Masoretes
Encyclopedia
The Masoretes were groups of mostly Karaite scribe
Scribe
A scribe is a person who writes books or documents by hand as a profession and helps the city keep track of its records. The profession, previously found in all literate cultures in some form, lost most of its importance and status with the advent of printing...

s and scholars working between the 7th and 11th centuries, based primarily in present-day Israel in the cities of Tiberias and Jerusalem, as well as in Iraq (Babylonia
Babylonia
Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as a major power when Hammurabi Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as...

). Each group compiled a system of pronunciation and grammatical guides in the form of diacritical notes on the external form of the Biblical text in an attempt to fix the pronunciation, paragraph and verse divisions and cantillation
Cantillation
Cantillation is the ritual chanting of readings from the Hebrew Bible in synagogue services. The chants are written and notated in accordance with the special signs or marks printed in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible to complement the letters and vowel points...

 of the Jewish Bible, the Tanakh
Tanakh
The Tanakh is a name used in Judaism for the canon of the Hebrew Bible. The Tanakh is also known as the Masoretic Text or the Miqra. The name is an acronym formed from the initial Hebrew letters of the Masoretic Text's three traditional subdivisions: The Torah , Nevi'im and Ketuvim —hence...

, for the worldwide Jewish community. (See the article on the Masoretic text
Masoretic Text
The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible and is regarded as Judaism's official version of the Tanakh. While the Masoretic Text defines the books of the Jewish canon, it also defines the precise letter-text of these biblical books, with their vocalization and...

 for a full discussion of their work.)

The ben Asher family of Masoretes was largely responsible for the preservation and production of the Masoretic Text, although an alternate Masoretic text of the ben Naphtali
Ben Naphtali
ben Naphtali was a rabbi and Masorete who flourished about 890-940 C.E., probably in Tiberias. Of his life little is known. His first name is in dispute. Some medieval authorities called him "Jacob"; two Tchufut-Kalè manuscripts have "Moses b...

 Masoretes, which differs slightly from the ben Asher text, existed. The halakhic authority Maimonides
Maimonides
Moses ben-Maimon, called Maimonides and also known as Mūsā ibn Maymūn in Arabic, or Rambam , was a preeminent medieval Jewish philosopher and one of the greatest Torah scholars and physicians of the Middle Ages...

 endorsed the ben Asher as superior, although the Egyptian Jewish scholar, Saadya Gaon al-Fayyumi, had preferred the ben Naphtali system, because ben Asher was a Karaite. The ben Asher family and the majority of the Masoretes appear to have been Karaites. Geoffrey Khan says that it is now believed that they were not.

The Masoretes devised the vowel notation system for Hebrew that is still widely used, as well as the trope
Trope (music)
A trope or tropus may be a variety of different things in medieval and modern music.The term trope derives from the Greek τρόπος , "a turn, a change" , related to the root of the verb τρέπειν , "to turn, to direct, to alter, to change"...

 symbols used for cantillation
Cantillation
Cantillation is the ritual chanting of readings from the Hebrew Bible in synagogue services. The chants are written and notated in accordance with the special signs or marks printed in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible to complement the letters and vowel points...

.

Further reading

  • In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language, Chapter 5. ISBN 0-8147-3654-8
  • The Text of the Old Testament. ISBN 0-8028-0788-7
  • Introduction to the Tiberian Masorah. ISBN 0-89130-374-X,

External links

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