Contents of the Masorah.—These are partly palmographic, partly critical, partly exegetical, partly grammatical. They embrace notes con cerning— I. The consonants of the Hebrew text. —Concerning these the Masoretes note about thirty letters which are larger than the others, about thirty that are less, four which are suspended or placed above the line of the others in the same word, and nine which are inverted or written upside down ; to these peculiarities reference is made also in the Talmud, and the use of them as merely marking the middle of a book or section indicated (Tr. Kicidushin, fol. 3o, c. I ; Haver nick, 1. c., p. 282). The Masoretes also note a case in which the final ? is found in the heart of a word (i11110, Is. ix. 6) ; one in which the initial n is found at the end (nn, Nch. ii. 13) ; and one in which the initial 7 occurs at the end On, Job xviii. I), irregularities for which no reason can be assigned (cf. Leusden, Phil. Heb., Diss. x.) They have noted how often each letter occurs ; and they signalise the middle of each book ; the middle letter of the Pentateuch (the 1 in TIT, Lev. xi. 42) ; the middle letter of the Psalter (the in -win, Ps. lxxx. 14) ; the number of times each of the five letters which have final forms occurs in its final and in its initial form. 2. The vowel-points and accents in the Hebrew text.—Here the Maso retes note the peculiarities or anomalies in the use of the vowel-points, of the dagesh and mappik, and of the accents in the text—a fact to which Buxtorf appeals with considerable force, as proving that the authors of the Masorah, as we have it, were not the inventors of the diacritical marks by which vowels and accents are indicated in the Hebrew text ; for had they been so, they would not have confined themselves to laboriously noting anomalies into which they themselves had fallen, but would at once have removed them. 3. Words. —In respect of these the Masoretes note—(I), The cases of Scriptio plena (rrt6n) and defectiva (ninon) ; (2), The number of times in which cer tain words occur at the beginning of a verse (as, ex.gr., nip, which they say is nine times the first word of a verse) or the end of a verse (as rt.71, which they say occurs thrice as the final word of a verse) ; (3), Words of which the meaning is am biguous, and to which they affix the proper mean ing in the place where they occur ; (4), Words which have over them the puncta extraordinaria ; and (5), Words which present anomalies in writing or grammar, and which some have thought should be altered, or peculiarities which need to be explained 4. Verses. —The Masoretes number the verses in each book of the O. T., as well as in each of the larger sections of the Penta teuch, and they note the middle verse of each book of the 0. T. ; they also note the number of verses in which certain expressions occur, the first and last letters of each verse, and in many cases the number of letters of which it is composed ; and, in fine, they have marked twenty-five or twenty-eight places where there is a pause in the middle of a verse, or where a hiatus is supposed to be found in the meaning (as, ex.gr., in Gen. iv.
8, where, after the words 1'rit4 2;-6N rp there is in Rabbinical editions of the O. 1. a space left vacant (IPDD, piska) to indicate that some thing is probably omitted). 5. Tikkun Sopherim (i0"1D10 ppri, ordinatio, sive correctio Scribarum). —On the word ?11=, Ps. cvi. 2o, the Masorah has this note npri rIbt+-Ipn, ”rr tn 7n Di'n tvielD, the word alnn is one of eighteen wordy in Scripture which are an ordination of the Scribes. These eighteen words are also enumerated in a note at the beginning of Numbers. The passages where they occur are presented in the following table Tikkun Sopterint. Erroneous reading.
Gen. xviii. 22 ,)th • 116 . . . . . Cr113t4 . . . .
