On Conditionals in the Greek Pentateuch

[Nikolaos Adamou]

http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7747

I think this is an interesting and useful book and a nice review.
I would be very interesting to hear/read more from those who already have read the book.

My associated question is why so much attention is given to the much later Masoratic text, and not to the Greek text of the Old Testament which is the one than the New Testament uses.

[Ken M. Penner]

My associated question is why so much attention is given to the much later Masoratic text, and not to the Greek text of the Old Testament which is the one than the New Testament uses.

The reason is simple: the "Old Testament" was written in Hebrew, and the Greek is secondary to it because it is a translation.
Note I'm not saying that's a good or sufficient reason.

[Nikolaos Adamou]

Ken,
I did not ask this, and the question is not for the original Old Testament.
It is for the lost part of it, and the much later reconstruction.
The Masoratic text IS NOT the original Hebrew, but a reconstruction.
New Testament quotes from the Greek Text of the Old Testament, not from the Hebrew text.

Are the parts of the OT that are given in NT in Greek essentially the same or there are variations due to the translation problems.
For example, the conditionals in Greek reflect accurately the conditionals in Hebrew?

[Eeli Kaikkonen]

The Masoratic text IS NOT the original Hebrew, but a reconstruction.
New Testament quotes from the Greek Text of the Old Testament, not from the Hebrew text.

Are the parts of the OT that are given in NT in Greek essentially the same or there are variations due to the translation problems.
For example, the conditionals in Greek reflect accurately the conditionals in Hebrew?

You should read some indroduction to the LXX, and some introduction to the NT use of the OT. The wider topic of how the NT writers used (and quoted) the OT is a hot topic in hermeneutics. In general, the NT uses the LXX quite much, but not always. In many places the scholars can't tell whether the underlying text is LXX, some other translation or the author's own translation (or paraphrase). The LXX differs greatly from the Hebrew text (both from the original and the MT, as far as we know) in many places. The quality of the translation is very uneven, it was not written in 70 identical copies as a legend states, but by several translators in different times and places with different levels of skills and purposes.

So, the short simplistic answer to your last question is a resounding "no".

[Ken M. Penner]

Ken,
I did not ask this, and the question is not for the original Old Testament.
It is for the lost part of it, and the much later reconstruction.
The Masoratic text IS NOT the original Hebrew, but a reconstruction.
New Testament quotes from the Greek Text of the Old Testament, not from the Hebrew text.

Are the parts of the OT that are given in NT in Greek essentially the same or there are variations due to the translation problems.
For example, the conditionals in Greek reflect accurately the conditionals in Hebrew?

You are right that most of the NT quotations of the OT match the received Greek translation (as would be expected in a Greek document) more often than they match the Masoretic text. And you are right that The Masoretic Text is not identical to the original Hebrew.
However, the Dead Sea Scrolls show that the Masoretic text is not a "reconstruction." For example, the Great Isaiah Scroll shows that already before the time of Christ there was a form of the text that closely matches what we now have as the Masoretic text. This similarity indicates a careful and continuous line of transmission.
(On the other hand other DSS show that there was more than one form of the text in circulation.)
When there is a discrepancy between the Masoretic and Septuagint, most scholars tend to think that it is more likely that the text was changed by translation than by transmission. I agree, in most cases.
In the case of Isaiah in particular (with which I am most familiar), when the MT and the LXX differ, only rarely is it because the original Hebrew text was different from the MT. Far more often the difference comes from a misreading, mishearing, or misunderstanding of a Hebrew text that closely resembles the MT.