Masoretic text (MT), Masoretes

Texts of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) produced by the ‘Masoretes' (Jewish copyists), who worked roughly between 600 - 950 CE. The Masoretes (which means ‘transmitters') worked painstakingly on a range of manuscripts over the centuries with the aim of preventing mistakes creeping into the biblical text.

When translating the Old Testament into modern languages, scholars aim to base their work on Masoretic texts and then compare them with other biblical manuscripts from among the Dead Sea scrolls and the Septuagint. In the past, many scholars believed that the Masoretic texts were always more reliable than the Septuagint, although recently this idea has been called into question.