Last time we looked at the Hebrew manuscripts known as the Masoretic Texts from the middle ages. Today, we’ll focus on the earliest Hebrew manuscripts ever found, including those at the Cairo Genizah, the Ein-Gedi Scroll, the Nash Papyrus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Ketef Hinnom Silver Scroll. This is going to be very helpful for future lectures when we cover the process of figuring out which readings are best when manuscripts differ from one another.
—— Books ——
- Old Testament Textual Criticism by Ellis Brotzman and Eric Tully
- Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Genizah by Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole
- The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible by Martin Abegg Jr., Peter Flint, and Eugene Ulrich
- The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation by Michael Wise and Martin Abegg Jr.
- The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English by Geza Vermes
—— Links ——
- Check out all the lectures in How We Got the Bible
- Frieberg Genizah Project digitizing Cairo genizah manuscripts (see also the free app)
- See what other classes are available here or on the Restitutio Classes podcast (subscribe in Apple, Spotify, RSS feed)
- If you’d like to support Restitutio, you can donate here.
- Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library
Nicely done; good series.
Though the most important event of 1948 affecting the children of the Father was not the discovery of Scrolls, but the Nakba.
Great class, Sean.
Thanks for including the wide dating for the DSS (200 BCE-68 CE). I prefer a later dating for the scrolls, closer to the first Jewish war. I think it helps contextualize some things. No matter, whatever dating one holds for the DSS, they certainly exemplify some of the earliest MSS for the Tanach.