The Origin of the Bible by Frederick Fyvie Bruce & Philip Wesley Comfort

Author:Frederick Fyvie Bruce & Philip Wesley Comfort [Bruce, Frederick Fyvie & Comfort, Philip Wesley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Christian Books & Bibles, Bible Study & Reference, Bible Study, Christian Living, Religion & Spirituality, Biblical Studies, Bible College
ISBN: 9781414379326
Amazon: B00AEB3D5O
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2012-12-19T22:00:00+00:00

TEXTS AND MANUSCRIPTS OF THE OlD TESTAMENT 175

do not reflect any frustration with varying texts within that

community.

Some scholars have attempted to account for such diversity by

theories of local texts. They theorize that that various localities in

the Near East (e.g., Bab ylon, Palestine, Egypt) had differing text

types which are reflected in the various surviving Hebrew texts

and versions. Other scholars account for the diversity by recog-

nizing a precanonical fluidity. They feel that until the process of

canonization was complete, accurate reproduction of the manu-

scripts was not viewed as very important. It should be noted, how-

ever, that the basic text that modern scholarship has identified as

closest to the original was among the Dead Sea texts (for example,

the large Isaiah scroll).

Destruction of the temple in A.D. 70 provided an impetus for

standardization of the consonantal text. The texts found at Wadi

Murabba’at, copied during the first centuries a.d., reflect the new

stage. The scholars initially reporting on the discovery were disap-

pointed to find in these texts so few variations from the standard

Masoretic Text. To scholars, the very early texts from the Dead

Sea Scroll discoveries had become the standard consonantal text

to the exclusion of other variants. Scholars have now gone so

far as to identify the only slightly later Wadi Murabba’at texts

as a “Proto-Masoretic” standard. This seems to indicate that the

Hebrew consonantal text was already approaching a standard in

Palestine by the first centuries a.d.

Standardization as practiced by the Masoretes meant identify-

ing one text as normative and copying carefully from that text.

It also meant correcting existing texts by the normative text. The

Hebrew text, of course, was written with consonants alone, not

with consonants and vowels as we write English.

The next stage in the transmission of the Old Testament text

was standardization of punctuation and vowel patterns. That

process, which began fairly early in the New Testament period,

174 THE ORIGIN OF THE BIBlE

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