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68-639: 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,

136-504: A connection to Shebna , on the basis of a verse in the Bible mentioning a royal steward who was admonished for building a conspicuous tomb. It was found by Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau , about a decade prior to the Siloam inscription , making it the first ancient Hebrew inscription found in modern times. Clermont-Ganneau wrote about three decades later: "I may observe, by the way, that

204-604: A cursive form whose lapidary form tended to be more conservative by remaining more visually similar to Phoenician and early Aramaic. Both were in use through the Achaemenid Persian period, but the cursive form steadily gained ground over the lapidary, which had largely disappeared by the 3rd century BC. For centuries after the fall of the Achaemenid Empire in 331 BC, Imperial Aramaic, or something near enough to it to be recognisable, remained an influence on

272-533: A cursory review and comparison of extant texts, the 11QpaleoLev Leviticus Scroll is considered by many to be a primary textual witness of the Proto-Masoretic text. As was apparently common for the time, the scribe who copied the paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll has joined all words together, with only a dot separating word from word. A comparative study made between the Masoretic text (henceforth MT) and

340-563: A precursor to Arabization centuries later. These include the Assyrians and Babylonians , who permanently replaced their Akkadian language and its cuneiform script with Aramaic and its script, and among Jews , but not Samaritans , who adopted the Aramaic language as their vernacular and started using the Aramaic alphabet even for writing Hebrew , displacing the former Paleo-Hebrew alphabet . The modern Hebrew alphabet derives from

408-660: A program about Western Neo-Aramaic and the villages in which it is spoken with the square script still in use. The Imperial Aramaic alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in October 2009, with the release of version 5.2. The Unicode block for Imperial Aramaic is U+10840–U+1085F: The Syriac Aramaic alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in September 1999, with the release of version 3.0. The Syriac Abbreviation (a type of overline ) can be represented with

476-701: A rich literary tradition in Syriac-Aramaic script, Western Neo-Aramaic was solely passed down orally for generations until 2006 and was not utilized in a written form. Therefore, the Language Institute's chairman, George Rizkalla (Rezkallah), undertook the writing of a textbook in Western Neo-Aramaic. Being previously unwritten, Rizkalla opted for the Hebrew alphabet . In 2010, the institute's activities were halted due to concerns that

544-529: A script now known widely as the Aramaic script. It is believed that during the period of Assyrian dominion, that Aramaic script and language received official status. Syriac and Christian Neo-Aramaic dialects are today written in the Syriac alphabet , which script has superseded the more ancient Assyrian script and now bears its name. Mandaic is written in the Mandaic alphabet . The near-identical nature of

612-432: A system like Aramaic must be either a syllabary, as argued by Ignace Gelb , or an incomplete or deficient alphabet , as most other writers had said before Daniels. Daniels put forward, this is a different type of writing system, intermediate between syllabaries and 'full' alphabets. The Aramaic alphabet is historically significant since virtually all modern Middle Eastern writing systems can be traced back to it. That

680-558: A translation of the paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll is rendered as follows: The arrangement of the lines does not necessarily follow the arrangements used by modern scribes when copying from their Tikkun Soferim , a thing which does invalidate a Torah scroll. However, the use of section breaks follows closely the traditions bequeathed by the Masoretes , so that the Open section ( Hebrew : פרשה פתוחה ) in line no. 3 (Lev. 23:23) starts at

748-403: Is forty-seven. Columns 4 to 7 measure 14.9 cm. in width, except for the narrow, final column. Columns 2 and 3 measure 13.6 cm. and 12.0 cm., respectively. The scroll contains much of Leviticus chapters 22:21–27, 23:22–29, 24:9–14, 25:28–36, 26:17–26, and 27:11–19, with smaller fragments showing portions of chapters 4:24–26, 10:4–7, 11:27–32, 13:3–9, 14:16–21, 18:26–19:3, 20:1–6, et al. Based on

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816-480: Is not a literal translation – the three words literally mean simply "whom/which (is) over the house", i.e. the one who oversees the house. Using parallels to biblical passages it has been variously translated "upon the house", "steward of the house" or "governor of the house". The "maidservant" is referred to by the Hebrew ‘amatah , equivalent to the term " handmaiden " used to refer to concubines at various points in

884-647: Is not on public display. 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 Ta'amireh clan, in what is now known as " Qumran Cave 11 ", about 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) north of Khirbet Qumran , where it had been stashed along with other manuscripts. The entrance to

