Of Tefillin and Typos
A few days ago, we reached in the Daf Yomi two mishnas that deal with customs of heretics and sectarians in terms of prayer. One of these mishnas says the following:
"One who constructs his phylacteries in a round shape exposes himself to danger and he does not fulfill the commandment to don phylacteries If one placed the phylacteries worn on the head on his forehead, or if he placed the phylacteries worn on the arm on his palm, and not on his bicep, this is the way of the heretics. If one plated his phylacteries with gold or placed the phylacteries worn on the arm on the outside of his sleeve [unkeli], this is the way of the outsiders, i.e., those who do not take part in the traditions of the Jewish people." (translation based on Sefaria's for Megillah 4:8)
This is a very curious mishna for those, such as myself, who take interest in understanding the customs and views of ancient Jewish sects and what our sages thought of them. One of the issues with this mishna is the question of what are "round tefillin". Typically people think this means that the blacked boxes in which the scrolls were inserted were round-shaped, but this is incorrect, for we know there were many Jews over the ages who had round tefillin and no rabbi saw any inherent issue with this (until the last century or so). For sources and pictures, see here. A. M. Habermann suggested an interesting theory: In Talmudic times, there may have been Jewish sects that did not place their tefillin scrolls in boxes. Rather, they tied the scrolls to their foreheads directly. Some of these sects might have spread out the scroll across their forehead, forming a "rounded" shape.
In light of this suggestion, the next sectarian customs brought in the mishna may be understood differently: Gold-plated tefillin need not refer to plating the boxes gold but plating the scrolls themselves. Likewise, placing the tefillin on the palm of the hand - not putting a box (never mind now how tiny such boxes were at the time) but wrapping a scroll around your hand, almost like a bandage.
But what does this have to do with Tanach, you may be wondering?
Last Friday, I visited part of the Israel Museum. The last exhibit we saw on the tour were the famous Ketef Hinom Scrolls, which are silver scrolls dated to the late 7th century, found in Yerushalayim a few years ago, that are inscribed with what seems to be the priestly blessing (Bamidbar 6:24-26). Some scholars believe that they may have been tefillin (in Qumran tefillin fitted with scrolls featuring other portions of the Torah were found, so evidently there were different customs). But then, where are the boxes?! And why are they made out of silver?! Comes this mishna (and Habermann) with a possible explanation: If these are tefillin scrolls, then they might have belonged to a person who had a tradition that tefillin could be made of metal, and that they did not necessarily need to be placed in a box. Perhaps we have found echoes of the bases of some sectarian customs all the way from before the destruction of the First Temple.
On that note, I recommend for Hebrew readers (or those who favor Google Translate) an essay by Zhabo Ehrlich on echoes of varying customs between the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah that may have been preserved by the Samaritans (to access, go here and right-hand click the first link and choose "save as" to download it).
On to the second part of this post: typos.
The Ketef Hinom Scrolls feature a variant of the Masoretic Text's version of the priestly blessing. In archeology, this is not new. Textual variants have already been found in Qumran and elsewhere. This seems to be, however, evidence for older textual traditions from as early as the end of the First Temple period.
And here comes an idea I had earlier today: Nowadays, we are careful to not write the exact name of Hashem unnecessarily, i.e., when not writing holy books, and even then - typically the holy names will appear in full only in books of the Tanach (Torah scrolls of course included). Maybe, just maybe, some textual variants found in archeological findings are similar - born out of an intent to not write the verse exactly as it should be, for these texts are not exactly Tanachic works. I am already aware that there are a great many holes in this theory, which I will not list right now (perhaps in a separate post someday), but I thought I would put this idea out there. I don't know whether anyone has thought of this before me.
Anyway, that's that. Have a great week!
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