(Continued)
2. During and Since the Reformation. — Passing over the names of other Catholic divines who also assumed a late origin of the vowel-points, we find that almost the entire period of the Reformation sided with Levita. Luther (who called the vowels a modern invention neues Menschenftfindlein), Calvin, Zwingli, Mercier, Pellican, Leo Judah, Piscator. John Scaliger, Drusius, etc., boldly declaimed against the antiquity, divine origin, and authority of the points. The conviction of the Protestant leaders "undoubtedly was that by liberating themselves from the traditional vowel-points of the synagogue, after having discarded the traditions of the Church of Rome, they could more easily and independently prosecute their Biblical studies, without any trammels whatsoever" — thus making the Bible, and the Bible alone, without gloss and without tradition, the rule of faith and practice. Embittered at the cry of the newly, risen Protestant leaders that the Bible, and nothing but the Bible, is the norma noormans, Rome soon changed her tactics, and Levita's argument as to the late origin of the vowel-points was perused by her in order to confute the claims of her opponents. From Levita's argument she deduced the following:
1. That the Bible could only be read in ancient days by the few authorized spiritual teachers; and,
2. That the Scriptures, without these points, cannot possibly be understood apart from the traditional interpretation transmitted by the Church of Rome. This opinion soon found its way into England, and was advocated by Dr. Thomas Harding (q.v.), the celebrated antagonist of bishop Jewel. His argument was as follows: "Among the people of Israel, the seventy elders only could read and understand the mysteries of the holy books that we call the Bible; for, whereas the letters of the Hebrew tongue have no vocals, they only had the skill to read the Scripture by the consonants, and thereby the vulgar people were kept from reading of it by special providence of God, as it is thought that precious stones should not be cast before swine; that is to say, such as be not called thereto as being, for their unreverend curiosity and impure life, unworthy" (comp. the Works of John Jewel, bishop of Salisbury. [ed. Parker Society], 2, 678).
Similar was the language used on the Continent by the Romanists against the Protestants, who appealed to the Scriptures in matters affecting their faith and practice. Jean Horinus (q.v.) solemnly declares, in his learned Exercitationes Biblicae e hebraei Graecique Textus Sinceritate, that "the reason why God ordained the Scriptures to be written in this ambiguous manner (i.e. without points) is because it was his will that every man should be subject to the judgment of the Church, and not interpret the Bible in his own way. For, seeing that the reading of the Bible is so difficult, and so liable to Various ambiguities, from the very nature of the thing, it is plain that it is not the will of God that every one should rashly and irreverently take upon himself to explain it, nor to suffer the common people to expound it at their pleasure; but that in those things, as in other matters respecting religion, it is his will that the people should depend upon the priests" (Exercitat. [Paris, 1633], IV, 2, 8, 198, etc.). To this argument R. Simon, in his Histoire Critique (Rotterdam, 1685), p. 468, replied in the following manner: "On pourra dire aussi, par la mdme raison que Dieu a voulu soamettre les Mahometans a leurs docteurs pour l'interpretation de l'Alcoran, parce qu'il est crit, aussi-bien que le texte Hebreu de la Bible, dans une langue qui n'est pas moins inconstante d'elle me que la langue Hebraique. Mais sans qu'il soit besoin d'avoir recours au conseil secret de Dieu, il est certain que la langue Hebraique a cela de commun avec les langues Arabe, Chaldaique et Syriaque, quielles sont de leur nature fort imparfaites, nayant pas assez de voyelles, pour rendre la lecture des mots qui les composeit constante et tout-h-fait arretee."
The modus operandi of the Catholic controversialists caused great alarm. among the defenders of Protestantism, who now commenced beating a retreat. They declared that the points were put to the text by the prophets themselves, and that to say otherwise was heathenish and popish. Thus the charge of Gregory Martin (q.v.), in his work entitled A Discovery of the Manifold Corruption of the Holy Scriptures by the Heretics of our Days, that Protestants, in their versions, follow the Hebrew vowels, which were of recent origin, was rebutted by Fulke, in his Defence of the Sincere and True Translations of the Holy Scriptures into the English Tongue, against the Manifold Cavils, Frivolous Quarrels, and Impudent Slanders of Gregory Martin, one of the Readers of Popish Divinity in the Traitorous Seminary of Rheims (Lond. 1583; Parker Society ed. Cambridge, 1843), p. 578, with the declaration that "seeing our Savior hath promised that never a particle of the law shall perish, we may understand the same also of the prophets, who have not received the vowels of the later Jews, but even of the prophets themselves, howsoever that heathenish opinion pleaseth you and other papists." Hitherto, both Catholics and Protestants chiefly relied upon abusing each other. None of them thought of examining Levita's arguments, or of corroborating or refuting his statements. To be or not to be, that was the question on both sides, and, besides, neither of the two parties had sufficient Talmudical learning and critical tact. The first attempt to meet Levita's book was made, as has already been stated above, by the learned Azariah de' Rossi, in 1574-75, in ch. 59, pt. 3, of his work The Light of the Eyes (Meor Enaim [Mantua, 1574-75; Vienna, 1, 829]), wherein he tried to prove the antiquity of the vowel-points from the Zochar and the Talmud.
