# Old Testament Textual Criticism

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** UsefulCharts
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HprzQR-IkKg
- **Дата:** 02.05.2026
- **Длительность:** 24:30
- **Просмотры:** 132,757

## Описание

Buy the @CrossBibleOfficial poster or explore the full digital tool here:
https://crossbible.com/timeline
Use the code USEFULCHARTS20 to get 20% off
Note: This video was not sponsored by CrossBible, nor am I getting any profit from the sales. I just find the chart "useful" :)

Buy the Timeline of Biblical Composition poster:
https://usefulcharts.com/products/timeline-of-the-bible

Watch the New Testament textual criticism video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GXowCfGMCs

CREDITS:
Main chart by Stephen Nelson
Narration by Matt Baker
Animation by Syawish Rehman
Audio editing by Ali Shahwaiz
Theme music: "Lord of the Land" by Kevin MacLeod and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution license 4.0. Available from http://incompetech.com

## Содержание

### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HprzQR-IkKg) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00)

Hi, this is Matt Baker. Today I'm going to give you a brief introduction to Old Testament textual criticism, similar to what I did last year for the New Testament. Once again, I'll be using this chart which was made by a colleague of mine named Steven Nelson from Cross Bible. It makes a great companion chart to my own timeline of biblical composition. You see, whereas my chart covers who wrote each book of the Bible and when, the Cross Bible chart covers what manuscripts have been discovered and how these have been used to piece together the final text. So together, you get the entire history of the Bible from its very first authors to the modern English translations available today. The chart on the right, which is the one we'll be looking at today, is available via the online Bible study platform crossbible. com. whereas the one on the left is available on our own website usefulcharts. com. Links to both are available in the description and pinned comment. Okay, let's now dive into textual criticism. First of all, please remember that textual criticism is not about promoting a negative view of the Bible. It's simply the process that scholars use when trying to figure out what was most likely the original wording of the Bible. You see, there are no original manuscripts available for any book of the Bible. All we have are copies of copies of the originals. And the thing is, when we compare all of the various copies that we have, we find differences called textual variants. Thousands of them. Now most of the time these differences are quite minor but still they are different. So the question comes up which version is most likely to be closest to the original? Well that's where textual criticism comes in. Last time I mentioned two of the most important principles of textual criticism. The first is that older variants are usually assumed to be closer to the original. This is because we know that given more time the chances of something being changed either deliberately or by mistake goes up. The second is that the shorter and more awkward sounding a variant is, the more likely it is to be the original. This is because when editors do make changes, it's often to make things more clear. And clear, additional words are often required. Now, to these two principles, I'm going to add a third, and that is that readings preserved in the original language are traditionally favored over those found in translations. This is pretty obvious because if you've ever done any translation work, you'll know that it's impossible to ever translate anything perfectly from one language to another language. Okay, so let's now dive into the chart. As I mentioned last time, each colored square represents an actual manuscript that has been found, and the column it's placed in represents the century that it has been dated to. Now, most of this chart covers the New Testament. If you want to see the explanation for that part, I'll leave a link in the description to the previous video. Today, we'll be concentrating only on the very top portion, which covers the Old Testament. Now, usually when talking about this part of the Bible, I prefer to use the term Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, which is the Jewish term. But in this video, I'm mostly going to use Old Testament because some of what we'll be discussing goes beyond what is included in the Jewish Tanakh. So when it comes to the Old Testament, we can divide all of the various sources we have into three main textual families known as text types. There's the Hebrew Maseretic text abbreviated MT, the Greek Septuagent, abbreviated LXX, and finally the Samaritan Pentitute or SP. Take note of the color scheme. brown for maseretic, pale green for septuagent, and gray for Samaritan because that's what's going to be used throughout the chart to indicate what text type each source belongs to. Now, one thing we know for sure is that most of the Old Testament was originally written in classical Hebrew, which was in use from around 1,000 B. CE. to roughly 200 B. CE. Well, the only one of these three text types that transmits the full Hebrew Bible in that original language is the Maseretic text. So, according to principle 3, that would make it the most likely to be closest to the original. However, there's a problem. As we're about to see, the oldest Septuagent copies that we have, which remember are Greek translations, are much older than the oldest Maseretic copies that we have. And therefore, according to principle one, it would be the Septuagent manuscripts that would be most likely to be the closest to the original. So, in other words, we've got two principles at odds with each other.

### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HprzQR-IkKg&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00)

As for the Samaritan Pentatuk, it's written in a later dialect of classical Hebrew, and we don't have any very old manuscripts for it. So, it's usually not seen as being a contender for representing the original. Okay. So, with those basics under our belts, let me now talk in greater detail about the Maseretic text. If you pick up any copy of a modern Jewish Bible with Hebrew in it, what you'll be looking at is the Maseretic text. So, for example, this is my own copy of the JPS Tanakh. JPS standing for Jewish Publication Society. On one side is the Hebrew Maseretic text and on the other side is an English translation. If you don't have a Jewish Bible at home, that's not a problem because you can just go to safaria. org, which is a free online library of all the major Jewish texts. So, for example, if you click on Tanakh, what you'll get is Maseretic on one side and English on the other. Now, Crossbible, the maker of the chart I'm using today, actually does something similar, except that it allows you to add up to three different English translations beside the Maseretic. And then of course, another place you'll find the Maseretic text is in every Jewish synagogue in the world. That's because just about every synagogue has a handwritten Torah scroll. The Torah being the first five books of the Tanakh. Every Torah scroll is an exact copy of the first part of the Maseretic text. So, how old is the oldest copy we have of the Maseretic text? Well, it's not as old as you might think. The oldest complete copy still in existence is the Lenenrad Codeex, which dates to around 1,000 years ago. Now, 1,000 years ago is pretty old, but considering that the Hebrew Bible was written about 2,500 years ago, that doesn't actually bring us that close to the original. The Aleppo Codex and the CEX Cissoon 1053 are a bit older, but both of those are only partial copies, as is Codex Kyenis. Now the reason why the Maseretic text is called Maseretic is because it was preserved and standardized by a group of Jewish scribes called the Maserites. They were responsible for adding the vowel markers that are used to this day. And as you can see here, they started making copies of the Hebrew Bible as far back as 600 CE. Now, where did they get their initial copy from? Well, we don't know. But the assumption is that they must have used copies that were based on copies that go all the way back to around the year 400 B. CE. which is probably around the time that most of the Old Testament books reached their final form. These hypothetical copies that existed around that time upon which the later Maseretic text was based are often called protomaseretic texts. But here's the thing. These protomaseretic texts were not the only version of the Old Testament that existed at that time. Prior to the 3rd century B. C. E. there was also a slightly different version of the Old Testament floating around labeled here as the proto Septuagent which is the hypothetical Hebrew source that the so-called old Greek Septuagent was based on. Now take note that I may also use the word septuagent plural rather than septuagent singular. A lot of people assume that there was just one official Septuagent created at just one point in time. But this is not the case. There were actually multiple Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible made over several centuries. All of which tend to be collectively referred to as the Septuagent. You see over time certain Jewish scholars such as Aquilla, Seamacus and Theodosian produced revised Greek versions that brought the text into closer alignment with the emerging standard Hebrew text that we now refer to as protomaseretic. So when scholars talk about the Septuagent, we sometimes need to clarify when this refers to the old Greek version as opposed to the later revised versions that are closer to the Maseretic. According to legend, the first Greek translation was created in the 3rd century B. C. E. and consisted only of the Torah or Pentatuk. As the legend goes, Tammy II of Egypt invited 72 Jewish scholars to translate the Hebrew Torah into Greek for the first time ever so that a copy could be stored in the famous library of Alexandria. The 72 was eventually simplified as 70, hence the name Septuagen, which in Greek literally means 70. Over the next 100 years, the remaining books of the Tanakh were translated as well, probably several times by several different groups and hence by the time of Jesus, several different Septuagents were in circulation. This is important because by the 1st century CE, Aramaic had

### [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HprzQR-IkKg&t=600s) Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00)

