Septuagint and Canon
Bible Canon Specifics
What is the Bible "Canon" ?
The issue of the Canon of the bible, is the issue of which books Legitimately should be considered to be part of the Bible.
The books that are in the Bible are referred to as a "canon", because those books have been "Canonized", which means that those books have been
recognized as being Holy.When a book of the Bible is Canonized, it does not mean that some people think it MIGHT be a message from God. And it does not mean that the human author of a particular book of the Bible...was a "nice guy".
A book of the Bible is not MADE Holy. The reason it is not MADE Holy is because humans cannot make or un-make anything Holy. If the books in the Bible ARE truly Holy, it is because they are Holy, because those specific books actually and authentically really come from a true and living God, and He personally dictated the contents of those books to the humans who wrote the words down.
Although humans cannot make something Holy, what we CAN do is to recognize something as HOLY.
That is the purpose of the Canonization of the Bible. That process Recognized which books of the Bible were Holy - and belonged in the Bible, and which books did NOT belong in the Bible and were Not Holy.
The Canonization of the books of the Bible is NOT when humans get together and tell God...what God AUGHT to put in the Bible.
The process of Canonization - on the contrary - is when Humans AGREE WITH GOD. It is Humans who must Agree with God, and NOT the Other way around. Canonization affirms that God sets the standards for which books belong in the Bible and which ones do not belong in the Bible.
It is GOD who is in charge of that process, and Not humans.
The Role of the Septuagint in the Canonization of the Bible
- Here is the main problem with the Septuagint: No Copy has ever been found.
Instead, only a few historic references to it have been found.
- Everyone talks so much ABOUT the Septuagint, that this is simply a trick to make people THINK that it has been found.
- Another problem is that many people today do not know what the Septuagint was.
The Septuagint was NOT the New Testament.
The Septuagint was ONLY the Old Testament.
But despite this, many people today STILL talk about the Septuagint AS IF its contained the New Testament, and then try to argue a point about the "Authenticity" of the New Testament, and try to base the arguments they make on the Septuagint.
IF this happens to you when you are in a conversation with someone, it is important to recognize that - you are being Misled (even though those who do this, may not be aware that they are doing this).
The Septuagint was supposed to be: the Old Testament translated by Hebrew wise men, from the Ancient Hebrew into Ancient Greek.
Therefore, the Septuagint is the OLD TESTAMENT written in Ancient Greek.
The Reason WHY the Septuagint was talked about by some theological commentators is because until the 20th century, it was difficult to know absolutely for sure, that the Contents found in the Old Testament, Actually were the GENUINE and ACCURATE translations, from the Original Old Testament books that the Hebrews were Given by God, thousands of Years ago.
The Theory was that those Old Testament books IN HEBREW...were basically lost.
SINCE they were lost, (so the theory claimed) - the one way to establish the Authenticity of the books of the Bible that we have in the Old Testament TODAY...was to go back and find copies of the SEPTUAGINT, the Old Testament in Ancient Greek.
After all, that would not be as good as the Hebrew Copies, but at least the contents of the Old Testament in the Ancient Greek ...would be a way to tell what the CONTENTS of the Old Testament were supposed to be.
For that reason, the Septuagint was talked about, and copies of the Septuagint were sought after.
This is an important point: the REASON why the Septuagint was presumed to be valid and Valuable, was because it was believed to be a way to find the contents of the Old Testament, as they were given to the Hebrew tribes thousands of years ago.
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint
The Value of the Septuagint Changed when the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. The Dead Sea Scrolls were a collection of ancient parchments and ancient documents. Among other documents, they also INCLUDED copies of almost All the books of the Old Testament.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were old. They were very Old. But maybe they were ONLY some books of the Bible AFTER CHRISTIANS had gotten ahold of them. Maybe those Christians had CHANGED the contents of the Old Testament.
That would not happen - by the way. Christians would never think of changing the contents of the Bible. The reason is that the Bible makes it clear that a person who Alters or Changes the Contents of the Bible can lose their ETERNAL LIFE.
(However, it is true that there could be some people who were PRETENDING to be Christians. THey would not care either about Christ, Christianity or the genuine contents of the Bible. And they would be willing to change some of those books. For that reason, Christians are commanded in the Bible to be very vigilant about ATTEMPTS to change the CONTENTS of the OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. And these instructions are given to EACH and every Christian. )
Back to the Dead Sea Scrolls - The Dead Sea Scrolls were Dated. So we now know WHEN the Dead Sea Scrolls were written.
