Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

Hi Ted,

This depends what you mean by "the Masorah". Yes, the masorets worked during 
the "Christian Era", but for the most part they worked under Muslim rule, and 
probably had little first-hand contact with the Christian Bible. The real 
question is, how much "editing" they did to the text that they were working 
with. Most scholars assume that the consonental text was a "received" text 
(which is what "masorah" means) which had more-or-less been standardized 
within the Jewish community a long time before. Actually, our best indication 
of the time by which the MT was already the "standard" Jewish text is the 
Vulgate, which Jerome translated from the Hebrew text that the Jews of his 
time (5th century) were using. 

The way I picture it is that the MT, the LXX and the DDS all represent 
textual traditions that were used by Jews during the Second Temple Period. 
There may have been more than these three - there were certainly different 
variations of each. The MT is basically what was left after most of the 
Jewish community and its centers of learning were destroyed in the revolts of 
66-73, 116-117 and 132-135, both in the Land of Israel and in the western 
Diaspora.

Yigal Levin
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: TedBro AT aol.com 
  To: leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il ; b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org 
  Sent: Sunday, February 01, 2009 6:24 AM
  Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] 1Q287 and the Tanakh at Deut. 32:43


  Hi, All:

  Interesting discussion... 

  <<Yigal Levin wrote: As to why neither version appears in the MT - probably 
scribal error, simply 
  "skipping" a line.

  Recall that the Massorah dates from the Christian era. Thus another 
possible explanation for missing Christian proof texts is that the 
Massoretes, like everyone else, had biases and when selecting readings from 
various manuscripts for inclusion in the MT, favored those less favorable to 
the Christians. 

  Peace,
  Ted Brownstein


   

  In a message dated 1/31/2009 7:25:47 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, 
leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il writes:
    Dear Gary,

    Let's please not be cynical. Your question is more about the NT than it 
is 
    about the Hebrew Bible.

    In any case, it is widely assumed that the writers of the NT used the 
    Septuagint (or something like what we call the Septuagint) as their "Old 
    Testament", so it would be only natural for them to quote the Septuagint 
    version of this verse, which does include the phrase "Be glad, O heavens, 
    together with Him, and do obeisance to Him, all angels of God". The 
Qumran 
    version, at least according to Abegg, Flint and Ulrich's The Dead Sea 
    Scrolls Bible, is ".... all you gods". If I had to guess, I'd assume that 
    the Qumran version is earlier, and that the Greek version(s) that we have 
    today, which are all based on manuscripts that are later than Qumran, 
    actually "cleaned it up" by replacing "gods" with "angels of God". As to 
why 
    neither version appears in the MT - probably scribal error, simply 
    "skipping" a line.

    Yigal Levin



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