I had the absolute privilege of interviewing Professor Hanan Eshel earlier today for an article I am writing for a Canadian national newspaper (ChristianWeek). While I will blog a fuller summary in the near future once I go through the interview again (and will probably blog a transcript of the entire interview once the story is published), I wanted to note some highlights so as to clarify some misperceptions and perhaps correct some of the speculation surrounding this amazing discovery:

1. Number of Fragments. There were actually four fragments discovered. One fragment is virtually unreadable, and while a couple letters on it can be deciphered, it is unlikely it will ever be identified. The second is the small fragment containing Leviticus 23:38-39 (a colour picture of it was released). The third and fourth fragments have been joined to make the larger fragment containing Leviticus 23:41-44 and 24:16-18 (a black and white picture of it was released). The three identified fragments clearly belong to the same manuscript that likely contained the entire Pentateuch/Torah.
2. Date & Provenance. While Eshel did not discover the scroll fragments in situ, he did have the opportunity to thoroughly examine the cave in Nahal Arugot where they were discovered. During his examination of the cave they found further evidence associating the cave with the Bar Kokhba revolt. This fact and the clearly post-Herodian Jewish script suggest an early second-century CE date.
3. Forgeries? While Carbon-14 tests have not yet been done on the fragments, based on his own physical inspection and other factors, Eshel is 110% certain they are not forgeries.
4. Should He Have Done it? The issue has been raised by some whether or not Eshel should have purchased the fragments from the Bedouin in the first place, as this may encourage further exploration and looting. While he wondered whether or not he should have contacted the Antiquities Authority and left it at that, he does not know what they would have done with the information. “Even if I am doing mistakes, I am doing what I can, and I think I acted in the right way.” In regards to encouraging looting, he commented “What can I say? … I will do everything I can to stop the looting of caves in the Judaean desert.” His primary motivation was the preservation of the fragments — and in this I do not think he can be faulted.

I will keep you up-to-date in regards to my article and stay tuned for a fuller summary of my interview (and possibly even a full transcript).

As an aside, my reconstruction of the fragments appears to be correct, though I will have to modify a few comments here and there with the new information I have from the interview (Note that my reconstruction has been updated).

Tim Bulkeley over at SansBlog asked me to expand my analysis of the newly-discovered fragments of Leviticus by describing a bit of the processes involved in identifying and reconstructing the fragments. I thought that I would entertain his request, though I should note up front that I am by no means an expert in this! My interest in the reconstruction of Dead Sea Scroll fragments is a tangent of my work on the so-called Qumran Psalms scrolls for my dissertation that combines my interest in computer technology and really old stuff!

At any rate, I thought I would outline some of the steps in identifying, reconstructing, and analyzing scroll fragments using the Leviticus fragments by way of illustration. (Since I am not an expert at this, I would love to get feedback from those who are!)

STEP 1: Identification

The first (obvious) step in reconstructing a fragment is figuring out what it is a fragment from! This is done by identifying some of the extant letters and words on the fragment and then performing some searches with various computer software to see if you can locate the text.

Image Adjustment
Before you can identify some of the letters it may be necessary to make some adjustments to the image to bring the letters into sharper relief or even to make the fragment readable in the first place! Note that I am dealing with working with images and not the actual original fragments. This is preferable in most cases as the originals may not be readable and (more significantly) they are likely not accessible! High resolution images may be obtained from various sources, including the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center at Claremont.

I prefer to do my work on the images with Adobe Photoshop. Within Photoshop you can adjust the input and output levels (using the histogram feature), brightness/contrast, among other things to make the text more readable. While the low resolution images of the Leviticus fragments I tracked down on the web are pretty clear, they can be made even clearer by adjusting them slightly:

The adjusted image is a bit easier to read. At times the difference may be dramatic. Compare the two images of PAM 42.141 where the text becomes readable only by adjusting the original image:

Identifying the Text
Once you can read the fragment — or at least some of the fragment — then you can start the process of identification. This is a bit easier for biblical fragments since there are a number of excellent databases of the Hebrew Bible to begin the identification process. I prefer to use Accordance Bible Software for my searches, though Logos Bible Software and BibleWorks, among others, are more than adequate (see my Software for Biblical Studies Pages for descriptions of these and other biblical studies software programs).

With the small Leviticus fragment I did a search for ‏כל־נדריכם “all your votive offerings” which is easily readable in the first line of the fragment. This search discovers that Lev 23:38 is the only occurrence of this phrase in the Hebrew Bible (I also searched a Qumran database with no matches). At that point the rest of the readable words can be checked in the context to see if you have found a match. In the case of the small Leviticus fragment, the other readable words from it easily fit the context of Lev 23:38-39. The same was the case for the larger Leviticus fragment (it is actually two fragments that have been joined), since there were quite a few readable words to make a certain identification with Lev 23:40-44; 24:16-18. You often don’t have as much to work with, however! In my work on 1Q12 (1QPs^c) I identified a fragment 8 based on two readable letters and portions of another letter (see my Proposed Reconstruction).

