{"id":1244,"date":"2026-11-10T16:31:11","date_gmt":"2026-11-10T16:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/okhlah-ve-okhlah-masoretic-lists\/"},"modified":"2026-11-10T16:31:11","modified_gmt":"2026-11-10T16:31:11","slug":"okhlah-ve-okhlah-masoretic-lists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/okhlah-ve-okhlah-masoretic-lists\/","title":{"rendered":"The Masoretic Lists of Okhlah ve-Okhlah"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Masoretes\">Masoretes<\/a> of the early Middle Ages are best known from the notes they wrote around the text of the great biblical codices, in the side margins, at the head and foot of the page and at the ends of books. Alongside those notes there also circulated, from an early date, collections of Masoretic material written out as books in their own right, without any biblical text beside them. The largest and most influential of these independent compilations is known by the first two words of its first list, <em>\u02beOkhlah ve-\u02beOkhlah<\/em>. Aron Dotan, whose survey of the Masorah in the <em>Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em> remains the standard short account, describes it as the work of widest scope among the independent Masoretic treatises then known, comprising almost four hundred lists arranged by topic rather than in the order of the biblical books.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-1\"><a href=\"#note-1\">1<\/a><\/sup> The book is therefore a different kind of witness from a Bible manuscript. It shows how the scholars who guarded the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Hebrew_Bible\">Hebrew Bible<\/a> organised their knowledge of it when they were free of the constraints of the page, and it shows the categories into which they sorted the irregular, the unique and the easily confused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This essay describes the compilation as a work: its name and the character of its lists, the manuscripts in which it survives and the two recensions they represent, the modern editions, the relation of its lists to the Masorah written in the margins of codices, and its use by the scholars and printers of the sixteenth century. It does not retell the lives of the editors of the printed Rabbinic Bible or of the Masoretes of <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Tiberias\">Tiberias<\/a>, which are treated elsewhere on this site, but concentrates on what the compilation contains and how its text has reached modern readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group at-a-glance\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"at-a-glance\">At a glance<\/h3>\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li><strong>Name:<\/strong> from the first pair of words in its first list, <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05d0\u05b8\u05db\u05b0\u05dc\u05b8\u05d4<\/span> (1 Sam. 1:9) and <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05d5\u05b0\u05d0\u05b8\u05db\u05b0\u05dc\u05b8\u05d4<\/span> (Gen. 27:19).<\/li>\n\n<li><strong>Content:<\/strong> almost 400 lists on Dotan\u2019s count, arranged by subject rather than by biblical verse.<\/li>\n\n<li><strong>Date:<\/strong> disputed; Aron Dotan held that it was not edited later than the tenth century, while Israel Yeivin argued for the ninth.<\/li>\n\n<li><strong>Paris manuscript:<\/strong> Biblioth\u00e8que nationale de France, MS h\u00e9breu 148, the shorter recension, edited by Salomon Frensdorff in 1864.<\/li>\n\n<li><strong>Halle manuscript:<\/strong> Universit\u00e4ts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Yb 4\u00b0 10, the longer recension, edited in two parts by Fernando D\u00edaz Esteban (1975) and Bruno Ognibeni (1995).<\/li>\n\n<li><strong>Later use:<\/strong> drawn on by Jacob ben Hayyim for the final Masorah of the Venice Rabbinic Bible of 1524\u201325 and praised by Elias Levita.<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-name-and-its-first-list\">The Name and Its First List<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Medieval Hebrew books were commonly known by an opening word or phrase, and the Masoretic compilation follows that custom. Its first list is alphabetical and records pairs of words, each of which occurs only once in the Bible, one member of the pair without the conjunction <em>vav<\/em>, \u201cand\u201d, and the other with it. The first such pair is <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05d0\u05b8\u05db\u05b0\u05dc\u05b8\u05d4<\/span> (<em>\u02beokhlah<\/em>, \u201ceating\u201d) in 1 Samuel 1:9 and <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05d5\u05b0\u05d0\u05b8\u05db\u05b0\u05dc\u05b8\u05d4<\/span> (<em>ve-\u02beokhlah<\/em>, \u201cand eat\u201d) in Genesis 27:19. Christian David Ginsburg, who knew the work in both its principal manuscripts, explained in his <em>Introduction<\/em> of 1897 that independent Masoretic compendia usually began with this long alphabetical list of words occurring twice, once with and once without the conjunctive <em>vav<\/em>, and that the manuals were therefore called after their first pair.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-2\"><a href=\"#note-2\">2<\/a><\/sup> Dotan likewise explains that the title comes from the first two words of the first list, and he adds that the book was also known to early scholars under other names. <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Saadia_Gaon\">Saadia Gaon<\/a> referred to it in his grammatical work as <em>al-m\u0101sirah<\/em>, \u201cthe Masorah\u201d, and David ben Abraham al-F\u0101s\u012b called it in his dictionary <em>al-m\u0101sirah al-kab\u012brah<\/em>, \u201cthe great Masorah\u201d. The Hebrew name <em>Masoret ha-Gedolah<\/em> is attested as well, and the title <em>\u02beOkhlah ve-\u02beOkhlah<\/em> itself already appears in the dictionary of <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Jonah_ibn_Janah\">Jonah ibn Janah<\/a>.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-3\"><a href=\"#note-3\">3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The opening list is characteristic of the book as a whole. It does not record a rare word for its own sake, nor does it explain a difficult form. It records a contrast between two forms that a copyist could easily confuse, and by setting both side by side it prevents either from being assimilated to the other. The authors of the handbook to the Masorah of the <em>Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia<\/em>, Page Kelley, Daniel Mynatt and Timothy Crawford, use this first list as their example of what Israel Yeivin called \u201ccollative\u201d Masorah. Such material, they explain, takes two frequent forms: lists of words or phrases that differ from one another, and are frequently unique, but share some common category or detail, and lists of pairs of words that are similar but differ in one detail. As an instance of the first kind they cite list 72 in Frensdorff\u2019s edition, which gathers words that occur as doublets, that is, the same word repeated immediately, and as an instance of the second kind they cite the opening alphabetical list of pairs.