The Old Testament in almost every modern Bible, Jewish or Christian, is translated from the same Hebrew text: the Masoretic Text, the form of the Hebrew Bible preserved by Jewish scribes and fixed, with vowels, accents and notes, by the scholars known as the Masoretes in the early Middle Ages (see The Masoretes). That agreement is remarkable, and it means that Old Testament translations differ far less in their base text than New Testament ones do (compare The Greek texts behind New Testaments).

But the agreement is not complete. Translators also consult older witnesses, the Greek Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls among them, and in some places they decide that one of these preserves a better reading than the Masoretic Text. Translations differ in how often they do this, and their footnotes are the place to look.

The Leningrad Codex and its printed editions

The oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible is the Leningrad Codex, copied in 1008 CE and now in the National Library of Russia in St Petersburg (see The Aleppo and Leningrad Codices). The older and more prestigious Aleppo Codex lost much of its Torah in the twentieth century, so the Leningrad Codex has become the basis of the standard scholarly editions:

  • Biblia Hebraica, edited by Rudolf Kittel, whose third edition (1937) was the first to print the Leningrad Codex. It is usually called BHK.
  • Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS, 1967–1977), for decades the text every translator had on the desk. Its apparatus at the foot of the page lists readings from ancient versions and proposed corrections.
  • Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ), its successor, published book by book since 2004 and still in progress. It gives fuller evidence, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, and a commentary explaining its judgments.
  • The Westminster Leningrad Codex (WLC), a digital transcription of the Leningrad Codex first produced at Westminster Theological Seminary and maintained by the J. Alan Groves Center. It underlies many free digital projects.

The preface of a modern translation will usually name its Hebrew text. The NIV and ESV, for example, describe translating from the Masoretic Text as printed in the Biblia Hebraica editions, consulting other ancient witnesses where the Hebrew is difficult. The NJPS Tanakh, a Jewish translation, follows the Masoretic Text very strictly and puts proposed alternatives only in its notes (see Jewish English translations).

Why look beyond the Masoretic Text?

The Masoretic Text is a very careful tradition, but it is a medieval one, and it was not the only form of the Hebrew Scriptures in antiquity.

  • The Septuagint, translated into Greek from the third century BC, was made from Hebrew manuscripts that sometimes differed from the ancestor of the Masoretic Text (see The Septuagint).
  • The Dead Sea Scrolls, copied between about the third century BC and the first century AD, include fragments of every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther (see Discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls). Most agree closely with the Masoretic tradition, but some side with the Septuagint or offer readings found nowhere else (see What the Dead Sea Scrolls show).
  • The Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac Peshitta, the Aramaic Targums and the Latin Vulgate add further evidence.

Where these witnesses differ, translators use the methods of textual criticism to decide which reading best explains the others (see How textual criticism works). Most modern translations depart from the Masoretic Text only occasionally, but they all do so somewhere.

Deuteronomy 32:8: sons of Israel or sons of God?

In the Song of Moses, God divides the nations. The World English Bible follows the Masoretic Text:

When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the children of men, he set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel.

The Septuagint has “angels of God” here, and a Dead Sea Scroll of Deuteronomy (known as 4QDeut-j) reads “sons of God.” Many scholars think this is the earlier reading: it fits the picture, found elsewhere in the Bible, of a heavenly council in which the nations are assigned to subordinate beings while Israel belongs to the Lord himself, as the next verse says. On this view the Masoretic reading may be a later change that avoided any suggestion of other divine beings.

Translations divide. The King James Version follows the Masoretic Text; the ESV reads “sons of God,” and the NRSV “the gods,” each with a note giving the Masoretic reading.

Psalm 22:16: “pierced” or “like a lion”?

Psalm 22 is quoted in the Gospels’ accounts of the crucifixion. In Christian Bibles verse 16 (verse 17 in Hebrew numbering) usually reads as in the World English Bible:

For dogs have surrounded me. A company of evildoers have enclosed me. They have pierced my hands and feet.

The Masoretic Text, read as it stands, has ka’ari, “like a lion,” leaving the line without a verb: “like a lion, my hands and my feet.” The Septuagint has a verb meaning “they dug” or “gouged,” which lies behind the traditional “pierced.” A fragmentary scroll of the Psalms from Nahal Hever, near the Dead Sea, appears to read a verb form, ka’aru, differing by one letter, though what that verb means is itself debated.

Jewish translations generally follow the Masoretic reading; NJPS, for instance, has “like lions [they maul] my hands and feet,” marking the verb it has supplied. Most Christian translations follow the Septuagint and other ancient versions, with a note. Because the verse carries theological weight on both sides, it is a place where the debate has sometimes been heated, and where a translation’s note can help readers see that the question is about a single letter in the evidence, not only about interpretation.

1 Samuel 10:27 and 11: a lost paragraph?

In the Masoretic Text, 1 Samuel 11 begins abruptly: Nahash the Ammonite besieges Jabesh-gilead and offers peace on condition of gouging out every right eye. The World English Bible reads:

But certain worthless fellows said, “How could this man save us?” They despised him, and brought him no present. But he held his peace. (1 Samuel 10:27) Then Nahash the Ammonite came up, and encamped against Jabesh Gilead. (1 Samuel 11:1)

A Samuel scroll from Qumran Cave 4, known as 4QSam-a, contains an additional paragraph at this point. It explains that Nahash had been oppressing the tribes of Gad and Reuben, gouging out their right eyes, and that seven thousand men had escaped to Jabesh-gilead; then “about a month later” Nahash came up. The first-century historian Josephus also knew this story. The phrase “about a month later” differs in Hebrew by only a little from the Masoretic “he held his peace,” which may explain how the paragraph dropped out of the Masoretic tradition, if a copyist’s eye jumped between similar words.

The NRSV (1989) added the paragraph to its text, one of the boldest uses of the Dead Sea Scrolls in a major English translation, and its updated edition keeps it. Many other translations, including the ESV, keep the Masoretic Text, sometimes with a note. Scholars still disagree whether the paragraph is original or an expansion.

Psalm 145: the missing letter

Psalm 145 is an acrostic: each verse begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. But in the Masoretic Text the verse for the letter nun is missing, between verses 13 and 14. The King James Version, following the Masoretic Text, reads only:

Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations. (Psalm 145:13)

The Septuagint and the Syriac contain an extra line, and the Great Psalms Scroll from Qumran Cave 11 has it in Hebrew, beginning with nun as expected. A single medieval Hebrew manuscript also has it. Most modern translations now include it, usually as the second half of verse 13, with a note. The World English Bible reads:

Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. Your dominion endures throughout all generations. Yahweh is faithful in all his words, and loving in all his deeds.

Some scholars argue that the line was added later to fill the gap, since a few other biblical acrostics are also imperfect. Others think its absence from the Masoretic Text is an accident of copying.

Other examples

Readers comparing translations will find many smaller cases. In Genesis 4:8, the Masoretic Text says that Cain spoke to Abel but does not say what he said; the Samaritan Pentateuch, Septuagint and other versions supply “Let us go out to the field,” and the World English Bible and many modern translations include it. In Isaiah 53:11, the Great Isaiah Scroll and the Septuagint read that the servant “will see light,” and the World English Bible, like a number of other translations, follows them. Even translations that generally follow the Masoretic Text, such as the World English Bible, depart from it in places like these.

How to read the footnotes

Translations signal these choices in their notes, and each has its own conventions. Common forms include:

  • ”Dead Sea Scrolls,” “Q Ms” or “Qumran”: the reading comes from a Dead Sea Scroll manuscript.
  • ”Septuagint,” “LXX” or “Gk”: the reading follows the Greek translation.
  • ”Syr,” “Vg,” “Tg” or ”Sam”: the Syriac, Latin Vulgate, Aramaic Targum or Samaritan Pentateuch.
  • ”MT” or “Hebrew”: the reading of the Masoretic Text, usually given when the translation departs from it.
  • ”Cn” (in the NRSV) or ”Emendation”: a correction proposed by scholars without direct manuscript support.
  • ”Meaning of Hebrew uncertain”: the text is not in doubt, but its sense is.

A note giving “Hebrew” or “MT” with a different reading tells you the translation has left the standard text at that point. If a translation has no such notes at all, it may be following the Masoretic Text throughout, or it may simply not be telling you.

Showing the evidence

Open Word Bible translates the Old Testament from the Westminster Leningrad Codex, with word-by-word data from MACULA Hebrew and the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible, and copies every Hebrew word from that data rather than typing it (see Why we never type Greek or Hebrew by hand). Where it follows another witness, or where a variant like those above bears on the meaning, the reasoning record for that sentence names the witnesses and explains the decision, so the choice is visible rather than buried in an abbreviation. Its drafts are AI-assisted and unreviewed until named human reviewers approve them, other translations are used for comparison only, never as the basis for its wording, and the result is dedicated to the public domain under CC0.

Sources

  • Tov, Emanuel. Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible. 3rd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012.
  • Würthwein, Ernst. The Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Biblia Hebraica. 3rd ed. Revised by Alexander Achilles Fischer. Translated by Erroll F. Rhodes. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014.
  • Elliger, Karl, and Wilhelm Rudolph, eds. Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1967–1977.
  • Schenker, Adrian, et al., eds. Biblia Hebraica Quinta. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2004–.
  • Abegg, Martin, Jr., Peter Flint, and Eugene Ulrich. The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999.
  • Ulrich, Eugene, ed. The Biblical Qumran Scrolls: Transcriptions and Textual Variants. Leiden: Brill, 2010.
  • Cross, Frank Moore, Donald W. Parry, Richard J. Saley, and Eugene Ulrich. Qumran Cave 4.XII: 1–2 Samuel. Discoveries in the Judaean Desert 17. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005.
  • “To the Reader.” Preface to the New Revised Standard Version. New York: National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, 1989.
  • Bible quotations are from the World English Bible (public domain), except where the article quotes the King James Version, which is also in the public domain.