Johnson and Wagner on Material and Scribal Features of Greek Bookrolls

William Johnson and Nicholas Wagner have published their curated dataset of material and scribal features of early Greek bookrolls (3rd cent CE and earlier) at https://ancientbooks.papyrology.org/. They expect to supplement this and add their work on early codices in 2026. This is an extremely valuable database for those interested in the study of early scroll formats and scribal practices. Congratulations to both for seeing their hard work come to fruition, and thanks for making it so easily accessible!

Sikes' Catalogue of Early Greek Psalms Fragments

Ryan Sikes has uploaded an updated version of his catalogue of early Greek Psalms fragments here. This is a very helpful resource with links to images and editions, which I use regularly.

CEHP Transcription Update

I just posted an update on the transcription progress for the Critical Edition of the Hebrew Psalter (CEHP) project on the project blog. If you're interested in learning more about the project or getting involved, do check it out and fill out our Google form to register your interest. We are going to be working mostly with manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah and early Greek papyri, which is a great opportunity to learn more about working with manuscripts and textual criticism. 

Diachronic Diversity in Classical Biblical Hebrew

I just saw that Aaron Hornkohl has published an open-access book on Diachronic Diversity in Classical Biblical Hebrew, where he argues that we can see diachronic indications even within the corpus of Classical Biblical Hebrew. He suggests that, on balance, the Pentateuch reflects an earlier stage of Hebrew than the early prophets et al.

Rezetko et al. have published a critical review of the book, where they repeat their criticism of "linguistic dating" as unwarranted, given the complex formation and transmission histories of the texts. In the comments, Ron Hendel provides his own response to the review, which is generally supportive of Hornkohl's approach (if not all of the details of his argument).

I would not claim to be a historical linguist, and I haven't spent a lot of time in the literature. But I guess as a textual critic I have some stake in the argument. I agree, in principle, that it is not safe to just uncritically assume the MT text form for linguistic analysis. Scribes sometimes did update orthography or other linguistic features, and critical comparison of different versions sometimes helps us to restore earlier states of the text. That said, it would be wrong to imagine that updating on the scale of the (in)famous 1QIsa-a was common, when it is rather the exception to the rule. I see very little evidence of any kind of systematic linguistic leveling or updating in the tradition. Most ancient biblical manuscripts are much more conservative in their copying approach, and in general I have been impressed by the way the distinctive linguistic profiles of different works are so well preserved despite many centuries of copying. This is evident in orthography, morphology, lexicon (including loanwords), and even syntax. And bringing in traditions like the Dead Sea Scrolls and Samaritan Pentateuch is unlikely to change much, since these are precisely where we find most of the linguistic innovations, in contrast to the generally more conservative MT. My prediction is that systematic text-critical work will help reverse some linguistic changes and provide improved clarity at points, but that improved resolution will more often reinforce the more established diachronic observations of language typologists than undermine the typological distinctions.

On the question of redaction, no one doubts that many of the texts of the Hebrew Bible had long and complex editorial (pre-)histories. But there are many disagreements and uncertainties on the details of those histories, and I, for one, am hesitant to rely on proposed redactional histories as firm ground truths for dating the texts of the Hebrew Bible. If faced with a choice, I would personally much rather bring historical linguistic typology to bear as an independent control on redaction-critical models than the reverse. Linguistic typology is less dependent upon complex and subjective literary readings, and it is more easily pegged to materially datable evidence in the form of ancient inscriptions and comparative evidence. Of course, this is not to discount dating based on literary criteria entirely, and sometimes internal indications of date may be the best criteria. But too much of the tradition of dating the biblical books has been based on highly ambiguous literary data and is heavily dependent on very speculative redaction-critical theories. So I welcome attempts like Hornkohl's to provide more objective controls on literary-critical speculation. Whether the details of Hornkohl's particular arguments hold up or not remains to be seen.

HT Agade

Old Latin of Esther

Dionisio Candido has published a new book on the Old Latin translation of Esther, a book with one of the most complicated textual histories with numerous distinct versions.

Friedberg Genizah Fragments in the Ktiv Database

In a recent update that was sent out by the Friedberg Genizah Project, they announced that most of the images and metadata from the site have now been migrated to the Ktiv database, and they are continuing to work on developing new tools and transferring the remaining data.

Scriptura Psalms Resources

Scriptura has just updated their website with exegetical and translation resources on the Psalms. This is an incredibly detailed and helpful site with extensive exegetical and linguistic treatments of many of the Psalms (work still in progress). They also give sustained (if not fully systematic) attention to important text-critical issues in the Psalms. I had the privilege of working with Scriptura for nearly two years and have great appreciation for their contributions to the study of the Psalms. My own exegetical work focused on Psalm 51, and I was also responsible for reviewing most of the grammatical and text-critical analysis done by the individual exegetes. If you haven't used these resources, I highly recommend checking out the website.

Verse Numbering in Hebrew

David Moster has produced a nice video on the role of concordances in the development of verse numbering in the Hebrew tradition.

Digital Latin Library

I recently learned from Hugh Cayless about the Digital Latin Library, a very useful resource for accessing digital editions of Latin literature. They also provide a number of helpful videos reflecting on the work of textual criticism in Latin literature.

Radiocarbon Dating, AI, and Paleography

Mladen Popovic et al. have published their long-anticipated article from the ERC project at the University of Groningen entitled The Hands that Wrote the Bible: Digital Palaeography and Scribal Culture of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The article describes the process of extracting new radiocarbon dates from a selection of Dead Sea Scrolls, digitally extracting quantifiable features of their scripts, and building an automated date estimation system called "Enoch." Roughly 80% of the resulting estimates agree with traditional, qualitative paleographical datings, but the results of both the radiocarbon dating and Enoch predictions suggests that several manuscripts throughout the series may well have been earlier than commonly supposed. This research moves the field forward considerably by adding quantitative, computational tools to aid paleographers that are not dependent upon conventional models for script development. In many cases, these new tools support previous approaches by grounding them in more secure dates derived from scientific analysis of the material remains instead of the handwriting style. But the results sometimes challenge conventional wisdom and have potential to help refine our understanding of Hebrew script development in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Congratulations to everyone involved for a job well done and a significant contribution to the field!

For a popular-level news report on the publication, see Science.

*Disclaimer: I worked with Mladen et al. on the project for several years during the foundational stages of the research, but I was not a co-author for this academic article.

Update on the Virtual Unrolling of Herculaneum Papyri

The Economist gives a useful update on progress virtually unrolling the Herculaneum scrolls, which is one of the more exciting technological advances in manuscript studies today.

Ezekiel Papyrus in Madrid

Sofia Torallas Tovar gives a good discussion of Ra 967, parts of which are on display currently in Madrid. They have compiled digital images of the entire manuscript, which will be nice to have for such an important manuscript.