Subject: The Massorah? |
Bible Note: Greetings Serenetime! The textual variants of the various Greek texts really don't make any doctrinal differences. However, if we are trying to get back to the text of the original autographs, the newer translations will be more accurate for several reasons. 1) The authors of the Textus Receptus only had a very limited number of manuscripts to work with. Now, we have literally thousands. 2) The authors of the TR were only using manuscripts from basically one family of manuscripts. So, they pretty much agreed on every reading simply because they were all made from the same family. But, this also meant that they all contained the same "errors". 99.9 percent of the time, the TR and the newer critical texts will agree with one another. But, the newer texts will be closer to the originals. Concerning the Massorah, it has the same basic problems as the TR. It was created late, maybe as late as the 6th century a.d.. It only was applied to one text type, the Massoretic. And, the biggest problem, it only exists in bits and pieces. There is no complete Massorah in existence. It was their intention to use the Massorah to protect the text (good intention), but the text they "protected" had errors in it. So, they ended up perpetuating the errors, rather than protecting the text. Your Brother in Christ, Tim Moran |