212a*. “The Sciences and the Analysis of the Ancient Scrolls: Possibilities and Impossibilities,” Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism … Collected Essays, Volume 3 (2015), 267–96 (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Qumran scrolls were written at different times and in different places in ancient Israel and it is therefore not expected that they would be of one kind. Indeed, there are many internal differences between the Qumran scrolls, but there are also many similarities between them, as would be expected for scrolls written in roughly the same period between the third century B.C.E. and the first century C.E. This study focuses on the special scribal characteristics of the corpus of Qumran scrolls as opposed to those from other sites in the Judean Desert and those dating from other periods.
Methodology, the Scrolls, and Origins
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1994
On this final day of the Scrolls conference we have dared to speculate on the origins of texts and, as an extension of that discussion, we hope to determine the identity of their authors-owners. Views have been advanced for Sadducean, Essene, Christian, and other origins. Because of this embarrassing array of conflicting viewpoints, for roughly a decade, I have been convinced that how we use our sources of information should ultimately supersede our desire to support any particular hypothesis. In this, I trust, we are in agreement. I continue to believe that the historian's task is not simply to collect, arrange, and interpret "relevant" historical reports. First, we must make decisions about the intention, character, trustworthiness, significance, and usefulness of each document or portion of a document. This applies especially to fragmentary, theological writings. Too often, I contend, we fail to scrutinize the great variety of ancient sources at our disposal. The typical approach represents-in one form or another-nothing less than decorating the narrative frameworks of 1-2 Maccabees, Josephus, the New Testament, and the Rabbinic writings. To this extent, scholars admit the difficulty of understanding the Scrolls. Six years ago, when I wrote my analysis of methodology in reconstructing Qumran history, I expressed my deep concern that the editors of 4QMMT were claiming that the author of this "letter" was none other than the Teacher of Righteousness and the intended recipient was the Wicked Priest known from a very small group of Dead Sea Scrolls. I observed at that time: According to their [the editors] preliminary indications ".. . there is not a shred of evidence in this document for the specific identities of the writer and the addressee of 4QMMT. It is claims such as these, which seem to persist largely unquestioned, that constitute the rarion d'hz fbr this investigation."' CALLAWAY, P. R 1988. "The History of the Qumran Community. An Investigation." Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. JSPSS 3: 8. 'Ain Feshka and 'An el-Ghuweir is consistent with that at Qumran and in the caves. P. Bar-Adon's dating of the ceramic data between 200 B.C.E. and 70 c.E., and even into the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt seems to be more acceptable than R. de Vaux and P. W. Lapp's pre-3l/post-31 B.C.E. (earthquake-induced) chronological schemati~ation.~ R. Smith's dating of Herodan lamps from 37 B.C.E. to 135 C.E. suits better the broader peri~dization.~ The coins found at Qumran range from the reign of Antiochus I11 (223 B.c.E.) to the second year of the First Revolt (68 c. E .) .~ Other coins associated with stratum 111, designated as a Roman occupation, date from 65 to Coins found in Qumran strata 1-11 represent Seleucid, Jewish, and Roman \ 133 C.E.7 2 ibid., 48. 4 IW., 48. IN., 42. IbJ. Dr. Donceel-Voute's contribution on the artiictual remains from Qumran urges us to explore the relationship between Qumran and its larger physical and social envimnment. 6 Ibid., 3 4 4 3 , 46-51. 7 ibid., 41. '9 Ibd., 164. 2O Ibkl., 178. 2' Ibid. 22 Ibkl., 246.
"Dating the Scroll Deposits of the Qumran Caves: a Question of Evidence" (2017)
Pp. 238-246 in: M. Fidanzio, ed., The Caves of Qumran: Proceedings of the International Conference, Lugano 2014. Leiden: Brill, 2017
This paper, presented at a Caves of Qumran international conference held at Lugano, Switzerland, in February 2014, and published in the conference proceedings Brill volume in 2017, argues that the scroll deposits in Qumran's caves happened in their entirety late first century BCE, not at the later First Jewish Revolt of the first century CE as has been universally supposed. It is argued that two striking large-scale data findings, unknown in the 1940s and 1950s but today well-developed and well-established, provide the argument and the evidence that the scroll deposits in Qumran's caves ended late first century BCE, earlier than commonly assumed. These two data finds, each independently established and now widely accepted, "like flashing beacons" signal that the Qumran scholarly mainstream has erred on the fundamental issue of the date of the era of scroll deposit activity in the Qumran caves. The overlooked conclusion indicated from these two large-scale data signals is that there do not exist any first century CE literary texts among the Qumran cave finds, either in dates of composition or dates of scribal copying--among the hundreds of scrolls found in the caves of Qumran. Once this is realized, the scrolls of Qumran's caves may take their rightful place in scholarly understanding as the remains of a lost textual world ending in the late first century BCE in their entirety. This article is the Accepted Version of the article available in its published form from Brill at https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004316508/B9789004316508\_018.xml .
The Judaean Desert documents (often named 'the Dead Sea Scrolls') constitute the largest corpus of texts in non-lapidary scripts providing information about scribal habits in early Israel relating to biblical and non-biblical texts. They may be compared with other texts in Hebrew and Aramaic in non-lapidary scripts, especially the large corpora of Elephantine papyri and other Aramaic manuscripts from the 5 th and 4 th centuries BCE. These two groups of documents are highly significant as comparative material for the present analysis; among other things, evidence shows that the manuscripts from the Judaean Desert continued the writing tradition of the Aramaic documents from the 5 th century BCE in several respects. For the purpose of this study, the following areas have been singled out from the many scribal aspects of manufacturing and preparing the Judaean Desert documents: the local production of written material in the Judaean Desert, special characteristics of the Qumran corpus, the reasons behind the scribal peculiarities of the Qumran corpus, internal differences between the Qumran caves, and chronological differences between the corpora.