Isaiah 9:6, Variant in the LXX

Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. We're doing a remote broadcast. I know it looks like the real thing, and even the warpcore is warping, warpcoring.

I'm not sure what warpcore is. Actually, warpcore is just generally get jettisoned and blow things up, but that's way too geeky.

The warpcore is warpcoring, but that's actually a green screen right behind me. Brother Rich not feeling well today, and so lots of folks are praying for Brother Rich, so hopefully he'll be feeling better pretty quickly.

We're doing the remote thing today. If I look a little bit weird, of course you're going, you're wearing one of those sweaters.

But that is a story that I want to start off with real briefly today. It's sort of my encouraging

Christmas story. A couple, I don't know, a couple nights ago, sometime, it was actually, it was actually after Christmas, I think.

Maybe not. Anyway, one evening, it might have been just before Christmas, I forget what it was,

I was up a little bit later than normal, and Brother John Cooper of Skillet and I were chatting back and forth, as we often do in text messages, and we were talking about woke stuff and theology and things like that, and I happened to pop over to eBay, as has been my tradition for many, many years, and I was sort of looking around at what was there as far as the sweaters that everyone knows

I love to wear. Most, many of them are Coogees, and that's what most people know for, but actually, and I've admitted this before, a number of my favorite sweaters are called

Tundra. That's the, it's sort of the Canadian version of Coogee, and very often the

Tundra sweaters are actually a little thicker, I think a little better made, to be perfectly honest with you, and so some of my favorites are

Tundras, and so I put Tundra sweater, men's, large in, and my eyes fell upon this.

Yes, which almost disappears behind some of the background there. It's about the same color as the, as the wall, and I would, and the, the market for these evidently has, has something about COVID has made them more expensive.

I don't know what, but they've been very, very expensive. This was really, really well priced.

I mean, it was, it was really, really well priced for how the condition it looked like, so I went ahead and ordered it, and I, I actually sent a picture of it to Brother John, and, and said that he should, he should consider getting one, and you know, would he ever be seen dead in one, or things like that.

I forget what we were talking about, but anyway, a few minutes later, and I'm, I'm sitting right where this happens, so I've got one screen over here,

I've got my laptop screen here, and I've got another screen over here, so I have three screens, a lot of, a lot of real estate here, and so I see over here,

I see a email come in regarding eBay order, and I'm like, okay, if something comes in that quick, probably was already sold, or you know, something, you know, who knows, and so I, opened it, and I was going to have this already queued up,

I apologize, not doing that, and instead of it being something along the lines of, you know,

I can't, I can't sell this, or whatever, here's what it said.

He said, well, there can't be too many James Whites from Arizona that wear these sweaters. Are you the theologian?

If so, I'm a fan of the show. The God who justifies has been a great resource for me, and I'm like, oh, cool, so I immediately responded, but I noticed that the response box was acting a little strangely as I was entering stuff in, it kept getting longer, it was, it was a little weird, and so the next morning when

I got up, and I told John about it, he thought that was pretty awesome, when

I got up, I didn't have a response, and so I said, you know, I want to respond to that guy, and I want to make sure he gets it, and so I tried again, it still looked funky, but a few minutes later,

I got a response, and it said, it's not every day that you get to clothe one of your favorite apologists, ha ha,

I look forward to seeing it on the show, I will get the package in the mail this morning, says some other things, and then he says, also, if you don't mind,

I'd like to refund you for the sweater, so this became my, my

Christmas gift from this brother, he says that he is, you guys really have been a blessing to me and my family, he mentioned

Apologia Studios, have a Merry Christmas, and God bless, and so he upped it to FedEx second day, it arrived just a couple of hours ago, and so I had promised that it was going to be on the program, and it will be a number of times in the future,

I can assure you, unless, unless 2020 was just a preview of the global warming that Phoenix is going to experience, so that it'll hit triple digits by the second week of February or something, then probably not so much, but anyway, but that was extremely encouraging, and really neat to, you know, just be doing something online, and find a brother out there,

I'm not going to mention names or anything like that, just, you know, you don't want the right hand to know what the left hand is doing, as they say in scripture, and, but I just wanted to thank that brother for a very encouraging thing there, and Rich is probably,

Rich, not feeling well, has probably been made nauseous. Oh, they can't hear that?

Well, they can probably hear it through my microphone, because it's coming through my speaker, so, so you're, you're,

I shouldn't have told you that, oh man, if I hadn't told everybody that, you all would have heard the stuff coming from Rich, and then you'd understand what

I have to put up with from behind the window, and now it's just through the speaker over on this side, but yes, they,

I can assure you, they can hear you, it may not be direct feed, but I bet you that's coming through my microphone pretty plainly, that's funny,

I shouldn't have said a word, I'm such an idiot, anyway, well, we're getting toward the end of the year, and most of the time, well,

I'll be perfectly honest with you, my, I don't know about your inbox, but my inbox is filled with all sorts of folks asking for end of the year donations, and things like that, and we really stink about that, we just, we just don't, we just don't do that, it's not that we're saying those other people are wrong for doing that, and it's not that we don't feel that what we do is important or anything like that, it's just,

I've told the story before, most people today do not remember the name

Bob Larson, most people today have no idea who Bob Larson was, but when

Alpha Omega first started, Bob Larson was huge, I mean, he was big, he was, he was a

Bible answer man big back in the 80s, and when

I first started listening to him, I would learn a lot, he'd have good people on, he'd do a lot of apologetics,

Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, sort of mainstream stuff, and I remember the day,

I mean, there was always a real strong fundraising element, there was always a lot of time spent in the program talking about the need to send him money, and things like that, so that was always there, but I remember the program when a demon called in, yeah, yeah,

I mean, whatever you think a demon would sound like on the phone, that's what this guy thing sounded like, and funny enough, would call in, called in for three days in a row,

I'm not sure if they had a special demon number for it, just, I'm not sure how demons use phones, this was before cell phones by the way, but a demon called in for three days, and Bob Larson was never the same after that, and the whole program just started spiraling down, but the money raising only became all the more prominent, to the point where it was like, if you do not send what we need in today, then you are going to be accountable for the souls are going to be lost, and da -da -da -da -da -da, and I guess, you know, listening to that, and then listening to that entire ministry just do a nosedive into the frozen tundra, really changed me, or impressed me, that that's just, that's just something we can never, ever, ever, ever do with Alwin Omega Ministries, of course, we were so small at that time, we didn't have any audience to begin with, but we were already doing the dividing line, we were on a local radio station on a

Saturday afternoon, no one listens to radio on a Saturday afternoon, so you almost give that time away, but we did what we did, and but I just made the commitment then, just never going to do it, just, just never going to do it, so we're not doing that, so if you're looking for our emails, begging you, you know, and saying everything, the whole world's going to end, that's not going to be coming from us, and so if anybody does,

I noticed someone was, was posting as Pastor Jeff Durbin recently on YouTube, and was doing all this prophesying over people, and stuff like that, and I'm like, why do people do this, why, why, why would you even think that anyone would actually take that seriously, when is,

I don't know, but I've had the people imitating me on various platforms as well, it's, it's pretty strange,

I want to keep this brief, because I want to give today, but I don't think we can avoid dealing with the issue that has come up in regards to RZIM, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, let me be straight up front,

I've never, I never met Ravi Zacharias, the only association

I had with RZIM was back in 2006, when

I debated Shabir Ali, a, the, an interesting situation had developed at Biola University before that debate, remember that, that debate was at Biola, and there had been a professor at Biola, who had tried to get the debate canceled, who taught on Islam, now the only reason he did, is because he knew who

Shabir Ali was, and he didn't know who I was, and so he knew Shabir Ali very sharp, he just assumed, in essence, he would have to do the cleanup, and I can understand that,

I get it, thankfully Bo and Jeremy held firm, held fast, the two students that were putting it together, and it happened, and that professor, then halfway through that debate, during the break, gave me his card, and as a result,

I became involved with a group of individuals doing graduate level study on the subject of Islam, and funding would be provided for you to take classes, well, all

I ever did was, that was the funding source that I had for taking Arabic, so I was able to pay a small amount of money to a individual here locally, who is native speaking

Arabic pastor, you've seen him, we did a video together about Ergin Kanner's lack of study of Arabic, and the funding for that came from a group that was associated with, funded by RZIM, so there you have straightforward, there's all the story, all the connection

I've ever had, but I've never spoken at any of their conferences, I had no, really no contact as far as anything else,

I mean, I, if there was, if they were involved with any conference I was at,

I was unaware of it, it wasn't that I wouldn't have been, there's lots of fine people associated with RZIM, but I don't have any recollection of any of that kind of connection, so anyway,

I started hearing stuff a few years ago, probably, I don't know, four years ago, maybe,

I'm just, I'm just guessing, it could be six, it could be three, but, and most of what

I heard was, I heard about a texting situation, and then

I heard about stuff in regards to where Ravi had said that he had lectured and taught, degrees that he had, a few things like that, so I was aware that there were websites and people going after him, and some people might ask the question, well, you went after Ergin Kanner, why wouldn't you have joined the people that were going after Ravi Zacharias, well, completely different situation, the only, the only reason that we invested the kind of time and effort we did in the

Ergin Kanner expose was because Ergin Kanner was claiming to do the exact things that I actually do,

Ravi Zacharias wasn't making that kind of a claim, he wasn't doing that kind of thing, Ergin Kanner was claiming to debate the same people

I actually debate, and, but he wasn't, he hadn't done any of those things, and the

Muslims knew that, and once I found out, then I didn't really, once I had the information myself, and knew where it came from, and knew how reliable it was, then there wasn't anything

I could do about it, I had to speak up about it, just simply to have any type of level of integrity, that didn't mean that I felt that the job of Alpha Omega Ministries is doing private investigation work on anybody who makes any type of claim, or any type of accusations made against people,

I've been very clear, there are biblical parameters as to what should be accepted and believed as far as accusations are concerned, and there are certain levels of evidence that have to be given, and unfortunately, so much of what flies around the internet is completely sub -biblical as to its character, if you cannot cross -examine the witness, it's not acceptable testimony in a court of law, based upon God's law, that's changing, sadly, very much in our world today, and so anyway, so it was never my interest whatsoever to dive into any kind of study of what was being accused of Ravi Zacharias Ministries, so you'll recall last year, there was that online thing during the summer, and ended up being

Ravi and I at the end, and I knew about this stuff, but you know, what do you do?

You just, you don't know what to say in a situation like that, you just, you know, do what you have to do, so of course,

Ravi passes away, and what has happened, if some of you are going, what are you talking about?

If, I suppose, if you're not on social media, you haven't seen it, but Ravi Zacharias Ministries itself, his ministry has released a statement, and if I'm, I think

I'm correct, it is a preliminary statement, saying that there will be a full report in January, but a preliminary statement saying that they hired attorneys to look into the accusations against Ravi Zacharias, and the attorneys have reported to them that the accusations are well -founded, and in fact, there's much more than the accusations that were known up to the point where the attorneys had been hired, if you can figure that out, and that in essence, there is strong evidence of sexual misconduct, not once or twice, not a private type thing, but sexual abuse of employees, evidently, and this is strange to me, evidently, the ministry was so big that it owned businesses, including massage businesses.

Now, by the way, there's sports massage, I mean, I know lots of chiropractors have massage therapists, and I would get massages before and after the big huge races up in Colorado, so there's a whole very proper proper area of that, but this left that area, and so when

I first saw that, I was like, well, once the full report comes out, then, then, you know, make a comment about, well, unfortunately, there's all sorts of discussion going on before that, and it's not that the statement from RZIM said, please hold off discussing any of this until the full report comes out, it's, yeah, the accusations have been well -founded, and, you know, obviously, it seems to me and to a lot of other people, this is probably the end of RZIM, I would assume, as a viable ministry.

Of course, there are only a few ministries, honestly, that can survive the death of their founders, and to be honest with you, sometimes that's not the best thing to even try to do in the first place, but something like this, obviously, you know,

RZIM was supporting all sorts of important research and ministry and things like that, just such an impact on, you know, so many people that it's a true shame, but once again, as I have said over and over and over again, if your faith is focused upon an individual, if your faith is focused upon the scholarship of an individual, the accomplishments of an individual, the charisma of an individual, whatever it might be, your faith is badly grounded, very, very badly grounded.

