Latest / The Podcast of Jewish Ideas / 84. The Mesorah & the Masoretes | Dr. David Moster

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84. The Mesorah & the Masoretes | Dr. David Moster · The Podcast of Jewish Ideas

0:20
Speaker 1: Greetings, friends, and welcome back to the podcast of Jewish
0:22
Speaker 1: Ideas a Torah in motion production i'm jj kimber. When
0:26
Speaker 1: one opens a Hebrew Bible, one notices that, in addition
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Speaker 1: to the letters on the page, there are a whole
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Speaker 1: host of other signs that greet you as well. This
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Speaker 1: includes the vowel signs or niquld underneath the letters. This
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Speaker 1: includes signs for cancellation or singing or reading the text
0:41
Speaker 1: in the synagogue, as well as a series of other
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Speaker 1: notations in the margin that give all sorts of information
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Speaker 1: about the text itself and its correct transmission. These kinds
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Speaker 1: of notation are all generally called the Biblical masura and
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Speaker 1: then have been present on both printed and manuscript's version
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Speaker 1: of the Hebrew Bible for at least the past one
1:00
Speaker 1: thousand years. Today, we shall be doing a deep dive
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Speaker 1: into the nature, purpose, and development of the Biblical mansura
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Speaker 1: and be asking what this history illuminates about Jewish texts
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Speaker 1: and ideas. More generally, Joining us to discuss this important
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Speaker 1: and fascinating topic today is Rabbi doctor David Moster, who
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Speaker 1: is the director of the Biblical Hebrew Program at the
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Speaker 1: Jewish Theological seminary in New York. He is also the
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Speaker 1: founder and director of the Institute of Biblical Culture and
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Speaker 1: runs a YouTube channel type of Biblical Culture, which is
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Speaker 1: a splendid portal into all things Bible and Biblical. Highly recommended, indeed,
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Speaker 1: and it's a pleasure for us to welcome Dr Moster
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Speaker 1: to our podcast today, Doctr Moster.
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Speaker 2: Welcome, Hi, Thank you for having me.
1:38
Speaker 1: Excellent, excellent, Okay, So let's start with some basic definitions.
1:42
Speaker 1: What exactly is the biblical massaura? How can it be
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Speaker 1: defined and identified? What exactly is to be included within
1:49
Speaker 1: this rubik? If you could just give us a basic
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Speaker 1: outline of the basic map of this terrain.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, the massa is fascinating. The massa means tradition,
2:00
Speaker 3: and it's the traditions of the scribes. So if you
2:04
Speaker 3: think of a Biblical text, let's say the Book of Esther,
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Speaker 3: whenever it was written or whoever it was written by,
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Speaker 3: writes it down and then it gets copied over and
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Speaker 3: over and over and over, and then finally it gets
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Speaker 3: to us here today. There were scribes in the middle
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Speaker 3: of that transmission process, and those scribes at a certain
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Speaker 3: date became known as the masteros the ballet Hamasura. So
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Speaker 3: what they did, their main goal was to solve a problem,
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Speaker 3: and this is a problem that all scribes know about,
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Speaker 3: but not to.
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Speaker 2: Site people who read texts.
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Speaker 3: And that's any time you are copying a text that
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Speaker 3: is large, large enough. Once you get to a large
2:43
Speaker 3: enough text, what's going to happen is you're going to
2:45
Speaker 3: have mistakes creeping in. And let's say you copy a text,
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Speaker 3: then you make one hundred mistakes. Then those one hundred
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Speaker 3: mistakes get passed down for the next generation, and the
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Speaker 3: next generation and the next generation. Then all of a sudden,
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Speaker 3: you've got you can go to any two books that
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Speaker 3: are supposed to be the same book, but they're totally different,
3:03
Speaker 3: and there's so many differences between them. And so a
3:06
Speaker 3: group of scribes that we don't know much about. We
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Speaker 3: know only a few of their names, but you can
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Speaker 3: imagine these are hundreds of people, over over hundreds of years,
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Speaker 3: came about and said, we have this tradition of reading
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Speaker 3: the tana. We know how this book is meant to
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Speaker 3: be pronounced, we know how it's meant to be sung,
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Speaker 3: we know how it's meant to be spelled, and we
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Speaker 3: don't want this to be lost. So what we're going
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Speaker 3: to do is support what we already have, and we're
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Speaker 3: going to add material to it.
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Speaker 2: And that's what the masura is.
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Speaker 3: They're adding materials to the biblical texts that weren't written.
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Speaker 3: So for example, when the Book of Esther was written,
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Speaker 3: originally it.
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Speaker 2: Was just consonants, that's all.
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Speaker 3: It was consonants and all the valeves that we know of,
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Speaker 3: all those valwels, and the singing, the cantilation, the trump
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Speaker 3: all of that was added.
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Speaker 2: By the masteries to say this is how you do it. Now.
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Speaker 3: That's part of what the massa is. But in particular
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Speaker 3: than when I find the most fascinating part of the
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Speaker 3: massa are the notes. Because the scribes would write notes
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Speaker 3: on the side of the text to other scribes telling
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Speaker 3: them how to copy the tana without making mistakes, and
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Speaker 3: that was their goal. So they added a great deal
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Speaker 3: of notes to the tanaph and those are known as
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Speaker 3: massoa notes.
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Speaker 1: Could you give us perhaps just one or two examples
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Speaker 1: of what we might mean. So I'm opening up a
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Speaker 1: text of say printed Bible or biobiblical manuscripts, and I
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Speaker 1: see obviously the vowels and the cancelation signs, but you know,
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Speaker 1: you also see these marginal little scribblings. They look like
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Speaker 1: a few letters here and there, perhaps half a sentence
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Speaker 1: a sentence. What would the scribes be saying. What kinds
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Speaker 1: of things are they trying to transmit in those notes?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, so for the first part, most tanahs are not
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Speaker 3: going to have these notes. These are going to be
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Speaker 3: in a very specific kind of tana, and it's going
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Speaker 3: to have that word massaaty in it.
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Speaker 2: There are sometimes you'll see it, like for example, in.
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Speaker 3: The Bariln, the Macropidolote or Ravindic Bible, they have miss
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Speaker 3: er notes in those, But for the most part, a
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Speaker 3: normal tanopha is not.
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Speaker 2: Gonna have these.
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Speaker 3: You're gonna need a very specific tana. And what the
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Speaker 3: massoretic kanopha is going to have is it's going to
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Speaker 3: have a verse, and on the side of the verse
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Speaker 3: will be little shorthand notes that take a while to learn.
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Speaker 2: But after after you.
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Speaker 3: See ten twenty notes, you can actually get the hang
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Speaker 3: of it and you can actually figure out what they're saying,
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Speaker 3: what the scribes are saying. And again these are mostly
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Speaker 3: anonymous scribes.
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Speaker 2: These are from the in the seven hundreds, the eight
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Speaker 2: hundreds into the nine hundreds.
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Speaker 3: We don't know who need these notes, but they started
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Speaker 3: adding them and they started being collected. And so you
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Speaker 3: want an example, so interesting enough, I happen to be
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Speaker 3: writing a tanach in the max theoretic style. This is
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Speaker 3: this is you can see this here on the visual
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Speaker 3: but this is a piece of parchment with Genesis one.
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Speaker 2: And what we have over here is next to in
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Speaker 2: verse two, there is a word one word. It's three letters.
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Speaker 3: And let's just take a moment to just look at
6:11
Speaker 3: what's going on. And the word is toho in the
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Speaker 3: phrase toeho who, which is going to mean like chaos
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Speaker 3: or void in the Great tumult before creation and the
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Speaker 3: word toe who is how many letters is it are
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Speaker 3: in the tana for the word toho three three letters toe,
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Speaker 3: three letters tough, hey, and love.
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Speaker 2: Next to it is a note and the note is
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Speaker 2: a massoretic note.
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Speaker 3: So this didn't come with the tanaka was added and
6:39
Speaker 3: the note says that this appears bet two times. The
6:44
Speaker 3: letter bet stands for the number two. The other example
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Speaker 3: is in the Book of Jeremiah hear me out and
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Speaker 3: so what does that mean? This is spelled this appears twice,
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Speaker 3: so What it means is that this phrase tohu avo
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Speaker 3: appears twice in the Tanath. And what the scribes are
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Speaker 3: doing are linking the two almost like a wormhole, from
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Speaker 3: Genesis to Jeremiah. The two are now connected, they are
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Speaker 3: now inseparable. So the way you spell tohulvo the void
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Speaker 3: and the tumult in Jeremiah is the way you spell
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Speaker 3: it in Genesis, and the way you spell it in
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Speaker 3: Genesis is the way you spelled in Jeremiah. And so
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Speaker 3: now we know how to spell the two. This is
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Speaker 3: what it's meant to be spelled, sollo, just as it
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Speaker 3: is in Jeremiah.
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Speaker 2: And so you say yourself, why is that important? Like
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Speaker 2: it's the second verson in the tanap, Who's gonna make
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Speaker 2: a mistake? Right?
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Speaker 1: Like?
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Speaker 2: Right, Like it's the very second verse, You're going to
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Speaker 2: make a mistake. So the thing is that in the seventeen.
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Speaker 3: Hundreds there were these two fascinating scholars who went about
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Speaker 3: collecting manuscripts. One of them was named Kennicott and the
7:49
Speaker 3: other one was named Darassi, and they had about Kennicott
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Speaker 3: had about six hundred manuscripts, and he went through hundreds
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Speaker 3: and hundreds of nineuscripts, and Drossi had his own, can
8:00
Speaker 3: still see them in the library in Italy. And what
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Speaker 3: these scholars did would say on verse two, where do
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Speaker 3: massoretic tanas?
