How Could the Church Fathers Have Believed that Matthew was the Hebrew Gospel - and it used the LXX?

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Secret Alias
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How Could the Church Fathers Have Believed that Matthew was the Hebrew Gospel - and it used the LXX?

Post by Secret Alias »

I principally read the writings of early Christianity to witness firsthand what the limits of credulity are. But here's something I wrestled with this morning. If Matthew was supposed to be the 'Jewish gospel' written 'in the Hebrew dialect' - how could the prophetic utterances have accorded with the LXX? Could anyone have been this stupid not to have noticed this?

Aside from the fact that modern scholars haven't considered this contradiction, I wonder if any ancient considered this difficulty. The significance of this is the fact that Eznik has a debate with the Marcionite interest in 'heavens' - ostensibly owing to the Hebrew text of the Bible. Against the Marcionites Eznik says that the 'Seventy' translate the passage 'heaven' in Greek which is supposedly the correct reading. My point is that there is a long history of early Christians arguing that the LXX is the more accurate reading of the Old Testament. Could the Church Fathers have argued that the Hebrew text was wrong? Of course the could have - and did. Just look at the arguments with respect to the Virgin Birth being foretold by Isaiah.

I wonder though whether all of this points to the Diatessaron-gospel of Ammonius - a four column work which had its origin from a pagan writer (Ammonius Saccas) - being written in Greek as a corrective text against the use of Hebrew scriptures by early Christian heretics.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: How Could the Church Fathers Have Believed that Matthew was the Hebrew Gospel - and it used the LXX?

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Secret Alias wrote: Sun Jun 23, 2019 6:20 am I principally read the writings of early Christianity to witness firsthand what the limits of credulity are. But here's something I wrestled with this morning. If Matthew was supposed to be the 'Jewish gospel' written 'in the Hebrew dialect' - how could the prophetic utterances have accorded with the LXX? Could anyone have been this stupid not to have noticed this?
Matthew may be more mixed here than you give him credit for:

John C. Hawkins, Horae Synopticae, page 154: It has often been noticed that the quotations which are introduced by [Matthew] the Evangelist himself agree much less closely with the LXX than those which occur in the course of the common narrative.

Stephen Cook, blog post: Richard Longnecker has pointed out that in the Gospel of Matthew the evangelist’s own quotations of the Old Testament usually follow the Hebrew reading, whereas the citations by Jesus "are strongly Septuagintal." — Link: https://blog.stephencook.com.au/2013/06 ... estament-5.

Holman Bible Dictionary, Old Testament Quotations in the New Testament: Of Matthew's 43 quotes, 11 agree with the LXX, while the other 32 differ from all known sources.

ΤΙ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ
Secret Alias
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Re: How Could the Church Fathers Have Believed that Matthew was the Hebrew Gospel - and it used the LXX?

Post by Secret Alias »

I was actually inspired by an examination of Matthew 4:15-16 which while not 'agreeing' with Isa 9:1 - 2 is still based on the LXX when Psalm 107 is brought into the mix. In other words, it's not slavish in its LXX-origins in terms of the reading of a particular scripture - but the building blocks seem to come from the LXX. At the very least there is a difficulty that the 'Hebrew gospel' is not derived from the Hebrew scriptures, no?

In later Imperial decrees the use of the LXX in Greek-speaking Jewish synagogues was mandated.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Re: How Could the Church Fathers Have Believed that Matthew was the Hebrew Gospel - and it used the LXX?

Post by Secret Alias »

Also if the Marcionites were against the LXX - as Eznik suggests - could that be in part responsible for their identification as a sect who stood 'against the Jewish scriptures' or 'against the prophesies'? Remember, the early orthodox drew from a bad translation of Isaiah to 'prove' that the Virgin Birth was real and predicted. If the Marcionites - which they did - opposed the Virgin Birth and the scriptural proofs provided by the orthodox might that have added fuel to the claim they were 'against the Jewish scriptures'? We see this thing all the time. 'I hate Chinese food!' Really, what have you had? 'Panda Express.' Well ... A story from my own life. I know a group of men who come from Kenya who routinely cook their own food and I have been dragged into eating their ugali (sema) and kuku (chicken) - a kind of maize cake dish served with chicken in a broth eaten with the hands. It was always horrible. When I finally went to Kenya and ate the same dish cooked in its proper setting - it was actually quite good. The reason, it turns out, comes down to something which made my mother a terrible cook. The guys substituted the proper ingredients being far away from home and for expediency. Instead of fresh tomatoes they used Italian tomato sauce etc. The point is that I told people how awful Bantu cooking was when in fact I had only known a bad copy.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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