Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jerry Shepherd <jshepherd53 AT gmail.com>]

Karl had asked: "How much editorial activity? What evidence do you have that the MT consonantal text, apart from relatively few copyist errors, doesn’t represent an older text form?"

 

My response was as follows.

 

Actually, I have you to thank for giving me the answer to this question.  In your reply to Ruth you referenced an article on the SBL Forum site  by William Griffin about your preference for an unpointed text.  Notice this paragraph:

 

"'Biblical Hebrew' is the name applied to the language(s) contained in a collection of texts that were written over a period of about a thousand years, spanning the second and first millennia B.C.E., by people in diverse regions and settings. Originally, it was written in what is called 'Paleohebrew,' a script much different from current Hebrew texts.[2] Dots were employed as word separators, and there were no distinctions between medial and final forms. The language was written without vowels. From about the sixth century B.C.E. on, many consonants were added to represent vowels (aleph, he, vav, and yodh), known as matres lectionis, 'mothers of the reading.'"

 

Griffin, by the way, references one of the important works for this whole discussion, Cross and Freedman's Early Hebrew Orthography.  Now, you may not agree with him; but Griffin here argues that the use matres lectiones did not come into play until the sixth century BCE.  Therefore, any texts of biblical books that existed before then must have been subjected to a wholesale editing process to account that addes these matres lectiones.  So, when reading, for example, the text of Exodus, if one believes that this text was written by Moses or someone at or close to that same time period, every time one comes across a heh, waw, or yod used as a vowel letter, one is actually reading a text that was updated to include these vowel letters many centuries later.  That constitutes a substantial revision of the consonantal text.

 

Karl's response was as follows:

 

Points to consider:

 

1) in pre-Babylonian Exile writings, were they “materes lectionis” or full-fledged consonants? In other words, prior to their being counted as vowels by later readers, were they considered to be consonants by the original writers?

 

2) In reading the pre-Babylonian Exile books, “materes lectionis” are found so seldom as to be either a) sounds added in poetry to make it fit a meter or b) copyist errors by later copyists or c) originally consonants later changed to materes lectionis?

 

My answer:

 

1) Karl, are you really being serious here?  This sounds absolutely ridiculous.

 

(2) Again, I have to ask, are you being serious here, that matres lectiones are seldom found in pre-exilic writings?  Look at Gen 1.  There are two occurrences  in v. 1, seven occurrences in v. 3, five in verse 3. and on and on.  You've got me totally confused here.

 

Blessings,

 

Jerry

Jerry Shepherd

Taylor Seminary

Edmonton, Alberta

jshepherd53 AT gmail.com