Of the manuscripts found in the eleven caves near the site of Qumran, approximately 130 – just over 14 percent – are written in the Aramaic language.1 To date, between thirty and forty different compositions have been detected among these manuscripts.2 Among the original seven scrolls to be discovered in Qumran Cave 1 by the now-legendary Bedouin herdsmen, only one was composed in Aramaic. At first, this manuscript was called simply “the Fourth Scroll,” since it could not be unrolled due to its layers of skin being stuck firmly together from millennia of storage. The Fourth Scroll was eventually, painstakingly opened to reveal the longest of all the Aramaic scrolls, the so-called Genesis Apocryphon (1Q20). However, this step occurred nearly a decade after the six Hebrew scrolls had been opened, during which time intensive study of the Hebrew scrolls had commenced with great vigor and international acclaim. If the Genesis Apocryphon was a bit late to the party, the same could be said for study of the Aramaic scrolls from the Qumran caves more generally, the large majority of which were published by Émile Puech in 2001 (DJD 31) and 2009 (DJD 37). The overwhelming bulk of research on the Qumran scrolls to date has been dedicated to study of the Hebrew texts, and to two distinctive sub-groups in particular: the books contained in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament – often referred to as the “biblical” scrolls – and a group of distinctive “sectarian” writings presumably associated with an Essene movement, or movements, at least part of which settled at Qumran beginning sometime during the late second or early first century BCE.3 While this focus on the Hebrew texts is not surprising, it has resulted in study of the Aramaic scrolls languishing by comparison.
Despite the imbalance between past treatment of the Hebrew and Aramaic Qumran scrolls, much may be lauded about the excellent work done on the latter group since the 1950s by scholars such as Józef Milik, Joseph Fitzmyer, Klaus Beyer, Émile Puech, Devorah Dimant, and many others. These scholars have made significant, lasting contributions to our understanding of the Qumran Aramaic literature, much of which was unknown before its discovery in the Judean Desert in the mid-twentieth century. The vast majority of these contributions have been in the areas of text editions, studies of individual manuscripts, texts, or text-groups (e.g., the Enoch scrolls or the Aramaic Levi Document), and the contribution of these scrolls to our knowledge of the Aramaic language. Those occasional comments that have been made on broader literary or thematic aspects of these works have provided glimpses of their distinctive voice within early Judaism and their rich, multi-faceted connections to the subsequently canonized (primarily Hebrew) Jewish scriptures. Moreover, the secondary tools for those who wish to study in detail the Aramaic literature kept at Qumran have flourished of late, most notably with the concordance and dictionary of Edward Cook, and the grammars of Ursula Schattner-Rieser and Takamitsu Muraoka. These resources will serve generations of students and scholars as the Aramaic scrolls become better known and more widely studied.4
This book is intended to extend the study of these scrolls in a new direction, providing a comprehensive assessment of their manuscript features, language, and scribal practices in order to encourage and facilitate comparison both across the Qumran Aramaic corpus and with other ancient textual corpora. As a result, the book may serve as an advanced introduction to many aspects of the Aramaic scrolls from the Qumran caves. A set of nearly ninety profiles – one for each significant manuscript – forms the core of this book, the layout and contents of which will be discussed further below in this introduction. In two thematic chapters, following the profiles, I make broader observations about the corpus, derived from the profiles. The first treats the Aramaic language of the scrolls, aimed primarily at assessing the question of dialectical coherence across the corpus. The second looks at the physical features of the profiled manuscripts and the scribal practices found in them, offering a synthetic overview of the scope and types of features found.
A basic, guiding question throughout my work on this project has been: In what ways do the Aramaic scrolls from the Qumran caves constitute a textual “corpus,” as physical objects produced by Jewish artisans and scribes? To this question many others may be added. Are scribal practices, such as corrections, consistent across the corpus? Is the Aramaic language of a similar style and register? Are there patterns, for example, in the palaeographic dating and contents of the scrolls? Why was Aramaic used as the language of composition or translation, rather than Hebrew or another language? I hope to have provided here some of the information necessary to better answer questions like these.
