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Originally Posted by TimV  Quote: |
Further, it was proven by Humphrey Hody that the Letter of Aristreas - the only source of the legend of the "Septuagint" was fraudulent, the same way the Donation of Constantine and Isidorian Decretals are fraudulent. Instead of dealing, calmly and dispassionately, with these historical facts you started on a tirade accusing us of being "conspiracy theorists."
| Look, friend. If I could get you to give a clear answer to a clear question, without Fundie style rhetorical logic, without going off onto other subjects, without anything but focusing in on answering the question, why do you say that the Letter of Aristreas is the only source for the "legend" of the Septuagint? If Philo lived literally during the same time as Christ and wrote that there was an annual celebration on the island that the Septuagint was translated to celebrate the making of the translation, then why isn't he a source? |
Dear Tim,
"....there is no new thing under the sun." Ecclesiastes 1:9
I've provided very detailed and clear answers. As I've stated several times, Hody dealt with all of this especially in his second work on the subject which included a reply to Isaac Vossius.
Philo is obviously quoting the Letter of Aristeas, or maybe vice versa. I pulled out my copy of The Works of Philo to refresh my memory and while his account of festivals is independent, so is his claim of inspiration of the translation whereby each group independently came up with the exact same translation... "
every one of them employed the self-same nouns and verbs, as if some unseen prompter had suggested all their language." Yonge, The Works of Philo - On the Life of Moses VII (37), p 494. Of course paragraph 40 tells you precisely what Philo is doing, creating a fake Mosaic "antiquity" for Platonic philosophy to support his syncretization. Again, I would point you to Wasserstein's "Legend of the Septuagint from Classical Antiquity to Today, 2005"
Of course, what no one has brought up is cross collating Quitna, Sexta and Septima - the most obvious that very plainly demonstrates the post-Apostolic alterations, is Habakkuk 3:13 in Sexta: "Thou wentest forth to save thy people for the sake of
Jesus thy anointed One..."
When you depart from the
authentic and legitimate tradition of the Masoretic Hebrew and Received Greek texts you are being set up for a fall. That is our confessional standard and that is what I'm sticking with.
And although you'll probably think this last statement is going off onto another subject, which is isn't, but when you then go back farther in the Alexandrian tradition you'll find that a great majority of scholars today agree that the Old Testament is actually Hebrew adaptations of Ugartic literature substituting Yahweh for Baal. And how do you argue with that, these scholars "know" and speak in absolutes that the Ugartic literature, which in many instances is an exact copy of the Psalms and other Old Testament books, represents a tradition that pre-dates the Exodus by a millienia.
If you accept their version then we are all fools, either that, or this process of translating the Old Testament into other languages has been going on for quite some time, with alteration to discredit it. When you get down to where the rubber meets the road, no one denies that their is a Greek Old Testament or even Ugaritic copies of the Psalms - it's the
dates that are in question, and who copied from whom. I believe the Greek Old Testament represents a recension adapted to the New Testament and I believe the Phoenicians copied the Old Testament adapted to Baal worship.