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The last time we were together, gentlemen, we concerned ourselves with the New Testament, its manuscripts, its text, its authenticity, and the New Testament canon. Today we consider similar things for the Old Testament, and we start off with the languages in which the Old Testament was originally written. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew for the most part. But certain portions of Esra and Sir- Esther and certain portions of, uh, certain portions of Ezra and certain portions of Daniel were written originally in Aramaic. Aramaic is a sister language of Hebrew, in the same sense as Spanish is a sister language to Italian. But Aramaic was the lingua franca for the big empires, particularly the Babylonian and then the Persian Empire. And by the time of our Lord Jesus, Aramaic was the language of the, uh, Old Testament. Next question we come to deal with is the text of the Old Testament. What evidence is there for the text of Old Testament. The manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, the great majority of them, follow a tradition that we call the Masoretic text. The Masoretes were scholars who, from the late first century onwards, gave themselves to, uh, the meticulous study of the actual writing of the n- of the Old Testament manuscripts. They copied it out with extreme care. They counted the very letters. And so the Masoretic text rightly deserves its reputation. For many centuries here in the West, the only Hebrew texts that we have were based of the er- the the, I better rephrase that, the earliest copies of the Hebrew text that we had went back to the ninth century AD. Let me repeat that so you, you get it clearly. The earliest copies of the manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible that we had were dated around the ninth century. So that between them and the time when Moses was writing, there was a very, very long period. Since that time, and perhaps just before some of you were born, there were discovered a number of manuscripts, first of all at Qumran and in the surrounding caves in the nearby hills. And subsequently, manuscripts of one kind and another were discovered in caves over a distance of some thirty kilometers on the west bank of the Dead Sea. Those manuscripts were of books of various kinds. It is thought that there was at Qumran a community of the equivalent of Jewish monks, maybe, or a strict religious order. Many people thought that they were of the order of the Essenes, as they are called, E double S E N E S. Other people to this day dispute that theory and say that the buildings at Qumran were more like a summer palace for some wealthy individual. The idea that Qumran was a scriptorium, that is a place where manuscripts are written out, has been disputed likewise, because what were thought to be stone tables upon which the long leather scrolls would be laid in order to be written upon. Those long stone tables, uh, were realized, what should have been obvious from the start, that they were hollow in the middle, they were curved, and whether they were for men, uh, uh, uh, the scrolls to be laid on before they were written on is very doubtful. Those matters really need not concern you. But there, among all the writings that were discovered, were copies of all the books of the Old Testament, except Esther. Sometimes there were many copies. Sometimes a few or only one. Some of the books of the Old Testament had survived, uh, in toto. Some of the first manuscripts to be discovered in pots in the caves were the big scrolls of Isaiah. Almost complete. They showed us that when we compared the manuscripts that we had already, the earliest of which was in the ninth century AD, when we compared them with these far more ancient manuscripts, then yes, there were some differences, but the differences were comparatively small and of very little import. This was, of course, a tremendous boost to the confidence of scholars as to the reliability of the transmission of the text. Because some of these manuscripts were dating to the first century AD, and therefore had narrowed the gaps between the, the gap between the earliest copy and the original writings by some eight hundred, seven hundred, eight hundred years. Some of the manuscripts that were discovered belong to the first century BC, and some of them, perhaps a few fragments, to the second century BC. So this, as I say, was a great boost to the confidence that we have the text that originally was written, at least in great part. But then a thing was noticed, that whereas many of the manuscripts discovered in the Judean Desert, the Dead Sea Scroll area, were, if not of the Masoretic text tradition, yet were what we now call the Proto-Masoretic tradition. What do we mean by that? Well, let me go aside a moment to point out what the Masoretes did. When they gave themselves to the very careful editing of manuscripts and the very careful copying out of manuscripts, of course they had a wealth of manuscripts before them, and they carefully chose what they felt were the better manuscripts, and the ones that had been written out with more care. They added the vowel points. How original Hebrew, like modern Hebrew, like the newspapers in modern Israel, the words are written in consonants and without vowels, do you see? Because it's pretty obvious what vowels are to be supplied, and therefore newspapers to this present day don't bother to print them. Do they? Would be more difficult in English, wouldn't it, to write with our consonants simply and not with any vowels. But in Hebrew, by and large, vowels were then indicated by the Masoretes with a system of dots below the letters, or dots above the letters, or dots inside the letters, dots then, and other such things, minor crosses and strokes and other such devices. So the Masoretes added them. And you will see, if you care to look at the, uh, Bibles I have brought to you, a modern Bible over there in the Hebrew has those dots and whatnots below the letters and in between the letters. This manuscript of Leviticus, it is exceedingly old. You will find it is in a different script. It's what we call the old script, Paleo-Hebrew. The modern Bible is written in the square script, but this manuscript here i- is a, a, a biblical manuscript, and it's in Hebrew, but it's in the older form of Hebrew letters. You won't find any dots and dashes, vowel points beneath it. When the Masoretes therefore added the vowels, guiding the reader as to how the thing should be pronounced, they weren't making up the pronunciation for the first time. For the Hebrew manuscripts had been read in the s- in the synagogue for centuries. There was a tradition, therefore, as to how the thing was to be pronounced, and an implicit, a a a tradition, therefore, of the implied vowels. And the Masoretes doubtless followed the, uh, traditional inter- uh, pronunciations. In the... de- at the Dead Sea Scrolls, manuscripts were discovered that weren't completely of the Masoretic type, but were very close to it. And we call them the Proto-Masoretic. They have differences, but not, uh, considerable differences. But then there were some manuscripts followed, they're mostly very fragmentary, tiny little bits of Hebrew manuscript that are ca- classified now as non-Masoretic, because they vary considerably from the Masoretic text. A famous example of them are the three or four fragments from a scroll of the prophecy of Jeremiah. So let me turn aside to, uh, point out certain features of Jeremiah. In the three big prophets, Isaiah, Ezek- uh, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, there is a group of chapters that are called the Oracles Against the Nations. They are mostly denunciations, but sometimes encouragements, denunciations of the Gentile nations. So you'll find them, uh, a message against the burden of, or something like that, and various nations are mentioned. Babylonians, Moabites, and so forth. The oracles against the nations. All three of those major prophets have a group of such chapters. In Isaiah, they start at chapter thirteen, so comparatively early on in his prophecy, and there are several chapters of them. In Ezekiel, they come in the middle of the book. In Jeremiah, in the Masoretic text, they come at the end of Jeremiah. But then were discovered these fragments of the Hebrew of Jeremiah at Qumran in Cave Four. And though they were only tiny fragments, there was enough on them to show that the scroll from which they came certainly had these oracles against the nations, but they had them not at the end, like the Masoretic texts do. They had them in the middle of Jeremiah, like they are in the prophecy of Ezekiel. And not only so, but they had these oracles in a different order from what the Masoretic texts have. That was very interesting because of the, uh, uh, Septuagint. And in many of the manuscripts of the Septuagint, when it comes to Jeremiah, they have these chapters, these oracles against the nations, but they too have them in the middle of Jeremiah and not at the end. So in this respect, the manuscripts of the Septuagint agree with the minority of Hebrew manuscripts from Qumran. That raises all kinds of interesting questions. So let me point to a feature of the prophecy of Jeremiah. You will have noticed, I'm sure, from your intense study of Jeremiah, that he dates his prophecies. So they often begin in the such and such year of such and such a king, in the somethingth month, and so forth. So the prophecies are dated. But if you compare them in your English Bibles, all these dates, you will find that they are not in chronological order. And of course, you will have asked yourself, why aren't they in chronological order? Well, presumably Jeremiah or his editor decided that when the book was published, they would adopt a thematic approach rather than a chronological approach. That is, they would order the prophecies according to their themes, rather than putting them in strict chronological order. Now let me go to the New Testament for a moment. You will there surely have observed that the first three writers, even when they have the same stories, do not necessarily put them in the same chronological order. Matthew will have a different order in places from Mark. What does that imply for the inspiration and authority of our gospels, we have to think, do we not, of the question of inspiration at two different levels. Tell me, when our Lord first spoke his parables, before they were written down, of course, were they already inspired? Mm-hmm. I think you nod your head enough to show, one, that