8 minutes
What is the Original Old Testament Text
Have you ever wondered from where we got our Old Testament? What is the original Old Testament? The Old Testament (OT) is the scripture that Jesus read. It is the basis of our New Testament, without which we struggle to understand our faith. As we come to the 500th anniversary of Reformation Day, it is difficult for the typical Christian today to recognize that throughout most of Christian history, the Bible was not available in the common languages.
The Protestant Reformation changed that. For over a millennium, the Bible was written in Latin and only the educated could read it. Worse, only those high up in the religious hierarchy could “understand” (interpret) it. This was not how it always was. Before the Bible was translated into Latin, it was written in the common language of the people.
The New Testament (NT) was written in Greek. Greek was the common language of the Roman Empire. The Gospels, Epistles, Letters and Revelation were all written in Greek so that all people, Jew or Gentile, could read them. Remember, in every circumstance, the books of the NT were written to individuals and churches that were either Gentiles or a combination of Jews and Gentiles.
The Language of the Jews?
In fact, even the Jewish people didn’t speak Hebrew any longer. The Jewish people gradually began speaking Aramaic after the exile into Babylon in 605 BC. Aramaic was the language of the people of Aram and of Chaldea (Babylon).
Some people, like Daniel, lived through the Babylonian Empire and lived to see the Jewish people return to Jerusalem. This happened in 536 BC when Cyrus fulfilled Isaiah and Jeremiah’s prophecies to allow the Jewish people to return from exile back to the land of promise. However, most of the returnees to Jerusalem were born in Babylon and spoke Aramaic (Ezra 3:11-12).
This is why Jesus himself spoke Aramaic rather than Hebrew. During his time on earth, the people of Judea and Galilee, and the entire region, spoke Aramaic. Hence, we see words such as “Abba,” “Raca,” “Talitha kum,” and “Eli, eli, lama sabachthani.” These are all Aramaic phrases.
Additionally, as we read the Gospels, we find that most of the OT quotes are from the Septuagint. The Septuagint is the Greek version of the Old Testament. The reason the Septuagint is used, rather than the Hebrew, is because most people didn’t read Hebrew any longer and the Septuagint was readily available.
Some say that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew. However, there has been no evidence for this and is based on Matthew’s Gospel being written for a Jewish audience and the assumption that he would have therefore written his gospel in Hebrew. However, the fact that most people were reading the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew texts proves that most of Matthew’s audience would have better understood Greek than Hebrew.
The Language of the Old Testament
So we can say with certainty that the NT was written in Greek, with a few Aramaic words and phrases throughout. However, what about the OT? What language was that written in?
The OT was written in Hebrew. Again, some portions were written in Aramaic:
- Ezra copies letters and notices in Aramaic that were originally written in Aramaic (Ezra 4:8-6:18, 7:12-26).
- Daniel writes a great part of his historical narrative in Aramaic (Daniel 2:4b-7:28)
- Jeremiah has one verse in Aramaic (Jeremiah 10:11)
Of course, we recognize that Jeremiah, Daniel and Ezra all lived during the Babylonian and Medo-Persian Empires, which used Aramaic as the common language.
However, other than a few scattered words, the rest of the OT is written in Hebrew.
So we come to an interesting question: From where do we get our OT translations?
The Original Old Testament
Almost all of our English OT texts are translated from the Masoretic Text (MT). This is also the text used for the Jewish Tanakh, the Jewish scriptures read by the Jewish people today. The MT comes from the Masoretes, Jewish rabbis writing between AD 700 and 1000.
However, as already mentioned, this is not the only ancient version of the OT to which we have access. We also have the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek OT, with portions of the LXX going back to the third-century BC.
Finally, we also have a third source: the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS). These are fragments of the OT found in caves in Qumran (West Bank) in 1947. These texts date back to the second-century BC. The Dead Sea Scrolls are written in Hebrew with some Aramaic and Greek. They consist of every canonical book of the OT except for Esther. (Why? A possibility: The Essenes, the copiers of the DSS, were extremely ascetic, did not approve of alcohol, and therefore did not celebrate the holiday of Purim. Hence, they decided to skip the book of Esther.)
