# Mysterious Texts  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: Mysterious Texts - Show: Data Over Dogma - Owner / Host: Daniel McClellan and Daniel Beecher - Episode publish date: 2026-04-20 - Episode AI description: A dive into the curious book 1 Esdras and why it was kept in some canons but not others. A close look at its overlapping stories, unique additions like the three bodyguards tale, and its place alongside Ezra–Nehemiah. A tour of the Masoretes' scribal work, vowel notation, cantillation marks, and the manuscripts that shaped the Hebrew Bible we read today. - Mentioned books: [The Bible Says So](https://share.snipd.com/book/a0b9a249-0904-4ce3-b0d7-6000458cd9b3) by [Dan McClellan](https://share.snipd.com/person/25209d25-3415-4657-89e2-eb3b0f8104cb) - Duration: 57:41 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/f08c526f-694b-4329-b26b-0703ce13e099) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/8153b1cc-d781-49fd-92d5-a4bef70d1be5) - Export date: 2026-04-20T20:59:05 ## Snips ### [First Esdras Is A Distinct Septuagint Version](https://share.snipd.com/snip/75ddd24c-1bed-4758-bbd4-50c6cb1edf9e) 🎧 05:10 - 10:59 (05:49) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/39e56d30-8100-49c1-9401-cd141e2ddedb" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - 1 Esdras is a Greek Septuagint version parallel to Ezra-Nehemiah that rearranges and adds material, including a unique court tale about three bodyguards. - It likely derives from a Semitic original and was canonical for some traditions like Josephus's witnesses, explaining its presence in Orthodox canons. #### 💬 Quote > It derives from the Septuagint, from the ancient Greek translation. > — Dan McClellan Dan McClellan introducing First Esdras #### 📚 Transcript **Dan McClellan:** Why are we **Dan Beecher:** talking about it? So **Dan McClellan:** we generally find it in the Greek and Slavonic Orthodox traditions. It derives from the Septuagint, from the ancient Greek translation. And it's basically a version of Ezra Nehemiah that it's a Greek translation and it's a little expansive. It has a little bit extra in it. But if you have Ezra and Nehemiah, then you have access to something close to the majority of 1st Esdras. And I think there's a lot of fascinating things associated with the fact that this comes from the Septuagint. One, there are a lot of scholars who think it's a translation from a Semitic language, from either Hebrew or Aramaic. So it could have been originally composed in Hebrew or Aramaic before being translated into Greek. And it is only in the canons of those traditions that adhered more faithfully to the Septuagint, whereas the broader Catholic tradition kind of fell away from giving the Septuagint preferential treatment. And, you know, once we got to the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, then the, you know, Apocrypha kind of became secondary. It's not part of the Apocrypha. It is something distinct from that. But if we look in like Josephus, Josephus is one of the earliest references that we have to the notion of a Jewish canon, where he talks about there being a certain number of books. But Josephus also quotes from when he talks about Ezra and Nehemiah, he seems to be quoting from 1 Esdras rather than from the Ezra and Nehemiah books, which suggests that maybe for Josephus, this was his canonical version of Ezra-Nehemiah. So when **Dan Beecher:** you say Ezra-Nehemiah, you're saying the book of Ezra, the book of Nehemiah cover basically all the same ground minus one little story or cover, you know, as first Ezra's. Is that right? **Dan McClellan:** Yeah, more or less. Yeah. And there's a slight change in order. There are a handful of verses that are moved up a little earlier in first Esdras in order to create kind of this poetic, I think a lot of scholars say there's a chiasm and chiasmus is this idea where you have like theme A, theme B, theme C, and then you've got your central theme, and then you go theme D, theme C, theme **Dan Beecher:** B, C. This is the theory that they used to create the episodes of Seinfeld. Is that right? You've got an A story and a B story and then a C. But then you go B and A and there's a parallelism. So it's inverse parallelism. **Dan McClellan:** But anyway, and this became a thing in decades ago in scholarship where everybody is chiasms all over the place. Even in Book of Mormon scholarship, there's a lot of focus on chiasms, but they're not very common anymore to talk about. But I think there are a lot of scholars who recognize the way that first Esdras is set up. There does seem to be an inverse parallelism, a basic inverse parallelism associated with the alterations. And a lot of that has to do with the stuff that's added. But, yeah. Sorry, it doesn't seem, **Dan Beecher:** it **Dan McClellan:** seems **Dan Beecher:** a little too coincidental that Esdras is so close to the word Ezra. Are they the same? Yeah, it's just the **Dan McClellan:** Greek transliteration. Okay. So basically **Dan Beecher:** this is just Ezra. Yeah. It's better than Ezra. I'm **Dan McClellan:** kidding. It's not better than Ezra. That's the name of a band. **Dan Beecher:** Okay. So is Ezra, are both these books in the Septuagint, Ezra **Dan McClellan:** and Esdras? There may be manuscripts where they are, but no. And one of the titles for First Ezra is Greek Ezra. Oh, okay. Because it's the Greek translation. Okay. It was probably composed somewhere around the 2nd century BCE. So it's coming around the time that the Septuagint is being prepared anyway. But again, it's certainly plausible that it was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic. And then you do have a little bit like the Ezra begins with the last two verses of 2 Chronicles 36. So the very end of 2 Chronicles, the last two verses are the first two verses of the book of Ezra. But when we look at 1 Esdras, 1 Esdras, no, that's not right. 1 Esdras, it's the last two chapters of Second Chronicles are the first chapter of First Esdras. So I've got to find a way around First Esdras because I keep wanting to put a T on the end of it. So we've got a slightly larger inclusion of kind of that introduction. that has led to some people theorizing that maybe the books of Chronicles were a part of Ezra and Nehemiah, that it was all kept on one scroll or something like that. And so maybe when this was translated into Greek, they took a larger chunk of 2 Chronicles than the people who transmitted it in Hebrew. So that's a possibility. --- ### [Masoretes Produced The Authoritative Hebrew Text](https://share.snipd.com/snip/11d7ddc4-224b-4ada-957c-43e61ceaf1ce) 🎧 38:40 - 39:57 (01:17) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/d7760afa-ed76-4c81-a6a8-26ee83880956" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - The Masoretic Text is a family of medieval Hebrew manuscripts standardized by Masoretes between ~500–1000 CE, with the Leningrad Codex (1008 CE) as the oldest complete witness. - Their work created the default Hebrew text used by most Jewish communities and many scholars today. #### 💬 Quote > The best representative, the oldest complete representative of the Masoretic tradition is the Leningrad Codex, which dates to like 1008 CE. > — Dan McClellan Dan McClellan describing the Masoretic Text #### 📚 Transcript **Dan McClellan:** a group of scribes that were, they basically produced the textual tradition that is considered most authoritative by the most Jewish folks, at least in terms of those who are approaching the Hebrew Bible from a Jewish devotional point of view, as well as most scholars. So the Masoretic text is considered the best single manuscript of the Hebrew Bible. Now, the Masoretic text actually refers to a family of manuscripts, not just a single manuscript. But the best representative, the oldest complete representative of the Masoretic tradition is the Leningrad Codex, which dates to like 1008 CE. And so this is well **Dan Beecher:** into the Common Era. We are well past the right, like centuries after the writing of any of these, the original composition of any of these texts. **Dan McClellan:** Yeah. And the Masoretic tradition, the Masoretic group is usually dated to between around 500 CE and around 1000 CE. So the Leningrad Codex would be like the apex, the culmination of all of their work. --- ### [Masoretes Codified Vowels Cantillation And Marginalia](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cd76b97c-615e-423a-875c-272654775668) 🎧 42:10 - 51:55 (09:45) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/a3c409ea-e44e-4b97-b729-28a3d2a42295" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Masoretes invented the Tiberian vowel and cantillation systems to fix pronunciation as Hebrew ceased being fully spoken, adding marginalia counting word forms (Masora Magna/Parva). - Their meticulous counts, Kativ/Kare notes, and cantillation marks preserved and guided pronunciation, reading, and liturgy. #### 💬 Quote > They developed a system of vocalization. > — Dan McClellan Dan McClellan explaining Masoretes' innovations #### 📚 Transcript **Dan McClellan:** But also, they do two big things among the many things that they did. They developed a system of vocalization. So if you know about Hebrew, you probably know that there are no vowels that are written. The consonants that are written down do not have vowels. But as it began to be less and less commonly spoken, natively spoken as a living language, it began to need some supplemental help so that you could understand precisely what was going on, what vowels were intended to be spoken. **Dan Beecher:** I guess I hadn't realized that the spoken language was falling so far out of use. The **Dan McClellan:** degree to which that's true is kind of debated, but I think most folks would say by the time of the turn of the era, so like the first century CE, people probably spoke Aramaic more than they spoke Hebrew. There are certainly scholars who will argue that Hebrew was still a thriving living language in this time period. And we have Mishnahic Hebrew, and we have poetry from the medieval period written in Hebrew. The degree to which it became a dead language is is debated. Certainly there were people who were speaking it. It have become more of a liturgical language, somewhat like ecclesiastical Latin or something like that. I'm not sure. I'm sure there are people who have stronger feelings than I do about it, but I think it is still a little hazy. So is modern **Dan Beecher:** Hebrew that is spoken in Israel, is that a revival of a language? **Dan McClellan:** That is a revival. In fact, it's considered the most successful revived language of all time. I **Dan Beecher:** did not realize that. I don't know why that had escaped me, but that's really fascinating. So, Dan, I spent years paying so much money for wireless service. I was with all the big wireless carriers. I've tried them all. And the truth is, I don't need much from my wireless. I just need to talk, to text, and to be on the Internet. And that doesn't require any fees and high bills. 