Emanuel Tov The Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Textual History of the Ma- soretic Bible The scrolls found in various places in the Judean Desert have been hailed as a source of knowledge for the biblical text. Foremost among them are seve- ral types of scrolls that were unknown before 1947, especially the so-called proto-Samaritan scrolls, Hebrew scrolls resembling the Septuagint, and scrolls written in unusual forms of orthography. 4QSam a provides very important insights into the early text of Samuel, 4QSam b presents an orthography system that is earlier than that of MT, 1 and yet other scrolls are “successive revised literary editions.” 2 The research of the biblical text in the last centuries B.C.E. has thus been advanced significantly for all these groups of texts. Furthermore, the fact that so many different scrolls of a varied nature have been found in a limited geographic area has been consi- dered indicative of the textual variety of the biblical text in ancient Israel in these early centuries. Within the framework of the contribution of the Judean Desert scrolls to textual criticism, all scrolls are compared with MT, but insufficient attenti- on has been paid to MT itself. The main observation made regarding MT is that early texts resembling MT were found in the Judean Desert, thus provi- ding us with information about that text 1000 years before the date of the Masoretic texts from the early Middle Ages. The fact that we can pre-date the text of MT is very important, but not revolutionary, as scholars have assumed for a long time that MT must have been in use in the last centuries B.C.E. and the first centuries C.E. since the biblical text quoted in rabbinic literature is identical to MT. We suggest there is a need to present the facts about MT in a different fashion. We believe that the facts that are now known about the finds of MT in the Judean Desert are very significant, if not revolutionary. Our know- ledge of MT is greatly enhanced by the Judean Desert scrolls because of a ————— 1 Francis I. Andersen and David N. Freedman, “Another Look at 4QSam b ,” RevQ 14 (1989): 7–29; Emanuel Tov, “Orthography of the Hebrew Bible,” forthcoming. 2 The term is used by Eugene Ulrich, “Clearer Insight into the Development of the Bible—A Gift of the Scrolls,” forthcoming. This group is described similarly in my own studies, albeit less prominently.