As it is published today. Well, now you are changing the goal posts.
The Septuagint as it is published today comes primarily from several different recensions, one of which is the Codex Vaticanus (Codex B), which is of Egyptian origin. The others are the Codex Alexandrinus, and Codex Sinaiticus. The Codex Vaticanus (Codex B) is popular because it is believed to be the oldest (nearly) complete copy of the Greek Bible in existence. The Roman edition of the Septuagint (1587) was based on the Vaticanus. Maybe Kolokotronis can inform us about the version preferred by the Orthodox.
However, Codex B did not come from Origen’s Hexapla as you claim. Rather, it belongs to the family of manuscripts used by Origen to compose his Hexapla. Origen duplicated the Septuagint in his Hexapla. The manuscript that did borrow from the Hexapla is the Alexandrinus Codex.
Or are you laboring under the misconception that the Septuagint today can be found someplace earlier than Origen's Hexapla? If so, then where is the Septuagint found earlier than Origen's Hexapla?
I’m not sure what you mean by the Septuagint being found “someplace earlier than Origen’s Hexapla”. The Septuagint was used by Origen to compose the Hexapla, so the Septuagint was of earlier origins than the Hexapla. If you are asking if the original manuscript of the Septuagint is available for examination, the answer is no. But if that is your requirement to prove that the Septuagint existed, you also need to realize that we don’t even have Origen’s Hexapla (a much later work), which seems to be your touchstone.
And tell us where there can be found any manuscript evidence of a pre-Christian Septuagint.
The Dead Sea Scrolls. Also, Hebrew manuscripts found at Qumran more closely follow the Septuagint we have now than they do the Masoretic texts.
Please tell us about earlier pre-Christian manuscripts of your canon. And what is the earliest complete manuscript now available containing your full OT canon. Before you answer, please note that even the Dead Sea Scrolls don’t contain a complete manuscript of your OT canon.
The fact still remains that the Septuagint pre-dates Origen, which is the topic of this thread.
"Maybe Kolokotronis can inform us about the version preferred by the Orthodox."
Here's an article which will go some of the way to answering your question. The quick simple answer is that we use the Septuagint which The Church has always used. The various other older or newer versions don't mean much to us. As a matter of fact, I don't think we even have anything approaching an "authorized" version of either the OT or the NT in English. But then again, the Bible as a collection of sacred and inspired writings plays little role in Orthodoxy. The scriptures themselves do in that they form the basis of much of our liturgical life, but the collection not so much. I think these issues are really more of interest to Western Christians, in great measure because of the Protestant focus on scripture to the near exclusion of liturgical worship. That's just not something we have had to deal with in the East.
www.geocities.com/trvalentine/orthodox/bible_texts.html
The Dead Sea Scrolls. Also, Hebrew manuscripts found at Qumran more closely follow the Septuagint we have now than they do the Masoretic texts.
They do? Does that complete book of Isaiah dating to circa 100 AD follow the Septuagint? or is it a perfect match for the Masoretic book of Isaiah? It follows the Masoretic book of Isaiah almost perfectly and testifies to the accuracy of the Masoretic text and those translations based upon it.
The book in front of me lists 24 Septuagint papyrus and all 24 date to the time of Origen or later. None are dated earlier than the time of Origen. Have you been able to find any earlier than that?
Where is all this evidence for the Septuagint from the Dead Sea Scrolls that has been pontificated to us ad nauseum? Are you saying that the only evidence are fragments of Hebrew papyrus that are closer to the Septuagint of Origen than the Masoretic text? Is that all? And even if true, what does that mean? The Levites regularly discarded corrupt and inaccurate texts, and if that Hebrew papyrus is from one of these discarded texts, then it is further testimony to the inaccuracies of the Septuagint.
The fact still remains that the Septuagint pre-dates Origen, which is the topic of this thread.
You have presented no evidence for that claim, nor has anyone else.
Do you believe Paul when he says to the Romans that "unto them [the Jews] were committed the oracles of God". They were not committed to the Greeks, the Chaldeans, the Romans, or anyone else. They were committed to the Jews.
He never claimed any such thing.
He stated that the Septuagint was in 'B', in the Old Testament, and that it came from Origen's 5th column.
The Dead Sea Scrolls. Also, Hebrew manuscripts found at Qumran more closely follow the Septuagint we have now than they do the Masoretic texts.
That is untrue, most of the Dead Sea Scrolls support the Masoretic text.
And there is disagreement between the scholars on those that don't on why they don't.
3. THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT TEXT
The discovery of the first Dead Sea Scroll, Isaiah A, was generally regarded by scholars as a victory for the Masoretic (Traditional) Hebrew text of the Old Testament. M. Burrows (1948) wrote as follows: ''The text of Isaiah in this manuscript is practically complete. With the exception of a few words lost where the edge of a column has been torn off and the relatively unimportant omissions to be noted below, the whole book is here, and it is substantially the book preserved in the Masoretic text. Differing notably in orthography and somewhat in morphology, it agrees with the Masoretic text to a remarkable degree in wording. Herein lies its chief importance, supporting the fidelity of the Masoretic tradition." And according to Albright (1955), the second Isaiah -scroll (Isaiah B) agrees even more closely with the Masoretic text.
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But the discovery in 1952 of Cave 4 with its vast store of manuscripts has altered the picture considerably. It became apparent that the Proto-Masoretic text of the Isaiah scrolls was not the only type of Old Testament text that had been preserved at Qumran. In the manuscripts from Cave 4 many other text types have been distinguished. In a recent article F. M. Cross (1964) presents some of the conclusions which he has drawn from his Qumran studies. He believes that three distinct ancient texts of Samuel can be identified, namely, (1) an Egyptian text represented by the Septuagint, (2) a Palestinian text represented by manuscript 4Q from Cave 4, and (3) a Proto-Masoretic text represented by a Greek text of Samuel also from Cave 4. And in the Pentateuch also Cross divides the text into the Egyptian, Palestinian, and Proto-Masoretic varieties.
[picture: Is iii. 16-20 from the Dead Sea Scroll (A) showing alterations to the divine Name (from adonay to Yaweh in line 3 and from Yahweh to adonay in line 4).]
[picture: Dead Sea Fragments of Exodus. Phoenician Script]
Albright (1955) and Burrows, (1958) agree with Cross in regard to his threefold division of the Old Testament documents, a conclusion which Cross presented in an earlier article (1956). But unless those two scholars have reconsidered their positions, they differ from Cross in their estimate of the age of the Proto-Masoretic and the relationship of this text to the Egyptian and Palestinian texts.
Albright holds that the Proto-Masoretic text was developed in Babylon during the days of the captivity and ''then brought back to Palestine by the returning exiles during the late sixth and fifth centuries BC." The other two texts were derived from this Proto-Masoretic text. Burrows also believes in the superiority of the Proto-Masoretic text. "The Proto-Masoretic text," he says, "existed at Qumran and elsewhere along with the divergent texts, on the whole it is fair to say that it was the trunk and they were the branches that spring out of it. The greatest contribution of the Dead Sea Scrolls to textual criticism is still their demonstration of this fact." Cross, on the other hand, denies that the Proto-Masoretic text was the ancestor of the other two. He believes that it was ''the local text of Babylon which emerged in the fourth to second centuries BC." According to Cross, the Proto-Masoretic text did not arrive in Palestine until comparatively late.
- Page 36 -
G. R. Driver (1965) disagrees with the interpretation which Albright, Burrows, Cross and other scholars have placed upon the Dead Sea Scrolls. Denying that these documents date from pre-Christian times, he relates them instead to the Jewish Revolt against Rome in AD 66 - 73, thus making them roughly contemporary with the New Testament. He believes that the Righteous Teacher mentioned in the Scrolls was Manaemus (Menahem), a leader in the Revolt and perhaps a son of the rebel Judas mentioned in Acts 5:37. Hence, in Driver's opinion, the Dead Sea Scrolls were written in the first and early second centuries AD, a theory which, if true, greatly alters the significance of these Scrolls both for history and for textual criticism.
Thus we see that, despite the new discoveries, our confidence in the trustworthiness of the Old Testament text must rest on some more solid foundation than the opinions of naturalistic scholars. For as the current Qumran studies demonstrate, these scholars disagree with one another. What one scholar grants another takes away. Instead of depending on such inconstant allies, Bible-believing Christians should develop their own type of Old Testament textual criticism, a textual criticism which takes its stand on the promises of Christ and views the evidence in the light of these promises.
With this summary by Edward F. Hills on the Dead Sea Scrolls, we conclude our survey of the Old Testament manuscripts and Versions. We end just where we began that the foundation of the study on how we got our Bible is the promise of God to preserve His word. It is tragic that so-called textual criticism has been left in the hands of those who proceed with their research totally oblivious to this promise. And worse, many who claim to be fundamentalists take the same naturalistic approach to the transmission of the Holy Scriptures.
Yes, the battle between God and Satan has raged over His Holy Word; there have been many pretenders; some streams of textual transmissions have become seriously corrupted. But, in carefully pondering the facts and evidence as given above, the student can clearly see that God has been faithful to His promise; the Old Testament has been preserved through the Masoretic Hebrew Text.
"Not one jot or tittle has passed away"
http://www.biblebelievers.net/BibleVersions/kjcforv2.htm#X