Qamets and Qamets Hatuph in the Hebrew text modules

[Martin Z]

Hello,

 

Does Accordance use Qamets for Qamets Hatuph in the Hebrew text?

 

I was searching for Qamets Hatuph, but found all cases of Qamets as well. The character tool does not provide Qamets Hatuph at all.

 

This is a big problem for those who want to search these two vowels separately.

[Iconoclaste]

שׁלום אחי

 

Unfortunately, the qametz and qametz chatuf are not differentiated because they are the same vowel. The difference is in modern Sephardic pronunciation practice, not in the Masoretic tradition's vowel pointing. 

 

This is one of those instances where it is just a matter of knowing the rule for proper differentiation. If the qametz is in a closed and unaccented syllable, then it probably is a qametz chatuf. The only consistent exception is when the qametz in a closed and unaccented syllable is on the first syllable of a qal perfect 3fs or 3 plural.

 

I recommend getting your hands on good recordings of the Tanakh in Hebrew. Accordance's Hebrew Old Testament Audio module is great because you can play a single verse at a time to listen to it to see if there are qametz chatuf where you suspect that there is one, although I've encountered two mistakes in that module.

 

Also, some printed Bibles use the meteg cantillation mark a lot more frequently than the BHS or HMT (both based on the Leningrad Codex). If the meteg cantillation mark is on a qametz that is in a closed and unaccented syllable, you know that it is not a qametz chatuf. That's why you might want to look at other printed Bibles which aren't based on the Leningrad, since there are some that contain a lot more metegs.

 

Finally, Accordance's search capabilities are so powerful that you probably figure out a way find all the instances of qametz chatuf by devising a clever search... But I don't have the time right now. I tried the following:  but that only found qametz on closed syllables, regardless of accent.
 

[Martin Z]

שׁלום אחי

 

Unfortunately, the qametz and qametz chatuf are not differentiated because they are the same vowel. The difference is in modern Sephardic pronunciation practice, not in the Masoretic tradition's vowel pointing. 

 

This is one of those instances where it is just a matter of knowing the rule for proper differentiation. If the qametz is in a closed and unaccented syllable, then it probably is a qametz chatuf. The only consistent exception is when the qametz in a closed and unaccented syllable is on the first syllable of a qal perfect 3fs or 3 plural.

 

I recommend getting your hands on good recordings of the Tanakh in Hebrew. Accordance's Hebrew Old Testament Audio module is great because you can play a single verse at a time to listen to it to see if there are qametz chatuf where you suspect that there is one, although I've encountered two mistakes in that module.

 

Also, some printed Bibles use the meteg cantillation mark a lot more frequently than the BHS or HMT (both based on the Leningrad Codex). If the meteg cantillation mark is on a qametz that is in a closed and unaccented syllable, you know that it is not a qametz chatuf. That's why you might want to look at other printed Bibles which aren't based on the Leningrad, since there are some that contain a lot more metegs.

 

Finally, Accordance's search capabilities are so powerful that you probably figure out a way find all the instances of qametz chatuf by devising a clever search... But I don't have the time right now. I tried the following: Screen Shot 2021-02-12 at 2.45.58 PM.png but that only found qametz on closed syllables, regardless of accent.

 

Thanks. I can't imagine how to search under this circumstance. Metheg is not always present to clarify ambiguous cases.

And metheg is also used to mark Qamets Hatuph in some other cases. This is one of them:

• Exod 29:37:
  • ‏ שִׁבְעַ֣ת יָמִ֗ים תְּכַפֵּר֙ עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּ֔חַ וְקִדַּשְׁתָּ֖ אֹת֑וֹ וְהָיָ֤ה הַמִּזְבֵּ֙חַ֙ קֹ֣דֶשׁ קָֽדָשִׁ֔ים כָּל־הַנֹּגֵ֥עַ בַּמִּזְבֵּ֖חַ יִקְדָּֽשׁ׃ ס

[Iconoclaste]

Hmmm... I was not aware of these cases. 
Have you looked at Joüon and Muraoka's Grammar of Biblical Hebrew §6l-6m?

At that spot, he gives a few exceptions to the rule, including קָדָשִׁים. 

 accord://read/Jouon-Muraoka_Hebrew#736

Other than pointing you to Jouon & Muraoka's grammar, I know that something like a print tiqqun often differentiates the qamatz from the qamatz-chatuf  by giving the latter a different shape. The only problem is that these are limited to texts of the Tanakh that are actually read in the yearly reading cycle. Much of the Nebiim and Ketubim is not covered in these.

