Textorah

Joel 1

1
דְּבַר־יְהוָה אֲשֶׁר הָיָה אֶל־יוֹאֵל בֶּן־פְּתוּאֵל
THE WORD of HaShem that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.
ΛΟΓΟΣ Κυρίου ὃς ἐγενήθη πρὸς Ἰωὴλ τὸν τοῦ Βαθουήλ.
The word of the Lord which came to Joel the son of Pethuel.
2
שִׁמְעוּ־זֹאת הַזְּקֵנִים וְהַאֲזִינוּ כֹּל יוֹשְׁבֵי הָאָרֶץ הֶהָיְתָה זֹּאת בִּימֵיכֶם וְאִם בִּימֵי אֲבֹתֵיכֶם
Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land. Hath this been in your days, or in the days of your fathers?
Ἀκούσατε ταῦτα, οἱ πρεσβύτεροι, καὶ ἑνωτίσασθε, πάντες οἱ κατοικοῦντες τὴν γῆν. εἰ γέγονεν τοιαῦτα ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ἡμῶν, ἢ ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις τῶν πατέρων ὑμῶν;
Hear these [words], ye elders, and hearken all ye that inhabit the land. Have such things happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers?
3
עָלֶיהָ לִבְנֵיכֶם סַפֵּרוּ וּבְנֵיכֶם לִבְנֵיהֶם וּבְנֵיהֶם לְדוֹר אַחֵר
Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.
ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν τοῖς τέκνοις ὑμῶν διηγήσασθε, καὶ τὰ τέκνα ὑμῶν τοῖς τέκνοις αὐτῶν, καὶ τὰ τέκνα αὐτῶν εἰς γενεὰν ἑτέραν.
Tell your children concerning them, and [let] your children [tell] their children, and their children another generation.
4
יֶתֶר הַגָּזָם אָכַל הָאַרְבֶּה וְיֶתֶר הָאַרְבֶּה אָכַל הַיָּלֶק וְיֶתֶר הַיֶּלֶק אָכַל הֶחָסִיל
That which the palmer-worm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the canker-worm eaten; and that which the canker-worm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten.
τὰ κατάλοιπα τῆς κάμπης κατέφαγεν ἡ ἀκρίς, καὶ τὰ κατάλοιπα τῆς ἀκρίδος κατέφαγεν ὁ βροῦχος, καὶ τὰ κατάλοιπα τοῦ βρούχου κατέφαγεν ἡ ἐρυσίβη.
The leavings of the caterpillar has the locust eaten, and the leavings of the locust has the palmerworm eaten, and the leavings of the palmerworm has the cankerworm eaten.
5
הָקִיצוּ שִׁכּוֹרִים וּבְכוּ וְהֵילִלוּ כָּל־שֹׁתֵי יָיִן עַל־עָסִיס כִּי נִכְרַת מִפִּיכֶם
Awake, ye drunkards, and weep, and wail, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine, for it is cut off from your mouth.
Ἐκνήψατε, οἱ μεθύοντες, ἐξ οἴνου αὐτῶν καὶ κλαύσατε· θρηνήσατε πάντες οἱ πίνοντες οἶνον εἰς μέθην, ὅτι ἐξῄρθη ἐκ στόματος ὑμῶν εὐφροσύνη καὶ χαρά.
Awake, ye drunkards, from your wine, and weep: mourn, all ye that drink wine to drunkenness: for joy and gladness are removed from your mouth.
6
