These sources were fragments though. Can you give an example of a fragment that reads continuous but skips across portions that are in the end product? Perhaps Genesis 3:20 or maybe another example that “looks” like it may have been inserted later like Genesis 2:10-14?
I do not doubt that errors were ever made, but these changes they made to the text could be a correction to a previous error. The original source now being lost.
I was quoting the article. The proto-Masoretic manuscripts in the Dead Sea scrolls support that the text that the Masoretes began working with was already “astonishingly similar”.
I think it makes sense to view 3:20 like a new paragraph, but not to start a new chapter. 3:20-24 complete the Garden of Eden narrative.
Perhaps what the scribes were storing in the caves was not all their own work?
I do not see the Septuagint as authoritative. It is a translation, and in my understanding is more of a “thought for thought” rather than a “word for word” translation. Additionally, among other things, they took liberty to change when all the patriarchs begat children, not knowing the meaning or importance of those numbers in showing our common decent will all life. For more on common decent see my study and discussion here.
The literal standard version (LSV) actually goes so far as to put the ages presented in the Septuagint in parenthesis after the actual ages from the MT. Example:
- Gen 5:3 (LSV) And Adam lives one hundred and thirty years [[or two hundred and thirty years]], and begets [a son] in his likeness, according to his image, and calls his name Seth. 4 And the days of Adam after his begetting Seth are eight hundred years [[or seven hundred years]], and he begets sons and daughters.
This kind of practice, putting what is authoritative into question, right into the text instead of as a margin note, just confuses and should really be frowned upon.