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Thank you so much for your encouragement, Buggman!

kosta50: You are presuming that it was there to be translated. You are presuming that the Pharisaical Hebrew text is the only "true" text and if it appears in the Masoretic it must have been in all of them.

You cannot read my mind. Nor can I read your mind and declare that you presume it was not.

The evidence that the apostles understood tzur (ha tzur) to be a proper name of God is in the New Testament, for instance.

Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; And did all eat the same spiritual meat; And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ. – 1 Cor 10:1-4

This is no small matter, for the name is specially announced in the Torah (emphasis mine)!

Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass: Because I will publish the name of the LORD: ascribe ye greatness unto our God. [He is] the Rock, his work [is] perfect: for all his ways [are] judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right [is] he. – Deu 32:1-4

The Torah is unlike any other manuscript, God breathed and supreme as Christ underscored here:

For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. – Matt 5:18

Jewish tradition holds that the Torah existed before the world, that every letter of it is a living creature and that altogether it, too, is a name of God. It is their – and by their hand to the world – greatest gift (since they don't receive Christ.) It is also their mission.

Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. - John 4:22

Christ used the term Rock in two very important passages. If one misunderstands the Rock to mean something common or someone other than God, then it can lead to grievous error.

Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. – Matt 7:24-25

And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed [it] unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. – Matt 16:17-18

kosta50 continued:

You are also suggesting that the Apostles, knowing that tzur was 'erased' by the scholars who translated the OT into Greek 300 years before Christ, would use LXX nonetheless almost exclusively! You are suggetsing that the Apostles would have used a book that 'defaces' the name of God! Good Lord, A-G, this one takes the cake!

I am not just suggesting it, I am declaring it. The Apostles and Christians to this very day have been quoting and translating out of a translation (LXX) which erased a specially announced name of God!

Moreover, I declare that has lead to millennia of misunderstanding and lost spiritual joy – not only of the two passages from Christ’s testimony above but also in understanding the Old Testament.

Consider anew, with the Spiritual eyes of Christ, this passage – understanding God is the Rock, Jesus on the Cross, Living Water (John 4, 7:38):

Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he called the name of the place Massah, and Meribah, because of the chiding of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the LORD, saying, Is the LORD among us, or not?– Exodus 17:6-7

Or perhaps this one:

And the LORD said, Behold, [there is] a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen. – Exodus 33:21-23

Nevertheless, I am also very, very sure that missing the mark on this name of God is also part of God's plan.

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to [his] purpose. - Romans 8:28

A-G, thank you, again, on your thoughtful and answer. I appreciate your faith and, in this case, concern.

You write in response to my statement ("You are also suggesting that the Apostles, knowing that tzur was 'erased' by the scholars who translated the OT into Greek 300 years before Christ, would use LXX nonetheless almost exclusively!"): I am not just suggesting it, I am declaring it.

And I would like to ask you to provide proof that it was 'erased' from the Scripture used by the 72 scholars who wrote the Septuagint (LXX) three centuries before Christ in Alexandria.

There is nothing whatsoever in those two verses you singled out, that is in any way demeaning to God in the LXX rendition.

You don't know, and no one alive knows, or has, the original copy of the Hebrew Bible used by the scholars to translate it into Greek. You don't know, and no one alive knows, that the word "tzur" was in their copy in those two verses.

You are basing your outrage on the Masoretic Text, the Hebrew Bible, whose oldest copy is barely ten centuries old, in which the word tzur does appear in those verses.

You have no way of knowing for certain why the word tzur is not in LXX, what transpired when LXX was translated from Hebrew into Greek, because the original has notbeen preserbved.

However, you should know that just because the pre-Christ Old Testament (LXX) differs from the post-Christ rabbinical Masoretic Text (MT), better known in the West as "the" Hebrew Bible, does not make MT "right" and LXX "wrong."

Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) agree in with MT, but also with LXX, and also disagree with both, thereby indicating that the "Hebrew Bible" was not a single version with identical passages, but a heterogeneous group of documents that show considerable variation, and even disagreement, just as various Jewish sects disagreed on many issues.

Neither the Jewish Scriptuire, nor pre-Christ Judaism, represent a single canon of beliefs and doctrines, and therefore one cannot use one set to call the other "wrong."

Thus, you have nothing whatsoever to base your dramatic statement on, except the available Masoretic Text which the Apostles, as a rule, did not quote from.

You use my favorite Apostle, +Paul, 1 Cor 10:4 "And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ." to prove your point.

Thank you. It shows how +Paul combined things to make his own gospel as he called it. He could do that because he was preaching to the ignorant Greeks and Romans, who knew nothing about Judaism.

The verses you quote (in full, 1-4) are related to Exodus 17:6, Numbers 20:11, and Ps 78:15 and in none of those is the word "rock" used to mean God! In fact, in the Numbers' verse, the word used is not even tzur but cela.

The NAS version of the Christian Bible does not even capitalize the word "rock" in your example of 1 Cor 10:1-4, indicating it is not God's name. It was a 'poetic' way, shall we say, for +Paul to give the Greeks and Romans preach the his own gospel before the Gopels were written.

But the bottom line is that those who knew Christ in Person when He walked the earth (that would not be either +Paul or +Luke), and who listened to His ministry, quote the Lord in the Gospels almost exclusively, if not exclusively, from LXX, which is the Old Testament you say 'erased' the name of God. How strange! I say again, this takes the cake!