A History of the Musical Accents

A HISTORY OF BIBLICAL CANTILLATION

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N.B.: A WinZip (.zip) archive (17.9 MB) containing a PowerPoint Presentation (.ppt) and sound files (.mp3) summarizing the historical and musical background to Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura's work may be downloaded via this link.

In biblical times, Hebrew script was far different in form than it is today, going through stages of development as does the script of any language. At one stage of the process (about the time the famous Moabite Stone was written), Genesis 1:1 would have looked something like this (reading right to left):

After the Babylonian Exile, the Jews (under Ezra's direction) adopted the so-called "square script" or "Assyrian script". In a modern printed edition, Genesis 1:1 looks like this (again, reading right to left):

Both examples are taken from Do It Yourself Hebrew and Greek: Everybody's Guide to the Language Tools by Edward W. Goodrick (Zondervan/Multnomah, 1980), pp. 14:2 and 14:6. (The second example actually comes from The Jerusalem Bible by Qoren Publishers Jerusalem Ltd.)

Notice that the large characters in the second example correspond to the large characters in the first example. These are the consonants of biblical Hebrew. To these (in the second example) are added the diacritical marks of our present Masoretic Text: the vowel-points, the musical accents (te`amim), dagesh (the point within some letters) and the sof pasuq (the square-dot colon at the end of the verse).

Even after Ezra's day, many Jews (and the Samaritans as well) wrote Hebrew in a script imitating the ancient script forms. Such script is called paleo-Hebrew. Some Dead Sea Scrolls use paleo-Hebrew script; some, the square script; some, a mixture of the two. The so-called Habakkuk Commentary (for example) uses paleo-Hebrew when writing the Tetragrammaton, and square script when writing everything else.

There are no known Hebrew manuscripts or inscriptions older than the Dead Sea Scrolls that show any system of vowel-points or accents in use. This is because Hebrew, like other Semitic languages, is effectively a shorthand. Consonants form words according to particular grammatical rules, which then allow the reader to infer the pronunciation of the vowels. Indications in the verbal context also allow one to distinguish between similar words, and to alter the pronunciation accordingly. Moreover, some consonants (being actually "half-vowels") may act as matres lectionis ("mothers of reading") by indicating the presence of vowels at particular places. Finally, ancient Hebrew texts often have a very basic form of punctuation: a dot indicating the end of a verse or sentence.

Nevertheless, apart from a full system of punctuation and vocal inflection or written vowel signs, biblical Hebrew is in many respects ambiguous in its sense. For that reason alone, the editors of the Masoretic Text had plenty of motivation to lay out a written system intended to mitigate any ambiguities. But were they the creators of this written system, as is usually thought? Or were they merely the heirs and reinterpreters of it?

The Beni Hassan lyrist. After Lise Manniche.

We have no desire to engage in circular reasoning: assuming the truth of what we are attempting to prove. Nevertheless, to give support to the crucial evidence, we must presage some of our conclusions here.

We know that Arabic and other Semitic languages put great stress on "how one says what one says". In other words, in Semitic languages vocal inflection is important in determining meaning. We know that the same is true for later Hebrew and even Yiddish. Rabbinic Judaism and specialists in the study of the Masoretic Text alike acknowledge that the musical accents mark in principle the stressed syllables of the words (thus distinguishing words that might otherwise be confused), and that they are in some sense related to the vocal inflection. For these and other reasons (including some of the very ambiguities involved in the Hebrew verbal text itself), a number of scholars have inferred that vocal inflection must likewise have been important in biblical Hebrew, especially in the recitation of sacred texts.

As we will see in a later chapter, in biblical times gestures of the hand and fingers generally filled the place of written notation. We have no written melodies from Egypt (for example), but we do have abundant portrayals of musicians and singers using hand-gestures (chironomy) to represent their melodies. As the melodies and harmonies used were evidently very simple, yet harmonically precise, something other than mere aide-memoire ("memory-aid") must have been intended. Quite likely such melodies were but extensions of the normal vocal inflection, and were meant to underline the meaning of the words for the sake of the listeners (human and divine) and performers alike. Reasonably, the same was true of the Hebrews' sacred music.

In hindsight, then, we may propose that in ancient Israel, neither vowels nor musical accents were normally written out. Rather, both were taught orally, even as later Rabbinic and Masoretic sources maintain. Yet as we have ancient and medieval examples of written sacred music being preserved by the initiated for the initiated, so we may surmise that the Hebrew priests, Levites and prophets also had a written form of sacred music, kept secret and undefiled.

