From: Peter T. Daniels
Message: 3138
Date: 2004-07-14
>Texts other than Tanakh are not pointed (unless they're children's
> 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 beenIf piyyutim were pointed, they would be a lot less difficult to
> 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).