Of Jars, Scraps, and Scrolls: How Ancient Books Were Composed

In biblical times, scraps of writing were stored together in jars, likely based on theme or topic, and these collections were combined and edited into our biblical books. Similarly, Talmudic pericopae began with collections of legal or wise sayings written on pitqi, “scraps,” and stored together in jars, or on a pinqas, wooden slats bound together.

Dr.

Monika Amsler

Dr.

Monika Amsler

Categories:

Mishpatim

Biblical Criticism

Of Jars, Scraps, and Scrolls: How Ancient Books Were Composed

Some form of very basic literacy may have been part of Israelite/Judean society from early on, as we can see various examples in both kingdoms of writing that is not royal in character, whether in the Gezer calendar, the Samarian ostraca, the inscriptions in Kuntillat Ajrud, or the Siloam Inscription, to name a few.^[1] Given that widespread education did not come about until the Hellenistic period, basic literacy was made possible by their having possessed a concise alphabet that was easily manageable and did not require the highly specialized scribal education of the cuneiform system.^[2]

When writing brief messages, such as receipts, ancient Israelites commonly used pottery shards (ostraca), which were ubiquitous, had a smooth surface, and could be washed off and reused.^[3] Additional writing materials were stones, palm leaves, small pieces of papyrus sheets, rolled or folded, or even just scraps.^[4] Notably, the Bible never describes such forms of writing. Instead, we only hear about more elite forms of writing in connection with prophets, kings, and their use of specialized scribes.

For example, YHWH commands Moses to come to the top of the mountain to receive the laws of the covenant carved onto stone tablets by YHWH’s own hand.^[5] The material of the tablets stands out, as writing tablets, luchot, were normally made of wood, and thus not durable long term.^[6] Carving words in stone, in contrast, was the most durable form of writing in the ancient world.^[7]

Following the Covenant Collection, Moses first delivers YHWH’s laws orally and the people accept them. Then he writes them down upon a ספר, “scroll” and reads it to the people again for them to accept it.^[8] Scrolls also appear as artifacts in prophetic visions. Ezekiel receives a message from God together with a scroll of lamentation that he is commanded to eat.^[9] We are never even informed what the scroll said. Similarly, Zechariah sees a giant flying scroll in one of his visions,^[10] and we aren’t told specifically what it says.

The material envisioned in all these texts is animal hide, a “fancy” and expensive material,^[11] not the papyrus scraps, pottery sherds, wooden slats, or even parchment scraps, that would have been the norm for the average person who would not be purchasing or preparing special writing materials.

Putting Together Books from Scraps

Storage containers, such as the jars in which the Qumran documents—in this case actual scrolls—were used for writing meant to be preserved. Indeed, specific types of jars were even crafted for the storage of documents.^[12] If we envision that specific jars were designated for certain texts—psalms, proverbs, Mosaic, etc.— we can understand how this practice contributed to the composition of biblical books.

The Book of the Twelve

Take The Twelve Minor Prophets. What connects these works and makes them into one book? The obvious answer is that they are short; many could have been written entirely on short scraps of papyrus. The fact that they ended up as part of a book centuries later implies that they must have been stored together, perhaps in a jar collecting small prophetic works.

Deutero-Zechariah

Scholars have long noted that the book of Zechariah is an artificial combination of two different prophets.^[13] The first eight chapters are associated with the prophet Zechariah from the beginning of the Second Temple period, and chapters 9–12, generally referred to as Deutero-Zechariah, from a different prophet whose style and message is easy to distinguish from that of Zechariah.

Apparently, a piece of prophetic text with no name attached to it was included in the collection jar from which the Book of the Twelve was composed, and the scribes who put it together added this collection of prophecies to Zechariah, for whatever reason, as they wished to present all prophecies as deriving from a named prophet.^[14]

Deutero-Isaiah and Trito-Isaiah

This may well be the same reason we have the large book of Isaiah, made up of at least three prophetic works, the eighth century prophet Isaiah, the exilic prophet known as Deutero-Isaiah, and the early Second Temple period prophecies of Trito-Isaiah. (These latter two are not names of real individuals; both collections were anonymous and appended to the eighth century Isaiah son of Amoz.)

Jeremiah: Two Versions

Nathan Mastnjak suggests a more complex example: The latter half of the book of Jeremiah is organized very differently in the Greek LXX—which likely derives from a Hebrew Vorlage—and in the Hebrew MT. For example, in MT chapters 46–51 contain a section known as Jeremiah’s oracles against the nations; in LXX, this collection appears in chapters 25–31. It contains the same prophecies, more or less, against the same nine nations, but in a different order:

MT: Egypt, Philistia, Moab, Ammon, Edom, Damascus, Kedar, Elam, Babylon

LXX: Elam, Egypt, Babylon, Philistia,^[15] Edom, Ammon, Kedar, Moab.

The breakdown is as follows:

Egypt: MT ch. 46; LXX ch. 26

Philistia: MT ch. 47; LXX ch. 29 (vv. 1–7)

Moab: MT ch. 48; LXX ch. 31

Ammon: MT ch. 49 (vv. 1–6); LXX ch. 30 (vv. 1–5)

Edom: MT ch. 49 (vv. 7–22); LXX ch. 29 (vv. 8–23)

Damascus: MT ch. 49 (vv. 23–27); LXX ch. 30 (vv. 12–16)

Kedar: MT ch. 49 (vv. 28–34); LXX ch. 30 (vv. 6–11)

Elam: MT ch. 49 (vv. 34–39); LXX ch. 25 (vv. 14–19)

Babylon: MT ch. 50–51; LXX ch. 27–28

While it is possible that one version is revising the other, it seems likely that both the MT and the Hebrew Vorlage of the Greek LXX editors were working from the same storage unit.^[16]

“This Is the Torah of…”

Leviticus has a series of laws about sacrifice and purity that begin or end with the phrase זאת תורת “this is the teaching of.” While some scholars argue that this is just the editor’s way of organizing the material, Israel Knohl of Hebrew University has suggested that these passages in the Priestly text of the Torah began as instructions, kept on papyrus or small scraps of parchment, filed in the Jerusalem Temple, that priests could use as reference or refreshers when performing these rituals.^[17]

Pentateuch and Psalms

On a larger scale, the Torah/Pentateuch and the book of Psalms were too long to have been combined in a single scroll until the third century C.E., well after they were conceptualized as a unit. It was the very storage in—and hence grouping of texts by—jars and other containers such as baskets or the Roman capsa that made it possible to refer to them as a sefer, a literary unit, even though the Torah consisted of five individual books.^[18]

