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Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by PastorAIO: 11:54am On Mar 13, 2013
This is the first in what I hope will be a number of threads under the title of Contra Bibliolatreia. In this first thread I would like us to discuss the Septuagint and the origins of our current OT.

Legend has it that King Ptolemy II of Egypt, out of concern for the Jews in his kingdom who could no longer speak Hebrew but only greek, commissioned a translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek in 3rd century BC. He summoned 72 translators and locked them up individually in separate cells and he didn't release them until they had finished their translations.

Miraculously each one emerged with exactly the same interpretation as the others. Thus was born the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the old testament. It's use spread so that it became the translation of the hebrew scriptures used by all Jews in the diaspora. Whenever you see the OT being quoted in the New testament it is mainly the Septuagint that they are quoting.

The Septuagint was the main scriptures of the early christians. The septuagint contains certain texts that are not in our present day Old Testament. For example Maccabees, Esdras . . Tobit etc. . . ..

So as time went on, the relationship between christians and other jews became more and more fractious. The Christians were using the Septuagint to argue against the Jews and they were winning the arguments. For example, in Isaiah 7:14 the Septuagint says a Parthenos (virgin in greek) will bear a child. So this supported the Virgin birth of Jesus. But what did the original Hebrew actually say?

The Jews were now so tired of christians using the Septuagint to bully them that they decided to reject the Septuagint completely. Remember that by this time (2nd century AD) most of the Jewish world used the septuagint, the temple had been destroyed and if the original hebrew texts still existed they weren't in circulation. The Jews came up with the Masoretic Text which is, not as one would imagine the original hebrew text but, a translation back into Hebrew of the Septuagint. The thing about the Masoretic text is that it now rendered Isaiah 7:14 in hebrew as saying an 'Almah' (young woman, not necessarily virgin, in hebrew) would bear a son.

That was how christians and Jews started using different scriptures. Masoretic text for Jews, Septuagint for Christians. And so things continued until a few centuries later there was a Pope called Damasus (in the 4th century) who wanted latin speaking people who were not so fluent in greek to have a translation that they could understand. (Hmmmm . . . this is hardly the thinking of people who are trying to keep the common man from reading their bibles). So he commissioned St. Jerome to write the Vulgate (Vulgate just means common, so the Vulgate is the latin Common bible).

The thing about Jerome though is that he had a lot of Jewish friends and he used to discuss with them a lot about the correct rendering of the OT. He was convinced that the Masoretic was superior to the Septuagint. So when he created the Vulgate he didn't use the Septuagint but rather used the hebrew Masoretic to make the OT. This decision of his caused a very big bust up with many other christians because you see the christians believed that the septuagint was a miracle and it was God's very own inspired scriptures. (yes we've all heard that before but this was the first time in christianity so the kjv people have to take the back seat on this one).

In fact one of St. Jerome's biggest opponents was St. Augustine, no less. They exchanged many angry words. When Jerome's Vulgate was read in some churches it caused riots because the congregation thought it was heretical. So Jerome's Vulgate was universal condemned and rejected.

But as they say, 'The race ain't always to the swift, nor the Battle to the strong'. Time and Chance decided to favour Jerome's Vulgate. Slowly and slowly over the centuries the vulgate gathered popularity and by the 9th century it was the main version of the bible in western Europe. However the Septuagint remained the OT of the Greek orthodox churches in eastern europe, but they don't count because most of what we call global christianity today came from western europe via the roman catholic church.

Now fast forward a few more centuries to when the protestants were ready to start their own wahala. Quite unanimously all the bible translations of the protestant churches including the the KJV mostly used the masoretic to translate their OT from. The only churches that stick to the original scriptures of christianity, the Septuagint are the Eastern orthodox churches.



There are some other curiosities regarding the septuagint. In the NT when Jesus quotes the OT he quotes it from the septuagint (greek). Of course it is totally possible that Jesus spoke greek as it was the lingua franca of the Roman Empire, but would he really, as a home bred jew, have quoted the OT in Greek rather than Hebrew. It is also possible that the NT writers simply used the greek translation of the passage that he would have quoted in hebrew. any way sha . . . .

Just some history of the bible that has come down to us. Please add, or dispute, or correct anything if you see fit.

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Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by InesQor(m): 2:26pm On Mar 13, 2013
Interesting thread.

If the legend of Ptolemy II is anything to go by, would you consider it a coincidence then, that 72 translators derived the exact same interpretation for Isaiah 7:14 (before Christ, and thus there was no confirmation bias)? What do you think?

