Heb., “tradition.” The traditional, authoritative form of the Hebrew text of the Bible, standardized in its basics sometime around 100 c.e., became the Bible for Jews and has been preserved and handed down by them from generation to generation ever since. In the Middle Ages, the Masoretes—a group of Jewish Bible scholars who gave this text-form its current scholarly name—established and promulgated the last details of this form, standardizing its consonants, vowels, and cantillation signs, as well as marginal notes that relate to orthographic, grammatical, and lexicographic oddities in order to preserve the subtlest nuances in the text’s traditional pronunciation, meaning, and conventions of public reading. Most of this work was done by the school of Masoretes in Tiberias between the sixth and ninth centuries. (Masoretic, adj.)