ach other more or
less completely by points. Yet the neglect of these is common. In most
Greek and Phoenician inscriptions there is no division of words. The
translators of the Septuagint may be reasonably supposed to have
employed the best manuscripts at their command. Yet their version shows
that in these the words were either not separated at all, or only
partially. The complete separation of words by intervening spaces did
not take place till after the introduction of the _Assyrian_, or
_square_ character. Ch. 14, No. 2. With the separation is connected the
use of the so-called _final_ letters, that is, forms of certain letters
employed exclusively at the ends of words.

6. A very _ancient Jewish division_ of the sacred text is into _open_
and _closed_ sections. The former, which are the larger of the two, are
so named because in the Hebrew manuscripts, and in some printed
editions, the remainder of the line at their close is left _open_, the
next section beginning with a new line. The _closed_ sections, on the
contrary, are separated from each other only by a space in the middle of
a line--_shut in_ on either hand. The origin of these sections is
obscure. They answer in a general way to our sections and paragraphs,
and are older than the Talmud, which contains several references to
them, belonging at least to the earliest time when the sacred books were
read in public. Davidson, Biblical Criticism, vol. 1, ch. 5.

Different from these, and later in their origin, are the _larger
sections of the Law_, called _Parshiyoth_ (from the singular _Parashah_,
_section_), which have exclusive reference to the reading of the Law in
the synagogue service. These are fifty-four in number, one for each
Sabbath of the Jewish intercalary year, while on common years two of the
smaller sections are united. Corresponding to these sections of the Law
are sections from the _Prophets_, (the former and latter, according to
the Jewish classification,) called _Haphtaroth_, embracing, however,
only selections from the prophets, and not the whole, as do the sections
of the Law. The Jewish tradition is that this custom was first
introduced during the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, (about 167
B.C.,) because the reading of the Law had been prohibited by him. But
this account of the matter is doubted by many.

In the Pentateuch, the smaller sections called open and closed
are indicated, the former by the Hebrew letter [Hebrew: P], t