hatsoff

That's part of why I like coming here, though, especially as an amateur. Without formal training, I have nothing else to keep me on my toes--to keep me honest, and, as you mentioned, clear in wording and meaning. I don't know if you require that sort of occasional reminder, having spent so much time doing gosh-knows-what at what I imagine are multiple universities, but I certainly think I benefit from it.

Or maybe that's not such a good thing if I can be caught off guard on a public message board...

In any case, I wonder if educated persons (in a field related to Biblical criticism, that is) actually learn anything in places like this. If you truly find nothing of value, here, then obviously you are justified in describing your passings-by as wasting time. Unfortunately, although iidb has a fair number of amateur Christian historians standing by, its population still has a tendency to lapse into ridiculous squabbling. So it's very nice to have intermediates between ourselves and the scholarly community.

I wonder just how far removed we are from academia. I know it's a long distance, but is there no hope for construction?

jgibson000

Poor fellow.

I see. The fault always lies with the reader, not the way you put things? And it's only the readers of forums like this one who have noted that your phraseology is unclear? Is that it? Is there the faintest chance that you've mis-assessed the situation and that none of the ways you have phrased what you have been trying to say has ever been intelligible to anyone, rather than clear to A but not to B., etc? Are you really saying that everything you write is crystal clear and that you are incapable of writing anything but intelligible prose?

Umm, Richard. I was (as I tried to indicate with "FWIW", and "to my eyes") offering an honest, and what I might thought you would accept as a sincere, evaluation of your rewording of your text. I was not in any way engaged in pedantry or one-upmanship.

I'm sorry that you took it as something other than it was intended to be.

What I "know" and what you conveyed are two different things.

[quote]The words "manuscript" and "book" are even in the sentences. Do you routinely ignore context when interpreting words in sentences? I doubt it. So it seems to me you are not being sincere when you suggest I am somehow "confusing" you into thinking I am talking about verses.

Is that really what I said? I think what I said was that given what you were talking about, the words you now chose to use used were likely to cause confusion.

Once again, whether I know what you intended to convey in your sentences and whether you conveyed clearly what you meant to say are two different matters.

But if I hadn't previously read your the text that you changed, I would have no idea what you were on about in your reworking of that text.

Well, I guess I'm an idiot then.

In any case, thanks for your kind words.

Jeffrey

S.C.Carlson

It's looking better, but it's also playing major havoc with the rest of your argument. For example, I can't see how to rescue your next sentence: For example, given your new presentation of the history of the LXX, I don't see what "only one survives" is now supposed to mean, nor what "not from the extant Septuagint" is now supposed to correspond to in the new presentation.

Moreover, since the issue is whether the reading παρθένος predated Matthew, it is misleading to state that Matthew differs from some (but not all) witnesses for LXX at Isa 7:14 for other variants in the verse yet fail to mention Matthew's agreement with LXX witnesses for παρθένος.

Frankly, as there is no genuine academic issue over whether the reading παρθένος predates Matthew in the textual tradition of the LXX (it does), the whole textual tradition section ought to be canned, or at least relegated to last place. In any case, it does not deserve the "pride of place" among your arguments. Generally, it is better to lead with your strongest arguments, not your weakest.

Stephen

jgibson000

Even if your claim about what follows from your (undocumented) premise about the pre 1st century C.E. split of the LXX into several different MS traditions were true, it's a bit irrelevant to the current question at hand, isn't it?

Your case about Matthew depends not on the general (but again undocumented) "fact" that in many places in many books of the OT the Greek read differently from one LXX MS tradition to another, but that that the Greek of Is. 7:14 read differently from one LXX MS tradition to another.

Do you have any concrete evidence that it did?

Jeffrey Gibson

Richard Carrier

To Jeffrey Gibson: You're right. I was short with you, and unfairly rude. I apologize. I should have responded more reflectively and constructively. I actually appreciate honest observations about how my arguments are misleading, and I can see how your remarks have been useful now. As Hatsoff says, we need reality checks and criticism to improve and clarify our work, and this has ended up working to that end. I was too shortsighted to realize this until now.

Now briefly to Carlson:

I eliminated the sentence that you claim is "next." That sentence has been completely replaced with the text I am proposing. Maybe you missed that step a while back.


I do not "state that Matthew differs from some (but not all) witnesses for LXX" (I never said he differed from any witnesses on the use of parthenos while as far as I know, on the verb and subject, as I did say, he differs from all witnesses--am I wrong? Please direct me to the manuscripts that agree with Matthew on those elements if I am). Nor do I "fail to mention Matthew's agreement" on parthenos in my article (please don't confuse this isolated quote with the whole of my article).

Let's please look at the actual argument and context in my article:

There I only argue that the textual evidence is not as iron clad as Mikulski claims. In other words, I am stating grounds for reasonable skepticism, not asserting that anything actually is the case.

First of all, I point out that Mikulski falsely claims that Isaiah was translated in 250 B.C., because he conflates the Philadelphus Torah with later books added to the Septuagint in later centuries. Then I point out the fact that there were probably "versions" (i.e. different manuscript traditions of the Greek books then called the Septuagint) available to Matthew that we no longer have. And the fact remains, we don't know whether ours or those are earlier, because we have no Greek manuscripts of that portion of Isaiah that date anywhere near Matthew (hence my Christian custody endnote). But even aside from the problem you refer to, both facts entail that we don't know how much earlier than Matthew or how widely parthenos was a reading. Then I present evidence that Matthew might not have been relying on any mss. of the LXX that we now have (since his quotation from it differs).

