The margins of Hebrew MSS play an important part in their cliaracter, since they generally con- tain the Massorah and certain kinds of various readings. The Massorah, or body of traditional commentary on textual matters, is of two kinds — the Greater and the Lesser Massorah. The Greater Massorah generally occupies the upper and lower margin of the page, whde the Lesser is placed in the outer side margin. Between the columns come the various readings known as the fCM and ^emrin (see Text of OT). The places of the Lesser Massorah and the various readings are, however, sometimes interchanged. Often, too, the Hebrew text is accompanied by an Aramaic paraphrase, either in parallel columns or between the unes. — On the paleography of Hebrew MSS
it is not necessary to dwell. Changes in tha manner of writing between the 9th cent, (the date of our earliest MS) and the invention of printing were slight, and the best authorities differ con- siderably in . their attribution of dates on tha handwriting alone. Moreover, in view of tha stereotyped character of the text preserved in all extant MSS, not so much depends on the precise assignment of dates as in the case of Greek MSS.
LiTERATrRE. — Ginsburgr, fntrod. to th* Ma^scrreti^o-CriHeeX Etiitioii of the Uebrew Bible, 1S!)7 ; S. Davidson. Text o/ tha 0T-, lSa9; Buhl, Canon and Text of the 0T-, Eng. tr. 1892; Wickes, Accentuatwn of the so-called Prone Jlooka, lth7; Driver, Notes on the Ueb. Text of the Books of Samuel, ISilO, pp. ix- XXXV, see also p. 957 ; Weir, Short Hist, of the Ueb. Text, 1899.
iv. Greek Writing on Papyrus. — We are far better situated with regard to knowledge of the manner in which the Greek Bible was written than is the case with the Hebrew Bible ; for, whereas the earliest extant Hebrew MS is separated by more than a thousand years from the date of composition of the latest Hebrew book of the OT, we have (thanks to the discoveries made in Egypt within the last twelve years) Greek MSS as early as the date at which Greek first began to be used as a vehicle for the Scriptures. From the first half of the 3rd cent. B.C. onwards we have a continuous stream of Greek MSS (not indeed biblical, liut showing how the biblical MSS must have been written), at first exclusively on papyrus, but from the 4th cent, after Christ also on vellum.
Greek writing upon papyrus falls into two cate- gories, literary and doeumentary, the former being used primarily for works of literature, but at times also for documents of special importance, such as petitions to the great magistrates ; while the latter, primarily used for all sorts of non-literary docu- ments (receipts, contracts, accounts, letters, etc.), was also occasionally employed for private copies of literary works. Both classes have therefore to be taken into consideration with regard to the transmission of the sacred text. So far as the LXX is concerned, indeed, the non-literary hand is not of much importance, since there is no reason to suppose that the version circulated to any great extent among other than literary classes. Copies were, no doubt, occasionally made in the common hand for poor people or for private use ; but it is not likely that this happened to such an extent as materially to atlect the textual tradition. With regard to the NT the case is different, as will he shown below.
The literary hand of the Srd cent. B.C., at the time of the pro- duntion of the LXX, is known from the paji.vri extracled by Prof. Petrie from the cartonna^'e of some mummy cases found by him at Gurob in 18S9, of which the best, from a palsogrophio point of view, are the fraffinenta of the Phoedo of Plato and the Avtiope of Euripides. These are written in a very small uncial hand, neat and firm, in columns about 6 in. high and 2J in, wide. According to a rough calculation, two rolls of about :i5 ft. each would be required to contain the Book of Genesis in the style of writing employed in the Phoedo SIS ; and, even with a taller column and greater economy of space between the lines, it !• certain that such a book could not have been contained in a single roll of normal length. The uncial hand on papynis admits of occasional ligatures between the letters, so that the distinction between uncial and cursive hands is less sharply marked on papyrjis than on vellum. Besides the sii'all literary hand Just mentioned, the early Ptolemaic pap^vri show a largnl and rougher uncial hand, hkewise used tor literary purposiB, but probably for cheaper and less carefully executed copi-s. The non-literary hands of the period are various, but for the most part are very cursive, with broad letters freely spaced out and large ligatures.
In the 2nd cent. B.C. two forms of literary hand are again found in existence (and it must be remembered that the extant evidence is still scanty, so that no description is likely to be exhaustive)— one (exemplified by the papyrus of H.vperides in Atherwijenem at the Louvre) being a square, flmi hand, larger than that of the Petrie Phcedo, while the other (conUined in « rhetorical papyrus, also at the Louvre) is smaller, weaker, and more sloping. The non-literary hand is generally less straggling than in the previous century, the larger fonns of it being often very handsome, and the smaller neat and flowing. The 1st cent. B.C. is a period of transition, the Roman conquest of Ggjlit