"Rediscovered Fragments Shed New Light on a Proto-Masoretic Torah Scroll"
Paul Sanders, J. of Hebrew Scriptures v. 35 a.5, 23 pages [2023]
During the past decade, two fragments of a single Torah scroll caught much attention, since they date from the 7th or 8th century CE.1 They are among the extremely rare remnants of Hebrew Bible manuscripts from the so-called “silent era,” the period of more than seven centuries between the writing of the latest Dead Sea Scrolls (ca. 135 CE) and the production of the earliest Hebrew Bible codices.2The first fragment, MS London, Jews’ College #31, displays Exod 9:18–13:2 in seven columns. Salomon Asher Birnbaum discussed the sheet already in 1959.3 The other fragment, MS Durham, Duke University, Ashkar-Gilson #2, was disclosed more recently in a JHS article by myself4 and a study by Edna Engel and Mordechay Mishor.5 It contains excerpts of Exod....
whole article at
https://jhsonline.org/index.php/jhs/art ... 9630/21639
"Rediscovered Fragments Shed New Light on a Proto-Masoretic Torah Scroll"
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StephenGoranson
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Re: "Brickwork Layout," Symetry, and Coincidence
pp.16-
Oh, really? Nothing to do with (what I surmise) the sea-builders' dance which Philo has described, of course... this, a choral-choreography of replication?
What I'm getting at:
3.COLUMNS WITH THE SONG OF THE SEA
The textual layouts within the columns that include the text of the Song of the Sea (Exod 15:1–19) were discussed extensively in my previous article,46 with the exception of the arrangement in the codex HP. Plate 2 at the end of that article displays AS’s damaged sheet Ashkar-Gilson #2, which includes a carefully planned layout of the Song of the Sea in a wide column.47 The thirty-line “brickwork arrangement” of this section belongs to the type the Talmud describes as אריח על גבי לבינה ולבינה על גבי אריח, “half-brick over whole brick, and whole brick over half-brick”.48 The blank spaces in the lines mark the ends of cola, while the line-breaks do not coincide with the ends of cola.
The brickwork arrangements of Exod 15:1–19 in the codices AC,49 GP, BP, and LC correspond closely with the arrangement in the scroll AS. The same arrangement of the text appears to occur also in the codex HP.50 The scroll AS is the oldest surviving representative of this tradition.51 DP shares the same lay-out in the first 28 lines, but shows some deviations in lines 29 and 30. Contrary to the other codices, DP does not show any 4 E.g.,b.Shabb 103b: לאומהסתסתומהיעשנהלאפתוחהפרש ה , פ ת ו ח ה יעשנה “an open paragraph, one may not render it closed; a closed one may not be rendered open”. See further Josef M. Oesch, “Skizze einer formalen Gliederungshermeneutik der Sifre Tora,” in Marjo C.A. Korpel and Josef M. Oesch (eds.), Unit Delimitation in Biblical Hebrew and Northwest Semitic Literature, Pericope 4 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2003), 162–203, esp. 164–78.45 In the 11th-century Washington Codex, orthographic deviations were corrected, while deviations in the sectional division were still left untouched; see Jordan S. Penkower, “An Eleventh-Century Eastern Masoretic Codex of the Pentateuch,” Textus 30 (2021), 152–70, esp. 165–67.46 Sanders, “Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript,” 4–18.47 Sanders, “Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript,” 24. See also Engel and Mishor, “An Ancient Scroll,” 27.48b Megillah 16b and Soferim XII:10; cf. Sanders, “Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript,” 4–5 nn. 15–17. The Talmud suggests that Rav, who died in the mid-third century CE, already required a brickwork layout for the Song of the Sea; cf. Engel and Mishor, “An Ancient Scroll,” 34. 49 The layout of the Song of the Sea in Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah, Book II, Ahavah, Hilkhot Sefer Torah viii:4, was copied from the codex AC; see Sanders, “Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript,” 12
50 In HP, there are traces of a correction in line 24, where בגדל(15:16) was probably written immediately after the first word ופחד. The mistake was apparently corrected instantly by the scribe himself.51 For the different layouts of the Song in the Dead Sea Scrolls, see Sanders, “Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript,” 7 n. 21.
