The Septuagint: a Roman / Christian fabrication to support the NT

[mlinssen]

We all know the fable about the 70 or 72 translating the Septuagint from Hebrew into Greek in Alexandria around 300 BCE, which naturally is a lie: The Hebrew Bible wasn't created until 275-290 BCE (which Gmirkin has successfully demonstrated)

The volumes that we have are each curated and delivered to us by Christians, and infested with typical scribal habits such as ü, ï, line-ending superlinear replacing a Nu, apostrophes in between Mat'taios and ag'gelos, and "nomina sacra" of course: all the scribal peculiarities that we find in Thomas, we find in xtian writings - even in the Greek fragments of Thomas.
The alleged Joshua son of Nun equating to Jesus is one such example: viewtopic.php?p=132096#p132096 - all of that is a Christian falsification, even though it perhaps is a try out for finding (cough) "evidence of IS being prophesied" in the Tanakh

Is there even a single book found, in Greek, before the Christians laid their hands on it?
In other words, is there any evidence that the Septuagint was NOT created by the Romans, next to the NT, in order to support their hijacking of Chrestianity?

Do you know of 1 single (almost) complete Tanakh book in Greek without ü, ï and nomina sacra?

[ConfusedEnoch]

Forgive me if what I say will come across as ignorant or unfounded, but I was under the impression that we have found a few fragments of the Septuagint that have been dated to the first and second centuries before Christ.

From a simple Google search,

The oldest manuscripts of the Septuagint include 2nd-century-BCE fragments of Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Rahlfs nos. 801, 819, and 957) and 1st-century-BCE fragments of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the Twelve Minor Prophets (Alfred Rahlfs nos. 802, 803, 805, 848, 942, and 943).

Again, my knowledge of Early Christianity and the inception of its Church is rudimentary at best, so please feel free to correct me on this; if these are conclusively shown to have been written in the 2nd century BCE for example, but as you say they are also Roman fabrications to support the NT, does that imply that the figure known as "Yeshua/Iesous" would have been a fabrication as well? I'm not a Mythicist but I've always found it a tad too convenient that the Saviour would have a name that means "Saviour"... Perhaps that was not his actual name, but he was given that name to fit this specific narrative?

[schillingklaus]

That is only an insignificant part of the messianic predictions.

[mlinssen]

Forgive me if what I say will come across as ignorant or unfounded, but I was under the impression that we have found a few fragments of the Septuagint that have been dated to the first and second centuries before Christ.

From a simple Google search,

The oldest manuscripts of the Septuagint include 2nd-century-BCE fragments of Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Rahlfs nos. 801, 819, and 957) and 1st-century-BCE fragments of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the Twelve Minor Prophets (Alfred Rahlfs nos. 802, 803, 805, 848, 942, and 943).

Again, my knowledge of Early Christianity and the inception of its Church is rudimentary at best, so please feel free to correct me on this; if these are conclusively shown to have been written in the 2nd century BCE for example, but as you say they are also Roman fabrications to support the NT, does that imply that the figure known as "Yeshua/Iesous" would have been a fabrication as well? I'm not a Mythicist but I've always found it a tad too convenient that the Saviour would have a name that means "Saviour"... Perhaps that was not his actual name, but he was given that name to fit this specific narrative?

Fragments indeed - but with such an allegedly grand undertaking shouldn't we have found at least 1 single book, largely complete?

You neatly align the fragments you name in the order of the books of the Tanakh - but all these are fragments by different hands, from different finds. Where is the collective? Surely the Tanakh was translated into Greek at some point, yes

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septuag ... :_801-1000

fragments of Leviticus 1:11, 2:3-6:5 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/4Q120 = 802
fragments of Numbers 3:39-4:16 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/4Q121 = 803
fragments of Exodus 28:4-7 - no wiki = 805
Deuteronomy 17:14 to 33:29 (with gaps) - viewtopic.php?p=132111#p132111 = 848
Genesis 3:10-12; 4:5-7.23; 7:17-20; 37:34-38:1; 38:10-12 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_Fouad_266 = 942
fragments of minor prophets - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Se2grXII = 943

Apart from the dating, these are individual fragments and it is hard to imagine that any one of them was part of a collection.
What I'm really looking for is something like a collection, as e.g. Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, Bezae: how come that only Christians were interested in having the Tanakh in Greek in full? And how come that, with even the most optimistic palaeographic dating, those all date to 350 CE at the very earliest?

