Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Steven Avery · 05-20-2005, 03:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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...?

Yep.. although even in the third and fourth century the NT canon was barely an issue in the church, other than full acceptance of Revelation, 2 Peter, etc.. and these Greek OT "smoothings" would be mostly third and fourth, with at least one change, "Cainan", coming even later.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wallener

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...?

While not answering for Me, but the DSS present a real problem to all such theories. The Pentateuch is generally close to the Masoretic Text. More clearly, if the Masoretes would have tampered with anything at all, it would be Isaiah, due to the ongoing Christian understandings of chapters like Isaiah 7,9,53. Yet, we know that all of the Great Isaiah Scroll is not only close, it is effectively a match (beyond language dialect). There goes the "Masoretes as tamperers" theories.

On top of this, even Swete mentions the Vulgate and Origen as strongly supporting the Masoretic Text way back then (the Vulgate is easy to see), and we can add the Peshitta OT is another early and very excellent match witness. So the idea that the Masoretes were doing anything negatively deliberately from 300 A.D. to 1000 A.D. simply cannot be entertained seriously, even if one believes their text is not the preserved Tanach.

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

Chris Weimer · 05-20-2005, 03:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by praxeus

While not answering for Me, but the DSS present a real problem to all such theories. The Pentateuch is generally close to the Masoretic Text. More clearly, if the Masoretes would have tampered with anything at all, it would be Isaiah, due to the ongoing Christian understandings of chapters like Isaiah 7,9,53. Yet, we know that all of the Great Isaiah Scroll is not only close, it is effectively a match (beyond language dialect). There goes the "Masoretes as tamperers" theories.

What kind of crap is this? The Jews held the Torah to be the most sacred, and there is where you see the most tampering!!

Quote:

On top of this, even Swete mentions the Vulgate and Origen as strongly supporting the Masoretic Text way back then (the Vulgate is easy to see), and we can add the Peshitta OT is another early and very excellent match witness. So the idea that the Masoretes were doing anything negatively deliberately from 300 A.D. to 1000 A.D. simply cannot be entertained seriously, even if one believes their text is not the preserved Tanach.

That's because both Origen and the Vulgate used the proto-MT, the favored text of the time period. But both of them are far too late to see the schismatic differences.

Steven Avery · 05-20-2005, 04:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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

Thanks. Sounds good.

Good solid writing on these issues is a litle hard to find.
On the 'LXX is oddball' side, the best is probably Floyd Nolen Jones - http://www.floydjones.org/LXX.pdf
THE SEPTUAGINT: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Generally he offers a scholarly perspective, without the harsh polemic of some who address the GreekOT negatively.

The whole discussion on the Tanach text has a lot of aspects. How one views inspiration and preservation of scripture is one foundational one that often gets left in the dust, as 'modern scientific textcrit' doesn't consider that as relevant.

Beyond this forum, most of my manuscript/version dialogs have been on my home forum, and on WhichVersion on Yahoogroups, and of course private email. Generally I prefer email forums into the inbox, but I am trying out this web forum per a long-ago invite. I also similarly tried Tweb once (TheologyWeb), which may be a good forum for some of these discussions. Also Paltalk voice chat.

Enjoy looking over some of your web-site stuff, too.

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

Steven Avery · 05-20-2005, 04:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Weimer

What kind of crap is this? The Jews held the Torah to be the most sacred, and there is where you see the most tampering!!

I'm sorry, Chris.
An obviously circular argument isn't going to cut it.

Even worse, with Pentateuch you then have to deal with the Torah having gone to Yemen and Ethiopia and Persia and other lands, and being virtually letter-for-letter identical to today's Torah. With the super-precision copying methods of Torah.

Penteteuch conspiracy theories are truly going to be an extremely hard row to hoe.

My mentioning of the closeness of Isaiah apparently upset you. Would you at least agree that the Masoretes did not tamper with anything in Isaiah from 100 B.C. to 900 A.D?

