Canonization of the Bible
The Marks of “Canonicity”
The books must be biblical
The books must be apostolic
The books must have been widely shared
Biblical Texts
Hebrew Text
The term “Masora” itself can mean either “to bind,” referring to a protection for the scriptures, or “to hand down,” referring to traditions
From around AD 500–1000, a group of scribes known as the Masoretes held the responsibility of textual transmission for the Jewish people. Their primary task was to fix a final form to the Hebrew text of the Old Testament that was faithful to the text that they had received.
It received its final form in the 10th century AD under Aaron Ben Asher of the Tiberian Masoretes (Tov, Textual Criticism, 24.) It is currently best represented in the Leningrad Codex, which is the base text for the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) and the ongoing work of the Biblia Hebraica Quinta.
The name given to the critical study of ancient manuscripts and versions of texts, for the purpose of ascertaining a correct reading of the text. Textual criticism has been applied to both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament.
The goal of OT textual criticism is to analyze and evaluate the data representing the text of the Hebrew Bible and to trace in broad outline the history of this text. For that purpose it collects the relevant data from the Hebrew sources and reconstructs them from the ancient translations (versions).
Within the field of textual criticism, the Masoretic Text is usually considered the central text because it is the best-preserved text of the Hebrew Bible.