[Mesorah] a kleinigkeit

Sun Jan 28 12:07:11 PST 2018

Please try to be accurate.  The Leningrad Codex has both a full patah AND a ge‘aya, not just a patah, as you imply.  R. Breuer shows it as such in his apparatus.  I am adding that B also has this. Only one Sasson ms. has both a hataph-patah with a ge‘aya, something that I am alleging never occurs elsewhere in the T'NaKh.

As R. Breuer does many times, in cases where he thinks that something found in a ms. is an obvious error, even in the Aleppo Codes (such as the hataph-segol under the shin in the word she-Hashem in the pasuk before T'hilla L'David, i.e. the second pasuq in "Ashrei").  I believe he thought the same about the hataph patah with a ge‘aya in Sasson 1053, and that what he printed was a compromise between the full patah with a ge‘aya that I think would have been justified according to his system and the mss. with only a hataph.

I am stating for the record that I am not always correct.  But I believe I am in this case.

I am looking for what R Breuer put in his book.  I do not know if he listed everything in the Da'at Mikra.

Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel

________________________________
From: Danny Levy <danestlev at gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2018 2:37 PM
To: jeremy.simon at nyu.edu; mesorah at lists.aishdas.org
Cc: Mandel, Seth; mesorah at aishdas.org
Subject: Re: [Mesorah] a kleinigkeit

R. Breuer's lists of the differences between the manuscripts that he examined in order to decide on the spelling, nikud and te'amim in his Tanakh are printed among the introductory chapters to each sefer in the Da'at Mikra Tanakh.  In this case, he lists only Leningrad with a patach, while both Sasoon mss. (507 and 1053) have a chataf-patach. This is why he has a chataf-patach in the text of his Tanakh with the patach version in the list at the back.  So it seems that in this case R' Jeremy is right.

R. Breuer lists Sasoon 1053 as having both a chataf and a ge'aya, while 507 has just the chataf.  Mikra'ot G'dolot (1525) agrees with 1053, which presumably is why he added the ge'aya in his Tanakh, although it does appear to be very unusual.  It would seem that the scribe of 1053 might have had the same mesorah as Leningrad, but wrote a chataf-patach by mistake (thinking of the meaning).

Danny Levy

2018-01-28 20:49 GMT+02:00 Jeremy Rosenbaum Simon via Mesorah <mesorah at lists.aishdas.org<mailto:mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>>:
With all due respect, I think it is you who are misunderstanding, or at least misapplying, R. Breuer's shittah. It is true that R. Breuer included extra-masoretic metagim so as not to appear "odd" to those who were used to them. But that is the only concession he made to simple expectations, and is not, in any case, relevant here, where the meteg is masoretic (as can be seen from its presence in the list, as well as, in the Keter Yerushalaim, being a long meteg.

As for his approach to chataf vowels, the only ones he modified where chataf vowels under non-guttural letters whose purpose was simply to indicate a shva na. He did this because he felt strongly that such a chataf should be pronounced as a shva, and not a short patach, and felt that continuing to print the chataf was misleading to readers. If anything, this is a case where he deviated from what readers would expect, in contradistinction to his approach with metagim (albeit still with the average reader in mind).

But this practice has no relevance to the case at hand. He did not change a chataf under a non-guttural to a shva. He "changed" one under a guttural to a full vowel. This is entirely different, and, as far as I can tell from what I remember of what R. Breuer wrote (and I have read much of it, including the relevant sections of the book on the Aleppo codex), he would not have deviated from Aleppo in this if he did not have significant textual support from other manuscripts. The fact that Bar Ilan, which does not share R. Breuer's methodology for meteg or for chataf (Prof. Cohen kept all the chatafs R. Breuer changed) arrived at the same conclusion furhter supports that this decision is well supported generally and not a feature of a quirk of R. Breuer's methodology.

Jeremy

On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 12:48 PM, Mandel, Seth <mandels at ou.org<mailto:mandels at ou.org>> wrote:

You misunderstand R. Breuer's shitta.  As he explains, he mostly goes according to the majority of the best kisvei yad.  However, he does not want it to appear too strange to regular Jews.  As a consequence, he omits all the many hataph vowels that Ben Asher put into the Codex, and puts in the "metegs" that people are used to, even if they do not exist in any of the best mss.  He tries to distinguish the ge‘ayot that are in the mss. as opposed to the others by having the printer use metegs of different length.  In this case, I am sure he did not want to depart from the hataph-patah because that is what people are used to.

There are no mss. that have both a ge‘aya AND a hataph on this word to the best of my knowledge.

You can go to R. Breuer's long book about how he decided questions without having the Aleppo Codex available: he uses the majority of the good mss., since in almost all cases the majority agrees with the Codex.  I am sure that if he mentions this case there he will say that the mss. all have a full patah.

Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel

________________________________
From: Jeremy Rosenbaum Simon <jeremy.simon at nyu.edu<mailto:jeremy.simon at nyu.edu>>
Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2018 12:05 PM
To: Mandel, Seth
Subject: Re: [Mesorah] a kleinigkeit

I was only addressing the patach, not the meteg. As for the list at the back, that only represents one manuscript, in this case Leningrad, not "the manuscripts". This list lets you see where his final decision deviated from that of his primary manuscript, which, depending on the edition and the section of Tanach, is either Leningrad or Aleppo. However, he deviated only on the basis of textual evidence, at least in the vast majority of cases. I would be extremely surprised to find that he changed the nikkud here without strong manuscript evidence.

On Jan 28, 2018, at 11:54 AM, Mandel, Seth <mandels at ou.org<mailto:mandels at ou.org>> wrote:

Not true.

Breuer, following his own shitta, has both a hataph-patah AND a ge‘aya.  And in the index in the back of his editions of the T'NaKh, where he lists the forms actually found in the mss, he has a full patah and a ge‘aya.

Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel
Rabbinic Coordinator
The Orthodox Union

Voice (212) 613-8330<tel:(212)%20613-8330>     Fax (212) 613-0718<tel:(212)%20613-0718>     e-mail mandels at ou.org<mailto:mandels at ou.org>

________________________________
From: Jeremy Rosenbaum Simon <jeremy.simon at nyu.edu<mailto:jeremy.simon at nyu.edu>>
Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2018 11:31 AM
To: Mandel, Seth
Cc: mesorah at aishdas.org<mailto:mesorah at aishdas.org>
Subject: Re: [Mesorah] a kleinigkeit

Given that both R. Breuer and Bar Ilan have a chataf parachute, I find it difficult to credit you claim that _all_ ben Asher manuscripts have a full patach. Neither of them would have deviated from Leningrad, which indeed has a full patach, without good support. And dikduk rules would not factor significantly.

Jeremy

On Jan 28, 2018, at 11:11 AM, Mandel, Seth via Mesorah <mesorah at lists.aishdas.org<mailto:mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>> wrote:

I call it that because most people only care about masorah if it changes the meaning or the pronunciation.

But the non-defenestrated denizens of the Mesorah group understand that the masorah is much deeper than such things, and is important in light of the number of rishonim who spent time on it.

So I am mentioning something that I shamefully admit that I was unaware of all my years:

In the pasuq:

יד:יא וַיֹּאמְרוּ, אֶל-מֹשֶׁה הֲמִבְּלִי אֵיןקְבָרִים בְּמִצְרַיִם לְקַחְתָּנוּ לָמוּת בַּמִּדְבָּר, מַה-זֹּאת עָשִׂיתָ לָּנוּ לְהוֹצִיאָנוּ מִמִּצְרָיִם.

regarding the word "hamibb'li," all printed Chumashim have the punctuation as is above, with a hataph-patah under the he'.

However, that is not the puncuation in the kisvei yad that represent the Ben-Asher masorah.  Rather, all of them, without exception have a full patah — WITH a ge‘aya/AKA meteg.  As the meritorious members of this group are aware, that means that the syllable "ha" is lengthened and has a secondary stress.

The Minchas Shai already noticed this issue.  He notes that R. Yonah had it with a full patah, and it is the R'DaQ who says it should be a hataph-patah based on S'faradi mss.  He even goes on to say that there are some who claim that the ms. on which R.Yonah was basing himself was the Aleppo Codex.  That means to me that the Minchas Shay, without being able to decide the matter, attaches serious weight to the view of R. Yonah.

In any event, now we can be certain based on the better mss. that we have.

Prescriptive grammarians, who hold that the he' hash'elah should always have a hataph-patah, of course will be disturbed.  But as we know, the Masorah did not believe in prescriptive grammar, only in descriptive.

Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel
Rabbinic Coordinator
The Orthodox Union

Voice (212) 613-8330<tel:(212)%20613-8330>     Fax (212) 613-0718<tel:(212)%20613-0718>     e-mail mandels at ou.org<mailto:mandels at ou.org>
_______________________________________________
Mesorah mailing list
Mesorah at lists.aishdas.org<mailto:Mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/mesorah-aishdas.org

--
Jeremy R. Simon, MD, PhD, FACEP
Associate Professor of Medicine at CUMC (Emergency Medicine)
Columbia University
Editor, The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Medicine
https://www.routledge.com/products/9781138846791

_______________________________________________
Mesorah mailing list
Mesorah at lists.aishdas.org<mailto:Mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/mesorah-aishdas.org

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/mesorah-aishdas.org/attachments/20180128/f90bee6b/attachment-0005.htm>