Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Harold Holmyard <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

K Randolph wrote:

> First of all, look at those who wrote the New Testament. Only one
> wrote in really educated Greek literary style, namely Luke.

HH: The Book of Hebrews is also in good, literate 
Greek, as are other books. This claim that the NT 
is all pedestrian Greek is way overdrawn.

 The Gospel
> of Matthew that we have is actually a translation of his original into
> Greek.

HH: This may or may not be true.


 More than once Greek scholars have told me that 
John is the
> most difficult of the authors to read, because his Greek was so bad.

HH: That's not a necessary conclusion.


> To a large extent, it is Greek words on a Hebrew / Aramaic grammar,
> which makes him the easiest for me to read. Even Paul, even though he
> was well educated and was from a Greek city, most of his education was
> in Hebrew so his use of Greek was middling at best. So the claim that
> the LXX was the basis of their knowledge of Tanakh just does not wash
> with this crowd.

HH: The LXX was not necessarily the basis of their 
knowledge of the Tanakh, but they used the LXX 
when they wrote the NT.

> Moreover, discoveries among the DSS show that many places where the
> LXX and NT agree are based on Hebrew texts that were extant during NT
> times, that sometimes are not reflected in MT. Secondly I have heard
> the claim that some verses of LXX were "corrected" to be more like
> their citations in NT from other people besides Steven Avery.

> The bottom line is that it is very doubtful that the LXX had any
> meaningful effect on the development of the New Testament.

HH: The bottom line is that the LXX was quite 
significant in the composition of the NT.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard