[Mesorah] third section of Details of Masorah

[Mandel, Seth via Mesorah]

And now we come to the sources that are most relevant to the matters I wish to discuss, and indeed are necessary knowledge for anyone seeking to understand the Masorah.
Although in the previous posts, we have mentioned that the Masorah and some Masoretic works mention the ge‘ayah, none of them really discuss it, nor do they discuss anything that would look to us like "grammatical rules," or any sort of rules.  To those acquainted with the history of grammar, this should not be surprising.  Grammar, i.e. the study of the rules of a language, was not much studied: anyone who spoke the language knew the rules, and anyone who did not know the language went to learn it from native speakers, not from Berlitz or from books.  The first grammar of a Semitic language was of Arabic, and it was religiously based: the Arabs considered the Qur'an to have been dictated by God, and therefore the language of the Qur'an must be divine.  Since by the 7th Century it differed from most spoken Arabic in several points, it was considered a meritorious act to fully describe it.  Jews, like most people, never had written anything about grammar.  The Masoretes, although not interested in grammar, were very much interested in fixing the proper way to write and read the T'NaKh, and so ben Asher himself wrote various observations on some matters.  It is very important to understand that he did not intend this to be a grammar, in the sense of rules that determine what should be said.  Rather, what should be said was the starting point, and that was represented in the T'NaKh with the complete Tiberian system,  But Ben Asher decided to write some observations, which, like the Masoretic notes, would serve as memory aids.  The book he wrote is called Sefer Diqduqei haT‘amim.  It was so well known in the time of the Massoretes, that several codices, including the Leningrad codex, included it as an appendix to the T'NaKh.  Outside of the codices containing parts of it, it is found in many Genizah fragments.  It was unknown, though, in Europe, not even mentioned by any of the grammarians up until very modern times.
The various chapters found in the codices sometimes differ in the exact wording, and since none arranged them as a "book," with numbered chapters, it is unclear whether all the pieces were part of the original work.  It has been published in two editions: Baer-Strack in 1879 and by Aharon Dotan in 1967.  Dotan brings all the pieces that are available, and then has decided which ones belonged to the original.  I am greatly obliged to Micha for many things, but in this regard, for his generous offer of storing photocopies of some of the material we will discuss here on the Aishdas website; most of the material is not readily available.  The photos are at http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/faxes/dikdukeiSoferim.  Pages 1 through 10 are Dotan's version of Diqduqei haT‘amim.  If you look at the first page, you will see that the P'tiha states that the composition is called "Sefer miDiqduei haT‘amim," composed by Aharon ben Asher in Ma‘azyah, which was called Tiberias by the Romans.
Page 11 is a photocopy of some of the sections of the book from the Leningrad Codex.  The one on the left corresponds to Page 3, Sha‘ar 5.  The one on the top right corresponds to Sha‘ar 22 on Page 9.  The below it on the right corresponds to Sha‘ar 25 on Page 10.  Many people, including me, are not happy with Dotan's editing decisions.  But it is the shortest edition.
Unlike the Masorah, which is in Aramaic, this composition is all in pure Hebrew, and very artfully rhymed, no less.  As might be expected, a lot of the terminology used is unfamiliar to modern readers, who learned diqduq based on the European Rishonim and Acharonim.  For instance, vowels are called "m'lakhim."  Chaper 1, found on Page 1 after the P'tiha, giives the names and numbers of the trop, called "t‘amim."  A couple of the names will not be familiar, such as "na'da" and "teres."  Some will be a little different than in European books, such as "tilsha."
Some of the book talks about exremely arcane topics, such as the exact trop used in certain conditions.  Other parts are readily understandable, such as Sha‘ar 6 on Page three, that describes when the word "ben" occurs with a tzere ("two dots"), and when with a segol ("three dots").
We will discuss some of the information from the chapters later; for now, I just wanted to draw attention to the photograph from the Leningrad codex on Page 11.  If you look on the column on the left, 7 lines from the end, you see the word ge‘yah spelled out and with vowels, and that is why I prefer to use that form rather than the word meteg invented by YHB'Y or the vocalization "ga‘ayah."  A rose by any other name, etc., but why not use the original?

In the century following, while the art of writing the codices was still active (the Leningrad codes dates from 1009), a composition was written in Arabic (the spoken language of the Jews at that time), called "Hidaayat alQaari" (Guide for the Qore/Reader), which, as its name implies, contains many useful comments for understanding the Masoretic text.  It quotes most of the Sefer Diqduquie haT‘amim verbatim, and adds a wealth of other information.  Unfortunately, we do not have the entire composition.  Many fragments of it are found in the Geniza, and it was extant in Yemen for years (Teimani rabbis quote from it).  It was written in the 11th century.
However, several Hebrew compositions exist that were based on Hidaayat alQaari.  One is called "Mahberet haTiijaan" (a notebook about the codices), which was used in Yemen, and was printed by Joseph Derenbourg in 1870. which was reprinted in the Yemenite Chumash (the "Taaj") when it was first printed in Yerushalayim in the 1940's.  A facsimile edition from a Yemeinte mauscript has been published in "Qovetz Diqduqei Torah" by Ariel Levi, Jerusalem, 2001.  I have provided photos of 10 pages of the Mahberet that discuss the sh'wa, which will be one of the subjects that we will be focusing on.
Let me just start with the two pages that deal with the pronunciation of the sh'wa, on Pages 12 and 13, pages 61-62 of the Mahberet.  It describes how the sh'wa nad is pronouned 1) like a short chirik before a yod; 2) if the sh'wa is followed by a guttural, like the vowel under the guttural; 3) like a short patach in other cases (note the use of the word "melekh" to describe a vowel, as well as "ge‘ya, terms that were not used in European grammars).  These pronunciations are quite different from the historical Ashk'nazi and S'faradi pronunciation of a sh'wa na‘ as a short ih vowel or eh vowel, but the pronunciations are reflected in the Masoretic text, and are absolutely necessary to understand the Aleppo Codex, which is why I am mentioning them here.
The Mahberet haTiijaan was apparently written in the 12th century.  Outside of the material from Hidaayat alQaari, it has at the end a short section that contains a poem written by R. S‘adya Ga'on that gives mnemonics for the number of times each letter of the Hebrew alphabet occurs in the T'NaKh.  For those interested, the letter aleph occurs 42,377 times, whereas tav occurs 63,140 times. Of course, R. S‘adya would never be so crass as to write the actual number.  Instead, he wrote a poem, one stanza for every letter, which contains allusions to certain things mentioned in the T'NaKh.  Once you understand the allusions, you can then figure out what number is referenced in that passage, and when you add the numbers from the different passages, you come up with the number.  For example, the stanza for aleph starts off wtih "'Ohel m'khon binyanay," referring to Nehemia 7:66 where the number 42,360 is found, and "ulzevch todah ba'u banai," referring to Numbers 7:17 where 17 qorbanot, all told, are mentioned.  Add them up, and you get the 42,377 number.
You need not worry.  I am not going to discuss this poem.  As a matter of fact, even though the Masorah is, to a large part, numbers (of occurrences), our discussion is going to be about theory, with very little numerical information.  But I did want to give the readers a flavor for what the giants of the Masorah, and R. S‘adya Ga'on were able to do, without any computers.  Their accomplishments boggle the imagination.

Seth Mandel