Storing scrolls and other pieces of writing material in containers contributed to the categorization, standardization, and ultimately canonization of a set of scrolls and other materials as a unit with subunits (book 1, book 2...); it did not impede, but, rather, encouraged, additions, especially in the formative stages of a text-compound.^[19]

From Scraps to Scrolls

Ancient book production underwent significant technological change and improvement in the Hellenistic period when the Ptolemies of Egypt made collecting Greek poetry and literature the basis of their claim to be Alexander’s rightful heirs.^[20] According to legend, the invention of parchment followed the Ptolemies’ pursuit of amassing Greek texts in the library of Alexandria by borrowing and copying them—the endeavor that led to the translation of the Septuagint—papyrus was no longer be exported to the Seleucids, who worked on a similar project in Pergamon.^[21] The shortage in papyrus resulted in an investment in the refinement of animal hide by the Pergamene, who ultimately refined parchment (in German: Pergament).

Finer parchment made scrolls less bulky and allowed for the combination of multiple books into a single scroll. In the third century C.E., the production of a scroll containing the five books of Moses became technologically feasible, and rabbinic sages began to regulate how such Torah scrolls should be written.^[22] The rules concerning the proper writing of such scrolls were collected in the post-talmudic tractate, called soferim [scribes]. Refined parchment could ultimately also be used for the codex, a Roman era invention of folding papyrus sheets into quires that were stitched together^[23]—the origin of books as we now know them.

Roman and Rabbinic Slips

The study of textual materiality in the emerging Judaism and Christianity of the first centuries C.E. tends to focus on the question of why the Christians seemed to prefer the codex while the Jews stuck to the scroll format for their sacred texts. In this debate, everyday writing materials such as wooden slats, scraps of papyrus, and ostraca have been swept under the carpet.^[24]

Keeping these other materials in mind, however, helps to explain why Late Antique literature is the way it is, broken down into small parts, sentences, short stories, parables. They corresponded to the considerably small writing surfaces on which they were composed and transmitted.

Such literal pieces of wisdom also permeate rabbinic literature.^[25] Indeed, while Rabbinic literature is inclined to portray the earlier rabbis as transmitting knowledge fresh from the teacher’s mouth to the student’s ear, it nevertheless mentions quite a few writing materials en passant.

Sending Messages to the Study House

The Babylonian Talmud, for example, relates a story in which the Rabbis Meir and Nathan attempt a coup against Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel through a humiliating tactic. After he narrowly avoids falling into the trap, he has them temporarily banned from the study house, but they send messages to their fellow rabbis on pitqi (sg. pitqa), a Greek loan word that Michael Sokoloff translates as “slip”:^[26]

^{בבלי הוריות יג:} פקיד ואפקינהו מבי מדרשא הוו כתבי קושייתא [בפתקי]^[27] ושדו התם דהוה מיפריק מיפריק דלא הוו מיפריק כתבי פירוקי ושדו.

^{b. Horayot 13b} He commanded that they be removed from the study house. They would write their analytical problems [on scraps] and throw them [into the study house]. Those that were answered were answered. Those that were not answered, [Rabbis Meir and Nathan] would write answers and throw them [into the study house].

In their comprehensive Greek lexicon, Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott render the Greek pittakion also as referring to tablet, label, ticket.^[28] The materiality of the pitqi is nowhere specified, but from the story, it was clearly lightweight enough to be thrown. Other texts describe them as being shot by an arrow (b. Sanh. 26a), falling from the sky (b. Baba Metzia 86a; b. Sanhedrin 64a; b. Yoma 69b), or worn as a pendant around the neck (b. Qidd. 73b).

From the Scroll (back) to the Slip

The pitqi stories, fictional though they may be, give an idea of the writing materials on which rabbinic maxims and legal statements were likely to have been collected. But there is also evidence that longer compositions, probably on papyrus scrolls, were cut up into short units and were then used associatively in the Babylonian Talmud.

This seems to be the case with those medical recipes that follow the standard terminology “For [name of the disease] bring …”. This formulation occurs at least 47 times in the Babylonian Talmud and is also known from Greek treatises on such simple remedies.^[29]

^{בבלי גיטין סט:} לכאב מיעי לייתי תלת^[30] מאה^[31] פלפלי אריכתא וכל יומא נישתי מאה^[32] מיניהו בחמימי רבין^[33] דמן נרש^[34] עבד לברתיה דרב אשי^[35] מאה וחמשין מהני דידן ואיתסי .

^{b. Gittin 69b} For pain in the intestines: Bring three hundred long peppers and drink one hundred of them every day in hot water. Rabin of Narash made one hundred and fifty from these for Rav Ashi’s daughter, and she recovered.

The standard formulation allowed readers to quickly grasp the beginning of a new recipe as well as its therapy or alternative therapies, introduced by “and if not” (ואי לא). The distribution of this particular type of recipe and its use—sometimes placed into the mouth of a rabbi as a saying, sometimes anonymously—points to the compilation techniques at work in the compilation process of the Babylonian Talmud and, indeed in late antique literature more generally: small units were puzzled together to form a whole that could be dismantled again if necessary.

A Woven Tapestry

Just as the biblical books discussed above, rabbinic texts may also have begun as bits and pieces of different sizes, gathered in jars and other containers that formed the rabbinic archive. Indeed, both the Talmuds and the Midrashim continuously surprise through the scope of their commentaries, their eclectic nature, and their digressions: features that can be explained through their origins in jars and baskets full of individual but associatively related pieces of text.

Rabbinic texts refer to oral transmission, but such transmission need not be limited to literal “Torah from the mouth,” i.e., knowledge contained only in the memory of tradents.^[36] Instead, we can understand this phrase as a shorthand reference to the difference between the formal and highly regulated production of the written Torah and informal note-taking such as writing on scraps.^[37] Such notes, stored together in jars, would end up as a key part of the Talmudic textual tapestry—the Latin textus as well as the Hebrew massekhet literally mean “fabric”—woven together to create the rich and complex dialogue style familiar to us.

