HOME| Contents | << | Responsibility of Critical Examination | Principal of Free Enquiry | Higher Criticism | Historical OT books based on earlier material | Composite materials of OT books | Dates of final composition | Its stages | Synod of Jamnia | History of Hebrew text | Destruction of old copies | The Cairo Geniza | Theory of a single archtype | Difficulties of 'Archtype' theory | Theory of Multiple texts | The Hebrew language | Scribes and Rabbis | Massoretes | Copying of Hebrew mss | The Dead Sea scrolls | Cairo Geniza fragments | Classification of Hebrew MSS | Chief extant MSS | MSS now lost | Printed Hebrew text | Summary | >> |
THE history of the Hebrew Old Testament falls into two parts, divided by the great national catastrophe of the destruction of Jerusalem. In the earlier part the history of the text is closely bound up with the history of the Canon – the history, that is, of how and when the several books came into existence, and how and when they were accepted by the Hebrews as the authoritative sacred
The consideration of these questions is made more difficult and delicate because of beliefs and misconceptions, which have at certain times and among many people assumed almost the character of dogmas of faith. The Bible is so intertwined with our inmost religion, is so rightly regarded as the immutable basis of our faith, that to many people it is hard to admit that any doubt can be allowed to attach to either the form or the substance of any of its statements. But this is to make an assumption with regard to God's methods which is not warranted by what we see of His methods elsewhere. Doubtless He might have imposed the true doctrines of religion on mankind in such a manner that no possible opening could have been left for doubt. He might have made it impossible for man to sin. He might have solved the mystery of pain. But that has not been His method. He has left to man the privilege of free will, and has imposed on him the responsibility of thought, of examination, of faith. There is therefore nothing that need disturb or unsettle us in the idea that He has also imposed on us the responsibility of using the intellectual faculties with which He has endowed us in the study of the records in which the history of the chosen Hebrew people and of the foundation of the Christian Church have come down to us. These intellectual faculties may lead us astray, just as we may go astray in far more important matters of faith and conduct; but it is a poor faith which does not believe that the Holy Spirit will, if we trust Him, ultimately lead us to the truth. It is incredible, to anyone who believes in God, that there should be an irreparable discrepancy between the truth and the results to which we can attain by the exercise of those faculties which God has given to us, and which He has imposed on us the responsibility of using.
This is not to say that every result which every new critic proclaims is to be accepted forthwith as truth. It is only to say that it is not to be condemned forthwith without examination because it offends our present opinions and beliefs. The history of Biblical criticism, as of the criticism of all ancient history and literature, is full of erroneous views, confidently proclaimed, eagerly accepted by those who wish to appear in the vanguard of advance, and then disproved or allowed gradually to sink into obscurity. The way to counter the results of research which are distasteful to us is more research; and it is surely a healthier faith to believe that truth is great and will prevail than to hide one's head, ostrich-like, in the sand.
This insistence on a stereotyped form of faith which must not be questioned is a relatively late development. It was not the attitude of the Fathers of the Christian Church. They readily admitted that there were doubts about the authorship of certain books. They knew, only too well, that there were differences of opinion about articles of faith, and were not disturbed by obscurities as to the history of the Hebrew people. We do not always accept their interpretations of doubtful passages, or their reading of the history of the past; but we can follow their acceptance of the principle of free inquiry, and can hope that with fuller knowledge we may gradually come nearer to the truth.
In these pages, therefore, an attempt will be made to set out the results which modern criticism is at present disposed to accept with regard to the history of the books composing our Bible; fully recognising that many of these results are still uncertain, but also deriving satisfaction from the belief, of which proofs will be given in the following pages, that the tendency of modern research has been, again and again, to confirm the substantial integrity and trustworthiness of the Bible record.
It seems advisable at this point to utter a warning against the misuse which is frequently made of the phrase "Higher Criticism," as if it implied an attitude of disbelief in the authenticity of the Bible. This is a complete misunderstanding of the real meaning of the words. "Higher Criticism" is criticism applied to the substance or contents of a book, while "Lower Criticism" is criticism applied to its form or text. And criticism is not necessarily hostile criticism. It is merely examination or judgment. It is just as much "Higher Criticism" to argue that Moses personally wrote all the books of the Pentateuch as it is to maintain that they are of late date and consequently untrustworthy. The question of importance is not whether the criticism is "higher," but whether it is sound; and that is a question of evidence and argument, not of a priori assumptions or of impeaching the motives of those whose views we find unpalatable or consider to be unsound.
It is to be observed that there is nothing in the books themselves inconsistent with this way of looking at them. The books of the Pentateuch do not claim Moses as their author; they may be referred to in later times as 'the books of Moses', but that is because four out of the five are books about him. His words or actions may be quoted from them, without implying that he himself recorded them. That older materials underlay them appears, for instance, in the reference to the book of the Wars of the Lord (Num. xxi. 14). The later historical books also repeatedly refer to the materials out of which they have been constructed: the book of Jashar, the book of the acts of Solomon, the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel, or of Judah, and so on. They are avowedly works composed by a later writer or writers, based upon such materials as were available.
This a priori probability is confirmed by the literary examination of the books themselves. This reveals to a Hebrew scholar differences in language and style, which are concealed from the English reader by the uniformity of the English translation. He can, however, easily understand it if he imagines what a history of England would be like which was compounded of extracts from Holinshed, Clarendon, Hume, Macaulay, Green and Trevelyan. The several elements would reveal themselves by the difference of their style and language. And this method of compiling history by putting together sections from different sources can be paralleled from our own medieval chroniclers. Their general practice was, not to rewrite the history of a past period in their own words, as a modern historian would do, but to take over whole slabs from an earlier chronicler, with insertions from other sources or of their own. Thus Matthew Paris, the great St. Albans historian of the thirteenth century, in his Greater Chronicles took over (with additions and corrections) the work of his predecessor Roger of Wendover, who himself adopted the chronicle of Abbot John de Cella, which was itself compiled from the Bible and various early historians and romancers. Similarly Roger of Hoveden wrote a history of England from 731 to 1201 which has been thus described:
topFor the part from 731 to 1148 he simply copied an earlier chronicle, written at Durham, which was itself compounded from the histories of Simeon of Durham and Henry of Huntingdon ; while, to go still further back, Simeon's history was largely derived from Florence of Worcester and an early Northumbrian chronicle. From 1148 to 1169 Hoveden's narrative appears to be original, though partly based on the Chronicle of the Abbey of Melrose and the lives and letters of Becket. From 1170 to 1192 his work is merely a revision of the chronicle assigned to Benedict of Peterborough. Finally, from 1192 to 1201 he is an original and independent witness.
