Hi Folks,

Matthew, you are wrong to say that you are "relying on Hills" because your claim :

"We know that the Jews did tamper with their texts in order to deny Messianic prophecies as had been fulfilled in Jesus Christ."

is simply not made by Edward Hills.

You gave a quote where Hills only talks about situations where the Masoretic Text is itself split.

First, Hills may not have been fully aware of the Psalm 22:16 Masoretic split-manuscript situation, and I discussed that more fully above.

And the other two were qere-ketiv and it is well known that the King James Bible sometimes translates qere, sometimes ketiv, so there is no evidence in that whatsoever of your claim of tampering. And they are not related to your claims about "Messianic prophecies".

So do you really have any claims of tampering in the Masoretic Text, outside the issue of Psalm 22:16 (where Hebraic midrash and minority Masoretic manuscripts agree with most of the extra-Hebrew evidences and there is no reason to assume anything other than a textual difficulty, especially when you include the Targum evidence).

Matthew, are you attacking the base underlying text of the King James Bible on vapors ?

What are the Messianic prophecy verses where you feel that the Masoretic Text was tampered and unreliable ?

You do know, I hope, that Isaiah has been the center of Messianic focus and the Masoretic prophecy verses in the Masoretic Text have been affirmed 100% by the DSS, including Isaiah 7, 9 and 53.

(While the Greek OT fails miserably, there is an excellent Daniel Sapp article on that vis a vis Isaiah 53.)

Shalom,
Steven