According to this model, the commentaries on Mishnaic lemmas were constructed as follows in the Babylonian Talmud: Bits and pieces of material were collected and sorted according to keywords. These keywords were then assigned to Mishnaic lemmas that themselves followed pre-existing lists of words that required explanations (scholia). These may also have furnished some of the keywords, but the composers of the Babylonian Talmud clearly also kept an eye on the way the parallel passages in the older Jerusalem Talmud were arranged.^[38]

The redactors would then arrange the material in an engaging order, following, in principle, the ancient rhetorical structure for speeches that consists of introduction, narration of the case, the proofs and the peroration/epilogue.^[39] Editorial questions and comments from the unnamed Talmudic voice—the stam—connect the pieces and give, together with the attributions, the impression of an ongoing dialogue. This method of composition has parallels in Greek and Latin texts that imitate the conversations held at a symposium, such as Athenaeus’ Learned Banqueters or Macrobius Saturnalia.^[40]

The Rabbinic Pinqas and Latin Pinax

Menahem Haran, “Codex, Pinax, and Writing Slat,” Fig. 8.

An in-between stage, after the scraps and small tablets, but before the full literary expression of a commentary on a Mishnaic lemma as we now have them, may have been pinax (plural pinakes)—what the rabbis call a פנקס (pinqas)—a folding, codex or concertina-like notebook, often made of wood slats bound together.^[41] In the Roman world, it is the pinax that preceded the creation of full-fledged codices, and the same is likely true of rabbinic works such as the Talmud. Such a structure illustrates why Talmudic stories, even if they are lengthy, are episodic and divided into different scenes that each may have fit one slat.

Several references to pinqasim in rabbinic literature give us a flavor for the presence of this technology among the rabbis. For instance, the Talmud compares the way a fetus rests in its mother’s womb to a folded pinqas:

^{בבלי נדה ל:} דרש רבי שמלאי: "למה הולד דומה במעי אמו? לפינקס שמקופל ומונח. ידיו על שתי צדעיו, שתי אציליו על ב' ארכובותיו, וב' עקביו על ב' עגבותיו, וראשו מונח לו בין [ירכיו]^[42]..."

^{b. Niddah 30b} Rabbi Simlai expounded: “To what may a fetus in its mother’s womb be compared? To a pinax that is folded up and put away. Its hands are against its temples, its two arms against its two knees, its two heels against its two buttocks, and its head between its thighs…”^[43]

Another reference to a pinax appears in a story in which a series of men come and share their dreams with a Samaritan dream interpreter and R. Ishmael son of R. Yossi, who compete over the dream’s interpretation:

^{איכה רבה (בובר) פרשה א} אתא אוחרנן לגביה. א[מר] ל[יה]: "חמית בחלמי טעין פנקס, ואית ביה עשרים וארבעה לוחין, ואנא כתיב מן הכא, ומחיק מן הכא."

^{Lamentations Rabbah, Parashah §1}Another man came before [the dream interpreter]. He said to him: “I saw in my dream that I was carrying a pinax with 24 slats, and I was writing on one side and erasing on the other.”^[44]

א[מר] ל[יה]: "את סליק לרבו והוי עסקך רב, ואת הוי כתיב מן הכא, ומחיק מן הכא."

[The dream interpreter] said to him: “You will rise to greatness and have plenty of business, and you will write on one side and erase on the other (=so you can write more).”^[45]

Taking Stock of Textual Materiality

Every text in antiquity comes with a body; its words have substance, possibly even flesh, if written on animal-skin.^[46] A cow’s skin can be made into an Esther scroll and a belt, maybe even a pair of shoes to wear to the synagogue on Purim. The fact that writing materials were organic, and especially in the case of leather, had a history and needed special treatment such as oiling, led ancient Jews—and ancient societies more generally—to treat respective texts as objects with a certain agency, as being vulnerable or sensual, even as interfering, as righteous and sinful.^[47]

But also the ostracon (sherd) used to write down the wedding contract^[48] could have been from a vessel from which the grandparents drank on their wedding day and that had served the family for many years in that function before it broke by accident.^[49] The wooden tablets, the ostraca, the stone, the leather rotulus (horizontal scroll) all bear marks of their prior life that interfere in the layout of the text, in its presentation.

The contemporary digitization of texts makes it difficult for us to appreciate the significance of the writing material and its storage in ancient times.^[50] Since the advent of the printing press, books have been mass produced in identical format. And most writing, nowadays, is typed into a computer and stored digitally, with no materiality at all, and stored on the cloud.

Ancient writing culture was very different. It demanded physical work, and it created an artifact. Texts were therefore cherished as artefacts, safely stored, and sometimes borrowed, exchanged, or traded.^[51] Notes, corrections, and remarks were added to texts. Sometimes a portion or all of it was wiped or scratched off in favor of another text. Well-protected, written texts could outlive several generations; but they could also rot or remain only partially preserved.^[52] The way in which texts were stored affected the way in which they were eventually combined into scrolls or books as that technology developed. It is this material reality that the reader of modern editions of ancient books must keep in mind in order to understand their structure and texture.

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February 19, 2025

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Footnotes

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Published

February 19, 2025

Last Updated

February 19, 2025

[1] For a survey of all the various examples of writing from this period, see Shmuel Ahituv, Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period, A Carta Handbook, trans. Anson Rainey (Carta, 2008). For one discussion of literacy in this period, see Christopher Rollston, Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel: Epigraphic Evidence from the Iron Age (SBL, 2010); Aaron Demsky, ידיעת ספר בישראל בעת העתיקה [Literacy in Ancient Israel], ספריית האנציקלופדיה המקראית [The Biblical Encyclopaedia Library] 28 (Bialik, 2012); Mark Leuchter, ed., Scribes and Scribalism, The Hebrew Bible in Social Perspective (Bloomsbury, 2021).

[2] Of course, a simple alphabet doesn’t guarantee literacy, and a word- or syllable-based system doesn’t preclude it, though the latter does require serious investment in education.

[3] In contrast to this archaeological picture, the Hebrew Bible never mentions writing on pottery sherds, though it describes their use of shards in other contexts (e.g., for scraping [sore] skin: Ezek 23:34; Job 2:8). Philip Zhakevich, Scribal Tools in Ancient Israel: A Study of Biblical Hebrew Terms for Writing Materials and Implements, History, Archaeology, and Culture of the Levant (Eisenbrauns, 2020), 110–115.

[4] People also wrote on walls and doors, but this is not pertinent to the topic of this essay. The diaspora-Jews living in Elephantine, Egypt in the fifth century B.C.E. wrote predominantly on papyrus sheets and ostraca. Eduard Sachau, Aramäische Papyrus und Ostraka aus einer jüdischen Militär-Kolonie zu Elephantine, Vol. 2 (Tafeln. Leibzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1911).

