Ever since I was a kid, worshiping on Christmas Eve has been a given. I didn’t always want to do it, of course, because it made time slow down and, thus, delayed the long-awaited gift opening. Indeed, one year I may have opened a gift, played with it, and rewrapped it before the Christmas Eve church service without my parents’ knowledge! But the habit of worship imprinted on me immeasurably important lessons about Christmas.

We worship at Christmas because Jesus is the “reason for the season.” We worship because he is the coming Messiah. We worship because of the beauty of the story of a humble virgin Mary, a humble man Joseph, and a humble Christ-child who comes to save, yet lies in a manger. We worship because the fullness of time has arrived (Galatians 4:4).

But theoretically, you can reflect on all those wonderful aspects of Christmas at home in your pajamas. Thus, gathering for public worship is particularly fitting for one other reason. The birth of Jesus is the advent of the consummate place of worship: not a temple, but a person. The incarnation of the Son of God fulfills a human longing to enjoy the presence of and offer worship to the living God.

Universal Longing

All humans are wired to worship their Creator. Eden and its garden were symbolically configured as a sanctuary. God made his presence manifest there (Genesis 3:8). Adam was charged with working and keeping it (Genesis 2:15) and was even adorned, it seems, as a priest (Ezekiel 28:13–14). The tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life stood at the center of the garden and were, in due course, guarded by cherubim (Genesis 3:24), just as they guarded the ark at the center of the temple’s Most Holy Place. Men and women were, in other words, created to worship God in his place, and after our expulsion from Eden we have longed for a way back into the divine presence.

“The birth of Jesus is the advent of the consummate place of worship: not a temple, but a person.”

History, thus, is divided into two paths of worship. The false path runs through every pagan religion that strives to please its god(s) through rituals and sacred shrines. For instance, the Canaanites directed zeal toward Baal’s altars and Asherah’s groves (Judges 6:25); Philistines oriented worship around the sanctuary of Dagon (1 Samuel 5:2); Lystra hosted a temple and priesthood of Zeus (Acts 14:13); a plethora of gods, even “unknown” ones, were venerated with altars and statues in Athens (Acts 17:24); and the temple of the Ephesian Artemis was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world (Acts 19:35). Not much has changed in two millennia, as pagan shrines exist in every corner of the world, representing the universal longing for the divine.

The true path of worship winds through the people of Israel. The patriarchs worshiped Yahweh via temporary altars (Genesis 8:20; 12:7; 26:25; 28:18; 35:1). His glory appeared in terrifying fire and cloud upon Mount Sinai, where he was worshiped from afar (Exodus 19:16–25). The Israelites constructed a movable tent, the ark of the covenant, and other furnishings whereby sacrifices could be offered to their Lord, who filled it with his glorious presence (Exodus 40:16–38). Under King David, the ark of the covenant made its way to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6:2). At long last King Solomon constructed a (seemingly) permanent and wondrous temple to Yahweh in Jerusalem, whose glorious presence again filled it magnificently — leading all Israelites to respond with effusive worship (2 Chronicles 7:1–4).

All seemed right in Israel. But the situation did not last for long.

Longing Forestalled

After Solomon’s death, God’s people split up. The northern tribes built competing shrines and worshiped golden calves in Dan and Bethel (1 Kings 12:25–29). In time, God judged them for this sin through conquest by the Assyrians (2 Kings 15:29).

The southern tribes likewise polluted the worship of Yahweh in the Jerusalem temple but still ironically pinned their hopes on its survival (Jeremiah 7:1–4). In a painful act of judgment, God withdrew his glorious presence from the temple (Ezekiel 11:22–23) and permitted the Babylonians to raze it, steal its ark, and scatter the people (2 Chronicles 36:15–21).

All was not right in Israel.

The temple was eventually rebuilt (Ezra 6:14–15) but never filled by God’s glory. The Old Testament ends with the forestalled longing for God to return to his temple (Malachi 3:1).

Longing Fulfilled

That is where Christmas comes into play. In at least four ways, the coming of Jesus Christ is the joyful fulfillment of the longing to worship God fully and truly.

Permanent Dwelling

When the Fourth Gospel describes how the eternally existent divine Son stunningly takes on a body at Christmas, John uses a particularly weighty word to describe it: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). The italicized verb (Greek eskēnōsen) can simply mean “to settle,” but almost certainly for the original reader it would evoke how the tabernacle (skēnē) was God’s means of dwelling among his people of old. The God who once dwelled as fire and cloud in a movable tent has now tented in the bodily flesh of God the Son.

“The coming of Jesus Christ is the joyful fulfillment of the longing to worship God fully and truly.”

Not only this, but Jesus speaks of himself as the new place where heaven meets earth, with the angels ascending and descending upon him as they once did at Bethel (John 1:51; Genesis 28:12). And Jesus’s body is described as the true temple that, though destroyed, will be raised in three days (John 2:21–22). Whereas no one could fully gaze upon God’s radiant glory in the original temple, now we behold it in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18; 4:6).

The people of God long recognized that the fullness of God could not really be confined to fabricated structures of wood and gold (1 Kings 8:27; Acts 7:48), so it is altogether fitting that the fullness of God dwells bodily in God the incarnate Son (Colossians 2:9). He is the place of true worship.

Effective Sacrifice

If Jesus is the true temple, then naturally he is also the true sacrifice. A striking truth about Christmas is that Jesus was born to die: he took on a body with the specific purpose of being a perfect sacrifice (Hebrews 10:5). He is the Passover (1 Corinthians 5:7), the sacrifice of atonement (Romans 3:25), and the sin offering (Romans 8:3) — the entire sacrificial system — rolled into one. His blood cleanses us far more than that of bulls and goats (Hebrews 9:13–14).

In short, not only is Jesus the manifest presence of God; he is also the one whose blood makes it possible to be in God’s presence in the first place. Christmas, then, arcs to Good Friday.

Heavenly Priest

Perhaps surprisingly, Jesus never takes on priestly garments in his earthly ministry or attempts to enter the sanctuary to perform ritual duties. He only cleanses the outer courts. Why? He is a better kind of priest.

Drawing his earthly sojourn to a close, he raises his hands in a priestly manner to bless his disciples (Luke 24:50; see Leviticus 9:22) and ascends to heaven. It is there — in the true heavenly temple of which the earthly tabernacle was but a vague shadow (Hebrews 8:5) — that priest Jesus offers his blood before the Father (Hebrews 9:11–14). It is there that priest Jesus intercedes for his people (Hebrews 8:34). And it is there that the souls of departed saints worship before a heavenly altar (Revelation 6:9).

At Christmas the heavenly Son descends to earth so that he might make a way for the sons and daughters of God to be brought into the real, permanent, heavenly temple.

Consecrated People

Christmas reminds us that Jesus is the true temple, true sacrifice, and true priest. Yet those who are united to him by faith are, strikingly, formed by God to be the same things: in Jesus we are a spiritual temple in which the Holy Spirit dwells (1 Corinthians 3:16), spiritual sacrifices offered in worship to the living God (Romans 12:1–2), and a spiritual priesthood consecrated to God (1 Peter 2:4–5).

Thus, at Christmas we worship because by faith we are, at long last, enabled through the birth of Jesus to fulfill our creational longing: to be conformed to him as temple, sacrifice, and priests.

More Than Eden

The destiny of all creation is not merely to return to Eden. It will be more than Eden. All the heavens and earth will be transformed into an all-encompassing, grand, indescribably amazing dwelling place of the triune God, who will abide with believers of every tribe and nation forever (Revelation 21:1–4, 22). The universal longing will be richly satisfied.

So let us, like the magi of old, relish this hope at Christmas and together worship baby Jesus (Matthew 2:11) — the newborn temple, the newborn sacrifice, the newborn priest.

The hit CBS show Undercover Boss has enjoyed a decade-long run based on a simple premise. Conceal the identity of a high-ranking leader of a company as he or she works among ordinary employees — and make the big reveal of the boss’s true identity at the end of each episode. Part of the fun is how some folks begin to piece it together along the way.

Of all designations used for Jesus Christ, the most undercover one is “Son of Man.” It shows up seemingly everywhere in the Gospels (over eighty times across all four), as a distinct way Jesus refers to himself in the third person. Jesus is not shy, in other words, about calling himself “Son of Man.” But what does it actually mean? It is surprisingly rare elsewhere in the New Testament, and unlike “Son of David” or other designations, it is not common in the Old Testament or Jewish tradition either.

