The Masoretes
Sometime between the 6th and the 8th centuries CE (500-800), there lived in Tiberias (a city on the Sea of Galilee in Israel) a group of scholars, or scribes, known to posterity as the Masoretes. Little more than has just been mentioned is known about them. What is however known is that these individuals created works whose sole aim was to assure the precise preservation of the Hebrew Bible as they knew it.
Tradition has always assumed that they were attempting merely to preserve traditions about the text that they had themselves received from prior generations. Until not long ago, these claims (of course) were treated with a good deal of skepticism or disdain by modern scholars. True scientists never take such traditions at face value. However, in more recent times, the traditions about the Masoretes have largely been vindicated and substantiated by findings near Wady Murabba'at, of which more will be said later.
Written Hebrew
A little background regarding the Hebrew language and the Hebrew text of the Bible is necessary for an understanding of the work of the Masoretes and the incredible nature of the preservation of the Hebrew Bible.
The writing of Hebrew is different from many other languages. In ancient times, Hebrew had no system for unambiguously designating vowels. In Hebrew texts only the consonants of the words appear unambiguously in them.
Of course, Hebrew words are like words in any other language, composed of both consonants and vowels. Indeed, by contrast to English, Hebrew consonants rarely are doubled up. There are very, very few words with things like `pl', `st', `rd' and the like. Almost all consonants are separated from each other by vowels or breaks within the words. But the written text has no marks for these vowels. The reader is expected to know, generally from the context, exactly what vowels to sound after each consonant, exactly how each word should be pronounced.
For example, if they would be Hebrew words, the words `ran', `run', and `rain' would all be written the same way, RN. But this word, RN, would have different meaning in different places and would be pronounced differently when read. Its pronunciation would depend on its meaning in the context. `RN home!' would be read `Run home!'; `He RN home', would be read `He ran home'; while `RN is falling', would obviously be read `Rain is falling'.
Why the Masoretes had to act
One of the aims of the Masoretes was the development of a system to preserve the accurate readings of biblical texts. While Hebrew was a living language spoken by most Jews, while Jews were still geographically concentrated, enough to preserve impeccably their ancient traditions, a system of marks to designate vowels to teach the pronunciation of the words in the biblical texts was totally unnecessary.
In most cases, the readings of the texts were not ambiguous. Anyone who knew Hebrew would know exactly how the written words ought to be pronounced. And in those few cases for which the context might be ambiguous, there were always individuals who could be consulted about the proper reading. The study of the Bible was a national occupation. It was the main feature of child's education. The Torah and other biblical books were constantly read in public services. The words of the text were familiar to very, very many. There was never a fear that the traditional readings would be lost.
By the time of the Masoretes, however, the Jews had already been dispersed over the globe for several centuries and the Hebrew language was no longer the vernacular of most Jews. Thus, the Masoretes feared that in time the traditional readings of the biblical texts would be lost to posterity.
What the Masoretes did
To forestall this, they developed a system for designating vowels. Several competing systems were developed and the one that took hold has been employed for over 1200 years and is still in use today.
According to this system, vowels appear as marks mainly above and below the letters of a consonantal text. These vowel marks are generally added only to texts that aim to teach, like printed editions of the Bible, or to works like prayer books where precise pronunciation is crucial. Scrolls of biblical texts do not include them. Indeed, adding such marks to a Torah scroll renders it unfit for use during obligatory public reading. Moreover, most other books, even those written in modern times, for which exact pronunciation is not all that important still do not include these marks.
The Masoretes also worked out a system that would help assure the perfect preservation of the consonantal text. In Hebrew, alternative spellings of words are allowed and are very frequent. The differences involve mainly the addition or omission of what I will call `help-letters'.
Several letters can have such a function but two are most common and thus most important. These are usually designated by the English letters Y and W (in Hebrew, they are `yod' and `vav' - the 10th and 6th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, respectively). These letters have dual roles. They appear in the text as true consonants, sometimes being pronounced as consonants with their own vowel sounds, or they can be inserted into a word to designate a vowel. In the latter case, technically, they are not pronounced.
As vowels, the letters Y and W are not unambiguous; each represents more than one vowel sound. (The same is true in the English language. Written vowels are certainly not unambiguous. Each of the vowel letters can have several sounds. It takes familiarity with a word to know how to pronounce it.) But their inclusion in a word does reduce the ambiguity of the word's pronunciation somewhat by limiting the ways in which the word can be read. When coupled with the clues from the context, the words become easier to read.
This too can be illustrated using our earlier example of RN. To indicate the vowel sound `ai' in rain, we might want to write the word as RYN, where the Y would stand for the English `ai'. As it might be a consonant or a vowel with a different sound, the Y may not in all cases serve perfectly to clear up ambiguity in pronunciation. But suppose that in our hypothetical, RN could stand for only the three words that were listed earlier, that no word in the language would be spelled with the consonants R'Y'N', and that the Y only designated the vowel sounds `ai' or `ee' (as in fact is the case in Hebrew), then the word RYN would be unambiguous. As the Y would not stand for the either the vowel `a' or `u', the only possibility for RYN would be `rain'.
In contrast to vowels in English writing, in Hebrew it is perfectly acceptable not to include the vowel letters Y and W in words where they are appropriate. Back to our RYN example. There is nothing wrong with writing `rain' as RN even though the word is now more ambiguous. Thus, in the Hebrew Bible, there are very many words with variant spellings of this sort. Many words appear in different forms in different locations - using our hypothetical example, `rain' is RN in some cases, RYN in others.
Though not exactly analogous to the Hebrew, English also has cases of variant spellings. It is perfectly acceptable to spell the word `grey' as `gray'. There are many other such examples. Some come from the differences between the British and American forms of some words - e.g. `color' in America versus `colour' in Britain. Even within American English, one finds differences of this sort. The word `encyclopedia' can also properly be spelled `encyclopaedia' - `ae' after the `p' instead of simply and `e'. The `u' in colour or the second `e' in encyclopaedia are sort of like the Hebrew help-letters Y and W. The added letter is extra; it has no real effect on anything. In all these cases, the words are the same, the pronunciations and meanings are the same, but the spellings are different.
