However, if one way of interpreting both Old and New Testaments is to attempt to reconstruct, as best we can, the way contemporary audiences understood certain passages, can we not apply that to the potential problems raised here? Let’s say that a NT author reads one version of the OT that contradicts another manuscript’s reading. Should we not consider the audience of the NT author when he makes that choice while at the same time considering the audience for the manuscript that has a different reading? And not just the audience but the time period, circumstances, and anything else that goes into reconstructing context. Can’t both readings be right in the context of when, where and for whom they were written?

I know that this demands textual criticism on the part of the modern reader, but I’m thinking more and more that all Christians today have to be engaged in TC to some extent.

It seems to me that to think too much about the version that a particular author quoted, and reasons for quoting a particular version, is misguided.

The NT authors were not textual critics.

Chances are we have more textual information to hand than they did when they wrote. To understand quotation of a particular OT/LXX reading as support for the quality of the reading puts far more burden on these authors’ quotations than they merit.

Evaluate the quotations in the context of the quoting author’s argument/purpose. To do anything more is to do too much.