Biblical Hebrew Forum

["JAMES CHRISTIAN READ" <JCR128 AT student.apu.ac.uk>]

Thankx Yitzhak. Very interesting research. I've looked 
at the online image version of the aleppo codex at 
aleppocodex.org and it seems that there are no pe's 
in the manuscript but rather spaces. It would seem that 
whoever put the {pe}'s in the digital sword module of 
the aleppo codex did so to represent the spaces in the 
codex.

There seem to be a variety of spacing arrangements in 
the image version of the codex.

1) Completely empty lines
2) Space to the end of a line
3) Mid line space (of about 9 characters as you said)
4) Space a the beginning of a line where there is space 
   at the end of a preceeding line.


Finally there seems to be another spatial arrangement 
which struck me but must have nothing at all to do with 
early chapter arrangements. There are sections which 
are left aligned. It must have been awfully difficult 
to left align a text when writing from right to left. 
I wonder why the copyist felt the need to make the effort.


-----Original Message-----
From: "Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 03:14:52 +0000
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Pe in the aleppo codex

Emanuel Tov's "The Textual Criticism of the Bible: An Introduction"
(1989, Hebrew, p.
40-41) makes the following points:

1) This is an early system of chapter (not verse) division.  A large
chapter would be
signaled by a space till the end of the line, and a sub-chapter would
be signaled by
a space that doesn't reach to the end of the line, and in later
convention would be
only nine letters wide.

2) This is attested in a whole variety of early texts: Biblical
scrolls from Qumran
(Psalms, Isaiah a, Paleo Exodus), as well as Greek scrolls (Greek Minor 
Prophets
from Nahal Hever).  It is also known from non-Biblical scrolls from Qumran, 
and
Greek and Aramaic texts from the Hellenistic period.

3) Studies on Isaiah a show that in 80% of the cases there is agreement 
between
the spacing divisions of the Isaiah a scroll and the Medieval manuscripts.  A
similar result is obtained for the Minor Prophets from Wadi Murabaat.

Yitzhak Sapir
http://toldot.blogspot.com
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