What is MAM

[Ben Denckla]

@99asteroids asked (over in an accentual difference between the ETCBC [...].):

 

Quote

please tell me what MAM is.

 

Seasoned readers of this forum may be tired of hearing from me about MAM and its superiority (for most purposes) to Accordance's standard Hebrew Bibles. Nonetheless ...

 

Full documentation of MAM is only available in Hebrew, but the English abstract of that documentation gives a feel for what MAM is all about.

 

Let's first summarize what Accordance and most digital Hebrew Bibles are. I'm sorry to be negative, but only in that context can one understand MAM's (IMO huge) contribution. Most digital Hebrew Bibles are:

• A note-stripped version of
• probably not the latest version of
• WLC, which is:
  • a good-but-not-perfect digital transcription of
  • a note-stripped version of
  • BHS, which is:
    • a not-that-good paper transcription (BHS) of
    • pretty good (but only black-and-white) images of
    • the pretty good (but not great) 20th-century state of
    • what was originally a quite good (but far from perfect) manuscript:
    • the Leningrad Codex.

These close-to-WLC Hebrew Bibles are the only way I know of (other than UXLC) to have something like the body text of the Leningrad Codex in digital form.  So, for example, to study the body text of the LC digitally, they have no competition. Therefore, I suppose we could say they are the best, for that narrow, academic purpose.

 

Through accidents of history, and a lack of available alternatives (at any price!), close-to-WLC Hebrew Bibles somehow became the standard digital general-purpose Hebrew Bibles. This is a role they are quite unsuited for, compared to today's good general-purpose paper Hebrew Bibles.

 

Now, finally, after that negative preamble, what is MAM?

 

MAM is a Hebrew Bible dataset that is finally starting to replace WLC in WLC's until-now unchallenged role. It has had considerable success in the Jewish world, but the Christian world so far seems unaware of it or uninterested in it. (Or in some cases turned off by my abrasive "marketing style"?)

 

First of all, MAM reflects a kind of Masoretic consensus rather than one manuscript. Or you could say it considers one manuscript, namely the Aleppo Codex, to represent the Masoretic consensus. But it is not afraid to diverge from Aleppo in those rare places where it feels that is justified. And of course, for the many sections missing from Aleppo, all it can do is apply Aleppo's method, or style, to evidence from other manuscripts. Leningrad is course particularly important in those sections, but still, it is only one of many manuscripts whose images are now, thankfully, freely Internet-available to consult.

 

Beyond its Masoretic merits, MAM, like many of today's good general-purpose Hebrew Bibles, also adds a number of non-Masoretic reading aids. Some of the aids present in MAM include:

• distinctions of qamats qatan from qamats gadol
• addition of "stress helper" accents
• "untangled" (i.e. singly-accented) versions of the dually-accented sections of the Torah

The Al-Hatorah edition of MAM (the core of the Al-Hatorah Mikraot Gedolot) goes beyond this, providing two reading aids present in some of today's good general-purpose Hebrew Bibles:

• distinctions of vocal sheva from resting sheva
• distinctions of dagesh ḥazaq from dagesh qal

Finally, there is the issue of notes. MAM supplies over 8,000 notes that document its decisions and sources, particularly in Torah, where for the most part the Aleppo Codex is missing. While MAM has good paper competitors in many respects (e.g. Koren, Simanim), with respect to documentation, MAM is unparalleled, even on paper. The only way to get a resource of comparable depth on this topic is if you (as I did) manage to buy all 30-or-so volumes of the Da`at Miqra series in order to amass Breuer's notes that appear in a short introductory section at the start of many of them.

 

In short, MAM has zero digital competitors and if you care about its documentation, no paper competitors either.

Edited May 16 by Ben Denckla

[Brian K. Mitchell]

 

MAM is a Hebrew Bible dataset that desperately needs to become available as a module or modules for Bible Software like Accordance.

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

I'll be starting Bible development shortly. After I get my feet wet with a few simple projects so I know what I'm doing, I'll be reaching out to discuss getting the MAM.

[99asteroids]

@Ben Denckla Whoa. I'm going to have to rethink my Scriptura project. Sounds like I should be using MAM as my copy-text, not SBL's online Bible, which is one of the many close-to-WLCs. And I really like Al-Hatorah's enhanced vowels as pronunciation aids. It reminds me of Koren's similar aids. But when I copy and paste into my SBL Hebrew Word document with SIL keyboard, these enhanced vowels don't show up. Any idea what font and keyboard they're using? I'd like to be able to use them myself.

 

To be clear, I am not aiming for a diplomatic end product. Yes, I want truly diplomatic versions of L and A to exist for research, but Scriptura is intentionally eclectic. I want a better text to read, without the obvious scribal errors. That's why I like Dotan so much and am using him as a guide to correct my SBL copy-text. He corrects obvious errors in L. If MAM is even better than Dotan in that regard, then I'm all in. 

[99asteroids]

I'm trying to find information on MAM. What does the acronym stand for? That might help.

[99asteroids]

Oh, never mind. I'm reading the abstract you posted

[Ben Denckla]

4 minutes ago, 99asteroids said:

@Ben Denckla when I copy and paste [from Al-Hatorah's edition of MAM] into my SBL Hebrew Word document with SIL keyboard, these enhanced vowels don't show up. Any idea what font and keyboard they're using? I'd like to be able to use them myself.

 

The problem is that Unicode doesn't allow us to make the sheva and dagesh distinctions that Al-Hatorah and other editions need to make.

 

So these distinctions are made (and sort of have to be made) in a way that loses this information across a copy-and-paste operation.

 

Al-Hatorah is making these sheva and dagesh distinctions by rapidly switching fonts back-and-forth, mid-word.

 

You can private-message me (this is not only a public forum but also has private messages) and I can put you in touch with the person who runs Al-Hatorah and he may be willing to give you the sources, which preserve this information.  (This information is also present in the underlying HTML but that may not be as easy to read/use as the actual sources.)

[99asteroids]

And I thought you guys might like this. I composited the two oldest known manuscripts containing Genesis 1:1. (I have a higher-res version.) My description for non-specialists is:

The fragments are 4QGeng (brown) and 4QGenb. The intention is not to suggest older is better. I just think it's amazing to see. I even got permission from the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Library to use the image, although it cost me $80.

[Ben Denckla]

13 minutes ago, 99asteroids said:

I want a better text to read, without the obvious scribal errors. That's why I like Dotan so much and am using him as a guide to correct my SBL copy-text. He corrects obvious errors in L. If MAM is even better than Dotan in that regard, then I'm all in. 

 

Dotan's BHL body text is a good general-purpose Masoretic text, with the bonus of being able to "turn into" a good diplomatic edition of L if you substitute in the words from the Appendix. (That bonus may not be relevant to your needs.) It sounds like you were able to get your hands on the original hardcover, which is great, since the paperback re-issue has serious problems. The paperback seems to have been re-issued from a scan. So, it looks like a bootlegged scan you might find on the Internet, not a "real" printed book. This is a particular problem for the pointed text in a small font used in the Appendix.

 

Dotan's BHL doesn't have non-Masoretic reading aids such as stress helpers, qamats qatan, sheva distinctions, and dagesh distinctions. It does have "untangled" Decalogues.

 

Koren has many of those reading aids but I think still has some traces of the Venice MG tradition. Nonetheless it is a great choice.

 

Probably the greatest Hebrew Bible ever produced on paper was the Keter Yerushalayim. Good luck getting your hands on one, particularly the large-sized edition. Availability and price are prohibitive. Also it is not a reader's edition: no reading aids.

 

None of those Bibles document their decisions as MAM does. MAM, I would say, approaches Keter Yerushalayim in the quality of its body text.

 

I'm biased, but I'd say MAM is the best choice for your purposes. Great to have Dotan's BHL and Koren around for reference/comparison, too.

 

 

[Ben Denckla]

13 minutes ago, 99asteroids said:

The fragments are 4QGeng (brown) and 4QGenb.

 

Wow, I expected them to be in some kind of unreadable (to me) paleo-Hebrew. Shows how much I know. I am focused on Tiberian manuscripts from about the year 900 and later! Actually, this has been fun going back to discussing manuscripts but for my personal work I'm trying to extract myself from that rabbit-hole. Now I'm focused on producing phonetic transcriptions of the Al-Hatorah edition of MAM.

[99asteroids]

Yes, I got a brand new copy of the original first printing hardcover BHL, and by the original publisher, Hendrickson, not Brill, which sublicensed it in Europe (I'm very picky about editions and printings). This guy on eBay collected a few and just stored them apparently. He has one more for sale for $80, which is less than half what others are charging for new, sealed copies.

[99asteroids]

A few of the scrolls are in Paleohebrew. And sometimes even the scrolls in square script spell YHWH in Paleohebrew, which is a really cool idiosyncracy.

Edited May 16 by 99asteroids

[99asteroids]

In case you guys want to see what the oldest-known fragment of Genesis 1 might have looked like whole. Orange text indicates what's missing and where it probably would have ended before a new line started. Green highlights the three letters that are different from L. It's astonishing to see and be able to read a text a thousand years older than L and see that it's nearly identical.

4QGeng Formatting.docx

[99asteroids]

The parts of the fragment that are illegible in color show up clearly in infrared, btw. I'm not making up text!