Old Testament Textual Criticism

Textual criticism seeks to reconstruct the earliest recoverable wording of the Bible. No original manuscripts survive for any biblical book. Scholars must compare copies made from earlier copies, identify differences known as textual variants, and determine which readings most likely reflect the original text.

Thousands of textual variants exist across surviving biblical manuscripts. Most differences involve relatively minor matters, such as spelling, phrasing, or word choice, but some affect entire chapters, the length of books, or passages with theological importance.

Older manuscript readings are generally considered more likely to preserve earlier wording. The reasoning is that every additional generation of copying creates opportunities for deliberate changes, accidental mistakes, and editorial revisions. Age is an important consideration, though it does not automatically establish which reading is correct.

Shorter and more awkward readings are often preferred over longer, smoother alternatives. Scribes and editors frequently clarified difficult passages by adding words or improving their phrasing. An unusually awkward reading may therefore preserve wording that later copyists attempted to improve.

Readings preserved in a text's original language are traditionally favored over translations. Translation inevitably involves interpretation and cannot reproduce every feature of the source language perfectly. This principle becomes complicated when an ancient translation survives in manuscripts substantially older than surviving copies in the original language.

Three major textual traditions provide the foundation for studying the Old Testament. These are the Hebrew Masoretic Text (MT), the Greek Septuagint (LXX), and the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP). Each preserves a different stream of the biblical textual tradition.

Most of the Old Testament was originally composed in classical Hebrew. The presentation dates the use of classical Hebrew to approximately 1000–200 BCE. Of the three major textual traditions discussed, the Masoretic Text is the only one that preserves the complete Hebrew Bible in its original language.

The Masoretic Text and Septuagint present competing claims to textual priority. The Masoretic Text preserves the original Hebrew, but the oldest surviving major Septuagint manuscripts are substantially earlier than the oldest complete Masoretic manuscript. The advantage of the original language therefore conflicts with the advantage of manuscript age.

The Samaritan Pentateuch is generally considered a less likely candidate for preserving the complete original biblical tradition. It contains only the first five books, uses a later form of Hebrew, and survives in comparatively late manuscripts. Nevertheless, its readings provide evidence for reconstructing the history of the Pentateuch.

The Masoretic Text forms the basis of modern Jewish Hebrew Bibles. The Jewish Publication Society's JPS Tanakh, for example, presents the Hebrew Masoretic Text alongside an English translation. The online Jewish library Sefaria also makes the Hebrew text and English translations available.

Synagogue Torah scrolls preserve the Pentateuch according to the Masoretic tradition. These handwritten scrolls contain the first five books of the Hebrew Bible and represent the continuation of a carefully maintained Jewish scribal tradition.

The Leningrad Codex is the oldest surviving complete manuscript of the Masoretic Hebrew Bible. It dates to approximately 1,000 years ago, leaving a substantial historical gap between the surviving complete manuscript and the composition of biblical books roughly 2,500 years ago.

Several Masoretic manuscripts are older than the Leningrad Codex but survive only partially. These include the Aleppo Codex, Codex Sassoon 1053, and Codex Cairensis. Their earlier dates make them valuable witnesses, but none provides the same complete biblical text as the Leningrad Codex.

The Masoretic Text takes its name from the Masoretes, Jewish scribes who preserved and standardized the Hebrew Bible. They are particularly associated with introducing the vowel markers that remain part of written biblical Hebrew today.

Masoretic copying and standardization began around 600 CE. The Masoretes inherited earlier Hebrew manuscripts rather than creating the biblical text themselves. The precise manuscripts from which their tradition developed are unknown.

The Masoretic tradition is believed to descend from much earlier Hebrew texts dating back to approximately 400 BCE. These hypothetical ancestral manuscripts are commonly called proto-Masoretic texts. Their existence helps explain how a relatively late manuscript tradition could preserve substantially older wording.

Many Old Testament books probably reached their final literary form around 400 BCE, according to the chronology used in the presentation. The proto-Masoretic tradition is therefore traced back toward the period when much of the biblical collection was approaching its completed form.

The proto-Masoretic text was not the only Hebrew biblical tradition circulating in antiquity. A somewhat different Hebrew textual tradition also existed before the third century BCE and is commonly identified as the hypothetical source behind the earliest Greek Septuagint.

