The OT?

Moshe Shulman mshulman at ix.netcom.com
Sun Aug 25 11:26:04 EDT 2002


At 12:24 PM 8/24/02 -0400, you wrote:
>Ms. Fried says: "The first thing I do with my students is to teach
>them the difference between the OT and the HB.
>I tell them the OT is the LXX!
>(Not one of them has ever argued with me about it!) :)"
>The way you define the Old Testament is close to true (but not quite) for
>Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians, but is definitely not
>true for Protestant Christians. The LXX includes the Apocrypha, which
>Protestants reject from being part of their Old Testament.  Moreover,
>virtually all modern translations of the Old Testament by Christians of
>whatever stripe are based first and foremost on the Masoretic Text of the
>Hebrew Bible, not the LXX.  Though the latter is regularly utilized for
>text-critical purposes, the Hebrew Bible is the main text.


I am not sure that Liz meant that seriously. (I sort of doubt it.) However 
the issue of what terms to use in discussion is important. It is like the 
BCE/BC discussion. I think her point was that in a University setting, 
where 'scholarship' is supposed to be going on using OT, when refering to 
the Hebrew text,is not accurate. Words like Tenach/OT have more of a 
religious context, and are non-neutral. On the other hand when in a Jewish 
context to refer to the 'OT' is not just insulting, but in a sense 
meaningless.

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