1. Discovery

The discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls in 1947 brought in its wake a flurry of epigraphic discoveries in the Qumran region. The paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll was one of the last of these discoveries, discovered in a cave in January of 1956 by local Bedouins of the Taʿamireh clan, where it had been stashed along with other manuscripts in what is now known as "Qumran Cave 11," about 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) north of Khirbet Qumran. The entrance to the cave had been sealed-off with fallen debris and large boulders, while part of the cave's roof had also collapsed, keeping the cave inaccessible for many centuries.^[1] The cache of manuscripts found in cave no. 11 yielded, among other manuscripts, the Great Psalms Scroll (11QPs), the Temple Scroll (11QT) (being the longest of the Dead Sea Scrolls), and the paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll. The Leviticus scroll was obtained by the Rockefeller Museum (formerly the Palestine Archaeological Museum) in May of 1956 where it was kept in the museum's scrollery, and there remained largely untouched for 12 years, until it could be examined by researchers. When the museum came under the administration of the Israeli government after the Six-Day War in 1967, the museum assigned the Leviticus scroll to D.N. Freedman for study and publication, who published the first report on the manuscript in 1974. Today, the 11QpaleoLev is held by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).

The scroll was first photographed in 1956 by the Palestine Archaeological Museum (PAM), and again in 1970 under the auspices of the IAA, when infra-red photographs were made of the manuscript.^[2] Between 1956 and 1970 the scroll had suffered, losing at several places tiny fragments from the edges. Thus, the 1956 photographs preserve a better stage of the scroll and show readings which were lost in 1970.^[2]

One fragment belonging to the 11QpaleoLev but not with the IAA is Fragment L (formerly, 11Q1), purchased by Georges Roux of France from the antiquities dealer Khalil Eskander Shaheen (Kando) of Bethlehem in 1967, showing Leviticus 21:7–12 / 22:21–27.^[3] Similar paleo-Hebrew fragments exist for the Books of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, discovered in Qumran Cave 4.^[4]

Qumran Cave 11 Entrance. By Ian Scott - https://www.flickr.com/photos/ian-w-scott/3668867772, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44926330

1.1. Historical Background

The paleo-Hebrew script used is similar to the script still preserved today by the Samaritans, in the Samaritan Pentateuch, which itself is thought to be a direct descendant of the paleo-Hebrew alphabet (known in other circles as the Phoenician alphabet).^[5]

The Leviticus scroll is of primary importance in helping secular and religious scholars better understand the textual development of the Hebrew Bible^[6] and can shed light on the Hebrew Pentateuch's Urtext.

Although secular linguistic experts agree that the Ashurit script (i.e. the modern square Jewish Hebrew alphabet) evolved from the earlier Paleo-Hebrew script via the Aramaic alphabet — their secular consensus view is based on palaeographic evidentiary discoveries, the timelines and assigned eras of those discoveries, and the slowly evolving letter/character morphologies as they offshoot from earlier scripts— the question remains undecided among Jewish religious sages as to whether or not the discovery of the 11QpaleoLev scroll has implications on what the original script of the first Torah was.

Among some Jewish religious sages, the find of 11QpaleoLev would corroborate one rabbinic view that the Torah was originally written in the paleo-Hebrew script,^[7] which is one view found in Talmudic commentary. According to another rabbinic view in the 5th-century CE Babylonian Talmud, conversely, the find of 11QpaleoLev is inconsequential since they regard the Torah to have been given by Moses already in the "Assyrian script" (Ktav Ashuri, also known as “Ashurit”- the current modern printed Hebrew script), but then later changed to the paleo-Hebrew script, and, once again, returned to the Ashurit script during the time of Ezra the Scribe in the 5th century BCE.^[8] This latter view, however, is incongruous with secular linguistic findings. Nevertheless, the matter remains undecided and in dispute among Jewish religious sages, with some holding the opinion that the Torah was originally inscribed in the Old Hebrew (Paleo-Hebrew) script,^[9] while others that it was not.

