There is not much that need be said analytically concerning the Old Testament manuscripts. It is rather surprising to realize that the earliest Hebrew manuscripts in existence, for much of the Old Testament, do not date back earlier than about the 9th century A.D. Since 1947, however, manuscripts of the Book of Isaiah and parts of the others (except for the short Book of Esther) have been discovered which date back as far as the first and second centuries before Christ. However, this general lack of complete early Hebrew manuscripts is less important than it might seem.

As far as can be learned, there appears to have been a gradual, though a not too critical, revision of the Palestine manuscripts going on almost continually from the days of Ezra. History indicates that from the Dispersion, this process of Hebrew manuscript revision ceased. At that early date, the Hebrew Old Testament was made as nearly correct as the best scholarship of the Jewish academies could make it. After this, the older manuscripts gradually disappeared. A manuscript of the Book of Isaiah (1QIsaᵃ), discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls, is close to those from which our English versions of the Bible have been translated, while another Isaiah scroll (1QIsaᵇ) is nearly identical. The Hebrew Old Testament is the best-preserved book of antiquity.

While it is true that most of the existing Hebrew Massoretic manuscripts are not very old, yet much dependence can be placed upon them, owing to the great reverence the Jewish scribes held for the Word of God, and their consequent carefulness in transcribing. It is said that these scribes were so scrupulous that even if a manifest error appeared in the copy from which they were transcribing they would not change the text, but would write an explanatory note in the margin, giving the proper thought.

It is claimed, also, that even if one letter were larger than another, or a word running beyond the line, or other irregularity, they would copy it exactly as found. Another important factor which enters into the accuracy of the Old Testament is that in the recensions more than one person was occupied in making the copies. One scribe copied the consonants; another inserted the vowels, points, and accents, in fainter ink; a third revised the copy; and a fourth wrote in the Masorah— notes which keep track of variants, editing changes in the past, and methods for detecting scribal errors.