Wick Stick
Well-Known Member
Thank you. I am less a fan of the Masoretic text than this author, as you seem to be as well.There are plenty but, even though older sources, the books from most authors are still copyrighted and sold on Amazon, so you probably will not find much online, (hardly anyone is interested in such studies now days anyway).
1) "The Nature of Word Division in Ancient Hebrew Manuscripts
Ancient Hebrew script, as preserved in the earliest stages of its transmission, was written without spaces between words. This scriptio continua, or continuous writing, characterized Hebrew writing until the later stages of the Second Temple period. In the earliest Hebrew inscriptions, such as the Gezer Calendar (ca. 925 B.C.E.) and the Siloam Inscription (ca. 701 B.C.E.), word division was either entirely absent or inconsistently indicated through minimal spacing or the use of small dots. The absence of consistent spacing was not a sign of carelessness but rather reflected the scribal conventions of the time. The reader was expected to recognize word boundaries through contextual familiarity and linguistic intuition."
The Scribal Habit of Word Division and Its Old Testament Textual Consequences - Updated American Standard Version
Examination of how Hebrew scribal habits of word division shaped the Old Testament’s textual transmission and interpretation.uasvbible.org
Note that the above author, by the end of the article, (under the heading "Conclusion"), reveals how terribly the modern text of the Meshiah-rejecting Masoretes has blinded him to the ancient reality he somewhat recognizes in the quote above. He never even mentions the fact that we have a plethora of Tanakh quotes from the Apostolic writers that do not match the Masorete text, (which did not exist until a thousand years later anyway).
The idea of "dividing Scripture" is new to me, but it doesn't seem much different than the issue of adding diacritical marks to enforce a single interpretation. The problem for both: if the original WAS ambiguous, then the ideal translation (uh... separation) would preserve the ambiguity. Instead, the Masoretes actively sought to remove all ambiguity.
Ah man, now I've got to question every word with an internal vav to see if it should be split in two
I'm not much of a mystic, either. I do find that Kabbalah articulates ideas of emanation and gnosis somewhat more clearly than other gnostic literature. So not completely worthless, even if it isn't top of my reading list.The following blogster unfortunately appears to be a Kabbalist, (which I am certainly not), and I believe he goes a little overboard in some ways, however, his overall argument is sound, and if true, answers some important questions regarding this topic. For example, if indeed the Torah was written as if to be a single super long thread of letters from the beginning to the end, it would surely explain the reason why practically every verse begins with the waw/vav in its function as the particle of continuance. There are other things also but I'll leave it at that.
Torah as Blast: Did the original have spaces between words?
Spaces between words was not used in writing until long after Moses got the Tablets on Sinai. Did Moses write the Torah as one long string of letters? And if so, what does that do to our reading to…davidporush.com
Well, he says they didn't abandon the faith when they went to Babylon. For most of the Bible, though, the priests are rarely faithful. Aaron himself made the molten calf. His sons were quite wicked. There were similar problems with Eli's children. Most of the Levites jumped ship in the verses quoted. I am... skeptical... of the idea that there was a group of priests who abided in faithfulness for centuries.
If this were so, why did they not recognize their Messiah? Not heed his words to flee destruction at the Romans hands? Why then was there a need for the entire Levitical priesthood to be done away with?
