This is the story of Susanna, and it is unlike anything in the Daniel we have walked through so far. No beasts, no kings, no visions of the end. Instead, a garden, a bath, two dirty old men, a woman condemned to die for a crime she did not commit, and a teenage Daniel, decades before the lions, who stops an execution with two questions.
It is a beautiful story. It is also the storm center of one of the most important arguments in the history of the Bible, an argument about whether this story is Scripture at all, and it turns, of all things, on two little Greek puns. A first-rate Christian scholar threw those puns at one of the greatest minds of the early church as proof that Susanna was a forgery. And the argument they had about it goes to the very heart of what this whole publication is about.
Awesome! As I was reading this, I thought of the woman who was dragged before Jesus, accused of adultery, and the fact that her lover was not brought too. Although she may have been guilty, Jesus showed mercy, humiliated her accusers, and set her onto the correct path.
But I was also thinking, ancient Greek language was very similar to the Phoenecian language that predated the Hebrew Herodian script that came much later. Is it possible that the Septuagint is the evolution of that much older textual form, and is therefore the inspired Word of God?
First, 100% on the woman caught in adultery. In fact, I made exactly that point when I was taking to my girlfriend about this material last night 🙂
Now, as to the inspired status of the Septuagint, my take, as I argued toward the end of the post, is that I see no reason that God could not have inspired Scripture in Greek as well as Hebrew and Aramaic. Especially regarding the books that were composed in Greek that most Protestants consider "apocrypha."
The idea that God only inspired Old Testament Scripture in Hebrew is an assertion that has never, to my knowledge, even been argued, much less proven.
However, viewing the entirety of the LXX as inspired does create a few problems. There are places, though they are few, that we have to make a decision about whether the Hebrew or the Greek is preserving the correct text/meaning.
Awesome! As I was reading this, I thought of the woman who was dragged before Jesus, accused of adultery, and the fact that her lover was not brought too. Although she may have been guilty, Jesus showed mercy, humiliated her accusers, and set her onto the correct path.
But I was also thinking, ancient Greek language was very similar to the Phoenecian language that predated the Hebrew Herodian script that came much later. Is it possible that the Septuagint is the evolution of that much older textual form, and is therefore the inspired Word of God?
First, 100% on the woman caught in adultery. In fact, I made exactly that point when I was taking to my girlfriend about this material last night 🙂
Now, as to the inspired status of the Septuagint, my take, as I argued toward the end of the post, is that I see no reason that God could not have inspired Scripture in Greek as well as Hebrew and Aramaic. Especially regarding the books that were composed in Greek that most Protestants consider "apocrypha."
The idea that God only inspired Old Testament Scripture in Hebrew is an assertion that has never, to my knowledge, even been argued, much less proven.
However, viewing the entirety of the LXX as inspired does create a few problems. There are places, though they are few, that we have to make a decision about whether the Hebrew or the Greek is preserving the correct text/meaning.