The Orthography of the Samaritan Pentateuch / hkhtyv shl hnṿs'ḥ hshṿmrṿny
The Orthography of the Samaritan Pentateuch / הכתיב של הנוסח השומרוני
This article, the first of two dealing with the Samaritan orthography, is mainly of methodological character. The author criticizes both the methods of research used by scholars when dealing with the orthography of the Samaritan Pentateuch and their unavoidable derivative conclusions. Consequently,...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | Hebrew |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
[publisher not identified]
1975
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| In: |
Bet miḳra
Year: 1975, Volume: 21, Issue: 1, Pages: 54-70 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article, the first of two dealing with the Samaritan orthography, is mainly of methodological character. The author criticizes both the methods of research used by scholars when dealing with the orthography of the Samaritan Pentateuch and their unavoidable derivative conclusions. Consequently, he offers new methods, and shows how the current theories should be modified accordingly. The Samaritan orthography is usually regarded as "full", and as such represented the typical orthography of the last two centuries B.C.E. The author shows that this view is imprecise, being based on methods of generalized comparison with the orthography of the Masoretic parallel text. In order to obtain a reliable and precise criterion for characterizing the Samaritan orthography, as well as any other biblical orthography, a way of dividing the orthographic material into categories and examining each category separately is suggested. Doing so, we may arrive at completely different conclusions from the current ones, concerning the characteristics of the Samaritan orthography, its relation to the orthography of the Masoretic text (including all parts of the Bible), and its place in the history of Hebrew orthography in the Second Temple period. The author's main conclusions may be summed up as follows : There is no justification in defining the Samaritan orthography as "full" and regarding it as a representative of a supposedly exclusive "full orthography", typical of the last centuries of the Second Temple period. Rather, it exhibits a "conservative" orthography, preserving in many of its categories "defective" spellings. A comparison of the Samaritan orthography, divided into categories, with both the masoretic and the Qumran material, would show two living trends in the Biblical orthographic activity during the two last centuries B.C.E. One may well be termed as a "full" orthographic system (such as in 1Q Isa etc.), but the other, probably the stronger trend, could be regarded as a "conservative" trend, preserving varying degress of "defective" spellings. The Samaritan orthography as well as that of the Masoretic text belong to the same "conservative" trend. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Bet miḳra
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