Copyists and their work

10.3. Copyists and their work
The copyist of the Old Testament and his work had to adhere to strict rules which were important. The copyist had to be a competent person. He should not be hostile towards the text, neither neutral nor indifferent. He must be a godly person who reverenced the text in his heart. As far as his work was concerned (see Dronkert 1964:57-58):
(1) He had to write the text on the skin of a clean animal.
(2) He had to draw lines on the scroll before he started to write. If he had written three words on the skin without drawing the lines on it, that scroll was worthless.
(3) He must use black ink, and the ink had to be prepared according to a special recipe.
(4) He was only allowed to copy a scroll that was recognised by the leaders of the synagogue as true and trustworthy. He was not allowed to deviate from it. The letters had to be written in the same way as in the original text.
(5) He was not allowed to write a text from memory, even if he knew that text very well.
(6) He had to leave a space the width of a hair between the letters and the space of nine letters between the paragraphs. Between two books he had to leave the space of three lines.
(7) He had to be a Jew, dressed in full Jewish attire. He had to wash his body clean before he started.
(8) He was not allowed to write the name of God with a pen that was just dipped into the ink.
(9) If the king called him while he was writing the name of God, he had to ignore him.
(10) A column should not have more than 60 or fewer than 48 rows. The width of the column should be thirty letters.
(11) The width of the open space at the top of a column had to be as thick as three fingers. At the bottom it should be as thick as four fingers.
(12) The masoretes counted all the verses, words and letters of every book. They calculated the middle word and the middle letter. When the copyist finished, the letters of his work were counted. If there were differences, they did not try to find them. The copyist had to start the work all over again.
If a scroll did not meet these criteria, it was buried, burned or banned to a school to be used as a reader.
This careful process of copying the text resulted in trustworthy scrolls. However, manuscripts sometimes reveal differences. These differences are similar to some that are found in the New Testament. This will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter.
Some typical differences include the change of letters. As illustrated in a previous chapter, there are some letters in Hebrew that look alike. These are: ב (b) and כ (k); ד (d) and ר (r); ח (ch) and ה (h). Sometimes letters were reversed. That problem is common in many languages.