A Little More to Read

I have excerpted material from the following academic PDF so that you can have a better understanding of some of the issues surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls and the impact on modern biblical translations.  Enjoy.

Excerpts from:

Emanuel Tov

Understanding the Text of the Bible 65 Years after the Discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls

The biblical Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran are so well known that the public often thinks that the Qumran corpus is confined to the 24 canonical books of Hebrew Scripture, but biblical fragments comprise only one quarter of the total manuscript finds at Qumran. An analysis of the scrolls found in the caves makes it appear likely that the Qumran community made a special effort to collect all the individual Scripture books as well as other compositions they considered important. This assumption is based on the fact that all the canonical books of the Hebrew Bible are represented in the Qumran corpus, with the sole exception of the short book of Esther. The absence of an Esther scroll from Qumran should, in my view, be attributed to happenstance, as the leather of its mere ten chapters was probably eaten by the Qumran worms. Other scholars claim that the book of Esther was rejected by the Qumran community, or was not known to them, but I embrace a more prosaic solution.

The Qumran caves contain almost 200 copies written in the regular Hebrew script, also named “square” or “Aramaic.” In addition, fragments of eleven or twelve biblical scrolls in the ancient Hebrew (paleo- Hebrew) script have been found there as well. This early script is otherwise known from ancient inscriptions and coins.6

. . . among the cave 4 fragments we find several so-called abbreviated or excerpted compositions. E.g., 4QExodd omits the narrative sections 13:17-22 and all of chapter 14. Two scrolls of the Song of Songs, 4QCanta and 4QCantb, omit some love songs, and one of the scrolls ends in the middle of the book, after 5:1 of the traditional text. Liturgical collections, such as the large Psalms scroll from cave 11, rearrange the Psalms according to certain themes, probably for use in worship in the Qumran community. This and other Psalm collections also omit several biblical Psalms, while adding non-canonical Psalms, such as the well-known Psalm 151, also found in the LXX, constituting an autobiographical Psalm of David.

Some of the additional books of the LXX that are not found in the MT, the so-called Apocrypha, are well evidenced in Israel, especially at Qumran. Thus we found the Hebrew Ben Sira at Qumran and on the Masada, and we found the Greek Epistle of Jeremiah and the Hebrew and Aramaic Tobit at Qumran. We also found at Qumran many copies of Jubilees and Enoch as well as several copies of the Temple Scroll. Probably these three books were considered authoritative at Qumran. The so-called Psalm 151 was also found at Qumran, as well as several apocryphal Syriac Psalms.

In short, it is likely that the canonical books of Hebrew Scripture, as well as a few additional books, held authoritative status at Qumran.

We are able to demonstrate that the text found in the medieval manuscripts is exactly the same as the text found in the Judean Desert, in scrolls of 2000 years old. This text hasn’t changed for two millennia, and this is almost a miracle. Not a divine miracle, but a man-made miracle, since the so-called Masoretes, keepers of the Masorah, carefully guarded the Masoretic Text against changes. The only changes made in the Masoretic Text, MT, was the addition of vowels and accentuation signs, te’amim, in the tenth century. According to Jewish and Christian tradition, these signs reflect an ancient oral tradition from the days of the revelation at Sinai. The first point we wish to stress is that the consonantal framework of the Masoretic Text was already present in scrolls from the Judean Desert. We name these texts proto-Masoretic.

But that is not the whole story.

The Scripture scrolls from the sites in the Judean Desert outside Qumran are identical in all details to the medieval MT, because they were produced by the people who followed the rules of the Jerusalem Temple; on the other hand, the proto- Masoretic scrolls from Qumran deviate slightly from this central text.

Phrased more sharply, the scrolls found in the Judean Desert in sites other than Qumran reflect only the MT, while the Qumran discoveries include all kinds of scrolls reflecting textual variety. This is the third lesson.

We now know from Qumran that many different scrolls were in existence around the turn of the era. This is our fourth lesson.

