Divine Updating

I read more of D. Bathelemy today. The article I read was about the use of the Septuagint in the Christian church. Some Christians wanted to go with the Hebrew text, whereas others held that the Septuagint was divinely-inspired.

I’m not sure if I understood all of Barthelemy’s article, since it’s in French. But what I thought it was saying was this: the pro-Septuagint Christians believed that God as an author wasn’t limited to the Hebrew text, and so God could have communicated new insights through the Septuagint. We see that sort of belief (that a highly-regarded text could be updated) within the Bible, for Chronicles was written to update I-II Kings. What’s important is not what Moses himself wrote down, for the author of the Torah is not Moses, but God. And God is not bound to the pen of Moses. God could have updated the text whenever he wished—through a Greek translation of the Pentateuch that was also interpretive, in places.

Then there’s the rabbinic midrash in which Moses goes forward in time to the life of Rabbi Akiba, who was expounding the Torah that Moses received on Sinai. Yet, Moses doesn’t understand what Akiba is talking about. In this case, God isn’t updating the Pentateuch, at least not explicitly. Rather, Akiba is uncovering meaning from the Torah of which Moses is unaware. The updating is occurring under the guise of interpretation.