Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Septuagint vs Hebrew, effect on Christianity

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Yonah Mishael" <yonahmishael AT gmail.com>
  • To: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Septuagint vs Hebrew, effect on Christianity
  • Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2006 22:23:12 -0500

Perspective note: Schmuel, are you not also the guy who argues ad
nauseam against the Alexandrian text family in support of the King
James and the Textus Receptus? If I recall correctly, past experience
has shown your propensity for disregarding scholarship for the sake of
a belief system, nearly across the board. I recall a certain dislike
for the work of Bruce Metzger, a distrust of all modern textual
discoveries, and a rejection of the principles of lower criticism. You
want to believe that you have your hands on "The Word" rather than
that this text from ancient times has been subjected to change and
edition. Is this an accurate assessment?

Yonah

--
Yonah Mishael ben Avraham
Joplin, MO
yonahmishael AT gmail.com
--

On 10/14/06, Schmuel <schmuel AT nyc.rr.com> wrote:
Hi Folks,

Schmuel
>> Conclusion.
>> 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: Where did you get this information?

Many places.
One good book is by Floyd Nolen Jones.
http://www.floydjones.org/LXX.pdf
The Septuagint: A Critical Analysis

However I don't think he covers both examples I gave in depth.

Will Kinney mentions the Romans-Psalms one and many have written about
Cainan in Luke 3:36 from John Gill on. Few have stated the obvious clearly.

>You don't include other sources of LXX quotations such as Philo and Josephus.

Schmuel
You have confused two distinct issues. The

1) question of a vorlage behind the Greek OT and
2) actual verses that are used for NT/Tanach supposed borrowing.

Do Philo or Josephus give any support for those actual verses ?
I have never seen even one.

(btw, their supposed support in general is dicey, but that is another story
have you ever taken a section with many differences from Philo and
compared it yourself ?)

>There is a huge debt that he NT writers have to the LXX, one that makes your
claim look like it must have been a conspiracy rather than a number of mistakes.
Here is one comment from the Wikipedia article on the Septuagint:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septuagint#Questioning_the_Septuagint
>Of the fuller quotations in the New Testament of the Old, nearly one hundred
agree with the modern
>form of the Septuagint[12] and six agree with the Masoretic Text.[13] The
principle differences
>concern presumed Bibilical prophecies relative to Christ.

These numbers look dubious, and that could be a whole nother discussion,
probably
gets a bit off-topic for this list. One thing you might notice: the word
'agree' is simply
wrong and is not in the R. Grant Jones article.

Anyway they do nothing to discuss the source of any closer texts in the cases
where the Greek OT really significantly differ from the Masoretic Text while
being
closer to the NT. The issue at hand.

We can demonstrate 'smoothing' in some cases. And for the reasons given
before
we can ask whether this is not the situation in virtually all the cases. I
believe there
is a compelling case 'yes', and that it is good to first research the obvious
cases to
see the pattern. Like in any good criminal investigation.

>HH: Copies of the Septuagint must have been fairly common at the time of the
church's foundation,
>used in Jewish synagogues in the Greek-speaking part of the world. So these
errors would be
>noticed, it seems to me.

There are so many considerations that run all different ways. The simplest
one is that there are no 'errors' - the NT and the Hebrew Bible are
harmonious. Only an ultra-literalist who denies any midrashic concepts (ie.
interpretative citations) would have difficulty, and from that perspective
they would have plenty of difficulties with the Greek OT as well.

>HH: And very soon the Septuagint was translated into other languages, such
as the Old Latin, which
>can be used to provide textual criticism on the text of the LXX.

Which is so wild and wooly that it is virtually useless.

Anyway tell us where are these Old Latin Tanachs that are used ?
I've been looking for one for years.

>HH: Furthermore, the Dead Sea Scrolls show that some peculiarities of the
LXX were based on an
>alternate Hebrew text. If the NT quotes the LXX as God's word to make a
point, and the LXX had to
>be changed to make the point, the point itself would lose the validity that
God's word could provide.

You would have to unpack this with examples. I see absolutely no difficulty
with the
Hebrew Text of the Tanach and the NT. None. Apparently you do. So where ?

(In other words, if there were no Greek OT at all, I believe the NT and the
Tanach
match up beautifully... the fact that a some early church writers were
confused on
this is only .. their confusion... fortunately it was largely straightened
out by Jerome.)

>HH: I recently read a fairly long text on studying the Septuagint, by Karen
Jobes and Moises Silva,
>called Invitation to the Septuagint. I don't remember that this claim even
came up.

I am aware that a lot of 'scholarship' today is woefully incomplete and
doesn't even discuss
the obvious cases like Cainan and the Psalms-Romans rigging.

Why the blindness ? I dunno for sure but I could conjecture.

It might be a bit like making sausage .. not pretty. (Even kosher beef
sausage).

Harold Holmyard -
>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.

Actually we are probably talking about a few dozen possible 'smoothings'.
Some obviously occurred, others are generally unexamined. Anyway there was a
major project done in the 3rd century, the Hexapla.

http://www.floydjones.org/LXX.pdf
The Septuagint: A Critical Analysis
As mentioned previously, nearly all scholars believe that the fifth column of
Origen's Hexapla is Origen's revision of a B.C. Septuagint. Nevertheless, as
noted in the previous heading, some dissenters believe that the so called LXX
in fact originates with Origen's fifth column – that the 5th column is based
on and constructed from the versions in the other columns – and that Origen
also had a N.T. at his side to further assist him.

Incidentally note the Thomas Hartwell Horne study of 263 citations.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
Queens, NY
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

_______________________________________________
b-hebrew mailing list
b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page