Old Testament Greek Origins

• Old Testament Greek Origins
  • Introduction
  • The Letter of Aristeas
    • Dr Hillman discusses the forgery
  • Greek is the Oldest - Timeline of Known Works
  • Stylistic Linguistic Evidence
  • Julius Africanus
  • Porphyry - these books, they’re not written in Hebrew
    • Porphyry’s Key Works and Influence
    • His Views on Ancient Texts
    • The Line About Hebrew Texts
    • Porphyry’s Argument on the Septuagint
  • Gad Barnea at U of Haifa

Introduction

The Septuagint (LXX) is the original and foundational text, written in Greek by a group of 70 rabbis from Crete who harbored disdain for the female tyrants and oppressors of neighboring lands (the Medes, the civilization of Medea; such as the oracular justice system by the Parthenos ). This Greek Septuagint was rich in philosophical and mystical concepts derived from the pre-Hellenic Bronze Age, rooted in the drug/divining/medicine culture that was dominant at the time—an era when knowledge was largely oral and fragmented. These scholars drew upon a broad knowledge of mystical philosophy, myth, and metaphysics, embedding the sophisticated concepts of the region’s Bronze Age Greek, Mycenaean, Minoan, and Medean cultures into the original Greek text.

Ancient Hebrew, however, is not the root language of these texts. Instead, it was a later, constructed form—a fabricated language developed by an extremist sect seeking to consolidate power, gain control over the religious narrative, and reshape the people’s connection to divinity. This sect, operating under a cult-like agenda, recognized the power and descriptive richness of the original Greek scriptures, but sought to downplay the profound nuances of the Greek Septuagint in favor of a much more simplistic and rigid Hebrew. This movement effectively drove out any references to pharmaka (the substances related to seeing, divining, healing, and spiritual experiences), replacing them with vague and fantastical terms like “magic” or “sorcery,” which obscured the deeper connections to drug-induced divination and the spiritual practices of the time.

The key driving force behind this movement was the creation of a version of the text that replaced the reality (pharmaka and cognitive practices) with the fairy tale, it's more dogmatic, and more easily commands the control of people, disarming critical thinking. In a nutshell it replaces Greek precision and technicality with Hebrew simplified language with nonsensical meaning opening the door to wild interpretive metaphor. The translation from Greek to Hebrew was a deliberate process of simplification, where the deep philosophical, mystical, and spiritual meanings tied to ancient mystery rites involving Chrio (χριω / application of salves) with Pharmaka (φαρμακον / drugs) along with the metaphysics (set / setting instructions) were flattened and reduced to their most basic, literal forms in Hebrew. Often simplified to what amounts as mistranslation. This move from entheogenic experiential practice, to spiritual nonsense, allowed the sect to control the narrative, removing complex layers that might have encouraged personal experience or challenge to the established religious hierarchy.

In this fabricated language scenario:

The Greek Septuagint is a document rich in pharmaka-related mystical concepts, offering an expansive view of the divine and the relationship between humanity and the divine, from a perspective that mirrors much of the Bacchic or Dionysian mystery. During the Bronze Age, this mystery and pharmaka knowledge was well known within the priesthood, linking the sacred to altered states of consciousness and divination. Also diverse pharmaka use for inspiration, medicine and healing, spiritual connection, was all part of the popular culture of human civilization at that time.

Hebrew, by contrast, emerged as an artificial language constructed to strip away these mystery rites and other complex spiritual teachings, reducing pharmaka-related truths to a rigid, linear form. With its limited vocabulary (8198 words, 2099 roots), Hebrew could not encapsulate the depth of meaning that Greek could convey, resulting in a simplified and less adaptable translation. The Septuagint’s philosophical language is particularly evident in its treatment of divine concepts. Words like Logos (λόγος), Aion (αἰών), and Sophia (σοφία), Ouranos, carry profound meanings that far exceed the depth of their Hebrew counterparts, creating a chasm of understanding—by design.

In contrast, the later derivative extremist Hebrew version imposes a narrow, literal framework, leaving much of the philosophical depth and spiritual truth embedded in the Greek Septuagint unexplored. It is as though the vast ocean of meaning is being forced into a small, rigid vessel. Over time, the simplification of language reshaped the religious worldview of both Jewish and Christian people, aligning them more closely with the power structures of the sect that controlled the Hebrew version of the text.

