The Septuagint is a Greek version of the Hebrew Old Testament and the first known translation of the Bible outside of its original language. It was completed by Hellenistic (Greek-speaking) Jewish rabbis a few hundred years before Christ.
The Septuagint, also called the LXX (or Seventy), was also the version of the Bible that the early Christians primarily relied on — both in Greek and then in Latin translation — until Protestants returned to the Masoretic Hebrew in the 16th century. Even today, it is the version exclusively used by the Eastern Orthodox churches.
For that reason, the Septuagint is anything but ancient history, and its impact is still felt vividly in relations between Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and Jewish Bible readers.
This article will survey the history and development of the LXX — including how it earned its nickname — and explain the tensions caused by the differences between its text and the Masoretic Hebrew.
Origins of the Septuagint
After Alexander the Great’s massive conquests across the Near East and North Africa around 330 BC, Greek quickly became the primary spoken language throughout his empire. Within a few generations, most Jews outside Israel no longer spoke Hebrew (and even the ones there mostly spoke Aramaic).
This created the same problem Christians would have much later in Western Europe with the Latin mass: that is, most people couldn’t read or understand their own scriptures!
So, sometime in the late 3rd century BC, a collection of rabbis in Alexandria, Egypt translated first the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) and then, later, the rest of the Old Testament into Greek. This became known as the Septuagint, or LXX (the Roman numerals for Seventy).
Why LXX (‘Seventy’)?
Technically, it should be LXXII (seventy-two).
Legend has it that King Ptolemy of Egypt gathered 72 elders — six from each tribe of Israel — and placed them each in a separate room of his palace with instructions to write the Torah in Greek. When they emerged, each had written the exact same thing.
Historically this event is pretty unlikely (for one thing, ten of the twelve tribes no longer existed by that time), and few Jews or Christians today believe that was exactly what happened. But the story stuck enough that their translation eventually became known in Latin as the Versio Septuaginta Interpretum, or “Version of the Seventy Translators” — which I suppose sounded nicer than “of the Seventy-Two.”
An Enormous — and Enormously Controversial — Achievement
It’s easy to overlook today, with our plethora of Bible versions, what an incredible accomplishment this translation was. Even now it takes dozens of scholars (if not exact multiples of a dozen) collaborating for years or even decades to complete a satisfactory translation of the Bible.
In the ancient world, it was unheard-of — literally! Translating the Hebrew scriptures had never been done before. But, again just like in the Latin Christian West, it was also a highly controversial move — lauded by some Greek-speaking Jews outside the Holy Land, loathed by the Hebrew-speaking rabbinate in Jerusalem.
Still, regardless of the actual number of rabbis or how they compiled their translation, their work enabled thousands of Jews over the next few centuries to read the scriptures (or more likely hear them, since most people were illiterate back then) in their native language.
And some of those Jews would become some of the first Christians.
The Septuagint’s Influence on Christianity
A few centuries after the creation of the Septuagint, when Paul and the other apostles were making their rounds across the Roman Empire, they used the Septuagint to engage with Greek-speaking Jews and gentiles and articulate the prophetic basis of their faith in Christ.
(Remember that the New Testament was written in Greek for much the same reason — even if it often drew from Aramaic sources — and most of its quotations from the Old Testament come directly from the Septuagint instead of retranslating from the Hebrew.)
Those early believers then used the Greek Septuagint, rather than the original Hebrew, to translate the Bible into Latin as they continued to expand westward.
In fact, by the time Jerome undertook his Vulgate translation in the late 4th century AD, the Septuagint was so entrenched in the Christian community that Jerome was accused of heresy (by Augustine, no less!) for daring to work from the Hebrew instead. In the end he relented and embraced the Septuagint as well, drawing from both texts to produce his translation. But his preference remained with the Hebrew.
The Septuagint’s (Lack of) Influence on Judaism
At the same time the Septuagint was being embraced by early Christians, it was falling out of (already tepid) favor with Jews.
It’s unclear to what extent the Greek Old Testament was ever embraced by the Jewish community, though its use by major figures like Philo and Josephus suggests that it had its share of fans.
But after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 AD and subsequent exile into diaspora, many Jews sought to recover a purer Hebraic faith free from Greco-Roman influence. Though some Jews made a few further attempts to translate the Old Testament, by the Middle Ages, each group had settled into their standard liturgical languages: Hebrew for Jews, Latin for Catholics, and Greek for Eastern Orthodox (with translations into Russian, Ethiopian Ge’ez, and other local languages when necessary).
Those liturgical languages persisted (and continue to persist) — with one major exception: the upheaval brought by the Reformation.
The Rediscovery of the Hebrew Bible During the Reformation
As with so many sacred traditions in the West, the dethroning of the Septuagint as the preferred Old Testament version was precipitated by the Protestant Reformation.
Starting with Martin Luther and quickly picked up by John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, and others, the emphasis on sola scriptura — the Bible alone as sufficient for a life of faith — demanded not just the availability of the Bible in people’s native languages, but also a return to its study in its original form. (Remember, until this time, nearly everyone in Western Christianity was reading — or hearing — the Bible in Latin, which fewer and fewer people could actually understand.)
For the New Testament, this meant working from its original Greek. For the Old Testament, it meant recovering the Hebrew, which had scarcely been used for over 1,000 years.
Scarcely used by European Christians, that is. Fortunately, Jews had continued to use the Masoretic (or rabbinic) Hebrew Bible throughout that whole time. So, early Protestant translators went back to the source, using the Hebrew text for early vernacular Bible translations, including the King James Version.
The Greek Septuagint vs. the Masoretic Hebrew Today
Today, nearly all Western translations of the Bible — Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic — work primarily from the Masoretic text, only referring back to the Septuagint (or other ancient versions such as the Dead Sea Scrolls) for unclear passages (and for the Apocrypha — more on that below).
For the Eastern Churches, where the effects of the Reformation were barely felt, if at all — and where much of the population still uses Greek liturgically — the Septuagint remains the preferred version. For non-Greek speakers such as Russian and Ethiopian Orthodox, their Bibles are translated from the Greek Septuagint, rather than the Hebrew. (You can even find the Septuagint in English in the Orthodox Study Bible.)
Only the Syriac Orthodox Church (active in the Levant, Turkey, and the Middle East) uses the Peshitta, a simplified Hebrew Old Testament, liturgically.
Septuagint Greek vs. Masoretic Hebrew Bibles: Similarities and Differences
For the most part, the Masoretic and Septuagint Old Testaments feature the same content in the same format with whatever small variations you might expect to see in a translation. There are some subtle differences, though — and some very obvious ones.
The Differences: Apocryphal Books and Textual Discrepancies
The biggest difference between the Septuagint and Masoretic texts is that the Septuagint includes the Deuterocanonical books, also known as the Apocrypha, and the Masoretic does not.
Why?
The simple reason is that the Apocryphal books were in fact written in Greek. Because of that, they were never fully embraced into Jewish canon — and because of that, they were excluded when Protestants rejected the Septuagint in favor of the original Hebrew Bible.
Perhaps more troublingly, there are some subtle textual differences between the Septuagint and Masoretic texts. For example, the books of Job and Jeremiah are much shorter in the Septuagint, and the latter is in a different order. The book of Exodus also varies significantly between the two versions. And there are other places where verses are added, removed, or altered throughout.
But which were added, and which were removed? Which verses are the correct ones?
Is the Septuagint or Masoretic More Reliable?
Both scholars and believers disagree among each other about whether the Septuagint or Masoretic versions are more likely to represent the original form of the Bible. Most Eastern Christians side with the Septuagint, while Western Christians (especially Protestants) and Jews prefer the Masoretic — and scholars are all over the place.
There are compelling reasons to trust them both. Basically what it comes down to, is that the Masoretic was written first, but the Septuagint was compiled first.
Christians recognized these discrepancies very early on. The second-century scholar and theologian Origen famously created a side-by-side comparison of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin known as the Hexapla. He attempted to reconcile the different versions, beginning a process picked up by Jerome’s combined translation, later rediscovered by post-Reformation Protestant translators, then probed by 19th century German and English scholars, and still continuing today.
