Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Kevin W. Woodruff" <cierpke AT prodigy.net>]

Bill:

Your best bet would be to read the section in Emanuel
Tov's Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible. 2nd
edition. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001. pp 50-53:

A unit in the Masoretic Text beginning a new topic (a
main subdivision) started on a new line. Thus the last
line had to be left blank after the last word of the
preceding unit. For this practice the Masoretes used
the term parashah p'tuchah (open section). The main
textual unit could itself be subdivided into smaller
units separated by a space-amounting to nine letters
according to the later tradition-within the line. For
the spacing in the middle of the line the Masoretes
used the term parasha s'tumah (clesed section)

These are presprestned by the the letters pe and
samekh respectively.

Kevin 



--- Richard Burks <rburks9400 AT comcast.net> wrote:

> All, 
> 
> I have read several volumes about textual criticism,
> each talk about
> paragraph marks as the end of paragraphs in the MT. 
> However they don't
> discuss what the significance might be of a "open
> paragraph" verses a
> "closed paragraph".  Someone out there have some
> thoughts on this.
> 
> Bill Burks
> 
> _______________________________________________
> b-hebrew mailing list
> b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
> 


=====
Prof. Kevin W. Woodruff, M. Div., M. S. I. S.
Library Director/Reference Librarian, Professor of Bible and Greek
Tennessee Temple University/Temple Baptist Seminary, 1815 Union Ave. 
Chattanooga, Tennessee 37404, United States of America
423/493-4252 (office) 423/493-4423 (home) 423/493-4497 (FAX)
Cierpke AT prodigy.net  http://pages.prodigy.net/cierpke/woodruff.htm