The Masoretic Text, the basis for most of our English Bible translations, compares well with the older Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls. The three together allow us to recognize that what we now consider our OT, or the Jewish Tanakh, can safely be trusted.
The Problem
However, we still have a problem. I came across this while doing research for a book I was writing. I looked at Psalm 22:16 (English version):
For dogs have surrounded me;
A band of evildoers has encompassed me;
They pierced my hands and my feet. – Psalm 22:16 NASB
In the book, I was describing how Paul would have spoken to other Jews about Jesus and would have used Psalm 22:16b as evidence of Jesus’ crucifixion being prophesied over a thousand years before his death. I envisioned that Paul would use this verse to hammer home that Messiah was to be crucified. I decided to use the version found in the Tanakh.
To my surprise, the same verse in the Tanakh has this (English version):
Dogs surround me;
a pack of evil ones closes in on me,
like lions [they maul] my hands and feet. – Psalm 22:17 JPS Tanakh
First, for those paying attention, you will notice that the verse numbers are different. This is because the Hebrew translations of the Psalms includes the Directions at the beginning of the Psalm as a verse but our English translations make the Directions at the beginning of the Psalm an introductory heading and verse 1 begins after this.
To the point I am making for this writing, you will notice that the last part of the verse is completely different from our English translations:
They pierced my hands and my feet. – NASB
like lions [they maul] my hands and feet. – JPS Tanakh
Could it be that one of the most important verses of scripture, describing the crucifixion of the Messiah 1,000 years before Christ’s death, is a mistranslation made by scribes attempting to prove Jesus was the prophesied Messiah?
I did some more research. I found that our NASB version matches both the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls. I knew that the Masoretic Text matched up well with both the LXX and the DSS but apparently, there are some differences, and in some cases, very important differences, such as this one.
Additional research found some other interesting differences:
In 1 Samuel 17:4, we find that Goliath is “six cubits and one span” tall. This comes to 9’6”. That is taller than the 8’11” Robert Pershing Wadlow, measured in 1940 as the world’s tallest man according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
However, the Septuagint has Goliath at “four cubits and one span” tall. This is 6’6”. Which is right? If we look at the DSS, we find Goliath listed at “four cubits and one span” tall. A final historical view comes from Josephus, who tells us that Goliath was “four cubits and one span” tall.
Would this mean that Goliath wasn’t a giant? Actually, the average male in those days would have been smaller than 5’6”. David has been estimated to be 5’2”. So Goliath would have been a foot taller than the average man and over a foot taller than David. For comparison, today, the average man is 5’10”. We would probably consider someone who is 6’10” a giant.
Some Additional Examples
Therefore, Saul said to the Lord, the God of Israel, “Give a perfect lot.” And Jonathan and Saul were taken, but the people escaped. – 1 Samuel 14:41, NASB (from the MT)
Therefore Saul said, “O Lord God of Israel, why have you not answered your servant this day? If this guilt is in me or in Jonathan my son, O Lord, God of Israel, give Urim. But if this guilt is in your people Israel, give Thummim.” And Jonathan and Saul were taken, but the people escaped. – 1 Samuel 14:41, ESV (from the Septuagint).
If you read the first version, you will notice that it actually doesn’t make sense. The second version explains what is really happening in the chapter. What caused this difference?
The Jewish rabbi who copied the MT made the mistake of losing his place. Notice that the word, “Israel” is just before the error. What apparently happened is that the scribe saw the word “Israel,” wrote it down and then when his eyes went back to the original text, he went back to the wrong instance of the word, “Israel” and continued copying from there. Hence, he missed everything between the first iteration of “Israel” and the last one.
A final example comes from 1 Samuel 11.
