Actually most of the DSS supports the MT, not the Septuagint - this includes the Great Isaiah Scroll.

Quote:
60% Proto-Masoretic texts, 20% Qumran style manuscripts, 10% Nonaligned texts, 5% Proto-Samaritan texts, and 5% Septuagintal type texts. Further more, the Qumran style manuscripts have their bases in the proto-Masoretic texts. The Masoretic type texts were dominant in the time of the Hasmonean period (about 160 B.C.E.).
(p172 of Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls by Shiffman).

UriYosef quotes a Professor Daniel in this article. who notes that a Greek named Ben Sira spoke of a Tanach as early as 135 BCE. (It was actually codified between 300-400 BCE).

The oldest versions of the Tanach are in Hebrew. The LXX (Septuagint) are translations into Greek from persons unknown at times unknown. There was no quality assurance and as a result they became heavily corrupted over time.

By the 5th century the Xians gave up on the LXX because it was so corrupt -- so why people now are debating this is really interesting. The term "self-serving" comes to mind.

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.

The translators of England's King James Version realized that the Septuagint was corrupt:

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



Archeologists are finding all sorts of things as time goes by --
>

That is a picture of a 2,000-year-old parchment scroll in the Judean Desert by Professor Chanan Eshel of Tel Aviv's Bar Ilan University. The fragments contain verses from Leviticus.

He also found two silver scrolls which date to about 700 BCE (which pre-dates the Tanach itself but shows that the various books were around).

UriYosef is far more expert than I in this area. Perhaps he'll chime in.



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