Matthew, am I correct that you have now reduced your accusation to one verse, and not "messianic prophecies" ?

Isn't that itself a repudiation of your earlier claim that -

"We know that the Jews did tamper with their texts in order to deny Messianic prophecies as had been fulfilled in Jesus Christ."

You are now claiming only that there is a variant on one verse, quite a different matter.

And you really should study that one verse, as you are quoting misinformation.

One very important point is that the "pierced.." reading is maintained in some Masoretic Text manuscripts. Your sources apparently are not aware of this minority reading. Very salient. In the New Testament as well the true reading is sometimes maintained in a minority reading.

The second point is that the split in the text apparently came before the time of Jesus, which a study of the Targum text indicates. Thus the John Calvin claim of obvious tampering is shown to be very questionable.

The third point is that this is a very minor variant in terms of the physical text, having to do with the length of a letter (equivalent, less than, the error behind "thus He declared all foods clean" in the NT, one letter - or the loss of the mark in 1 Timothy 3:16). In such a case we should be very slow to accuse the early texts of original error, when in fact the error could have easily occurred with faded text in the copyist process.

So you originally made a broad-based accusation against the Masoretic Text of tampering. You have reduced that accusation to one verse, and that one verse is seen to be very difficult to accuse of deliberate tampering.

In fact the Jewish midrash and rabbinical commentaries after the times of Jesus are themselves split about the verse, due to the textual difficulty.

The King James Bible gives us the pure and perfect reading in Psalm 22:16, however we cannot prove any deliberate tampering and we should be slow to accuse. And you should not quote in repetition misinformation from earlier writers after you have been told that they are missing salient facts on Psalm 22:16.

The specifics are easily available (such as the proper minority reading being in some Masoretic Texts, in the main text) for you to check up. Rather than simply quoting mistaken claims about "the" Masoretic Text.

Shalom,
Steven