Interlude A: Before the Beginning - Jewish Textual Traditions

This chapter is part of the book The Sacred Editors: Christianity.

"Each retelling and translation subtly transformed the text. Rather than a fixed book, the Torah was a living story—growing and changing with each generation."

Long before scrolls were sealed and scriptures debated, there were only stories. Around desert fires and mountain camps, early Israelite tribes told of creation, flood, freedom, and covenant. These tales were oral—fluid, evolving with each generation. They were not fixed texts but living memory, shaped by the voices of each community that preserved and passed them on.

Over time, under pressure from exile, empire, and the urgent need to define identity in an uncertain world, these oral traditions began to crystallize into written form. Priests, scribes, and elders gathered, redacted, and arranged them—not just to preserve the past but to shape the future. What we now call the Torah emerged not from a single author or divine moment of dictation, but from centuries of layered voices weaving together diverse traditions into a unified narrative.

That transformative act—turning living stories into sacred texts—marked the beginning of a long tradition that would echo through Christian history: the editing of God's word by human hands.

A Community Forgotten

Elephantine Island, Egypt. Fifth century BCE. A Jewish scribe carefully seals a letter destined for Jerusalem. He is pleading for help—because the Persian governor has allowed their temple to be destroyed by hostile Egyptian priests.

The Jews of Elephantine, a military colony living far from the Jerusalem temple, have long maintained their own version of Jewish worship. They offer sacrifices at their own temple, read from ancient scrolls, and revere the God of Israel alongside other deities. But their texts are slightly different from those used in Jerusalem. Their customs diverge. Their understanding of proper worship includes practices that Jerusalem's priests would find questionable at best.

Now, with their temple reduced to rubble, they write desperately to the high priest in Jerusalem: help us rebuild. Affirm our worship. Confirm that we are part of the same covenant story.

The response from Jerusalem comes as a thunderous silence.

No condemnation. No comfort. No acknowledgment. Just the deafening quiet of abandonment.

The silence raises a question that would echo through centuries of religious development: Whose version of Scripture is authoritative? Whose traditions deserve to survive? And who gets to decide?

The Jews of Elephantine would eventually fade from history, their temple never rebuilt, their variant traditions lost. But their story illuminates a crucial reality: even within Judaism, long before Christianity emerged, communities had already wrestled with competing versions of sacred texts and conflicting claims to authenticity.

The Textual Reality of Second Temple Judaism

In the centuries before Christianity, Jewish communities across the Mediterranean world had already confronted fundamental questions about textual authority. What we now call the Hebrew Bible (or Tanakh) had emerged not as a single, uniform collection but as a constellation of scrolls—shaped, copied, and interpreted differently across regions and communities. There was no central religious authority, no official language, no standardized canon (the technical term for an authoritative collection of sacred books). Just a multitude of sacred voices preserved and transformed across generations.

By the time of Jesus, this textual diversity had produced at least three major versions of the Hebrew Scriptures circulating simultaneously:

The Masoretic Text (MT)—preserved in Hebrew by Jewish scribes and later carefully standardized around 1000 CE by families of Jewish scholars called Masoretes, who added vowel points and pronunciation guides to the consonantal Hebrew text.

The Septuagint (LXX)—a Greek translation produced by and for Hellenistic Jews living in Egypt and other Greek-speaking regions, containing several additional books and notably longer versions of familiar texts like Daniel and Esther.

The Samaritan Pentateuch—used by the Samaritan community, which had split from mainstream Judaism centuries earlier, differing significantly in crucial places like the proper location for worship (Mount Gerizim rather than Jerusalem's Temple Mount).

Beyond these major traditions, regional communities preserved their own textual variants. Jews in Alexandria read different versions than those in Damascus. Communities in Rome might encounter texts that differed from those used in Babylon. This wasn't corruption or carelessness—it was the natural result of a living tradition adapting to diverse cultural and linguistic contexts over centuries.

The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Window into Textual Plurality

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in caves near Qumran beginning in 1947 dramatically illuminated this ancient textual landscape. Dating from the third century BCE to the first century CE, these nearly 1,000 manuscripts include fragments of virtually every book of the Hebrew Bible—often in startlingly variant forms.

Some scrolls closely resemble what would become the standard Masoretic Text. Others match the Septuagint's distinctive readings. Still others preserve entirely independent versions that differ from all known traditions. The Great Isaiah Scroll, for example, contains thousands of minor variations from the later Masoretic tradition, while the Psalms Scroll includes psalms in different orders and incorporates compositions unknown from other sources.

