Еврей Библиясының Масореттік Мәтіні

Authoritative text of the Tanakh in Rabbinic Judaism

The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; נֻסָּח הַמָּסוֹרָה, lit. 'Text of the Tradition') is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter text, with its vocalization and accentuation known as the mas'sora. Referring to the Masoretic Text, masorah specifically means the diacritic markings of the text of the Jewish scriptures and the concise marginal notes in manuscripts (and later printings) of the Tanakh which note textual details, usually about the precise spelling of words. It was primarily copied, edited, and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the 7th and 10th centuries of the Common Era (CE). The oldest known complete copy, the Leningrad Codex, dates from the early 11th century CE. The differences attested to in the Dead Sea Scrolls indicate that multiple versions of the Hebrew scriptures already existed by the end of the Second Temple period. Which is closest to a theoretical Urtext is disputed, as is whether such a singular text ever existed. The Dead Sea Scrolls, dating to as early as the 3rd century BCE, contain versions of the text which have some differences with today's Hebrew Bible. Fragments of an ancient manuscript of the Book of Leviticus found near an ancient synagogue's Torah ark in Ein Gedi have identical wording to the Masoretic Text. The Masoretic Text is the basis for most Protestant translations of the Old Testament such as the King James Version, English Standard Version, New American Standard Bible, and New International Version. After 1943, it has also been used for some Catholic Bibles, such as the New American Bible and the New Jerusalem Bible. Some Christian denominations instead prefer translations of the Septuagint as it matches quotations in the New Testament.

The oldest manuscript fragments of the final Masoretic Text, including vocalications and the masorah, date from around the 9th century. The oldest known complete copy, the Leningrad Codex, dates from the early 11th century. The Aleppo Codex, once the oldest known complete copy but missing large sections since the 1947 Civil war in Palestine, dates from the 10th century. However, codification of the base consonants appears to have begun earlier, perhaps even in the Second Temple period. In 2022, Codex Sassoon (or Codex S1, MS1, Codex Sassoon 1053, or Safra JUD 002) resurfaced after almost 600 years of obscurity. This is a codex comprising all 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, dated to the 10th century. It is considered as old as the Aleppo Codex and a century older than the Leningrad Codex (1006). In Codex Sassoon, 12 leaves are completely missing and hundreds more are partially lost. The scribe was unusually sloppy, frequently missing punctuation, diacritical marks, and vowels; he also erred in his consonantal spelling on dozens of occasions. The Talmud and Karaite manuscripts state that a standard copy of the Hebrew Bible was kept in the court of the Temple in Jerusalem for the benefit of copyists; there were paid correctors of biblical books among the officers of the Temple (Talmud, tractate Ketubot 106a). This copy is mentioned in the Letter of Aristeas (§ 30; comp. Blau, Studien zum Althebr. Buchwesen, p. 100), in the statements of Philo (preamble to his "Analysis of the Political Constitution of the Jews"), and in Josephus (Contra Ap. i. 8).

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, dating from c. 150 BCE – 75 CE, shows that in this period there was no uniform text. According to Menachem Cohen, the Dead Sea scrolls showed that "there was indeed a Hebrew text type on which the Septuagint translation was based and which differed substantially from the received MT." The text of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Peshitta read somewhat in between the Masoretic Text and the old Greek. Joseph Fitzmyer noted the following regarding the findings at Qumran Cave 4 in particular: "Such ancient recensional forms of Old Testament books bear witness to an unsuspected textual diversity that once existed; these texts merit far greater study and attention than they have been accorded till now. Thus, the differences in the Septuagint are no longer considered the result of a poor or tendentious attempt to translate the Hebrew into the Greek; rather they testify to a different pre Christian form of the Hebrew text". On the other hand, some of the fragments conforming most accurately to the Masoretic Text were found in Cave 4.

An emphasis on minute details of words and spellings, already used among the Pharisees as basis for argumentation, reached its height with the example of Rabbi Akiva (died 135 CE). The idea of a perfect text sanctified in its consonantal base quickly spread throughout the Jewish communities via supportive statements in Halakha, Aggadah, and Jewish thought; Very few manuscripts are said to have survived the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. This drastically reduced the number of variants in circulation and also gave a new urgency that the text must be preserved. Few manuscripts survive from this era, but a short Leviticus fragment recovered from the ancient En Gedi Scroll, carbon dated to the 3rd or 4th century CE, is completely identical to the consonantal Masoretic Text preserved today. New Greek translations were also made. Unlike the Septuagint, large scale deviations in sense between the Greek of Aquila of Sinope and Theodotion and what we now know as the Masoretic Text are minimal. Relatively small variations between different Hebrew texts in use still clearly existed though, as witnessed by differences between the present day Masoretic Text and versions mentioned in the Gemara, and often even halachic midrashim based on spelling versions which do not exist in the current Masoretic Text. The differences between Ben Naphtali and Ben Asher number about 875, nine tenths of which refer to the placing of the accents, while the rest relate to vowels and consonantal spelling. The differences between the two Masoretes do not represent solely personal opinions; the two rivals represent different schools. Like the Ben Ashers there seem to have been several Ben Naftalis. The Masoretic lists often do not agree on the precise nature of the differences between the two rival authorities; it is, therefore, impossible to define with exactness their differences in every case; and it is probably due to this fact that the received text does not follow uniformly the system of either Ben Asher or Ben Naphtali.

