The Bible was originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, with a few chapters and verses in Aramaic. The New Testament was written in Konia Greek, which was the language of the common people in biblical times.
If it were not for translations of the Bible into other languages, the Bible would be a sealed book to everyone in the world who is not proficient in the original languages. Therefore, translations of the Bible are imperative, and the work of Bible translators greatly important. Unfortunately, Bible translators are often denigrated today rather than appreciated, due to widespread ignorance about modern-day translations.
To translate the Scripture into English, the translator must take each word from the original language and convert it into the corresponding word in modern-day English. This, as I’m sure you understand, is a most tedious and difficult task. When it comes to translating the Old Testament, the Masoretic Text is the only existing representation of the Old Testament in Hebrew. Thus, its importance to Bible translators cannot be overstated.
While the Dead Sea Scrolls are a representation of almost all of the Old Testament in Hebrew, they still lack the entire book of Esther and provide only partial portions of other books. While the Greek Septuagint provides us with the entire text of the Hebrew Bible, it is not in Hebrew, but a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Konia Greek between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC in Alexandria. Although the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Greek Septuagint both attest to the validity of the Masoretic Text, the Masoretic Text is still our only complete representation of the Old Testament in Hebrew.
Whereas there are many Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, the Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament are relatively few. The reason for this may be found in the ancient rabbis’ superstitious veneration of copies of the Old Testament. When a copy became old, worn and unsuitable for reading, it was reverently interred. Before being given an honorable burial in hallowed ground, the copy was stored for a time in a “genizah”—a room adjoining the synagogue in which documents were hidden away. The Hebrew word “genizah” means “hiding place.”
With old and worn copies being continuously interred and the few copies available being only those still suitable for reading, it became imperative that great care was taken to preserve the purity of the text in each new copy that was made. Jewish copiers and editors therefore began to take painstaking steps to assure the preservation of the Hebrew text. For instance, they meticulously counted the number of times each letter of the Hebrew alphabet occurred in each Old Testament book. Furthermore, they pinpointed the middle letter of the Pentateuch—the first five books of the Old Testament—and the middle letter of the whole Old Testament, not to mention carrying out even more detailed calculations than these.
Along with their meticulous calculations, these Jewish copiers and editors also began including notes at the beginning and end of the manuscripts, as well as in the manuscript’s margins. These notes included aids in proper enunciation, punctuation marks, vowel points and notes on the text itself. All of these notes were based on authoritative Jewish tradition that had been passed down through successive generations.
It is from their allegiance to authoritative tradition that these Jewish copiers and editors received the name by which they have become known—Masoretes. This name is derived from the Hebrew word “masorah,” which means “tradition.” The Hebrew manuscripts copied and edited by the Masoretes, and in particularly the more accurate edition produced by the leading Masoretes in Palestine during the first half of the 10th century, namely Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali, are what we know today as the Masoretic Text.
