The Oral-Written Textuality of Stichographic Poetry in the Dead Sea Scrolls

Full title
The Oral-Written Textuality of Stichographic Poetry in the Dead Sea Scrolls
Updated By
Research notes

NR\Reader checked\09/08/2015

Reference type
Author(s)
Miller, Shem
Year
2015
Journal / Book Title || Series Title
Dead Sea Discoveries
Volume
22
Issue / Series Volume
2
Abbreviated Series Name
DSD
Pages
162-188
Work type
Label
17/08/2015
Abstract

Textuality in antiquity differs significantly from that of modern Western culture in which the text exists as a fixed, idealized abstraction. In antiquity reading was speaking, and stichography is a visual representation of this interface between speech and writing. Stichography’s spatialization displays scribes’ perception of the spoken text including the concomitants of oral performance. Stichography also reflects scribes’ attentiveness to the readership’s experience with the performed or inscribed text. Scribes interacted with compositions as authors, adapting them according to the exigencies of specific performance events. As a result, the transmission of a specific written layout can supersede parallelismus membrorum; nevertheless, parallelism is a constitutive device in the majority of stichographic texts. The demarcation of sense units elicits two symbiotic social uses, both of which are also implied by the content of the canon. Stichographic texts provide a formatted reference point that is styled to facilitate oral performance and pedagogy.

Primary Texts: Judean Desert Documents
Scroll / Document
Passage
6b
Section type
Fragment
Scroll / Document
Passage
33
Section type
Column