Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Philip <philipengmann AT yahoo.com>]

Dear Group,
 
Please can anyone tell me why the consonantal Hebrew text was vocalized?
 
Many thanks,
 
Philip Engmann



>From ishinan AT comcast.net  Sun Mar 28 20:03:24 2010
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Motivation for Vocalizing the Hebrew Old Testament
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[PHILIP ENGMANN] - Dear Group, Please can anyone tell me why the consonantal
Hebrew text was vocalized?

-------------------------------------------------------

[ISHINAN] - Dear Philip, it is well known that the core of the Tanakh is
written in Classical Hebrew.  However, Biblical Hebrew was displaced as the
everyday spoken language for most Jews, by the Aramaic language, by then
considered the lingua Franca of the Near East.

Overtime, Aramaic became the sole spoken language.  As a corollary, Hebrew
ceased to function as a spoken language around the same time. Thus, chapter
IX of the Biblical book of Nehemiah describes what was clearly a momentous
event which took place in the mid. 5th (circa between 445 and 420 B.C.). The
Scribe Ezra, having recently arrived in Babylon, was reading to the
assembled crowd the book of Law.  As Ezra spoke, so the book of Nehemiah
narrates, others provided an interpretation of Ezra's words for the benefit
of the Jewish assembly gathered to hear them. Although Hebrew and Aramaic
are closely related Semitic languages, the knowledge of one did not
necessarily lead to competency in the other.

MOTIVATIONS FOR VOCALIZING THE OLD TESTAMENT CONSONANTAL TEXT:

As ritual, Torah scrolls usually contain only the Hebrew consonantal text -
nothing may be added, nothing taken away.  This  created a problem for Jews
who ceased to speak Biblical Hebrew, except for the very few scholars who
used it for personal study rather than for ritual use.

This alarming situation exposed the fact that it has become exceedingly
difficult to preserve the memory of the correct pronunciation. To counteract
this impediment, the authors of Masoretic codices, under the influence of
the Arabic grammarians of the time (in the seventh and eighth centuries
C.E. ), improvised full systems of vocalization. Their aim was to restore
the correct pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew, and to protect against scribal
errors, as well as to annotate possible variants and cantillation. The
latter's primary incentive was to provide signs to guide the chanting of the
sacred texts during public worship. Until the time of the Masoretes, these
signs conveyed the tradition of the melody of the reading, which was passed
on from generation to generation.

I hope this helps

Best regards,

Ishinan Ishibashi