Findings from the Text

Early church writers only knew Psalm 22:1 in Greek translation (the Septuagint), never in Hebrew. This tells us Christians used an exclusively Greek Old Testament for centuries, completely separate from the Hebrew Bible preserved by Jews.

The Dead Sea Scrolls prove that the original Hebrew spoke of a 'scepter' arising from Israel, not a 'man' as the ancient Greek translation says—the Greek translators were interpreting, not translating a different text.

Hebrew uses a military marching word for the star, but Greek uses the normal astronomical term for a star rising. The translators made the image more conventional and less poetic.

Every early Christian writer who quoted the Shema used the Greek translation, never the Hebrew original, even though some knew Hebrew. This tells us the Greek Old Testament became Christianity's Bible very early, shaping how Christians understood and argued about God's oneness and the Trinity.

The Hebrew describes a king who has been saved by God, while the Greek makes him the one who saves others. This completely reverses whether the king receives salvation or gives it.

The Hebrew word means 'young woman' while the Greek says 'virgin.' The translator chose a more specific Greek word that emphasized something supernatural about the birth, even though the Hebrew is less explicit about this detail.

Hebrew presents God as 'I will be' emphasizing future action and presence with the people. Greek shifts to 'the Being' or 'the Existent One,' making God sound more like an eternal philosophical principle than a covenant partner who acts in history.

The Dead Sea Scrolls prove that the traditional Hebrew Bible's controversial reading of Isaiah 7:14 ('young woman' and feminine verb form) is not a later corruption but reflects the original Hebrew text from at least 125 BCE, predating any Christian interpretation and confirming this was the authentic ancient reading.

Unlike the prophetic books, which show significant variation in their Dead Sea Scrolls copies, Genesis was already remarkably uniform by 200 BCE, with most differences involving spelling modernization and genealogical numbers rather than narrative content. This suggests the Pentateuch was treated as authoritative Scripture earlier than other biblical books, leading scribes to copy it more conservatively.

The Hebrew describes something happening now or very soon ('is pregnant and bearing'), while the Greek puts it in the future tense ('will conceive and will bear'). This makes the prophecy sound more distant and predictive in Greek than in Hebrew.

Ancient Greek translators always replaced God's personal name with the title 'Lord,' following Jewish tradition of not speaking the sacred name aloud.