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Speaker 2: Where is their variant? Do they make a mistake?
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Speaker 3: And on this word, if you go into chemic con,
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Speaker 3: you go into the Darasi, you'll see people are making mistakes.
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Speaker 3: They're spelling tobu with an extra vove tough love hey vive,
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Speaker 3: which is four letters, and the same thing for vogue.
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Speaker 3: So Darrossi and Chemicon are finding people making mistakes in
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Speaker 3: real life. People who actually copy the tanof are making
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Speaker 3: mistakes real scribes. And so what the missour says, you've
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Speaker 3: made a mistake, you need to spell it like you
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Speaker 3: spell it in Jeremiah, and jeremiahs to be spelled here.
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Speaker 3: There should be no vob in either of those.
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Speaker 2: And that's how a masura noteworks fascinating.
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Speaker 1: So these are small notations in the margins at the
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Speaker 1: top or in the margins between the columns that try
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Speaker 1: and minimize mistakes and transmission by by guiding, let's say,
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Speaker 1: describe in how exactly something is to be spelled or vowalizes.
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Speaker 1: This episode, by the way, I just want to make
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Speaker 1: a no one you said, you're right that in most
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Speaker 1: of nowadays we don't have so many master recive notations
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Speaker 1: as the printed However, for example, if you open up
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Speaker 1: many Humasian, you will find that at the end of
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Speaker 1: each parsha there'll be little notations on how many kim
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Speaker 1: and how many letters on each parsha and often and
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Speaker 1: so small notations like that. Those are also master rectic
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Speaker 1: notations that I think have been preserved in the most
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Speaker 1: popular Homasian.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and one of the things that the masters did,
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Speaker 3: they did a lot of things, but one of the
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Speaker 3: things they did was count They loved to counting, and
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Speaker 3: so at the end they'll tell you how many verses
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Speaker 3: are in each parsha and how many and which verse
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Speaker 3: is the center of the book, and so on and
9:40
Speaker 3: so forth. And they did things like that, definitely. But
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Speaker 3: the even though that's in most of Umusium, that is
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Speaker 3: like let's say one percent of the notes, the ninety
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Speaker 3: nine percent are usually not there. But the thing is
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Speaker 3: is that whoever madeor kumash, when you open up, no
9:58
Speaker 3: two bibles are the same. This is this is something
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Speaker 3: that I didn't realize as a kid. But like, there's
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Speaker 3: no two taps that are exactly the same. They're going
10:07
Speaker 3: to have lots of differences. You just need to look
10:09
Speaker 3: closely enough to find them. And so whoever major a
10:12
Speaker 3: flumage is using a certain massoretic codex to put that
10:17
Speaker 3: stuff in, and it's different between one codex to the other.
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Speaker 3: So wherever they got that from, that actually comes from
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Speaker 3: an actual text that was written by ascribe.
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Speaker 1: Oh fascinating. Let's dive a little bit into the history
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Speaker 1: of these because, as you mentioned, those who created this
10:35
Speaker 1: system of vowels and cantillation, marks and notations of the margin,
10:39
Speaker 1: et cetera, they they were at a certain time, in
10:42
Speaker 1: a certain place. And so so I mean, let's let's
10:46
Speaker 1: go back. It was originally the case, let's say that
10:49
Speaker 1: biblical texts that we had written down did not have
10:53
Speaker 1: these right and this was the case in the ancient period,
10:55
Speaker 1: in the classical period until describes a certain point side
10:59
Speaker 1: to change it. So took us through this a little bit,
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Speaker 1: until when or what points did did we have unpointed, unvowed, uncancelated,
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Speaker 1: unnoted manuscripts? And then at what point and where you know, where? When,
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Speaker 1: how what are the circumstances in which these masterots decided
11:15
Speaker 1: to sort of to to try and systematize this.
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Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean, if you go far way far
11:21
Speaker 3: back enough, we have inscriptions from antient Israel, which suggests
11:25
Speaker 3: that there weren't there weren't even necessarily spaces between words.
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Speaker 3: You would just have like a whole string of consonants.
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Speaker 2: But all this text that we have for the Tana,
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Speaker 2: like actual texts of the Tana are the Dead Sea scrolls,
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Speaker 2: And in the Dead Sea scrolls you have just consonants.
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Speaker 3: So grace ship, there's no there's no under the first bet,
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Speaker 3: there's no dot in the bed. It's just very cheap
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Speaker 3: with the letters bet tough.
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Speaker 2: That's how. That's how you can do it.
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Speaker 3: And so in the Dead Sea scrolls we have just consonants,
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Speaker 3: but we also see scribes like there.
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Speaker 2: Anyone can go right now on.
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Speaker 3: Just google the Great Isaiah Scroll and take a look online.
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Speaker 3: You can actually see if you go through the Isaiah Scroll,
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Speaker 3: there are words that have little dots on top of them,
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Speaker 3: for example, and these dots on top of those words,
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Speaker 3: when you look in your tanap you see they don't appear.
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Speaker 2: So what do the dots mean?
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Speaker 3: I mean, this word needs to be taken out so
12:23
Speaker 3: scribes are saying this word was a mistake. They're putting
12:26
Speaker 3: in little scribal notations. And there's also places where things
12:30
Speaker 3: were left out that they'll write in the verses that
12:33
Speaker 3: should have been there on the side and the margins.
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Speaker 2: And so you can see scribes, actual scribes in the
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Speaker 2: Dead Sea.
12:39
Speaker 3: Scrolls working with the text, making mistakes, making corrections, And
12:44
Speaker 3: this is how copying works with real people at real texts.
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Speaker 3: There's always going to be problems, there are always need pumps.
12:52
Speaker 3: So after that, after the n C scrolls, which were
12:55
Speaker 3: just consonants, the next text we have are massatic texts.
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Speaker 3: So we're talking about the nine hundreds, you want to
13:02
Speaker 3: push it back to the eight hundreds, the thousands in
13:06
Speaker 3: this period, the text that we actually have are all
13:10
Speaker 3: almost fully formed or mostly formed. So you have most
13:14
Speaker 3: vowels written in, not all vowels at the beginning, but
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Speaker 3: most vowels written in. And then you'll also have cancelation
13:21
Speaker 3: put in.
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Speaker 2: And so where do we go from the.
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Speaker 3: Dead Sea Scrolls, where there's nothing but consonants all of
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Speaker 3: a sudden, to the eight hundreds.
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Speaker 2: You can even imagine the.
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Speaker 3: Seven hundreds, all of a sudden in the nine hundreds
13:34
Speaker 3: where you have actual tons with nikkud with the vowelation,
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Speaker 3: the vowels as well as the amim the trump which
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Speaker 3: is the cantillation. So somewhere in between those periods the
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Speaker 3: Dead Sea scrolls right around the turn of the millennium
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Speaker 3: from minus one hundred up to up to the year seventy,
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Speaker 3: and then all of a sudden you're going to have
13:58
Speaker 3: you'll also have jump seven eight hundred years in between them.
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Speaker 3: The scribes, they were the ones who.
14:03
Speaker 1: Had in it right, And of course there was more
14:08
Speaker 1: than one school of described and so perhaps you could
14:10
Speaker 1: let us know a little bit about this. I mean,
14:12
Speaker 1: some of our listeners may have heard that the names
14:15
Speaker 1: ben Asher, benaf Tali, for instance, but can tell us
14:18
Speaker 1: a bit about the different schools that existed and the
14:20
Speaker 1: different systems they came up with. Was there wasn't only
14:23
Speaker 1: one system to vowalize the text, for instance, and write
14:27
Speaker 1: the text. So what do we know about the different
14:30
Speaker 1: forms of textual production and notation that took place in
14:34
Speaker 1: you know, sixth to tenth century or whenever this was
14:37
Speaker 1: supposed to have taken place, right, So this is like
14:39
Speaker 1: this is.
14:40
Speaker 2: Kind of like a fish in water. This is a
14:42
Speaker 2: fish node. They're in water. They know what water is.
14:46
Speaker 2: We usually anybody who started with draft today we tend
14:49
Speaker 2: to think this is the master to not but it's
14:52
Speaker 2: actually the system of.
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Speaker 3: One group of master It's from Tiberius to Varia, and
14:59
Speaker 3: the on the Galilee and so on the Quinaria, and
15:02
Speaker 3: so what we have here is like one system, but
15:04
Speaker 3: there were other systems, like for example, the Babylonians had
15:08
Speaker 3: their way of vocalizing and singing, and they also had
15:13
Speaker 3: an entirely different system that would look foreign to us,
15:17
Speaker 3: but they would actually put the vowels at the top
15:19
Speaker 3: of the line, not underneath. Most of our valuels are
15:22
Speaker 3: underneath the letter. They would put the valels at the
15:24
Speaker 3: top at Jats. We actually have a few of these
15:26
Speaker 3: manuscripts from Bovel and we actually look at these and
15:30
Speaker 3: compare how the vowel of the Babylonian system compared to
15:34
Speaker 3: the vowels of the Tiberian system.
15:36
Speaker 2: And in Israel. It wasn't just in Siberia.
15:38
Speaker 3: There was also a greater knowledge of Hebrew in Israel,
15:42
Speaker 3: and so there was also other Israeli so to speak,
15:47
Speaker 3: in Israel systems as well.
