5

WRITING PRACTICES

The wntmg practices reflected in the various texts from the Judean Desert differ internally in many details. They often show a common idiosyncratic heritage, while other practices sometimes coincide with writing conventions known from other cultures. Both sacred and nonsacred texts were written in the same scripts and with identical orthographic practices, with the employment of the same systems of sense division, scribal marks, correction, etc. (below, ch. 7a). Also, there are virtually no differences between the scribal systems used for the writing in the square script and the paleo­ Hebrew script excluding the details mentioned in ch. 7b.

a. Divisions between , s1nall sense units (stichs and verses), sections, poetical units, and books

Divisions in the text, whether between words, stichs, verses, sections, larger units, and books are indicated in a variety of ways in the Judean Desert texts.

(1) division

The various languages and corpora of texts from the ancient Middle East employed different systems of word division, while some had no such division at all. For an overall analysis, see Ashton, Scribal Habits, ch. 7; A. F. Robertson, Word Dividers; Gordon, Ugaritic Textbook, 24 (vertical wedge); idem, "Non­ Word Divider Use of the Small Vertical Wedge in Yarih and Nikkal and in an Akkadian Text Written in Alphabetic ," in Ki Baruch Hu, Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Judaic Studies in Honor of Baruch A. Levin (ed. R. Chazan et al.; Winona Lake, Indiana 1999) 89-109; W. Horowitz, Graphemic Representation of Word Boundary: The Small Vertical Wedge in Ugaritic, unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Yale 1971; Tov, TCHB, 208-9; A. R. Millard, '"' in Early Hebrew-Ancient Practice or Modern Surmise?" JSS 15 (1970) 2-15; idem, "Were Words Separated in Ancient Hebrew Writing?" Bible Review VIII, 3 (1992) 44-47; J. Naveh, "Word Division in West Semitic Writing," IEJ 23 (1973) 206-8. P. Saenger, between Words, The Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford, Calif. 1997) provides an in-depth analysis, but mainly of practices in European languages and literatures. Scriptio continua The overwhelming majority of the Judean Desert texts use one of two systems for separating words in Hebrew and Aramaic, employing either word-dividers of some kind (mainly dots) in texts written in the paleo-Hebrew script, or spacing between words in the texts written in the square script. Words in most Greek texts from that area are separated by spacing. Continuous writing (scriptio/scriptura continua) or that with very few breaks is attested only in some texts or groups of texts, probably with the purpose of economizing on space, since the texts use final Hebrew letters, or for aesthetic reasons: • All the tefillin and mezuzot; see illustr. 91. • The Copper Scroll (3Q15). • MurGen, MurExod, and MurNum (same manuscript?), written almost continuously, with minute spaces between the words. • Murlsa. 132 Chapter 5: Writing Practices

• The Greek Qumran texts of the Pentateuch (DJD IX), as well as hand A of 8!-jevXIlgr (hand B used spacing). In the early Aramaic, Hebrew, and Moabite texts, scriptio continua is used only sparingly (Ashton, Scribal Habits, 131). Usually words were separated by dots or very short vertical lines: the Tell Fekheriyeh inscription from the ninth century BCE (occasionally), early inscriptions in the Hebrew script such as the Moabite Mesha Stone, the Tell Dan inscription from the eighth or ninth century BCE, other Hebrew inscriptions (Siloam, Ekron, and Ophel) and a few Phoenician inscriptions such as the plaque from Sarepta. On the basis of this evidence, it seems likely that word division of some kind (dots or lines?) was also used in the earliest biblical scrolls (so Millard and Naveh in the studies mentioned above). The custom of systematically separating words with spacing developed later. If this opinion is correct, the word division in the earliest sources reflected the views of the biblical authors, editors, or first scribes. On the other hand, several scholars claim that the earliest biblical scrolls were written without any word division in the scriptio continua, as already suggested by Nachmanides in his introduction to the Torah.170 This assumption is supported both by some Phoenician inscriptions, which do not contain word division, and by indirect evidence, viz., many variants in biblical manuscripts and the ancient versions that reflect differences in word division (see Tov, TCHB, 252-3). These variants, representing different views on the content of the text, may indeed have been created with the introduction of word division. However, they could also have been created only in those cases in which the indication of word division was unclear in the ancient scrolls. Dots, strokes, and triangles in paleo-Hebrew texts (illustrations H and H:m) In the Judean Desert texts written in the paleo-Hebrew script, most words were separated by dots, while sometimes similar graphic dividers were used (for the background of this practice, see Tov, TCHB, 208-9).171 The practice of separating words with dots in papyri is evidenced as early as the eighth-seventh century BCE, the date assigned to the papyrus palimpsest Mur 17 (A: papLetter; B: papList of Personal Names). These dots were written on the line from which the letters were suspended (see 4QpaleoExodm and 11 QpaleoLeva), at the same level as the tops of letters. This practice is reflected also in the only text employing the Cryptic C script, 4QcryptC Unclassified Religious Text (4Q363a). This text is written mainly in paleo-Hebrew letters, intermingled with some cryptic signs. W. J. Horwitz, "The U garitic Scribe," UF 11 (1979) 389-94 showed that scribes in U garit divided words with small vertical strokes. See further D. Sivan, "The Glosses in the Akkadian Texts from Ugarit," Shnaton 11 (1997) 222-36 (Heb.). In cuneiform texts, originally there was no word division, but at a later stage a sign was inserted between the words (Driver, Semitic Writing, 42). Dots are employed as word dividers in early inscriptions written in the Hebrew script. viz., the Moabite Mesha Stone, and the Siloam, Dan, Ekron, and Ophel inscriptions. Likewise, the words in all manuscripts of SP are separated by dots (Crown, Samaritan Scribes, 80). These dots were written level with the tops of the letters, although sometimes they were written at the mid-letter level, see MS Nablus 8 (Crown, Dated Samaritan MSS). Words were separated by spaces with dots in the middle in most inscriptions. See J. C. Egbert, Introduction to the Study of Latin Inscriptions (New York/Cincinnati/Chicago 1896). The word-dividers in 2QpaleoLev, 4QpaleoDeuts, and 6QpaleoGen are shaped like small oblique strokes (which may be compared with vertical line dividers in many early lapidary texts), while in Mas lo (Mas pap paleoText of Sam. Origin [recto] and Mas pap paleoUnidentified Text [verso]) the word-dividers resemble small triangles. In 4QpaleoJobc, the words were separated either by dots or small strokes. Several scribes forgot to insert some word-dividers within the line. At the ends of lines they were usually omitted (4QpaleoGen-Exod 1, 4QpaleoExodm, 4QpaleoDeuts, and 11 QpaleoLeva), and this practice was continued in SP manuscripts prior to the sixteenth century (Crown,

170Pp. 6-7 in the edition of C. B. Chavel, Commentary on the Torah by Moshe Ben Nachman (Nachmanides), vol. 1 (Jerusalem 1959). 171 For other uses of dots in manuscripts, see SUBJECT , 'dot.'