Holy Hormones Bible Study: If your book isn’t a buzz, it’s not the Bible.
ARE THERE REALLY TYPOS IN THE TORAH?
Typos in the Torah #8
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Prologue
If you have already read a Holy Hormones article you know what to expect. If this is your first visit, it is advised that you read HERE before proceding.
Introduction
In an article dated 1992–07–24 a Jim Meritt posted, “A List of Biblical Contradictions.” There were about 65 of them. This series will gradually work through them, as time allows.
In the interest of completion, this particular post contains some general background on God’s Word and typos.
Who is this post for?
Those who waste their time finding fault with the Word of God.
It is one of a series on Typos in the Torah.
A repudiated axiom
It is regurgitated, ad nauseam, on this platform that the Bible is written by humans, we have no original copies, sections have been erased, sections have been injected, errors have been made, and contradictions are contained — to name just a few.
HOW CAN WE POSSIBLY BELIEVE THE BIBLE IS SPECIAL?
IT IS JUST ONE OF MANY BOOKS.
But I know someone who knows a bit about the subject and He vehemently disagrees.
It is written in Isaiah 40:6–8 || “All flesh is grass, And all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, Because the breath of the Lord blows upon it; Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever.”
Also in Isaiah 55:10–11 || “For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, And do not return there, But water the earth, And make it bring forth and bud, That it may give seed to the sower And bread to the eater, So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me empty, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.
And in Psalm 12:6–7; Combining both Hebrew and Greek meanings and grammar; God will remember His Word forever, and will protect it from all generations; including this one — from both inside and outside the church.
║The words of the Lord are pure words, Like silver tried in a furnace of earth, Purified seven times. You shall keep (H8104 — šāmar) them, O Lord, You shall preserve (H5341 — nāṣar) them from this generation forever (H5769 — ʿôlām).
H8104 — šāmar; verb = to keep, retain, treasure up (in memory), to keep, preserve, protect
Tense: open ended, never ending, → G5442 — phylassō; verb future tense
H5341 — nāṣar; verb = to guard, watch, watch over, keep → G1301 — diatēreō; verb future tense
H5769 — ʿôlām; noun = can’t be seen but always there (i.e. a glow behind a hill) → G165 — aiōn = for ever, an unbroken age, perpetuity of time, eternity.
GOD PROTECTS HIS WORD.
HE NEVER FORGETS HIS WORD AND PROTECTS IT FROM EVERYONE — EVEN WILLING BUT UN-GIFTED CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIANS. HE ALWAYS KEEPS HIS REMNANT WHO UNDERSTAND.
A give away comment
Another reoccurring comment which demonstrates no understanding of the Bible, concerns literalism. It seems a bit one-sided that parts of our society spend hours delving into Shakespeare to wonder at his turn of phrase that has such meaning, but allow the Bible to have no poetic qualities at all — just boring, mechanical single meaning.
The Holy Spirit is not a boring teacher
It is written in Hosea 12:10║I have also spoken by the prophets, And have multiplied visions; I have given symbols and similitudes through the witness of the prophets.”
And He shows many spiritual concepts in the natural first so they can be understood by the Saints.
It is written in 1 Corinthians 15:46–49║However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterwards the spiritual. The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man.
For example, all of the Baptism accounts include the phrasing, “the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him.” How can a human intellect accurately describe the Holy Spirit when there is nothing else like the Holy Spirit? Explain ice to a Bedouin born and bred in the Arabian desert. Or Coca-Cola to someone who hasn’t seen it.
There are about 142 examples of figures of speech used in the Bible. How many did Shakespeare use?
BUT YES, THERE ARE REALLY TYPOS IN THE TORAH?
God makes no promises about translations
Just look at the torturous linguistic gymnastics coming from somewhere over the rainbow on this platform.
He also makes no promises about copies
When the Lord harvested me, a month before Diana died in 1997, I was told how much the Jews venerated the Old Testament by the practices of the Scribes. Some examples being:
• They washed themselves before writing any word that was the Name of God.
• They washed themselves after writing the Name of God.
• They destroyed the quill after writing the Name of God.
• They tallied the Gematria total for each line of the text. If it didn’t comply with the expected value, the whole scroll was destroyed.
