If you missed the inaugural meeting of the Reformation Bible Society, here is the first plenary lecture by Dr. Russell Fuller. He does an excellent job laying out the history and state of the LXX. If the LXX has been something of a mystery to you, Dr. Fuller certainly puts you on the right track to understanding it and its impact here. Blessings.
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I enjoyed listening to the conference. Congratulations on a great first meeting. I heard that Dr. Will Ross was in attendance, a specialist in LXX studies. I took an OT class with Dr. Ross a number of years ago when I was in seminary. As Dr. Riddle pointed out in his lecture, Ross is in favor of using the LXX in some instances to identify an underlying (but no longer extant) Hebrew reading that may be older and/or superior to the reading in the Masoretic Text. In other words, the LXX is translating a Hebrew text that seems to be different in some places from the Masoretic Text, and sometimes those readings may more likely be original than the variant in the Masoretic. In such instances, Ross supports replacing the Masoretic reading with the supposed Hebrew reading attested to by the LXX.
I think Ross would say this is technically not correcting the original Hebrew with a translation, as though the Greek trumps the Hebrew, or some such idea. Rather, this is using a Greek translation to identify its underlying Hebrew text, noting places where this underlying Hebrew text appears to differ from the Masoretic Text, and then correcting one Hebrew text with another Hebrew text. So it is really Hebrew correcting Hebrew. The Greek translation is a window into important, exceedingly ancient Hebrew variants that otherwise are no longer extant. The Hebrew is what is important, not the Greek translation.
I do not mean to speak for Dr. Ross. Perhaps he would put things differently. Did anyone have a chance to talk to Dr. Ross and discuss these important issues? I would be interested to hear if he had any constructive feedback, or if he seemed open to the views being espoused by the conference.
Grace and peace to all.
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Thank you for these observations, Wesley. I did not have any meaningful interaction with Dr. Ross. I was certainly glad that he was there. When he attended my lecture his only question to me was whether or not there was a mechanism to identify what was the word of God and what was not to which I replied in the affirmative.
Touch your characterization, I think it is interesting and could potentially bear fruit. That said, your characterization bears consideration parody with the argument made by TR and KJV advocates when they claim that the Old Latin is much older than most of the Greek MSS we have and in many cases includes 1 John 5:7. The TR and KJV advocate often appeal to the Old Latin translation as support for the original Greek reading of 1 John 5:7. Still, the most telling consideration for me is why do LXX advocates lean so confidently into the value of the LXX to support potential alternate OT readings while simultaneously dismissing the Old Latin when it comes to NT readings (i.e., 1 John 5:7). I mean, what’s good for the OT goose seems good for the NT gander.
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Thanks for the reply. It’s interesting that Ross asked you that particular question. It may hint at some internal skepticism over our ability to recognize which variants are God’s word and which ones aren’t through some other mechanism than text-critical analysis. I think that is a feeling shared by many who are not in the TR camp. I think there is this sense that the self-attesting nature of Scripture, which confessional Reformed believers accept at a more macrolevel with respect to the canon, does not apply at the microlevel of textual variants. I obviously don’t know what Ross had in mind, but I am guessing there is this general skepticism at play.
At any rate, I enjoyed listening to your presentation. I earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Liberty University, so it was great fun hearing an analytical philosophy paper on the LXX. I was trained in Plantinga’s analytical philosophy and Reformed Epistemology, although I’m sure I’m rusty since that was many years ago now. I think bringing that philosophy to bear on the questions of the text of Scripture is a unique approach that no one else is really attempting right now. I hope you will pursue some academic publishing in this area and test these ideas in the larger philosophical/theological community.
You raise a very interesting point about parody between the use of the LXX to alter the Hebrew text and the use of the Old Latin to alter the Greek. At first glance, these appear to be quite similar, and, prima facie, it seems that consistency for the LXX advocate would entail acceptance of the TR-defender as an Old Latin advocate. I hadn’t considered that before. You might be right if this were a case of all things being equal, but I don’t think things are equal. The situation with the Hebrew Bible is that we have so few manuscripts. Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, our earliest extant copies of the Masoretic Text were 10th and 11th century AD. The DSS take us back about a millennium earlier, but the number of manuscripts is still relatively small. So I think OT textual critics are more willing to utilize the LXX since there isn’t much else to compare it with. This isn’t the case for the NT. There are comparatively so many manuscripts that it seems unlikely that a reading attested to in the Old Latin would leave virtually no trace in all those other Greek manuscripts (e.g., 1 John 5:7). Given the amount of evidence for the NT, we can check the Old Latin against a plethora of Greek copies. We could see that the Old Latin is idiosyncratic in this or that place since its reading is unattested in so many other independent lines of transmission in the Greek copies. That isn’t the case for the OT. If we had a similar situation with the evidence for the OT, we could check the LXX against a plethora of Hebrew copies. Unfortunately, we have a paucity of copies, not a plethora, so we can’t see if the LXX is being idiosyncratic or not. So I am hesitant to agree that there is real parody here, as you suggest. There is also the question of the TR-defender’s consistent utilization of the Old Latin. Is the TR-defender willing to give the Old Latin the same weight and consideration when it attests readings that go against the TR? If the Old Latin can correct a critical-text reading, can it also correct a TR reading? If the answer to these questions is no, what principled reason can the TR-defender give that justifies this inconsistency?
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Agreed, I think Dr. Ross’ question may have come from some skepticism on his part. Still, it was a good question.
Regarding your comments on the LXX and the Old Latin, rarely if ever are things equal when touching practical examples (i.e., LXX vs. Old Latin). The question now is, are the two objects compared sufficiently different on the point of comparison to dissolve the comparison? For example, apples are not oranges, but at the point of comparing them as fruit the comparison is warranted but on the point of color and source they are not (but even those are comparable if one is granular enough in their assessment of the objects compared i.e., both have color and both are from trees). The question now is, does the fact that we have fewer OT mss than NT mss invalidate the comparison or render it effete? I see no reason to think so for the following sample of reasons:
1.) There is no proof provided by modern textual criticism that demonstrates the NT mss we have are the trunk of the tree that is the original rather than merely a branch or even a twig as it were. In fact, with the rise of the CBGM, the argument seems to be that the mss we have are merely branches at best from which we try infer the nature of the trunk via probabilities.
2.) Because of #1, how do we know we have the right branch? To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, Who is the most progressive man, the one who travels long down the wrong road or the one who travels down the wrong road, recognizes it is the wrong road and turns around? How does modern textual criticism know it is not traveling down the wrong road or branch?
3.) Number in anything does not establish goodness, truth, or beauty. Simply because we have more NT mss than OT mss it does not logically follow that the NT should be treated substantively different than the OT.
4.) The vast majority (80-90%) of Greek mss are Byzantine in nature and are treated in the textual apparatus of the NA 28 as one witness referred to as Byz. That is, according to modern textual critics upwards of 90% of Greek mss count as only one witness. By modern estimations then there are only ~521 witnesses to the NT. Hence the “amount of evidence for the NT” is relatively small.
Therefore, at the points of comparison between the NT mss and the OT mss (i.e., that translations can be used to identify the original) there is sufficient parody between these two mss sets to conclude that the Old Latin should serve as a helpful witness to discovering the original just as the LXX advocates claim the LXX should serve as a helpful witness to discovering the original.
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