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84-600: The LSB is a direct update of the NASB 1995 edition that "honors and upholds the NASB tradition, and endeavors to more fully implement its translation philosophy." The translators of the LSB used the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek sources to review every verse in the translation for accuracy. Any changes made in the LSB from the NASB 1995 were made for "greater consistency in word usage, accuracy in grammatical structure, and tightening phrasing." The Hebrew text used for this translation

168-410: A completely satisfactory solution. There are four words having one of their letters suspended above the line. One of them, מ שה , is due to an alteration of the original משה out of reverence for Moses ; rather than say that Moses's grandson became an idolatrous priest, a suspended letter nun ( נ ) was inserted to turn Mosheh into Menasheh ( Manasseh ). The origin of the other three

252-633: A finer pen) and frequently the Masorah. During the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries the Franco-German school of Tosafists influenced in the development and spread of Masoretic literature. Gershom ben Judah , his brother Machir ben Judah , Joseph ben Samuel Bonfils (Tob 'Elem) of Limoges , Rabbeinu Tam (Jacob ben Meïr), Menahem ben Perez of Joigny , Perez ben Elijah of Corbeil , Judah ben Isaac Messer Leon , Meïr Spira, and Meir of Rothenburg made Masoretic compilations, or additions to

336-518: A perfect text sanctified in its consonantal base quickly spread throughout the Jewish communities via supportive statements in Halakha , Aggadah , and Jewish thought; and with it increasingly forceful strictures that a deviation in even a single letter would make a Torah scroll invalid. Very few manuscripts are said to have survived the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE . This drastically reduced

420-622: A reversed nun is found referred to as a nun hafucha by the masoretes. In some earlier printed editions, they are shown as the standard nun upside down or rotated, because the printer did not want to bother to design a character to be used only nine times. The recent scholarly editions of the Masoretic Text show the reversed nun as described by the masoretes. In some manuscripts, however, other symbols are occasionally found instead. These are sometimes referred to in rabbinical literature as simaniyot (markers). The primary set of inverted nuns

504-597: A system of abbreviations (e.g. an introductory example in the book states that the word "והקריבו" from Lev 1:15 has the note "Hr10s0 קרב" in the apparatus which means that the word is a " Hiphil suffix conjugation third masculine singular verb with a wāv retentive and a third masculine singular pronominal suffix of the root קרב" ). It also has a 50-page appendix listing paradigm -tables for strong and weak verbal roots and noun suffixes. The bible scholar Emanuel Tov has criticised BHS somewhat for having errors, and for correcting errors in later editions without informing

588-455: A thought which some of the readers might expect them to express. The assumed emendations are of four general types: Among the earliest technical terms used in connection with activities of the Scribes are the mikra Soferim and ittur Soferim . In the geonic schools, the first term was taken to signify certain vowel-changes which were made in words in pause or after the article; the second,

672-829: Is an edition of the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible as preserved in the Leningrad Codex , and supplemented by masoretic and text-critical notes. It is the fourth edition in the Biblia Hebraica series started by Rudolf Kittel and is published by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft (German Bible Society ) in Stuttgart . The work has been published in 15 fascicles from 1968 to 1976 according to this release schedule taken from

756-420: Is based entirely on Ben Asher: they are all eclectic. Aside from Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali, the names of several other Masorites have come down; but, perhaps with the exception of one—Phinehas, the head of the academy, who is supposed by modern scholars to have lived about 750—neither their time, their place, nor their connection with the various schools is known. Most scholars conclude that Aaron ben Asher

840-545: Is concise in style with a profusion of abbreviations, requiring a considerable amount of knowledge for their full understanding. It was quite natural that a later generation of scribes would no longer understand the notes of the Masoretes and consider them unimportant; by the late medieval period they were reduced to mere ornamentation of the manuscripts. It was Jacob ben Chayyim who restored clarity and order to them. In most manuscripts, there are some discrepancies between

924-469: Is doubtful. According to some, they are due to mistaken majuscular letters; according to others, they are later insertions of originally omitted weak consonants. In fifteen passages within the Bible, some words are stigmatized; i.e., dots appear above the letters. The significance of the dots is disputed. Some hold them to be marks of erasure; others believe them to indicate that in some collated manuscripts

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1008-469: Is found surrounding the text of Numbers 10:35–36. The Mishna notes that this text is 85 letters long and dotted. This demarcation of this text leads to the later use of the inverted nun markings. Saul Lieberman demonstrated that similar markings can be found in ancient Greek texts where they are also used to denote 'short texts'. During the Medieval period, the inverted nuns were actually inserted into

1092-523: Is largely a reworking of the Tiberias . Levita compiled likewise a vast Masoretic concordance, Sefer ha-Zikronot , which still lies in the National Library at Paris unpublished. The study is indebted also to R. Meïr b. Todros ha-Levi (RaMaH), who, as early as the 13th century, wrote his Sefer Massoret Seyag la-Torah (correct ed. Florence, 1750); to Menahem Lonzano , who composed a treatise on

1176-529: Is our Lord and master (2 Cor 4:5), and we are His slaves (Rom 1:1; Phil 1:1). This underscores His great redemption in buying believers from slavery to sin (Rom 6:16). This also underscores the believer's absolute surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 6:16-17). A consistent translation of doulos, in effect, sharpens the very nature of the Christian life. One of the distinctive features of the NASB

1260-451: Is predominantly found in poetry and praise. Another significant translation in the LSB is the Greek word doulos , which the LSB always renders as "slave". This is opposed to many other modern English Bible translations that render it as "servant". The LSB translators defended this decision for consistency as follows: The NT has a variety of terms that refer to the individuals who serve under

1344-687: The Biblia Hebraica Kittel the BHS adds the letters samekh " ס " (for סתומה, setumah: "closed portion") and " פ " (for פתוחה, petuchah: "open portion") into the text to indicate blank spaces in the Leningrad Codex, which divide the text into sections. One more difference to the Leningrad Codex is the book order: the Books of Chronicles have been moved to the end as it appears in common Hebrew bibles, even though it precedes Psalms in

1428-571: The Masora . The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia is meant to be an exact copy of the Masoretic Text as recorded in the Leningrad Codex . According to the introductory prolegomena of the book, the editors have "accordingly refrained from removing obvious scribal errors" (these have then been noted in the critical apparatus). Diacritics like the Silluq and Meteg which were missing in the Leningrad Codex also have not been added. Like its predecessor

1512-696: The New American Bible and the New Jerusalem Bible . Some Christian denominations instead prefer translations of the Septuagint as it matches quotations in the New Testament . The oldest manuscript fragments of the final Masoretic Text, including vocalications and the masorah, date from around the 9th century. The oldest-known complete copy, the Leningrad Codex , dates from the early 11th century. The Aleppo Codex , once

1596-876: The Samaritans in Samaritan Hebrew . Fragments of an ancient 2nd–3rd-century manuscript of the Book of Leviticus found near an ancient synagogue's Torah ark in Ein Gedi have identical wording to the Masoretic Text. The Masoretic Text is the basis for most Protestant translations of the Old Testament such as the King James Version , English Standard Version , New American Standard Bible , and New International Version . After 1943 , it has also been used for some Catholic Bibles , such as

1680-508: The mas'sora . Referring to the Masoretic Text, masorah specifically means the diacritic markings of the text of the Jewish scriptures and the concise marginal notes in manuscripts (and later printings) of the Tanakh which note textual details, usually about the precise spelling of words. It was primarily copied, edited, and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between

1764-585: The 3rd century BCE, contain versions of the text which have some differences with today's Hebrew Bible. The Septuagint (a Koine Greek translation made in the third and second centuries BCE) and the Peshitta (a Syriac translation made in the second century CE) occasionally present notable differences from the Masoretic Text, as does the Samaritan Pentateuch , the text of the Torah preserved by