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-4\"><a href=\"#note-4\">4<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-character-of-the-lists\">The Character of the Lists<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The lists of <em>\u02beOkhlah ve-\u02beOkhlah<\/em> are not arranged in the order of the biblical text. Dotan describes them as arranged alphabetically and topically, so that a list collects unique words that share a characteristic, pairs of words that differ in a single detail, or extraordinary spellings, vocalisations and accents.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-5\"><a href=\"#note-5\">5<\/a><\/sup> In this respect the compilation differs from other independent Masoretic works recovered from the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Cairo_Geniza\">Cairo Geniza<\/a>, some of which give their notes in the order of the books of the Bible without the biblical text. Dotan notes that fragments of such independent works survive in Tiberian, Babylonian and, in a few cases, Palestinian form, and that some of them may go back to the period in which the Masorah was not yet written in the margins of biblical manuscripts.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-6\"><a href=\"#note-6\">6<\/a><\/sup> Kelley, Mynatt and Crawford add that before the discovery of the Geniza, <em>\u02beOkhlah ve-\u02beOkhlah<\/em> was the only treatise of this type known to exist, and that Geniza fragments contain collections of both types, some following the order of the text and some arranged by topic like <em>\u02beOkhlah ve-\u02beOkhlah<\/em>.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-7\"><a href=\"#note-7\">7<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Several lists in the book can be traced through Dotan\u2019s account of particular Masoretic phenomena. In describing the fifteen words of the Bible that carry extraordinary dots above or below their letters, Dotan refers the reader to the full lists in the Masorah magna at Numbers 3:39 and to section 96 of Frensdorff\u2019s edition.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-8\"><a href=\"#note-8\">8<\/a><\/sup> In discussing the reversed or isolated <em>nun<\/em> signs that bracket Numbers 10:35\u201336, he cites section 179 for the uncertainty whether the whole sign was reversed.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-9\"><a href=\"#note-9\">9<\/a><\/sup> For the rabbinic lists of words that are read but not written, and of words that are written but not read, he observes that the list in the Talmud is a sample and that a correct list is found in section 97 of the compilation, where there are ten words of the first type and eight of the second.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-10\"><a href=\"#note-10\">10<\/a><\/sup> He cites section 161 for the curious combined letters known as attached <em>qufin<\/em>.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-11\"><a href=\"#note-11\">11<\/a><\/sup> Taken together, these references show that the compilation was not only a store of statistical curiosities. It preserved the classified knowledge on which the scribal handling of the consonantal text depended, including the very features that later scribes were forbidden to alter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Other lists bear on pronunciation. Elvira Mart\u00edn-Contreras, in a study of the use of the Masorah for interpreting the vocalisation and accentuation of the biblical text, gives the example of the word <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05dc\u05b8\u05d7\u05b6\u05dd<\/span>, \u201cfighting, war\u201d, in Judges 5:8, which the marginal Masorah of the Aleppo Codex marks as unique, as do the margins of the Cairo Codex of the Prophets and the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Leningrad_Codex\">Leningrad Codex<\/a> at the same verse. A concordance shows that the consonantal word occurs many times, so the note alone does not reveal in what sense it is unique. List 373 of the compilation in its Paris version resolves the question: it collects words that occur once with stress on the final syllable while everywhere else they are stressed on the penultimate. The note thus signals that the word in question is not the pausal form of <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05dc\u05b6\u05d7\u05b6\u05dd<\/span>, \u201cbread\u201d, which is vocalised identically but stressed on the penultimate, but a different word meaning \u201cwar\u201d, distinguished from it only by the position of the stress.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-12\"><a href=\"#note-12\">12<\/a><\/sup> Mart\u00edn-Contreras includes the editions of the compilation by Frensdorff, D\u00edaz Esteban and Ognibeni among the major Masoretic lists and treatises that must be consulted, together with the margins of the principal Tiberian codices, before the meaning of any marginal note can be established.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-13\"><a href=\"#note-13\">13<\/a><\/sup> The example illustrates why the lists are still used. A note in the margin of a codex is usually abbreviated and often elliptical, while a list in the compilation may state its principle in full.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The same interest in contrast and confusion runs through the work. The earliest Masoretic notes were concerned with matters that a copyist was likely to get wrong, such as full and defective spelling, the forms of words with and without a prefix, and the reading that differs from the written form. A list of unique pairs is a defence against harmonisation: a scribe who has copied a common phrase many times is tempted to write it again where a rare variant stands, and the list tells him that the variant is right. Vincent Beiler, writing about the large marginal letters found in some early codices, describes the practice of reminding the reader that what is written on the page differs from what should be read as \u201cpart and parcel of the masoretic project as seen most famously in Sefer Okhlah ve-Okhlah\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-14\"><a href=\"#note-14\">14<\/a><\/sup> The phrase is a fair summary of the compilation\u2019s purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"a-compilation-rather-than-a-single-composition\">A Compilation Rather Than a Single Composition<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dotan emphasised that the book is not a uniform work. Most of its lists are known from other sources, either in the marginal Masorah or in other independent manuscripts, but in <em>\u02beOkhlah ve-\u02beOkhlah<\/em> they are more complete and appear in part to have been taken from an ancient source. At the same time the book contains lists from relatively late periods, and the existence of more than one version of it confirms that it grew over time.