Solar Logos vs. the Biblical Logos
- Michelle Hayman
- 30 minutes ago
- 22 min read
Yesterday we explored how occult writers like Éliphas Lévi reinterpreted "Christianity", claiming that Catholic priests are heirs of the Chaldean magi and that Rome itself is the “new Thebes,” where ancient pagan mysteries live on under "Christian" names. In that view, the sacraments become magical rites and Christ Himself is reduced to a solar archetype; one more sun-god in the long line of Osiris, Mithras, and Apollo. Today we turn to examine that claim more closely by contrasting the false Solar Logos of the occult tradition with the true Christ revealed in Scripture. By drawing from Lévi, Aleister Crowley, and the Greek Septuagint, we will see how the occult counterfeit equates Jesus with the sun, while the Bible presents Him as the eternal Word who made the sun and all creation.
Occultists like Éliphas Lévi and Aleister Crowley explicitly equate Christ with a solar deity, repackaging Christian symbols as sun-worship. For example, Lévi calls Jesus the “human Sun of the Gospel" and exalts “the Christian religion” as continuing “the science of the ancient magi,” even saying the Magi’s guiding star is the “same Burning Star” and “Great Arcanum” found in every occult initiation. In Crowley’s system Christ is likewise absorbed into solar myth: his daily Liber Resh ritual adorates the sun four times a day, and he proclaims the Egyptian sun-god Horus as the “Crowned and conquering Child” ruling a new aeon. Crowley even tells initiates to “enter the ranks of the Host of the Sun” in proclaiming Horus and speaks of “recognizing the Sun as the Son (Star)". In short, occult lore portrays Christ as one more incarnation of the eternal Sun-Logos.
Scripture leaves no room for confusion: Jesus Christ is not a sun-god, not a planetary spirit, not a recycled myth from Osiris, Mithras, or Sol Invictus. He is the eternal Word, the Logos, through whom the heavens and the earth were created. The sun itself was called into being by His word and is sustained by His power. To collapse Christ into the image of the sun is to strip Him of His glory as Creator and to drag Him down among the very works of His hands. When the prophets spoke of the “Sun of righteousness,” they used the language of metaphor to describe the Messiah’s healing light, not to license the worship of a star. From beginning to end, the biblical witness presents Christ as the Lord over creation, never as a fiery body within it.
But this is precisely the perversion embraced by both the occultists and the Roman system. Lévi calls Christ the “human Sun of the Gospel,” and he does so with good reason: the ceremonies of Rome have been modeled to reflect the very solar mysteries of Egypt and Chaldea. Crowley takes the same premise and turns it into open ritual, commanding his followers to salute the sun at its rising, zenith, setting, and midnight rest, to adore Horus as the crowned and conquering child of a new aeon. And where do these ideas gain credibility? In the fact that Rome herself has draped her worship in solar imagery. The monstrance is not merely a vessel of reverence but a blazing disk that mirrors the sun itself. The halo in iconography reflects the aura of Helios. The feasts are timed with the cycles of the heavens: the Nativity fixed at the solstice, Easter tethered to the spring equinox. For Lévi, this proved that Rome is the new Thebes; for Crowley, it confirmed that the Mass itself is veiled sun adoration.
These are not innocent misunderstandings of Christian symbols. They are the fingerprints of the magi, still stamped upon the institution that claims the name of Christ while perpetuating the worship of the sun. By their forms, by their calendars, by their imagery, they testify not to the gospel but to the continuity of the very mysteries Scripture condemns. Yet against this counterfeit shines the unshakable truth: Christ is not the sun, nor a mask of Horus, nor the heir of Osiris. He is the eternal Logos who created the sun, who reigns above the cycles of nature, and who breaks the endless patterns of myth with His once-for-all act of redemption. Where Rome and the occult offer the Solar Logos, Scripture proclaims the true Logos. He is not bound to the rising and setting of a star but stands as Lord of history, the Light of the world who conquers sin and death.
Solar Rituals and the False Horus
Crowley took Lévi’s esoteric Christ and pushed the blasphemy further. For him, the worship of the true God is discarded in favor of a ritual calendar of the sun itself. His disciples are instructed to bow at dawn, salute at noon, adore at sunset, and whisper to the midnight sun: acts of devotion not to the Creator, but to the created fireball in the sky. He calls this the “discipline of Liber Resh,” the daily rhythm of acknowledging the sun’s power. And at the heart of his system is not Christ crucified and risen, but Horus, the crowned and conquering child, the supposed deity of a “new aeon.” In Crowley’s scheme, Horus is the solar child, the archetype of perpetual cycles, the one to whom the faithful must pay homage as the incarnation of light and strength.
