Q Bible Hebrew

[Desmond Hutchins]

Thatinformation can be found in many good Bible dictionaries, study bibles, and encyclopedias like the ESV Study Bible and the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. These should allow you to calculate the percentages on your own.

I was curious about this myself. A few weeks ago I found a forum where a guy used logos to do a total word count of each of the books of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation (not including the Apocrypha). From this data I kept a record of them and added it all up to get 611,224 words all up, then checked out how much of those numbers were OT and NT etc.

What is the oldest Hebrew Bible? That is a complicated question. The Dead Sea Scrolls are fragments of the oldest Hebrew Bible text, while the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex are the oldest complete versions, written by the Masoretes in the 10th and 11th centuries, respectively. The Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript falls in between the early scrolls and the later codices.

The Aleppo Codex, the oldest Hebrew Bible that has survived to modern times, was created by scribes called Masoretes in Tiberias, Israel around 930 C.E. As such, the Aleppo Codex is considered to be the most authoritative copy of the Hebrew Bible. The Aleppo Codex is not complete, however, as almost 200 pages went missing between 1947 and 1957.

Interested in the history and meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls? In the free eBook Dead Sea Scrolls, learn what the Dead Sea Scrolls are and why are they important. Find out what they tell us about the Bible, Christianity and Judaism.

In the end there is some very good news and some not so good news. The good news is this: in many instances the Hebrew text found among the Scrolls is very, very similar to the consonantal text standardized later by the Masoretes. The copy of Isaiah is very much like the copy found in Codex Leningradensis.

The not so good news is that this is not the case with all of the books of the Hebrew Bible. Scholars had long noted, for example, that the Septuagint (Greek) text of the book of Jeremiah was about 15% shorter than the Masoretic text (i.e., it had that many fewer verses/words), and scholars had suspected that it was because the Hebrew version of Jeremiah known to the ancient Greek translators was significantly different from the Masoretic Text. As it turns out, one of the scrolls discovered at Qumran has a Hebrew text of Jeremiah that is closer to that lying behind the Septuagint version than the Masoretic text. 15% is a big difference. Other books of the Septuagint are also strikingly different from the Masoretic text, for example, in the books of Samuel and Kings. It is possible that the Hebrew texts of all these books were in serious flux before the text came to be standardized by the end of the first century. Bart Ehrman

Saul, the article is not on the Greek Bible but the Hebrew Bible. Yes, the LXX translation was done earlier than the Dead Sea Scrolls but the oldest extant complete LXX we have comes from a date later than the Scrolls (the Codex Vaticanus from about 350). But I think there are fragments from the 1st century BCE (within the Scroll period) while some Dead Sea Scroll fragments go back to 250 BCE.

The use of BCE and CE has less to do with science per se and more to do with groups of people or individuals who do not endorse or suggest that they endorse Christianity, for whatever reason. The criterion for such groups and individuals is historical and, for some, religious, more than scientific. As a Jew, I still recognize that, historically, the Western world and more have come to view the year 1 as a huge turning point. But I want a way to refer to it without endorsing the view Jesus was or is the Christ, as I would do using BC Before Christ) and I also want a way to not endorse the view that Jesus or Jesus Christ is Lord in some way, as I would do using AD (the year of our Lord). Christians think he was and is Lord but not Jews, Muslims, agnostics or atheists. Public schools are run by state governments which should not be endorsing any religious view. The entire British public school system has been using BCE and CE for many years. Not just scientists, then, but Jews and scholars in many fields who wish to not endorse Christianity use BCE and CE.

Additional ancient testimony. One of the chief external evidences against the canonicity of the Apocrypha is the fact that none of the Christian Bible writers quoted from these books. While this of itself is not conclusive, inasmuch as their writings are also lacking in quotations from a few books recognized as canonical, such as Esther, Ecclesiastes, and The Song of Solomon, yet the fact that not one of the writings of the Apocrypha is quoted even once is certainly significant. -e/1200000305#h=1:0-48:292

Evidence Against Canonicity. While in some cases they have certain historical value, any claim for canonicity on the part of these writings is without any solid foundation. The evidence points to a closing of the Hebrew canon following the writing of the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Malachi in the fifth century B.C.E. The Apocryphal writings were never included in the Jewish canon of inspired Scriptures and do not form part of it today. -e/1200000305#h=1:0-48:292

The notion that there are only slight differences in the Masoretic and Septuagint texts does not hold up very well on examination, simply by looking at the table of contents of the two Bibles. Several of the books and chapters that are either considered by many faiths as deutero-canonical or apocryphal were once included in the King James and other collections; in recent years they have been discreetly dropped. Criteria for what is canonical came literally with book binding. So long as scriptures were tied to scrolls, the documents we know collectively as a Bible were once components of libraries, or more likely parts of one. And not necessarily all of it was included due to local availability or the commissioning of a copy. Councils of churches and the Judaic equivalent set the criteria for a canon over centuries.

Many of the individual OT books are many centuries older than the demarcation of BC and AD or BCE and CE ( your choice), yet others creep very close to that dividing point. Yet what exactly are the criteria for inclusion? Who said so? How? When?

All the rectitude of men cannot find a solution to what is happening in the world today,

So what if ???? does it really matter what or who is politically correct.

Let us live our lives as if Jesus is coming back to earth today, because we

desperately need a special leader who knows how things work for the good of all mankind.

Dr. Saul Pressman, You are correct in saying that the Septuagint is older than the oldest Hebrew bible we have. I am curious if you have some documentation on your implication on the influence Bar Kochbah and Rabbi Akiva had on Masoretic vsersion of Torah?

Nothing wrong with saying Before the Christian Era (BCE) and the Christian Era (CE). I know some want to use the words Common or Current, but hey, we can easily put Christ back into its meaning. ?

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