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-15\"><a href=\"#note-15\">15<\/a><\/sup> Dotan connected the work with the anonymous Masoretic literature on which <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Aaron_ben_Moses_ben_Asher\">Aaron ben Asher<\/a> himself drew. In his account, Ben Asher\u2019s work of compilation depended on a vast literature handed down in fragments on the pages of the Bible and in rules, and even in very early times there were anonymous scholars who gathered that material into larger works, of which <em>\u02beOkhlah ve-\u02beOkhlah<\/em> is one.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-16\"><a href=\"#note-16\">16<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The date of the compilation is therefore difficult to fix. Dotan wrote that the exact date of its editing had not been established, that there is evidence of its antiquity, and that it was certainly not edited later than the tenth century.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-17\"><a href=\"#note-17\">17<\/a><\/sup> Kelley, Mynatt and Crawford summarise the disagreement between Dotan, who held that it was not edited before the tenth century, and Yeivin, who argued for the ninth.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-18\"><a href=\"#note-18\">18<\/a><\/sup> Both views place the compilation within the classical period of Tiberian Masoretic activity, but neither can be made precise, because the lists themselves are of different ages. A work that collected and recopied existing material over several generations will always resist a single date, and the honest statement is that the core of the compilation belongs to the ninth or tenth century and that its lists, and the recensions in which they survive, continued to develop after that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The citation by Ibn Janah, who wrote in Spain in the first half of the eleventh century, shows that the title was already current outside the Land of Israel within a century or so of the end of the classical Masoretic period. Geoffrey Khan has shown, from Ibn Janah\u2019s own complaints, how little direct access Spanish grammarians of that generation had to the living oral tradition of Tiberian reading.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-19\"><a href=\"#note-19\">19<\/a><\/sup> Written compilations such as <em>\u02beOkhlah ve-\u02beOkhlah<\/em> were among the means by which Tiberian knowledge travelled to communities that no longer heard it read in Tiberias or Jerusalem. That function helps to explain both its survival in European manuscripts and the variety of its recensions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"ornate-card overflow-hidden mb-8\"><picture class=\"article-figure-picture\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" src=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Okhlah-body-library-take-2.jpg\" alt=\"A nineteenth-century scholar, seen from behind in a book-lined library, compares an open medieval manuscript with a stack of printed proof sheets\" class=\"article-figure-img wp-image-1243\" srcset=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Okhlah-body-library-take-2.jpg?v=20261101clean 1280w, https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Okhlah-body-library-take-2-300x169.jpg?v=20261101clean 300w, https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Okhlah-body-library-take-2-1024x576.jpg?v=20261101clean 1024w, https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Okhlah-body-library-take-2-768x432.jpg?v=20261101clean 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px\" \/><\/picture><figcaption class=\"figure-caption\">Illustration: a nineteenth-century scholar compares a manuscript with printed proofs, as the first editors of the compilation did.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-paris-manuscript-and-frensdorffs-edition\">The Paris Manuscript and Frensdorff\u2019s Edition<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For about three centuries after its use by the Venetian printers the work was little studied, and Kelley, Mynatt and Crawford remark that references to it disappear until modern times.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-20\"><a href=\"#note-20\">20<\/a><\/sup> Its modern history begins with a manuscript in the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Biblioth\u00e8que_nationale_de_France\">Biblioth\u00e8que nationale de France<\/a>, MS h\u00e9breu 148, which represents the shorter of the two surviving recensions. Salomon Frensdorff published the text of this manuscript at Hanover in 1864 under the title <em>Das Buch Ochlah W\u2019ochlah<\/em>, with a learned commentary.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-21\"><a href=\"#note-21\">21<\/a><\/sup> Dotan records the edition as the first publication of the book, made from the Paris manuscript, and Ginsburg described it as published \u201cwith learned notes\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-22\"><a href=\"#note-22\">22<\/a><\/sup> Frensdorff\u2019s edition numbers the lists consecutively, and because it was the first in print its numbering became the conventional way of referring to them. When Dotan cites sections 96, 97, 161 or 179, and when Mart\u00edn-Contreras cites list 373, they are using Frensdorff\u2019s numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Frensdorff\u2019s interest in the Masorah did not end with this edition. He published a scholarly edition of the Masorah magna of Jacob ben Hayyim\u2019s Rabbinic Bible, which Dotan lists in his account of that edition.