Appendix
Old Testament Manuscripts
The Old Testament was primarily written in the Hebrew language, the manuscripts that have survived are copies, perhaps several generations of copies. The meaning of the word manuscript refers to a document handwritten. While the copying process, in most manuscript copying is both tedious and fairly accurate, there are many variants. For example copyists would assign numbers to each letter of the language’s letters (a process known as ‘gematria’, click here to read more) and then would add the values of each row and column of the copy and compare to the values of the original. If the values varied the page was destroyed and the process continued on a new page. In addition to copying, translations of these manuscripts were made, and those translations were copied.
Sherlock Holmes said, “There is nothing like first-hand evidence.” Unfortunately, the original documents (technically called “autographs”) of the Old Testament books all perished due to time and natural causes. But they did not disappear before scribes copied them, and then later scribes copied those copies, and on and on. We, therefore, possess only copies of the originals. And what is more, our copies differ to varying degrees when compared to one another. Almost every ancient book is in this situation: the original is lost and only different manuscript copies remain.[1]
Most of today’s Hebrew Scriptures are derived from the work of Jewish scholars known as the Masoretes (meaning “transmitters of traditions”). They standardized the ancient text by adding vocalization (vowels), accent marks, and marginal notes that provided guidance for their pronunciation. They provided the unified text tradition that remains the primary approach for today’s Christian Old Testament and the Jewish Tanakh. The Old Testament Hebrew text prior to their work was written only with consonants with little to no word separation. The initial work is estimated to have been completed between the 7th and 10th Century A.D.
Effort was made to translate the Old Testament into other languages many years prior to the Masoretic Text (often depicted as MT). Two of the earlier translations are the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew into the Greek language and the Targums being various translations and commentaries into the Aramaic language. Many of these writings date several hundred years before the Masoretic Text and as we have seen in this study of 1 Samuel, there are some differences.
Does this mean if an earlier document is more accurate than one that was dated more recent? No, in most applications the Hebrew text is considered the “gold standard,” but the differences do offer insight to some of the narratives and should then not be ‘automatically rejected’. The following are brief introductions to the Septuagint and the Targums.
Introduction to the Septuagint
The Septuagint has a fascinating history, which to some degree is still a mystery. Just like there are several English language Bible versions available to read today, there are several variations (such as what books to include) and versions of the Septuagint available as well. Even the formation of the name “Septuagint” (meaning seventy) is debated, which is believed by most to have been coined from the use of seventy (or possibly seventy-two) Jerusalem elders who at the request of King Ptolemy II (285–246 B.C.), translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. If the Septuagint is a subject that you want to learn more about it is recommended that you begin with “The Authority of the Septuagint: Biblical, Historical, and Theological Approaches” written by several authors, edited by Gregory R. Lanier and William A. Ross. This recent book seems to offer in our opinion, the most “level-headed” review of the Septuagint. Here is the book’s introduction:
EVEN THE MOST CASUAL READER of a modern edition of the Bible cannot avoid the term Septuagint, since it appears in the footnotes as early as Genesis 2:2 (CSB) or Genesis 4:8 (ESV, NIV). Some study Bibles even mention that Matthew or Luke or Paul are citing a scriptural passage “from the Septuagint.” Those same Bibles as a general rule say little about what this Septuagint actually is. Fortunately, several entry-level books have hit the market that orient interested laypeople to the basic background of the Greek translation(s) of the Old Testament, including some by authors in the present volume. Amid the rise of interest about the Septuagint in recent decades—doctoral dissertations, new translations, a Greek reader’s edition, numerous journal articles, and more—a particular question has percolated in both academic and religious circles that is the stimulus for this volume: What authority does the Septuagint have today?
For the Greek Orthodox Church, the answer is simple: the Septuagint (in some form) is the definitive text of the Old Testament Scriptures. For the modern Jewish community in its various expressions, the answer is also simple: the Hebrew Tanakh alone is authoritative, not the Septuagint. For Protestants and Roman Catholics, the answer is less clear and has been a matter of debate as far back as Origen, Jerome, and Augustine. At one end of the spectrum is the position that today’s church should reduce its reliance on the Hebrew Bible and embrace the Septuagint as its primary Old Testament text, chiefly because New Testament authors and the early church seem to use the Septuagint more often than the Hebrew text.4 At the other end of the spectrum is the view—often held by proponents of the exclusivity of the King James Bible—that the Septuagint either did not exist prior to the first century (but was fabricated later) or was never meaningfully used by the apostles.
