The Old Testament was given in Hebrew (with small portions in Aramaic), and that Hebrew text stands at the center of all serious biblical study. As Israel’s Scriptures spread across different lands and languages, translations arose so that non-Hebrew readers could hear and understand the Word of God. These translations do not replace the Hebrew text. Instead, they function as witnesses to it, reflecting how Jews and later Christians received, interpreted, and transmitted the Scriptures.

Among the earliest and most important witnesses are four distinct traditions: the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Aramaic Targums, the Greek Septuagint, and the Latin Vulgate. The Samaritan Pentateuch is not a translation into another language but a separate Hebrew textual tradition of the Pentateuch. The other three are genuine translations into Aramaic, Greek, and Latin.

Each of these witnesses arose in a specific historical setting. Each reflects particular linguistic, theological, and textual characteristics. When handled properly, they confirm the extraordinary stability of the Hebrew Scriptures and occasionally shed light on local details where a scribe or translator adjusted wording. None of them overturns the Hebrew Old Testament preserved in the Masoretic tradition. Rather, they show how faithfully that text was preserved and how broadly it was received.

What follows is a detailed examination of these four early witnesses: their origin, their character, and their value for understanding the Hebrew Old Testament.

The Samaritan Pentateuch

The Samaritan Pentateuch is a Hebrew form of the five books of Moses preserved by the Samaritan community. The Samaritans accept only the Pentateuch as Scripture. For them, Genesis through Deuteronomy constitute the entire biblical canon. Their Bible is therefore not larger than the Jewish Old Testament but smaller, limited to the Torah alone.

Historically, the Samaritans trace their origins to the northern kingdom of Israel and to the region around Shechem and Mount Gerizim. After the Assyrian exile and subsequent resettlements, a distinct community formed that combined elements of Israelite ancestry with populations brought into the land. Over time this community developed its own identity and sanctuary on Mount Gerizim, in deliberate contrast to the temple in Jerusalem.

The Samaritan Pentateuch is written in a distinctive script often called Samaritan script. This script derives from the older Paleo-Hebrew script that Israel used before adopting the square Aramaic script in which the Masoretic Text is written. The script alone reminds us that Samaritan Torah copying stands in a long Hebrew tradition that precedes the medieval Masoretes.

Historical And Textual Character

The Samaritan Pentateuch as a manuscript tradition appears in copies that are mostly medieval and later, but its textual character clearly reaches back into the Second Temple period. Hebrew manuscripts at Qumran show a “pre-Samaritan” type of text in which harmonizing and explanatory tendencies resemble what later becomes characteristic of the Samaritan Pentateuch. This means the Samaritans did not create an alternate Pentateuch from nothing. They inherited a Hebrew text family that already circulated among some Jewish groups before the time of Jesus.

When compared to the Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Pentateuch differs in thousands of details. This sounds dramatic, but the vast majority of those differences are minor: spelling variants, small grammatical adjustments, and harmonizations where parallel passages are made to match more closely. Only a smaller group of readings express distinct Samaritan theology.

A hallmark of the Samaritan Pentateuch is harmonization. Where the Masoretic Text preserves slightly different wording in repeated laws or narratives, the Samaritan scribes frequently brought those passages into greater agreement. For example, legal material that appears both in Exodus and Deuteronomy often shows small differences in Masoretic Hebrew. The Samaritan text tends to smooth those differences so that the parallel passages are nearly identical. This reflects a scribal desire for internal consistency, but it also shows that the Masoretic tradition scrupulously preserved the differing wordings that Moses originally wrote.

Another feature of the Samaritan Pentateuch is the occasional expansion of chronological or explanatory details. Genealogies or time statements may receive additional words that make the meaning more explicit for later readers. These expansions do not overthrow the basic narrative, but they reveal a willingness to clarify and sometimes to simplify.