The earliest Septuagint was translated from Hebrew manuscripts that did not always match the proto-Masoretic tradition. Differences between the resulting Greek and later Masoretic Hebrew cannot therefore automatically be attributed to inaccurate translation. Some reflect differences already present in the Hebrew source manuscripts.

The Septuagint was not a single translation completed at one moment in history. Several Greek translations and revisions were produced over multiple centuries. Scholars therefore sometimes speak of multiple Septuagints rather than one uniform Greek text.

The Old Greek Septuagint must be distinguished from later Greek revisions. The Old Greek represents the earlier translation tradition, while subsequent translators increasingly revised Greek readings to agree with the developing standard Hebrew text.

Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion were important contributors to the Greek biblical translation tradition. Their translations or revisions brought portions of the Greek biblical text into closer agreement with the Hebrew tradition that eventually became the Masoretic Text.

The traditional origin story of the Septuagint places its first translation in third-century BCE Egypt. According to the legend, Ptolemy II invited 72 Jewish scholars to translate the Torah into Greek for the Library of Alexandria. The account is presented as a tradition rather than an independently established reconstruction of events.

The name Septuagint comes from the number seventy. The legendary group of 72 translators eventually became associated with the rounded number 70, which gave the Greek translation tradition its name.

The earliest Greek translation reportedly covered only the Torah or Pentateuch. The remaining books of the Hebrew Bible were translated during approximately the following century, probably by different groups and, in some cases, more than once.

Multiple Greek versions of biblical books were circulating by the lifetime of Jesus. Consequently, references to the Septuagint during the first century CE should not necessarily be understood as referring to one universally standardized Greek Bible.

Aramaic had largely replaced Hebrew as the principal spoken language of Judea by the first century CE. Greek was also widely used, especially among educated people and Jewish communities living outside Judea.

Most Old Testament quotations in the New Testament correspond more closely to the Old Greek Septuagint than to the Masoretic Text. The widespread use of Greek helps explain why New Testament authors frequently employed Greek biblical wording rather than the form preserved in the later standardized Hebrew tradition.

Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus are among the most important surviving early Septuagint manuscripts. Both date to approximately the fourth century CE, making them at least six centuries older than the Leningrad Codex.

Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus also preserve nearly complete Greek New Testaments. They are therefore important witnesses to the textual history of both the Old and New Testaments.

The Masoretic Text and Septuagint sometimes preserve substantially different versions of the same biblical book. Their differences extend beyond translation choices and include changes in length, chapter arrangement, narrative material, and theological content.

The Septuagint's Book of Jeremiah is approximately 12% shorter than the Masoretic version. Several chapters also appear in a different order. These differences indicate that the two traditions preserve distinct forms of Jeremiah rather than simply alternative translations of an identical Hebrew text.

The Masoretic Book of Esther is shorter than its Septuagint counterpart. Most notably, the Hebrew version never explicitly mentions God, while the Greek version includes references to God, prayers, and additional theological material.

The Septuagint's additions to Esther substantially change the book's religious presentation. Material absent from the Hebrew version introduces explicit religious elements into a narrative that otherwise leaves divine involvement unstated.

Several other biblical books differ in length or content between the Masoretic and Septuagint traditions. The presentation identifies 1 Samuel, Ezekiel, Psalms, Proverbs, Job, and Daniel as important examples.

The Septuagint also preserves books absent from the Hebrew Masoretic collection. Examples include Tobit and Judith, which belong to the broader ancient Jewish literary tradition but are not included in the Jewish Tanakh.

The largest differences between the Masoretic Text and Septuagint generally occur in the Prophets and Writings. The Torah or Pentateuch is comparatively consistent between the two traditions.

Genesis 5 and 11 contain a major exception to the relative consistency of the Torah. The genealogical ages in these chapters differ substantially between the Hebrew and Greek traditions.

The Septuagint's Genesis chronology places Adam's creation approximately 1,400 years earlier than the Masoretic chronology. The difference arises from the numerical ages assigned to patriarchs, particularly the ages at which they fathered children.

Thousands of smaller differences also exist at the individual-verse level. These include changes in spelling, vocabulary, grammatical construction, and phrasing. Although many have little interpretive significance, others influence how religious communities understand particular passages.