They were written 200 years - Two HUNDRED Years BEFORE JESUS CHRIST.
Since the Dead Sea Scrolls existed BEFORE the time of Jesus Christ on Earth, this means that the Dead Sea Scrolls existed before the First Christians appeared. (Remember, Christian means Christ- Follower. and there were no Christ-followers before Jesus Christ was around to Follow).
When the Dead Sea Scrolls were dated to being 200 years BEFORE Christ, this proved that Christians had NOT changed the Contents of the Bible and that they could not have. Therefore, the contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls proved and demonstrated what the Contents of the Old Testament were SUPPOSED to be.
After the Discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940s, there was No longer a Need for the Septuagint or to attempt to find copies of it.
After all, the Septuagint - at best - was a Greek Copy of the Hebrew Originals. On the other hand, the
Dead Sea Scrolls were (and are) accurate copies of the Old Testament in Hebrew - that were dated to be more than Two Thousand Years old.
So if - today - we now have the Dead Sea Scrolls, and if they are known to be dated to the time BEFORE Christ and Christianity, then WHY would we need to find the Septuagint ?
The answer is that we Don't need to find the Septuagint. After all, the only thing that the Septuagint was supposed to do, was to help us find the Contents of the Old Testament.
Remember back in the 1800s, when people were trying to find the septuagint,
some skeptics remained unconvinced that the contents of the Bible of today, were
the same as the Original Contents of the Bible.
Today, we do not have that dilema.
Thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls, we Know which books were in the Old Testament two thousand years ago. And they are the same ones as the books of the Old Testament that are in the Old Testament today.
The Old Septuagint, and the Modern Substitute
The Old Septuagint has never been found to exist. If it has, then give us the actual reference numbers. Give us the manuscript numbers, who published it and when, who translated it and from what source.
What we have today (2006) is an abundance of Modern Books that are REPRINTS and simply slap the Title of
"Septuagint" on whatever they happen to have reprinted. In the original copies of those books, almost all of those old books actually discuss and talk about where they come from.
The MODERN publishing houses have re-edited some of those works, and have LEFT OUT the introduction to most copies of the so-called Septuagint.
[for that matter, who can find the preface of Jerome, and what he wrote in LATIN, about his own Latin Vulgate, and what Jerome Said about the books of the Apocrypha ? - this omission is just one more example of the censorship]
What is being sold today as the Septuagint...is only the copy of Codex Vaticanus. This is the Old Vatican Codex that visibly shows that it was written by more than 10 different people. We can tell because the handwriting is Different. In addition, the old authors were not that clever and it is obvious where they have crossed out or erased MANY of the Old Words that were ORIGINALLY written, and you can see that the new words were written Over the old ones.
People who speak favorably of Codex Vaticanus do not want you to know this. They hope that you will NOT compare the various Bibles in Greek and that you will not find out that Codex Vaticanus disagrees with almost every other Ancient Greek copy of the Bible. Codex Vaticanus disagrees with the other copies of the New Testament, and it disagrees with 99% of the copies of the Bible that were written in Ancient Greek.
Codex Vaticanus is known to be a fraudulent Bible. IT is known to have come from Origen, and it is the VATICAN that has made that statement on the record.
ANd Yet, the Early Church Councils Banned Origen, and excommunicated not only Origen himself, but anyone who read his works.
So, since this is the case, then how is it possible for the Church to suddenly ABANDON the Early Church Councils and turn around and recommend the Bible of Origen, when the Early Church Councils pronounced this man to be a Heretic, a teacher of False Doctrine ???
We challenge anyone to find a copy of the Septuagint that - in turn - is NOT traced to Codex Vaticanus.
Such A Copy does NOT exist.
The Modern Septuagint.
So what happened is that there are Modern Followers of Origen. They deny that Jesus Christ died for their sins. They deny that Jesus Christ CAN save them from their sins. They Deny that Jesus Christ pre-existed as part of the Trinity.
And those men, decided to corrupt the Bible. And it is Those men who decided to sell the public on the supposed "Discovery" of the Septuagint.
And it is Those Men and their friends that people today are chosing to be deceived by, whenever they are reading copies of the supposed Lost Septuagint.
So you may say: "But I did not CHOSE anything !. I did not Chose to be deceived by this Fake Septuagint. No one had told me this before !".
