Authenticity of the text
Masoretic Text
What is the Masoretic Text?
The word "Masoretic Text" literally means "Text of the Tradition". it is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic test of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in Rabbinic Judaism.
What is the "Mas'sora"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masoretic_Text
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_diacritics
The Masoretic Text includes what is called the "mas'sora", which is the vocalization and accentuation, known as diacritic ("diacritic" being similar to accent marks on letters in English) markings. These markings are called "Niqqud" (which means dotting or pointing). These diacritical signs are used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Essentially thus, there this text includes three basic "types" of Niqqud's:
- Niqqud to indicate vowels
- geresh and gershayim, two diacritics that are not considered a part of niqqud, each of which has several functions (e.g. to denote Hebrew numerals)
- cantillation, which are also "accents" but which are used exclusively to indicate how Biblical passages should be chanted and may possess a punctuating function.
