Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 25/02/2004 04:54, Jonathan Walther wrote:

> ...

> 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.


It is true that the Septuagint differs from the Masoretic text here, as 
in thousands of other places. The commonest explanations of these 
differences are that the LXX is not always an accurate translation of 
the MT, that sometimes the LXX translators were working from a variant 
Hebrew text, and that sometimes the LXX has become corrupted in copying. 
The MT does not deny the virgin birth, but it does not plainly teach it.

> 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?
This is another place where the LXX differs from the MT. If A says one 
thing and B says something contradictory, how do you decide which to 
believe, A or B?

> > I don't understand this comment. Are you suggesting that the New 
> > Testament gives evidence of a Jewish conspiracy? The most that you 
> > can legitimately read from it is that a particular group of Jews 
> > plotted against Jesus and against the early church. That is not the 
> > same as saying that Jews in general did.
>
>
> My sheep know me, and heed my voice.  It was ever so, from generation to
> generation, that each of my chosen may have an opportunity to be saved.


I understand this even less, but just enough to know that this comment 
is irrelevant to this list.

> > 1) That what certain Jews were saying to Jerome, presumably about the 
> > priority of the Hebrew text over the LXX, was untrue. Well, this is 
> > one of Herrell's main themes, and I think it has been thoroughly 
> > discredited by the evidence given by S?ren and Dave.
>
>
> I appreciate your calm answer.  As a newcomer to this forum, and as one
> unfamiliar with Hebrew and Greek, may I humbly request you give more
> detailed pointers to the books and online writings I should have already
> read?


Well, you could try Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible 
(2nd revised edition; Minneapolis, MI.: Augsburg Fortress, 2001), but 
I'm not sure how comprehensible this is for those who don't know Hebrew.

> > 2) That the Jews knew that what they were saying was untrue. This is 
> > without any foundation and highly improbable. Whether or not they 
> > were correct, they were surely sincere and not deliberately deceiving 
> > anyone.
>
>
> Roman persecution of Christians at the behest of the Jews is
> historically documented, even in the time of Nero (cf Seutonius and
> Pliny the Younger).  That seems sufficient to sustain a reasonable
> suspicion of intent.  Lack of copies of the Talmud in all the major
> public libraries in my area is also suspicious.
I don't deny some hostility at some periods, but I look for some proof 
that the Jews at the time of Jerome knew that the Hebrew text was worse 
than the LXX but deceived Jerome into thinking it was better, which is 
what Herrell seems to allege.

> > 3) That the dialogue between Jews and Jerome was the start of an 
> > ongoing process. Sadly, this was not true. During Jerome's time the 
> > western empire was overrun by "barbarians" (my ancestors!) and 
> > contact between the western church and the Palestinian Jewish 
> > community was lost.
>
>
> Pastor Harrell says Jerome spent 34 years in Palestine.  Also, there
> were Jewish communities and synagogues in every major metropolitan
> center of the empire.  Could that really be considered a "loss of
> contact"?
34 years of contact followed by 1000 of loss of contact. OK, there were 
scattered Jews in western countries during those 1000 years after the 
fall of the empire, but do you have any evidence that these Jews 
continued to deceive Christians, or even to communicate at all with 
them, on the matter in question?

> > 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?
>
> Jonathan
Lampe is presumably a reliable scholar, I don't know Ulrich. But all 
have agreed that there are SOME Qumran texts which are closer to LXX 
than MT, including these fragments from Samuel. But it seems clear (and 
is probably clear if you read the full context in Lampe's and Ulrich's 
books) that such fragments are a small minority of the DSS biblical texts.

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