Is the Old Testament Historically Reliable

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Is the Old Testament Historically Reliable?
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Old Testament has shown to be historically
reliable through

• Textual transmission the accuracy of the
  process of copying the manuscripts through
  history
• The confirmation of the Old Testament by hard
  evidence uncovered through archaeology
• Documentary evidence also uncovered through
  archaeology.
• Testimony of the Authenticity of the Old
  Testament through Jesus.

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Bibliographical Evidence

• Number of Manuscripts and the closeness to
  original date of authorship of the existent
  Manuscripts do match the N.T.
• Sheer age of the text and the inability of
  writing material to survive.
• The loss of manuscripts during the destruction of
  Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

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Bibliographical Evidence

• Jewish commitment to the text
• Romans 31, 2 What advantage then hath the Jew?
  or what profit is there of circumcision? Much
  every way chiefly, because that unto them were
  committed the oracles of God.

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Jewish Commitment to the Text

• Josephus We have given practical proof of our
  reverence for our own Scriptures. For, although
  such long ages have now passed, no one has
  ventured either to add, or to remove or to alter
  a syllable and it is an instinct with every Jew,
  from the day of his birth, to regard them as the
  decrees of God, to abide by them, and if need be,
  cheerfully to die for them

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Jewish Commitment to the Text

• Rabbi Aquiba (Jewish Scribe in the 2nd century
  A.D) the accurate transmission of the text is a
  fence for the Torah.

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Jewish Caretakers of the Old Testament Text

• Sopherim scribes Jewish scholars and
  custodians of the text between 5th-3rd B.C.
• The Zugoth pairs textual scholars 2nd-1st
  century BC
• Tannaim repeaters or teachers 1st century BC-AD
  200 work also included the Talmud
• Talmudists (A.D.100-500)

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Talmudists

• A synagogue roll must be written on the skins of
  clean animals
• Prepare for the particular use of the synagogue
  by a Jew.
• Must be fastened together with strings taken from
  clean animals
• Every skin must contain a certain number of
  columns, equal throughout the entire codex

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Talmudists

• The length of each column must not extend less
  than 48 or more than 60 lines, the breadth must
  consist of thirty letters
• The ink should be black and be prepared
  according to a definite recipe
• An authentic copy must be the exemplar, from
  which the transcriber ought not in the least
  deviate

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Talmudists

• No word or letter must be written from memory
• Between every consonant the space of a hair or
  thread must intervene
• The copyist must be in full Jewish dress and have
  cleansed his whole body
• Not begin to write the name of God with a pen
  newly dipped in ink
• Should a king address him while writing the name
  of God he must not take notice.

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Talmudists

• Once a manuscript had been copied with the
  exactitude prescribed by the Talmud and been
  verified it was accepted as being equal to the
  original

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Jewish Caretakers of the Old Testament Text

• Masoretes Jewish scholars between A.D 500 A.D.
  950
• Two major centers of Masoretic activity (one in
  Babylon, the other in Palestine
• Most famous Masoretes were the ben Asher family
  (Tiberias) who produced the ben Asher text that
  is considered the standard Hebrew text of today

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Masoretes

• Use of vowel points
• Introduced an extensive system of multiple levels
  of section, paragraph, and phrasal divisions that
  were indicated in Masoretic markings.
• One of the most frequent of these was a special
  type of punctuation, for a full stop used to help
  mark verse numbers later on.

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Masoretes

• Numbered the verses, words, and letters of very
  book.
• They calculated the middle word and middle letter
  of each verse.
• Pointed out the middle letter of the Pentateuch
  and the middle letter of the whole Hebrew Bible.

