Masoretic Text - 9-10th century
Dead Sea Scrolls 150 BC - 75 AD
Samaritan Pentateuch (they only cannonized the Pentateuch, don't believe the others are divinely inspired)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritan_Pentateuch
The usual assumption had been that it was made somewhere around 432 B.C., when Manasseh, the son-in-law of Sanballat, went off to found a community in Samaria, as related in Neh. 13:28 and Josephus Antiquities XI.7.2; 8.2.
Josephus himself, however, dates this event in the days of Alexander the Great, a
http://www.archive.org/stream/notesontheearlyh00chapuoft#page/n11/mode/2up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hebrew_Bible_manuscripts
http://www.toseftaonline.org/
MT - the authoritative Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible. While the Masoretic Text defines the books of the Jewish canon, it also defines the precise letter-text of these biblical books, with their vocalization andaccentuation known as the Masorah.
The Hebrew Bible - World Digital Library
widely used as the basis for translations of the Old Testament in Protestant Bibles,
In modern times the Dead Sea Scrolls have shown the MT to be nearly identical to some texts of the Tanakh dating from 200 BCE but different from others.
primarily copied, edited and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the 7th and 10th centuries CE
Though the consonants differ little from the text generally accepted in the early 2nd century (and also differ little from some Qumran texts that are even older), it has numerous differences of both greater and lesser significance when compared to (extant 4th century) manuscripts of the Septuagint, a Greek translation (made in the 3rd to 2nd centuries BCE) of the Hebrew Scriptures that was in popular use in Egypt and Israel (and that is often quoted in the New Testament, especially by the Apostle Paul).[2]
The Hebrew word mesorah (מסורה, alt. מסורת) refers to the transmission of a tradition.
The oldest extant manuscripts of the Masoretic Text date from approximately the 9th century CE,[3] and the Aleppo Codex (once the oldest complete copy of the Masoretic Text, but now missing its Torah section) dates from the 10th century.
According to Menachem Cohen the Dead Sea scrolls decided these issues, 'by showing that there was indeed a Hebrew text-type on which the Septuagint-translation was based and which differed substantially from the received MT'
despite these variations, most of the Qumran fragments can be classified as being closer to the Masoretic text than to any other text group that has survived
the differences in the Septuagint are no longer considered the result of a poor or tendentious attempt to translate the Hebrew into the Greek; rather they testify to a different pre-Christian form of the Hebrew text"
New Greek translations were also made
Unlike the Septuagint, large-scale deviations in sense between the Greek of Aquila and Theodotion and what we now know as the Masoretic text are minimal.
In the first half of the 10th century Aaron ben Moses ben Asher and Moshe ben Naphtali (often just called ben Asher and ben Naphtali) were the leading Masoretes in Tiberias.
Ben Asher was the last of a distinguished family of Masoretes extending back to the latter half of the 8th century. Despite the rivalry of ben Naphtali and the opposition of Saadia Gaon, the most eminent representative of the Babylonian school of criticism, ben Asher's codex became recognized as the standard text of the Bible. See Aleppo Codex, Codex Cairensis.
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/
Codex - ancient manuscripts in book form
Aleppo Codex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleppo_Codexhttp://aleppocodex.org/
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Aleppo_Codex
http://www.jerusalem-crown.co.il/website/files/images/4-eng25.pdf
Israel Museum - http://www.english.imjnet.org.il/
http://www.bible-researcher.com/aleppo.html
some scholars view the Aleppo Codex as the most authoritative representative of the masoretic tradition, both its letter-text and its vocalization
most of its Torahsection and many other parts of the text are now missing and older documents such as the Dead Sea Scrolls have significantly different versions of the Biblical text.[4]
Dead Sea Scrolls on Archive
The Karaite Jewish community of Jerusalem purchased the codex about a hundred years after it was made, from Israel ben Simha of Basra sometime between 1040 and 1050..[5] During the First Crusade, the synagogue was plundered and the codex was transferred to Egypt, whose Jews paid a high price for its ransom.[1] It was preserved at the Karaite then Rabbanite synagogue in Old Cairo, where it was consulted by Maimonides, who described it as a text trusted by all Jewish scholars. It is rumoured that in 1375 one of Maimonides' descendants brought it to Aleppo, Syria, leading to its present name.[1]
After the Fall of Jerusalem (1099) during the First Crusade, the Crusaders held the codex and other holy works for ransom (along with Jewish survivors).[8][9] The Aleppo Codex website cites two letters in the Cairo Geniza that describe how the inhabitants of Ashqelon borrowed money from Egypt to pay for the books.
