ABMC/Israel Antiquities Authority

Mere fragments have survived from two early-second-century B.C.E. copies of Jeremiah found in a cave overlooking the Dead Sea. And yet these small scraps contain sufficient biblical verses to identify them as the sole extant Hebrew remains of what scholars call Edition I of the Book of Jeremiah.

The scroll shown here (compare with image of 4QJerd fragment), known as 4QJerb, includes parts of Jeremiah 9:22–10:21. But this fragment, like the Greek Septuagint, lacks verses 10:6–8 (“O Lord, there is none like You! You are great…[Their] doctrine is but delusion, It is a piece of wood”) and 10:10 (“But the Lord is truly God: He is a living God. The everlasting King. At His wrath, the earth quakes, and nations cannot endure His rage”). These verses, which emphasize the centrality of God, appear only in Edition II (the Masoretic Text).