Massoretes (from Heb.מסרת, Mas(s)oreth, prob. ‘tradition’),
Jewish grammarians who worked on the Hebrew text of the OT between about the 6th and 10th cents. ad. There were three main centres of Massoretic activity, Palestinian, Babylonian, and Tiberian, of which the last (based in Tiberias in N. Palestine) eventually gained the supremacy; the text of the Tiberian Massoretes thus finally became the recognized text form (although the Babylonian system continued to be used by Yemenite communities). In their endeavours to preserve a biblical text free from accretion, alteration, or corruption, the Massoretes provided marginal notes, which sometimes preserve careful reproductions of irregularities, and detailed instructions for copyists. There are two main types of Massoretic note: abbreviated notes which were written in the left- or right-hand margins of the text (the ... ...
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