Page 27 - Yahwehs Book

means “trunk of a tree.”

Chinese Bamboo Book, or Codex

In Europe, the bark of the Beech tree was used for the pages of a codex. It is from the word “Beech”
(German bok - pronounced “boke”) that we get our English word “book.”

The following excerpt describes the meticulous attention to detail employed by the Masoretes to
ensure that the Hebrew Bible was copied with flawless precision.

The Masoretes, who go back to about A.D. 500, succeeded the earlier scribes. The Masoretes of
Tiberias were the most important of the Masoretes, and the Ben Asher family of Tiberias, with whom
several of the model codices are associated, are especially renowned.

The work of the Masoretes is truly significant. Their labors are spread out over a period of four or
five centuries, and their contributions are many. They are perhaps best known for their system of
vowels and accents which they devised for the Hebrew text. It will be remembered that all of the
letters in the Hebrew alphabet are consonants. Thus the Old Testament was first written without
vowels. Although this may seem strange to us, it was sufficient during the many centuries when
Hebrew was a spoken language. When eventually Hebrew was no longer spoken, the danger was
imminent that the proper pronunciation of the consonantal text might be lost. To meet the danger,
the Masoretes, on the basis of their well-kept traditions, inserted vowel points above and below the
lines of the text. It must be emphasized, however, that they did not bother the text itself; they only
added a means by which to ensure the correct pronunciation of the text.

The Masoretes were not concerned with only such things as proper pronunciation. They also sought
ways and methods by which to eliminate scribal slips of addition or omission. This they achieved
through intricate procedures of counting. They numbered the verses, words, and letters of each book.
They counted the number of times each letter was used in each book. They noted verses that
contained all the letters of the alphabet, or a certain number of them. They calculated the middle
letter, the middle word, and the middle verse of the Pentateuch; the middle verse of the Psalms, the
middle verse of the entire Hebrew Bible, and so forth. In fact, they counted almost everything that
could be counted. With these safeguards, and others, when a scribe finished making a copy of a
book, he could then check the accuracy of his work before using it.