{"id":1472,"date":"2026-11-12T23:33:12","date_gmt":"2026-11-12T23:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/the-treatise-called-diqduqe-ha-te%ca%bfamim\/"},"modified":"2026-11-13T00:11:25","modified_gmt":"2026-11-13T00:11:25","slug":"the-treatise-called-diqduqe-ha-teamim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/the-treatise-called-diqduqe-ha-teamim\/","title":{"rendered":"The Treatise Called Diqduqe ha-Te\u02bfamim"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph lead\">At the end of a Tiberian Bible, or in the blank space left after a book, the Masoretes sometimes added a short work that does not read like a grammar for a beginner. One of those closing texts, transmitted under the name of <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/aaron-ben-asher.html\">Aaron ben Moses ben Asher<\/a> of Tiberias and usually called Diqduqe ha-Te\u02bfamim, has been printed, enlarged, reduced and reconstructed for more than a century, and it still does not exist in a single agreed form. The <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/diqduqe-ha-teamim.html\">hub note on the treatise<\/a> sets out what the work is and how it sits among the other Tiberian handbooks. This essay asks why the copies differ, and what the printed editions, from Venice in 1517 to Leipzig in 1879 and Jerusalem in 1967, have done with that difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The title is commonly rendered in two ways, and both already hint at the difficulty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-style-fl-pull\"><p>The fine details of the accents.<\/p><cite>A usual English rendering of the title Diqduqe ha-Te\u02bfamim<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The other common rendering, \u201cthe grammatical rules of the accents,\u201d is equally fair. A book of fine details is not a complete system. Geoffrey Khan, following Aron Dotan, has stressed that the treatise was never meant to describe the whole Tiberian pointing. It takes up selected points that were felt to be difficult, in the accents and also in the vowels, and it leaves the rest unsaid.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-1\"><a href=\"#note-1\">1<\/a><\/sup> That is why later copyists could add rubrics, why editors could disagree about the original core, and why a reader who meets the work only in one printed form can be misled about its size.<\/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>Attribution:<\/strong> transmitted under the name of Aaron ben Moses ben Asher of Tiberias<\/li>\n\n<li><strong>Language:<\/strong> Hebrew, often in rhyme<\/li>\n\n<li><strong>What it covers:<\/strong> selected difficulties in the accents and in vocalisation, not a complete grammar<\/li>\n\n<li><strong>Leningrad form:<\/strong> 42 rubrics, in the copy printed by C. D. Ginsburg<\/li>\n\n<li><strong>Baer\u2013Strack edition:<\/strong> 76 sections, Leipzig, 1879<\/li>\n\n<li><strong>Dotan\u2019s reconstruction:<\/strong> an original core of 26 sections, Jerusalem, 1967<\/li>\n\n<li><strong>First printing:<\/strong> Venice, 1517<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"a-book-at-the-end-of-a-codex\">A Book at the End of a Codex<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The natural home of such a work was not a separate volume. It was the end of a Bible, or the space left after a book, where the Masoretes already collected lists that would not fit in the margins. The <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/the-masorah-finalis-and-the-closing-apparatus-of-the-hebrew-bible\/\">journal essay on the Masorah finalis<\/a> describes that habit of gathering long notes when the page itself had no room. Diqduqe ha-Te\u02bfamim belongs to the same family of closing texts, though its contents are rules rather than tallies. The Jewish Encyclopedia already treated the title as probably the author\u2019s own choice, and it placed the work among the writings associated with Aaron ben Asher.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-2\"><a href=\"#note-2\">2<\/a><\/sup><\/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\/Diqduqe-journal-body-last-leaves-take-1.jpg\" data-id=\"1513\" alt=\"In a sunlit room overlooking the Sea of Galilee, a Masorete and two assistants work at the last leaves of a large parchment Bible\" class=\"article-figure-img wp-image-1513\" srcset=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Diqduqe-journal-body-last-leaves-take-1.jpg?v=20261101clean 1280w, https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Diqduqe-journal-body-last-leaves-take-1-300x169.jpg?v=20261101clean 300w, https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Diqduqe-journal-body-last-leaves-take-1-1024x576.jpg?v=20261101clean 1024w, https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Diqduqe-journal-body-last-leaves-take-1-768x432.jpg?v=20261101clean 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px\" \/><\/picture><figcaption class=\"figure-caption\">Illustration: the last leaves of a Bible being finished in Tiberias, the natural home of a short treatise added at the end of a codex.