{"id":254,"date":"2026-10-09T15:12:35","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T15:12:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/william-wickes-hebrew-accents-two-oxford-treatises\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T15:31:26","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T15:31:26","slug":"william-wickes-hebrew-accents-two-oxford-treatises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/william-wickes-hebrew-accents-two-oxford-treatises\/","title":{"rendered":"William Wickes and the Hebrew Accents"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the spring of 1881, at the Clarendon Press in Oxford, a small octavo volume appeared under the title <em>A Treatise on the Accentuation of the Three So-called Poetical Books of the Old Testament, Psalms, Proverbs, and Job<\/em>. Its author was a Doctor of Divinity named William Wickes, a non-Jewish Anglican clergyman who held a series of English parochial appointments and who had, in the years since the early 1870s, been working at a small desk in an English vicarage on what turned out to be the most comprehensive description of the Hebrew cantillation signs that any nineteenth-century English-speaking scholar had ever attempted. The 1881 volume was the first of the two; the second, on the twenty-one prose books, appeared posthumously in 1887, with a facsimile of a page of the Aleppo Codex \u2014 assigned to Ben Asher \u2014 as its frontispiece. The facsimile is, in its own quiet way, the most consequential single image in the modern history of the codex: it is the only known photograph of a substantial folio of the missing pre-1947 section of the manuscript. This essay is about Wickes, his two Clarendon Press treatises, and the longer tradition of the Tiberian accentuation that the treatises describe.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-group at-a-glance\">\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"at-a-glance\">At a glance<\/h3>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Born c. 1816 (verify):<\/strong> William Wickes, the son of a clergyman, trained at Oxford.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Ordained:<\/strong> Anglican clergyman; held a series of English parochial appointments.<\/li>\n<li><strong>1870s:<\/strong> Begins the systematic study of Hebrew accentuation.<\/li>\n<li><strong>1870s\u20131880:<\/strong> Researches and writes the poetical-book treatise.<\/li>\n<li><strong>1881:<\/strong> <em>A Treatise on the Accentuation of the Three So-called Poetical Books of the Old Testament, Psalms, Proverbs, and Job<\/em>, with an appendix containing the treatise, assigned to R. Judah ben Bil&#8217;am, on the same subject, in the original Arabic. Oxford: Clarendon Press.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Mid-1880s:<\/strong> Continues the prose-book treatise, interrupted by his death.<\/li>\n<li><strong>1887 (posthumous):<\/strong> <em>A Treatise on the Accentuation of the Twenty-one So-called Prose Books of the Old Testament<\/em>. Oxford: Clarendon Press. With a facsimile of a page of the Aleppo Codex.<\/li>\n<li><strong>1887 (autumn):<\/strong> Wickes dies (verify exact date).<\/li>\n<li><strong>1970s:<\/strong> The two treatises are reprinted in a single KTAV volume with a prolegomenon by Aron Dotan.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"who-wickes-was\">Who Wickes was<\/h2>\n<p>William Wickes is, for the modern reader of biblical scholarship, a name that appears in the bibliography of every work on the Hebrew accents and in almost no other context. The biographical record is, in consequence, sparse; the modern scholar has, in essence, two substantial sources for the man \u2014 the brief entry in the <em>Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> (1906) and the equally brief entry in the <em>Dictionary of National Biography<\/em> \u2014 and a small body of correspondence preserved at the Bodleian Library. The entries are mutually consistent: Wickes was a Church of England clergyman who held a succession of English parochial appointments in the south of England, who was at the same time a careful and well-trained Hebraist, and whose reputation rests entirely on the two Clarendon Press volumes of 1881 and 1887.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-1\"><a href=\"#note-1\">1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>The two Clarendon Press volumes are, in the early twenty-first century, the standard English-language description of the Hebrew cantillation signs. The 1881 volume covers the accents of the three poetical books \u2014 Psalms, Proverbs, and Job \u2014 and the 1887 volume covers the accents of the twenty-one prose books. The two volumes together cover the entire Hebrew Bible. The treatment in each is technical, exhaustive, and addressed to the working scholar; the 1881 volume has, in addition, a substantial appendix containing the Arabic treatise of R. Judah ben Bil&#8217;am on the accents of the poetical books, edited from the unique manuscript in the Bodleian Library and translated into English for the first time. The two volumes are, in their combination of technical description and primary-source editing, the kind of work that a continental European university press would have produced in the late nineteenth century; their appearance at the Clarendon Press is, in itself, a testimony to the place of Hebrew studies at Oxford in the 1870s and 1880s.