Scroll

And the first card that came up was the five of scrolls, which kind of surprised me.

But the quick picture is a woman standing on a veranda overlooking a beautiful valley dotted with little towns on the hills and along the rivers.

Scrolls that she's read lie upon a nearby table.

Another scroll is held loosely in her hand while the woman surveys all that she sees.

So in this card, the meaning is you'll find it's time to diversify.

Totally.

All right.

And then we got the Queen of Scrolls.

And I'm Emma.

And this is part two of chapter 14, Scrolls.

Thank you for tuning back in.

We'll pick up right where we left off.

Hmm.

And, you know, our earliest physical copies, uh, in the Dead Sea Scrolls don't typically have titles.

They're probably, uh, you know, they're, they're, they're probably, our guess is, we don't know, our guess is that earlier on when you had a fixed book, um, you know, an edited scroll, they'd probably cite it as early rabbinic and medieval, uh, scholars did by w- you know, what's called the incipit, the first word.

So Genesis would be called Bereshit, Exodus, Shemot.

Does our need or want for some of these other external literary conventions, styles, titling, authorship lead us to miss ways that the text knows itself or knows other texts inside of it?

Yeah, I mean, I think a good example of how, um, biblical literature forms these holes, um, that can be very sort of expansive, that can, that, that seem to have kept drawing in things, um, while still, still having a kind of, um, a coherence, but just not, maybe not our, the flavor of coherence we're expecting, is, um, is a brilliant stuff, first of all, that, and, uh, that, uh, Avam Roczek, um, who has a, a, a great book, uh, The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity that lays this out.

Um, and then Nathan Mastoniak, another friend and colleague who I knew back at U of Chicago, who has, uh, this an amazing recent book, um, on the, uh, called Before the Scrolls, uh, which is kind of a material approach to Israel's prophetic library, which really is i- in dialogue, I think, with M- Mroczek's.

But what Mroczek points out is that there was no book of the Psalms, uh, before late antiquity.

This is a... [laughs] Thanks for listening to the pod, y'all.

You can always show us your appreciation by leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or giving us a shout or text message, like BDB or Mark Keeper of the Scrolls, 803-563-7169.

And Mark, please let us know what you ended up doing for your food for Tuesday.

I've been thinking about you as I have been scarfing down food on the road.

Although most of these jars were empty, two contained these cylindrical scrolls.

They were so old that they started falling apart in the following days.

Although they didn't realize it at the time, they had discovered the first Dead Sea Scrolls.

However, only seven scrolls came from that cave.

The Dead Sea Scrolls actually comprise 972 texts.

Some of these are complete documents, like the Great Isaiah Scroll, which is a 24-foot long piece of parchment containing the entire biblical Book of Isaiah.

Others are tiny, barely legible fragments of papyri.

Whoever wrote them might have lived at Qumran.

Chapter 11.

The Scroll in the Marketplace.

In the pale light of the moon, the sleeping town lay hushed and noiseless.

At its foot the river rolled, spanned by the curves of the old gray stone bridge, and behind rose the giant hills, clothed with tracts of pine and birch trees.

And I'm Emma.

And we're discussing chapter 14, Scrolls.

14?

I had the S from Scrolls already on my tongue as I was saying the number.

Okay, sure, sure.

But yeah, chapter 14 has an epigraph that... is a little excerpt beginning of a story from the Out Islands.

A little bit funny at the end of that paragraph because all three of them end up going.

Yes, yeah.

They had to be inserted after the fact by Someone who came along and added to Daniel's work.

And that argument served their purpose until we had this little discovery known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, which confirmed in 1947 that the book of Daniel, they had multiple copies, copies of copies of copies, and it went all the way back to the time period of Daniel.

And they have almost an entire complete copy from about 150 to 200 BC before most of these events even took place.

So it's a neat collision of archaeology and apologetics and prophecy all coming together to prove God's word.

Well, there's archaeological digs there that verify that was absolutely the city of Jericho.

And there's several more we could talk about, and we will, but one quick comment just to make is that there's thousands of archaeological digs and probably hundreds of thousands of finds.

Not one single find has ever controverted a fact in the Bible, yet many, many thousands of those do support what we read in the Bible, and many hundreds of those like the Dead Sea Scrolls and Jericho and many of these others that we're going to look at are verifiable, clear things.

There's a House of David stone that was found.

CHAPTER XI.

The Scroll in the Marketplace in the pale light of the moon the sleeping town lay hushed and noiseless at its foot the river rolled spanned by the curves of the old gray stone bridge and behind rose the giant hills clothed with tracts of pine and birch trees a high wall surrounded the town with towers at intervals from which gleamed the light of the watchmen's lanterns all was silent on the earth and in the air when through the deep blue of the star sprinkled sky a little child angel winged his way from heaven and hovering over the steep red roofs beneath him folded his wings and dropped softly into the deserted market-place in his hand he held a scroll with strange writing upon it and crossing the square over the rough cobblestones he fixed the paper to the fountain and spreading his white wings flew up again to the home from which he came next day the country people flocking into the market-place saw to their astonishment a track of beautiful white flowers springing up from amongst the cobblestones and stretching from one corner of the square to the fountain they were star-like flowers with bright green leaves and they grew in patches like a child's footsteps the women said a little crowd soon gathered round the paper fastened to the ancient fountain on the top of the scroll was written very clearly all those who can read the words beneath shall be rewarded generously but the lines that followed were in a strange language and in such crabbed characters that they defied every effort to decipher them all day the crowd ebbed and flowed round the fountain while the learned men of the town came with their dictionaries under their arms and spectacles on nose and set on stools attempting to make out the crooked letters of the inscription in the end each one decided upon a different language and the argument became so warm between them that they had to be separated by a party of watchmen and conducted back again to their own houses professors from the university on the other side of the mountains journeyed over the rough roads and brought their learning to the old stone fountain in the market-place but they too went away discomfited no one could read the strange writing and no one could pull down the paper for it appeared to be fixed to the stone by some means that made it impossible to tear it away time went on and the snow covered up the market square threw a white mantle over the steep roofs and buried the old gardens in its soft deepness in one of the houses near the spot where the little angel had first touched the earth lived a poor lonely woman she worked all day at some fine kind of needlework but when in the evenings the sun had set and the twilight began to fall she would steal out for a few minutes to breathe the fresh air often though she was so wearied with her incessant stitching she would carry in her hand a flower from the plants that grew in her latticed window to a neighbor's sick child it was a weary climb up a steep flight of stairs to the attic where the sick child lay but it was reward enough to the woman to see the bright smile that lightened up the little drawn face as she laid the flower on the counterpane all summer the poor sempstress had been too busy during the daylight to afford time even to cross the square to study the strange paper on the fountain if learned men cannot read it a poor ignorant woman like me could certainly never do so she said to the child and the little girl looked up at her with tender love in her eyes you are so good you could do anything she whispered and clasped the worn hand on which the needle pricks had left the marks of many long years of patient sewing i should like to see the paper so much continued the child after a thoughtful pause i wish i could walk there but it is so long since i walked and the snow is so deep now and she sighed Someday, if the good dawn pleases, I will carry you there, said the workwoman, and the child, as she lay patiently on her little bed, dreamt and dreamt of the mysterious paper that no one could read, until the longing to see it became uncontrollable, and her friend of the simptress promised that she would spare an hour the next day from her work, and if the sun shone she would carry the invalid across the market-place to the old stone fountain.

the next morning the child's face was bright with anticipation as the woman wrapped her in a warm shawl and carried her fragile weight down the staircase the cobblestones hurt the poor simstress's feet and she staggered under the light burden but she persevered for the child's murmurs of delight rang in her ears how sweetly the sun shines how white the snow looks how beautiful how beautiful it is to be alive when they reached the fountain the sun shone brightly upon the angel scroll the workwoman seated herself on one of the swept stone steps still holding the child in her arms and they gazed long and earnestly at the writing above them gradually a smile of delight spread across both their faces it's quite quite easy they cried together how is it people have been puzzling so long for as they looked the crabbed letters unrolled before them straightened and arranged themselves in order and the angel's message was read by the poor workwoman and the sick child love god and live for others said the scroll and a soft light seemed to stream from it and shed a glow of happiness right into the hearts of the two who read it the air was warmer the sun shone more brightly and just by the foot of the fountain pushing through the snow sprang one blue head of palest forget-me-not and as the letters on the scroll became plainer and plainer the paper slowly rolled up and shrunk away until it had disappeared altogether the seamstress carried back the child upon the steep staircase laid her tenderly on her bed and hurried away to her own attic in her absence strange things had happened the room was swept and tidy the flowers were watered and the piece of work she had left half done was lying finished on the broad window seat the poor woman looked around her in astonishment she went downstairs to inquire if any neighbors had prepared this surprise for her but they only stared at her and told her she must have left her wits in the market-place and that that was what came of leaving your own duties to look after other people's The simstress did not listen to their taunts, for a song of joy was welling up in her heart, a song so sweet and true it might have been the echo of that sung by the angels.

Never had life seemed so beautiful to her.