Subject: language Jesus speak |
Bible Note: 'Most of the Old Testament quotations in the New Testament are taken from the Greek Bible (the Septuagint)' (page 198 Nelson's New Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1995). ____________________ 'Jesus and His Apostles quoted the Greek Septuagint - of this there can be no question. In order to quote the Greek Septuagint, one must speak Greek. (...) 'Thus, we can say with certainty, in the light of over 5000 Greek witnesses to the New Testament, and based upon historical evidence, that it is an absolute impossibility that the New Testament was written in any language other than Greek' (http://www.christianseparatist.org/ast/hist/aramaic.htm) ____________________ 'Jesus,[6] the apostles and the New Testament writers also accepted the Septuagint, using it in conjunction with the Hebrew. 'The Septuagint version having been current for about three centuries before the time when the books of the New Testament were written, it is not surprising that the Apostles should have used it more often than not in making citations from the Old Testament. They used it as an honestly-made version in pretty general use at the time when they wrote. They did not on every occasion give an authoritative translation of each passage de novo, but they used what was already familiar to the ears of converted Hellenists, when it was sufficiently accurate to suit the matter in hand.[8]' 6 One example of Jesus' use of the Septuagint is found in His refutation of the Devil in Matthew 4.4. The Hebrew in Deuteronomy 8.3 has "mouth of the LORD"; the Septuagint has "mouth of God". It is this latter that Jesus quotes. 8 Lancelot C. L. Brenton, "Introduction" to The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English (Peabody, MA, USA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1986, 1992), p. iv. (http://www.trinitarianbiblesociety.org/site/articles/lxx.asp) ____________________ When all else fails, look it up. We need to do some research and look at facts and forget what we always thought, what we would have thought, or whether some idea seems strange to us. |