Here, the counterfeit is exposed. The gospel proclaims Christ as the Light of the world, but not as the rising and setting of a star. His light is uncreated and eternal, not a passing glow that fades at dusk. The adoration of the sun is precisely the idolatry condemned by the prophets, who warned Israel never to bow to the host of heaven. Yet Crowley dares to make this idolatry a spiritual discipline, replacing prayer to the living God with ritual to a dying star. In the end, it is not a new aeon that Crowley offers, but the oldest lie of all: the worship of creation in place of the Creator. Christ is not Horus, nor is His kingdom an endless solar cycle. He is the Lord of history, the breaker of cycles, the one whose resurrection shattered the reign of death. To confuse Him with the daily rising of the sun is not just error; it is a deliberate counterfeit meant to drag men back into bondage under the elemental powers of the world.
Symbols Reinterpreted
If Lévi is right that Rome is the new Thebes, then her symbols betray it most clearly. The monstrance, with the host encircled by golden rays, is not a neutral vessel of devotion but a crafted talisman in the very shape of the solar disk. It is lifted up, adored, and paraded in precisely the manner of ancient sun-rites, an object that fuses the bread of the Mass with the blazing image of the sun-god. The halo, likewise, is no mere artistic flourish. It is the crown of radiance taken straight from pagan iconography, a solar aura transferred from depictions of Helios and Apollo to the saints of the Church. And the timing of the feasts is no accident: Christmas fixed at the solstice, Easter tied to the spring equinox, all in keeping with the cycle of the heavens rather than the pattern of Scripture.
This is why Lévi could speak of Christ as the “human Sun of the Gospel” and why Crowley could salute the Catholic liturgy as a continuation of solar mysteries. Their claims ring true because Rome has adopted the very forms of the cult they themselves glorify. What is presented as Christianity is in fact the reanimation of Chaldean and Egyptian rites under new names. The bread becomes the disk of the sun. The star of Bethlehem becomes the magician’s pentagram. The Church calendar marches to the rhythm of the heavens.
But none of this is the faith once delivered to the saints. It is the Solar Logos disguised in Christian robes, the same idolatry that Scripture condemns. The true Christ is not contained in a sun disk, nor bound to the rising and setting of the sun. He is the eternal Word who created the sun, who reigns above every power of heaven and earth.
The Magi and the Star
When the Gospels record the visit of the Magi, they describe a miraculous sign from heaven leading Gentiles to worship the true King. But in the hands of Lévi, and in the practice of Rome, this event is recast as a testimony to the continuity of magical wisdom. Lévi insists that the Magi were not worshippers bowing to revelation, but initiates of the ancient order of Chaldean priests, recognizing in Christ the fulfillment of their own solar mysteries. The star that guided them is said to be the same Burning Star of initiation, the pentagram of the magi, a symbol of esoteric wisdom rather than an act of divine providence.
Rome has taken this image and enshrined it in its own practice.
The Magi are exalted in Catholic tradition as kings and sages, crowned and robed, carrying gifts like initiates approaching a hierophant. Their star is celebrated not simply as a miracle but as a cosmic sign folded into Rome’s liturgical cycle. In this way the Church aligns herself, not against the magi of old, but as their heir; heirs to the very Chaldean mysteries the prophets denounced.
Yet the Scriptures themselves, as preserved in the Septuagint which the apostles used, speak differently from the later Latin Vulgate. Luke records the shepherds visiting the newborn on the night of His birth, describing Him as a βρέφος (brephos), an infant lying in a manger. Matthew, however, recounts a separate and later event: the visit of the Magi. Here the Greek text consistently uses the word παιδίον (paidion), meaning “young child,” not brephos. Matthew 2:11 is explicit: καὶ εἰσελθόντες εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν εἶδον τὸ παιδίον μετὰ Μαρίας τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ — “and entering the house they saw the child with Mary His mother.” The setting is no longer a stable but a house, and the time is long enough after the birth that Herod, calculating from the star’s first appearance, orders the slaughter of all boys two years old and under. This distinction is vital. The apostolic Scriptures testify that the shepherds and the Magi did not come together, but at different times: first the shepherds to the manger on the night of His birth, then later the Magi to the house where the child was with His mother. Rome has fused what Scripture keeps separate, collapsing the shepherds at the manger and the Magi at the house into one dramatic scene. In its pageantry, the Magi are no longer foreign Gentiles drawn by revelation to worship the incarnate Logos, but crowned kings and sages of secret wisdom, kneeling beside shepherds at a crib.
