Fr. Stephen De Young has repeatedly made the claim that the Septuagint has no more authority in the Orthodox Church than does the Masoretic Hebrew Text (for example, in his interview with Fr. Thomas Soroka, entitled: "Orthodoxy, the Old Testament, & the Septuagint"). This is simply not the case. Now, Fr. Stephen is obviously an extremely intelligent man, and well educated. I have learned a lot from listening to him, and have often found him to be very insightful. But the idea that the Septuagint has superior authority to the Masoretic Text is not an urban legend -- this has been the consistent teaching of the Church.
The Orthodox Study Bible went to the trouble of producing a translation of the Septuagint (albeit an imperfect one) for a reason. In the introduction to the Orthodox Study Bible, Bishop Basil (Essey) of the Antiochian Archdiocese writes:
"It is helpful to keep in mind that, like the earliest Christian community, the Orthodox Church of today continues using the Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint (LXX). The Septuagint -- referencing the seventy finest Jewish scholars, from all twelve Jewish tribes, who made the translation from the Hebrew into Greek -- became the universally accepted version of the Old Testament...." ("Overview of the Books of the Bible," in The Orthodox Study Bible, ed. St. Athanasius Academy of Orthodox Theology (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008), p. xv).
Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) notes:
"...the basis of the Old Testament text in the Orthodox tradition is the Septuagint, a Greek translation by the "seventy interpreters" made in the third to second centuries BCE for the Alexandrian Hebrews and the Jewish diaspora. The authority of the Septuagint is based on three factors. First of all, though the Greek text is not the original language of the Old Testament books, the Septuagint does reflect the state of the original text as it would have been found in the third to second centuries BCE, while the current Hebrew text of the Bible, which is called the "Masoretic," was edited up until the eighth century CE. Second, some of the citations taken from the Old Testament and found in the New mainly use the Septuagint text. Third, the Septuagint was used by both the Greek Fathers of the Church, and Orthodox liturgical services (in other words, this text became part of the Orthodox church Tradition). Taking into account the three factors enumerated above, St. Philaret of Moscow considers it possible to maintain that "in the Orthodox teaching of Holy Scripture it is necessary to attribute a dogmatic merit to the Translation of the Seventy, in some cases placing it on equal level with the original and even elevating it above the Hebrew text, as is generally accepted in the most recent editions" (Orthodox Christianity, Volume II: Doctrine and Teaching of the Orthodox Church, (New York: St. Vladimir Seminary Press, 2012) p. 34).
And in the above quote, when it says "some of the citations taken from the Old Testament and found in the New mainly use the Septuagint text," it is so awkwardly worded that I assumed something was lost in translation, and so I contacted Metropolitan Hilarion and asked him if what he was saying in Russian was that most (not just "some") of the quotes of the Old Testament in the New Testament are based on the Septuagint, and he confirmed that this was correct.
Fr. Seraphim Slobodskoy, in his classic catechetical text, wrote:
"...it is clear why the Church prefers the Septuagint and Peshitta translations for the authoritative text of the Old Testament, and principally the first, for the Septuagint text was produced under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit by the concerted effort of the Old Testament Church" (The Law of God: For Study at Home and School (Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1994) p. 440).
"The Orthodox Church has the same New Testament as the rest of Christendom. As its authoritative text for the Old Testament, it uses the ancient Greek translation known as the Septuagint" (The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity. 3rd ed. London: Penguin Books, 2015, p. 194).
