StephenGoranson wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2023 3:27 pm
NG wrote above, in part:
"....I [NG] pointed out that the Alexandrian scenario is irrelevant to the divergence of texts...."
May I suggest that it is not "irrelevant"?
Are you really denying SG, that the original Hebrew Vorlage is lost? And that such a conclusion stands regardless of Gmirkin's thesis?
Gmirkin agrees with the scholarly findings of other academics that the LXX testifies to a missing Hebrew Vorlage. Do you have a problem with him agreeing with scholarship on that point?
Do you think he should agree with some variant of the Documentary Hypothesis and is a bad person for questioning it? And that I am a bad person, an ant-semite, and a bad speller, because I attempt to correct misrepresentations of his views?
The view that the Pentateuch or Hexateuch was written in Alexandria and translated into Greek needs to be distinguished, I believe -- though I don't know what Russell Gmirkin says explicitly about this and I may have forgotten for now something he has written -- needs to be distinguished from the view that the text is to be declared sacred holy writ in every Hebrew stroke and Greek iota. We can even see conflicts within the books between different viewpoints of god and tradition.
All scholars who have specialized in this area, as far as I am aware, acknowledge as a fact that we no longer can recover the original Hebrew text.
It is evident that the original work was considered up for revision by various readers and scribes. The idea that every jot and tittle had to be preserved was clearly not the dominant and only view at the time the various scrolls that turned up at Qumran were first written.
StephenGoranson wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2023 1:18 pm
If a Hebrew Alexandian-created Vorlage--unified, broadly officially authorized, and first-ever-imagined as by Gmirkin--and of a Greek translation in some early Alexandria-imagined by same folks (by Gmirkin) creation why were both soon lost?
Or, rather, do not appear as such in the evidence?
Your highlighted quote, Mr. Godfrey, does not support what you claim that it does.
Or do you imagine that Schenker actually approves of your urged imagined scenario?
Why is the Hebrew Vorlage for the MT and other surviving Hebrew texts lost? Are you denying the Hebrew Vorlage has been lost? Are you saying that our MT is the original text?
My quote was from Emmanuel Tov, by the way.
The MT is not the original text. However there are numerous cases where the Samaritan Pentateuch and the LXX agree against the MT and on internal evidence the MT is original. See for example Shared TraditionLXX by Emmanuel Tov. This may cause problems for the idea that both the Hebrew Vorlage of the Pentateuch and the LXX translation originate at around the same time. It suggests rather a history of development of the Hebrew text before the translation of one of the text types into Greek.
"...suggests a history of development of the Hebrew text before the translation of one of the text types into Greek."
Quite right, Andrew.
(PS, to strive to be fair: Emanuel not Emmanuel.)
andrewcriddle wrote: ↑Sat Mar 11, 2023 5:08 am
The MT is not the original text. However there are numerous cases where the Samaritan Pentateuch and the LXX agree against the MT and on internal evidence the MT is original. See for example Shared TraditionLXX by Emmanuel Tov. This may cause problems for the idea that both the Hebrew Vorlage of the Pentateuch and the LXX translation originate at around the same time. It suggests rather a history of development of the Hebrew text before the translation of one of the text types into Greek.
Andrew Criddle
I think your interpretation of Tov's conclusions in this data-heavy article may be mistaken, since Tov elsewhere holds that proto-LXX is earlier than proto-MT (Tov 2015: 221, 223 n. 46).
Tov, Emanuel, The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research. Jerusalem Biblical Studies 8. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015.
However one might define "proto-LXX" and/or "proto-MT" (not Platonic categories?), do any such definitions exclude any pre-270s versions of a written Torah?
StephenGoranson wrote: ↑Sat Mar 11, 2023 2:26 pm
However one might define "proto-LXX" and/or "proto-MT" (not Platonic categories?), do any such definitions exclude any pre-270s versions of a written Torah?
It's Tov's terminology. Proto-LXX is the original Hebrew Vorlage behind the LXX. A standardized MT text did not emerge until first century CE. The MT family of texts was previously quite fluid. Proto-MT refers to the earliest hypothetical form(s) of this category of text.
I am aware of the terminology. I have written here--more than once--that MT (standardized) is much later than 270s bce. So, yet again, we agree on that point.
But that is not an answer to my question just above. To answer it: no. No, the two "proto" categories that I mentioned do not "exclude any pre-270s versions of a written Torah."
An aside on some definitions--not an accusation, but seeking clarity.
Sometimes "Torah" is used (passive voice, i.e., by some people, sometimes) for a teaching (or law, liturgy, etc.) text that is shorter than "versions" commonly printed today. (And even more broadly when oral torah in the rabbinic usage comes into play.) So when I, to take an example, say Torah existed before 270s, that may refer to what someone else might prefer instead to call proto-Torah, or shorter Torah, Torah-in-the-making, or somewhat different copies, textually, than some text other used as a comparison.
But, again, as we know, variety existed after the 270s, also. The 270s imo is not a watershed. Unlike, possibly--not my area of study, so I may be mistaken--the standardization of, first, Jerome's Latin Vulgate (compared to old Latin translations) and then the further, 1592, revision, official to the RC church. If so, then the RC church had, at least in 1592ff, more centralized authority over its text than anybody had in the 270s--a main difference, admittedly, being the printing press.
The word "versions" is sometimes used for (a) translations, such as Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Arabic, etc. Other times (b) "versions" is sometimes used in a broader generic sense, including differing Hebrew copies.
andrewcriddle wrote: ↑Sat Mar 11, 2023 5:08 am
The MT is not the original text. However there are numerous cases where the Samaritan Pentateuch and the LXX agree against the MT and on internal evidence the MT is original. See for example Shared TraditionLXX by Emmanuel Tov. This may cause problems for the idea that both the Hebrew Vorlage of the Pentateuch and the LXX translation originate at around the same time. It suggests rather a history of development of the Hebrew text before the translation of one of the text types into Greek.
Andrew Criddle
I think your interpretation of Tov's conclusions in this data-heavy article may be mistaken, since Tov elsewhere holds that proto-LXX is earlier than proto-MT (Tov 2015: 221, 223 n. 46).
Tov, Emanuel, The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research. Jerusalem Biblical Studies 8. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015.
IIUC the claim that there are numerous cases where the MT preserves the original text against both the LXX and the SP is in principle entirely compatible with the claim that the proto-MT (in Tov's definition) is rather late.
If Russell actually sat down and looked at the various Pentateuch traditions and the fact that the relationship between the Samaritan and Qurman (and I would argue sectarian tradition at the heart of the two powers tradition and thus the tradition that the oldest rabbinic commentary's are reacting to) editions of Exodus. Deuteronomy has to be understood to be a later tradition copying Exodus in parts. The Hebrew is different too. As such with all these layers needing to be explained 270 CE can't be the start date of the process. It has to go back to an earlier period. It's not a slight against Russell. I don't care that he attributed my interest in the Samaritan tradition to "anti-Semitism." An Alexandrian origin for the Pentateuch is incompatible with the actual evidence.
