When the New Testament writers quoted the Old Testament, their quotations didn’t always come from the original Hebrew/Aramaic. In fact, somewhere between 90-95% of the time, their quotations came from one of the Greek translations of the Hebrew/Aramaic Old Testament.
This means that when Paul, or Peter, or John, or even Jesus, quoted the Old Testament to show continuity between what God had done in the past to what he was doing now, the words they chose to quote from were often from a translation of the original. It must mean something like dependence upon the Hebrew alone had dropped or maybe quoting the original source did not carry the weight it carries today. Either way, they thought, wrote, and quoted differently than we do today.
Even more interesting than that, there are places within the New Testament quotations of a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament where the Greek translation is different than the original Hebrew!
There are times when Jesus himself quotes the Old Testament in it’s Greek form rather than the Hebrew even while the Greek words are different than the Hebrew. For example, let’s take a look at Jesus quoting Psalm 2:9 in Revelation 2:26-27.
Psalm 2:9 (Hebrew OT): “You will break them with an iron rod. Like a potter’s vessel you will shatter them.”
Psalm 2:9 (Greek OT): “You will shepherd them with an iron rod; like a potter’s vessel you will shatter them.”
Revelation 2:26-27: “And the one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, I will give him authority over the nations, and ‘he will shepherd them with an iron rod; he will break them in pieces like jars made of clay,’ ”
Why would Jesus say “shepherd” instead of “break”? The most likely answer is because he was quoting a Greek translation rather than the original Hebrew. But, why did he choose to quote the Greek instead of the Hebrew?
Now we’re getting into some real fun things about the Bible!
We will talk about this sort of occurrence as well as a number of other interesting topics about the Bible during the Exploring the Bible seminar on November 5 and 6 at Living Waters Church. If this sort of thing is interesting to you, please register and join us for the seminar.