Sixth, from the Jews’ reverence toward Scripture.
Sixth, from the Jews’ reverence toward Scripture.
§ 341. We prove our opinion: (VI) From the Jews’ reverence toward Scripture. It is unlikely that the rabbinic scholars dared to add the vowel points. Although they were daring in the matter of twisting the Scriptures to fit their preconceived notions, they were careful to the point of superstition in retaining what was written. If some letters were accidentally moved from their place or were written differently, even if someone wanted to move one or write it differently, they would not dare restore it. If they found variant readings, however, they wrote the one in the margin and left the other unchanged in the text. They added 
, “(This or that word) is read and is not written (in the text).” In fact, if a letter in the text were to surpass the others in size (as the 
in the word 
and the 
in the word 
, Deut. 6:4)61 or were dropped from the others (as the 
in the word 
, Gen. 2:4) or were inverted (as the 
in the word 
, Num. 10:35) or were suspended (as the 
in the word 
, Judg. 18:30), they still were unwilling to correct this but merely noted the inconsistency in the margin, as is evident from the Masoretic notes. Therefore who will allow himself to be persuaded that the rabbinic scholars would have arrogated so much license to themselves as to add vowel points to each and every word of Scripture, points that were not as old as those words?