1 Kings 6:3
Hebrew Bible
1 In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites left Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, during the month Ziv (the second month), he began building the Lord’s temple. 2 The temple King Solomon built for the Lord was 90 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 45 feet high. 3 The porch in front of the main hall of the temple was 30 feet long, corresponding to the width of the temple. It was 15 feet wide, extending out from the front of the temple. 4 He made framed windows for the temple. 5 He built an extension all around the walls of the temple’s main hall and Holy Place and constructed side rooms in it.
Date: 6th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
Zechariah 5:2
Hebrew Bible
1 Then I turned to look, and there was a flying scroll! 2 Someone asked me, “What do you see?” I replied, “I see a flying scroll 30 feet long and 15 feet wide.” 3 The speaker went on to say, “This is a curse traveling across the whole earth. For example, according to the curse whoever steals will be removed from the community; or on the other hand (according to the curse) whoever swears falsely will suffer the same fate.” 4 “I will send it out,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, “and it will enter the house of the thief and of the person who swears falsely in my name. It will land in the middle of his house and destroy both timber and stones.”
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
Search:
Notes and References
"... the circumference of the Torah scroll when rolled in two separate rollers should not exceed the column height. This rule applied only to the rabbinic rules for the writing of Torah scrolls, but evidence from Qumran shows that it also pertained to other scrolls. Because of the close relationship between the length of scrolls and their column sizes, some general remarks on small and large scrolls are included below. Furthermore, the data included may be supplemented by the data below regarding the column sizes of all categories of scrolls (small, medium, large, and very large). There is evidence for long scrolls in ancient Egypt as well as Greece, but it is unclear to what extent this evidence is relevant to Hebrew Scripture, as the Egyptian scrolls were ceremonial and not meant for reading which would have been made difficult by their length. However, it may also be possible that some Torah scrolls were ceremonial. In fact, all views about the length of the earliest biblical scrolls are hypothetical, the only evidence being the description of a scroll containing the prophecies of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 36), but its scope is unknown. Zechariah 5:2 mentions a scroll of ten meters in length (twenty cubits), but as its height is mentioned as five meters (ten cubits), these measures should not be taken at face value (they probably imitate the measures of the ‘porch,’ before the temple as described in 1 Kings 6:3) ..."
Tov, Emanuel
Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert
(p. 73) Brill, 2004
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
Your Feedback:
User Comments
Anonymous comments are welcome. All comments are subject to moderation.