![]() ![]() There is a beautiful example of this kind of interpretative work recorded by Adam Nicolson in his book, God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. ![]() One might even say that this was at least part of the Masoretic mission in the 7th to 10th centuries CE. There is a long history of Biblical interpretation, attempts to reduce the gray of ambiguity and replace it with the white light of clarity. To me, this is astounding! Who would have thought that the text containing what many believe to be God’s communication to humans would be delivered in any way but an exact, unambiguous format? One might expect this sort of thing from an ancient Greek oracle, maybe, but not-at least it seems to me-from a sacred book of instruction, a guide for humans by their creator about how to walk in this life. Rabbi Weiss went on to note that “while there are indeed Masoretic traditions as to how words should be written and pronounced, the text itself is clearly ambiguous and open to interpretation.” No telling where one sentence begins or ends no paragraph breaks or page numbers.”. No punctuation no periods, question marks or exclamation points. “The Torah, one notices almost immediately upon opening, is written without vowels. Why? Rabbi Stewart Weiss, director of the Jewish Outreach Center of Ra’anana, Israel, summed it up succinctly in an article he wrote for The Jerusalem post in 2012. Interestingly, the Bible, and here I want to address only the first five books, the Pentateuch or Torah, is problematic on punctuation issues. The layout of the text, line (including the use of enjambment), and stanza breaks, can also mark places where a poet wants the reader to pause when reciting a poem. There are other punctuation symbols also employed for the same purpose: dashes, ellipses, colons, semi-colons. Poets often use commas to indicate pauses in recitation, in addition to the ability to reduce confusion. Some, that is, might not have been at home, and with them, he didn’t speak. However, if you remove the comma, the meaning changes, for then, the clause “who were at home” tells to which committeemen he talked. He gave the following example: “He talked to the committeemen, who were at home.” The sentence, Beardsley noted, contains two statements: first, he talked to the committeemen second, the men were at home. ![]() ![]() Beardsley’s primary emphasis was on using commas to eliminate ambiguity, the bane of written communication. There are several comments about comma usage in the book. I used Monroe Beardsley’s excellent book, Thinking Straight: A Guide for Readers & Writers, for the “critical thinking” classes. In graduate school, I worked for two years teaching undergraduate courses in philosophical issues and critical thinking. “He had told his host one evening that he had spent the day in hard literary work, and that, when asked what he had done, he had said, ‘I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning and took out a comma.’ ‘And in the afternoon?’ ‘In the afternoon–well, I put it back again.'” Sherard, Oscar Wilde: The Story of an Unhappy Friendship, p. Once, he wrote, Wilde reported a conversation he’d had with a host. In his book, Oscar Wilde: The Story of an Unhappy Friendship, the English writer Robert Harborough Sherard (Decem– January 30, 1943) recounted one of Wilde’s many witticisms. The Reading of the Bible by the Rabbis – a Souvenir of Morocco ![]()
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