Manuscripts and Versions of the Old Testament

We have received the Old Testament through diligent copying by scribes from one generation to another. However, at some point, it must have been originally written down, and anything before that must come from oral traditions which were in turn passed down from generation to generation through the spoken word. Oral traditions have the advantage that they move with the development and changes of language, retaining the same meaning with new vocabulary. They have the disadvantage that they rely on memory and individual interpretation from generation to generation. When the written traditions began, they had the advantage of relatively accurate transmission from generation to generation, with the corresponding disadvantage that as language changes, the written text stagnates as fewer and fewer speakers of the current language understand the written text.

Since bibical traditions were both oral, and then written, the Old Testament comes down to us with advantages and disadvantages of both oral and written traditions, applied with a somewhat different distribution to oral traditions commited to writing than for written traditions only.

In any event, it is possible that written documents in the Old Testament began to appear in the 11th century BC, the time of the kingdoms of David and Solomon. In Exodus 24:4 we are told that Moses wrote 400 years before that which is certainly probable as early writing systems existed then. We know the prophets had their messages written down from Jeremiah 36:4 for example. Such writing in that part of the world would probably have been done with a reed pen on papyrus. In any event, none of these early autographs are available to us now as they are perishable.

It is very likely that as these documents were copied and copied again, scribes introduced both unintentional and intentional errors into to text, especially before these texts came to be regarded as religiously important. This includes misreading, spelling mistakes, word divisions, and omissions. They would also edit the content, condensing, omitting, expanding, transposing, explaining, and generally cleaning up and organizing the text. As the text gained importance to the religious life of the Jewish community, a group called Sopherim arose who were responsible for the assembling, arranging, redaction (arrange for publication), and guarding the integrity of "inspired" writings. Sopherim is often translated "Scribes", but they were much more than that.

The Sopherim upgraded from the older script to the more modern "square" script of the Hebrew Old Testament available to us, and also enhanced the beauty of the script itself. They added rubrics (headings and titles) and paragraphing for readability. They checked orthography (spelling), marked sense divisions in the text, and spaced the text in blocks for readability. They also introduced alterations, such as replacing the tetragrammaton (4 consonants of God's name transliterated in our text to JHVH) with the word for Lord (Adonai or Elohim), and substituted the vowels for those names instead of the correct ones, to preserve the integrity of God's name. This resulted in the incorrect pronounciation Jehovah, and the more accurate Yahweh. They disfigured the names of heathen deities, replaced indelicate or unseemly expressions with euphenisms, emended passages which could be misunderstood, and modernized the language.

Early Sopherim functioned from 500 BC to 100 AD. They labored to complete the Palestinian Canon which was finalized by the rabbinic school of Rabi Akiba. The later Sopherim from 100 AD to 500 AD were preoccupied with stereotyping the text, that is standardizing it completely, including letter placement, blocking, etc. as if it were committed to a printing plate. The Sopherim were suceeded by the Masoretes whose labored extended from 500 AD to the inception of printing presses. The Sopherim left a text that was consonants only (no punctuation or word separation) and blocked the text into paragraphs.

The Masoretes supplied the missing elements, annotations, statistical word and letter counts, textual criticism, and interpretation with the purpose of safeguarding the text while making it more useful to the reader. They broke it up into verses and phrases for convenient public reading. There were three schools of Masoretes mainly responsible for this, each with their own system, namely the Tiberians, the Babylonians, and the Palestinians. Each used their own set of markings as:

1. A kind of punctuation to guide a reader from part to part within a sentence;

2. Guide the cantillation or singing of phrases in public worship, and

3. Mark the correct accentuation of words.

The Masoretes also:

1. Counted words and letters;

2. noted anomalies and peculiarities of the text;

3. Recorded variant readings;

4. Suggested corrections and emendations of the text, though they did not dare to actually change the text as the Sopherim had done.

The Tiberian School ultimately dominated the work and the most famous result is the Tiberian Codices of Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali from that rabbinical mastoretic school.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls dating from about 100 BC give us some insiight into the accuracy of transmission through the Sopherim and Masoretes, and they were essentially faithful in their work with some exceptions. Other available texts are as follows.

There are numerous manuscripts after that, but they are less important from the standpoint of establishing the correct text.

There are a number of early printed texts, including the third complete Old Testament printed in 1494 at Brescia which was used by Martin Luther for his translation. The second Rabbinic Bible was printed in Venice in 1524 to 1525. The text was prepared by Jacob ben Hayyim (Chayyim), and was a monumental work of scholarship for its time. Unfortunately it was based on late manuscripts that were less accurate to the original text. It became the authoritative text until Paul Kahle used the Codex L from Leningrad to yield a more accurate Ben Asher School text in 1937.

Another major source concerning the original meaning and readings of the Old Testament come from the Jewish targums. These are loosely translated scripture from Hebrew to popular languages used to publically interpret Hebrew Scriptures after the Hebrew Language was not commonly understood by Jewish worshippers. Over time, Aramaic, a related language became the popular language among Jews, and in fact some more recent parts of the Old Testament Canon may have been written first in Aramaic, and then translated into Hebrew. Targum means "translation."

A set of rules was developed for these public translations called the "Mishna". For example, translation must be one verse at a time for the Pentateuch, but the prophets may be three verses at a time. In cases where accuracy was very important, standard renderings were remembered and written down. Since translation was a public reading and translation by a scholar at the same time, writing down the translations was in disfavor among many Jews.

No original Aramaic Targums have survived, but a number of derivative targums are considered as coming from the originals, including four of the Law, two of the prophets, and three of parts of the writings. Only two ever had official standing among Jews, that of Onkelos on the Pentateuch, and Jonathon on the Prophets. Neither is by a single author. There is also a Samaritan Targum.

The Greek Septuagent version of the Old Testament probably began as a targum though never officlally sanctioned. There were targums for many languages. Ultimately, Rabbi Akiba prepared an official version of the Hebrew text in the first century AD from which later Christian greek versions of the Old Testament were prepared. All kinds of other translations were done into Syriac, Latin, Coptic (Egypt), Armenian, and so on. These were too late to be helpful in establishing the original text.