Sectarian Theological Alterations

The most theologically significant differences appear where Samaritan doctrine directly touches the text. The central issue is the place Jehovah chose for His sanctuary. The Samaritans insisted that Mount Gerizim, not Jerusalem, is the divinely chosen place. Predictably, some key passages are altered to support this claim.

One classic example appears in Deuteronomy 27. The Masoretic Text instructs Israel to build an altar on Mount Ebal. In the Samaritan Pentateuch, the command refers instead to Mount Gerizim. Certain passages referring to “the place that Jehovah will choose” are sharpened or connected explicitly with Gerizim. This is not a mere variant driven by scribal accident. It is an intentional sectarian reading that relocates the authorized center of worship away from Jerusalem.

These doctrinally charged readings are important because they show what happens when a community subjects the text to its theology, rather than submitting its theology to the text. At the same time, their very specificity allows textual criticism to identify them clearly and prevent them from gaining undue authority.

Value For Textual Criticism

Because it is still Hebrew, the Samaritan Pentateuch occupies a special place among the witnesses to the Pentateuch. It stands below the Masoretic Text in authority but above all translations, since translations inevitably add another layer of interpretation.

Its sectarian and harmonizing tendencies mean that unique Samaritan readings are rarely preferred when reconstructing the original text. However, the Samaritan Pentateuch becomes very significant when its readings align with other independent witnesses. When a Samaritan reading agrees with the Greek Septuagint and with Hebrew fragments from Qumran against the Masoretic Text, that agreement can signal a genuine ancient variant.

Even in such cases, the original reading is not decided mechanically. One must consider which reading best explains the origin of the others, which fits the author’s style and theology, and which is most in line with normal scribal behavior. Often the Masoretic reading remains clearly superior. In a few places, however, the Samaritan Pentateuch may preserve traces of early textual development that help us understand how the Pentateuch was transmitted.

Most importantly, the Samaritan Pentateuch overwhelmingly confirms the Masoretic Pentateuch. The vast agreement between these two independent Hebrew traditions demonstrates that the text of Genesis through Deuteronomy was remarkably stable across centuries, locations, and communities. The Samaritan differences draw attention precisely because the shared base is so large.

The Aramaic Targums

The Aramaic Targums are translations or interpretive renderings of the Hebrew Scriptures into Aramaic. The word “targum” simply means “translation,” but these works are more than bare translations. They combine a usually close rendering of the Hebrew text with built-in explanations, expansions, and applications that reflect synagogue teaching.

After the Babylonian exile, Aramaic functioned as a widely used language in the Near East. Many Jews, especially those in the Diaspora and in later generations, were more fluent in Aramaic than in Hebrew. Hebrew remained the language of Scripture, but ordinary hearers needed help to grasp what they were hearing. This gave rise to the practice of reading the Hebrew in the synagogue and then giving an oral Aramaic rendering to explain it.

Over time, these oral renderings took on stable forms and were written down. What began as spoken explanation eventually became literary Targums: fixed texts that could be copied, studied, and used in public worship.

Historical Development and Major Traditions

The roots of the Targumic tradition likely reach back to the fifth century B.C.E. or earlier, when the post-exilic community gathered to hear the reading of the Torah. In Nehemiah 8, Levites read from the book of the Law of God and “gave the sense, so that they understood the reading.” That passage reflects the same kind of explanatory ministry that later characterized the Targums, even if written Targums did not yet exist.

By the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Aramaic translations of parts of Scripture already circulated. Fragments of Aramaic renderings of Leviticus and Job show that Jews were translating Scripture into Aramaic centuries before the full literary Targums of later Judaism.

As the Targum tradition matured, two main families developed. One arose in the land of Israel and is associated with Jewish Palestinian Aramaic. This family includes Targum Neofiti, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on the Pentateuch, and the Fragment Targums. These texts are often expansive, richly interpretive, and full of midrashic material.

