Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Harold Holmyard <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Dear James,

> Thanx for your research Harold. Very enlightening! So 
> it seems that they date back to at least Masoretic
> times then, eh? But surely the Masoretes would only 
> have made a point of putting the spaces there if they 
> believed them to be an integral and/or significant 
> part of the text? Does anyone know what the testimony 
> of our most ancient fragment say?
>
> Hang on a minute. I've just had a flick through my 
> dead sea scroll Isaiah photocopy and while I can't see 
> any pe's or empty lines there does seem to be many 
> occasions where the rest of a line is left blank. Even 
> multiple times on the same 'page'. Do the Isaiah blank 
> spaces from the dead sea scrolls correspond to the 
> Masoretic Isaiah spacings?
>  

HH: I am not in a position to make the comparison easily. Here is the 
online copy of the Isaiah scroll that I know about, but it is not that 
easy to read:

http://www.ao.net/~fmoeller/qum-1.htm

HH: If I went to the nearby seminary library, I could do this sort of 
comparison more readily.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard