Jews believe Catholics mistranslated verses about Jesus in the HB/OT?

[patrick457]

There is also the Codex Vaticanus at the Vatican dated to the 4th century. The earliest copies of the bible are from the 4th centuries and they are the only copies of the Septuagint that exist today. That means all the early copies of the Septuagint are all Christian copies. There are no ancient Jewish copies of the Septuagint in existence. This is significant from a Jewish perspective if you do not trust Christians. But, for Christians it tells us that the early Church used the Septuagint in their bibles and that included all the books the Protestants (and Jews) are missing from their bibles.

Not exactly. Fragments of biblical books in Greek were also found in the Judaean desert. Qumran yielded fragments of Exodus (pap7QLXXExod), Leviticus (4QLXXLev[sup]a[/sup], pap4QLXXLev[sup]b[/sup]), Numbers (4QLXXNum), Deuteronomy (4QLXXDeut). A copy of the minor prophets found at Nagal Hever (8HevXII gr). The fun part is that the Nahal Hever minor prophets scroll seem to have been systematically ‘corrected’ to correspond more closely to the proto-Masoretic Text.



http://imageshack.us/a/img705/331/mprsb.jpg

I should add that the term ‘Septuagint’ really means a lot of things. It is a common popular mistake of thinking of and referring to a particular collection of as being “the Septuagint.” Many scholars themselves, while they are more aware of the actual situation in those days, still somewhat misleadingly choose to use this shorthand (“The evangelists/Paul quoted the Septuagint,” etc.), as if the disciples consulted a huge, fat codex called ‘The Septuagint’ or Mark or Luke or Paul somehow decided to drop by a local bookstore one day and decided to buy a copy for themselves.

In reality, what the term ‘Septuagint’ means could either be (1) in a strict sense, the earliest translation of the first five books of the Old Testament into Greek (ca. late 3rd century BC) - with the earliest versions of the other books (3rd-1st century BC) being called “Old Greek”; or (2) in a more looser way, as a catch-all reference to the earliest translations of the different books as a whole, or even (3) Scriptural books in Greek that were available to the early Christians, with no care as to whether they were the oldest translations or not.

In any case, the version of the Septuagint circulating in Christian manuscripts is not the original version (the so-called “Old Greek”), but any one of the many recensions of the text that were produced in an effort to produced a standardized and authoritative text, or combined versions thereof. St. Jerome in his day identified three Christian recensions of the Old Greek text, made by Origen (Hexaplaric), Lucian of Antioch, and Hesychius of Jerusalem, respectively. There is also the so-called Kaige recension, so called because it renders the Hebrew phrase we gam “and also” consistently as kai ge. (The Nahal Hever Minor Prophets scroll is usually considered to belong to this category.) This recension is sometimes labelled as ‘Theodotion’, because the characteristics of this recension seems to have been also shared in the so-called Theodotion recension (sixth column of Origen’s Hexapla), in the fifth column of the Hexapla, in Codex Washingtonensis, in the LXX versions of Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and Daniel, in several parts of Codex Vaticanus (Judges, 2 Samuel 11:1-1 Kings 2:11, 1 Kings 22:1-2 Kings 25:30), and in biblical quotations by Justin Martyr. More recent studies understand these similarities not as attesting to a single overall recension but to a group of recensions. It remains uncertain if all recensions date as early as the one attested by 8HevXII gr. It is now thought that Theodotion was not the author of the Kaige recension/s, and that at least portions of it are pre-Christian, i.e. the reworking of the Old Greek towards the consonantal text of the pre-Masoretic text is not a Jewish response to its appropriation by early Christianity but started earlier and has other causes.

 

[patrick457]

Thanks. Just off the top of my head it is something like 300 quotes are from the Septuagint and remainder 50 or so (don’t quote me on exact numbers) are from the Masoretic text which is a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic. The reason we know this is because the 300 quotes are word for word copies of the Greek Septuagint. If you want to learn more about this get ahold of Fr. Mitch Pacwa’s CD called ‘Where Does The Bible Come From?’

Sorry for rehashing earlier material again.

Out of the four gospels, Matthew is the one who diverges the most: out of all the fulfillment quotations in his gospel, only three (1:23; 3:3; 13:14-16 - all interestingly quotes from Isaiah) are Septuagintal. The rest are unique translations/paraphrases/interpretations which interestingly reveals influence from the (proto-)Masoretic text or from Aramaic targumim. It is impossible to know whether Matthew himself was responsible for bringing his Greek closer to the underlying Hebrew or whether he had employed a Greek translation which has done so. In other instances, for example, in material Matthew shares with Mark, are based on the Septuagint, but all other quotations and allusions in the synoptic materials have evidence of the same kind of “mixed form” as that in the fulfillment quotations. Mark, by contrast, predominantly uses Septuagintal quotations (1:2-3; 7:6-7; 12:10-11; 12:36), although in a few passages he departs from it (4:12, which departs from both the Hebrew and LXX). Same goes for OT allusions (4:29 “But when the fruit yields itself, immediately he sends out the sickle, for the harvest has come;” cf. Joel 3:13 MT). Matthew and Mark share at least 40 allusive translations: of these 11 are the same as the LXX, 12 are non-Septuagintal, and 8 are a mixture of Septuagintal and non-Septuagintal.

