23 The Dead Sea Scrolls

Moreover, in the Mesorah remarks at the end of the Leningrad manuscript (on which the Adi edition of the Scripture is based), it is written: "The total number of letters in the Torah is four hundred thousand nine hundred forty-five." In all the manuscripts and editions of the Torah known to us, from Middle Ages until now (including the Leningrad manuscript itself and all the editions based on it), the Torah text consists of a bit more than 300,000 letters -- that is, the discrepancy between the text and the Mesorah of the Leningrad manuscript is about 100,000 letters! If even such a basic Masoretic manuscript suffers from a 33% discrepancy between the Torah text and the Mesorah, what reason is there to believe that the Mesorah succeeded in preserving the Torah text in its original form?

Actually, we find Chazal themselves openly admitting that not only plene/defective spellings, but even whole words could be changed in the Torah text. Thus we find in Tractate Soferim 6:4: "R' Simeon the son of Lakish said: once they found three [Torah] scrolls in the Temple court: the scroll of ma'on, the scroll of za'atutei and the scroll of hu. In one [of the scrolls] it was written 'Ma'on,' and in the other two -- 'Meonah E-lohei kedem' (Deuteronomy 33:27), so they adopted [the version of] two scrolls and rejected [that of] one. In one [of the scrolls] it was written 'Vayishlach et za'atutei benei Yisra'el,' and in the other two -- 'Vayishlach et na'arei benei Yisra'el' (Exodus 24:5), so they adopted [the version of] two scrolls and rejected [that of] one. In one [of the scrolls] it was written eleven times 'hu,' and in the other two -- eleven times 'hi', so they rejected [the version of] one scroll and adopted [that of] two."

Three different Torah scrolls were found in the Temple court and the Sages used them to create a new scroll, which, as one can easily see, was different from all three of the scrolls. One of the three scrolls was different by a whole word -- za'atutei -- from the others, where it was written naarei. And though these two words are almost synonyms (za'atutei means "infants," while na'arei means "boys"), there is yet another version of this story, brought in the responsa "Ginat Vradim" (Orach Chayim, rule 2, section 6), according to which in one of the three scrolls it was written za'atutei instead of atzilei in Exodus 24:11 (Ve'el atzilei bnei Yisra'el lo shalach yado -- "But [G-d] did not raise His hand against the noblemen of the children of Israel"). Here the discrepancy za'atutei/atzilei obviously changes the meaning of the verse, as za'atutei means "infants" while atzilei means "noblemen." Thus, R' Simeon the son of Lakish and R' Abraham the son of Mordechai Halevi (the author of the responsa "Ginat Vradim") openly admitted that discrepancies of whole words are quite possible in the Torah text. [As a side note, I should add that the word hi (or vehi), meaning "she/and she" appears 11 times in the Koren version of the Torah, but in the Adi edition the word hi appears 8 times and vehi 9 times, for a total of 17.]

The above evidence should be enough to lead to the conclusion that the Torah text underwent very significant changes, including some that totally changed the text's meaning. Yet these are all (aside from the case of Tractate Soferim) only variations of the Masoretic text used by the Rabbinic Jewish communities from the period of the Talmud to now. But obviously the Scripture existed well before the Talmud, and during the last 50 years many discoveries have been made that shed light on how the Scriptural text looked around the commencement of the Common Era. I refer to the discovery of hundreds of fragments of ancient scrolls, containing various portions of the Scriptural books, found at several sites in the Judean Desert: Qumran, Wadi Murabba'at, Nachal Chever and Massada. There were 225 manuscripts found containing fragments of the Scriptural books, and dozens of manuscripts of the so-called "external" books, like the Son of Sirach and Jubilees. Of the 225 Scriptural manuscripts, 215 were found at Qumran, the site of an ancient Jewish community that lived there between the 3rd century BCE and the 1st century CE. Of the 215 Scriptural manuscripts from Qumran, 89 contain fragments of the Five Books of the Torah, covering the majority of the Torah text (Martin Abegg, Jr. et al., The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, pp. XV, 3, 23, 77, 108, 145). Many formulations in these manuscripts are quite discrepant with the Torah text now used by the Jewish communities.

Thus, in Genesis 22:14 the present-day Torah scrolls read: "And Abraham called that place 'the Lord will see' (YHWH yir'eh)," while in one of the Qumran scrolls the relevant name is quoted as "G-d will see (E-lohim yir'eh" (The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, p. 10). In the present-day Torah scrolls, Exodus 1:5 reads "And all the souls that came out the loins of Jacob were seventy souls, and Joseph was already in Egypt," while in another scroll from Qumran the number of Jacob's descendants is given as "seventy-five souls," and the words "and Joseph was already in Egypt" are missing (The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, p. 25).

