Was There Ever an Oral Hebrew Masora?

The essay challenges the existence of an oral Hebrew Masora that purportedly preceded the written Masora. The concept of an oral Masora originated in the 16th century, when Jacob ben Hayyim and Elías Levita proposed that all Masoretic statements were laws given to Moses at Sinai and passed down orally until written down by Ezra and the Tiberian sages. This hypothesis, endorsed by C. D. Ginsburg and other researchers, has become generally accepted without additional investigation.

A thorough examination of rabbinic and Masoretic sources, however, raises doubts about the evidence for an oral Masora. The comparative study reveals significant discrepancies between rabbinic and Masoretic sources, suggesting that the tradition was not unalterable and that written Masoras are not a straightforward continuation of an oral Masora. Instead, the essay proposes that the Masoretic annotation system was a later development, likely inspired by surrounding textual traditions such as Arabic and Syriac.