SCRIBAL PRACTICES AND APPROACHE S ... - Emanuel Tov

128 Chapter 5: Writing Practices
that practice was initially only oral. At the same time, the beginnings of verse divisions may be
visible in one or two Hebrew/Aramaic Qumran texts (see below), while fully developed evidence
is known only for early manuscripts of LXX and T. The indication of these sense divisions in the
translations partly followed the oral traditions for the Hebrew text, 175 and partly the syntax of
the translations and the scribal practices used in the languages of the translations.
The indication of small text units developed differently for texts written in prose and poetry.
Some poetical units in the Bible were written stichographically, though in different systems, in
thirty texts from the Judean Desert, mainly from Qumran (ch. 5b). The details of this layout,
especially the extent of stichs and hemistichs, are necessarily based on an exegetical tradition or
ad hoc exegesis, which often differs from that of the Masoretes and/or the early versions.
Only in Isa 61:10–62:9 in 1QIsa a have such stichs—consisting of 2–5 words—been indicated
in the running text by the inclusion of small spaces after each stich. The section as a whole is
separated from the context by beginning and closing open section marks as well as by
paragraphoi. 176 It is unclear why only this segment of 1QIsa a among the Judean Desert texts was
singled out for the notation of stichs, which differ in a few details from the Masoretic division
into units (note the differences in 61:10 and 62:6).
Units larger than stichs, but still smaller than sections, were initially indicated in antiquity in
both poetry and prose segments of biblical texts, in the sources mentioned below. These small
units are known in modern parlance as ‘verses.’
Oral traditions. The main tradition of verse division was oral (as mentioned by b. Ned. 37b
with reference to the accent system), invoked for the reading of Scripture. The fact that the
earliest available evidence from the Judean Desert and elsewhere for the division into verses (see
below) is found only in early witnesses of two ancient translations (LXX, T) and not in Hebrew
manuscripts from the same period, with the possible exception of two late Qumran texts, cannot
be coincidental. Accordingly, the earliest manuscripts (the ‘original’ manuscripts) of the LXX
and T probably already indicated what we now name ‘verse divisions’ (thus also Oesch, Petucha
und Setuma, 341). At the same time, for the Hebrew manuscripts, the evidence suggests that
from an early period onwards verse division was part and parcel of the oral rather than the
written tradition. Indeed, at a later stage the use of verse indication in Torah scrolls was explicitly
forbidden (Sof. 3.7):
wb arqy la wbç µyqwsph yçar 177 wqspç rps
If a Torah scroll has spaces the beginning of verses, it may not be used for the lections.
The oral division of Scripture into verses is mentioned often in rabbinic literature which
stringently preserves the details of this tradition, conceived of as going back to Moses (cf. b.
Meg. 22a ‘Rab said . . . Any verse which Moses had not divided, we do not divide’). In that
tradition, such a small unit was known as a qwsp, pasuq, that is, a unit after which one interrupts
(qsp) the reading and leaves a pause, and which subsequently was indicated with a silluq accent.
The indication of this accent, usually combined with a dicolon, at the end of a verse indicated the
original oral division into verses and was therefore the end product of an exegetical procedure,
rather than its beginning.
What exactly constituted a verse in prose sections has not been determined and further
research is needed for the different books of the Bible, especially the prose books. 178 The
175 This assumption requires a further assumption, namely that the translators who rendered Scripture into Greek and
Aramaic were aware of the details of the Hebrew oral tradition.
176 This phenomenon was first recognized by Bardke, “Die Parascheneinteilung,” 72. The details were subsequently
analyzed by J. C. de Moor, “Structure and Redaction: Isaiah 60,1–63,6,” in Studies in the Book of Isaiah, Festschrift
Willem A. M. Beuken (ed. J. van Ruiten and M. Vervenne; BETL CXXXII; Leuven 1997) 325–46. The special layout was
not marked in Burrows, The Dead Sea Scrolls, but was indicated in Parry–Qimron, Isaiah.
177 Some manuscripts add wrq[ç wa or wdqwnç wa (see Higger, Mskt Swprym).