“A Note on the Reading of שמונה and עמוד השני in 4Q186 2 i 7,” Revue de Qumrân 21/84 (2004): 635-641 (original) (raw)

"New Readings in 4Q256 (4QSb)," RevQ 30 (2018): 69-77 + Addendum

T HE most recent photographs of 4Q256, taken in 2012, offer new evidence for the transcription and reconstruction of some parts of the scroll. In what follows, I propose four new readings, and touch briefly on their implications. For each new reading, I have supplied the DJD transcription for reference, and have incorporated corrections made by Elisha Qimron where appropriate. The new readings differ from those found in the DJD and Qimron editions.

Ratzon, E., A New Reading of 4Q313. Revue de Qumran 121, 2023, pp. 3–15

Revue de Qumran, 2023

The present article proposes a new edition of the cryptic scroll 4Q313, based on the improved images at our disposal. The current readings do not support previous identification of this scroll as a copy of MMT. The very fragmented text might be related to a prayer for the healing of the misguided sinners. A paleographical analysis, based on the new reading, demonstrates that the handwriting of this scroll is very similar to that of 4Q298. This may imply that the two scrolls were penned by the same hand, but 4Q313 was written in a less formal script. * This paper was created as part of the work of Vered Noam, with decipherment and reconstruction by Eshbal Ratzon, 4QMMT: Some Precepts of the Torah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). I thank Avraham Yoskovitz, Naomi Hadad, and Noam Eisenstein for their help in preparing this paper's manuscript. I am also grateful to Émile Puech, Vered Noam, Charlotte Hempel, Jonathan Ben-Dov and Asaf Gayer for their valuable comments on earlier drafts, and the careful anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. 1 A very limited inventory of scrolls written in two other cryptic scripts (B and C) also exists in Qumran, but this paper will focus only on the Cryptic A scrolls.

The Poetry of 4Q416 2 III 15–19

Dead Sea Discoveries, 2006

The working hypothesis of John Strugnell and Daniel J. Harrington is that 4QInstruction (4Q415-418, also known as Instruction of the Maven and, in previous literature, Sapiential Work A) is composed with that standard device of ancient Hebrew poetry, parallelism, though they only tentatively assert its existence and question the degree to which it dominates the work. 1 They do not address the nature of this parallelism, nor do they opine on the structure of any poems within the text, other than to comment briefly on common topics or themes. Although a plethora of articles and books have appeared recently treating various aspects of this text, none to date thoroughly addresses its poetry. 2 As a first foray into this realm, therefore, I have analyzed a small segment of 4QInstruction, one that Strugnell and Harrington agree treats a common theme and one which I feel deserves 1 At two points at least the editors tentatively assert that "parallelismus membrorum" exists in the text and can be used to reconstruct the sense of broken passages (J. Strugnell and D.J. Harrington, Qumran Cave 4, Sapiential Texts, part 2: 4QInstruction [DJD 34; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999] 5, 17). A greater skepticism on the presence of parallelism in the text is expressed on page 177: "Parallelismus membrorum, though not necessarily observed in 4Q415ff.. . ." Harrington, on the other hand, comments that in Sirach and in 4QInstruction "the instructions are usually formulated with the aid of parallelism" ("Two Early Jewish Approaches to Wisdom: Sirach and Qumran Sapiential Work A," JSP 16 [1997] 26). 2 Strugnell and Harrington (DJD 34) mention "parallelism" occasionally in their commentary; Harrington in "Two Early Jewish Approaches to Wisdom" speaks of "synonymous and antithetical" parallelism (26), describes the organization of the material into short paragraphs (28), and emphasizes that the admonitions in 4QInstruction are accompanied by "reasons for following the advice" (28-29). D. Jefferies, by contrast, argues that the author of 4QInstruction does not write with parallelism, but with the "Hellenistic monostich" (Wisdom at Qumran: A Form-Critical Analysis of the Admonitions in 4QInstruction [Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2002] 320). His assertion is not supported by the present study that finds, in fact, much parallelism in 4QInstruction.

Pre-print: Four Unidentified Fragments from 4QJob a (4Q99) — Revue de Qumrân (RevQ)

Revue de Qumrân, 2020

We provide readings and identifications for three fragments assigned to 4QJob a (4Q99), as well as one fragment from this manuscript that has been misattributed to 4QS b (4Q256). All four fragments correspond to a brief passage, Job 37:13–19, and all derive from a single column. Nous fournissons de nouvelles lectures et identifications pour trois fragments attribués à 4QJob a (4Q99), ainsi qu'un fragment de ce manuscrit qui a été mal attribué à 4QS b (4Q256), malgré le fait qu'il appartient à 4QJob a. Les quatre fragments correspondent tous à un bref passage, Job 37:13–19, et proviennent tous d'une seule colonne.