TESTAMENT
527
TESTAMENT
margin, either to be changed, or inserted, or omitted
by the reader. Such were the so-called "Tiqqunfi
Sopherim", corrections of the scribes. The second
group of corrections consisted in changing an am-
biguous word, — of such eighteen are recorded in the
Massorah. In the Talmud no mention has as yet been
made of them. But its compilers were aware of the
"'Itture Sopherim", or erasures of the connecting
Waiv, which had been made in several places in
opposition to the Septuagint and the Samaritan Ver-
sions. \Mien later the Massoretes speak only of four
or five instances, we must say with Ginsbm-g that these
cases are merely recorded as typical. Cases are not
rare when consideration for religious or moral feehng
has led to the substitution of a more harmless euphe-
mism for an ill-sounchng word. The vowels of the
expression to be read are attached to the written word
of the text, whilst the consonants are noted on the
margin. Well known is the ever-recurring "Qere"
Adonai instead of Jahve; it seems to date back to the
time before Christ, and probably even the first Greek
interpreters were acquainted with it.
The fact that the Massoretes did not dare insert the changes described in the Sacred Text itself .shows that the latter was already fixed. Other peculiarities point to the same reverence for tradition. We repeatedly find in the text a so-called inverted Nun (e. g.. Num., X, 35-36). In Is., ix, 6, there is a final Mem within the word. A Waw is interrupted or letters are made big- ger, whilst others are placed higher up — the so-called suspended letters. Not a few of these oddities are already recorded in the Talmud, and therefore must be of great age. Letters with points are mentioned even in the "Mishna". The counting of the letters also probably belongs to the older period. Records serving for textual criticism are extant from the same time. In its esiientials the work is completed with the post- Talmudic treatise "Sopherim". This treatise, which gives a careful introduction to the writing of the Sa- cred Text, is one of the most conclusive proofs of the scrupulosity with which at the time of its origin (not before the seventh centurj') the text was generally treated.
B. Older Witnesses. — The condition of the text pre- vious to the age of the Massoretes is guarant<;ed by the "Talmud" with its notes on tex-t-criticism and its innumerable quotations, which are, however, frequently drawn only from memorj\ Another help are the "Targums", or free Aramaic versions of the Sacred Books, composed from the last centuries B. c. to the fifth A. D. But the state of the text is chiefly evidenced by the \'ulgate \'ersion made by St. .Jerome at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth centuries. He followed the Hebrew original, and his occasional remarks on how a word was spelt or read enable us to arrive at a sure judgment on the text of the fourth cen- turj-. As was to be expected from the statements of the Talmud, the consonant^text of the MSS. tallies almost in every respect with the original of St. Jerome. There appear greater discrepancies in vocalization, which is not to be wondered at, for at that time the marking of the vowels was not known. Thus the read- ing is necessarily often ambiguous, as the saint ex- pressly states. His comment on Is., xxx\'iii, 11, shows that this statement is not only to be taken as a learned note, but that thereby the interpretation might often be influenced practically. When St. .Jerome occasion- ally speaks of vowels, he means the quiescent or vowel letters. Nevertheless, the opinion that in the fourth centurj' the pronunciation was still fluctuating, would be erroneous. For the saint knew how, in a definite case, an ambiguous word was to be vocaUzed; he ap- pealed to the custom of the Jews standing in opposi- tion to the interpretation of the Septu.agint. A fixed pronunciation had already resulted from the practice, in vogue for centuries, of reading the Holy Writ pub- licly in the sjTiagogue. There might be doubt in par-
ticular cases, but, on the whole, even the vowel-text
was secured.
The letters in which the MSS. of that time were written are the "square characters", as appears from St. Jerome's remarks. This writing cUstinguished the final forms of the well-known five letters (Prologus galeatus), and probably supposed the separation of words which, excepting a few places, is the same as in our Massoretic Text. Sometimes the Vulgate alone seems to have preserved the correct separation in op- position to the Massoretes and the Greek Version.
The loss of Origen's hexapla is very much to be regretted. This work in its first two columns would have handed down to us both the consonant-text and the vocalization. But only a few scattered remnants of the second are left. They show that the pronuncia- tion, especially of the proper names, in the third cen- tury disagrees not infrequently with the one used later. The alphabet at the time of Origen was the same as that of a century and a half afterwards. As regards the consonants there is little change, and the texi:. shows no essential transformation.
We are led still further back by the Greek versions originating in the second centurj-. The most valuable is Aquila's, as it was based upon the Hebrew text, and rendered it to the letter, with the greatest fidehty, thus enabling us to draw reliable conclusions as to the con- dition of the original. The work is all the more valu- able, as Aquila does not care about the Greek position of words and the peculiar Greek idiom. Moreover, he consciously differs from the Septuagint, taking the then official text for his norm. Being a disciple of Rabbi Aqiba he presumably maintains the \'iews and principles of the Jewish scribes in the beginning of the second century. The two other versions of the same period are of less importance for the critic. Theodo- tion depends upon the Septuagint, and Symmachus allows himself greater libertj' in the treatment of the text. Of the three versions only very small fragments have come down to us. The form of the text which we gather from them is almost the one transmitted by the Massoretes; the differences naturally became more numerous, but it remains the one recension vre know of from our MSS. It must, therefore, be ascribed at least to the beginning of the second centurj', and re- cent investigations in fact assign it to that period.
But that is not all. The perfect agreement of the MSS., even in their critical remarks and seemingly irrelevant and casual pecuharities, has led to the as- sumption that the present text not only represents a single recension, but that this recension is even built upon one archetype containing the very peculiarities that now strike us in the MSS. In favour of this hjT)othesis, which, since the time of Olshausen, has been defended and based upon a deeper argument especially by de Lagarde, e\-idence has been brought forward which seems overwhelming. Hence it is not surprising that, of late, the assertion was made that this view had long since become an admitted fact in the textual criticism of the Old Testament. Yet, how- ever persuasive the argument appears at first sight its validity has been constantly impugned by authorities such as Kuenen, Strack, Buhl, Konig, and others dis- tinguished by their knowledge of the subject. The present state of the Hebrew text is doubtless the out- come of systematic labour during the course of several centuries, but the question is whether the supposed archetjTie ever existed.
At the outset the very as.sumption that about a. d. 1.50 only a single copy was available for the preparar tion of the Bible text, is so improbable .as scarcely to deserve consideration. For even if during the insur- rection of Bar-Cocheba a great number of Scripture rolls perished, there nevertheless existed enough of them in Egj'pt and Persia, so that there was no need to rely on one dam.aged copy. And how could this copy, the defective peculiarities of which could not
