So Long, King James: All Aboard the Ship of Alexandria! — Chapter Seven

Why will the Alexandrian Bible Old Testament hold up during the Tribulation while the Alexandrian New Testament will not?
By W. D. Penfield. Originally published on Substack, January 6, 2022.

The Forepart that sticks fast and holds up

At this point in Acts chapter 27, the Alexandrian ship, picture of an Alexandrian text-based Bible, has run aground in “a place where two seas met” (verse 41).

This is a picture of two factions warring against the Bible and battering it. The forepart of the Alexandrian text-based Bible sticks fast and holds together. The hinder part, however, is “broken in the violence of the waves.”

The forepart of the ship pictures the front part of the Bible—the Old Testament. The hinder part, the latter part, pictures the New Testament.

Why will the Alexandrian Bible Old Testament hold up in the Tribulation while the Alexandrian New Testament will not?

The short answer is that while New Testaments of Alexandrian Bibles remain mostly Alexandrian (conforming to Alexandrian family manuscripts), the Old Testaments of Alexandrian Bibles are becoming more “legit,” conforming more to the Byzantine family.

People aren’t too fond of the Alexandrian Old Testament. It’s just too out there for many Bible readers. And it has drawn a lot of criticism.

Let’s delve a little deeper and find out why. It won’t be boring. The backstory of the Alexandrian Old Testament is loaded with intrigue.

The Masoretic text versus the Septuagint

The Old Testament of the Byzantine family of texts (from which the King James Bible was translated) relies on the Hebrew Masoretic text. You might say the Masoretic text is standard equipment in the Byzantine text family.

The Jewish Masoretes were dedicated to accurately duplicating and preserving the scriptures, meaning the Hebrew Old Testament. That’s a reason the Hebrew Masoretic text of the Old Testament is regarded as accurate and authoritative.

In contrast, the Alexandrian family of texts uses an Alexandrian Greek Old Testament, which is called the Septuagint.

Those two versions of the Old Testament differ wildly. For example, the Septuagint includes the Apocrypha as canon, meaning as supposedly an actual part of the Old Testament.

Early editions of the KJV included the Apocrypha, but placed them between the Testaments as non-canonical. Martin Luther placed them between the Testaments in his German Bible translation because they did not appear in the Hebrew Masoretic text.

Rabbinic Jews aren’t too fond of the Septuagint. They rejected it because of its differences from the Masoretic Text.

Publishers and scholars caught flak when they published Bibles that heavily utilized the Septuagint for the Old Testament. So, over time, they began to draw more on the Hebrew Masoretic text for the Old Testament in their various versions. The NIV, for example, utilizes the Biblia Hebraica, a published edition of the Masoretic text, for its Old Testament.

But Alexandrian-text Bible publishers haven’t drawn more on the Byzantine family for their New Testaments. They’ve stuck with the Alexandrian texts for that.¹ The result has been Alexandrian versions of the Bible with a fairly sound and reliable Old Testament that will stick fast and hold up under assault during the Tribulation, but with an Alexandrian New Testament that will not hold up, but will instead be broken to pieces.

The sketchy backstory of the Septuagint

Here’s how the story goes: The Old Testament text of the Alexandrian family of manuscripts (particularly in the Vaticanus and Alexandrinus manuscripts) was derived from a Greek language translation of the Old Testament—the Septuagint—which, supposedly, existed before Christ and, also supposedly, was read, used, and quoted by Jesus and His apostles.

There is no actual B.C. Septuagint. The Old Testament texts of Vaticanus and Alexandrinus are the Septuagint. And neither existed until hundreds of years after Christ. When you see a picture labeled as a page from the Septuagint, it’s actually a picture of a page from one of those A.D. manuscripts.

The legend of a B.C. Septuagint is widely accepted as settled fact. But it’s unsupported by hard evidence.

Several claims surrounding the Septuagint are audacious and full of holes:

• It was produced by 72 devout Jewish scholars, six from each tribe of Israel.

(That’s where it got the name “Septuagint,” which, as we will see, is a slightly inaccurate name.)

This is unlikely, since the tribe of Levi was caretaker of the words of God (Malachi 2:7, Deuteronomy 31:24–26; Ezra was a “ready scribe,” “a scribe of the words of the commandments of the Lord,” and also a priest (Ezra 7:6, 10–11), which means he was a Levite).

It’s also unlikely that devout Jewish scholars would go back down to Egypt to do it (a land God delivered the Israelites from, and in Jeremiah 42 told remnant Jews not to go down to to sojourn), and unlikely they would agree to produce it in Greek, a Gentile language. Hebrew is the “official” language of the Old Testament scriptures.

Remarkably, in the story of the production, there’s no record of a single Greek grammarian being retained to assist with the supposed work.

• The seventy-two scholars worked in independent groups (the number of groups varies) and in seventy-two days miraculously produced identical, perfect translations, matching word for word.

I’m, um, skeptical. It would mean that God’s hand and blessing was on the work of six Levite and sixty-six non-Levite Jewish scholars who left Jerusalem, left Israel, and went back down to Eqypt to do it—at the behest of a Gentile idolator (see below). The only evidence such a thing occurred is the Letter of Aristeas. More on that letter will follow.

And about the name “Septuagint”: Septuagint means “seventy,” not seventy-two, and it’s often abbreviated LXX, which is the Roman numeral for seventy. So somewhere along the line, seventy-two was rounded down to seventy, perhaps because seventy, not seventy-two, is more echoed in scripture. In Exodus 1:5, Jacob’s family numbered seventy when they first moved down to Egypt. Seventy elders of Israel are first mentioned in Exodus 24:1. And in Luke 10:1, Jesus sent out seventy disciples to preach.

• The Jews of Alexandria pretty much pronounced the work error-free and inspired, and forbade anyone to change a word of it.

Rabbinic Jews might take issue with that claim of textual infallibility, if such a pronouncement was ever actually made.

• It was produced at the behest of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, king of Egypt (who held the title of Pharaoh, though he himself was of Greek heritage).

Unlikely, given the Hebrew Old Testament does not portray Egypt or its best-known Pharaoh in a flattering light.

Also, Ptolemy II deified his own parents, and was favorable toward the old gods of Egypt.

It’s unlikely a high priest of Israel or devout Jewish scholars would agree to go down to Egypt to do the work for a idolator, and a Gentile idolator at that.

• Ptolemy II Philadelphus lavished gifts on the translators on completion of the work, and the implication is they accepted the gifts after being urged to do so.

Unlikely, considering Exodus 23:8 and Deuteronomy 16:19, passages devout Jewish scholars would no doubt have been aware of. Also, Elisha the prophet refused to take a gift from Naaman the Syrian after he was healed (2 Kings 5:15–16), even though Naaman urged him to accept it. Devout Jewish scholars would have been aware of that passage too.

• There is overwhelming manuscript evidence of a B.C. Septuagint.

No, there’s not. There’s a single B.C. scrap of Old Testament text in Greek. It’s Rylands Papyrus #458, and it only contains Deuteronomy 23 through 28. That’s not a Septuagint, and is nowhere near “overwhelming” evidence that a complete Greek language B.C. Old Testament existed, much less that one was used by Jesus and His disciples.

• Since copies of the Septuagint are older than the oldest existing copies of the Hebrew Masoretic Old Testament [though they’re all still A.D., not B.C.], they are more accurate reflections of the original Old Testament autographs, and can even be used to “correct” the Hebrew Masoretic text.

Older does not mean better or more accurate. It sometimes means the opposite, as inferior or flawed or unfavored texts were set aside and not used, and therefore survived longer and in better condition. Recent discoveries of old texts have confirmed the accuracy of the Masoretic text.

• Because Jesus and His apostles used and quoted the Septuagint, and the Septuagint contains the Apocrypha as canon, we can take that as confirmation the Apocrypha books are canon.