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1848-707: The 7th and 10th centuries of the Common Era (CE). The oldest known complete copy, the Leningrad Codex , dates from the early 11th century CE. The differences attested to in the Dead Sea Scrolls indicate that multiple versions of the Hebrew scriptures already existed by the end of the Second Temple period . Which is closest to a theoretical Urtext is disputed, as is whether such a singular text ever existed. The Dead Sea Scrolls, dating to as early as

1932-643: The BHS called Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: A Reader's Edition (abbreviated as the BHS Reader ) was published by the German Bible Society and Hendrickson Publishers . This edition features the same Hebrew text as the regular BHS, but without the Masora on the side margins and with a "Lexical and Grammatical Apparatus" on the bottom of the page replacing the critical apparatus of the BHS. The edition defines an English translation to every word in

2016-652: The Dead Sea Scrolls and Peshitta read somewhat in-between the Masoretic Text and the old Greek. However, 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. According to Lawrence Schiffman , 60% can be classed as being of proto-Masoretic type, and a further 20% Qumran style with a basis in proto-Masoretic texts, compared to 5% proto- Samaritan type, 5% Septuagintal type, and 10% non-aligned. Joseph Fitzmyer noted

2100-634: The Dead Sea scrolls showed that "there was indeed a Hebrew text-type on which the Septuagint-translation was based and which differed substantially from the received MT." The scrolls show numerous small variations in orthography , both as against the later Masoretic Text, and between each other. It is also evident from the notings of corrections and of variant alternatives that scribes felt free to choose according to their personal taste and discretion between different readings. The text of

2184-493: The English translation of the Old Testament for the King James Version (though not always followed). Next to Ibn Adoniyah, the critical study of the Masorah has been most advanced by Elia Levita , who published his famous "Massoret ha-Massoret" in 1538. The Tiberias of the elder Johannes Buxtorf (1620) made Levita's researches more accessible to a Christian audience. The eighth introduction to Walton's Polyglot Bible

2268-541: The Greek of Aquila of Sinope and Theodotion and what we now know as the Masoretic Text are minimal. Relatively small variations between different Hebrew texts in use still clearly existed though, as witnessed by differences between the present-day Masoretic Text and versions mentioned in the Gemara , and often even halachic midrashim based on spelling versions which do not exist in the current Masoretic Text. The current received text finally achieved predominance through

2352-603: The Hebrew into the Greek; rather they testify to a different pre-Christian form of the Hebrew text". On the other hand, some of the fragments conforming most accurately to the Masoretic Text were found in Cave ;4. Tannaitic sources relate that a standard copy of the Hebrew Bible was kept in the court of the Second Temple for the benefit of copyists and that there were paid correctors of biblical books among

2436-464: The Hebrew word masorah "tradition" . Originally masoret , a word found in Book of Ezekiel 20:37 (there from אסר "to bind" for "fetters"). According to the majority of scholars, including Wilhelm Bacher , the form of the Ezekiel word masoret "fetters" was applied by the Masoretes to the מסר root meaning "to transmit", for masoret "tradition." (See also Aggadah § Etymology .) Later,

2520-553: The Kethiv-Qere readings and more. These observations are also the result of a passionate zeal to safeguard the accurate transmission of the sacred text. Even though often cited as very exact, the Masoretic "frequency notes" in the margin of Codex Leningradiensis contain several errors. The Masorah magna , in measure, is an expanded Masorah parva . Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) includes an apparatus referring

2604-725: The Latin prolegomena in the book. The processing and development of the Masoretic annotations and notes within all editions of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia was the privilege of Gérard E. Weil . He also released the book Massorah Gedolah iuxta codicem Leningradensem B 19a at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in 1971, which is the very first Edition of the Masora Magna, what gives an idea of his unique expertise in relation to