We normally think of the musical life of Israel as beginning with David and his Levitical "academy" of psalmists, or at the earliest with Moses and the children of Israel at the Red Sea (Exodus 15). Actually, it had to begin earlier than that. A musical tradition does not take hold in the life of a people overnight, even if it is specially created (and such creations are relatively rare).

The first clue we have to when Israel's formal musical worship began is in Psalms 81:1-5 (English versification). The melody reconstructed by Haïk-Vantoura from the accompanying notation is most expressive given its limitations, suggesting the sweetness of the stringed instruments and the call of the shofar. "Blow the trumpet [shofar] at the new moon, at the full moon, on our feast day. For it is a statute for Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob. He made it a decree in Joseph, when he [God] went out over the land of Egypt" (verses 3-5, RSV). So here we have the special creation of a liturgical form, one which then developed over time. Yet it seems that not only the use of the shofar, but that of singing and the playing of stringed instruments, was part of this liturgy from the beginning. We see no specific reference to it in the Law of Moses, but Asaph the Psalmist recorded its existence for us.

And there may have been an even earlier tradition to draw upon. The recitation of sacred and epic texts of every sort -- even geneologies -- was generally done melodically in antiquity. Were the genealogies and narratives recorded by Moses so recited, even before his time? Was the prophecy of Jacob (Genesis 49:2-27)? Was the book of Job, which uniquely uses both prosodic and psalmodic accentuation in the Masoretic Text? Or did Moses set all these down in musical form for the first time? The former seems more likely, but the latter is not completely impossible. If Moses had learned or created a specifically Hebraic gestural system in Egypt (for he certainly would have known of the Egyptian variety), or had created one in exile, what might he have written and composed even before his return to Egypt?

When Israel left Egypt, no doubt many songs were in the mouths of the people. How much more was this true when God delivered Israel at the Red Sea! "The Song of the Sea" (actually, the first complete passage deciphered musically by Haïk-Vantoura) is the earliest "art song" recorded in the Bible (Exodus 15:1-18). Yet in both its words and in its deciphered melody, it is "rustic" -- befitting the circumstances in which the Song was written. Its melody was such that it (or certain parts of it) could be learned quickly and sung by many people (the more complex parts being sung by Moses as soloist); and part of it was adapted by Miriam into a metrical tune suitable for dance (verses 20-21). As we shall see, hand-gestures would have been brilliantly adapted to creating and conducting the melody of such a Song. Simple written signs -- "accents" -- would have sufficed to preserve the melody in secret.

At Mt. Sinai, the LORD revealed Himself in a cloud and gave the Ten Commandments (as well as the statutes and judgments of the original "Old Covenant" -- cf. Jeremiah 31:31-34, English versification). According to various Rabbinic and Masoretic sources, the vowel-points and/or the te`amim were taught orally, and were revealed to Moses on Sinai. Reading their current knowledge into the past as they no doubt were, these sources differed somewhat in their inferences. Some (such as the 12th-century Manuel du Lecteur, which we will discuss later) said "both the te`amim and the vowel-points were taught orally, and were revealed to Moses on Sinai." Others maintained that only the te`amim were so revealed. Some underlined the point that only the values of the te`amim were revealed; the particular form of the written signs was the work of the scribes. All agreed, though, on the traditional necessity of having the te`amim (and to a somewhat lesser extent, the vowel-points) in order to gain a clear understanding of the meaning of the verbal text. In fact, it was even maintained that from the point of view of the Hebrew language itself, only through the te`amim could one come to a correct understanding of the intent of the verbal text. It would only be natural to conclude that such a tool would be "inspired", and therefore originally revealed by God Himself. (There may have been other reasons for this tradition, which we will explore later.)

As the Law of Moses was written step by step, its melodic rendition would have been as well. It is unreasonable to think that the melodic rendition would not have been kept in writing. David as king would have had to make his own copy of the Law based on that preserved by the Levites (Deuteronomy 17:18-20). Yet David sang the statutes contained therein (Psalms 119:54). While there are several possibilities a priori, since in antiquity every sacred author was in principle a poet-composer, reasonably David was singing God's statutes to Moses' melodies rather than his own. This is all the more likely in that Moses himself was a Psalmist long before David was born (Psalms 90). Therefore, the melodies of the Law (Torah) and other sacred works would reasonably have been written down in secret by the initiated, even if they were generally taught to others by means of gestures.

