OG show that verses 6-8 and 10 are a secondary insertion into chap. 10 in
the MT, 4QJera, though it agrees with the MT in its overall edition, none-
theless exposes a large secondary addition of eight verses in the MT at Jer.
7:30-34; 8:1-3. The original scroll, copied ca. 225-175b.c.e., lacked this
lengthy pair of passages; but a later scribe, palaeographically dated a cen-
tury or more later, about 100-50b.c.e., inserted them into the old text. He
squeezed three lines of tiny script into a horizontal space in the text, con-
tinued with four lines written down the left margin, and, since there was
yet more text, wrote a final line upside down in the bottom margin (DJD
15: 155 and plate 24). That this two-part passage was not part of the original
Jeremiah text is suggested by the fact that it is not closely related to the
context, that the prose insertion interrupts the flow ofthe poetic verse 7:29
into another logically followingpoetic verse8:4, and that the original
scribe’s omission of it would have required an unparalleled parablepsis in-
volving about twelve lines of text.Psalms
The evidence from Qumran and Masada also demonstrates that there were
at least two editions of the Psalter in antiquity. One manuscript from
Masada has Psalm 150 followed by a blank sheet at the end, showing that it
represented the same 150-psalm edition handed down in the MT. Cave 11,
however, held a beautiful and generously preserved scroll with Psalms that
was so different from the MT that many scholars, especially in the early de-
cades, considered it as nonbiblical. 11QPsa(see fig. 45) contains thirty-nine
Psalms known from the MT plus ten additional compositions. Shortly af-
ter it was published, there was a vigorous debate concerning its nature,
whether biblical or not. Its editor, James A. Sanders, considered it a biblical
scroll and thus listed “Ps” in the title, but other major scholars challenged
this classification. Their challenges included the following reasons: (1) the
psalms that are familiar as biblical psalms are presented in a sequence that
differs repeatedly from that of the MT; (2) the scroll includes additional
“nonbiblical” psalms not found in the MT; (3) it was characterized as “li-
turgical,” because even within the biblical Psalm 145 an antiphon is repeat-
edly added in contrast with the MT; (4) it includes in the midst of the
Psalms a prose piece, “David’s Compositions”; and (5) the tetragramma-
ton is written in the Paleo-Hebrew script, not in the normal Jewish script
used for the remainder of the scroll.135The Jewish Scriptures: Texts, Versions, CanonsEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
Tuesday, October 09, 2012 12:03:58 PM