STEP 2: Reconstruction

Once you have the text identified, the next step is to reconstruct it so that you may confirm your identification and ascertain other things about the fragment such as its original size. In order to do this I use Microsoft Word and/or Photoshop (I have also used Quark XPress for this step) to see how the text lines up with the fragment. So, for example, with the smaller Leviticus fragment I imported Hebrew text of Lev 23:38-39 (without pointing) into Word and then adjusted the right-hand margin until the text lined up in accordance with the fragment. In the case of the smaller fragment, the text lined up quite nicely, producing lines of ca. 22-28 letterspaces:

My reconstruction shows the extant Leviticus 23:40-44 (middle of the right column) and 24:16-18 (left column) in bold black type with an outline of the fragment placement. Note that the smaller fragment also nicely fits at the top of the right column.

The one variant from the MT (as represented by BHS) is the plene spelling of בסכת at the end of verse 42 (the vav is in red). (click for larger image)

³⁸ …and apart from all your votive offerings, and apart from all your freewill offerings, which you give to the Lord. ³⁹ Now, the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the produce of the land, you shall keep the festival of the Lord, lasting seven days; a complete rest on the first day, and a complete rest on the eighth day.
…
⁴¹You shall keep it as a festival to the Lord seven days in the year; you shall keep it in the seventh month as a statute forever throughout your generations. ⁴² You shall live in booths for seven days; all that are citizens in Israel shall live in booths, ⁴³ so that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. ⁴⁴ Thus Moses declared to the people of Israel the appointed festivals of the Lord.

…

¹⁶One who blasphemes the name of the Lord shall be put to death; the whole congregation shall stone the blasphemer. Aliens as well as citizens, when they blaspheme the Name, shall be put to death. ¹⁷ Anyone who kills a human being shall be put to death. ¹⁸ Anyone who kills an animal shall make restitution for it, life for life.

STEP 3: Description

Conclusions

A post to the Biblical Studies email list by Yitzhak Sapir reports on the discovery of two small fragments of a scroll containing portions of Leviticus 23. Here is the post:

Walla News, apparently reporting an article from Yediot Ahronot, reports that in the past year a small piece of scroll found at Nahal Arugot, near Ein Gedi, was purchased for $3000 by Prof. Hanan Eshel of Bar Ilan. Originally, Prof. Eshel refused to appraise the scroll when he was first asked to do so in August 2004, although he did photograph it at this time. When he came upon it again, it was near crumbling state, and he purchased it and turned it over to Amir Ganor of the Antiquities Authority, who are trying to locate the thieves. It consists of two pieces of deer-hide scroll, about 35 square cms, containing portions of verses from Leviticus 23, dealing with the Feast of Tabernacles, and differing from the MT only in that the scroll misses a single holam. It is dated to the Bar Kokhba revolt days. Prof. Eshel is calling for searching again for more scrolls which may still lay hidden among the caves in the area.

I have not been able to find out anything more on this scroll, but as soon as I have more information I will post an update.

UPDATE: Jim West on Biblical Theology blog also noted this discovery here, and in an update links to the following English-language article from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online: “Bedouin wanders across Biblical manuscript.” Here are some excerpts from the article:

Fragments of a Biblical manuscript dating back to the last Jewish revolt against Roman rule in 135 AD Judaea, have been uncovered near the Dead Sea. After four decades with a dearth of new finds, archaeologists had resigned themselves to believing the desert caves in the modern-day West Bank had already yielded all their secrets from the Roman era. “It’s simply sensational, a dream come true,” archaeology professor Hanan Eshel, a Biblical specialist at Israel’s Bar Ilan University, said. For the past 20 years, he has scoured the Judaean desert around the Dead Sea, overturning stone after stone in search of Biblical parchments. He has been trumped by Bedouin, who stumbled across the miniature fragments last August. Only a few centimetres long, the pieces contain extracts in Hebrew from the Biblical Book of Leviticus. Damaged by bat droppings and lying under a film of dirt in a cave near the Ein Gedi oasis, the Bedouin pocketed the manuscripts and began an arduous bidding process with Professor Eshel. “Thanks to this find, we now know a little more about the troubled period that gave rise to the Jewish revolt against the Romans,” the Professor said.
….
The fragments have been further damaged by the Bedouin, who glued them together and stowed the whole thing in aluminium foil. It was in this state that Professor Esher found and bought them for $US3,000, beating down the Bedouins’ original asking price of $US20,000. “Despite all this, we can identify the Hebrew letters,” he said. He points out words from Leviticus that relate to the escape of the Israelites from Egypt and the building of temporary shanty houses in the desert.

UPDATES: See here for more up-to-date blog entries on the Leviticus scroll fragments.