Language Studies

Aramaic Thoughts

The Peshitta of the Old Testament - Part 22

Ruth 3:17 reads as follows in the KJV, “And she said, These six measures of barley gave he me, for he said to me, Go not empty unto thy mother-in-law.” The HCSB reads, “She said, He gave me these six measures of barley, because he said, Don’t go back to your mother-in-law empty-handed.” The latter is obviously more up-to-date in its style and arrangement, but that is not the key difference between the two texts. The KJV (and many other English versions have, “he said to me,” while the HCSB and other English versions have simply, “he said.” The former is the reading that follows the Peshitta, the Septuagint, the Targum, and what the HCSB calls an alternate Hebrew tradition. This alternate Hebrew tradition, and the variation in readings, is what Hebrew professors call a Ktiv-Qere (pronounced kuh-teev kuh-ray).

The word Ktiv means roughly “that which is written,” while the word Qere means roughly “that which is to be read. The Masoretic scribes, who produced the type of text that serves as the basis for today’s printed texts, inherited two things from their forefathers as regards the Hebrew text. They inherited a consonantal text (that is, a text in which the vowels were not written) and they inherited a pronunciation of that text. At some points, these two inherited readings do not coincide precisely. The Masoretic scribes thus developed the Ktiv-Qere system in order to indicate these disparate readings. The Ktiv indicates what was written in the consonantal text. The Qere represented the inherited reading. Different manuscripts had slightly different ways of indicating the Ktiv-Qere. Most commonly, the Ktiv consonants were simply left in the line of the text, but without vowels. The Qere is then given in the margin. The scribes generally considered the Qere to be preferable to, or more accurate than, the Ktiv. So, for example, Psalm 100:3 reads (KJV), “he made us, and not we ourselves.” In the HCSB it reads, “He made us, and we are his.” The KJV rendering indicates that the KJV translators were following the Ktiv, where the word “not” occurs. The translators of the HCSB were following the Qere, which indicated that, rather than reading “not,” the reader was to read “his.” [You’d have to know some Hebrew before I could explain it in any more detail.]

Now to Ruth 3:17. The Ktiv does not have “to me.” The “to me” is indicated by the Qere. The interesting thing is that many printed texts show the vowels printed in the line of the text, even though there are no consonants to go with them, contrary to the more usual custom of indicating the Qere in the margin.

None of this really has any affect on the meaning of the text. But it is significant that the ancient versions all seem to have followed a Hebrew text that actually had the word represented by the Qere of the Masoretic text.

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