The Septuagint is the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament that the Orthodox Church uses as its official Old Testament text. It’s older than the Hebrew Masoretic text that Protestant Bibles use, and it’s the Bible Jesus and the Apostles actually quoted.
If you’ve been coming to services at St. Michael’s and noticed that the psalm numbers in the service books don’t match your Bible at home, this is why. We’re using a different textual tradition, one that goes back to the early Church.
How We Got the Septuagint
Around the third century before Christ, the Jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt needed their Scriptures in Greek. Most Jews living outside Palestine didn’t speak Hebrew anymore. They spoke Greek, the common language of the Mediterranean world. So according to tradition, seventy (or seventy-two) Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek at the request of Ptolemy II. That’s where the name comes from, Septuagint means “seventy” in Latin, and you’ll often see it abbreviated as LXX (the Roman numeral for 70).
This wasn’t just any translation project. The early Church believed this translation was divinely guided. And here’s what matters most: this Greek Old Testament became the Bible of the early Christians. When the Apostles wrote the New Testament and quoted the Old Testament, they quoted the Septuagint. When the Church Fathers preached and taught, they used the Septuagint. Our entire liturgical life grew up around this text.
Why It’s Different From Your Protestant Bible
Protestant Bibles follow the Hebrew Masoretic text, which was standardized by Jewish rabbis centuries after Christ. The Masoretic text has 39 Old Testament books. The Septuagint includes additional books, Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees, among others. We call these the Deuterocanonical books. Protestants call them the Apocrypha and usually leave them out entirely.
But it’s not just about extra books. The wording differs in places too. Sometimes significantly. Take Isaiah 7:14, the prophecy about Christ’s birth. The Septuagint uses a Greek word that clearly means “virgin.” The Hebrew word is almah, which can mean “young woman” or “virgin.” When Matthew quotes this prophecy about Mary, he’s quoting the Septuagint’s clear “virgin” reading. That’s not a coincidence.
The psalm numbering is different too. What you know as Psalm 23 in a Protestant Bible is Psalm 22 in Orthodox prayer books. From Psalm 10 through 147, the numbering is usually off by one. This trips up every convert at first. You’ll get used to it, but it helps to have an Orthodox Psalter when you’re following along in services.
There are other differences scattered throughout, different phrasings, occasionally different verse divisions, sometimes whole sections that vary. The Septuagint often preserves older Hebrew readings that got changed or standardized later in the Masoretic tradition. Some of the Dead Sea Scrolls discoveries have actually confirmed that the Septuagint sometimes reflects earlier Hebrew texts than what survived in the later Masoretic line.
Why We Trust It
The Orthodox Church doesn’t use the Septuagint out of stubbornness or ethnic pride. We use it because it’s the Old Testament of the Church. It’s what the Apostles used. It’s what shaped Christian worship and theology from the beginning. When the Church reads Scripture in the liturgy, when our hymns quote the Old Testament, when the Fathers wrote their commentaries, all of that was formed by the Septuagint.
We believe the Church’s reception of Scripture matters. The Bible didn’t fall from heaven as a complete book with a table of contents. The Church recognized, preserved, and handed down the Scriptures. The Septuagint is the Old Testament the Church received and used. That continuous liturgical and theological life gives it authority in Orthodoxy.
This is one of those places where we part ways with the Protestant principle of going back to “the original Hebrew.” We’d say the Septuagint is our received text. It’s not a corruption or a secondary source. It’s the Bible of the New Testament Church.
What This Means Practically
If you’re an inquirer or a catechumen, you’ll want to get an Orthodox Bible or at least an Orthodox Psalter. The Orthodox Study Bible is a good English option, it translates the Old Testament from the Septuagint. You can keep your old Bible for reference, but you’ll find it confusing to follow services if your psalm numbers are off and your Old Testament is missing books we read from in church.
When you hear a New Testament passage quote the Old Testament and it sounds different from what you remember, that’s usually because the New Testament writer was quoting the Septuagint. The Apostles weren’t working from the Hebrew text that later became standard in synagogues. They were working from the Greek Bible that Greek-speaking Jews and early Christians used.
Don’t worry if this feels like a lot at first. Every convert from a Protestant background goes through this adjustment. Your priest can recommend good resources. Ancient Faith Publishing has articles and talks that explain the Septuagint in more depth. Fr. Thomas Hopko and Metropolitan Kallistos Ware have both written and spoken about why the Church uses this text. It’s worth digging into once you’re ready.
The Septuagint isn’t just a historical curiosity. It’s the living Old Testament of the Orthodox Church, woven into every service, every feast, every hymn. When we chant the Psalms at Vespers or hear the Old Testament readings at the Vesperal Liturgy, we’re hearing the same words the early Christians heard. That continuity matters. It’s part of what it means to be the Church that the Apostles founded.