In a scroll of Numbers, preserved in a very fragmentary condition, it is nevertheless possible to find out that before and after the verse Numbers 21:12 come two phrases that figure in the present-day Torah text as the verses of Deuteronomy 2:9 and 2:18-19, in which G-d forbids Moses to fight the nations of Moab and Ammon (the verses known to us from Deuteronomy are given below in bold; the portions of text not preserved in the scroll and reconstructed by scholars are given in square brackets, but judging from the words which are preserved, the relevant verses from Deuteronomy did appear there): "[And the Lord] sai[d to Moses, 'Do not harass Moab nor engage them in battle, for] I will not give an[y of its land to you as a possession, since I have given Ar to the descendants of Lot for a possession.' From there they set out, and camped] in the Valley of Zer[ed. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 'Today you are going to cross at Ar,] the border of M[oab; and when you approach the Ammonites, do not harass them or engage them,] for [I will not give you any of the territory of the Ammonites as a possession, since I have given it to the descendants of Lot as a possession.']" (The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, p. 125)

Another scroll from Qumran, containing the book of Deuteronomy, has, in the portion of the Ten Commandments, a much wider version of the commandment concerning the Sabbath (Deuteronomy 5:12-15), than the present-day Torah scrolls (in the table below, the differences between the two versions are marked in bold):

The scroll from Qumran (The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, p. 54)

The present-day Torah text

Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your G-d commanded you. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your G-d. On it you shall not do any work, you, your son, your daughter, your male servant, nor your female servant, your ox, nor your ass, nor your cattle, your stranger who is within your gates, so that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your G-d brought you out from there with a mighty hand and outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your G-d commanded you to keep the Sabbath day to hallow it. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested the seventh day; so the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your G-d commanded you. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your G-d. You shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox nor your ass, nor any of your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates, so that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your G-d brought you out from there with a mighty hand and outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your G-d commanded you to perform the Sabbath day.

The differences between the Qumran scrolls and the Masoretic texts of the Torah may even have theological implications. Thus, instead of the Masoretic reading of Deuteronomy 32:43, "Rejoice, O nations, with His people, for He will avenge the blood of His servants and will render vengeance to his enemies, and will atone His land, for His people," one of the Qumran scrolls reads: "Rejoice, O heavens, together with Him, and bow down to Him all you gods, for He will avenge the blood of His sons, and will render vengeance to His enemies, and will recompense those who hate Him, and will atone for the land of His people." (The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, p. 192-193)

This verse seems to recognize existence of several gods, though it urges those gods to bow down to G-d of Israel!

There is yet another ancient manuscript containing a part of the Torah text -- the Nash Papyrus, discovered in Egypt at the beginning of the 20th century. Though it is hard to consider it a part of a Torah scroll, as it juxtaposes the Ten Commandments and the Shema Yisra'el, which are distant by 15 verses in our Torah scrolls, it is thought to be a part of an ancient Jewish schoolbook or prayerbook, where the Ten Commandments and the Shema were quoted as the credos of Judaism. Various researchers date the Nash Papyrus to the 2nd century BCE-2nd century CE (see W. F. Albright, "A Biblical Fragment from the Maccabaean Age: the Nash Papyrus," Journal of Biblical Literature, v. 56 (1937), pp. 145-176). The full Hebrew text of the papyrus (more precisely, of the part of it that survived to now) is brought in Stanley A. Cook, "A Pre-Masoretic Biblical Papyrus" (Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, v. 25, pp. 34-56).

The Nash Papyrus is most interesting, since in its 24 lines it contains a very significant amount of differences from the text of our contemporary Torah scrolls. The most noteworthy of them is related to the wording of the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh commandments in the papyrus (translation from Hebrew mine, based on the one brought by Cook, with the antiquated English wordings replaced by modern ones, e.g. "thou" by "you"): "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but on the seventh day there is a sabbath to the Lord your G-d. On it you shall not do any work, you, and your son, and your daughter and your male servant, and your female servant, your ox, and your ass, and any of your cattle and your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; so the Lord blessed the seventh day and hallowed it. Honor your father and your mother, so that it may go well with you, and that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your G-d gives to you. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not commit murder."

