Bible Project: Can prophecy withstand human editing?



(A page from the Aleppo Codex)

Fifty-three years into an estimated 200-year Bible Project, scholars at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem sit around a table viewing different versions of the same sacred text.  This text is the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Old Testament. 

According to AP writer Matti Friedman, the findings of these scholars indicate that “this text at the root of Judaism, Christianity and Islam was somewhat fluid for long periods of its history, and that its transmission through the ages was messier and more human than most of us imagine.”  It is certainly “messier and more human” than fundamentalists who believe that every word in the Bible was indelibly placed there by God would want to imagine. 

The different versions that these scholars are studying have come from such varied sources as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Samaritan Torah, and a 1525 Venetian Bible.  The core text against which these versions are being compared is the 1100-year-old Aleppo Codex (aka Keter Aram Tzova in Hebrew).

The Aleppo Codex, so-named because it allegedly was brought to Aleppo, Syria in 1375 CE by a descendent of Maimonides, was widely used by medieval Jewish scholars.  Wikipedia reports that “modern studies have shown it to be the most accurate representation of Masoretic principles in any extant manuscript.”  The Bible Project therefore began in 1958 when the Aleppo Codex was successfully smuggled into Jerusalem by a Jewish cheese merchant.

Friedman’s article points out that, ironically, the majority of the Bible Project’s scholars are Orthodox Jews.  How, then, can a fundamental belief in the Bible’s holy authenticity be reconciled with the discrepancies that exist between various versions of the text?  The Bible Project’s academic secretary, Rafael Zer, explains it this way:  A believing Jew claims that the source of the Bible is prophecy…  the holiness of the biblical text remains, even if mistakes are made when the text is passed on. 

These “mistakes” are therefore human ones.  It is now the formidable task of the Bible Project scholars to separate the divine wheat from the human chaff.

Resources

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44117239/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/

http://www.aleppocodex.org/homepage.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleppo_Codex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masoretic_Text

Copyright August 15, 2011 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved