{"id":505,"date":"2026-10-19T00:37:03","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T00:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/babylonian-vocalisation-the-eastern-pointing-of-the-hebrew-bible\/"},"modified":"2026-10-19T00:37:03","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T00:37:03","slug":"babylonian-vocalisation-the-eastern-pointing-of-the-hebrew-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/babylonian-vocalisation-the-eastern-pointing-of-the-hebrew-bible\/","title":{"rendered":"Babylonian Vocalisation: The Eastern Pointing of the Hebrew Bible"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Every printed Hebrew Bible uses the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Tiberian_vocalization\">Tiberian vowel points<\/a>: dots and dashes set mostly beneath the letters, worked out by the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Masoretes\">Masoretes<\/a> of <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Tiberias\">Tiberias<\/a> in the early Middle Ages. For several centuries it was not the only system. In the Jewish academies of Babylonia, modern Iraq, scribes wrote their vowels <em>above<\/em> the line, in small strokes and dots of their own design, and those signs recorded a pronunciation of Hebrew that was not quite the one heard in Tiberias. When Paul Kahle published the surviving fragments in 1913, he described them as material that had been \u201cforgotten for almost a thousand years\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-1\"><a href=\"#note-1\">1<\/a><\/sup> Today the oldest Hebrew book dated by its own colophon is a Babylonian-pointed manuscript, and scholars are still working out how to get its signs into the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Unicode\">Unicode Standard<\/a>.<\/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\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li><strong>4th century CE:<\/strong> Aramaic incantation bowls from Babylonia already reflect the Babylonian pronunciation of Hebrew through their spelling.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>c. 6th\u201310th centuries:<\/strong> Babylonian and Palestinian supralinear (above-the-line) pointing is in use for Hebrew and Jewish Babylonian Aramaic.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>840\/841:<\/strong> a Mishnah manuscript with Babylonian vowels is copied. Its surviving colophon leaf, now in Toronto, makes it the oldest Hebrew book dated by a scribe.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>903\/4:<\/strong> a Bible codex with Babylonian vowels is copied at Gunbat-i-Mallg\u00e0n in Iran.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>916:<\/strong> the Prophets codex later known as the Codex Babylonicus Petropolitanus is completed, with Babylonian signs showing heavy Tiberian influence.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>10th century:<\/strong> Tiberian reading is regarded as superior even where Babylonian pointing is common. The academy of Sura closes after a final revival under Saadia Gaon.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>1839:<\/strong> Abraham Firkovich finds the 916 codex in the synagogue at Chufut-Kale in the Crimea.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>1863:<\/strong> Sim\u1e25a Pinsker publishes the first book-length study of the system. The codex enters the Imperial Public Library in St Petersburg.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>1876:<\/strong> Hermann Strack publishes a photolithographic facsimile of the 916 codex.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>1902 and 1913:<\/strong> Paul Kahle publishes the Babylonian Masoretic text, first from one manuscript in Berlin, then from more than sixty.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>1985:<\/strong> Israel Yeivin\u2019s two-volume study of the language tradition behind the Babylonian vocalisation appears.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>2025\u201326:<\/strong> a proposal to encode the Babylonian and Palestinian marks goes to the Unicode Technical Committee, which takes no action pending a meeting with experts.<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"pointing-from-above\">Pointing from Above<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"an-eastern-community\">An Eastern Community<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jewish settlement in Babylonia began after the destruction of the First Temple, and the community remained one of the largest and most learned in the Jewish world into the Middle Ages.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-2\"><a href=\"#note-2\">2<\/a><\/sup> Its academies at <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Sura_%28city%29\">Sura<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Nehardea\">Nehardea<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Pumbedita\">Pumbedita<\/a> produced the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Talmud\">Babylonian Talmud<\/a> and the <em><a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Geonim\">geonim<\/a><\/em> who led much of the Jewish world in the early Islamic period. By the start of the tenth century, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ames.cam.ac.uk\/people\/dr-benjamin-kantor\">Benjamin Kantor<\/a>, the Babylonian tradition of Hebrew had spread beyond Iraq to the Jewish communities of <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Iran\">Iran<\/a>, the Arabian Peninsula and <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Yemen\">Yemen<\/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 tradition of pronunciation is older than the signs that record it. Kantor points to <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Incantation_bowl\">incantation bowls<\/a> of the fourth century CE, inscribed in Aramaic and buried under houses to trap demons, whose spellings with vowel letters already reflect Babylonian pronunciation.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-4\"><a href=\"#note-4\">4<\/a><\/sup> The written vowel signs came later. Kantor thinks the Babylonian notation probably began to develop at about the same time as the Palestinian system, \u201cthough perhaps just a bit later\u201d, and that the Tiberian signs probably developed slightly after both.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-5\"><a href=\"#note-5\">5<\/a><\/sup> That last point matters for the old argument over the age of the vowel points, told in our post on <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/the-vowel-point-controversy-who-pointed-the-hebrew-bible\/\">the Vowel-Point Controversy<\/a>: the Tiberian system now printed everywhere was one of three medieval solutions to the same problem, and probably not the first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"where-the-signs-were-used\">Where the Signs Were Used<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The authors of the 2025 Unicode proposal sum up both supralinear systems as used \u201cprimarily by Jewish communities in Babylonia (present-day Iraq) and Palestine between the 6th and 10th centuries CE\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-6\"><a href=\"#note-6\">6<\/a><\/sup> Babylonian pointing was used mainly for Bible manuscripts, but it also appears on rabbinic texts and <em><a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Piyyut\">piyyu\u1e6dim<\/a><\/em>, the liturgical poems of the synagogue.