Masoretes and their lack of knowledge?

[Isaac Fried]

Chris asks
I ask respectfully Isaac, what on earth have your last two posts to do with my last submission?

I will tell you Chris, I find your posts reasonable and thoughtful, and I read them carefully to see what a wise man has to say on BH. In your said post you extol the book History of the Hebrew Language so much that I became curious enough to search for the book, and leaf through it. I did not find much edifying about the "History" of the Hebrew language, but coming to the end I noticed some statement of the author Angel Saenz-Badillos ("he" in the post) on spoken Hebrew, that I thought deserve comment.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

[Galena]

Chris asks
I ask respectfully Isaac, what on earth have your last two posts to do with my last submission?

I will tell you Chris, I find your posts reasonable and thoughtful, and I read them carefully to see what a wise man has to say on BH. In your said post you extol the book History of the Hebrew Language so much that I became curious enough to search for the book, and leaf through it. I did not find much edifying about the "History" of the Hebrew language, but coming to the end I noticed some statement of the author Angel Saenz-Badillos ("he" in the post) on spoken Hebrew, that I thought deserve comment.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

Isaac, I was not extolling at all, simply using a respected work held in some measure of esteem as opposed to reasoning, an attempt to provide evidence that was. Secondly, Why out of hundreds of pages are you picking up on one mistake in the modern hebrew section, which by the way I do agree, but please find fault with anything within the context of BH or Rabbinic hebrew and I will gladly amend the text myself. One negative statement is hardly convincing me of ineptitude with his work.
Kind regards

[kwrandolph]

Don't particularly want to divert into the Greek issues and the NT,…
Kindest regards
chris

This isn’t a question about the Greek and NT, rather about attitudes and willingness to discuss openly. Being open includes the willingness to change one’s mind when given good reasons, and I am on record on this list as having changed my mind. But it’s a waste of time even to read the posts of those who have closed minds, and I don’t read them.

By refusing even to read their posts, that is my way of agreeing to disagree.

The KJV only-er crowd have closed minds—the texts that were available to the translators of the KJV they call the Textus Receptus and they consider them to have been perfect, any scholarship to the contrary be damned. If you are one of that crowd, then this whole discussion and thread was a waste of time and effort.

…simply using a respected work held in some measure of esteem as opposed to reasoning, an attempt to provide evidence…

A second issue is that of authority—who or what is the ultimate authority? Is it Scripture, or is it man’s fallible reasoning?

I have made it known on this forum, not as an effort at proselytism (I assume that the people on this forum are educated and have already heard those arguments) but as a matter of clarity, that I’m very much a son of the Reformation with its attitude towards Scripture being Sola Scriptura. Other “experts” “held in some measure of esteem” are mere noise and distraction if they interfere with learning what Scripture actually says. They are not evidence. Therein lies my bias.

The teaching of Sola Scriptura has no problem with the work of textual critics, if they help identify copyist errors to try to get back to the original texts; but they need to work from evidence, not presuppositions as the Masoretes often did. The work of linguists often help, if they work in the language itself (Biblical Hebrew) using cognate languages sparingly, not having a cognate language at the center of their work as did Gesenius, BDB, the Masoretes and rabbis, and others who used medieval Hebrew as their basis.

So what is your authority? Scripture or man?

This forum is about the language, and I can discuss linguistic issues with those whom I disagree on theological issues.

Karl W. Randolph.

Follow-up: I found some evidence to the question I made concerning deliberate changing of the text beyond those that I mentioned—apparently it concerns a translation into Greek where those changes were deliberately made, not in the Hebrew text. Apparently that translation never became popular, not even among Jews, and it fell into obscurity. But the reputation of deliberately changing the text lived on.

[Galena]

that I’m very much a son of the Reformation

So be thankful to Erasmus, for without HIM, you would not be a son of the reformation. Was this God's doing or man's? If God's then He obviously gave the reformers the wrong translation and allowed them to use corrupt versions to set millions free!

A second issue is that of authority—who or what is the ultimate authority? Is it Scripture, or is it man’s fallible reasoning?

