...Thanks for the clarification. I realised that you were not rejecting copyists' errors, and I accept that you now allow changes of orthographic convention.
This goes beyond what I say.
However, as a historian, we have to play with the hand we're dealt.
With few exceptions, all we know of Torah is what is contained in the
consonantal text of the Masoretic text. Anything else is speculation.
Any copy made by hand contains some copyist errors, thus it is a
certainty that the text is not 100% as written by Moses' hand. But
what is the probability that a different alphabet was used? Given the
nature of the books, very slight. What about the orthography, in other
words the spelling? Given that the pre-Masoretes tended to add materes
lectiones to aid in pronunciation, it is possible that more of those
are in the text than as it left Moses' hand. Some difficult passages
may be blamed on copyist errors. But in general, unless you have a
paper trail to show otherwise, we have to assume, given my
presuppositions, that what we have is close to what Moses wrote.
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