כִּי־גוֹי עָלָה עַל־אַרְצִי עָצוּם וְאֵין מִסְפָּר שִׁנָּיו שִׁנֵּי אַרְיֵה וּמְתַלְּעוֹת לָבִיא לוֹ
For a people is come up upon my land, mighty, and without number; his teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the jaw-teeth of a lioness.
Ὅτι ἔθνος ἀνέβη ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν μου ἰσχυρὸν καὶ ἀναρίθμητον, οἱ ὀδόντες αὐτοῦ ὀδόντες λέοντος, καὶ αἱ μῦλαι αὐτοῦ σκύμνου·
For a strong and innumerable nation is come up against my land, their teeth are lion’s teeth, and their back teeth those of a [lion’s] whelp.
7
שָׂם גַּפְנִי לְשַׁמָּה וּתְאֵנָתִי לִקְצָפָה חָשֹׂף חֲשָׂפָהּ וְהִשְׁלִיךְ הִלְבִּינוּ שָׂרִיגֶיהָ
He hath laid my vine waste, and blasted my fig-tree; he hath made it clean bare, and cast it down, the branches thereof are made white.
Ἔθετο τὴν ἄμπελόν μου εἰς ἀφανισμὸν, καὶ τὰς συκάς μου εἰς συγκλασμόν· ἐρευνῶν ἐξηρεύνησεν αὐτὴν, καὶ ἔῤῥιψεν· ἐλεύκανε τὰ κλήματα αὐτῆς.
He has ruined my vine, and utterly broken my fig trees: he has utterly searched [my vine], and cast it down; he has peeled its branches.
8
אֱלִי כִּבְתוּלָה חֲגֻרַת־שַׂק עַל־בַּעַל נְעוּרֶיהָ
Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth.
Θρήνησον πρὸς μὲ ὑπὲρ νύμφην περιεζωσμένην σάκκον, ἐπὶ τὸν ἄνδρα αὐτῆς τὸν παρθενικόν.
Lament to me more than a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth.
9
הָכְרַת מִנְחָה וָנֶסֶךְ מִבֵּית יְהוָה אָבְלוּ הַכֹּהֲנִים מְשָׁרְתֵי יְהוָה
The meal-offering and the drink-offering is cut off from the house of HaShem; the priests mourn, even HaShem'S ministers.
Ἐξῇρται θυσία καὶ σπονδὴ ἐξ οἴκου Κυρίου· πενθεῖτε οἱ ἱερεῖς οἱ λειτουργοῦντες θυσιαστηρίῳ Κυρίου,
The meat offering and drink offering are removed from the house of the Lord: mourn, ye priests that serve at the altar of the Lord.
10
שֻׁדַּד שָׂדֶה אָבְלָה אֲדָמָה כִּי שֻׁדַּד דָּגָן הוֹבִישׁ תִּירוֹשׁ אֻמְלַל יִצְהָר
The field is wasted, the land mourneth; for the corn is wasted, the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth.
ὅτι τεταλαιπώρηκε τὰ πεδία· πενθείτω ἡ γῆ, ὅτι τεταλαιπώρηκεν σῖτος· ἐξηράνθη οἶνος, ὠλιγώθη ἔλαιον·
For the plains languish: let the land mourn, for the corn languishes; the wine is dried up, the oil becomes scarce;
11
הֹבִישׁוּ אִכָּרִים הֵילִילוּ כֹּרְמִים עַל־חִטָּה וְעַל־שְׂעֹרָה כִּי אָבַד קְצִיר שָׂדֶה
Be ashamed, O ye husbandmen, wail, O ye vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley; because the harvest of the field is perished.
Ἐξηράνθησαν γεωργοί· θρηνεῖτε κτήματα ὑπὲρ πυροῦ καὶ κριθῆς, ὅτι ἀπόλωλε τρυγητὸς ἐξ ἀγροῦ·
the husbandmen are consumed: mourn your property on account of the wheat and barley; for the harvest has perished from off the field.
12
הַגֶּפֶן הוֹבִישָׁה וְהַתְּאֵנָה אֻמְלָלָה רִמּוֹן גַּם־תָּמָר וְתַפּוּחַ כָּל־עֲצֵי הַשָּׂדֶה יָבֵשׁוּ כִּי־הֹבִישׁ שָׂשׂוֹן מִן־בְּנֵי אָדָם
The vine is withered, and the fig-tree languisheth; the pomegranate-tree, the palm-tree also, and the apple-tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered; for joy is withered away from the sons of men.
Ἡ ἄμπελος ἐξηράνθη, καὶ αἱ συκαῖ ὠλιγώθησαν· ῥοὰ, καὶ φοῖνιξ, καὶ μῆλον, καὶ πάντα τὰ ξύλα τοῦ ἀγροῦ ἐξηράνθησαν, ὅτι ᾔσχυναν χαρὰν οἱ υἱοὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων.
The vine is dried up, and the fig trees are become few; the pomegranate, and palm tree, and apple, and all the trees of the field are dried up: for the sons of men have abolished joy.
13
חִגְרוּ וְסִפְדוּ הַכֹּהֲנִים הֵילִילוּ מְשָׁרְתֵי מִזְבֵּחַ בֹּאוּ לִינוּ בַשַּׂקִּים מְשָׁרְתֵי אֱלֹהָי כִּי נִמְנַע מִבֵּית אֱלֹהֵיכֶם מִנְחָה וָנָסֶךְ
Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests, wail, ye ministers of the altar; come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my G-d; for the meal-offering and the drink-offering is withholden from the house of your G-d.
Περιζώσασθε καὶ κόπτεσθε οἱ ἱερεῖς· θρηνεῖτε οἱ λειτουργοῦντες θυσιαστηρίῳ· εἰσέλθετε, ὑπνώσατε ἐν σάκκοις λειτουργοῦντες Θεῷ, ὅτι ἀπέσχηκεν ἐξ οἴκου Θεοῦ ὑμῶν θυσία καὶ σπονδή.
Gird yourselves [with sackcloth], and lament, ye priests: mourn, ye that serve at the altar: go in, sleep in sackcloth, ye that minister to God: for the meat offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.
14
קַדְּשׁוּ־צוֹם קִרְאוּ עֲצָרָה אִסְפוּ זְקֵנִים כֹּל יֹשְׁבֵי הָאָרֶץ בֵּית יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם וְזַעֲקוּ אֶל־יְהוָה
Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land unto the house of HaShem your G-d, and cry unto HaShem.
Ἁγιάσατε νηστείαν, κηρύξατε θεραπείαν, συναγάγετε πρεσβυτέρους, πάντας κατοικοῦντας γῆν εἰς οἶκον Θεοῦ ὑμῶν, καὶ κεκράξετε πρὸς Κύριον ἐκτενῶς,
Sanctify a fast, proclaim a [solemn] service, gather the elders [and] all the inhabitants of the land into the house of your God, and cry earnestly to the Lord,
15
אֲהָהּ לַיּוֹם כִּי קָרוֹב יוֹם יְהוָה וּכְשֹׁד מִשַׁדַּי יָבוֹא
Alas for the day! for the day of HaShem is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.