Now Nahash the Ammonite came up and besieged Jabesh-gilead; and all the men of Jabesh said to Nahash, “Make a covenant with us and we will serve you.” – 1 Samuel 11:1, NASB
This passage begins with Nahash the Ammonite besieging Jabesh-gilead. But why does Nahash do this? Here is what is missing according to the Dead Sea Scrolls:
Now Nahash king of the Ammonites oppressed the Gadites and the Reubenites severely. He gouged out the right eye of all of them and there was no one to save Israel. There did not remain an Israelite man who was beyond the Jordan whose right eye Nahash king of the Ammonites did not gouge out, except seven thousand men who escaped from the hand of the Ammonites and went to Jabesh Gilead. And they were there about a month. Then Nahash the Ammonite came up, and encamped against Jabesh Gilead: and all the men of Jabesh said to Nahash king of Ammonites, “Make a covenant with us, and we will serve you.” – 1 Samuel 11:1, Dead Sea Scrolls
In this case, the NASB, as well as every other English translation that I know about, does not have the first part of this verse. The missing part clarifies why Nahash besieged Jabesh-gilead. He was chasing down the escapees from Gad and Reuben.
The Point
Why bring this up? We English speaking Christians tend to assume the English translations we read are the autographs (the original versions written by the Biblical writers). However, that is not what we believe. We know that the Bible is God-inspired but we should not think that our English versions are the exact replicas of the autographs. There are accidental mistakes, like seeing “Israel” and then skipping down to the next one. There are purposeful mistakes, like the Masoretes attempting to remove the crucifixion from Psalm 22.
It is important that we are honest when the evidence points to our English version being less than accurate. This does not mean God’s word is corrupt. It simply means our translators are human and made mistakes.
So what is the original Old Testament? It can probably be found when we combine the best of the Masoretic Text, the Septuagint, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. There is also the possibility that another excellent manuscript might be found that is older and more accurate and if that happened, we should add that into the mix.
It is the job of each individual Christian to try to determine what God has said in His word. It behooves us to think like Bereans and test everything. After all, the Bereans were testing the teachings of Paul (i.e.: our scriptures today) and yet they were considered noble.
Hence, when you’re reading your Bible, if anything doesn’t seem to make sense or sounds like something is missing, check it out. There’s the possibility that another OT text has something to teach you.
Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. – 2 Timothy 2:15
Maranatha! (btw – another Aramaic phrase found in the New Testament…)
Have not read this all yet so not sure if I align with whatever the whole message might be (if anything other than universal truth) in any case thanks for sharing the work you’ve done and the insight it may bring
The Latin language was the lingua franca of the Western Church by the end of the fourth Century, not Greek (still in the East). When you speak of “language of the people” Greek was not the native tongue of the Jews nor of most of Christian population in Europe. It was a lingua franca for those with education. Just like Latin in the west. Everyone else spoke literally hundreds of dialects, patois and tongues.
The first NT in Old English was written by Saint Bede in the 7th Century. But there were so many other translations done in High German, Swedish, and of course we can thank Cyril and Methodius for creating the Cyrillic alphabet to bring the Scriptures to the Slavic peoples.
« The Canon of the Bible . . . was framed in the fourth century. In that same century Pope Damascus commanded a new and complete translation of the Scriptures to be made into the Latin language, which was then the living tongue not only of Rome and Italy, but of the civilized world. If the Popes were afraid that the Bible should see the light, this was a singular way of manifesting their fear. The task of preparing a new edition of the Scriptures was assigned to St. Jerome, the most learned Hebrew scholar of his time. This new translation was disseminated throughout Christendom, and on that account was called the Vulgate, or popular edition.
In the 6th and 7th centuries the modern languages of Europe began to spring up like so many shoots from the parent Latin stock. The Scriptures, also, soon found their way into these languages. »
{James Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers, NY: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, rev. ed., 1917, p. 74}
The publisher of the Cologne Bible [1480] writes . . . :
« All Christians should read the Bible with piety and reverence, praying the Holy Ghost, who is the inspirer of the Scriptures, to enable them to understand . . . The learned should make use of the Latin translation of St. Jerome; but the unlearned and simple folk, whether laymen or clergy . . . should read the German translations now supplied, and thus arm themselves against the enemy of our salvation.