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-7\"><a href=\"#note-7\">7<\/a><\/sup> It was used for <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Jewish_Babylonian_Aramaic\">Jewish Babylonian Aramaic<\/a> too, the language of the Babylonian Talmud.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-8\"><a href=\"#note-8\">8<\/a><\/sup> Kahle\u2019s 1913 study covered the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Targum\">Targums<\/a> as well as the Bible, and its subtitle calls the manuscripts \u201cthe oldest pointed manuscripts of the Old Testament and the Targums\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-9\"><a href=\"#note-9\">9<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Most of the surviving witnesses are fragments. The proposal speaks of \u201chundreds of manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah\u201d, and adds that the Babylonian system is also attested \u201cacross hundreds of pages of medieval European manuscripts\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-10\"><a href=\"#note-10\">10<\/a><\/sup> The story of how so much of this material reached modern libraries belongs to <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/the-cairo-geniza-and-the-taylor-schechter-collection\/\">the Cairo Geniza<\/a> and to the collectors described on our <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/cairo-genizah.html\">Cairo Genizah<\/a> page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-signs\">The Signs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"six-vowels-two-systems\">Six Vowels, Two Systems<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Babylonian signs are more complex than either of their rivals. There are two main types, which scholars call the simple system and the compound system. The simple system itself comes in two varieties: a <em>line system<\/em> made of small strokes above the letters, and a rarer <em>dot system<\/em> made of supralinear dots. Kantor notes that the dot system does not seem to be older or younger than the line system: both developed at about the same time.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-11\"><a href=\"#note-11\">11<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Each variety has six vowel signs for six vowel sounds:<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-12\"><a href=\"#note-12\">12<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><thead><tr><th>Sound<\/th><th>Nearest Tiberian sign<\/th><\/tr><\/thead><tbody><tr><td><em>i<\/em><\/td><td>\u1e25ireq<\/td><\/tr><tr><td><em>e<\/em><\/td><td>\u1e63ere<\/td><\/tr><tr><td><em>a<\/em><\/td><td>pata\u1e25 (and seghol)<\/td><\/tr><tr><td><em>\u0254<\/em><\/td><td>qame\u1e63<\/td><\/tr><tr><td><em>o<\/em><\/td><td>\u1e25olem<\/td><\/tr><tr><td><em>u<\/em><\/td><td>qibbu\u1e63 or shureq<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Several of the line signs started life as tiny letters written over the word. The <em>a<\/em> sign was originally a miniature <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05e2<\/span> (<em>\u02bfayin<\/em>), the <em>\u0254<\/em> sign a miniature <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05d0<\/span> (<em>\u02bealef<\/em>), the <em>i<\/em> sign a small <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05d9<\/span> (<em>yod<\/em>) and the <em>u<\/em> sign a tiny <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05d5<\/span> (<em>waw<\/em>).<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-13\"><a href=\"#note-13\">13<\/a><\/sup> A scribe was, in effect, writing a small vowel letter above a word whose spelling could not be changed. That is the same respect for the consonantal text that lies behind <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/ketiv-and-qere-what-is-written-and-what-is-read\/\"><em>ketiv<\/em> and <em>qere<\/em><\/a>, where the Masoretes kept a written form they would not alter alongside a reading they would not give up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Unicode proposal uses traditional names for the main marks: <em>qamats<\/em>, <em>pata\u1e25<\/em>, <em>tsere<\/em>, <em>\u1e25iriq<\/em>, <em>\u1e25olam<\/em> and <em>qubbuts<\/em>. It takes the shapes from Kahle\u2019s classic chart of 1922, adds a dotted form of <em>pata\u1e25<\/em>, and counts seven principal Babylonian points.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-14\"><a href=\"#note-14\">14<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"shewa-gemination-and-the-letters-above-the-line\">Shewa, Gemination and the Letters Above the Line<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To these was added a short horizontal stroke called the <em>\u1e25i\u1e6dfa<\/em>, which could mark a vocal <em><a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Shewa\">shewa<\/a><\/em>.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-15\"><a href=\"#note-15\">15<\/a><\/sup> Babylonian scribes also wrote miniature letters above the text for distinctions the bare consonants could not show:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>a small <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05e1<\/span> (<em>samekh<\/em>) marked a letter to be read as <em>sin<\/em>, and a small <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05e9<\/span> marked <em>shin<\/em>;<\/li>\n\n\n<li>a small <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05d2<\/span> (<em>gimel<\/em>, for <em>gemination<\/em>) marked doubling, the work done by <em><a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Dagesh\">dagesh<\/a><\/em> in Tiberian;<\/li>\n\n\n<li>a small <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05e7<\/span> marked <em>rafe<\/em>, the absence of doubling;<\/li>\n\n\n<li>a small <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05d4<\/span> marked <em><a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Mappiq\">mappiq<\/a><\/em>, a pronounced final <em>he<\/em>.<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Unicode proposal gives manuscript examples of each, most from Cambridge Genizah fragments. One is a miniature <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05d4<\/span> over the last letter of <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05e2\u05dc\u05d5\u05ea\u05d4<\/span> (<em>\u02bfalotah<\/em>, \u201cher coming up\u201d) at Hosea 2:17 in T-S B 2.7.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-16\"><a href=\"#note-16\">16<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-compound-system\">The Compound System<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The compound system added marks for vowel length and syllable structure. Placing the <em>\u1e25i\u1e6dfa<\/em> above or below one of the ordinary vowel signs showed that the vowel was short, or that its syllable was closed. Kantor\u2019s example is the place name <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Tel_Megiddo\">Megiddo<\/a>. A simple-system spelling <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05de\u05b0\u05d2\u05b4\u05d3\u05d5\u05b9<\/span> could stand for either <em>m\u0259\u0263i\u00f0o<\/em> or <em>m\u0259\u0263iddo<\/em>. The compound spelling, with <em>\u1e25i\u1e6dfa<\/em> combined with the <em>i<\/em> sign, can only mean the second, with the <em>d<\/em> doubled.