The Septuagint: if it was good enough for Paul is it good enough for us?

[nolidad]

That's the problem, the oldest complete codex we have of the Hebrew is the Leningrad Codex from 1008-9 and an incomplete codex, the Aleppo Codex from the mid 900s. Although there are plenty of fragments, at least according to this website (https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org...hebrew-bible/what-is-the-oldest-hebrew-bible/ ), the Aleppo Codex is considered to be the most authoritative version of the Masoretic text. So for the early church, the LXX would have been the main text used for the OT, and it is still considered to be the OT text for the Eastern Orthodox church.

Wikipedia:
The Leningrad Codex (Latin: Codex Leningradensis, the "codex of Leningrad") is the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew, using the Masoretic Text and Tiberian vocalization.[1] It is dated 1008 CE (or possibly 1009) according to its colophon.[2] The Aleppo Codex, against which the Leningrad Codex was corrected, is several decades older, but parts of it have been missing since 1947, making the Leningrad Codex the oldest complete codex of the Tiberian mesorah that has survived intact to this day.

The early churches most likely had no copies of the OT! There was no Christian Book Distributor around those days nor Amazon! It was until the late 2nd century that churches began to have OT scrolls. They were more interested in surviving the persecutions and getting the letters written to other churches than to worry about the OT! Remember they were Gentiles and not too concerned with the law and the Prophets which were jewish in nature.

An old testament was copied by hand and took several years! Most synagogues did not even have a whole OT ! They were very very expensive to buy!

 

[Radagast]

The early churches most likely had no copies of the OT!

Of course they did!

Jesus reads an OT scroll in Luke 4:17. An Ethiopian reads the same scroll in Acts 8:28. Paul refers to his scrolls in 2 Timothy 4:13.

It was until the late 2nd century that churches began to have OT scrolls.

That's just nonsense. 2 Timothy 3:16 presupposes that the OT is around and can be used for "teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness."

 

[Radagast]

English OT's that are translations of the Septuagint is a translation of a translation.

The only English OT's for sale that are translations of the Septuagint are a handful of specifically Greek Orthodox translations.

Every translation that isn't specifically Greek Orthodox is based on the Hebrew (with occasional reference to the Septuagint when the Hebrew is confusing).

 

[nolidad]

The only English OT's for sale that are translations of the Septuagint are a handful of specifically Greek Orthodox translations.

Every translation that isn't specifically Greek Orthodox is based on the Hebrew (with occasional reference to the Septuagint when the Hebrew is confusing).

You need to do better research. I cannot speak for all the new translations since c. 1990 but all before were almost exclusively the Septuagint. That is why I still use the KJV for it was the only translation for a long time that used the Hebrew/Aramaic.

 

[nolidad]

Of course they did!

Jesus reads an OT scroll in Luke 4:17. An Ethiopian reads the same scroll in Acts 8:28. Paul refers to his scrolls in 2 Timothy 4:13.

Jesus was in a synagogue in Luke!

The Eunuch probably had a bought copy of Isaiah. He was in charge of great wealth and in Ethiopia there were a great many Jews! It could have been Candaces scroll or given to him by one of the rabbis. I have just given you the reality fo the day.

Scrolls were hand written and the scribes after writing them counted every vowel and every consonant. If they found three mistakes- they destroyed teh scrolls and started over again. There were no printing presses or PC printers in those days!

 

[Radagast]

You need to do better research.

Somebody needs to.

I cannot speak for all the new translations since c. 1990 but all before were almost exclusively the Septuagint.

Not true. Every Protestant translation since Martin Luther has translated the OT from the Hebrew. Catholic translations started translating from the Hebrew when they stopped using the Vulgate.

Bibles based on the Septuagint include Brenton (1854), the Orthodox Study Bible (2008), the Eastern Orthodox Bible (based on Brenton), and only 1 or 2 others.

 

[GreekOrthodox]

The early churches most likely had no copies of the OT! There was no Christian Book Distributor around those days nor Amazon! It was until the late 2nd century that churches began to have OT scrolls. They were more interested in surviving the persecutions and getting the letters written to other churches than to worry about the OT! Remember they were Gentiles and not too concerned with the law and the Prophets which were jewish in nature.

An old testament was copied by hand and took several years! Most synagogues did not even have a whole OT ! They were very very expensive to buy!

Agreed, as I recall, Readers were responsible for keeping the books and scrolls safe in the early church (although dont quote me on that)

 

[nolidad]

Agreed, as I recall, Readers were responsible for keeping the books and scrolls safe in the early church (although dont quote me on that)

Well books were not invented till the printing press. And the early church copied the letters which werwe to later become the corpus of the epistles. Same with the gospels. And they were fastidiously copied. Just remember something like matthew would have taken months to recopy!

The OT if in the hands of a Jewish believer- they would have been a wealthy individual who could afford the price of a scribe writing a scroll for them. Before the church was well established- no Jew would have darted undertake to copy a scroll. That was the job of the scribes.

 

[chevyontheriver]

The LXX was initiated by Alexander the Great. What we do NOT have is the underlying Hebrew text behind it.

