it will doubtless come as a shock to many people when they discover that the new testament
sometimes misquote the old testament to create christian beliefs which are not there in the old
testament . just give you a bit of background here before i come to a particular example which
is not very well known but it's totally important . so the original jewish bible is in hebrew .
the jews believe that god revealed the torah to moses on mount sinai in the hebrew language .
now later on when the jews were scattered across the world during the graco roman empire ,
most jews spoke greek which was the lingua franca the common language of the day from about the
third / fourth century bc onwards most jews spoke greek . obviously there were some in
palestine who spoke hebrew or aramaic in fact . so the translation was made of the hebrew
scriptures into greek and that's called the septuagint . and this is my copy of the english
translation of the septuagint . published by oxford university press . so this is the bible that most
jews at the time of jesus would have read . and it's also the bible that the new testament writers
quote from when they quote from the bible so they don't quote from the hebrew bible ( the original )
they quote from a translation : the septuagints , the greek version , the greek translation of the bible
so it's important you grasp that when i move on to give you the example which is to do with the
languages where you get this extraordinary misquote in the new testament . now to help us
understand this better , i'm going to quote from this book Escaping from Fundamentalism by
james barr . now this is an old book i've had this since my teens and it's a
very precious book to me , but james barr was a scottish old testament scholar at the university
of oxford , he was the oriole professor of the interpretation of holy scripture
until 1978 and then he became the regis professor of hebrew . so he is one of the world's top
old testament scholars a specialist in biblical hebrew and a man eminently qualified to talk
about this subject and in the chapter in this book called texts and translations he's
dealing with fundamentalist christianity and how it distorts the bible . and he gives
the example i want to share with you about the misquotation now this is a bit technical so
bear with me but do look the passages up in the bible for yourself just to check that what i'm
saying is true what james barr is saying is accurate and i find it quite shocking i
mean you'll see why it's quite shocking at the end so james barr says on page 142 :
the new testament writers generally quote from the septuagint and so does jesus as depicted by them
now the scepter again is a work of epoch making importance the first full-scale translation of
a body of works like the old testament to be made on this scale and in a scope that involves
languages as different as hebrew and greek and cultural ameliors as different as the jewish
and the hellenistic but under the circumstances it was not surprisingly as a translation a work of
very mixed quality so it's not a particularly good translation in parts it differed from book to book
since different techniques of translation were used at some places it must have had a hebrew text
different from ours while at other times it seriously misread or misunderstood the hebrew
so sometimes the bible the early christians used in quoting from it in the new testament
was misread or misunderstood the hebrew which is interesting . no scholar who knows the material
doubts that this is so but this makes a difference when we consider the new testament
for it does not only use the septuagint in a general way it often uses the exact words
as an argument or proof of a theological point and now we come to the example take this passage
now here he's quoting from a letter in the new testament that's traditionally thought to be
by paul although it's not actually by paul it doesn't claim to be by paul this is the letter
to the hebrews okay letter to the hebrews in the new testament , and in hebrews chapter 10 verse
5 invite you to stop the video and go and look it up and read it for yourself in a
any modern translation will do you will read and i'll read it in my own translation here :
consequently when christ came into the world he said sacrifices and offerings you have not
desired but a body you have prepared for me so when christ came into the world he became man he
became incarnate incarnate means to take on flesh and god became a human being took on a body and
this is prophesied in the old testament and it's quoting an old testament passage which says
sacrifices and offerings you have not desired but a body you have prepared for me . so god
prepared a body for jesus according to the old testament prophecy yeah .
now the passage which continues for another few lines is a quotation from psalm 40 verse 7 onwards
psalm 40 verse 7 onwards and you can certainly look that up if you want to now so you can
check what it says in any modern translation it doesn't matter which translation it is .
in the hebrew which is translated in our english bibles we find the following
in psalm 40 verse 6. : sacrifice an offering you do not desire but you have given me an open ear
did that come from sacrifice and offering you do not desire yeah that sounds familiar
but you have given me an open ear well that's odd that's not what we read in in the letter was it
so the rsv margin , this is a translation a very scholarly accurate translation adds in the ma as
in the footnotes at the bottom ears thou hast dug for me which is a literal rending of
the hebrew says professor barr now the whole point of the quotation in the letter to the hebrews
is that it mentions the preparation of a body for the christ coming into the world
the writer of the letter to the hebrews at the culmination of his argument
comes back to exactly this in hebrews 10 10 a few verses later it says : and by that will we have been
sanctified through the offering of the body of jesus christ once and for all hebrews 10 10.
but there was nothing about a body in the original hebrew as you can see in
your modern bibles which translate from the hebrew in the old testament nothing at
all it is often said to be a mistranslation but it seems more likely in j professor james barr's
view that it was a mere copying error in the transmission of the greek text and by the way i
disagree here i think it was deliberate but we'll see what james barr says and then we'll discuss it
the best editions of the septuagint have but ears you have prepared for me
which at least in regard to the noun is a correct and exact rendering of the hebrew the words as
quoted in the letter to the hebrews gave him a copying error the word was ears which is greek
otia written in unsealed script like capitals this is where it gets technical by the way the S at the
end of the previous word was read twice and the T the T I in the middle was read as the letter M
producing the word " soma " body , soma in greek thus to sum up the word was ears in the hebrew
was correctly translated into the greek as ears but in the transmission of the greek text it
became it was misread and there was wrongly copied as soma which is body this mistaken reading was
then used by the letter to the hebrews it was also supported by the use of it in hebrews transmitted
in many manuscripts of the greek psalms thus even if some details of this explanation may
be questioned there is no doubt that the letter to the hebrews was proving a point of doctrine and a
point of central importance in its argument from a word that did not exist at all in the hebrew bible
that's the original and was a straightforward product of an error in transmission the matter
was theologically important for it was the question of whether there was a scripture
so the question was : whether there was in scripture that is the old testament a previous
reference to the clothing of christ in a body of incarnation with sacrificial scope ? because the
left of the hebrew says this is a prophecy that god will provide christ with a body this difficult
demonstration says bar is accomplished entirely through the appeal to the verbal
form of an erroneous text in this case then far from the inspiration of scripture leading to a
uniquely good preservation of the bible it is the faulty preservation of the original inspired text
that has been essential for the production of the second inspired text now that's quite complex and
you might want to listen to that a couple of times and i do recommend the book by the way
but the point is this a misreading a mistranslation perhaps or an error in transmission
those are the theories that baal suggests has led to the letter to the hebrews the new testament
misquoting a text to prove an important point of christian doctrine i.e the incarnation of
jesus himself he came to earth in a body but that is not prophesied in the original text at best
it's based on a mistake . now my own personal view for what it's worth is that this is deliberate
that the original text was known whether in the hebrew but even in the best
greek manuscripts the best ones there was no problem with the translation
i think the scribe chose he came across how fortunate he would have been in his own mind
wow i've come across a version of this greek text which says body now the fact that it's wrong
it's not in the hebrew it's not in the best greek manuscript suggests to me that he probably picked
how fortuitous for him how felicitous for him that this accident was there in this dodgy greek
manuscript it provided some kind of providential proof from the bible of the incarnation of jesus
but actually it was a dodgy translation and i think it was deliberately used to justify
and create a doctrine in the letter of hebrews so these are the kind of issues that we're dealing
when you look carefully at the new testament particularly the way it uses old testament texts
it usually misquotes them it usually mangles them sometimes it invents prophecies out of nothing
i kid you not it's not a very pretty site when you look at it and that's just the reality this is not
me being negative this is just surveying the facts . so i hope that was of interest . until next time