In due time, other books were added to the canon and preserved by the Levites (cf. Joshua 24:26). Again, as consistent with current practice the authors of the books would have written their own melodies to accompany their own words. We see in Egypt evidence for a traditional, highly formal means of composing and performing sacred music (again, using hand-gestures), maintained for longer than Israel was an independent nation. It is not unreasonable a priori that Israel's sacred musicians could have used their own dedicated musical system for their own sacred texts.

In the time of King Saul there were already "schools of prophets", one of which at least was apparently headed by Samuel himself. Whatever else these schools did, they taught and performed inspired song (1 Samuel 10:5-6, 10-13; 19:18-24). Such song is called "prophecy" both in this context and in that of the later psalmody of the Temple (1 Chronicles 25:1-6). Perhaps here, if not from the Levites themselves in Sabbath services, is where David learned how to perform sacred music after the traditional style and to start composing his own. One may readily imagine him using gestures or written signs or both to help create and preserve the melodies he composed "on the run" during his years of flight from Saul (Psalms 52, 54, 56, etc.) and his later flight from Absalom (Psalms 3).

Famously, King David founded a Levitical "academy" of psalm-singers (about which we will say more later). That academy continued its activities down into Second Temple times; not the wicked kings of Judah, nor the Babylonian Exile, nor yet the trials of the Seleucid, Hasmonean and Roman periods were able to permanently silence it. Only the fall of Second Temple Jerusalem and the death and scattering of so many priests and Levites put an end to the "Davidic" psalmody -- and with it, the cantillation of the prose texts which had been the charge of the priests and prophets for so long.

Long before, however, Ezra and the Great Synagogue he founded had put the canon of Hebrew Scripture into its final, basic form. (When the Council of Jamnia met toward the end of the first century AD, it was not to decide upon the canon, but to resolve why certain books that did not overtly mention the name of God were already in the canon.) In like manner (according to medieval sources), Ezra would have set in order everything pertaining to the accentuation and vowels. As we will see, these (again, according to medieval testimony) came into the hands of a specific family of Second Temple priests, from whom the Masoretes received them by one or more of several possible means.

After the Second Temple fell, the local synagogues maintained their local chants, with local systems of "te`amim" being used in parallel with them. In time, due to loss of knowledge, both the Talmudists and the local synagogues assumed that the music of the synagogue was derived from that of Temple via oral transmission by pilgrims and/or itinerant teachers. There was indeed such influence while the Temple was still standing, but the one thing an oral tradition cannot do is maintain a record of its own transmission. Few suspected, from the Middle Ages down to recent times, just how badly corrupted the synagogue traditions had become at any given point in history.

By the end of the second third or so of the 20th century (in good measure thanks to musicologists such as Eric Werner, Curt Sachs, Alfred Sendrey and others), most still believed that the cantillation of the Scriptures in the Temple and in the synagogue were essentially the same in principle if not in exact detail. This consensus apparently began to change in the last third of the 20th century. Early that century, Abraham Idelsohn's extensive collection of Jewish melodies documented the similarities and differences between the various local traditions -- yet Idelsohn seems to have emphasized the similarities over the differences, as did many others. Comparisons with the "Great Tradition" of the Islamic world by other scholars (such as Johanna Spector) made an important clarification: much of synagogue chant was either influenced by or actually borrowed from the peoples of the nations surrounding the local communities. These nations had a method of singing which was widespread, yet had numerous local variations -- and these variations influenced the local synagogue chants.

Another reason for the slow shift in scholarly consensus was the following realization, very well expressed by musicologist Israel Adler: "The singers of the Temple were professional musicians, trained for the preservation of the tradition from generation to generation. (...) It is above all the examination of the musical organization of the synagogue which renders unreasonable a direct filiation between the music of the Temple and that of the synagogue" ("Musique Juive", in Encyclopedie de la Musique, Fasquelle, Vol. II, p. p. 643, cited and emphasized by Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura, The Music of the Bible Revealed, p. 133).

