Early Church Fathers Quotes about the Septuagint

Justin Martyr

My friends, I now refer to the Scriptures as the Seventy have interpreted them; for when I quoted them formerly as you possess them, I made proof of you [to ascertain] how you were disposed. For, mentioning the Scripture which says, ‘Woe unto them! for they have devised evil counsel against themselves, saying (as the Seventy have translated, I continued): ‘Let us take away the righteous, for he is distasteful to us;’

Irenaeus

Daniel the prophet, when Cyrus king of the Persians said to him, “Why do you not worship Bel?” did proclaim, saying, “Because I do not worship idols made with hands, but the living God, who established the heaven and the earth and has dominion over all flesh.”

Tertullian

For of this tree likewise it is that God hints, through Jeremiah, that you would say, “Come, let us put wood into his bread, and let us wear him away out of the land of the living; and his name shall no more be remembered.” (Jer. 11:19) Of course on His body that “wood” was put; for so Christ has revealed, calling His body “bread,” whose body the prophet in bygone days announced under the term “bread.”

For in the times of the Maccabees, too, they did bravely in fighting on the Sabbaths, and routed their foreign foes, and recalled the law of their fathers to the primitive style of life by fighting on the Sabbaths.

Who is this but Christ? “Come, say they, let us take away the righteous, because He is not for our turn, (and He is clean contrary to our doings).” (Wisdom 2:12) Premising, therefore, and likewise subjoining the fact that Christ suffered, He foretold that His just ones should suffer equally with Him – both the apostles and all the faithful in succession.

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