[Mesorah] Kimchi's rules

[Simon Montagu]

On Wed, Apr 17, 2019 at 10:58 AM David and Esther Bannett <
dbnet at zahav.net.il> wrote:

>
>
> On 04/17/2019 12:17 AM, rabbirichwolpoe wrote:
> > makes more sense to say that Kimchi, rather than "inventing" anything,
> > systematized and made consistent what existed before him."
>
> To me it seems that R' Kimchi saw the logic of having five pairs of
> vowels. If, as you say, they existed before him, how is it possible that
> the mesorah experts before couldn't see them and many stated clearly
> that there are seven vowels in Hebrew,
>
>

I was basing myself on the fact that, except for kamatz katan and gadol,
the Massoretic text has all of Kimchi's vowels as different graphemes. If,
say, kubutz and shuruk are the same vowel, why are they written differently?

But I am missing too much background information here and no longer have an
opinion.

When we are talking about the Mesorah and the mesorah experts, do we mean
the Massoretic Text of the Tanach and the people who set it down in
writing, or people who wrote books about the text and its language and
grammar? Or are these the same people?
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