Originally Posted by Jerusalem Blade

Richard,

Just a brief note here (I have to prepare a number of sermons for an upcoming series, and my time is tight).

You said, "Christian scribes tinkered with the (previously completed) text of the LXX?"

You see, this is perhaps the prime issue. What portions of the LXX were completed when? It is generally agreed there was a translation of the Five Books of Moses, fairly well executed, before the time of Christ, and that this was used by the dispersed Jews in the Greek-speaking world, including Egypt, although not in Israel, where Aramaic was the lingua franca. If you look over the study by Dr. Jones above, you will see the mythological (as in ficticious) quality of the reports of a pre-Christ completed LXX, especially the tale of the 72 elders putting it together with attending miracles.

It does appear to be reliable information that the OT versions in Greek, of which there were many -- and many portions of the OT by various translators -- were "corrected" against the NT quotes.

There is also the matter of the NT writers often not quoting verbatim, but "loosely" as they were guided by the Holy Spirit, sometimes translating so as to interpret in the light of New Covenant truth. Imagine post-apostolic scribes trying to "back-correct" such loose OT quotes!

If you want to do an in-depth (although remarkably brief) study of this phenomena, I highly recommend Dr. Jones' work (in pdf), and then, if you want to look at many particular passages, Dr. DiVietro's book noted in an above post. They are both thin volumes.

Steve