Here is a matter where the halakha is decided according to a variant reading the Talmud had that is not in the masoretic text of today’s Torahs
And, most significantly, sometimes the Talmud bases laws on the spelling of particular words (e.g., the number of compartments required in the head tefillin),17 yet the spelling differs from that found in the MT. In such cases, the Talmudic rabbis were obviously confident of the accuracy of the reading they relied on, and none of their colleagues challenged it.
17. The precept of tefillin is based on Exodus 13:9 and 16 and Deuteronomy 6:8 and 11:18. The word totafot, “frontlets, headbands,” referring to the tefillin worn on the head, appears in three of these verses. According to Rabbi Ishmael in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 4b and parallels), the suffix -OT is spelled defectively (that is, without the vowel letter VAV) in the first two occurrences and fully (with the VAV) the third time. This allows the first two to be read “as if” they were singulars, implying one compartment each, and requires the third to be read as a plural, hence requiring two compartments, and thus indicating that the head tefillin must have a total of four compartments. However, in all known copies of the Bible, both ancient (with one exception, in Exodus 13:16) and Masoretic, the suffix is spelled defectively all three times, and this is how Maimonides rules that they must be written (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Tefillin 2:7, presumably following the Aleppo Codex). For the ancient manuscripts see J. Tigay, “On the Meaning of totafot,” Journal of Biblical Literature 101 (1982):321. For other such examples see Leiman, cited in the next note.
18. Sid Z. Leiman, “Masorah and Halakhah: A Study in Conflict,” in Tehilla le-Moshe. Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Moshe Greenberg, ed. M. Cogan, B.L. Eichler, and J.H. Tigay (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbraun’s, 1997), pp. 291-306.
Can you really say empirically that “this is the Torah that Moshe gave before Israel on God’s word?”
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