Variants in the Kaifeng Vienna Scroll: Numbers

 

I have now examined Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and now Numbers of what I call the Vienna Scroll: VS, the Kaifeng scroll housed in the Austrian National Library.  In keeping with the other books of this Torah, Numbers contains many examples of full or plene spellings.  My full notes can be found here.  In some cases, it appears that the full spelling was placed in the text after the word was written.  Here is the breakdown of plene spellings:

Examples of the VS having a plene spelling but a lack of such a spelling in the Square Scripture: 14.

Examples of the VS having a plene spelling and the SS also having a plene spelling: 13.

Examples of the VS having a plene spelling alone, because a SS is not extant: 12.

There are 39 examples of plene spellings; half of those went it alone, without an example in the square scriptures.  But the other half does have analogs in the SS, some of them quite surprising.  Here is clearly an addition to the VS:

HUC 968 as very clear editorial intentions on this word:

In masoretic texts, a circle above a letter indicates in insertion, in this case a vav between the tav and the tet.

Here is another example:

Here the circle functions in the marginal, explaining that the vav is inserted between the lamed and the tet.  These two examples illustrate that the Kaifeng Jews did indeed interrogate their texts in an effort to make them more accurate.  Does this apply to the other extant Torah Kaifeng scrolls?  When I have images of them, I will submit them to the same scrutiny.