Your Bible Isn't As "Original" As You Think

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan. And

Dan Beecher I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things, Dan?

Dan Beecher Things are good. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Mm-hmm. I think it's gonna be really interesting.

Dan McClellan Excellent.

Dan Beecher Uh, we got a "What's that?" for everybody, and it's something that you have referenced on the show many times.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher It's something that we have, that we have, uh, made quick reference to, but we haven't really dive, dived, dove? D- divven, divver. And we... Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Ooh. We haven't, we haven't really given it the, uh, the, the long form discussion that I think it deserves, so I'm excited to talk about the Masoretes.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So should we just dive into it?

Dan McClellan I don't think we have any other choice.

Dan Beecher Other than, you know, we don't know what all of the forms of dive is. But we know this one, so we're gonna dive into "What's that?" All right, so what's that? It's the Masoretes/the Masoretic Text.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher That's, those are phrases... The Masoretic Text is a phrase that you have used many times.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Uh, and so, so let's, let's talk about who and what we're, we're getting into here.

Dan McClellan Yeah. The, the Masoretes are a group of scribes that were... Th- they basically produced the textual tradition that is considered most authoritative by the most Jewish folks, uh, at least in terms of those who are, are, are approaching the Hebrew Bible from a Jewish devotional point of view, as well as most scholars. So the Masoretic Text is considered the best single manuscript of, uh, the Hebrew Bible. Now, the, the Masoretic Text actually refers to a family of manuscripts, not just a single manuscript. But the, the best representative, the oldest complete representative of the Masoretic tradition is the Leningrad Codex, which dates to, like, 1008 CE. And-

Dan Beecher Okay. So, and so this is well into the Common Era. We are-

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah ...

Dan Beecher we are well past the writ- like, like centuries after the writing of any of these- Yeah ... the original composition of any of these texts.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And, and the Masoretic tradition, the Masoretic group, is usually dated to between around 500 CE and around 1000 CE. So the Leningrad Codex would be, like, the apex, the culmination of all of their work, but they started in the middle of the first millennium CE.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And-

Dan Beecher Who, who were they? You said they're scribes, but, like- Th- ... are they... Uh, is- was this just- They're,

Dan McClellan it's a- ...

Dan Beecher a tradition? Was it, like, a m- a, like, a monastic group, or, or like... Why, why are they called the Masoretes?

Dan McClellan Um-

Dan Beecher It's, it's, because it sounds like a group. It sounds like a, like an ethnic group or something, but...

Dan McClellan It, so it's, it's dominated by, um, some specific families, but, uh, and located either in Tiberias, which is a city on the western, uh, shore of the Sea of Galilee, or a couple of cities in, uh, modern-day Iraq along the- Oh ... um, along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Uh, so it's, there's a, there's one family within the Masore- It, so it's not, it's... I don't, I don't think you can call it an ethnic group, but it, it's more of, like, a tradition, but there are- Sure ... there are certainly, uh, representative families, just like, uh, folks who are... Yeah. The, there are just- ... there are prominent families. I'm not gonna go-

Dan Beecher You were about to, you were about to go to The Godfather, weren't you? No,

Dan McClellan not quite.

Dan Beecher The fi- the five families.

Dan McClellan Well, I was, I was trying to decide between that or, or the Five Boroughs, uh- Okay ... from a Kings of New York kind of, kind of, uh-

Dan Beecher Oh, sure, sure ...

Dan McClellan approach, or, or talking about Mormon wards that have- ... that have, like, the, the governing families.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Uh, but Aaron Ben Moses Ben Asher is considered one of the, uh, most prominent representatives of, of this school. Uh, and I think he, he dies before we get to, uh, 1000 CE, so, like, between 950 and 1000 CE. Uh, but then there was also, um, another named, uh, Ben Naphtali. And there are, I, I think there are slightly different textual traditions associated with these two different individuals who lived roughly contemporaneously. But yeah, this, this is something that's spread out, but they're... Basically, these people are all united in their desire to transmit the, uh, the manuscripts of, of the Hebrew Bible faithfully, but also, they do, they do two big things, uh, among the many things that they did. They developed a system of vocalization. So if, if you know, uh, about Hebrew, you probably know that there are no vowels that are written.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan The consonants that are written down do not have vowels. But as it began to be less and less commonly spoken, uh, natively spoken as a living language, it began to need some, some supplemental help so that you could understand precisely what was going on, what vowels were intended to be spoken.

