Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Bryan Rocine" <brocine AT earthlink.net>]

Dear Don and Peter,

There are three issues involved in the decision to reject
Don's additional posting of this unknown person's e-mail
(BTW, the rejected post is shown below following my
comments).  One is that the person's post contains ad
hominem, faith-based arguements, which our charter forbids.
Second, the person is an unnamed writer of an e-mail.  If we
start passing on a broad spectrum of third party e-mail
comments by unnamed sources, the list will become more of a
litter basket than a "scholarly" discussion.  Thirdly, the
staff had a chance to reject the second post (and did so).
Typically, even inappropriate posts will be forwarded to the
list automatically by Lyris, the list's host (the list is
not totally moderated).  However, a member's first two posts
are sent to the b-hebrew staff for approval.  This mechanism
exists to insure that new contributors understand the
mission of the list and post appropriately (at least the
first two times  ;-)   ).  Lyris interprets an "old" member
who changes his e-mail address as a new member and
consequently sends the first two postings to the staff for
approval.  The point is that the staff saw an inappropriate
post, so that it did not pass the post along.  The truth is,
the *first* post quoting this unnamed person should probably
not have been approved either.  Sorry, that's my fault.

Shalom,
Bryan Rocine
b-hebrew staff

-----quote of previously rejected post--------

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From: "Don Elbourne" <elbourne AT earthlink.net>
To: "Biblical Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: RE: Textual Criticism - Part 2
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 22:27:04 -0500
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Here is the second installment of the previous posting.
Reactions are
welcome and I will pass along any pertinent comments to the
author.

<snip>
Dear Brothers and Sisters, concerning Old Testament Textual
History and
Criticism, let me say this, I don't mind presenting these
points from the
Jewish point of view, but I must say that they might tend to
cause hard
feelings among some, and this is not my intention.  So,
first let me make
the following points:

1. I believe in the Divine Inspiration and the Divine
Preservation of the
Ancient Scriptures in their original Languages and first
Autographs or
Manuscripts.  That is, the ancient Hebrew Old Testament and
the Common Greek
New Testament.

2. I do not believe in the inspiration of any translation,
nor copy other
than the original Scriptures, but I do believe in the Divine
Preservation of
the Original Scriptures in different copies and translations
when they were
done by God's people, but not by the forces of Antichrist.

3. The Reason I hold to the King James New Testament is
because of the
underlying Greek Texts used to produce it, they are the
Antiochian Texts.
These are the Greek texts gathered and preserved by the
great Gentile Church
mentioned in Acts 13. These Texts are known today as the
Textus Receptus.
The Majority or Byzantine Texts are also very close to the
Textus Receptus.
I have them both and have only compared them from the Book
of Revelation. I
have found few differences and these are not such as would
cause any
doctrinal differences to my knowledge.

4. Concerning the King James Old Testament or any Old
Testament based on any
version of the Masoratic Text, let me say that the Penteucah
and the
Historical
Books, these parts have not been changed much from the
ancient Hebrew Texts.
The issues governing the Masoratic Text and its differences
from the older
Old
Testament Texts have to do with the Prophetical Scriptures,
and those
Prophetical Scriptures which are Christological. When I
study the Old
Testament
in a detail way I use both the Antiochian or Pre Christ LXX,
never the post
Christ or Alexandrine LXX, and also the Masoratic Text.  If
there are
differences I usually let the New Testament settle the issue
for me if it
will.
If this is not possible, then I like to refer to Dr. Gill
and his historical
theology and textual critical remarks.  I do favor strongly
the ancient
Jewish
writers and their commentaries up to a point, and that is, I
leave them when
they try to under mine the Messiahship of Jesus Christ.  I
suppose that if I
had
to choose between the LXX and the Masoratic Text, I could
not rightly do so
on
the large scale, but would lean toward the LXX on the
Prophecies and the
Masoratic Text on the Law and the Historical portions of the
Scriptures.
The
reason for this is because most of the Christological
prophecies from the
Old
Testament are found in the New Testament.  Most of them are
taken from the
Antiochian LXX and never any from the later Masoratic Text
or still later
Alexandrine LXX as neither of these did exist when the New
Testament was
written.