This analysis of the methods of the medieval chroniclers of England may help us to understand the methods of the chroniclers of Judah and Israel, and may satisfy us that there is nothing unnatural or unreasonable in the differences which Hebrew scholars discern in the strata of which the historical books of the Old Testament are, according to their analysis, composed. When they were finally put together in their present form may never be definitely known, and it is not necessary to suppose that modern scholarship has yet said its last word. The Jews themselves attributed the definite fixing of the Canon of the Law to Ezra, who promulgated it at the great assembly of the people recorded in Nehemiah (chapter viii); but of course that does not mean that the books themselves were not of earlier date. The book of Deuteronomy is generally believed to be (at any rate in its main substance) the book found in the Temple by Hilkiah the high priest in the time of Josiah (2 Kings xxii. 8). Its discovery at this time (621 b.c.) was evidently a complete surprise to the king, and it was made the basis of the reform of the cultus (see 2 Kings xxiii. 1-24). The book itself, which reflects the teaching of the prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries, may have been composed during the preceding half century. The earlier strata in the other books of the Pentateuch are variously assigned by scholars to dates between 950 and 750, with full recognition of the fact that they rest on materials of earlier date. The later (the so-called 'priestly') elements, and the final redaction of the whole, are attributed to the time of Ezra (about 400 B.c.), or by some even later. There is still great divergence in the views of scholars, and none can claim decisive authority.
Of the other historical books, Joshua has strata similar to those of the Pentateuch. The books of Judges, Samuel and Kings are evidently and avowedly compiled from a large variety of materials of different dates, put together after the fall of the monarchy. Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah all hang together, and are of the fourth century. Job may be of the same date, but there is little evidence, and opinions vary greatly. The Psalms and Proverbs are composed of several collections, ranging from the eighth to the third, or possibly the second century. Esther, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, and Daniel are the latest books of the Old Testament. The Prophets range from Amos, Hosea, Micah and Isaiah, in the eighth century, to Joel and Jonah, probably in the fourth; but in all cases there may be later additions or editorial revisions. On this point there is infinite scope for the ingenuity of scholars. Some are never tired of subdividing, and see the hands of editors everywhere. Some seem to have very little sense of the way in which it is reasonable to suppose that books were written and circulated.
We have therefore in the Old Testament a collection of books, the materials of which go back to an indefinite antiquity, and which were put together in their present forms, or approximately in their present forms, at various times between the ninth and the second centuries. The process of their adoption as having canonical authority appears to be indicated by the classification which the Jews themselves made of them. This classification is into three groups, known as the Law, the Prophets and the Hagiographa, or sacred writings. The Law included the five books of Moses, which we now call the Pentateuch. The Prophets comprised the historical books of Joshua, Judges, i and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings (these four being a continuous work, known as the four books of 'Kingdoms' or 'Reigns'), which were known as 'the Former Prophets'; and Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve Minor Prophets, known as 'the Latter Prophets'. The Hagiographa consisted of the Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Daniel, Esther, I and 2 Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah. The origin of this classification and of the inclusion of several historical and prophetic books among the Hagiographa is unknown; but it almost certainly implies that those books were written later, and were among the last to be recognized as inspired. Divisions of the books themselves into reading-lessons, paragraphs, and verses (very nearly corresponding to our modern verses) were made in very early times; but they are not of much importance to us here. They are indicated in the manuscripts by blank spaces of greater or lesser size.
1. The Law. It seems tolerably certain that the three divisions of the books of the Old Testament, just mentioned, represent three stages in the process known as the formation of the Hebrew Canon of Scripture. Whenever the books of the Pentateuch were written, it is at least certain that they, constituting the Law, were the first group of writings to be thus accepted. In the days of the kings it was possible for the 'book of the Law' (perhaps meaning our Deuteronomy) to be lost and forgotten, and to be recovered as it were by accident (2 Kings xxii. 8); but the Captivity taught the Jews to be careful of their Scriptures, and the Canon of the Law may be taken as fixed by about 400 b.c., after the return from the Exile, but before the Samaritan schism, and possibly under the guidance of Ezra, to whom Jewish tradition assigned a special prominence in the work of collecting the sacred books. From this time forth the five books of Moses, as they were commonly called, were regarded as a thing apart. They were sacred; and by degrees the greatest care came to be devoted to copying them with perfect accuracy and studying minutely every word that they contained. There is reason to suppose that this extreme accuracy was not at first required or obtained; but in the time of our Lord it is clear that the text of the Law was held in the utmost veneration, and the class of the 'scribes', whose special duty was to copy the sacred books, was fully established and held in considerable esteem.
2. The Prophets. The second group of books to obtain recognition as inspired, and to be adopted into the Canon, was that of the Prophets, the 'Former Prophets' comprising the historical books (Joshua to 2 Kings), and the 'Latter Prophets' the writing prophets without Daniel. The historical books contain a good deal of prophetic material, and, indeed, Samuel and Kings were attributed to various prophetic writers by the Chroniclers (cf. 1 Chron. xxix. 29, 2 Chron. ix. 29, xxvi. 22, etc.), and in fact Former and Latter Prophets supplement each other. Their canonization must have taken place before ben Sira wrote (c. 180 b.c.), since he summarizes the historical books and refers to "the twelve prophets" (Ecclus. xlvi-xlix., cf. xlix. 10), but the date cannot be fixed precisely.
3. The Hagiographa. The remaining group, known as the Hagiographa or 'Writings', is of a miscellaneous character, and for some time the books composing it evidently circulated on much the same footing as other books which were eventually excluded from the Canon, such as Judith or Ecclesiasticus. It is likely that each attained recognition independently, book by book, at different times. However, it was held that inspiration had ceased with Ezra; consequently any book which was known to be later than this would be excluded, and in this connexion is it noteworthy that the Psalms are attributed to David, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs to Solomon, Daniel purports to deal with events about 600 b.c., Job is a grandson of Esau long before the days of Moses, and Esther is set in the days of Xerxes I (485-465 b.c.). Only Ecclesiasticus bears its author's name, and is among those not admitted.
It is probable that the process of canonization began soon after 200 b.c. and the close of the prophetic canon. Ben Sira c. 180 b.c. (Ecclus. xlvii. 8-10) knows of the Davidic Psalter, and his grandson and translator in his Preface to the Greek version of Ecclesiasticus mentions "the law and the prophets and the other books of our Fathers". Proverbs and Job were probably recognized early, and Daniel (c. 164) perhaps soon after its appearance. The order of the Hebrew books suggests that Ezra-Nehemiah was received before Chronicles. Of the rest, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs and Esther remained longest in doubt, and it is perhaps significant that they are not quoted in the New Testament.
But it is clear that other books than these were in circulation, especially amongst the Jews of Alexandria, for in the Greek translation made for them (the 'Septuagint'-see below, p. 98) the books which now constitute our Apocrypha appear intermingled among the canonical books.
A decisive point in the history of both the Canon and the Text of the Old Testament was reached about the end of the first century of the Christian era. Throughout the period of the wars of the Maccabees there may well have been little time to spare for the labours of scholarship; but with the attainment of religious independence and the return of more settled conditions came greater attention to study. In the famous schools of Hillel and Shammai, about the beginning of the Christian era, we may find the origin of a long line of rabbis and scribes to whom is due the fixing of the Hebrew Canon and of the traditional text as we now have them. The destruction of Jerusalem in a.d. 70, the annihilation of Judaea as a nation-state, the necessity of combating both the Christians who had taken to themselves the Old Testament Scriptures and the hellenistic tendencies within Judaism itself, turned the Jews back on their sacred books. Somewhere between a.d. 90 and 100 a synod is recorded to have been held at Jamnia (near Jaffa), at which certain disputed questions with regard to the acceptibility of some of the books-notably of Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and Esther-were decided, as well as of others accepted by the Christians but not included in the Hebrew Bible. It is from this point that we may regard the Canon of the Hebrew Scriptures as being definitely fixed so far as orthodox Judaism is concerned, and the canonical books are those which now appear in our Old Testament. But although the Canon of inspired Scriptures now included Law, Prophets and Writings, the Pentateuch remained supreme; it was the revelation par excellence, and the Prophets and Hagiographa were regarded as comment upon it, as 'tradition'. Moreover, it is for this reason that the non-canonical books (except Ecclesiasticus) ceased to be copied by the Jews, and their preservation is due to the fact that the Greek Canon of Alexandria had become the Old Testament of the Church.
Our knowledge of the history of any text must, it is clear, rest in the first place on the manuscripts of that text in the original language. In the case of the Hebrew Old Testament, however, no manuscript of the whole or substantial parts of it is older than the end of the ninth century a.d. In other words, apart from the Dead Sea Scrolls, over a thousand years separate our earliest Hebrew manuscripts from the date at which the latest of the books contained in them was originally written. This would be disquieting, when one reflects how much a text may be corrupted or mutilated in the course of transmission over a long period of time; but in the case of the Old Testament there are several considerations which help to mitigate the disquietude and help to bridge the very considerable gap in the history of the text.
Although direct evidence for so long a period is lacking, this is not so with regard to indirect evidence of a kind which in any case is extremely valuable. There are the Aramaic Targums, paraphrases of the Scriptures into the Aramaic dialect spoken by the Jews after Hebrew had ceased to be a living language; there are the Greek versions-the ' Septuagint' made for the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria, and also the remains of the versions made for Jews by Aquila, Theodotion and Symmachus during the second century a.d. ; there is the Syriac version of the Pentateuch which was probably made in the first place by Jews. In addition there is for the books of Moses the Hebrew-Samaritan Pentateuch which, although it has its own textual history, represents a Hebrew text going back to the fourth century b.c. All these will be discussed in greater detail in their proper place, but even if we possessed Hebrew manuscripts much older than is in fact the case, the versions and the Samaritan Pentateuch would be important witnesses.
In the second place, so far as the traditional text is concerned, there is the extreme care with which manuscripts were copied by Jewish scribes. Errors were bound to creep into all copies that have come down to us. Nevertheless the close agreement of the second Isaiah Scroll from the Dead Sea with the manuscripts of the ninth and tenth centuries shows how carefully the text-tradition which they represent has been preserved.
The same extreme care which was devoted to the transcription of manuscripts is also at the bottom of the disappearance of the earlier copies. When a manuscript had been copied with the exactitude prescribed by the Talmud, and had been duly verified, it was accepted as authentic and regarded as being of equal value with any other copy. If all were equally correct, age gave no advantage to a manuscript; on the contrary, age was a positive disadvantage, since a manuscript was liable to become defaced or damaged in the lapse of time. A damaged or imperfect copy was at once condemned as unfit for use. Attached to each synagogue was a 'Geniza' (from a Hebrew word 'to hide', 'to store'), a sort of lumber room or cupboard in which worn or defective manuscripts or indeed any other documents containing the Divine Name were laid aside. Thus far from regarding an older copy of the Scriptures as more valuable, the Jewish habit has been to prefer the newer, as being the more perfect, and free from damage. The older copies, once consigned to the Geniza, where they would be safe from profanation, were left until the room or cupboard was full, and were then removed and buried with elaborate ceremonial.
The fate which thus awaited Hebrew manuscripts withdrawn from circulation had one very notable exception. In the synagogue of Old Cairo, once the Christian church of St. Michael which had been bought by the Jews in a.d. 882, was a Geniza which for centuries had been walled up and forgotten. After the synagogue was rebuilt in 1890 the contents of this chamber found their way into libraries and collections all over the world, the most valuable being now in the British Museum, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the Cambridge University Library, the Jewish Seminary in New York, and the Leningrad Library. These manuscripts and fragments, some dating back to the sixth century, have shed a great deal of light on the work of Jewish scribes and scholars in the centuries between the Dead Sea Scrolls and our oldest Biblical manuscripts.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century the examination and comparison of large numbers of available Hebrew manuscripts was undertaken by two notable scholars. The first collection of evidence was made by Benjamin Kennicott, canon of Christ Church, who published at Oxford in 1776-80 the readings of no less than 615 manuscripts and 52 printed editions. He was followed in 1784-8 by the Italian scholar Giovanni de Rossi, who published collations of 731 manuscripts and 300 printed editions. De Rossi used better manuscripts, on the whole, than Kennicott and his work is more broadly based. The conclusions of their labours were that the variants in the manuscripts were so negligible, and their conformity in peculiar forms and even of single letters was such, that all extant manuscripts had descended from a single archetype. These observations seemed to be confirmed by quotations in the Talmud and by the Greek versions made in the second century a.d. by Aquila, Theodotion and Symmachus, which have a similar text. There are also Jewish traditions, of which one says that there were three copies of the Torah in the Temple which differed from each other, the differences being settled by adopting the reading which appeared in any two against that in only one-a simple though unreliable method of textual criticism. According to the other tradition, after the destruction of the Temple in a.d. 70 a copy of the Torah was rescued by the priests, and during the Second Jewish Revolt in 135 it was brought to Baghdad; from there copies were sent to the different Jewish communities. On the evidence of these facts and traditions it was believed that the Hebrew text had been fixed early in the second century a.d. on the basis of copies from the Temple, from which all other manuscripts are descended. This theory, which had behind it all the authority of the great scholar Paul de Lagarde, became generally accepted, and indeed was assumed in previous editions of this work.
