Textorah

Leviticus 1

1
וַיִּקְרָא אֶל־מֹשֶׁה וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָה אֵלָיו מֵאֹהֶל מוֹעֵד לֵאמֹר
THE HaShem called unto Moses, and spoke unto him out of the tent of meeting, saying:
ΚΑΙ ἀνεκάλεσε Μωυσῆν, καὶ ἐλάλησε Κύριος αὐτῷ ἐκ τῆς σκηνῆς τοῦ μαρτυρίου, λέγων,
And the Lord called Moses again and spoke to him out of the tabernacle of witness, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, and thou shalt say to them,
2
דַּבֵּר אֶל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם אָדָם כִּי־יַקְרִיב מִכֶּם קָרְבָּן לַיהוָה מִן־הַבְּהֵמָה מִן־הַבָּקָר וּמִן־הַצֹּאן תַּקְרִיבוּ אֶת־קָרְבַּנְכֶם
Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them: When any man of you bringeth an offering unto HaShem, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd or of the flock.
λάλησον τοῖς υἱοῖς Ἰσραὴλ, καὶ ἐρεῖς πρὸς αὐτοὺς, ἄνθρωπος ἐξ ὑμῶν ἐὰν προσαγάγῃ δῶρα τῷ Κυρίῳ, ἀπὸ τῶν κτηνῶν καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν βοῶν καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν προβάτων προσοίσετε τὰ δῶρα ὑμῶν.
If [any] man of you shall bring gifts to the Lord, ye shall bring your gifts of the cattle and of the oxen and of the sheep.
3
אִם־עֹלָה קָרְבָּנוֹ מִן־הַבָּקָר זָכָר תָּמִים יַקְרִיבֶנּוּ אֶל־פֶּתַח אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד יַקְרִיב אֹתוֹ לִרְצֹנוֹ לִפְנֵי יְהוָה
If his offering be a burnt-offering of the herd, he shall offer it a male without blemish; he shall bring it to the door of the tent of meeting, that he may be accepted before HaShem.
Ἐὰν ὁλοκαύτωμα τὸ δῶρον αὐτοῦ, ἐκ τῶν βοῶν ἄρσεν ἄμωμον προσάξει πρὸς τὴν θύραν τῆς σκηνῆς τοῦ μαρτυρίου, προσοίσει αὐτὸ δεκτὸν ἐναντίον Κυρίου.
If his gift be a whole burnt offering, he shall bring an unblemished male of the herd to the door of the tabernacle of witness, he shall bring it as acceptable before the Lord.
4
וְסָמַךְ יָדוֹ עַל רֹאשׁ הָעֹלָה וְנִרְצָה לוֹ לְכַפֵּר עָלָיו
And he shall lay his hand upon the head of the burnt-offering; and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.
Καὶ ἐπιθήσει τὴν χεῖρα ἐπὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν τοῦ καρπώματος δεκτὸν αὐτῷ, ἐξιλάσασθαι περὶ αὐτοῦ.
And he shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering as a thing acceptable for him, to make atonement for him.
5
וְשָׁחַט אֶת־בֶּן הַבָּקָר לִפְנֵי יְהוָה וְהִקְרִיבוּ בְּנֵי אַהֲרֹן ה͏ַכֹּהֲנִים אֶת־הַדָּם וְזָרְקוּ אֶת־הַדָּם עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּחַ סָבִיב אֲשֶׁר־פֶּתַח אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד
And he shall kill the bullock before HaShem; and Aaron's sons, the priests, shall present the blood, and dash the blood round about against the altar that is at the door of the tent of meeting.
Καὶ σφάξουσι τὸν μόσχον ἔναντι Κυρίου· καὶ προσοίσουσιν οἱ υἱοὶ Ἀαρὼν οἱ ἱερεῖς τὸ αἷμα, καὶ προσχεοῦσι τὸ αἷμα ἐπὶ τὸ θυσιαστήριον κύκλῳ τὸ ἐπὶ τῶν θυρῶν τῆς σκηνῆς τοῦ μαρτυρίου·
And they shall slay the calf before the Lord; and the sons of Aaron the priests shall bring the blood, and they shall pour the blood round about on the altar, which [is] at the doors of the tabernacle of witness.
6
וְהִפְשִׁיט אֶת־הָעֹלָה וְנִתַּח אֹתָהּ לִנְתָחֶיהָ
And he shall flay the burnt-offering, and cut it into its pieces.
καὶ ἐκδείραντες τὸ ὁλοκαύτωμα, μελιοῦσιν αὐτὸ κατὰ μέλη.
And having flayed the whole burnt offering, they shall divide it by its limbs.
7
וְנָתְנוּ בְּנֵי אַהֲרֹן הַכֹּהֵן אֵשׁ עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּחַ וְעָרְכוּ עֵצִים עַל־הָאֵשׁ
And the sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire upon the altar, and lay wood in order upon the fire.
Καὶ ἐπιθήσουσιν οἱ υἱοὶ Ἀαρὼν οἱ ἱερεῖς πῦρ ἐπὶ τὸ θυσιαστήριον, καὶ ἐπιστοιβάσουσι ξύλα ἐπὶ τὸ πῦρ.
And the sons of Aaron the priests shall put fire on the altar, and shall pile wood on the fire.
8
וְעָרְכוּ בְּנֵי אַהֲרֹן הַכֹּהֲנִים אֵת הַנְּתָחִים אֶת־הָרֹאשׁ וְאֶת־הַפָּדֶר עַל־הָעֵצִים אֲשֶׁר עַל־הָאֵשׁ אֲשֶׁר עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּחַ
And Aaron's sons, the priests, shall lay the pieces, and the head, and the suet, in order upon the wood that is on the fire which is upon the altar;
Καὶ ἐπιστοιβάσουσιν οἱ υἱοὶ Ἀαρὼν οἱ ἱερεῖς τὰ διχοτομήματα, καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν, καὶ τὸ στέαρ ἐπὶ τὰ ξύλα τὰ ἐπὶ τοῦ πυρὸς τὰ ὄντα ἐπὶ τοῦ θυσιαστηρίου.
And the sons of Aaron the priests shall pile up the divided parts, and the head, and the fat on the wood on the fire, [the wood] which is on the altar.
9
וְקִרְבּוֹ וּכְרָעָיו יִרְחַץ בַּמָּיִם וְהִקְטִיר הַכֹּהֵן אֶת־הַכֹּל הַמִּזְבֵּחָה עֹלָה אִשֵּׁה רֵיחַ־נִיחוֹחַ לַיהוָה
but its inwards and its legs shall he wash with water; and the priest shall make the whole smoke on the altar, for a burnt-offering, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto HaShem.
Τὰ δὲ ἐγκοίλια καὶ τοὺς πόδας πλυνοῦσιν ὕδατι· καὶ ἐπιθήσουσιν οἱ ἱερεῖς τὰ πάντα ἐπὶ τὸ θυσιαστήριον· κάρπωμά ἐστι θυσία ὀσμὴ εὐωδίας τῷ Κυρίῳ.
And the entrails and the feet they shall wash in water, and the priests shall put all on the altar: it is a burnt offering, a sacrifice, a smell of sweet savor to the Lord.
10
וְאִם־מִן־הַצֹּאן קָרְבָּנוֹ מִן־הַכְּשָׂבִים אוֹ מִן־הָעִזִּים לְעֹלָה זָכָר תָּמִים יַקְרִיבֶנּוּ
And if his offering be of the flock, whether of the sheep, or of the goats, for a burnt-offering, he shall offer it a male without blemish.
Ἐὰν δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν προβάτων τὸ δῶρον αὐτοῦ τῷ Κυρίῳ, ἀπό τε τῶν ἀρνῶν, καὶ τῶν ἐρίφων εἰς ὁλοκαυτώματα, ἄρσεν ἄμωμον προσάξει αὐτό.
And if his gift [be] of the sheep to the Lord, or of the lambs, or of the kids for whole burnt offerings, he shall bring it a male without blemish.
11
וְשָׁחַט אֹתוֹ עַל יֶרֶךְ הַמִּזְבֵּחַ צָפֹנָה לִפְנֵי יְהוָה וְזָרְקוּ בְּנֵי אַהֲרֹן הַכֹּהֲנִים אֶת־דָּמוֹ עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּחַ סָבִיב
And he shall kill it on the side of the altar northward before HaShem; and Aaron's sons, the priests, shall dash its blood against the altar round about.
Καὶ ἐπιθήσει τὴν χεῖρα ἐπὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν αὐτοῦ· καὶ σφάξουσιν αὐτὸ ἐκ πλαγίων τοῦ θυσιαστηρίου πρὸς βοῤῥᾶν ἔναντι Κυρίου· καὶ προσχεοῦσιν οἱ υἱοὶ Ἀαρὼν οἱ ἱερεῖς τὸ αἷμα αὐτοῦ ἐπὶ τὸ θυσιαστήριον κύκλῳ.
And he shall lay his hand on its head; and they shall kill it by the side of the altar, toward the north before the Lord, and the sons of Aaron the priests shall pour its blood on the altar round about.
12
וְנִתַּח אֹתוֹ לִנְתָחָיו וְאֶת־רֹאשׁוֹ וְאֶת־פִּדְרוֹ וְעָרַךְ הַכֹּהֵן אֹתָם עַל־הָעֵצִים אֲשֶׁר עַל־הָאֵשׁ אֲשֶׁר עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּחַ
And he shall cut it into its pieces; and the priest shall lay them, with its head and its suet, in order on the wood that is on the fire which is upon the altar.
Καὶ διελουσιν αὐτὸ κατὰ μέλη, καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν, καὶ τὸ στέαρ· καὶ ἐπιστοιβάσουσιν οἱ ἱερεῖς αὐτὰ ἐπὶ τὰ ξύλα τὰ ἐπὶ τοῦ πυρὸς τὰ ἐπὶ τοῦ θυσιαστηρίου.
And they shall divide it by its limbs, and its head and its fat, and the priests shall pile them up on the wood which is on the fire, on the altar.
13
וְהַקֶּרֶב וְהַכְּרָעַיִם יִרְחַץ בַּמָּיִם וְהִקְרִיב הַכֹּהֵן אֶת־הַכֹּל וְהִקְטִיר הַמִּזְבֵּחָה עֹלָה הוּא אִשֵּׁה רֵיחַ נִיחֹחַ לַיהוָה
But the inwards and the legs shall he wash with water; and the priest shall offer the whole, and make it smoke upon the altar; it is a burnt-offering, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto HaShem.
Καὶ τὰ ἐγκοίλια, καὶ τοὺς πόδας πλυνοῦσιν ὕδατι· καὶ προσοίσει ὁ ἱερεὺς τὰ πάντα, καὶ ἐπιθήσει ἐπὶ τὸ θυσιαστήριον· κάρπωμά ἐστι θυσία ὀσμὴ εὐωδίας τῷ Κυρίῳ.
And they shall wash the entrails and the feet with water, and the priest shall bring all the [parts] and put them on the altar: it is a burnt offering, a sacrifice, a smell of sweet savor to the Lord.
14
וְאִם מִן־הָעוֹף עֹלָה קָרְבָּנוֹ לַיהוָה וְהִקְרִיב מִן־הַתֹּרִים אוֹ מִן־בְּנֵי הַיּוֹנָה אֶת־קָרְבָּנוֹ
And if his offering to HaShem be a burnt-offering of fowls, then he shall bring his offering of turtle-doves, or of young pigeons.
Ἐὰν δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν πετεινῶν κάρπωμα προσφέρει δῶρον αὐτοῦ τῷ κυρίῳ, καὶ προσοίσει ἀπὸ τῶν τρυγόνων, ἢ ἀπὸ τῶν περιστερῶν τὸ δῶρον αὐτοῦ.
And if he bring his gift, a burnt offering to the Lord, of birds, then shall he bring his gift of doves or pigeons.
15
וְהִקְרִיבוֹ הַכֹּהֵן אֶל־הַמִּזְבֵּחַ וּמָלַק אֶת־רֹאשׁוֹ וְהִקְטִיר הַמִּזְבֵּחָה וְנִמְצָה דָמוֹ עַל קִיר הַמִּזְבֵּחַ
And the priest shall bring it unto the altar, and pinch off its head, and make it smoke on the altar; and the blood thereof shall be drained out on the side of the altar.
Καὶ προσοίσει αὐτὸ ὁ ἱερεὺς πρὸς τὸ θυσιαστήριον, καὶ ἀποκνίσει τὴν κεφαλήν, καὶ ἐπιθήσει ὁ ἱερεὺς ἐπὶ τὸ θυσιαστήριον, καὶ στραγγιεῖ τὸ αἷμα πρὸς τὴν βάσιν τοῦ θυσιαστηρίου.
And the priest shall bring it to the altar, and shall wring off its head; and the priest shall put it on the altar, and shall wring out the blood at the bottom of the altar.
16
וְהֵסִיר אֶת־מֻרְאָתוֹ בְּנֹצָתָהּ וְהִשְׁלִיךְ אֹתָהּ אֵצֶל הַמִּזְבֵּחַ קֵדְמָה אֶל־מְקוֹם הַדָּשֶׁן
And he shall take away its crop with the feathers thereof, and cast it beside the altar on the east part, in the place of the ashes.
Καὶ ἀφελεῖ τὸν πρόλοβον σὺν τοῖς πτεροῖς, καὶ ἐκβαλεῖ αὐτὸ παρὰ τὸ θυσιαστήριον κατʼ ἀνατολὰς εἰς τὸν τόπον τῆς σποδοῦ·
And he shall take away the crop with the feathers, and shall cast it forth by the altar toward the east to the place of the ashes.
17
וְשִׁסַּע אֹתוֹ בִכְנָפָיו לֹא יַבְדִּיל וְהִקְטִיר אֹתוֹ הַכֹּהֵן הַמִּזְבֵּחָה עַל־הָעֵצִים אֲשֶׁר עַל־הָאֵשׁ עֹלָה הוּא אִשֵּׁה רֵיחַ נִיחֹחַ לַיהוָה
And he shall rend it by the wings thereof, but shall not divide it asunder; and the priest shall make it smoke upon the altar, upon the wood that is upon the fire; it is a burnt-offering, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto HaShem.
Καὶ ἐκκλάσει αὐτὸ ἐκ τῶν πτερύγων, καὶ οὐ διελεῖ, καὶ ἐπιθήσει αὐτὸ ὁ ἱερεὺς ἐπὶ τὸ θυσιαστήριον ἐπὶ τὰ ξύλα τὰ ἐπὶ τοῦ πυρός· κάρπωμά ἐστι θυσία ὀσμὴ εὐωδίας τῷ Κυρίῳ.
And he shall break it off from the wings and shall not separate it, and the priest shall put it on the altar on the wood which is on the fire: it is a burnt offering, a sacrifice, a sweet-smelling savor to the Lord.

