mikey_anarchy

This is an extract from an essay i have been reading. I am looking for confirmation to the truth of this claim. any help?

For instance, the modern Hebrew Bible is not in any way shape or form an ancient document but from Medieval times. Scholarly pundit, Jacques Berlinerclau elaborates further and writes:

It is based [Hebrew Bible] on what is called the Masoretic test (or MT), whose most important variant is referred to the Leningrad Codex. The latter stems from the eleventh century AD and is, at best, a copy of a copy of a copy (and so on) of some earlier canonized version of the Hebrew Bible.

(Berlinerclau,The Secular Bible, Page 77)


Notably, being a copy of a prior test does not necessarily posit altered literature. However, the MT variations had to be dramatically different from ancient Hebrew texts because the Israelite scribes did not, for whatever reason, develop a sophisticated method of flagging the presence of vowels. Berlinerclau explains in more depth:

…a word that was pronounced “bat,” would usually be written in biblical times solely with the consonants, as “bt.” In the absence of a signifying vowel, a later interpreter who came across “bt” might not know if it should be read “bet,” “beat,” “bit,” “bite,” “but,” and so on. Fearful that the meaning of the scripture was being lost, the Masoretes dutifully “vowelled” the text between the fifth and tenth centuries AD.
(Berlinerclau, The Secular Bible, Page 77)

Toto

That's Berlinerblau. A short bio is here. He wrote one of the recent secweb books of the month available here and reviewed here: The Secular Bible : Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously

Toto

You might want to check out the arguments in this thread: Corruption in the Masoretic Text.