TESTAMENT
528
TESTAMENT
have been overlooked, attain to such undisputed
authority? This could have happened only if it had
much greater weight than the others, for instance, for
its being a temple scroll; this would imply further
that there existed official texts and copies, and so the
uniformity goes further back. On the supposition that
it were but a private scroll, preserved merely by chance,
it would be impossible to explain how the obvious mis-
takes were retained. Why, for instance, should all copies
have a closed Qoph, or a letter casually made larger,
crafinal Me/n within a word? Such improbabilities arise
necessarily from the hypothesis of a single archetype.
Is it not much more likely that the supposed mistakes
are really not erroneous, but have some critical signifi-
cation? For several of them a satisfactorj- explana-
tion has already been given. Thus the inverted Nu7i
points to the uncertainty of the respective passages:
in Prov., xvi, 28, for instance, the small Nun, as Blau
rightly conjectures, might owe its origin to a textual
emendation suggested by the feeling prevalent later
on. The larger letters served perhaps to mark the
middle of a book. Possibly something similar may
have given rise to the other pecuharities for which
we cannot at present account. As long as there exists
the possibility of a probable explanation, we should
not make chance responsible for the condition of our
text-, though we do not deny that here and there chance
has been at play. But the complete agreement was
certainly brought about gradually. The older the wit^
nesses, the more they differ, even though the recen-
sion remains the same. And yet it might have been
expected, the more ancient they were the more uni-
form they should become.
Besides, if one codex had been the source of all the rest, it cannot be explained why trifling oddities were everywhere taken over faithfully, whilst the conso- nant-text was less cared for. If, again, in later times the differences were maintained by the Western and the Eastern schools, it is clear that the supposed codex did not possess the necessarily decisive authority.
The present text on the contrary seems to have re- sulted from the critical labour of the scribes from the first century B. c. to the second century a. d. Con- sidering the reading of the Bible in the synagogue and the statements of Josephus (Contra Apionem, I, viii) and of Philo (Eusebius, "Pra'p. evang.", VIII, vi) on the treatment of the Scriptures, we may rightly sup- pose that greater changes of the text did not occur at that time. Even the words of Jesus in Matt., v, 18, about the jot and tit tie not passing away, seem to point to a scrupulous care in the preservation of the very letter; and the unconditional authority of the Scrip- ture presupposes a high opinion of the letter of Holy Writ.
How the work of the scribes was carried out in de- tail, we cannot ascertain. Some statements of Jewish tradition suggest that they were satisfied with super- ficial investigation and criticism, which, however, is all that could have been expected at a time when seri- ous textual criticism was not even thought of. When difficulties arose, it is said that the witnesses were counted and the question decided according to nu- merical majority. However simple and imperfect this method was, under the circumstances an objective account of the actual state of the question was much more valuable than a series of hypothe.'ses the claims of which we could not now examine. Nor is there any reason for supposing, with some early Christian writers, conscious changes or faLsifications of the text. But we are, perhaps, justified in holding that the dis- putes between the Jews and Christians about the text of t he Scrijit urcs were one of t he rr:usons why t he former hastened tile work of \inifying and fixing the text.
The MSS. of t hat piTio<r probably showed Httle dif- ference from those of the subsequent epoch. The consonant-textr was written in a more ancient form of the square characters; the so-called final letters pre-
sumably came into use then. The Nash Papyrus (the
Ten Commandments) would give some information if
it were only certain that it really belongs to the first
century. The question cannot be decided, as our
knowledge of Hebrew writing from the first to the
third century is quite imperfect. The papjTUs is
written in well-developed square characters, exhibits
division of words throughout, and always uses the
"final letters". As in the Talmud, the memory of the
relatively late distinction of the double forms of the
five letters is still alive, their application in Holy Writ
cannot be dated back too far. Even the Massorah
contains a number of phrases having final letters which
are divided differently in the text and on the margin,
and must, therefore, belong to a period when the dis-
tinction was not as yet in use. From the Nabataean
and PalmjTian inscriptions we learn that at the time
of Christ the distinction already existed, but it does
not follow that the same usage prevailed in the land
west of the Jordan and, in particular, in the Sacred
Books. The PalmyTian inscriptions of the first to the
thii-d century apply the final form of only one letter,
viz., Nun, whilst the Nabatiean go beyond the Hebrew
and use, though not consistently, double forms also for
Aleph and He. The time when the Jewish copyists
began to distinguish the double forms must then re-
main an open question. Moreover, the term "final
letters" does not seem very appropriate, consider-
ing the historical development. It is not the final
forms then invented, but rather the others, that
seem to be the product of a new writing. For, with
the single exception of Mem, the so-called final forms
are those of the old characters as exhibited partly at
least even in the oldest inscriptions, or at any rate in
use in the Aramaic papyri of the fifth century B. c.
C. The Bible Text before Christ. — As regards the pre- ceding centiu'ies, we are relatively well informed. In place of the missing MSS. we have the ancient Greek Version of the Old Testament, the so-called Septua- gint, or Alexandrian, Version. The Pentateuch was translated in the first half of the third century, but it cannot be determined in what order and at what inter- vals the other books followed. Yet in the case of the majority of the books the work was probably com- pleted about the middle of the second century B. c. Of primary importance for us is the question of the state of the text at the time of the translation. As the version is not the work of one man — not even the Pentateudi had only one translator — nor the work of one period, but is extended over more than a hundred years, it cannot all be jiulged by the same criterion. The same holds good of its Hebrew original. Some of the Old-Testament Scriptures had, at the time of the translation, existed for about a thousand years, whilst others had just been composed. Considering this his- torical development, we must, in judging the texts, not simply oppose the whole of the M. T. (Massoretic Text) on the one hand to the whole Septuagint on the other. Results of any practical value can be obtained only by a separate study of the different books of Holy Scripture.
The oldest, the Pentateuch, presents considerable differences from the M. T. only in Ex., xxxvi-xl, and in Num. Greater divergences appear in Sam., Jer., Job, Prov., and Daniel. The M. T. of the Books of Samuel has suffered in many places. The Greek Ver- sion often serves to correct it, though not always. In Jeremias text-tradition is very unsettled. In the Greek \'ersion not less than 2700 words of the M. T., about an eighth part of the whole, are missing. Addi- tions to the M. T. are inconsiderable. Some of the parts wanting in Sejit. may be later additions, whilst others belong to the original text. The transpositions of the Greek text seem to be secondary. Still the order of the M. T. is not unobjectionable either, and sometimes Sept. is right in opposition to M. T. On the whole, the text of Sept. seems to be preferable to
