Masoretic Text Added Vowel Points – and Much Commentary

Some have said that the vowel points are inspired – because they were accepted by the KJV translators – and they say, God watched over His Word and would not have allowed the vowel points to be included in the text if they were not inspired.

This argument is invalid. The Masoretes added the vowel points. As well as various other commentary in the same text. They added a system of specialized notes on the text. It was included with the Hebrew Scripture. These notes contained many details. Such as: word counts of the passage. Chapter. Book. And also, at times, if a word was only found 3 times in the O.T. it would provide information on where these other references were (in a smaller way similar to Strong's). The Masoretes also counted all the words in a chapter/passage and made a notation on the middle word of the section or book. This they did for verification purposes. A later scribe would copy the text and do his own word count. If his middle word was off-they knew there was an error. There were even more extensive notes at the end of books-all verifying techniques to make sure the copy was perfect. One scholar said, "They counted everything you could count."

Notice in the image below that it shows the commentary included with the text in the middle column, off to the sides, and at the top and bottom of pages.

Obviously, the whole idea of the Masoretic text vowel points being inspired because they are in the text does not hold up if, along with the vowel points, there is a great deal of commentary. When we see an English Bible today with commentary notes we realize that those notes are not God's Word. The KJV scholars and translators accepted the text (the consonants only) as the inspired word of God – realizing that the Masoretic scribes had added much of their own commentary (including the vowel points) besides.