The Hebrew Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls 9783666535550, 9783525535554, 9783647535555

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© 2012, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525535554 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647535555

Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments Edited by Jan Christian Gertz, Dietrich-Alex Koch, Matthias Köckert, Hermut Löhr, Joachim Schaper, and Christopher Tuckett

Volume 239

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

© 2012, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525535554 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647535555

The Hebrew Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls Edited by Nóra Dávid, Armin Lange, Kristin De Troyer, and Shani Tzoref

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

© 2012, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525535554 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647535555

In memory of Hanan Eshelʬʦ

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.d-nb.de. ISBN 978-3-525-53555-4 ISBN 978-3-647-53555-5 (E-Book) © 2012, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen/ Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht LLC, Oakville, CT, U.S.A. www.v-r.de All rights reserved. No part of his work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Printed and bound in Germany by Hubert & Co, Göttingen Printed on non-aging paper.

© 2012, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525535554 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647535555

Contents

Introduction .............................................................................................

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Part I: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Textual History of the Hebrew Bible a) General Studies Some Thoughts on How the Dead Sea Scrolls Have Changed our Understanding of the Text of the Hebrew Bible and its History and the Practice of Textual Criticism Russell Fuller ..........................................................................................

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Preservation and Promulgation: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Textual History of the Hebrew Bible Arie van der Kooij...................................................................................

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The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Textual History of the Masoretic Text Emanuel Tov............................................................................................

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The Fundamental Importance of the Biblical Qumran Scrolls Eugene Ulrich .........................................................................................

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Understanding the Textual History of the Hebrew Bible: A New Proposal Sidnie White Crawford............................................................................

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b) Case Studies Textual and Literary Criticism on Passages Attested by 4QSama,b (1Sam 6:4–5 and 1 Sam 23:11–12) Julio Trebolle Barrera ............................................................................

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Looking at Bathsheba with Text-Critical Eyes Kristin De Troyer ....................................................................................

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The Text of Jeremiah in the War Scroll from Qumran Armin Lange............................................................................................

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Textual Fluidity as a Means of Sectarian Identity: Some Examples from the Qumran Literature Corrado Martone .................................................................................... 117

Part 2: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Understanding of Biblical Books a) General Studies The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Language of Jewish Scriptures Steven E. Fassberg .................................................................................. 129 Qumran and Biblical Scholarship Thomas Römer ........................................................................................ 137 The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Deuteronomistic Movement Karin Finsterbusch.................................................................................. 143 Looking Back: What the Dead Sea Scrolls Can Teach Us about Biblical Blessings Esther G. Chazon .................................................................................... 155 b) Case Studies Knowledge, Nakedness, and Shame in the Primeval History of the Hebrew Bible and in Several Texts from the Judean Desert Michaela Bauks....................................................................................... 172 The Textual Connection between 4Q380 Fragment 1 and Psalm 106. Mika S. Pajunen ...................................................................................... 186 The Book of Daniel and the Dead Sea Scrolls John J. Collins......................................................................................... 203 Symbolic and Non-Symbolic Visions of the Book of Daniel in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls Bennie H. Reynolds III. ........................................................................... 218 Part 3: The Dead Sea Scrolls and Ancient Interpretations of Jewish Scriptures a) General Studies Embryonic Legal Midrash in the Qumran Scrolls Vered Noam............................................................................................. 237

© 2012, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525535554 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647535555

Contents

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The Uses of Scriptural Traditions at Qumran for the Construction of Ethics Marcus Tso.............................................................................................. 263 Ancient Jewish Commentaries in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Multiple Interpretations as a Distinctive Feature? Matthias Weigold .................................................................................... 281 b) Case Studies Jubilees, Philo, and the Problem of Genesis James Kugel ............................................................................................ 295 Modification of Biblical Law in the Temple Scroll Lawrence H. Schiffman ........................................................................... 312 Philo and the Temple Scroll on the Prohibition of Single Testimony Sarah Pearce ........................................................................................... 321 Rewriting the Story of Dinah and Shechem: The Literary Development of Jubilees 30 Michael Segal.......................................................................................... 337 The Twelve Minor Prophets at Qumran and the Canonical Process: Amos as a “Case Study” Hanne von Weissenberg.......................................................................... 357 Part 4: The Dead Sea Scrolls and Jewish Law and Life Sociology of Jewish Life in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Seeking Steps Forward Jutta Jokiranta ........................................................................................ 379 Did Enochians Exist? Answer to Boccaccini Paul Heger .............................................................................................. 402 “You Shall See”: Rebecca’s Farewell Address in 4Q364 3 ii 1–6 Hanna Tervanotko................................................................................... 413 Marriage Laws in the Dead Sea Scrolls in Relation to the Broader Jewish Society Cecilia Wassen ........................................................................................ 427 Jewish Law in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Some Issues for Consideration Lutz Doering............................................................................................ 449

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Contents

Some Observations on the Literary Constitution of Legal and Ethical Discourse in Rabbinic and Qumran Texts Alexander Samely.................................................................................... 463 Authors and Editors of the Volume ........................................................ 474 Index of Ancient Sources ........................................................................ 477

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Introduction

The purpose of the seminar “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hebrew Bible” was to explore the importance of the former for the understanding of the latter. Until recently, the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls was considered to be of only secondary importance for the understanding of the Hebrew Bible, as it was presumed that most non-biblical texts that are attested by the manuscripts from the Qumran library are copies of texts that were composed after the biblical books were written. For this reason, the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls for biblical scholar-ship was limited to the spheres of the textual and interpretative histories of the Hebrew Bible. It is hence not surprising that extensive research has been done in these two areas, which has shed new light both on how the text of the biblical books developed and how these biblical books were interpreted in ancient Judaism. Since the last decade of the last millennium, however, a new consensus has developed among students of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The non-biblical scrolls from Qum-ran are no longer understood as the literary product of the people living at Qumran alone, but rather as having been collected by them. This means that only some of the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls attest to texts that were actually composed by the Essenes and are hence sectarian in character. The lion’s share of the non-biblical Dead Sea Scrolls were only collected in Qumran but not composed by the Essenes. As a consequence of this new scholarly consensus, scholars began to recognize that some of the non-Essene texts from the Qumran library date back to a time when the late books of the Hebrew Bible were written and the later redactions of other biblical books were produced. At least some of the texts attested by the Qumran manuscripts are therefore part of the cultural and religious contexts in which the Hebrew Bible developed. These texts are of similar if not greater importance for the understanding of the Hebrew Bible than, e.g., the textual finds from Ugarit or ancient Egyptian and ancient Mesopotamian literature. The SBL seminar “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hebrew Bible” responded to this paradigm shift with a series of five meetings in total. The first four meetings addressed individual aspects of this overall theme, focusing on a hermeneutical question (Cambridge 2003), on the importance of the pre-Maccabean texts from the Qumran library for the understanding of the Hebrew Bible (Groningen 2004), on the question of prophecy and the

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Dead Sea Scrolls (Edinburgh 2006), and on the Qumran legal texts (Vienna 2007). The proceedings of these meetings were and will be published as x Reading the Present in the Qumran Library: The Perception of the Contemporary by Means of Scriptural Interpretation (eds. Kristin De Troyer and Armin Lange, with the assistance of Katie M. Goetz and Susan Bond; SBL Symposium Series 30; Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005). x Pre-Maccabean Literature from the Qumran Library and Its Importance for the Study of the Hebrew Bible (eds. Kristin De Troyer and Armin Lange, with the assistance of Lucas L. Schulte, and Eva Mrozek; DSD 13.3 [2006]). x Prophecy after the Prophets? The Contribution of the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Understanding of Biblical and Extra-Biblical Prophecy (eds. Kristin De Troyer and Armin Lange, with the assistance of Lucas L. Schulte; CBET 52; Leuven: Peeters, 2009). x The Qumran Legal Texts between the Hebrew Bible and Its Interpretation (eds. Kristin De Troyer and Armin Lange, with the assistance of James. S. Adcock; CBET 61; Leuven: Peeters, 2011). The final meeting of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hebrew Bible seminar took place in Rome in 2009. As the summit of our seminar series, this last meeting did not highlight a particular aspect of how the Dead Sea Scrolls shed new light on the Hebrew Bible, but tried to address the issue in all its facets. For this purpose the two seminar chairs, Kristin De Troyer and Armin Lange, invited both junior and senior specialists from the fields of Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism, Dead Sea Scrolls and Rabbinics to Rome. As always it was our policy to involve specialists from outside the field of Dead Sea Scrolls to join us in our work. This volume of proceedings of the last meeting of the “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hebrew Bible” seminar is structured in four parts, dedicated to the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls for the textual history of the Hebrew Bible, for the understanding of individual biblical books, for the early interpretative history of the Hebrew Bible and for the understanding of Jewish life and law in the period when the late parts of the Hebrew Bible were written and the canon of the Hebrew Bible developed. While there is more to be said about the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls for the study of the Hebrew Bible, we hope that the present selection of articles provides the reader with a good impression of some key issues. The first part of the present proceedings asks about the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls for the study of the textual history of the Hebrew Bible (The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Textual History of the Hebrew Bible). Five articles engage with general depictions of the textual history of the Hebrew

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Bible in light of the Dead Sea Scrolls and a further four are case studies. In an introductory survey, Russell Fuller (“Some Thoughts on How the Dead Sea Scrolls Have Changed our Understanding of the Text of the Hebrew Bible and its History and the Practice of Textual Criticism”) sketches the textcritical evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls and points the specialist and non-specialist alike to the main questions posed by this material. The following four papers provide two fundamentally different perspectives on the biblical manuscripts among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Both Arie van der Kooij and Emanuel Tov locate the (proto)MT text at the Jerusalem temple and understand it as a carefully maintained textual tradition that stands opposed to the overall textual plurality of Second Temple Judaism. Arie van der Kooij (“Preservation and Promulgation: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Textual History of the Hebrew Bible”) argues that copies of Jewish Scriptures were archived at the Jerusalem temple where they were carefully preserved and transmitted under the supervision of the chief priests. These Jerusalemite exemplars are to be distinguished carefully from the texts displaying textual plurality attested elsewhere in the Second Temple period. The text(s) kept at the Jerusalem temple can be compared to the city editions of the Homeric epics and other classical Greek literature. MT is not the result of textual standardization but reflects this text with minor changes and therefore harks back to an official text kept in the temple and preserved with great care by the appropriate temple officials. Emanuel Tov (“The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Textual History of the Masoretic Text”) emphasizes the stichographic and textual identity of certain biblical scrolls from Qumran and all biblical manuscripts from the non-Qumran sites with MT. Based on the identification of such a (proto)masoretic manuscript group, Tov proposes that the text of MT developed in four stages. During the first stage, authors deposited copies of their literary works at the Jerusalem temple, which were maintained and copied there. These manuscripts can be described as the archetype of MT. Later (proto)MT copies were produced from this master copy or revised according to it. At this early stage, MT was a good text which knew textual and orthographic differences. The second stage of MT is characterized by a uniform picture. The (proto)MT manuscripts dating from between 250 B.C.E. and 135 C.E. comprise an inner circle of texts that agree precisely with codex L and a second circle of scrolls that are only very similar to it and reflect typologically a later stage of MT. The third stage of MT, between 135 C.E. and the eighth century C.E., is characterized by a relatively high degree of textual consistency. During the fourth stage, between the end of eighth century C.E. until the end of the Middle Ages, MT became almost completely standardized, due to the addition of the vocalization, accentuation and the Masorot. Against Van der Kooij and Tov, Eugene Ulrich and Sidnie White Craw-

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ford develop a different perspective on the textual history of the biblical books in the Second Temple period, putting more emphasis on its plurality. For Eugene Ulrich (“The Fundamental Importance of the Biblical Qumran Scrolls”), MT is simply by chance the sole surviving witness of the Hebrew Bible’s Hebrew text after the two Jewish wars and is neither the Jerusalem temple text nor the result of conscious textual standardization. As a uniform text, MT thus represents only “period two” of the two-stage process of the textual history of the Hebrew Bible. The Qumran scrolls show that “period one” of this process was characterized by textual pluriformity and was the time in which the biblical text was composed and in which it developed. Sidnie White Crawford (“Understanding the Textual History of the Hebrew Bible: A New Proposal”) wants to discard the labels MT, SP, and LXX for the description of the textual history of the Hebrew Bible in the Second Temple period as anachronistic. White Crawford identifies instead two scribal traditions at work in the textual witnesses from the Second Temple period as attested by the biblical manuscripts from Qumran as well as by MT, SP, and LXX, namely a conservative and a revisionist scribal tradition. Texts like 1QIsab, 4QJerb,d, LXXJeremiah, and MTEsther are part of the conservative scribal tradition, but texts like 1QIsaa, 4QJera,c,e, MTJeremiah, and LXXEsther belong to the revisionist scribal tradition. The conservative and revisionist scribal traditions were at work in Judea at the same time and are responsible for the multiplicity of texts we see at Qumran. Only after the first century B.C.E., those texts that later became the Masoretic Text gradually became dominant. Some of the books collected in the Masoretic Text came from the conservative scribal tradition, e.g. the books of the Torah, others from the revisionist scribal tradition, e.g. Jeremiah. Four case studies illustrate what was argued in the papers of Fuller, van der Kooij, Tov, Ulrich and White Crawford. The first two case studies are concerned with various parts of the books of Samuel. Julio Trebolle Barrera (“Textual and Literary Criticism on Passages Attested by 4QSama,b [1Sam 6:4-5 and 1 Sam 23:11-12]”) compares the various textual witnesses to 1 Sam 6:4-5 and 1 Sam 23:11-12 with one another in light of 4QSama,b. The MT text of 1 Sam 6:4-5 is the result of a juxtaposition of two originally independent readings and a gloss. In 1 Sam 23:11-12, Trebolle Barrera observes the confluence of two oracular inquiries, whose juxtaposition has produced different textual forms (4QSamb, MT, the Vorlage of LXX, and the Greek and Latin recensions). Kristin De Troyer (“Looking at Bathsheba with Text-Critical Eyes”) is also concerned with the text of 1-2 Samuel. She finds evidence in the Antiochene text as well as in 4QSama that the MT text of 1-2 Samuel reworked 2 Sam 11-12. “The figure of Bathsheba and her actions with regard to David and her begetting of Solomon are elaborations from ingredients found in 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles. The figure of the

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Queen of Sheba has functioned as the source (or inspiration) for the invention and depiction of Bathsheba.”1 The last two case studies of this section investigate the importance of the biblical quotations and allusions in Qumran manuscripts for the textual history of the Hebrew Bible. Armin Lange (“The Text of Jeremiah in the War Scroll from Qumran”) analyzes the textual character of the Jeremiah quotations and allusions in the War Scroll from the Qumran library. He shows that in all cases of textual variation the War Scroll reads consistently with the consonantal text of MT. Corrado Martone (“Textual Fluidity as a Means of Sectarian Identity: Some Examples from the Qumran Literature”) engages with the question of sectarian variant readings. He points to the fluidity of the text of biblical books in the Qumran library and identifies at least two sectarian variant readings that were inserted into a quotation of Hab 1:13 in 1QpHab V:8-12 and into a quotation of Ezek 44:15 in CD A 3:21–4:4. The second part of our proceedings asks in how far the Dead Sea Scrolls help to better interpret individual biblical books. This question is of particular importance as some Dead Sea Scrolls attest to texts that were composed at a time when the later books of the Hebrew Bible were written. Again, our proceedings publish contributions that address more general questions and contributions that propose solutions for individual cruces interpretum with the help of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Steven E. Fassberg (“The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Language of Jewish Scriptures”) opens a series of four general studies by way of a survey of the Hebrew and Aramaic of the Dead Sea Scrolls and its importance for the understanding of the languages in which the Jewish Scriptures were written. Fassberg shows that the Hebrew and Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls corroborate linguistic phenomena found in the post-exilic books of the Hebrew Bible and other contemporary corpora, and also reveal previously unknown grammatical forms and lexemes. With regard to Hebrew, the Dead Sea Scrolls corroborate the type of language known from the biblical books of the Second Temple period but demonstrate links with the language of Ben-Sira, the traditions of the Samaritan Pentateuch, and early Tannaitic Hebrew as well. The Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls provide on the one hand additional evidence for a Standard Literary Jewish Aramaic and allow on the other hand a glimpse of early Palestinian Aramaic features. Thomas Römer’s contribution (“Qumran and Biblical Scholarship”) addresses the grey area between higher and lower criticism. The Qumran manuscripts show that the distinction between a scribe as a copyist and a redactor as a supposed “author” of a biblical book is anachro————— 1

Page 94 of the present volume.

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nistic. The Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate rather that scribes acted often as redactors of biblical books. The fact that most books of the Pentateuch in the Qumran library seem to be attested in separate copies leads Römer to regard the “fragment” hypothesis of how the Pentateuch developed as most likely. This opens the possibility that late scribes could have still reworked individual books of the Torah. Römer regards the Joshua manuscripts from Qumran and 4QapocrJosha (4Q378) as supporting the hexateuch model, with the Book of Joshua being situated more in the context of the Torah than in that of the deuteronomistic history. The lack of Judg 6:7-10 in 4QJudga (4Q49) points to the existence of a version of the Book of Judges in the Hellenistic period without one of its most prominent deuteronomistic passages. That some of the late MT-long texts in Joshua and Jeremiah are also characterized by deuteronomistic language could argue, in light of 4QJudga (4Q49), for the existence of Deuteronomism in the Hellenistic period. 4QSama (4Q51) indicates that Chronicles preserves evidence for a Hebrew text of Samuel preceding that of MT. The study of Karin Finsterbusch (“The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Deuteronomistic Movement”) discusses one of the questions raised by Römer’s article in more detail. She asks how far deuteronomistic rhetoric in the Yahad literature from Qumran can be taken - as Odil Hannes Steck argued - as evidence for the existence of a deuteronomistic movement in the late Second Temple period. Finsterbusch argues against the existence of such a deuteronomistic movement in the late Second Temple period. She casts the issue in terms of the reception of Deuteronomy and deuteronomistic traditions in CD 1:1-2:1; 20:28-30 and 1QS I:24b-II:1, showing instead that the Yahad literature is “distinctly marked by the stamp of Deuteronomic and Deuteronomistic traditions.”2 Esther G. Chazon shows that the sectarian and non-sectarian liturgical collections from Qumran uncover missing links in a chain of development from the classical biblical blessing to the rabbinic liturgical benediction. The evidence points to a multi-stage evolutionary development that is not strictly linear. The (1) classical biblical blessing grew into a (2) formal opening in longer prayers of praise and thanksgiving, which led to the use of the blessing as (3a) an introduction to petitionary prayers and (3b) to the emergence of closing benedictions. Stages 3a and b are followed by the use of blessings as formal openings and closings in a liturgical practice of routine communal prayer. The formal, framing benediction which is well attested in the liturgical collections from Qumran points to (4) the rabbinic liturgical benediction and heralds the emerging practice of fixed communal prayer. ————— 2

Page 144 of the present volume.

