Bearing Faithful Witness

Septuagint The Septuagint is a translation from Hebrew into Greek of important Jewish texts. It was begun around 260 BCE to serve Jews throughout the world who might have difficulty reading Hebrew. It also made Jewish texts accessible to non-Jews, and influenced a growing number of "God-fearers" who admired the ethics and teachings of Judaism (Acts 10:2,35;13:43). Legend has it that the translation was made independently by seventy translators (hence, "septuagint"), and that their work, when compared, was found to be identical. The Septuagint is often designated by LXX.

Apocrypha When Jerome (d. 420 CE) translated the Bible into Latin, he used the Septuagint. Not all of the texts in that collection, however, had been included in Jewish Scripture when Jewish canonization took place between 75 and 130 CE. Jerome’s Vulgate contained more than the Jewish faith came to recognize as authoritative. At the time of the Reformation, Protestants accepted the authorized Jewish selection of texts in preference to the Septuagint selection. The extra texts in the Vulgate, accepted today as Scripture by Roman Catholics but not by Protestants, are known as the books of the Apocrypha.

A note about YHWH This combination of four Hebrew consonants is the name of God (Exod. 3:14; called the "tetragrammaton" meaning "four-lettered name"). It is not to be said under any circumstances today by Jews. How exactly it is to be pronounced is not known anymore. In pointed Hebrew texts (i.e. ones to which vowels have been added), the vowels of ‘Adonai’ (= ‘Lord’) have been included with these consonants in order to remind the Jewish reader to say "Adonai" in preference to anything else.

From this combination of consonants and vowels, Christians have produced ‘Jehovah’ as a divine name. Many English translations still follow the King James Version in rendering YHWH by "the LORD" (i.e. with all letters capitalized), thus allowing English Bible readers to know when the four consonants appear and also to respect their special sacredness. Increasingly today Christians are using the word, ‘Yahweh’, and even pretending to know that this formulation from YHWH is the correct one.

It cannot be known whether it is correct. Whether correct or not, Jews believe that to use it is disrespectful and disobedient to God. Be that as it may, if we respect Jews, both ‘Jehovah’ and ‘Yahweh’ should be avoided. Even in Jesus’ time, YHWH was only pronounced once a year on the Day of Atonement within the Most Holy place. Jesus probably never said the name. Today, without the Temple, it is not pronounced at all. What books were authoritative for Jesus’ community?
The books in the Old Testament are frequently cited as inspired and authoritative to the New Testament authors, but this fails to do justice to the other works cited as inspired by them. The New Testament authors apparently quoted from (or alluded to the inspired or authoritative nature of) the Ascension of Isaiah (Heb. 11:37), Testament of Moses (Jude 9), Baruch (1 Cor. 10:20; Rev. 8:2), 1 Enoch (Luke 16:9, 21:28; John 5:22; Col. 2:3; Heb. 11:5; 1 Pet. 1:12; Jude 14-15; Rev. 5:11, 15:3, 17:14, 19:16), 3 Maccabees (1 Tim. 6:15; Rev. 14:10, 17:14, 19:16, 20:10, 21:8), 4 Maccabees (Matt. 22:32; Rom. 7:7), Psalms of Solomon (Matt. 6:26; Luke 11:21-22; John 1:14; Rev. 2:26-27, 21:24,26), many documents in the Old Testament Apocrypha, Aratus’s Phaenomena 5 (Acts 17:28), Cleanthes (Acts 17:28), Epimenides de Oraculis (Titus 1:12), and Menander’s Thais (1 Cor. 15:33). A wider literature was available to New Testament authors than we have been accustomed to considering, and this fact is significant.

When Paul says "according to the Scriptures" in I Cor. 15:3-4, what exactly does he have in mind?

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