Paleo v. Ivri
Hebrew writing is beautiful. It is ancient. And it is, unfortunately, ‘controversial’, as is everything concerning truth these days.
Paleo was indeed a legitimate writing script for the Hebrew alphabet in antiquity. In the pre-Babylonian period in Israel, there was indeed Paleo script. It is seen in these ancient sources:
Gezer Calendar
Siloam Inscription,
Ostraca (pieces of pottery) seals, bullae, and coins.
So, the evidence for it is there. But, it is in no way conclusive that it was the script used for Torah Scrolls, even in the pre-exilic period. That is eisegesis, writing into history what is not there. Samaria is not Judea. They rebelled against truth, so we cannot say that ‘they have it right’.
In fact, nowhere in history has there ever been found an actual Torah Scroll from the pre-Babylonian period, 1st Temple period, whether written in Paleo script or the Hebrew script we have inherited from our Jewish people.
Torah scrolls were written [and ‘kosher’ ones today still are] on organic materials, mostly leather parchment, and those were in constant use, repaired as necessary along the way, and finally ritually buried when they could no longer be used. When they were buried, they vanished.
The oldest actual parchments we have in tact are the Dead Sea scrolls. They are from the 3rd century B.C., and they are written in the Square Script we use today. I’ve seen them, in Israel. I can read them. The Isaiah scroll found there used Paleo, but only for God’s Name. These scrolls are from a divergent sect in Israel that opposed all Temple worship. They lived in isolation. There was no prophet from their sect ever in Israel. So, their use of the Paleo to replace God’s name in their text is not ‘authoritative’ in any way. It is a historical curiosity, and nothing more.
No complete Torah scrolls written in Paleo have ever been found.
There are people in “Hebrew Roots” circles that are advocating for the primacy of paleo script over the square script that comes from the Babylonian Aramaic community, adopted as the sole script for writing by Irsael/Judea upon their return from Babylon. This does not mean the sqare script was never used in Israel in pre-Babylonian days. It is entirely plausible that the square script was used for Torah in sacred writ, and it cannot be disproven through any actual evidence that we have. Yes, the concensus is that this script is post-exilic, but the important thing to note is that paleo did not chronologically precede Hebrew Square script. It coexisted with it as a contemporary script. This could be analgous to our using “Times New Roman” for legal documents and “Ariel” for academic documents. The two ‘scripts’ coexisted. Paleo is not the ‘original’ and ‘only correct form’ of Hebrew writing. Square script was not ‘forced’ on Israel by some divergent, sinful religious class, as is being asserted. It simply became the defacto ‘script’ for the official Hebrew language upon return from Babylon, as the Jewish children there likely learned to read using that script exclusively. They would be the adults we see in Ezra and Nehemiah. It is bad ‘history’ to assert, however, that it could not have been used at all before exile. There’s no evidence of that ‘impossibility’.
But, it doesn’t matter. The transmission of the Torah scrolls is what is critical.
We can assert with aboslute confidence that God put His seal of approval on the Square Script Hebrew writing. And we will demonstrate that here shortly.
The absence of any early paleo Hebrew scrolls actually makes our confidence in the Square Script more aptly placed. We are confident in the chain of transmission of the words of Torah. From the first Temple period, pre-Babylonian exile, there is not one scroll. The oldest complete scrolls we have from later antiquity are the Masoretic texts, which we use as our base for scripture. The fragmentary scrolls that we have from the Dead Sea scrolls are much earlier, from the second temple period [although that sect was ‘anti-temple’], are also written in square script. These sets of scrolls are 1,000 years apart. The Dead Sea scrolls laid buried for nearly 2,000 years, but when compared to the Masoretic texts, they are very nearly identical.
The Masoretes did not ‘invent’ the square Hebrew script, as some wrongly assert. They ‘froze’ it. They ‘preserved’ the pronunciation of the letters and words by creating the nikudot ‘diacritics’ system, so that later generations who did not speak Hebrew natively could more easily learn to read Hebrew. They added ‘cantillation’ signals to transmit the ancient melodies of how passages are sung in the synagogue, and they added marginal notes. But, the text of the Torah itself is untouched. The letters were actually counted, the words were counted, all to ensure proper transmission from generation to generation. We can be confident in these texts.
As stated, the Dead Sea scrolls were from the second Temple period, in which there were multiple textual traditions, due to the varied streams of early Judaism. But, the copies of the books of the Torah that were found there match the much later Masoretic tradition, often verbatim. So, the close correspondence between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the later Masoretic Texts demonstrates that the Hebrew Bible was transmitted with exceptional fidelity across changes in script, material, and centuries.
More importantly for us, those of us who follow Yeshua, we need to be confident in our scriptures.
Discussing canon [inspired scripture] is another topic, but it is important to note that Yeshua actually affirms the canon of Judaism from His day.
Yeshua was speaking to the Pharisees, the religous ‘ruling’ class in His day, when He told them He would send them prophets, wise men, AND SCRIBES. [Matt 23:34] Those would be His “Shlikhim”, ‘sent ones’, which included the twelve ‘apostles’ and others like Mark and Luke, Jewish men who would write down the history and message of the Jewish Messiah! And in telling them He was sending SCRIBES, He then said this:
“…from the blood of Avel HaTzadik [Abel the Righteous One] down to the blood of Zakhar-Yah Ben Berekh-Yah, [Zechariah son of Berechiah] whom you [false Jewish shepherds] killed between the Sanctuary [Heikhal] and the Altar [Mizbe’akh].
When people read this, they don’t typically put together that Yeshua was affirming the canon of the day. Abel’s death is in Genesis, and Zechariah’s death is in 2 Chronicles, the last book of the Jewish canon in the 1st Century, the Second Temple period, which is still the Jewish canon today.
Further, when Yeshua was asserting that the Torah, the written Word of God given to Israel by Moses, would not pass away, that He did NOT come to abolish it, but to confirm it and to teach it, and to have others [prophets, wise men, and scribes] to expound it [Matt 5:17-19], He said that not one ‘jot’, nor one ‘tittle’ would pass away, until everything in it comes to pass.
Yeshua was speaking to a huge crowd of Jews who grew up being schooled in the Torah every day for seven years [from age six to age thirteen] on how to read the Torah, in the SQUARE SCRIPT Hebrew texts. Paleo was not used AT ALL during the second Temple period, which is the epoch of Jewish history into which God the Father decided to insert His Son into the world. Yeshua was teaching at a time when SQUARE SCRIPT was not only the ‘supreme’ script for writing Hebrew, but the ONLY script, apart from that divergent sect out in the desert that used three letters from the Paleo script: yod, heh, and vav.
When Yeshua said “jot” in the English “jot or tittle” rendering of Matthew 5:18, He actually said, “not even one yod, nor a stroke [of the pen] shall pass away from the Torah until everything comes to pass.” The implication here actually matches the SQUARE SCRIPT, where the ‘yod’ is the SMALLEST HEBREW LETTER. The ‘tittle’ is likely the ‘tagin’, the tiny, decorative strokes on the letters. Regardless, the point that Yeshua is making is that not even the SMALLEST marks of the Torah will go away. This is Yeshua giving us CONFIDENCE in the SQUARE SCRIPT! How do we know?
The ‘yod’ in Paleo is one of the biggest, if not the biggest letter in the paleo script alphabet! Yeshua never would have referred to it otherwise.
Yeshua could not use paleo to affirm our confidence in the Hebrew Bible! He had to use the Square Script, because we had to have confidence in the prophets, wise men, and scribes that He would send out into all the world to teach the Torah, when square script was the rule of the day! The ‘books’ that Paul carried with him, seen in 2 Tim 4:13, “The book-carrier which I left at Troas with Karpus, bring it with you when you come, and the books, especially the parchment scrolls”, would have been written in Square Script. History gives us the preponderence of evidence.
So, while paleo is fun to look at, the sensationalism over it in some minds is dangerous. It detracts attention and casts doubt on our written Word, which is the DNA of our Master Yeshua. Like all bad doctrine, it divides the Body of Messiah. But, we are confident in our Hebrew Bible, because we understand why Yeshua said the things He said about the books! To give us the confidence we need in the Jewish books that we inherited, that have been faithfully transmitted through the ages.