ORTHODOX GOOD FRIDAY
On this Eastern Orthodox “Good Friday,” I am posting my own translation of Isaiah’s most famous “Servant Song”–the one that all Christians recognize as prophesying Messiah’s High Priestly ordeals before his exaltation to the throne of God and universal rule. I have collated information from several texts and translations of the Greek version known as the Septuagint, abbreviated LXX, alluding to the “70” (actually 72) ancient Jewish scholars who translated the Hebrew Scriptures into the common Greek lingua franca of their day. This momentus event occurred providentially by the orders and financing of Ptolemy, ruler of Egypt in the third century before Christ, as Hellenism altered the outlook of antiquity, enabling the unique knowledge of God within Israel’s Scriptures to gain a vastly wider audience in preparation for the heralding of its fulfillment in the Gospel.
The LXX was the dominant version of the Old Testament in Jesus’ day and for another century thereafter, when the unbelieving rabbis commissioned a proselyte to Judaism, named Aquila of Pontus, to make a new Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, but this time from the proto-Masoretic text. Later on in the second century, two more translations were likewise made from the proto-Masoretic text type (in contrast with the Hebrew text underlying the LXX), and by then probably incorporating actual alterations to further a judaistic agenda (as suggested by Justin Martyr already in mid-2nd century, calling the Jews impudent and presumptuous for daring to make such new translations, and echoed again by Tertullian at the close of the century), all happily endorsed by the unbelieving Jewish leaders.
The early Christians, who continued to use and quote from the LXX almost exclusively, had been so successful at demonstrating from it that Jesus was the promised Messiah that Jewish leaders conspired to close ranks against those very Scriptures their forefathers for some three centuries had venerated and authorized for use in synagogues throughout the Roman Empire! Indeed, both Jesus and his apostles quote from the LXX in the vast majority of cases documented in the New Testament (by a factor of nearly ten to one!). Of the families of Hebrew texts in circulation during the inter-testamental era, as attested by the Dead Sea Scrolls, the LXX drew from the older, more revered. The proto-Masoretic family of texts that the rabbis used, which evolved into the medieval Masoretic tradition (which introduced vowel pointings among the ancient consonantal Hebrew words–a novelty which undoubtedly introduced semantic choices impossible to defend conclusively from the ancient ambiguous consonantal texts), though generally known and even occasionally quoted in the N.T., was evidently not dominant at that time, and perpetuated significant differences over the centuries, continuing to do so after the destruction of Herod’s temple in 70 A.D., when the original Hebrew texts underlying the LXX may have been destroyed, thus further emboldening the surviving unbelieving Jewish rabbis to expunge embarrassing Messianic prophecies contained in the LXX (and for that matter even in the Apocrypha, where the Wisdom of Solomon 1:1-3:9 contains perhaps the most explicit messianic prophecy within the entire pre-Christian Scriptures).
The Protestant tradition, ironically, acquiesced in the fraudulent scholarship of Jerome (342-420 A.D.). In 382 A.D., he was commissioned by pope Damasis I, whom he served as secretary, to make a more standardized Latin translation of the Gospels. He had studied Hebrew with rabbis and was taken in by the prevalent Jewish propaganda concerning the antiquity of their Hebrew text above the LXX. Without authorization, he expanded his duties to encompass a translation of most of the remainder of the Bible, including the Old Testament, starting with the Psalms, which, however he rendered from the Greek of the LXX because it had long been used as a psalter in Christian worship. But thereafter he fulfilled an intention to “correct” what he had come to believe was an unfounded devotion of Christians to the LXX. Consequently, he actually used the proto-Masoretic Hebrew text of his day as the basis for his Latin version. However, he slyly added the LXX readings of many messianic prophecies under the pretext that they were present in the then current proto-Masoretic Hebrew texts, which was palpably untrue (but, as he craftily knew, could not be challenged by the Christian public, who did not know Hebrew). Jerome’s hoax was so thoroughly accepted during the Middle Ages that even Protestant scholars came to adopt the inferior Masoretic text for their vernacular translations of the Old Testament, including every later revision. This accounts for the “contradictions” between the N.T. and O.T. that Protestants have puzzled over for centuries, and which has posed a stumblingblock before many an inquirer. English scholars even repeated Jerome’s misrepresentations almost word for word in their introduction to the KJV. Thus the rabbinic suppression of the Septuagint–especially its witness to Jesus as the divinely endorsed Messiah of prophetic Scripture–which surfaced in the 2nd century, became a runaway success until well into the 20th century, when the discovery of the Qumran cache of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1948 revolutionized our understanding of the ancient manuscripts and exposed the dishonesty of Jerome’s tampering.
