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In the seventh place, many Bible difficulties result from a minor error on the part of a
copyist in the transmission of the text. In the Old Testament such transmissional errors
may have resulted from an incorrect reading of similar appearing consonants. Hebrew was
originally written in consonants only, and the vowel signs were not added until 1,000
years later after the completion of the Old Testament canon. But there are also some consonants
that are easily confused because they look so much alike. For example, the letter for
“D” is like this, you have a horizontal stroke, then a vertical stroke, then a little
hangover at the upper right corner. The letter for “R” looks rather similar, but you
have actually a rounded corner. Even to this day when you read
Israeli newspapers you get this same problem. They generally tend to use this and they leave
it to your intelligence to tell whether it’s a “D” or an “R.” Of course, they do
think up ways to make life hard in Israel, and this is one of them.
Another problem has to do with the similarity between a “Y” and a “W.” The “Y”
is written like this: it’s a vertical with a little curve thing at the top. No, this
is the one that has a short tail—I’m trying to get this shortened up here—and the “W”
has a longer tail. Now, the problem is that, particularly during the time of the Dead Sea
Scrolls, say in the second century BC, the similarity was so great, this then would be
the typical Dead Sea Scroll “Y” and this would be the typical Dead Sea Scroll “W.”
Well, you see, if the scribe was writing a little bit hastily, he might not have calculated
to the correct millimeter the distinction between those two letters. And so we have
to be alert to these factors in textual criticism.