The
alphabetical letters (consonants) are merely symbols of sound. No doubt the
words are formed by placing the consonants together but they cannot be
pronounced until some proper vocalization system be applied. Some scripts and
languages have introduced vowels in their alphabet to meet this requirement, but
they are not sufficient and their scope is limited. Subtle differences of
pronunciation cannot be expressed through them. Therefore some languages had to
evolve their own systems of vowel signs, and Arabic is almost the foremost
instance of it. As far as Hebrew is concerned it was void of any such vowel
signs until seventh century AD. Sir Frederic Kenyon writes:
(…) in its original state only the consonants were
written, the vowels being left to be filled up by the reader’s mind. (…). This
ancient practice of omitting the vowels is one fertile cause of varieties in the
text, for it will readily be understood that doubts might often occur as to the
proper vowels to be supplied to a group of consonants. To take a parallel from
English, the consonants “M R” might be read as mare, mire, or more, and it is
quite possible that in some cases the sense of the passage would not show for
certain which way was right.
Shemaryahu
Talmon, Professor of Bible, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem writes:
The absence of vowels meant that many a Hebrew consonant
group could be differently pronounced, and from this resulted the fact that a
variety of meanings could be attached to one and the same word in the original.
When ultimately vowels were introduced into the Hebrew text of the Bible, these
pronunciation variants sometimes became the bases of variae lections (various
readings).
The language
of the OT was mostly Hebrew. When its script came into existence cannot be
determined of certain. David Diringer, formerly Reader in Semitic Epigraphy,
Cambridge University says:
Through the results of excavation and research, the
development of the early Hebrew alphabet can now be traced for more than a
thousand years. We may assume that about 1000 BC, after the United Kingdom had
been established and its centralized administration organized by King David with
a staff of secretaries (see, for instance, 2Sam. 8:17 and 20:25), the early
Hebrew alphabet had begun its autonomous development.
It took early
Hebrew alphabet almost one thousand years to evolve into the modern square
Hebrew alphabet. The same writer explains:
The (square) Hebrew alphabet became standardized just
before the Christian era and took the form which, with insignificant changes, we
have now.
For centuries
the Hebrew script remained restricted to groups of letters placed together and
vowel signs were not introduced to it. The same writer explains:
The Hebrew alphabet consists of the ancient 22 Semitic
letters, which are all consonants, though four of them (aliph, he, waw and yod)
are also used to represent long vowels, particularly at the end of a word. The
absence of vowel letters was not very strongly felt in Hebrew any more than it
was in the other Semitic languages. (Indeed, it must be emphasized that the
Semitic languages are mainly based on consonantal roots.) On the other hand, as
Hebrew speech passed out of daily use, and familiarity with Biblical Hebrew
steadily declined, it became necessary to introduce some form of vocal
distinction, so that the Torah could be read and explained correctly.
When, in the
second half of the sixth century BC, Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylonia and,
terminating the exile of the Jewish people, allowed them to leave Babylonia and
to go back to their homeland, Jerusalem, two separate centres of learning
evolved among Jews: Babylonian and Palestinian. Vocalization and vowel signs
were developed there during the late fifth to ninth century AD. In the eighth
century, refinements were introduced into the vocalization which ultimately
produced the complicated scheme of supralineal pointing. Rev. Prof. B. J.
Roberts, Prof. Of Heb. and Biblical Studies, Univ. College of North Wales
explains it in his article “The OT, MSS, Text and Versions” as follows:
The survival of the two main traditions of Massoretic
activity in Babylon and Palestine is seen in the two divergent Massoroth, (…).
Nowhere is the divergence more obvious or more relevant than in the systems of
vocalization which were superimposed on the consonantal text and which were
developed both in Palestine and Babylon between the late fifth century and the
ninth century A.D. in Babylon sporadic use of vocalic consonants and dots was
made to assist and to formalize the correct recitation of the hitherto
unvocalized, consonantal text in synagogue worship. In the eighth century, (…),
refinements were introduced into the vocalization which ultimately produced the
complicated scheme of supralineal pointing which still survives in the so-called
Babylonian vocalization. (…).
