LXX X-perts Deny LXX

Even the LXX X-perts admit there is no actual evidence for a BC LXX. Here is Sir Frederick Kenyon:

“A considerable number of MSS. exist which give information as to Origen’s Hexaplaric text and particular passages in the other columns, but these DO NOT GO FAR towards enabling us to recover the LXX text as it existed BEFORE ORIGEN; and this remains the GREATEST PROBLEM which confronts the TEXTUAL STUDENT of the SEPTUAGINT.”

“The Text of the Greek Bible”, Sir Frederick Kenyon, (approx. 1920) p 35.

Brenton, the editor of the LXX, remarks –

“The Hexapla itself is said never to have been copied: what remains of the versions which it contained (mere fragments) were edited by Montfaucon in 1714, and in an abridged edition by Bahrdt in 1769-70. The Hexaplar text of the Septuagint was copied about a half century AFTER Origen’s death by Pamphilus and Eusebius; it thus obtained a circulation; but the errors of copyists soon confounded the marks of addition and omission which Origen placed, and HENCE the TEXT of the SEPTUAGINT became almost hopelessly MIXED up WITH that of OTHER VERSIONS.”

Brenton’s Septuagint Introduction (Zondervan, from the original 1851), p vi.

In other words, we can’t even reconstruct Origen’s fifth column of the LXX, let alone a pre-Origenian Septuagint, much less a BC LXX.

In “Invitation To The Septuagint,” Moises Silva & Karen Jobes, Baker Academic, 2000, “In effect, the great task of Septuagint textual criticism is to reconstruct the pre-Hexaplaric text, which means undoing Origen’s labors so as to rediscover the form of the “Septuagint” in the second century. Without Greek manuscripts predating Origen, however, that goal is not easily reached.” p 53.

“We have no EVIDENCE that any Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, or even of the Pentateuch, was called the Septuagint prior to the second century of this era.”

Jobes & Silva, Invitation To The Septuagint, p 32.

So, aside from the few scraps which predate Origen, they again admit they can’t even reconstruct Origen’s Hexapla, let alone any kind of “Septuagint.” They don’t have any EVIDENCE to work with.

https://av400.blogspot.com/2016/02/lxx-x-perts-deny-lxx.html