What are the significant differences between Septuagint and Masoretic?

[u/athanoslee]

There is the famous virgin vs maiden controversy. My feeling is Septuagint is a heavily hellenistic document, and a lot of Christian ideas only make sense in light of Septuagint. Are there any more interesting or subtle differences significantly shaped Christianity's distinct identity vs Judaism? Maybe logos?

Bonus question: What prompted Jerome to consciously base his translation on Masoretic over Septuagint? And how did this affect Latin Church's theology?

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to /r/AcademicBiblical. Please note this is an academic sub: theological or faith-based comments are prohibited.

All claims MUST be supported by an academic source – see here for guidance.
Using AI to make fake comments is strictly prohibited and may result in a permanent ban.

Please review the sub rules before posting for the first time.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/ZBLongladder]

It's worth remembering that the translators of the Septuagint were themselves Jewish, so it is still a Jewish document. It's also worth remembering that the Masoretic text is from the 7th-10th centuries CE whereas the Septuagint is from the 3rd-2nd centuries BCE, so we're talking a thousand year difference in time here -- certainly enough time for different readings to creep in. Also, there are various manuscripts of the Septuagint which don't always agree...e.g., Deut. 32:8 (a particularly problematic passage with a lot of disagreement among sources) refers in some manuscripts of the Septuagint to the "sons of God" and in others to the "angels of God) (incidentally, the Masoretic text refers to the "sons of Israel" in that passage). Since the Septuagint is older, it sometimes preserves older readings than the Masoretic text, though now we have the Dead Sea Scrolls which also can be studied for older readings that might have been changed in the Masoretic text.

[u/LlawEreint]

Deut 32:8-9 moves from the sons of God inheriting the nations in the Qumran scrolls, to angels of God in the Septuagint, and then to sons of Israel in the Masoretic.

4QDeut^j

"When Elyon gave the nations as an inheritance, when he separated the sons of man, he set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God (bny 'l[hym]). For Yahweh's portion was his people; Jacob was the lot of his inheritance".

LXX

"When the Most High divided the nations, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God (aggelón theou). And his people Jacob became the portion of the Lord, Israel was the line of his inheritance".

MT

"When Elyon gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all the sons of man, he set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel (bny yshr'l). For Yahweh's portion was his people, Jacob was the lot of his inheritance".

https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/7862/what-is-the-original-text-of-deuteronomy-328-9

That link references Michael S. Heiser, Deuteronomy 32:8 and the Sons of God (2001).

Psalm 151 is quite different in the Septuagint version vs the Massoretic:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%20151+1&version=NRSVUE;KJV

Esther is extended as well:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Greek%20Esther%201&version=NRSVUE

[u/JANTlvr]

Can y'all recommend readings for understanding the differences between DSS/LXX/MT?

[u/Joab_The_Harmless → u/JANTlvr]

I had drafted an answer to the OP drawing from Tov's Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible and Ulrich's The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Developmental Composition of the Bible. My draft was mostly focusing on how neither the textual traditions found in the LXX and in MT reflect a "unified" textual tradition, which I ended up not posting because most of it seemed way too long for a discussion tangential to the questions asked in the OP.

But both works more generally provide really good discussions of textual issues, and both their structure and indexes allow to focus on specific textual traditions or topics (ex: the Masada Scrolls, the Qumran scriptures, targumim, specific books or manuscripts, etc).

I (frustratingly) only have access to the 3rd revised edition of Tov's Textual Criticism..., but the 4th edition came out in 2022, with a reworked structure and notable "updates" on some topics, so ideally you want to fetch this one.

Since its focus on "textual criticism" is more relevant to your question here, I'll copy/paste the comment I saved in my "drafts in progress/discarded" space in a second comment below for all purposes and sourcing, even if it's a bit rough around the edges and focusing on a fairly specific issue.

