Ray Pritz

The Bible texts were originally written down in three languages: the Jewish Bible in Hebrew and a bit of Aramaic, and the New Testament in Greek. However, none of the extant manuscripts is the original document written by one of the authors of the books of the Bible. Those first versions have long ago been lost. Fortunately for us, they were painstakingly copied over and over again, and handed down from one generation to the next.

Copying & Translating

When a person copies a document of any length, he is bound to make some mistakes. Even the most skilled scribe may misspell words or skip letters, words or even whole lines. (See "Scribal Errors" on page 9.) As we read the copy, we may be able to see just where a mistake has been made and easily correct it. If we have another copy of the same document to compare with, the job is that much easier. In fact, the more copies we have to compare, the more we can be sure that we are reconstructing the original accurately.

The texts of the Hebrew Bible were not only copied, they were also translated into other languages such as Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic and Ethiopic. Another valid way to get an independent picture of the original is to translate these other early versions back into Hebrew. After this has been done, the scholar can compare the results with the Masoretic (traditional) text and other biblical manuscripts such as those found in the Judean Desert caves and the Samaritan Pentateuch.

The printed Hebrew Bible which translators use contains the Masoretic text