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2688-540: The Lockman Foundation. The LSB website states that it "also went through an extensive review process from a team that consists of scholars and pastors from all around the world" and "was reviewed by a team of 70+ scholars, pastors, and every-day NASB readers... [to ensure] readers from all walks of life can easily engage and interact with the text." Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia , abbreviated as BHS or rarely BH ,

2772-409: The Masorah into the margin, he compiled at the close of his Bible a concordance of the Masoretic glosses for which he could not find room in a marginal form, and added an elaborate introduction – the first treatise on the Masorah ever produced. Due to its wide distribution, and in spite of its many errors, this work is frequently considered as the textus receptus of the Masorah. It was also used for

2856-462: The Masorah may be divided into three periods: (1) creative period, from its beginning to the introduction of vowel-signs; (2) reproductive period, from the introduction of vowel-signs to the printing of the Masorah (1525); (3) critical period, from 1525 to the present time. The materials for the history of the first period are scattered remarks in Talmudic and Midrashic literature, in

2940-434: The Masoretes included a standard division of the text into books, sections, paragraphs, verses, and clauses; fixing of the orthography, pronunciation, and cantillation; introduction or final adoption of the square characters with the five final letters ; some textual changes to guard against blasphemy (though these changes may pre-date the Masoretes – see Tikkune Soferim below); enumeration of letters, words, verses, etc., and

3024-539: The Masoretic Concordance. The Small Masorah consists of brief notes with reference to marginal readings, to statistics showing the number of times a particular form is found in Scripture, to full and defective spelling, and to abnormally written letters. The Large Masorah is more copious in its notes. The Final Masorah comprises all the longer rubrics for which space could not be found in the margin of

3108-510: The Masoretic notes are those that detail the Qere and Ketiv that are located in the Masorah parva in the outside margins of BHS. Given that the Masoretes would not alter the sacred consonantal text, the Kethiv-Qere notes were a way of "correcting" or commenting on the text for any number of reasons (grammatical, theological, aesthetic, etc.) deemed important by the copyist. The earliest tasks of

3192-533: The Masoretic notes is primarily Aramaic but partly Hebrew. The Masoretic annotations are found in various forms: (a) in separate works, e.g., the Oklah we-Oklah ; (b) in the form of notes written in the margins and at the end of codices. In rare cases, the notes are written between the lines. The first word of each biblical book is also as a rule surrounded by notes. The latter are called the Initial Masorah;

3276-450: The NASB was its reliability and fidelity to the original languages, and the LSB seeks to be an improvement upon it "while simultaneously preserving its faithful legacy." One significant departure from the NASB 1995 is the rendering of the tetragrammaton YHWH (rendered as " Jehovah " in the original American Standard Version ). The NASB rendered it as "LORD" or "GOD" in all capitals, but the LSB renders it as " Yahweh " or "Yah" depending on

3360-472: The Scribes" ( tikkune Soferim ; Midrash Genesis Rabbah xlix. 7), assuming that the Scribes actually made the changes. This view was adopted by the later Midrash and by the majority of Masoretes. In Masoretic works these changes are ascribed to Ezra ; to Ezra and Nehemiah ; to Ezra and the Soferim ; or to Ezra, Nehemiah, Zechariah , Haggai , and Baruch . All these ascriptions mean one and the same thing: that

3444-524: The Temple court, at variance with each other. The differences between the three were resolved by majority decision. This may describe a previous period, although Solomon Zeitlin argues it is not historical. An emphasis on minute details of words and spellings, already used among the Pharisees as basis for argumentation, reached its height with the example of Rabbi Akiva (died 135 CE). The idea of

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3528-735: The Text-Critical Masorah. The close relation which existed in earlier times (from the Soferim to the Amoraim inclusive) between the teacher of tradition and the Masorete, both frequently being united in one person, accounts for the Exegetical Masorah. Finally, the invention and introduction of a graphic system of vocalization and accentuation gave rise to the Grammatical Masorah. The most important of

