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We know that a variety of text forms existed in ancient Israel from the last centuries BCE onwards. In addition to the proto-MT texts (outside Qumran) we find several other text traditions among the 230 biblical texts found in Qumran. Most of these texts would have been considered authoritative Scripture texts at the time, yet if they had not been discovered in the caves of Qumran, many of them would not have been known to us.

The only texts that have been transmitted consistently through the centuries were the texts that have been embraced by religious groups that continued into later times, that is, MT by Judaism, SP by the Samaritans and in Greek, the LXX by early Christianity.⁴³

a. The Samaritan Pentateuch (SP) is the holy writ of the Samaritan community comprised solely of the Torah, the Pentateuch, from the second century BCE until today. The full text of SP, like MT, is known from medieval manuscripts dating to the ninth century CE onwards and undoubtedly goes back to ancient texts. The Israelite Samaritans, as they call themselves, are closely related to the Jews, but they do not identify as Jews and therefore the SP is not considered a Jewish text, or as I would say, not a Jewish text any more.

Yet the Dead Sea Scrolls contain texts that are very similar to the SP, which demonstrates that this text type was also considered to be an authoritative Jewish text. These predecessors of the SP found at Qumran, named pre-Samaritan by scholars, share all the major features with SP. SP was created probably in the second century BCE by slightly rewriting one of these pre-Samaritan texts to reflect the importance of Mount Gerizim (see especially SP’s tenth commandment).

The fact that the scrolls of SP were written in a form of the early Hebrew script gave them an appearance of originality, since all other manuscripts of Hebrew Scripture that were then known were written in the later, square script. However, this is no indication that SP reflects a more ancient text than its Jewish counterpart; a paleographical analysis of the specific version of the Hebrew script used by the Samaritans indicates that it dates from the Hasmonean period or later.⁴⁴

b. LXX (Septuagint or Old Greek45 Translation)—The ancient Jewish translation of the Torah into Greek is named the Septuagint after the apocryphal story of seventy (two) translators producing the same translation (see the Letter of Aristeas, an ancient wisdom composition describing the creation of the Septuagint). As the LXX differs from MT in many details, it is clear that the translation was based on a different Hebrew text. (Parts of this text are sometimes preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls.)

The enterprise of rendering the Torah into Greek in the beginning of the third century BCE in Alexandria was a Jewish enterprise, created by Jews for gentiles and Jews alike. The Letter of Aristeas mentions King Ptolemy II Philadelphos (287–247 BCE) as the person who commissioned the translation. Although the letter itself is later than the events it describes, it possibly contains a kernel of history.

This translation was probably used in Alexandria by Jews in their weekly ceremonial reading from the first century BCE onwards.⁴⁶ The Jewish background of the Greek translation of the Torah is well established, while that of the post-Pentateuchal books is not, although these too undoubtedly reflect a Jewish translation in origin.⁴⁷

Jews already began to see the LXX as problematic in the pre-Christian period, since it did not reflect the proto-MT text current in Palestine.⁴⁸ This began a pro­cess of revision of the LXX towards the proto-Masoretic Text, reflected, for example, in such Jewish revisions as Theodotion (named kaige-Theodotion in modern research), Aquila, and Symmachus, in this sequence. As these new translations became more popular, the LXX translation gradually fell into disuse among the Jews.

The emergence of early Christianity made the split between Jews and the LXX a foregone conclusion. In the first century CE, when the NT writers quoted Scripture, they used the LXX or an early revision of the LXX that was close to MT, such as the (kaige)-Theodotion revision mentioned above. That was a natural development since the New Testament was written in Greek, and it was natural for its authors to quote from earlier Scripture written in the same language.

As a result of its adoption by Christianity, the Jewish-Greek translation of the LXX was held in contempt by Jews, and was left to the church.⁴⁹ The Christians accepted the LXX as it was, generally without changing its wording.⁵⁰