952-692: Is primarily due to the widespread usage of the Aramaic language after it was adopted as both a lingua franca and the official language of the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires, and their successor, the Achaemenid Empire . Among the descendant scripts in modern use, the Jewish Hebrew alphabet bears the closest relation to the Imperial Aramaic script of the 5th century BC, with an identical letter inventory and, for

1020-478: Is that it shows an ancient scribal practice of aligning all words in the columns in a natural progressive order, without the necessity of stretching words as is typically practised by scribes in the Ashurit script (modern Hebrew script) to justify the end of the line at the left margin. To avoid a long word extending beyond the column, the scribe simply broke-off the word, writing one or several letters of that word at

1088-488: Is thought to have been originally part of a larger Torah scroll made-up of individual sheets of parchment that were sewn together. The surviving scroll, showing portions of the Book of Leviticus , shows only the bottom portion of two sheets of parchment (ca. one-fifth of its original height), now measuring 10.9 centimetres (4.3 in) in height. The two sheets of parchment are shown sewn together; one containing three columns, and

1156-444: Is written to also signify the first letter in the word וידבר in the new section. In these places and others, the solitary waw is characteristically used in open spaces between paragraphs when the new paragraph should have begun with that letter. The use of a solitary waw in the middle of the section break is consistent with the practice found in paleo-Hebrew biblical manuscripts discovered in Qumran cave no. 4, showing fragments from

1224-472: The ḳeri ( קרי ), although the text is written לא as the actual ketiv ( כתיב ) in the MT, the paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll shows the original reading and is written plainly as לו , without the necessity of changing its reading. This suggests that the Masoretes who transmitted the readings for words had access to an early orthographic tradition. Another unique feature of the paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll

1292-618: The Aramaic language use the Phoenician alphabet . Over time, the alphabet developed into the Aramaic alphabet by the 8th century BC. It was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian tribes throughout the Fertile Crescent . It was also adopted by other peoples as their own alphabet when empires and their subjects underwent linguistic Aramaization during a language shift for governing purposes —

1360-409: The Book of Exodus , tentatively dated 100–25 BCE . As was customary for ancient Torah scrolls, words were joined together without spacing, as is seen in the paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll. Some words are broken in two, between two consecutive lines. The original paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll contained approximately 45 lines. From this one surviving relic of Israel's distant past, it can be shown that

1428-455: The Fertile Crescent . It was also adopted by other peoples as their own alphabet when empires and their subjects underwent linguistic Aramaization during a language shift for governing purposes — a precursor to Arabization centuries later — including among the Assyrians and Babylonians who permanently replaced their Akkadian language and its cuneiform script with Aramaic and its script, and among Jews , but not Samaritans , who adopted

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1496-742: 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

1564-514: The Torah . The royal steward or court chamberlain was a powerful figure in Ancient Judah . According to the Book of Isaiah ( Isaiah 22:15–16 ), the royal steward appointed by King Hezekiah was called Shebna and he was admonished for building himself too grandiose a tomb . Although the name of the royal steward is broken at the point where the official is named, it has been conjectured on

1632-463: The paleo-Hebrew script , which is one view found in Talmudic commentary. According to another rabbinic view in the 5th-century CE Babylonian Talmud , conversely, the find of 11QpaleoLev is inconsequential since they regard the Torah to have been given by Moses already in the "Assyrian script" ( Ktav Ashuri , also known as "Ashurit"—the current modern printed Hebrew script), but then later changed to

1700-671: The Aramaic alphabet, in contrast to the modern Samaritan alphabet , which derives from Paleo-Hebrew . Around 500 BC, following the Achaemenid conquest of Mesopotamia under Darius I , Old Aramaic was adopted by the Persians as the "vehicle for written communication between the different regions of the vast Persian empire with its different peoples and languages. The use of a single official language, which modern scholarship has dubbed as Official Aramaic, Imperial Aramaic or Achaemenid Aramaic, can be assumed to have greatly contributed to

1768-411: The Aramaic and the classical Hebrew alphabets caused Aramaic text to be typeset mostly in the standard Hebrew script in scholarly literature. In Maaloula , one of few surviving communities in which a Western Aramaic dialect is still spoken, an Aramaic Language Institute was established in 2006 by Damascus University that teaches courses to keep the language alive. Unlike Classical Syriac, which has

1836-503: The Aramaic language as their vernacular and started using the Aramaic alphabet, which they call " Square Script ", even for writing Hebrew , displacing the former Paleo-Hebrew alphabet . The modern Hebrew alphabet derives from the Aramaic alphabet, in contrast to the modern Samaritan alphabet , which derives from Paleo-Hebrew . The letters in the Aramaic alphabet all represent consonants , some of which are also used as matres lectionis to indicate long vowels . Writing systems, like

