Masoretic Note: Its Creation and Chronicles "חזינא" The from the Special Accentuation in Medieval Manuscripts until Minchat Shay

Abstract

Unusually, the story of Reuben and Bilhah (Genesis 35:22) contains a double set of accentuation. A mysterious comment in Minchat Shay, partly copied from Or Torah, points to an unfamiliar double accentuation of the first part of the verse, as opposed to the familiar double accentuation that starts from the middle of the verse. The surprising origin of the comment in Minchat Shay and Or Torah is meaning that the note writer ,”חזינא” , found to be an exceptional Masoretic note declares that he saw a manuscript with unusual accentuation. Searching for the source of this accentuation that may have led to the special note opens the door to a variety of medieval Bible manuscripts. We investigated 250 such manuscripts, from the 10th to the 16th centuries, and established the argument of the Jewish linguists and Masoretic notes. The unusual accents were found in a considerable proportion of the manuscripts examined – about 15%. The wide variety of manuscripts examined shed light on the distribution, trends, and development of the special accentuation. The dependency of the proportion of manuscripts with this accentuation on the manuscript date and writing style suggests that the special accentuation originated in an old Sephardic tradition. From being included in the biblical text itself in this tradition, the unusual accents notes, and later to the “חזינא” were shifted to the side of the text, in Masoretic writings of Or Torah and Minchat Shay.