15:49
Speaker 2: Of the master eats.
15:51
Speaker 3: Then there were some groups of Tiberians, for example, and
15:56
Speaker 3: the most famous one of the benas Cheer and the
15:59
Speaker 3: Ben not Tali. You can imagine there was a person
16:01
Speaker 3: named Asha and a person named not Pully, but their
16:05
Speaker 3: first name is Perhaps, and the and the school became
16:10
Speaker 3: known after them. And what the masteris what they would
16:14
Speaker 3: do is they would sit, they would preserve great lists,
16:17
Speaker 3: a magnificent list of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
16:20
Speaker 3: examples of where one group, the Bena Cheer family do
16:25
Speaker 3: one way and the other.
16:27
Speaker 2: Group, Benda Pully do another way.
16:30
Speaker 3: Now, in most cases it's not like they have one
16:33
Speaker 3: word in the tanap and the one does not have
16:35
Speaker 3: the other word. No, it's usually about what's the vowel
16:38
Speaker 3: and where is the cancelation mark. These are most of
16:41
Speaker 3: those differences. And interestingly enough, there was a person in
16:45
Speaker 3: eighteen hundreds who compiled all of this. And it's too
16:50
Speaker 3: you wrote your dissertation about is Christian David Ginsford, and
16:55
Speaker 3: this is how we met. Actually was speaking about him,
16:58
Speaker 3: and so you can actually go and see, well, where
17:01
Speaker 3: what are all the differences between the two and in
17:05
Speaker 3: particular the benas Cher family one out at least it
17:09
Speaker 3: was the most popular among the scribes. And so even
17:12
Speaker 3: though I told you no two texts are the same,
17:14
Speaker 3: there are absolutely no two texts that have ever been
17:17
Speaker 3: written enough that are exactly the same. The ben Asher
17:20
Speaker 3: family scribes preferred them, and of them they preferred one scribe,
17:26
Speaker 3: in particular, arm Banasher.
17:28
Speaker 2: And his text.
17:30
Speaker 3: You could almost think of it as the Mona Lisa
17:33
Speaker 3: of Bibles, right, this is the one above all others.
17:36
Speaker 3: His text became known as the Eleppa Podex, became in
17:41
Speaker 3: many for many centuries, the most important text for people
17:44
Speaker 3: to check, and that became.
17:45
Speaker 2: The messer texts.
17:47
Speaker 3: Even though there's really no such thing as the it
17:49
Speaker 3: became the best known of them.
17:52
Speaker 2: Right.
17:52
Speaker 1: So there's a few things you mentioned that. The first
17:54
Speaker 1: is it is actually fascinating. The Babylonian system has the
17:57
Speaker 1: vowels above the woods. I recommend to anyone who can
18:00
Speaker 1: and does want to see it. It's sort of a
18:02
Speaker 1: slightly head spinning, you know, you feel like you've entered
18:05
Speaker 1: some kind of you know, beyond the looking glass situation
18:08
Speaker 1: where you pick up a Hebrew text and all the
18:09
Speaker 1: males have risen to the top of the letter, like
18:12
Speaker 1: what you know you can, but you also can't and
18:15
Speaker 1: it's very strange.
18:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, come join our Hebrew class. We'll look We'll look
18:19
Speaker 3: at them in real life, you know, not on the computer.
18:21
Speaker 3: We actually we actually get to see them, right.
18:23
Speaker 2: And then read through them.
18:24
Speaker 1: Yes, one hundred percent. And the second thing you imagined. Yes,
18:27
Speaker 1: of course I do have a tolerable working knowledge of
18:31
Speaker 1: the life and works of Christian David Ginsberg, having you know,
18:33
Speaker 1: written a couple hundred thousand words on the topic in
18:36
Speaker 1: my dissertation. But yes, he was. He was the great
18:39
Speaker 1: nineteenth century compiler of these various texts and most importantly
18:43
Speaker 1: the subtle differences between the different schools, different manuscripts, and
18:46
Speaker 1: everything that we have have with that, I'm sure to
18:51
Speaker 1: ask a question, and I don't know to what extent
18:54
Speaker 1: we know about this, But of course these texts and
18:57
Speaker 1: these scribal traditions were being compiled in seventh, eighth, tenth century.
19:00
Speaker 1: It was also, of course a time of difference or
19:03
Speaker 1: of splitting, of splitting off between Rabnite and Karaite traditions, right,
19:08
Speaker 1: and then Rabbnite and Karenite communities. And I was asking,
19:12
Speaker 1: I know there are various theories on the subject, but
19:14
Speaker 1: is it possible to map some of the scribes and
19:17
Speaker 1: subscriber communities onto this differentiation Rabbinis and Karaites. Do we
19:22
Speaker 1: know to what extent some of these scribes may have
19:25
Speaker 1: been may have had allegiances to one or the other.
19:27
Speaker 3: Right, So yeah, we want to avoid the economy that
19:31
Speaker 3: the Karaite Jews they were into the Tonah and the
19:34
Speaker 3: Rabinite qeu's were not, or that the Rabbinite Jews were
19:38
Speaker 3: interpreting Tanah and the charac Ques were not right. There
19:42
Speaker 3: was definitely a lot of free ideas going around, but
19:48
Speaker 3: there are suggestions, and we are talking about a group
19:51
Speaker 3: of people who were hyper focused on to Nah alone.
19:55
Speaker 3: There's no rabbinics in the within the actual mesurer notes
20:01
Speaker 3: it's in some cases like for example, you open up
20:05
Speaker 3: a master Tanak, you're almost guaranteed that it's not going
20:08
Speaker 3: to follow the order of the Talmud, only like ten
20:11
Speaker 3: fifteen followed the Talmud right. So they're definitely not a
20:15
Speaker 3: slight strong rabbit Nites. But you could even suggest that
20:19
Speaker 3: it's been suggested by many that many or even most
20:24
Speaker 3: of the scribes in this world, or possibly Karaites, or
20:30
Speaker 3: at least running and carriat circles. And that's what kind
20:35
Speaker 3: of makes Arnbacher such a fascinating character, because he got
20:39
Speaker 3: the smell of approval from one rabbit Nite who is
20:43
Speaker 3: arguably the most important rabbit Knight rabbi to ever live,
20:47
Speaker 3: or one of them at least Matt Rushmoreworthy is my.
20:50
Speaker 2: Mom is run Bomb.
20:51
Speaker 3: And so when Rambam said that, hey, this is how
20:53
Speaker 3: you write a power scroll, and you know there's all
20:56
Speaker 3: this confusion about the paragraphs, I went in Egypt and
20:59
Speaker 3: I found this one really important book by this really
21:01
Speaker 3: important scribe that kind of gave the seal of approval
21:05
Speaker 3: and no one looked back. So even if Vana Shiera
21:08
Speaker 3: was a cow right, I don't think it would matter
21:11
Speaker 3: to anyone in the Rabbitite circles.
21:13
Speaker 2: So but yeah, this is this is a good question.
21:16
Speaker 3: But also part of the part of the issue with
21:19
Speaker 3: the scribes are we we don't even know most of
21:22
Speaker 3: these people's names, so's it's really hard to say, like
21:26
Speaker 3: what were there, what were their beliefs about Judaism? You know,
21:30
Speaker 3: we really we really know what they wrote. They left
21:33
Speaker 3: us this great and this is a great treasury, and
21:37
Speaker 3: like we're right now in like.
21:39
Speaker 2: A golden age of study with this Masura stuff.
21:42
Speaker 3: Like I honestly think this is the most exciting part
21:45
Speaker 3: of icle studies right now. And it all has to
21:47
Speaker 3: do with manuscripts because nowadays, you know, let's say there's
21:51
Speaker 3: a manuscript in England, so that somebody in England uploads
21:55
Speaker 3: it to their website, and now all of a sudden,
21:58
Speaker 3: someone does the same in Russia, they do the same
21:59
Speaker 3: in the less and all of a sudden we all
22:01
Speaker 3: have access to the thousands of manuscripts and we can
22:05
Speaker 3: all see what this group of people are doing. And
22:07
Speaker 3: that's really an exciting thing that's happening right now.
22:11
Speaker 1: I actually I agree with you funnily enough, and I
22:14
Speaker 1: think that the more or let's put it this way,
22:16
Speaker 1: every single time a new Biblical manuscript, a preprinted manuscript
22:20
Speaker 1: is discovered somewhere in the world, that opens up the
22:23
Speaker 1: door for new discoveries in the world of masura. And
22:25
Speaker 1: you know, well, you know what order did they follow,
22:28
Speaker 1: and what notations did they have and did they not have,
22:30
Speaker 1: and you know their vowels and the division of the
22:32
Speaker 1: succi and all of this. Every single Bible, as you mentioned,
22:35
Speaker 1: it has subtle difference and for sometimes very subtle differences
22:38
Speaker 1: the differences nonetheless, and so it just every new discovery
22:41
Speaker 1: opens up a new vista. It's it's a really fascinating field.
22:44
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, and it's observable. Like I love biblical studies.
22:48
Speaker 3: I've been studying to not for many eight years, and
22:52
Speaker 3: I've often sat in the lecture and somebody has given
22:55
Speaker 3: the lecture and Biblical studies, and they're saying, I believe
22:58
Speaker 3: that this particular text was by an editor, or this
23:02
Speaker 3: particular text used to have something that was deleted by
23:05
Speaker 3: an editor, and so that's the theory, and mirroring the audience,
23:09
Speaker 3: you're just left to say, Okay, maybe maybe not, that's
23:12
Speaker 3: an interesting idea.
