-snip-
HISTORY OF THE SEPTUAGINT
In about 94 A.D. the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus put together his great work, Antiquities of the Jews, relying heavily on the Scriptures, which he drew from the Septuagint version. By this time the Apostles of Christ were writing - Gospels and Epistles. And we see that they were using the Septuagint almost exclusively - of the two hundred thirty-eight passages from the Old Testament quoted in the New Testament, only four are from the Hebrew and all the rest from the Septuagint. Even the Revelation of St. John, which does not quote the Old Testament directly, is filled with Septuagint words and phrases. Examining the Gospels and the Epistles carefully, we are met over and over by words and phrases which cannot be fully understood without referring to their earlier use in the Septuagint.
...
From the Septuagint we also gained those books sometimes called "Deuterocanonical" or "Apocrypha" which are not in the Hebrew canon, but are so valuable to the Orthodox Church in her worship - including the beautiful and inspiring "Song of the Three Children," sung so often in our services. These useful and instructive books are interspersed throughout the Septuagint, and make it quite different from the Hebrew Old Testament. To those who object, saying, "But these books are not in the Hebrew canon," we must say in return, "We are not dealing with the Hebrew canon, but with the Bible of the Church, and these have been in our Bible from the very beginning. Our Old Testament is the Septuagint."
Old Testament and the Orthodox Church