Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>]

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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