The Septuagint Old Testament Translation verses the Jamnian

http://www.agapebiblestudy.com/documents/SEPTUAGINT_VS_JAMAIAN_OLD_T.htm ^ | 1998 | Michal Hunt

[stfassisi]

As Christianity exploded out of Palestine and into Syria and Asia Minor it was difficult for the Church to produce copies fast enough of the Septuagint translated into the various common spoken languages of new Christians. As a result, errors crept into the manuscripts by the late fourth century. “I am not so ignorant as to suppose that any of the Lord’s words are in need of correction,” St. Jerome complained, “but the Latin books are proved to be faulty by the discrepancies that they all exhibit among themselves.”

[stfassisi]

PING!

[Quix]

Seems like a nice historical summary from the RC perspective.

[markomalley]

[Invincibly Ignorant]

Here we go. Another everyone else but Jews are more qualified to interpret their own scriptures. Gets tiring.

[docbnj]

As Christianity exploded out of Palestine and into Syria and Asia Minor it was difficult for the Church to produce copies fast enough of the Septuagint translated into the various common spoken languages of new Christians. That's funny. It took an awfully long time to get translations into national tongues. That was some translation bottleneck! Perhaps the bottleneck was particularly bad when the translators were being burned at the stake.

[Uncle Chip]

As Christianity continued to gain ground, Jewish scholars decided it was time to re-translate the Sacred Texts back into Hebrew. It wasn’t until the early Middle Ages that a translation back into Hebrew was completed.

You guys should give up posting outright lies like this one during Lent. This article is full of so many lies that the writer was probably in the confessional for three hours and is still saying his Hail Mary's as Penance.

[Diego1618]

When Jesus read from prophecy in the synagogue, it was the Septuagint translation of Isaiah that He read from in Luke 4:16-21, and when He said, “search through Scripture” in John 5:39, He meant the Greek translation Septuagint!

This is very unlikely ....seeing that in [Luke 24:44] He quotes from the Hebrew saying: And he said unto them, "These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me." The Law, the Prophets and the Psalms, of course.....would not include the Deuts.

He goes on to say: (verse 25)"Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures.

He speaks to Paul in Hebrew [Acts 26:14], He quotes scripture from the Hebrew, He never quotes the Deuts (Greek) and He was a Hebrew.

Where in the world do you folks get the idea he used the Septuagint?

[dangus]

Because this is what Luke 4 says:

he hath anointed me to preach good news to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.

This is what Isaiah 61 says, according to the Masoretic text:

the LORD hath anointed me to preach good news unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to [them that are] bound;

As you can see, they are very different. Yet the Septuagint Isaiah 61 passage is identical to Luke 4.

[dangus]

>> He speaks to Paul in Hebrew [Acts 26:14], He quotes scripture from the Hebrew, He never quotes the Deuts (Greek) and He was a Hebrew. <<

He also never quotes 1/3rd of the books of the Protestant Old Testament, because the Pharisees did not use them to teach from. Would you throw out also Job, Chronicles, and Joshua?

[Uncle Chip]

You're correct that the Luke 4 passage and the Isaiah 61 passage differ. The book from which Jesus read was given to him and He read from it as it was written in it. It is possible that He realized that the passage was not entirely accurate, but He read it anyway as it was written on the page in front of him as He was supposed to do without correcting it.

It appears to have been a tradition in the synagogues to read from the Hebrew text first, then to read the same passage from a Greek text which even Jews of the 1st century BC often criticized as being full of interpolations, paraphrases, and inaccuracies.

The tradition of reading from these often inaccurate and paraphrased Greek texts after reading from the Hebrew was a Pharisaical tradition. It appeared to have been a tradition, which if the translation reflected the Hebrew was no problem, but if not, then it was one of those many traditions of the Pharisees [Mark 7;13], that Jesus criticized as making "the word of God of no effect."

[redgolum]

One of the rather interesting things about the Qumran (sp?) scrolls, or the Dead Sea Scrolls, is that they follow the LXX version of Isaiah and Jeremiah more than the Masoretic text. Which, according to the scholarship of the day, they shouldn't.

Caused quite a bit of internal controversy, and was one of the reasons it took so long to publish the scrolls. The other reason is that many at the IAA thought that they should be labeled forgeries since the scrolls were not found at an authorized dig.

