[1] The fragmentary remains of the Torah scroll is written in the Paleo-Hebrew script and was found stashed away in cave no.

[2] The paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll, although many centuries more recent than the well-known earlier ancient paleo-Hebrew epigraphic materials, such as the Royal Steward inscription from Siloam, Jerusalem (8th century BCE), now in the Museum of the Ancient Orient, Istanbul,[3] and the Phoenician inscription on the sarcophagus of King Eshmun-Azar at Sidon, dating to the fifth-fourth century BCE,[4] the Lachish ostraca (ca.

950–918 BCE), and the paleo-Hebrew sacerdotal blessing discovered in 1979 near the St Andrew's Church in Jerusalem, is of no less importance to palaeography[5][6][7][8]—even though the manuscript is fragmentary and only partially preserved on leather parchment.

Today, the paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll (11QpaleoLev) is housed at the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), but is not on public display.

[11] Similar paleo-Hebrew fragments exist for the Books of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, discovered in Qumran Cave 4.

Although secular linguistic experts agree that the Ashurit script (i.e., the modern square Jewish Hebrew alphabet) evolved from the earlier Paleo-Hebrew script via the Aramaic alphabet—their secular consensus view is based on palaeographic evidentiary discoveries, the timelines and assigned eras of those discoveries, and the slowly evolving letter/character morphologies as they offshoot from earlier scripts—the question remains undecided among Jewish religious sages as to whether or not the discovery of the 11QpaleoLev scroll has implications on what the original script of the first Torah was.

Nevertheless, the matter remains undecided and in dispute among Jewish religious sages, with some holding the opinion that the Torah was originally inscribed in the Old Hebrew (Paleo-Hebrew) script,[17] while others that it was not.

What is generally acknowledged by all Jewish religious sages[18] is that Ezra the Scribe in the 5th century BCE was the first to enact that the scroll of the Law be written in the Assyrian alphabet (Ashurit)—the modern Hebrew script, rather than in the Old Hebrew (Paleo-Hebrew) script used formerly, and permitted that the Book of Daniel be composed in the Aramaic language with Ashurit characters.

[20] The paleo-Hebrew script is written upon horizontal ruled lines, indented in the parchment by a semi-sharp instrument, from which the scribe "hangs" his letters.

The leather, upon examination, is thought to belong to a small domesticated animal; either a kid of the goats or young sheep.

The top portion of the scroll is irregularly worn away, with no indication that it had been deliberately torn or cut.

[24] The scroll contains much of Leviticus chapters 22:21–27, 23:22–29, 24:9–14, 25:28–36, 26:17–26, and 27:11–19, with smaller fragments showing portions of chapters 4:24–26, 10:4–7, 11:27–32, 13:3–9, 14:16–21, 18:26–19:3, 20:1–6, et al. Based on a cursory review and comparison of extant texts, the 11QpaleoLev Leviticus Scroll is considered by many to be a primary textual witness of the Proto-Masoretic text.

According to the Talmud, at some time during the Second Temple period the Sages saw a need to bring conformity to the writing, and therefore began work on establishing an authoritative text, which eventually became known as the MT.

[37] This suggests that the Masoretes who transmitted the readings for words had access to an early orthographic tradition.

[38] Another unique feature of the paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll is that it shows an ancient scribal practice of aligning all words in the columns in a natural progressive order, without the necessity of stretching words as is typically practised by scribes in the Ashurit script (modern Hebrew script) to justify the end of the line at the left margin.

23:26) is an anomaly of sorts, insofar that the MT makes it a Closed Section (Hebrew: פרשה סתומה), which should start in the middle of the column, with an intermediate space between it and the previous verse,[43] but in the paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll the section here starts at the beginning of the right margin, with the previous verse ending in the previous line and followed by a short vacant space extending to the left margin (which space is equivalent to that of about 14 letters).

24:10 is made a Closed Section in the MT, but in the paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll the section break starts at the beginning of the right margin, preceded by a line where the previous verse ends close to the start of the line, and a solitary paleo-Hebrew letter waw is written in the middle of that long-extended space, a tradition which is no longer recognised today.

[46] The use of a solitary waw in the middle of the section break is consistent with the practice found in paleo-Hebrew biblical manuscripts discovered in Qumran cave no.