Puncta extraordinaria
Puncta extraordinaria, or extraordinary points, refer to certain small dots in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible, where they appear alongside other, more common, traditional markings (nequddot) found in the Masoretic Text. The dots may appear above or below (usually above) individual letters or even an entire word or group of words.
Quotes
[edit]- Puncta extraordinaria (extraordinary points) occur fifty-six times in the Old Testament text: fifty-three times above letters and three times below letters. The electronic edition of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia text notes that the function of these marks "is not entirely clear, but it has variously been proposed that: a) the marks are merely emphasis and draw special attention to the theological implications of the word; b) the marks are early critical marks which indicate an omission or change that the scribes desired to make, but dared not; c) the marks represent drops of ink or even bits of dirt that were slavishly copied from one manuscript to the next; d) the marks indicate a special or unusual pronunciation of the word, or that the word should not be read at all; or e) some mixture of the above, on a case-by-case basis."
- John Hudson: SBL Hebrew Font User Manual, p. 14. Version 1.51 (February 2008). Society of Biblical Literature.
- The most complex example of puncta extraordinaria is in Ps 27:13, in which puncta appear both above and below, and with other marks. … The SBL Hebrew font encodes these marks using the Hebrew 'upper dot' (U+05C4) and Hebrew 'lower dot' (U+05C5) characters; the latter is a recent addition in version 4.1 of the Unicode Standard.
- John Hudson: SBL Hebrew Font User Manual, p. 14. Version 1.51 (February 2008). Society of Biblical Literature.
