Hi Folks,

Matthew, the Jews were split on their knowledge and skill in Greek. Josephus clearly did not have Greek skills when he was in Israel and learned them later in Rome. Not just narrative style niceties but the basics of communication. Similarly Paul, while multi-lingual, spoke to the common people in Hebrew in Acts.

You do a lot of conjecturing above, most of which I will let pass for now to focus on the big picture.

The critical issue is that the most consistent understanding is that the LXX referred to the Penteteuch. (Yes, I believe strongly that there was a Greek Penteteuch in the 1st century in some lands.) This is fully consistent with Josephus not having a Greek history to work with, it is consistent with Philo writing almost entirely about the Penteteuch and it is consistent with extant Greek fragments from the DSS. And it is consistent with Hebrew and Aramaic being the common languages of the people in Israel, especially in the more Jewish regions like Jerusalem.

And it is also consistent with the known tampering of the Greek OT to match the NT, as in Psalm 14.

As for the supposed benefits of the Greek OT for NT studies and translation, they are limited almost entirely to unusual words, where the Latin, Syriac and Greek are all helpful to give us the true English Bible. I would challenge you to find any other use for the Greek OT other than difficult words and a minor support on a couple of Masoretic text splits (Psalm 22:16 and Isaiah 7:14 being oft-discussed, yet perfectly and strongly defendable without a smidgen of Greek OT in the mix.)

Of course those with mastery in Greek might overemphasize what fits their own skills, the LXX lists are utter confusion on the basic issue of the identity of the Tanach (OT) text.

I realize that you are reacting somewhat to the "myth" view, which I believe is an overstatement, since the evidence is good that there was a Greek Penteteuch in use at the time. There is virtually no case though that it gave us the NT readings, since most all of those OT readings arise in 4th-century tampered manuscripts as orphans, without Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew or even church writer or rabbinic support. They are tampered 'smoothings' of the Greek OT text like was done in Psalm 14.

Shalom,
Steven