1. The Eebrexo of the Old Testament.— It is hardly possible to conceive of the liturgical use of the Looks of the Old Testament without some kind of recognised division. In proportion as the books were studied and commented on in the schools of the rabbins, the division would become more technical and complete, and hence the existing notation which is recognised in the Tal- mud (the Gemara ascribing it to Moses [Hupfeld, Stud, und Kril. 1830, p. 827]) may probably have originated in the earlier stages of the growth of the synagogue ritual. The New-Testament quotations from the Old are for the most part cited without any more specific reference than to the book from which they come. The references, however, in Mark xii, 26, and Luke xx, 37 (i/n ti)c fidrov), Rom. xi, 2 (tV 'R\ia~), and Acts viii, 32 (// TTepio\)) tT)Q ypatpijc), indicate a division which had become familiar, and show that some, at least, of the sections were known popularly by titles taken from their subjects. In like manner, the exist- ence o{some cycle of lessons is indicated by Luke iv, 17; Acts xiii, 15 ; xv, 21 ; 2 Cor. iii, 14 ; and this, whether identical or not with the later rabbinic cycle, must have involved an arrangement analogous to that sub- sequently adopted.
(1.) The Talmudic division is on the following plan. [1.] The Law was, in the first instance, divided into fif- ty-four T\l'*ti~)%, parshiyoth' = sections, so as to provide a lesson for each Sabbath in the Jewish intercalary year, provision being made for the shorter year by the combination of two of the shorter sections. Coexist- ing with this, there was a subdivision into lesser par- shiyoth, which served to determine the portions of the sections taken by the several readers in the syna- gogues. The lesser parshiyoth themselves were classed under two heads — the "open" (nireriQ, pethuehoth'), which served to indicate a change of subject analogous to that between two paragraphs in modern writing, and began accordingly a fresh line in the MS., and the "closed" (nTSWp, sethumoth'), which corresponded to minor divisions, and were marked only by a space within the line. The initial letters 3 and 0 served as a notation, in the margin or in the text itself, for the two kinds of sections. The threefold initial S5S or OCO was used when the commencement of one of the parshiyoth coincided with that of a Sabbath lesson (comp. Keil, Einkitung in das A. T. § 170, 171).
[2.] A different terminology was employed for the Propheta; Priores and Posteriores, and the division was less uniform. The tradition of the Jews that the Prophets were first read in the service of the syna- gogue, and consequently divided into sections, because the reading of the Law had been forbidden by Antio- chus Epiphanes, rests upon a very slight foundation ; but its exigence is, at any rate, a proof that the Law was believed to have been systematically divided be- fore the same process was applied to the other books. The name of the sections in this case was ni"i^sn Eee
(haphtaroth' , from 1^?, to dismiss). If the name were applied in this way because the lessons from the Prophets came at the close of the synagogue service, and so were followed by the dismissal of the people (Vitringa, De Synag. iii, 2, 20), its history would pre- sent a curious analogy to that of "Missa," "Mass," on the assumption that this also was derived from the " Ite missa est," by which the congregation was in- formed of the conclusion of the earlier portion of the service of the Church. The peculiar use of Missa shortly after its appearance in the Latin of ecclesias- tical writers in a sense equivalent to that cf haphtaroth (" sex Missas de Propheta Esaia facite," Caesar Arelat. and Aurelian in Bingham, Ant. xiii, 1) presents at least a singular coincidence. The haphtaroth them- selves were intended to correspond with the larger parshiyoth of the Law, so that there might be a dis- tinct lesson for each Sabbath in the intercalary year as before; but the traditions of the German and the Spanish Jews, both of them of great antiquity, pre- sent a considerable diversity' in the length of the di- visions, and show that they had never been determ- ined by the same authority as that which had settled the parshiyoth of the Law (Van der Hooght, Prcefat. in Bib. §35).
(2.) Of the traditional divisions of the Hebrew Bible, however, that which has exercised most influence in the received arrangement of the text was the subdivision of the larger sections into verses (D^J^OQ, pesukim'). These do not appear to have been used till the post- Talmudic recension of the text by the Masoretes of the 9th century. The}' were then applied, first to the prose, and afterward to the poetical books of the Hebrew Scriptures, superseding in the latter the arrangement of otiyoi, KU)\a, KoppctTci, lines and groups of lines, which had been based upon metrical considerations. The verses of the Masoretic divisions were preserved with comparatively slight variations through the Mid- dle Ages, and came to the knowledge of translators and editors when the attention of European scholars was di- rected to the study of Hebrew. In the Hebrew MSS. the notation had been simply marked by the " Soph- Pasuk" (:) at the end of each verse ; and in the earlier printed Hebrew Bibles (Sabionetta's, 1557, and Plan- tin's, 15G0) the Hebrew numerals which guide the read- er in referring are attached to every fifth verse only. The Concordance of Rabbi Nathan, 1450, however, had rested on the application of a numeral to each verse, and this was adopted by the Dominican Pagninus in his Latin version, 1528, and carried throughout the whole of the Old and New Testament, coinciding sub- stantially, as regards the former, with the Masoretic, and therefore with the modern division, but differing materially, as to the New Testament, from that which was adopted by Robert Stephens, and through his wide- ly circulated editions passed into general reception.