to his trust. The work and duty of the Massoretes—the authoritative custodians of the sacred text—was to safeguard it, so as to protect it from any change. This they did effectually by "building a hedge round it." To do this, they carefully registered all the phenomena in the ancient manuscripts, the reason for and meaning of many of which were not understood; but they were carefully noted and preserved. Some words were found which had been dotted over; some were spelt with large, some with smaller letters; some words and expressions were archaic, that is, belonging to a much earlier date in their history; some were suspended above the line; some sentences contained peculiar expressions: such-like phenomena and peculiarities in the ancient MSS. were diligently recorded by the Massoretes,—none were overlooked.
Other textual notes were carefully made, such as the number of verses in each sacred book. The middle verse and word of each great section in each book and even in the whole Bible were also recorded. All important words were noted; the number of times that each letter of the alphabet occurs in each division in each book and in the whole Bible were diligently written down. All this, and very much more of such curious statistical information, was registered by the Massoretes so as to lock and interlock every letter, word, and line into its place, that the original text of the ancient MSS. might be preserved and faithfully reproduced and handed down by any copyist who followed the direction of the Massorah.
That some of this curious elaborate work was done, that some of this vast hedge[1] round the Law was planted before the fall of the City and Temple in A.D. 70, is fairly certain. But there is no doubt that the extremely complicated and exhaustive work of the Massoretes to ensure the preservation of the ancient text was really elaborated and completed in those centuries after the Christian era when the composition of the Mishnah and Gemara occupied the attention of the great
- ↑ R. Akiba (early second century) in the Mishnah treatise "Pirke Aboth" used to say, "Massorah is a fence to the Torah." This has been generally understood as a reference to the Massorah of which we are speaking here. But many scholars now consider that R. Akiba was referring in this saying to "tradition" generally, and they understand the word Massorah as correlative to "Kabbala" (tradition in general), such as is embodied in the Mishnah.