With weapons like these, the Protestants now opened a new campaign, under the leadership of Buxtorf, the father (died 1629), with a display of Rabbinical bayonets. The antiquity and divinity of the vowel-points. which were formerly abandoned, were now defended; and in his Tiberias siae Comentarius Masorethicus (Basle, 1620) Buxtorf made use of De' Rossi's arguments. Feeble as these arguments were, they nevertheless found many supporters who ranged themselves under the leadership of Buxtorf who, however, was not destined to carry everything before him in his first battle against Levita. The Buxtorf-de'-Rossi alliance produced a counter-alliance, headed by Louis Cappel (q.v.), Before Cappel published his treatise, he sent it in manuscript to Buxtorf for examination, who returned it with the request that it might not be printed. "He then sent it to Erpenius who was so convinced by sits arguments and learning that, without the sanction of the author, he printed it at Leyden, under the title. The Mystery of the Points Unvueiled (Arcanum Punctatiomi Revelatunt [Leyd. 1624; afterwards reprinted by his son Amsterd. 1689, fol.]).
A time of anxious suspense followed the publication of this anonymous work, during which time father Morinus published his Biblical Exercitations, as already indicated above. Morinus, as well as Cappel, denied the antiquity of the vowel-points, but each had a different aim in view; for while Cappel contended against the authority of Rabbinical tradition, Morinus contended in behalf of Romish tradition, placing the same above the Scriptures, which he compared "to a mere nose of wax, to be turned any wavy," to prove thereby the necessity of one infallible interpretation. Albert Pighius, a mathematician and controversialist (born in 1490, and died in 1542), in his Hierarch. Eccles. Assertio (ed. 1538), 3, 3, 80, makes a similar statement: "Suntenim illae (Scriptur), ut non minus vere quam festive dixit quidam, velitn nasus cereus, qui se horsum, illorsum, et in quam volueris parten, trahi, retrahi, fingique facile permittit." When Morinus's work was published, Cappel felt rather uncomfortable at this association, and, having been made known to the public as the author of the Arcanum by Cocceius (in his De duobus Talmnu dis Titulis Sanhedrim et Maccoth), Cappel now openly declared himself as the author in the preface to the Animadversio ad Novam a Davidis Lyranam (ed. Gomarus). The success which had followed the publication of the Arcanum was indeed, very great. Its immense erudition, conclusive reasoning, and overpowering arguments soon convinced the most skeptical scholars of the late origin of the vowel-points. The followers of Buxtorf were for a considerable time doomed to almost fatal inaction, till at last, after a silence of four-and-twenty years, Buxtorf, the son, who succeeded his father, published, in 1648, a reply to Cappel, entitled Tractatus de Punctorum Vocalium et Accentuuw in Libris Veteris Testamenti Hebraicis Origine, Antiq.iftate et Authoriate, Oppositus Arcano Punctationis Revelato Judovici Capelli. Cappel answered in a rejoinder entitled Vindicice Arcani Punictationis (published by his son in 1689).
