A Pre-Masoretic Pronunciation of YHWH by slaveofone
The texts of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament used by most bibles today is called Masoretic (or Tiberian), based on the standardised texts produced by the Masoretes in Tiberias. Nowadays, when one learns Biblical Hebrew, they learn from this text type. The spelling and vocalisation of these texts not only tell the reader WHAT the text is or is not saying (contrary to popular opinion, vowels do change meaning), but tells the reader HOW to say it. This pronunciation, however, was never the only way of reading/speaking the biblical texts.
Prior to the standardisation of the Hebrew manuscripts, there were two other types of pronunciation called Palestinian and Babylonian. Masoretic Hebrew altered and changed the pronunciation of Palestinian and Babylonian Hebrew in order to standardise the reading. Once the Tiberian type was established, Palestinian and Babylonian manuscripts were changed or altered to conform with the Masoretic. The Masoretic, however, did not escape alteration itself based on the Palestinian or Babylonian, which were older. Over several centuries, the Masoretic was changed to conform to Palestinian and/or Babylonian while Palestinian and/or Babylonian was being changed to conform to Masoretic. The result of that normalisation and harmonisation process between all three types was a new eclectic text based on no actual manuscript, but which itself became a textual tradition. This text was widely printed in the early days of the printing press and for quite some time was the authoritative and official Hebrew text. It was often mistaken to be Masoretic. Manuscripts which actually were Masoretic, Palestinian, or Babylonian were then altered to conform to this new eclectic text so that by the 13th and 14th Centuries, almost all Hebrew manuscripts represented this new eclectic text. That text was named Ben Chayyim after the Jew who was responsible for getting it printed and is the primary text used by the makers of the King James Bible for the Christian Old Testament. About a century ago, the Ben Chayyim text was abandoned for the Masoretic text type, which is what we use today. The Masoretic text type, however, does not preserve the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton (YHWH). Instead, it inserts vowels representative of various other words like Elohim or Adonai. There do exist, however, fragments of manuscript in earlier Palestinian and Babylonian pronunciation. These texts offer us a glimpse at what the Name looked and sounded like before the Masoretes began their work.
The picture above is a transcription of part of MS 594 of the Jewish Theological Seminary as taken from Paul E. Kahle’s The Cairo Geniza. It contains the last part of Qoheleth and the first part of Lamentations in Palestinian Hebrew. A later scribe added Masoretic pronunciation to the manuscript in a different colored ink, but preserved the original Palestinian reading. In the transcription, the Hebrew with Palestinian pronunciation is given in the upper portion while the Hebrew with Masoretic pronunciation is given in the lower. This particular piece comes from Lamentations 1:9, but can also be seen with the same vocalisation in Lamentations 1:11 of the MS. Palestinian vocalisation is new to me, so I don’t know about the proper pronunciation. Looking at how it is used on other words in the manuscript, it does show up in places where qamets exists in the Masoretic, but it also shows up in places where there is a chireq and even shureq in the Masoretic. Curiouser and curiouser. Unfortunately, Palestinian manuscripts unmolested by Masoretic harmonisation are few and far between and those who study them fewer and further. When I master Hebrew, I’ll come back to this. Otherwise, comments are open for those much more learned than I in these matters.