What is generally acknowledged by all Jewish religious sages^[10] is that Ezra the Scribe in the 5th century BCE was the first to enact that the scroll of the Law be written in the Assyrian alphabet (Ashurit) - the modern Hebrew script, rather than in the Old Hebrew (Paleo-Hebrew) script used formerly, and permitted that the Book of Daniel be composed in the Aramaic language with Ashurit characters.^[9] The switch from the ancient paleo-Hebrew script to the Ashurit script (modern Hebrew script), which happened after Israel's return from the Babylonian exile, officially did away with the ancient characters,^[10] but preserved the language intact, as the paleo-Hebrew letters were replaced, letter by letter, with their exact Ashurit equivalent, and where the newer characters represented the same phonetic sounds used in the Old Hebrew script. Both old and new systems consisted of 22 corresponding characters with (at that time) the same Semitic sound values.

The Hebrew sages of the 1st-century CE augmented the use of the modern Hebrew script over that of the former script, declaring that sanctity only applied to those texts transcribed in the Ashurit (modern Hebrew) script, effectively doing away with the Old Hebrew (paleo-Hebrew) writing system.^[11]

2. Description

The paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll consists of fifteen fragments and one scroll of seven columns, measuring 100.5 centimetres (39.6 in) in length. The scroll is thought to have been originally part of a larger Torah scroll made-up of individual sheets of parchment that were sewn together.^[12] The surviving scroll, showing portions of the Book of Leviticus, shows only the bottom portion of two sheets of parchment (ca. one-fifth of its original height), now measuring 10.9 centimetres (4.3 in) in height. The two sheets of parchment are shown sewn together; one containing three columns, and the other four columns, for a total of seven extant columns.^[12] The paleo-Hebrew script is written upon horizontal ruled lines, indented in the parchment by a semi-sharp instrument, from which the scribe "hangs" his letters. The rule lines were made mechanically and have a distinctive lighter shade of brown, and are intersected with indented vertical lines at the ends of the margins.^[13]

The parchment consists of light to dark brown, tanned leather, with the ancient Hebrew writing inscribed on the grain-side of the leather,^[12] being the side where the hair once grew, and which side is usually darker than the flesh side of the leather. The leather, upon examination, is thought to belong to a small domesticated animal; either a kid of the goats or young sheep. The pattern of the grain surface in the leather resembles that of a kid, rather than a sheep.^[12] The lettering of the scroll is written in lampblack ink.^[14] Individual words are divided by dots.

The top portion of the scroll is irregularly worn away, with no indication that it had been deliberately torn or cut.^[14] Letter and line calculations suggest that the scroll's height was roughly four times greater than the extant lower portion, based upon letter and scribal dot counts of columns four to six.^[14] The average number of letters per line is forty-seven.^[15] Columns 4 to 7 measure 14.9 cm. in width, except for the narrow, final column.^[16] Columns 2 and 3 measure 13.6 cm. and 12.0 cm., respectively.^[16]

The scroll contains much of Leviticus chapters 22:21–27, 23:22–29, 24:9–14, 25:28–36, 26:17–26, and 27:11–19, with smaller fragments showing portions of chapters 4:24–26, 10:4–7, 11:27–32, 13:3–9, 14:16–21, 18:26–19:3, 20:1–6, et al. Based on a cursory review and comparison of extant texts, the 11QpaleoLev Leviticus scroll is considered by many to be a primary textual witness of the Proto-Masoretic text.^[17]

3. Orthography

A comparative study made between the Masoretic text (henceforth MT) and the Leviticus scroll shows a tradition of orthography which slightly differed from the MT with respect to plene and defective scripta, the Leviticus scroll generally showing more full spellings than the MT.^[18] At some time during the Second Temple period the Sages saw a need to bring conformity to the writing, and therefore established an authoritative text, now known as the MT.^[19]

The 11QpaleoLev scroll is unique in that where the MT requires reading לו in Leviticus 25:30 as the ḳeri (קרי), although the text is written לא as the actual ketiv (כתיב) in the MT, the paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll shows the original reading and is written plainly as לו, without the necessity of changing its reading.^[29] This suggests that the Masoretes who transmitted the readings for words had access to an early orthographic tradition.^[30]

Another unique feature of the paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll is that it shows an ancient scribal practice of aligning all words in the columns in a natural progressive order, without the necessity of stretching words as is typically practised by scribes in the Ashurit script (modern Hebrew script) to justify the end of the line at the left margin. To avoid a long word extending beyond the column, the scribe simply broke-off the word, writing one or several letters of that word at the end of one line, and the remaining letters of the same word at the beginning of the next line (e.g. the Tetragrammaton in Lev. 24:9, the word ישראל in Lev. 24:10, the word אל in Lev. 24:11 - all in column no. 3; the word ארצכם in Lev. 26:19 in column no. 5, et al.)

