Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 6:41 PM, James Christian wrote:

> Yes Yitzhak. In my view there was a tradition of vocalisation just in the
> same way as there was an oral Torah. That is to say that when we finally set
> about writing it down we couldn't all unanimously agree just exactly what
> that tradition was. So please forgive me if I'm skeptical but I feel it more
> scholarly an approach to analyse the text critically and taking away the
> vowel points of the massoretes is an important step in this process.
> James Christian

James, I don't know who this "we" is that you speak of.  I was correcting your
views about "the Hebrews" which you voiced here:

>> > corruption of it. Karl's method is only to be commended and, in fact,
>> > the
>> > Hebrews read the text in this way for thousands of years before the
>> > Massoretes made this change.

I responded to this statement as a "Hebrew" speaking for your inaccurate
and wrong statements about us.

There is nothing scholarly or critical about ignoring the vowels.  Nor is it 
an
issue that the Masoretes couldn't all unanimously agree what that tradition
was.  The issue is complex.  There are several traditions, all relevant and
authentic.  A proper scholarly approach is actually to make use of the
wealth of information and slowly reconstruct the tradition back based on
the existing representatives.  Furthermore, the best way to analyze the
text critically is to clearly understand the vowels.  Only with expertise in
the vocalization (or, better yet, different vocalization systems in addition
to the well-documented Tiberian system) can you consider alternatives.

Yitzhak Sapir