As leading textual scholar Emanuel Tov observes, "the textual reality in the Second Temple period was one of plurality rather than uniformity."¹ The Qumran community itself appears to have been comfortable using multiple textual traditions simultaneously, suggesting that ancient Jewish communities were far more flexible about textual variation than later religious authorities would become.

These discoveries also reveal that some textual differences were quite deliberate. Scribes at Qumran made conscious efforts to harmonize contradictions between different biblical books, update archaic language, clarify legal interpretations, and even modify prophecies to reflect contemporary circumstances. This wasn't deception—it was what they understood as faithful transmission of sacred tradition in changing times.

Why the Masoretic Text Prevailed

The eventual dominance of the Masoretic Text tradition resulted from a complex interplay of religious, political, and cultural factors that unfolded over many centuries.

Early Christians, especially Greek-speaking communities throughout the Roman Empire, relied heavily on the Septuagint. Many Old Testament quotations in the New Testament match the Septuagint's wording rather than what would become the standard Hebrew text. This Christian adoption of the Greek translation created a curious dynamic: as Christianity spread and gained institutional power, Jewish communities increasingly emphasized Hebrew texts as more authentically Jewish.

By the fourth century, as Christianity became aligned with Roman imperial power, church leaders faced growing pressure to standardize their scriptural texts. Jerome, the brilliant and irascible scholar who produced the Latin Vulgate translation, argued passionately for returning to Hebraica veritas—the "Hebrew truth." Though multiple Hebrew textual traditions still existed in his time, Jerome chose to work primarily with versions that Jewish communities were then using, which would eventually develop into the Masoretic Text.

Jerome's preference for Hebrew sources over the Greek Septuagint was motivated by several concerns: a desire for linguistic accuracy, worry about theological drift in the longer Septuagint versions, and occasionally by anti-Jewish polemics that portrayed the Greek translation as somehow corrupted by Jewish interpreters seeking to undermine Christian arguments.

This shift had profound long-term consequences. Jerome's Latin Vulgate became the standard Bible for Western Christianity for over a millennium. When Protestant reformers in the sixteenth century sought to bypass what they saw as Catholic corruption by returning to original languages, they naturally turned to Hebrew for the Old Testament—specifically, the Masoretic tradition that Jerome had favored a thousand years earlier.

Today, the Masoretic Text remains the foundation of most Protestant Old Testaments, while Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Bibles retain many of the Septuagint's additional books, known as the Apocrypha (from Greek, meaning "hidden things") in Protestant terminology or Deuterocanonical books ("second canon") in Catholic usage.

What Would Have Changed?

The historical accident by which the Masoretic Text became standard for most of Christianity, while the Septuagint's additional books survived only in Catholic and Orthodox traditions, had enormous consequences for Christian theology and practice. Understanding these alternative paths illuminates just how contingent our current biblical arrangements really are.

What if early Christians had canonized the full Septuagint without revision, making its additional books standard for all Christian communities?

This scenario isn't merely hypothetical—it nearly happened. Many early church fathers, from Justin Martyr to Augustine, treated Septuagint texts as fully scriptural. Had Jerome's preference for Hebrew sources not prevailed, or had the Protestant Reformation developed differently, modern Christianity might look dramatically different in several key areas:

1. Political Resistance and Armed Struggle

First Maccabees tells the story of a Jewish revolt against the oppressive Seleucid Empire, portraying military resistance as divinely sanctioned when righteous people face religious persecution. The book presents armed rebellion not as a last resort but as a faithful response when imperial powers demand apostasy.

If this text had remained in all Christian Bibles rather than being relegated to Catholic and Orthodox collections, Christian attitudes toward pacifism versus righteous rebellion might have evolved along entirely different lines. Christian communities facing persecution—from early Roman oppression through medieval Islamic conquests to modern authoritarian regimes—might have found stronger scriptural warrant for armed resistance. The development of Christian just war theory, the ethics of revolution, and approaches to civil disobedience could all have taken different trajectories.

2. Afterlife, Purgatory, and Communal Responsibility for the Dead

Second Maccabees includes a striking passage about Jewish soldiers making financial offerings for the dead, "that they might be delivered from their sin" (2 Macc 12:44-46). This text suggests that the living can positively influence the spiritual state of the deceased through prayer and material offerings.

This passage became foundational for Catholic doctrines of purgatory and the practice of saying Masses for the dead, but its absence from Protestant Bibles contributed directly to Reformation-era rejection of those practices. If all Christian communities had retained this text as canonical, the sharp Protestant-Catholic divide over prayers for the dead, indulgences, and purgatorial states might never have developed. Christian funeral practices, attitudes toward death, and understanding of communal spiritual responsibility could have remained more unified across denominational lines.

3. Divine Wisdom as Personal Agent

The Wisdom of Solomon presents "Wisdom" as a pre-existent divine force that "reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other" and "pervades and penetrates all things" (Wis 8:1; 7:24). This personified Wisdom guides creation, reveals God's will to humanity, and actively saves the righteous from spiritual and physical death.

Early Christian theologians saw clear connections between this divine Wisdom figure and Christ as the Logos (Word) of God. Had this text remained universally canonical, it might have significantly influenced the development of Trinitarian theology, perhaps emphasizing the cosmic, creative role of Christ or providing stronger scriptural foundation for understanding divine wisdom as a distinct person within the Godhead. Protestant theology, which developed with less emphasis on this Wisdom tradition, might have maintained stronger connections between divine revelation and feminine imagery.

Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus) offers detailed guidance on daily moral life: honoring parents and elders, managing wealth ethically, treating servants with dignity, controlling speech to avoid gossip and slander, and maintaining humility in the face of success. Unlike some biblical wisdom literature that can seem abstract, Sirach provides concrete advice for navigating family relationships, business dealings, and community responsibilities.

Universal canonization of Sirach might have strengthened Christian emphasis on economic justice, family obligations, and social ethics in ways that could have influenced everything from medieval guild practices to modern approaches to capitalism and wealth distribution. Its continued presence in Catholic and Orthodox liturgies, where passages are read regularly during feast days and seasonal celebrations, demonstrates how canonical inclusion shapes ongoing spiritual formation in practical ways.

Scholar Debate: Organic Development or Deliberate Revision?

Modern scholars continue to debate whether the extensive textual differences between major traditions reflect natural transmission processes or more deliberate editorial interventions.

Emanuel Tov, whose comprehensive work on Hebrew Bible textual criticism remains foundational to the field, emphasizes that "most variants arose from practical or linguistic needs, not theological conspiracy." In his view, the majority of textual differences resulted from routine challenges of copying by hand across centuries: scribal errors, dialect variations, attempts to clarify archaic language, and adaptation to different liturgical needs.²

Timothy Michael Law, in his influential study When God Spoke Greek, argues for a more dynamic understanding of ancient textual transmission. Law contends that the Septuagint reflects the genuine theological creativity of Jewish communities consciously adapting Scripture to new cultural contexts—something early Christians initially embraced but later generations abandoned in favor of more rigid approaches to textual preservation.³

James VanderKam and other Dead Sea Scrolls specialists have documented clear evidence that some textual changes were indeed deliberate. Qumran scribes demonstrably harmonized contradictions between different biblical books, updated prophetic language to reflect contemporary circumstances, and clarified legal interpretations to address practical questions their community faced. But these scholars generally view such changes as honest attempts to faithfully transmit sacred tradition rather than as deceptive manipulation.⁴

The emerging scholarly consensus recognizes both phenomena: much textual variation resulted from the practical realities of hand-copying across centuries and cultures, while some changes reflected conscious theological and interpretive decisions. Most importantly, ancient Jewish communities appear to have been comfortable with this textual fluidity in ways that later religious authorities—both Jewish and Christian—would find troubling.

The Continuing Significance of Ancient Choices

These ancient decisions about which texts to preserve, translate, and authorize continue to shape contemporary religious life in concrete ways.

Catholics and Orthodox Christians regularly hear readings from Wisdom literature and Maccabean narratives during weekly liturgies, subtly reinforcing theological emphases on divine wisdom, communal prayer, and legitimate resistance to persecution. Protestant communities, influenced by Reformation-era rejection of deuterocanonical books, often display less comfort with intercessory prayers for the dead, purgatorial concepts, and expansive biblical approaches to economic ethics.

Even the basic question of how many books belong in "the Bible" reflects these ancient textual decisions. A Catholic Bible contains seventy-three books; most Protestant Bibles contain sixty-six; Ethiopian Orthodox communities recognize eighty-one; and various Eastern churches include different combinations depending on their particular historical development.

If the Septuagint tradition had prevailed universally, contemporary Christianity might place greater emphasis on courage in resistance to unjust authority, stronger communal responsibility for deceased community members, more robust integration of divine feminine imagery through Wisdom literature, and more detailed scriptural guidance for economic and social ethics.

Understanding this history doesn't resolve contemporary theological disagreements, but it does illuminate how much of what modern Christians take for granted as "biblical" actually reflects particular historical choices made under specific cultural and political pressures. The Bible we've inherited is neither accidental nor inevitable—it's the result of countless human decisions about how best to preserve and transmit sacred tradition across changing circumstances.

Notes

Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012), 164.
Tov, Textual Criticism, 267-293.
Timothy Michael Law, When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 154-178.
James C. VanderKam and Peter Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: HarperOne, 2002), 98-126.