In column no. 4 of the 11QpaleoLev scroll (the second line from the bottom) it shows no section break for Leviticus 25:35 (Hebrew: וכי ימוך אחיך ומטה ידו עמך‎),^[31] although in most MT readings the place is marked by a section break (Closed Section).^[32] This anomaly can be attributed to the fact that some of the Geonim were in dispute over whether or not the reading in Leviticus 25:35 was to be marked by a section break; some including there a section break and others omitting a section break, as disclosed by the medieval scribe Menahem Meiri in his Kiryat Sefer.^[33]

3.1. Partial Translation of Scroll

In the following nine lines, a translation of the paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll is rendered as follows:^[34]

Lev. 23:22-29 (contained in the second column). Words written here in brackets are based on the scrolls reconstruction, as they are missing in the original manuscript.

1. (22)[…edges of your field, or] gather [the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger; I the LO]RD [am]
2. your God.
3. (23)The LORD spoke to Moses saying: (24)Speak to the Israelite people thus: In the seventh month
4. on the first day of the month, you shall observe complete rest, a sacred occasion commemorated with load blasts.
5. (25)You shall not work at your occupations; and you shall bring an offering by fire to the LORD.
6. (26)The LORD spoke to Moses saying: (27)Mark, the tenth day of this seventh month is the Day
7. of Atonement. It shall be a sacred occasion for you: you shall practice self-denial, and you shall bring an offering
8. by fire to the LORD; (28)you shall do no work throughout that day. For
9. [it is a Day of Atonement on which] expiation is made on your behalf [before the LO]RD your God. (29)Indeed, any person who...

The arrangement of the lines does not necessarily follow the arrangements used by modern scribes when copying from their Tikkun Soferim, a thing which does invalidate a Torah scroll. However, the use of section breaks follows closely the traditions bequeathed by the Masoretes, so that the Open section (Hebrew: פרשה פתוחה‎) in line no. 3 (Lev. 23:23) starts at the beginning of the margin, after the previous verse ended on the previous line, followed by a very long vacant space (vacat) extending to the left margin, showing that it is an Open Section, whereas line no. 6 (Lev. 23:26) is an anomaly of sorts, insofar that the MT makes it a Closed Section (Hebrew: פרשה סתומה‎), which should start in the middle of the column, with an intermediate space between it and the previous verse,^[35] but in the paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll the section here starts at the beginning of the right margin, with the previous verse ending in the previous line and followed by a short vacant space extending to the left margin (which space is equivalent to that of about 14 letters).^[36]

Likewise, in column no. three, the verse Lev. 24:10 is made a Closed Section in the MT, but in the paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll the section break starts at the beginning of the right margin, preceded by a line where the previous verse ends close to the start of the line, and a solitary paleo-Hebrew letter waw is written in the middle of that long-extended space, a tradition which is no longer recognised today. In Leviticus 20:1–6 (Fragment J), the Open Section is preceded by a vacant space, in the middle of which the Hebrew character waw is written to also signify the first letter in the word וידבר in the new section.^[37] In these places and others, the solitary waw is characteristically used in open spaces between paragraphs when the new paragraph should have begun with that letter.^[38] The use of a solitary waw in the middle of the section break is consistent with the practice found in paleo-Hebrew biblical manuscripts discovered in Qumran cave no. 4, showing fragments from the Book of Exodus, tentatively dated 100–25 BCE.^[39]

3.2. Paleo-Hebrew Scroll vs. the Parent Text of the Septuagint

From this one surviving relic of Israel's distant past, it can be shown that the unknown vorlage, or parent text, used to produce the Greek Septuagint (LXX) was similar to the text of the Paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll in some places, such as in Lev. 26:24, where it adds the words beḥamat ḳerī = "in rage of froward behaviour" – the words "in rage" not appearing in the MT. In yet other places (Lev. 25:31 and Lev. 23:23–24), the Paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll follows more closely the MT than does the Septuagint.