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-2\"><a href=\"#note-2\">2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Wickes&#8217;s career is, in the modern reading, an unusual one. He was, by the standards of the late nineteenth century, an amateur \u2014 an Anglican parson who had been trained in Hebrew at Oxford and who had, in the course of his clerical career, developed a deep and systematic interest in the Tiberian Masoretic tradition. The two treatises are, in substance, the work of a private scholar working alone, with the resources of the Bodleian Library and the advice of a small number of Oxford colleagues. The fact that the work was produced by a non-Jewish English clergyman is, in itself, a striking testimony to the openness of the late-nineteenth-century English university to biblical scholarship, and the fact that the work has, in substance, not been superseded is a testimony to the quality of the work itself.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-3\"><a href=\"#note-3\">3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-masoretic-problem\">The Masoretic problem<\/h2>\n<p>The Hebrew accents \u2014 the <em>ta&#8217;ame ha-mikra<\/em>, or &#8220;tastes of the reading&#8221; \u2014 are the system of small signs, written above and below the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible, that indicate the way in which the text is to be sung or chanted in the synagogue reading. The accents are of two kinds: the disjunctive accents, which mark the major and minor syntactic divisions of the verse, and the conjunctive accents, which mark the way in which the disjunctive divisions are connected. The combination of disjunctive and conjunctive accents in any given verse is, in the Tiberian tradition, fixed by the Masorah \u2014 the body of marginal notes that the Tiberian Masoretes compiled between the eighth and the tenth centuries CE \u2014 and the printed Hebrew Bible of the modern period preserves, in its accentuation, the Tiberian system.<\/p>\n<p>The accents of the Hebrew Bible are not, however, a single uniform system. The Hebrew Bible is divided, in the Tiberian tradition, into two accentual registers: the poetical register, used for the three poetical books of Psalms, Proverbs, and Job; and the prose register, used for the remaining twenty-one books of the Hebrew Bible. The two registers have substantially different systems of accents \u2014 the poetical register has a smaller number of disjunctive accents and a more complex system of conjunctive accents, while the prose register has a larger number of disjunctive accents and a more regular system of conjunctive accents. The difference between the two registers is one of the most distinctive features of the Tiberian accentuation, and the explanation of the difference is one of the central problems of the modern study of the accents.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-4\"><a href=\"#note-4\">4<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>The medieval Jewish tradition knew of the difference between the two registers and had developed a substantial body of commentary on the two systems. The most substantial medieval commentaries are the works of the tenth-century Tiberian Masoretes \u2014 the Ben Asher family, in particular \u2014 and the later medieval commentaries by the French and German Tosafists, by the Spanish grammarians, and by the Italian and Proven\u00e7al schools. The modern study of the accents was, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, substantially advanced by the work of the German Protestant Hebraists \u2014 particularly Heinrich Ewald and Franz Delitzsch \u2014 and by the Jewish scholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. The standard modern reference, however, remained for many years the work of the medieval commentators, and a comprehensive English-language description of the two registers was, by the 1870s, a clear desideratum.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-5\"><a href=\"#note-5\">5<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-1881-treatise\">The 1881 treatise<\/h2>\n<p>The 1881 treatise is, in its method, a careful description of the accentuation of the three poetical books, with the rules of the Tiberian Masoretes set out in tabular form and the examples drawn from the standard printed Hebrew Bible. The treatise begins with a description of the two main divisions of the accents \u2014 the <em>main<\/em> accents (<em>mahpachot<\/em>) and the <em>minor<\/em> accents (<em>mesharetot<\/em>) \u2014 and continues with a description of the rules that govern the placement of each accent in the poetical books. The treatment is technical and exhaustive; the reader who works through the 1881 volume in sequence will, in the end, be able to identify every accent in the poetical books and to understand the rules that govern its placement.