Dan Beecher I guess I hadn't realized that it was, that, that the spoken language was falling so far out of use. Uh, did, did-

Dan McClellan That, the degree to which that's true is, is kind of debated, but I think most folks would say by the time of the turn of the era, so, like, the first century CE, people probably spoke Aramaic more than they spoke Hebrew. There are certainly scholars who will argue that Hebrew was still a thriving, living language in this time period, and we have Mishnaic Hebrew, and we have, like, we have poetry from the medieval period written in Hebrew. The degree to which it became a dead language is, is debated Certainly there were people who were speaking it. It might have become more of a liturgical-

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan -language, somewhat like, uh, Ecclesiastical Latin or something like that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It m- I, I'm not sure. I'm sure there are people who have stronger feelings than I do about it, but I think it is, uh, it is still a little hazy, but the-

Dan Beecher So is modern Hebrew that is spoken in Israel, is that a revival of a, of a language?

Dan McClellan That is a revival. In fact-

Dan Beecher Oh

Dan McClellan ... it's considered the most successful, uh, revived language of all time.

Dan Beecher I did not realize that. I-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... I don't know why I, uh, why I, that had escaped me, but that's really fascinating.

Dan McClellan Well, and, you know, when you had the, the Jewish diaspora where people were spread all over the place, and you had a lot of Jewish folks who were speaking Russian, and you had a lot-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... of Jewish folks who were speaking German, and you had a lot of Jewish folks who were speaking Portuguese, and you had a lot of folks who were speaking Yiddish-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... which is, um, r- related to German. Uh, and when there is a desire to recreate a Jewish homeland, uh, it was like, "Hey, if, if we're going to be a single people and, and have a homeland, then we need to be speaking a single language." So, uh, Zionism sits at the root of the development of, of modern Hebrew to some degree. Um, and, and that's not to, to say there's anything wrong with the develop- the revival of, of the Hebrew language. But-

Dan Beecher No

Dan McClellan ... the, the rationale was a single people should be identifiable by a single language, and so there was an intentional effort to revive, uh, Hebrew.

Dan Beecher Well, and as you say, it was, it, it was probably carried along at least liturgically in most of these traditions.

Dan McClellan Yeah, I, uh, literarily, uh, de- definitely literarily to some degree, definitely, uh, liturgically to some degree. The degree to which, you know, mothers would speak to their children in Hebrew, um, I'm sure that was going on, but I don't know how prominent it was.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But it w- but it was a slightly, um... You know, he- all languages evolve, so, so Hebrew was evolving over this time period. However, when we go back to prior to the Masoretes-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... there, uh, the first five centuries of the Common Era, there were a few different attempts to try to create a, um, a system of, of vowel notations. So how to add vowels so we can get a clearer idea of what precise words are being intended by these, by these consonants. So you have a Babylonian system that develops, and there are old manuscripts with, um, prayers or, or parts of the Hebrew Bible that are written in the, the, with the Babylonian notation, which is entirely written above the characters, and they're like l- horizontal lines, vertical lines. There's one that's kind of a, a diagonal line with a little smaller line going off of it, and then the series of dots.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Uh, there's a Palestinian, uh, system that also develops, but it's really the Tiberian system. So, um, Ti- the Tiberius, Tiberian system would've been the system developed by the Masoretes in Tiberias, that city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, and that's the one that dominates and ultimately becomes what is considered authoritative these days for most people who are engaging with the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew. And so that's one of the main contributions of the Masoretes. Just the preservation of the text is, is probably the most significant, but the, the development of and perfection of, as, as some people like to say, uh, the vocalization tradition is, is probably the next largest contribution. But then they did an awful lot of analysis of the text, and, and there's a saying that anything that could be counted was counted. So when you look in a cri- critical edition of the Hebrew Bible, there are a couple of different collections of notes, uh, that are referred to as the Masorah. You have the Masorah Parva and the Masorah Magna.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Uh, large Ma- Masorah and small Masorah, and these are basically just annotations talking about how frequently things are occurring. So they counted up every word, every word form, and so, uh, you'll occasionally see, uh, a, a little letter in the, in the margin of the Leningrad Codex, and that indicates this f- exact form of this word only occurs once. This is the only occurrence of that exact form of the word. There are, uh, they also introduce the Ketiv and Qere system, which is basically like, uh, they're doing their best to try not to alter the consonants of the manuscripts at all.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan But there are times when it's very clear that the consonants are incorrect.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Or, or they don't want people to read out loud what the consonants say because it could be a vulgarity or it could be considered blasphemous or something like that.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan And so you have in, in many cases-- Or, or it could be that the, the vowels that they've added, they would prefer you not pronounce those vowels. They think it was probably originally something else. So th- they're trying to transmit the tradition as they received it, but they are adding notes where they think, where they think like, "Hey, we, we actually think it's probably was intended to be pronounced this way." And so the Qere, which would mean read, uh, or s- or said out loud, that is sometimes, uh, annotated in the margins, and so the reader knows, okay, the Ketiv means written.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan So that is what is in the text, and then the Qere would be where they suggest you pronounce it a different way.

