ATTR Seminar, University of Oslo, 2019 Jonathan Darby, PhD Candidate, University of Manchester PROJECT DESCRIPTION: THE IDENTIFICATION OF INDIVIDUAL SCRIBAL PRACTICES AMONG THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS Abstract (research question, method/approach, outline): The proposed research addresses the question: how can individual scribes of multiple Dead Sea Scrolls be confidently identified, and what insights does the analysis of individual scribal practices contribute to our knowledge and understanding of scribal culture in Second Temple Judaism? This task requires an assessment of current methodologies for the identification of scribes of Dead Sea Scrolls, namely: paleography, comparison of orthography, morphology, scribal and codicological features, and advances in digital paleography. The process of identification itself, therefore, consists of the analysis of scribal practices, but with the goal that new groups of texts copied by an individual scribe can then be subjected to internal comparison. Part one of the study will consist of an assessment of current methodologies and existing scribal identifications, and part two will comprise the analysis and internal comparison of a newly established set of texts originating from a single scribe. Rationale Scholars have long acknowledged that it is possible to identify an individual scribal hand at work in multiple manuscripts among the Dead Sea Scrolls. To date, however, only very limited identifications have been made, and with varying degrees of confidence. The earliest such connection seems to have been tentatively proposed by Malachi Martin, in his study on The Scribal Character of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1958, little more than a decade after the