Another word for pericope?

[Helikwps]

Hi and thanks for any help on this: I think the word "pericope" is used to describe a numbered chunk of reading text in New Testament study. Is there a word for it in Attic reading? What are those similarly-numbered divisions called (often bigger than a paragraph)? Replies much appreciated! Thanks.

[mwh]

A "perikope" in Greek is a section or segment of anything, including text. So I don't see why you shouldn't use it for chunks of Attic text as well as NT, even if that's not an established use. There's not really any other word you could use, except "chapter" perhaps (Latin caput; but Gk. kefalaion is more like a summary, giving the main points). Our "paragraph" derives from the Greek custom of marking off sections of text with a short horizontal line (the paragraphe or paragraphos) placed beneath the beginning of the line in which a section ended. They didn't start what we call paragraphs on a new line, but just ran the text on from beginning to end, with occasional punctuation; and they didn't really have chapters. The same goes for the NT texts, until people started dividing it up into chapters and verses.

[Helikwps]

Thank you much for your help mwh and that's a fascinating little history of the paragraph, I'd never heard that before -- makes sense as a demarcation if the words are being crowded together without spaces on a roll of papyrus. Also didn't know kefalaion to mean summary, only kefalei and proskefalaion, which if I recall means hat (?). Perikope it is going forward and thanks.

[mwh]

I must admit "pericope" always sounds a bit pretentious to me (except perhaps in the context of evangelaria). Why not simply "section"?

[Helikwps]

Good point! (And idea.)