Friday, February 8, 2013

1 Cor 11:10, "because of the angels": International Septuagint Day

1 Corinthians 11:10 That is why a woman ought to have a veil on her head, because of the angels.

No wonder I was reading the LXX everyday for the past week. It's International Septuagint Day today. Yesterday in class while discussing 1 Cor 11:10 where Paul said that women ought to have their hair covered because of the angels, I remember reading Psalm 137 (ET: 138) in the LXX that David sang to the Lord before "the angels" while the Hebrew MT has the word, "gods." It seems that many of the difficult texts in the NT only appear difficult because English readers of the OT read them from the Hebrew translation and not the LXX. Yet the LXX is the Bible of the early church; the Bible of the Apostle Paul, Luke and even of Matthew who wrote the most Jewish of all Gospels. Matthew cited from Isaiah 7 where the word, "virgin" is found in the LXX but not the Hebrew MT.

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