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The four general studies are followed by four case studies. Based on the example of the basic correlation of knowledge, nakedness and shame, Michaela Bauks (“Knowledge, Nakedness and Shame in the Primeval History of the Hebrew Bible and in Several Texts from the Judean Desert”) shows that creation myths were used in contexts of national histories, of the establishment of political and/or religious hierarchies and of ethical or cultic regimes. Biblical and extrabiblical texts, like Genesis, the Book of Watchers, the Book of Jubilees and others, seem to have the same apologetic interest in creation myths as Ancient Near Eastern texts, but with a sapiential intention. Mika S. Pajunen (“The Textual Connection between 4Q380 Fragment 1 and Psalm 106”) argues that the psalm preserved in 4Q380 1 is a source employed in Psalm 106. Pajunen’s discovery is of great importance as it shows that the biblical Psalms employed sources that were not later incorporated into any biblical canon. The two last articles of the second part of our proceedings are dedicated to the Book of Daniel, i.e. to the book of the Hebrew Bible that was written almost contemporaneously with the Essene movement. John J. Collins (“The Book of Daniel and the Dead Sea Scrolls”) surveys all Danielic material (including quotations and allusions) in the Dead Sea Scrolls with the exception of the Daniel manuscripts from Qumran. On the one hand the Prayer of Nabonidus illuminates the traditional story that underlies Daniel 4, and 4QGiantsb does the same for Daniel 7. On the other hand the PseudoDaniel texts 4Q243–244 and 4Q245 are largely independent of the biblical book. The famous “Son of God”-text 4Q246 depends on the biblical book of Daniel and the Four Kingdoms text (4Q552–553) is a contemporizing exegesis of Daniel 2 or 7. Bennie H. Reynolds III (“Symbolic and NonSymbolic Visions of the Book of Daniel in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls”) shows that Daniel 10–12, the Pseudo-Daniel texts and the Apocryphon of Jeremiah C make use of explicit descriptions in the form of sobriquets while the symbolic visions of Daniel 2, 4, 7–8 as well as the Book of the Words of Noah, 4QFourKingdomsa–b ar, the Book of Giants and the Animal Apocalypse employ symbolic categories. The semiotic systems underlying symbolic apocalypses indicate that they cannot have been intended to hide anything. But the opaque sobriquetical representations of dramatis personae in non-symbolic apocalypses appear to presume an audience limited to those with the requisite interpretative tools. The third part of our proceedings explores the interpretative history of the biblical books as illuminated by the Dead Sea Scrolls. This question is of particular importance as it provides glimpses into the reception history of biblical books from a time when some of the books of the Hebrew Bible were still being written or reworked and into a time shortly after the last book of the Hebrew Bible was completed. The Dead Sea Scrolls thus dem-

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onstrate the fluid transition from the making of the Hebrew Bible to its interpretation. The three general studies and the five case studies in this part of our proceedings are particularly interested in the various approaches to the Jewish Scriptures, such as exegetical methods and methodologies as well as reading strategies. Vered Noam (“Embryonic Legal Midrash in the Qumran Scrolls”) offers new insights into such a spotlight, i.e., the existence of a fixed midrashic format in the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls. This primal midrash deduced new laws from accepted scriptural concepts. The deduction was based on analogy. The law which is inferred may be a term or case described in the Torah, the rule of which is not fully explicated or a new law not even mentioned in Scriptures. In some cases these laws that were developed by way of midrash involve a polemic against the approach taken in rabbinic literature while in other cases Qumranic and rabbinic halakhah basically agree. The article by Marcus Tso (“The Uses of Scriptural Traditions at Qumran for the Construction of Ethics”) asks about the role that scriptural traditions played in the construction of Qumranite ethics. Tso emphasizes that the Qumranites appropriated the Jewish Scriptures by using earlier rewritings, by creating commentaries, by alluding to scriptural references and by catchword association. In the case of more stable textual traditions, the Qumran community informed their ethics in ways that were often neither original nor unique to them. Textual traditions of greater fluidity and openness were used to support perspectives that were more distinctively sectarian. The study of Matthias Weigold (“Ancient Jewish Commentaries in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Multiple Interpretations as a Distinctive Feature?”) proceeds to the realm of commentary literature. He argues that in rare cases the pesharim and the work of Aristobulus of Alexandria attest to multiple interpretations of the Jewish Scriptures even before Philo of Alexandria and the Rabbis. He also demonstrates, based on 1 Enoch 106-107, that such a polyvalence of the Jewish Scriptures is not restricted to commentary literature but can also be found in the realm of paratextual literature. Textual polyvalence would thus not be a distinctive characteristic of commentary literature. The five case studies in this section point the attention of the reader to individual interpretative problems of Jewish Scriptures that are addressed in various Dead Sea Scrolls. The first four case studies focus on various issues regarding the interpretation of the Pentateuch. James Kugel (“Jubilees, Philo and the Problem of Genesis”) observes a disconnect between the Book of Genesis and the legal passages of the Torah. If the Torah is a regula vitae by which people steer their course in life why did it start with a narration of the creation of the world and the development of humankind? Kugel finds two different answers given to this question by Philo of Alexandria and Jubilees on the one hand and by a later redaction of Jubilees on

© 2012, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525535554 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647535555

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the other hand. The original author of Jubilees rewrote the text of Genesis to show that Israel was God’s people independently of the Sinai covenant, as the patriarchs initiated on their own some of the things that would later become God’s laws in the Torah. Genesis demonstrates thus the eternity of God’s alliance with His people. Philo of Alexandria either directly or indirectly through other Alexandrian Jews learned about Jubilees’ concept from Judeans visiting Alexandria. Philo also claims that the patriarchs’ actions prefigured the laws given on Mt. Sinai. This is possible because for Philo the laws of Moses are copies of the laws of nature. Therefore Abraham was able to observe the laws of the Sinai covenant even before they were written. Different from the original text of Jubilees and from Philo, the Jubilees’ interpolator turned the original message of Jubilees into a concept of divine law that existed from time immemorial in form of the heavenly tablets. The Torah had always been there, and Israel’s ancestors had known and observed a good part of it long before Sinai. Sarah Pearce (“Philo and the Temple Scroll on the Prohibition of Single Testimony”) engages with Philo as well. She studies his interpretation of the prohibition of single testimony in comparison with its interpretation in the Temple Scroll. That both Philo and the Temple Scroll associate the prohibition of single testimony with other laws dealing with false utterances and false testimony does not point to Philo’s knowledge of the Temple Scroll but shows that he draws on similar interpretative traditions. Lawrence H. Schiffman (“Modification of Biblical Law in the Temple Scroll”) continues the study of the Temple Scroll’s reading of the Torah on a macro level. The Temple Scroll attests to an overarching interpretation of large parts of Pentateuchal law, which argues for a thoroughgoing reformation of the Temple, polity and much of the way of life of Judeans in the Hasmonean period. The result is a highly modified Torah-like text in which major changes were introduced into biblical legal principles and prescriptions. These modifications can be classified under the rubrics of modification of place, time, persons and the political order. Michael Segal (“Rewriting the Story of Dinah and Shechem: The Literary Development of Jubilees 30”) directs our attention back to the Book of Jubilees. He finds a reworking in Jubilees 30 that is part of a larger redaction of the Book of Jubilees. The redaction added a chronological framework and legal passages to the book. In Jubilees 30, contradictions regarding Dinah’s age as well as the different roles played by Jacob in the rewritten narrative and in the legal passages of this chapter confirm Segal’s approach. Segal’s work points to the possibility that even rewritings of Jewish Scriptures were rewritten in turn. Hanne von Weissenberg (“The Twelve Minor Prophets at Qumran and the Canonical Process: Amos as a ‘Case Study’”) provides a glimpse into the interpretative history of the prophetic books by using the Book of Amos

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Introduction

as a case study to demonstrate some ways in which authoritative source texts were used. In eschatological contexts, references to the Book of Amos are central for the messianic interpretations of the Damascus Document and of 4QFlorilegium. Similarly, the oracle of Amos 8:11 is used in the Apocryphon of Jeremiah C in a description of impending doom awaiting the wrongdoers and corrupt priests. On the textual level, the authoritative status of texts did not stop scribes from modifying their source texts according to their interpretative needs. In the Damascus Document (CD A 7:14–15), for instance, the “original” meaning of Amos 5:27 is turned virtually upside down. The fourth part of our proceedings directs the attention of the reader to yet another important aspect of the overall question of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hebrew Bible. A large number of the texts attested in the nonbiblical Dead Sea Scrolls were composed in the late Second Temple period. That means they were written at a time when the canon of the Hebrew Bible evolved and the Masoretic Text began to become its dominant text. These Dead Sea Scrolls thus provide key information about the social structure, life and law of Judaism in a time that was of great importance for the development of the Hebrew Bible. The first two contributions inquire into the sociology of late Second Temple Judaism. Jutta Jokiranta (“Sociology of Jewish Life in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Seeking Steps Forward”) studies three aspects of Qumran sectarianism: 1) the enterprise of having open-ended sobriquets in pesharim and other texts, 2) sectarian tensions as elements of antagonism, difference and separation, and 3) the fact that even in self-chosen isolation, membership in the Qumran movement produced virtuoso types of personalities that produced the culture that later would receive the admiration of other learned intellectuals. Paul Heger (“Did Enochians Exist? Answer to Boccaccini”) engages with the question of the so-called Enochic Judaism which is prominently described by Gabrielle Boccaccini as an eschatological movement in Second Temple Judaism. Heger argues against the existence of an Enochic Judaism that marginalized the Torah. The author and readers of Jubilees and the Qumran writings as the closest contemporaries of the texts collected in 1 Enoch perceived these texts as hortatory works complementing the Torah. The next two studies by Hanna Tervanotko and Cecilia Wassen ask about the role of women in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Hanna Tervanotko (“‘You Shall See’: Rebecca’s Farewell Address in 4Q364 3 ii 1-6”) approaches this topic by means of an analysis of Rebecca’s farewell address in 4Q364. She argues that 4Q364 3 ii 1-6 attests to a variation of Jacob’s departure in Gen 28:1-5. In the 4Q364 version, Rebecca gives a farewell speech to the departing Jacob. That such a farewell address is attributed to a woman in Second Temple Jewish literature is exceptio-nal. 4Q364 3 ii 1-6 shows therefore that Jewish women had a more active role in the Second Temple

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period than previously thought. This more active role of women is nuanced though by the study of Cecilia Wassen (“Marriage Laws in the Dead Sea Scrolls in Relation to the Broader Jewish Society”). She shows that the marital laws of the Damascus Document reflect the view of female sexuality of Jewish society as a whole. According to this view, which is reflected in the prohibition against a man marrying any woman who had sexual experience outside of marriage, a woman’s sexuality should be closely guarded as the property of a man. But that D also gives evidence of the validity of women’s testimony shows that women were considered reliable witnesses in Jewish society. The condemnation of polygyny and uncleniece marriages in the admonition of D points to the popularity of these particular marital unions in the late Second Temple Jewish society. The last two studies of our proceedings engage with the question of law. Lutz Doering (“Jewish Law in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Some Issues for Consideration”) surveys issues pertaining to Jewish law in the Dead Sea Scrolls. He identifies four main areas of research: the relation of the Halakhah in the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Hebrew Bible, the relation of law to its practice and to its rhetoric, the various halakhic appraoches of the period and the questions of how concomitant halakhic differences developed. Alexander Samely (“Some Observations on the Literary Constitution of Legal and Ethical Discourse in Rabbinic and Qumran Texts”) approaches the topic of law from a literary perspective in comparing the literary structures of both the Temple Scroll and MMT with the literary structures of Rabbinic literature. For the Temple Scroll, Samely finds only dissimilarities with Rabbinic literature in literary structure. Unlike Rabbinic literature, the Temple Scroll constitutes itself in the perspective of God speaking and promulgating law. It employs neither the conditional norm as the single most important way to thematically describe the world nor the dispute between different authorities. Unlike the Temple Scroll, MMT exhibits both similarities and dissimilarities to the literary structures of Rabbinic literature: While most of MMT’s thematic units do not exhibit the grammar of explicit conditionals, many of them constitute effectively legal case schemata. MMT regularly uses a sentence structure that promotes the normative theme of the sentence to an initial, anticipating position. This format occurs occasionally also in rabbinic texts. MMT does not know a close thematic interdependency between adjacent case schemata as occasionally found in Rabbinic texts. Rabbinic texts using a first person perspective as framework are extremely rare. Unlike MMT, Rabbinic texts do not have headings and take no cognizance of their own existence as texts. Again unlike MMT, Rabbinic texts know no equivalent to the often quoted “you” in MMT. Jerusalem/St. Andrews/Vienna, August 2011

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The editors

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Part 1:

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Textual History of the Hebrew Bible

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Russell Fuller University of San Diego

Some Thoughts on How the Dead Sea Scrolls Have Changed Our Understanding of the Text of the Hebrew Bible and Its History and the Practice of Textual Criticism We have to think in terms of both the so-called “biblical scrolls” as well as the non-biblical compositions among the Dead Sea Scrolls when considering the importance of this collection of ancient manuscripts for the study of the text of the Hebrew Bible and its history. The relevance and importance of the biblical scrolls is obvious. The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest biblical manuscripts in Hebrew dating from ca. 275 B.C.E. to 135 C.E. There are approximately two hundred and thirty biblical scrolls. They provide thousands of variant readings, which must be evaluated by the textual critic, they are unavoidably important because of their language and antiquity. If we expand our view beyond the Qumran manuscripts, then there are also additional biblical manuscripts from later time periods which are of great importance for the study of the history of the text of the Hebrew Bible and its transmission. For example, the biblical materials from Masada, the Wadi Murabba'at, and the Naতal ণever to name a few. Most of the Masada biblical scrolls seem to be slightly later than the Qumran biblical scrolls and to reflect the so-called proto-Masoretic text type. The materials from Murabba'at come from the period of the Bar Kochba revolt (ca. 132–135 C.E.) and include the important scroll of the Twelve Minor Prophets which, like the Masada biblical scrolls, reflects a proto-Masoretic text type. In addition there is the important Greek scroll of the Twelve Minor Prophets from the Naতal ণever. This manuscript is evidence of the revision of the older Greek translation of the Twelve based on a Hebrew text close to, but not identical to the consonantal Masoretic Text. These later biblical manuscripts from the Judean Desert are also exceedingly important in the study of the history of the text of the Hebrew Bible and the developing dominance of what eventually becomes the Masoretic Text.1 ————— 1

See Emanuel Tov, “The Text of the Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek Bible Used in the Ancient Synagogues,” in The Ancient Synagogue From Its Origins until 200 CE (ed. Birger Olsson and Magnus Zetterholm; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2003), 237–259.

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Some of the biblical scrolls provide access to Hebrew forms of the biblical text close to or identical to the Hebrew Vorlage of the Septuagint and some are antecedent to the Samaritan Pentateuch. Many of the biblical scrolls are ancestral to the medieval Masoretic Text. The biblical scrolls provide evidence of the literary development, successive literary editions, of some biblical compositions. They therefore provide evidence, which allows for the reconstruction of the history of the biblical text of at least some compositions. The non-biblical scrolls are also frequently of importance for textual criticism as well. They enhance our knowledge and understanding of scribal practices, Hebrew and Aramaic paleography, Jewish beliefs and practices during the Second Temple period. A large number of the non-biblical scrolls are centered on scripture. Many of the non-biblical compositions are so imbued with scriptural language and ideas that they are evidence of the centrality of scripture in the thought of this Jewish sect. There are pesharim and commentaries, which cite the text of biblical compositions. There are rules, which cite scripture and other authoritative works. Because of their manifold focus on scripture, we are able to glean hundreds of biblical citations from the non-biblical compositions. These citations are even more useful for the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible than are the citations in early church fathers or in rabbinic literature. They are in Hebrew and they are ancient. The citations reveal a similar fluidity to the form of the biblical text to that which is revealed by the biblical scrolls. Although the biblical citations are used in the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible there is currently no standard set of criteria for identifying and utilizing the citations. This is an area in which discussion is needed. So, both for the citations of biblical books and for the evidence of the centrality of scripture for the sect, the non-biblical scrolls are also of relevance for the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible and for understanding the history of the biblical text.2 Both the biblical and the non-biblical scrolls provide a wealth of information on scribal practices and for the study of Hebrew paleography. We are light years beyond where we were before the discovery of the scrolls in both of these areas. It is not unreasonable to be able to date most Hebrew manuscripts to within plus or minus fifty years of their date of copying. ————— 2

See the following works on the identification of allusions and citations. Esther Chazon, Reworking the Bible, Apocryphal and Related Texts at Qumran (Leiden: Brill, 2005); Devorah Dimant, “Use and Interpretation of Mikra in the Apokrypha and Pseudepigrapha,” in Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (ed. Martin Jan Mulder and Harry Sysling; CRINT1; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1990), 379–419. Especially pages 385 and 401 n. 84. Julie A. Hughes, Scriptural Allusions and Exegesis in the Hodayot (STDJ 59; Leiden: Brill, 2006); Jeffery M. Leonard, “Identifying InnerBiblical Allusions: Psalm 78 as a Test Case.” JBL 127/2 (2008): 241–65.

