Replies

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!