Intertestamental, Apocrypha, NT Use: Qumran
- Intertestamental, Apocrypha, NT UseQumran
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A consideration of both the palaeographic and material features of a scroll provides scholars with the opportunity to investigate the scribal culture in which a particular manuscript [End Page 219] emerged. This article examines the papyrus opisthograph from Qumran containing 4Qpap-Hodayot-like Text B, 4Q433a, and 4QpapSerekh ha-Yaḥada, 4Q255, on either side. There has been scholarly disagreement about this opisthograph with regard to a number of questions: (1) which of the two compositions was inscribed on the recto?; (2) how should the two compositions be dated?; and (3) which of the two texts was written first? This article looks at both compositions from a palaeographic and codicological perspective, and on the basis of this combined approach concludes that 4Q433a was written first on the recto of the manuscript. 4Q255 was added later, on the verso. Both compositions can be dated to the early 1st cent. b.c.e. The proposed reconstruction makes it appear plausible that 4Q255 was a copy designed for personal use. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.]
Our study offers a new edition of Serekh ha-ʾEdah, the Rule of the Congregation from Cave 1 of Qumran (1QSa). Although this text has been the subject of several editions and studies since its original publication in 1955, a new edition is needed in light of recent findings. These include the identification and reconstruction of a copy of the Rule in cryptic script from Cave 4, as well as new methods for working with the available images of the Rule. The reconstruction of lacunae in our edition has been carried out with the use of digital tools, on the basis of actual letters preserved on the same scroll. We survey previous scholarship on 1QSa and provide a new edition of this (with transliteration, translation, and commentary) that includes several new readings, some changes in the placement of small fragments, as well as several new textual reconstructions. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.]
In this essay, C. seeks to reconstruct the textual growth of the Treatise of her title in light of parallels between it and other Qumran documents, i.e. Instruction and the Hodayot. She does so basing herself on previous scholarly findings, namely that only portions of the extant Treatise, i.e. 1QS 3:13–18 and 4:15–26 share strong similarities with Instruction and the Hodayot. C. begins by studying these previously identified similarities and argues that the Treatise represents a further development of ideas found in the Hodayot and Instruction. She then examines the Treatise in more detail in terms of its potential seams and layers. Ultimately, C. presents a theory concerning the Treatise’s major literary stages according to which an original core (1QS 3:13–14*, 3:15b-18a + 4:15–23a) was expanded both in the middle (with 1QS 3:18–4:14) as well as at the end (with 1QS 4:23b-26), this introducing certain additional nuances into the earlier form of the document. These later insertions transformed the basic schema of the original composition. Whereas the focus of that composition was on creation and the divinely predetermined course of history, in the course of its subsequent supplementation the Treatise came increasingly to reflect concerns with various kinds of divisions (dualisms), such as lists of vices and virtues as well as references to cosmic struggles and the inner struggles within human beings. C. does not, as yet, venture to suggest how and when the text’s literary expansion took...