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The Dead Sea Scrolls provide linguistic data, which have expanded our knowledge of the Hebrew language of the Second Temple period. The discovery and study of the Dead Sea Scrolls have enriched the ancient biblical materials available to the editors of critical editions of the Hebrew Bible. There are two critical edition projects of long standing, Biblia Hebraica and the Hebrew University Bible. Both of these are diplomatic editions based on the St. Petersburg Codex and the Aleppo Codex (where extant) respectively. Both make judicious use of readings from the biblical Dead Sea Scrolls, according to their understanding of their relevance and importance. The HUB also makes limited use of biblical citations from non-biblical compositions from the Judean Desert (and rabbinic literature), although without defining criteria for the identification of citations. Recently, a new critical edition project has begun the goal of which is to produce an eclectic critical edition of the text of the Hebrew Bible. The Oxford Hebrew Bible project, led by Ronald Hendel, is motivated primarily by the recently completed publication of the biblical manuscripts from the Judean Desert. It intends to make maximum appropriate use of the Judean Desert manuscripts in the textual criticism and reconstruction of the text of the Hebrew Bible. This project is also explicitly historical in nature. The editors will reconstruct earlier literary editions of biblical compositions where warranted. Two other important projects should also be mentioned. The first, the Biblia Qumranica project, led by Armin Lange, is an ambitious project to produce a synoptic edition of the biblical materials from the Judean desert along side the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text.3 The Biblia Qumranica could be thought of as a sort of “new Hexapla” in that it adopts the synoptic format to present the extant textual witnesses in parallel columns. The only volume currently available from this project is the Minor Prophets volume. In that edition, not only are the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text presented, but also the other extant textual witnesses in Hebrew and Greek. These include the Greek Minor Prophets scroll from the Naতal ণever as well as the Qumran biblical manuscripts, the Minor Prophets scroll from Murabba'at, and a selection of pesharim, which contain citations from the Twelve. Since the Biblia Qumranica has adopted the synoptic format, it is probably the most user-friendly of textual tools for the textual critic or biblical scholar. Another convenient tool of interest to scholars is The Biblical Qumran Scrolls: Transcriptions and Variants recently published by Eugene Ulrich.4 This is a single volume edition of all the biblical ————— 3

Biblia Qumranica, vol. 3b: Minor Prophets (ed. Beate Ego, Armin Lange, Hermann Lichtenberger, and Kristin De Troyer; Leiden: Brill, 2005). 4 The Biblical Qumran Scrolls: Transcriptions and Variants (ed. Eugene Ulrich; VTSup 134; Leiden: Brill, 2010).

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manuscripts published in the Discoveries in the Judean Desert series along with a listing of textual variants. The transcriptions are presented in biblical order for ease of consultation. This is a more affordable resource than either the Discoveries in the Judean Desert volumes or the Hebrew University Bible volumes that affords convenient access to the Qumran biblical manuscripts in a sort of critical edition. The field of textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible has changed dramatically since the discovery and publication of the biblical Dead Sea Scrolls. It is sometimes difficult for specialists to keep up with all the developments in the study of this large collection of material. What does the field of textual criticism look like to a non-specialist? How does the conscientious, well trained scholar of the Hebrew Bible approach textual criticism now, when the publication and study of the biblical Dead Sea Scrolls has changed the field so much?

1. Complexity I will begin with textual criticism. Things are much more complicated than they used to be. We have approximately 230 biblical manuscripts from the Judean Desert, which provide at least partial witness to the text of every book in the Hebrew Bible with the well-known exception of Esther. These manuscripts are the earliest witnesses to the Hebrew text of biblical books. Because of their age and language, they are unavoidably important and they can be very difficult to work with. With a few well-known exceptions, like 1QIsaiaha, the majority of the scrolls are very fragmentary. This can make understanding their relationships to other textual witnesses difficult to parse and make it difficult to reconstruct readings. Scribal hands are not always easy to decipher. There are very many different scribal hands. Many letters are easily confused such as yod/waw, dalet/resh, mem/bet/kaf. Even experts can disagree on the reading of these texts, so what is the biblical scholar without expertise in working with the scrolls to do?

2. Variants There is no shortage of variants. It is not always a simple task to decide the relative importance of the readings gleaned from the biblical scrolls. Not all variants are of equal importance for the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible. For example, for many biblical scholars orthographic variants are of

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little consequence. In the production of critical editions orthography is one of the “accidentals” of the text. Spelling practices varied over time and so these differences are unimportant. Substantive readings are of importance in textual criticism. However, for other scholars the orthography of a scroll may point to its provenance and be indicative of textual affiliation.5 The relationships among textual witnesses are complex. We have forever left behind the days prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls when one only had to worry about a few major witnesses to the text: the MT, the LXX, the SP, the Nash Papyrus. Now we have over two hundred biblical manuscripts and in addition a great many biblical citations from nonbiblical compositions, most of which are in Hebrew. We are striving to move beyond the concepts and terminology that were influenced by or grew out of the pre-Qumran era. This is a work in progress. There is a tendency toward two models, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Some scholars see the Masoretic Text as the end result of a chain of tradition, which may be traced back to manuscripts, which were copied by “conservative” scribes during the Second Temple period. That is to say, these “protoMasoretic” manuscripts were carefully copied to high standards. Some scholars suggest that these manuscripts were the product of the scribes of the Jerusalem temple and that they are evidence of official copies of manuscripts, which are directly ancestral to the Masoretic Text. Other scholars emphasize the fluid state of the text of biblical compositions in the Second temple period. There is evidence of successive literary editions of some biblical books, most famously Jeremiah. The texts ancestral to the Masoretic text, according to this view, were not in a privileged or central position vis a vis other copies of the biblical text.There was no official text, even in the Jerusalem temple.6 Clearly, for the non-specialist, the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible and the history of the biblical text and the development of the canon have become very complex areas of study. I suspect that some biblical scholars shy away from these areas of study because of this complexity. The large amount of data, that is, the great number of biblical manuscripts available, the technical difficulties in the study of these areas, and the diversity of expert understandings of the important issues in the field, tends to make the non-specialist long for simpler days and perhaps to avoid textual criticism as much as possible. ————— 5

See for example the data presented in support of Tov's theory of scrolls written in the Qumran Practice in, Emanuel Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert (STDJ 54; Leiden: Brill, 2004). 6 See conveniently Eugene Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible (Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999).

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As our knowledge and understanding increase, the complexity of the field also increases. This is as unavoidable as the second law of thermodynamics. I think that, as specialists, we need to do our best to make the field as accessible to non-specialists as possible. Perhaps our field is at a point where we need a standard introduction to the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and their use in the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, which is aimed at the scholar of the Hebrew Bible who is not a specialist in the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

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Arie van der Kooij Leiden University

Preservation and Promulgation The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Textual History of the Hebrew Bible

1. In her contribution dealing with theories in the field of textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible,1 White Crawford distinguishes between two scribal traditions, “the conservative scribal tradition,” and “the revisionist scribal tradition”. She does so in line with Ulrich and Tov. According to the former, “Second Temple scribes worked along two lines simultaneously. One line copied the text in front of them exactly, while the other, more creative line reworked the text for the purpose of exegesis”. Tov too speaks of two basic approaches in the Second Temple period, one “free” and one “conservative”. I agree with this picture, which is of course a rough one, but which nevertheless seems to do justice to the textual data. Instead of using the term “revisionist” I would prefer, however, the more neutral and general term “free,” allowing for a wide range of types of copies, from a careful way up to a creative one by e.g. revising and reworking a given source. The assumption of these two approaches evokes two related issues which are part of the current scholarly debate: (A) Which texts found at Qumran and elsewhere do we consider reflecting the conservative approach of copying? (B) What does the assumption of a conservative approach of copying mean to the theory of multiformity and fluidity of texts? As to A, scholars (Tov and others) subscribe to the view that the texts of the conservative type belonged to the protoMT tradition, but White Crawford is criticizing this idea because, she argues, the two terms – “conservative” and “revisionist” – “allow us to discard any reference to M, S, and G.” However, if the conservative type of text should not be linked with the protoMT text tradition, the question arises on which other grounds a given textform might be labeled “conservative.” In her view, since MT texts of Jeremiah and Ezekiel represent longer, expanded editions, “it is not helpful to speak of a proto-Masoretic group or family at the beginning of the pro————— 1 Sidnie White Crawford, “The Contribution of the Non-Aligned Texts to Understanding the Textual History of the Hebrew Bible: A New Proposal,” in this volume (60-69).

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cess of textual transmission”. Hence, in the case of Jeremiah the texts testifying to the primary edition (4QJerb,d; LXX Jeremiah) should fall under the conservative scribal tradition, whereas the witnesses to the expanded version (4QJera,c,e; MT Jeremiah) “come under the revisionist scribal tradition.” The criterium applied here is related to the idea of the primary, not yet expanded edition of a given book, i.e. an edition at the beginning of the transmission history. Things are different, however, if one looks at the data from another perspective, that is to say, by considering the short text of Jeremiah not as an edition standing at the beginning of the transmission history, but rather as part of the literary (redactional) history of the book, representing a stage preceding the transmission history of the book. I will come back to this example. As far as B is concerned, we touch here on the debated issue of how to evaluate the fascinating matter of the diversity or variety of biblical texts in the Second Temple period. It is a well-known theory subscribed by a number of scholars that the textual variety should be regarded as evidence of a fluidity of the biblical text in the sense of a process in which books were still be rewritten; textual uniformity and stabilization then come at a later date (first, second century C.E.).2 Other scholars do not adhere to this view. They are of the opinion that the available evidence strongly suggests that an uniform, or stable textual tradition existed alongside a multiform one in Early Judaism. Their view is based on the observation that the MT is attested by a large number of biblical texts, found in the Dead Sea region (Qumran, Masada), which date to the period before 70 C.E.3 It seems to me that this second theory does more justice to the data than the first one because it sheds light on the assumption of a conservative line of copying. For example, the fact that the protoMT tradition of Jeremiah is attested as early as the end of the third century B.C.E. (4QJera) indicates that there must have been a scribal milieu in which texts of Scripture were transmitted, in the Hellenistic period, in an accurate manner. In this contribution I want to focus on the question which scribal milieu might have been responsible for this way of transmitting the text of Scripture. Scholars such as Lieberman and Tov have advanced the view that temple circles played a major role in the preservation and transmission of the

————— 2

See e.g. Eugene Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible (Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999). 3 See e.g. Adam S. van der Woude, “Pluriformity and Uniformity: Reflections on the Transmission of the Text of the Old Testament,” in Sacred History and Sacred Texts in Early Judaism: A Symposium in Honour of Adam S. van der Woude (ed. Jan N. Bremmer and Florentino García Martínez; CBET 5; Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1992), 151–69.

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protoMT tradition.4 I share this view, and in the following I want to contribute to this theory by dealing with three aspects: (a) The Scriptures kept in the temple; (b) Who were in charge of the Scriptures in the temple? (c) The preservation of the Scriptures in the temple. Furthermore, if the protoMT text goes back to the text preserved in the temple (temple text), the question then arises how to evaluate copies of the ancient books which do not agree with the protoMT tradition. Since it is not possible to discuss this complex issue in detail within the constraints of this paper, I therefore will limit myself to a few general remarks and suggestions.

2. 2.1 The Scriptures Kept in the Temple As has been pointed out by scholars a number of sources clearly indicate that scrolls/books making up the Scriptures were kept in the temple of Jerusalem. Rabbinic sources, though of a relatively late date, provide some interesting data that may reflect evidence going back to the period in which the temple was still there. They pertain to traditions about the Three Scrolls of the Law that were found in the temple court, about a special college of book correctors of the temple, as well as to a tradition which says that the scroll of the king (cf. Deut 17) was corrected under the supervision of the High Court.5 Another interesting tradition has it that Moses “wrote thirteen Scrolls, twelve for the twelve tribes and one which he deposited in the ark.”6 Evidence of an earlier date can be found in the writings of Josephus. At some instances, he tells his readers about ancient writings, books belonging to the Scriptures, that were “deposited” in the temple; see Ant. 3.38; 5.61; 6.66; 10.58. According to J.W. 7.150 “a copy of the Jewish Law” was car————— 4

Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York: Philipp Feldheim, 1950), 22–23; Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (2d rev. ed.; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 28, 191. See also Ian Young, “The Stabilization of the Biblical Text in the Light of Qumran and Masada: A Challenge for Conventional Qumran Chronology,” DSD 9 (2002): 364–90 (369, 383), and Alexander Achilles Fischer, Der Text des Alten Testaments. Neubearbeitung der Einleitung in die Biblia Hebraica von Ernst Würthwein (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2009), 23. 5 See Lieberman, Hellenism, 22; Tov, Textual Criticism, 22, 25. 6 Lieberman, Hellenism, 86.

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ried as “last of all the spoils” from the temple, in the triumphal procession that took place in Rome, in June 71.7 Another passage of interest is 2 Macc 2:13–14, dating to the last decades of the second century B.C.E.: These facts are set out in the official records and in the memoirs of Nehemiah, and further (it is found in them) that Nehemiah collected the books about the kings and about the prophets, those of David, and royal letters about sacred offerings, to found the library. In the same way Judas also has collected all the books that had been scattered as a result of the recent war, and they are in our possession.

Although not explicitly stated the “library” mentioned here is to be understood as referring to a kind of archive in the temple, since the main topic in the immediate context concerns the restoration of the cult.8 Furthermore, the Letter of Aristeas, also dating to the second century B.C.E., tells its readers that the scrolls containing the (five) books of the Law were sent to Alexandria by the high priest of Jerusalem, implying that these scrolls were preserved in the temple (see par. 46, 176–179). Finally, there is also evidence from the writings found in the Dead Sea area because CD A 7:14–18 interprets the text of Amos 5:26–27 by saying that God will remove “the books of the Law and of the Prophets from My tent”, i.e. from the temple, “to Damascus.”

2.2 Who Were in Charge of the Scriptures in the Temple? The next question is, Who were in charge of the Scriptures kept in the temple? Seen from a rabbinic perspective one might think of the Sopherim as the leading authorities because in sources, such as the Mishnah, the ones who had the position to interpret the Scriptures in the early days, i.e., the pre-Tannaitic period, are called “the Sopherim,” the Scribes.9 This is the more interesting since in rabbinic sources this title is also used for those who are supposed to have “corrected” the text of the Scriptures (tiqqune ————— 7

See also Martin Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem. The Clash of Ancient Civilizations (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 453. 8 See Arie van der Kooij, “The Canonization of Ancient Books Kept in the Temple of Jerusalem,” in Canonization and Decanonization. Papers presented to the International Conference of the Leiden Institute for the Study of Religions (LISOR) held at Leiden 9–10 January 1997 (ed. Arie van der Kooij and Karel van der Toorn; SHR 82; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 24–26. 9 See Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C. – A.D. 135) (rev. and ed. Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar and Matthew Black; 5 vols.; Edinburgh: Clark, 1979), 2:325; Eckhard J. Schnabel, Law and Wisdom from Ben Sira to Paul (WUNT 216; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1985), 68; Emanuel Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts found in the Judean Desert (STDJ 54; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 11.

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sopherim). The term sopher if applied in these sources to scribes of earlier times, was used to designate leading scholars, beginning with Ezra, whereas the leading scholars of the Tannaitic period are referred to as “sages.”10 However, although this tradition about the early sopherim clearly conveys the notion of scholars of great authority as far as the Scriptures are concerned, it does not help us to answer the question of who were the officials in the temple that were in charge of the “ancestral” books.11 In view of the hierarchy of positions in the temple, it stands to reason to think of the highest authorities, that is to say, the “chief priests,” as the officials in charge. They were the ones who were charged, among other things, with the preservation of the treasures in the temple which also concerned books that had been deposited there.12 These leading priests, designated archiereis both in the New Testament and by Josephus, were the ones who constituted the highest rank of the priests officiating in the temple.13 To quote Jeremias, the “chief priests permanently employed at the Temple formed a definite body who had jurisdiction over the priesthood and whose members had seats and votes on the council” (180). A writing from Qumran, 1QM, contains a passage which is illuminating in this regard. 1QM II:1–3 provides the following details regarding the priestly hierarchy of the temple: • the chiefs of the priests behind the High Priest and of his second, twelve priests to serve continually before God; • the twenty-six chiefs of the divisions; • the chiefs of the Levites to serve continually, twelve; • the chiefs of their divisions. The “chiefs of the priests,” representing together with the High Priest and his deputy the highest rank, are to be equated with the “chief priests” in the sources mentioned above. They were serving permanently in the temple, and this being so, it makes perfect sense to assume that they were the ones who were in charge of the Scriptures in the temple. The idea that priests were the keepers of books kept in the temple, is also attested in passages in the Hebrew Bible itself. Passages like Deut 31:26 (“Take this book of the law, and put it by the side of the ark”) and 2 Kings ————— 10

Notably, in a few instances the sages are said to be responsible for the text of Scriptures; so e.g. in the tradition about the changes made in the Septuagint by the ‘sages’ for king Ptolemy (on this tradition, see Giuseppe Veltri, Eine Tora für den Konig Talmai. Untersuchungen zum Übersetzungsverständnis in der judisch-hellenistischen und rabbinischen Literatur [TSAJ 41; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994], 76–88). 11 Cf. the Prologue to the Wisdom of Ben Sira where the books of Scripture are designated as “ancestral,” conveying the notion of authority. 12 For ‘archives’ as being part of the Treasury, see Ezra 6:1, and 1 Esdras 6:22. 13 See Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus. An Investigation into Economic and Social Conditions during the New Testament Period (London: SCM Press, 1976), 147–80.

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22:8 (“I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord”) testify to the practice that books considered important were deposited in the temple. According to Deut 17:18 “the king shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, from that which is in charge of the Levitical priests” (RSV), which implies that priests were responsible for the copy kept in the temple. As argued above, the priests who were in charge were not ordinary ones, but leading ones. In his rewriting of Deut 31:9 Josephus says that Moses gave “this book” (Deut) and other books containing the laws to “the priests” (Ant. 4.304). As to the question which priests he might have had in mind, a passage in his Ag. Ap. (1.29) is of interest: The keeping of the records – a task which they assigned to their chief priests and prophets – and that down to our own times these records have been … preserved with scrupulous accuracy.