 

Perhaps this could be a module request? I know literally nothing of the Jewish publishing world, but there's got to be someone who could license something like this for Accordance. I'm sure there would be good demand for this, not just from our Jewish users, but from other students of the Tanakh as well who want to know this.

[Ben Denckla]

I have a couple of things to add:

 

For readers like me, unfamiliar with the term qamats chatuf (or its other transliterations), and confused by its similarity to chataf qamats, I'll just add here that qamats chatuf is, at least in my "circles," more commonly known as qamats qatan.  Admittedly, that term is not without its own confusions, because many fonts represent qamats qatan as a bigger (or at least taller) version of qamats (gadol)!

 

The digital Tanakh I have recently "ported" to Sefaria, Miqra according to the Masorah (MAM), distinguishes qamats qatan from qamats (gadol). This is one of many "value added" features compared to most digital Tanakh editions, the great majority of which seem to derive from the Groves WLC. Another "value added" feature of MAM is its distinction between the cantillation-modifier legarmeih and the paseq. The paseq has various uses, but none of those uses modify the fundamental cantillation of the text.

 

In a separate thread (not sure how to link to a separate thread in Accordance Forums), I have raised the possibility of me porting MAM to Accordance, for free, but have not got any "traction" from Accordance. Some work was even done on such a port in the past, but was not completed.

[Martin Z]

14 minutes ago, Benjamin Denckla said:

For readers like me, unfamiliar with the term qamats chatuf (or its other transliterations), and confused by its similarity to chataf qamats, I'll just add here that qamats chatuf is, at least in my "circles," more commonly known as qamats qatan.

Qamets Qatan is also the unicode character name of the vowel. So I guess there is benefit in using this term. However, many grammar books use Qamets Hatuph, including GKC:

Quote

(4) —ָ Qameṣ-ḥaṭuph represents ō (properly å̆, cf. § 8 a, note 2) modified from ŭ and is therefore classed here. It stands in the same relation toḤolem as the Sᵉgôl of the second class to Sere, כָּל־ kŏl, וַיָּ֫קָם wayyāqŏm. On the distinction between this and Qameṣ, see below, u.

 

Wilhelm Gesenius, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, ed. E. Kautzsch and A. E. Cowley; 2d, Accordance electronic ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910), 49.

 

 

19 minutes ago, Benjamin Denckla said:

n a separate thread (not sure how to link to a separate thread in Accordance Forums), I have raised the possibility of me porting MAM to Accordance, for free, but have not got any "traction" from Accordance. Some work was even done on such a port in the past, but was not completed.

I saw your post here: 

 

 

I would be very interested in a module like this. I took a look at the site: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/User:Dovi/Miqra_according_to_the_Masorah

 

I saw that MAM presents the reading tradition. I assume it presents the qere but not the kethiv of the Leningrad manuscript. Is that correct? Or do you have other emendations to the text? If so, are they documented? The original documentations are in Hebrew. It is very challenging for many Hebrew students. Is there a plan to translate the documentation into English?

 

I'm curious what stops Accordance from making such a resource available, given that it is a free offer?

[Ben Denckla]

19 minutes ago, martinacc said:

I saw that MAM presents the reading tradition. I assume it presents the qere but not the kethiv of the Leningrad manuscript. Is that correct? Or do you have other emendations to the text? If so, are they documented? The original documentations are in Hebrew. It is very challenging for many Hebrew students. Is there a plan to translate the documentation into English?

MAM is an eclectic rather than diplomatic edition. It hews closer to the Aleppo Codex (Keter Aram Tzova) than to the LC, for sections where the AC exists. So, for most of the 5 books of the Torah, which are (tragically) missing from the AC, of course it must rely heavily on the LC, although it is not constrained to the LC even there.

 

MAM presents both ketiv and qere for all non-trivial cases. In the 5 books of the Torah I would imagine it usually presents the ketiv & qere you'd see in the LC.

 

So, while MAM is, in spirit, a reader's edition (tikkun), it does not discard the ketiv. For one thing, one important role of a tikkun is to prepare the reader to read from an unpointed scroll, and showing the ketiv, i.e. showing what the reader will see in a scroll, can be helpful! Indeed if you haven't seen one, you might see if Google will turn up an image of a page of a "real" (bound paper) tikkun, which usually presents the text in two columns, one pointed/qere and the other unpointed/ketiv! Sorry I'm too lazy at the moment to do such a search myself.

 

MAM has two main forms of documentation: its introduction, and the thousands of notes embedded in the text (invisible in most views).

 

Other than the subset of the introduction that is translated into English, unfortunately there are no plans to translate either of these forms of documentation into English.

 

Of course, if Accordance wanted to fund such a worthy enterprise, that would be great!