The other family took shape in Babylonia and is associated with Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. Its main representatives are Targum Onqelos on the Pentateuch and Targum Jonathan on the Former and Latter Prophets. These Babylonian Targums are more restrained, especially Onqelos, which follows the Hebrew text quite closely and was treated almost like an official Aramaic version in some rabbinic circles.

Most of the Targums reached their final literary form between the third and fifth centuries C.E., though they preserve older traditions. Their final redaction is later than the Septuagint but earlier than the major medieval Masoretic codices.

Translation Technique and Theological Interpretation

The Targums demonstrate a fascinating blend of literal translation and interpretive paraphrase. At the base level, they typically mirror the structure and sequence of the Hebrew text. A reader familiar with Hebrew can often align the Targum phrase by phrase with its source.

Overlaying that literal base, however, are interpretive elements. These include narrative expansions, doctrinal clarifications, and legal updates.

First, narrative expansions fill in gaps or spell out motives. Where the Hebrew text states that one character spoke to another, the Targum may supply the content of that conversation, turning a brief statement into a fully developed dialogue. These expansions are not arbitrary. They often reflect traditional Jewish explanations of why certain events occurred and what they meant.

Second, doctrinal clarifications are especially evident where the Hebrew text uses anthropomorphic language about Jehovah. When Scripture speaks of God “coming down,” “repenting,” or “remembering,” the Targums frequently rephrase such expressions to avoid suggesting that God is changeable or limited like humans. They preserve the meaning of the event while protecting the truth of His unchanging character.

Third, halakhic adjustments appear in the rendering of laws. The Targumika often bring the Torah into closer alignment with later rabbinic practice. Where the Hebrew commandment is concise and leaves much implicit, the Aramaic rendering may insert the developed legal interpretation. This gives the congregation both the word of the Law and its expected application in one continuous text.

Finally, there are occasional geographical or cultural explanations. Obscure place names or ancient institutions may be clarified so that hearers in later centuries understand what the text refers to.

The Targums as Textual Witnesses

For textual criticism of the Old Testament, the Targums are both valuable and complex. Because they are translations, they belong to a secondary tier of evidence below the Hebrew manuscripts themselves. The interpretive nature of the Targums requires careful distinction between genuine textual indications and mere paraphrase.

Targum Onqelos and Targum Jonathan are especially important because they typically follow a Hebrew base very close to the Masoretic Text. When their wording corresponds closely to the Masoretic Hebrew, they confirm the stability of that text as it was read and explained in late antiquity.

When a Targum differs from the Masoretic Text, one must first ask whether the difference can be explained as interpretation. If the Aramaic simply clarifies a theological point, expands a narrative, or incorporates later halakhic detail, that tells us much about Jewish exegesis but little about the original Hebrew wording.

However, there are instances where the Targum’s rendering best fits a slightly different underlying Hebrew text. For example, if a Targum consistently implies the presence of a particular word or phrase that is absent from the Masoretic Text and this difference cannot be accounted for by interpretation, this can suggest that the translator had a divergent Hebrew reading before him. Such cases are not extremely frequent, but they exist.

Even then, the Targum by itself rarely overturns the Masoretic Text. Its greatest strength lies in convergence. When a Targum agrees with the Septuagint and with a Qumran Hebrew manuscript against the Masoretic reading, that combined testimony deserves serious attention. The Targum, standing between the Hebrew consonants and synagogue application, illustrates how deeply the Hebrew text was embedded in the life of God’s people.

The Greek Septuagint

The Greek Septuagint, commonly abbreviated LXX, is the earliest complete translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into another language. It arose in the Hellenistic period when many Jews lived outside the land of Israel and spoke Greek as their primary language. For those communities, a Greek translation of Scripture was essential for worship and instruction.

The traditional story of the Septuagint’s origin is preserved in the Letter of Aristeas and later Jewish and Christian sources. According to that account, the Pentateuch was translated in Alexandria, Egypt, by a group of Jewish scholars who worked at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus for his royal library. While the details of this story are strongly embellished, its core aligns with historical reality: a Greek Torah was translated in the third century B.C.E. for Greek-speaking Jews in Egypt.

Most scholars date the translation of the Pentateuch to the third century B.C.E. The other books of the Hebrew Bible were translated over the next century or so, with the full Greek Old Testament taking shape by the second century B.C.E. This places the Septuagint more than a thousand years earlier than our complete medieval Hebrew codices and makes it a crucial witness to the text as it existed during the Second Temple period.

Manuscripts And Textual History

The Septuagint survives in thousands of manuscripts and fragments. These range from early papyrus fragments containing portions of individual books to large parchment codices that contain much or all of the Greek Old Testament. Famous Christian codices such as Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Alexandrinus are key witnesses to the Septuagint tradition.

The Septuagint is not a monolithic text. Different books show different translation styles. Some underwent later revisions as copyists attempted to bring the Greek more closely into line with the Hebrew text used in their own day. As a result, the Septuagint tradition includes both early, freer translations and later, more literal revisions.

The history of the Septuagint also includes later Greek translations produced by Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. These were not parts of the original Septuagint but were produced to offer alternatives that adhered more closely to the Hebrew text. Origen’s great work, the Hexapla, placed these Greek versions in parallel columns with the Hebrew text and a revised Septuagint, attempting to clarify where the Greek did or did not correspond to the Hebrew.

Translation Styles and Textual Forms

The Septuagint does not exhibit a single uniform translation technique. Some books, especially in the Pentateuch and historical books, are quite literal. They often preserve Hebrew word order, reflect Hebrew syntax closely, and attempt to render terms consistently. These literal books serve as very sensitive witnesses to the underlying Hebrew.

Other books are more idiomatic or interpretive. Wisdom literature, portions of Isaiah, and other poetic or prophetic texts sometimes show freer renderings that reorganize phrases, summarize ideas, or employ explanatory paraphrase. These renderings still follow genuine Hebrew sources, but they cannot be treated as simple word-for-word equivalents.

The relationship between the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text is complex. In many places, the Septuagint reflects a Hebrew text essentially identical to the Masoretic consonants. In other places, especially in books like Jeremiah and Job, the Greek corresponds to a Hebrew edition that differs in length and order. This shows that, for certain books, more than one Hebrew edition circulated in ancient Judaism.

Even here, however, the Septuagint does not overthrow the Masoretic Text. The Masoretic edition represents the form recognized and transmitted in the mainstream Jewish tradition. The Septuagint reveals that alternate editions existed, but it does not annul the authority of the Masoretic form. Instead, it helps us understand how Scripture was edited and arranged in the centuries leading up to the time of Christ.

Another significant element is the handling of the divine Name. Early Septuagint manuscripts often preserve the Tetragrammaton in Hebrew letters or as a special Greek transliteration embedded within the Greek text. Later manuscripts, especially in Christian circles, frequently replace the Name with the Greek word for “Lord.” Even in those cases the translation presupposes the underlying Hebrew Name Jehovah in the original text.

Use In Judaism and the Early Church

Originally, the Septuagint was a Jewish project for Jewish communities. It was widely used in synagogues throughout the Greek-speaking world. As Christianity spread, Greek-speaking Christians naturally adopted the Septuagint as their Old Testament. Many Old Testament quotations in the New Testament follow Septuagint wording, although the New Testament writers also show awareness of the underlying Hebrew.

Over time, as Christians used the Septuagint to argue that Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament, many Jews in the Greek-speaking world distanced themselves from it and favored more strictly literal Greek translations. This separation further sharpened the distinction between the Hebrew text maintained by Jewish scribes and the Greek text preserved in Christian communities.

Despite that later divergence, the Septuagint confirms that long before the Masoretic accents and vowel points were added, there already existed a stable Hebrew consonantal text that could be translated into Greek and used across the Mediterranean world. Where the Septuagint closely tracks the Masoretic Text, it offers powerful confirmation of the reliability of the Hebrew Old Testament.