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Upfront payment of $45 for three-month five-gigabyte plan required, equivalent to **Dan McClellan:** So I got to teach my eight-year daughter about how we cleaned up when I was a kid. My mom used to say, time to finger vacuum. And finger vacuum meant crawl on your hands and knees and use your fingers to pick up all the little stuff that you can see that's in the carpet. It reminded me, there's so many times when I wish that something would just take care of these little small messes that pop up on our carpet every day. But with Narwhal, things really are a lot easier. And thank you to Narwhal, by the way, for sponsoring today's show. **Dan Beecher:** If you've never had a robotic vacuum and mop system, Narwhal is exactly where you want to start. I absolutely love my Narwhal Flow 2. I have experimented in my life with robot before and they have not been great i'll be honest with you uh the hair gets tangled up in them they just push dirt around on the floor this thing is the next generation of robot vacuums and mopping systems the flow 2 has the flow wash mopping system which is real-time water inf which means that they are squirting 16 angled nozzles, spraying fresh water continuously. It's got this beautiful, this reverse rolling mop, which I love because it leaves just a streak of clean behind but dries really quickly. It's heated water, so it cleans It's an amazing thing. But that's not all. The Gnar Mind system, it's an autonomous system. It has dual RGB cameras. It's got two cameras and it's watching everything. And it recognizes all of the objects and adjusts accordingly to your floor. Listen, I've got pets. They have toys. My floor never looks the same twice, but my narwhal understands what it's looking at, moves around what it needs to move around, understands what is a chair leg and what is a cable, you know, a phone cord or something and acts It's just a genuinely remarkable tool. **Dan McClellan:** Yeah, the Narwhal Flow 2 has powerful suction with carpet focus technology. It does a phenomenal job. It's got an all-in base station and that AI power management that protects long-term battery health. This is really the top of the line when it comes to robot vacuums. If you want to treat your home to spotless fresh floors, **Dan Beecher:** visit us.narwal slash Dan. That's us.narwal slash Dan. This NBA playoffs with FanDuel, you're not just watching the playoffs, you're a part of them. Steve's got the phone, opens FanDuel, and he's going for threes. Be a part of the action on FanDuel. All customers get a profit boost every NBA playoff game day. 21 plus and present in Iowa. Opt-in required. Bonus issued is not a withdrawal profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration and max wager amount. See full terms at Fan.com/sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 1-800 When **Dan McClellan:** you had the Jewish diaspora where people were spread all over the place and you had a lot of Jewish folks who were speaking Russian and you had a lot of Jewish folks who were speaking German and you had a lot of Jewish folks who were speaking Portuguese and you had a lot of folks who were speaking Yiddish, which is related to German. And when there is a desire to recreate a Jewish homeland, it was like, hey, if we're going to be a single people and have a homeland, then we need to be speaking a single language. So Zionism sits at the root of the development of modern Hebrew to some degree. And that's not to say there's anything wrong with the revival of the Hebrew language. But the rationale was a single people should be identifiable by a single language. And so there was an intentional effort to revive Hebrew. Well, and as you say, it was probably carried along at least **Dan Beecher:** liturgically in most of these traditions. **Dan McClellan:** Yeah, literarily, definitely literarily to some degree, definitely liturgically to some degree. The degree to which mothers would speak to their children in Hebrew. I'm sure that was going on, but I don't know how prominent it was. But it was a slightly, all languages evolved, so Hebrew was evolving over this time period. However, when we go back to prior to the Masoretes, the first five centuries of the Common Era, there were a few different attempts to try to create a system of vowel notations. So how to add vowels so we can get a clearer idea of what precise words are being intended by these consonants. So you have a Babylonian system that develops, and there are old manuscripts with prayers or parts of the Hebrew Bible that are written with the Babylonian notation, which is entirely written above the characters. And they're like horizontal lines, vertical lines. There's one that's kind of a diagonal line with a little smaller line going off of it. And then the series of dots. There's a Palestinian system that also develops, but it's really the Tiberian system. So the Tiberian system would have been the system developed by the Masoretes in Tiberias, that city on the Western shore of the Sea of Galilee. And that's the one that dominates and ultimately becomes what is considered authoritative these days for most people who are engaging with the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew. And so that's one of the main contributions of the Masoretes. Just the preservation of the text is probably the most significant, but the development and perfection of, as some people like to say, the tradition is probably the next largest contribution. --- ### [Masoretic Readings Are Not The Only Ancient Tradition](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a603f858-e86f-4820-8c5c-6319f8cd03a3) 🎧 50:38 - 01:00:17 (09:39) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/02af06f9-25cd-498c-9354-9335e7bd7fdd" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Comparing Masoretic vocalization with the much older Septuagint reveals both correspondence and significant divergences used by scholars to reconstruct earlier readings. - Some books (e.g., Jeremiah) show major length and order differences suggesting multiple Hebrew textual traditions predated the Masoretic standard. #### 💬 Quote > When you look at all the differences between how the Septuagint translators are reading the text and how the Masoretes are vocalizing the text...there are divergences as well. > — Dan McClellan Dan McClellan on Septuagint vs Masoretic differences #### 📚 Transcript **Dan McClellan:** So how to add vowels so we can get a clearer idea of what precise words are being intended by these consonants. So you have a Babylonian system that develops, and there are old manuscripts with prayers or parts of the Hebrew Bible that are written with the Babylonian notation, which is entirely written above the characters. And they're like horizontal lines, vertical lines. There's one that's kind of a diagonal line with a little smaller line going off of it. And then the series of dots. There's a Palestinian system that also develops, but it's really the Tiberian system. So the Tiberian system would have been the system developed by the Masoretes in Tiberias, that city on the Western shore of the Sea of Galilee. And that's the one that dominates and ultimately becomes what is considered authoritative these days for most people who are engaging with the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew. And so that's one of the main contributions of the Masoretes. Just the preservation of the text is probably the most significant, but the development and perfection of, as some people like to say, the tradition is probably the next largest contribution. But then they did an awful lot of analysis of the text, and there's a saying that anything that could be counted was counted. So when you look in a critical edition of the Hebrew Bible, there are a couple of different collections of notes that are referred to as the Masora. You have the Masora Parva and the Masora Magna, large Masora and small Masora. And are basically just annotations talking about how frequently things are occurring. So they counted up every word, every word form. And so you'll occasionally see a little letter in the margin of the Leningrad Codex, and that indicates this exact form of this word only occurs once. This is the only occurrence of that exact form of the word. They also introduce the Kativ and Kare system, which is basically like they're doing their best to try not to alter the consonants of the manuscripts at all. But there are times when it's very clear that the consonants are incorrect or they don't want people to read out loud what the consonants say, because it could be a vulgarity or it could be considered blasphemous or something like that. And so you have in many cases, or it could be that the vowels that they've added, they would prefer you not pronounce those vowels. They think it was probably originally something else. So they're trying to transmit the tradition as they received it, but they are adding notes where they think like, hey, we actually think it probably was intended to be pronounced this way. And so the kare, which would mean read or said out loud, that is sometimes annotated in the margins. And so the reader knows, okay, kativ means written. So that is what is in the text. And then the kare would be where they suggest you pronounce it a different way. And then you have kare perpetua, which are the things that you always pronounce differently. So the divine name, for instance, you would never pronounce. You would always