Meanwhile the Masoretic seems like a deliberately coordinated attempt to reject Christian views peeking through the histories of the Old Testament, and Jerome's Latin Vulgate follows after the Masoretic. These two would thus seem to me to be more biased versions.

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Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by truthislight: 3:42pm On Mar 13, 2013
InesQor: Interesting thread.

If the legend of Ptolemy II is anything to go by, would you consider it a coincidence then, that 72 translators derived the exact same interpretation for Isaiah 7:14 (before Christ, and thus there was no confirmation bias)? What do you think?

Meanwhile the Masoretic seems like a deliberately coordinated attempt to reject Christian views peeking through the histories of the Old Testament, and Jerome's Latin Vulgate follows after the Masoretic. These two would thus seem to me to be more biased versions.

Well, going by what he put down up there, it seems a natural deduction hence.

Seconded, unless there is a contrary opinion/presentation.

From that, the Jews were already biased as it were hence their own version/translation to suite their intent. (Masoretic text)

Why interview a set of people already influence/biased to form a basis for a translation?

The septuagint had no such bias hence a precise translation it seems.

@AIO.
Some references will do no harm.
Peace
Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by PastorAIO: 3:50am On Mar 14, 2013
truthislight:

@AIO.
Some references will do no harm.
Peace

Okay. You can find references to the matter by googling The Septuagint. Or Septuagint vs Masoretic. Or Jerome vs Augustine.

One that I found that is really interesting because it provides various opinions from the christian and the Jewish perspective is this: http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2010/02/septuagint-vs-masoretic-which-is-more.html


It mentions something that I forgot to mention in the OP. Although we don't have any Hebrew manuscripts from the first centuries CE, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940s shed a big light on the early scriptures. The Dead Seas scrolls date from the first and century before CE and they contain Hebrew scriptures ( as well as other languages). They are today the oldest copies (actual documents) of Jewish scriptures that we have. However until 1940s nobody had seen them since about 70AD so they wouldn't have influenced the writing of the Masoretic.
What the Dead Sea Scrolls tell us is that the Septuagint agrees with ancient hebrew scriptures in some parts and not in others. Also that the Masoretic agrees with ancient hebrew scriptures in some parts and not in others. And furthermore that amongst the scrolls there is enough discrepancy that suggests that the Jews at that time were not to bothered that the scriptures had a fixed rendering or not. The Rigidifying of scriptural renditions came later.

Interesting points that I found from the link:

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.

The original text of the Septuagint is lost, we can say. But there are different ways of reconstructing it.
Hah! This is the same problem with the NT, scribes were always changing it in the process of copying it. It's only later that the Jews developed a strict system for copying texts.

The Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrates just how carefully the Hebrew Bible was copied. But the Septuagint we have today is NOT the LXX of 250 BC!!! This is just silly. The LXX we have today is Brenton's or Ralph's, which basically is a copy of Codex Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, which are comparatively late manuscripts, 4th or 5th century being generous. Who knows what manner of editing was done in the intervening centuries.

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Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by PastorAIO: 3:54am On Mar 14, 2013
InesQor: Interesting thread.

If the legend of Ptolemy II is anything to go by, would you consider it a coincidence then, that 72 translators derived the exact same interpretation for Isaiah 7:14 (before Christ, and thus there was no confirmation bias)? What do you think?

Meanwhile the Masoretic seems like a deliberately coordinated attempt to reject Christian views peeking through the histories of the Old Testament, and Jerome's Latin Vulgate follows after the Masoretic. These two would thus seem to me to be more biased versions.

Not only Jerome's Vulgate but every subsequent bible used in Western Europe. Apart from the Eastern orthodox churches everybody is using the 'more biased versions'. Including the KJV!! The septuagint contained Maccabees and other books that would make most protestants today shudder. It was actually the Masoretic Jews that first rejected these books from their canon, and through Jerome the christians did too eventually. The NT contains references to extra-canonical books as scriptures.

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Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by UyiIredia(m): 4:13am On Mar 14, 2013
Indeed it is true that the Septugaint is a Greek translation of the scriptures, I didn't know until now it was authorised by Ptolemy. In any case, I do know for a fact that the Septugaint is used in modern Bible translations.
Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by PastorAIO: 4:30am On Mar 14, 2013
Uyi Iredia: Indeed it is true that the Septugaint is a Greek translation of the scriptures, I didn't know until now it was authorised by Ptolemy. In any case, I do know for a fact that the Septugaint is used in modern Bible translations.

