Sep 29, 2026 · 21 min · 11 segments
This episode explores scrolls in the Bible, travelling from the caves of Qumran to the scroll in your hand to discover how to make your daily scrolling matter. The journey includes the scroll a king…
Julianne AugustHost
A few years ago, I stood in a small shop in Egypt and I watched someone make paper by hand the old way.
They cut open the stalk of papyrus, this plant, and they peeled away the tougher outer skin just to get to the soft pith inside.
They laid the strips in a crisscross pattern and then pressed them together until they dried into a single sheet.
And then with the plant's own natural sap acting like glue, it became this single flat sheet of paper once it was dried.
Now, some of the artists in that shop had painted beautiful nature scenes right onto the dried sheets, and it was fascinating watching all of it come together.
Once someone bought a piece, what they did is they rolled up the finished art and then they slid it into a tube to carry home, almost like their own little scroll to take with them.
Let me back up and talk about what a scroll was like in ancient biblical times.
Parchment is the general word for any prepared animal skin used for writing, usually sheep, goat, or calf.
Vellum is one specific type of parchment, and it's made only from calf skin because it's known for being extra smooth and extra fine.
And this was really the normal way that people preserved scripture in Old Testament times.
Sources put a typical scroll's length usually somewhere between 20 and 30 feet, though some ran longer than that.
So, a longer book of the Bible sometimes needed more than one scroll just to fit the whole thing.
Readers unrolled these from right to left because that's the direction Hebrew is written and read.
A few years ago, I stood in a small shop in Egypt and I watched someone make paper by hand the old way.
They cut open the stalk of papyrus, this plant, and they peeled away the tougher outer skin just to get to the soft pith inside.
They laid the strips in a crisscross pattern and then pressed them together until they dried into a single sheet.
And then with the plant's own natural sap acting like glue, it became this single flat sheet of paper once it was dried.
Now, some of the artists in that shop had painted beautiful nature scenes right onto the dried sheets, and it was fascinating watching all of it come together.
Once someone bought a piece, what they did is they rolled up the finished art and then they slid it into a tube to carry home, almost like their own little scroll to take with them.
Let me back up and talk about what a scroll was like in ancient biblical times.
Parchment is the general word for any prepared animal skin used for writing, usually sheep, goat, or calf.
Vellum is one specific type of parchment, and it's made only from calf skin because it's known for being extra smooth and extra fine.
And this was really the normal way that people preserved scripture in Old Testament times.
Sources put a typical scroll's length usually somewhere between 20 and 30 feet, though some ran longer than that.
So, a longer book of the Bible sometimes needed more than one scroll just to fit the whole thing.
Readers unrolled these from right to left because that's the direction Hebrew is written and read.
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