Antithesis.
Antithesis.
§ 343. Those who accept the contrary are distinguished into two groups. Some argue that the points were added before Christ’s birth by 
, “men of the Great Synagogue,” namely, by Ezra, Daniel, Zechariah, Malachi, Hananiah, Nehemiah, Zerubbabel, Joshua the son of Josedech, etc., and by other holy prophets who, after their return from the Babylonian captivity, held the council that they call “the Great Synagogue,” in which they appointed which books were sacred and added the vowel points to them. (The opinion of these is more tolerable than that of the others who refer the invention of the vowel points to the time following the birth of Christ, since the men of the Great Synagogue, whom the learned claim were also the authors of the Masorah, excelled in the prophetic spirit.)
Some, on the other hand, think that the vowel points were invented and added to the codex of the Bible after Christ’s birth. But these, too, vary considerably in assigning the date and number of years. Some count 236 years after the destruction of the temple until the development of the vowel points; some suspect the pointing was added in the 470th year after Christ’s birth; some claim the invention of the points occurred in the 436th year after the destruction of the temple, which is the 510th year after Christ’s birth. They say that in that year the rabbinic scholars met in Tiberias, a city of Galilee, for this purpose and that the leaders of this work were a certain Aaron and Jacob, the former of the tribe of Asher, the latter of the tribe of Naphtali. Now in this group, all agree that the vowel points are not as old as the Hebrew codex.
This claim is made by: (1) Some of the rabbinic scholars: Elias Levita, a German Jew, in his preface to bk. 3 of the Masoreth hammasoreth, in which he cites the grammarian Rabbi Jonas in favor of his opinion.
(2) Some of the Papists: Genebrardus (Chron., p. 181), Sixtus Senensis (Biblioth., bk. 2), ** Stapleton (Relect., controv. 5, q. 3, art. 1), ** Franciscus Picus Mirandulanus (De praenotion., bk. 7, c. 8), Galatinus (De arcan. Cath. verit., bk. 1, c. 8), Torniellus, Pineda, Bellarmine, and Huntlaeus. ** Their words read: “The points, separations, and accents were invented and introduced after Jerome’s death with great disagreement by two Jews: Rabbi Aaron, the son of Asher, and Rabbi Jacob, the son of Naphtali” (Controv. 1, c. 9). Sixtus Senensis, Biblioth., bk. 3, p. 153: “The vowel points were invented long after the time of Constantine by Jews of Babylonian Egypt, now called Cairo [Cayrus], by the shrewd efforts of Rabbi Hammay and Rabbi Asse, authors of the talmudic doctrine,” etc. **
(3) Some of the more recent Hebrew grammarians: Drusius (De rect. rat. legendi and in Animadv.), Buxtorf (later edition of his Thesaur.), Peter Martinius (Technolog.), Reuchlin (De art. Cabalist., bk. 3, p. 741). ** He expressly denies Arcanum punctionis revelatum, which came forth at Leiden in 1624 under the midwifery of Thomas Erpenius. **
(4) Some of our people: Blessed Luther makes this claim in his commentary on Genesis 36 and 47, where he says, “The pointing in the Hebrew language is a recent invention on which we cannot depend everywhere safely.” Also: “The plan of the pointing is superficial, full of ambiguity, and quite uncertain.” ** And Hutter, De missa contra Bellarmin., bk. 1, c. 6, p. 98: “It is evident that the pointing of the Bible is not as old as the Hebrew text itself but came many centuries later.” **
§ 344. Before we set forth the arguments for this opinion, we warn that the opinion does not at all agree with chronology. You see, the authors of the Masorah pass judgment on the vowel points, separations, and accents as if they existed in the sacred text already before, as is clear from an inspection of the Masoretic work. Clearly, then, they were not the authors of the vowel points, separations, and accents in the sacred text. But if one claims that the authors of the Masorah are the men of the Great Synagogue—Ezra, Daniel, Zechariah, etc.—as most learned people claim, it is clear that the vowel points were added to the codex of the Bible long before the birth of Christ and therefore are of the same age as the text because their author, older than the Masoretes, cannot be shown to be anyone other than the very “holy men of God” through whom Scripture was first published. If, on the other hand, the authors of the Masorah are claimed to be the masters of Tiberias, that is, the men who conducted the meeting in Tiberias around AD 508 or (as others wish) 510, the invention of the vowel points cannot be attributed to the men of Tiberias because the aforesaid Masoretes speak about the points, separations, and accents as if they were already in use. We should also note that the authors of the Masorah are older than the talmudic writers because mention of significant matters contained in the Masoretic work is injected into the Jerusalem Talmud, which is older than the Babylonian Talmud, as Buxtorf shows (Tiberias, bk. 1, c. 8). But now, the talmudic writers are older than the masters of Tiberias, as Elias Levita explains (preface to bk. 3, Masorah Hammasoreth). Therefore the masters of Tiberias cannot be the authors of the vowel points, certainly not those which the Masoretes, older than the Tiberians, mention as already extant.