23:14
Speaker 2: Perhaps when it comes to when it comes to Masoura.
23:17
Speaker 3: And kind of looking at the nuts and bolts of
23:19
Speaker 3: the actual PanAm, you can see, hey, look this scribe
23:22
Speaker 3: originally underneath something was written.
23:25
Speaker 2: It was crossed off. You can see it scratched out.
23:28
Speaker 2: You can see the new word on top.
23:30
Speaker 3: You can see the scribe wrote you'd hey, Bubney removed
23:34
Speaker 3: it and then wrote all a dollid nine right, And.
23:37
Speaker 2: So you can actually see the theory. You don't have
23:40
Speaker 2: to do.
23:40
Speaker 3: It's not just the theory that oh, maybe this was
23:42
Speaker 3: here you can see it with your own eyes, and
23:44
Speaker 3: if anybody wants to start looking and exploring, there is
23:47
Speaker 3: a website called Pete Ativ. It's by the National Library
23:52
Speaker 3: of Israel, and they have thousands and thousands.
23:55
Speaker 2: Of Hebrew manuscripts. I think they have something like three
23:58
Speaker 2: hundred thousand Hebrew manuscripts period, and of those, I think
24:02
Speaker 2: they have about one or two thousand to maths complete,
24:05
Speaker 2: and then there hundreds and thousands of more partial parts
24:09
Speaker 2: of the to map and also things like the Tiragonus that.
24:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating. And also one of the things
24:15
Speaker 1: you mentioned, it's oddly this kind of almost democratic system
24:20
Speaker 1: because of course, you know, as you said, we don't
24:23
Speaker 1: really know who these scribes are. We don't we know
24:25
Speaker 1: very very few of the names, maybe a dozen certain
24:27
Speaker 1: names maybe, But over the centuries, more and more manuscripts
24:31
Speaker 1: are produced, and you just see a sort of a
24:34
Speaker 1: development by thousands of anonymous It's it's really it's an amazing,
24:39
Speaker 1: amazing field.
24:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and there's a lot of chance that goes
24:43
Speaker 2: into it.
24:43
Speaker 3: Like we spoke about the Alepo Codax, the Leper codecs
24:46
Speaker 3: is the most important to math that.
24:48
Speaker 2: We have today, and you know, it was almost completely lost.
24:52
Speaker 2: We only have two thirds of it.
24:54
Speaker 3: About it was almost completely lost. There's a there's an
24:56
Speaker 3: excellent book which tells the story of how that happens.
24:59
Speaker 2: From the other codex. But but the actual we we
25:03
Speaker 2: have two thirds of it.
25:04
Speaker 3: That's what we got, you know, And that's my chance.
25:08
Speaker 3: And right now we all the scribes, what we've seen
25:12
Speaker 3: them kind of coalesced around arm.
25:13
Speaker 2: Than a share.
25:14
Speaker 3: But when our bencher was living, scribes were talking about
25:17
Speaker 3: other books that are now lost to us. It was
25:20
Speaker 3: the Safer Muga corrected book, which is gone.
25:23
Speaker 2: We don't know where it is. It's gone, like that
25:25
Speaker 2: was the.
25:26
Speaker 3: Most important book amongst the early masters. And then at
25:31
Speaker 3: JTS we have a manuscript by a very important scribe
25:33
Speaker 3: called Estralla. Sofair Is describe and he says that I
25:38
Speaker 3: when he had like he wasn't sure what to do.
25:39
Speaker 3: He said, I saw in the Hillali Codex.
25:42
Speaker 2: This is what they wrote. You're like, what's the Heilley Codex?
25:44
Speaker 3: That was an important to not that we don't have anymore.
25:48
Speaker 3: So there's it's democratic, but it's also by chance.
25:50
Speaker 2: What do we got? That's that's really it's like the
25:54
Speaker 2: it's its own history.
25:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, survived and what didn't Let me ask you the
25:58
Speaker 1: following question, are there other reasons for the master reads
26:03
Speaker 1: to write the notes that they write? So the general
26:05
Speaker 1: explanation given is that it's all about preservation and transmission
26:08
Speaker 1: of the text, right, and so so my question is
26:11
Speaker 1: is that the sum total of the motivation or of
26:14
Speaker 1: the of the purpose of these massareting notes. Are there
26:16
Speaker 1: other things that they're trying to do here? Is there
26:19
Speaker 1: space to say that the musura also verges on biblical
26:22
Speaker 1: interpretation at some point? In other words, is this preservation
26:25
Speaker 1: entirely neutral? What else is going on here aside from
26:28
Speaker 1: just saying like, hey, listen, you know there are twelve
26:30
Speaker 1: times in the tenough that this word is spelt this way.
26:33
Speaker 3: So yeah, the scribers do add So I don't consider
26:35
Speaker 3: them interpreters in the same way that Rashi or even
26:40
Speaker 3: Ezra are like, Hey, I'm going to tell you about
26:42
Speaker 3: this book and how to solve things in it. But
26:44
Speaker 3: the thing is that what the master reets do do
26:48
Speaker 3: is kind of like the kindle for the fire of interpretation.
26:53
Speaker 3: So let's go back to that example I said. I said,
26:55
Speaker 3: if you're on the first verse a second versus Kana,
26:58
Speaker 3: you don't know that Jeremiah exists with the words tohu vavo, this,
27:03
Speaker 3: this null and void, this this chaos. Right, but now
27:07
Speaker 3: describe is saying this word toevvo exists in Jeremiah. And
27:11
Speaker 3: now all of a sudden you're saying, okay, what connects
27:13
Speaker 3: these two verses? So it actually kind of brings intertextual interpretation.
27:18
Speaker 3: It kind of connects them and it's up to you
27:20
Speaker 3: to kind of make those decisions. Or like on the
27:23
Speaker 3: first word bere sheet and it appears five times, so
27:26
Speaker 3: the other four times, how does it function?
27:28
Speaker 2: How does it work?
27:29
Speaker 3: So if you know those other four you can translate
27:33
Speaker 3: beorra sheet in a very new and unusual way. There's
27:37
Speaker 3: always been a debate how to translate bary sheet. Is
27:39
Speaker 3: it in the beginning period or in the beginning of
27:42
Speaker 3: So if you're looking at the other four versus, you
27:44
Speaker 3: might get that oven there there's the other four versus
27:46
Speaker 3: suggests that and so it's it's.
27:49
Speaker 2: Like the fuel. But they also do something I like
27:51
Speaker 2: to I like to think about like strolling through the
27:54
Speaker 2: Tanakh with the mass threats, Like you ever walk with
27:56
Speaker 2: someone and you know it's not the most important thing.
27:59
Speaker 2: But walk and you say, oh, this house, that's where
28:02
Speaker 2: such and such happens, or like, oh, this corner, you know,
28:06
Speaker 2: this is like one of three corners that does this,
28:08
Speaker 2: where you'll see this. The masteris won't do that.
28:11
Speaker 3: They'll say this verse, this word appears the first time
28:14
Speaker 3: at the beginning of the verse seven times.
28:17
Speaker 2: And they'll do things like that, And so there are
28:20
Speaker 2: cases where they'll add.
28:21
Speaker 3: Things that aren't necessarily interpretation, but they just show you
28:24
Speaker 3: their viewpoint. My favorite note in the Masteries. I didn't
28:28
Speaker 3: understand this until I was started describing myself. But there's
28:31
Speaker 3: only there's only a few notes that get usually artistic
28:34
Speaker 3: details in the manuscripts, and so one of them is
28:37
Speaker 3: usually the partsha the beginning of the partial we get
28:40
Speaker 3: an a nice note, a nice you know, flourish.
28:44
Speaker 2: But another one is the.
28:45
Speaker 3: Note that says Katzi half of the book, and like
28:50
Speaker 3: I always wonder, like why are these getting all these
28:52
Speaker 3: nice flourishes? To you reading the book, it might not
28:54
Speaker 3: be a big deal that you're at the halfway point,
28:56
Speaker 3: but to you writing the book, that's a great motivation.
29:00
Speaker 2: You reached half way keep.
29:02
Speaker 3: Going, You're now like halfway through, so they'll add their own,
29:06
Speaker 3: their own characteristics. And every once in a while you
29:09
Speaker 3: would see a note talking the first person, like I
29:12
Speaker 3: think X Y is your eyes saw on that. But
29:15
Speaker 3: for the most part these are anonymous. These are generally
29:18
Speaker 3: not flashy. They're just saying, hey, this word appears this way,
29:23
Speaker 3: don't mess it up. Do not mess this word up.
29:25
Speaker 3: This is how it's supposed to be.
29:26
Speaker 2: That's what they're about, all right, fair enough?
29:29
Speaker 1: And you know you mentioned, you mentioned that the massart
29:32
Speaker 1: is kind of fuel for the fire of late interpreters
29:35
Speaker 1: rashive and as, etcetera. So I mean, I guess it's
29:37
Speaker 1: a very large question, so take it how you want.
29:39
Speaker 1: But what would be I say, the relationship between Rashia
29:42
Speaker 1: and Ezra and and and the massoretic notations and traditions
29:46
Speaker 1: and you know, the vowels, the cancelation marketcetera. Did these
29:49
Speaker 1: later I mean later by comparison interpreters, some of the
29:55
Speaker 1: great you know, the great parson him of of Vittoria
29:57
Speaker 1: and the Tona. Did they see themselves as down and
30:00
Speaker 1: buy them massoretic notations? Did they relate to them at all?
