Bracketing out ideas about inspiration, which are not directly related to text-critical analyses, we can agree that the writings now collected under the banner of the "Old Testament" by Christians were predominantly composed in Hebrew with a few sections in Aramaic. We have no access to these original compositions, however, only to much later text and manuscript traditions... among these is the LXX, which is a collection of ancient translations of these texts into and a few new compositions in Greek. While there is evidence that some of the differences owe to the translators themselves, in many cases they reflect a sound translation of a variant Hebrew text. In other words, in the Second Temple period -- which is as far back as the oldest manuscripts found at Qumran take us -- there were several different forms of the Hebrew text in circulation. This fact should not be surprising since we find the text of the Greek New Testament is in a similar state of plurality... the difference is in the extent of these variances -- there are far more and significant ones within the Hebrew Bible than the New Testament. Since the former is a much longer text and has been copied over many more centuries, this fact should not be surprising either. One should not and, indeed, cannot assume that what became the dominant form of the Hebrew text (MT) represents the earliest recoverable form of these writings. As I laid out in the post to which you responded, LXX is at times a valuable witness to recovering this form...
Since there are now three of us expressing interest in these matters and none of us are KJV Onlyists, I do recommend we take discussion to a more appropriate forum... others are, of course, welcome to join us.
Kind regards,
Jonathan
