““According to Paul Kahle's well-known thesis, the Masoretic, especially the Tiberian, system of punctuation is not simply a representation of how Hebrew was actually pronounced in the sixth to eighth centuries; it also bears witness to the active intervention of the Masoretes, who deliberately introduced various corrections or reconstructions intended to guarantee that Hebrew woud be 'pronounced as it should be', and not as it actually had been during the previous centuries influenced by Aramaic ... However, it is possible, independently of Kahle's thesis, to accept that there might be important differences between Masoretic Hebrew and the language of the pre-exilic writings.””