The earlier, primitive phases of the vocalization in both
transmissions are almost wholly unknown, except for incidental and until
recently incomprehensible references in late rabbinic works, (…).
It requires a
lengthy discussion. Only a brief background of the theme has been afforded here,
which explains that the attempts of recording the exact pronunciation of some
Hebrew word succeeded after the Islamic era; hundreds and in some cases
thousands of years after the claimed origin of those books. How is it possible
that correct pronunciation of the words of the Bible could have been properly
preserved without the existence of any system of vowel signs or vocalization?
The Biblical scholars could not fix the pronunciation of even the name of their
God: “YHWH”.
Geddes
MacGregor writes:
Not even the most perfect copyist could ensure an
unambiguous text, for Hebrew was written entirely without vowels, which the
reader had to supply for himself. (…). Competent Hebraists, without as much
difficulty as one might suppose, read manuscripts written in this way; but
ambiguities were inevitable. To help in the elimination of these ambiguities, a
school of Jewish scholars, the Massoretes, invented, probably about the sixth
century A.D, a system of pointing —dots and dashes placed under the Hebrew
letters to indicate the vowel sounds. The Massoretes naturally vocalized the
text according to the practice of their own day. From this Massoretic text, in
“pointed” Hebrew, we can know fairly well how Hebrew sounded when it was
solemnly chanted in a synagogue as long ago as, say, the time of Mohammed. But
we have no such clear knowledge of how it may have been pronounced by David or
Solomon. The Massoretes halted the corruption that the passage of centuries had
inevitably introduced; but they came on the scene much too late to preserve for
us an entirely pure unambiguous Old Testament text. They also compiled a set of
notes, called Massorah, and offered variant readings.
(…) about the end of the first century A.D., (…), there
were considerable textual variations among the existing manuscripts. The problem
of later determining what, in a doubtful case, was the original reading, is
obviously a difficult and highly technical one demanding, for its solution,
great learning and skill. (…). If we remember that besides such textual
disparities there are also, in unpointed Hebrew, great possibilities of
ambiguity, and that the Massoretes themselves frequently misled posterity by
faulty vocalization that changed the meaning, we shall have some notion of the
complexity of the task of trying to recover, as far as may be possible, the
original Old Testament text.
The Jewish
Encyclopaedia has explained it in the following words:
All Semitic script, (…), is purely consonantal, the reader
being left to supply the vowels. (…). To obviate such ambiguity the Semitic
languages have developed three methods. The oldest method is to denote the
vowels by the vowel-letters אוי.
(…). But since the vowel-letters were not sufficient to mark the exact shades of
the vowel-sounds, some of the Semitic languages ( i.e. those which were in
possession of sacred books in whose recitation exactness was imperative)
developed systems of vowel-signs. (….). Elijah Levita had already pointed out
that the Talmudim and Midrashim do not mention vowel-signs or vowel-names, in
spite of there having been abundant opportunity to do so. From this fact he
concluded that vocalization and accentuation are post-Talmudic. The earliest
date mentioned of vocalization is that of Saadia Gaon and his contemporaries.
Between the dates 500 and 900 the following data are to be considered: Even
Aaron ben Moses ben Asher, whose ancestor in the sixth generation flourished in
the second half of the eighth century, was ignorant of the origin of the
vowel-points. A still older authority than Ben Asher the elder, R. Phinehas, the
head of the academy, is quoted as authority for T (Tiberian system of
vocalization). (…). He (R. Phinehas) must have lived early in the eighth
century, or must have been contemporary with Khalil b. Ahmad (719-729), to whom
the introduction of the Arabic system is attributed. Assuming that A (Arabic
system of vocalization) and T (Tiberian system) were introduced about 750, these
being based on P (Palestinian system) and B (Babylonian), the date for P must be
about 700, (…).