There is, as we shall see, some truth in the theory, but it is not the whole truth. A re-examination of the evidence shows that although the uniformity of the tradition is greater than might be expected in literature of such antiquity, there is a greater degree of variation than would support the archetype hypothesis. Even within the manuscripts used by Kennicott and de Rossi this is so, and when earlier manuscripts, discovered since their time, are added to the scale, the differences are not inconsiderable and unimportant. The version of Aquila, although based on a Hebrew text closer to the traditional text than the Septuagint, is by no means identical with it. Again, the Talmudic literature shows that for long there were divergent forms of the text in the different Rabbinical schools, some of which agree with the older versions against the traditional text. This has been greatly reinforced by the texts and fragments from the Cairo Geniza, from which, as Paul Kahle has shown, it is possible to see more clearly the work and traditions of the different centres of Jewish learning.
When the Dead Sea discoveries were first made known it seemed that the issue had been settled, and settled in favour of the archetype theory, for it was announced that the Isaiah Scrolls contained a text virtually identical with that of our printed Hebrew Bible. However, although this is largely true of'Isaiah B', it is less so in the case of' Isaiah A', and while both books have the same general type of text, the fact that two quite different manuscripts were found in the same cave shows that a degree of fluidity was possible even in one centre. But, as mentioned already, the study of the fragments from the Dead Sea Caves has brought to light very different types of text, sometimes agreeing with the Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch against the traditional text, at other times having readings shared with no other authority.
In consequence of what has been said, the view which is specially associated with the work of Paul Kahle has been more and more gaining ground, namely that the text-tradition of the Hebrew Bible was much more fluid than was previously thought. This was certainly the case before the destruction of Jerusalem, when the forms and types of text represented by the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint were not deviations from the norm, but competing traditions in their own right. After the fall of Jerusalem, when the need for drawing Judaism together and meeting the claims of the Christian Church became more and more pressing, the movement towards standardization of the text began to make itself felt. But the achievement of a fixed text was not the result of a single act of authorization universally adopted, but of a long process in which the rival schools competed with each other. It is above all due to Paul Kahle that the main outlines of this process have become clear, and it is important that these should be briefly described. But first it is necessary to see how the changing history of the Hebrew language and of Hebrew writing played their part.
The characters in which modern Hebrew manuscripts are written are not the same as those which were in use when the books of the Hebrew Scriptures were composed, and to which reference was made above, when dealing with the origins of alphabetical writing (p. 28). In the time of the Hebrew kingdoms and later, Hebrew was written in the Phoenician or Canaanite script which, as we saw, can be traced back to the inscriptions in the Sinaitic Peninsula, and is used, in a modified form, for the Samaritan Pentateuch.
The Jewish story of the origin of the 'Assyrian' or 'square' script, as the later Hebrew characters are called, is that Ezra brought it back with him from Babylon, and that it was forthwith adopted for general use. This is only another instance of the common habit of tradition, to assign to a single man and a single moment a change which must have been spread over several generations. It is likely that the square script was developed from the Phoenician independently in Syria, and gradually adopted by the Jews when Aramaic replaced Hebrew as the vernacular tongue of the Jews in Palestine. Since the Samaritan Pentateuch was written in the old script, the change must have come after the expulsion of the Samaritans, and was certainly completed before New Testament times, since the saying "not one jot or tittle shall pass from the Law" can only refer to the square script in which the 'jot' (=yod) was the smallest letter. Since the Septuagint Pentateuch, which was translated during the third century b.c., seems to presuppose an original written in the Phoenician script, while the Greek Isaiah probably has as its basis a text written in a transitional form of the script, the change may date from c. 200 b.c. The reason for this is the evidence of confusion of similar letters—in the square script the equivalents of h and t, r, d and w, w and i, b and k.
The Old Phoenician script, however, did not entirely pass out of use. It is found on coins, no doubt from archaizing and nationalistic motives, as late as the Second Jewish Rebellion of a.d. 132-5, and in some of the Dead Sea fragments.
The language in which the manuscripts we are examining were written is, of course, Hebrew, a branch of the great Semitic family of languages, which includes the Babylonian, Assyrian, Phoenician, Arabic and other tongues. It was the spoken language of Palestine down to the time of the Exile; and even after that date, when Aramaic was adopted for ordinary use, Hebrew remained the literary language for educated Jews, and of course for the reading of the Scriptures in the synagogues. To what extent it had become to all intents a dead language for most Jews by New Testament
times, as is often assumed, is likely to be raised again now that letters and contracts written not in Aramaic but in Hebrew and belonging to the time of Bar Kochba (c. 135) have been discovered in the Murabba'at caves.
Hebrew is written from right to left, not from left to right as in our modern European books. But the special peculiarity of it is that in its original state only the consonants were written, the vowels being left to be filled in by the reader's mind. Moreover, as is normally the case with ancient documents, the words were not separated, or only by the sporadic use of dots or strokes. This works reasonably well when a living language is being used and the text is familiar. But once the language has ceased to be that of everyday speech the omission of vowels is one fertile cause of variations in the text (since doubts might often occur as to the proper vowels to be supplied to a group of consonants), and the possibility of alternative divisions of the same consonants is another. To take a parallel from English, the consonants BD might be read as b(a)d, b(a)d(e), b(e)d, b(ea)d, b(e)d(e), b(i)d, b(i)d(e), b(o)d(e), b(u)d, (a)b(i)d(e), (a)b(o)d(e), while the group BSTRNG might be divided as b(e) str(o)ng, b(e)st r(i)ng, or taken as one word b(e)st(i)rr(i)ng, and it is quite possible that in some cases the sense of the passage would not show for certain which was right. A glance at the notes of the Variorum Bible would show that this danger is far from imaginary; e.g. in Deut. xxviii. 22, either " sword " or " drought" maybe read, according to the vowels supplied; in Judg. xv. 16, "heaps upon heaps" or "I have flayed them" ; in Isa. xxvii. 7, "them that are slain by him" or " those that slew him" ; in Amos vi. 12 the correct division of the text reads "will one plough the sea with oxen", which gives much better sense.
To some extent these difficulties were met by the use of some consonants to do the work of vowels—e.g. waw (w) for o and u,yod (y) for i and e—the so-called scriptio plena. When this practice began to be used has been debated among scholars, but it is already found very frequently in the St. Mark's Dead Sea scroll of Isaiah. In copies of the Scriptures in private circulation-and these would be more numerous than those used officially for worship—some such aids to reading would be necessary.
