Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>]

Hi,

as I said, it's a bit meaningless to discuss the 'LXX' since there are  
no extant copies of it. What we can discuss are manuscripts such as  
the codex vaticanus and the codex sinaiticus. What we basically have  
is Christian owned and curated copies greek manuscripts that may have  
had their origin with a variant of the original LXX.

As you have rightly noted this is as a translation. This does not  
automatically make it inferior as the question arises 'a translation  
of what?'. Comparison of the MT related MSS, LXX related manuscripts,  
DSS and Samaritan Pentateuch clearly show a forking in the tradition.  
Extant greek MSS versions of the Torah seem to show more agreement  
with the DSS and the Samaritan Pentateuch than with the MT variant  
MSS. This would seem to indicate that the tradition the Greek MSS were  
translated from were older than the Christian era significantly. So,  
the logical question that arises is which tradition best reflects the  
original.

James Christian

Quoting Steve Miller <smille10 AT sbcglobal.net>:

> > From: James Read
> >
> > Hi Steve,
> >
> > you state that MT is generally better than LXX. What do you base this
> > on? I've been looking into this a lot recently. We don't even know
> > what the LXX originally looked like and so, personally, I find it more
> > useful to discuss specific texts like the codex vaticanus and the
> > codex sinaiticus. The MT frequently mistakes gender (confuses he with
> > she). How confidence building is that?
> >
> > James Christian
> [Steve Miller] James,
> I thought it was generally accepted that the MT is much more accurate than
> the LXX. One strong reason is that the LXX is a translation. Nevertheless
> there are many places where the LXX reading is correct and the MT has an
> error.
> -Steve Miller
> Detroit



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