The Aleppo community guarded the Codex zealously for some six hundred years: it was kept, together with three other Biblical manuscripts, in a special cupboard (later, an iron safe) in a basement chapel of the Central Synagogue of Aleppo, supposed to have been the cave of Elijah.
Paul Kahle, when revising the text of the Biblia Hebraica in the 1920s, tried and failed to obtain a photographic copy. This forced him to use the Leningrad Codexinstead for the third edition, which appeared in 1937.
The only modern scholar allowed to compare it with a standard printed Hebrew Bible and take notes on the differences was Umberto Cassuto. This secrecy made it impossible to confirm the authenticity of the Codex, and indeed Cassuto doubted that it was Maimonides' codex, though he agreed that it was 10th century.
During the riots against Jews and Jewish property in Aleppo in December 1947, the community's ancient synagogue was burned and the Codex was damaged, so that no more than 294 of the original (estimated) 487 pages survived.[13][14] Each page is parchment, 33 cm high by 26.5 cm wide (13 inches x 10.43 inches).[15] In particular, only the last few pages of the Torah are extant[16]
Some scholars instead accuse members of the Jewish community of having torn off the missing leaves and keeping them privately hidden. Two "missing" leaves have turned up, one in 1982 and the other in 2007, leaving open the possibility that even more may have survived the riots in 1947.
The community of Damascus possessed a counterpart of the Aleppo Codex, known as the "Damascus Keter", also written in Israel in the tenth century, which is now kept at the Jewish National and University Library and numbered ms. Heb 5702. It is available online here [1]. (This should not be confused with another Damascus Keter, of medieval Spanish origin.) http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/mss/heb5702/index_eng.html
n January 1958, the Aleppo Codex was smuggled out of Syria and sent to Jerusalem to be placed in the care of the chief rabbi of the Aleppo Jews. But by the influence of then Israeli President, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, it was secretly taken by the government. In the late 1980s the codex was placed in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum.[17][17] This finally gave scholars the chance to examine it and consider the claims that it is indeed the manuscript referred to by Maimonides. The work of Moshe Goshen-Gottstein on the few surviving pages of the Torah seems to have confirmed these claims beyond reasonable doubt. Goshen-Gottstein suggested (in the introduction to his facsimile reprint of the codex) that not only was it the oldest known masoretic Bible in a single volume, it was the first time ever that a complete Tanakh had been produced by one or two people as a unified entity in a consistent style.
Later, after the university denied him access to the codex, Rabbi Mordechai Breuer began his own reconstruction of the Masoretic text on the basis of other well-known ancient manuscripts. His results matched the Aleppo Codex almost exactly. Thus today, Breuer's version is used authoritatively for the reconstruction of the missing portions of the Aleppo Codex. The Keter Yerushalayim (כתר ירושלים, "Jerusalem Crown"), printed in Jerusalem in 2000, is a modern version of the Tanakh, based on the Aleppo Codex and the work of Breuer: it uses a newly designed typeface based on the calligraphy of the Codex and is based on its page-layout.[20]
When the Aleppo Codex was complete (until 1947), it followed the Tiberian textual tradition in the order of its books, similar to the Leningrad Codex, and which also matches the later tradition of Sephardic biblical manuscripts.
