I am still waiting on a non-pauline example of MT preference. All you showed Kosta was that the NT writers corrected both from time to time (perhaps, because they were quoting form memory). You did not show that anyone other than St. Paul preferred MT.
the LXX illuminates the thinking of the pre-Apostolic Jewish translators
That too, but to me as a Christian it is the thinking of the Apostles that is of paramount importance. The Hebrew original is of course important, but it is the mind of the Early Church that I need to know.
I do go to the Church for guidance--just not your church
You do not go to anything that looks for historical continuity with the Aposotles if your basic theology is Baptist, as I suspect it to be.
the Apostles went out of their way to keep Jewish Tradition as well as the Torah (cf. Acts 21:20-26)--they just didn't make it a requirement for Gentiles.
True. In other words, the Church as a whole deprecated the Jewish tradition even though it did not wish to purge it. This is generally what we see about Tradition: that its criticism is always pointed against a particular superstition or when used a s a hypocritical cover. In generall, Christ and the Apostles did not mind the Christian Tradition at all, and when used in the general sense, as in 2 Thess 2:14, it is praised.
Jewish authority before Christianity as to the canon is very important, since it tells us what Bible Yeshua and His disciples used
They were using the Septuagint alongside with the Hebrew scripture, did they not? They read the Deuterocanon. So should we.
*sigh* When you manage to get the criteria of my argument correctly, maybe we'll get somewhere: I am not arguing for the MT, which is just one tradition out of at least three, but for the Hebrew text. Ergo, both quotes consistent with the MT and quotes that are evidentially self-translations from the Hebrew but do not agree with the LXX are admissible.
Moreover, I am not arguing that the NT authors did not use the LXX as their default translation any more than I would claim that Chuck Missler does not use the KJV as his default translation. What I am arguing is that they did not consider the LXX to be Divinely correct, since out of the instances in which there is real disagreement between the LXX and the Hebrew (that is, the actual sense of the words in all existent Hebrew texts, including the DSS, are different from the sense of the words in the LXX), they side against the LXX between almost half to a third of the time, to judge by how often even this LXX proponent seems to err in imagining a difference where there is none.
Even limiting myself to MT quotes, I can cite Matthew (2:15, 11:10) and John (19:37) in addition to Sha'ul's letters. Under my actual criteria rather than your strawman parody of it, Mark likewise did not always agree with the LXX (12:29-30), but did his own rendering of the text.
So right off the bat, your premise that only Sha'ul the Pharisee ever disagreed with the LXX is shown to be completely fallacious.
You do not go to anything that looks for historical continuity with the Aposotles if your basic theology is Baptist, as I suspect it to be.
Actually, my basic theology is Messianic Judaism--and my historical continuity with the Apostles, who were all Torah-observant Jews as the book of Acts attests, is a heck of a lot closer than yours.
In other words, the Church as a whole deprecated the Jewish tradition even though it did not wish to purge it.
They didn't deprecate Jewish tradition as a whole--you'll notice how Ya'akov (James) was concerned at the false rumor that Sha'ul was teaching Jews not to follow the customs of their people (Acts 21:21). What they did is cast aside certain traditions which contradicted the Torah (like refusing fellowship with believing Gentiles) and refused to enforce as binding others that added to the Torah (in accordance with Deu. 12:32).
In generall, Christ and the Apostles did not mind the Christian Tradition at all, and when used in the general sense, as in 2 Thess 2:14, it is praised.
Tradition is a fine thing, a connection to our ancestors . . . as long as it neither adds to nor takes away from God's commandments. This is why I reject both the RCC and the EOC as being the "true" Church: Your traditions contradict God's commands in the Torah, which were never annulled in the NT.
As for 2 Thess 2:14, I see nowhere where Sha'ul defines what traditions he had in mind. Most likely he was referring to those traditions which came to be enshrined in the Gospel accounts, since they weren't written at that time. He may have been referring to something else. But I'm pretty sure that moving the Sabbath or iconography wasn't what he had in mind, since that would by definition make him a false prophet (Deu. 12:32-13:5).
They were using the Septuagint alongside with the Hebrew scripture, did they not?
Alongside, yes, as a translation for those who did not speak Hebrew, the same way we use an English translation--but not in place of the Hebrew, which their rabbis (religious leaders) were expected to know so that they could teach correctly from the Tanakh.
They read the Deuterocanon. So should we.
They did not speak of the Apocrypha with the terms that indicated that they thought it Scripture, nor did they build doctrine upon them. Neither should we.
I'd say that summarizes is very well.