> Except that it was copied very faithfully by people who would dispose of the scroll rather than leave an error in it. You've probably heard of the Masorites?
>

Except that the Masoretic text is clearly not an exact copy of any "original" Hebrew (what "original" means to a text related in some fairly difficult to understand yet fundamental way to oral tradition really means is an excellent question. What do you think it was copied from, Nyperold?) How do we know the Masoretic text isn't an exact copy? One thing in particular stands out -- it has vowels.

Biblical Hebrew was originally written without any vowels; that's why you'll sometimes see Yahweh written as YHWH -- though we're pretty sure Yahweh is the correct pronounciation, it could theoretically be almost anything. There were a number of reasons the texts didn't need vowels, among them that they were primarily being transmitted orally; the existence of a text helped more to validate the spoken word than it did as a reference for it.

The reason the Masoretic text is the "standard" version that most translators go back to and vary from only with strong evidence to the contrary is that it's the earliest, or one of the earliest, texts we have that gives us the vowels we need to make sense out of the text. There are a number of places modern translators have identified where the greek text of the Septuagint or other relatively ancient Hebrew sources disagree with the Masoretic text in ways that suggest the Masorites put the wrong vowels in.

So what it means to have an exact or original copy of a biblical text, I'm not exactly sure; I'm inclined to think that, for religious folks (which I'm not), it's the divine guidance they find as they read that's more important than the exact phrasing or meaning of particular words. Personally, literary, critical and textual approaches to the bible are some of my favorite subjects, but I don't think they necessarily have much bearing on the religious significance of a particular text.

Tom
tmschm@wm.edu1