Οἴμοι, οἴμοι, οἴμοι εἰς ἡμέραν, ὅτι ἐγγὺς ἡ ἡμέρα Κυρίου, καὶ ὡς ταλαιπωρία ἐκ ταλαιπωρίας ἥξει.
Alas, alas, alas for the day! for the day of the Lord is nigh, and it will come as trouble upon trouble.
16
הֲלוֹא נֶגֶד עֵינֵינוּ אֹכֶל נִכְרָת מִבֵּית אֱלֹהֵינוּ שִׂמְחָה וָגִיל
Is not the food cut off before our eyes, yea, joy and gladness from the house of our G-d?
Κατέναντι τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν ὑμῶν βρώματα ἐξωλθρεύθη, ἐξ οἴκου Θεοῦ ὑμῶν εὐφροσύνη καὶ χαρά.
[Your] meat has been destroyed before your eyes, joy and gladness from out of the house of your God.
17
עָבְשׁוּ פְרֻדוֹת תַּחַת מֶגְרְפֹתֵיהֶם נָשַׁמּוּ אֹצָרוֹת נֶהֶרְסוּ מַמְּגֻרוֹת כִּי הֹבִישׁ דָּגָן
The grains shrivel under their hoes; the garners are laid desolate, the barns are broken down; for the corn is withered.
Ἐσκίρτησαν δαμάλεις ἐπὶ ταῖς φάτναις αὐτῶν, ἠφανίσθησαν θησαυροὶ, κατεσκάφησαν ληνοὶ, ὅτι ἐξηράνθη σῖτος.
The heifers have started at their mangers, the treasures are abolished, the winepresses are broken down; for the corn is withered.
18
מַה־נֶּאֶנְחָה בְהֵמָה נָבֹכוּ עֶדְרֵי בָקָר כִּי אֵין מִרְעֶה לָהֶם גַּם־עֶדְרֵי הַצֹּאן נֶאְשָׁמוּ
How do the beasts groan! the herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate.
Τί ἀποθήσομεν ἑαυτοῖς; ἔκλαυσαν βουκόλια βοῶν, ὅτι οὐχ ὑπῆρχε νομὴ αὐτοῖς· καὶ τὰ ποίμνια τῶν προβάτων ἠφανίσθησαν.
What shall we store up for ourselves? the herds of cattle have mourned, because they had no pasture; and the flocks of sheep have been utterly destroyed.
19
אֵלֶיךָ יְהוָה אֶקְרָא כִּי אֵשׁ אָכְלָה נְאוֹת מִדְבָּר וְלֶהָבָה לִהֲטָה כָּל־עֲצֵי הַשָּׂדֶה
Unto Thee, O HaShem, do I cry; for the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame hath set ablaze all the trees of the field.
Πρὸς σὲ Κύριε βοήσομαι, ὅτι πῦρ ἀνήλωσε τὰ ὡραῖα τῆς ἐρήμου, καὶ φλὸξ ἀνῆψε πάντα τὰ ξύλα τοῦ ἀγροῦ,
To thee, O Lord, will I cry: for fire has devoured the fair places of the wilderness, and a flame has burned up all the trees of the field.
20
גַּם־בַּהֲמוֹת שָׂדֶה תַּעֲרוֹג אֵלֶיךָ כִּי יָבְשׁוּ אֲפִיקֵי מָיִם וְאֵשׁ אָכְלָה נְאוֹת הַמִּדְבָּר
Yea, the beasts of the field pant unto Thee; for the water brooks are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness.
καὶ τὰ κτήνη τοῦ πεδίου ἀνέβλεψαν πρὸς σὲ, ὅτι ἐξηράνθησαν ἀφέσεις ὑδάτων, καὶ πῦρ κατέφαγε τὰ ὡραῖα τῆς ἐρήμου.
And the cattle of the field have looked up to thee: for the fountains of waters have been dried up, and fire has devoured the fair places of the wilderness.