[dangus]

>> You're correct that the Luke 4 passage and the Isaiah 61 passage differ. The book from which Jesus read was given to him and He read from it as it was written in it. It is possible that He realized that the passage was not entirely accurate, but He read it anyway as it was written on the page in front of him as He was supposed to do without correcting it. <<

That's desperate. You think he had a stenographer with him? Luke records the Septuagint because that's what LUKE had and/or that's what the Holy Spirit inspired him to record. 300 out of 350 citations in the New Testament use the Septuagint; that's simply one of the longest passages, so the differences are most plain.

>> It appears to have been a tradition in the synagogues to read from the Hebrew text first, then to read the same passage from a Greek text <<

Says who? Or does is this simply conjecture to fit your model? (It would make sense if this were done among the Jews in exile, but it seems bizarre to read Greek to Jews in Palestine unless the Greek were somehow thought to be superior to the Hebrew, like Catholics who would read Latin before their vernacular.)

>> which even Jews of the 1st century BC often criticized as being full of interpolations, paraphrases, and inaccuracies. <<

Which would make it all the more bizarre to cite the Greek, if Jesus also read the Hebrew... unless Luke was deliberately using the Greek for some other reason. That reason is clear: the Septuagint was what was known to first century Christians and exilic Jews whom the Christians hoped to convert.

Incidentally, while I'm sure that Jews of different sects criticized each others' translations (like the King James Only folks, for instance), the name "Septuagint" refers to a legend, very widely believed at the time of Christ, that 70 translators, all working in complete isolation, produced the exact same translation, thus supposedly demonstrating that there was among them a unique gift of inspiration. Christians never asserted the factuality of that notion, but it certainly demonstrates that a sizeable portion of the New Testament's target audience thought very highly of the Septuagint.

Jerome, while accepting the Church's authority on using the canon of the Septuagint, certainly believed the Jews of his day who complained that the Septuagint was filled with translation errors. That is quite unfortunate, because if the congruity of the Greek New Testament and the Greek Old Testament were apparent to the laypeople of the medieval era, Luther's lies wouldn't have been nearly as successful.

[dangus]

>> One of the rather interesting things about the Qumran (sp?) scrolls, or the Dead Sea Scrolls, is that they follow the LXX version of Isaiah and Jeremiah more than the Masoretic text. Which, according to the scholarship of the day, they shouldn't. <<

Yes. This article does seem to slightly overstate or oversimplify the case to assert that the Masoretic Text is a back-translation of the Septuagint; From the Qumran and other sources, it seems to be a later translation from something which was much more recent.

The other interesting thing about the Qumran is that it contains many of the deuterocanonicals, which, at the time of Jerome, were not known to exist in Hebrew. In fact, it contains all the books of the bible, except one of the deuterocanonicals (I forget which), Esther, and Daniel 13. Yes, Daniel includes the dueterocanonical portions... This suggests that the term "deuterocanonical" is too large of a concession.

[redgolum]

I think it was Ester, but not to sure.

[Uncle Chip]

One of the things that also must be kept in mind about the Dead Sea Scrolls is that scholars make their living off of studying them and disputing with each other as to what they mean. There is very little consensus among them about just what any of the things found there actually mean, especially since the Essenes were not charged with the transmission and preservation of the scriptures. The Levitical priests in Jerusalem were in charge of the scriptures.

From what I can discern, Cave 4 is where a lot of fragments were discovered but no manuscripts that had been placed in jars for preservation. Some are concluding that Cave 4 may have been a place where discarded and unwanted manuscripts were tossed or set aside. Thus to draw conclusions from anything taken from this cave is questionable at its source.

[Uncle Chip]

Here is what Jerome says about Matthew:

"Matthew, also called Levi, apostle and aforetimes publican, composed a gospel of Christ at first published in Judea in Hebrew for the sake of those of the circumcision who believed, but this was afterwards translated into Greek though by what author is uncertain. The Hebrew itself has been preserved until the present day in the library at Caesarea which Pamphilus so diligently gathered. I have also had the opportunity of having the volume described to me by the Nazarenes of Beroea, a city of Syria, who use it. In this it is to be noted that wherever the Evangelist, whether on his own account or in the person of our Lord the Saviour, quotes the testimony of the Old Testament, he does not follow the authority of the translators of the Septuagint but the Hebrew. Wherefore these two forms exist "Out of Egypt have I called my son, " and "for he shall be called a Nazarene" (Jerome. De Viris Illustribus (On Illustrious Men). Excerpted from Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Volume 3. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. American Edition, 1892. Online Edition Copyright © 2005 by K. Knight).