This book is intended to be a resource for those studying the Aramaic Qumran literature from a variety of angles, but for me it has one, overarching purpose: To serve as the prolegomenon to a subsequent study on the contents and literary character of this literature, considered as a corpus. Such a study must inevitably deal with questions of dating, social background, and coherence of linguistic dialect, but questions like these are difficult to answer convincingly without the kind of detailed, extended analysis provided in this book. The value of such a corpus-wide view in studying these texts can be illustrated by taking stock of some major trends in previous scholarship. Such an overview also serves as a good starting point for study of the corpus by those unfamiliar with it.
1 The Current State of Research: The Aramaic Scrolls in the Context of the Qumran Library and Second Temple Judaism
Although only a few scholars have sought to elaborate what distinguishes the Aramaic texts as a group from the other, non-Aramaic texts at Qumran, a measure of agreement has coalesced around a few basic points. First, some have judged that the Aramaic scrolls generally lack the sectarian ideology and language that marks a significant portion of the non-biblical, Hebrew literature.5 The origins of the Aramaic texts should, therefore, be located outside the Essene communities that produced the sectarian texts. It has now grown quite common for scholars to assume that the Aramaic scrolls are “non-sectarian,” which usually implies that they were “non-Qumranic” in origin, and perhaps (though not necessarily) “non-Essene” as well. Second, some go a step further by maintaining that the Aramaic literature also predates the Hebrew sectarian writings; that is, it is deemed “pre-sectarian,” “pre-Qumranic,” or “pre-Essene,” with each of these designations having slightly different nuances and implications.
An opinion along these lines was offered already in 1957 by Milik, who was originally responsible for editing many of the Qumran Aramaic texts. Assuming the Qumran sectarians to be Essenes, he wrote,
The discovery of the Qumrân library fills in this gap [i.e., of our knowledge of Greco-Roman period Jewish literature] in a fairly substantial way; it provides us not only with strictly Essene writings, but also with a selection of other books that they copied, works composed before and during the time of the community’s occupation of Qumrân. The works that were written before the community came to Qumrân were mainly pseudepigraphical, (with themes especially of priestly interest and usually written in Aramaic) liturgical and sapiential. Some works, such as Tobit, the Description of the New Jerusalem and an astrological book, survive in both Hebrew and Aramaic copies. This can be explained, if we consider it as part of the literary and national renaissance which was mentioned above; works that had earlier been composed in Aramaic were later translated into Hebrew.6
This paragraph is packed with early insights into the Aramaic literature from Qumran, many of which would be echoed in later scholarship. Milik clearly considered a number of Aramaic texts from Qumran to be specially marked by a “pseudepigraphic” style and “themes of priestly interest,” though he does not say that this applies to all the Aramaic works. He also took them to be part of the books copied, but not composed, by those who wrote the “strictly Essene writings.” Finally, he suggested that at least some of the Aramaic writings belonged to “the period before the community came to Qumrân,” an arrival that Milik thought occurred sometime during the reign of John Hyrcanus (135–104 BCE).7
In a later article, published in 1978, Milik wrote more specifically about a number of Qumran Aramaic texts focused on the patriarchal figures of Enoch, Noah, Levi, Judah, Joseph, Jacob, and Abraham, the bulk of which he considered to be “écrits préesséniens.”8
Les pseudépigraphes passes en revue ont tous été, à mon avis, composes en langue araméenne; on ne manqué pas cependant de les traduire en hébreu. Une bonne partie d’entre eux est d’origine samaritaine; on ne negligee point d’en faire une version judéenne. Par consequent, à l’époque perse, et probablement bien avant, existait déjà une riche littérature juive, véhiculée par la lingua franca des empires successifs: assyrien, chaldéen, perse, grec.9
Though Milik’s notion of Samaritan authorship has been widely rejected, he described a time in the Persian and Hellenistic eras during which “a rich Jewish literature already existed,” composed and transmitted in Aramaic. According to Milik, it is this literature that we find preserved fragmentarily in the Qumran caves. It is worth noting that Milik’s comments seem to assume a general, chronological priority for the Aramaic literature compared with the Hebrew non-biblical texts.
