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Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary

MASORA*, MASORETES*

Oral tradition concerning the pronunciation and accuracy of the Hebrew text of the OT, and the scholars who were responsible for putting those traditions into writing.

At the background of the work of the Masoretes lay the efforts of the Sopherim, or scribes, who, from about 400 BC to AD 200, tried to establish and maintain the true text of the OT. In connection with this effort they made a practice of counting the verses, words, and letters of each Bible book and appending this information in order to give future copyists some standard against which to check the accuracy of their copies. The traditional Hebrew text, called the Masoretic Text, achieved its standard form early in the second century AD. It was based on and substantially agreed with a much earlier textual tradition, as the Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate. But the text of the scribes or custodians of the Bible was still only consonantal; it had no vowels or accent marks.

The work of the Masoretes picked up where that of the Sopherim left off. They are called Masoretes because they preserved in writing the oral traditions (Masora) concerning the biblical text. These Jewish scholars lived primarily in Tiberias on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee during the period AD 500 to 950. Most prominent among them were the learned Moses ben Asher and his son Aaron; the present text of the Hebrew Bible is based on a ben Asher text.

The Masoretes sought not only to determine the exact text handed down to them but to pass it on to future generations without change. To protect against copyists’ errors and alterations, they filled the side margins with all sorts of data concerning how often and where various words and phrases appearing in a given line of the text could be found elsewhere.

The special contribution of the Masoretes was to provide the text with vowels and accent marks. They achieved this with a system of dots and strokes. Their task was not to invent pronunciations but to pass on received or accepted pronunciations and to decide between debatable ones. Of course, the issue was not merely correct pronunciation, because a slight change in vowel pointing or pronunciation would, for instance, turn a noun into a participle.

As the Masoretes sought to vocalize, determine, and protect the true text, they had to engage in a certain amount of textual criticism. But their reverence for the text would not permit making changes in it, so they worked out an ingenious system of editorial notes. Where it appeared to them that a copyist’s error had occurred, they left the error written in the text (a kethib working—that which is written) but put vowel markings with it for a preferred wording (qere—that which is to be read) and inserted the consonants for that reading in the margin. They also indicated a limited number of words that probably should be omitted altogether.

One of the most interesting of the qere readings involved the pronunciation of God’s name. As early as the fifth century BC, Jews began to grow uneasy about pronouncing God’s covenant name, properly vocalized as Yahweh. So they substituted the vowel markings for Adonai (Lord), indicating that Adonai was to be uttered instead of Yahweh. This substitute vowel marking of the Masoretes has led to the modern pronunciation of Jehovah (using the vowels of Adonai).

The meticulous efforts of the Masoretes and the Sopherim before them resulted in a marvelously successful preservation of the OT text. What the Masoretes passed on to later centuries was meticulously copied by hand until the advent of the printing press. So it may be confidently asserted that, of ancient Near Eastern literature, the OT is unique in the degree of accuracy of preservation.