| Masoretic
Points, Vowels (Heb.), or as the system is now called, Masora
from MASSOREH ("tradition"), and MASAR ("to
hand down"). The rabbis who busied themselves with the Masorah
were called Masoretes. They were also the inventors of the Masoretic
points, which are supposed to give the vowelless words of the
Scriptures their true pronunciation and meanings by the addition of
points representing vowels to the consonants.
This was
the invention of the rabbis of the School of Tiberius (in the ninth
century CE). By doing this they attached their understanding
to the words and names in their texts of the Hebrew Bible.
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