Is Our Old Testament Text Reliable?

Is Our Old Testament Text Reliable?

"By and large we are fully justified in saying concerning the Old Testament what Westcott and Hort said concerning the New: except for trivialities, not one part in a thousand is in serious doubt and we have no objective evidence to make us think that doctrinal differences or substantial matters are involved in the whole process of Old Testament copying" (Can I Trust My Bible?, sub. How Reliable is the Old Testament Text? by R. Laird Harris, p. 132).

I. "Text-data for the Old Testament is not vast as compared with the multitude of witnesses on the Greek text, nor does the available data appear as impressive" (How We Got the Bible, Neil Lightfoot, p. 69).

II. Until the middle of the 20th century, our oldest manuscripts dated from the ninth century A.D.

Our earliest Hebrew manuscripts were known as the Cairo Codex and the Leningrad Codex. The Cairo Codex, which contained the prophets, is dated at 895 A.D. The Leningrad dates from 916 A.D.. The British Museum Codex of the Pentateuch comes from the tenth or eleventh century. The Leningrad codex of the entire Old Testament dates from 1008 A.D. (Ibid. p. 69-70).

III. The reason why ancient copies of the Hebrew text have not survived is that Jewish scribes looked upon their copies of the Scriptures with an almost superstitious respect. This led them to give a ceremonial burial to any copy which was old or worn (Ibid, p. 70).

IV. The Massoretes: These were Jewish scholars dedicated to the preservation of the Old Testament text. These groups came into existence at a very early date. The most notable group was at Tiberias and began about 500 A.D. They sought ways and methods to eliminate scribal slips of addition or omission or mistakes in copying. This they achieved by intricate procedures of counting. They numbered the verses, words and letters of each book. They calculated the middle verse, the middle word and the middle letter of each book. Each copy upon completion was carefully checked to insure accuracy of work (Ibid, p. 71).

Even before the Massoretes schools, Jewish scholars conscientiously sought perfection in transcribing the text. Rigid regulations were laid down for the preparation of copies to be used in synagogues. The length of the column must not be less than 48 nor more than 60 lines. Each column must be 30 letters wide. The whole copy must be first lined. An authentic copy must be the exemplar, from which the transcriber must not deviate in the least. No word or letter or even punctuation was to be written by memory. The scrolls in which these regulations were not observed were condemned to be buried or burned or used only for common reading such as in schools (Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts by F.Kenyon, pp.78-79).

V. Other Sources for Determining Our Old Testament Text:

1. The Samaritan Pentateuch, Its beginning is traced back to about 400 B.C. To a high degree it confirms the traditional Hebrew Text.

2. The Septuagint (from the Latin Septuaginta, meaning seventy). This is a Greek translation of the Old Testament dating from about 250 B.C. For a while it was virtually the only Bible for the early church. It was the text most often quoted by the inspired writers of the N.T.

3. The Aramaic Targums. These are translations/paraphrases from Hebrew into the Jewish dialect of the first century.

4. The Syriac Peshitta. This Syriac translation dates from possibly the first century.

5. Latin Versions, The Old Latin and the Latin Vulgate. The Vulgate is by far the most valuable and is the work of Jerome and was prepared in 390-405 A.D.

6. Other Sources include quotations found in the Jewish Talmud (A body of Jewish literature containing the Mishnah(text) and Gemara (commentary), dating from 200-500 A.D. Fragments of Origen's Old Testament used in the third century A.D. and other versions such as the Coptic, Ethoipic, Armenian and the Arabic. While not all of these are of equal value, they do help by adding to the cummulation of witnesses for the text.

VI. The Dead Sea Scrolls: Since March of 1948 eleven caves have been discovered on the cliffs above the Dead Sea that yielded about 382 rolls of ancient manuscripts and thousands of fragments. Many of these contain Old Testament scriptures. "every book of the Old Testament is found either in manuscript, quotation or allusion in the Qumran literature" (The Dead Sea Scrolls, Pfeiffer, p. 101).

Since the Essene community that owned these scrolls was destroyed by the Romans in 68 A.D., all of these manuscripts are at least that old or older. Scholars have dated some of the scrolls at 250 B.C. Thus we have a body of literature giving us the text of our Old Testament that is 1,000 years older than anything previously had.

The Dead Sea Scrolls have proven that the ancient Masoretic text has been faithfully transmitted to us. "The new evidence confirms what we already had good reason to believe---that the Jewish scribes of the early Christian centuries copied and recopied the text of the Hebrew Bible with the utmost fidelity" (F.F.Bruce, Second Thoughts on the Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 61-62).

Conclusion: Today we can be assured that we have the same scripture that was read by God's children in the first century. The God who could inspire men to record His will, his use of the same power to preserve for us His Sacred Word.

Sincerely,

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