Biblical Hebrew Forum

[AMK Judaica <amkjudaica AT hotmail.com>]

Karl, a) for those of us interested in the accuracy of the masoretic text, 
even little lines like the meteg are important. (i'm not looking to debate 
the possibility or futility of determining "the" masoretic text, but rather 
trying to convey why a little line is important to some people.) b) fixing 
the masoretic text is a worthwhile task in its own right, but also note that 
the bible features prominently in contemporary jewish liturgy and 
hazzanim/ba'ale keri'ah (lectors) should (ideally) take the meteg into 
account when reading. c) rivka's orginal question about the meteg had to do 
with the question of whether or not it has implications for the opening or 
closure of a syllable, which i suspect has to do with her interest in the 
kamatz vowel. so it's not solely about one little line, but rather another 
little line with a dot underneath as well. d) vocalization and cantillation 
markings in general were added to the text long after biblical hebrew ceased 
to be a spoken language. so why single out the meteg for disregard? as an 
aside, your comment about the insignificance of the meteg reminds me about a 
comment about the dagesh. gerson rosenzweig was an immigrant humorist, poet 
and shoe salesman (he advertised his store in the hebrew press under the name 
bet xalutz ha-na'al!) on new york's lower east side at the end of the 19th 
c.at the end of his "shirim, meshalim u-mikhtamim" (ny, 1893) he blamed the 
typsetter for any errors in the text and asked "the careful reader to take 
misplaced degeshim and place them where they are missing, and if there are 
not enough he should inform me and i will send him the missing degeshim. if 
there are extras, he may keep them as a gift." kol tuv,ari kinsberg > Date: 
Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:58:53 -0800> From: kwrandolph AT gmail.com> To: 
b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Meteg and Shva Na/Nah> > 
For another view on this controversy:> > I´m a little amused at the amount of 
electronic ink metaphorically spilled> in this discussion, of a symbol that 
does not appear on my computer when I> read Tanakh. Please don´t take it 
personally, as in this message I have no> intention to single out any 
individual, rather this is an example of how> grmmarians love to wax long on 
minutiae, while in the bigger picture of the> language, this was added long 
after Biblical Hebrew ceased to be spoken and> is sometimes wrong.> > Carry 
on, this is just a comment from the peanut gallery.> > Karl W. Randolph.> 
_______________________________________________> b-hebrew mailing list> 
b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew

Suspicious message? There’s an alert for that. Get your Hotmail® account now.
_________________________________________________________________
You live life online. So we put Windows on the web. 
http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/127032869/direct/01/