Even if you feel they started with the 'wrong' text, they did not tamper with it, neither in relation to Christian doctrinal disputes, or to distance from other language versions. They left it alone and copied it faithfully.

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

Chris Weimer · 05-20-2005, 05:14 PM

The truth about Isaiah.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eugene Ulrich

A. THE CAVE 1 ISAIAH SCROLLS
Among the first discoveries in 1947 were two scrolls of the Book of Isaiah. One large but fragmentary scroll (1QIsa[supb]) appeared to agree almost word for word with the traditional Hebrew text, the Masoretic (MT).(FN5) This scroll, published quickly by 1954, served to support the confidence of scholars that our traditional texts had maintained an amazing accuracy throughout the centuries of repeated hand copying until the invention of the printing press. This confidence is, in fact, firmly based, but there was a counterbalancing major surprise.
The other manuscript (1QIsa[supa]), the only biblical manuscript that has survived fully intact, presented a very different picture. Published already in 1950, it exhibited a wide array of variants from the traditional text.(FN6) As one should probably expect from ancient manuscripts, there were different spelling practices and alternate morphological forms of many words. But, more importantly, the scroll displayed over a thousand textual variants from the MT,(FN7) including whole verses or passages "missing" or added only by later scribes.(FN8)
From the outset, these two scrolls offered one of the principal things to learn from the biblical scrolls, but virtually no one actually saw and clearly understood what the evidence was teaching us.(FN9) The fact is that our traditional Hebrew Bible, the rabbinic recension that we call the MT, is a collection of texts from late antiquity, reworked through the early Middle Ages, of which our oldest complete manuscript dates from 1009. Meanwhile, the Isaiah scrolls, antedating that manuscript by a millennium, demonstrated that in the late Second Temple period there were two alternate forms of the text for that central prophetic book. We could not see that clearly because of our preformed academic categories and religious mentalities. Since we "knew" what the biblical text was supposed to look like, what we saw was that 1QIsa[supb] confirmed that the MT "faithfully preserved the original text" (and we were quite relieved); 1QIsa[supa], on the other hand, was accused of being a "vulgar" or even a "worthless" manuscript(FN10) because it diverged so widely from the textus receptus. Two factors, however, prove that accusation false. First, 1QIsa[supa] had been carefully wrapped in linen and sealed inside a protective pottery jar, ensuring its excellent preservation. 1QIsa[supb] had not been so protected and is thus fragmentary. Why carefully preserve a "vulgar" or "worthless" scroll in contrast to a "perfect" or "authentic" scroll if those really were the views of the community that possessed them? Second, as numerous other scrolls were discovered and deciphered, the same pattern continued to unfold in large quantity.

4QPaleoExodus

Quote:

As scroll after scroll was analyzed, the new discoveries continued to spread in many directions. A large and handsome scroll of Exodus (4QpaleoExod[supm]) provided another surprise. Word by word it generally agreed with the MT and the LXX, but time after time it seemed to "add" verses and even whole paragraphs. It did not take Patrick Skehan, its editor, very long to realize that these "additions" were simply the expanded text known since 1616 as the Samaritan form of the Pentateuch (SP). Already in 1955, he published key fragments announcing this text of "Exodus in the Samaritan Recension."(FN11) Soon afterwards, however, he revised his conclusion because he had learned that the scroll did not contain the two specifically Samaritan theological tenets, the addition to the Ten Commandments after Exod 20:17, commanding that an altar be built on Mount Gerizim, and the use of the perfect rcb "[God] has chosen" (Shechem), in contrast to the future rcby, "[God] will choose" (Jerusalem), as Israel's central shrine.(FN12)
Skehan thus isolated what we can now call a pair of variant literary editions of the Book of Exodus. The MT presents one version of the text, and the Samaritan version had already provided us with an intentionally developed revised edition of that text. This was clearly based on the same edition of the text that the MT attests, but it had systematically expanded that edition with other biblical texts, that is, harmonizations drawn from other parts of Exodus and Deuteronomy and inserted at appropriate places. Skehan's contribution here was to show that the edition that had been attributed as a whole to the Samaritans was, in fact, a regular Jewish edition; the Samaritans simply took one of the available variant Jewish editions and added two small, specifically Samaritan points. Thus, this Exodus MS exemplified the same pattern as did the Isaiah scrolls--the pluriformity of the text and the process of development in the text in antiquity.

