Subject: tc-list The LXX

From: "Matthew Bell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Apr 1998 13:21:17 +0100

Hi all

If this is not a matter of TC then please just ignore it or respond to me
privately. I have been reading some material on the net bringing into
question the existence of a BC LXX and the accepted view that the NT
writers quote from it rather than the Masoretic. How conclusive can we be
that a BC LXX was done, completed and used by the NT writers.

Thanks
Matt Bell

---

From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Apr 1998 09:14:21 -0500

>that a BC LXX was done, completed and used by the NT writers.

I personally don't see how there can be any doubt about this. There
are two lines of evidence: The manuscripts and the quotations.

We have LXX fragments which are dated as early as the second
century B.C.E. So if one accepts the evidence of paleography,
I think the matter is settled: At least part of the LXX was in
existence by then.

Then there are the quotations. Philo, the NT, and Josephus all
quote the LXX. At times they quote the LXX at points where it
differs from the MT. The obvious example of this is in Matthew:
"Behold, a VIRGIN shall bear a son...." Since this is a mistranslation
of the Hebrew, and since Matthew elsewhere translates the MT
on his own, this can only have come from a copy of the LXX.

A little comparative research will show that the correspondences
between the NT and the LXX (usually the late LXX -- more like
that found in A than B) are simply too great to be coincidence.
The NT uses the LXX rendering far too often when the MT could
be interpreted in multiple ways.

There is a third line of evidence, which lies in the text of the
LXX. This line of evidence is indirect but solid. The text of
LXX often differs substantially from that of the MT. But the
MT was already coming to be standardized by the first century
C.E. Therefore any translation which does not conform to the
MT must be older than that.

I read somewhere a comment on Herodotus to the effect that the
classics have been studied so much that the only way to produce
a new theory was to produce a perverse theory. This sounds like
an example of that. :-)

Bob Waltz
[email-masked]

"The one thing we learn from history --
   is that no one ever learns from history."

---

From: "Professor L.W. Hurtado" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 14:07:49 +000

RE:  the Septuagint and quotations of the OT in the NT.
--Among specialists in LXX-studies, there is the view that the term
*Septuagint* should be reserved for the *Christian-era* Greek Bible 
texts, and that we should understand that these texts show 
recensional activities/efforts. Thus, we can differentiate between 
these Septuagint texts and "pre-LXX" texts or "Old Greek" texts, 
which are technically the pre-Christian mss of the Greek Bible.  We 
do have to be aware that the Greek Bibles of the lst century readers 
were not necessarily at all points the same readings as what are 
found in the mss of the LXX upon which Ralfs etc depends.  See, e.g., 
R. W. Klein, _Textual Criticism of the OT:  From the Septuagint to 
Qumran_ Fortress, 1974.
--Citations of the OT in the NT don't always follow the LXX mss 
exactly, and there the reasons could be (a) use of a variant pre-LXX 
Greek bible ms, or (b) free/fluid citation (always a factor in 
citation of the OT), and or (c) independent Greek renderings of the 
MT (my colleague, Timothy Lim argues that Paul's citations of the OT 
suggest that at least occasionally Paul gave his own translation of 
the Hebrew [_Hebrew Scripture in the Qumran Commentaries and the 
Pauline Letters_, OUP, 1997]).

L. W. Hurtado
University of Edinburgh,
New College
Mound Place 
Edinburgh, Scotland EH1 2LX
Phone: 0131-650-8920
Fax: 0131-650-6579
E-mail:  [email-masked]