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-23\"><a href=\"#note-23\">23<\/a><\/sup> The edition published at Hanover and Leipzig in 1876 is a separate work from the compilation, but the two together made Frensdorff one of the principal nineteenth-century editors of Masoretic texts. The <em>Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia<\/em> cites the 1864 edition in its Masoretic apparatus under the abbreviation \u201cOkhl\u201d, while the later edition of the Halle manuscript is cited as \u201cOkhl II\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-24\"><a href=\"#note-24\">24<\/a><\/sup> A reader who meets either abbreviation in the apparatus of the standard modern hand edition is therefore meeting this compilation, in one or other of its recensions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-halle-manuscript\">The Halle Manuscript<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The second complete manuscript is preserved in the university library at <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Halle_%28Saale%29\">Halle<\/a>, now the Universit\u00e4ts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, under the shelfmark Yb 4\u00b0 10. It represents a longer recension than the Paris copy, and its lists are arranged in two parts. Benjamin Ziemer, who has worked on the Halle manuscript, cites a list from its first part as Part I, section 19, on folios 23r\u201324r, and gives the corresponding list in the Paris manuscript as section 18, on folios 24r\u201326r, which illustrates both the parallel structure of the two recensions in their opening sections and the differences in their numbering.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-25\"><a href=\"#note-25\">25<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ginsburg had a particular interest in this manuscript. He reported that it had belonged to Elias Levita, according to a partially defaced note on its first page, and he identified it with the copy of <em>Ochlah ve-Ochlah<\/em> that Levita says was used extensively by Jacob ben Hayyim in compiling the Masorah of the Rabbinic Bible printed at Venice in 1524\u201325. Ginsburg added that by permission of the Halle University authorities he had made a facsimile of the manuscript in 1867 and had incorporated many lists from it in his own compilation of the Masorah.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-26\"><a href=\"#note-26\">26<\/a><\/sup> Ginsburg\u2019s identification rests on the ownership note and on his reading of Levita, and it should be treated as his judgement rather than as a settled fact; but it explains why the Halle copy was regarded from the nineteenth century onward as the more important of the two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Halle text waited longer than the Paris text for a modern edition. Fernando D\u00edaz Esteban published the first part at Madrid in 1975, together with the fragments of the work that had come to light in the Geniza collections, and Bruno Ognibeni published the second part in 1995.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-27\"><a href=\"#note-27\">27<\/a><\/sup> D\u00edaz Esteban\u2019s volume also gave the first edition of the Geniza fragments of the work, and Ognibeni\u2019s appeared at Madrid and Fribourg. Dotan observes that the existence of more than one version of the book reinforces the conclusion that it is not a uniform work.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-28\"><a href=\"#note-28\">28<\/a><\/sup> The difference between the recensions is not merely a matter of length. The longer version includes lists that the shorter lacks, orders some material differently and divides the whole into two orders, so that each recension has to be read as a witness in its own right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"fragments-and-the-question-of-a-stemma\">Fragments and the Question of a Stemma<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Besides the two complete copies, fragments of the compilation survive in the great collections of Hebrew manuscripts that received material from the Cairo Geniza and from the collections of Abraham Firkovich. Ziemer\u2019s study of a single list, the alphabetical list of unique words beginning with <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05d5\u05de<\/span> (<em>u-m-<\/em>), shows what this evidence looks like in practice. In addition to the Halle and Paris manuscripts, the list is partly extant in fragments now in the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/National_Library_of_Russia\">National Library of Russia<\/a> in Saint Petersburg, in the Taylor-Schechter collection at <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Cambridge_University_Library\">Cambridge University Library<\/a> and in the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Bodleian_Library\">Bodleian Library<\/a> at Oxford.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-29\"><a href=\"#note-29\">29<\/a><\/sup> Ziemer used these witnesses to approach the relationship between the manuscripts, a task that remains unfinished, and his title presents the list only as a clue to a possible stemma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The same handout shows how widely the material of a single list could be distributed in biblical manuscripts. British Library Or. 4445, an early Pentateuch codex, contains twelve lists covering parts of the same alphabetical sequence, written beside particular words in its margins. Other early codices cite parts of the list in their margins, among them a manuscript in Saint Petersburg and the <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/the-cairo-prophets-codex\/\">Cairo Codex of the Prophets<\/a> as published in its Madrid edition, while a number of manuscripts apply the list implicitly in their marginal notes of uniqueness. Ziemer estimates that the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Aleppo_Codex\">Aleppo Codex<\/a> takes account of about 80 to 90 per cent of the words of the list in its Masorah parva, and the Leningrad Codex of about half of them.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-30\"><a href=\"#note-30\">30<\/a><\/sup> A compilation such as <em>\u02beOkhlah ve-\u02beOkhlah<\/em> thus stands in a reciprocal relation to the codices: its lists draw on Masoretic knowledge that was also written in the margins, and the marginal notes of the best codices presuppose lists of the kind that the compilation preserves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-compilation-and-the-cairo-codex-of-the-prophets\">The Compilation and the Cairo Codex of the Prophets<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The relation between the independent compilation and the Masorah of a particular codex was examined in detail by Mar\u00eda Teresa Ortega Monasterio and Emilia Fern\u00e1ndez Tejero of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cient\u00edficas. Their article in <em>Sefarad<\/em> compared the Masorah magna of the Cairo Codex of the Prophets with the two editions of the compilation, by Frensdorff and by D\u00edaz Esteban. They found that in almost a hundred cases lists of the compilation, or fragments of them, appear in the Masorah magna of the Cairo codex, and that in fourteen cases two or more notes of that Masorah could be compared with both editions. They published the ninety-four cases of shared information and discussed the fourteen special cases in detail.