{page17} blank spaces in these last two lines, probably since 15:19 was not regarded as part of the poem proper.52For an accurate determination of the setting of the scroll AS, an analysis of the lines written above the Song of the Sea is crucial. The 42-line column in AS begins with the word הבאים(Exod 14:28). It includes five written lines, then a single blank line and the thirty lines with Exod 15:1–19, then again a blank line, and finally once again a set of five written lines. This means that there is vertical symmetry between the top and the bottom of the column. This vertical symmetry is beautiful, but I have argued that it is coincidental: There is neither exceptional spacing out nor compression of words at the end of the preceding column so that the new column would start with the wordהבאים.53F53In some of the later codices, this is clearly different. In the four codices GP, HP, BP and LC, the first line of the column with the first part of the Song of the Sea begins also with הבאים, but also the following four lines begin with the same words as the corresponding lines in the scroll AS (ביבשה, יהוה, מת, במצרים, respectively). The copyists of these manuscripts had to make a special effort to enable the new column to begin with the wordהבאים.54 This is clearly the case in LC, where the copyist spaced out the text on the preceding page to obtain a page break before הבאים, and in BP, where the copyist compressed a part of the text on the preceding page and spaced out another part for the same reason.55 Also in GP, the page with the beginning of the Song of the Sea begins with הבאים, thanks to the conspicuous compression of the text on the preceding page. In HP, the measures are less exceptional, but there are some compressed lines in the final column of the page preceding the page beginning with הבאים.56F56The question is whether this tradition with regard to the writing of the lines above the Song of the Sea began in the scroll AS. Engel and Mishor have suggested that the tradition existed already before AS was written: In many manuscripts, the width of the last lines at the end of the preceding column is modified so that the column with the Song of the Sea can begin with הבאים. ( .....) The
52 Sanders, “Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript,” 13.
53 Cf. Sanders, “Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript,” 14.
54 Cf. Penkower, “Sheet of Parchment,” 255: “They often had to resort to various subterfuges in the column preceding the column of the Song of the Sea (e.g. dilating letters, or on the contrary compressing them) in order to begin the column of the Song with הבאים.”55 Sanders, “Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript,” 14–15.
56 Two more recent scrolls, labelled as “ES” and “BS”, include an additional line of text under the preceding column to allow the new column to begin with הבאים; see Sanders, “Ashkar-Gilson Manu-script,” 14. In the Washington Codex, a page break before הבאים was achieved with the help of meaningless line-fillers; cf. Penkower, “An Eleventh-Century Eastern Masoretic Codex,” 168.
spaces in order to comply with this tradition.57In my view, however, AS does not show any indications that the copyist needed to make an effort to comply with an existing writing tradition.58 The text in the five written lines above the Song of the Sea did not need to be compressed or spaced out to allow these lines to begin with specific words. In the preceding column, which has a usual width, there are some lines in which the text has been compressed, but this is due to the wish to prevent the last word from protruding into the left margin (e.g., line 25 ending with the long word ומשמאלם ). In other lines of this column there is a blank space after the final word, or an intermediate blank space before the final word which was inserted to prevent a blank space between the final word and the left margin line. Such spaces occur only when the inclusion of an additional word in the same line would have led to the text protruding into the left margin. Similar lines that are compressed or that include a blank space before or after the final word occur also in many other columns of the scroll. It seems useful to compare the textual arrangement in the final column of the scroll, which has largely survived. The text of the scroll ends in the last line of this final column (visible in ENA 4117.13). When he wrote this column, the copyist presumably made a deliberate effort to let the end of the text of the Torah coincide with the end of the column.59 At the end of line 19 (visible in Cambr. T-S AS 37.10) he apparently wrote almost the entire word תעבר (Deut 34:4) in the – now lost – left margin. There may have been additional cases of protrusion into the left margin of this column, but this remains uncertain due to the damage. It is significant, however, that the copyist did not take such unusual measures in the column before the column with the Song of the Sea. Since there are no indications that the copyist of AS made a deliberate effort to comply with an older tradition regarding five clearly defined lines to be written above the Song of the Sea, I still assume that the vertical symmetry in this column of AS is a coincidence.
The textual layouts within the columns that include the text of the Song of the Sea (Exod 15:1–19) were discussed extensively in my previous article,46 with the exception of the arrangement in the codex HP. Plate 2 at the end of that article displays AS’s damaged sheet Ashkar-Gilson #2, which includes a carefully planned layout of the Song of the Sea in a wide column.47 The thirty-line “brickwork arrangement” of this section belongs to the type the Talmud describes as אריח על גבי לבינה ולבינה על גבי אריח, “half-brick over whole brick, and whole brick over half-brick”.48 The blank spaces in the lines mark the ends of cola, while the line-breaks do not coincide with the ends of cola.
The brickwork arrangements of Exod 15:1–19 in the codices AC,49 GP, BP, and LC correspond closely with the arrangement in the scroll AS. The same arrangement of the text appears to occur also in the codex HP.50 The scroll AS is the oldest surviving representative of this tradition.51 DP shares the same lay-out in the first 28 lines, but shows some deviations in lines 29 and 30. Contrary to the other codices, DP does not show any 4 E.g.,b.Shabb 103b: לאומהסתסתומהיעשנהלאפתוחהפרש ה , פ ת ו ח ה יעשנה “an open paragraph, one may not render it closed; a closed one may not be rendered open”. See further Josef M. Oesch, “Skizze einer formalen Gliederungshermeneutik der Sifre Tora,” in Marjo C.A. Korpel and Josef M. Oesch (eds.), Unit Delimitation in Biblical Hebrew and Northwest Semitic Literature, Pericope 4 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2003), 162–203, esp. 164–78.45 In the 11th-century Washington Codex, orthographic deviations were corrected, while deviations in the sectional division were still left untouched; see Jordan S. Penkower, “An Eleventh-Century Eastern Masoretic Codex of the Pentateuch,” Textus 30 (2021), 152–70, esp. 165–67.46 Sanders, “Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript,” 4–18.47 Sanders, “Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript,” 24. See also Engel and Mishor, “An Ancient Scroll,” 27.48b Megillah 16b and Soferim XII:10; cf. Sanders, “Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript,” 4–5 nn. 15–17. The Talmud suggests that Rav, who died in the mid-third century CE, already required a brickwork layout for the Song of the Sea; cf. Engel and Mishor, “An Ancient Scroll,” 34. 49 The layout of the Song of the Sea in Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah, Book II, Ahavah, Hilkhot Sefer Torah viii:4, was copied from the codex AC; see Sanders, “Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript,” 12
50 In HP, there are traces of a correction in line 24, where בגדל(15:16) was probably written immediately after the first word ופחד. The mistake was apparently corrected instantly by the scribe himself.51 For the different layouts of the Song in the Dead Sea Scrolls, see Sanders, “Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript,” 7 n. 21.
{page17} blank spaces in these last two lines, probably since 15:19 was not regarded as part of the poem proper.52For an accurate determination of the setting of the scroll AS, an analysis of the lines written above the Song of the Sea is crucial. The 42-line column in AS begins with the word הבאים(Exod 14:28). It includes five written lines, then a single blank line and the thirty lines with Exod 15:1–19, then again a blank line, and finally once again a set of five written lines. This means that there is vertical symmetry between the top and the bottom of the column. This vertical symmetry is beautiful, but I have argued that it is coincidental: There is neither exceptional spacing out nor compression of words at the end of the preceding column so that the new column would start with the wordהבאים.53F53In some of the later codices, this is clearly different. In the four codices GP, HP, BP and LC, the first line of the column with the first part of the Song of the Sea begins also with הבאים, but also the following four lines begin with the same words as the corresponding lines in the scroll AS (ביבשה, יהוה, מת, במצרים, respectively). The copyists of these manuscripts had to make a special effort to enable the new column to begin with the wordהבאים.54 This is clearly the case in LC, where the copyist spaced out the text on the preceding page to obtain a page break before הבאים, and in BP, where the copyist compressed a part of the text on the preceding page and spaced out another part for the same reason.55 Also in GP, the page with the beginning of the Song of the Sea begins with הבאים, thanks to the conspicuous compression of the text on the preceding page. In HP, the measures are less exceptional, but there are some compressed lines in the final column of the page preceding the page beginning with הבאים.56F56The question is whether this tradition with regard to the writing of the lines above the Song of the Sea began in the scroll AS. Engel and Mishor have suggested that the tradition existed already before AS was written: In many manuscripts, the width of the last lines at the end of the preceding column is modified so that the column with the Song of the Sea can begin with הבאים. ( .....) The
52 Sanders, “Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript,” 13.
53 Cf. Sanders, “Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript,” 14.
54 Cf. Penkower, “Sheet of Parchment,” 255: “They often had to resort to various subterfuges in the column preceding the column of the Song of the Sea (e.g. dilating letters, or on the contrary compressing them) in order to begin the column of the Song with הבאים.”55 Sanders, “Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript,” 14–15.