5. In early Christianity the main battle was over Textual
Criticism.  The
wars
between the Jews and the Christians was over which Old
Testament to use.
Later,
as the Jewish writers began to loose out, they developed a
different Greek
Old
Testament, the Alexandrine LXX for the Jews of the Dispersa,
and then for
those
more elite Jews, those who could read modern Hebrew
(considered at that
time)
they developed the Masoratic Text.  The post Christ Jews
hated the pre
Christ
LXX, the Antiochian LXX, so badly that they tried to corrupt
it and ban it
from
all the Jewish families in and around Palestine.  In time a
Roman Emperor
passed
a Law requiring the Jews to teach Greek and use Greek and
the Greek Old
Testament.  The Jews had become so anti Hellenistic because
of the
Antiochian
LXX that they started forbidding all their people from
reading the Greek Old
Testament.  The Jewish people were actually reduced to being
Bibleless,
unless
they could read Hebrews which most could not do, it being
much like Latin in
the
Dark Ages, a Priestly or Sacred Language, until a Roman
Emperor passed a
Roman
Law requiring the Jews to permit their people to read and
study Greek, and
the
ancient Greek Scriptures.  This Jewish ban was the same type
of ban which
later
the Pope would put on the Western World in the dark ages.

Let me note this before passing on.  Before the dawn of the
new religion
(Christianity) the Jews translated the Old Testament into
different
languages.
In about the second century of the present era a different
view started
governing the Jews and their translations.  After the times
of Christ the
Scriptures should not go into other languages.  The Jews
actually, then,
felt
that the day in which the Law was translated into Greek was
as unfortunate
for
the Jews as the day they made the Golden Calf, See The
Jewish Encyclopedia,
volume dealing with Translations, page 186. This is when the
Jews forbid
teaching Greek to their children, page 186.  It was all
right to teach
Jewish
Girls Greek but only as an accomplishment, like music, page
186.  The reason
for
this is the New Religion (Christianity) adopted only the
Septuagint Version
of
the Old Testament, page 186.  This is the Pre Christ or
Antiochian LXX.
According to the Jewish historians and Scholars this
Septuagint is the
oldest
and most important of all the versions or translations which
the Jews did
make
into the other languages, page 186.  The Large numbers of
the Jewish
communities
which spoke Greek in Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia
Minor and Northern
Africa facilitated the spread of the older LXX into these
regions, page 186.
The older LXX had an undoubted influence upon the Peshitta
or the Syrian
Version, (Remember there are two of these, the Jews
themselves have
corrected
the first and have produced a better second Version,
according to their
concepts) page 186. Among the Greek speaking Jews the LXX
became the
Canonical
Bible as Luther's became the German and the King James, the
English Bible,
page
186. By the middle of the Sixth century A D many of the Jews
in Byzantium
wished
to read the Sabbath lectures in Greek as well as Hebrew, but
the Rabbis and
Jewish Authorities declared that only the Hebrew should be
read, page 186.
Therefore the Emperor Justinian issued a "Novella" in which
it was expressly
stated that the "Hebrews are allowed to read the Holy Writ
in their
synagogues
in the Greek Language", page 187.  They could use either the
older LXX or
the
new Acquilla version (or corruption, rep) page 187.

These quotations are from The Jewish Encyclopedia, from the
Katv Publishing
House, Inc. This is the modern reprint of the same
Encyclopedia which Funk
and
Wagnals Company printed and published about 1906.

6.  As the Jews and Christians warred against each other
about which Old
Testament to use, there arose para-Christian groups such as
the Alogi, the
Ebonites, ect.  These groups entered into Textual
Corruptions of the New
Testament.  Much of this came under the Gnostic influence
and Neo-platontic
concepts expressed in the Alexandrine School in Northern
Egypt.

The Pre Christ Hebrew and the Pre Christ LXX are not the
same as the later
Masoratic Hebrew and the post Christ Lxx.  There are two
different families
of
Old Testaments as well as New Testaments.

The Gentile Church at Antioch gathered, copied and preserved
both the Greek
Old
Testament and the Greek New Testament.

The Alexandrine School gathered many New Testament texts and
began to issue
these.  They came from the different already existing
Egyptian Greek Texts,
mostly from Gnostic and Alogi influence, some from the older
Italic and
still
others from those of the Antiochian Greek Texts.  The end
result, the
Alexandrine Texts, which we know today in the New Testament
as the Westcott
and
Hort Texts.

