An Overlooked Bible Controversy—Septuagint vs Masoretic Text.

 Guest Post by Patrick O’Carroll.

Preface by James Perloff.

More than 20 years ago, long before I embraced Eastern Orthodoxy, I was regularly attending a men’s Bible Study at a church in Winchester, Mass. After a while, something began bothering me. Jesus and His Apostles frequently quoted the Old Testament. However, when I turned to the Old Testament passage alluded to, it usually said something different—not radically different, but different nonetheless. I asked my group if they knew why.

One of the men, better schooled in the Bible’s history than I, said: “Well, that’s because there are two versions of the Old Testament—the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text. Jesus and the Apostles were quoting the Septuagint. But our Bible uses the Masoretic Text.”

“Oh, OK,” I said. I didn’t give it further thought at the time.

 ...

The changes were designed to obscure the Old Testament’s Messianic prophecies, so as to conceal passages that proclaimed that Jesus is indeed the Messiah for the whole world; the “holy” rabbis most especially wanted to censor that.

Unfortunately, all Reformation Bibles got corrupted more than any other Bibles because they based their OT on the untrustworthy Masoretic Text (MT).

https://jamesperloff.net/an-overlooked-bible-controversy-septuagint-vs-masoretic-text/