I have often heard Christians boast that the translation of the Old Testament they use is “based on the Masoretic text.” In point of fact, virtually every translation of the Tanakh into any language is based on the Masoretic text, since this is the only complete text of the Hebrew Scriptures that we have. The only exceptions would be variant Hebrew readings preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls or variants in the ancient versions—in particular, the Septuagint—that seem to reflect a different Hebrew original. Otherwise, every translation of the Hebrew Scriptures can use one text and one text only: the Masoretic text!
What, then, is the Masoretic text (commonly abbreviated MT)? Actually, it is more accurate to speak of the Masoretic textual tradition, since there are literally thousands of medieval manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures that were copied and preserved by the Jewish scribes whom we call the Masoretes (literally, “the transmitters”), and there are thousands of very minor variants in these manuscripts. In other words, there is not one “master” text of the Hebrew Bible, but the scribes were so careful in their transmission methods that the differences in the Masoretic manuscripts are, for the most part, of extremely minor consequence.
The work of the Masoretes is generally dated from the sixth to the eleventh centuries a.d., but the oldest complete copy of the Hebrew Bible we have today dates to the eleventh century (it is called the Leningrad B19a). What happened to the earlier copies? And how reliable can an eleventh-century text be? That is more than thirteen centuries after the last book of the Tanakh was written! In contrast, the oldest complete copy of the Greek New Testament dates to less than three centuries after the writing of the last book of the New Testament.
Those who questioned the accuracy of the Masoretic manuscripts were in for a surprise when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the late 1940s. Here were Hebrew manuscripts that were more than one thousand years older than the oldest Masoretic texts, and yet some of the Dead Sea texts agreed with the Masoretic texts word for word and letter for letter. What a testimony to the careful work of these Jewish scribes! Of course, there were other scrolls that deviated extensively from the Masoretic manuscripts—especially in spelling conventions—but these deviations reflected one of two things: either the popular spelling style that was often used at that time (meaning that these ancient scrolls were less accurate than the medieval manuscripts) or a different, ancient textual tradition was preserved (meaning that the question is not the accuracy of the transmission but the origin of the tradition).
What, then, became of all the manuscripts between the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the eleventh-century B19a manuscript? Because the biblical texts were considered sacred, they could not be destroyed, so they were either buried when they were no longer usable or else stored away in special rooms that functioned like a hidden warehouse, sometimes in the back of a synagogue. (One of the most famous Hebrew manuscript treasure troves was discovered in one such synagogue room, called the Cairo Genizah. The word genizah means “a storage room.” It should also be remembered that the Dead Sea Scrolls were hidden away for safekeeping, only to be discovered nineteen centuries later.)
How was it, then, that the Jewish scribes, both before and after the Masoretes, were able to preserve the biblical text with such accuracy? First, it is clear that God willed that His Word would be preserved for His people through the ages, which is the biggest reason that the biblical text of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures has been so wonderfully and even miraculously kept through the ages. Second, because the scribes believed that they were handling sacred texts, they were scrupulous in their transmission methods, counting the letters, words and sentences in each book of the Tanakh, making note of the middle letter, middle word and middle sentence of each book (or of the Torah as a whole). Can you imagine how painstaking this work was? And just think: If the manuscript was off by one single letter, it would not be used. That’s scribal accuracy! Third, because Judaism put a tremendous emphasis on study and on the memorization of the sacred texts (meaning the Tanakh and the rabbinic literature; see #7), the scribes were specially equipped for their task, having an extreme familiarity with the biblical texts and a high level of academic discipline.
The Masoretes were also responsible for developing the vowel system used in Hebrew Bibles today. (Hebrew vowels, for the most part, are not represented by letters—as they are, for example, in English. Instead, they are represented by series of dots or short lines placed beneath, above or to the side of the consonants.) The Masoretes also developed an elaborate (and somewhat esoteric) system of marginal notes, in which they commented on every kind of textual phenomenon and variant.