It is an easy enough misunderstanding to have. Ancient Greek also had no
punctuation, and as I have read, no word spaces early on. This information
would have been encountered in any consideration of Homer, which Pound--and
Joyce--both make requisite. Of course, the lack of line spaces would make
rhythm and rhyme necessary to interpret written streams of phonetic
characters....
 
Word spaces are a newer technology than alphanumeric characters, and
punctuation a much newer yet. [Personally, I love the algebraic precision of
modern punctuation; it allows for more intonation and phrasing to be
included in writing than any earlier technology of transcribing written
speech, and modern poetry (Hopkins and Carroll and after) with its line
breaks and indentations, etc., allows for yet more. It eats a bit off the
old ambiguities, but gives us a richer music--I think.]      :-)
 
Chris Booth
 
 
> ----------
> From:         Yakob Leib ha Kohain [Jacob Leib Cohen, Ph.D.]
> Reply To:     [log in to unmask]
> Sent:         Thursday, March 11, 1999 10:17 AM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Re: that centaur ant
>
> N. Scott Reynolds wrote:
>
> >the Hebrew bible has no spaces to
> > delineate the words, reputably to enable myriad interpretations.
>
> YAKOV LEIB REPLIES:
>
> I'm afraid that's not entirely true. What you're referring to, I think,
> is that the "Hebrew Bible" (i.e., Torah) has no _punctuation_ to
> delineate _sentences_, not that it has no "spaces" to delineate "words."
>
> I have a Torah Scroll (i.e., the "Hebrew Bible" to which you refer) in
> front of me at this very moment and, I assure you, it is not one, long
> uninterupted string of Hebrew letters but one long, uninterupted
> _sentence_. May I ask the source of your information?
>
> JLC
>