Did you know that Jesus and the Apostles quoted MORE from the Septuagint (Greek Translation of the Hebrew Old Testament before the time of Christ)?
In fact, among all the Apostles, ONLY Matthew (and later St. Paul) could read Hebrew! All the other Apostles spoke either Koine Greek or Aramaic, BUT NOT HEBREW. They were mostly uneducated in Jewish Schools because they were poor fishermen who lived hand-to-mouth and could not afford the more sophisticated education that St. Paul had under Gamaliel.
When St. Paul declared that "All Scripture is God-breathed..." Paul was talking to Timothy who was HEBREW ILLITERATE (Yup, Timothy did not read nor understand Hebrew), he was referring to the Septuagint because that was the ONLY Bible that Timothy can read.
Timothy was the son of a Greek father and an uneducated Jewish mother AND grandmother. So, literally, it was the Greek that was "God-breathed". But we will discuss this in another post.
Meanwhile, take Matthew 1:23. Compare the Greek New Testament quote to the Greek Old Testament source and Matthew quoted Isaiah 7:14 almost word-for-word from the Greek. Now, compare this with the Hebrew. The word "virgin" in NOT in the Hebrew. The Hebrew word used is "young maiden" which does NOT necessarily mean "virgin" although it may in common usage. The Greek, however, is very specific! The Hebrew used "almah (young woman)" instead of "bethulah (virgin)".
How about "what Old Testament text did Jesus read in the synagogue in Luke 4:18-19?". Note that this was read IN A JEWISH SYNAGOGUE at the time of Christ! Read the passage and then read the Greek Old Testament source in Isaiah 61:1-2. IT WAS QUOTED BY CHRIST WORD-FOR-WORD in the GREEK!!! Now compare this to the Hebrew version. The Hebrew SKIPS ONE CRUCIAL phrase: "to give sight to the blind".
We can give other countless examples like Jude 14-15 was quoted entirely from the Greek Book of Enoch. This is NOT in the Hebrew but is part of the Old Testament of some of the Eastern Orthodox churches like the Ethiopian church and the Syriac churches.
THE SEPTUAGINT IS A MUST READ for any serious Bible student and especially TEACHER of the Word.
https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nets/edition/
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