Of none of the books of the Bible have the original manuscripts, the autographa, survived through time. For the text of the Old Testament, therefore, we depend on the text as found in the various later text witnesses. Among those text witnesses are:

(1) Hebrew manuscripts belonging to the following text groups:

Masoretic text

The oldest manuscripts known to us containing the Hebrew text of the entire Old Testament date from around 1000 A.D. These manuscripts were handed down and from vocalization (vowel marks) and comments provided by the Masoretics, hence we speak of the Masoretic Text (MT).

One of the most important manuscripts belonging to the Masoretic text is the Codex Leningradensis from 1008 or 1009 AD, which gets its name from the fact that it is kept in a museum in St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad). The mainstream scholarly edition of the Old Testament text, the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS), takes the text of this manuscript as its starting point. Through BHS, modern translations are based on this Hebrew text. The successor to BHS, the Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ), expected in a few years, also incorporates the text of this manuscript.

Another important manuscript, also belonging to the Masoretic text, is the Aleppo codex. This manuscript is slightly older than the Leningradensis codex (early tenth century) and, like it, gives the official text as established by the Masoretes.The oldest manuscripts known to us which contain the Hebrew text of the entire Old Testament date from the time around 1000 A.D. These manuscripts were handed down and from vocalization (vowel marks) and comments provided by the Masoretics, hence we speak of the Masoretic Text (MT).

One of the most important manuscripts belonging to the Masoretic text is the Codex Leningradensis from 1008 or 1009 AD, which gets its name from the fact that it is kept in a museum in St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad). The mainstream scholarly edition of the Old Testament text, the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS), takes the text of this manuscript as its starting point. Through BHS, modern translations are based on this Hebrew text. The successor to BHS, the Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ), expected in a few years, also incorporates the text of this manuscript.

Another important manuscript, also belonging to the Masoretic text, is the Aleppo codex. This manuscript is slightly older than the Leningradensis codex (early tenth century) and, like it, provides the official text as established by the Masoretics.

Dead Sea Scrolls (Qumran)

In 1947, in the desert of Judea close to the Dead Sea, near the archaeological site of Qumran, seven ancient scrolls were found, including a scroll containing the biblical book of Isaiah. The announcement of this find set off a year-long search that led to the discovery of ten more caves in the immediate vicinity of Qumran containing ancient manuscripts or other archaeological material. In total, some 800 manuscripts were found in these eleven caves, almost all of them unfortunately very fragmentary in nature. All of these texts date from the period from the third century BCE to 68 AD.

Among the texts found at Qumran are some 200 - mostly very fragmentary - manuscripts with text from the Old Testament. Fragments of almost all the books of the Bible have been found; only the books of Nehemiah and Ester are missing. However, since our Bible books Ezra and Nehemiah form one book in the Jewish tradition and fragments of Ezra have been found, it is plausible that Nehemiah must also have been originally present. Of the book of Esther this is not certain; in any case, the Purim feast mentioned in Esther was not celebrated in Qumran. Especially of the books of Deuteronomy, Psalms and Isaiah, many copies were found at Qumran. The most important Bible manuscript found at Qumran is the Isaiah scroll already mentioned, which is virtually undamaged and contains the text of the entire book of Isaiah (1QIsa). Another Isaiah scroll, found in the same cave, is also of great importance, although of this only about a third of the text of the book of Isaiah has been preserved (1QIsb).

In the decades following the manuscript finds at Qumran, ancient Bible manuscripts have also been found at other sites around the Dead Sea. Although the term "Dead Sea Scrolls" is usually used in reference to the texts found at Qumran, it is also used in a broader sense, including these manuscripts.

The manuscripts found in 1951 at the wadi Muraba'at contain mainly correspondence from Bar Kochba, the leader of the Jewish revolt against the Romans (132-135 AD). The other manuscripts found here also date from that period and from before. Among these manuscripts is a manuscript of the minor prophets (Hosea through Malachi). A short time later, a scroll containing the books of the minor prophets was also discovered from a southern part of Judea, at Nachal Chever.

Another important manuscript find is that at Masada (1963-1965). The manuscripts found here are all older than 73 AD, when Masada was conquered by the Romans in the Jewish War. Among the manuscripts found at Masada are also some fragmentarily preserved manuscripts of the Bible text, including the books of Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Psalms and Ezekiel.

The Bible manuscripts found in the desert of Judea are invaluable for the study of the OT, since not before have so many manuscripts of such age been found (some 1,000 years older than the Masoretic text). It is true that in a few places there are differences between the text of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Masoretic text, but on the whole it is notable that the differences are not too great and that the Old Testament text has been handed down very accurately over the centuries. In a number of places, the Dead Sea Scrolls offer an anomalous text previously known only from the Septuagint or the Samaritan Pentateuch. Clearly, great weight must be given to such text variants.

Samaritan pentateuch

The Samaritans have their ethnic and religious roots in the Tribal Kingdom from the time of the kings. Therefore, like the Judeans, they worshiped the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Moses enjoyed great reverence among them and they strictly kept the Torah. In fact, the five books of Moses were the only books recognized as authoritative by the Samaritans. The Torah as handed down by the Samaritans is called "Samaritan Pentateuch" (abbreviated as SamP in the explanation).

Although the available manuscripts of the Samaritan Pentateuch all date from the late Middle Ages and are thus relatively young, their value lies primarily in the fact that the textual tradition of the Samaritan Pentateuch has remained separate from the textual tradition among the Jews.

