John C. Trever

This 14-line commentary on the Book of Habakkuk was found at Qumran among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Composed about 50 B.C., this scroll is written mainly in modern or Aramaic script, the script we recognize even today as Hebrew. But in lines seven and fourteen (the third and seventh words, respectively, reading from the right) where the Bible is quoted directly (Habakkuk 2:13 and 2:14), the name for God is written in the older, paleo-Hebrew style. Consisting of four consonants, often referred to as the tetragrammaton, this construction using the older script was one of several methods by which Jewish scribes of the period emphasized graphically the sanctity of God’s name.