Wednesday, June 02, 2021

DSS "paperbacks?"

ALGORITHM WATCH: Dead Sea Scrolls: 2,000 years ago Jews used biblical ‘paperbacks.’ (Rossella Tercatin, Jerusalem Post).
Some 2,000 years ago, Jews used formal beautifully written biblical manuscripts for public reading, but also informal and sloppily written biblical texts for personal use, new research on the Dead Sea Scrolls has shown.

In addition, some of the scrolls might be more ancient than previously thought, suggesting that the current canonical form of the Book of Psalms might date earlier than previously believed.

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For more on "The Hands that Wrote the Bible Project," see here, here, here, here, and here.

The Jerusalem Post article interviews Dr. Drew Longacre, whose Old Testament Textual Criticism blog I link to from time to time. He comments on the article here.

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