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Note about Age

• Age was not seen as advantage when determining
  the authenticity of a Scribe.
• On the contrary it was seen as disadvantage as
  older copies where viewed as more susceptible to
  damage.
• Older copies placed in a lumber cupboard in the
  Synagogue. Once the cupboard was filled the
  oldest copies where destroyed

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Note about Age

• Paleographer Sir Frederic Kenyon Thus far from
  regarding an older copy of the Scriptures as more
  valuable, the Jewish habit has been to prefer the
  newer as being the most perfect and free from
  damage

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Number of Hebrew Manuscripts

• 1780 Benjamin Kennicott numbered and published
  the list of existent Hebrew Manuscripts as 615
• 1788 Giovanni de Rossi published a list of 731
  Hebrew Manuscripts

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Number of Hebrew Manuscripts

• 1890s Cairo Synagogue 200,000 Manuscripts and
  fragments (10,000 which are biblical)
• Dated 6th-8th Century. Attic had been walled off
  and forgotten
• Half of the Cairo manuscripts are housed at
  Cambridge University -- The rest are scattered
  across the world (A number of the larger
  manuscripts are in New York in the Jewish
  Theological Seminary)

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Number of Hebrew Manuscripts

• When you add the Dead Sea Scrolls the total
  number of manuscripts of known Old Testament
  Manuscripts and fragments rises to well above
  11,000

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Famous Manuscripts

• Cairo Codex (A.D. 895) Located in the British
  Museum. Produced by the Moses ben Asher family
  contains all the Prophets (but none of the rest
  of the O.T.)
• Codex of the Prophets of Leningrad (A.D. 915)
  contains Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the
  twelve minor profits
• Codex Babylonicus Petropalitanus (A.D. 1008)
  also located in Leningrad. Earliest complete
  copy of the Masoretic text. It was prepared from
  a corrected text of Rabbi Aaron ben Moses ben
  Asher A.D. 1000

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Famous Manuscripts

• British Museum codex (A.D. 950) contains part of
  Genesis through Deuteronomy
• Aleppo Codex (A.D. 900)
• The consonants in the Codex were copied by the a
  Jewish scribe in Israel. The text was then
  verified, vocalized, and provided with Masoretic
  notes by Aaron ben Asher.
• It was partially destroyed (including all of the
  Pentateuch in the 1947 Arab riots in Israel after
  the announcement of the UN Partition Plan.
• Before its partial distruction it was the oldest
  complete Masoretic manuscript of the entire O.T.

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Dead Sea Scrolls

• Sir Frederic Kenyon (textual scholar) wrote in
  his book Our Bible and Ancient Manuscripts
  There is indeed no probablility that we shall
  find manuscripts of the Hebrew text going back to
  a period before the formation of the text which
  we know as Masoretic. We can only arrive at an
  idea of it by a study of the earliest
  translations made from it.

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Dead Sea Scrolls

• Found by a shepherd boy named Muhammed who was
  searching for a lost goat, He tossed a stone
  into a hole in a cliff on the west side of the
  Dead Sea about 8 miles south of Jericho. The boy
  heard the sound of shattering pottery.
• 5 of the scrolls found in what is now known as
  cave 1 were purchased by the Archbishop of the
  Syrian Orthodox Moastery at Jeruslaem. Three
  other scrolls where purchased by Professor
  Sukenik of Hebrew Univeristy.

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Dead Sea Scrolls

• The Archbishop could not read Hebrew so he called
  the American School of Oriental Research in
  Jerusalem and the acting director of the school
  named John Trever photograph each colomn of what
  turned out to be the Isaiah scroll and sent the
  prints to Dr. W. F. Albright of John Hopkins
  University.

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Dead Sea Scrolls

• Albright wrote, My heartiest congratulations on
  the greatest manuscript discovery of modern
  times!...What an absolutely incredible find! And
  there can happily not be the slightest doubt in
  the world about the genuineness of the
  manuscript. He dated it at 100 B.C.

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Possible Origin

• Sect known as the Essenes who lived in Kirbet
  Qumran
• Belief is that they hid the scrolls in the caves
  around A.D. 66 before the first Jewish Revolt

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Value of the Dead Sea Scrolls

• They are dated about 1000 years earlier then the
  earliest Masoretic manuscripts.
• When word of the dead sea scrolls came out there
  where many who assumed that a dramatic correction
  of the Old Testament text would need to follow.
  However, the consistency of the Dead Seas scrolls
  with the Maseretic proved to be astonishing.

