New Dead Sea Scroll Fragments

Haaretz, the New York Times, and the AP (among others) report on some new Greek Minor Prophets fragments from the Nahal Ḥever Cave of Horrors, including a few nice images. Presumably these are from the same scroll as the famous Kaige Greek Minor Prophets scroll.

Friedeman, A Scripture Index to Rabbinic Literature

Caleb T. Friedeman has just published what looks to be a very useful reference work:  Scripture Index to Rabbinic Literature.

Publisher's product description:

 A Scripture Index to Rabbinic Literature is a comprehensive Scrip­ture index that catalogs approximately 90,000 references to the Bible found in classical rabbinic literature. This literature compris­es two categories: (1) Talmudic literature (i.e., the Mishnah and related works) and (2) midrashic literature (i.e., biblical commentary).

Each rabbinic reference includes a hard citation following SBL Hand­book of Style, the page number where the reference can be found in a standard English edition, and an indication of whether the biblical reference is a direct citation, allusion, or editorial reference. This incredibly handy reference work is the first of its kind and is a welcome addition to Hendrickson’s well-crafted line of reference books.

Key points and features:

• A comprehensive Scripture index to classical rabbinic literature in English
• Includes references to the Mishnah, the Tosefta, the Jerusalem Tal­mud, and the Babylonian Talmud, as well as the Mekilta, Midrash Rabbah, Pirqe Rabbi Eliezer, and many more
• Approximately 90,000 references include a hard citation, a page number in a standard English edition, and an indication of wheth­er the biblical reference is a direct citation, allusion, or editorial reference
• Saves researchers large amounts of time and energy by bringing together a vast amount of data that was previously located across many disparate resources.

Dershowitz on the Shapira Deuteronomy

The New York Times has a piece highlighting a recent article and book by Idan Dershowitz arguing again for the authenticity of the Shapira Deuteronomy fragments. Looking briefly through the article and book, his argument is that 1) Shapira's private papers suggest he did not forge it; 2) paleographic and material arguments against its authenticity are not definitive; and 3) its text seems to reflect a an early precursor to the canonical form of Deuteronomy. While Dershowitz brings important information to the discussion, I doubt he will be able to convince many.

Dershowitz seems particularly enamored with the literary-critical arguments, suggesting that no forger at the time could have anticipated the ways the scroll corresponds to modern literary-critical reconstructions. Without going through his full argument, I must say that I am considerably less enamored with these types of literary-critical arguments in general. They tend to be very subjective and debatable, hardly to be considered solid evidentiary grounds. I have seen enough unwarranted suggestions that Dead Sea Scrolls were the sources for biblical texts to be quite skeptical in this regard. For instance, the lack of legal material can at least as easily be explained based on the interests of a 19th-century Christian target audience as an earlier form of the book.

So ultimately, I would stress that the epigraphic evidence must take precedence when it comes to questions of authenticity. As Christopher Rollston emphasizes, we don't have the material artifacts that would be necessary to conduct standard tests for authenticity, but the epigraphic evidence seems strongly against its authenticity. Dershowitz argues that we can't do a paleographic analysis based on inaccurate drawings, but we do have a number of independent visual records that all seem to point in the same general direction. With even a superficial glance: 1) script doesn't look typologically right for what we would expect from an authentic script from the period; 2) there's not a hint of evidence for a brush, which would probably have been used for ink writing; 3) it is the extremely sloppy work of an unskilled and/or careless writer (just look at the line arrangement, even if you don't trust the drawings of particular letter forms); 4) the column dimensions and proportions seem all wrong for what I would expect from a literary scroll; 5) would such a text even be written on ruled animal skin at that time, and why don't the lines respect the ruling? I haven't worked through all the details, but everything about it looks fishy to me, and I know others who have looked at it more closely suggest the same.

William Johnson, "From Bookroll to Codex"

I just found a lecture by William Johnson, "From Bookroll to Codex," which I highly recommend. Johnson has worked extensively on book roll formats, and he has been working recently on early codex formats.

ScriptSource

 I just discovered this interesting online resource for typed scripts: ScriptSource.

Haaretz on Scroll Reconstruction

Ruth Schuster has just published an interesting article in Haaretz highlighting the recent article by Ratzon and Dershowitz on scroll length reconstruction, complete with some responses by yours truly.

Radiocarbon Dating of P.Köln Inv. 5941

In a recent COMSt article Date, Materiality and Historical Significance of P.Köln Inv. 5941, the authors report a new analysis of an old Hebrew liturgical manuscript reportedly from Oxyrhynchus. The ink is apparently a mixed iron-gall ink, making it an important early example of this ink type. A sample was radiocarbon dated to the late 3rd or 4th century CE, which accords well with Edna Engel's paleographic dating. Before reading the article, I looked briefly at the fragment paleographically, and I supposed a date from the 3rd-5th centuries. So here we have a good example where material and paleographic evidence support dating another important document to the dark ages of Hebrew manuscripts. See also my article on EGLev.