Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Uri:

On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 4:40 PM, Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com> wrote:

>   ...>"The thing is that we...  don't know what is the
>  intended distinction between a qamats and a
> patax. Did these markings represent different
>  pronunciations, or was  the qamats used to indicate
>  only something gramatical, we just don't  know >..."
>
>      If you'd taken the slightest trouble, you'd
>  have found out that whoever vocalized the consonantal
>  text, heard distinctly two different 'A' vowels.
>

Admittedly so, but which were those two ‘A’ vowels? And which symbols did
they use to designate those vowels?


>     Correspondingly they were given different markers.
>  One was a Qamatz, another a Patach, and related to
>  the last, a semi-vowel hataf-patach. There is no point
>  in explicating the differences bweteen long and short
>  vowels here.


Were the patach and hataf-patach originally for the short and long “A’
sounds, while the qamatz referred to a more hollow vowel that, as the
language developed, became more open in the open (CV) syllables to where it
is now almost indistinguishable from a hataf, while in closed (CVC)
syllables the sound itself became more closed to where today it is almost
indistinguishable from the holem? But by that time the writing system had
already become tradition?


> …
>   The second post to which I respond, read in part:
>
>   ..."> My question is: why a qamats and not a patah?
> >
> > Reasons like "tradition", "custom"... are not welcome.<"..
>
>
>     …
>    Sometimes those who vocalized  biblical texts, made
>  mistakes, but this is not the place to elaborate.
>
>    Then there are the well known differences between
>  'Ktiv' and 'Qri'. …
>
>    Many hundreds of such difference between the 'Ktiv'
>  and the 'Qri" were counted in the biblical texts; however,
>  according to different counts, they amounted to over
>  fifteen hundred cases, depending on
>  the manuscripts.
>

Many of these ‘Ktiv’ and ‘Qri’ post-date the Masoretes, so that when one
reads an unpointed text, occasionally one finds a ‘Ktiv’ and ‘Qri’ that are
identical.

Almost always I find that the ‘Ktiv’ gives a superior reading according to
context, syntax and meaning than the ‘Qri’.

>
>   Uri Hurwitz                                    Great Neck, NY
>
>
> Karl W. Randolph.