Septuagint or Masoretic
This article has been copied from http://oodegr.co/english/protestantism/masoretic_vs_septuagint.htm
and
Masoretic vs Septuagint : Guns, Lies and ForgeriesA Bible Story By Robert E. Reis
Source: http://majorityrights.com
Guns, Lies and Forgeries:A Bible Story
By
Robert E. Reis
Once upon a time there was a tribe living in the Middle East that had a collection of sacred texts written in Hebrew, Chaldean and Aramaic. It is the nature of sacred tests to be venerated and transmitted from generation to generation unaltered. As time passed members of this tribe emigrated to areas where Hebrew and Aramaic and Chaldean were not spoken. A large community settled and prospered in the city of Alexandria in Egypt. Greek replaced their tribal language. They needed an accurate translation of their venerated documents into Greek.
Around 250 B.C. seventy rabbis translated the sacred texts into Greek. This translation was not a bootleg edition. The project was approved by the High Priest and the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. The Septuagint, the translation of the seventy, was an official document. A Hebrew Bible exists today. It is used by Jews everywhere. It is called the Masoretic text. It was compiled around 700 A.D. It is almost one thousand years newer than the Septuagint. The rabbis who compiled the Masoretic text were not accountable to the High Priest in Jerusalem. There no longer was a High Priest. The rabbis who compiled the Masoretic text were not accountable to the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. There no longer was a Sanhedrin.
The Septuagint predates the first appearance of the Masoretic text by almost ten centuries. The Septuagint is based upon Hebrew texts at least twelve centuries older than the texts upon which the Masoretic version is based. .Yet, modern Christian translations of the Old Testament rely on the Masoretic Text, not the Septuagint.
Where is the problem?
Most of the quotations from the Old Testament in the New Testament used the Septuagint as their primary source. The integrity and truthfulness of the Septuagint is completely dependant on the Septuagint being a truthful translation. Discredit the Septuagint and there is no New Testament.
There was no controversy about the integrity of the Septuagint from 250 B.C. until 135 A. D.
What had happened to provoke dissatisfaction with the Septuagint among the Jews?
Annas and Caiphas and the Sanhedrin had rejected the messianic claims of Jesus. The New Testament documents had been written and were circulating by A.D. 70. The Jews knew that the credibility of the Christian Gospels depended on the credibility of the Septuagint. Something had to be done. Around 95 A.D. Rabbi Akiva, who later proclaimed Bar Kochba as the messiah, hired a man named Aquila to translate a Hebrew to Greek version of the Old Testament that would undermine the messianic claims of Jesus found in the Septuagint. Some scholars believe that the Masoretic text was based in part on this tendentious translation by Aquila.
How is the Masoretic text different from the Septuagint?
Psalm 22:16 the word “pierced” has been replaced by “lion”.
Psalm 145: 13 omitted entirely.
Isaiah 53:11 the word “light” is omitted.
On 134 occasions the Tetragrammaton, the name of God, has been replaced by “Adonai”.
Psalm 151 was omitted entirely. (It is now omitted by almost all Christian Bibles!)
Exodus 1: The number 75 replaced by 70
Genesis 10:24 some generations removed.
Deuteronomy 32:8 “Angels Of Elohim” replaced with “children of Israel.”
Jeremiah 10 verses 6 and 7 have been added in the Masoretic.
Psalm 96:10 “Say among the nations, YHWH reigns from the wood” omitted.
Isaiah 19:18 “city of righteousness” changed to the “city of the sun” or in some versions “the city of destruction.”
The Masoretic scribes purposely and willfully rearranged the original chapter order in the prophetic Book of Daniel, so that the chapters make no sense chronologically.
Isaiah 61:1 “recovery of sight to the blind.”. Omitted.
In Psalm 40:6 “a body you have prepared for me” was replaced by “you opened my ears.”
Deuteronomy 32:43 ‘Let all the messengers of Elohim worship him.’” Omitted.
Genesis 4:8: “Let us go into the field” is omitted.
Deuteronomy 32:43. Moses’ song is shortened.
Isaiah 53 contains 10 spelling differences, 4 stylistic changes and 3 missing letters for light in verse 11, for a total of 17 differences.
Isaiah 7:14. “Virgin” replaced by “young woman.”
(When Aquila made his Greek translation of the Old Testament at the behest of Rabbi Akiva, he changed the Septuagint’s “virgin” into “young woman”. The Masoretic compilers may have followed his lead.)
The Masoretic text differs from the Septuagint in hundreds of places.
How do we know which text is accurate?
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered just after World War II.
According to carbon dating, textual analysis, and handwriting analysis the documents were written at various times between the middle of the 2nd century BC and the 1st century AD. There are fragments from all of the books of the Hebrew Bible fragments except the Book of Esther and the Book of Nehemiah.
In addition an independent Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bible exists, the Peshitta.
Control of the Dead Sea Scrolls was a military objective of Israelis. It was achieved by their victory in the Six Days War. The publication of the scrolls slowed to a trickle. After 1971, the international team even refused to allow the publication of photographs of the material. They excluded scholars who wanted to make independent evaluations. The embargo was not broken until 1991.
An addition to the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars can use the Peshitta to decide between the Masoretic text and the Septuagint. I have given examples above of some of the places the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Peshitta, and the Septuagint agree. The Masoretic Text is part of a tradition that began with Rabbi Akiva. Rabbis rewrote the Jewish Bible to destroy the credibility of the New Testament.
The Hebrew versions of the Old Testament have been used to proclaim scores of “messiahs” . The Septuagint was only used once.
===============================================================
Comments of this article include:
Posted by Rnl on Fri, 24 Aug 2007 07:01 | #
Annas and Caiphas and the Sanhedrin had rejected the messianic claims of Jesus. The New Testament documents had been written and were circulating by A.D. 70. The Jews knew that the credibility of the Christian Gospels depended on the credibility of the Septuagint. Something had to be done.
A more serious point would be that Jews did not want to share a sacred text with Christians. They preferred a text that Christians couldn’t read. Christians could read Greek; few could read Hebrew. Jews had no inkling that there would eventually arise a “Judeo-Christian tradition.” They hoped to suppress debate and dialogue with Christians. They also feared that their Greek Bible was corrupting Hellenized Jews.
Psalm 96:10 “Say among the nations, YHWH reigns from the wood” omitted.
“The Lord reigned from the tree” was missing from some Jewish copies of the Septuagint. We know that because Christians accused them of truncating the verse in their own Greek translations. It’s just as likely that eager Christians had themselves interpolated “from the tree.”
Psalm 22:16 the word “pierced” has been replaced by “lion”.
If anti-Christian Jews were attempting to corrupt Christianity by selective corruptions of their own Hebrew Bible, they didn’t succeed here. Jerome, supposedly following the Hebrew rather than the Septuagint, translates as _fixerunt_ - “they fixed” him to the cross. The most authoritative version of the Vulgate reads: “vinxerunt manus meas et pedes meas” (Psalm 21.17) - i.e. “they fettered my hands and feet.” A Latin paraphrase of the Syriac has “mordentes sicut leo,” piercing (or biting) [him] as a lion. The Douay has “they have dug my hands and feet” (21.17). The KJV and RSV have “they (have) pierced my hands and feet” (Psalm 22:16). All ignore or modify the Hebrew, which apparently reads literally “like a lion my hands and feet.” The verse appears in the various Christian translations as though the translators were reading the Septuagint, which they probably were for this difficult verse. Even Aquila, who was rigorously literal, translates as “they disfigured ...”
I don’t believe Psalm 22 (or 21 in the Vulgate) is a prophecy of Christ’s Crucifixion. But that interpretation remained available in all major translations of the Old Testament. Any ancient Masoretic chicanery had no effect whatever on the traditional Christian interpretation of the psalm.
For your case to be plausible, there must be passages in important Christian translations that misstate or distort Christian doctrine as a result of the translators’ reliance on the Hebrew text.
Isaiah 7:14. “Virgin” replaced by “young woman.” (When Aquila made his Greek translation of the Old Testament at the behest of Rabbi Akiva, he changed the Septuagint’s “virgin” into “young woman”. The Masoretic compilers may have followed his lead.)
Hebrew _almah_ - “young woman,” which could mean “virgin” - appears in the Septuagint at Isaiah 7:14 as Greek _parthenos_, which clearly means “virgin.” The difference in meaning is not large. In our own language _maiden_ offers a parallel. Until recently a woman’s maiden name was her virgin name. In earlier English _virgin_ and _maiden_ were almost synonyms. A young girl was presumed to be a virgin.
