Prophetic Scrolls in the Persian Period

Abstract

Abstract Menahem Haran’s studies of the materiality of biblical scrolls provide the starting point for this chapter. As Haran argues, biblical literature in the monarchic period was written on papyrus scrolls that were significantly shorter than the long parchment scrolls known from the Dead Sea. One important implication of this material form of the text is that many biblical compositions of length would simply not have fit on a single standard papyrus scroll. This chapter extends Haran’s work with further argumentation corroborating these conclusions. It departs from Haran in arguing against his proposal for the adoption of parchment in the early Persian period. On the basis of artifact evidence and the economics of papyrus production in Ptolemaic Egypt, this chapter proposes the Hellenistic period as the decisive era in which Judean scribes switched from a preference for papyrus to a preference for parchment.