One thing that I have seen a number of times on Twitter recently has been people commenting about older Christians, commenting about how they've had to deal in their lives with the reality that even people who were involved in leading them to the

Lord in years later, straight up apostatized, or it was found out after their deaths that they were charlatans or whatever else it might be, and if you confuse the means that God uses with the gospel itself, that can be devastating.

If you think that, you know, the individual that God uses to bring conviction to your life, that that somehow imbues that particular individual with some kind of spiritual standing that if that proves to be untrue, if they prove to be unfaithful, that somehow your faith is impacted by that, that's a problem.

There is an objective reality to gospel truth, and I remember it was my fellow elder at PRBC for many years, almost 30 years, who first said to me,

God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick, and what he meant by that was a lot of us had a testimony that people were used in our own conversion that eventually we would see were not the most balanced people in the world, and the natural response to that should be, well, thank the

Lord that he's brought maturity to me. Maybe I can be used to bring maturity to someone else, or maybe even to that person, or something along those lines, but the reality is sometimes, you know, there are people who would say, hey,

I first heard the gospel from someone today that I would consider to be a rank heretic, and God used that, and God can use all sorts of things.

God has used cults and isms and everything else. It doesn't, it can't in our mind mean, and therefore those things are not relevant, or we shouldn't oppose false teaching, or any of that type of stuff.

It's just that God sometimes uses some pretty amazing providences to bring about his purposes, and so here's a situation where, you know, my study of Arabic helped,

I think, to make the book on Islam, whatever a

Christian needs to know about the Quran, more useful. It certainly helped me in looking things up and being able to navigate, you know, the

Quran and its original language and things like that, and so that was a, that's been a blessing to people.

We know people who've been saved by that, people who've left Islam and embraced the truth because of that, and you follow all the dots around, and our

ZIM was involved with that, and so God works in that way.

He has to work in that way. We all have our failures and our sins and everything else, and then when you see something like this, and you go, well, this is,

I hate to use this term, once had a nice use to it, doesn't so much anymore, but a systemic problem.

It's not a fall into a sin once in a while type thing.

There's a pattern here, so sort of the difference between an aorist punctiliar action and the imperfect, the continuous action in the past style of understanding or a perfect tense in the verbal forms and things like that.

When you see multiple victims over multiple years with the similar, the same kind of context, very different from the pastor who struggles with anger, issues that are punctiliar and are repented of and are not a marked constant of a person's life, and that which is a marked constant of a person's life, that's much more significant and much more concerning as to that person's nature and things like that.

So we will look for the report in January, not looking forward to the report in January, but there's no reason to hide such things or to put such things away.

Make sure the information is known and let the chips fall where they may, as the old saying goes, and just be aware that there are men who live those types of lives, and it should just make every single one of us be much more sober and much more dependent upon the gospel and examining our own lives.

That's certainly what it does for me. So with that, a couple little things.

Once again, a sincere thank you to everyone sending in cards and notices of appreciation concerning the ministry over the course of this year.

It's been a very different year, and I'll be honest with you, next year is going to be more different.

I was thinking just a little while ago, if someone had, let's say it was

Thanksgiving of 2019, and you're sitting around with family members, and you're talking about the future, and I had said 2020 was going to be a, there's going to be big things happening in 2020.

I do not claim to be a prophet in that way. I just felt that there were a lot of converging threads, especially with the 2020 election, that would probably result in it being a very remarkable year.

Well, yeah, you can say that, remarkable for how bad it was.

But if you've been sitting around and someone had said, what do you think it would take to get the large majority of the world's population to give up their liberties, their freedoms, their personal responsibilities, their abilities to better themselves in the future, give up their personal property, their jobs, their savings, future possibilities of education for their children, and confine themselves in their own homes, kill their businesses, kill their investments, kill their travel.

What do you think that would take? And if you've read enough dystopian novels, you might have come up with something semi -close to what happened.

But no one, who could have seen this? Who could have seen how readily people in our society would demonstrate that they take their freedoms completely for granted, and will not fight for them in any way, shape, or form, will not even open their mouths.

They will submit out of fear. Fear and panic has been...

I was saying to a friend yesterday, yesterday, I was saying, you know, the climate change stuff was meant to do the same thing, as has been accomplished with the great panic of 2020.

And certainly the climate change thing did panic a lot of people, but not enough.

It got a little traction, but not enough. And so I think people obviously realized that we need to do something more.

We need to do something more. And so there was this virus that has been treated.

And this is one thing that everyone I've talked to, and there are more and more people that are out there that have completely bought the story.

They've completely bought the narrative. They're wearing their masks in their houses, and when they're on hikes in the woods, and there's not other human for 20 miles, they're still all masked up.

And they think those of us who find that to be an assault upon our person, and upon our liberties and freedoms and our health, and that it's a violation of the saying that was made famous by Alexander Solzhenitsyn as he was being exiled from the

Soviet Union, live not according to lies. And hence,

I don't want to wear one of these things, and I don't need to wear one of these things, and I've got a ton of science behind me saying it's stupid to force me to wear one of these things.

These people just don't get any of that, and they're not interested in getting any of that. They don't want to hear it. They've completely bought into all of this stuff.

Those people have never been able to answer one question for me, and that is, given that there are other diseases, other viruses that are deadlier to a wider spectrum of people, deadlier to children, deadlier to young adults, deadlier to middle -aged people, and given that those viruses have raged through our societies in years past, and not even long years past, within the past 20 years, we never treated them the way we've treated

COVID -19, never treated them, did not approach them with anywhere near the extreme reaction that has become the norm since March of 2020.

Why? And as soon as you ask the question, why, those who have been bred to submit, that's not a way to put it.

They've been bred to submit. They've been bred by their education. They have been bred by universities.

They have been bred by television. The media, oh my goodness, talk about a unified body.

They have been bred to submit. As soon as you ask the question, why, oh, you're a conspiracy theorist.

They don't want, it's like they're so filled with fear and panic already that they can't, that the straw that will break the proverbial camel's back is if you start thinking about what the connections are, all the politics globally connecting together to use this to accomplish something, to accomplish what we're seeing in Canada right now where evangelical pastors are being brought up on not civil charges, but criminal charges, 10 to $100 ,000 fines and a year in jail for having a

Christian church service the weekend before Christmas in Canada.

This is happening. It has happened. It's ongoing. And most of these folks are actually following the non -science demands, you know, having seats open and masking and all the rest of this stuff, not even allowing for free worship, but they're still being put under attack.

What could happen so quickly as to cause people to be putting up with that kind of experience?

Well, it certainly is stunning to most of us to see how quickly people have been willing.

It's the religion of safism. It's the religion of safism. I was having a conversation in Twitter with someone about this very thing.

And who was that? A fairly well -known individual, well -known in the sense of I've seen this name a number of times before.

Let me see if I can pull it up here. It wasn't. Yeah. John Pavlovitz.

John Pavlovitz. Yesterday, if churches really cared about loving their neighbors, they wouldn't hold services until everyone is safe.

Until everyone is safe. Now, let's just think about the absurdity of this for just a second.

How many times have you heard about the tragedy of a family dying, the whole family dying in a car accident on the way to church?

It has happened many times. It was within three years ago here in the

Phoenix area that a large family in a van, sort of like if you ever come to Apologia Church, you will discover that the parking lot is filled with 15 passenger vans, small buses, because that's how big our families are.

Most of them and so a family like that with multiple children were in one of those vehicles on their way to church.

They're at a stoplight having gotten off a freeway. And I don't remember if it's someone came up behind him, just never slowed down, just kept the freeway speeds.

Or if it was someone, a wrong way drivers. I forget what it was. They're all killed.

So it's not safe to go to church. So we shouldn't go to church, right? Because it's not safe. And the

H1N1 virus, H1N2, these flu bugs,

I mean, seriously, think about it, folks. It's the end of December.

And if anyone coughs or sneezes, what's the first thing we think of now? All of us, even those of us that recognize that this has been a media induced purposeful panic.

The first thing you think of is, Rona, as if all other diseases have been completely banished from the planet by the

COVID -19 virus. It's an amazing healing. COVID -19, the Benny Hinna viruses. I mean, seriously?

Well, that's what we all think, isn't it? Even those of us who know that the numbers are rabidly inflated.

We all think of the same thing. There has never been a safe time.

There has never been a safe time to build a nation. There's never been a safe time to go into space exploration. There's never been a safe time to drive a car, fly in a plane, ride my bicycle down the road.

Oh my goodness. Especially with all the textures these days and the people with three masks on, not getting enough oxygen.

So I look at these people, they wouldn't hold services until everyone is safe, which means they will never hold services again because there is no such thing as safe.

Well, up to a certain point, well, okay, who gets to define that? Why didn't you do this in 2018 during the viral outbreak at that time?

Nobody did. Nothing else has been handled this way. There's a reason for it.

There is an absolute reason for it. And we will see that just flowering in clarity over the course of the next year.

Whether we will have the freedom to discuss it is something completely different. I don't know if we will or won't.

I don't know if we will or won't. Anyway, all right, so that off my chest. I started commenting on something about a month ago and then

I forgot to finish it. And a number of you have reminded me of this. And I appreciate that or I would forget.

So I apologize. I'm sure there are probably a lot of things that I have stopped commenting on that I was supposed to finish up commenting on.

But this is an interesting area and a number of people, it did make me feel good that a number of you folks in various ways mentioned this to me along with confessing the fact that you're geeks.

And you're nerds. And you like the geeky nerdy stuff. And okay,

I get the message. And you know, I think you're saying we're your people and you are our people.

And there's a level of truth to all of that. But what I'm referring to is the issue of Isaiah 9 .6.

Now, again, I have the Christmas season is not over yet.

It will not be until January 6th. Here in the

United States, both January 5th and January 6th are going to be interesting days, aren't they? Something's going to be going on.

But the text in Isaiah chapter 9

I had mentioned on the program, the beauty of the text, the idea of child being born to us,

Gelid and Ulad, standard terms for human birth. But then a

Ben being Nethond to us, Nathan to give, a son being given to us.

We had talked about some of the names that are provided in the text. Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, the

El Gabor, the Aviad, the Father of Eternity, and the Sar Shalom, the

Prince of Peace. And then I had made reference to the fact that I was going to talk about, and then

I forgot to talk about, a textual variant in the Greek Septuagint. For those of you who weren't with us that time, it's very important to remember that our

Old Testaments, our Hebrew scriptures, are translated primarily from what's called the

Hebrew Masoretic text. Now, the Masoretes flourished many hundreds of years after Jesus, and the

Masoretes developed extremely strict and stringent transmission methods for the

Hebrew text to make sure that it would not change over time, that they were maintaining the original readings, counting the number of letters and what the middle word should be, and amazingly strict rules for how to copy the text and to be able to detect errors when they took place.

Because everyone knew, remember this is long before photocopiers, long before printing, everyone knew that any book which was written by the hand of man was liable to have errors in it.

That was like saying the sun rises in the morning. Everybody knew that. It wasn't something that was disputable.

It wasn't something that was controversial. Everybody knew that. Most of our

Old Testament comes directly from the Hebrew text, but we know that there are textual variants that existed in the days of Jesus.

So remember, the Masoretic text is normally placed historically about 900 years after Jesus, so just before the turn of the millennium.

But if you go back to A .D. 30 and Jesus is handed the scroll in the synagogue, what would he have been handed?

Well, in a synagogue in Israel, he would have been handed a

Hebrew scroll, and he was able to read from that scroll.

But a few years later, when Paul is in Ephesus and he makes reference to a prophetic passage from the

Hebrew scriptures, what is he most likely to quote from a Hebrew scroll?

That's going to really limit the number of people in the audience that he's writing to, or what he's right there in Ephesus, who are going to be able to follow what he's saying.

The vast majority of his audience speaks Greek, reads Greek, if they can read anything at all.

If they're going to look it up in the Greek Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the

Hebrew Old Testament. But there isn't just one

Septuagint, and there wasn't just one Hebrew text in Jesus's day either. There are variants in the

Masoretic text. I'm sorry, in the Hebrew text. There weren't any

Masoretic texts in Jesus's day. The line of transmission that becomes the

Masoretic text does exist in Jesus's day, but there are other Hebrew lines as well that we are able to determine from history.

And as we have been able to examine the Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, which come from 100 years before Jesus, we have found the

Masoretic text, basically unchanged, Leviticus and Isaiah, for a thousand years in those two scrolls.

But we have found other Hebrew readings that match more to the

Greek translation and things like that. So there were multiple traditions that existed in the days of Jesus.

And so it's important to recognize that the early church held to the text of the

Old Testament as being God's Word, but that meant that while James is preaching in Jerusalem from Hebrew, Paul and Antioch is preaching from the

Greek. Now they don't see that as a problem, they don't see it as a contradiction. They see both as the

Word of God. But as we delve deeply into the text, we recognize that at times there are differences.

That is the case in Isaiah 9 -6. Now just in passing, just so you're aware, when you look things up in the

Greek Septuagint, the numeration system is not always the same as what you're used to in your English Bible. Not only is the canon order different, it's not that it's a different canon, it's just that it's in a different order.

Second Chronicles is the last book, the historical books are last, and so sometimes it's hard to find things.

But some of the ways that things are broken up is different. And so the various Psalms may not necessarily cross straight over directly, and you might have to look one before, one after to find what you're looking for.

And very often the verse numeration is different. So Isaiah 9 -6 to us is

Isaiah 9 -5 in the Hebrew text. And it sort of depends on which critical edition of the

Greek Septuagint you're reading. I have two Greek Septuagints on my screen right now.

One has it as 9 -6, one has it as 9 -5. So there you go. When you look at the

Greek Septuagint, at Isaiah 9 -6, you find something very interesting.

And so it's not just me giving you this. I'm going to read you from the nets, the New English translation of the

Septuagint, which isn't always the most literal translation. It's a little weird, but at least it gives you a sense of what's there.

So here's the nets translation of Isaiah 9 -6.

Because a child was born for us, a son also given to us, whose sovereignty was upon his shoulder, and he is named messenger of great counsel.

For I will bring peace upon the rulers, peace and health to him.

Now that sounds a lot different than what you're accustomed to.

For a child born to us, the son will be given to us, the government will be rest on his shoulders, his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

Instead, he is named messenger of great counsel, for I will bring peace upon the rulers.

See how peace and rulers go together, Prince of Peace, peace and health to him.

So you immediately see that. And again, the Greek Septuagint is a translation from the

Hebrew. And we can't go back, fire up a mp3 recorder, mp4 video, to see what sources the translators of the

Septuagint are using. And not only that, there wasn't just one group of translators that gave us the

Septuagint in the first place. It was probably done over a period of time by multiple people.

That's why some places like the Pentateuch have done really, really well, and then other places not so well. And then it comes together over time.

Differing levels of quality, and hence differing sources. So you can see that the translator had pretty much what we have in front of him.

It's how he's rendering it that is interesting. And I have not done enough comparison to make this any kind of meaningful statement, but not a whole lot of people sit around making comparisons to the textual variants in the

Greek Septuagint with the Hebrew Masoretic text. So on the basis of the limited amount of that that I've done, which is more than most people have done, but there you go, it seems to me that when you have a major variant, the

Septuagint is liable to be trying to make the text more acceptable in a context like, oh,

I don't know, Alexandria, Egypt? In a

Greco -Post -Alexander world, possibly?

Because it looks like given the words that are here, that the translator had the

Hebrew in front of him, and it wasn't the Hebrew that was different. It's the interpretation coming out in the translation that's the issue.

So the first thing that crossed my mind is that when you see a variant, look at how wide the variant is in its readings.

So for example, when you look at the longer ending of Mark, you'll discover that the text of the longer ending of Mark has a lot of variants in it.

So even the manuscripts that have it have a lot of variations in it. That's a telltale sign of a later insertion, of a disruption of the flow of the text over time.

Well, it's not surprising that as I look at the textual data, the

Grutengen Greek Septuagint, which is really, as far as I know, the most comprehensive work on the

Greek Septuagint as far as providing textual data, textual information, and things like that. As I look at it, it is one of the most extensive lists of variants, both verses six and seven, five and six in the

Septuagint, have a large number of variants. And as you look at the, and you're not dealing with nearly as many manuscripts of the

Greek Septuagint as you're frequently very much united in their reading, go all over the place in these two verses, especially verse six.

