The Old Testament does not have the wealth of MSS evidence as the New Testament; however, once the facts of the extreme caution exercised by the Jews in transcription are brought to light, one will readily see the uniqueness of this Scripture in its reliability. Following the council of Jamnia in A.D. 70 the canon of Hebrew Scripture was formally established and efforts were taken to duplicate copies of the Scripture for use by the widely scattered Jews. During the period A.D. 100-500 Hebrew civil and canonical law was cataloged by a group of Hebrews known as the Talmudists. They had an extremely intricate system of transcribing synagogue scrolls that approaches fanaticism. Indeed, a Christian begins to glimpse the zealous attention to minute detail that characterized the Hebrew religious system condemned by Jesus.
Followings are the strict disciplines:
- A synagogue scroll must be written on the skins of clean animals, that were Prepared for the particular use of the synagogue by a Jew; The skins must be fastened together with the strings taken from clean animals; Every skin must contain a certain number of columns, equal throughout the entire codex.
- The length of each column must not extend over less than 48 or more than 60 lines; and, the breadth must consist of thirty letters;
- The whole copy must be first lined; and if three words be written without a line, it is worthless;
- The ink should be black, neither red, green, nor any other colour, and be prepare according to a definite recipe;
- An authentic copy must be the exemplar, from which the transcriber ought not in the least deviate;
- No word or letter, not even a yod, must be written from memory, the scribe not having looked at the codex before him;
- Between every consonant the space of a hair or thread must intervene;
- Between every new parashah, or section, the breadth of nine consonants;
- Between every book, three lines;
- The fifth book of Moses must terminate exactly with a line; but the rest need not do so;
- Besides this, the copyist must sit in full Jewish dress; Wash his whole body;
- Not begin to write the name of God with a pen newly dipped in ink;
- And should a king address him while writing that name, he must take no notice of him.
Any scroll in which the above regulations were not strictly observed was condemned to be buried in the ground or burned; or they were banished to the schools, to be used as reading books. Once a scroll was transcribed, the Talmudists were so convinced that it was an exact duplicate of the codex they copied from, they gave the new copy equal authority. Thus, when one considers the rigid rules and phenomenal accuracy of the Talmudic copyists in preparing a new scroll we begin to understand the absence of numerous ancient Old Testament MSS, and one must also be convinced of the reliability of the extant copies.
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