Subject: Re: Responses
From: L. Manning Vines (lmanningvines@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Jul 16 2002 - 20:07:41 EDT
Jim said:
<< From what I understand, the manuscripts of the books the
Qumran community had back then (esp. the complete books, like Isaiah and
Deuteronomy) weren't all that different from the Masoretic texts (of course
excepting the vowel points) that came into being almost 1000 years later --
wouldn't this testify to relatively fixed text? It seems like when this
was brought up before you agreed, although you also wanted to emphasize
that the Qumran community had a whole lot of texts besides what we
recognize today as the OT or Hebrew Scriptures. >>
The books in the Qumran collection include some that agree remarkably with
the Masoretic text. But, as I said before, it is my understanding that they
also include books that disagree with the Masoretic to favor the Septuagint,
and books that disagree with both to favor some previously unknown version.
In some cases the Qumran collection includes several manuscripts (or
fragments of manuscripts) of one book, with some agreeing with the Masoretic
and some agreeing with the Septuagint and some agreeing with neither.
This testifies to a still unfixed text, and a culture that was rather
unworried about it.
Also, our recent focus on the Septuagint makes it seems to me pertinent to
say, in case I've neglected it, that what we today call the Septuagint
actually DOES include apocryphal books and does not make a distinction
between them and the rest. I think it was the Vulgate (approx. fifth
century Latin translation) that eliminated them, and on the basis of no
known Hebrew originals.
-robbie
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