The commandment of the Sabbath is expressed here by the verb "remember" (zachor), and the reason for remembering the Sabbath is the creation of the world in six days -- just as it is in the book of Exodus in our Torah text, as opposed to Deuteronomy, where the commandment is expressed by the verb "observe" (shamor), and the "reason" for observing the Sabbath is the escape from Egyptian slavery. However, the Nash Papyrus details that on the Sabbath, "You shall not do any work... and your female servant, your ox, and your ass, and any of your cattle," while our text of Exodus states, "You shall not do any work... and your female servant, and your cattle," without detailing the ox and the ass and without reading "any of" before "your cattle." On the other hand, the wording of this papyrus matches the Deuteronomy text on the commandment of the Sabbath. And, discrepant with both Exodus and Deuteronomy, the papyrus reads, "On it you shall not do any work" -- thus, the wording of the papyrus does not precisely fit either the Exodus nor the Deuteronomy text of the Ten Commandments.

Likewise, the fifth commandment is expressed in the papyrus by the sentence, "Honor your father and your mother, so that it may go well with you, and that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your G-d gives to you." In our Torah text, Exodus reads, "Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your G-d gives to you," and Deuteronomy reads, "Honor your father and your mother, just as the Lord your G-d commanded you, so that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land which the Lord your G-d gives to you." Again, the Nash Papyrus version is different from the wording of both iterations in our Torah text.

Similarly, the sixth and the seventh commandments in the papyrus are, "You shall not commit adultery. You shall not commit murder," while both in Exodus and in Deuteronomy in our Torah text the order is reverse: "You shall not commit murder. You shall not commit adultery."

And one more remarkable detail is that in the Nash Papyrus the wording of the Shema is: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our G-d, one Lord is He" (YHWH echad hu), while our Torah text -- Deuteronomy 6:4 -- reads: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our G-d, the Lord is one" (YHWH echad). Even in such an important verse as the Shema there is a discrepancy.

As you can see, not only was the text of the Torah used by the Jews around the commencement of the Common Era sometimes very different from the one we use now, but no uniform text existed at all, even within the boundaries of a single community (like that of Qumran). Even in a single community significantly different scrolls could be used at the same time. This provided, it seems that we cannot claim a definite tradition of the Torah text being maintained from the time the original Torah scroll was written until now. And, besides the problems which this raises for a belief in the immutability of the Torah text, let me ask a further disturbing question: if the tradition of our most sacred book is corrupt, what can be said about the tradition (both written and oral) on other matters?

With regard to the number of 400,945 for the number of the letters in the Torah given by the mesoratic remarks at the end of the Leningrad Codex, it must be noted that there are, in fact, 304,848 letters. Our Torah scrolls contain 304,805 letters, so the discrepancy of 43 letters is only in the magnitude of around 0.0133%.

It could very well be that the extra letters were inadvertently added, as perhaps the scribe, Shmuel ben Yaakov, was not attentive enough, but again, it is hard to have any complaints against him, as there is, on average, only one extra letter for every 7,500 letters, which is a miniscule margin of error.

As for the reason why such a mistaken number could be recorded as the mesorah in the first place, I will start by pointing out that although the word ‘mesorah’ literally mean tradition, the understanding is not that these numbers were received by tradtion from the earliest generations until now, that there must be a certain number of letters or words; rather, the intention is that these are remarks that are made based on the mesorah – where people in later generations compiled mnemonics and markings, based on the number of times they found certain words that were written in certain ways. In other words, rather than understanding the number of 400,945 as representing an early tradition of how much letters the Torah must contain, a scribe who took upon himself the task of counting the Torah’s letters, probably some 1500 years ago, came to the total of 400,945, and wrote that down for later generations.

But in this specific case, it seems probable that this number is actually a corrupted version of the correct number. The mesoratic remarks as recorded by in the Leningrad Codex are: 5845 verses, 78, words and 400,945. This is immediately problematic, and shows that Shmuel ben Ya’akov never actually counted the letters, but rather copied this number from an earlier scribe, as to have 400,945 letters in only 79, words, would mean that each word contains on average – something almost unattainable in the Hebrew language, and never found in any of the books of Scripture. The mistake might have originated because an earlier scribe had transcribed the correct number in shorthand – rather than 304,805 as שלש מאות וארבע אלפים ושמנה מאות וחמש, it was written unclearly ד'ש'אלפים ת'ת'ה. This might cause someone in a hurry to mistranslate 4 and 300 thousand (ד"ש) as 400 thousand (ד' ש[ל] אלפים).

Moving on to your question regarding the three Torah scrolls mention in Tractate Sofrim, the truth is that I would prefer not to comment on this at all if I could, as we don’t really know with any degree of certainty why those three specific scrolls were chosen, and for what purpose they were kept in the Temple court. As I don’t have all of the relevant details, there is no reason why I should have any conviction that the conclusions I reach are true.