30:03
Speaker 1: Did they take note of them? Was it? Did it
30:05
Speaker 1: form part of their pression, part of the interpretation. I mean,
30:09
Speaker 1: how how does one characterize the relationship between between these
30:12
Speaker 1: two endeavors.
30:13
Speaker 2: Let's say that's interesting.
30:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the thing about these notes is I can't
30:21
Speaker 3: think of and maybe maybe your listeners can think of examples,
30:25
Speaker 3: but I can't think of an example where Rashi or
30:27
Speaker 3: the Deezra says I saw in a massoretic note that
30:32
Speaker 3: this should be written this way three times, et cetera.
30:35
Speaker 3: But what often happens is that Rashi or even Ezra
30:39
Speaker 3: are trying to explain to you their reading. So even Ezra,
30:44
Speaker 3: they use different grammatical terms than we do, so it.
30:47
Speaker 2: Could sometimes be confusing.
30:48
Speaker 3: But even Ezra might say the fact that there's a
30:51
Speaker 3: come ops here the awe that tells you it's a niphal,
30:55
Speaker 3: and therefore this is how you should read this. And
30:58
Speaker 3: Rashi will also grapple with the vowels and like, for example,
31:02
Speaker 3: on the very first word, while she on bury sheet
31:04
Speaker 3: offers an alternative.
31:06
Speaker 2: Theory instead of very sheet, it should.
31:07
Speaker 3: Be boring sheet in the beginning, and so or a
31:12
Speaker 3: bury sheet burrow in the beginning of creating, which are
31:15
Speaker 3: different ways of pointing These first two words brace sheet burrowh. So,
31:19
Speaker 3: so what Rash's grappling with the interpretation is essentially often
31:24
Speaker 3: with the vowels that were passed down. Another issue that
31:27
Speaker 3: actually comes up sometimes I never collected these, but people
31:31
Speaker 3: have made a whole collection of these. Is that a
31:33
Speaker 3: lot of times in Rashie or in Ezra, or even
31:36
Speaker 3: in the Tolerad, there'll be somebody making a point about
31:39
Speaker 3: a specific word and that word will look different in
31:44
Speaker 3: them in their minds than what we see in our tinax.
31:48
Speaker 2: And so you actually see there are.
31:49
Speaker 3: Variations between how to spell things. And this is what
31:52
Speaker 3: the masterets we're trying to stop. We're trying to say, hey,
31:55
Speaker 3: that is a mistake the way you're reading it. Keep
31:57
Speaker 3: it the way it is, this is the way it is,
31:58
Speaker 3: this is the way we should do it. And depending
32:01
Speaker 3: on your edition of Rashi, they'll either be a note
32:03
Speaker 3: at the bottom that says, oh, Rashie had an extra
32:05
Speaker 3: hay here or was missing a hey, or had an
32:07
Speaker 3: extra above or missing above, or had a different vowel,
32:10
Speaker 3: things like that. So it comes up in every single
32:13
Speaker 3: aspect of their interpretation without necessarily I'm saying quoting the masteries.
32:17
Speaker 3: If that makes sense masteries are really behind the scenes.
32:20
Speaker 3: That's that's why you can print it to enough. Every
32:23
Speaker 3: printed to enough that exists, whether it's core and it's
32:25
Speaker 3: art scroll, whoever it is, everyone the ability of brain
32:29
Speaker 3: restrict it doesn't matter every single tenoph This is essentially
32:32
Speaker 3: coming from manuscripts, and manuscripts were written by scribes, and
32:37
Speaker 3: really what was their massa?
32:38
Speaker 2: What was there? What was their approach to all of
32:41
Speaker 2: this is really what it's all about.
32:44
Speaker 1: Interesting which takes it neatly to perhaps the pivotal event
32:50
Speaker 1: possibly in the history of the massaura, which is the
32:53
Speaker 1: publication was setting enough And this ton was published in
32:56
Speaker 1: Venice in fifteen twenty five and it had a sort
32:59
Speaker 1: of adnder with the collection of other massura published by
33:03
Speaker 1: a man called Yako or the editor was Jakoba Kayem
33:07
Speaker 1: sometimes and also as ibn Ad Yahoo. And this in
33:11
Speaker 1: a certain way is sort of a hinge moment in
33:13
Speaker 1: the history of the massura. Sore perhaps walk us through
33:15
Speaker 1: this What was this tonight? Why was it so important?
33:18
Speaker 1: Why was it published? What was its effect? And am
33:21
Speaker 1: I correct essentially in describing it as this is this
33:24
Speaker 1: great landmark moment in the history of the mast has
33:27
Speaker 1: I studies.
33:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so great that if any of your listeners
33:30
Speaker 3: happen to like, go to their bookshelf and look if
33:33
Speaker 3: they have one. If you have a fifteen twenty five
33:37
Speaker 3: Ben Kayema, that's that's.
33:41
Speaker 2: Easily one hundred thousand dollars easily. You know, we're talking real.
33:44
Speaker 1: This is this is it.
33:46
Speaker 3: This is the most important Hebrew printed book arguably or
33:49
Speaker 3: at least one of them, without a doubt. So something
33:53
Speaker 3: changed with the printing press. So what happened was with
33:57
Speaker 3: the printing press, you no longer needed to describe the copy.
34:00
Speaker 2: That was one thing, so all of a.
34:01
Speaker 3: Sudden, describes are less important. The second thing that happened
34:05
Speaker 3: was there were issues with typeface. You know, even just
34:08
Speaker 3: putting in vowels on Hebrew is very difficult. Now you're
34:11
Speaker 3: gonna put in vowels and cantilation, and now you're gonna
34:15
Speaker 3: tell me you want to have little circles that point
34:17
Speaker 3: to notes, and now you're gonna have more and more notes.
34:20
Speaker 3: So the first printings of the Tanaf at the beginning
34:23
Speaker 3: of printing left out for the Starodox, and they also
34:26
Speaker 3: happened to have been excessively poor in terms of their quality.
34:30
Speaker 2: There were many many mistakes.
34:32
Speaker 3: Listen, like I told you, every tanophas gonna have mistakes,
34:35
Speaker 3: but there's only so much people can take.
34:37
Speaker 2: So there was there were these big problems with the
34:40
Speaker 2: first printings.
34:41
Speaker 3: And then out of the press in Menice Bonder Express
34:45
Speaker 3: they came out with the Macro. You go look, they're
34:47
Speaker 3: a bitic bible. It's known as the second Orvetic Bible,
34:50
Speaker 3: and it was different because it was the first one
34:54
Speaker 3: that actually looked.
34:55
Speaker 2: At massoretic treatises and Massoretic codeses to really come up
35:01
Speaker 2: with was essentially a neglected text. What time.
35:05
Speaker 3: He didn't say, here's my one text, I'm gonna copy it.
35:07
Speaker 3: He said, I'm gonna If I sense a mistake and
35:10
Speaker 3: the other ones are better, I'm gonna go with the
35:12
Speaker 3: other ones. And he followed the Masaronic advice as.
35:15
Speaker 2: He had it.
35:16
Speaker 3: And he also printed a lot of this the massa
35:19
Speaker 3: into the text itself. So these are all very important
35:23
Speaker 3: things in their own right. This is the first time
35:26
Speaker 3: Massorro was printed, at least I believe it was the
35:29
Speaker 3: first time that sera was printed. But like we spoke
35:32
Speaker 3: about the chances of history, this became the Tanah. So
35:39
Speaker 3: anytime you have anybody quoting Tanak for three and a
35:43
Speaker 3: half centuries after fifteen twenty five in Hebrew, especially if
35:47
Speaker 3: they're Jewish, they're using the Tanach of Ben Kheim. It
35:52
Speaker 3: was so important that like when afterwards, I have a
35:56
Speaker 3: great Polyglock Bible. But the great Polyglock Bibles had many
35:59
Speaker 3: language is, but the Hebrew texts that the one that
36:02
Speaker 3: I am is it's using the Ben Kayen addition. So
36:06
Speaker 3: everybody's using this text. And so the thing what happened
36:09
Speaker 3: is remember those I told you about toe avou? Should
36:12
Speaker 3: it be three letters or four? So Ben Kayen tried
36:16
Speaker 3: his best. He did this entire Tanah, I mean in
36:20
Speaker 3: under two years time, came out with this amazing job,
36:25
Speaker 3: but has hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
36:28
Speaker 3: examples that go against the master writic notes. So Ben
36:33
Speaker 3: Kayum's texts, even though it was the best by far
36:36
Speaker 3: from the printed it actually led to many mistakes.
36:40
Speaker 2: And that's why to this day, if you if you
36:42
Speaker 2: line up.
36:42
Speaker 3: Any too tannas, if you take an art school and
36:45
Speaker 3: a JPS or or a car whatever Hebrew tonop you're using,
36:50
Speaker 3: especially even older ones like from the sixties and the
36:53
Speaker 3: fifties of the last century. You'll see if you know
36:55
Speaker 3: where to look, you'll find words that are completely different,
36:59
Speaker 3: completely different, like in one in one in one case
37:02
Speaker 3: it's going to say stik righteous and the other case
37:05
Speaker 3: is can say ares land which is it is a land?
37:08
Speaker 2: Or arts which isn't It depends.
37:10
Speaker 3: If you're following Ben Kayen, it's gonna be I don't
37:13
Speaker 3: know which one was which, but sec And if you're
37:16
Speaker 3: following other maguscripts, it's going to be arts.
