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I'm a relatively new baal keriah in the process of preparing Vayechi for next month. I happened to notice that the te'amim in my Tikkun Kor'im Simanim have a couple of slight variations that I haven't been able to find anywhere else.

In Bereishit 48:20, Simanim has:

וַיְבָ֨רְכֵ֜ם בַּיּ֣וֹם הַהוּא֮ לֵאמוֹר֒ בְּךָ֞ ...

And in Bereishit 48:22:

וַאֲנִ֗י נָתַ֧תִּֽי לְךָ֛ ...

But every other text I've checked - Mechon Mamre, SBL, a Hertz chumash, a JPS Tanakh, Sefaria - has revia instead of gershayim in verse 20, and gershayim instead of revia in verse 22. Simanim has a sidenote on verse 22 referring to a note reading "וַאֲנִ֞י [וַאֲנִ֗י] נָתַ֧תִּֽי לְךָ֛ שְׁכֶ֥ם", so its editors seem to be aware of a textual variation in that verse, although there's no similar note on verse 20 as far as I can find. (I'm not very good at interpreting masorah language, though.)

What is the source of these particular variations?

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    In general, it's rare that a variant has an obvious single source. There will be the version in the best Tiberian manuscripts (which have very very few variations between them) and then sometimes some other variations have crept in over the years with various degrees of popularity and various imprecise origins
    – Double AA ♦
    Commented 19 hours ago
  • Notice the below answer, once you strip away the pictures and jargon, just says exactly what I predicted: the tiberian mss have one way and some later editions have another way and it doesn't know how or why.
    – Double AA ♦
    Commented 3 hours ago

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The excellent Wikitext/Wikisource project "Miqra according to the Masorah (MAM)" maintains a detailed spreadsheet of all pesukim in Tanach with notes on sources of variants in letters, nekudos and trop.

In rows 1567 and 1569 of the spreadsheet's Torah tab, it contains details on בראשית מח: כ,כב where it wraps the words בך and ואני in curly braces containing terse notes indicating the source of each of the two versions of trop:

ַַּּיּ֣וֹם הַהוּא֮ לֵאמוֹר֒ {{נוסח|בְּךָ֗|2==א(ס),ל,ל1,ב?,ש,ש1,ק3,ו <גרשיים? אינו כן אלא ברביע>{{ש}}דפוסים=בְּךָ֞ (גרשיים)}} יְבָרֵ֤ךְ יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ לֵאמֹ֔ר

י {{נוסח|וַאֲנִ֞י|2==א(ס),ל,ל1,ב,ש,ש1,ק3,ו <רביע? אינו כן אלא בגרשיים>{{ש}}דפוסים=וַאֲנִ֗י (ברביע)}} נָתַ֧תִּֽי לְךָ֛ שְׁכֶ֥ם אַחַ֖ד עַל־אַחֶ֑יךָ

Using their page containing an abbreviation key which decodes all the symbols, we get that a version with בך\רביעי and ואני\גרשיים is upheld by the following sources (with "ב" marked with a ? - possibly since it could be difficult to discern which trop is being used there):

  • א(ס) = נוסח הכתר לפי הערותיו של יעקב ספיר
  • (B 19a) ל = כתב־יד לנינגרד
  • B 17 ל1 = כתב־יד סנקט פטרבורג, פירקוביץ
  • Or 4445 ב = לונדון, המוזאון הבריטי כתב־יד
  • ש = כתב־יד ששון 507
  • ש1 = כתב־יד ששון 1053
  • ק3 = כתב־יד קהיר 18
  • Ms. 882 ,ו = מוזיאון המקרא, ושינגטון

A visual example of one of these is a section of the Leningrad Codex with the relevant words highlighted:

enter image description here

A version with בך\גרשיים and ואני\רביעי is contained in "דפוסים" which would be one to many old printed versions of the Tanach. A listing of those that the MAM project uses can be found here. This would be the version used by the Simanim Tanach.

Here's a visual sample of one of the referenced דפוסים (this example taken from the one listed as מקראות גדולות דפוס נעטטער (Vienna, 1859)):

enter image description here

In the MAM pages referenced above, near each listing of manuscripts and printed versions there are often links to images and scans of the original source material if you want to dig further.

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  • Amazing, thank you so much!
    – Colin Watson
    Commented 8 hours ago
  • The catchall דפוסים is hardly specific and doesn't really help us understand where the variant came from. This is just the project's way of saying "something later"
    – Double AA ♦
    Commented 6 hours ago
  • True, a nice improvement would be to list which particular דפוסים. You might want to suggest that to them as they are very open to input (though typically a small number of people in their edit history so any sweeping changes might not occur so soon). For what it's worth, I just edited info re: which דפוס the image above is from.
    – EraserX
    Commented 3 hours ago
  • No, that's not my point. A long list of later printed editions is not all that valuable, all copying from each other. Trying to trace where the variant started would be. The question sought "the source of these particular variations" and you are just showing some random later printing which is almost surely not THE source of this variant.
    – Double AA ♦
    Commented 3 hours ago
  • ok, got it, thx.
    – EraserX
    Commented 3 hours ago

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