The consequence of this controversy was, that Protestant Christendom everywhere was divided into two hostile camps, vowellists and anti- vowellists. Soon the controversy was transplanted to England, where Levita and Cappel were represented by Walton, while De' Rossi and Buxtorf were represented by Lightfoot and Owen. Walton, in his prolegomena to the London Polyglot (Prolegom. 3, 38-56), speaks at great length concerning the controversy, and concludes that the controversy "is only about the present points, in regard to their forms, not of their force and signification." Different entirely was the position of Lightfoot. This learned Hebraist thought that his dicta would be quite sufficient to silence his opponents, and in his Centuriac Chorographica, 100, 81, he comes to the conclusion: "Opus Spiritus Sancti sapit punctatio Bibliorum, non opus hominum perditorurn, exccecatorum, amentium." This dogmatic and abusive assertion of Lightfoot stimulated Dr. Owen to issue his attack on Walton's Polyglot and the anti-vowel lists and his defense of the vowel points, with the exception of the endorsement and elaboration of Lightfoot's diatribe, is simply made up of De-Rossi-Buxtorf arguments greatly diluted (comp. his Integrity and Purity of the Hebrew and Greek Text of the Scriptures, etc. [Lond. 1659]; 4:447 sq. of his collected works [Lond. 1823]). Within twelve months Walton published a reply, the Considerator Considered (Lond. 1659: reprinted in the second volume of Todd's Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Bishop Walton [Lond. 1821]), which contains additional and valuable contributions to the literature of this controversy.
Although the antiquity of the vowel-points still found advocates in Joseph Cooper (Dormus Mosaicae Claris, sive Legis Septimentum, etc. [Lond. 1673], Samuel Clarke (An Exercitation concerning the Original of the Chapters and Verses in the Bible, etc. [ibid. 1698]), Whitefield (A Dissertation on the Hebrew Vowel-points [Liverpool, 1748]), and Dr. Gill (A Dissertation Concerning the Antiquity of the Hebrew Language, Letters, Vowel points, and Accents [Lond. 1767]), who published learned dissertations in defense of Dr. Owen and against Walton, yet it must be admitted that Walton's works decided the battle in England in favor of the anti-vowellists.
On the Continent, Wasmuth, with his Vindicie Hebr. Script. (Rostock, 1664), and others entered the lists in support of Buxtorf, whose adherents in Switzerland exalted his views to a confessional article of belief in the Formula Consensus, art. 4 Song of Solomon 2, so that a law was enacted in 1678 that no person should be licensed to preach the Gospel in their churches unless he publicly declared that he believed in the integrity of the Hebrew text and in the divinity of the vowel-points and accents ("codicem Hebr. Vet. Test. turn quoad consonas turn quoad vocalia sive puncta ipsa sive punctorum saltem potestatem θεόπνευστον esse").
An intermediate course, proceeding on the assumption that there had been a simpler system of vowel marks, either by three original vowels or by diacritic points, was opened up by Rivetus (Isagoge seo Introductio Generalis, Yet. et Noel Test. [Leyd. 1627], 8:15, 104), Hottinger, and others, and was pursued especially by J. D. Michaelis (Van Clem Alter der hebr. Vocale, in Orient. Bibl., 9:82 sq., 88 sq.), Trendelenburg (in Eichhorn's Repertor. 18:78 sq.), Eichhorn, Jahn, Berthold, and others (comp. Diestel, Gesch. des alten Test. in der christl. Kirche [Jena, 1869], p. 253, 334 sq., 401, 451, 566, 570, 595 sq.).
The controversy, which so vehemently raged for more than three centuries, may now be regarded as ended. Modern research and criticism have confirmed the arguments urged by Levita against the antiquity of the present vowel-signs. It is now established beyond question, from the discovery of ancient MSS., that there were two systems of vocalization contrived almost simultaneously, the earlier or first-system developed by Acha, or Achai, of Irak (Babylon), cir. A.D. 550; the later or second system by Mocha of Tiberias, about 57.
See Ginsburg, Levita's Massoreth ha-Massoreth (Lond. 1867), p. 44 sq.; Pick, The Vowel-points Controversy, in the Presbyterian Quarterly and Princeton Review, Jan. 1877; Schnedermann, Die Controverse des Ludovicus Cappellus mit den Buxtonfen fiber das Alter der hebr. Punctation (Leips. 1879); Kautzsch, Johannes Buxtorf der Altere (Basle, 1879). (B. P.)
Copyright Statement
These files are public domain.
Bibliography Information
McClintock, John. Strong, James. Entry for 'Vowel-Points'. Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature.
Browse by letter: 'A' - The Catholic Encyclopedia -. Harper & Brothers. New York. 1870.
;At no time was the Hebrew system of writing merely a writing of the consonants, but from the beginning it had three vowel-signs for the vowels a, i, and u. Of these, however, the first (א ) was used only with a commencing sound, and in a concluding sound it was not written, but every
www.studylight.org
As you know, some volumes are downright voluminous!
www.deadseascrolls.org.il
en.wiktionary.org
