Thursday, March 2, 2023

Authoritative NT Citations of the OT?

In Christian circles, the question often comes up whether NT authors' citations of OT passages are authoritative for textual decisions regarding to the OT passages. To this, the answer must simply be "No!" Such authoritative pronouncements were far from the minds of the original authors, and so we should by no means appropriate them in this way. Furthermore, the NT authors frequently cite different forms of the OT, so they cannot be said to give a unified voice in favor of a single original. They rather used a variety of texts that were available to them at that time generally without making text-critical judgments of the sort we are used to making today.

In my reading today, I came across a good example of this in the parallel texts Ps 6:9, Matt 7:23, and Luke 13:27. Both gospels disagree with each other and what seems to be the OG of the Psalm. Both gospel writers seem to have a mix of OG and revision towards the MT, but in different places. Matthew omits "all" against MT, LXX, and Luke, and he uses a different Greek word for "depart" that could perhaps be a revision towards the Hebrew (?--I'd have to look into this more). Luke keeps the OG except the final phrase, where he reflects a revision towards a more literal rendering of the Hebrew. So here we have just one example where it makes no sense to look to NT usage for authoritative textual judgments in favor of a single inspired original. The authors had access to an array of texts, translations, and revisions, and they used them creatively for their own purposes. But they have no claim to making authoritative pronouncements about the precise original text of the Hebrew or Greek Bibles.

Ps 6:9
 ס֣וּרוּ מִ֭מֶּנִּי כָּל־פֹּ֣עֲלֵי אָ֑וֶן

ἀπόστητε ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ, πάντες οἱ ἐργαζόμενοι τὴν ἀνομίαν,

Matt 7:23

ἀποχωρεῖτε ἀπ᾿ ἐμοῦ οἱ ἐργαζόμενοι τὴν ἀνομίαν.

Luke 13:27

ἀπόστητε ἀπ᾿ ἐμοῦ πάντες ἐργάται ἀδικίας.

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