you are awake, and two, that you are agree, that you agree, that of course the words of the Lord Jesus, as originally spoken, were inspired. Then the question arises at the secondary level, when the writers of the Gospels came to record them. Did they do this just upon their own authority? Or merely by their own sense of literary, uh, literature propri- uh, you know, literary propriety, what is suitable? Or were they guided by the Holy Spirit when they wrote their gospels? It is my view that they were guided in that fashion. And to support that view, I appealed to our Lord's words in the gospel by John, that when the Holy Spirit was come, he would bring to their minds all that Christ had taught them, and would also lead them into all the truth. In the gospels, the fact that the authors, the re- the evangelists put the story sometimes in a different order, helps to bring out the significance of what our Lord said. Leaving that then for a moment, let's come back to Jeremiah. When he first pronounced his prophecies, and he dates the occasions on which he announced them. Were they already inspired? Was he acting as a prophet of the Lord and speaking by inspiration of the Holy Spirit? I think you would agree with me, yes, of course. Then, why did the, was the order changed from chronological to thematic in his prophecy? I suspect for the same reason that the evangelists had when they recorded our Lord's words and deeds in a different order from what they were originally given. Moreover, we have insight into the process of the production of Jeremiah within Jeremiah himself. For he tells us that on one occasion he was ordered by the king to come and read one of his prophecies before the king. And when the king heard it, he didn't like it, and got out his knife and cut a lot out of the stuff out of it and put it in the fire. So there was an original writing of Jeremiah. Then we are told that after that, Jeremiah's scribe, name of Baruch, he wrote it all again and added much to it. That I'm just quoting the words of Jeremiah as they now stand. Because when Jeremiah came to write his prophecies down, and doubtless Baruch helped him, it is uh, uh, uh, uh, now apparent that he may well have added at that stage to what he originally said. We hold, therefore, that inspiration of such a prophet acted at various levels, as originally spoken, and then in the course of writing them down. But that means we must go on at this stage, therefore, because we are considering text of the Hebrew and its authenticity. We must consider this so-called Septuagint translation. Its importance is, in some first, in the first place, the early date at which the translation began to be made. The translation of the Old Testament into Greek began around two eighty to two seventy BC, before Christ. The first record we have of the translation being made, the first account of it, comes from a writer who gives himself the name Aristias. I think that was his pen name, perhaps. He's generally called Pseudo-Aristias, in a letter that he purports to be writing to his brother Philocrates. He only claims that it was the Pentateuch that was then translated, the first five books. His story, however, is that the Ptolemy, the reigning ruler in Alexandria in Egypt, the Ptolemy, he was a Greek, of course. He was one of the four generals of Alexander the Great. And when Alexander died, his great empire was split among the four generals. And this general by the name of Ptolemy got as his share Egypt and originally Palestine included. So at that stage, he was the ruler in Egypt and the ruler in Palestine. He was a Greek. Alexander, of course, had taken thousands of Greeks to Egypt, so they were a thriving community, as distinct from the local Greeks who spoke their own native language. In addition, Alexander had taken some thousands of Jews when he swept down through Palestine into Egypt, he'd taken a lot of Jews with him and planted them there in Alexandria. By the time eighty, two seventy BC, therefore, the Jews were a thriving community, already had a synagogue. And they mostly spoke Greek. Some of them still may well have understood Hebrew, but their first language, eh, it was Greek. That's the language they commonly spoke. Like Jews in London speak English, though as boys from one to twelve they are taught a bit of Hebrew, and to pass their confirmation ceremony, the bar mitzvah, which they do at the age of twelve, they have to be able to read a certain amount of Hebrew. Most of them thereafter immediately forget it, but never mind. That- that's that, you see, their majority language is English. So their majority language of the Jews in- in Egypt was Greek. Now, the story of this Aristeas goes as follows. The Ptolemy, the second ruler, Ptolemy the second, was a great scholar, interested in Greek culture and Greek literature. He was a Greek, of course. He founded a museum and founded a great library. He had his scholars and agents combing the whole of Greece for manuscripts of the Greek classical authors. And of course, in those days, many more manuscripts would have survived than do now, of course. And having collected them, he got his scholars working on them in an early form of textual criticism, deciding what was, as far as they could judge, the original text of the author, what were