Hebrew transliteration source; qamets vs. qamets chatuph principles used

PS Unless you are referring to manuals in documentation and didn't see specific one there?

TY for response, but apparently I am as untransparent in my question as logos is when it comes to the source of its Hebrew transliteration.

I am not asking about the format/style of transliteration, but the source/author of the actual transliteration given, for ex., in the reverse interlinear ribbon.

So for "all-of" in Gen 1:21, transliteration is kal, with flat line over a, which I take for regular qamets. If you put the same BH into the text converter you get  kǒl in the scientific format (and simply "o" in the other formats; but not "a" with a line over it for any of the formats.) It seems to me that the transliterator for the interlinear is reading the vowel as a long "a" qamets, instead of short "o," qamets chatuph, as Christo van der Merwe (and note the transparency there!), does in the text converter interactive. Open to correction on that.

But my question is Who is the Source of the transliteration; who did the transliteration? not What is the format/scheme? I do not think the style of format accounts for differences in such instances. Such distinctions can and are made within any transliteration format.

Muchas gracias! So, ESV reverse interlinear ribbon, as just one ex. That same transliteration is actually quite pervasive in many places in logos and I would assume is sort of an Ur source.

Would you know of any documentation Faithlife has provided for that transliteration (that might be more useful than mere names of perhaps unpublished biblical Hebrew scholars among Faithlife staffers)? Perhaps especially any feedback they might have produced to justify their transliterations as opposed to transliterations offered by other resources in logos?

Do you know if there is any kind of effort to update/coordinate transliteration among different logos resources, ideally based on clearly declared principles; or to at least offer somewhere a cavat re. any common alternative transliteration within logos?

I believe you at looking at the transliteration of the lemma in the RI, which has cholem-waw long "o" vowel, rather than the MSS transliteration -- "all-of," more literally put, (a construct noun form, enclitic to following noun by means of maqqeph, with subsequent vowel reduction). If you have the MSS transliteration enabled in the RI ribbon and click on the word "every" in Gn 1.21 in ESV or LEB or KJV, you will see a transliteration as kal, with line over the a --which differs from results you will receive in the text converter (as mentioned in earlier post) IF you enter the mss, not lemma, form there.

I will make one last attempt to clarify. If speaking your name to someone on the phone they transcribed it as Dove rather than Dave, the problem would lie with the transcriber, not with the English alphabet. The issue I raised has nothing directly to do with the style/format of transliteration used (each are essentially separate alphabets, but each can distinguish vowels of different class and length appropriately with their own sigla. Actually, they show very minor differences across the styles re. vowels).

But we are certainly talking past each other and probably should desist our correspondence on this Q, Dove, er, Dave.

Just to be clear- if you re-read earlier posts - the question was about the transliteration in the Reverse Interlinear ribbon. (ONCE it is enabled for MSS transliteration there!)

1) Enable MSS transliteration in RI ribbon for EAV/LEB/KJV, (2) click or hold cursor over "every" in Gn 1:21. Tell me you do not get kal, with line over the "a" in the MSS transl. row and column for the Hebrew text form, and you post that screenshot.

Otherwise, I have moved on.

TY, but we are dancing around the periphery IMHO. And that screeenshot there is where Dave's comments about the transliteration system used would come into actual relevance. This screenshot with the result kal, instead of kal, with diacritic is INDEED based simply on the different transliteration systems used.

The transliteration system used with this example is a is red herring. (And this is only one example of the kind of problems I find in the transliteration in logos.) It is unrelated to whatever system is used; rather it pertains to the identification of the vowel represented by a single Massoretic sign in Hebrew- alternatively, short o or long a. Most beginning Hebrew students will understand the difference and difficulty.

Your screenshot - and even Dave finally acknowledged that kall [his system with diacritic, line over a] shows the MSS transliteration as a long a- however that is represented in any system.. I insist it should be a short o instead, as the tc will show if you select the Hebrew text (easiest to be sure you don't misrepresent the Hebrew text is to select the entire Hebrew construct phrase from LHI or other strictly Hebrew text).

As I suggested to Dave, and I think you are a more disimpassioned observer on this Q:

Keep the same transliteration system used for that screenshot,

Select the entire Hebrew construct phrase in Gn 1.21 = kol-nephesh (in crude transliteration), and paste that into tc.

You will not get kal, either with or without a diacritc/line over it, in any format.

Instead you will get, lo and behold, a short o, in whatever format, with or without diacritic [because some systems choose to leave the actual length of the vowel, whether o or a , less clearly distinguished].

If you can't do so, let me know how I can send a MS Word doc/convert if needed, a screenshot showing that, contrary to Dave and Andrew”s assertion, the transliteration is NOT the same in MSS transliteration and in tc.

[As to the suggestion that all the transliterations in logos are done "on the fly" by some program at Faithlife, I am dubious. But IF that is the case, who programed the program and by what principles are outputs produced? As in my example, it is NOT the same as the tc program.]

Bingo! You and Andrew got the transliteration correct using tc. kol, NOT kal, with or without diacritic.

And you are correct to some extent about sound change due to connection with following word. (But if you look at the regular/dictionary/absolute BH noun form you will see kOl, a long "o" - cholem. [PS. I actually mis-spoke, off-the-cuff, saying cholem-waw when side-tracked by Dave's mistaken reference to the lemma and not the text form.. Reduction typically occurs within its class [a/i/u], barring historical anomolies, so the noun form in construct attached by maqqeph reduces to a short "o," with or without diacritic. And this is NOT what is represented in the MSS transliteration, which is kal, with or without diacritic, long "a."

