On 03/05/2004 11:47, Patrick Andries wrote:
Peter Kirk a �crit :
On 03/05/2004 05:55, Patrick Andries wrote:
...
When the Biblical text is written in paleo Hebrew there are no vowel
pointings. When the text was written in the paleo Hebrew four of the
Hebrew letters were used as vowels - aleph, hey, vav and yud, but
were removed from the text when the masorites added the vowel
pointings. This is evident in the Dead Sea Scrolls where the four
letters are found in the words but removed in the Masoretic text.
No. The DSS, or nearly all of them, are in square script, and this
indicates that the (partial) removal of these additional letters (if
that is indeed a correct way to describe what happened) took place
long after the transition from paleo-Hebrew to square script.
Do I understand from your remark that the Square Script DSS use matres
lectionis ?
P. A.
Yes. The Masoretic text Hebrew uses matres lectionis (though not alef as
one, except perhaps in the Aramaic portions). The earlier square script
DSS use more of them. Most paleo-Hebrew texts use very few if any of
them, because they were only starting to be used in pre-exilic times.
I'm not sure about later paleo-Hebrew texts like the few paleo-Hebrew DSS.
--
Peter Kirk
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http://www.qaya.org/
