כתיבים שלא הוכנו

Many spellings occurring occasionally in Biblical Hebrew (=BH) are more frequent in Mishnaic Hebrew (=MH), especially where scriptio plena in MH is preferred to scriptio defectiva in BH. In other words, the difference between the languages is only quantitative, the orthographic details typical of MH already occurring in BH. Nevertheless, there are some new spellings in MH. These spellings are very rare and so were sometimes misunderstood by copiers of ancient mss. and by modern scholars. A. It seems that a final he was omitted in MH. This can be inferred from spellings like אוירא,בא instead of אוירה, בה and from vocalizations such as,מגביה בה in place of מגביה, בה. This phonetic process is the basis of a number of word-combinations, e.g., וקוצה לחלה (Niddā 10, 7) instead of וקוצה לה חלה in Codex Kaufmann of the Mishna: lāh ḥallā which was pronounced lā ḥallā was written as a single word לחלה (the tendency to attach a proclitic word to the following word, not only in pronunciation but also in spelling, is a well-known phenomenon in MH). However, the second hand of the ms., the hand of the vocalizer, misunderstood the compound word (לה חלה >) לחלה, considering it לחלה (=the preposition החלה + ל). B. Most Semitic scripts do not indicate gemination, i.e., a double consonant is not indicated orthographically. Only in later periods was the gemination noted by an extra sign (the dagéš forte in Hebrew and in Aramaic, the šaddā in Arabic). However there are occasional orthographical indications of gemination: writing a doubled consonant by doubling the relevant letter. This is the case in Judeo-Arabic of North Africa, e.g., the word סראק ("thief") is written סרראק. This feature is very rare in ancient mss. of MH and Aramaic dialects, e.g., רננון,מככוין,מדדה in place of the usual spelling רנון,מכוין,מדה etc. But such spellings were sometimes misunderstood, as in mss. and printed editions of Pseudo-Jonathan, e.g., in Gen. 4, 20-21 רבבהום/רבבהון was changed by mistake to רב בהום/רב בהון. C. Similarly, the spelling מועט in the Dead Sea Scrolls was explained by scholars as MH (ממועט>) מועט when it is in fact the noun מעט, the waw indicating the shewa, which was pronounced [u] under the influence of the labial [m] (like פורת for פרת in the Genesis Apocryphon). To conclude, spellings of the kind discussed in our article are very rare, most of them occurring only in a few of the ancient mss. They were often misunderstood by copyists and scholars. It is our role to clarify these misunderstandings.