The Work of the Masoretes.  From 500 AD to 900 AD, a group of scribes called the Masoretes worked to preserve the Old Testament Scriptures. Their name came from the word "massorah", meaning "authoritative traditions concerning the text".  They sorted and compared all of the available manuscripts and put them together into what is known today as the Masoretic Text. The Masoretes were very dedicated to the preserving the Word of God and no detail was too small to be overlooked.

    The Masoretes collected all of the Scriptural comments provided by Rabbis from the past as well as alternative readings, pronunciation aids and other notes. About 1,000 copies of the Masoretic text still exist today and scholars use them to help construct the Bible’s original text.

    The Masoretes main function was the devising of methods of modernizing the pronunciation of the text. As previously mentioned, they added a series of vowel points and accents which correspond to what we today call punctuation. Over time, an incredibly detailed procedure was developed for copying each Old Testament scroll. Here are some of the detailed requirements that were followed whenever a Jewish scribe undertook the process of copying God’s Word.

• Each page must contain a certain number of columns, equal throughout the volume

• Each column length must not extend over less tha n 48 or more than 60 lines

• The width of each column must consist of 30 letters

• The ink should be black, prepared according to a definite recipe

• A copy must be taken only from an authentic example, from which the transcriber ought not deviate in the least

• No word or letter must be written from memory, the scribe not having looked at the volume before him

• Between every consonant the space of a hair, or thread must intervene

• Between every new section, the breadth of nine consonants

• Between every book, three lines

• The fifth book of Moses must terminate with an exact line, but the rest need not do so

• The copyist must sit in full Jewish dress, wash his whole body and not begin to write the name of God with a pen newly dipped in ink

• Should a king address him while writing that name, he must take no notice of him

    Other Materials on the Old Testament Text. 
        Septuagint - Septuagint (sometimes abbreviated LXX) is the name given to the Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures. The Septuagint has its origin in Alexandria, Egypt and was translated between 300-200 B.C. Widely used among Hellenistic Jews, this Greek translation was produced because many Jews spread throughout the empire were beginning to lose their command of the Hebrew language. The process of translating the Hebrew to Greek also gave many non-Jews a glimpse into Judaism.  According to an ancient document called the Letter of Aristeas, it is believed that 70 to 72 Jewish scholars were commissioned during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus to carry out the task of translation. The term "Septuagint" means seventy in Latin, and the text is so named to the credit of these 70 scholars.

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    The Septuagint contains not only the Old Testament, but also the Apocrypha.  This translation became the Bible of the Greek-speaking Jews, and circulated widely.  The Christian church adopted the Septuagint as the Book of the Old Covenant, and as a result the Jews turned it aside and ceased copying it. Rival translations of it were then made by many others. The Septuagint was revised by the Christian writer Origen in his Hexapla (six translations side-by-side), which had the current Hebrew text, that text in Greek letters, and translations by four other Christians; Aquila, Symmachus, Origen, and Theodotion. As far as we know, the Septuagint underwent no new translations after the fourth century. There are too many copies of the Septuagint to mention the number.

    Samaritan Pentateuch - On the return from the Exile, the Jews refused the Samaritans’ participation with them in the worship at Jerusalem. The Samaritans separated from all fellowship with the Jews, and built a temple for themselves, substituting Mount Gerizim for Mount Ebal as the mountain the memorial altar should be placed on (see Deuteronomy 27:4). (Note: This temple was destroyed more than one hundred years B.C.) They then instituted a system of worship similar to that of the temple at Jerusalem. It was founded on the Law, copies of which had been multiplied in Israel as well as in Judah. Thus the Pentateuch was preserved among the Samaritans, although they never called it by this name, but always "the Law," which they read as one book. The division into five books, as we now have it, however, was adopted by the Samaritans, as it was by the Jews, in all their priests’ copies of "the Law," for the sake of convenience. This was the only portion of the Old Testament, which was accepted by the Samaritans as of divine authority.

    The form of the letters in the manuscript copies of the Samaritan Pentateuch is different from that of the Hebrew copies, and is probably the same as that which was in general use before the Captivity. 

    It differs from the Hebrew in about 6,000 places, but the majority of these variations are trivial. The Samaritan text may be closer to the true language than the Hebrew. It can be said that in the Samaritan text we have preserved a more ancient copy of the Hebrew text than was previously known. None of the manuscripts are known to be earlier than the tenth century. All of them are on vellum and are in the form of books.