• They summed the value of the middle word of the section and, if it didn’t comply, the entire scroll was destroyed.
The list carried on. The Common Knowledge was there were no errors in the Old Testament. It was the Gold Standard for the veracity of the Written Word of God. I never questioned it because it was considered to be an axiom — no argument. Anyone who did not wholeheartedly subscribe to the catchphrase, “The Bible is Inspired, Inerrant and Infallible,” had best remain silent or entertain the risk of being burned at the stake or stoned.
But over years of private and supervised study of the Written word of the Living Word of God, it has become apparent that the Message of the Gospel is so simple that even a child is capable of grasping it, but the text is not as superficial as it first seems. There are paradoxes (for the Kings to discover), apparent errors (for the fools who say, in their heart, there is no God), and actual typographical errors (caused by both intentional and unintentional human interference during the manual copying process). It is only armed with the knowledge of the different types of seeming contradictions can the “flaws” be resolved.
So the Bible isn’t Inspired, Inerrant and Infallible?
It is, but not in the way humans generally argue the toss.
In the suite Gutting the Divine, Isaiah prophesies God bringing Israel back to the Land a second time about 150 years before they left the first time. That second return began in 1948 and was completed in 1967.
Did Isaiah know anything about 1948 and 1967? You think? → Inspired .
Did it turn out the way God said? Yes → Inerrant.
Did anyone cause it to fail? No → Infallible.
It has become evident that Yehovah doesn’t sweat the small-stuff when the naysayers try Him on.
The suite Esther in Nuremberg verifies Isaiah with eye-watering accuracy.
Did Isaiah know anything about the Nuremberg War Crimes trials (1946), 1948 and 1967?
Asking this question to the free thinking rationalists draws the same startling reply from everyone I have questioned personally. “Someone must have written it in after it happened.” WOW! That means that Isaiah was written after the 1967 Arab-Israel war! That is even after the fabrication of the word, “homosexual.”
So what do the Rabbis say about Torah Reliability.
In an article, “Accuracy of Torah Text,” Rabbi Aish HaTorah states, amongst other things:-
• A Torah Scroll is disqualified if even a single letter is added.
• A Torah Scroll is disqualified if even a single letter is deleted.
Which is in line with the commonly believed NT Saint thinking.
But the Emeritus Rabbi of the Great Synagogue, Sydney, Rabbi Raymond Apple, disagrees. In his blog “Ask the Rabbi,” he says it is an Evangelical myth, and erroneous Kabbalistic mystical tradition, that Torah Scrolls were destroyed if they contain spelling errors. It is not true. Corrections are made. The practice today is that hand written Scrolls are rigorously checked and corrections made if detected. Below is an extract from the article.
It has been estimated that up to 80% of scrolls used to be completely correct after painstaking personal checking, but now about 30% are found to have one or more mistakes.
Since there are over 300,000 letters in a Torah, the most scrupulously careful scribe can still occasionally make a blunder, e.g. spelling No’ach with a chaf instead of a chet or writing a word twice.
If there is even only one error the scroll may not be used until it is corrected, and there are times when a particular scroll has been in regular use for many years and no-one has detected the problem.
It should be added that sometimes the problem with an old scroll is not spelling but fading or cracked writing, and generally this too can be fixed with a steady scribal hand and kosher ink.
I do not know the reason for the published differing opinion on this matter in Jewish circles. But, by the Grace of God, I’ve discovered some old news that is good news. It is the Scribal procedure, Tiqqun Soferim, “correction of scribes” or “scribal correction”, which has been practiced since time immemorial in Judaism. The terms used are Qere (“what is read”) and Ketiv (“what is written)”. There are a half dozen types of Qere and Ketiv covering, amongst other things, letters and words omitted or inserted (“Ordinary”, “Vowel”, “Omitted”, “Added”, “Euphemistic”, “Split/Joined”).
An example of a correction
The next figure shows two copies of the same portion of an ancient Torah scroll, the text in question is Deuteronomy 33:9, Moses blessing the Tribe of Levi.
Who said of his father and his mother,
‘I did not consider them’;
And he did not acknowledge his brothers,
Nor did he regard his own SONS,
For they observed Your word,
And kept Your covenant. (NASB)
There is nothing of Theological significance in this example. It is merely the only pictorial example I could find.