Could you provide the link supporting what you say. I believe only the Greek orthodox churches use the Septuagint today.
Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by okeyxyz(m): 8:07am On Mar 14, 2013
@OP says that our modern bibles are derived from the Masoretic texts, yet virtually all modern bibles renders the Isiah 7:14 http://bible.cc/isaiah/7-14.htm(Which was the main conflict text) according to the Septuagint version. Or was this a typo by the OP??
Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by PastorAIO: 9:05am On Mar 14, 2013
okeyxyz: @OP says that our modern bibles are derived from the Masoretic texts, yet virtually all modern bibles renders the Isiah 7:14 http://bible.cc/isaiah/7-14.htm(Which was the main conflict text) according to the Septuagint version. Or was this a typo by the OP??

Yeah, you're right there. It is masoretic with certain key words essential to christians doctrine kept intact for obvious reasons (there were quite a few 'main conflict texts'). The biggest difference would be the exclusion of books that are in the septuagint such as Sirach and Maccabees etc. . .
Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by PastorAIO: 9:09am On Mar 14, 2013
Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by PastorAIO: 9:18am On Mar 14, 2013
Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by truthislight: 10:19am On Mar 14, 2013
Pastor AIO:

Yeah, you're right there. It is masoretic with certain key words essential to christians doctrine kept intact for obvious reasons. The biggest difference would be the exclusion of books that are in the septuagint such as Sirach and Maccabees etc. . .

I dont see why the apocriphal translation along with other books in the septuagint will become the bone now.

Lets say the mandate given to the "72" were generous to capture availabe circulating books.

I see it as being that they were translated as other books that were around to enable the greek readers to be able to read all availabe books in greek and not to give authority as to which sort of books are genuine or not.

So, using the inclusion of the apocriphal books in the translation of the septuagint may not give the veracity needed for those book(apocriphals) as being this or that.

The bone i think is in the quality of the translation and not in the books captured per se in the septuagint, in this thread, unless otherwise stated.
Peace.
Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by Ubenedictus(m): 6:16pm On Mar 14, 2013
Pastor AIO:
Not only Jerome's Vulgate but every subsequent bible used in Western Europe. Apart from the Eastern orthodox churches everybody is using the 'more biased versions'. Including the KJV!! The septuagint contained Maccabees and other books that would make most protestants today shudder. It was actually the Masoretic Jews that first rejected these books from their canon, and through Jerome the christians did too eventually. The NT contains references to extra-canonical books as scriptures.
now be careful, don't misinform us.
Jerome could read understand and translate, hebrew, greek and latin, while he relied on one language over the other, he did well to compare both and make up for what was missing, macabees wasnt in d mosoretic text but Jerome had the wisdom to translate it to latin from d greek. He translated the deuterocanonical books, the rejection of those books didnt come from Jerome, it came frome the rabis and ultimately d protestant reformer Luther.

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Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by Ubenedictus(m): 6:16pm On Mar 14, 2013
Pastor AIO:

Not only Jerome's Vulgate but every subsequent bible used in Western Europe. Apart from the Eastern orthodox churches everybody is using the 'more biased versions'. Including the KJV!! The septuagint contained Maccabees and other books that would make most protestants today shudder. It was actually the Masoretic Jews that first rejected these books from their canon, and through Jerome the christians did too eventually. The NT contains references to extra-canonical books as scriptures.
Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by Ubenedictus(m): 6:21pm On Mar 14, 2013
truthislight:

I dont see why the apocriphal translation along with other books in the septuagint will become the bone now.

Lets say the mandate given to the "72" were generous to capture availabe circulating books.

I see it as being that they were translated as other books that were around to enable the greek readers to be able to read all availabe books in greek and not to give authority as to which sort of books are genuine or not.

So, using the inclusion of the apocriphal books in the translation of the septuagint may not give the veracity needed for those book(apocriphals) as being this or that.

The bone i think is in the quality of the translation and not in the books captured per se in the septuagint, in this thread, unless otherwise stated.
Peace.
this is an interesting effort the shy away from d fact that macabee etc were part of the xtian bible.

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Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by Ubenedictus(m): 7:04pm On Mar 14, 2013
Pastor AIO: This is the first in what I hope will be a number of threads under the title of Contra Bibliolatreia. In this first thread I would like us to discuss the Septuagint and the origins of our current OT.
The thing about Jerome though is that he had a lot of Jewish friends and he used to discuss with them a lot about the correct rendering of the OT. He was convinced that the Masoretic was superior to the Septuagint. So when he created the Vulgate he didn't use the Septuagint but rather used the hebrew Masoretic to make the OT.
Now fast forward a few more centuries to when the protestants were ready to start their own wahala. Quite unanimously all the bible translations of the protestant churches including the the KJV mostly used the masoretic to translate their OT from. The only churches that stick to the original scriptures of christianity, the Septuagint are the Eastern orthodox churches.
There are some other curiosities regarding the septuagint. In the NT when Jesus quotes the OT he quotes it from the septuagint (greek).
thanks for d thread, while Jerome translated from hebrew, i think you forgot to note that he compared his translation with the greek and made sure he translated what the rabis removed.

