The Development of the Bible, Post 2

This is the second post based on my discussion of the development of the Bible.  You can read Post #1 here.  

At this point the conversation turned to the Masoretic Text, which I had not known the history.  This was an eye opener.  The Masoretic Text is from where current translations of Old Testaments come from.

 

Manny:

This is what I learned about the Masoretic test, and ultimately why I am convinced it is wrong as a canonical Bible, maybe even heretical, for Christians to base their Old Testament on it. 

 

I found it amazing that the Jewish texts we have today were not the original texts from their original writing in the millennia prior to Christ.  I was under the impression their wording stretched back over a millennia before Christ.  They are an assimilation of texts that was put together around the ninth century AD.  That’s AD!  The original Hebrew texts were lost or disfigured and what remained were texts copied over time.  This is from a Catholic apologetics page that explains the history:

 

What About the Original Hebrew [texts]?

That is where the problem arises. The "original" Hebrew text no longer exists. When Bibles claim to be translated from the "Original Hebrew", they are being somewhat misleading, since the oldest existing Hebrew texts of the Old Testament date back only to around 1000 AD. These are the Masoretic texts used by the Jews of the diaspora.

 

In other words, the Masoretes had to reconstruct the OT.  Again from that website.

 

Why Are There No Earlier Hebrew Texts?

The main reason why earlier Hebrew texts do not exist is that the Jews tended to recopy their scriptures when they grew worn, and then bury the original, which soon decayed. Therefore we have nothing like a Hebrew text which goes back to the time of Christ. We do have some earlier fragments, discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls, but there is only one full book and a few disjointed fragments of all the rest.

 

I chose that Catholic website because it put the context so succinctly.  Now let me turn to a Protestant website for a fuller picture, this from Ryan Nelson, “What Is the Masoretic Text? The Beginner’s Guide.”   He describes how the 9^th century OT was put together:

 

To save the Hebrew Bible from dissolving into competing interpretations, a group known as the Masoretes (traditionalists) produced a new copy of the original Hebrew, working from the best available manuscripts, just as countless others had—but with a twist. They used rabbinic tradition to add the most intricate system of punctuation and stress marks anyone had ever seen, obliterating ambiguity once-and-for-all.

 

The Ma soretic Text so rigidly defined the Hebrew Bible’s punctuation and wording that there could only be one way to read and understand it: the same way rabbis had for centuries.

 

While the Masoretic Text was completed rather late (the oldest copies we have of the Masoretic Text are from ninth century), it was the culmination of several centuries of work.

 

Ryan says, “the same way rabbis had for centuries.”  Centuries being how long?  Nine?  Keep in mind, Judaism underwent enormous changes once the Temple was destroyed.  Judaism from the nine centuries after Christ was not the same Judaism as before.  Ryan goes on to say that the “oral tradition” played a great part in the Masoretic version.

 

While not explicitly discussed in Scripture, the “oral Torah” was considered authoritative, because it too was handed down from God, to Moses, to the Israelites. While it might sound like an ancient game of “telephone,” the oral tradition was carefully preserved, passed on to each generation of rabbis through rigorous repetition and memorization.

 

Now the oral tradition may be pretty good, but how accurate is it really when we are referring to words, tens of thousands of words, and not traditions?  We’re talking about texts that were composed before 1100 BC and now they are being reconstructed in 900 AD.  How good is oral tradition over 2000 years?  Ryan even questions the deletion of the deuterocanonical books:

 

Other early manuscripts like the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) and the Dead Sea Scrolls appear to suggest that additional books may have been considered authoritative by some Jewish sects, but Jewish tradition holds that the Masoretic Text authentically represents the canon as it had been passed down.

 

The loss of the deuterocanonical books may be the least important of the discrepancies.  Ryan gets to the controversy:

 

While the Masoretic Text is still widely embraced today, it’s had its share of controversy, too. Discrepancies between the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint have led some scholars (and entire traditions) to question the Masoretic Text’s authenticity and the degree to which it really reflects the Jewish canon.

