Copying the Bible

All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness;  2 Timothy 3:16 NASB

By God – Text and transmission.  It seems as if the crucial issue about the authority of the Bible comes down to these two words.  Who wrote it and how did it come to us?  Text and transmission.  But our concern about how we got the Bible might not be as important as we think it is.  We can learn something from an article by Emanual Tov of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Even though the Dead Sea Scrolls have opened up seemingly endless resources that help us better understand and reconstruct the early biblical text, we are still groping in the dark when we try to understand how the various biblical texts emerged. Thus, the more we know, the less we know.

We will never have firm answers regarding whether there was once an original text of Hebrew Scripture and which of the known texts represents that text best. Moreover, at least in some chapters, it seems quite possible that more than one formulation of the text circulated already in early times, making it difficult to even discuss which formulation is earlier or later.

The Masoretic Text (MT) of the Torah, the version used by all Jews today (including Karaites), is a carefully copied text, but that doesn’t mean it is perfect or always reflective of the original.  When analyzing variants, scholars will often express an opinion on the comparative value for each reading, and I will do so here as well. Sometimes an MT reading is preferred, at other times a reading found in another source: a Dead Sea Scroll, the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP), the Torah of the Samaritan community, or the Greek Septuagint (LXX), the translation that, according to tradition, was produced by seventy (LXX) sages. In all instances, while we constantly search for objective elements, such preferences are ultimately based on subjective reasoning; in other words, different views are possible.

The reason why MT differs from other texts in any given instance is sometimes because of scribal intervention in one of the texts. Sometimes a difference may be a result of error.  At other times, scribes may have made minor changes based on context or interpretation or based on theological exegesis; in some cases, passages have been rewritten more extensively.

That scribes purposefully adjusted their received text may seem surprising to modern readers, who imagine that the job of the scribe is to faithfully transmit the text being copied, exactly as it appears, like a modern copy machine. However, ancient scribes were much more active in creating the text, and they took the liberty of inserting various changes in the text (omissions, additions, changes in content). Such interventions were considered acceptable at the beginning of the transmission of the biblical text.[1]

Far too often we are presented with a doctrinal view of the authenticity of Scripture rather than an historical view of its construction.  While we might be tempted to assert dogmas in order to protect our faith from any criticism, when we succumb to that temptation we are likely to paint ourselves into a corner, rejecting any human alteration in the production and transmission of the sacred texts.  Of course, no ancient document escapes the interpretive and corrective efforts of the copyist or the commentator, as history shows.  But maintaining the sanctity of the Bible on the basis of divine oversight can lead only to skepticism on behalf of those who do not share a fundamentalist biblical worldview.  This is so unnecessary since our faith in the God of Israel does not ultimately depend on the accuracy of the texts but rather on the experience of God’s involvement with humanity.  The scholar is not an enemy.  Rather, he or she is the one who helps us answer the crucial question, “Where did that idea come from?”  In the process, we learn just how much we are an essential element in God’s communication with Man.  When we finally embrace the fact that Scripture is the work of men in their efforts to record and explain the involvement of God, we are no longer strapped to the chair of dogmatics and we can embrace critical scholarship as an aid to understanding the ancient cultures and the ancient authors who produced these marvelous accounts.  The creative work of God did not end with Genesis 1 or 2.  It continues daily.  As Heschel noted, history is the realm of creation.

Topical Index: inspiration, authority, Scripture, dogma, criticism, 2 Timothy 3:16

[1] Emanuel Tov, “Textual Criticism of the Torah: Ten Short Case Studies.”