Introduction
No discussion of the Old Testament canon is complete without addressing the Septuagint — the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Septuagint (abbreviated LXX, from the Latin word for "seventy") is arguably the most important translation in the history of the Bible. It was the Bible of the early church. It is the text most frequently quoted in the New Testament. And it is at the center of one of the most consequential debates in canon studies: did the early church inherit a larger Old Testament than the one preserved in the Hebrew Tanakh?
This question has direct implications for the debate over the Apocrypha (or deuterocanonical books). If the Septuagint represented a broader, authoritative "Alexandrian canon" that included books like Sirach, Wisdom of Solomon, and 1–2 Maccabees, and if the early church adopted this broader canon, then the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox inclusion of these books has a strong historical argument. If, on the other hand, the Septuagint was a collection of Jewish literature in Greek rather than a defined canon, and if the additional books were valued for reading but not regarded as Scripture in the same sense as the books of the Hebrew Bible, then the Protestant position has the stronger claim.
The Origin of the Septuagint
The traditional account of the Septuagint's origin comes from the Letter of Aristeas, a pseudepigraphal work probably written in the second century BC. According to this account, Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt (285–246 BC) commissioned a translation of the Jewish Law for the famous Library of Alexandria. Seventy-two Jewish elders (six from each of the twelve tribes) were sent from Jerusalem to Alexandria, where they produced the translation in seventy-two days. Later tradition embellished the story: the elders worked independently and produced identical translations, proving the translation was divinely inspired.
Modern scholarship recognizes that the Letter of Aristeas is more legend than history, but the core claim — that the Torah was translated into Greek in Alexandria during the third century BC — is widely accepted. The translation of the rest of the Hebrew Bible followed over the next two centuries, with different books translated at different times, in different places, and with varying degrees of quality. "The Septuagint" is therefore not a single, unified translation but a collection of translations produced over an extended period.
The translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek was an event of enormous providential significance. It made the God of Israel, the history of Israel, and the promises of Israel accessible to the entire Greek-speaking world. When Paul entered a synagogue in Corinth, Ephesus, or Thessalonica, the Scriptures he read and expounded were in Greek — the Septuagint. When the New Testament authors quoted the Old Testament, they most often quoted the Septuagint text rather than translating directly from the Hebrew. The LXX was the bridge between the Hebrew Scriptures and the Gentile world, and without it, the rapid spread of Christianity among Greek-speaking populations would have been far more difficult.
The "Alexandrian Canon" Hypothesis
For much of the twentieth century, scholars spoke of an "Alexandrian canon" — the theory that the Jewish community in Alexandria (Egypt) recognized a broader canon than the one accepted in Palestine. This broader canon included not only the books of the Hebrew Bible but also additional works such as Sirach, Wisdom of Solomon, Tobit, Judith, Baruch, and 1–2 Maccabees — books that appear in the great fourth- and fifth-century Christian manuscripts of the LXX (Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus, and Codex Alexandrinus).
On this hypothesis, the early church — which was largely Greek-speaking and used the LXX as its Bible — naturally adopted the broader Alexandrian canon. The narrower Palestinian canon (the 24 books of the Tanakh) was a later Jewish development, perhaps in reaction to Christianity's use of the LXX. The implication is that the Protestant Old Testament, which follows the Palestinian canon, represents a later narrowing rather than the original collection.
Problems with the Hypothesis
The Alexandrian canon hypothesis, once widely accepted, has been significantly challenged and largely abandoned by scholars across the theological spectrum. Several problems have emerged:
First, there is no evidence that the Alexandrian Jewish community ever formally defined a canon — let alone a broader one. No ancient Jewish source from Alexandria describes a canonical list that differs from the Palestinian collection. The concept of a distinct "Alexandrian canon" is a modern scholarly construction, not an ancient historical reality.
Second, the major LXX manuscripts (Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus) are Christian manuscripts from the fourth and fifth centuries AD, not Jewish manuscripts from the pre-Christian period. They tell us what the Christian church included in its biblical codices, but they do not tell us what Alexandrian Jews regarded as canonical Scripture. Moreover, these manuscripts do not agree with one another about which additional books to include — Vaticanus includes some books that Sinaiticus omits, and Alexandrinus includes still others. This inconsistency undermines the idea of a defined "Alexandrian canon."
Third, the most important Jewish writer from Alexandria — Philo (c. 20 BC – c. AD 50) — quotes extensively from the books of the Hebrew Bible but never quotes any of the additional books as Scripture. If Alexandrian Jews regarded Sirach, Wisdom, and the Maccabees as canonical, Philo's complete silence about them is difficult to explain.