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-17\"><a href=\"#note-17\">17<\/a><\/sup> The Tiberian system makes the same distinction with <em>dagesh<\/em>. The Babylonian compound system makes it by marking the vowel before the doubled letter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"accents\">Accents<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like the Tiberian Masoretes, the Babylonian scribes marked <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Hebrew_cantillation\">cantillation<\/a>, the chanted division of the verse. The Unicode proposal documents thirteen supralinear Babylonian accents, following Ronit Shoshany\u2019s study of Babylonian accentuation, with examples drawn from Genizah fragments and from the Berlin manuscript Or. Qu. 680.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-18\"><a href=\"#note-18\">18<\/a><\/sup> Their names and shapes differ from the Tiberian ones, but they do the same job of dividing the verse for reading aloud. The Tiberian accents are covered in our post on <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/the-tiberian-masorah-and-the-schools-of-ben-asher-and-ben-naphtali\/\">the Tiberian Masorah and the schools of Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"a-different-pronunciation\">A Different Pronunciation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"more-than-a-different-script\">More Than a Different Script<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Babylonian points are not just another way of writing the Tiberian vowels. The Unicode proposal says so directly: in many instances the Babylonian and Palestinian systems \u201cmaintain divergent pronunciations of Hebrew words, reflecting alternate phonological norms\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-19\"><a href=\"#note-19\">19<\/a><\/sup> They are evidence of how Hebrew was actually read aloud in the Middle Ages, in a different region and in a different school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kantor regards Babylonian as the reading tradition closest to Tiberian. Both have the distinct <em><a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Kamatz\">qame\u1e63<\/a><\/em> vowel [\u0254], and both lengthen the prefix vowel of <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05d9\u05d4\u05d9\u05d4<\/span> (<em>yihye<\/em>, \u201cwill be\u201d) in a particular way. He suggests that both go back to a more formal, \u201cbiblical\u201d style of recitation rooted in the late Second Temple period.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-20\"><a href=\"#note-20\">20<\/a><\/sup> Yet the two differ at many points, and some of the differences are obvious even to a beginner.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-21\"><a href=\"#note-21\">21<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"six-vowels-not-seven\">Six Vowels, Not Seven<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Tiberian Hebrew distinguishes seven vowel qualities. Babylonian has six: there is no separate <em><a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Segol\">seghol<\/a><\/em> [\u025b], which has merged with <em>pata\u1e25<\/em> [a].<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-22\"><a href=\"#note-22\">22<\/a><\/sup> Many words that Tiberian pronounces with an <em>e<\/em> sound come out with <em>a<\/em> in the Babylonian tradition:<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-23\"><a href=\"#note-23\">23<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><thead><tr><th>Meaning<\/th><th>Tiberian<\/th><th>Babylonian<\/th><\/tr><\/thead><tbody><tr><td>\u201cthey\u201d<\/td><td><span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05d4\u05b5\u05dd<\/span> <em>hem<\/em><\/td><td><em>ham<\/em><\/td><\/tr><tr><td>\u201cheart\u201d<\/td><td><span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05dc\u05b5\u05d1<\/span> <em>lev<\/em><\/td><td><em>lav<\/em><\/td><\/tr><tr><td>\u201cgrew old\u201d<\/td><td><span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05d6\u05b8\u05e7\u05b5\u05df<\/span> <em>zaqen<\/em><\/td><td><em>zaqan<\/em><\/td><\/tr><tr><td>\u201cshe will give birth\u201d<\/td><td><span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05ea\u05b5\u05bc\u05dc\u05b5\u05d3<\/span> <em>teled<\/em><\/td><td><em>telad<\/em><\/td><\/tr><tr><td>\u201cdesert\u201d (Ps 102:7)<\/td><td><span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05de\u05b4\u05d3\u05b0\u05d1\u05b8\u05bc\u05e8<\/span> <em>midbar<\/em><\/td><td><em>madbar<\/em><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the last example Babylonian keeps the older <em>a<\/em> vowel that Tiberian has shifted to <em>i<\/em>. Kantor sees in these words, together with the loss of <em>seghol<\/em>, \u201ca general tendency to shift short <em>e<\/em> \u2192 <em>a<\/em> in Babylonian Hebrew\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-24\"><a href=\"#note-24\">24<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"gutturals-furtive-pata-and-two-kinds-of-from\">Gutturals, Furtive Pata\u1e25 and Two Kinds of \u201cFrom\u201d<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The guttural letters behave differently too. Tiberian Hebrew inserts a brief \u201cfurtive\u201d <em>pata\u1e25<\/em> before a final guttural, so that <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05e8\u05d5\u05bc\u05d7\u05b7<\/span>, \u201cspirit\u201d, is read <em>rua\u1e25<\/em>. Babylonian has no furtive <em>pata\u1e25<\/em>: the word is simply <em>ru\u1e25<\/em>.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-25\"><a href=\"#note-25\">25<\/a><\/sup> Where Tiberian writes a reduced <em>\u1e25a\u1e6def<\/em> vowel under a guttural, Babylonian usually has a full vowel, as in <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05e2\u05b2\u05e9\u05b4\u05c2\u05d9\u05ea\u05b6\u05dd<\/span>, \u201cyou did\u201d, which in Babylonian is <em>\u02bfasitam<\/em>.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-26\"><a href=\"#note-26\">26<\/a><\/sup> In Job 12:14 Tiberian reads <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05d9\u05b7\u05d4\u05b2\u05e8\u05d5\u05b9\u05e1<\/span> (<em>yaharos<\/em>, \u201che tears down\u201d) where Babylonian reads <em>yihros<\/em>.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-27\"><a href=\"#note-27\">27<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One difference actually removes an ambiguity. In Tiberian Hebrew, <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05de\u05b4\u05de\u05b6\u05bc\u05e0\u05bc\u05d5\u05bc<\/span> (<em>mimmennu<\/em>) means both \u201cfrom him\u201d and \u201cfrom us\u201d. Babylonian keeps them apart: <em>mimmannu<\/em> for \u201cfrom him\u201d and <em>mimmenu<\/em> for \u201cfrom us\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-28\"><a href=\"#note-28\">28<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"old-middle-and-late-babylonian\">Old, Middle and Late Babylonian<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The manuscripts do not all reflect one pronunciation. Following Israel Yeivin, scholars divide them into three stages: Old, Middle and Late Babylonian. The Old Babylonian manuscripts preserve the most archaic and purely Babylonian pronunciation, and they are often only partly vocalised. Middle and Late Babylonian manuscripts are pointed more fully. They also drift towards the Tiberian tradition, since copying the most prestigious reading was common, \u201cespecially \u2026 in Late Babylonian\u201d. Not every later change came from Tiberias, though: the Babylonian tradition went on developing in its own ways.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-29\"><a href=\"#note-29\">29<\/a><\/sup> Yeivin classed the Toronto <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Mishnah\">Mishnah<\/a>, discussed below, as Middle Babylonian.