5 February 2025

In my previous blog entry, there was an announcement on extending the statement database with LXX-StatResGNT connections in the bibref project. Now here are some news about a major update of the LXX module database.

The SWORD project updated the text of Septuagint in their module database more than 2 years ago. I was unhappy with that new version because it used a different versification system. As a result, many verses in the Old Testament had a different numbering, for example, Psalm 40:1 in the old system appears as Psalm 39:2 in the new version. In general, this is unfortunately not as simple as one thinks, because certain Psalms are shifted by this schema, but others not (or yet in another way). Similar problems occur with other books like Exodus, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and so on. This issue is well-known among Bible software developers: it is called versification and usually handled by Bible programs to some extent.

My first idea was to keep with the old version and ask the SWORD maintainers to allow accessing the old version publicly as well, maybe under a different name, but it became soon clear that it would not be the optimal way. So finally I decided to go ahead and update the whole program to handle the new version correctly, including the databases. Now the new bibref version is available at GitHub.

As a side effect, the new LXX module contains a couple of deuterocanonical books from the Septuagint. These include I Esdras, Judith, Tobit, the four Maccabees books, Wisdom, Sirach, Psalms of Solomon, Baruch, Epistle of Jeremiah, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, and Odes. From the research perspective, they have just a secondary importance, because no known quotation in the New Testament refers to any of these books. During the years, however, I learned that such statements should always be accepted with doubt: So I did try an attempt to look for possible texts that are from the deuterocanonical books and mentioned in the New Testament.

One possible method is to use the getrefs command in bibref. It can identify unique texts in LXX that are present in the New Testament as well. A batch program can collect all possible occurrences. To do that, the program requires a reasonable big amount of memory, so my laptop with 16 GB stopped processing the second half of Genesis because of being low on memory. Instead, I re-ran the script on my university server (with 24 GB RAM) and after a couple of hours, the full database was obtained.

The result is quite clear: The first 115 entries, sorted by length (longer one first), are from canonical Bible books like Psalms, Isaiah, Deuteronomy, Proverbs, Exodus, Joel, Hosea, Genesis, Amos, Jonah, Habakkuk. The 116th entry is from I Maccabees, the passage 2:69+18 2:70-119, it is verbatim the same text that appears in SBLGNT Acts 13:36+52 13:36-14: “και προσετεθη προς τους πατερας αυτου” (“and was added to the fathers of him”), on 35 Greek letters. The New Testament text is in the middle of Paul's speech in a synagogue in Pisidian Antioch, and it seems clear that he just used a longer expression that was probably well-known for him, eventually since he also knew the Maccabees books. That is, I Maccabees is not raised here to the same level of the canonical books, but eventually, Paul's phrasing explains that the language and formalizations of I Maccabees were well-accepted in the 1st century AD.

The following entries also include Leviticus, until, on the 148th entry, another verbatim text can be identified, this time between I Maccabees 11:1+41 11:1-94 and Hebrews 11:12+76 11:12-12, on 32 letters: “ως η αμμος η παρα το χειλος της θαλασσης” (“as the sand by the lip of the sea”). Again, this is a kind of artistic expression of the author of Hebrews, but it can be assumed that for him, the Maccabees books were relevant, however, not at the same level like for the canonical books.

The next non-canonical entries (160th-162nd) are between I Maccabees 3:45+37 3:45-134 and Acts 9:28+13 9:28-47 (“εισπορευομενος και εκπορευομενος”, “entering in and going out”), IV Maccabees 18:24 18:24-1 and Galatians 1:5 1:5-1 and II Timothy 4:18+78 4:18-1 (“η δοξα εις τους αιωνας των αιωνων αμην”, “the glory to the ages of the ages, amen”), on 31 letters. It seems that Luke and Paul both used similar phrases that appear in the Maccabees books, here, the last phrase is actually in the last verse of the last Maccabees book. This is perhaps not just a random match.

Instead of continuing with other examples, we point the reader to the whole database in CSV format, available here. The file can be imported to any spreadsheet software (warning, it contains more than 125000 lines!), and then, by ordering the table by column I (the length of the verbatim match), the study can be continued by anyone. In some other entries one will find verbatim passages from Judith and Baruch (on lengths 27), and from other books (on shorter lengths).

We can conclude that deuterocanonical books were probably an important part of Christian literature in the 1st century AD, but their importance is much below the above mentioned canonical books. Here, only verbatim match was checked, but, of course, it may also be interesting to find fuzzy matches (where some letters are missing or eventually changed). Anyway, checking for verbatim matches gives a good overview of matching in general, since there is a substantial amount of passages that are indeed quoted letter by letter.

Verbatim quotations from the canonical books are often used to argue for the divine origin of Jesus Christ. The canonical books prophesized His coming and His work many centuries before those actually happened. This seems to be the most relevant argument why we are interested in verbatim and almost-verbatim matches: to prove that the person of Jesus is not just a random event in history. No, His presence was completely planned, and this can be clearly followed in the many connections between the Old Testament and New Testament texts.

Acknowlegment. Ildikó Vargáné Kiss kindly presented me a couple of Bible study books last summer. Among them, there is a Hungarian edition of the texts of the deuterocanonical books, with some comments by the editors. I used this book with good success in my current research.