Contents:
Near-Aleppo differs from MAM in three ways:
Each subsection of this document says what near-Aleppo has where MAM has something else. The changes are made in the verse's text, in a note's target, and in every parameter of a ketiv/qere template, and never in a note's body, which near-Aleppo keeps as MAM has it.
MAM's templates evaluated away are listed in the JSON reference.
The codex has no separate sign for the qamats qatan. Where MAM has HEBREW POINT QAMATS QATAN, near-Aleppo has HEBREW POINT QAMATS, at 7,431 places in its text and 1 more in a ketiv/qere template's other parameters. So HEBREW POINT QAMATS in near-Aleppo is, in Ben Denckla's words, “an ambiguous qamats, not a qamats gadol”. The note bodies and the copies of MAM's target keep MAM's qamats qatan.
The qamats template example shows both Unicode qamats characters and the final near-Aleppo form.
Where the divine name is read Adonai, MAM has a holam on its first he, and MAM's introduction says that the codex does not write it there except in a few places, which MAM's notes record. Near-Aleppo has no holam there, at 6,517 words, and keeps it at the 5 whose notes record the codex's: 1 Samuel 15:1; 2 Kings 20:9; Isaiah 30:1; Ezekiel 3:12; Psalms 26:12. Where the divine name is read Elohim, the codex has the holam, and near-Aleppo has it as MAM does.
For example, at Isaiah 1:2:
| MAM | יְהֹוָ֖ה |
| near-Aleppo | יְהוָ֖ה |
Where a word ending in the letters אדני is the divine title, with a qamats on its nun, MAM has a holam on its dalet, which MAM's introduction says the codex writes only in isolated places. Near-Aleppo has no holam there, at 437 words, and keeps it at Psalms 110:5, whose note records the codex's. The other 218 words ending in those letters, which are not the title, are as MAM has them.
For example, at Isaiah 3:17:
| MAM | אֲדֹנָ֔י |
| near-Aleppo | אֲדנָ֔י |
Where the divine name is read Elohim, MAM has a hataf segol on its yod, and near-Aleppo has a sheva there, at 304 words. At Psalms 68:21 the yod has no vowel, and near-Aleppo has it as MAM does.
For example, at Ezekiel 2:4:
| MAM | יֱהֹוִֽה |
| near-Aleppo | יְהֹוִֽה |
Where MAM has a revia and a geresh muqdam on one letter, the revia mugrash, near-Aleppo has the geresh muqdam alone, at 252 sites. Chapter 5 of MAM's introduction lists every such site with the codex's reading. Near-Aleppo keeps the revia at the 7 sites where chapter 5, or the note on the word, records it in the codex: Psalms 7:1, 25:21, 27:12, 35:14, 77:17, 105:2; Proverbs 19:26. The record at Proverbs 19:26 is doubt-marked, and the site is flagged. At Job 19:16 it has the two marks split across a maqaf compound, as the codex has them: the geresh muqdam on the compound's first word and the revia where MAM has it. Where the site is in a note's target, the note's form of the codex's word agrees with near-Aleppo's, at all 230 such sites.
For example, at Psalms 8:7:
| MAM | כֹּ֝֗ל |
| near-Aleppo | כֹּ֝ל |
Where MAM has an ole and a yored on one letter, near-Aleppo has the yored alone; the yored's Unicode name is HEBREW ACCENT MERKHA. Chapter 2 of MAM's introduction says that the manuscripts have the yored alone where its syllable begins its word and the word before it is stressed on its last syllable or has a disjunctive accent, as Yeivin does (ITM §360). Chapter 5 lists the verses where MAM has both marks on one letter, saying that the codex has no ole in any of them: Psalms 30:12, 42:3, 55:20, 68:20, 86:2, 109:16, 125:2; Proverbs 24:24, 30:15; Job 8:6, 9:22, 29:25, 34:20. Where the letter is in a note's target, near-Aleppo's word is the form the note's clauses citing the codex give, at all 12 such letters. The other 410 oles, each on a letter without a yored, are as MAM has them.
For example, at Psalms 30:12:
| MAM | לִ֥֫י |
| near-Aleppo | לִ֥י |
The ketiv/qere apparatus is the one part of the masorah near-Aleppo represents: a ketiv/qere template stands where the codex has a qere note. So where MAM's note on a ketiv/qere word says that the codex has no qere note there, near-Aleppo has plain text in place of the template. It reads a note in the same way where the note gives the codex's masorah note on the word and that note is not a qere note, as at Deuteronomy 32:13, Joshua 3:4, and Zephaniah 2:9, and at the second site of Ezekiel 40:24.
