The differences between the Babylonian tradition of the Torah

and our text

The Babylonian tradition of the Torah, by Dr. Yosef Ofer, The Academy of the Hebrew Language, Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem 5761.

The tradition of reading, writing, and preserving the text of the Scriptures was crystallized in two main Jewish centers: Tiberias and Babylon. Each of these centers gave rise to a system of noting traditional readings through vowelization and cantillation, and to a system of Masoretic rules intended to preserve the text of the Scriptures and the tradition of its reading. The Tiberian Mesorah reflects and preserves the Tiberian tradition of the Hebrew language and the Tiberian system of notation, while the Babylonian Mesorah suited the tradition of Hebrew as practiced in Babylon and adopted the system of notation that reflects it.

The Tiberian system of notation and the Tiberian Mesorah were accepted throughout the entire Jewish diaspora and are employed in hundreds of manuscripts and printed versions, both early and late. In contrast, the use of the Babylonian system of notation and the Babylonian Mesorah grew less and less, until it ceased completely. A large part of our knowledge about the Babylonian Mesorah is based on material found in the Cairo geniza. (The Cairo geniza was maintained in the Jerusalemite synagogue in the city of Fustat [ancient Cairo]; documents found in the geniza date from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries CE. The geniza room was built in approximately 1020, and there are only a few documents bearing a date before the year 1000. [Studies on the Cairo Geniza, edited by Akiva Friedman, Tel Aviv University, 5740])

The text of the Babylonian Mesorah, brought here, comes from 45 manuscript pages employing the notation system of the Babylonian Mesorah, which were found in the Cairo geniza and include only one-fifth to one-sixth of the Torah’s verses.

According to the author, in places where the Scriptural text brought in the manuscript is different from the standard text we have, one cannot know for certain if this is the result of error (as it is in most cases) or if the Masorete responsible for the particular manuscript page relied upon a different version.

Daat Emet gathered the textual differences in the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) — plene spelling, defective spelling, whole words — between the Babylonian Mesorah and our present text, as reflected in the book. This is a supplement to the essay The variety of Torah texts and strengthens the claim that today’s “sanctified” text is purely a Halachic construct which does not reflect the ancient, original text (if there ever was such a thing).

In this table we see 14 changes in whole words and 25 changes in plene and defective spelling, though only one-fifth of the entire Torah’s text was available for examination.

The Babylonian Mesorah of the Torah — based on the critical edition[1]:

Asterisks (*) mark hint words, that is, words employed by a Masorete in reference to a particular verse.

There are no asterisks for words whose spelling, quoted in the above table, was explicitly prescribed by a Masorete.

[1] Note numbers cited in the table are those given by Ofer.