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

[LoveAvenue]

If someone has faith that The Masoretic Text does truly reflect the Original Hebrew Manuscripts that existed thousands of years ago - they can just as easily label or call or REFER to these old Manuscripts that were destroyed by Rome " and decayed, rotted and disappeared with old age - as - The Masoretic Text - Because the The Masoretic Text - are exact duplicates / copies from these older manuscripts.

So when one speaks of The Masoretic Text - they are referring to the very manuscripts that The Masoretic Text was made and copied from. Also The Septuagint or the WORD / LABEL " Septuagint " also does not appear anywhere in written history, until the time of Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) - it was first and only then that they came to be called by the Latin term Septuaginta.

So this is 600 - 700 years of time that had gone by, before we have anyone ever mentioning the WORD Septuagint.

One could just as easily make the claim that The Septuagint existed centuries after it is claimed to have been written or translated.

If we want to believe that giants were only 5 -6 feet tall and not 9 - 10 feet tall or that Enoch lived 14 years after the flood yet was never on the ark, then we can turn to The Septuagint

The name “ Septuagint ” comes from the Latin / Italian language = meaning - the word for seventy.

The Masoretic Text's were copied and duplicated from the Original OLD Hebrew manuscripts and we know exactly who made these. They were called " The Masoretes " The Septuagint, however, has no information about who produced it. All we know is that The Septuagint was presumably made by 70 unknown people who were chosen by an Egyptian ruler.

When one speaks of The Masoretic Text - they are referring to the very manuscripts that The Masoretic Text was made and copied from.. " The Original Manuscripts " these are the same exact thing. However, with The Septuagint - they are based upon among many, many Greek manuscripts that have contradictions and errors.

It is The Septuagint that was not even mentioned or know - as the label or term " The Septuagint " until the time of Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) .. this is nearly 700 years from the time it is claimed to have been translated. The most astonishing reality is that Jerome and His Catholic Church did not preserve or make copies of the Old Hebrew Manuscripts that He had used to translate his Latin Bible.

The Hebrew Text - that Jerome used - perfectly agree - with the The Masoretic Text. Jeromes translation does not agree with The Septuagint.. He could not use the Greek ..

Jerome found that there was next to nothing - VALID nor complete - in Greek - whatsoever - concerning the Old Testament. So Jerome turned to what was later copied and duplicated and known as " The Hebrew Masoretic Text manuscripts "- This is proven by reading Jerome's Translation and comparing them to The Masoretic Text manuscripts of today. NOT the Septuagint that was not completed until after Jerome. Christians can safely and accurately say that the original manuscripts are in fact -

The Masoretic Text - or what they were duplicated / copied from - The Tanak and Torah. these are what were used by and what was available to Jerome - and still available and used today - in any Bible on the planet - outside of The Septuagint. Sadly The Roman Catholic never preserved a single page of any original Hebrew. instead - they ditched them all and went about propagating about 6 other alternative translation in Greek filled with contradictions and errors.

 

[Radagast]

Because the The Masoretic Text - are exact duplicates / copies from these older manuscripts.

How can you be sure? The Masoretes destroyed most of the older manuscripts.

So when one speaks of The Masoretic Text - they are referring to the very manuscripts that The Masoretic Text was made and copied from.

No, "Masoretic Text" refers only to the text produced by the Masoretes. In producing this text, the Masoretes made choices between the older manuscripts available to them. We know that those older manuscripts disagreed with each other.

Also The Septuagint or the WORD / LABEL " Septuagint " also does not appear anywhere in written history, until the time of Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE)

So? "Septuagint" is just an abbreviation of a Latin phrase that refers to the ancient story of the 70 translators.

The Masoretic Text's were copied and duplicated from the Original OLD Hebrew manuscripts and we know exactly who made these. They were called " The Masoretes "

They are largely just as unknown as the 70 translators of the LXX. In fact, we don't even know how many Masoretes there were.

 

[LoveAvenue]

Your claim of - blame - concerning how that many of the Original Manuscripts were destroyed by The Masoretes .

How did you come to this untruthful conclusion. ?
If it is true or claimed to be true, Can you please provide a single source for your claim ?