The rapidity with which the different editions followed each other and the testimony of contemporary writers point to a wide distribution of German Bibles among the people. »
{Johannes Janssen, History of the German People From the Close of the Middle Ages, 16 vols., tr. A.M. Christie, St. Louis: B. Herder, 1910 (orig. 1891), v. 1, pp. 58-60}
« The desire to possess the Holy Scriptures in the mother tongue is already met with on German soil in the time of Charlemagne [742-814]; and, strange to say, it is just the earliest translators of the Middle Ages who have come nearest to perfection in this task. »
{Janssen, ibid., v. 14, p. 384}
« The number of translations . . . of the complete Bible, was indeed very great . . . Between this period [1466] and the separation of the Churches at least fourteen complete editions of the Bible were published in High German, and five in the low German dialect. The first High German edition was brought out in 1466 by Johann Mendel, of Strasburg . . .
[Other editions in High German: Strasburg: 1470,1485 / Basel, Switzerland: 1474 / Augsburg: 1473 (2),1477 (2),1480,1487,1490,1507,1518 / Nuremburg: 1483]. Bible Translations in Low German: Cologne: 1480 (2) / Lubeck: 1494 / Halberstadt: 1522 / Delf: before 1522] »
{Janssen, ibid., v. 1, pp. 56-57; v. 14, p. 388}
« Raban Maur, born in Mainz in 776, translated the Old and New Testament into the Teutonic, or old German, tongue. Some time later, Valafrid Strabon made a new translation of the whole Bible. Huges of Fleury also translated the Scriptures into German, and the monk Ottfried of Wissemburg rendered it into verse . . .
Hallam, the non-Catholic historian, in his work on the Middle Ages, chap. 9, part 2, says:
In the 8th and 9th centuries, when the Vulgate ceased to be generally intelligible . . . translations were freely made into the vernacular languages, and, perhaps, read in churches. »
{Patrick F. O’Hare, The Facts About Luther, Rockford, IL: TAN Books, rev. ed., 1987 (orig. Cincinnati, 1916), pp.183,185}
The well-known Anglican writer, Dr. Blunt, in his History of the Reformation (Vol. I. pp. 501-502), tells us that:
« There has been much wild and foolish writing about the scarcity of the Bible in the ages preceding the Reformation . . . that the Holy Scripture was almost a sealed book until it was printed in English by Tyndale and Coverdale, and that the only source of knowledge respecting it before them was the translation made by Wyckliffe. The facts are . . . that all laymen who could read were, as a rule, provided with their Gospels, their Psalter, or other devotional portions of the Bible. Men did, in fact, take a vast amount of personal trouble with respect to the productions of the Holy Scriptures . . . The clergy studied the Word of God and made it known to the laity; and those few among the laity who could read had abundant opportunity of reading the Bible either in Latin or English, up to the Reformation period. »
{O’Hare, ibid., pp. 185-186}
« We shall . . . refute once more the common fallacy that John Wycliff was the first to place an English translation of the Scriptures in the hands of the English people in 1382. To anyone that has investigated the real facts of the case, this fondly-cherished notion must seem truly ridiculous; it is not only absolutely false, but stupidly so, inasmuch as it admits of such easy disproof . . .
To begin far back, we have a copy of the work of Caedmon, a monk of Whitby, in the end of the 7th century, consisting of great portions of the Bible in the common tongue. In the next century we have the well-known translations of the Venerable Bede, a monk of Jarrow . . . In the same (8th) century we have the copies of Eadhelm . . . of Guthlac, . . . and of Egbert . . . these were all in Saxon, the language understood and spoken by the Christians of that time. Coming down a little later, we have the free translations of King Alfred the Great . . . and of Aelfric, Archbishop of Canterbury . . . After the Norman conquest of 1066, Anglo-Norman or Middle-English became the language of England, and consequently the next translations of the Bible we meet with are in that tongue . . . such as the paraphrase of Orm (about 1150) and the Salus Animae (1250), the translations of William Shoreham and Richard Rolle . . . (d.1349) . . . »
I could go in but seriously, go study history.