That said, there are also other reasons for differences between N.T. quotations and O.T. texts, even while writing the N.T. with the LXX in hand. Some of these become evident in my following rendering. I have colored green the texts from these fifteen verses in Isaiah that are either quoted or alluded to in the N.T. I have noted LXX textual variants within brackets, inserting a slash between the available alternatives (never more than two crop up within this brief set of texts). Among the standard LXX texts published by Alfred Rahlfs (1935, 1979), Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton (19th century), and Charles Van der Pool (The Apostolic Bible Polyglot, 1996), where any two agree, that majority rendering is located first in the pair; this choice is not based on critical comparative evaluation, however, but for simple convenience. (The authors provide extended background concerning textual criticism of the LXX and distinguish the latter from subsequent Greek translations by later Jewish proselytes, Aquila of Pontus, Theodotian the Ephesian, and Symmachus the Ebionite, whereupon the Jewish leaders ordered all synagogues to stop using the Septuagint altogether and switch to these debased translations instead, lacking many key passages stunningly prophetic of Christ, and therefore highly threatening to the unbelieving Jewish establishment. Origen of Alexandria, the most accomplished textual critic of the age and an ardent defender of the Septuagint, compiled all the available Greek translations side-by-side in his massive Hexapla, and proceded to account for the differences among them precisely in order to defend the LXX and refute the unbelieving Jews, as he explicitly states.) If a set of brackets contains no slash, then the enclosed words represent only a single source variant. Pairs of variant renderings are always underlined because sometimes whole phrases are at issue instead of single words.
You may notice by inspection of the eleven N.T. quotations that the first three are exactly as found in all these versions of the LXX. The fourth quote, from Matthew, is very different from any LXX version; he appears to be rendering the Masoretic Hebrew text with which we are more familiar from the King James Version. Early church tradition holds that Matthew, a Levitical Jew, wrote his Gospel originally in Hebrew in order to bring the message to his fellow Jews, so it would make sense for him to draw from a contemporary Hebrew version more acceptable to his target audience for his quotations.
In the fifth, sixth, and ninth quotations, all from 1 Peter, the apostle adapts the grammar to suit his reading audience. So he alters the LXX word (preceding the slash) in order to make a more immediate appeal to his readers (therefore I have not put the word pair in brackets as if both were LXX variants). The author of Hebrews does the same thing in the eleventh quotation. However, in the seventh quotation, from the Acts of the Apostles, Luke has simply made a choice between alternatives already existing in versions of the LXX, so I have kept them all inside the brackets. In the eighth quotation, where all the LXX versions I’ve compared employ “lawlessness,” Peter supplies the word “sin” instead. Luke does something similar in the tenth quotation, perhaps yielding to a more current usage of his day.
I had attempted to adapt the chiastic structure of Isaiah’s prophetic poetry, elaborated by Adolph E. Knoch in his translation, Isaiah– Concordant Version, The Sacred Scriptures, 1962, which he based on the Masoretic Hebrew text. And even though the LXX Greek and Masoretic Hebrew are very different in many places, Knoch’s highlighting of the inverted parallelism by progressive indentations still seems valid and illuminating. However, this procedure was not technically workable with current WordPress formatting, for some reason, so I have had to forego this option, regrettably. Perhaps I will give it another try after some consultation.
I have, however, attempted to remain true to Knoch’s concordant method of translation with respect to the consistency of rendering the Greek words by the best English equivalents. This endeavor was eased somewhat by my being able to draw from his own translations of the the N.T. quotations in The Concordant Literal New Testament (my default version within this blog site). And although LXX Greek is but an earlier stage of what became the common or Koine Greek of Christ’s time, substantial similarities remained semantically and grammatically to bring this little project to a satisfying conclusion.
I have also followed Knoch’s lead by using an intertextual symbol to indicate the Greek “middle voice,” which ranges somewhere between the “active” and “passive” voice of verbs, with which we are readily familiar, and often has a somewhat reflexive sense. In English, the middle voice is usually formed with addition of the helping verb “get.” English grammarians seem hesitant to recognize such a distinction in our own language, yet it is universally used by all English-speakers, and is by no means merely slang or debased usage. As in Greek, some English words already contain a “middle” sense, so do not need the helping verb in order to convey the meaning. In such cases, in accord with Knoch’s own practice, I add the raised symbol, ΅, to indicate that the preceding word is a verb in middle voice (in the absence of the helping verb “get”).
