December 1, 2021 Journal article Open Access

Writing and Correcting a Torah Scroll in Germany of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries

Nehring; Bonnerot; Gordon; Rabin

Ms Erfurt 7 (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preussicher Kulturbesitz, Ms. Or. fol. 1216) is a thirteenth-century Torah scroll from the famous Erfurt collection kept at the Berlin State Library. Multiple corrections, reinking, and three replacement sheets testify to intense ritual use of the scroll. A previous study has already investigated the different nature of the inks used for the original and replacement sheets and identified a two-stage process of writing, in which the names of God were sometimes added in the second state. The present article broadens the previous study, investigating the relationship between the inks used for the different corrections, reinking, and names of God on both the original and replacement sheets, using a scanning micro-XRF spectrometer. Scientific material analysis confirms and supplements palaeographical observations, identifying the work of a scribe who filled God’s name into blank spaces in replacement sheets and performed corrections on both the original sheets and the replacement sheets. It is suggested that this scribe was a master scribe working alongside an apprentice, a practice with parallels in the Dead Sea Scrolls and medieval Hebrew Bible codices.