Mater lectionis & The Vienna Scroll

 

So far, the Kaifeng Scroll at the Austrian National Library (the Vienna Scroll, or VS) has far more mater lectionis than modern Torah scrolls.  Mater lectionis (mother of reading in Latin) are consonants that are used as vowels in Hebrew and other semitic languages.  Hebrew has a strictly consented alphabet, yet early in the history of its writing, some letters were used as vowels.  

As time passed, and Hebrew was used less as a spoken language, Hebrew spelling used more consonantal vowels.  Many Hebrew words have two kinds of spelling, plene, or full, i.e. spelling using mater lectionis, and defective, those not using such letters.  The process of adopting either spelling is not governed by clear rules:

 

From:

For the Masoretic text of the Torah, Weinberg explains that the mix use of plene and defective spelling has been: "'frozen' in a mixed status quo, after which not even an adjustment of extremes in either respect was possible."  The Torah is a chaotic mix of both plene and defective spellings.

The Vienna Scroll has an abundance of plene spellings.  In some, and perhaps most examples, it appears that someone came along after the scroll was written and added vav and yod:

A squeezed vav between the lamed and tav.  Given that this is an image of a microfilm, I can't tell if the ink is different in the vav than the surrounding letter.  In another example, a vav is squished between a mem and rosh:

 

For others, the text appear to correct a less frequently used defective spelling of a word:

The word these in these men, does not have a he.  Was this added to correct the text?  However, in this case, the SMU scroll has the same spelling:

I do not know why the VS sometimes has full spellings for some words.  If there was a complete lack of command for Hebrew, we would expect to see many more.  But this is not the case.  There are perhaps one or two per column.  Did the original Hebrew text copied from have these full spellings?  It seems in many instances this is the case, as in the above example.  We won't know until I have access to more Kaifeng Torah scrolls.  

Until then, I will proceed along these lines:

The VS will be checked against modern Torah scrolls.  I have done this with Genesis, and I am nearly finished with Exodus.  Then I will check both against the Square Scripture Books. When this project is completed, I will have a library of variants of all extent Torah scrolls, and all the HUC Square Scriptures.  

The question(s) to answer:  

Did the Kaifeng Community use a single Torah scroll (the Scroll of Moses) to copy their scrolls after 1642?  

Are the variants in the text scribal errors, or simply the copying of exemplars that the Kaifeng Jews had at hand after 1642?

What are the origins of the Kaifeng Torah scrolls?  If they indeed two (or three) scrolls from Ningbo and Yangzhou procured in the 1400s and 1500s, where did they come from?  Can sus out their origin from characteristics in their descendants?