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The MT was primarily copied, edited and distributed by a group of Jews known as the [[Masoretes]] between the seventh and tenth centuries AD. Though the consonants differ little from the text generally accepted in the early second century (and also differ little from some Qumran texts that are even older), it has numerous differences of both greater and lesser significance when compared to (extant 4th century) manuscripts of the [[Septuagint]], a Greek translation (made in the 3rd to 2nd centuries BC) of the Hebrew Scriptures that was in popular use in Egypt and Palestine and that is often quoted in the Christian New Testament.
The Hebrew word ''mesorah'' (Hebrew מסורה, alt. מסורת) refers to the transmission of a tradition. In a very broad sense it can refer to the entire chain of Jewish tradition Oral law, but in reference to the '''masoretic text''' the word ''mesorah'' has a very specific meaning: the diacritic markings of the text of the Hebrew Bible and concise marginal notes in manuscripts (and later printings) of the Hebrew Bible which note textual details, usually about the precise spelling of words.
The oldest extant fragments of the Masoretic Text date from approximately the ninth century AD,<ref>A seventh century fragment containing the Song of the Sea (Exodus 13:19-16:1) is one of the few surviving texts from the "silent era" of Hebrew bibilical texts between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Aleppo Codex. See [http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1178708654713&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull "Rare scroll fragment to be unveiled," Jerusalem Post, May 21, 2007].</ref> and the Aleppo Codex (the oldest copy of the Masoretic Text, but missing the Torah) dates from the tenth century.[[Image:2nd century Hebrew decalogue.jpg|thumb|right|The [[Nash Papyrus]] (2nd century BC) contains a portion of a pre-Masoretic Text, specifically the [[Ten Commandments]] and the Shema Yisrael prayer.]]
== Origin and transmission ==
=== Rabbinic period ===
An emphasis on minute details of words and spellings, already used among the [[Pharisee]] as bases for argumentation, reached its height with the example of Rabbi Akiva (d. AD 135). The idea of a perfect text sanctified in its consonantal base quickly spread throughout the Jewish communities via supportive statements in Halakha, Aggada, and Jewish thought;<ref name="Cohen1979" /> and with it increasingly forceful strictures leading ultimately to the statement in medieval times that a deviation in even a single letter would make a Torah scroll invalid.<ref>Rambam, The Laws of Tefillin, Mezuzot, and Torah Scrolls, 1:2</ref> Very few manuscripts are said to have survived the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.<ref>Sir Godfrey Driver, [http://www.bible-researcher.com/driver1.html Introduction to the Old Testament of the New English Bible], 1970</ref> This both drastically reduced the number of variants in circulation, and gave a new urgency that the text must be preserved. New Greek translations were also made. Unlike the Septuagint, large-scale deviations in sense between the Greek of Aquila and Theodotion and what we now know as the Masoretic text are minimal. Detailed variations between different Hebrew texts in use still clearly existed though, as witnessed by differences between the present-day Masoretic text and versions mentioned in the Gemara, and often even Halachic midrashim based on spelling versions which do not exist in the current Masoretic text.<ref name="Cohen1979" /> (Mostly, however, these variations are limited to whether particular words should be written plene or defectively - i.e. whether a mater lectionis consonant to represent a particular vowel sound should or should not be included in a particular word at a particular point).
=== The Age of the Masoretes ===
The current received text finally achieved predominance through the reputation of the Masoretes, schools of scribes and Torah scholars working between the 7th seventh and 11th eleventh centuries, based primarily in Palestine in the cities of Tiberias and [[Jerusalem]], and in Babylonia. These schools developed such prestige for the accuracy and error-control of their copying techniques that their texts established an authority beyond all others.<ref name="Cohen1979" /> Differences remained, sometimes bolstered by systematic local differences in pronunciation and cantillation. Every locality, following the tradition of its school, had a standard codex embodying its readings. In Babylonia the school of Sura differed from that of Nehardea; and similar differences existed in the schools of the Land of Israel as against that at Tiberias, which in later times increasingly became the chief seat of learning. In this period living tradition ceased, and the Masoretes in preparing their codices usually followed the one school or the other, examining, however, standard codices of other schools and noting their differences.
==== Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali ====
== Masorah ==
By long tradition, a ritual Torah scroll shall contain only the Hebrew consonantal text - nothing may be added, nothing taken away. However, perhaps because they were intended for personal study rather than ritual use, the Masoretic codices provide extensive additional material, called ''masorah'', to show correct pronunciation and cantillation, protect against scribal errors, and annotate possible variants. The manuscripts thus include vowel points, pronunciation marks and stress accents in the text, short annotations in the side margins, and longer more extensive notes in the upper and lower margins and collected at the end of each book.
The language of the Masoretic notes is partly Hebrew and partly [[Aramaic]]. The Masoretic annotations are found in various forms: (a) in separate works, e.g., the ''Oklah we-Oklah''; (b) in the form of notes written in the margins and at the end of codices. In rare cases, the notes are written between the lines. The first word of each Biblical book is also as a rule surrounded by notes. The latter are called the Initial Masorah; the notes on the side margins or between the columns are called the Small or Inner Masorah; and those on the lower and upper margins, the Large or Outer Masorah. The name "Large Masorah" is applied sometimes to the lexically arranged notes at the end of the printed Bible, usually called the Final Masorah, or the Masoretic Concordance.
The Small Masorah consists of brief notes with reference to marginal readings, to statistics showing the number of times a particular form is found in Scripture, to full and defective spelling, and to abnormally written letters. The Large Masorah is more copious in its notes. The Final Masorah comprises all the longer rubrics for which space could not be found in the margin of the text, and is arranged alphabetically in the form of a concordance. The quantity of notes the marginal Masorah contains is conditioned by the amount of vacant space on each page. In the manuscripts it varies also with the rate at which the [[copyist]] was paid and the fanciful shape he gave to his gloss.
In most manuscripts, there are some discrepancies between the text and the masorah, suggesting that they were copied from different sources or that one of them has copying errors. The lack of such discrepancies in the Aleppo Codex is one of the reasons for its importance; the scribe who copied the notes, presumably [[Aaron ben Moses ben Asher]], probably wrote them originally.
=== Numerical Masorah ===
In classical antiquity, [[copyist]]s copyists were paid for their work according to the number of stichs (lines of verse). As the prose books of the Bible were hardly ever written in stichs, the copyists, in order to estimate the amount of work, had to count the letters. For the Masoretic Text, such statistical information more importantly also ensured accuracy in the transmission of the text with the production of subsequent copies that were done by hand.
Hence the Masoretes contributed the Numerical Masorah. These notes are traditionally categorized into two main groups: the marginal Masorah and the final Masorah. The category of marginal Masorah is further divided into the Masorah parva (small Masorah) in the outer side margins and the Masorah magna (large Masorah), traditionally located at the top and bottom margins of the text.
Thus ([[Leviticus]] 8:23) is the middle verse in the Pentateuch; all the names of Divinity mentioned in connection with Abraham are holy except ([[Genesis]] 18:3); ten passages in the Pentateuch are dotted; three times the Pentateuch has the spelling לא where the reading is לו. The collation of manuscripts and the noting of their differences furnished material for the Text-Critical Masorah. The close relation which existed in earlier times (from the Soferim to the Amoraim inclusive) between the teacher of tradition and the Masorete, both frequently being united in one person, accounts for the Exegetical Masorah. Finally, the invention and introduction of a graphic system of vocalization and accentuation gave rise to the Grammatical Masorah.
