The Masoretes were Jewish scribes who copied the Bible. The Masoretes developed a system of vocalization, adding vowel markings to the Hebrew language (in Hebrew, the letters are all consonants), and supplying other helps for reading the Bible. The Hebrew Bible called the Masoretic Text, produced by the Masoretes, is the primary source of English language Old Testament translations today.
This short note describes one additional thing they did which I always found interesting. At the end
of each book in the Hebrew Bible, the Masoretes added a brief epilogue (called the "Final Masorah") with some statistics about the book. The following epilogue is found at
the end of the book of Deuteronomy (the translation is mine).
“The sum of
the verses that are in the book are 955.”
“The middle
word is ‘al_pi’ and there are 31 lessons."
“The sum of
the verses that are in the Torah are 5845.”
“The sum of
the lessons that are in the Torah are 167.”
“The sum of
the words that are in the Torah are 79,856.”
“The sum of
the letters that are in the Torah are 400,945.”
So - they counted the letters. Why? They wanted to make sure they didn't leave one out, or add an extra one in, of course. It speaks to the care with which the Bible was copied.
