Biblical Hebrew Forum

["K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Yitzhak:

On 12/29/06, Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/27/06, K Randolph wrote:
>
> > How many times do I have to repeat myself before you stop claiming
> > that I claim that the Masoretes "made up the vowels" that they
> > preserved with their points?
>
> Actually, your claim is more far reaching and deals with consonants as
> well.
Huh???

How does claiming that the Masoretes preserved the pronunciation of
the tradition as it existed at their time get morphed into a claim
that they made up their pronunciations?

How many more times do I need to say this before you understand it?

I don't understand your line of thought.

> > Even you admit in the long paragraph (deleted in this response) that
> > it is almost certain that those pronunciations were not the same as in
> > Biblical times. That is all I have ever claimed.
>
> The claim that the pronunciations were different does not mean that
> the original meaning is not preserved.  However, your claim goes
> much further and says that you can effectively ignore the vowels and
> use context primarily.  You have also severely contradicted some
> basic claims of Hebrew linguistics (such as the "CV theory").
I have shown specific examples where the pointing distorted the
meaning, plus there have been discussions on other examples where
changing the points cleared up the understanding.

As for the CV theory, it contradicts only the Masoretic pointing, not
linguistics. And as I have repeatedly said, you can neither prove nor
disprove it because there is not enough surviving information.

> Now, you nor other Christians have a monopoly on the word
> "inspired." ...

Many words have a common meaning, and a technical meaning. Steve
Miller was using "inspired" according to the technical meaning from
within his theology, which is what I was saying you should understand
before going off and saying foolishness.

> ...  Even if there is an official doctrine of "Inspiration"
> that is published by the Pope, ...

Pope? Who is he? (Rhetorical question)

> ... "inspiration" is still an English word
> and may be used by other religions without prejudice.  In particular,
> Judaism has a similar concept in that traditional Jews do believe that
> the Massoretic marks represent the divine system of pronunciation....(deleted a Jewish 
> understanding of "inspiration" for length)
This is what I mean, you need to know more than just your own
definition, otherwise you can end up looking foolish.

> I don't understand your claim about being able to find documents
> an uncanny ability, but leaving something to be desired of understanding
> them.  Are you talking about that "capernaum" issue?  As you know, in
> private mails, I told you that I did not read the entire article but only 
> parts
> of it.  Those parts I did read seemed to directly suggest that no manuscript
> prior to the 4th century BCE contains the spelling "capernaum", and prior
> documents contained the spelling "capharnaum" or "cafarnaum".  You
> seemed to take this as consistent with your belief that "capernaum" is
> an otherwise unpreserved early Christian pronunciation because no
> Galilean evidence was brought that showed the spelling is "capharnaum"
> even in the Galilee.  Well, you may think what you want, but I think the
> absence of evidence is no place for extreme conclusions.  I also
> provided a similar example of camel (from "gamal") where it is unlikely
> that Galilean evidence had anything to do with it.  Now, what do you think
> the article said that I did not understand properly?
When reading the whole article, I noticed that he was making claims
that the evidence did not back up. He took as a given that the
Galilean pronunciation was always with a F and not P, with no evidence
to back it up. The earliest evidence for both readings that he had was
from the fourth century. His whole argument hinges on an assumption
that may be wrong. The evidence that does exist leaves open the
possibility that his assumption is wrong.

He did have Judean evidence that the Judean pronunciation had an F
instead of a P, but were the Judean and Galilean pronunciations the
same? We know that they differed in some areas, we just don't have
surviving records where and how they differed, and it could be that
this was one. Remember, the New Testament is the earliest document we
have that was written with transliterations from a Galilean rather
than a Judean slant.

You properly understood the abstract about the article that you read.
Because you did not read the whole article, you didn't see that he was
making assumptions without evidence to back them up.

This is why I wanted to see the whole article, not just an abstract,
especially if that abstract was written by someone who agreed with
him.

> Going back to pronunciations, I do argue that the pronunciations were
> different. ...

In this, we both agree.

> ...  I even argue that we can reconstruct them to some degree and
> that if we do, we find Hebrew getting closer and closer to the EA Canaanite
> and Ugaritic of the Late Bronze, as we reach the Late Bronze period.  I
> also do not say that because the pronunciation was different the word was
> wrongly understood. ...

A change in pronunciation and a change in meaning are two separate,
though often connected, issues. Depends on which changes of
pronunciation you are talking about.

> ...  Yes, Massoretes probably did record pronunciations
> that were corrupted by some transmissional problems.  This does not mean
> that every word should be ignored from the Massoretic notes. ...

To repeat myself, I found that the vast majority of the points as far
as meaning are concerned are correct and readily recognized, making
them unnecessary, which made having them on the page visual clutter.
On the tiny minority of times that they are wrong, they are visual
noise to filter out. Either way, I prefer not to deal with them. Just
a personal preference.

> ...  The
> Massoretic notes, being an authentic representation of a reading tradition,
> is the best we have, and one cannot simply ignore it because one does not
> like it, or feels he can do just as well otherwise. ...

To quote you above, " We may say that errors in transmission perhaps
occurred through the ages in both the written and oral text" is
already an admission that we can't blindly trust the Masoretic points.

> ...  Yes, readers did read the
> Torah scroll in liturgy from an unvoweled manuscript.  But they also had a
> clear memory of what the vowels were supposed to be that they had
> received from oral tradition.  While I don't necessarily think that
> the tradition
> goes back to Moses, I do think that the tradition goes back to when Hebrew
> was still a spoken language.  In contrast, your claim is that the reading
> tradition does not even go back that far, and that major corruptions were
> introduced because the Massoretes or their ancestors did not understand
> Hebrew and spoke Aramaic, even so far as to construct an artificial
> language that did not exist authentically derive from a spoken language.
> This is why I say you say the Massoretes made it up.  If instead, you
> think that the vocalization system is as authentic as the consonantal
> text, then I'm sorry.
>
> Yitzhak Sapir

Oy Veh!!! You close with a complete distortion of what I said. Look at
my opening question above. How many times do I have to repeat myself
before you stop putting words in my mouth that I have never said? How
many times ... ???

Karl W. Randolph.