Text Criticism
Of course, for the most part, stories were transmitted orally for generations, sometimes centuries, before they were written down. In the case of the Hebrew Scriptures, the first scrolls would have been on velum, sheep or goat skins. By the time stories were written down, there could be many oral variants. Oral variants would develop because certain details were more important to one storytelling community than another. Names of characters could change (Abram or Abraham), or sacred numbers (2 or 7), or place names (Horeb or Sinai).
The texts were painstakingly transcribed (copied) from one scroll to the next which made copies of scrolls very costly. As one of my OT profs used to say, “A Lamb died for this!” Errors were inevitable. Further, notation was very brief. Written Biblical Hebrew has no vowels. The vowels were “understood” from context or notated with jots and tiddles above and below the words. There were no punctuation and no space between the words. And Biblical Hebrew only has two tenses: perfect and imperfect. These tenses indicate completed actions, and actions that have yet to be completed.
Sometimes, a copyist or transcriber might add explanations to a text to smooth out a lack of clarity, or even obvious conflicts. Of course, copyists made mistakes. All you have to do is try copying a full page of text from your own bible and you will discover all kinds of interesting mistakes. One of my favourites is dittography when a word appears more than once in the text and your eye accidentally returns to the earlier appearance, so you copy the same lines more than once. Haplography is the opposite, skipping to the later appearance of the word and missing everything between the two instances.
The above is to explain that we end up with Variants in the Texts and the variants create families. It looks like this: a copyist makes a “variant” in copying a text. It could be a mistake, or an intentional addition or omission to try clarifying the text. That text is sent to the community that requested it. That text is copied, variants and all. Another copyist copies the same text the first copyist copied, but creates different variants and that text is sent to another community. Over generations and hundreds of years text lineages are created.
This is important. No original scrolls or texts remain today. What we have are copies of copies of copies, of both the Old Testament and the New. Some copies are older than others. Some copies are copies of older copies than others.
When King James authorized the English translation of the bible in 1611, the translators used whatever scrolls and books of scripture they happened to have on hand. This is called the “Received Text.” There was no criticism or analysis used to determine which variants might be closer to the original. What’s more, the copies the translators had on hand were more than likely to have been in Latin, not Hebrew, not Aramaic, and not Koine (Biblical Greek).
In most mainline denominations, like the United Church of Canada, we use translations of a “Critical Text.” We have exercised scholarship to determine the most original scrolls and text to translate into our vernacular languages. This creates some significant differences from the King James Bible.
If you are using a study bible, there will be notations when a difficult decision was made between the traditional received text and a critical text.
Furthermore, this is why trying to read the bible literally makes absolutely no sense. We literally have no idea what literal words were used thousands of years ago after so many copies and variants. We read for meaning.
God bless the scholars!
LXX
Between 286 BCE and 245 BCE, the Pentateuch was translated into Koine Greek. This translation was called the Septuagint or LXX (the roman numerals for 70). The story is that 70 or 72 scholars worked independently to translate the Torah and created identical transcripts! That’s highly unlikely. Over some 200 years an authoritative translation was created. When New Testament writers quote Hebrew Scriptures, it is usually from some version of the LXX. A quick Google search will identify 320 direct quotes of the LXX in the New Testament and 890 allusions to the LXX.
Vulgate
The Vulgate was prepared by St Jerome in the late 4th Century of the Common Era. It became the official Latin text for the Roman Catholic Church. Once again, it was a collection of “received texts” not texts critically chosen for their original authority. It did finalize the “cannon” of Christian texts (pre-reformation).
Masoretic Text (MT)
The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the Hebrew Bible. It dates to between the 7th and 10th Centuries of the Common Era. This is the Hebrew Bible that is currently used when translating most English bibles (Critical Texts).
Dead Sea Scrolls
Between 1946 and 1956, a collection of 800-900 ancient manuscripts were discovered in 11 caves near Qumran, west of the Dead Sea. These texts were preserved since the 3rd Century before the common era and so predate most Hebrew Biblical manuscripts by 8 to 11 centuries.
For Study
Read the last chapter of Mark, Mark 16, especially the footnotes.
Was this an oops? or an intentional edit? Why would a copyist make such an edit/adition? What is the difference in the meaning of the text? What does the long ending add to the story? What does the long ending remove from the story? Which ending do you prefer?
Read the long footnote on page 74 of the NT in my copy of The New Oxford Annotated Bible (Betty's edition will not include this footnote).
Read Mattew 1:22-23 and Isaiah 7:14, including any footnotes. Matthew is quoting the LXX while Isaiah is translated from the MT. What difference do you hear in the meaning? Does it matter?
Read Acts 15:15-18 and Amos 9:11-12, including any footnotes. Once again, Luke (the author of Acts) is quoting the LXX while Amos is a translation from the MT. What difference can we hear in the meaning if any? What difference does "narrowing" definition vs "broadening" definition make? Can we think of how "narrowing" and "broadening" are interpretive techniques currently being fought over (hint: to whom does "We the People..." refer?). Are "narrowing" and "broadening" legitmate techniques for interpretation? Is one right or one wrong?
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