From: mls@cbnewsm.cb.att.com (mike.siemon)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: To Murray et al (was re: Jesus did not claim.....)
Summary: no, Paul.
Date: 12 Sep 92 00:49:20 GMT
Organization: AT&T

In article <fSs2sQG@quack.sac.ca.us>, pharvey@quack.sac.ca.us (Paul Harvey)
writes:

> In article <1992Sep11.022422.29183@cbnewsm.cb.att.com> 
> mls@cbnewsm.cb.att.com (mike.siemon) writes:

> >Just to make something quite explicit -- the JPS _Tanakh_ is based on the
> >Masoretic text.  You will need to go to Christian sources for a translation
> >that uses other material (Septuagint, mostly, with some supplementation
> >from other versions and where possible recent discoveries), at least if you
> >want a one-volume version. 

> Well, don't get to hung up on the word Masora, it really doesn't mean a
> whole lot. What it means roughly is that this is the official redacted
> compilation of all the scraps of Biblical material found, in Hebrew, not
> Aramaic or Greek. The Septuagint is the Greek translation of this Hebrew
> "Masora" that was used by the proto-Christians and is referenced in the

No.  You are quite simply wrong.  And I am not at all hung up on the word
Masora.  The text that is the basis of ALL Jewish texts in Hebrew or in
translation is conventionally called the "Masoretic text" and is the
product of an endeavor of copyists called Masoretes in the formative
centuries of what Neusner calls "normative Judaism" -- the same time as
the Talmud is accreting in Babylon and in Israel, a period starting about
1500 years ago and continuing over several centuries.

One presumes, of course, that the Masoretes were copying something earlier.
(To assume otherwise would have them inventing the texts.)  Among the
valuable results of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery is that there are SOME
attestations of an earlier stage of the same "text tradition" as we have
in the Masoretic text (specifically, there is an Isaiah scroll from Qumran
that is quite close to and may be presumed to be related to the Masoretic
text tradition.)  By way of explanation, a "text tradition" means a line
of transmission of a given text -- the Samritan pentateuch, and the Septua-
gint both attest to *different* text traditions than the Masoretic (and
these, or again different ones are ALSO found at Qumran.)  Different means
that they have different readings at points in their versions, and those
who copy the Samaritan tradition, for example, will tend to preserve (and
may at times extend) these characteristic differences.

In other words, I am explicitly *commending* the Masoretes  for the job
they did in passing on the text tradition they recieved.  That, however,
is not by itself sufficient to take us to the original texts.

Your "proto-Christians" used the Septuagint, if Greek speaking.  There is
some trace in Matthew of possible phrasing and imagery from Aramaic targums
(= free translations) that may be behind some of Matthew's "scriptural"
citations that differ from BOTH the Spetuagint and the Masoretic text.

The point is that the Septuagint preserves, besides material it SHARES
with the Masoretic text, some OTHER text tradition that one assumes had
a Hebrew exemplar (else, the Greeks were just making it up on the fly,
in translation :-))  Christian usage of some of the peculiarites of the
Septuagint in fact led it to be disparaged by the synagogues, in favor
of other (or no) translations.  This is all understandable, but as a matter
of history, the Masoretic text emerges AFTER this rejection of the Septua-
gint.

From a scholar's point of view, the Septuagint has value BECAUSE it gives
evidence of a different transmission of the original text, and thus may
be able to help us solve (by a "back-translation" process) puzzles in the
Masoretic text (of which there are not a few.)

> So it is possible to think of the Septuagint as the original,

That is bizarre, though to do you credit I think you are trying to point
up that for Greek-speaking Christians, the Septuagint was "Scripture"
in roughly the way the KJV tends to be for English speakers.  That has
nothing to do with the value (or lack thereof) that the Spetuaging brings
to the study of the "original" Hebrew.  The point is that we don't HAVE
the original Hebrew.  Our earliest texts ARE those from Qumran, and in
the days before they (with their VARIANT testimonies) were available, we
had to "triangulate" from the (late) Maosretic text preserved in the syn-
agogues (yes; orthodox Jews will tend to think that THIS text is letter
for letter what pre-existed the universe -- as a historically demonstrable
propostion, that is a bit odd in the absence of ANY early texts!) with
such exterior sightlines as were provided by the Septuagint and some other
more fragmentary data.

> since this is most likely what Jesus had access to and is what
> the proto-Christians had access to, but it is of course only a

It is debatable whether Jesus knew any Greek.  His most likely Scripture
would be in Hebrew, with (as in the Matthean indications) some Aramaic
paraphrases in targums.

> JPS ... was just completed over the last 40 years or so, 
> so it represents a very modern translation of the Hebrew texts, ie up to 
> date. The Septuagint (Hebrew to Greek) is some 2,000 years old.

You completely miss my point, and demonstrate a total insensitivity to
what would move a historian or philologist -- the TEXT that JPS used as
its basis for translation is LATE, almost 1000 years later than the
text of the Septuagint.  Because that is Greek it cannot be any kind of
*basis* for translation, merely giving supplemenatary readings.  But no
Jewish translation will "correct" the Masoretic text from the earlier
data -- at most they will address the issues in commentaries.

"Masoretic text" does NOT mean "the original Hebrew of the authors of
the books" -- it means THAT text which came into use, and has been
maintained as a continuing text tradition, by Jews from about 800 C.E.
or so.  YES, that has precursors, and there is SOME "original" text
or texts that feeds into this tradition -- the problem of scholarship
is to take the texts and see what can be said ABOUT the earlier stages
of the traditions(s) WHICH WE DO NOT HAVE.  When I recommend secular
or Christian scholarship, it is because these have less problem with
such an agenda than (orthodox) Judaism -- and the Conservative Jews of
JTS make a (largely unappreciated) effort to be as orthodox as their
ideas of intellectual honesty will allow.
-- 
Michael L. Siemon		   "Oh, stand, stand at the window,
					As the tears scald and start;
mls@usl.com			   You shall love your crooked neighbor
standard disclaimer			With your crooked heart."
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