[5] The text reads:

^{שמות כד:יב} וַיֹּאמֶר יְ־הוָה אֶל מֹשֶׁה עֲלֵה אֵלַי הָהָרָה וֶהְיֵה שָׁם וְאֶתְּנָה לְךָ אֶת לֻחֹת הָאֶבֶן וְהַתּוֹרָה וְהַמִּצְוָה אֲשֶׁר כָּתַבְתִּי לְהוֹרֹתָם.

^{Exod 24:12} YHWH said to Moses, “Come up to Me on the mountain and wait there, and I will give you the stone tablets with the teachings and commandments which I have inscribed to instruct them.”

And indeed, when Moses comes down the mountain, he is holding these tablets:

^{שמות לא:יח} וַיִּתֵּן אֶל מֹשֶׁה כְּכַלֹּתוֹ לְדַבֵּר אִתּוֹ בְּהַר סִינַי שְׁנֵי לֻחֹת הָעֵדֻת לֻחֹת אֶבֶן כְּתֻבִים בְּאֶצְבַּע אֱלֹהִים.... ^לב:טו וַיִּפֶן וַיֵּרֶד מֹשֶׁה מִן הָהָר וּשְׁנֵי לֻחֹת הָעֵדֻת בְּיָדוֹ לֻחֹת כְּתֻבִים מִשְּׁנֵי עֶבְרֵיהֶם מִזֶּה וּמִזֶּה הֵם כְּתֻבִים. ^לב:טז וְהַלֻּחֹת מַעֲשֵׂה אֱלֹהִים הֵמָּה וְהַמִּכְתָּב מִכְתַּב אֱלֹהִים הוּא חָרוּת עַל הַלֻּחֹת.

^{Exod 31:18} He (YHWH) gave Moses—when He had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai—the two tablets of the Pact, stone tablets inscribed with the finger of God…. ^32:15Thereupon Moses turned and went down from the mountain bearing the two tablets of the Pact, tablets inscribed on both their surfaces: they were inscribed on the one side and on the other. ^32:16 The tablets were God’s work, and the writing was God’s writing, incised upon the tablets.

The act of writing itself—by the finger of God— is highly performative.

[6] Cf. Philip Zhakevich, Scribal Tools in Ancient Israel: A Study of Biblical Hebrew Terms for Writing Materials and Implements, History, Archaeology, and Culture of the Levant (Eisenbrauns, 2020), 102–110. The term luchot can also refer to a “board.”

[7] Notably, the laws are not carved on a large stela, like that of Hammurabi, nor on the mountain itself like the Behistun inscription of Darius I, but on both sides of small, portable tablets which Moses could hold in one (Exod 32:19; 34:4, 29; Deut 10:3) or both of his hands (Deut 9:15. 17). They are meant to be read to the people, not read by the people.

[8] The text reads:

^{שמות כד:ג} וַיָּבֹא מֹשֶׁה וַיְסַפֵּר לָעָם אֵת כָּל דִּבְרֵי יְ־הוָה וְאֵת כָּל הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים וַיַּעַן כָּל הָעָם קוֹל אֶחָד וַיֹּאמְרוּ כָּל הַדְּבָרִים אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר יְ־הוָה נַעֲשֶׂה [תה"ש וְנִשְׁמָע]. ^כד:ד וַיִּכְתֹּב מֹשֶׁה אֵת כָּל דִּבְרֵי יְ־הוָה... ^כד:ז וַיִּקַּח סֵפֶר הַבְּרִית וַיִּקְרָא בְּאָזְנֵי הָעָם וַיֹּאמְרוּ כֹּל אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר יְ־הוָה נַעֲשֶׂה וְנִשְׁמָע.

^{Exod 24:3} Moses went and repeated to the people all the commands of YHWH and all the rules; and all the people answered with one voice, saying, “All the things that YHWH has commanded we will do [LXX: and we will attend to]!” ^24:4 Moses then wrote down all the commands of YHWH…. ^24:7 Then he took the record of the covenant and read it aloud to the people. And they said, “All that YHWH has spoken we will do and we will attend to!”

Ezra too, who is said to have brought a Torah scroll with him to Jerusalem, uses it for a public reading:

^{נחמיה ח:ב} וַיָּבִיא עֶזְרָא הַכֹּהֵן אֶת הַתּוֹרָה לִפְנֵי הַקָּהָל מֵאִישׁ וְעַד אִשָּׁה וְכֹל מֵבִין לִשְׁמֹעַ בְּיוֹם אֶחָד לַחֹדֶשׁ הַשְּׁבִיעִי. ^ח:ג וַיִּקְרָא בוֹ לִפְנֵי הָרְחוֹב אֲשֶׁר לִפְנֵי שַׁעַר הַמַּיִם מִן הָאוֹר עַד מַחֲצִית הַיּוֹם נֶגֶד הָאֲנָשִׁים וְהַנָּשִׁים וְהַמְּבִינִים וְאָזְנֵי כָל הָעָם אֶל סֵפֶר הַתּוֹרָה.

^{Neh 8:2} Ezra the priest brought the Teaching before the congregation, men and women and all who could listen with understanding, on the first day of the seventh month. ^8:3He read from it, facing the square before the Water Gate, from the first light until midday, to the men and the women and those who could understand; the ears of all the people were given to the scroll of the Teaching.

[9] The text reads:

^{יחזקאל ב:ח} וְאַתָּה בֶן אָדָם שְׁמַע אֵת אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי מְדַבֵּר אֵלֶיךָ אַל תְּהִי מֶרִי כְּבֵית הַמֶּרִי פְּצֵה פִיךָ וֶאֱכֹל אֵת אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי נֹתֵן אֵלֶיךָ. ^ב:ט וָאֶרְאֶה וְהִנֵּה יָד שְׁלוּחָה אֵלָי וְהִנֵּה בוֹ מְגִלַּת סֵפֶר. ^ב:י וַיִּפְרֹשׂ אוֹתָהּ לְפָנַי וְהִיא כְתוּבָה פָּנִים וְאָחוֹר וְכָתוּב אֵלֶיהָ קִנִים וָהֶגֶה וָהִי.

^{Ezek 2:8} “And you, mortal, heed what I say to you: Do not be rebellious like that rebellious breed. Open your mouth and eat what I am giving you.” ^2:9 As I looked, there was a hand stretched out to me, holding a written scroll. ^2:10 He unrolled it before me, and it was inscribed on both the front and the back; on it were written lamentations, dirges, and woes.

