The Place of the Hebrew Old Testament Text in the Eastern Church

Abstract

As is well known, the Eastern Church since its birth has used as Old Testament text basically that of the Septuagint (LXX). This fact however must not lead to the conclusion that she has accepted Septuagint as the sole authority for the text of the Orthodox Old Testament. The reasons that led the Church to the adoption of the Septuagint text were not theological but practical. Even the Jews used the Greek language in their worship until the tenth century. The key question in this case, then, is not whether the Church used the Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible in its Scripture interpretation, but how the Church incorporated the Synagogue Bible into its own Christian Bible. The Church during its first millennium, did not tie itself to a specific textual tradition of the Old Testament, nor did it ever reject the original Hebrew text. In the Orthodox Church the matter of Old Testament text was raised again, not as an internal problem, but as a reflection of the related discussions that were going on in the West. The views which were formulated in that period, even the synodical resolutions, were fueled by the confrontation of Catholicism with Protestantism. Therefore, to the extent that nothing today compels the Orthodox Church to favor a text of a particular form, there is a need for a completely new and sober handling of the problem with purely scientific criteria, but also with a sense of responsibility.