Rabbinic academies which arose after the ruin of the City and Temple, in Palestine and in Babylonia.
This very brief sketch of the Massorah will give some idea of how exceedingly precious in the eyes of the Jew for many centuries has been the text of his loved Scriptures.
We possess no MSS. of the Hebrew Bible older than the first half of the ninth century. The reason of the non-existence of any very ancient MSS. is probably owing to the fact of the Jews being in the habit of burying old and worn-out copies of the Scriptures lest the worn material, the valuable parchment or papyrus, should be employed for any secular purpose. The text we now possess is, however, certainly that which was current in the seventh and eighth centuries of the Christian era, and there is little doubt that it accurately represents a much older text.
The Massoretic notes, something of the general purport of which is described above, are written above and below the three columns into which usually each page of the MS. of the Scriptures is divided. These notes are termed the "Massorah Magna"; while on the margin and between the columns are more Massoretic notes. These are termed the "Massorah Parva."
The composition of these notes, which included every phenomenon of the text, as well as a vast number of interesting statistical facts bearing on the text, went on for well-nigh a thousand years, and eventually they amounted to an enormous bulk of material. It became in time absolutely impossible to write down anything approaching to the whole of the Massorah in any single MS. Hence, whenever a new copy of the Scriptures was ordered by an individual or a community, the Massoretic scribes were in the habit of transcribing only so much of the Massorah as they deemed of especial importance and interest, or as much of the Massorah as they considered a fair equivalent for the price paid for the MS. Thus it has come about that there is no single MS. of the Old Testament which contains the whole or anything approximating to the whole Massorah. The present scholarly editor of the Massorah (Dr. Ginsberg) has some seventy-two ancient MSS. of the Old Testament collected in the British Museum, from which he is
