amajorityofancientmanuscriptslookveryunusualtoustodayparchmentwasveryexpensiveandsomeasuresweretakentoeconomizespacethetextisnotdividedintoparagraphsorlinesandthereisnopunctuationorspacesbetweenwordsA majority of ancient manuscripts look very unusual to us today. Parchment was very expensive and so measures were taken to to economize space. The text is not divided into paragraphs or lines, and there is no punctuation or spaces between words [as illustrated in the text above]. The sheer visual impact of letter after uninterrupted letter must have been daunting and discouraging to all but the most skilled readers. There are no visual clues as to the structure of the text; the structure of the text could be most properly discerned when it was read aloud.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Structuralcluestothetext
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I knew about no-space thing in the original text, but had never much considered the visual impact, much less - and probably more to the point for your class - the necessity of the audio for making sense of it. (An aside: in Hebrew [Old Testament], there is also the no-space thing in the original manuscripts, I believe, ...but with the additional challenge of no vowels!) --Dave Vroege
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