say, Adonai is one substitution. Hashem is another substitution. And then the name Jerusalem, it's pronounced slightly different from how it's spelled in the consonantal text. So they did that, and then they also contributed a system of cantillation marks, which was intended to aid the liturgical reading, which was more of a, I don't want to say a song, but the intent was to read it with specific intonations, and a cantor was supposed to read it a specific way. So is a little more sing-songy. You're supposed to accent things a certain way. You're supposed to keep certain groups of words together and separate other groups of words. So you also have the addition of these cancellation marks. So if you look at a critical edition of the Hebrew Bible or if you look at the Leningrad Codex, it can kind of be a mess because you have all these consonants, but then you've got a system of vocalization written around the consonants, and then you have cantillation marks written around the consonants, and then a lot of critical editions will also have footnote markers to tell you about all variant readings and stuff. So you've got the text. You'll have one set of marginal notes. You'll have another set of marginal notes beneath the text. And then you'll have the critical apparatus, which is like the modern scholarly notes. And then the text is just, you know, a bunch of different annotation systems. So it **Dan Beecher:** can be a little overwhelming. This is what happens when you get a whole bunch of very obsessive people, like obsessing over a thing for 500 years. You're going **Dan McClellan:** to get every note possible in the world. And there are, yeah, we've got other manuscripts that come from the Masoretes that are earlier. For instance, there is a codex that is probably about a hundred years earlier than the Leningrad codex called the Aleppo codex, but it's not complete. It's missing a large chunk of the Pentateuch. Some of it was lost in a fire. And every now and then a chunk of the Aleppo codex will, you know, somebody will be like, I found it in my attic. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. And, you know, close comparison shows that of the hundreds of thousands of vowels, like it differs only in like the use of a meth egg, which is kind of one of these cantillation marks. Oh, okay. And so like the, the differences are so, so minimal. Oh, **Dan Beecher:** wow. **Dan McClellan:** Uh, like, like people talk about how, how well the, the manuscripts show the, the Bible has been preserved. The Masoretes, like if, if we want to talk about people who were very clearly, very, very committed to their craft, the Masoretes, I think, uh, the stand head and shoulders above any other known scribal communities. Yeah, that makes **Dan Beecher:** sense to me. the things that we've talked about when it comes to the Masoretic text is just that you know you mentioned that they invented the system for writing out vowels which becomes really important did they they must have had to make interpretive calls oh yeah because you know we've talked about how how many words you change the vowel you change the meaning. I mean, that's the, that's true in, in all languages, you know, if you, a cat versus a kit versus a cot, those are different things. But I mean, that could, that could have huge implications theologically and, uh, and sort of interpretively, uh, in terms of like, you know, so yeah they i guess i guess my question is just how much of it was them just deciding which was the right vowel or how much was traditionally handed to them or you know i i think the uh the reading **Dan McClellan:** tradition would have been fairly firmly in place. So I think an awful lot of it was them just copying down the tradition as they received it. No doubt there would have been fuzzy edges to that, and no doubt there would have been controversial passages. But we can see that when we look at the Septuagint, the Septuagint helps us determine how they would have pronounced things based on how things were translated, as well as a lot of stuff in the Septuagint is transliterated. If there was a Hebrew word that they thought was a name or they just didn't understand, they would transliterate it, and that would help us see how they were pronouncing it. And there is an awful lot of correspondence between the Septuagint, which is coming from a thousand years before the Leningrad Codex. There's an awful lot of correspondence between the two. Now, there are divergences as well. And so one of the fascinating things to do in the Hebrew Bible scholarship is to look at those differences and try to figure out what's going on in the reading traditions. When did they change? Why did they change? And try to reconstruct whose reading is likely more original. And there are a lot of scholars who would argue that when you look at all the differences between how the Septuagint translators are reading the text and how the Masoretes are vocalizing the text. While there is an awful lot of correspondence, where there are differences, I think a lot of scholars would say the Masoretes are probably correct more frequently than the Septuagint