I just don't see any point in demonizing him either
No need to demonize anyone; but a balanced profile is good for a fair discussion. What a person does often makes him reliable or unreliable in general. Saying that Hitler liked animals doesn't make him any less of a monster (and, no, I am not comparing Josephus to Hitler!)
And pray-tell, what is your evidence that the matter of the Jewish canon was something that he saw fit to lie about for his own purposes?
I didn't say he saw fit to lie about it. I was only wondering if his choice corresponded to others' and why. What was the reason for him to spell out the Jewish canon? To the best of my knowledge, few people considered it closed.
Thanks to Christian scribes who saw fit to interpolate their own prejudices into Josephus' writings and thereby almost destroy the value of the earliest non-Biblical source on the existence of Yeshua the Messiah
Exactly! And not only into Josephus' writings but into the Bible itself! As a result, there is no way of knowing which came first, what was added, what was deleted, what was not there to begin with.
The Scripture have been tampered with. That much is clear. Subtle words change whole meanings; missing one accent can change the whole word. Different words lead to different beliefs and concepts. That's why corroborating evidence is needed more than ever.
The unfortunate part is that about 90+% of what we know about ancient history is single-sourced. So what then is your point?
Uncertainty.
As opposed to dozens of places where the LXX is less accurate?
No, in response to your claim that the Hebrew version has been "perfectly" persevered. Even a 'handful' makes it not perfect.
Look, the differences in the LXX are often due to the fact that the LXX, like the Targums, is more a dynamic-equivalent translation than a word-for-word translation
Agree. The only reason the Orthodox Church uses LXX is because it is by far the most predominant version of the OT used in the Gospels. We don't know which version they used, however. The Sinai and Vatican Codices being the oldest actually differ quite a bit from the Alexandrian version (which is the one used by the EOC and is least reliable of the three).
I don't think anyone in the EOC would claim that any one version is absolutely faultless.
If you think Yeshua was preaching in Greek in Galilee and Judea
I wold never think that. But the earliest Gospel fragments we have are in Greek. Until such time that we discover Aramaic versions, Greek will be the original language of the NT. The references made to the OT in the Gospels are made with respect to LXX (in a vast majority of cases).
Well, I was right--this has indeed been every bit as fruitful as debating with a KJV-Only fanatic would be. "If the King James' was good enough for Peter and Paul, then it's good enough for me!"
I am sorry, that's a poor comparison. KJV was created for political purposes and is based on a "Greek" text retro-translated into Greek from a Latin translation from Greek. It also contains numerous documented errors and very strong pro-Protestant vocabulary and concepts.
Anyone who uses any single source as the Bible is guilty of self-deception. But it is also a stretch to assume that absolutely nothing changed in the Old Testament from Exodus until Babylon and that 'oral tradition' maintained a faultless version of the truth delivered to Moses when there is ample evidence of variations and changes in scriptural texts elsewhere.
So, the best way to approach any Scripture, in my opinion, is one of open minded doubt, and consider all source.
Yeah, sorry for the delay on that, but it wasn't something I could answer accurately and completely off the top of my head, and since my Sabbath is spent with the youth group of our congregation, I wasn't going to have time until today to dig into it.
Before I begin, let's make sure that we're defining our positions accurately. As I've said, I am not arguing for the perfection of the Masoretic text, nor am I arguing that the Apostles did not frequently make use of the LXX as the default translation cited for their predominantly Greek-speaking audience. The Masoretic clearly has some issues--though these are few and far between--but there are other Hebrew textual traditions, including those in the DSS, as well as other non-Greek sources like the Samaritan Penteteuch which serve as a corrective along with the LXX in doing our textual criticism. Nor is it surprising that the NT authors used the LXX frequently, any more than it's surprising that so many Catholics have used the Duoay-Rheims as their default English translation or so many Protestants and Evangelicals default to the KJV.
So the issue is not the LXX vs. the Masoretic, but the Greek vs. the Hebrew--that is, can a translation be divinely inspired so as to replace the original Scriptures (as the KJV-Onlyists claim)? While I may quote the KJV as a useful "common ground" translation with an English audience, that doesn't mean that I won't prefer the original languages of the Scriptures or even refer back to them if I think the KJV has mistranslated something.
How is that important to us? Simply so: The instant one corrects a translation in any regard by referring back to the original languages of the Scriptures, one a priori throws out the idea that the translation is "God-breathed" and inerrant.
"But," you may argue, "the Aposltes also corrected the Masoretic!"
This is true, but again, I'm not defending the Masoretic--I'm defending the Hebrew. The doctrine of inerrancy in the Scriptures has always been that the original autographs were without flaw or error, but acknowledges that scribal errors have since entered into many texts. That is why even Biblical inerrantists must rely on textual criticism to reconstruct the original state of the text--and why God has provided that no doctrine is given in but a single passage, let alone a disputed one.
In the course of my research, I came across this page which you'll doubtless find interesting, especially since the author takes your position on LXX primacy. The most useful part of his data is where he charts the agreement between the NT and the LXX and/or MT (about halfway down the page). And here we notice something very interesting: In the great majority of cases, there is no substantial disagreement between the LXX and MT for the NT to choose between!
If there's no substantial disagreement, then it hardly follows that the NT authors were favoring the LXX simply because they quoted it, anymore than I'm favoring the KJV over the Greek NT when I find them to be in agreement and quote the KJV!
Below that, we find the author, though he in his conclusion clearly favors the LXX, admitting six instances where the NT favors the MT, and eleven instances where they favored neither but instead did their own translation. Frankly, seventeen instances of correcting the LXX versus thirty instances of favoring it does not indicate that the NT authors considered the LXX to be vastly superior to the Hebrew texts at their disposal.
Moreover, many of the cases in which this author cites the LXX over the MT (near the top of the page) are not actually instances of superior transmission, but of the NT authors making use of the LXX's clarifying statements. For example:
- He cites Mat. 1:23 as an instance of favoring the LXX over the MT. However, the fact is that the Hebrew word almah does mean a virgin girl of marriageable age in every instance in which it is used in the Tanakh, so this is more an instance of arguing over the translation of a Hebrew word than it is the MT getting it wrong.If you take out those types of differences, you're left with a handful of true descrepancies, like Heb. 1:6 vs. the MT of Deu. 32:43--but at that point, there's not much distinction left between the number of times the NT favors the LXX over the MT and the number of times it disputes the LXX (not always in favor of the MT)!- Likewise, in Mat. 12:21, Matthew is simply making use of the LXX's clarification of "coastlands" to refer to the Gentiles--an interpretation which Isaiah's readers understood. I use the Message and the Complete Jewish Bible in the same way, without considering either to be superior to the Greek NT or Hebrew Tanakh.
Therefore, I maintain to you that while the NT authors used the LXX as their default Greek translation, the fact that they corrected it as often as they corrected the Masoretic (and we don't know which versions of the Hebrew Scriptures they had at their disposal, so it's not even certain that the LXX was the reason they favored certain readings) proves that they did not regard the LXX as divinely correct or inerrant.
What a person does often makes him reliable or unreliable in general.
True, but a person's failings in one area do not automatically make him unreliable in unrelated errors. So again I ask you: What specific evidence do you have that Josephus was unreliable, or had any reason to be, in transmitting the canon of the Tanakh which was broadly accepted in his day?
If you have none, then you're reduced to making a fallacious "poisoning the well" argument.
What was the reason for him to spell out the Jewish canon?
For a quick background on the work, look here.
Exactly! And not only into Josephus' writings but into the Bible itself! As a result, there is no way of knowing which came first, what was added, what was deleted, what was not there to begin with.
I think you're a little too quick to despair. In most instances, it's not that hard to figure it out. For example, in the case of the Josephus witness to Yeshua, we have copies of his work in Arabic which contain the passage, but without the Christian interpolations--which weren't exactly characteristic of Josephus' style anyway.
In the case of the Bible, the multiplicity of early manuscripts in agreement with each other help us to weed out "creative editing" from later centuries, as do the voluminous quotes from the rabbis and early Church fathers in their works. If we lost every copy of the NT, we could reconstruct it sans only a handful of verses from their quotes alone.
Nearly all disputes that are still up in the air involve minor spelling discrepancies, most of which do not affect the reading of the text enough to present a problem. The other major dispute is over the Majority Text vs. the slightly earlier but probably redacted Alexandrian manuscripts. In that case, the ECF strongly favor the Majority Text.
No, in response to your claim that the Hebrew version has been "perfectly" persevered. Even a 'handful' makes it not perfect.
The same applies to the LXX.
I don't think anyone in the EOC would claim that any one version is absolutely faultless.
Hence the need for textual criticism. :)
Until such time that we discover Aramaic versions, Greek will be the original language of the NT.
Oh, we have Aramaic versions; there's just some dispute over whether they were preserved in Aramaic from the beginning or translated back into Aramaic from the Greek. We also have some Hebrew manuscripts, but again we face the same problem. But I agree that one must work with the Greek which we know has been preserved for the most part--though we've found that translating Yeshua's words back into Aramaic and Hebrew has yielded some surprising clarity on some of His "hard sayings." It's even revealed an underlying poetic meter to His teachings.
KJV was created for political purposes and is based on a "Greek" text retro-translated into Greek from a Latin translation from Greek.
Yep. It also contains some anti-semetic and anti-Torah mistranslations that can only be called deliberate. Hence why even when I quote it or the NKJV, I correct it against other sources. I personally do my study from an interlinear Bible which uses a woodenly literal translation, using the CJB, NASB, and a few other translations for clarity.
Of course, translations that rely on the Vulgate run into the same problem. Which isn't your problem, I realize. I'll have to read the Eastern Orthodox English translation for comparison purposes someday.
Anyone who uses any single source as the Bible is guilty of self-deception.
Exactly! And I think since we agree on that, the most important point, everything else comes down to discussing the original state and meaning of certain passages. Which we can do if you'd like, but I'm also fine on ending on a point of agreement.