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The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew, Volume 1

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The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew, Volume 1 Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures The Tiberian Pronunciation Khan Tradition of Biblical Hebrew (Vol. I) The Tiberian Pronunciation Geoffrey Khan Tradition of Biblical Hebrew The form of Biblical Hebrew that is presented in printed edi� ons, with vocaliza� on and Tradition of Biblical Hebrew Vol. I accent signs, has its origin in medieval manuscripts of the Bible. The vocaliza� on and Volume I accent signs are nota� on systems that were created in Tiberias in the early Islamic period The Tiberian Pronunciation The by scholars known as the Tiberian Masoretes, but the oral tradi� on they represent has roots in an� quity. The gramma� cal textbooks and reference grammars of Biblical Hebrew in use today are heirs to centuries of tradi� on of gramma� cal works on Biblical Hebrew in GEOFFREY KHAN Europe. The paradox is that this European tradi� on of Biblical Hebrew grammar did not have direct access to the way the Tiberian Masoretes were pronouncing Biblical Hebrew. In the last few decades, research of manuscript sources from the medieval Middle East has made it possible to reconstruct with considerable accuracy the pronuncia� on of the Tiberian Masoretes, which has come to be known as the ‘Tiberian pronuncia� on tradi� on’. This book presents the current state of knowledge of the Tiberian pronuncia� on tradi� on of Biblical Hebrew and a full edi� on of one of the key medieval sources, Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ ‘The Guide for the Reader’, by ʾAbū al-Faraj Hārūn. It is hoped that the book will help to break the mould of current gramma� cal descrip� ons of Biblical Hebrew and form a bridge between modern tradi� ons of grammar and the school of the Masoretes of Tiberias. Links and QR codes in the book allow readers to listen to an oral performance of samples of the reconstructed Tiberian pronuncia� on by Alex Foreman. This is the fi rst � me Biblical Hebrew has been recited with the Tiberian pronuncia� on for a millennium. As with all Open Book publica� ons, this en� re book is available to read for free on the publisher’s website. Printed and digital edi� ons, together with supplementary digital material, can also be found at www.openbookpublishers.com Cover image: The Aleppo Codex. Courtesy of the Ben-Zvi Insti tute, Jerusalem. Photographer: Ardon Bar Hama. Cover design: Luca Baff a. book 1 ebooke and OA edi� ons also available OPEN ACCESS OBP https://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2020 Geoffrey Khan. Recorded material © 2020 Alex Foreman, CC BY. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the text; to adapt the text and to make commercial use of the text providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Geoffrey Khan, The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew, Volume I. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2020, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0163 In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit, https:// doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0163#copyright Further details about CC BY licenses are available at, https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/ All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web Updated digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0163#resources Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher. Semitic Languages and Cultures 1, volume 1. ISSN (print): 2632-6906 ISSN (digital): 2632-6914 ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-675-0 ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-676-7 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-677-4 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0163 Cover image: The Aleppo Codex, Courtesy of the Ben-Zvi Institute, Jerusalem. Photographer: Ardon Bar Hama Cover design: Luca Baffa. I.3. DAGESH AND RAFE I.3.1. DAGESH I.3.1.1. Preliminary Remarks Dagesh is a dot that is marked within a letter. It is in origin an Aramaic active participle meaning ‘stabbing’ from the Aramaic root d-g-š ‘to stab’. This referred, it seems, to the ‘stabbing’ of the letter by the pen when the sign was marked. The dagesh sign was used mainly in two contexts. These are (i) on a consonant that was geminated (traditionally referred to in modern grammars as dagesh forte) and (ii) on the consonants when they were realized as plosives (traditionally referred בגדכפת to as dagesh lene).1 In both cases the letter with dagesh was pronounced with greater pressure than its counterpart without dagesh. The majority of consonants in the Tiberian pronunciation tradition could be marked with a dagesh. 