This statement is part of a section in which the trustworthiness of historiography is the issue at stake. In this connexion, Josephus among other things points to the care taken by Egyptians and Babylonians for their chronicles, “records” from the remotest ages, and informs his readers that the ones who did so were priests in Egypt, and the Chaldeans in Babylonia. As is clear from the statement just quoted, Josephus claims that the “records” of his own nation were preserved with the utmost care and accuracy, underlining in this way the trustworthiness of these documents. It has been suggested that Josephus is referring here to two different kinds of record, the priestly genealogies, and the Scriptures.14 However, the term used here, anagrafe, strongly suggests that the passage is about the Scriptures only. This is not only in line with the way the books of the Egyptians and Babylonians are designated, but also with the way Josephus speaks about the Scriptures in 1.38, “our books contain the record of all time.” As is well known, the Jewish Scriptures are described and presented by him in 1.39–40 as mainly consisting of historiographical writings: the five books of Moses are said to comprise “the laws and the traditional history from the birth of man down to the death of the lawgiver,” whereas the thirteen books of the Prophets are considered to contain “the history of the events of their own times,” having been written by “the prophets subsequent to Moses.” Only four books are said to represent a different kind of literature (containing hymns, presumably the book of Psalms, and precepts for the conduct of human life, presumably a reference to Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes). In the passage quoted above, Josephus states that the keeping of the records was a task assigned to “their chief priests and prophets,” but he also ————— 14

So John M.G. Barclay, Against Apion. Translation and Commentary (Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary 10; ed. Steve Mason; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 24.

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notes that these records have been preserved with great accuracy. This raises the question, who was in charge of what? In the light of 1.39, it seems reasonable to assume that the prophets were the ones who wrote the records, whereas then the chief priests were bestowed with the preservation of the books, just as in Egypt (1.28). There is an interesting piece of evidence that supports our assumption regarding the role of these leading priests; it is a passage to be found in the Targum to the Prophets, Tg Zech 11:13: And the Lord said to me, ‘Write a record of their deeds on a writing tablet and cast it into the Sanctuary, into the care of a temple-officer’.

The prophet, Zechariah, is commissioned here to write a particular record, and to deposit it into the temple, into the care of “a temple officer.” The word used here, amarkal, refers to a temple official responsible for the treasuries. The plural amarkelin in the Targum to the Prophets is best understood as referring to the body of “the chief priests” as we know them from other sources. According to Tg Jer 1:1, the prophet Jeremiah is said to be one of “the heads of the service of the priests”, who are also called in the same text, “the temple officers who were in Jerusalem”. This is a clear instance where the leading priests are equated with the temple officers.15 All in all, it is likely to assume that the highest authorities, i.e. the chief priests, were in charge of the ancient books deposited and kept in the temple.16

2.3 The Preservation of the Scriptures in the Temple The available sources indicate that the scrolls kept in the temple were deemed not only to posses great authority but also to represent texts that had been preserved, by the appropriate authorities, with the greatest care. This is the view of Josephus, as noted above on the basis of his statement in Ag. Ap. 1.29. At another place in the same work (1.42) speaking about the reverence for the Scriptures he claims that although such long ages now passed, no one has ventured either to add, or to remove, or to alter a syllable.

————— 15

On this issue, see Arie van der Kooij, Die alten Textzeugen des Jesajabuches. Ein Beitrag zur Textgeschichte des Alten Testaments (OBO 35; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1981), 197–200, and idem, “Josephus, Onkelos and Jonathan. On the Agreements between Josephus’ Works and Targumic Sources” (forthcoming). 16 Interestingly, there are a few passages in the Mishnah which are in line with this thesis. See Arie van der Kooij, “The Public Reading of Scriptures at Feasts,” in Feasts and Festivals (ed. Christopher Tuckett; CBET 53; Leuven: Peeters, 2009), 27–44, esp. 30.

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Although one is inclined to dismiss this claim in the light of all the evidence now available since the discoveries of the biblical texts from the Dead Sea region,17 it may be asked whether this criticism does justice to the comment made by Josephus. The reason why he underscores the notion of an accurate transmission has to do with his apology of the Jewish Scriptures as being trustworthy from the point of historiography.18 This could imply that his claim simply was made pour besoin de la cause, the more so since it does seem unlikely in the light of the Qumran evidence just mentioned. However, read in the light of the other passage (Ag. Ap. 1.29) the statement in Ag. Ap. 1.42 should not be understood as referring to all kind of copies made of the Scriptures, such as those found in the Caves, but rather to the Scriptures that were kept and preserved in the temple. Rabbinic sources also testify to the view that the scrolls in the temple were considered as having been preserved with great care. This is clear from the traditions referred to above, such as the tradition about the Three Scrolls found in the temple (see Lieberman, Talmon), and the tradition about a special college of book correctors. The picture of temple scrolls containing Scripture as being the best ones is also attested by earlier sources. The Letter of Aristeas is explicit in this regard since copies of the Law in circulation are deemed not be accurate enough (par. 30). Hence, the High Priest of Jerusalem was asked to send not only the experts of the Law in order to make the translation, but also a copy of the Law from (the temple of) Jerusalem (par. 46). These books of the Law were apparently considered the best ones, as they represent official copies which had been well preserved. This idea is in line with ideas prevalent among scholars in Alexandria who held the view that the so-called “city editions” were regarded the best editions of a given text. The story, accounted by Galen, about the copies of the three tragedians from the city of Athens is illustrative in this respect. It it told that the Ptolemaic king having borrowed from the Athenians “their official copies of the three tragedians – that is, those which formed the basis of public performances – […] had splendid copies on papyrus of the finest quality made by the library staff, and kept the Athenian exemplars.”19 The same idea seems to be typical of the textual history of the work of Homer, ————— 17

So e.g. Armin Lange, ““Nobody dared to add to them, to take from them, or to make changes” (Josephus, Ag.Ap. 1.42): The Textual Standardization of Jewish Scriptures in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Flores Florentino. Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Early Jewish Studies in Honour of Florentino García Martínez (ed. Anthony Hilhorst, Emile Puech, and Eibert Tigchelaar; JSJSup 122; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 105–26, esp. 117. 18 See above. 19 Peter M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (3 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 1:325. The official copies of Athens are designated as “the ancient books” (Fraser, Alexandria, 2:480).

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because it has been argued that the copy kept in the archives of Athens was considered by Alexandrian scholars to be an official and trustworthy text of Homer.20 In the light of all this, there are good reasons to assume that the Scriptures kept and preserved in the temple, –the temple text, or edition (cf. city edition)–, was preserved and transmitted with great care, as Josephus claims. In his view, this was the case from the Persian period onwards down to his own times. This view is difficult to assess, but is plausible as far as the Hellenistic era is concerned because it provides an explanation of the fact that the protoMT tradition is attested as early as the late third century B.C.E. (4QJera). It also confirms the view, held by Tov and other scholars, that the MT tradition goes back to the text that was kept in the temple. It therefore is likely that the temple text was regarded the official text, just as in the case of the Athenian copy of the Three Tragedians. Or to put it this way, the chief priests did just their job by preserving the books deposited in the temple, and by transmitting them accurately. Hence, I agree with the following statement of Tov: … the masoretic family, which probably was the only acceptable text in Temple circles. In a way this text should be considered an official text, and this assumption would explain the great number of copies of it found at Qumran, and that it was the only text found at Masada, Naতal ণever, and Wadi Murabba’at.21

3. All in all, it is my thesis that the MT goes back to an official text kept in the temple and preserved with great care by the appropriate temple officials, the chief priests. It implies that the temple text represented a stable textual tradition. This is not meant to say that this text was “fixed,” or was transmitted from the Persian time onwards up to the time of Bar Kosiba, without any change or correction. Early Jewish (rabbinic) tradition contains indications of changes and corrections that had been made (cf. the tiqqune sopherim). It seems likely indeed that the (official) text of Scripture has been ————— 20

See Egert Pöhlmann, Einführung in die Überlieferungsgeschichte und in die Textkritik der antiken Literatur, Bd. I: Altertum (3. Aufl.; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2008), 36–37. As to the “city editions”, see also Fraser, Alexandria, 1:328, and Gregory Nagy, Homer's Text and Language (Traditions; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 20–21. 21 Tov, “Scriptures,” in Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman and James C. VanderKam; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 2:834. See also Fischer, Text, 91: “Wahrscheinlich wurde die protomasoretische Texttradition in Tempel-Kreisen intakt gehalten und von den Pharisäern und Sadduzäern fortgeführt.”

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changed or corrected in a few cases, particularly so in the period after 164 B.C.E., when the Scriptures became more and more significant.22 This of course raises questions as to the view advanced by scholars that a process of stabilization and standardization was taking place, according to some since 164 B.C.E.,23 according to others as of ca 50 B.C.E.,24 or as of 70 C.E.25 This view is based on the assumption held by most scholars that the copies found in the caves of Qumran and elsewhere do reflect in one way or another a period of fluidity and multiformity (cf. the diversity of texts[types]) followed by a period of standardization (cf. the copies found at Masada and Murabba’at). This assumption however is to be questioned, since as far as our manuscript evidence goes the variety of texts does not point to a textual development of a given book. Rather, the variety of copies made, “conservative” ones and “free” ones, can more easily be seen as part of a particular strategy, namely, to promote the reading and understanding of Scripture. Such a strategy fits the Hellenistic culture of the time as this was marked by the production of books and by study and teaching in the setting of a school.26 Since space constraints do not allow me to elaborate on this complex issue I limit myself to the following statements. (1) One should distinguish between two procedures, that of the transmission and preservation of ancient books kept in the temple, on the one hand, and that of the dissemination and promulgation of Scripture by means of (all kinds of) copies, on the other. Being an official text, the temple text was only used as far as we know, for official occasions, such as the public reading at feasts by the high priest.27 (2) Copies, both the “conservative” ones and the “free” ones were made, first of all, for reading and studying purposes.28 An early example of this practice can be found in Deut 17, where it is prescribed that the king should make a copy of the Law (Deut) in order to “read” in it, so that he may “learn” to fear the Lord (v. 19). Copies were required in order to enable priests and scribes to read and study the ancient books (cf. the Prologue to the Wisdom of Ben Sira; see also 1QS VI:7 [“And the many shall watch ————— 22

See Arie van der Kooij, “Ancient Emendations in MT,” in L’Écrit et l’Ésprit. Études d’histoire du texte et de théologie biblique en hommage à Adrian Schenker (ed. Dieter Böhler, Innocent Himbaza, and Philippe Hugo; OBO 214; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2005), 152–59. 23 See Young, “Stabilization”, in line with scholars like Moses H. Segal (“The Promulgation of the Authoritative Text of the Hebrew Bible,” JBL 72 [1953]: 35–48). 24 See Lange, “Standardization.” 25 See Ulrich, Dead Sea Scrolls. 26 See Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 23–25. 27 See van der Kooij, “Public Reading,” 28. For an example in the Hebrew Bible itself, compare 2 Kings 22:3 (public reading of a book found in the temple). 28 This applies in my view also to translations made (into Greek or Aramaic) of the ancient books.

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together for a third of all the nights of the year to read the book and to study the law”]). (3) Copies made for reading and studying purposes were not meant to transmit, or replace the exemplar of the temple. They could reflect the official text in quite a close manner, but in order to enhance the reading and understanding of a given text or book it was also possible to produce copies containing all kinds of modifications, including texts belonging to the category of “rewritten” Scripture.29 Interesting examples are 4QpaleoExodm30 and 4QSama.31 As far as modifications of an exegetical nature are concerned, it is reasonable to assume that they were introduced by the appropriate authorities not only in order to help the reader to understand the text better, but also to promulgate a particular interpretation of the text.32 (4) To come back to the book of Jeremiah: What about the textform of this book (4QJerb; Vorlage LXX) that is quite different from the MT tradition? Seen from the perspective of our thesis, two models do recommend itself, (a) the short text testifies to a stage in the literary history of the book, i.e., a stage preceding the final redaction of it,33 or, alternatively, (b) it represents a rewritten form of the book.34 In the current debate, a third model has been advanced, namely, the idea that the earlier text form which served as Vorlage for the LXX translators, is to be seen as a primary official “edition” which then was followed by a new, revised “edition” (cf. MT), promulgated by the appropriate authorities to be the new (official) text of the book.35 However, in the light of the above, this model does not recommend itself. (5) As has been observed by scholars, since ca. 50 B.C.E. copies were produced that are fully in line with MT (Masada and Murabba’at). In my view, they do not testify to a standardization of the temple text, but rather ————— 29

On this type of literature, see now Sidnie White Crawford, Rewriting Scripture in Second Temple Times (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008). 30 On this text, see White Crawford, Rewriting Scripture, 23–29. 31 As to 4QSama, see Alexander Rofé, “Midrashic Traits in 4Q51 (so-called 4QSama),” in Archaeology of the Books of Samuel. The Entangling of the Textual and Literary History (ed. Philippe Hugo and Adrian Schenker; VTSup 132; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 75–88. 32 This may also apply to translations. 33 Cf. Emanuel Tov, “The Literary History of the Book of Jeremiah in Light of its Textual History,” in idem, The Greek and Hebrew Bible. Collected Essays on the Septuagint (VTSup 72; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 364. See also his Textual Criticism, 314–15. 34 For the idea of a Hebrew Vorlage as rewritten bible, see Emanuel Tov, “3 Kingdoms Compared with Similar Rewritten Compositions,” in Flores Florentino, 345–66. 35 See White Crawford, above, and Adrian Schenker, “Est-ce que le livre de Jérémie fut publié dans une édition refondue au 2e siècle? La multiplicité textuelle peut-elle coexister avec l’édition unique d’un livre biblique?” in Un carrefour dans l’histoire de la Bible. Du texte à la théologie au IIe siècle avant J.-C. (ed. Innocent Himbaza and Adrian Schenker; OBO 233; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 58–74.

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attest a specific practice, namely that copies should be fully in line with the authoritative text in the temple. The reason of this copying strategy is not clear. It may well be that this was due to a particular milieu in Palestine that came to power around 50 B.C.E., namely the Pharisees.36 (6) Finally, at the panel discussion in Rome (2009) I stated that the biblical texts from the Dead Sea region are very interesting indeed, but not that important. The above is meant to clarify this statement.

————— 36

See Josephus, Ant. 13.408–9.

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Emanuel Tov The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Textual History of the Masoretic Bible The scrolls found in various places in the Judean Desert have been hailed as a source of knowledge for the biblical text. Foremost among them are several types of scrolls that were unknown before 1947, especially the so-called proto-Samaritan scrolls, Hebrew scrolls resembling the Septuagint, and scrolls written in unusual forms of orthography. 4QSama provides very important insights into the early text of Samuel, 4QSamb presents an orthography system that is earlier than that of MT,1 and yet other scrolls are “successive revised literary editions.”2 The research of the biblical text in the last centuries B.C.E. has thus been advanced significantly for all these groups of texts. Furthermore, the fact that so many different scrolls of a varied nature have been found in a limited geographic area has been considered indicative of the textual variety of the biblical text in ancient Israel in these early centuries. Within the framework of the contribution of the Judean Desert scrolls to textual criticism, all scrolls are compared with MT, but insufficient attention has been paid to MT itself. The main observation made regarding MT is that early texts resembling MT were found in the Judean Desert, thus providing us with information about that text 1000 years before the date of the Masoretic texts from the early Middle Ages. The fact that we can pre-date the text of MT is very important, but not revolutionary, as scholars have assumed for a long time that MT must have been in use in the last centuries B.C.E. and the first centuries C.E. since the biblical text quoted in rabbinic literature is identical to MT. We suggest there is a need to present the facts about MT in a different fashion. We believe that the facts that are now known about the finds of MT in the Judean Desert are very significant, if not revolutionary. Our know————— 1 Francis I. Andersen and David N. Freedman, “Another Look at 4QSamb,” RevQ 14 (1989): 7–29; Emanuel Tov, “Orthography of the Hebrew Bible,” forthcoming. 2 The term is used by Eugene Ulrich, “Clearer Insight into the Development of the Bible—A Gift of the Scrolls,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls and Contemporary Culture: Proceedings of the International Conference Held at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem (July 6–8, 2008) (ed. Adolfo D. Roitman, Lawrence H. Schiffman, and Shani Tzoref; Leiden: Brill, 2011), 119–37 (128). This group is described similarly in my own studies, albeit less prominently.

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ledge of MT is greatly enhanced by the Judean Desert scrolls because of a special type of information contained in them relating to the distribution of the various texts at the different find sites. It does not suffice to say that some or many texts “merely” confirm the medieval MT, since there is a story behind these texts. The novel aspects relating to these texts from the Judean Desert pertain not only to the new data themselves, but also to a better understanding of the medieval sources that were known prior to the Qumran finds.3

1. Identity of the Judean Desert Texts and the Medieval Tradition of MT First the facts. All the texts that were found at sites in the Judean Desert other than Qumran display complete identity with the medieval tradition of MT.4 The Judean Desert texts are compared with codex L (Leningrad codex B19A), being the best complete representative of the medieval text. This group of twenty-five texts from the Judean Desert includes both the earlier site of Masada (texts written between 50 B.C.E. and 30 C.E.) and the later sites of Wadi Murabba‘at, Wadi Sdeir, Naতal ণever, Naতal Arugot, and Naতal ৡe’elim dating to the period of the Bar-Kochba revolt in 132–135 C.E. (texts written between 20 C.E. and 115 C.E.).5 Fragments of the Torah, Isaiah, and the Minor Prophets were found in Wadi Murabba‘at6 and fragments of Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Psalms were found in Naতal ণever.7 The Masada fragments include texts from Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Ezekiel, and Psalms.8 We also include a text of ————— 3 For my latest summary, see “The Biblical Texts from the Judaean Desert—An Overview and Analysis of the Published Texts,” in my collected writings Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible, and Qumran—Collected Essays (TSAJ 121; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 128–54. 4 The socio-religious differences between the two types of text are best visible when texts from the same period are juxtaposed. All the texts copied from the beginning of the first century C.E. until 65 C.E. from Qumran are of a varied nature, with only very few reflecting MT while the texts from the same period (until 115 C.E.) from Judean Desert sites other than Qumran only reflect MT. 5 For the chronological data, see the lists of Brian Webster in The Texts from the Judaean Desert: Indices and an Introduction to the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Series (ed. Emanuel Tov; DJD 39; Oxford: Clarendon, 2002), 351–446. 6 See Mur 1–3, 88 in Pierre Benoit, Józef T. Milik, and Roland de Vaux, Les grottes de Murabba’at (DJD 2; Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), 75–79, 181–205. 7 James H. Charlesworth et al., Miscellaneous Texts from the Judaean Desert (DJD 38; Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), 133–82. 8 Shemaryahu Talmon and Yigael Yadin, Masada VI, The Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963–1965, Final Reports, Hebrew Fragments from Masada (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1999), 1– 149.