If, however, I would comment about this, this is how I see things:

From Yalkut Re’uveini (who writes: Ezra fixed the cantillation notes, vowels and the crowns of the letters (based) on three Torah scrolls that he found after the [Temple’s] destruction), it can be possibly inferred that these three Torah scrolls were unique in the sense that they were what we would refer to today, as Tikkun Sofrim – a text purposely compiled to constitute a precise text from which scribes would copy from when writing new Torah scrolls.

One of the questions surrounding this story, is if the passage should be read as שלשה ספרים מצאו בעזרה, three Torah scrolls were found in the Temple court, or שלשה ספרים מצא עזרא, three Torah scrolls were found by Ezra. It could be that Ezra used these three scrolls to create his own one, which would then explain the reason why he rejected the version that was existent in only one Torah scroll, in favor of the others. As these Torah scrolls were in truth Tikkun Sofrims, where the compiler puts in a concerted effort to ascertain from a whole range of Torah scrolls, what appears to him to be the accurate version of the text, Ezra, who was interested in the true tradition, and not in the ‘chiddushim’ (novel conclusions) of the compilers, inferred that in cases where there was a doubt, the true tradition was evident from the agreement between two scrolls and that the third scroll contained the compilers own ‘chiddush’, as it is uncommon for two different people to independently come to the same ‘chiddush’.

As for why a compiler might reach those conclusions, the discrepancy between the spellings of ‘hu’ and ‘hi’ is easy to understand, as in these cases, the word is still read ‘hi’ despite the fact that it is written as ‘hu’. It could be that the compiler felt that it should also be written as ‘hi’, in addition to being read as such.

Similarly, it is also easy to speculate why another compiler decided that the correct version should read ‘ma’on/meonah’ (מעון), instead of ‘meonah’ (מעונה). (In the same story mentioned in the Jerusalem Ta’anit chapter 4, halachah 2, the Gemara says that in one Torah scroll, they found ‘מעון אלקי קדם’, while in the other, they found ‘מעונה אלקי קדם’. It can be understood that the discrepancy was only with regard to the word מעון/מעונה, and that both scrolls correctly contained the next two words ‘אלקי קדם’. It is also possible that they were both read the same, as ‘meonah’, with the disagreement only about how to spell it.)

It is mentioned by the Talmud (Shabbat 104a) that there was a period of time in which the use of final letters (like mem sofit, or nun sofit etc.) fell into disuse, and it was only later re-established by the prophets. It can further be inferred from the Dead Sea Scrolls, whose authors seemingly rejected the authority of the Sages, and in many places, continued the practice of not using final letters, that the style of writing when the final letters where not used was that instead of using the final letter of, for example, final nun in the word ‘meonah’ (מעון), they would use a nun followed by a hey (מעונה). It is possible that the compiler of that Torah scroll was of the opinion that, after reverting back to the usage of final letters, the original word was to be spelt as מעון and not מעונה – which Ezra disregarded, as it was the ‘chiddush’ of that compiler.

As for the disagreement about the word זעטוטי – I’m really not sure where that came from, especially as it is a word that comes from a different language.

As an aside, it would only seem reasonable to say that the conclusions that Ezra reached with regard to the correct text of the Torah, were also supported by the text of many other Torah’s scrolls which surely existed in his time, as I find it truly incredulous to posit that there should exist only three Torah scrolls throughout the entire Jewish nation, which by that time, was already spread out in Israel, Egypt, Yemen, Babylon and Europe.

The existence of other Torah scrolls can also be inferred from the Midrash (Pirkei D'Rabbi Eliezer chapter 38): "What did Ezra, Zerubbabel and Joshua do? They gathered the congregation... with 300 Torah scrolls."

Lastly, about the Dead Sea Scrolls (and the Nash Papyrus), I again, have a hesitancy to really say anything about them, as we do not know with certainty who wrote them, and for what purpose. However, if I was already to comment on them, this is how I see them:

I have the unshakable feeling that the authors of these scrolls were either Sadducees, or if Essenes, they were at least strongly influenced by the Sadducees. The reasons why I believe so, are because of the following:

1. It is very evident that they did not accept the authority of the Sages, with one of the most noticeable examples being, the lack of use of final letters in their versions of the Scripture, as mentioned above. When one takes into account what I mentioned much earlier in my response, that one can infer the greatness of the Sages, as being at least as great, if not more, than the greatness of the Tzaddikim of our generation, one quickly realizes that their disregard for the Sages’ authority, is not a plus.

2. There are a number of references in the scrolls, that demand that the members of their group give respect to the ‘children of Zadok’. In one instance, they even reinterpret the verse ‘And the priests, the levites, [who are] the children of Zadok’ (Ezekiel 44:15), as that one must give respect to, ‘The priests and the levites and the children of Zadok’. This is significant, as the Sadducee sect was founded by Zadok, the student of Antigenos from Socho.

3. The halachik rulings that they reached are in line with what one would expect from the Sadducee sect. One example is from the Damascus document, where it says regarding the prohibition of arayot: “The laws of forbidden degrees are written, to be sure, with reference to males, but they hold good equally for females.” It then goes on to give an example, that just as it is forbidden for a man to marry his aunt, it is likewise forbidden for a woman to marry her uncle – a ruling clearly against the accepted halachah.

Another example can be brought from their pairs of phylacteries that were recently found. The scrolls they contain have the same Biblical paragraphs as the ones we have, with a notable difference – they also contain, in addition to the Shema, the version of the Ten Commandments that is recorded in Deuteronomy. This would fit perfectly with the Sadducean mindset: since the Torah says that one should ‘bind [these] words on the arm and head’ without specifying exactly which words are meant, the Sadducees decided that the Ten Commandments should be included as well, especially as in Deuteronomy, they are written immediately prior to the Shema.

What re-assures me that we have the correct version of the text (with regard to both the Tefillin, and the Shema of the Nash Papyrus), and that they have the mistaken one, is again, based on the miracle stories from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. (Again, the reason why I am only using the Lubavitcher Rebbe as an example, and not stories from other Tzaddikim, as I know the stories specifically about the Lubavitcher Rebbe very well). It seems, to me, to be an inescapable conclusion, for reasons detailed below, that somehow the Rebbe was able to know if someone’s Tefillin were kosher or not, which would not make any sense if all of our Tefiilin are inherently invalid from the start, as we do not have the correct words and letters written on the Tefillin’s parchment.

Within the tens of stories where someone had a miraculous recovery after fixing the mistakes that existed in their Tefillin, there is a noticeable amount of stories, almost a subgenre in itself, of cases where, after the person who received an answer that he should check his Tefillin, or Mezuzot, showed them to the scribe, the scribe would find no apparent mistake in the Tefillin; however, when they would inform the Rebbe that nothing was wrong, the Rebbe would reply again to check the Tefillin. This sometimes happened even up to four times, where they told the Rebbe that the Tefillin were kosher, and the Rebbe kept insisting that they should check it again. Invariably, the Rebbe was always right. And not about mistakes that were debatable if they made the Tefillin invalid or not – many times, letters, or even full words, were found to be missing.

From these stories, one can infer that the Rebbe was somehow able to sense if the Tefillin were kosher or not, which is why he would not accept the assurances from the scribe that it was kosher, and insisted that it be checked again.

But there are stories in the other direction as well. There were certain cases were the Rebbe answered someone that should check their Tefillin, and again, when they took the Tefillin to the scribe to be checked, the scribe found no problem with them.

In these stories, the person decided to start wearing a new pair of Tefillin, just in case the old one is somehow invalid, and the remarkable thing was that with every set of questions that they had sent in to the Rebbe, before they had made the switch, the Rebbe would always add at the end of his answer that they should check their Tefillin. After making the change, the Rebbe never mentioned the subject again, even though they never told the Rebbe that they had changed their Tefillin.

(This is not overly surprising that they could be invalid anyway, as there are certain flaws that would make a Tefillin or Mezuzah scroll invalid, in a way that it is impossible to detect while checking them. To give just two examples: the letters and words within the scrolls have to be written in order. If the scribe who wrote the Tefillin accidently forgot a letter, and only realized after writing the next few words, and decided to then insert the missing letter in the previous word, the scroll is invalid. Another example is that the words have to be written with the proper intent. Again, that is something that is impossible for a scribe who is checking over the Tefillin later, to know about.

Incidentally, this was a major problem during the beginning of the last century, where there were cases of irreligious scribes who wrote Torah scrolls on the Sabbath, and then sold them in America, where people did not know that they were written without the proper intent. This is why it is so important to buy these scrolls from a G-d fearing scribe, who can be trusted in selling only the scrolls that are truly kosher.)

To me, that can only make sense if our Tefillin are kosher from the beginning, as then it would be possible to differentiate between when it is kosher, and when it is not. But if our Tefillin are invalid from the get go, even if we would attempt to fix them they would remain invalid. How then could the Rebbe differentiate between when it was kosher or not?