Five Scrolls

(Heb. Hamesh Megillot). The biblical books Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther. They appear together in this order in the Hagiographa section in printed Hebrew Bibles and in Ashkenazi manuscripts, following the biblical calendar. Song of Songs is read in the synagogue on Passover, in the month of Nisan; Ruth on Shavu'Ot; Lamentations on Tishah Be-Av; Ecclesiastes on Sukkot; and Esther on Purim (see also Festivals). In Sephardi manuscripts and in the oldest known Masoretic Bibles, the Aleppo (Keter Aram Zova) and Leningrad codices, the order is chronological: Ruth (period of the Judges); Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes (Solomonic authorship); Lamentations (commemorating the destruction of the First Temple); and Esther (the Persian or Hellenistic era). The order in the Talmud (BB 14b), which has them interspersed among the other books of the Hagiographa, is: Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Lamentations, and Esther; except for Esther, the Talmud does not mention their public reading. It follows that they were grouped together according to their liturgical use, first cited in the minor tractate Soferim (c. 7th cent.). Not all of the scrolls are read by all communities: some traditions divide Ruth over both days of Shavu'ot in the Diaspora and Soferim mentions a similar practice with regard to the Song of Songs on the last days of Passover. It is obligatory to read the Book of Esther ("the Megillah") from a parchment scroll upon which the text is handwritten with pen (quill) and ink. Generally speaking, the other scrolls are read today from printed texts. However, certain Ashkenazi congregations in Jerusalem read all but Lamentations from a handwritten parchment scroll.

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