Um, Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–247 BCE) rather than Alexander, at least according to the story.

 

[Dave-W]

Um, Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–247 BCE) rather than Alexander, at least according to the story.

Whose story?

Not the Jews' story.

 

[Radagast]

Well books were not invented till the printing press.

False. The Codex Sinaiticus, for example is a Bible in book form that was made more than 1,000 years before the printing press.

 

[Radagast]

Whose story?

According to Jews like Philo and Josephus.

 

[ralfyman]

From what I gathered, the journal article argues that the numerical problem was caused by a clerical error in translation. Given that, LXX is generally reliable.

 

[Knee V]

I agree with different people here on different points. Here is my stance:

The LXX was the Greek scriptures in a Greek-speaking world, and was THE Old Testament that spread throughout the Roman Empire as Christianity spread, at least at the beginning. I am perfectly comfortable with the LXX being the default Old Testament for Christians.

However, I recognize that at the time that the Scriptures were translated into Greek there was already textual variance and different textual families emerging. The Masoretic Texts likely came from a different textual family than that which produced the LXX, and the DSS may have come from a textual family separate from both of those, and the Peshitta may have come from another family.

I would be comfortable with an English translation solely of the LXX, but I would also be comfortable with an English translation of the Old Testament from the Peshitta, or one which draws from the LXX, Peshitta and DSS and MT, without automatic default deference to the MT.

I don't particularly care for translations which are exclusively or nearly exclusively based on the MT. Since the only real alternatives available to me are English translations of the MT and the LXX, by default go-to translation of the OT is a particular translation of the LXX.

 

[FenderTL5]

Well books were not invented till the printing press...

False. The Codex Sinaiticus, for example is a Bible in book form that was made more than 1,000 years before the printing press.

also off the top of my head, The Book of Kells predates the printing press by ~500 years.

 

[tz620q]

Somebody needs to.



Not true. Every Protestant translation since Martin Luther has translated the OT from the Hebrew. Catholic translations started translating from the Hebrew when they stopped using the Vulgate.

Bibles based on the Septuagint include Brenton (1854), the Orthodox Study Bible (2008), the Eastern Orthodox Bible (based on Brenton), and only 1 or 2 others.

Actually that is a bit more complicated on the Vulgate. Jerome was known initially for his scholarship in Greek and translated from Greek into Latin as his first translation of the Vulgate. This was while his Hebrew was very bad. Later he traveled and spent 30 years in Palestine learning Hebrew from the Jewish Rabbis and gathering as many ancient manuscripts as he could find, in both Hebrew and Aramaic. He then retranslated the OT using these Hebrew and Aramaic scrolls. That version is what became the Latin Vulgate. Parts are still translations from Greek, since he could not find all of the OT canonized by the Roman church in Hebrew or Aramaic.

 

[nolidad]

also off the top of my head, The Book of Kells predates the printing press by ~500 years.

Well my bad! I did mean books printed by press.

Vellum and papyrus were sewn together in book form

 

[Radagast]

Actually that is a bit more complicated on the Vulgate. Jerome was known initially for his scholarship in Greek and translated from Greek into Latin as his first translation of the Vulgate. This was while his Hebrew was very bad. Later he traveled and spent 30 years in Palestine learning Hebrew from the Jewish Rabbis and gathering as many ancient manuscripts as he could find, in both Hebrew and Aramaic. He then retranslated the OT using these Hebrew and Aramaic scrolls. That version is what became the Latin Vulgate. Parts are still translations from Greek, since he could not find all of the OT canonized by the Roman church in Hebrew or Aramaic.

All I was saying that the DR, for example, is translated from the Vulgate, and the NAB and other recent Catholic English versions from the Greek and Hebrew. I wasn't discussing the origin of the Vulgate itself.

 

[LoveAvenue]

The Septuagint is filled with many errors and falsehoods-

The Goliath Giant in the Septuagint was only six feet tall. This is not a giant !
Giants are not merely 5 to 6 feet tall.

The Torah in Hebrew says he was a giant, standing nearly 9 - 10feet tall. These type of major differences are exactly why the Septuagint was written - to undermine and change and alter the Bible and cause people to have argumentive differences and doubts concerning God's word.

The Septuagint goes through the Old Testament making little contradictory changes such as placing Mathusala as having lived for nearly 15 years beyond / past the date of flood event, but yet - was never on the ark.

The Septuagint also says literally - that angels are called " The Sons Of God " but The Masoretic Hebrew never says this - The Sons Of God are never once described as Angels. - - God said in the New Testament that no Angel has never, ever been known - to be called His Son.

One of the major problems with The Septuagint - is that we do not have anything like it in the original language. The Septuagint has no original Hebrew manuscripts to show from what it was translated from.

All that is claimed is that seventy Jews who shut themselves and hid themselves in one single location produced The Septuagint (for Ptolemy king of Egypt. But to hide the fact that they had no manuscripts, they made up and added to the story that they received inspiration for the translation from the holy spirit - Even with limited or next to no copies of Hebrew manuscripts.