Recognizing that there must be some option between these two poles, and taking a cue from the helpful work of Karen Jobes (who contributes an afterword here), we attempted to articulate our thoughts on the authority of the Septuagint in the closing chapter of our introductory volume. In a nutshell, we argued (from a Protestant perspective) that the Septuagint has derivative or downstream authority for today’s church insofar as it generally provides reliable access to the upstream Hebrew Scriptures, particularly for those (in antiquity and even today) who might not be able to access it otherwise; in turn, the Hebrew text alone, as best it can be reconstructed from available evidence (often factoring in the Septuagint), bears normative authority for faith and practice in the church.
But we recognized that our approach was provisional at best, and we needed help pushing the ball further. What do we mean by authority? What are its nature, boundaries, and spheres of application? How does one know whether something is authoritative? Does Paul’s use of the Septuagint imply that it is inspired and, in turn, sanction its use today? If so, how and when? How has this issue been dealt with over the centuries since the apostolic era? To help answer such questions, we have enlisted scholars from a variety of disciplines—Old Testament, New Testament, patristics, dogmatics, and church history—to provide a cross-disciplinary set of approaches to the topic.[2]
Introduction to the Targums
The word Targum essentially means “translation,” but when referring to ‘The Targum’ or ‘The Targums’, it is typically a reference to translations of the Hebrew Scripture text into the Aramaic language. There are several versions of the Targums including the Targum Onkelos (the Torah, the first five books of the Bible), Targum Jerusalem (1 & 2 Chronicles), Targum Jonathan (the Torah and the Prophets), Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (commentary on the Torah), and the list goes on. There are Targums to all books of the Hebrew Bible except for Ezra and Daniel, interestingly as both of those books contain Aramaic verses. For many years these translations were not given a lot of credibility as they were considered to be either paraphrased text or commentary offering an explanation or interpretation that was not found in the Hebrew text. But with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other recent studies and findings, many are finding that the Targums may have some benefit in studying.
Targums provide a window into the religious, mythic, and theological world of the Targums’ composers and the audiences who read and listened to them. The material added into the translation reveals the attitudes, beliefs, and practices important to the Jews who regularly used these texts within their worship. Unlike other genres of rabbinic literature, the Targums were used primarily by ordinary Jews and did not require extensive education to learn them or gain access to their debates and issues. Targums thus provide modern scholars and students of ancient Judaism a way to view a different stratum of Jewish religious society that is not readily accessible through the talmuds and the midrashim.
The key to opening this window into the world of ancient Jewry lies in the additions and changes that the Targums introduce into a literal translation of the biblical text. This combination of materials often strikes students and newcomers to the field as odd. Why would a literal rendering programmatically add so much non-literal material? Part of the answer is common to all translations; when translating from one language to another, many wordings or ideas from the original or donor language simply do not work in the receiving language. Idioms are often difficult to translate; to call a remark “tongue-in-cheek,” for instance, is to indicate that it was humorous and has nothing to do with someone’s mouth. Or, while Indo-European languages generally divide their tenses into past, present, and future, writings in ancient Hebrew deal only with completed and uncompleted action. Other times, words that combine into a sentence in one language simply make no sense in another. Language differences such as these require a translation to move away from the literal to be comprehensible.[3]
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[1] Meade, J. D., & Gurry, P. J. (2022). Scribes and Scripture: The Amazing Story of How We Got the Bible (p. 51). Crossway.
[2] Lanier, G. R., & Ross, W. A. (2025). Introduction. In W. A. Ross & G. R. Lanier (Eds.), The Authority of the Septuagint: Biblical, Historical, and Theological Approaches (pp. 1–3). InterVarsity Press.
[3] Flesher, P. V. M., & Chilton, B. (2011). The Targums: A Critical Introduction (pp. 11–12). Baylor University Press.