Copying the Dead Sea Scrolls
Inkwell from Qumran
The amount of data about the scribal practices, preparing hides, ruling, writing, ink and writing materials, attaching pieces and rolling of scrolls is enormous.[1] We can only survey a small amount of this data here. However, it seems that much of it is relevant to the way scrolls were written in biblical times, and it is certainly the case that the procedures required in tannaitic halakhah are in accord with many practices followed by the Qumran sectarians.[2] Interestingly, biblical scrolls from Qumran that are closest to the proto-Masoretic text type tend to be the ones that accord most closely with later rabbinic scribal rules. However, as codices developed and Torah scrolls became symbols with a ritual role to play, more and more specifications reflecting holiness and guaranteeing aesthetic concerns became associated with them in the rabbinic corpus.
Qumran scrolls are written mostly on skins of bovines, sheep or goats, and a small amount on papyrus, a material not permitted by later rabbinic law for biblical scrolls. The ink is a carbon-based vegetable ink, with no metallic content. It is normally black, with just a few words written in red, a practice not permitted by the… Continue reading
More on the Event Celebrating Outside the Bible Publication
Yeshiva University and the Jewish Publication Society Present December 3 Event Celebrating Outside the Bible Publication
Yeshiva University and the Jewish Publication Society (JPS) will host a Hanukkah event on December 3 at the Yeshiva University Museum to celebrate the publication of Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (JPS, December 2013).
The book, a three-volume anthology of Second Temple literature, was edited by Dr. Louis H. Feldman, the Abraham Wouk Family Chair in Classics and Literature at Yeshiva University; Dr. James L. Kugel, director of the Institute for the History of the Jewish Bible at Bar-Ilan University; and Dr. Lawrence H. Schiffman, vice provost for undergraduate education and professor of Judaic studies at YU.
“Outside the Bible brings readers into the library of Second Temple Judaism and places Second Temple texts into the wider context of the history of Judaism,” said Schiffman. “It was a great privilege to work with my coeditors and so many colleagues to produce this amazing collection of texts and commentaries.”
More than 70 scholars contributed to the monumental 3,000 page compilation, including several YU faculty members. Dr. Joseph Angel, assistant professor of Bible, was a contributor to the anthology. Dr. Yaakov… Continue reading
Composition and Redaction of the Dead Sea Scrolls
Composition
The Scrolls give us information about the composition of only one type of literature, collections of laws called serakhim.[1] These laws were derived from Scripture by halakhic midrash and then organized into serakhim, lists of laws on a topic, and often provided with titles like, “Regarding Forbidden Consanguineous Marriages.”[2] Such topical collections are in some ways forerunners of the later orally redacted Mishnaic tractates on their earlier oral proto-tractates. We know that the collectors of larger halakhic compositions found at Qumran had such serakhim available. Similarly composed “mini-rules,” stemming from the sectarian assembly (moshav ha-rabbim),[3] seem to underlie the collections of sectarian rules included in the various rule scrolls.
Redaction
Quite a number of Dead Sea Scrolls texts show evidence of redaction that enable us to learn about this process. Specifically, since all the major sectarian compositions survive in more than one recension, in which different components are variously assembled, it becomes clear that the larger texts were assembled from sources that originally circulated as independent units. This is certainly true about the Damascus Document (Zadokite Fragments),[4] Rule of the Community,[5] War Scroll,[6] the Berakhot texts,[7] and Hodayot[8]… Continue reading