mistakes that had entered in through the copying, what were additions added by well-meaning people and politicians and all sorts, and now producing what they regarded as first rate texts of the Greek classical authors. You'll see. It is a tremendous lot to si- loss to civilization that when the Turks took Egypt, they destroyed that library. Many a scholar would give his left arm, if not his right, to have the manuscripts from that library. And now, of course, it's under the sea anyway, for the sea is encroached. But to go back to Aristeas, his story is that the second Ptolemy decided that he must have a good copy of the Jewish Old Testament. That is the story of this Aristias. He is a Jew, I should warn you. And that it was the second Ptolemy who was advised by his librarian that, well, this would be a difficult thing because the, uh, Jewish manuscripts are written in what they then call Phoenician characters, you'll see, meaning the old Hebrew script. And secondly, they had not been copied out very well. That shows, incidentally, that the Jews were aware that not all their manuscripts had been carefully carried out, uh, copied out. But to get back to Aristeas's story, the Ptolemy therefore sent to the high priest at Jerusalem and asked, and this is significant, asked for translators to be sent who could translate the, this language which was in Phoenician lettering. And the high priest duly obliged and sent, you'll see, six translators from each of the twelve tribes. And sheer arithmetic tells us that that would have meant not seventy translators, but uh seventy two translators. So the Septuagint is called Septuagint because Septuagint is the Latin for seventy. To be correct, it ought to be Dua et Septuaginta, two and seventy, because there were seventy two translators. But early on it came to be called the seventy, and the name has stuck even to those parts of Bar- the barbarian world that have heard of the Septuagint Intlegent translation. translation. Is that a likely story? Well, it could be. It could be that the Ptolemy was broad enough minded to know that this Jewish community was a significant community, and therefore wanted to get its literature that is conceivable. It is to be noticed that in this story by Aristeas, the high priest sent not only seventy two translators, but a very specially prepared manuscript. That is a very significant thing. It shows, by the time this Aristias was writing, which probably was about one hundred and thirty BC, the Jews were aware of the importance of a first class manuscript produced by the religious authorities in the temple at Jerusalem. We come back to that later. Just to complete the story, when the seventy-two translators got to Egypt, the Ptolemy received them and wined and dined them for days on end and nights on end, and put to them questions testing their wisdom, and lo and behold, they all answered with magnificently wise answers, according to the story, you see. And eventually they produced the translation, and it was absolutely and hundred exact. They did it by consulting one with another and coming to a unanimous opinion. I mention that because of what will come up later. It is not claimed that the translators were inspired. They are very good translators. They consulted together, and thus they arrived at what is claimed to be an exact translation. The alternative accounts that we have elsewhere from the ancient world was that there were simply Only 5 five translators. translators. A later story is that these translators were put two and two in caves. There are such caves, or were, around Alexandria. They worked in pairs, but apart from each other and without consultation. Mm. And lo and behind, lo and behold, when the results were compared, they were found all to agree, word for word. From which it was concluded they must be inspired. That story, gentlemen, it comes from centuries after the translations were made, do you see? That's a matter we shall come back to. I suspect most people think these days, it's still debated, that the translation owed a lot to the energies of the Jewish rabbis in Alexandria. Because the congregations could no longer understand Hebrew, if it were read out to them, they needed a translation into Greek. Now, you should here remember that in Jewish synagogues, right from the word go, ever since there were synagogues, which dates back to perhaps the captivity in Babylon, when Jews no longer had a temple, and many of them were in distant countries, where they began to meet together on a Sabbath for the reading of scripture, you see, the reading of the law. So from the beginning of the, uh, uh, of the movement, the synagogue movement, the scriptures were read first in Hebrew. In the synagogue in Belfast to this very present day, on the Sabbath, there is a big dais built in the synagogue, on which stands a cantor, as he's called. His job is to read the law, and he reads it in Hebrew, not in Belfast language. And he, he reads several chapters of it. It goes on and on and on and on. Whether the congregation understands it or not, some of them every now and again, uh, uh, uh, invent the phrase Baruch Hashem or something like that, blessed be the name, to indicate that they were probably listening, but most of them are talking about business to each other, but that's