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-31\"><a href=\"#note-31\">31<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Their provisional conclusion is important for any account of the work. In Masoretic content, they found, the notes of the Cairo codex and the two editions of the compilation are similar; in the form in which that content was transmitted, they differ so much that a common source must be rejected.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-32\"><a href=\"#note-32\">32<\/a><\/sup> The result discourages the simple picture in which the compilation is either the source of the marginal Masorah or an anthology made from it. Both appear rather to draw independently on a shared body of Masoretic knowledge, which each shaped according to its own purpose and layout. A list written as a single block in a compilation can be distributed in a codex across many pages, abbreviated by catchwords, or attached to a single lemma, and the differences in form are the result of these different modes of transmission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ziemer\u2019s observation that the Cairo codex sometimes gives as catchwords not the beginning of a verse but its continuation is a small example of the same phenomenon.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-33\"><a href=\"#note-33\">33<\/a><\/sup> The compiler of a list in book form could write out each item fully, while a Masorete writing in the margin above or below the text had to economise, and the solutions adopted differed from scribe to scribe. Mart\u00edn-Contreras makes the same point about the Masorah in general: the marginal annotations of each codex form their own corpus, no two codices have identical Masorah, and the information is often expressed in abbreviated and elliptical ways that vary even within a single manuscript.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-34\"><a href=\"#note-34\">34<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"use-by-jacob-ben-hayyim-and-elias-levita\">Use by Jacob ben Hayyim and Elias Levita<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The influence of <em>\u02beOkhlah ve-\u02beOkhlah<\/em> on the printed Hebrew Bible came through the Venetian press of <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Daniel_Bomberg\">Daniel Bomberg<\/a>. When <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/jacob-ben-hayyim-second-rabbinic-bible-venice-1525\/\">Jacob ben Hayyim<\/a> prepared the second <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Mikraot_Gedolot\">Rabbinic Bible<\/a>, printed in 1524\u201325, he corrected and rearranged the Masorah of the manuscripts available to him and placed a large part of the Masorah magna, in alphabetical order, at the end of the volume. Dotan describes this arrangement as the first attempt to set all the Masoretic notes in alphabetical order and records that Ben Hayyim also printed, with the final Masorah, various Masoretic lists, some of them resembling those in <em>\u02beOkhlah ve-\u02beOkhlah<\/em>.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-35\"><a href=\"#note-35\">35<\/a><\/sup> Ziemer\u2019s comparison shows how close the resemblance could be: in the final Masorah of the Venice edition, under the letter <em>mem<\/em>, sections 6 to 12 contain the material of the list of words beginning with <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05d5\u05de<\/span>, and section 12 is nearly identical with Part I, section 19, of the Halle manuscript.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-36\"><a href=\"#note-36\">36<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/elias-levita-and-the-masoret-ha-masoret-of-1538\/\">Elias Levita<\/a>, whose <em>Masoret ha-Masoret<\/em> of 1538 was the first systematic introduction to the Masorah written for a wide readership, knew the compilation and referred to its use by Ben Hayyim. Ginsburg, as noted above, identified the Halle manuscript with the copy Levita describes, on the strength of the ownership note.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-37\"><a href=\"#note-37\">37<\/a><\/sup> Whether or not that identification is accepted, the link between the compilation and the Venetian Masorah is secure. The alphabetical <em>Masorah finalis<\/em> that was printed in the Rabbinic Bibles for four centuries, and that remained for most readers the only accessible form of the Masorah, depends in part on lists of the kind preserved in <em>\u02beOkhlah ve-\u02beOkhlah<\/em>. The site\u2019s essay on <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/the-masorah-finalis-and-the-closing-apparatus-of-the-hebrew-bible\/\">the Masorah finalis<\/a> describes that apparatus in its printed form; the compilation is one of the reasons why the apparatus took the shape it did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dotan\u2019s judgement on the Venetian Masorah is balanced. He credits Ben Hayyim with correcting many errors and with the innovation of cross-references, but he also notes that the codified Masorah of the Rabbinic Bible was long treated, unjustly, as the exclusive text of the Masorah, until the Ben Asher codices of Leningrad and Aleppo began to appear in print in the twentieth century.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-38\"><a href=\"#note-38\">38<\/a><\/sup> The renewed study of the independent compilation belongs to the same correction. By publishing the Paris and Halle manuscripts as they stand, Frensdorff, D\u00edaz Esteban and Ognibeni made it possible to see the medieval lists before they were rearranged for print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"medieval-readers-and-the-growth-of-the-book\">Medieval Readers and the Growth of the Book<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The book\u2019s medieval readers were not only Masoretes. The citations by Saadia and by Ibn Janah show that grammarians and lexicographers drew on it, and Dotan\u2019s account of the early development of Hebrew grammar uses the lists repeatedly. In discussing the theory of <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Heinrich_Graetz\">Heinrich Graetz<\/a> that diacritical dots once distinguished homographs before the invention of the vowel signs, Dotan explains that Graetz found in several lists of <em>\u02beOkhlah ve-\u02beOkhlah<\/em>, sections 5, 11 and 45 to 50 in Frensdorff\u2019s edition, that the terms <em>mil\u02bfel<\/em> and <em>milra\u02bf<\/em>, normally used of penultimate and final stress, were applied to pairs of homographs that differ in a single vowel. Dotan adds that the first of these lists is also cited in the final Masorah of Jacob ben Hayyim under the letter <em>alef<\/em>, and he observes that no manuscript preserves any trace of the dots that Graetz postulated.