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Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by PastorAIO: 7:49pm On Mar 14, 2013
Ubenedictus: now be careful, don't misinform us.
Jerome could read understand and translate, hebrew, greek and latin, while he relied on one language over the other, he did well to compare both and make up for what was missing, macabees wasnt in d mosoretic text but Jerome had the wisdom to translate it to latin from d greek. He translated the deuterocanonical books, the rejection of those books didnt come from Jerome, it came frome the rabis and ultimately d protestant reformer Luther.

You're quite right. Perhaps you could help to fill in the gaps where I err or I miss stuff out. I also think I was wrong to say that there were no hebrew texts extant at the time of the 2nd century. From what I can tell the Masoretic was created from what Jews called Protomasoretic texts, some of which were in hebrew. So Masoretic was not a reverse translation of the Septuagint back to hebrew. I think their idea was to sidestep the Septuagint completely.

You're also correct that it was mainly Luther that cut out the deuterocanonical books. The Jews had cut them out of the Masoretic earlier but the first christians to do so were the protestants despite the fact that the apostles in the NT sometimes quote them. I also heard that maccabees was cut out mainly because it gave support to the idea of prayers for the dead which some protestants were not happy with.
Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by InesQor(m): 7:56pm On Mar 14, 2013
^^^

Acknowledging when you're wrong or you've passed wrong information. Always a very rare and refreshing thing to see on Nairaland.

Good job Pastor AIO. And thanks for the clarification, Ubenedictus. Please provide more insight if you have such.

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Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by truthislight: 10:57pm On Mar 14, 2013
There comes a time that we find it difficult to identify which are assumptions and which are facts as it seems.

InesQor: Ubenedictus. Please provide more insight if you have such.

true ^ talk.

Should he not have had facts or references/sources to back up his claims?

Please, Ubenedictus, do you mind providing the sources for what you are saying?

Should we rather take to the bank all you have said without evidence?

Please oblige InesQor, and by extension other readers.
thanks.

InesQor: Ubenedictus. Please provide more insight if you have such.
Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by Ubenedictus(m): 11:56pm On Mar 14, 2013
I reread my comment, it might have sounded harsh, i'm sorry, thanks for the civility.
Pastor AIO:
You're quite right. Perhaps you could help to fill in the gaps where I err or I miss stuff out. I also think I was wrong to say that there were no hebrew texts extant at the time of the 2nd century. From what I can tell the Masoretic was created from what Jews called Protomasoretic texts, some of which were in hebrew. So Masoretic was not a reverse translation of the Septuagint back to hebrew. I think their idea was to sidestep the Septuagint completely.
and in all fairness, it is also interesting to note that the early christians(except jerome et al) rejected the masoretic text. Justin in his discussion with typho directly accuses the jew and rabis of tampering te tanack to suite their anti christian teachings, i'll see if i still have d link to that discussion. But it is interesting to note that d greek wasn't that better, there were d aquinle and Text (pardon d spellings and d question mark i'll try to update later.) i doubt the matter was black and white.
In Jerome's discuss with augustine, jerome says even d greek version was tampered by origen.
The whole arguement is quite long and i seem to be forgetting d specifics, i'll refresh and get back.

You're also correct that it was mainly Luther that cut out the deuterocanonical books. The Jews had cut them out of the Masoretic earlier but the first christians to do so were the protestants despite the fact that the apostles in the NT sometimes quote them. I also heard that maccabees was cut out mainly because it gave support to the idea of prayers for the dead which some protestants were not happy with.
i think it is hard to tell what exactly luther had with d deutero books, d guy also had problem with d epistle of james (he calls it "d epistle of straws", james actually said faith alone is dead which if using d literal reading of d text renders luther sola fide suspect). When it comes to d deutero book luther just refuses to give an answer he instead uses d opportunity to insult d roman curia.
I'll talk about these later.

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Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by Ubenedictus(m): 12:01am On Mar 15, 2013
truthislight: There comes a time that we find it difficult to identify which are assumptions and which are facts as it seems.

true ^ talk.
Should he not have had facts or references/sources to back up his claims?