Still there is a major difference between these English examples and the Hebrew Bible. In English one expects an author to be perfectly consistent in his spellings - either always `grey' or always `gray', not sometimes one and sometimes the other. As has just been mentioned, consistency of this sort does not exist in ancient Hebrew texts.
Because it is possible to write a very large percentage of the words in the biblical texts in alternative ways, and because they believed that the spelling in each location was not arbitrary, but was chosen for a reason, even if unknown, the Masoretes produced copious notes pertaining to all words which could be spelled in more than one way.
For the most part, they did not concern themselves with preserving the actual words of the text or their order in the text. Nor did they feel the need to assure the preservation of the consonantal spelling of the words of the text. Using present day experiences as a guide, one can surmise that their experience too had shown that there was no fear that the actual words in the Hebrew Bible or the spelling of those words would be changed or forgotten.
But because a word with identical pronunciation and meaning could be correctly spelled in more than one way, and because experience had shown, and still shows, that this is the one aspect of the consonantal text which was most vulnerable and prone to error, they collated, in what are called Masoretic notes, information about the precise spelling of all such words. They counted the total number of times a word was spelled each possible way and noted all the textual locations with those spellings. In our hypothetical, they counted how many times `rain' was spelled RN and how many times it was spelled RYN and noted all the locations for each variant. By this work they attempted to assure that the precise lettering of the biblical texts would never be forgotten.
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What the Masoretes accomplished
How well did theMasoretes accomplish their aim?
To answer this question, two things have to be determined:
(a) whether we today have a uniform accepted text and what that is; and
(b) whether the Masoretes had a uniform accepted text and what that was.
If it is determined that we have, and the Masoretes had, a uniform accepted text and that we know them both, then these two texts can be compared to see whether or not they are the same.
In a study done about 20 years ago (The Aleppo Codex), Dr. Mordechai Breuer did all this. Considering how most other ancient texts have fared, what he found is no less than astonishing. In his study, he distinguished between the preservation of the text of the Torah and the text of the other biblical books. To follow the path of his reasoning, we will do the same.
The Books of the Torah
The Two Versions of the Accepted Torah Text
It is common knowledge that today Jews possess a text which they consider to be an `accepted Masoretic text' of the Torah. There is a slight twist however. Two different segments of Jews have slightly different versions of the text and both claim to have the superior `accepted' text.
In one camp stand the Yemenites, Jews that have lived in Yemen for centuries, virtually isolated from the rest of Jewry. Their received text has been copied by their scribes using the copies they consider to be authentic.
In the other camp stand the rest of the Jews, the Europeans, the North Africans, the Middle Eastern, the Asian. By the force of the opinion of a few prominent religious leaders who lived centuries ago, they all have come to accept a single version of the Torah as being authentic. The people who were mainly responsible for causing this text to be considered the `textus receptus' were known as the Ramah and the Or Torah, and their text is thus commonly referred to as the Ramah-OrTorah version.
The Differences Between the Two Versions
The differences between the version of the Yemenites and that of the Ramah-OrTorah are really negligible.
The Ramah-OrTorah version has a total 304,805 letters. The Yemenite version has four letters less. Comparing the two versions to each other letter by letter shows that they are different in only nine places. Eight of these involve help letters; they do not affect anything, meaning or pronunciation. The Yemenite version includes help-letters in two words while the Ramah-OrTorah version omits the help-letters from those two words. In five cases, the situation is reversed. The Ramah-OrTorah version includes help-letters to the words while the Yemenite version omits them. In one other case, both the Yemenite and the Ramah-OrTorah versions include the help-letter. But the Yemenites use a different help letter than that found in the Ramah-OrTorah version.
Only one difference between the two versions affects meaning, but even this case the difference is truly minute. The Ramah-OrTorah versions omits a letter W in a word which is included in the same word in the Yemenite version. According to the Ramah-OrTorah version the word means, `it is', while the same word in the Yemenite version means `they are'. In that location, both terms are grammatically correct.
In sum, it can be said that the answer to (a) is yes - we essentially do have a uniform accepted text and we do know what it is.
The Version of the Masoretes
The answer to (b) is slightly more complicated but also turns out to be yes - the Masoretes had a uniform text and we can know virtually precisely what that text looked like.
To be sure, we do not have at our disposal the actual text used by the Masoretes and thus we cannot be absolutely certain exactly what their text looked like. And although one of the aims of the Masoretic notes was to help reconstruct the Masoretic text, it is today not possible to rely solely on those notes. As is true of all texts transmitted through millennia, there is no perfect uniformity in the notes that have been handed down to us. In some cases, errors have clearly crept in. Notes are in any case often cryptic and can thus be slightly ambiguous. And there are also some few cases of conflicts between the notes found in one version of notes and another.
But after carefully studying some very ancient manuscripts of the Torah that are clearly Masoretic and comparing them to the notes in those manuscripts, Dr. Mordechai Breuer believes that the Masoretes had a uniform text and that virtually all of it can be reconstructed. Using a methodology that will be explained later, he was able to reconstruct that text letter for letter, except for six instances which could not be determined unequivocally. All six instances involve help letters, their inclusion or exclusion. For these six letters, the evidence from the manuscripts and notes is contradictory or equivocal.
Comparing the Accepted Text to the Masoretic Text
After reconstructing this eclectic Masoretic text, Dr. Breuer then compared it to the two `accepted' texts of the Yemenites and the rest of Jewry. What he found was truly incredible.
Ignoring the six questionable letters, the Yemenite text is a perfect copy of his reconstructed Masoretic text.
The Ramah-OrTorah text, which is different than the Yemenite text in nine instances, is hence also different from the reconstructed Masoretic text. However, three of the differences between the Yemenite and Ramah-OrTorah texts pertain to cases for which the evidence from the ancient manuscripts was equivocal. In other words, in three cases, some ancient manuscripts agree with the Yemenites, while others agree with the Ramah-OrTorah. From the evidence we have at our disposal, we cannot know which text is right and which text is wrong in these three instances. But without doubt, the Ramah- OrTorah text is different than the reconstructed Masoretic text in six places.
