A little more attention to the translation of the 3rd and 6th verses of chapter xiii. of Leviticus by the Septuagint would have prevented the former from falling into their sacrilegious errors, and would have saved the latter from wasting so much time in refuting errors which refute themselves.
Every one knows that the Septuagint Bible was the Bible that was generally read and used by Jesus Christ and the Hebrew people, in our Saviour's days. Its language was evidently the one spoken by Christ and understood by his hearers. When addressing his apostles and disciples on their duties towards the spiritual lepers to whom they were to preach the ways of salvation, Christ constantly followed the very expression of the Septuagint. It was the foundation of his doctrine and the testimonial of his divine mission to which he constantly appealed: the book which was the greatest treasure of the nation.
From the beginning to the end of the Old and the New Testament, the bodily leprosy, with which the Jewish priest had to deal, is presented as the figure of the spiritual leprosy, sin, the penalty of which our Saviour had taken upon himself, that we might be saved by his death. That spiritual leprosy was the very thing for the cleansing of which he had come to this world—for which he lived, suffered and died. Yes! the bodily leprosy with which the priests of the Jews had to deal, was the figure of the sins which Christ was to take away by shedding his blood, and with which his apostles were to deal till the end of the world.
When speaking of the duties of the Hebrew priests towards the leper, our modern translations say: (Lev. xiii. v. 6.) "They will pronounce him clean" or (v. 3d.) "They will pronounce him unclean."
But this action of the priests was expressed in a very different way by the Septuagint Bible, used by Christ and the people of his time. Instead of saying, "The priest shall pronounce the leper clean," as we read in our Bible, the Septuagint version says, "The priest shall clean (katharei,) or shall unclean (mianei,) the leper.
No one had ever been so foolish, among the Jews, as to believe that because their Bible said clean, (katharei) their priests had the miraculous and supernatural power of taking away and curing the leprosy: and we nowhere see that the Jewish priests ever had the audacity to try to persuade the people that they had ever received any supernatural and divine power to "cleanse" the leprosy, because their God through the Bible, had said of them: "They will cleanse the leper." Both priest and people were sufficiently intelligent and honest to understand and acknowledge that by that expression, if was only meant that the priests had the legal right to see if the leprosy was gone or not, they had only to look at certain marks indicated by God Himself, through Moses, to know whether, or not, God had cured the leper before he presented himself to his priest. The leper, cured by the mercy and power of God alone, before presenting himself to the priest, was only declared to be clean by that priest. Thus the priest was said, by the Bible, to "clean" the leper, or the leprosy;—and, in the opposite case, to "unclean." (Septuagint, Leviticus xiii. v. 3. 6.)
Now, let us put what God has said, through Moses, to the priests of the old law, in reference to the bodily leprosy, face to face with what God has said, through his Son Jesus, to his apostles and his whole church, in reference to the spiritual leprosy from which Christ has delivered us on the cross.
| Septuagint Bible, Levit. xiii. "And the Priest shall look on the plague, in the skin of the flesh, and when the hair in the plague is turned white, and the plague in sight be deeper than the skin of his flesh, it is a plague of leprosy: and the priest shall look on him and unclean him (mianei). "And the Priest shall look on him again the seventh day, and if the plague is somewhat dark and does not spread on the skin, the Priest shall clean him (katharei): and he shall wash his clothes and be clean," (katharos.) | New Testament, John xx., 23. "Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." |
The analogy of the diseases with which the Hebrew priests and the disciples of Christ had to deal, is striking: so the analogy of the expressions prescribing their respective duties is also striking.
When God said to the priests of the Old Law, "You shall clean the leper," and he shall be "cleaned," or, "you shall unclean the leper," and he shall be "uncleaned," He only gave the legal power to see if there were any signs or indications by which they could say that God had cured the leper before he presented himself to the priest. So, when Christ said to his apostles and his whole church, "Whose soever sins ye shall forgive, shall be forgiven unto them," He only repeated what Moses had said in an analagous case: He only gave them the authority to say when the spiritual lepers, the sinners, had reconciled themselves to God, and received their pardon from Him and Him alone, previous to their coming to the apostles.