You kept calling me out for using reasoning instead of FACTS based on EVIDENCE, this was my feeble attempt to use evidence.

KJV? Your Prejudice, leave it alone. Nothing wrong with it, your perspectives are based on how you interpret manuscripts, their history and language. And I read different English versions by the way, but KJV is for me the best translation, not perfect but more perfect than others in MY opinion, not for fluency but for faithfulness, and this has not come through any KJV'er club mentality but my OWN PERSONAL RESEARCH!

I tried using humour to respond to a certain comments you made, instead of counter arguing I tried to make some laughter. Well that fell on its head. It is only normal in conversation to break things up sometimes with humour. I have tried to present a serious argument not to be CLOSED in thought but thatI feel strongly that the evidence for KAARU was not sufficient by any means. It is not a matter of being CLOSED, it is a matter that I am un-convinced by the argument FOR the KAARU. And for fear of streaming off at a tangent I respectfully declined the Greek comments.

I never wanted to get into Faith, it has no place here I realize, but to answer your question unashamedly, yes absolutely I believe the word is infallible, the word of God without question. But I also believe that God uses ordinary men and women to do some of His work and that includes archeology and history and language. I t was because of my belief that I am looking for sufficient evidence to convince me that the masoretes changed a yod into a vav. I want to believe that pierced is correct, but as of yet I see Absolutely nothing that carries authority to weigh those scales down in favour. IF the NT had quoted that very verse we would never be having this conversation, I would be annoyed that the masoretes did that but I would still give them first priority in faithfulness because I would Understand WHY they did it. Oh and as a last note zachariah 12:10 = pierced, thrust through, the masoretes forgot to change this word heh? Maybe they should have altered a couple of consonants in Isaiah 53, that would do the trick heh?

Regards to you Karl
Chris

[kwrandolph]

that I’m very much a son of the Reformation

So be thankful to Erasmus, for without HIM, you would not be a son of the reformation. Was this God's doing or man's? If God's then He obviously gave the reformers the wrong translation and allowed them to use corrupt versions to set millions free!

And I thank other fallible men, most notably Luther. But that doesn’t mean that I treat their works as flawless, without error.

My greatest influence is to what the reformers pointed (which Erasmus did NOT) namely to Scripture as the ultimate authority. It is through that authority that people can point out mistakes.

A second issue is that of authority—who or what is the ultimate authority? Is it Scripture, or is it man’s fallible reasoning?

You kept calling me out for using reasoning instead of FACTS based on EVIDENCE, this was my feeble attempt to use evidence.

But much of what you called “evidence” isn’t.

KJV? Your Prejudice, leave it alone. Nothing wrong with it, your perspectives are based on how you interpret manuscripts, their history and language. And I read different English versions by the way, but KJV is for me the best translation, not perfect but more perfect than others in MY opinion, not for fluency but for faithfulness, and this has not come through any KJV'er club mentality but my OWN PERSONAL RESEARCH!

However, you’ll have to admit that the KJV contains literally thousands of errors. That previous sentence itself points to thousands of errors, namely the KJV translators used the term “sin” to “translate” the Greek αμαρτια and the Hebrew חטאה both of which mean “error” in English. I’ll grant the possibility that “trespass” has changed meaning since when the KJV was translated, but “iniquity” has no meaning in modern English: I understand one of them was used to “translate” פשע (rebellion) and the other עוה (pervert) and its noun עון (perversion, such as “twisting the truth”). Those are just some of the errors.

I tried using humour to respond to a certain comments you made, instead of counter arguing I tried to make some laughter. Well that fell on its head.

Which is why I don’t use humor—too often it comes across as mockery, which offends rather than lightens up. I found that out through bitter experience when I offended people.

I have tried to present a serious argument not to be CLOSED in thought but thatI feel strongly that the evidence for KAARU was not sufficient by any means. It is not a matter of being CLOSED, it is a matter that I am un-convinced by the argument FOR the KAARU.

Your arguments come across as clutching at straws, especially when you used altered images to try to make your point. And your referencing of explanations by others is relying on reason rather than evidence.

