The Masoretic Text (MT) is the authoritative Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible regarded almost universally as the official version of the Tanakh. In modern times the Dead Sea Scrolls have shown the MT to be nearly identical to some texts of the Tanakh dating from 200 B.C. but different from others.

 

The MT was primarily copied, edited and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the seventh and tenth centuries AD.

 

The oldest extant manuscripts of the Masoretic Text date from approximately the ninth century AD, and the Aleppo Codex (once the oldest complete copy of the Masoretic Text, but now missing its Torah section) dates from the tenth century.