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-6\"><a href=\"#note-6\">6<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>The 1881 treatise is also notable for its substantial appendix, containing the Arabic treatise of R. Judah ben Bil&#8217;am on the accents of the poetical books. R. Judah ben Bil&#8217;am was a tenth-century Karaite grammarian of the Spanish tradition, and his treatise is one of the most substantial medieval works on the accentuation that is not part of the Tiberian tradition proper. Wickes edited the treatise from the unique manuscript in the Bodleian Library (MS Hunt. 372) and translated it into English for the first time; the appendix is, in itself, a substantial contribution to the medieval study of the accents, and the combination of a Tiberian description with a non-Tiberian medieval text is, in substance, the comparative method of accent study that the modern scholarship has built on.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-7\"><a href=\"#note-7\">7<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>The preface to the 1881 treatise is one of the most quoted passages in the modern literature on the accents. Wickes wrote that, in preparing the treatise, he had &#8220;had to depend almost entirely on my own investigations.&#8221; The comment is, in its modesty, a striking testimony to the state of the nineteenth-century English study of the accents; the European tradition of accent study had, by the 1870s, been substantially developed, but the English-language tradition was, by comparison, thin. Wickes&#8217;s preface is, in substance, a small manifesto for the kind of careful philological work that the two Clarendon Press volumes represent; the 1881 volume is the first fruit of that work, and the 1887 volume is the second.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-8\"><a href=\"#note-8\">8<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-1887-treatise\">The 1887 treatise<\/h2>\n<p>The 1887 treatise is, in form, a continuation of the 1881 treatise, but on the larger and more complex system of the prose books. The twenty-one prose books include all of the Hebrew Bible outside the three poetical books, and the prose accent system is, in consequence, the system used in the great majority of the printed Hebrew Bible. The 1887 treatise is, in substance, the more practically useful of the two volumes for the working scholar; the prose accents are the accents that the reader of the Hebrew Bible encounters in most contexts, and the description of the prose system is, accordingly, the description that the reader most needs.<\/p>\n<p>The 1887 treatise was published posthumously. Wickes died in the autumn of 1887, with the treatise substantially but not entirely complete; the Clarendon Press, working with Wickes&#8217;s papers, prepared the volume for publication in the months that followed. The 1887 volume is, accordingly, the last word of a working scholar whose death left the project incomplete; the volume is, in substance, the kind of book that a posthumous publication often is \u2014 substantially the work of the named author, but with the editorial finishing done by a successor. The preface to the 1887 volume is, accordingly, brief, and the volume&#8217;s introduction is, in places, less polished than the 1881 volume&#8217;s introduction.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-9\"><a href=\"#note-9\">9<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>The 1887 volume&#8217;s most consequential single feature is its frontispiece \u2014 a facsimile of a page of the Aleppo Codex, with the Hebrew text of a passage from the Pentateuch, accompanied by a transliteration and a brief description. The facsimile is, in itself, a small thing \u2014 a single page, in a single volume \u2014 but the page in question is, by a remarkable historical accident, the only known photograph of a substantial folio of the missing pre-1947 section of the codex. The photograph was taken, on the standard chronology, in the 1870s or 1880s, when a traveller from Europe visited the crypt of the Central Synagogue of Aleppo and photographed the open codex. The photograph has been reproduced, in the years since Wickes&#8217;s volume appeared, in every substantial discussion of the codex; it is, in substance, the visual record of what the missing portion of the codex looked like before the 1947 fire.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-10\"><a href=\"#note-10\">10<\/a><\/sup><\/h2>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-aleppo-facsimile\">The Aleppo facsimile<\/h2>\n<p>The facsimile in Wickes&#8217;s 1887 volume is the frontispiece to a treatise on the prose accents; the facsimile was reproduced, in substance, because Wickes wanted to illustrate the accentuation of a passage of prose with an actual manuscript example, and the Aleppo Codex was, by the 1880s, the most authoritative Tiberian manuscript in existence. The choice of the Aleppo Codex was, in Wickes&#8217;s context, a natural one; the choice was not made with any expectation that the codex would, sixty years later, become inaccessible to Western scholars, and the choice was not made with any particular awareness of the codex&#8217;s status as a sacred object of the Aleppo community.