Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Dear Susan,

The DSS had spaces between words, but sometimes they are pretty 
small, if I remember, so confusion can occur.

                                Yours,
                                Harold Holmyard

> Greetings b-hebrew folk --
>
> I teach an Introduction to Biblical Studies course, and I've been trying to
> find out what's the evidence for whether the earliest Hebrew Bible
> manuscripts were written with or without spaces in between the words.  Can
> you help?
>
> I've found several web pages that claim "no spaces" but they don't cite any
> evidence (e.g. ancient manuscripts).
>
> I really don't care all that much what the actual answer is -- but I sure
> would like to know what the EVIDENCE is, one way or another.  And the basis
> for the assertions one way or the other.
>
> Here's what I've found so far, on both sides (spaces vs no spaces):
>
> SPACES:
>
> (1) My recollection of the Qumran Isaiah Scroll from when I saw it in the
> Israel Museum in Jerusalem; I'm pretty sure it had spaces between the words.
>
> (2) Wikipedia has this to say,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interword_separation:
> "Interword separation is the set of symbol or spacing conventions used by
> the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//wiki/Orthography>orthography of a script
> to separate words. According to Paul Saenger in Spaces between Words, the
> early <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//wiki/Semitic_language>Semitic
> languages - which had no vowel signs - had interword separations, but
> languages with vowels (principally
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//wiki/Greek_language>Greek and
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//wiki/Latin>Latin) lost the separation, not
> regaining it until much later."
> I've requested this book by Saenger through interlibrary loan...
>
> (3)  Another Dead Sea Scroll fragment I found on line that appears to have
> interword spaces is at
> http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/deadsea.scrolls.exhibit/full-images/hosea-b.gif
>
> My thinking is that the Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest extant Hebrew
> manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, so if the DSS documents have
> spaces, that confirms the "spaces" side, as far as we know.
>
> NO SPACES:
>
> Here are a couple of web pages that claim there were no spaces between words:
>
> (1)
> http://www.rotten.com/library/religion/bible/historical-construction/ot-errata/
>
> "First, prior to the 6th century A.D., the written Tanach consisted
> primarily of consonants. To be able to actually translate the written text
> into understandable and meaningful words, one would have to receive special
> instruction by a teacher or rabbi. Knowledge of this correct interpretation
> or reading was passed down orally from teachers to students over the
> generations. Second, as if to further confuse matters, words were written
> without spaces in between. Thus knowledge of where one word ended and
> another began was, as with vowel sounds, dependent on the oral tradition."
>
> (2) at http://home.earthlink.net/~ddstuhlman/crc64.htm :
>
> "Even though the scribes were very careful variations have crept into the
> text. One reason is that the original Torah scrolls were in the ancient
> Hebrew characters without spaces between the words and without final letters."
>
> I'm sure this is a naive question, but I don't have any obvious way to find
> out the answer besides asking you-all.
>
> Thanks!