Orthodox Study Bible, My Turn IV

Continued from parts one, two, and three.

It is widely known that the Septuagint was the Bible of the early Church, the version of the Old Testament cited by both the authors of the New Testament and the early Fathers. It is also known that the Greek of the Septuagint sometimes varies from that of the Hebrew versions. What might not be so well known is that a number of the key Messianic "proof texts" used by the early Christians differed from the Hebrew texts favored by contemporary Jews. In such cases it is essential that Christians today be, at the very least, aware of how such verses were read in the early Church.

One such example is found in Genesis 49:10. Here I quote from Ronald E. Heine’s invaluable recent study Reading the Old Testament with the Ancient Church:

The wording of the text of Genesis 49:10 differs as reported by various church fathers, all of whom were reading the Septuagint. The difference is rooted in a variation in the wording of the Hebrew text of Genesis 49:10 itself. The majority of the ancient copies of the Hebrew text have the word shiloh in the third clause of the verse. The was treated as the name “Shiloh” by later Jewish interpreters. Some copies of the Hebrew text, however, have shelo, which can mean either “he to whom it belongs” or “that which belongs to him.” The first stresses the person and the second stresses the “belongings.” In my translation of Genesis 49:10 from the Hebrew text and the Septuagint that follow, I have italicized the clause in question. The Hebrew text, as we have it today reads: “A scepter shall not depart from Judah nor a commander from between his feet until Shiloh comes and the obedience of the peoples is his.” What “Shiloh” means puzzled the ancient interpreters and translators as much as it does us today. The Septuagint text that we have reads: “A ruler shall not depart from Judah and a leader from his thighs until the things which have been stored up come to him and he is the expectation of the nations” (i.e., the Gentiles). It would appear that the translators of the Septuagint had a Hebrew text that contained shelo and that they understood the expression to mean “the things which belong to him.”

Professor Heine goes on to demonstrate that other ancient translations followed a reading similar to the Septuagint, including St Jerome’s fourth-century Vulgate and the Syriac Peshitta. Indeed, as Dr Heine notes, the “Targum Onqelos, a Jewish interpretive translation of the Pentateuch into Aramaic made in Palestine in the late first or early second century AD, renders the phrase, 'until the Messiah comes, to whom the Kingdom belongs, and whom nations shall obey.'” St Justin the Philosopher argues with Trypho (Dialogue with Trypho 120.4-5) over precisely this verse, although he asserts that the clause in question should be “until he comes for whom it has been stored up” rather than “until the things which have been stored up come to him” (a variant of which Origen was aware). All subsequent Fathers, to my knowledge, follow some variant of the Septuagint reading; none of them worries about the identity of “Shiloh.”

Considering the frequency with which Genesis 49:10 is cited by the early Fathers, as well as the solid philological basis for the Greek reading, it would seem to be beyond question that any translation prepared for the purposes of the Orthodox Church would follow the Septuagint reading. The NETS – which, although not prepared for the liturgical use of the Orthodox Church, at least is in fact a translation of the Septuagint – renders this verse as follows:

A ruler shall not be wanting from Ioudas
and a leader from his thighs
until the things stored up for him come,
and he is the expectation of nations.

Even the NIV largely follows the Septuagint:

The scepter will not depart from Judah,
nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
until he comes to whom it belongs
and the obedience of the nations is his.

The NIV gives a rendering from the Hebrew in a footnote: “Or until Shiloh comes; or until he comes to whom tribute belongs."

Here, however, is the OSB's rendering:

The scepter shall not depart from Judah.
Nor a lawgiver from his loins,
Until Shiloh comes;
And to Him shall be the expectation of the nations.

This is simply the NKJV, without a word changed. How could the editors (or "translators") of the OSB have possibly missed this? What, really, is the point of producing an "Orthodox" Bible if is does not correspond to the Septuagint even when rendering essential Messianic texts? Very, very shoddy work.