The Septuagint has been under revision for two thousand years. Everyone and their brother has been engaged in the revision of the Septuagint. So who is to say that at some point in time, some of the passages of the NT were not placed back into the Septuagint from the NT --- by the likes of Origen for his Hexapla.

I point out that in Origen's day there appeared to be no authoritative Septuagint. He had to use Aquila, Symmachus, and mainly Theodotian to write his fifth column LXX. Why??? What had happened to that beloved Septuagint??? Is it possible that some Christians had been using Aquila and Theodotian, with minor adjustments of course, and then calling them "the Septuagint"???

Origen recognized that there was one Hebrew text and that was in his first column, but he needed four other columns for assistance in writing his LXX in the fifth column. So even Origen recognized that the Hebrew text of his day was unchanging and singular, as did Jerome, but "the Septuagint" was always under perpetual revision and still is today.

[dangus]

>> The Septuagint has been under revision for two thousand years. Everyone and their brother has been engaged in the revision of the Septuagint. So who is to say that at some point in time, some of the passages of the NT were not placed back into the Septuagint from the NT --- by the likes of Origen for his Hexapla. <<

Sure, some copies could be redacted as such, but the notion that all copies would be is preposterous. Don't forget: communication in those days was so abyssmal that Jerome didn't even know of multiple Jewish texts! And besides: why would they preserve inconsistencies? Why wouldn't they make it conform 100% to the New Testament? Why would there exist passages which are more similar to the Septuagint, but not exactly? Plus, you seem to forget that Origen's purpose was to compare translations.

>> Here is what Jerome says about Matthew: <<

Yes, Matthew is unique in that it was written in Hebrew, and THEN translated into Greek. The rest of the New Testament was almost certainly composed directly in Greek. But that is ONLY Matthew who did that. It is VERY likely that Jesus, himself, did cite the Hebrew text to those who spoke only Hebrew; How bizarre would it be to speak Greek to them!

The point is that when the apostles wrote to a Greek audience, they did not translate the scripture from Hebrew to Greek, as they did their own thoughts, but rather used Greek documents already available. This would certainly seem to suggest that the Greek documents were deemed acceptable by the apostles.

Luther asserted that the Hebrew canon (which did not even exist as a canon at the time of Christ) was authoritative over the Greek canon. How bizarre!

Given what we now know, can you imagine this?: The Greek Jews had been reading the Septuagint as scripture all along. Many Greek gentiles even knew of it and read it to learn about Judaism. Now, these Jews come from Israel, establishing a new faith, based on the Jewish faith, and claiming it is the fulfillment of the Jewish faith. And no-one ever informed them (for 1600 years) that there Septuagint had seven extra books -- with dangerous theology -- in them?

We have NO historical record of ANYONE in the early church denying the status of the Septuagint's canon. Even Origen's alleged denial is an argument from silence: he failed to include the Septuagint books in his Hexalpa. But his reason is obvious, and it wasn't that he didn't consider them scripture: He was comparing translations, and he had no Hebrew version of the Septuagint available!

Several people have cited cases of Church Fathers blasting the authenticity of the apocrypha, as if ignorant of the fact that the term apocrypha (prior to Luther) meant "hidden writings," and could hardly be applied to books which were in the published bibles. Many of these Church Fathers elsewhere stated exactly what they meant by "apocrypha."

[dangus]

And I should point out, of course, that even this is nailing down the impossibility of a conspiracy of sorts to change the Septuagint for which there is absolutely no evidence, anyway.

[redgolum]

Good points dangus. The LXX was widely used in the 1 century world, so widely that very often the Diaspora Jews outside of Israel only knew of the Scriptures from the LXX.

As for the Dead Seal scrolls being full of copyists errors, there were some that did have that. That doesn't change the fact that they follow the LXX version of Isaiah and Jerimiah. Since we are not sure in what condition the scrolls were stored in before they were found (remember it wasn't from an excavation), it is hard to say one way or another. From artifacts at the sight, it is clear that the people were attacked during the AD 70 revolt, and wiped out by the Romans. It is just as likely that some of the scrolls were hurriedly placed in the cave, and then those who hid them died.