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.4. REFLECTIONS OF THE IMPERFECT LEARNING OF THE TIBERIAN PRONUNCIATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES I.4.1. PRELIMINARY REMARKS The Tiberian pronunciation was highly prestigious when it was a living oral tradition (§I.0.9.). For this reason, many readers strove to adopt it in their reading of the Bible and orthoepic measures were taken to ensure that it was pronounced correctly and distinctly. The fact that the Tiberian pronunciation was the ideal target of readers of the Bible is reflected by the fact that many manuscripts pointed with Babylonian and Palestinian vowel signs display a tendency to convergence with the Tiberian tradition. Although the prestigious Tiberian pronunciation tradition was the ideal target, many readers fell short of achieving this target due to imperfect learning and interference from other reading traditions and vernacular languages.1 This is reflected by the fact that manuscripts with Babylonian and Palestinian systems of vocalization that were adapted to the Tiberian tradition rarely exhibit complete convergence. Even those of a manuscript such as I Firkovtich Evr. I B 3 (Codex Babylonicus 1 For the phenomenon of imperfect learning and its role in conditioning linguistic change see Thomason and Kaufman (1988, 251–55) and Thomason (2001, 66–76). © Geoffrey Khan, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0163.04 Imperfect Learning of the Tiberian Pronunciation 587 Petropolitanus), which appears to represent the Tiberian tradi- tion very closely, exhibits some differences from the tradition of the inner circle of the Tiberian Masoretic school (§I.2.5.8.). The various Non-Standard Tiberian manuscripts that have come down to us from the Middle Ages exhibit some developed orthoepic features of the Tiberian tradition, such as the extended use of dagesh, but in many cases their vocalization reflects a read- ing that falls short of the Tiberian model. The Karaite transcriptions into Arabic script exhibit read- ings of various degrees of closeness to the Tiberian tradition. Most are very close, whereas a few reflect a reading that falls short of the Tiberian ideal due to imperfect learning and interfer- ence. The transcriptions are particularly important for our under- standing of the processes at work that resulted in such a failure to reach the ideal target. The discussion in this chapter, therefore, will be based to a large extent on the evidence from the transcrip- tions. The failure to achieve the target is due to imperfect learn- ing and the impact of the phonology of a substrate on the pro- duction of the reading. The key process involves the matching of phonetic sounds in the Tiberian target pronunciation with pho- nemic prototypes in the substrate rather than learning the Tibe- rian phonemic prototypes and matching the phonetic sounds with these. This can lead to a distribution of sounds that does not correspond to that of the Tiberian target. Such a suboptimal out- come can be classified into two types. (i) The distribution of sounds may correspond to that of the substrate. (ii) The distribu- tion of sounds may correspond neither to that of the substrate 588 The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew nor to that of Tiberian target. In the latter case, the resulting type of pronunciation can be said to be a ‘hypercorrection’. I.4.2. CONSONANTS The main case study concerning the interference of a substrate in the achievement of a Tiberian target in the reading of consonants is the pronunciation of the interdental consonants. In most of the Sefardi reading traditions of the Levant and North Africa that have continued down to modern times the let- ters tav and dalet are pronounced as stops in all contexts. They are not pronounced as interdentals where the Tiberian tradition 2 had fricative tav [θ] or fricative dalet [ð], e.g. Aleppo Gen. 49.19 כִּבְרַ ת־אֶ ֶ֖רֶ ץ :[kəvrat ˈʔeˌrøˑs̴ (Katz 1981, 9 | L [BHSˌ ‘some distance’) ,Gen. 49.19 ‘Gad ִֶ֖ ִגְִִּדגּ דוּד :[gad geˈdud (Katz 1981, 8 | L [BHSˈ a troop … ’) Jerba Exod. 21.19 וְהתְהִַ ְךלִּ :[weˌhəthalˈleˑx (Katz 1977, 17 | L [BHS ‘and he walks about’) Exod. 21.2 ‘he will ביַעֲ ֹ֑ ד :[jaʕaˈbod (Katz 1977, 18 | L [BHS work’) 2 For this phenomenon see Garbell (1954, 232), Katz (1977, 16–18, 1981, 4–5), Akun (2010, 35–37, 46–47), Henshke (2013, 861–182). Imperfect Learning of the Tiberian Pronunciation 589 Morocco Exod. 15.8 התְ מ ֶ֖ ת :[tihuˈmut (Akun 2010, 46 | L [BHS ‘depths’) Exod. 14.30 ‘from the ִ ִמ דיַּ :[miˈyad (Akun 2010, 36 | L [BHS hand of (cstr.)’) The Sefardi reading traditions had their origin in the Pales- tinian reading tradition of Hebrew. This phenomenon, however, was not an original feature of the Palestinian reading tradition, but rather it appears to be the result of interference from the Ar- abic dialects spoken by the Jews of the regions in question, in which stops have replaced the interdental consonants.3 In regions where the Arabic dialects of the Jews preserved the interdentals, these consonants were generally preserved also in the local Se- fardi reading traditions of Hebrew.4 In some medieval Karaite transcriptions, there is evidence that readers sometimes pronounced tav and dalet as stops where interdental realizations would be expected. This is seen particu- larly clearly in the case of the transcription of tav, since the stop and fricative realizations are distinguished by different Arabic di- -with د whereas the occurrence of an Arabic ,(ث .vs ت .acritics (i.e 3 See, for example, Nevo (1991, 3–4: Aleppo), David Cohen (1975, 19: Tunis), Marcel Cohen (1912, 21: Algiers).