Another early voice for separating the Aramaic Scrolls from the Hebrew ones, on more than linguistic grounds alone, was the Czech scholar of Semitic languages Stanislav Segert. In 1963, writing primarily on the topic of the languages of the Qumran scrolls, Segert remarked that
Diese Verteilung der Qumrānschriften nach der Sprache könnte auch für Erwägungen über die Herkunft einzelner in der Qumrānhöhlen gefundener Schriften herangezogen werden. Bei den hebräischen außerbiblischen Schriften wird es sich, soweit kein Gegenbeweis vorliegt, um essäische Erzeugnisse handeln, während die Schriften fremden Ursprungs eher unter den aramäischen gesucht werden können.10
Here the Aramaic writings are identified with “works of foreign origin” as opposed to the “Essene products,” a sentiment expressed again some years later in a review of Joseph Fitzmyer’s 1966 commentary on the Genesis Apocryphon,
Fitzmyer’s well-founded statement that there is no certain indication for the Essene origin of the Genesis Apocryphon (cf. pp. 10–11) can be supported by the fact that the book is written in Aramaic. All the Qumran writings of certain Essene origin published as yet are in Hebrew, which was the official language of the Qumran community…; therefore for these Aramaic texts an external origin is very probable indeed.11
Segert said nothing about the chronological situation of the two groups of texts, but clearly held the Aramaic texts to be cut from a different cloth than the Essene Hebrew literature. It has now become quite common for scholars to note the “non-sectarian” and/or “pre-sectarian” character of the Aramaic scrolls from Qumran.12
Both Milik and Segert discerned fundamental differences between the non-biblical Aramaic and Hebrew literatures from the Qumran caves, but what may be said of the unity of the Aramaic corpus in its own right? Does an external, non-sectarian origin for the composition of the Aramaic works also imply that they constitute what Ben-Zion Wacholder called “a single class of literature”?13 I noted above Milik’s comments on the literature’s pseudepigraphic and priestly traits, though he never claimed that this characterized all of the Aramaic works. A certain level of group coherence also seems to be implied in Klaus Beyer’s brief introduction to his collection of “alttestamentlichen Apokryphen,” which comprised only literary Aramaic texts from Qumran.14 The title of Florentino García Martínez’s 1992 monograph Qumran and Apocalyptic, which is a collection of independent studies on Aramaic works from Qumran, also hints at the apocalyptic character of a number of these texts, even if there was little extended reflection there on the corpus as a whole.15 Shortly afterwards, Devorah Dimant likewise stressed that “most of the texts which can be termed apocalypses or which involve related themes and styles are written in Aramaic rather than in Hebrew.”16
It was in 1990, however, that Wacholder made the first explicit and comprehensive attempt at articulating the interrelationship of Jewish Aramaic writings from roughly 500 BCE (Jer 10:11) to around 165 BCE (the final form of Daniel), including but not limited to the Qumran materials. He gathered his discussion around four loosely-defined themes: Texts and Traditions from Mesopotamia and Syria, Targums, Amplifications of Genesis and Exodus, and Judaism Confronts Paganism. Also discussed were some additional “leading ideational and aesthetic components of the pre-Qumranic Aramaic literature” (heptadal numerology, dream interpretation, an especially “didactic flavor,” and an eschatological focus).17 Wacholder advocated a “hypothesis of interrelationship” for the “pre-Qumranic Judaeo-Aramaic literature,” which presupposed “the existence of a scribal culture almost certainly international in scope.”18 Like Milik, Wacholder held that this distinctive, Aramaic literary tradition waned with the national awakening of the Hasmonean period, at which time a renewed effort to compose literature in Hebrew emerged.19 In his opinion, Aramaic was chosen as the language of composition because it allowed the authors of these works “to disseminate what they perceived to be the distinctive message of the Jewish religion as broadly as possible.”20
