Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>Hebrew has moved a bit away from the prototypical abjad, first by
>adopting matres from Aramaic, and later by occasionally using a vowel
>point from the sacred script used only for Tanakh. That doesn't suddenly
>make it stop being an abjad; it makes it a less prototypical abjad.
>
>

I don't know that the vowel-points were of "the sacred script used only
for Tanakh." Certainly the vowel-points were invented to codify and
record the vowels so that the Tanakh reading could be recorded, but the
points were a more general invention, fit for any use of Hebrew. There
are old grammars, conjugations of words not necessarily in the Tanakh,
etc, all dealing with and using the points. It's sort of like saying
that the Latin alphabet "borrowed" moveable-type printing, which was
originally used only for printing the Bible.

And it isn't just "occasionally"; Hebrew poetry is and has been
regularly *completely* pointed, every dagesh (light and heavy), every
shewa, every patah and qamats. Hebrew prosodic analysis (among other
things) requires it.

The accents/cantillations are a better example of "used only for the
Tanakh." I've seen occasional examples of the cantillations applied to
other things, sometimes even more than isolated stuff (which would
include the Haftarah blessings in many prayer-books, which are often
accented because people usually chant them that way so they blend in
with the reading better); there was an edition of the Talmud that had
accents in the Mishna! (not fully accented, just a few here and there).

~mark