Nazaroo

(sigh) Can't anyone read and comprehend what they are looking at? For my estimate of 1,500 errors, I presumed Vaticanus was RIGHT 90% of the time.

In a sadly imperfect world, where close balances are extremely rare, it tells me that some manuscripts are inevitably better than others. And when a text-type and its exemplars show obvious and multitudinous accidental blunders, they earn a lower status as textual witnesses.

Why did I buy BHS? Firstly, to see just how far the Germans were willing to go to mutilate the traditional MT, and in what direction their theories were taking them.

Kittel (the Nazi) and his bias are a pretty hot topic in MT textual crit right now by the way.


By all means ignore Scrivener. Now what about the other four experts, including Skeat.

Apikorus

If the Vaticanus is "correct" in 90% of the instances where it disagrees with the MT, then by all means we should be using it in critical editions. Doh!

What specifically do you feel Skeat has proven with regard to the Old Testament in the Vaticanus?

Do you have some sort of a priori commitment to the MT? If not, what do you suppose is the point behind a critical edition? And take a look at the text-critical analyses of Speiser, Propp, Milgrom, Levine, and Weinfeld who wrote the Anchor Bible commentaries on the Torah to see how far we Jews are willing to go in mutilating the traditional MT.

Do you really think that complaining about Jesuits, Jews, and Nazis, and calling your interlocutors childish names is helping your case?

spin

And just what does Gill say the Tanach is, praxeus?

If your efforts to deny one text and another, supporting later texts over earlier texts, you're ultimately left with no text, nor any way to identify an accetable one.

More projection. I guess we've forgotten flogging the Alexandrinus, because, though it is a century later than the Vaticanus, at least it had the reading you want. Opportunistically found, Alexandrinus is opportunistically forgotten and we get a half-assed defense of the MT:

Let me turn to a book for a change, Eugene Ulrich, "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible (or via: amazon.co.uk)", Eerdmans/Brill, 1999. On pages 178-179 is at table comparing selected biblical phrases from MT, Qumran texts and Old Greek (LXX), showing that there are significant agreements between the DSS and OG against the MT. Ulrich writes:

The conclusion to be drawn is that there was a wide variety of Hebrew texts available and in use when the OG translation of the various books was made and for several centuries during the early transmission of the OG. One must treat the elasticity of the Hebrew text with caution, to be sure, but one also must not underrate the variation in the Hebrew text abundantly demonstrated by the Qumran manuscripts and versions. To underrate it will cause distortion in the understanding of the LXX and the forces behind its translation and transmission.

The MT is just one variety of the Hebrew text traditions in circulation at the time the Qumran texts were deposited. The Greek reflects the existence of another. And for the Torah there is also a clear proto-Samaritan tradition at Qumran as well.

When praxeus opts for the MT he turns his back on Hebrew text traditions that are just as old as the MT. The Old Greek relies on one of these other traditions and that is the precursor of the Vaticanus. On the other hand the Alexandrinus has clearly been modified, away from the text tradition based on the Hebrew LXX Vorlage and towards the MT.

Yup, I said the Greek of Vaticanus got it direct from Hebrew. But of course praxeus with monomanic desire for hairsplitting wants the scribes of Vaticanus to have translated the Hebrew themselves. Bit of a joke of course.

He's not interested in the fact that there were different forms of the Hebrew text before the MT was standardized. All he has to do is go to the Qumran evidence.

Ulrich comments after his close examination of the Qumran Greek texts that

1. "there is a wide variety of Hebrew texts available and in use when the OG translation of the various books was made and for several centuries during the early transmission of the OG." (p.179)
2. the OG is "often", "but often is not, identical with the Masoretic textus receptus. (p.182)
3. later Greek texts "could display a pattern of revision, most commonly sought as recensional revisions of the OG back to the emergingly dominant proto-MT." (p.183)
4. "The cumulative evidence suggests that 4QLXXNum, just as 4QLXXLev(a) above, presents the superior witness to the Old Greek translation." (p.183)

Reliance on the MT as a standard for measuring the content of the Greek translation(s) of the Hebrew bible is simplistic and inappropriate. To come out in favour of one recension of the Hebrew text tradition is to ignore all the other evidence. The Masoretic text is not the be-all and end-all of the Hebrew tradition, but merely marks the dominant flavour which bled back into the Greek translation over centuries tainting the earlier Greek tradition. The more time that passed, the more influence was passed across from the MT to the Greek, so that the earlier the manuscript of the Greek the closer to the original Hebrew Vorlage under the Greek tradition.