Apart from spelling issues, the text of the Samaritan Pentateuch largely corresponds to that of the later Masoretic text, but shows discrepancies in a number of places. In a number of places, the quality of the text lore of the Samaritan Pentateuch is clearly inferior to the Masoretic text, for example, in places where the wording of parallel verses is aligned or where explanatory additions are present in the text. In other places, however, the Samaritan Pentateuch offers a text that may be more original than the one found in the Masoretic tradition. This is especially true in a number of places where the discrepancies in the Samaritan Pentateuch correspond to the Dead Sea Scrolls and/or the Septuagint.

Other Hebrew text finds (including papyrus Nash, Cairo geniza, Ketef Hinnom)

In addition to the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Samaritan pentateuch, several other ancient Hebrew manuscripts have been found that are older than the Masoretic text. The so-called papyrus Nash from the second or first century B.C. contains the Ten Commandments in a text that appears to merge Ex.20 and Deut.5, followed by Deut.6:4v..Furthermore, in a geniza (= repository for disused manuscripts) at an ancient synagogue in Cairo, a large number of texts have been found, including some Bible manuscripts from the time from the fifth century A.D. onward. However, these have been preserved in a very fragmentary manner.

Sometimes other types of text are also found, for example two silver amulets from about 700 B.C., found at Ketef Hinnom, bearing the priestly blessing from Numbers 6:22-27. This is discussed in more detail in the on-site explanation.

(2) Early translations of the Old Testament, viz.

Septuagint(LXX)

Septuagint (LXX) is the designation for the Greek translation of the Old Testament, compiled from 200 BCE.

Reason
After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BCE, Jewish communities arose in many cities in the Mediterranean. In the Jewish community of Egyptian Alexandria, from the third century BCE onward, people worked on a Greek translation of the books of the Old Testament and some other Jewish writings. The result of this labor became known by the Latin name Septuagint or Septuagint (usually, and also in this Bible commentary, abbreviated to LXX). The translation of the books of the Bible had been completed well before the beginning of our era.

Naming
The name Septuagint - an abbreviation of the Latin septuaginta et duo "seventy-two" - is derived from the legend that soon circulated among Jews after the translation was created. The legend states that the translation would have been made by order of the then Ptolemaic (Egyptian) king who would then add the translation to the impressive library of Alexandria. At his request, the high priest in Jerusalem is said to have sent seventy-two elders to Alexandria, who translated the Torah there in separate, locked rooms each in exactly seventy-two days. Their translations turned out to correspond verbatim. It is now clear that the historical value of this legend is very low, although there may be a historical core.

Characterization
The Septuagint was compiled by many different translators, who also used different translation principles. Some books, including the five books of Moses, were transcribed more or less word for word into Greek, sometimes - as in the case of the book of Ecclesiastes - so literally that the rules of Greek grammar seemed to be trampled upon. In other books of the Bible, such as Daniel, for example, translators allowed themselves greater liberties in translating the text. Sometimes when translating, the text was even updated. For example, Isa. 9:11, where the Hebrew speaks of "Aram in the east and the Philistines in the west" has become "Syria in the east and the Greeks in the west" in the Septuagint. Moreover, of some books, such as Judges and Daniel, several Greek versions were in circulation, and for some books the chapter order (e.g., Proverbs) or the scope of the book differs (e.g., Jeremiah).

In particular, the books that were more freely translated have in the past quite often led to the idea that the translators of the Septuagint did not take the Hebrew text very seriously. However, modern textual research, especially in comparison with the biblical fragments among the Dead Sea Scrolls, has shown that this idea was incorrect and that the translators of the Septuagint did generally try to render the Hebrew text as faithfully as possible, albeit sometimes starting from different translation principles than modern translators (as in the case of updating). Moreover, it has become clear that the Hebrew text underlying the Septuagint differs in some respects from the Masoretic text. Of particular interest for the study of the Old Testament text are those cases where variants in the Septuagint reflect a Hebrew text that we also find in the Dead Sea Scrolls and/or the Samaritan Pentateuch.

Other early translations, including Peshitta (Syr.), Vulgata (Vulg.) and Vetus Latina

In the first centuries of our era, the Hebrew Bible, often along with the New Testament, was also translated into other languages. The Syriac translation, called the Peshitta, dates from the second century A.D. However, we know most of its text from manuscripts dating from the fifth to seventh centuries A.D. Because with regard to the text history of the Peshitta, many questions remain unanswered and it is clear that the text known to us has undergone edits from the Septuagint and the Hebrew text would later be referred to as a Masoretic text, its value for research into the text of the Old Testament is quite limited. Between 390 and 405 AD, the Church Father Jerome, by order of the then Pope Damasus I, produced the Latin translation of Old and New Testaments that would become the Church text (called the Vulgate) in the Middle Ages. Although Jerome translated the Old Testament from Hebrew, in many places his translation is so heavily influenced by the Septuagint and other Greek translations that there is hardly any question of an independent text witness. Even less is this the case with the older Latin translations, the so-called Vetus Latina from the second and third centuries A.D. For these were not translated from Hebrew, but from the Septuagint.

In the Hebrew text and word-for-word translation window, the text is followed in each case as it appears in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia.
For text variants mentioned in the explanations, Qumran manuscripts, the Samaritan Pentateuch (SamP) and the Septuagint (LXX) have been listed as text witnesses where applicable. Other text witnesses have been excluded in most cases because of their relatively small value for Old Testament textual research. Incidentally, not all divergent readings from the listed text witnesses are listed. In deciding whether or not to include a text variation, the main consideration has been whether the text difference in question is relevant to the translation and/or explanation of the Bible text.