Paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll, known also as 11QpaleoLev, is an ancient text preserved in one of the Qumran group of caves, and which provides a rare glimpse of the script used formerly by the Israelites in writing Torah scrolls during pre-exilic history. The fragmentary remains of the Torah scroll is written in the Paleo-Hebrew script and was found stashed away in cave no. 11 at Qumran, showing a portion of Leviticus. The scroll is thought to have been penned by the scribe between the late 2nd century BCE to early 1st century BCE, while others place its writing in the 1st century CE.
The paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll, although many centuries more recent than the well-known earlier ancient paleo-Hebrew epigraphic materials, such as the Royal Steward inscription from Siloam, Jerusalem (8th century BCE), now in the Museum of the Ancient Orient, Istanbul, and the Phoenician inscription on the sarcophagus of King Eshmun-Azar at Sidon, dating to the fifth-fourth century BCE, the Lachish ostraca (ca. 6th-century BCE), the Gezer calendar (ca. 950–918 BCE), and the paleo-Hebrew sacerdotal blessing discovered in 1979 near the St Andrew's Church in Jerusalem, is of no less importance to palaeography—even though the manuscript is fragmentary and only partially preserved on leather parchment.
Today, the paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll (11QpaleoLev) is housed at the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), but is not on public display.
Discovery
The discovery of the first Dead Sea scrolls in 1947 brought in its wake a flurry of epigraphic discoveries in the Qumran region. The paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll was one of the last among them to be discovered. It was found in January of 1956 by local Bedouins of the Taʿamireh clan, in what is now known as "Qumran Cave 11", about north of Khirbet Qumran, where it had been stashed along with other manuscripts. The entrance to the cave had been sealed off by fallen debris and large boulders, while part of the cave's roof had also collapsed, keeping the cave inaccessible for many centuries. The cache of manuscripts found in cave no. 11 yielded, among other manuscripts, the Great Psalms Scroll (11QPs), the Temple Scroll (11QT; being the longest of the Dead Sea Scrolls), and the paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll. The Leviticus Scroll was obtained by the Rockefeller Museum (formerly the Palestine Archaeological Museum) in May of 1956 where it was kept in the museum's scrollery, and there remained largely untouched for 12 years, until it could be examined by researchers. When the museum came under the administration of the Israeli government after the Six-Day War in 1967, the museum assigned the Leviticus Scroll to D.N. Freedman for study and publication, who published the first report on the manuscript in 1974. Today, the 11QpaleoLev is held by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).
The scroll was first photographed in 1956 by the Palestine Archaeological Museum (PAM), and again in 1970 under the auspices of the IAA, when infrared photographs were made of the manuscript. Between 1956 and 1970 the scroll had suffered, losing at several places tiny fragments from the edges. Thus, the 1956 photographs preserve a better stage of the scroll and show readings which were lost in 1970.
One fragment belonging to the 11QpaleoLev but not with the IAA is Fragment L (formerly, 11Q1), purchased by Georges Roux of France from the antiquities dealer Khalil Eskander Shaheen (Kando) of Bethlehem in 1967, showing Leviticus 21:7–12 / 22:21–27. Similar paleo-Hebrew fragments exist for the Books of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, discovered in Qumran Cave 4.
Historical background
The paleo-Hebrew script used is similar to the script still preserved today by the Samaritans, in the Samaritan Pentateuch, which itself is thought to be a direct descendant of the paleo-Hebrew alphabet (known in other circles as the Phoenician alphabet).
The Leviticus Scroll is of primary importance in helping secular and religious scholars better understand the textual development of the Hebrew Bible and can shed light on the Hebrew Pentateuch's Urtext.
Although secular linguistic experts agree that the Ashurit script (i.e., the modern square Jewish Hebrew alphabet) evolved from the earlier Paleo-Hebrew script via the Aramaic alphabet—their secular consensus view is based on palaeographic evidentiary discoveries, the timelines and assigned eras of those discoveries, and the slowly evolving letter/character morphologies as they offshoot from earlier scripts—the question remains undecided among Jewish religious sages as to whether or not the discovery of the 11QpaleoLev scroll has implications on what the original script of the first Torah was.