3612-501: The Torah of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (Bibal, 1994); Christopher Dost, The Sub-Loco Notes in the Torah of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (Gorgias, 2016). Footnotes record possible corrections to the Hebrew text. Many are based on the Samaritan Pentateuch , the Dead Sea Scrolls and on early Bible translations ("versions") such as the Septuagint , Vulgate and Peshitta . Others are conjectural emendations . The order of

3696-467: The authority of another. Doulos denotes a very specific form of servitude: slavery. The NT uses doulos to describe an individual who is totally subordinate to a master (cf. Matt 8:9; 24:46; 2 Pet 2:19) and even owned by that master (Philem 16-19), in contrast to one who is freed (Gal 3:28). For this reason, the NASB already translated the vast majority of this term as slave. The LSB made this consistent, which brings out how believers are to relate to Christ. He

3780-496: The benefits of this decision, stating that "Capitalization aids in two main ways. First, it is a way to show honor to God who is greater than man. Second, it helps the reader track with the author, making clear exactly to whom the pronoun refers." The translation work was done by a group of scholars from The Master's Seminary and was sponsored by the John MacArthur Charitable Trust in partnership with

3864-532: The biblical books generally follows the codex, even for the Ketuvim , where that order differs from most common printed Hebrew bibles. Thus the Book of Job comes after Psalms and before Proverbs, and the Megillot are in the order Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations and Esther. The only difference is with Chronicles . The Torah : The Nevi'im : The Ketuvim In September 2014 an edition of

3948-458: The cancellation in a few passages of the "vav" conjunctive, where it had been wrongly read by some. The objection to such an explanation is that the first changes would fall under the general head of fixation of pronunciation, and the second under the head of Qere and Ketiv (i.e. "What is read" and "What is written"). Various explanations have, therefore, been offered by ancient as well as modern scholars without, however, succeeding in furnishing

4032-596: The changes were assumed to have been made by the Men of the Great Assembly . The term tikkun Soferim ( תקון סופרים ) has been understood by different scholars in various ways. Some regard it as a correction of biblical language authorized by the Soferim for homiletical purposes. Others take it to mean a mental change made by the original writers or redactors of Scripture; i.e. the latter shrank from putting in writing

4116-551: The codex. The BHS is composed of the three traditional divisions of the Hebrew Scriptures: the Torah (תורה "instruction"), Neviim (נבאים "prophets"), and the Ketuvim (כתבים "writings"). In the margins are Masoretic notes . These are based on the codex, but have been heavily edited to make them more consistent and easier to understand. Even so, whole books have been written to explain these notes themselves. Some of

4200-476: The differences between the two are found in more or less complete Masoretic lists and in quotations in David Ḳimḥi, Norzi, and other medieval writers. The differences between Ben Naphtali and Ben Asher number about 875, nine-tenths of which refer to the placing of the accents, while the rest relate to vowels and consonantal spelling. The differences between the two Masoretes do not represent solely personal opinions;

4284-550: The first mention of such notes is found in the case of R. Meïr (c. 100–150 CE). Early rabbinic sources, from around 200 CE, mention several passages of Scripture in which the conclusion is inevitable that the ancient reading must have differed from that of the present text. The explanation of this phenomenon is given in the expression "Scripture has used euphemistic language" ( כנה הכתוב ), i.e. to avoid anthropomorphism and anthropopathism . Rabbi Simon ben Pazzi (3rd century) calls these readings "emendations of

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4368-407: The following regarding the findings at Qumran Cave 4 in particular: "Such ancient recensional forms of Old Testament books bear witness to an unsuspected textual diversity that once existed; these texts merit far greater study and attention than they have been accorded till now. Thus, the differences in the Septuagint are no longer considered the result of a poor or tendentious attempt to translate

4452-558: The marginal Masorah and the final Masorah. The category of marginal Masorah is further divided into the Masorah parva (small Masorah) in the outer side margins and the Masorah magna (large Masorah), traditionally located at the top and bottom margins of the text. The Masorah parva is a set of statistics in the outer side margins of the text. Beyond simply counting the letters, the Masorah parva consists of word-use statistics, similar documentation for expressions or certain phraseology, observations on full or defective writing, references to

4536-586: The nation of Israel. Such a dynamic is a prevalent characteristic of the Scriptures as Yahweh appears in the OT over 6,800 times. In addition to Yahweh, the full name of God, the OT also includes references to God by a shorter version of His name, Yah. By itself, God's name "Yah" may not be as familiar, but the appearance of it is recognizable in Hebrew names and words (e.g. Zechar-iah, meaning Yah remembers, and Hallelu-jah, meaning praise Yah!). God's shortened name "Yah"

4620-443: The notes are marked sub loco ("in this place"), meaning that there appears to be some problem, often that they contradict the text. The editors never published any explanation of what the problems were, or how they might be resolved. The sub loco notes do not necessarily explain interesting text variants; they are, in the vast majority, only notes on inaccurate word countings/frequencies. See Daniel S. Mynatt, The Sub Loco Notes in

4704-569: The notes on the side margins or between the columns are called the Small ( Masora parva or Mp) or Inner Masorah (Masora marginalis); and those on the lower and upper margins, the Large or Outer Masorah ( Masora magna or Mm[Mas.M]). The name "Large Masorah" is applied sometimes to the lexically arranged notes at the end of the printed Bible, usually called the Final Masorah, ( Masora finalis ), or

4788-448: The number of variants in circulation and also gave a new urgency that the text must be preserved. Few manuscripts survive from this era, but a short Leviticus fragment recovered from the ancient En-Gedi Scroll , carbon-dated to the 3rd or 4th century CE, is completely identical to the consonantal Masoretic Text preserved today. New Greek translations were also made. Unlike the Septuagint, large-scale deviations in sense between

4872-618: The officers of the Temple. The Letter of Aristeas claims that a model codex was sent to Ptolemy by the High Priest Eleazar , who asked that it be returned after the Septuagint was completed. Josephus describes the Romans taking a copy of the Law as spoil, and both he and Philo claim no word of the text was ever changed from the time of Moses. In contrast, an Amoraic narrative relates that three Torah scrolls were found in

4956-420: The oldest-known complete copy but missing large sections since the 1947 Civil war in Palestine , dates from the 10th century. However, codification of the base consonants appears to have begun earlier, perhaps even in the Second Temple period . The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran , dating from c. 150 BCE – 75 CE , shows that in this period there was no uniform text. According to Menachem Cohen ,

5040-468: The original, underlying Hebrew usage. The stated reason for this change was as follows: In the LSB, God's covenant name is rendered as Yahweh, as opposed to LORD. The meaning and implication of this name is God's self-deriving, ongoing, and never-ending existence. Exodus 3:14–15 shows that God Himself considered it important for His people to know His name. The effect of revealing God's name is His distinction from other gods and His expression of intimacy with

5124-414: The other, examining, however, standard codices of other schools and noting their differences. The Masorah for the most part ended in the 10th century with Aaron ben Moses ben Asher and Ben Naphtali who were the leading Masoretes of the time. Ben Asher wrote a standard codex (the Aleppo Codex ) embodying his opinions. Ben Naphtali likely did as well, though it has not survived. However,

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5208-408: The post-Talmudical treatises Masseket Sefer Torah and Masseket Soferim , and in a Masoretic chain of tradition found in ben Asher's Diḳduḳe ha-Ṭe'amim, § 69 and elsewhere. Jacob ben Hayyim ibn Adonijah , having collated a vast number of manuscripts, systematized his material and arranged the Masorah in the second Bomberg edition of the Bible ( Venice , 1524–1525). Besides introducing

5292-420: The prose books of the Bible were hardly ever written in stichs, the copyists, in order to estimate the amount of work, had to count the letters. According to some this was (also) to ensure accuracy in the transmission of the text with the production of subsequent copies that were done by hand. Hence the Masoretes contributed the Numerical Masorah. These notes are traditionally categorized into two main groups,

5376-448: The reader to the large Masorah, which is printed separately. The final Masorah is located at the end of biblical books or after certain sections of the text, such as at the end of the Torah. It contains information and statistics regarding the number of words in a book or section, etc. Thus, Book of Leviticus 8:23 is the middle verse in the Pentateuch. The collation of manuscripts and the noting of their differences furnished material for

5460-453: The reader. Masoretic Text The Masoretic Text ( MT or 𝕸; Hebrew : נֻסָּח הַמָּסוֹרָה , romanized :  Nūssāḥ hamMāsōrā , lit.   'Text of the Tradition') is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible ( Tanakh ) in Rabbinic Judaism . The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocalization and accentuation known as

5544-469: The reason that such faulty readings would belong to Qere and Ketiv, which, in case of doubt, the majority of manuscripts would decide. The last two theories have equal probability. In nine passages of the Masoretic Text are found signs usually called inverted nuns , because they resemble the Hebrew letter nun  ( נ ) written in some inverted fashion. The exact shape varies between different manuscripts and printed editions. In many manuscripts,

5628-603: The reputation of the Masoretes , schools of scribes and Torah scholars working between the 7th and 11th centuries in the Rashidun , Umayyad , and Abbasid Caliphates , based primarily in the cities of Tiberias and Jerusalem and in Mesopotamia (called "Babylonia"). According to Menachem Cohen, these schools developed such prestige for the accuracy and error-control of their copying techniques that their texts established an authority beyond all others. Differences remained, sometimes bolstered by systematic local differences in pronunciation and cantillation . Every locality, following

5712-447: The seven Books of Moses". Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus and Deuteronomy as we know them but Numbers was really three separate volumes: Numbers 1:1–10:35 followed by Numbers 10:35–36 and the third text from there to the end of Numbers. The 85 letter text is also said to be denoted because it is the model for the fewest letters which constitute a 'text' which one would be required to save from fire due to its holiness. The history of

5796-547: The stigmatized words were missing, hence that the reading is doubtful; still others contend that they are merely a mnemonic device to indicate homiletic explanations which the ancients had connected with those words; finally, some maintain that the dots were designed to guard against the omission by copyists of text-elements which, at first glance or after comparison with parallel passages, seemed to be superfluous. Instead of dots some manuscripts exhibit strokes, vertical or else horizontal. The first two explanations are unacceptable for

5880-584: The subject, which are all more or less frequently referred to in the marginal glosses of biblical codices and in the works of Hebrew grammarians. Traditionally, a ritual Sefer Torah (Torah scroll) could contain only the Hebrew consonantal text – nothing added, nothing taken away. The Masoretic codices , however, provide extensive additional material, called masorah , to show correct pronunciation and cantillation , protect against scribal errors, and annotate possible variants. The manuscripts thus include vowel points , pronunciation marks and stress accents in

5964-430: The substitution of some words for others in public reading. Since no additions were allowed to be made to the official text of the Bible, the early Masoretes adopted other methods: e.g., they marked the various divisions by spacing, and gave indications of halakic and haggadic teachings by full or defective spelling, abnormal forms of letters, dots, and other signs. Marginal notes were permitted only in private copies, and

6048-501: The text and the masorah, suggesting that they were copied from different sources or that one of them has copying errors. The lack of such discrepancies in the Aleppo Codex is one of the reasons for its importance; the scribe who copied the notes, presumably Aaron ben Moses ben Asher , probably wrote them originally. In classical antiquity, copyists were paid for their work according to the number of stichs (lines of verse). As

6132-454: The text of the early Rabbinic Bibles published by Bomberg in the early 16th century. The talmud records that the markings surrounding Numbers 10:35-36 were thought to denote that this 85 letter text was not in its proper place. Bar Kappara considered the Torah known to us as composed of seven volumes in the Gemara "The seven pillars with which Wisdom built her house (Prov. 9:1) are

6216-477: The text was also called moseirah , by a direct conjugation of מסר "to transmit," and the synthesis of the two forms produced the modern word masorah. According to a minority of scholars, including Caspar Levias , the intent of the Masoretes was masoret "fetter [upon the exposition of the text ]", and the word was only later connected to מסר and translated as "tradition". Other specific explanations are provided: Samuel David Luzzatto argued that masoret

6300-515: The text, and is arranged alphabetically in the form of a concordance. The quantity of notes the marginal Masorah contains is conditioned by the amount of vacant space on each page. In the manuscripts it varies also with the rate at which the copyist was paid and the fanciful shape he gave to his gloss. There was accordingly an independent Babylonian Masora which differed from the Palestinian in terminology and to some extent in order. The Masora

6384-422: The text, short annotations in the side margins, and longer more extensive notes in the upper and lower margins and collected at the end of each book. These notes were added because the Masoretes recognized the possibility of human error in copying the Hebrew Bible. The Masoretes were not working with the original Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible and corruptions had already crept into the versions they copied. From

6468-578: The text: words that occur 70 times or more are listed in a glossary in the back of the book, and words that occur fewer than 70 times are listed in the apparatus. The translations were mostly taken out of the Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament , but also from DCH and the Brown–Driver–Briggs . Alongside the translations it features a grammatical parsing of the words encoded in

6552-504: The tradition of its school, had a standard codex embodying its readings. In the talmudic academies in Babylonia , the school of Sura differed from that of Nehardea ; and similar differences existed in those of Syria Palaestina as against that at Tiberias, which in later times increasingly became the chief seat of learning. In this period living tradition ceased, and the Masoretes in preparing their codices usually followed one school or

6636-516: The two rivals represent different schools. Like the Ben Ashers there seem to have been several Ben Naftalis. The Masoretic lists often do not agree on the precise nature of the differences between the two rival authorities; it is, therefore, impossible to define with exactness their differences in every case; and it is probably due to this fact that the received text does not follow uniformly the system of either Ben Asher or Ben Naphtali. Ben Asher

6720-413: Was a Karaite rather than a Rabbinical Jew, though there is evidence against this view. The two rival authorities, ben Asher and ben Naphtali, practically brought the Masorah to a close. Very few additions were made by the later Masoretes, styled in the 13th and 14th centuries Naqdanim , who revised the works of the copyists, added the vowels and accents (generally in fainter ink and with

6804-485: Was a synonym for siman by extended meaning ("transmission[ of the sign]" became "transmitted sign") and referred to the symbols used in vocalizing and punctuating the text. Ze'ev Ben-Haim argued that masoret meant "counting" and was later conjugated as moseirah "thing which is counted", referring to the Masoretic counts of the letters, words, and verses in the Bible, discussed in Qiddushin 30a. The language of

6888-606: Was that all pronouns referring to God were capitalized. The LSB has preserved this decision to capitalize all pronouns referring to God and, by extension, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit . For example, in John 3:16, the LSB says, "For God so loved the world, that He [God] gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him [God's Son, Jesus] shall not perish, but have eternal life" (emphasis added). The LSB translators explained

6972-713: Was the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia together with the most recent insights from lexicography, cognate languages, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. For Greek, the 27th edition of Eberhard Nestle's Novum Testamentum Graece , supplemented by the 28th edition in the General Epistles, was used as the base text while consulting the Society of Biblical Literature GNT as well as the Tyndale House GNT on variant texts. The greatest strength of

7056-516: 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 Hebrew Bible. Notwithstanding all this, for reasons unknown neither the printed text nor any manuscript which has been preserved

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