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-39\"><a href=\"#note-39\">39<\/a><\/sup> Whatever the merits of the theory, its dependence on the compilation shows how central the book had become to nineteenth-century attempts to reconstruct the prehistory of Hebrew vocalisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ginsburg drew attention to the breadth of this readership. In his account, standard codices and independent Masoretic compilations alike are constantly cited by Masoretic annotators, Jewish grammarians and commentators from the middle of the tenth century onward.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-40\"><a href=\"#note-40\">40<\/a><\/sup> Dotan supplies a concrete instance from the compilation itself: a well-known Masoretic note on the total number of verses in the Bible, which traces the tradition back through Dosa ben Eleazar to the Babylonian <em>amora<\/em> Rav Hamnuna and thence to Palestinian sources, is quoted in several sources, among them a manuscript of <em>\u02beOkhlah ve-\u02beOkhlah<\/em>.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-41\"><a href=\"#note-41\">41<\/a><\/sup> The compilation thus preserved not only lists about the text but also traditions about the history of the Masorah, which its users could cite as evidence for the antiquity of their own discipline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The survival of both recensions in European manuscripts, one of which, on Ginsburg\u2019s reading of its ownership note, later passed through the hands of Elias Levita in Italy, indicates that the compilation remained in use among the scribes and <em>naqdanim<\/em> who prepared Masoretic Bibles long after it was first assembled. Ginsburg\u2019s description of the later Masoretic manuals of the naqdanim explains their purpose: such compendia were convenient sources from which a Masoretic annotator could select the material he wished to transfer into the codex he was revising, and the order adopted in them generally depended on the taste of the compiler.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-42\"><a href=\"#note-42\">42<\/a><\/sup> On this view, <em>\u02beOkhlah ve-\u02beOkhlah<\/em> is the most extensive survivor of a genre of working manuals, and its several recensions are the record of different scribes adapting a common inheritance to their own needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"reading-the-compilation-today\">Reading the Compilation Today<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A modern reader approaching the compilation will usually meet it through the editions rather than the manuscripts, and through citations in the apparatus of the <em>Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia<\/em> and in studies of the Masorah of individual codices. The editions differ in kind. Frensdorff\u2019s edition presents the shorter recension of the Paris manuscript with what Ginsburg called \u201clearned notes\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-43\"><a href=\"#note-43\">43<\/a><\/sup> The editions of the Halle manuscript by D\u00edaz Esteban and Ognibeni present the longer recension and, in D\u00edaz Esteban\u2019s case, the Geniza fragments, so that the user can see where the recensions agree and where they diverge.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-44\"><a href=\"#note-44\">44<\/a><\/sup> The scholar who wishes to know whether a particular list belongs to the oldest stratum of the work must compare both editions and, where possible, the fragments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The method illustrated by Mart\u00edn-Contreras shows how the compilation is used in practice. Faced with a marginal note in the Leningrad Codex that seems to give the wrong number of occurrences, or that marks a word as unique without saying why, the student consults the Masorah of the other principal Tiberian codices and the major independent lists, including the editions of <em>\u02beOkhlah ve-\u02beOkhlah<\/em>. The list that matches the note usually reveals the principle behind it, such as a distinction in stress or vocalisation between homographs, and the note can then be applied to the interpretation of the verse.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-45\"><a href=\"#note-45\">45<\/a><\/sup> In this way the compilation functions as a key to the abbreviated language of the margins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The lists also preserve evidence for the text itself. Because they record unique forms, pairs and spellings, they can show which reading a given Masoretic tradition regarded as correct at a particular place. The comparison of the compilation with the Cairo Codex of the Prophets by Ortega Monasterio and Fern\u00e1ndez Tejero, and the use of its lists by Ziemer to estimate how far the Aleppo and Leningrad codices take account of a given list, are examples of this kind of work.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-46\"><a href=\"#note-46\">46<\/a><\/sup> Such studies do not treat the compilation as an authority superior to the codices. They treat it as one more witness to a tradition that was transmitted in several media at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"assessment\">Assessment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>\u02beOkhlah ve-\u02beOkhlah<\/em> is the fullest surviving example of the Masorah written as a book. Its name records the contrast with which it begins, and its lists show the same concern throughout: to fix the unique, the irregular and the easily confused, and to set them in categories that a scribe or reader could consult. The work cannot be assigned to a single author or date. Dotan\u2019s conclusion that it was edited not later than the tenth century, and that it contains both ancient and later lists, remains the most cautious summary of the evidence, while Yeivin\u2019s preference for the ninth century and Dotan\u2019s for the tenth mark the range of informed opinion.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-47\"><a href=\"#note-47\">47<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The two recensions, represented by the Paris and Halle manuscripts and by fragments in Saint Petersburg, Cambridge and Oxford, show that the compilation was copied and enlarged in more than one form. The editions of Frensdorff, D\u00edaz Esteban and Ognibeni have made both recensions available, and the comparison of the lists with the Masorah of the Cairo Codex of the Prophets has shown that compilation and codex draw on shared Masoretic knowledge without depending on a single common written source.