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