How it works

A parallel reader for the Hebrew Bible and its oldest witnesses: the Masoretic text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint, each with an English translation where one is available.

Reading a chapter

Choose a book and chapter at the top, or type a reference into Go to (Isa 53:11, 1 Sam 3, sam 3:4, ii kgs 2, ben sira 51). Book names can be abbreviated; a name shared by numbered books (sam, kings, chr, macc) opens the first of them unless you add the number. The arrow keys move between chapters, and the address bar keeps a link to the verse you clicked, so you can bookmark or share a place.

Each row is one verse. Rows follow the Masoretic verse numbering, so the Hebrew, JPS and Samaritan columns line up exactly. The Septuagint is numbered differently in many places (Psalms, Jeremiah, Exodus 35–40, parts of Kings, Proverbs, Daniel, and dozens of chapter boundaries). Its verses are placed against their Masoretic counterparts, and a small tag such as 50:3 shows the Septuagint's own number when it differs. Greek verses that have no Masoretic counterpart (for example the Prayer of Azariah in Daniel 3) appear in reading order as separate rows marked LXX.

Columns

The chips at the top switch columns on and off. Drag a chip (or a column heading) to reorder; with a chip focused, the ← → keys move it. Your choice is remembered. The Samaritan columns appear only in Genesis–Deuteronomy; the scrolls column appears wherever a manuscript survives, including Ben Sira. Columns marked † are licensed for non-commercial use only.

Words: lexicon and concordance

Hover over any Hebrew word (Masoretic, Samaritan or scroll) or any Greek word to see its dictionary form, Strong's number, a short gloss and its grammar. Click the word to open the concordance on the right: the full lexicon entry, then every occurrence, grouped by book — for Hebrew, separately for the Masoretic text, the Samaritan Pentateuch and the scrolls (with the manuscript named). Click a reference to go there; every form of the word in the chapter is highlighted. You can also type a word or a Strong's number into Lexicon at the top.

In the Masoretic text, a Ketiv (the written form, unpointed) is shown in grey immediately before its Qere (the form read aloud); both carry the Qere's dictionary entry.

Variants

The Samaritan Pentateuch and every scroll are compared word by word with the Masoretic text of the same verse:

In the scrolls, letters in brackets are a modern editor's reconstruction and are never counted as variants; letters with a dotted overline are uncertain; ◦ is a trace of an unreadable letter. Manuscripts written in paleo-Hebrew script, and divine names that square-script scrolls write in paleo-Hebrew, are shown in paleo-Hebrew letters (switchable under Display). Hover a manuscript to see its edition. Display → Dead Sea Scrolls can hide the manuscripts that agree with the Masoretic text, or strip the reconstructions to show only what survives.

The comparison is automatic. It aligns words by spelling, so a transposition or a long rewritten passage can be marked imperfectly, and the spelling rule cannot tell a suffix from a vowel letter. Treat the colours as a finding aid and check a critical edition before building an argument on a reading.

Books outside the Hebrew Bible

Besides the Septuagint-only books, the book list has 1 Enoch and Jubilees (“Other ancient books”), shown in R. H. Charles's English with the Qumran copies beside them, and Psalms has a chapter 151. Their scroll copies — like those of Tobit and Ben Sira — have no verse numbers in the data: each fragment is placed by its published identification, and its lines are spread over those verses, so treat the exact verse boundaries as approximate. Aramaic copies (Tobit 4Q196–199 and all of Enoch) are marked “Aramaic” and have no word lookups.

Rabbinic citations

The small ❝ under a verse number opens the passages of rabbinic literature that cite that verse — Mishnah, Tosefta, both Talmuds, Midrash, Targum and Kabbalah (and, if you tick the box, later halakhah, liturgy and thought) — fetched live from Sefaria, so it needs an internet connection. Each passage is listed with Sefaria's date for the work it comes from and a link to read it there. Sefaria's links include allusions and discussions as well as quotations; those it classes as quotations are marked. It works for the Hebrew Bible, Ben Sira (by Kahana's numbering, e.g. the Talmud's quotations of Ben Sira), Tobit and Jubilees. For 1 Enoch, which the rabbis do not quote, it lists instead the Zohar's passages about a “Book of Enoch”.

How the Septuagint is aligned

Each Greek verse is placed by combining three things: the standard table of Septuagint–Masoretic verse correspondences (SIL's lxx.vrs), the table of Masoretic–English numbering differences, and a comparison of the English of Brenton's Septuagint with the JPS English, which confirms each pairing and catches displaced verses. Where no Masoretic verse is similar enough, the Greek verse stands on its own row.