Why It Matters
If Christ is only the Solar Logos, then He is nothing more than one mask among many in the endless cycle of myth; a name that hides the same powers worshipped in Egypt, Babylon, and Rome. This is exactly what Lévi and Crowley preach, and it is exactly what the rituals of Rome embody: a Christ who rises and sets with the sun, who is adored in the form of a blazing disk, who is celebrated on the turning points of the heavens. If this is Christianity, then it is no different from the mystery cults of old.
But the Christ of Scripture shatters these illusions. He is not one more iteration of the solar god. He is the eternal Word who called the stars into existence, who entered time once for all in the Incarnation. The counterfeit reduces Him to symbol; the truth proclaims Him as Lord. The counterfeit offers endless cycles; the truth proclaims a final consummation. The counterfeit bows to the sun; the truth bows to the Son.
This matters because souls are at stake. To mistake the sun for the Son is to trade eternal light for a dying star. To bow to a talisman in a gilded monstrance is to miss the living Christ who reigns at the right hand of the Father. The occult counterfeit, carried forward under Rome’s banners, blinds men with dazzling imagery while hiding the gospel that saves.
The Patristic Witness
The earliest defenders of the faith knew well the danger of confusing Christ with the sun. They lived in a world saturated with solar cults; from Sol Invictus in Rome to Helios in Greece; and they rejected every attempt to collapse the Son of God into the image of a blazing star. Athanasius, in his defense of the Incarnation, insists that Christ is the eternal Word by whom all things were made, not a creature within the heavens. Augustine ridiculed the notion that Christians were worshippers of the sun, exposing the emptiness of identifying Christ with Sol Invictus. These men saw clearly what is at stake: if Christ is merely the sun, He is not the Savior.
And Scripture itself, especially as preserved in the Septuagint, testifies the same. In the Psalms it is written: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and all their power by the spirit of His mouth” (Psalm 33:6 LXX). Here the Logos of God is not the heavens, not the sun, but the One who made them. Again in Wisdom of Solomon we read: “For from the greatness and beauty of created things their original author is seen” (Wisdom 13:5 LXX). The sun is beautiful, but it is not God; it points to its Maker. Malachi, as rendered in the Greek, speaks of the coming Messiah as the “Sun of righteousness” rising with healing, but always as metaphor, pointing beyond creation to the Lord Himself. To rip this phrase from context and make Christ into the sun itself is to miss the very point: the true Messiah is greater than creation.
Yet Rome has not only blurred that line but crossed it entirely. Even pope Francis, before he went to meet his true Maker, denied that God could act as Scripture reveals. In his infamous address on creation, he scoffed at the idea of God being a “magician with a magic wand,” and instead merged the act of creation with the Big Bang and evolutionary processes. Here is the irony: while claiming to defend Christian faith against “simplistic” views, he undermined the very testimony of the Word; the same Word by whom “the heavens were established” and “all things were made.” To insist that God cannot create directly, to subordinate His power to human theories of cosmic origins, is not humility but unbelief. It is to deny that the Logos is Creator and to recast Him as a principle buried within nature itself.
And this exposes the deeper problem. The popes claim to stand in Christ’s place on earth, to represent Him as His vicar, yet by their words and deeds they consistently misrepresent Him. How can a man who denies God’s creative act speak in the name of the Logos who created? To set up a man as Christ’s “voice” on earth is to repeat the ancient lie of Babylon; priests who claim the authority of heaven while leading souls into the worship of creation.
Thus from Lévi’s solar Christ, to Crowley’s ritual adoration of the sun, to Francis’ Big Bang theology, the trajectory is the same: men turning away from the testimony of Scripture and bowing instead to the created order. But the Septuagint speaks with clarity — the Word of the Lord is not the cosmos but its Maker, not the sun but the Lord of the sun, not a force hidden in natural processes but the eternal Logos who brings all things into being by His will.
