In order to gain some appreciation of the problems which confront the student of the original Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament, it is well that one should pause to consider some of their peculiar characteristics. Scholars are agreed that, as originally composed, the Old Testament books were devoid of punctuation—the letters being set down continuously, that is, without any division between the words, or even between the sentences. Then, when we bear in mind that at this early period, the Hebrew language consisted solely of consonants, it becomes evident that difficulties of interpretation might readily present themselves. It is as though a very familiar verse from our English Bible (Deut. 33:27) were set down in part as: THTRNLGDSTHRFGNDNDRNTHRTHVRLSTNGRMS. This might appear to present an all but insuperable obstacle to a correct understanding of what had been said, since, in any language, a given series of consonants generally represents many different words according to the vowels which are added to it, and the way in which the letters are grouped. As time went by, the Jews themselves began to realize the disadvantages and ambiguities inherent in their method of writing.
Two of the earliest steps taken in attempting to remedy the difficulty seem to have been the introduction of what are known as "vowel-letters"— which were simply certain Hebrew consonants arbitrarily selected to represent the more important vowel sounds—and the leaving of a space between each word. These were definite aids towards the simplification of the text, but still there were no vowels in the usual sense of the term.
At length, about the seventh or eighth century A. D., there arose a famous school of Jewish scholars later known as "the Massoretes.'' This word derives from the Hebrew term "Massorah," meaning "tradition," and these men were described as "Massoretes"—"Traditionalists" —because they introduced an ingenious and elaborate system of vowelsigns which standardized the "traditional" pronunciation of what the Bible writers had set down many centuries before. The Massoretes, however, feeling that the consonants alone constituted the original and inspired text, and should not be in any degree displaced to make way for the new vowels, added their minute vowel-signs and punctuation marks above, below, and sometimes within the basic consonants. Then, too, these men felt that they were the divinely-appointed guardians of the sacred text, and for that reason they studied and copied it with the utmost care, in a sincere and praiseworthy effort to preserve it intact for future generations. With this end in view they enumerated such details as the exact number of words in every book, and the middle word of each book, noting carefully any peculiarities of orthography that these too might remain unchanged; while they added in the margin various notes as aids to the reader or translator. Thus we indeed owe a debt of gratitude to the Massoretes, who did so much both to preserve and to clarify the text of our Old Testament.
