That’s the question proposed for consideration in a post by a friend of mine, Gabe Martini (“Is the Septuagint a Divinely Inspired Translation?“). Nothing like a provocative headline! I thought you Septuagint fans out there would like it.

Gabe is Orthodox and so he’s ready to say “yes” in answer to his own question. The article is interesting and a good read — though I want a source for the claim in the first paragraph about only five readings being from MT. That just doesn’t ring true at all.1 But I don’t think this is a question that is supposed to be answered with math. Since Gabe works at Logos and we’re supposed to have lunch next week, I’ll ask him where that figure comes from. (Gabe, if you’re reading this, we have an agenda item!) For my money, I don’t think inspiration ought to be extended to translations any more than it should be extended to quotations of other material used by the NT authors. (And I’d say the same thing about OT author quotations of external material).

Enjoy the post!

  1. I’ve read in Silva and Jobes, for instance, that 20-25% of the NT quotations favor MT. See here and here for lots of statistics on LXX quotations. Both sites are by the same person, but you’ll find two different percentages for NT agreement with the LXX: 68% and 64%. However, I can’t claim to be completely sure I’m reading the statistics correctly.