Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Moshe Shulman <mshulman AT ix.netcom.com>]

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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