What is the Septuagint? How Does It Explain Archaeological Chronology? - Dr. Doug Petrovich

[Music] you know as we look around at all of these amazing artifacts I'm struck by not only just the artistic ability that they had but the engineering I'm struck by the fact that the same human mind that we build lots of things today was at play here they were building tools they were creating artifacts that were artistic I'm amazed by the design that we see in all of these does that strike you when you when you're out on your digs there are forms of the artifacts that have been found that have been dug up that demonstrate the glory and the power of man such as the Khorsabad bull that we looked at before of its enormous size in relation to the desire that the king had to demonstrate his power to the people and their need to submit to him their need to ascribe glory to him and yet at the same time we have fine work being done on cuneiform tablets and on scarabs with hieroglyphics so all of these things show us the intricacy that's involved and certainly the technological advances that we see are fascinating this alone right there is an issue that has been raised throughout all of my time with these scientists that comes back often to the issue of time in the area of archaeology how do you establish the chronology and those dates what are you use to do that that's an important question because ultimately the ancients didn't have the same absolute calendar that we have today and it's very difficult very challenging to understand exactly when things transpired and along the timeline that goes back into ancient history so there are several methods that we have to rely on one for example with the nearest neo-assyrian empire is that they had a what was called an epidemic dating method where they dated every year according to the main that transpired during that year and so every year was named after that year such as 2001 in the United States of course would be the twin towers coming down in New York City and because of the fact that they record a number of important events that we can trace and we can identify and plot on the absolute time scale we're able to correlate their records with the timing of absolute dating so that's one thing that's very helpful but ultimately that mainly helps us with the first millennium BC it doesn't help us much with the 2nd and 3rd millennium BC now a second method for obtaining dates and and coming to a good understanding of chronology with ancient history is related to organic material such as plant life or animal life if we can find something that lived something that had an organic element to it we're able to through radiocarbon dating establish a range not a specific date but a range of time and we can be fairly well confident about the dating based on the radiocarbon decay that goes all the way back to about 1400 BC now once we get to 1400 BC we have a problem and this is noticed throughout the world of ancient Near Eastern historical studies and that problem is that we have an offset and what happens with this offset is let's say for example that historically we know something should be dated to 1480 or 1500 BC and it's abundantly clear in the historical record that you can't really fudge on that number very much well then the radiocarbon evidence is going to suggest that it dates to around 1600 instead and so we have this offset there is a contradiction in the evidence the historical evidence says one thing in the radiocarbon evidence says another and the variation there can be 100 120 years within that time period just before 1400 BC and it's very important to note this offset increases in its gap between the historical and radiocarbon dating as you go back in time in other words if you go back another couple hundred years the offset is more than a hundred or 120 years it becomes two hundred to two hundred and fifty years so it essentially is an exponential problem that exists in the radiocarbon evidence and this essentially is causing a great division within scholarship of the ancient Near East but now evidence has shown that this isn't just a local phenomenon because before it was known and understood as having taken place in northern Egypt in ancient times now we see it throughout Beach Near East including the Levant and beyond and other sites are giving us evidence demonstrating this offset this presents a great challenge I'm not sure that we can be a hundred percent sure how to account for this I think we can perhaps solve this problem in the in the historical dating based on a better understanding of Scripture so for example if there was some kind of major upheaval in the relationship between the Sun and the earth at the time of the universal flood on her on the planet Earth it's very possible that we could have something that transpired such as a change in the rate of decay of the radiocarbon in in all organic life form and that would make up for this this offset that we see and certainly the biblical text would match with that because we see lifespans before the flood and for a short time after the flood being a lot larger a lot longer than the time period after that so it's very possible that all of this correlates together so what we would see as being much older actually was much more recent than that dr. Snelling was talking the evidence that they were beginning to see that pointed back to a period when that radioactive decay actually had accelerated so that's along the same line that you're talking about there absolutely and that may provide the kinds of answers that would solve the problems that now face not only Christians who study archaeology and ancient history but all scholars do there is also a difference of opinion in terms of the dates associated with the Masoretic text and the Septuagint you can you explain that a little bit first we go back to Genesis 11 and with in Genesis 11 we have one of the genealogies basically gives us the the history of the transmission of people going from the time of the flood down to Abraham and in that genealogy we have various readings in the text we have different Hebrew traditions different written traditions of the Bible even beyond the Hebrew Bible that give us information that would cause us to understand maybe one or another is problematic the textual variation we have in Genesis 11 is a very complex problem and when you study the issue you see that there's basically two textual traditions there the Masoretic tradition and the what we call a double textual tradition of the Samaritan Pentateuch which is an older form of the Hebrew Bible and the lxx or Septuagint which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible so these two textual traditions match up together in contrast to what we read in the Genesis 11 account in the Masoretic text so with the Masoretic text basically you have the period of the flood going back only a certain time period in the 3rd millennium BC such that it's very difficult to find time for all of the archaeological periods that take place can't fit Nimrod in as the Acadian leader you can't fit the Tower of Babel in and that's very problematic but there are two other textual traditions apart from the Masoretic text and those are found those are independent traditions and they're found in the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint known as the lxx the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible and in those texts the numbers are different and if you take those numbers as being factual that allows the flood to be pushed back to about 30 108 BC and it gives you a lot of ability to fit in the archaeological periods and ultimately we can explain the rise of the wrong reading better with the reading of the Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch now basically what it comes down to is this with with a number of the the men who are who are the fathers the ones who sire children who are part of this genealogy there's a difference in how old that man was at the time that he birthed that child who was part of that genealogy so for example if a father in the Masoretic text was 30 years old when he sired that child in the Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch it says that he was a hundred and thirty years old so you have this same type of repeated problem in the textual tradition now what's interesting is that when you come to the end of that lifespan of that certain patriarch he lives the exact same amount of time in the Masoretic text versus the double traditionalist Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint so the question is which tradition is correct and which is incorrect now I wrote my master of theology thesis in the area of lower textual criticism which essentially is the study of what did text of the Bible in the original manuscripts say whether in Hebrew Aramaic or Greek we have a number of principles that we use in the field of textual criticism these are called canons and the most important and this is universally recognized as the most important Canon for determining correct readings is this choose the reading that best accounts for the other readings now what that comes down to is the correct reading is going to account for how you develop the spurious reading so if you were am as erotic scribe and you saw that the man was thirty years old when he sired his child would is there any reason that would make you change your texts in hopes that you're improving it to alter the number to one hundred and thirty years of age when he sired that child and think of it right so we can account for the reading in the Masoretic text by changing it from one thirty two thirty that's very logical it's absolutely illogical to change the text from thirty years of age to a hundred and thirty years of age and in this textual tradition we have two independent lines of textual tradition that's both bare with them the same numbering so most likely although the Masoretic text on the whole more often is correct than the other textual lines or textual sources with the Hebrew Bible in this case almost certainly the Masoretic text itself is wrong yeah but what is interesting to me in in all of this and in the same way I was very interested in edwin t lee's work when he spent most of his life i guess trying to understand the differences associated with the dates you know in kings and chronicles and so forth and he and he did and in solved all of that problem what I'm struck with is that there is a reason why we care about these texts and the reason is because we see them as being sourced by God himself if we really believed they were just sourced by people then we wouldn't really care that much is that part of the reason why we're so hungry to find the answer to these questions part of the reason and for us we see the biblical text as different than any other form of literature in the entire history of the world why because for us the biblical text has what we call dual authorship it has a human author and a divine author who are working together harmoniously how that took place it's difficult for us to comprehend but we do understand from the text that talked about the inspiration of the human authors we can see that the Spirit of God is working together with a spirit of the biblical writer to not only preserve accurately everything that was written but to preserve the will of God and the mind of God and the heart and character of God in that texture yeah and that of course is the the mystery that we even find within Christ he was fully God and fully man and and yet we know that that is true we can't understand everything about that yeah but it doesn't seem logical it's like the Trinity it doesn't seem logical that you could have one God yet be manifested in three persons yet it is not contradictory no in itself it's just mysterious right and it's beyond what the human mind can come to yes Doug after all of your years in archeology and all that you've seen and the digs and all of your scientific work are you more convinced in the historicity of Genesis or are you less convinced I'm absolutely more convinced and I've essentially dedicated my life to the study not only of the scripture itself and trying to understand what originally written by the inspired authors but to defend that against attacks that are currently being made in the area of historicity and then you might say why is that so important the reason is this because if someone can undermine your understanding of the historical facts that are or at least purported to be factual in the biblical text if someone can prove to you that that has erred in some way probably it's going to undermine your belief in the spiritual message in the Bible right and in the characters of the Bible and any events of the Bible that are recorded in the and the encounters between people and the miracles all of these things are going to be eroded away if you undermine the historicity of the biblical tale but we don't assume that it is correct just simply in order to hold that up what you're saying is that the evidence you have found in the evidence that we see here in this museum it all collaborates that it does it corroborates all of the events in many ways in the biblical text [Music] you

Channel: Is Genesis History?

Views: 228,852

Keywords: is genesis history, douglas petrovich, archaeology, septuagint, lxx, greek old testament, bible, carbon 14 dating, carbon dating, c14 dating, genesis, tower of babel, doug petrovich, masoretic

Id: w8BqXrBzgVY

Length: 17min 1sec (1021 seconds)

Published: Sun May 24 2020