Editing Masoretic Text (section)

=== Language and form ===
The language of the Masoretic notes is primarily [[Aramaic language|Aramaic]] but partly Hebrew. The Masoretic annotations are found in various forms: (a) in separate works, e.g., the ''[[Sefer Oklah we-Oklah|Oklah we-Oklah]]''; (b) in the form of notes written in the margins and at the end of codices. In rare cases, the notes are written between the lines. The first word of each biblical book is also as a rule surrounded by notes. The latter are called the Initial Masorah; the notes on the side margins or between the columns are called the Small (''Masora parva'' or Mp) or Inner Masorah (Masora marginalis); and those on the lower and upper margins, the Large or Outer Masorah (''Masora magna'' or Mm[Mas.M]). The name "Large Masorah" is applied sometimes to the lexically arranged notes at the end of the printed Bible, usually called the Final Masorah, (''Masora finalis''), or the Masoretic Concordance.<ref name="Jewish"/>

The Small Masorah consists of brief notes with reference to marginal readings, to statistics showing the number of times a particular form is found in Scripture, to full and defective spelling, and to abnormally written letters. The Large Masorah is more copious in its notes. The Final Masorah comprises all the longer rubrics for which space could not be found in the margin of the text, and is arranged alphabetically in the form of a concordance. The quantity of notes the marginal Masorah contains is conditioned by the amount of vacant space on each page. In the manuscripts it varies also with the rate at which the [[copyist]] was paid and the fanciful shape he gave to his gloss.<ref name="Jewish"/>

{{blockquote|There was accordingly an independent Babylonian Masora which differed from the Palestinian in terminology and to some extent in order. The Masora is concise in style with a profusion of abbreviations, requiring a considerable amount of knowledge for their full understanding. It was quite natural that a later generation of scribes would no longer understand the notes of the Masoretes and consider them unimportant; by the late medieval period they were reduced to mere ornamentation of the manuscripts. It was Jacob ben&nbsp;Chayyim who restored clarity and order to them.<ref>{{cite book |author=Würthwein, Ernst |title=The Text of the Old Testament |place=Grand Rapids |publisher=William B. Eerdmans |year=1979}}</ref>}}

In most manuscripts, there are some discrepancies between the text and the masorah, suggesting that they were copied from different sources or that one of them has copying errors. The lack of such discrepancies in the ''Aleppo Codex'' is one of the reasons for its importance; the scribe who copied the notes, presumably [[Aaron ben Moses ben Asher]], probably wrote them originally.{{citation needed|date=December 2014}}