The Greek word data

No openly licensed word-by-word analysis of Brenton's Greek exists, so each Greek word is matched to the most frequent analysis of the same form in the openly licensed Swete Septuagint (Morpheus parser), then to a lexicon entry. About 95% of words are identified. Parses of ambiguous forms (e.g. αὐτοῦ, τοῦ) can be wrong; the card says "automatic parse" as a reminder.

Building and updating

The page reads prepared data from the data folder; python3 build.py (in the app folder) downloads the sources into sources and rebuilds it in a few minutes. Two files must be added by hand: eng-Brenton_vpl.zip from ebible.org and SPE.zip from CrossWire. python3 build.py --public-domain-only leaves out the three non-commercially-licensed layers; --download-only just fetches the sources. Licences and required credits are listed in SOURCES.md.

About the texts

What each column is, where it comes from, and what to keep in mind when reading it.

Masoretic Text — Westminster Leningrad Codex

The Masoretic text is the Hebrew Bible as transmitted by the Masoretes, scribal scholars active in Tiberias and elsewhere roughly from the 7th to the 10th century, who fixed its vowel points, accents and marginal notes (the Masorah) around a consonantal text that was already essentially stable by the 1st–2nd century CE. The Leningrad Codex (St Petersburg, Firkovich I B 19 A), copied in 1008/1009 CE in the Ben Asher tradition, is the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible; the slightly older Aleppo Codex lost most of the Torah in 1947. It is the base of the standard critical editions (BHK, BHS, BHQ).

The Westminster Leningrad Codex is the public-domain digital transcription of it maintained by the J. Alan Groves Center at Westminster Theological Seminary. In this edition a Ketiv appears as its own unpointed word before the pointed Qere.

JPS 1917 — The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text

The first English Bible translation produced by a committee of Jewish scholars for the Jewish Publication Society of America, under Max L. Margolis as editor-in-chief, published in 1917. Its language deliberately follows the cadence of the King James and Revised Versions, but its renderings follow the Masoretic text and Jewish exegetical tradition, and it keeps the Hebrew chapter and verse numbering. It is in the public domain; its successor, the New JPS (Tanakh, 1985), is not. The electronic edition used here writes the divine names as “HaShem” and “G-d”.

Septuagint — Brenton's Greek text and the Updated Brenton English

The Septuagint is the Jewish translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek. The Torah was translated in Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE (the Letter of Aristeas tells the legend of 72 translators under Ptolemy II); the other books followed over the next two centuries. Because it was made from Hebrew manuscripts older than the Masoretic text, it often preserves a different Hebrew text: Jeremiah is about one-seventh shorter and differently ordered (a shorter Hebrew text of this type survives at Qumran in 4QJerb,d), Job is about one-sixth shorter, and Esther and Daniel have long additions. It was the Bible of Philo, Josephus and the New Testament writers, and became the Old Testament of the Greek church, which in turn led Jewish translators (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion) to produce closer revisions.

Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton published an English translation in 1844 and a Greek–English edition in 1851. His Greek is essentially the Sixtine (Roman) edition of 1587, which follows the 4th-century Codex Vaticanus. It is older and less critical than the modern editions of Rahlfs (1935) and Göttingen, which are under copyright. The English column is the Updated Brenton (Adam Boyd, 2020), Brenton's translation with modernised spelling and wording, dedicated to the public domain.

Samaritan Pentateuch †

The Torah as preserved by the Samaritan community of Mount Gerizim (Nablus), written in the Samaritan script, a descendant of the paleo-Hebrew alphabet. It differs from the Masoretic text in about 6,000 places, most of them spelling or grammar; in about 1,900 of them it agrees with the Septuagint. Some readings are distinctively Samaritan, above all the commandment to build an altar on Mount Gerizim added after the Ten Commandments (Exod 20:17; Deut 5:21) and “Gerizim” for “Ebal” in Deut 27:4. Many others — harmonising expansions that copy one passage into its parallel — are shared with “pre-Samaritan” Qumran manuscripts such as 4QpaleoExodm and 4QNumb, showing that the text type is older than the Samaritan schism.