The Alexandrine family of Texts was the foundation for
Jerome's Vulgate.
The
official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church came from
Jerome's Vulgate.  The
Alexandrian School soon translated their Old Testaments and
New Testaments
into
the Vulgate Latin.  This produced Jerome's Vulgate and then
later the Douey
Bible of the Papacy.

However, the Antiochian Church, Acts 13, had already
translated the Greek
Testaments into the Latin Language.  These are what is known
as the old
Italic
Latin.  The older Dissenters, Waldenses, Anabaptists, use
the older Latin or
Italic Version of both the New and Old Testaments.

The Old Italic Latin New Testament agrees with the TR on I
John 5:7,8;
Colossians 1:14 and I Tim. 3:15-16.  The Alexandrine Text
families agree
with
the older Egyptian Gnostic versions on these points and the
Westcott and
Hort
Texts reflect these Gnostic-Alexanderian Texts.

If you can read any Latin, which many of us should be able
to do, as it is
very
important to our church history and historical theology in
the Western
World,
the best text, in my opinion has been issued by the United
Bible Societies
in
London under the Title of Novum Testamentum Graece et
Latine, Utrumque
textum
cum apparatu critico imprimendum curavit Eberhard Nestle,
novus curis
elaboravunt Erwin Nestle et Kurt Aland Editio vicesima
secunda.

You can see that the Greek Text is from the Nestle-Aland
text of Westcott
and
Hort.  The Latin is an electric collection from the older
Italic.  I find it
very ironic that the Latin in this publication agrees with
the TR and not
the
Nestle-Aland texts on the Trinitarian and Blood Scriptures.

I hope this well help some.  Next, I hope to present, from
various Jewish
and
Greek scholars, the History of the Hebrew and Greek
Languages.  It is
important
to realize that Hebrew is not the oldest of the known
languages, far from
it.
You might be shocked to find out where the ancient Hebrew
did come from,
according to the Hebrew Scholars themselves.  In addition,
you might be
shocked
as to who started the popular Christian idea that Hebrew is
the ancient
language
of God, used in the Garden of Eden and before the Flood.  It
was not, for it
did
not then exist, according to the Hebrews.

Later more, if the Lord wills.

  ------------end previously rejected----------


>
> You are correct. I just found out he is dyslexic. So I'm
glad I did not slam
> him. I too wanted to hear what he has to say and was
hoping to get some help
> from those on the list that are more versed at the
non-Hebrew and
> pre-masoretic textual transmission than I am. I can not
post his subsequent
> argument in full because the staff of the B-Hebrew list
informed me that
> doing so is a violation of the rules.
>
> Don A. Elbourne Jr.
> http://elbourne.simplenet.com
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: peter_kirk AT sil.org [mailto:peter_kirk AT sil.org]
> > Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 1999 7:14 PM
> > To: Biblical Hebrew
> > Subject: Re: Textual Criticism
> >
> >
> > Maybe the guy is dyslexic, or maybe he has textual
doubts about the
> > pointing of the word "Masoretic", so let's give him the
benefit of the
> > doubt on that one and see what he is trying to say...
> >
> > Cutting through the dead wood, I see that he is trying
to argue that
> > the "original Hebrew" is best preserved in an Old Latin
text preserved
> > by the Waldensian church, and that Jewish commentators
support that
> > view. Well, I would want to check whether the variants
in such a text
> > were theologically motivated changes e.g. to make
explicit the Virgin
> > Birth. (But then LXX could be considered to do that.)
But there just
> > could be some original readings preserved.
> >
> > Are there any experts on the list who can comment on the
existence and
> > state of any such Old Latin text of the Hebrew
scriptures? Or on what
> > doubt is cast on the MT by Jewish commentators?
> >
> > Peter Kirk
> >
> >
> > ______________________________ Reply Separator
> > _________________________________
> > Subject: Textual Criticism
> > Author:  <elbourne AT earthlink.net> at Internet
> > Date:    19/10/1999 13:51
> >
> >
> > I am on another discussion group where the topic of
Textual criticism has
> > arisen. I was wondering if anyone would like to respond
to the
> > posts by one
> > individual in particular. I will not pass along his name
but his post is
> > below.
> >
> >
> > <snip>
> > Dear Brothers and Sisters, as there seems to be a very
great
> > interest just
> > now on Old and New Testament Textual history, may  I ask
this question:
> > Do you want me to give you a history of the Old
Testament Canon from the
> > Jewish historians and writers and their point of view?
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> >
> > ---
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> >
> >
>
>
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