Decalogue pronunciation is influenced by cantillation

[ducky]

You're right.
The main subject was ignored.

The cantillation marks divide the verses differently and with that the vowels change as well.

A word whose pronunciation varies between cantillations in all communities I'm aware of is כל־מלאכתך, which, in superimposed form, looks like this:



Again (but for a different reason) I feign surprise by saying: what the heck? Assuming we even remember what rafeh normally means, what the heck does it mean when combined with dagesh?! Here it may help to see the cantillations separated rather than superimposed. I provide those below, along with some phonetic transcriptions using Jacobson's system:

As for this case of Rafe/Dagesh, it is influenced, of course, by its previous word, and the change of its cantillation mark - So it is like giving you another way of reading.

There is another interesting case of rafe/dagesh of two words that are known in the Masora that have it, which are not related to cantillation marks.
ועירם in Gen. 32:16
and יירה in Ex. 19:13
Both have dagesh and rafe on the letter Y.
The Aleppo codex that we have is missing the Torah (and these two verse) - but the notes about these cases ask about the meaning of this.
as for עירם - according to my book, there is no manuscript that it is found (but a scholar said that he saw two handwrites that has it).
as for יירה - it is seen in three manuscripts.

[bdenckla]

There is another interesting case of rafe/dagesh of two words that are known in the Masora that have it, which are not related to cantillation marks.
ועירם in Gen. 32:16
and יירה in Ex. 19:13
Both have dagesh and rafe on the letter Y.
The Aleppo codex that we have is missing the Torah (and these two verse) - but the notes about these cases ask about the meaning of this.

Interesting... which notes are you referring to? Like, masorah gedolah notes in one or more manuscripts?

as for עירם - according to my book, there is no manuscript that it is found (but a scholar said that he saw two handwrites that has it).

Which book do you mean when you say "my book"? The only thing interesting I find discussed about this word is there is some question as to whether the ע should get a ḥataf pataḥ instead of a sheva, i.e. וַעֲיָרִ֖ם instead of וַעְיָרִ֖ם. But I don't think there's much support for the ḥataf pataḥ. The sheva is supported by many high-quality manuscripts (see MAM's note on this) and the ḥataf pataḥ seems to be supported only by the Venice MG. BHS says that the ḥataf pataḥ is supported by multiple manuscripts and (printed) editions but:

• BHS is known to come from an era of scholarship in which quantity rather than quality of manuscripts was emphasized.
• It isn't really meaningful to say that multiple printed editions have something when Venice MG has it, because until quite recently, basically all printed editions followed Venice MG. I.e. with all due respect to the editors of BHS, I think they are mistaking "group think" for multiple independent, expert judgments on the issue.

as for יירה - it is seen in three manuscripts.

I do see this noted in Breuer's notes in Da`at Miqra:



Although he cites only 1 manuscript (שׂ); what are the three manuscripts you are referring to (and what source lists those three)?

Breuer's footnote 13 is as follows:



OCR transcribed this as follows (looks pretty accurate but may have errors):

נצטרפו כאן שתי שיטות של ב״נ. תחילה היה מרפה את היו״ד; ואחר כך הודה לב״א והדגיש את היו״ד; והשוה כא״צ ה. 4.

I won't attempt to translate this and thus display my ignorance of Hebrew; I will just mention the meaning of these abbreviations:

• ב״נ = Ben Naftali
• ב״א = Ben Asher
• כא״צ = a work by Yeivin on the Aleppo Codex (כתר ארם צובה)

[bdenckla]

נצטרפו כאן שתי שיטות של ב״נ. תחילה היה מרפה את היו״ד; ואחר כך הודה לב״א והדגיש את היו״ד; והשוה כא״צ ה. 4.

The following translation of the main part of this note has been graciously provided to me:

The text reflects Ben Naftali, who changed his mind. First he considered the letter י [yod] rafah, then he accepted Ben Asher's tradition that it has dagesh.

[ducky]

Hi,

The book that I read from is a book by Dotan that collected short texts about Masora cases.
I have no idea if it has an English version.
It is called: Thesaurus of Quntrese Ha-Masora.

