B-Hebrew: The Biblical Hebrew Forum

Sorry, Jason, I was focusing more on your words and didn't notice well what you referred to.

Jason Hare wrote:

kwrandolph wrote:Why not a simple Qal Qatal of the verb חלל to pierce? יד takes a feminine verb.

Karl W. Randolph.

Ḥolalah cannot be Qal.

Forget the Masoretic points. They are wrong indicating wrong meanings often enough that they can’t be used as evidence for anything, other than the Masoretes’ mindset.

My question was based on an unpointed text.

Karl W. Randolph.

kwrandolph wrote:Forget the Masoretic points. They are wrong indicating wrong meanings often enough that they can’t be used as evidence for anything, other than the Masoretes’ mindset.

My question was based on an unpointed text.

Karl W. Randolph.

That's not my experience. Sorry.

Karl W. Randoph wrote: “Forget the Masoretic points. They are wrong indicating wrong meanings often enough that they can’t be used as evidence for anything, other than the Masoretes’ mindset.”

Jason Hare responded: “That's not my experience. Sorry.”

Here are two comments I found about this issue:

1. “[V]owel pointing, historically, postdates the latest of the original texts by at least a thousand years -- thus Tiberian pointing, while possibly in the ball park, represents one pronunciation system out of many, and one that cannot be demonstrated to be the "biblical" pronunciation. In fact, there is much evidence that Tiberian pointing, from the standpoint of the history of the language, contains enough flaws to call into question its accuracy.” William P. Griffin, Society of Biblical Literature (2007).

2. “Interestingly, where oral tradition mandated a reading (or qere) that did not match the written text (kethib), the Masorites allowed both to stand. They preserved the written text but inserted the ‘correct’ vowels (frequently producing unpronounceable words). They then provided the ‘corrected’ consonantal text in the margins of the text.” Sandra L. Gravett, ‎Karla G. Bohmbach, ‎F. V. Greifenhagen, “An Introduction to the Hebrew Bible” (2008), p. 46.

Jim Stinehart

Some people say that the masoretic notes are not corrections of the text, but were actually given with the texts by different prophets for some reason. They can't accept the idea that anything could be wrong in the Hebrew Bible because they believe that the people who passed it down were somehow perfect and knew every word of the Hebrew Bible by heart.

Kenneth Greifer wrote:Some people say that the masoretic notes are not corrections of the text, but were actually given with the texts by different prophets for some reason. They can't accept the idea that anything could be wrong in the Hebrew Bible because they believe that the people who passed it down were somehow perfect and knew every word of the Hebrew Bible by heart.

If we can take on position by faith, certainly we can take any other position by faith.

Probably better that we deal with the text as we have it and try to make sense of why it would be pointed this way and not that — before just declaring ourselves more enlightened.

I will say, though, that our reading of Nehemiah 9 yesterday really made me want to re-write verses of the Bible.

Jason Hare wrote:

kwrandolph wrote:Forget the Masoretic points. They are wrong indicating wrong meanings often enough that they can’t be used as evidence for anything, other than the Masoretes’ mindset.

My question was based on an unpointed text.

Karl W. Randolph.

That's not my experience. Sorry.

Don’t be sorry.

The following are reasons I don’t trust the Masoretic points:

1) The Masoretic points do not reflect Biblical era pronunciations. A thousand years of when there have been no native speakers of Biblical Hebrew, as well as those who spoke Hebrew as a second language had their pronunciations influenced by their native tongues, caused the pronunciations to change before the time of the Masoretes.

2) The Masoretes did not speak Biblical Hebrew.

3) The Masoretes’ native tongue was Aramaic.

4) The Hebrew the Masoretes knew was Tiberian Hebrew, a language whose grammar and many vocabulary items differed from Biblical Hebrew.

5) The Masoretes invented the vowel points, but the pronunciations the vowel points recorded are from Tiberian Hebrew, not Biblical Hebrew.

6) The points recorded by the Masoretes reflect the understanding of the text through the lens of Tiberian Hebrew, rather than through a thoroughgoing understanding of Biblical Hebrew.

7) Therefore, many times the points are wrong as far as Biblical Hebrew understanding is concerned.

With these as a background, we cannot use the Masoretic points as proof of anything, rather we need to rely solely on the consonantal text as proof.

There are those who claim that the Masoretic points preserve Biblical era pronunciations, But the evidence indicates otherwise. There was a time that I tried to follow the Masoretic points exactly, in every minor detail. But as I read more and more, the more I started questioning them until today where I say that they are merely a window into medieval Hebrew but are to be questioned when reading Tanakh.

So to get back to my question, why not read verb in question as a Qal Qatal?

Jason Hare wrote:I will say, though, that our reading of Nehemiah 9 yesterday really made me want to re-write verses of the Bible.

Me too.

Karl W. Randolph.

"Many times" the vowels are wrong; therefore, cast it all aside... This is a really bad argument. One can reasonably read Koiné Greek with a modern pronunciation. One can reasonably read biblical Hebrew with a modern pronunciation. I don't see what pronunciation has to do with the question.

Again, I don't think you could teach Hebrew to students in the way that you read it. I've said it before, but I would be so interested in hearing an audio recording of your reading. I just cannot imagine in my mind how you read Hebrew. Do you think you have a more historic pronunciation? I really want to know what it sounds like when you read.

Jason Hare wrote:"Many times" the vowels are wrong; therefore, cast it all aside...

Actually, the evidence is that 100% of the time the points don’t reflect Biblical era pronunciations.

Jason Hare wrote:This is a really bad argument. One can reasonably read Koiné Greek with a modern pronunciation. One can reasonably read biblical Hebrew with a modern pronunciation. I don't see what pronunciation has to do with the question.

Yes, one can read the text with the modern pronunciations. That’s not the question. Where the pronunciations influence meaning, wrong pronunciations can influence wrong meanings.

Jason Hare wrote:Again, I don't think you could teach Hebrew to students in the way that you read it. I've said it before, but I would be so interested in hearing an audio recording of your reading. I just cannot imagine in my mind how you read Hebrew. Do you think you have a more historic pronunciation? I really want to know what it sounds like when you read.

I readily admit that I don’t know what was the original pronunciation. No one knows. So I end up with the modern pronunciations.

Most of the time I read the text, I read it silently. With no pronunciation.

What I emphasize is that the Masoretic points are not original, not canon, and have mistakes. In fact, many times the points make the text harder to read. Therefore, when I read the text, I read it according to how I understand the grammar, context, syntax indicate what the meanings should be. Because the points are not original, not canon, and have mistakes, they cannot be trusted to indicate the correct meanings. Many times the points are “correct” in the sense of indicating the correct meanings, but enough times incorrect that one cannot trust any of them. None of them are above question.

Karl W. Randolph.

You read with no pronunciation. Brilliant. That is a problem to me.