It has already been mentioned in connexion with the fixing of the Canon that after the destruction of the Jewish State the Jews were left with their Scriptures as the one firm foundation of their national and religious consciousness. Moreover they had to meet the controversial attacks of Christians, who accused the Jews of deliberately altering the text of the Old Testament in an anti-Christian direction. If only for these reasons the Jews were driven to a renewed study of the text in all its details, every word and every letter of which now assumed importance as part of the final revelation of the divine will. Not only were rules for the interpretation of the text drawn up by the famous Rabbi Hillel (died about a.d. 15). There was an imperative need that the text to be interpreted should be determined in view of the variant traditions current amongst the Jews. Foremost amongst the Rabbis at this time who are known to us was Rabbi Akiba, who displayed extraordinary ingenuity in finding a meaning, so to say, in every particle. His exegetical methods were applied by his pupil Aquila in a new Greek translation of the Old Testament which helped to replace the Septuagint, which was more and more regarded with suspicion in Jewish circles. Most important of all, the influence of Akiba is to be seen in the emergence of something like an authorized Hebrew text of the Old Testament, not yet completely fixed in all its details, and not at once driving out other forms. But it is significant that the text which forms the basis of Aquila's translation belongs to the same tradition which we find in the manuscripts of the tenth century and later. The process of standardization was a gradual one, and had to compete with other traditions in the different Rabbinical schools and centres of learning. The Massoretes, as we shall see, were well aware of such differences of tradition, which shows well enough that there was as yet no single text-form which was accepted everywhere.
The work of the scribes was not confined, as the English word would suggest, to the copying of the Scriptures with meticulous care (see below, p. 78). We gather from the New Testament that they were also experts in the exposition of the Law, and this side too is to be seen. Not only word-division, but the dividing of the text into paragraphs, and of the Law and the Prophets into sections for liturgical reading belong to this period. Doubtful passages were indicated by dots or strokes, or by writing the letters in an unusual way, thus calling the reader's attention to them. Anthropomorphic or irreverent expressions were changed or toned down-e.g. Genesis xviii. 22 "Abraham was yet standing before Jahweh" for the original "Jahweh was yet standing before Abraham" ; words with heathen connotations were replaced-e.g. "Baal" is changed to "bosheth" (shame) in proper names and elsewhere as at 2 Sam. xi. 21 (cf. Judg. vi. 32); and improprieties were smoothed over in reading with euphemisms. In these ways the scribes engaged in editorial work, though from doctrinal and reverential rather than properly critical motives in our sense. And of course scribal errors of the kind mentioned above (p. 50) continued to be made and reproduced within the accepted text.
As a consequence of the Second Jewish Revolt and the spread of Christianity, the centre of Rabbinical studies moved from Palestine to Babylonia, and in the schools first at Nehardea, and at Sura and Pumbedita, flourished until the ninth century and later. But the Moslem conquest of Palestine in 638 made possible a revival of Jewish life and culture in its ancient home, and the academy at Tiberias became especially famous as the headquarters of Biblical learning. It was in these schools, Eastern and Western, that the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds and Aramaic Targums were composed, and put into final shape. Most important of all, it was at Tiberias that the text of the Old Testament, which we find in Hebrew manuscripts from the ninth century and in our present Hebrew Bibles, was finally fixed and standardized. It is that which is called the Massoretic text.
The period of the Massoretes, as these scholars are called, is usually dated from about a.d. 500. The name is derived from the Hebrew word Massorah, meaning 'tradition', and was used in this sense by Rabbi Akiba in the second century when he said "massorah is a hedge for the Law". This brings us to the first aspect of their work—the accumulation and codification of the mass of traditional learning, handed down and enlarged by them, with which they embellished the manuscripts of the Old Testament. It took the form of annotations written around the text: the massorah parva at the side, and the massorah magna consisting of longer notes in the upper and lower margins (see Plate IX). The whole was then digested and arranged alphabetically at the end of the Bible, and is known as the massorah finalis. This Massoretic material consists of grammatical notes, variant readings, verbal illustrations, mnemonics, and so forth, which do not enter into the ordinary sphere of textual criticism. The Massoretes numbered the verses, words, and letters of every book. They calculated the middle word and the middle letter of each. They enumerated verses which contained all the letters of the alphabet, or a certain number of them; and so on. These trivialities, as we may rightly consider them, had yet the effect of securing minute attention to the precise transmission of the text; and they are but a manifestation of an excessive respect for the sacred Scriptures which in itself deserves nothing but praise. The Massoretes were indeed anxious that not one jot nor tittle—not one smallest letter nor one tiny part of a letter-of the Law should pass away or be lost.
The greatest single work of the Massoretes, however, was the devising of methods of vocalization for the current pronunciation of the text. Until the beginning of this century very little was known about this. But as a result of a lifetime's work on the manuscripts and fragments from the Cairo Geniza, Paul Kahle has shown that the vocalization of the Massoretic text as we know it is only the latest and the survivor of several systems. In Babylonia Kahle distinguishes two stages: an early simple system of points above the consonants which seems to be related to that used in Nestorian Syriac; this was replaced by one more complex, using forms of Hebrew letters above the consonants as well as Nestorian signs. Altogether Kahle has identified over 120 examples of Biblical MSS. belonging to the Babylonian group, as well as Targums and Rabbinical writings. In Palestine similarly it is possible to distinguish two stages: the pre-Tiberian or' Palestinian' system which is related to that used in the Samaritan Pentateuch, and is therefore Palestinian in origin; and that of the Tiberian school, which is written both above and (mostly) below the consonants. Eventually the Tiberian system superseded those of Palestine and Babylonia, and is now universally used. The Tiberian system is highly elaborate and, indeed, artificial, and is more than an aid to pronunciation. Behind it is a very complex scheme of grammatical rules, which were not simply systematized by the Massoretes, but to some extent invented by them. For, as Kahle has shown, the pronunciation which was fixed for all time was not that which was then normally used by Jews, but the ideal pronunciation as the Massoretes conceived it. It follows therefore that Hebrew grammar, as it has been understood since the time of the Tiberian Massoretes, is different in detail from that of the Hebrew of Palestine in the first century, or at the time when the Old Testament books were written, or for that matter of the Babylonian Massoretes themselves. Indeed, Kahle has shown that not only the pronunciation but also the text-tradition of Babylonia differed from the tradition of Palestine-not substantially, it is true, but sufficient to show that the uniformity and identity was not so great as once was thought. The Tiberian Massoretes themselves were aware of variant readings, but so far were they from introducing alterations into the actual text of the sacred books that, even where the text was plainly wrong, they confined themselves to stating in the margin the reading which they held to be superior. Such variations were known by the name of Qere (' read') and Kethib ('written'), the latter being the reading of the text, and the former that of the margin, which was to be substituted for the other when the passage was read.
Finally the Massoretes added, in addition to the vowel signs, a complicated system of accents which not only served the purpose of what in modern books corresponds to punctuation (and therefore is another guide to the correct meaning of the text) but also indicates the 'cantillation'—i.e. the proper inflections of the voice in public reading.
