If you have a decent copy of the Tanach, one that contains the Hebrew text, you will occasionally see an occasional indicator within or beside the text. At Leviticus 21:5, we see the following:
This is a scan of part of a page of my collection of the Torah with the
midrashic and traditional commentary omitted. I have circled in
red the special indicator that my text uses, and I also drew squares around the words on either side. No published text will go this far!
What the קרי indicates is: "This word is either misspelled or is a grammatical error. So instead of reading the word in the
red-square to the left, read this word to the right in the
blue-square instead."
Yes, there are known errors in the Masoretic Text (MT).
Now, you might expect that this indicator would happen more than it does. As I pointed out in
another post, there are a large number of spelling errors in the text, and even areas were complete words or verses are missing. But these don't warrant a note in most cases. For example, 1Chronicles 1:6 has the name "Difat" and Genesis 10:3 has "Rifat" (the scribe obviously didn't see any difference between a ד and a ר and swapped them), but there is no note on either verse. After all, how do you tell which is the right one?
So apparently, this minor use of the indicator is only for those words in Scripture that, when heard, seems to violate some grammatical rule.
Now, one would think that, since there is a tradition that these words are incorrect, then calling Scripture a perfect Word of God seems to be a problem. After all, you have Rabbi Akiva who claimed that not a single word, nor even a single letter, is out of place or superfluous. Although, those who cite that ignore that Rabbi Ishmael disagreed, saying that Rabbi Akiva was reading more into the text than there was, and some superfluous or defective uses were stylistic, and not God giving a secret message.
And even though one may see this, if one is ideologically directed, then it doesn't matter that the person sees a קרי in the text. To that person, it's the perfect word of God, and it must have some meaning to it, even though one cannot grasp it, and so a word provided by the Rabbis, which is equally holy, is used in its place, but never to replace it.
In The Beginning
Once upon a time, long ago, the Jews had a collection of oral folklore (since they were, for the most part, an illiterate people) that they would tell one another. Depending upon their location and societal class, they would embellish these stories to reflect their positions. The Jews of the north would demonize those of the south, and visa-versa. The lower class would mock the upper class, and all would make fun of the Gods of the other nations.
Eventually, these would be put down into writing, by elitists who wrote them for other elitists who had the money and the education to appreciate them.
Each of these scrolls contained only one story, and some were longer than others. The Book of Job was on one scroll, and the Book of Deuteronomy was by itself on another scroll. And there were those who copied these, improved upon them, and acquired them. As we saw in Qumran, the more interesting the book, the more likely an elite would have acquired it. The boring ones, such as Nechemiah, was rarely collected at all.
And nobody had a "Tanach", since that concept didn't even exist. And some of the more interesting books, like the Book of Enoch, which has been found in Qumran, was excluded for ideological purposes.
And it didn't matter that a book had differences when compared to another version of the same book. People weren't collecting history, as you and I see it today, but were collecting Biblical Folklore that connected to their nationalistic vision.
Eventually, the leadership came to a conclusion: these stories need to be consistent, meaning, if you have a scroll of Genesis, then every scroll of Genesis has to have the exact same letters and words.
So how did they choose which scroll of Genesis was the "true" text?
Most likely, they decided by committee. There seems to be a long standing tradition that the "majority wins" in Rabbinical Judaism, and there is no reason why this is any different than the rest of history.
Of course, like any software product that gets released as the real "production" version, there are going to be some bugs.
But there is a rule that one is forbidden to add or delete or change a word in Scripture.
So what do you do?
You create an external list of updates! And for centuries, these were taught to students who were to learn the Torah, where "this word says this, but you will say that". And after the invention of the printing press, and collections of the Tanach that now included commentaries and translations on the same page were produced, these updates were included on the same page.
So, What is the TRUE version?
I will write more of this elsewhere, but here's a few important notes to consider:
- The MT (see above)
- The LXX that later followed is not a word-for-word translation of the MT, and is more of a "similar look and feel" type of text. While there are multiple legends how it got created, the truth is we aren't 100% certain. There may be a bit of truth in each legend. In any case, it is not better than the MT, just different.
- The Targum (Aramaic translation) of the text is basically a Rabbinical rewrite. The big problem with Scripture is that it does not have a monotheistic root, and they needed to invent one, and so the Aramaic translation have more than 10,000 changed to the MT, including the insertion of midrashic stories.
- The Vulgate (Latin translation) - this is a Christian rewrite of the text, that seems to use a bit of the MT here, a bit of the LX there, and then just makes changes there it was ideologically suitable, such as putting "virgin" in Isaiah 7:14, where it never existed before, or giving "unicorns" to the Bible!
- The KJV (English translation) - this is a Christian rewrite of the Christian rewrite of the text.
The answer is that no TRUE version exists. There may never have been a TRUE version. And to use the word "TRUE" ignores the actual problem.
You see, Biblical folklore began with some stories told around the fire in the evenings. Writing these down does not make the eventual versions of these stories more true than the older versions, just different. Remember, they were telling folktales, not history.
The MT is a collection that was considered by the people who told these stories to be the definitive version, and made it static.
Eventually, the elite educated Hebrews who were interested in these stories got smaller and smaller, and the regular Jews were speaking Greek and/or Aramaic, and so the LXX was, most likely, created to satisfy the need to provide a version that the less educated would understand (just as the "vulgate" was created by the Christians for those who did not read classical Greek).
Is the LXX less true? Well it is certainly different, but it is based on the MT which is also not the TRUE version, so that answer is no.
As for the Targum, it is like comparing the "Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure" to "Doctor Who". Both are fun and interesting, but one is not really representing the other.
So Why the Argument?
When a Christian claims that "Jesus fulfilled a prophecy in [book_chapter_verse]" and you point out, "it doesn't say that in the MT", they can respond with, "it says it in the LXX". And if you look and say "it doesn't say that in the LXX", they can respond with, "It's in Targum Onkelos". And if you see that it's a midrash, a metaphorical rewrite of the MT, and say, "You cannot fulfill a midrash. A midrash is not a prophecy", they can respond with, "Apparently you can!"
This is not just with Christians, but Jews do it as well when it comes to forcing Biblical Folklore to fit their own ideology.
You can go up and down that chain of texts (there are a few others, such as the Samaritan version), and the apologists will always be able to claim that their view is the true view.
And in the end, what they ignore is that there is no true view, because there is no TRUE version from which all of this comes from.
There was no Moses, no giving of a single version of the book to a national of avid readers who kept it perfect for 1,500 years.
What we have are ideologues who use the text to prove that their view is the TRUE view.
For which they have no evidence.
The Bible: It can be whatever you want it to be...apparently!