Luke 4:17-19

Luke quotes from a Greek translation of the Hebrew text.

The spirit of the Lord is upon me
Because he has anointed me;
He has sent me to bring good news to the poor,
To heal the broken hearted,
To proclaim release to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind, to summon the acceptable year of the Lord
And the day of retribution
To comfort all who mourn
Esaias 61:1-2 New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS 2007)

Rob

 

Dead Sea Scrolls fragment 2, the "Messianic Apocalypse" (4Q521).

II … [the hea]vens and the earth will listen to His Messiah, and none therein will stray from the commandments of the holy ones.
Seekers of the Lord, strengthen yourselves in His service!
All you hopeful in (your) heart, will you not find the Lord in this?
For the Lord will consider the pious (hasidim) and call the righteous by name.
Over the poor His spirit will hover and will renew the faithful with His power.
And He will glorify the pious on the throne of the eternal Kingdom,
He who liberates the captives, restores sight to the blind, straightens the b[ent] (Ps. 146:7–8).
And f[or] ever I will clea[ve to the h]opeful and in His mercy …
And the fr[uit …] will not be delayed for anyone
And the Lord will accomplish glorious things which have never been as [He …]
For He will heal the wounded, and revive the dead and bring good news to the poor (Isa. 61:1).
… He will lead the uprooted and knowledge … and smoke(?)
…
Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, Previous Ed.: London : Penguin, 1987., Revised and extended 4th ed. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 244.

 

Luke wasn't quoting any text there, he was quoting Jesus. Jesus was reading the scriptures He had on hand.

 

Nevertheless, what Jesus read agrees with the Septuagint and not the Hebrew Masora which omits these words.

HankD

 

Well that may be the case, but Jesus wasn't reading from the septuagint and Luke wasn't quoting from it.

 

You are probably correct that Jesus was not reading from the LXX, possibly reading from the Hebrew, possibly an Aramaic version.

But I can't help wondering why the OT quotes in the NT are word-for-word (in many cases) the LXX rendering often times differing from the Masoretic text.

It's just too consistent to be a coincidence.

HankD

 

I wouldn't be surprised if it was discovered that the LXX, which began its life as a highly corrupted translation, had been altered in light of the NT, thus OT texts quoted by NT authors were conformed to agree just about word for word with how they were quoted in the NT. I don't know if that is right or not, but that's at least as likely a scenario as the apostles and Jesus using the LXX, which I just can't quite buy.

 

Of course Jesus would have been speaking either Hebrew or a local dialect so someone still would have had to translate it into Greek.

Good comment!

Gershom’s original question was: What translations include "recovering of sight to the blind" in the portion of scripture the Lord read from Isaiah 61?

I answered the Septuagint as translated by the New English Translation of the Septuagint; do with it what you will.

The rest of the thread deals with translational issues; this thead will probably be turfed to the translation forum sooner or later.

In Hebrew, the phrase in question reads: ve-la’asurim peqah-qochah
literally translated as: and to (the) bound, opening (or release)

There's an interesting article in the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (here’s a small taste).

Look up the verses, come to your own conclusion!

There in lies the dilemma: What do you think? Is the word's use in Isaiah 61 really an “exception” to its general usage?

Are today’s translations of the Hebrew word correct or is the translation of Luke correct?

OR does the Hebrew word provide a number of possibilities, many of which can be considered?

Rob

 

A possibility.

LXX goes back to around 300BC and I don't know the oldest extant Isaiah 61 portion.

I have read that the Dead Sea Scrolls are in greater agreement with the Septuagint than the Masora.


HankD

 

The Dead Sea Scrolls being in greater agreement with the septuagint is to its detriment. The septuagint is a highly corrupted translation intentionally altered by hellenistic Jews.