by Patrick O’Carroll, JamesPerloff:
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.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
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 story of the Septuagint’s origin was described by the Christian apologist Saint Justin Martyr (100-165 AD):
Ptolemy, king of Egypt [ruled 285 to 246 BC], when he had built the library in Alexandria, and by gathering books from every quarter had filled it, then learnt that very ancient histories written in Hebrew happened to be carefully preserved; and wishing to know their contents, he sent for seventy wise men from Jerusalem, who were acquainted with both the Greek and Hebrew language, and appointed them to translate the books [of Moses into Greek]; and that in freedom from all disturbance they might the more speedily complete the translation, he ordered … those officers who were appointed to this duty, to afford them all attendance, but to prevent communication with one another, in order that the accuracy of the translation might be discernible even by their agreement. And when he ascertained that the seventy men had not only given the same meaning, but had employed the same words, and had failed in agreement with one another not even to the extent of one word; but had written the same things, and concerning the same things, he was struck with amazement, and believed that the translation had been written by divine power, and perceived that the men were worthy of all honor, as beloved of God; and with many gifts ordered them to return to their own country. And having, as was natural, marveled at the books, and concluded them to be divine, he consecrated them in that library.1
The pristine copies that Ptolemy had ordered became the foundation for the translation of the entire Old Testament into Greek; the Septuagint was completed in the second century BC, and it was these manuscripts that Jesus and the Apostles quoted when referring to the Old Testament.
The Septuagint is still available today, but as we will see in Patrick O’Carroll’s article, most Bibles reject it in favor of the rabbi-written Masoretic translation, which was not completed until nearly a thousand years after Christ. Even the venerated King James Version uses the Masoretic Text (MT), despite many alterations it made to the Septuagint—especially eliminating books and passages prophesying the coming of Christ.
We must ask why, if the Septuagint was good enough for Jesus and the Apostles, it isn’t good enough for us.
In his book Rebooting the Bible (Part 1 published in 2019, and Part 2 in 2021), Douglas Woodward exposes a conspiracy of the “holy” rabbis, by which the words of the Old Testament were altered and corrupted in hopes of stopping, or slowing down, the massive conversion of ancient Judeans to Christianity that was taking place at the time, especially until about 250 AD. Overall, this rabbinical conspiracy to corrupt the Old Testament lasted from circa 136 AD, the end of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, until 1008 AD, when the Masoretic Leningrad Codex was completed.
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).
The Single Biggest Whopper in the Masoretic Text (MT)
Although the Old Testament does not explicitly state a 6,000-year timeline for the arrival of the Messiah, the Ancient Judeans did have an unofficial tradition whereby the Messiah would arrive around the year 6000 (meaning 6,000 years after Creation). They were basing this loosely on an analogy whereby the seven days of Creation corresponded to the first seven millennia, and whereby the seventh millennium was analogous to a “Messianic Age of Rest.” In the event, Jesus did indeed arrive around 5,500 years after Creation and, thus, He did indeed fulfill this Ancient Judean tradition by arriving just inside that unofficial 6,000-year timeline.
So, in order to better conceal this awkward fact, the “holy” rabbis were very keen to falsify the date of Creation. They figured that such a falsification would serve to dissuade more Ancient Judeans from converting to Christianity, which they were already doing in large numbers after the failed Bar Kokhba Revolt of 132-136 AD. The main upshot was that the rabbis literally deleted 1,500 years from the Old Testament’s chronology so as to make it falsely appear as if Jesus had arrived “too early.” This chronological defilement went on to become the Single Biggest Whopper that the rabbis deployed to corrupt the Masoretic Text (MT).
