How the Bible Got It’s Vowels and Punctuation
A group called the “Masoretes” (often dated to the ninth century C.E.) recorded and annotated what has become the “authentic” version of the Hebrew Scriptures. Their work is recognized today by Jewish religious leaders as being authentic. This group’s name comes from Hebrew word “MESORAH” which is ultimately from the verb “MASAR”, meaning “to hand down”. The leaders and Rabbis who busied themselves with the “MASORAH” were called the “MASORETES”. The oldest copy of the Hebrew Bible still in existence today is about 1000 years old.
Often called “The Masorites”, they were not happy with the fact that only serious students and scholars could read the Hebrew text. It consists of all consonsants and lacks any puncutation other than white spaces. In prior times, three consonants were adapted to vowel sounds to make reading easier: the YOD, HEI, and VAV. These are now called in Latin “matres lectiones” (mother of meaning) or “AM QIRIA” (mother of reading) in Hebrew.
Often called “The Masorites”, they were not happy with the fact that only serious students and scholars could read the Hebrew text. It consists of all consonsants and lacks any puncutation other than white spaces. In prior times, three consonants were adapted to vowel sounds to make reading easier: the YOD, HEI, and VAV. These are now called in Latin “matres lectiones” (mother of meaning) or “AM QIRIA” (mother of reading) in Hebrew.
Rather than relying on the three “matres lectiones” consonants that act as vowels (YUD, HEI, VAV), the Masoretes used small marks, usually dots and dashes, above, below or through a letter to show how the letters are to be pronounced based on a common understood meaning or tradition. You might be surprised to know that the three words SHEM (name), SHAM (there) and SAM (put) are all spelled the same when using only consonants (SHEM follwoed by MEM-SOFIT). Thus a beginner who runs across these letters, must choose his punctuation based on the context of the sentence. Would it be nice if there were just vowels?
This group accomplished yet another useful function. In a Torah scroll, for example, most of the sentences run together, with only an occasional white space. The Masoretes added small amounts of punctuation, basically periods and the equivalent of a hyphen. Beyond the above, they added an intricate musical system for singing the text in liturgical settings.
The Ben Asher family of masoretes was largely responsible for the preservation and production of the Masoretic Text, although an alternate Masoretic text of the Ben Naphtali masoretes which differs slightly from the Ben Asher text existed. The halakhic authority Maimonides endorsed the Ben Asher as superior, although the Egyptian Jewish scholar, Saadya Gaon al-Fayyumi, had preferred the Ben Naphtali system.
When most people think of “the Hebrew Bible”, most are referring to one copied from “The Leningrad Codex” (which was produced according to the Tiberian Masorah). The word “codex” comes from the Latin “block of wood” and is a book in the format of modern books , with separate pages normally bound together and given a cover. It was a Roman invention that replaced scrolls. The Leningrad Codex dates from approximately 1009 C.E., and it is the oldest surviving complete copy of the Hebrew Bible, and is housed in the Russian National Library. The Leningrad Codex, in extraordinarily pristine condition after a millennium, also provides an example of medieval Jewish art. Sixteen of the pages contain decorative geometric patterns that illuminate passages from the text.