Psalm 22:16 is one of the most theologically disputed differences between the Hebrew and Greek traditions. The verse is numbered Psalm 22:17 in the Masoretic tradition and concerns the speaker's hands and feet.

The Masoretic reading of Psalm 22 describes the speaker's hands and feet using the expression “like a lion.” The surrounding passage describes threatening enemies, including dogs and evildoers.

The Septuagint version of Psalm 22 instead describes an action against the speaker's hands and feet. Its wording can be rendered as “they dug into my hands and my feet,” commonly translated in Christian English Bibles using the word “pierced.”

The Septuagint reading of Psalm 22 became particularly important to Christian interpretations of Jesus' crucifixion. Christians who regard the psalm as prophetic often prefer wording that appears to describe the piercing of hands and feet.

The disagreement over Psalm 22 has produced opposing accusations of deliberate textual alteration. Some Christians argue that Jewish scribes changed the wording after Jesus' death to obscure a prophecy. Conversely, some Jews argue that Christians changed the wording to create an apparent prediction of the crucifixion. The presentation reports both accusations without establishing either as fact.

Isaiah 7:14 is another major difference with direct implications for Christian theology. The Masoretic Hebrew refers to a young woman conceiving and giving birth to a son, while the Septuagint explicitly describes the woman as a virgin.

Christian interpretations commonly connect the Septuagint wording of Isaiah 7:14 to the birth of Jesus. Jewish interpretations generally understand the passage in its original historical setting rather than as a prediction about Jesus.

The Hebrew expression translated as “young woman” does not necessarily imply virginity. This distinction is central to the disagreement over whether the Septuagint faithfully reflects the intended meaning of the original Hebrew.

Even an original reference to a virgin would not independently establish Isaiah 7:14 as a prophecy about Jesus. The author could have been describing a contemporary woman who was not yet married and would subsequently conceive and bear a child.

The interpretation of Isaiah 7:14 depends partly on readers' existing religious commitments. The textual difference is identifiable, but whether the passage refers to Jesus involves theological interpretation beyond the choice of Hebrew or Greek wording.

The Samaritan Pentateuch contains only Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Unlike the Masoretic Text and Septuagint traditions, it does not preserve the rest of the Hebrew Bible.

The Samaritan Pentateuch often agrees more closely with the Septuagint than with the Masoretic Text. This pattern supports the possibility that the Samaritan and Old Greek traditions developed from related earlier Hebrew textual sources.

The distinct Samaritan form of the Pentateuch probably emerged between approximately 250 BCE and 50 BCE. Its final textual form uses a later variety of ancient Hebrew than the classical Hebrew underlying the Masoretic tradition.

Samaritans traditionally identify themselves as descendants of the ancient northern Kingdom of Israel. That kingdom fell to the Assyrians in approximately 721 BCE.

Samaritan tradition claims that their Pentateuch predates the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom. The presentation challenges this claim on the grounds that critical biblical scholarship dates much of the Old Testament's composition and editing to periods after 721 BCE.

The documentary and supplementary hypotheses both treat the Pentateuch as a work assembled in stages. Although these models differ in their explanations of composition, both challenge the idea that the complete Pentateuch originated as a single finished work in the distant past.

The final compilation of the Pentateuch is placed no earlier than approximately 458 BCE in the scholarly reconstruction presented. This would put its completed form in the Second Temple period, long after the fall of the northern Kingdom of Israel.

The presentation identifies the ancestors of the Samaritans with the “people in the land” mentioned in Ezra and Nehemiah. These were people who remained in the region rather than being deported to Babylon.

The population from which the Samaritans emerged was probably mixed. It may have included poorer Judahites who were never exiled, descendants of northern Israelites who moved south after the fall of Samaria, and settlers introduced by foreign rulers.

The Samaritan community established a temple on Mount Gerizim that rivaled Jerusalem's temple. Biblical and archaeological evidence is cited for this sanctuary, which existed from approximately 450 BCE until 100 BCE.

The emergence of the Samaritan Pentateuch is linked to the development of the Mount Gerizim religious community. Its distinctive features are consistent with a textual tradition formed around a community whose worship centered on Gerizim rather than Jerusalem.

