Biblical Hebrew - Orthography

Orthography

The earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, found at Khirbet Qeiyafa, dates to the 10th century BC. The 15 cm x 16.5 cm (5.9 in x 6.5 in) trapezoid pottery sherd (ostracon) has five lines of text written in ink written in the Proto-Canaanite alphabet (the old form of the Phoenician alphabet). The tablet is written from left to right, indicating that Hebrew writing was still in the formative stage.

The Israelite tribes who settled in the land of Israel adopted the Phoenician script around the 12th century BC, as found in the Gezer calendar (c. 10th century BC). This script developed into the Paleo-Hebrew script in the 10th or 9th centuries BC. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet's main differences from from the Phoenician script were "a curving to the left of the dowstrokes in the 'long-legged' letter-signs... the consistent use of a Waw with a concave top, x-shaped Taw." The oldest inscriptions in Paleo-Hebrew script are dated to around the middle of the 9th century BC, the most famous being the Mesha Stele in the Moabite language (which might be considered a dialect of Hebrew). The ancient Hebrew script was in continuous use until the early 6th century BC, the end of the First Temple period. In the Second Temple Period the Paleo-Hebrew script gradually fell into disuse, and was completely abandoned among the Jews after the failed Bar Kochba revolt. The Samaritans retained the ancient Hebrew alphabet, which evolved into the modern Samaritan alphabet.

By the end of the First Temple period the Aramaic script, a separate descendant of the Phoenician script, became widespread throughout the region, gradually displacing Paleo-Hebrew. The oldest documents that have been found in the Aramaic Script are fragments of the scrolls of Exodus, Samuel, and Jeremiah found among the Dead Sea scrolls, dating from the late 3rd and early 2nd centuries BC. It seems that the earlier Biblical books were originally written in the Paleo-Hebrew script, while the later books were written directly in the later Assyrian script. Some Qumran texts written in the Assyrian script write the tetragrammaton and some other divine names in Paleo-Hebrew, and this practice is also found in several Jewish-Greek Biblical translations. While spoken Hebrew continued to evolve into Mishnaic Hebrew, the scribal tradition for writing the Torah gradually developed. A number of regional "book-hand" styles developed for the purpose of Torah manuscripts and occasionally other literary works, distinct from the calligraphic styles used mainly for private purposes. The Mizrahi and Ashkenazi book-hand styles were later adapted to printed fonts after the invention of the printing press. The modern Hebrew alphabet, also known as the Assyrian or Square script, is a descendant of the Aramaic alphabet.

The Phoenician script had dropped five characters by the 12th century BC, reflecting the language's twenty-two consonantal phonemes. As a result, the 22 letters of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet numbered less than the consonant phonemes of ancient Biblical Hebrew; in particular, the letters <ח, ע, ש> could each mark two different phonemes. After a sound shift the letters ח, ע could only mark one phoneme, but (except in Samaritan Hebrew) ש still marked two. The old Babylonian vocalization system wrote a superscript ס above the ש to indicate it took the value /s/, while the Masoretes added the shin dot to distinguish between the two varieties of the letter.

The original Hebrew alphabet consisted only of consonants, but gradually the letters א, ה, ו, י, also became used to indicate vowels, known as matres lectionis when used in this function. It is thought that this was a product of phonetic development: for instance, *bayt 'house' shifted to בֵּית in construct state but retained its spelling. While no examples of early Hebrew orthography have been found, older Phoenician and Moabite texts show how First Temple period Hebrew would have been written. Phoenician inscriptions from the 10th century BC do not indicate matres lectiones in the middle or the end of a word, for example לפנ and ז for later לפני and זה, similarly to the Hebrew Gezer Calendar, which has for instance שערמ for שעורים and possibly ירח for ירחו‎. Matres lectionis were later added word-finally, for instance the Mesha inscription has בללה, בנתי‎ for later בלילה, בניתי‎; however at this stage they were not yet used word-medially, compare Siloam inscription זדה versus אש (for later איש‎). The relative terms defective and full/plene are used to refer to alternative spellings of a word with less or more matres lectionis, respectively.

The Hebrew Bible was presumably originally written in a more defective orthography than found in any of the texts known today. Of the extant textual witnesses of the Hebrew Bible, the Masoretic text is generally the most conservative in its use of matres lectionis, with the Samaritan Pentateuch and its forebearers being more full and the Qumran tradition showing the most liberal use of vowel letters. The Masoretic text mostly uses vowel letters for long vowels, showing the tendency to mark all long vowels except for word-internal /aː/. In the Qumran tradition, back vowels are usually represented by <ו>‎ whether short or long. <י>‎ is generally used for both long and (אבילים, מית), and final is often written as יא-‎ in analogy to words like היא, הביא, e.g. כיא, sometimes מיא‎. <ה>‎ is found finally in forms like חוטה‎ (Tiberian חוטא‎), קורה‎ (Tiberian קורא‎) while <א> may be used for an a-quality vowel in final position (e.g. עליהא‎) and in medial position (e.g. יאתום‎). Pre-Samaritan and Samaritan texts show full spellings in many categories (e.g. כוחי‎ vs. Masoretic כחי‎ in Genesis 49:3) but only rarely show full spelling of the Qumran type.

In general the vowels of Biblical Hebrew were not indicated in the original text, but various sources attest them at various stages of development. Greek and Latin transcriptions of words from the Biblical text provide early evidence of the nature of Biblical Hebrew vowels. In particular, there is evidence from the rendering of proper nouns in the Koine Greek Septuagint (3rd–2nd centuries BC) and the Greek alphabet transcription of the Hebrew Biblical text contained in the Secunda (3rd century AD, likely a copy of a preexisting text from before 100 BC). In the 7th and 8th centuries AD various systems of vocalic notation were developed to indicate vowels in the Biblical text. The most prominent, best preserved, and the only system still in use, is the Tiberian vocalization system, created by scholars known as Masoretes around AD 850. There are also various extant manuscripts making use of less common vocalization systems (Babylonian and Palestinian), known as superlinear vocalizations because their vocalization marks are placed above the letters. In addition, the Samaritan reading tradition is independent of these systems, and was occasionally notated with a separate vocalization system. These systems often record vowels at different stages of historical development; for example, the name of the Judge Samson is recorded in Greek as Σαμψών Sampsōn with the first vowel as /a/, while Tiberian שִמְשוֹן /ʃimʃon/ with /i/ shows the effect of the law of attenuation whereby /a/ in closed unstressed syllables became /i/. All of these systems together are used to reconstruct the original vocalization of Biblical Hebrew.

At an early stage, in documents written in the paleo-Hebrew script, words were divided by short vertical lines and later by dots, as reflected by the Mesha Stone, the Siloam inscription, the Ophel inscription, and paleo-Hebrew script documents from Qumran. Word division was not used in Phoenician inscriptions; however, there is not direct evidence for Biblical texts being written without word division, as suggested by Nahmanides in his introduction to the Torah. Word division using spaces was commonly used from the beginning of the 7th century BC for documents in the Aramaic script. In addition to marking vowels, the Tiberian system also uses cantillation marks, which serve to mark word stress, semantic structure, and the musical motifs used in formal recitation of the text.

While the Tiberian, Babylonian, and Palestinian reading traditions are extinct, various other systems of pronunciation have evolved over time, notably the Yemenite, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, and Samaritan traditions. Modern Hebrew pronunciation is also used by some to read Biblical texts. The modern reading traditions do not stem solely from the Tiberian system; for instance, the Sephardic tradition's distinction between qamatz gadol and qatan is pre-Tiberian. However, the only orthographic system used to mark vowels is the Tiberian vocalization.