The past decade has seen increased interest in what distinguishes the Qumran Aramaic works from their Hebrew counterparts, most notably with the ongoing work of Dimant, García Martínez, and Eibert Tigchelaar. Dimant has embraced the non-sectarian character of the Aramaic texts for decades, and in a 2007 article sought to delineate further what sets them apart as a distinct group within the Qumran library.21 She organized the various Aramaic works into six categories: 1.) Works about the Period of the Flood; 2.) Works dealing with the History of the Patriarchs; 3.) Visionary Compositions; 4.) Legendary Narratives and Court-Tales; 5.) Astronomy and Magic; and 6.) Varia. Dimant concluded that these headings capture some of the prominent thematic affinities of the Aramaic literature kept and copied at Qumran, and that we should consider it a specific group, “segments of an unknown Jewish Aramaic literature from Second Temple times.”22 These views were further elaborated in the published proceedings of the first academic conference dedicated exclusively to the Aramaic texts from Qumran, held in Aix-en-Provence, France, in 2008.23 In the same volume, García Martínez drew attention again to the apocalyptic character of “a disproportionately large number” of Aramaic texts from Qumran when compared with other groups of Jewish writings from around this period, a point also made by Lorenzo DiTommaso at the Aix conference.24 Tigchelaar contributed further to this discussion with a pair of studies. In the first, devoted primarily to identifying the lost literary figure associated with the Aramaic New Jerusalem text, he observed that “[t]he vast majority of the Aramaic narrative texts found amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls belong to two main categories, namely: 1.) texts related or ascribed to pre-Mosaic figures (Enoch, Noah?, Abraham, Jacob, Judah?, Levi, Qahat, Amram), or 2.) narratives that have an Eastern Diaspora setting (Tobit, proto-Esther, Nabonidus, Daniel).”25 In a second article, Tigchelaar articulated a fundamental difference of approach in how the Aramaic and non-biblical Hebrew texts at Qumran handled earlier Jewish scriptural books: while the Aramaic texts engage in freely rewriting and building upon received authoritative writings, the Hebrew sectarian texts usually interact more explicitly with the received traditions through quotation or direct allusion.26
Several scholars have attempted to explain why Aramaic was chosen to compose the works from Qumran written in that language, and their proposals should ideally be coordinated with the points raised above. Both Bickerman and Wacholder thought that these works were composed in Aramaic in order to make them widely available to Jews living throughout the diaspora, and to give them a cosmopolitan aura grounded in the reality of Aramaic as an international prestige language through the Persian and Hellenistic periods.27 That is to say, the choice of language depended largely on the intended audience of this body of literature, and on a certain intellectual cachet that accompanied Aramaic. An explanation linked more closely to the genre or literary characterization of a particular work was advocated by Dimant, and later extended by Jonathan Ben-Dov.28 Both argue that language choice coordinates with Tigchelaar’s observation that the Aramaic texts from Qumran cluster around the historical eras of the patriarchs and matriarchs on the one hand, and the exilic era on the other. Aramaic is held to better reflect these two historical periods in the eyes of whoever wrote these texts, so that the choice of Aramaic lends them a certain historical verisimilitude. While this is an area deserving of further study, I find the explanations of Bickerman and Wacholder to be more convincing.29
This brief, preliminary sketch of the growing discussion about the Aramaic scrolls from Qumran, as a corpus, may be summarized in the following three points:
-
The Aramaic scrolls are largely or wholly non-sectarian, non-Essene, or non-Qumranic, insofar as they do not exhibit the concerns or literary styles present in the Essene sectarian writings (which comprise a significant percentage of the Hebrew, non-biblical Qumran texts). This implies that the Aramaic literature came to the Qumran library from outside the community responsible for writing the sectarian literature. In keeping with this position, Collins judged that “it was probably a segment of popular Jewish literature from the Hellenistic period.”30
-
The Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls are largely or wholly pre-sectarian, pre-Essene, or pre-Qumran in their composition, insofar as they belong to a generally earlier period of Jewish history and literature than the Essene sectarian writings. As such, the earlier Aramaic literature may have influenced the later sectarian authors, but the opposite should not be expected. Related to this point, the shift from Aramaic to Hebrew is often associated by scholars with the era of the Hasmonean revolt (mid-second cent. BCE) and a return to or revivification of the Hebrew language.31
-
At least some of the Aramaic texts from the Qumran caves display features that warrant their study as a distinctive corpus of interrelated literature, presumably issuing from a shared historical and social location for their composition.
