Two Floods and a confusing type of god.

not everyone accepts that; certainly most orthodox jews dont. our traditionhas that all or most of the text is as the original. True, i dont have any original copies, but neither does anyone else. its definitly beyond the medieval ages.
proof:
when you look in quotes in the mishna, midrash, tosefta, braita and talmud - all works that can be dated to 3rd and 6th century...they are the same as today, more or less...
-this is hearsay for me so please correct me if im wrong - the tefillin [phylacteries] that they found in the cumran caves and the texts of prophets that they found [dead sea scrolls] also indicated that it was the same. so while you are right that the house of Asher in tiberius and others put together the masoretic NOTES to freeze the text -im saying its only a way of preserving the past.... true, they had some inconsistencies, due to scribal errors, but compared to the massive amoun tof letters of the Ot, the percentage is tiny....
now youll want proof on that and i ma not equpped to give it. but i ca disagree

so let me clarify again -
its modern hebrew - but i could definitely speak biblical hebrew as it is very very similar..almost identical....
in structure its not at all different from what you read in the text..same subject verb order etc.....the 'modren' part of modern hebrew is mainly the new words for new things...not too many biblical Tv's, planes or vaccuum cleaners....and not the structure or main words used..those all come from biblical hebrew.. so,yes i could speak to any biblical jew...or jew of the times of the mishna.....or any era.... reading their words in the bible just like reading a modern hebrew newspaper...if you can read one, you can read the other...
as for the 'revival'... well, i guess now some 6 million jews worldwide speak fluently, and hunfreds of thousands more read....anyone of you could do it too..learning to read it is simple...i really recomend it..you could read the torah in hebrew and its a COMPLETLY DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE... bc all translations do injustive bc some words just cant be translated [and many questions are cleared up]
one example, which you are all free to check. the hrebrew word 'et' [in hebrew spelled alef-tav] -it appears THOUSANDS OF TIMES in the torah, from verse 1 till the end

Mendy, there is a very interesting book titled The Bible As Book: The Hebrew Bible and the Judaean Desert Discoveries - a series of related papers on the process of textual transmission and canonization in light of the DSS evidence. Almost without exception, the DSS material speaks (1) to a plurality of textual variants, with (2) a significant tendency to favor the non-Masoretic (e.g., Samaritan Pentateuch & Septuagint Vorlage) text, and (3) an absence of clear distinction/demarcation between so-called Canon and Apocrapha. Feel free to believe this or not. It is, however, a fact.As for the Masoretes, the laudable transcription abilities of 4th-6th century CE scribes says absolutely nothing about the textual plurality that aparently characterized Hebrew scripture up to and during the 2nd Temple period.