is correct. Now, that's just with vocalization, because when it comes to what consonants were there, there are a lot of differences there as well. --- ### [Tiberian Notation Became The Dominant Vowel System](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9cfd7402-e665-48ef-be7e-78f8f1e980f1) 🎧 51:17 - 56:11 (04:54) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/4a78cafa-5042-469c-8f53-38d66290378a" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - The Tiberian notation, developed in Tiberias, outcompeted Babylonian and Palestinian systems and became the dominant vocalization scheme. - Earlier witnesses like the Aleppo Codex (older but incomplete) confirm tight agreement with Leningrad's Masoretic tradition. #### 💬 Quote > It's really the Tiberian system...that's the one that dominates and ultimately becomes what is considered authoritative these days. > — Dan McClellan Dan McClellan comparing vocalization systems #### 📚 Transcript **Dan McClellan:** So the Tiberian system would have been the system developed by the Masoretes in Tiberias, that city on the Western shore of the Sea of Galilee. And that's the one that dominates and ultimately becomes what is considered authoritative these days for most people who are engaging with the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew. And so that's one of the main contributions of the Masoretes. Just the preservation of the text is probably the most significant, but the development and perfection of, as some people like to say, the tradition is probably the next largest contribution. But then they did an awful lot of analysis of the text, and there's a saying that anything that could be counted was counted. So when you look in a critical edition of the Hebrew Bible, there are a couple of different collections of notes that are referred to as the Masora. You have the Masora Parva and the Masora Magna, large Masora and small Masora. And are basically just annotations talking about how frequently things are occurring. So they counted up every word, every word form. And so you'll occasionally see a little letter in the margin of the Leningrad Codex, and that indicates this exact form of this word only occurs once. This is the only occurrence of that exact form of the word. They also introduce the Kativ and Kare system, which is basically like they're doing their best to try not to alter the consonants of the manuscripts at all. But there are times when it's very clear that the consonants are incorrect or they don't want people to read out loud what the consonants say, because it could be a vulgarity or it could be considered blasphemous or something like that. And so you have in many cases, or it could be that the vowels that they've added, they would prefer you not pronounce those vowels. They think it was probably originally something else. So they're trying to transmit the tradition as they received it, but they are adding notes where they think like, hey, we actually think it probably was intended to be pronounced this way. And so the kare, which would mean read or said out loud, that is sometimes annotated in the margins. And so the reader knows, okay, kativ means written. So that is what is in the text. And then the kare would be where they suggest you pronounce it a different way. And then you have kare perpetua, which are the things that you always pronounce differently. So the divine name, for instance, you would never pronounce. You would always say, Adonai is one substitution. Hashem is another substitution. And then the name Jerusalem, it's pronounced slightly different from how it's spelled in the consonantal text. So they did that, and then they also contributed a system of cantillation marks, which was intended to aid the liturgical reading, which was more of a, I don't want to say a song, but the intent was to read it with specific intonations, and a cantor was supposed to read it a specific way. it is a little more sing-songy. You're supposed to accent things a certain way. You're supposed to keep certain groups of words together and separate other groups of words. So you also have the addition of these cancellation marks. So if you look at a critical edition of the Hebrew Bible or if you look at the Leningrad Codex, it can kind of be a mess because you have all these consonants, but then you've got a system of vocalization written around the consonants, and then you have cantillation marks written around the consonants, and then a lot of critical editions will also have footnote markers to tell you about all variant readings and stuff. So you've got the text. You'll have one set of marginal notes. You'll have another set of marginal notes beneath the text. And then you'll have the critical apparatus, which is like the modern scholarly notes. And then the text is just, you know, a bunch of different annotation systems. So it **Dan Beecher:** can be a little overwhelming. This is what happens when you get a whole bunch of very obsessive people, like obsessing over a thing for 500 years. You're going **Dan McClellan:** to get every note possible in the world. And there are, yeah, we've got other manuscripts that come from the Masoretes that are earlier. --- ### [Masoretes Largely Copied An Existing Reading Tradition](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4c6daa5a-0ef5-4d4e-a180-7d0b1b38151d) 🎧 58:30 - 59:09 (00:39) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/b62cdab6-eac4-4447-91d5-c5db73f4d3fa" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Dan McClellan argues the Masoretes mostly copied an established reading tradition rather than inventing pronunciations from scratch. - He acknowledges some "fuzzy edges" and controversial passages where choices were necessary. - The Septuagint (a Greek translation ~1,000 years earlier) helps reconstruct pronunciation and shows many correspondences with later Hebrew manuscripts. - Transliteration in the Septuagint reveals how Hebrew names were pronounced and supports continuity across manuscripts. - Overall, differences between these sources are minimal, indicating strong preservation by scribal communities. #### 💬 Quote > So I think an awful lot of it was them just copying down the tradition as they received it. > — Dan McClellan Dan McClellan on the Masoretes and transmission #### 📚 Transcript **Dan McClellan:** tradition would have been fairly firmly in place. So I think an awful lot of it was them just copying down the tradition as they received it. No doubt there would have been fuzzy edges to that, and no doubt there would have been controversial passages. But we can see that when we look at the Septuagint, the Septuagint helps us determine how they would have pronounced things based on how things were translated, as well as a lot of stuff in the Septuagint is transliterated. If there was a Hebrew word that they thought was a name or they just didn't understand, they would transliterate it, and that would help us see how they were pronouncing it. --- ### [Compare Multiple Traditions To Reconstruct Original Readings](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fead8b26-44fa-4856-a9ab-83876aa8964e) 🎧 59:21 - 01:02:05 (02:44) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/f5476993-6350-4512-819d-8deb1140ed47" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - For textual study, compare Septuagint, Dead Sea Scrolls, and Masoretic readings to trace where readings diverged and which tradition may be earlier. - Focus on variant-rich books like Jeremiah to reveal editorial expansions or shortenings across traditions. #### 💬 Quote > There's a giant mess. And I and a lot of other people think that trying to pick apart this knot is just some of the most exciting research. > — Dan McClellan Dan McClellan urging textual-comparative study #### 📚 Transcript **Dan McClellan:** Now, there are divergences as well. And so one of the fascinating things to do in the Hebrew Bible scholarship is to look at those differences and try to figure out what's going on in the reading traditions. When did they change? Why did they change? And try to reconstruct whose reading is likely more original. And there are a lot of scholars who would argue that when you look at all the differences between how the Septuagint translators are reading the text and how the Masoretes are vocalizing the text. While there is an awful lot of correspondence, where there are differences, I think a lot of scholars would say the Masoretes are probably correct more frequently than the Septuagint is correct. Now, that's just with vocalization, because when it comes to what consonants were there, there are a lot of differences there as well. One of the things I find hilarious is when apologists get up and say that, you know, we discovered the Great Isaiah Scroll and, you know, it blew scholars away. They were just so shocked that it matched so closely the Masoretic text. It's like the Great Isaiah Scroll is not even the best translation differences book of Isaiah among the Dead Sea Scrolls. There are other manuscripts of Isaiah that are far more faithful to what we find in the Masoretic text, but these apologists never talk about Jeremiah, because we have multiple different manuscripts of Jeremiah as well. They're very fragmentary. They're very small. but some of them show that the Septuagint reading of Jeremiah, which is one-sixth shorter— than the book of Jeremiah in the Masoretic text, is preserved in some of these Hebrew manuscripts, which suggests to a lot of scholars that the Septuagint version of Jeremiah was earlier than what we now have in the Masoretic text, that the Masoretic text reading is later, secondary. Now, we have some manuscripts of Jeremiah at Qumran that's witness to the longer Masoretic readings as well. So it's like, what do you do with this? Which is more original? How and why did it change? There's even some changes in order of the verses between the Septuagint and the Masoretic text. So it's just a giant mess. And I and a lot of other people think that trying to pick apart this knot is just some of the most exciting research that most people would just find be bored to tears by what's going on in this. --- Created with [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com) | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts