Posted on 09/21/2014 1:37:08 PM PDT by Laissez-faire capitalist
A.) If no one alive today was there when He spoke, how then do we know which Jesus quoted from - the Masoretic Text or the Septuagint?
B.) If he did quote from the Masoretic Text, and His quotes, parables, etcetera, were later translated into Greek in the middle of the first century AD - independently of the Septuagint - how would we know given that none of these Original Manuscripts have survived. And though this translation work would undoubtedly differ slightly from the Septuagint, none have survived. Since no Original Manuscripts - showing one way or the other - have survived until today, there is no way to know which way or the other.
C.) If He did quote from the 1.) Masoretic Text and those who did translation work in the first century AD decided to later use 2.) the Septuagint instead of doing independent translation work (since the Septuagint gave a Greek rendering), how could we know since no Original Manuscripts have survived to show that they decided to go the route of #2?
How could we possibly know if the surviving Greek fragments come from the A or B camp?
You are welcome....
Idiot libtards think the OT is a bunch of fairy tales but believe Homers Iliad like it came off the printing press yesterday...
In Mark 7:6–7, Jesus quotes the LXX of Isaiah 29:13 when he says, "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.’"
In Mark 7:6–7, Jesus quotes the LXX of Isaiah 29:13 when he says, "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.’"
What proof do you have that the 'LXX' was not written by Origen or Eusebius and thus copied from the scriptures as opposed to the scriptures being copied from the LXX???
Romans 3:2.
What proof do you have it wasn’t?
I’d suggest Michael Kruger’s Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books.
A.) If no one alive today was there when He spoke, how then do we know which Jesus quoted from - the Masoretic Text or the Septuagint?
They didn't have the Masoretic text in the first century.
I'm curious as to why it matters.
Already convinced—there are only so many books you can read. Thank you.
It is quite impossible for Our Lord to have quoted the Masoretic Text, unless by Divine foreknowledge, since the Masorete was not fixed until well after His Ascension. It is also unlikely, unless by Divine foreknowledge, that He would have quoted the then-extant Hebrew manuscripts on which it was eventually based, since these were Babylonian manuscripts and differed from the Hebrew version current in Palestine during His earthly ministry. And, I must say, it would be very odd for Him to have preferred the Babylonian version, in as much as it was subsequently selected for use by rabbis who were deliberately establishing a textual tradition in contradistinction to that used by Christians.
The LXX, however, was in common use at the time of Our Lord’s earthly ministry, and was the normative Greek version of the Old Covenant Scriptures among Greek speaking Jews. If Our Lord spoke Greek, as seems likely enough, given both His Divine omniscience and the fact that even in human terms, having sojourned in then largely Greek-speaking Egypt as a child, then grow up in Galilee (”Galilee of the Gentiles” it was called), He would have had ample opportunity to learn Greek, unless He had reason to correct the text, it would have been natural for Him to have quoted the LXX when quoting Scripture in Greek.
Unfortunately, what you ask is quite impossible — the fact that the Evangelists and Apostles usually use the LXX in their quotations from the Old Testament — cannot distinguish between your two textual hypotheses. Even were a hypothetical Ur-text for one of the Gospels to be unearthed, one cannot distinguish between Our Lord speaking in Greek quoting the LXX and the Evangelist reporting in Greek something Our Lord said in Aramaic or Hebrew, and following the preferred translation of the passage of Scripture Our Lord was quoting into Greek, given by the already existing translation provided by the LXX.
Basically, the question of authenticity of Scripture is a good question.
Jewish tradition has always placed the greatest importance on the validity of their scriptures. Jesus Christ taught that not one jot or tittle in Matthew 5:18 shall pass away until heaven and earth pass. Jesus understood the sanctity of Jewish scriptural text according to Jewish tradition if even one dot is changed in the Talmud then that edition of the Talmud is no longer a valid copy and must be buried.
