The present web page seeks to draw attention to two very significant contributions to biblical scholarship, namely, the Septuagint (LXX) and the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS). The LXX also known as the Greek Old Testament (G), is the earliest translation of the Jewish Scriptures from the original Hebrew into Greek dating from 300 BCE to 2 BCE. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a work that was carried out between 1947 and 1956, provided us with the oldest extant manuscripts of the Jewish Scriptures. The DSS dates between 300 BCE and 100 CE, and as scholars have observed, are an authentication of the present Hebrew Bible which is a copy of the Masoretic Texts (MT). The original text of the Hebrew Scriptures, including that of the DSS, only consisted of consonants without vowels and punctuation marks. The main task of the Masoretes, a group of Jewish Scribe-scholars therefore was to add vowels and punctuation marks to the text of the Hebrew Bible. The oldest existing complete copy of the Masoretic Texts is the Leningrad Codex dating to 1009 CE. The Masoretic Texts themselves were copied from copies of copies as the original Bible if ever there was such a thing has never been found.
The interesting thing in the scholarship of these documents (DSS & MT) lies mainly in the differences that might be detected in their textual variants including those of other textual translations such as the Targums, Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Vulgate among others. Scholars would then have to critically analyze the variant readings in comparison with the parent text (German, vorlage) in order to determine the motivation for the variations on the part of the recording scribes. However, to the credibility of the present Hebrew Bible (OT), which is a copy of the Masoretic Text, it was ‘mostly’ found to match the text of the corresponding books in the Dead Sea Scrolls with minuscule variations. This is what makes the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls an invaluable asset to biblical scholarship. In the language of financial accounting professionals, the DSS offers checks and balances to the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible. This means therefore that the Masoretes carefully copied the text of the Hebrew Bible in its present form, from the source text in whatever form it existed without much redactions, subtractions or additions based on its conformity with the older text of the DSS. The present webpage shall highlight the roles played by the two biblical resources, LXX and DSS through contributions from different experts on the topics.
The Septuagint and the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament
Translating the Untranslatable: Septuagint Renderings of Hebrew idioms
Biblical Hebrew as Mirrored in the Septuagint
Interpretation and Meaning in the Septuagint
Reading Gods Word in Translation: The Septuagint…
Reading the Septuagint: The Hermeneutical problem of a translated Text
Towards a Theology of the Septuagint
The Septuagint, LXX, origin, textual transmission, synagogues, church
A Brief History of the Septuagint
The Dead Sea Scrolls at the Gnostic Society Library: Online Texts from the Scrolls