and the name Masora to be affixed to it." "Thus it was until the points were affixed, and this period continued till the Talmud was closed, that is, till the year 3989 after the creation of the world, and the 436th after the second dispersion. From this time forth, the holy language ceased to be spoken, till the time of the Masorites- these are the men of Tiberias."a [It cannot be accurately determined, from the Jewish writings, when or where the Masorites lived. There are three hypotheses respecting the matter. 1. Some say the men of Tiberias are the authors of the Masora. 2. Others ascribe it to Ezra, and the men of the Great Synagogue. 3. And others make Moses the author, who, it is said, received the true reading and the true interpretation from God, and transmitted it to the elders. "However, the Masora did not proceed from Moses, Ezra, or the pretended men of the Great Synagogue, but from the later Jews. The first foundation is older than the Talmud. The ages between the third and sixth centuries have furnished the richest contributions to it, though, according to itself, it has received accessions in every age, and is not yet completed. "1. The Talmud contains many of the remarks which form part of the Masora. Both mention the omission and the correction of the scribes; both speak of the Keri velo Kethib, and the Kethib velo Keri.' The Talmud points out the middle consonant, the middle letter, and Vorrede zur Mas. Hammas. pp. 3 and 67. See Morinus, 1. c. p. 411; Walton, Prol. viii. 12; Cappellus and Simon. On the contrary, Buxtorf, l. c. ch. xi. p. 102; Leusden, Phil. Heb.; A. Pfeiffer, Diss. de Masora; Löscher, De Causis Ling. Heb. p. 91; Wolf, 1. c. p. 465; and Carpzov, 1. c. p. 286, who place the commencement of the Masora in the time of Ezra. [See the judicious opinion of Palfrey, 1. c. vol. i. p. 59, sq. Horne, pt. i. ch. ii. sect. i. § 1.] b [See § 89, p. 344.] the middle verse, of the Pentateuch," as the Masora does of all the books. Some of these annotations - subsequently incorporated in the Masora were made before the third century, and expressed in the text of manuscripts in various ways; for example, by consonants of unusual form, the suspended and inverted, the greater and smaller letters, and by extraordinary points. But none of them was written out fully before the time of the Talmud. "2. After the composition of the Talmud, these annotations rapidly increased from age to age. The tract Sopherim, which was written between the time of the Talmud and that of the Masora, speaks more fully of some kinds of them, but it does not agree with the Masora. Thus, for example, the Talmud enumerates five Kethib velo Keri; the tract Sopherim, six; and the Masora, on Ruth iii. 12, eight; and this difference is still more striking when it is noticed that only two of the six mentioned by the tract are the same with those cited by the Talmud. During this period, also, the critical annotations were preserved by various signs or characters written in the manuscripts. The greater and smaller, the suspended and inverted letters, are, at least, older than the written Masora. "3. Finally, in the beginning of the sixth century, the scattered annotations already made were collected into a whole, called the Masora, by the Jews at Tiberias, where, it is well known, an academy of Jews flourished after the time of Christ, and great attention was paid to the critical revision of the Bible. "4. But still the Masora was not regarded as a finished work. From time to time, new annotations were inserted, and the old furnished with new examples. From this circumstance, the Masora does not agree with itself, nor with the present masoretic editions of the Bible, in the number of passages cited as instances of a particular law, or of exceptions to it. It is to be wished that the principal masoretic recension of the sixth century, or the old masoretic, could be separated from the new masoretic recension, made since that time. But the modern annotations are so intimately mingled with the old, that it is impossible to separate them."]" At first, the Masora was written in separate books,' but afterwards on the margin of manuscripts of the Bible. [The books containing nothing but the Masora were written without any systematic order. Their materials are thrown together as chance directed. Such a chaotic mass could not be used conveniently; therefore the most important passages were extracted from the great work, and written, with many abbreviations, on the margin of manuscripts. But they were written without regular method. Every passage was not fur * [Eichhorn, § 141, and Jahn, vol. i. p. 389, sqq., who agrees with Eichhorn on this point. Jablonski, Præf. ad Bib. Heb. § 32. Stark, Carm. Davidis, vol. i. p. 48, says the Masora has been revised two or three times — first at Tiberias, then in Babylonia, about 1037 A. C., and finally after the time of Rabbi Jonah. "O," says Eichhorn, "that he had separated these three recensions, since he thought it could be done so easily!"] Elias Levita, 1. c. p. 86. Cod. Palat. in Rom. Comp. Annal. litt. Helmstad. An. 1784, p. 97. On the various forms of it, see Carpzov, 1. c. p. 290. Buxtorf, 1. c. 195. [Elias Levita, cited in Buxtorf, says, "The great Masora is almost infinite in extent. If all the words of it which I have seen in my life were written and bound together in one book, it would exceed the size of the whole Bible." The Jews sometimes wrote the biblical text in a small space in the centre of a leaf, and surrounded it with the Masora, which thus became literally "the Hedge of the Law," so that the text stood "like a lodge in a garden of cucumbers."] nished with its proper note; nor was a reference made to the place where it could be found. The abbreviators collected remarks of a certain kind in any place, as accident suggested, and left it for the reader's sagacity to find these remarks; a later Masorite made such additions as he pleased to the annotations of his predecessors, with whom he sometimes agreed, and sometimes differed. The Jews cared little for these inconveniences, and made no attempts to remove them. But the abbreviations that had been used were to them the source of greater perplexity, for they demanded a peculiar study, and, even with all their diligence, they could not make use of all the observations so darkly written; accordingly they began to insert the whole Masora, with the Hebrew text, and to write as many annotations as the margin of the manuscripts would contain, without always considering whether the note was connected with the verse which it explained. The portion of the Masora written on the margin of the manuscripts is called the textual, that at the end of the books, the final Masora. The textual is divided into the small and the great. The former, derived from the latter, is usually written at the sides, the latter above and below the text, but sometimes also at the sides. The great final Masora is placed at the end of each book." After the time when attempts were made to insert the whole Masora on the margin of manuscripts, which was often too small for it, transcribers allowed themselves to omit what the margin of the page would not contain; and the passages omitted were, for the a [Eichhorn, § 154. Walton, Prol. viii. 11. Buxtorf, Clav. Mas. p. 218. See the above note c, p. 349.] most part, added at the end of the book, but sometimes they were left out. Sometimes the Masora did not fill the whole margin of the page; and in order to leave nothing empty, and not offend the nice eye of the purchaser by the sight of empty spaces, a portion of the previous Masora was repeated, sufficient to fill the chasm, or various other fragments, sometimes relating to the same, sometimes to different subjects, were patched together. Besides, the copyist often adorned his manuscript by writing the Masora in figures of men and animals, caricatures, and the like; and sometimes he had too much or too little space left for the figure he had commenced, and so he added to the Masora, or diminished it, to suit his convenience. Every rabbi who revised or read the Masora, took the liberty to add such new notes as he pleased. At its best state, the Masora was confusion: by this treatment it became worse confounded, and the remark of Elias is fully justified-"There was not a house in which was not one dead." As Kennicott suggests, it resembled the Elm in the poem, "celebrated for the residence of vain dreams."]" This manner of writing the Masora, and the con [Elias Levita complains touchingly at this treatment of the Masora. "But the scribes who copied the biblical books, extracted as each one saw fit, writing it in the margins, below and above, here copiously, there briefly, according to the size of the margin." See his pitiful threnody in Buxtorf, l. c. p. 197. Shickard, cited in Carpzov, p. 291, speaks of a MS. the margin of which seemed, at first sight, adorned with pictures of lions, bears, sheep, and oxen; but, on a closer inspection, it appeared that the Masora was written in these forms, in a very minute character. What wonder it was corrupted in such transmigrations? Eichhorn, § 155. Michaelis, De Codd. Erfurt, p. 32.] ' [Ulmus opaca, ingens, quam sedem Somnia vulgo |