How it works

A parallel reader for the Hebrew Bible and its oldest witnesses: the Masoretic text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint, each with an English translation where one is available.

Reading a chapter

Choose a book and chapter at the top, or type a reference into Go to (Isa 53:11, 1 Sam 3, sam 3:4, ii kgs 2, ben sira 51). Book names can be abbreviated; a name shared by numbered books (sam, kings, chr, macc) opens the first of them unless you add the number. The arrow keys move between chapters, and the address bar keeps a link to the verse you clicked, so you can bookmark or share a place.

Each row is one verse. Rows follow the Masoretic verse numbering, so the Hebrew, JPS and Samaritan columns line up exactly. The Septuagint is numbered differently in many places (Psalms, Jeremiah, Exodus 35–40, parts of Kings, Proverbs, Daniel, and dozens of chapter boundaries). Its verses are placed against their Masoretic counterparts, and a small tag such as 50:3 shows the Septuagint's own number when it differs. Greek verses that have no Masoretic counterpart (for example the Prayer of Azariah in Daniel 3) appear in reading order as separate rows marked LXX.

Columns

The chips at the top switch columns on and off. Drag a chip (or a column heading) to reorder; with a chip focused, the ← → keys move it. Your choice is remembered. The Samaritan columns appear only in Genesis–Deuteronomy; the scrolls column appears wherever a manuscript survives, including Ben Sira. Columns marked † are licensed for non-commercial use only.

Words: lexicon and concordance

Hover over any Hebrew word (Masoretic, Samaritan or scroll) or any Greek word to see its dictionary form, Strong's number, a short gloss and its grammar. Click the word to open the concordance on the right: the full lexicon entry, then every occurrence, grouped by book — for Hebrew, separately for the Masoretic text, the Samaritan Pentateuch and the scrolls (with the manuscript named). Click a reference to go there; every form of the word in the chapter is highlighted. You can also type a word or a Strong's number into Lexicon at the top.

In the Masoretic text, a Ketiv (the written form, unpointed) is shown in grey immediately before its Qere (the form read aloud); both carry the Qere's dictionary entry.

Variants

The Samaritan Pentateuch and every scroll are compared word by word with the Masoretic text of the same verse:

In the scrolls, letters in brackets are a modern editor's reconstruction and are never counted as variants; letters with a dotted overline are uncertain; ◦ is a trace of an unreadable letter. Manuscripts written in paleo-Hebrew script, and divine names that square-script scrolls write in paleo-Hebrew, are shown in paleo-Hebrew letters (switchable under Display). Hover a manuscript to see its edition. Display → Dead Sea Scrolls can hide the manuscripts that agree with the Masoretic text, or strip the reconstructions to show only what survives.

The comparison is automatic. It aligns words by spelling, so a transposition or a long rewritten passage can be marked imperfectly, and the spelling rule cannot tell a suffix from a vowel letter. Treat the colours as a finding aid and check a critical edition before building an argument on a reading.

Books outside the Hebrew Bible

Besides the Septuagint-only books, the book list has 1 Enoch and Jubilees (“Other ancient books”), shown in R. H. Charles's English with the Qumran copies beside them, and Psalms has a chapter 151. Their scroll copies — like those of Tobit and Ben Sira — have no verse numbers in the data: each fragment is placed by its published identification, and its lines are spread over those verses, so treat the exact verse boundaries as approximate. Aramaic copies (Tobit 4Q196–199 and all of Enoch) are marked “Aramaic” and have no word lookups.

Rabbinic citations

The small ❝ under a verse number opens the passages of rabbinic literature that cite that verse — Mishnah, Tosefta, both Talmuds, Midrash, Targum and Kabbalah (and, if you tick the box, later halakhah, liturgy and thought) — fetched live from Sefaria, so it needs an internet connection. Each passage is listed with Sefaria's date for the work it comes from and a link to read it there. Sefaria's links include allusions and discussions as well as quotations; those it classes as quotations are marked. It works for the Hebrew Bible, Ben Sira (by Kahana's numbering, e.g. the Talmud's quotations of Ben Sira), Tobit and Jubilees. For 1 Enoch, which the rabbis do not quote, it lists instead the Zohar's passages about a “Book of Enoch”.

How the Septuagint is aligned

Each Greek verse is placed by combining three things: the standard table of Septuagint–Masoretic verse correspondences (SIL's lxx.vrs), the table of Masoretic–English numbering differences, and a comparison of the English of Brenton's Septuagint with the JPS English, which confirms each pairing and catches displaced verses. Where no Masoretic verse is similar enough, the Greek verse stands on its own row.

The Greek word data

No openly licensed word-by-word analysis of Brenton's Greek exists, so each Greek word is matched to the most frequent analysis of the same form in the openly licensed Swete Septuagint (Morpheus parser), then to a lexicon entry. About 95% of words are identified. Parses of ambiguous forms (e.g. αὐτοῦ, τοῦ) can be wrong; the card says "automatic parse" as a reminder.

