Talk:Qere and Ketiv

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[edit] Form and Meaning of כְּתִיב

Previously, this stub was published stating that כְּתִיב meant "to be written," as a passive infinitive. The Aramaic form XĕXîX is analogous to the Hebrew form XāXûX. Thus, כְּתִיב means the same as כָּתוּב in Hebrew, which is "written" as a passive participle. "To be written" would be expressed with an infinitive, as in the Hebrew לְהִתְכַּתֵּב (correction: לְהִכַּתֵּב; see below). - Yonah mishael 05:46, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, passive participles sometimes develop an additional meaning of "obligation" or "necessity" in certain contexts, as was the case for certain Latin forms (Cato's famous "Carthago delenda est!", for example). I don't know the Aramaic language well enough to verify this personally, but the English-language gloss "to be written" is based on a claimed Aramaic connotation of necessity or obligation. In this particular context, the English-language expression "to be written" does not have a simple infinitive meaning, and would not be generally translated into other languages using an infinitive form. In any case, "Lehitkatev" means "to correspond" (Hitpael infinitive), so I really fail to see how that's relevant (in Biblical Hebrew, infinitves quite often appear without the Lamedh anyway). AnonMoos 15:55, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
Re: להתכתב. Correct. "To be written" is לְהִכַּתֵּב in the binyan נִפְעַל. My hasty mistake. It wasn't the main point of what I was saying. The point is: there exists a passive infinitive, and כתיב and כתוב are not it.
כתיב simply means "(what is) read" as per the tradition. It is not a command or an obligation, but simply an instruction on the proper way to read the text.
BTW, why didn't you transliterate להתכתב as lehithkateb as per your argued transliteration? Could it be because ב does NOT represent the sound [b] when unpointed but [v]? Kethib is a bad transliteration. - Yonah

In the meantime, we need to find a way to resolve the content fork. Kethib really is not the best way to transliterate כתיב/ܟܬܝܒ. We should be able to resolve these issues in such a way as to honor older labelling traditions (perhaps by including them as possible transliterations) while listing the entries in more accurately-transliterated forms. - Yonah mishael 15:20, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

You will notice that I redirected the article Ketiv and updated this article to reflect that. You may feel the need to make changes to the current article. This is at least a temporary solution. - Yonah mishael 23:59, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Transcription

Kethib is a problematic transliteration. The th (in appearance [θ] or [ð], but really [t]) represents the soft form of tav ת, which is written with aspiration on account of the lack of dagesh (תּ). It is inconsistent because the bet ב is also aspirated and would -- if this transliteration were consistent -- come across as bh, with the resultant form of Kethibh.

The better transliteration would be one that is recognizable to an English reader who has not been versed in transliteration schemes. This would be ketiv, which represents the apirated form of bet. Since the title of this article is based on a very imprecise transliteration, the article should be merged with Ketiv -- in other words, this article should be deleted. - Yonah mishael 07:07, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

First off, Kethib is actually the way the word would have been quite often transcribed into the English language in the 19th-century, when English-speaking Biblical scholars were concerned with how Biblical Hebrew / Aramaic sounds mapped to Greek or English, rather than with the modern Israeli Hebrew pronounciation (which didn't really exist at that time). Second, Biblical/Masoretic terminology is not generally transcribed into English as if they were modern Israeli Hebrew words (as I explained on your talk page). Third, this article will not be "deleted" -- it will be redirected to another name, if another name is found to be better. Fourth, you didn't advance the process when you created a redundant duplicative article at Ketiv. AnonMoos 15:55, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
The pronunciation now used in Israel did exist in the 19th Century. It was (and still is) known as the Sephardic pronunciation. The Sephardic Jews, who derive their designation from ספרד sefarad "Spain," used Ladino as a regular means of communication and spoke Hebrew in the manner currently used in Israel.
Perhaps, "deleted" is not the solution, then... but surely redirected to Ketiv is a good idea.
The oddity that I see, I guess, is that כתיב and קרי are Aramaic terms (which could indicate something different about their pronunciation), but Jewish Aramaic is always pronounced by whatever Hebrew system your synagogue uses. Thus, in my synagogue we read the קדיש as if it were Hebrew -- yitgadal veyitkadash shemeih rabah. In Ashkenazi synagogues, they use a more Yiddish-style pronunciation for the Aramaic, too. Thus, to someone of this background, כתיב would be pronounced kesiv.
Masoretic Text (without my interfering) uses the transliteration ketiv for כתיב, while Qere uses kethib. Should we not work for some kind of uniformity between these articles? The best way to do that would be to use the most accepted manner of transliteration used by Hebrew scholars. Don't you agree? - Yonah mishael

[edit] Comparison with Hebrew article: Combining כתיב and קרי

I was just looking at the Hebrew article on this subject, and it is noteworthy that both the "Kethib" (= Ketiv, Kethiv) and the "Qere" (= Q're, Kerei) are included in a single, more expansive, article. Can we not combine the two and redirect it all on to one page so that the subject could be treated more completely without any content forks at all? What do you think? - Yonah mishael

[edit] Merging

Per the comment above, I am merging the two to a single article, Qere and Ketiv. It makes much more sense to take them together comprehensively on the one page. I'll use a move, so the new article will retain the history of this page. The individual words (and their variant spellings) will forward to there, as redirects.

IMO the spelling "Ketiv" is to be preferred. It's the spelling used by Encyclopedia Judaica, and by Kelley et al in The Masorah of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. The three are all about even in a google fight: "qere ketiv -wikipedia" gets 1380, "qere kethib -wikipedia" 1220, "qere ketib -wikipedia" 1690. -- Jheald 19:03, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

The article Q're perpetuum has also been merged into this article, in the section Qere and Ketiv#Qere perpetuum. HYC (talk) 01:34, 25 January 2008 (UTC)