Now the difference between maiden and virgin may be substantial to some. But for those of us without any strong emotional investment in the history of Jewish mythology, it looks quite small. Even Martin Luther, who did have a strong emotional investment in Jewish mythology, reasonably treated _parthenos_ and _almah_ as synonyms. In any case most Christian translations, including both the Catholic Douay and the Protestant KJV, prefer _virgin_: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son.” No Jewish corruption of the dogma of virgin birth or the prophecy of Christ’s coming occurred, since the source of contention was translated exactly as it appears in the Septuagint.
The Masoretic text differs from the Septuagint in hundreds of places.
Only about fifty are relevant to your argument. There are over three hundred quotations from the Old Testament in the New Testament, and the vast majority agree with the Septuagint. We would expect differences, but they are not abundant.
Your best example, incidentally, would be the omission of the Book of Susanna, which appears in Catholic Bibles following the last chapter of Daniel, but not in the Hebrew Old Testament, perhaps because it reflects poorly on the Jewish elders.
Control of the Dead Sea Scrolls was a military objective of Israelis. It was achieved by their victory in the Six Days War. The publication of the scrolls slowed to a trickle. After 1971, the international team even refused to allow the publication of photographs of the material. They excluded scholars who wanted to make independent evaluations. The embargo was not broken until 1991.
Please list the names of the Jewish scholars in the international team who suppressed publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Then list the names of the non-Jews who broke the embargo.
These are trick questions.
The Masoretic Text is part of a tradition that began with Rabbi Akiva. Rabbis rewrote the Jewish Bible to destroy the credibility of the New Testament.
Christians are reading Jewish scriptures whenever they open the Old Testament. Nothing will change that. There is no non-Jewish Old Testament anywhere in existence.
Traditionally Christians have argued that Jews fail to understand their own religious texts. That’s a good tradition, which anti-Semitic Christians should retain. But you shouldn’t accuse Jews of elobarate conspiracies to corrupt your Old Testament, which is also their Hebrew Bible.
By creative misreading our Christian forefathers transformed this often monstrous collection of ethnocentric Jewish tales into a source of genuine moral edification and artistic inspiration. That has been one of the great accomplishments of our civilization. But _we_ were the corrupters of Jewish texts; they didn’t corrupt ours. Jews have every right to be irritated.
and
Masoretic vs Septuagint : Guns, Lies and ForgeriesA Bible Story By Robert E. Reis
Source: http://majorityrights.com
Guns, Lies and Forgeries:A Bible Story
By
Robert E. Reis
Once upon a time there was a tribe living in the Middle East that had a collection of sacred texts written in Hebrew, Chaldean and Aramaic. It is the nature of sacred tests to be venerated and transmitted from generation to generation unaltered. As time passed members of this tribe emigrated to areas where Hebrew and Aramaic and Chaldean were not spoken. A large community settled and prospered in the city of Alexandria in Egypt. Greek replaced their tribal language. They needed an accurate translation of their venerated documents into Greek.
Around 250 B.C. seventy rabbis translated the sacred texts into Greek. This translation was not a bootleg edition. The project was approved by the High Priest and the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. The Septuagint, the translation of the seventy, was an official document. A Hebrew Bible exists today. It is used by Jews everywhere. It is called the Masoretic text. It was compiled around 700 A.D. It is almost one thousand years newer than the Septuagint. The rabbis who compiled the Masoretic text were not accountable to the High Priest in Jerusalem. There no longer was a High Priest. The rabbis who compiled the Masoretic text were not accountable to the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. There no longer was a Sanhedrin.
The Septuagint predates the first appearance of the Masoretic text by almost ten centuries. The Septuagint is based upon Hebrew texts at least twelve centuries older than the texts upon which the Masoretic version is based. .Yet, modern Christian translations of the Old Testament rely on the Masoretic Text, not the Septuagint.
Where is the problem?
Most of the quotations from the Old Testament in the New Testament used the Septuagint as their primary source. The integrity and truthfulness of the Septuagint is completely dependant on the Septuagint being a truthful translation. Discredit the Septuagint and there is no New Testament.
There was no controversy about the integrity of the Septuagint from 250 B.C. until 135 A. D.
What had happened to provoke dissatisfaction with the Septuagint among the Jews?
