Page 261 - History of The Quranic Text | Kalamullah.Com

THE OLD TESTAMENT AND ITS CORRUPTION 241

i. The Role of the Council of Jamnia - Late First Century C.E.

Wiirthwein writes,

The consonantal text which is preserved in the medieval manuscripts
and forms the basis of our present editions goes back to about A.D.
100. As part of the greatJewish revivalwhichmarked the decades after
the catastrophe of A.D.70, the canonical status of certain disputed books ofthe
OldTestament wasdefined at the Council of]amnia (latefirst century A.D.), and
an authoritative textofthe Old Testament wasalso established.60

The text preserved in the period following 70 C.E. was simply that of the
most influential group, the Pharisees. The text types supported by lesser
groups disappeared, making the current standard text a result of historical
development and evolution.P! Wiirthwein's assertion that the Council of
Jamnia established an authoritative text appears to be nothing short of
wishful thinking, since this contradicts his claim elsewhere that the OT
text was finally established in the tenth century C.E. 62

ii. The Old Testament Text was known in a
Variety of Differing Traditions

A false impression has been created among general readers that the OT
has been transmitted through the ages exactly word for word, and character
for character." Such is hardly the case; even the Ten Commandments differ
in two versions.v'
Scholars agree that, at the end of the pre-Christian era, the OT text was
known in a variety of traditions that differed from each other to varying
degrees. Attempting to solve this puzzle of multiple text types, scholars have
relied on different approaches. "Frank M. Cross would interpret them as
local Palestinian, Egyptian, and Babylonian textual forms,"65meaning that
each of these centres nurtured its own OT text, independent of whatever
textual forms other centres were using. Shemaryahu Talmon has objected

60 ibid, p. 13. Italics added.
61 ibid, p. 14.
62 Seethisworkp. 246.
63 See "Are Torah Scrolls Exactly the Same?", Bible Review, voL xiii, no. 6, Dec.
1997, pp. 5-6.
61 Seefor instance Wurthwein's analysis of the Nash Papyrus [Wurthwein, p. 34].
65 ibid, pp.14-l5.