Septuagint: better than the oldest Hebrew manuscripts?

Jonathan Robie (jwrobie@mindspring.com)
Thu, 05 Dec 1996 16:21:04 -0500

I just read this on an Orthodox bulletin board. They apparantly see the
Septuagint as more authoritative than the Hebrew scriptures, and take
exception to our translations because the translate the Hebrew rather than
the Greek. One person stated the following:

"it's interesting to note that the Septuagent (LXX) is generally considered
to be a better translation of the original Hebrew than the oldest Hebrew
manuscripts we have. This is due to textual variations, since we are very
distanced from the original autographs of the Hebrew. Also because of the
nature of the Greek language, you can get a better translation of Hebew in
Greek than you can in English (or any other modern language for that matter)"

I'm completely uninformed on these matters, and it isn't very easy to check
his references, since "generally considered" and "better translation" aren't
particularly clear claims. I'm sure that *my* opinions are "generally
considered" to be "better" than *your* opinions ;->

Does anybody out there have some *information* on this subject?

Thanks!

Jonathan

***************************************************************************
Jonathan Robie
POET Software, 3207 Gibson Road, Durham, N.C., 27703
Ph: 919.598.5728 Fax: 919.598.6728
email: jwrobie@mindspring.com, jonathan@poet.com
http://www.poet.com <--- shockwave enabled!
***************************************************************************