There’s zero—zero—evidence Jesus and His apostles used and quoted a Greek Old Testament. And they never once quoted any of the Apocrypha.

• Since the Septuagint Old Testament readings match the Alexandrian New Testament citations of the Old Testament, it proves Jesus and His apostles used it. That, in turn, supposedly validates the Alexandrian New Testament readings, because they match the Alexandrian Old Testament readings.

Well, no. The Old Testament readings could have easily been revised to match the Alexandrian New Testament—and all of it written A.D., not B.C.

• The major manuscripts of the Alexandrian text family Old Testament used the Septuagint as a major source.

Well, no. There was no Septuagint to use as a source, at least not a B.C. one. The Old Testaments included in those manuscripts were pieced together based on a sketchy presumption that a B.C. Septuagint existed. So someone somewhere along the A.D. timeline just made one. The whole thing was reverse engineered. It was a fantasy construct based on imaginings of what a B.C. Septuagint would look like had it really existed. Which it didn’t.

About the letter of Aristeas

Much of the mythology surrounding the Septuagint comes from the letter of Aristeas. The letter describes the supposed production of the Septuagint, and was supposedly written contemporaneously.

Many scholars now agree the Letter of Aristeas was fictitious.

I think anyone informed of what’s actually in the letter—the anachronisms, implausibilities, and a couple of historical inaccuracies—would have to agree it’s fictitious.²

But some continue to claim there was a B.C. Septuagint that did originate in Alexandria, Egypt, but it was just produced in a different way. Legends die hard.

A tradition preserved in the pseudepigraphical Letter of Aristeas presents Ptolemy as the driving force behind the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek as the Septuagint. This account contains several anachronisms and is unlikely to be true. The Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible is likely to have taken place among the Jews of Alexandria, but was probably a protracted process rather than a single moment of translation. Source.

Yet the letter of Aristeas is still cited by some as authoritative evidence supporting the whole Septuagint story.

So who wrote the A.D. Greek language Old Testament used in Alexandrian texts?

A few historical names have been bandied about as the possible author. But no one really knows.

A hypothetical

Let’s say a complete or nearly complete B.C. Greek Old Testament were to be unearthed, and its readings were found to match the Hebrew Masoretic text more than the Septuagint text. What do you think would happen?

I can think of two possibilities: One is that it would be put back where it was found and covered up and not talked about.

The other is that the Old Testaments of future Alexandrian Bibles would be revised into even more agreement with the Hebrew Masoretic text, and, by extension, with the Byzantine text family. And that would further solidify the Alexandrian Old Testament against assaults During the Tribulation.

And it would all but end current conflict over the Septuagint.

But all this is just hypothesizing, and the conflict is already diminishing.

Why all this is really not so important anymore

We can regard the whole Septuagint topic as a distraction and misdirection. The battleground isn’t the Old Testament. It’s the New Testament.

The battle over the Old Testament is resolving itself. As pointed out, Alexandrian-based Bibles like the NIV are already drawing more heavily on the Hebrew Masoretic text for their Old Testament translations, even if they use the Biblia Hebraica isntead of the Textus Receptus (Erasmus’ Byzantine text compilation) as their source.

But most are not drawing more heavily on the Byzantine family for their New Testaments. They’re sticking with the Alexandrian family for that.

The result is Alexandrian Bibles with Old Testaments that will hold up under siege in the Tribulation, just as Acts 27:41 says, but New Testaments that will not hold up.

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In the next chapter, we’ll explore why the Alexandrian New Testament will be under such assault. Then we’ll return to the story in Acts 27 and see how it all concludes. Will the crew, soldiers, and passengers make it safely to the end as Paul assured them? We’re about to find out!

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1. The publisher and translators of the New King James Version claim it is sourced from the Byzantine family of texts, but Alexandrian readings are included in the margins. What’s the problem in this? It’s that such notes tend to call the Byzantine text readings into question.↩

2. For anyone curious to read it, English translations of the Letter of Aristeas are available online.↩