Rediscovered Fragments Shed New Light on a Proto-Masoretic Torah Scroll

What it is about

Two fragments of one Torah scroll of the 7th–8th century CE (Jews' College #31 and Ashkar-Gilson #2) have been joined by thirteen more pieces, mostly from the Cairo Genizah, covering about 10% of the Torah (all books but Leviticus). The author compares the scroll with the early codices (Aleppo, the Cairo/Damascus/BM Pentateuchs, Leningrad) on three points. Spelling: 37 differences, all in waw and yod as matres lectionis; the scroll agrees with the Aleppo tradition without exception, while Leningrad and BM Or. 4445 deviate most. Section breaks (petuḥot and setumot): much more variety between manuscripts, even between the scroll and Aleppo. Layout of the Song of the Sea (Ex 15:1–19, "brickwork"): almost uniform, and the five lines above it in later codices seem to copy this very scroll, which the Tiberian Masoretes may have used.

Ideas

• I1. Our text is the Leningrad Codex (WLC via MACULA), the manuscript the paper finds furthest from the authoritative spelling. List the known Leningrad-vs-Aleppo-tradition mater differences in the Torah (the paper's tables give some, e.g. אתנת Gen 45:23, ושלשם Ex 14:7) and mark them in MISC so that a spelling count does not take a scribal variant for grammar.
• I2. Use the petuḥah/setumah marks as section boundaries for discourse (episode starts), but as a soft signal: the paper shows they vary across manuscripts. Measure how often a פ/ס break coincides with a prag speech or scene change.
• I3. Spelling statistics (plene vs defective per lemma) should be computed per manuscript tradition and dated; a note on why matres vary while consonants of words do not.

For Mova

I1 belongs to 1. Script and pointing (matres lectionis, the text we use) and 13-mova-tools.md (known defects of the data). I2 is a measure linking the section marks of the WLC with tools/macula/src/prag.rs and 09-discourse.md. I3 goes to 01-script.md and the dictionary's spelling column in macula dict.

Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.5508/jhs29630

@article{sanders2023rediscovered,
  title = {{Rediscovered Fragments Shed New Light on a Proto-Masoretic Torah Scroll}},
  author = {Sanders, Paul},
  journal = {Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 23},
  year = {2023},
  doi = {10.5508/jhs29630},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.5508/jhs29630}
}

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/hbo-2023-sanders-rediscovered-fragments-shed-new-light/