The Original Text of the Old Testament
It is a problem for text criticism of the Old Testament
What is the Original Text?
In the ideal case, in relation to a scripture, there is a difference between a:
- period of emergence;
- moment when the writing is “ready” or “finished”;
- period of text transmission.
In such cases, text criticism attempts to reconstruct the original form of the writing, the writing at the moment that it was “ready” or “finished”.
In the case of many of the books of the Old Testament, however, the phases of coming into being and text transmission cannot be distinguished with precision. So it is sometimes uncertain as to which text the text critic is actually looking for.
A Practical Approach
Generally speaking, biblical scholars opt for a practical approach to this problem. They do not start by trying to reconstruct the history of the emergence of each text. Instead, they look at all the available texts, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran, the Samaritan Pentateuch and the ancient translations, as part of the text transmission of the Old Testament. They use all this information to establish the most original text for each book of the Bible.
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