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That association matters, because it tells the reader what kind of authority the treatise claimed. Aaron ben Asher is the name attached to the model pointing of the <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/aleppo-codex.html\">Aleppo Codex<\/a>, and the Tiberian system that later printed Bibles follow is the system his school taught. A short book of fine points, written in Hebrew and often in rhyme so that it could be remembered, is exactly the sort of thing such a school might leave behind. It is not a commentary on Scripture, and it is not a masoretic list of words. It is a set of remarks on the signs themselves, on shewa and ga\u02bfya and on those accents whose use was easy to get wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The treatise is therefore best read beside the later manuals that try to be more complete. The <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/hidayat-al-qari.html\">Hid\u0101yat al-Q\u0101ri\u02be<\/a>, written in Judaeo-Arabic in eleventh-century Jerusalem, and the Hebrew <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/horayat-ha-qore.html\">Horayat ha-Qore<\/a> that descends from the same tradition, set out the reading more systematically. <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/william-wickes-hebrew-accents-two-oxford-treatises\/\">William Wickes<\/a>, in the nineteenth century, wrote two Oxford treatises that do what Diqduqe ha-Te\u02bfamim does not attempt, namely a full account of the accents of the poetical books and of the twenty-one prose books. The older work is useful precisely because it is not those books. It shows which details a Tiberian teacher thought it necessary to fix in writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"what-the-treatise-will-not-do\">What the Treatise Will Not Do<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Khan\u2019s warning is the right place to begin any account of the contents. Because the work is selective, it cannot be used as a map of the whole Tiberian system. It has much to say about shewa and the \u1e25a\u1e6def vowels, and about the ga\u02bfya, and about particular accents, but it does not march through the twenty-one prose accents or the three poetical ones in order.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-3\"><a href=\"#note-3\">3<\/a><\/sup> A reader who wants that order must go to Wickes, or to the later Arabic and Hebrew manuals, or to a modern handbook such as <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/israel-yeivin.html\">Israel Yeivin\u2019s<\/a> introduction to the Tiberian Masorah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The same selectivity explains the variety of the copies. A complete grammar has a shape that is hard to alter without being noticed. A collection of fine points can be extended. A copyist who had another list of difficult cases, or a rhyme that circulated independently, could add it at the end. An editor who found such additions in his manuscripts could print them as part of the treatise. None of this is unique to Diqduqe ha-Te\u02bfamim. It is what happens to short technical works that are copied as appendices rather than as books with a fixed close. The Jewish Encyclopedia\u2019s article on punctuation already pointed readers to this treatise as a medieval source for the signs, without treating any one printed form as the only text.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-4\"><a href=\"#note-4\">4<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The language of the work has a part in this history. Rhymed Hebrew is easier to memorise than prose, and it is also easier to detach. A stanza can travel on its own and come to rest in another copy. The result, visible once the recensions are set side by side, is a family of texts that share a core and disagree about the edges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-first-printed-editions\">The First Printed Editions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ginsburg\u2019s starting point is the printed text, and it is already a warning. \u201cAs regards the separate Treatise called in some MSS. Dikduke Ha-Teamim which has come down to us in several Codices in the name of Ben-Asher,\u201d he writes, \u201cits text in the different MSS. and in the editio princeps is as hopelessly irreconcilable as that of the official Lists.\u201d<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-5\"><a href=\"#note-5\">5<\/a><\/sup> The official lists in question are the lists of differences between Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali, which precede this discussion in the same chapter. Ginsburg\u2019s point is that the treatise, like those lists, does not present a single agreed wording.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The work \u201cwas first published in the editio princeps of the Rabbinic Bible by Felix Pratensis, Venice 1517, where it is described in the heading as the compilation of Ben-Asher.\u201d<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-6\"><a href=\"#note-6\">6<\/a><\/sup> That fact alone is worth lingering over. The treatise did not first appear as a slim independent handbook. It was printed as part of the great <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/felix-pratensis-first-rabbinic-bible-1517.html\">Rabbinic Bible of 1517<\/a>, the edition in which a Christian editor at Daniel Bomberg\u2019s press in Venice first put a wide range of masoretic and exegetical material around the biblical text. A short Tiberian work of fine points thus entered print in the company of Targum and commentary, under a heading that already named Ben Asher as its compiler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A second edition was published by Leopold Dukes under the title <em>Kontres Ha-Massoreth<\/em>, at T\u00fcbingen in 1846, from a manuscript in the possession of Samuel David Luzzatto. In that manuscript, Ginsburg notes, no author\u2019s name is given to the treatise. The two editions, moreover, \u201cdiffer essentially in the text,\u201d and \u201cthe recension published by Dukes barely contains one fourth of the text in the editio princeps.