The universal divisions of modern literary productions into books,
chapters, sections, paragraphs, sentences, and members of sentences,
together with capitalization and the system of punctuation, are so
important and so enthralled with modern composition and rhetoric that
we could hardly appreciate or understand literature apart from them.
Apropos to this observation, Professor Dobschütz says: "If we look
at the earliest manuscripts of the Bible which have come down to us,
we shall almost think that supernatural assistance was necessary for
reading them; no punctuation, no accent, no space between the words, no
breaking off at the end of a sentence. The reader has to know his text
almost entirely by heart to do it well."[61]
These distinctions of literature are mechanical and artificial devices
for clarifying and making emphatic a writer's thoughts as expressed in
written or printed language and they are comparatively modern devices.
Punctuation marks are indispensable in legal documents and in all the
commercial operations of the times. The altered position of a comma
gives a changed meaning to scripture texts and to legal documents. (As
an illustration of the changed position of a comma, note the varying
punctuation of Hebrews 10:12 as contained in different editions of our
Authorized Version. In all pulpit Bibles which we have examined, the
comma is placed after the word "sins," while in the various teachers'
Bibles the comma follows the word "forever." By the former punctuation
an important New Testament doctrine is negatived.)
Imagine yourself trying to read a philosophical treatise, a technical
or abstruse discussion, a scholarly or scientific essay, a thrilling
romance, or a legal document, in which there were no distinctions
of paragraphs, sentences, phrases, or even individual words--no
capitalization and no punctuation-marks of any kind to assist
in determining a writer's thoughts or the exact meaning of his
composition--and you must recognize the obstacles which confront the
researchers of ancient literary documents. The difficulties encountered
in the literature of the Bible are in no wise diminished when we recall
the fact that the originals of our sacred writings, both Hebrew and
Greek, were written, for the most part, in solid blocks of letters
analogous to our capitals, without any of the distinguishing limits or
relief which come from chapters, verses, pause-marks, or words. It was
only by degrees and at slow stages that individual words were separated
from one another by a spacing between them; then, later, came the
grouping of words into sentences by means of pause-marks and other
mechanical devices of literature.
The division of the books of the Bible into chapters and verses is of
comparatively modern origin. The chapters of the Bible are associated
with the name of Cardinal Hugo who, at about the middle of the
thirteenth century, divided the Latin Bible into chapters in order to
facilitate reference, for comparison of scripture with scripture, and
to make available a commentary which he had prepared. The system of
verses, so useful for reference in Bible study, is associated with the
work of Robert Stephens, a printer of Geneva who divided the chapters
of Cardinal Hugo's Latin Bible into verses and affixed a numerical
notation to them. This numbering of the verses first appeared in a
Greek New Testament which Stephens printed at Geneva in 1531. The same
volume contained also the Vulgate and a Latin version by Erasmus.
The importance of punctuation-marks as an artificial aid for conveying
a writer's thoughts and in giving emphasis to written or printed
language can scarcely be appreciated by the present generation, for it
has always been accustomed to their use. In the Greek manuscripts there
was, at the first, nothing corresponding to "stops" or pause-marks
as in modern literature. In the modern Hebrew literature there are
vowels or vowel "pointings" to facilitate reading; but these were not
expressed in the ancient Hebrew writing, inasmuch as the Hebrew written
language was made up exclusively of consonant letters (commonly three
letters to a word) without vowels or vowel "pointings." The idiomatic
use of the respective languages occasioned a further difficulty: In
English composition, _e. g._, the logical order is subject, predicate,
object with their modifiers in order; and emphasis is indicated by
_italic_ and CAPITAL letters, and by pause-marks without varying the
order of composition; but with the Greek and Latin literatures emphasis
was denoted by the position of words in the sentence, by the relation
of a word to other words, or in the use of words with reference to
their modifiers.
The development of a system of "pointings" in order to bring out more
clearly the meaning of a writer and so facilitate the reading of
manuscript literature, began at Alexandria, being first employed in
poetical writing. A slight open space at the left of a line, analogous
to modern indentation in the margin at the beginning of a paragraph,
made its appearance first on the papyri at Alexandria. In the
manuscripts of the New Testament the earliest attempts in the direction
of punctuation go back to the fourth century A. D., and consisted of an
occasional simple point or a small blank space in the writing, which,
to that extent, broke up somewhat the otherwise monotonous lines of
letters. _Stichometry_, introduced in the fifth century by a scholar
named Euthalius, was an arrangement of the Gospels, the Acts, and the
epistles of Paul in lines--regulated according to the sense--each line
terminating where some pause should be made in the reading; and so had
the force of a system of punctuation, but, owing to the waste of costly
parchment, it was not generally or extensively adopted.
Concerning the history of punctuation-marks it is claimed that Jerome,
the celebrated scholar of the fourth and fifth centuries (died 420
A. D.) used points similar to our "comma" and "colon." These points,
while not in universal use by the writers, were inserted in many old
manuscripts. In the ninth century, the stroke called the "comma" came
into more common use, and a dot above the line indicated a pause
equivalent to the "colon" or the "semicolon," while a full stop was
denoted by a large dot or "period" or a double dot, and by a space.
The interrogation point, identical in form with our semicolon,
occasionally appears. The "breathings" and "accents" with which the
Greek literature has come down to us, while traces of them appear in
the early centuries, were not common at the end of the seventh century
A. D.,--those found in the Vatican manuscript of the fourth century
and in the Alexandrian manuscript of the fifth were supplied by a
later hand than the writers of these copies. The Latins, in the wake
of the Greeks, adopted their system of punctuation, meager as it was,
and continued its use in the transcription of the Latin literature
throughout the Middle Ages.
The system of punctuation employed in all modern literature, and
which is so essential a part of the finished rhetoric, is of recent
development as compared with the course of literature, and dates from
the time of a Venetian printer, Aldus Manutius, late in the fifteenth
century. It was largely consequent upon the invention of printing,
though some of the punctuation-marks of the modern system were used
before the division of the sacred literature into chapters and verses.
It is to be noted that the present tendency by the best writers is to
simplify punctuation as much as possible.
The system of notation--as with many of the good things of life
and much of our wisdom--like the wise men in the days of Herod,
came from the East,--from India by way of Arabia. The origin of
the completed system of notation as now in universal use, at once
simple and complete, is comparatively recent and obscure. Its origin
and development had both a practical and a philosophical side. Its
beginnings antedate the earliest art, literature, and science. It began
in _counting_ and in some sort of tally of separate units,--perhaps
upon the fingers. Probably the ten digits of the two hands suggested
the widely-extended and ever-available scale of ten for comparison and
estimate. Other scales than ten for counting and calculation have been
employed by tribes and nations:--scales of twos, and threes, and fives,
and sevens, and twelves, and twenties. The ancient Hebrews employed
two or more of these scales.
The Hebrews and Greeks as well as the Romans used letters of the
alphabet instead of figures for counting and calculations. The system
of notation as we now have it was of gradual development. Under
Theoderic the Great (454-526 A. D.), Boethius made use of certain
marks or signs which were in part similar to our nine digits. This was
improved upon by a pupil of Gerbeet, who used signs still more like
our nine digits. But all methods of notation preceding the Arabic were
unwieldly, complex, and incomplete. The system did not originate with
the Arabs. As the Arabs had appropriated the Chinese discovery and use
of paper, so they appropriated the Hindu system of notation. The system
at first was without a _zero_: that character was added probably in the
seventh century. The decimal character was used to give positional or
place value to the nine digits,--the cipher having no value except in
combination with the digits; it thus completed the system of notation.