^ג:אוַיֹּאמֶר אֵלַי בֶּן אָדָם אֵת אֲשֶׁר תִּמְצָא אֱכוֹל אֱכוֹל אֶת הַמְּגִלָּה הַזֹּאת וְלֵךְ דַּבֵּר אֶל בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל. ^ג:ב וָאֶפְתַּח אֶת פִּי וַיַּאֲכִלֵנִי אֵת הַמְּגִלָּה הַזֹּאת. ^ג:ג וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלַי בֶּן אָדָם בִּטְנְךָ תַאֲכֵל וּמֵעֶיךָ תְמַלֵּא אֵת הַמְּגִלָּה הַזֹּאת אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי נֹתֵן אֵלֶיךָ וָאֹכְלָה וַתְּהִי בְּפִי כִּדְבַשׁ לְמָתוֹק.

^3:1 He said to me, “Mortal, eat what is offered you; eat this scroll, and go speak to the House of Israel.” ^3:2 So I opened my mouth, and He gave me this scroll to eat, ^3:3 as He said to me, “Mortal, feed your stomach and fill your belly with this scroll that I give you.” I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey to me.

[10] The text reads:

^{זכריה ה:א} וָאָשׁוּב וָאֶשָּׂא עֵינַי וָאֶרְאֶה וְהִנֵּה מְגִלָּה עָפָה. ^ה:ב וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלַי מָה אַתָּה רֹאֶה וָאֹמַר אֲנִי רֹאֶה מְגִלָּה עָפָה אָרְכָּהּ עֶשְׂרִים בָּאַמָּה וְרָחְבָּהּ עֶשֶׂר בָּאַמָּה. ^ה:ג וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלַי זֹאת הָאָלָה הַיּוֹצֵאת עַל פְּנֵי כָל הָאָרֶץ...

^{Zech 5:1}I looked up again, and I saw a flying scroll. ^5:2 “What do you see?” he (YHWH) asked. And I replied, “A flying scroll, twenty cubits long and ten cubits wide.” ^5:3 “That,” he explained to me, “is the curse which goes out over the whole land….”

[11] See Nathan Mastnjak, Before the Scrolls: A Material Approach to Israel’s Prophetic Library (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), 35-57.

[12] Unfortunately, despite the many reports, ancient and modern, of documents stored and found in jars and archaeological data that points to the existence of such jars, the practice is still mostly seen as a way of hiding documents; see Minna Lönnqvist and Kenneth Lönnqvist, “Parallels to Be Seen: Manuscripts in Jars from Qumran and Egypt,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Context Integrating the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Study of Ancient Texts, Languages, and Cultures, ed. Armin Lange et al., vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 471–87. And since the jars were never thought relevant in comparison to their content by the people who found them mostly by chance rather than systematic archaeology, there is scant documentation of either the jars or the pairing of documents by jars.

[13] The Anchor Bible commentary of Eric and Carol Meyers, for instance, has its own volume for Second Zechariah, and discusses it as a separate work.

[14] The loose piecemeal content of such containers also encouraged losses or the merging with other texts, accounting for what is often perceived as the fluidity of ancient texts. For an analysis of ancient text fluidity see Eva Mroczek, The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

[15] LXX calls them “foreigners” ἀλλοφύλοὺς.

[16] Mastnjak, Before the Scrolls, 58–107. Mastnjak speaks of Jeremiah’s library in quotation mark, but we can just as easily speak of a “writing container.”

[17] See Israel Knohl איך נולד התנ"ך [How the Bible Was Born] (Dvir, 2018), 54–55. For an alternative understanding of these phrases and their origin/function, see Martha Himmelfarb, “Scribal Features That Helped the Priestly Text Survive,” TheTorah (2020).

[18] For book storage in baskets see Philip Alexander, “Oral Tradition and Writing in the Rabbinic Culture of Late Antiquity: Between Qumran and the Cairo Genizah,” in Encyclopedia of Jewish Book Cultures Online (Leiden: Brill, 2021), with reference to b. Meg. 28b and b. MQ 24b; on the concept of multi-volume books as one sefer see A.J. Berkovitz, A Life of Psalms in Jewish Late Antiquity, Jewish Culture and Context (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023), 33-36, with reference to b. Qidd. 30a.

[19] Respective insights from book production and storage processes recently started to challenge traditional redaction critical models of the biblical texts. Rather than attributing frictions, doubles, and different arrangements between manuscripts or the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint to a team of “redactors,” their standards and faulty choices, it is the material reality of ancient book production with its limits and possibilities that should be made responsible for much of the texts’ shape and for the eclectic ways in which they were transmitted and used. Mastnjak, Before the Scrolls: A Material Approach to Israel’s Prophetic Library, 58–107. See also Idan Dershowitz, The Dismembered Bible: Cutting and Pasting Scripture in Antiquity, Forschung zum Alten Testament 143 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021), for a cut-and-paste-model. I remain sceptical of the cutting-aspect of the model as the text, as outlined, tended to emerge from individual pieces not from large formats that were then re-sized. Editor’s note: See also discussion in David M. Carr, “What Ancient Scrolls Teach Us about the Torah’s Formation,” TheTorah (2022).

[20] Francesca Schironi, “Enlightened Kings or Pragmatic Rulers? Ptolemaic Patronage of Scholarship and Sciences in Contex,” in Intellectual and Empire in Greco-Roman Antiquity, ed. Philip R. Bosman (New York: Routledge, 2019), 1–29.

[21] Joshua J. Thomas, Art, Science, and the Natural World in the Ancient Mediterranean, 300 BC to AD 100, Oxford Studies in Ancient Culture and Representation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 5-14.

[22] See Emanuel Tov, “The Torah Scroll: How the Copying Process Became Sacred,” TheTorah (2023). “Writing a Torah scroll,” eventually became “unlike any other kind of writing.” James S. Diamond, Scribal Secrets: Extraordinary Texts in the Torah and Their Implications, ed. Robert Goldenberg, Gary A. Rendsburg, and with editorial assistance provided by Charles W. Loder (Eugene OR: Pickwick Publications, 2019), 74.