In sum, the Yemenites may have an absolutely perfect copy of the Masoretic text. At worst, they may be off in the case of no more than three help letters. The text of the rest of Jewry is different than the reconstructed Masoretic text in at least six instances. At worst, that text is different than the Masoretic text in no more than nine cases.
Why These Results are Astonishing
Compared to the ancient texts of the rest of the world, these results are truly staggering. The Jews as a whole have managed to preserve their Torah almost perfectly since about the 8th century. This despite the fact that they had to rely on handwritten manuscripts until the advent of printing (a period of at least 700 years), and that the nation was dispersed all over the globe, without a central authoritative government or body to lead them.
Even the Chinese classics, which were preserved in a very stable society, which were inscribed on stone monuments, which had governments as their patrons, which may have been printed as early as 850 CE, became different to some extent between the years 200 and 1200 CE. In the Analects, which contain less than 17,000 symbols or words, 25 errors crept in during that time and most of these errors affect meaning at least slightly.
Very few other ancient documents have done nearly as well. In the New Testament, which in the King James version is not much longer than the Torah of that version, thousands of variations which affect meaning were introduced even after the text became canonical and at least to a degree fixed.
By contrast, in the Torah, which has almost 80,000 words and almost 305,000 letters, no more than one error which affects meaning has crept in since at least the Masoretes. This error has crept into only one of the `accepted' texts and as explained earlier, this error has extremely minimal import. The error is absent in the other. Under the harshest of conditions, the Jews have been able to keep the Torah truly immutable. It has virtually not changed at all.
The Other Biblical Books
When he next looked at the rest of the Bible, Dr. Breuer found that the accuracy of its preservation is not nearly as good as that of the Torah. As in the case of the few differences found in the `accepted' versions of the Torah, the differences between the other books in the Masoretic Bible and the other books in the currently `accepted' Bible involved mainly help-letters. But still the number of differences were relatively speaking much higher. This fact will be very important later on in this book, and details will be presented shortly. The reason for this discrepancy also will be discussed later in this chapter and again in a later chapter. But to properly and fully understand and make use of his findings and their implications, we must look briefly at how Dr. Breuer was able to reconstruct the Masoretic text. The story also has an important implication and lesson.
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Reconstructing the Ancienct Masoretic Texts
The oldest Masoretic manuscripts
The oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible from a time subsequent to the work of the Masoretes are no more than 1100 years old. Though written maybe as much as a few centuries after the Masoretes worked, they are certainly not far removed from their time.
These ancient texts are not like the Torah scrolls read in synagogues today. They are `codexes' - books containing the text of all or parts of the Hebrew Bible, much like our printed editions of the Bible. They contain the marks for vowels in the words and Masoretic notes on the pages with the text, often in the margins. They obviously were written to preserve the teachings of the Masoretes, probably meant as tools to help one know how to write and read the text.
The existence of many of these texts has been known for about one hundred years, and they have been intensively studied and analyzed. Although they are all clearly `Masoretic', these manuscripts are not perfectly uniform. They do contain quite a few differences from each other.
The manuscripts he used
To create his eclectic `Masoretic' text, Dr. Breuer compared six such manuscripts plus one of the earliest printed editions of the Bible, commonly called the Ben Hayyim edition (Venice, 1525). Only two manuscripts contain essentially the entire Bible. Of the other four, two contain only the Torah and even here they are not complete, another contains only the books of the Prophets, while the last contains the books of the Prophets and of Ketubim (the third part of the Hebrew Bible).
A close examination of these seven works reveals that each is clearly not a copy of any other. Each has many unique differences in the texts. The notes in each are written differently. Some have extensive notes; some have cryptic notes. There is no doubt that the notes come from the same general tradition. But the way in which they are worked out implies that none was directly dependent on any of the others. Thus, each can be viewed as a separate witness to the Masoretic tradition.
The method used for recreating the original text
What he did is relatively straightforward. He first lined up all the manuscripts containing the Torah and compared them letter for letter. He had five witnesses for most passages, but because not all the manuscripts are complete, he had only four witnesses for some.
If all the witnesses agreed on the spelling of a word, he presumed that this must have been the spelling in the original Masoretic text.
If only one witness had a variant spelling, he presumed that this one witness contained the mistake; majority wins. To verify that it is proper to rely on the majority in this way, he also checked the Masoretic notes, looking for at least two sets of notes that would corroborate the majority spelling. When they exist, the notes always support the majority reading. He never found any contrary case. In fact, in many cases, it was very obvious that the single disparate manuscript was mistaken. The notes in the manuscript containing the error contradict the text of that manuscript.
From this he concluded that one can rely on a clear majority of texts even if there are no notes to support that particular spelling, and conversely, that one can rely solely on a clear majority of the notes when the texts contradict each other. In other words, each witness, text or Masoretic notes, is reliable on its own.
The recreated Masoretic text
When the manuscripts of the Torah were lined up in this way, he found that they collectively contained a total of 230 differences among them. It cannot be reiterated often enough. These differences pertain almost solely to the inclusion or exclusion of help-letters, not differences that affect meaning or pronunciation.
But he was quickly able to reduce the number of differences substantially. After applying the rule of the majority, he found that only 20 variations in the manuscripts for which the majority rule could not be applied. The other 210 differences were resolved by application of the majority rule and the correct readings were corroborated by the notes. Almost surely, they had to be errors that had crept in during the copying of the original Masoretic text.
The remaining 20 variants in spellings were not that easy to resolve. The manuscripts are more or less evenly divided - i.e. three against two or two against two (three or four manuscripts and the Venetian printed edition).
Nevertheless, 14 of these cases could clearly be decided from the Masoretic notes found in at least two of these works. Considering that the notes and the majority texts had agreed in 210 cases, Dr. Breuer accepted the notes alone, with support of at least two manuscripts, as credible and reliable witnesses to the original text.
But for the remaining six cases, both the texts and the notes conflicted with each other, or the notes were missing. Thus, as has already been mentioned, he did not find enough reliable evidence for the reconstruction of the original Masoretic text of the Torah in these six cases.
Comparing single texts to the reconstructed text
He then turned around and compared each manuscript to the eclectic, reconstructed Masoretic text he had just created. It turned out that there were vast differences in their quality.