(This doesn't mean of course that newer forms of the Greek tradition reflect the Hebrew better, though they might reflect the Masoretic text better. In fact, the willingness to alter the Greek text opens it up to the tainting from other sources as well.)

[omitted praxeus antics]

The further this praxeus joke continues the more he will go off on tangents from the original discussion, which he found necessary to obfuscate in his usual manner in order to get over the denial of the fact that the Greek translation represented by Codex Vaticanus reflects well on the Hebrew of Jdg 13:5. He cannot get away from that fact. The present tense of the woman being pregnant in the Greek Jdg 13:5 must be explained if it is not derived from the Hebrew of the LXX Vorlage. It does reflect the Hebrew found in the MT, which is not so strange: after all Ulrich found that the OG often was identical with the MT. We can see where the future in the Codex Vaticanus could have come from, ie the form found in Mt 1:23.

Oversimplification, thou art a similar jewel.

Inspirational logic here. The Greek clearly reflects the Hebrew in Jdg 13:5 and clearly does not reflect the Hebrew regarding (LMH, "young woman", confusingly given as parQenos, mainly "virgin". Our praxeus says though that if the Greek is good in one it must be good in both.

The Greek is not based on the MT, but as time goes by there is more back influence of the MT over the Greek of a different Hebrew Vorlage.

Because praxeus knows nothing about the languages involved he has difficulty understanding the concept that the information in a phrase in one language can be compared with that in another and judged to be either similar or different. Just as parQenos can be seen as a poor translation of (LMH, so the phrase en gastri echei (with verb in present tense) can be seen as reflective of the non-verbal phrase in Hebrew HRH in its context.

[On the (LMH/parQenos question, I'm sure one can see that from "The girl has never had sex" one cannot conclude that "girl" means "virgin", though we know that the girl was a virgin. We derive "virgin" from the sentence, not from the word "girl", which is neutral as to her virginity. All attempts to confuse the issue fail because it is based on redefinition.]

What ever happened to the violin player smilie? Still avoiding the issue poor praxeus performs this quibbling dance of shifting terms, prancing around whatever will keep him away from the meanings we are looking at.

Yes the Hebrew in Jdg 13:5 says that she was pregnant at the time of the enunciation, just as the Greek version Codex Vaticanus says she was pregnant at the time. I don't think this was coincidental, just as I don't think that Mt 1:23 saying that she wasn't yet pregnant along with the Codex Alexandrinus which was copied 100 years after Codex Vaticanus. Even scribes can make connections between texts about important births (on the one hand Jesus in Mt 1:23 and on the other Samson in Jdg 13:5).

The irony is that praxeus is willing to indiscriminantly attack anything to hide the problem he cannot deal with.

The Greek text tradition was based on a different Hebrew tradition from that which became the MT. This doesn't change the fact that the MT reflects a lot of the same material as the LXX Vorlage. We should expect that the Vaticanus displays meaning which is coherent with the MT quite often. When it displays meaning that is coherent with Jdg 13:5 it is no big deal. The fact that the Vaticanus reflects the Hebrew with Jdg 13:5 should help someone who doesn't understand the Hebrew.

What, really, is the significance of the present tense in Jdg 13:5 for this "conversation"? It is the same form as part of Isaiah 7:14:

behold, a young woman is pregnant and will give birth

In fact, modern scholarly translations such as the NRSV and the JPS give this as the meaning. They also find nothing wrong with using the present tense to reflect the MT in this case.

Still working on the over-simplistic idea that if it's right once it's always right. Doh! praxeus, doh! Deal with the reality of the problem not your cardboard cut-outs of it. One makes such discriminatory judgments all the time. It's based on evidence, not desires for homogeneity.

When you take your fingers out of your ears and stop shouting la-la-la-la, you might change your mind.

A better question is: "What did the Greek scribe know about the Hebrew that you don't know today?"



It's not hard to see that lack of understanding of the issues is praxeus's basic problem. As he adheres to the necessity of the primacy of the MT he is at once stuck in the quagmire of not being able to understand the problems or the solutions.

For want of any argument sophistry is an understandable response.

Here's some simplifications on my part: praxeus simply cannot deal with the issues, he simply hasn't got the facilities to do so, his biases simply hamstring him from even being in the race.

He is complaining about language I used to talk about the issue, but has he talked about the issue? As you all know he can't talk about it. He can only fire blanks.

Why is he so upset about the modern translations of Isaiah 7:14? Because they reflect the Hebrew found in the MT.