J. J. Pn.
Writes in his article “The Text of the OT” in the Encyclopaedia Britannica:
The form in which the Hebrew text of the OT is presented
in most manuscripts and printed editions is that of the Masoretic text, the date
of which is usually placed somewhere between the 6th and 8th centuries A.D. (…);
but before that date, owing to various causes, a larger number of corruptions
indisputably were [sic.] introduced into the Hebrew text.
Originally the text consisted only of consonants, since
the Hebrew language had an alphabet without vowels. It is also likely that in
the earliest texts the words and sentences were not divided. The evolution of
the Masoretic text was an attempt to make up for both these deficiencies. It
supplied vowels by adding marks to the consonantal text, and it divided the
words and sentences. For many centuries it was believed that these vowel points
formed part of the original text; some theologians argued that points were
inspired by the Holy Spirit. But subsequent research has proved beyond doubt
that they are younger by almost 1,000 years than the text itself.
Encyclopedia
Americana has also afforded an account of the vocalization of the Biblical text.
It would be very useful to go through it because it has dealt with the theme in
a brief and systematic manner. The writer of the article “MSS and Versions of
the OT”, Arthur Jeffery of the Columbia University states:
As certain documents, however, came to be regarded as
something apart, something of importance for the religious life of the
community, there arose among the Jews, (…), those who devoted themselves in a
particular way to the care of such writings. These later were called Sopherim,
and although this is popularly translated “scribes”, they were not merely
copyists, but keepers of records, interpreters, and “bookmen” in widest sense.
(….). It was by their labours that the text was standardized for transmission,
and in that process of standardization, as reverence for Scripture increased,
they, from motive of piety, introduced little alterations [what an interesting
use of piety: to introduce changes in the so-called divine revelation!],
safeguarding the divine name, disfiguring the names of heathen deities,
replacing indelicate or unseemly expressions by euphemisms,
emending passages likely to be misunderstood, and at times modernizing the
language. The evidence of all this is in the text as they have transmitted it to
us.
The period of the early Sopherim may be considered to have
extended from about 500 B.C. to 100 A.D. From the closing of the Palestinian
Canon about 100 A.D. to about 500 A.D. is the period of later Sopherim. Part of
the activity associated with the closing of the canon was concerned with the
question of a standard exemplar of the text. This would seem to have been
settled by the labours of the School of Rabbi Akiba (died 135), (…).
The Sopherim were succeeded by the Masoretes, whose labors
extended from about 500 A.D. to the invention of printing. The early text left
by the Sopherim was for the most part a purely consonantal text with no pointing
for vocalization or accentuation, no punctuation in our sense, and with little
more to help the reader than some breaking up of the text into paragraphs. The
Masoretes labored to supply the text with these elements that were lacking and
in addition compiled a great body of annotations, some statistical, some
text-critical, some exegetical, all with the twofold purpose of safeguarding the
text and making it fully intelligible to the reader. They standardized a system
of verse division, and broke up the text into pericopes
of convenient size of liturgical cycles of public reading of the Scriptures.
Three systems of vocalization worked out by them are known, a Babylonian, a
Palestinian, and a Tiberian, the latter of which is found in most manuscripts
and the printed texts. There are also three systems of accentuation. The
vocalization consists of little signs written below, within, or above the
consonants to indicate correct pronunciation. (…). There were schools of
Masoretes, but it was the Tiberian School that finally came to dominate textual
studies, so that most Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament derive from the
famous tenth century Tiberian Codices of Ben Asher and Ben Nephtali.