Mount Gerizim is the principal theological distinction between the Samaritan Pentateuch and the other textual traditions. The Samaritan version contains several references to the mountain that are absent from the Masoretic Text and Septuagint.

Deuteronomy 27:4 provides a particularly important example of the Samaritan textual difference. The Masoretic tradition instructs the Israelites to build an altar on Mount Ebal, while the Samaritan Pentateuch names Mount Gerizim.

Most critical scholars favor the explanation that Samaritan scribes changed the location to Mount Gerizim. Such a revision would support the religious legitimacy of their own sanctuary. However, the presentation acknowledges that the surviving evidence cannot establish this conclusion with certainty.

The Abisha Scroll is identified as the oldest surviving Samaritan Pentateuch manuscript. It is dated to approximately 1250 CE, leaving a considerable gap between the manuscript and the ancient formation of the Samaritan tradition.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls transformed the study of Old Testament textual history. The presentation dates the discovery to 1946 and explains that the manuscripts provided Hebrew biblical evidence far older than the previously available medieval Masoretic copies.

The Dead Sea Scrolls preserve Hebrew biblical manuscripts older than the earliest major surviving Septuagint codices. They also predate the oldest complete Masoretic manuscript by more than a thousand years.

The Dead Sea Scrolls offered a way to test whether the medieval Masoretic Text accurately preserved ancient Hebrew readings. Before their discovery, the relative age of the surviving Greek and Hebrew manuscripts made this question particularly difficult to resolve.

Most Hebrew biblical material in the Dead Sea Scrolls agrees fairly closely with the Masoretic Text. This demonstrates substantial continuity between ancient Hebrew textual traditions and the versions preserved by medieval Jewish scribes.

The agreement between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Masoretic Text supports the reliability of Masoretic transmission. It indicates that the Masoretes and their predecessors maintained a largely consistent textual tradition across many centuries.

Some Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts agree more closely with the presumed Hebrew source of the Old Greek Septuagint. This shows that textual forms differing from the later Masoretic standard were already circulating in Hebrew during antiquity.

The Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate that ancient Judaism possessed more than one form of certain biblical texts. The differences between the Masoretic and Septuagint traditions cannot all be explained as later alterations introduced during Greek translation or medieval Hebrew copying.

The Masoretic Text is generally close to the earliest recoverable form of the Hebrew Bible, but it is not always the oldest reading. The Dead Sea Scrolls support the overall reliability of the Masoretic tradition while also confirming that alternative ancient readings sometimes preserve earlier forms.

Neither the Masoretic Text nor the Septuagint can be declared universally superior. The best-supported reading must be determined individually, sometimes at the level of an entire book, sometimes a chapter, and sometimes a single verse.

Emanuel Tov's Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible is presented as a leading scholarly reference for this approach. The book supports evaluating the textual evidence case by case rather than consistently favoring one manuscript tradition.

The shorter Septuagint version of Jeremiah is considered more likely to preserve an earlier form of the book. The longer Masoretic Jeremiah probably represents a subsequent expansion of an earlier Hebrew text.

The Masoretic version of Esther is considered more likely to preserve the earlier form of that book. The longer Greek version probably incorporates later additions, including prayers and explicit references to God.

The presenter favors the Septuagint's Genesis genealogical numbers as more likely to be original. This is presented as an argument based on the structure and consistency of the numbers rather than a settled conclusion established by the manuscript evidence alone.

The ages assigned to the patriarchs follow a more consistent pattern in the Septuagint. Their ages at fatherhood generally decline in a comparatively orderly manner, whereas the corresponding Masoretic numbers display a less even pattern.

A proposed explanation connects the altered Genesis chronology to the Maccabean period. The presenter suggests that scribes may have revised the genealogical numbers after the Maccabean revolt so that the rededication of the Jerusalem Temple occurred exactly 4,000 years after creation.

The proposed 4,000-year chronology would give the Temple's rededication symbolic historical significance. Under this interpretation, the numerical changes were intended to connect a major religious event with an idealized biblical timeline.

The presenter does not regard the Septuagint's longer Genesis chronology as literally historically accurate. The claim is that its numbers may be closer to those chosen by the ancient authors of Genesis 5 and 11, possibly for symbolic purposes.

