Talmud Bavli
Talmud Bavli

Commentary for Nedarim 73:3

רב אמר שכר שימור ורבי יוחנן אמר שכר פיסוק טעמים

just as I [taught you] gratuitously, so you must teach gratuitously? Then should not Scripture too be unremunerated? — Rab said: The fee is for guarding [the children]. R. Johanan maintained: The fee is for the teaching of accentuation.<span class="x" onmousemove="('comment',' The whole system of punctuation and accentuation being post-Biblical, Moses' prohibition does not apply to it. The meaning of the phrase pisuk te' ammim is not altogether clear. Jastrow translates: 'the division of words into clauses in accordance with the sense, punctuation'. Be that as it may, it must at least refer to a particular manner of dividing the Biblical text with or without signs, over and above that which would naturally suggest itself by the subject matter. This conclusion must be drawn from the fact that it is regarded by Rab as non-Sinaitic: yet the clearly natural division, corresponding to peshat, could not have been thought of as introduced after Moses; what sense then did it make otherwise? There is mention of chanting in Meg. 32a, but there the reference is to the Mishnah as well as the Bible, the former being studied in a sort of chant, and the phrase pisuk te'ammim is not used there. [Berliner, A., however, in Bertr. z. hebr. Gram. p. 29, n. 1, quotes Rashi on Gen. Rab. XXXVI, (according to a Munchen MS.) as explaining pisuk te'ammim as Tropen, cantillation.] ');"><sup>3</sup></span>

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