Fair Enough. If you decide to use and read an accurate Bible or an Accurate Translation, and pray that God reveals His truth to you when you are reading His Bible, then you may not be deceived.
On the other hand, if you forget this article, if you forget that you once were given the chance to PURSUE truth and Find Truth, and you decided to DO NOTHING ABOUT IT, God sees your heart. He knows what you will have decided, and no one can fool God.
God will not only look at your heart, God will remember your decision For Ever.
And God also knows what you think, each and every moment.
If you blow this off, what is that to us ? Our job was to tell you the truth. We have now done this.
And if you have questions you know how to contact us. [and feel free to agree or disagree. From your point of view, if you disagree with us, there is Only a problem if we happen to be Right. And we are not better than anyone else. And other have had to have long conversations with us as well ].
Many people are uncomfortable with truth, and not enough people have a healthy respect for God.
The problem with deception is that when we start by allowing "a little bit" of deception, soon we have learned to accept a Large Amount of it. ANd that is very true in the area of Faith, religion and Spirituality.
The Eastern Orthodox Church and the Septuagint
The Eastern Orthodox Church has never truly historically used the Septuagint, the Old Testament written in Ancient Greek.
The reason is that they did not have a great need to do this. Most of the theology of the Churches in the Eastern Orthodox Areas around the World comes from the New Testament and NOT the Old Testament. And most of the copies of the Bible that have been found and some are more than one thousand years old, are written in Ancient Greek, and are copies of the NEW TESTAMENT, not copies of the Old Testament. The reason is because most of the Early Christians understood that even though the Old Testament was used and should be used, the actual theology of the Early Church came from the New Testament. The portions of the Old Testament which have been found are few and far between.
There have been THOUSANDS of copies of the Bible (and portions of the Bible) that have been found around the world. They are written in Ancient Greek. Many of those copies belonged to the early Christians. The copies of the New Testament that have been found in ancient Greek are around Five Thousand (Copies of the other ancient books of Rome and Greek often number no more than a dozen, until the Modern Era when they were reprinted).
No Other book other than the New Testament has ever been found in greater quantity, than the ancient Greek copies of the New Testament. We know what books of the Bible were read and used by the Early Christians, BECAUSE we have discovered the actual copies of the New Testament that those early Christians used, not simply a few copies, not only a handful, but thousands upon thousands of copies of portions of the New Testament.What they all have in common is that 99% of those early copies AGREE with each other. Long Before the year 300 A.D, the copies of the New Testament AGREE with each other. And this is true, even when those copies are separated by Hundreds and hundreds of Miles.
There are also Lectionaries that have been discovered. Lectionaries are books written to guide local Christians though the contents of Christianity and the Bible. Those lectionaries contain a great deal of quotes from the New Testament.
It is interesting that those copies in Ancient Greek - of the New Testament do not contradict each other. They AGREE with each other.
The Eastern Orthodox Church had no History of using the Septuagint
The Eastern Orthodox Church - historically did not use the Septuagint. That is a modern myth, invented recently to give the appearance of using "ancient" documents.
The Eastern Orthodox Church has never taken an official position on even defining what the contents of the Septuagint are. However, beyond that, there are no historic copies of the Septuagint that exist. (This surprises many, but the facts support this).
We will refer you to some of the pages on our website about the Septuagint:
http://www.exorthodoxforchrist.com/septuagint_%26_facts.htm
http://www.exorthodoxforchrist.com/septuagint_-_intro.htm
http://www.exorthodoxforchrist.com/septuagint.htm
(We have more pages on the topic, these are just a few of them)
There are many copies of the manuscripts of the New Testament that were used in the near east and in the areas of the Eastern Orthodox Church. None of those ancient manuscripts of the Bible include copies of the original Septuagint.
The Third Council of Carthage is sometimes referred to as suggesting that a few of the Apocryphal books be included in the Canon. However, Third Council of Carthage is an interesting council, but it is NOT one of the officially recognized historic (church-wide) Six Church Councils.
Those OFFICIAL & ACCEPTED First Six Church councils are listed below:
The First Six Church Councils
In summary:
- The septuagint is something that people mention today, but whatever copies might have existed do not exist and have never been found. Modern copies of the Septuagint are frauds from the 1800s, and some publishers today continue to call them the "Septuagint", but there is NO evidence to support those false claims.
The Bible has 66 books, and there are 25,000 copies of greek fragments and parchments ( 5,000 copies of the New Testament or portions of it, and 20,000 lectionaries or portions of those that contain Bible Verses) . Those ancient copies of the Bible are copies of the same books that are the 66 books in the Bibles today. Almost none of the early copies of the Greek New Testament have any apocryphal books in them. The very term "apocrypha" means "counterfeit".
Many books have been written claiming to be the real bible, because enemies of Christianity were trying to mislead those who were seeking truth.
There are between 200 to 300 books that are called "Apocryphal" books. They each of them have something wrong with them, that contradict the teachings found in the current 66 books of the Bible. Many of them are not historical, have basic geography and geographical descriptions wrong. Some claim to refer to time periods when it is clear that they could not have been written when their authors claim they were. The tests of "canonicity" in order for a book to become a part of the Bible are extremely high and extremely comprehensive. That is why the Apocryphal books were rejected. God does not contradict himself, therefore God would not write or inspire books that would contradict the 66 books of the Bible that God already inspired.
People today are fed lies in the area of the History of Early Christianity. They are told that the contents of the Bible was NOT fixed or established by the Early Christians. That is not true.
The purpose of the Scripture is to give spiritual strength and to spiritually equip followers of Jesus Christ in their pursuit of the will of God while they are here. The purpose of the Bible is to help Christians serve God.
It makes no sense to suggest that God would write the books of the Bible during the lifetime of the Apostles and Disciples of Jesus Christ, who knew Him personally and worked with Him personally, and yet God is somehow supposed to have waited for 300 or 400 years for Him (God) to make up His mind about which books to include in the Bible.
The Church Councils - which happened 300 years after Jesus Christ - did not Establish the Books in the Bibles. The Decision of "Which books" belonged in the Bible were made long before by Christ-followers who personally knew and were trained by Jesus Christ.
That task of deciding which books belonged in the Bible was ALREADY accomplished by the Apostles during their lifetime. The last living disciple of Jesus was John (St. John). He lived until 95 A.D. That is more than 50 years after Jesus Christ and the start of the Church.
Are we really supposed to believe that the Apostles wrote the books under the inspiration of God, but that they lacked either the courage or the inspiration from God to know which books were to be included in the Bible ?
The task of deciding which books Belonged in the Bible is hard for us today. But the Apostles who knew Jesus Christ were operating under the Direct Inspiration of the Holy Spirit in a manner that only those Disciples who knew Jesus Christ Personally while He was on this earth, could claim to have.
If God is Serious enough to establish his Church, and establish his doctrines, and appoint the first leaders, then God gave those SAME original Disciples of Jesus the understanding, the authority and the inspiration to know which Books they had written were to be included and which ones were not.
The reason why acceptance of historical truth is hard to accept is that there are many publishers and a whole industry today making millions of dollars from disputing and questioning the Bible. Trying to find fault with the Bible is a popular thing to do.
But the larger reason why it is hard to accept that the 66 Books in the Bible are the right ones is because very few people have any experience with God. Many people know ABOUT God, but do not know God personally.
Knowing God personally is not nearly as hard as it may seem, but people actually have to open the Bible and read the contents. (The New Testament book of John is a good place to start)
Another reason why people do not want to believe that the 66 books are the inspired word of God is because they are afraid of what this may mean for the predictions in the Bible about the future, and the near-future.
Why the 66 books of the Bible BELONG in the Bible
Part III (upcoming )
The writings of Paul and their inclusion in the Early Canon of the Bible by the Early Christians
The writings of Paul are slightly more complicated to deal with, if only because they are more numerous.
It is really amazing that Peter refers to the writings of Paul as being scripture. That just saves us a great deal of confusion. The writings of Paul in the New Testament are many, being 14 books/Epistles out of the 27 books of the New Testament.
Just in case A Roman Catholic happens to stop by here:
- Pontifex Maximus
- stigmatta - Mother
Teresa - Power Grab -
Pope Appoints Cardinal
- Apocrypha - Donation of Constantine
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"Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance."
--Article 18 of the Universal
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True Christianity is the way of Genuine love and caring for others.
Christian Conversions - According to the Bible - Can NEVER be forced.
Any Conversion to Christianity which would be "Forced" would NOT be recognized by God. It is in
His True and KIND nature, that those who come to Him and choose to believe in Him, must come to Him OF
THEIR OWN FREE WILL.
Don't Let anyone tell you that Christians support Forced Conversions.
That is False. True Christianity is NEVER forced.
The
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to
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and
witness
The
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to change
one's
belief
or
religion
The
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