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Value of the Dead Sea Scrolls

• Dr Miller Burrows (Yale Univ)Considering what
  a long time intervened between the Dead Sea
  Scrolls and the oldest of the medieval mss. one
  might have expected a much larger number of
  variant readings and a much wider degree of
  divergence. It is a matter for wonder that
  through something like a thousand years the text
  underwent so little alteration. As I said in my
  first article on the scroll Herein lies its
  chief importance supporting the fidelity of the
  Masoretic tradition.

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Dr Yadin

• What is astonishing is that despite their
  antiquity and the fact that the scrolls belong to
  this pre-standardization period they are, on the
  whole, almost identical with the Masoretic text
  known to us. This establishes a basic principle
  for all future research on texts of the Bible.
  Not even the hundreds of slight variations
  established in the texts, affecting mainly
  spelling and occasionally word substitution, can
  alter that fact.

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What do the scrolls contain?

• Cave 1 (1947)
• Isaiah (entire copy125 B.C.), Partial copies of
  Genesis, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Judges, Samuel,
  Ezekiel, Psalms, as well as some extra-biblical
  texts
• Cave 2 (1952)
• Partial copies of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers,
  Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, Job, Psalms, Ruth

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What do the scrolls contain?

• Cave 3
• No Biblical writings
• Cave 4 (1952)
• Thousand of fragments from all the Old Testament
  books with the exception of Esther (Fragment of
  Samuel dated to 3rd Century BC thought to be the
  oldest known piece of the Bible)

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What do the scrolls contain?

• Cave 5-6 no significant Old Testament finds
• Cave 7-10 no significant Old Testament finds
• New Testament Find (Greek Text)? -- Jesuit
  paleographer Jose OCallahan believes he found
  some very early fragments of Mark (A.D. 50), Acts
  (A.D. 60), Romans, 1 Timothy, 2 Peter, James (AD
  70)
• Mark 652, 53 fragment pictured

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Other Early Manuscripts

• Nash Papyrus acquired in Egypt by W. L. Nash had
  been dated in the 2nd century B.C. Contains
  parts of Exodus including the 10 Commandments.
  Agrees with the Masoretic text
• Jeremiah SealBitumen seal of a wine jar Jeremiah
  4811 agrees with the Masoretic text (Date
  1st-2nd Century B.C.

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Non-Hebrew evidence

• Septuagint (3rd 1st Century B.C.)
• Letter was found indicating that King Ptolemy had
  an interest in Jewish literature and sent a
  delegation to the Jewish high priest Eleazar in
  Jerusalem.
• The high priest choose 6 elders from each of the
  twelve tribes of Israel and sent them to
  Alexandria along with an authenticated copy of
  the Torah.
• The elders then took up residence in a house on
  the island of Pharos where in seventy two days
  they finished the translation of the Pentateuch
  into Greek

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Septuagint

• Differs from the Hebrew canon in quality of
  translation and was intended to be used in public
  services in the synagogues rather than for
  scholarly or scribble purposes
• The text of Job in the original Septuagint was
  one-sixth shorter then the Hebrew text.
• Large variations in Joshua, Samuel, Kings,
  Proverbs, Esther, and Jeremiah

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Contributions of the Septuagint

• Bridged the religious gap between the Hebrew and
  Greek speaking peoples, as it met the needs of
  the Alexandrian Jews
• Bridged the gap between the Hebrew Old Testament
  of the Jews and the Greek-speaking Christians who
  would use it with the New Testament

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Contributions of the Septuagint

• Provided a precedent for missionaries to make
  translations of the Scriptures into various
  languages
• Bridges the textual criticism gap by its
  substantial agreement with the Hebrew Old
  Testament.
• Codex Vaticanus (A.D. 325-350)
• Codex Sinaiticus (A.D. 350)

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Samaritan Pentateuch

• When the Samaritans separated from the Jews
  during the 5th -4th century B.C. they took with
  them the Pentateuch as it existed
• Referred to by Eusebius and Jerome but not made
  available to modern western scholars until 1616
  when a Samaritan manuscript was discovered in
  Damascus.

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Samaritan Pentateuch

• Earliest copies are from the 11th century
• There are approximately 6000 deviations from the
  Masoretic Text though most of them are considered
  trivial.