The role of the Septuagint in early Christian life

There may be some in our ranks who have an interest in some of the practices of the ancient church. I am right now doing some work in the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia (350-428), so I hope you will indulge my bringing another remark your way. Theodore is well-known for his hermeneutics, and no book on the history of the discipline worth its salt will omit his contribution. His interpretation of Scripture was historical or "literal", and is the leading example of the "Antiochene school" against Origen and the Alexandrian school's allegorical interpretation.

This quotation is on a completely different subject, the Septuagint. What I find of interest here is the role of the Scriptures in the early Church. With Theodore's comment, we get a small glimpse at the place of Scriptures in early Church's liturgy and home.

"The translation into Greek, on the other hand, was done by seventy men, elders of the people, possessing a precise knowledge of their own language and knowledge of the divine Scriptures, approved of by the priest and all the Israelite people as particularly suited to translating. Their translation and publication the blessed apostles clearly seem to have accepted, and to the believers from the nations who formerly had no access at all to the contents of the Old Testament, they passed on the divine Scriptures written in Greek in the translation of the Seventy. All of us, having come to faith in Christ the Lord from the nations, received the Scriptures from them and now enjoy them, reading them aloud in the churches and keeping them at home."

- Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on the Twelve Prophets (Fathers of the Church 108; trans. Richard C. Hill; Washington, D. C.: Catholic University Press, 2004), 289.

The role of the Septuagint in early Christian life

There may be some in our ranks who have an interest in some of the practices of the ancient church. I am right now doing some work in the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia (350-428), so I hope you will indulge my bringing another remark your way. Theodore is well-known for his hermeneutics, and no book on the history of the discipline worth its salt will omit his contribution. His interpretation of Scripture was historical or "literal", and is the leading example of the "Antiochene school" against Origen and the Alexandrian school's allegorical interpretation.

This quotation is on a completely different subject, the Septuagint. What I find of interest here is the role of the Scriptures in the early Church. With Theodore's comment, we get a small glimpse at the place of Scriptures in early Church's liturgy and home.

"The translation into Greek, on the other hand, was done by seventy men, elders of the people, possessing a precise knowledge of their own language and knowledge of the divine Scriptures, approved of by the priest and all the Israelite people as particularly suited to translating. Their translation and publication the blessed apostles clearly seem to have accepted, and to the believers from the nations who formerly had no access at all to the contents of the Old Testament, they passed on the divine Scriptures written in Greek in the translation of the Seventy. All of us, having come to faith in Christ the Lord from the nations, received the Scriptures from them and now enjoy them, reading them aloud in the churches and keeping them at home."

- Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on the Twelve Prophets (Fathers of the Church 108; trans. Richard C. Hill; Washington, D. C.: Catholic University Press, 2004), 289.