Please, Ubenedictus, do you mind providing the sources for what your are saying?
Should we rather take to the bank all you have said without evidence?
Please oblige InesQor, and by extension other readers.
thanks.
thank God i havent gone too far, i would have been accused of citing a "church father" and dat term is synonymous to liar on nairaland. All what i've said so far can be found on the wikipedia articles.
Thanks.
Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by PastorAIO: 2:22pm On Apr 26, 2013
Ubenedictus: I reread my comment, it might have sounded harsh, i'm sorry, thanks for the civility.
and in all fairness, it is also interesting to note that the early christians(except jerome et al) rejected the masoretic text. Justin in his discussion with typho directly accuses the jew and rabis of tampering te tanack to suite their anti christian teachings, i'll see if i still have d link to that discussion. But it is interesting to note that d greek wasn't that better, there were d aquinle and Text (pardon d spellings and d question mark i'll try to update later.) i doubt the matter was black and white.
In Jerome's discuss with augustine, jerome says even d greek version was tampered by origen.
The whole arguement is quite long and i seem to be forgetting d specifics, i'll refresh and get back.

I'm sorry that I've been away for so long, abeg I hope you haven't lost interest. I am keen to hear more about what you have to say on the matter. Especially Jerome's arguments for Origen tampering with the Greek.


i think it is hard to tell what exactly luther had with d deutero books, d guy also had problem with d epistle of james (he calls it "d epistle of straws", james actually said faith alone is dead which if using d literal reading of d text renders luther sola fide suspect). When it comes to d deutero book luther just refuses to give an answer he instead uses d opportunity to insult d roman curia.
I'll talk about these later.

I think that Luther simply didn't like James cos James directly contradicted his teaching of Sola Fide. Of course he based his teaching on Romans 3:28, I even heard that he added the word 'alone' to the text to further emphasise his point. Now I find Luther to be a prime example of what is written in 2 Peter 3:16.

I have no doubt that the letters of Paul, Or rather the ease with which the letters of Paul can be interpreted one way or the other due to their complicatedness, is the basis of almost everything that that is rotten in christianity today.


As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.


speaking of these things in all of his letters. Some of his comments are hard to understand, and those who are ignorant and unstable have twisted his letters to mean something quite different, just as they do with other parts of Scripture. And this will result in their destruction.

Reading the letters of Paul without any grounding is one of the most dangerous things that a christian can do. It will lead, and it has in many cases led, to perdition and destruction.

I always recommend reading and PRACTICING the teachings of Jesus first. But People dive straight into Paul and dismiss Jesus. 'Oh, Jesus said that while it was still the old covenant'. or 'Jesus didn't really mean it like that'.

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Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by Nobody: 6:49pm On Apr 26, 2013
GOOD STUFF GUYS. GREAT READ FROM ALL INVOLVED
Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by FromGuiriga(m): 11:09pm On Apr 26, 2013
Pastor AIO:

Yeah, you're right there. It is masoretic with certain key words essential to christians doctrine kept intact for obvious reasons (there were quite a few 'main conflict texts'). The biggest difference would be the exclusion of books that are in the septuagint such as Sirach and Maccabees etc. . .

Interesting stuff man. Sirach is a great book!
Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by Ubenedictus(m): 3:22pm On Apr 30, 2013
Hey, i'm sorry, i've been away from nl for some time, my days are very busy and for the next two month my project will be very demanding and i doubt i'll have the mental energy to go in depth, that not withstanding i'll keep dropping some points.
Pastor AIO:
I'm sorry that I've been away for so long, abeg I hope you haven't lost interest. I am keen to hear more about what you have to say on the matter. Especially Jerome's arguments for Origen tampering with the Greek.
during jeromes' time the old testament then had asterixs and oblisks to account for the differences between the 3 different greek manuscript of the time, the differences were mainly structural not real difference in substance, infact even the hebrew copyist weren't anxious to copy the texts of the hebrew bible word for word, this attitude caused the text to be inexact. Jerome claims to have hebrew text without discripacies common in d greek. I'll try to paste discourse between jerome and augustine. Augustine defended the greek scriptures as possesing equal authority as the original hebrew, jerome on the other hand ranks the hebrew higher!
I'll go on later to discourse jerome and the deuterocanonical books

I think that Luther simply didn't like James cos James directly contradicted his teaching of Sola Fide. Of course he based his teaching on Romans 3:28, I even heard that he added the word 'alone' to the text to further emphasise his point. Now I find Luther to be a prime example of what is written in 2 Peter 3:16.
yeah he did luther's german bible has the word "alone" in it. And luther admits that the words isn't in the original manuscripts, the guy wanted his doctrine to fit by all means.

I have no doubt that the letters of Paul, Or rather the ease with which the letters of Paul can be interpreted one way or the other due to their complicatedness, is the basis of almost everything that that is rotten in christianity today.


