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. 

 

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