Num. xi. is +nr-la mrznz Num. xii. 12 II 11V1 1rIVZ I Sam. iii. 13 nr6 2 Sam. xvi. 12 '7'111 1.17311 Kings xii. 16 t.1'Sr.it,,b 1'n5N9 2 Chr011. X. 16 Ezek. viii. 17 DN Hab. i. 12 L.6 turn 5 Mal, i. 13 Zech. ii. 8 1717 Jer. ii. II 12117 Hos. iv. 7 I71I17 s1137 Ps. cvi. 20 n1117 Job vii. 20 17 Job xxxii. 3 1rt.4 TIN 1'1 r1tA Lam. iii. 20 +3./ Charges have been rashly advanced against these Sopherim of having corrupted the sacred text (Ga latin, De Arcanis Cathol. Tamer., 1. i. c. 8) ; but for this there is no foundation (see b. Chajim's Intro
duction to the Rabbinic Bible, translated by Gins burg, p. 21). Eichhorn concludes from the character of the readings' that this recension took note only of certain errors which had crept into the text through transcribers, and which were corrected by collation of MSS.' (Einleit. ins A. T., sec. 116). Bleek, however, thinks that this is affirmed without evidence, and that in some cases the rejected reading is probably the original one, as, ex.gr., in Gen. xviii. 22, and Hab. i. 12 (Einleit. ins A. T., p. 803). 6. Ittur Sopherim (11[03) Ablatio Scribarum).—The Masoretes have noted four instances in which the letter"' has been erroneously prefixed to Gen. xviii. 5; xxiv. 55 ; Num. xii. 14 ; and Ps. lxviii. 26 ; they note also that it has been erroneously prefixed to the word limn: in Ps. xxxvi. 7. Of these pas sages the only one in which the injunction of the Sopherim to remove the 1 has been neglected is Num. xii. 14 ; a neglect at which Buxtorf expresses surprise (Lex. Talmud, in voc. 1i7V). 7. Keri and Ketibh [see the article KERI AND KETHIV in this work].
Form of the Masorah.— The greater part of the notes of which the Masorah is composed was at first written on separate leaves, or in books, as occasion demanded. Afterwards they were appended as marginal notes to the text, sometimes on the upper and lower margin, sometimes in a more curt form on the space between the text and the Chaldee ver sion, where, from scarcity of room, many abbrevi ations and symbols were resorted to, and consider able omissions were made. Hence arose a distinc tion between the ;61.-1 ;Ton*, the Masora Magna, and the MUD "D, the M. Parva ; the former of which comprehends the entire body of critical re mark on the margins, the latter the more curt and condensed notes inserted in the intermediate space. The latter has frequently been represented as an abbreviated compend of the former ; but this is not strictly correct, for the lesser Masorah contains many things not found in the greater. At an early period the scribes introduced the practice of adorning their annotations with all manner of figures and symbols and caligraphic ingenuities, and from this, as well as from causes connected with their method of selection and arrangement, the whole came into such a state of confusion that it was rendered almost useless. In this state it re mained until the publication of Bomberg's Rabbi nical Bible, Venet. 1526 (the second Bomberg Biblia Rabbin., not the first, as is sometimes stated), for which the learned R. Jacob ben Chajim, with immense labour, prepared and arranged the Maso rah [JACOB BEN CHAJIM]. To facilitate the use of the Greater Masorah, he placed at the end of his work what has been called the Masora maxima or finalis, and which forms a sort of Masoretic Con cordance in alphabetic order.
Value of the Masorah.—Whilst there is much in the Masorah that can be regarded in no other light than as laborious trifling, it is far from deserving the scorn which has sometimes been poured upon it. There can be no doubt that it preserves to us much valuable traditional information concerning the constitution and the meaning of the sacred text. It is the source whence materials for a critical re vision of the 0. T. text can now alone be derived. It is a pity that it is now impossible to discriminate the older from the more recent of its contents. We would earnestly reiterate the wish of Eichhorn, that some one would undertake the bitter task' of making complete critical excerpts from the Ma sorah.
Literature.—Elias Levita, rrvionri n-ronn, Ven. 1538 ; German trans. by Semler, Halle 1770 ; Buxtorf, Tiberias, sive Comment. Masoreth. triplex histor. didact. crit., Basel 1620, 4to ; Cappell, Grit. Sac.,lib. iii. ; 01. Celsius, De Masora Disput. ; Leusden, Philol. Heb., Diss. xxii.-xxv. ; Walton, Prolegg. iii Polyglott, No. viii. ; Carpzov, Crit. Sac., p. 283 ; Waehner, Antiq. Hebr., sec. I, c. 36; Eichhorn, Einleit. ins A. T., vol. i. sec. 140-158 ; De Wette, Einleit., sec. 90-92 ; Havemick, Introd. to the 0. T., p. 279, ff. ; Bleek, Einleit. ins A. T., p. 803, ff. ; Ginsburg, Introduction to the Rabbinic Bible by b. Chajim, translated in ,journal of Sacred Literature for July 1863 ; art. illasorah in Herzog's Real. Encyk. —W. L. A.