Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 23/02/2004 15:26, Jonathan Walther wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 23, 2004 at 04:09:18PM -0700, Dave Washburn wrote:
>
> > Most of the "non-aligned" texts are actually MT-based, with the vast 
> > majority of variants involving little more than spelling variations.  
> > Based on my own research, I would guesstimate that at least 30% of 
> > these have what I would call an MT "flavor" while the other 17% are 
> > readings unique to the DSS themselves.  Tov tends to refer to the 30% 
> > as either "proto-Masoretic" or "Qumran type."  I have some doubts 
> > about these terms (because of certain assumptions that underly them, 
> > see his book) but the actual differences between these and what we 
> > know as the MT are fairly minor.
>
>
> What is your take on the book by Pastor V.S. Herrell, "The History of
> the Bible"?  It is short, you can read it online here:
>
>    http://www.christianseparatist.org/ast/hist/toc.htm
>
> He argues that Jesus spoke Greek, not Aramaic, and that the Septuagint
> was the Bible that Jesus and his disciples considered authoritative.
> His arguments and evidence seemed compelling to me, but I don't have the
> scholarly background or resources to make an accurate judgement on these
> matters.  Perhaps some kind person on this list could help?
>
> Jonathan
Jonathan, I think you should apologise to the Jewish members of this 
list for posting a link to this kind of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory 
material. From the first page I looked at, 
http://www.christianseparatist.org/ast/hist/ot.htm:

> Jews begin to deceive Catholics into accepting Hebrew through Jerome.

... and worse.

I think the following (from 
http://www.christianseparatist.org/ast/hist/qumran.htm) illustrates 
clearly how valueless the book is:

> First of all, the Israeli government has kept the documents from the 
> general public, so an exhaustive study of their textual content is 
> unavailable. The reason that the Jews have kept a hold on the 
> documents is clear from what documents and statistics have been 
> released. They even fought the Six Day War to gain control of the 
> documents. The Qumran Scrolls of the Old Testament agree with the 
> Septuagint version of the Old Testament to a far greater degree than 
> they agree with the Masoretic Text. Thus, from a statistical point of 
> view, the Dead Sea Scrolls are dangerous to the Jews. At the same 
> time, however, for the most part, the Dead Sea Scrolls do not agree 
> with either the Masoretic Text or the Septuagint, but preserve another 
> type of reading altogether.


This is simply full of factual errors with a clearly tendentious intention.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/