I'll enlighten you on the topic of

the Saviour would have a name that means "Saviour"

In every single manuscript available to us save one, the "name" is invariably written as ις or ιης - how do you read Saviour into those?

[ConfusedEnoch]

Thank you for the information!

Another question for you, how did they determine whether or not the fragments belong to the "Septuagint", other than the fact they were written in Greek - namely the Alexandrian dialect? It seems rather strange that the conclusion was made entirely based on that fact.

Couldn't the Hellenistic Jews from different regions translate the Old Testament (and especially the essential Torah) to Greek independently of each other? If anything, I think the fact we haven't found any fragments from the Minor Prophets books reinforces the idea that these translations weren't part of some large "collection" but simply used to teach Greek-speaking Jews...

In every single manuscript available to us save one, the "name" is invariably written as ις or ιης - how do you read Saviour into those?

I was more referring to the original name of Jesus before the transliteration, as in "Yehoshua" = YHWH's Salvation or YHWH's Saviour.

[Charles Wilson]

If the Basis of the Original Story was Semitic (I believe it was), then the Original Name may have been a Title instead of a Name.

John 1: 29 (RSV):

[29] The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!"

The name has already been assigned but an earlier Fragment remains: "Behold 'Immar-Yah..." => "Lamb of God"
Strong's H563 (https://studybible.info/strongs/H563): " אמּר "
Strong's H564 (https://studybible.info/strongs/H564): " אמּר "

Identical words - minus the later diacriticals.

The Title is - at least - "A Priest of the Mishmarot Group 'Immer'."

CW

[Leucius Charinus]

I'll enlighten you on the topic of

the Saviour would have a name that means "Saviour"

In every single manuscript available to us save one, the "name" is invariably written as ις or ιης - how do you read Saviour into those?

I read somewhere that scholars have classed various manuscripts of the Greek LXX to be either Jewish of Christian on the basis of the absence or presence of "Nomina Sacra" (respectively). IDK the extent of this practice or whether it is a consensus position.

As to the problem of the absence and lack of complete manuscripts for the LXX that is a good question the answer to which must at some point involve a study of the theological library of Origen. No matter what happened before Origen it seems clear that the earliest Greek Bible codices most probably had a transmission history through this 3rd century library because it was supposedly "inherited" by Eusebius. (via Pamphilus). Origen is the sole Pre Nicene "Father" with a working knowledge of both Greek and Hebrew. He is famous for his parallel translations in his "Hexapla".

Whoever wrote the NT canonical material certainly saturated their product with nomina sacra. This suggests they already preserved (or created) the LXX material using nomina sacra as a consistent literary characteristic.

The question is when. I too agree with Gmirkin's dating of the Hebrew Bible c.273 BCE at Alexandria. But the question here is where is the physical evidence for the Greek manuscripts before the Christians borrowed it as "Old Testament" which would be data mined and copy/pasted to create a "New Testament" and then bound together in a codex. Practically all surviving Christian literature are remnants of physical codices. There seems to be only 4 instances of rolls. How many of the Greek LXX fragments are from codices? And how many from rolls?


FWIW here is a summary of the physical evidence for the Greek LXX which I made quite some time ago.

Physical Evidence for the Greek LXX

DATE ITEM

281-246 BCE Rule of Ptolemy II Philadelphus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_Aristeas

170-130 BCE Estimated forgery of the Letter of Aristeas

2nd Cen BCE Papyrus Rylands 458, (assigned palaeographically) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_Rylands_458

1st/2nd BCE Greek papyri in the Qumran - http://www.sdnhm.org/scrolls/description.html

1st/2nd BCE 9 Greek papyri in the Qumran - http://hebrewscripturesandmore.com/Blog/?p=359

1st Cen BCE Papyrus Fouad 266 (assigned palaeographically) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_Fouad_266]

--------------------------

050 CE P.Oxy 3522 - Job 42.11,12 (assigned palaeographically [AP])

037-100 CE Titus Flavius Josephus aka Joseph ben Mattathias - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus

100 CE P.Oxy 4443 - Esther 6,7 (assigned palaeographically)

150 CE P.Oxy 656 (150 CE) Gen 14:21-23; 15:5-9; 19:32-20:11;24:28-47; 27:32-33, 40-41 (AP)

185-254 CE Origen and Hexapla - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origen - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexapla

312-339 CE Eusebius got most, if not all, of his information about what Christian writings
were accepted by the various churches from the writings and library of Origen

4th century http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_Genesis - Cotton Genesis

6th century Codex Marchalianus - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Marchalianus

[mlinssen]

I'll enlighten you on the topic of

the Saviour would have a name that means "Saviour"

In every single manuscript available to us save one, the "name" is invariably written as ις or ιης - how do you read Saviour into those?

I read somewhere that scholars have classed various manuscripts of the Greek LXX to be either Jewish of Christian on the basis of the absence or presence of "Nomina Sacra" (respectively). IDK the extent of this practice or whether it is a consensus position.

THAT would be EXACTLY what I'm looking for!!!
I bet that the "Jewish" LXX all date prior to 4th CE, and the Christian ones all 4th or later.
And I also bet that the "Jewish" WITHOUT EXCEPTION consist of fragmentary MSS, at max a minor series of the Tanakh, e.g. only the Torah, only Nevi'im (likely divided in two as well), only Ketuvim or only Sifrei Emet

And it would be even more interesting to compare the contested verses such as Matthew's parthenos source between the "Jewish" and Christian versions

Once again, the Septuagint as we know it is nothing but yet another Greco-Roman product meant to support its hijacking of Chrestianity - and the very, very earliest fragment that we could possibly have dates to after Justin Martyr & chums

[mlinssen]

FWIW here is a summary of the physical evidence for the Greek LXX which I made quite some time ago.

Physical Evidence for the Greek LXX

DATE ITEM

281-246 BCE Rule of Ptolemy II Philadelphus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_Aristeas

170-130 BCE Estimated forgery of the Letter of Aristeas

Inadmissible given the hand: this is 10th+ CE miniscule with full blown diacritics, and it's all fun and fraud how this gets dates a millennium prior to that:

Letter_of_Aristeas_(Vat._gr._747_f._1r).jpg (128.28 KiB) Viewed 1628 times

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_ ... f._1r).jpg
An obvious Christian hand-down, no need to look any further: there is nothing original to this MS

The quote from Wikipedia says enough:

Over twenty Greek manuscript copies of the letter are known to survive, dating from the 11th to the 15th century. The letter is also mentioned and quoted in other ancient texts, most notably in Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus (c. 93 AD), in Life of Moses by Philo of Alexandria (c. AD 15), and in an excerpt from Aristobulus of Alexandria (c. 160 BC) preserved in Praeparatio evangelica by Eusebius.[6]

2nd Cen BCE Papyrus Rylands 458, (assigned palaeographically) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_Rylands_458

Source:
'Our Bible & the Ancient Manuscripts' by Sir Frederick Kenyon (1895 - 4th Ed. 1939) Pg 63 & Plate VI.
Arthur S. Hunt [et al], 'Catalogue of the Greek and Latin Papyri in the John Rylands Library Manchester', 4 vols (Manchester, 1911-52). Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 20 (1936), pp.219-45.
Recto: https://www.digitalcollections.manchest ... -P-00458/1
Verso (dunno what that content is from): https://www.digitalcollections.manchest ... -P-00458/2
Now that is what an early hand looks like; no makeup, consecutive letters without space: the only goal was to preserve the text no matter what, on very expensive Papyrus. Look at the letters as well, they're all block capitals, nothing like script. 2nd BCE?! Really, this looks not very different from e.g. Bezae, even slightly prettier, with neat finishes to every letter's start and end that seem to be just one step before script. But no diacritics for sure, no nomina sacra, no nothing

Discussed earlier here in this forum: viewtopic.php?p=132115#p132115

1st/2nd BCE Greek papyri in the Qumran - http://www.sdnhm.org/scrolls/description.html

Dead link. Please help, thank you

1st/2nd BCE 9 Greek papyri in the Qumran - http://hebrewscripturesandmore.com/Blog/?p=359