Different spellings, orders of words, synonyms, just a tremendous amount of variation is testified by the

Grutengen Greek Septuagint in its textual data. And that, as I said, is always a telltale sign of a disruption to the text in its transmission.

People are looking at the Greek Septuagint, and then they're looking at the Hebrew going, what happened?

How did that get in there? And so you'll have later manuscripts trying to repair the damage, in essence, and bring the

Septuagint more into line with the Hebrew Masoretic text. But it seems to me, this is just a feeling,

I'm just, take it for what it's worth. It seems to me that the translators of the

Septuagint at times are trying to make the text more palatable,

I hate to use that term, but more palatable to Alexandrian Jewry, which is, of course, interacting with all the great learning of the world and the philosophy, the philosophers and things like that.

That would explain some of what is said in the description, in the

Septuagint, in regards to the messenger of great counsel. Rather than mighty god, you have

Angelos, which is normally translated angel, here it's being translated as messenger, but it could be angel of Megales Bulais.

Megales Bulais, great will, great purposes, it could be an announcer of great purposes.

That would be, not necessarily purposes, that's primarily

English, but announcer of the great will of God, maybe revealer of the great will of God, Megales Bulais Angelos.

But then you don't have really anything that comes across as eternal father, prince of peace, he will bring peace upon the rulers.

Yeah, that's a prince of peace, prince being a ruler. Okay, I see where that comes from.

But you sort of lose the whole concept of aviad, father of eternity, that seems to be lost.

And so, might that explain why this section is not focused upon in the

New Testament as testimony in regards to the person of Christ, deity of Christ, because it's not in the

Greek Septuagint, there's already a recognition of the variations. Possible, that's assuming, because all that is, we cannot assume that people back then had access, especially to comparative information as we have it.

They couldn't compare manuscripts, they couldn't compare printed editions with nearly the ease that we can. That doesn't mean we're smarter, it just means that our tech has given us the ability to have,

I have five columns plus a lower column down below, I have six columns worth of data just in one program sitting on my screen.

You couldn't do that in that day, maybe if you sat in a, if you had to be literate and sat in a huge library, you could have spread handwritten manuscripts around like that, but not with the kind of background information and click for more information type stuff like we have today.

And so, you can't just automatically assume that a writer is aware of the types of things we would be aware of today.

That's something you have to avoid being anachronistic on and reading something into those things.

So, there's the variant as it's found there. People, I don't know why people like to geek out on this type of stuff, but it is,

I was looking at Psalm 111 last night, I was looking at another variant between the Septuagint and Hebrew, and in that situation, it wasn't so much saying something different as saying it in an interesting way that sort of supported what the

Hebrew was, but in a way I wouldn't have thought of before. And so, that's definitely, I think, a worthwhile thing to do if you're working on Old Testament texts is having the

Greek Septuagint open. You say, well, I can't read Greek. Well, then pick up the nets and the

NETS, it's available and Lagos Accordance, Olive Tree, all those.

I think they all have it. I've got an Accordance. I'm pretty sure I have an Olive Tree. I'm not sure. I have to double check that.

But that can give you at least an idea of what's over in the

Greek Septuagint as you do your studies of these things. So, with that, we will once again show the, see, there's the light now.

See, it glows if I put my arms like that. Sorry, Rich. I didn't mean to cause a wave of nausea for you there.

They can hear you. I'm telling you. Anyway, thanks for watching the program today.

I'm not sure about tomorrow. We'll see. We'll see how the, you know, I have pictures of, in my mind, of Rich laying in bed, you know, just reaching over to the laptop, trying to hit buttons that just, you know, the dedication, you know, with his last ounce of strength, getting this information out to you.

And the whole time going, he's wearing one of those sweaters. I don't want to even look.

That's what I see happening here. Could be wrong, but I did it.

Well, I went to the Don Fry School of Bedside Manners, rather. So, oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Remember, Don Fry, Don Fry called me in 1993.

I had double hernia surgery. And Don Fry called me on the phone just to try to get me to laugh, knowing that I had double hernia surgery.

So, that was my training. And so, I just blame it on that. I just, that's, you know, that's how I was,

I was told to do it. And that's how you do it. That's your bedside manner. Anyways, thanks for watching the program today.