Textual-Critical Significance

For Old Testament textual criticism, the Septuagint is the most important of all the ancient versions. Its age, its widespread manuscript base, and its many close agreements with pre-Masoretic Hebrew make it indispensable.

At the same time, the Septuagint must always be treated as a translation. Differences from the Masoretic Text can arise for several reasons. Some reflect a genuinely different Hebrew parent. Others reflect interpretive translation choices. Still others result from Greek scribal errors or later recensional activity.

When using the Septuagint critically, one asks whether a given Greek divergence is best explained as a translation decision or as evidence of another Hebrew reading. If the divergence can easily be explained as the translator simplifying, clarifying, or interpreting, then it has limited weight as textual evidence. If the divergence cannot be accounted for by normal translation behavior and the Greek implies a different Hebrew phrase or clause, then it may indicate a variant in the Hebrew tradition.

The strongest cases occur where the Septuagint’s reading aligns with independent Hebrew manuscripts from the Dead Sea region and sometimes also with the Samaritan Pentateuch or Targums. In such situations, the Septuagint stands as one member of a broader chorus of witnesses that must be weighed together. Even then, the Masoretic Text remains the base, and decisions are made by evaluating which reading best explains the rise of the others and fits the overall pattern of Scripture.

The Latin Vulgate

The Latin Vulgate is the standard Latin translation of the Bible associated with Jerome in the late fourth and early fifth centuries C.E. Before the Vulgate, Christians in the Latin-speaking West used a collection of Old Latin translations that had been made from the Greek Septuagint. These Old Latin texts varied in quality and consistency and produced a rather uneven textual landscape.

Jerome was commissioned by Bishop Damasus of Rome to revise the Latin Gospels. As he worked and studied, his project expanded to a comprehensive revision and translation of the entire Bible. Jerome’s crucial decision for the Old Testament was to translate from the Hebrew text rather than from the Greek Septuagint. He called this commitment the pursuit of the “Hebrew truth,” meaning that the Hebrew text preserved in Jewish communities was the proper base for translating the Old Testament.

Jerome’s Training and Approach

Jerome received a thorough education in classical Latin literature, Greek, and rhetoric. He then devoted himself to biblical studies and learned Hebrew, studying with Jewish teachers in Palestine. He spent extended years in Bethlehem, where he had direct access to Hebrew manuscripts and Jewish interpretive traditions.

For the canonical books of the Old Testament, Jerome translated directly from the Hebrew. He consulted the Septuagint and other Greek translations, but he treated the Hebrew text as decisive. His Latin style is generally more literal than the Old Latin, aligning more closely with the structure and wording of the Hebrew while still aiming for intelligible Latin.

Jerome’s prefaces make clear that he regarded the Hebrew text preserved in the synagogue as the authoritative standard. That Hebrew tradition corresponds in substance to what later emerges in full Masoretic form. Jerome’s work therefore links the Jewish Hebrew tradition directly to the Latin theological and liturgical tradition.

Regarding books not found in the Jewish Hebrew canon (such as Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, and others), Jerome distinguished them from the Hebrew Scriptures. He either declined to translate them from Hebrew, used existing Greek or Old Latin forms, or explicitly stated that they lacked the same authority as the canonical Hebrew books. This distinction demonstrates Jerome’s awareness of the boundaries of the Hebrew canon.

Reception and Impact

Jerome’s Hebrew-based translation initially met with some resistance, particularly from those accustomed to the wording of the Old Latin. Over time, however, the superiority of a more consistent, Hebrew-aligned Latin text became evident, and the Vulgate gained broader acceptance.

Through centuries of copying and use, the Vulgate became the Bible of Western Christianity. It shaped the exegesis, theology, worship, and devotional life of the Latin West for over a millennium. While copyists introduced their own variations over time, the core of Jerome’s translation remained and was reinforced in later standardized editions.