Encyclopedia
Judaica has recorded a systematic article on this theme. It asserts:
Vocalization
and Accentuation
There are
three graphic systems of vocalization and accentuation for Hebrew: Palestinian,
Babylonian, and Tiberian. There is no imperative connection between the
pronunciation traditions in Hebrew and the graphic systems which were used; one
graphic system is not necessarily specific to one of the traditions of
pronunciation, and therefore a certain tradition of pronunciation is not
necessarily limited to one system of notation. One can assume, though, that each
one of the systems developed against the background of one defined tradition of
pronunciation(…).
The Tiberian
system is the most sophisticated and complete in the items which it transmits;
and it is the most recent. Most scholars tend to believe that the Palestinian is
the older of the other two systems. However, since these two systems developed
in different countries, Babylonia and Palestine, and since at the beginning of
their development there was no contact between them, and since the signs differ
in the two systems (letters and dots), it is impossible to arrive at a definite
decision in this question on the basis of the data available today. In line with
the generally accepted opinion the Palestinian system is discussed first;
however, this is not meant to indicate a view on the relative dating of the
systems.
The
Palestinian System
The State of
Transmission
The
Palestinian is not a crystallized system. Almost every one of the manuscripts
has a number of individual and characteristic traits with regard to the use of
signs. It is possible to point to the common and similar aspects but not to all
the deviations of each manuscript. For what we find in the manuscripts is
actually a system in development. Scholars endeavour to fix the date of a text
on the basis of the degree of progress shown by the use of the signs in it: the
oldest manuscripts (apparently from the eighth century) have generally very few
signs, sometimes no more than one or two for a word and sometimes not even that;
and even the latest of them never reach the stage of fully marking each vowel
and its nuances, as is the case in the Tiberian system.
Types of Texts
In this matter
a distinction must be made between texts of the Bible, (…). The amount of
vocalization is generally fuller in the latter, while the biblical texts, which
had a strong tradition of reading, have relatively fewer vocalization signs but
many accentuation signs. It seems that the precise cantillation was likely to
trouble the educated reader more than the pronunciation of the biblical words.
Therefore, vowel signs in ancient biblical texts are mainly in places where
there was room for error in the reading and at points where the orthography
allowed different pronunciations. When the spelling is plene,
with waw or yod, one almost never finds vowel signs in ancient manuscripts.
(….).
As time passed
this high standard of knowledge declined and more notations were needed.
The Vowel
Signs
In the
presentation and explanation of the signs one must refrain as much as possible
from drawing parallels with the Tiberian system, (…), since at times the signs
are anchored in a different reading tradition, i.e., with different grammar, and
the comparison is likely to give a distorted impression. (….).
The Babylonian
System
The Term
This system
was called Babylonian in accordance with references by a number of early
scholars.
The Tiberian
System
The Vowel
Signs
Unlike its
predecessors, the Tiberian vocalization has reached us as a consolidated,
uniform, and complete system, although in some isolated and exceptional
manuscripts there are remnants of other systems, such as the Palestinian sign
.·.m to denote o (cf. Kahle, Masoretendes Westens , 1 (1927), 35).
The Signs
There are
seven vowels, for which there are eight signs, and it is clear that they do not
indicate quantity in any way. This system, like its predecessors, was used by
different communities and by people who had different traditions of
pronunciation and who interpreted the signs and read them accordingly.
Dating
Despite the
fact that actual evidence for the conditions necessary for the writing down of
the Masorah is rather late, there is clear evidence from other sources that the
Masorah was committed to writing prior to the eighth century. This evidence can
be considered reliable in the light of the fact that scrolls which were invalid
for public reading also served, as it seems, for the noting of Masorah. Scrolls
of this type were also found in the Cairo Genizah. The proofs point to a period
of 200 years within which vocalization and accentuation signs were initiated:
not before the sixth century nor later than the seventh. This terminus a quo is
based on a number of facts:
(1) Jerome (end of the fourth century-beginning of the
fifth) states explicitly (in his commentary on the Bible) that the Jews did not
have signs to note the vowels (he does not speak of accents).
