I don’t share the author’s inerrantist polemic, but I believe the Septuagint should be authoritative for all Christians when it comes to the Old Testament.
Eastern Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians still consider the Septuagint authoritative.
Bump
“books for more than 2,000 years without infusing significant error into the texts. That being too much for some to accept, the inerrancy doctrine lost a lot of followers. “
Went off the tracks with a failure to understand what inerrancy means.
Presuppose away. As for me, the text of the Bible as we have it is the word of God as He has preserved it. Jesus Himself said:
"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." (Matthew 24:35)
Those words are also recorded in Mark 13:31 and Luke 21:33.
To paraphrase Joshua, "Choose you what you will believe. As for me I will believe the Lord."
Yes, it may correctly be said that my viewpoint is neither scientific nor scholarly. But neither is the opposing viewpoint. Both are based upon certain presuppositions, or as some may say, faith.
Why do philosophers wear long robes? Because their feet are not planted upon solid ground.
While the author of this piece is most concise in his efforts to discredit the accuracy of scripture, he has yet to illustrate any substantive difference in the conveyed meaning of the various text.
It has always been a mystery to me why protestants are so insistent that the Masorete, the earliest extant manuscript of which dates to the 10th century, and which was transmitted by Christ-denying rabbis who had an anti-Christian interest in selecting which ancient manuscripts were authoritative (traditionally held by Christians to have taken place at a rabbinic council at Jamnia in 90 A.D., but perhaps more diffusely after the destruction of the Temple), and in inserting vowel points to fix the meanings of words (for instance, the same consonants make Nazarene and Nazarite in Hebrew), is to be preferred over the Septuagint, which the Evangelists and Apostles used, and for which we have manuscripts dating back to the second century.
I realize the simple argument is that the now lost ur-text was in Hebrew. But the translation into Greek by faithful Israelites as yet anticipating the Messiah seems to me less likely to have corrupted the text than transmission in the original Hebrew by those with an interest in denying Christ.
Suppose I made a copy of the bible at home, by hand. Or somehow a few bytes got corrupted on my hard drive in the file that contained the bible.
The doctrine that the bible is the inspired word of God, and transmitted through the ages without serious flaw does not apply to every copy. God himself will not stop my mis-management of the scriptures.
What God will do, is make sure that his Word will never pass away, and the his truth cannot be hidden. Is every jot and title accurate? Hardly so, in fact, it may be impossible to tell which is the correct grammar. However, it’s NOT possible to mis-undertand God’s word, even with the mispellings or typos or occasional change (which can be backed out).
God has created a entire creation that testifies to his truth, his power, and his nature (Romans 1:20). The only way to hide this truth would be to destroy the creation. Even Satan cannot do this, so he has to content himself to try to corrupt it. God has saved the creation (though Christ Jesus), and can/has/will save his Word through the testimony of the Holy Spirit.
To say we can’t believe the bible because someone, sometime might have mis-copied it is the height of stupidity and is not logical.
Bookmark;read only, later.
As if this wasn’t enough vindication for the Septuagint...
Jesus quotes the distinctively septuagint version of the old testament 10 times as often as the masoretic version.
That thing in your hands we call the “Holy Bible”. Either you believe He made some effort to put it there or He didn’t. You will never “find proof” so quit looking. He doesn’t OWE us proof. Read Job. We couldn’t understand it if He tried. Merry Christmas.