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From: rhendel@mcs.drexel.edu (Russell Hendel)
Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 22:27:45 -0400
Subject: Regarding Changing Biblical Texts

During the Memorial day weekend I had a chance to catch up on some
research needed to answer some challenging questions on former postings.

In particular a while back there was discussion on comments in the
literature on our traditional texts. One such comment lists 18 verses in
the Bible which were "fixed" by the scribes. The question arose as to
whether the verses were actually "changed" by the scribes for reasons of
discretion or whether they just appear changed.  As a simple example,
Gen 18:22 mentions "And Abraham was still standing before G-d" when in
reality according to the text it should have said "And G-d was still
standing before Abraham". So now we have the question. Was the text
changed?  Or does it just appear changed. Also what does Rashi there
really believe. I believe I have found some new sources that place this
in a better light.

Everyone agrees that One job of the Mesorah is to prevent scribes from
'correcting' "queer" constructions which they might think are errors.

For example: It usually says "As G-d commanded Moses(e.g. Ex
40:19,21,23,25..)  In one verse it says "As G-d commanded *TO*
Moses(Ex16:34)"

The Mesorah says "Appears without TO". Clearly the Mesorah is simply
warning us against making the error of leaving out the *TO*. This
Massoretic style "Appears.." is frequently used with "queer"
prepositional constructions.

Additionally, the Rabbis researched and found 18 texts where sentence
order or word forms appear wrong. Again their goals were simply to warn
scribes against errors (not to indicate that anyone changed the text).

Mechy Fraenkel and Steve Oren were concerned that the phrase "which the
Rabbis 'turned'" (Rashi Gen 18:22)seems to indicate a "willful" change
of texts (for reasons of discretion).

However my research shows that it is only in English that "turned" means
to "Change".  In Hebrew the word "turned" means to do research
(cf. Avoth 5:27). Similarly the Biblical Hebrew word "plough" denotes
thinking. I hope this strengthens the possibility of this approach.

Russell Hendel; Ph.d;ASA rhendel @ mcs drexel edu