Can anyone fill me in on the basics of this debate? I've heard that the Masoretic is the translation of the Septuagint which is a translation of some lost original, at least when it comes to some books of the Bible. Is that true? I'm also aware that there are lines missing in the Masoretic that are only found in the Septuagint. I guess one of the main reasons that I feel compelled to look into this issue is because of Isaiah 45:7 in which the Masoretic suggests that God creates evil whereas the Septuagint, if I understand correctly, says that God creates calamity. But that isn't the only reason I am interested in this so please let's not make the whole thread about Isaiah 45:7.
Also PLEASE if anyone can recommed a good book that goes into this topic.
Are you sure the right-most column isn't a bad translation or (((the translators))) deliberately losing pro-Jesus verses in the translation process?
You have to show us that what's on the right is what you get from the original Hebrew of the MT.
Hunter Flores
Also, another question: where does the KJV fit into this Masoretic-Septuagint debate? I've heard the KJV makes a lot of use of the Masoretic but I'm not sure if that is true.
Zachary Brown
The Masoretic text is a corruption of the original scriptures that was created by Jews who were deliberately trying to scrub out references to Jesus. The masoretic text is not a translation of the septuagint, it's a copy of the older hebrew texts in hebrew. For this reason the masoretic text was seen as more reliable than the septuagint because it was generally assumed that because the septuagint was a greek translation of the Hebrew that a Hebrew copy of the Old Testament would naturally be more representative of the originals.
The Dead Sea Scrolls threw a wrench in that theory because when we found them it was discovered that they supported the septuagint far more often than the masoretic text when the two had differing interpretations.
The septuagint was what the apostles read and quoted, and it's what all Christians used for around 300 years. It is the definitive version of the Old Testament for Christians. The only people who still advocate for the masoretic text are judaizers like American Protestants. It's the same reason they want to exclude the deuterocanonicals. They put Jewish opinions of scripture higher than Christian views. They advocate for the masoretic text because their Jewish masters do, because it denies the divinity of Christ and his claim to being the messiah.
huh? I looked up Deuteronomy 32:43 (Brenton) and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the Messiah. Can you explain that reasoning?
Alexander Green
Nvm, disregard this post. I looked at the passage and chapter more closely. I'm a little tired so excuse me.
Carter Brown
It's quoted in Hebrews
Wyatt Cruz
You need to define what you mean by 'the Septuagint' before we can have this discussion. There were many Greek translations of the OT that were made before the first century, and the NT authors did not exclusively use any one of them. Uncontroversial vid related.
The KJV translators mostly relied on the Ben Chayyim Masoretic Text for the OT.
Ian Roberts
>Are you sure the right-most column isn't a bad translation or (((the translators))) deliberately losing pro-Jesus verses in the translation process? Precisely! I don't know about these specific citations, but I've noticed that most of the differences between the Septuagint and the modern translations is due to the translation process. Without the the vowel marks the consonantal Hebrew text can be interpreted in different ways. The ancient Jews who made the Septuagint interpreted the sacred text differently than the medieval Jews who produced the vowel marks.
Most people who don't look into actual Greek and Hebrew text simply read what the scholars write, namely that the Septuagint and the Masoretic version differ. The scholars are correct, of course, the differences, however, are not as many as you may think.
It was common for the ancient scribes to add explanatory gloses in the text (these glosses were used like we use footnotes today). Generally (but not always), the oldest the text is, the shorter it is. The masoretic Pentateuch is surprisingly ancient, therefore it has no glosses, while the Septuagint has some (and most scrolls in Qumran have even more glosses because they are newer than the Septuagint). For the book of Jeremiah, however, the situation is opposite. Jeremiah died in Egypt, so it is to be expected that the translators of the Septuagint had an older text when they translated the book of Jeremiah in Greek. The masoretic version of Jeremiah is newer and it contains lots and lots of glosses (and not only). The situation with some other prophetic books is that both the masoretic text and the Septuagint have glosses, but they are different.
Joshua Gomez
Christians, going back to at least St. Justin Martyr, claim that the Jews corrupted the scriptures and the Septuagint aligns more closely with the Dead Sea Scrolls than the Masoretic.
Mason Taylor
They did so because the Jews started producing alternative translations where they intentionally misinterpreted the Hebrew text. The modern masoretic vowel marks are continuation of this intentional misinterpretation.
Besides that, the meaning of the Hebrew words in the modern dictionaries often is different than what we find in the Septuagint. The most famous example is Isaiah 7:14 ("Behold, the virgin shall conceive") where the Hebrew text doesn't seem to be corrupt, the dictionaries, however, are. There are many other words that have been interpreted differently by the Septuagint translators than what we find today in the dictionaries.
Liam Rivera
The fact that the only people who dispute the primacy of the septuagint are judaizing Protestants should raise some eyebrows
Aaron Ramirez
This implies that the original hebrew has been lost
this is much more level headed
Caleb Garcia
The Septuagint can be quite interpretive in parts.
