The Vienna Scroll: the new hand in columns 71 and 72

 

The Kaifeng Scroll at the Austrian National Library as an atypical history for a Kaifeng Torah scroll:

This scrolls was purchased in Beijing a full nineteen years after the major purchases by the Chinese Delegates in 1851.  This scroll is numbered 6.  Pollak brings our attention one of the notes of an examination of this scroll:

The suggestion of different hand in interesting, as I noticed a change of hand for both columns 71 and 72.  Are these the skins in question?  The quality of the scans I am using (based on a microfilm) is poor, but you can clearly see the change of hand.  Here is he writing from column 70:

Please note the thickness of the lines of the letters, both vertically and horizontally, and the upper arm of the lamed, which slants far to the left.  Now see the next column 71 and 72:

Note that both the horizontal and vertical lines in the letters are far thinner. 

Mem from column 70:

Mem from column 71:

Pay special attention to the lamed, which on these columns is far more vertical, nearly ninety degrees from crossbar of the letter, with a discernable "cap" at the very top of the letter. 

Lamed column 70:

Lambed from column 71:

It is clear that columns 71 and 72 are by a different hand.  Column 73 resumes the handwriting of column 70.  I am currently reading/checking the first 10 chapter of Exodus and the interpolated handwriting has not returned.  Why did another scribe write these two columns?

The fact that they are full columns is interesting.  We know that a great many damaged Torah scrolls were pulled from the Flood of 1642.  The damaged scrolls were examined, and when possible, useable portions were cut to create the Scroll of Moses.  Could these two columns culled scrolls?  It would have had to have been very undamaged.  There is no indication of water damages, even in these poor quality scans.  To find out if it is a scroll a section of scroll from before the Flood of 1642, I would need scans/photos of better quality than I currently have of the ABS scroll, which dates from the 1400s - 1500s.

There appears to be a tendency in seventeenth century Kaifeng Torah scrolls to elongate letters in the final few lines for pagination.  Column 71 shows this seventeenth century trait:

While column 72 does not:

So we can't use this trait as a indication that this is a pre or post-flood provenance of columns 71 and 72.  Also, not all post 1642 Kaifeng scrolls have this trait in any consistent way, from what I have seen.

A more possible scenario is that someone in the immediate vicinity of the scroll as it was being copied decided to lend a hand.  We know from the 1663 stele that families were involved in the copying of scrolls after the Flood of 1642:

Are columns 71 and 72 in the Vienna Scroll written by a brother, son, nephew or family?  Will this hand return in later portions of the Vienna Scroll?