\u201d<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-7\"><a href=\"#note-7\">7<\/a><\/sup> The first two printed forms, in other words, already stand as far apart as some of the manuscripts. A reader who meets only the Venice heading will think of a compilation by Ben Asher. A reader who meets only Dukes will find a much shorter, anonymous work. Neither printed book can be treated as \u201cthe\u201d treatise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is after these two editions that Ginsburg turns to the five recensions he himself printed in <em>The Massorah<\/em>. The printed history and the manuscript history tell the same story: the work was recognised, named, and copied, but it was not stabilised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"five-recensions-in-ginsburg\">Five Recensions in Ginsburg<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The fullest older account of that family is in chapter X of Christian D. Ginsburg\u2019s <em>Introduction<\/em> of 1897. Ginsburg printed, in <em>The Massorah<\/em>, five recensions of the treatise, and he described them in enough detail for a later reader to see how far they diverge.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-8\"><a href=\"#note-8\">8<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first recension, printed under the letter \u1e6det, \u00a7246, in the first volume of <em>The Massorah<\/em>, pages 654\u2013660, was taken from British Library, Add. 15251, where the compilation forms an appendix, with other masoretic materials, on folios 444a\u2013448a. The work is there ascribed to Ben Asher. Ginsburg notes that its arrangement and text stand closer to the editio princeps than the other recensions do, though the first printed edition contains about thirty-five more rubrics.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-9\"><a href=\"#note-9\">9<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The second recension, printed under the letter \u1e6det, \u00a7\u00a744\u201375, in the third volume, pages 41\u201343, comes from the illuminated manuscript Orient. 2626\u201328, where it occupies the first and second lines of the ornamental square in volume I, folios 1b\u201322b. Not only does its text differ materially from the other treatises, Ginsburg writes, but the rubrics are fewer and are differently arranged. He could not exhibit it in a parallel column with the rest.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-10\"><a href=\"#note-10\">10<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The third is from Codex Tzufutkale no. 15, a transcript supplied to Ginsburg by Hermann Strack. An epigraph which, according to Strack, \u201cproceeds from the clever hand of Firkowitsch,\u201d ascribes the Masorah to Aaron ben Asher. The appendix consists of fifty-nine rubrics of sundry masoretic import, attached to an ancient fragment of the Pentateuch. Of these, only twenty-two correspond to Ginsburg\u2019s first recension, and nine are to be found among the additions in the compilation of Baer and Strack.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-11\"><a href=\"#note-11\">11<\/a><\/sup> <sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-12\"><a href=\"#note-12\">12<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The fourth recension, also in the third volume of <em>The Massorah<\/em>, is from Tzufutkale no. 17, again from a transcript by Strack. The codex is an imperfect Pentateuch of 213 folios, \u201cone of the most important fragments of the Hebrew Scriptures.\u201d An epigraph assigns to it the date 790, which would place it in the generation of Aaron\u2019s grandfather. Ginsburg, following Strack, reports that the date has been tampered with: the letter shin (300) has been made out of an original tav (400). \u201cNo reliance whatever can be placed on the date,\u201d he concludes, but the manuscript \u201cis very important.\u201d In this copy the rubrics of Diqduqe ha-Te\u02bfamim are not grouped as a distinct whole. They are simply sundry parts of a somewhat extensive Masorah of ninety-six rubrics, of which only nineteen correspond to the first recension and eleven to the additions in Baer and Strack.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-13\"><a href=\"#note-13\">13<\/a><\/sup> <sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-14\"><a href=\"#note-14\">14<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The fifth recension is the Masorah finalis of Tzufutkale no. 19, again from Strack\u2019s transcript. Ginsburg\u2019s point, taken as a whole, is not that one of these five is the treatise and the others are corruptions. It is that the work circulated as a set of rubrics that could be grouped, expanded, abridged and mixed with other masoretic matter, and that the ascriptions and dates attached to some copies cannot be taken at face value. The Firkovich epigraph dated 790 is the clearest case.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-15\"><a href=\"#note-15\">15<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-leipzig-edition-of-1879\">The Leipzig Edition of 1879<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Seligmann Baer and Hermann Strack published <em>Die Dikduke ha-\u1e6deamim des Ahron ben Moscheh ben Ascher<\/em> at Leipzig in 1879. Their edition presents the treatise in seventy-six sections.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-16\"><a href=\"#note-16\">16<\/a><\/sup> That number is not a count of what any one early manuscript contains. It is the size of a compiled text, in which material found in the copies has been arranged as a single work. Ginsburg, who used their edition and cited its introduction, was careful to distinguish the rubrics that correspond to his first recension from \u201cthe additions in the compilation of Drs. Baer and Strack.