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OdUr. GESENIUS'
HEBREW GRAMMAR
AS EDITED AND ENLARGED BY THE LATE
E. KAUTZSCH
PBOFESSOB OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF HALLE
SECOND ENGLISH EDITION
REVISED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE TWENTY-EIGHTH GERMAN
EDITION (1909) BY
A. E. COWLEY
WITH A FACSIMILE OF THE SILOAM INSCRIPTION BY J. EUTING, AND A TABLE OF ALPHABETS BY M. LIDZBARSKI
OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C. 4
GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI CAPE TOWN IBADAN
Geoffrey Cumberlege, Publisher to the University
iq/o
SECOND ENGU8H EDITION I9IO
BEPRINTED LITHOGRAPHICALLY IN GREAT BRrTAtV
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD, I946, I949, 1952, I956
FROM CORRECTED SHEETS OF THE SECOND EDITION
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
The translation of the twenty -sixth German edition of this grammar, originally prepared by the Rev. G. W. Collins and revised by me, was published in 1898. Since that date a twenty-seventh German edition has appeared ; and Prof. Kautzsch was already engaged on a twenty-eighth in 1908 when the English translation was becoming exhausted. He sent me the sheets as they were printed off, and I began revising the former translation in order to produce it as soon as possible after the completion of the German. The whole of the English has been carefully compared with the new edition, and, it is hoped, improved in many points, while Prof. Kautzsch's own corrections and additions have of course been incorporated. As before, the plan and arrangement of the original have been strictly followed, so that the references for sections and paragraphs correspond exactly in German and English. Dr. Driver has again most generously given up time, in the midst of other engagements, to reading the sheets, and has made numerous suggestions. To him also are chiefly due the enlargement of the index of subjects, some expansions in the new index of Hebrew words, and some additions to the index of passages, whereby we hope to have made the book more serviceable to students. I have also to thank my young friend, Mr. Godfrey R. Driver, of Winchester College, for some welcome help in correcting proofs of the Hebrew index and the index of passages. 2S nott'* D3n p. Many cori'ections have been sent to me by scholars who have used the former English edition, especially the Rev. W. E. Blomfield, the Rev. S. Holmes, Mr. P. Wilson, Prof. Witton Davies, Mr. G. H. Skipwith, and an unknown correspondent
iv Translator s Preface
at West Croydon. These, as well as suggestions in reviews, have all been considered, and where possible, utilized. I am also much indebted to the Press-readers for the great care which they have bestowed on the work.
Finally, I must pay an affectionate tribute to the memory of Prof. Kautzsch, who died in the spring of this year, shortly after finishing the last sheets of the twenty-eighth edition. For more than thirty years he was indefatigable in improving the successive editions of the Grammar. The German trans- lation of the Old Testament first published by him in 1894, with the co-operation of other scholars, under the title Die Heilige Schrift des A Ts, and now (19 10) in the third and much enlarged edition, is a valuable work which has been widely appreciated : the Apocryphen und Fseudepigraphen des A Ts, edited by him in 1 900, is another important work : besides which he published his GrainTnatik des Biblisch- Aramdischen in 1884, two useful brochures Bibelwissenschaft und Religionsunterricht in 1 900, and Die bleibende Bedeutung des A Ts in 1903, six popular lectures on Die Poesie und die poetischen Bilcher des A Ts in 1902, his article 'Religion of Israel' in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, v. (1904), pp. 612-734, not to mention minor publications. His death is a serious loss to Biblical scholarship, while to me and to many others it is the loss of a most kindly friend, remarkable alike for his simple piety and his enthusiasm for learning.
A. C.
Magdalen College, Oxford, Sept. 19 10.
FROM THE GERMAN PREFACE
The present (twenty-eighth) edition of this Grammar/ like the former ones, takes account as far as possible of all impor- tant new publications on the subject, especially J. Earth's Sj^radnvissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zuvi Semitischen, pt. i, Lpz. 1907 ; the important works of C. Brockelmann (for the titles see the heading of § i ; vol. i of the GruTidriss was finished in 1908) ; P. Kahle's Der Tnasoretische Text des A Tk iiach der Uberlieferung der babylonischen Juden, Lpz. 1902 (giving on p. 51 ff. an outline of Hebrew accidence from a Babylonian MS. at Berlin) ; R. Kittel's Bihlia Hehraica, Lpz. 1905 f., 2 vols, (discriminating between certain, probable, and proposed emendations ; see § 3 ^, end) ; Th. Noldeke's Beitrdge zur semit. Sprachivissenschaft, Strassburg, 1904; Ed. Sievers' Metrische Studien (for the titles of these striking works see § 2r). The important work of J. W. Rothstein, Grundzilge des hehr. Bfiythmus, &c. (see also § 2 r), unfortunately appeared too late to be used. The two large commentaries edited by Nowack and Marti have been recently completed ; and in P. Haupt's Polychrome Bible {SBOT.), part ix (Kings) by Stade and Schwally was published in 1904.
For full reviews of the twenty-seventh edition, which of course have been considered as carefully as possible, I have to thank Max Margolis (in Hehraica, 1902, p. 159 fF.), Mayer
* The first edition appeared at Halle in 1813 (202 pp. small 8vo) ; twelve more editions were published by W. Gesenius himself, the fourteenth to the twenty first (1845-1872) by E. ROdiger, the twenty-second to the twenty- eighth (1878-1910) by E. Kautzsch. The first abridged edition appeared in 1896, the second at the same time as the present (twenty-eighth) large edition. The first edition of the ' Ubungsbuch ' (Exercises) to Gesenius- Kautzsch's Hebrew Grammar appealed in 1881, the sixth in 1908.
vi From the German Preface
Lambert {B.EJ. 1902, p. 307 ff.), and H. Oort (Theol. Tijd- schrift, 1902, p. 373 ff.). For particular remarks and correc- tions I must thank Prof. J. Earth (Berlin), Dr. Gasser, pastor in Bucbberg, Schaffhausen, B. Kirschner, of Charlottenburg, (contributions to the index of passages), Pastor Kohler, of Augst, Dr. Liebmann, of Kuczkow, Posen, Prof. Th. Noldeke, of Strassburg, Pastor S. Preiswerk junior, of Bale, Dr. Schwarz, of Leipzig, and Prof. B. Stade, of Giessen (died in 1906). Special mention must be made of the abundant help received from three old friends of this book, Prof. P. Haupt, of Baltimore, Prof. Knudtzon, of Kristiania, and Prof. H. Strack, of Berlin, and also, in connexion with the present edition, Prof. H. Hyvernat, of the University of Washington, who has rendered great service especially in the correction and enlargement of the indexes. I take this opportunity of thanking them all again sincerely. And I am no less grateful also to my dear colleague Prof. C. Steuernagel for the unwearying care with which he has helped me from beginning to end in correcting the proof-sheets.
Among material changes introduced into this edition may be mentioned the abolition of the term S^wd medium (§10 d). In this I have adopted, not without hesitation, the views of Sievers. I find it, however, quite impossible to follow him in rejecting all distinctions of quantity in the vowels. It is no doubt possible that such matters may in the spoken language have worn a very different appearance, and especially that in the period of nearly a thousand years, over which the Old Testament writings extend, very great variations may have taken place. Our duty, however, is to represent the language in the form in which it has been handed down to us by the Masoretes ; and that this form involves a dis- tinction between unchangeable, tone-long, and short vowels, admits in my opinion of no doubt. The discussion of any earlier stage of development belongs not to Hebrew grammar but to comparative Semitic philology.
The same answer may be made to Beer's desire {ThLZ. 1904,
From the Geinnan Preface vii
col. 314 f) for an ' historical Hebrew grammar describing the actual growth of the language on a basis of comparative philology, as it may still be traced within the narrow limits of the Old Testament '. Such material as is available for the purpose ought indeed to be honestly set forth in the new edi- tions of Gesenius; but Beer seems to me to appraise such material much too highly when he refers to it as necessi- tating an ' historical grammar '. In my opinion these his- torical differences have for the most part been obliterated by the harmonizing activity of the Masoretes.
E. KAUTZSCH.
Halle,
July, 1909.
ADDITIONS AND COERECTIONS
Page 42, line 13 from below, /or note i read note 3.
Page 63, § 15 p. [See also Wickes, Prose Accentuation, 130 f,, 87 n. (who, however, regards the superlinear, Babylonian system as the earlier); and Ginsburg, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 76, 78. In Ginsburg's Hebrew Bible, ed, 2 (1908), pp. 108 f., 267 f., the two systems of division are printed in extenso, in parallel columns — the 10 verses of the superlinear (Babylonian) system consisting (in Exodus) of V. 2.3-6.7.8-U.12.I3.U.16.16.17 (^s numbered in ordinary texts), and the 1 2 verses of the sublinear (Palestinian) system, consisting of
y 2-3.4.5.6.7.8.9.10.11.12.13-16.17 g R D 1
< <
Page 65, note i,/or N3N read X|i< (as § 105 a).
[Editions often vary in individual passages, as regards the accen- tuation of the first syllable: but in the 7 occurrences of NJK, and the 6 of nJX, Baer, Ginsburg, and Kittel agree in having at\ accent on both syllables (as N3X) in Gn 50^^, Ex 32'^ \f/ 116", and Metheg on the first syllable and an accent on the second syllable (as n^3X) in 2 K 20?=Is 38', Jon I'V4^ xp ii6\ ii%'^-^\ Dn 9*, Ne i^", except that in i/^ 116^ Ginsburg has n?^. — S. R. D.]
Page 79, § 22 s, before ^riD''*i"nn insert exceptions to h are. After Jer 39^^^ add ifr 52° ; and for Ez 9^ read Ezr 9^
[So Baer (cf. his note on Jud 20*'; also on Jer 39'^, and several of the other passages in question) : but Ginsburg only in 10 of the exceptions to b, and Jacob ben Hayyim and Kittel only in 5, viz. Jer 39'S Pr ii^ is\ yj, 52', Ezr 9«.— S. R. D.]
Page III, line 12, for H^nn read H'^T^T}.
Page 123, § 45 e, add: cf. also nasny followed by nx, Is 13'*,
Am 4" (§"5 4
Page 175, § 67. See B. Halpei-, ' The Participial formations of the
Geminate Verbs ' in ZA IF. 1 910, pp. 42 ff., 99 ff., 201 S. (also dealing with the regular verb).
Page 177, at the end of § 67 g- the following paragraph has been accidentally omitted :
Rem. According to the prevailing view, this strengthening of the first radical is merely intended to give the bi-literal stem at least
Additions and Corrections ix
a 4^i-Hteral appearance. (Possibly aided by the analogy of verbs }*B, as P. Haupt has suggested to me in conversation.) But cf. Kautzsch, ' Die sog. aramaisierenden Formen der Verba v"V im Hebr.' in Oriental. Studien zum 70. Gehurtstag Th. NoldeJces, 1906, p. 771 ff. It is there shown (i) that the sharpening of the ist radical often serves to empha- size a particular meaning (cf. *13^, but ^H^.^^, ^nj and ?n^, 3D^ and 3DJ, Dt?^ and DK'ri), and elsewhere no doubt to dissiniilate the vowels (as 1?!, ''1!, never "UJ, ^T, &c.) : (2) that the sharpening of the ist ladical often appears to be occasioned by the nature of the first letter of the stem, especially when it is a sibilant. Whether the masoretic pronunciation is based on an early tradition, or the Masora has arbi- trarily adopted aramaizing forms to attain the above objects, must be left undecided.
Page 193, the second and third paragraphs should have the marginal letters d and e respectively.
Page 200, § 72 2, line 2, after Est 2'* add 4".
Page 232, § 84" s, add nDpb' 2813^.
Page 236, § 85 c, a(i(i r\prf\ Ezr ^'^.
Page 273, § 93 qq end, add n^lpto Jer 5^ O^V?!, ^'^S^ Ez 2o\ n^JDCb' Is 49«, D^OOb' La i'« (cf Konig, ii. 109).
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
The following abbreviations have occasionally been used for works and periodicals frequently quoted : —
AJSL. = American Journal of Semitic Languages.
CIS. = Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum.
Ed.Mant.='B\h\i2k Hebraica ex recensione Sal. Norzi edidit Raphael
Hayyim Basila, Mantuae 1742-4. Jabl. = Biblia Hebraica ex recensione D. E. Jablonski, Berolini, 1699-. JQR. = Jewish Quarterly Review. KAT.^ = Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, 3rd ed. by
H. Zimmern and H. Winckler, 2 vols., Berlin, 1902 f. Lexicon = A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, based on the Thesaurus and Lexicon of Gesenius, by F. Brown, S. R. Driver, and C. A. Briggs, Oxford, 1906. NB. = J. Barth, Die Nominalbildung in den semitischen Sprachen.
Lpz. 1889-94. NGGW. = Nachrichten der Gottinger Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften. OLZ. = Orientalistische Literaturzeitung. Vienna, 1898 if. PEE. = Realencyclopadie fiir protestantische Theologie und Kirche,
3rd ed. by A. Hauck. Lpz. 1896 ff. PSBA = Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology. Loudon,
1879 ff. RE J. = Revue des Etudes Juives. Paris, 1880 ff, Sam. = The iHebrew) Pentateuch of the Samaritans. SBOT. = Sacred Books of the Old Testament, ed. by P. Haupt. Lpz.
and Baltimore, 1893 ff. ThLZ. = Theologische Literaturzeitung, ed. by E. Schiirer. Lpz.
1876 ff. VB. = Vorderasiatische Bibliothek, ed. by A. Jeremias and H. Winck- ler. Lpz. 1907 ff. ZA. — Zeitschrift fiir Assyriologie und verwandte Gebiete, ed. by
C. Bezold. Lpz. 18S6 ff. ZAW. = Zeitschrift fiir die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, ed. by
B. Stade, Giessen, 1881 ff., and since 1907 by K. Marti. ZDMG. — Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlandischen Gesellschaft,
Lj z. 1846 ff., since 1903 ed. by A, Fischer. ZDPV. = Zeitschrift des deutschen Palastinavereins, Lpz. 1878 ff., since 1903 ed. by C. Steuernagel.
CONTENTS
Additions and Corrections
List of Abbreviations
Table of Early Semitic Alphabets
SiLOAM Inscription
PAGE
. viii
X
INTRODUCTION
§ 1. The Semitic Languages in General .
§ 2. Sketch of the History of the Hebrew Language
§ 3. Grammatical Treatment of the Hebrew Language
§ 4. Division and Arrangement of the Grammar .
I
8
22
gns
PIBST PART
ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES, OR THE SOUNDS AND
CHARACTERS
Chapter I. The Individual Sounds and Characters
5. The Consonants : their Forms and Names
6. Pronunciation and Division of Consonants
7. The Vowels in General, Vowel Letters and Vowel S
8. The Vowel Signs in particular 9'. Character of the several Vowels
§ 10. The Half Vowels and the Syllable Divider (f§°wa)
§ 11. Other Signs which affect the Reading
§ 12. Dages in general, and Dages forte in particular
§ 13. Dages lene
§ 14. Mappiq and Raphe
§ 15. The Accents
§ 16. Of Maqqeph and Metheg
§ 17. Of the Q-re and K^thibh
§ § § §
Masora marginalis and finalis
24
31
35 39 45 51 54 55 56 56 57 63 65
Chapter II. Peculiarities and Changes of Letters: the Syllable and the Tone
§ 18. In general 68
§ 19. Changes of Consonants 68
§20. The Strengthening (Sharpening) of Consonants ... 70
xii Contents
PAGE
75
76
79 82
84
§21. The Aspiration of the Tenues
§ 22, Peculiarities of the Gutturals
§ 23, The Feebleness of the Gutturals N and n . , .
§ 24. Changes of the Weak Letters 1 and ^ . . . .
§ 25. Unchangeable Vowels
§ 26. Syllable-formation and its Influence on the Quantity of Vowels 85 § 27. The Change of the Vowels, especially as regards Quantity . 88
§ 28. The Rise of New Vowels and Syllables 92
§ 29. The Tone, its Changes, and the Pause 94
SECOWD PART ETYMOLOGY, OR THE PARTS OF SPEECH
§ 30. Stems and Roots ; Biliteral, Triliteral, and Quadriliteral . 99 § 31. Grammatical Structure 103
Chapter I. The Pronoun
§ 32. The Personal Pronoun. The Separate Pronoun . . .105
§33. Pronominal Suffixes 108
§ 34. The Demonstrative Pronoun 1 09
§ 35. The Article , . .110
§36. The Relative Pronoun 112
§37. The Interrogative and Indefinite Pronouns . . . .113
Chapter II. The Verb
§88. General View 114
§39. Ground-form and Derived Stems 114
§40. Tenses. Moods. Flexion 117
§ 41. Variations from the Ordinary Form of the Strong Verb . .118
I. The Strong Verb. §42. In general 118
A. The Pure Stem, or Qui.
§48. Its Form and Meaning 118
§ 44. Flexion of the Perfect of Qal 119
§ 45. The Infinitive 122
§46. The Imperative 124
§47. The Imperfect and its Inflexion 125
§ 48. Shortening and Lengthening of the Imperfect and Imperative.
The Jussive and Cohortative 129
§ 49. The Perfect and Imperfect with Waw Consecutive . . . 132
§ 50. The Participle .136
a
Contents xiii
B. Veiha Denvativa, or Derived Conjugations.
PAGE
§ 51. Niph'al 137
§ 52. Pi'el and Pu'al 139
§ 53. Hiph'il and Hopb'al 144
§ 54 Hithpa'el 149
§55. Less Common Conjugations 151
§ 56. Quadriliteials > . . .153
C. Strong Verb with Pronominal Suffixes.
§ 57. In general 1 54
(| 58., The Pronominal Suffixes of the Verb 155
59. The Perfect with Pronominal Suffixes 158
(^ 60. Imperfect with Pronominal Suffixes 160
§ 61. Infinitive, Imperative and Participle with Pronominal Suffixes 162
Verbs with Gutturals.
§ 62. In general 164
§ 63. Verbs First Guttural 165
§ 64. Verbs Middle Guttural ........ 169
§ 65. Verbs Third Guttural 171
ir. The Weak Verb.
§ 66. Veibs Primae Radicalis Nun (i"d) 173
§ 67. Verbs y^y 175
The Weakest Verbs {Verba Quiescentia).
§ 68. Verbs N"a 184
§ 69. Verbs '•''S. First Class, or Verbs originally Td . . .186 § 70. Verbs '•'''Q. Second Class, or Verbs properly ^"d . . . 192 § 71. Verbs """Q. Third Class, or Verbs with Yodh assimilated . 193
§ 72. Verbs Vy I94
§ 73. Verbs middle i (vulgo '•"y) 202
§ 74. Verbs s"^ 205
§ 75. Verbs n"^ 207
§ 76. Verbs Doubly Weak 217
§ 77. Relation of the Weak Verbs to one another . . . .219 § 78. Verba Defectiva 219
Chapter III. The Noun
§ 79. General View 221
§ 80. The Indication of Gender in Nouns 222
§81. Derivation of Nouns 225
§ 82. Primitive Nouns 225
xiv Contents
§ 83. Verbal Nouns in General .... § 84". Nouns derived from the Simple Stem § 84*. Formation of Nouns from the Intensive Stem § 85. Nouns with Preformatives and Aflformatives § 86. Denominative Nouns
§ 87. Of the Plural
§ 88. Of the Dual
§ 89. The Genitive and the Construct State
§ 90. Real and supposed Remains of Early Case-endings
§ 91. The Noun with Pronominal Suffixes
§ 92. Vowel Changes in the Noun
§ 93. Paradigms of Masculine Nouns
§ 94. Formation of Feminine Nouns .
§ 95. Paradigms of Feminine Nouns
§ 96. Nouns of Peculiar Formation .
§ 97. Numerals, (a) Cardinal Numbers
§ 98. Numerals. (6) Ordinal Numbers
PAGE 226 227 233 235
239 241
244 247 248 254 260 262 275 276 281 286 292
Chapter IV. The Particles
§ 99. General View 293
§ 100. Adverbs 294
§ 101. Prepositions 297
§ 102. Prefixed Prepositions 298
§ 103. Prepositions with Pronominal Suffixes and in the Plural
Form 300
§ 104. Conjunctions 305
§ 105. Interjections 307
J
THIRD PART
SYNTAX
Chapter I. The Parts of Speech
I. Synteix of the Verb.
A. Use of the Tenses and Moods.
§ 106. Use of the Perfect 309
§107. Use of the Imperfect 313
§108. Use of the Cohortative 319
§109. Use of the Jussive 321
§ 110. The Imperative 324
§ 111. The Imperfect with Waw Consecutive 326
§ 112. The Perfect with Waw Consecutive 330
Contents xv
B. The Infinitive and Participle.
PAOE
§ 113. The Infinitive Absolute 339
§ 114, The Infinitive Construct 347
§ 115. Construction of the Infinitive Construct with Subject and
Object 352
§ 116. The Participles 355
C. The Government of the Verb.
§ 117. The Direct Subordination of the Noun to the Verb as
Accusative of the Object. The Double Accusative . . 362
§ 118. The Looser Subordination of the Accusative to the Verb . 372
§ 119. The Subordination of Nouns to the Verb by means of
Prepositions 377
§ 120. Verbal Ideas under the Government of a Verb. Co-ordination
of Complementary Verbal Ideas 385
§121. Construction of Passive Verbs 387
II. Syntax of the Noxin.
§122. Indication of the Gender of the Noun 389
§ 123. The Representation of Plural Ideas by means of Collectives,
and by the Repetition of Words 394
§ 124. The Various Uses of the Plural-Form 396
§ 125. Determination of Nouns in general. Determination of
Proper Names 401
§ 126. Determination by means of the Article 404
§ 127. The Noun determined by a following Determinate Genitive . 410 § 128. The Indication of the Genitive Relation by means of the
Construct State , -414
§ 129. Expression of the Genitive by Circumlocution . . .419
§130. Wider Use of the Construct State 421
§ 131. Apposition 423
§132. Connexion of the Substantive with the Adjective . . . 427 § 133. The Comparison of Adjectives. (Periphrastic expression of
the Comparative and Superlative) 429
§ 134. Syntax of the Numerals 432
III. Syntax of the Pronovm.
§ 135. The Personal Pronoun 437
§ 136. The Demonstrative Pronoun 442
§ 137. The Interrogative Pronoun 443
§ 138. The Relative Pronoun 444
§ 139. Expression of Pronominal Ideas by means of Substantives . 447
xvi Contents
Chapter II. The Sentence I. The Sentence in General.
PAGE
§ 140. Noun- clauses, Verbal-clauses, and the Compound Sentence . 450
§ 141. The Noun-clause 451
§ 142. The Verbal-clause 455
§ 143. The Compound Sentence 457
§ 144. Peculiarities in the Representation of the Subject (especially
V in the Verbal-clause) 459
■J § 145. Agreement between the Members of a Sentence, especially between Subject and Predicate, in r^pect of Gender and
Number 462
§ 146. Construction of Compound Subjects 467
§ 147. Incomplete Sentences 469
n. Special Kinds of Sentences.
§ 148. Exclamations 471
§ 149. Sentences which express an Oath or Asseveration . . .471
§ 150. Interrogative Sentences . 473
§ 151. Desiderative Sentences ... i ... . 476
§ 152. Negative Sentences 478
§ 153. Restrictive and Intensive Clauses 483
§ 154. Sentences connected by Waw 484
§ 155. Relative Clauses 485
§ 156. Circumstantial Clauses 489
§ 157. Object-clauses (Oratio Obliqua) 491
§ 158. Causal Clauses 492
§ 159. Conditional Sentences 493
§ 160. Concessive Clauses 498
§ 161. Comparative Clauses ........ 499
§ 162. Disjunctive Sentences 500
§ 163. Adversative and Exceptive Clauses 500
§ 164. Temporal Clauses 501
§ 165. Final Clauses 503
§ 166. Consecutive Clauses 504
§ 167. Aposiopesis, Anacoluthon, Involved Series of Sentences . 505
Paradigms 507
Index of Subjects 533
Index op Hebrew Words 544
Index of Passages 565
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H
HEBREW GRAMMAR
INTRODUCTION § 1. The Semitic Languages in General.
B. Stade, Lehrh. der hebr. Gramm., Lpz. 1879, § 2 ff. ; E. KOnig, Rist.-krit. Lehrgeb. der hebr. Spr., i. Lpz. 1881, § 3 ; H. Strack, EM. in das A. T., 6th ed., Munich, 1906, p. 231 ff. (a good bibliography of all the Semitic dialects) ; Th, Noldeke, article 'Semitic Languages', in the 9th ed. of the Enqjcl. Brit. {Die semit. Sprachen, 2nd ed., Lpz. 1899), and Beitr. sur sem. Sprachwiss., Strassb., 1904 ; W. Wright, Lectures on (he Comparative Grariimar of the Semitic Languages, Cambr. 1890 ; H. Reckendorf, ' Zur Karakteristik der sem. Sprachen,' in the Actes du .X^' Congres internal, des Orientalistes (at Geneva in 1894), iii. i ff., Leiden, 1896 ; O. E. Lindberg, Vergl. Gramm. der sem. Sprachen, i A : Konsonan- tismus, Gothenburg, 1897 ; H. Zimmern, Vergl. Gramm. der sem. Sprachen, Berlin, 1898 ; E. KOnig, Hebrdisch und Semitisch : Prolegomena und Grundlinien einer Gesch. der sem. Sprachen, &c., Berlin, 1901 ; C. Brockelmann, Semitische Sprachwissenschaft, Lpz. 1906, Grundriss der vergl. Gramm. der sem. Sprachen, vol. i (Laut- und Formenlehre), parts T-5, Berlin, 1907 f. and his Kurzgef. vergleichende Gramm. (Porta Ling. Or.) Berlin, 1908. — The material contained in inscriptions has been in process of collection since 1881 in the Paris Corpus Inscripiionum Semiticarum. To this the best introductions are M. Lidz- barski's Handbuch der Nordsem. Epigraphik, Weimar, 1898, in 2 parts (text and plates), and his Ephemeris zur sem. Epigraphik (5 parts published), Giessen, 1900 f. [G. A. Cooke, Handbook of North-Semitic Inscriptions, Oxford, 1903].
1. The Hebrew language is one branch of a great family of Ian- CL guages in Western Asia which was indigenous in Palestine, Phoenicia, Syria, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Assyria, and Arabia, that is to say, in the countries extending from the Mediterranean to the other side of the Euphrates and Tigris, and from the mountains of Armenia to the southern coast of Arabia. In early times, however, it spread from Arabia over Abyssinia, and by means of Phoenician colonies over many islands and sea-boards of ihe Mediterranean, as for instance to the Carthaginian coast. No comprehensive designation is found in early times for the languages and nations of this family ; the name Semites or Semitic^ languages (based upon the fact that according to Gn lo^'*^' almost all nations speaking these languages are descended from Shem) is, however, now generally accepted, and has accordingly been retained here.'^
' First used by SchlOzer in Eichhorn's Eepertorium fiir bibl. u. morgenl. Liter atur, 1781, p. 16 1.
^ From Shem are derived (Gn 10*' ^•') the Aramaean and Arab families as well as the Hebrews, but not the Canaanites (Phoenicians), who are traced back to Ham (vv. s-'^ff), although their language belongs decidedly to what is now called Semitic. The language of the Babylonians and Assyrians also was long ago shown to be Semitic, just as ASSur (Gn 10'"') is included among the sons of Shem.
COWLKY B
2 Introduction [§ i b-d
b 2. The better known Semitic languages may be subdivided' as follows : —
L The South Semitic or Arabic branch. To this belong, besides the classical literary language of the Arabs and the modern vulgar Arabic, the older southern Arabic preserved in the Sabaean inscrip- tions (less correctly called Himyaritic), and its offshoot, the Ge'ez or Ethiopic, in Abyssinia.
II. The Middle Semitic or Canaanitish branch. To this belonjjs the Hebrew of the Old Testament with its descendants, the New Hebrew, as found especially in the Mishna (see below, § 3 a), and Rabbinic; also Phoenician, with Punic (in Carthage and its colonies), and the various remains of Canaanitish dialects preserved in names of places and persons, and in the inscription of Mesa', king of Moab.
C III, The North Semitic or Aramaic branch. The subdivisions of this are — (i) The Eastern Aramaic or Syriac, the literary language of the Christian Syrians. The religious books of the Mandaeans (Nasoraeans, Sabians, also called the disciples of St, John) represent a very debased offshoot of this, A Jewish modification of Syriac is to be seen in the language of the Pabylonian Talmud, (2) The Western or Palestinian Aramaic, incorrectly called also ' Chaldee '.'^ This latter dialect is represented in the Old Testament by two words in Gn 31^^, by the verse Jer 10", and the sections Dn 2* to 7^; Ezr 4* to 6'*, and 7^2-26^ ^^ ^^jj ^g ^^y ^ number of non-Jewish inscriptions and Jewish papyri (see below, under m), but especially by a considerable section of Jewish literature (Targums, Palestinian Gemara, &c.). To th* same branch belongs also the Samaritan, with its admixture of Hebrew forms, and, except for the rather Arabic colouring of the proper names, the idiom of the Nabataean inscriptions in the Sinaitic peninsula, in the East of Palestine, &c.
For further particulars about the remains of Western Aramaic (including those in the New Test,, in the Palmyrene and Egyptian Aramaic inscriptions) see Kautzsch, Gramm. des Biblisch-Aramdischen, Lpz. 1884, p. 6 ff.
d IV. The East Semitic branch, the language of the Assyrio- Babylonian cuneiform inscriptions, the third line of the Achaemenian inscriptions.
On the importance of Assyrian for Hebrew philology especially from a lexicographical point of view cf. Friedr. Delitzsch, Prolegomena eines neuen
* For conjectures as to the gradual divergence of the dialects (first the Babylonian, then Canaanite, including Hebrew, lastly Aramaic and Arabic) from primitive Semitic, see Zimmern, KAT.^, ii. p. 644 ff.
' In a wider sense all Jewish Aramaic is sometimes called ' Chaldee '.
§ I e,/] The Semitic Languages in General 3
hebr.-aram. Worterbuchs zum A. T., Lpz. 1886 ; P. Haupt, 'Assyrian Phonology, &c.,' in Hehraica, Chicago, Jan. 1885, vol. i. 3 ; Delitzsch, Assyrische Grammatik, 2nd ed., Berlin, 1906.
If the above division into four branches be reduced to two principal <,'roups, No. I, as South Semitic, will be contrasted with the three North Semitic branches.'
All these langunges stand to one another in much the same relation as those g of the Germanic family (Gothic, Old Norse, Danish, Swedish ; High and Low German in their earlier and later dialects), or as the Slavonic languages (Lithuanian, Lettish ; Old Slavonic, Serbian, Russian ; Polish, Bohemian). They are now either wholly extinct, as the Phoenician and Assyrian, or preserved only in a debased form, as Neo-Syriac among Syrian Christians and Jews in Mesopotamia and Kurdistan, Ethiopic (Ge'ez) in the later Abyssinian dialects (Tigre, Tigrina, Amharic), and Hebrew among some modern Jews, except in so far as they attempt a purely literary x-eproduction of the language of the Old Testament. Arabic alone has not only occupied to this day its original abode in Arabia proper, but has also forced its way in all directions into the domain of other languages.
The Semitic family of languages is bounded on the East and North by another of still wider extent, which reaches from India to the western limits of Europe, and is called Indo-Germanic^ since it comprises, in the most varied ramifications, the Indian (Sanskrit), Old and New Persian, Greek, Latin, Slavonic, as well as Gothic and the other Germanic languages. With the Old Egyptian language, of which Coptic is a descendant, as well as with the languages of north-western Africa, the Semitic had from the earliest times much in common, especially in grammatical structure ; but on the other hand there are fundamental differences between them, especially from a lexicographical point of view ; see Erman, ' Das Verhaltnis des Aegyptischen zu den semitischen Sprachen,' in the ZDMG. xlvi, 1892, p. 93 ff., and Brockel- mann, Grundriss, i. 3.
3. The grammatical structure of the Semitic family of languages, f as compared with that of other languages, especially the Indo-Gerraanic, exhibits numerous peculiarities which collectively constitute its dis- tinctive character, although many of them are found singly in other languages. These are — (a) among the consonants, which in fact form the substance of these languages, occur peculiar gutturals of different grades ; the vowels are subject, within the same consonantal frame- work, to great changes in order to express various modifications of the same stem-meaning ; (ft) the word-stems are almost invariably triliteral, i.e. composed of three consonants; (c) the verb is restricted to two tense-forms, with a peculiarly regulated use ; {d) the noun has only two genders (masc. and fern.) ; and peculiar expedients are adopted for the purpose of indicating the case-relations ; (e) the
* Hommel, Grundriss der Geogr. und Gesch. des alten Orients, Munich, 1904, p. 75 ff., prefers to distinguish them as Eastern and Western Semitic branches. Their geographical position, however, is of less importance than the genealogical relation of the various groups of dialects, as rightly pointed out by A. Jeremias in Th.LZ. 1906, col. 291.
' First by Klaproth in Asia Polyglotia, Paris, 1823 ; of. Leo Meyer in Kach- richien d. Gott, Gesellschaft, 1 901, p. 454.
B 2
4 Introduction [§ \ g-i
oblique cases of the personal pronoun, as well as all the possessive pronouns and the pronominal object of the verb, are denoted by forms appended directly to the governing word (suffixes) ; (/) the almost complete absence of compounds both in the noun (with the exception of many proper names) and in the verb ; {g) great simplicity in the expression of syntactical relations, e. g. the small number of particles, and the prevalence of simple co-ordination of clauses without periodic structure. Classical Arabic and Syriac, however, form a not un- important exception as regards the last-mentioned point,
g 4. From a lexicographical point of view also the vocabulary of the Semites difiPers essentially from that of the Indo-Germanic languages, although there is apparently more agreement here than in the grammar. A considerable number of Semitic roots and stems agree in sound with synonyms in the Indo-Germanic family. But apart from ex- pressions actually borrowed (see below, under i), the real similarity may be reduced to imitative words (onomatopoetica), and to those in which one and the same idea is represented by similar sounds in consequence of a formative instinct common to the most varied families of language. Neither of these proves any historic or generic relation, for which an agreement in grammatical structure would also be necessary.
Comp. Friedr. Delitzsch, Siudien iiber indogennanisch-semitische Wurzelverwandt- scha/t, Lpz. 1873; Neldechen, Semit. Glossen zu Fick und Curtius, Magdeb. 1876 f. ; McCurdy, AryoSemiiic Speech, Andover, U.S. A, 1881. The phonetic relations have been thoroughly investigated by H. MOller in Semitisch und Indogermanisch, Teil i, Konsotianten, Copenhagen and Lpz. 1907, a work which has evoked considerable criticism. h As onomatopoetic words, or as stem-sounds of a similar charactei*, we may compare, e.g. piP, ^n? A.«»x<"» lingo, Skt. lih, Eng. to lick, Fr. lecher, Qerm.
lecken ; ?pa (cf. b^X, b^V) icv\i<u, volvo, Germ, quellen, wallen, Eng. to well ;
n^3 t^irij nin xapaTToi, Pers. khdridan, Ital. grattare, Fr. gratter, Eng. (0
grate, to scratch, Qerm. kraisen ; p^S frango, Germ, brechen, &c. ; Reuss, Gesch.
der hi, Schri/ten A.T.'s, Braunschw. 1881, p. 38, draws attention moreover to the Semitic equivalents for earth, six, seivn, horn, to sound, to measure, to mix, to smell, to place, clear, to kneel, raven, goat, ox, &c. An example of a somewhat different kind is am, ham (saw), gam, ham, in the sense of the German samt, zusammen, together; in Hebrew DDK (whence TXt^V, people, properly assembly), Q])
(with) samt, DS also, moreover, Arab. yii3 to coUect ; Pers. ham, hamah (at the same time) ; Skt. soma (with), Gk. a/ia (afi<pai), d/xSi, d/xov (ofuKos, ofmSoi), and harder koivSs, Lat. cum, cumulus, cunctus ; with the corresponding sibilant Skt. sam, Gk. avv, (vv, (w6s = koiv6s, Goth, sama, Germ, samt, sammeln ; but many of these instances are doubtful.
I Essentially different from this internal connexion is the occur- rence of the same words in different languages, where one language has borrowed directly from the other. Such loan-words are —
§ I i] The Semitic Languages in General 5
(a) In Hebrew: some names of objects which were originally indi- genous in Babylonia and Assyria (see a comprehensive list of Assyrio- Babylonian loan-words in the Hebrew and Aramaic of the Old Testament in Zimmern and Winckler, KAT.^, ii. p. 648 flf.), in Egypt, Persia, or India, e. g. ^N^ (also in the plural) river, from Egyptian yoor, generally as the name of the Nile (late Egypt, yaro, Assyr. yaru'u), although it is possible that a pure Semitic "IK"* has been confounded with the Egyptian name of the Nile
(so Zimmern) ; iriN (Egyptian) Nile-reed (see Lieblein, ' Mots 6gyptiens dans la Bible,' in PSBA. 1898, p. 202 f.) ; DlJ^B (in Zend pairidaesa, circumvalla- tion = ira/xiSetcros) pleasure-garden, park; p31*lN daric, Persian gold coin; C*?!'! peacocks, perhaps from the Malabar togai or toghai. Some of these words are also found in Greek, as DS"]? (Pers. karbds, Skt. karpdsa) cotton, Kap-naaoi,
carbasus. On the other hand it is doubtful if Pjip corresponds to the Greek Kjjnoi, K^Bos, Skt. kapi, ape.
(b) In Greek, &c. : some originally Semitic names of Asiatic products and articles of commerce, e. g. V^H /Svacros, byssus ; HSbp Xi^avos, \iBavaiT6s, incense ; ri3p tcavT], K&wa, eanna, cane ; |D3 icvfuvov, cuminum, cumin ; njTifp Kaaaia,
cassia ; ?D3 KanrjXos, camelics ; P3"^y dppafidjv, arrhabo, anha, pledge. Such transitions have perhaps been brought about chiefly by Phoenician trade. Cf. A. Miiller, ' Semitische Lehnworte im alteren Griechisoh,' in Bezzen- berger's Beitrage zur Kunde der Indo-germ. Sprachen, GSttingen, 1877, vol. i. p. 273 ff. ; E. Ries, Quae res et vocabula a gentibus semiticis in Graeciam pervenerinf, Breslau, 1890; Muss-Arnolt, 'Semitic words in Greek and Latin,' in the Transactions 0/ the American Philological Association, xxiii. p. 35 flf. ; H. Lewy, Die semitischen Fremdwbrter im Oriech., Berlin, 1895 ; J. H. Bondi, Dem hebr.-phoniz. Sprachzweige angehor. Lehnworter in hieroglyph, m. hieratischen Texten, Lpz. 1886.
6. No system of writing is ever so perfect as to be able to reproduce k the sounds of a language in all their various shades, and the writing of the Semites has one striking fundamental defect, viz. that only the consonants (which indeed form the substance of the language) are written as real letters,^ whilst of the vowels only the longer are indicated by certain representative consonants (see below, § 7). It was only later that special small marks (points or strokes below or above the consonants) were invented to represent to the eye all the vowel-sounds (see § 8). These are, however, superfluous for the practised reader, and are therefore often wholly omitted in Semitic manuscripts and printed texts. Semitic writing, moreover, almost invariably proceeds from right to left.'*
* So also originally the Ethiopic writing, which afterwards represented the vowels by small appendages to the consonants, or by some other change in their form. On the Assyrio-Babylonian cuneiform writing, which like- wise indicates the vowels, see the next note, ad fin.
' The Sabaean (Himyaritic) writing runs occasionally from left to right, and even alternately in both directions {boustrophedon^, but as a rule from right to left. In Ethiopic writing the direction from left to right has become the rule ; some few old inscriptions exhibit, however, the opposite direction. The cuneiform writing also runs from left to right, but this is undoubtedly borrowed from a non-Semitic people. Cf. § 5 d, note 3.
Introduction [§ 1 1,
m
With the exception of the Assyrio-Babylonian (cuneiform), all varieties of Semitic writing, although differing widely in some respects, are derived from one and the same original alphabet, represented on extant monuments most faithfully by the characters used on the stele of Mesa, king of Moab (see below, § 2 d), and in the old Phoenician inscriptions, of which the bronze bowls from a temple of Baal {CIS. i. 22 ff. and Plate IV) are somewhat earlier than Mesa'. The old Hebrew writing, as it appears on the oldest monument, the Siloam inscription (see below, § 2 d), exhibits essentially the same character. The old Greek, and indirectly all European alphabets, are descended from the old Phoenician writing (see § 5 i). I See the Table of Alphabets at the beginning of the Grammar, which shows the relations of the older varieties of Semitic writing to one another and especially the origin of the present Hebrew characters from their primitive forms. For a more complete view, see Gesenius' Scripturae linguaeque Phoeniciae monumenta, Lips. 1837, 4to, pt. i. p. 15 ff., and pt. iii. tab. 1-5. From numerous monuments since discovered, our knowledge of the Semitic characters, especially the Phoenician, has become considerably enlarged and more accurate. Cf. the all but exhaustive bibliography (from 1616 to 1896) in Lidzbarski's Handbuch der Nordsemitischen Epigraphik, i. p. 4 ff , and on the origin of the Semitic alphabet, ibid., p. I73ff., and Ephemeris (see the heading of § I a above), i. pp. 109 ff., 142, 261 ff., and his ' Altsemitische Texte|, pt. i, Kanaanaische Inschriften (Moabite, Old-Hebrew, Phoenician, Punic), Giessen, ic)07. — On the origin and development of the Hebrew characters and the best tables of alphabets, see § 5 a, last note, and especially §56.
7?l 6. As regards the relative age of the Semitic languages, the oldest literary remains of them are to be found in the Assyrio-Babylonian (cuneiform) inscriptions,' with which are to be classed the earliest Hebrew fragments occurring in the old Testament (see § 2).
The earliest non-Jewish Aramaic inscriptions known to us are that cf -|3T king of Hamath (early eighth cent. B.C.), on which see Nbldeke, ZA. 1908, p. 376, and that found at Teima, in N. Arabia, in 1880, probably of the fifth cent. b. c, cf. E. Littmann in the Monist, xiv. 4 [and Cooke, op. cit., p. 195]. The monuments of Kalammus of Sam'al, in the reign of Shalmanezer II, 859-829 B.C. (cf. A. Sanda, Die Aramaer, Lpz. 1902, p. 26), and those found in 1888-1891 at Zenjirli in N. Syria, including the Hadad inscription of thirty-four lines (early eighth cent. B.C.) and the Panamrau inscription (740 B.C.), are not in pure Aramaic. The Jewish-Aramaic writings begin about the time of Cyrus (cf. Ezr 6^ '^■), specially important being the papyri from Assuan ed. by Sayce and Cowley, London, 1906 (and in a cheaper form by Staerk, Bonn, 1907), which are precisely dated from 471 to 411 B.C., and three others of 407 B. c. ed. by Sachau, Berlin, 1907.
* According to Hilprecht, The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, i. p. ii ff., the inscriptions found at Nippur embrace the period from about 4000 to 450 b. c.
§ I n] The Semitic Languages in General 7
Monuments of the Arahic brancli first appear in the earliest centuries A. d. (Sabaean inscriptions, Ethiopic translation of the Bible in the fourth or fifth century, North-Arabic literature from the sixth century A. D.),
It is, however, another question which of these languages has adhered longest and most faithfully to the original character of the Semitic, and which consequently represents to us the earliest phase of its development. For the more or less rapid transformation of the sounds and forms of a language, as spoken by nations and races, is dependent on causes quite distinct from the growth of a literature, and the organic structure of a language is often considerably impaired even before it has developed a literature, especially by early contact with people of a difFerent language. Thus in the Semitic group, the Aramaic dialects exhibit the earliest and greatest decay, next to them the Hebrew-Canaanitish, and in its own way the Assyrian. Arabic, owing to the seclusion of the desert tribes, was the longest to retain the original fullness and purity of the sounds and forms of words.^ Even here, however, there appeared, through the revolu- tionary influence of Islam, an ever-increasing decay, until Arabic at length reached the stage at which we find Hebrew in the Old Testament.
Hence the phenomenon, that in its grammatical structure the ancient n Hebrew agrees more with the modern than with the ancient Arabic, and that the latter, although it only appears as a written language at a later period, has yet in many respects preserved a more complete structure and a more original vowel system than the other Semitic languages, cf. Noldeke, ' Das klassische Arabisch und die arabischen Dialekte,' in Beitrdge sur semitischen Sprachwissenschaft, p. i ff. It thus occupies amongst them a position similar to that which Sanskrit holds among the Indo-Germanic languages, or Gothic in the narrower circle of the Germanic. But even the toughest organism of a language often deteriorates, at least in single forms and derivatives, while on the contrary, in the midst of what is otherwise universal decay, there still remains here and there something original and archaic ; and this is the case with the Semitic languages.
Fuller proof of the above statements belongs to the comparative Grammar of the Semitic languages. It follows,however, from what has been said: (i) that the Hebrew language, as found in the sacred literatureof the Jews, has, in respect
^ Even now the language of some of the Bfedawi is much purer and more archaic than that of the town Arabs. It must, however, bo admitted that the former exalted estimate of the primitiveness of Arabic has been moderated in many respects by the most recent school of Semitic philology. Much apparently original is to be regarded with Noldeke (7>je setnit. Spr,, p. 5 \_ = £nqjd. Brit., ed. 9, art. Semitic Languaoes, p. 642 J) only as a modification of the original. The assertion that the Arabs exhibit Semitic characteristics in their purest form, should, according to NOldeke, be rather that 'the in- habitants of the desert lands of Arabia, under the influence of the extraordinarily monotonous scenery and of a life continually the same amid continual change, have developed most exclusively some of the principal traits of the Semitic race ',
8 Introduction [§ 2 a, 6
to its organic structure, already suffered more considerable losses tlian the Arabic, which appears much later on the historical horizon; (2) that, not- withstanding this fact, we cannot at once and in all points concede priority to the latter ; (3) that it is a mistake to consider with some that the Aramaic on account of its simplicity (which is only due to the decay of its organic structure), is the oldest form of Semitic speech.
§ 2. Sketch of the History of the Hebrew Language.
See Gesenius, Gesch. der kebr. Sprache u. Schrift, Lpz. 1815, §§ 5-18; Th. Noldeke's art., ' Sprache, hebraische,' in Schenkel's Bibel-Lexikon, Bd. v, Lpz. 1875; F. Buhl, 'Hebraische Sprache,' in Hauck's Realencycl. fur prot. T/ieol. und Kirche, vii (1899), p. 506 ff.; A. Cowley, ' Hebrew Language and Literature,' in the forthcoming ed. of the Encycl. Brit. ; W. R. Smith in the Encyd. BiU., ii. London, 1901, p. 1984 ff.; A. Lukyn Williams, 'Hebrew,' in Hastings' Did. of the Bible, ii. p. 335 ff., Edinb. 1899.
a 1. The name Hebrew Language usually denotes the language of the sacred writings of the Israelites which form the canon of the Old Testament, It is also called Ancient Hebrew in contradistinction to the New Hebrew of Jewish writings of the post-biblical period (§ 3 a). The name Hebrew language (nn^y fW^b yXC^a-a. twv 'E/3p<u(ov, k^paiari) does not occur in the Old Testament itself. Instead of it we find in Is 1 9'* the term language of Canaan,^ and nn^n^ in the Jews' language 2 K i8^«-^ (cf. Is aa"'^') Neh 13^ In the last-cited passage it already agrees with the later (post-exilic) usage, which gi-adually extended the name Jews, Jewish to the whole nation, as in Haggai, Nehemiah, and the book of Esther.
O The distinction between the names Hebrew (D"''1Iiy 'E0fMtoi) and Israelites pN'lb'^ ^p2) is that the latter was rather a national name of honour, with
also a religious significance, employed by the people themselves, while the former appears as the less significant name by which the nation was known amongst foreigners. Hence in tlie Old Testament Hebrews are only cpoken of either when the name is employed by themselves as contrasted with foreigners (Gn 40", Ex 26 '• 3I8 &c., Jon !») or when it is put in the mouth of those who are not Israelites (Gn 39"-" 41'^ &c.) or, finally, when it is used in opposition to other nations (Gn 14" 4332, Ex 3"-" 21^). In I S is^T and 14*' the text is clearly corrupt. In the Greek and Latin authors, as well as in Josephus, the name 'Efipaioi, Hebraei," &c., alone occurs. Of the many explanations of the gentilic ^"12^, the derivation from 13J? a country on the other side with the derivative suffix >__ {^8f>h) appears to be the only one philologically possible. The name accordingly denoted the Israelites as being those who inhabited the 'eber, i. e. the district on the other side of the Jordan (or according to others the Euphrates), and would therefore originally be only appropriate when used by the nations on this side of the Jordan or Euphrates. We must, then, suppose that after the crossing of the river in question it had been retained by the Abrahamidae as an old-established name, and within certain- limits
* That Hebrew in its present form was actually developed in Canaan appears from such facts as the use of yam (sea) for the west, negeb (properly dry- ness, afterwards as a proper name for the south of Palestine) for the south.
" The Gracco-Roman form of the name is not directly derived from the Hebrew >"13y, but from the Palestinian Aramaic 'ebraya, ' the Hebrew.'
§ 2 c, rf] History of the Hebrew Language 9
(see above) had become naturalized among them. In referring this name to the patronymic Eber, the Hebrew genealogists have assigned to it a much more comprehensive signification. For since in Gn lo" (Nu 24^^* does not apply) Shem is called the father of all the children of Eber, and to the latter there also belonged according to Gn iii**^- and lo*"* *f- Aramean and Arab races, the name, afterwards restricted in the form of the gentilic 'ibii exclusively to the Israelites, must have originally included a considerably larger group of countries and nations. The etymological significance of the name must in that case not be insisted upon.^
The term efipcuari is first used, to denote the old Hebrew, in the prologue C to Jesus the son of Sirach (about 130 B.C.), and in the New Testament, Rv 9". On the other hand it serves in Jn 5^^, 19^31'' perhaps also in jg"^" and Kv 16'^ to denote what was then the (Aramaic) vernacular of Palestine as opposed to the Greek. The meaning of the expression tBpah Std\tKTos in Acta 21*", 22^, and 26'* is doubtful (cf. Kautzsch, Gramm. des Bihl.-Aram., p. 19 f.). Joseplius also uses the term Hebrew both of the old Hebrew and of the Aramaic vernacular of his time.
The Hebrew language is first called the sacred language in the Jewish- Aramaic versions of the Old Testament, as being the language of the sacred books in opposition to the lingua jprofatia, i. e. the Aramaic vulgar tongue.
2. With the exception of the Old Testament (and apart from the u Phoenician inscriptions ; see below, f--h), only very few remains of old Hebrew or old Canaanitish literature have been preserved. Of the latter — (i) an inscription, unfortunately much injured, of thirty- four lines, which was found in the ancient territory of the tribe of Reuben, about twelve miles to the east of the Dead Sea, among the ruins of the city of Dibon (now Diban), inhabited in earlier times by the Gadites, afterwards by the Moabites. In it the Moabite king Mesa' (about 850 B.C.) recounts his battles with Israel (cf. 2 K 3'' "), his buildings, and other matters.^ Of old Hebrew : (2) an inscription
^ We may also leave out of account the linguistically possible identification of the 'Ibriyyim with the Habiri who appear in the Tell-elAmarna letters (about 1400 B. c.) as freebooters and mercenaries in Palestine and its neighbourhood.
* This monument, unique of its kind, was first seen in August, 1868, on the spot, by the German missionary F. A. Klein. It vras aftei wards broken into pieces by the Arabs, so that only an incomplete copy of the inscription could be made. Most of the fragments are now in the Louvre in Paris. For the history of the discovery and for the earlier literature relating to the stone, see Lidzbarski, Nordsemitische Epigraphik, i. pp. 103 f, 415 f., and iu the bibliography (under Me), p. 39 ff. The useful reproduction and trans- lation of the inscription by Smend and Socin (Freiburg in Baden, 1886) was afterwards revised and improved by Nordlander, Die Inschrift des Konigs Mesa von Moab, Lpz. 1896 ; by Socin and Holzinger, 'Zur Mesainschrift' {Berichte der K. Sdchsisclien Gesell. d. Wiss., Dec. 1897) ; and by Lidzbarski, 'Eine Nachpriifung der Mesainschiift' {Ephemeris, i. i, p. i flf. ; text in his Altsemitische Texte, pt. i, Giessen, 1907) ; J. Hal6vy, Eevue Simitique, 1900, pp. 236 ff., 289 ff., 1901, p. 2Q7 ff. ; M. J. Lagrange, Revue biblique Inter- nationale, 1901, p. 522 ff.; F. Pratorius in ZDMG. 1905, p. 33 ff., 1906, p. 402. Its genuineness was attacked by A. Lowy, Die Echtheit der Moabit, Inschr. im Louvre (Wien, 1903), and G. Jahn in Das Buck Daniel, Lpz. 1904, p. 122 ff. (also in ZDMG. 1905, p. 723 ff.), but without justification, as shown by E. KOnig in ZDMG. 1905, pp. 233 ff. and 743 ff. [Cf. also Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text (if the Books of Samuel, Oxford, 1890, p. Ixxxv ff. ; Cooke, op. cit., p. i ff.]
lo Introduction C§ 2 e,/
of six lines (proLably of the eighth century b.c.^) discovered in June, 1880, in the tunnel between the Virgin's Spring and the Pool of Siloam at Jerusalem ; (3) about forty engraved seal-stones, some of them pre-exilic but bearing little except proper names '^ ; (4) coins of the Maccabaean prince Simon (from ' the 2nd year of deliverance', 140 and 139 B.C.) and his successors,^ and the coinage of the revolts in the times of Vespasian and Hadrian.
6 3. In the whole series of the ancient Hebrew writings, as found in the Old Testament and also in non-biblical monuments (see above, d), the language (to judge from its consonantal formation) remains, as regards its general character, and apait from slight changes in form and differences of style (see k to w), at about the same stage of development. In this form, it may at an early time have been fixed as a literary language, and the fact tliat the books contained in the Old Testament were handed down as sacred writings, must have contributed to this constant uniformity.
f To this old Hebrew, the language of the Canaanitish or Phoenician * stocks
•^ came the nearest of all the Semitic languages, as is evident partly from the
many Canaanitisli names of persons and places with a Hebrew form and
meaning which occur in the Old Testament (e.g. plSfiSpip, IDD H^lp^ &c. ;
^ Of this inscription — unfortunately not dated, but linguistically and palaeo- graphically very important— referring to the boring of the tunnel, a facsimile is given at the beginning of this grammar. See also Lidzbarski, Nordsemitische Epigraphik, i. 105, 163, 439 (bibliography, p. 56 ff. ; facsimile, vol. ii, plate xxi, 1) ; on the new drawing of it by Socin {ZBPV. xxii. p. 61 ff. and separately published at Freiburg i. B. 1899), see Lidzbarski, Ephemeris, i. 53 ff. and 310 f. (text in Altsemit. Texte, p. 9 f.). Against the view of A. Fischer {ZDMG. 1902, p. 800 f.) that the six lines are the continuation of an inscription which was never executed, see Lidzbarski, Ephemeris, ii. 71. The inscription was removed in 1890, and broken into six or seven pieces in the process. It has since been well restored, and is now in the Imperial Museum at Constan- tinople. If, as can hardly be doubted, the name T\Vp (i. e. emissio) Is 8® refers to the discharge of water from the Virgin's Spring, through the tunnel (so Stade, Gesch. Isr. i. 594), then the latter, and consequently the inscrip- tion, was already in existence about 736 b. c. [Cf. Cooke, op. cit, p. 15 ff.]
* M. A. Levy, Siegel u. Gemmen, dec, Bresl. 1869, p. 33 ff. ; Stade, ZAW. 1897, p. 501 ff. (four old-Semitic seals published in 1896) ; Lidzbarski, Handbuch, i. 169 f. ; Ephemei-is, i. 10 ff. ; W. Nowack, Lehrb. d. kebr. Archaol. (^Freib. 1894), i. 262 f. ; I. Benzinger, Hebr. Archaol.'^ (Tubingen, 1907),
pp. 80, 225 ff., which includes the beautiful seal inscribed Cy^"!'' IDV J?CK'^
from the castle-hill of Megiddo, found in 1904 ; [Cooke, p. 363].
* De Saulcy, Numismatique de la Terre Sainte, Par. 1874; M. A. Levy, Gesch. der jud. Miinzen, Breslau, 1862; Madden, The Coins of the Jews, Lond. 1881 ; Reinach, Les monnaies juives, Paris, 1888. — Cf. the literature in Schiirer's Gesch. dcs jiid.Volkes im Zeitalter J, C, Lpz. 1901, i. p. 20 ff. ; [Cooke, p. 352 ff.].
* |y?3, ^P_V?3 is the native name, common both to the Canaanitish tribes in Palestine and to those which dwelt at the foot of the Lebanon and on the Syrian coast, whom we call Phoenicians, while they called themselves fV3D on their coins. The people of Carthage also called themselves so.
§ 2 J7-0 History of the Hebrew Language 1 1
on 'Canaanite glosses '^ to Assyrian words in the cuneiform tablets of Tell-el-Amarna [about 1400 b. c] cf. H. Winekler, ' Die Thontafeln von Tell- el-Amarna,' in Keilinschr. Bibliothek, vol. v, Berlin, 1896 f. [transcription and translation] ; J. A. Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna-Tafeln, Lpz. 1907 f. ; H. Ziramern, ZA. 1891, p. 154 S. and KAT.^, p. 651 ff.), and partly from the numerous remains of the Phoenician and Punic languages.
The latter we find in their peculiar writing (§ i k, I) in a great number of inscriptions and on coins, copies of which have been collected by Gesenius, Judas, Bourgade, Davis, de Vogiie, Levy, P. Schroder, v. Maltzan, Euting, but especially in Part I of the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, Paris, 1881 If. Among the inscriptions but few public documents are found, e.g. two lists of fees for sacrifices ; by far the most are epitaphs or votive tablets. Of special importance is the inscription on the sarcophagus of King Esmunazar of Sidon, found in 1855, now in the Louvre; see the bibliography in Lidzbarski, Nordsem. Epigr., i. 23 fif. ; on the inscription, i. 97 fif"., 141 f-, 417, ii. plate iv, 2 ; [Cooke, p. 30 ff.]. To these may be added isolated words in Greek and Latin authors, and the Punic texts in Plautus, Poenulus 5, 1-3 (best treated by Gildemeister in Eitschl's edition of Plautus, Lips. 1884, torn, ii, fasc. 5). From the monuments we learn the native orthography, from the Greek and Latin transcriptions the pronunciation and vocalization ; the two together give a tolerably distinct idea of the language and its relation to Hebrew.
Phoenician (Punic) words occurring in inscriptions are, e. g. PK God, g
DIN man, p son, T)2 daughter, "^PO king, IDJJ servant, |n3 priest, riQT sacrifice,
7V2 lord, tfCB' sun, J'lK land, D*" sea, pK stone, 5)03 silver, 7t~0 iron, \C^ oil,
ny time, ^p grave, DiifO monument, DpD place, 33tJ'D bed, ^3 all, TnS one,
CJK' two, B'^K' three, ynnx four, ^DJI five, B'B' six, yaC seven, "iK'y ten,
p ( = Hebr. rTTl) to be, yOiJ' to hear, nflB to open, "113 to vow, "^IH to bless,
tJ'pa to seek, &c. Proper names : pjf Sidon, 12? Tyre, X3n Hanno, py33n
Hannibal, &c. See the complete vocabulary in Lidzbarski, Nordsem. Epigr., i. 204 ff.
Variations from Hebrew in Phoenician orthography and inflection are, h e.g. the almost invariable omission of the vowel letters (§ 7 b), as n3 for IT'S
hmse, ^p for bSp voice, pX for ]\T'^^ DJn3 for Qianij) priests, D3^N (in Plant. alonim) gods ; the fem., even in the absolute state, ending in n {ath) (§ 80 h) as well as K (6), the relative tJ'K (Hebr. "IK'X), &c. The differences in pro- nunciation are more remarkable, especially in Punic, where the i was regularly pronounced as m, e. g. tDBCJ' siijet (judge), E'/B' salus (three), B'T ms = K'X") head ; i and e often as the obscure dull sound of y, e.g. ^3311 ynnynnu (occe eum), m (D^N) yth; the y as 0, e.g. -\p)}Ki Mocar (cf. nijjo LXX,
Gn 22^* Mcyx<i). See the collection of the grammatical peculiarities in Gesenius, Monumenta Phoenicia, p. 430 ff. ; Paul Schroder, Die phoniz. Sprache, Halle, 1869; B. Stade, 'Erneute Priifung des zwischen dem PhOnic. und Hebr. bestehenden Verwandtschaftsgrades,' in the Morgenldnd. Forschungen, Lpz. 1875, p. 169 ff.
4. As the Hebrew writing ou monuments and coins mentioned I in d consists only of consonants, so also the writers of the Old
* Cf. inter alia : aparu, also haparu (Assyr. epru, ipru) = "IDy ; huUu = p'y (with hard y ; cf. § 6 c, and Assyr. humri = '^yO'^ , hazzatu = T\\^) ; iazkur = "laV, zuruhu = ^'\'li] , abadat = rtTza , saftrt = lytj', gate; fca/nw = |t33, belly; kiliibi = 31^3, net ; saduk ^ phx (P^"^?) . Slc. [Cf. BOhl, Die Sprache d. Amarnabrie/e, Lpz. 1909.]
12 Introduction [§ 2 h-m
Testament books used merely the consonant-signs (§ i k), and even now the written scrolls of the Law used in the synagogues must not, according to ancient custom, contain anything more. The present pronunciation of this consonantal text, its vocalization and accentua- tion, rest on the tradition of the Jewish schools, as it was finally fixed by the system of punctuation (§ 7 h) introduced by Jewish scholars about the seventh century A. D. ; cf. § 3 h. h An earlier stage in the development of the Canaftnitish-Hebrew language, i.e. a form of it anterior to the written documents now extant, when it must have stood nearer to the common language of the united Semitic family, can still be discerned in its principal features: — (i) from many archaisms preserved in the traditional texts, especially in the names of persons and places dating from earlier times, as well as in isolated forms chiefly occurring in poetic style ; (2) in general by an a 2)ostenori conclusion from traditional forms, so far as according to the laws and analogies of phonetic change they clearly point to an older phase of the language ; and (3) ^y comparison with the kindred languages, especially Arabic, in which this earlier stage of the language has been frequently preserved even down to later times (§ i m, n)- In numerous instances in examining linguistic phenomena, the same — and consequently so much the more certain — result is attained by each of these three methods.
Although the systematic investigation of the linguistic development in- dicated above belongs to comparative Semitic philology, it is nevertheless indispensable for the scientific treatment of Hebrew to refer to the ground- forms ' so far as they can be ascertained and to compare the corresponding forms in Arabic. Even elementary grammar which treats of the forms of the language occurring in the Old Testament frequently requires, for their explanation, a reference to these ground-forms.
/ 6. Even in the language of the Old Testament, notwithstanding its general uniformity, there is noticeable a certain progress from an earlier to a later stage. Two periods, though with some reservations, may be distinguished : the Jirist, down to the end of the Babylonian exile ; and the second, after the exile. Tfl To the former belongs, apart from isolated traces of a later revision, the larger half of the Old Testament books, viz. (a) of the prose and historical writings, a large part of the Pentateuch and of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings ; (6) of the poetical, perhaps
1 Whether those can be described simply as 'primitive Semitic' is a question which may be left undecided here.
§ 2 n-g] History of the Hebrew Language 13
a part of the Psalms and Proverbs ; (c) the writings of the earlier prophets (apart from various later additions) in the following chrono- logical order : Amos, Hosea, Isaiah I, Micah, Nahum, Zephaniah, Habakkuk, Obadiah (?), Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah 11 (eh. 40-55).
The beginning of this period, and consequently of Hebrew literature W generally, is undoubtedly to be placed as early as the time of Moses, although the Pentateuch in its present form, in which very different strata may be still clearly recognized, is to be regarded as a gradual production of the centuries after Moses. Certain linguistic peculiarities of the Pentateuch, which it was once customary to regard as archaisms, such as the epicene use of nyj hoy, youth, for nly3 girl, and NIH for KTI, are merely to be attributed to a later redactor ; cf. § 1 7 c.
The linguistic character of the various strata of the Pentateuch has been O examined by Ryssel, Ue Elohistae Pentaieuchici sermone, Lpz. 1878; KOnig, Be criticae saa-ae argumento e linguae legihus repetito, Lpz. 1879 (analysis of Gn i-ii) ; F. Giesebrecht, 'Der Sprachgebr. des hexateuchischen Elohisten,' in ZAW. 1881, p. 177 flf., partly modified by Driver in the Journal of Philology, vol. xi. p. 201 fif. ; Krautlein, Die sprachl. Verschiedenheiten in den Hexateuchquellen, Lpz. 1908. — Abundant matter is afforded also by Holzinger, Einleitung in den Hexateuch, Freib. 1 893 ; Driver, Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament *, Edinburgh, 1908 ; Strack, Einleitung ins A. T.^, Munich, 1906 ; KOnig, Einleitung in das A. T., Bonn, 1 893.
6. Even in the writings of this first period, which embraces w about 600 years, we meet, as might be expected, with considerable differences in linguistic form and style, which are due partly to differences in the time and place of composition, and partly to the individuality and talent of the authors. Thus Isaiah, for example, writes quite differently from the later Jeremiah, but also differently from his contemporary Micah. Amongst the historical books of this period, the texts borrowed from earlier sources have a linguistic colouring perceptibly different from those derived from later sources, or passages which balong to the latest redactor himself. Yet the structure of the language, and, apart from isolated cases, even the vocabulary and phraseology, are on the whole the same, especially in the prose books.
But the poetic language is in many ways distinguished from ^ prose, not only by a rhythm due to more strictly balanced (parallel) members and definite metres (see r), but also by peculiar words and meanings, inflexions and syntactical constructions which it uses in addition to those usual in prose. This distinction, however, does not go far as, for example, in Greek. Many of these poetic pecu- liarities occur in the kindred languages, especially in Aramaic, as the ordinary modes of expression, and probably are to be regarded largely as archaisms which poetry retained. Some perhaps, also, are
14 Introduction [§ 2 r
embellishments which the Hebrew poets who knew Aramaic adopted into their language.^
The prophets, at least the earlier, in language and rhythm are to be regarded almost entirely as poets, except that with them the sentences are often more extended, and the parallelism i? less regular and balanced than is the case with the poets properly so called. The language of the later prophets, on the contrary, approaches nearer to prose.
/• On the rhythm of Hebrew poetry, see besides the Commentaries on the poetical books and Introductions to the O.T., J. Ley, Grundzuge des Bhythmus, <rc, Halle, 1875 ; Leitfaden der Metrik der hebr. Poesie, Halle, 1887 ; 'Die metr. Beschaffenheit des B. Hiob,' in Theol. Stud. u. Krit, 1895, iv, 1897, i ; Grimme_, 'Abriss der bibl.-hebr. Metrik,' ZDMG. 1896, p. 529 flf., 1897, p. 683 ff. ; Psalmenprobleme, &c., Freiburg (Switzerland), 1902 (on which see Beer in ThLZ. 1903, no. 11); 'Gedanken iiber hebr. Metrik,' in Altschiiler's Viertel- jahrschrift, i (1903), I ff. ; DSller, Bhythmus, Metrik u. Strophik in d. bibl.-hebr. Poesie, Paderborn, 1899; Schloegl, De re metrica veterum Hebraeorum dispuiatio, Vindobonae, 1899 (on the same lines as Grimme) ; but especially Ed. Sievers, Metrische Studien : i Studien sur hebr. Metrik, pt. I Vntersuchungen, pt. 2 Textproben, Lpz. 1901 : ii Bie hebr. Genesis, i Texle, 2 Zur Quellenscheidung u. Texikritik, Lpz. 1904 f. : iii Samuel, Lpz. 1907 ; Amos metrisch bearbeitet (with H. Guthe), Lpz. 1907 ; and his AUtest. Miszellen (i Is 24-27, 2 Jona, 3 Deutero-Zechariah, 4 Malachi, 5 Hosea, 6 Joel, 7 Obadiah, 8 Zephaniah, 9 Haggai, 10 Micah), Lpz. 1904-7. — As a guide to Sievers' system (with some criticism of his principles see Baumann, ' Die Metrik u. das A.T.,' in the Theol. Rundschau, viii (1905), 41 ff. ; W. H. Cobb, A criticism of systems of Hebrew Metre, Oxford, 1905 ; Cornill, Einleitung ins A.T.^, Tiibingen, 190-;, p.. 11 ff. ; Rothstein, Zeitschr. fur d. ev. Bel.-Unterricht, 1907, p. 188 ff. and his Grundziige des hebr. Rhythmus, Lpz. 1909 (also separately Psalmentexte u. der Text des Hohen Liedes, Lpz. 1909) ; W. R.Arnold, 'The rhythms of the ancient Heb.,' in 0. T. and Semitic Studies in memory of W. R. Harper, i. 165 ff., Chicago, 1907, according to whom the number of syllables between the beats is only limited by the physiological possibilities of phonetics ; C. v. Orelli, ' Zur Metrik der alttest. Propheten- schriften,' in his Kommentar su den kl. Propheten^, p. 236 ff., Munich, 1908. — In full agreement with Sievers is Baethgen, Psalmen^, p. xxvi ff., GSttingen, 1904. [Cf. Budde in DB. iv. 3 ff. ; Duhm in EB. iii. 3793 ff.]
Of all views of this matter, the only one generally accepted as sound was at first Ley's and Budde's discovery of the Qina- or Lamentation-Verse {ZAW. 1882, 5ff ; 1891, 234 ff. ; 1892, 31 ff.). On their predecessors, Lowth, de Wette, Ewald, see LOhr, Klagelied^, p. 9. This verse, called by Duhm * long verse ', by Sievers simply ' five-syllabled ' (Fiinfer), consists of two members, the second at least one beat shorter than the other. That a regular repetition of an equal number of syllables in arsis and thesis was observed by other poets, had been established by Ley, Duhm, Gunkel, Grimme, and others, especially Zimmern, who cites a Babylonian hymn in which the members are actually marked {ZA. x. i ff., xii. 382 ff. ; cf. also Delitzsch, Das babyl. Weltschopfungsepos, Lpz. 1896, pp. 60 ff.). Recently, however, E. Sievers, the recognized authority on metre in other branches of literature, has indicated, in the works mentioned above, a number of fresh facts and views, which have frequently been confirmed by the conclusions of Ley and others. The most important are as follows : —
Hebrew poetry, as distinguished from the quantitative Classical and Arabic
^ That already in Isaiah's time (second half of the eighth century b. c.) educated Hebrews, or at least oflScers of state, understood Aramaic, while the common people in Jerusalem did not, is evident from 2 K x8'^* (Is 36^'_).
§ 2 s] History of the Hebrew Language 15
and the syllabic Syriac verse, is accentual. The number of unstressed syllables between the beats {ictus) is, however, not arbitrary, but the scheme of the verse is based on an irregular anapaest which may undergo rhythmical modifications (e. g. resolving the ictus into two syllables, or lengthening the arsis so as to give a double accent) and contraction, e. g. of the first two syllables. The foot always concludes with the ictus, so that toneless endings, ■due to change of pronunciation or corruption of the text, are to be dis- regarded, although as a rule the ictus coincides with the Hebrew word- accent. The metrical scheme consists of combinations of feet in series (of 2, 3 or 4), and of these again in periods — double threes, very frequently, double fours in narrative, fives in Lamentations (see above) and very often else- where, and sevens. Sievers regards the last two metres as catalectic double threes and fours. Connected sections do not always maintain the same metre throughout, but often exhibit a mixture of metres.
It can no longer be doubted that in the analysis of purely poetical passages, this system often finds ready confirmation and leads to textual and literary results, such as the elimination of glosses. There are, however, various difficulties in carrying out the scheme consistently and extending it to the prophetical writings and still more to narrative : (i) not infrequently the required number of feet is only obtained by sacrificing the clearly marked parallelism, or the grammatical connexion (e. g. of the construct state with its genitive), and sometimes even by means of doubtful emenda- tions; (2) the whole system assumes a correct transmission of the text and its pronunciation, for neither of which is there the least guarantee. To sum up, our conclusion at present is that for poetry proper some assured and final results have been already obtained, and others may be expected, from the principles laid down by Sievers, although, considering the way in which the text has been transmitted, a faUltless arrangement of metres can- not be expected. Convincing proof of the consistent use of the same metrical schemes in the prophets, and a fortiori in narrative, can hardly be brought forward.
The great work of D. H. Miiller, Bie Propheten in ihrer urspmngl. Form (2 vols., Vienna, 1896 ; cf. his Strophenbau u. Responsion, ibid. 1898, and Komposition u. Strophenhau, ibid. 1907), is a study of the most important monuments of early Semitic poetry from the point of view of strophic structure and the use of the refrain, i. e. the repetition of the same or similar phrases or words in corresponding positions in different strophes.
The arrangement of certain poetical passages in verse-form required by early scribal rules (Ex 15^-"; Dt 32I-" ; Ju 5 ; i S 21-'"; 2 S 22, 231-^; ^ 18, 136; Pr. si'o-si; I Ch \(,^-^^ : cf. also Jo 129-2* ; gg 32-8. Est9'-'»)has nothing to do with the question of metre in the above sense.
Words are used in poetry, for which others are customary in prose, e. g. , KnJS Mian = DIN: mx jpa^A = TITI ; n^» toord = ini: TWU to see=-T\Vir\ ; nflN
V: T T ' ~ ••.•;•' T • T T ' TT T 7 T T
to coTOe = N^2.
To the poetic meanings of words belongs the use of certain poetic epithets as substantives ; thus, for example, TiiN (only in constr. st. "lON) the strong one
for Qod ; 1''3N the strong one for bull, horse ; n33p alba for luna ; IJf enemy for
Of word-forms, we may note, e.g. the longer forms of prepositions of place (§ 103 n) \by = i'y, \bN = ^N, ny=ny; the endings ^__, i in the noun (§ 90) ;
the pronominal sufBxes 10, ilO_L, iD_l for D, D D (§ 58) ; the plural
ending p__ for D"" (§ 87 e). To the syntax belongs the far more sparing
use of the article, of the relative pronoun, of the accusative particle riN ; the constinict state even before prepositions ; the shortened imperfect with the same meaning as the ordinary form (§ 109 i) ; the wider governing power of prepositions ; and in general a forcible brevity of expression.
i6 Introduction [§ 2 t-v
t 7. The second period of the Hebrew language and literature, after the return from the exile until the Maccabees (about 160 B.C.), is chiefly distinguished by a constantly closer approximation of the language to the kindred western Aramaic dialect. This is due to the influence of the Aramaeans, who lived in close contact with the recent and thinly-populated colony in Jerusalem, and whose dialect was already of importance as being the official language of the western half of the Persian empire. Nevertheless the supplanting of Hebrew by Aramaic proceeded only very gradually. Writings intended for popular use, such as the Hebrew original of Jesus the son of Sirach and the book of Daniel, not only show that Hebrew about 170 b.c. was still in use as a literary language, but also that it was still at least understood by the people.^ When it had finally ceased to exist as a living language, it was still preserved as the language of the Schools — not to mention the numerous Hebraisms introduced into the Aramaic spoken by the Jews.
For particulars, see Kautzsch, Gramm. des Bibl.-Aram., pp. i-6. We may conveniently regard the relation of the languages v^hich* co-existed in this later period as similar to that of the Higli and Low German in North Germany, or to that of the High Gei-man and the common dialects in the south and in Switzerland. Even amongst the more educated, the common dialect prevails orally, whilst the High German serves essentially as the literary and cultured language, and is at least understood by all classes of the people. "Wholly untenable is the notion, based on an erroneous interpretation of Neh 8*, that the Jews immediately after the exile had com- pletely forgotten the Hebrew language, and therefore needed a translation of the Holy Scriptures.
U The Old Testament writings belonging to this second period, in all of which the Aramaic colouring appears in various degrees, are : certain parts of the Pentateuch and of Joshua, Ruth, the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles, Esther; the prophetical books of Haggai, Zechariah, Isaiah 111(56-66), Malachi, Joel, Jonah, Daniel; of the poet- ical books, a large part of Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and most of the Psalms. As literary compositions, these books are some- times far inferior to those of the first period, although work was still produced which in purity of language and aesthetic value falls little short of the writings of the golden age.
D Later words (Aramaisms) are, e.g. niPIK declaration, D3N compel, 13 son, yi chalk, |Dt = D}} time, 5]|5T raise up, *lDn Pi. reproach, i>^J3 Pi. roof over,
* The extensive use of Hebrew in the popular religious literature which is partly preserved to us in the Midrasim, the Misna, and the Liturgy, indicates, moreover, that Hebrew was widely understood much later than this. Cf. M. H. Segal, ' ML^naic Hebrew and its relations to Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic,' in J. Q. R., 1908, p. 647 ff. (also separately).
§§ i w, 3 a] History of the Hebrew Language 17
nyO stray, 5)3 rock, "]^0 a^frtse, PliD = }^i5 end, b3p = ni5b tafte, yjn = }^Xn J^rea/t, N3E' 6e wiany, tD7B' = ^5J3 '■"fe; ^P.''^ = n?^ ^^ strong. — Later meanings are, e.g. ipN (to say) to command ; njy (to answer) to begin speaking. — Orthographical and grammatical peculiarities are, the frequent scriptio plena of S and ''__ e. g. l>n' (elsewhere IH), even E'Tp for tJ'lp, 311 for 31 ; the interchange of n and N final ; the more frequent use of substantives in |i | n^
&c. Cf. Dav. Strauss, Sprachl. Studien zu d. hebr. Sirach/ragmenten, Zurich, 1900, p. 19 ff. ; for the Psalms Choyne, Origin of the Psalter, p. 461 S., and especially Giesebrecht in ZAW. 1881, p. 276 ff. ; in general, Kautzsch, Die Aramaismen im A. T. (i, Lexikal. Teil), Halle, 1902,
But all the peculiarities of these later writers are not Aramaisms. Several ilo not occur in Aramaic and must have belonged at an earlier period to the Hebrew vernacular, especially it would seem in northern Palestine. There certain parts of Judges, amongst others, may have originated, as is indicated, e.g. by •£J', a common form in Phoenician (as well as l^N), for "It^X (§ 36), which afterwards recurs in Jonah, Lamentations, the Song of
Songs, the later Psalms, and Ecclesiastes.
Rem. I. Of dialectical varieties in the old Hebrew language, only one W express mention occurs in the 0. T. (Ju 12*), according to which the Ephraimites in certain cases pronounced the B' as D. (Cf. Marquart in
ZAW. 1888, p. 151 ff.) Whether in Neh 13^* by the speech of Ashdod a Hebrew, or a (wholly different) Philistine dialect is intended, cannot be determined. On the other hand, many peculiarities in the North Palestinian hooks (Judges and Hosea) are probably to be regarded as differences in dialect, and so also some anomalies in the Moabite inscription of Mesa' (see above, d). On later developments see L. Metman, Die hebr. Sprache, ihre Geschichte u. lexikal. Enticickelung seit Abschluss des Kanons u. ihr Bau in d. Gegenwart, Jerusalem, 1906.
2. It is evident that, in the extant remains of old Hebrew literature, ^ the entire store of the ancient language is not preserved. The canonical books of the Old Testament formed certainly only a fraction of the whole Hebrew national literature.
§ 3. Grammatical Treatment of the Hebrew Language.
Gesenius, Gesch. derhebr. Sprache, §§ 19-39 ; Oehler's article, 'Hebr. Sprache,' in Schmid's Encykl. des ges. Erziehungs- u. Unterrichtswesens, vol. iii. p. 346 ff. (in the 2nd ed. revised by Nestle, p. 314 ff.). Cf. also the literature cited above in the headings of §§ 1 and 2 ; also BOttcher, Lehrb. der hebr. Spr., i. Lpz. 1866, p. 30 ff. ; L. Geiger, Das Studium der Hebr. Spr. in Deutschl. vom Ende des XV. bis zur Mitte des XVI. Jahrh., Breslau, 1870 ; B. Pick, 'The Study of the Hebrew Language among Jews and Christians,' in Bibliotheca Sacra, 1884, p. 450 ff., and 1885, p. 470 ff. ; W. Bacher, article 'Grammar' in the Jew. Encyclopaedia, vol. vi, N«w York and London, 1904. Cf. also the note on d.
1. At the time when the old Hebrew language was gradually a becoming extinct, and the formation of the O. T. canon was
1 Tl^ in the Minor Prophets throughout (Ho 3', &c.) is due merely to a caprice of the Masoretes,
2 According to the calculation of the Dutch scholar Leusden, the 0. T. contains 5,642 different Hebrew and Aramaic words; according to rabbinical calculations, 79,856 altogether in the Pentateuch. Cf. also E. Nestle, ZAW, 1906, p. 2S^3 ; H. Strack, ZAW. 1907, p. 69 ff. ; Blau, ' Neue masoret. Studien,' in JQR. xvi. 357 ff., treats of the number of letters and words, and the ve se- division in the 0. T.
COWLET c.
1 8 Introduction [§36
approaching completion, the Jews began to explain and critically revise their sacred text, and sometimes to translate it into the vernacular languages which in various countries had become current among them. The oldest translation is the Greek of the Seventy (more correctly Seventy-two) Interpreters (LXX), which was begun with the Pentateuch at Alexandria under Ptolemy Philadelphus, but only completed later. It was the work of various authoi's, some of whom had a living knowledge of the original, and was intended for the use of Greek-speaking Jews, especially in Alexandria. Somewhat later the Aramaic translations, or Targums (D''0^3iri i, e. interpreta- tions), were foi'med by successive recensions made in Palestine and Babylonia. The explanations, derived in part from alleged tradition, refer almost exclusively to civil and ritual law and dogmatic theology, and are no more scientific in character than much of the textual tradition of that period. Both kinds of tradition are preserved in the Talmud, the first part of which, the Misna, was finally brought to its present form towards the end of the second century ; of the remainder, the Gemara, one recension (the Jerusalem or Palestinian Gem.) about the middle of the fourth century, the other (the Babylo- nian Gem.) about the middle of the sixth century a.d. The Mi§na forms the beginning of the New-Hebrew literature; the language of the Gemaras is for the most part Aramaic. b 2. To the interval between the completion of the Talmud and the earliest grammatical writers, belong mainly the vocalization and accentuation of the hitherto unpointed text of the 0. T., according to the pronunciation traditional in the Synagogues and Schools (§ 7 h, i), as well as the greater part of the collection of critical notes which bears the name of Masora (•^'jiOO traditio 1).^ From this the text which has since been transmitted with rigid uniformity by the MSS.,
' On the name Masora (or Massora, as e.g. E. KSnig, Einleitung in das A. T.. p. 38 fif. ; Lehrgeb. d. hebr. Sprache, ii. 358 fif.), and the great difficulty of satis- factorily explaining it, cf. De Lagarde, Mitleilungen, i. 91 S. W. Bacher's derivation of the expression (in JQR. 1891, p. 785 ff. ; so also C. Levias in the Hebrew Union College Annual, Cincinnati, 1904, p. 147 ff.) from Ee 20" (JT'l^n n"lDD ; moo, i.e. iTJpiD, being an equally legitimate form) is rightly rejected by Konig, 1. c. The correctness of the form niDD (by the side of the equally well-attested form JTIDIO) does not seem to us to be invalidated by his arguments, nor by Blau's proposal to read D^iDD {JQK. xii. 241). The remark of Levias (I.e.) deserves notice, that with the earlier Masoretes miDD is equivalent to orthography, i. e. plene- and defective writing, and only later came to mean traditio. — G. Wildboer, in ZAW. 1909, p. 74, contends that as ">DD to hand on is not found in the O.T., it must be a late denomina- tive in this sense.
§3c,rf] Grammatical Treatment of the Language 19
and is still the received text of the O.T., has obtained the name of the Masoretic Text.
E. F. K. Rosenmiiller already (Handbuch fiir d. Liter, der bibl. Kritik u. C Exegese, 1797, i. 247; Vorrede sur Stereotyp-Ausg. des A. T., Lpz. 1834) main- tained that our 0. T. text was derived from Codices belonging to a single recension. J. G. Sommer (cf. Cornill, ZAW. 1892, p. 309), Olshausen (since 1^53)) ^nd especially De Lagarde (Proverbien, 1863, p. i ff.), have even made it probable that the original Masoretic text was derived from a single standard manuscript. Cf., however, E. KCnig in Ztschr. f. kirchl. Wiss., 1887, p. 279 f., and especially his Einleitung ins A. T., p, 88 ff. Moreover a great many facts, which will be noticed in their proper places, indicate that the Masora itself is by no means uniform but shows clear traces of different schools and opinions ; cf. H. Strack in Semitic Studies in memory of . . . Kohut, Berlin, 1897, p. 563 ff. An excellent foundation for the history of the Masora and the settlement of the masoretic tradition was laid by Joh. Buxtorf in his Tiberias seu Commen- iarius Masorethicus, first published at Basel in 1620 as an appendix to the Rabbinical Bible of 1618 f. For more recent work see Geiger, Jiidische Ztschr., iii. 78 ff., followed by Harris in JQR. i. 128 ff, 243 ff. ; S. Frensdorff. Ochla W'ochla, Hanover, 1864 ; and his Massor. Wiirierb., part i, Hanover and Lpz. 1876 ; and Ch. D. Ginsburg, The Massora compiled from Manuscripts, tfcc, 3 vols., Lond. 1880 ff., and Introduction to the Massoretico-critical edition of the Hebr. Bible, Lond. 1897 (his text, reprinted from that of Jacob b. Hayyim [Venice, 1524-5] with variants from MSS. and the earliest editions, was published in 2 vols. at London in 1894, 2nd ed. 1906; a revised edition is in progress); H. Hyvemat, 'La langue et le langage de la Massore' (as a mixture of New- Hebrew and Aramaic), in the Revue biblique, Oct. 1903, p. 529 ff. and B: ' Lexique massor6tique,' ibid., Oct. 1904, p. 521 ff., 1905, p. 481 ff., and p. 515 ff. In the use of the Massora for the critical construction of the Text, useful work has been done especially by S. Baer, in the editions of the several books (only Exod.-Deut. have still to appear), edited from 1869 conjointly with Fr. Delitzsch, and since 1891 by Baer alone. Cf. also § 7 /*.
The various readings of the Q*re (see § 17) form one of the oldest and most important parts of the Masora. The punctuation of the Text, however, is not to be confounded with the compilation of the Masora. The former was settled at an earlier period, and is the result of a much more exhaustive labour than the Masora, which was not completed till a considerably later time.
3. It was not until about the beginning of the tentli century that (I the Jews, following the example of the Arabs, began their grammatical compilations. Of the numerous grammatical and lexicographical works of R. Sa'adya,' beyond fragments in the commentary on the Sepher Yesira (ed. Mayer-Lambert, pp. 42, 47, 75, &c.), only the explanation in Arabic of the seventy (more correctly ninety) hapax legomena in the O. T. has been preserved. "Written likewise in Arabic, but fre- quently translated into Hebrew, were the still extant works of the grammarians R. Yehuda Hayyug (also called Abu Zakarya Yahya, about the year 1000) and R. Yona (Abu '1-Walid Merwan ibn Ganah, about 1030). By the aid of these earlier labours, Abraham ben Ezra (com- monly called Aben Ezra, ob. 1167) and R. David Qirahi (ob. c. 1235) especially gained a classical reputation by their Hebrew grammatical writings.
^ On his independent attitude towards the Masoretic punctuation, see Delitzsch, Comm. su den Psalmen*, p. 39.
C 2
20 Introduction [§ 3 «. /
From these earliest grammarians are derived many principles of arrange- ment and technical terms, some of which are still retained, e. g. the naming of the conjugations and weak vexbs according to the paradigm of bVS, certain voces memoriales, as DDB'IJB and the like.^
€ 4. The father of Hebrew philology among Christians was John Reuchliu (ob. 1522),^ to whom Greek literature also is so much indebted. Like the grammarians who succeeded him, till the time of John Buxtorf the elder (ob. 1629), he still adhered almost entirely to Jewish tradition. From the middle of the seventeenth century the field of investigation gradually widened, and the study of the kindred languages, chiefly through the leaders of the Dutch school, Albert Schultens (ob. 1750) and N. W. Schroder (ob. 1798), became of fruitful service to Hebrew grammar.
f 5. In the nineteenth century ' the advances in Hebrew philology are especially connected with the names of W. Gesenius (born at Nordhausen, Feb. 3, 1786; from the year 1810 Professor at Halle, where he died Oct. 23, 1842), who above all things aimed at the comprehensive observation and lucid presentation of the actually occurring linguistic phenomena ; H. Ewald (ob. 1875, at Gottingen ; Krit. Gramm. der Hebr. Spr., Lpz. 1827; Ausfuhrl. Lehrb. d. hebr. Sjyr., 8th ed., Gbtt. 1870), who chiefly aimed at referring linguistic forms to general laws and rationally explaining the latter ; J. Olshausen (ob. 1882, at Berlin; Lehrb. der hebr. Sjtrache, Brunswick, 1861) who attempted a consistent explanation of the existing condition of the language, from the presupposed primitive Semitic forms, preserved according to him notably in old Arabic. F. Bottcher {Ausfuhrl. Lehrb. d. hebr. Spr. ed. by F.Miihlau, 2 vols., Lpz. 1866-8) endeavoured to present an exhaustive synopsis of the linguistic phenomena, as well as to give an explanation of them from the sphere of Hebrew
• On the oldest Hebrew grammarians, see Strack and Siegfried, Lehrb. d. neuhebr. Spr. u. Liter., Carlsr. 1884, p. 107 fif., and the prefaces to the Hebrew Lexicons of Gesenius and Fiirst ; Berliner. Beitrage zur hebr. Gramm. im Talmud u. Midrasih, Berlin, 1879; Baer and Strack, Die Dikduke ha-i'amim des Ahron ben Moscheh ben Ascher u. andere alte grammatisch-massorethische Lehrstiicke, Lpz. 1879, and P. Kahle's criticisms in ZDMG. Iv. 170, n. 2 ; Ewald and Dukes, Beitrage z. Gesch. der altesfen Auslegung u. Spracherklarvng des A. T., Stuttg. 1844, 3 vols. ; Hupfeld, De rei grammaticae apud Judaeos initiis antiquissimisque scri- pioribus, Hal. 1846 ; W. Bacher, 'Die Anfange der hebr. Gr.,' in ZDMG. 1S95, I ff. and 335 ff. ; and Die hebr. Sprachwissenschaft vo7n 10. bis sum 16. Jahrh., Trier, 1892.
2 A strong impulse was naturally given to these studies by the introduction of printing — the Psalter in 1477, the Bologna Pentateuch in 1482, the Soncino 0. T. complete in 1488 : see the description of the twenty-four earliest editions (down to 1528) in Ginsburg's Introduction, p. 779 ff.
' Of the literature 01 the subject down to the year 1850, see a tolerably full account in Steinschneider'a Bibliogr. Handb.f. hebr. Sprachkunde, Lpz. 1859.
§ 3 17] Grammatical Treatment of the Language 21
alone. B. Stade, on the other liand {Lehrb. der hebr. Gr., pt. i. Lpz. 1879), adopted a strictly scientific method in endeavouring to reduce the systems of Ewald and Olshausen to a more fundamental unity. E. Kouig^ in his very thorough researches into the phonology and accidence starts generally from the position reached by the early Jewish grammarians (in his second part ' with comparative reference to the Semitic languages in general ') aud instead of adopting the usual dogmatic method, takes pains to re-open the discussion of disputed grammatical questions. The syntax Konig has ' endeavoured to treat in sevei'al respects in such a way as to show its affinity to the common Semitic syntax '. — Among the works of Jewish scholars, special atten- tion may be called to the grammar by S. D. Luzzatto written in Italian (Padua, 1853-69).
The chief requirements for one who is treating the grammar of an ancient language are — (i) that he should observe as fully and accurately as possible the existing linguistic phenomena and describe them, after showing their organic connexion (the empirical and historico-critical element) ; (2) that he should try to explain these facts, partly by comparing them with one another aud by the analogy of the sister languages, partly from the general laws of philology (the logical element).
Such observation has more and more led to the belief that the a- original text of the O. T. has suffered to a much greater extent than former scholars were inclined to admit, in spite of the number of variants in jJarallel passages: Is 2'*^ = Mi 4'"^-, 1336-39 = 2X18'^- 2o'^ Jer 52 = 2 K 24'«-25''», 2 S 22=^^ 18, f 14 = ^/^ 53, >/.4o»'' = ^ 70, >//• io8 = V' 57**^' and 60' '^•. Cf. also the parallels between the Chronicles and the older historical books, and F. Vodel, Die konsonant. Yarianten in den doppelt iiberlief. poet. Stucken d. masoret. Textes, Lpz. 1905. As to the extent and causes of the corruption of the Masoretic text, the newly discovered fragments of the Hebrew Ecclesiasticus are very instructive; cf. Smend, Gott. gel. Anz., 1906,
P- 763-
The causes of unintentional corruption in the great majority of
cases are : — Interchange of similar letters, which has sometimes taken place in the early ' Phoenician ' writing; transposition or omission of
' Ilistorisch-krit. Lehrgeb. der hebr. Sprache mit stetcr Besiehung auf Qitncki und die anderen Autoritdlen : I, 'Lehre von der Sohrift, der Aussprache, dero Pron. u. dem Verbum,' Lpz. 1881 ; II. i, ' Abscliluss der speziellen Formenlehre u. generelle Forraenl.,' 1895; ii. 2, ' Historisch-kompar. Syntax d, hebr. Spr.,' 1897.
22 hiti'oduction [§ 4
single letters, words, or even whole sentences, which are then often added in the margin and thence brought back into the text in the wrong place ; such omission is generally due to homoioteleuton (of. (jinsburg, Introd., p. 171 ff.), i.e. the scribe's eye wanders from the place to a subsequent word of the same or similar form. Other ( auses are dittography, i. e. erroneous repetition of letters, words, and even sentences ; its opposite, haplography ; and lastly wrong division of words (cf. Ginsburg, Introd., p. 158 ff.), since at a certain period in the transmission of the text the words were not separated.^ — Intentional changes are due to corrections for the sake of decency or of dogma, and to the insertion of glosses, some of them very early.
Advance in grammar is therefore closely dependent on progress in textual criticism. The systematic pursuit of the latter has only begun in recent years: cf. especially Doorninck on Ju 1-16, Leid. 1879; Wellhausen, Text der Bh. Sam,., Gott. 187 1 ; Cornill, Ezechiel, Lpz. 1886 ; Klostermann, Bh. Sam. u. d. Kon., Nordl. 1887 ; Driver, Notes on tlte Hehr. text of the Books of Sam., Oxf. 1890; Kloster- mann, Deuterojesaja, Munich, 1893 ; Oort, Textus hebr. emendationes, Lugd. 1900; Burney on Kivigs, Oxf. 1903; the commentaries of Marti and Nowack ; the Internat. Crit. Comm. ; Kautzsch, Die heil. Schriften des A.T.^, 1909-10. A critical edition of the O.T. with full textual notes, and indicating the different documents by colours, is being published in a handsome form by P. Haupt in The Sacred Books of the Old Test., Lpz. and Baltimore, 1893 ff. (sixteen paits have appeared : Exod., Deut., Minor Prophets, and Megilloth are still to come); 'KiiieX, Biblia hebraica', 1909, Masoretic text from Jacob b. Hayyim (see c), with a valuable selection of variants from the versions, and emendations.
§ 4. Division and Arrangement of the Grammar.
The division and arrangement of Hebrew grammar follow the three constituent parts of every language, viz. (i) articulate sounds represented by letters, and united to form syllables, (2) words, and (3) sentences.
The first part (the elements) comprises accordingly the treatment of sounds and their representation in writing. It describes the nature and relations of the sounds of the language, teaches the pronunciation
1 This scriptio continna is also found in Phoenician inscriptions. The inscription of Me"a' always divides the words by a point (and so the Siloam inscription ; see tlie facsimile at the beginning of tliis grammar), and fre- quently marks the close of a sentence by a stroke.
§ 4] A7'rangement of the Grammar 23
of the written signs (orthoepy), and the established mode of writing (orthography). It then treats of the sounds as combined in syllables and words, and specifies the laws and conditions under which this combination takes place.
The second part (etymology) treats of words in their character as parts of speech, and comprises: (i) the principles oiihe formation of words, or of the derivation of the different parts of speech from the roots or from one another ; (2) the principles of inflexion, i. e. of the various forms which the words assume according to their relation to other words and to the sentence.
The third part (syntax, or the arrangement of words) : (i) shows how the word-formations and inflexions occurring in the language are used to express different shades of ideas, and how other ideas, for which the language hus not coined any forms, are expressed by periphrasis ; (2) states the laws according to which the parts of speech are combined in sentences (the principles of the sentence, or syntax in the stricter sense of the term).
FIRST PART
ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OR THE SOUNDS AND
CHARACTERS
CHAPTER, I
THE INDIVIDUAL SOUNDS AND CHARACTERS
§ 5. The Consonants : their Forms and Names.
(Cf. the Table of Alphabets.)
Among the abundant literature on the subject, special attention is directed to : A. Berliner, Beitrage zurhebr. Gramm., Berlin, 1879, p. 15 ff., on the names, forms,and pronunciation of the consonants in Talmud and Midrash ; H. Strack, Schreibkunst u. Schrift bei d. Hebraern, PRE?, Lpz. 1906, p. 766 ff. ; Benzinger, Hebr. Archdologie^, Tiibingen, 1907, p. 172 ff. ; Nowack, Lehrbicch d. hebr. Archdol, Freiburg, 1894, i. 279 fif.; Lidzbarski, Handbuch d. nordsem. Epigraphik, Weimar, 1898, i. I73ff. ; also his art. ' Hebrew Alphabet,' in the Jewish Encyclopaedia, i, 1 901, p. 439 fF. (cf. his Ephemeris, i. 316 ff.) ; and 'Die Namen der Alphabet- buchstaben ', in Ephemeris, ii. 125 ff.; Kenyon, art. ' Writing,' in the Dictionary of the Bible, iv. Edinb. 1902, p. 944 ff. ; NOldeke, ' Diesemit. Buchstabennamen,' in Beitr. sur semit. Sprachwiss., Strassb. 1904, p. 124 ff. ; F. Praetorius, Ueber den Ursprung des kanaan. Alphabets, Berlin, 1906; H. Grimme, 'Zur Genesis des semit. Alphabets,' in ZA. xx. 1907, p. 49 ff. ; R. Stiibe, Grundlinien su einer Entwickelungsgesch, d. Schrift, Munich, 1907 ; Jermain, In the path of the Alphabet, Fort Wayne, 1907. — L. Blau, Studien zum althebr. Buchwesen, dc, Strassb. 1903 ; and his ' Ueber d. Einfluss d. althebr. Buchwesens auf d. Originale ', &c., in Festschr. zu Ehren A. Berliners, Frkf. 1903.
The best tables of alphabets are those of J. Euting in G. Bickell's Outlines of Heb. Gram, transl. by S. I. Curtiss, Lpz. 1877 ; in Pt. vii of the Oriental Series of the Palaeographical Soc, London, 1882 ; and, the fullest of all, in Chwol- son's Corpus inscr. Hebr., Petersburg, 1882; also Lidzbarski's in the Jewish Encycl., see above.
a 1. The Hebrew letters now in use, in which both the manu- scripts of the O. T. are written and our editions of the Bible are printed, commonly called the square character (V?"?? ^^?)> ^l^o the Assyrian character (^l^tS'K '3),* are not those originally employed. Old Hehrcio (or Old Canaanitish^) writing, as it was used on
^ The name 'l^E'N (Assyria) is here used in the widest sense, to include the
countries on the Mediterranean inhabited by Aramaeans ; cf. Stade in ZAW. 1882, p. 292 f. On some other names for Old Hebrew writing, cf. G. Hoffmann, ibid. 1881, p. 334 ff. ; Buhl, Car^on and Text of the 0. T. (transl. by J. Macpherson), Edinb. 1893, p. 200.
' It is tacitly assumed here that this was the mother of all Semitic alphabets. In ZDMG. 1909, p. 189 ff., however, Pratorius has shown good
I § 5 a] The Consonants : their Foiins and Names 25
public monuments in the beginning of the ninth and in the seconit half of the eighth century B.C., is to be seen in the inscription of Mesa', as well as in that of Siloam. The characters on the Macca- baean coins of the second century B.C., and also on ancient gems, still bear much resemblance to this (cf § 2 d). With the Old Hebrew writing the Phoenician is nearly identical (see § i A;, ^ 2 f, and the Table of Alphabets). From the analogy of the history of other kinds of writing, it may be assumed that out of and along with this monu- mental character, a less antique and in some ways more convenient, rounded style was early developed, for use on softer materials, skins, bark, papyrus, and the like. This the Samaritans retained after their separation from the Jews, while the Jews gradually ' (between the sixth and the fourth century) exchanged it for an Aramaic character. From this gradually arose (from about the fourth to the middle of the third century) what is called the square character, which consequently bears great resemblance to the extant forms of Aramaic writing, such as the Egyptian- Aramaic, the Nabatean and especially the Palmyrene. Of Hebrew inscriptions in the older square character, that of 'Araq al-Emir (15^ miles north-east of the mouth of the Jordan) probably belongs to 183 B.C.''
The Jewish sarcophagus-inscriptions of the time of Christ, found in Jerusalem in 1905, almost without exception exhibit a pure square character. This altered little in the course of centuries, so that the age of a Hebrew MS. cannot easily be determined from the style of the writing. The oldest known biblical fragment is the Nash papyrus (found in 1902), containing the ten commandments and the beginning of Dt 6*'*, of the end of the first or beginning of the second century a. d. ; cf. N. Peters, Die dlteste Abschr. der 10 Geboie, Freibg. i. B. 1905. Of actual MSS. of the Bible the oldest is probably one of 820-850 A. D. described by Ginsburg, Introd., p. 469 ff., at the head of his sixty principal MSS. ; next in age is the codex of Moses ben Asher at Cairo (897 a. d., cf. the art. ' Scribes' in the Jew. Encycl. xi and Gottheil in JQR. 1905, p. 32). The date (916 a. d.) of the Codex prophetarum Babylon. Petropol. (see § 8 jr, note) is quite certain. — In the synagogue-rolls a distinc- tion is drawn between the Tam-character (said to be so called from Rabbi Tam, grandson of R. Yishaqi, in the twelfth century) with its straight strokes, square corners and ' tittles ' (tagin), in German and Polish MSS., and the foreign character with rounded letters and tittles in Spanish MSS. See further E. KOnig, Einl. in das A. T., Bonn, 1893, p. 16 ff.
grounds for believing that the South Semitic alphabet is derived not from the Mesa,' character, or from some kindred and hardly older script, but from some unknown and much earlier form of writing.
^ On the effect of the transitional mixture of earlier and later forms on the constitution of the text, see R. Kittel, Ueher d. Notwendigk. d. Herausg. einer neuen hebr. Bibel, Lpz. 1901, p. 20 fif. — L. Blau, ' Wie lange stand die althebr. Schrift bei den Juden im Gebrauch?' in Kaufmanngedenkbuch, Breslau, 1900, p. 44 ff.
' Not 176, as formerly held. Driver and Lidzbarski now read n"'3iy,
correctly, not rfilD.
S6 The Individual Sounds and Characters [§56
2. The Alphabet consists, like all Semitic alphabets, solely of consonants, twenty-two in number, some of which, however, liave also a kind of vocalic power (§ 7 6). The following Table shows their form, names, pronunciation, and numerical value (see k') : —
|
FOEM. |
NAME. |
PRONUNCIATION. |
NUMERICAL VALUE. |
|
N |
'Aleph |
' spiritus lenis |
I |
|
2 |
Beth |
b (hh, but see § 6 w) |
2 |
|
a |
Gimel {Giml) |
g{gK „ „ u ) |
3 |
|
n |
Daleth |
d {dh, „ „ „ ) |
4 |
|
n |
He |
h |
5 |
|
1 |
Wdw{Wau) |
w {u) ' |
6 |
|
r |
Zdyln |
z, as in English (soft s) |
7 |
|
n |
HHh |
h, a strong guttural |
8 |
|
\2 |
Teth |
t, empliatic t |
9 |
|
> |
Yod |
y (0 ' |
10 |
|
3, final T |
Kaph |
h {kh, but see § 6 «) |
20 |
|
^ |
Lamed |
/ |
30 |
|
D, final D |
Mem |
m |
40 |
|
3, final } |
mn |
n |
60 |
|
D |
Sdmekh |
s |
60 |
|
V |
'Ayin |
' a peculiar guttural (see beloR-) |
70 |
|
3, final C) |
Pe |
p if, see § 6 n) |
80 |
|
V, final y |
Sdde |
s, emphatic s |
90 |
|
P |
Qof |
q, a strong k * formed at the back of the palate |
100 |
|
"1 |
ReH |
r |
200 |
|
fb' |
iin |
S |
300 |
|
]t^ |
Sin^ |
s, pronounced sh |
|
|
n |
Taw {Tau) |
t {th, but see ^ 6 n) |
400 |
I
' Philippi, 'Die Aussprache der semit. Consonanten 1 und ^' in ZDMG.
1886, p. 639 fif., 1897, p. 66 flf., adduces reasons in detail for the opinion that
' the Semitic 1 and "• are certainly by usage consonants, although by nature
they are vowels, viz. m and i, and consequently are consonantal vowels ' : cf. § 8 w. ^ J ,
^ As & representation of this sound the Latin q is very suitable, since it occupies in the alphabet the place of tlie Semitic p (Greek K6vva).
' Nestle {Actes du onzieme Congres . . . des Orientalistes, 1897, iv. llsflF.) has shown that the original order was K' b.
§ 5 c-f] The Consonants : their Form and Names 27
3. As the Table shows, five letters have a special form at the end C t)f the word. They are called final letters, and were combined by the Jewish grammarians in the mnemonic word K??.'?? Kamnephds, or better, with A. Miiller and Stade, K???'?? i- e. as the breaker in pieces} Of these, "], |, S], y are distinguished from the common form by the shaft being drawn straight down, while in the usual form it is bent round towards the left.^ In the case of D the letter is completely closed.
4. Hebrew is read and written from right to left.^ "Words must d not be divided at the end of tl>e lines ; ■• but, in order that no empty space may be left, in MSS. and printed texts, certain letters suitable for the purpose are dilated at the end or in the middle of the line. In oiir printed texts these literae dilatahiles are the five following : Q n "7 n {>? (mnemonic word DHp'!?^ '%altem). In some MSS. other letters suitable for the purpose are also employed in this way, as
n, 3, "1 ; cf. Strack in the Theol Lehrb., 1882, No. 22; Nestle, ZAW.
1906, p. 170 f.
Rem. I. The forms of the letters originally represent the rude outlines of e perceptible objects, the names of which, respectively, begin with the consonant represented (akrophony). Thus Yod, in the earlier alphabets the rude picture of a hand, properly denotes hand (Heb. 1^), but as a letter simply the sound
' (j/), with which this word begins; 'Ayin, originally a circle, properly an eye (py), stands for the consonant y. In the Phoenician alphabet, especiallj', the resemblance of the forms to the objects denoted by the name is still for the most part recognizable (see the Table). In some letters (i^ )^ T, £3, tJ') the similarity is still preserved in the square character.
It is another question whether the present names are all original. They may be merely due to a later, and not always accurate, interpretation of the forms. Moreover, it is possible that in the period from about 1 500 to 1000 b. c. the original forms underwent considerable change. .
The usual explanation of the present names of the letters ^ is : Pj^N ox, /*
' In the Talmud, disregarding the alphabetical order, ^QV~|0 o/thy watcher,
i.e. prophet. See the discussions of this mnemonic word by Nestle, ZAW.
1907, p. 119 ff., K6nig, Bacher (who would read '!]^a>rfjp = proceed ing/rom thy
prophets, Is 52^), Krauss, Marmorstein, ibid. p. 278 ff. All the twenty-two letters, together with the five final forms, occur in Zp3^
* Chwolson, Corpus Inscr. Hebr., col. 68, rightly observes that the more original forms of these letters are preserved in the literae finales. Instances of them go back to the time of Christ.
* The same was originally the practice in Greek, which only adopted the opposite direction exclusively about 400 b.c. On the boustrophedon writing (alternately in each direction) in early Greek, early Sabaean, and in the Safa-inscriptions of the first three centuries a. d., cf. Lidzbarski, Ephemeris, i. ii6f.
* This does not apply to early inscriptions or seals. Cf. Mela', 11. 1-5, 7, 8, &c., Siloam 2, 3, 5, where the division of words appears to be customary.
* We possess Greek transcriptions of the Hebrew names, dating from the fifth century b. c. The LXX give them (in almost the same form as Eusebius, J'raep. Evang. 10. 5) in La 1-4, as do also many Codices of the Vulgate (e. g. the
28 The Individual Sounds and Characters [§ 5 ^
n*2 house, ^03 camel (according to Lidzbarski, see below, perhaps originally
jna axe or pick-axe), TO"^ door (jproperly folding door ; according to Lidzbarski,
perhaps Tl the female breast), NH air-hole (?), lattice-window (?), 11 hook, nail, p)
tceapow (according to Nestle, comparing the Greek f^jra, rather JT'I olive-tree),
rrin /ence, barrier (but perhaps only differentiated from n by the left-hand
stroke), n"'tp a winding (?), according to others a leather bottle or a snake (but
perhaps only differentiated from D by a circle round it), HV hand, P|3 ben/
/lawci, IJ^p ox-goad, D^IO wa<er, pj fish (Lidzbarski, 'perhaps originally t^PIJ
snake,' as in Ethiopic), T]pD prop (perhaps a modification of T), PS? e2/e, J<B
(also '•Q) mouth, i^'^ fish-hook {?), P]ip ej/e o/a needle, according to others back of
the head (Lidzb,, 'perhaps nCJ'p bow'), B''"'} /leacf, pB* tooth, in sigrn, cross.
^ With regard to the origin of this alphabet, it may be taken as proved that it is not earlier (or very little earlier) than the fifteenth century b. c, since otherwise the el-Amarna tablets (§ 2/) would not have been written ex- clusively in cuneiform.^ It seems equally certain on various grounds, that it originated on Canaanitish soil. It is, however, still an open question whether the inventors of it borrowed
(a) From the Egyptian system — not, as was formerly supposed, by direct adoption of hieroglyphic signs (an explanation of twelve or thirteen characters was revived by J. Halevy in Eev. Semit. 1901, p. 356 fif., 1902, p. 331 ff., and in the Verhandlungen des xiii. . . . Orient.-Kongr. su Hamh., Leiden, 1904, p. 199 ff.; but cf. Lidzbarski, Ephemeris, i. 261 ff.), or of hieratic characters derived from them (so E. de Rouge), but by the adoption of the acrophonic principle (see e) by which e. g. the hand, in Egyptian tot, represents the letter t, the lion = laboi, the letter I. This view still seems the most probable. It is now accepted by Lidzbarski ('Der Ursprung d. nord- u. siidsemit. Schrift' in Ephemeris, i (1900), 109 ff., cf. pp. 134 and 261 ff.), though in his Nordsem. Epigr. (1898) p. 173 ff. he was still undecided.
(&) From the Babylonian (cuneiform) system. Wuttke's and W. Deecke's derivation of the old-Semitic alphabet from new- Assyrian cuneiform is impossible for chronological reasons. More recently Peters and Hommel have sought to derive it from the old-Babylonian, and Ball from the archaic Assyrian cuneiform. A vigorous discussion has been aroused by the theory of Frdr. Delitzsch (in Die Entstehung des alt. Schriftsystems od. der Urspr. der Keilschriftzeichen dargel., Lpz. 1897; and with the same title 'Ein Nachwort', Lpz. 1898, preceded by a very clear outline of the theory) that the old-Semitic alphabet arose in Canaan under the influence both of the Egyptian system (whence the acrophonic principle) and of the old-Babylonian, whence the principle of the graphic representation of objects and ideas by means of simple, and mostly rectilinear, signs. He holds that the choice of the objects was probably (in about fifteen cases) iailuenced by the Babylonian system. The correspondence of names had all the more effect since, accord- ing to Zimmern {ZDMG. 1896, p. 667 ff.), out of twelve names which are certainly identical, eight appear in the same order in the Babylonian arrange- ment of signs. But it must first be shown that the present names of the
Cod. Amiatinus) in fi// iii, 112, 119, but with many variations from the customary forms, which rest on the traditional Jewish pronunciation. The forms Deleth (and delth), Zai, Sen (LXX also x"''"* cf. Hebr. JB' tooth) are to be noticed, amongst others, for Daleth, Zain, Sin. Cf. the tables in Niildekc, Beitrdge zur sem. Sprachwiss., p. 126 f. In his opinion (and so Lidzbarski, Ephemeris, i. 134) the form and meaning of the names point to Phoenicia as the original home of the alphabet, since alf, bet, dalt, udw, taw, pei = pi, pi, mouth, and the vowel of pu> = ros, head, are all Hebraeo-Phoenician.
' In the excavations at Jericho in April, 1907, E. Sellin found ajar-handle witli the Canaanite characters n*, which he dates (probably too early) about 1 500 B c.
§ 5 A] The Consonants : their Forjus and Names 29
'Phoenician' letters really denote the original jncture. The identity of the objects may perhaps be due simply to the choice of the commonest things (animals, implements, limbs) in both systems.
The derivation of the Semitic alphabet from the signs of the Zodiac and their names, first attempted by Seyffarth in 1834, has been revived by Winckler, who refers twelve fundamental sounds to the Babylonian Zodiac. Hommel connects the original alphabet with the moon and its phases, and certain constellations ; cf. Lidzbarski, Ephemeris, i. 269 ff., and in complete agreement with him, Benzinger, Hebr. Archdologie' , p. 173 ff. This theory is by no means convincing.
(c) From the hieroglyphic system of writing discovered in 1894 by A. J. Evans in inscriptions in Crete (esp. at Cnossus) and ehewhere. According to Kluge (1897) and others, this represents the ' Mycenaean script ' used about 3000-iooo'B. c, and according to Fries (' Die neuesten Forschungen iiber d. Urspr. des phOniz. Alph.' in ZDPV. xxii. 118 ff.) really supplies the original forms of the Phoenician alphabet as brought to Palestine by the Philistines about iioo B.C., but 'the Phoenician-Canaanite- Hebrews gave to the Mycenaean signs names derived from the earlier cuneiform signs'. The hypothesis of Fries is thus connected with that of Delitzsch. But although the derivation of the Phoenician forms from 'Mycenaean' types appears in some cases very plausible, in others there are grave difficulties, and moreover the date, 1 100 B.C., assigned for the introduction of the alphabet is clearly too late. [See Evans, Scripta Minoa, Oxf. 1909, p. 80 ff.]
(d) From a system, derived from Asia Minor, closely related to the Cypriote syllabary (Praetorius, Der Urspr. des kanaan. Alphabets, Berlin, 1906). On this theory the Canaanites transformed the syllabic into an apparently alphabetic writing. In reality, however, they merely retained a single sign for the various syllables, so that e. g. p is not really q, but qa, qe, qi, &c. Of the five
Cypriote vowels also they retained only the star (in Cypriote = a) simplified into an 'dlef (see alphabetical table) to express the vowels at the beginning of syllables, and i and u as Yod and Waw. Praetorius claims to explain about half the twenty-two Canaanite letters in this way, but there are various objections to his ingenious hypothesis.
2. As to the order of the letters, we possess early evidence in the alphabetic^ Ji
poems: ^ 9 (N— 3, cf. ^ 10^ p, and vv^*~" p-fl ; cf. Gray in the Expositor, 1906,
p. 233 ff., and Rosenthal, ZAW. 1896, p. 40, who shows that \p ^3.15.17 3^ ^^ 3
exactly fit in between n D "■ and that ^ 10^'^ therefore has the reverse
order p 3 ^) ; also xp^p 25 and 34 (both without a separate 1-verse and with
B repeated at the end^) ; 37, m, 112, 119 (in which every eight verses begin
with the same letter, each strophe, as discovered by D. H. Miiller of Vienna, containing the eight leading words of ^ 19* ^■, tord, 'eduth, &c.) ; La 1-4 (in 2-4 D before y^, in chap. 3 every three verses with the same initial, see LShr,
ZAW. 1904, p. I ff., in chap. 5 at any rate as many verses as letters in the alphabet) ; Pr 2\^-^'^, 3110-31 (Jq the LXX with B before y') ; also in Na i^-io Pastor Frohnmeyer of Wurttemberg (ob. 1880) detected traces of an alpha- betic arrangement, but the attempt of Gunkel, Bickell, Arnold {ZAW. 1901,
^ On the supposed connexion of this artificial arrangement with magical formulae ('the order of the letters was believed to have a sort of magic power') cf. Lohr, ZAW. 1905, p. 173 ff., and Klagelieder'^, GOtt. 1907, p. vii ff.
* On this superfluous B cf. Grimrae, Euphemistic liturgical appendices, Lpz. 1901, p. 8 ff., and Nestle, ZAW. 1903, p. 340 f., who considers it an appendage to the Greek alphabet.
3 [Perhaps also originally in if/ 34.] B before y is probably due to a magic alphabet, see above, n. i. According to BOhmer, ZAW. 1908, p. 53 ff., the combinations 3S, 1}^ in &c., were used in magical texts; Dy was excluded,
but by a rearrangement we get PjD and y]}.
30 The Individual Sounds and Characters [§ 5 i-m
p. 225 ff.), Ilappel {Der Ps. Ilah , Wiirzb. 1900) to discover further traces, has not been successful. [Cf. Gray in Expositor, 1898, p. 207 fif. ; Driver, in tlie Century Bible, Nahum, p. 26.] — Bickell, Zfschr f. Kath. Theol.,1882, p. 319 ff., had already deduced from the versions the alphabetical character of Ecclus 51'^"'°, with the omission of the "1-verse and with D' at the end. His conjectures
have been brilliantly confirmed by the discovery of the Hebrew original.
although the order from 2 to p is partly disturbed or obscured. If "I before i*
is deleted, ten letters are in their right positions, and seven can be restored to their places with certainty. Cf N. Schlogl, ZDMG. 53, 669 ff. ; C. Taylor in the appendix to Schechter and Taylor, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, Cambr. 1899, p. Ixxvi ff., and in the Journ. of Philol., xxx (1906), p. 95 ff. ; JQli. 1905, p. 238 ff. ; Lohr, ZAW. 1905, p. 183 ff. ; I. Levy, KEJ. 1907, p. 62 ff.
The sequence of the three softest labial, palatal, and dental sounds 3 3 *1
and of the three liquids ?, O 3^ indicates an attempt at classification. At the same time other considerations also appear to have had influence. Thus it is certainly not accidental, that two letters, representing a hand {Yod, Kaph), as also two (if Qoph = ha.ck of the head) which represent the head, and in general several forms denoting objects naturally connected {Mem and Nun, • 'Ayin and Pe), stand next to one another.
^ The order, names, and numerical values of the letters have passed over from the Phoenicians to the Greeks, in whose alphabet the letters A to T are borrowed from the Old Semitic. So also the Old Italic alphabets as well as the Roman, and consequently all alphabets derived eitlier from this or from the Greek, are directly or indirectly dependent on the Phoenician. fC 3. a. In default of special arithmetical figures, the consonants were used also as numerical signs ; cf. G. Gundermann, Die Zahlseichen, Giessen, 1899, p. 6 f., and Lidzbarski, Ephemeris, i. io5 ff. The earliest traces of this usage are, however, first found on the Maccabean coins (see above, § 2 d, end). These numerical letterswere afterwards commonly employed, e.g. for marking the numbers of chapters and verses in the editions of the Bible. The units are denoted by K-tD, the tens by ""—if, 100-400 by p-D, the numbers from 500-900 by n ( = 400), with the addition of the remaining hundreds, e.g. pn 500. In compound numbers the greater precedes (on the right), thus K"! 11, NDp 121. But 15 is expressed by ID 9 + 6, not n^ (which is a form of the divine name, being the first two consonants of mn"').'' For a similar reason tt3 is also mostly written for 16, instead of V, which in compound proper names, like PNI*, also represents the name of God, nilT'.
The thousands are sometimes denoted by the units with two dots placed
above, e. g. N 1000.
/ b. The reckoning of the years in Jewish writings (generally m*2fv ofter
the creation) follows either the full chronology (pITSl tS^Qp or '3 'Si?), with the
addition of the thousands, or the abridged chronology (pDp 'S/), in which they
are omitted. In the dates of the first thousand years after Christ, the Christian era is obtained by the addition of 240, in the second thousand years by the addition of 1 240 (i. e. if the date falls between Jan. i and the Jewish new year; otherwise add 1239), the thousands of the Creation era being omitted. Ifl 4. Abbreviations of words are not found in the text of the 0. T., but they occur on coins, and their use is extremely frequent amongst the later Jews.'
' See note 3 on p. 29.
' On the rise of this custom (n^ having been originally used and afterwards \n), cf. Nestle in ZAW. 1884, p. 250, where a trace of this method of writing occurring as early as Origen is noted.
' Cf. Jo. Buxtorf, De abbreviaturis Hebr,, Basel, 1613, &c. ; Pietro Perrcau.
§ 5 «, 6 a] The Consonants : their Forms and Names 31
A point, or later an oblique stroke, serves as the sign of abridgement in old MSS. and editions, e. g. ''«'"' for ^NI")K'^, 'D for ^jSq aliqiiis, "^ for "I3"n aliquid, 'VA for ">Di31 et comphns, i.e. and so on. Also in the middle of what is
npparently a word, such strokes indicate that it is an abbreviation or a vox ■memoricdis (of. e. g. § 15 d CND). Two such strokes are employed, from § 41 d onward, to mark the different classes of weak verbs. — Note also '•^ or ""^ (also
'n)fornin\
T :
5. Peculiarities in the tradition of the 0. T. text, which are already fi mentioned in the Talmud, are — (i) The 15 puncta extraordinaria, about which the tradition (from Siphri on Nu 9^" onwards) differs considerably, even as to their number; on particular consonants, Gn 16*, i8^ iq^^-^'', Nu 9^" ; or on whole words, Gn 33^ 37", Nu 339^ 21=0, 29I6, Dt 2928, 2 S 1920, Is 448, Ez 4120, 46^2, \p 2712, — all no doubt critical marks ; cf. Strack, Prolegomena Critica, p. 88 ff. ; L. Blau, Musoretische Untermchtmgen, Strassburg, 1891, p. 6 ff., and Einleitung in die hi. Schrifi, Budapest, 1894; KOnigsberger, Jiid. Lit.-Blatt, 1891, nos. 29-31, and Aus Masorah u. Talmudkritik, Berlin, 1892, p. 6 ff. ; Mayer-Lambert, BE J. 30 (1895), no. 59 ; and especially Ginsburg, Introd., p. 318 If. ; also on the ten points found in the Pentateuch, see Butin (Baltimore, 1906), who considers that they are as old as the Christian era and probably mark a letter, &c., to be deleted. (2) The literae majusculae (e.g. 3 Gn 1^, 1 Lv 11*2 ^s the middle
consonant of the Pentateuch, "• Nu 14"), and minuscvlue (e. g. PI Gn 2^). (3) The literae suspensae (Ginsburg, Introd., p. 3345.) 3 Ju iS^** (which points to the reading HB'D for HlfJlO), y 1^ 80" (the middle of the Psalms i) and Jb 38"-i5. (4) The 'mutilated' Wdw in n)h^ Nu 25", and p Ex 3225 (QniDpn), and Nu 72 (DnipDH). (5) Mem clausum in nniD? Is 9*, and Mem apertum in CVIID on Neh 2". (6) Nun inversum before Nu ic^^, and after ver. 36, as also before f 10723-28 and *" ; according to Ginsburg, Introd., p. 341 ff., a sort of bracket to indicate that the verses are out of place ; cf. Krauss, ZAW. 1902, p. 57 ff., who regards the inverted. Nuns as an imitation of the Greek obelus.
§ 6. Pronunciation and Division of Consonants.
P. Ilaupt, 'Die Semit. Sprachlaute u. ihre Umschrift,' in Beilrdge sur Assyrio- logie u. vergleich. semit. Sprachwissenschaft, by Delitzsch and Haupt, i, Lpz. 1889, 249 ff. ; E. Sievcrs, Metrische Sludien, i, Lpz. 1901, p. 14 ff.
1. An accurate knowledge of the original phonetic value of each a consonant is of the greatest importance, since very many grammatical peculiarities and changes (§ 18 ff.) only become intelligible from the nature and pronunciation of the sounds. This knowledge is obtained partly from the pronunciation of the kindred dialects, especially the still living Arabic, partly by observing the affinity and interchange
Oceano delle abbreviature e sigle^, Parma, 1883 (appendix, 1884) ; Ph. Lederei-, Hebr. u. Chald. Abbreviaturen, Frankf. 1893; Handler, Lexicon d. Abbreviaturen (annexed to G. Dalman's Aram.-neukebr. WB., Frankf. 1897) ; Levias, art. ' Abbreviations,' in the Jew. EncycL, i. 39 ff. ; F. Perles, ' Zur Gesch. der Abbrev. im Hebr.' {Archiv f. Stenogr.. 1902, p. 41 ff.). On abbreviations in biblical MSS. see Ginsburg, Introd., 165 ff.
^ According to Blau, Studien zum althebr. Buchwesen, Strassburg, 1902, p. 167, properly a large y, called t'lHya because suspended between the two halves of
the Psalter, and then incorrectly taken for a littera suspensa.
32 The Individual Sounds and Characters [§ 6 b-e
of sounds on Hebrew itself (§ 19), and partly from the tradition of the Jews.'
The pronunciation of Hebrew by the modern German Jews, which partly resembles the Syriac and is generally called ' Polish ', differs considerably from that of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, which approaches nearer to the Arabic. The pronunciation of Hebrew by Christians follows the latter (after the example of Reuchlin), in almost all cases. O The oldest tradition is presented in the transcription of Hebrew names in Assyrian cuneiform ; a later, but yet in its way very important system is seen in the manner in which the LXX transcribe Hebrew names with Greek letters.' As, however, corresponding signs for several sounds (D, V, 2f, p, tJ')
are wanting in the Greek alphabet, only an approximate representation was possible in these cases. The same applies to the Latin transcription of Hebrew words by Jerome, according to the Jewish pronunciation of his time.*
On the pronunciation of the modern Jews in North Africa, see Barges in the Journ. Asiat., Nov. 1848 ; on that of the South Arabian Jews, J. D^renbourg, Manuel du ledeur, &c. (from a Yemen MS. of the year 1390), Paris, 187 1 (extra it 6 du Journ. Asiat. 1870),
C 2. With regard to the pronunciation of the several gutturals and sibilants, and of D and p, it may be remarked : —
I. Among the gutturals, the glottal stop N is the lightest, corresponding to the spiritus lenis of the Greeks. It may stand either at the beginning or end of a syllable, e. g. "IDX 'dmdr, DK'{<1 j/d'sdm. Even be/ore a vowel N is almost lost to our ear, like the h in hour and in the French habit, homme. After a vowel N generally (and at the end of a word, always) coalesces with it, e. g. K^p qdrd for an original qard' , Arab, qdra'd ; see further, § 23 a, 27 jr.
d n before a vowel corresponds exactly to our h (spiritus asper) ; after a vowel it is either a guttural (so always at the end of a syllable which is not final, e. g. "ijSnj) ndhpakh ; at the- end of a word the consonantal H has a point — Mappiq — in it, see § 14), or it stands inaudible at the end of a word, generally as a mere orthographic indication of a preceding vowel, e. g. itpH gala ; cf. §§ 7 & and 75 a.
e V is related to X , but is a much stronger guttural. Its strongest sound is a rattled, guttural g, cf. e.g. n^y, LXX rdfa, ITlby Tofioppa; elsewhere, a weaker sound of the same kind, which the LXX reproduce by a spiritus {lenis or asper), e g. ""pJJ 'HXi, pb^V 'A/jiaXtic.* In the mouth of the Arabs one hears in the former case a sort of guttural r, in the latter a sound peculiar to them- selves formed in the back of the throat. — It is as incorrect to omit the ]}
* Cf. C. Meinhof, 'Die Aussprache des Hebr.,' in Neue Jahrb.f. Philol. u. Padag., 1885, Bd. 132, p. 146 ff. ; M. Schreiner, 'Zur Gesch. der Ausspr. des Hebr.,' in ZAW. 1886, p. 213 ff.
^ Cf. Frankel, Vorstudien su der Septuag., Lpz. 1841, p. 90 ff.; C. KSnneke, 'Gymn.-Progr.,' Stargard, 1885. On the transcription of eleven Psalms in a palimpsest fragment of the Hexapla at Milan, see Mercati, Atti delta R. Accad., xxxi, Turin, 1896. [Cf. Burkitt, Fragments of . . . Aquila, Ca.mhr. 1897,
' Numerous examples occur in Hieronymi quaestiones hebraicae in libro geneseos, edited by P. de Lagarde, Lpz. 1868 ; cf. the exhaustive and systematic dis- cussion by Siegfried, 'Die Aussprache des Hebr. bei Hieronymus,' in ZAW. 1884, pp. 34-83.
* It is, however, doubtful if the LXX always consciously aimed at repro- ducing the actual differences of sound.
§ ef-n] Pronunciation and Division of Consonants 33
entirely, in reading and transcribing words ('•py Eli, pboy Amalek), as to
pronounce it exactly like g or like a nasal ng. The stronger sound might be approximately transcribed by gh or 'gr ; but since in Hebrew the softer sound was the more common, it is sufiScient to represent it by the sign ', as PSIK
'arba', nj? 'ad.
n is the strongest guttural sound, a deep guttural ck, as heard generally / in Swiss German, somewhat as in the German Achat, Macht, Sache, Docht, Zucht (not as in Licht, Knecht), and similar to the Spanish j. Like JJ it was, however, pronounced in many words feebly, in others strongly.
As regards 1, its pronunciation as a palatal (with a vibrating uvula) seems n- to have been the prevailing one. Hence in some respects it is also classed with th© gutturals (§ 22 g, r). On the Ungual 1, cf. 0.
2. The Hebrew language is unusually rich in sibilants. These have, at any f^ rate in some cases, arisen from dentals which are retained as such in Aramaic and Arabic (see in the Lexicon the letters T, Jf and K*).
B' and 1^ were originally represented (as is still the case in the unpointed I texts) by only one form ^ ; but that the use of this one form to express two
different sounds (at least in Hebrew) was due only to the poverty of the alphabet, is clear from the fact that they are differentiated in Arabic and Ethiopic (cf. Neldeke in Ztschr.f. wissensch. Theol., 1873, p. 121 ; Brockelraann, Grundriss, i. 133). In the Masoretic punctuation they were distinguished by means of the diacritical point as B' (jah) and B' (i).*
The original difference between the sounds '{}' and D" sometimes marks A* a distinction in meaning, e. g. *1DD to close, Ipty to hire, PSD to he foolish, 7Db> to he prudent, to be wise. Syriac always represents both sounds by D, and in Hebrew also they are sometimes interchanged ; as "13D for "15b' to hire, Ezr 4" ; nh^^ for r\^b3D folly, Ec i".
T (transcribed ( by the LXX) is a soft whizzing s, the French and English 2, / altogether different from the German z {ts).
3. to, p, and probably X are pronounced with a sti'ong articulation and fn
with a compression of the larynx. The first two are thus essentially different from n and 3, which correspond to our t and k and also are often aspirated (see below, n). Jf is distinguished fi'om every other s by its peculiar articu- lation, and in no way corresponds to the German s or ts; we transcribe it by s ; cf. G. Hiising, "^ Zum Lautwerte des If,' in OLZ. x. 467 ff.
3. Six consonants, the weak and middle hard Palatals, Dentals, fi and Labials n B 3 1 3 3 ("Mn:3)
have a twofold pronunciation, (i) a harder sound, as mutes, like
* The modern Samaritans, however, in reading their Hebrew Pentateuch pronounce K' invariably as C
* The original value of D, and its relation to the original value of b' and B*, is still undetermined, despite the valuable investigations of P. Haupt, ^DMG. 1880, p. 762 f, ; D. H. Miiiler, ' Zur Geschichte der semit. Zischlaute,' in the Verhandlungen des Wiener Orient. Congresses, Vienna, 1888, Semitic section, p. 229 ff.; De Lagarde, 'Samech,' in the NGGW. 1891, no. 5, esp. p. 173; Aug. Muller, ZAW. 1891, p. 267 ff. ; NSldeke, ZDMG. 1893, p. 100 f. ; E. Glaser, Zwei Wiener Publicationen iiher Kabaschitisch-punische Dialekte itt Sii darabien, Munich , 1902, pp. 19 ff. — On the phonetic value of X see G. Hiising, OLZ. 1907, p. 467 ff.
OOWLKT D
34 The Individual Sounds and Characters [§ 6 o, p
]c,p, t, or initial b, g (hard), d; and (2) a softer sound as spirantes} The harder sound is the original. It is retained at the beginning of syllables, when there is no vowel immediately preceding to influence the pronunciation, and is denoted by a point, Dages lene (§ 13), placed in the consonants, viz. 2 b, i, g, "^ d, 3 k, Q p, r\ t. The weaker pro- nunciation appears as soon as a vowel sound immediately precedes. It is occasionally denoted, esp. in MSS., by Raphe (§14 e), but in printed texts usually by the mere absence of the Dages. In the case of 3, 3, D, n, the two sounds are clearly distinguishable even to our ear as b and v, k and German (weak) ch, j) and ph, t and th (in thin). The Greeks too express this twofold pronunciation by special characters : 3 K, 3 X J S "■' ^ ^ ' '^ "^j ^ ^- ^^ ^^® same way 3 should be pronounced like the North German g in Tage, Wagen, and T like th in the, as distinguished from 3 and "1.
For more precise information on the cases in which the one or the other pronunciation takes place, see § 21. The modern Jews pronounce the aspirated 3 as r, the aspirated T\ as s, e.g. 31 rav (or even raf), n^3 hais.
The customary transcription (used also in this Grammar) of the spirants 3 3 n by hh, kh, th is only an unsatisfactory makeshift, since it may lead
(esp. in the case of hh and kh) to an erroneous conception of the sounds as real aspirates, h-h, k-h.
0 4. According to their special character the consonants are divided
into —
(a) Gutturals n y n N;
(6) Palatals P 3 ^ ;
(c) Dentals D t3 T ;
{d) Labials B 3;
(e) Sibilants 5f D B' tr T;
(/) Sonants ^1, bl, 0 3.
In the case of "1 its hardest pronunciation as a palatal (see above, g, end) is to be distinguished from its more unusual sound as a lingual, pronounced in the front of the mouth.
On the twofold pronunciation of r in Tiberias, of. Delitzsch, Physiol, und Musik, Lpz. 1868, p. 10 ff.; Baer and Strack, Dikduke ha-famim, Lpz. 1879, p. 5, note a, and § 7 of the Hebrew text, as well as p. 82.
p In accordance with E. Sievers, Metrische Stvdien, i. 1 4, the following scheme of the Hebrew phonetic system is substituted for the table formerly given in this grammar : —
i. Throat sounds (Gutturals) : N n J? n .
' So at any rate at the time when the present punctuation arose.
§6q-s,'ja] Pronunciation and Division of Consonants 35
ii. Mouth-sounds:
|
w. |
m. |
e. P |
m. |
|
|
Palatal 2 |
3 |
3 |
||
|
Dental ^ |
n |
D |
1 |
n |
|
Labial 3 |
a |
n |
0 |
|
|
T |
DtJ'K' |
X |
||
|
... M |
i'n |
0 3 |
Mutes and
2. Sibilants:
3. Sonants :
Rem. I. The meaning of the letters at the top is, w. = weak, m. =midtlle (1 hard, e. = emphatic. Consonants which are produced by the same organ of speech are called homorganic (e.g. 3 and 3 as palatals), consonants whose
sound is of the same nature homogeneous (e.g. 1 and "i as semi-vowels). On
their homorganic character and homogeneity depends the possibility of interchange, whether within Hebrew itself or with the kindred dialects. In such cases the soft sound generally interchanges with the soft, the hard with the hard, &c. (e.g. 1=T, n = tr, tD = X). Further transitions are not, however, excluded, as e.g. the interchange of n and p (n = 3=p). Here it is
of importance to observe whether the change takes place in an initial, medial, or final letter ; since e.g. the change in a letter when medial does not always prove the possibility of the change when initial. That in certain cases the character of the consonantal sound also influences the preceding or following vowel will be noticed in the accidence as the instances occur.
Rem. 2. Very probably in course of time certain nicer distinctions of f pronunciation became moi-e and more neglected and finally were lost. Thus e.g. the stronger y 'gt, which was known to the LXX (see above, e), became in many cases altogether lost to the later Jews ; by the Samaritans and Galileans y and PI were pronounced merely as K, and so in Ethiopic, y like N, n like h, ^ like s.
Rem. 3. The consonants which it is usual to describe especially as weak, S are those which readily coalesce with a preceding vowel to form a long vowel, viz. N, 1, ■• (as to n, cf. § 23 fc), or those which are most frequently affected
by the changes described in § 19 b-l, as again N, ), "", and 3, and in certain
cases n and 7 ; finally the gutturals and 1 for the reason given in § 22 & and q.
§ 7. The Vowels in General, Vowel Letters and Vowel Signs.
1. The original vowels in Hebrew, as in the other Semitic tongues, a
are a, i, u. E and 0 always arise from an obscuring or contraction
of these three pure sounds, viz. e by modification from ? or a ; short
0 from u] e by contraction from ai (properly ay) ; and 6 sometimes
by modification (obscuring) from d, sometimes by contraction from au
(properly axo)}
In Arabic writing there are vowel signs only for a, i, u ; the combined sounds ay and aw are therefore retained uncontracted and pronounced as
diphthongs (at and au), e. g. tDitJ? Arab, saut, and D"'5"'y Arab, 'ainain. It was
' In proper names the LXX often use the diphthongs ai and av where the Hebrew form has e or 0. It is, however, very doubtful whether the al and av of the LXX really represent the true pronunciation of Hebrew of that time ; see the instructive statistics given by Kittel in Haupt's SBOT., on 1 Ch i***".
D 2
36 The Individual Sounds and Characters [§ 7 b-d
only in later Arabic that they became in pronunciation e and 6, at least after weaker or softer consonants; cf. p3 Arab, hain, 6en, Di* Arab, yaum, yom. The same contraction appears also in other languages, e.g. in Greek and Latin {$avna, Ionic eai/xa; plaustrum = plostrum), in the French pronunciation of ai and au, and likewise in the German popular dialects (Oge for Auge, &c.). Similarly, the obscuring of the vowels plays a part in various languages (cf. e. g. the a in modern Persian, Swedish, English, &c.).*
b 2. The partial expression of the vowels by certain consonants (n, 1, '; k), which sufficed during the lifetime of the language, and for a still longer period afterwards (cf. § i k), must in the main have passed through the following stages ^ : —
(a) The need of a written indication of the vowel first made itself felt in cases where, after the rejection of a consonant, or of an entire syllable, a long vowel formed the final sound of the word. The first step in such a case was to retain the original final consonant, at least as a vowel letter, i. e. merely as an indication of a final vowel. In point of fact we find even in the Old Testament, as already in the Mesa' inscription, a n employed in this way (see below) as an indica- tion of a final o. From this it was only a step to the employment of the same consonant to indicate also other vowels when final (thus, e.g. in the inflection of the verbs n'^b, the vowels d,^ e, e). After the employment of 1 as a vowel letter for 6 and 4, and of ■• for e and i, had been established (see below, e) these consonants were also em- ployed— although not consistently — for the same vowels at the end of a word.
C According to § 91 6 and d, the suffix of the 3rd sing. masc. in the noun (as in the verb) was originally pronounced in. But in the places where this in with a preceding a is contracted into 6 (after the rejection of the n), we find the H still frequently retained as a vowel letter, e. g. Tf)"^]}, nhlD Gn 49", cf. § 91 e ; so throughout the MeSa' inscription nJOS, nh^li (also nri3), nb3 na rO nbnnSn ; on the other hand already in the Siloam inscription ^V"i ,* no"" Mesa', 1. 8 = 1"'D"' his days is unusual, as also ntJH 1. 20 if it is for V^^l his chiefs. The verbal forms with n suffixed are to be read nOpH^l (1. 6), nanoXI (l. 12 f.) and nB'">3''1 (1. 19).
d As an example of the original consonant being retained, we might also include the i of the constr. state plur. masc. if its e (according to § 89 d) is
^ In Sanskrit, in the Old Persian cuneiform, and in Ethiopic, short a alone of all the vowels is not represented, but the consonant by itself is pronounced with short a.
' Cf. especially Stade, Lehrb. der hebr. Or., p. 34 ff.
' According to Stade, the employment of n for a probably took place first in the case of the locative accusatives which originally ended in
n , as nsiK, nonp.
* The form lyT contradicts the view of Oort, Theol. Tijds., 1902, p. 374, that the above instances from the MSia'-inscription are to be read benhu, bahu, lahu, which were afterwards vocalized aa beno, bo, to.
§ 7 ^./] Vowel Letters and Vowel Signs 37
contracted from an original ay. Against this, however, it may be urged that the Phoenician inscriptions do not usually express this e, nor any other final vowel.^
(6) The employment of 1 to denote 6, H, and of ^ to denote e, i, may e
have resulted from those cases in which a "I with a preceding a was
contracted into au and further to 6, or with a preceding u coalesced
into 4, and where ^ with a has been contracted into ai and further
to e, or with a preceding i into i (cf. § 24). In this case the previously
existing consonants were retained as vowel letters and were further
applied at the end of the word to denote the respective long vowels.
Finally N also will iu the first instance have established itself as
a vowel letter only where a consonantal N with a preceding a had
coalesced into d or d.
The orthography of the Siloam inscription coiTesponds almost exactly with / the above assumptions. Here (as in the M§la' inscr,) we find all the long ' vowels, which have not arisen from original diphthongs, without vowel letters,
thus K^N, D3Vn, f»''P (or IP»D) ; HbK, bp, ^bp, "1??. On the other hand
KJfiO (from mausa'), 1)]} (from 'aud) ; JCD also, if it is to be read \\p''K), is an
instance of the retention of a "• which has coalesced with i into i. Instances
of the retention of an originally consonantal K as a vowel letter are D^riNlO,
KSiD, and iTp, as also K'NH. Otherwise final a is always represented by-"^
H: ilDN riM. mT. n3p3. To this D* alone would form an exception (cf.
however the note on DV, § 96), instead of Di* (Arab, yaum) day, which one
would expect. If the reading be correct, this is to be regarded as an argument that a consciousness of the origin of many long vowels was lost at an early period, so that (at least in the middle of the word) the vowel letters were omitted in places where they should stand, according to what has been stated above, and added where there was no case of contraction. This view is in a great measure confirmed by the orthography of the Mesa' inscription. There we find, as might be expected, pH { = Daibon, as the Aai0wv of the LXX proves), piin (6 from au), and r\h''ll (e from ai), but also even '«:jj^n^ instead of ^JJJB'Vl (from haus-), 3t}'K1 = 3''K'iX3, n3 four times, nha once, for n""? and nh"! (from bait); n^^ = n^^^, I^^H^ °^ P*?-
^ Thus there occurs, e.g. in Melit. i, 1. 3 333B' = 132 ^pB* the two sons; elsewhere 3 for ^3 (but ""J in the MeSa' and Siloam inscrr.), T for iTf (the latter in the Siloam inscr.), n3n = ^133 (so MeSa*) or '•JT'Sa, &c. Cf. on the other hand in MSSa', 33K = 03S (unless it was actually pronounced 'anokh by the Moabites !). As final o is represented by n and K and final i by '', so final M is almost everywhere expressed by 1 in MeSa', and always in the Siloam inscription. It is indeed not impossible that Hebrew orthography also once passed through a period in which the final vowels were left always or sometimes undenoted, and that not a few strange forms in the present text of the Bible are to be explained from the fact that subsequently the vowel letters (especially 1 and ■•) were not added in all cases. So Chwolson^ ' Die Quiescentia ""in in der althebr.Orthogr.,' in Travaux du Congres .. .des Orien- talistes, Petersb. 1876 ; cf. numerous instances in Ginsburg, Introd., p. 146 ff.
* ^3i?{J'n is the more strange since the name of king yK'in is represented as An si' in cuneiform as late as 728 b.c.
^
38 The Individual Sounds and Characters [§ 7 g, a
g (c) In the present state of Old Testament vocalization as it appears in the Masoretic text, the striving after a certain uniformity cannot be mistaken, in spite of the inconsistencies which have crept in. Thus the final long vowel is, with very few exceptions (cf. § 9 c£, and the very doubtful cases in § 8 k), indicated by a vowel letter — and almost always by the same letter in certain nominal and verbal endings. In many cases the use of 1 to mark an 6 or 'A, arising from contraction, and of "• for e or i, is by far the more common, while we seldom find an originally consonantal N rejected, and the simple phonetic principle taking the place of the historical orthography. On the other hand the number of exceptions is very great. In many cases (as e.g. in the plural endings D^-^- and rt) the vowel letters are habitually employed to express long vowels which do not arise through contraction, and we even find short vowels indicated. The conclusion is, that if there ever was a period of Hebrew writing when the application of fixed laws to all cases was intended, either these laws were not consistently carried out in the further transmission of the text, or errors and confusion afterwards crept into it. More- over much remained uncertain even in texts which were plentifully provided with vowel letters. For, although in most cases the context was a guide to the correct reading, yet there were also cases where, of the many possible ways of pronouncing a word, more than one appeared admissible.* // 3. When the language had died out, the ambiguity of such a writing mufct have been found continually more troublesome ; and as there was thus a danger that the correct pronunciation might be finally lost, the vowel signs or vowel points were invented in order to fix it. By means of these points everything hitherto left uncertain was most accurately settled. It is trr.e that there is no historical account of the date of this vocalization of the O. T. text, yet we may at least infer, from a comparison of other historical facts, that it was gradually developed by Jewish grammarians in the sixth and seventh centuries a.d. under the influence of different Schools, traces of which have been preserved to the present time in various differences of ti adition.^ They mainly followed, though with independent regard to
1 Thus e. g. PDp can be read qatal, qaial, qatol, (ftol, qotel, qiftel, qatfel, quttal, qifel, and several of these forms have also different senses.
' The most important of these differences are, (a) those between the Orientals, 1. e. the scholars of the Babylonian Schools, and the Occidentals, i. e. the scholars of Palestine (Tiberias, &c.) ; cf. Ginsburg, Introd., p. 197 ff. ; (6) amongst the Occidentals, between Ben-Naphtali and Ben-Asher, who flourished in the first half of the tenth century at Tiberias ; cf. Ginsburg, Introd., p. 241 fif. Both sets of variants are given by Baer in the appendices
§§ 7 ». 8] Vowel Letters and Vowel Signs 39
the peculiar nature of the Hebrew, the example and pattern of the
older Syrian punctuation.'
See Gesenius, Gesch. d. hebr. Spr., p. 182 ff. ; Hupfeld, in Theol. Studien u. Kritiken, 1830, pt. iii, who shows that neither Jerome nor the Talmud mentions vowel signs ; Berliner, Beitrage sur hebr. Gramm. im Talm. u. Mulraschy p. 26 ff. ; and B. Pick, in Hebraica, i, 3, p. 153 ff. ; Abr. Qeiger, ' Zur Nakdanim- [Punctuators-]Literatur,' in Jiid. Ztschr. filr Wissensch. u. Leben, x. Breslau, 1872, p. 10 ff. ; H. Strack, Prolegomena critica in Vet. Test. Hebr., Lips. 1873 ; ' Beitrag zur Gesch. des hebr. Bibeltextes,' in Theol. Stud. u. Krit., 1875, p. 736 ff, as also in the Ztschr./. die ges. luth. Theol. u. K., 1875, p. 619 ff. ; ' Massorah,' in tlie Protest. Real.-Enc.^, xii. 393 ff. (a good outline) ; A. Merx, in the Verhand- lungen des Orienialistenkongresses zu Berlin, i. Berlin, 1881, p. 164 ff. and p. 188 ff. ; H. Graetz, 'Die Anfange der Vokalzeichen im Hebr.,' in Monatsschr. f. Gesch. M. Wissensch. d. Judenth., 1881, pp. 348 ff. and 395 ff. ; Hersmann, Zur Gesch. des Streites iiber die Entsiehung der hebr. Punktation, Kuhrort, 1885 ; Harris, 'The Rise ... of the Massorah,' JQR. i. 1889, p. 1 28 ff. and p. 223 ff. ; Mayer-Lambert, REJ. xxvi. 1893, p. 274 ff. ; J. Bachrach, Das Alter d. bibl. Vocalisation u. Accen- tuation, 2 pts. Warsaw, 1897, and esp. Ginsburg, Inirod. (see § 3 c), p. 287 ff. ; Budde, 'Zur Gesch. d. Tiberiens. Vokalisation,' in Orient. Stitdien zu Ehren Th. Noldekes, i. 1906, 651 ff. ; Bacher, ' Diakrit. Zeichen in vormasoret. Zeit,' in ZAW. 1907, p. 285 ; C. Levias, art. 'Vocalization,' in the Jewish Encycl. — On the hypothesis of the origin of punctuation in the Jewish schools for children, cf. J. Derenbourg in the Rev. Crit., xiii. 1879, no. 25.
4. To complete the histoi-ical vocalization of the consonantal text i a phonetic system was devised, so exact as to show all vowel-changes occasioned by lengthening of words, by the tone, by gutturals, &c., which in other languages are seldom indicated in writing. The pro- nunciation followed is in the main that of the Palestinian Jews of about the sixth century A.D., as observed in the solemn reading of the sacred writings in synagogue and school, but based on a much older tradition. That the real pronunciation of early Hebrew is consistently preserved by this tradition, has recently been seriously questioned on good grounds, especially in view of the transcription of proper names in the LXX. Nevertheless in many caseSj internal reasons, as well as the analogy of the kindred languages, testify in a high degree to the faithfulness of the tradition. At the same recension of the text, or soon after, the various other signs for reading (§§ 11-14, 16) were added, and Ihe accents (§ 15).
§ 8. The Voivel Signs in particular.
P. Haupt, ' The names of the Hebrew vowels,' JAOS. xxii, and in the Johns Hopkins Semitic Papers, Newhaven, J 901, p. 7 ff. ; C. Levias in the Hebr. Union Coll. Annual, Cincinnati, 1904, p. 138 ft".
to his critical editions. Our printed editions present uniformly the text of Ben-Asher, with the exception of a few isolated readings of Ben-Naphtali, and of numerous later corruptions.
1 See Geiger, 'Massorah bei d. Syrern,' in ZDMG. 1873, p. 148 ff. ; J. P. Martin, Hist, de la ponctuation ou de la Massore chez les Sjfi-iens, Par. 1875 ; E. Nestle, in ZDMG. 1876, p. 525 ff. ; Wsingarten, Die syr. Massora nach Bar Hebraeus, Halle, 1887.
40 The Individual Sounds and Characters [§ 8 a
Preliminary Remark.
The next two sections (§§ 8 and 9) have been severely criticized (Philippi, ThLZ. 1897, no. 2) for assigning a definite quantity to each of the several vowels, whereas in reality ___ ___^ _:_ are merely signs for a, e, 0: 'whether
these are long or short is not shown by the signs themselves but must be inferred from the rules for the pause which marks the breaks in continuous narrative, or from other circumstances.' But in the twenty-fourth and sub- sequent German editions of this Grammar, in the last note on § 8 a [English ed. p. 38, note 4], it was stated : 'it must be mentioned that the Masoretes are not concerned with any distinction between long and short vowels, or in general with any question Of quantity. Their efforts are directed to fixing the received pronunciation as faithfully as possible, by means of writing.
For a long time only D'^Dplp nVDB' seven kings were reckoned (vox memor. in
Elias Levita ^n*?X 1t2N*1), Sureq and Qibbus being counted as one vowel.
The division of the vowels in respect of quantity is a later attempt at a scientific conception of the phonetic system, which was not invented but only represented by the Masoretes (Qimchi, Mikhlol, ed. Rittenb. 136 a, distinguishes the five long as mothers from their five daughters).'
I have therefore long shared the opinion that 'the vowel-system repre- sented by the ordinary punctuation (of Tiberias) was primarily intended to mark only differences of quality' (Sievers, Metrische Siudien, i. 17). There is, liowever, of course a further question how far these ' later ' grammarians were mistaken in assigning a particular quantity to the vowels represented by particular signs. In Philippi's opinion they were mistaken (excluding of course i, e, 6 when written plene) in a very great number of cases, since not
only does stand, according to circumstances, for d or a, and ___ for S or a,
but also __ for e or e, and _:_ for 0 or 0, e. g. 133 and fop^ out of pause kdbed, qaSn (form PDp), but in pause kabed, qaton.
I readily admit, with regard to Qames and S'gol, that the account formerly given in § 8 f. was open to misconstruction. With regard to Sere and Holem, however, I can only follow Philippi so long as his view does not conflict with the (to me inviolable) law of a long vowel in an open syllable before the tone and (except Pathah) in a final syllable with the tone. To me n|}3 = fca6^cf, &c., is as impossible as e.g. 2i)} = 'inab or 'i\'\2 = bdrakh, in spite of the analogy
cited by Sievers (p. 18, note i) that 'in old German e.g. original t and u often pass into I and 0 dialectical! y, while remaining in a closed syllable.
a 1- The full vowels (in contrtist to the half-vowels or vowel trills, § 10 a-f), classified according to the three principal vowel sounds (§ 7 a), are as follows : —
First Class. A- sound. ' I, __ ' Qdmes denotes either a, d, more strictly & (the obscure Swedish a) and a,^ as T^ yad (hand), D'K'K"! ra'ma . \ (heads), or h, (in future transcribed as 0), called Qdmes
hdtilph, i.e. hurried Qames. The latter occurs almost exclusively as a modification of u; of. c and § 9 w. \ 2. -^ Fdthdh, a, HS bath (daughter).
* In early MSS. the sign for Qames is a stroke with a point underneath, i. e. according to Nestle's discovery {ZDMG. 1892, p. 411 f.), Pathah with i/oton, the latter suggesting the obscure pronunciation of Qames as 3. Cf. also Ginsburg, Introd., p. 609.
* Instead of the no doubt more accurate transcription a, a we have
§8*, c] The Vowel Signs in particular 41
Also 3, -^ S^gol, an open e, e (<? or a), as a modification of a,' either in an untoned closed syllable, as in the first syllable of D^l* yddkhem (your hand) from yddkhem — or in a tone-syllable as in HpQ pesah ; I cf. Trao^a, and on the really monosyllabic character of such forma-
tions, see § 28 e. But S^gdl in an open tone-syllable with a following ^ as in n3v3 gHend (cf. § 75/), TIJ V^dekhd (cf. § 91 i), is due to contraction from ay.
Second Class. I- and E-sounds. ''-r- Hireq with yod, almost always i, as P'''^?? saddtq (righteous). J) -r- either t (see below, i), as D^p"^?? saddiqim, only ortho- graphically different from D^^^^f (Dpn2f),— or ?, as ipl^f stc^go (his righteousness). '__ Sert or ^ere with yod = e, e.g. iri^3 6e<^o (his house). -^ either e, but rarely (see below, i), or e as CB' sew (name). Sere can only be e, in my opinion, in few cases, such as I those mentioned in § 2 9 /.
^j- S^gol, a, a modification of I, e.g. ''V?^' Aa/«t (ground-form ^!/?) > '1?' ^(^^ (ground-form sm). r/nVd Class. U- and 0-sounds. ^ Silreq, usually -A, HID milth (to die), rarely it. C
-:^ QibhUs, either u, e.g. D?p sulldm (ladder), or il, e.g. ^J^p g-wmw (rise up), instead of the usual ID^p. S and -^ Holem, 6 and J, b^p qol (voice), 3T ro6/t (multitude). Often also a defective -— for 6 ; rarely ^ for o. On the question whether -:_ under some circumstances represents 6, see § 93 ^. -J- On Qdmes hdtdph = 0, generally modified from u, as "PC hoq (statute), see above, a.
retained d, d in this grammar, as being typographically simpler and not liable to any misunderstanding. For Qames hatuph, in the previous German edition expressed by a, we have, after careful consideration, returned to 0 The use of the same sign for a (oj and a, shows that the Massoretes did
not intend to draw a sharp distinction between them. We must not, how- ever, regard the Jewish grammarians as making a merely idle distinction between Qdmes rahdb, or broad Qames, and Qdmes hatuph, or light Qames. It is quite impossible that in the living language an d lengthened from a, as in ddbdr, should have been indistinguishable from e.g. the last vowel in 3B'*1
or the first in D^K'lp. — The notation a, e, 6 expresses here the vowels essen- tially long, either naturally or by contraction ; the notation d, e, 6 those lengthened only by the tone, and therefore changeable ; a, S, 0 the short vowels. As regards the others, the distinction into * and J, it and u is sufficient ; see § 9. — The mark ' stands in the following pages over the tone- syllable, whenever this is not the last, as is usual, but the penultimate Byllable of the word, e. g. 2p\ ' These S'gois, modified from o, are very frequent in the language, Tho
0
42 The Individual Sounds and Characters [§ 8 d-g
u The names of the vowels are mostly taken from the form and action of the
< <
mouth in producing the various sounds, as nriSI opening ; '•IX a wide parting
(of the mouth), also 1I1K' ( = ^) breaking, parting (cf. the Arab, kasr) ; p')^n (also p'ln) naiYOw opening ; u?\n closing, according to others fullness, i. e. of the mouth (also D12 XPD ' fullness of the mouth). y^P ^ ^^so denotes a slighter, as p'l/lty and p2p (also D^S p3p) a firmer, compression or contraction of the mouth. S'gOl (?i3D bunch of grapes) takes its name from its form. So n^TpJ ^b^ {three points) is another name for Qihbus. e Moreover the names were mostly so formed (but only later), that the sound of each vowel is heard in the first syllable (J^Cp for yop, riHS for nnS , ^"lif for t^Jf) ; in order to carry this out consistently some even write Sdgol, Qomes-hatuf, Qiibbus.
J 2. As the above examples show, the vowel sign stands regularly under the consonant, after which it is to be pronounced, "J m, 1 rd, 1 re, "3 rw, &c. The Pathah called furtivum (§ 22/) alone forms an exception to this rule, being pronounced before the consonant, D'"^ rvP^h (wind, spirit). The Holem (without wduo) stands on the left above the consonant; ^ ro (but ^ = Zd). If K, as a vowel letter, follows a conso- nant which is to be pronounced with 0, the point is placed over its right arm, thus N3, B'Ni ; but e.g. DN3, since N here begins a syllable.
^ No dot is used for the Holem when 0 (of course without loaw) is pro- nounced after sUn or before sin. Hence Kp'B' ions (hating), NtJ'i w*io (to bear), n^D moU (not nB'b) ; but ICB' 'iomer (a watchman). When 0 precedes the iin, the dot is placed over its right arm, e.g. b'B"]* yirpb§ (he treads with the feet), D^xb'iin hannos^im (those who carry).
In the sign i, the 1 may also be a consonant. The i is then either to be I'ead 6w (necessarily so when .a consonant otherwise without a vowel precedes, e. g. np lowe, lending) or wo, when a vowel already precedes the "I, e. g. py 'dwon (iniquity) for jiiy. In more exact printing, a distinction is at least made between \ {wo) and "i (i. e. either 0 or, when another vowel follows the waw, 610 ').
Babylonian punctuation (see § 8 gr, note 1) has only one sign for it and tone- bearing Pathah ; see also Gaster, 'Die Unterschiedslosigkeit zwischen Pathach u. Segol,' in ZAW. 1894, p. 60 ff.
' On the erroneous use of the term melo pum, only in Germany, for sureq (hence also pronounced melu pum to indicate u), see E. Nestle, ZDMG. 1904, p. 597 ff. ; Bacher, ibid., p. 799 ff., Melopum ; Simonsen, ibid., p. 807 ff.
2 The usual spelling ^Ipp and nTlS takes the words certainly rightly as
Hebrew substantives; according to De Lagarde {Gott. gel. Am. 1886, p. 873, and so previously Luzzatto), fOp and nriQ are rather Aram, participles, like
Dages, &c., and consequently to be transliterated QcUmx and Pdtka/i.
' Since 1 846 we have become acquainted with asystem of vocalization different in many respects from the common method. The vowel signs, all except ^^ are there placed above the consonants, and differ almost throughout in form,
§ 8 A] The Vowel Signs m particular 43
3. The vowels of the first class are, with the exception of ""^^ in h the middle and n___j K_.j n__ at the end of the word (§ 9 a-d,f), represented onlt/ by vowel signs, but the long vowels of the I- and U-class largely by vowel letters. The vowel sound to which the letter
and some even as regards the sound which they denote: -^- = d, a, -ii--tone- hearing a and e, -^ =e,e,-^ = i,\^ -^ = 6, o, _1_ or ^ = m. In an unsharpened syllable -^- = toneless a, and e, and also Hateph Pathah ; -=_ = toneless 6 and Hateph S^ghol ; ^ = i, J±- =u, -^ = 6, and Hateph Qames. Lastly in tone- less syllables before DageS, -^ =a, -H- =J _z_ =i -i_ = M J2--=a. §*wa is ^^
The accents differ less and stand in some cases under the line of the consonants. Besides this complicated system of theCodex Babylonicus (see below)and other MSS., there is a simpler one, used in Targums. It is still uncertain whether the latter is the foundation of the former (as Merx, Cfirest. Targ. xi, and Bacher, ZDMG. 1895, p. 15 ff.), or is a later development of it among the Jews of South Arabia (as Praetorius, ZDMG. 1899, p. 181 ff.). For the older literature on this Babylonian punctuation (vD2 1^153), as it is called, see A. Harkavy and
H. L. Strack, Katalog der hebr. Bibelhandschr. der Kaiserl. offentl. Bibliothek su St. Petersb., St. Petersb. and Lpz., 1875, parts i and ii, p, 223 ff. A more thorough study of the system was made possible by H. Strack's facsimile edition o{ the Prophetarum postetiorum codex Babylonicus Petropolitanus (St. Petersb., 1876, la. fol.) of the year 916, which Firkowitsch discovered in 1839, in the synagogue at Tschufutkale in the Crimea. The MS. has been shown by Ginsburg {Recueil des travaux rediges en memoire . . . de Chwolson, Berlin, 1899, p. 149, and Introd., pp. 216 ff., 475 f.) to contain a recension of the Biblical text partly Babylonian and partly Palestinian ; cf. also Barnstein, The Targum of Onkelos to Genesis, London, 1896, p. 6 f. Strack edited a fragment of it in Hosea et Joel prophetae ad Jidem cod. Babylon. Petrop., St. Petersb. 1875. Cf. also the publication by A. Merx, quoted above, § 7 A, and his Chrestomathia Targumica, Berlin, 1888; G. Margoliouth, in the PSBA. xv. 4, and M. Gaster, ibid.; P. Kahle, Der masoret. Text des A. T. nach d. ijberlief. der babyl. Juden, Lpz. 1902, with the valuable review by Rahlfs in GOA. 1903, no. 5 ; Nestle, ZDMG. 1905, p. 719 (Babylonian -i^=y. According to the opinion formerly pi-evailing, this Babylonian punctuation exhibits the system which was developed in the Eastern schools, corresponding to and contemporaneous with the Western or Tiberian system, although a higher degree of originality, or approximation to the original of both systems of punctuation, was generally conceded to the latter. Recently, however, Wickes, Accents of the Twenty-one Books, Oxford, 1887, p. 142 ff, has endeavoured to show, from the accents, that the ' Babylonian ' punctuation may certainly be an Oriental, but is by no means the Oriental system. It is rather to be regarded, according to him, as a later and not altogether successful attempt to modify, and tlius to simplify, the system common to all the Schools in the East and West. Strack, Wiss. Jahresb. der ZDMG. 1879, p. 124, established the probability that the vowels of the superlinear punctuation arose under Arab influence from the vowel letters NV (so previously Pinsker and Graetz), while the Tiberian system shows Syrian influence.
A third, widely different system (Palestinian), probably the basis of the other two, is described by A. Neubauer, JQE, vii. 1895, p. 361 ff., and Friedlander, ibid., p. 564 ff., and PSBA. 1896, p. 86 ff. ; C. Levias, Journ. of Sem. Lang, and Lit., xv. p. 157 ff. ; and esp. P. Kahle, Beitr. zu der Gesch. der hebr. Punktation,' in ZAW. 1901, p. 273 ff. and in Der masoret. Text des A. T. (see above), chiefly dealing with the Berlin MS. Or. qu. 680, which contains a number of variants on the biblical text, and frequently agrees with tlie transcriptions of the LXX and Jerome.
44 'J^he Iridividual Sounds and Characters [§ 8 i-n»
points is determined more precisely by the vowel sign standing before, above, or within it. Thus —
1 may be combined with HirSq, Sere, S^gdl C-^, ''.^^ ''—.).
1 with Siireq and Holem (^ and i).^
In Arabic the long a also is regularly expressed by a vowel letter, viz. ^AUph (N-__), so that in that language three vowel letters correspond to the three
vowel classes. In Hebrew K is rarely used as a vowel letter ; see § 9 6 and § 23 g.
I 4. The omission of the vowel letters when writing ?, H, e, 6 is called scriptio defectiva in contrast to scriptio plena, p'^p, Dip are written plene, fvp, Dp defective.
Cf. Bardowitz, Studien sur Gesch. der Orthogr. im Althehr., 1894; Lidzbarski, Ephem., i. 182, 275 ; Marmorstein, ' Midrasch der voUen u. defekt. Schreibung,' in ZAW. 1907, p. 33 flf.
k So far as the choice of the full or defective mode of writing is con- cerned, there are certainly some cases in which only the one or the other is admissible, Thus the full form is necessary at the end of the word, for -A, 6, o, i, e, e, as well as for e in 7)}h &c. (§9/), also generally with d, a (cf. however § 9 d), e.g. I^LSp, 'r\bo\>, "•T, ^^^D. (But the Masora requires in Jer 26®, 44^; Ezr6'^'; 2 Ch32^^ ."lia instead of V.^a ; Zp 2' ^ia [perhaps an error due to the following ■•] for ^^13; Is 40^^ .IPl [followed by ^J for \-ipl ; JeraS'' .".i^a for V.ib.) On the other hand the defective writing is common when the letter, which would have to be employed as a vowel letter, immediately precedes as a strong consonant, e.g. D^^a {nations) for D''^i3, nIVO {commandments) for nilXO.
/ That much is here arbitrary (see § 7 g), follows from the fact that sometimes the same word is written very differently, e.g. ^niD'pH Ez i6«" : ^nbpHand also ^riiOpri Jer 23* ; cf. § 25 b. Only it may be observed,
(a) That the scriptio plena in two successive syllables was generally avoided; cf. e.g. «'33 but D^N33; p^-^Jf, but D^p"^y ; bSp, r\\b\> ■ J/B^.^;
(b) That in the later Books of the 0. T. (and regularly in post-biblical Hebrew) the full form, in the earlier the defective, is more usual.
m 5. In the cognate dialects, when a vowel precedes a vowel-letter which is not kindred (heterogeneous), e.g. 1-^, ^^^y V__, ''__, ^__, a diphthong {au, ai)^ is formed if the heterogeneous vowel be a. This is also to be regarded as the Old Hebrew pronunciation, since it
* After the example of the Jewish grammarians the expression, 'the vowel letter rests {quiescee) in the vowel-sign,' has become customary. On the other hand, the vowel letters are also called by the grammarians, matres lectionis or supports (fulcra).
' Cf. T. C. Foote, The diphthong ai in Hebrew (Johns Hopkins Univ. Circulars, June, 1903, p. 70 £f.).
§ 9 a-c] The Vowel Signs in particular 45
agrees with the vocalic character of 1 and * (§ 5 6, note 2). Thus such words as 11, '•n, ''^3, ^Vb'Vj 13 ^ n^2 are not to be pronounced according to the usual Jewish custom ^ as vdv, hay, gdy, 'asHy, gev, hayith (or even as vaf, &c. ; cf. ruodern Greek av af, ev ef for av, cv), but with the Italian Jews more like wdu, hat, &c. The sound of V—- is the same as 1^^, i.e. almost like du, so that 1-:^ is often written defectively for IV-
§ 9. Character of the several Vowels.
Numerous as are the vowel signs in Hebrew writing, they are yet a not fully adequate to express all the various modifications of the vowel sounds, especially with respect to length and shortness. To understand this better a short explanation of the character and value of the several vowels is required, especially in regard to their length and shortness as well as to their changeableness (§§ 25, 27).
I. First Class. A-sound.
1. Qames (-.^), when it represents a long a, is, by nature and origin, of two kinds : —
(i) The essentially long d (in Arabic regularly written N-^^), which is not readily shortened and never wholly dropped (§25 c), e.g. 3Jn3 l<fithdbh (writing); very seldom with a following N, as K'KT 2 Si2''* (see the examples in § 72 p)."^
The writing of DKp Ho 10^* for Dp would only be justifiable, if the a O of this form were to be explained as a contraction of aa ; cf. however § 72 a; JN"!! Neh 13I* for J"*! {dag) is certainly incorrect. — The rarity of the
d in Hebrew arises from the fact that it has for the most part become an obtuse 6 ; see below, q.
(2)-«, lengthened only by position (i.e. tone-long or at all events C lengthened under the influence of the tone, according to the laws for the formation of syllables, § 27 e-h), either in the tone-syllable itself (or in the secondary tone-syllable indicated by Metheg, see below), or just before or after it. This sound is invariably lengthened from an original a,* and is found in open syllables, i. e. syllables ending in a vowel (§266), e.g. ^S, 7^^, D^pJ, T'DK (Arab. Idkd, qdtdld, ydqUmu, 'dstru), as well as in closed syllables, i.e. those ending in
^ In MSS. 1 and ^ in such combinations as \3 *n are even marked with Mappiq (§ 14 a).
* Of a different kind are the cases in which N has lost its consonantal sound by coalescing with a preceding a, § 23 a-d.
' In Arabic this a is always retained in an open syllable.
46 The Individual Sounds and Characters [§ 9 d~f
a consonant, as 1J, 2?i3 (vulgar Arab, ydd, kaukdb). In a closed syllable, however, it can only stand when this has the tone,">5"1, D^iV; whereas in an open syllable it is especially frequent before the tone, e.g. ■^2"|J, I^T, 03^. Where the tone is moved forward or weakened (as happens most commonly in what is called the construct state of nouns, cf. § 89 a) tlie original short d {Pathah) is retained in a closed syllable, while in an open syllable it becomes ^^wd (§27 i) : 0311, constr. state DPl] {mhdm); -in-l, -in-n (d'bhdr)', hl^p^, D^^i?. For examples of the retention, in the secondary tone-syllable, of a lengthened from d, see
§ 93 a^- d In some terminations of the verb {^ in the 2nd sing. masc. perf.,
J in the 2nd pi. fern, of the imperat., as well as in the 3rd and 2nd
pi. fern, of the imperf.), in ^^ thou (masc.) and in the suffixes ^ and ^;
the final a can stand even without a vowel letter. A n is, however,
in these cases (except with H) frequently added as a vowel letter.
On -Tf- for 0 see below, /.
e 2. Pathah, or short d, stands in Hebrew almost exclusively in a closed syllable with or without the tone {bb\>, ^^f^P)- In places where it now appears to stand in an open syllable the syllable was originally closed, and a helping vowel (d, ?) has been inserted after the second radical merely to make the pronunciation easier, e.g. ^'D? (ground-form nahl), n^| (Arab, bait), see § 28 d, and with regard to two cases of a different kind, § 26 g, h. Otherwise a in an open syllable has almost without exception passed into a {-^, see above, c.
On the very frequent attenuation of a to i, cf. below, h. On the rare, and only apparent union of Pathah with K (^-^)y s^® § ^3 d, end. On a as a helping-vowel, § 22 f (Pathah furtivum), and § 28*.
f 3. Segol (e, e \a]) by origin belongs sometimes to the second, but most frequently to the first vowel class (§270, p, u). It belongs to the first class when it is a modification of a (as the Germ. Bad, pi. Bader; Eng. man, pi. men), either in a toneless syllable, e.g. D^lv i^^^ yadkhem), or with the tone, e. g. H? f^^om 'ars, n.i?. Arab, qdrn, npj? Arab. qdmh. This S^gol is often retained even in the strongest tone-syllable, at the end of a sentence or of an important clause (in pause), as ^^J^, P'^^lf. (malakh, sadaq). As a rule, however, in such cases the Pathah which underlies the S^gol is lengthened into Qames, e.g. npj?, pp, A S^gol apparently lengthened from ^^wd, but in reality traceable to an original d, stands in pausal forms, as ''IS (ground-form pdry), *n^*. {ydhy), &c. On the cases where a ^ (originally consonantal) follows this S^gol, see § 75/, and § 91 ^.
§ 9 g-m] Character of the several Vowels 47
II. Second Class. I- and E-sounds.
4. The long t is frequently even in the consonantal writing indicated /r by ^ (a fully written Hireq ^-^) ; but a naturally long i can be also written defectively (§ 8 i), e.g. P^"^?? {righteous), plur. D"*{?"^?f saddlqim; '^T! iM fi'^''^)i plur. ^^<'?,1 . "Whether a defectively written Hireq is long may be best known from the origin of the form ; often also from the nature of the syllable (§ 26), or as in ^>'")^"'. from the Metheg attached to
it (§16/).
5. The short Hireq (always' written defectively) is especially frequent h in sharpened syllables (^'^i?, "'BN) and in toneless closed syllables (''i'^l'? 2)salm); cf. however Sipjl in a closed tone-syllable, and even fS-^l, with
a helping S^gol, for wayytphn. It has arisen very frequently by attenuation from a, as in ''"1?'^ from original ddbdre, ''Pllf (ground-form sddq),^ or else it is the original ?, which in the tone-syllable had become e, as in ''J?^.** {thy enemy) from Sl^N (ground-form 'dyih)? It is sometimes a simple helping vowel, as in ri^3, § 28 e.
The earlier grammarians call every Hireq yrriiien fidly , Hireq magnum ; every one written defectively, Hireq parvum, — a misleading distinction, so far as quantity is concerned.
6. The longest e *-^ (more rarely defective -^, e.g. ^.^ for TJ^ ? Is 3*; at the end of a word also H — ) is as a rule contracted from W ay {ai), § 7 a, e.g. ''9''n {palace), Arab, and Syriac haikal.
7. The Sere without Yodh mostly represents the tone-long e, which, k like the tone -long a (see c), is very rarely retained except in and before the tone-syllable, and is always lengthened from an original i. It stands in an open syllable with or before the tone, e.g. "^SD (ground- form siphr) book, n3K' (Arab, stndt) sleep, or with Metheg (see § 16 c?,/) in the secondary tone-syllable, e.g. *ri7i<ip my request, i^^fji let us go. On the other hand in a closed syllable it is almost always with the tone, as |3 son, D?i< dumb.
Exceptions : (a) e is sometimes retained in a toneless closed syllable, in / monosyllabic words before Maqqeph, e. g. ~^y Nu 35^^, as well as in the examples of ndsog ^dhor mentioned in § 29 /(on the quantity cf. § 8 6 3 end) ; (6) in a toneless open final syllable, Sere likewise occurs in examples of the
nasog 'akor, as N;f> Ex 16" ; cf. Ju g^K
8. The S^gol of the I(E)-class is most frequently an e modified from M originali, either replacing a tone-long e which has lost the tone, e.g.
^ At least according to the Masoretic orthography ; cf. Wellhausen, Text der Bb. Sam. , p. 18, Rem-.
' Jerome (cf. Siegfried, ZAW. 1884, p. 77) in these cases often gives a for i.
' Cf. the remarks of I. Guidi, ' La pronuncia del sere,' in the Verhandl. d-:s Hamburger Orient. -Kongr. of 1902, Leiden, 1904, p. 208 ff., on Italian e for Latin t, as in fede ^Jtdem, pece=picem.
48 TJie Individual Sounds and Characters [§ 9 n-r
"1^ from \^ (give), T)??)' [thy creator) from "l-f', or in the case discussed in § 93 0, ^?p^, "'ItJ? from the ground-forms hilq, 'izr ; cf. also § 64 /. S^gol appears as a simple helping- vowel in cases such as 1BD for siphr, bf^ for yigl (§ 28 e).
III. Third Class. U- and O-sounds.
n 9. For the U-£oimd there is —
(i) the long ti, either (a) written fully, ^ Sureq, e.g. ?^32 {boundary), or (b) defectively written ^:- QibhUs ''\h'2^_ , \^T)12'] ;
(2) the short u, mostly represented by QibhUs, in a toneless closed syllable and especially common in a sharpened syllable, in e.g. iCr'^ (table), nSD Q)ooth).
O Sometimes also m in a sharpened syllable is written ^, e.g. nS^H ^ 102'
n-iV Jb s'', D^13 Jer. 3i3«, inS^K'D Is 5', D*Giny Gn 2^^ for HSn, &c.
For this u the LXX write 0, e. g. D?"iy 'OSoXXd/^, from which, however, it
only follows, that this m was pronounced somewhat indistinctly. The LXX also express the sharp Hireq by «, e.g. n!3X = 'E/t/xTjp. The pronunciation of
the Qibbus like the German ii, which was formerly common, is incorrect, although the occasional pronunciation of the U sounds as ii in the time of the punctators is attested, at least as regards Palestine ^ ; cf. the Turkish biilbul for the Persian bvdbul, and the pronunciation of the Arabic dunyd in Syria as diinyd.
p 10. The 0-sound bears the same relation to U as the E does to I in the second class. It has four varieties : —
(i) The 6 which is contracted from aw (=aw), § 7 a, and accord- ingly is mostly written fully ; ^ {Holem plenum), e.g. l^iC (a whij)), Arab, saitf, >T^'iV (^iniquity) from Hp^y. More rarely defectively, as 'I'lb' (thine ox) from "'itJ' Arab. /aur.
q (2) The long 6 which arose in Hebrew at an early period, by a general process of obscuring, out of an original d^ while the latter has been retained in Arabic and Aramaic. It is usually written fully in the tone-syllable, defectively in the toneless, e.g. ^t?'p Arab, qdtil. Aram. qAtel, ni^K Arab, 'lldh, Aram. 'Hdh, plur. Cl^n^X; pitT {hg), Arab, sdq ; "li^a {hero), Arab, gabbdr ; DHin {seal), Arab, hdtdm ; pQl {pomegranate), Arab, rilmmdn ; JiobK' {dominion), Aram, l??^ and lOpB' Arab, mltdn; Dv^ {j)eace), Aram. D?^, Arab, sdldm. Some- times the form in d also occurs side by side with that in 6 as IJ"]?' and JV'iK' (coa< 0/ mai7 ; see however § 29 w). Cf. also § 68 6.
r (3) The tone-long 0 which is lengthened from an original w, or from an 0 arising from u, by the tone, or in general according to the
* Cf. Delitzsch, Physiologie u. Musik, Lpz. 1868, p. 15 f.
* Cf. above, b, end. On Jerome's transliteration of 0 for d, see ZAW, 1884, P- 75-
§ 9 s, <] Character of the several Vowels
49
laws for the formation of syllables. It occurs not only in the tone- syllable, but also in an open syllable before the tone, e.g. ^IP (ground- form quds) sanctuary; ^1'3 for buirakh, ^^pfl >/' 104^, as well as (with Metheg) in the secondary tone-syllable ; Ovv"^, ^^J?3- But the original 6 (w) is retained .n a toneless closed syllable, whereas in a toneless open syllable it is weakened to S^a-d. Cf. 73 all, but "^3 {kol}, D^3 (Jcidlam); Vop^, ^S^p^ and ^^tii?% where original u is weakened to ^^wd : yiqiHit, Arab, yaqtuld. This tone-long 0 is only as an exception written fully.
(4) __ Qames-hatu2)h. represents 6 (properly a, cf. § 8 a, note 2)modified S from u and is therefore classed here. It stands in the same relation to Holem as the S^gol of the second class to Sere, 'b'^-kol, D^>1 wayyaqom. On the distinction between this and Qames, see below, u.
11. The following table gives a summary of the gradation of the t three vowel-classes according to the quantity of the vowels : —
First Class : A.
_ original d (Arabic
_ tone-long d (from
original a) chiefly in the tone-syllable but also just before it.
(as a modification
of a) sometimes a tone-long e, some- times S. short a.
[" i attenuated from
d ; see A.] Utmost weakening to
Second Class : I and E.
■i e, from original ay
\ai).
' or long i.
tone-long e (from i)
generally in the tone- syllable but also just before it.
TTiird Class : U and 0.
S 0, from original aw
(aw), i or -^6 obscured from d.
^ or M.
— tone-long 5 (from
original m) in the tone- syllable, otherwise in an open syllable.
short »•
Utmost weakening to », * or «.
6, modified from u.
short u, especially
in a sharpened sylla- ble. Utmost weakening to a i " or *.
Rem. On the distinction between Qames and Qames- hatuph}
Ac-ording to § 8 o, long o or d (Qames) and short 0 or a (Qames-hatuph) are in
manuocripts and printed texts generally expressed by the same sign (^), e.g.
Dp qdm, "73 kol. The beginner who does not yet know the grammatical
U
1 These statements, in order to be fully understood, must be studied in connexion with the theory of syllables (§ 26) and Metheg (§ 16 c-t).
COWLET E
50 The Individual Sounds and Characters [§ 9 v
origin of the words in question (which is of course the surest guide), may depend meanwhile on the following principal rules : —
I. The sign -^ ' is 6 in a toneless closed syllable, since such a syllable can have only a short vowel (§26 0). The above case occurs —
(a) When S^v^d follows as a syllable-divider, as in noDn hokh-ma (wisdom), i^}?^ '6kh-ld (food). With Metheg __ is a (a) and according to the usual view stands in an open, syllable with a following S^wd mobile, e.g. ^4'?^ 'd-khHa (she ate) ; but cf. § 16 i.
(6) W^hen a closed syllable is formed by Dagel forte, e. g. "'ijin honneni (have mercy upon me); but D^ijl3 (with Metheg, § 16/^) bdfttm.
(c) When the syllable in question loses the tone on account of a following Maqqeph (§16 a), e. g. ClXH/S kol-hd-'dddm (all men).
In ^t 35'° and Pr ig' Maqqeph with ^3 is replaced by a conjunctive accent (Mer^kha) ; so hy Darga, Ju 19^ with lyD, and Ez 37^ with Dip*! (so Baer after Qimhi ; ed. Mant., Ginsburg, Kittel Dlp^l).
{d) In a closed final syllable without the tone, e.g. DiJ'l wayyaqom, (and he stood up). — In the cases where <t or a in the final syllable has become toneless through Maqqeph (§ 16 a) and yet remains, e.g. JT^n'^ra Est 4^, v"^^ Gn 4"^ it has a Metheg in correct manuscripts and printed texts.
In cases like ^^7"^, i^^? lamma, the tone shows that -j- is to be read as d.
V 2. The cases in which -y- appears to stand in an open syllable and yet is to be read as 0 require special consideration. This is the case, (a) when Hafeph-Qames follows, e.g. ipyS his work, or simple vocal S'wd, e.g. P'l"'! ox goad ; ilSyiS Jo 4'' ; mttSJ' (so ed. Mant., Ginsb.) preserve ip 86', cf. 16' and the cases mentioned in § 48 i, n., and § 61/, n. ; other examples are Ob 11, Ju 14"); Hateph-Pathah follows in ^H'^dIj (so Ginsburg; Baer ^^{;^•rp|5) i S 151, ^jl"in^ 24", and '^JJ'JS^ (so Baer, Gn 32^^, others ^'kJ'JQ^) ; (6) before another Qames- Jiatvvh, e.g. ^pyQ thy work ; on ""p'TlX and ""^'rinp Nu 23'', see § 67 0 : (c) in
' ': TIT • T|T • T (T " f * \ •
the two plural forms Ct'lp sanctuaries and CBHtJ* roots (also written ^p and 'IJi'). In all these cases the Jewish grammarians regard the Metheg accompanying the -:;- as indicating a Qames rahabh (broad Qames) and therefore read the -rr- as a ; thus pd-°l6, dd-r'bdn, pd-ol^khd, qd-ddsim. But neither the origin of these forms, nor the analogous formations in Hebrew and in the cognate languages, nor the transcription of proper names in the
^ In the Babylonian punctuation (§ 8 g, note) d and 0 are carefully distin- guished. So also in many MSS. with the ordinary punctuation and in Baer's editions of the text since 1880, in which -^r- is used for 6 as well as for *. Cf Baer-Delitzsch, Liber Jobi, p. 43. But the identity of the two signs is certainly original, and the use of -^ for 0 is misleading.
§ 10 a-d] Character of the several Trowels 51
LXX, allows us to regard this view as correct. It is just possible that Qames is here used loosely for a, as the equivalent of o, on the analogy of ipya &c,,
§ 93 q. As a matter of fact, however, we ought no doubt to divide and read po'^-lo (for po'-l6), po'o-Vkha, goda-H»n.— Quite as inconceivable is it for Meiheg to be a sign of the lengthening into a in ^^"''"in^'^-^^ "*)' although it is so in "'3N3 ha-'°nx (in the navy), since here the a of the article appears under the 3.
§ 10. The Half Voivels and the Syllable Divider (Sewa).
L Besides the full vowels, Hebrew has also a series of vowel a sounds which may be called half vowels (Sievers, Murmelvokale). The punctuation makes use of these to represent extremely slight sounds which are to be regarded as remains of fuller and more distinct vowels from an earlier period of the language. They generally take the place of vowels originally short standing in open syllables. Such short vowels, though preserved in the kindred languages, are not tolerated by the present system of pointing in Hebrew, but either undergo a lengthening or are weakened to S®wa. Under some circumstances, however, the original short vowel may reappear.
To these belongs first of all the sign -p-, which indicates an ex- b treraely short, slight, and (as regards pronunciation) indeterminate vowel sound, something like an obscure half e (— ). It is called S^wd,^ which may be either simple ^^wd [S^wd simjflex) as distinguished from the compound (see /), or vocal S^wd {S^wd mobile) as distin- guished from S"wd quiescens, which is silent and stands as a mere syllable divider (see ^) under the consonant which closes the syllable.
The vocal S^wd stands under a consonant which is closely united, as C a kind of grace-note, with the following syllable, either (a) at the beginning of the word, as ^'^p qHol (to kill), ^yo'Q rtfmalle (filling), or (6) in the middle of the word, as nbtpij? q6-fld, l^t^i?^ yiq-fU.
In former editions of this Grammar SHva was distinguished as medium CI when it followed a short vowel and therefore stood in a supposed 'loosely closed' or 'wavering' syllable, as in ""aplO, >Q33. According to Sievers,
Metrische Studien, i. 22, this distinction must now be abandoned. These syllables are really closed, and the original vowel is not merely shortened, but entirely elided. The fact that a following B^gadk^phath letter (§ 6 w) remains spirant instead of taking Bages lene, is explained by Sievers on the ' supposition that the change from hard to spirant is older than the elision
* On a^p, the older and certainly the only correct form (as in Ben Asher),
see Bacher, ZDMG. 1895, p. 18, note 3, who compares Sewayya, the name of the Syriac accentual sign of similar form -^— ( = Hebr. Zaqeph). The form ^?Z1K', customary in Spain since the time of Menahem b. Saruq, is due to a supposed connexion with Aram. n!3E' rest, and hence would originally have denoted only S'wd quiescens, like the Arabic sukHn (rest). The derivation from riDK', n^^B' (stem 2^^, Levias, American Journ. ofPhilol., xvi. 28 ft'.) seems impossible.
£ 2
52 J'he Individual Sounds and Characters [§ lo e-g
of the vowel, and that the prehistoric malakai became malakhai before being shortened to malkhe'. In cases like iNp3 (from ND3), ^r\\)) (from ng^) the dropping of the Dagei forte shows that the original vowel is completely lost. C The sound e has been adopted as the normal transcription of simple S^wd mobile, although it is certain that it often became assimilated in sound to other vowels. The LXX express it bye, or even by ij, D""!!^"!!! Xepov0iiJ, H^ vpH dK\r]\ovta, more frequently by a, PXIOB' Xaixov-qX, but very frequently by assimilating its indeterminate sound to the following principal vowel, e. g. Dip 'S.oSona, nb^K' XoKojxuv (as well as 2aA<u/«w»'), niKlJf 2ay3atutf, ?Niri3 KaOavariK.^ A similar account of the pronunciation of S*wd is given
by Jewish grammarians of the middle ages.^
How the Shed sound has arisen through the vanishing of a full vowel is seen, e.g. in nS13 from bdrdkd, as the word is still pronounced in Arabic.
In that language the full short vowel regularly corresponds to the Hebrew
Shod mobik.
f 2. Connected with the simple S'wd mdbile is the compound S^wd or Hdteph {correptum), i.e. a S"wd the pronunciation of which is more accurately fixed by the addition of a short vowel. There are three 6'^i«<J-sounds determined in this way, corresponding to the three vowel classes (§ 7 a) : —
(__) Hdteph-Pdthdh, e.g. 1i»n Ifmdr, ass.
(-^) Hdteph-S'gol, e.g. I^X '«mdr, to say.
(-^) ndteph-Qdmes, e.g. vH, h^U, sickness.
These Hdtephs, or at least the first two, stand especially under the four guttural letters (§22 I), instead of a simjyle S^wd mobile, since these letters by their nature require a more definite vowel than the indetenninate simple S^wd mobile. Accordingly a guttural at the beginning of a syllable, where the S^wA is necessarily vocal, can never have a mere S^wd simplex.
On -=:- the shorter Hatef as compared with -^ cf. § 27 v.
§ Rem. A. Only and occur under letters which are not gutturals.
ffateph-Paihah is found instead of simple S'wd (especially 5*wd mobile), chiefly (a) under strengthened consonants, since this strengthening (commonly called doubling) causes a more distinct pronunciation of the S^wd mobile, ^731^ branches, Zc 4". According to the rule given by Ben-Asher (which, however, appears to bo unknown to good early MSS. and is therefore rejected by Ginsburg, Introd., p. 466 ; cf. Foote, Johns Hopkins Univ. Circulars, June 1903,
* The same occurs frequently also in the Greek and Latin transcriptions of Phoenician words, e.g. NSpD Malaga, D^xW3 gubulim (SchrOder, Die phoniz. Spr., p. 139 fif.). Cf. the Latin augment in momordi, pupugi, with the Greek in T(Tv<pa, Ttrvfi/ifvos, and the old form memordi.
* See especially Yehuda Hayyug, pp. 4 f. and 130 f. in Nutt's edition (Lond. 1870), corresponding to p. 200 of the edition by Dukes (Stuttg. 1844) ; Ibn Ezra's Sahoth, p. 3; Gesenius, Lehrgebdude der hebr, Sprache, p. 68. The Manuel du lecteur, mentioned above, § 6 6, also contains express rules for the various ways of pronouncing S*wd mobile : so too the Dikduke ha-t'amim, ed. by Baer and Strack, Lpz. 1879, p. 12 fif. Cf. also Schreiner, ZAW. vi. 236 ff.
V
§ 10 A] Half Vowels and Syllable Divider {S'vca) 53
p. 71 f.), the Hateph is necessary'^ when, in a strengthened medial consonant with SHod (consequently not in cases like ^ni^, &c.), preceded by a Pathah, the sign of the strengthening {Dages forte) has fallen away, e. g. ^ppH (but ed. Mant. and Ginsb. ^^^il) praise ye! ^Hif^Nni Ju i6i« ; no less universally, where after a consonant with S'lcd the same consonant follows (to separate them more sharply, and hence with a il/e</ieg always preceding), e. g. CirjiD f 68*; "^nhhp, (ed. Mant. and Ginsb. 'bb\>) Gn 2f^ (but not without excep- tions, e. g. "'•ppn Ju 5I5, Is 10^ ; \b|)if Jer 6^ and so always ""Jin behold me, ^Jjn behold us: on 3 before the suffix SI, see § 20 6) ; also in certain forms under Kaph and Res after a long vowel and before the tone, e. g. nSp^Nn Gn 3IT ; ^2-\3 ip 103I; ^nnnK'ni i K i* (but Vi-^m ^ 72", cf. Jer 42, I Ch 2920, because the tone is thrown back on to the d. After e S'wd remains even before the tone, as ^3")3, &c. ; but before Maqqef N3"n3f>N Baer Ex 4", 2 S 15'', Jer 40^^ but ed. Mant., Jabl., Ginsb. '[jN) ^ ; (6) under initial sibilants after 1 copulative, e. g. 2r\]} Gn 2^2 ; cf. Jer 482° ; nHD^ Is 45" ; Him Lv 25" ; n^{^> Gn 27»« ; V^m Nu 2318, Is 37", Dn 91^, cf. Ju 512, i K 14", 2 K 9", Jb 14I, Ec 9^— to emphasize the vocal character of the .bVa. For the same reason under the emphatic tJ in ^^0^^ Jer 22^8 ; cf. Jb 332^ ; after Qoph in ''ri'l'li'?^ (so Baer, but ed. Mant., Jabl., Ginsb. 'p^) Ez 23"; -2");?^ >P 55"? cf- J^^- 3^^ under Rei in n*jnN (ed. Mant. "IX) Gn i8«i ; DJJn'l \p zS^; even under fl Ezr 26-1 ; under 3 Est 2* ; ^3-l31 so Jabl., Ginsb., but'ed. Mant. '13^) Dt 24" ; (c) under sonants, sibilants or Qoph after t, e. g. pn^f"* Gn 2i«, cf. 30^8 and Ez 21^8 (under P); nilOS <p 12*; TiSpnn Jer 2215; ^1^-^33 Jos ii»; 'r\^P2 ^ 74^— for t^^ snme reason as the cases under b ' ; according to Baer also in n^CD5I' I S so"*; '^'^:p\ Gn 32I8 after 6 (cf, § 9 v), as well as after a in Hn^C'i^n Dn
91"; nan^n'Gn 2738; D''V'i^on 2 k 7*.
B. The ffateph-Qames is less restricted ^to the gutturals than the first two, //, and stands more frequently for a simple S^wd mobile when an original 0-sound requires to be partly preserved, e. g. at the beginning, in iNT (ground-form ri'y) vision (cf. §932); ?.T333 2 Ch 31", &c., Q^re {K'th. ' "i):i) ; ni'SOy Ammonitish women, i K u' (sing.' JTiJiDy) ; ^STl'' for the usual 1?.'^1^ Ez 36«, from t]'"^T ; M'2pT\ Nu 23^5, Jer 31", and elsewhere before suffixes, cf. § 60 a ; ni^nj? his pate (from ipij?) ip f, &c. ; HDj^K'SI Is i8< Q're. Further, like __, it stands under consonants, which ought to have Dagei forte, as in nnp? (for nriijjb) Gn 22s. In this example, as in nnyO^ i K 13'' ; HSD^ 2 K 7"; and VV^'^ Jer 2 2^0 the Hateph-Qames is no doubt due to the influence of the
• T T : 1 • *
1 See Delitzsch, 'Bemerkungen iiber masoretisch treue Darstellung dcs alttestam. Textes,' in the Ztschr. f. luih. Theol. u. Kirche, vol. xxiv. 1863, p. 409 ff.
^ On the uncertainty of the MSS. in some cases which come under «, see Minhat shay (the Masoretic comm. in ed. Mant.) on Gn 12' and Ju 7^
' Ben-Ashcr requires for (even for ^"wd quiescens) generally before
a guttural or "1 ; hence Baer reads' in 2 S i ■;» -3'np3 f 18'' XIpN ; 49'^ ?iNB'7; 658 nnin ; 68" ^nori ; Pr 3c" :j?^n ; Jb 29" -in^lN ; cf. Delitzsch, Psalms, 12'', note.
54 The Individual Sounds and Characters [§§ lo i-i, ii
following guttural as well as of the preceding U-sound. (Elsewhere indeed after 1 in similar cases /lateph-Pathah is preferred, see above, b ; but with nnp^ of. also "l^Bp Is 9^ lo", 14^^, where the U-sound must necessarily be admitted to have an influence on the S'wd immediately following.) In ""inL21 (li-fhor) Jb 17' it is also influenced by the following 0-sound. In ''Jppi? I S 28* Q're, the original form is DDp, where again the 0 represents an 6. It is only through the influence of a following guttural that we can explain the forms nii-\p^ Est 2" ; ^n33 Pr28«; nrnD3 Jer 49^ ; nyb'DX Is 27* ;
T t;': • T Til" T t; ; • tt: : •
ny?:K'S1 Dn S" ; nyr:tJ' ip 39^^ ; myoa 2 K 2I (Baer's ed. also in ver. ii) ;
tt:: viT tt:i' ' ' 'tt;!-
DTinpn 2 Ch 34I2 (ed. Mant., Opitius, &c. 'pn). Finally in most of the examples which have been adduced, the influence "of an emphatic sound (p t3 , cf. also nOp^N Ru z^-f), or of a sibilant is also to be taken into account.
/ 3. The sign of the simjyle 6hod -r- serves also as a mere syllable divider. In this case it is disregarded in pronunciation and is called ^^wA quiescens. In the middle of a word it stands under every con- sonant which closes a syllable ; at the end of words on the other hand it is omitted except in final ^ (to distinguish it better from final |), e.g. "nbp king, and in the less frequent case, where a word ends with a mute after another vowelless consonant as in '^^). nard, J!^^ thou fem. (for kint), Jjibpp thou fem. hast killed, p^l^ and he watered, 3f ^. and he took cajytive, ^^^'^^ drink thou not; but NTT, Nt^n/
jf However, in the examples where a mute closes the syllable, the final 5«ud comes somewhat nearer to a vocal S^iod, especially as in almost all the cases a weakening of a final vowel has taken place, viz. riS 'a«« from ''Jjlt^ 'att'i {'anti),
nS^p from ''P\b6^ (cf. in this form, the 2nd sing. fem. perf. Qal, even nN3, after a vowel, Gn I6^ Mi 4", &c., according to the readings of Baer), 3K'"' yisJ)^ from HB'^^ , «S!;c. The Arabic actually has a short vowel in analogous forms. In Y]^ borrowed from the Indian, as also in tpK'p (qdU) Pr 22^^; and in t^Din~^X ne addas (for which we should expect fipin) Pr 30« the final mute of itself attracts a slight vowel sound. / Rem. The proper distinction between simple S'wd mobile and quiescens depends on a correct understanding of the formation of syllables (§ 26). The beginner may observe for the present, that (i) ^^wd is always mobile (a) at the beginning of a word (except in D"'ri6J' ^nt^' § 97 b, note) ; (6) under a consonant with Dage^ forte, e. g. ^D'lJ gid-d^phu ; (c) after another ^^wd, e. g. vtDp^ yiqflu
(except at the end of the word, see above, i). {2)^S^icd is quiescens (a) at the end of a word, also in the T] ; {b) before another S^wd.
§ 11. Other Signs ichich affect the Reading.
Very closely connected with the vowel points are the reading-signs, which were probably introduced at the same time. Besides the diacritical point over b' and K', a point is placed loithirf, a consonant
» On n^ as an ending of the 2nd sing. fem. perf. Qal of verbs iTv, see
§ 75 »«.
§ 12 a-c] Other Signs which affect the Reading 55
to sliow that it has a stronger sound. On the other liand a horizontal stroke {Rapfie) over a consonant is a sign that it has 7iot the stronger f^ound. According to the different purposes for which it is used the point is either (i) DageS forte, a sign of strengthening (§ 12); or (2) Dages lene, a sign of the harder pronunciation of certain con- sonants (§ 13); or (3) Mappiq, a sign to bring out the full consonantal value of letters which otherwise serve as vowel letters (§ 7 b), especially in the case of n at the end of the word (§14 a). The Raphe, which excludes the insertion of any of these points, has almost entirely gone out of use in our printed texts (§14 e).
§ 12. Dagek in general,^ and Dage§ forte in particular.
Cf. Graetz, ' Die mannigfache Anwendung u. Bedeut. des Dagesch,' in Monatsschr. fiir Gesch. w. Wiss. d. Judent., 1887, pp. 425 S. and 473 £f.
1. Dage^, a point standing in the middle of a consonant,^ denotes, a according to § 11, (a) the strengthening^ of a consonant [Dages forte), e-g- ''^i? qittel (§ 20); or (6) the harder pronunciation of the letters ^?|*15? {Dages lene). For a variety of the latter, now rarely used in our printed texts, see § 13 c.
The root ^T\ in Syriac means to pierce through, to bore through (with sharp f) iron) ; hence the name Dagei is commonly explained, solely with reference to its form, oy pMnrf«re, point. But the names of all similar signs are derived rather from their grammatical significance. Accordingly ^y] may in the Masora have the sense : acuere (Jiteram), i. e. to sharpen a letter, as well as to harden it, i.e. to pronounce it as hard and without aspiration. \yH acuens {literam) would then be a sign of sharpening and hardening (like Mappiq P^Sip proferens, as signum prolationis), for which purposes a prick of the pen, or puncture, was selected. The opposite of Da^eHs nQI soft, § 14 e, and § 22 n.
2. In grammar Dage^ forte, the sign of strengthening, is the more q important. It may be compared to the sicilicus of the Latins {Luculus for Lucullus) or to the stroke over m and n. In the unpointed text it is omitted, like the vowels and other reading signs.
For the different kinds of Dages forte, see § 20.
1 Oort, Theol. Tijdschr. 1902, p. 376, maintains that 'the Masoretes recognized no distinction between Dages lene and forte. They used a Dages where they considered that a letter had the sharp, not the soft or aspirated sound.' This may be true; but the old-established distinction between the two kinds of DogeJ is essential for the right understanding of the grammatical forms.
* Wdw with Dagei (^) cannot in our printed texts be distinguished from a wSw pointed as Surlq (^) ; in the latter case the point should stand higher up. The ^ u is, however, easily to be recognized since it cannot take a vowel before or under it.
* Stade, Lehrb. der hebr. Gr., Lpz. 1879, pp. 44, 103, rightly insists on the expression strengthened pronunciation instead of the older term doubling, since the consonant in question is only written once. The common expression arises from the fact that in transcription a strengthened consonant can only be indicated by writing it as double.
56 The Individual Sounds and Characters [§§ ra a-a,
l^a-c
§ 13. Dages lene.
Ginsburg, Introd., p. 114 if. : Dagesh and Baphe.
a 1. Dages lene, the sign of hardening, is in ordinary printed texts placed only within the nSSl^a letters (§ 6 n) as a sign that they should be pronounced with their original hard sound (without aspira- tion), e.g. ^y^ melekh, but i3?P md'-ko ; ">S|J1 taphdr, but 'i^) yith-por ; nriE^ tatha, but r\V\f\ yiUe. '
f) 2. The cases in which a DageS lene is to be inserted are stated in
§ 21. It occurs almost exclusively at the beginning of words and
syllables. In the middle of the word it can easily be distinguished
from Dages forte, since the latter always has a vowel before it, whereas
Dage^ lene never has; accordingly the Dages in ''3*5 'appt, D''3"l rabbim
must be forte, but in P'!!?^ yigdal it is lene.
C A variety of the Bagei lene is used in many manuscripts, as well as in Baer's editions, though others (including Ginsburg in the first t\v<) cases, Introd., pp. 121, 130, 603, 662) reject it together with the Hatefs dlscusised in § 10 g. It is inserted in consonants other than the B'gadk'phath to cajl attention expressly to the beginning of a new syllable : (a) when the same consonant
precedes in close connexion, e. g. ^3?"b33 tp 9', where, owing to tK© Dages,
the coalescing of the two Lameds is avoided ; (J>) in cases like ''DTO ^62^ =
•>nah-si (not mdh"'-si) ; (c) according to some (including Baer ; not in ed. Mant.)
in N7 in the combination N^ 1^3 Dt 32*, or i? 6^7 Hb 1', 2« &c. (so always also in Ginsburg's text, except in Gn 38') ; see also § 20 e and g. — Delitzsch appropriately gives the name of Dage^ orihophonicum to this variety of Dagci {Bibl. Kommentar, 1874, on ^t 94") ; cf. moreover Delitzsch, Luth. Ztschr., 1863, p. 413 ; also his Oomplutensische Varianten zu dem Alttest. Texte, Lpz. 1878, p. 1 2.,
d 3. When Dages forte is placed in a B^gadk^phath, the strengthening necessarily excludes its aspiration, e.g. ""SN, from ^33*?.
§ 14. Mappiq and Raphe.
a 1. Mappiq, like DageS, also a point toithin the consonant, serves in the letters M n X as a sign that they are to be regarded as full consonants and not as vowel letters. In most editions of the text it is only used in the consonantal n at the end of words (since n can never be a vowel letter in the middle of a word), e.g. I^^J gabhdh (to be high), "^-f^?* 'arsdh (her land) which has a consonantal ending
(shortened from -hd), different from '"l^")^ 'drsd (to the earth) which has a vowel ending.
h Rem. I. Without doubt such a Hs was distinctly aspirated like the Arabic Hd at the end of a syllable. There are, however, cases in which this n has lost its consonantal character (the Mappiq of course disappearing too), so that it remains only as a vowel letter ; cf. § 91 e on the 3rd fem. sing.
C The name p'^QD means proferens, i. e. a sign which brings out the sound of the letter distinctly, as a consonant. The same sign was selected for this
IU4d,e,isa,b-\ Mappiq and Raphe 57
and for Bagei, since both are intended to indicate a hard, i. e. a strong, sound. Hence Raphe (see e) is the opposite of both.
2. In MSS. Mappiq is also found with K, 1, \ to mark them expressly as d consonants, e.g. ^13 (got/), 1p {qaw, qdu), for which 1 is also used, as IK'J^, &c. For the various statements of the Masora (where these points are treated as Dages), see Ginsburg, The Massorah, letter H, § 6 (also Introd., pp. 557, 609, 637, 770), and ' The Dageshed Alephs in the Karlsruhe MS.' (where these points are extremely frequent), in the Verhandluvgen des Berliner Orientalisten-Kongresses, Berlin, i. 188 1, p. 136 S. The great differences in the statements found in the Masora point to different schools, one of which appears to have intended that every audible N should be pointed. In the printed editions the point occurs only four times with N (N or N), Gn 432*, Lv 23", Ezr 8" and Jb 33"! (1N"I ; where the point can be taken only as an orthophonetic sign, not with KOnig as Dagei forte). Cf. Delitzsch, Hiob, 2nd ed., p. 439 ff.
2. Rd2)he (HDn i.e. weak, soft), a horizontal stroke over the letter, e is the opposite of both kinds of DageS and Mappiq, but especially of Dagd lene. In exact manuscripts every nD31J3 letter has either Dage^ lene or Bdphe, e.g. ^^» melekh, isri, T\i^f. In modern editions (except Ginsburg's ist ed.) Rdjpke is used only when the absence of a Dages or Mappiq requires to be expressly pointed out.
§ 15. The Accents.
On the ordinal^ accents (see below, e), cf. W. Heidenheim, D^OytSH "'PBK'O ^
[The Laws of the Accents], EOdelheim, 1808 (a compilation from older Jewish writers on the accents, with a commentary) ; W. Wickes (see also below), D^ISD N"3 "iDytD [_The Accents of the Tuetiiy-one Books], Oxford, 1887, an exhaustive investigation in English ; J. M. Japhet, Die Accente der hi. Schrift (exclusive of the books n?Oi«{),ed. by Heinemann, Frankf. a. M. 1896; Pratorius, Die Herkunft der hebr. Accente, Berlin, 1901, and (in answer to Gregory's criticism in the TLZ. 1901, no. 22) Die Uebernahme der frilh-mittelgriech. Neumen durch die Juden, Berlin, 1902 ; P. Kahle, ' Zur Gesch. der hebr.