There is not an unbroken sequence from the days of the Old Testament
to now where the Hebrew Bible never changed.
So by way of summary, the three medieval texts traditions; the oldest was 1008 AD.
The three text traditions that were known for manuscript data that dated into,
you know, back to the Middle Ages:
the Masoretic texts, Septuagint, Samaritan pentateuch, are all very ancient.
And they're all as old as 300 to 200 BC.
Well, why do we say that? Because they were all found,
they're all represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls material.
And that's about as far back as you can date the Dead Sea Scrolls material.
So all three text traditions, you know, are in the intertestamental period
(300-200 BC),
as far as the existing manuscript data we have for the Hebrew Bible.
There were also if you go back to the slide here, there were also non aligned texts,
biblical texts that didn't appear to agree with any of the other three.
So there could have been more editions of the Hebrew Bible. Now, recent scholarship.
And again, this is really getting into the weeds, so I'm not going to bother but
recent scholarship in the last year or two, an important article came out
disputing the unaffiliated category, and arguing for a way to align those texts
with one of the other traditions, typically the Masoretic.
But be that as it may, there's at least three, maybe more versions of the Hebrew Bible,
back into the intertestamental, the Second Temple period.
The Qumran scribes preserved all of them.
That's important, because what it tells us is they didn't look at the different editions
or versions of the Hebrew Bible and say, "Well, there's only one that comes from God.
There's only one that bears the mark of inspiration." They didn't do that.
And neither would you. If you walked into a Christian bookstore,
and there's 50 translations of the Bible there. If you were in charge of the world,
would you really go in there and say; "Well, I'm burning everything but the NIV.
That's the only true translation"? No, come on.
And neither did the people at Qumran. They preserved all of them.
Therefore, we can't say one tradition was considered more sacred than any other tradition.
Now, that's an important thought,
because when we get to Deuteronomy 32 in a moment,
the Dead Sea Scroll reading of Deuteronomy 32:8 is not what the Masoretic text has.
And you already know this, if you read my article for this week
that I published in Bib Sac,
which is DallasTheological Seminary's Journal back in 2001.
Again, if this is new information to you,
Dallas Theological Seminary is not a liberal institution.
Okay. It's a very conservative evangelical institution. This is their journal.
I published this article back in 2001, about Deuteronomy 32:8.
And in the article I make the comment and make the case,
and I'm far from being alone here. So it's not a hard case to make,
that we should not view the Masoretic text as sacrosanct, as blessed by God
more than the other ones. Ancient Judaism did not see things that way
and neither should we. Now, what we know as the Masoretic text today,
and what gets ultimately produced in Codex Leningradensis in 1000 AD,
even that doesn't always agree with Masoretic texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls,
and Masoretic texts from elsewhere in the Middle Ages.
There is no such thing as a single Masoretic text.
Okay, there just isn't. It is a myth. There is not an unbroken sequence
from the days of the Old Testament to now where the Hebrew Bible never changed.
No tradition is identical and uniform in all of its manuscripts
that could get put in that bucket, that tradition bucket;
Masoretic text, whatever underlies the Septuagint,
and then the Samaritan Pentateuch,
there is no such thing. And we know that for sure, because people have collected
all that stuff and compared them, all the manuscripts. So, it's a demonstrable fact.