Proverbs 23:29-31 ASV; KJV, DR, Vulgate read similarly 29 Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? Who hath complaining? who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes? 30 They that tarry long at the wine; They that go to seek out mixed wine. 31 Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, When it sparkleth in the cup, When it goeth down smoothly:
Brenton's Septuagint 29 Who has woe? who trouble? who has quarrels? and who vexations and disputes? who has bruises without a cause? whose eyes are livid? 30 Are not those of them that stay long at wine? are not those of them that haunt the places where banquets are? Be not drunk with wine; but converse with just men, and converse with them openly. 31 For if thou shouldest set thine eyes on bowls and cups, thou shalt afterwards go more naked than a pestle.
Angel Lopez
For the most part it has. The oldest hebrew OT manuscripts we had prior to finding the dead sea scrolls only dated back to the 11th Century. The dead sea scrolls predate our previous oldest manuscripts by over 1300 years, and they support the septuagint far more strongly than the Aleppo and Leningrad codexes. Turns out the Jews were fiddling with scripture for about 1000 years and they got caught red handed when the DSS were uncovered and revealed the "discrepancies" in the septuagint were simply because the septuagint faithfully translated the original hebrew whereas the later hebrew texts were altered in various ways
Julian Gonzalez
The only problem with the LXX is that the translators quite clearly modified some verses that wouldn't have made sense in Greek (e.g. Psalm 46(47):10)
MT translation, with some verses modified to conform to the Christian OT (e.g. Isaias 7:14).
No, the MT actually says that. The original Hebrew obviously didn't, but in the time after Christ the Jews modified the text in an attempt to stop Christianity from spreading.
Jaxson Reed
I shit on the masoretic text in principle, it's talmudic and gay. But I still read the KJV and ESV (which I believe are based on the masoretic?) because of convenience.
I also have an Orthodox bible that uses the Sept, but rarely use it.
Yes, Proverbs. No other book in the Septuagint is translated in this manner. Besides, there are textual problems with the Greek text of this book. Some portions are missing in the Rahlfs edition and the Göttingen critical edition of Proverbs is not ready yet.
The book of Job also differs although in this case it is unclear if the differences are due to free translation of because of different Hebrew text. But in allmost all other books the Greek translation is extremely literal to the point of being slavish. One simply has to remove the glosses from the Septuagint and (when necessary) from the masoretic text and we obtain one to one correspondence.
There can be no doubt that the Septuagint translators had different Hebrew text than the Hebrew text we have now. The differences however are not as many as it is commonly believed by people who haven't looked into the actual Hebrew and Greek texts.
It is not at all clear that the translators have modified this verse.
First half of the verse
ESV: The princes of the peoples gather as the people of the God of Abraham. LXX: The princes of the peoples gather with the God of Abraham.
ESV has "as the people of" which corresponds to the masoretic עָם. LXX has "with" which corresponds to עָם. As you can see the, difference between the masoretic text and the Septuagint is only in the vocalization. Besides, the interpretation of עָם as "as the people of" is not unproblematic and there are many scholarly publications about it. In the Vulgate Jerome agreed with the interpretation in the Septuagint: "Principes populorum congregati sunt cum Deo Abraham".
Second half of the verse
ESV: For the shields of the earth belong to God; he is highly exalted! LXX: For the strong ones of the earth belong to God; they are highly exalted!
The first difference between ESV and LXX is due to different translation of the word מָגֵן (shield versus strong one/ruler). The second difference is because the Hebrew (and Greek) grammar does not require the words "he is" (and "they are"). These words are missing both in Hebrew and Greek but they are unavoidable in an English translation. The difference between plural and singular disappears if we remove the masoretic vocalization. Here, too, Jerome agrees with the interpretation in the Septuagint: "quoniam dii fortes terræ; vehementer elevati sunt".
Caleb Perez
Correction: עִם
Leo Jones
why
Tyler Morris
can anyone give examples of the "glosses" that >>701491 are referring to
Levi Wright
epic quote. I need to read justin now.
Luis Walker
...
Leo Nguyen
For example there are lots of glosses in Genesis 1. Here they are in bold.
——————————— In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” And it was so. And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. The waters under the heavens gathered together into one place, and the dry land appeared. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. ———————————
As you can see these glosses don't change the meaning of the text, their function is here is to make the parallelism of the text clearer. In other cases the glosses are there to make the meaning clearer. For example in Exodus the father-in-law of Moses is usually named Jethro but he is named Reuel once. So in order to lessen the confusion, in the Septuagint the name Jethro is inserted in some places where the masoretic text is not specific about his name. Again, the meaning of the text is unchanged.
Easton Rodriguez
If I had to pick a translation I would go with translation based on the a Septuagint.
However if one knows Hebrew the original Masoretic text is not to be disregarded, while it's true the rabbis probably corrupted some verses to downplay the phropecies about Jesus there are many subtle meanings, including numerical, that only the original language can express. Hebrew is an holy language, and despite the changes of the rabbis, we can assume most of the Masoretic texts reports the original words of the original Bible. But since most people don't know hebrew I'd say go with a Septuagint based translation, the latin Vulgate would also be a good choice because St.Jerome used hebrew texts several centuries older than our Masoretic and probably not yet corrupted at that time.
Xavier Torres
All I did was post a video clarifying what scholars mean when they speak about the Septuagint translation from a well known OT scholar for the furtherance of the discussion, and you call me a Judaizer? Peter Williams understands the usefulness of the OT greek translations, he said so in the video! And where the hell does Protestantism even enter this discussion?
Ryan Sanchez
Christians as far as the second century used the Septuagint and said the jews were altering the hebrew version. Do we know better than people who lived two or three generations away from the Apostles? I don't trust these modern experts.
Alexander Collins
And the modern expert is not contradicting you in the video I posted. You would have known that if you had watched the video before jumping on me.
Blake Thompson
I'm not that guy though.
Jayden Wood
I didn't realize, but it really doesn't change my response.
Ian Collins
Basically
Basically, use the LXX or any OT that was either in the hands of ancient Christians only or something like the DSS that embarrasses the lying noses who couldn't alter it
I really really love this topic. The issue with the Masoretic is usually the vowel points – the Septuagint stands beside the *unpointed* Hebrew but the Masoretes when they added the vowel points didn't add them in the same way the 72 understood them. There was obviously some differences in the vorlage of the LXX though which is reflected in some of the DSS.
This graph is very misleading. First of all Psalm 39:7 in the critical LXX agrees with the Hebrew to say "ears you fashioned for me". I think the change in some LXX mss was made by Christian scribes trying to harmonize with Hebrews.
Isaiah 7:14 is not a difference between the LXX and Hebrew, it's an issue of translation which Christian translations from the Hebrew render properly.
Deut 32:43 might be a Masoretic corruption which has been changed in some modern translations because scroll 4q44 agreed with the LXX. It seems the Samaritan Pentateuch agrees with the Masoretic though.
At Isaiah 61:1 neither the Qumran Isaiah Scroll, the Syriac Peshitta, or Aramaic Targums agree with the LXX so it is probably a Christian corruption in the LXX.
The variant in Psalm 22:16 is very slight in the Hebrew, it's the difference between "כארו" (they pierced) and "כארי" like a lion. "they have pierced" is supported by the Nahal Hever Psalms and the Syriac Peshitta so this is probably a Masoretic corruption (no need to go to the LXX)!
The Masoretic reading is supported by the Qumran Isaiah Scroll, Syriac Peshitta, scroll 4q56, scroll 4q62 (and Fragment Tischendorfianus of the LXX supports the Masoretic on "law"), and the Aramaic Targums, the ms evidence is very overwhelming against the LXX here.
I forgot – if you think that the LXX is more correct than the Masoretic, look up what Jesus was quoting from when he said "Eli eli lama sabakhthani", and compare the Masoretic and LXX readings.
Owen Edwards
Except St.Jerome used better hebrew sources than the corrupted Masoretic we have today. In fact he translates "the virgin shall conceive" and not "the young woman"
Samuel Scott
The current masoretic text also says "the virgin shall conceive". The problem (in this case) is not with the text but with the Jewish dictionaries we use.
Ethan Hall
One word: Jews.
Or so I'm lead to believe
I must also call-out that pic's using Deut 32 because several versions seem to have things on angels worshiping Him. Others refer to "you nations", which ties better with Romans 15:10 which refers to gentiles, not Angels. So, this whole reference has me a little confused.
Isaiah White
Qumran and DSS, we must save them before Isreali nanotech gets to editing it
Jackson Cruz
…so is Gospel of Thomas canon?
Jackson White
Qumran =/= Nag Hammadi
Jack Kelly
Usually this fact is ignored in favor of attacking the KJV.
The funny part is that in doing so, they are crediting the modern Jewish dictionary as an authority on how biblical Hebrew is translated.
Henry Brooks
Don't just say "look up" when there's no obvious meaning, when Googling gives no idea about what you're talking about. Don't be lazy and be so winnie the pooh vague. Are you just talking about They have pierced my hands and my feet Psalm 22 or the actual winnie the pooh beginning of Psalm 22 with the Eli eli lama quote, where the differences aren't obvious in what the winnie the pooh you are talking about. Don't be a little bitch and be vague about it.
Lucas Collins
Is anyone else annoyed at the title of that book? "The Septuagint with Apocrypha". There's no other type of Septuagint since the name Septuagint means "seventy".
Kevin Myers
That refers to seventy translators and not the number of books. Some published translations don't feature the apocrypha.