1904-499: The Aramaic, that indicate consonants but do not indicate most vowels other than by means of matres lectionis or added diacritical signs, have been called abjads by Peter T. Daniels to distinguish them from alphabets such as the Greek alphabet , that represent vowels more systematically. The term was coined to avoid the notion that a writing system that represents sounds must be either a syllabary or an alphabet, which would imply that

1972-699: The Books of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, discovered in Qumran Cave 4 . 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

2040-530: The Leviticus Scroll shows a tradition of orthography which slightly differed from the MT with respect to plene and defective scripta , the Leviticus Scroll generally showing more full spellings than the MT. This makes sense, since the Masoretic scholars are the ones who created the vowel pointing system that was added to the consonantal text, whereas the fuller spellings were the only available aid to

2108-577: The MT than does the Septuagint. Royal Steward inscription The Royal Steward Inscription , known as KAI 191, is an important Proto-Hebrew inscription found in the village of Silwan outside Jerusalem in 1870. After passing through various hands, the inscription was purchased by the British Museum in 1871. The inscription is broken at the point where the tomb's owner would have been named, but biblical scholars have conjectured

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2176-522: The Middle East led to the gradual adoption of the Aramaic alphabet for writing Hebrew . Formerly, Hebrew had been written using an alphabet closer in form to that of Phoenician, the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet . Since the evolution of the Aramaic alphabet out of the Phoenician one was a gradual process, the division of the world's alphabets into the ones derived from the Phoenician one directly, and

2244-660: The Old Hebrew script. Both old and new systems consisted of 22 corresponding characters with (at that time) the same Semitic sound values. The Hebrew sages of the 1st-century CE augmented the use of the modern Hebrew script over that of the former script, declaring that sanctity only applied to those texts transcribed in the Ashurit (modern Hebrew) script, effectively doing away with the Old Hebrew (paleo-Hebrew) writing system. The paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll consists of fifteen fragments and one scroll of seven columns, measuring 100.5 centimetres (39.6 in) in length. The scroll

2312-417: The ancient Hebrew writing inscribed on the grain-side of the leather, being the side where the hair once grew, and which side is usually darker than the flesh side of the leather. The leather, upon examination, is thought to belong to a small domesticated animal; either a kid of the goats or young sheep. The pattern of the grain surface in the leather resembles that of a kid, rather than a sheep. The lettering of

2380-459: The ancient paleo-Hebrew script to the Ashurit script (modern Hebrew script), which happened after Israel's return from the Babylonian exile , officially did away with the ancient characters, but preserved the language intact, as the paleo-Hebrew letters were replaced, letter by letter, with their exact Ashurit equivalent, and where the newer characters represented the same phonetic sounds used in

2448-507: The astonishing success of the Achaemenid Persians in holding their far-flung empire together for as long as they did." Imperial Aramaic was highly standardised. Its orthography was based more on historical roots than any spoken dialect and was influenced by Old Persian . The Aramaic glyph forms of the period are often divided into two main styles, the "lapidary" form, usually inscribed on hard surfaces like stone monuments, and

2516-673: The basis of the biblical verse that this monumental inscription originates from the tomb of Shebna. Clermont-Ganneau speculated in 1899 that the tomb could be that of the Shebna mentioned in Isaiah, but described the idea as a "sanguine illusion". In the early 1950s, the idea was suggested again by Yigael Yadin , the Israeli Army Chief of the General Staff , who was later to become an archaeologist. Nahman Avigad assessed

2584-420: The beginning of the margin, after the previous verse ended on the previous line, followed by a very long vacant space ( vacat ) extending to the left margin, showing that it is an Open Section , whereas line no. 6 (Lev. 23:26) is an anomaly of sorts, insofar that the MT makes it a Closed Section ( Hebrew : פרשה סתומה ), which should start in the middle of the column, with an intermediate space between it and

2652-611: 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

2720-547: The creation of the Syriac , Palmyrene and Mandaic alphabets , which formed the basis of the historical scripts of Central Asia, such as the Sogdian and Mongolian alphabets. The Old Turkic script is generally considered to have its ultimate origins in Aramaic, in particular via the Pahlavi or Sogdian alphabets , as suggested by V. Thomsen , or possibly via Kharosthi ( cf ., Issyk inscription ). Brahmi script

2788-542: The discovery of these two texts was made long before that of the inscription in the tunnel, and therefore, though people in general do not seem to recognise this fact, it was the first which enabled us to behold an authentic specimen of Hebrew monumental epigraphy of the period of the Kings of Judah." The text is considered to have a "remarkable" similarity to that of the Tabnit sarcophagus from Sidon . The inscribed lintel

