Page 269 - History of The Quranic Text | Kalamullah.Com

THE OLD TESTAMENT AND ITS CORRUPTION 249

One major concern nevertheless lies in the accurary of the pointing system,
smce,

more than a millennium separates the Masoretes of Tiberias from the
days when Hebrew was a living national language, and it is altogether
probable that the pronunciation of Hebrew had undergone some
change in this interval, especially considering that it was written with-
out vowels ... It would seem necessary, then, to expect a fair number
of artificial forms in the Tiberian system, related to the Masoretes'
desire to produce a correct pronunciation which made them susceptible
tosucli outside injluen(es as ~riat and Islamicphilology.95

ii. Masoretic Activity Flourished in the West Under Islamic Influence

Masoretic activity flourished again in the West in the period A.D. 780-
930, evidently stimulated by Karaite influence... A new Tiberian system
was created, based on the experience of the Palestinian system, which
comhined the accent system with a means of indicating finer nuances,
and could represent the pronunciation and intonation of the biblical
text in its minutest details."

If the Karaite'? movement, a sect that emerged in the shadow of Islamic
Civilization and under its influence, was the stimulus behind the creation
of this Tiberian system, we can conclude that the entire idea was derived
from Muslim literary practices. Usage of elaborate diacritical marks in the
Qur'an (to represent the correct intonation of each word) in fact predates
the rise of this Tiberian system by over one hundred years.98

95 Wurthwein, pp. 26-7. Italics added.
96 ibid, p. 24.
97 According to Y Qojman [Q,amils 'lbri-'ArabI, Beirut, 1970, p. 835] 'this is aJewish
sect that believes only in Torah while discarding Talmud.'
98 Islamic influence over Jewish society was not limited to a handful of develop-
ments however, but was the catalyst for an enormous revival touching all aspects of
Jewish culture. The flowering of Medieval Islamic civilisation in many ways facilitated
the evolution ofJudaism into the religious culture that existstoday. Synagogue traditions
and rituals, along with the legal framework governingJewish life,were all standardised;
cornerstones ofJewish philosophic thought, ineluding Sa'adya's Bookr!fBeliefs andOpinions
(c. 936) and Maimonides' GuidetothePerplexed (1190), were also written at this time. See
Norman A. Stillman, TheJews r!fArab Lands: A History and Source Book, The Jewish
Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1979, pp. 40-41, where the author quotes
multiple Jewish sources.