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-30\"><a href=\"#note-30\">30<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-yemenite-echo\">The Yemenite Echo<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Babylonian pronunciation did not disappear with the manuscripts. Kantor notes that <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Yemenite_Jews\">Yemenite Jews<\/a> \u201chave preserved features of the medieval Babylonian pronunciation in their own oral reading tradition down to modern times\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-31\"><a href=\"#note-31\">31<\/a><\/sup> Some of the most important Babylonian-pointed books passed through Yemen. Kahle observed that the Berlin manuscript Or. Qu. 680, the basis of his 1902 study, had clearly been in Yemen because of the way it was later reworked there, though it was just as clearly not written there.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-32\"><a href=\"#note-32\">32<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"tijan-the-yemenite-bibles\">Tijan: The Yemenite Bibles<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yemenite Bibles, and above all copies of the Pentateuch, are called <em>tijan<\/em> (singular <em>taj<\/em>, Arabic for \u201ccrown\u201d). A Sotheby\u2019s catalogue note of 2024 sums up their history. The Yemenite community had long used the Babylonian supralinear system for its Torah codices, then gradually adopted the Tiberian method, probably under the influence of Maimonides, whom Yemenite Jews revered as a legal authority. Because the <em>tijan<\/em> were copied with great exactness and followed the Masorah closely, modern scholars treat them as valuable witnesses to the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Aaron_ben_Moses_ben_Asher\">Ben Asher<\/a> tradition. Mordechai Breuer took the agreement between his own edited text and the <em>tijan<\/em> as confirmation of his method.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-33\"><a href=\"#note-33\">33<\/a><\/sup> The older system did not vanish from Yemenite books. A sixteenth-century <em>taj<\/em> described by the dealers Les Enluminures opens with a liturgical poem by <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Judah_Halevi\">Judah Halevi<\/a> written with supralinear vowels.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-34\"><a href=\"#note-34\">34<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For Kahle, Yemen mattered most for the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Targum_Onkelos\">Targum<\/a>. He wrote of \u201cthe numerous Yemenite manuscripts with their tradition, so valuable especially for the text of the Targum\u201d, which stand very close to the Tiberian tradition but share some features with the 916 codex and the Berlin manuscript.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-35\"><a href=\"#note-35\">35<\/a><\/sup> The two oldest Yemenite manuscripts he knew, British Museum Or. 1467 and Or. 2363, use supralinear signs. Their Hebrew text, Kahle concluded, was \u201conly to be understood as a transfer back from a Tiberian-pointed manuscript\u201d and had no independent value, though their Targum text had important peculiarities of its own.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-36\"><a href=\"#note-36\">36<\/a><\/sup> He was also sceptical of the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Bodleian_Library\">Bodleian<\/a> catalogue of 1906, which labelled every supralinear fragment \u201cYemenite\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-37\"><a href=\"#note-37\">37<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The living reading tradition of Yemen keeps the clearest trace of the Babylonian vowels. Kantor notes that pronouncing the Tiberian <em>seghol<\/em> as [a] or [\u00e6] is one of the clear marks of <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Yemenite_Hebrew\">modern Yemenite Hebrew<\/a>, so that <span lang=\"he\" dir=\"rtl\">\u05db\u05b6\u05bc\u05e1\u05b6\u05e3<\/span>, \u201csilver\u201d, in Isaiah 2:7 is heard as <em>k\u00e6s\u00e6f<\/em>. He regards the Yemenite traditions as \u201cthe present-day continuation of the medieval Babylonian tradition, at least in many respects\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-38\"><a href=\"#note-38\">38<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"hybrids\">Hybrids<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Pure examples of either tradition are rarer than one might expect. Kahle warned that old manuscripts often show \u201ccomplicated mixtures of the traditions of different schools\u201d. The codex of 916 mixes Eastern and Western elements, and so do the Yemenite manuscripts. British Museum Or. 2373 is a mixture of yet another kind: its Masorah belongs to Babylonia, but the rest of the manuscript shows very strong Western influence.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-39\"><a href=\"#note-39\">39<\/a><\/sup> Even the Berlin manuscript, the best witness Kahle had in 1902, was later \u201creworked in the Yemenite manner\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-40\"><a href=\"#note-40\">40<\/a><\/sup> Kahle also traced a wider pressure towards uniformity. From the eleventh century the text named after Ben Asher was more and more accepted as authoritative, and Masoretes worked systematically to bring manuscripts into line with it. He doubted that any manuscript of the thirteenth or fourteenth century escaped its influence altogether.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-41\"><a href=\"#note-41\">41<\/a><\/sup> The problem has not gone away. When the Unicode working group reviewed the 2025 encoding proposal, one of its first objections was that \u201cit is common for there to be texts that are hybrid-annotated\u201d, with Babylonian and Tiberian signs side by side.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-42\"><a href=\"#note-42\">42<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-babylonian-masorah\">The Babylonian Masorah<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"easterners-and-westerners\">Easterners and Westerners<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Babylonian scribes had their own Masorah, their own notes on spelling and reading, as well as their own vowels. The medieval lists of differences between the <em>Madin\u1e25a\u2019e<\/em> (\u201cEasterners\u201d, the Babylonians) and the <em>Ma\u2018arba\u2019e<\/em> (\u201cWesterners\u201d, the scholars of the Land of Israel) record many points where the two traditions disagreed. Some involve <em>ketiv<\/em> and <em>qere<\/em>, which is why they come up in our post on <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/ketiv-and-qere-what-is-written-and-what-is-read\/\"><em>ketiv<\/em> and <em>qere<\/em><\/a>. Kahle stressed that there were schools within each camp as well: in Babylonia the traditions of Sura and Nehardea differed, just as Ben Asher differed from <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/ben-naphtali.html\">Ben Naphtali<\/a> in the West.