(2) In the Jerusalem Talmud (which was completed in the
first half of the fifth century) and in the Babylonian Talmud (which was
completed at the end of the fifth century) there is no mention of vowel and
accentuation signs; similarly there is no mention of them in the earliest
Midrashim. Evidence from late
Midrashim is obviously not reliable; for example in Exodus Rabbah, ch. 2:6 (to
Ex. 3:4) csp (paseq) is actually mentioned, but this Midrash is later than the
tenth century. It follows, therefore, that the use of the vowel and accentuation
signs was not instituted before the sixth century. The terminus ad quem (the
limit to which; destination) is established by a number of indirect proofs:
(1)
Phinehas Rosh ha-Yeshivah is one of the early masoretes about
whose work in Masorah and vocalization there is definite knowledge, and he lived
in the first half of the ninth century at the latest. This suggests that
vocalization and accentuation signs were already in use before then.
(2)
Asher b. Nehemiah (the grandfather of Aaron Ben-Asher) lived
apparently at the same time as Phinehas, and his grandfather Asher was the
“great elder,” the founder of the dynasty of famous masoretes who dealt with
vocalization and accentuation signs like his descendants. This Asher the Elder
must have lived in the second half of the eighth century at the latest, which
means that the vowel and accentuation signs were fixed before that time.
(3)
In the ninth century there was already no definite knowledge
as to who invented the vowel and accentuation signs, and so we hear from
Natronai Gaon of Babylonia (d, 858) in his prayer book, Me’ah Berakhot : “The
vowel signs (niqqud) were not given at Sinai but the sages marked them by
signs.” Thus in the first half of the ninth century, although vowel and accent
signs were known and accepted, the inventors were unknown. It can be assumed
therefore that the institution of their use preceded that time by several
centuries. In the eighth century there were sages dealing with punctuation (see
above); the latest possible time for the first use of vocalization and
accentuation signs is therefore the seventh century.
To
recapitulate the above discussion, its salient features are being reproduced
below; reproduced: because in most of the cases they have been copied verbatim:
a) The words are formed by placing the consonants together
but they cannot be pronounced until some proper vocalization system be applied.
b) The vocalization consists of little signs written
below, within, or above the consonants to indicate correct pronunciation.
c) Some languages had to evolve their own systems of
vowel signs. As far as Hebrew is concerned it was void of any such vowel signs
until seventh century AD.
d) In its original state only the consonants were
written, the vowels being left to be filled up by the reader’s mind. (…). This
ancient practice of omitting the vowels is one fertile cause of varieties in the
text, for it will readily be understood that doubts might often occur as to the
proper vowels to be supplied to a group of consonants.
e) The absence of vowels meant that many a Hebrew
consonant group could be differently pronounced, and from this resulted the fact
that a variety of meanings could be attached to one and the same word in the
original. When ultimately vowels were introduced into the Hebrew text of the
Bible, these pronunciation variants sometimes became the bases of variae
lections (various readings)
f) About 1000 BC, the early Hebrew alphabet had begun
its autonomous development.
g) It took early Hebrew alphabet almost one thousand
years to evolve into the modern square Hebrew alphabet.
h) As Hebrew speech passed out of daily use, and
familiarity with Biblical Hebrew steadily declined, it became necessary to
introduce some form of vocal distinction, so that the Torah could be read and
explained correctly.
i) Not even the most perfect copyist could ensure an
unambiguous text, for Hebrew was written entirely without vowels, which the
reader had to supply for himself.
j) The Massoretes naturally vocalized the text
according to the practice of their own day. From this Massoretic text, in
“pointed” Hebrew, we can know fairly well how Hebrew sounded when it was
solemnly chanted in a synagogue as long ago as, say, the time of Muhammad. But
we have no such clear knowledge of how it may have been pronounced by David or
Solomon.
k) The Massoretes themselves frequently misled posterity
by faulty vocalization that changed the meaning.
l) Vocalization and accentuation are post-Talmudic.
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