I have interposed plus signs, +, to indicate where the Greek (and Hebrew before that) had inserted “and” within a sequence of words. We customarily use commas in such sequences, except for the final term. I have also inserted (as Knoch does) a vertical line, ˡ, before a Greek verb in the “imperfect” tense, which Knoch came to understand to represent ongoing action in the present. This is most correctly rendered by the English “-ing” ending, which, however, is becoming rapidly phased out in common parlance. Even so, it seems worth preserving in translation from ancient texts, if only as a way of distinguishing it from what Knoch recognized as the “indefinite”–the so-called “first aorist,” which is a true indefinite tense, reserved for timeless truths and statements of historic fact, as well as some other cases. Accordingly, I have reverted to the slightly more verbose use of the “-ing” forms, where possible; otherwise I insert the symbol, ˡ, before the verb to indicate the Greek present imperfect tense.
You’ll notice that I have placed the main text of Isaiah in bold typeface. This allowed me to use lightface type to indiccate English words that are implied by Greek usage and facilitate more idiomatic reading. A. E. Knoch, as usual, pioneered this device, and I have long since found it likewise indispensable.
My main goal for this project is to be able to lay out the whole of this pivotal Messianic passage so as to make more visible the recurrent vocabulary and phraseology, as well as any textual variants, and hence to facilitate comprehension from a text untampered with by revisions and adjustments dictated by sectarian factions reacting against the dawning of prophetic fulfillment in Christ Jesus and the church he founded and governs by his renewing Spirit. In particular, I wished to grasp how this most famous of all O.T. prophetic utterances relating to the Atonement articulates with what I now understand to be the premial function of God’s justice. Bottom line: does this passage teach “penal substitution/satisfaction” as its stridently vocal defenders insist, or does it reinforce the premial emphasis that arguably animated the apostles? Here I leave you with the challenge to study the inner consistencies and patterns of discourse you find below, and compare your findings with the traditions that have informed you. There is obviously much more to say on the matter, but here, at least, is a fresh beginning for ongoing reflection on this crucial text in the form most familiar to the earliest church…and, indeed, to the Lord Jesus when he walked the earth and ushered in the actual fulfillment of this prophecy! I have only barely begun this exploration for myself. Won’t you join the adventure?
ISAIAH 52:13-53:12 (Septuagint/LXX—references: Douay, Thomson, Brenton, Rahlfs, Knoch, Van der Pool, Sparks)
[52:13] Behold! My boy will be understanding,
and be ˡexalted, + ˡglorified{, and ˡelevated} tremendously.
[14] In which manner many will be getting amazed at you,
so will your appearance be ˡunglorified from {the} human beings
and your glory from {sons of/the} human beings.
[15] Thus, many nations will be getting astonished at him,
and kings will be restraining their mouth,
seeing that those to whom it was not getting reported about him will
be getting to see,
and ones who have not heard will be understanding. (Rom. 15:21)
[53:1] Lord, who believes the thing heard from us, (Rom. 10:16)
And who was the arm of the Lord uncovered to? (John 12:38)
[2] We reported΅ {as regards a boy before Him/before Him as regards a boy },
as regards a root in thirsty land.
There is neither an impressive appearance to him, nor glory;
and we are perceiving him, and he has neither impressive appearance, nor beauty.
[3] Nay, dishonored{,/ and} handicapped his appearance beside {[the] sons of the human beings/all humanity},
a human, being under attack and aware how to be bearing with sickness;
seeing that he is turning his face away,
he was dishonored and not counted.
[4] This one/He is bearing with/got our sins/sicknesses
and is getting hurt/sustains concerning us/the diseases (Matt. 8:17)
and we considered΅ him to be in misery {by God}
and under attack and ill-treatment.
[5] Yet he was wounded on account of our {sins/lawlessnesses}
and has gotten sick on account of our {lawlessnesses/sins}.
Discipline for our peace was upon him;
by his/whose welt we/you were healed. (1 Peter 2:24)
[6] As sheep, we/you all were/got led astray; (1 Peter 2:25)
a human was led astray in his path,
and the Lord surrendered him to our sins.
[7] And he, on account of the being ill-treated
is not opening/did not open} {his/the} mouth;
he was led as a sheep at slaughter,
and as a lamb {before/in front of} {the/his} shearer is soundless,
so he {is not opening/did not open} {his/the} mouth.
[8] In his humiliation his judging was taken away.
Who will be getting to recount his genealogy,
seeing that his life is getting taken away from the earth? (Acts 8:32-33)
From/by the lawlessness of my people he was led to death.
[9] And I will be giving the wicked in exchange for his tomb,
and the rich in exchange for his death,
seeing that he did not commit lawlessness/sins nor was fraud {found} in his mouth. (1 Peter 2:22)
[10] And the Lord is intending΅ to rid him of the attack;
if ever you may be giving an offering concerning sin
your soul will be getting to see a long-lived progeny.