The fact is …

The most stunning reality is that Jerome originally started off pretended that there was a Greek translation of The Old testament - but once he dove into his translation project he found that there was next to nothing - VALID or complete - in Greek whatsoever - concerning the Old Testament. So Jerome turned to the Hebrew Masoretic Text manuscripts. was the Hebrew texts which were the inspired words of God.

What is stunning about the whole situation is that Jerome and His Catholic Church did not even preserve the original Hebrew manuscripts from which he had translated from.

If we search - we find that - The Aleppo Codex ( 920 AD ) and Leningrad Codex (c. 1008 AD ) were once the oldest known Hebrew language manuscripts of the Tanakh.

What did the Catholic Church do with the Hebrew Manuscripts that Jerome used to translate from ?

Rome and Egypt should have at least a handful of crumbled dust and rotten fragments of manuscripts to show for - concerning what they used to translate the Septuagint from. But everything before the 8 th and 9 th century has been completely trashed and destroyed. Rome is the only place where most of the SEPTUAGINT manuscripts from the 4 th and 5 th centuries exist. These are the only evidence for the SEPTUAGINT. The very SEPTUAGINT originators and holders and care - takers and preservers - are the very ones who destroyedall of early the Hebrew manuscripts.

In Adam Clarke's commentary on Psalm 14 he notes: "Yet IT HAS BEEN CONTENDED, PARTICULARLY BY ST. JEROME, THAT PAUL DID NOT QUOTE THEM (the verses in Romans 3:10-18) from this Psalm; but...he collected from different parts several passages that bore upon the subject, and united them here....AND THAT SUCCEEDING COPYISTS, FINDING THEM IN ROMANS INSERTED THEM INTO THE SEPTUAGINT, from which it was presumed they had been lost. It does not appear that they made a part of this Psalm in Origen's Hexapla. In the portions that still exist of this Psalm there is not a word of these additional verses referred to in that collection, neither here nor in the parallel Psalm 53."

in 380 A.D - Jerome began to consult the Hebrew texts. Here Jerome claimed that The available SEPTUAGINT borrowed whole verses from the already completed N.T. text, and transplanted them back into their SEPTUAGINT version.

CHARACTERISTICS OF ST. JEROME'S WORK

Jerome then began to write several works on the supremacy of the Hebrew texts over the various Greek translations. Jerome writes: “It would be tedious now to enumerate, what great additions and omissions the Septuagint has made, and all the passages which in church-copies are marked with daggers and asterisks [symbols indicating words present in the Greek but absent in the Hebrew, and vice versa]. The Jews generally laugh when they hear our version of this passage of Isaiah, ‘Blessed is he that hath seed in Zion and servants in Jerusalem [Is. 31.9].’ In Amos also ... But how shall we deal with the Hebrew originals in which these passages and others like them are omitted, passages so numerous that to reproduce them would require books without number?" - [ Jerome's Letter LVII]”

In Jerome's Latin Vulgate translation of 405 A.D. , he did NOT include the extra 6 verses. Psalm 14 (13 in the SEPTUAGINT and Latin) does not contain the additional 6 verses found in the SEPTUAGINT. It can be seen here: Psalms Chapter 13 - Jerome s Latin Vulgate (405 A.D.) - Free Bible Software by johnhurt.com

The SEPTUAGINT was written - AFTER the New Testament. Some of the New Testament was inserted / placed back into The SEPTUAGINT O.T. translation

The SEPTUAGINT translators took the already completed New Testament writings, and transplanted them back into their Greek translation. Just like the Douay Rheims Catholics Translators of 1582 - also - transplanted the Greek word “ Christ “ back into their English Old Testament, numerous times.

They are taking NT – Greek - verses and inserting them word for word in their Greek translation when NO Hebrew text anywhere exist for the way these New Testament verses are written. They got them directly from the New Testament -
Also - If the acclaimed Pre-Christ SEPTUAGINT already existed and was spread and used by thousands of people - why, after the New Testament was completed, did at least three or four different men ( Origen, Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotian ) attempt to make new Greek translations between 140 A.D. and 240 A.D.?

Why was the Roman Catholic Church still attempting to make 5 or 6 new different Greek Old Testaments. ?

All copies of the SEPTUAGINT are the editorial work of Origen from the 3 rd century. This is the only manuscript source that reflects anything that resembles from what the SEPTUAGINT was copied from.

There are no Hebrew manuscripts that reflect the SEPTUAGINT contradictions that compare to the Masoretic texts.

The only manuscripts for The SEPTUAGINT in any bulk volume are The Codex Vaticanus (Vatican Library), dating from about 350 AD. The Vatican has added pages to make the collection over the centuries, it contains 617 leaves that have been added, INSERTED into the collection hundreds of years after Christ, Also - The Codex Sinaiticus. in 1933 the British Museum purchased this fourth-century Codex from the Soviet Government for about $500,000. Even these are incomplete scriptures filled with thousands and thousands of contradictions and errors.

 

[Radagast]

So Jerome turned to the Hebrew Masoretic Text manuscripts. was the Hebrew texts which were the inspired words of God.

The Masoretes lived centuries after Jerome, so Jerome could not have used the Masoretic text.