Transmitting the Hebrew Scriptures to You
LIKELY you possess a copy in your own language of the Hebrew Scriptures, commonly called the “Old Testament.” This Hebrew portion of the Holy Bible has a few chapters and isolated verses written in Aramaic. The writing of the Hebrew Scriptures was completed more than 2,400 years ago.
Can you be confident that your copy of the Hebrew Scriptures represents what was originally written? Some feel that thousands of years of copying and recopying would surely obscure the original-language text beyond recognition. But has this really happened? It is interesting to consider some basic information as to how these writings have come down through the centuries.
Right from the start of Bible writing efforts were made to preserve the Word of God. The Scriptures state that Moses commanded the Levites to preserve “this book of the law” for the benefit of succeeding generations. (Deut. 31:25, 26) Kings of Israel were commanded by God to make “a copy of this law” when they took their seat on the throne.—Deut. 17:18.
Later, a special need for copies of the Hebrew Scriptures arose in the time of Ezra, a priest who, along with other Jews, went up from Babylon to Jerusalem in the seventh year of Persian King Artaxerxes (468 B.C.E.). (Ezra 7:1-7) Thousands of Jews had chosen to remain in Babylon and others had been scattered about because of migrations and for business purposes. Local assembly halls known as synagogues sprang up in different places, and for these scribes had to make handwritten copies of Biblical manuscripts. Ezra himself is identified as “a skilled copyist in the law of Moses” and as “a copyist of the words of the commandments of Jehovah and of his regulations toward Israel.”—Ezra 7:6, 11.
THE WORK OF “SOPHERIM”
Copyists of the Hebrew Scriptures from Ezra’s day onward for some 1,000 years were known as “sopherim.” A very ancient rabbinic tradition connects this title with a Hebrew verb (sa·pharʹ), meaning “to count,” saying: “The early scholars were called Sof’rim, because they counted all the letters in the Torah,” that is, the Pentateuch, or the first five books of the Bible. Such painstaking efforts assured a high degree of accuracy in transmission of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Of course, centuries of copying would naturally result in some mistakes finding their way into the Hebrew Bible text. There is evidence that the sopherim even made a few intentional changes. For example, copyists much later in history list 134 places where the sopherim changed the original Hebrew text to read Adonay [“Lord”] instead of God’s personal name YHWH [“Jehovah”]. Fortunately, though, these scribes indicated where they had made changes so that subsequent scholars would know what the text originally said.
According to Jewish tradition, before the destruction in 70 C.E. of the temple of God’s worship in Jerusalem strenuous efforts were made to get back to what the Hebrew Bible text originally said. Concerning this, Robert Gordis writes in The Biblical Text in the Making: “The guardians of the Biblical text found one ancient, meticulously written manuscript and made it the foundation for their work. They established it as the archetype from which all official copies were to be made and by which all manuscripts in private hands could henceforth be corrected.”
Rabbinic literature mentions a Hebrew copy of the Pentateuch known as the “Scroll of the Temple precincts” that served as a model for revision of new copies. There is also mention of “correctors of biblical books in Jerusalem” who received their wages from the Temple treasury.
THE “MASORETIC” TEXT
Originally Hebrew Bible manuscripts were written with only consonants. The Hebrew alphabet does not have vowel letters such as our a, e, i, o, u, y. But if you look at a printed Hebrew Bible today, you will notice that above, below, or in the middle of each word are dots, dashes and other marks. Why were these added to the text of Hebrew Scriptures? Because Hebrew words written with only consonants can often be pronounced several different ways, with variations of meaning. The vowel points and accents serve to safeguard the traditional pronunciation of each word.
The vowel points and accents are the work of specially skilled copyists who lived during the sixth to the tenth centuries C.E. These scribes came to be known as baalei ha-masoreth (“masters of tradition”), or “Masoretes.” The vowel-pointed Hebrew text is therefore called the “Masoretic” text.
The Masoretes changed nothing when copying Hebrew Bible manuscripts. They examined all unusual word forms, making notes about them in the margins of Masoretic manuscripts. These notes are called “masorah.” A highly abbreviated method of notation, known as the “small masorah,” appears in the margins beside the Hebrew Bible text. The top and bottom margins contain the “large masorah,” which supplements the small masorah. At the end of some Masoretic manuscripts is found a concordance-like “final Masorah.”
These notations reveal that the Masoretes had amassed a vast amount of information for faithfully preserving the Biblical text. According to Robert Gordis, they “counted the letters of Scripture, determined the middle letter and the middle verse of the Torah [Pentateuch], established the middle letter of the Bible as a whole, compiled extensive lists of rare and unique Biblical forms, listed the number of occurrences of thousands of Biblical words and usages—all in order to help protect it from tampering and prevent scribes from introducing changes into the accepted text.”
For example, the small masorah notes that the first word of Genesis, bereshithʹ (often rendered: “In the beginning”), occurs five times in the Bible, three of them at the beginning of a verse. Many words on nearly every page of Masoretic Bible manuscripts are marked in the margin by the Hebrew letter lamedh (ל). This letter (equivalent to our “l”) is an abbreviation for the word leit, Aramaic for “there is none.” It indicates that the expression as it appears in that spot occurs nowhere else. Concerning the masorah, Ernst Würthwein remarks in The Text of the Old Testament:
“Often such Masoretic notes seem to us far-fetched, frivolous and without purpose. But we must remember that they are the result of a passionate desire to protect the text and to prevent wilful or careless mistakes by the scribe, . . . The Masora bears witness to an extremely exact revision of the text, which deserves our respect, even though there is always the danger that in the care for the letter of the text its spirit has been missed.”
ACCURACY CONFIRMED BY DEAD SEA SCROLLS
Searches in the area of the Dead Sea have turned up numerous Hebrew scrolls written before the beginning of the Common Era. Many of these contain parts of the Hebrew Scriptures. How do they compare with Masoretic manuscripts produced some one thousand or more years later?
In one study, the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah was examined both in a Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah, copied about 100 B.C.E., and in the Masoretic text. Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix give the results of this study in A General Introduction to the Bible:
“Of the 166 words in Isaiah 53, there are only seventeen letters in question. Ten of these letters are simply a matter of spelling, which does not affect the sense. Four more letters are minor stylistic changes, such as conjunctions. The remaining three letters comprise the word ‘light,’ which is added in verse 11, and does not affect the meaning greatly. . . . Thus, in one chapter of 166 words, there is only one word (three letters) in question after a thousand years of transmission—and this word does not significantly change the meaning of the passage.”
Another publication notes that this scroll and an additional copy of parts of Isaiah found near the Dead Sea “proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95% of the text. The 5% of variation consisted chiefly of obvious slips of the pen and variations in spelling.”
When reading the Hebrew Scriptures, therefore, you can be confident that your Bible is based upon a Hebrew text that accurately conveys the thoughts of God’s inspired penmen. (2 Tim. 3:16) Thousands of years of painstaking professional copying has assured what God long ago foretold: “The green grass has dried up, the blossom has withered; but as for the word of our God, it will last to time indefinite.”—Isa. 40:8.
[Picture on page 189]
Masoretic text of Leviticus 10:16. Tiny circle above a Hebrew word (left arrow) points to marginal note (right arrow), saying: “Middle word of Pentateuch”
[Pictures on page 190]
Beginning of Isaiah from Dead Sea Scroll of 100 B.C.E. (above) and Leningrad Manuscript of 1000 C.E. (left). Though 1,100 years apart, they show almost word-for-word agreement