Samaritan Pentateuch, Important Witness to the Early Textual History of the First Part of the Hebrew Bible

After the deportation of inhabitants of Samaria and the ten-tribe kingdom of Israel by Assyria in the middle of the 8th century B.C.E., pagans from other territories of the Assyrian Empire were settled there by Assyria. (2 Ki. 17:22-33) In time they came to be called “Samaritans.” They accepted the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures and in about the fourth century B.C.E. they produced the Samaritan Pentateuch, not really a translation of the original Hebrew Pentateuch, but a transliteration of its text into Samaritan characters, mixed with Samaritan idioms. Few of the extant manuscripts of the Samaritan Pentateuch are older than the thirteenth century C.E. Of about 6,000 differences between the Samaritan and the Hebrew texts, by far the majority are unimportant. One variation of interest appears in Exodus 12:40, where the Samaritan Pentateuch corresponds to the Septuagint.

June 29, 2022 0

Syriac Versions of the Bible

The Old Testament.—There are two Syriac translations of this part of the Bible, one made directly from the original language Hebrew, and the other from an ancient Greek version. The Syriac New-Testament Versions.—These we may conveniently enumerate under five heads, including several recensions under some of them, but treating separately the notable “Curetonian text.”

June 24, 2022 1

Textual Studies of the Hebrew Bible

The Old Testament, the inspired Word of God, how was it copied, maintained as to the textual reliability, and handed down throughout the past three thousand five hundred years?

May 14, 2022 0

TEXTUAL STUDIES: The Syriac Peshitta Is a Look into the World of Early Bible Versions

The Peshitta of Syriac-speaking people confessing Christianity was in widespread use from the fifth century C.E. onward. The word “Peshitta” means “simple.” The Hebrew Old Testament Scripture part was essentially a translation from the Hebrew, likely made during the second or third century C.E. However, a later revision involved comparing with the Septuagint.

May 24, 2021 2

OLD TESTAMENT TEXTUAL STUDIES: The Aramaic Targums

The “Targums” were loose translations or paraphrases of the Hebrew Old Testament Scriptures into Aramaic. Although fragments of the early Targums of some books were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Jewish Targums as a whole likely found their current form no sooner than about the fifth century C.E.

May 24, 2021 6

What is the Greek Septuagint (LXX)?

The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint, is the earliest extant Koine Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible, various biblical apocrypha, and deuterocanonical books.

December 7, 2020 7

Papyrus Rylands 458: The Oldest Copy of the Greek Septuagint

Papyrus Rylands 458 is a copy of the Pentateuch in a Greek version of the Hebrew Bible known as the Septuagint.

September 8, 2020 0

Did the New Testament Authors Really Quote the Greek Septuagint Rather than Hebrew Texts?

Hands down, the Greek Septuagint version is the most important of the early versions of the Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures. In fact, it is the first translation. The Greek Septuagint is abbreviated as the Roman numeral LXX (meaning, “Seventy”).

June 25, 2019 24

How Did the Septuagint Bible Translation Change the World?

The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament). Initially, the Septuagint was made by Jews for the Jewish community, and they felt that it was just as inspired as the Hebrew Scriptures. However, it was used heavily by the early Church in their evangelism, pricing that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah, which caused the Jews to return to the Hebrew.

March 20, 2019 10

What Is the Greek Septuagint and How Accurate Is It?

The apostle Paul often quoted from the “Septuagint” The “Septuagint” was understood by many people to whom Paul preached The Septuagint is the common term for the Old Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. The word means "seventy" and is frequently shortened by using the Roman numeral LXX, which is a reference to the tradition... Continue Reading →

March 2, 2019 5

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Category: Versions of the Old Testament