Using the Masora for Interpreting the Vocalisation and Accentuation of the Biblical Text

Abstract

The marginal annotations that appear with the biblical text in most medieval biblical manuscripts—called by the technical term Masora—are hardly taken into account when interpreting the biblical text. Their idiosyncratic characteristics (they are formulated briefly, concisely, and, on many occasions, elliptically) make it nearly impossible to appreciate the content of the annotation and its possible interpretive relevance on a first reading. All these difficulties can be resolved, however, by establishing implicit information and formulating a clear methodology as to how to analyse the Masoretic annotations. This allows us to study them and apply them to the interpretation of the biblical text. This article shows the benefits of using the Masora for the interpretation of the biblical text through some selected examples, all of them related to vocalisation and stress. The content of these Masora annotations is explained and applied to textual interpretation.