As we reflect on Jesus this Advent season, it is right to ask the very question he asked his disciples: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (Matthew 16:13). “Son of Man” may sound simple on the surface, but this phrase masks the astounding depths of the person and work of Jesus.

Revealing: Man Among Us

Let’s begin with what seems quite obvious about the phrase: “Son of Man” reveals someone is truly human. On the surface, the title seems to work just like, say, Aslan’s affectionate way of calling the four Pevensies “Sons of Adam” and “Daughters of Eve” to distinguish them from Narnian creatures. The offspring of a human shares the same nature.

Early church writers generally understood “Son of Man” along these lines. They treated it as a beautifully succinct reminder that Jesus is fully human, often as the opposite pole of “Son of God.” Here are a few examples that capture the Christmas spirit of the phrase (italics mine):

Ignatius (d. 140s): “Jesus Christ — who according to the flesh is of the lineage of David, the Son of Man” (Letter to the Ephesians, 20.2).
Justin Martyr (d. 165): “He spoke of himself as ‘Son of Man,’ either because of his birth through a virgin . . . or because Adam was his father” (Dialogue with Trypho, 100.3).
Irenaeus (d. 202): “Our Lord is . . . Son of Man, because from Mary he has his generation according to humanity, being made Son of Man” (Against Heresies, 3.19.3).
Tertullian (d. 220): “Christ is neither able to lie, that he would pronounce himself ‘Son of Man’ if it were not truly so, nor could he be regarded as son of man if he were not born of a human” (Against Marcion, 4.10.6).
Origen (d. 253): “The Son of God is said to have died, namely, with regard to that nature that was able to accept death — and he is designated ‘Son of Man’” (On First Principles, 2.6.3).

The church fathers, then, chart a course for seeing “Son of Man” as a three-word way of capturing the essence of the nativity: Jesus took on flesh and was born of a virgin. This fits nicely with the hypothesis that — assuming Jesus regularly spoke this phrase in Aramaic (bar enash) — it would sound to his hearers like a simple idiom for “a man like me.”

There is only one problem: Jesus uses “Son of Man” in ways that stretch far beyond mere humanness.

Concealing: Divine Man in Heaven

Several times, Jesus states that, as “Son of Man,” he will sit on a heavenly throne, come with the clouds, receive glory and power, and be surrounded by angels (Matthew 24:30; 25:31; 26:64; Mark 13:26; 14:62; Luke 21:27; 22:69). Surely this is not normal for a man! A reader with ears to hear will be drawn to Daniel 7 as the key for how “Son of Man,” while revealing Jesus’s humanity, simultaneously conceals Jesus’s heavenly status.

“‘Son of Man’ sounds simple on the surface, but this phrase masks the astounding depths of the person and work of Jesus.”

In Daniel’s vision of heaven, the Ancient of Days takes his throne of judgment, and “with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man . . . and to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom” (Daniel 7:13–14). The setup is staggering. Someone is enthroned with God in heaven to rule forever, and he appears as a “son of man” because he is better than the beastly kings of earth (Daniel 7:17).

By deftly applying phrases of Daniel 7 to himself, Jesus unveils that he is that Son of Man. And Daniel’s vision is not about simple flesh and blood. It is ripe for far more.

Preexistence: In this vision, Daniel glimpses the preincarnate Son in the throne room — just as Isaiah saw Jesus’s glory (John 12:37–41; Isaiah 6:1–10), and Ezekiel saw a “man” enthroned in the highest heaven (Ezekiel 1:26–28).
Present authority: Multiple times, Jesus invokes his identity as Son of Man to claim authority on earth that no mere man could claim, such as unrestricted forgiveness of sins (Mark 2:5–12) and lordship over the Sabbath (Mark 2:28). Jesus’s divine prerogatives are rooted in his status as heavenly Son of Man.
Suffering to accomplish redemption: Jesus also connects “Son of Man” with the vicarious suffering of the Isaianic “servant” (Isaiah 52:13–53:12) when he predicts how, as Son of Man, he would suffer and die for sins (Mark 9:31).
Heavenly enthronement: Upon his ascension, Jesus is enthroned as Son of Man at the right hand of the Father on high (Acts 7:56; cf. Revelation 1:12–16) — further connecting the phrase to Psalm 110:1. Having accomplished salvation, the man Jesus Christ now reigns in heaven.
Return in glory: Finally, Jesus will return from heaven as Son of Man, the divine judge and eternal king (Matthew 19:28–30).