As for עירם...
Dotan brings an old assumption that the Dagesh in the Y comes to show that the previous syllable is closed (that the Ayin is with Quiescent Sheva).
(This method is also found in another Tiberian system, and it "invaded" this one in this case).
But since that in the accepted Tiberian system, this Dagesh may not be understood, then the Rafe comes to "cancel" it.

Dotan has another assumption.
He says that it could be that this Dagesh/Rafe in this word reflects the two ways of writing the word.
1. With Hataph-Patah in the Ayin.
2. With quiescent Sheva in the Ayin.

The Dagesh comes to reflect 2.
The Rafe comes to reflect 1.

He says that there is not known manuscript that we know that has it, but Strack says in his (and Baer) book that he found this double-vowel in two manuscripts.
The book is in German, and I didn't manage to read it (even with google).
If you want to try, then it is here:
https://www.hebrewbooks.org/38509
Page xxxix (page 38 in the pdf).
In the same page it also brings the short text that is in Dotan's book.

****
יירה
Dotan says it is found in:
London Qr. 4445
Shlomo ben Buya'a ל4
Sassoon 1053

This case has more details.
I'll just give the ending points.
It also represents two ways.
There was a version of יירה (as Piel) which doesn't seems to fit the context - but could be that also here, the vowels reflected another system.
Dotan suggests that the Rafe version maybe was יִירֶה (as passive qal).
And with that, both version (Niphal, and Qal) are good.

As you mentioned, Ben Naftali used to point it with Dagesh in the beginning, but later on, he agreed with Ben Asher.

****************************
If we're already talking about Rafe/Dagesh, then just notice that in the link that you provided:
https://bdenckla.github.io/MAM-with-doc ... tml#c32v16
Also has this case in Gen. 32:18 in the word יפגשך
according to the note, one manuscript writes Rafe/dagesh together
***

Just a question...
I though you read Hebrew at first, especially when you I saw you use Hebrew commentary books, and then you said that you don't read so well.
If you don't care, what is your relationship with Hebrew?

[bdenckla]

Thanks for those additional details on ועירם in Gen. 32:16 and יירה in Ex. 19:13. And thanks for pointing out that related case "right next door" with יפגשך in Gen. 32:18!

I though you read Hebrew at first, especially when you I saw you use Hebrew commentary books, and then you said that you don't read so well.
If you don't care, what is your relationship with Hebrew?

Luckily Breuer's main notes in Da`at Miqra are so compact that they don't even use Hebrew. (Unluckily, they are also so compact that they are sometimes hard to understand!) And then I'm lost (or subject to the whims of Google Translate) when Breuer has a footnote to his main notes!

As for the documentation notes in MAM (visible in the "MAM with doc" edition I created), they have a limited-enough vocabulary that, with a little help from Google Translate, I can usually figure them out. Google Translate does terribly with the technical vocabulary like the names for the trope marks, but that's the one part of Hebrew I know very well so that is okay.

I'll probably have to make aliyah someday, to get myself to really learn the language. Living in Israel could have other advantages, too .

[ducky]

Wow! That is great.
Wish you well, and I hope you'll make the right decision.

And who provided you with the translation? (you said it was provided).

[bdenckla]

And who provided you with the translation? (you said it was provided).

For this (as with so many other questions), I got help from Avi Kadish, the person behind MAM.

[kwrandolph]

I'll probably have to make aliyah someday, to get myself to really learn the language. Living in Israel could have other advantages, too .

Well, it really comes down to, which language do you want to learn? Modern Israeli Hebrew or Biblical Hebrew?

Those are two different languages, with different grammars with words that at times have different meanings. The pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew is unknown, with too few words that were transliterated when Biblical Hebrew was spoken for us to be able to figure out Biblical Hebrew pronunciation. The few transliterations that we have seem to point to an alphabet that was originally a syllabary, each consonant followed by a vowel, but we don’t know which vowels.

As for the grammar, after millennia of influences by Indo-European languages—Farsi, Greek, Latin, modern languages—verbal conjugation is tense based. Biblical era verbal conjugations apparently were model, with no conjugated time references. There’s more.

I too wanted to go to Israel, but the opportunity never came through. Instead, all I did was read Tanakh, all of it, over and over again.
I now view it as a blessing that I didn’t go, because not going spared me of having modern Israeli Hebrew interfering with my reading and understanding Biblical Hebrew.

Karl W. Randolph.