06-18-2008, 08:11 PM
Shlama Akhi Stephen,
Because words are never divided at the end of a line, the scribes depending on individual preference would either leave a blank space at the end of a line, or if they could they would stretch out the last letter to the end.
Some letters, like the final-form Nun or a Resh, cannot be stretched out without severely distorting the letter. Therefore, the original scribe left a blank space in these cases. If you look a few lines down from Luke 3:1, you could see that the scribe was able to stretch the final Waw in "Tybw" to fill up the empty space.
At a later time, in order to prevent the addition of words to the manuscript, a later scribe came along and filled in the blank spaces with an end-of-line marker in order to prevent any tampering. Sometimes you'll see dots, asterisks, stars, letters, etc. There's really no rhyme or reason to it. As long as it fills up the empty space, or prevents alteration it has served its purpose.
+Shamasha
Because words are never divided at the end of a line, the scribes depending on individual preference would either leave a blank space at the end of a line, or if they could they would stretch out the last letter to the end.
Some letters, like the final-form Nun or a Resh, cannot be stretched out without severely distorting the letter. Therefore, the original scribe left a blank space in these cases. If you look a few lines down from Luke 3:1, you could see that the scribe was able to stretch the final Waw in "Tybw" to fill up the empty space.
At a later time, in order to prevent the addition of words to the manuscript, a later scribe came along and filled in the blank spaces with an end-of-line marker in order to prevent any tampering. Sometimes you'll see dots, asterisks, stars, letters, etc. There's really no rhyme or reason to it. As long as it fills up the empty space, or prevents alteration it has served its purpose.
+Shamasha