On closer inspection, “Son of Man” is just as much about Jesus’s divinity as it is his humanity.

This title proves to be perhaps the most effective way Jesus reveals and conceals who he really is. By using “Son of Man,” he is able to minister undercover, so to speak, on earth. For many observers then and now, the cryptic phrase just states the obvious: he’s human. But those who know the Scriptures see that “Son of Man” conceals something amazing: he is the one divine-man, grounded in heaven!

Our Son of Man

When Daniel glimpsed this heavenly reality, he was thoroughly overwhelmed (Daniel 7:28). What is our own response this Advent, as we see with greater clarity than even Daniel that Jesus Christ as Son of Man is truly man — born in Bethlehem, placed in a manger — but also much more?

He came down from heaven as Son of Man among the sons and daughters of Adam. Why? So that, through his divine authority and self-giving, he might make us to be children of the living God. The Son of Man descended from the heavenly throne room to win a people for himself, that in him the “saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, forever and ever” (Daniel 7:18).

How, then, should we answer Jesus’s question, Who is this “Son of Man”? He is nothing short of God-made-flesh, who reigns in heaven, yet was born of a virgin — our brother and our friend.

ABSTRACT: What many call “the Septuagint” today was a collection of varied Greek translations of the Hebrew Old Testament that circulated among Jews and Christians in antiquity. The apostles both read and referenced these Greek translations often, especially as they wrote to Greek-speaking churches throughout the Greek-speaking world. Sometimes, their use of the Septuagint comes across through translations of key words; other times, they quote directly from the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew. Their familiarity with the Greek Old Testament also exerts a behind-the-scenes influence on broader New Testament themes. Familiarity with the Septuagint, then, offers a fresh window into the study of the Scriptures, for pastors and engaged laypeople as well as for scholars.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Greg Lanier, Associate Professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, to offer an introduction to the Septuagint.

If your personal Bible is the ESV or NIV, you first come across it in a footnote at Genesis 4:8. If you are using the NET, you will spot it even earlier in a translators’ note at Genesis 3:15. But if you cut against the grain and use the CSB, you will see it make a cameo as early as Genesis 2:2. In fact, you will bump into it roughly 96 times in the CSB’s footnotes for Genesis–Deuteronomy.

It is called the Septuagint, or LXX for short: in a nutshell, the Greek form of the Old Testament (OT). Often ignored or misunderstood, it is one of the more important words in your Bible’s footnotes.

Septuagint studies has enjoyed a bit of an academic renaissance in recent decades, but many pastors and laypersons still know little about it. It sounds esoteric, especially with its difficult-to-say title — which scholars do not pronounce uniformly anyhow — and fancy nickname. The aim of this article is to bring it out of the shadows of footnotes and into the light, focusing on clarifying what it is and why it matters to everyday Christians.

What Exactly Is the Septuagint?

Before discussing its relevance, we have to clarify what is meant by Septuagint. But that is part of the problem. The term itself, when paired with the (the Septuagint, or the LXX), and combined with the fact that you can purchase a copy, might give the false impression that “the Septuagint” is a singular book, produced by a single committee, and published in a single place at a single time. But since we are looking back to a time before printing presses, publishers, computers, and online booksellers, little of this impression is accurate. It is better to think of the word Septuagint as a pointer to the process by which the Hebrew Scriptures circulated in the Greek language among Jews and Christians in antiquity. The details are complex, but some key ideas can be sketched.

Clear Starting Point

Most Christians know that their personal copy of the OT is a translation from the ancient Hebrew text, aimed at conveying God’s word to people unfamiliar with Hebrew. Jews in antiquity faced the same issue. After the conquest of Alexander the Great (d. 323 BC), much of the Mediterranean world adopted Greek as the functional language. Jews inside and outside Palestine followed suit to varying degrees, and competency in Hebrew began to wane. In the mid-third century BC, a group of Greek-speaking Jews in Egypt (likely Alexandria) undertook translating the Torah (or Pentateuch, Genesis–Deuteronomy) from Hebrew into Greek, not only to give their own people access to Scripture in their daily language for use in worship but also (possibly) to provide a copy of their law code to the Ptolemaic rulers.