[11] And the Lord is intending΅ {in/by} His hand to be taking away {from the misery/misery} of his soul,
to show him light, and to mold in the understanding,
to render-justice to a just one who slaves well for many,
and he/who himself bears up under their/our sins. (1 Peter 2:24)
[12] Therefore, he will be inheriting many
and will be apportioning spoils of the strong
in exchange for his soul being surrendered to death
and counted among/with the lawless; (Luke 22:37)
and he bears up under{to be bearing up under sins of many (Heb. 9:28)
and was surrendered on account of their {lawlessnesses/sins}.
Translation © Ronald L. Roper, April 3-17,27,29, 2021, Oct. 26, 2022
The Premial Atonement 
Assorted Wrinkles in the Uneven Development of Atonement Doctrine
Observation concerning comments on Isaiah 52:13-53:12 in the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, OT, Vol. 11. Edited by Mark W. Elliott; General Editor, Thomas C. Oden. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007.
This most revealing assemblage of early (and some quite late) Christian authors is the more amazing in its virtually total lack of penal substitutionary construals of Isaiah’s most famous text, in view of the fact that the general editor is Tom Oden, who has gone on record decisively as a champion of penal substitution being authentic early Christian doctrine. If ever there was a golden opportunity to marshal a definitive swat team of early Christian quotations to settle the score on the embattled issue of the Atonement, this was surely it. Yet the grand opportunity was forever lost as the requisite materiel failed to materialize, and the remainder tended to deviate from this bullseye by an embarrassing margin along a rather broad front of eight centuries. Either this was a culpable neglect of essential sources (hardly likely), an unaccountably inept oversight (not plausible), or a conclusive proof of the authentic unacquaintance of earliest Christianity with anything closely resembling penal satisfaction/penal substitution. Is the question even still open now? [2/14/11; 10/24/23]
John McLeod Campbell (1800-1872) picked up and tried to unfold an incidental throwaway thought of Jonathan Edwards [Sr.] (1703-1758) concerning atonement. Robert C[ampbell]. Moberly (1845-1903), in turn, picked up the same thought and tried to iron out a few more wrinkles. However, neither Campbell’s nor Moberly’s attempts seem supportable by Scripture, nor would Edwards likely have expected anyone to take up his conjecture and explore it seriously. [2/15/11]
It seems curious that in the hitory of opposition to penal substitution there is not more successive building on predecessors, at least not explicitly so. William Pynchon (1590-1662), author of The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption (London, 1650), New England’s first banned (and burned) book, does not explicitly build on Socinus, for instance. John Balguy (1586-1648) does not refer to any of Pynchon’s books, although the emphasis of both authors on Christ’s obedience was unique. John Taylor of Norwich (1694-1761) seems oblivious of Pynchon’s or Balguy’s contributions. And Barton W. Stone (1772-1844) does not show overt dependence on any of them, although he is aware of Taylor’s Hebrew Concordance. And so it goes. Yet authors like this keep thinking through many of the same problematics and keep stumbling across the same or similar solutions. One could wish, however, for a treatment that proceeds systematically with cognizance of all likely predecessors and gives credit to whom it seems due. Even so, vital truths discovered independently, repeatedly, and cogently must reveal something about the weaknesses of the dominant orthodoxy. Scripture resolutely continues to untwist itself from false representations over time, though seldom without controversy and stiff opposition. [2/15/11; 10/24/23]
The theory of penal substitution has introduced counterfeit currency in ‘payment‘ for sins. It postulates a certain amount of suffering to be equivalent to a specific amount of sin. However, no matter how they figure, they can never quite come up with sufficient bona fide suffering to cover the debt of sin(s) even for the ‘elect,’ much less for “the whole world.” [2/15/11]
The apostle Paul’s unique phrase, “the righteousness (or justice) of God” almost always refers to the singular event of God’s raising of Jesus from among the dead, but it never alludes to Christ’s crucifixion. [2/16/11]
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Filed under Calvinism, Isaiah 52:13-53:12, justification, The Atonement, the Mediation of Christ, the obedience of Christ, Uncategorized
Tagged as "the righteousness/justice of God", Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Barton W. Stone (1772-1844), Faustus Socinus (1539-1604), Isaiah 52:13-53:12, John Balguy (1686-1748), John McLeod Campbell (1800-1872), John Taylor of Norwich (1694-1761), Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), Mark W. Elliott, penal satisfaction, Penal Satisfaction theory of the Atonement, penal substitution, Penal Substitution theory of the Atonement, Robert Campbell Moberly (1845-1903), Thomas C[lark]. Oden (1931-2016), Tom Oden, William Pynchon (1590-1662)