56 Two more recent scrolls, labelled as “ES” and “BS”, include an additional line of text under the preceding column to allow the new column to begin with הבאים; see Sanders, “Ashkar-Gilson Manu-script,” 14. In the Washington Codex, a page break before הבאים was achieved with the help of meaningless line-fillers; cf. Penkower, “An Eleventh-Century Eastern Masoretic Codex,” 168.
spaces in order to comply with this tradition.57In my view, however, AS does not show any indications that the copyist needed to make an effort to comply with an existing writing tradition.58 The text in the five written lines above the Song of the Sea did not need to be compressed or spaced out to allow these lines to begin with specific words. In the preceding column, which has a usual width, there are some lines in which the text has been compressed, but this is due to the wish to prevent the last word from protruding into the left margin (e.g., line 25 ending with the long word ומשמאלם ). In other lines of this column there is a blank space after the final word, or an intermediate blank space before the final word which was inserted to prevent a blank space between the final word and the left margin line. Such spaces occur only when the inclusion of an additional word in the same line would have led to the text protruding into the left margin. Similar lines that are compressed or that include a blank space before or after the final word occur also in many other columns of the scroll. It seems useful to compare the textual arrangement in the final column of the scroll, which has largely survived. The text of the scroll ends in the last line of this final column (visible in ENA 4117.13). When he wrote this column, the copyist presumably made a deliberate effort to let the end of the text of the Torah coincide with the end of the column.59 At the end of line 19 (visible in Cambr. T-S AS 37.10) he apparently wrote almost the entire word תעבר (Deut 34:4) in the – now lost – left margin. There may have been additional cases of protrusion into the left margin of this column, but this remains uncertain due to the damage. It is significant, however, that the copyist did not take such unusual measures in the column before the column with the Song of the Sea. Since there are no indications that the copyist of AS made a deliberate effort to comply with an older tradition regarding five clearly defined lines to be written above the Song of the Sea, I still assume that the vertical symmetry in this column of AS is a coincidence.
Oh, really? Nothing to do with (what I surmise) the sea-builders' dance which Philo has described, of course... this, a choral-choreography of replication?
What I'm getting at:
billd89 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 25, 2022 3:18 pmDVC 3.29: ἔστι δὲ αὐτοῖς καὶ συγγράμματα παλαιῶν ἀνδρῶν, οἳ τῆς αἱρέσεως ἀρχηγέται γενόμενοι πολλὰ μνημεῖα τῆς ἐν τοῖς ἀλληγορουμένοις ἰδέας ἀπέλιπον, οἷς καθάπερ τισὶν ἀρχετύποις χρώμενοι μιμοῦνται τῆς προαιρέσεως τὸν τρόπον·
My translation:DVC 3.29: “They also have treatises of ancient men, founders of their sect {αἱρέσεως ‘heresy’}, who left behind many records of the allegorical interpretation of the Idea, which – according to a certain archetype {ἀρχετύποις} – they make use of {administer/experience/proclaim/etc.} to imitate the course of action/purpose {προαιρέσεως} in such a way.”
billd89 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 26, 2023 7:14 amConsider then any possible allusions to this particular site -- or any relevance, in fact -- in that dance of the Therapeutae, obviously 'The Song of the Sea' (Hebrew: שירת הים, Shirat HaYam). These sober Jews are singing about a channel of salvation, miraculous walls of water, a punishing flood, a dry march to freedom, etc. [...]I would further point out here -- at least as the Symbol, if not the very egress point -- is our philologist Edelsteins' exact "Broad Highway": a dry way-out. See Colson's 1935 trans. of DVC 85-88 pp.165-6:Then when each choir has separately done its own part in the feast, having drunk as in the Bacchic rites of the strong wine of God’s love they mix and both together become a single choir, a copy of the choir set up of old beside the Red Sea in honour of the wonders there wrought.
For at the command of God the sea became a source 86 of salvation to one party and of perdition to the other. As it broke in twain and withdrew under the violence of the forces which swept it back there rose on either side, opposite to each other, the semblance of solid walls, while the space thus opened between them broadened into a highway smooth and dry throughout on which the people marched under guidance right on until they reached the higher ground on the opposite mainland. But when the sea came rushing in with the returning tide, and from either side passed over the ground where dry land had appeared the pursuing enemy were submerged and perished. This 87 wonderful sight and experience, an act transcending word and thought and hope, so filled with ecstasy both men and women that forming a single choir they sang hymns of thanksgiving to God their Saviour, the men led by the prophet Moses and the women by the prophetess Miriam.
It is on this model above all that the choir of the 88 Therapeutae of either sex, note in response to note and voice to voice, the treble of the women blending with the bass of the men, create an harmonious concert, music in the truest sense. Lovely are the thoughts, lovely the words and worthy of reverence the choristers, and the end and aim of thoughts, words and choristers alike is piety.