The embellished account of this translation (in the Letter of Aristeas, from the second or third century BC) states there were 72 translators, which, over the course of time, became 70 — the Latin of which is septuaginta or LXX. Strictly speaking, then, Septuagint or LXX refers only to this initial endeavor.

The Plot Thickens

The Greek Pentateuch may have been first in the pool, but over the next centuries more swimmers entered, the water itself began changing, lane markers started crisscrossing, and so on. Five overlapping developments are worth mentioning.

First, more books of the traditional OT were translated from Hebrew into Greek, starting perhaps with Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the minor prophets. The precise sequence, location, and timing are unknown, but most, if not all, were completed by the time of the early church. Swimming in this same pool of activity were the writings known as Apocrypha. Their association with the Greek copies of scriptural books greatly influenced how, in due course, they were designated as deuterocanonical books within Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

Second, translation strategies evolved over time. Some books were translated in a way similar to today’s NASB (stricter correspondence to the Hebrew) while others were closer to the NLT (less strictness, more paraphrastic). The translations are all adequate as Greek but had different philosophies, needs, and audiences in view.

Third, existing Greek translations were not carved in stone but began to be revised (or even retranslated), often with the goal of bringing them closer to the Hebrew. Some books like Daniel and Esther even branched into two distinct Greek forms. Such activities are traditionally associated with the Kaige movement, Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, Origen, Lucian of Antioch, and possibly others. One could compare these translations to the different editions of, say, the NIV (1978, 1984, 1996 NIrV, 1999, 2002 TNIV, 2011).

Fourth, manuscripts of the emerging Greek versions of the OT themselves took on a life of their own, as they were copied and passed on by Jewish and, in turn, Christian scribes. No scribe was perfect, and accidental or intentional changes entered the stream over time.

Fifth, running through all these developments is the fact that the Hebrew source text itself — which translators were attempting to capture in Greek — was itself not 100 percent stable at the margins. The Hebrew text was passed on with exceptional accuracy, but there is no guarantee that any given translator was working from an identical copy of the Hebrew. (This is why modern Bibles sometimes mention alternative wording found in certain Hebrew manuscripts like the Dead Sea Scrolls — as, e.g., the ESV at Psalm 22:16.)

We could go further into the weeds, but this suffices to prove the point: there really was no such thing as the Septuagint. Talking about it as such is like asking a churchgoer where to find the Bible. Do you want the ESV? NIV? KJV? RVR (Spanish)? A study Bible? Devotional Bible? Interlinear? App? Audio Bible? Even for those who can read the biblical languages, there are multiple options.

Septuagint, then, is at best a kind of shorthand for the complex but fascinating history by which God’s word in Hebrew made its way throughout the empire in various Greek forms.

Why Is It Relevant to the Study of the NT?

Precisely here — the use of Greek Bible(s) in antiquity — the relevance of the so-called Septuagint for us today becomes evident.

By definition, it is clearly relevant to studying the OT, particularly for reconstructing the authentic OT text (e.g., ESV at 1 Samuel 10:1; 14:41), exploring canon-related issues, and tracing early Jewish interpretation — vital topics that would merit a standalone article.

But it is also of great relevance to studying the New Testament (NT), which is our focus here. Early Christians, like their Jewish predecessors, were immersed in a Greek-speaking world. We see this not only in how some of Jesus’s disciples bore Greek names alongside Semitic ones (Saul/Paul, Levi/Matthew, Simon/Peter) or were from Hellenistic backgrounds (Acts 6), but most clearly in the writing of the entire NT in Greek. It should come as no surprise, then, that the authors sometimes make direct use of the Greek form of the OT in addition to or even in place of the known Hebrew form. Just as a Korean-speaking pastor would naturally quote from a Korean Bible in a sermon to a Korean congregation, so also the Greek-speaking apostolic authors would often default to a Greek Bible when writing to Greek-speaking congregations.