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Genesis from Wadi Sdeir,9 a Leviticus scroll from Naতal Arugot (75–100 a C.E.),10 and fragments of XJudg deriving from an unknown site.11 Good sources for the analysis of the Masada fragments are the somewhat longer texts MasPsa 12 dating to the end of the first century B.C.E. and MasLevb dating to 30 B.C.E.–30 C.E.13 Both texts are identical with the medieval texts. Likewise, the differences between the well-preserved texts 5/6ণevPs dating to 50–68 C.E. and MurXII dating to c. 115 C.E. and the medieval codex L are minimal, as shown in a detailed study by Young.14 Recognizing that few differences exist between codex L and the other medieval sources of MT, we note that these differences are of the same nature as those between codex L and the Judean Desert texts. The relation between codex L and the ancient Judean Desert texts is thus one of identity,15 and we therefore note that the consonantal framework of MT changed very little over the course of more than one thousand years. So far, we have discussed only the Judean Desert texts found at sites other than Qumran. On the other hand, the Qumran scrolls are not identical to codex L. Many Qumran scrolls, copied between 250 B.C.E. and 68 C.E., are very similar to codex L, but not to the same degree as the other Judean Desert texts, and they form a sizable group among the Qumran scrolls. According to our calculations, in the Torah these texts (22 items) comprise 48 percent of the Qumran biblical texts and in the other books (33 items) they comprise 44 percent.16 All the texts display several differences in small details and orthography,17 but they always are close to L, and together with L they differ from other textual witnesses. It is hard to express in statistical terms the exact relation between these proto-Masoretic Qumran texts and MT, but these texts are clearly somewhat removed from MT in small de————— 9

DJD 38, 117–24. Hanan Eshel, Yosi Baruchi, Roi Porat, “Fragments of a Leviticus Scroll (ArugLev) Found in the Judean Desert in 2004,” DSD 13 (2006): 55–60. 11 Esther Eshel, Hanan Eshel, Magen Broshi, “A New Fragment of XJudges,” DSD 14 (2007): 354–58 (with references to the other fragments). 12 This scroll reflects only four orthographical differences and six other deviations from L in small details. 13 The agreement between MasLevb and the medieval text pertains even to the intricacies of orthography, including details in which the orthography ad loc. goes against the conventions elsewhere in the book such as the defective -/'/= in Lev 9:2, 3 (I:11, 13) and the defective hiph‘il form #:9'# in Lev 9:9 (I:21). 14 Ian Young, “The Stabilization of the Biblical Text in the Light of Qumran and Masada: A Challenge for Conventional Qumran Chronology?” DSD 9 (2002): 364–90. 15 There has been some discussion as to which terminology best describes the consonantal framework of MT extant in the last century B.C.E., but the fact of their identity is beyond doubt. 16 See Tov, Textual Criticism (see n. 43), 108. 17 An exception is 4QGenb, which is identical to codex L, but it only contains parts of Gen 1:1– 4:11. 10

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tails. For example, in the fragmentary col. XXI of 1QIsab covering Isa 48:17–49:15, that is 20 verses, one finds 20 differences all of which concern only minutiae: 9 differences in orthography and 11 minor, mainly linguistic, differences. The complete column of 1QIsab would have deviated more from MT and this number is definitely greater than in the case of the Judean Desert scrolls from other sites. In the case of 4QJera, we witness few orthographical deviations from MT, and also a relatively large number of small content differences: the fragmentary text of col. XI (Jer 17:8-26) contains 5 orthographical differences, 2 other differences, and an excessive number of 12 corrections (towards the base text of the scroll = MT) showing a great number of scribal errors and much scribal activity. With the help of Young’s study, the relation between codex L and the different types of Judean Desert scrolls can now be expressed in statistical terms. In this way, it is recognized that the Qumran scrolls differ much more from codex L than the scrolls from the other sites. In Young’s system, the ratio of variation for each text is calculated by dividing the number of preserved words by the number of variants. The lower that number, the greater is the divergence from codex L. For example, in the well-preserved Minor Prophets Scroll from Murabba‘at, there are 222 words between any two variants, while in the Qumran scrolls this number varies between 6 and 42.18 To this identity of the Judean Desert proto-Masoretic texts and the medieval MT we add an important, hitherto unknown feature in the layout of the poetical texts as well as a remark about the sense divisions. While most of the poetry texts in MT are written as running texts, MT presented the books Job, Proverbs, and Psalms, some songs of the Torah, the song of Deborah, and the acrostic in Lamentations as poetry in a stichographic layout. This feature was foreshadowed by the proto-Masoretic texts from Qumran and elsewhere. In these texts, a stichographic layout is evidenced for two poems in the Torah (Exodus 15; Deuteronomy 32), Psalms (especially Psalm 119), Proverbs, Lamentations, and Job, as well as Ben Sira and one non-biblical text, 4QMessianic Apocalypse (4Q521). Most of these poetical texts are also transmitted in prose format in other Judean Desert texts, and it is not easy to discover why some manuscripts present a prose layout, and others a stichographic arrangement. The differences are neither in the dates of the manuscripts nor in their function, for example as liturgical versus non-liturgical sources. The solution lies in the textual character of the texts. The twenty-seven poetical texts from the Judean Desert that do not have a stichographic arrangement are not Masoretic, while the thirty texts that do display such an arrangement are both Masoretic and nonMasoretic, mainly displaying two stichs per line separated by a space. The ————— 18

Young, “Stabilization,” 373.

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proto-Masoretic texts are thus transmitted only in stichographic arrangement and I therefore suggest that the proto-Masoretic scribes developed the stichographic layout. These scribes reflect the same tradition as that of the medieval MT, both positively and negatively; for example, Deuteronomy 32 is transmitted in stichographic layout (1QDeutb MT/SP; 4QpaleoDeutr MT/SP), but chapter 33 is not: 1QDeutb (MT/SP), 4QpaleoDeutr (MT/SP) and MasDeut (MT). Furthermore, as in the medieval MT, Genesis 49 is not presented in stichographic layout: 4QGen-Exoda (MT) and 4QGene (MT/SP). In short, we suggest that the stichographic layout presents another link between the consonantal frameworks of the proto-Masoretic texts and the medieval MT. An analysis of the section divisions, that is, open and closed sections, points in the same direction. Ever since the study by Oesch,19 scholars have compared the section divisions of the Dead Sea Scrolls with the medieval texts. These comparisons highlighted differences between most sources, but at the same time they can also aid us to point to identity between the protoMasoretic texts and the medieval MT. We note an identity between the medieval MT and a group of the Judean Desert texts, namely the protoMasoretic texts. This identity is so striking that in the case of the Minor Prophets Scroll from Murabba‘at Oesch noted: “… the section division of MurXII … does not differ more from the section division of MT than the individual manuscripts differ from one another.”20 Indeed, in this wellpreserved scroll its 55 instances of section division agree with the medieval text regarding the position of the division, and furthermore, in some 90 percent of the instances they display the same type of section division when compared with individual medieval manuscripts.21 In the less sizable, but still extensive Masada scrolls of Leviticus (MasLevb) and Ezekiel (MasEzek), Talmon22 noted the same identity.23

————— 19

Josef M. Oesch, Petucha und Setuma, Untersuchungen zu einer überlieferten Gliederung im hebräischen Text des Alten Testament (OBO 27; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979). 20 Ibid., 288. 21 The differences between the two types of sections, P[etuhah] or S[etumah] in the remaining 20 percent is less relevant, since scribes constantly had to adapt the size of the section division to the different parameters of the manuscripts. 22 Talmon, Masada , 40–50, 59–75. 23 In another category, the indication of K/Q, the medieval texts differed from the Judean Desert texts because the Qere forms were probably added to the text at a later stage. See Emanuel Tov, “The Ketiv-Qere Variations in Light of the Manuscript Finds in the Judean Desert,” in idem, Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible, and Qumran (2008), 199–205.

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2. Background of the Identity between the Texts The identity of the Judean Desert texts other than Qumran with the medieval text of MT is a fact, in my view, while the description of many Qumran texts as being close to MT is a matter of interpretation. It remains subjective to characterize a Qumran text as being close to codex L, but such a characterization is probably correct as long as the number of deviations from L is “small.” Ideally, the text common to codex L and the Qumran text should differ from other ancient witnesses, but this condition cannot always be met. While the Qumran texts cannot be evaluated easily, the character of the Judean Desert texts from other sites is easier to understand. The remarkable fact of their identity with the medieval text of MT has led to some speculation about the background of the Judean Desert texts, especially by myself.24 The key for understanding the background of the different scrolls found in the Judean Desert lies in the correlation between their nature and the socio-religious background of the archeological sites. What the earlier site of Masada (texts written between 50 B.C.E. and 30 C.E.) and the Bar-Kochba sites (texts written between 20 C.E. and 115 C.E.) have in common, in contradistinction to the Qumran scrolls, is that the people who left the scrolls behind at these sites (the Masada rebels and the freedom fighters of Bar Kochba) closely followed the guidance of the Jerusalem spiritual center in religious matters.25 They also exclusively used the “proto-rabbinic” (“protoMasoretic”) text embraced by the spiritual leadership of Jerusalem.26 Some scholars even stress the priestly influence on the leadership of the revolt.27 ————— 24

“The Text of the Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek Bible Used in the Ancient Synagogues,” in The Ancient Synagogue: From Its Origins until 200 C.E.—Papers Presented at an International Conference at Lund University October 14–17, 2001 (ed. Birger Olsson and Magnus Zetterholm; ConBNT 39; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2003), 237–59; Revised version: Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible, and Qumran, 171–88. Hebrew version: “The Biblical Text in Ancient Synagogues in Light of Judean Desert Finds,” Meghillot, Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls I (ed. Moshe Bar-Asher and Devorah Dimant; Heb. with Eng. summary; Haifa: University of Haifa, 2003), 185–201. 25 It is not impossible that both cases involved people who fled from Jerusalem bringing with them Jerusalem scrolls. In Masada these refugees were joined by refugees from Qumran. See Emanuel Tov, “A Qumran Origin for the Masada Non-biblical Texts?” DSD 7 (2000): 57–73. 26 See the characterization by Moshe Greenberg, “The Stabilization of the Text of the Hebrew Bible,” JAOS 76 (1956): 157–67 (165) of the people who left the Murabba‘at texts, basing himself on the scanty evidence available in 1956: “... since the spiritual leaders of this Second Revolt against Rome (132–135) were some of the most eminent Rabbis, there is no question as to the orthodoxy of this group.” 27 See David Goodblatt, “The Title Nasi and the Ideological Background of the Second Revolt,” in The Bar Kokhva Revolt—A New Approach (ed. Aharon Oppenheimer and Uriel Rappaport; Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben Zvi, 1984), 113–32.

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As a further background explanation of the virtual lack of differences between the copies of MT through the ages, I pointed to the precision in the copying of the scrolls described in rabbinic literature.28 Rabbinic sources, deriving from a period later than the Judean Desert evidence, provide descriptions of earlier textual procedures, which were also their own. In these descriptions, we read about a master copy of the Torah found in the Temple Court, and about scrolls copied from or revised according to that copy. The term sefer ha-‘azarah (!:$3! :62, with a variant :$3 :62the book of Ezra)29 probably referred only to the Torah,30 but it stands to reason that (the) other books of Scripture were also found in the temple.31 The little that is known about the scroll from the Temple Court is consonant with the Judean Desert texts (except for those from Qumran). This comparative analysis of the Judean Desert scrolls and rabbinic literature is strengthened by an additional argument: To find identical ancient and medieval textual evidence is not very common; it represents an unusual situation requiring explanation. We therefore turn to the question of how such textual identity was achieved among the Judean Desert scrolls internally, between these scrolls and the temple copies, and between these scrolls and the medieval manuscripts. The logic prevailing today could not have been different from that of ancient times. It seems to us that identity between two or more texts could have been achieved only if all of them were copied from a single source, in this case (a) master copy (copies) located in a central place, which was probably the temple until 70 C.E., and subsequently another central location (Jamnia?). The textual unity described above has to start somewhere and the assumption of master copies is therefore necessary.32 The depositing and preserving of holy books in the temple is parallel to the modern concept of publication as implied by various references in rabbinic literature,33 and can be paralleled by evidence from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome.34 ————— 28

Tov, “Text of the Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek Bible.” See m. Kel. 15.6; m. Moed Qatan 3.4; b. b. Bat. 14b; b. Yoma 69a-b; y. San. 2.20c. This variant, occurring among other places in m. Moed Qatan, is considered the original reading by Roger Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 84, 102. 30 This is evident from the discussion in b. B. Bat. 14b and from the names of the three scrolls found in the Temple Court relating to passages in the Torah (see the next note). 31 Thus, according to m. Yom. 1.6, the elders of the priesthood read to the High Priest on the eve of the Day of Atonement from Job, Ezra, Chronicles, and Daniel. 32 This suggestion was already voiced by Samuel Krauss, Talmudische Archäologie (Leipzig: Gustav Fock, 1912; repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1966), III.171 and Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (2d ed.; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1962), 22. 33 See Tov, Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible, and Qumran, 178, n. 31. 34 See Tov, ibid., n. 32. 29

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We suggested that the internal identity of this group of texts, subsequently perpetuated in the medieval tradition,35 was created because they were copied from or revised according to the master copies in the temple. It also seems that the type of scrolls found in the Judean Desert in sites other than Qumran is referred to in rabbinic literature. In other words, we suggest that the precise proto-Masoretic texts found in the Judean Desert can be identified as some of the “corrected scrolls” mentioned in rabbinic literature. We surmised that a carefully copied biblical text such as those found in the Judean Desert is mentioned in rabbinic literature as a “corrected scroll,” sefer muggah.36 The temple employed professional maggihim, “correctors” or “revisers,” whose task it was to safeguard precision in the copying of the text: “Maggihim of books in Jerusalem received their fees from the temple funds” (b. Ketub. 106a).37 This description implies that the correcting procedure based on the master copy in the temple was financed from the temple resources that thus provided an imprimatur. This was the only way to safeguard the proper distribution of precise copies of Scripture.38 These scrolls must have been used everywhere in Israel,39 for public reading as well as for instruction, public and private.40 All these texts form a first circle of transmission of the proto-Masoretic text. The Qumran texts belonging to the second circle resemble the nature of the “corrected copies” with regard to their closeness to the medieval MT,

————— 35

See Tov, ibid., 179, n. 41. For an initial analysis of the sefer muggah, see Lajos Blau, Studien zum althebräischen Buchwesen und zur biblischen Literatur-und Textgeschichte (Strasbourg i. E.: Adolf Alkalay, 1902), 97– 111; Krauss, Talmudische Archäologie, III.170–71. 37 See Tov, ibid., 179, n. 44. 38 Safrai even suggested that the pilgrims who came to Jerusalem had their biblical texts corrected by the temple scribes: Shemuel Safrai, Pilgrimage at the Time of the Second Temple (Tel Aviv: Am Hassefer, 1965) [Hebrew], 203 = idem, Die Wallfahrt im Zeitalter des Zweiten Tempels (Forschungen zum Jüdisch-Christlichen Dialog 3; Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1981), 262. Safrai’s views are based upon m. Mo‘ed Qatan 3.4 according to Rashi’s interpretation (“on the middle days of the three regalim one is not allowed to correct even one single letter, not even from the scroll in the Temple Court”). 39 Similarly, Shemuel Safrai in Safrai, The Jewish People, 905: “Problems related to the transmission of the text and authenticity of various books of the Bible were examined in the Temple; copyists and correctors sat in the Temple and worked to supply books to those who needed them in the land of Israel and in the Diaspora . There was a bible in the Temple called ‘the book of the court’ on the basis of which books were corrected.” 40 Thus b. Pesa‫ۊ‬. 112a, where one of the five instructions of R. Akiba to his student R. Simeon was: “and when you teach your son, teach him from a corrected scroll.” Another such precise copy was the scroll of the king, which accompanied the king wherever he went. y. San. 2.20c and Sifre Deuteronomy 160 (Ed. Finkelstein [New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1993] 211) tell us that this scroll was corrected “to the copy in the Temple Court in accordance with the court of seventy-one members.” 36

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but they were less precise. Possibly they were copied from the “corrected copies.” It is not impossible that an effort was made to limit the range of differences between early texts. There is some evidence for this assumption in a Talmudic tradition on the limiting of the differences between three specific texts by comparing their readings in each individual instance of disagreement.41 Some scholars suggested that several corrections in the Qumran scrolls evidence such a procedure as well, but I have not been convinced.42

3. Renewed Understanding of MT The evidence from the Judean Desert allows us not only to comprehend the textual situation at the time of the copying of these scrolls, but also to improve our understanding of the development of MT and to postulate a stage before the earliest available manuscript evidence. The different attestations of the consonantal text of MT point to three main stages that reflect a growing measure of internal stabilization and agreement between the members of the group of MT. A different type of manuscript evidence characterizes each stage. The description that follows refers only to the precursors of MT (the proto-Masoretic texts) and MT itself, and must therefore be integrated into the description of the development of the biblical text as a whole. These three stages, recognized on the basis of evidence, were preceded by an additional, hypothetical stage.43 3.1. The assumption of the existence of a stage of MT that preceded that of the manuscript evidence is hypothetical. The origins of MT are unclear, but this text or these texts must have existed before the stage for which we have manuscript evidence. At Qumran we have such evidence for the MTlike texts from 250 B.C.E. onwards. For the pure MT texts—the first circle—we have evidence from 50 B.C.E. onwards from the other Judean Desert sites. We named the Qumran manifestations of MT the second circle. ————— 41

Apparently this was done in order to compose from them one single copy that would reflect the majority readings (the agreement of two sources against the third one). Although such an activity seems to be the implication of the baraita in y. Ta‘an. 4.68a (see also Sof. 6.4), the procedures followed are not sufficiently clear. For an analysis, see Shemaryahu Talmon, “The Three Scrolls of the Law That Were Found in the Temple Court,” Textus 2 (1962): 14–27. In all three instances, the majority reading agrees with MT, so that in principle this baraita could record the creation of MT. 42 For an analysis, see my book Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert (STDJ 54; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 223–25. 43 The description of these periods follows new insights reflected in my Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (3d rev. ed.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012 [forthcoming], 27–34.

