Early Judaism (2nd Temple, Greco-Roman) Research Papers (original) (raw)

This book is intended as a practical tool to facilitate access to the Qumran collection of Dead Sea Scrolls. As such, it is primarily intended for classroom use and for the benefit of specialists from other disciplines (scholars working on the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament or Rabbinic literature, specialists on Semitic languages, on the History of Judaism or on the History of Religions, among others) who need a reliable compendium of all the relevant materials found in this collection. As such, it is not intended to compete with, let alone to replace, the editio princeps of the materials published in the series Discoveries in the Judaean Desert or outside this series, or the preliminary publications of materials which have not yet appeared in the DJD Series. The plates printed in the critical editions, as well as the transcriptions, translations and commentaries of the first editors are, and will always remain, the basis of all serious work on the Scrolls.
Whereas the evidence of the biblical manuscripts from Qumran will be shortly available in The Qumran Bible by E. Ulrich, this book offers a fresh transcription and an English translation of all the relevant non-biblical texts found at Qumran, arranged by serial number from Cave 1 to Cave 11. By biblical scrolls we understand here the copies of the books that subsequently emerged as the traditional Hebrew Bible, as well as the remains of tefillin and mezuzot which only contain quotations of those biblical books. In several cases the distinction between biblical and non-biblical texts is not clear-cut. Thus, the so-called Reworked Pentateuch consists mainly of the biblical text of the pentateuchal books, be it sometimes in a different order, but also has some sections with material that is not included in the Hebrew Bible; likewise, we have included the non-biblical psalms from the Psalms Scrolls 4Q88, 11Q5 and 11Q6. Not included are the scant remains of Ben Sira from Cave 2. The inclusion in the edition of these ‘additions’ does not imply a judgment on their ‘biblical’ or ‘non-biblical’ character. In three cases we have included texts not found at Qumran, but related to manuscripts from Qumran; this goes for the remains of the mediaeval copies of the Damascus Document and the Aramaic Levi Document found in the Cairo Genizah, and for the copy of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice recovered at Masada.
The transcriptions of the material included in this edition are fresh transcriptions made by the authors, though it is a very pleasant duty to recognize the debt to all previous work by teachers and colleagues. Our transcriptions rely not only on the identification and placement of the many tens of thousands of fragments achieved by the original editors of the non-biblical scrolls, who arranged the fragments for the photographs made by the Palestine Archaeological Museum in the 1950s and 1960s, and the subsequent editions of these materials by the original editors, but also on all the editions done by other scholars.
Although we have consulted the available editions of the individual manuscripts, the responsibility for the transcriptions here presented is entirely ours. We have checked all the proposed readings against the photographs accessible to us: the photographs provided by the published editions, the photographs included in the Brill microfiche edition and the photographs available in the Oxford-Brill’s CDROM. In most cases one will find no or few significant differences from other transcriptions because these readings are imposed by the univocal manuscript evidence. In the case of ambiguous manuscript evidence, and in view of the practical purpose of this book, we have often adopted the suggestions of previous editors, rather than presenting alternative readings for the sake of originality and difference, even when such readings would be palaeographically or otherwise possible. The restorations of the text offered in the transcriptions are on the whole relatively sparse. The main exceptions are reconstructions based upon the preserved text of parallel copies of the same manuscript.
A considerable part of the materials was already accessible in translation in The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated. That translation has served as the base-text of the translations presented in this edition, but has been thoroughly checked and corrected by the authors. Of the greatest help for this revision was the Dutch translation by A.S. van der Woude included in F. García Martínez & A.S. van der Woude, De Rollen van de Dode Zee Ingeleid en in het Nederlands vertaald (Kampen: Kok, 1994, 1995). Although we have consulted most other translations of individual manuscripts, the responsibility for the translations here presented is also ours. The practical purpose of the book has shaped the final translation: to a large extent literal, neutral and close to the transcribed text, even if the outcome lacks finesse and is less fluent than some other presently available translations. On the whole the translation aims to be a translation of the transcribed text on the facing page. Exceptions have been made for texts like Tobit, Jubilees and 1 Enoch, where the translation fills in the lacunae on the basis of the known non-Hebrew versions for the benefit of the readers. Although we have tried to be generally consistent in the translation of technical terms, we have not established a chart of translation-equivalents to avoid imposing an uniform meaning upon texts which may be of different origin or of different epochs. Other differences of translation, and also, to some extent, method of transcription, may be attributed to the procedure followed by the authors: each author prepared his own lot, and revised the lot of the other author.
The practical purpose of the book has also governed the selection and the presentation of the materials. We have selected the materials on the basis of their extensiveness and interest, discarding most of the minute fragments which add little to our knowledge. On some occasions we have hesitantly opted for the inclusion of very small and insignificant fragments, only to provide some idea of the material remains of certain compositions, and in order not to leave too many entries empty. On the other hand, larger but, in our opinion, less interesting fragments from manuscripts have been omitted. This means that, in general, we present the largest fragments of a manuscript, and a selection of the smaller ones. Even so, many Q numbers from the different caves are exclusively made up of unidentified or unclassified fragments, and we have not attempted to reproduce these snippets. In spite of this, we consider this edition relatively complete for the nonbiblical scrolls, and as such it could be useful as a companion volume with transcriptions and translations for the users of the microfiche or the CD-ROM editions of the photographs of the manuscripts.
This same practical purpose has governed the presentation of the transcriptions. We have avoided all diacritical marks which indicate the degree of certainty of a reading. Readings which in our view are sufficiently assured or have a high degree of probability, even if the remains are minimal, are transcribed outside square brackets. When we are not reasonably assured of a reading, we have noted the letter within square brackets, as a reconstruction, or replaced it by one or more dots. We have not reproduced the extent of lacunae; three dots within square brackets ([…]) indicate any amount of missing text and three dots outside square brackets (]…[) any amount of unreadable (either undecipherable or meaningless) letters or words. Readings corrected by a copyist are indicated within accolades. The text printed within accolades ({…}) may represent erasures, letters with cancellation dots, or text otherwise marked by the copyist as not to be read. One particular type of scribal correction, the overwriting and reshaping of individual letters, has not always been presented in the transcription. The indication vacat in the transcription, and Blank in the translation, indicate any amount of space left blank in the manuscript, either intentionally (as indication of a new paragraph) or accidentally. Words written above the line or in Palaeohebrew characters in the manuscript are reproduced as such in our transcription. In only a limited number of cases we have indicated obvious mistakes in the text which have not been corrected by the copyist. Text presented within angled brackets (< >) was written in the manuscripts, but should, in our opinion, be read otherwise or be deleted. Text within round brackets either presents our addition to the text, or indicates our corrected reading of the preceding word or words.
The materials are arranged according to cave and serial number. For the materials which do not have a serial number (1QIsaa, 1QIsab, 1QHa, 1QM, 1QS, 1QapGen, 1QpHab, and the three included non-Qumranic texts)