ʻIyunim bi-leshon ha-miḳra uva-masorah

About this book

This volume collects together 35 articles from the full range of Aron Dotan's scholarly interests. The original publications span more than fifty years: the earliest having first appeared back in 1965, while the most recent is the one hitherto unpublished article appearing for the first time in this volume. The articles are arranged thematically, rather than chronologically, into eight sections, each containing between two and six articles. Although three of the studies originally appeared in English, these have been translated for the sake of this volume, such that the entire volume is, appropriately in my view, in Hebrew. The specialities of Masora and mediaeval grammar encompass numerous subfields: examination of the central biblical manuscripts themselves; study of the various masoretic traditions (Tiberian, Babylonian, Erets-Yisraeli) contained within those manuscripts; the decoding and analysis of the various masoretic treatises that arose as the masoretic enterprise developed; the tracing of the development of grammatical thought as it arose out of masoretic thought and in relation to other semitic grammatical traditions, and so on. And behind each of these sub-specialities lie key mediaeval scholars, whose encyclopaedic minds frequently span multiple fields, and whose oeuvres can be studied in and of themselves. Figures such as Aharon ben Asher, Saʿadia Gaon, and Yehuda Hayyuj. This collection of essays spans each of the specialities, fields, sub-fields and figures listed above. Six sections of the book comprise: mediaeval linguistics, Masora, manuscripts (focussing principally on the Leningrad Codex and British Library Or. 4445), ben Asher, Saʿadia, and the historical development of the various vocalisation and accentuation traditions. To these six sections are added two apparently extraneous sections: one with the rather general title: 'Grammatical Issues' (in which, for example, the appropriate declination of maqṭēl nouns in Modern Hebrew is discussed), and one more exegetical section, containing four brief articles on the meaning of particular biblical phrases. In fact, though, these sections are not really outliers. Rather, they showcase the benefits of paying sustained attention to the full breadth of the mediaeval masoretic and exegetical traditions. The discussion of the appropriate declination of maqṭēl nouns in Modern Hebrew, for example, is informed not only by the biblical and post-biblical data from the Tiberian tradition, but also from the Babylonian and Erets-Yisraeli traditions.