The most important of the Masoretic notes are those that detail the Kethiv-Qere that are located in the Masorah parva in the outside margins of BHS. Given that the Masoretes would not alter the sacred consonantal text, the Kethiv-Qere notes were a way of "correcting" or commenting on the text for any number of reasons (grammatical, theological, aesthetic, etc.) deemed important by the copyist. [Reference: <ref>Pratico and Van Pelt, Basics of Biblical Hebrew, Zondervan. 2001. p406ff].</ref>
== Fixing of the text ==
== Critical study ==
Jacob ben Hayyim ibn Adonijah, having collated a vast number of manuscripts, systematized his material and arranged the Masorah in the second Bomberg edition of the Bible ([[Venice]], 1524-25). Besides introducing the Masorah into the margin, he compiled at the close of his Bible a concordance of the Masoretic glosses for which he could not find room in a marginal form, and added an elaborate introduction – the first treatise on the Masorah ever produced. In spite of its numerous errors, this work has been considered by some as the "textus receptus" of the Masorah (Würthwein 1995:39), and was used for the English translation of the [[Old Testament ]] for the King James Version of the Bible.
Next to Ibn Adonijah the critical study of the Masorah has been most advanced by Elijah Levita, who published his famous "Massoret ha-Massoret" in 1538. The "Tiberias" of the elder Buxtorf (1620) made Levita's researches more accessible to a Christian audience. The eighth prolegomenon to Walton's Polyglot Bible is largely a réchauffé of the "Tiberias". Levita compiled likewise a vast Masoretic concordance, "Sefer ha-Zikronot," which still lies in the National Library at Paris unpublished. The study is indebted also to R. Meïr b. Todros ha-Levi (RaMaH), who, as early as the thirteenth century, wrote his "Sefer Massoret Seyag la-Torah" (correct ed. Florence, 1750); to Menahem Lonzano, who composed a treatise on the Masorah of the Pentateuch entitled "Or Torah"; and in particular to Jedidiah Norzi, whose "Minḥat Shai" contains valuable Masoretic notes based on a careful study of manuscripts.
The Dead Sea Scrolls have shed new light on the history of the Masoretic Text. Many texts found there, especially those from Masada, are quite similar to the Masoretic Text, suggesting that an ancestor of the Masoretic Text was indeed extant as early as the 2nd century BC. However, other texts, including many of those from Qumran, differ substantially, indicating that the Masoretic Text was but one of a diverse set of Biblical writings (Lane Fox 1991:99-106; Tov 1992:115).
§Among the rejected books by both the Judaic and Catholic canons was found the Book of Enoch, the Manual of Discipline or "Rule of the Community" (1QS) and the "The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness." (1QM). <references/ref>Mansoor, Menahem. The Dead Sea Scrolls. Grand Rapids, Michigan and </ref> <ref>Driver, G.R. The Judaean Scrolls. Great Britain: Oxford, 1965</ref>.
==Some important editions==
There have been very many published editions of the Masoretic text; this is a list of some of the most important.
*Daniel Bomberg, ed. Jacob ben Hayyim ibn Adonijah, 1524-1525, [[Venice]]
:The second Rabbinic Bible, which served as the base for all future editions.
*Everard van der Hooght, 1705, Amsterdam
:Nearly all 18th eighteenth century and 19th nineteenth century Bibles were almost exact reprints of this edition.
*Benjamin Kennicott, 1776, Oxford
:As well as the van der Hooght text, this included the Samaritan Pentateuch and a huge collection of variants from manuscripts and early printed editions; while this collection has many errors, it is still of some value. The collection of variants was corrected and extended by Johann Bernard de Rossi (1784–8), but his publications gave only the variants without a complete text.
* Hebrew University Bible Project, 1965-
:Started by Moshe Goshen-Gottstein, this follows the text of the Aleppo Codex where extant and otherwise the Leningrad Codex. It includes a wide variety of variants from the Dead Sea Scrolls, Septuagint, early Rabbinic literature and selected early mediaeval manuscripts. So far, only Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel have been published.
*[[Koren]], 1966
:The text was derived by comparing a number of printed Bibles, and following the majority when there were discrepancies.
*Aron Dotan, based on the Leningrad Codex, 1976
*Mordechai Breuer, based on the Aleppo Codex, 1977–1982
*Biblia Hebraica Quinta, revision of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia; only three volumes (Five Megilloth, Ezra and Nehemiah, Deuteronomy) have been published so far.
==References==
<references>
==Source==
*[Imported from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masoretic_Text Wikipedia - : Masoretic Text]
[[Category: Texts]]
