It was natural that the prophets and historians, all of whom wrote soon after the exile, should employ the sacred language of their fathers. This fact cannot be adduced as a valid argument that the body of the people continued to speak Hebrew. The incorporation, on the other hand, of long passages in Chaldee into the books of Daniel and Ezra implies at least that this language was known to the people at large. As to the children spoken of in Neh. 13:24, who "could not speak in the Jews' language, but according to the language of each people"--the people, to wit, to which their mothers belonged--"the Jews' language" here is probably the language used by the Jews, as distinguished from that used by the people of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. Keil, Introduction to Old Testament, Sec. 18. 5. After the Hebrew had ceased to be the language of the common people, its traditional pronunciation was carefully preserved for many successive centuries in the synagogue-reading. It was not till several centuries after Christ (somewhere between the sixth and the tenth centuries) that the vowel-signs and other marks of distinction were added in order to perpetuate, with all possible accuracy, the solemn traditional pronunciation of the synagogue. This work is ascribed to learned Jews of Tiberias, called _Masoretes_, from _Masora_, _tradition_; and the Hebrew text thus furnished by them is called the _Masoretic_, in distinction from the _unpointed_ text, which latter is, according to Jewish usage, retained in the synagogue-rolls. From reverence to the word of God, the _punctuators_ (as these men are also called) left the primitive text in all cases undisturbed, simply superadding to it their marks of distinction. After giving with great minuteness the different _vowel-signs_ and marks (commonly called _diacritical_) for the varying pronunciation of the consonants, they superadded a complicated system of _accents_. These serve the threefold office of guides in _cantillating_ the sacred text (according to ancient usage in the synagogue-reading); of indicating the _connection in meaning_ among the words and clauses; and of marking, though with certain exceptions, the _tone-syllables_ of words. In addition to all the above, they added a mass of _notes_, partly of a critical and partly of a grammatical character, relating to various readings, grammatical forms and connections, modes of orthography, and the like. These are called collectively the _Masorah_, of which there is a fuller Masorah called the _greater_ (found only in Rabbinical Bibles), and a briefer, called the _less_, the main part of which is found in common editions of the Hebrew Bible. To illustrate the _Masoretic_ as contrasted with the _unpointed_ text, we give the first verse of Genesis, _first_, in its simple unpointed form; _secondly_, with the vowel-signs and diacritical marks for the consonants; _thirdly_, with both these and the accents, the last being the complete Masoretic text.