The best codex, referred to as Sassoon 1053, differs from the others, and the reconstructed Masoretic text, in only twenty places.
The worst codex turned out to be the very famous Leningrad codex, probably the most ancient one, and the one that was used as the basis for the Biblica Hebraica, Stuttgart, the version accepted as authentic by most secular and many Christian scholars. It differs from all the others, and the reconstructed Masoretic text, in 120 places.
Another Sassoon codex differed in 25 places, while the last, one in the British Museum, which is missing about 1/3 of the text, differed in 65 places.
Somewhat surprisingly, the text of the Torah that is currently accepted as the received text, which has traveled through time and has had the potential to be changed for over 1200 years, is superior even to the best ancient codex we know of and is vastly superior to the Leningrad codex, whose travels through time were arrested over a millennia ago. Clearly, according to his analysis, older does not necessarily mean more precise or better.
The Results for the other Biblical Books
When Dr. Breuer then used the exact same rules to generate an eclectic, reconstructed text of the Prophets, he found a much worse fit between his eclectic, reconstructed text and most of the ancient manuscripts, the Venetian Bible and the `accepted' text.
Just one example should suffice to illustrate the difference. Sassoon 1053, which had the least differences when its Torah was compared to the eclectic Masoretic Torah (20 variant spellings), had the most differences when its books of Prophets were compared with the eclectic Masoretic version of the books of Prophets, about 500. When the relative sizes of the works are taken into consideration, this works out to about 15 times as many errors for the books of the Prophets. Of course, most of the differences are simply variants in spelling, inclusions or exclusions of help-letters.
Only one codex, the Aleppo codex, was found to be exceedingly superior. It has only about 7 or 8 differences from Dr. Breuer's eclectic text.
The Aleppo codex has an interesting history. It was kept in a synagogue in Aleppo (northern Syria) for centuries. When this synagogue was burned down during riots in 1948, about 1/3 of the codex was burnt with it, almost its entire Torah and parts of Ketubim. In the few chapters that remain from its original books of the Torah, it is has no variants from his eclectic text of the Torah. The Jews of Aleppo had a tradition that this codex was the one written by Ben Asher, one of the most famous Masoretes. Based on his findings, Dr. Breuer believes that this tradition is correct.
How does the `accepted' text of the books of the Prophets compare to the reconstructed Masoretic text and to the Aleppo codex? After examining carefully only part of the data, Dr. Breuer argues that relative to the `accepted' text of the Torah, the `accepted' text of the Prophets is quite poor, certainly much, much worse than the Aleppo codex. He gives no precise numbers. But there are certainly hundreds of differences.
That there is such a discrepancy between the `accepted' texts of the Torah and of the books of the Prophets may be somewhat surprising. But there are good reasons for it. As the difference will turn out to be important, let us look at this issue now.
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Why the Torah Text Is the Most Accurately Preserved
Why is it that the Torah was preserved so carefully while the books of the Prophets were not? In particular, why did the Jews preserve the Torah so carefully? Furthermore, how did they manage to do it? How could they have achieved such incredible fidelity to the text?
Jewish scribes are not infallible
It is clear from everything that has been shown so far that the Jews are certainly not infallible. Inevitably they too will make mistakes when they copy their religious texts. As all the ancient manuscripts show, none is truly perfect. The same is also true today. Although Torah scribes are extremely careful and meticulous when they write Torah scrolls and although these works are checked cover to cover, letter by letter, at least once more by someone else, most Torah scrolls contain at least a few errors. We know this most clearly from the computer. But before looking at the data, let us first understand why the computer is being used to check the accuracy of Torah scrolls.
Laws governing the writing of a Torah
Jewish law (the halakhah) makes it obligatory to read the Torah publicly in the synagogue four times every week and during holidays. Each year every congregation reads the entire text of the Torah once through in a fixed weekly schedule. The beginnings of each weekly portion and some portions that are read on special occasions are read several times during the year.
The obligation of reading the Torah cannot be fulfilled by using a printed text. It can only be fulfilled if the Torah is read from a halakhically `kosher' Torah scroll. The Torah scroll has to be perfect in every detail; every letter has to be formed correctly and be exact. Any error, ever so small, invalidates the Torah from being used in performing this obligation and it cannot be used again until the error is corrected. This law is explicitly stated in works that have come down to us from Talmudic times, and it is this law that undoubtedly prompted and motivated the Masoretes to assure the accurate preservation of the Torah text.
The training of Jewish scribes
Because Torah scribes know that their product is only useful for halakhic purposes if it is absolutely perfect, they have always exercised the greatest care possible when writing Torah texts. Elaborate rules governing the writing of Torah scrolls have been developed and adhered to for millennia. To our knowledge, Jewish scribes who write Torah scrolls have almost always been trained professionals who not only have the artistic skill required to form the letters correctly, but also have had extensive training in the laws regulating the writing of these scrolls and generally have spent much time study the Torah as a religious text. Because they believe they are engaged in sacred work, because they know that one cannot make a living if the product they sell is discovered always to be defective, scribes tend to be meticulously careful in carrying out their professional duties.
Along the same lines, because congregations know that using a Torah scroll which is not perfectly precise does not enable them to discharge their halakhic obligation, they will generally buy a Torah scroll only if they are sure that it was written with great care and if its accuracy has been verified. In order to assure that the text is not defective, the scroll is often checked by an expert corrector before it is bought and put to use.
While it is being read, the Torah is also constantly being checked. Fulfilling the obligation of reading the Torah requires that it be read correctly, without gross error in pronunciation. Since Torah scrolls do not contain vowels and since the Torah must also be read in a special tune, the task of reading the Torah is generally assigned to one or more people who have developed expertise in the reading of the Torah.
While it is being read, congregants today listen and follow the reading in printed editions of the Torah. Let the reader beware. Should he make an error in reading the text, corrections by attentive listeners will immediately be flung at him from the wings. In this way, Torah scrolls that are being used are scrutinized yet again each and every year.
