SCROLL MATERIAL CULTURE:
The oldest complete biblical scroll ever found was originally split in 2, scholar finds. Study comes as ‘Great Isaiah,’ a 24-foot-long text parchment found with the Dead Sea Scrolls, set to be displayed by the Israel Museum in full for the first time since 1968 (Rossella Tercatin, Times of Israel).
In the past, some suggested that the discrepancies between the two parts apparent to the naked eye might have resulted from the scribe transcribing the scroll by copying from different manuscripts. A groundbreaking 2021 study employing artificial intelligence to examine minute differences in the way letters were written suggested that the scrolls were compiled by two scribes who sought to match their styles to each other.
Taking the scholarship a step further, Dead Sea Scrolls expert Prof. Marcello Fidanzio of the Università della Svizzera Italiana says his research shows that the incongruities between the two sections stem from the fact that they were created as two separate scrolls and became one at a later point in time.
“I can now show that the two parts of the scrolls present a different manufacture,” Fidanzio told The Times of Israel in a phone interview ahead of the publication of “The Great Isaiah Scroll: A Voice From the Desert,” which he edited.
If so, the obvious next question is, Why did people make two scrolls of different halves of Isaiah at different times? The ToI article says:
While modern scholars typically view the Book of Isaiah as having two distinct parts — from chapters 1-39 and chapter 40-66 — the division seen in the parchments does not mirror that split.
Hmmm ... not exactly. There is a good case that Second Isaiah commences with chapters 34-35. And chapters 36-39 are obvious imports from the Deuteronomistic History. If in antiquity scribes wrote two different scrolls of Isaiah, one with chapters 1-33 and one with chapters 34-66, that may mean that they had a tradition that the book consisted of two (or more) different books by different authors. Maybe.
For that 2021 AI study mentioned in the quote, see here.
Background on the current Great Isaiah Scroll exhibition at the Israel Museum and (if you keep going) on the scroll itself, is here and links.
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