Vowel‐points on the ketib

[Sam Jer]

Did Masoretic manuscripts typically have points on both the qere and ketib, or only on one of them?

 

[iainduguid]

The vowel points in the text are the qere ("what is read"); the consonants are the kethib ("what is written"). Often there is a marginal notation with the consonants that are being read.

E.g. 2 Kings 5:9 (in the Leningrad text, which matches the Second Rabbinic Bible here)
וַיָּבֹ֥א נַעֲמָ֖ן בְּסוּסָ֣ו וּבְרִכְבֹּ֑ו וַיַּעֲמֹ֥ד פֶּֽתַח־הַבַּ֖יִת לֶאֱלִישָֽׁע׃

The third word (from the right) has the vowels that presuppose a plural reading ("with his horses"), but the consonantal text assumes a singular ("with his horse"). The resulting composite is an impossible Hebrew form. In the margin, in tiny print you have the consonants of the Qere bswsyw.

BHS footnote advises that there are other Masoretic Hebrew manuscripts that have the same as the Qere, though it prefers the kethib. Septuagint follows the kethib. All the English translations I looked at follow the Qere, including the KJV, though KJV translates the next words as "and his chariot", where other translations take the singular as a collective "and his chariots".

 

[Sam Jer]

The vowel points in the text are the qere ("what is read"); the consonants are the kethib ("what is written"). Often there is a marginal notation with the consonants that are being read.

E.g. 2 Kings 5:9 (in the Leningrad text, which matches the Second Rabbinic Bible here)
וַיָּבֹ֥א נַעֲמָ֖ן בְּסוּסָ֣ו וּבְרִכְבֹּ֑ו וַיַּעֲמֹ֥ד פֶּֽתַח־הַבַּ֖יִת לֶאֱלִישָֽׁע׃

The third word (from the right) has the vowels that presuppose a plural reading ("with his horses"), but the consonantal text assumes a singular ("with his horse"). The resulting composite is an impossible Hebrew form. In the margin, in tiny print you have the consonants of the Qere bswsyw.

BHS footnote advises that there are other Masoretic Hebrew manuscripts that have the same as the Qere, though it prefers the kethib. Septuagint follows the kethib. All the English translations I looked at follow the Qere, including the KJV, though KJV translates the next words as "and his chariot", where other translations take the singular as a collective "and his chariots".

In my leningrad-based bible, the words with a diffrent qere are left unpointed and the qere is in the margain. But my Ginsburg OT has a margain that instead says something like this (taken from Genesis 8:17):

הוֹצֵא כתיב, הַיְצֵא קרי (hotze ketib, hatize qeri)

So my question is where the pointings of the ketib came from. Did Christian David Ginsburg make them up, or are they as old as the vowel-points themselves?

 

[Sam Jer]

The third word (from the right) has the vowels that presuppose a plural reading ("with his horses"), but the consonantal text assumes a singular ("with his horse"). The resulting composite is an impossible Hebrew form. In the margin, in tiny print you have the consonants of the Qere bswsyw.

By the way, this does not ring true to me (the likelihood that I am wrong is not small but if I am I'd like to be told so, hence me posting here). I never studied biblical Hebrew but Modern Hebrew is my native tounge and Iv'e read the Hebrew OT since childhood (exclusively the leningrad text until recently when I got an OT from the SDHS which uses Gibsburg's edition. I am only now learning the accents, which do not exist in modern Hebrew).

סוסו in an unpointed text is indeed more likely suso then susav, but would not סוּסָו pointed as it is be a slightly unusual, yet still (at least without modern standardized spelling) acceptable way, to write susav (his horses)? Surely no one who remembers the vowel‐points he learned when he was just learnimg to read would be duped into reading suso. In Israeli schools this is called כתיב חסר (ketib chaser), roughly translated as "lacking spelling", as opposed to כתיב מלא (ketib maleh - "full spelling").

 

[iainduguid]

So my question is where the pointings of the ketib came from. Did Christian David Ginsburg make them up, or are they as old as the vowel-points themselves?

I think this is a false dichotomy. Ginsberg is not "making them up"; he is giving you what he understands to have been the original vowel points, even though he has no direct access to them. So it's somewhere in between. In most cases, the vowel pointing for the kethib is obvious.

 

[Sam Jer]

I think this is a false dichotomy. Ginsberg is not "making them up"; he is giving you what he understands to have been the original vowel points, even though he has no direct access to them. So it's somewhere in between. In most cases, the vowel pointing for the kethib is obvious.

Did he have a source, or was it only an educated conjecture on the part of CDG?

Also, did I understand you correctly that in older manuscripts the main text is in fact pointed, and where the pointing makes little sense there are alternative consonants in the qere?

 

[iainduguid]

By the way, this does not ring true to me (the likelihood that I am wrong is not small but if I am I'd like to be told so, hence me posting here). I never studied biblical Hebrew but Modern Hebrew is my native tounge and Iv'e read the Hebrew OT since childhood (exclusively the leningrad text until recently when I got an OT from the SDHS which uses Gibsburg's edition. I am only now learning the accents, which do not exist in modern Hebrew).

סוסו in an unpointed text is indeed more likely suso then susav, but would not סוּסָו pointed as it is be a slightly unusual, yet still (at least without modern standardized spelling) acceptable way, to write susav (his horses)? Surely no one who remembers the vowel‐points he learned when he was just learnimg to read would be duped into reading suso. In Israeli schools this is called כתיב חסר (ketib chaser), roughly translated as "lacking spelling", as opposed to כתיב מלא (ketib maleh - "full spelling").

I hear what you are saying: swsw could in theory simply be a "defectively" spelled plural, but of the seven other times this form occurs in the OT, it nowhere else has this defective spelling. And of course kethib/qere readings are sometimes simply spelling related: for example the form yerushalaim where the text lacks the yod in the full yerushalayim. In that case, the qere is simply making clear a later convention to ensure that the text is read in a way that makes sense to the hearers. Another example would be the lack of a feminine demonstrative in the Pentateuch, so the form is consistently written hw' in the consonantal text, but the vocalization is a hireq rather than a shureq so that the reader knows to read the feminine form hi' instead of (what became) the masculine form hu'

In an unpointed text, most readers would assume swsw to be suso; if there was a tradition of reading it as a defective spelling, that would account for the masoretic punctuation, but there isn't normally a marginal note on defective spellings. The fact that there is one suggests the masoretes thought there may have been an omission in the text

Did he have a source, or was it only an educated conjecture on the part of CDG?

Also, did I understand you correctly that in older manuscripts the main text is in fact pointed, and where the pointing makes little sense there are alternative consonants in the qere?

He may have had oral tradition sources and there is likely some discussion of some of these cases in medieval Jewish commentaries. But in most cases, it isn't rocket science. It's like looking at "hppy brthdy" and asking yourself what the missing vowels might be.

The Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad manuscript (our oldest masoretic manuscripts) are both pointed Hebrew texts that include qere pointings, along with marginal notations that explain kethib/qere readings, among other things. The Dead Sea scrolls are unpointed manuscripts.

 

[Sam Jer]

The Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad manuscript (our oldest masoretic manuscripts) are both pointed Hebrew texts that include qere pointings, along with marginal notations that explain kethib/qere readings, among other things. The Dead Sea scrolls are unpointed manuscripts.

I shoukd have clarified: would they act as the Leningrad-based editions I have (not pointing the ketib, and having a pointed marginal note), or simply put qere points of ketib letters and clarify thd consonants in the margain?

 

[iainduguid]

The latter