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  • From: "AMK Judaica" <amkjudaica AT hotmail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] verse numbering in Exodus 12
  • Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 23:57:33 -0500

Some comments from a Rabbinic perspective pertaining to the recent thread on the versification of the “Ten Commandments” (TC):

1) The entire section containing the TC in Rabbinic Bibles has two sets of cantillation: taam elyon (upper cantillation) and taam tahton (lower cantillation). Taam tahon divides the section into the “regular” verse lengths and is the “standard” versification. Taam tahton divides the section into ten verses of abnormal-length according to the TC.
2) Words that in taam elyon with initial begedkefet letters containing a dagesh kal may lose it in taam tahton because the reordering of the cantillation results in disjunctive cantillation becoming conjunctive cantillation. Also, there is a strong tendency for words to become proclitic in taam elyon.
3) There are different traditions pertaining to specifically when taam tahton or taam elyon are used for public worship.
4) As per Gary Hedrick’s statement that “Perhaps the difference in verse numbering is related to the fact that the rabbis consider the introduction ("I am the LORD your God," v. 2) to be the first commandment”: this is the dominant view in the Jewish tradition, but not only one. Isolated midrashic sources, Philo and Josephus see it otherwise. What may have at one time been a more vibrant debate among the rabbis is hinted at by the variant traditions over how to cantillate that first verse in taam elyon. Some cantillate it to the effect of making it a separate verse, whereas others join it to the next commandment.
5) Two things to keep in mind when considering whether it is a separate commandment or not: A) Hebrew Bibles are divided into parshiyot (sing. parashah), or sections (like paragraphs) by gaps in the text (with petuhot and setumot). Each commandment of the TC gets it own parashah (whether the two-word lo tirtzah or the fifty-word Sabbath commandment). That first commandment, however, does not get its own parashah and is part of the parashah with the second commandment. (There is no debate on this issue, even among those who maintain it must be cantillated as a separate verse in taam elyon.) B) I’m not sure why there is a need to account for (or to count) “ten commandments” This phrase is a regular part of our popular parlance, but it is not an accurate one; the Hebrew text refers only to aseret ha-devarim, which translates not as “ten commandments, ” but rather as “ten statements” (or Decalogue). (From a strictly “commandments” perspective I count at least 14 separate commandment.)

-Ari Kinsberg

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  • [b-hebrew] verse numbering in Exodus 12, AMK Judaica, 01/25/2007

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