Building and updating

The page reads prepared data from the data folder; python3 build.py (in the app folder) downloads the sources into sources and rebuilds it in a few minutes. Two files must be added by hand: eng-Brenton_vpl.zip from ebible.org and SPE.zip from CrossWire. python3 build.py --public-domain-only leaves out the three non-commercially-licensed layers; --download-only just fetches the sources. Licences and required credits are listed in SOURCES.md.

About the texts

What each column is, where it comes from, and what to keep in mind when reading it.

Masoretic Text — Westminster Leningrad Codex

The Masoretic text is the Hebrew Bible as transmitted by the Masoretes, scribal scholars active in Tiberias and elsewhere roughly from the 7th to the 10th century, who fixed its vowel points, accents and marginal notes (the Masorah) around a consonantal text that was already essentially stable by the 1st–2nd century CE. The Leningrad Codex (St Petersburg, Firkovich I B 19 A), copied in 1008/1009 CE in the Ben Asher tradition, is the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible; the slightly older Aleppo Codex lost most of the Torah in 1947. It is the base of the standard critical editions (BHK, BHS, BHQ).

The Westminster Leningrad Codex is the public-domain digital transcription of it maintained by the J. Alan Groves Center at Westminster Theological Seminary. In this edition a Ketiv appears as its own unpointed word before the pointed Qere.

JPS 1917 — The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text

The first English Bible translation produced by a committee of Jewish scholars for the Jewish Publication Society of America, under Max L. Margolis as editor-in-chief, published in 1917. Its language deliberately follows the cadence of the King James and Revised Versions, but its renderings follow the Masoretic text and Jewish exegetical tradition, and it keeps the Hebrew chapter and verse numbering. It is in the public domain; its successor, the New JPS (Tanakh, 1985), is not. The electronic edition used here writes the divine names as “HaShem” and “G-d”.

Septuagint — Brenton's Greek text and the Updated Brenton English

The Septuagint is the Jewish translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek. The Torah was translated in Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE (the Letter of Aristeas tells the legend of 72 translators under Ptolemy II); the other books followed over the next two centuries. Because it was made from Hebrew manuscripts older than the Masoretic text, it often preserves a different Hebrew text: Jeremiah is about one-seventh shorter and differently ordered (a shorter Hebrew text of this type survives at Qumran in 4QJerb,d), Job is about one-sixth shorter, and Esther and Daniel have long additions. It was the Bible of Philo, Josephus and the New Testament writers, and became the Old Testament of the Greek church, which in turn led Jewish translators (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion) to produce closer revisions.

Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton published an English translation in 1844 and a Greek–English edition in 1851. His Greek is essentially the Sixtine (Roman) edition of 1587, which follows the 4th-century Codex Vaticanus. It is older and less critical than the modern editions of Rahlfs (1935) and Göttingen, which are under copyright. The English column is the Updated Brenton (Adam Boyd, 2020), Brenton's translation with modernised spelling and wording, dedicated to the public domain.

Samaritan Pentateuch †

The Torah as preserved by the Samaritan community of Mount Gerizim (Nablus), written in the Samaritan script, a descendant of the paleo-Hebrew alphabet. It differs from the Masoretic text in about 6,000 places, most of them spelling or grammar; in about 1,900 of them it agrees with the Septuagint. Some readings are distinctively Samaritan, above all the commandment to build an altar on Mount Gerizim added after the Ten Commandments (Exod 20:17; Deut 5:21) and “Gerizim” for “Ebal” in Deut 27:4. Many others — harmonising expansions that copy one passage into its parallel — are shared with “pre-Samaritan” Qumran manuscripts such as 4QpaleoExodm and 4QNumb, showing that the text type is older than the Samaritan schism.