Annas and Caiphas and the Sanhedrin had rejected the messianic claims of Jesus. The New Testament documents had been written and were circulating by A.D. 70. The Jews knew that the credibility of the Christian Gospels depended on the credibility of the Septuagint. Something had to be done. Around 95 A.D. Rabbi Akiva, who later proclaimed Bar Kochba as the messiah, hired a man named Aquila to translate a Hebrew to Greek version of the Old Testament that would undermine the messianic claims of Jesus found in the Septuagint. Some scholars believe that the Masoretic text was based in part on this tendentious translation by Aquila.
How is the Masoretic text different from the Septuagint?
Psalm 22:16 the word “pierced” has been replaced by “lion”.
Psalm 145: 13 omitted entirely.
Isaiah 53:11 the word “light” is omitted.
On 134 occasions the Tetragrammaton, the name of God, has been replaced by “Adonai”.
Psalm 151 was omitted entirely. (It is now omitted by almost all Christian Bibles!)
Exodus 1: The number 75 replaced by 70
Genesis 10:24 some generations removed.
Deuteronomy 32:8 “Angels Of Elohim” replaced with “children of Israel.”
Jeremiah 10 verses 6 and 7 have been added in the Masoretic.
Psalm 96:10 “Say among the nations, YHWH reigns from the wood” omitted.
Isaiah 19:18 “city of righteousness” changed to the “city of the sun” or in some versions “the city of destruction.”
The Masoretic scribes purposely and willfully rearranged the original chapter order in the prophetic Book of Daniel, so that the chapters make no sense chronologically.
Isaiah 61:1 “recovery of sight to the blind.”. Omitted.
In Psalm 40:6 “a body you have prepared for me” was replaced by “you opened my ears.”
Deuteronomy 32:43 ‘Let all the messengers of Elohim worship him.’” Omitted.
Genesis 4:8: “Let us go into the field” is omitted.
Deuteronomy 32:43. Moses’ song is shortened.
Isaiah 53 contains 10 spelling differences, 4 stylistic changes and 3 missing letters for light in verse 11, for a total of 17 differences.
Isaiah 7:14. “Virgin” replaced by “young woman.”
(When Aquila made his Greek translation of the Old Testament at the behest of Rabbi Akiva, he changed the Septuagint’s “virgin” into “young woman”. The Masoretic compilers may have followed his lead.)
The Masoretic text differs from the Septuagint in hundreds of places.
How do we know which text is accurate?
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered just after World War II.
According to carbon dating, textual analysis, and handwriting analysis the documents were written at various times between the middle of the 2nd century BC and the 1st century AD. There are fragments from all of the books of the Hebrew Bible fragments except the Book of Esther and the Book of Nehemiah.
In addition an independent Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bible exists, the Peshitta.
Control of the Dead Sea Scrolls was a military objective of Israelis. It was achieved by their victory in the Six Days War. The publication of the scrolls slowed to a trickle. After 1971, the international team even refused to allow the publication of photographs of the material. They excluded scholars who wanted to make independent evaluations. The embargo was not broken until 1991.
An addition to the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars can use the Peshitta to decide between the Masoretic text and the Septuagint. I have given examples above of some of the places the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Peshitta, and the Septuagint agree. The Masoretic Text is part of a tradition that began with Rabbi Akiva. Rabbis rewrote the Jewish Bible to destroy the credibility of the New Testament.
The Hebrew versions of the Old Testament have been used to proclaim scores of “messiahs” . The Septuagint was only used once.
===============================================================
Comments of this article include:
Posted by Rnl on Fri, 24 Aug 2007 07:01 | #
Annas and Caiphas and the Sanhedrin had rejected the messianic claims of Jesus. The New Testament documents had been written and were circulating by A.D. 70. The Jews knew that the credibility of the Christian Gospels depended on the credibility of the Septuagint. Something had to be done.
A more serious point would be that Jews did not want to share a sacred text with Christians. They preferred a text that Christians couldn’t read. Christians could read Greek; few could read Hebrew. Jews had no inkling that there would eventually arise a “Judeo-Christian tradition.” They hoped to suppress debate and dialogue with Christians. They also feared that their Greek Bible was corrupting Hellenized Jews.
Psalm 96:10 “Say among the nations, YHWH reigns from the wood” omitted.
“The Lord reigned from the tree” was missing from some Jewish copies of the Septuagint. We know that because Christians accused them of truncating the verse in their own Greek translations. It’s just as likely that eager Christians had themselves interpolated “from the tree.”
