Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - [b-hebrew] LXX, MT and the NT

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Schmuel <schmuel AT nyc.rr.com>
  • To: "b-hebrew-lists.ibiblio.org" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] LXX, MT and the NT
  • Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 17:28:20 -0400

Hi Folks,

Mark Spitsbergen -
>the population is clearly less than 10%, which I am certain would be
>rejected as significant
>by any statistical model ....I really am scratching my head at this point as
>to what this lengthy "smoothing argument" is really all about. Is this
>argument really in the interest of discovering truth?

Mark, statistics on this are all over the map, since the definitions can
be so wide.
Are we talking about specific citations, or general allusions, or in between?
Are
we concerned with minor grammatical changes, or only significant meaning
changes ?
Are we allowing for midrash or interpretation by the NT authors or are we
assuming
that they only attempt to quote the Tanach verbatim ? Or do we split that up
depending
on the nature of the citation or allusion. What about situations where even
the speaker
is unclear (Micah 5 - Matthew) and perhaps the difference was a function of
Luke reporting
what was spoken by the folks helping Herod using a who-knows-what text.

Such questions go on an on, explaining why you might give one
statistical number, others have given very different.

However, all that being said, there are a dozen or two or three cases
where one can look
at the 4th century and later Greek OT manuscripts and say

"aha - this/that Greek OT is significantly closer to the NT than the Hebrew
Bible"

And one three basic alternatives for why this occurred -

a) textual accident, with Hebrew texts they were using now missing, stuff
like that.
squirrelly answers that essentially hand-wave

b) the apostles (or even Jesus in the Temple in the most strained claims)
referred to
a Greek OT when writing the Tanach - even in Israel ! - perhaps replacing
what was
said by the Hebrew Bible by Jesus with a Greek OT that they had at hand.

c) The apostles and Jesus used the Hebrew Bible, and the Greek OT was changed
in many ways from the 2nd through 5th-6th centuries. ("smoothed") to be
closer
to the NT.

Ok, I use the word "smoothed" ... "tampered" is more accurate.
Scribal shenanigans.
(Something is seen especially in alexandrian Greek texts).

This is why I shifted gears and showed the forum the Psalm 14 - Romans 3
situation.

This is an actual "smoking gun" of a huge tampering - a whole chapter.
(Other theories
are possible, but quite difficult and un-Ockhamish.) Once you see that the
Greek OT
would even change a whole chapter, and you see similar with the example of
the word
"Cainan", and you realize that generally these Greek OT variants have no
support in
Targumim, DSS, Latin or Aramaic, and you study a bit the wooly and wild
textual
history of the Greek OT, you find it much easier to take (c) over (b) above.
Especially
adding the fact that these were Hebrew-savvy men, as is the emphasis in the
posts from
Karl.

So does this help "discover truth" ?
Definitely, if you are interested in what is the true Bible.

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





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page