Everybody loves to preach about the accuracy of the New Testament. But I say it is even cooler to talk about the Old Testament, like how the original Nintendo will always be cooler than Super Nintendo. The stories about the preservation of the Old Testament reveal groups who are unrivaled in their dedication to accuracy and admiration of God’s Word. Before the days of Johannes Gutenberg and his magical printing press, mass publication of books didn’t exist. In order to get a copy of the latest bestseller, you had to sit down and copy it verbatim. Two of the groups tasked with xeroxing the Hebrew Bible (a.k.a. the Old Testament) were the Talmudists and the Masoretes.
The Talmudists copied between about 100 to 500 AD, similar to the time of the compilation of the Talmud. This was an important time for the transcription of Jewish teachings and text since there was no Temple in Jerusalem for Jews as of 70 AD. Thank you Titus Flavius Vespasianus. The Talmudists had some very strict rules regarding the practice of replicating the Holy Scriptures.
- A synagogue roll must be written on the skins of clean animals
- prepared for the particular use of the synagogue by a Jew.
- These must be fastened together with strings taken from clean animals.
- Every skin must contain a certain number of columns, equal throughout the entire codex.
- The length of each column must not extend over less than 48 or more than 60 lines; and the breadth must consist of thirty letters.
- The whole copy must be first-lined; and if three words be written without a line, it is worthless.
- The ink should be black, neither red, green, nor any other colour, and be prepared according to a definite recipe.
- An authentic copy must be the exemplar, from which the transcriber ought not in the least deviate.
- No word or letter, not even a yod, must be written from memory, the scribe not having looked at the codex before him…
- Between every consonant the space of a hair or thread must intervene;
- between every new parashah, or section, the breadth of nine consonants;
- between every book, three lines.
- The fifth book of Moses must terminate exactly with a line; but the rest need not do so.
- Besides this, the copyist must sit in full Jewish dress,
- wash his whole body,
- not begin to write the name of God with a pen newly dipped in ink,
- and should a king address him while writing that name he must take no notice of him.
If these guidelines were not followed when copying then the scrolls were buried in the ground or burned. The Talmudists were so confident in their accuracy that they saw new copies as having the same authority as older.
The Masoretes are probably the best known group since their manuscripts, known as the Masoretic Text, are the standard used for the Jewish Bible today and were the oldest OT manuscripts until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Masoretes (500 – 950 AD) gave us an Old Testament with vowels. Ancient Hebrew did not use vowels when writing because those fluent could understand without them. (R u thinking that is weird? jk lol ttyl) The Masoretes inserted the appropriate vowels to ensure accuracy and correct pronunciation by those of us unfamiliar with nonconsonantal locution.
The Masoretes also had a tedious system that guaranteed accuracy in their copying. They counted each word and letter in the Old Testament and assigned them a number. This way they could identify the middle consonant or word of each book or section. For example, the middle consonant of the Pentateuch was ALEPH, the first letter of the Hebrew Alphabet. The manuscripts with even one letter off were destroyed.
The Masoretes also had strict rules regarding the skins that they wrote on and the ink they used. It is also said that the Masoretes had to perform a ritual each time before writing the name of God. These groups have made my own reverence for the Scriptures seem negligible.
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