It was the Tiberian Massoretic text, vocalized, accented, and provided with marginal notes, which became the accepted norm for the Jews, to the exclusion of any other form of text. Extraordinary care was taken to secure perfect accuracy in the transcription of the sacred books. Especially was this the case with the synagogue rolls, or copies of the Pentateuch intended for use in the synagogues. These were written on skins, fastened together so as to form a roll, never in modern book-form. Minute regulations are laid down in the Talmud for their preparation. "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 forty-eight, or more than sixty lines; and the breadth must consist of thirty letters. The whole copy must be first lined; and if three words be written in it 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 receipt. An authentic copy must be the exemplar, from which the transcriber ought not in the least to 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 word the breadth of a narrow consonant; 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. . . . The rolls in which these regulations are not observed are condemned to be buried in the ground or burned; or they are banished to the schools, to be used as reading-books."
Private or common copies were not subject to such precise regulations. They are written in book-form, sometimes on vellum, sometimes on paper. Inks of various colours are used, and the size of the columns is not necessarily uniform. The Hebrew text is often accompanied by an Aramaic paraphrase, arranged either in a parallel column or between the lines of the Hebrew. In the upper and lower margins (generally speaking) the Great Massorah may be written; in the external side margins are notes, comments, corrections, and indications of the divisions of the text; between the columns is the Lesser Massorah. Vowel-points and accents, which are forbidden in synagogue rolls, are generally inserted in private copies; but they were always written separately, after the consonant text had been finished.
It is under conditions such as these that the Massoretic text has been handed down, from manuscript to manuscript, until the invention of printing. Now what of the actual manuscripts which are still in existence?
These epoch-making documents, as has been explained above, are the remains of the library of the Qumran community which was dispersed shortly before the fall of Jerusalem in a.d. 70, and consists of sectarian documents as well as Biblical scrolls and fragments. Those which concern the subject of this book are:
(a) The St. Mark's Isaiah Scroll (Isaiah A): part of the original discovery in Cave I; the text has been edited by Millar Burrows, J. C. Trever and W. H. Brownlee and published by the American Schools of Oriental Research in 1950. (See Plate VII.)
The MS. is made from seventeen sheets of leather joined together, and is about ten inches high and twenty-four feet long. The text is full of mistakes, some of which have been corrected by the original scribe, others in a later hand. There is extensive use of vowel letters, especially from chapter xxxiv onwards, though whether this implies that two scribes were engaged, or that chapters i-xxxiii were copied from a different MS., or simply that the scribe allowed himself more freedom in the latter part, has been disputed. The text belongs by and large to the same tradition as the Massoretic, though with many differences in detail. Among these may be mentioned iii. 24 (end) "instead of beauty shame"; vi. 3 where the seraphim cry "Holy" twice instead of thrice; xxi. 8 "then he who saw cried: upon a watchtower, O Lord, I stand . . ."; xxxiii. 8 "covenants are broken, witnesses are despised"; xliv. 16 "I am warm in front of the fire"; xliv. 19 "shall I fall down to a worn-out piece of wood"; xlix. 9 "they shall feed upon all the mountains"; 1. 6 " I have not turned my face from shame"; li. 11 "and the scattered of the Lord shall return"; liii. 12 (end) "and made intercession for their transgressions". Other readings agree with the versions and confirm emendations to the Massoretic text which have been proposed by various scholars. Not all of these are better readings than the Massoretic text, and many of them are trivial. But they show that even within the tradition of that text considerable variations were possible. It is interesting that the corrections by the later hand are generally towards agreement with the Massoretic text.
(b) The Hebrew University Isaiah Scroll (Isaiah B); also from Cave I, edited by E. L. Sukenik, Osar Hammegilloth Haggenuzoth (Jerusalem, 1954). It contains on one larger and two smaller pieces of leather parts of chapters x, xiii, xix-xxx, xxxv-end (with some gaps). The text is in close agreement with the Massoretic text. It is probably a century or more later in date than (a).
(c) The Habakkuk Commentary contains the text of the first two chapters of the book, but omits the third, which may support the view of some scholars that this last chapter (a psalm in the form of a prayer) is a later addition. The text, like that of Isaiah A, differs frequently from the Massoretic text in small details of spelling, etc. Apart from this, there are about fifty variants mostly of trivial importance; i. 17, supported by the versions reads as a direct statement, and instead of "he empties his net" has "he bares his sword"; ii. 5 reads "wealth (instead of 'wine') is treacherous"; ii. 16 has "drink and stagger" for "drink and be uncircumcised"-here agreeing with an emendation proposed by a modern scholar.
(d) Fragments of Daniel from Cave I show the same change from Hebrew to Aramaic at ii. 4 as the Massoretic text, with which they generally agree. From the same cave are fragments of Leviticus xix-xxii written in the Old Phoenician script, and also of the book of Jubilees.
(e) Fragments from Cave IV. Potentially the richest hoard has come from Cave IV, which has yielded tens of thousands of fragments, besides which it is more than likely that quantities of manuscript material are still in the hands of the Arabs. But since they were buried about three feet below the modern floor-level of the cave, many of them are in an advanced state of disintegration. The work of cleaning and piecing together is itself a slow and laborious process which will take years to complete, apart from the editing and publication of the texts, which is only now beginning.
Altogether the remains of about 330 manuscripts have been recognized so far, rather less than one-third of them being Biblical. Every book of the Old Testament is present except Esther, and some of them in profusion-e.g. fragments of thirteen manuscripts of Deuteronomy, twelve of Isaiah, ten of Psalms, seven of the Minor Prophets. There are also fragments of the Septuagint, showing that the Greek version was by no means confined to the Diaspora. Of the texts already published the following are the most notable. Two fragmentary scrolls of Samuel are known, the first (Samuel A) originally consisted of fifty-seven columns, and of these twenty-seven of 1 Samuel and all twenty-four of 2 Samuel are represented. The text is much closer to the Septuagint Codex Vaticanus than to the present Massoretic
text, and shows that, far from being a loose paraphrase as has been supposed, the Septuagint was a faithful and literal translation of one form of the Hebrew text of these books. The second Samuel scroll (Samuel B) survives in seven fragments containing i Sam. xvi. i-ii, xix. 10-17, xxl- 3~7> 8-10, xxiii. 9-17, and, like Samuel A, is close to the Septuagint, though it has also many original readings. Exodus provides fragments of vi. 29-xxxvii. 15, and is remarkable for its alignment with the Samaritan recension, most notably in the expansions after vii. 18, 29, viii. 19 and elsewhere, which are especially characteristic of that version. Part of the Song of Moses (Deut. xxxii. 37-43), like the Samuel fragments, is close to the Septuagint, and here again the alleged looseness of the latter is seen to be a careful following of an original Hebrew text. On the other hand there are fragments of Numbers which combine both Septuagint and Samaritan readings. There are also parts of a beautifully written scroll of Ecclesiastes, dated about the middle of the second century b.c., showing that this book was already in common use at that time.
