2. The Voirel-points and A events in the Tlebreto Text. — Here the Masoretes note the pecidiarities or anoma- lies in the use of the vowel-points, of the dagesh and mappik, and of the accents in the text— a fact to which Buxtorf appeals with considerable force, as jjroving that the authors of the Masorah, as we have it, were not the
inventors of the diacritical marks by which vowels and accents are indicated in the Hebrew text ; for, had they been so, they would not have confined themselves to la- boriously noting anomalies into which thej' themselves had fallen, but would at once have removed them. See Vowel-points.
3. Words. — With regard to these, the Masoretes note (1) the cases of Scrij>tio ple?ui (D'^X?^) and defectiva (D^~iDn) ; (2) the number of times in which certain words occur at the beginning of a verse (as, e. g., mp, ^vhich they say is nine times the first word of a verse), or the end of a verse (as yiXtl, which they say occurs thrice as the final word of a verse) ; (3) words of which the meaning is ambiguous, and to which they athx the proper meaning in the place where they occur ; (4) words which have over them the puncta extraordinaria ; and (5) words which present anomalies in writing or grammar, and which some have thought should be alter- ed, or pecuUarities which need to be explained ("j'^T'SD).
4. Verses. — The Masoretes number the verses in each book of the O. Test., as well as in each of the larger sec- tions of the Pentateuch, and they note the middle verse of each book of the O. T. ; they also note the number of verses in which certain expressions occur, the first and last letters of each verse, and in many cases the number of letters of which it is composed ; and, in fine, they have marked twenty-five or twenty-eight places where there is a pause in the middle of a verse, or where a hiatus is supposed to be found in the meaning (as, e. g., in Gen. iv, 8, where, after the words l^nx bzrrbx "pp T^Xi", there is in rabbinical editions of the O. Test, a space left vacant [XpDS, piska'] to indicate that something is probablj' omitted).
5. Tihhun Sopherim (D"'^&'10 'Ip!^? ordinafio, sive correctio Scribarum). — On the word DTl^D (Psa. cvi, 20) the Masorah has this note : the icord 01133 is one of eighteen words in Scripture which are an ordination of the Scribes. These eighteen words are also enumera- ted in a note at the beginning of Numbers. The pas- sages where they occur are presented in the following table :
Tikkun Soiiltervm. Erroneous Reading.
Gen. xviii, 22, mni ^isb .... Cm^X '^I'sh
DtT>as mni
nrrnn
i3iTua
13X bx
rrcn xb
inix
T^'bx T"iT rx
Charges have been rashly advanced against these Sopherim of having corrupted the sacred text (Galatin, De A rcanis Cathol. Ver. lib. i, c. 8), but for this there is no foundation (see ben-Chajim's Introduction to the Rab- binic Bible, translated by Ginsburg, p. 21). Eichhorn concludes from '' the character of the readings" that " this recension took note only of certain errors which had crept into the text through transcribers, and which
Numb, si, 15,
in^'-a
Numb, sii, 12,
1-cx
nirn
1 Sam. iii, 13,
cnb
2 Sam. xvi, 12,
»;i-'-
1 Kings xii, 16,)
2 Chron. x, 16, / Ezek. viii,17,
i"''bnxb
DSX ^X
Hab. i, 12.
Til ^3 X^
Mai. i, 13,
irix
Zecb. ii, 8,
131:;
Jer. ii, 11,
imsD
Hos. iv, 7,
cm^D
Psa. cvi, 20,
0^2=
Job vii, 20,
i?X
Job xxxii, 3,
mix rx
Lam. iil, 20,
-b-j
MASORAH
862
MASREKAH
were corrected by cullation of IMSS." (Einleif. ins. A . T. sec. 110). Bleek, however, thinks that this is affirmed without evidence, and that in some cases the rejected reading is probably the original one, as, e. g., in Gen. xviii, "22, and Hab. i, 12 {Einleit. ins A. T. p. 803).
0. Itiur Sopherim (D'ISIO "iIl^^", ablatio Scriba- rum). — The Masoretes have noted four instances in which the letter 1 has been erroneously prefixed to *nx — viz. Gen. xviii, 5 ; xxiv, 55 ; Numb, xii, 1-1 ; and Psa. Ixviii, 20 ; they note also that it has been erroneously prefixed to the word T'^IiSUJia in Psa. xxxvi, 7. Of these passages, the only one in which the injunction of the Sopherim to remove the 1 has been neglected is Numb, xii, 14 — a neglect at which Buxtorf expresses surprise (Lex. Talmud, s. v. ^-2").
7. Keri and Kethib. — But not aU the dicta of the Mas- oretes are of equal sterling value ; they are not only sometimes utterly superfluous, but downright erroneous. Of its " countings" we may adduce that it enumerates in the Pentateuch 18 greater and 43 smaller portions, 1534 verses, 03,407 words, 70,100 letters, etc. — a calcidation which is, however, to a certain degree at variance with the Talmud. See the article Keki jSssd Kethib in this work.
III. Form, of Ike Masorah. — The language of the Ma- sorah is Chaldee; and, besides the difficulty of this idiom, the obscure abbreviations, contractions, symbolical signs, etc., with which the work abounds, render its study ex- ceedingly difficult. In all probability it was composed out of notes that had been made from time to time on separate leaves, or in books, as occasion demanded. Af- terwards they were appended as marginal notes to the text, sometimes on the upper and lower margin, some- times in a more brief form on the space between the text and the Chaldee version, where, from scarcity of room, many abbreviations and symbols were resorted to, and considerable omissions were made. Hence arose a distinction between the nbns iTTlD'a, the Masora Maffna, and the il5i:p 12, the M, Parva — the former of which comprehends the entire body of critical re- mark on the margins, the latter the more curt and con- densed notes inserted in the intermediate space. The latter has frequently been represented as an abbreviated compend of the former ; but this is not strictly correct, for the lesser Masorah contains many things not found in the greater. At an early period the scribes intro- duced the practice of adorning their annotations with all manner of figures, and symbols, and caligraphic inge- nuities ; and from this, as well as from causes connected with their method of selection and arrangement, the Mhole came into such a state of confusion that it was rendered almost useless. In this state it remained until the publication of Bomberg's Rabbinical Bible (Venetia, 1526 : the second Bomberg Biblia Rabbin., not the first, as is sometimes stated), for which the learned K. Jacob ben-Cliajim, with immense labor, prepared and arranged the Masorah. See JACon ben-Ciiajim. To facilitate the use of the Greater Masorah. he placed at the end of liis v.ork what has been called the Masora maxima or Jinali.-!, and which forms a sort of JIasorctic Concord- ance in alphabetic order.