European scholars learned of it in 1616, when Pietro della Valle brought a manuscript from Damascus; it was printed in the Paris (1645) and London (1657) Polyglots, collated by Benjamin Kennicott (1776–80) and edited critically by August von Gall (1914–18). The Hebrew here is Aleksandr Sigalov's digital text, based on Kennicott and checked against von Gall; the English is Sigalov's adaptation of the King James Version to the Samaritan readings. For modern scholarship see Abraham Tal's edition of MS Shechem 6 and Stefan Schorch's critical editio maior.

Dead Sea Scrolls and other Judean Desert manuscripts †

Between 1947 and 1956 the remains of about 950 manuscripts were found in eleven caves near Khirbet Qumran. Some 230 are biblical — every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther is represented, from tiny fragments to the complete Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) — dating from about 250 BCE to 68 CE. They are a thousand years older than the Leningrad Codex. Most are close to the ancestor of the Masoretic text (“proto-Masoretic”), but others agree with the Septuagint (4QJerb, 4QSama in places), with the Samaritan text type, or with neither — evidence that several forms of the text circulated side by side before the Masoretic text prevailed.

Manuscripts from other sites fill out the picture: Masada (before its fall in 73/74 CE; excavated by Yigael Yadin, 1963–65) and the Bar Kokhba refuges of Wadi Murabba'at and Naḥal Ḥever (132–135 CE), whose biblical texts are already virtually identical with the Masoretic text, as well as Naḥal Ṣe'elim, Wadi Sdeir and Naḥal Arugot. The official publication is the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series (Oxford, 1955–2010).

The transcriptions here are those of Martin G. Abegg Jr., James E. Bowley and Edward M. Cook, as converted by the Eep Talstra Centre for Bible and Computer (ETCBC). Each manuscript is labelled with its siglum (e.g. 4QIsad), its DJD number, its find-site and the column or fragment and line. Besides the biblical manuscripts, the copies of Ben Sira, Tobit, 1 Enoch, Jubilees and Psalm 151 are shown under those books. Not every manuscript is in the dataset — notably the Greek scrolls (such as the Greek Minor Prophets from Naḥal Ḥever) are absent, and the Masada Ben Sira scroll is added separately (see Ben Sira).

Ben Sira

The Wisdom of Yeshua ben Eleazar ben Sira, composed in Hebrew in Jerusalem around 190–180 BCE and translated into Greek by his grandson in Egypt after 132 BCE (his prologue explains the difficulty of rendering Hebrew into Greek). It belongs to the Septuagint and to the Catholic and Orthodox canons (Latin Ecclesiasticus) but not to the Jewish one, although the Talmud and midrash quote it. Its Hebrew text was lost to the West until 1896, when Solomon Schechter, Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson identified medieval copies in the Cairo Genizah; ancient Hebrew copies then emerged at Qumran and Masada.

About two-thirds of the Hebrew is now known, from six medieval Genizah manuscripts (A–F, 10th–12th century) and three ancient ones: 2QSir (2Q18; Sir 6:14–15, 20–32), the acrostic of Sir 51:13–20, 30 in the Psalms Scroll 11QPsa (columns 21–22), and the Masada scroll (Mas1h), found by Yigael Yadin in 1964 in a casemate room of the fortress and published in 1965: seven columns with Sir 39:27–44:17, copied in the early 1st century BCE, little more than a century after the author. Its agreement with Genizah manuscript B showed that the medieval copies descend from the ancient Hebrew rather than from a translation back from Greek or Syriac.

