My thanks to Jeff for his gracious response to my essay on the Septuagint.

I am not so much interested in the Orthodox-Roman Catholic polemics in this discussion but rather on which version of the Scriptures – Vulgate or Septuagint – gives the most accurate rendering.

We will give a couple of examples.

The first seems to be a small thing:

‘In Acts 7:14 St. Stephen relates the story of the Israelite nation and refers to 75 people who traveled from Canaan to Egypt in the emigration of Jacob’s family. This is not what Genesis 46 states in our [Hebrew/Masoretic-based] Bibles, where it catalogues 70 sojourners [Gen. 46:27]. But the LXX [Septuagint] lists 75 people, confirming St. Stephen’s account, with the differences accounted for by the grand- and great-grandchildren of Joseph (Gen 46:20-22)’ (Joel Kalvesmaki).

The Vulgate retains the error mentioned, stating 70 in Genesis 46 and 75 in Acts 7 (verse look-up in the Douay-Rheims Bible available here), omitting some of Joseph’s descendants in Gen. 46:20.

The second involves a weightier subject, an OT prophecy of Christ:

‘The role of the LXX in the New Testament and the early Church is a crucial help in understanding what Paul might have meant by “all Scripture.” As previously mentioned, this is the version most often quoted in the New Testament. And in some cases the claims of the New Testament theologically depend on the peculiarities of the LXX.

‘For instance, Hebrews 10:5 quotes Psalm 40:6 as a messianic prophecy:

‘Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, “sacrifice and offering Thou hast not desired, but a body Thou hast prepared for Me.”

‘The author has directly quoted from the LXX Psalter. A quick turn to our modern Bibles will confirm that the Hebrew text reads:

‘Sacrifice and meal offering Thou hast not desired; My ears Thou hast opened.

‘If we follow this latter reading, the author of Hebrews has not only misquoted the passage, but has made it an important plank of his argument. Only the rendering of the LXX justifies this as a Messianic passage’ (Kalvesmaki).

Once again, the Vulgate retains the Hebrew rendition, which removes a Messianic prophecy from the Bible (given the different numberings, the verse in the Vulgate is Ps. 39:7).

Also of note, Cainan is missing from the Vulgate’s genealogy of Arphaxad (Gen. 10:24), yet that Cainan is listed as part of Christ’s lineage (St. Luke 3:36).  The Septuagint has the lineage without any missing names (Metropolitan Bishop Ephraim of Boston).

Again, this is the crux of what we were getting at in our previous essay:  Which version of the Scriptures is the most accurate?  Based on the foregoing examples and on the articles they come from, as well as on what we noted in the previous essay, we would say that those based on the Septuagint (rather than on the Hebrew/Masoretic texts like the Vulgate) are the most reliable.

That is what we wished to clarify.  Our thanks again to Jeff for an amicable dialogue.  And to borrow from his response referenced up above, we leave it to the reader to decide.