Both of these were taken from "Our Sharper Focus on the Bible and Theology Thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls" by Eugene Ulrich, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly v. 66 no1 (Jan. 2004) p. 1-24 Journal Code: Cathol Biblic Q
Additional Info: United States.

Chris Weimer · 05-20-2005, 05:21 PM

Oh right, the less preserved Isaiah scroll is the better one, right? But of course, the one that disagrees most with the MT, although preserved much better thanks to the better treatment at the DSS site, is the heretical one.

Steven Avery · 05-20-2005, 05:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Weimer

Oh right, the less preserved Isaiah scroll is the better one, right? But of course, the one that disagrees most with the MT, although preserved much better thanks to the better treatment at the DSS site, is the heretical one.

Hi Chris,
Please put your thinking cap on for a second.

This is rather analagous to the situation I just mentioned with the rows that are hoeing on the Torah, with virtually identical ancient scrolls in diverse and far-flung lands.

On Isaiah, whether you like one scroll or another or a third, whatever you consider "true" or "heretical", all I am asking you to acknowledge is that the Masoretes were faithful copiers -- that there are essentially no differences between the Great Isaiah Scroll and the Masoretic Text.

There is only one way for this to occur, for two texts 1000 years apart to be virtually identical, and that is faithful copying and transmission. Any tampering of any kind will fork the texts in different directions.

Understanding and acknowledging this is not rocket science, sometimes, however, these issues seem to be one of paradigimic blockage.

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

Wallener · 05-20-2005, 05:47 PM

Where does the Samaritan Torah fit into all this? Is there any reasonable evidence to support the age claimed for it?

Chris Weimer · 05-20-2005, 05:51 PM

I don't see how that is related to anything? And no, the Leningrad Codex, which is what is the modern Masoretic Text is based off of, has many errors compared to even the "Great" Isaiah scroll (1QIsiah-b). Every little error counts.

Wallener · 05-20-2005, 06:02 PM

If the Samaritan claim is correct, it predates LXX, MT, and everything found at Qumran by a very long time. It is also complete. And it differs from all of them. If the point is to figure out who is zooming who, wouldn't it make sense to start with that scroll as the de facto baseline rather than something much older?

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05-20-2005, 05:21 PM	#36
Chris Weimer Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: none Posts: 9,879	Oh right, the less preserved Isaiah scroll is the better one, right? But of course, the one that disagrees most with the MT, although preserved much better thanks to the better treatment at the DSS site, is the heretical one.

05-20-2005, 05:47 PM	#38
Wallener Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Vancouver Posts: 1,043	Where does the Samaritan Torah fit into all this? Is there any reasonable evidence to support the age claimed for it?

05-20-2005, 05:51 PM	#39
Chris Weimer Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: none Posts: 9,879	I don't see how that is related to anything? And no, the Leningrad Codex, which is what is the modern Masoretic Text is based off of, has many errors compared to even the "Great" Isaiah scroll (1QIsiah-b). Every little error counts.

05-20-2005, 06:02 PM	#40
Wallener Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Vancouver Posts: 1,043	If the Samaritan claim is correct, it predates LXX, MT, and everything found at Qumran by a very long time. It is also complete. And it differs from all of them. If the point is to figure out who is zooming who, wouldn't it make sense to start with that scroll as the de facto baseline rather than something much older?

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