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-43\"><a href=\"#note-43\">43<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"ben-naphtali-was-not-an-easterner\">Ben Naphtali Was Not an Easterner<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kahle also corrected an error that had confused writing on the Masorah for almost four centuries. <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Elia_Levita\">Elias Levita<\/a>, the great Masoretic scholar of the sixteenth century, wrote that \u201cthe people of the East rely on the reading of Ben Naftali\u201d, while the Western communities followed Ben Asher. Kahle called this an \u201celementary error\u201d that had misled even Christian D. Ginsburg. For anyone with real insight into the Masorah, he wrote, there could be no doubt that Ben Naphtali, like Ben Asher, \u201cbelongs to the West (Tiberias) and has nothing to do with the East (Babylonia)\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-44\"><a href=\"#note-44\">44<\/a><\/sup> The real Eastern tradition was the one written above the line. The Western schools are described in our post on <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/the-tiberian-masorah-and-the-schools-of-ben-asher-and-ben-naphtali\/\">Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"decline\">Decline<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-triumph-of-tiberias\">The Triumph of Tiberias<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By the tenth century, Kantor writes, Tiberian \u201cwas widely regarded as superior to the other reading traditions, even in areas where the Babylonian tradition was much more commonly used\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-45\"><a href=\"#note-45\">45<\/a><\/sup> Kahle traced how Tiberian influence \u201cpenetrated more and more\u201d, and in the end ensured that the work of the Babylonian Masoretes was forgotten and lost. He also noted that Maimonides already treated the text of Ben Asher as close to authoritative. The model codex associated with that judgement is the subject of our post on <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/the-aleppo-codex-and-the-tiberian-standard\/\">the Aleppo Codex<\/a>, and the Rambam\u2019s role is set out on our <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/maimonides.html\">Maimonides<\/a> page.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-46\"><a href=\"#note-46\">46<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kahle blamed the decline of the Babylonian academies. The school at Sura was closed soon after \u201ca last brief flowering\u201d under <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/saadia-gaon.html\">Saadia Gaon<\/a> in the first half of the tenth century. Nehardea had come to an end much earlier, though its traditions may have continued at Pumbedita. Saadia, Kahle wrote, was \u201creally the last Jewish scholar who still had a real knowledge of the Babylonian tradition of the biblical text\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-47\"><a href=\"#note-47\">47<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"kahle-s-date-limit-and-later-evidence\">Kahle\u2019s Date Limit and Later Evidence<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From this history Kahle drew a bold conclusion: Bible manuscripts pointed by Babylonian Masoretes \u201ccannot in any case be later than 900 CE\u201d, so his fragments belonged to the ninth century at the latest, and some might be older still.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-48\"><a href=\"#note-48\">48<\/a><\/sup> That limit has not held as a general rule. The Unicode proposal notes that the Babylonian system appears on \u201chundreds of pages of medieval European manuscripts\u201d, and the Yemenite tradition kept Babylonian features alive long after the academies closed.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-49\"><a href=\"#note-49\">49<\/a><\/sup> Kahle was right, though, that the purest Babylonian witnesses are early, and that the famous codex of 916 was not one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"rediscovery\">Rediscovery<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-codex-of-916\">The Codex of 916<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The best-known Babylonian-pointed book is a codex of the Latter Prophets dated 916, now in the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/National_Library_of_Russia\">National Library of Russia<\/a> in St Petersburg. Its old catalogue number was B 3, and it is often called the Codex Babylonicus Petropolitanus. According to Kahle, <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/abraham-firkovich.html\">Abraham Firkovich<\/a> found it in 1839 in the synagogue at <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Chufut-Kale\">Chufut-Kale<\/a> in the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Crimea\">Crimea<\/a>. He gave it to the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Odessa\">Odessa<\/a> Society for History and Antiquities, and in 1863, with the other manuscripts held in Odessa, it was transferred to the Imperial Public Library in St Petersburg.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-50\"><a href=\"#note-50\">50<\/a><\/sup> The same library would later acquire the <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/the-leningrad-codex\/\">Leningrad Codex<\/a>, also from Firkovich\u2019s collections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The codex was described in the catalogue of Hebrew Bible manuscripts by <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/abraham-harkavy.html\">Abraham Harkavy<\/a> and Hermann L. Strack (1875), and Strack published a photolithographic facsimile in 1876.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-51\"><a href=\"#note-51\">51<\/a><\/sup> For decades it was the main evidence for the Babylonian system, and it shaped how scholars imagined that system. Kahle argued that this was misleading. The codex represented \u201ca far later stage of development\u201d than almost all the fragments he had collected, and it showed \u201ca degeneration of the Babylonian tradition that can only be explained by the influence of the Tiberian Masoretes\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-52\"><a href=\"#note-52\">52<\/a><\/sup> In other words, the most famous Babylonian manuscript was already a hybrid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"pinsker-kahle-and-the-fragments\">Pinsker, Kahle and the Fragments<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first book devoted to the system was <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/simhah-pinsker.html\">Sim\u1e25a Pinsker<\/a>\u2019s <em>Einleitung in das Babylonisch-Hebr\u00e4ische Punktationssystem<\/em> (Vienna, 1863).<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-53\"><a href=\"#note-53\">53<\/a><\/sup> More fragments came to light in the following decades, from Firkovich\u2019s second collection, bought by the Russian government on Harkavy and Strack\u2019s advice after his death in 1874, and from the Genizah material that reached Oxford, Cambridge and other libraries. Kahle wondered whether Firkovich had acquired the Petersburg fragments in Cairo on his travels to Egypt and Palestine in the 1860s.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-54\"><a href=\"#note-54\">54<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/paul-kahle.html\">Paul Kahle<\/a> built his early career on this material. His 1902 book <em>Der masoretische Text des Alten Testaments nach der \u00dcberlieferung der babylonischen Juden<\/em> was based on a single manuscript, Berlin Or. Qu. 680. <em>Masoreten des Ostens<\/em> (1913) confirmed and greatly extended it. In the preface Kahle speaks of more than fifty manuscripts, and in the introduction of \u201cmore than 60 different manuscripts of the Eastern tradition\u201d, with facsimiles from seventeen of them.