Dan Beecher Huh.

Dan McClellan And then you have Qere Perpetua, which are the things that you always pronounce differently. So the divine name, for instance, you would never pronounce. You would always, um, say, I, I, Adonai is one substitution. Hashem is another substitution. Uh, and then there, you know, like the name Jerusalem is, uh, there's a-- It's pronounced slightly different from, from how it's spelled in the, in the consonantal text. So they did that, and then- They also contributed a, uh, system of, uh, cantillation marks, which was intended to, uh, aid the reading, uh, the liturgical reading, which was more of a-- I don't want to say a song, but the, the intent was to read it with, uh, specific intonations and, and, uh, it was, you know, a cantor was sup-supposed to read it a specific way.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So it is a little more sing-songy. You're supposed to, uh, accent things a certain way. You're supposed to keep certain groups of words together and separate other groups of words.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan So you also have the addition of these cantillation marks. So if you look at a critical edition of the Hebrew Bible, or if you look at the Leningrad Codex, it can kind of be a mess. Uh, because you've got-- you have all these consonants, but then you've got a system of vocalization written around the consonants, and then you have cantillation marks written around the consonants, and then a lot of critical editions will also have footnote markers- ... to tell you about, like, all variant readings and stuff. So you've got the text. You'll have one set of marginal notes. You'll have another set of marginal notes beneath the text, and then you'll have the critical apparatus, which is, like, the modern scholarly notes, and then the text is just, uh, you know, a bunch of different a-annotation systems. So it can be a little overwhelming.

Dan Beecher This, this is what, this is what happens when you get a whole bunch of very obsessive people, like, obsessing over a thing for 500 years.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher You're just-- You're gonna get every note possible in the world.

Dan McClellan And, and there are-- Yeah, we've, we've got other manuscripts that are-- come from the Masoretes that are earlier. For instance, there is a codex that is probably, uh, about 100 years earlier than the Leningrad Codex called the Aleppo Codex.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan But it's not complete. It's missing a, a large chunk of the Pentateuch. Uh, some of it was lost in a fire, and every now and then, a chunk of the Aleppo Codex will, you know, somebody will be like, "Found it in my attic." Um, so-

Dan Beecher Oh, really? Okay.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Um, and, you know, close comparison shows that of the hundreds and thou- hundreds of thousands of vowels, like, the-- it differs only in, like, the use of a matreg, which is kind of one of these cantillation marks.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan And so, like, the, the differences are so, so minimal.

Dan Beecher Oh, wow.

Dan McClellan Uh, like, like, people talk about how, how well the, the manuscripts show the, the Bible has been preserved. The Masoretes, w- like, if, if, if we wanna talk about people who were very clearly very, very committed to their craft, the Masoretes, I think, uh, are-- stand head and shoulders above any other known scribal communities. Uh-

Dan Beecher Yeah, that makes sense to me. I-- And it-- What-- You know, one of the things that we've talked about when it comes to the Masoretic Text is just that, you know, you mentioned that they invented the system for writing out vowels, which becomes really important. Did they ma-- They must have had to make interpretive calls.

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah.

Dan Beecher Because w- you know, we've talked about how, how many words you change the vowel, you change the meaning. I mean, that's the-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... that's true in, in all languages. You know, if, if you-- a cat versus a kit versus a cot, those are different things. But, I, I mean, that could, that could have huge implications theologically and, uh, and sort of interpretively, uh, in terms of, like, you know. They-- So, so yeah. They m-- I guess, I, I guess my question is just how much of it was them just deciding which was the right vowel or how much was traditionally handed to them or, or, you know.

