The Syntax of Masoretic Accents in the Hebrew Bible.

• Author: Goerwitz, III, Richard L.

By James D. Price. Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity, vol. 27. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990. Pp. ii + 323.

Given the scant knowledge most Hebraists possess in accentual matters, James Price's Syntax of Masoretic Accents in the Hebrew Bible represents a welcome addition to the literature. After all, the accents, or , represent critical elements of all three main medieval liturgical Hebrew writing systems--writing systems that serve as our primary windows to the classical forms of the language. Any work that provides a clear structural outline or "syntax" of the is therefore welcome--all the more so if, as in Price's case, it attempts to step beyond the traditional "Wickesian" framework and takes full advantage (in the tradition of G. E. Weil) of machine-readable Biblical texts that can be exhaustively searched and analyzed.

Price begins with a somewhat spotty review of previous research, one that will, no doubt, discourage some would-be readers. Patience, in this instance, pays a reward: the body of the work waxes considerably more eloquent. Part I first sketches out his overall scheme, as it applies to the prose books of the Bible and then afterwards offers a detailed account of each accent's distribution and usage. Part I then concludes with a fairly lucid summary and analysis. Part II largely mirrors part I, except that it deals with the so-called "poetic" books, that is, Psalms, Proverbs, and Job. The work ends with a bibliography, a good general index, and a list of scriptural citations.

Price's basic goals are 1) to oust strict Wickesian dichotomies, i.e., the idea that disjunctive accents invariably bisect the cantillatory phrase; and 2) to replace these dichotomies with systems of almost-equal-rank "near" and "remote" subordinate segments (pp. 40-47; e.g., pasta and revia clauses function as near and remote subordinate segments before zaqef). Price's critique of the Wickesian framework is usually well motivated and at times devastating (see especially pp. 171-85, on ole wyored). One is left wondering, though, whether Price's own systems of near and remote segments can fill the resulting analytical gap. Prose zarqa, pasta, tevir, and revia-clauses, for example, all admit threefold division into pazer, telisa gedola, and geres-governed sub-segments. So also does silluq, which takes atnah, zaqef, and lifha as its subordinates. Price's dual near/remote segments, in their pristine form, are really only discernible in...