Psalm 22:16 the word “pierced” has been replaced by “lion”.
If anti-Christian Jews were attempting to corrupt Christianity by selective corruptions of their own Hebrew Bible, they didn’t succeed here. Jerome, supposedly following the Hebrew rather than the Septuagint, translates as _fixerunt_ - “they fixed” him to the cross. The most authoritative version of the Vulgate reads: “vinxerunt manus meas et pedes meas” (Psalm 21.17) - i.e. “they fettered my hands and feet.” A Latin paraphrase of the Syriac has “mordentes sicut leo,” piercing (or biting) [him] as a lion. The Douay has “they have dug my hands and feet” (21.17). The KJV and RSV have “they (have) pierced my hands and feet” (Psalm 22:16). All ignore or modify the Hebrew, which apparently reads literally “like a lion my hands and feet.” The verse appears in the various Christian translations as though the translators were reading the Septuagint, which they probably were for this difficult verse. Even Aquila, who was rigorously literal, translates as “they disfigured ...”
I don’t believe Psalm 22 (or 21 in the Vulgate) is a prophecy of Christ’s Crucifixion. But that interpretation remained available in all major translations of the Old Testament. Any ancient Masoretic chicanery had no effect whatever on the traditional Christian interpretation of the psalm.
For your case to be plausible, there must be passages in important Christian translations that misstate or distort Christian doctrine as a result of the translators’ reliance on the Hebrew text.
Isaiah 7:14. “Virgin” replaced by “young woman.” (When Aquila made his Greek translation of the Old Testament at the behest of Rabbi Akiva, he changed the Septuagint’s “virgin” into “young woman”. The Masoretic compilers may have followed his lead.)
Hebrew _almah_ - “young woman,” which could mean “virgin” - appears in the Septuagint at Isaiah 7:14 as Greek _parthenos_, which clearly means “virgin.” The difference in meaning is not large. In our own language _maiden_ offers a parallel. Until recently a woman’s maiden name was her virgin name. In earlier English _virgin_ and _maiden_ were almost synonyms. A young girl was presumed to be a virgin.
Now the difference between maiden and virgin may be substantial to some. But for those of us without any strong emotional investment in the history of Jewish mythology, it looks quite small. Even Martin Luther, who did have a strong emotional investment in Jewish mythology, reasonably treated _parthenos_ and _almah_ as synonyms. In any case most Christian translations, including both the Catholic Douay and the Protestant KJV, prefer _virgin_: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son.” No Jewish corruption of the dogma of virgin birth or the prophecy of Christ’s coming occurred, since the source of contention was translated exactly as it appears in the Septuagint.
The Masoretic text differs from the Septuagint in hundreds of places.
Only about fifty are relevant to your argument. There are over three hundred quotations from the Old Testament in the New Testament, and the vast majority agree with the Septuagint. We would expect differences, but they are not abundant.
Your best example, incidentally, would be the omission of the Book of Susanna, which appears in Catholic Bibles following the last chapter of Daniel, but not in the Hebrew Old Testament, perhaps because it reflects poorly on the Jewish elders.
Control of the Dead Sea Scrolls was a military objective of Israelis. It was achieved by their victory in the Six Days War. The publication of the scrolls slowed to a trickle. After 1971, the international team even refused to allow the publication of photographs of the material. They excluded scholars who wanted to make independent evaluations. The embargo was not broken until 1991.
Please list the names of the Jewish scholars in the international team who suppressed publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Then list the names of the non-Jews who broke the embargo.
These are trick questions.
The Masoretic Text is part of a tradition that began with Rabbi Akiva. Rabbis rewrote the Jewish Bible to destroy the credibility of the New Testament.
Christians are reading Jewish scriptures whenever they open the Old Testament. Nothing will change that. There is no non-Jewish Old Testament anywhere in existence.
Traditionally Christians have argued that Jews fail to understand their own religious texts. That’s a good tradition, which anti-Semitic Christians should retain. But you shouldn’t accuse Jews of elobarate conspiracies to corrupt your Old Testament, which is also their Hebrew Bible.
By creative misreading our Christian forefathers transformed this often monstrous collection of ethnocentric Jewish tales into a source of genuine moral edification and artistic inspiration. That has been one of the great accomplishments of our civilization. But _we_ were the corrupters of Jewish texts; they didn’t corrupt ours. Jews have every right to be irritated.