Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>]

Jerry,

I'm with Yigal on this one. The evidence is scant, so it's difficult to know 
what to say. Given the manuscript evidence from Qumran, Hebrew texts abound, 
so I think it's fair enough to deduce a plausibility that synagogues in 
Judea, Perea, and Galilee had Hebrew scrolls. I suspect this is what Jesus 
cut his teeth on. However, we can't rule out the possibility of there being 
Greek scrolls. Given there was no centralisation or 'denominational' 
institutions, most synagogues would have been run independently and, 
therefore, have gone with an 'anything goes' attitude in terms of stocks of 
scrolls. By the first century there is certainly a canonical consciousness, 
so they may have tried to compile scriptural libraries, but in which 
language, it's hard to say. Perhaps they had a mixture. I think the 
possibility of Greek scrolls in Galilee is more likely than in Judea. But 
then we're back to the evidential question: what hard data do we have?



GEORGE ATHAS
Dean of Research,
Moore Theological College (moore.edu.au)
Sydney, Australia