The inter-verse and inter-chapter relationships of the te'amim

In 2015, I noted this post (below) that - due to the nature of blog posts - is transient, but deserves to be noted again. Wickes 1881: A treatise on the accentuation of the three so-called poetical books on the Old Testament, Psalms, Proverbs, and Job.

I have to repeat the note because Wickes is still taught and believed and I have demonstrated repeatedly that some of his claims are materially incorrect. You can even pay to read about his incorrect theories. Why would you want to learn confusion?

The scholars cannot study the accents without the music. How many of them would know that the tifha begins each of the responses to Job and that these verses are in the accents of the 21. We must correct the confusion of history with accurate and complete information. Scholarship is wonderful, but it must be subject to scrutiny. I am an old man now and not a scholar of the guild. I discovered this relationship between the two sets of accents through the computer program I wrote to create the music. The program (2013) 'knew' the difference between the set of accents in the 21 and the set in the 3 -- and it failed on the narrator's part until I noted the presence of an accent from the 21 in that part of the text. Then all was well with the music. No growth is possible until we see what we have done wrong.

From my archives: (lightly edited)

I am testing again the thesis that individual verses of the Bible are unrelated to each other with respect to the music (from Wickes 1881) as noted in an earlier post. Wickes writes the following: "Logically, a verse may be closely connected with the one preceding or following it; but musically and accentually no such connection exists." This a false thesis. Individual verses are clearly "musically and accentually" related over a wide range within the context of stories, books, and sections of the text. Here is another illustration that shows we should read the music of the text from the beginning.

I will give you one example from the book of Job. 

Job is a series of conversations from chapter 3 to 41. Each conversation is introduced by a phrase from the narrator. The music shows that each conversation is a response to Job. It could have been just a repetition of a standard bit of punctuation - but it is not. And the narrator (using the accents from the 21 books right in the midst of all the poetry) has ample scope for singing a suitable tone of voice as each of the three friends responds to Job (the conversations themselves being with the poetic accents of the three books).

I note also that Crowther in Studies on the Masora 2022 has missed the usage of the accents from the 21 books in the narrator's part. His claim (page 301) that the accents of the 21 are used 'up to Job 3:2, and then back at 42.7' is incomplete. All the narrator's parts use the accents of the 21. These include these verses: Job 3:1, 4:1, 6:1, 8:1, 9:1, 11:1, 12:1, 15:1, 16:1, 18:1, 19:1, 20:1, 21:1, 22:1, 23:1, 25:1, 26:1, 29:1.

Have a look. Note too how Job's initial conversation has an elaborate introduction. Yahweh's introduction in chapter 38 is quiet compared to Job's introduction in chapter 3. Then note how the narrator's introduction of Job always goes from tonic to tonic, whereas the introduction to the three friends' response always begins on the third (tifha) and descends to the tonic (silluq). There are no resting points (atnah or ole-veyored) in any of these verses. Also note that Elihu's introductions are exactly equivalent to Job's. Make of it what you will - but this is not an answer beginning on the third, rather it is more like the introduction to an addendum which Job himself might have sung.


All the chapters of Job are here in their musical form.

Elihu warns about inexperience vs experience: Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgment.