TORAH SCROLL

The Torah, or Pentateuch, is commonly acknowledged to be the oldest section of the Hebrew Old Testament, containing the five books of Moses: Genesis (Bereshit, "In the beginning..."), Exodus (Shemot, "Names..."), Leviticus (Vayyiqra, "And he called..."), Numbers (Bamidbar, "In the desert..."), and Deuteronomy (Devarim, "'Words" or "Discourses.").  It describes the creation of the Universe and its early history, and pays particular attention to the special covenant between God and the people of Israel.  It forms the bedrock of biblical history, theology, and is a legal and ritual guide for both Jews and Christians alike.
 

The faithful transmission of core texts in a form as close as possible to the original copy is one of the central tenets of all modern faiths, and in the Torah Scroll we have the single greatest expression of this wish in any text produced in human history. The text itself contains 304,805 letters and must be duplicated perfectly by a professional scribe, word-by-word from a correct exemplar.
 

This particular scroll is an Ashkenazi Torah, and is approximately 128 years old.  It is 106.54 feet long, 17.46 inches high, contains 245 columns with 42 lines per column on 57 panels of Klaph, a specially prepared inside layer of kosher animal hide, such as a goat, cattle, or deer.  The Ashkenazi tradition of scrolls has Germanic origins and they generally originate in Europe or in the diaspore from that region, particularly Israel.  This scroll originated from the central-eastern European region and survived the destructive chaos of World War II and the Holocaust. Although scroll’s ink, surface, and seams remain in excellent condition, it is a non-kosher scroll, meaning it is no longer suitable for religious use.  This status usually results from an excessive number of repairs or corrections.  This scroll contains a number of erasures in Genesis and Exodus, along with tear and hole patches on a number of panels.
 

This rare and authentic Ashkenazi Torah includes many features important as an object of study, and provides RTS students a firsthand engagement with an artifact that will teach them about the preservation of the Bible as a living testimony to the faithful transmission of God's Word across the centuries.

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The Torah Scroll was donated through the generosity of Ken and Barb Larson and their family, and was received and unveiled in a dedication ceremony at Reformed Theological Seminary on August 24th, 2016.