How was the music of the synagogue organized? It was a folk liturgy, performed by amateur musicians. It bore the "local color" of the music of the Gentile peoples among whom the various synagogue communities lived. Like folk and primitive vocal music of all sorts around the world, it was either logogenic ("word-born", in which the melody was but the simplest of supports for the words) or pathogenic ("passion-born", in which the melody and melodic ornaments all but completely dominated the words). In fact (according to Eric Werner), before the rise of professional cantoral schools in Europe, synagogue cantillations typically oscillated between logogenic and pathogenic extremes without ever actually becoming either one. It is as if they were searching for some felicitous combination of words and melody that they had lost and could never quite regain...

What such combination was lost? The kind that characterizes "art music" of all times and places, including (by necessity) the professional music of the ancient Temple: the combination of melodic and verbal syntaxes called melos by the ancient and early Greeks. Vocal music of this sort is called melogenic (melos-born). Such music interweaves the words and melody into a whole, partly through the common link of rhythm. The melody, in effect, magnifies the natural vocal inflection of the words, clarifying the verbal syntax even as it expounds the verbal meaning.

Here is how a well-known CD-ROM encyclopedia (in an article by a Jewish professor of music) summarizes the current musicological consensus concerning the relationship between Temple cantillation and synagogue cantillation:

"The historical experience of the Jewish people [more exactly, the people of Israel and Judah, and then of Judah alone -- JW] has led to a long and distinctive music tradition. Until the 1st century, Jewish spiritual and musical life centered around the city of Jerusalem, the ancient capital of Israel and site of the Temple, a Jewish religious focus. Three times a year pilgrims bearing the fruits of agricultural labor came to the Temple, where a hereditary caste of musicians, the Levites, performed intricate music as described in the Bible. The Jewish people also held small services in synagogues, where folk music may have been performed in a manner similar to the musical styles of neighboring Middle Eastern peoples.

"The defeat of the Jewish revolt against occupying Roman armies in Jerusalem, and the subsequent destruction of the Second Temple in 70, led to a scattering of the Jewish population in the 1st and 2nd centuries. During this period of Diaspora (the dispersion of the Jews outside Israel), Jewish music entered a second phase that has lasted nearly 2000 years. Because of the Diaspora and a lack of historical documentation, a core of ancient Jewish music common to all communities cannot be identified. Until the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, Jews lived in communities throughout the world -- in countries such as the United States, Canada, France, India, and China -- as non-Israeli Jews continue to do today. Thus the Jewish people spoke many different languages and were strongly influenced in their everyday life, including in their music making, by the ways of their non-Jewish neighbors. However, Jews in these disparate communities continued to recite common sacred Jewish texts and to observe the daily and yearly prayers and rituals of those texts" ("Jewish Music," Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia, emphases ours).

Let us now review briefly the history of the written accentuation itself. As intimated earlier, our present Hebrew Masoretic Text contains (among other things) three basic sets of symbols related to verbal meaning: the consonants, the vowel-points (with associated graphemes such as the maqqef or hyphen and the dagesh or dot), and the accents (te`amim). The name for the accents, te`amim (singular ta`am), comes from the verb ta`am, "to taste, discern, appreciate, etc." Sometimes the accents are called ta`amê miqra', "the accents of Scripture (in the sense of what is recited rather than written)". In effect, the te`amim are meant to enable the reader and the listener to discern and appreciate the sense of the often-ambiguous Hebrew words.

The system of accentuation and vowel-pointing in our Masoretic Text is properly called "Tiberian", after the scribes of Tiberias, Galilee who copied it.1 The "Tiberian" accentuation is founded in two systems: what Haik-Vantoura calls the psalmodic system (found in Psalms, Proverbs and the body of Job) and what she calls the prosodic system (found in the prologue and epilogue of Job and in all the other books).2 The prosodic system is actually much the more complex system and the foundational one, with more graphemes in use in more complicated relationships with each other and with the words. The most complex relationships between the te`amim and the words are found in the Pentateuch (a fact which will become important later).

The earliest securely dated MS. containing the "Tiberian" accents and vowel-points is the "Codex of the Prophets" by Moshe ben Asher, completed in 895 AD. Some MSS. and fragments may date as early as 820-850 AD or even earlier. Moshe ben Asher stated in the colophon to his Codex that he copied the verbal text, with its accents and vowels, "as it was understood by the Community of Prophets" - probably a reference to the medieval Jewish sect of Karaites. In a separate poem called "The Song of the Vine", ben Asher claimed that a family of Second Temple priests knows as the Elders of Bathyra (whom some consider the Herodians of the New Testament) had "established the accents of Scripture (ta`amê miqra'), giving [its] sense and interpreting its word." Ben Asher likewise waxed rhapsodic about the multiple meanings of the word te`amim, pointing thereby to both the exegetical and the tonal functions of the accents.