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-55\"><a href=\"#note-55\">55<\/a><\/sup> He found \u201cgreat diversity\u201d in their pointing: few fragments agreed in every detail. But he valued that diversity, because it gave a glimpse of the effort in the Babylonian academies to fix the received pronunciation ever more precisely. And despite the differences, he wrote, the fragments shared \u201ca common tradition that clearly stands opposed to the Tiberian (Western)\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-56\"><a href=\"#note-56\">56<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"modern-study\">Modern Study<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The standard modern work is Israel Yeivin\u2019s Hebrew study <em>The Hebrew Language Tradition as Reflected in the Babylonian Vocalization<\/em> (2 vols, Academy of the Hebrew Language, 1985). It surveys the manuscripts and catalogues the additional signs, and it underlies Geoffrey Khan\u2019s article \u201cVocalization, Babylonian\u201d in the <em>Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics<\/em> (Brill, 2013).<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-57\"><a href=\"#note-57\">57<\/a><\/sup> Shoshany\u2019s work on the accents and Kantor\u2019s comparative study of the reading traditions (2023) build on both. Spanish scholarship took an interest early. When the Instituto Arias Montano of the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Spanish_National_Research_Council\">Spanish National Research Council<\/a> (CSIC) planned its Madrid Polyglot in the 1950s, the intended apparatus included Babylonian and Tiberian variants from the Cairo Genizah fragments. The project later narrowed to an edition of the <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/the-cairo-prophets-codex\/\">Cairo Codex of the Prophets<\/a>, and Kahle corresponded with its director, Federico P\u00e9rez Castro, about microfilms of that codex in 1959. The CSIC has since put its photographs and edition online.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-58\"><a href=\"#note-58\">58<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-oldest-dated-hebrew-book\">The Oldest Dated Hebrew Book<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In June 2023 the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lib.cam.ac.uk\/collections\/departments\/taylor-schechter-genizah-research-unit\">Cambridge Genizah Research Unit<\/a> published Judith Olszowy-Schlanger\u2019s study of a single leaf in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/University_of_Toronto\">University of Toronto<\/a>, MSS Friedberg 9-001 c1. The leaf belongs to a Mishnah manuscript with Babylonian vowels, known to scholars as \u201cMS A\u201d, whose other surviving parts are in Oxford and Cambridge.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-59\"><a href=\"#note-59\">59<\/a><\/sup> In 1935 Kahle and his collaborators had dated these fragments to the ninth century at the latest, and Kahle regretted that the very last leaf was missing, since it might have carried a date. Olszowy-Schlanger showed that the Toronto leaf is that missing leaf. It completes the Bodleian fragment and ends with the scribe\u2019s colophon, in a mixture of Hebrew and Babylonian Aramaic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The date is partly damaged, but Olszowy-Schlanger was able to read it with ultraviolet light and a digital microscope. The year, written in Babylonian Aramaic, is 1152 of the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Seleucid_era\">Seleucid era<\/a>, which corresponds to 840 or 841 CE. That makes MS A the earliest dated manuscript of the Mishnah, and \u201cthe very earliest medieval Hebrew book explicitly dated by scribal colophon\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-60\"><a href=\"#note-60\">60<\/a><\/sup> The previous record-holder was also Babylonian: a Bible manuscript from Iran, copied at Gunbat-i-Mallg\u00e0n in 903\/4 and preserved in nine Genizah fragments. Olszowy-Schlanger notes that the Toronto leaf\u2019s script shows affinities with it.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-61\"><a href=\"#note-61\">61<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The study also corrects the record on the leaf itself. The online catalogue in Toronto said the manuscript had been dated by radiocarbon to the early eleventh century, but neither the library nor the former owner, Albert Dov Friedberg, had ever commissioned a radiocarbon test.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-62\"><a href=\"#note-62\">62<\/a><\/sup> Olszowy-Schlanger places the leaf within a much larger Babylonian corpus that includes dozens of Genizah fragments and the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Sifra\">Sifra<\/a> manuscript in the <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Vatican_Library\">Vatican<\/a> (Vat. ebr. 66). A firm date for one of its members gives a basis for dating the rest.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-63\"><a href=\"#note-63\">63<\/a><\/sup> Kahle\u2019s instinct that the Babylonian manuscripts were very old has been borne out in an unexpected way: for now, the oldest dated Hebrew book of the Middle Ages carries Babylonian vowels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"into-the-digital-age\">Into the Digital Age<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Babylonian vocalisation is studied today mostly from photographs, but scholars who want to edit or search Babylonian texts need the signs as characters. Unicode, the international standard for encoding text, includes the Tiberian points and accents but not the supralinear systems. A first proposal in 2004 went nowhere. In May 2025 Aleksandr Andreev and Christa M\u00fcller-Kessler submitted a proposal for the Babylonian system (L2\/25-268). On 22 October 2025 a larger team submitted a combined proposal for the Babylonian and Palestinian systems (L2\/26-038): Andreev, M\u00fcller-Kessler, Avi Shmidman, Benjamin Outhwaite and Kim Phillips. It asks for 49 characters.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-64\"><a href=\"#note-64\">64<\/a><\/sup> The proposal argues that without encoding, these systems remain inaccessible to digital scholarship despite their importance for \u201cresearching and reconstructing the linguistic history of the Hebrew language\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-65\"><a href=\"#note-65\">65<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Script Encoding Working Group reviewed the proposal for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.unicode.org\/consortium\/utc.html\">Unicode Technical Committee<\/a>\u2019s 186th meeting in January 2026. Its recommendation was that \u201cno action is requested of the UTC\u201d for the time being. It welcomed the document as \u201ca great step\u201d but listed open questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>how the new marks would interact with the Tiberian points already encoded, since many manuscripts mix systems;<\/li>\n\n\n<li>a Judeo-Arabic system of marks that the proposal does not cover;<\/li>\n\n\n<li>characters that look alike across the systems and might be unified, alongside a single proposed Palestinian <em>zaqef<\/em> that has three very different forms;<\/li>\n\n\n<li>character names that do not follow the pattern of the existing Hebrew characters.<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A meeting with experts was planned to take the proposal forward.