Let's just discuss the Dead Sea Scrolls since that is in your topic and it is the second time in a week the question has arisen.

The Septuagint is also often called the LXX. As I explained in my previous post the original translation was only the Torah (5 Books of Moses). Religious Jews never used it, only less educated ones. Jews abandoned it in the early common era and only the Greeks and Xians brought it down through the generations without any controls to protect it from corruption.

By the 5th century the Xians gave up on the LXX because it was so corrupt -- which defeats any argument by some that it is more reliable than Hebrew since:

1. it was a translation whereas Hebrew is the original language;

2. even the Xians realized it was corrupt and abandoned it.

Origen, an early church father (died 232 CE) tried to piece together a decent translation by putting 6 different versions side by side (called the Hexapla). Here is what HE says about how bad the Septuagint had become

Quote:
we are forthwith to reject as spurious the copies in use in our Churches, and enjoin the brotherhood to put away the sacred books current among them, and to coax the Jews, and persuade them to give us copies which shall be untampered with, and free from forgery! Origen, A Letter from Origen to Africanus, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 4.]


Then we have St. Jerome (early 5th century) who decided to re-translate from the MT rather than rely on the Septuagint saying:

Quote:
I was stimulated to undertake the task by the zeal of Origen, who blended (the Septuagint) with the old edition Theodotions translation


Sophiees note: So Jerome is saying that the Septuagint had already been blended with Theodotions translation by Origen.

Read the KJV's preface:

Quote:
(The Septuagint) "It is certain, that that Translation was not so sound and so perfect, but it needed in many places correction; and who had been so sufficient for this work as the Apostles or Apostolic men? . . .

. . . the Translation of the Seventy was allowed to pass for current. Notwithstanding, though it was commended generally, yet it did not fully content the learned, no not of the Jews.

For not long after Chr*st, Aquila fell in hand with a new Translation, and after him Theodotion, and after him Symmachus; yea, there was a fifth and a sixth edition, the Authors whereof were not known



As for the original point that the DSS proves the LXX is more authentic -- you'd have to be on drugs to come to that conclusion.

Examing the DSS we find that 60% are Proto-Masoretic texts, 20% Qumran style manuscripts, 10% Nonaligned texts, 5% Proto-Samaritan texts, and 5% Septuagintal type texts.

Got that? 5% are Septuagintal types. 5% is less than 60%. It is hard to make a case that the Septuagint is a more reliable source when even at the DSS (which was not mainstream Judaism) 60% of their texts were proto-MT and 5% were LXX.


And everything that Sarah tells you, listen to her voice. Genesis, 21:12