 

Ryan then turns to how this effects the NT:

 

Since the New Testament writers (especially Paul) primarily refer to the Septuagint when quoting the Old Testament, some view the Masoretic Text (or perhaps the Hebrew manuscripts it was based on) as an attempt to discredit Christianity.

 

Most of the differences between the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text are innocent enough, but some appear to muddy prophecies about Jesus. Hebrews 10 quotes Psalm 40 in the Septuagint:

 

“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,

but a body you prepared for me;

with burnt offerings and sin offerings

you were not pleased.

Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—

I have come to do your will, my God.’” —Hebrews 10:5-7, NIV (emphasis added)

 

But if you refer back to Psalm 40 in your Protestant Bible (based on the Masoretic Text), you’ll find something like this:

 

“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire—

but my ears you have opened—

burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require.

Then I said, “Here I am, I have come—

it is written about me in the scroll.

I desire to do your will, my God;

your law is within my heart.” —Psalm 40:6-8, NIV (emphasis added)

 

It appears that the Masoretic Text doesn’t include this prophecy about the incarnation, which the author of Hebrews is clearly referencing.

 

Read Ryan’s entire blog.  He is very generous in his perspective toward the Masoretes and even ends on a positive note.  He’s not looking to undermine the Masoretic Bible. 

 

Without the Masoretes, it’s hard to say what our Bibles would look like today. Perhaps they’d all be based on the Septuagint, or they’d all be based on different versions of the Hebrew Bible. At a pivotal moment in history, when culture, popular teachings, and language itself threatened to erase centuries of tradition, the Masoretes found a way to keep that tradition in the spotlight.

 

But the Masoretic Text is very questionable.  Ryan only provides one example above of the text “muddying” Christian theology, and it is a big one.  But you need to see all the quotes which vary with the Septuagint.   Once you do, “muddying” is putting it kindly.  For that, you need to turn on these series of lessons from a YouTube channel called the Post-Apostolic Church, a channel that provides lessons on early Christianity.  They have a series on how the Septuagint came about and its differences with the Masoretic Text.  Here is the link to that ongoing series if you wish to watch the entire series.   But the two critical parts to watch are Part 3 and Part 4.  I’ll embed them here.

 

 

 

Are those meaningless variations?  I would say not.  They are an attempt to undermine Christianity. 

 

Now I have pulled information from Catholic and Protestant sources.  Finally I will cite an Eastern Orthodox website.  After going through similar analysis they come to this conclusion.  

 

There was a time when many Protestant scholars assumed that the Septuagint was an often loose translation of the Hebrew text, and that when it differed from the Masoretic Text, it was due to changes made by the translators. However, since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we now know that the Septuagint is based on a different, and older Hebrew text than the Masoretic text.

 

I have to say, the websites I found from the Orthodox did not pull any punches.  Do a Google search of “Septuagint versus Masoretic Bible Eastern Orthodox” and you will find quite passionate opposition to the Masoretic text.  We Catholics have become milquetoast in comparison.  There was a time we would have been just as vociferous.  And to fully conclude, the Orthodox site references the Holy Spirit as I did earlier.

 

That the Septuagint is the most authoritative text in the Orthodox Church is something that is confirmed in just about any Orthodox catechetical text you could consult. The Septuagint text is the text that the Church has preserved. The Masoretic text is a text that has not been preserved by the Church, and so while it is worthy of study and comparison, it is not equally trustworthy. We have the promise that the Holy Spirit will guide us into all Truth (John 16:13), and so can indeed affirm that "Our Church holds the infallible and genuine deposit of the Holy Scriptures" ("Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs" of 1848).

 

I agree.  The Holy Spirit guided Christ’s apostles and then the Apostolic Churches to the Septuagint.  That ultimately is the bottom line for me.  All the Apostolic Churches consider it canonical.  As a Catholic I am obligated to consider it so, but, after learning all that I did in this exploration, I do so passionately and with my full support.  The Septuagint is categorically the Bible of choice.

