Page 260 - History of The Quranic Text | Kalamullah.Com

240 THE HISTORY OF THE QUR'ANIC TEXT

Another remark worthy of note here comes from Wiirthwein, that "verse
divisions were already known in the Talmudic period, with differing Baby-
lonian and Palestinian traditions't.v By lacking any form of separation
between verses, this 11th century codex (written so many centuries after
Talmudic times) casts a pall on this assertion. However, "the division into
chapters, a system derived from Stephen Langton (1150-1228), was adopted
in Hebrew manuscripts from the Latin Vulgate in the fourteenth century."53
Moreover, the verse divisions were not given numbers as subdivisions of
chapters until the 16th century,"
The Leningrad Codex is alarmingly recent given the age of the OT;
the oldest existing Hebrew manuscript of the entire OT hails, in fact, from
55
only the 10th century C.E.
A number of substantially earlier Hebrew manuscripts, some dating
from the pre-Christian era, were hidden during the first and second
centuries A.D. in various cavesin theJudean desert ... near the Dead
56
Sea and remained there for nearly two millennia, to be found in a
successionof discoveries beginning in 1947,57

These findings include fragments from nearly all the OT books, but for
a full copy of the 0'f scholars are still entirely dependent on manuscripts
dating from the l Oth century and onwards/"

5. In Search if anAuthoritative 'Text

It is well known that for many centuries the Hebrew text of the Old
Testament existed as a purely consonantal text. Vowelsigns were not
added to the text until a later stage, when the consonantal text was
already wellestablishedwith a long history of transmissionbehind it.59

The history of the various textual variations, the subsequent inclusion
of vowels, and the [mal emergence of an authoritative version of the OT
text, requires detailed scrutiny.

52 WOrthwein, p. 21.
53 ibid, p. 21.
54 ibid, p. 21.
55 ibid, pp. lU-Ll, More accurately it shouldbc hailedfrom the early IIth century
as it (i.e. the Leningrad Codex) bears the copying date of 1008 C.E. [ibid, p. 10].
56 These dates are baseless; seethisworkpp. 252-6.
57 Wurthwein, p. II.
58 ibid, p. 11.
59 ibid, p. 12.