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Updated: May 27, 2025
A very competent writer tells us that this formation may have extended from the sixth or seventh to the tenth or eleventh century. From the end of this Massoretic period onward the same writer tells us that the Massora became the great authority by which the text given in all the Jewish manuscripts was settled. All our manuscripts, in a word, are Massoretic.
That in this decision the Revisers had exercised the sound judgement which marks every part of their work cannot possibly be doubted by any competent reader. The Massoretic text has a long and interesting history. That the formation of the written Massora was a work of time seems a probable and reasonable supposition.
But little, I believe, of a systematic character has, as yet, been accomplished. The Revisers mention that they have been obliged, in some few cases of extreme difficulty, to depart from the Massoretic text and adopt a reading from the Ancient Versions.
The Old Testament Company, on the contrary, had ready to hand a textus receptus which really deserved the title, and on which, in their preface, they write as follows: "The received, or, as it is commonly called, the Massoretic text of the Old Testament Scriptures has come down to us in manuscripts which are of no very great antiquity, and which all belong to the same family or recension.
But as the date of knowledge on the subject is not at present such as to justify any attempt at an entire reconstruction of the text on the authority of the Versions, the Revisers have thought it most prudent to adopt the Massoretic text as the basis of their work, and to depart from it, as the Authorised Translators had done, only in exceptional cases."
There appears to have been the feeling that they all lead up to the Massoretic text, and that any particular variations from it need not be treated over-seriously; and yet surely we must regard it as possible that some of these negligible variations might concur with, and by their concurrence add weight to, readings already rendered probable by the suggestive testimony of the Ancient Versions.
The Revisers also mention that where the Versions appeared to supply a very probable, though not so absolutely necessary, correction as displacement of the Massoretic text, they have still felt it proper to place the reading in the margin.
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