Dr. Rochelle Altman has recently remarked on some Dead Sea Scroll fragments that appear to have accents similar to some found in the "Tiberian" notation.3 Musicologist and Hellenist Denise Jourdan-Hemmerdinger notes that there is a pre-Christian system of Greek accentuation which has all the graphic forms found in the "Tiberian" te`amim (though differently arranged), supporting the idea that the "Tiberian" accentuation is likewise pre-Christian. Clement of Alexandria likewise mentioned a system of "accents and points" which was "justly and prudently arranged", which some exegetes were already changing to suit their own likings.

As we will see later, and as we have already mentioned above, the written accentuation itself is a transcription of a system of conducting vocal music by means of gestures of the hand and/or fingers. Such a musical system is called chironomy. A number of the original gestures were preserved in a Yemenite Hebrew source dating from the 12th century, translated into French as the Manuel du Lecteur ("Reader's Manual", one of several medieval manuals of its type). However, while a number of ancient synagogues use gestures in parallel with the written graphemes (the custom being noted in Jewish literature since the first century), none seem to use the original gestural system, not even the Yemenite community that preserved it in part.

If we accept that the "Tiberian" notation was transmitted from the Elders of Bathyra to the Karaites (and from them to the Masoretes), how was this accomplished? We know of abbreviated manuscripts and fragments called serugin which contained accents or vowel-points or both. We also know of a cache of manuscripts of the Bible and other texts found "near Jericho" ca. 800 AD and brought to the Karaites in Jerusalem.4 Circumstantial evidence (if nothing else) suggests that this discovery actually triggered the work of the Masoretes of Tiberias, who were closely related to the Karaites or perhaps even members of the sect (scholars have differed on this point).

We know that the Karaites were the doctrinal heirs of the Elders of Bathyra, and we also know they were influenced by the same doctrines we find in the Dead Sea Scrolls found in the 20th century. Could it be that they had also received biblical manuscripts with accents and vowels? Whatever the case, within as little as 20-50 years -- perhaps less -- we see "Tiberian" manuscripts appear with accents and points written out: first of portions of the Bible, then (by 930 AD) the entire Bible (in the Aleppo Codex).

From that time on, if not sooner, the systems of accentuation and vowel-pointing were subject to intense scrutiny and even textual criticism. What that scrutiny led to is the subject of the next page...

Before we go on, however, we need to address the conventional wisdom, held since the Renaissance (beginning with the Hebraist Elias Levita or Eliyahu ha-Levi), that written accent signs were not used before or during the Talmudic period. This is based on an argument from silence: the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds allude only to the punctuational values of the te`amim and to the gestures that marked them, not to any system of written signs. Adding to the confusion, the Talmuds equate the local systems of "te`amim" used in the synagogues of Babylonia and Palestine with the te`amim that would have been used during biblical times. This has led to the thesis (held by some) that the Tiberian notation developed from one or both of the Babylonian and Palestinian notations, which in turn transcribed a strictly oral/gestural tradition.

It is true that from all available evidence, the early synagogues originally maintained their traditions by oral and gestural means. During the 4th-7th centuries, the Palestinian and Babylonian communities wrote down their local traditions of cantillation and punctuation. Later (9th century) the Tiberian tradition, said to be ancient and priestly in origin, appeared in writing and began to supplant the others. The problem with arguing from silence here is that it begs the question of whether the Masoretes of Tiberias were telling the truth: that the Tiberian notation really was ancient and priestly rather than latter-day and rabbinic. For if the Masoretes were telling the truth, then the Tiberian accentuation must have disappeared for a time, only to be rediscovered later. We have already mentioned circumstantial evidence that suggests this is precisely what happened.

What then of the idea that the Tiberian accentuation developed from one or another synagogal accentuation? The thesis is problematic even for the specialists, but a brief review of the problem is worth making here.

The Palestinian system of accentuation is highly abbreviated and unsystematic compared to the Tiberian system; in fact, the extant manuscripts that contain it show a system that was still developing before the Tiberian system finally supplanted it. For our purposes here, an overview of the Babylonian system of accentuation will suffice.