another story, you see. They read it first in Hebrew, and it remains untranslated. They read it from a scroll. All these centuries later, still a scroll. This beautiful scroll is kept in a cupboard, a very dignified cupboard, which is called the ark. And at the beginning of the service, the elders and the synagogue, with their prayer shawls and their phylacteries, and of course, uh, everything else, they go to the ark, the ark is opened, the scroll is taken out, and it is processed around the synagogue. And as it is processed around, the me- the congregation, the men at least, take their prayer shawls that they have on, and they touch the m- uh, the uh manuscript, the Torah scroll, and put it to their lips. Why? Because thy word is as honey to my mouth, you see. So that's what they still do. But in the ancient world, in Palestine and other countries, as well as the man who stood on the dais, or wherever he stood, and read the Hebrew, they had another man. He was an interpreter, as we should call him, in Aramaic, a matuagiman. The reader would read so much Hebrew, the interpreter would then give an interpretation, but along with the strict interpretation, there would be a lot of exposition, you'll see, and so forth and so on. They were not supposed to write it down and read it. That shows you the importance the Jews paid to the actual text of Bible. They wanted it clear in the minds of the congregation. What was Bible? That was the original Hebrew. And what was a translation that would be the best the man could do, but wasn't to be treated as exactly the Bible. In many a church of Ireland, I suppose in them all, and certainly in the Church of England, when the Bible is being read, it's read from a bookstand here, and therefore the reader tells the congregation, here begins, and quotes the passage. And then at the end, here ends the passage. Goes back to the days when the people didn't have a Bible, and they needed to know the difference between Bible and sermon, the parson got up into the pulpit. He didn't stand at the desk from which he had the Bible. And thus a distinction was formerly made in the minds of people between Bible, which was God's word and authoritative, and the sermon. Nowadays, in many places, the preacher reads the Bible and stands at the same text and text and gives the sermon. Okay, so long as people have Bibles in their hand and can check the difference between what the Bible actually says and what the preacher says. You know, that might be important still to distinguish between what the Bible says and what the preachers say and what the commentaries say. How often our interpretation of scripture depends on interpretations that have been handed down and are now regarded as orthodox doctrine that must not be questioned. Uh, from my lesson drawn from Old Testament synagogue practice, I must briefly, uh, return to the matter of this Greek translation. We have many, many, many manuscripts of this Greek translation, thousands of them. And we have translations of them, because when the early Christian missionaries went to countries that didn't speak Hebrew, they translated the Old Testament into the language of their missionary country. And so, uh, the Septuagint of the Old Testament, for the early Christian missionaries used the Septuagint, many of them didn't know Hebrew anyway, translated the Old Testament from the Septuagint into the local language. And so we have translations into Syriac, into Bohairic, Sahidic, Ethiopic, Old Latin, and so forth and so on. You'll see. And we have many manuscripts. Indeed, until the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, the manuscripts we have of the Old Testament in Greek were much earlier than the earliest Hebrew manuscripts we have. Which was odd, wasn't it? We'll say. The thing that interests us, of course, necessarily in this matter is whether the Greek translation agrees with the Hebrew. Of course, there is with the Septuagint the problem of knowing how well the manuscripts we have have been copied out, how well do they represent the original translation? The original translation of the Pentateuch was made, as I say, in Alexandria, around two hundred and eighty to two hundred and seventy BC. After that, the rest of the canonical books of the Old Testament were translated, but from the style, it looks as if they were translated very often by different people, at different times, in different styles, and some places may be in different countries. You should get it, hold of it well, that if you consult the Septuagint in some pocket edition, the Septuagint is not homogeneous. It's not of the same quality throughout. It's not all translated by the same translators, nor at the same time, and so forth and so on. Secondly, you should notice that the translation in the course of the centuries was many times revised. So let me sum up now, in general, what the situation is, and come to particulars later. In general, of course, you may say that the Pentateuch translation is a reasonable translation into Greek of the Hebrew that stood before the translators. It is reasonable. It is moderately literal, but not literalistic. And of course, to a great, great, great extent, it agrees with the Hebrew. The Masoretic text, that is. It does have some differences, and we want to know why. There