We are now ready to consider some further points in connection with our

subject -- the history of the Hebrew text, the question of the Hebrew

characters, the bearing of the Targums, the Talmud, the work of the Sopherim

and the Massorites, the methods adopted by the Hebrew scribe to ensure

accuracy, and other considerations of interest and importance.

We have now to consider the history of the Hebrew text of the Old

With the exception of the Dead Sea scroll of Isaiah, which is dated

about the second century a.d., there are no Hebrew Manuscripts of a date

earlier than the eighth century.  The reason is that the Jews took the

precaution of destroying a scroll when ever it showed signs of wear lest it

should lead to mistakes in reading.  Dr. Davidson has given a fairly clear

account of the scrupulous care that the Hebrew copyist exercised in the

transcribing of the Sacred Text.  When the reader has read the extract below,

he will cease to wonder how it is that the Hebrew manuscripts have remained

so accurate up to the present time.  The precautions taken may seem trivial,

or even superstitious, but they were effective in hedging about the Holy

'A synagogue roll must be written on the skins of clean animals,

prepared for the particular use of the synagogue by a Jew.  These must

be fastened together with strings taken from clean animals.  Every skin

must contain a certain number of columns, equal through the entire

codex.  The length of each column must not extend over less than forty-

eight, or more than sixty lines; and the breadth must consist of thirty

letters.  The whole copy must be first lined; and if three words be

written in it without a line, it is worthless.  The ink should be

black, neither red, green nor any other colour, and be prepared

according to a definite recipe.  An authentic copy must be the

exemplar, from which the transcriber ought not in the least to deviate.

No word or letter, not even a yod, must be written from memory, the

scribe not having looked at the codex before him ... Between every

consonant the space of a hair or thread must intervene; between every

word the breadth of a narrow consonant, between every new parshiah, or

section, the breadth of nine consonants, between every book three

lines.  The fifth book of Moses must terminate exactly with a line: but

the rest need not do so.  Besides this, the copyist must sit in full

Jewish dress, wash his whole body, not begin to write the name of God

with a pen not newly dipped in ink, and should a King address him he

must take no notice of him ... The rolls on which these regulations are

not observed are condemned to be buried in the ground or burned; or

they are banished to the schools to be used as reading books' (Dr.

'The Hebrew language, probably one of seven branches of the old Semitic

stock which was probably the primeval speech of mankind, has been

subject, like all others, to a series of changes ... In its earliest

written state it exhibits, in the writing of Moses, a perfection of

structure which was never surpassed ... The great crisis of the

language occurs at the time of the captivity in Babylon.  There, as a

spoken tongue, it became deeply tinged with the Aramaic ... But while

these changes were taking place in the vernacular speech, the Hebrew