In the Aleppo Codex, the order of Ketubim is: Chronicles, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah.
The current text is missing almost the entire Torah (Genesis through most of Deuteronomy). It begins with the last word of Deuteronomy 28:17 (ומשארתך, "and your kneading trough"). After that, the books of Nebi'im appear in their traditional order (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve minor prophets). However, part of Amos after Amos 8:12, Obadiah, Jonah, and the beginning of Micah to 5:1 are missing. The Ketubim follow as above, but currently end at the last leaf with בנות ציון in Song of Songs 3:11 ("daughters of Zion..."). Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, and Ezra-Nehemiah are missing.
Leningrad Codex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leningrad_Codex
http://tanach.us/Tanach.xml
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Codex_Leningradensis
http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/wsrp/educational_site/biblical_manuscripts/LeningradCodex.shtml
http://www.seforimonline.org/seforimdb/index.php?table_name=seforim_database&function=details&where_field=id&where_value=264
http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/wsrp/educational_site/biblical_manuscripts/LeningradCodex.shtml
http://www.seforimonline.org/seforimdb/index.php?table_name=seforim_database&function=details&where_field=id&where_value=264
corrected against Aleppo Codex
In modern times, the Leningrad Codex is significant as the Hebrew text reproduced in Biblia Hebraica (1937) and Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (1977). It also serves scholars as a primary source for the recovery of details in the missing parts of theAleppo Codex.
In the Leningrad Codex, the order of the Ketuvim is: Chronicles, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah.
It's letter-text is not superb, however, and contradicts its own masoretic apparatus in many hundreds of places.
The Westminster Leningrad Codex is an online digital version of the Leningrad Codex maintained by the J. Alan Groves Center for Advanced Biblical Research at the Westminster Theological Seminary. This is a verified electronic version of BHS, with further proofreading and corrections. The online version includes transcription notes and tools for analyzing syntax.
The Leningrad Codex also served as the basis for two important modern Jewish editions of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh):
- The Dotan edition, which was distributed to soldiers in mass quantities as the official Tanakh of the Israel Defense Forces throughout the 1990s.
- The JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh (Philadelphia, 1999) and the various volumes of the JPS Torah Commentary and JPS Bible Commentary.
For minute masoretic details, however, Israeli and Jewish scholars have shown a marked preference for modern Hebrew editions based upon the Aleppo Codex. These editions use the Leningrad Codex as the most important source (but not the only one) for the reconstruction of parts of the Aleppo Codex that have been missing since 1947.
the earliest surviving manuscript of the nearly complete Bible in the Latin Vulgate version,[1] and is considered to be the most accurate copy of St. Jerome's text. It is missing the Book of Baruch
a collection of 972 texts discovered between 1946 and 1956 at Khirbet Qumran in the West Bank. They were found in caves about a mile inland from the northwest shore of the Dead Sea,
Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest Hebrew language manuscripts of the Bible were Masoretic texts dating to the 10th century, such as the Aleppo Codex. (Today, the oldest known extant manuscripts of the Masoretic Text date from approximately the 9th century.[108]) The biblical manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls push that date back a millennium to the 2nd century BCE.[109] Before this discovery, the earliest extant manuscripts of the Old Testament were manuscripts such as Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209 and Codex Sinaiticus (both dating from the 4th century) that were written in Greek.
identified with the ancient Jewish sect called the Essenes, although some recent interpretations have challenged this association and argue that the scrolls were penned by priests inJerusalem, Zadokites, or other unknown Jewish groups.[5][6] They composed the scrolls and ultimately hid them in the nearby caves during the Jewish Revolt sometime between 66 and 68 CE. The site of Qumran was destroyed and the scrolls never recovered. A number of arguments are used to support this theory.
- There are striking similarities between the description of an initiation ceremony of new members in the Community Rule and descriptions of the Essene initiation ceremony mentioned in the works of Flavius Josephus – a Jewish–Roman historian of the Second Temple Period.