The plain text is the form of the codex's word that the note quotes, at 13 sites (Deuteronomy 32:13; 1 Samuel 10:7; Isaiah 18:4, 44:17, 58:14; Ezekiel 21:28, 24:2, 44:3; Nahum 1:3, 2:1; Psalms 89:29; 2 Chronicles 25:17, 34:22); MAM's pointed ketiv, parameter 1 of a מ:קו״כ-אם-2, at 4 (Joshua 3:4; Ezekiel 40:24, 40:25, 40:26); MAM's pointed qere, the spelling that the note's prose gives the codex, at Ezekiel 40:24; or MAM's ketiv, each of whose letters has the marks that the same letter has in the qere, at 2 (Isaiah 26:20; Zephaniah 2:9). At Jeremiah 33:26 the note's form of the codex's word is doubt-marked, so near-Aleppo keeps the template there, and flags the site.
At Deuteronomy 32:13, MAM's קו״כ has ketiv letters במותי and the pointed qere below. Near-Aleppo has the note's quoted Aleppo form as plain text, under the recorded decision to treat this spelling note as evidence of no qere note:
| MAM's pointed qere | עַל־בָּ֣מֳתֵי |
| near-Aleppo plain text | עַל־בָּ֣מֳותֵי |
Where a clause of a note citing the codex gives it a form that differs from MAM's target only in a maqaf, near-Aleppo has the form: 13 clauses, 5 of them marked in the note as a manifest error in the codex, and flagged. Near-Aleppo has a maqaf where MAM has none at 8 sites, 4 of them inside one of MAM's words: 1 Samuel 14:49; Micah 5:2; Psalms 75:4; Job 18:15, 23:5; 1 Chronicles 9:39, 10:2, 18:17. It has a space where MAM has a maqaf at 5: 2 Samuel 12:1; Joel 2:25; Psalms 106:48, 107:18; Job 21:15. A doubt-marked clause of the kind is flagged and not taken, as every doubtful reading is.
For example, at Job 23:5:
| MAM | מַה־יֹּ֥אמַר לִֽי |
| near-Aleppo | מַה־יֹּ֥אמַר־לִֽי |
This is the note's first quoted Aleppo form, with the merkha retained, under the recorded choice for Job 23:5.
Where the manuscripts have a hataf on a letter that is not a guttural, MAM has a sheva with a varika, U+FB1E HEBREW POINT JUDEO-SPANISH VARIKA, and gives the hataf's form in its note on the word. Near-Aleppo has the hataf, reading each vowel from the note: a hataf patah at 616 letters and a hataf qamats at 50. At the 5 letters where MAM's notes give the codex a hataf hiriq, 1 Kings 17:11; Psalms 14:1 (twice), 53:2 (twice), near-Aleppo has the sheva with a hiriq, as each note writes the codex's form. At all 671 letters near-Aleppo's letter agrees with a form the note quotes.
For example, at Psalms 40:13:
| MAM | אָפְﬞפֽוּ־עָלַ֨י׀ |
| near-Aleppo | אָפֲפֽוּ־עָלַ֨י׀ |
For example, at Psalms 14:1:
| MAM | הִֽשְׁﬞחִ֗יתוּ |
| near-Aleppo | הִֽשְִׁחִ֗יתוּ |
Near-Aleppo has the hataf at every varika of MAM's, whichever sources the note cites. Of the 669 notes on a varika, 87 quote the hataf's form under no siglum beginning with א, so that there the hataf rests on the convention and on other manuscripts rather than on a reading of the codex.
A stress helper is a second copy of an accent that stands at an edge of its chanted word, put on the first letter of the stressed syllable. The codex writes the pashta's stress helper except where no letter stands between the stressed letter and the word's last letter (Yeivin, ITM §239), and near-Aleppo has that convention, where the codex is lost too. Where MAM has the pashta's stress helper on a word's second-to-last letter, near-Aleppo has the pashta alone, at 197 words, and it keeps the other 3,627, a mater lectionis counting as a letter between. Where MAM has the stress helper of another accent, near-Aleppo has the accent alone: at 168 words with the segolta, 325 with the telisha qetanah, 997 with the telisha gedolah, and 179 with the zarqa. Every stress helper this policy strips is in a prose verse. In a poetic verse the characters of a zarqa and its helper are the tsinnor and the tsinnorit, two accents, which near-Aleppo keeps. The poetic stress helpers of the deḥi and the tsinnor go with MAM's templates for them.
