The Construction of the Bible

From the *Codex Vaticanus*,
one of the oldest extant mss

The Co-opting of the Tanakh

The Name

The name "Tanakh" is an acronym formed from the initial Hebrew letters of the three traditional subdivisions of the Masoretic Text (the authoratative Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible): The Torah ("Teaching"—also known as the Five Books of Moses), Nevi'im ("Prophets") and Ketuvim ("Writings")—hence TaNaKh. The name "Miqra" (מקרא), meaning "that which is read," is an alternative Hebrew term for the Tanakh. The books of the Tanakh were relayed with an accompanying oral tradition passed on by each generation, called the Oral Torah.

The Septuagint

The translation of these ancient scriptures into Koine Greek is known as The Septuagint. According to a legendary story, seventy or seventy-two Jewish scholars were asked by the Greek King of Egypt Ptolemy II Philadelphus to translate the Torah from Biblical Hebrew into Greek, for inclusion in the Library of Alexandria. This legend is first found in the pseudepigraphic Letter of Aristeas to his brother Philocrates, and is repeated with embellishments by Philo of Alexandria, Josephus and by various later sources, including Augustine of Hippo. A version of the legend is found in the Tractate Megillah of the Babylonian Talmud:

King Ptolemy once gathered 72 Elders. He placed them in 72 chambers, each of them in a separate one, without revealing to them why they were summoned. He entered each one's room and said: "Write for me the Torah of Moshe, your teacher." God put it in the heart of each one to translate identically as all the others did.

Philo of Alexandria, who relied extensively on the Septuagint, says that the number of scholars was chosen by selecting six scholars from each of the 12 tribes of Israel. This legend, with its miraculous details, underlines the fact that some Jews in antiquity wished to present the translation as authoritative.

The date of the 3rd century BCE, given in the legend, is confirmed (for the Torah translation) by a number of factors, including the Greek being representative of early Koine, citations beginning as early as the 2nd century BCE, and early manuscripts datable to the 2nd century.

After the Torah, other books were translated over the next two to three centuries. It is not altogether clear which was translated when, or where; some may even have been translated twice, into different versions, and then revised. The quality and style of the different translators also varied considerably from book to book, from the literal to paraphrasing to interpretative.

The translation process of the Septuagint can be broken down into several distinct stages, during which the social milieu of the translators shifted from Hellenistic Judaism to Early Christianity. The translation began in the 3rd century BCE and was completed by 132 BCE, initially in Alexandria, but in time elsewhere as well.

The Septuagint is the basis for the Old Latin, Slavonic, Syriac, Old Armenian, Old Georgian and Coptic versions of the Christian Old Testament.

The Unintended Promotion of Christianity

However, translating the Tanakh into Greek was to have consequences the Jews had never foreseen. As the teachings of Jesus Christ grew in popularity, his following expanded among the gentiles, most of whom spoke Greek, not Hebrew. The Septuagint allowed these Greek-speaking Christians access to the scriptures so often referred to by Jesus and the Apostles. No doubt they hoped to gain some greater insight into Jesus' mysterious parables through reading Jewish scripture. In addition, within the Septuagint, the Christians found references and prophecies which seemed to validate their belief that Jesus was the Messiah, the blessed savior long foretold by the prophets of Judaism [type-antitype].

Understandably, most Jews did not appreciate having their holy book co-opted by an upstart religious cult—especially one that had clearly misunderstood the mission of their (long-awaited, and still-awaited) Messiah. Worse yet, having propped up their own leader as a false Messiah, these Christians were now spreading his fame, and his heretical teachings, far and wide to all who would listen.

As far as mainstream Judaism was concerned, not only was Jesus not the Messiah, he wasn't even a real prophet. In fact, there had been no new prophets in roughly the 500 years since the closing or canonization of the Prophets portion of the Tanakh. To amend this concept and acknowledge Jesus as a true prophet was absurd. His apparent teachings threatened the very foundations of Jewish society: the Law of Moses and the power and leadership of the priests.