Luke’s gospel has relatively few direct quotations (most of which are from the Psalms, Isaiah, or the minor prophets), although the book is filled with allusions: out of all the quotations and references, only 7:27 is non-Septuagintal, with the rest being either verbatim or adapted quotations. In four passages of John where he quotes the OT, his Greek is Septuagintal (10:34; 12:13, 38; 19:24); in several others he makes some minor adaptations to suit the context (1:23; 2:17; 6:31, 45; 15:25; 19:36); in yet four others he diverges completely from the Old Greek (12:15, 40; 13:18; 19:37).

 

[fisherman_carl]

Not exactly. Fragments of biblical books in Greek were also found in the Judaean desert. Qumran yielded fragments of Exodus (pap7QLXXExod), Leviticus (4QLXXLev[sup]a[/sup], pap4QLXXLev[sup]b[/sup]), Numbers (4QLXXNum), Deuteronomy (4QLXXDeut). A copy of the minor prophets found at Nagal Hever (8HevXII gr). The fun part is that the Nahal Hever minor prophets scroll seem to have been systematically ‘corrected’ to correspond more closely to the proto-Masoretic Text.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7098/7277929368_8a79c5a9cc_z.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img705/331/mprsb.jpg

I should add that the term ‘Septuagint’ really means a lot of things. It is a common popular mistake of thinking of and referring to a particular collection of as being “the Septuagint.” Many scholars themselves, while they are more aware of the actual situation in those days, still somewhat misleadingly choose to use this shorthand (“The evangelists/Paul quoted the Septuagint,” etc.), as if the disciples consulted a huge, fat codex called ‘The Septuagint’ or Mark or Luke or Paul somehow decided to drop by a local bookstore one day and decided to buy a copy for themselves.

In reality, what the term ‘Septuagint’ means could either be (1) in a strict sense, the earliest translation of the first five books of the Old Testament into Greek (ca. late 3rd century BC) - with the earliest versions of the other books (3rd-1st century BC) being called “Old Greek”; or (2) in a more looser way, as a catch-all reference to the earliest translations of the different books as a whole, or even (3) Scriptural books in Greek that were available to the early Christians, with no care as to whether they were the oldest translations or not.

In any case, the version of the Septuagint circulating in Christian manuscripts is not the original version (the so-called “Old Greek”), but any one of the many recensions of the text that were produced in an effort to produced a standardized and authoritative text, or combined versions thereof. St. Jerome in his day identified three Christian recensions of the Old Greek text, made by Origen (Hexaplaric), Lucian of Antioch, and Hesychius of Jerusalem, respectively. There is also the so-called Kaige recension, so called because it renders the Hebrew phrase we gam “and also” consistently as kai ge. (The Nahal Hever Minor Prophets scroll is usually considered to belong to this category.) This recension is sometimes labelled as ‘Theodotion’, because the characteristics of this recension seems to have been also shared in the so-called Theodotion recension (sixth column of Origen’s Hexapla), in the fifth column of the Hexapla, in Codex Washingtonensis, in the LXX versions of Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and Daniel, in several parts of Codex Vaticanus (Judges, 2 Samuel 11:1-1 Kings 2:11, 1 Kings 22:1-2 Kings 25:30), and in biblical quotations by Justin Martyr. More recent studies understand these similarities not as attesting to a single overall recension but to a group of recensions. It remains uncertain if all recensions date as early as the one attested by 8HevXII gr. It is now thought that Theodotion was not the author of the Kaige recension/s, and that at least portions of it are pre-Christian, i.e. the reworking of the Old Greek towards the consonantal text of the pre-Masoretic text is not a Jewish response to its appropriation by early Christianity but started earlier and has other causes.

When you say Judean desert you mean Qumran right? Or is there another location? I was actually at Qumran 2 years ago as part of a tour of Israel. Very interesting place overlooking the Dead Sea. I am aware there are different versions of the Septuagint, but according to Fr. Mitch Pacwa the only complete copy we have in existence today is from ancient Christian bibles.

 

[patrick457]

When you say Judean desert you mean Qumran right? Or is there another location? I was actually at Qumran 2 years ago as part of a tour of Israel. Very interesting place overlooking the Dead Sea. I am aware there are different versions of the Septuagint, but according to Fr. Mitch Pacwa the
only complete copy we have in existence today is from ancient Christian bibles.

Fr. Pacwa is corrrect. By ‘Judaean Desert’ I meant all the sites located within it as a whole like Qumran and its caves, Masada, Nahal Hever (the Cave of Horrors and the Cave of Letters), Ein Gedi or Ein Feshkha.

And wow! You’ve actually been there? What was it like?

 

[CEM5]

When you say Judean desert you mean Qumran right? Or is there another location? I was actually at Qumran 2 years ago as part of a tour of Israel. Very interesting place overlooking the Dead Sea. I am aware there are different versions of the Septuagint, but according to Fr. Mitch Pacwa the only complete copy we have in existence today is from ancient Christian bibles.

Hey! I was at Qumran years ago as well. It was amazing!

 

[fisherman_carl]

Fr. Pacwa is corrrect. By ‘Judaean Desert’ I meant all the sites located within it as a whole like Qumran and its caves, Masada, Nahal Hever (the Cave of Horrors and the Cave of Letters), Ein Gedi or Ein Feshkha.

And wow! You’ve actually been there? What was it like?

Well, it’s basically in the middle of nowhere on the side of a mountain overlooking the dead sea. It is quite scenic there. There are the ruins where they lived and you can walk through there and look at it. Also, you can see the caves where they found the scrolls. We went to the dead sea as well and you float like a cork in water because there is so much salt in the sea.