patcleaver

Matt Giwer hypothesizes that the Septuagint is the original Jewish Scripture and that Hebrew versions were translated from the Septuagint. He proposes that the Septuagint was written in Greek in 200 BCE, possibly in Alexandria, and that probably nothing but oral tradition existed before then.

http://www.giwersworld.org/bible/septuagint.html

http://www.omgili.com/newsgroups/sci...gy+order:newer

Has this been discussed before - any old threads?

When are Jewish beliefs first mentioned in Greek literature?

When is the Jewish Scriptures first mentioned in Greek literature?

Are there any unambiguous references to the Jewish Scriptures or Jewish beliefs in Egyptian or the writings of other ancient cultures?

Are there any other water tight arguments against his hypotheses?

Surely there is some citation to an ancient primary reference that supports the Christian and Jewish claim that the Jewish Scriptures and Jewish religion are ancient.

Would you believe 1500 BCE, well would you believe 300-600 BCE, well would you believe 200 BCE. :huh:

spin

First, the Hebrew bible has many linguistic traits that are from the Hebrew, such as all the names given to people based on meanings from narratives (eg the sons of Jacob), poetry based on Hebrew acrostics and alphabet, linguistic stories such as Shibboleth/sibboleth. The Greek name forms are best understood as messed up Hebrew names and it is easier to go from Hebrew to messed up Greek than from messed up Greek to Hebrew.

Second, a lot of the difficulties in the Greek text is understandable as translation Greek.

Third, the dating for the LXX is based on a slavish understanding of the letter of Aristeas. Aristeas talks of the books of the law, which would normally be understood as the pentateuch, not the whole Hebrew bible. Some of the bible wasn't finished until Pharisaic times and Josephus claims to have translated some of the original Hebrew texts because they hadn't been translated. He knew of Hebrew text, not Greek text, as original.

I think this Hebrew text is post-exilic, but prior to any of the Greek forms of it.


spin

neilgodfrey

Are any of these difficulties found in those Greek mss among the DSS?

Are the difficulties in Greek texts similarly understandable when compared with the Hebrew texts in the DSS?


Neil

spin

While I had in mind here grammatical difficulties and such difficulties one wouldn't expect in the Hebrew text, there are certainly signs in some LXX flavoured DSS HB texts that show that the LXX is related to a Hebrew form which is not the one behind the masoretic text. Scholars tend to see three basic flavours of Hebrew text, all of which are traceable in the DSS: masoretic, LXX and Samaritan types. Obviously it's not that simple because texts can be mixtures and show signs of "unique" variations.

(If you browse through the footnotes of the DSS Bible (Abegg, Flint, Ulrich; Harper SanFrancisco, 1999), you'll note that forms of the DSS will favour Greek sometimes, others Masoretic, others be unique.)

Some of the sorts of difficulty I had in mind are the types dealt with here.

I can't really say enough about the DSS Hebrew texts with regard to grammatical issues in the LXX. I don't really have the resources.


spin

mountainman

Dear Pat,

As far as I am aware the primary references for this claim derive from our friend Hans Eusebius Anderson, and that his propaganda was constructed such that he wished to adequately demonstrate the superiority, antiquity and authenticity of the ancient Hebrew sages, over any presumed peers in Greece and Egypt. What does Julius Africanus (one of Eusebius' purported "sources") say? I am guessing that you are seeking far more ancient sources for the answers on this issue, but I dont know of any. As spin has already pointed out Letter of Aristeas needs to treated with some caution.

Best wishes,


Pete

patcleaver

Matt Giwer's hypotheses is that the Greeks were interested in documenting the Jewish oral tradition, so they got some Jewish priest/bards and Jewish-to-Greek translators together in Alexandria and created the Septuagint.

Later the Jewish priest/bards and Jewish-to-Greek translators, translated the written Septuagint back into Hebrew - making some corrections.

In this scenario you would expect all the linguistic traits that you mention above. How could you tell the difference from the documents?

Again, that would be true whichever was the original, as long as the original Greek is translated from oral Hebrew.

I agree that in general ancient documents are not reliable. There are some that we can show are not reliable, and others that we can not show that they are not reliable, but that does not mean that any of them are reliable.

I do not think that Matt Giwer claims that all the books of the Septuagint were included in the original Greek documentation. Which books did Josephus claim were not yet translated into Greek?

Thanks for sharing your valuable opinion, but I was looking for evidence.

patcleaver

We have the DSS carbon dated to 95 BCE-122 CE. I think they contain most of the Jewish Scriptures in Hebrew (or is it Aramaic?).

Josephus is the earliest source that the Jewish Scriptures are ancient, and he was interpolated by Eusebius in the 4th century.

Would oral Hebrew to Greek documentation be more likely to cause the types of differences (between the Greek and Hebrew scriptures) then written Hebrew to Greek translation.

spin

None of this deals with the types of issues I indicated. Simple example, the "sh" sound doesn't exist in Greek; how do you make the distinction between "shibboleth" and "sibboleth"?

In Ps 34 (& 145), there are 22 verses, each successive verse starting with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In the LXX, the phenomenon doesn't exist.

Ps 119 is organized as a series of eight verses per letter of the Hebrew alphabet, ie each of the eight starts with the same letter -- making 176 verses. The Greek has tried to indicate the Hebrew original, providing a Greek number and an approximate pronunciation for the Hebrew letter for the first of each eight. We have to imagine that if the text was written in Greek, the person who translated it into Hebrew was very creative, writing each verse with the same letter eight times in a row. It is far easier to contemplate that the text was written in Hebrew specifically with the alphabetic constraint in the construction rather than the much harder effort of translating with the constraint. There is also a great use of assonance in the psalm, ie the sounds of the words in Hebrew play one with another.

The histories. These are extremely poorly manifested among the Hebrew DSS.

The first part of my post contained three items of evidence, which should be enough to set a philologist dealing with those issues. As the sorts of problems outlined require some knowledge, I have here attempted to supply a little of that knowledge for those who need it.


spin

patcleaver

The Book of Judges 12:4 is written so that someone who can not pronounce 'sh' still understands the story about "shibboleth". There is no reason for that unless the story was originally written in a language that did not have the 'sh' (such as Greek). Is this a smoking gun?

:notworthy:

Your evidence seems water tight that these Psalms (34, 119 145) had to have been originally written in Hebrew. However that does not indicate that any other Psalms or other books of the Jewish Scriptures were originally written in Hebrew.

Possibly the Jews did not think they were important.

Sorry, I was only referring to the immediately proceeding statement, not the evidence you supplied further above. I did not mean to insult you, and did not realize that it could be taken that way until I read your response. I apologize for not being more sensitive. ><

patcleaver

WOW, I thought there was good evidence that the Pentateuch was written no later than 500 to 600 BCE, and now I find that was all Bullshit.

The last 100 years of Christian Bible Scholarship is just pure crap. Even some of their foundational premises are without support.

The first time that I saw MM's stuff I thought he was a crank, and that someone would just present the evidence and prove him wrong. But the evidence was never presented because there is no reasonable evidence that MM's basic hypotheses is wrong. I was stunned.

Thanks, MM

I never thought it really mattered when the Jewish Scriptures or the NT was written because I think they are fiction. I am still hoping that they find a 200 BCE copy of proto-Mark.

The Christian fantasy castle is built on the quicksand of lies.