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Cantillation Marks

The Ethnachta Clause

While reading along in The Art of Torah Cantillation (link) one stumbles upon the claim ( page 13) that one is encountering a list of the five of the most common variations of the etnachta clause (or clauses ending with the ‘enachta’ cantillation mark) in the Torah/Pentateuch.

The first pattern of the clause given on page 13 is:
‘Mercha, Tipcha, Munach, Etnachta’

You might wonder just how common the above pattern is and should you spend your time committing this pattern to memory or not? Great question but how does one go about answering such a question. In time past you would need to simply trust the authors’ judgment, scan through the Bible counting count all the patterns, or consult a concordance of the accents. Today, however, there are two currently available commercial software programs Accordance and now Logos as of 2019) that are capable of running searches on the cantillation marks and their patterns and there used to be a third program (BibleWorks) but it is no longer available for purchase.

While the three programs mentioned above are capable of running such queries Accordance Bible Software is my program of choice for the following reasons:

(1) Searches in Accordance are visually intuitive and quick to set up. You simply open the ‘character keyboard’ and click on the accent or accent marks you want to search on. No need for codes or esoteric program like language to run searches. The first program I used to run such searches BibleWorks required me to type in codes for each accent on the command line making searches time and energy-consuming to set up. At the time I was very thankful to be able to run such searches. Then when I tried Accordance and it was like a breath of fresh air there was no turning back.

(2) budget-friendly. If you already have a Hebrew text in Accordance you can run accent searches. No need to buy extra modules, database or dataset to run searches.

(3) bugless, glitchless, and almost error-free. Because Accordance was the first program to implement accents searches (back in 2003 with verse 6) they have had the time to work out almost all the issues over the years.
The Interface. Okay, I know this is very subjective! But I find the interface to be so intuitive that not only does it not get in my way, I almost completely forget about the interface while using the program.

Now, back to the question:

How common is the accent pattern: Mercha, Tipcha, Munach, Etnachta’ ?

in Accordance, the names are slightly different Merka, Tiphah, Munah, Atnah but it doesn’t matter as one does not need to type in the names all one needs to do is right-click on the visual representation of the accent(s) one desires to search on.

In Accordance Bible Software version 13 one would first need to open the program and a Hebrew Text of course. Then they would need to click on ‘Window‘ on the ‘menu bar‘ and on the drop-down menu select the option Characters.

After which the ‘Character Keyboard‘ (formerly known as the Character palette ) should appear.

Then in the search entry area simply type in a period before each clicking on each accent you would like to run a search on. (The period acts as a wildcard or place holder for a character in this search). If one is searching for an accent clause or pattern one needs to click the space bar between each period accent combination.

Then hit the enter button to run the search.

This search returned with 395 verses.

How the accents of the Hebrew Bible can change the meaning?

Does the study of the accents / cantillation marks of the Hebrew Bible aid one in understanding or interperting the meaning of the text?

Yes, I believe so take Deuteronomy 26:5 for example. Below is an image of the text in Hebrew. Notice that the text of Deuteronomy has been mirrored. The Hebrew consonants’ of both texts colored in black as well as the ‘vowels’ colored in blue are identical. The accents/cantillation marks are colored red. However, to demonstrate how accents can radically change the meaning of the text one accent on the first word (on the right) has been substituted for another:

Disclaimer: Each of the translations above represent only one of the multiple ways each of the parallel lines of text could be understood or translated in English. You may find this reading in the haggadah which in turn was getting this from an interpretation of Mechilta or maybe from Reshi. There are no Bible manuscripts that have this reading. It is just that when you look at a Sefer Torah or any other text without vowel points the verse in question could be, in theory, interpreted this way.

Now, examine how this same verse appears in a Torah scroll the verse appears neither with accents nor with vowel points. So a reader without these Masoretic notations would have had to decide from him or herself how to interpret this verse:

For more on the on the issue mentioned above check out:

https://www.thetorah.com/article/did-an-aramean-try-to-destroy-our-father

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/an-aramean-destroyed-my-father/

The above was originally posted back n 2018 on the Logos forums: https://community.logos.com/forums/p/135738/1008148.aspx#1008148

Here I have made a few minor changes and additions.

