Annotated links to
other important studies
of Biblical cantillation on the Web

by John Wheeler

(For Mr. Wheeler's own site, which contains an enormous number of biblical chant resources, see King David's Harp, Inc.)

ACCENTS IN HEBREW— Max L. Margolis

This article in the online Jewish Encyclopaedia discusses the role of the "word-accent" and the "sentence-accent" in developing coherent verbal sentences and phrases, and the role of the te`amim in indicating these verbal factors in biblical Hebrew.

It starts from the Masoretic assumption that the te`amim are primarily a series of disjunctives and conjunctives, and discusses each system of te`amim (that of the Three Books, then of the Twenty-One Books) from that perspective. It shows how the accents are determined under the Masoretic and post-Masoretic rules, lists the accents in the two systems, notes their supposed divine origin according to tradition, claims their post-Talmudic origin according to history, and describes their usefulness in biblical exegesis. There are useful charts in the article which may be downloaded if desired (the encyclopedia is presently in the public domain).

The a priori usefulness to our studies of the technical information about sentence structure and its relationship to the accentuation should be evident. The chief flaws of the article stem from its two main assumptions:

1) the notation is primarily punctuational;

2) it originated with the Tiberian Masoretes.

These assumptions leave far too much about the layout and history of the te`amim unexplained, and there is no discussion of the problems with the Masoretic exegetical paradigm. But then, this encyclopedia was written well before the State of Israel was established.

CANTILLATION— Cyrus Adler, Francis L. Cohen

This article, also in the online Jewish Encyclopaedia, is a useful and instructive summary of the mainstream view on the origin and history of the cantillation of the te`amim.

It claims that the cantillation preceded its notation, gives early references to the practice, discusses the relationship between chironomy and the notation, and cites the loss of one kind of cantillation (that of the Three Books) while claiming the vigorous survivance of the other (that of the Twnety-One Books). It also discusses the principle of parallel tonalities in synagogue cantillation, claiming it to be ancient; it refers to the Temple cantillation of the Psalms; and it discusses various interpretations of the notation. It cites old descriptions of the practice, as well as the practice of student cantillation. Once again, there are useful charts that may be examined and downloaded.

This subject is complex, and the article doesn't take into account all of the salient facts that are presently known. A number of musicologists have added important material to the discussion over the decades. Lacking, for example, is the distinction which Israel Adler has pointed out between the "primitive" cantillation discussed in the Masorah and the early "reader's manuals" (and still used in many places) and the more ornate cantillations that gained the ascendency after the 12th century. Naturally, there is no conception that the "accents of the Twenty-One Books" likewise are not presently understood by the synagogue, given that the traditional cantillations take so little account of most of the features of the notation.

Interestingly enough, the article assumes (citing the famous work of Wickes) that the notation is primarily musical, and that the melody it defined served the function of indicating the meaning and rhythm of the words as well as their syntactical relationships.

HEBREW CANTILLATION MARKS AND THEIR ENCODING— Helmut Richter

A most interesting site, and deserving of a bookmark. It presents itself as "a short description of the Hebrew cantillation marks and their usage for structuring the Bible text.... The problems of their representation in modern character codes are briefly outlined. The article contains also tables with the Unicode and the Michigan-Claremont codings of the cantillation marks. Cantillation, which obviously is the purpose of cantillation marks, is not treated here."

Because of the author's interest in developing computer coding for the text of the Hebrew Scriptures, it provides a good summary of the Masoretic analytical paradigm. Like many references, however, this site claims that the accentuation's primary purpose is cantillation, yet it still treats the accentuation as though its primary purpose were punctuation. (Can you say "doublethink"?) At least the Jewish Encyclopedia's even more in-depth article on the accents (above) is consistent: it acknowledges that the accentuation, as interpreted under the Masoretic paradigm, is primarily punctuational, and it says so.

This site mentions two places where the accents' punctuation would make the sense of the text unambiguous— both in Isaiah— without actually committing itself to what the accents are supposed to indicate. In the case of Isaiah 40:3, the Masoretic paradigm would have it read "A voice cries: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD...'", whereas Suzanne's would have it read "A voice cries in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the LORD...'". (In that verse the sequence of accents is fairly unusual, and its combination with the verbal syntax even more so, so it is not surprising that the two paradigms come up with different divisions of the words.) This site illustrates just how far the confusion goes in the Judaic and academic "mainstreams" as to what the accentuation represents and how it functions.

Jules Derenbourg, in the notes to his translation of the "Manuel du Lecteur" (a Hebrew reader's manual from Yemen, 12th century) in the Journal Asiatique (1870), had some excellent critical comments about the whole "feudal" system described in the text (as in the Web site) and about some accents in particular as treated by it. In fact, he called the whole feudal hierarchy of disjunctives and conjunctives "rather burlesque" and indeed misleading to a number of great scholars of the 17th-19th centuries. In the case of the accent munach, he noted that the various names given to it by the "Manuel" were but attempts to give special domains to signs which were originally but one and the same thing.

It is unfortunate that he didn't think the matter through to the rest of the accents, apparently. It is also unfortunate that he seems not to have been taken seriously, for he presaged Suzanne's thinking about the Masoretic paradigm by a full century (to the year, in fact, for she started full-time work on her project in 1970).

For more general remarks about "Consonants and Vowels In the Hebrew Script", please see Mr. Richter's related page on this topic.