Keter Shem Tov

Perspectives on Hebrew Scriptures and itsContexts

20

This series contains volumes dealing with the study of the HebrewBible, ancient Israelite society and related ancient societies, biblicalHebrew and cognate languages, the reception of biblical textsthrough the centuries, and the history of the discipline. The seriesincludes monographs, edited collections, and the printed version ofthe Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, which is also available online.

Keter Shem Tov

Essays on the Dead Sea Scrolls in Memory ofAlan Crown

Edited by

Shani Tzoref

Ian Young

9342013

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA

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Copyright © by Gorgias Press LLC2013

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2013 ܝ

9ISBN 978-1-61143-866-6 ISSN 1935-6897

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

International Conference on the Dead Sea scrolls (2011 :Mandelbaum House, University of Sydney) Keter shem tov : collected essays on the Dead Sea scrollsin memory of Alan Crown / edited by Shani Tzoref, Ian Young. pages cm. -- (Perspectives on Hebrew scriptures andits contexts, ISSN 1935-6897 ; 20) “This volume contains the proceedings of a conference onthe Dead Sea scrolls held in memory of the late emeritusprofessor Alan Crown in late 2011 at the University ofSydney, Mandelbaum House. This eclectic collection contains16 articles on a variety of topics within Qumran studies fromestablished scholars in the field such as Emanuel Tov, AlbertBaumgarten, William Loader and Shani Tzoref as well asexciting new voices in the field. Topics cover the full rangeof scholarly study of the scrolls, from the impact of theQumran discoveries on the study of the Hebrew Bible and theNew Testament to the study of the scrolls themselves and thecommunity organizations presupposed in them, focusing as wellon topics as diverse as sexuality, scribal practice and theattitude to the Temple in the scrolls.“--Summary. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-61143-866-6 (alk. paper) 1. Dead Sea scrolls--Congresses. I. Crown, Alan David.II. Tzoref, Shani. III. Young, Ian. IV. Title. BM487.I545 2013 296.1’55--dc23

2013034674

KETER SHEM TOV: ESSAYS ON THE

DEAD SEA SCROLLS IN MEMORY OF ALAN CROWN

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents ..................................................................................... v Abbreviations .......................................................................................... vii Introduction .............................................................................................. 1

Shani Tzoref and Ian Young

Eulogy for Alan Crown ........................................................................... 9 David Freedman

Part 1. Qumran Scholarship: Now and Then .................................... 15 Qumran Communities—Past and Present ................................ 17

Shani Tzoref

Part 2. Textual Transmission of the Hebrew Bible ........................... 57 The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The

Proximity of the Pre-Samaritan Qumran Scrolls to the SP .... 59 Emanuel Tov

―Loose‖ Language in 1QIsaa ....................................................... 89 Ian Young

The Contrast Between the Qumran and Masada Biblical Scrolls in the Light of New Data. ............................................ 113 Ian Young

Part 3. Reception of Scripture in the Dead Sea Scrolls .................. 121 A Case for Two Vorlagen Behind the Habakkuk

Commentary (1QpHab) ............................................................. 123 Stephen Llewelyn, Stephanie Ng, Gareth Wearne and

Alexandra Wrathall

―Holy Ones‖ and ―(Holy) People‖ in Daniel and 1QM ....... 151 Anne Gardner

What has Qohelet to do with Qumran?................................... 185 Martin A. Shields

4QTestimonia (4Q175) and the Epistle of Jude..................... 203 John A. Davies

vi KETER SHEM TOV

Plant Symbolism and the Dreams of Noah and Abram in the Genesis Apocryphon ............................................................ 217 Marianne Dacy

Part 4. Community and the Dead Sea Scrolls .................................. 233 What Did the ―Teacher‖ Know?: Owls and Roosters in

the Qumran Barnyard ................................................................. 235 Albert I. Baumgarten

Exclusion and Ethics: Contrasting Covenant Communities

in 1QS 5:1–7:25 and 1 Cor 5:1–6:11 ........................................ 259 Bradley J. Bitner

Eschatology and Sexuality in the So-Called Sectarian Documents from Qumran ......................................................... 305 William Loader

Part 5. The Temple and the Dead Sea Scrolls ................................. 317 A Temple Built of Words: Exploring Concepts of the Divine in the Damascus Document ......................................... 319

Dionysia A. van Beek

4Q174 and the Epistle to the Hebrews.................................... 333 Philip Church

The Temple Scroll: ―The Day of Blessing‖ or ―The Day of

Creation‖? Insights on Shekinah and Sabbath ......................... 361 Antoinette Collins

List of Contributors ............................................................................. 375 Index of Authors .................................................................................. 377 Index of Ancient Sources .................................................................... 385

113

THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE QUMRAN

AND MASADA BIBLICAL SCROLLS IN THE LIGHT OF NEW DATA. A NOTE IN LIGHT OF THE ALAN CROWN FESTSCHRIFT*

Ian Young

A Festschrift for Alan Crown was published in 2005 under the title: Feasts and Fasts A Festschrift in Honour of Alan David Crown. My contribution to that Festschrift was the article ―The Biblical Scrolls From Qumran and the Masoretic Text: A Statistical Approach.‖1 In that article I published a complete statistical survey of all the Second Temple period biblical manuscripts from the Judean Desert in comparison with the Masoretic Text (MT) of the Leningrad Codex (L). Among the conclusions reached in that study was that

* Thanks are due to Greg Doudna and Ian Hutchesson for

commenting on, and improving, earlier drafts of this article. Thanks are

also due to Yair Hoffman for asking the questions that led to its writing in

the first place. The views expressed, and any errors, are of course my own

responsibility. 1 Ian Young, ―The Biblical Scrolls from Qumran and the Masoretic

Text: A Statistical Approach,‖ in Feasts and Fasts A Festschrift in Honour of

Alan David Crown (ed. Marianne Dacy, Jennifer Dowling and Suzanne

Faigan; Mandelbaum Studies in Judaica 11; Sydney: Mandelbaum

Publishing, 2005), 81–139. The article is available for download on

http://usyd.academia.edu/IanYoung.

114 KETER SHEM TOV

the contrast between the fluidity of biblical manuscripts from the BCE period (Qumran, cf. the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint) and the stability of manuscripts from the CE era (the MT, related texts from the Judean Desert, and translations such as the Targumim, Aquila, etc.) not only involves the end of different literary editions of biblical passages, and of significant individual

variants, but also can be seen in the drastic reduction of the volume of minor variants.2

The article in the Alan Crown Festschrift developed the statistical approach to analyzing manuscript variation already used in an earlier article. The earlier article argued that ―[t]he Masada corpus of biblical texts is sharply different from the Qumran biblical texts.‖3 To support that contention I provided statistics relating to those books of the Hebrew Bible found at Masada—Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Ezekiel and Psalms. The Alan Crown Festschrift article provides a great deal more relevant data for this discussion, and corrects some of the earlier data. However, despite noting that the ―argument of that paper is strengthened by the full

statistics presented here,‖4 I did not spend any time summarizing the main points where the new data was relevant. The purpose of this short article is therefore to summarize the relevance of the full presentation of the data in the Alan Crown Festschrift for the argument that the assemblage of biblical texts at Qumran and Masada are in sharp contrast.

There are five biblical manuscripts from Masada which preserve a significant amount of text. By a ―significant‖ amount of

2 See also Ian Young, ―Textual Stability in Gilgamesh and the Dead

Sea Scrolls,‖ in Gilgamesh and the World of Assyria Proceedings of the Conference

Held at Mandelbaum House, The University of Sydney, 21–23 July 2004 (ed.

Joseph Azize and Noel Weeks; ANESSup 21; Leuven: Peeters, 2007),

173–84. 3 Ian Young, ―The Stabilization of the Biblical Text in the Light of

Qumran and Masada: A Challenge For Conventional Qumran Chrono-

logy?‖ DSD 9 (2002): 364–90; quote from p. 379. Cited approvingly, and

in detail, in Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (3d ed.;

Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), 29 with note 10. 4 Young, ―Biblical Scrolls,‖ 118.

THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE QUMRAN AND MASADA 115

text I mean at least 50 fully or partially preserved words. Examination of better preserved Qumran manuscripts demonstrates that a sample of such a size is likely to give an accurate indication of the nature of the manuscript as a whole.5 The so-called Masada manuscript of Genesis is thereby excluded since it contains only 11 partially or completely preserved words. It

is not possible on this basis to decide whether it is a copy of Genesis or of a Genesis apocryphon (it was previously considered a copy of Jubilees6 and exhibits three minor variants against Genesis in codex L). If a copy of Genesis, we cannot confidently extrapolate from this small sample to the nature of the manuscript as a whole. Even some medieval manuscripts, long after the stabilization of the biblical text, exhibit clusterings of a few minor variants against codex L in a short sample of text, but this clustering is atypical of the manuscript as a whole.7 Thus, for example, Kennicott‘s manuscript 30 registers three variants against codex L in 16 words in 1 Sam 1:9–11, and two within four words in 1 Sam 2:23, yet these proportions of words to variants are quite

foreign to the manuscript as a whole.8 Also excluded is the second Psalms manuscript from Masada, MasPsb which has only 29 words.

Of the five significantly preserved Masada manuscripts, it is striking that three of them have no variants against the MT of codex L at all. MasLeva has 61 words, MasLevb 456 words, and MasDeut has 69 words. Likewise, there are three biblical manuscripts from Qumran with 50 or more preserved words, and no variants. However, in stark contrast to the Masada evidence, these three are drawn from a total of 108 Qumran manuscripts with 50 or more words. In other words, at Masada three-fifths of

5 Young, ―Biblical Scrolls,‖ 82, 108–12. 6 Shemaryahu Talmon, ―Fragments of Scrolls from Masada‖

(Hebrew), ErIsr 20 (Sefer Yigael Yadin) (1989): 281–83. 7 Young, ―Biblical Scrolls,‖ 119–22; cf. Young, ―Stabilization,‖ 371. 8 Benjamin Kennicott, Vetus Testamentum Hebraicum cum Variis

Lectionibus (2 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1776–1780); cf. Young, ―Biblical

Scrolls,‖ 119–20.

116 KETER SHEM TOV

the biblical manuscripts with 50 or more words have no variants, or 60%, whereas at Qumran only 2.8% have no variants.9

All the manuscripts containing no variants are Torah manuscripts. If one only considers manuscripts of the Pentateuch, the contrast between Masada and Qumran is still stark. Three out of three or 100% of the Masada Torah manuscripts with 50 or

more words have no variants, whereas only three out of the 46 Qumran Torah manuscripts with 50 or more words have no variants, or a bare 6.5%.10 The absence of variants in the Masada Leviticus and Deuteronomy manuscripts links them to the Torah manuscripts from all the other Judean desert sites outside Qumran, which are usually considered to have been deposited in the context of the Bar Kochba revolt c.135 CE, i.e., Wadi Murabba‗at, Nahal Hever, Nahal Se‘elim and Wadi Sdeir.

The three Qumran manuscripts with 50 or more words and no variants consist of two copies of Genesis—4QGenb (357 words) and 4QGend (72 words)—and one of Deuteronomy—4QDeutg (133 words). In contrast to the two Masada manuscripts

of Leviticus, none of the eight Qumran Leviticus manuscripts with 50 or more words has no variants.11 In regard to the longest Qumran manuscript with no variants, 4QGenb, the editor has raised the possibility that it in fact does not originate from Qumran at all, but from another Judean desert site.12 This may raise concerns about other Qumran manuscripts as well.13 Even setting these concerns aside, it may be significant that two of the three Qumran manuscripts without variants are copies of Genesis. In

9 Young, ―Biblical Scrolls,‖ 104. 10 Ibid., 112–13. 11 Ibid., 87–88. 12 James R. Davila, ―4QGenb,‖ in Eugene Ulrich et al. (eds.), Qumran

Cave 4. VII. Genesis to Numbers (DJD 12; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 31. In

addition to the unusual closeness to the MT, Davila points out that the

leather is coarse and poorly prepared, unusual for Qumran; the script is

typologically late; and that no fragment of 4QGenb has been identified

among photographs of fragments recovered in controlled excavations

from Qumran Cave 4. 13 Young, ―Biblical Scrolls,‖ 84–85.

THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE QUMRAN AND MASADA 117

regard to Genesis at Qumran I concluded that ―the Genesis manuscripts from Qumran display a notable degree of stability, by and large, compared with the rest of the Qumran corpus‖14 and ―[t]he text of Genesis overall at Qumran is atypically similar to the MT.‖15 MT-like copies of Genesis are therefore less impressive than the MT-like Leviticus manuscripts from Masada.

The lack of variants in the Masada Deuteronomy is also more significant than the Qumran evidence from the same book given that the majority of the preserved text of Masada Deuteronomy is material from the textually volatile poem in Deuteronomy chapter 33.16 Contrast, for example, 4QDeuth, with 16 variants in 111 words of Deut 33, or one every 6.9 words. The Qumran Deuteronomy text with no variants, 4QDeutg, contains material from the middle sections of the book.17

Non-Torah manuscripts of the Bar Kochba era from outside Qumran do exhibit variants against the MT of Codex L. However, these occur much less commonly than in the same books from Qumran.18 The other two significantly preserved biblical

manuscripts from Masada are copies of Ezekiel and Psalms. In my study in the Alan Crown Festschrift I resurveyed all the material covered in my earlier study. This brought about a refinement of my criteria, which in turn led to a revision of the number of variants accepted for both MasEzek and MasPsa.19 In both cases the contrast of Masada and Qumran copies of these books becomes even clearer with the new statistics.