For many medieval theologians, the Latin Vulgate functioned practically as the authoritative form of Scripture. Yet at its base, Jerome’s work stood upon the Hebrew text preserved among the Jews. The Vulgate thus serves as a powerful historical testimony to the stability and authority of that Hebrew text.

Textual-Critical Significance

In Old Testament textual criticism, the Latin Vulgate occupies a supporting role. Because Jerome translated from a Hebrew text closely aligned with the Masoretic tradition, the Vulgate usually confirms the Masoretic consonants. Where the Vulgate differs, the variance often arises from Jerome’s translation choices, Latin idiom, or later scribal changes rather than from a different Hebrew Vorlage.

There are, however, layers within the Latin tradition that can sometimes yield additional information. The earlier Old Latin translations, which often reflect the Septuagint more directly, sometimes preserve older readings. When those Old Latin readings can be recovered and are found to agree with the Septuagint and other witnesses against the Masoretic Text, they provide further evidence that a particular non-Masoretic reading has ancient roots.

Even so, neither the Vulgate nor the Old Latin forms are primary authorities for the Old Testament text. They are secondary witnesses whose main value lies in confirming the Hebrew and illustrating how it was understood by Latin-speaking Christians.

How These Versions Relate to the Masoretic Text

All four of these early witnesses stand in a subordinate yet significant relationship to the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible. The Masoretic tradition, especially as preserved in codices such as Aleppo and Leningrad, represents the culmination of a careful scribal transmission that preserved the consonantal text of the Old Testament with extraordinary precision. The Masoretes did not invent the text. They inherited it, guarded it, and supplemented it with vowel pointing, accents, and marginal notes.

The Samaritan Pentateuch demonstrates how a sectarian community could adjust the text to support its own theology while still preserving the vast bulk of the Pentateuch unchanged. Its harmonizations and doctrinal alterations underscore how restrained mainstream Jewish scribes were by comparison. The Masoretic Pentateuch preserves diverse wordings, difficult expressions, and theologically challenging statements without “correction,” which testifies to its fidelity to what Moses originally wrote.

The Aramaic Targums show how Scripture functioned in the life of the synagogue. They reveal the interpretive traditions, theological concerns, and legal applications that surrounded the Hebrew text in late Second Temple and rabbinic Judaism. At the same time, their base translations generally presuppose a Hebrew text essentially identical to the Masoretic Text. Where they diverge due to interpretation, they showcase exegesis rather than an alternate canon.

The Greek Septuagint provides a window into the Hebrew Scriptures as they stood in the third and second centuries B.C.E. It confirms that the basic content and wording of the Old Testament were already established long before Christ. In books where the Septuagint reflects an alternate edition, it reminds us that certain compositions went through stages of arrangement and transmission. Yet even here, the Masoretic form stands as the recognized standard within the Jewish community from which Jesus and the apostles sprang.

The Latin Vulgate links the Hebrew text with the Western church. Jerome’s deliberate return to the Hebrew establishes a clear chain of transmission from the synagogue scrolls to the Latin Bible that shaped Western theology. His translation work, grounded in the Hebrew, demonstrates that as of the fourth and fifth centuries C.E. the Hebrew Old Testament existed in a stable and authoritative form.

Taken together, these versions do not undermine confidence in the Hebrew Old Testament. They enhance it. They show that as the Scriptures passed into new languages and cultures, faithful Jews and Christians recognized the Hebrew text as the standard and sought to translate it accurately. Deviations that arose were limited, traceable, and subject to correction by comparison with the Hebrew base.

Through all these witnesses, one consistent picture emerges: Jehovah has preserved His written revelation through the ordinary, careful labor of scribes, translators, and teachers. The Samaritan Pentateuch, the Aramaic Targums, the Greek Septuagint, and the Latin Vulgate stand as distinct yet converging testimonies to the stability, clarity, and enduring authority of the Hebrew Old Testament.

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