Revisiting the Orthography of the Great Isaiah Scroll: the Rendering of Plural Forms Ending in -ot

The paper addresses the issue of rendering plural forms with the -ot ending that occur in the text of the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa). As is common, this ending can be written either with or without the letter waw. Consequently, there may be instances in which certain forms found in the text can be interpreted either as plural forms rendered in incomplete orthography or as singular forms. The paper will analyze a series of such examples.

Cyrill von Büttner is Senior Researcher in the Department for Comparative-Historical Study of Indo-European Languages and Areal Research at the Institute for Linguistic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg. His principal fields of research include Biblical textual criticism, Classical and Biblical Hebrew, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Hebrew philology, the textual history of the Hebrew Bible, ancient Israelite religion, Aramaic studies, and ancient Jewish literature.

A major focus of his scholarship is the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaᵃ), particularly its textual variants, orthography, scribal activity, and relationship to other textual traditions of the Book of Isaiah. His doctoral-level dissertation, defended at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2016, examined the Qumran recension of the Servant Songs in the Great Isaiah Scroll as a historical and cultural source.

Von Büttner has published a series of studies on individual readings and textual phenomena in 1QIsaᵃ, including textual harmonization, scribal and editorial intervention, the interpretation of variants in Isaiah 42, 49, 50, and 53, and, most recently, the Qumran version of Isaiah 42:1–9. His work combines Hebrew philology, textual criticism, linguistic analysis, and the study of ancient manuscript transmission.

He has also taught Biblical Studies, Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, the Hebrew Bible, ancient Jewish literature, and related subjects at Saint Petersburg State University and currently serves as a visiting lecturer at HSE University.

The Great Isaiah Scroll: Orthography, Variants, and Scribal Activity

A continuing focus of von Büttner's research is the textual and linguistic analysis of the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaᵃ), including its orthography, textual variants, scribal and editorial activity, lexical interpretation, and relationship to other witnesses of the Hebrew text of Isaiah. His recent publications examine individual readings in Isaiah 5, 42, and 53, while his 2026 conference presentation turns specifically to the orthographic representation of plural forms ending in -ot. See also the Institute research on the Great Isaiah Scroll for additional scholarly perspective on this important manuscript.