All of this only supports the thesis of the original paragraph: "Mikulski has his history just a bit wrong, and the ground is shakier than he implies." After that paragraph I immediately go on to discuss the parthenos reading, a far cry from failing to mention it.

That's it. I have made no other and no stronger claim. I did not assert that parthenos was not in the LXX before Matthew (I raised this possibility only in an endnote and only with reservations as stated there). I only said that we cannot be certain, as Mikulski claims, that Jewish scholars of the time unanimously agreed "nearly three centuries before Mary" that parthenos was the only correct translation of the text at that point. Mikulski could be wrong not only on the time (indeed, he almost certainly is), but on the unanimity as well (since Jews may have disagreed as to the proper word to use--we can't check the manuscripts available to Matthew to see, much less ascertain whether parthenos was an early or a late reading before reaching Matthew).

And even then, in both respects, "could be" is the operative point. As I conclude, "discussion of what words were where is always an uncertain business." That's all I argued. If anyone here is blowing that statement out of proportion, they are at fault.

But either way, I can see my actual argument is ripe for misreading--especially by those who ignore my endnotes (esp. note 7 which should have exposed right away what I wasn't arguing in section 1 of my article). I shall need to restructure the sentences of my paragraph more than I thought to make sure people don't keep repeating that mistake.

Back to Jeffrey Gibson

I have not been arguing what you think. You seem to think I said the Greek of Is. 7:14 did read differently from one LXX MS tradition to another. That is not what my article says. All my article says is that it could have--so Mikulski cannot claim to be certain it didn't.

And I did (here) document the fact that there were distinct manuscript traditions of the LXX: even putting all the other evidence aside (from Origen, Philo, etc.), papyri alone confirm the existence of "versions" (recensions, if you prefer, in the most general sense of the term) preceding Matthew that do not agree with the current critical edition of the LXX. Since these papyri only contain fragments, we do not know in what other ways those LXX "editions" (i.e. the rest of the collection of books that those papyri scraps came from) differed from extant texts, yet we know they differed in some ways (since we see differences in the snippets that survive), and since those snippets are relatively small, the laws of probability entail that the number of differences throughout those corresponding (now lost) editions of the LXX would have been "many." And it is a fact that we do not know what those differences were.

I make no other claim about this particular issue in my article.

jgibson000

Apology accepted. I appreciate your graciousness.

Thank you for this admission. What do you think was the cause of your "shortsightedness"?


Yes, you are.

See Davies and Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew (or via: amazon.co.uk) (London; New York : T&T Clark International, 2004) 213.
Jeffrey

Riverwind

Origen is believed to have written this around 248 A.D., or perhaps earlier. It seems that he had a clear body of writing in mind when he refers to the "Septuagint". I don't believe I have access to the Greek (is it online?), so I am not sure what the Greek word is here, but I would imagine this is likely a correct translation. He distinguishes between the Septuagint "and others". Doesn't this contradict the notion that there was not an accepted body of text known as the "Septuagint" that was known over against "others" (at least around the date of this writing, and likely before to my mind...does Justin mention the "Septuagint")?

In addition, it seems disingenuous to me to say that the translation of the 70(72) was only the Penteteuch. Judging by the tradition, it was surely the first part of the work, but I see no reason to believe that the rest was not translated soon thereafter (since these were the main texts of the Jews). From the writings of the early Christian church fathers, it doesn't seem to me that there was anyone who ever said to a fellow Jew, "Hey. Don't you know that the 70(72) only translated the Penteteuch...you have heresy/blasphemy on your hands, son, when you read from those other books!" Perhaps I'm wrong. Can anyone point to an early Christian church father or contemporary Jew who says something along these lines? Further, how do we know that the other, later versions were not simply a polemical reaction to Christian usage of the Jewish scriptures?

jgibson000

For the text of critical editions of the LXX, go here.

JG

S.C.Carlson

It wasn't particularly clear from your statement:
It looked to me that the sentence you want to change the beginning of the sentence I quoted from "in fact Matthew's" to "All we know is that Matthew's ...". I did not realize that your ellipsis was intended to repudiate the whole sentence (which is a good decision).

They're listed in the apparatus of Rahlfs-Hanhart critical edition of the Septuagint, p. 575.

I'm talking about your presentation of the textual evidence in your section entitled "The Textual Tradition is not Iron Clad." Your first section is still misleading when you fail to mention the counterevidence right when it is most relevant.

Note 7 relates to section 2, not to section 1. It also includes, among other comments: Burying the relevant counterevidence to your claim within a footnote for a different section does not really remedy the problem that your section 1 is "ripe for misreading," as you put it.

Stephen

spin

You should take that up with Pseudo-Aristeas which provided us with the notion of the seventy(-two) [Aristeas 70] and the reference to the books of the law of the Jews [Aristeas 30]. This limit is the same mentioned by Josephus in his introduction to AJ, tacitly citing Pseudo-Aristeas.

Well, if you want to substantiate this piece of guess work you might start off dating Pseudo-Aristeas, then you might explain why Josephus felt it necessary, so he claims, to translate the Jewish history books himself into Greek (It is "a difficult thing to translate our history into a foreign, and to us unaccustomed language", Intro AJ 2).


spin