    A small number of the Samaritan people still live at Nablus and celebrate the Passover on Mount Gerizim, but it was not until a noted Catholic traveler, Pietro della Valle, obtained a copy of the Samaritan Pentateuch in 1632 that the value of the text became known.

    Aramaic Targums.  The word "targum" itself means translation. While any translation of the Scriptures may in Hebrew be called a Targum, the word is used especially for a translation of a book of the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic. Before the Christian era Aramaic had in good part replaced Hebrew in Palestine as the common language of the Jews.

    Rabbinic Judaism has transmitted Targums of all the books of the Hebrew Canon, with the exception of Daniel and Ezra-Nehemiah, which are themselves partly in Aramaic. Translations of books of the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic must have begun before the Christian era.

    Targums are not of great importance in translation because they usually contain a large number of alterations and were in many cases paraphrases rather than strict translations.

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    Syriac versions.  Antioch was the capital of Syria. God’s people had been in and around this area and it was natural that the Bible would be translated into this language.  But it should be noted that, just as Koine Greek is the "Biblical" version of classical Greek, Syriac is the "Biblical" version of Aramaic. There were two major syriac versions, one by one Paul of Tella, and the other called the Peshitta.

    The version by Paul of Tella was done about 616.  This was not a translation from the Hebrew but a Syriac version of the Septuagint column in Origen’s Hexapla.  It was never used extensively because it was such a blatant copy of the Greek.

    "Peshitta" is a syriac word meaning "simple" or "easily understood".  When Christianity began to truly flourish in Mesopotamia, there naturally came the need for a translation of the Bible in the local language.  One Rabbula, bishop of Edessa from 411 to 435, undertook the translation, called the Peshitta.  His translation took as its basis the Byzantine Greek text, which had become the standard Bible of the Greek Christians. This Peshitta translation has become the "authorized" version of the Syriac churches, even to this day. It is possible today to go to the Syrian Church of the Malabar coast in India and see this translation (they believe Bartholomew came to preach in India and left behind Matthew’s gospel). Other tradition says that the apostle Thomas was the first to evanglize India.  Nevertheless, the official Bible of this church is the standard Syriac version, in the Peshitta or easily understood language. (Picture is a page showing the prophets Isaiah and Jacob, along with three apostles, probably illustrating the transfiguration.)

    The importance of this translation to determining the authorized text, or "canon" of the Old Testament, is that it is apparently a translation from the Hebrew original, and while we do not have any Hebrew Bibles older than about 1000 A.D., we have Syriac versions that are perhaps 400 years older.

    As an interest, the close similarities between the Palestinian dialect of Aramaic spoken by Christ and Syriac offer us a unique understanding of some of the Biblical readings. For example, in the English King James version of the Bible we read in Matthew 5:18 "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled". What could jot mean? The Syriac Bible uses the word yod for jot in this verse. This word is the name of the tenth letter of the Aramaic alphabet, shown here in the Syriac Estrangelo script (read from right to left).

    Tatian’s Diatesseron.  Tatian was a young Roman Christian who wrote several books. One of them, the most important one, was a "harmony of the gospels" in which he attempted to put all the events of Jesus’ life in chronological order. This book was probably published before 200 A.D. The Diatesseron was practically the only Bible used in Syria during the 4th and 5th centuries. Rabulla, bishop of Edessa, who translated the Peshitta, saw that every church had a copy of the Diatesseron for use in the worship.  Only fragments remain of the original Syriac version, but translations into Armenian, Latin, and Arabic exist today to illustrate Tatian’s contributions.

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    Contribution of the Dead Sea Scrolls.  Back in the spring of 1947, a young boy named Muhammad was out looking for a lost goat out in the wilderness of Judea- an area of the world inhabited today by the nation of Israel. As the little shepherd boy walked along the dry, craggy land, he started tossing stones into the caves that were there, just 500 yards or so from the Dead Sea.

    As he walked along, he picked up a stone and tossed it into one of the cave openings along the hillside. As the stone disappeared into the cave, he heard a noise that didn’t quite sound like a stone striking a rock. So he picked up another stone, threw it into the same cave, and heard the same sound again. Muhammad decided that this was something worth checking out, so he climbed up to the opening to have a better look.

