NT quoting/translating the OT against the “LXX”

[Francesco Grassi]

Hello friends,

 

I am trying to locate all the OT verses quoted (and possibly alluded too) in the NT that contain a specific Hebrew word (e.g. all verses containing פּשׁע used in the NT). The reason of doing this is to see when/if the NT diverges from the “LXX”, when that particular Hebrew word is used. Maybe there is even an easier way to do that, but nothing comes to mind.

 

I did use the OT in the NT module, but it doesn’t allow a word search within it.

 

Any help? 

 

 

Thanks in advance!

[Helen Brown]

You can search the HMT for פּשׁע and save the results as a Reference list. If you open that list in the LXX1 you can then find allusions to those verses in the GNT using the INFER command.

 

It is less easy to get a list of the words that translate פּשׁע in the LXX, though you can easily find them in the MT-LXX Parallel. You can then search the GNT for that word list.

[Francesco Grassi]

 

 

It is less easy to get a list of the words that translate פּשׁע in the LXX, though you can easily find them in the MT-LXX Parallel. You can then search the GNT for that word list.

 

Actually, that was the easy part. I ran a search of פּשׁע and in the Analysis (Pie Chart), you get exactly the many ways the LXX has translated the MT 

 

 

As for the INFER command in the GNT/LXX, and maybe I am missing something, but that will return occurrences which I have to "search back" one by one, and will give me what I don't want, that is the NT agreeing with the LXX.

 

Isn't there just a way to export the list of allusions/quotations from the NA28 Apparatus, and search in that list for the  פּשׁע word?

[Helen Brown]

Yes, but you cannot export the list of LXX words. In any case, it won't help you. The GNT Notes module does list the identified cross-references, but I do not know how you would incorporate that into a search. I think you will need to:

• Find each verse with פּשׁע in the HMT.
• Search for that verse in GNT Notes Scripture field
• Compare the LXX and GNT texts for the cross-references.

[Enoch]

As a matter of fact the NT rarely if ever quotes the OT.  The NT cites and gives the gist of OT verses.  This follows from the definition of quote.  A quotation must be exact; words may not be left out or changed; words must be presented in exactly the order uttered or written.  An honest quoter of a written document must use ellipses ( . . .) for omitted words.  You may not quote "Row your boat" as "Propel your craft."  If the NT quoted the OT, the NT would present Hebrew or Aramaic words.  You cannot actually quote one language using another language.  You can give the gist or translate. ( But you cannot quote Spanish in English.) You may find a rare exception like the cry of desolation from the cross where Hebrew or Aramaic is possibly quoted.

 

As to the LXX, we do not have any copy of the LXX so far as I know, except for fragments.  What we do have is the AD Greek OT, which it is supposed comes from the Septuagint, a BC document.  Our uncial manuscript so-called LXXs are from c AD 300 or later, long after the NT was written.  I don't know any way we could know that any particular reading in the Vaticanus Greek OT was not derived from the NT.  So if a reading in Vaticanus (etc.) agrees with a NT citation from the OT, there seems no way to prove that such reading was not from the NT into the (erroneously) so-called LXX.  (Some might say that the NT corrupted the LXX, if that were not an impious statement.)

 

Those who believe that the Bible is the infallible Word of God will understand this: We primarily want the most accurate OT possible, the best representation of God's Word possible.  I think it is safe to assume that those who made the ancient uncial Greek OTs like Vaticanus, had the same attitude.  Thus it is logical that 4th century Christians in making their Greek OT would prefer the inspired NT's readings of the OT over the actual LXX in deciding what the reading should be. And it is safe to assume that 4th century Bible-producers would be more concerned about an accurate OT, than in being faithful to to the ancient but uninspired LXX.

 

Thus it is a vain attempt to determine when the NT writers followed the LXX in preference to any Hebrew text of the OT.  And we really do not have the LXX except in fragments.  Moreover, so far as I know, we do not have a copy of the Hebrew Tanakh older than the NT, only we have parts & fragments of the pre-NT Hebrew. So we also lack certainty to prove that the present Masoretic text was never altered after the NT came out.

Edited October 2, 2017 by Enoch

[Helen Brown]

Enoch: Your comments may be interesting but not really relevant to the technical discussion of this post. We prefer not to continue the discussion in this vein.

[Λύχνις Δαν]

So I tried your suggestion Helen, which is somewhat similar to what I did for https://www.accordancebible.com/forums/topic/21939-search-help-lord-and-yhwhthe other day but going in the opposite direction if you like. Doing revealed a couple of enhancements which would be nice for queries of this type if they could be implemented in a sufficiently general way.

 

This would be considerably easier if a Tool could use [CONTENTS <text tab>] in fields that are indexes of verse references. Absent that it's a bit time consuming to take the refs using Copy As Refs from the results of the search for פשׁע . Also I note that Copy as Refs produces a form that cannot be just pasted into the Tool search field as it omits the chapter in some cases and the Tool search box pukes on that. Hopefully that wouldn't be too hard to fix.  So then manually correcting those refs one can paste them in - requires replacing the comma with a ; and inserting the relevant chapter. Actually correcting the refs I then get a message saying refs cannot exceed 255 characters. So that would be good to fix too. So you have to chunk them in the Scripture field searches.

