Missing Link in Hebrew Bible Formation

Home > Magazines > BAR > November/December 2015

New analysis of a previously known scrap of a Biblical text provides fascinating insight into the formation of the Hebrew Bible. Known as the Ashkar-Gilson Hebrew Manuscript #2, the text is a remnant of a Torah scroll from the seventh or eighth century C.E. and contains a crucial section of the Book of Exodus. Although the fragment came to light more than three decades ago, it was disregarded by scholars and remained unpublished. But a recent analysis shows that this damaged sheet fills a gap in our knowledge regarding the transmission of the Biblical text. The earliest texts of […]

Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.

Join the BAS Library!

Already a library member? Log in here.

Institution user? Log in with your IP address or Username

Footnotes

Hershel Shanks, “Isaiah among the Scrolls,” BAR 37:04; Sidnie White Crawford, “A View from the Caves: Who Put the Scrolls in There?” BAR 37:05.

Emmanuel Tov, “Searching for the Original Bible: Do the Dead Sea Scrolls Help?” BAR 40:04.

Yosef Ofer, “The Shattered Crown: The Aleppo Codex, 60 Years after the Riots,” BAR 34:05; Yosef Ofer, “The Mystery of the Missing Pages of the Aleppo Codex,” BAR 41:04.

Astrid Beck and James A. Sanders, “The Leningrad Codex,” Bible Review 13:04.

David Marcus and James A. Sanders, “What’s Critical About a Critical Edition of the Bible?” BAR 39:06.

Endnotes

For example, in his essay “The Development of the Masoretic Bible,” in Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds., The Jewish Study Bible, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004, 2014), Jordan S. Penkower notes the paucity of texts in this interim: “It is especially difficult to reconstruct this period because we lack direct witnesses to the Hebrew text; i.e., we do not have Hebrew mss [manuscripts] from most of this period.” The Ashkar-Gilson manuscript had apparently not yet been published.

Paul Sanders, “The Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript: Remnant of a Proto-Masoretic Model Scroll of the Torah,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 14 (2014); see http://www.jhsonline.org/Articles/article_201.pdf.