largely replaced Hebrew as the main spoken language in Judea, while Greek was also widely used, especially by the educated class and in the diaspora. Which is why most of the Old Testament quotations found in the New Testament match better with the Old Greek version of the Septuagent than with the Maseretic text. Now, like I mentioned earlier, we have several surviving copies of the Septuagent that are much older than the medieval Maseretic copies. Most notably, these include Codex Ciaticus and Codex Vaticanis, both of which date to around the 4th century CE. So that's at least 600 years older than the Maseretic text. They are both mentioned down here in the New Testament section as they also include nearcomplete versions of the Greek New Testament. Okay, at this point I should explain some of the main differences between the Maseretic text and the Septuagent. After all, it's because of these differences that we know that there were at least two slightly different early versions of the Old Testament. So, first of all, there are some really big differences involving entire books. The best example is Jeremiah. Basically, the Septuagen has a totally different version of Jeremiah. Not only is it 12% shorter, several chapters also appear in an entirely different order. Then there's Esther. In this case, it's the Maseretic version that's shorter. And what's really interesting is that Maseretic Esther makes no mention of God, not even once. Whereas Septuagent Esther not only mentions God, but includes several prayers and other theological elements. So yeah, that's a pretty big difference. Other books that differ in terms of length and content include 1st Samuel, Ezekiel, Psalms, Proverbs, Job, and Daniel. And then of course there's the fact that the Septuagent includes a few extra books from the broader Jewish tradition that are entirely missing from the Hebrew Maseretic text such as Tobit and Judith. But take note that most of the major differences involve either the prophets section or the writing section. Generally speaking, the Torah or Pentatuk is much closer in both the Septuagent and in the Maseretic text. The one main exception to this is the genealogies found in Genesis 5 and 11. When we compare the numbers given in both texts, we can see that the Septuagent pushes back the date for Adam's creation by about 1,400 years. I'll come back to this a bit later, but first I want to point out that in addition to these larger differences involving entire books and chapters, there are also thousands of smaller verse level differences involving things like spelling, phrasing, and word choice. The two most well-known because they impact theology are Psalm 22:16 and Isaiah 7:14. Let's look at the one in Psalms first, which is often listed as verse 17 in the Maseretic text. In the Maseretic text, the verse reads, "For many dogs have surrounded me. A band of evildoers has encircled me. They like a lion are at my hands and my feet. But in the Septuagen, it reads,"For many dogs have surrounded me. They dug into my hands and my feet with most English versions translating dug into as pierced. Obviously, choosing the word pierced brings to mind the crucifixion. And it's therefore the translation preferred by Christians who see this verse as being a prophecy. Some Christians even go as far as to say that sometime after the death of Jesus, Jewish scribes deliberately changed this verse in order to hide the obvious illusion to Jesus. On the flip side, some Jews claimed that it was the Christians who deliberately changed the verse in order to fake a reference to Jesus. Again, I'll come back to this a bit later. Let's now look at Isaiah 7:14, which in the Maseretic reads, "The Lord himself will give you a sign. The young woman will conceive and bear a son. " Whereas the Septuagent reads, "The Lord himself will give you a sign. The virgin will conceive and bear a son. " Again, Christians see this as being a prophecy about Jesus, whereas Jews see it as having a contemporary meaning only, arguing that the Hebrew word for young woman does not necessarily imply virginity. Although it's important to keep in mind that even if the original author did mean to imply virginity, this doesn't necessarily mean that it's a prophecy about Jesus. He could have been simply referring to a contemporary woman that was about to get married, get pregnant, and have a child. So in this case, I think that how a person interprets the verse will boil down to

### [15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HprzQR-IkKg&t=900s) Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00)

his or her already held faith positions. Now, at this point, I want to say a few things about the Samaritan Pentatuk. First of all, take note that as the name implies, it only includes the Pentatuk, not the entire Old Testament. Second, generally speaking, it tends to agree more with the Septuagent than with the Maseretic, which is why it's shown here as being potentially based on a source that had the same parent text as the Septuagent. Third, its distinct Samaritan form likely took shape somewhere here between 250 B. CE. and 50 B. CE. Like I said earlier, its final form is written in a dialect of ancient Hebrew that is later than that of the Maseretic text, one that was used around this time. Now, the Samaritans themselves claim that they are the descendants of the northern kingdom of Israel, which fell to the Assyrians back in 721 B. C. E. and that their version of the Pentatuk dates to before this time. However, if we move over to the timeline of biblical composition, you can see that according to critical scholars, the vast majority of the Old Testament was actually written after 7:21. Meaning that their claim cannot be true. In fact, if we accept the hypothesis that the pentatou was written in layers as opposed to all at once, whether it's the documentary hypothesis, the supplementary hypothesis, or something else, all of which I've covered in my intro to the Bible series, it's almost certain that the final version of the Pentatuk was compiled no earlier than 458 B. CE, sometime after the construction of the second temple. So, who are the Samaritans then, if not the descendants of the northern kingdom of Israel? Well, the leading theory is that they were originally those referred to in Ezra and Nehemiah as the people in the land, meaning those who were never exiled to Babylon, which likely included some lowerass Judahites, some descendants of the northern Israelites who had moved south after the fall of Samaria, as well as some newcomers who had been settled there by foreign powers. We know from both the Bible and from archaeology that this group built a temple at Mount Garazim which was sort of an alternative or rival to the one at Jerusalem and that existed from about 450 B. CE to 100 B. CE. So what makes the most sense is that the Samaritan Pentatuk took shape in connection with this Garazim centered community during this period which is exactly what the chart shows. Which brings me to the most important difference between the Samaritan Pentatuk and the other two text types. In the Samaritan Pentatuk, there are several references to Mount Garazim, which do not appear in either the Maseretic text or the Septuagent. For example, in Deuteronomy 27:4, God commands the Israelites to set up an altar on Mount Ebal. However, in the Samaritan Pentatuk, it's Mount Garazim instead. According to most critical scholars, it was the Samaritans who changed the text to better suit their current situation rather than it being the other way around. Unfortunately, there's no way to know for sure. And it certainly doesn't help that the oldest surviving copy of the Samaritan Pentatuk, the Aisha scroll, is very late, dating to around the year 1250. Okay, so all of this brings us back to the question of which one of the other two, the Maseretic or the Septuagent, is more likely to reflect the original. Well, as you probably know, in 1946, a major discovery was made that many thought would provide an answer to the question. This of course was the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls which turned out to include many manuscripts of the Bible written in Hebrew that were several centuries older than the oldest Septuagent copies we had and over a thousand years older than the oldest Maseretic text. But here's the thing. After all the analysis was said and done, what scholars found was that while most of the time the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls matches fairly closely to the Hebrew of the Maseretic text, meaning that the Mazerites and Premaserates did a pretty good job preserving a consistent stream of transmission. There are some instances where certain Dead Sea Scrolls match better with what the Hebrew parent text behind the old Greek Septuagent probably looked like. Which means that while we can conclude that the framework of the Maseretic text is generally very close to the earliest recoverable text and thus very reliable, we cannot definitively say that it is always going to be closer to the original than the parent text behind the Septuagent. At the end of the day, we have to make decisions one book at a time and often

### [20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HprzQR-IkKg&t=1200s) Segment 5 (20:00 - 24:00)

one chapter sometimes even one verse at a time which is basically the conclusion given by Emanuel Toveve in his book textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible the most authoritative book on the subject. So using some of the examples discussed so far, when it comes to Jeremiah, it's likely that the Septuagent version is closer to the original and that the Maseretic version represents a later expansion. But when it comes to Esther, the reverse is likely true. And in terms of the Genesis chronologies, I think there's a strong argument to be made that the Septuagent version is closer to the original. You see in the Septuagent the age at which each patriarch had their first child is more consistent going down slightly whereas in the Maseretic text it is very uneven. As I mentioned in my biblical chronology video it would appear that sometime after the Makabian revolt scribes likely altered the numbers in Genesis so that the rededication of the temple took place exactly 4,000 years after creation. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that the Septuagent numbers are correct in some sort of literal way. I'm just saying that they are probably more likely to be the original numbers used by the original authors of Genesis 5:11, probably for symbolic reasons. Finally, let's return to Psalm 22:16. This is an interesting case because based on the evidence, it's possible that neither the maseretic text nor the Septuagent is exactly correct. On one hand, like a lion makes more sense because it's a common phrase used throughout the Hebrew Bible and it matches with the dog metaphor. However, in the Hebrew, there is no verb. So, it literally reads like a lion, hands and feet. One proposed reconstruction is that the original was actually they bound my hands and feet because in Hebrew just one letter needs to be swapped and therefore it may have been a scribe that did this by accident. So the solution is not to choose one text type over another. What most scholars use nowadays is a critical edition of the Hebrew Bible which uses the Maseretic Leningrad Codex as its base but then incorporates notes about variant readings found in the Septuagent, Dead Sea Scrolls, Samaritan Pentatuk, etc. The first such critical edition was the Biblia Hebraa published by Rudolph KD in 1906 with updates in 1913 and 1937. These are referred to as BH1, BH2, and BH3. This was then replaced in the late 1960s with the Biblia Hebra Stogartenia or BHS, which is named after the city of Stoutgart because that's the location of the German Bible Society. This is the current critical edition used by most Bible translators today, although it will eventually be replaced by the Biblia Hebraica Quinta. Quinta meaning five. As for the Septuagent, the primary critical edition used these days is the Goodingan Septuagent. Now, of course, if you don't know Hebrew and Greek, that's not a problem because most modern Bible translations such as the NIV, ESV, or NRSV have the same kind of critical footnotes listing major variants when necessary so that you can be aware of verses that can be translated in multiple ways. You can also use websites like crossbible. com which allows you to view the Maseretic, the Septuagent, and a modern translation all at the same time. Okay, so that was a look at Old Testament textual criticism. Once again, if you want to buy a copy of the chart we've used today or just use it online, you can find it at crossbible. com. In addition to this, if you're interested in the timeline of biblical composition that I showed, that one is available on our website, usefulcharts. com, which I'll link to on the screen right now. Thanks for watching.

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*Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/51937*