Ebook The Quotations of the New Testament From the Old

The principal difficulties which have been found with the quotations of the New Testament from the Old may be stated as follows:

1. The writers of the New Testament, instead of translating their quotations directly from the Hebrew, and thus presenting us with exact transcriptions of the original text, have taken them generally from the Septuagint version, which is not free from faults.

2. Their quotations from the Septuagint are often verbally inexact, and their variations from this version are seldom of the nature of corrections, since they seem usually to have quoted from memory.

3. They sometimes employ quotations so brief and fragmentary that the reader cannot readily determine the degree of support, if any, which the quotation gives to the argument.

4. They sometimes alter the language of the Old Testament with the obvious design of aiding their argument.

5. They sometimes present in the form of a single quotation an assemblage of phrases or sentences drawn from different sources.

6. In a few instances they give us, apparently as quotations from the Old Testament, sentences which it does not contain.