The distinction between a collection and a canon is crucial here. The great LXX codices were collections of Jewish literature in Greek — they gathered together everything that the Christian community found useful for reading, instruction, and edification. But inclusion in a collection does not automatically mean inclusion in a canon. A modern study Bible might include maps, timelines, cross-references, and devotional essays alongside the biblical text — but no one would claim that the maps are canonical. Similarly, the inclusion of Sirach or Wisdom alongside Isaiah and the Psalms in a Christian codex does not prove that they were regarded as possessing the same authority. It may simply mean that they were regarded as useful and worth preserving.
The New Testament's Use of the Septuagint
A frequently raised argument for the broader canon is that the New Testament authors used the Septuagint and therefore implicitly endorsed whatever the Septuagint contained. This argument fails for several reasons.
First, the New Testament authors' use of the LXX as a translation does not constitute an endorsement of every book that later LXX manuscripts would include. Using a particular translation of the Scriptures does not commit you to everything that might appear in the same manuscript or codex. Paul quoted the Greek Old Testament because it was the version his audiences could read, not because he was making a canonical statement about the Septuagint collection.
Second, and more importantly, the New Testament never quotes any of the apocryphal/deuterocanonical books as Scripture. The New Testament quotes or alludes to virtually every book of the Hebrew canon, and when it introduces Old Testament citations, it uses formulas like "it is written," "Scripture says," and "God says" — formulas that indicate canonical authority. These formulas are never applied to the additional books. There may be allusions or echoes (the author of Hebrews may allude to 2 Maccabees 7 in Hebrews 11:35), but allusion is not quotation, and literary awareness is not canonical endorsement. New Testament authors also allude to pagan poets (Acts 17:28; Titus 1:12) without endorsing them as Scripture.
The Septuagint in Early Christianity
The early church fathers' use of the additional books is more complex and deserves honest assessment. Many fathers — including Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Augustine — cited books like Sirach and Wisdom with respect, and some appear to have treated them as Scripture. However, several important qualifications must be noted.
The most careful early Christian scholars were aware of the difference between the Hebrew canon and the additional books. Origen (c. 185–254), despite occasionally citing the additional books, compiled a list of Old Testament books that corresponds to the Hebrew canon. Athanasius (c. 296–373), in the same 39th Festal Letter that provides the first complete New Testament canon list, distinguishes between the canonical books (which correspond to the Hebrew Bible) and books that are "not included in the Canon, but appointed by the Fathers to be read" — a category that includes Wisdom, Sirach, Esther (in its Greek additions), Judith, and Tobit. Jerome (c. 347–420), the greatest biblical scholar of the early church and translator of the Latin Vulgate, was emphatic: the additional books are useful for edification but are not part of the canon and should not be used to establish doctrine.
The formal definition of the broader canon — including the deuterocanonical books as fully canonical Scripture — did not occur until the Council of Trent in 1546, in direct response to the Reformation. For fifteen centuries, the church had used these books with varying degrees of authority and without a definitive conciliar pronouncement on their canonical status. Protestant apologists like James White have argued that Trent elevated an open question into a dogma for polemical reasons — the deuterocanonical books contain passages (2 Maccabees 12:43–45 on prayer for the dead; Tobit 12:9 and Sirach 3:30 on almsgiving and atonement) that support Catholic doctrines challenged by the Reformers. Whether or not this was Trent's conscious motivation, the timing is difficult to ignore.
Conclusion
The Septuagint is one of the most important documents in the history of the Bible, and its role in the early church cannot be overstated. But the existence of additional books in LXX manuscripts does not establish that those books were regarded as canonical Scripture by either Alexandrian Jews or the early church as a whole. The "Alexandrian canon" hypothesis has largely collapsed under scholarly scrutiny. The most careful early Christian scholars (Origen, Athanasius, Jerome) distinguished between the canonical books and the additional ones. And the New Testament itself, while using the LXX freely as a translation, never cites the additional books as Scripture.
The Protestant Old Testament — following the Hebrew canon that Jesus recognized, that Josephus described, and that the most careful patristic scholars affirmed — represents the best-attested boundaries of the Old Testament canon. The additional books are valuable, historically important, and worthy of study — but they are not Scripture in the same sense as the books of the Hebrew Bible. The next lesson will examine these books in greater detail, asking what they contain, why they were valued, and what Protestants lose by never reading them.