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Papyrus Fouad 266 is a copy of the Pentateuch in the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible known as the Septuagint. It is a papyrus manuscript in scroll form. The manuscript has been assigned palaeographically to the second or the first-century B.C.E.
At the end of the second century, there were (at least) four competing Greek versions of the OT. Origen, one of the most important theologians in the Eastern church, was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and was active in the middle of the third century CE. Aware of differences between the Greek and Hebrew texts, he set out to bring order and understanding to the confusing array of competing textual witnesses and to produce an edition that would account for those variations.
The earliest MS evidence available for the OT text is also the most recently discovered. Since 1947 thousands of fragments of MSS, both biblical and nonbiblical, have come to light in the Dead Sea region.
The Masoretes were groups of Jewish scribe-scholars who worked between the 6th and 10th centuries CE, based primarily in early medieval Palestine in the cities of Tiberias and Jerusalem, as well as in Iraq.
The Masoretic Text[a] (MT or 𝕸) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of Tanakh for Rabbinic Judaism.
It was primarily copied, edited and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the 7th and 10th centuries of the Common Era (CE). It is the text behind all of our Bible translations.
Respecting the text of the Hebrew Scriptures, scholar W. H. Green observed: “It may be safely said that no other work of antiquity has been so accurately transmitted.” (Archaeology and Bible History, by J. P. Free, 1964, p. 5) This statement is even more true today.
The first list of the Old Testament manuscripts in Hebrew, made by Benjamin Kennicott (1776–1780) and published by Oxford, listed 615 manuscripts from libraries in England and on the Continent. Giovanni de Rossi (1784–1788) published a list of 731 manuscripts. The main manuscript discoveries in modern times are those of the Cairo Geniza (c. 1890)... Continue Reading →
Each instance, some 1,300 of these depending on the manuscript, must be evaluated on its own merits. Many times, the kethib (text) is correct and is a good reading or an even better reading than the qere (margin).
Old Testament Textual Criticism (sometimes called lower criticism) is the study of copies of Old Testament documents whose original no longer survives. It is the process of attempting to ascertain the original wording of a text.
DIFFICULTY: For some scholars, this is a difficulty, as they feel “he removed them [i.e., the people] to the cities,” does not make a lot of sense in this context. They feel that “he made slaves of them” makes more sense in this context. What is the case?
First, a quick reminder about textual issues. Simply put, having no perfect solution does not mean that there is no perfect solution, it merely eludes us at this time. For this textual difficulty, many have offered different explanations.