Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Kirk Lowery <klowery AT whi.wts.edu>]

Peter Kirk wrote:
> On 28/04/2005 14:36, David Roth wrote:

[snip]

>> Since you mention Kirk Lowery's work

It's not "mine." I'm simply standing on the shoulders of the scholars
who created the original electronic text of the Leningrad Codex:
Emmanuel Tov, Bob Kraft, Alan Groves and others, not to mention H. Van
Parunak, who had the original vision for an electronic text in the late
1970s.

>> with the electronic text of
>> Leningradensis, can anyone point to a statement of purpose for the
>> project?

The project was completed in 1987 when it was first released as the CCAT
BHS. In the years since, both it and the hard copy BHS moved ever closer
to a diplomatic "mirror image" of Leningradensis.

Professor Groves then took that 1987 text and created a Hebrew
morphology database, first released in 1991. The very nature of such an
analysis requires a very close reading of the text; in that process many
errors were corrected; and many other errors have been reported by
various people through the years.

With the publication of the Eerdmann's facsimile of L, we here at the
Institute have made it our business to consult it at every point where
there is a possible question of the text, often under magnification:
"Hmmm, is that dot an ink splatter; did the scribe's quill actually lift
off of the page at this point?" :-)

>> 1) Will it include the Masorah?
>> 2) Will this version have the rafe marks (it seems that any diplomatic
>> representation of L should have these).

It would be nice. A number of years ago now Patrick Durusau and I
designed a data model for the xml markup of L that would include
*everything*, carpet pages and all (including an element attribute
"direction" with the values being the 360 degrees of the compass to
capture the art of those pages).

The real constraint for us is -- as usual -- resources. The Institute's
focus right now is upon extending the morphology database to syntactic
markup. (We've just finished segmenting the entire Hebrew Bible at the
phrase level using the disjunctive/conjunctive distinctions of the
cantillation, and generated binary trees using the traditional hierarchy
of the accents. Now we have a "cantillation browser." Very cool.)

We view ourselves as a custodian of the electronic text and we make it
freely available as the Westminster Leningrad Codex. If others would
care to contribute to the text in any way, it would become part of the
electronic representation and preservation of this important manuscript.

> I think you should ask Kirk Lowery this in person (klowery AT wts.edu), as
> he may not read this thread.

Ha! Not likely. As one of the moderators of this list, I have to read
*everything,* *carefully*. ;-)

Blessings,

Kirk
B-Hebrew co-chair
-- 
Kirk E. Lowery, PhD
Director, Westminster Hebrew Institute
Adjunct Professor of Old Testament
Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia
--
"Good boy, Dex!"
   -- Joseph "Sky Captain" Sullivan