Blurb:

Here, we look at the people and processes that created the individual






Jewish scriptures. We start with the processes because these point us to






the authors. This includes not only initial composition or collection, but






copying and recopying that always involved redrafting. (Only after these






writings became ‘sacred scriptures’ were they retained in a fixed form.)






The frequency and extent of these re-draftings can be deduced by comparing






the surviving Hebrew and Greek manuscripts and analysing their






structure and language. Such processes can also be directly observed






within the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of biblical and non-biblical Jewish






manuscripts, mostly in Hebrew, dating from the third century bce to the






first century ce. Among these writings we find multiple copies of the same






composition preserved together, demonstrating how rapidly and frequently






texts could sometimes evolve.