Hebrew Bible text with uppercase and lowercase text, and etymological consonants

The traditional "punctuation" of the Hebrew Bible is from a time more than 1000 years after the Tanakh was completed. The language had evolved meanwhile, lost many of its consonants, and changed its pronunciation. In my opinion the masoretic text should be enriched, by restoring the consonant system that hebrew language used during the time when these books were authored originally.

I also think that it is time to take the same leap of progress in hebrew manuscripts of the Bible, which was done with greek manuscripts already 1000 years ago: write the Hebrew Bible text with a two-case writing system, with uppercase and lowercase letters.

In the attached image I demonstrate, how hebrew text could look with diacritical marks that indicate the "lost consonants", which the masoretic text fails to indicate, most of which were still in use when the last book of the Hebrew Bible was authored, and all of them may have been in use during the era of Abraham or Mosheh. I am experimenting with a modernized vowel pointing system, which is based on modern western diacritical marks, and "sparing vowelization", which omits all shwas, the expected vowel points in front of a mater lectionis letter, and the expected long A before word-final H or alef. (Unexpected vowels are always marked before these letters, however.)

In some of the sample words I demonstrate "small caps" text style, with uppercase and lowercase letters whose letter design is basically identical. (I spare you now from using a true two-case writing system for hebrew, which uses the more difficult-to-read paleo hebrew letters as lowercase, and square script as uppercase. I can demonstrate that option too, if requested.) What comes to the technical side of two-case hebrew text, my current solution is to have uppercase letters in one font, and lowercase letters in a different font. Thus the text is encoded with the expected hebrew Unicode letters and vowels, and changing the font to any popularly used hebrew font would keep the text perfectly readable -- just losing its two-case nature.

Find more posts tagged with

Submitted

Hebrew

Status: Submitted

Comments

Ben

There's no evidence that "the consonant system that Hebrew language used during the time when these books were authored originally" HAD upper case and lower case letters mixed together. What you're suggesting seems to modernize, not archaize. If you want to go back to an earlier system, lots of archaic semitic fonts to pick from. And the suggestion has already been made to have a non-pointed Hebrew text.

Ion Mittler

Two-case writing was invented (or in any case, became the norm in western languages) approximately 1000 years ago. I don't claim that it was used before that in any language, because I don't think that it even existed before then. After some experimenting and gradual development towards the way how capitalization is used nowadays, within 100 years or so the greek manuscripts of NT and OT started to be written with two-case text, and have been ever since. I am happy about this development, and would like to see the same in hebrew too.

The concept "consonant system" has nothing to do with uppercase or lowercase letters. It means how many consonants the language contains in its logical and/or pronounced repertoire.

Ion Mittler

You wonder, whether it is meaningful to mix archaic with modern. A good question, but an example of that is the grammatical iota in your brand new greek NT with the latest sleek fonts, with uppercase and lowercase letters (not to mention all those diacritics, which were invented in the middle ages).

What is a "grammatical iota"? Something that we like to indicate in writing, but in reality people stopped pronouncing it around the same time when hebrew-speakers stopped pronouncing the "lost consonants" that I am talking about — more than 2000 years ago, that is. Thus we already indicate in greek manuscripts something similar, a relic from antiquity.

Ben

I don't wonder whether it's "meaningful." I just don't get the inconsistency; your stated desire is to "enrich" the MT by "restoring the consonant system that hebrew language used during the time when these books were authored originally"… but what you propose is NOT restoring the older pre-masoretic system, but innovating. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ion Mittler

I don't innovate anything regarding the consonant system, other than how to indicate them, now as the masoretes failed to do so. Scholars know what the consonant system was, nobody would certainly take my word for it.

My statement is a list of features, which are separate from each other. A bit like I want a car that is black, with roof window and a diesel engine. If roof windows are not available, the car could still be black with a diesel engine. Every feature has a life and destiny of its own, without any necessary connection to the other features.