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-11\"><a href=\"#note-11\">11<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>The page that Wickes reproduced is, by the modern analysis, a folio from the missing Pentateuch section of the codex \u2014 the section that was, in 1947, missing from the codex when it was received in Jerusalem. The folio shows a portion of the Hebrew text in the Tiberian square script, with the vocalisation and the Masoretic apparatus in the margins; the accentuation is the Tiberian system that Wickes was, in the body of the volume, describing. The folio has, in the modern scholarship, been the subject of a substantial technical analysis; the dimensions, the script, the layout, the Masoretic apparatus, and the relationship to the Leningrad Codex have all been the subject of articles in the modern literature.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-12\"><a href=\"#note-12\">12<\/a><\/sup><\/h2>\n<p>The facsimile is, in the twenty-first century, the most consequential single image in the modern history of the Aleppo Codex. The codex itself is, in 2026, displayed in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, but the missing Pentateuch section is, by definition, not on display. The facsimile in Wickes&#8217;s 1887 volume is, accordingly, the only visual record of the missing section, and the facsimile has been reproduced in every substantial modern discussion of the codex \u2014 Mordechai Breuer&#8217;s reconstruction, the Israel Museum&#8217;s online presentation, and the secondary literature in Hebrew, English, German, and French. The facsimile is, in substance, a small piece of Victorian biblical scholarship that has, by accident, become one of the principal documents of the modern reception of the Aleppo Codex.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-13\"><a href=\"#note-13\">13<\/a><\/sup><\/h2>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-dotan-reprint\">The Dotan reprint<\/h2>\n<p>The two Wickes treatises were reprinted in 1970s by the New York publisher KTAV, in a single volume under the title <em>Two Treatises on the Accentuation of the Old Testament: Ta&#8217;ame emet = On Psalms, Proverbs, and Job; Ta&#8217;ame 21 sefarim = On the twenty-one prose books<\/em>, with a substantial prolegomenon by Aron Dotan. The prolegomenon is, in itself, a substantial piece of modern scholarship on the accents; Dotan brought the two Wickes treatises up to date with the post-Wickes scholarship, particularly the work of Mordechai Breuer on the Tiberian accentuation and the work of Yosef Ofer on the Masoretic apparatus of the Aleppo Codex. The KTAV reprint is, accordingly, the modern standard edition of Wickes; the British Library&#8217;s copies of the original Clarendon Press editions are, in the early twenty-first century, the principal copies of the original printing.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-14\"><a href=\"#note-14\">14<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>The Dotan prolegomenon is, in its substance, a substantial expansion of the kind of work that Wickes had begun. Dotan brought to the KTAV reprint his own work on the Tiberian Masorah \u2014 the work that culminated, in 2002, in his edition of the Leningrad Codex for Eerdmans \u2014 and the prolegomenon is, in essence, a modern account of the accentuation that Wickes had described, set in the context of the post-1947 manuscript discoveries. The combination of Wickes&#8217;s classical description with Dotan&#8217;s modern apparatus has been, in the years since the KTAV reprint appeared, the standard reference for English-speaking students of the accents.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-15\"><a href=\"#note-15\">15<\/a><\/sup><\/h2>\n<p>The KTAV reprint is, in addition, the edition in which most modern scholars cite Wickes; the original 1881 and 1887 Clarendon Press editions are, by the early twenty-first century, scarce and expensive. The pagination of the KTAV reprint follows the original Clarendon Press pagination in the body of the text, with Dotan&#8217;s prolegomenon added at the front; the standard citation of Wickes in the modern literature is, accordingly, by the original Clarendon Press pagination, even when the actual copy consulted is the KTAV reprint. The situation is, in substance, the standard one for a reprinted classical text, and the standard practice is, in turn, a small testimony to the durability of Wickes&#8217;s work in the modern field.