Masoretic Text
The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; Hebrew: נֻסָּח הַמָּסוֹרָה) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in Rabbinic Judaism. The oldest known complete copy, the Leningrad Codex, dates from the early 11th century CE.
Quotes
[edit]- There is no need to defend the use of the Leningrad Codex B19A (L) as the basis for an edition of the Hebrew Bible, whatever one may think of its relationship to the Ben Asher text. P. Kahle's own views on the matter may be consulted in his book The Cairo Geniza (Oxford, 1959, 2nd edition). In any event, L is still "the oldest dated manuscript of the complete Hebrew Bible."
- Karl Elliger and Wilhelm Rudolph, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, "Foreword to the First Edition", p. xii. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft (1977). ISBN 3-438-05218-0.
- In BHK since the third edition, 𝕸 has represented the text of Ms. B 19A of the Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library of St. Petersburg, written in a.d. 1008 (L, Leningradensis; pl. 24). The fourth edition of Biblia Hebraica, the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS), edited by Karl Elliger and Wilhelm Rudolph, is also based on the same manuscript. … In BHK and BHS, then, we have a text that is centuries older than that of any previously printed edition. But even this manuscript which underlies BHK and BHS is remarkably recent when we consider the age of the Old Testament and compare it with the important fourth- and fifth-century manuscripts of the Greek Old and New Testaments. In fact, we do not have any Hebrew manuscript of the entire Old Testament written earlier than the tenth century.
- Ernst Würheim: The Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Biblia Hebraica, ch. 2, "The Masoretic Text", pp. 10–11. Second edition, translated by Erroll F. Rhodes. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (1995). ISBN 0-8028-0788-7.
- The oldest complete transcript of the Hebrew Bible that we know today is the Codex Leningradensis from the year 1008; almost a hundred years older, but unfortunately no longer complete, is the Aleppo Codex from 930. The Leningrad Codex and the Aleppo Codex are two prominent and exemplary instances of the so-called Masoretic Text, the version that was proclaimed definitive by Jewish scribes around 100 AD. Originally comprising only consonants, this text was provided with vowel marks as of about 700 AD. In this form, it was handed down further with meticulous care by the so-called Masoretes.
- "Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia" (archived), www.die-bibel.de
