Different Source Texts - Post #2 on Old Testament Manuscripts, Source Texts, and Textual Analysis

Different Source Texts

“All reliable translations of the Old Testament (OT, frequently called the Hebrew Bible - HB) into any language used today must be based on the ancient manuscripts that have survived to the present day. The important task of determining the Hebrew (most of the OT) and Aramaic (portions of Daniel, Ezra, and a few other verses) text most faithful to the original writings is a complex one because there is no document that dates to its biblical author (the autograph), but only carefully crafted, but not perfect, copies from later periods. Much of the prophetic writings, for instance, date from the 9th to the 6th centuries B.C., but the very oldest fragments of copies in Hebrew and Aramiac that exist come from the 2nd century B.C.

It was in the 3rd century B.C. that the Hebrew Bible was first translated into Greek; this so-called Septuagint is the oldest and most important indirect witness from that era for the wording of the Hebrew/ Aramaic text. Further ancient translations were later added, above all the translation into the common (“Vulgata”) Latin, the Syrian “Peshitta” and the Aramaic “Targum”.

The oldest direct witnesses for the text of the Hebrew Bible are the manuscripts found in 1947 and thereafter in the Judean Desert that had been hidden in caves near Qumran on the western edge of the Dead Sea. These ancient manuscripts include the remains of some 200 transcriptions of individual books of the Bible from the period between 150 B.C. and A.D. 70. Apart from one single transcription of the Book of Isaiah preserved in its entirety, the biblical texts from Qumran are mere fragments, on which in most cases a very limited number of legible words, often only a few characters, can be made out.

The oldest complete copy of the entire Hebrew Bible as we know it today is the Codex Leningradensis from the year A.D. 1008. Another ancient copy, the Aleppo Codex, dating from almost a hundred years earlier (A.D. 930), is unfortunately no longer complete. The Codex Leningradensis and the Aleppo Codex are two prime examples of the so-called Masoretic text.”

- Dr. Rolf Schäfer und Dr. Florian Voss Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/Intro-ScholarlyEditions-GBS_2.pdf