Monday BCS (Bible as Christian Scripture) 2.2

2.2 The Old Testament Text
What, therefore, will the ideal text of the Old Testament be for us when we are approaching the Old Testament as Christian Scripture rather than as Jewish Scripture or as a collection of ancient books produced in ancient Israel and early Judaism? We should first point out that the specific text is not a primary concern. The Old Testament as Christian Scripture is already altered in both significance and meaning, both subtly and at times significantly, from what it originally meant, as we showed in the first chapter. In that sense, the details of wording are not a major concern, nor in one sense are the precise contents of the Old Testament canon.

Further, the New Testament and formative Christian believers did not draw evenly from the Old Testament. We are thus left without a distinctive Christian voice on what text of, say, Nahum or Nehemiah is most Christian. We can safely say that for the majority of the Old Testament text, we might use any of the major Hebrew, Greek, or even Latin texts as the basic for our translation and fairly represent Christian usage.

At times, however, we do find fairly distinctive Christian passages where either the New Testament or common Christianity has smiled on a particular text or translation of an Old Testament passage. Such texts and translations are arguably more Christian even when they are not likely the original text or the originally intended meaning of the text. In this section we of course could not possibly be exhaustive, but we can give a good feel for what we are talking about.

Texts
The Gospel of Matthew is particularly known for its use of Septuagintal texts where they were susceptible to distinctively Christian interpretations. Matthew 1:23's citation of Isaiah 7:14, for example, follows the Septuagintal, "virgin will conceive" (παρθένος) rather than the Hebrew "a young woman will conceive" (הָעַלְמָה). It was translations of this sort in the Septuagint that in fact drove retranslations like that of Aquila in the second century in order to provide a Greek text of the Jewish Scriptures that was less amenable to Christian belief.

Translations like the New International Version or the English Standard Version are thus more Christian than the Revised or New Revised Standard Version when they translate the verse with the word virgin. The only fault we find with them is that they smuggle in this translation with the claim that they are simply translating the most likely original meaning of the Hebrew text. This claim is rather a reflection of an outmoded paradigm that mistook the original meaning for the Christian meaning. The Christian instinct is correct, but the professed basis for translation is not the real basis.

An even more poignant example is Psalm 40:6, which originally spoke of God "gouging open" the Psalmist's ears. Hebrews 10:5 does not follow the Hebrew text, however, but the Septuagintal, "a body you prepared for me." It thus seems far more appropriate for a Christian text of the Old Testament to follow the text as it appears in Hebrews 10 rather than the likely original text of the psalm.

At times, of course, we are seemingly left unable to alter the Old Testament text to fit with the particular use a New Testament author makes of it. For example, Matthew 2:15 takes Hosea 11:1 as a prophecy of Jesus' departure from Egypt as a child, "Out of Egypt I called my Son." This reading takes the verse so out of context, that we would need to delete its first words, "When Israel was a child" as well as the following verse, 11:2 that speaks of the "son's" subsequent serving of other gods. It by and large simply was not a major concern of New Testament authors to read the Old Testament in the light of its surrounding context.

Canon
The question of the Old Testament canon is more complicated than Protestants have tended to make it. The standard suggestion is that the Roman Catholic Church had added books like Sirach, Tobit, and the Maccabees into the Old Testament canon, which Martin Luther then restored to its original form. But we rather have evidence from the early days of Christendom that the early Christians referred to these books. We find, for example, no appreciably different use of the book of Wisdom by Augustine than any other Old Testament book.

It is true that no New Testament book explicitly quotes one of these books in the "Apocrypha." However, it seems just as certain that they did draw material from them. The effort to deny that Matthew 11:28-29 alludes to the book of Sirach is unconvincing, as is any denial that Romans 1 engages the book of Wisdom. Hebrews 1:3 seems to allude clearly to Wisdom 7:26, and Hebrews 11:35 seems to allude to the seven brothers of 2 Maccabees 7. We do not have enough evidence to conclude that these New Testament authors took these writings to be Scripture, but they seem to have heard God's voice in them.

Jude 14-15 seems to quote 1 Enoch as Scripture, although none but the Ethiopic church considers it such. Nevertheless, for the first 1500 years of Christian history, the vast majority of the church in both East and West seems to have granted these books at least a semi-canonical status. Jerome considered them "deuterocanonical," a second sort of canon, and perhaps this is the most Christian position to grant them. The Council of Trent in 1545 seems to have unjustifiably promoted them at the same time that Luther unjustifiably demoted them.

A particularly special case to consider is that of Greek Esther. Hebrew Esther, as is well known, never mentions God, and it includes some statements and practices that are questionable from both a Jewish and Christian perspective. Certainly other parts of the Old Testament do the same. Nevertheless, in the case of Esther we have a Greek version of the text that has added prayers to God and re-presented some of the features more offensive to Jewish and Christian ethics (although perhaps based on a Hebrew or Aramaic original). Jerome included them at the end of his Latin translation of Esther.

The current departure of the bulk of Protestantism from this form of the canon, however, leaves us without a consensus on this issue.[1] On the whole, we would seem on more solid ground to consider them as potentially important documents for Christians, even if not fully canonical. On this particular issue Protestantism in general seems to have mistaken the Jewish canon (at least as it developed in the rabbinic period) for the Christian canon. Yet we also cannot ignore the solid consensus among so many Protestants for their exclusion, keeping in mind the principle of "semper reformans" we set down in chapter 1.

Translations
Our discussion of the appropriate text to follow above has already involved us in the matter of how to translate. For example, the Hebrew הָעַלְמָה in Isaiah 7:14 might conceivably be translated "the virgin," even though the original context does not require it. The underlying desire of so many scholars of faith for the original and Christian meaning of the Old Testament to be the same has already led often to translations that are more Christian than likely original. A translation of the Old Testament as Christian Scripture should continue this practice without worrying if one's translation is that which an ancient Israelite would have recognized.

For example, the parallelism between the first and second parts of Genesis 15:6 suggest that the most likely original meaning translation would be, "he [Abraham] trusted in the LORD and he [Abraham] considered Him [YHWH] righteous." But Bible translations consistently translate the latter clause, "the LORD considered him [Abraham] righteous." There is only one reason to translate the verse this way, and it is not because this reading is obvious from the Hebrew. Christian translators render Genesis 15:6 in this way because that is the way Paul reads the verse (e.g., Rom. 4:9).

The principle of translating with Christian eyes may also, however, lead us to make translations that fit with the theology of the church of the ages. For example, while it would violate the rules of original meaning interpretation to see a reference to the Trinity in Genesis 1:27, a Christian translator might justifiably translate the verse something like "Let Us create humanity in Our image." We might also translate Job 19:25 with Christ in view, "I know that my Redeemer lives and that he will stand on the earth in the latter days," even though Job originally likely was saying that God would eventually appear to heal him of his flesh before he died.

Christians throughout the ages have regularly translated the Old Testament through the eyes of Christian theology, following the precedent set for them in the New Testament and in the traditions of the church that they have inherited. A Christian text and translation not only may reflect these readings, they arguably should be oriented around such translations. Doing such does not deny that the original meaning might have differed. It only denies that the original meaning is the locus of the Christian understanding of those texts.

[1] The Anglican and Episcopal wing of Protestant continues to include them.