The ABS & London Society Scrolls

 

William White's Chinese Jews contains this photo of the Kaifeng Torah scroll which was housed at the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews.  This was one of two scrolls in western hands that pre-date the copying effort by the Kaifeng community following the flood of 1642.  It went missing sometime before the Second World War.  Pollak references the above photograph in his book on the Kaifeng scrolls:

He correctly notes that ABS and LSS are alike.  The letters are similarity formed.  Here are examples from the first few verses of Leviticus

BLS:

VS:

LSS

ABS

Both BLS and VS have a more cursive or sloping style that ABS and LSS.  And although not fully visible in this example, BLS, VS, SMU all use elongated letters to make columns flush, especially at the end of columns.  This is hardly ever employed for ABS.   There seem to be differences between ABS and LSS.  So far, BLS, SMU, and VS all have the same basic column structure.  They begin and end with the same words; although within the columns, there is variability. Scribes would "catch up" at the end of the column, and begin with the same word as other scrolls.  There was obviously coordination among the scribes after the 1642 flood.  They used the same examples when making their copies.  At least in this on page, there is no coordination of columns between ABS and LSS.

Kaifeng scrolls before and after the 1642 flood also have differences beyond appearance in handwriting.  So far, all of the post flood scrolls I have examined show editorial intrusions.  ABS does not show the same kind of intrusions, or to the same extent.  The beginning of Leviticus offers us two examples.  In Leviticus 2:4 this word shows the addition of a vav to make this word plene:

BLS

VS

This is not present in ABS:

Nor in LSS

If present trends continue, the ABS scroll will not share these plene spelling additions with the post flood scrolls which I have yet to read:  CLS, OUS, SMU, JTS, as they it does not with BLS and VS.  What does this mean?

If we take the legend that the Scroll of Moses was the copy used to create ALL the post flood scrolls are true, then the LSS is not the Scroll of Moses, nor is the ABS.