Matthew offers a helpful example to prove the point. On the one hand, he uses the specific Hebrew form of Hosea 11:1 (“I have called my son”) and not the Greek (“I have called my children”) in Matthew 2:15. On the other hand, he draws on the Greek form of Isaiah 40:3, even where it differs from the Hebrew, in Matthew 3:2. Since Matthew was a bilingual tax collector, it makes sense that he would be able to navigate the OT in both Hebrew and Greek.

In short, the Greek tradition of the OT influenced the writing of the NT in various ways alongside the Hebrew tradition, which means that today’s student of the Bible would benefit to know something about it. I will trace three ways we can detect this influence, offering brief implications at each step.

The Greek OT shaped the contours of certain words.

When my church congregation prays the Lord’s Prayer, I self-consciously avoid using thy and thine embedded in memory from the KJV. Your Bible influences your theological vocabulary. Similarly, the Greek of the Septuagint texts shaped to varying degrees the specific ways certain words were used by NT authors.

A marquee example is the use of ekklēsia for “church.” Other options existed, and in secular Greek ekklēsia often carried the sense of a civic assembly. So why did this term get applied immediately (and with no apparent debate) to the spiritual gathering of believers (Matthew 16:18; Galatians 1:2)? The Jewish community had already settled on this word as a suitable way of translating Hebrew terms for the congregation or gathering of the Israelites for religious worship and instruction (e.g., Deuteronomy 4:10; Joshua 8:5). Indeed, ekklēsia is used for the assembly of the Israelites in Acts 7:38 and, only a few breaths later, for the early church in 8:1. Knowing something about the Greek OT, then, is crucial to grasping the identity of today’s church as the people of God.

Another key example is “gospel” or “good news.” Euangelion vocabulary was often used for reports of military victories in antiquity. But in the Greek tradition of the prophets (especially Isaiah), it was applied to spiritual good news related to the saving work of God, doubtless shaping the apostolic authors. For instance, Mark 1:1–3 traces the good news directly to Isaiah 40, and Paul treats the good news as something pre-promised to the prophets as well (Romans 1:1–2).

A final example is the term used in the Greek OT for the “sin offering,” namely, peri hamartias (e.g., Leviticus 5:6). Strictly speaking, this phrase means “concerning sin,” but it became a technical term for the specific Levitical sacrifice (see Hebrews 10:6). Its influence can be felt most vividly in Romans 8:3, where Paul refers to Jesus as peri hamartias; though some English translations take this as “for sin” (KJV, RSV), it is more accurate to render it “sin offering” (CSB, NIV), which concretely captures how Jesus’s blood fulfills the Levitical sacrificial system.

Implication: Students of the NT can benefit from adding the Greek OT to their set of tools for studying the semantic ranges of NT words (from covenant to mercy seat/propitiation and beyond). The Greek OT may not answer every question for every word, but it can be a window on common use in the first century — and sure beats using Merriam-Webster!

The Greek OT was often used in specific quotations.

Additionally, NT authors often use wording from the Greek tradition when directly quoting an OT passage. When studying such reuses of the OT in the NT, it is important to keep four basic patterns in mind.

The wording matches both the Hebrew and the Greek, particularly if the latter is a straightforward rendering of the former (e.g., Leviticus 19:18 in Matthew 19:19).
The wording matches the Hebrew more closely, and not the Greek (e.g., Zechariah 12:10 in John 19:37).
The wording matches neither fully but appears to involve apostolic retranslation or interpretation (e.g., Psalm 68:19 in Ephesians 4:8).
The wording matches the Greek more closely, even where it deviates from the Hebrew.

The fourth category is of most interest here, since it demonstrates the vital importance of the Greek translation(s) of the OT to NT study. I will provide a few examples to illustrate the point.

Let us begin with instances where the use of the Greek OT is important Christologically.