The fathers stood on this biblical foundation. They knew that the language of light and radiance belonged to Christ not because He was the star of the heavens but because He was the eternal radiance of the Father. Against the pagan cults they drew a sharp line: the true Church bows not to the creature but to the Creator. Yet in Rome’s later adoption of solar imagery; monstrances shaped like suns, halos gleaming like solar crowns, feasts fixed to solstices; the very boundary the fathers defended was blurred. And this blurring is what allowed Lévi and Crowley to proclaim openly what the fathers had warned against: that Rome has become the new temple of the sun, perpetuating the same mysteries under Christian names.
The testimony of the Septuagint and the fathers together declares otherwise: Christ is not a cosmic symbol, not the Solar Logos, but the eternal Logos. He is the Word who brought forth the sun, the Wisdom by whom all creation was ordered, the Light that no darkness; and no counterfeit; can overcome.
It is my conviction that what occultists call the “Great Work” is not a harmless mystical ideal but an agenda. That is why the pyramid on the back of the U.S. dollar bill remains unfinished. The Novus Ordo Seclorum, drawn directly from Virgil’s Eclogue IV, proclaims the dawning of a “new order of the ages” and a new race from heaven. It is the same old promise of empire reborn under their antichrist; the restoration of Babel in a modern guise. The political maneuverings of nations, the propaganda of global powers, and the theological compromises of Rome all serve this trajectory. The pyramid’s missing capstone is not an accident: it represents the work they believe must be finished ; the enthronement of their false Christ, the Solar Logos, as ruler of the age.
Even America, long hailed as a “Christian nation,” is written over with this same symbolism. The U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. was consciously modeled after the Pantheon in Rome, the temple of all gods. Like the Pantheon, it is crowned with a massive dome, a structure that has always symbolized the heavens in pagan architecture. The Pantheon’s oculus; the great eye in its ceiling; lets the light of the sun trace its path inside, turning the temple into a calendar of the heavens. The Capitol mirrors this, its rotunda functioning as a symbolic cosmic eye beneath which the republic’s laws are made. And above, painted into the dome itself, is the Apotheosis of Washington, a fresco depicting America’s first president ascending into divinity, surrounded by Roman gods. The message is unmistakable: just as emperors were deified beneath the dome of the Pantheon, so too does America crown its civic temple with the exaltation of man as god. The Capitol dome, like the unfinished pyramid, is not neutral architecture; it is a monument to the Great Work, the blending of nations under a single order built on the mysteries of Babylon and Rome.
Everywhere we look, the fingerprints of this agenda appear. Easter is fixed to the equinox so that the sun always rises in Aries, the ram once worshiped as Baal Hammon. The “perpetual sacrifice” of the Mass revives Babylonian ritual, as even Lévi admitted when he praised it as the “most prodigious of evocations.” Sunday is enthroned in place of the Sabbath, despite the Septuagint declaring with clarity, “There remains therefore a sabbath-keeping for the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9 LXX). The so-called Queen of Heaven is adored under Marian titles, even though Jeremiah in the Septuagint condemned offerings to the βασίλισσα τοῦ οὐρανοῦ as rebellion against the Lord. These are not accidents of history but deliberate choices, aligning the worship of millions with the same solar mysteries that Crowley adored and Lévi traced back to the Chaldean magi.
The Great Work seeks to enthrone a counterfeit, to bring the nations under a false dawn. The unfinished pyramid waits for its capstone, the Capitol dome mirrors the Pantheon with its apotheosis of man, Rome’s altars repeat Babylon’s sacrifices, and the world readies itself for the man of sin. Yet the Septuagint and the apostolic witness proclaim the unshakable truth: the true Light has already come into the world, the Logos by whom the heavens were made, the Lord who shattered death and darkness by His cross and resurrection.
It is not the Solar Logos who will finish history, but the eternal Logos, the Alpha and the Omega. The pyramid will never be crowned by man’s antichrist, for the kingdom belongs to Christ alone.
Daily Ritual Timings: Crowley, Church, and the True Logos
Crowley’s Liber Resh, or The Book of the Sun, lays it bare: his adherents perform four daily adorations of the sun at dawn, noon, sunset, and midnight. In his own words:
“Let him greet the Sun at dawn, facing East… ‘Hail unto Thee who art Ra in Thy rising…’”“Also at Noon, let him greet the Sun, facing South… ‘Hail unto Thee who art Ahathoor in Thy triumphing…’”“Also, at Sunset… ‘Hail unto Thee who art Tum in Thy setting…’”“Lastly, at Midnight… ‘Hail unto thee who art Khephra in Thy hiding…’”
Crowley is intentionally binding spiritual devotion to the solar cycle; worshipping Ra, Hathor, Atum, and Khepri at each station, training the initiate to align daily with those forces.
