OT quotes in the NT

[asalas]

The claim is made (Gleason Archer) that the NT cites about 340 quotations from the LXX but only 33 places from the Hebrew Canon. My question is how do we know this? How do scholars know that some came from the LXX and some came from the Hebrew Canon?

 

[Spencerian]

The claim is made (Gleason Archer) that the NT cites about 340 quotations from the LXX but only 33 places from the Hebrew Canon. My question is how do we know this? How do scholars know that some came from the LXX and some came from the Hebrew Canon?

Nice question!

This one is a toughie and WAY outside my understanding of Jewish canonical history. Not that Wikipedia should be used as an authority for anything, but I offer this article as one explanation. Hopefully someone more learned in the origins can help us answer this question.

 

[NHInsider]

The claim is made (Gleason Archer) that the NT cites about 340 quotations from the LXX but only 33 places from the Hebrew Canon. My question is how do we know this? How do scholars know that some came from the LXX and some came from the Hebrew Canon?

This is actually not terribly difficult - they look at the words and phrases that the NT writers used, and compare them to the LXX translation and the Masoretic text, and count the matches.

Since the NT was written in Greek, and the LXX was the commonly used Greek translation everyone was familiar with, it shouldn’t be surprising that it would be more frequently cited.

One other point, it is not technically correct to refer to the “Hebrew Canon.” There was no defined Hebrew Canon at the time of Christ, in fact there was extensive debate amongst scholars of the day over whether anything other than the Penteteuch was inspired/binding. The books that wound up as the Protestant Old Testament were selected by a second-century group reacting against the rise of Christianity, and was not universally accepted within Judaism even then.

 

[Rightlydivide]

One other point, it is not technically correct to refer to the “Hebrew Canon.” There was no defined Hebrew Canon at the time of Christ, in fact there was extensive debate amongst scholars of the day over whether anything other than the Penteteuch was inspired/binding. The books that wound up as the Protestant Old Testament were selected by a second-century group reacting against the rise of Christianity, and was not universally accepted within Judaism even then.

Do you have quotes from Jewish scholars during this era concerning this debate? People sometimes refer to hypothetical discussions at a hypothetical council constructed from documents hundreds of years later in a place called Jamnia but hopefully that is not what you are using to make that assertion. ibri.org/RRs/RR013/13jamnia.html
You would agree that nothing in the NT itself would indicate there was a debate about specific books?

 

[NHInsider]

You would agree that nothing in the NT itself would indicate there was a debate about specific books?

If there were any discussion of canon whatever in the New Testament, we might not have to repeat this discussion every few weeks . . . .