hebrew text on parchment

Author of 10th century Hebrew Biblical text is identified

The author of a 10th-century collection of Scriptures has been identified as the same scribe who wrote the the earliest known complete copy of the Hebrew Bible.

The finding could influence future translations of the Hebrew Scriptures, also known as the Old Testament, according to a news release from Tyndale House, Cambridge, which published the research.

The ancient text, known to scholars as Codex L17, contains only Joshua, Judges, I Samuel, II Samuel, I Kings and II Kings. Researcher Kim Phillips wrote in an article the Tyndale Bulletin that he determined that the author was the scribe Samuel ben Jacob, or “Samuel, son of Jacob,” and that it was written around the year 975.

Samuel ben Jacob also wrote The Leningrad Codex, the earliest known complete copy of the Hebrew Bible, completed in the year 1008 and the basis for many modern Biblical translations.

L17 was part of the Firkovich Collection of Hebrew manuscripts housed in the Russian National Library, which Dr Phillips described as “the most important trove of manuscripts for the study of the medieval text of the Hebrew Bible”.

 

Read the full article by Madeleine Buckley at Sight Magazine.