Hebrew OT Text

[gbausc]

It has been pretty well established that the Massoretic text is much older than A.D. 1000 .
The Great Isaiah Scroll (circa. 100 B.C.) agrees very closely with the Massoretic text throughout the entire book of Isaiah, disregarding Aramaic spelling in the scroll and orthographical style.

It is certainly not a LXX type text, though there are other scrolls of other books (Samuel in particular) that show a LXX type Hebrew text.

The OT Peshitta has been carefully compared with the Hebrew text of the Massoretes and it agrees very closely. See Hugoye Journal's article on the Peshitta OT, I don't remember which issue.

Certainly, The Peshitta and the DSS and LXX can be used to correct the Massoretic text (e.g.Isaiah 7:14 in some places.

The Peshitta, like the LXX is just a translation; therefore it has errors aplenty, like any translation.
It is highly doubtful that it is closer to the original
than the Hebrew text we have today.It is a very valuable and very well done translation, being almost as early as the LXX ,and a Semitic one at that, thus reducing the room for error in translation.
The Massorah lists some 137 places where "Yahweh was changed to Adonai". The Peshitta retains "Marya" in those places in the OT.
So its text , like the DSS, is very early.

Shlama,


Dave