Which Old Testament Did the Apostles Use?

Which Old Testament Did the Apostles Use? The Bible Jesus quoted is not the Bible you read. When Matthew wrote about the virgin who would conceive, he was quoting a Greek translation made 300 years before Christ. When Paul preached the resurrection, he was reading from that same Greek translation. Roughly 80-90% of the New Testament's Old Testament quotations match the Septuagint not the Hebrew Masoretic Text that modern Protestant Bibles are translated from. The Septuagint contains seven books that Luther removed in the 1500s. The Dead Sea Scrolls 1,000 years older than the oldest Masoretic manuscript side with the Septuagint in key passages. And three Messianic prophecies that Christians have quoted for 2,000 years read differently in the Hebrew text that was finalized centuries AFTER Christ. This video tells the story most Christians have never heard. 📖 KEY SCRIPTURE COMPARISONS Isaiah 7:14 — Septuagint: "the virgin (παρθένος) shall conceive" vs Masoretic: "the young woman" Psalm 22:16 — Septuagint: "they pierced my hands and feet" vs Masoretic: "like a lion are my hands and feet" Psalm 40:6 — Septuagint: "a body You have prepared for me" vs Masoretic: "my ears You have opened" 2 Timothy 3:16 — "All Scripture is God-breathed" — Paul writing in Greek, referring to the Septuagint Luke 4:16-21 — Jesus reads Isaiah in the synagogue; quotation matches the Septuagint Hebrews 10:5-7 — Quotes Psalm 40 from the Septuagint to speak of the Incarnation 📚 HISTORICAL SOURCES • Letter of Aristeas (c. 200 BC) — Account of the Septuagint's translation in Alexandria under Ptolemy II • Dead Sea Scrolls (discovered 1947, Qumran) — Hebrew manuscripts 1,000 years older than the oldest Masoretic Text; frequently agree with the Septuagint against the Masoretic • Council of Jamnia / Yavneh (c. 90 AD) — Post-destruction Jewish gathering; rabbis narrowed the Hebrew canon, excluding books accepted by Greek-speaking Jews • Aquila, Theodotion, Symmachus — Post-Christian Jewish Greek translations deliberately replacing the Septuagint • St. Jerome, Latin Vulgate (c. 405 AD) — Translated OT from Hebrew (Hebraica Veritas); first major Christian move away from the Septuagint • Pope Damasus I — Commissioned Jerome's translation • Martin Luther (1534) — Removed Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1-2 Maccabees from the OT canon • Council of Hippo (393 AD) and Carthage (397 AD) — Affirmed the full Septuagint canon • Synod of Trullo (692 AD) — Confirmed the canon for the Eastern Church 🔑 KEY TERMS • Septuagint (LXX) — Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, c. 250 BC; the Old Testament of the Apostles and the early Church • Masoretic Text — Hebrew Bible text finalized by the Masoretes between 600-1000 AD • Παρθένος (parthenos) — Greek for "virgin"; used in the Septuagint's Isaiah 7:14 ✚ Ancient Faith Explained Scripture, Church Fathers, 2,000 years of history. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📺 EXPLORE MORE: ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ▶ This video is part of: How the Bible Was Made [    • How the Bible Was Made   ] ▶ Watch Part 1 first — the New Testament: "Who Decided What's In the Bible?" (Canon Formation) [    • Who Decided What's In the Bible?   ] ▶ More answers to Protestant questions: Orthodox Apologetics [    • Orthodox Apologetics   ] ▶ See all playlists:    / @ancientfaithexplained   🤝 BECOME A MEMBER    / @ancientfaithexplained   📷 IMAGE CREDITS • Ptolemy II bust: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... • Katzrin ancient synagogue: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... • Crucifixion mosaic icon, Bode Museum: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... • Qumran caves: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... • Dead Sea Scroll 28a: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... • Babylonian Talmud manuscript, 1342: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... ⚠️ DISCLAIMER This video does not attack the Hebrew Bible. It traces the historical relationship between the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text and presents the Orthodox Church's preservation of the older, apostolic Old Testament canon. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📚 RECOMMENDED READING: ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ▶ "Invitation to the Septuagint" by Karen H. Jobes and Moisés Silva The standard academic introduction to the Greek Old Testament — the Bible the Apostles actually quoted and the early Church used for centuries. Essential for understanding what "Old Testament" meant in the first Christian centuries. https://amzn.to/3QiAA3O ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. #septuagint #oldtestament #orthodoxchristianity