The Masoretes ( he, בַּעֲלֵי הַמָּסוֹרָה, Baʿălēy Hammāsōrā, lit. 'Masters of the Tradition') were groups of
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
scholar
A scholar is a person who pursues academic and intellectual activities, particularly academics who apply their intellectualism into expertise in an area of study. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or research ...
s who worked from around the end of the 5th through 10th centuries CE, based primarily in
medieval
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
Tiberias
Tiberias ( ; he, טְבֶרְיָה, ; ar, طبريا, Ṭabariyyā) is an Israeli city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. A major Jewish center during Late Antiquity, it has been considered since the 16th century one of Judaism's F ...
and
Jerusalem
Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
, as well as in Iraq (
Babylonia
Babylonia (; Akkadian: , ''māt Akkadī'') was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Syria). It emerged as an Amorite-ruled state ...
). Each group compiled a system of pronunciation and grammatical guides in the form of diacritical notes (''
niqqud
In Hebrew orthography, niqqud or nikud ( or ) is a system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Several such diacritical systems were developed in the ...
'') on the external form of the biblical text in an attempt to standardize the pronunciation, paragraph and verse divisions, and cantillation of the
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach" ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. Hebrew: ''Tān ...
ben Asher family of Masoretes was largely responsible for the preservation and production of the
Masoretic Text
The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; he, נֻסָּח הַמָּסוֹרָה, Nūssāḥ Hammāsōrā, lit. 'Text of the Tradition') is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in Rabbinic Judaism. ...
, although there existed an alternative Masoretic text of the ben Naphtali Masoretes, which has around 875 differences from the ben Asher text. The
halakhic
''Halakha'' (; he, הֲלָכָה, ), also transliterated as ''halacha'', ''halakhah'', and ''halocho'' ( ), is the collective body of Jewish religious laws which is derived from the written and Oral Torah. Halakha is based on biblical comman ...
authority
Maimonides
Musa ibn Maimon (1138–1204), commonly known as Maimonides (); la, Moses Maimonides and also referred to by the acronym Rambam ( he, רמב״ם), was a Sephardic Jewish philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah ...
endorsed the ben Asher as superior, although the Egyptian Jewish scholar, Saadya Gaon al-Fayyumi, had preferred the ben Naphtali system. It has been suggested that the ben Asher family and the majority of the Masoretes were
Karaites
Karaite or Qaraite may refer to:
*Karaite Judaism, a Jewish religious movement that rejects the Talmud
**Crimean Karaites, an ethnic group derived from Turkic-speaking adherents of Karaite Judaism in Eastern Europe
***Karaim language, Turkic lan ...
. However, Geoffrey Khan believes that the ben Asher family was probably not Karaite, and
Aron Dotan
Aron may refer to:
Characters
* Aron (comics), from the Marvel Universe comic ''Aron! HyperSpace Boy!''
* Aron (Pokémon), in the ''Pokémon'' franchise
* Aron Trask, from John Steinbeck's novel ''East of Eden''
* Áron or Aaron, the brother of ...
avers that there are "decisive proofs that M. Ben-Asher was not a Karaite."
The Masoretes devised the vowel notation system for Hebrew that is still widely used, as well as the trope symbols used for cantillation.
References
Further reading
* ''In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language'', Chapter 5.
* ''The Text of the Old Testament''.
* ''Introduction to the Tiberian Masorah''.
* ,
The Jewish Encyclopedia
''The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day'' is an English-language encyclopedia containing over 15,000 articles on th ...