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, b^ereshithʹ (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.”

[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”