The original, containing references to the rich Greek mystery traditions, was ultimately overshadowed in favor of a simplified, hierarchical, and doctrinally constrained version. The cultists who created the Hebrew version used this new, narrow interpretation to enforce a more authoritarian understanding of religious texts, ultimately maintaining dominance over spiritual authority. This shift in control paved the way for the Roman Empire and the dark ages.

One further piece of evidence is the fact that the New Testament, written in Ancient Greek, frequently references the Greek Septuagint. This reinforces the idea that the Septuagint was the original and foundational text for the early Christian community.

There has been no earlier Hebrew version found of the Greek Septuagint parts, that did not also contain fragments of Greek with those Hebrew fragments (e.g., Dead Sea Scrolls contained both Hebrew and Greek texts; Nag Hamadi, much later, had coptic only).

Ancient Hebrew, with its 8198 words and 2099 roots (Hapax legomena), is far more limited in scope compared to the expansive vocabulary of Ancient Greek. As noted by scholars like Ghil’ad Zuckerman, the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae contains over 110 million words, with 1.6 million unique word forms and 250,000 unique lemmata, a vast resource compared to the more limited scope of Hebrew.

Thus, at worst, we can conclude that the later Hebrew Old Testament are derivative fabrications designed to reframe, simplify, control, and constrain the original texts. While, at best, it was simply a translation to a much less expressive language, flawed in execution. The result is the same, regardless of intention, the Hebrew washes the Greek of all nuance and mysteries meaning. When compared to the Greek Septuagint, the limitations of Hebrew become glaringly apparent. The profound richness of the Greek version, full of mystery illumination towards metaphysical and spiritual insights, was simply obscured and lost in the transition to a simplified and more rigid and nonsensical form.

The Letter of Aristeas

The forged letter of Aristeas is the only proof for a supposed LXX translation.

The Letter of Aristeas is a Hellenistic-era text that claims to describe the creation of the Septuagint by 72 Jewish scholars (often rounded to 70) who were brought to Alexandria at the request of King Ptolemy II Philadelphus (r. 285–246 BCE) to translate the Torah (the first five books) from Hebrew into Greek.

The Letter of Aristeas presents itself as an account written by a court official named Aristeas, addressed to his brother Philocrates. It describes the circumstances of the translation, emphasizing divine inspiration and the scholarly rigor of the translators, as well as promoting the cultural and philosophical alignment between Jewish wisdom and Greek thought.

However, modern scholars generally view it as a later literary work rather than a historical document.

Several ancient critics regarded the Letter of Aristeas as propaganda rather than a factual account. While no single work was dedicated solely to refuting it, some ancient writers and Church Fathers commented on its implausibility or treated it with skepticism. Here are a few key sources that criticized or challenged the narrative:

1. Josephus' Against Apion (Ἀπὸν ἢ περὶ τῆς Ἰουδαίων ἀρχαιότητος) – While Josephus (1st century CE) actually repeats parts of the Letter of Aristeas in his Antiquities of the Jews (Book 12), in Against Apion, he defends Jewish antiquity against Hellenistic critics. Some scholars believe his account reflects an awareness of the propaganda aspects of Aristeas’ claims.
2. Origen's and Jerome's Writings – Origen (3rd century CE) and Jerome (4th century CE) were aware of textual variations between the Septuagint and the Hebrew texts, and they expressed doubts about the claim that the translation was divinely perfect. While they do not directly call Aristeas a forgery, their critiques of the Septuagint suggest skepticism about the legendary aspects of its creation.
3. Eusebius' Praeparatio Evangelica (Εὐαγγελικὴ προπαρασκευή) – Eusebius (4th century CE) discusses the Letter of Aristeas but presents it in the context of how Greek and Jewish knowledge align. While he does not outright dismiss it, his work indirectly highlights inconsistencies.
4. Early Rabbinic Criticism – While not a single document, early rabbinic sources in the Talmud (e.g., Megillah 9a-b) suggest that the translation of the Torah into Greek was seen by some Jewish scholars as a tragic event, a sign of cultural loss rather than divine inspiration. This indirectly criticizes the idealized claims of Aristeas.
   1. These rabbinic concerns primarily come from the Tannaitic and Amoraic periods of Jewish scholarship, meaning they were formulated between the 1st century BCE and the 5th century CE. The earliest rabbinic writings that reference the translation, such as Megillah 9a-b and Sofrim 1:7-8, likely date to the late Second Temple period (before 70 CE) but were compiled more fully in the Talmudic period (3rd-5th centuries CE).

While there is no surviving ancient work that is purely a direct rebuttal to the Letter of Aristeas, these sources indicate a historical awareness that the document was more rhetorical than factual.

1. Lack of Contemporary Mentions: Greek and Roman writers from the Hellenistic period do not appear to reference the Letter of Aristeas at all, either positively or negatively. This suggests that it may not have been widely circulated outside of Jewish and Hellenized Jewish circles during its early history.
2. Later Pagan Criticism of Jewish Texts: While we lack early critiques of the Letter of Aristeas, later Greco-Roman writers such as Manetho (3rd century BCE, Egypt), Apion (1st century CE, Egypt), Tacitus (1st-2nd century CE, Rome), and Celsus (2nd century CE, Rome) wrote negatively about Jewish history and traditions. Manetho, for example, crafted an alternative Egyptian history that painted the Jewish Exodus in a negative light, while Apion and Tacitus framed Judaism as an insular or superstitious tradition. While these critiques do not specifically target the Letter of Aristeas, they do reflect broader skepticism toward Jewish narratives in Greco-Roman intellectual circles.
3. Hellenistic Rhetorical Traditions: The Letter of Aristeas follows a well-known Hellenistic literary tradition of presenting a fabricated document as a means of lending credibility to a narrative (pseudepigraphy). If contemporary Greek scholars had encountered it and viewed it as propaganda, they might have dismissed it as an idealized or exaggerated origin story, similar to how some Greek and Roman intellectuals viewed the legendary histories of other cultures.
4. Potential Greek Skepticism: Greek scholars familiar with linguistic and textual traditions (e.g., the Alexandrian grammarians who studied Homer and other ancient texts) might have recognized the Letter of Aristeas as a literary construction rather than a strict historical account. However, no direct writings survive from them critiquing it.

Dr Hillman discusses the forgery

in Cosmic Tension

Wikipedia quote from here. The reason the way you think the way you do, and say things like "biblical history" or "Bible times", the reason you think that is because of this false letter. That they knew was false in antiquity, this is the letter that establishes the Septuagint is a translation. It was never questioned before. Someone came along in the 1st cent and created this letter to give it some substantiation to say this thing (Septuagint) is a translation of Hebrew.

• Letter of Aristeas - Describes a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible

Imagine if someone writes an epic tome.
Then 200 years later, someone writes a letter that says this epic tome was a translation.
And everyone buys it!!!

That's because the predominant wave in the 1st, 2nd cent CE is towards this Christian acceptance.
Those Hebrew originals Which strangely don't exist.
This is why people were so excited to get the Dead Sea Scrolls. Because it had some Hebrew in it, it also had the Greek that they were trying to copy into Hebrew but didn't have enough words in the Hebrew to do successfully.

Ha!!! "Some scholars" not just modern scholars, they did the same thing in antiquity: they said "this thing is a lie" but remember it was the pagans that got silenced when the Christians found their expletive Constantine. Are we just reliving? Yes. And you're doomed to. Because you don't study this stuff. Because if we had studied this stuff we wouldn't have let it lead up to this point.

