The Scribe(s?) of the Great Isaiah Scroll

Mladen Popović, Maruf Dhali, and Lambert Schomaker have now published their groundbreaking PLOS ONE paper arguing that there are strong paleographic indications that the two halves of the Great Isaiah Scroll were written by two different writers.

Artificial intelligence based writer identification generates new evidence for the unknown scribes of the Dead Sea Scrolls exemplified by the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa)

More background on the project can be found in their recent presentations here, here, and here.

Digital Palaeography and Hebrew/Aramaic Scribal Culture Recordings Online

I am happy to announce that the recordings from the 2021 Groningen International Symposium "Digital Palaeography and Hebrew/Aramaic Scribal Culture" are now available online. These are great resources for those interested in the current state of digital paleography and the study of Hebrew/Aramaic scripts.

You can find the program and direct links on the conference web page.

The videos are hosted on the University of Groningen YouTube channel on a dedicated playlist. 

Eibert Tigchelaar on Skilled Scribes

Eibert Tigchelaar's lecture Beautiful Bookhands and Careless Characters has been posted online by the University of Birmingham. He proposes classifying scribal hands according to skillfulness, beauty, and regularity. He also suggests that there may be a correlation between skillfulness and function.

New Codex by Shmuel ben Yaakov

Kim Phillips has identified a new codex as written by Shmuel ben Yaakov, the scribe of the famous "Leningrad Codex". This is a codex of the former prophets (labelled L17), and Kim takes the interesting opportunity to compare it to the Leningrad Codex to better understand the scribe's work. A very interesting piece of detective work!

Qumran-Masada Link?

Jack Sasson brings attention to an article in Popular Archaeology noting that Ada Yardeni claims to have identified a common scribal hand in around 50 DSS, including scrolls from multiple Qumran caves and Masada. If this is correct, then it would be a very significant link between the various caves at Qumran and the finds at Masada.