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2856-465: 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

2924-590: The end of one line, and the remaining letters of the same word at the beginning of the next line (e.g. the Tetragrammaton in Lev. 24:9, the word ישראל in Lev. 24:10, the word אל in Lev. 24:11 - all in column no. 3; the word ארצכם in Lev. 26:19 in column no. 5, et al. ) In column no. 4 of the 11QpaleoLev scroll (the second line from the bottom) it shows no section break for Leviticus 25:35 ( Hebrew : וכי ימוך אחיך ומטה ידו עמך ), although in most MT readings

2992-463: The fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the unity of the Imperial Aramaic script was lost, diversifying into a number of descendant cursives. The Hebrew and Nabataean alphabets , as they stood by the Roman era , were little changed in style from the Imperial Aramaic alphabet. Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) alleges that not only the old Nabataean writing was influenced by the "Syrian script" (i.e. Aramaic), but also

3060-495: 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

3128-545: The inscription to be purchased and removed by the British Museum one year after its discovery. Almost thirty years later, in 1899, he published a detailed description of the discovery. The limestone inscription was so severely damaged that it has not been possible to completely decipher the script. The writing is in Biblical Hebrew in the Phoenician or Paleo-Hebrew script – at the time of its discovery

3196-540: The most part, nearly identical letter shapes. By contrast the Samaritan Hebrew script is directly descended from Proto-Hebrew/Phoenician script, which was the ancestor of the Aramaic alphabet. The Aramaic alphabet was also an ancestor to the Syriac alphabet and Mongolian script and Kharosthi and Brahmi ,and Nabataean alphabet , which had the Arabic alphabet as a descendant. The earliest inscriptions in

3264-508: The old Chaldean script. A cursive Hebrew variant developed from the early centuries AD. It remained restricted to the status of a variant used alongside the noncursive. By contrast, the cursive developed out of the Nabataean alphabet in the same period soon became the standard for writing Arabic, evolving into the Arabic alphabet as it stood by the time of the early spread of Islam . The development of cursive versions of Aramaic led to

3332-597: The ones derived from Phoenician via Aramaic, is somewhat artificial. In general, the alphabets of the Mediterranean region (Anatolia, Greece, Italy) are classified as Phoenician-derived, adapted from around the 8th century BC. Those of the East (the Levant, Persia, Central Asia, and India) are considered Aramaic-derived, adapted from around the 6th century BC from the Imperial Aramaic script of the Achaemenid Empire. After

3400-453: The other four columns, for a total of seven extant columns. The paleo-Hebrew script is written upon horizontal ruled lines, indented in the parchment by a semi-sharp instrument, from which the scribe "hangs" his letters. The rule lines were made mechanically and have a distinctive lighter shade of brown, and are intersected with indented vertical lines at the ends of the margins. The parchment consists of light to dark brown, tanned leather, with

3468-534: The paleo-Hebrew script, and, once again, returned to the Ashurit script during the time of Ezra the Scribe in the 5th century BCE. This latter view, however, is incongruous with secular linguistic findings. Nevertheless, the matter remains undecided and in dispute among Jewish religious sages, with some holding the opinion that the Torah was originally inscribed in the Old Hebrew (Paleo-Hebrew) script, while others that it

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3536-531: The place is marked by a section break ( Closed Section ). This anomaly can be attributed to the fact that some of the Geonim were in dispute over whether or not the reading in Leviticus 25:35 was to be marked by a section break; some including there a section break and others omitting a section break, as disclosed by the medieval scribe Menahem Meiri in his Kiryat Sefer . In the following nine lines,

3604-430: The previous verse, but in the paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll the section here starts at the beginning of the right margin, with the previous verse ending in the previous line and followed by a short vacant space extending to the left margin (which space is equivalent to that of about 14 letters). Likewise, in column no. three, the verse Lev. 24:10 is made a Closed Section in the MT, but in the paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll

3672-410: The proposal, based upon the similarity of the text to that of the Siloam inscription and the fact that biblical story of Shebna took place during the reign of King Hezekiah (715–687 BCE), describing it as a "highly conjectural suggestion". Aramaic alphabet The ancient Aramaic alphabet was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian tribes throughout

3740-570: The reader for discerning the vowel sounds at the earlier period. According to the Talmud, at some time during the Second Temple period the Sages saw a need to bring conformity to the writing, and therefore began work on establishing an authoritative text, which eventually became known as the MT. The 11QpaleoLev scroll is unique in that where the MT requires reading לו in Leviticus 25:30 as