 

To nail the coffin of this argument shut for me, I would end that it is erroneous to say that 10% of the New Testament quoting of the Old Testament comes from the Masoretic text.  The Masoretic text is not what the New Testament Writers had on hand because it was not created yet.  It was created 900 years later.  What they quoted was from the ancient texts that were destroyed. 

 

†

The Development of the Bible, Post 1

I recently had a remarkable conversation and learning experience on the nature and development of the Bible.  You would think everyone would know how the Bible came about, but while it intuitively feels we all know, but it’s actually more complicated than you imagine.  For instance, why do Catholic and the other Apostolic Churches have more books in the Old Testament than Protestants?   Protestants claim that Catholics added books, while Catholics claim that Protestants took them out.  This conversation started on a conservative social media I belong to, Ricochet.   The original post was highlighting Hanukkah and made a reference that Bibles don’t even refer to the event from which a number of Catholics retorted that their Bibles most certainly do.  The event of Hanukkah is told in the First and Second books of Maccabees, both of which are part of the deuterocanonical texts contained in Catholic Old Testaments but not in Protestant Old Testaments, and ironically not included in Jewish Bibles, referred to as the Tanakh. 

Why are there books of the Old Testament in Catholic Bibles and not in Protestant and more astonishingly Jewish Bibles?  I explained for to those that didn’t realize, but in the course of the conversation I learned something really amazing.  What we have as the Jewish Bible is not what actually was read (in Hebrew of course) 2500 years ago.  The Hebrew Old Testament is a reconstruction put together some 900 years after Christ died.  We’ll get to all that.

So these series of posts are my portion of an extended conversation on the history of the Bible discussed on the post “Canceling God: Hanukkah and Cancel Culture” at Ricochet.  I’m not sure if no-members can access that post on Ricochet, but perhaps you might.  The post started off innocently enough but unfortunately a couple of us wound up hijacking the conversation.  My main interlocutor is a fellow whose website name is St. Augustine.  Despite his name, St. Augustine is Protestant with a particular love for the writings of the original St. Augustine.  My interlocutor is a scholarly fellow (I thought he had a PhD but I learned otherwise) and from an Evangelical background.  He’s more of an intellectual than a fundamentalist, and scholarly rather than pastoral.  We had a genial and charitable conversation bringing out our two viewpoints.

I am not reposting everything said.  I am mostly focusing on my side of the conversation.  It would be too much to recreate everything, and plus I only feel ownership to my side of the writing.  The actual Ricochet discussion will be in regular font and when I step out of that discussion, such as this, I will be in italics.  I project to complete this in four posts.  I’ll define some terms up front.

 

Septuagint: Greek translation of the Old Testament 200-300 years B.C.

DeuterocanonicalBooks: The Old Testament in Catholic Bibles but not in Protestant.

Vulgate Bible: The Latin translation of the Septuagint & New Testament by St. Jerome in the 4th Century A.D.

MasoreticText: The Hebrew Bible reconstructed by the Masoretes around 900 A.D.

I’m going to start with my comment explaining why the deuterocanonical exist in the Catholic Bibles.

Manny:

Reading through the comments it seems that most people don’t understand how the Bible cannon differences between Protestants and everyone else came about. Catholics are not the only Christian groups that contain what some call the deuterocanonical books. All Christians except most Protestants include them.

 

What is counter-intuitive and I think confuses most people (and it confused me before I learned this) is that Christians actually had an Old Testament cannon before Judaism. There was no Jewish cannon before the second or third century AD. Notice “AD.” Back in the third century BC (notice “BC”) there was a large Jewish diaspora across the Greek speaking world, remnants of Alexander the Great’s empire. In time those Jews wanted a copy of the scriptures they could read in what had become their native Greek language. So across the Greek speaking world seventy rabbis translated as many of the scriptures as possible. This ultimately included the deuterocanonical books. But remember, there was no official Jewish list of Books that had to be included. That Greek translated Bible came to be known as the Septuagint, which stands for the number 70, which was the number of translators.

 

So by the time of Christ a couple of centuries later, the Greek speaking Jews used the Septuagint.  The New Testament authors all traced their quotes from the Septuagint.  When you see Christ quote from the OT in the NT, the phrasing is identifiable to the Septuagint.  Mark, Matthew, Luke and John had the Septuagint available as they constructed their Gospels.  Even in the Epistles, Paul and the other letter writers are quoting from the Septuagint.

 

The Jewish cannon, known as the Tanakh, came about after the diaspora resulting from the destruction of the Temple and Israel in 70 AD by the Romans.  After a couple of hundred years, somewhere in the second or third century AD, they put together an official cannon, and it did not include the deuterocanonical books.  What I learned last week inclusion was based on whether those books were originally in Greek or Hebrew.  That was for Judaism to decide but all Christians at that point had already a cannon.

 

Now, come 1500 years later and Martin Luther in creating a Bible for his new church is faced with a problem.  If he includes the Maccabee books he is faced with the theological problem of praying for the dead. Here’s what 2 Mac 12:42-46 says:

 

42 Turning to supplication, they prayed that the sinful deed might be fully blotted out. The noble Judas exhorted the people to keep themselves free from sin, for they had seen with their own eyes what had happened because of the sin of those who had fallen.

43 He then took up a collection among all his soldiers, amounting to two thousand silver drachmas, which he sent to Jerusalem to provide for an expiatory sacrifice. In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection in mind;

44 for if he were not expecting the fallen to rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead.

45 But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought.

46 Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be absolved from their sin.

 

Why is that important?  Luther fought the Catholic Church over Purgatory and praying for the dead.  He could not keep that in or he would have been slammed dunk proven wrong.  Notice what it says, there was a collection of money to be taken for prayers for the dead to Jerusalem.  That’s no different than Catholic prayers for the dead given in churches.  Not only that, it justifies the theological concept of purgatory.  If there is no purgatory, then there is no reason to pray for the dead.  Either you’re already in heaven, and so no prayers are needed, or you’re in hell and no prayers will help.  Indeed, I do not believe that Protestants are theologically supposed to pray for the dead.  So using the excuse that Judaism had excluded these books, Luther dropped them altogether.  But by doing so, he took out the link between quotes from the NT to the old.  But the deuterocanonical books (as well as praying for the dead and the notion of purgatory) were there from the first century. 

### 

Manny:

But remember, there was no official Jewish list of Books that had to be included.

Saint Augustine

There didn’t have to be.  Neither was the NT official until centuries after, or the Deuterocanon/Apocrypha until the Reformation era.

Manny:

The official date of the NT can be traced to 382 at the Council of Rome.  But like most official proclamations in the Church, those official proclamations come quite a bit of time after it was widely accepted.  The 27 books of the NT can be traced to Clement of Alexandria (150-215), though he actually included more than the 27.  But the entire canon was officially declared in 382.  From Wikipedia: 

 

The Catholic Church considers that in the Council of Rome in 382 AD, under the Papacy of Damasus I, was defined the complete canon of the Bible, accepting 46 books for the Old Testament, including what the Reformed Churches consider as deuterocanonical books, and 27 books for the New Testament.[89] Based in this first canon, Saint Jerome compiled and translated the 73 books of the Bible into Latin, later known as the Vulgate Bible version, which has been considered during many centuries as one of the official Bible translations of the Catholic Church. The Synod of Hippo (in AD 393), followed by the Council of Carthage (397) and the Council of Carthage (419), also explicitly accepted the first canon from the Council of Rome; these councils [65] were under significant influence of Augustine of Hippo, who also regarded the Biblical canon as already closed.[66][67][68] The Roman Catholic Council of Florence (AD 1442) confirmed the first canon too,[73] while the Council of Trent (AD 1546) elevated the first canon to dogma.[90]

 

So the Vulgate at the time of Luther already had the deuterocanonical books.

###

Manny:

The common Protestant talking point is that Catholics put them, “added books to the Bible.” That is a lie. The reality is that Protestants took them out.

Saint Augustine:

And yet the Catholics call them the Deuterocanonical because their canonicity was formally recognized later.  It’s not as simple as “The Catholics added them!” Nor is it as simple as your account. No Protestant ever opted to take anything out of the Bible.

Manny:

Yes, of course and to be fair it depends on the spin you accept.  Protestants say he did it because he believed it was the right thing.  (Actually I’m not sure why.  What was Luther’s justification?)  Catholics say he did it to fit his new theology.  But here are a couple of more curious facts.  (1) Luther also wanted to delete four books from the New Testament: James, Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation, all of which contain theology which opposed his.  He wanted to delete four books of the New Testament!  Can you imagine how the Protestant world would go crazy if a pope declared four books of the NT to no longer be canonical?  Whoa.  Luther was prevented.  Remember there were political implications.  He was being protected by various aristocracy of the German city states that wanted a break from Rome.  Deleting NT books would have caused an uproar.  He ultimately didn’t.  (2) Luther wasn’t above manipulating the meaning of his translation.  He added the word “alone” to faith in Romans 3:28.  He insisted keeping it in after it was pointed out, declaring it was implied.  No he altered the text to support his claim of justification by faith alone.  If you look in today’s Protestant Bible translations, “alone” is no longer there.  It has been corrected, but Luther caused so much division.

 

So you can believe whatever spin you like about Luther, but when I look at the totality of his translation decisions, it appears to me he was adjusting it to fit his theology.

Manny:

Where’s the evidence they [NT writers] rejected it?

Saint Augustine:

I don’t know. Occam’s Razor, I guess, plus the grand total of zero quotations from the Apocrypha in the NT. (Or did I miss a quotation?) And the occasional reference to the OT Scriptures in ways that apparently reference the entire Tanakh but not the Apocrypha. (Although I have learned of interesting objections to that last one!)

Manny:

What do you mean that’s all I have?  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and the others quoted from the Septuagint.  The Septuagint included the deuterocanonical books.  There is no evidence they rejected them.  If anything Occam’s Razor says they accepted them.

Manny:

I don’t know what you’re trying to argue over.  The Church had established all 72 books as canonical at the Council of Rome in 382. In the subsequent couple of decades it was defined in the Eastern side of Christianity as well.  It was accepted by all for the next 1100+ years.  No one in the Christian world disputed using the Septuagint.  Perhaps they disputed what the Septuagint contained, but the Septuagint was the Christian standard.  1100 years is about from Moses to Christ. That’s pretty defined.  That’s as authoritative as it gets in the preprinting press world.

Manny:

OK, so you don’t accept the NT writers all choosing the Septuagint, you don’t accept the various Church councils authorizing the Septuagint (and which other Church Councils do you not accept?), you don’t accept all the Apostolic Churches using the Septuagint as canon, and you don’t accept 1100 years of unchallenged precedent, then where did the Holy Spirit go wrong?  After all Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were all led to the Septuagint.  Christ says “But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth” (Jn 16:13 and elsewhere).  Did the Holy Spirit lead the Gospel writers astray?  After all, the Hebrew texts could have been available to them.  It would not have required heroic effort for them to go to them.  They were available at the Temple.

 

And before you say, it didn’t matter which translation they went to, yes it did.  By directing all four to the Septuagint it established the prayers for the dead and therefore purgatory as dogma.  All four is not an accident.  Did the Holy Spirit after just some twenty to thirty years after Christ’s crucifixion guide the NT writers incorrectly?

Saint Augustine:

But I doubt that the Apocrypha/Deuterocanon actually is part of the Septuagint.

Manny:

Oh I never imagined that’s what you were referring to.  That’s why it kept going over my head.  I have never heard otherwise.  Where do you see anything to suggest they were not part of it?  I’m certainly not a history of the Bible scholar, but I have not come across that anywhere. 

