The fact is that there were a variety of copies of what we call the OT available to be read by the Jewish people.
That's not what you said, and that's not what I questioned. You stated that there were known variants of the LXX during the time of Jesus, and I asked you to back up your claim. Can you? Or not?
While one might make a presumption of copyist errors in the LXX, that's still a presumption, unlike the copyist errors readily seen between the extant New Testament manuscripts.
For almost 1,500 years, the New Testament manuscripts w…
www.goodreads.com
While Dr. Ehrman makes a number of logical errors in his conclusions, the book should be read by all Christians, and the facts presented should be acknowledged. (The
facts, not the conclusions.)
I'll buy you a copy.
he fact is that there were a variety of copies of what we call the OT available to be read by the Jewish people.
Indeed, as shown by the Dead Sea Scrolls. (So much for "inerrancy.") However....
The Dead Sea scrolls showed that "there was indeed a Hebrew text-type on which the Septuagint-translation was based and which differed substantially from the received Masoretic Text.
- Cohen, Menachem (1979). "The idea of the sanctity of the biblical text and the science of textual criticism".
LINK
It is WELL worth the read, although it is written about Judaism.
Is continued adherence to the popular historical interpretation of the sanctity of the text, coupled with disregard for the available textual evidence, the only path contemporary Judaism may pursue?
One might well ask the same for contemporary Evangelical Christianity.
Continuing on...
Even before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, however, theories about the Biblical text in the Second Temple period abounded. These theories drew inspiration from two texts whose roots lie in the same period: the Septuagint and the Samaritan version of the Bible. The Septuagint Vorlage (the presumed underlying Hebrew text of the LXX) differs from the Masoretic Text [the received Hebrew text, the Authorized Text, the Jewish Bible, abbreviated MT] in many aspects, several of them of great significance.... (an outstanding example is The Book of Jeremiah, which in the Septuagint is almost one eighth shorter than in the Masoretic Text).
We can conclude that the textual situation at Qumran {where the DSS were found} was substantially different from the one we know today. There were many different consonantal texts, both variants within a particular text-type group and also multiple text-types, and there are no signs that the people of Qumran entertained the idea of one single version that was a fixed, sanctified text.The clear-cut belief of the Qumran people in the Scriptural message as the words of a living G-d, eternally vital and always meaningful, was not dependent on any notion of the sanctity of one particular text.
One then wonders what John 10:35 "cannot be broken" means.
It can also now be proven beyond doubt that the author of Chronicles used a version of Samuel different from the MT and closer to the Lucianic version of the Septuagint, whose Hebrew prototype was found at Qumran.
There is further attestation to the authenticity of the LXX as a reliable transmission vector of the earliest Hebrew collection of the scriptures.
All the evidence we possess points to textual pluralism in the Second Temple era, as opposed to the notion of a single sacred consonantal text as later conceived.
So yes, while we have evidence of a plurality of versions of the Scriptures in Hebrew, such plurality of the LXX doesn't seem to occur until the second century AD.
There are several signs that Pharisaic circles attempted to reject the multiple text-types long before the destruction of the Temple, ...
We then can see Jesus' comment about "the scripture cannot be broken;" to be a "thumbing of the nose" to the Pharisees. That the Pharisees were creating a religious fiction of a single sanctified scriptural text when it was common knowledge that such wasn't true.
Again, the fact that the New Testament texts literally quote from the LXX word for word in numerous places can be simplified into the rule of thumb that it was the OT that Jesus used.
What I have been asking is for you to support the claim that there were multiple versions of the LXX around at the time of Jesus. We know that such is true about the Hebrew Bibles, but what's the proof for the LXX? You made the claim, so please be a dear and prove it?
Now with regards to the article from which I've been quoting, it's well worth the read because it addresses the surreal modern Christian misconception that the Hebrew scribes of the OT had nearly mythical superpowers to ensure that the Hebrew text of the OT hadn't one letter or word out of place over the centuries of its transmission. But....
A deeper examination of the facts shows, however, that even the enormous activity of the Masorah circles was not sufficient to significantly alter the textual situation which had developed throughout the Diaspora after the Destruction {of the temple}. Variant consonantal bases within the MT group which differed from {the current Jewish} "Received Text" continued to flourish right up until the advent of printing.
(Please note that the term "Received Text" has nothing to do with the KJV, and the rest of the article turns into a kind of "KJV only" polemic for the MT in Jewish circles. Go figure.)
What we find, then, is that the definitive transmission of the OT turns out to be the LXX as kept by the Greek Orthodox Church. And this is also the case for the New Testament texts such as the Codex Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus, along with the Alexandrinus - manuscripts of the NT known as the Alexandrian text-type.
Rhema
Just the fact that the original documents were many,
Uh... by definition, there is only one original, not many.
Just the fact that the original documents were many, and varied being used by the translators to make the Septuagint l
To clarify, then, the article quoted above seems to disagree - (see first quote with link).
The Dead Sea scrolls showed that "there was indeed a Hebrew text-type on which the Septuagint-translation was based and which differed substantially from the received Masoretic Text.
So the Hebrew texts used to make the Septuagint were not "many and varied," but rather had a specific Hebrew text-type. Obviously, the Jews in Alexandria kept their own library. The quotes in the NT lend the LXX credence.
www.bibleodyssey.org
