How many vowels are found in the Hebrew Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947?

sportsherald

Presumably, none (see consonant substitution below): "The Hebrew of the Old Testament was written without vowels (they were pronounced, just not written). Hebrew Bibles today add various kinds of dots and marks to represent vowels. Most of the extra dots and marks are vowels which were added later to the text (some are accents). In addition, some of the Dead Sea Scroll scribes added consonants to represent vowels (e.g. Y for e and i, W for o and u, H and ' for A)." -from Vhttp://www.drbill.net/eu_website/dss_presentation/intro/1.htm Oct 08 12, 7:28 PM

Arpeggionist

Unfortunately, counting the times where letters are written as vowels in Hebrew is not a practiacal thing. True, Semitic languages are written in consonants. But in Hebrew and Aramaic (which comprise 99.9% of what is known to non-Jews as the Old Testament), the letters Aleph, Heh, Vav and Yud (????( are often filled into the body of the text to provide vowel context. This is as true of any Torah scroll written in Hebrew as it is in printed newspaper articles today. In Torah scrolls there are traditions of where those vowels are left out to make a point (or to allow other interpretations of the text), but it is almost impossible to say just how many of these vowel letters actually represent vowel sounds - as the answer is really anywhere from zero to a few million. Oct 12 12, 5:26 AM