Yahuda101 Accuracy of Torah

 

Accuracy of Torah

By Yahuda101

The great success of Jewish tradition is the meticulous transmission of the Torah text. But actually how accurate is it?

How do we know that the Torah we have today is the same text given on Mount Sinai?

The Torah was originally dictated from God to Moses, letter for letter. From there, the Midrash (Devarim Rabba 9:9) tells us:

Before his death, Moses wrote 13 Torah Scrolls. Twelve of these were distributed to each of the 12 Tribes. The 13th was placed in the Ark of the Covenant (with the Tablets). If anyone would come and attempt to rewrite or falsify the Torah, the one in the Ark would "testify" against him. (Likewise, if he had access to the scroll in the Ark and tried to falsify it, the distributed copies would "testify" against him.)

There are 79,976 words in the Torah. Out of the 79,976 words there only nine differences between Teimani and Ashkenazi/Sefardi sifrei Torah where a different letter (style and layout differences aside) appears in modern scrolls are:

מנש)ו(א . 1 Genesis 4:13 Ashkenazi/Sephardi vs. Temoni

מעינ)ו(ת . 2 Genesis 7:11 Ashkenazi/Sephardi vs. Temoni

ויהי)ו( . 3 Genesis 9:29 Ashkenazi/Sephardi vs. Temoni

ת)י(עשה . 4 Exodus 25:31 Ashkenazi/Sephardi vs. Temoni

האפ)ו(ד . 5 Exodus 28:26 Ashkenazi/Sephardi vs. Temoni

בשמ)ו(ת . 6 Numbers 1:17 Ashkenazi/Sephardi vs. Temoni

חדש)י(כם . 7 Numbers 10:10 Ashkenazi/Sephardi vs. Temoni

בע)ו(ר . 8 Numbers 22:5 Ashkenazi/Sephardi vs. Temoni

דכ)ה|א( . 9 Deuteronomy 23:2 Some Ashkenazi/Sephardi vs. Some Ashkenazi/Temoni

How were the new scrolls verified? An authentic "proof text" was always kept in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, against which all other scrolls would be checked. Following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the Sages would periodically perform global checks to weed out any scribal errors.

Writing a Torah Scroll

The meticulous process of hand-copying a scroll takes about 2,000 hours (a full-time job for one year).

Success of the System

Maintaining the accuracy of any document as ancient and as large as the Torah is very challenging even under the best of circumstances.

But consider that throughout history, Jewish communities were subject to widespread persecutions and exile. Over the last 2,000 years, Jews have been spread to the four corners of the world, from Yemen to Poland, from Australia to Alaska.

Other historical factors make the accurate transmission of the Torah all the more difficult. For example, the destruction of the Temple 1,900 years ago saw the dissolution of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish central authority which traditionally would unify the Jewish people in case of any disagreements.

Let’s investigate the facts as we have them today. If we collect the oldest Torah scrolls and compare them, we can see if any garbling exists, and if so, how much.

How many letters are there in the Torah? 304,805 letters (or approximately 79,000 words).

If you were to guess, how many letters of these 304,805 do you think are in question? (Most people guess anywhere from 25 to 1,000 letters.)

The fact is, that after all the trials and tribulations, communal dislocations and persecutions, only the Yemenite Torah scrolls contain any difference from the rest of world Jewry. A total of nine letter-differences are found in their scrolls.

These are all spelling differences. In no case do they change the meaning of the word. For example, how would you spell the word "color?" In America, it's spelled C-O-L-O-R. But in England, it's spelled with a "u," C-O-L-O-U-R.

Such is the nature of the few spelling differences between Torah scrolls today. The results over thousands of years are remarkable!

Torah Compared to Other Texts

But how impressive is this compared to other similar documents, such as the Christian Bible? (Both books contain approximately the same number of words.)

First of all, which would you expect to be more successful in preserving the accuracy of a text?

The Christian Bible. For several reasons.

First, the Christian Bible is about 1,700 years younger than the Torah. Second, the Christians haven't gone through nearly as much exile and dislocation as the Jews. Third, Christianity has always had a central authority (the Vatican) to ensure the accuracy of their text.

What are the results? The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, a book written to prove the validity of the New Testament, says: " A study of 150 Greek [manuscripts] of the Gospel of Luke has revealed more than 30,000 different readings... It is safe to say that there is not one sentence in the New Testament in which the [manuscript] is wholly uniform."

Other scholars report there are some 200,000 variants in the existing manuscripts of the New Testament, representing about 400 variant readings which cause doubt about textual meaning; 50 of these are of great significance.

The Torah has nine spelling variants – with absolutely no effect on the meaning of the words. The Christian Bible has over 200,000 variants and in 400 instances the variants change the meaning of the text.

The point of course is not to denigrate Christianity. Rather, this comparison demonstrates the remarkable accuracy of the Jewish transmission of Torah.

The oldest part of the Dead Sea scrolls, the Isaiah Scroll, found relatively intact, is 1000 years older than any previously known copy of Isaiah. In fact, the scrolls are the oldest group of Old Testament manuscripts ever found.

By Yahuda101