Manuscript Tradition

The Masoretic Text is the Hebrew Old Testament as standardized and preserved by the Masoretes — Jewish scribal scholars who worked c. 500–1000 AD. They added vowel markings (nikudot) and cantillation marks to the consonantal text, and surrounded every page with detailed notes (Masorah) recording word counts and variant readings to ensure perfect transmission. The consonantal text they transmitted, however, was already ancient — the same text family found in some Dead Sea Scrolls (c. 200 BC – 68 AD).

The oldest complete MT manuscript is the Leningrad Codex (1008–1009 AD, now in Saint Petersburg). The oldest complete Torah section is the Aleppo Codex (c. 925 AD, partially damaged).

The Septuagint (from Latin septuaginta, "seventy," for the legendary 72 translators) is the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures produced in Alexandria, Egypt beginning c. 250 BC. The Torah was translated first; the prophets and writings followed over the next two centuries.

This is the Bible the New Testament quotes from. When Matthew writes "the virgin shall conceive" (Matthew 1:23), he quotes the LXX's parthenos (virgin) rather than the Hebrew almah (young woman). When Paul quotes extensively from the OT, the wording often matches the LXX more closely than the MT. Jesus almost certainly read Scripture in Hebrew but quoted it in the Greek that his audience used.

The Dead Sea Scrolls — discovered between 1947 and 1956 in 11 caves near Qumran — include the oldest surviving manuscripts of virtually every Old Testament book (except Esther). They predate the Masoretic Text by ~1,000 years. The scrolls were copied and used by the Qumran community (likely Essenes) from c. 250 BC to 68 AD, when Rome destroyed Qumran.

What they reveal: the biblical text was remarkably stable across a millennium of transmission. The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa-a, c. 100 BC) is 24 feet long and matches the MT in 95% of its text. A small number of Qumran scrolls, however, preserve a text closer to the Septuagint than the MT — confirming that multiple textual traditions existed before the Masoretes standardized the text.

The New Testament is the most well-attested ancient document in existence: over 5,800 Greek manuscripts survive, ranging from tiny papyrus fragments to complete codices. By comparison, Homer's Iliad survives in ~1,800 manuscripts; Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars in ~10. The closest manuscripts to the original composition are within 25–50 years of writing — the Rylands papyrus (P52, c. 125 AD) contains a fragment of John 18 and was copied within 30–40 years of John's writing.

Textual variants exist — over 400,000 by count — but 99% are spelling differences, word order variations, and scribal slips that do not affect meaning. Of the remainder, no core Christian doctrine rests on a disputed passage. The longer ending of Mark (16:9–20) and the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53–8:11) are the most significant passages not found in the earliest manuscripts.

Commissioned by Pope Damasus I and translated by Jerome in Bethlehem (382–405 AD), the Latin Vulgate became the authoritative Bible of the Western church through the medieval period. Jerome translated the OT directly from Hebrew — unusual for his time, when most Latin versions used the Septuagint. His NT translation was a revision of existing Latin versions against the best Greek manuscripts available to him.

The Vulgate shaped Western Christianity's vocabulary: paenitentiam agite (do penance) for the Greek metanoeite (repent/change your mind) influenced medieval sacramental theology. Gratia plena (full of grace) in Luke 1:28 for the Greek kecharitomene (favored one) influenced Marian theology. Translation choices embedded in this single version shaped a millennium of doctrine.

Commissioned by King James I of England, translated by 47 scholars in six committees (1604–1611), the KJV built on William Tyndale's earlier English translation (1526) so substantially that scholars estimate 83% of the NT is Tyndale's work. The translators used the Textus Receptus — a Greek NT compiled by Erasmus in 1516 from a handful of late (12th–15th century) manuscripts — which explains why the KJV includes some passages (the longer ending of Mark, the Johannine comma in 1 John 5:7–8) not found in earlier manuscripts.

The KJV's literary influence on English is incalculable — phrases like "the skin of my teeth," "a thorn in the flesh," "fell flat on his face," "a drop in the bucket," and hundreds more entered the English language directly from its pages. It is the translation TELL uses as its primary text because it is public domain, widely recognized, and remains the baseline for much biblical scholarship.