Symmetrically Designed Sifrei Torah: A Quantitative Analysis - Hakirah

Symmetrically Designed Sifrei Torah: A Quantitative Analysis : 215
are the 3 rd and 4 th words on the top of the page (the numbers in the
chart are to the nearest 2 decimal places). Although we ideally would
have preferred that one דרש end a page and the other start a page
ס (
considering that there is some doubt as to a few words, and ‏,(שיטה
that the count in the back of all Chumashim says there are 79,976 (not
79,980) words, it is possible that the soferim counted דרש דרש three
words earlier. Because of the positioning of דרש דרש on the page and
the fact that the total number of pages is only one more than it is for
the initial division by 46 words, we feel strongly that Case 3 is the one
the soferim were targeting, i.e. the actual middle and the one the
Gemara gives are either directly in the middle of a page or at the top
of a page, albeit 1½ pages apart.
Table 9 summarizes all of our results for the different ways of
writing a S”T, i.e. equal verses, letters or words, and the last column
gives how many blank pages would be necessary to add at the end of
each S”T in order to make the Gemara’s letter/word/verse the actual
middle one. Note for the letter scenario, the vav of gachon is exactly in
the middle of the middle page, while for the word scenario the
middle דרש דרש is appropriately separated over two pages. 70
ופרים ט:ב...דרש דרש חצי תיבות
של תורה דרש בסוף שיטה דרש בראש
Table 9
Summary of Equal Letter/Word/Verse Sefer Torah
Property
Total Number 71
Of Pages
Gemara’s Middle
On Page
Blank Pages at
End of
Sefer Torah
Middle Letter 131 65.5 4
Middle Word 132 66.0 3
Middle Verse 134 67.0 6
70 Assuming the slight change in letters and words previously discussed.
These slight changes would represent the only differences between
their S”T and ours.
71 The second column is formed by doubling the third column, and the
last column is formed by subtracting the number of pages previously
stated as being required from the number in column 1. For example,
131 for the middle letter is 2*65.5, and the 4 in the last column is 131
less the 127 of Table 7 Case 2.