Replies

The fact is the Masorete, in terms of oldest extant manuscript, is about 700 years more recent than the LXX. It is simply a scholarly error to regard it as more 'authentic' than the LXX simply because it is in the same language as the hypothetical ur-text.

But it is the same text with vowel points that was in Origen's first column, right? and it preceded his fifth column LXX which was being composed as he went along. The text that emerged from Jamnia was in Origen's first column and thus precedes the LXX that came from Origen by 200 years.

But you still have to explain away the Hebrew copies of Tobit and Ecclesiasticus found at Qumran

What??? just because something was found at Qumran we're supposed to put it in the canon of scripture. A lot of things were found there, should we put the rules of the religious sect living there in the canon as well???

and the fact that Genesis, Eziekiel, Proverbs and several other books have the reading of the LXX confirmed against that given in the Masorete by the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So what. They were bad Greek translations and were probably discarded by the community. What about all of the fragments in Hebrew from the DSS that confirm the readings of nearly every book of the OT as found in the Masoretic text.

Are you going to trust a translation over the original text??? Since when??? Should we do that with the Greek NT???? That must mean that one or all of those English translations are superior to the original Byzantine Greek, right???

And I still haven't heard a reason for preferring textual transmission via anti-Christian rabbis to textual transmisison by Christ's Church. Will one be forthcoming?

Those "anti-Christian rabbis" transmitted the text that God gave to them and that they faithfully protected and preserved, even though in that text were prophecies of a Messiah who they had rejected. The fact that all those Messianic prophecies and books were transmitted accurately is clear evidence that the Jews knew them to be such an integral part of the Scriptures that to remove them would be a sacrilege. And since they so faithfully with those passages that confirmed the religion of their opposition, then they could certainly be trusted with the rest of the neutral text.

You do believe Paul don't you? You do believe him when he says that "unto them [the Jews] were committed the oracles of God", don't you? Are you going to tell God that he made a mistake???

What??? just because something was found at Qumran we're supposed to put it in the canon of scripture

Well, the Essene canon contains numerous apocalypses not found in the "other" Hebrew canon (or LXX for that matter). I suppose you will dismiss that too.

If the Essenes were a sect so were the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Along with Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria and Asia Minor, they were all Jewish, they all had different canons, and no sect to the best of my knowledge had any monopoly on what constitutes a "Jewish canon," and that includes the sole-surviving sect of Pharisees who morphed into post-Jamnia Judaism.

You do believe Paul don't you?

Do you believe the Apostles would use a 'false' scripture? The crucial question the Protestant side fails to answer is why did the Apostles so overwhemlmingly use the LXX as the source of OT verses, and in fact called it scripture.

But you still have to explain away the Hebrew copies of Tobit and Ecclesiasticus found at Qumran

No, but you can accept the Church's judgement that these books are Scripture, rather than following the lead of Christ-denying rabbis, and peddling the absurd lie that the books were 'added' to the Scriptures by someone (usually the Council of Trent, though how that could be when we Orthodox regard them as Scripture, but regard Trent as an heretical conventicle is quite beyond rational comprehentions), rather than removed by the 'reformers'.

The point is that Qumran lays to rest the false claim that the LXX is somehow inferior to the Masorete, as it confirms that the LXX conforms to the pre-Christian Jewish texts, while the Masorete deviate from them on many points. This very much questions you assertion that the anti-Christian rabbis preserved 'the text God gave them'. They tossed out books that gave too much support to Christian positions. Hardly 'preserving the text God gave them.' The protestant insistence on the shortened canon of the Masorete strikes me quite frankly as a Judaizing heresy.

Also, you are simply wrong that Origen 'composed' the fifth column of his Hexalpa. The LXX translation had been used by Greek speaking Jews from before the time of Christ. The fourth column of Origen's Hexapla was a more recent (c. 130 AD) translation of the now-lost proto-Masorete into Greek, which showed influences from the already extant LXX.