The translators of the Authorised Version, in their ‘Preface,’ refer to previous translations . . . :
« Much about that time [1360], even our King Richard the Second’s days, John Trevisa translated them into English, and many English Bibles in written hand are yet to be seen that divers translated, as it is very probable, in that age . . . So that, to have the Scriptures in the mother tongue is not a quaint conceit lately taken up . . . but hath been . . . put in practice of old, even from the first times of the conversion of any nation. »
{Graham, ibid., pp. 98-101}
« From 1450 to 1520 [there were] many translations of the whole Bible . . . seventeen German, eleven Italian, ten French, two Bohemian, one Belgian, . . . and one Russian edition. »
{Grisar, ibid., v. 5, p. 536. Data from Franz Falk, The Bible in the Middle Ages, Cologne: 1905, pp. 24, 91 ff.}
Says another Protestant scholar, . . . :
« It can no longer be said that the Vulgate alone was in use and that the laity consequently were ignorant of Scripture . . . We must admit that the Middle Ages possessed a quite surprising and extremely praiseworthy knowledge of the Bible, such as might in many respects put our own age to shame. »
{Ibid., v. 5, p. 537. Citation of E. v. Dobschutz, Deutsche Rundschau, 101, 1900, pp. 61ff.}
« We know from history that there were popular translations of the Bible and Gospels in Spanish, Italian, Danish, French, Norwegian, Polish, Bohemian and Hungarian for the Catholics of those lands before the days of printing . . .
In Italy there were more than 40 editions of the Bible before the first Protestant version appeared, beginning at Venice in 1471; and 25 of these were in the Italian language before 1500, with the express permission of Rome. In France there were 18 editions before 1547, the first appearing in 1478. Spain began to publish editions in the same year, and issued Bibles with the full approval of the Spanish Inquisition (of course one can hardly expect Protestants to believe this). In Hungary by the year 1456, in Bohemia by the year 1478, in Flanders before 1500, and in other lands groaning under the yoke of Rome, we know that editions of the Sacred Scriptures had been given to the people. In all . . . 626 editions of the Bible, in which 198 were in the language of the laity, had issued from the press, with the sanction and at the instance of the Church, in the countries where she reigned supreme, before the first Protestant version of the Scriptures was sent forth into the world . . . What, then, becomes of the pathetic delusion . . . that an acquaintance with the open Bible in our own tongue must necessarily prove fatal to Catholicism? . . .
Many senseless charges are laid at the door of the Catholic Church; but surely the accusation that, during the centuries preceding the 16th, she was the enemy of the Bible and of Bible reading must, to any one who does not wilfully shut his eyes to facts, appear of all accusations the most ludicrous . . .
We may examine and investigate the action of the Church in various countries and in various centuries as to her legislation in regard to Bible reading among the people; and wherever we find some apparently severe or unaccountable prohibition of it, we shall on enquiry find that it was necessitated by the foolish or sinful conduct on the part either of some of her own people, or of bitter and aggressive enemies who literally forced her to forbid what in ordinary circumstances she would not only have allowed but have approved and encouraged. »
{Graham, ibid., pp. 98,105-106,108,120}
I liked your comments about the possible earliest origins of who actually wrote the bible. I would like to get a list of your references for academic analysis, to not only gauge the value and accreditation of your work, but also at some point to make a comparison using the facts of the languages involved in the writing of the bible. With its many reformations and renewed translations primarily after the Council of Nicea attempts at clarificaiton. The council may have taken it and blocked information because they thought ordinary Humanity, or the lay person would not or could not understand the deeper sacredness of these texts. Probably the oldest written religious work we have found dates prior to the Bible text, with the clarification and integration you have offered with respect to the Dead Sea Scrolls. That of course is the Ancient practices and teachings of the Great Book the Mahabharata of Hindu thought. Also other more familiar texts we can also refer to in search of occult texts or mysteries might also be found in the Egyptian and Tibetan Books of the Dead. in the case of the Egyptian book of the dead, the manuscript was written on scrolls that date back as far as 8 to 10000 B.C. It is funny how most of the Religious world today is still stuck or bound by a much more recent ancient text as the Bible? They have just about delegitimized any texts older and in many ways more reflective of those Great Tenets most of modern Occidental or Western Civilization identifies with such as the Ten Commandments as written supposedly by Moses, found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. But that is the nature I guess of modern disruptive and fundamental Christian dogma, that we as a collective humanity have allowed to fester in modern days. Would love to hear and get your comments. Have a great day. I am going to share your findings in an academic paper, since you published it here on public domain. But I will reference you authorship. Have a great day.