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Originally, the Old Testament, which included the five books of Moses (in Greek, Pentateuch-five scrolls), the Prophets, and Apocrypha, were Divine revelations, both written and oral, given by God through Moses, some of them at Mount Sinai and others at the Tabernacle. All of the teachings were written down by Moses, or his scribe Joshua, and passed down orally in an unbroken chain from generation to generation, until its contents were committed to papyrus around 700BC (Archeological evidence discovered in 2004, suggests before the Babylonian captivity).

Painstaking care was taken in making written copies of the Old Testament, which is reflected in a statement in Psalm 18:30, “The word of the Lord is tried” pointing to the extreme caution taken with every word, letter, and mark of the Holy Texts preserved during the copying process (counting words and letters to insure accuracy).

The Hebrew priests memorized the Torah word for word. When the Old Testament was eventually written, the text appeared as one continuous set of consonants known as the “Word of God” with no breaks or vowels to separate words, and thus could only be read by priests who had memorized every word. To the uneducated, the unbroken document was incomprehensible.