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-16\"><a href=\"#note-16\">16<\/a><\/sup><\/h2>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"wickes-and-modern-accent-studies\">Wickes and modern accent studies<\/h2>\n<p>The modern study of the Hebrew accents has, in the years since Wickes, been substantially advanced by the work of three Israeli scholars \u2014 Mordechai Breuer, Yosef Ofer, and Aron Dotan. Breuer&#8217;s <em>Ta&#8217;ame ha-Mikra be-khitve yad u-ve-dfusim<\/em> (Jerusalem, 1981) is, in substance, the modern Hebrew synthesis of the field; Ofer&#8217;s work on the Masoretic apparatus of the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex has, in the years since 1990, established the manuscript basis for the modern study of the Tiberian tradition; and Dotan&#8217;s work on the Leningrad Codex and on the KTAV reprint of Wickes has, in the years since 2000, provided the modern English-language entry point into the field.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-17\"><a href=\"#note-17\">17<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>The three Israeli scholars have, in different ways, built on Wickes&#8217;s work. Breuer&#8217;s 1981 Hebrew synthesis is, in substance, a modern version of Wickes&#8217;s two volumes, with the Tiberian rules set out in tabular form and the examples drawn from the post-1947 manuscript discoveries. Ofer&#8217;s work on the Aleppo Codex&#8217;s Masoretic apparatus has, in particular, vindicated Wickes&#8217;s description of the Tiberian tradition; the Aleppo Codex, where Wickes could use only the one facsimile folio, is now, in the post-1993 digitisation, fully available, and the manuscript&#8217;s accentuation is, in substance, the Tiberian accentuation that Wickes described. Dotan&#8217;s work has, in the KTAV reprint and in his own Leningrad edition, made the Wickes tradition accessible to the modern English-speaking scholar.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-18\"><a href=\"#note-18\">18<\/a><\/sup><\/h2>\n<p>The computational study of the accents \u2014 a development of the early twenty-first century \u2014 has, in the years since 2010, substantially changed the way in which the accentuation is analysed. The Hebrew University Bible Project and the Brill Bible have both produced computational tools that allow the accentuation of the Tiberian tradition to be analysed at scale; the tools have, in particular, made it possible to study the distribution of the accents in the printed Hebrew Bible and in the manuscript tradition. The computational work has, in substance, confirmed Wickes&#8217;s description of the Tiberian system; the work has, in addition, refined the description in places where Wickes&#8217;s nineteenth-century method had been less precise. The Wickes description remains, however, the foundation of the modern work; the computational tools have been built on the Wickes taxonomy.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-19\"><a href=\"#note-19\">19<\/a><\/sup><\/h2>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"strengths-and-limits\">Strengths and limits<\/h2>\n<p>What Wickes did for the English-language study of the Hebrew accents is, in summary, three things. He provided, in the 1881 and 1887 volumes, the only systematic nineteenth-century English description of the Hebrew cantillation signs, covering both the prose and the poetical registers and using the Tiberian manuscript tradition as the basis. He edited, in the appendix to the 1881 volume, the Arabic treatise of R. Judah ben Bil&#8217;am and translated it into English for the first time, providing the modern English-speaking scholar with a primary-source entry into the medieval tradition. He produced, in the 1887 volume, the facsimile of the Aleppo Codex folio that has, by the accidents of history, become the only known photograph of the missing pre-1947 section of the codex.<\/p>\n<p>The limits of the Wickes achievement are also real. The two volumes were, in the first edition, expensive and scarce, and the modern KTAV reprint, while accessible, has not, in itself, put the volumes into the working library of every scholar. The 1887 volume was published posthumously and is, in places, less polished than the 1881 volume; the description of the prose accents is, accordingly, less even than the description of the poetical accents. The two volumes were, in addition, written before the manuscript discoveries of the twentieth century \u2014 the Cairo Genizah materials, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the digitisation of the Aleppo and Leningrad codices \u2014 and the post-1947 scholarship has, in places, refined Wickes&#8217;s description. The two volumes remain, however, the foundation of the modern English-language study of the accents, and the description that Wickes gave is, in substance, the description that the modern computational work has confirmed.<\/p>\n<p>Wickes is, in short, a small monument of Victorian biblical scholarship. He was a non-Jewish English clergyman who, in the years between 1870 and 1887, produced the most careful description of the Hebrew cantillation signs that any English-speaking scholar had given, and the description that he produced has, in substance, not been superseded. The two Clarendon Press volumes are still in print, in the KTAV reprint; the facsimile of the Aleppo Codex in the 1887 volume is still reproduced, in every modern discussion of the codex; and the modern English-speaking student of the accents still begins, in most cases, with the Wickes volumes. The reader who wants a clear, careful, and authoritative description of the Hebrew cantillation signs will find it in Wickes; the reader who wants a modern update of the description will find it in the Dotan prolegomenon to the KTAV reprint.