A specific variation on the Qumran–Sectarian theory that has gained much recent popularity is the work of Lawrence H. Schiffman, who proposes that the community was led by a group of Zadokite priests (Sadducees).[43] The most important document in support of this view is the "Miqsat Ma'ase Ha-Torah" (4QMMT), which cites purity laws (such as the transfer of impurities) identical to those attributed in rabbinic writings to the Sadducees. 4QMMT also reproduces a festival calendar that follows Sadducee principles for the dating of certain festival days.
(1) some 40% of them are copies of texts from the Hebrew Bible,
(2) approximately another 30% of them are texts from the Second Temple Period and which ultimately were not canonized in the Hebrew Bible, like the Book of Enoch, Jubilees, the Book of Tobit, the Wisdom of Sirach, Psalms 152–155, etc.,
(3) the remaining roughly 30% of them are sectarian manuscripts of previously unknown documents that shed light on the rules and beliefs of a particular group or groups within greater Judaism, like the Community Rule, the War Scroll, the Pesher on Habakkuk and The Rule of the Blessing.[7]
Radiocarbon dating
Parchment from a number of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been carbon dated. The initial test performed in 1950 was on a piece of linen from one of the caves. This test gave an indicative dating of 33 CE plus or minus 200 years, eliminating early hypotheses relating the scrolls to the mediaeval period.[44] Since then two large series of tests have been performed on the scrolls themselves. The results were summarized by VanderKam and Flint, who said the tests give "strong reason for thinking that most of the Qumran manuscripts belong to the last two centuries BCE and the first century CE."[45]
Paleographic dating
Analysis of handwriting, a path of study known as palaeography, was applied to the text on the Dead Sea Scrolls by a variety of scholars in the field. Major linguistic analysis by Cross and Avigad dates fragments from 225 BCE to 50 CE.[46] These dates were determined by examining the size, variability, and style of the text.[47] The same fragments were later analyzed using radiocarbon date testing and were dated to an estimated range of 385 BCE to 82 CE with a 68% accuracy rate.[46]
The initial discovery, by Bedouin shepherd Muhammed Edh-Dhib, his cousin Jum'a Muhammed, and Khalil Musa, took place between November 1946 and February 1947
The original scrolls continued to change hands after the Bedouin left them in the possession of a third party until a sale could be arranged. (See Ownership)
In 1947 the original seven scrolls caught the attention of Dr. John C. Trever, of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), who compared the script in the scrolls to that of The Nash Papyrus, the oldest biblical manuscript then known, and found similarities between them. In March the 1948 Arab-Israeli War prompted the move of some of the scrolls to Beirut, Lebanon for safekeeping. On 11 April 1948, Millar Burrows, head of the ASOR, announced the discovery of the scrolls in a general press release.
Cave 1
Cave 1 was rediscovered on 28 January 1949, by Belgian United Nations observer Captain Phillipe Lippens and Arab Legion Captain Akkash el-Zebn. yielded discoveries of additional Dead Sea Scroll fragments, linen cloth, jars, and other artifacts
The original seven scrolls from Cave 1 at Qumran are: the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa), a second copy of Isaiah (1QIsab), the Community Rule Scroll (4QSa-j), the Pesher on Habakkuk (1QpHab), the War Scroll (1QM), the Thanksgiving Hymns(1QH), and the Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen).[19]
Cave 2
By February 1952, the Bedouin people had discovered 30 fragments in what was to be designated Cave 2.eventually yielded 300 fragments from 33 manuscripts, including fragments of Jubilees, the Wisdom of Sirach, and Ben Sira written in Hebrew
Cave 3
14 March 1952, the ASOR team discovered a third cave with fragments of Jubilees and the Copper Scroll
Cave 4
August 1952
xcavated from 22–29 September 1952 by Gerald Lankester Harding, Roland de Vaux, and Józef Milik
two hand-cut caves (4a and 4b),
ninety percent of the Dead Sea Scrolls and scroll fragments (approx. 15,000 fragments from 500 different texts), including 9–10 copies of Jubilees, along with 21 tefillin and 7 mezuzot.