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-66\"><a href=\"#note-66\">66<\/a><\/sup> At the time of writing, the Babylonian points are still not part of the standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"why-the-eastern-pointing-matters\">Why the Eastern Pointing Matters<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Tiberian pointing won, and every Hebrew Bible on a modern desk uses it. Its rival is still worth knowing. The Babylonian vocalisation shows that the Masoretic achievement was not one invention made once, but a set of parallel efforts in Iraq, Iran and Palestine to keep the sound of Scripture alongside its letters. It preserves a pronunciation that differs from Tiberian in ways that matter for the history of Hebrew, and that still echoes in Yemenite synagogues. And it has given scholars both the most famous hybrid codex of the tenth century and the oldest dated Hebrew book of the Middle Ages.<\/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\">Paul Kahle, <em>Masoreten des Ostens: Die \u00e4ltesten punktierten Handschriften des Alten Testaments und der Targume<\/em> (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1913), Vorwort: \u201cdies seit fast 1000 Jahren in Vergessenheit geratene Material\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-1\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-2\">Benjamin Paul Kantor, <em>The Linguistic Classification of the Reading Traditions of Biblical Hebrew: A Phyla-and-Waves Model<\/em> (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2023), pp. 39\u201340, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.11647\/OBP.0210. <a href=\"#ref-2\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-3\">Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, p. 40. <a href=\"#ref-3\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-4\">Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, p. 40, citing Dotan 2007, Khan 2013, Heijmans 2016 and Molin 2020. <a href=\"#ref-4\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-5\">Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, pp. 40, 47. <a href=\"#ref-5\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-6\">Aleksandr Andreev, Christa M\u00fcller-Kessler, Avi Shmidman, Benjamin Outhwaite and Kim Phillips, \u201cProposal to Encode Characters for the Babylonian and Palestinian Vocalization Systems of Hebrew\u201d, Unicode document L2\/26-038 (dated 22 October 2025; registered January 2026), p. 1, https:\/\/www.unicode.org\/L2\/L2026\/26038-babylonian-revision.pdf. <a href=\"#ref-6\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-7\">Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, p. 43, citing Khan 2013. <a href=\"#ref-7\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-8\">Andreev et al., L2\/26-038, p. 1. <a href=\"#ref-8\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-9\">Kahle, <em>Masoreten des Ostens<\/em>, title page and Vorwort. <a href=\"#ref-9\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-10\">Andreev et al., L2\/26-038, p. 1. <a href=\"#ref-10\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-11\">Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, pp. 40\u201341. <a href=\"#ref-11\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-12\">Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, p. 41, Table 5. The Tiberian equivalents are given for orientation only. <a href=\"#ref-12\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-13\">Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, p. 41, citing Khan 2013. <a href=\"#ref-13\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-14\">Andreev et al., L2\/26-038, pp. 1\u20132, citing P. Kahle, \u201cDie Zeichen f\u00fcr die Vokale\u201d, in H. Bauer and P. Leander, <em>Historische Grammatik der hebr\u00e4ischen Sprache des Alten Testaments<\/em>, vol. 1 (Halle, 1922), p. 102. <a href=\"#ref-14\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-15\">Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, p. 41. On the name <em>hitfa<\/em> and its use for vocal <em>shewa<\/em>, see Andreev et al., L2\/26-038, pp. 6\u20138. <a href=\"#ref-15\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-16\">Andreev et al., L2\/26-038, pp. 4\u20136, following G. Khan, \u201cVocalization, Babylonian\u201d, <em>Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics<\/em> (Leiden: Brill, 2013), p. 956. <a href=\"#ref-16\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-17\">Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, pp. 41\u201342, citing Yeivin 1985, p. 1092, and Khan 2013, pp. 955\u201356. Kantor gives the forms in phonetic transcription; they are simplified here. <a href=\"#ref-17\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-18\">Andreev et al., L2\/26-038, p. 8, citing Ronit Shoshany, <em>Biblical Accentuation in the Babylonian Tradition<\/em> (2022). <a href=\"#ref-18\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-19\">Andreev et al., L2\/26-038, p. 1. <a href=\"#ref-19\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-20\">Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, p. 43, citing Khan 2018. <a href=\"#ref-20\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-21\">Kantor\u2019s examples are taken from Khan 2013, pp. 956\u201362 (<em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, pp. 43\u201345). <a href=\"#ref-21\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-22\">Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, pp. 40, 43. The Unicode proposal notes that some later Babylonian-pointed manuscripts do mark a <em>seghol<\/em>: Andreev et al., L2\/26-038, p. 8. <a href=\"#ref-22\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-23\">Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, p. 45. Transliterations are simplified from Kantor\u2019s phonetic notation. <a href=\"#ref-23\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-24\">Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, p. 45. <a href=\"#ref-24\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-25\">Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, p. 44. <a href=\"#ref-25\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-26\">Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, p. 44. <a href=\"#ref-26\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-27\">Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, p. 44. <a href=\"#ref-27\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-28\">Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, p. 45. <a href=\"#ref-28\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-29\">Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, pp. 42\u201343, citing Yeivin 1985, p. 1092, and Khan 2013, p. 954. <a href=\"#ref-29\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-30\">Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, \u201cThe Oldest Hebrew Manuscript Dated by Its Colophon: A Leaf of a Mishna Manuscript with Babylonian Vocalization in Toronto\u201d, Cambridge University Library, Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, Fragment of the Month, June 2023, doi:10.17863\/CAM.107304. <a href=\"#ref-30\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-31\">Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, p. 40. <a href=\"#ref-31\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-32\">Kahle, <em>Masoreten des Ostens<\/em>, p. XXVII. <a href=\"#ref-32\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-33\">Sotheby\u2019s, <em>Important Judaica<\/em> (2024), catalogue note to \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sothebys.com\/buy\/18f16381-5669-456d-8ca3-fd45385655d4\/lots\/b55bec58-25d9-49b1-84dc-06c04594a1b3\">Taj (Yemenite Pentateuch) with Ma\u1e25beret ha-Tijan, Yemen, 15th century<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-33\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-34\">Les