Computer cheking of Torah scrolls
About fifteen years ago, an enterprising Israeli scribe, Rabbi Greenfield, decided to mechanize part of the task of checking Torah scrolls. He put the text of the Torah into a computer, taught it to recognize the script of scribes, developed a program to check the text, and began using it to check Torah scrolls for scribal errors. (There are some features of the text that the computer cannot deal with. Human intervention is still required for certain aspects of this work.)
To date, his organization, called Vaad Mishmeres Stam, with branches in Israel and Brooklyn, has checked over 7500 Torah scrolls by computer. Many of these are scrolls that had been used for many years, that had been checked originally when bought, and sometimes even checked once or more times since then. Nevertheless, 72% of the scrolls had scribal defects.
There were extra letters, missing letters, transposed letters, wrong letters, and the like. The average Torah scroll with defects contains from one to five errors, each usually involving one letter.
The biggest percentage of mistakes are those that involve help letters. As they do not change meaning or pronunciation, these errors cannot be caught by the congregation during the reading of the Torah.
But some texts are very bad, with very many mistakes and some truly gross errors. Some even have words added or missing. Rabbi Greenfield has found that certain types of mistakes keep recurring even though the basic source for copying the Torah used today by scribes does not contain those errors. He believes that certain types of mistakes are psychological and are more apt to occur.
Scribes today versus scribes in olden times
In olden times, errors in Torah scrolls were, on the one hand, more likely to occur than today, and on the other hand, less likely to occur than today. Since the advent of printing, scribes have had a printed `master' copy of the Torah which mimics the `accepted' text from which to work. This printed edition has obviously been scrutinized extremely carefully and has been validated to be exactly like the `accepted' text of Ramah-OrTorah ought to be.
But, from the time of the Masoretes until the days the first printed `master' copies of the text became universally available, scribes were at a great disadvantage. As the Jews were spread out in thousands of communities, many of them far from the others, there could be no `master' copy from which to work. At best, each community or each scribe might have its or his `master' copy that was believed to be accurate. But unless this text was a perfect copy of a perfect copy, it was sure to contain mistakes. In time, as copies became further and further distant in space and time from some original perfect copy, no doubt, error would compound on error and the later copies would become, relatively speaking, somewhat poor.
But the Torah scrolls of older times also had the advantage of being produced by scribes that were in some ways more `professional'. Rabbi Greenfield's computer shows that older Torah scrolls tend generally to be more error free.
Rabbi Greenfield believes that this is due to the pace and economics of modern living. Today, scribes and especially correctors are much more rushed. They may be sacrificing a small, but important, degree of quality for an increase in speed. In olden times, correctors were paid for finding mistakes. Today's economics does not allow for that and thus, correctors today are paid for the job as a whole. Thus, correctors today tend not to be as good.
It may also be that in olden times, scribes and correctors were more conversant in the precise wording and lettering of the text and thus, scribes were less likely to make errors and correctors more likely to catch them. Were it not for the fact that scribes today work from a single perfect printed master copy, we must suspect that our texts would surely be far worse than they are.
The advantage of the Yemenite scribes
In preserving the text of the Torah, the Yemenites have had a very strong advantage over the rest of Jewry. They have basically lived in the same geographic region, which is not all that large, and have to some extent remained isolated from the rest of Jewry since before the time of the Masoretes. Although they too have been at times mercilessly persecuted, they apparently have always been able to retain at least one perfect copy of the Torah text, which they have used as a master to check all other scrolls. One can surmise that either they always had, or at some point in the distant past, they must have received from the north, a perfect copy of the Masoretic text.
Torah scrolls are written to last hundreds, and indeed even thousands, of years. By Jewish law, they may be written only on parchment [animal leather] and with ink that tends not to fade easily, materials that are extremely durable and can survive for millennia, as the finds near the Dead Sea so cogently attest.
Thus, the Yemenites could easily have retained this original perfect copy for very many years. Because the geographic distances in Yemen are not all that large, they could also easily have used this single copy as the template for writing and/or checking all subsequently produced Torah scrolls. As long as they kept working off the original copy, or other scrolls that had been verified to be perfect copies of that copy, there would never have been any occasion for errors to creep in.
The disadvantages of scribes in other lands
But the European Jews and all the Jews living around the Mediterranean have had a much more difficult time preserving a uniform Torah text. They have collectively lived over a very wide geographic area. There could be no single master used by all. Inevitably, as they moved further and further from each other, they had to make for themselves copies of the best text to take along with them. But these Jews often have had to flee from persecutions, have had to run very quickly from place to place. Their synagogues and books have been burned. In general, they have lived fairly precarious lives. It is most difficult to retain original copies of a text under such conditions, and thus surely, they have often had to rely on imperfect copies of other imperfect copies to make future copies. Thus over time, their texts became less and less accurate and uniform.
The efforts made to preserve the Torah's accuracy
The accurate preservation of the Torah text by the Jews of Europe, Asia and Africa under these most difficult conditions was made possible only be a few zealous individuals who acted in a timely manner to assure its preservation at crucial junctures in its history.
The Ramah
One of these was Rabbi Meir HaLevi ben Todros Abulafia, known as the Ramah (which is an acronym of first letters of his name, Rabbi Meir Halevi - RaMaH) who worked in Spain during the early 13th century. He was a very highly respected leader, a mentor of Nachmanides who called him a `prince' of the people. By his time, sufficiently many texts displayed enough differences to inspire further effort at conserving the text.
Even a quick study of medieval manuscripts shows this obviously to be true. Almost all contain some differences from the received accepted text. Because collectively these differences amount to the thousands for the Bible as a whole, it was thought for a long time that these variations were evidence of more than one `authorized' text. But a careful study of all these variations by members of the Hebrew University's Bible Project has unequivocally shown that all these errors are secondary, errors of the type that scribes make inadvertently; not even one deviation can be connected to any non-Masoretic tradition.
