LXX; but the genetic relationship between all texts argued strongly against
it. TheUrtexttheory probably emerged from three factors: (1) the absence
of evidence, because only a single Hebrew text form had been transmitted
to posterity after the Second Jewish Revolt in 132-135c.e.; (2) the tradi-
tional religious view, that the biblical text was the word that God spoke to
Moses and the Prophets and the Sages, and thus was unique; and (3) early
scholarly views, that the books were “documents” or major written com-
positions by single authors or compilers. Thus, the purified MT was ulti-
mately God’s word, and the diverse manuscripts that survive attest to the
errors that human scribes have allowed to penetrate it.
But just as the invention of the telescope and accurate observation of
astronomical data allowed the Copernican heliocentric cosmology to
eclipse the unquestioned Ptolemaic-medieval geocentric cosmology, so
too the discovery of the biblical scrolls and accurate observation of the
data they provide have eclipsed the view of the MT as the textual center of
the Hebrew Bible. Though the biblical scrolls from the Judean Desert were
early assumed to be sectarian, the more they are studied, the more it is ob-
vious that there is nothing sectarian about them; they constitute the most
ancient and authentic witness to what the texts of the Jewish Scriptures
were like at the time of the origins of Christianity and rabbinic Judaism.
The Qumran biblical manuscripts — and in their light, the LXX, the
expanded Jewish text used as the basis for the SP, the biblical texts used by
Josephus, and citations in the New Testament and rabbinic writings —
make it clear that the MT was not the textual center. They all attest to a
measured pluriformity in the scriptural texts. A number of lessons thus
emerged. First, the scrolls did confirm that the medieval codices of the MT
had for over a millennium been very accurately hand-copied from texts
like 4QGenb, 1QIsab, and 4QJera,c. But they also confirmed that the SP (in
light of 4QpaleoExodmand 4QNumb) and the LXX (in light of 4QDeutq,
4QSama,b, and 4QJerb,d) preserved equally important witnesses to alter-
nate ancient forms of the Hebrew biblical text otherwise lost.
Second, scholars realized not only that the MT is not “the original
text” or theUrtextof the Hebrew Bible, but that it is not “a text” at all. Like
the LXX, it is a varied collection of texts — a different type of text for each
of the books — each being simply a copy of one of the editions of that
book that was circulating in late Second Temple Jewish circles. Again, the
MT is not “the original text”; it is rather the only collection of texts in the
original languagethat had been preserved (beyond the Samaritan commu-
nity) since the second centuryc.e.141The Jewish Scriptures: Texts, Versions, CanonsEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
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