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I am looking through the Sefaria Exports and finding it is extremely messy, non-uniform, and full of modern "Latin script" symbols, see this literature question for a small amount of context.

Meanwhile, when you go into an Orthodox or other synagogue, you find really nice hardcover books written in the original Hebrew/Aramaic/etc. language.

Several of the Sefaria texts come from Wikipedia like WikiSource, which are probably not as diligently transcribed as the hardcover editions of the texts, and so are probably full of errors, small and large.

My question is 3 parts.

  1. Status of online texts in Judaism? What is the status of Sefaria (or other online Hebrew/Aramaic "original" texts online) in the Jewish community? Where does it stand? How is it perceived?
  2. Status of Synagogue Hardcover texts in Judaism? What is the status of "original Hebrew/Aramaic" texts in general? How do they compare to the original original texts (manuscripts)? I.e., are even the hardcover editions found in synagogues "full of errors"? If not full, aren't there pretty much guaranteed to be mistakes in transcriptions along the way? If so, how are these "mistakes" conceptualized of in Judaism? If the texts are known to have transcription mistakes/inconsistencies, wouldn't that mean that the Word is evolving or not quite the original Word? How is that conceptualized / rationalized or otherwise handled in Judaism?
  3. How do you arrive at a "canonical" text in Judaism? Given that there are many versions of texts, such as found in this list on GitHub or in the Sefaria exports like this Seder Kodashim - Bekhorot which has 2 versions, but some books have 3 or 4+ versions.

The reason I ask is, it seems that the Sefaria collection of texts, beyond being extremely messy, is guaranteed to be full of errors in one way or another. Either because it uses non-original syntax like periods and commas and parentheses, or because it has mixed in HTML markup which doesn't quite retain its original meaning/intent, or because things aren't labelled properly or according to tradition, or maybe because it was typed in incorrectly here or there. I would like to obtain a high quality Unicode (i.e. standard digital text-based) copy of all the books in Sefaria, but they don't look to have a high quality bar (yet?), so I'm not sure how they are perceived in the Jewish community in general. Though I can see them being useful as a "rough draft / introduction" to the texts for free, I don't know if they would live up to the standard of quality which I imagine is required in Judaism in some way or another. Then if I go and try and "clean up" the Sefaria texts (as per that literature question), I am modifying them further, so wondering what the end result would be.

Basically, wondering how to obtain high quality digital text-based (i.e. non-image, non-PDF) versions of all the Hebrew texts.

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    I suppose your question is way too broad. A good start would be to separate the Written Law and the Oral Law. Another illusion you seem to have is that in the "hardcover" books you can find a uniform text, which is definitely not true. And of course there's no "original" text, as we don't have at hand the autograph of Moses, but we have a very strong tradition instead to choose among the different versions. (And the whole process is totally different for the Oral Law.) Dec 7, 2021 at 8:13
  • This is too broad, as each text in Sefaria has to be evaluated separately. For example, the Wikisource Tanakh text is almost surely more accurate than your average printed Tanakh, but the Koren gemara text surely had some transcription errors over its print source.
    – magicker72
    Dec 7, 2021 at 12:08
  • What does "all the Hebrew texts" consist of?
    – magicker72
    Dec 7, 2021 at 12:10
  • You might also want to check out alhatorah.org, which had been working on some high-quality editions (like of the Rif).
    – magicker72
    Dec 7, 2021 at 12:18
  • @magicker72 funny you would pick on this as an example. Why? In this specific case, it was digitally imported so should not have errors
    – mbloch
    Dec 7, 2021 at 13:32

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Every text has to be evaluated by how close it is to the original. A tremendous amount of scholarship goes into correcting errors. The most accurate versions are usually not available for free, because of the high cost involved. Sefaria especially can have problems because anyone can edit it. It is very useful for people with enough knowledge to avoid the pitfalls, but ultimately you get what you pay for. Any high-quality version of texts is protected by copyright.

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    What is the original? Dec 7, 2021 at 8:57
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    It is not true that anyone can edit the Hebrew texts in Sefaria. There are plenty of very high quality texts available for free online (especially Tanakh, but also others).
    – magicker72
    Dec 7, 2021 at 12:05
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    The Wikisource project מקרא על פי המסורה is one of the best editions available of Tanach period anywhere, and it's free.
    – Double AA
    Dec 7, 2021 at 13:20
  • @DoubleAA That could be true, but take a random sefer on Sefaria? Almost certainly worse than your standard printed edition.
    – N.T.
    Dec 8, 2021 at 1:01
  • I have spotted errors in both printed and electronic texts. I try to alert the publishers so they can be corrected. For electronic versions, I trust the Bar Ilan collection (which is not free on line) Dec 8, 2021 at 13:36

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