You're missing the point, the MT is not the only Hebrew Bible to ever exist. We have other writings of Jews, where they talk about how they view the LXX versus whatever manuscripts they were currently using, which the MT eventually came from. Please broaden your mind out of this simplistic "LXX vs MT" thinking.Paidion wrote:It is the Masoretic text that is of late date, the oldest fragments dating from the 9th century A.D., and the oldest complete texts from the 10th and 11th centuries A.D.Dizerner wrote:We should also note that due to the late nature of the LXX, the Jews often accused the LXX of having been written with Christian sympathies, with an intent to favor Jesus' Messiahship.
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/masorete.htm
On the other hand, the Septuagint was translated from the Hebrew (a different form of Hebrew from the Masoretic text) from 300 to 200 B.C.
http://www.septuagint.net/
"The Jews early learnt to dislike the Septuagint. The Christians used it in their Messianic controversies, and even accused the Jews—quite groundlessly—of having falsified the original in passages which bore on Christian controversy. The Jews could easily justify themselves against such a charge, but their most orthodox Rabbis soon began to declare that the translation of the sacred Law was a crime and misfortune as bad for Israel as the day on which the golden calf was made."
The Jews then started making ultra literal Septuagints (Greek OTs) to combat Christian apologists (ie. Aquila).
Encyclopaedia Britannica:
"The Jews first began to dislike and reject the Septuagint, when they found that its renderings were peculiarly valuable for the purposes of Christian controversy. They therefore adopted in lieu of it the version of Aquila, the chief merit of which is its slavish literalism.... Since the Septuagint had long been used in almost all their synagogues, this condemnation of it came a little too late in the day ; and the Christians, who had no means of consulting the original, prized the translation with an extravagant veneration, and accepted it as an inspired production, and even preferred it to the Hebrew text. Jerome’s profound learning led him to see that such views were untenable, and in forming the design of making a fresh translation from the Hebrew, he pointed out the necessity for doing so by showing the errors of the LXX. This proposal alarmed St Augustine as much as the suggestion of a revision of our English version alarms the more timid divines of the present day; and when Jerome was driven by the Bishop’s opposition into further arguments, he finally forbade the use of Jerome's translation within his diocese. Rufiinus was even more violent and unreasonable in his attacks on the proposed innovation; and, on the whole, the Septuagint maintained its high authority until the conclusion of the eighteenth century, when it began to be rated at its true value, as a version which can not be regarded as possessing any claims to equal authority with the Hebrew text, although it is exceedingly important for all the purposes of Scriptural interpretation."