    What he found was a cave about 25 feet long and six feet wide. Inside the cave were clay jars including the ones that his rocks had hit- the ones that had made the sound he heard. Some of the jars were gray, some were pinkish-white and all stood about 2 feet high. Inside the jars were rolled objects, wrapped in cloth and covered with a protective wax-like substance. The young boy unrolled one of the objects and found it to be a manuscript, neatly written in matching columns on pages that had been sewn together.

    What Muhammad found in the cave that day was one of the greatest archaeological finds ever made, for he found what is now known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.  The Scrolls belonged to a group of people who lived in that area somewhere between 150 B.C. to 70 A.D. Scholars believe that the Scrolls were placed in the caves during that time to protect them from an invasion by the Romans. With the exception of the book of Esther, parts of every Old Testament book are represented among the Scrolls. The oldest text is a fragment of Exodus that dates from about 250 B.C. The scroll containing the entire book of Isaiah is thought to have been copied around 100 B.C.

    Why bring this up? Simply this- the Dead Sea Scrolls in some cases are over 1000 years older than the earliest Old Testament copies that previously existed. But when the Scrolls were checked against these later manuscripts, it was found that they read almost entirely the same as the Old Testament that you can read today! In commenting on this, one scholar-type says... "Even though the two copies of Isaiah discovered...in 1947 were a thousand years earlier than the oldest dated manuscripts previously known...they 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".  So, while the Dead Sea Scrolls tell us much, the most important thing they tell us is that the Bible we use today has not changed from the original! (The impressive scroll shown above is a collection of psalms and hymns, comprising parts of forty-one biblical psalms (chiefly from chapters 101-50. It also presents previously unknown hymns, as well as a prose passage about the psalms composed by King David.

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    One of the longer texts to be found at Qumran, the manuscript was found in 1956 in Cave 11 and unrolled in 1961. Its surface is the thickest of any of the scrolls--it may be of calfskin rather than sheepskin, which was the more common writing material at Qumran. The script is on the grain side of the skin. The scroll contains twenty-eight incomplete columns of text, six of which are displayed here (cols. 14-19). Each of the preserved columns contains fourteen to seventeen lines; it is clear that six to seven lines are lacking at the bottom of each column.

    New Testament Text.  New Testaments were mostly written on papyrus, a material that does not weather well. Therefore, the original "autograph" versions of the New Testament books quickly disappeared. But we have literally thousands of copies.

    Suppose there is a copy of a New Testament text in front of us. What should we know about it? How old is it? How can we date it?

    Well, first, are the letters large or small. Are there spaces between words?  How many columns are there, and what are their lengths? Are there marks of punctuation on the page? Are the letters simple or ornate, elaborate, and complex? Those skilled in determining the age of manuscripts will use these questions and many more to determine the age and authenticity of an ancient document related to the Bible.

    New Testament manuscripts generally fall into two categories, the letters of the document determining the categories. The earliest and most important of the manuscripts are written in all-capitals and are called uncials. The more recent and less important, but by far the most numerous, are written in a running script and are known as cursives. Cursives did not appear until the 9th century and are less valuable because of their dates. 

    All together, there are about 4,500 New Testament manuscripts, but not all are complete. There are over 25,000 partial manuscripts. Of the known manuscripts, about 300 are uncials, while the remaining cursives date from the 9th to the 15th centuries.

    The 300 uncials include about 70 papyrus documents dating from the 2nd to the 4th centuries. And there are about 30 fragments of pottery, called ostraca, which were used for writing, usua lly for exercise, but sometimes for use in the worship service, that have uncial letters inscribed on them. So, excluding papyrus and ostraca, there are about 200 vellum manuscripts surviving that date from the 4th to the 9th centuries.

    Important Uncials.  It is easily understood that the most complete and oldest manuscripts are generally the most important. The number of documents fitting this description is limited to three: the Vatican, the Sinaitic, and the Alexandrian manuscripts.

    The Vatican Manuscript.  Known as Codex B, this is the single most important existing manuscript of the New Testament known. It is dated from the 4th century. It contains in Greek practically all of the Old and New Testaments. The beginning is missing (Genesis 1:1 46:28), part of the Psalms (Psalms 106-138) and the close of the New Testament (Hebrew 9:14 to the end of the book, the letters of Timothy, Titus, and Revelation). It is bound in codex (book) form and contains 759 leaves of the finest vellum. The pages are 10 inches square and hold three columns of very beautiful handwriting. There are no spaces between the words and punctuation is very sparse.  In fact, it is evident that at least two scribes are responsible for this manuscript, one of whom believed in using a great deal more punctuation than the other, although neither used much.

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