Meanwhile, Christians were mixing the Torah and other scriptures of the Tanakh with texts generated by their own cult—and presenting both as co-equal scripture. What's more, the rituals of the early Christian church were direcly borrowed from rituals performed in the Jewish synagogue, further blurring distinctions. Finally, the Christians were an evangelical cult, actively seeking and recruiting new members—Jew and gentile alike. Increasingly, Jewish leaders felt the need to draw a sharp distinction between "true" scripture and the various other writings in circulation. It would not do for Jews, especially those living in far-flung posts of the Roman Empire, to become confused about their own religious heritage and doctrine. Such confusion could take them down the same misguided path trod by Christians—a path which included, among other things, abandoning kosher food rules and all observance of sacrificial duties, as well as the rite of male circumcision.

Such a mode of living might be fine for gentiles, but Jews were the "chosen people," meaning that they were required by YWHW to uphold the agreements of their covenant with him, negotiated through Abraham and Moses, which required the very customs and observances that Christians were ignoring. Moreover, it might be said that the common thread (and threat) that ran throughout Jewish scripture was the idea that God abandons his chosen people when they forget to honor that covenant. Without God's support, they would repeatedly found themselves helpless before their enemies—a point which was surely on their minds after Rome destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE.

Codifying the Jewish Canon

In response to this disturbing development, Jewish religious leaders convened the Council of Jamnia in 92 CE, determined to separate true scripture from false texts and outright heresy, Christian or otherwise. According to the council, for a text to be retained as official scripture, it must:

Conform to the Torah aka the Pentateuch);
Be written in Hebrew;
Have been written in Palestine;
Have been generated before 400 BCE.

The texts excluded by these criteria, which had been present in the Septuagint, included Baruch, Judith, Sirach, Tobit, Wisdom, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and parts of Daniel and Esther. The Council also excluded a number of other books that once were in circulation as part of the Writings portion of the Tanakh, though it is not clear whether any of these were ever truly deemed scripture.

Part of the reasoning behind the "written in Hebrew" requirement was surely the exclusion of works influenced by Christianity, as almost all of these were written in Greek. But a larger purpose must have been to preserve Jewish culture from annihilation through assimilation. If the Jews could not maintain their national identity as a political entity (that having been already crushed by Rome), then they would need to preserve a cultural identity or risk disappearing as a people. Ultimately, this goal was achieved through maintaining their own separate language, as well as other distinctive practices which set them apart no matter where they emigrated. The irony here is that the Greek language of the Septuagint, which had originally come into being in order to preserve Jewish culture, was now being abandoned hundreds of years later for the same purpose—to preserve Jewish culture.

Meanwhile, Christians had no problem with using the Septuagint. In fact, its usage was vital to the spread of their religion, as it would be nearly 500 years before the Hebrew language texts of the Tanakh became accessible as a stand-alone text—that is, without requiring oral instruction by a Rabbi. Rabbinical instruction was generally not available or desirable to gentile Christian converts, but the Septuagint was already available, not to mention highly accessible, being written in a language they already knew, Greek. Christians also found the Septuagint version to be in greater accord with their own doctrines: specifically, only the Septuagint contained references and turns of phrase that supported their own claim that Jesus was the Messiah.

For example, according to Christian tradition, Jesus had been the product of a virgin birth. The prediction that the savior would be of virgin birth could only be found in the Septuagint:

"'Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel' which means, 'God is with us.'" (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23)

Interestingly, while Greek translators interpreted the word "almah" as "virgin" in this passage, it actually means "young woman." The word which meant "virgin" was actually "besulah." Oddly, elsewhere in the Septuagint, the translation is in more in accord with this usage. Not surprisingly, Christian theologians who have acknowledged the error have attributed it to divine action, that is, to God paving the way for a correct understanding of Jesus' role. Jews, obviously, do not share this interpretation.

Ultimately Christianity would retain the Septuagint, paired with assorted New Testament texts, for many centuries to come, although it would modify it drastically by translating it a second time—this time into Latin. The later revisions of this Latin translation would come to be known as the Catholic Bible.

A thousand years later, the Septuagint would become even more identified with the newly-emergent Orthodox Christian Church. Shaking off the Roman Catholic Church's demand of total subservience and obedience, the Greek-speaking Orthodox Church established itself as a thoroughly independent entity. Naturally, to avoid the taint of heresy, the Orthodox Church portrayed itself as remaining true to the original Christian Church while the Catholic Church broke away in a strange and offensive new direction. This schism between Rome and Constantinople (formerly heads of the Western and Eastern branches of the Church) would serve as a model for later schisms in the faith, 1,500 years after the birth of Christ.