And I stand by mine: If the Apostles were, however occasionally, finding it necessary to correct the LXX, it meant that they were checking it against the Hebrew texts available to them, which may or may not have been Masoretic. And if they were double-checking the LXX, it wasn't "good enough" for them in the sense that you feel it is good enough for you--they used it only where it was in agreement with the Hebrew text (not necessarily from the tradition that gave us the Masoretic) or clarified the Hebrew text for their Greek audience.
But did they consider it God-breathed? If they had, they would have never corrected it--one does not correct the words of God.
The New Testament quotes from the Septuagint in 93% (other sources claim 95%) of the time.
Misleading statement, since you fail to take into account the number of times there is no significant deviation between the LXX and MT for the authors to actually choose between. The author of the site I used for a resource fails to make this distinction as well, though we can derive somewhat from his numbers.
He claims that the NT quotes from the LXX 93% of the time and is in agreement with the MT 63% of the time. That means that even by his count, that 56% of the time there is no difference for the NT authors to choose between--and hence no indication of preference. That means that in passages in which there is any difference between the two readings, the LXX is being chosen 37% of the time and either the MT or the author's own translation of the Hebrew 7% of the time by his count, a ratio of about 5 to 1. Certainly that favors the LXX to a large degree, but not by the 93% to 7% that he implies!
Moreover, I think his counts are flawed. Unfortunately, he does not show all of the passages in which he finds deviations in favor of the LXX, and the 30 he presents only amount to about 10% of the NT quotes (which number from 280-300 depending on who is doing the counting--one source says 287 direct quotes, and since I'm not going to go through and count them, I'll use that figure for our discussion), or about a third of those he claims deviate. Let's assume for the moment that this is a representative sample.
Now, let's first strip out those quotes in which there is no actual disagreement in the MT, just a debate about the translation:
Isa. 7:14 - As mentioned, almah does in fact mean virgin (or the closest Hebrew word to it), so this is not actually a descrepancy.I'm going to stop there for the time being, since it's late and I'm weary of looking up the original words in the original languages to compare meanings. Suffice to say that in many of the author's examples, there's no actual difference between the quotes--unless one is merely comparing two English translations. In other cases, which I've not even started into yet, the difference in translation amounts to a dynamic-equivalent translation choice that doesn't affect the meaning of the passage but might clarify it to a Greek audience (e.g., Isa. 8:17 or 29:13). In other cases, like Deu. 32:43, while the quote is not found in the MT, it is found in the DSS.Psa. 8:2 - The phrase erroneously translated in the author's example "founded a bulwark" is yisadta oz. Yisadta means "establish" (just as it is rendered in the LXX), while oz, while meaning "strength," can be used in the sense of "splendor," "majesty," or "praise," as it is in Psa. 29:1 (see the Thayer's Lexicon entry here). So again, there's no true disagreement; only a question of a translation choice.
Amos 5:25-27 - The phrase "Sakkuth your king" (Sakkuth melek'khem) can also be translated, with a different set of vowels (which were not added until well after Yeshua's time) "the tent of your Molech." So there's no real difference there; just a translation choice.
For Kiyun, this was the Assyrian name for the deity we commonly know as Saturn, who was in Coptic called Remphan. Since the LXX was rendered in Alexandria, it's hardly surprising that they decided to "update" the name to one the Egyptian Greeks would have actually heard of. In any case, there's no contradiction here, just another translation choice.
Isa. 53:7-8 - The website's author actually botches this one, since the quote is actually all from v. 8, which in an extremely woodenly literal translation of the MT Hebrew, reads, "From prison and from justice He was taken; and of His generation who will consider? For He was cut off from the land of the living."
The word translated "from prison" is mae'otzer, with otzer meaning "oppression," and that of a sort to bring about humiliation, as a barren womb brought to a woman (cf. Pro. 30:16)--hence the decision of the LXX translators to render it tapeinusei, a lowly estate or condition. Likewise, in this context, being taken "from judgment/justice" means the same thing as the literal translation of the LXX krisis antou erthe, "from His justice He was lifted away." Again, no distinction if one is actually referring to the LXX itself and not to a bad translation that makes a mountain out of less than a molehill.
By the time you remove these passages, the number of times the NT agrees with both the LXX and the Hebrew text closes the gap substantially. The LXX probably does still "win," but the fact that the Apostles did correct it indicates that they were continually checking it against the Hebrew original and deciding on a case-by-case basis whether to use the default Greek translation of their day or render their own translation.
'Nuff said for now. I'm off to bed. Goodnight (or good morning by the time you read this, probably), and God bless.
And if they were double-checking the LXX, it wasn't "good enough" for them in the sense that you feel it is good enough
There is no evidence whatsoever that they were "double-checking." The fact remains that they used LXX in all but six times when quoting from the OT.
That means that even by his count, that 56% of the time there is no difference for the NT authors to choose between--and hence no indication of preference
That really means that the disagreement between the LXX and MT is a whopping 44% for whatever reason.
The LXX probably does still "win," but the fact that the Apostles did correct it indicates that they were continually checking it against the Hebrew original and deciding on a case-by-case basis whether to use the default Greek translation of their day or render their own translation
First, it's not a "fact" that they were "continually checking it against the Hebrew original..." because there is no such evidence anywhere.
Second, regardless of the size of the "gap," the very existence of the gap tells us that the existing copies of the Scripture, even in Apostoles' times, were not faultless, but diverged (as is the case with the NT) due to various sources of corruption.
The size of that gap matters, but the indisputable fact is that the Apostles used LXX predominantly, whether its text agreed or disagreed with the MT, with notable half-a-dozen exceptions to the contrary.