Septuagint

[[File:Codex Vaticanus B, 2Thess. 3,11-18, Hebr. 1,1-2,2.jpg|thumb|right|165px|A page from the Septuagint]]
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The '''Septuagint''', a Greek [[Bible translations |translation]] of the [[Old Testament |Hebrew Scriptures]], originated in Alexandria in about the 3rd century BCE. Legend states that seventy scribes produced the text in seventy days (the name "Septuagint" comes from the Latin ''septuaginta'', literally: "seventy"); it was originally associated with communities of Hellenized Jews.  Textual analysis of the [[New Testament]] reveals that [[Jesus]] and the early [[Christian Church]] used the Septuagint, which became the official Old Testament of the [[Eastern Orthodox]] Church. (The [[Roman Catholic Church]] uses the Vulgate, a [[Latin]] translation.)

==Differing opinions==
At the Council of Jamnia in 90 [[CE]] many leading rabbis (partly to differentiate [[Judaism]] from [[Christianity]]) rejected the Alexandrian text in favor of the [[Hebrew]] texts (now known as the Masoretic Text); since seven of the books were available at the time only in Greek, this resulted in an Old Testament with only thirty-nine books rather than forty-six.  In the Sixteenth Century the [[Reformation]] embraced this 7% smaller [[Bible]] (partly to differentiate [[Protestantism]] from Catholicism) and to this day Catholics have to answer charges that the [[Pope]] added books to the [[Bible]]. Nevertheless, the Septuagint is agreed by most Bible scholars to represent an older textual tradition closely related to the texts found at Qumran, and represents a valuable historical document of the evolution of the Bible.

A few [[King James only]]ists consider the Septuagint a hoax, part of a [[Satanic]] [[conspiracy theory]] that claims that the early Roman Catholic Church intentionally sought to corrupt the Bible. Outside extreme [[Christian fundamentalism|fundamentalist]] circles, no one else takes this claim seriously.

== YHWH versus "Lord" ==
By the time the Septuagint was written, the Hebrew name of God, [[YHWH]], or "the tetragrammaton" when you're being polite had become a "forbidden word" that a good Jew wasn't supposed to utter out loud.  So, instead of transliterating YHWH into its Greek equivalent, some versions of the Septuagint uses the Greek word ''kyrios'' (lit. "Lord") every place the Hebrew scriptures contain YHWH.  Older versions of the Septuagint apparently include YHWH. <ref>[http://www.eliyah.com/lxx.html Tetragrammaton Found in Earliest Copies of the Septuagint]</ref><ref>[http://jehovah.to/exe/greek/yhwh.htm YHWH in the New Testament]</ref><ref>[http://en.allexperts.com/q/Jehovah-s-Witness-1617/2010/10/YHWH-NT.htm Jehovah`s Witness/YHWH in the NT]</ref>

This explains why YHWH appears nowhere in the New Testament.  The authors of the New Testament were using the Septuagint as their source of scripture.{{fact}}  Every place an Old Testament passage is quoted in the New Testament, it is the Septuagint version of that passage that is quoted; e.g., while Isaiah 40:3 said "prepare the way for YHWH", Matthew 3:3 quoted it as "prepare the way for the Lord".

This tradition has carried forward into modern translations of the Bible, such as the King James version, in which the Hebrew YHWH is translated as "the L<small>ORD</small>" in small caps. Despite this, most Christians do not necessarily believe the tetragrammaton is taboo.

==External links==
*[http://www.ecclesia.org/truth/septuagint.html History of the Septuagint]

==References==
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Categories: Scriptures, Bible analysis, Bible translations