You can see the fruits of all of their labors in the footnotes of most modern Bible translations.
The Similarities Are Far Greater than the Differences
In any case, these differences between Greek and Hebrew Bibles should not be overstated. Aside from the Apocrypha, the vast majority of the Old Testament’s 23,000-plus verses are very close across its different versions. That is remarkable — even miraculous — when you consider that each and every one of them had to be copied by hand, over and over, for hundreds of years.
List of Books in the Septuagint
Here is a list of the books that appear in the Septuagint, and which denominations consider them canonical.
Note how closely aligned the Protestant and Jewish canons are: that’s because they both use the Masoretic text. Catholic Bibles have most — but not all — of the books that Orthodox Bibles have. Only the Psalms of Solomon do not appear in any canon; the Odes are songs taken from elsewhere in the Bible and made into a separate book for liturgical readings.
Book | Protestant | Jewish | Catholic | Orthodox |
Genesis | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Exodus | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Leviticus | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Numbers | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Deuteronomy | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Joshua | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Judges | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Ruth | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
1 Kings | ✔ [as 1 Samuel] | ✔ [as Samuel] | ✔ [as 1 Samuel] | ✔ |
2 Kings | ✔ [as 2 Samuel] | ✔ [as Samuel] | ✔ [as 2 Samuel] | ✔ |
3 Kings | ✔ [as 1 Kings] | ✔ [as Kings] | ✔ [as 1 Kings] | ✔ |
4 Kings | ✔ [as 2 Kings] | ✔ [as Kings] | ✔ [as 2 Kings] | ✔ |
1 Chronicles | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
2 Chronicles | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
1 Esdras | ✔ | |||
2 Esdras | ✔ [as Ezra & Nehemiah] | ✔ [as Ezra-Nehemiah] | ✔ [as Ezra & Nehemiah] | ✔ |
Esther | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ [with additions] | ✔ [with additions] |
Judith | ✔ | ✔ | ||
Tobit | ✔ | ✔ | ||
1 Maccabees | ✔ | ✔ | ||
2 Maccabees | ✔ | ✔ | ||
3 Maccabees | ✔ | |||
Psalms | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ [with Psalm 151] |
Odes | [These exist elsewhere in the Bible and not as a separate book in modern Bibles.] | |||
Proverbs | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Ecclesiastes | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Song of Solomon | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Job | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Wisdom of Solomon | ✔ | ✔ | ||
Sirach | ✔ | ✔ | ||
Hosea | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Amos | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Micah | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Joel | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Obadiah | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Jonah | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Nahum | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Habakkuk | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Zephaniah | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Haggai | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Zechariah | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Malachi | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Isaiah | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Jeremiah | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Baruch | ✔ | ✔ | ||
Lamentations | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Letter of Jeremiah | ✔ | ✔ | ||
Ezekiel | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Daniel | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ [with additions] | ✔ [with additions] |
4 Maccabees | ✔ [in appendix] | |||
Psalms of Solomon |
Conclusion: The Legacy of the Septuagint
From its origins among ancient Greek-speaking Jews, to its use as a bridge between Jews and Gentiles in early Christianity, to its foundational role in Eastern Orthodox and — to a lesser extent — Roman Catholic liturgy and doctrine, the Septuagint has played an integral role in Biblical history and translation.
Though it ultimately fell out of favor in the West and remains in use today mainly among Orthodox Christians, it remains a critical piece of the tapestry that makes up our Scriptures — and our faith. It continues to inform our understanding of the Bible by filling in the blanks when the Hebrew texts are unclear, and reminds us of the rich cultural and linguistic diversity that exists within Christianity — now more than ever.
So next time you pick up your Bible, keep an eye on the footnotes — you just might see a few of the seams that hold that tapestry together.
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Jacob is Editorial Director of Bible Gateway. He holds a Master of Theological Studies in Early Christian Thought from Harvard Divinity School, and a Bachelor of Arts in Religious History from Memorial University of Newfoundland, though with most of his coursework from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. His work has appeared in Ekstasis and in Geez Magazine's "Embracing Darkness" Advent devotional.