DEFECTS, ALLEGED OR REAL, IN THE TIBERIAS POINTING

The notation of the punctators of Tiberias was admired and, in good time, adopted by all Jewish communities for the reading of the Holy Scriptures in the original language. The Tiberias pronuncia tion which it represented differed more or less from the sounds they were used to, and they received too little oral instruction to acquire that pronunciation in toto. The discrepancies between their actual sounds and certain graphemes from Tiberias made it harder for them to understand the rationale of the graphemes. The scholars among them struggled to clarify the apparent ambiguities, but never sup posed there was anything wrong with the apparatus of signs, any more than with the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. But when Christians in the Renaissance studied Hebrew, some of them were critical. Being accustomed to the Latin alphabet and knowing some Greek besides, they had an independent notion of what a writing system ought to show. They had to depend, in prac tice, upon the Tiberias pointing, as they could not learn Hebrew without it, in spite of a few abortive efforts to consider only the un pointed text. But they did not approach the Hebrew text of the Bible with the reverence that the Jews felt toward everything about it. In stead the authority of the Hebrew, as compared with the ancient ver sions, became entangled in ecclesiastical controversies; so those who adhered less to the "Hebraica ueritas" had a strong motive for cross-examining its formal features as well as its substance. With regard to the pointing, the result was that whereas the Jews had no ticed some difficulties, the Christians expressed frank doubts. I am not going to survey the history of Hebrew grammar, de scribing the various objections to the pointing. Most of them arose from misconceptions; and if these have been disposed of before our time and are no longer entertained by any Hebraists of standing, there is little gain from dwelling upon them now. But it is worth while to study whatever is still at issue.