Table Conversation

Georgiann and I ate out tonight. Something we are doing less of now that the budget is tightening. Mostly because of gasoline prices. Jill and Mari, Todd and Diana came along. I mentioned the fact that I was up for about an hour or so around 3 am this morning researching some things on the Internet and Todd was curious.

In my reading I have been made aware that the origins of the Bible were for many years only oral tradition handed down from generation to generation. I have not found out in actual fact but I get the feeling that the Jewish leadership during the time before Christ came on the scene did not want the oral tradition written down. It seems they were afraid that the dynamic story would become static with the commitment to words.

I think I wrote about that before and may have explained some of it.

In addition, I did not know until last night that the Bible was first written in Hebrew in 3 separate books. The "Torah" whose authorship is attributed to Moses, "Nevi'im" also known as the "Prophets," major and minor. And "Ketuvim" also known as the "Writings" consisting of what is known to us now as the Psalm, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Ruth and Lamentations."

At some point, believed to be between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC, those three Hebrew books were combined and translated into Greek and called the "Septuagint." This translation was done by 72 Jewish Hebrew scholars in Alexanderia, Egypt.

Todd, I was wrong about BCE being different than BC. Seems to be the same. I'll post you that once I get a few minutes to research it.

The "Septuagint" was and is often referred to simply as LXX which is the Roman Numerals for 70. 70 being a round number representative of the 72 scholars.

My quest in all of this is to find someone who may have insight into the mindset of the Jewish leadership in their resistance of taking the dynamic oral history and entombing it for all time in static written form.

I understand in part how a story has emotion and power in an oral tradition that it might lose when written down and especially when translated.

But to me that is where the Holy Spirit must be at His post of duty to provide the real translation and application to our understanding.

More as time permits. Does anyone really know what time it is? Who put that into a hit song in 1971?