preamblic

I've talked before about why no other dots in the Torah, and I keep saying I'll say more later. So here we go.

There are ten places in Torah where some letters have dots above them, variously styled puncta extraordinaria, nekudot, Extraordinary Points, or just "those dots in the Torah." For reference, the verses are: in Genesis, 16:5; 18:9; 19:33; 33:4; 37:12. In Numbers, 3:39; 9:10; 21:30; 29:15; in Deuteronomy, 29:28.

principal

Dots here serve much the same function as lines like - do in Roman letters; to delete or to highlight. I might use an underline to point out something you wouldn't necessarily have noticed, thus:

Found ermine, deer hides damaged (Wikipedia example of cryptic crossword clue)

and I might use a strikeout to indicate that a word doesn't belong at all, but nonetheless it's saying telling you something.

Dots are used similarly; here's a manuscript of Ketubot 14b. The text should be תנא קמא סבר כל פסול דקרו ליה ושתיק, and you can see how the scribe has started to write איזוהי א, from the phrase תנו רבנן איזוהי אלמנת עיסה later in the text. Realising he was in the wrong place, he's put dots over it (this is much quicker than erasing and redoing it), and continued in the right place:



Here's an example where the scribe was supposed to write רב נחמן בר יצחק אמר ראשון דמעיקרא משמע, but left out the word ראשון - realising this later, he put a dot where it should be, and wrote the missing word in the margin:



I know I've seen a manuscript where dots were being used to highlight particular letters, but I can't quite remember which one just now, so no picture of that one. These are mediaeval, not ancient, but mediaeval's easier to get pictures of - similar sorts of things do appear in ancient manuscripts, see for e.g. Emanuel Tov's Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, pp 56, 214.
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