The Serugin, Te’amim, and Meturgeman in Christian Perspective-part 12

The Serugin, Te’amim, and Meturgeman in Christian Perspective-part 12 

             Some authors have given the origin of these signs a later date and have believed that the system of accents existed from at least the time of Ezra. Other authors disagree and give a much later date to the origin of the accents (te’amim).  Still others believe them to be the invention of the Masoretes at Tiberius. The major point to this discussion is that, although there is disagreement among authors, it has been believed for centuries that these graphic signs are much more ancient than being an invention of the Masoretes at Tiberius, and ipso facto they are very authoritative— being perhaps as old as the Bible texts themselves if they were conceived as a melos [a text and melody conceived and produced as a unit].  I have not been able to find any quotations taken from the Diqduque ha-Te’amim or any other source that would give support to the notion that the scholars of the School of Tiberius claimed ownership of the te’amim.         Although some authors still believe strongly that the system of te’amim that the scholars of the school of Tiberius placed in the MT was their own invention, there is much disagreement and confusion concerning that notion.  First of all, several of the graphic signs have a close connection to the ancient system of hand signs called cheironomy that is much older than the work of the scholars at Tiberius.  Second, even Aaron ben Asher’s manual called Diqduque ha-Te’amim [930 A.D.] was vague in its description of the use of the graphic signs and, as Suzanne Haik-Vantoura explains, “We should remember that the Masoretes of Tiberius were only preoccupied with the exegetical syntax.  But while they sought to detect it in the order of the signs, they did not deny the musical significance of them.  On the contrary, they affirmed it!  They even insisted on the precision of this musical significance which they did not at all define, evidently not being able to do so.  Moreover, the syntactical rules they deduced from the signs were evasive and contradictory.” TMotBR, p. 8.  Nulman asserts, “The date of the introduction of the accents into the Hebrew text has not been ascertained.” Nulman, CEoJM, p.2.