V. It is not, therefore, to be asked whether it should have any authority in the church. We concede that it is of great weight, and rightly to be preferred to other translations.
(1) It is the oldest of all, made two thousand years ago, and so to be honored for its hoary hair.
(2) It was read both in public and in private by the Jews wherever they were dispersed.
(3) The apostles and evangelists used it in quoting many Old Testament passages, and consecrated it, so to speak, by their writings.
(4) The apostles gave it to the church, when through it they conquered the world for Christ, and so the Gentile church was born through it, and nourished by this milk.
(5) The church, both Greek and Latin, used it as the common version (pro vulgata) for six hundred years.
(6) The old fathers and ecclesiastical writers explained it in commentaries, taught it to the people in homilies, and strangled the rising heresies with it, and drew from it, in councils, canons for the direction of faith and conduct. But it must be asked whether this authority is such that it ought be regarded as authentic and on a par with the sources, which our adversaries teach and we deny.
VI. The reasons are
(1) it was composed by human effort, not by inspired men; its authors were interpreters, not prophets, who lived after Malachi, who is called by the Jews the seal of the prophets. This is clear from Aristeas's testimony that the translators conferred with one another, and discussed everything among themselves until they were all in agreement. But if they conferred among themselves, they did not prophesy, for the sacred writers never conferred with others, but put everything into writing without discussion or delay.
(2) If they wrote by the breath of the Holy Spirit, their number was excessive, when one would have been enough, nor was there any need of learned men, familiar with the Hebrew and Greek tongues, if the work was done without study and without human effort.
(3) In many ways it does not agree with the sources, but contains a number of discrepancies, as is shown by those who have discussed this argument, so that Morinus is forced to admit, "No more authority can be ascribed to this version than to others made by human endeavor."
(4) Because it does not now exist in a pure state, but with corruption and interpolation to a great degree, we have only its debris and remnants, and today it can hardly be called the Septuagint version; it is like the ship Argo which was so often rebuilt that it was no longer either the same or something other, as Jerome often remarked (epistle 69, to Augustine; prefaces to Ezra and Chronicles). So today it is confidently maintained among the learned that it is from the koinh version that may be called "Lucianic," on the authority of Jerome (epistle to Sunias and Fretellas).
VII. If the apostles often made use of this version, they did not do so because they believed that it was authentic and of divine quality, but because at that time it was most widely used and accepted, and because, where the meaning and truth are plain, they did not wish to stir up controversy or arouse scruples among the weak, but they left unchanged by a holy economy whatever, if changed, would have offended, especially when no change of meaning was involved. They did not [make changes] except where there was a reason. When the Septuagint is not only awkward, but also out of harmony with the truth, they used the sources in preference to it, as Jerome notes (Contra Ruffinan, book 2) and as can easily be seen by comparing Matthew 2:15 with Hosea 11:1; John 19:37 with Zechariah 12:10; Jeremiah 31:15 with Matthew 2:18; Isaiah 25:8 with I Corinthians 15:54, and many other passages.
VIII. The evidences (testimonia) which are brought forward in the New Testament from the Septuagint are authentic, not in themselves, or because they were translated by the seventy from Hebrew into Greek; but in their situation (per accidens) as approved and sanctified by the Holy Spirit by means of his inbreathing (afflatus), they were employed by the evangelists in the sacred narrative.
IX. If many of the patristic writers gave high honor to this version, and asserted its authenticity, as it cannot be denied that Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, and others were inclined to do, this was from feeling (affectus) rather than from reflection (studium). They were unlearned in the Hebrew language; nor were they obliged to judge the words [of the seventy], since no less than the seventy were they subject to human errors and feelings. But the more learned among them, such as Origen and Jerome, were of very different opinion, and taught that [the seventy] were translators, not prophets.
X. Although the church used this version for many years, it does not follow that it used it as authentic and of divine quality, but only that it was held in great esteem. This common usage ought not to weaken the - freedom of consulting the sources when there is reason to do so.
XI. The great discrepancies in chronology which occur between the Hebrew text and the Septuagint do not suggest the authenticity of the latter but its corruption. . . .