The evidence is:
1) most importantly, there are some manuscripts that have this reading, among them the only one from 2000 years ago.
2) all the ancient translations from Hebrew have it as a verb, not a noun.
3) people make mistakes, and that includes copyists, even careful copyists.
4) all the linguistic clues indicate that there should be a verb in that place.
5) context indicates that there should be a verb in that place.

Your evidence:
1) the Masoretes were very careful, and they have a noun.
2) the people who translated the KJV used the MT (this one appears to be your strongest argument).

Do you understand why your reasons are unconvincing?

I never wanted to get into Faith, it has no place here I realize, but to answer your question unashamedly, yes absolutely I believe the word is infallible, the word of God without question.

The original manuscripts, or the copies made by fallible men?

But I also believe that God uses ordinary men and women to do some of His work and that includes archeology and history and language. I t was because of my belief that I am looking for sufficient evidence to convince me that the masoretes changed a yod into a vav.

Don’t attribute to malice what can be the result of a simple mistake. Further, we have no evidence that the Masoretes did the mistake, it could have come earlier, before the Masoretes. The evidences we have from before the Masoretes indicates that the MT has a mistake in that place.

I want to believe that pierced is correct, but as of yet I see Absolutely nothing that carries authority to weigh those scales down in favour. IF the NT had quoted that very verse we would never be having this conversation, I would be annoyed that the masoretes did that but I would still give them first priority in faithfulness because I would Understand WHY they did it. Oh and as a last note zachariah 12:10 = pierced, thrust through, the masoretes forgot to change this word heh? Maybe they should have altered a couple of consonants in Isaiah 53, that would do the trick heh?

Why do you insist on the definition of כאר as “pierce”? Is it because the KJV used that term? Linguistic evidence and evidences from some ancient translations indicate that the translators of the KJV made a mistake when they chose the word “pierced” when they translated כארו.

Regards to you Karl
Chris

You started a thread questioning the accuracy of the Masoretes. While I admit that they were very careful, that doesn’t mean that they were infallible—they made mistakes. Further, they built on the mistakes of people who went before them. Yet, the evidence from the DSS is that the number of accumulated mistakes is quite low.

This discussion has narrowed its focus to one example, there are other verses to which we can reference, and that doesn’t include all the Masoretic points that are in error.

Yet it appears that your primary argument for the MT is that the translators of the KJV used the MT.

Karl W. Randolph.

[S_Walch]

But then, those who produced the KJV were more revisers than translators. The Bible In English (David Daniell) is worth a read in this regard.

Plus, if we in the English-speaking world should have a Reformer to put on a pedestal, then William Tyndale should be the man we talk about. Without him and his translation of the Greek NT into English, we wouldn't even have the language around as it is today.

[Galena]

Karl said : You started a thread questioning the accuracy of the Masoretes

I started the thread because you let it be known how distrustful of the masoretes you were and I did not want to go off-track in a thread that was about a different subject (Gen 1:1 if I remember correctly).

The following below has absolutely nothing to do with psalm 22, I leave that alone, and open. This is about the masoretes

Anyway, in the beginning I found myself being swayed by the idea that the masoretes' pronounciation of the biblical hebrew text was medieval, and their choice of vocalisation was precisely that - I had no reason to question this until:

1. there is overwhelming evidence demonstrating that the masoretes did not actually invent every bit of this voclisation;

2. that although indeed there are certainly medieval vocalisations in the text, these do not out number what are believed to be pronounciations handed down to them from Ezra's era

3. documents, letters, extant MSS and linguistic analysis has shown beyond doubt that a lot of the vocalisation seen in the 10th century masoretic text was already standardised in the time of the 1st century AD; and even these times are believd to be traditional pronounciations from Ezra's time.