\u201d<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-17\"><a href=\"#note-17\">17<\/a><\/sup> The phrase is a judgement. It means that the Leipzig book is larger than the recension he took as his first point of comparison, and that some of its sections are additions.<\/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\/Diqduqe-journal-body-leipzig-shop-take-1.jpg\" data-id=\"1514\" alt=\"A late-nineteenth-century Leipzig letterpress workshop, with compositors at type cases and a scholar conferring with a printer beside a cylinder press\" class=\"article-figure-img wp-image-1514\" srcset=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Diqduqe-journal-body-leipzig-shop-take-1.jpg?v=20261101clean 1280w, https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Diqduqe-journal-body-leipzig-shop-take-1-300x169.jpg?v=20261101clean 300w, https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Diqduqe-journal-body-leipzig-shop-take-1-1024x576.jpg?v=20261101clean 1024w, https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Diqduqe-journal-body-leipzig-shop-take-1-768x432.jpg?v=20261101clean 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px\" \/><\/picture><figcaption class=\"figure-caption\">Illustration: a Leipzig printing shop, for the Baer\u2013Strack edition of 1879, one of the printed forms in which the treatise has been known.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The edition remains indispensable, because it made the treatise available as a printed book with a scholarly introduction, and because it gathered the evidence of manuscripts that few readers could see. It is also the source of a confusion that still appears in casual references. A writer who says that Diqduqe ha-Te\u02bfamim has seventy-six sections is describing Baer and Strack, not the Leningrad copy, and not the core that Dotan later isolated. The same caution applies to the forty-two rubrics of the form Ginsburg printed from the tradition of the <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/leningrad-codex.html\">Leningrad Codex<\/a>. Forty-two is the shape of one important copy, not a divine number.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Baer, whose printed Hebrew Bibles are discussed in the <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/seligmann-baer-and-the-masoretic-text\/\">journal essay on his Leipzig text<\/a>, was not a disinterested typographer. He had a view of what a correct Tiberian text should look like, and he was willing to adjust printed Bibles to it. The 1879 treatise should be read with that career in mind, not as an attack on the edition, but as a reminder that compilation and correction were part of the same nineteenth-century project of making the Masorah usable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"dotans-core-of-twenty-six-sections\">Dotan\u2019s Core of Twenty-Six Sections<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Aron Dotan\u2019s critical edition, published at Jerusalem in 1967, is the modern attempt to work back from this variety to a core. The review of his later <em>Thesaurus of the Tiberian Masora<\/em> in the <em>Revue des \u00e9tudes juives<\/em> cites that edition, and it is from that scholarly record that the figure of twenty-six original sections has entered the standard accounts.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-18\"><a href=\"#note-18\">18<\/a><\/sup> Dotan\u2019s result is not a claim that every later rubric is worthless. It is a claim about what can be assigned, with some confidence, to the treatise as a short, coherent work, before copyists and compilers lengthened it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Twenty-six, forty-two and seventy-six are therefore not rival estimates of the same object. They are descriptions of different stages. The core is the work as a critical editor can reconstruct it. The Leningrad form is the work as it stood in a great eleventh-century Bible. The Leipzig edition is the work as two nineteenth-century scholars compiled it from the manuscripts they had. A responsible account names the stage it is talking about. The hub note does that in a table; this essay has tried to show how the numbers were produced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dotan\u2019s edition also belongs to a wider modern effort, in which the Tiberian reading is described from manuscripts and from the surviving manuals rather than from later printed convention. Khan\u2019s volumes on the Tiberian pronunciation tradition are part of that effort, and they repeatedly send the reader back to the older treatises, including this one, for evidence of how particular signs were understood.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-19\"><a href=\"#note-19\">19<\/a><\/sup> The short book at the end of the codex has become, in that setting, a witness to be weighed, not a rule-book to be reprinted unaltered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"lists-rules-and-the-temptation-of-a-system\">Lists, Rules and the Temptation of a System<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ginsburg\u2019s remarks on the official lists of Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali, which immediately precede his account of the treatise, explain why he was so unwilling to treat Diqduqe ha-Te\u02bfamim as a code. Those lists, he writes, often differ among themselves even in the Pentateuch, \u201cwhere the greatest care has been taken to transmit the punctuation of Ben-Asher and Ben-Naphtali.