Steven Avery

We see the evidence differently :-)

The huge preponderance of quotes from Philo are from the Pentateuch.
We have about 1000 Pentateuch verses, referenced about 2000 times!
Yet the Prophets/Writings verses total under 45 (counted from the Yonge edition).
If anything, this is quite strong circumstantial evidence
that Philo did not have a full Greek Tanach easily at hand.

And I wonder if any of those 45 verses in particular vary away from the Masoretic text to a known Greek OT variant, (and how many of them have such variants). This is the type of simple study that is rarely done :-)

Shalom,
Praxeus
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/

meforevidence

Response: I appreciate your candor. I am sorry for the misunderstanding. I would love to study with you on this (maybe by email). I try to be open minded.
Take care

andrewcriddle

The great majority of Philo's work consists of allegorical commentary on the Pentateuch.

One would expect quotations from the Pentateuch to predominate.

Andrew Criddle

Wallener

These arguments are starting to splinter and there are some very long posts in here. If I get something wrong, feel free to smack me upside the head.

Praxeus: You're suggesting the reason NT and LXX match fairly well is that LXX was revised to match what eventually became the christian canon...?

Me4: You're suggesting LXX is actually quite old and variations between LXX, Qumran and Masoretic point to Masoretic being modified to differ from LXX...?

spin: You're suggesting Torah may have been translated into greek relatively early, but there it is not possible that LXX as a whole - or at least without significant missings - was finished before the 2nd Temple went *poof*...?

meforevidence

In order to help answer that, we have to validate the Gospels and when they were actually written. If the Gospels were actually written within the first century, then this would be before the Modern Hebrew Masoretic text was completed and definitely after the LXX and Samaritan Pentateuch were written. We both know that even though it was in Alexandria that the LXX was written, that it was Jews that translated the text. Furthermore, since the Samaritan Pentateuch is written in ancient Hebrew and is closer to the LXX Greek than the modern day Hebrew, it would seem that this would help support the possibility of the Greek text (at least of the Pentateuch) being closer to the original text than one that was written much later.

I realize that the dating of the gospels is a whole different “can of worms� on this site, but as mentioned earlier, it helps to know which set of scriptures were actually used during the first century. The following is an excerpt from a debate with Mr. Frank Zindler about the History of Jesus and the Gospels. The rest of this information can be found on my web-site.

http://www.geocities.com/bkitc/Bible...04184376984%20

Toto

me4 - check your PM's before you post again.

Chris Weimer

Praxeus - I already gave you an example, and meforevidence gave you even more examples of where the DSS matches both the LXX and the NT. You're arguing a moot point..

Steven Avery

Indubitably. Of course, one reason why such Penteteuch commentary work might so heavily predominate could be the lack of a comfortable native-language edition of the full Tanach :-)

And if Philo was similarly comfortable with the Hebrew Bible, that fully negates the original argument about his quoting from the historical books. Square one.

Apparently Philo could handle Hebrew etymologies of many words, so there should have been no difficulty for him to get the 45 verse references from a Hebrew Tanach, even if he was partial to the Greek.

Which is why a little study of those 45 verses might be very helpful, but I rarely find version/text/language scholars doing the simple studies that might really clarify. You could almost do the whole comparison in English, except for the squirrelly situation with the Greek OT, probably you would need about three editions to cover the variantions.

Shalom,
Praxeus
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/ i

Steven Avery

Perhaps I missed something. Did we get more than Hebrews 1:6 from meforevidence. (He was mainly working on a different issue). So we end up with two ? I think I might be able to supply a third.

The others are all complete orphans in the OT manuscript line until fourth century Christian-provenance manuscripts ?

Shalom,
Praxeus
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/

darstec

Did Philo actually quote scripture, chapter and verse as we might today, or is it that his writing have what appear to be the same material which is contained in Samuel, Kings, Judges and Joshua? Is it possible that the translators might have used Philo for help? Other than Philo, how many others among his contemporaries quote from the same material?

Why would Josephus have to do his own translation if something else was available? It isn't as though he was giving a new translation because the others were poor in his estimation.