According to Jewish tradition, it was through direct speech that God conveyed the Bible to its authors. They recorded the dictation and thus the later users, according to strict Jewish (and Christian fundamentalist) orthodoxy, had God's own words in front of them in the Holy Scriptures. The earliest manuscript evidence we possess varies and does not support the idea of divine dictation. Qumran testifies to a considerable textual elasticity. Unification resulted only later from the intervention of rabbinic authority. First the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible was established and subsequently the meaning was further determined through the introduction of "pointing" or the Masoretic vowel signs, which eliminated equivocation. For example, without vowel signs, the three consonants MLK can be read as MeLeK (king), MaLaK (he reigned) or MoLeK (Molech, a pagan god).

The Qumran biblical manuscripts attest many notable variations. Some of them, called proto-Masoretic, roughly prefigure the later traditional (Masoretic) text. Others recall the somewhat different Hebrew underlying the Samaritan Pentateuch or the Greek of the Septuagint. Fifteen per cent of the texts are non-aligned: they differ from the three previously listed patterns. The Qumran evidence demonstrates that variety preceded textual unity.

How should one judge these textual variants? One must assume that the scribes intended to transmit what they believed to be the correct form of the sacred text and intended to put in their scrolls what was for them the word of God even when these differed from the commonly accepted version. Consequently, unusual readings, which are not obviously interpretative, represent texts preferred by the copyists. 

Some of the variants have doctrinal basis. The Samaritans substitute Samaria for Jerusalem and Mount Gerizim, their sacred mountain, for Mount Zion. The manuscripts mirroring the Hebrew used by the Greek translators of the Septuagint prefer to speak of "angels" rather than "sons of God". The same verse may exist in shorter and longer versions. For instance for Exodus 10:5 the Masoretic Bible and the Septuagint assert that the locusts "shall eat every tree". By contrast, the Samaritan Pentateuch and a Qumran fragment substitute for it: the locusts "shall eat every grass of the land and every fruit of the tree".