Enluminures, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.textmanuscripts.com\/tm-assets\/tm-descriptions\/descriptions-sept21\/TM%201166%20Yemenite%20Pentateuch%20SH%20FINAL.pdf\">Taj (Yemenite Pentateuch), Yemen, c. 1500\u20131600<\/a>\u201d, description TM 1166, vol. 1, p. 1. <a href=\"#ref-34\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-35\">Kahle, <em>Masoreten des Ostens<\/em>, pp. XXI\u2013XXII. <a href=\"#ref-35\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-36\">Kahle, <em>Masoreten des Ostens<\/em>, p. XXIV, discussing G. Margoliouth, \u201cThe Superlinear Punctuation\u201d, <em>Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology<\/em> 15 (1893), p. 166. <a href=\"#ref-36\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-37\">Kahle, <em>Masoreten des Ostens<\/em>, p. XXIII, on A. Neubauer and A. E. Cowley, <em>Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library<\/em>, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1906). <a href=\"#ref-37\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-38\">Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, pp. 103, 183, citing S. Morag, <em>The Hebrew Language Tradition of the Yemenite Jews<\/em> (Jerusalem, 1963), p. 24. <a href=\"#ref-38\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-39\">Kahle, <em>Masoreten des Ostens<\/em>, pp. XX, XXIV. <a href=\"#ref-39\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-40\">Kahle, <em>Masoreten des Ostens<\/em>, p. XXI. <a href=\"#ref-40\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-41\">Kahle, <em>Masoreten des Ostens<\/em>, p. XX. <a href=\"#ref-41\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-42\">Unicode Script Encoding Working Group, L2\/26-010, \u00a72.10. <a href=\"#ref-42\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-43\">Kahle, <em>Masoreten des Ostens<\/em>, p. XVI. On the lists of Eastern and Western differences, see Robert Gordis, <em>The Biblical Text in the Making: A Study of the Kethib\u2013Qere<\/em> (Philadelphia: Dropsie College, 1937), pp. 70\u201371. <a href=\"#ref-43\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-44\">Kahle, <em>Masoreten des Ostens<\/em>, pp. XII\u2013XIII. <a href=\"#ref-44\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-45\">Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, p. 46, citing Ofer 2016 and Khan 2020. <a href=\"#ref-45\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-46\">Kahle, <em>Masoreten des Ostens<\/em>, p. XXVIII. <a href=\"#ref-46\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-47\">Kahle, <em>Masoreten des Ostens<\/em>, p. XXVIII. <a href=\"#ref-47\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-48\">Kahle, <em>Masoreten des Ostens<\/em>, p. XXVIII. <a href=\"#ref-48\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-49\">Andreev et al., L2\/26-038, p. 1. Kantor, <em>Linguistic Classification<\/em>, p. 40. <a href=\"#ref-49\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-50\">Kahle, <em>Masoreten des Ostens<\/em>, p. XXVI, citing S. Pinsker, <em>Einleitung in das Babylonisch-Hebr\u00e4ische Punktationssystem<\/em> (Vienna, 1863), p. V, and Harkavy and Strack, <em>Catalog<\/em>, p. XVIII. <a href=\"#ref-50\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-51\">Kahle, <em>Masoreten des Ostens<\/em>, p. XXVI, n. 1: described as no. B 3 in A. Harkavy and H. L. Strack, <em>Catalog der hebr\u00e4ischen Bibelhandschriften<\/em> \u2026 <em>zu St. Petersburg<\/em> (1875), pp. 223\u201335; facsimile by H. L. Strack (St Petersburg and Leipzig, 1876). <a href=\"#ref-51\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-52\">Kahle, <em>Masoreten des Ostens<\/em>, p. XXVIII. <a href=\"#ref-52\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-53\">Kahle, <em>Masoreten des Ostens<\/em>, p. XXVI, n. 2. <a href=\"#ref-53\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-54\">Kahle, <em>Masoreten des Ostens<\/em>, pp. XXVI\u2013XXVII. <a href=\"#ref-54\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-55\">Kahle, <em>Masoreten des Ostens<\/em>, Vorwort (\u201cmehr als 50 Handschriften\u201d) and pp. XXVII\u2013XXVIII (\u201cMehr als 60 verschiedene Handschriften der \u00f6stlichen \u00dcberlieferung\u201d; facsimiles of 17 manuscripts). The two figures are Kahle\u2019s own. <a href=\"#ref-55\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-56\">Kahle, <em>Masoreten des Ostens<\/em>, p. XXVII. <a href=\"#ref-56\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-57\">Andreev et al., L2\/26-038, p. 3. Olszowy-Schlanger, \u201cOldest Hebrew Manuscript\u201d, n. 1. <a href=\"#ref-57\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-58\">Elvira Mart\u00edn-Contreras and Biblioteca Tom\u00e1s Navarro Tom\u00e1s, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/biblioteca.cchs.csic.es\/Codice-Profetas-Cairo\/\">The Cairo Codex of the Prophets: Digital Edition<\/a><\/em> (CSIC), \u201cThe Edition: Genesis of the Project\u201d and \u201cElaboration and Publication\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-58\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-59\">Olszowy-Schlanger, \u201cOldest Hebrew Manuscript\u201d, citing P. Kahle, J. Weinberg and T. Weinberg, \u201cThe Mishna Text in Babylonia: I\u201d, <em>Hebrew Union College Annual<\/em> 10 (1935), pp. 185\u2013222. <a href=\"#ref-59\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-60\">Olszowy-Schlanger, \u201cOldest Hebrew Manuscript\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-60\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-61\">Olszowy-Schlanger, \u201cOldest Hebrew Manuscript\u201d, and n. 21, citing M. Beit-Ari\u00e9, C. Sirat and M. Glatzer, <em>Codices hebraicis litteris exarati quo tempore scripti fuerint exhibentes<\/em>, vol. 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), no. 2, pp. 40\u201341. <a href=\"#ref-61\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-62\">Olszowy-Schlanger, \u201cOldest Hebrew Manuscript\u201d, n. 18. <a href=\"#ref-62\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-63\">Olszowy-Schlanger, \u201cOldest Hebrew Manuscript\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-63\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-64\">Andreev et al., L2\/26-038, proposal summary form (49 characters; earlier proposal WG2 N2839, 2004); Unicode Script Encoding Working Group, \u201cRecommendations to UTC #186 (January 2026) on Script Proposals\u201d, L2\/26-010, \u00a72.10 (related document L2\/25-268). <a href=\"#ref-64\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-65\">Andreev et al., L2\/26-038, p. 1. <a href=\"#ref-65\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-66\">Unicode Script Encoding Working Group, \u201cRecommendations to UTC #186 (January 2026) on Script Proposals\u201d (19 January 2026), L2\/26-010, \u00a72.10, https:\/\/www.unicode.org\/L2\/L2026\/26010-sew-recommendations-utc186.pdf. <a href=\"#ref-66\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n<\/ol>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every printed Hebrew Bible uses the Tiberian vowel points: dots and dashes set mostly beneath the letters, worked out by the Masoretes of Tiberias in the early Middle Ages. For several centuries&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":506,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hebrew-language-script","category-text-transmission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505","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=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}