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-48\"><a href=\"#note-48\">48<\/a><\/sup> Through Jacob ben Hayyim the compilation entered the printed <em>Masorah finalis<\/em> of the Rabbinic Bible, and through the modern editions it has become a working tool for the interpretation of the marginal notes in the codices themselves. Its value lies less in any single list than in the evidence it gives of how the Masoretes and their successors classified the text they were committed to preserve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"notes\">Notes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list post-notes\">\n\n<li id=\"note-1\">Aron Dotan, \u201cMasorah\u201d, in <em>Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, 2nd edn, at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.encyclopedia.com\/religion\/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps\/masorah\">Encyclopedia.com<\/a>, \u00a73.4. <a href=\"#ref-1\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 1\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-2\">Christian D. Ginsburg, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/introductionofma00ginsuoft\">Introduction to the Massoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible<\/a><\/em> (London: Trinitarian Bible Society, 1897), pp. 463\u2013464. <a href=\"#ref-2\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 2\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-3\">Dotan, \u201cMasorah\u201d, \u00a73.4. <a href=\"#ref-3\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 3\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-4\">Page H. Kelley, Daniel S. Mynatt and Timothy G. Crawford, <em>The Masorah of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: Introduction and Annotated Glossary<\/em> (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 21, quoted in the description of <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/OkhlahVeOkhlah\">Frensdorff\u2019s edition at the Internet Archive<\/a>. <a href=\"#ref-4\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 4\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-5\">Dotan, \u201cMasorah\u201d, \u00a73.4. <a href=\"#ref-5\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 5\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-6\">Dotan, \u201cMasorah\u201d, \u00a73.4. <a href=\"#ref-6\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 6\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-7\">Kelley, Mynatt and Crawford, <em>Masorah of BHS<\/em>. <a href=\"#ref-7\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 7\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-8\">Dotan, \u201cMasorah\u201d, \u00a71.2.2.1. <a href=\"#ref-8\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 8\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-9\">Dotan, \u201cMasorah\u201d, \u00a71.2.2.2. <a href=\"#ref-9\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 9\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-10\">Dotan, \u201cMasorah\u201d, \u00a71.3.1.3. <a href=\"#ref-10\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 10\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-11\">Dotan, \u201cMasorah\u201d, \u00a71.2.2.5. <a href=\"#ref-11\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 11\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-12\">Elvira Mart\u00edn-Contreras, \u201cUsing the Masora for Interpreting the Vocalisation and Accentuation of the Biblical Text\u201d, in Daniel J. Crowther, Aaron D. Hornkohl and Geoffrey Khan (eds), <em><a href=\"https:\/\/library.oapen.org\/bitstream\/id\/51e03712-a6cf-44e2-87f9-485d7f7885b4\/9781800649217.pdf\">Studies in the Masoretic Tradition of the Hebrew Bible<\/a><\/em> (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2022), pp. 1\u201322, pp. 14\u201315. <a href=\"#ref-12\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 12\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-13\">Mart\u00edn-Contreras, \u201cUsing the Masora\u201d, pp. 5\u20136. <a href=\"#ref-13\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 13\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-14\">Vincent D. Beiler, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/books.openbookpublishers.com\/10.11647\/obp.0330.03.pdf\">The Marginal <em>nun\/zayin<\/em>: Meaning, Purpose, Localisation<\/a>\u201d, in Crowther, Hornkohl and Khan (eds), <em>Studies in the Masoretic Tradition of the Hebrew Bible<\/em>, pp. 75\u2013114, p. 106. <a href=\"#ref-14\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 14\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-15\">Dotan, \u201cMasorah\u201d, \u00a73.4. <a href=\"#ref-15\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 15\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-16\">Dotan, \u201cMasorah\u201d, \u00a76.3. <a href=\"#ref-16\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 16\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-17\">Dotan, \u201cMasorah\u201d, \u00a73.4. <a href=\"#ref-17\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 17\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-18\">Kelley, Mynatt and Crawford, <em>Masorah of BHS<\/em>. <a href=\"#ref-18\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 18\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-19\">Geoffrey Khan, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/library.oapen.org\/bitstream\/handle\/20.500.12657\/22422\/9781783746774.pdf\">The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew<\/a><\/em>, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2020), pp. 107\u2013108. <a href=\"#ref-19\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 19\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-20\">Kelley, Mynatt and Crawford, <em>Masorah of BHS<\/em>. <a href=\"#ref-20\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 20\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-21\">Salomon Frensdorff, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/OkhlahVeOkhlah\">Das Buch Ochlah W\u2019ochlah (Massora)<\/a><\/em> (Hanover: Hahn, 1864). <a href=\"#ref-21\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 21\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-22\">Dotan, \u201cMasorah\u201d, \u00a73.4; Ginsburg, <em>Introduction<\/em>, p. 464. <a href=\"#ref-22\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 