Lévi sees precisely this pattern in the Church’s own rhythms. He portrays Catholic priests as heirs to Chaldean magi, wearing scapulars and offering Mass as “a more invincible talisman” that “evokes the living God” far more securely than the pentacles of old magic; declaring Rome itself “the great Thebes of the new initiation.” In his razor-sharp phrasing:
“The Mass is the most prodigious of evocations… Rome is the great Thebes of the new initiation… for talismen, its rosaries and medallions… for magnetic fires, its convents… it has, lastly, its Pope, the Man‑God rendered visible.”
Compare this with Catholic practice: the Church’s daily offices; Matins at dawn, Sext at noon, Vespers at sunset, Compline at night; mirror Crowley’s four solar stations. The monstrance elevates a golden disk in adoration at Mass; the halo crowns saints with shining aureoles; Christmas is fixed at the winter solstice and Easter calculated by solar-lunar cycles. If Crowley’s ritual of the sun is overt, Catholic worship is covert—but equivalent in its solar structure.
Crowley builds a religion around sun worship, invoking Egyptian deities at each cardinal point of day and night. Lévi claims that Catholic ritual already is continuation of that solar cult in disguise. And what do we see in Church practice? Prayer hours aligned to solar positions, symbols of light that mimic solar disks, feasts timed by solstice and equinox; clearly mirroring the occult pattern.
But the Word of God stands opposed to this pattern. Christ is not a solar figure but the Logos by whom the “heavens were established.” He is not embedded in a cycle but inaugurates history. Satan may cloak the sun in spiritual language; Rome may wrap solar cult in Christian form. But Scripture; and especially as echoed in the Septuagint; unmasks the deception: the true Lord is not of the cosmos; He is above it.
The Apostles’ Bible vs. Rome’s Bible: Septuagint or Vulgate?
Most Christians assume the Bible is a fixed text, but the reality is more complicated. The Old Testament comes down to us in two very different streams: the Greek Septuagint (LXX), translated in the centuries before Christ, and the Latin Vulgate, produced by Jerome in the 4th century AD. Which you follow changes how you read Scripture; and more importantly, how you understand Christ Himself.
The Septuagint was the Bible of the apostles. Jesus and the New Testament writers lived in a Greek-speaking world, and when they quoted “Scripture,” they overwhelmingly used the Greek text. Paul’s sermon in Acts 13, Stephen’s speech in Acts 7, and the author of Hebrews all cite the Septuagint word-for-word. Jerome, however, abandoned the Septuagint for what he called the Hebraica veritas (“the Hebrew truth”), creating a Latin Bible aligned with the later Masoretic text. This Latin Vulgate was then exalted by Rome as the “official” Bible, shaping Catholic theology and devotion for centuries.
But here’s the problem: the two don’t say the same thing.
Creation and Fall
Genesis 2:2
Septuagint: “On the sixth day God finished His work, and He rested on the seventh.”
Vulgate: “On the seventh day God finished His work, and He rested on the seventh.”
The Septuagint avoids the idea that God “worked” on the Sabbath. The Vulgate makes it sound as though He finished creating on the very day He rested.
Genesis 3:15
Septuagint: “He shall crush your head, and you shall crush his heel.”
Vulgate: “She shall crush your head, and you shall lie in wait for her heel.”
The Septuagint points directly to Christ, the male seed who destroys the serpent. The Vulgate changes the pronoun to “she,” birthing centuries of Marian devotion and iconography in which Mary is pictured crushing the serpent; a doctrine foreign to the apostles.
Genesis 5–11 (genealogies)The Septuagint adds an extra patriarch (Cainan, also found in Luke 3:36) and lengthens ages by hundreds of years. The Vulgate omits Cainan and shortens the timeline. This alters biblical chronology dramatically.
Genesis 46:27
Septuagint: 75 people went down into Egypt.
Vulgate: 70 people.
When Stephen retells the story in Acts 7:14, he sides with the Septuagint: “Joseph sent and summoned Jacob his father and all his kindred, seventy-five persons in all.” The apostles clearly used the Greek number, not Jerome’s Latin revision.
