[Steven Avery]

Hi Folks,

Brandon, you make excellent points from the scholarship of Alan Millard about Hebrew at the time of Jesus, also Ken Penner has shown rather conclusively that the translation of Hebraisti as 'Aramaic' in the modern versions is an error. The word for Aramaic would be Syriac or Chaldee, Hebraisti was .. surprise .. Hebrew.

Originally Posted by Diligent

- where the LXX agrees with the NT it is simply because the LXX got it right.

Nope. The Greek OT was smoothed in many places to match NT readings, such as the awkward Greek OT Cainan addition (I believe the Floyd Jones paper discusses that in some depth, also issues like the number 70 or 75 out of Egypt). These tamperings were not 'right', this was Bible correcting.

Before going into a lot of details, may I suggest everybody interested in this do a little study on Psalm 14 in the Greek OT (hint, also look at Romans 3) -- to get a picture of how blatant such tampering with the Greek scriptures could be.

Tim, this understanding must precede any analysis of how many NT quotes are closer to or match one text or another. The first issue is simple, if the Greek MSS from 400 AD and later are closer to the NT, is it because the NT was using the Greek (usually an orphan reading with no DSS, Vulgate, Targum, Peshitta, Targumim, Hebrew MSS, Talmud & Midrash or even early church writer support) or because the Greek OT was tampered ?

Note: the tamperings were from many sides, Jewish anti-messianic tamperings as of Aquila and incompetent alexandrian scribes (good 'ol Vaticanus) being two distinct and separate types of Greek OT shenanigans. This is a long discussion in itself, considering the editions of Theodotian and Symmachus also being examined, and the Jerome reference to recensions, including Lucian. (Yes, the Lucian recension is not a Westcott-Hort myth in the OT, only in the NT was it a modernist fabrication !).

I am not going into all the questions about why the Holy Spirit was not constrained to only reference the Tanach (OT) woodenly, literally, one-dimensionally in the NT. On this forum most of the readers will understand that easily, whether you consider it Holy Spirit insight, or Matthew's midrash, or the liberty of the Lord Jesus to combine verses - and more.

Shalom,
Steven Avery