3808-457: The script was referred to as "Phoenician letters" – and can be dated to the 7th century BCE. 𐤆𐤀𐤕 . . . . . . . 𐤉𐤄𐤅 𐤀𐤔𐤓 𐤏𐤋𐤄 𐤁𐤉𐤕. 𐤀𐤉[𐤍 𐤐𐤄] 𐤊𐤎𐤐. 𐤅[𐤆]𐤄𐤁 . 𐤀𐤌 . . . . . . . 𐤅𐤏𐤑𐤌𐤅[𐤕] 𐤀𐤌𐤕𐤄 𐤀[𐤕]𐤄. 𐤀𐤓𐤅𐤓 𐤄𐤀[𐤃𐤌] 𐤀𐤔𐤓 𐤉𐤐[𐤕𐤇] 𐤀[𐤕] 𐤆𐤀𐤕 ‎ The three words "אשר על הבית" gave rise to the English translation "royal steward", although this

3876-427: The scroll is written in lampblack ink. Individual words are divided by dots. The top portion of the scroll is irregularly worn away, with no indication that it had been deliberately torn or cut. Letter and line calculations suggest that the scroll's height was roughly four times greater than the extant lower portion, based upon letter and scribal dot counts of columns four to six. The average number of letters per line

3944-484: The section break starts at the beginning of the right margin, preceded by a line where the previous verse ends close to the start of the line, and a solitary paleo-Hebrew letter waw is written in the middle of that long-extended space, a tradition which is no longer recognised today. In Leviticus 20:1–6 ( Fragment J ), the Open Section is preceded by a vacant space, in the middle of which the Hebrew character waw

4012-420: 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. Among some Jewish religious sages, the find of 11QpaleoLev would corroborate one rabbinic view that the Torah was originally written in

4080-458: The square Maalouli-Aramaic alphabet used in the program bore a resemblance to the square script of the Hebrew alphabet. As a result, all signs featuring the square Maalouli script were subsequently removed. The program stated that they would instead use the more distinct Syriac-Aramaic alphabet , although use of the Maalouli alphabet has continued to some degree. Al Jazeera Arabic also broadcast

4148-615: 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

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4216-433: The time of the kings of Judah. It belongs authentically, by the very position which it occupies, to the history of Jerusalem. I cannot yet publicly point out its origin, in order not to interfere with the steps taken for its preservation. I will confine myself to saying that it has probably a religious signification, as is proved by the words beit and Baal , which are very distinctly to be read. Clermont-Ganneau arranged for

4284-528: The unknown vorlage , or parent text, used to produce the Greek Septuagint (LXX) was similar to the text of the paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll in some places, such as in Lev. 26:24, where it adds the words beḥamat ḳerī = "in rage of froward behaviour" – the words "in rage" not appearing in the MT . In yet other places (Lev. 25:31 and Lev. 23:23–24) , the paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll follows more closely

4352-476: The various native Iranian languages . The Aramaic script survived as the essential characteristics of the Iranian Pahlavi writing system . 30 Aramaic documents from Bactria have been recently discovered, an analysis of which was published in November 2006. The texts, which were rendered on leather, reflect the use of Aramaic in the 4th century BC, in the Persian Achaemenid administration of Bactria and Sogdiana . The widespread usage of Achaemenid Aramaic in

4420-407: Was also possibly derived or inspired by Aramaic. Brahmic family of scripts includes Devanagari . Today, Biblical Aramaic , Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects and the Aramaic language of the Talmud are written in the modern-Hebrew alphabet, distinguished from the Old Hebrew script. In classical Jewish literature , the name given to the modern-Hebrew script was "Ashurit", the ancient Assyrian script,

4488-442: Was found by French archaeologist , Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau in 1870 above the entrance to a home in Silwan , a village south of Jerusalem . Clermont-Ganneau first published the discovery in the Quarterly Statement of the Palestinian Exploration Fund , but with little detail: Hebrew inscription in Phoenician characters. This inscription, discovered by myself several months ago, is the only monumental text which goes back to

4556-424: Was not. What is generally acknowledged by all Jewish religious sages is that Ezra the Scribe in the 5th century BCE was the first to enact that the scroll of the Law be written in the Assyrian alphabet (Ashurit)—the modern Hebrew script, rather than in the Old Hebrew (Paleo-Hebrew) script used formerly, and permitted that the Book of Daniel be composed in the Aramaic language with Ashurit characters. The switch from

4624-447: 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

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