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Old 06-23-2008, 03:08 AM
Steven Avery Steven Avery is offline
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 462
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Hi Folks,

Welcome.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Buythetruth
Thanks again Steven, You are suggesting evidence confirming my questioning interest. I did read somewhere that the Vatican endorses the Ben Asher, not that that is of any import.
Right, for three reasons.

1) RCC language is tricky, and I have never heard of such an endorsement, other than use. They use the Ben Asher Masoretic (through BHS) in some recent translations rather than the Vulgate Old Testament. That would include the Jerusalem Bible in 1966 and the New Jerusalem in 1985 and the New American Bible. However that would be "par for the course" for modern scholarship, neither here nor there.

2) A stopped clock is right twice a day. At times the RCC has endorsed the Johannine Comma as scripture, since the historic Latin Vulgate contained the heavenly witnesses verse (although today they publish many counter-Reformation modern versions without it). And on occasion the doofus textual liberals would try to use that correct RCC position against Bible believers. (Even there, some RCC endorsement was clouded by typical problems in language and papacy control.) The point is that you cannot automatically take the opposite textual view of the RCC, folks with that view could end up going to the Greek OT because they use the Hebrew ! (As an LXX-pushers could.) Even in the New Testament, the Vulgate, while grossly deficient and defeated in the Reformation Battle of the Bible, is vastly superior to the modern version alexandrian text. Thus it allies with the true text on the ending of Mark, the Pericope Adultera, the Johannine Comma and much more. We surely would not want to fight the resurrection accounts of Mark as scripture because the Vulgate properly has the twelve verses ! God forbid !

3) The Masoretic Text would be a step forward for the RCC. Before that they had Jerome's Vulgate which was a Latin translation of an early Masoretic-type text. While one of many early confirmations of the Hebrew text, and far superior to the Byzantine Greek-based OT, the version was lacking in many ways. Also the RCC had gotten used to translating through the Latin for their doctrine, tampering as in Genesis 3:15, harder for them to do from the Hebrew.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Buythetruth
... We focus on the New Testament and rightly so, with Westcott and Hort's shenanigens and the proof text comparrisons.
Well, I am sharing that the OT focus is also necessary and proper, and mentioned Will Kinney and John Hinton as two authors who have done so. The problem is that the focus is diverted if an implied major corruption -- isn't. There are tons of errors and corruptions in modern version OTs that deserve more exposure, however ad hominem articles against Gerhard Kittel (even if the gist of them are true as to his views and history) is diversionary. We need skilled scholarship in OT comparisons of the pure King James Bible and the corrupt and wild various counterfeit versions. The reason I say diversionary is that the German higher criticism schools, with their false and liberal doctrines, and along with the NT textual apostasy, have not really modified the source Hebrew-Aramaic Masoretic Text very much. It is time for that to be acknowledged by King James Bible authors. (While still defending and explaining the Ben Hayim, you can acknowledge that the differences are relatively small).

The real problems in modern version OTs are almost entirely :

1) inferior translation (lack of Hebraic savvy, lack of belief in the truth and accuracy of the text, general lack of skill and insight, translating to doctrine rather than text, logical errors)

2) leaving the Masoretic Text for this and that, on nonsensical and fanciful conjectures. This varies a lot from version to version, the Jewish versions being the most faithful, along with the King James Version. The Jewish versions have the problem of translational tampering away from Messianic understandings.

3) numerical tampering, emendations etc. They will change the text even without support. This is an offshoot of (2) except that (2) implies some sort of external textual support.

(Oh, let's also add that the King James Bible is stylistically far superior to all the pretenders. Some versions try to maintain some of the cadence and majesty of the King James, and become pale pretenders, others lose it altogether.)

What is emphasized as the problem (Ben Asher corrupt vs. Ben Hayim good) is vastly overblown, and that that is why you do not see the examples. For the most part, they simply do not exist.

Let's work on #1 and #2 and #3. And for the umpteenth time afaik only Will Kinney and John Hinton have done wide-ranging writings on Old Testament textual corruptions and shenanigans in the modern versions. Others have done well on focused issues (e.g. Thomas Strouse and Jeffrey Khoo on Psalm 12) yet even there, John Hinton offers new and significant elements.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Buythetruth
... When the Masoretic Text is mentioned, which edition is refered to? Do we really need to know.
Yes, in a scholarly context. There are some differences. Even in casual conversation, it is proper to say "Masoretic Text, Ben Hayim"

(Also spelled Chayim, Chayyim, I like the simplified version, similar to Haim & Chaim, both used today for Hebrew names, the "H" is a gutteral "ch" sound).

Context is king. There may be times where you properly say just "Masoretic Text" eg. for simplicity when comparing our Bible to translating from the corrupt Greek.

I tend to say the edition. That is not my distance from some modern authors. It is good to seek to be precise. The problem is speaking and writing as if the differences are humongous when they are not, and diverting from the actual huge modern version corruptions by raising what can be seen as a pseudo-issue.

Shalom,
Steven

Last edited by Steven Avery; 06-23-2008 at 03:34 AM.