Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Steve Miller" <smille10 AT sbcglobal.net>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: kenneth greifer
> 
> Steve,
> 
> If you are saying that the Masoretic writers changed the holem in Isaiah
> in
> those quotes from a vav with a dot over it to a dot only,

[Steve Miller] I am saying that the function of the holem vowel in MT has
support in the written ancient text. That is really all I can say. It is
possible that MT writers standardized different ways in which the function
of the holem was written down.

> how do you know if
> they also changed it in Haggai 2:7? Maybe Haggai 2:7 had a dot over the
> vav
> originally, and they wrote it with a dot only. 

[Steve Miller] You are saying that maybe chemdath in Hag 2:7 originally had
a vav with a dot over it, and then it got changed to a dot? But there's no
dot (holem) there in the MT there. I do not think we have the right to add
one.


> Maybe people who change the
> word to plural in Haggai 2:7 are actually writing it the way the Dead Sea
> Scroll writers would have written it. (I hope I understood what you said
> in
> your email, and this answer makes sense to you.)

[Steve Miller] I'm not following you here. DSS would have written a plural
chemdath with a vav. The emenders of Hag 2:7 do not suggest to change the
consonants.

> 
> You are assuming that the Dead Sea Scrolls are the original text because
> they are older copies, but that does not mean they really older. The
> Masoretic texts could be older, even if we don't have copies of it that
> are
> older than the Dead Sea Scrolls.

[Steve Miller] I agree that the MT text could be older and more accurate. I
am saying that the holem in MT text has a written basis in the ancient text,
and was not something just handed down orally and not written down until
100-200 A.D.

> 
> Also, I don't think people should make major decisions about Biblical
> Hebrew
> based on such a tiny amount of proof, that really does not prove anything.
 
[Steve Miller] Fact: the holem without an underlying vav in MT appears as a
vav in DSS in 100% of the random sample that I tried. 17 cases.  (I am
willing to do another random sample specified by someone else.)

Based on that fact, I conclude that the function of the holem vowel was part
of the written text. 
Based on that conclusion, I believe that adding a holem to the MT text is
like adding a vav consonant to the text, which I would not do.

Thanks very much for your input.

-Steve Miller
Detroit