Why did the NT authors seem to prefer the Greek translation of the OT? (Forthcoming Book)

I recently had the honor of contributing the “NT Perspective” to a forthcoming book, The Authority of the Septuagint: Biblical, Historical, and Theological Approaches, edited by my RTS colleagues Greg Lanier and Will Ross (and available here).

The question I was tasked with answering was this: to what extent does the New Testament place unique authority on the Septuagint (or LXX) over and against the Hebrew text, or vice-verse. To answer that, I engage in the “usual” method of quantifying and comparing citations that are clearly from the LXX vs. those that are from the Hebrew text that eventually results in the Masoretic-Text we have today (called in the book the “proto-MT”). There’s nothing new about that methodology, and the results are pretty clearly a “soft” preference for the Septuagint.

But that’s not the whole story. My contribution to the debate is the (obvious, in my opinion) observation that we have to factor in how the NT writers “sourced” their OT citations to begin with. Where were they getting there texts?

Here’s an excerpt (and I’ll post a few more before publication day on Oct. 30th).

How did these ancient NT authors source their OT citations and allusions? A “tally” approach—even a “weighted” tally approach—is flawed because it does not sufficiently account for the various modes by which the textual tradition would be accessed in the ancient world or, relatedly, the values and expectations of those studying and commenting on that tradition. It imagines these NT writers (and preachers, since much of the writing we have in the NT was originally delivered orally) as having multiple texts at their disposal, choosing from among them on the basis of defined criteria, like a kind of primitive text-critic. Longenecker, for examples, hypothesizes that if Jesus is familiar with the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek textual traditions, he may “at times…engaged in textual selection among the various Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek versions then current, and that some of the Septuagintal features in the text forms attributed to him actually are to be credited to him.”

That hypothesis is carefully stated and seems reasonable, but it needs to be analyzed in light of the textual situation “on the ground,” and also how that situation might differ for Matthew, John, Peter, or Paul. Where would an apostolic author go to access the words of Scripture, to do research into the text, or to verify or compare citations? Is such a process ordinary for teachers and writers, and did their audience expect such precision? These questions are critical for our overall concern. The debate is often conducted as if these authors fit essentially modern standards of textual selection—more primitive, of course, but with similar values and questions. We need to reimagine the “citation workflow” so that it better matches that of 2^nd Temple Jewish itinerant preachers, teachers, leaders, writers, and scribes, while also recognizing that certain features of this new Christian movement are unique and therefore establishing new patterns and norms.

And then a bit later:

We need to reclaim the “ordinariness” of the apostolic writing process.

We should begin with the all-too-obvious observation that the NT is entirely in Greek. What is more, it is so unapologetically. It assumes without argument that its readers know that the Hebrew Bible was written in Hebrew (Luke 24:44; Rom. 3:2), that the language of the Jews is Aramaic (Matt. 27:37; John 20:16; Acts 21:40; Phil. 3:5), that therefore Jesus and his disciples spoke and taught Jews in Aramaic (Acts 21:37-40), and that it is perfectly fine and ordinary that all of this is still “the very word of God” in Greek.

This is particularly evident with the words of Jesus. It is almost certain that the bulk of Jesus’ teaching was in Aramaic. As Barr points out, it is surprising, then, that “that the words of Jesus have not been preserved in the language in which they were originally spoken…. The tradition of his teaching was carefully cultivated and was set forth in the various versions of the different Gospels, but it was a tradition in translation.”¹ The NT authors aren’t hiding this; there are a few significant spots where we did hear Jesus speaking his native tongue (Mark 5:41, 15:34), and here the authors provide us a translation.² The most likely explanation for this curious lack of attention to Jesus’ Aramaic is that the eyewitness-generation isn’t really bothered by it; the Greek will do just as well.

Our second observation, then, is that this applies not only to Jesus’ words, but to all of Scripture. The complex eclecticism of citation phenomena has indirectly established this already; the best explanation for the apparent freedom in NT citations of the OT is the belief that these translations adequately convey the authority of the original. Or, to put it bluntly, the NT never cites the proto-MT, by which I mean that the NT never references the Hebrew language. When we find the proto-MT represented in the NT it is always in translation. Even if we could prove that when the NT writers cite the proto-MT they are doing so because it has more authority, even then the NT decides to do so in translation, which actually serves the emphasize our point: the NT writers presuppose that translation adequately transliterates divine authority.

For those at ETS, there will be a review and panel discussion on the book as a whole. Hope to see you there, or comment below. Feedback, as always, is welcome.

1 J. Barr, “Which Language Did Jesus Speak? Some Remarks of a Semitist,” BJRL 53.1 (1970): 9.

2 It’s significant that each of these involve not a small degree of pathos in the moment; they are each very personal. The original is not given because the translation cannot capture the meaning of the original, as if translation is inadequate to communicate the “true sense” of Jesus’ words; rather, the original is given so that the reader is able to see the intimacy and humanity of Jesus’ relationships.