"We have now to speak of the labours of ORIGEN in connection with the text of the Septuagint. This learned and enterprising scholar, having acquired a knowledge of Hebrew, found that in many respects the copies of the Septuagint differed from the Hebrew text. It seems to be uncertain whether he regarded such differences as having arisen from mistakes on the part of the copyists, or from errors of the original translators themselves.
"The object which he proposed to himself was not to restore the Septuagint to its original condition, nor yet to correct mere errors of translation simply as such, but to cause that the Church should possess a text of the Septuagint in which all additions to the Hebrew should be marked with an obelus, and in which all that the Septuagint omitted should be added from one of the other versions marked with an asterisk. He also indicated readings in the Septuagint which were so incorrect that the passage ought to be changed for the corresponding one in another version.
"With the object of thus amending the Septuagint, he formed his great works, the Hexapla and Tetrapla; these were (as the names imply) works in which the page was divided respectively into six columns and into four columns.
The Hexapla contained, 1st, the Hebrew text; 2nd, the Hebrew text expressed in Greek characters; 3rd, the version of Aquila; 4th, that of Symmachus; 5th, the Septuagint; 6th, Theodotion. The Tetrapla contained merely the four last columns.
"Besides these four versions of the entire Old Testament, Origen employed three anonymous Greek versions of particular books; these are commonly called the fifth, sixth, and seventh versions. Hence in the parts in which two of these versions are added, the work was designated Octapla, and where all the three appeared, it was called Enneapla.
"References were then made from the column of the Septuagint to other versions, so as to complete and correct it: for this purpose Theodotion was principally used. This recension by Origen has generally been called the Hexaplar text. The Hexapla itself is said never to have been copied: what remains of the versions which it contained (mere fragments) were edited by Montfaucon in 1714, and in an abridged edition by Bahrdt in 1769-70.
"The Hexaplar text of the Septuagint was copied about half a century after Origen's death by Pamphilus and Eusebius; it thus obtained a circulation; but the errors of copyists soon confounded the marks of addition and omission which Origen placed, and hence the text of the Septuagint became almost hopelessly mixed up with that of other versions."
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I find it interesting that Origen was not trying to correct the Hebrew text in the 1st column of his Hexapla in order to make it read more like the Septuagint in the fifth column, but vice versa. He clearly believed the Hebrew text that he had in his first column was accurate and authoritative, but that all the other Greek translations in his hand, including his LXX, to be flawed and in need of revision to be brought more in line with the Hebrew of column one.
I wonder if the Hebrew text in Origen's first column was the same as the later Masoretic text.
Is the Hebrew text believed to be the copies from the original (written by the authors) passed down through the ages?
Origen had available to him several different versions of the Septaugint, while having a pre-Massoretic Hebrew text to allow the reader of the Hexapla to see the variants of the Greek versions.
Taken from the Catholic Encyclopedia on "Hexapla":
"The principles which guided Origen in his work as textual critic are partly explained by Origen himself. He began by assuming the correctness of the current Hebrew textus receptus, and considered the Septuagint as more or less pure according to the degree in which it approximated to the Hebrew. He frequently changed the spelling of proper names to conform with the Hebrew. The symbols were intended not only to indicate a difference between the two texts, but to mark a departure from the Hebrew verity or genuine text. These principles are rightly discredited by modern scholars, who recognize that the Septuagint often bears plain witness to a Hebrew original different from the textus receptus and older than it in some parts. Moreover, of two readings, one a free, the other a literal, translation of the Hebrew, the free is more likely to be the original rendering of the Septuagint translator, while the literal is more apt to represent the effort of correctors, who very frequently endeavoured to bring the Greek into greater conformity with the Hebrew. Origen's critical principles were at fault, then, but his use of symbols ought to have guarded others from being led by his work into error. Unfortunately, the symbols were not reproduced in many copies which were taken of the fifth column — the Septuagint together with the readings from Theodotion and Aquila."
According to the Dead Sea Scrolls, it appears that the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls are more in common than the Masoretic text which came much later. Considering that the Septaugint is a copy of the Hebrew Scriptures, we can suppose that the copyists writing 200-300 years before Christ would have been fairly accurate - however, with the growth of various versions, some variances had crept into the Scriptures - as it has in the many different translations we have even today.
Here is a site that compares, verse for verse, the Masoretic against the Septuagint.
http://www.ecmarsh.com/lxx-kjv/
Here are an example of a few contradictions posed by the Masoretic text, none of which exist when the Greek Septuagint is used:
1. II Samuel 6:23 vs. II Samuel 21:8
2. Matthew 15:8-9 vs. Isaiah 29:13
3. Romans 3:11-18 vs. Psalms 14:2-3
4. II Kings 24:8 vs. II Chronicles 36:9
Regards
UC, this has already been presented on this thread. Brenton bases his otherwise educated essay on the knowledge of the middle of the 19th century. Since then, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1947) demonstrated that there was more than one "Jewish canon" and that the Septuagint is actually a lot more genuine that it used to be believed in the 1850's, when brenton wrote that piece.