(f) The Murabba'at Caves. The largest Biblical find from this quarter is a scroll of the Minor Prophets, much damaged and blackened by damp, but recognizably a roll and susceptible of decipherment by infra-red photography. There are also small fragments of Genesis xxxii-xxxiv, Exodus, Deuteronomy, and the beginning of Isaiah. All these are in close agreement with the Massoretic text, but this is in part accounted for by the fact they are at least seventy years later than the Qumran Scrolls, and belong to the period of the Second Revolt (c. a.d. 135), and of Rabbi Akiba, who supported the Jewish leader Bar Kochba.
It is certain that when all the fragments from these caves have been published, a great deal of light will be thrown on the early history of the Hebrew text which previously has been largely a matter of conjecture. But it seems likely that the Old Testament-or a large part of it-existed in more than one textual form. Already we have evidence from the caves of three types of Hebrew text: that which subsequently becomes known to us as the Massoretic text; that which is represented by the Samaritan Pentateuch; and that which formed the basis of the Septuagint version. Far from being aberrant versions, therefore, the Samaritan recension and the Septuagint (at any rate in the Pentateuch and in the historical books) are restored as important witnesses to the early forms of the Hebrew as it was used in Palestine itself.
The discovery of these important fragments, and their bearing on the history of the text and the work of the Massoretes, has already been described in some detail (see p. 70 above). Of most interest for the general reader are the fragments of the Hebrew text of Ecclesiasticus, previously unknown in its original language, covering about two-thirds of the book. (See below, p. 150.)
It is not necessary to enumerate and describe any considerable number of individual Hebrew manuscripts. When we come to speak of the Greek text, whether of the Old or the New Testament, we shall find it both interesting and important to describe the chief manuscripts with some minuteness in respect of age, their comparative value, and the groups or families into which they fall. In none of these respects is it possible to distinguish effectively between the great mass of Hebrew manuscripts. Since all represent the same kind of text, and none is conspicuously older than the rest, there is not the same opportunity for marked preeminence.
The points to be taken into consideration in examining a Hebrew manuscript are the following; but it will be seen that their importance is not very great. First, whether it was intended for public or private use; since those intended for the service of the synagogue, like the great leather rolls of the Law, are most likely to be accurately copied. Next, its age; but on this head it is difficult to arrive at any certainty. Many manuscripts contain a statement of their date; but these statements are extremely misleading and of doubtful authenticity. Sometimes we do not know by what era the date is calculated; sometimes the date is evidently that of the manuscript from which it was copied, not of the manuscript itself; sometimes, unfortunately, the date is simply fraudulent. And it is not possible always to test such statements by the handwriting of the manuscript, as can generally be done with Greek writings. The best authorities differ so widely (in the case of one well-known manuscript, one good authority assigns it to the tenth century, and another to the fourteenth, while another copy has been assigned to various dates between the sixth and the fifteenth centuries) as to prove that the science of dating Hebrew writing is very imperfect. It is more possible to distinguish the country in which a manuscript has been written-Germany, Spain, Italy, and so forth. But even so our advantage is small in view of the uniformity of the Massoretic tradition. Finally, manuscripts may be distinguished as Eastern (Babylonian) or Western (Palestinian or Tiberian) which, as we have seen, had their own text-traditions and systems of punctuation. And, as we have already noted, Hebrew manuscripts may be classified as scrolls used for public reading in the synagogue, of parchment or leather, containing the unpointed text of the Pentateuch, and codices of the whole or parts of the Old Testament, pointed and written for private use.
Any account of the principal Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament must begin with Moses ben Asher and his son Aaron ben Moses ben Asher. These two were the last in the line of a family of Tiberian Massoretes which can be traced back to the second half of the eighth century a.d. This was the period of the rise of the Karaites, a kind of' back to the Bible' movement which, setting itself against the prevailing Rabbinical exegesis, helped greatly to stimulate the study of the actual text of the Old Testament-in the words of the founder "search ye well the Torah and do not rely on my opinion". The Karaites thus played their part in the movement towards fixing the Tiberian text, which in turn has been transmitted to us in manuscripts actually prepared by Moses ben Asher and his son. It is another aspect of Paul Kahle's great contribution to these studies that this last chapter of the Massoretic history can clearly be told. The ben Asher manuscripts are:
(1) A codex of the Former and Latter Prophets with vocalization and Massorah written by Moses ben Asher in Tiberias for a Karaite Ya'bes ben Shelomo, in a.d. 895. It was presented by its owner to the Karaite community in Jerusalem, and after the capture of the Holy City by the Crusaders in 1099 passed to the Karaite synagogue in Cairo, where it now is. A photograph is in Berlin.
(2) The Aleppo Codex of the complete Old Testament, the consonantal text written by Shelomo ben Buya'a, which was corrected and provided with punctuation and Massorah by Aaron ben Asher about a.d. 930. It was given to the Karaites in Jerusalem about the middle of the eleventh century, was taken to Cairo about the same time as (1), and reached Aleppo before the middle of the fifteenth century. It was seen by Maimonides, the great Jewish authority, at the end of the twelfth century and approved by him. If available, this would be the final authority for the Tiberian text of the whole Bible. Unfortunately the synagogue authorities would allow it neither to be copied nor photographed, and it is now reported to be destroyed.
(3) British Museum Codex of the Pentateuch, numbered Or. 4445, containing Gen. xxxix. 20-Deut. i. 33. It is not dated, and was thought to belong to the middle of the ninth century. It was described in former editions of this book as probably the oldest manuscript now in existence of any part of the Hebrew Bible. Kahle has shown that it is about a century later, and represents an early form of the ben Asher text (Plate XI).
(4) The Leningrad complete Old Testament, written, according to the colophon, in 1008 and copied "from the corrected clear books prepared by the Master Aaron ben Moses ben Asher". Ginsburg assumed that the original was the Aleppo Codex, but Kahle shows that it was copied from another ben Asher codex, now lost, which was in Egypt about a.d. 1000. This codex has been selected as the basic text of the fourth edition of Kittel's Hebrew Bible, as being the oldest and best representative available of the ben Asher recension of the complete Old Testament, where it appears under the sign L.
These are not the only manuscripts of the ben Asher recension: among others listed by Kahle are a Pentateuch scroll of a.d. 930 by the same hand as the Aleppo Codex, and others of 943 and 946; Prophets dated 946 and 989; and a Hagiographa of 994-all at Leningrad.
Mention should also be made of:
(5) The famous Leningrad Codex of the Prophets, written with Babylonian punctuation in 916, and thus one of the oldest existing manuscripts. But to quote the Preface to Kittel's Biblica Hebraica "it is provided with a Tiberian Massorah and has been assimilated in its punctuation to the Tiberian-punctuated manuscripts to such an extent that all important variants have been eliminated". However, no less than 184 fragments of Babylonian manuscripts are cited in the latest edition of Kittel.
(6) Reuchlin Codex of the Prophets, dated a.d. 1105, now at Karlsruhe, which, like the British Museum manuscript Ad. 21161 (c. a.d. 1150), contains a text in the recension of ben Naphtali, another Tiberian Massorete. The differences between ben Naphtali and ben Asher were studied and described by Mishael ben Uzziel in the tenth century, who cites more than 800 of them. His work has been of great assistance in verifying the fidelity of the Leningrad Old Testament and other copies of the ben Asher text. Moreover, although the ben Asher text came to be universally adopted, that of ben Naphtali was not without its effect, and in fourteenth-century and later manuscripts a compromise text of the two traditions is found. It is manuscripts of this mixed type which provided the basis of the early printed Hebrew Bibles.
One other source of knowledge for the Hebrew text should, however, be mentioned-namely, readings quoted in the Middle Ages from manuscripts since lost. The chief of these is a manuscript known as the Codex Hillelis, which was at one time supposed to date back to the great teacher Hillel, before the time of our Lord. It is, however, probable that it was really written after the sixth century. It was used by a Jewish scholar in Spain, and a considerable number of its readings have been preserved by references to it in various writers. Other lost manuscripts are sometimes quoted, but less often, and their testimony is less important.
The first portion of the Hebrew Bible to appear in print was the Psalms, which issued from the press, probably at Bologna in Italy, in 1477. The first complete Old Testament followed in 1488, at Soncino. Both these editions were due to Jews. The first edition prepared by a Christian scholar was that which appeared in the great Bible printed by Cardinal Ximenes at Alcala (and hence known as the Complutensian Bible, from Complutum, the Latin name of Alcala), in Spain, during the years 1514-17. In this Bible the Hebrew, Greek and Latin Vulgate texts were printed side by side, together with the Aramaic Targum of Onkelos for the Pentateuch; it forms, as will be seen more fully hereafter, a most important landmark in the story of the beginnings of Biblical study in modern Europe, and was employed by Tyndale in his translation of the Old Testament into English. These multiple texts, or Polyglots, were enormous undertakings, and three others appeared: the Antwerp Polyglot of 1569-72; the Paris Polyglot edited in ten volumes by de Jay, 1629-45; and greatest of all the London Polyglot brought out by Brian Walton, later bishop of Chester, in six folio volumes between 1654 and 1657, containing the Hebrew with interlinear Latin translation and Targum; the Samaritan Pentateuch and Targum; the Syriac, the Arabic, the
Septuagint-each of these with its Latin translation-together with the Vulgate and fragments of the Old Latin. (Plates X, XI.) In the New Testament Walton gives the Greek text with apparatus and an interlinear translation in Latin; the Vulgate; and the Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, Persian (in the Gospels), each accompanied by Latin translations. The whole is rounded off by a Lexicon of all the Oriental languages used and a comparative Semitic grammar!
The first Hebrew Bible with full vowel-points and accents, and including Targums and Rabbinical material, was published by Daniel Bomberg at Venice in four volumes 1516-17. The second edition of this, edited by a Tunisian Jew, ben Chayyim, appeared 1524-5, and became the textus receptus for printed Hebrew Bibles down to 1929. It is based on late manuscripts, and since he followed none exclusively, the text frequently deviates from the ben Asher recension.
It was not, however, until the end of the eighteenth century that scholars fairly took a hand in the critical study of the Hebrew text in a scientific way. The first collection of evidence was made by an Englishman, Benjamin Kennicott, canon of Christ Church, Oxford, who, as was mentioned above, published from the University Press between 1776 and 1780 the readings of 615 manuscripts (giving, however, only the consonants without vowel-points) and of over fifty printed editions. In 1784-8 the Italian scholar de Rossi published collations of more than 730 manuscripts and 300 printed editions with details of vocalization. It was as a result of these immense labours that the conclusion was drawn that all Hebrew manuscripts represent the Massoretic text without substantial variation. Unfortunately the materials with which they worked were late, and we have seen that this view is untenable. Nevertheless their lists of manuscripts are still invaluable. A critical edition of the Hebrew Bible, "diligently revised according to the Massorah and the early editions, with the various readings from MSS. and the ancient versions", occupied Dr. C. D. Gins-burg for many years and was published in 1894, and again by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1926. But this has now been superseded by the work of R. Kittel and P. Kahle, the third edition of whose Biblia Hebraica, completed by A. Alt and O. Eissfeldt, was published by the Wiirttemburg Bibelanstalt at Stuttgart in 1937. In this and later editions the Leningrad Codex provides the basic text with the small Massorah of ben Asher in the margin, while the seventh edition (1951) includes the variants of the Dead Sea scroll of Isaiah and the Habakkuk Commentary.
It is thus an indispensible tool for the serious study of the Hebrew Bible.
The result of our examination of the Hebrew text is, then, this. We have manuscripts which give us in a very pure form the text as it finally became standardized in the Massoretic school at Tiberias in the eighth to tenth centuries. Thanks also to the work of Paul Kahle on the Cairo Geniza fragments we can trace the work of other Massoretic scholars in Palestine and Babylonia. The discovery of the Dead Sea manuscripts has disclosed that, during the last two centuries b.c. and the first a.d. the Hebrew text was more fluid than had been supposed, but nevertheless what was later to become the Massoretic text already existed in an early form. We may therefore be satisfied that the text of our Old Testament has been handed down in one line without serious change since the beginning of the Christian era and even before. The question which now meets us is this: Does this Hebrew text which we call Massoretic faithfully represent the Hebrew text as originally written by the authors of the Old Testament books? Or do the differences which we find, for example, in the Dead Sea documents and the Septuagint, represent other and perhaps older and better traditions than that which we find in the Massoretic text? To answer this question it is necessary to bring up our second line of authorities, described in Chapter III. We must refer to those translations of the Old Testament into other languages which were made at an early period when the evidence from Hebrew manuscripts is non-existent or incomplete. We must see what they can tell us about the Hebrew text from which they were translated, and examine the extent and credibility of that evidence. In this way alone can we hope, even partially, to bridge over the gap in our knowledge between the actual composition of the books of the Old Testament and the text whose history has been traced in the present chapter.