Scrolls and Scroll-Revisions Behind the Priestly Stratum

Building on earlier work on a scroll approach by this author and others, this article outlines how a material-historical scroll approach to the Priestly stratum would undermine some models for P, support others, and open up new theoretical possibilities for modelling the material prehistory of Priestly materials. Rather than originating as a single, cross-Pentateuchal Priestly source - a document that would have been too long to inscribe on a typical pre-Hellenistic literary working scroll - the Priestly stratum likely emerged from shorter scrolls that were then combined into larger Priestly scrolls covering parts of the broader story (e. g. pre-Moses ancestors, Moses-exodus). These partial iterations of the Priestly tradition could function as such insofar as such material inscriptions of tradition were intended to be used in a circumscribed scribal environment where verbatim learning of Priestly and other (e. g. non-Priestly) traditions could be presupposed.