22\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-23\">Dotan, \u201cMasorah\u201d, \u00a73.3.6.1. <a href=\"#ref-23\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 23\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-24\">Kelley, Mynatt and Crawford, <em>Masorah of BHS<\/em>. <a href=\"#ref-24\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 24\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-25\">Benjamin Ziemer, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/wcms.itz.uni-halle.de\/download.php?down=57477&#038;elem=3336152\">The List of Unique Words Beginning with <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05d5\u05de<\/span> as Clue for a Stemma of the Okhla Manuscripts<\/a>\u201d, handout, Society of Biblical Literature, Masoretic Studies section, 2020. <a href=\"#ref-25\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 25\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-26\">Ginsburg, <em>Introduction<\/em>, p. 464. <a href=\"#ref-26\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 26\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-27\">Dotan, \u201cMasorah\u201d, \u00a73.4; Ziemer, \u201cList of Unique Words\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-27\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 27\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-28\">Dotan, \u201cMasorah\u201d, \u00a73.4. <a href=\"#ref-28\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 28\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-29\">Ziemer, \u201cList of Unique Words\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-29\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 29\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-30\">Ziemer, \u201cList of Unique Words\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-30\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 30\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-31\">Mar\u00eda Teresa Ortega Monasterio and Emilia Fern\u00e1ndez Tejero, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/sefarad.revistas.csic.es\/index.php\/sefarad\/article\/view\/1114\">El <em>Sefer \u2019Oklah w\u0115-\u2019Oklah<\/em> y la masora magna del c\u00f3dice de Profetas de El Cairo<\/a>\u201d, <em>Sefarad<\/em> 55 (1995), pp. 147\u2013162. <a href=\"#ref-31\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 31\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-32\">Ortega Monasterio and Fern\u00e1ndez Tejero, \u201cEl <em>Sefer \u2019Oklah w\u0115-\u2019Oklah<\/em>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-32\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 32\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-33\">Ziemer, \u201cList of Unique Words\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-33\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 33\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-34\">Mart\u00edn-Contreras, \u201cUsing the Masora\u201d, pp. 1\u20134. <a href=\"#ref-34\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 34\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-35\">Dotan, \u201cMasorah\u201d, \u00a7\u00a73.3.6, 6.4.4. <a href=\"#ref-35\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 35\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-36\">Ziemer, \u201cList of Unique Words\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-36\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 36\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-37\">Ginsburg, <em>Introduction<\/em>, p. 464. <a href=\"#ref-37\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 37\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-38\">Dotan, \u201cMasorah\u201d, \u00a76.4.4. <a href=\"#ref-38\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 38\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-39\">Dotan, \u201cMasorah\u201d, \u00a7\u00a74.1\u20134.2. <a href=\"#ref-39\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 39\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-40\">Ginsburg, <em>Introduction<\/em>, p. 463. <a href=\"#ref-40\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 40\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-41\">Dotan, \u201cMasorah\u201d, \u00a76.1.1. <a href=\"#ref-41\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 41\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-42\">Ginsburg, <em>Introduction<\/em>, pp. 463\u2013464. <a href=\"#ref-42\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 42\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-43\">Frensdorff, <em>Ochlah W\u2019ochlah<\/em>; Ginsburg, <em>Introduction<\/em>, p. 464. <a href=\"#ref-43\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 43\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-44\">Dotan, \u201cMasorah\u201d, \u00a73.4; Ziemer, \u201cList of Unique Words\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-44\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 44\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-45\">Mart\u00edn-Contreras, \u201cUsing the Masora\u201d, pp. 5\u201315. <a href=\"#ref-45\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 45\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-46\">Ortega Monasterio and Fern\u00e1ndez Tejero, \u201cEl <em>Sefer \u2019Oklah w\u0115-\u2019Oklah<\/em>\u201d; Ziemer, \u201cList of Unique Words\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-46\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 46\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-47\">Dotan, \u201cMasorah\u201d, \u00a73.4; Kelley, Mynatt and Crawford, <em>Masorah of BHS<\/em>. <a href=\"#ref-47\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 47\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-48\">Ortega Monasterio and Fern\u00e1ndez Tejero, \u201cEl <em>Sefer \u2019Oklah w\u0115-\u2019Oklah<\/em>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-48\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 48\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<\/ol>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The largest independent compilation of Masoretic lists, known by the first two words of its opening list, shows how the Masoretes and their successors classified the unique, the irregular and the easily confused in the text of the Hebrew Bible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1242,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[878,879,42,34,877,876,880],"class_list":["post-1244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-masoretes","tag-frensdorff","tag-halle-manuscript","tag-jacob-ben-hayyim","tag-masorah","tag-masoretic-lists","tag-okhlah-ve-okhlah","tag-paris-manuscript"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}