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On the basis of its orthography, the present form of MT has been dated by different scholars to the periods between 550 and 350 B.C.E., 400 and 100 B.C.E., and also to the end of the third century or the beginning of the second century B.C.E.44 Some of these dates are early, and precede the stage of the available evidence. Biblical manuscripts existed before the earliest text evidence of MT, but we do not know when MT itself was created, so to speak. Scholars presuppose stages of books that preceded MT, as in the case of Jeremiah, but we would like to know when MT was created. We cannot think of any sound criteria for establishing the date of MT based on its contents and obviously such a date would differ from book to book. The Masoretic edition of Jeremiah is post-exilic, as opposed to the edition included in the LXX,45 but we would like to be more specific. At this first hypothetical stage, MT already must have been a good text, although not written with the same precision as that displayed in later periods, and it was probably extant in the Temple Court. The orthography was inconsistent46 and at least Samuel contained relatively many mistakes and was marred by theological tendencies.47 Although there is no manuscript evidence pertaining to the internal differences within the MT group in the first period, it would appear from a comparison of parallel texts within MT itself that such differences already existed between the various textual witnesses at an early stage. We should remember that the character of MT cannot be characterized. 3.2 The second stage of the textual transmission extends over a long time-span. Its beginning and end are determined by the availability of sources in the Judean Desert, starting with 250 B.C.E. (the earliest Qumran evidence) and ending with 135 C.E. (the texts found at Wadi Murabba‘at, Wadi Sdeir, Naতal ণever, Naতal Arugot, and Naতal ৡe’elim written before the Bar-Kochba revolt). The earliest evidence from Qumran records the second circle and the scrolls from the other sites reflect the first circle of transmission. The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E., occurring in the middle of this period, did not change the textual situation in Palestine, and the appearance of a seemingly larger number of MT texts after that date is a

————— 44

For details, see Tov, Textual Criticism, 212–18. See my analysis, “The Literary History of the Book of Jeremiah in the Light of Its Textual History,” in The Greek and Hebrew Bible—Collected Essays on the Septuagint (VTSup 72; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 363–84. 46 For details, see Tov, Textual Criticism, 213–17. 47 For some examples, see Tov, Textual Criticism, 267–68, 270; The Greek and Hebrew Bible, 433–55. 45

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mere optical illusion.48 The earliest textual evidence of MT displays a rather uniform picture. The witnesses for this stage may be divided into two groups of texts, defined in accordance with their closeness to the medieval tradition of MT. For this purpose, the texts are compared with the medieval codex L as the best complete representative of the medieval text. We distinguish in this period between an inner circle of Hebrew proto-rabbinic scrolls (Judean Desert texts from sites other than Qumran) and ancient translations that agree precisely with the medieval codex L and a second circle of scrolls (the Qumran scrolls) that are very similar to it. The latter group is the earlier, according to the preserved evidence, but typologically it reflects a later stage. Some translations that reflect the medieval text of MT also derive from this period: some of the Targumim and the Peshitta, both originating during either the second or third stage of the development of MT, as well as two revisions (recensions) of the LXX, kaige-Theodotion probably dating to the middle of the first century B.C.E. and Aquila probably dating to 125 C.E. All these sources, with the possible exception of the Peshitta, are identical to the medieval text of MT to the same extent as the proto-Masoretic scrolls from the Judean Desert discussed above. All translations that originated from the first century C.E. onwards are bound to reflect the text that was to become the medieval MT since there simply were no other Hebrew Jewish texts to be translated. Besides, the Targumim were the in-house texts of the rabbis and therefore by definition they were based on MT. 3.3 The third stage of transmission, characterized by a relatively high degree of textual consistency (except for the Severus Scroll, whose text frequently differs from MT), extends from the Bar-Kochba revolt (132–135 C.E.) until the eighth century C.E. Most of the witnesses for this period pertain to its latter end, namely the earliest texts from the Cairo Genizah. In the 1890s, more than 200,000 fragments of manuscripts, among them tens of thousands of biblical fragments, dating from the ninth century onward, were found in the Cairo Genizah, the genizah of the synagogue of Fus৬at, “Old Cairo.”49 All these texts reflect MT. ————— 48

See Tov, Textual Criticism, 174–80. Since there was no group in Judaism that embraced texts other than MT, the impression is created that MT slowly was accepted by all streams in Judaism or, in other words, that the biblical text was stabilized. 49 In 2011, most of these fragments were as yet unpublished, available only on microfilm. In the meantime, see Malcolm C. Davis, Hebrew Bible Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, vols. 1–2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Library, 1978, 1980); Israel Yeivin, Geniza Bible Fragments with Babylonian Massorah and Vocalization (Heb.; Jerusalem: Makor, 1973). For an evaluation of these fragments, see Paul E. Kahle, The Cairo Geniza (2d ed.; Oxford: Blackwell, 1959), 3–13; Johann Hempel, “Der textkritische Wert des Konsonantentextes von Kairener Geniza-fragmenten in Cambridge und Oxford zum Deuteronomium nach Kollationen

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Also the translations prepared in this period reflect the medieval text of MT: the Targumim and the Peshitta, both originating during either the second or third stage of MT, Symmachus, the fifth column of the Hexapla, and the Vulgate. We do not know when the Peshitta and the Targumim originated, so that I mention them for both the second and the third period. Also, the great majority of the biblical quotations in rabbinic literature50 and the piyyu‫ܒ‬im (liturgical hymns)51 agree with MT. 3.4 The fourth stage of transmission, characterized by almost complete textual unity, extends from the eighth century until the end of the Middle Ages. The main sources for this period are Masoretic manuscripts containing the complete apparatus of the Masorah and biblical quotations in the writings of the traditional Jewish commentators.52 The earliest dated Masoretic manuscripts are from the ninth century.53 During this period, MT became almost completely standardized, due largely to the addition of the apparatuses of vocalization, accentuation, and Masorah necessitating the fixation of the consonants that formed their base.

4. One Original Text at the Base of the Masoretic Tradition? By necessity, the previous analysis leads to the question of whether or not all manuscripts of MT go back to a single source. We believe such a source, or possibly a series of sources, once existed. It is difficult to know whether a single early source (an “original”) of MT ever existed in the fifth, fourth, or third centuries B.C.E., and even if such a text had existed, it cannot be identified or reconstructed. Furthermore, if such a text had once existed, it was changed subsequently, although we do not know how much it was changed. Referring to the medieval manuscripts of MT, de Lagarde surmised that all of them attest to a single archetype in antiquity because all the copies of ————— von H. P. Rüger untersucht,” (NAWG I: Philologisch.-Historische Klasse 10; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht, 1959), 207–37; Moshe H. Goshen-Gottstein, “Biblical Manuscripts in the United States,” Textus 2 (1962): 28–59. 50 See Tov, Textual Criticism, 33, n. 24. 51 Cf. Meir Wallenstein, “The Piyyut, with Special Reference to the Textual Study of the Old Testament,” BJRL 34 (1952): 469–76. 52 See, for example, Saul Esh, “Variant Readings in Mediaeval Hebrew Commentaries; R. Samuel Ben Meir (Rashbam),” Textus 5 (1966): 84–92. Many examples are provided by Edward L. Greenstein, “Misquotation of Scripture in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Frank Talmage Memorial Volume (ed. Barry Walfish; Haifa: Haifa University Press, 1993), 71–83, esp. 71–73. 53 According to Birnbaum, a manuscript found at Jews College, London, was written somewhat earlier: Salomo A. Birnbaum, “A Sheet of an Eighth Century Synagogue Scroll,” VT 9 (1959): 122–29.

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MT reflect its distinctive scribal features, such as the puncta extraordinaria as well as very distinct common errors, such as those, for example, in the somewhat corrupt text of Samuel. That early copy may well have been the scroll in the Temple Court (see above), which was preceded by presumed earlier copies of very similar content. We accept the postulate of de Lagarde for reasons in addition to those given by him: We base ourselves on the aforementioned identity of the medieval manuscripts of MT and the Judean Desert texts except for the Qumran scrolls, which lead us to believe that a single text existed in the last centuries B.C.E. that may be named the archetype of MT. That text was transmitted in Judaism from that period until the Middle Ages (the present text of MT) and remained unchanged over the centuries. The assumption of this early archetype involves a speculative position, based on partial evidence, on which few scholars have expressed a view, and therefore it is hard to say whether this position reflects the majority or a minority view. The one copy postulated as the original text of MT from which all medieval texts and the Judean Desert evidence derive can be traced back in some cases as early as the beginning of the third century B.C.E. However, we do not know how far it can be traced back to earlier periods. In my reconstruction of the evidence, we thus make far-reaching conclusions that ultimately go back to our explanation of the Judean Desert evidence from Qumran and the other sites.

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Eugene Ulrich University of Notre Dame

The Fundamental Importance of the Biblical Qumran Scrolls I was asked to reflect on “how and why the Dead Sea Scrolls are important for the textual history of the Hebrew Bible and how and why they might not be.” My remarks could be quite brief: The Qumran biblical scrolls are absolutely fundamental; they have replaced the Masoretic Text as the best guide to what the “Bible” was like at the origins of rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. But perhaps I should offer a bit of explanation. Let me preface my remarks by saying that I will be speaking academically, not religiously. I am not at all challenging the place of the MT within the Jewish religion, but speaking strictly academically—offering a theological or academic exercise, in Anselm’s terminology, in “faith seeking understanding” with regard to the biblical text. The situation seems parallel to Catholicism’s choice of the Vulgate until the middle of the twentieth century, when scholarly insistence required that the Hebrew and Greek texts replace the Vulgate as the primary guide; that produced a surge in the Bible’s importance both academically and pastorally. The scrolls have not displaced the MT, but they relegate the MT to democratically equal status alongside all other manuscripts from antiquity. The MT is supremely important as a religious text, and it is academically important as the solitary witness to the Hebrew Bible in the original language after the Second Jewish Revolt. But the scrolls outshine the MT in several ways. They are the oldest, the best, the most authentic witness we have to the state of the biblical text in antiquity. They illumine an earlier period that had been lost from history: the period of the developmental growth of the biblical books. The ancient scrolls validate the general accuracy of the MT, but they similarly validate the SP, the LXX, quotations in the NT, and other authors such as Josephus as major witnesses to the text of the Hebrew Bible. None of these is a pure witness; each, including the MT, must be examined word-by-word on an egalitarian basis. We in the older generation were trained in a pre-Qumran textual world. I am not sure how widespread post-Qumran textual training is yet for the younger generation, but it will be a major advantage that doctoral students now can learn during a one-semester course what it took their teachers a generation to learn.

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As far back as the 1980s both Emanuel Tov and I realized, in Emanuel’s words, that the Qumran texts have “taught us no longer to posit MT at the center of our textual thinking.”1 Or, in my possibly over-dramatic formulation: “The Masoretic Text is not the central text of the Hebrew Bible, though it long appeared to be—just as the earth is not the central body of the universe, though it long appeared to be.”2 Just as it took us some time to realize that fact, so it has taken the scholarly world in general a long time to realize it. In the pre-Qumran world, the Masoretic Text was in practice the Hebrew Bible. The MT was the sun, and other textual forms such as the LXX and the SP were small distant planets that were sometimes brought into view, more often out of sight. But in light of Qumran it appears that the MT was not, as thought, the “standardized text.” Rather, it was the sole-surviving witness in the original language of a collection of MSS for each biblical book. It was, simply, all we had. But now we know that it represented only “period two” of a two-stage process in which “period one” was the much more educative period. “Period one” was that of the composition and development of the biblical text, while “period two” was that of—not the “standardized text”—but the “uniform text.” That is, there does not seem to be any evidence that the texts which constitute the MT were carefully compared with others and selected and standardized; they rather appear to be those copies that the rabbis happened to have available and thus passed on to future generations.3 ————— 1

Emanuel Tov, “Hebrew Biblical Manuscripts from the Judaean Desert: Their Contribution to Textual Criticism,” JJS 39 (1988): 5–37 (7); see more recently his “The Status of the Masoretic Text in Modern Text Editions of the Hebrew Bible: The Relevance of Canon,” in The Canon Debate (ed. Lee M. McDonald and James A. Sanders; Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002), 234–51, esp. 242: “From a socio-religious point of view, the MT forms the central text in Judaism, but from a textual point of view, it represents just another text.” See also Eugene Ulrich, “Double Literary Editions of Biblical Narratives and Reflections on Determining the Form to be Translated,” in Perspectives on the Hebrew Bible: Essays in Honor of Walter J. Harrelson (ed. James L. Crenshaw; Macon: Mercer University Press, 1988), 101–16; repr. in The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 34–50, esp. 46–47; and idem, “The Biblical Scrolls from Qumran Cave 4: An Overview and a Progress Report on Their Publication,” in The Texts of Qumran and the History of the Community: Proceedings of the Groningen Congress on the Dead Sea Scrolls (20–23 August 1989). Vol. 1: Biblical Texts (ed. Florentino García Martínez; Paris: Gabalda, 1989 = RevQ 14/2 No. 54–55 [1989]), 207–228, esp. 223. 2 “The Text of the Hebrew Scriptures at the Time of Hillel and Jesus,” in Congress Volume Basel 2001 (ed. André Lemaire; VTSup 92; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 85–108, esp. 98. 3 Emanuel Tov (“The Status of the Masoretic Text,” 242–43) agrees: “The MT was not selected in antiquity because of its textual superiority. In fact, it was probably not selected at all. From a certain point onwards it simply was used. [...] We do not know the prehistory of this text.” See also Eugene Ulrich, “The Qumran Biblical Scrolls—The Scriptures of Late Second Temple Judaism,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context (ed. Timothy H. Lim, with Larry W. Hurtado, A. Graeme Auld, and Alison Jack; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 67–87, esp. 72.

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The pair of first-discovered biblical scrolls from Qumran Cave 1 already taught us, over a half century ago, the two main lessons about the biblical text in antiquity: 1QIsaa demonstrated that the biblical text was pluriform and still developing prior to the Jewish Revolts; 1QIsab showed that the books which eventually became the Masoretic collection had been quite accurately copied, each from one (but only one) of the available ancient forms of its book. Some scholars suggest that the texts now in the MT faithfully transmit the texts used by the Jerusalem temple priests,4 whereas other texts displaying pluriformity would have been popular or vulgar texts copied by those less well qualified, or produced as “study” texts. But one must ask what the point would be of producing a vulgar or aberrant text to serve as a study text? For a study text would not the most accurate be desirable? There are a number of related hypotheses, for most of which we have no evidence to support or reject. First, to my knowledge there is no evidence to support the idea that the MT transmits the texts of the Jerusalem temple priests, in contradistinction to other non-Masoretic texts which were popular or vulgar or “study” texts. Secondly, some go further to suggest that the Pharisees somehow received these texts and passed them on to the Rabbis. But again it has not been convincingly shown that there was a line of succession—from Temple priests to Pharisees to Rabbis. It may be quite likely that the Rabbis inherited Pharisaic texts, but what is the basis for thinking that the Pharisees, as opposed to other groups, inherited the temple texts, while others had only vulgar texts? If any group had temple texts that they preserved and copied, the Qumran group would seem to be the most likely candidate. Their early members are widely believed to have been priests in the temple who separated themselves for closer adherence to the ideals of Judaism because they believed the temple had been defiled. Where, other than the temple, would be the source of those priests’ Scriptures? Moreover, there does not seem to be any evidence that the Pharisees were conscious that their texts differed from other less valuable textual forms. Nor did they have the religious authority—acknowledged by other Jewish parties—to claim that their texts were standard and others were not.5 The specific texts for the books in the rabbinic collection as reflected in the MT are, as far as we can tell, not selected or chosen but chance or coincidental.6 ————— 4

Cf. e.g. the contributions of Arie van der Kooij and Emanuel Tov to this volume. Lawrence H. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition: A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism (Hoboken: Ktav, 1991), 98 and 112. 6 See note 3. This paragraph is heavily drawn from my “Methodological Reflections on Determining Scriptural Status in First Century Judaism,” in Tools for Our Work: Methods and Theories in the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. Maxine Grossman; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010). 5

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The views above appear to presume that the Masoretic collection is textually superior to the scriptural scrolls found at Qumran or those used as the basis for the LXX. But clearly, the texts in the Masoretic collection are not routinely superior to those found at Qumran or those used as the basis for the LXX; the Qumran and LXX texts frequently offer readings superior to those of the MT. Shemaryahu Talmon, noting that the fragmentary 5QDeut exhibits several corrections, all of which agree with the LXX against the MT, said it well: We have no reason to doubt that this “liberal” attitude towards divergent textual traditions of the Bible was prevalent also in the mainstream circles of Judaism of that period, i.e., in the second and first centuries B.C.E. It actually can be shown that according to rabbinic testimony even the model codices that were kept in the Temple precincts not only exhibited divergent readings, but represented conflicting texttypes.7

Finally, some draw a parallel between the “city texts” of the Homeric epics and the MT, the former being the “official” version preserved in the cities of Greece for performance at the great festivals, and the latter the “official” version of the Scriptures preserved in the Jerusalem temple.8 But it is important to notice several factors. First, the Homeric epics continued to “thrive in oral transmission.” Second, though there were “city editions ... available to Zenodotus (b. 325) ..., they came from Aeolis, Argos, Chios, Masalia, Crete, Cyprus and Sinope” in addition to Athens, and Zenodotus even at that time had to “draw together hundreds of diverging Homeric MSS into a critical edition.”9 Third, and perhaps most important—though of course the Jerusalem temple, like the palaces/temples of many ancient lands, undoubtedly preserved and copied texts—is there any evidence that a parallel exists between the Greek city-states and Jerusalem in regard to the specific manner in which they preserved texts? There is very little evidence to build on,10 but Josephus claims in his Vita (417–418) that at the fall of Jerusalem Titus allowed him to take ¹À¹ÂĕÑÅ d¼ÉľÅ from the temple. Presumably these priestly temple scrolls are some of the scriptural books which he used for his Jewish Antiquities. But Ant. 5.20 ————— 7

Shemaryahu Talmon, The World of Qumran from Within: Collected Studies (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1989), 74; repr. of “Aspects of the Textual Transmission of the Bible in Light of Qumran Manuscripts,” Textus 4 (1964): 95–132; and idem, “The Three Scrolls of the Law That Were Found in the Temple Court,” Textus 2 (1962): 14–27. 8 Cf. e.g. the contribution of Arie van der Kooij to this volume. 9 Egert Pöhlmann, “Textual History,” Brill’s New Pauly, vol. 14 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 346–57, esp. 348–50. 10 Talmon’s study of “The Three Scrolls of the Law” notes that this tradition dates from Talmudic times. In addition, the comparison appears to be for only a few minor details, not for systematic comparison of complete scrolls.

