cal scrolls, Lieberman points to various other types of biblical texts that would have cir-
culated in parallel with this ‘official’ version. As well as the official scrolls of the Temple
archives (the ήκριβωμένα, or most exact scrolls), the Jewish public also made use of “au-
thoritative popular texts circulated among the masses, in many synagogues and
schools.”^712 These texts, designated as κοινά, continued to exist as the standard texts used
by the public even though the scrolls from the Temple archives were considered to be the
most authoritative texts. κοινά, or vulgata, were not as fixed in form as the scrolls found
in the Temple archives. Instead, they were generally correct in form, but subtly different
across various localities. Lieberman thus talks obliquely about the “general vulgata of the
Jews of the first centuries C.E.,”^713 and asserts that “the Scriptures of the small Jewish
localities in Palestine were inferior to the vulgata of Jerusalem.”^714 This final observation
suggests a third category of biblical texts. These last, designated as φαυλότερα, were es-
sentially those copies kept in smaller communities in Palestine.
Lieberman thus describes three general types of biblical scrolls circulating in the period
between the last century B.C.E. and the fourth century C.E. From his outline of their
qualities, it seems that we can arrange these types of scrolls in an order of diminishing
authoritativeness. The scroll-type that carried the most authority in Jewish Palestine dur-
ing this period was the type that was stored in the Temple archives. These are presumably
of the same scroll-type that is alluded to in some ancient sources. For example, as is well
known, we encounter in the works of Josephus various allusions to scrolls that were ‘laid
712
713 S. Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, 22.
714 S. Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, 24.
S. Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, 26.