37:19
Speaker 2: And that was the So there's been a great revolution
37:22
Speaker 2: in the field. It started in academic biblical studies, but
37:25
Speaker 2: now it's all over just regular Judaism.
37:28
Speaker 3: Is that Ben Kayen has fallen out of fashion. Why
37:33
Speaker 3: what's wrong with Ben Kayne? Because it's an eclectic text.
37:37
Speaker 3: So he's telling you, he said, I looked at these
37:39
Speaker 3: hundred manuscripts, and I think this is the one. This
37:43
Speaker 3: is the right way for this word, and this is
37:45
Speaker 3: the right way for that word, and this is right
37:46
Speaker 3: for this word. And now and he's essentially making a noose,
37:49
Speaker 3: a new version. It's a new creation. I don't want
37:52
Speaker 3: to say it's like a Frankenstein from giant pieces.
37:54
Speaker 2: Here, but it's like it was something that's new. There
37:57
Speaker 2: was no text before it that looked exactly we like it.
38:01
Speaker 3: And so nowadays in biblical studies, what we do is
38:04
Speaker 3: we start with one text or what most popular editions do.
38:08
Speaker 3: If you start with the texts, either the Aleppo Codex
38:11
Speaker 3: and you try to recreate the missing part, or there's
38:15
Speaker 3: a the lenning Grad Codex, which is another more popular choice.
38:19
Speaker 3: And the land Grad Codecs is in Russia and it
38:21
Speaker 3: is a complete Tanah and it's the oldest complete Tanach
38:25
Speaker 3: that we have, and so that is another choice. So
38:30
Speaker 3: I think Corey, if I remember, was a little bit
38:32
Speaker 3: of an eclectic and I'm not sure, but JPS might
38:37
Speaker 3: be on the Leningrad and then you'll find many other editions.
38:42
Speaker 3: The most soner of cook editions are focused on Kleppo
38:45
Speaker 3: and things like that. So that's that's what happens. So
38:49
Speaker 3: it basically that Tanah from fifteen to twenty five changed everything,
38:53
Speaker 3: and about three hundred and fifty years later the field
38:56
Speaker 3: started going back slowly to manuscripts. And now everyone's doing manuscripts,
39:00
Speaker 3: whether you know it or not. Everybody you have you're
39:03
Speaker 3: in the introduction, it will say this is where this
39:05
Speaker 3: tonap comes from and in all likelihood it's a manuscript
39:08
Speaker 3: like the Learning Your codecs.
39:10
Speaker 1: Right, it's And this is actually one of the very
39:12
Speaker 1: interesting things about delving into the Masura and all the
39:16
Speaker 1: questions arounding it, which is that okay, so you have
39:19
Speaker 1: editors specifically for printed editions from Jako Benhaim onwards, right,
39:24
Speaker 1: and each of them have to sort of make a
39:27
Speaker 1: series of decisions when producing it to a firstly, do
39:30
Speaker 1: you do it based on a specific text like the
39:32
Speaker 1: EPO codecs, le grad codecs, or do you do you
39:36
Speaker 1: you know, choose the eclectic way in a sense, and
39:40
Speaker 1: sort of at each decision point whether how to vow
39:43
Speaker 1: this word, how to spell that word, how to you know,
39:44
Speaker 1: has malay creative and make a decision on each one.
39:49
Speaker 1: And so are you question yeah, on each specific instance,
39:52
Speaker 1: of course, there are tens of thousands of instances which
39:54
Speaker 1: require decisions exactly. And then the.
39:58
Speaker 2: Very first letter. Some say it's supposed to be large,
40:03
Speaker 2: it's not large in the learning drag collects. So are
40:06
Speaker 2: you gonna do it or not? You know that much fun?
40:08
Speaker 2: Should it be large enough?
40:10
Speaker 1: So then let me ask you the question, which is
40:11
Speaker 1: that someone like Ben Haim or someone like the modern
40:14
Speaker 1: editors of a coin or a JPS or any of
40:17
Speaker 1: these tanaks. Let's say they are doing something either eclectic
40:20
Speaker 1: or like semi eclectic, like allowing for the possibility of
40:24
Speaker 1: diverging from the lepo or the learning rerec codicies. How
40:27
Speaker 1: do they make such a decision on? What do you
40:29
Speaker 1: base a decision? Why would one choose option A over
40:32
Speaker 1: option B? Is it like, you know, we have one
40:35
Speaker 1: hundred manuscripts and seventy to one and thirty another method
40:38
Speaker 1: June seventy Or is it based on there are some
40:40
Speaker 1: internal logic or are some more some codesies texts considered
40:44
Speaker 1: more more reliable than I was? Like, how is a
40:46
Speaker 1: decision made like this? In fact, now that I know
40:48
Speaker 1: that you are writing yourself a masserestor to not let
40:50
Speaker 1: me ask you, how are you making such a decision?
40:52
Speaker 2: And I think now we're in the conversation. It takes,
40:55
Speaker 2: it takes a little bit of like kiptowing into the
40:58
Speaker 2: water for master relics, but right here I feel like
41:01
Speaker 2: we're in the conversation where we start to see the differences.
41:04
Speaker 2: Why this thing, why this is important? So remember I.
41:08
Speaker 3: Mentioned that the Aleppo Codex of arn bena Cher was
41:11
Speaker 3: considered the most important tanak.
41:14
Speaker 2: It still is the most important to AC today.
41:16
Speaker 3: It's in the vault underneath the dense sea scrolls and
41:19
Speaker 3: the shrine of the book in the in the Israel Museum. Right.
41:23
Speaker 3: I only know two people have been in that vault
41:25
Speaker 3: and got to see it. But the Alecto Codex is
41:29
Speaker 3: the most important tanok, not because people liked darn Benascher
41:33
Speaker 3: and he was popular, but because his text matched the
41:37
Speaker 3: masora the most. Does that make sense? He didn't have mistakes,
41:43
Speaker 3: so he didn't have to who is Novov in Genesis?
41:47
Speaker 3: And then to who has yes louve in Jeremiah?
41:51
Speaker 2: Everything matched.
41:52
Speaker 3: It was a beautiful system. There have been theories that
41:55
Speaker 3: there's only six mistakes. Mortefai Breyer Rabbi Morti a very
42:00
Speaker 3: famously so there were six mistakes. The Barilan crew who
42:03
Speaker 3: who went through it again saw the only two mistakes.
42:07
Speaker 3: So there's two mistakes of the Leper Codex between it
42:09
Speaker 3: and the Massaura, which means it's all it's o missura
42:16
Speaker 3: happens to be remember, but it doesn't own the Massora.
42:19
Speaker 3: The missaura is elsewhere too. It fits with its own
42:22
Speaker 3: massaura and other missurros too. It didn't create it. And
42:26
Speaker 3: so you take, for example, the second most important thanach
42:29
Speaker 3: that we have, the lening Grad codex. Has I can
42:32
Speaker 3: point to we're not going to do this, but I
42:34
Speaker 3: can point to you right now in my computer five
42:36
Speaker 3: hundred mistakes easily where the lening graand Codex the missaura
42:41
Speaker 3: says this should appear five times and it's only four times,
42:44
Speaker 3: or this should appear four times and it's only it's
42:46
Speaker 3: five times. And those are five hundred mistakes of major issues,
42:51
Speaker 3: and then you can do other thousands with smaller issues
42:54
Speaker 3: like now appointing and things like that. So so any
42:58
Speaker 3: text is going to have issues. The Lepokotas is the
43:01
Speaker 3: most accurate. And the reason it's the most accurate, you
43:03
Speaker 3: can imagine. The reason I use the Mona Lisa example
43:06
Speaker 3: is I'm not an art historian, but I remember hearing
43:09
Speaker 3: that that Da Vinu would would carry it within for
43:12
Speaker 3: many years and what updated. So you imagine arm Benascher
43:16
Speaker 3: was actually walking around with his codex for decades and
43:22
Speaker 3: making it better and better and better. And if you
43:25
Speaker 3: just want to know how many mistakes can appear in
43:28
Speaker 3: a tana right, how many mistakes can describe? Theoretically, let's say, jang,
43:32
Speaker 3: you want are dada and you want to get it
43:34
Speaker 3: all wrong?
43:35
Speaker 2: Right?
43:36
Speaker 3: How many red lines and Microsoft word can we get right?
43:39
Speaker 3: How many times can you get around squiggly and Microsoft word?
43:42
Speaker 3: So I saw a book professor Gosfare from Barila that
43:46
Speaker 3: he thought that there's probably two million places you could
43:50
Speaker 3: make a mistake. So for the word durratios, so it's
43:54
Speaker 3: not just the six letters, it's the vowels, it's the
43:57
Speaker 3: cantilation mark, it's the dots.
44:00
Speaker 2: Right, So he suggests about two million places.
44:03
Speaker 3: So if you think about it, I told you the
44:05
Speaker 3: Lenegrad codects as five hundred serious mistakes.
44:09
Speaker 2: That out of two million, that's nothing, right, five hundred
44:13
Speaker 2: million lanning grad is amazing, tonight, Right, A left bo
44:16
Speaker 2: has two mistakes. If you can imagine two mistakes.
44:20
Speaker 1: It's a And of course this gives fuel to to
44:25
Speaker 1: why the scribes would invent the masura in the first
44:27
Speaker 1: or have these massoretic notations. If there are two million
44:30
Speaker 1: potential pitfalls, let's say, then it would be worth having
44:33
Speaker 1: a whole series of notes. In the top margin, the
44:36
Speaker 1: bottom margin, the margin between the columns, you know, courtesies
44:39
Speaker 1: at the end, et cetera, to try and mitigate to
44:42
Speaker 1: or meteorate these mistakes exactly.
