Christian Publishing House Blog
Apologetic Defense of the faith, the Bible, and Christianity
The BHS/MT has the reading “walked with God” in both verse 22 and 24 of chapter 5. On the other hand, we have a variant in the Greek Septuagint (LXX) that reads “Enoch was pleasing to God” in both verse 22 and 24 of chapter 5. The metaphor “walked with God” would have been deemed ...
Some have argued that it was the versions that changed the reading from “Therefore whoever kills Cain.” so that it reads “Not so! Whoever kills Cain” in order to make a stronger contrast to Cain’s words in verse 14.
The bracketed clause “let us go over into the field” is not found in the Codex Leningrad B 19A and the Aleppo Codex, nor is it found in the QT Qumran Texts (Dead Sea Scrolls; Scroll 4Q2). However, the reading is included in older Septuagint manuscripts and in SP, SYR, and VG.
We are quoting extensively from the Old Testament textual scholars Ellis R. Brotzman and Eric J. Tully in their OLD TESTAMENT TEXTUAL CRITICISM: A Practical Introduction from Baker Publishing Group. However, there are a number of paragraphs that were written by Edward D. Andrews. Christian Publishing is beginning a free online Old Testament Textual Commentary.... Continue Reading →
Internal Conditions Judaism has always been a book religion: it stands or falls with the Old Testament, especially with the Pentateuch. Although no manuscript of the Hebrew Old Testament is older than the 10th-century B.C.E, save for one minute papyrus, we know, from citations, translations, etc., that the consonantal text of the Old Testament was... Continue Reading →
Ezra was an inspired scribe/copyist/Bible author about 467-537 B.C.E But how were the inspired writings preserved down to Ezra’s day? There is no way of knowing with absolute certainty just how they were preserved, What we do know is that the 39 books that we accepted as inspired and authoritative in the Hebrew and Aramaic... Continue Reading →
We know that there are mistakes in the Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts because they all have some different readings in them. If there were no mistakes, all of the Hebrew Old Testament Manuscripts would have read exactly the same with absolutely no difference, which would have required that God repeat the miracles of inspiration, moving the copyists along with Holy Spirit like he had done with the authors every time they picked up a pen. Yet, this simply was not the case. Mistakes were made. In fact, the same sopherim in Jesus' day took liberties with the text. Were these so serious that our Bible was corrupted so that the meaning God wished to convey was lost?
Versions are translations of the Bible from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek into other languages (or Hebrew into Greek). Translation work has made the Word of God accessible to billions of persons, who are incapable of understanding the original Biblical languages. The early versions of the Scriptures were handwritten and were, therefore, in the form of... Continue Reading →
Hebrew is the language in which the thirty-nine inspired books of the Old Testament were penned, apart from the Aramaic sections in Ezra 4:8–6:18; 7:12–26; Dan. 2:4b–7:28; Jer. 10:11, as well as a few other words and phrases from Aramaic and other languages. The language is not called “Hebrew” in the Old Testament. At Isaiah... Continue Reading →
In the days of Ezra and beyond, there would have been an increasing need for copying the Old Testament manuscripts. As you may recall from your personal Bible study, the Babylonians took the Jews into captivity for seventy years. Most of the Jews did not return upon their release in 537 B.C.E., and after that.... Continue Reading →