Genesis 49:10
Septuagint: “Until there come the things laid up for him, and he is the expectation of nations.”
Vulgate: “Until he comes who is to be sent, the expectation of nations.”
The LXX envisions a messianic figure bringing hidden promises to light; the Vulgate narrows it to a generic “one who is sent.” The nuance shifts messianic expectation.
Exodus 12:40
Septuagint: “The sojourning of the children of Israel, which they sojourned in Egypt and in Canaan, was four hundred and thirty years.”
Vulgate: “… which they dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years.”
Paul in Galatians 3:17 calculates Israel’s 430 years from Abraham to Sinai; which matches the Septuagint’s inclusion of Canaan, not the Vulgate’s restriction to Egypt.
Exodus 34:29
Septuagint: “The appearance of the skin of his face was glorified.”
Vulgate: “The skin of his face was horned (cornuta).”
This mistranslation led to Michelangelo’s statue of Moses with literal horns.
Leviticus 16:8
Septuagint: One lot for the Lord, the other for Azazel (a mysterious figure, often linked to demonic powers).
Vulgate: One lot for the Lord, the other for the “scapegoat.”
The Septuagint preserves the mystery; the Vulgate erases it and invents the “scapegoat,” shaping centuries of Western theology and even our language.
Joshua 15:59
Septuagint: Lists extra cities in Judah, including Bethlehem.
Vulgate: Omits them.
By erasing Bethlehem from Judah’s inheritance, the Vulgate severs an important link between Joshua’s conquest and Christ’s birth.
Joshua 21:36–37
Septuagint: Lists four Levitical cities in Benjamin.
Vulgate: Omits them.
The LXX preserves detail; the Vulgate streamlines.
One of the clearest examples of how Rome built doctrine on the Vulgate rather than on the Scriptures of the apostles is found in Daniel 8:12. In the Septuagint we read: “And sin was committed against the sacrifice, and truth was cast down to the ground, and he acted and prospered.” (Dan. 8:12 LXX). The focus is corruption — lawlessness rising up against God’s worship, trampling truth, and prospering for a time. It says nothing about a continual offering, only that sin polluted what was holy.
But in the Latin Vulgate the wording shifts dramatically: “And strength was given against the perpetual sacrifice because of sins: and truth shall be cast down to the ground, and he shall act and prosper.” Here the phrase “perpetual sacrifice” (iuge sacrificium) appears; a phrase entirely absent from the Septuagint. This tiny change opened the way for Rome to claim that Daniel prophesied the Eucharistic Mass as a “perpetual sacrifice,” something offered daily upon the altars of the Church. In the Greek Scriptures, Daniel condemns rebellion against God’s worship; in the Latin Bible, Rome finds justification for repeating the sacrifice of Christ in perpetuity.
The difference is not trivial. The apostles’ Bible, the Septuagint, gives no room for the idea of an ongoing sacrifice. Hebrews 10:14 insists, “By one offering He has perfected forever those who are sanctified.” Christ’s sacrifice is complete, final, and never to be repeated. The Vulgate’s innovation in Daniel 8:12 created the illusion of biblical support for the Mass; a ritual that places Christ back on the altar day after day. In truth, this doctrine rests not on the Word of God, but on a mistranslation that served Rome’s purposes.
The Scriptures themselves, in the language the apostles used, bear witness otherwise: sin polluted the sacrifice, truth was trampled, and the horn prospered; but Christ, the eternal Logos, came once for all to bring the true sacrifice to completion. Anything else is a counterfeit built on the shaky foundation of Rome’s Latin text.
Why This Matters
Over and over, the pattern is clear:
The Septuagint is the Bible of the apostles. Its language shows up in the New Testament, its chronology aligns with apostolic teaching, its prophecies point directly to Christ.
The Vulgate, however, often shifts meaning in ways that support Roman theology: Marian devotion (“she shall crush”), perpetual sacrifice (Daniel 8:12 in Latin), Sunday over Sabbath (Jerome minimizes sabbatismos in Hebrews 4:9), and ritual innovations.
By elevating the Vulgate above the Septuagint, Rome cut the Church off from the very Scriptures the apostles used. They replaced the testimony of the inspired Greek with a Latin text tailored to their theology.