\u201d The attempt \u201cto reduce these variants into a system, to formulate rules from these conflictingly recorded differences and to apply these rules to other passages\u201d is, in his view, \u201ca task far more in harmony with the superfine ingenuity of some mediaeval grammarians than with sober textual criticism.\u201d<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-20\"><a href=\"#note-20\">20<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He illustrates the point from the oldest and most beautifully written Pentateuch in the British Library, Orient. 4445, a manuscript that is the subject of its own <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/codex-orientales.html\">hub note<\/a>. That codex \u201cvery rarely employs the Metheg or Gaya even before Chateph-pathach, and yet it is the presence or absence of the Metheg or Gaya which constitutes fully nine-tenths of the differences between these two redactors of the text.\u201d<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-21\"><a href=\"#note-21\">21<\/a><\/sup> If the oldest manuscript does not follow the lists uniformly, a short treatise of fine points cannot be used to manufacture rules that the manuscripts themselves do not observe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The same caution should govern the modern use of Diqduqe ha-Te\u02bfamim. The work is evidence of what a Tiberian teacher, or a later compiler writing under that name, thought it useful to record. It is not a key that will unlock every later copy of the Bible. Where it agrees with the great model codices, it confirms a practice. Where it diverges, or where the recensions diverge among themselves, it records a difficulty, not a licence to regularise the text. The <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/mishael-ben-uzziel-book-of-differences\/\">journal essay on Mishael ben Uzziel<\/a> is the better place to follow the differences between Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali as a set of recorded variants. The treatise belongs beside that evidence, not above it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"authorship-and-affiliation\">Authorship and Affiliation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The ascription to Aaron ben Asher is early and persistent, but it is not simple. Ginsburg\u2019s first recension already carries the name. The Tzufutkale epigraphs repeat it, in one case in a hand that Strack did not trust. The Jewish Encyclopedia, in its article on Aaron, judged a Karaite identification of the Ben Asher family \u201cuntenable,\u201d and it treated an ascription of the Aleppo Codex in this connection as unfounded.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-22\"><a href=\"#note-22\">22<\/a><\/sup> Later scholarship has reopened parts of that question, and this essay does not try to settle the affiliation of the family. What can be said from the sources used here is more limited. The treatise is transmitted under Aaron\u2019s name; some of the most confident-looking dates and epigraphs have been challenged by the scholars who first published them; and the work itself, being a collection of fine points rather than a signed preface, does not carry a autobiographical statement that would close the matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Jewish Encyclopedia\u2019s longer article on the Masorah remains a convenient older survey of the literature in which the treatise sits, and of the printed Bibles and handbooks that used it.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-23\"><a href=\"#note-23\">23<\/a><\/sup> For the signs that the treatise discusses, the same encyclopedia\u2019s article on punctuation is still a useful starting point, though it must be read through the later work of Dotan, Khan and Yeivin.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-24\"><a href=\"#note-24\">24<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The right conclusion is a modest one. Diqduqe ha-Te\u02bfamim is a real Tiberian work, short, selective and often rhymed, that was copied at the ends of Bibles and then compiled by modern editors. It is not a complete grammar, and it is not a single text with a single number of sections. A reader who wants a first orientation will find it in the <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/diqduqe-ha-teamim.html\">hub note<\/a>. A reader who wants to see how the copies were counted and why the counts disagree will need Ginsburg\u2019s chapter X, the Leipzig edition of 1879, and Dotan\u2019s reconstruction of 1967. The fine details of the accents were never only a matter of the signs on the line. They were also a matter of how a short book was copied, enlarged and printed.<\/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\">Geoffrey Khan, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/151cad12-4981-4bbe-923f-f65c9c2c6eb0\">The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew<\/a><\/em>, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2020), introduction, \u00a7I.0.13. <a href=\"#ref-1\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 1\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-2\">Aaron ben Moses ben Asher, in the <em>Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901\u20131906), at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jewishencyclopedia.com\/articles\/72-aaron-ben-moses-ben-asher\">JewishEncyclopedia.com<\/a>. <a href=\"#ref-2\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 2\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-3\">Khan, <em>Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition<\/em>, vol. 1, chapters on shewa and the \u1e25a\u1e6def vowels. <a href=\"#ref-3\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 3\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-4\">\u201cPunctuation,\u201d