was some translation of the rest of the books. There was certainly one translation by the year one thirty AD, uh, BC. Of some books, there was more than one translation, two translations. In some books, bits and pieces of three translations have survived. They are not all of equal quality. Some of them are very literalistic, to the point of not making any sense, they are so literalistic. If you read in one manuscript that David asked the messenger who came from Joab from the army, he asked him about the peace of the war, P-E-A-C-E, about the peace of the war, you'll have to scratch your head to think what on earth that could possibly mean. What is the peace of the war? Well, it's a literalistic translation of the Hebrew. Shalom in Hebrew means peace. So if you meet your neighbor and say, hello, how are you? How are you is mashaloma ka? What is your peace? He's not implying, have you had an argument with your wife recently, or have you fallen out with the boss? He's just asking, how are you, old boy? Mashaloma ka, what is your peace? And so ma shalom comes to mean what is the state of? What David asked the messenger that came from Joab was, what is the state of the war? So he's in Hebrew, he said, ma shalomaka, what is its peace? What is its state? How's it getting on? To translate that literally into Greek, what is the peace of the war, is absolute nonsense, do you see? Not all were equally good translators. In some places, there are interpretative elements. And when you should, if you ever get reading the book of Proverbs in Greek, you'll wonder whether it is a translation at all in some places, so different is it. So the Septuagint has to be handled with some care. On the other hand, it is an important evidence for text of Old Testament. And therefore, you will find modern Bibles quoting in their footnotes sometimes the Septuagint, and sometimes in the text itself following the tech- the Septuagint manuscripts rather than the Hebrew. Why they do that is because on times in the New Testament, very many times, when the inspired writers of the New Testament want to quote the Old Testament, they quote it in this Septuagint translation. And even when they quote the words of the Lord Jesus, that he would have spoken more often than not in Aramaic, sometimes the writers will translate them themselves into Greek, but sometimes they will just put the Greek translation of the Old Testament. So when our Lord quotes the Old Testament, he quotes it in Aramaic, maybe sometimes in the original Hebrew. For you notice that when he went to the synagogue at Nazareth, they handed him the scroll, and he read from the scroll. That would have been Hebrew, not Aramaic. He preached to the people, probably in Aramaic, you'll see. But when the apostles quote his words and quote the passage that he read from the Old Testament in Hebrew, they of course quote it in Greek, and quote it generally from that Greek translation, or one of the Greek translations. We regard it, therefore, with a great respect. You'll see, we do not follow it blindly. Even the Holy Spirit in Hebrews seems to quote at one place the Greek translation and not the Hebrew that we now have. In the Hebrew, when dear old Jacob dies, the authorized following the Hebrew says he bowed himself upon his bed. Read the Greek translation, and it says he bowed himself on his staff. The difference lies in the vowels. One is mate, and the other is mite. When the He- uh, Holy Spirit has it quoted in Hebrews eleven, he follows the Greek, agrees with the Greek anyway, and says that Jacob worshipped leaning on his staff. Hm? And we should finally note, when I talked about the Hebrew texts of Jeremiah, I said that the Masoretic texts have the oracles against the nations at the end of the book. Some non-Masoretic Hebrew manuscripts. Mm-hmm. Getting complicated, isn't it? Why on earth shouldn't it be when computers and M three s and M four s and all that are vastly complicated? Why would you not expect it to be complicated? You'll see. Mm-hmm. The, uh, not some non-Masoretic Hebrew manuscripts have the Oracles Against the Nations in the middle of the book. The Greek translation of Jeremiah has those oracles in the middle of the book, just as those non-Masoretic Hebrew manuscripts have. But even so, they don't agree a hundred percent, and they don't have the same order of the nations within the group. Fun and games, you say? You know, if as a result of these talks, I could come across one evangelical in a million who believes God's word is inspired, but believes it enough to begin to have a care for the matter of Old Testament manuscripts and the text of Old Testament. Then I would have counted these lectures worthwhile. It has been an unhappy thing that so very few of the people that have cared to look after the text of the Old Testament and all these complications, very few have been evangelicals and conservative scholars. There begins to be a few more now. When I began work myself, I didn't know of anybody in England that was an expert on the Greek translation of Old Testament. Hmm. Ponder it, if you will. But we must now, else we shall die of thirst in the Sahara. Eh, do you see? We must, uh, break off to get our coffee. I warn you that we have not completely exhausted this matter of the text of the Old Testament.