The Original manuscripts used by The Masoretes were in fact destroyed by fires, persecution, the elements of Old Age and Decay.

Yes, there obviously were corrupted Hebrew manuscripts going around that were so obviously false and corrupted that they would never even consider preserving or copying / duplicating them. They were obviously never a part of the Original Bible.

Also, there were 860 differences between Ben Naphtali and Ben Asher Bibles - who were the two families of Bibles produced / duplicated / copied - by the Jews called The Masoretes -

These 860 differences are only referring to the writing style of where the placing of the accents = markings are used, also differences between the vowels, accents, and consonantal spelling.

The differences between the two Masorites - do not reflect in any way two different views, contradictions or personal opinions; the two rivals represent different schools of language structure. .

This website - explains this in complete detail.

BEN NAPHTALI - JewishEncyclopedia.com

The message is the same message - As the Hebrew language was being attacked and changing and the Jews were being scattered around the world – the Hebrew Language began to change in various locations in diacritical markings is the vowels, the accents, and consonantal spellings and parts of speech. THIS HAS NOTHING to do with any contradictions in the message - when two schools of language are under – developing a difference in their structure of a SPOKEN language.

This does not change the message intended - when the writer and reader understanding the adaptations in the language structure read the Bible based on the intent of the writer. / copyist.

The Problem with the Greek Old Testament Translations - is that they all are in contradiction with one another and most of them are incomplete.

Until the Latin / Italian word " Septuagint " appears in the 4 th century - there never was a complete Greek Old Testament available for any translator to use - even Jerome. Jerome even stated this fact when he translated the Bible into Latin.

 

[Radagast]

Your claim of - blame - concerning how that many of the Original Manuscripts were destroyed by The Masoretes .

That's widely accepted (see e.g. Joseph M. Holden, The Popular Handbook of Archaeology and the Bible. p. 23). Certainly, pre-Masoretic manuscripts are rare, compared to the plethora of NT manuscripts.

Until the Latin / Italian word " Septuagint " appears in the 4 th century - there never was a complete Greek Old Testament available for any translator to use - even Jerome. Jerome even stated this fact when he translated the Bible into Latin.

I don't believe that that is true.

 

[prodromos]

So this is 600 - 700 years of time that had gone by, before we have anyone ever mentioning the WORD Septuagint

Well duh
Prior to that it was known by its Greek name "Ευδομήκοντα".

 

[LoveAvenue]

Thank you - Radagast for your reply.

However, I have read and closely reviewed the book that you mentioned.

You cited The Book called - " The Popular Handbook of Archaeology and the Bible - by Joseph M. Holden "

The fact is - Joseph M. Holden expresses on page 25 that { The Masoretic Text is the greatest and supreme witness to the original Hebrew Old Testament text. }

The fact is - the Book only mentions The word " GREEK " in only found in 2 different occasions in the entire body of his book.

# 1. Joseph M. Holden expresses that - A totally new system of vowel marking was established in the Hebrew language. Saying that - no one succeeded in establishing this system of vowel markings into the Greek language - and the Jews rejected and avoided the Greek, making it more difficult or impossible for this system to catch on in the Greek language.


And - # 2. Joseph M. Holden expresses that - The Septuagint gives us the greatest evidence for the validity of the Masoretic Text. Saying that - The Greek Septuagint closely resembles the Masoretic Text.

These two ideas concerning “ The Greek Old Testament “ these are the only two instances where Joseph M. Holden mentions anything whatsoever about the Greek Language - whatsoever ! - in his book.

Joseph M. Holden never once expresses that The Greek manuscripts are larger more numerous than the Hebrew. But even though this is true - THE GREEK Old Testament is older and has more manuscripts dating from the 4 th - to the - 10 th centuries than the Hebrew during this time period. But that is because of the fact that the Roman Catholic Church never preserved what Jerome used to translate his translation.

As Pre Catholic - Rome completely destroyed every single Hebrew manuscript that it could find - and FORCED CHRISTIANS AND JEWS THROUGHOUT THE area - to destroy their Bible manuscripts as well. The persecution of Jewish Christians by Rome reached as far as Egypt.