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shows that his text of Joshua was aligned with 4QJosha against the MT in the placement at Gilgal of the first altar in the newly entered Land,11 and Ant. 6.68–71 shows that his text of Samuel agreed routinely with 4QSama against the MT, especially in the inclusion of the Nahash passage between 1 Sam 10:27 and 11:1. In sum, the evidence shows that the SP, many parts of the LXX, NT authors, and Josephus did not use the MT; and importantly the Chronicler—presumably a Levite or Levitical group in the temple!—did not use the MT of Samuel-Kings. The Masoretic collection is, in a number of ways, roughly equivalent to the Rahlfs’ LXX collection. Neither the MT nor Rahlfs is a critical edition.12 Both are collections of disparate text types for the various books. Both present the only complete form of the Bible in their respective languages. Both present one, but only one, form for each book, though several forms circulated in antiquity.13 What is urgently required is a paradigm shift in scholars’ mentality, from pre-Qumran to post-Qumran thinking. A poignant example is provided by the late, great scholar and friend, Moshe Goshen-Gottstein. James Sanders had the foresight in 1965 to envision the Cave 11 Psalms scroll correctly as a scriptural scroll: “11QPsalmsa,” not “Para-Psalms” or “Reworked Psalter.”14 Several major scholars objected, seeing the scroll as a post-biblical, liturgical scroll. Surpassing many others, Goshen-Gottstein was able at least to see the possibility: “The recent publication of what has been termed a ‘Psalms Scroll’ may change this picture and turn out to be the beginning of new stage … the answer to be given may necessitate a reformulation of existing theories. ...”15 But even a great mind like his could not make the leap. He finally concluded: “To sum up: The theory that 11QPsa represents a different ‘canon’ has little to commend it.”16 But each of the arguments brought against the scriptural status of 11QPsa has disappeared (just as the arguments against the so-called “4QReworked Pentateuch” have disap-

————— 11

Pseudo-Philo, an additional non-Qumran author, also says that “Joshua went down to Gilgal and built an altar with very large stones” (L.A.J. 21.7). 12 In a preliminary sense, Rahlfs presents a rough critical edition of the LXX, but it is not really a critical edition. 13 Rahlfs does, of course, present two forms of Judges and Daniel, but this does not touch our main point. 14 James A. Sanders, The Psalms Scroll of Qumrân Cave 11 (11QPsa) (DJD 4; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965). 15 Moshe H. Goshen-Gottstein, “The Psalms Scroll (11QPsa): A Problem of Canon and Text,” Textus 5 (1966): 22–33, esp. 23. 16 Goshen-Gottstein, “The Psalms Scroll,” 31.

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peared)17 as our cumulative knowledge about the nature of the biblical text in antiquity has grown with the publication of all the MSS.18 To conclude, I will repeat my opening statement: The Qumran biblical scrolls are absolutely fundamental to the study of the biblical text; they have replaced the Masoretic Text as the best guide to what the “Bible” was like at the origins of rabbinic Judaism and Christianity.

————— 17

See Eugene Ulrich, “The Bible in the Making: The Scriptures at Qumran,” in The Community of the Renewed Covenant: The Notre Dame Symposium on the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. Eugene Ulrich and James C. VanderKam; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 77–93, esp. 92 n. 51; repr. in Ulrich, Scrolls and Origins, 32, n. 51; Michael Segal, “4QReworked Pentateuch or 4QPentateuch?” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Fifty Years after Their Discovery (ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman et al.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2000), 391–99; and Emanuel Tov, “The Many Forms of Hebrew Scripture: Reflections in Light of the LXX and 4QReworked Pentateuch,” in From Qumran to Aleppo: A Discussion with Emanuel Tov about the Textual History of Jewish Scriptures in Honor of His 65th Birthday (ed. Armin Lange et al.; FRLANT 230; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009), 11–28. See also Anders Klostergaard Petersen’s review of Sidnie White Crawford, Rewriting Scripture in Second Temple Times (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008) in DSD 17 (2010): 145–49, esp. 147. 18 See Eugene Ulrich, Scrolls and Origins, 30, and more fully on 115–20; Peter W. Flint, The Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls and the Book of Psalms (STDJ 17; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 202–27.

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Sidnie White Crawford University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Understanding the Textual History of the Hebrew Bible: A New Proposal1 When I was initially asked to present a paper dealing with the “non-aligned biblical” manuscripts from Qumran for the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hebrew Bible section of the International Society of Biblical Literature, I did not expect to learn that much that was new.2 But that initial expectation has been proved false, because writing this article has enabled me to rethink the process of the transmission of the so-called “biblical” texts in the Second Temple period, both from a purely textual standpoint, but also, and closely intertwined, a socio-religious standpoint.3 In the process, I have gone back and read closely the work of the two major text-critical theorists of the first generation of Qumran scholars, Frank Moore Cross and Shemaryahu Talmon, and also of the second generation, Eugene Ulrich and Emanuel Tov. In what follows it will be clear that my thinking has been influenced by all four of these scholars, but I find myself especially in dialogue with Cross, Ulrich and Tov. I will begin with a discussion of the history of text-critical scholarship, before and after the discovery of the Qumran scrolls. Prior to the discovery of the Qumran scrolls, the field of textual criticism was dominated by a set of facts and two theories. The set of facts was that textual evidence for the Hebrew Bible was confined to the Masoretic manuscripts, the Septuagint manuscripts, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and some chance finds such as the Nash Papyrus. Thus textual critics assumed a tripartite (in the case of the Torah) or bipartite division of the biblical text into ————— 1

I would like to dedicate this paper to the memory of Betty Ann Cross, the wife of Frank Moore Cross and a dear friend, who passed away in April 2009. 2 The title of my presentation was “The Contribution of the ‘Non-Aligned’ Texts to Understanding the Textual History of the Hebrew Bible: A New Proposal.” I would like to thank Armin Lange and Kristin de Troyer for inviting me to present this paper. I benefitted greatly from the discussions in the sessions, as well as private conversations outside the official sessions, especially with Emanuel Tov, Eugene Ulrich, and Sarianna Metso. Any mistakes or misconceptions, of course, remain my own. 3 As has been stated many times, the use of the term “biblical” in the context of the Qumran scrolls is anachronistic, since the Bible as we know it did not exist then. A better term would be “scriptural.” However, since this article is concerned with the transmission of books that eventually became part of the Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible, I will use the word “biblical” as a convenient shorthand, with all the caveats stated above.

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textual recensions.4 This was the evidence at hand, and this was the evidence text-critics used. The two major theories were those of de Lagarde and Kahle, propounded mainly in relation to the history of the Septuagint translation. De Lagarde posited an Urtext, a single archetype from which all manuscripts descended, while Kahle argued for Vulgärtexte, many texts that eventually coalesced into one text.5 The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 and following put a plethora of new evidence into the hands of text-critics, and the grip of the past began to loosen, although it did not disappear entirely. The Qumran evidence presented two new sets of facts. One set of facts was that manuscripts surfaced that were clearly ancestors of the three later witnesses, MT (the unpointed Masoretic Text), OG (the Old Greek text), and SP (the Samaritan Pentateuch), e.g. 1QIsab for MT, 4QJerb, d for OG, and 4QpaleoExodm for SP. But there were also other manuscripts that did not fit neatly into these so-called recensions, such as 11QpaleoLev,6 and the number of variants displayed in all the manuscripts was truly mind-boggling. Two approaches developed in the wake of this new evidence. The first, and probably most influential, was that of Cross, who posited three local textual families, of which MT, SP, and OG were merely complete exemplars. Cross emphasized textual filiation, the process of discerning relationships among manuscripts on the basis of shared errors or corrupt readings, and believed that all biblical manuscripts could be placed into one or another textual family.7 For Cross, three families could be discerned: the Old Palestinian, the proto-rabbinic, and the Egyptian. Since they evolved, they had to have done so in relative isolation (that is, not “infecting” each other), and so he chose three geographic locations for this to happen, Palestine, Egypt, and, for the proto-rabbinic family, Babylon. Although this is probably the best-known part of his theory, it is the least important part to Cross. For example, he ————— 4

Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (2nd rev. ed.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 158. 5 Tov, Textual Criticism, 181–85. 6 See Kenneth A. Mathews, “The Leviticus Scroll (11QpaleoLev) and the Text of the Hebrew Bible,” CBQ 48 (1986): 171–207, and Emanuel Tov, “The Textual Character of the Leviticus Scroll from Qumran Cave 11,” Shnaton 3 (1978–79): 238–44 [Hebrew]. 7 It is interesting to note, in the bicentennial year of Charles Darwin’s birth, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species, that Cross’s text-critical theory is based on evolutionary theory. He believed that, just as different species evolved from a common ancestor, so did texts, so that even if the results looked quite different on the surface, like dogs and bears do today, you could tease out the common ancestor. He uses words like “genes,” “families,” “isolated,” and “stemma” very deliberately in this context. See, for example, his “The Fixation of the Text of the Hebrew Bible,” in From Epic to Canon: History and Literature in Ancient Israel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1998), 205–218, 210–12. I would like to thank my husband, Dan D. Crawford, for pointing out to me Cross’s use of evolutionary language.

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states that the proto-rabbinic text “cannot be localized [in Babylon] on the basis of direct evidence.”8 What was important to Cross were the genetic characteristics of the families. The Old Palestinian family was “characterized by inflation, glosses, synoptic additions and other evidence of intense scribal activity, and can be defined as expansionistic.”9 The Egyptian family, a branch of the Old Palestinian family, is often but not always a full text, while the proto-rabbinic family, which is known only in the Pentateuch and the Former Prophets, is a short, pristine text.10 It should be noted that Cross firmly believes that there is an Urtext, and that often there are only one or two textual families that can be found in an individual biblical book. Cross accounts for what he calls “mixed” manuscripts, in this way: “When manuscripts stemming from different textual traditions come into contact, the result is their dissolution into a mixed text.”11 Talmon, on the other hand, put a much greater emphasis on the textual variety discovered at Qumran. For Talmon, what was not there was in some ways as important as what was there: “the extant text-types must be viewed as the remains of a yet more variegated transmission of the Bible text in the preceding centuries, rather than as witnesses to…three archetypes.”12 The large number of variants extant in the scrolls showed that “the ancient authors, compilers, tradents and scribes enjoyed what may be termed a controlled freedom of textual variation.”13 For Talmon, in other words, almost all of the biblical manuscripts were what text critics now term “nonaligned.”14 He uses the term Gruppentexte to indicate an unlimited plurality of text-types that eventually boiled down to textual uniformity.15 An important aspect of his theory is the role of the scribes, or literati, which was paramount; he understood that the roles of authors and copyists were not ————— 8

Frank Moore Cross, “The History of the Biblical Text in the Light of Discoveries in the Judaean Desert,” in Qumran and the History of the Biblical Text (ed. Frank M. Cross and Shemaryahu Talmon; Cambridge: Harvard University, 1975), 287. 9 Cross, Qumran and the History, 283. 10 Cross, Qumran and the History, 283. 11 Cross, Qumran and the History, 284. 12 Shemaryahu Talmon, “The Textual Study of the Bible: A New Outlook,” in Cross and Talmon, eds., Qumran and the History of the Biblical Text, 325. 13 Talmon, Qumran and the History, 326. 14 The term “non-aligned” as used in this article was introduced by Emanuel Tov, who defines it as follows: “Many Qumran texts are not exclusively close to either the MT, LXX, or SP and are therefore considered non-aligned. That is, they agree sometimes with MT against the other texts, and sometimes with SP and/or the LXX against the other texts. They furthermore contain readings not known from other texts.” He also emphasizes that these manuscripts are “statistically independent.” Tov, “The Biblical Texts from the Judean Desert - An Overview and Analysis,” in Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible, and Qumran: Collected Essays (TSAJ 21; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 128–154; 148; hereinafter Tov, Hebrew Bible. 15 Talmon, Qumran and the History, 327, 334.

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easily separable.16 Talmon also emphasized the socio-religious setting of scribal activity, which was sometimes recoverable, sometimes not. Both Cross and Talmon argued that MT, SP, and OG were simply exemplars, albeit complete, of the wider evidence now available, and should no longer be the starting point for text criticism. This point was further emphasized in the next generation of text critics, led by Ulrich and Tov. Ulrich has put particular emphasis on complicating our preconceived notions concerning what is Bible, what we mean when we say “the biblical text,” what we mean by “canon,” what is a text or a variant, and how we make sense out of and choices from the evidence of the scrolls. He is especially wary of any overemphasis on the Masoretic Text, since he notes that no one form of the biblical text could be said to be preferred before the late first/early second century C.E.17 He also stresses the fact that the textual history of each biblical book is different, and each should be approached individually.18 Another oft-repeated point in Ulrich’s text-critical thinking has been the idea of the “creative reshaping” of the text by the scribal tradition. At the start of the process was the basic form of the book or larger complex of material; there followed a period of scribal activity in transmitting the text, and by the end of the first century C.E. the final form of the book was reached, although that final form could be different in different religious communities.19 Sometimes this scribal activity could be so extensive and systematic that the result was a “variant literary edition,” for example in Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, and Psalms.20 Even if a variant literary edition was not created, scribal activity can be discerned in the “multivalent” variants in the various manuscripts, such as 1QIsaa.21 This accounts, I believe, for the non-aligned texts in Ulrich’s system. They are the product of scribal ————— 16

Talmon, Qumran and the History, 336. For example, Josephus had a text for Joshua-2 Samuel from the Temple that was a developed form of OG, and related to 4QSama. Eugene C. Ulrich, “The Community of Israel and the Composition of Scriptures,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible (SDSSRL; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 9, n.15. 18 Ulrich, “The Bible in the Making: The Scriptures at Qumran,” in Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls, 32, 114. 19 E.g., Exodus and Numbers in the Jewish Torah vs. the Samaritan Torah. Ulrich, “The Community of Israel and the Composition of the Scriptures,” in Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls, 7. 20 Eugene C. Ulrich, “The Qumran Scrolls and the Biblical Text,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty Years After their Discovery, Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July 20–25, 1997 (ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman, Emanuel Tov, and James C. VanderKam; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2000), 53; idem., “Multiple Literary Editions: Reflections Toward a Theory of the History of the Biblical Text,” in Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls, 107. 21 Ulrich, “The Bible in the Making,” in Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls, 29. 17

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activity that drew freely on, or were influenced by, diverse older manuscripts. Ulrich must explain the continuing existence of the first edition of a biblical book alongside the second edition (e.g. the Jeremiah manuscripts from Cave 4). He does this by suggesting that the Second Temple scribes worked along two lines simultaneously. One line copied the text in front of them exactly, while the other, more creative line reworked the text for the purpose of exegesis.22 He does not suggest a socio-religious setting for these two scribal traditions. Emanuel Tov has made the most systematic survey to date of the Judean Desert biblical scrolls, classifying them according to textual character and also according to scribal practices. Tov starts with the same premise as Cross, Talmon, and Ulrich, that MT, OG, and SP can no longer be at the center of our textual descriptions, but instead we must work in reverse order, taking all the Qumran evidence into consideration first as the most ancient.23 Tov divides the 128 biblical manuscripts that he deems large enough for analysis into four textual categories: 1) proto-Masoretic (or protoRabbinic), 2) pre-Samaritan, 3) the presumed Hebrew source of OG, and 4) non-aligned or independent. Within this system, 46 Torah manuscripts are analyzed. Tov concludes that 52% of the manuscripts are proto-Masoretic, 6.5% are pre-Samaritan, 4.5% are close to the presumed Hebrew source of OG, and 37% are non-aligned. For the 75 manuscripts from the rest of Hebrew Scriptures, 44% reflect MT, 53% are non-aligned, and 3% reflect the LXX.24 Tov concludes, “The overall preponderance of MT and nonaligned texts in the Qumran corpus is thus evident, in the Torah more MT and in the other books more the non-aligned texts. These percentages are quite significant, and they are telling about the preferences of the Qumran community…”25 The second way in which Tov classifies manuscripts is according to scribal practice. He isolates a scribal group or school, characterized by “a distinctive orthography, morphology, and set of scribal practices.”26 21% of ————— 22

Ulrich, “The Community of Israel,” in Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls, 11; “The Bible in the Making,” in Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls, 23–27. 23 Tov, Textual Criticism, 192. 24 Tov, Hebrew Bible, 145. The statistics are slightly different in: Tov, Textual Criticism, 114–17, Emanuel Tov, “The Biblical Texts from the Judaean Desert – an Overview and Analysis of the Published Texts,” in The Bible as Book (ed. E. Herbert and E. Tov; London: British Library, 2002), 153, and Emanuel Tov, “Scriptures: Texts,” in Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman and James C. VanderKam; 2 vols.; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 2:832–836, 833. 25 Tov, Hebrew Bible, 145. 26 Tov, “The Biblical Texts from the Judaean Desert,” in The Bible as Book, 153.

