Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

On Wednesday 25 February 2004 05:54, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 24, 2004 at 03:37:21AM -0800, Peter Kirk wrote:
[snip]
> >I don't hold anyone as immune. But conspiracies should be alleged
> >(especially in this very sensitive area) only when there is proper
> >evidence for them. Some simple checking of the facts, by Pastor Herrell
> >or by yourself, should make it clear that in this case the evidence does
> >not exist.
>
> At the mouth of two witnesses a matter will be established.  Pastor
> Harrell brought forth several witnesses against the Masoretes, two of
> which I will list here.
>
> Witness one: Isaiah 7:14.  Pastor Herrell says that in the Septuagint,
> it reads "virgin", while in the Masoretic text this is altered to "young
> woman".  Is this a true or a false witness?  The matter touches directly
> on the New Testament account of the birth of Jesus.

Check out the archives on this list for exhaustive discussion of this matter. 
 
He's repeating some overly simplistic comments by others.  The word in the 
LXX most commonly meant "virgin" but not always.  The Hebrew word "bethulah" 
is applied to a married woman more than once in the Hebrew Bible, so it did 
not exclusively mean "virgin" unless the husband in each case was impotent.  
And the word in Isaiah 7:14 did mean "young woman of marriageable age," and 
in that culture, such a woman would have been assumed to be a virgin.  What 
he has here is a cure for which there is no known disease.

> Witness two: Luke 3:36.  Compare Genesis 11:12.  Pastor Harrell says
> the Masoretic text permits no interpretation that includes Cainan, while
> the Septuagint does.  Is he wrong on this point?

Nope, he's right.  But so what?  One brief passage, probably accidentally 
omitted from the MT by a commonly known scribal error, neither indicts the 
entire MT nor vindicates the entire LXX.  That's a big part of this guy's 
problem: he makes excessive extrapolations based on a minimum of material 
like this.  And your comment above is a serious misuse of the "two witnesses" 
criterion.

[snip]
> >3) What Herrell says about the contents of the scrolls has been
> >thoroughly discredited by the data posted on this list. Herrell may have
> >been writing partly from ignorance before 1991. He made certain
> >assumptions about the content of unpublished material which have now
> >been shown clearly to be false.
>
> Harrell attributes the following quote to Lampe:
>
>     From Qumran caves one, four, five and six come biblical texts in
>     Hebrew which, according to reports, are related to the parent text
>     of the Septuagint historical books. Particular interest attaches to
>     Samuel fragments from cave four, because the text-form shows more
>     obvious affinities with the Septuagint than do the others. Of
>     course, it has long been agreed that the parent text of the
>     Septuagint Samuel contained recensional divergences from the
>     Massoretic Text.
>
> Not knowing the names of the authoritative scholars in this field, I
> must ask, is Lampe a reliable scholar?  Pastor Herrell also quoted
> Eugene Ulrich and his book, "The Qumran Text of Samuel and Josephus" in
> support of his thesis.  Is this also an unreliable source?

There he goes with the improper extrapolation again.  Yes, most of the 
manuscripts of Samuel reflect a text-type tending more toward the Septuagint 
than the MT.  Big deal; we've known for centuries that there were serious 
problems with the Masoretic text OF THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL.  A well-known 
example is 1 Sam 13:1, "Saul was ____ years old when he became king."  
Obviously, a number has dropped out there.  What you need to understand, and 
what Herrell has failed to understand, is that this applies ONLY to the books 
of Samuel.  It's horribly illegitimate to take that and use it to throw out 
the entire Masoretic tradition in favor of the LXX.  Lampe's last sentence 
above is telling: we've known for ages that the Septuagint SAMUEL "contained 
recensional divergences from the Massoretic [sic] Text."  Notice also that 
Ulrich's book, which ultimately became part of the Discoveries in the Judean 
Desert series (with revisions), is EXCLUSIVELY about the text of Samuel.  In 
other words, Samuel is a special case and in no way has anything to do with 
the state of the text of the other books of the HB.  Herrell has apparently 
missed that fact; you now have no excuse for repeating his error.

Now I'm going to ask you a pointed question, Jon: how much evidence will it 
take to convince you that Herrell is wrong?  Peter, Soren and I keep giving 
you more and more, and you keep demanding more and more.  It seems there's 
never enough.  Is that the case?  Is your mind already made up, and are we 
beating our heads against a wall?  Because if no amount of evidence is going 
to be enough, then most of us have better things to do.  I can't speak for 
anybody but myself, but if your mind is already made up then I'm not going to 
waste my time.  What exactly is it going to take?  I/we need to know before 
we go any further.

-- 
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
Learning about Christianity from a non-Christian
is like getting a kiss over the telephone.