Unfortunately Christian tradition is much different. Until the first Council at Nicaea by the Emperor Constantine there was no central clearinghouse on Scripture. The apostles themselves did not write the Gospels, people who were close to them wrote what they remembered the apostles speaking about as they traveled from church to church. It is amazing that the four Gospels are as close in content to each other as they are considering where they came from. Further, it is amazing that so many variations of the Gospels that still exist are relatively close in what they say to each other. After the first Council of Nicaea and after a second Council of 385 nearly all of the books that the early Christian church used that were not approved by these councils were collected and destroyed.
After the third century we start having some unity and a central clearinghouse for Scripture. From the third century on the Scriptures maintained by the Roman Catholic Church are fairly reliable. Even after the schism of the Eastern Church and the Roman church the two “universal churches” mostly agree on scriptural content.
While the epistles of James and Paul were written in their own hand supposedly, we do not have any of the original paper that they were written on. Those epistles sent to a particular church were copied and copied nearly ad infinitum so that everyone got to read the words of Paul to a lesser extent James. There were likely many more epistles that we no longer have. There were perhaps other Gospels, in modernity there have been some “Gospels” that have shown up but their authenticity is in doubt.
Regardless of the perfection of the scriptural record that we have today that has survived antiquity we can be sure that the Old Testament at least where it agrees with the Jewish text is still good. When reading the New Testament it is wise to seek spiritual guidance. Christ has told us that the Holy Ghost will reveal truths to us, revelation if you will to the authenticity of what you read.
Many churches consider every letter of the Bible to be holy, much like Jewish scholars and their tradition of the Talmud. It is fascinating to note that although many congregations or denominations consider every word of the New Testament and the Old Testament to be the word of God they interpret those words dramatically differently and so we have thousands of Christian denominations in the world. I don’t begrudge any of the denominations, my hope is they all love the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are doing their best to serve Him. Further it is my hope that the Lord will recognize the efforts of these people and trying to serve Him until we all come to the unity of faith.
"…one cannot distinguish between Our Lord speaking in Greek quoting the LXX and the Evangelist reporting in Greek something Our Lord said in Aramaic or Hebrew, and following the preferred translation of the passage of Scripture Our Lord was quoting into Greek, given by the already existing translation provided by the LXX."An excellent point that put paid to the matter.
Interestingly enough the Dead Sea Scrolls contain the Hebrew text of most of the Old Testament. They have been dated to about 150 years before Christ. You can compare them to the current Masoretic text and they are quite faithful. I suspect if you compare the translations from the Septuagint they will be equally faithful.
The Septuagint was completed to help the non-Hebrew speaking Jews with the Old Testament. Since Jesus lived in Israel, I think it is safe to conclude His Rabbis taught Him from the Masoretic text.
According to one account from the Talmud, (BT Megillah 9a, Of 3.) and which work contains many strange ideas, Philadelphus [Ptolemy II] sent for seventy-two Hebrew scholars, six from each tribe of Israel, to undertake the work. He secluded these men on the island of Phares, where each worked separately on his own translation, without consultation with one another. According to the legend, when they came together to compare their work, the seventy-two copies proved to be identical.
This story, while highly unlikely, convinced many that the Septuagint had a supernatural quality which helped gain its acceptance for several hundred years, until the time of Jerome some four hundred years after Christ. (http://www.trinitarianbiblesociety.org/site/articles/lxx.html)
Greek was the common language in the Roman empires, and the N.T. does reference the LXX heavily, which certifies that at least these parts of the Torah (see below) were faithful translations, while this was followed by the Hebrew Masoretic translations (due to Jewish doubt on the LXX) and which Jerome affirmed, and which all major Bible translations translate the O.T. from.