4. There were always two scribes, one would copy the consonants, the other would add the vocalisation, another would count letters and yet another would count verses, this system of checking amd proofing and re-checking was established in the time of Nehemiah/Ezra

5. No other document in the whole world in all of history has got any evidence whatsoever for this kind of rigid text proofing and DESIRE for complete accuracy

6. The DSS can not claim this, the DSS is not one language and not even one dialect, the DSS is full of an ad hoc mixture of colloquial and vernacular and biblical and personal, the DSS is very useful for understanding many things, and I find reading parts of it very interesting, but just because it is older does not mean more accurate, the DSS was written by a sect that broke away from mainstream Judaism. There is so much information that given a police analysis in a forensic setting even a judge would give more authority to the Masoretes.


7. The LXX Torah section was the very first to be completed, the ketuvim were more than likely codified and completed very late indeed (how late?). There is absolutely no evidence and no scholar can establish any time frame or date for the completion of the separate books and writings of the totah, ketuvim and neviim. There is not much better agreement between scholars concerning the time frame of the LXX, however they tend to agree on anything between 250 BC to 250 AD with many variations in between. More popular are the 250 BC to 100 AD. There are a lot of years left after 33 AD for Psalm 22 to have been written!!!

8. If I write a document and pass it down to my children and it gets worn out, they copy it, they throw the original away and keep the new one. A friend of mine copies my original document and disagrees with one sentence that I wrote. His friend copies this document with the new sentence and so now there two copies. Both documents are now found 100 years later. My friends document is the oldest and there two of them, and therefore more accurate? As we say in dutch , Kom Op Nou! ridiculous reasoning.


Kind regards

[kwrandolph]

I started the thread because you let it be known how distrustful of the masoretes you were and I did not want to go off-track in a thread that was about a different subject (Gen 1:1 if I remember correctly).

The following below has absolutely nothing to do with psalm 22, I leave that alone, and open. This is about the masoretes

Anyway, in the beginning I found myself being swayed by the idea that the masoretes' pronounciation of the biblical hebrew text was medieval, and their choice of vocalisation was precisely that - I had no reason to question this until:

1. there is overwhelming evidence demonstrating that the masoretes did not actually invent every bit of this voclisation;

There is not a single person that I know of who claims that they invented their vocalizations, not one. All they did was to invent the points they used to preserve their vocalizations.

However, evidence from transliterations and other vocalization schemes over history show that theirs was not the only vocalization, and that they had changed over time.

2. that although indeed there are certainly medieval vocalisations in the text, these do not out number what are believed to be pronounciations handed down to them from Ezra's era

Ezra lived about a century after the last native speaker of Biblical Hebrew had died. Evidence from linguistic studies indicates that possibly the greatest change of vocalization would have occurred during that century.

“Believed”—that is not evidence.

3. documents, letters, extant MSS and linguistic analysis has shown beyond doubt that a lot of the vocalisation seen in the 10th century masoretic text was already standardised in the time of the 1st century AD; and even these times are believd to be traditional pronounciations from Ezra's time.

“Believed”—again that is not evidence.

4. There were always two scribes, one would copy the consonants, the other would add the vocalisation, another would count letters and yet another would count verses, this system of checking amd proofing and re-checking was established in the time of Nehemiah/Ezra

Oh? And your evidence? Where is your evidence that that was the system set up under Ezra?

The evidence from the DSS is that was not the method that was followed.

5. No other document in the whole world in all of history has got any evidence whatsoever for this kind of rigid text proofing and DESIRE for complete accuracy

The NT had the same desire for accuracy. And the copyists, the earliest ones being Jews, used the same techniques employed by the DSS copyists at that time.

6. The DSS can not claim this, the DSS is not one language and not even one dialect, the DSS is full of an ad hoc mixture of colloquial and vernacular and biblical and personal, the DSS is very useful for understanding many things, and I find reading parts of it very interesting, but just because it is older does not mean more accurate, the DSS was written by a sect that broke away from mainstream Judaism. There is so much information that given a police analysis in a forensic setting even a judge would give more authority to the Masoretes.

But the Masoretes were Johnny-come-latelies to the scene, which would make them hear-sayers of hear-sayers, not witnesses. As such, they wouldn’t be allowed in court.

What we’re discussing here are the copies of Tanakh, not the other documents found among the DSS.

7. The LXX Torah section was the very first to be completed, the ketuvim were more than likely codified and completed very late indeed (how late?). There is absolutely no evidence and no scholar can establish any time frame or date for the completion of the separate books and writings of the totah, ketuvim and neviim. There is not much better agreement between scholars concerning the time frame of the LXX, however they tend to agree on anything between 250 BC to 250 AD with many variations in between. More popular are the 250 BC to 100 AD. There are a lot of years left after 33 AD for Psalm 22 to have been written!!!

Yet most scholars conclude that the LXX was completed by about 150 BC and was in widespread use by the time the NT was written. Anyways, the translators of the LXX used the wrong word to “translate” כארו. Further there’s evidence that the exact meaning of כארו had been forgotten by the time of the LXX (by 150 BC if not before). Even the KJV’s use of “pierced” doesn’t follow the LXX, they were guessing too.

8. If I write a document and pass it down to my children and it gets worn out, they copy it, they throw the original away and keep the new one. A friend of mine copies my original document and disagrees with one sentence that I wrote. His friend copies this document with the new sentence and so now there two copies. Both documents are now found 100 years later. My friends document is the oldest and there two of them, and therefore more accurate? As we say in dutch , Kom Op Nou! ridiculous reasoning.

How would that later finders establish that your children were not the ones who changed your document to fit their memory of you? Or that it was not they who made a typo, or because by the time they made the copy your original document had become so worn that it was difficult to read so that there was an honest mistake in the reading of the original document? Those are the questions that the finders would face.

That’s why we use not only date, but other clues as well, each case to be evaluated on its own.

In the case of Psalm 22:17, all the other clues point to the conclusion that the MT is wrong.

In the case of the Great Isaiah Scroll, the other clues indicate that on the whole, the MT has the correct consonantal spelling schema, not the DSS.

Each case has to be evaluated on its own.

Kind regards

Karl W. Randolph.

[Galena]

Re-document that I am sending you that can not be uploaded here.

There are Greek words explained in this document that I can not fully ascend to simply because I do not know Greek, however leaving his comments aside about the Hireq vowel and the transliteration from the greek I think it rather more poignant where he addresses the masoretes' volcalization (sorry 'pointing' system - mixed the terms up in the last post which is why you criticised it). The fact that he uses scripture almost entirely to back up his claim might, I believe, find resonance with yourself. I find it refreshing to have scriptural support and allusions though I am not qualified to appraise this document, I am certainly sensible enough to see that his points do make perfect sense given that I check my bible, the hebrew codices online, and the Talmud.

The idea that the full grammatical pointing system was in place is not something I tend/lean towards at all, one could be mistaken for thinking that he is trying to prove this, I do believe though that there was definitely some vowel pointing in place from at least Ezra's time, evidence that those scribes would have made sure to avert ambiguity or confusion in places, though it probably was not in every verse as we see today. It seems definitive for me, and without question, that the masoretes' vowel system was not an invention by them alone, I had thought that this was so, but rather they had been handed a tradition of pronounciation from at least Ezra, that where there were definitely differences in pronounciation this is to be expected, but that made no difference to the meaning, that there were questions and differences over pronounciation goes without saying in some parts, but that they ESTABLISHED a faithful translation and meaning in order to standardise variances was their greater and number one responsibility, not to invent a point system, as I had been led to believe by not researching things out carefully as I have been forced to do as a result of this debate.

I have heard the word "bath" said in three different ways in English, if I was a masorete I would choose the one that was most popular, this may well be the vernacular or this may have been how it was originally pronounced, whichever was popular, in either case it would be the one that was the most widely understood. No doubt BTH would have been pointed one way by me, and yet another way by someone from the north, and yet another by someone from an older generation. The masoretes standardised pronounciation, and kept it as faithfully close to what was already left over from the time of Ezra.

As a final note I believe wholeheartedly that Deut 4:2 was a scripture to which every scribe, within the tribe of Levi and those involved in the preservation of the temple scrolls, would have feared and taken serious heed to. Those involved with the DSS were sects and interpreters, not faithful scribes, they wrote outside of the workings of the temple and were not subject to the laws of mainstream judaism. There is no evidence either for or against Psalm 22 being written either in BC or AD, none at all.