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Qumran biblical manuscripts were copied in this distinctive scribal practice.27 Because all of the compositions that have been identified as sectarian are also copied in this distinctive scribal practice, Tov has called it “Qumran scribal practice,” a name that has led to the misconception that he believes that all manuscripts copied according to this practice were copied at Qumran. He does not (although some of them may have been), and says himself that this scribal practice should be understood as a Palestinian scribal system, not isolated at Qumran.28 Cross also noted this system of orthography and morphology, which he termed “baroque.”29 The term “baroque” may be somewhat obscure, but has the advantage of not suggesting geographical isolation at Qumran. According to Tov, the vast majority of biblical manuscripts written in this distinctive Palestinian scribal practice are either non-aligned or pre-Samaritan (some manuscripts are too small to determine textual affiliation).30 Finally, some scrolls, according to Tov, were “de luxe editions,” that is, scrolls with a particular large format, use of large top and bottom margins, a large writing block, precision in copying, and careful preparation of the leather.31 Twelve biblical manuscripts are found in this deluxe format; six reflect the proto-Masoretic text, one the pre-Samaritan, two are independent, and three cannot be certainly classified.32 How does Tov explain or understand the vast amount of data he presents? He sees two basic approaches to the biblical text in the Second Temple period, one “free” and one “conservative,” parallel to Ulrich’s “creative reshaping” and “exact.” Because these approaches to the text can be categorized, and the growth of the text, through the work of “scribeeditors,”33 in the “free” group can be traced, Tov rejects the idea of different pristine versions and embraces the notion that a textual critic can determine the priority of one version over another. He states, “At the end of the composition…stood a text which was considered authoritative (and hence also finished at the literary level)…and which at the same time stood at the beginning of a process of copying and textual transmission.”34 In other words, at the beginning of the process of copying and transmission stands a text with a recognizable shape, which we can identify as a particular com————— 27

Tov, Hebrew Bible, 146. Tov, Textual Criticism, 108. 29 Cross, Qumran and the History, 286. 30 Tov, “The Biblical Texts from the Judaean Desert,” in The Bible as Book, 154–55. 31 Emanuel Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 126. 32 Tov, Scribal Practices, 126. 33 Tov, Scribal Practices, 25. 34 Tov, Textual Criticism, 177. 28

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position. The process of copying and transmission obviously begins at different times for different books, according to when they reached that authoritative shape. The Qumran situation of textual multiplicity represents a relatively late stage in textual development. This “process of copying and textual transmission” could be conservative and result in very little change to the text, or it could be free, and result in a much-changed version of a particular book, or even in a new edition of the book. Although the new edition sought to replace the old edition as solely authoritative, this was not always successful; hence our Qumran evidence of the preservation of two Hebrew editions of the same book, e.g. Jeremiah.35 Unlike Ulrich, however, Tov believes you can choose between the two editions to arrive at (or at least closer to) the prior or earlier edition. I find myself in basic agreement with Tov, but I would like to propose some refinements to his terminology and methodology, and to push his insights even further, utilizing the insights of Ulrich and Cross in the process. The result, I hope, will be a new way of thinking about the transmission of the biblical text in the Second Temple period, one that starts at the beginning of the process and finally frees us from overreliance on MT, SP, and OG. Like Tov and Ulrich, I would argue that each biblical book reached a recognizable shape at the end of its redactional process, and that shape then governed the activity of the scribes who transmitted it going forward. For example, the shape of Exodus began with the Israelites in Egypt and the birth of Moses, proceeded through the Plague and Passover narratives, the Exodus, and the journey to Sinai, and ended with the long section of the giving of the Law at Mt. Sinai. The text within that shape was not fixed, but the shape itself was stable. The scribes who transmitted Exodus henceforth worked within that shape. Thus, even though Exodus exists in two literary editions (proto-rabbinic and pre-Samaritan), it is recognizably Exodus in both editions.36 I also agree with Ulrich and Tov that there were different scribal approaches to transmitting the text, “exact” or “conservative,” and “creative” or “free.” Scribes in the “exact/conservative” group attempted to copy the text in front of them exactly, while scribes in the other group felt “free” to introduce editorial changes for purposes of exegesis (broadly understood). Thus, there were two scribal traditions at work in early Second Temple period Palestine, transmitting the books that became the Hebrew Bible. However, I believe that certain of Tov’s classification categories are misleading when attempting to understand the early transmission history of the ————— 35 36

Tov, Textual Criticism, 177–79, 188. See also Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls, 38–39.

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biblical books. The category to which I take the strongest exception is “proto-Masoretic,” since it privileges the final form of the Jewish Bible, the Masoretic Text. This is fine from a socio-religious standpoint, since MT is now the canonical text of Judaism, but it skews our picture of early textual development in favor of the Masoretic Text. Tov admits that Cross’s term “proto-rabbinic” would be less prescriptive, but even this more neutral term does not satisfy my main objection, which is this. The so-called “protoMasoretic” group or family is not a textual group or family at all. It does not share textual characteristics as a whole, although it is more uniform than not in scribal practices. Its lack of textual uniformity is to be expected, since it is a collection of separate books with distinctive textual histories. But even more than that, by applying the idea of the two different scribal approaches to the transmission of the text outlined above, it becomes evident that the books of the Masoretic Text do not line up neatly on one side or the other. For example, in the MT Torah the text of the five books is, to use Cross’s phrase, “marvelously compact and well-preserved,” while the texts of Jeremiah and Ezekiel are the longer, expanded editions, according to Tov’s own classification.37 Therefore, it is not helpful to speak of a protoMasoretic group or family at the beginning of the process of textual transmission, but only toward the end of that process. I would like to propose instead the phrases “text from the conservative scribal tradition,” and “text from the revisionist (Tov’s “free” or Ulrich’s “creative”) scribal tradition” (the latter term would also be roughly equivalent to Cross’s Old Palestinian family).38 These two terms are descriptive, but allow us to discard any reference to MT, SP, and OG. Thus, we would say that 4QJerb and d and LXXJeremiah fall within the conservative scribal tradition, but 4QJera, c and e and MT Jeremiah come within the revisionist scribal tradition. MTEsther is from the conservative scribal tradition, but in LXX-Esther (or its Vorlage) we find the revisionist scribal tradition.39 This nomenclature, I believe, is also descriptive when there are not two clear textual editions, but only one textual tradition with variants: 1QIsab comes from the conservative scribal tradition, but 1QIsaa is a product of the revisionist scribal tradition. Deute————— 37

Cross, Qumran and the History, 289; Tov, Textual Criticism, 321, 334–34. Eshel has proposed the name “harmonistic,” which is descriptive, but not all the changes introduced by this scribal tradition are harmonizations. Esther Eshel, “4QDeutn - A Text That has Undergone Harmonistic Editing,” HUCA 62 (1991): 117–54. 39 Note that the colophon to LXX-Esther claims that LXX-Esther originated in Palestine and was brought to Egypt already translated into Greek (LXX-Esther 11:1). The scholarly literature concerning Greek Esther and its Vorlage is immense. See, for example, Michael V. Fox, The Redaction of the Books of Esther (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991). Tov’s recent article on Esther, “Three Strange Books of the LXX: 1 Kings, Esther and Daniel Compared with Similar Rewritten Compositions from Qumran and Elsewhere,” in Hebrew Bible, 283–305, argues that the Vorlage of LXXEsther “reflects a Hebrew composition that rewrote a book similar to MT” (295). 38

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ronomy in general tends toward expansion, with MT-Deut and its forebears is the least expansive, while LXX-Deut and its forebears is the most expansive.40 This does not mean that every variant that appears in a manuscript from the revisionist scribal tradition should be dismissed as later and thus secondary. These manuscripts also preserve preferred readings, and each variant must still be individually weighed. I would also like to take issue with a quirk in the way Tov counts his manuscripts. Tov, on the basis of statistical probability, counts “texts which are equally close to MT and SP in the Torah and to MT and the LXX in other books…as MT,” and “texts which are characterized as both “nonaligned’ and close to the LXX or the SP are counted as ‘non-aligned’.”41 Counting in this way clearly skews the count in favor of “proto-Masoretic” and non-aligned texts. What if, for example, complete manuscripts of those deemed to have “no opposition between MT and SP,” of which there are 20 in the Pentateuch,42 suddenly surfaced, and proved to be closer to SP? Suddenly, rather than seven manuscripts in the pre-Samaritan group,43 we would have 27.44 That would change our notion of the ubiquity of the preSamaritan (or, in Cross’s phrase, Old Palestinian) text at Qumran and in Palestine generally in the Second Temple period. In fact, our evidence elsewhere leads us to expect that the Old Palestinian text, a product of the revisionist scribal tradition, would be widely available and in use in the mid-Second Temple period. As examples, Ulrich points out that Josephus had a text for Joshua-2 Samuel that was a developed form of the Old Greek, and related to 4QSama, which for Cross is part of the Old Palestinian tradition.45 The Chronicler, according to Cross, used a Torah text from the Old Palestinian tradition.46 In short, this textual family in Samuel, and in the Torah, from the revisionist scribal tradition, was current in Palestine in the fifth, fourth, and third centuries B.C.E., and in wide use. This family or group is my “texts in the revisionist scribal tradition group,” and it is not ————— 40 Julie A. Duncan, “Deuteronomy, Book of,” in The Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 1:198–202, 199. 41 Tov, Hebrew Bible, 145. 42 Tov, “The Biblical Texts from the Judaean Desert,” in The Bible as Book, 154–55. 43 Tov, “The Biblical Texts from the Judaean Desert,” in The Bible as Book, 155. 44 Chelica Hiltunen, in an excellent M.A. thesis, “An Examination of the Supposed pre-Samaritan Texts from Qumran,” (Trinity Western University, 2008), also takes issue with Tov’s counts, asking, “what is the reason for defaulting to MT and/or the non-aligned category over and against affiliation with SP?” (2). In an careful study, she reanalyzes 47 Pentateuchal manuscripts from Qumran, and concludes, “as few as 11 (23%) and as many as 22 (forty-seven %) … align with MT, as few as 2 (4%) and as many as 15 (32%) align with SP, as few as 2 (4%) and as many as 5 (11%) are characteristic of the Hebrew Vorlage of LXX, and as few as 20 (43%) and as many as 21 (45%) are non-aligned manuscripts” (122–23). 45 Ulrich, “The Community of Israel,” 9, n. 15; Cross, Qumran and the History, 311. 46 Cross, Qumran and the History, 285.

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limited to Qumran, or the Samaritans, but is a general Second Temple Palestinian text group. It is found in the Qumran caves and used in other compositions found at Qumran (e.g. 4Q158 and 4Q175), and an exemplar was chosen by the Samaritans as their Torah text. At the same time, however, the texts from the conservative scribal tradition were equally at home in Palestine in this period. This tradition may have been favored in Temple circles, although there is not a straight line of evidence between these texts and those eventually selected as the Jewish canonical texts.47 We find these manuscripts also in great numbers at Qumran, indicating that there was as yet no choice made among different texttypes, at least by the group that preserved the Qumran collection. In sum, we have evidence for two scribal traditions, working at the same time in Palestine in the early and middle Second Temple period. Their labors resulted in the multiplicity of texts we see at Qumran, a multiplicity that reflects, as Tov and Ulrich have both argued, a later stage in the process of textual transmission. After the first century B.C.E., the evidence points to the gradual, and then complete, triumph of those texts that became the Jewish canonical text, the Masoretic Text. Some of the books that make up the Masoretic Text came from the conservative scribal tradition, e.g. the books of the Torah, others from the revisionist scribal tradition, e.g. Jeremiah. Whether there were patterns or reasons behind the choice of the specific form of an individual book that eventually became canonical should be the subject of further study. By changing the direction of our text-critical study from a focus on the three canonical collections that resulted from the process of textual transmission to a focus on the beginnings of that transmission process, we can free ourselves from the tyranny of the Masoretic Text, the Septuagint, and the Samaritan Pentateuch. After all, the scribes who worked in the fifth, fourth, and third centuries B.C.E., handing down what became the books of the Bible, had no idea that certain exemplars of their work would become fixed and canonical for later generations of Jews and Christians. Rather, their job was to pass along the written tradition of their community according to the conventions of the scribal school to which they belonged. We have a remnant of the fruits of their labor in the Qumran scrolls. The evidence of those scrolls should force us to discard old paradigms that are no longer useful, and adopt a new paradigm for the history of the transmission of the biblical text(s).

————— 47

See the articles by Tov and Arie van der Kooij in this volume, in which both, in different ways, argue for the origin of what became the MT in Temple circles.

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Julio Trebolle Barrera Universidad Complutense

Textual and Literary Criticism on Passages Attested by 4QSama,b (1 Sam 6:4–5 and 1 Sam 23:11–12)*

The history of the discovery and study of the Qumran biblical manuscripts has been that of a growing awareness of the plurality of texts or editions of the biblical books. The progressive publication of 4QpaleoExodusm and 4QNumb which are close to the Samaritan Pentateuch, of texts akin to the Hebrew original of the Septuagint such as 4QSama and 4QJerb.d, and of “unaligned” or independent texts like 4QJosha, 4QJudga, and also 4QSama, has underlined the remarkable textual plurality of the biblical books in the Qumran period, to the point that the moulds of what until recently was considered biblical text seem to break down. Emanuel Tov has recently modified his opinion regarding the character of 4QReworked Pentateuch (4Q158, 4Q364–67), a composition published as a non-biblical composition, that now has to be reclassified as a Bible text similar in character to some of the rewritten LXX Books like 3 Kingdoms.1 As was the case for Mesopotamian literature, the corpus of biblical literature arose when the order of literary units and the text in which the books were to be read started to become fixed.2 A subsequent Hebrew edition will ————— * I thank Andrés Piquer Otero for the translation of my paper into English from the Spanish original. This paper has been produced in the framework of the public Research Project “Nueva Edición Políglota de Textos Bíblicos,” funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación. 1 Emanuel Tov, “3 Kingdoms Compared with Similar Rewritten Compositions,” in Flores Florentino. Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Early Jewish Studies in Honour of Florentino García Martínez (ed. Anthony Hilhorst, Émil Puech, and Eibert Tigchelaar; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 345–66, esp. 358 and 365; idem, “Three Strange Books of the LXX: 1 Kings, Esther, and Daniel Compared with Similar Rewritten Compositions from Qumran and Elsewhere,” in Die Septuaginta—Texte, Kontexte, Lebenswelten. Internationale Fachtagung veranstaltet von Septuaginta Deutsch (LXX.D), Wuppertal 20–23. Juli 2006 (ed. Martin Karrer and Wolfgang Kraus with the collaboration of Martin Meiser, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 369–93; Molly M. Zahn, “The Problem of Characterizing the 4QReworked Pentateuch Manuscripts: Bible, Rewritten Bible, or None of the Above?,” DSD 15 (2008): 315–39. 2 Nahum M. Sarna, “The Order of the Books,” in Studies in Jewish Bibliography, History and Literature in Honor of I. Edward Kiev (ed. Charles Berlin; New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1971), 407–13, esp. 411 and 413; William W. Hallo, “The Concept of Canonicity in Cuneiform and Biblical Literature: A Comparative Appraisal,” in The Biblical Canon in Comparative Pers-

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differ from a previous one in two main features: a new arrangement of the pieces that constitute the book, and the insertion of new materials. The Origenian recension basically consisted of a rearrangement of the OG text in order to adjust it to the MT order, with the insertion of the so-called Hexaplaric additions whose text was missing in the older version. There is a correspondence between the history of the Hebrew text and the history of the Greek text and its secondary versions. The recension process of the LXX and of its secondary versions (particularly of the Latin, Armenian and Georgian versions), reflects a similar process which took place before at the level of the Hebrew text. The passages that were inserted in the Old Greek by the Hexaplaric recension are passages that were added by the protoMasoretic textual tradition to an earlier Hebrew edition. Such is, for instance, the case of Josh 10:15 and 43 studied by Kristin De Troyer in her paper “Reconstructing the OG of Joshua.”3 The Hebrew text underlying the Old Greek did not have verses 15 and 43, which constitute two Hexaplaric additions in the Greek text. These additions in MT are connected with the prominent role which Gilgal plays in the entrance to the land in 4:19–20 and 5:9, and with the textual layout in 4QJosha. In this manuscript the episode of Josh 8:30–35 appears before 5:2–7. Thus, the first altar in the newly-entered land was built by Joshua at Gilgal immediately after the crossing of the Jordan (after Josh chapter 4), not later on Mount Ebal (cf. 8:30–35 MT and 9:3–8 LXX). I will examine two passages of 1 Samuel which the editors of 4QSama and 4QSamb explain as cases of dittographies and haplographies but can be explained in a more satisfactory way if they are related to the editorial process that gave birth to the different preserved textual forms.4 A case in point would be that of 1 Sam 2:31–32. Here 4QSama, LXX and OL omit MT verses 31b.32a, and read only (='09$!'!'+#. According to the editors of 4QSama, this is a case of expansion and corruption in MT.5 Nevertheless, MT is not the result of “conflated variants” ((='09$=#'!/ and 09$!'!'+# (='), but of a linking repetition or Wiederaufnahme (underlined text) ————— pective. Scripture in Context IV (ed. K. Lawson Younger Jr., William W. Hallo, and Bernard F. Batto; ANETS 11; Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991, 1-20; Menahem Haran, “Book-Scrolls in Israel in Pre-exilic Times,” JSS 33 (1982): 161–73. 3 Kristin De Troyer, “Reconstructing the OG of Joshua,” in Septuaginta Research. Issues and Challenges in the Study of the Greek Jewish Scriptures (ed. Wolfgang Kraus and R. Glenn Wooden; SBLSCS 53; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006), 105–18, 115. 4 On the textual character of 4QSama and 4QSamb, see Frank M. Cross and Richard J. Saley, “A Statistical Analysis of the Textual Character of 4QSama,” DSD 13 (2006): 46–54; Armin Lange, Handbuch der Textfunde vom Toten Meer. Band 1: Die Handschriften biblischer Bücher von Qumran und den anderen Fundorten (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 200), 215–22 and 236–41. 5 Frank M. Cross, Donald W. Parry, Richard J. Saley, and Eugene Ulrich, Qumran Cave 4·XII. 1–2 Samuel (DJD 17; Oxford: Clarendon, 2005), 44.

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which facilitates the insertion of the embedded gloss: “so that no one in your family will live to old age. [32 Then in distress you will look with greedy eye on all the prosperity that shall be bestowed upon Israel], and no one in your family shall ever live to old age” (NRSV, MT (=' 09$ =#'!/ (=' 09$ !'!' +# +: