Why the Hebrew Text Matters

I beg you, my sweetest friend, you who are so curious that you even know my dreams, and who comb through everything I have written over these many years, when I had no fear of the slanders to come, to find grounds for accusation: answer me this. How is it that you do not know the prefaces of the very books on which you base your charges against me? These prefaces, as if by some prophetic foresight, gave the answer to the slanders that were coming, and so fulfilled the proverb, “The antidote before the poison.” What harm has my translation done to the churches? You bought up at great cost, as I knew, the versions of Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion, and those of the Jewish authors of the fifth and sixth translations. Your Origen, or, so that I may not seem to wound you with pretended praise, our Origen (for I may call him ours for his genius and learning, though not for the truth of his doctrines), in all his books explains and expounds not only the Septuagint but the Jewish versions as well. Eusebius and Didymus do the same. I say nothing of Apollinaris, who, with a praiseworthy zeal, though not according to knowledge, tried to patch the rags of all the translations into one garment, and to weave a consistent text of Scripture at his own discretion, not by any sound rule of criticism. [a]

The Hebrew Scriptures are used by apostolic men; they are used, as is plain, by the apostles and evangelists. Our Lord and Savior himself, whenever he refers to the Scriptures, takes his quotations from the Hebrew. So it is with the words, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his belly will flow rivers of living water,” and with the words spoken on the cross itself, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani,” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and not, as the Septuagint gives it, “My God, my God, look upon me; why have you forsaken me?” And there are many similar cases. I do not say this to strike a blow at the seventy translators, but I assert that the apostles of Christ have an authority greater than theirs. Wherever the Seventy agree with the Hebrew, the apostles took their quotations from that translation; but where they disagree, the apostles set down in Greek what they had found in the Hebrew. Further, I issue a challenge to my accuser. I have shown that many things are cited in the New Testament as coming from the older books that are not found in the Septuagint, and I have pointed out that they exist in the Hebrew. Now let him show that there is anything in the New Testament that comes from the Septuagint but is not found in the Hebrew, and our dispute is at an end.