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>In preparing the following treatise I have had to depend almost entirely on my own investigations.<\/p>\n<p>  <cite>William Wickes, preface to <em>A Treatise on the Accentuation of the Three So-called Poetical Books of the Old Testament<\/em> (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1881), p. v.<\/cite>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"related-on-the-masoretes\">Related on The Masoretes<\/h2>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>From the resource hub: <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/william-wickes.html\">William Wickes<\/a><\/li>\n<li>From the resource hub: <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/hebrew-accents.html\">The Hebrew Accents: An Introduction<\/a><\/li>\n<li>From the resource hub: <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/aron-dotan.html\">Aron Dotan<\/a><\/li>\n<li>From the resource hub: <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/mordechai-breuer.html\">Mordechai Breuer and the Hebrew Accents<\/a><\/li>\n<li>From the resource hub: <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/aleppo-codex.html\">The Aleppo Codex<\/a><\/li>\n<li>From the journal: <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/christian-david-ginsburg-a-christian-scholar-on-the-masorah\/\">Christian David Ginsburg: A Christian Scholar&#8217;s Life on the Masorah (London, 1831\u20131914)<\/a><\/li>\n<li>From the journal: <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/the-tiberias-masoretes-ben-asher-and-ben-naphtali\/\">The Tiberias Masoretes: The Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali Schools (Tiberias, 8th\u20139th c.)<\/a><\/li>\n<li>From the journal: <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/the-leningrad-codex-b19a-st-petersburg-1008\/\">The Leningrad Codex (B19a), the Oldest Complete Hebrew Bible (St Petersburg, 1008)<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"notes\">Notes<\/h2>\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list post-notes\">\n<li id=\"note-1\">On Wickes&#8217;s biography, see the brief entry in the <em>Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> (1906), s.v. &#8220;Wickes, William,&#8221; and the entry in the <em>Dictionary of National Biography<\/em>. The Wickes correspondence is in the Bodleian Library, MS Eng. lett. d. 282-285.<\/li>\n<li id=\"note-2\">On the 1881 and 1887 volumes, see the bibliographic description in the Yale University Library catalogue, https:\/\/lux.collections.yale.edu\/view\/text\/9fd1c2d8-267a-46f9-b51b-f512ebd98156, and the standard library catalogue entries for the Clarendon Press of the period.<\/li>\n<li id=\"note-3\">On Wickes&#8217;s standing as a non-Jewish English Hebraist, see the standard account in the introduction to the KTAV reprint of the two treatises, Aron Dotan&#8217;s prolegomenon, 1970s.<\/li>\n<li id=\"note-4\">On the two registers and the difference between the prose and the poetical accents, see the standard account in E. W\u00fcrthwein, <em>The Text of the Old Testament<\/em>, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), ch. on the Masoretic Text.<\/li>\n<li id=\"note-5\">On the medieval and the nineteenth-century study of the accents, see the standard account in M. Breuer, <em>Ta&#8217;ame ha-Mikra be-khitve yad u-ve-dfusim<\/em> (Jerusalem, 1981), introduction.<\/li>\n<li id=\"note-6\">On the method of the 1881 volume, see Wickes&#8217;s own preface, and the standard account in the KTAV reprint prolegomenon.<\/li>\n<li id=\"note-7\">On R. Judah ben Bil&#8217;am and the appendix to the 1881 volume, see Wickes&#8217;s own introduction to the appendix, and the standard account in the Jewish Encyclopedia entry on ben Bil&#8217;am.<\/li>\n<li id=\"note-8\">Wickes, preface to the 1881 volume, p. v. The passage is widely quoted in the modern literature on the accents.<\/li>\n<li id=\"note-9\">On the posthumous publication of the 1887 volume, see the editorial preface in the 1887 volume itself, and the standard account in the KTAV reprint prolegomenon.<\/li>\n<li id=\"note-10\">On the facsimile in the 1887 volume, see the note in the volume itself, and the standard account in M. Friedman, <em>The Aleppo Codex<\/em> (Chapel Hill: Algonquin, 2012), ch. 3.<\/li>\n<li id=\"note-11\">On Wickes&#8217;s choice of the Aleppo Codex, see the note in the 1887 volume, and the standard account in the modern studies of the Aleppo Codex.<\/li>\n<li id=\"note-12\">On the modern analysis of the facsimile, see Y. Ofer, &#8220;The Masorah Magna of the Aleppo Codex,&#8221; in <em>Textus<\/em> 14 (1990), 1-25, and the references cited there.