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Explore our Versions of the Old Testament Articles. Discover the variations and translations that reveal the richness of the Old Testament.
Origins, revisions, Origen’s Hexapla, Lucianic text, great codices, and how the Septuagint serves the Hebrew text with disciplined, evidence-based analysis.
After the deportation of inhabitants of Samaria and the ten-tribe kingdom of Israel by Assyria in the middle of the 8th century B.C.E., pagans from other territories of the Assyrian Empire were settled there by Assyria. (2 Ki. 17:22-33) In time they came to be called “Samaritans.” They accepted the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures and in about the fourth century B.C.E. they produced the Samaritan Pentateuch, not really a translation of the original Hebrew Pentateuch, but a transliteration of its text into Samaritan characters, mixed with Samaritan idioms. Few of the extant manuscripts of the Samaritan Pentateuch are older than the thirteenth century C.E. Of about 6,000 differences between the Samaritan and the Hebrew texts, by far the majority are unimportant. One variation of interest appears in Exodus 12:40, where the Samaritan Pentateuch corresponds to the Septuagint.
The Old Testament, the inspired Word of God, how was it copied, maintained as to the textual reliability, and handed down throughout the past three thousand five hundred years?
The Syriac Peshitta preserves a stable, conservative text and offers critical insights into early New Testament transmission and theology.
The “Targums” were loose translations or paraphrases of the Hebrew Old Testament Scriptures into Aramaic. Although fragments of the early Targums of some books were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Jewish Targums as a whole likely found their current form no sooner than about the fifth century C.E.
The Septuagint (LXX) is a translation of the Hebrew scriptures and was made for the Jewish community, not Christians. The vocabulary is Greek and the syntax Hebrew. There is a Semitic influence in the vocabulary of the LXX. The New Testament is not a translation and is written for Christians who have the ransom sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Third, The Greek of the NT is 180 years to 310 years removed from the Greek of the Septuagint.
The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint, is the earliest extant Koine Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible, various biblical apocrypha, and deuterocanonical books.
Papyrus Rylands 458 is a copy of the Pentateuch in a Greek version of the Hebrew Bible known as the Septuagint.
The Aramaic Bible, especially the Peshitta, reflects a Greek base and offers valuable insight into early New Testament textual transmission.
Explore the intriguing link between early Christian writings and ancient translations. Discover more here.
