John Cowan wrote:

>
> Peter T. Daniels scripsit:
>
> > Or, maybe, Hebrew writing was transformed by the Masoretes, so now there
> > are in fact two ways of writing Hebrew, the old-fashioned way, which
> > retains most of its abjadity, and the new-fangled way, which never
> > really did catch on, which pretty much achieves alphabeticity?
>
> Perhaps. But what is the evidence for a sharp line of demarcation?
> It seems to me that Hebrew writing stands on a continuum between the
> pure abjad of the scrolls and the pure alphabet of the study texts,
> with the great bulk of written Hebrew standing in the middle.
>
> (Alternatively, one could view the vowel points like the accents,
> as a meta-level imposed on a pure abjad.)

The great bulk of written Hebrew doesn't use the points.

The accents cannot occur anywhere but in the Tanakh.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...