As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.

speaking of these things in all of his letters. Some of his comments are hard to understand, and those who are ignorant and unstable have twisted his letters to mean something quite different, just as they do with other parts of Scripture. And this will result in their destruction.

Reading the letters of Paul without any grounding is one of the most dangerous things that a christian can do. It will lead, and it has in many cases led, to perdition and destruction.

I always recommend reading and PRACTICING the teachings of Jesus first. But People dive straight into Paul and dismiss Jesus. 'Oh, Jesus said that while it was still the old covenant'. or 'Jesus didn't really mean it like that'.
well luther's reading of paul can be corrected easily but that of calvin is another matter entirely.
I'll leave it at that so as not to deviate d thread.
Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by PastorAIO: 12:56pm On Aug 01, 2018
I find it interesting to discover that there are 'christians' (such as the Jehovah's Witnesses) that would readily reject the LXX regardless of the fact that Early Christianity was itself based on the LXX.
Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by truthislight: 12:02pm On Oct 19, 2018
PastorAIO:
I find it interesting to discover that there are 'christians' (such as the Jehovah's Witnesses) that would readily reject the LXX regardless of the fact that Early Christianity was itself based on the LXX.

Lol. Transferred aggression that is. cool

That you have a disagreement with one or two persons on Nairaland on a different topic, does not translate to such generalization of what JW as an organisation accepts or rejects. Things must be seen from their perspectives.

Your statement above is a false accusation.

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Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by ihedinobi2: 12:15pm On Oct 19, 2018
Makes for interesting browsing. This was back when antichristians could still string together a sophisticated but false argument. Today, they can't even talk without finding an insult to throw in. And they never even bother to properly attack arguments or properly construct one. They could take a library out of your book, PastorAIO.
Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by PastorAIO: 12:38pm On Oct 20, 2018
truthislight:


Lol. Transferred aggression that is. cool

That you have a disagreement with one or two persons on Nairaland on a different topic, does not translate to such generalization of what JW as an organisation accepts or rejects. Things must be seen from their perspectives.

Your statement above is a false accusation.

Since you were one of the two persons that I had the disagreement with, the other being OneJ, are you about to declare that your position in that disagreement is Not the accepted position of the JW organisation?

If you were not representing the JW position then I might accept that I made a generalisation about JW, BUT if you were accurately representing the JW lies then any rebuttal of your lies is also a rebuttal of the lies of the JW Organisation.

For those who don't know the 'disagreement' stems from this thread: https://www.nairaland.com/3753404/hebrew-monotheistic-belief-product-religious/12#69128895

I connect both threads with links because they are pertinent to each other.
Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by PastorAIO: 12:39pm On Oct 20, 2018
ihedinobi2:
Makes for interesting browsing. This was back when antichristians could still string together a sophisticated but false argument. Today, they can't even talk without finding an insult to throw in. And they never even bother to properly attack arguments or properly construct one. They could take a library out of your book, PastorAIO.


Could you kindly explain to us how this thread makes a false argument?
Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by Ihedinobi3: 3:19pm On Oct 20, 2018
PastorAIO:
Legend has it that King Ptolemy II of Egypt, out of concern for the Jews in his kingdom who could no longer speak Hebrew but only greek, commissioned a translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek in 3rd century BC. He summoned 72 translators and locked them up individually in separate cells and he didn't release them until they had finished their translations.

Miraculously each one emerged with exactly the same interpretation as the others. Thus was born the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the old testament. It's use spread so that it became the translation of the hebrew scriptures used by all Jews in the diaspora. Whenever you see the OT being quoted in the New testament it is mainly the Septuagint that they are quoting. The Septuagint was the main scriptures of the early christians. The septuagint contains certain texts that are not in our present day Old Testament. For example Maccabees, Esdras . . Tobit etc. . . ..

So as time went on, the relationship between christians and other jews became more and more fractious. The Christians were using the Septuagint to argue against the Jews and they were winning the arguments. For example, in Isaiah 7:14 the Septuagint says a Parthenos (virgin in greek) will bear a child. So this supported the Virgin birth of Jesus. But what did the original Hebrew actually say?