In Jesus’s visit to the Nazareth synagogue, his reading of Isaiah 61:1–2 as recorded in Luke 4:18–19 includes “and recovering of sight to the blind,” found only in Greek Isaiah and not the known Hebrew. This line is important to the Lukan context because it frames Jesus as the Spirit-anointed deliverer who will, indeed, bring healing to both physical and spiritual blindness.
Amid the rapid-fire set of quotations in Hebrews 1:5–14, the author writes, “When he [God] brings the firstborn into the world, he says, ‘Let all God’s angels worship him’” (Hebrews 1:6). This line is apparently drawn from the Greek tradition of Deuteronomy 32:43 and is absent in the standard Hebrew tradition, providing the author with helpful wording to express the divinity of Jesus. (Note: some English translations incorporate the line into the text of Deuteronomy, effectively blending the Hebrew and Greek.)
Hebrews also reflects the distinct wording of the Greek of Psalm 40:6–8 in order to capture the humanity of Jesus via “A body have you prepared for me” (Hebrews 10:5), whereas the Hebrew reads, “You have given me an open ear.”

These are but a few instances where the OT — and the Greek form, at that — is key to articulating the person and work of Christ.

The Greek OT is also missionally important to the NT authors. Occasionally, the ancient Greek translators had already enhanced how a given passage anticipates the inclusion of the nations/Gentiles in the plan of God, allowing the apostolic authors more readily to root the global mission of the church in Scripture.

Matthew draws on the distinctive Greek wording of Isaiah 42:1–3 to plant the seed that Jesus’s ministry is not only for Jews but encompasses Gentiles, too: while the Hebrew reads, “The coastlands await his laws,” the Greek form that is used in Matthew 12:21 reads, “In his name the Gentiles will hope.”
At the Jerusalem council, the decisive evidence in favor of not imposing circumcision on Gentiles comes from Amos 9:11–12. The wording of the quotation in Acts 15:17, “that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord,” aligns more closely with the clearer Gentile-inclusive wording of the Greek of Amos rather than the Hebrew.
Among Paul’s string of OT quotations about the Gentile-embracing work of Jesus is another use of the unique Greek form of Deuteronomy 32:43 (see above), “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people” (Romans 15:10), which is not found in the Hebrew.

No doubt other Hebrew Scriptures would suffice to make the same points, but the apostolic authors apparently opted to draw on Greek translations that were already ripe for use.

Lastly, knowledge of the NT authors’ use of the Greek OT is also helpful apologetically for today’s readers. On occasion, an OT quotation in the NT seems at first glance to contradict what one finds when looking it up in the English Bible (which, recall, uses the Hebrew). In such cases, the Greek OT can sometimes shed light.

Luke references a figure named “Cainan” in Jesus’s genealogy (Luke 3:36) as well as “seventy-five persons” emigrating to Egypt (Acts 7:14). The former figure is not found in the Hebrew genealogies, and the latter is presented as “seventy” in the Hebrew of Genesis 46:27 and Exodus 1:5. In both cases, however, Luke is seemingly drawing on the Greek tradition, which mentions “Cainan” at Genesis 10:24 and tabulates the descendants (via a different way of counting) as “seventy-five.”
The quotation of Psalm 95:7–8 in Hebrews 3:7–11 reads, in part, “as you did in the rebellion, on the day of testing.” This seems to contradict the Hebrew: “as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah.” But the author is using the Greek form that has translated those place-names.
Hebrews 11:21 states that the dying patriarch Jacob worshiped “over the head of his staff,” pointing to Genesis 47:31. The Hebrew reads “upon the head of his bed,” but the NT author has simply used the Greek form.

In these instances and a few others, any apparent misstep by a NT author is ameliorated by recognizing that he is drawing on a Greek form of the text known to his audience.

Implication: Students of the NT, when encountering an OT quotation, should consider consulting not only the English translation (from the Hebrew) but also the Greek form, to see if any specific nuances in the Greek tradition have influenced the apostolic writer. Those who are unable to read Greek can use a modern translation, specifically LES or NETS.

The Greek OT exerts behind-the-scenes influence on broader concepts/themes.

Finally, we see telltale signs of the formative influence of the Greek OT on the NT exegesis of Scripture beyond word-for-word quotations. In such scenarios, knowledge of the broader context of the specifically Greek form of an OT passage often enhances our understanding of what a given NT author is doing.

A simple example involves the Greek form of Numbers 24:17, picturing a royal star that “will rise” (anatelei) from Jacob (versus Hebrew “walk”). The Greek verb provides a clue as to why the magi seek a new Jewish king when they see a star “in its rising” (anatolē, Matthew 2:2).

A more potent example appears in John 12:41, where the evangelist comments that Isaiah “said these things” — referring to two quotations of Isaiah in 12:38, 40 — because he “saw his glory and spoke of him.” The “him” here is Jesus, and the key connection is “glory” (doxa). The quoted passages are from Isaiah 53:1 and 6:10, respectively, and the quoted wording is not otherwise notable. But if one reads each passage in Greek, light bulbs start turning on. In the Greek of Isaiah 52:13–53:12, the “servant” is “glorified,” but his “glory” is rejected (versus Hebrew “lifted up” and “form”); and in the Greek of Isaiah 6:1, the Lord’s “glory” fills heaven (versus Hebrew “train of his robe”). John taps into both “glory” connections in Greek to express what Isaiah “saw” in each scene: namely, the suffering-doxa and heavenly-doxa of the Son of God.

Sticking with Isaiah, another intriguing example is Isaiah 65:17–22, the grand vision for the new heavens and new earth. When the heavenly Jerusalem comes, death will be defeated and God’s people will rest secure. The Greek tradition includes a reference to the “tree of life” (65:22) — a rare mention of this Edenic plant — where the Hebrew reads only “tree.” This detail may to some degree influence the appearance of this same “tree of life” in Revelation 21:1–22:5 (specifically 22:2), where the author is capturing vividly the fulfillment of Isaiah 65.

Staying in Revelation, the initial vision of the “son of man” (Jesus) in Revelation 1:13–14 is intriguing because his attributes (e.g., hair as white as snow/wool) match those of the “Ancient of Days” in Daniel 7:9–14, where “son of man” first appears. In Revelation, the identity of the son of man seems almost to merge with the Ancient of Days, though in Daniel 7 they are distinct. Intriguingly, this close identification of the two figures already occurs in the older Greek tradition of Daniel 7:13, which has the “son of man” coming “as” the “Ancient of Days” (versus “to” or “before the presence of” in Aramaic). Perhaps such an exegetical tradition had taken root before John’s writing of the Apocalypse.

More examples could be mentioned, but the key point is this: in such cases, the influence of the Greek OT is felt not so much onstage (the wording of a given quotation) but more behind-the-scenes, reflecting the NT authors’ rich and multifaceted engagement with God’s word.

Implication: Students of the NT should strive to be sensitive to how the particular Greek form of the OT could shape an NT author’s argument or narrative at the conceptual level. One way to do this is simply to read the Greek OT (even in translation) regularly when studying OT passages that are instrumental to NT theology.

Septuagint and Scripture

Much more could be said, but the hope is that this brief survey has whetted the reader’s appetite to explore the texts of the Septuagint further (see here or here). It offers an exciting gateway to studying both OT and NT afresh, not only for scholars but for ministers and laypersons too.

Many Christians often ask at this point, “If the apostles sometimes used the Septuagint, does that make it inspired?” A common answer is that a NT quotation of the Greek OT does sanction its wording, even when it deviates from the Hebrew. This answer hits the rocks, however, when NT authors do not always use identical wording for the same OT quotations (e.g., Isaiah 6:9–10 in Matthew 13:14–15; Mark 4:12; Luke 8:10; John 12:39–40; Acts 28:25–27), making it hard to say which wording is “sanctioned.”

A better answer is this: the Jewish community and early Christians clearly privileged the Hebrew text as the locus of inspiration. However, there were no efforts (then or now) at linguistic Judaizing, whereby new converts would be forced to learn Hebrew to access Scripture. The Greek OT in its varied forms was seen as more than adequate as a translation of the word of God to reach a Greek-speaking world, and the apostles used it accordingly. Does this mean that apostolic use of the Greek OT where it appears to deviate from the Hebrew is an exercise in building theology off a faulty translation? Not at all — it simply means the NT writers felt that the Greek “pew Bible” (in modern terminology) familiar to their readers faithfully captured the theological intent of God-given words, so they used it accordingly.

Studying the Septuagint, if nothing else, is an illuminating exercise in tracing God’s faithfulness in using his word to motivate and sustain the early church in proclaiming Christ from the Scriptures to the ends of the earth (Luke 24:44–47).