1. We first turn our attention to several Qumran scrolls that differ from MT in many minor details of spelling and language. The differences in spelling are similar to those between, for example, British and American English. No fixed rules existed for the spelling of Hebrew; even in modern Hebrew the spelling is not fixed. In MT, most books have a somewhat defective spelling. On the other hand, the large Isaiah scroll, together with a group of similar scrolls, reflects a completely different spelling system. Its orthography is full to the extreme, including such spellings as ki with an aleph, yatom with an internal aleph, etc. This group of texts also contains morphological novelties, especially lengthened forms in pronouns (for example, hiah, atemah) and so-called pausal forms (e.g., yirdofu).9
2. Scrolls also differed in small details, including mistakes. For example, according to MT, in 1 Sam 1:24 Hannah takes Samuel with her to Shilo “with three bulls,” while according to the Qumran scroll 4QSama and the LXX she takes a “three-year-old bull” with her. This is a case of a scribal mistake in the traditional text (word division, different reading of the vowels) in which the “three-year-old bull” has been corrupted. In v. 28 of the same chapter, Elkanah bowed before the Lord in the Temple according to MT. According to the same Qumran scroll and the LXX, however, it was Hannah who bowed down. This may well be a case where Hannah’s active role in the cult was replaced in the MT with that of Elkanah.
3. Scrolls also differed in several large details. Thus, 4QDeutq and the LXX have a few extra lines beyond MT at the end of the Song of Moses (Deut 32:43). This Qumran scroll, probably containing only that poem, mentions details that one may describe as polytheistic. It has an added phrase in v 43, “prostrate to him, all you gods,” (והשתחוו לו כל אלהים). Further, according to this scroll, as well as the LXX, Moses proclaims, “be joyous, heaven, with him” (הרנינו שמים ִעמו), as opposed to MT הרנינו עמים ַעמו, “be joyous, peoples, his nation” and probably not meaning “make happy, peoples, his nation.” The longer text of Qumran and the LXX has all the marks of originality, as similar references to an assembly of Gods are found elsewhere in the Bible, and in the earlier West Semitic literature – for example in the cuneiform texts found at Ugarit in present-day Syria, dating to around 1200 BCE. Scholars believe that the MT removed these remnants of polytheistic beliefs as an act of censorship.

This is the fifth lesson. Thus we found in Qumran Hebrew scrolls that were close to the source from which the Greek LXX was translated; scrolls that were very close to the SP; and scrolls that did not resemble any pattern known before.

Probably the largest deviation in any Qumran scroll is found in the Jeremiah scrolls from cave 4, 4QJerb,d usually agreeing with the LXX. The text of these two scrolls is shorter than MT in many details, especially in many personal names and titles. For example, in 4QJerd Jer 43:6 reads “Nebuzaradan” instead of “Nebuzaradan the chief of the guards,” and in the same verse the scroll reads “Gedaliah son of Ahikam” instead of “Gedaliah son of Ahikam, son of Shaphan” in the MT. Equally important, in chapter 10, vv 6, 7, 8, 10 are lacking in that scroll as is also the case in the LXX. The section lacking in 4QJerb and the LXX has a uniform character: it extols the Lord of Israel, while the remaining verses deride the idols of the godless people. It is hard to imagine that the scribe of the Qumran scroll omitted this praise; instead, it seems more likely that the hymn about God was added in the MT edition in order to stress the difference between the idols and the God of Israel.

The Qumran scrolls show us that textual divergence was the rule rather than the exception at Qumran.

As for Qumran, the coexistence of these different scrolls does not allow us to draw any sound conclusions about the approach of the Qumranites towards the biblical text; it is safe to say, however, that they paid no attention to textual differences.  When these scrolls were written, the concept that scrolls should be identical simply did not exist in most of Israel. At the same time, this concept presumably did prevail in one very important place, namely the Temple, as well as in Pharisaic circles, where the MT, the central Scripture text, dominated.  Beyond these circles, such as in Qumran, all texts were tolerated. Or, formulated positively, all texts had equal authority.

Our seventh lesson is that all Scripture texts were equally authoritative in ancient Israel, except for the circles that created and perpetuated the MT.

Summary

The seven points made in the course of this analysis are:

1. The consonantal framework of the Masoretic Text was already present in scrolls from the Judean Desert.
2. The 25 Scripture scrolls from sites in the Judean Desert outside Qumran are identical in all details to the medieval MT; the proto-Masoretic Qumran texts are less close to MT, but still close.
3. The scrolls found in the Judean Desert in sites other than Qumran reflect only the MT, while the Qumran discoveries include all kinds of scrolls reflecting textual variety.
4. We now know from Qumran that there were many different scrolls around the turn of the era.
5. There were some real surprises among the Qumran scrolls that truly revolutionized the study of the text of the Hebrew Bible.
6. Qumran and Israel as a whole display textual variety.
7. All Scripture texts were equally authoritative in ancient Israel, except for the circles that created and perpetuated the MT.