Why is he so upset about the Greek translation of Jdg 13:5? Because it doesn't allow him to use the verse to bolster his tendentious understanding of Isaiah 7:14.


spin

spin

You seem to know more about smoking dope than whatever else you're trying to talk about.

I was advocating that you deal with each instance of variant rather than making simplistic estimates.

That's nice, for what it's worth. But I don't play these number games.

There is inherent error underlying this. The MT is not the be-all and end-all. Either you face the fact that there were numerous forms of the Hebrew text at the time the biblical books were translated, or you just blow air. The LXX tradition is not based on the MT.

I'm not sugesting anything other than to stop with the facile guesstimation.

Crapping on about names is rather irrelevant to meanings of clauses. Names have to be rendered not semantically but either as close to the translator's understanding of it is or through some scheme for normalizing names (plus errors of transcription): there is no meaning to help him. I don't think your approach so far is at all reasonable, despite the fact that you seem to know something more about the matter than praxeus.

I think it is more honest and reasonable to talk to the subject than waylay it.

There is no need whatsoever. They are irrelevant to what you are supposed to be dealing with.

Uh-huh.

My basic contention here is that guessing numbers serves little purpose.

Smoking that stuff is bad for you, though it does help you ease your pains.


spin

Steven Avery

Let's just take a simple example. The Greek OT Penteuch chronology numbers are very different than the Masoretic Text. So, will I find them in the DSS ? And you can take my example from Psalms below, and find it in the DSS.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apikorus There are hundreds of differences between proto-MT fragments from Qumran and the MT itself. Even within the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa^a) alone, there are dozens of differences..

You probably mean with the MT. And there are about at most a few dozen two moderately significant differences that directly effect translation sense (with different phrases, replacement verbs and nouns) in the 66 chapters. Pretty kewl.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apikorus Generally these variations are minor, but clearly you have no idea of their sheer magnitude..

Since the dialects were different, and letters used differently, talking about a 'magnitude' of differences has the possibility of being very misleading.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apikorus After reviewing the thread I found your original reference to the "Aramaic Peshitta" in a response to spin. The Peshitta is in Syriac, which is a dialect of Aramaic. In scholarly parlance, "the Aramaic" = Targumim.

No. It can, but not necessarily.

http://syrcom.cua.edu/Hugoye/Vol6No1/HV6N1PRRomeny.html
Aramaic Studies: A Journal for the Aramaic Bible and More
University of Leiden, ... The Netherlands
"The Journal will continue publishing studies on the Peshitta,
the Targums, and other Aramaic Bible versions"

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apikorus But you often ask about the Targumim, praxeus, in a pointless attempt to cloud the issue(example).

Yet you had just said
"Tov reports that yhvh is present in the MT, in the Targumim..."
So when you reference the Targum, all is beautiful, but if I ask,
you go a little haywire.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apikorus Of course you never quote from the texts themselves, because you can't read them.

Api, you didn't know that many of these texts are translated ?
Amazing.

If you like, I can share you many links with translations of Targumim, and book sources as augmentation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apikorus Peshitta scholarship has lagged in part due to the absence of a reliable edition. From what I understand there are an enormous number of variant readings,

No, you are very confused. The Peshitta is considered a comparatively homogeneous text, more than the Greek, more than even the Byzantine Greek. Even if you include the later western editions (sometimes called Peshitto) variations are small, and folks in that realm can rattle off the major half-dozen or dozen. Like Acts 20:28 and the Pericope Adultera. You are likely mixing up the two Old Syriac manuscripts in the equation. (Hopefully you are not including the 5-book issue as a variant.) If you don't mind, share your sources, I am curious how you got this idea.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apikorus and unlike the LXX its transmission history is shrouded in obscurity

... with the LXX the transmission history is a bunch of names attached to no extant texts and wildly diffuse texts. Wonderful clarity.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apikorus -- the earliest references to the Peshitta are from the fourth century. The general view of scholars (see e.g. the article by Peshitta scholar P. B. Dirksen in ch. 8 of Mikra for a discussion) is that the Peshitta originated after the proto-MT had stabilized, after the early 2nd century CE (Dirksen says after mid-1st).

Right, nice and early, so very relevant if anything is going to be a window on the Hebrew.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apikorus Unlike the LXX, there is no "Peshitta text type" represented at Qumran.

Yes there is. It's called the Masoretic Text.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apikorus So like the Targumim and the Vulgate, it was derived from the MT.

Exactly what I said. It took you awhile to catch up. So perhaps the best possible other-language window for how the Masoretic Text was understood, which was spin's idea here on Judges 13 (but not with Psalm 22). While the Latin could be similarly useful and has the advantage of being further away from Hebrew than Aramaic.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apikorus In addition, the Peshitta is a somewhat free translation: The most recent confirmation of this tendency is given by A. Gelston, who gives examples of a number of stylistic modifications among which are pluses, minuses, inversions of the order of words, avoidance of the construct state, modifications in tense, number, person, and suffixes, and avoidance of rhetorical questions. (Dirksen in Mikra, p. 259)

All minor stuff, compared to what we run into with the Greek problems. If the Peshitta is "free" many various Greek OT evidences are roving all over the maps as wolves devouring.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apikorus In the end, praxeus, if you believe that the Peshitta is relevant, you are welcome to produce (and defend) the text.

I simply asserted, and you proved above, that it is far more relevant than the conflicting Greek OT. So a methodology that limits itself to (part of) the Greek OT for other language efforts is fatally flawed. And the fatally flawed (and totally inconsistent) methodology is that of spin.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apikorus If this refers to the Peshitta, then it is wrong, as I've explained.

No, you explained the Aramaic Peshitta was early, 1st or 2nd century. Greek OT manuscripts can be dated as early as 3rd century BC by sleight-of-hand or as late as 4th century AD. Any idea that the 4th century AD manuscripts actually match, in any close sense, extant non-Masoretic-type DSS texts, is simply false.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apikorus This is priceless. The understanding is that the original text of the LXX was translated by Alexandrian Jewish scribes. Do you suppose they might have known something about the Hebrew language of their day and the exegetical traditions behind their own sacred texts?

Were those the Alexandrian Jewish scribes that stuck Romans 3 from the NT into Psalm 14 of Codex Vaticanus. ?

To quote John Gill

John Gill comments on Psalm 14:3 -
http://eword.gospelcom.net/comments/...ll/psalm14.htm
"Here follows in the Septuagint version, according to the Vatican copy, all those passages quoted by the apostle, Romans 3:13; which have been generally supposed to have been taken from different parts of Scripture; so the Syriac scholiast says, in some ancient Greek copies are found eight more verses, and these are they, "Their throat," &c."

Wow, those Alexandrian Jewish scribes had foreknowledge of the NT and included it in their text ! Amazing.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

PS
I think I will await your answer to that last question (and the corrections on the Peshitta above) before answering your closing about your sober defense of the pristine Vaticanus as the wonderful ancient Jewish text used to inform and correct the Hebrew Bible.

And before looking at how you and spin try to work as allies even when you take opposite sides of an issue, as here.

kais

Inerrancy is a harsh mistress.

Steven Avery

Especially if you have to defend Vaticanus as 'pristine' and wonderful

spin

Especially as you need to ignore the evidence from the Vaticanus.

You still have to pretend that there was no other tradition of the Hebrew text and defend the MT as the one, despite the fact that that's rubbish.


spin

judge

Does this homogenity extend to the POT? I dont know , just asking. I know the PNT is known for its extreme lack of variation from mss to mss, but AFAIK there is no discernable relationship between the POT and the PNT in as far as the OT quotes found in the PNT do not appear to come from the POT.

Of course both textual traditions were preserved by the same institutions, but the lack of relationship does seem to indicate,

1.The ancientness of the POT, and
2.The different origin of each tradition.

Steven Avery

Great question. Afaik it does. I am on boards that discuss Peshitta variants, Tanach as well as NT, and very little comes up. Nor have I seen any reference to substantive numbers of variants in the POT. Plus as you said the transmisional history is largely the same and the NT has a high homogeneity. I am confident enough to leave it at that with a qualified and tentative, yet fairly emphatic, "yes".

Quote:

Originally Posted by judge I know the PNT is known for its extreme lack of variation from mss to mss?

Right. One reason that I was surprised to see Api struggling on this one.

Quote:

Originally Posted by judge but AFAIK there is no discernable relationship between the POT and the PNT in as far as the OT quotes found in the PNT do not appear to come from the POT.

Which is a testimony to the fact that the Peshitta NT was a translation from the Greek (from 2nd to 4th century, depending on viewpoint) and done after the Tanach. Or if you were a Peshitta primacist you could theorize that the NT was written first but you would have Ockham rolling over a bit in his grave.

Quote:

Originally Posted by judge Of course both textual traditions were preserved by the same institutions, but the lack of relationship does seem to indicate, 1.The ancientness of the POT, and 2.The different origin of each tradition.

Agreed 100%.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic