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  • From: Raymond Regalado <fwgk5942 AT mb.infoweb.ne.jp>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] A question on the Hebrew text
  • Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 19:46:18 +0900

On 2004.10.25, at 06:27 PM, Peter Kirk wrote:

On 25/10/2004 08:51, Yigal Levin wrote:

Hi Raymond,

The first thing you must realize, is that most Jews and Israelis, just like
most Christians who are not professional Bible scholars, are not really
aware that there are differences between different versions of the MT, and
so to most, a Bible is a Bible, and if they even notice slight variations in
spelling or in cantilation marks between different prints, they don't give
them much thought. However unlike Christians, for whom Bible translaions
from the Greek onward are part of tradition, for Jews, the ONLY text that
"counts" is the MT.


Not too much of the "unlike Christians", please. For most Protestant Christians who know anything about such matters, the only authoritative text of the Hebrew Bible is the "original Hebrew", not any translation. And although they recognise that the precise "original Hebrew" is not available, in practice most would consider the MT to be the closest that we can get to it, although they might allow emendation where ancient translations show a clear error in the MT.

Of course in practice nearly all Christians use translations because they don't know Hebrew well enough. But all Protestant translations from the 16th century onwards (and the more recent Catholic translations) are based on the MT, with more or less emendation of apparent errors based on LXX and other ancient translations.


Thanks all, for the responses, both on and off-list. I do recall reading somewhere that for Greek Orthodox Christians, "the" Bible is the Septuagint (with Apocrypha) and the Byzantine Greek texts of the New Testament. In other words, Greek Orthodox Christians do not use the MT. Am I correct on this one? Pardon me if this is off-topic.

Thanks,

Raymond Regalado
Tokyo, Japan





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