Cave 5
Between September and December 1952 the fragments and scrolls of Caves 4, 5, and 6 were subsequently discovered by the ASOR teams
Cave 5 was discovered alongside Cave 6 in 1952, shortly after the discovery of Cave 4. Cave 5 produced approximately 25 manuscripts
Cave 6
Between September and December 1952 the fragments and scrolls of Caves 4, 5, and 6 were subsequently discovered by the ASOR teams
Cave 6 was discovered alongside Cave 5 in 1952, shortly after the discovery of Cave 4. Cave 6 contained fragments of about 31 manuscripts.[20]
List of groups of fragments collected from Wadi Qumran Cave 6
Cave 7
Cave 7 yielded fewer than 20 fragments of Greek documents, including 7Q2 (the "Letter of Jeremiah" = Baruch 6), 7Q5 (which became the subject of much speculation in later decades), and a Greek copy of a scroll of Enoch.[25][26][27] Cave 7 also produced several inscribed potsherds and jars.[28]
List of groups of fragments collected from Wadi Qumran Cave 7
Cave 8
Cave 8, along with caves 7 and 9, was one of the only caves that is accessible by passing through the settlement at Qumran. Carved into the southern end of the Qumran plateau, archaeologists excavated cave 8 in 1957.
Cave 8 produced five fragments: Genesis (8QGen), Psalms (8QPs), a tefillin fragment (8QPhyl), a mezuzah (8QMez), and a hymn (8QHymn).[29] Cave 8 also produced several tefillin cases, a box of leather objects, tons of lamps, jars, and the sole of a leather shoe.[28]
List of groups of fragments collected from Wadi Qumran Cave 8
Cave 9
Cave 9, along with caves 7 and 8, was one of the only caves that is accessible by passing through the settlement at Qumran. Carved into the southern end of the Qumran plateau, archaeologists excavated cave 9 in 1957.
There was only one fragment found in Cave 9:
Cave 10
In Cave 10 archaeologists found two ostraca with some writing on them, along with an unknown symbol on a grey stone slab:
With the monetary value of the scrolls rising as their historical significance was made more public, the Bedouins and the ASOR archaeologists accelerated their search for the scrolls separately in the same general area of Qumran, which was over 1kilometer in length. Between 1953 and 1956, Roland de Vaux led four more archaeological expeditions in the area to uncover scrolls and artifacts.[14]
Cave 11
The last cave, Cave 11, was discovered in 1956 and yielded the last fragments to be found in the vicinity of Qumran.
Cave 11 was discovered in 1956 and yielded 21 texts, some of which were quite lengthy. The Temple Scroll, so called because more than half of it pertains to the construction of the Temple of Jerusalem, was found in Cave 11, and is by far the longest scroll. It is now 26.7 feet (8.15 m) long. Its original length may have been over 28 feet (8.75 m). The Temple Scroll was regarded by Yigael Yadin as "The Torah According to the Essenes". On the other hand, Hartmut Stegemann, a contemporary and friend of Yadin, believed the scroll was not to be regarded as such, but was a document without exceptional significance. Stegemann notes that it is not mentioned or cited in any known Essene writing.[30]
Also in Cave 11, an escatological fragment about the biblical figure Melchizedek (11Q13) was found. Cave 11 also produced a copy of Jubilees.
According to former chief editor of the DSS editorial team John Strugnell, there are at least four privately owned scrolls from Cave 11, that have not yet been made available for scholars. Among them is a complete Aramaic manuscript of the Book of Enoch.[31]
List of groups of fragments collected from Wadi Qumran Cave 11:
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