Ken wrote,

I’ve got myself into strife with more than one Baptist minister by asking why in so many places in the NT the Septuagint, rather than the Hebrew, is quoted as “scripture”.

To which Athanasius (Orthodox priest) responded:

Because the Septuagint is the ‘authorised version’ of the Orthodox. 🙂

For Orthodox the Septuagint -was- -is- inspired by God and we hold to the miraculous story of the seventy translators as well (don’t think even the Jews hold to that anymore) and certainly no one in western Christianity to my knowledge.

Having said that, the NKJV is the preferred text for Church readings and the recent Orthodox Study Bible New Testament translators. (However they are currently working on the Old Testament Orthodox Study Bible-it would be interesting to know whether they are using the 8th century masoretic text or the septuagint) If they use the Septuagint then we are likely to see at least -two- verses placed back into our Old testaments that are not currently there, one from Job which said something like…”no man is free from sin even if his life is but a day on the earth.” and another about a prophecy of Christ which escapes my mind at the moment…conspiracy theorists take note. 🙂

peace ken

ps: oops just checked the webpage and it seems the Septuagint is the basis for the new orthodox study Bible, which means the deuterocanonical Books will be finally back in the Bible…Thank God for that!….see:

http://www.lxx.org/

Athanasius.

“If the world is against Athanasius then Athanasius is against the world.” St Athanasius.