![]() The Masoretic text reflects only one of those text types. Rather than vindicating the Masoretic text as being the original Hebrew text, the thousands of Qumran text specimens reveal that there was a definite diversity of text types of the Old Testament in use during the centuries before Christ. ![]() However, later, a more sober reflection on the Isaiah scrolls, coupled with the discovery of Dead Sea manuscripts for other Old Testament books, revealed that the initial reports were premature. Evangelical Christians were quick to propagate these initial reports. The initial published reports proclaimed that those manuscripts were virtually identical to the Masoretic text of today. Among the first scrolls examined were two manuscripts of the Book of Isaiah. The Old Testament texts found among these scrolls were centuries older than any previously known Old Testament manuscripts. Those scrolls, along with numerous other scrolls later found in the same vicinity, have come to be known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the Qumran Library. In 1947, when scholars were still speculating about these things, an Arab shepherd accidentally discovered some ancient Jewish scrolls near the settlement of Qumran in Palestine. However, during the 1800s, scholars began to postulate that perhaps the reason for the variance between the Septuagint and the Masoretic text was that the translators of the Septuagint were working from an earlier Hebrew text that varied from the later Masoretic text. But how honest is that? Can we ignore the Septuagint and treat it as “a translation full of errors,” but then when one of those “errors” supports a major Christian doctrine, go over and borrow from it? Are we really seeking truth when we do that?ĭuring the Middle Ages, and for many centuries thereafter, western Christians mistakenly thought that the Septuagint was merely a careless translation of the Hebrew text. Unless you use the Revised Standard Version, if you look up Isaiah 7:14 in your Old Testament, you will probably find that it reads “virgin” instead of “young woman.” That’s because translators have fudged on their use of the Masoretic text in order to conform to the cardinal Christian doctrine of the virgin birth. What I did not realize until recently was that the Hebrew Masoretic text does not say, “the virgin shall be with child.” It says, “the young woman shall be with child.” No wonder the apostles and their disciples chose the Septuagint over the Masoretic text. We have all read Matthew’s quotation from Isaiah 7:14: “Now all this took place that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, ‘Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel'” (Matt. In fact, one of the cardinal teachings of Christianity turns on one of these variances. Such variances between the Septuagint and the Masoretic text are fairly numerous. Our Old Testaments don’t say anything in Psalms about “a body Thou hast prepared for me.” Is that not part of Scripture? If it isn’t, why did the writer of Hebrews quote it as Scripture? If it is part of Scripture, what justification do we have for using a text that is different from what the apostles were using? If you look up Psalm 40:6 in your Bible, you will find that it reads: “Sacrifice and offering Thou hast not desired mine ears Thou hast opened.” That’s not how writer of Hebrews quoted that verse, is it? In that passage, Paul is quoting from Psalm 40:6. However, if you were using the Septuagint Old Testament, they would read the same.įor example, notice this passage from the Psalms that is quoted in the Book of Hebrews: “Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, ‘Sacrifice and offering thou hast not desired, but a body thou hast prepared for me'” (Heb. You have probably noticed that many of the Old Testament passages that are quoted in the New Testament don’t read the same in the New as they do in the Old. And they chose to quote from the Septuagint, not the proto-Masoretic text. This is sad, for the apostles had access to both the Septuagint and to the proto-Masoretic text that was in existence in their time. It was translated from a Hebrew Old Testament text-type that is older than the Masoretic text, from which most Old Testaments are translated today. It was begun over two hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ. The Septuagint was the first translation made of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek.
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