The Jews were now so tired of christians using the Septuagint to bully them that they decided to reject the Septuagint completely. Remember that by this time (2nd century AD) most of the Jewish world used the septuagint, the temple had been destroyed and if the original hebrew texts still existed they weren't in circulation. The Jews came up with the Masoretic Text which is, not as one would imagine the original hebrew text but, a translation back into Hebrew of the Septuagint. The thing about the Masoretic text is that it now rendered Isaiah 7:14 in hebrew as saying an 'Almah' (young woman, not necessarily virgin, in hebrew) would bear a son.
That was how christians and Jews started using different scriptures. Masoretic text for Jews, Septuagint for Christians. And so things continued until a few centuries later there was a Pope called Damasus (in the 4th century) who wanted latin speaking people who were not so fluent in greek to have a translation that they could understand. (Hmmmm . . . this is hardly the thinking of people who are trying to keep the common man from reading their bibles). So he commissioned St. Jerome to write the Vulgate (Vulgate just means common, so the Vulgate is the latin Common bible).

The thing about Jerome though is that he had a lot of Jewish friends and he used to discuss with them a lot about the correct rendering of the OT. He was convinced that the Masoretic was superior to the Septuagint. So when he created the Vulgate he didn't use the Septuagint but rather used the hebrew Masoretic to make the OT. This decision of his caused a very big bust up with many other christians because you see the christians believed that the septuagint was a miracle and it was God's very own inspired scriptures. (yes we've all heard that before but this was the first time in christianity so the kjv people have to take the back seat on this one).

In fact one of St. Jerome's biggest opponents was St. Augustine, no less. They exchanged many angry words. When Jerome's Vulgate was read in some churches it caused riots because the congregation thought it was heretical. So Jerome's Vulgate was universal condemned and rejected.

But as they say, 'The race ain't always to the swift, nor the Battle to the strong'. Time and Chance decided to favour Jerome's Vulgate. Slowly and slowly over the centuries the vulgate gathered popularity and by the 9th century it was the main version of the bible in western Europe. However the Septuagint remained the OT of the Greek orthodox churches in eastern europe, but they don't count because most of what we call global christianity today came from western europe via the roman catholic church.

Now fast forward a few more centuries to when the protestants were ready to start their own wahala. Quite unanimously all the bible translations of the protestant churches including the the KJV mostly used the masoretic to translate their OT from. The only churches that stick to the original scriptures of christianity, the Septuagint are the Eastern orthodox churches.



There are some other curiosities regarding the septuagint. In the NT when Jesus quotes the OT he quotes it from the septuagint (greek). Of course it is totally possible that Jesus spoke greek as it was the lingua franca of the Roman Empire, but would he really, as a home bred jew, have quoted the OT in Greek rather than Hebrew. It is also possible that the NT writers simply used the greek translation of the passage that he would have quoted in hebrew. any way sha . . . .

Just some history of the bible that has come down to us. Please add, or dispute, or correct anything if you see fit.

The part in blue seems to be a flat out falsehood and in my thinking it is the single most important falsehood in this argument:

"Masoretic text, (from Hebrew masoreth, “tradition”), traditional Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible, meticulously assembled and codified, and supplied with diacritical marks to enable correct pronunciation. This monumental work was begun around the 6th century AD and completed in the 10th by scholars at Talmudic academies in Babylonia and Palestine, in an effort to reproduce, as far as possible, the original text of the Hebrew Old Testament. Their intention was not to interpret the meaning of the Scriptures but to transmit to future generations the authentic Word of God. To this end they gathered manuscripts and whatever oral traditions were available to them."

Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Masoretic-text

What I perceive to be the real aim of this argument is to call the Bible into question on the basis of cleverly twisted historical events woven to disguise the major falsehood it seeks to perpetrate, namely, that the Bible we have today may not be quite the same as what existed before the Septuagint but is rather the product of different schemes/agenda/beliefs held by different groups.

Regardless whether the legend about the creation of the Septuagint is true or not, the Septuagint was known to have problems in translation. Scholars tended to use existing Hebrew texts to correct it a lot. This was during the 3rd Century AD (see the link) which was a long time after the destruction of the Temple. That means that contrary to your argument, Hebrew manuscripts survived from which a more correct translation of the Hebrew Bible could be made.

Those were the source of the Masoretic Text. And till date, it has proved completely reliable in preserving the truths of the Old Testament.

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Re: Contra Bibliolatreia II -the Septuagint by Ihedinobi3: 7:30pm On Oct 20, 2018
Some points of departure in Britannica from your deposition, PastorAIO:

1. "The name Septuagint (from the Latin septuaginta, “70”) was derived later from the legend that there were 72 translators, 6 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel, who worked independently to translate the whole and ultimately produced identical versions. Another legend holds that the translators were sent to Alexandria by Eleazar, the chief priest at Jerusalem, at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–246 BCE), though its source, the Letter of Aristeas, is unreliable. Despite the tradition that it was perfectly translated, there are large differences in style and usage between the Septuagint’s translation of the Torah and its translations of the later books in the Old Testament. In the 3rd century CE Origen attempted to clear up copyists’ errors that had crept into the text of the Septuagint, which by then varied widely from copy to copy, and a number of other scholars consulted the Hebrew texts in order to make the Septuagint more accurate."
Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Septuagint

So, your version of the legend is weird and your later assertion that the Septuagint was the original Scripture of Christianity perhaps on the strength of this legend is problematic. Also, it is clear that the Septuagint had problems and scholars used Hebrew texts to compensate. Origen, incidentally, is a church father.

