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The Original Text While the surviving manuscripts differ among themselves, the various versions were nevertheless regarded as authoritative in different communities at different times. This poses the question: which version of the text should be taken as the basis for the commentary? As far as the Malachi document is concerned, the classic concept of the “original text” may suffice: it means that all surviving textual variants can be traced to a single text type. This original text is the one regarded as canonical in the Protestant tradition, even though the New Testament authors, beginning with Paul (Rom 9:13), preferred to use the Greek translation.

The original text has not survived, but with the exception of only a few passages it can be reconstructed. The starting point for the text-critical task is the so-called Masoretic text type, as attested by the earliest complete surviving manuscript of the Tanakh, Codex Leningradensis from the year 1008 CE. That codex is likewise the basis for the Biblia Hebraica Quinta (ed. Anthony Gelston, 2010). The consonantal text of this type was probably regarded as standard among leading circles of Palestinian Judaism ca. 100 CE. Among the scrolls containing the Twelve Prophets from Cave 4 at Qumran only Scroll 4QXII^a preserves some text from the Malachi document, namely, some very fragmentary passages from Mal 2:10–3:24 [2:10–4:6 ET].³ Those contain only a very few deviations from Codex Leningradensis.

The Septuagint’s Vorlage We can also see from the Septuagint translation of the Book of the Twelve Prophets that its Hebrew Vorlage was largely identical with the Masoretic text type.⁴

It is true that Codex Leningradensis contains a few passages in which the original text can no longer be reconstructed; for example, Mal 2:3b and 2:15 are altogether incomprehensible. The Septuagint already presupposed the faulty text, which means that it must have been created inadvertently quite soon after the completion of the Book of the Twelve. The faulty text cannot be corrected because meaningful conjectures have to deviate sharply from the consonantal text as it stands; such a situation makes it difficult to monitor or evaluate the conjectures.