RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
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their close unfilled, the next great section beginning with a new line, on which account they were called " open "; the smaller sections were separated from each other by only a small space, and were therefore called " closed " or " connected." Thus not only the law but also the other two parts of the canon were divided. For the division of the whole canon, and the arrangement of the books, see Canon of Scripture, I.
From what has been said, it follows that the reading of the text, the vocalization, the division into words, verses, and sections depend upon the gradual settlement by the scribes; their reading can claim neither infallibility nor any absolutely binding power; and though their labor betrays a thorough and correct understanding of the text, the necessity may yet arise when the exegete must deviate from tradition. Extraordinary pains were taken to perpetuate in its purity the text thus divided and vocalized. Signs of this care, such as the rules for calligraphy and for writing the extraordinary points, have already been mentioned. The Posttalmudic treatises Masseket sopherim and Masseket sepher torah contain full details for copying. Nevertheless fluctuations are met with in the Masoretic period, and it must therefore be assumed that learned labor had not yet covered all details or made final settlement.
2. The Masoretic Period: The third period of the textual history is usually reckoned as extending from the sixth until the eleventh Christian century (when Jewish learning was transferred from the East to North Africa and Spain); it embraces the age of the Masoretes proper, and has for the Bible text in general the same importance as the Talmudic period had for the law. The efforts of the scholars to fix the reading and understanding of the sacred text were overshadowed somewhat by the study of the Talmud. After the close of the Talmud the work was resumed and cultivated in Babylonia and Palestine (at Tiberias). ' e In both schools the work of former retes generations was continued; but the Palestinians, who acted more independently than the more Talmudically inclined Babylonians, finally got the victory over the Babylonian school. In both schools they were no longer satisfied with a mere oral transmission of rules and regulations, but committed them to writing. There is no continuous history of the men of the Masorah and of the progress of their work preserved; but the marginal notes in ancient Biblemanuscripts and the fragments of other works show that the oldest Masoretes can be traced back to the eighth century. The main effort of this period (as the name Masorah, " tradition," indicates; see Masorah) was to collect and to write down the exegetico-critical material of the former period., and this makes sufficiently clear the one part of their work. But the Masoretes also added some new matter. Anxiously following the footsteps of the older critics in their effort to fix and to guard the traditional text, they laid down more minute rules of a linguistic and grammatical character, and in this respect a great part of the contents of the Masorah is indeed new. IT.— 7
They took the consonantal textus receptus just as it stood, and finally settled it in the minutest details, as is seen from the variants which became
2. Their a matter of controversy between the Work. East and tne West, the Babylonians and the Palestinians, which to the number of 216 Jacob ben Hayyim published for the first time in the second edition of the Bomberg Rabbinic Bible; these have reference mostly to the vowel-points. This list of variants, as is now known, is by no means complete. They also appended critical notes to the text, in part derived from the Talmudic period, in part new (especially the " grammatical conjectures "), showing that where, according to the grammar and the genius of the language, one should expect another reading, nevertheless the text must stand. Finally the great majority of the alternative " readings " date from the Masoretes.
The Masoretes fixed the reading of the text by the introduction of the vowel-signs, the accents, and the signs which affect the reading of the consonants (daghesh, mappik, raphe, and the diacritical point to distinguish between the letters "sin" and "shin"). The pronunciation they thus brought about was no invention, but embodied the current tradition. Nevertheless, one can not accept every Masoretic reading as infallible and unchangeable, especially when one considers that the tradition no doubt often fluctuated and that with such fluctuation the less correct reading may often have come into the text. Besides the system found in the majority of manuscripts, there exists another which has only recently become known called the " superlinear " system, because the vowel-signs are placed above the letters; this is found in some Babylonian and South Arabian manuscripts. The same is also the case with the accents.
The division of the text into verses, introduced by the Masoretes, was neither Babylonian nor Palestinian, but one which the Masoretes themselves seem to have established. At the beginning of this period the end of the verses was marked by soph pasuk, and, when the accents were introduced, by silluk besides. The old sections were retained, though not recognized as entirely correct, and the old traditional sign for the section, the smaller spacing (the little D in printed texts), was respected. The closed sections were marked in manuscripts and prints by a D, the open ones by a 3 in the empty space before the initial word. In addition there were introduced the Babylonian division into sections or parashiyoth (in the law) and haphtaroth (in the prophets), for Sabbath public reading. As these sections generally agree with the beginning and the end of an open or closed section, they were marked by a threefold 2 [i.e., DBS] or D [D D D] in the empty space before the beginning.
But even these efforts could not entirely remove variations. Hence, before the end of this period, the learned either attempted to find out by an elaborate comparison the correct punctuation and to fix it, or marked the important variations in the punctuation, or added a caution to each apparently
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