European scholars learned of it in 1616, when Pietro della Valle brought a manuscript from Damascus; it was printed in the Paris (1645) and London (1657) Polyglots, collated by Benjamin Kennicott (1776–80) and edited critically by August von Gall (1914–18). The Hebrew here is Aleksandr Sigalov's digital text, based on Kennicott and checked against von Gall; the English is Sigalov's adaptation of the King James Version to the Samaritan readings. For modern scholarship see Abraham Tal's edition of MS Shechem 6 and Stefan Schorch's critical editio maior.

Dead Sea Scrolls and other Judean Desert manuscripts †

Between 1947 and 1956 the remains of about 950 manuscripts were found in eleven caves near Khirbet Qumran. Some 230 are biblical — every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther is represented, from tiny fragments to the complete Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) — dating from about 250 BCE to 68 CE. They are a thousand years older than the Leningrad Codex. Most are close to the ancestor of the Masoretic text (“proto-Masoretic”), but others agree with the Septuagint (4QJerb, 4QSama in places), with the Samaritan text type, or with neither — evidence that several forms of the text circulated side by side before the Masoretic text prevailed.

Manuscripts from other sites fill out the picture: Masada (before its fall in 73/74 CE; excavated by Yigael Yadin, 1963–65) and the Bar Kokhba refuges of Wadi Murabba'at and Naḥal Ḥever (132–135 CE), whose biblical texts are already virtually identical with the Masoretic text, as well as Naḥal Ṣe'elim, Wadi Sdeir and Naḥal Arugot. The official publication is the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series (Oxford, 1955–2010).

The transcriptions here are those of Martin G. Abegg Jr., James E. Bowley and Edward M. Cook, as converted by the Eep Talstra Centre for Bible and Computer (ETCBC). Each manuscript is labelled with its siglum (e.g. 4QIsad), its DJD number, its find-site and the column or fragment and line. Besides the biblical manuscripts, the copies of Ben Sira, Tobit, 1 Enoch, Jubilees and Psalm 151 are shown under those books. Not every manuscript is in the dataset — notably the Greek scrolls (such as the Greek Minor Prophets from Naḥal Ḥever) are absent, and the Masada Ben Sira scroll is added separately (see Ben Sira).

Ben Sira

The Wisdom of Yeshua ben Eleazar ben Sira, composed in Hebrew in Jerusalem around 190–180 BCE and translated into Greek by his grandson in Egypt after 132 BCE (his prologue explains the difficulty of rendering Hebrew into Greek). It belongs to the Septuagint and to the Catholic and Orthodox canons (Latin Ecclesiasticus) but not to the Jewish one, although the Talmud and midrash quote it. Its Hebrew text was lost to the West until 1896, when Solomon Schechter, Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson identified medieval copies in the Cairo Genizah; ancient Hebrew copies then emerged at Qumran and Masada.

About two-thirds of the Hebrew is now known, from six medieval Genizah manuscripts (A–F, 10th–12th century) and three ancient ones: 2QSir (2Q18; Sir 6:14–15, 20–32), the acrostic of Sir 51:13–20, 30 in the Psalms Scroll 11QPsa (columns 21–22), and the Masada scroll (Mas1h), found by Yigael Yadin in 1964 in a casemate room of the fortress and published in 1965: seven columns with Sir 39:27–44:17, copied in the early 1st century BCE, little more than a century after the author. Its agreement with Genizah manuscript B showed that the medieval copies descend from the ancient Hebrew rather than from a translation back from Greek or Syriac.

Here the book is shown in Brenton's Greek and English. The Hebrew column is the Kahana edition, as transcribed on Hebrew Wikisource and distributed by Sefaria (CC BY-SA): a running text built on the Genizah manuscripts, in which words in [brackets] are Kahana's restorations; chapters with no surviving Hebrew are empty. Kahana numbers the verses in the Hebrew order — in the Greek, two blocks of chapters 30–36 are transposed — so his verses have been matched to Brenton's by content for this app, with his own number shown as “Heb.” where it differs. The scrolls column has the three ancient witnesses; the Masada text is Eric Reymond's transcription from bensira.org, which states no licence, so it is only included when you download it yourself. Their placement was made for this app by matching the text; there is no Masoretic text to compare them with, so no variants are marked.

Psalm 151

The Septuagint Psalter ends with a short psalm “outside the number”, in which David recalls tending his father's sheep, his anointing and his victory over Goliath. It belongs to the Greek, Syriac and Ethiopic Bibles but not to the Hebrew one, and was long thought to have been composed in Greek — until the Psalms Scroll from Qumran Cave 11 (11QPsa, published by James Sanders in 1965) turned out to contain a longer Hebrew original in its 28th column, as two poems (151A on David's music and anointing, 151B, broken off, on Goliath). The Greek is a condensed translation of them. The psalm is shown as chapter 151 of Psalms, with the scroll's lines under the Greek verses they correspond to.

Tobit

A Jewish novella of the Eastern diaspora (probably 3rd–2nd century BCE): the pious exile Tobit, blinded in Nineveh, sends his son Tobias to recover money in Media, guided by the angel Raphael in disguise; on the way Tobias marries Sarah and drives off the demon Asmodeus. It is in the Septuagint and the Catholic and Orthodox canons. It survives in two Greek forms — a shorter one (Codices Vaticanus and Alexandrinus, printed by Brenton) and a longer one (Codex Sinaiticus) — and the Qumran copies, four in Aramaic (4Q196–199) and one in Hebrew (4Q200), published by Joseph Fitzmyer in 1995, side with the longer form, which is now generally taken as nearer the original. Their verse placement here follows Fitzmyer's identifications.

1 Enoch

A collection of five works ascribed to Enoch, the seventh from Adam who “walked with God” (Gen 5:24): the Book of the Watchers (ch. 1–36, 3rd century BCE), on the angels who descended to the daughters of men; the Parables (37–71); the Astronomical Book (72–82); the Dream Visions (83–90), with the “Animal Apocalypse” of Israel's history; and the Epistle of Enoch (91–108). It is quoted in the Letter of Jude (1:14–15) and is canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, whose Ge'ez version is the only complete text; Greek survives for about a third. Józef Milik published the Aramaic fragments from Qumran Cave 4 in 1976: eleven copies, covering every part except the Parables, the oldest from around 200 BCE. The English is R. H. Charles's 1917 translation from the Ethiopic (public domain). The Astronomical scrolls (4Q208–211) contain a much longer calendar than the Ethiopic; only their few passages that match chapters 76–82 are placed.

Jubilees

A retelling of Genesis and Exodus 1–14 as revealed to Moses on Sinai by an “angel of the presence”, dated by a calendar of 49-year jubilees and a 364-day solar year (mid-2nd century BCE). Like 1 Enoch it is canonical only in the Ethiopian church, whose Ge'ez version is the only complete text; parts survive in Latin, Syriac and Greek quotations. Fragments of about fifteen Hebrew copies were found at Qumran, more than of most biblical books, and are published in DJD 13 (VanderKam and Milik, 1994) and DJD 23. The English is R. H. Charles's 1917 translation (public domain).

Lexicon and concordance data

Hebrew words carry the analysis of STEPBible's Translators Amalgamated Hebrew OT (Tyndale House, Cambridge): extended Strong's numbers — James Strong's 1890 numbering, subdivided to follow the Brown–Driver–Briggs lexicon (1906) — with morphology from the ETCBC and an abridged BDB for definitions. Samaritan and scroll words take the analysis of the Masoretic word they correspond to, or, where they differ, of the same written form elsewhere in the Masoretic text. Greek words are matched through the Swete Septuagint and the Morpheus parser to STEPBible's Greek lexicon, which draws on Abbott-Smith (1922) and Liddell–Scott–Jones.

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