Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>]

I agree with you that what I say is conjectural. All we say on this topic is conjectural.

1. The term "masorates" is ambiguous and (possibly intentionally) misleading. We are talking about the NAQDANIYM, the mysterious people (possibly Karaites) who appeared, around the 9th century, from nowhere, asked permission from no one, and single handedly accomplished this monumental (and possibly rabbinically censured) task of punctuating the entire Hebrew bible. Once it was done, it was universally accepted. There was no other choice. 

2. The Hebrew script was indeed changed, but this was done by an absolute authority.

3. The fact of the matter is that "gemination" does not exist today. Some say that the traditional Yemenites "geminate", but I am unable to verify this as I don't recognize their Torah reading as being Hebrew (my fault, of course). Why is "gemination" out? because it is redundant. 

4. What I mean by "naturally articulated" is the fact that the dagesh "forte" appears between two vowels causing a faint doubling due to the entering and the leaving of the consonant, but this is a universal phenomenon.

5. The dagesh "lene" is in my opinion but a shifted dagesh "forte", kept only for the BGDKPT letters. The fact of the matter is that you may remove every dagesh (except in the BKP letters) and no one will notice it. The dagesh became obsolete by the invention of the NIYQUD, and is being kept in place just for tradition. I tend to think that the dagesh was introduced originally to serve as a pre-niyqud reading hint, and that it never had any phonetic purpose. For instance, the un-punctuated word $BR is ambiguous, but seeing a dot in the letter B, the reader is prompted to read it $IBER, in the piel form, rather than in the qal form.

6. I just repeat that I don't believe the NAQDANIYM would have dared to place a dot INSIDE the Hebrew letter ––– it was there much before them, but you are, of course, free to disagree and advance your own theories on this matter.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

On May 24, 2013, at 3:54 PM, Nir cohen - Prof. Mat. wrote:

Is it conceivable that the "masorates" would disfigure the sacred  

text itself to mark something that is only questionably there, or  

that naturally articulates itself?

isaac,

your question was a bit ambiguous, ralf answered about the verb form, 

i complete on the dagesh.

all your implicit assumptions are either wrong or conjectural.

1. your conjecture that, for the masoretes, putting a dot inside a 

letter meant disfiguration of the sacred, has no support.

2. quite to the contrary, by the fact that they did put this dot 

there you can conclude that they did NOT consider this as disfiguring.

3. moreover, the dagesh does not touch the letter - they remain 

disconnected. so, geometrically speaking, there is no disfiguring 

whatsoever.

4. but in fact the masoretes and even the talmudists did disfigure the 

letters

much more than this: for example, added to them "ctarim" etc. 

they even changed the alfabet from hebrew to aramaic!!!!!!!!!!! 

CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT?? the SACRED script! so, what is "sacred" or 

not is subject to much debate.

5. the argument that gemination was, to the masoretes, "questionable" 

is meaningless: it may be "questionable" only to us. as

to the masoretes, there are only two possible hypotheses: either 

gemination was there at their time, or not. in case it was there, 

it would indeed make sense if the masoretes denoted it and call it 

"DAGESH", as they did. now, since neither you nor me know for 

sure that gemination existed, or not, i have the right to speculate 

as much as you. and so do all the others b-henrew members, especially

as gemination is a typical semitic phenomenon, and appears always 

IN THE SAME PLACES. now, if as you say gemination was not a feature of hebrew

in masoretic time, then indeed i would be asking what this funny dot 

is doing there.

6. equally absurd is the opinion that gemination, assuming it existed,

was "naturally articulated". if indeed gemination existed, it was 

articulated in some letters and not in others. so, it required 

notation - a DAGESH.

7. the dagesh qal is very similar. equally denoted by a dot, it 

equally "disfigures" the letter to express some difference which 

clearly existed in THEIR time, if not much earlier. 

say B vs V, K vs Kh. that it evidently marks phonological difference 

is at least partly evident from the greek and latin translations, 

e.g. PALESTINA and not FALESTINA. JOSEPH and not JOSEP. as to (ABRAM, 

ABEL the problem is in the greek!) so, SOME letters required dagesh qal,

others did not. and so a dot was invented.

8. in fact, masorah-wise there are not two types of dagesh, just one.

it seems that masorah put the dagesh whenever they observed a 

binary phonological change. then, at some point, invented a 

grammatical rule which simplified the empiric evidence. but in 

this respect, the masoretes were no different than any grammarians:

observation, deduction, simplification. so, at some point i guess that 

they discovered that dagesh sometimes meant dislabialization, 

sometimes gemination. then invented the syllable law etc etc.

9. observe that the niqud was invented in several different places at 

once, and with only minimal differences between them.

nir cohen

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