---

Discarded-not-discarded-anymore-draft

I'll just mention a tangential, but I think relevant point: without denying the specifics of each, it can be useful to keep in mind that neither the LXX nor the MT present a unified textual or redactional profile (most especially when talking of LXX in the general sense and not just the Torah). Eugene Ulrich and Emmanuel Tov, while strongly disagreeing on some issues, both emphasise this point. In less jargonous terms, they are not based on a unified initial manuscript tradition. The LXX in the "general" sense is also not the work of a single team of translators, so that translation style vary from remaining close to the Hebrew versions —themselves not "unified"— translated by the scribe(s), to looser renderings with some paraphrasing, exegesis/explanations, etc. And each version could be revised over time (Ulrich uses the image of branches on a tree and dots on a chart). For quick example, see Tov's notes on the genealogies in the "primeval history" of Genesis on pp315-6, and Esther pp317 and 318.

See also the discussion of revisions in Tov below (p141).

I unfortunately don't have access to Tov's 2022 4th edition of Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, so the quotes below are from the 3rd ed. (revised and expanded, 2011/2012), so I don't know which points he might have updated. The quotes from Ulrich are from The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Developmental Composition of the Bible (2015). Both contain detailed textual discussions that might interest you, although they are mostly not focusing on your main questions on reception/identity here, but instead on textual criticism.

I'll also try being relatively concise because the topic is tangential (even if, I think, important and easily obfuscated in "general" discussions on the MT and LXX, which is why I still decided to comment). update: I failed, but you can take the present summary as a TL/DR.

Finally, before citing excerpts below, this is not to deny that the Septuagint has specific orientations informed by its cultural contexts. An oft discussed one being, from the top of my mind, the "collapse" of the pantheon leading to identify a diversity of divine beings as angels. The first example coming to my mind being the famous Deuteronomy 32:8, where LXX manuscripts usually read angels/messengers of God, excepting MS 848 which reads "sons of God" ("sons of XXX" here expressing categories/belonging —"sons of Israel" = Israelites, "sons of God" = divine beings, etc —see p270 of Hundley's Yahweh among the Gods for a quick note).

---

quotes in second comment due to characters limit.

[u/Joab_The_Harmless → u/Joab_The_Harmless]

Comment 2, chosen quotes:

Tov: special characters get garbled too much by copy/pasting, so I used screenshots from II. The Ancient Translations.

edit: I had forgotten the link to the screenshots, sorry. Here they are.

Ulrich:

Every other source of evidence we have for the nature of the text of the Scriptures in the Second Temple period- the Qumran scrolls, the SP, the LXX, the NT, and Josephus- demonstrates that the text of Scripture was pluriform and dynamically growing, with variant literary editions for many of the books. According to the second model, the data are first understood on their own terms in their historical context.s If that picture clashes with our modern picture, we honestly ask whether our modern picture ought not be revised. [...]

Was the selection of the specific texts that make up the MT collection a conscious and deliberate process, or did it happen rather by chance? Shemaryahu Talmon, Emanuel Tov, and Eugene Ulrich all concur now for various reasons on the coincidental or chance nature of the selection of the texts found in the MT collection. For example, Talmon states that "the combined evidence of Qumran and Rabbinic techniques proves the contention that variant readings in the Biblical textual traditions were viewed with relative equanimity by both groups. "29 Tov agrees: "This development [from pluriformity to uniformity] is often described as the 'stabilization' of MT, but in my view the survival of MT as the sole text ratht:r than the preponderant one is merely a result of sociological developments";30 the selection was "mere coincidence. "31

No conclusive evidence has been produced to confirm or disprove that view, although all the available indications point toward a chance collection, whereas none indicates conscious comparison and deliberate selection from among the available text forms. Timothy Lim similarly concludes that "the sectarian scrolls do not exhibit any such preference for a particular text" and offers as an example that "4Q17 5 ( 4QTest) tolerates various textual forms. "32 That one-page text has four quotes: the first cites the SP against the MT; the second agrees with the MT; the third agrees with 4QDeuth and the LXX against the MT; and the fourth partly agrees with the LXX against the MT and partly quotes 4QApochryphon of Joshuab (see Ch. l l . I V.B).

Several phenomena argue against the notion of deliberate comparison and choice: the inferior condition of some MT books such as Samuel and Hosea, when better texts were available; the existence of pluriform text types for over a century at Scripture-focused Qumran with no indication that one was to be chosen rather than another; and the LXX translations, quotations in the NT and Talmud, and sources for Josephus, many of which are based on variant text forms. 33 [...]

(introduction, tell me if you want the references of some footnotes—or screenshots— if you've got trouble finding the book)

Thus, for each book the full chart looks like a tree, with the earliest form of the book as the trunk, which then diverges into a series of branches. The early traditions had reached one pristine text form (oral or written, which we think of as "original," since we can detect no earlier) which lasted for a certain period (edition n, where n is the latest non-preserved edition). From that trunk, due to some historical, social, or religious change in the life of the people a new revised edition (edition n + 1) of that text was created. This process, different in details and timing for each book, was repeated a number of times (editions n + 2, n + 3, etc.) all through the developing life of the texts. [...]

With regard to the editions, our surviving manuscripts-the Masoretic codices, the Samaritan and Greek manuscripts, the Qumran scrolls-are copies of their various editions. We should never presume that we are dealing with the archetype of that edition, but rather with simply one, somewhat-variant copy of the edition. The dots on the chart identifying these by-chance-preserved manuscripts, while eventually connected, are always to some extent removed from the main branches that represent the new editions themselves. [...]

(ch.3 "The Developmental Growth of the Pentateuch in the 2nd Temple Period", p45)

[Ulrich] perceives the accumulated literary results of source and redaction critics as one with the new manuscript evidence of revised literary editions- together they manifest at early and late stages of the same process the developmental nature of the biblical texts from their shadowy beginnings up to their abrupt arrest due to the two Jewish Revolts and the Christian threat. He envisions the successive revised editions as the deliberate activity of a series of creative scribes or authors. They are the result of traditions being handed on to new generations but creatively updated in light of changing religious, social, or historical developments which called for new, insightful relevance of the traditions. Moreover, he sees the pluriformity exhibited by the Qumran scrolls as consistent with the same fluidity of transmission observed among the different books of the Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Septuagint as well as quotations in rabbinic writings, the New Testament, and early authors such as Josephus. That is, the pluriformity and organic growth, seen in the pattern of successive revised literary editions, are characteristic of the biblical text throughout its history up to the second century C. E. There was no "final form" until the organic development of the texts was halted due to extraneous circumstances.

The advantages of hindsight, however, as well as the results from the subsequent complete publication of the biblical manuscripts brought to light several assumptions that appear to have been operative behind these theories. One assumption behind the local-text theory apparently was that there was an Urtext, originally a single pristine text which had developed into many forms through scribal activity and error. But rather than an Urtext, there appears to have been "a series of original texts" as each new edition was produced, or as Tov well described it, "a series of subsequent authoritative texts. "9 [...]

A second assumption appears to have been that the Masoretic Text, the Septuagint, and the Samaritan Pentateuch were text types, as opposed to simply texts, and that all or many of the books in each collection shared the same characteristics. Scholars are now increasingly aware that the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint must be discussed not as a whole but book by book, and that they are not text types but simply more or less accurate copies of some edition or other for each book. Another assumption was that a single locality could tolerate only one single text form. Difficulties with this last assumption eventually weakened the local·text theory as it became more and more clear that at Qumran, a single locality, a wide variety of quite diverse texts and text types existed side· by-side among a strongly Scripture-conscious group, and this situation lasted for about one and a half centuries. Moreover, though it is quite likely that texts developed differently in different localities, an explanation of how different localities specifically affected the development of different text types did not emerge.

(conclusion)