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  • From: Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] DSS --> MT silent letters and vowel-points
  • Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2005 12:36:40 -0700

On Tuesday 15 March 2005 11:58, Vadim Cherny wrote:
> > Peter Kirk,
> >
> > >...it is clear from the DSS than Hebrew spelling was not frozen soon
>
> after the exile, but remained fluid right through the Second Temple period.
> For there are significant and consistent differences betwen DSS, Mishnaic
> and Masoretic Hebrew e.g. DSS and Mishnaic Hebrew rather consistently use a
> silent alef to mark a long A vowel, but the Masoretic text never does.
>
> What does silent aleph have to do with spelling? In the absence of vowel
> points, aleph and waw were used to mark vowels. This constitutes no
> "significant and consistent differences."
> Some Aramaic influences, misspellings, vulgar errors in DSS are no evidence
> of "significant and consistent differences," either.
> Mishnaic Hebrew is an obvious development of the earlier language, with new
> words and forms, but what is the basis of your assertion that "spelling was
> not frozen soon after the exile, but remained fluid right through the
> Second Temple period"?
> Simply saying, Hebrew spelling could not be fluid because of the root
> system and vowel-based word forms. When just every letter makes semantic
> difference, how would you expect any "fluidity"?

Vadim,
There are a lot of assumptions and tentative conclusions flying around
regarding the question of spelling in the DSS. Many follow Tov and his
associates in saying that the spelling differences indicate something of a
different textual (or perhaps linguistic) stream, with some examples dubbed
"proto-Masoretic" and others dubbed something of a local textual stream. I'm
inclined to disagree, for some of the reasons you mentioned. The general
trend that we see is greater use of aleph, waw and yod as vowel letters than
what we have in the MT; the question is, does this shed light on textual
transmission or scribal habits within a fairly confined area? I lean toward
the latter, because we also have places where such letters could have been
used but weren't. There are also at least a few "dual" readings in the
pesharim, where the scribe wrote one word in the biblical text but wrote the
commentary as if the text read otherwise. This suggests to me that use of
vowel letters didn't constitute a change in the text, at least in the
scribe's/scribal school's mind, and was left to the scribe's discretion for
the sake of reading clarity. I can't comment on Mishnaic Hebrew because I've
never spent any real time in it, but DSS Hebrew spelling at least seems only
to have been "fluid" in a very narrow sense of the word. I doubt whether the
phenomenon in question really indicates anything of a linguistic nature at
all, and have serious doubts whether it indicates anything of a truly textual
nature, either.

--
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"No good. Hit on head." -Gronk




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