Page 37 - Yahwehs Book

the Septuagint translation, placing each man in a separate room, and only then disclosed to them why
they were summoned. Ptolemy is reported to have entered into each man’s chamber and said: "Write
for me the Torah of Moshe, your teacher." The Talmud relates that every one of the 72 Jewish men
wrote out an exact copy of the Torah in the Greek language, word for word in agreement with each
other for Yahweh guided them to produce a perfect translation.

Septuagint Symbol

Such an account lacks credibility. Yet men resort to such deceits in order to magnify a favored Bible
translation, embellishing it with exaggerated claims of being perfect and without error. One can
imagine many present day Christians entertaining similar fictions in their minds regarding the
manner in which the King James Bible came into existence.

One of the reasons the Greek Septuagint had reached a place of ascendancy among Jews, and later
among Messianic Christians, is that Greek was the most widely spoken language of the Roman
Empire. Jews who emigrated outside of the land of Canaan frequently adopted the language of the
land in which they were dwelling. The Hebrew language waned, with fewer people being able to
speak or read the language. When Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire, many disciples
of Christ arose who had never had any familiarity with Hebrew. It was quite reasonable that they
would prefer a Greek translation of the Scriptures.

When in the year 382 A.D. Pope Damasus I delivered to Jerome the task of creating an updated Latin
Version of the Bible, Jerome at first began to translate his Latin Bible from existing Greek
manuscripts. He later reconsidered this decision, determining that it was far better to translate the
Old Testament from the original Hebrew. It is hard to dispute such logic, for it is far better to
translate from an original source language than to translate from a translation, as long as reliable
original language manuscripts exist and the translator understands the language. Jerome was
immediately taken to task for his decision to translate from the Hebrew, rather than from the Greek
Septuagint. One of his critics was none other than St. Augustine. Following is a discourse between
the two men as they carried forth a correspondence on this topic.

Jerome:
I have received letters so long and eagerly desired from my dear Desiderius ... entreating me to put
our friends in possession of a translation of the Pentateuch from Hebrew into Latin. The work is
certainly hazardous and it is exposed to the attacks of my calumniators, who maintain that it is
through contempt of the Seventy that I have set to work to forge a new version to take the place of
the old. They thus test ability as they do wine; whereas I have again and again declared that I
dutifully offer, in the Tabernacle of God what I can, and have pointed out that the great gifts which
one man brings are not marred by the inferior gifts of another. But I was stimulated to undertake
the task by the zeal of Origen, who blended with the old edition Theodotion’s translation and used