SCRIBAL PRACTICES AND APPROACHE S ... - Emanuel Tov

36 Chapter 3: Writing and Writing Materials
It is also an oral prescription delivered to Moses at Sinai that shall be written on the skins of
ritually clean cattle or ritually clean wild animals, and be sewn together with their sinews.
The evidence suggests that most of the stitching material used in the scrolls from Qumran indeed
consists of sinews. However, further investigation should be able to determine which threads
were made of animal sinews and which of flax, in the latter case contrary to rabbinic custom. In
their 1962 research, Poole–Reed 72 claimed that the stitching material which they examined was of
vegetable origin and most probably derived from flax. It is not known, however, which specific
scrolls were examined for this purpose.
• 1QIsa a : The stitching material was described by Burrows, The Dead Sea Scrolls, I.xiv as ‘linen thread.’
• 4QNum b : N. Jastram, DJD XII, 217 concluded that the unraveling of the thread preceding col. XV (frg. 22b)
suggested that it consisted of flax rather than sinews.
• 4QcryptA Words of the Maskil (4Q298): S. J. Pfann, DJD XX, 2 describes the stitching material as flax.
• 4QApocryphal Pentateuch A (4Q368) frg. 4: The stitching material is probably flax.
The two biblical scrolls quoted as deviating from the rabbinic custom (4QNum b [pre-
Samaritan, Qumran scribal practice] and 1QIsa a [Qumran scribal practice]) are non-Masoretic.
It is not impossible that a damaged inscribed sheet was on occasion replaced with a repair
sheet:
• According to VanderKam–Milik, the beginning of 4QJuba (4Q216) written by scribe A contains a repair sheet.
The change of hands between scribes A and B of 4QJuba (4Q216) is clearly visible in frg. 12.
• According to J. Strugnell, the first sheet of 4QDeutn (illustr. 1 5), 5 containing Deut 8:5-10 in a single column
and followed by a sheet containing 5:1–6:1, may have been a wrongly positioned repair sheet. See the analysis by
S. A. White (Crawford), quoted in n. 167 and for a different view, see below ch. 4a.
Tefillin were folded in a special way, for which see Yadin, Tefillin, 15–21. According to
Broshi–Yardeni, DJD XIX, 77, the tiny fragment 4QList of False Prophets ar (4Q339) was
folded twice and held together by a string passed through holes still visible on the fragment. This
fragment was named a ‘card’ by Steudel, “Assembling,” n. 3.
See further ch. 4d regarding the dimensions of the sheets.
d. Scrolls
Documents comprising more than one column were contained in scrolls (rolls) 73 composed of
sheets of leather or papyrus. 74 Each such scroll from the Judean Desert contained but a single unit
(composition, document), 75 although some exceptions are recognized when different, possibly
related, compositions may have been written by the same scribe or two others in the same scroll:
72 Poole–Reed, “The Preparation of Leather” (n. 61). The quote is from p. 22.
73 The words ‘scroll’ and ‘roll’ are apparently synonymous. Scroll is described as follows in J. A. Simpson and E. S. C.
Weiner, The Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford 1989) XIV.746: ‘A roll of paper or parchment, usually one with
writing upon it.’ The list of early appearances of this word shows that it was used especially with regard to scrolls
mentioned in Hebrew and Greek Scripture, as early as Tyndale’s translation of Rev 6:14 in 1526. The term is used also
especially for the Jewish ‘Scroll of the Law’ (sefer ha-Torah) with the earliest occurrences listed in the Dictionary
dating from 1887.
74 Very little is known about papyrus scrolls deposited in the Judean Desert, as no complete scrolls have been preserved
(see below § e concerning fragmentary papyrus scrolls). Egyptian papyrus scrolls were strengthened with a
reinforcement strip at the beginning and/or end.
75 Conversely, each ancient text was once written in a single scroll (although longer documents would have been written
in more than one scroll). This applies to the individual books of the Bible, even to the books of the Minor Prophets,
which at a later stage were combined into a single unit (scroll). See M. Haran, “The Size of Books in the Bible and the
Division of the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomistic Work,” Tarbiz 53 (1984) 329–52 (Heb. with Eng. summ.). At a
later period, however, when larger scrolls were in use, several units were combined into one scroll (the Minor Prophets,
the Torah, Former Prophets). For a discussion of the relevant Qumran evidence, see ch. 4, TABLE 11 and the discussion
there.