Dead link. Please help, thank you

1st Cen BCE Papyrus Fouad 266 (assigned palaeographically) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_Fouad_266]

I've already discussed that here: viewtopic.php?p=132111#p132111
The hand looks very similar to the Rylands 458, and there are no abbreviations or any of the typical Christian scribal signs

--------------------------

050 CE P.Oxy 3522 - Job 42.11,12 (assigned palaeographically [AP])

I've already discussed that here: viewtopic.php?p=132119#p132119
Nothing but an alleged diaresis on the i which is hard to distinguish

037-100 CE Titus Flavius Josephus aka Joseph ben Mattathias - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus

100 CE P.Oxy 4443 - Esther 6,7 (assigned palaeographically)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus ... nchus_4443

Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 4443 (P. Oxy. 65. 4443, TM 61923, LDAB 3080, Rahlfs 0996) is a fragment of a Septuagint manuscript (LXX) written on papyrus in scroll form.[1] It is the oldest extant manuscript that contains Esther 8.16-9.3 of the Septuagint text and verse numbering.[2][3] according to the text of LXX. The manuscript has been assigned palaeographically to 50-150 CE.

Papyri.info still is open access, unlike Trismegistos: please do remind that one Sunday per month Trismegistos *is* open access!
https://papyri.info/dclp/61923
I spent a few minutes and landed at a numeric IP: http://163.1.169.40/gsdl/collect/POxy/i ... .hires.jpg
Downloaded that, and here it is:

POxy.v0065.n4443.a.01.hires.jpg (1.2 MiB) Viewed 1612 times

On line 8 from the bottom there is a diaresis on the i: ï
If have to do a deeper study but this is "Christian scribal practice" and again it is noted that these appear in Thomas as well: ï, ü, apostrophes and line-ending superlinears representing Nu

So we have a first here that seems to be in between old and new

150 CE P.Oxy 656 (150 CE) Gen 14:21-23; 15:5-9; 19:32-20:11;24:28-47; 27:32-33, 40-41 (AP)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_Oxyrhynchus_656

Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 656 (abbreviated as P.Oxy.IV 656, VH 13, LBAD 3094, or Rahlfs 905) – is a Greek fragment of a Septuagint manuscript written on papyrus in codex form. This is a manuscript discovered at Oxyrhynchus, and it has been catalogued with number 656. Palaeographycally it is dated to late second century or early third century.

Not helpful, the extra / corrected refences are: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Gr. bibl. d. 5 (P), TM 61937, TC OT8, vHTR 13

https://medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/cata ... cript_4950

No online images freely available, but we have
P. Oxy. 4 656 (Grenfell, Bernard P. / Hunt, Arthur S. - 1904). Trismegistos hides the link in order to bait subscribers, alas

Volume IV is what we need, of course: https://archive.org/details/oxyrhynchuspapyr04gren

Page 28-35, and 323 for the plate: https://archive.org/details/oxyrhynchus ... 3/mode/1up

Two pages up there is P. Oxy. 654, The Greek copy of Thomas that desperately tries to mark beginning and end of logia - that, on a side note

This fragment however contains much more than just the half page at the end of the book, yet while looking at the transcription it seems that NS aren't present - although my experience with G&H is that they just don't transcribe them. But in the intro they mention the absence of nomina sacra, offering the possibility of "individual peculiarity" for that (LOL).
So, no nomina sacra here, and perhaps no other scribal habits either - yet can't verify any for ourselves as there's only 1 leaf, in fairly low resolution / quality

185-254 CE Origen and Hexapla - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origen - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexapla

I saw 2 MSS in Hebrew (LOL), no use

312-339 CE Eusebius got most, if not all, of his information about what Christian writings were accepted by the various churches from the writings and library of Origen

4th century http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_Genesis - Cotton Genesis

The Cotton Genesis (London, British Library, MS Cotton Otho B VI) is a 4th- or 5th-century Greek Illuminated manuscript copy of the Book of Genesis.[1]

Really? The pic shows a more than generously illustrated page, and I'm still downloading from archive.org - but I feel free to discard this as something that couldn't possibly date prior to 7th CE. But perhaps I'll change my mind - not. Eusebius, really? Would be interesting to see a page though, but it's clear how that will look

6th century Codex Marchalianus - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Marchalianus

6th CE - sample VatLib page is https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.2125/0012

Full blown diacritics, superlinears, nomina sacra, line ending superlinear - as to be expected. A beautiful hand by the way
[/quote]

Well that's it. If you can provide the missing links...