The following schematic diagrams (from "Masorah", in Encyclopedia Judaica, pp. 1446b-1447a) give the relative "pausal strengths" of the various Babylonian accents in its two systems. (Not all the uses and variations of the Babylonian signs are given.) The first diagram corresponds to the prose or "prosodic" system of the Tiberian accentuation; the second, to the poetic or "psalmodic" system of the Tiberian accentuation. The various lines show how the verse is divided up into parts by the accentuation, with the "half-cadence" appearing after the sign that looks like an upside-down "V".

The Babylonian prose accents (typical verse, read right to left)

The Babylonian poetic accents (typical verse, read right to left)

Unlike the Tiberian accentuation, which places written signs above and below the words, the Babylonian accentuation places written signs only above the words. The poetic system here is simply an abbreviated version of the prose system, whereas in the Tiberian system the poetic or "psalmodic" notation has written signs not found in the prose or "prosodic" system. Moreover, most of the Babylonian signs are small letters or parts of letters, which is not true at all for the Tiberian signs. The two Babylonian signs which are not letters or parts of letters (the upside-down "V" and the backwards "L" leaning to the right) correspond closely in form and position within the verse to two of the three primary Tiberian sublinear signs: atnah (written like an upside-down "V") and munah (written like a backwards "L"). However, the Babylonian signs overall are not arrayed in the same way, either within a verse or relative to the stressed syllables of the words, that the Tiberian signs are. In other words, the Babylonian and Tiberian notations do not possess a one-to-one correspondence in their layout. In all reasonableness, then, the Babylonian signs cannot represent the same tradition of cantillation and punctuation that the Tiberian signs do.

Certain early sources (such as the medieval prayerbook Mahzor Vitry) maintained that while the values of the te`amim were revealed to Moses on Sinai, their written forms were the work of the scribes -- the written forms used differing in the Palestinian, Babylonian and Tiberian notations. Underlying this statement was the Talmudic assumption that the "te`amim" of the synagogues and the te`amim of biblical times were one and the same. By the Renaissance (16th century), the existence of the Palestinian and Babylonian notations was forgotten. When Elias Levita claimed (for the first time) that written signs were never used until after the Talmuds were completed, there was no direct evidence to contradict him. When the Palestinian and Babylonian accents were discovered, that claim was modified, not dismissed. Afterward it was commonly claimed that the Tiberian notation developed from one or both of these "earlier" notations. When in the 20th century, the comments of the Masorete Moshe ben Asher himself regarding the pre-Christian age and origin of the Tiberian notation were discovered in the Cairo Geniza, these comments were largely dismissed as pious fraud (cf. Paul Kahle, The Cairo Genizah, Oxford, 1959).

Now the situation is different. Rochelle Altman posits that the Catholic theologian Origen sent an exemplar Hebrew manuscript -- complete with written accents -- to Britain, where the Hebrew accentuation became the basis of the Anglo-Saxon liturgical notation. We have already mentioned Clement of Alexandria's comment about the existence of "accents" in his day. Plus, there are the testimonies and tantalizing clues from the Masoretic tradition about the age and origin of the "Tiberian" notation, and in particular the possible connection between a then-famous exemplar manuscript called Yeriho ("Jericho") and the discovery of a cache of biblical and other texts in the caves "near Jericho".

But the crucial evidence lies in the "Tiberian" notation itself, and in how it has been traditionally interpreted by the Masoretes and later grammarians, cantors and even scientists. That traditional interpretation -- that paradigm -- and others that have been put forward in its place comprise the subject of the next page of this Web site.

FOOTNOTES

1. There were two synagogal accent systems as well, used in Palestine and Babylonia and dating from the 4th-7th centuries AD. These were designed, it appears, to annotate local synagogue chants and punctuational traditions. These notations were confused by some with the "Tiberian" accentuation after the last was published, as it was assumed the three written systems represented essentially the same tradition.
2. In Jewish sources these systems are typically called "the accents of the Three Books" and "the accents of the Twenty-One Books". For consistency with Haik-Vantoura's publications, we will use Haik-Vantoura's terminology on this Web site.
3. In particular, geresh, one of the superlinear te`amim (those found above the Hebrew words).
4. There was a then-famous biblical manuscript called "Jericho", now lost, which may well have been part of this cache. At any rate, the Ginsburg Edition of the Hebrew Bible (in its Masoretic notes) lists variant readings of the te`amim and vowel-points as based on this manuscript.

Index

Updated November 05, 2008