Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Steve Oren" <soren AT enteract.com>]

 There are several accounts of this story.  The clearest is in Midrash Tanhuma
 (edited in Palestine-Eretz Yisrael around 800 CE) which lists all the tiqqune
 sopherim and then ascribes the change to the People of the Great Assembly 
from
 the time of Ezra (see Midrash Tanhuma Parsha  Beshallach 15 on the verse
 "U'brov Gaoncha".  Rashi (the citation is his commentary to Job but I forget
 the exact verse) agreed with this view.   Later Jewish traditional
 commentators tend to feel this view to be too liberal. Nowadays. we ,may note
 that this is surely too early since a) as Neusner has observed the "Great
 Assembly" is a much later fiction ("Traditions of the Pharisees Before 70CE")
 and (I would argue on other grounds) b) the Torah as we know it had not been
 assembled by the time of Ezra (ca. 400 BCE).  There is a modern work on the
 tigune sofrim by an Irish female scholar (I think named McCarthy)

>                                                                      
>                     Steve Oren
>                                                                      
>                     Chicago, IL
>
> ----------
> > Date: Monday, May 15, 2000 16:17:54
> > From: Joseph Brian Tucker
> > To
> > Subject: Tiqqune sopherim
> >
> >
> > There are a few readings in the MT which are labelled  as Tiqqune 
> > sopherim,
> > "the corrections of the scribes." Apparently these were not masoretic
> > changes but earlier ones introduced to avoid "objectionable readings,"
> >
> > I am interested in knowing if members of the list believe this tradition 
> > to
> > be true? If not, how would you describe the history of the Tiqqune
> > sopherim? Or, what other suggested traditions are there for the genesis of
> > the Tiqqune sopherim?
> >
> Stephen Oren
> Chicago, IL