in the <em>Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901\u20131906), at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jewishencyclopedia.com\/articles\/12441-punctuation\">JewishEncyclopedia.com<\/a>. <a href=\"#ref-4\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 4\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-5\">Christian D. Ginsburg, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/introductionoftm00gins\">Introduction to the Massoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible<\/a><\/em> (London: Trinitarian Bible Society, 1897), ch. X, pp. 278\u2013279. <a href=\"#ref-5\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 5\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-6\">Ginsburg, <em>Introduction<\/em>, ch. X, p. 278. <a href=\"#ref-6\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 6\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-7\">Ginsburg, <em>Introduction<\/em>, ch. X, pp. 278\u2013279. <a href=\"#ref-7\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 7\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-8\">Ginsburg, <em>Introduction<\/em>, ch. X, pp. 278\u2013280. <a href=\"#ref-8\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 8\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-9\">Ginsburg, <em>Introduction<\/em>, ch. X, p. 278. <a href=\"#ref-9\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 9\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-10\">Ginsburg, <em>Introduction<\/em>, ch. X, p. 278. <a href=\"#ref-10\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 10\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-11\">Ginsburg, <em>Introduction<\/em>, ch. X, pp. 278\u2013279. <a href=\"#ref-11\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 11\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-12\">S. Baer and H. L. Strack, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/dikdukei-hateamim-1879-hb-38509\">Die Dikduke ha-\u1e6deamim des Ahron ben Moscheh ben Ascher<\/a><\/em> (Leipzig, 1879), Einleitung, p. XXXIII. <a href=\"#ref-12\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 12\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-13\">Ginsburg, <em>Introduction<\/em>, ch. X, pp. 279\u2013280. <a href=\"#ref-13\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 13\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-14\">Baer and Strack, <em>Die Dikduke ha-\u1e6deamim<\/em>, Einleitung, p. XXXIV. <a href=\"#ref-14\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 14\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-15\">Ginsburg, <em>Introduction<\/em>, ch. X, pp. 279\u2013280. <a href=\"#ref-15\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 15\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-16\">Baer and Strack, <em>Die Dikduke ha-\u1e6deamim<\/em>. <a href=\"#ref-16\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 16\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-17\">Ginsburg, <em>Introduction<\/em>, ch. X, p. 279. <a href=\"#ref-17\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 17\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-18\">Review of Aron Dotan, <em>Thesaurus of the Tiberian Masora<\/em>, <em>Revue des \u00e9tudes juives<\/em> 147 (1988), at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.persee.fr\/doc\/rjuiv_0484-8616_1988_num_147_3_2253_t1_0409_0000_1\">Pers\u00e9e<\/a>, citing Dotan\u2019s critical edition of the treatise (Jerusalem, 1967). <a href=\"#ref-18\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 18\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-19\">Khan, <em>Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition<\/em>, vol. 1, introduction, \u00a7I.0.13. <a href=\"#ref-19\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 19\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-20\">Ginsburg, <em>Introduction<\/em>, ch. X, p. 278. <a href=\"#ref-20\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 20\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-21\">Ginsburg, <em>Introduction<\/em>, ch. X, p. 278. <a href=\"#ref-21\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 21\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-22\">Jewish Encyclopedia, \u201cAaron ben Moses ben Asher\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-22\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 22\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-23\">\u201cMasorah,\u201d in the <em>Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901\u20131906), at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jewishencyclopedia.com\/articles\/10465-masorah\">JewishEncyclopedia.com<\/a>. <a href=\"#ref-23\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 23\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<li id=\"note-24\">Jewish Encyclopedia, \u201cPunctuation\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-24\" aria-label=\"Return to citation 24\">*<\/a><\/li>\n\n<\/ol>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The short Tiberian treatise known as Diqduqe ha-Te\u02bfamim does not survive in a single fixed form. Its copies differ in length and arrangement, and the printed editions have made those differences more visible rather than less.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1512,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-masoretes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472","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=1472"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1515,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472\/revisions\/1515"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}