I leave this in your capable hands for critique. Unfortunately I can not upload as PDF, DOC or TXT as I have just discovered. So I will send this to you in email as pdf.

One slight editorial addition here, you said :

But the Masoretes were Johnny-come-latelies to the scene, which would make them hear-sayers of hear-sayers, not witnesses.

Rather large assumption on your part don't you think. The masoretes were not a club of people living in the 11th century that were suddenly given this name, they were actually generations of them from at least the 7th century. Direct Witnesses maybe not, but reliable carriers of what had been handed down to them, grammarians and with the Talmud almost completed - access to vocalisations, notes and grammar on the scriptures. Brought up to revere the scriptures and dedication to their continuity and faithfulness, if you can't trust the masoretes are you going to trust a group of 'peed-off' half jew half samaritan cult members living in secret?

[kwrandolph]

Re-document that I am sending you that can not be uploaded here.

There are Greek words explained in this document that I can not fully ascend to simply because I do not know Greek,

Too bad you don’t know Greek, because if you did, you wouldn’t have given this paper a second thought.

however leaving his comments aside about the Hireq vowel and the transliteration from the greek I think it rather more poignant where he addresses the masoretes' volcalization (sorry 'pointing' system - mixed the terms up in the last post which is why you criticised it).

When was this document written? It had to have been before the discovery of the DSS. His claim that the Masoretic points were around during Jesus’ time has 0% support.

The fact that he uses scripture almost entirely to back up his claim might, I believe, find resonance with yourself.

It’s no longer Scripture when he changes the definitions of words to support his claims. The little “horn” (exact translation of the term) was the extra stroke that distinguishes, for example, a ב from a כ in the Aramaic square characters used at that time.

… I am certainly sensible enough to see that his points do make perfect sense given that I check my bible, the hebrew codices online, and the Talmud.

Many of the DSS are online, including the Great Isaiah Scroll—not one has any hint of the Masoretic points.

… I do believe though that there was definitely some vowel pointing in place from at least Ezra's time,…

No evidence whatsoever that such existed prior to the Masoretes. Belief is not evidence.

… It seems definitive for me, and without question, that the masoretes' vowel system was not an invention by them alone,…

The physical dots on a page are theirs. But they were not the first to recognize that there was a problem because of a lack of vowel representation.

I had thought that this was so, but rather they had been handed a tradition of pronounciation …

That tradition was from when? All the evidence is that it is from their time and place.

from at least Ezra, that where there were definitely differences in pronounciation this is to be expected, but that made no difference to the meaning, that there were questions and differences over pronounciation goes without saying in some parts, but that they ESTABLISHED a faithful translation and meaning in order to standardise variances was their greater and number one responsibility, not to invent a point system, as I had been led to believe by not researching things out carefully as I have been forced to do as a result of this debate.

Again you are looking at what others say about the documents, I am looking at the documents themselves (or in this case, digital images made of them).

One slight editorial addition here, you said :

But the Masoretes were Johnny-come-latelies to the scene, which would make them hear-sayers of hear-sayers, not witnesses.

Rather large assumption on your part don't you think.

What? How can you even question that fact? The documents they copied were already copies of copies of unknown number of generations of copies. They didn’t have the originals. They were dependent on the accuracy of those who went before them. That makes them the legal equivalent of hear-say.

… Direct Witnesses maybe not, but reliable carriers of what had been handed down to them, grammarians and with the Talmud almost completed - access to vocalisations, notes and grammar on the scriptures. Brought up to revere the scriptures and dedication to their continuity and faithfulness, if you can't trust the masoretes are you going to trust a group of 'peed-off' half jew half samaritan cult members living in secret?

I trust the consonantal text that preceded the Masoretes by centuries. Because the DSS is so fragmentary, I have to rely on the consonantal MT for the majority of consonantal Tanakh as well. But I have found enough errors in the Masoretic points, which is what they added long after the text was written, that I no longer trust those points.

Karl W. Randolph.