44:45
Speaker 3: And you are you brought up the topic of the
44:48
Speaker 3: master it's interpreters. Well, if we knew that they're passing
44:52
Speaker 3: on the vowels. Vowels are grammar, and even one change
44:56
Speaker 3: in a vowel can change a subject from new killings
45:00
Speaker 3: until you getting killed, just one little vowel. So all
45:03
Speaker 3: of a sudden, then they are they're passing along a
45:07
Speaker 3: way that the copt should be read without a doubt.
45:10
Speaker 3: And that is that is a big part of it.
45:12
Speaker 3: And you want to make sure you're accurate in all
45:15
Speaker 3: of that, and so aren't going to share became the
45:18
Speaker 3: most popular? Now does that mean, like all, there's a
45:22
Speaker 3: bigger question is just because the Master's say.
45:26
Speaker 1: This this way, is it right?
45:28
Speaker 3: So like if you look at the Dens scrolls, there
45:29
Speaker 3: are tens of thousands of differences between the scrolls and
45:33
Speaker 3: aren't not some major but mostly minor. So it doesn't
45:37
Speaker 3: mean that it's the original text. What it means is
45:40
Speaker 3: it's the most it's the most masseratic.
45:43
Speaker 2: Text that the Master eats. Like that's what it means.
45:46
Speaker 2: It's the mostly masteratic text.
45:48
Speaker 3: That's what the that's what the Massara is trying to do,
45:50
Speaker 3: to preserve it as they had it and as they
45:52
Speaker 3: understood it.
45:53
Speaker 1: Interesting, let me press you on a small point that
45:56
Speaker 1: you you made or or or something you referred to
46:00
Speaker 1: use the phrase the massurra. And this is actually deceptively
46:05
Speaker 1: simple phrase because and by the way, the phrase the
46:09
Speaker 1: Massora is, of course the title of Ginsburg's Christian David
46:12
Speaker 1: Gins's massive four volume collation of the Massora, and his ambition,
46:17
Speaker 1: at least at the start, although by the time he
46:19
Speaker 1: reached volume four and nineteen oh four is ambition to change,
46:21
Speaker 1: but certainly at the start when he in his first
46:24
Speaker 1: volume in eighteen eighty, the ambition was to truly truly
46:28
Speaker 1: note down the Massora in all the manuscripts that could
46:31
Speaker 1: be they could get his hands out, in other words,
46:33
Speaker 1: find all the massacre resignizations and put them down in
46:36
Speaker 1: one under. And my question is is it possible or
46:40
Speaker 1: coherent to talk about the Massora in other words, with
46:43
Speaker 1: all the notations that exist in all the codices and
46:47
Speaker 1: all the manuscripts and all the printed Bibles and everything
46:49
Speaker 1: that we have. Is this is this something that kind
46:53
Speaker 1: of becomes bigger than we can grasp? Is it something
46:57
Speaker 1: that can be talked about with one definite oarticle or
47:01
Speaker 1: I mean, what are we talking about here? Woul we
47:03
Speaker 1: say them asra Is there something that those words point
47:08
Speaker 1: to or not?
47:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's interesting you mentioned Ginsburg because Christian David
47:13
Speaker 3: Ginsburg his ginormous books, four volumes. Then it's mind boggling
47:19
Speaker 3: how many maguscripts he went through and collated.
47:22
Speaker 2: And I'll added that. But even in that, when you
47:24
Speaker 2: look at the actual lists, sometimes over du a.
47:27
Speaker 3: List one way and then I'll put in a second
47:30
Speaker 3: way that's different, and you'll have two different versions of
47:32
Speaker 3: the same list, and they're disagreeing with each other.
47:34
Speaker 2: So you can see that he's putting what he received,
47:39
Speaker 2: but not necessarily saying.
47:41
Speaker 1: This is the way.
47:42
Speaker 2: He did make his own tanocha.
47:43
Speaker 3: Much of it he started, and so he did have
47:46
Speaker 3: to make editorial choices, but at least for him as
47:50
Speaker 3: a particular scholar, it wasn't always clear what's the one,
47:54
Speaker 3: which one is the best one. But in general, each
47:58
Speaker 3: time the nats copied each scribe. If they are going
48:03
Speaker 3: to make it either massoretic with no notes that's one way.
48:05
Speaker 3: But even if they add notes, need to decide which
48:09
Speaker 3: notes to add and what they're copying. So if you
48:13
Speaker 3: don't have access to a great manuscript, let's say you're
48:16
Speaker 3: in the middle of the desert somewhere and all you
48:17
Speaker 3: got is one manuscript, then you know that's you're copying
48:21
Speaker 3: that word for word.
48:22
Speaker 2: But let's say you're like there are.
48:24
Speaker 3: Certain centers where a lot of this was going on,
48:27
Speaker 3: like in Toledo, Spain, and the Sparadim had a lot
48:31
Speaker 3: of text copying and the Yeminites had a lot of
48:33
Speaker 3: text copy Like if they had more options, they would
48:37
Speaker 3: want to get a more prestigious text. And that's where
48:40
Speaker 3: the mystery idea gets closer and closer. So like today
48:44
Speaker 3: we want to try and copy the Leper Codex or
48:47
Speaker 3: the Lending Driph because these are very good quality manuscripts.
48:51
Speaker 3: So we're getting closer to the concept of the But
48:54
Speaker 3: just those two alone are very different. So there is
48:57
Speaker 3: once you kind of like scratch into the surface, there's
48:59
Speaker 3: no saying as the misura. It all depends on who
49:03
Speaker 3: you're copying from and how much access do you have.
49:06
Speaker 3: Now the Ellipto Codex, let's this is a great example
49:09
Speaker 3: because it was in Aleppo for hundreds of years and
49:12
Speaker 3: scholars had very limited access to it. So even though
49:16
Speaker 3: it existed for hundreds of years, nobody was using it.
49:21
Speaker 3: Only the mm Nites had some connection with it, and
49:24
Speaker 3: that's why Torres scrolls today. The m and Nits had
49:26
Speaker 3: had access to the Alepo Codex, and that's why they're
49:29
Speaker 3: Torres scrolls in about like I made a video about
49:32
Speaker 3: this one. I think like nine or eleven cases has
49:35
Speaker 3: different letters than the Ashkenazen of a Sardinian and the
49:37
Speaker 3: rest age found is round. The yemen Knites have like
49:40
Speaker 3: different letters in their toros because they were saying, we're
49:43
Speaker 3: following the Ellipto codecs.
49:45
Speaker 2: Interestingly, what does that mean for.
49:46
Speaker 3: Everyone else now that we have the Ellipto Codex. So
49:49
Speaker 3: I would have guessed that no one would care. That
49:51
Speaker 3: would have been my thought, like I can't imagine, you know,
49:55
Speaker 3: my Rami coming in one and saying, hey, new Torah,
49:57
Speaker 3: everyone out with the.
49:59
Speaker 2: Older they do.
50:00
Speaker 3: I just can't imagine that. But they tell me that
50:02
Speaker 3: in Israel. In Israel, a lot of the scribes when they.
50:05
Speaker 2: Make new Torahs are following the Codex, which means we're
50:09
Speaker 2: going towards the Missaura, if that makes sense, as opposed
50:13
Speaker 2: to Misaura.
50:14
Speaker 3: So right now, at this point in time, there is
50:17
Speaker 3: a push toaurance Aleppo, even though there are other options,
50:21
Speaker 3: like there's in the Library of Congress is a very
50:25
Speaker 3: important enough from Madrid, and in we mentioned the Lenningrad codex,
50:30
Speaker 3: and there are other important abouts throughout the world.
50:33
Speaker 1: Not to mention the most codecs that will suit that
50:36
Speaker 1: will one day be available on a.
50:40
Speaker 3: How so, I've done Ruth and and I mean Bashi Bet,
50:46
Speaker 3: I'm in chapter two of Genesis, and I'm very excited
50:50
Speaker 3: to say that at the pace that I'm going.
50:51
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not doing this full time. This is
50:53
Speaker 2: a hobby. But at the pace that I've been going,
50:56
Speaker 2: i should completely God willing in two hundred and fifty years.
51:02
Speaker 2: So that's my case. So right now, my realistic goal
51:06
Speaker 2: is to just do Genesis. That's my real goal is
51:09
Speaker 2: that I'm an Agesis And then hopefully if.
51:11
Speaker 3: Any of your listeners are interested inscribing or already by
51:14
Speaker 3: a described or want to join a project, they should
51:17
Speaker 3: definitely reach out. Maybe we'll do like a collaborative like
51:20
Speaker 3: you were talking about the democratic process of the masteris right,
51:24
Speaker 3: it's it's and this could be a great collaborative effort.
51:27
Speaker 2: But so you know my tana. So what am I doing.
51:29
Speaker 2: I actually use the notes.
51:31
Speaker 3: I use the text of the Alepo Codecs as understood
51:35
Speaker 3: by the bar Elon Macro tana, which is an active choice.
51:41
Speaker 2: There are other options. I find that to be the
51:43
Speaker 2: best option, and I'm.
51:45
Speaker 3: Updating the notes when I find I feel like, oh,
51:48
Speaker 3: this note I would like to add, I'll add.
51:50
Speaker 2: A note from other manuscripts as well.
