and contains the biblical scrolls from Masada, Murabba‘at, Naḥal Ḥever and Wadi Sdeir.
This division of the evidence allows Young to view the results of his analysis in terms of
two sets of data that inform on two separate stages of textual development. The Qumran
biblical texts reflect processes that were underway in the closing stages of the first mil-
lennium B.C.E., while the Masada, Murabba‘at, Naḥal Ḥever and Wadi Sdeir biblical
texts reflect developments that occurred in the first and second century C.E. In this way
Young is able to plot developments in textual transmission that occur diachronically,
rather than treating all of the evidence as a single data set that reflects synchronic phe-
nomena. Critically, Young treats the evidence from Qumran as representing a collection
of equally legitimate texts, without exploring the possibility that some biblical scrolls
from Qumran may be more authoritative than others.
Young concludes that there was a change in the transmission of biblical scrolls between
the late first century B.C.E. and the mid-first century C.E. His thesis relies on a relatively
early dating of the Qumran scrolls, arguing for a first-century B.C.E. deposit of the
scrolls in the caves near Qumran.^707 With multiple forms of the biblical text at Qumran
707
This view is approached from the perspective of the arguments put forward by I. Hutchesson and G.
Doudna in various publications. See the discussion in I. Young, "The Stabilization of the Biblical Text,"
380-382, and in particular the references in I. Young, "The Stabilization of the Biblical Text," 380, n.38.
Doudna’s position on an early deposit for the scrolls in the caves near Khirbit Qumran can be found in G.
Doudna, 4Q Pesher Nahum: A Critical Edition (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002) 683-754, espe-
cially as regards the use of palaeography for precise dating of internally undated texts. In particular,
Doudna points out that “in a situation of multiple sources of text production—which for the Qumran texts
is a certainty—typologically later simply cannot be assumed to mean chronologically later due to the possi-
bility, indeed likelihood, of different scribal habits occurring contemporaneously at different scribal cen-
tres” (G. Doudna, 4Q Pesher Nahum, 675). Further to this, Doudna asserts, the accepted chronological
stratification for the palaeographical development of Hebrew scripts between the first century B.C.E. and
the first century CE relies on a starting point that finds no support from any “internally dated Hebrew