A groundbreaking , “Black surfaces on ancient leather tefillin cases and straps from the Judean Desert: Macroscopic, microscopic and spectroscopic analyses,” has unveiled that ancient tefillin were not black, as is mandated by contemporary . The findings, published in the prestigious journal PLOS ONE, challenge long-held assumptions about the practice of tefillin observance. Tefillin are small leather cases containing minuscule parchment scrolls inscribed with biblical verses.
Observant Jews wear one on the head and the other on the arm during their morning prayers. According to Jewish law, the tefillin cases, or phylacteries, should be black. A team of researchers from Israel and Great Britain conducted extensive scientific tests revealing that ancient tefillin were not blackened.
The research was led by Prof. Yonatan Adler of Ariel University, alongside Dr. Ilit Cohen-Ofri and Dr.
Yonah Maor from the Israel Antiquities Authority, Dr. Theresa Emmerich Kamper from the University of Exeter, and Dr. Iddo Pinkas from the Weizmann Institute of Science.
In 1949, archaeologists discovered several leather tefillin cases in a cave near Qumran, where the first Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Additional tefillin cases were subsequently unearthed in other caves near Qumran, including Wadi Murabba‘at and Nahal Se’elim, all located in the Judean Desert. These findings are dated to the same period as the Dead Sea Scrolls, around the end of the Second Temple period, approximately 2,000.
