The Old Testament is called by the Jews the Tanakh, an acronym formed by combining the initials of the three sections by which the Jews divide the text: the Torah, or Law ( the Pentateuch ), the Nevi ' im, or Prophets, and the Ketuvim, or Writings or Hagiographa ( with vowels added, as Hebrew is written with a consonantal script, TaNaKh ).

According to Bamidbar Rabbah, Ezra was doubtful of the correctness of some words in the Torah and said, " Should Elijah ... approve the text, the points dots that he scribed above the letters will be disregarded ; should he disapprove, the doubtful words will be removed from the text ".

This work traces the Halakha from the Torah text and the Talmud through the Rishonim, with the Hilchot of Alfasi as its starting point.

While there have been Jewish groups whose beliefs were claimed to be based on the written text of the Torah alone ( e. g., the Sadducees, and the Karaites ), most Jews believed in what they call the oral law.

To justify this viewpoint, Jews point to the text of the Torah, where many words are left undefined, and many procedures mentioned without explanation or instructions ; this, they argue, means that the reader is assumed to be familiar with the details from other, i. e., oral, sources.

For centuries, only the Torah appeared as a written text.

According to the Zohar, a foundational text for kabbalistic thought, Torah study can proceed along four levels of interpretation ( exegesis ).

There were female Tannaic Torah jurists such as Rabbi Meir's wife, Rabbi Meir's daughter, and the daughter of Haninyah ben Teradyon Haninyah's daughter is again mentioned as a sage in the non-Talmud 3rd Century text Tractate Semahot verse 12: 13.

Non-Orthodox Jews generally understand the same texts as signs that the current text of the Torah was redacted from earlier sources.

The fidelity of the Hebrew text of the Tanakh, and the Torah in particular, is considered paramount, down to the last letter: translations or transcriptions are frowned upon for formal service use, and transcribing is done with painstaking care.

An error of a single letter, ornamentation, or symbol of the 304, 805 stylized letters which make up the Hebrew Torah text renders a Torah scroll unfit for use, hence a special skill is required and a scroll takes considerable time to write and check.

According to Jewish law, a sefer Torah ( plural: Sifrei Torah ) is a copy of the formal Hebrew text of hand-written on gevil or qlaf ( forms of parchment ) by using a quill ( or other permitted writing utensil ) dipped in ink.

Most modern Sifrei Torah are written with forty-two lines of text per column ( Yemenite Jews use fifty ), and very strict rules about the position and appearance of the Hebrew letters are observed.

The Talmud ( Hebrew: " instruction, learning ", from a root " teach, study ") is a central text of mainstream Judaism, considered second to the Torah.

The statement is then analyzed and compared with other statements used in different approaches to Biblical exegesis in rabbinic Judaism ( or-simpler-interpretation of text in Torah study ) exchanges between two ( frequently anonymous and sometimes metaphorical ) disputants, termed the ( questioner ) and ( answerer ).

Alberdina Houtman and colleagues theorize that while the Mishnah was compiled in order to establish an authoritative text on halakhic tradition, a more conservative party opposed the exclusion of the rest of tradition and produced the Tosefta to avoid the impression that the written Mishnah was equivalent to the entire oral Torah.

Throughout the rest of the Torah, Jacob is referred to at times as both Jacob and Israel, depending on which aspect of his character the text means to convey.

Samaritans adhere to a version of the Torah, known as the Samaritan Pentateuch, which differs in some respects from the Masoretic text, sometimes in important ways, and less so from the Septuagint.

However, this does not imply that the text of the Torah should be understood literally, as according to Karaism.

They note that the Masoretes ( 7th to 10th centuries ) compared all known Torah variations in order to create a definitive text.

The idea of a perfect text sanctified in its consonantal base quickly spread throughout the Jewish communities via supportive statements in Halakha, Aggada, and Jewish thought ; and with it increasingly forceful strictures that a deviation in even a single letter would make a Torah scroll invalid.

The current received text finally achieved predominance through the reputation of the Masoretes, schools of scribes and Torah scholars working between the 7th and 11th centuries, based primarily in the Land of Israel in the cities of Tiberias and Jerusalem, and in Babylonia.

The Exodus Rabbah argues that when the Pharaoh instructed midwives to throw male children into the Nile, Amram divorced Jochebed, who was three months pregnant with Moses at the time, arguing that there was no justification for the Israelite men to father children if they were just to be killed ; however, the text goes on to state that Miriam, his daughter, chided him for his lack of care for his wife's feelings, persuading him to recant and marry Jochebed again.

In The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, popular author and text critic Bart D. Ehrman argues that the Adoptionist Theology may date back almost to the time of Jesus and his view is shared by many other scholars.

In this particular text, Christine argues that women must recognize and promote their ability to make peace.

Derrida argues that there are no self-sufficient units of meaning in a text.

Joosten, however, while accepting that the carelessness of the English scribe is the most likely explanation for most such instances, nevertheless argues that a minority of such readings are due to translation errors in the Spanish text: as, for example, where the Italian text employs the conjunction pero, with an Italian meaning ' therefore '; while the Spanish text also reads pero, with a Spanish meaning ' however '; the Italian sense being the one demanded by the context.

Ian Barbour in his book Issues in Science and Religion ( 1966 ), p. 133, cites Arthur Eddington's The Nature of the Physical World ( 1928 ) for a text that argues The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principles provides a scientific basis for " the defense of the idea of human freedom " and his Science and the Unseen World ( 1929 ) for support of philosophical idealism " the thesis that reality is basically mental ".

A typical philosophical text presents a philosophical problem, summarizes and critiques various alternative approaches to solving it, presents its own approach, and then argues in favour of that approach.

Although Wittgenstein certainly argues that the notion of private language is incoherent, because of the way in which the text is presented the exact nature of the argument is disputed.

A post-structuralist approach argues that to understand an object ( e. g., a text ), it is necessary to study both the object itself and the systems of knowledge that produced the object.

Conceptually driven criticism operates more through abduction, according to scholar James Jasinski, who argues that this emerging type of criticism can be thought of as a back-and-forth between the text and the concepts, which are being explored at the same time.

Structuralism argues that there must be a structure in every text, which explains why it is easier for experienced readers than for non-experienced readers to interpret a text.

Structuralistic literary criticism argues that the " literary banter of a text " can lie only in new structure, rather than in the specifics of character development and voice in which that structure is expressed.

Admitting that there are stylistic problems between Second Thessalonians and First Thessalonians, he argues that part of the problem is due to the composite nature of First Thessalonians ( Murphy-O ' Connor is only one of many scholars who argue that the current text of Second Thessalonians is the product of merging two or more authentic letters of Paul.

Peter Raby argues that the three-act structure is more effective, and that the shorter original text is more theatrically resonant than the expanded published edition.

In his Arden edition, R. A. Foakes argues for a date of 1605 – 6, because one of Shakespeare's sources, The True Chronicle History of King Leir, was not published until 1605 ; close correspondences between that play and Shakespeare's suggest that he may have been working from a text ( rather than from recollections of a performance ).

As Stephen Roy Miller argues in his 1998 edition of A Shrew ( although he does so in support of his adaptation theory ), " the differences between the texts are substantial and coherent enough to establish that there was deliberate revision in producing one text out of the other ; hence A Shrew is not merely a poor report ( or ' bad quarto ') of The Shrew.

The biblical text states that Moses asked Hashem to rule on the issue ; the Zohar argues that Moses had presented the case to Hashem, rather than deciding it himself, because Moses was modest.

Haukur details that " the oldest manuscript, U, offers a version where Jǫrð is the wife of Dellingr and the mother of Dagr while the other manuscripts, R, W and T, cast Nótt in the role of Dellingr's wife and Dagr's mother ", and argues that " the version in U came about accidentally when the writer of U or its antecedent shortened a text similar to that in RWT.

Haukur details that " the oldest manuscript, U, offers a version where Jǫrð is the wife of Dellingr and the mother of Dagr while the other manuscripts, R, W and T, cast Nótt in the role of Dellingr's wife and Dagr's mother ", and argues that " the version in U came about accidentally when the writer of U or its antecedent shortened a text similar to that in RWT.

Haukur details that " the oldest manuscript, U, offers a version where Jǫrð is the wife of Dellingr and the mother of Dagr while the other manuscripts, R, W and T, cast Nótt in the role of Dellingr's wife and Dagr's mother ", and argues that " the version in U came about accidentally when the writer of U or its antecedent shortened a text similar to that in RWT.

Haukur details that " the oldest manuscript, U, offers a version where Jǫrð is the wife of Dellingr and the mother of Dagr while the other manuscripts, R, W and T, cast Nótt in the role of Dellingr's wife and Dagr's mother ", and argues that " the version in U came about accidentally when the writer of U or its antecedent shortened a text similar to that in RWT.

Haly argues that this should rather be translated as " juicy maguey God " as the text talks about the imbibing of pulque.