An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax

attacks have long since disappeared, but suspicion of the MT has remained.
Serious consideration of the text’s history should help to dispel any deep distrust
and lead to a cautious conservatism in using it. 43
b The history of the text can be divided, on the bases of the kinds of evidence
available and the text’s fortunes, into four periods: from the time of composition
to ca. 400 B.C.E., from 400 B.C.E. to ca. 100 C.E., from 100 C.E. to 1000, and from
1000 to the present. Since the text, and hence the basis for the grammar of Biblical
Hebrew, was standardized during the third period, and the fourth pertains mostly
to minor modifications within the Masoretic tradition and to the printing of the
text, we limit our survey to the first three. 44
[Page 16] 1.5.2 Earliest Period (to 400 B.C.E.)
a No extant manuscript of the Hebrew Bible can be dated before 400 B.C.E. by the
disciplines of paleography or archeology (even with the help of nuclear physics). 45
Scribal practices before this time must be inferred from evidence within the Bible
itself and from known scribal practices in the ancient Near East at the time the
books were recorded. These two sources suggest that scribes variously sought
both to preserve and to revise the text.
b Tendency to preserve the text. The very fact that the Scripture persistently
survived the most deleterious conditions throughout its long history demonstrates
that indefatigable scribes insisted on its preservation. The books were copied by
hand for generations on highly perishable papyrus and animal skins in the
relatively damp, hostile climate of Palestine; the dry climate of Egypt, so
favorable to the preservation of such materials, provides a vivid contrast.
Moreover, the prospects for the survival of texts were uncertain in a land that
served as a bridge for armies in unceasing contention between the continents of
Africa and Asia—a land whose people were the object of plunderers in their early
43 On the subject of this section, see, in general, P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans, eds.,
The Cambridge History of the Bible. 1. From the Beginnings to Jerome (Cambridge:
Cambridge University, 1970); and F. M. Cross and S. Talmon, eds., Qumran and the
History of the Biblical Text (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1975).
44 The story of the printing of the Hebrew Bible is summarized by N. M. Sarna, “Bible
Text,” Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Keter, 1971), 4. 816–36. The discussion that
follows is based on B. K. Waltke, “Textual Criticism of the Old Testament,”
Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. F. E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979),
1. 211–28, at 211–13; used by permission.
45 The oldest manuscripts from Qumran are dated by F. M. Cross on paleographic
grounds broadly to between the late fourth century and the first half of the second
century B.C.E.; Cross, “The Oldest Manuscripts from Qumran,” Journal of Biblical
Literature 74 (1955) 147–72; more narrowly he would date the oldest manuscripts
between 275 and 225.