The two rival authorities, ben Asher and ben Naphtali, practically brought the Masorah to a close. Very few additions were made by the later Masoretes, styled in the 13th and 14th centuries Naqdanim, who revised the works of the copyists, added the vowels and accents (generally in fainter ink and with a finer pen) and frequently the Masorah.

In classical antiquity, copyists were paid for their work according to the number of stichs (lines of verse). As the prose books of the Bible were hardly ever written in stichs, the copyists, in order to estimate the amount of work, had to count the letters. Hence the Masoretes contributed the Numerical Masorah. Even though often cited as very exact, the Masoretic "frequency notes" in the margin of Codex Leningradiensis contain several errors. The Masorah magna, in measure, is an expanded Masorah parva. Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) includes an apparatus referring the reader to the large Masorah, which is printed separately. The final Masorah is located at the end of biblical books or after certain sections of the text, such as at the end of the Torah. It contains information and statistics regarding the number of words in a book or section, etc. Thus, Book of Leviticus 8:23 is the middle verse in the Pentateuch. The collation of manuscripts and the noting of their differences furnished material for the Text Critical Masorah. The close relation which existed in earlier times (from the Soferim to the Amoraim inclusive) between the teacher of tradition and the Masorete, both frequently being united in one person, accounts for the Exegetical Masorah. Finally, the invention and introduction of a graphic system of vocalization and accentuation gave rise to the Grammatical Masorah.

The earliest tasks of the Masoretes included a standard division of the text into books, sections, paragraphs, verses, and clauses; fixing of the orthography, pronunciation, and cantillation; introduction or final adoption of the square characters with the five final letters; some textual changes to guard against blasphemy (though these changes may pre date the Masoretes – see Tikkune Soferim below); enumeration of letters, words, verses, etc., and the substitution of some words for others in public reading. is due to an alteration of the original משה out of reverence for Moses; rather than say that Moses's grandson became an idolatrous priest, a suspended letter nun ( נ ) was inserted to turn Mosheh into Menasheh (Manasseh). The origin of the other three is doubtful. According to some, they are due to mistaken majuscular letters; according to others, they are later insertions of originally omitted weak consonants. The significance of the dots is disputed. Some hold them to be marks of erasure; others believe them to indicate that in some collated manuscripts the stigmatized words were missing, hence that the reading is doubtful; still others contend that they are merely a mnemonic device to indicate homiletic explanations which the ancients had connected with those words; finally, some maintain that the dots were designed to guard against the omission by copyists of text elements which, at first glance or after comparison with parallel passages, seemed to be superfluous. Instead of dots some manuscripts exhibit strokes, vertical or else horizontal. The first two explanations are unacceptable for the reason that such faulty readings would belong to Qere and Ketiv, which, in case of doubt, the majority of manuscripts would decide. The last two theories have equal probability. The primary set of inverted nuns is found surrounding the text of Numbers 10:35–36. The Mishna notes that this text is 85 letters long and dotted. This demarcation of this text leads to the later use of the inverted nun markings. Saul Lieberman demonstrated that similar markings can be found in ancient Greek texts where they are also used to denote 'short texts'. During the Medieval period, the inverted nuns were actually inserted into the text of the early Rabbinic Bibles published by Bomberg in the early 16th century. The talmud records that the markings surrounding Numbers 10:35 36 were thought to denote that this 85 letter text was not in its proper place. Bar Kappara considered the Torah known to us as composed of seven volumes in the Gemara "The seven pillars with which Wisdom built her house (Prov. 9:1) are the seven Books of Moses". Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus and Deuteronomy as we know them but Numbers was really three separate volumes: Numbers 1:1–10:35 followed by Numbers 10:35–36 and the third text from there to the end of Numbers. The 85 letter text is also said to be denoted because it is the model for the fewest letters which constitute a 'text' which one would be required to save from fire due to its holiness.

The history of the Masorah may be divided into three periods: (1) creative period, from its beginning to the introduction of vowel signs; (2) reproductive period, from the introduction of vowel signs to the printing of the Masorah (1525); (3) critical period, from 1525 to the present time. Unreliable source: date=February 2021

Next to Ibn Adoniyah, the critical study of the Masorah has been most advanced by Elia Levita, who published his famous "Massoret ha Massoret" in 1538. The Tiberias of the elder Johannes Buxtorf (1620) made Levita's researches more accessible to a Christian audience. The eighth introduction to Walton's Polyglot Bible is largely a reworking of the Tiberias. Levita compiled likewise a vast Masoretic concordance, Sefer ha Zikronot, which still lies in the National Library at Paris unpublished. The study is indebted also to R. Meïr b. Todros ha Levi (RaMaH), who, as early as the 13th century, wrote his Sefer Massoret Seyag la Torah (correct ed. Florence, 1750); to Menahem Lonzano, who composed a treatise on the Masorah of the Pentateuch entitled "Or Torah"; and in particular to Jedidiah Norzi, whose "Minḥat Shai" contains valuable Masoretic notes based on a careful study of manuscripts. In a recent finding, a scroll fragment was found to be identical to the Masoretic Text. The approximately 1,700 year old En Gedi Scroll was found in 1970 but had not had its contents reconstructed until 2016. Researchers were able to recover 35 complete and partial lines of text from the Book of Leviticus and the text they deciphered is completely identical with the consonantal framework of the Masoretic Text. The En Gedi scroll is the first biblical scroll to have been discovered in the holy ark of an ancient synagogue, where it would have been stored for prayers, and not in desert caves like the Dead Sea Scrolls.