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What are Jewish and non-Jewish sources? TeNaKh = Torah (Pentateuch) + Neviʾim (Prophets) + Ketuvim (Writings) is the Jewish Scripture that has come down to us from antiquity in a complex way. Like other ancient compositions, it was first put into writing in antiquity on papyrus or skins of leather and subsequently copied, generation after generation, until the invention of printing. The process of the development between the stage of the first writing of the text until the stage of the printed text is named the transmission of the text, and that stage was very complex. There were many reasons for this complexity. The first stage of writing was preceded by a stage of oral transmission that often created several versions of the same event that were eventually committed to writing. The transmission was also complex because early scribes allowed themselves the freedom of changing the text in many large and small details. All these complications created slightly different copies of the same scriptural book.

The traditional Jewish »Bible« as we know it today from Hebrew texts and mo­dern translations represents one of the early text traditions to be described below. Textual criticism is the discipline that deals with the textual history of the Bible, but it sometimes also pertains to the history of the literary forms.

There is no such thing as the »main text« of the Bible, since all the texts to be described below may be named »the Bible.« For practical purposes we may consider the traditional or Masoretic Text (MT, see § 2) the central text, since that is the sacred or authoritative text accepted by all streams of Judaism from the first century CE onwards (see below). It also has become the authoritative text of the Bible in its Hebrew form for the Protestant world, and it is the central text for the scholarly world. But the Septuagint (LXX, see § 4) is equally as much »the Bible« as the MT. That text, originally a Jewish translation of Hebrew Scripture, served subsequently as the sacred text of Christianity; until at a certain point it was replaced by the Latin Vulgate translation. The Dead Sea Scrolls do not have an authoritative status in the modern world, but for the Qumran community they were authoritative between the first century BCE until the end of their existence in 73 CE. The Samaritan Scripture (Samaritan Pentateuch, henceforth SP), based on ancient scrolls, is another Scripture text in Hebrew, limited to the Torah. In short, all forms of the Hebrew and translated Bible that were accepted as authoritative by a given community should be considered »Bible,« as each community accepted a different form of that Bible as authoritative.

What then is the »Jewish Bible«? Before the first century CE, all forms of Hebrew and translated Scripture may be considered the »Jewish Bible,« but after that period the situation was changed due to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE causing major changes in the use of the Scripture texts (see § 2.1.c below). From that time onwards, only a single text form was considered to be the Jewish Bible. This was the Masoretic Text, accepted by all streams of Judaism as the authoritative Jewish Bible. The Hebrew manuscripts of this tradition were augmented with a layer of vocalization and musical notes (teʿamim) between the eighth and eleventh century.

The variety of the different forms of the Jewish Bible before the 1^st century of the Common Era created a special situation. At that time the Jewish people, to some extent organized in different groups, mainly the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, held on to manifold forms of the Scripture books, but all of them were considered to be a Jewish Bible. Below we will describe the early proto-Masoretic scrolls from the Judean Desert as well as many other Judean Desert scrolls, mainly the Qumran scrolls. Initially also the Septuagint was considered a Jewish Bible in translation, produced in Greek, around 285 BCE for the Torah, and most of the other early Greek versions were Jewish as well. The Aramaic Targumim were Jewish par excellence. Even the source of the Samaritan Pentateuch originally served as a Jewish Bible until the Samaritans distanced themselves from the other Jews. We turn now to sort out this history of various biblical texts.