Saint Augustine:

But as for the idea that they weren’t–Ockam’s Razor ain’t a bad place to start. But since the LXX is a translation of Scriptures, and since OT Scriptures are abundantly used in the NT, then we have at least two other reasons of some interest:

 

–the grand total of zero quotations from the Apocrypha/Deuterocanon in the NT. (Or did I miss a quotation?)

–the occasional reference to the OT Scriptures in ways that apparently reference the entire Tanakh but not the Apocrypha. (Although I have learned of interesting objections to that last one!)

This is a transition in the conversation.  While that first part (above) dealt with the canonicity of the deuterocanonical books, this next part dealt with the Masoretic text being reconstructed almost a millennium after Christ. 

Manny:

St A, I’ve been spending all my free time today learning about the history of the various Bibles.  I have to admit to you it is more complicated than I have outlined in this thread.  I’m going to write up the complications in a post, but it may take me a little while and possibly not by tonight. First let me address our questions here. 

 

Yes, there are quotations or references from the Hebrew OT, referred to as the Masoretic Text, but the statistics I found are the following.  Of the several hundred quotes and references in the NT, 20% are in common between the Septuagint and Masoretic.  Of the 80% which are different, 90% are from the Septuagint and 10% are from the Masoretic.  I wonder if the NT writers were sometimes using their memory of a phrase since 10% isn’t all that much.  But it is not exclusively Septuagint.  On that I can see then how you might hold to your position. 

 

As to Occam’s razor, no, I still think Occam’s Razor supports the Septuagint.  There are lots of OT books the NT didn’t quote from.  Because they didn’t quote from the deuterocanonical ones doesn’t mean anything.  The Septuagint was a bundle of all the books, so Occam’s razor would say if they relied on the bulk of that bundle, then the entire bundle was accepted.

Here’s a major fact I learned today which expanded my perception and perhaps alters some of my rationales, but I still believe the Septuagint should be the Christian text of the OT.  In the  third century AD, Judaism only established the canon of books, which books Judaism holds as scripture, not the official text.  But it did not agree on which of the variations of the texts was canonical, and given the loss of Hebrew it made the composition not so easy and straight forward.  The official Hebrew text was fixed centuries later, in the 9th century, known as the Masoretic Text.  What we have as the Masoretic texts were an assimilation of old manuscripts and oral tradition composed hundreds of years later.  So let me work on my comment that brings all this together. 

†

Faith Filled Friday: Psalm 23, The Lord Is My Shepherd

The windy storm from a few nights ago really affected us.  My cable TV, my land line telephone, and my Internet were all down for several days.  They are finally back on, just in time to post a Faith Filled Friday.  God must be with me! :)

Today my family and I went to a funeral service for the passing of my wife's great uncle, Uncle Marty.  He was 93 and the last few years were a struggle for him.  He's now at peace and with his beloved wife Esther.  May the Lord eternally shine upon them both.

I have mentioned that my wife's side of the family is Jewish.  I really enjoy Jewish religious services.  I've only been to weddings, Bar Mitzvah, and funerals, and unfortunately mostly funerals.  I love the Hebrew prayers.  Of course I have no idea what they are saying, but sometimes a prayer is spoken in both Hebrew and English.  I love wearing a yarmulke. It's a shame we Catholic men are not required to wear head covering before the Lord. 

In honor of Uncle Marty, I'm going to post a video of Psalm 23, sung in Hebrew.  This clip tries to capture the how it might have been sung in ancient Hebrew.  The accompaniment is very simple, as ancient music was assumed to be.  It provides a transliteration of the Hebrew and English translation, of which we are probably all familiar with. 

 

 

I also found this fascinating exegesis of this great psalm.  I have no idea who is this Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, but he provides penetrating insight that can only be obtained from understanding the subtle connotations of the Hebrew.  We lose some of that in an English translation.

 



So much of this Rabbi reminds me of what is wonderful about older Jewish men: the gentleness, the humor and wit, and the love of intellect.