So even if anyone were to argue in favor of one reading [wrongly as long a, vs. correctly as short o] over the other, no one can insist, as Dave and Andrew did, that there is no difference in these transliteration resources.

TY for restoring my sanity after all the rabbit trails about transliteration systems.

But this one example will perhaps show also some of my hesitancy in accepting the hypothesis that there was any kind of "automatic" conversion and, if so, sufficient principles involved in converting the many instances of some similar Massoretic signs for alternative vowels, reduced sounds, and accents.

I admit I am no computer programmer, but I have some idea of some of the complexities of Masoretic Biblical Hebrew.

[Maybe indeed there is some incredible processing happening "on the fly" at various logos servers crunching, importing, uploading and filling all the various data fields in the scrollable! interlinear ribbons for the English-Hebrew interlinear text via calculations at the speed of light, even as I and thousands of users jump with a mouse-click from chapter to chapter or book to book. Seems like it would be easier, safer, and swifter to use hyper-links to specific databases, links like so many other logos resources use without special conversion processing by uniquely designed programs. And all that was programmed and packaged, what, 20+ years ago for these interlinears? I choose to remain an agnostic on that.]

At any rate, that "program" for MSS transliteration produces output different from the tc. And the tc has a fine Hebrew grammarian's name attached and the output is more what I would anticipate based on basic principles of biblical Hebrew. So will you forgive me if I don't bow before that particular unseen and somewhat questionable "creator?"

Anyway, always appreciate your input. God bless. Hasta la vista.

I've had the time of my life...

But since you are so congenial [and a programmer and Sanskritist!], and

since you attempted to answer my initial Q, and

since at least you finally came to somewhat see what was behind my original Q about the source of the MSS transliteration, and

since I have fully expressed my opinion that that resource bears a thorough review,

I will extend this dialogue.

Now, despite your very astute observation that some transliterations are context-dependent, you are still missing some of the point - but I take it only because you are not quite so fluent in BH. This same minimal BH background was initially displayed in some of the posts, as an apparent lack of awareness that the same single/identical Masoretic sigla/vowel/point can be used for both long A and short o. But it is further revealed -  again assuming just because of lack of BH training -  when you suggest that the rvi "by necessity uses the single word form."

You are absolutely correct saying there is some constraint made when words in the rvi are out of order, but that does not mean, IMHO, that the MSS transl. gets to make up words. kal (w/without diacritic), with long a, is not "the single word form" for this BH text-form. The single word form is the lemma, kOl, with a long o vowel, a totally different sigla/vowel/sign/pointing - that is, a superscript "dot," vs. the subscript T-sign for, alternatively long a or short o. If the MSS transl. had put kol, with or without diacritic, to represent the "single word form (with long o)" -- rather than purporting to represent the form in the text as kal (long a; aside from any consideration of the merit of such a vocalic representation) -- that would have been less egregious and perhaps attributable to the mere constraint of one transliteration word for a Hebrew word ripped from its multi-component form in context. [Even if that itself would have been something akin to "a text without a context is a pretext."]

But honestly, the Mss transliteration in Gn 1.21 is the type of egregious error that a beginning Hebrew student would not make or would often be called to task and further study. [Actually the distinction in this verse is only significant for accuracy of representation of the Hebrew form and has zero impact on any meaning, i.e., no one suggests the meaning there is anything other than something like "all-of/every." But this distinction of short o vs. long a can have semantic value elsewhere, pointing to different words. That is why a BH teacher would instruct re. accurate principles for making the distinction.]

Such an egregious mistransliteration is, however, quite like the type of transliterations that one might have found over a century ago, somewhat similar, say, to the type of transliterations found in Strong's concordance. There, along with other Q-able representations, seems no basic principles of BH syllable structure [which, btw, apply in the Gn 1.21 ex: "A closed, unaccented syllable will have a short vowel." not a long a].

My suspicion is that at the start of the transliteration project which is now found in the MSS transl, some such older body of data was used as an initial input and then some revisions proceeded from there, often with such dubious renderings continuing unaltered. So  -- unlike the computer program development process which you describe as normal now. Just a guess/an impression from the stunning MSS transliteration and from looking at different BH resources over the years, as well as a fleeting discussion with Dr. McDaniel. (But I do not here intend to represent his view or speak for him.) Unless someone who was involved in the production of the MSS transliteration surfaces to explain what was actually done. Why, if unique principles were discovered and applied in the process, by all means, let's get those into the light of day and force retractions from, at a minimum, half of the BH grammars issued in the last 50 years.

Congrats Dave, you are slowly coming around to the issue in the ex. given -- you have discovered that the same sign can represent two different Hebrew vowels. (That is a genuine beginning.)

The table shows how to generate the single sigla, which is identical for either, a subscript T essentially. It can represent a long a or a short o, but to determine which, within a syllable of an actual Hebrew word, and how to transliterate it correctly, actually requires some knowledge of biblical Hebrew.

My original Q, for the last time, was: What was the source of the MSS transliteration? The type of responses I have received seem mainly:

-No peaking behind the curtain!

-Programmers at Work!

-It was done in the ancient past by unknown scribes whose tradition must be honored at all costs.

-It all occurs seamlessly and instantaneously generated

-There are no contradictions or errors [manifestly false]. 

-You are wrong about everything! At any rate, Never question The Logos!

-We don't need no stinkin' Hebrew.

I will obediently slink away, vowing never again to speak of the transliteration program that Must Not Be Named. Still I take away trinkets of mundane and frequently incorrect information about transliteration systems, interlinears, Hebrew morphology and syntax, and the manufacturing of new Hebrew terms - all treasures tossed out as I attempted to run the gauntlet.