Psalm 22:16 illustrates why neither surviving textual tradition must necessarily preserve the exact original reading. The presenter argues that both the Masoretic and Septuagint versions may contain difficulties that arose during transmission.

The Masoretic expression “like a lion” fits the animal imagery of Psalm 22. The surrounding passage already uses dogs as a metaphor for the speaker's enemies, and lion imagery appears elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible.

The Masoretic wording of Psalm 22:16 has a significant grammatical difficulty. The Hebrew expression lacks a verb and literally produces wording equivalent to “like a lion, hands and feet.”

One proposed reconstruction of Psalm 22:16 reads “They bound my hands and feet.” This interpretation would supply an action that makes grammatical sense without necessarily adopting either the Masoretic lion imagery or the Septuagint's wording about digging or piercing.

The proposed “bound” reading could have been altered through a one-letter copying error. The presenter explains that a small change in the Hebrew lettering could account for the surviving difficulty, making an accidental scribal alteration a plausible explanation.

Modern textual scholarship generally works from critical editions rather than relying exclusively on one manuscript tradition. Such editions establish a principal text while documenting significant alternative readings and the manuscripts that preserve them.

The Leningrad Codex serves as the base text for the principal modern critical editions of the Masoretic Hebrew Bible. Editors supplement it with notes recording variants from the Septuagint, Dead Sea Scrolls, Samaritan Pentateuch, and other textual witnesses.

Rudolf Kittel published the first Biblia Hebraica critical edition in 1906. Revised editions followed in 1913 and 1937, commonly identified as BH1, BH2, and BH3.

The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) replaced earlier editions beginning in the late 1960s. Its name refers to Stuttgart, the location associated with the German Bible Society.

The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia is identified as the standard critical Hebrew Bible used by most modern Bible translators. It provides the Masoretic base text together with scholarly information about variant readings.

The Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ) is intended to succeed the Stuttgartensia edition. The word Quinta means five, identifying it as the fifth major edition in the Biblia Hebraica series.

The Göttingen Septuagint is identified as the principal critical edition of the Greek Old Testament. It provides the corresponding scholarly foundation for examining and comparing the Greek textual tradition.

Modern English Bible translations frequently incorporate the findings of textual criticism. Translations such as the NIV, ESV, and NRSV include footnotes identifying significant manuscript differences or passages that can be translated in more than one way.

Readers do not need to know Hebrew or Greek to identify many important textual variants. Critical footnotes in modern translations provide access to significant disagreements between manuscript traditions.

Side-by-side comparison of textual traditions is available through online Bible-study resources. The presentation demonstrates platforms that display the Masoretic Hebrew alongside English translations and allow comparison with Greek Septuagint readings.

Stephen Nelson created the manuscript-history chart used throughout the presentation. The chart is associated with Crossway Bible and organizes surviving biblical manuscripts according to their estimated dates and textual traditions.

The manuscript chart uses individual colored squares to represent surviving manuscripts. Their horizontal positions indicate the centuries to which the manuscripts are dated, while colors distinguish the principal textual families.

The chart identifies Masoretic manuscripts in brown, Septuagint manuscripts in pale green, and Samaritan manuscripts in gray. This arrangement makes the chronological relationship between the surviving textual traditions visible.

Matt Baker's separate biblical-composition timeline complements Nelson's manuscript chart. Baker's timeline examines the authorship and composition dates of biblical books, while Nelson's chart traces the surviving manuscripts and their role in reconstructing the text.

The two charts together distinguish the composition of biblical literature from its subsequent transmission. A book's estimated date of composition does not establish the age of its oldest surviving manuscript, and the oldest surviving manuscript does not necessarily preserve the earliest wording in every passage.

The surviving evidence supports substantial continuity alongside genuine textual diversity in the Old Testament. The Masoretic tradition preserves an ancient and generally reliable Hebrew text, while the Septuagint, Samaritan Pentateuch, and Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate that alternative forms of some biblical passages and books circulated long before the surviving medieval manuscripts.

Reconstructing the Old Testament requires evaluating the evidence for each disputed reading rather than choosing a single authoritative manuscript family. The decisive considerations include manuscript age, original-language evidence, wording, grammar, literary structure, ancient translation practices, and the possibility of deliberate or accidental scribal changes.