Tim Mitchell

Our Peshitta Interlinear module with Plain English translation from AramaicNT.com with lexicon uses Sedra 3 and also links to both Dukhrana and the CAL database at Hebrew Union College. 

Shlama,

Tim.

The font that I am using in the picture is Titus Cyberbit Basic.  I am aware that is the default and it works fine except for the pointed text.  I have tried Ezra Sil and other unicode fonts and all of them have their problems with correct display of the vowels. 

MS unicode and Arial displayed the vowels below the text, but the line on top of the letters was displaced one whole character. 

I don't believe that it even exists in print as you mention it.

The question that you pose indicates a few assumptions.  You are correct that the original OT text did not have vowel points, some letters did act as vowels, but generally speaking the were no vowel marks. Your assumption that there were no word spaces or separations of words is incorrect however. That is an unfounded modern assumptoin there were spaces in the text as can be seen in the dead sea scrolls and the Samaritan Pentetuch use either word marks or spaces. This was a very ancient and accepted practice in both Hebrew and other languages.  There were also little marks on some of the letters which Jesus talked about, saying that no Yud (a letter) or Tittle (a tiny mark above a letter) would pass from the law.. 

The assumption that there is somehow an original uncopied text of the Hebrew scriptures is actually not correct, the old used scrolls, when they were getting worn out, were replaced with a new hand written copy and the old one was buried in a document box. There were times that books of the bible were lost entirely and then re-found as recorded in the story of Josiah. I caution you to be careful to not place your faith in the idea of a completely error free or original Old Testament text rather than in the God who inspired it.  The only full copies of the OT text today come from the Massoretes who added the vowel points without changing the base text.  These points fixed the oral tradition of pronunciation.  The dead sea scrolls are mostly speaking very close to the Massoretic text that we have today.  The Massoretes did change the text in some places, but these were marked in the marginal notes and collections of these are found in The Messorah by Ginsburg.

We see that there were also different wordings of passages from before the time of Christ and Jesus himself sometimes quotes from the Peshitta OT textural branch which closely follows the Massoretic text in most places, sometimes he quotes from the branch of text that was used in the Greek OT and sometimes he quotes from a hybrid text.  Jesus did not use one specific and original text wording, but used the original MEANING of the text which is what we should be interrested in. When there is a doubt, the meaning can be understood from the Massoretic text, the LXX (Greek OT), the Peshitta OT, the Targums and the Samaritan Pentetuch.  Examining all these in unison we can get a much closer understanding of the actual meaning if there is any doubt, and all these were accepted scripture.  But the most important thing is to be reading and understanding the spirit of the text not the letter.  The spirit of the text is what Jesus was teaching his disciples, the letter is what the Jews were obsessed with, don't fall into that trap. 

The Scribes of Jeremiah's day were accused for having lying pens, twisting the words of God, and Jesus greatest criticism was of the scribes who copied the scriptures and the pharisees who interpreted them legalistically. The Jewish scribes after the time of Christ, but before the Massoretes, changed passages of the Old Testament to obscure the revelation of Jesus in the OT and passages which clearly showed that Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament prophesies. These have been added back in modern times by the scholars who translated the King James and some subsequent translations. This is because they were specifically cited by Jesus as proving that he was the Christ so we have a record of the original reading and it is also confirmed in the Peshitta (Aramaic) OT which was a first century AD production.

Now the New Testament text was actually written in Aramaic, like many of the dead sea scroll texts from the first century, and was later translated into Greek, which is provable.  It was a great copy, but a copy none the less. 

The Aramaic scriptures, the Peshitta, was copied faithfully letter by letter since the time of Christ and the Khabouris codex which claimed to have been copied from an original text copied in the 3rd century AD has only about 5 differences over the entire text between the current critical text, with none being significant.  We can trust the integrity of every word in the Aramaic New Testament and the majority of the Old Testament but giving preference to the spirit of the Old Testament text where there is contention.

I acknowledge that some of these points are not mainstream scholarly views, but we have evidence to back it up, and lets face it, scholars still believe that Mt Sinai is in the Sinai peninsula which is Egypt when Paul, in Galatians, clearly states that it is in Arabia, the Bible declares it to be in Midian and we know that the caves of Jethro are still in Saudi Arabia....  They may not be widely accepted, but they are true. 

I council you to seek to place your faith in the perfect God of the New Testament, not in some perfectly technical Old Testament Hebrew text which doesn't completely exist. Follow the spirit of the law and not the letter of the law which never brought perfection or righteousness.  Also make sure you take the time to get to know the author of the Bible, the Spirit of Holiness because he leads us into all truth and a more perfect understanding of the word.

The Old Testament text can only be studied from the dead sea scroll books or partial books, the Aleppo Codex, the LXX and the Peshitta Old Testament, the only existing earlier copies are fragments which are found from time to time, no other complete old texts remain. There are however countless references by other writers throughout history which confirm the integrity of the Old Testament text. Most of the Old Testament and New Testament could be put back together by what ancient writers have quoted from them if they no longer existed in complete form.

Blessings, Tim.