51:52
Speaker 3: So it really, it really is a personal It is
51:55
Speaker 3: a personal tana as opposed to just a printing press
51:59
Speaker 3: copy copy.
52:00
Speaker 1: Interesting. The one sort of a nest of questions that
52:04
Speaker 1: I want to get to before we finish, because it
52:07
Speaker 1: is actually quite important for the history of Vesara specifically,
52:11
Speaker 1: is to turn our lenswoy from Jewish world towards the
52:14
Speaker 1: Christian world right, because of course, this story of argument
52:19
Speaker 1: about the vowels, about the cancelation marks, about the sorrow,
52:21
Speaker 1: about the precise or the best and the most reliable
52:24
Speaker 1: biblical manuscript wasn't something that only concerned Jews, but concerned
52:28
Speaker 1: Christians as well, and actually had quite an effect in
52:30
Speaker 1: the intellectual history of verous Christian communities. And this is
52:34
Speaker 1: of course especially true following the Protestant Reformation, where going
52:38
Speaker 1: back to the original text of the Bible itself, I
52:41
Speaker 1: was seen or suddenly became of greater import or accessible
52:45
Speaker 1: to more people, and be the basis of more was
52:47
Speaker 1: considered more important for the basis of theology and the
52:50
Speaker 1: formation of communities going forward. So let me ask you,
52:53
Speaker 1: I mean, again, it's very broad questions, and to say
52:55
Speaker 1: about it what you can in a few minutes, but
52:58
Speaker 1: you know, the effect or what except was did Christians
53:01
Speaker 1: notice this history of the mass around the development of
53:04
Speaker 1: the Masura and what extends they participates in it, and
53:06
Speaker 1: how did it affect the continual development of Christian engagement with.
53:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's an excellent question, and it's not just in
53:15
Speaker 3: the sixteen hundred and seventeen that is today in modern
53:18
Speaker 3: biblical scholarship, these are the same questions. So let's just
53:21
Speaker 3: look historically. There are a number of ancient witnesses to
53:26
Speaker 3: the Tanaka that they were copying a certain time in
53:28
Speaker 3: a different language, and then that language went on its own,
53:32
Speaker 3: and it's like there was a snapshot of what the
53:34
Speaker 3: Tanoth looked like, and the oldest of all of these
53:37
Speaker 3: is known as the septuagen or the Old Greek, and
53:41
Speaker 3: this translation of the Tanath into Old Greek, which which
53:44
Speaker 3: was a Jewish translation.
53:46
Speaker 2: Essentially, when you compare it to the Hebrew text, what you.
53:49
Speaker 3: Actually are going to see over and over and over
53:52
Speaker 3: again are a number of words that we have in
53:55
Speaker 3: the Hebrew that appears slight that don't really match the Greek.
53:59
Speaker 2: But if you change the vowel or you change the letter,
54:03
Speaker 2: it will match.
54:04
Speaker 3: Like for example, we saw how we're learning the huscale.
54:07
Speaker 3: I'm teaching a huscal in our most adnanced Hebert group.
54:11
Speaker 3: We just met this morning and we saw a kingse
54:13
Speaker 3: where based on the Greek, you could see that in
54:16
Speaker 3: the Hebrew the verb is cuadal to cease, but in
54:19
Speaker 3: the Greek it was harad to shape. They looked very similar,
54:23
Speaker 3: but they're not exactly the same thing. And so, all
54:25
Speaker 3: of a sudden, once you start looking at the sebituagin
54:28
Speaker 3: in that light, and it's not just the Greek. You
54:30
Speaker 3: can also look at the targets, the Aromatic, you can
54:33
Speaker 3: look at the Latin, et cetera, all of a sudden
54:36
Speaker 3: you could say, well, the master in a tradition we
54:39
Speaker 3: have might not exactly be what was the original, and
54:44
Speaker 3: you can all of a sudden say, oh, maybe there's
54:46
Speaker 3: a different way to point this, or maybe there's a
54:49
Speaker 3: different letters here, or even different words, sometimes even different verses.
54:52
Speaker 3: And so these smaller issues of just language opened up
54:57
Speaker 3: the larger sphere for saying, oh can interpret not like
55:01
Speaker 3: the masters.
55:02
Speaker 2: So it's not today.
55:03
Speaker 3: It's very common when you have a tough passage to
55:06
Speaker 3: open up a modern modern commentary, and you can look
55:10
Speaker 3: in the modern commentary when I mean modern meaning a
55:13
Speaker 3: university type of commedary, somebody who's like a scholar university
55:17
Speaker 3: or a seminar, and you look at it and they say, oh,
55:19
Speaker 3: this should be pointed differently, this should be pointed differently,
55:22
Speaker 3: And that's standard. I personally find that I tend to
55:29
Speaker 3: agree with the master. It's ninety nine point ninety percent
55:31
Speaker 3: of the times. But maybe once a chapter I say, hey,
55:35
Speaker 3: maybe maybe this should have pointed differently, or hey, you know,
55:39
Speaker 3: look at all this evidence from the other languages. Maybe
55:42
Speaker 3: this should have been a dollar instead of a race.
55:44
Speaker 3: It looks so similar the two can really be interchanged.
55:47
Speaker 3: And so so in that sense, the Master retic tradition
55:53
Speaker 3: and the pointings and the cancelation wasn't necessarily absolute, meaning
55:58
Speaker 3: it's something that you can can handle with, which is
56:01
Speaker 3: common in biblical scholarship today, but was something that needed
56:05
Speaker 3: to develop over in the years and over the centuries.
56:08
Speaker 1: Interesting, Okay, I think I think we're gonna have to
56:12
Speaker 1: wrap up in a moment. The final final question. I
56:15
Speaker 1: would like to ask her, like many to ask many
56:16
Speaker 1: of my guests, because as follows today, we have mentioned
56:20
Speaker 1: or invoked various individuals who have worked on the Massora,
56:24
Speaker 1: Baran Perim, Ginsburg or all of these the great stars
56:29
Speaker 1: of the history of the Massora. If you could sit
56:31
Speaker 1: down with one of them tonight for dinner, Firstly, which
56:34
Speaker 1: which of these individuals would it be? And secondly, what
56:36
Speaker 1: would you be asking them? Whose advice, whose counsel, whose
56:39
Speaker 1: wisdom would you want to learn from? And what would
56:42
Speaker 1: you be asking them?
56:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going with Ginsburg. I would go name of Ginsburg.
56:48
Speaker 2: I love you know, Victorian England.
56:50
Speaker 3: I think he was he got his hands and a
56:53
Speaker 3: lot of a lot of interesting debates and and whatnot.
56:56
Speaker 2: Some when it comes to the Messara, and I I
57:00
Speaker 2: feel like he did amazing good when.
57:02
Speaker 3: It comes to other areas. People questioned if he did
57:04
Speaker 3: some some some damage, but you know, something like that.
57:08
Speaker 3: I would love to sit down. What would I asked
57:11
Speaker 3: him and say, what are you working on? I would
57:13
Speaker 3: tell him about my story, and I've talked to him
57:16
Speaker 3: about it. And actually the way we met you and
57:18
Speaker 3: I was that I bought a four volume set of
57:22
Speaker 3: Ginsburg's Thesaura, and I noticed little markings in it that
57:28
Speaker 3: seemed to be numbers and letters in it that seemed
57:31
Speaker 3: to be referring to manuscripts. And with a little slew thing,
57:35
Speaker 3: I was able to figure out that I had actually
57:38
Speaker 3: bought his own copy of the Mesura, and so I
57:42
Speaker 3: actually have my library in the room next door, I
57:44
Speaker 3: have his own copy with all of his handwritten notes,
57:47
Speaker 3: thousands and thousands of thousands of notes. So I'd love
57:50
Speaker 3: to talk to him about that and to see where
57:52
Speaker 3: he wrote these notes and how he wrote nothing, nothing
57:55
Speaker 3: really major to to like, you know, earthquake, shattering, earth
57:59
Speaker 3: shadowy ideas, just like, hey, how do you write this?
58:03
Speaker 2: Let's go over it, Let's tell me back and just chat.
58:05
Speaker 1: So YEAHS and I might have to say, I'm wildly
58:08
Speaker 1: jealous that you manage to get Ginsburg's own copy, and
58:11
Speaker 1: you know you should, you should preserve it. And the
58:13
Speaker 1: truth is that I would very much obviously like to
58:15
Speaker 1: sit down Ginsburg as well. Doctor David Moster, thank you
58:17
Speaker 1: so very much for joining us today on the Podcast
58:20
Speaker 1: of Jewish Ideas. This has been a fascinating conversation. We
58:22
Speaker 1: look forward to your future productions, including your massoretic Tanach
58:25
Speaker 1: whenever you finish it, and we wish you luck with
58:27
Speaker 1: the new certificate program in Biblical Hebrew at JTS. If
58:31
Speaker 1: anyone is interested, by the way in learning more about
58:33
Speaker 1: this highly accessible program at JTS, the links are below
58:36
Speaker 1: in the podcast description. Doctor Moster, thank you so very
58:39
Speaker 1: much for joining us today.
58:40
Speaker 2: It's been a pasure. Thank you for having me.
58:44
Speaker 1: This has been the Podcast of Jewish Ideas by Tora
58:46
Speaker 1: in Motion, produced by Alisha Kellman and myself Jjkimbrie, edited
58:50
Speaker 1: and mixed by Alisha Kelman. You can stay up to
58:53
Speaker 1: date by subscribing in your favorite podcast app. To support
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59:08
Speaker 3: Im