 

Perhaps with the money they save from me doing the "port" for them, and the money they save from MAM being CC-BY-SA 3.0 licensed, i.e. having some conditions on its use, but no monetary conditions ...

 

Ben

[Iconoclaste]

Yes, this would be a product I would pay for and I believe not a few others would as well...

 

I have been trying to learn more about the Masoretic cantillation/accent marks and in reading chapter 3 in Joshua R. Jacobson's Chanting the Hebrew Bible, I learned that there are disagreements over which kamatz are katan. Is it tsohoraim or tsahoraim? So it is good to be aware of this even when using a resource like MAM. It is ultimately better to learn the rules oneself. 

 

When I was searching for hofals in the HMT-W4, I discovered that the second commandment is understood by some scholars to be a hofal instead of a simple qal! לֹא תָעָבְדֵם. Is it lo toovdem or lo taavdem? The change in vocalization determines what binyan one understands it to be. Joüon and Muraoka's Grammar of Biblical Hebrew disagrees with the parsing in the HMT-W4 and so do all the English translations. 

[Ben Denckla]

@Iconoclaste a feature of MAM that may interest you is for many words with qamats qatan, it encodes the word in two different forms. From the documentation on templates in the MAM Google Sheet:

Quote

This edition [MAM] utilizes the special niqqud in Unicode for qamaz qatan, which distinguishes it from a normal qamaz. However, there are places where traditions differ as to whether a qamaz is "qatan" or not. In general, the Sephardic tradition has less of a tendency to voice qamaz qatan within certain grammatical forms, while theoretical grammar is more likely find qamaz qatan in those same forms. The latter has had a significant influence on the pronunciation of Modern Hebrew (including the reading of the Torah by speakers of Modern Hebrew). This template utilizes a minimum of two optional parameters, usually "ד=" (for the more theoretical grammar) and "ס=" (for the Sephardic tradition). In Wikisource the template is currently set to display "ד=" as the default, but that can easily be changed, and the future goal is to allow the user to set his own preference.

 

[blgriffin83]

On 3/15/2021 at 9:32 AM, Benjamin Denckla said:

I have a couple of things to add:

 

For readers like me, unfamiliar with the term qamats chatuf (or its other transliterations), and confused by its similarity to chataf qamats, I'll just add here that qamats chatuf is, at least in my "circles," more commonly known as qamats qatan.  Admittedly, that term is not without its own confusions, because many fonts represent qamats qatan as a bigger (or at least taller) version of qamats (gadol)!

 

The digital Tanakh I have recently "ported" to Sefaria, Miqra according to the Masorah (MAM), distinguishes qamats qatan from qamats (gadol). This is one of many "value added" features compared to most digital Tanakh editions, the great majority of which seem to derive from the Groves WLC. Another "value added" feature of MAM is its distinction between the cantillation-modifier legarmeih and the paseq. The paseq has various uses, but none of those uses modify the fundamental cantillation of the text.

 

In a separate thread (not sure how to link to a separate thread in Accordance Forums), I have raised the possibility of me porting MAM to Accordance, for free, but have not got any "traction" from Accordance. Some work was even done on such a port in the past, but was not completed.

I know this post is rather old, but was curious by what you mean that you ported to Sefaria? Does that have something to do with being able to use sefaria within Accordance?

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

You can load the Sefaria website in the Accordance web browser, but we are looking at bringing some Sefaria content into Accordance in the future.

[Accordance Enthusiast]

On 3/16/2021 at 12:32 AM, Benjamin Denckla said:

In a separate thread (not sure how to link to a separate thread in Accordance Forums), I have raised the possibility of me porting MAM to Accordance, for free, but have not got any "traction" from Accordance. Some work was even done on such a port in the past, but was not completed.

 

@Dr. Nathan Parker take note! This will be a great incredible addition to Accordance for FREE!

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

@Benjamin Denckla Feel free to send me an email so we can chat about it. I'm going to be working on Bible projects this year, so this would be interesting to consider taking on and working with you on.

[Brian K. Mitchell]

This sounds exciting!
I would love to see the following get an Accordance Module: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/User:Dovi/Miqra_according_to_the_Masorah

[blgriffin83]

On 1/28/2024 at 10:26 PM, Dr. Nathan Parker said:

You can load the Sefaria website in the Accordance web browser, but we are looking at bringing some Sefaria content into Accordance in the future.

This would be amazing. Is this something in the near future or just something on the "some-day" list?

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

15 hours ago, blgriffin83 said:

This would be amazing. Is this something in the near future or just something on the "some-day" list?

 

No specific ETA, but discussions with them have been productive.