Wed Mar 13 02:26:18 1996

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Date: Wed, 13 Mar 96 09:16 +0200
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Subject: Tiq. Sopherim
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ALTERATIONS BY SCRIBES

That the Massoretes (and most probably scribes before their time) altered the
text of the "Hebrew Bible" is, of course, an accepted fact. I think one has 
to accept, first of all, that the ancients viewed texts different from what 
we do today (especially in conservative circles). In the pre-Common
Era, and perhaps well into the Common Era, the spoken word, and therefore 
tradition, carried more weight than the written word. Texts reflected and 
served tradition, not the other way round. Therefore texts HAD to be
brought in line with the developing tradition from time to time. 

If this argument holds water, scribes would mark changes to texts only 
AFTER  the written word had become more important than the spoken word, i.e.
 when written texts came to serve as the standard for the preservation of 
tradition. The scribal INDICATIONS of tiqqune sopherim in manuscripts would
 then be of relatively recent date, i.e. medieval.

In my book "Witnesses to the Old Testament" I argued (in the section on 
Samaritan texts) in relation to the classic dispute over the phrase
"hammaq“m 'asher bahar/yibhar 'adonay" in Deuteronomy, that Jewish
 scribes added the "yod" for ideological reasons, rather than that 
Samaritan scribes dropped a "yod" - as is commonly held. Whether or
not this conclusion is acceptable, I think that the variant
readings "bahar/yibhar" represent an early instance of a "tiqqun" and had 
been inspired by religious disputes.

If this is true, there may be many more small alterations of which we will, 
because of a lack of comparative material, never become aware of.

Greetings,
Ferdinand Deist

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