Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Petr:

On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 3:56 PM, Petr Tomasek <tomasek AT etf.cuni.cz> wrote:

> > > No one can read or pronounce or even understand the text ( see
> > > http://www.houseofdavid.ca/anc_heb_5.htm#orth )without assuming a
> > > vocalization.
> > >
> >
> > For the record, I largely still use the vowel pronunciations for the
> > different forms as were used by the Masoretes, but that is only to help
> > with reading the text. I make no claim that those pronunciations are
> > accurate for Biblical times. In this, I am using those pronunciations the
> > same way as Egyptologists, as mentioned by Will Parsons.
>
>
> Karl, please, could you make clear what are you speaking about? :-)
>
> Namely, are you interested in the exact ancient pronounciation of the
> Hebrew
> in the "biblical times" (if so, why?) or is the meaning/grammatical form
> what is important for you?
>

The meaning/grammatical forms are what are important.

As for the pronunciation, I think that is lost and unrecoverable.

>
> But if you conclude from this fact that the masoretic vocalization is
> "unreliable" or even erroneous _as opposed to the written text_ than
> you are completely wrong.
>
> Years ago I started my disertation in an effort to find the "theology"
> of the Masoretic text assuming that it were "the Masoretes" who invented
> the vocalization of the masoretic codices.
>

That’s one place where I differ from you: I never considered that the
Masoretes invented the vocalization that they recorded. They invented the
written schema that indicates the vocalization that they inherited, but
that was to record a tradition that had been handed down to them. I have
been consistent in this understanding, having had to argue against the
proposition that the Masoretes invented the vocalizations several times.

I think the biggest changes in Hebrew pronunciation occurred a thousand
years before the Masoretes, during and shortly after the Babylonian Exile,
with continued but smaller changes in the following centuries.

>
> Now I am convinced that all that "the Masoretes" have done was to combine
> two
> (slightly different) textual traditions of the Jewish Hebrew Bible:
> the written text (copied by the scribes) and a memorized and orally
> studied variant of the same texts. It seems to me that socio-economic
> conditions were what caused the two traditions to exist (the high costs of
> the writing) and later to be merged at the end of the 1st millenium C.E.
> (due to a more accessible literacy at that time and consequently
> the decay of the ability to memorize large chunks of texts...).
>
> What I found is that both sources of "our" masoretic codices, i.e. the
> written text and the oral tradition are prone to specific transmission
> errors - each to its own, so that sometimes the written text is more
> reliable but in other cases it is, in turn, the oral tradition that
> preserved
> the text in a better shape.
>
> For example if you find ר instead of ד (or vice versa) it is in the vast
> majority of cases
> a scribal error (and many times the oral tradition has the better variant,
> i.e. in cases where the two traditions differ - see the qerē/ketīḇ).
> On the other hand, phenomena such as harmonization are typical errors that
> occur during an oral transmition of the text.
>

I don’t know about this particular error, but in general, where there is a
Ketib/Qere pair, the vast majority of the times (it seems to me to be over
90% of the pairs) I find that the Ketib fits the context and meaning better
than the Qere. Hence I go with the Ketib.

>
> Sometimes even more tricky examples can be found where a scribal error
> caused the oral tradition to be "corrected" according to such an erroneous
> form creating at the end totally nonsensical form.
>
> In all these cases it doesn't make any sense to ignore the masoretic
> vocalization; rather the exact nature of the transmission error should
> be considered to decide which of the two traditions is more reliable in
> a specific case - or to see whether some sort of "interplay" between the
> two traditions may have occured.
>

First of all, I found that one does not need the Masoretic points in order
to read and understand Tanakh in Hebrew. Where a written form may be read
in a few different ways, the contexts almost always indicate which readings
should be read. It has been years since I last looked at the Masoretic
points.

Secondly, when I looked at the Masoretic points, I found that they were
sometimes wrong. Even an error rate of 1% adds up to one error every few
verses. By this, I mean that the incorrect points indicate incorrect
meaning / grammar that can end up leading to a ketib/qere pair.

Thirdly, the Masoretic points indicate a pronunciation from a millennium
after Biblical Hebrew was no longer spoken as a native tongue. As such, it
is impossible that they represent Biblical era pronunciation.

I am not fighting against the Masoretic points, they are just irrelevant to
an understanding of Biblical Hebrew.

>
> Ignoring the masoretic tradition and relying only on the written text
> is biased and unscientific and doesn't help in understanding the textual
> history of the Hebrew Bible or the development of the Biblical Hebrew
> itself.
>

Here’s where I have to disagree with you. During the time that Biblical
Hebrew was spoken as a native tongue, all we have is the consonantal text.
We have no proof of which vowels were pronounced in Biblical Hebrew, all we
have are theories and beliefs. I am willing to admit to our collective
ignorance, and then go on.

>
> For more see my dissertation (which I reached about a month ago, hoping it
> will be accepted): http://www.etf.cuni.cz/~tomasek/dis.pdf
> (Unfortunatelly, I didn't manage to catch all the errors, so be warned...
> :-/ )
>

It appears that your proposed dissertation reflects the Talmudic era. That
does not reflect the pre-Babylonian Exile era with its widespread apostasy
and idol worship, but when Hebrew was spoken as a native language. I won’t
comment on the theological implications of the Talmudic era, as this is a
forum dedicated to the study of the language, not the theology, of Tanakh.

>
> Petr Tomasek
>
> --
> Petr Tomasek <http://www.etf.cuni.cz/~tomasek>
> Jabber: butrus AT jabbim.cz
>
> Karl W. Randolph.