Also, In Joseph M. Holden’s book - a total of 6. total occasions - he mentions “ The Masoretic Text “

Holden expresses that - In the 5 th and 6 th centuries AD - " IT IS BELIEVED / or SUPPOSED " that the Masoretes methodically and totally destroyed all of the original manuscripts that did not agree with “ THE JEWISH TRANSLATORS “ vocalization / pronunciation system and regularity and reliability.

Holden expresses in his book that - The scribes that made errors and mistakes while copying from a manuscript, or when finding errors in an existing manuscripts, they destroyed the ones with errors and mistakes. Holden also expresses - That when correct manuscripts were found with deteriorations or faded and unreadable texts - they also destroyed these manuscripts to avoid mistaken and un readable partial manuscripts being spread and read and re produced - in error.

Also, we can read history and see how that in Aleppo Syria - Portions of “ The Aleppo Hebrew Codex “ that contained the entire Hebrew Bible were destroyed in 1947. Pages from the manuscript were ripped out and the book was thrown, tossed and slammed around and down - by Arabian Muslims who were rioting.

Jewish homes and businesses and parts of the Aleppo Syrian Synagogue along with ten other synagogues, five schools, an orphanage and a youth club... Jewish shops and 150 houses were set ablaze and destroyed. The damaged properties that were destroyed estimated at a valued US $2.5 million in property damage. Also, the Syrian government set numerous discriminatory laws including a 1948 ban on the sale of Jewish property, Jewish bank accounts were frozen and Jews were banned from traveling and emigrating from Arabian Muslim countries.

Imagine what Rome put the Jews through when destroying The Hebrew manuscripts in the first three centuries. Thousands of Jews and Jewish leaders and Rabbis were killed and threats of torture death, prison and extermination were made to anyone possessing any Bible manuscripts.

The Roman Catholic Church did not preserve the Hebrew - yet they managed to preserve many of the corrupted Greek texts that are partial Old Testaments filled with thousands of unexplainable and inexcusable contradictions.

The fact remains - We do not find any mention of The Book CALLED “ The Septuagint “ being mentioned anywhere in a single page of history until nearly 400 years after Yahoshua.

This was first mentioned by The Roman Catholic Father Of “ The Septuagint “ Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD).

My friend - Radagast. had Jerome used The Greek manuscripts available at his time the whole translation would have been filled with contractions such as 5 - 6 foot giants and thousands of pages of errors like
Mathusala living 15 years after the flood. This is why there was no Septuagint for Jerome to use. it was a collection of fake manuscripts filled with perversity, errors and contradictions. Exactly as Jerome expressed in his writings, saying - - - -

: “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]”

 

[Radagast]

The fact is - Joseph M. Holden expresses on page 25 that { The Masoretic Text is the greatest and supreme witness to the original Hebrew Old Testament text. }

He says something a little bit like that. But he adds an "however."

And on p 23 he writes "Moreover, it was the Septuagint Bible that Jesus and the apostles possessed, and it was from this Bible that the New Testament authors primarily drew their quotes."

# 1. Joseph M. Holden expresses that - A totally new system of vowel marking was established in the Hebrew language. Saying that - no one succeeded in establishing this system of vowel markings into the Greek language - and the Jews rejected and avoided the Greek, making it more difficult or impossible for this system to catch on in the Greek language

(1) You are radically misquoting him. He actually says "One attempt to put such a vowel system into place incorporated the use of the Greek language, but the Jewish tendency to avoid anything Greek made it difficult for this solution to catch on."

(2) Your comment makes no sense. Greek (like English) already has vowels. Hbrw rginlly hd n vwls, nd ws wrttn lk ths. Thus Hebrew benefits from adding vowels. The Masoretes added vowel points as an alternative to adding Greek-style vowels (Modern Hebrew instead uses ktiv male which, like Greek and English, has letters to represent vowels).

The rest of what you say is also completely false.

Imagine what Rome put the Jews through when destroying The Hebrew manuscripts in the first three centuries. Thousands of Jews and Jewish leaders and Rabbis were killed and threats of torture death, prison and extermination were made to anyone possessing any Bible manuscripts.

What absolute nonsense! That never happened. In fact, it was Christians that were the target of persecution (up until Constantine).