The Apostolic Worldview the Vulgate Erased
Genesis 6:2 — The Angelic Rebellion
The Septuagint records: “The angels of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.” This is not vague poetry. It is a supernatural event: angels transgressing their proper estate and corrupting humanity, a sin that provoked the flood. Jude explicitly references this when he speaks of “angels who did not keep their own estate but left their habitation” (Jude 6), and Peter echoes it: “God spared not the angels who sinned, but cast them down to chains of darkness” (2 Pet 2:4). The apostles are clearly drawing from the Septuagint’s “angels of God.”
But the Vulgate weakens it: “The sons of God saw the daughters of men …” No angels, no rebellion, no cosmic corruption; just an ambiguous human genealogy. The flood becomes a tale of human lust, not a judgment on supernatural transgression. In one stroke, the Vulgate cuts the connection between Genesis and the New Testament’s warnings about fallen angels.
Deuteronomy 32:8 — Nations Under Angels or Under Israel?
The Septuagint reads: “When the Most High divided the nations, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the nations according to the number of the angels of God.” This text reveals a cosmic worldview: the nations of the earth were allotted under angelic rulers, heavenly beings who governed them. Israel was the Lord’s portion alone. This matches Paul’s teaching that we wrestle “not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world” (Eph 6:12).
The Vulgate, however, replaces this with: “… according to the number of the children of Israel.” The supernatural council is gone. The passage is reduced to a census. Once again, the cosmic drama collapses into human politics.
Psalm 82:1 — Gods or Judges?
The Septuagint proclaims: “God stood in the assembly of gods; in the midst He judges gods.” This is the divine council, God presiding over heavenly beings who rule the nations. These are the same “gods” condemned for injustice in the verses that follow, the same rebellious powers Christ came to overthrow. This explains Jesus’ words in John 10:34: “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods’?”
The Vulgate reduces it to: “God stood in the congregation of judges; in the midst He judges the judges.” The gods are no longer heavenly rulers but mere human magistrates. The supernatural stage of Scripture is shut down, replaced with a courtroom scene.
Why does it matter that the Septuagint speaks of angels while the Vulgate reduces them to “sons of God” or “judges” or “children of Israel”? Because if the Septuagint preserves the truth, then Rome has not erased these beings from Scripture at all; it has simply rebranded them. The “angels of God” who rebelled in Genesis 6, the heavenly rulers who were allotted the nations in Deuteronomy 32, the “gods” condemned in Psalm 82 ; all of these vanished in the Latin Bible, only to reappear in Roman devotion as saints. The divine council of the nations was flattened into a roll call of holy patrons, each given a city, a trade, or a feast day, precisely as the pagan gods once were. What Scripture presents as fallen powers to be judged by Christ, Rome venerates as intercessors to be prayed to. The very rebels against the God of the Bible, whom the apostles warned about and Christ came to overthrow, are now invoked at Roman altars as mediators between God and man. In this way, the Vulgate’s flattening of the supernatural prepared the soil for a church that honors as saints the very powers Scripture exposes as corrupt and condemned.
Why Rome Erased the Supernatural
These three passages expose a pattern. The Septuagint presents the world as the apostles knew it: nations under angelic rulers, fallen angels corrupting mankind, gods condemned by the Most High. Against this backdrop, the Logos appears in history to triumph over the rulers and authorities, to reclaim the nations, to bind the rebellious angels in chains. The gospel is cosmic; Christ is not just a moral teacher but the King of kings who shatters both earthly and heavenly tyrannies.
But Rome could not tolerate such a text. A cosmos filled with angelic rulers left no room for a pope to claim universal dominion. A story of angels rebelling and nations under their sway made priestly mediators and Marian queens irrelevant. So Jerome’s Vulgate blunted the text: angels became “sons,” gods became “judges,” the council of heaven became the “children of Israel.” Rome enthroned this Latin Bible, and for over a millennium the Church in the West was locked into a neutered Scripture.
The True Apostolic Witness
The Septuagint remains, bearing the witness the apostles proclaimed. It preserves the supernatural worldview of the early church: angels fallen, nations allotted to heavenly powers, the Most High ruling over them all. And it points us to the Logos, who has now triumphed over every power of darkness.
To return to the Septuagint is to return to the Bible of the apostles. To remain with the Vulgate is to sit under a text designed to support Rome’s counterfeit gospel.
The choice is stark: either the true Light who conquers gods and angels of rebellion, or the false Solar Logos enthroned by Rome.
Happy Sabbath this evening at sunset.
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