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Despite the desire to believe in MT as the sole text form of Scripture, the rabbis were long aware of other text forms, at least those of the SP and LXX. Nevertheless, from the rabbinic period and on, these texts have posed no threat to the supremacy of the Masoretic Text among Jews.

LXX—The Greek Septuagint was mentioned in very few places in rabbinic literature, but those quotations were accompanied by descriptions that the translators intentionally changed the contents of Hebrew Scripture in their translation, concluding that therefore the LXX should be disregarded.⁵¹ (The rabbis never considered the possibility that the LXX was based on a different Vorlage.) The text of the LXX was not quoted in rabbinic literature as support for their halachic or aggadic deliberations, since no sources other than the Hebrew text was considered »Scripture.« When in rare occasions the rabbis quoted from a Greek translator, they quoted from the Jewish translator Aquila, not from Symmachus or Theodotion.

SP—The rabbis describe the Samaritan Pentateuch as a falsification of the Jewish Torah (y. Sot 7.3; b. Sot 33b; b. San 90b) and its text was never quoted in rabbinic literature.

Targumim—The Targumim were often quoted in rabbinic literature, not as witnesses to possible differences between their text and MT, but for their exegesis.

Vulgate and Peshitta—The evidence of the Latin Vulgate and the Syriac Peshitta,⁵² later to be sanctified in the Catholic and Syriac church traditions respectively, were beyond the horizon of rabbinic Judaism.

In short, none of these texts or »versions« posed any challenge to the notion that within Judaism MT served as the only text of Hebrew Scripture. Organized Judaism from the Rabbinic period onwards always considered MT the only text of the Bible, and therefore, by implication, the »original text« of the Hebrew Bible.⁵³

Qumran—In modern times, the Dead Sea Scrolls could have posed such a threat to MT, since they offer evidence of a relatively fluid textual tradition in antiquity. I do not know, however, of any official statement by any of the streams of Judaism concerning the implications of the biblical scrolls from the Judean Desert.⁵⁴

On the other hand, the New Jewish Publication Society Tanakh translation (NJPS), although based on MT, also provides editorial notes on readings from the LXX and the scrolls when according to the editors of NJPS these sources may present a reading better than the one of MT.