Early Judaism- A Comprehensive Overview

Samuel like 4QSama, since he also narrates the content, details, and word-

ing of that otherwise lost paragraph (Ant.6.68-69).

Isaiah

The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa; see fig. 44) was the first and most dramatic

biblical manuscript to gain widespread fame. Especially because the text

displays multifaceted disagreement with the traditional MT, the assump-

tion was made that it was a Qumran text of Isaiah, that is, that its unusual

features were specifically due to the “sect” that lived at Qumran and copied

it there. A second Isaiah scroll (1QIsab) was also found in Cave 1 and by

contrast was quite close to the MT. It did indeed show that the medieval

MT of Isaiah had been copied with great accuracy over the intervening

thousand years. But whereas the two scrolls were first categorized as one

authentic text and one “vulgar” Qumran text, in fact they demonstrated —

though scholars could not yet realize it — the two principal lessons for the

biblical text from the new discoveries. The MT is, for the most part, an ac-

curate copy of some ancient text for each book; but importantly, there

were also valuable variant editions of many books in antiquity that had

been lost or discarded. Though the linguistic and orthographic profile of

1QIsaais generally secondary to that of the MT, its textual profile is earlier

in numerous cases. 1QIsaademonstrates that the MT displays a recurring

pattern of a sentence or more added to the text; in seven instances the MT

inserts secondary expansions of up to four verses where 1QIsaapreserves

the earlier short text.

Jeremiah

While several scrolls show that the edition they represent is at variance

with the MT, the scrolls of Jeremiah provide an example of two variant,

successive editions of the book visible among the scrolls themselves. Small

fragments of two manuscripts, 4QJerband 4QJerd, both from the second

centuryb.c.e., display in Hebrew the earlier, shorter edition with one ar-

rangement of the book that formed the basis of the OG translation. In

contrast, both 4QJera, from ca. 225-175b.c.e., and 4QJerc, from the latter

part of the first centuryb.c.e., have the later, more expanded edition with

a variant arrangement in agreement with the MT. Just as 4QJerband the

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eugene ulrich

EERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
Tuesday, October 09, 2012 12:03:58 PM