On January 16, 2015 at Trinity Bible Church in Phoenix, Arizona, The Gospel Coalition Arizona chapter held The Bible: Canon, Texts, and Translations Conference. The conference featured: Dr. Peter Williams, the CEO of Tyndale House Cambridge; Dr. Wayne Grudem, the Research Professor of Theology and Biblical Studies at Phoenix Seminary; Dr. John Meade, professor of Old Testament at Phoenix Seminary; and Dr. John DelHousaye, professor of New Testament at Phoenix Seminary. The main question of the conference was: Can people trust the authenticity and validity of the biblical text?
Nowadays, a common reason for rejecting the Scripture as an authoritative text is that, through the process of translating, much of what was in the original text would have been lost. Dr. John Meade and Dr. Peter Williams attempted to explain the validity of the biblical text through the Old Testament manuscripts that scholars currently study from. In the earlier traditions of Biblical scholarship, many scholars thought that the Septuagint, which is the Greek rendition of the Hebrew Old Testament, was the key to understanding what the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament contained. There was a problem in Biblical scholarship when archaeologists excavated the Dead Sea Scrolls and various ancient manuscripts that showed variations from the Septuagint. With the differences that the Septuagint had with manuscripts like Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars began doubting the authenticity of the Scripture.
Dr. John Meade sought to solve this problem by looking at the history of how the Jews preserved their holy texts. He emphasized the importance of temple texts, which were very accurate copies of the Hebrew Scripture stored in temples for the sake of being read during worship. Various literary works from history support for the existence of these temple texts: 'Letter of Aristeas' stated that professional copyists were sent from Jerusalem to Alexandria to fix the horribly copied texts in Alexandria, and 'Jewish War' by Josephus spoke of the Law of the Jews taken from Israel to Rome. These evidences indicate the proof of holy texts stored in the temples and that professional copyists were sent to different regions to present more accurate translations of the Biblical text.
Because of the variations found between the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Dr. Peter Williams suggested that Biblical scholars should avoid approaching the Septuagint as the text to study when trying to get at the accuracy of the Bible. This is a surprising stance on the Septuagint. Historically speaking, the Septuagint had huge influence upon the translators of the Bible. Yet, Dr. Williams reasoned with the congregation that the problems of the Septuagint translation outweigh the benefits that readers can find from the Septuagint.
The term "Septuagint" originated from the seventy or seventy two scholars who translated the Old Testament into Koine Greek. However, now it is usually defined as a one big piece of translated work rather than referring to those scholars who translated the text. It is also historically puzzling to know what these seventy scholars actually translated. Early church fathers differed in their opinion of what the original text of the Septuagint contained. Some even considered apocryphal books such as Susanna and 1 Esdras to be part of the Septuagint. Because there is so much dispute of what the actual translated work of Septuagint contained, Dr. Peter Williams argued that Biblical scholars see the Septuagint, not as a single ancient text, but as the group of translators who worked to translate the Scripture.
Furthermore, Dr. Williams pointed to the problem of the Septuagint in failing to precisely translate or interpret the Hebrew Old Testament. For instance, Acts 15:16-18 and Amos 9:11-12 have exact same wording in the Septuagint. Yet, Dr. Williams suggest that James, the speaker in Acts 15:16-18, did not intend to merely cite Amos 9:11-12, but he was seeking to interpret other verses in the Old Testament. Also, Psalm 2:3 in the Septuagint creates difficulty in the readers because Septuagint translates to connote the concept of "breaking," but the more precise understanding of the Psalm 2:3 is in reference to shepherding. With these failures of the Septuagint to correctly convey the meaning, the Septuagint cannot be the Biblical scholar's best translation of the Bible to rely on.
Dr. Williams notices a trend in the Biblical scholarship during the early church period to arrive at a more accurate translation of the Scripture. As the result, the variations found between the Septuagint and the other manuscripts suggest this movement toward the more accurate translations of the Biblical text. Many doubters of the Bible would question the validity of the Bible based on the simple thought that much would be lost from the works of translation. However, the use of temple texts to constantly fix errors found in translated work and the excavations of manuscripts that point toward accuracy and better interpretations of the Scripture suggest that the Bible is a much more reliable text than what most doubters conjure up the Bible to be.
Joo Heon Lee is a volunteer student writer from the University of California, Irvine.
