Temple-court Torah scroll variant witnesses behind Soferim 6

This article describes an entity that is not directly attested as surviving scrolls; it is inferred from source-citation traces and should not be read as ordinary documentation of extant Temple-court manuscripts.

Epistemic status

Draft article. Tractate Soferim reports named scroll witnesses and a comparison procedure, but the scrolls themselves are not extant here.

Summary

Soferim 6:4 reports three Torah scrolls found in the Temple court and describes choosing readings by two witnesses against one. Inferpedia treats this as a lost Torah-witness cluster.

What is being inferred

The inferred entity is the cluster of Temple-court Torah scroll witnesses behind the Soferim tradition.

What is attested

The text attests three scrolls, a Temple-court setting, variant readings, and a majority-reading procedure.

Why infer this entity

The notice is not merely about a rule; it preserves named variant witnesses and a textual-comparison process.

Evidence ledger

• E1, Soferim 6:4: primary trace for three Torah scrolls.
• E2, Soferim 6:4: primary trace for the Temple-court setting.
• E3, Soferim 6:4: primary trace for the majority-reading procedure.

Counterarguments

The story may be schematic, etiological, or later text-critical memory rather than direct evidence for recoverable scrolls.

Confidence scores

Direct attestation: 66. Existence warrant: 82. Specificity: 78. Reconstruction dependence: 76. Counterevidence: 20.

What would change the score

Specialist work on Soferim, Masoretic traditions, and Temple textual plurality would change the score.