The second grouping of witnesses is the Greek Old Testament, represented chiefly by what is known as the Septuagint. The amazing fact that is often cited about the Hebrew Masoretic text is that when compared to the much older Dead Sea Scrolls, virtual 95% agreement exists. This first branch represents a very stable form of the Hebrew text that although represented in Medeival Hebrew manuscripts copied and standardized in the 8th to 11th centuries A.D, represents (according to Brotzman) a Hebrew manuscript stream going back as far as at least 500 b.c. The first grouping has already been mentioned – namely the so-called “Masoretic Hebrew text”. Brotzman’s work, “Old Testament Textual Criticism”, as well as other standard reference works on the subject (such as Ernst Wuerthwein’s “The Text of the Old Testament”), four major groups of witnesses of the Old Testament text are consulted when performing Old Testament textual criticism. The major Old Testament translations used in discerning the original text of the Old Testament The Hebrew Masoretic Text found in all Hebrew Bibles today weighs in at 419,687 words, representing 8,679 different vocabulary words used by God to express His revelation to His people.Ģ. Contents (Poetry being Psalms, Job, Proverbs Megilloth being Ruth, Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations & Esther) and the three final books of Daniel and 1 & 2 Chronicles.Īll three major sections comprise the Hebrew Bible, which based upon the first letters of each section is sometimes referred to as the TaNaK (Torah and Neviim and Ketuviim). Contents: (Joshua-Ezekiel called “The Former Prophets” and Hosea-Malachi called “The Twelve”)Ĭ. Neviim is the Hebrew term for “Prophets”. Torah means “that which guides, teaches”. In virtually all Hebrew Bibles today, one will find three major divisions of the biblical material:Ī. A sample of one of these Hebrew manuscripts, the Aleppo Codex of the 9th century, is depicted below (from wikipedia article on the Aleppo Codex): The world famous Dead Sea scrolls (dated between the Old and New Testaments) exhibit the Aramaic Square script as seen in the photo below (from the website: )Īll of the Hebrew Manuscripts copied in the Medieval period by the Masorete scribes (hence “The Masoretic Text) exist in this beautiful type of Hebrew lettering, with vowel points introduced sometime after the fifth century A.D. Once the Jews returned back to Jerusalem under Zerubbabel (516 b.c), Ezra (458 b.c) and Nehemiah (445 b.c), the Hebrew lettering or script changed to what is today called “The Aramaic Square Script”. When the Jews went into exile to Babylon beginning in 605 b.c, they spent 70 years being immersed in the language of Babylon – Aramaic. In the first several centuries of the Hebrew text, the so-called “Paleo-Hebrew” script would had been used, and looked something akin to the following photograph (from “): 98% of the text was revealed originally in Hebrew, with roughly 2% composed in Aramaic (in major portions of Daniel, some parts of Ezra, one verse in Jeremiah and a couple of words in Genesis). The Old Testament (or as it is sometimes called “Old Covenant”) was revealed by God over a period of 1,000 years, beginning with Moses in 1445 b.c and ending with Malachi in roughly 396 b.c. Getting a “lay of the land” regarding the Old Testament text Throughout this introductory treatment on how these matters relate to the Old Testament text, the reader will be alerted to the distinct ways in which Old Testament textual criticism proceeds in comparison to its New Testament counterpart.ġ. Main point of today’s post: Today’s post will aim to observe the relationship between textual crticism, biblical inerrancy and the study of Old Testament manuscripts. If anything, textual criticism serves the need of the church in showing how God’s words are still available in current translations of both Old and New Testaments. We labored to show through real world examples that textual criticism (the science that attempts to reconstruct the original text out of currently existing copies) does not dismiss the theological assertion of Biblical inerrancy in the originals. Introduction and review: In the last post we considered the relationship between textual criticism, biblical inerrancy and the study of the New Testament manuscripts (see: ).
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