[23] As a liturgical divide between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity, the Jews continued to write their holy books on scrolls while Christians moved to the new technology of codices. But the Jewish reticence to adopt the codex applied only to biblical and liturgical scrolls. Thus, writes Zina Cohen, we find in the Cairo Geniza “copies of the Talmud in the form of a codex (T‐S 12.755 + T‐S 12.756 + T-S F17.4), commentaries, liturgical verses, responsa and piyyutim,” of non-scroll format. Zina Cohen, Composition Analysis of Writing Materials in Cairo Genizah Documents. Volume 15: Cambridge Genizah Studies Series, Études sur le judaïsme médiéval 91 (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 155.

[24] The thesis in this latter half of the essay is based on Monika Amsler, The Babylonian Talmud and Late Antique Book Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).

[25] Richard Hidary, Rabbis and Classical Rhetoric: Sophistic Education and Oratory in the Talmud and Midrash (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

[26] See his Dictionary of Palestinian Aramaic, “פיטק” p. 486; Dictionary of Babylonian Aramaic “פיתקא” p. 879.

[27] The word appears in MS Paris 1337 and in brackets in the Vilna edition in the singular בפתקא. It is absent from MS Munich 95 and the Venice printing.

[28] Henry G. Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, Reprinted 9th Ed. [1925-40] (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), s.v. πιττάκιον. They also mention “promissory note” which finds its equivalent in b. Bekhorot 8b.

[29] For references and discussion, see Amsler, The Babylonian Talmud and Late Antique Book Culture, 219-236.

[30] Arras 889 adds: בכמונא.

[31] Missing in Vatican 140.

[32] JTS 3112.1: וליכול.

[33] Arras 889: רמי. Missing in Vatican 140 (only: דמן נדש).

[34] St. Petersburg 187: נריש.

[35] דרב אשי is missing in Arras 889 and, according to Oppenheimer 1983, 262, Fn 23 also in the Paris Ms of Aggadot ha-Talmud.

[36] See discussion in Martin S. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism 200 BCE-400 CE (Oxford 2001). For a recent argument in favor of limiting the origins of the Talmud to oral tradition alone, see Yaakov Sussmann, 'תורה שבעל פה' פשוטו כמשמעו: כוחו של קוצו של יו"ד [Oral Law—Taken Literally: The Power of the Tip of a Yod] (Magnes, 2019).

[37] Formal writing for juridical purposes needed ruled lined parchment or at least spacing; there were not supposed to be mistakes and if there were, they needed to be corrected properly, according to the standards. Without signature or signet and date, a document did not count. The execution of the written Torah is regulated similarly and in detail, from the ink to the lining and rolling. Samuel Krauss, Talmudische Archäologie, Band 3 (Leipzig: Buchhandlung Gustav Fock G.m.b.H., 1912), 158-166.

[38] For more on the relevance of the Jerusalem Talmud’s structure on the composition of the Babylonian Talmud, see Alyssa M. Gray, A Talmud in Exile: The Influence of the Yerushalmi Avodah Zarah on the Formation of the Bavli Avodah Zarah, Brown Judaica Series 342 (Brown University, 2005).

[39] Depending on the material at disposition, the order needed to be changed or could only be achieved in parts. Arbitrary material was always placed in the end of a commentary, before the next lemma from the Mishnah is introduced.

[40] See Amsler, The Babylonian Talmud and Late Antique Book Culture, 75-93. I analyze three Talmudic examples in chapter 3 in depth.

[41] Andrea Jördens, “Codices des Typs C und die Anfänge des Blätterns,” in Material Aspects of Reading in Ancient and Medieval Culture: Materiality, Presence, and Performance, Materiale Textkulturen 26 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), 115–48. Together with the increased investment in public schools under the Romans, literature, including its possession and storage, became more accessible and “everybody’s business.” Written records allow research beyond the generations that are still alive, to verify the genealogy of the prospective wife of a priest, for example. See Menahem Haran, “Archives, Libraries, and the Order of the Biblical Books,” JANES 22 (1993): 56, and references there.

[42] This is the text in MS Vatican 113, the others read ברכיו, the Hebrew word for knees, synonym to the word ארכובה used earlier in the text.

[43] See also Leviticus Rabbah §14.

[44] The Vilna text reads:

והוה כתיב מן הכא ומחיק מן הכא, וכתיב מן הכא ומחיק מן הכא.

And it had writing on one side and erased on the other, and then writing on that side and erased on the other.

[45] As always in this series, R. Ishmael rejects the interpretation, in this case offering something much more mundane:

א"ר ישמעאל ב"ר יוסי: "תיפח רוחיה דההוא גברא! חלוק שחוק אית ליה, ואית ליה עשרים וארבע מקרעין, ואת מחייט ליה מן הכא ומתבזע ליה מן הכא."

R. Ishmael son of R. Yossi said: “Drop dead! (literally, “may the spirit of that man be blown away.”) He (the dreamer) has a worn-out tunic, which has twenty-four tears on it, and you are sewing it up in one place and it tears in another.”

[46] John Lowden, “The Word Made Visible,” in The Early Christian Book, ed. William E. Klingshirn and Linda Safran, CUA Studies in Early Christianity (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 47.

[47] AnneMarie Luijendijk, “‘Embalm Them with Cedar Oil:’ Maintenance of Manuscripts with Oil of Cedar,” in Above, Below, Before, and After: Studies on Judaism and Christianity in Dialogue with Martha Himmelfarb, ed. Ra’anan Boustan, David Frankfurter, and Annette Y. Reed, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 188 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2023), 333–56; Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg, “Parchment Skins and Human Skins: Some Thoughts on the Permeability of Text and Material Environment in Late Antique Jewish Reading Cultures,” Hebrew Studies 64 (2023): 11–30.

[48] See Esther Eshel and Amos Kloner, “An Aramaic Ostracon of an Edomite Marriage Contract from Maresha, Dated 176 B.C.E.,” Israel Exploration Journal 46, no. 1/2 (1996): 1–22.

[49] Ancient affect towards the written was clearly also triggered by the history that connected the writer and/or reader with the material support of a text and the fact that writing and reading were physical and sensual involvement with material objects.

[50] The continuous estrangement of contemporary writing from its material form, from tangible bits and pieces of knowledge, from the obvious signs that once marked the trade of scholars—the heavy bags of books, the hump, the ink stains on fingers and shirts, a blister or corneal on the middle finger—is, paradoxically, one reason the materiality of writing has gained momentum in historical and especially also biblical scholarship. The more dematerialized scholarly activities become, so it seems, the more esteem and interest there is in societies that composed books and managed complex administrations without the assistance of computers. The two foundational books dealing with biblical and rabbinic book history both just turned 120 and 110, respectively: Ludwig Blau’s Studien zum althebräischen Buchwesen und zur biblischen Litteratur- und Textgeschichte, and Samuel Krauss’ Talmudische Archäologie (especially volume 3). Both works remain eminent treasure troves for sources and their interpretation, although the approaches, questions and the available data for contextualization have changed considerably. Yet also the technological stance, and our estrangement from the old writing technologies, has rendered contemporary scholars more appreciative of things that were in Blau’s and Krauss’ time ongoing or just recently conquered nuisances and Blau and Krauss were not interested in imagining these issues back into the intellectual world of rabbinic sages, unless the text forced them to.

[51] Based on content they were also worn as apotropaic adornment, e.g., the Priestly blessing amulet in Ketef Hinnom. See Shawna Dolansky, “Birkat Kohanim: The Magic of a Blessing,” TheTorah (2016).

[52] Take, for example, the literal “bookworm,” critters like beetles, moths, and cockroaches whose larvae used to feast on book bindings and harmed their content, which used to affect what remained of a book. Nowadays, paper contains too many chemicals and has become poisonous and unattractive for critters. See also Samuel Krauss, Talmudische Archäologie, Band 3 (Leipzig: Buchhandlung Gustav Fock G.m.b.H., 1912), 178, and Ludwig Blau, Studien zum althebräischen Buchwesen und zur biblischen Litteratur- und Textgeschichte (Strassburg: Trübner, 1902), 114. Krauss also mentions the fact that books had to be opened regularly to prevent them from being eaten by critter or rotting. The same is discussed in Blau, 88–89.

[2] Of course, a simple alphabet doesn’t guarantee literacy, and a word- or syllable-based system doesn’t preclude it, though the latter does require serious investment in education.

[5] The text reads:

^{שמות כד:יב} וַיֹּאמֶר יְ־הוָה אֶל מֹשֶׁה עֲלֵה אֵלַי הָהָרָה וֶהְיֵה שָׁם וְאֶתְּנָה לְךָ אֶת לֻחֹת הָאֶבֶן וְהַתּוֹרָה וְהַמִּצְוָה אֲשֶׁר כָּתַבְתִּי לְהוֹרֹתָם.

^{Exod 24:12} YHWH said to Moses, “Come up to Me on the mountain and wait there, and I will give you the stone tablets with the teachings and commandments which I have inscribed to instruct them.”

And indeed, when Moses comes down the mountain, he is holding these tablets:

^{שמות לא:יח} וַיִּתֵּן אֶל מֹשֶׁה כְּכַלֹּתוֹ לְדַבֵּר אִתּוֹ בְּהַר סִינַי שְׁנֵי לֻחֹת הָעֵדֻת לֻחֹת אֶבֶן כְּתֻבִים בְּאֶצְבַּע אֱלֹהִים.... ^לב:טו וַיִּפֶן וַיֵּרֶד מֹשֶׁה מִן הָהָר וּשְׁנֵי לֻחֹת הָעֵדֻת בְּיָדוֹ לֻחֹת כְּתֻבִים מִשְּׁנֵי עֶבְרֵיהֶם מִזֶּה וּמִזֶּה הֵם כְּתֻבִים. ^לב:טז וְהַלֻּחֹת מַעֲשֵׂה אֱלֹהִים הֵמָּה וְהַמִּכְתָּב מִכְתַּב אֱלֹהִים הוּא חָרוּת עַל הַלֻּחֹת.

^{Exod 31:18} He (YHWH) gave Moses—when He had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai—the two tablets of the Pact, stone tablets inscribed with the finger of God…. ^32:15Thereupon Moses turned and went down from the mountain bearing the two tablets of the Pact, tablets inscribed on both their surfaces: they were inscribed on the one side and on the other. ^32:16 The tablets were God’s work, and the writing was God’s writing, incised upon the tablets.

The act of writing itself—by the finger of God— is highly performative.

[8] The text reads:

^{שמות כד:ג} וַיָּבֹא מֹשֶׁה וַיְסַפֵּר לָעָם אֵת כָּל דִּבְרֵי יְ־הוָה וְאֵת כָּל הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים וַיַּעַן כָּל הָעָם קוֹל אֶחָד וַיֹּאמְרוּ כָּל הַדְּבָרִים אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר יְ־הוָה נַעֲשֶׂה [תה"ש וְנִשְׁמָע]. ^כד:ד וַיִּכְתֹּב מֹשֶׁה אֵת כָּל דִּבְרֵי יְ־הוָה... ^כד:ז וַיִּקַּח סֵפֶר הַבְּרִית וַיִּקְרָא בְּאָזְנֵי הָעָם וַיֹּאמְרוּ כֹּל אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר יְ־הוָה נַעֲשֶׂה וְנִשְׁמָע.

^{Exod 24:3} Moses went and repeated to the people all the commands of YHWH and all the rules; and all the people answered with one voice, saying, “All the things that YHWH has commanded we will do [LXX: and we will attend to]!” ^24:4 Moses then wrote down all the commands of YHWH…. ^24:7 Then he took the record of the covenant and read it aloud to the people. And they said, “All that YHWH has spoken we will do and we will attend to!”

Ezra too, who is said to have brought a Torah scroll with him to Jerusalem, uses it for a public reading:

^{נחמיה ח:ב} וַיָּבִיא עֶזְרָא הַכֹּהֵן אֶת הַתּוֹרָה לִפְנֵי הַקָּהָל מֵאִישׁ וְעַד אִשָּׁה וְכֹל מֵבִין לִשְׁמֹעַ בְּיוֹם אֶחָד לַחֹדֶשׁ הַשְּׁבִיעִי. ^ח:ג וַיִּקְרָא בוֹ לִפְנֵי הָרְחוֹב אֲשֶׁר לִפְנֵי שַׁעַר הַמַּיִם מִן הָאוֹר עַד מַחֲצִית הַיּוֹם נֶגֶד הָאֲנָשִׁים וְהַנָּשִׁים וְהַמְּבִינִים וְאָזְנֵי כָל הָעָם אֶל סֵפֶר הַתּוֹרָה.

^{Neh 8:2} Ezra the priest brought the Teaching before the congregation, men and women and all who could listen with understanding, on the first day of the seventh month. ^8:3He read from it, facing the square before the Water Gate, from the first light until midday, to the men and the women and those who could understand; the ears of all the people were given to the scroll of the Teaching.

[9] The text reads:

^{יחזקאל ב:ח} וְאַתָּה בֶן אָדָם שְׁמַע אֵת אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי מְדַבֵּר אֵלֶיךָ אַל תְּהִי מֶרִי כְּבֵית הַמֶּרִי פְּצֵה פִיךָ וֶאֱכֹל אֵת אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי נֹתֵן אֵלֶיךָ. ^ב:ט וָאֶרְאֶה וְהִנֵּה יָד שְׁלוּחָה אֵלָי וְהִנֵּה בוֹ מְגִלַּת סֵפֶר. ^ב:י וַיִּפְרֹשׂ אוֹתָהּ לְפָנַי וְהִיא כְתוּבָה פָּנִים וְאָחוֹר וְכָתוּב אֵלֶיהָ קִנִים וָהֶגֶה וָהִי.

^{Ezek 2:8} “And you, mortal, heed what I say to you: Do not be rebellious like that rebellious breed. Open your mouth and eat what I am giving you.” ^2:9 As I looked, there was a hand stretched out to me, holding a written scroll. ^2:10 He unrolled it before me, and it was inscribed on both the front and the back; on it were written lamentations, dirges, and woes.

^ג:אוַיֹּאמֶר אֵלַי בֶּן אָדָם אֵת אֲשֶׁר תִּמְצָא אֱכוֹל אֱכוֹל אֶת הַמְּגִלָּה הַזֹּאת וְלֵךְ דַּבֵּר אֶל בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל. ^ג:ב וָאֶפְתַּח אֶת פִּי וַיַּאֲכִלֵנִי אֵת הַמְּגִלָּה הַזֹּאת. ^ג:ג וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלַי בֶּן אָדָם בִּטְנְךָ תַאֲכֵל וּמֵעֶיךָ תְמַלֵּא אֵת הַמְּגִלָּה הַזֹּאת אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי נֹתֵן אֵלֶיךָ וָאֹכְלָה וַתְּהִי בְּפִי כִּדְבַשׁ לְמָתוֹק.

^3:1 He said to me, “Mortal, eat what is offered you; eat this scroll, and go speak to the House of Israel.” ^3:2 So I opened my mouth, and He gave me this scroll to eat, ^3:3 as He said to me, “Mortal, feed your stomach and fill your belly with this scroll that I give you.” I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey to me.

[10] The text reads:

^{זכריה ה:א} וָאָשׁוּב וָאֶשָּׂא עֵינַי וָאֶרְאֶה וְהִנֵּה מְגִלָּה עָפָה. ^ה:ב וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלַי מָה אַתָּה רֹאֶה וָאֹמַר אֲנִי רֹאֶה מְגִלָּה עָפָה אָרְכָּהּ עֶשְׂרִים בָּאַמָּה וְרָחְבָּהּ עֶשֶׂר בָּאַמָּה. ^ה:ג וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלַי זֹאת הָאָלָה הַיּוֹצֵאת עַל פְּנֵי כָל הָאָרֶץ...

^{Zech 5:1}I looked up again, and I saw a flying scroll. ^5:2 “What do you see?” he (YHWH) asked. And I replied, “A flying scroll, twenty cubits long and ten cubits wide.” ^5:3 “That,” he explained to me, “is the curse which goes out over the whole land….”

[11] See Nathan Mastnjak, Before the Scrolls: A Material Approach to Israel’s Prophetic Library (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), 35-57.

[13] The Anchor Bible commentary of Eric and Carol Meyers, for instance, has its own volume for Second Zechariah, and discusses it as a separate work.

[15] LXX calls them “foreigners” ἀλλοφύλοὺς.

[16] Mastnjak, Before the Scrolls, 58–107. Mastnjak speaks of Jeremiah’s library in quotation mark, but we can just as easily speak of a “writing container.”

[24] The thesis in this latter half of the essay is based on Monika Amsler, The Babylonian Talmud and Late Antique Book Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).

[25] Richard Hidary, Rabbis and Classical Rhetoric: Sophistic Education and Oratory in the Talmud and Midrash (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

[26] See his Dictionary of Palestinian Aramaic, “פיטק” p. 486; Dictionary of Babylonian Aramaic “פיתקא” p. 879.

[27] The word appears in MS Paris 1337 and in brackets in the Vilna edition in the singular בפתקא. It is absent from MS Munich 95 and the Venice printing.

[29] For references and discussion, see Amsler, The Babylonian Talmud and Late Antique Book Culture, 219-236.

[30] Arras 889 adds: בכמונא.

[31] Missing in Vatican 140.

[32] JTS 3112.1: וליכול.

[33] Arras 889: רמי. Missing in Vatican 140 (only: דמן נדש).

[34] St. Petersburg 187: נריש.

[35] דרב אשי is missing in Arras 889 and, according to Oppenheimer 1983, 262, Fn 23 also in the Paris Ms of Aggadot ha-Talmud.

[40] See Amsler, The Babylonian Talmud and Late Antique Book Culture, 75-93. I analyze three Talmudic examples in chapter 3 in depth.

[42] This is the text in MS Vatican 113, the others read ברכיו, the Hebrew word for knees, synonym to the word ארכובה used earlier in the text.

[43] See also Leviticus Rabbah §14.

[44] The Vilna text reads:

והוה כתיב מן הכא ומחיק מן הכא, וכתיב מן הכא ומחיק מן הכא.

And it had writing on one side and erased on the other, and then writing on that side and erased on the other.

[45] As always in this series, R. Ishmael rejects the interpretation, in this case offering something much more mundane:

א"ר ישמעאל ב"ר יוסי: "תיפח רוחיה דההוא גברא! חלוק שחוק אית ליה, ואית ליה עשרים וארבע מקרעין, ואת מחייט ליה מן הכא ומתבזע ליה מן הכא."

R. Ishmael son of R. Yossi said: “Drop dead! (literally, “may the spirit of that man be blown away.”) He (the dreamer) has a worn-out tunic, which has twenty-four tears on it, and you are sewing it up in one place and it tears in another.”

[48] See Esther Eshel and Amos Kloner, “An Aramaic Ostracon of an Edomite Marriage Contract from Maresha, Dated 176 B.C.E.,” Israel Exploration Journal 46, no. 1/2 (1996): 1–22.

Dr. Monika Amsler is Senior Research Assistant at the University of Bern’s Department of Ancient History and the Classical Tradition. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Zurich, and is the author of The Babylonian Talmud and Late Antique Book Culture (Cambridge, 2023), and the editor of Knowledge Construction in Late Antiquity (Berlin, 2023).

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