Near-Aleppo keeps the 11 stress helpers that MAM's notes record in the codex, at Judges 18:19; 1 Kings 17:13; Jeremiah 2:2, 3:12, 44:27; Ezekiel 5:15; 2 Chronicles 28:23, or, where the codex is lost, in the Leningrad Codex, at Genesis 48:7; Deuteronomy 21:13; 2 Kings 17:24; Esther 6:13. At Leviticus 10:4 near-Aleppo follows the note's testimony to the codex's lost part, cited as א(ס): the telisha gedolah on the qof and the gershayim on the bet.
The Genesis 2:7 example shows a removed telishah qetannah stress helper.
Where a clause of a נוסח note cites the codex for a reading that differs from MAM's text, near-Aleppo takes the reading, if the clause is undoubted and quotes one pointed form. The clause cites the codex by a siglum for its text or for testimony to its lost parts. MAM's notes have 1,142 such clauses, in 1,062 verses, and the table gives what near-Aleppo has of each.
| What near-Aleppo has of the reading | Clauses |
|---|---|
| Already in place, after the conventions above | 851 |
| In place in a ketiv/qere template's qere, or through the ketiv/qere apparatus | 7 |
| Taken, in place of MAM's target or of some of its words, or in the ketiv/qere template that is the target | 120 |
| Taken as the pointed ketiv, in כתיב מנוקד | 68 |
| Not taken, being doubt-marked, and flagged | 54 |
| Not taken, the note's prose outweighing it, and flagged | 1 |
| Left as MAM has it, being a description in prose rather than a form | 31 |
| Not yet read or not yet taken | 10 |
Of the readings near-Aleppo has, 87 are marked in their notes as manifest errors in the codex, and each is flagged. Where the codex is lost, near-Aleppo also has the readings of the clauses naming the codex's method, שיטת-א: 13 differing clauses, of which 11 are in place already, the one at Song of Songs 8:4 is taken, and the one at Leviticus 10:4 gives way to the testimony the stress helpers follow there.
The Isaiah 27:5 example compares MAM's target with the Aleppo form quoted in its note.
Where MAM's notes give the pointed ketiv that the codex has at a ketiv/qere template, under the siglum א-כתיב or under a plain א with the ketiv's letters, near-Aleppo writes it in the parameter כתיב מנוקד, and its text follows that parameter: at 68 templates. At 63 the parameter is the note's form as it stands, and at 5 it has an adjustment: without the note's masorah circles, at 2 Samuel 5:2 and 21:12; with the maqaf of the note's form where MAM's ketiv has a space, at Isaiah 44:24, as the note says the two words are read together; with the marks that the note writes on bracketed alefs written as the near-Aleppo dataset's template ניקוד בלי אות, at Isaiah 36:12; and at Proverbs 3:30, with a space where MAM has a maqaf before the template, as the note's form has it. Of the forms, 5 end in the maqaf that follows MAM's qere.
An approved frozen source-only algorithm supplies a further 723 pointed-ketiv parameters from MAM's ketiv and pointed qere after the representation policies. Each accepted prediction has one surviving canonical candidate and no unresolved ownership node. Other transfer and source-accounting warnings are retained in a separate source archive; singleton selection is categorical, not a probability or a guarantee of correctness. MAM-note pointings take priority. The frozen import adds no source attribution or diagnostic metadata to a template.
Individual editorial adjudication supplies a further 5 pointed-ketiv parameters, at Genesis 43:28, Ezekiel 42:9, and Daniel 5:7, 5:21, and 5:29. The mobile he cases explain the unattached patah in Ezekiel; the Genesis 43:28 case and Daniel cases explain inferred readings where Aleppo is not extant. These decisions are recorded separately from the frozen algorithmic predictions.
A sealed reviewed portable import supplies a further 236 pointed-ketiv parameters: case-specific choices and source-supported agreements admitted under the approved plan only after checking current targets, notes, prior pointings, written letters and atom boundaries. It preserves current qeres and edition punctuation, and includes only the sealed pointings and target guards. All retained paired ketiv/qere templates now have an adopted pointing. Prior note-derived, frozen and individual pointings retain priority.
Near-Aleppo keeps the following as MAM has them. Most are features of the codex that MAM already has, and a change to any of them would move near-Aleppo away from the codex:
Near-Aleppo represents the codex's body text and its ketiv/qere apparatus, and nothing else of the manuscript. It does not represent: