CHAPTER 1
The "Biblical" Scrolls and Their Implications
For many, the first response to the question about the value of the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern biblical studies would be the copies of scriptural works found among them. The fact that many copies of books that later became part of the Hebrew Bible are represented among the fragments removed from the caves at Qumran has been trumpeted about as their greatest contribution to contemporary analysis and appreciation of the Bible. There have been numerous surveys of the scrolls finds that have been labeled "biblical," and the present chapter adds to that survey — but just briefly. It is worth covering the entire corpus if only because the situation has continued to change slightly right up to the present. More space will be devoted to examining the implications of these unquestionably significant finds. It is a fact that, among the more than 900 manuscripts identified by editors of the scrolls, approximately 200-210 qualify as copies of one or more scriptural books (although the status of the books in question is not always clear) — that is, copies of works which at some, apparently later time became parts of the Hebrew Bible. 1 If one adds those discovered at other Judean Desert sites, the numbe r jumps to approximately 230. The historical period in which the scrolls from the Qumran caves were transcribed begins in the third century B.C.E. and continues to the first century C E . , with most of them having been copied in the first century B.C.E. or 1. The remains of these copies have been gathered by Eugene Ulrich into a single volume: The Biblical Qumran Scrolls: Transcriptions and Textual Variants (VTSup 134; Leiden: Brill, 2010). the first C.E. 2 They come from a time many centuries before the earliest representative of the Masoretic Text (= MT, ca. 900 CE . ) and the most ancient codex of the Old Greek translation (= LXX, 4th century C.E. ). It is likely that the Qumran copies reflect the situation with respect to the text of scriptural books not only at the small site of Qumran but also throughout the land of Israel, as some of the scrolls — certainly the earliest ones — were brought to Qumran from elsewhere. NUMBE R O F COPIE S FRO M TH E QUMRA N CAVE S Only one of the many scriptural scrolls can be called complete, apart from a few scraps: iQIsaa contains the entire book of Isaiah. All of the other representatives of "biblical" books are fragmentary to one degree or another, usually to a very high degree. Except for one, every book in the Hebrew Bible is represented by at least one fragment among the Dead Sea Scrolls; the missing one is, of course, the book of Esther. Until recently one always had to add that there was no copy of Nehemiah either and to note that there is an absence of evidence from Qumran that Nehemiah was considered one book with Ezra, as it was later; in fact, there is practically no indication of the presence of either book at Qumran, whether of the text or influence from it. 3 A fragment with the text of Neh 3:14-15 has turned up, although it remains unpublished (possibly more than one fragment of the manuscript has survived). Some of the other books in the Hebrew Bible, it must be admitted, just barely make the list: a part of the text of Habakkuk, for instance, may appear on one small fragment (4QXII 8 frg. 102) where the editor, Russell Fuller, reads ΓΠΦ 1 [. He identifies the two words as coming from "Hab 2:4?" (the first three letters and the last are adorned 2. See B. Webster, "Chronological Index of the Texts from the Judaean Desert," in Ε. Τον, ed., The Texts from the Judaean Desert: Indices and an Introduction to the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Series (DJD 39; Oxford: Clarendon, 2002), 351-446. He includes fourteen "biblical" scrolls in the Archaic period (250-150 B.C.E. ), places 23 in the Late Herodian period (30-68 C.E. ), and two in the "Late to Post-Herodian period (4Q2, 4Q21) (see pp. 371, 375, for example). All of the earliest scriptural copies are of pentateuchal books, other than 4QJer a . 3. 4QEzra (4Q117) consists of three fragments preserving bits and pieces of Ezra 4:2-6, 9-11 ; 5:17-6:5 (see E. Ulrich. "4QEzra," in Ulrich et al., eds., Qumran Cave 4: XI, Psalms to Chronicles [DJD 16; Oxford: Clarendon, 2000], 291-93 and pi. 38). In an oddly anachronistic move, the text is labeled "4QEzra (= Ezra-Nehemiah)" in the list of Qumran mss. in DJ D 39 (p. 48). with supralinear circlets indicating a high degree of uncertainty in reading them). 4 Some others, like Chronicles, do not fare much better: 4QChr (4Q118) consists of one fragment with letters from two columns, with the text of the first column being unidentified and the second offering a few letters from four verses in 2 Chronicles (2 Chr 28:27-29:3). 5 Almost all the copies are inscribed in various styles of the square (or Assyrian) script, but twelve manuscripts were written in paleo-Hebrew (with three unidentified ones — 4Q124-125; 11Q22) and at least five in Greek. The list below gives the numbers of identified copies for each book of the Hebrew Bible. The numbers in the list may not be exact, since there are at times problems in determining whether a fragment belongs to a particular manuscript or whether one is dealing with pieces from what was once an entire book, but they should be nearly correct. The totals represented as "19-20" or "8-9" copies for a book indicate some uncertainty about whether a few fragments come from one or two copies; the numbers in parentheses express the actual number of scrolls involved, in cases where more than one book was copied on a single scroll (they are counted once for each book, thus the larger totals for some books). 6 Genesis 19-20 Minor Prophets 8-9 Exodus 17 (15) Psalms 36 Leviticus 13 (12) Job 4 Numbers 7(5) Proverbs 2 Deuteronomy 30 Ruth 4 Joshua 2 Song 4 Judges 3 Ecclesiastes 2 1-2 Samuel 4 Lamentations 4 1-2 Kings 3 Daniel 8 Isaiah 21 Ezra 1 Jeremiah 6 Nehemiah 1 Ezekiel 6 1-2 Chronicles 1 4. R. E. Fuller, "The Twelve," in E. Ulrich et al., eds., Qumran Cave 4: X, The Prophets (DJD 15; Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 316. 5. See J. Trebolle Barrera, "4QChr," in E. Ulrich et al., eds., DJ D 16:295-97. 6. Ε. Τον writes: "Although most of the scrolls contain only one biblical book, 5 Torah scrolls contain two consecutive books. . . . Likewise, the individual books of the Minor Prophets were considered as one book contained in one scroll"; Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (2nd rev. ed.; Minneapolis: Fortress/Assen: Van Gorcum, 2001), 103-4. The total for these figures, using the larger numbers in the uncertain cases, is 208; working with the smaller numbers in those instances, it is 201. If one adopts the larger number in each case and groups them by categories familiar from the later Hebrew Bible, there are 87 manuscripts containing pentateuchal texts, 54 with materai from the Prophets (Former Prophets, 12, and Latter Prophets, 42), and 67 with remains of the Writings. The books most frequently represented are: Psalms, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus — a group among which pentateuchal books are strongly in evidence, with the other canonical divisions of the Hebrew Bible represented by one member each.
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