In order to safeguard the text from further corruption, the Ramah did what Dr. Breuer did (or more correctly, Dr. Breuer did what he did) and what probably has been done at every crucial juncture in the history of the text. He too collected many ancient manuscripts. Indeed, he sent delegations all over Europe and North Africa to seek out the most ancient manuscripts and the most authoritative texts. Giving greater weight to older manuscripts, he worked through the Masoretic notes and other witnesses to the text to cross check the correct spelling of the words, and created an eclectic text using the majority rule to decide the correct reading. He wrote an alphabetic dictionary, called Masoret Seyag LaTorah, which lists many words whose spelling might be questionable and sets forth precisely where each word occurs in the Torah with each spelling. He then wrote an accurate Torah scroll based on his findings.
Delegations of Torah scribes were sent to him from all over Europe and the Mediterranean world to copy his notes and text. The copies were checked and verified numerous times by many different people before they were let go. These copies were then taken back to the home countries to be used as masters to verify the accuracy of existing texts and to serve as the bases for future texts. For his work and because of his influence, the Ramah is known as the father of the `accepted text' of the Torah, especially among the European Jews.
The Or Torah
Despite the work of the Ramah, within a few hundred years, errors began to creep into Torah texts again. The Ramah's word lists were not comprehensive; not all words which might potentially be misspelled were treated. By the sixteenth century, the situation had deteriorated again to such an extent that further work at stabilizing the text was warranted.
Rabbi Menahem di Lonzano, known to posterity by the name of his work, the Or Torah, did what the Ramah before him had done. He too collected and compared to each other many ancient manuscripts, collated the words, and used the majority rule the Masoretic notes and the Ramah's work to create an eclectic text. His text, referred to as the Ramah-OrTorah text, became the accepted text of all the Jews except for the Yemenites.
What about the other Biblical books?
What was true for the preservation of the text of the Torah was not at all true for the preservation of the other books of the Bible. Both the Ramah and the Or Torah worked only on the text of the Torah; neither did anything about the text of any other biblical book. No one else from the time of the Masoretes until the 17th century did any work on the other biblical books similar to what was done for the Torah by the Ramah and the Or Torah. As a result, the text of the other biblical books were far less uniform throughout this period. Even the Yemenites whose preservation of the Torah seems to have surpassed that of the rest of Jewry were not as careful in preserving the text of the other biblical books; even in their culture, these books contain many scribal errors.
The reason why Jewry as a whole has not showed the same concern for the preservation of the exact lettering of the other biblical books almost surely has to do with the halakhah. As mentioned earlier, the halakhah requires a Torah scroll to be written perfectly. If it is not, it cannot be used for public reading of the Torah.
There is no similar halakhic requirement for other biblical works. Most of the other biblical books are not read publicly on a regular ongoing basis. Small parts of many of these books are read publicly in the synagogue a few times a year. However, the halakhah does not require that these portions of text be read from a scroll. They can be read from a printed text, as is actually done by most congregations today. It is rare to find a congregation with scroll of most other books of the Bible. And even if a scroll is used, the halakhah does not impose the requirement that the scroll be a perfect copy of the accepted text. Indeed, detailed rules pertaining to this issue are not explicitly discussed in the halakhah at all.
The Torah stands apart
The Torah has always been treated differently that the other biblical books even in the most ancient times. The entire record from Mishnaic and Talmudic times shows that the Torah was considered of a different order than all the other biblical books. Some of the precise differences will be discussed in a later chapter. The Torah was the first part of the Bible translated into a foreign language, Greek, and it was translated considerably earlier than the other books. The translation of the Torah is also vastly superior to the translation of the other books. The Samaritans accepted only the Torah, not the other biblical books. The most common books among the Dead Sea scrolls are the books of the Torah.
It is because Jewish law and culture have made distinctions between the Torah and the other biblical books that we find differences in the accuracy of the preservation within these two parts of the Bible. There never were nearly as many copies of the other biblical books even in olden times. Moreover, since they do not become invalid for use if they are not perfect, they were not written with the same degree of care as was exercised for the writing of the Torah.
The uniqueness of the accurate preservartion of the Torah
As the previous discussion implies, a text can be preserved perfectly under ideal conditions. What is needed is essentially two things, a national will and a master copy.
The Jews have made the preservation of the biblical texts, especially the text of the Torah, a national priority and enterprise. A great deal of energy has been expended over the past millennia to ensure that these texts remain untainted. Although a few other cultures have achieved equally, or almost equally, remarkable results, it is still quite clear that the story of the preservation of the Torah text is a unique phenomenon. The Jews have managed to accomplish this feat of perfection without a centralized government, without an official ecclesiastical body, without uniform leadership of any sort.
This feat has been accomplished only because the nation as a whole has been willing to accept and abide by the opinion of its great leaders since ancient times. Part of the miracle of Jewish survival is that those who have lived by normative Judaism have been willing to trust and rely on the Jewish sages of each generation. This true the world over. Although many different customs evolved in different lands, all Jews subscribing to rabbinic Judaism have recognized that when it comes to the holy works in their possession they would have to remain united in their efforts to preserve them. Thus, they have always submitted to the opinion of their sages and have followed their rulings in these matters.
Jews have argued with each other over very many details of their religious lives. In fact, there were times when major battles were fought literally over one letter of the Torah text. But ever since Talmudic times, and possibly even earlier, mechanisms have been in place for deciding conflicts of this sort. Majority rules. Thus, once the dust settled after these battles, the Jews universally stopped quibbling with each other and followed the rulings set down, sometime by Rabbis who lived in distant lands. Within normative Judaism, the rabbis of each generation have acted as the unifying force of the people and text, crossing ethnic and geographic lines. Yemenite Jew, German Jew, Moroccan Jew, Russian Jew, all have the same, or virtually the same, document now because all were willing to accept what their sages have said.
This chapter has shown that the text of the Torah, and to only a slightly lesser extent the other biblical books, have remained fixed since about 1200 years ago. The next chapter examines whether how far back we can go.
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From Bar Kochba to the Masoretes
Traditional view of the Masoretes' work
Jewish tradition has maintained that the Masoretes were merely attempting to preserve a textual tradition that they had received from prior generations. To be sure, by their time, it is almost certain that the text was becoming corrupted by changes and it is fair to surmise, that in order to recreate an original text that may have been changed, they too may have had to create an eclectic text from the ones before them. There certainly were differences among the texts they knew. They cite to variations and in some cases do not decide the correct reading.
