Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Henry Churchyard" <churchh AT usa.net>]

> From: "Rob Barrett/Almaden/IBM" <barrett AT almaden.ibm.com>

> According to the Code Manual for eBHS from Westminster
> (http://www.wts.edu/hebrew/whmcodemanual.html), the BHS line breaks
> are marked by '?' characters.  When I encountered the
> missing-line-break problem, I checked the OTA text and indeed found
> that there were no '?'  characters present in the problematic lines.
> My suggestion is that someone else check the text to verify this.
> If this is the case, then the location of the problem is narrowed
> down to two possibilities: 1. The OTA text contains errors (missing
> line breaks) OR 2. The Code Manual I refer to above does not
> correspond to the OTA text and there is some other way of encoding a
> line break (but this seems unlikely to me)

That's a very good thought.  I threw out all the "?" characters in the
very first step of processing the BHS text for my dissertation, so I
kind of forgot about "?"  (it certainly never occurred to me that
anybody would write a software program in such a way that the presence
of the "?" characters is critically necessary to successfully process
the text, since these characters do not mark any feature of the
manuscript L/B19a, and do not represent any meaningful or ancient
characteristic of the Biblical text either).

I cobbled together a quick AWK script to find verses that had more
than 145 characters estimated to occur between successive "?"
characters within a verse, and turned up the following:


 244 NEHEMIA 3:15
 221 1 SAMUEL 25:39
 216 EZECHIEL 5:11
 213 NEHEMIA 9:37
 212 NEHEMIA 13:15
 210 ESRA 4:12
 209 2 CHRONICA 24:12
 207 1 SAMUEL 7:3
 204 DEUTERONOMIUM 13:17
 198 JEREMIA 19:9
 197 JEREMIA 5:7
 190 JESAIA 36:7
 188 1 SAMUEL 16:2
 187 1 SAMUEL 22:8
 185 GENESIS 14:2
 184 ESTHER 5:8
 184 2 SAMUEL 16:10
 181 JEREMIA 11:11
 181 GENESIS 22:5
 181 1 SAMUEL 23:2
 180 NEHEMIA 9:25
 180 JESAIA 19:21
 178 JEREMIA 7:12
 178 2 SAMUEL 16:9
 176 1 SAMUEL 6:15
 175 1 SAMUEL 26:25
 170 DANIEL 5:23

 170 1 SAMUEL 1:8
 169 DEUTERONOMIUM 23:21
 168 JESAIA 44:19
 166 NEHEMIA 7:45
 166 1 SAMUEL 19:10
 165 DEUTERONOMIUM 3:16
 160 EZECHIEL 42:9
 158 2 SAMUEL 10:4
 157 NEHEMIA 1:1
 157 JEREMIA 3:2
 156 1 SAMUEL 15:17
 155 JESAIA 64:4
 155 EZECHIEL 19:11
 154 JEREMIA 32:20
 153 EZECHIEL 40:21
 152 EZECHIEL 40:33
 152 1 SAMUEL 17:40
 151 JEREMIA 7:22
 150 ESRA 4:7
 150 2 SAMUEL 5:2
 150 1 SAMUEL 27:8
 149 2 CHRONICA 17:8
 148 DANIEL 6:4

 148 1 SAMUEL 19:9
 147 JOSUA 24:11
 147 EXODUS 20:4
 147 DANIEL 2:41
 146 1 REGUM 9:9
 

I looked at the OTA BHS e-text, and it did indeed have a missing "?"
mark:

NEHEMIA 3:15
W:/)"T04 $A63(AR HF/(A61YIN? 14HEX:EZIYQ $AL.74W.N
B.EN-K.FL-XOZEH02 &A74R P.E74LEK: HA/M.IC:P.FH01 H70W.)
YIB:N/E33N.W.03 WI/Y+A75L:L/E80N.W. *W:/YA(:AMIYDW.
**W:/YA(:AMIYD03 D.AL:TOTF80Y/W MAN:(ULF73Y/W
W./B:RIYXF92Y/W 14W:/)"T XOWMA62T B.:R"KA70T HA/$.E33LAX03
L:/GAN-?HA/M.E80LEK: W:/(AD-HA75/M.A(:ALO80WT
HA/Y.OWR:DO73WT M"/(I71YR D.FWI75YD00 S


(There should be a "?" attached to the end of WI/Y+A75L:L/E80N.W.
on the third line.)

But then I looked at my ca. 1989 CCAT BHS e-text, and that was also
missing a "?" character in the same place; the two are absolutely
identical except for the wrapping of the lines:

W:/)"T04 $A63(AR HF/(A61YIN? 14HEX:EZIYQ $AL.74W.N 
B.EN-K.FL-XOZEH02 &A74R P.E74LEK: HA/M.IC:P.FH01 H70W.) 
YIB:N/E33N.W.03 WI/Y+A75L:L/E80N.W. *W:/YA(:AMIYDW. 
**W:/YA(:AMIYD03 D.AL:TOTF80Y/W MAN:(ULF73Y/W W./B:RIYXF92Y/W 
14W:/)"T XOWMA62T B.:R"KA70T HA/$.E33LAX03 L:/GAN-?HA/M.E80LEK: 
W:/(AD-HA75/M.A(:ALO80WT HA/Y.OWR:DO73WT M"/(I71YR D.FWI75YD00 S 


So the SIL software may not be technically buggy -- but if it vitally
depends on an absolutely correct placement of "?" markers (which in
fact does not seem to have been present in the majority of the
versions of the BHS e-text over the years), then I would say that it is
somewhat finicky and persnickety (the opposite of "robust").

--
Henry Churchyard   churchh AT usa.net   http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/