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Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
  • To: "Christopher V. Kimball" <mail AT cvkimball.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Excess consonants in the WLC Torah.
  • Date: Mon, 06 Jun 2005 12:03:58 -0500

Christopher:

Maqefs are not counted as consonants? Then you have a typo in your list at
http://www.cvkimball.com/Tanach/Lists/Counts.xml . Anyways, because Maqef is
not found in archaic Hebrew, I think it very easy for there to be
disagreement on placement and number of Maqefs, I did not consider the total
number of Maqefs.

Considering the total number of letters, and that there existed a certain
amount of fluidity in spelling, it is remarkable that there are only 43
differences.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher V. Kimball" <mail AT cvkimball.com>

>
>
>
> Maqafs are not counted as consonants, but rather as accents, in my
> statistics. Since there are 11,480 maqafs in the Torah (including
> both qere and kethib variants) they are probably not the
> explanation.
>
> Your idea that one might count the spaces is helpful. A note in the
> JPS "Etz Hayim" Chumash, 2001 (p 770) says:
>
> "...Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev connects the final total of 603,550
> Israelites [v. 46] to a tradition that there are 603,550 letters in
> the Torah. ...
>
> in referring to Numbers 1:46. I can't get close to the 603,550
> number any way I count it, so I'm off by 50%.
>
>
>
> Karl Randolph wrote:
>
> > I think that a difference of this amount is not only plausible, but
> > probable.
> >
> > Looking at your stats listed below, spaces between words (in
> > archaic Hebrew, dots) are not counted, while Maqefs (which did
> > not exist in archaic Hebrew) are counted as consonants. Add to
> > that that spelling was often fluid, it’s almost surprising that
> > the differences add up to only 43.
> >
> > Karl W. Randolph.

--
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