On the left is the scroll section being examined, as is. On the right two words are highlighted. The left one, marked L, shows what is written. That is, בָּנָו “his son”, obviously singular. But the context is that Moses is prophesying over the Tribe of Levi so the singular is not applicable. The right one, marked R in the margin, shows an edit which is the inclusion of a yod, י, resulting in בָּנִָיו “his sons”, which complies with the flavour of the tract. So, what is written, “His son,” is substituted by what is read, “His sons,” in the mind of the reader.
The next figure shows how the same verse is presented in a modern computer package. (Highlighting of K and Q wordsis mine.)
How many typos are there?
Copyist error = typo.
An 1884 commentary on the 1611 version of the King James Bible by English Theologian, Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener, reports 6637 marginal notes in the KJV Old Testament, of which 31 are instances of the KJV translators drawing attention to qere and ketiv.
The Blue Letter Bible reports 305 qere or ketiv instances. This would be for the Leningrad Codex, the oldest full copy of the Tanakh which is the reference for all Christian and Jewish Old Testament Scripture.
However it should be remembered that, for every manual copy there is a possibility for this type of typographical error to occur a number of times — but not always the same error in the same place for each copy. It must be emphasized that the original autograph, when the Holy Spirit was guiding, say, Moses’s mind and hand, this would not have happened. The Lord makes Divine Promises about His Word — not about copies of His Word.
Whenever there are humans manually copying documents there are errors. Jewish Scribes are as human as anyone.
Here is a very useful list assembled by the Department of Manuscript Studies, Medieval and Early Modern, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. It is useful in deciphering typos.
The most common types of alteration made by scribes to the texts that they copy are these:-
- Of Omission:
homeoteleuton: the scribe paused, then resumed writing but skipped ahead because of the similarity of the endings of two lines, thus leaving out a passage.
homeoarchy: eye-skip because of the similarity of the beginnings of two lines.
haplography: copying once what appeared in the exemplar twice (“pewterer” reduced to “pewter,” or “that that” reduced to “that”).
- Of Addition:
dittography: mechanical repetition, by trick of memory (“that that” when original had only “that”).
contamination: extraneous element from elsewhere appears on the page.
- Of Transposition:
metathesis: reversing letters, words, phrases.
- Of Alteration:
unwitting.
Unwitting mistranscription: the First Folio Anthony and Cleopatra, in V.ii.87, gives “an Antonie twas” where Shakespeare had written “an autumn twas”; the typesetter “saw” “Antonie” there, partly because the name had appeared so often already, and partly because it made “sense” in the passage, so the initial error was not immediately caught.deliberate: the scribe acts as editor to correct and improve the original.
Conclusion
If anyone thinks they are so smart that they are the first to see something that has been around for millennia — think again. There is no such thing as new news, just old news happening to new people.
God protects His Word and, if the links provided in this post have been followed, evidence has been shown that His Word is absolutely INSPIRED, INERRANT AND INFALLIBLE. If you require further validation, just turn on the TV news. In case it has slipped by you, Israel is back in the Land whether you like it or not. Start with the big picture and work down.
He knows He’s dealing with UNINSPIRED, ERRANT AND FALLIBLE humans so He doesn’t sweat the small stuff of puerile arguments about things of which we are all ignorant. When He appeared to Job He ignored Job’s questions and declared His own Glory. Job saw that the big picture was beyond him and he humbled himself before Yehovah — a good role model.
That’s it from me for now. I’m still wearing my Big Boy pants, so hit me with your best shot.
Epilogue
Every apparent error is an opportunity for you to dig deeper, and the Holy Spirit will show you more interesting things about Himself depending on how much interest you show.
It won’t make you any smarter but it will make you wiser.
THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM IS KNOWLEDGE OF YHVH.
The forgoing evidence has not been presented to convince any reader but to allow a personal decision to be made. There is much more to know about this subject. Perhaps you’ll pay another visit, sometime. If you have seen something you like, I encourage plagiarism. So, always check everything I say first, then please re-cycle, re-brand, re-structure, re-issue, re-label, or re-gurgitate in any manner you please. No need to acknowledge me because the Holy Spirit Who holds the Intellectual Rights.
All Glory to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
(We all have a plank in our eye. It’s bigger than we think.)
