In this period living tradition ceased, and the masorites in preparing their codices usually followed the one school or the other, exam ining, however, standard codices of other schools and noting their differences. In the first half of the 10th century Aaron ben Moses Ben-Asher of Tiberias and Ben-Naphtali, heads of two rival masoretical schools, each wrote a standard copy of the Bible, embodying the traditions of their respective schools. Both of them were descendants of distinguished fam ilies of masorites. Ben-Asher's codex became recognized as the standard text of the Bible. Notwithstanding this, for reasons 'unknown, neither the printed text, nor any manuscript which has come down to us, is based entirely on Ben-Asher ; they are all eclectic. The two rival authorities, Ben-Asher and Ben-Naphtali, practically brought the Masorah to a close. Very few additions were made by the later masorites, styled in the 13th and 14th centuries Nakdanim, who revised the works of the copy ists, added the vowels and accents, and fre quently the Masorah. Considerable influence on the development and spread of Masoretic literature was exercised during the three first centuries of the second millennium by the Franco-German school of Tosaphists, or Tal mudic annotators.
Jacob ben Hayyim ibn Adonijah, having col lated a vast number of manuscripts, sys tematized his material and arranged the Ma sorah in the second Bomberg edition of the Bible (Venice 1424-25). Besides introducing
the Masorah into the margin, he compiled at the close of his Bible a concordance of Ma soretic glosses for which he could find no room in a marginal form, and added an elaborate introduction — the first treatise on the Masorah ever written. In spite of its numerous errors this excellent work has generally been acknowledged as the "textus receptus." Next to Ibn Adoni the critical study has been most advanced y Elijah Levita, who published his famous in 1538. The (Tiberias) of the elder Buxterf (1620) made Levita's re searches accessible to Christian students. Levita compiled likewise a vast masoretic con cordance which still lies in the National Library of Paris unpublished. Other prominent work ers in this field in the times of the Renaissance were Rabbi Meir ben Todros ha-Levi, Mena hem di Lonzano, and Jedidiah Solomon of Norzi. In modern times, to mention only the most prominent names, were W. Heidenheim, S. Pinsker, S. Frensdorff, S. Baer and C. D. Ginsburg.
In imitation of the Masorah to the Hebrew text a similar work exists to the text of the Aramaic version, known as Targum Onkelos. Its date is probably about 900.