But, it also is quite clear that, by their times, the basic consonantal text was extremely rigid. The Masoretes deal primarily with exceedingly narrow details, variations in the spelling of words - whether they do or do not include help- letters. They hardly deal with the really crucial issues, the exact wording and spelling of the consonantal text. Clearly, this presupposes that by their time the consonantal text has already been fixed and to their minds, there is no fear that it will be subject to further change. Taken at face value, their entire enterprise shows that they too were not consciously changing a text, merely attempting to reconstruct or ascertain the `correct' one.
The view of secular and Christian scholars
Nevertheless, before the discoveries near the Dead Sea, many scholars disbelieved the traditions about the Masoretes and thought that they were innovators, having fixed a text that until their time had still been somewhat fluid.
Until about 50 years ago, the oldest Masoretic texts were no older than the 9th or 10th century. Scholars could point to texts in other languages, such as the Greek version accepted by Christianity, or to other Hebrew traditions, such as the version accepted by the Samaritans, that were different than the Masoretic text. In some cases, the manuscripts from these other traditions were older than the Masoretic ones. Thus, until less than 50 years ago many scholars believed that prior to the time of the Masoretes, the text had not as yet been fixed, that there was no Masoretic text before the Masoretes.
Scrolls from the earth vindicate tradition
The finds near the Dead Sea, especially in the caves of Wady Murabba'at, Nahal Hever, and Nahal Tse'elim changed all this - they proved the scholars wrong. The manuscripts from the three specified locations were in caves that had been occupied during the Bar Kochba revolt, circa 130 CE. All biblical texts found in these locations are identical to, or virtually identical to, the texts of the Masoretes.
As the warriors of Bar Kochba's army almost surely abided by Rabbinic law, these documents show that by the early part of the second century Jews with affiliation to Rabbinic Judaism had a text that complied with the Masoretic text that had hitherto only been known from centuries later. Even some texts from the area of Qumran, of much more will be stated later, imply the existence of a Masoretic text possibly several centuries earlier.
In light of what had been known about other texts that have been transmitted since about the same time, the closeness of fit between these texts of two millennia ago and the later Masoretic text were considered to be `astonishing' in the eyes of scholars. It is quite clear from all these finds that at least by 100 CE, and maybe even earlier, something very close to the Masoretic text essentially existed already. By that time, there was almost surely a text that Rabbinic Jewry considered rigidly fixed. That text changed very little, if at all, from that time to the Masoretes and as shown earlier, also remained virtually static from the Masoretes up until today.
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Before Bar Kochba
How far back can we go?
The findings of Wady Murabba'at and the other Bar Kochba revolt locations take us back about 1900 years, to the early years of the sages who were responsible for the collation of the Mishna, and just a few years after the destruction of the Second Temple. From our standpoint, this is much more than half way back to the time of Moses. Can the clock be rolled back even further? Is there any way to know for sure whether or not some time earlier the text of the Bible was considered rigidly fixed for at least some Jews?
The Dead Sea scrolls
The answer is not really. The only hard evidence that does exist are older manuscripts and fragments of manuscripts of the Bible found mainly in the vicinity of Qumran. Many documents were found there. Some have been dated as early as about 250 BCE; others have been dated to not later than around 70 CE, and many lie somewhere in between these dates. These manuscripts probably belonged to the library of a fringe Jewish sect that by the second century BCE had already divorced itself from mainstream Judaism. Taken as a whole, the manuscripts in the Qumran caves show that prior to the year 100 CE, there existed versions of the biblical texts that were sometimes at odds with the later Masoretic text.
However, since these manuscripts belonged to a sect that was antagonistic to Rabbinic Judaism, the existence of these manuscripts cannot be used to prove the status of the text for those who believed in Rabbinic Judaism. At best, one is tempted to draw an analogy between these people and others. The validity of doing this will be soon considered.
Even earlier
Certainly, once we go further back, beyond the year 250 BCE, no hard evidence exists that allows one to make any firm conclusions about the history of the text. There has been only one tiny find that corroborates something about the status of the text in yet earlier times, but this find is by no means enough to allow for a determination of whether the biblical text even existed, never mind if they were fluid or fixed.
About a decade ago, archaeologists digging in Jerusalem unearthed a grave in which was found a tiny silver amulet (a `charm' worn around the neck) dating from about the 7th century BCE. Inscribed on this amulet are the three verses of the Priestly Benediction, Numbers 7.
Nothing known to us leads one to suppose that the wearer of this amulet considered it to have the same sort of sanctity currently applied to things like phylacteries (leather boxes containing biblical texts worn by men during prayer) or mezuzot (biblical texts placed on doorposts). According to halakhah, these latter items are kosher only if they are written on parchment. The words of the silver amulet are engraved on it.
Nor is there any reason to suppose that the words on the amulet were copied directly from a sacred text. They could easily have been written from memory as according to tradition, the Priestly benediction was publicly said every day in the Temple.
Nevertheless, the words on the amulet are virtually identical to the words in the Masoretic text, spelling and all. Although this find does increase the likelihood that at least some book containing these words existed during that time and also shows that at least this small part of that document has been preserved exceedingly well, the find certainly is not large enough to allow one to make any firm conclusions about the existence or nature of a Torah text as a whole at that time.
Hence, we can know very little with certainty about the text in its earliest years. To know the status of the biblical texts in earliest times, we inevitably must rely on traditions, circumstantial evidence, and the like. We must enter the realm of deductions and inferences. We have very little hard evidence to go on. And thus, as is true for many things in life, resolving the issue of the antiquity of the biblical texts will require an evaluation of the evidence and choosing those bits of evidence that are deemed to be the most credible. The presentation and evaluation of some of this evidence will occupy us for the remainder of this book. But before we can go on, we must dispense with two items of importance that have been touched upon and are of concern.
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A Master Copy of the Torah
Torah and Temple
There are strong grounds for believing that during the Temple period, the Temple held master copies of the Torah and the other biblical books.
