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(MT / 𝕸 / M)
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*the masoretic text is the authoritative ‘hebrew’ + ‘aramaic’ text of the ‘tanakh’ for ‘rabbinic judaism’*
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(however, ‘contemporary scholars’ seeking to understand the history of the hebrew bible’s text use a range of other sources)
(these include ‘greek’ + ‘syriac’ translations, ‘quotations’ from ‘rabbinic manuscripts’, the ‘samaritan pentateuch’ and others such as the “dead sea scrolls”)
(many of these are older than the “masoretic text” and often contradict it)
(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’ and ‘accentuation’ known as the “masorah”)
(the ‘masoretic text’ is widely used as the basis for translations of the ‘old testament’ in ‘protestant bibles’, and in recent years (since ‘1943’), for some versions of ‘catholic bibles’ in terms of ‘translation’, but not of ‘canon’)
(the ‘catholic church’ and ‘eastern orthodox churches’ continue to use the ‘canon’ used by the ‘hellenistic jews’ and ‘jesus of nazareth’ and which is referenced in the ‘new testament’ (called the ‘septuagint’), holding it to be ‘divinely inspired’, and ‘roman catholics’ have, as their ‘official version’ of ‘scripture’, the version translated by ‘saint jerome’ into ‘latin’, called the “vulgate,” based on the septuagint’s ‘canon’)
(in ‘modern times’, the ‘dead sea scrolls’ have shown the ‘masoretic text’ to be nearly ‘identical’ to some ‘texts’ of the ‘tanakh’ dating from ‘200 BCE’ but different from others)
(the 2000 years old ‘en-gedi scroll’ (found in ‘1970’ but which had not had its content reconstructed until recently), found that the ‘book of leviticus’ text in the ‘en-gedi scroll’ is 100% identical to the ‘hebrew text’ of the ‘book of leviticus’ in the ‘masoretic text’)
(the ‘en-gedi scroll’ is the first time a ‘biblical scroll’ has been discovered in an ancient synagogue’s ‘holy ark’, where it would have been stored for ‘prayers’, and not in ‘desert caves’ like the ‘dead sea scrolls’)
(the ‘masoretic text’ was 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 the ‘manuscripts’ of the ‘septuagint’, a ‘greek translation’ (about 1000 years older than the MT made in the ‘3rd’ to ‘2nd’ centuries BCE) of the ‘hebrew scriptures’ that was in popular use in ‘egypt’ and ‘israel’ (and was used in the ‘quotations’ in the ‘new testament’, especially by ‘paul the apostle’))
(the Hebrew word mesorah (מסורה, alt. מסורת) refers to the transmission of a tradition)
(in a very broad sense it can refer to the entire chain of “jewish tradition” (see ‘oral law’))
(this Jewish tradition is claimed (by Orthodox Judaism) to be unchanged and infallible)
(however when one looks at some of the discussions in the Talmud one can see that this tradition (mesorah) is not unchanged and infallible because the Talmud mentions different opinions and recollection of the law (“halacha”))
(moreover in reference to the Masoretic Text the word mesorah has a very specific meaning: the diacritic markings of the text of the Hebrew Bible and concise marginal notes in manuscripts (and later printings) of the Hebrew Bible which note textual details, usually about the precise spelling of words)
(the oldest extant manuscripts of the Masoretic Text date from approximately the 9th century CE)
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(the ‘aleppo codex’ (once the oldest known complete copy of the ‘masoretic text’, but now missing its ‘torah’ section) dates from the ’10th century’)
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