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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Jonathan Walther <krooger AT debian.org>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Qumran agreement with LXX and MT, was: aph
  • Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 15:48:19 -0800

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/





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