From: John Hudson (john@tiro.ca)
Date: Fri Jul 13 2007 - 00:57:46 CDT
Philippe Verdy wrote:
> Given that the authors of this document needed to use color to make the
> distinction between hebrew points and the Arabic text
They didn't *need* to use colour. They chose to use colour, just as the creators of texts
in many of the world's manuscript traditions have used more than one colour.
By the way, most of the green marks are, on closer examination, Hebrew cantillation marks.
Only the shaddah is Arabic, which one would expect since it is a consonant modifier.
> When you say that Hebrew points were written first, I find it difficult to
> realize without the help of a pre-existing reference Arabic text
...
> ; in which
> case, the Hebrew points were still specially laid out according to Arabic,
> not the reverse.
It's the Hebrew Bible, in Hebrew. There is no Arabic language involved in this manuscript,
only the use of the Arabic script to write Hebrew. Of course they didn't need a
pre-existing Arabic reference text: they were Jews writing Hebrew, but writing it
according to the convention of the Judaeo-Arabic language that they spoke.
John Hudson
-- Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Gulf Islands, BC tiro@tiro.com We say our understanding measures how things are, and likewise our perception, since that is how we find our way around, but in fact these do not measure. They are measured. -- Aristotle, Metaphysics
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