/karen/

“Let the reader understand ...”

Tuesday, 15 November, 2005

Of the signs or “points” added by the Masoretes to the consonantal text of the Hebrew Scriptures, some denoted the vowel-sounds, since the Hebrew alphabet contained only consonants. Other indicated the punctuation, and others showed the reader when he had to pronounce something different from the text which lay before him. There are several places in the Old Testament where one word is written (kethibh, as it is called) and quite another word public read (qere). This distinction between what was written and what was to be read goes back to quite early times, and was sometimes indicated in the consonantal text before the points were added. For example, we are told in Judges 18:30 that the priest who functioned at the sanctuary in Dan, where there was a graven image, was a grandson of Moses. But, centuries before the time of the Masoretes, this was felt to be such a scandalous state of affairs that those who revered the name of Moses preferred not to draw public attention to it. The synagogue reader was therefore directed to say “Manesseh” instead of “Moses” when he came to this verse. And lest he should forget, the letter N was inserted between M and S—not actually on the line, but suspended. We might represent the resulting appearance of the Hebrew consonantal text [insert Hebrew] by the English letters M^NSH. The constants of “Moses” are [insert Hebrew] MSH; those of “Manesseh” are [insert Hebrew] MNSH; and by inserting the suspended N into MSH these pious scribes spared the embarrassment of readers and hearers. It was not that they wanted these people to think that the idolatrous priest in question was really the son of Manesseh and not of Moses; in that case they would have written the inserted N on the line instead of suspending it. But they did suggest that this priest's behaviour made him a fitter associate with the wicked king Manesseh, or of the Manesseh who built the schismatic temple on Mount Gerazim, that of Moses, the man of God. When the Masoretes came to affix vowel points to this word, the vowels which they added were those of “Manesseh”, not of “Moses”—that is to say, in accordance with their regular procedure, they added the vowels of the word which the synagogue reader had to pronounce.

One permanent differentiation of the kethibh (the written text) from the qere (the word to be read) concerns the Divine Name which we know as Yahweh. In the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible this word is written with four constants [insert Hebrew] which we may represent by YHWH. In the latter centuries B.C. this name came to be regarded with such veneration that it ceased to be used. The Third Commandment enjoins: “Thou shalt not take the name of YHWH thy God in vain, for YHWH will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain”. Primarily this may be a warning against perjury, though we need not limit its scope to perjury in the technical sense. The Westminster Shorter Catechism is no doubt right in affirming that this Commandment “requireth the holy and reverent use of God's names, titles, attributes, ordinances, word, and works” and “forbiddeth all profaning or abusing of any thing whereby God maketh himself known”. The ancient Jews felt something like this, and decided that the best way of avoiding the unworthy use of the Divine Name was not to use it at all. At first, probably, they gave up using it in ordinary conversation; then they even gave up using it when reading the Scriptures aloud, and substituting a term like “Lord” or “God” in its place. This was already the custom when the Hebrew Scriptures began to be translated into Greek in the third century B.C., for in that translation (the Septuagint) the name YHWH is not rendered by a proper name but represented by the Greek word for “Lord” (kyrios) or “God” (theos). It is said that the only occasion on which it was actually pronounced in those days was when the High Priest uttered it on his annual entry into the Holy of Holies in the temple on the Great Day of Atonement; and that practice came to an end with the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70. So the original pronunciation seems to have been forgotten among the Jews. At any rate, when the editors of whom we have been speaking affixed the vowel signs to the Hebrew consonants for the guidance of readers, there would have been no point in any case in attaching the proper vowel signs to the constants YHWH, as the word was not to be pronounced. What they did was attach to the consonants YHWH the vowel signs of the word that was to be read in its place, whether of 'Adonay (“Lord”) or of 'Elohim (“God”). When the knowledge of Hebrew was revived in Western Europe from the twelfth century onwards, it was not realised at first that the consonants YHWH were accompanied by the vowels of another word, and an attempt was made to read the consonants YHWH or JHVH along with the vowels of 'Adonay; the result was the hybrid form “Jehovah”, which was introduced by William Tyndale into English, where it has become thoroughly naturalised. What the original Hebrew vowels of the name were is a matter of some debate, although it is usually considered that they were a and e, the word being pronounced Yahweh. There is adequate evidence that this was how it was pronounced in the early Christian centuries among the Samaritans and others who did not share the Jewish scruples about uttering it. There is further evidence in the Old Testament that it was also current in the abbreviated forms Yahu and Yah (cf. Psa. 68:4, “His name is JAH”).

(F.F. Bruce, The Books and the Parchments [London: Marshall Pickering, 1991], 109-111.)

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