Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>]

Hi Karl,

Four things:

1. My own experience is the opposite of your own: I find that if I sit 
with the text as it stands long enough, emendation and repointing can 
nearly always be avoided.

2. What you have to say below is assertion without demonstrable evidence.

3. I would rather the text dictate what it says than repointing or 
emending it to what I think it should say.

4. You have not presented a scenario where the text changed from having 
a noun to a verb. If this is what has happened, then there is to be some 
explanation. Nevertheless, I am unable to find manuscript support for 
your position so it seems to be pure conjecture if a scenario giving 
rise to the alteration is not able to be provided.

Regards,
David Kummerow.


> David:
> First of all, when I read Tanakh, at least for the last few times I read it
> through, I read it without the Masoretic points. There are a few reasons 
> for
> it: I read using a font derived from pre-Exile Hebrew writing, and the
> points don't fit in it (I don't know when I deviate from their points); 
> when
> reading with the dots, I came across too many (I didn't bother to count)
> instances where changing the points changed a difficult to understand
> passage to a simple, easily read one; I think the Masoretes were more
> interested in preserving the sounds that had come to them from their
> tradition than in having the text make sense, i.e. preserving tradition was
> more important than understanding it; and I don't think they were as
> mechanically rigorous in their parts of speech as are modern day
> grammarians.
>
> Having said that, I have noticed that almost every time there is a dispute
> as to the meaning of a verse, changing the Masoretic points of a word or 
> two
> is enough to clear up the dispute. Almost every time. And here is a verse
> with a dispute.
>
> Karl W. Randolph.