Here the book is shown in Brenton's Greek and English. The Hebrew column is the Kahana edition, as transcribed on Hebrew Wikisource and distributed by Sefaria (CC BY-SA): a running text built on the Genizah manuscripts, in which words in [brackets] are Kahana's restorations; chapters with no surviving Hebrew are empty. Kahana numbers the verses in the Hebrew order — in the Greek, two blocks of chapters 30–36 are transposed — so his verses have been matched to Brenton's by content for this app, with his own number shown as “Heb.” where it differs. The scrolls column has the three ancient witnesses; the Masada text is Eric Reymond's transcription from bensira.org, which states no licence, so it is only included when you download it yourself. Their placement was made for this app by matching the text; there is no Masoretic text to compare them with, so no variants are marked.

Psalm 151

The Septuagint Psalter ends with a short psalm “outside the number”, in which David recalls tending his father's sheep, his anointing and his victory over Goliath. It belongs to the Greek, Syriac and Ethiopic Bibles but not to the Hebrew one, and was long thought to have been composed in Greek — until the Psalms Scroll from Qumran Cave 11 (11QPsa, published by James Sanders in 1965) turned out to contain a longer Hebrew original in its 28th column, as two poems (151A on David's music and anointing, 151B, broken off, on Goliath). The Greek is a condensed translation of them. The psalm is shown as chapter 151 of Psalms, with the scroll's lines under the Greek verses they correspond to.

Tobit

A Jewish novella of the Eastern diaspora (probably 3rd–2nd century BCE): the pious exile Tobit, blinded in Nineveh, sends his son Tobias to recover money in Media, guided by the angel Raphael in disguise; on the way Tobias marries Sarah and drives off the demon Asmodeus. It is in the Septuagint and the Catholic and Orthodox canons. It survives in two Greek forms — a shorter one (Codices Vaticanus and Alexandrinus, printed by Brenton) and a longer one (Codex Sinaiticus) — and the Qumran copies, four in Aramaic (4Q196–199) and one in Hebrew (4Q200), published by Joseph Fitzmyer in 1995, side with the longer form, which is now generally taken as nearer the original. Their verse placement here follows Fitzmyer's identifications.

1 Enoch

A collection of five works ascribed to Enoch, the seventh from Adam who “walked with God” (Gen 5:24): the Book of the Watchers (ch. 1–36, 3rd century BCE), on the angels who descended to the daughters of men; the Parables (37–71); the Astronomical Book (72–82); the Dream Visions (83–90), with the “Animal Apocalypse” of Israel's history; and the Epistle of Enoch (91–108). It is quoted in the Letter of Jude (1:14–15) and is canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, whose Ge'ez version is the only complete text; Greek survives for about a third. Józef Milik published the Aramaic fragments from Qumran Cave 4 in 1976: eleven copies, covering every part except the Parables, the oldest from around 200 BCE. The English is R. H. Charles's 1917 translation from the Ethiopic (public domain). The Astronomical scrolls (4Q208–211) contain a much longer calendar than the Ethiopic; only their few passages that match chapters 76–82 are placed.

Jubilees

A retelling of Genesis and Exodus 1–14 as revealed to Moses on Sinai by an “angel of the presence”, dated by a calendar of 49-year jubilees and a 364-day solar year (mid-2nd century BCE). Like 1 Enoch it is canonical only in the Ethiopian church, whose Ge'ez version is the only complete text; parts survive in Latin, Syriac and Greek quotations. Fragments of about fifteen Hebrew copies were found at Qumran, more than of most biblical books, and are published in DJD 13 (VanderKam and Milik, 1994) and DJD 23. The English is R. H. Charles's 1917 translation (public domain).

Lexicon and concordance data

Hebrew words carry the analysis of STEPBible's Translators Amalgamated Hebrew OT (Tyndale House, Cambridge): extended Strong's numbers — James Strong's 1890 numbering, subdivided to follow the Brown–Driver–Briggs lexicon (1906) — with morphology from the ETCBC and an abridged BDB for definitions. Samaritan and scroll words take the analysis of the Masoretic word they correspond to, or, where they differ, of the same written form elsewhere in the Masoretic text. Greek words are matched through the Swete Septuagint and the Morpheus parser to STEPBible's Greek lexicon, which draws on Abbott-Smith (1922) and Liddell–Scott–Jones.

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