Scroll Topics

• sefer torah
• torah scrolls
• silk ties
• boustrophedon
• bottom plates
• jewish practice
• living word
• breastplate
• aron
• yad
• word of god
• clasps
• recliner
• latch
• mantle
• top and bottom
• ornaments
• virtue
• belts
• niche

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Scroll, Scroll

It is distinguished from a roll (see below) by virtue of being intended for repeated use rather than continuous, but once-only use of the roll. Scrolls in general have greater value.

The scroll is usually unrolled so that one page is exposed at a time, for writing or reading, with the remaining pages rolled up to the left and right of the visible page. It is unrolled from side to side, and the text is written in lines from the top to the bottom of the page. The letters may be written left to right, right to left, or alternating in direction (boustrophedon).

In Jewish practice the Torah scrolls are bound by a special length of usually silk ties or belts with clasps, and in Ashkenazi practice are covered or "dressed" in protective embroidered kippah (mantle), and external ornamental silver Tas (breastplate), and usually a silver Keter (crown) of beaten silver placed over the upper atzei chaim (handles). In Sephardi practice the Keter is built into the portable Aron and the Sefer Torah is never removed from it, the reading conducted with the scroll remaining in the upright position, while that of the Ashkenazi practice is laid on a recliner. These ornaments are not objects of worship, but are used only to beautify the scroll as the sacred and holy living word of God. The reading pointer, or yad, to help the reader keep track of the text without actually touching it, is also stored with the scrolls usually by means of being hung on a chain suspended from the upper handles over the Tas, or over the Aron latch. In Jewish designs the handles with their top and bottom plates are known as atzei chaim (trees of life), and are often highly decorated with silver, and etchings.

The scroll is stored in a cylindrical Aron (case) in the Sephardic practice, and in an often extremely elaborate Aron Kodesh (Hekhl amongst most Sefardim) in Ashkenazi designs, preferably built on the East wall, which takes the shape of a large, often walk-in niche with doors and covered with an elaborately decorated embroidered parokhet (curtain) either inside (Sephardim) or outside (Ashkenazim) the doors. The Parokhet usually includes the name of the congregation and that of its donors.

In a later Early Christian era, scrolls became quite valuable as scribal skills became less common, and were often stored in protected leather cases. Some texts that were declared heretical by the Church, but were retained for study, were secured by special locks somewhat like the chastity belts in use at the time.

A scroll is a sequential access format; a codex is a random-access format, analogous to tape and disc storage devices in computers.

The way a scroll was read by being unrolled meant scribes were sometimes confused; for example, there are versions of the Egyptian Book of the Dead with repeated sections.

Many Jewish families also own their own Megillah scroll for use during Purim.

Alexander the Great brought the Library of Solomon from his conquest of Persia, where it was taken when the city was overcome by the Babylonians in 597 BCE. These scrolls were used as founding texts of the Library of Alexandria. In Roman usage the scrolls were written latitudinally, usually placed on podiums with roll holders from which the rolls were unwound.

The ink invented by the Chinese philosopher, Tien-Lcheu (2697 B.C.), became common by the year 1200 B.C. Later other formats came into use in China, firstly the sutra or scripture binding, a scroll folded concertina-style, which avoids the need to unroll to find a passage in the middle.

Traditional painting and calligraphy in East Asia is often still performed on relatively short latitudinal paper scrolls displayed vertically as a hanging-scroll on a wall.

Unlike scrolls, these are usually written down the length of the roll latitudinally. Rolls may be wider than most scrolls, up to perhaps 60cm or two feet wide.

Source: Wikipedia > Scroll