How ancient paragraph breaks shaped biblical text

Biblical scholars Gary A. Rendsburg and Matthieu Richelle examined how white spaces functioned as paragraph breaks in Hebrew biblical manuscripts across three millennia. In an article titled "Mind the Gap! Telling Stories with White Spaces" published in the Fall 2026 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, the researchers demonstrated that two types of breaks—setumot (closed breaks where text resumes on the same line) and petuhot (open breaks extending to the left margin)—appear consistently from the Dead Sea Scrolls through medieval Masoretic manuscripts to modern printed editions. The scholars showed that these breaks follow an intuitive pattern, with setumot marking smaller subparagraph divisions and petuhot indicating more significant section breaks. Their analysis focused on places where paragraph breaks align with content expectations and on unexpected uses of breaks that illuminate narrative structure. One example came from 2 Samuel 3, where a genealogical interlude listing David's sons is set apart by a closed break at the beginning and an open break at the end, separating it from the surrounding war narrative. The consistency of these textual divisions across ancient and medieval sources demonstrates that paragraph placement was a deliberate part of the biblical transmission tradition.

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Source: Biblical Archaeology Society — https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-artifacts/dead-sea-scrolls/mind-gap/