2. "In addition to all the books of the Hebrew canon, the Septuagint under Christian auspices separated the minor prophets and some other books and added the extra books known to Protestants and Jews as apocryphal and to Roman Catholics as deuterocanonical."
Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Septuagint

So, it's not like the Septuagint always had those extra books. It was at the hands of men of the Church visible that they were added.

3. "The Christian church received its Bible from Greek-speaking Jews and found the majority of its early converts in the Hellenistic world. The Greek Bible of Alexandria thus became the official Bible of the Christian community, and the overwhelming number of quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures in the New Testament are derived from it. Whatever the origin of the apocryphal books in the canon of Alexandria, these became part of the Christian Scriptures, but there seems to have been no unanimity as to their exact canonical status. The New Testament itself does not cite the Apocryphal books directly, but occasional traces of a knowledge of them are to be found. The Apostolic Fathers (late 1st–early 2nd century) show extensive familiarity with this literature, but a list of the Old Testament books by Melito, bishop of Sardis in Asia Minor (2nd century), does not include the additional writings of the Greek Bible, and Origen (c. 185–c. 254) explicitly describes the Old Testament canon as comprising only 22 books."
Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/biblical-literature/The-Christian-canon

So, there was a more complex situation than you represent in your argument.

4. "The story of the Greek translation of the Pentateuch is told in the Letter of Aristeas, which purports to be a contemporary document written by Aristeas, a Greek official at the Egyptian court of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–246 BCE). It recounts how the law of the Jews was translated into Greek by Jewish scholars sent from Jerusalem at the request of the king.

This narrative, repeated in one form or another by Philo and rabbinic sources, is full of inaccuracies that prove that the author was an Alexandrian Jew writing well after the events he described had taken place. The Septuagint Pentateuch, which is all that is discussed, does, however, constitute an independent corpus within the Greek Bible, and it was probably first translated as a unit by a company of scholars in Alexandria about the middle of the 3rd century BCE.

The Septuagint, as the entire Greek Bible came to be called, has a long and complex history and took well over a century to be completed. It is for this reason not a unified or consistent translation. The Septuagint became the instrument whereby the basic teachings of Judaism were mediated to the pagan world, and it became an indispensable factor in the spread of Christianity.

The adoption of the Septuagint as the Bible of the Christians naturally engendered suspicion on the part of Jews. In addition, the emergence of a single authoritative text type after the destruction of the Temple made the great differences between it and the Septuagint increasingly intolerable, and the need was felt for a Greek translation based upon the current Hebrew text in circulation."


Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/biblical-literature/Early-versions

A clearer picture of the issue.

5. "Jerome produced three revisions of the Psalms, all extant. The first was based on the Septuagint and is known as the Roman Psalter because it was incorporated into the liturgy at Rome. The second, produced in Palestine from the Hexaplaric Septuagint, tended to bring the Latin closer to the Hebrew. Its popularity in Gaul was such that it came to be known as the Gallican Psalter. This version was later adopted into the Vulgate. The third revision, actually a fresh translation, was made directly from the Hebrew, but it never enjoyed wide circulation. In the course of preparing the latter, Jerome realized the futility of revising the Old Latin solely on the basis of the Greek and apparently left that task unfinished. By the end of 405 he had executed his own Latin translation of the entire Old Testament based on the “Hebrew truth” (Hebraica veritas).

Because of the canonical status of the Greek version within the church, Jerome’s version was received at first with much suspicion, for it seemed to cast doubt on the authenticity of the Septuagint and exhibited divergences from the Old Latin that sounded discordant to those familiar with the traditional renderings. St. Augustine feared a consequent split between the Greek and Latin churches. The innate superiority of Jerome’s version, however, assured its ultimate victory, and by the 8th century it had become the Latin Vulgate (“the common version”) throughout the churches of Western Christendom, where it remained the chief Bible until the Reformation."


Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/biblical-literature/Versions-after-the-4th-century

Perhaps there were riots. Perhaps Jerome and Augustine had words. But I wonder if you exaggerated the actual events.



I think I'll stop at this point. Other duties call. If it is necessary, I may continue this examination and comparison in the future.

Cheers.

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