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  • From: James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Is the Massoretic text reliable?
  • Date: Wed, 06 May 2009 00:42:06 +0100

Hi,

I've been doing a lot of reading and a lot of thinking in the past few months and one of the things I've been interested in was finding out more about alternative readings. Now I was brought up and fed with stories that the OT was originally written in Hebrew and so the massoretic text is our most reliable source for its original shape. But recent lines of research have been causing me seriously question that kind of reasoning. Does the fact that the massoretic is in Hebrew really make it a superior source?

Some of the lines of evidence I've been looking at are

1) The age of extant manuscripts of the Massoretic text
2) Greek translations of the OT
3) The dead sea scrolls
4) The Samaritan pentateuch

Now, I was also brought up on stories of how the LXX has been proven to be a 'bad translation' because of X, Y and Z with only the Torah part of it being of decent enough quality. Now, the information that has come to light to me in recent months are the following factors:

1) The oldest manuscripts of the Massoretic text are post 9th century (not that old in the big scheme of things)
2) Qere and ketib such as the common he/she confusion show that the Massoretic text was only sanctified as a holy order of consonants which must be copied in that sequence no matter what *after* considerable error had been introduced into it
3) There is more agreement between the variant readings of the Samaritan Pentateuch, the extant Greek versions of the torah such as those found in Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus and the torah fragments in the dead sea scrolls than there is between any of them and the Massoretic text.
4) The dead sea scrolls may be as old as 2nd century B.C.E
5) Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are both 4th century codices
6) This shows that both the dead sea scrolls and the Greek versions predate extant MT codices such as Aleppo and Leningrad considerably
7) The MT is the product of years of Rabbinical debate who may have had an agenda influenced by the ever growing division between themselves and the Christians
8) Jerome (4th century) claims to have based his Vulgate translation on the Hebrew text yet there is more agreement with derivative manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate with the aforementioned dead sea scroll texts, the Greek versions and the Samaritan Pentateuch than with the MT

All of these factors have caused me recently to call into question just how reliable a source the Aleppo and Leningrad codices are and whether a reconstruction of the original Hebrew text from these other sources would be a more reliable indicator of an older form of the Hebrew text of the books we consider to be part of the Tanakh.

Any thoughts?

James

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