Both MasEzek and MasPsa have a lower concentration of variants than any Qumran manuscript of those books. In other

14 Young, ―Biblical Scrolls,‖ 84. 15 Ibid., 85. 16 Young, ―Stabilization,‖ 376. 17 Deut 9:12–14; 23:18–20; 24:16–22; 25:1–5, 14–19; 26:1–5; 28:21–25,

27–29. 18 For statistics relating to MurXII and 5/6HevPs see Young, ―Biblical

Scrolls,‖ 97–99. 19 Young, ―Biblical Scrolls,‖ 82, 134 nn. 36, 40. The criteria and my

methodology are set forth in detail on pp. 81–82, 128–29, and hence it is

possible, for anyone who wishes, to check my data.

118 KETER SHEM TOV

words they exhibit a higher proportion of words to variants. The Masada Ezekiel manuscript has 489 preserved words, and five variants, an average of 97.8 words for each variant. Of the three Ezekiel manuscripts from Qumran with 50 or more words, two have proportions in the 20‘s: 4QEzeka (28.4) and 4QEzekb (22.0). Even 11QEzek (58.0) which has the highest proportion of words

to variants of any of the 21 Qumran Latter Prophets manuscripts with 50 or more words, has a proportion significantly lower than MasEzek.20 In fact, not only is MasEzek different to every Qumran Ezekiel manuscript, and to every Qumran Latter Prophets manuscript, it has a higher ratio of words to variants than any Qumran non-Torah manuscript.

The vast majority of Qumran Psalms manuscripts have very low proportions of words to variants. In other words, they display significant clusterings of variants. Of the 13 Qumran Psalms manuscripts with 50 or more words preserved, eight have fewer than 20 words per variant and, of these eight, six have an average of less than ten words per variant. In this context, the fact that

MasPsb has 29 words and no variants, even though it is not counted as a significantly preserved manuscript, already marks it out as, at the very least, unusual in comparison with the Qumran Psalms manuscripts. MasPsa has four variants in its 284 words or a proportion of 71.0 words per variant. As with MasEzek this is higher than any Qumran Psalms manuscript. Further, this proportion may be due to special circumstances, since all but one of the variants occur in Ps 83:7–14. The rest of the manuscript contains over 200 words with only one variant.21 Even 71 words per variant, the lowest Masada proportion, is higher than all but one of the 62 Qumran non-Torah manuscripts with 50 or more words.22

In conclusion, at every point of comparison, the Masada biblical texts strongly contrast with the Qumran biblical texts. This phenomenon demands explanation, given that according to

20 Young, ―Biblical Scrolls,‖ 97. 21 Ibid., 98–100. 22 2QRutha has a slightly higher proportion of 75.0 words per variant

(two variants in 150 words).

THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE QUMRAN AND MASADA 119

scholarly consensus the Qumran (68 CE) and Masada (73 CE) texts were deposited at virtually the same time. The Masada biblical texts differ fundamentally in their character from the Qumran biblical texts. Instead, the Masada texts bear a much closer similarity to the texts deposited in the Bar Kochba era in that they display Torah texts without variants against the MT of Codex L, and non-Torah

texts with proportionately less variants than any Qumran texts of the same books. The explanation of the contrast between Qumran and Masada, I have argued, is found in the theories of G. L. Doudna and I. Hutchesson that the Qumran scrolls were deposited in the caves in the first century BCE, not 68 CE.23 A first century BCE dating would seem to be the easiest explanation for the lack of explicit references in the Qumran scrolls to historical events and people later than that date. Likewise, chronological distance would provide a convincing explanation for the difference between the Masada and Qumran biblical texts outlined here. I thus end this paper with the challenge with which I ended my 2002 paper: ―If the Qumran and Masada scrolls represent two deposits

of the Biblical texts in circulation during the second half of the first century CE, why are they of such utterly different natures?‛24

23 Young, ―Stabilization,‖ and the article in this volume, ―‗Loose

Language‘ in 1QIsaa,‖ 89–112, at 90, n.3. It should be noted that Alan

Crown was one of the first to see the strength of this new approach to the

Qumran scrolls, and approvingly discussed it on pages 4–5 of his own

iconoclastic work on the Scrolls: Alan David Crown, ―An Alternative

View of Qumran,‖ in Samaritan, Hebrew and Aramaic Studies Presented to

Professor Abraham Tal (ed. Moshe Bar-Asher and Moshe Florentin;

Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2005), 1*–24*. 24 Young, ―Stabilization,‖ 387.