Manuscripts of the Old Testament

The text of the Old Testament is preserved primarily through Hebrew manuscripts of the Masoretic tradition, supplemented by the Greek Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Targums (Aramaic paraphrases), the Syriac Peshitta, and Latin Vulgate. The Masoretic Text (MT), standardized by Jewish scribal scholars (Masoretes) between the 6th and 10th centuries A.D., represents the authoritative Hebrew text; the oldest complete MT manuscript is the Leningrad Codex (1008–1009 A.D.). The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1947–1956) at Qumran dramatically pushed the textual evidence back a thousand years: the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa^a, c. 125 B.C.) is nearly complete and shows remarkable stability in the textual tradition while also revealing some variants. The Septuagint (LXX), translated in stages from the 3rd to 1st centuries B.C., reflects a Hebrew text sometimes differing from the MT and proves invaluable for textual criticism. The Samaritan Pentateuch preserves an independent textual tradition for the Torah. OT textual criticism applies the same principles as NT — weighing internal and external evidence — to reconstruct the most original reading.