As for type of translation, it was more a paraphrase,
“It was not a literal translation, however, since it incorporated commentary in the text, consciously attempting to harmonize biblical and Greek thought and to include halakhic and aggadic ideas which were current in Palestinian commentary. Some interesting features of the text are its deletion of all anthropomorphic expressions and the provision of many readings of the text which are different from the standard masoretic version. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0013_0_12632.html
The story of the origin of the LXX was embellished as time went on and is considered a fable by scholars, and Jerome chided Augustine for criticizing his differences from it and misunderstanding the nuances of his translations (http://www.bible-researcher.com/vulgate2.html). <
Also relevant is that the Septuagint was favored by the principal force behind early acceptance of the apocrypha, that being Augustine, who believed the miraculous legend of its translation.Gleason Archer affirms,
Even in the case of the Septuagint, the apocryphal books maintain a rather uncertain existence. The Codex Vaticanus (B) lacks [besides 3 and 4] 1 and 2 Maccabees (canonical, according to Rome), but includes 1 Esdras (non-canonical, according to Rome). The Sinaiticus (Aleph) omits Baruch (canonical, according to Rome), but includes 4 Maccabees (non-canonical, according to Rome)... Thus it turns out that even the three earliest MSS or the LXX show considerable uncertainty as to which books constitute the list of the Apocrypha.. (Archer, Gleason L., Jr., "A Survey of Old Testament Introduction", Moody Press, Chicago, IL, Rev. 1974, p. 75; http://www.provethebible.net/T2-Integ/B-1101.htm)
Also, the Psalms of Solomon, which is not part of any scriptural canon, is found in copies of the Septuagint as is Psalm 151, and 3 and 4 Maccabees (Vaticanus [early 4th century] does not include any of the Maccabean books, while Sinaiticus [early 4th century] includes 1 and 4 Maccabees and Alexandrinus [early 5th century] includes 1, 2, 3, and 4 Maccabees and the Psalms of Solomon)
The German historian Martin Hengel writes, “Sinaiticus contains Barnabas and Hermas, Alexandrinus 1 and 2 Clement.” “Codex Alexandrinus...includes the LXX as we know it in Rahlfs’ edition, with all four books of Maccabees and the fourteen Odes appended to Psalms.” “...the Odes (sometimes varied in number), attested from the fifth century in all Greek Psalm manuscripts, contain three New Testament ‘psalms’: the Magnificat, the Benedictus, the Nunc Dimittis from Luke’s birth narrative, and the conclusion of the hymn that begins with the ‘Gloria in Excelsis.’ This underlines the fact that the LXX, although, itself consisting of a collection of Jewish documents, wishes to be a Christian book.” (Martin Hengel, The Septuagint as Christian Scripture [Baker 2004], pp. 57-59)
Moreover, there is no historical evidence that the Septuagint was a uniform body of texts in the time of Christ. The earliest existing Greek manuscripts which contain some apocryphal books date from the 4th Century and are understood to have been placed therein by Christians. .
Luke 23:38 And an inscription also was written over Him in letters of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.
John 19:13 When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought *Yeshua out and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called The Pavement, but in Hebrew, Gabbatha.
Acts 21:40 So when he had given him permission, Paul stood on the stairs and motioned with his hand to the people. And when there was a great silence, he spoke to them in the Hebrew language, saying,
Acts 26:14 And when we all had fallen to the ground, I heard a voice speaking to me and saying in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’
Yeshua spoke Hebrew
Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls
Frequently Asked Questions
In what languages were the scrolls written ?
The majority of the scrolls were written in the Hebrew Language (approximately 90-95%) with Assyrian Block script. From this majority there are a few cases in which the scribes used Paleo-Hebrew (see for example 4QPaleoExodus). In addition to the texts found in Hebrew there were also some texts written in Aramaic and Greek.
http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il/resources/FAQ.shtml#language
There is no such thing as a Greek Torah Scroll.
*Tehillim 28:8 יְהוָה עֹז־לָמוֹ וּמָעוֹז יְשׁוּעוֹת מְשִׁיחוֹ הוּא
http://www.sarshalom.us/resources/scripture/asv/bible.html
‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’
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