Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>]

I'll not get into a discussion about how you seem to have concluded that I'm
not a Hebrew without first asking me if I was born in the blood line of one
the 12 tribes but rather get on with dealing with the issue you have raised.

You seem to feel confident that there has always been an unbroken tradition
of the vocalisation despite the many debates and conflicting traditions. If
the tradition was so unbroken how do we end up with variant readings in the
various MSS (here we are talking about disagreements of consonants let alone
vowels)? How do you explain he versus she blatant errors in the received
text?

James Christian

On 6 May 2010 22:00, Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
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