[Leucius Charinus]

Well that's it. If you can provide the missing links...

These two dead links both relate to Greek papyri in the Qumran.
FWIW I googled for current results - not much to say, here is the first:

https://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/learn ... nd-scripts

ll of the Greek texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls are written in koine, the common dialect of the post-classical Hellenistic and Roman worlds and the New Testament language. A total of 27 Greek manuscripts have been identified from the Qumran caves. This includes all remains of 19 papyri found in Qumran Cave 7, and several Greek manuscripts preserved in Cave 4, made up of mostly biblical fragments. While the majority of the Cave 7 manuscripts cannot be identified, exceptions are a copy of Exodus and an Apocrypha work, the Epistle of Jeremiah. Attempts to identify some Cave 7 Greek fragments as Enoch are subject to debate, while attempts to identify fragments as New Testament have proven unsuccessful. The majority of Greek manuscripts found at other Judean Desert sites are papyri documents from the Roman era. Most were recovered from the refuge caves of the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132-135 ce). Several Jewish Greek documentary papyri dating to before 74 ce were found at Masada. Among the non-documentary texts is the well-preserved translation of the Twelve Minor Prophets Scroll found at Nahal Hever, dating to the first century ce. Another unusual find is a text in iambic trimeters from Wadi Murabba'at.

etc

Alot of work has been done on this stuff. IMO it is unlikely that any one of these fragments contain nomina sacra because if they did the Christian scholars would be all over it. The general opinion is that there is nothing Christian in the DSS.

There is little doubt in my mind that the Greek Septuagint was employed as a foundational element of a Roman / Christian literary fabrication of two parts. The Old and the New Parts. The New Part was to be the NT which we now call the canonical Jesus Story Book. We all know very well how much mapping, Greek text copy/pasting and thematic story borrowing there was between the Greek LXX and the Greek Canonical NT. Thomas Brodie suggests all this was conducted in some sort of literary school. I agree.

And when or why did they add the Christian trade mark fingerprints of the nomina sacra? Or were these added by some later editor as a number of scholars have suggested? The fact that practically all of the manuscripts are from codices suggests that the entire phenomenon of Christian Origins (meaning the NT and its ecclesia) is very late. Of course this has not deterred some Christian scholars from making the proposition that the Christian evangelists invented the codex. Confirmation bias in extreme mode.

Origen and the Greek LXX

Origen and his most authoritative library in the mid 3rd century is pivotal to our understanding of Christian origins. Biblical historians seem to be agreed that its most likely that the manuscripts used by Eusebius to manufacture the NT Bible codices for Constantine were ultimately derived from manuscripts held in the archives of the library of the Christian Father Origen. Both the Greek LXX and the Greek NT (if it then existed) most likely had manuscript transmission histories through this library of Origen.

"The most important fact in the history of Christian Doctrine
was that the father of Christian Theology, Origen,
was a Platonic philosopher at the school of Alexandria.
He built into Christian Doctrine the whole
cosmic drama of the soul, which he took from Plato."

Harvard Theological Review (1959);
cited by Bernard Simon (2004),
The Essence of the Gnostics, p.111

The problem for the mainstream theory is that the classical historians have insisted that there was also a separate person called Origen in the early 3rd century and this other historical Origen was a Platonist philospher, and not a Christian at all. This pagan Origen may have have been Jewish and/or had an interest in the Hebrew Bible and its Greek translations. We don't know. If I had to make a bet I'd put money on Eusebius fabricating a literary source which would be known as the Christian Origen.

For the Christian theologian and philosopher, see Origen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origen

Origen the Pagan (Greek: Ὠριγένης; fl. early 3rd century) was a Platonist philosopher who lived in Alexandria. He was a student of Ammonius Saccas and a contemporary of Plotinus in Ammonius's philosophy school in Alexandria.[1]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origen_the_Pagan