Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Harold Holmyard <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Schmuel wrote:

> > K Randolph wrote:
> > > LXX was irrelevant to the founding of Christianity and the writing of the New 
> > > Testament.
>
> Harold Holmyard,
> > HH: What do you mean when you say this? It is obvious that the NT quotation of many OT verses 
> > follows the LXX wording exactly or almost exactly.


> Steven: An easier general explanation for the verses in question -
>
> The Greek OT was 'smoothed' by low-quality scribes between 100 AD to 500 AD
> to be closer to the NT - by scribes who simply could not leave midrash alone 
> :-)

HH: Let me add to what I said that translation is 
a very flexible undertaking. The same words in 
Hebrew can be translated many ways into English, 
as is apparent from the many Hebrew Bible 
translations that exist today. The same is no 
doubt true with Greek, as is somewhat demonstrable 
from the various remains of ancient Greek 
translations of the OT that we have. One set of 
Hebrew words could engender a wide variety of 
Greek verbal and syntactical choices. The fact 
that the NT matches the LXX in so many places 
would imply a massive alteration of the LXX text 
to conform it to the NT. It would not be a small 
project.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard