historical perspectives: from the hasmoneans to bar kokhba in light ...

ANALYSIS OF MICROSCOPIC MATERIAL 177
the thread in the other seams is a double-strand; this is a third
sewing event. The fourth sewing event is seen in the repair of seam
5 of the Isaiah manuscript. This repair has random rather than
ordered stitching and a sewing thread with an S-twist rather than
the Z-twist seen in the other seams of this manuscript.
Two of the people doing the stitching appear to have been working
to a standard (seam 1 of the Habakkuk Commentary and seams 2, 3,
4, and the top and bottom of seam 5 in the Isaiah manuscript). The
work is of high quality, attempts were made to minimise its visibility
when reading the document, and the manner, albeit showing individual
differences, is repetitive. The third, and perhaps a fourth, person
doing the stitching did not do high quality work. No attempt to hide
the stitching was made and the work does not follow any standard.
Since there is no repetitive pattern present, I was not able to
determine if the repair in seam 5 of the Isaiah manuscript was done
by a person other than the person who sewed seam 1 of the Isaiah
manuscript. I characterize this as a repair instead of a join/seam as
there is high quality stitching done to the standard both above and
below it.
Due to the poor quality of the stitching in seam 1 of the Isaiah
manuscript, and the fact that this stitching completely joins the two
panels, it can be deduced that these panels were sewn together in
a hasty fashion at a time other than the manufacture of the manuscript.
I was not able to determine at the time if there was evidence
for previous stitching in seam 1. I did not remove any samples of
thread from the stitching in an attempt to identify the material.
Conclusions
It has been proven that there are microscopic traces on the scrolls
that can be characterized utilizing classical light microscopic and
forensic methodologies. Information as to the number of people who
stitched two scrolls has also been derived.
Scientific methods can provide information on technologies, places,
flocks, and people associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls. This information,
while having value in its own right, can be of value to other
scholars by providing them with non-subjective methodologies to test
facts indigenous to their hypotheses.
As valuable as the application of science can be to scroll research,