Dan McClellan I, I think the, uh, the reading tradition would've been fairly firmly in place.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So I think an, an awful lot of it was them just copying down the tradition as they received it. No doubt there would've been fuzzy edges to that, and, and no doubt there would've been controversial passages. But we can see that when we look at the Septuagint, the Septuagint helps us determine how they would've pronounced things based on how things were translated, as well as, uh, a lot of stuff in the Septuagint is transliterated. If there was a Hebrew word that they thought was a name or they just didn't understand, they would transliterate it, and, and that would help us see how they were pronouncing it. And there is an awful lot of correspondence between the Septuagint, which is coming from 1,000 years before the Leningrad Codex.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan There's an awful lot of correspondence between the two. Now, there are divergences as well. Uh, and so one of the fascinating things to do in the Biblical, Hebrew Bible scholarship is to look at those differences and, and try to figure out what's going on in the reading traditions. When did they change? Why did they change? And, uh, and try to reconstruct whose reading is, is likely more original. And there are a lot of scholars who would argue that when you look at all the differences between how the Septuagint translators are reading the text and how the Masoretes are vocalizing the text, while there is an awful lot of correspondence, uh, where there are differences, I think a lot of scholars would say the Masoretes are probably correct more frequently than the Septuagint is correct. Now, that's just with vocalization, 'cause when it comes to what the consont- what consonants were there, there are a lot of differences there as well.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan O- One of the things I find hilarious is when, when apologists get up and say that, you know, "We discovered the Great Isaiah Scroll, and, and, you know, it, it blew scholars away. They were just so shocked that it was, that it matched so closely the Masoretic Text." It's like the Great Isaiah Scroll is not even the best transmitted Book of Isaiah among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Like, there, there are other manuscripts of Isaiah that are far more faithful to what we find in the Masoretic Text. But these, these apologists never talk about, like, Jeremiah, 'cause we have multiple different manuscripts of Jeremiah as well. Uh, they're very fragmentary. They're very small, but some of them show that the Septuagint, uh, reading of Jeremiah, which is one-sixth shorter than the Book of Jeremiah in the Masoretic Text, is, uh, is preserved in, in some of these Hebrew manuscripts.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan Which suggests to a lot of scholars that the Septuagint version of Jeremiah was earlier than what we now have in the Masoretic Text, that the Masoretic Text reading is, is later, secondary. Now, we have some manuscripts of Jeremiah at Qumran that's witness to the longer Masoretic readings as well. So it's like, what do you, what do you do with this? When-- Which is more original? How and why did it change? There's even some changes in order of the verses, uh, between the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text. So it, it's just a giant mess, and I, and I and a lot of other people think that trying to pick apart this knot is just some of the most exciting research- ... that most people would just find-- be bored to tears by, by- ... what's going on in this. But, um, but we have... You know, you, you'll... And you've been to SBL.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan You could go to SBL, and you can, you can find something, uh, where it's talking about- ... you know, just one word in the-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... Masoretic tradition, and there will be whole papers just on that one word or one vowel change or something like that. So the, the tradition of the Masoretes lives on in the spirits of a lot of people who are just fascinated endlessly by the minutiae of, uh, textual transmission of the Bible, and other texts- So-

Dan Beecher ... that... So. So the Masoretes weren't, uh... They, they weren't a, sort of a clerical class. They weren't-- They, they, they were, they were meant to be just sort of scribes trying diligently to transmit the o- the, the old texts rather than, uh, rather than, you know, rabbis who were, who were there to, to interpret or there to, like, there... Is, is that right?

Dan McClellan Uh, it is de- definitely more scholarly a community than ecclesiastical.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Um, but, but certainly there, there's kind of, uh... It's more of a spectrum than a dichotomy, I think, because you would, would've certainly have had people with authority among the, the Masoretes as well. And, and the scribe scholars would've been considered to have their own kind of authority-

Dan Beecher Okay

Dan McClellan ... that was, was not quite the same as ecclesiastical authority. And there are, uh, there are debates. There are some folks who think that the Masoretes were, um, were Karaites, which is kind of a minority branch of Judaism-

Dan Beecher Hmm

Dan McClellan ... that, uh, is looked down upon by, by some other, uh, groups within Judaism. And there are a lot of people who say, "No, no way on Earth that they, they were Karaites." So we don't know exactly the, um, their relationship to centralized authority, uh, and that kind of thing. But, um, there, there are different possibilities. But, but yeah, the, the Masoretes, when we refer to the Masoretes, generally it's referring to a group that is united by their scholarship and their scribal, scribal school, scribal training, scribal tradition-

Dan Beecher Okay

Dan McClellan ... uh, more so than, uh, any kind of liturgical or, um, ecclesiastical authority.

Dan Beecher All right. Well, there you go. Now, now we know what we're talking about when, when you, when you start talking about the, the Masoretic Text versus the Septuagint versus whatever. Uh, I think, I think that'll, uh, that, that'll be a good primer. We can, we can point people to this, to this episode when they're like, "What are you talking about?" Just go back and watch that one.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

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Dan McClellan Bye, everybody.