1 Our terms dagesh forte and dagesh lene go back to David Qimḥi (1160- דגש קל dagesh forte) and) דגש חזק who uses the Hebrew terms ,(1235 are used also דגש קל and דגש חזק dagesh lene) in his Mikhlol. The terms) by Yequtiʾel ha-Naqadan, who was active in medieval Ashkenaz in the second half of the thirteenth century. He does not mention David Qimḥi’s Mikhlol, which was written earlier, but it is possible that Yequtiʾel borrowed this terminology from Qimḥi (Yarqoni 1985, 105– 13). © Geoffrey Khan, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0163.03 Dagesh and Rafe 521 Dagesh is not marked, however, on the laryngeals and in the Standard Tiberian tradition, except in (אהעח) pharyngeals a few isolated cases to ensure correct reading (e.g. the dagesh in ʾalef in four words, see §I.1.1.). In principle, therefore, these consonants are not geminated. The letter resh, like the laryngeal and pharyngeal conso- nants, is generally not geminated by dagesh. Occasionally, how- ever, the resh does have dagesh, e.g. (your navel string was not cut’ (Ezek. 16.4‘ לֹֽ א־כָּרַּ֣ת שָּר ֵּ֔ ְך :L (the bitterness of its soul’ (Prov. 14.10‘ מָּר ת ַּ֣ נ פְשׁ֑ ֹו :L (because my head’ (Cant. 5.2‘ רשֶׁ אשִּ י :L (anything bad’ (Jer. 39.12‘ מְאַּּ֣ומָּ ה ׁ֑ רָּ ע :L (to irritate her’ (1 Sam. 1.6‘ הרְ עִּמָּ ׁ֑ ּה :L When it is marked in cases such as these, it should be iden- tified as dagesh forte, indicating the gemination of the consonant. In the attested examples, the resh with dagesh in the Tiberian Masoretic tradition would have had its primary realization as an uvular trill according to the rules that have come down to us from the medieval sources (§I.I.1.20.). This does not appear, however, to have been a relevant conditioning factor for the dagesh. Some Middle Eastern Jewish communities pronounce the resh as gemi- nate in their biblical reading where the dagesh was marked, but in all cases they pronounce the resh as an apical-alveolar.2 In medieval manuscripts of Rabbinic Hebrew that belong to the eastern tradition of transmission, dagesh is marked on resh 2 Morag (1960, 207–8). 522 The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew more frequently than it is in the Tiberian biblical text.3 The ten- dency to mark dagesh is greater in some eastern manuscripts than in others. It is particularly common in the Parma B manuscript of the Mishnah. The dagesh is marked on resh after the relative par- -še and on the medial resh of a number of verbal and nom שֶׁ ticle inal morphological patterns with a geminated middle radical, e.g. 4 ’.weavers‘ ס רָּ גִּ ין ,(mixed’ (puʿal‘ מְ עּורֶׁ בֶׁ ת he mixed’ (piʿel) and‘ עִּ ירב The resh is pronounced geminated in a similar range of contexts in Middle Eastern reading traditions of Rabbinic Hebrew that have survived into modern times, e.g. Aleppo [ʃerrɑʔaˈta] he‘ ( עִּרב) [who has seen (fs)’ (Berakhot 3.6), [ʕərˈreːβ‘ (שֶׁרָּ אֲתָּ ה) ( לְהרָּ גִּ ין) ’created an ʿeruv’ (ʿEruvin 2.6), [leharraˈgin] ‘to murderers (Nedarim 3.4).5 The gemination is more widespread in some traditions than in others. Also in verbal and nominal patterns with a geminated middle radical it tends to be restricted to certain verbal roots and lexical items, as is the case in the medieval manuscripts. Sometimes there are variations within the same root that are exploited to express a semantic distinction. In is geminated in the ערב Jerba, for example, the resh in the root piʿel when it has the meaning of mixing one thing with another, but it is not geminated when it has the sense of creating an ʿeruv. Morag believes that the lack of consistency in the gemination of the resh across the traditions of Rabbinic reading and within 3 Bar-Asher (1987). 4 Bar-Asher (1987, 13–14). 5 Katz (1981, 32–36). Dagesh and Rafe 523 individual traditions may have been the result of varying degrees of influence from biblical reading traditions.6 The dagesh in the resh in the Tiberian biblical tradition in a -because my head’ (Cant. 5.2) after the parti‘ ֶׁשר ִּ אש י case such as which corresponds to one of the contexts where it occurs , ֶׁ ש- cle in the eastern Rabbinic traditions, suggests that the tradition of gemination of this letter is of considerable time depth. It is likely to have had its origin at a period when Hebrew was a living language, assuming that Rabbinic Hebrew originated in the vernacular of the Tannaitic period.
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