The parchment fragments, containing a part of the Twelve Minor Prophets in Greek, discovered in the Cave of Horror on the Wadi Heber of the Judaean Desert, belongs stratigraphically to the period of the Bar Koseba's revolt in the first half of the second century A. D. From the palaeographical and archaeological point of view, they would be contemporary with the Greek fragments of the Twelve Minor Prophets, argued in RB Vol. 60 (1953) by Barthélemy, and a leather scroll in Hebrew found in a cave somewhat upstream to Murabba'at, which covers a great part of the twelve Minor Prophets. These two groups of the fragments and a scroll were all perhaps possessed by the rebels. Considering their remarkable similarities to the Aquila's version and the MT, the writer supposes them the nearest manuscript to the Hebrew text, which would be sanctioned as canon by the Jamnian (Yabneh) synod in the late first century A. D. under the influence of the Rabbis during the second term of Tanna'îm, and strictly literal translations into Greek, which are ascribed to the same tradition circle and would be intended to b e done so above all rather than to revise.
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