Jewish Scholar Agrees: First Century Jews Accepted the Masoretic Text and Rejected the Septuagint. The Question is: Why?

Excerpt from the Jewish website, The Torah:

The roots of MT [Masoretic text] and its popularity go back to the first century of the Common Era. Before that period, only the proto-rabbinic (Pharisaic) movement made use of MT, while other streams in Judaism used other Hebrew textual traditions.  In other words, before the first century of the Common Era, we witness a textual plurality among Jews, with multiple text forms conceived of as “the Bible,” or Scripture, including the Hebrew source upon which the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint (LXX), was built.

…With the advent of Christianity in the first century C.E., the LXX, which began as the biblical text for Greek speaking Hellenistic Jews, was accepted as holy writ by this new group of early Christians, and was concomitantly dropped by other Greek-speaking Jews and ceased to be considered authoritative scripture by them. Around the same time, the Samaritans adopted the version of the Torah known as the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Qumran community that had assembled texts of different types ceased to exist.

…[Therefore, in the first century,] different  groups [of Jews} made use of different texts, and this trend continued over time, but these groups either split off from Judaism (Christians and Samaritans) or disappeared (Qumran group), leaving the group that used proto-MT as the only remaining Jewish group. Thus, their version of Scripture became the only version left after the destruction of the Second Temple, and this version thus became the only version that was used by all streams of Judaism.

–Professor Emanuel Tov

 

Professor Emanuel Tov is J. L. Magnes Professor of Bible (emeritus) in the Dept. of Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Born in Amsterdam, Emanuel Tov emigrated to Israel in 1961 and obtained his Ph.D. in biblical studies at the Hebrew University in 1973. Tov specializes in various aspects of the textual criticism of Hebrew and Greek Scripture as well as in the Qumran Scrolls. Under his editorship, thirty-three volumes of the Dead Sea Scrolls series, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, appeared (1992-2008). Among his many publications are, Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert, STDJ 54 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2004); Textual Criticism of the Bible, 3rd ed., revised and expanded; (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012); ביקורת נוסח המקרא, פרקי מבוא, The Biblical Encyclopaedia Library 31 (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2013); and The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research, 3rd ed., completely rev. and enl. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015). For more  of  Tov’s work see his page on Academia.

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Gary:  So if Professor Tov is correct, the selection by post-Temple Jews in Palestine of the Masoretic text seems to have had nothing to do with Christianity and its use of the Septuagint.  The evidence indicates that the Pharisees of Jesus’ day and the Pharisees in the centuries just prior to Jesus had been using the (proto) Masoretic text as their sole preferred text of the Hebrew Scriptures.  After the destruction of the Temple, the Pharisees (later known as “rabbis”), became the dominant authority in the Jewish culture left in Palestine, and therefore, their preferred text, the Masoretic text, became the preferred and only text of the entire culture.

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But why did the Hellenized Jews of the diaspora stop using the Septuagint?  Was it to avoid alleged “Jesus prophecies” in the Septuagint or was it to conform to the preferred text of the majority of Jews in Palestine or was it for some other reason?   Can we ever know the answer to this question???

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But we have not answered our original question:  Which text, Masoretic or Septuagint, is more accurate in comparison to the original texts (which no longer exist)?  Can we ever know?

Let’s keep studying.