Accent Searches in Accordance Bible Software

Accent Searches in Accordance Bible Software

Late last year I bought a license for an Accordance bundle/base package for the Mac Emulator. My, purpose in getting Accordance was to acquire another database and software platform to run searches on Hebrew Accent patterns in the Tanakh/Hebrew Bible.  It isn’t easy to find programs with such capabilities.

Since, I am a bit busy and maybe lazy at the moment I will re-post a short description of an Accent search I posted on the Accordance  Forums last year:

Originally Posted on the November 6th, 2012 – 11:10  pm. I’ve always envied Accordance users and the multitude of Semitic texts available to them! Now, that I too am an Accordance user I thought I might as well make an attempt at running a few queries. I welcome an suggestions and corrections as I start learning to make efficient use of Accordance.It’s commonly known that the Shalshelet (accent/cantillation mark) occurs only four times in the Pentateuch/Torah. This is something also confirmed by popular literature on the subject:

  1. Cantors Marshall Portnoy and Josee Wolf, The Art of Torah Cantillation pg. 61
  2. James D. Price,Concordance of the Hebrew accents in the Hebrew Bible: Volume 1 pg 6.
  3. Joshua R. Jacobson, Chanting the Hebrew Bible pg. 107-108 (Out, of his list of seven occurrences of the Shalshelet four are from the Pentateuch)

Since, I already know how many times the Shalshelet should appear in the Pentateuch I thought this would be a great search to start with. So, here is my attempt:

  • Opened, Accordance
  • Selected the BHS-W4
  • Limited the Search range to the “Law” or the Pentateuch using the button bar above the text window.
  • Click on “Window” heading on the menu bar at the top of the screen. A drop down window opened.
  • Then selected “Character Palette” from the drop down window(Or the 5th choice from the top).
  • In the character palette window I then selected the Yehudit (font)
  • made sure that there was a check mark next to the “cantillation” option.
  • Then, on the command line I entered: A wildcard period(.) followed by Shalshelet (I used the character palette to select it)
  • Finally, I Hit enter

Sure, enough Accordance brought back all four verses in the Torah/Pentateuch which contain the Shalshelet. That was great! Now, I know what people mean when they say Accordance is intuitive! I was able to run this query basically without typing any codes in, and with only an elementary knowledge of Accordance.

Searching on the Cantillation marks(Ta’amin) of the Hebrew Bible

Modern Software makes it easy to search for individual accents/Cantillation marks as well as on specific combination of them in the Hebrew Bible.[A program called Bibleworks comes licensed with two different database for searching on cantillations/Ta’amin. The WTM(Westminster Morphological date base) and the JDP(Dr. J.D. Price accent database) . One, must be sure, to observe the different accent codes particular to each database. There are also differing codes from prose and poetic books of the Bible in the JDP datebase] Let’s say you’d like to search for every occurrence of the Mereka accent in the WTM.
(1) Enable the Permit accent code searching in Hebrew morph. version(s) option. (2)Now, select the  WTM database as your search version (3) Then on the command line type: .*@*Zy*

This yields you 286 hits in in 283 verses.
For reference sake here are the WTM accent codes:

  1. Segolta (a)
  2. Sinnorit (s)
  3. Zarqa, Sinnor (b)
  4. Pazer (t)
  5. Pashta, Azla Legarmeh (c)
  6. Pazer Mag or Qarne Parv (u)
  7. Pashta (with previous left) (d)
  8. Zaqep Magnum (v)
  9. Telisha Parvum (e)
  10. Mahpak or Mehuppak (w)
  11. Paseq [separator] (f)
  12. Mereka (y)
  13. Yetib (g)
  14. Mereka Kepulah (z)
  15. Dehi or Tipha (h)
  16. Tipha, Majela, or Tarha (0)
  17. Mugrash (i)
  18. Munah (1)
  19. Telisha Magnum (j)
  20. Silluq [meteg (left)] (9,2)
  21. Ole or Mahpakatum (k)
  22. Meteg (right) (3)
  23. Geresh or Teres (l)
  24. Tebir (4)
  25. Gershajim (m)
  26. Atnah (5)
  27. Azla or Qadma (n)
  28. Galgal or Jerah (6)
  29. Illuj (o)
  30. Darga (7)
  31. Shalshelet (mag,parv) (p)
  32. Telisha Qetannah (med) (A)
  33. Zaqep Parvum (q)
  34. Telish Magnum (med) (B)