The vowel points are as old as the Hebrew text.
The vowel points are as old as the Hebrew text.
§ 334. Among the remaining arguments with which the Papists try to demonstrate corruptions of the Hebrew text, we must list not in last place the argument that the rabbinic scholars added the vowel points to the codex of the Bible and that therefore it could have happened easily that they corrupted the Hebrew Bible in their hatred against Christians.
** (The Papists defend this hypothesis also for the purpose of keeping laypeople from reading Scripture. Thomas Harding writes in Contra Ivellum, 15, sect. 7, as recorded in Ivellus, vol. 1, p. 123: “Many ancient and trustworthy authors have made it clear that in the nation of Israel only the seventy elders could read and understand the mysteries of the sacred books that we call the Bible. Because the Hebrew alphabet lacks vowels, only those men could read Scripture with the consonants, and in this way the common people were excluded from reading it.”) **
Bellarmine speaks about this matter thus (De verbo Dei, bk. 2, c. 2, penultimate §): “The Hebrew Scriptures are not completely whole and pure but have some errors of their own that crept in partly through the carelessness and ignorance of scribes … and partly through the ignorance of the rabbinic scholars who added the vowel points. Because Hebrew words can be read in various ways if they lack vowel points, it is not strange if occasionally they erred from the truth also in marking the vowel points. It can also happen that because of their evil feeling for Christ and hatred against Him, they at times rather approved that reading that was less favorable to Christians.” Last §: “The errors that occurred with the addition of vowel points do no harm at all to the truth, for the vowel points were added from without and do not change the text. Therefore, if we wish, we can take away the vowel points and read in a different way.”
In Controv. 1, c. 9, Gordonus Huntlaeus intends to prove “at the time of the Jewish synagogue before and up to Christ and also from the Lord’s ascension until the times of Jerome and Augustine, the Hebrew Bible was free of corruption on the part of the Jews; but after the death of St. Jerome a great corruption arose within a few years.” Among other things he also brings out this: “About that time, vowel points, the separation of words, and accents were invented and introduced by two Jews: Rabbi Aaron, son of Asher, and Rabbi Jacob, son of Naphthali; and this happened not without great dissent.” From this the question arises: Are the vowel points as old as the words in the publication of the Bible, or were they actually added later?
§ 335.58 The former is affirmed: (1) By some of the rabbinic scholars, as Buxtorf shows in the preface to his Thesaur. grammat., former edition. He says, p. 55: “In the book of Zoar, which by consensus of all Hebrews was written before the Masoretes and before the Talmud was published, I have found passages that not only mention vowel points and accents but also express the names of some, such as hireq, holem, shureq, segol, tsere, shewa, segolta, maqqeph, etc.” Rabbi D. Kimchi declares: “God revealed the vowel points at the same time as the Law on Mount Sinai.” What he writes on the Niphal is not at all opposed to this. “The arrangers of the points made a distinction between the Niphal perfect and the participle, ascribing the same singular form of the Niphal conjugation to the perfect with a patach [e.g., 
] and to the participle with a qamets [e.g., 
].” You see, by “arrangers of the points,” he does not mean their original authors but the restorers who corrected the vowel points that were written and observed carelessly over a long period of time in various exiles of the Jews and who called the points back to God’s eternal arrangement on Mount Sinai.
** The addition of observations, notes, and opinions of the rabbinic scholars does not prove that the Masoretes were the authors of the vowel points but rather the correctors of the vowel points. **
Rabbi Levi, son of Joseph, in his book Samadar, agrees with Kimchi and declares: “The vowel points were given along with the Law.”
** In his book Horaiath Hakkorach, we read the following: “Some of those who entered the vowel points, but who did not understand the true nature of the pointing, object and say, ‘Why were not two zarqa accents made in a single word, just as there were two later?’ They ought to have known that there was only one zarqa in the world and that Moses was shown only one zarqa.” In the book Samadar we read the following in the beginning: “If anyone were to ask how we know that the vowel points and plan of accents were dictated from the mouth of God, we can answer that Scripture was given as a complete thing, or completely, according to the passage: ‘And you shall write upon the stones all the words of this Law to make plain what is good’ (Deut. 27:8). If the points and accents had not been there to explain the words, no one could have understood their meaning.” **
(2) By most of our theologians: Chemnitz (Harmonia, c. 51, p. 339), Flacius (Clav. Script., part 2, p. 629), Haffenreffer (Templ. Ezech., p. 170), etc.
(3) By some of the more recent Hebrew grammarians: Buxtorf (Thesaur., p. 59, former edition), Cevalerius (Gramm., p. 23), Fabricius (Partit. cod. Hebr., c. 2), Engelbertus Engels (preface to Schindler’s Lexic.), Joh. Balthasar Baumbach (De lingg. orient. auctoritate, etc.), Crinesius (Disput. de confus. lingg., etc.).
(4) By some of the Calvinists: Junius (Animadv. ad lib. 2, Bellarm. de verbo Dei, c. 2), Alsted (Praecogn. theolog., p. 276), Polanus (Syntagm., bk. 1, c. 37, p. 75), ** Petrus Morentinus Navarrus (Grammat. Hebr., published at La Rochelle59 in 1590), and Drusius (treatise De recta ratione legendi linguam sanctam, p. 6). ** These make a distinction between a particular or private Bible that a private citizen reads within the walls of his own home and the public or authentic Bible that would be read publicly in the synagogues (Acts 15:21). They concede that the former lacked vowel points because of the bother and difficulty of writing them; they claim, however, that the latter did have the points because of the necessity of reverence.