LXX -vs- MT, Jeremiah 25:11,12

by Death to the Pixies 10 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  Death to the Pixies

  Not looking to debate here, just getting some ideas. If you would, please give which text you accept and briefly give a reason or two for your conclusions. I posted this on another forum but realized the only people who care about this are Jws and X-Jws.

  The LXX reads: "And all the land shall be a desolation: and they shall serve among the nations seventy years" The MT reads: " And this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years."

  Thanks for any input you share.
• 

  TheListener

  I have found this website to have much data on this subject: http://web.syr.edu/~jwwatts/Jer-oafn.htm
• 

  Death to the Pixies

  Thanks for the link.
• 

  Forscher

  Well pixied one,
  The LXX is pretty much acknowledged as the "Readers Digest" version of the OT. That is because some of of the prophetic books appear somewhat edited when compared to the Masoretic text. Among the Dead Sea finds was a copy in Hebrew which is pretty much the same as the LXX. That set off a debate as to whether the LXX represents a more ancient text, possibly the original. I am going to go out on a limb and say that the scholars who hold that it does represent the original may have a point (see Leo, I don't always reject those folks out of hand.). Since the difference is relatively minor and doesn't change the message in any important way (despite substituting "nations" for "king of Babylon"), I think it is just as acceptable.
  Maybe Leo can give us the current thinking from her side of the aisle on that one.
  
  Forscher
• 

  TheListener

  I would add that reviewing the MT and the LXX has not caused me to rethink my disagreement with 607.
• 

  Narkissos

  Hi DttP,

  please give which text you accept

  Both, of course. As you may have gathered from TL's link, the textual history of Jeremiah is quite complex and there is evidence to at least two distinct recensions which developed separately from an early stage. It is quite likely that the (proto-)masoretic text as a whole is secondary to the LXX Hebrew Vorlage (as attested in 4QJerb), but the MT of Jeremiah 25:11f is an integral part of this edition which happened to be considered as the canonical one (if not the original one) by both rabbinical Judaism and Western Christianity, including JWs (the NWT is based on the MT, not the LXX). At the very least, one cannot appeal to a different LXX reading in one particular verse while dismissing the completely different LXX as a whole, as the NWT implicitly does. As a matter of fact, afaik the WT never used such an argument. On the contrary it directly referred to the MT of 25:11f to justify the "70 years" as a general period of Babylonian domination over a group of nations when explaining the "70 years of Tyre" (which didn't last 70 years) in Isaiah. Only their "prophetic" agenda prevents them from applying the same rule to Jerusalem.
• 

  Leolaia

  The two different editions of this text in Jeremiah 25 are also discussed in the following article:

  Anneli Aejmelaeus (2002). "Jeremiah at the turning point of history: The function of Jer. xxv 1-14 in the book of Jeremiah". Vetus Testamentum 52 (4): 459-482.

  And the question of the overall MT redaction is also considered here:

  Bernard Gosse (1998). "The Masoretic redaction of Jeremiah: An explanation". Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 77: 75-80.

  If anyone wants PDFs of these, PM me your email...

  I haven't made a thorough study of the question, so I am undecided on the question of priority tho the literary arguments for priority of the LXX Vorlage seem quite cogent and more adequate than the arguments that the shorter text is abbreviated from the MT (tho the LXX may naturally have its own secondary elements). I have doubts that the MT redaction would have been as late as some have claimed (could it have been exilic?), but again I need to familiarize myself more with the specific details of the matter.
• 

  Leolaia

  Narkissos....There may have been a third recension as well...4QJer a (which dates to c. 200 BC and thus poses imho a problem for a Maccabean dating of the MT edition, as suggested by Aejmelaeus) has been thoroughly worked over by a second copyist to make the text conform to the MT type, while the text's original departures (such as the omission of 7:30-8:3) do not correspond to the LXX text. The first scribe may have just been a very lousy copyist, but there is also a possibility that the text he was copying already had these characteristics...
• 

  KW13

  If you read verse 9 of jeremiah note the mention of surrounding nations

  read verse 12 it says the 70 years will end when the king was punished. so that makes 539. Using that + 70 years = 609.

  i believe 609 NOT to be the destruction of jerusalem but when the first of the 'surrounding nations' was affected. Reading a tablet from the british musuem it dates the Babylonians defeating assyria in 616-609. What if it was in 609....it fits with the 70 year thing then.

  Just my thoughts.
• 

  peacefulpete

  Vere 9 also says these same nations would be 'desolated forever'. Without turning the conversation to issues of "fullfillment" or no fullfillment, I wonder if this doesn't illustrate the symbolic nature of the 70 years. Or even more provocatively does this suggest the whole 70 motif is an Isaiah overlay on Jeremiah by early copyists.