"As for editions or versions of the Old Testament the principal ones are five in number, namely, the Greek, the Syriac, the Arabic, the Aramaic (formerly called “Chaldaic”), and the Latin (or Roman). The Greek is divided into four main versions. Of these the first and most ancient is that of the LXX (or LXXXII), commonly known as the Septuagint in English, which, in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, interpreted not only the Pentateuch, as mistakenly maintained by Scaligerus and other modernists, but the entire Old Testament, as is attested by Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and others, before the times of the Maccabees, which is the same as saying 230 years before the birth of Christ. It was from that version, indeed, that the divine Apostles drew the predictions of the prophets. But if Bellarminus the Jesuit says that that version is incomplete as it now stands, citing as witnesses St. Jerome, who says in the preface to the Chronicles (or Paralipomena) that the ancient and genuine version was corrupted and that originals thereof were extant wherein it could be seen that they differed from one another, as well as Justin, who says in the Dialogue with Pryphon that Aristeus, an aide-de-camp of King Ptolemy, bears witness that the Septuagint Version agreed with the Hebrew originals, though by his time (the saint asserts in his own declaration) it had come to differ in many points from the Hebrew manuscripts. Nevertheless, let Bellarminus learn that the Septuagint Version (i.e., the text of the genuine LXX) was directly in the beginning judged by the Church to be genuine and authoritative; and the divine Apostles used it in testimony; and it was recognized by the whole Church—not only the Eastern, but also the Western—before the translation made by St. Jerome into the Latin. Even Philo the Jew praises the LXX, not only as interpreters of the Scriptures, but also as prophets inspired with divine Spirit. And St. Augustine (in his book concerning the City of God) says: “the Spirit which illumined the prophets when they preached, the same Spirit illumined also the LXX when they interpreted the writings of the prophets.” Both divine Justin and Tertullian say that each of the LXX interpreters translated the Scripture separately in separate houses, and, miraculous to relate! not one of them was found to have added or to have omitted a single thing even of the slightest kind in the books which they had severally written, but, on the contrary, identically the same very words were found to have been written in all of them. So who can prefer any other version to this God-inspired version of the LXX?" (D. Cummings, trans., The Rudder of the Orthodox Catholic Church: The Compilation of the Holy Canons Saints Nicodemus and Agapius (West Brookfield, MA: The Orthodox Christian Educational Society, 1983), p. 157).
The Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs of 1848 is a document that was signed by all the Patriarchs of that time, and was endorsed by the Russian Church, certainly has Pan-Orthodox authority, and it says:
"Our Church holds the infallible and genuine deposit of the Holy Scriptures, of the Old Testament a true and perfect version, of the New the divine original itself" (Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs, 1848: A Reply to the Epistle of Pope Pius IX, ‘to the Easterns,' Orthodox Christian Information Center, accessed August 20, 2026, http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/encyc_1848.aspx).
"For [the] Eastern Orthodox Church, the Septuagint has first of all a religious value. It is the Bible witnessing to all phases of the church history, beginning with the New Testament and apostolic times through to church fathers, ecumenical councils and beyond. The Septuagint is doubtlessly the Bible of the undivided Church" (The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 90 emphasis in the original).
I am well aware that the history of the Septuagint is complicated, but whether or not one takes the same view of the origins of the Septuagint that Bishop Basil or St. Nicodemos expressed in the quotes cited, or if one takes the view of contemporary Orthodox scholars, like Fr. Eugen Pentiuc, who lays out his more complicated view, there is no serious question that the Septuagint has "pride of place" in terms of its authority in the Orthodox Church.
What is the Septuagint?
Now as to the question of what we mean by the term Septuagint, Fr. Stephen takes the position that this only really refers to the texts of the Pentateuch, and that the rest of the texts that are commonly referred to as being in the Septuagint are simply a collection of various Greek translations that came to be used by the Church. And the biggest example of this is the book of Daniel, which is usually said to be the work of Theodotion, who was a second century Anti-Christian Jew. The real story seems to be more complicated, because we have "Theodotion" citations in the New Testament itself, which would obviously be impossible if Theodotion actually lived in the second century and was the original translator of these texts. A number of examples can be cited, but two fairly clear examples are 1 Cor. 15:54 quoting Isa. 25:8, and John 19:3 quoting Zech. 12:10. So it would seem likely that either Theodotion lived in the first century or before, or that Theodotion may have simply reworked some translations that were already in existence and already widely known in the first century, and so his name came to be associated with texts were actually the work of an earlier translator or translators (See Moore, Colton. “Theodotion Zechariah in the Fourth Gospel.” Novum Testamentum 63, no. 2 (March 17, 2021): 221–28. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27068126). Whatever the case may be -- and we may never know -- the version of Daniel that the Church chose to use is what we find in the Greek Old Testament, and we have long referred to the entire collection as the Septuagint.
Is the Russian Synodal Bible a Translation of the Masoretic Text?
Another point that Fr. Stephen has often made is that the Russian translation of the Bible (The Russian Synodal Bible) was made from the Masoretic Text, but this is not really true either. There was a great deal of controversy on what texts to use for the translation of the Old Testament, and the best book in English on this subject that I am aware of is aptly titled "Russian Bible Wars: Modern Scriptural Translation and Cultural Authority," by Stephen K. Batalden. To sum up the history, there were many who wanted to just stick with the Slavonic Bible as it was. There were those who wanted a straight translation from the Septuagint, and there were those who wanted a straight translation from the Masoretic Text (not among the bishops, as best as I can tell, but among some Russian biblical scholars). What they ended up deciding on doing was a translation that used the Masoretic Text as the base text for those parts of the Old Testament that could be found there, but then noting in brackets which were imbedded in the text (not just footnotes) where the Septuagint was different. This is not evident in Protestant editions of this translation that have removed these bracketed texts, but if you look at the original published text, or at the editions currently published by the Russian Church, you will see that they have these Septuagint translations in abundance. If you look at Genesis 4, for example, you will see that the word "Lord" (Господь) is frequently by the word "God" (Бог) in brackets, and this is because the Hebrew texts in this chapter usually have the name of God (YHWH), which the Septuagint (and also in the New Testament) is translated with the word "Lord." But here the Septuagint simply has "God," and so the Russian translation notes this difference. There is a more significant difference in verse 8, where the Hebrew text literally reads: "And Cain said to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him." But what Cain said to Abel is absent, and so the text doesn't make much sense as it is, though translations generally smooth this over. However, the Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac, and the Latin Vulgate all contain this missing clause which tells us what Cain actually said: "Let us go out into the field." The Russian Synodal Bible thus reads "И сказал Каин Авелю, брату своему: [пойдем в поле]. И когда они были в поле, восстал Каин на Авеля, брата своего, и убил его." Which in English reads: "And Cain said to Abel his brother: [Let us go out into the field.] And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him."
There are also blocks of texts that are lacking in the Masoretic Texts, that are included in the Russian Synodal Bible, for example at the end of Job we find:
42:17a«Написано, что он опять восстанет с теми, коих воскресит Господь. 42:17b О нем толкуется в Сирской книге, что жил он в земле Авситидийской на пределах Идумеи и Аравии: прежде же было имя ему Иовав. 42:17c Взяв жену Аравитянку, родил сына, которому имя Еннон. Происходил он от отца Зарефа, сынов Исавовых сын, матери же Воссоры, так что был он пятым от Авраама. 42:17d И сии цари, царствовавшие в Едоме, какою страною и он обладал: первый Валак, сын Веора, и имя городу его Деннава; после же Валака Иовав, называемый Иовом; после сего Ассом, игемон из Феманитской страны; после него Адад, сын Варада, поразивший Мадиама на поле Моава,- и имя городу его Гефем. 42:17e Пришедшие же к нему друзья, Елифаз (сын Софана) от сынов Исавовых, царь Феманский, Валдад (сын Амнона Ховарского) савхейский властитель, Софар Минейский царь. 42:17f (Феман сын Елифаза, игемон Идумеи. О нем говорится в книге Сирской, что жил в земле Авситидийской, около берегов Евфрата; прежде имя его было Иовав, отец же его был Зареф, от востока солнца.)»
Which in English, reads:
42:17a “It is written that he will rise again with those whom the Lord will raise up. 42:17b Concerning him it is explained in the Syriac Book that he dwelt in the land of Ausitis, on the borders of Idumea and Arabia: and his former name was Jobab. 42:17c And he took an Arabian wife, and begat a son, whose name was Ennon. His father was Zereth, the son of the sons of Esau, and his mother was Bosorah, so that he was the fifth from Abraham. 42:17d And these are the kings who reigned in Edom, which country he also possessed: the first was Balak the son of Beor, and the name of his city was Denaba; and after Balak, Jobab, who was called Job; after him, Assom, governor of the country of the Temanites; After him, Hadad, the son of Barad, who defeated Midian in the field of Moab, and the name of his city was Gatham. 42:17e And his friends came to him: Eliphaz (son of Zophan), king of Teman, of the sons of Esau; Baldad (son of Amnon the Chebarite), ruler of the Sabhaeans; Zophar the Minean king. 42:17f (Teman, the son of Eliphaz, governor of Idumea. It is said of him in the book of Syria that he dwelt in the land of Ausitis, near the banks of the Euphrates. His former name was Jobab, and his father was Zareth, from the east.)"
