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Septuagint Onlyism

The Bible contains few words more obvious than the phrase “there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). It always interests me to find fresh illustrations of this ancient truth. Postmodernism, for example, is rich with proofs of this truism. This week I discovered another piece of modern folly that is nothing new. It seems King James Onlyism has ancient roots, reaching back (at least) to the early first century. Many KJVOists scorn any attempt at scholarly textual criticism, claiming that the KJV is not only translated from inspired documents, but is itself an inspired translation. It is therefore unnecessary, and in fact dangerous, to go back to the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. The early church father Jerome (347–420), in his work of translating the Old Testament, encountered the same attitude in regard to the Septuagint.

[H]e soon became convinced that the only satisfactory way to translate the Old Testament was to cut loose from the Septuagint and work from the original Hebrew—the ‘Hebrew verity’, as he called it. Accordingly, he gave himself to this task and completed the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Latin in 405. This work included a further version of the Psalter, the ‘Hebrew Psalter’, a rendering direct from the original; religious conservatism, however, preferred to go on using the more familiar wording based on the Septuagint.
For this work Jerome needed to perfect his knowledge of Hebrew, and did not hesitate to rely on the help of Jewish teachers. . . . Jerome’s dependence on Jewish instructors increased the suspicion of some of his Christian critics who were put off in any case by such an innovation as a translation of the sacred writings from Hebrew (with its implied disparagement of the divinely-inspired Septuagint).

—F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (InterVarsity Press, 1988), 88–89.