Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

> 
> In a message dated 7/30/02 7:25:10 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
> dwashbur AT nyx.net 
> writes:
>     But if we assume the Masoretes were preserving the pronunciation 
>     traditions as handed down to them, they should have known, as well. So 
> none of this 
>     really helps to explain the phenomenon under consideration. 
> 
> 
> I don't understand this. This Masoretes considered the consonantal text as 
> fixed and pointed 
> HW) as hi' when it was feminine because that was their pronunciation even 
> though it did not 
> correspond with the text. If the text at one time was written in a script 
> in which like DSS the waw 
> and yod were virtually indistinguishable, later conservative scribes could 
> well have uniformly 
> written HW) for HY) even though they knew very well how to pronounce it. 
> This may well be 
> evidence (as confusing as it is) for dating the fixing of the standard 
> orthography of the Torah, but I 
> do not at all see why this needs to be evidence for dating the composition 
> of the Torah. 
> ---
This kind of speculation gets us nowhere, so I won't pursue it except to 
point out that 
the Masoretes had no problem in other parts of the text using a Qere reading 
to 
"correct" a HW) reading to HY) when they felt it was necessary.  But in the 
Torah, 
they did things differently.  Why this should be so, is the question at hand.

Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur