The earliest instances of paragraphs (ekthesis) in Greek manuscripts?
"Paragraph" divisions from the first century B.C.
Charles Hill recently drew to my attention that the earliest instance of ekthesis (out-denting) is probably in the Greek Minor Prophets scroll from Naḥal Ḥever, dated tentatively by Peter Parsons to the first century B.C.:1
And there are two other early instances of ekthesis as well:
P.Mich.Inv. 622 (dated to 42 A.D.) is an abstract of contracts registered at the writing office of Kerkesoucha Orous near Tebtynis (in the Fayum area of Middle Egypt).2
And P.Oxy. 2545 is dated to the late first century B.C. or early first century A.D.:3
E. G. Turner claims that ‘hexameter verses begin in ekthesis.’4 But the left margin of the manuscript is lacunose, so we cannot visually verify an ekthesis (see image above).
P.Oxy. 2545 contains Aristophanes, Equities, lines 1057–76 and based on reconstructing the lines, the editors of P.Oxy. 2545 say that the ‘hexameters begin about five letters further to the left (i.e. in ecthesis [sic]) than the trimeters.’
The scholia on Aristophanes, Equities, lines 1067–1069 say that these three lines are written ἐν ἐκθέσει ἐπικοὶ τρεῖς (‘in three epic lines with ekthesis’).5 My own reconstruction of the text confirms that there must have been ekthesis in P.Oxy. 2545.
What is interesting is that these are from different locations: the Judaean desert and middle Egypt (Oxyrhynchus and Fayum).
So, I think it's likely that the New Testament authors used some visual textual divisions, whether punctuation dots, ekthesis, or paragraphos markings.
But these would have been sporadic and not systematically used. And it's a separate question whether we can recover these...
Emanuel Tov, The Greek Minor Prophets Scroll from Nahal Hever, DJD 8 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).
E. G. Turner and P. J. Parsons, Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World, 2nd ed., Bulletin Supplement 46 (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1987), 72.
J. W. B. Barns et al., eds., The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part XXXI (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1966), 55.
E. G. Turner and P. J. Parsons, Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World, 2nd ed., Bulletin Supplement 46 (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1987), 72.
D. Mervyn Jones, Scholia Vetera in Aristophanis Equites (Wolters-Noordhoff: Groningen, 1969).