The Isaiah scroll collated

The Isaiah scroll set beside the medieval text: about 95% word-for-word identical, the remainder spelling and slips of the pen.

Geometry, Retention: A reading: what survives copying is what error does not take once correction has run. A thousand years of copying left Isaiah about 95% word for word the same, most of the rest spelling.

In plain words

Set beside the medieval Hebrew text, the Isaiah scroll is about 95 per cent identical word for word; the rest is spelling and slips of the pen. A thousand years of copying by hand, through exile and conquest, moved the book almost not at all.

The mechanism

TRANSMISSION MEASURED — a millennium of hand copying, through exile, conquest and the collapse of literacy, moved this book by almost nothing

How it was checked

• EvidenceT6 PHYSICAL / MANUSCRIPT; Status: COMMITTED; a release
• Letter eraTHE REGATHERING AND THE RAIL 1947 to 1993
• Plate — Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa), c. 2nd century BC · Israel Museum, Jerusalem; photo by Ardon Bar Hama · Public domain · source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Great_Isaiah_Scroll.jpg
• SourcesMANUSCRIPT — published collation