How did the Septuagint prepare the world for the coming of Jesus and the spread of the Gospel?

Answer 1

A:

The Septuagint is a flawed early Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. One of the many mistakes in the Septuagint is to mistranslate Isaiah 7:14, creating the opportunity to interpret this as a prophecy that Jesus would be born of a virgin.

What the prophet Isaiah actually wrote in the original Hebrew was, "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, the young woman shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." The Septuagint says instead: "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." Although this does not actually mention Jesus (even saying that the son will be called Immanuel), nor provide any information from which to identify Jesus indirectly, the author of Matthew's Gospel used this passage to demonstrate that the birth of Jesus had already been prophesied by Isaiah.

Answer 2

The Septuagint (LXX) was an early, flawed translation of the Hebrew scriptures. It prepared the way for the gospels by mistranslating Isaiah 7:14 to say that a virgin would conceive and bear a child. The correct translation would have been "the young woman", and the young woman in question did have a child a few verses later in Isaiah. The author of the Gospel of Matthew relied on this mistranslation, taken out of context, to show that it was prophesied that Jesus would be born of a virgin.

Although the LXX was not original, being merely a rough translation of the original scriptures, it prepared the world for the coming of Jesus by providing the author of Matthew with what he could claim to be a prophecy.

Answer 3

The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament was God's word to the Jews of Palestine. There were over 300 specific prophecies of the Messiah, all of which were fulfilled to a "T" in Our Blessed Lord.

Among other things the Septuagint covered the several hundred year period when the Jews were exiled from the Promised Land and had to learn to live out their faith without a Temple. Up until then, the entire Old Testament Israel had been based on Temple worship.

God revealed to the Jews, most especially in the book of Tobit, how they were to worship; such worship was based on a three legged stool of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer. Our Blessed Lord began His preaching in St. Matthew's Gospel by expanding on this and showing how the new Christian life He was preaching was going to be based on fasting, almsgiving, and prayer - in His Sermon on the Mount, in chapters 5-7 of St. Matthew's Gospel

In addition, all the evangelists, particularly St. Matthew, were careful to point out how Our Blessed Lord fulfilled all the prophecies about Him in the Old Testament - every single one of the more than 300. And we know that the Septuagint was the infallible translation both because it is the one that Our Blessed Lord used throughout His ministry - most of His sayings, and most of the references throughout the New Testament are taken directly from the Septuagint. And, also, it is the Old Testament that the Church, with Our Blessed Lord's authority, canonized as the Scriptures to be used by Christians.