I use an OT based on the Masoretic text myself, but these falsehoods of yours shed little light on the Masoretic vs LXX debate.

 

[prodromos]

It was only the Latins who called it Septuagint. Everybody else called it by the Greek name of "Evdomikonta"

 

[LoveAvenue]

It is very obvious that the Septuagint is filled with error.

One is incapable of getting beyond Genesis before they find that Methuselah is living 15 years after the worldwide flood. This tells you that the creators of The Septuagint will proceed to doctor up their timeline and generational lines to accommodate and cater to this error.

Also, In various copies of the Septuagint, the word "angels" is substituted for the " SONS OF GOD " found in the book of Job - Yet The New Testament makes it clear that God has never referred to or called any of the angels as " A Son Of God "

It should be dismissed completely, especially when we go to find that " The Septuagint Goliath " was only 5 - 6 feet tall. An honest person could never perceive someone called a GIANT, standing at the same height as the average man. A giant by all historical standards, from the bones, found in archeological sites stand between 9 ft to 11 to 12 feet tall.

There has never been a person standing 5 -6 ft tall who was considered a giant. yet promoters of The Septuagint - completely ignore these glaring facts and march onward pretending that the facts do not matter. it seems that promoters of The Septuagint are more interested in the total lack of facts in which to support their imaginary claims.
And this is what it is - the lack of facts, the lack of information, the lack of evidence somehow proves nothing - which means everything needed to create a fantasy - to promote of The Septuagint. An empty bottomless dark hole that only they alone can determine what lies at the bottom.

In my previous post - I was never quoting Joseph M. Holden’s words. There is no need to quote someone who writes mostly about what people wish to imagine, presume or pretend – as if, it is a fact.

Holden has absolutely no more proof than anyone else that The Septuagint existed before the 4 th century. It is all imaginary imagery and wishful pretense.

It is quite true concerning the Greek - that NO ONE had ever succeeded, or as you clarify, [ NEEDED ] to establish vowel markings into the Greek.. Because the Greek language had never been under attack.

In 70 AD, the Romans lay siege to Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple. Countless manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh) were lost in the aftermath

The Romans destroyed all Hebrew texts, including Hebrew scrolls. It is believed that one million Jews were killed by the Romans and the rest of the Jews fled for their lives. Since this day the Roman Catholic Church continued to persecute and terrorize the Jewish people. We can see exactly why so many, many manuscripts of the Torah have disappeared. The Jews have been persecuted and running for their very lives for nearly 2000 years.

When Adolf Hitler finally came along in the 1940s, The German Nazis killed 6 - 8 million more Jews in just a few short years. It is surprising that any Hebrew manuscripts exist today.

The lack of early Hebrew manuscripts compared to Greek translated manuscripts of the Torah does not prove that the Septuagint existed before the 4 th century. Promoters of The Septuagint are forever playing a game of circular reason to validate their claims. This is not a claim based on proven facts.

Finding an occasional partial or a similar quote in the Greek manuscripts that also exist present in the New Testament - this is not proof that The Septuagint existed before the 4 th century.

 

[Radagast]

In my previous post - I was never quoting Joseph M. Holden’s words. There is no need to quote someone who writes mostly about what people wish to imagine, presume or pretend – as if, it is a fact.

There is a need to be honest in citing them, though. It's wrong to twist someone's words.

Finding an occasional partial or a similar quote in the Greek manuscripts that also exist present in the New Testament - this is not proof that The Septuagint existed before the 4 th century.

In many places the New Testament quotes the Septuagint word-for-word. In some of those places, the NT quote contradicts the Masoretic text.

That's one of the arguments for the Septuagint, and it's a strong one.

 

[Vanellus]

LoveAvenue wrote

The Masoretic Text's were copied and duplicated from the Original OLD Hebrew manuscripts

We cannot be sure that the Masoretes used such original mss whatever they were.

Radagast wrote:

In many places the New Testament quotes the Septuagint word-for-word. In some of those places, the NT quote contradicts the Masoretic text.

That's one of the arguments for the Septuagint, and it's a strong one.

A point that LoveAvenue seems to refuse to acknowledge, apparently being a prisoner of his own prejudices on this subject.

 

[tampasteve]

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