Robert said:
The author of this blog is approaching this question from a doctrinal point of view, hence his citation of the Westminster Confession of Faith and his conclusion that “the Old Testament in Hebrew, together with the New Testament in Greek, and those only, are immediately inspired and authoritative.” Whether or not the LXX is an accurate translation of the Hebrew, does not fully address the question of whether or not a given author is using the LXX translation. Many citations and allusions to the LXX reproduce the exact words of the LXX, even when the meaning is substantially the same as the Hebrew. This is not merely a coincidence, as there are always various ways to translate from one language to another. Thus the author of the blog is no doubt underestimating here the degree to which New Testament authors were in fact using the LXX translation.
I think what you are saying is, Robert, that the 64% similarity between the LXX and MT cited in the study is based on dogmatic, not linguistic, similarity. That two sentences can be doctrinally (dogmatically) similar, but linguistically differentiable. There is a clear way to know which sentence an author quotes, only due to the language used and quoted, no matter if doctrinally the two are similar.
I agree with that statement. I did not go though the quotes to check that myself.
I will say this though: i did get the distinct impression that this study was biased against the LXX. This was partly the reason i chose it. I didn’t want to use references that were biased towards my point–scientifically, that’s not the honest thing to do. I’ve seen other studies that favor the LXX much, much more than this study, making claims that a NT author is ten times more likely to quote from the LXX than the MT. I don’t know if i would go that far, but i think the truth is somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.
Anyhow, it doesn’t matter if it’s 30% or 64%, it’s not all or nothing. So the truth of the matter is that the NT authors used the quote that fit their purpose at hand, no matter where it came from. Now, we can get into the discussion of how likely each author was to favor the LXX to the MT, an issue of probabilities. But it’s beyond what i wanted to explore. But maybe a good topic for academic discussion.
Jill said:
Okay. So meaning the Hebrew used in the NT times into a personal translation (rather than a given translation) written with an personal understanding of that Hebrew into what would be a personal understanding of the Greek (of that time).Is that close?
I’m not an expert on this, Jill, so i may not be able to explain this well. But the idea is that the OT comes in two ancient forms, the MT and the LXX. So, how do we know which one Jesus preferred or the early authors preferred, was my question.
The answer i came up so far, is both. Maybe LXX was more of a favorite of the NT authors, but that’s just because they were Greek-speaking writers addressing Greek-speaking readers, not because they felt the LXX is more God inspired than the MT.
Mark assumes a great deal of knowledge of the Hebrew scriptures on the part of his audience.
This confuses me, in light of passages like Mark 7:3 where he explains fairly routine points of Jewish practice.
Perhaps we must distinguish knowledge of Hebrew Scripture from knowledge of Jewish practice, but that raises only more questions (like, Who exactly knows the Hebrew Scriptures without at least some acquaintance with Jewish practice?).
I think it was Joel Marcus who first really made me aware of how much Mark depends on the Hebrew Scriptures. Isaiah and the Psalms hover over Mark’s text in incident and in viewpoint. Not always explicitly but in an allusive manner. Also, If I’m remembering correctly there are 27 direct quotes of the Hebrew Bible. Significantly, most are placed placed on Jesus’ lips. Then notice how much interaction is depicted between Jesus and other Jewish sectarians. Marcus notes how in Mark there is still a consciousness of Jesus as a Jew among other Jews. In conflict certainly, but there is none of the anti-Jewish polemic found in later gospels. Note how observant Jesus is in Mark’s depiction.
Mark’s dodgy knowledge of Judean Jewish custom and his whimsical geography lead many to conclude he is a gentile convert, but I would point out that many expats have similar sketchy awareness of the motherland. Especially descendants of expats. I know ethnic Chinese who do not speak the language. And I have a good friend who grew up in India whose American bred children are just as ignorant of Hindu practice. This leads to the possibility that Mark was a diaspora Jew like Paul. (I also point out that Ehrman doubts Paul could speak Aramaic.)
So, yes, I would distinguish between functional practice and literary awareness.
Interesting.
Applying that to something like Mk 7:3, would that imply that things like ritual hand washing before meals was not a common practice of first century diaspora Jews, such that a diaspora Jew like Mark would feel the need to explain it to his audience of other diaspora Jews?
And would it also mean that ‘Ioudaioi’ in that verse means not “Jews”, but something like “inhabitants of Judea”?
It’s generally thought that Mark’s audience would have been mixed between Jews and gentiles, as indeed the faith itself was by Mark’s time. However Second Temple Judaism was an amorphous constellation of traditions and beliefs only having in common a reverence of the Torah. But note that in the context of Mark 7:3, Jesus and his disciples are apparently not practicing hand washing, initiating the episode. So it would seem the practice was not universal even in Judea.
Scholarly arguments about how to best translate Ioudaioi continue to this day. At times the ancients seem to have used it to mean both “Jews” (implying an ethnic religious dimension) and simply “inhabitants of Judea”. Robert, or any of our Greek reading folks want to chime in?
I also wonder about that passage about washing the hands. While Mark expects the audience to know the scriptures, perhaps he is calling out which scriptures are relevant?
For example, I think Mark has Jesus name six or seven commandments. Notice which ones are absent. The commandments given are similar to moral motifs in almost any culture. Especially missing in my mind is the command to keep the Sabbath. Mark has Jesus’s first three miracles occur on the Sabbath.
He could have listed a couple of commandments, to make a point. He could have listed all ten with just a little bit more effort. Yet he lists only what he lists.
To me this debate is all throughout the OT as well. The reader should be aware of this debate of which laws are The Law when they read about Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Ezekiel talking about the law.
I know the standard take on the passage is that the washing up to the elbows was a later addition to the law, but if John the Baptist’s disciples did it, surely it was important to some people that Jesus respected.
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