Sunday Sermonette: A note on sources

1 Samuel 7 is just another version of the Groundhog Day story that constitutes most of the previous Book of Judges. A leader emerges who rallies the people to return to exclusive veneration of Yahweh, and he rewards them with victory in battle. As I need say no more about that, let me say something about the document we are reading.I have from time to time mentioned the Septuagint and the Masoretic text. The Septuagint is a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Koine Greek, that is the Lingua Franca of the Mediterranean world from the 4th Century BC and many centuries thereafter. The Masoretic text is the authoritative Hebrew Tanakh, used in Judaism today. It was canonized by rabbinical scholars in the 10th and 11th Century CE, but the documents on which it is based, and their history, are lost.  The Septuagint is so-called because the legend is that Pharaoh Ptolemy II commissioned 70 (or 72) Jewish scholars to create it for his library at Alexandria in the Third Century BCE. The truth is that various books were translated by different people at different times over the course of a century or so, centering on the reign of Ptolemy. The reason is simply that few people spoke Hebrew any more: a vernacular Bible was needed. The Septuagint includes several books that are not included in the Masoretic text, and they differ on many other points.   'Ancient fragments of the Tanakh, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls (which were created around 300 BCE) differ in respects ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs