I am spending a great deal of time searching for variants in two Kaifeng Torah Scrolls. I am not noting any instances of "corrections" in the text. So, I will take this time to show a mem inserted between a yod and an ayin (above in the line, and below a detail):
Either the scribe forgot the mem and realized later, and did not have the room in the column to completely erase the word and add the mem, or someone came along after the scribe had written this text, and added a mem. Why is this important? It shows that these texts were being examined, investigated, and otherwise interrogated.
Reading Rian Thum's book opens up the possibility that the Hebrew and Persian skills of the elite Kaifeng Jews were possibility more accomplished than has been supposed. The testimony of Jesuit visitors, and modern reactions to their Torah scrolls, have prompted possibly biased criticism.
If Hui Muslims were writing in Persian and Arabic with native abilities into the 19th century, what were the skills of the Kaifeng Jews in both Judeo-Persian and Hebrew during the 17th century, when this scroll was copied?
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