The Mishna and Talmud have extensive discussions pertaining to the reading of the Torah and other books of the Bible on the Temple grounds. The Mishna speaks about the High Priest reading from the Torah on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), about kings reading from Torah during Sukkoth (Tabernacles) once every seven years. These discussions are not purely legalistic. Stories about these events are recounted. Eye witnesses speak. The Temple grounds had a `knesseth', a synagogue. And, in the halakhah, a distinction is made between the books of the Temple and books in the rest of the country.
The entire weight of the evidence points to the existence of one or more copies of the Torah and other biblical books within the Temple precincts. It is certainly not a farfetched to assume that the Temple authorities believed that these were authentic and accurate versions of the texts.
Temple scribes
Also encountered in the Talmud is evidence that during the Temple period there was a very high concern for preserving the biblical texts.
The Talmud mentions the existence of a cadre of individuals who were responsible for correcting texts. These may be the `scribes' that are encountered often together with priests in the New Testament. What is most interesting is that these individuals were apparently not really attached to the Temple. They are called the `correctors of Jerusalem', not the `correctors of the Temple'. Nevertheless they were paid from the Temple treasury, an act which shows the utmost importance attached to their job.
Normally, money that was donated to the Temple could only be used for the purchase of items or payment of services that pertained directly to the Temple services. Any use of the money that was not related to the Temple service was considered a profanation of these items or monies. Nevertheless, the correction of texts was apparently so crucial that the allowed the compensation of the correctors to be paid out of the sacred money, even though correcting texts had nothing to do with Temple service.
The Ark of the Covenant
The connection between Temple and Torah is intrinsic to the Torah itself. A large part of the book of Exodus details the dimensions of the Sanctuary that was built in the times of Moses. These instructions begin, not with matters pertaining to the construction of the building proper, but with instructions pertaining to the construction of the Holy Ark that was to house the Tablets received by Moses on Mount Sinai.
This Ark was ultimately placed in the holiest part of the Sanctuary. Many details regarding the building of the Sanctuary stated in the book of Exodus and traditions that have been preserved in the Talmud and the Midrash all strongly imply that one of the main, if not the main, reason the Sanctuary was built was to house these Tablets. According to the book of Deuteronomy, the master copy of the Torah, the one handwritten by Moses himself, was also placed in the Holy of Holies adjacent to the Ark and the Tablets. The history of the first Temple recorded in later books of the Bible says essentially the same thing. In effect, it can be said that the inner Sanctum of the Sanctuary and the Temple were each in their own time the repository of the nation's most revered works.
The Second Temple era
During the Second Temple era, the Torah must still have had a special connection to the Temple. As the entire history of the Second Temple era so cogently shows, the Jews of that period accepted the Torah wholeheartedly and were willing to lay down their lives to uphold its precepts. For obvious reasons, they could not fully abide by the instructions of Exodus and Deuteronomy; by then, there were no Tablets of stone, no copy of Moses' Torah. But surely it is not farfetched to assume that they would have tried to do what is second best, namely keep some master copy of the Torah on the Temple grounds.
Preserving the text is thus easier
As we have seen from the cases of the Yemenites and the Torah and Confucian texts of China, it is relatively easier to preserve a text perfectly when there exists a master copy of that text in a central depository under the auspices of a central authority. Of course, other ingredients, such as national will and stability, have to exist as well. As stated earlier, we cannot be sure whether the former existed. But again, ,my aim is not to prove that this is in fact what did happen, merely to show that it could have happened. If we posit that there was a national will to preserve the text and the existence of a master copy of the text, then given the experiences of texts in other times and other cultures, we can conclude that the text may indeed have remained immutable and fixed.
To be sure, the Jews of the Second Temple era did not have complete stability. There were innumerable wars and serious dislocations. But we do know that in times of crisis, the Jews were quite adept at hiding what was sacred to them to prevent these things from falling into enemy hands. Not long ago there was a report of the finding in the Judean desert of a flask that may have contained a special oil used in the Temple. Some have conjectured that this flask may indeed have come from the Temple. One of the scrolls found in the Dead Sea area was made of copper. It contains a list of hiding places where money and other precious objects were placed. The consensus seems to be growing that these were items and money consecrated for sacred purposes after the fall of the Temple that could not be used until the Temple was rebuilt again.
Moreover, as long as there continually existed some copies of the master copy held in the Temple, as long as some of these were preserved, it would have been easy to reconstruct the master should it have been destroyed or lost. As recent excavations in Israel show, many synagogues were built throughout the land during the 3d and 2nd centuries BCE. The structure of these buildings implies that the reading and study of the Torah was one of their main functions. A central feature of all synagogues today and in the past is the Holy Ark with its Torah scrolls. One thus can infer that in Temple times as well, there must have been numerous and numerous copies of the Torah in use throughout the land of Israel.
Stability in Babylon
Finally, during Second Temple period, Jews continued to reside in Babylon. There is strong evidence that the Babylonian communities were strongly allied with the Temple authorities and the later Rabbis and had ongoing connections with the communities in Israel. Two of the most important religious leaders in Israel, one who functioned toward the beginning of the era and one toward its end, Ezra and Hillel, had come from Babylon to Israel. As long as somewhere within these communities, the Torah was preserved, a master could always be reconstructed if lost.
The First Temple period
Much of what might have been true for the Second Temple period could easily also have been true for the entire period from the conquest of Israel until the destruction of the First Temple. By its own accounts during the entire 900 years of this period, the Israelites always had some sort of central Sanctuary or Temple.
To be sure, there were schisms within the nation then as well. But if there was a Torah of Moses and other biblical books, then there is no reason to suppose that they would not have been placed in the central repository of one of these sacred buildings. These buildings were the only logical place to house a Torah of Moses, the Torah commanded the Israelites to do precisely that, and many of the surrounding nations did the same thing.
When archaeologists dig up the remains of other ancient cultures, especially those that were geographically close to Israel, they tend to find texts of an administrative nature in palaces, and literary and religious texts in temple precincts. A prime example of this are the finds at Ugarit (Ras Shamra), an ancient Canaanite town located in what is now northern Syria, which flourished at about the same time as the earliest period in Israelite history. In the grounds of its main temple were found mounds of religious and literary texts that archaeologists believe had been written or developed several hundred years before the Israelites conquered Canaan.
Even when we look simply for