Proof that the Masoretic Text changed Zechariah 3:8 from Nazarene to Branch

[Marathoner]

I was a transient for many years, so I was liberated from possessions over and over again. Ah, but ccel.org contains just about everything my old friend had in his library, so I use that website to refresh my memory or read something new. There's even a digital rendition of the Septuagint available online (free to read!), but that was one book I had to acquire in print. It's just not the same online. 

[anastasis888]

Yeah, here it is. The paradigm is in Wm. B. Stevenson's Grammar of Palestinian Jewish Aramaic (1924). If you have a compound word with the initial Na at the beginning, it's going to morph like an initial nun verb. I'm thinking it's the simple participle with sere yod taw ending. That's very similar to the Hebrew, but the Aramaic of the period tends to retain the full vowel letters. Matthew is simply writing Nazareith (Prayer Rising) in its Aramaic form as it was called in his time.

I knew it was some kind of Aramaic participle. It had to be. It's just a very New Testament / Targum era Aramaic participle.

Edited November 16, 2022 by anastasis888

[WilliamL]

On 11/15/2022 at 1:25 PM, anastasis888 said:

Caution is definitely in order when studying prophecy from the Masoretic. They are known to have been quite liberal about changing text in the 4th century to obfuscate against Christianity.

The Septuagint is a good copy to have on hand, because I'm telling you the Masoretic text is corrupt in many instances.

"I read the article by this gentleman. He seems to be trying to create a big controversy where there is only a small one. He purposefully exaggerates differences where, in fact, they are small. I believe that he is not a scholar, but is riding a horse to create a point. For example, he makes grand statements about how much the Jews corrupted the OT, but provides literally not a single example of a corruption of the OT in the Masoretic text. This author is really slandering the Masoretes. He better have a lot of evidence to back up his scandalous charges. The best I can tell, he has little if any evidence to back up his claim of huge corruptions by the Masoretes. Unless he produces such evidence, I do not agree with his claims. We have plenty of quotes from the OT in the Talmud, targums, etc which come from before the Masoretic text was created." 

https://evidenceforchristianity.org/what-is-masoretic-hebrew-is-the-mt-more-reliable-than-the-dss/

I agree with the above assessment. It must be remembered that there is no reliable version of the Septuagint, nor of the authorship or of the dates of any of its translated books other that the Torah. As shown in Origen's Hexapla, even in his day there were notable variations in the available texts of the LXX.

The Dead Seas Scrolls agree strongly with the Masoretic Text, not the LXX:

"...the almost total agreement between these sources is actually of huge comfort.

The differences are minor, very minor. And of the few, most don’t actually make any real difference." https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/56688/what-are-the-theologically-significant-differences-between-mt-and-dss

As to the point in question in Zechariah 3:8, the Messianic term used in Hebrew for the Messiah is tsemach, which is likewise used in Isaiah 4:2, Jeremiah 23:5 and 33:15. So there certainly is scriptural precedent for this term; as opposed to the completely unsupported term used in the LXX, which is suggestive of a later Christian post-edit.