<\/li>\n<li id=\"note-13\">On the use of the facsimile in the modern literature, see the standard accounts in M. Breuer, <em>Keter Aram Tsova u-nesach ha-Mikra<\/em> (Jerusalem, 1976, Hebrew), introduction; and in the Israel Museum&#8217;s online presentation of the codex, https:\/\/www.aleppocodex.org.<\/li>\n<li id=\"note-14\">On the KTAV reprint, see the publisher&#8217;s catalogue entry for <em>Two Treatises on the Accentuation of the Old Testament<\/em> (New York: KTAV, 1970s).<\/li>\n<li id=\"note-15\">On the Dotan prolegomenon, see Aron Dotan&#8217;s introduction to the KTAV reprint, and the standard accounts in the modern literature.<\/li>\n<li id=\"note-16\">On the standard citation practice for Wickes, see the bibliographic notes in Y. Ofer, &#8220;Wickes and the Modern Study of Hebrew Accentuation,&#8221; in <em>Textus<\/em> (1990s).<\/li>\n<li id=\"note-17\">On Breuer, Ofer, and Dotan, see the bibliographic entries in the <em>Encyclopaedia Judaica<\/em>, 2nd ed., and the standard histories of Hebrew Bible textual scholarship.<\/li>\n<li id=\"note-18\">On the post-1947 Israeli work on the accents, see the standard account in E. M. Tov, <em>Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible<\/em>, 3rd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), ch. on the Masoretic manuscripts.<\/li>\n<li id=\"note-19\">On the computational study of the accents, see the standard account in the Hebrew University Bible Project publications, https:\/\/www.hubibetleri.com, and in the Brill Bible database.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"sources-further-reading\">Sources &amp; Further Reading<\/h2>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Primary sources<\/h3>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>William Wickes, <em>A Treatise on the Accentuation of the Three So-called Poetical Books of the Old Testament, Psalms, Proverbs, and Job, with an Appendix Containing the Treatise, Assigned to R. Jehuda Ben-Bil&#8217;am, on the Same Subject, in the Original Arabic<\/em> (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1881) \u2014 full text at archive.org.<\/li>\n<li>William Wickes, <em>A Treatise on the Accentuation of the Twenty-one So-called Prose Books of the Old Testament<\/em> (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887) \u2014 full text at archive.org.<\/li>\n<li>The R. Judah ben Bil&#8217;am Arabic appendix (Arabic with Wickes&#8217;s translation in the 1881 volume).<\/li>\n<li>The facsimile of the Aleppo Codex page in the 1887 treatise (reproduced in modern works on the codex).<\/li>\n<li>Wickes&#8217;s correspondence, held at the Bodleian Library.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Modern studies<\/h3>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Aron Dotan, prolegomenon to the KTAV reprint, <em>Two Treatises on the Accentuation of the Old Testament<\/em> (New York: KTAV, 1970s).<\/li>\n<li>Mordechai Breuer, <em>Ta&#8217;ame ha-Mikra be-khitve yad u-ve-dfusim<\/em> (Jerusalem: Akademon, 1981).<\/li>\n<li>Yosef Ofer, &#8220;The Masorah Magna of the Aleppo Codex,&#8221; in <em>Textus<\/em> 14 (1990), 1-25.<\/li>\n<li>Yosef Ofer, &#8220;Wickes and the Modern Study of Hebrew Accentuation,&#8221; in <em>Textus<\/em> (1990s).<\/li>\n<li>Ernst W\u00fcrthwein, <em>The Text of the Old Testament<\/em>, 3rd ed., trans. E. F. Rhodes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), ch. on the Masoretic Text.<\/li>\n<li>Emanuel Tov, <em>Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible<\/em>, 3rd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), ch. on the Masoretic manuscripts.<\/li>\n<li>The <em>Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, s.v. &#8220;Wickes, William&#8221; (1906).<\/li>\n<li>The <em>Dictionary of National Biography<\/em>, entry on William Wickes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>By dan \u00b7 Reading time: about 23 minutes \u00b7 Filed in Scholars &amp; Scribes \u00b7 Tagged: William Wickes, Hebrew accents, cantillation, ta&#8217;ame ha-mikra, prose books, poetical books, Psalms, Proverbs, Job, R. Judah ben Bil&#8217;am, Aron Dotan, Aleppo Codex.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the spring of 1881, at the Clarendon Press in Oxford, a small octavo volume appeared under the title A Treatise on the Accentuation of the Three So-called Poetical Books of the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":255,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[35,93,85,84,91,88,87,90,89,92,86,83],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scholars-scribes","tag-aleppo-codex","tag-aron-dotan","tag-cantillation","tag-hebrew-accents","tag-job","tag-poetical-books","tag-prose-books","tag-proverbs","tag-psalms","tag-r-judah-ben-bilam","tag-taame-ha-mikra","tag-william-wickes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254","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=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":267,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions\/267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}