THE QUALITY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS

Several reasons have been suggested for the scarcity of early Hebrew manuscripts. The
first and most obvious reason is a combination of antiquity and destructibility. Two or three
thousand years is a long time to expect the elements and the destructiveness of man to leave
these ancient documents unmolested. With this in mind, the next logical question to be
asked is, How good are the Hebrew manuscripts that remain? Several lines of evidence
suggest that their quality is very good.
RELATIVELY FEW VARIANTS
There are very few variants in the texts available because the Masoretes systematically
destroyed old manuscripts once they were carefully copied. Kenyon illustrates the paucity
of variations in the Masoretic Text by contrasting the Leningrad Codex of the Prophets,
which is Babylonian (Eastern), with the standard Palestinian text (Western) of Ezekiel,
where the Masoretic Text is sometimes corrupt. A critical comparison reveals that there are
only sixteen real conflicts between the two texts.54 The fidelity of the New Testament text
depends upon the multiplicity of manuscripts, whereas in the Old Testament the accuracy
of the text results from the ability and reliability of the scribes who transmitted it.
REVERENCE FOR THE BIBLE
With respect to the Jewish Scriptures, however, it was not scribal accuracy alone that
guaranteed their product. Rather, it was their almost superstitious reverence for the Bible.
According to the Talmud, there were specifications not only for the kind of skins to be used
and the size of the columns, but there was even a religious ritual necessary for the scribe to
perform before writing the name of God. Rules governed the kind of ink used, dictated the
spacing of words, and prohibited writing anything from memory. The lines, and even the
letters, were counted methodically. If a manuscript was found to contain even one mistake,
it was discarded and destroyed (cf. chap. 20). This scribal formalism was responsible, at
least in part, for the extreme care exercised in copying the Scriptures. It was also the reason
there were only a few manuscripts (as the rules demanded the destruction of defective
items), as well as why those which are extant are of good quality.
COMPARISON OF DUPLICATE PASSAGES
Another line of evidence for the quality of the Old Testament manuscripts is found in
the comparison of the duplicate passages of the Masoretic Text itself. Several psalms occur
twice (e.g., Pss. 14 and 53); much of Isaiah 36-39 is also found in 2 Kings 18-20; Isaiah
2:2-4 is almost exactly parallel to Micah 4:1-3; Jeremiah 52 is a repeat of 2 Kings 25; and
large portions of Chronicles are found in Samuel and Kings. An examination of those
passages shows not only a substantial textual agreement but, in some cases, almost a word-
for-word identity. Therefore it may be concluded that the Old Testament texts have not
undergone radical revisions, even if it were assumed that these parallel passages had
identical sources.
SUPPORT FROM ARCHAEOLOGY
A substantial proof for the accuracy of the Old Testament text has come from
archaeology. Numerous discoveries have confirmed the historical accuracy of the biblical

54
54. Kenyon, pp. 45, 70-72.

1
documents, even down to the occasional use of obsolete names of foreign kings.55 These
archaeological confirmations of the accuracy of Scripture have been recorded in numerous
books.56 Archaeologist Nelson Glueck asserts, “As a matter of fact, however, it may be
stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical
reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline
or exact detail historical statements in the Bible.”57
Furthermore, the Septuagint was the Bible of Jesus and the apostles. Most New
Testament quotations are taken from it directly, even when it differs from the Masoretic
Text. These differences will be discussed subsequently, but on the whole the Septuagint
closely parallels the Masoretic Text and is a confirmation of the fidelity of the tenth-century
A.D. Hebrew text.
CLOSE PARALLEL BETWEEN THE LXX AND MASORETIC TEXT
If no other evidence were available, the case for the fidelity of the Masoretic Text could
be brought to rest with confidence upon the foregoing lines of evidence alone. It appeared
to be a careful and correct reproduction of the autographs. But with the discovery of the
Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 and thereafter, there is now another and almost overwhelming
substantiation of the received Hebrew text of the Masoretes. Critics of the Masoretic Text
charged that the manuscripts were few and late; now, however, there is available, through
the Dead Sea Scrolls, many and early manuscript fragments that provide a check on nearly
the whole Old Testament. Those checks date about a thousand years before the great
Masoretic manuscripts of the tenth century A.D. Before the discoveries in the Cairo Geniza
and the Dead Sea caves, the Nash Papyrus (a fragment of the Ten Commandments and
Shema, Deut. 6:4-9), dated between 150 B.C. and A.D. 100, was the only known scrap of the
Hebrew text dating from before the Christian era.
AGREEMENT WITH THE SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH
Despite the many minor variants between the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Hebrew
text of the Old Testament, there is substantial agreement between them. The Samaritan
Pentateuch contains about six thousand variants from the Masoretic Text, but most of those
are a matter of orthography (spelling, etc.). Some nineteen hundred of the variants agree
with the LXX (e.g., in the ages given for the patriarchs in Gen. 5 and 11). Some of the
Samaritan Pentateuch variants are sectarian, such as the command to build the Temple on
Mt. Gerizim, not at Jerusalem (e.g., after Ex. 20:17). It should be noted, however, that most
manuscripts of the Samaritan Pentateuch are late (3th-4th cent.), and none is before the

55
55. The reference to “So king of Egypt” (2 Kings 17:4) has often been used to illustrate the total ignorance
of the writer of the book. No such king of Egypt was known to history. Now it is known, from the Egyptian
spelling of the city of Saisthe capital of an Egyptian province in the western delta of that time (c. 725
B.C.)that the text should read “To So [Sais], to the king of Egypt.” Hans Goedicke, “The End of ’So,’ King of
Egypt,” pp. 64-66, and William F. Albright, “The Elimination of King ’So,’” p. 66.
56
56. William F. Albright, Archaeology of Palestine; E. M. Blaiklock and R. K. Harrison, eds., The New
International Dictionary of Biblical Archaeology; Gleason L. Archer, Jr., Encyclopedia of Biblical Difficulties;
and a good popular summary by Clifford Wilson, Rocks, Relics, and Biblical Reliability.
57
57. Nelson Glueck, Rivers in the Desert: A History of the Negev, p. 31.

2
tenth century.58 But in chapter after chapter and verse after verse, the Samaritan Pentateuch
is a confirmation of the general text of the Hebrew Old Testament.
CROSSCHECK BY THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS
With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars have Hebrew manuscripts one
thousand years earlier than the great Masoretic Text manuscripts, enabling them to check
on the fidelity of the Hebrew text. The result of comparative studies reveals that there is a
word-for-word identity in more than 95 percent of the cases, and the 5 percent variation
consists mostly of slips of the pen and spelling.59 To be specific, the Isaiah scroll (QIsa)
from Qumran led the Revised Standard Version translators to make only thirteen changes
from the Masoretic Text; eight of those were known from ancient versions, and few of them
were significant.60 More specifically, of the 166 Hebrew words in Isaiah 53 only seventeen
Hebrew letters in QIsb differ from the Masoretic Text. Ten letters are a matter of spelling,
four are stylistic changes, and the other three compose the word for “light” (add in v.11),
which does not affect the meaning greatly.61 Furthermore that word is also found in that
verse in the LXX and QIsa.
CONCLUSION
The thousands of Hebrew manuscripts, with their confirmation by the LXX and the
Samaritan Pentateuch, and the numerous other crosschecks from outside and inside the text
provide overwhelming support for the reliability of the Old Testament text. Hence, it is
appropriate to conclude with Sir Frederic Kenyon’s statement, “The Christian can take the
whole Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that he holds in it the true word
of God, handed down without essential loss from generation to generation throughout the
centuries.”62

58
58. Archer, Survey of Old Testament Introduction, p. 44.
59
59. Ibid., p. 24.
60
60. Burrows, Dead Sea Scrolls, pp. 305ff.
61
61. Harris, Inspiration and Canonicity, p. 124.
62
62. Kenyon, p. 55.

3
4