 

So my second chunk of refs like this :  Is 1:2; 1:28; 24:20; 43:25; 43:27; 44:22; 46:8; 48:8; 50:1; 53:5; 5:8; 5:12; 57:4; 58:1; 59:12-13; 59:20; 66:24; Jer 2:8; 2:29; 3:13; 5:6; 33:8

 

finds hits in a Scripture search for GNT-OT X refs. Setting Show Text As -> Articles you can then c & p and get this :

 

Mark 9:48    Isaiah 66:24

Rom. 11:26-27    Isaiah 59:20-21; 27:9

1Pet. 2:24    Isaiah 53:4-5, 12

You then need to do the reverse edit of the one I did in the other post, throwing away the OT refs and using the NT ones to find the NT hits that correspond. Of course you also want to keep the Xrefs showing the matched references so that you can compare whether the Greek work in the LXX and the GNT are the same or different, on a cross-ref by cross-ref basis.

 

(From the examples above Francesco, 1Pet 2:24/Is 53:4 would seem to come closest to an example of a different translation but really in this case the reference in NT is merely an incomplete rendering of the OT version which uses two expressions for the injuries suffered and the NT really only refers to one.)

 

This is making me think that we need a MERGE style command for cross-ref based queries like we have for the MT-LXX module, though joins on data sets would be more general. If one could take the references from the tool and use them in a CONTENTS command against a text. That way one could chain these queries together and do this search in one workspace without copy and paste. This is basically doing database table joins which is what you really want.

 

So it can be done but it's a bit of work. If you have a lot of hits for the Hebrew word in the OT or a lot of XRefs you'll have to chunk it a bunch of times.

I also haven't optimized my tabs and layout to make review easy but you'll probably want three zones to see what you need to see.

 

Thx

D

[Francesco Grassi]

Thanks Helen and Daniel for your helpful suggestions. I came up with interesting results (Daniel, look at Rom 4:25), although the copy/past-->editing/255 character limits is a bit frustrating. Solving this issue and having the [CONTENTS <text tab>] for Tools would definitely make things much easier.

 

The MERGE command could be of help, but for now I do the comparison using instant details for the NT (cmd to switch between versions), and the dedicated MT-LXX Parallel for the OT 

 

One more thing: You mentioned that already, Helen, but it would be very helpful to just click on the Analysis pie chart (e.g. on a particular lexeme) and have the list of relative verses. Or is there already a way to do that?

 

Thanks a lot for your help guys!

 

[Joel Brown]

Just shift-click on a slice of the pie chart to open up a search tab with those results, showing you the hits and their locations.

[Francesco Grassi]

Just shift-click on a slice of the pie chart to open up a search tab with those results, showing you the hits and their locations.

 

It doesn't work, Joel. 

[Joel Brown]

Oh!  This was a new feature in version 12, and based on your screenshot I believe you are still running 11 or earlier.  Sorry, I don't believe there is an automated way to do it prior to v12, you'll have to construct the search yourself.

[Francesco Grassi]

Oh, ok! One more reason to update now ;-) 

 

Thanks!

[Ken Simpson]

Hey Joel, shift-clicking doesn’t work for me either. Though I thought it should work (v 12.1.4b2)

[Joel Brown]

What steps did you take, Ken?

[Francesco Grassi]

Doesn't work here either, even after upgrading.

 

Any idea?

[Joel Brown]

Francesco, what steps are you taking?  What search are you running, then what slice of the pie chart are you shift-clicking?

[Francesco Grassi]

Joel, running a word search in the BHS--> Analytics (Pie Chart)--> MTLXX Lex (as the selected class).

[Helen Brown]

Joel and I looked together, and here's the scoop.

 

The newer Accordance (11 and 12) do more with the Pie Chart and MT-LXX Parallel. You can use Analysis and add MT-LXX Lex or Word to the column (in Set Analysis Display) to get a simple list of the ways your Hebrew Word in translated in the LXX. That's exportable and can be used as a search criterion. This does require the full MT-LXX Parallel module.

 

Now the Pie Chart does not export lists. If you click any segment it will show the results of the search broken down by that tag. If you shift-click it will search the text for the main search@new tag, so you can get a list of verses. These work only on the actual Hebrew tags. if you choose MT-LXX neither the click nor shift-click have any effect. The Pie Chart lists the Greek words in segments but that is all it does when going between Hebrew and Greek.

 

I hope this is clearer now.
 

[Francesco Grassi]

Helen, thanks for the clarification. The problem for me is not so much exporting the lexical forms from the Analysis results. In fact, the [MERGE BHS] command in the MT-LXX module already gives you that (yes, minus the breakdown). 

 

It would be great if we could avoid the complexity of this search and go straight from translated lexemes to locations, just as the analysis already does for any word search. 

 

 

One step away from perfection ;-)