Editing Masoretic Text (section)

=== Rabbinic period ===
An emphasis on minute details of words and spellings, already used among the [[Pharisees]] as basis for argumentation, reached its height with the example of [[Rabbi Akiva]] (died 135&nbsp;CE). The idea of a perfect text sanctified in its consonantal base quickly spread throughout the Jewish communities via supportive statements in [[Halakha]], [[Aggadah]], and Jewish thought;<ref name="Cohen1979"/> and with it increasingly forceful strictures that a deviation in even a single letter would make a Torah scroll invalid.<ref>[[Maimonides]], The Laws of Tefillin, Mezuzot, and Torah Scrolls, 1:2</ref> Very few manuscripts are said to have survived the [[Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE)|destruction of Jerusalem in 70&nbsp;CE]].<ref>{{cite book |first=Godfrey Rolles |last=Driver |author-link=Godfrey Rolles Driver |url=http://www.bible-researcher.com/driver1.html |title=Introduction to the Old Testament of the ''New English Bible'' |year=1970}}</ref> This drastically reduced the number of variants in circulation and also gave a new urgency that the text must be preserved. Few manuscripts survive from this era, but a short [[Leviticus]] fragment recovered from the ancient [[En-Gedi Scroll]], carbon-dated to the 3rd or 4th&nbsp;century&nbsp;CE, is completely identical to the consonantal Masoretic Text preserved today.<ref name="Associated Press"/>

New Greek translations were also made. Unlike the Septuagint, large-scale deviations in sense between the Greek of [[Aquila of Sinope]] and [[Theodotion]] and what we now know as the Masoretic Text are minimal. Relatively small variations between different Hebrew texts in use still clearly existed though, as witnessed by differences between the present-day Masoretic Text and versions mentioned in the [[Gemara]], and often even [[Halakha|halachic]] [[midrash]]im based on spelling versions which do not exist in the current Masoretic Text.<ref name="Cohen1979" />