Textual Variants between the Leningrad Codex B19a and Other Masoretic Sources in the Léxico do Antigo Testamento Interlinear Hebraico-Português. New Insights in the Hebrew Lexicography

This article refers to the lexemes of the Léxico do Antigo Testamento Interlinear Hebraico-Português (Engl. Lexicon of the Interlinear Old Testament Hebrew-Portuguese) (LéxATI) (Barueri: Sociedade Bíblica do Brasil, 2024), by this author, related to textual variants between the Leningrad Codex B19a (ML) and other Masoretic sources, such as the Aleppo (MA), Oriental 4445 (MB), Cairo of the Prophets (MC), Madrid No. 1 (MM1), Sassoon 507 (MS), Sassoon 1053 (MS1) codices, among other manuscripts, and the Second Rabbinic Bible (BibRab2), the main representatives of the Masoretic Text of the Tiberian tradition. In this article, several situations of textual variants between the Codex ML and other Masoretic sources are shown, and the possible reasons for the existence of such textual differences are discussed. In certain situations, the variations show idiosyncrasies of the Codex ML in relation to the other sources of the Masorah, revealing how the process of production of the aforementioned medieval manuscript of the Hebrew Bible would have been. In some instances, supposed textual variants may reveal that some diacritics would actually just be smudges in the parchment of the Codex ML, which could have led to confusion of reading and interpretation.