• see Cosmic Tension

Greek is the Oldest - Timeline of Known Works

• Before 300BCE (Nothing known)
  • No earlier Old Testament exists than the Septuagint LXX's parts (Greek)
  • there is no known Hebrew literature, other than enscriptions. Hebrew was a dead language by 400BCE.
• 270BCE - Septuagint LXX (Koine Greek - Alexandria, Egypt)
  • mixture of three different manuscripts: codex vaticanus, codex sinaiticus, and the Codex Alexandrakis
• 250-50BCE - Dead Sea Scrolls (Paleo-Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek)
  • Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the Qumran Caves in the West Bank between 1946 and 1956.
  • discovered in caves near Khirbet Qumran, on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. While the exact authorship is debated, many scholars believe the scrolls were written by a Jewish sect, potentially the Essenes, who inhabited a settlement at Qumran
  • Contains both Hebrew and Greek fragments
    • Hebrew makes up 85% of the scrolls
    • Aramaic makes up about 13%
    • Greek comprises around 2%
  • Simplified
    • Simplified Hebrew is based on Septuagint Greek from ~300BCE.
    • Hebrew at this time has ~7000 words, while the Greek has ~1.5M words, so simplification was nessesary. Hebrew was a dead language, and much lower resolution technically.
    • The Greek fragments also simplified. (as if back translated from the simple Hebrew)
  • The Greek appears to be a back-translation from the Proto Hebrew translation, for a propaganda campaign by the Qumran sect, to own those previous texts for their cult.
  • Conclusion: The Qumran extremist cult converts original Greek Old Testament (Septuagint) to a much simplified Hebrew (8000words in Paleo-Hebrew, 1.6M in Ancient Greek, Hebrew is dead language by 400BCE this point). Which loses all nuance and Hellenic context found in the earlier Greek Septuagint (LXX). It contains both Greek (back-translated from Hebrew) and Hebrew (translated from the original Greek). Attempt to resurrect the dead Hebrew language for the extremist cult to co-opt and own the Greek language rabbinical work for their extremist sect. Simplification and Hebrewification towards a narrative of owning the text for the strength of the cult. The scrolls were written in Paleo-Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek. The scrolls were written on parchment, papyrus, and bronze. The scrolls were created by Jewish extremists that lived in Qumran until the Romans destroyed the settlement around 70 CE. The scrolls are also known as the Qumran Caves Scrolls. A mix of Paleo-Hebrew (for some texts like parts of Leviticus) and the square Aramaic script (proto-Masoretic and Qumran script styles).
• 200-400CE - Nag Hammadi (Sahidic Coptic)
  • The Nag Hammadi Codices were discovered in 1945.
  • Sahidic Coptic, a late form of the Egyptian language. While the texts are in Coptic, they are believed to be translations of works originally written in Greek
• 7-10th century CE - Masoretic text was written (Medieval Hebrew)
  • Using the Medieval Hebrew language that existed from the 6th to the 13th century CE, when Hebrew borrowed words from other languages.
• 1155CE - Talmud (Medieval Hebrew)
  • Using the Medieval Hebrew language that existed from the 6th to the 13th century CE, when Hebrew borrowed words from other languages.

Stylistic Linguistic Evidence

Dr DCA Hillman with 35 years Ancient Greek experience, PhD and degree in bacteriology, has the experience to "date" Ancient Greek texts that he reads "linguistically". That is, by seeing the grammar, vocabulary, and diacritical marks usage, he can place a text within a century or two.

When was it written stylistically?
(from Septuagint VS Masoretic Text - 100K Subs - Ammon Hillman Kipp Davis Mythvision - Gnostic Informant)

Dr Hillman tells us in Renaissance Portal - Jesus and the Sphinx

Strength of the language from Septuagint VS Masoretic Text - 100K Subs - Ammon Hillman Kipp Davis Mythvision - Gnostic Informant

from Christ Means What - Part 1

Example of a much more advanced form in the Greek than you do in the Hebrew, from Renaissance Portal - Theology in Flames

from Ancient Hebrew and its forgery - Faked Language and False History

from Study Notes Ammon U - 02

Julius Africanus

from Christ Means What - Part 1

• search more for Julius Africanus

Porphyry - these books, they’re not written in Hebrew

Porphyry came along and said “these books, they’re not written in Hebrew”, who’s poetry are they burning?

• from Judaism Part 3 - Sex

Gad Barnea at U of Haifa

Before 300 BC, there is no evidence for the existence of Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joshua, Moses etc. The Bible and its characters were invented after the Library of Alexandria was established. This is according to Dr. Gad Barnea at U of Haifa. His book (2024): Yahwism under the Achaemenid Empire.

There was little if any "Torah" observance taking place in Palestine until the Hasmonean Greeks spread it starting about 160 BC. This is according to the research of Dr. Yonatan Adler at Ariel University. His book (2024): The Origins of Judaism: An Archaeological-Historical Reappraisal (The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library)

Interviews with Drs. Barnea and Adler can be watched on YouTube.