If all three of these points were to be adopted, they lead to the important realization that we have in the Aramaic literature from Qumran a relatively extensive collection of pre-Hasmonean Jewish writings, the breadth and content of which far exceeds what we possessed prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Consequently, these texts open a window onto a dynamic period of Jewish history for which we have few written sources and many lingering questions.
However, it is not yet clear that all of the points listed above are correct. Some doubts and complications have been voiced with regard to each one, and these must not be passed over unacknowledged. The greatest consensus has been reached for the first point, the non-sectarian character of the Aramaic texts. Yet even this has recently been questioned by García Martínez, who suggested that scholars should not be too quick to consider the Aramaic texts non-Essene or non-Qumranic, since even the latter categories are still being negotiated.32 Nonetheless, wide scholarly consensus on this point remains, for good reason, and García Martínez fails to provide any compelling evidence for reversing the current opinion. The pre-sectarian classification of the Aramaic texts, while often accepted, has run into greater opposition. This resistance has typically centered on the Aramaic dialect of the texts, following in the wake of an influential 1958 study on the language of the Genesis Apocryphon by Yehezkel Kutscher.33 Kutscher chose a limited set of linguistic traits and, through a careful comparison of texts, judged the Genesis Apocryphon to date to the first century BCE or first century CE. This dating has been followed by a number of scholars – most notably Joseph Fitzmyer – and would place one of our longest, best-preserved Aramaic scrolls after the “pre-Qumran” period and the Hasmonean period Hebrew shift advocated by Milik and Wacholder. Other scholars have argued that the Aramaic linguistic profiles of different Qumran texts suggest geographical variation, such as Muraoka’s proposal that the Job translation from Cave 11 preserves a more eastern dialect.34 The dating of the Aramaic of different texts to distinct periods or locales would not necessarily affect point one above, but it could pose serious problems for points two and three. This topic will be discussed more fully in Chapter 3, on language, though it may be said here that the factor of the Aramaic dialect(s) of the Qumran scrolls has now become closely intertwined with questions of dating and compositional origin, and is, therefore, very important for any comprehensive assessment of them. A major goal of the present study is to gather the data necessary to evaluate the issues surveyed above.
2 Delineating the Corpus
Some of the greatest difficulties in writing this book have concerned the foundational decisions of which texts to include, and what factors to measure for eventual comparison. It is obvious that, to a great extent, such decisions predetermine the results of the study, and at its core reflect my own interests and questions. These interests and questions are primarily social, historical, and theological in nature: Who wrote these texts, and to whom? Can we discern distinctive streams of thought among them? Are there indicators of where and when they were written? Which religious beliefs and convictions do they reflect? What sorts of social practices are advocated in them? For what purposes were they written? All of these questions contribute in some way to the more fundamental question of where these texts fit within the broader landscape of Second Temple period Judaism.
An initial task, then, is to delineate the group of texts that will comprise the focus of my study. The group chosen for specific treatment includes all Aramaic literary texts found in the eleven caves associated by most scholars with Khirbet Qumran, and well-preserved enough to give us some sense of their contents, language, and scribal character. This, of course, excludes a number of fragments that are unidentified or provide little insight for an introductory study of this sort. Occasionally, one of these fragments may be mentioned in connection with better-preserved manuscripts, and a full list of the Aramaic manuscripts, including these small fragments, is provided in Tov, Revised Lists (though mixed among non-Aramaic manuscripts).
The translations of Job from Caves 11 (11Q10) and 4 (4Q157) are special cases, since unlike all other texts examined here they are known to have been composed originally not in Aramaic, but in Hebrew. Nevertheless, the fact that Job was translated into Aramaic at some place and time during the Second Temple period is significant, and these scrolls will therefore be included in my study, primarily for material and linguistic analysis. One may also include here the so-called Leviticus Targum from Cave 4 (4Q156), though Fitzmyer and others have expressed some reservation over pronouncing this manuscript a translation (or targum) of the book of Leviticus based on the small amount of text preserved.35
Another special case is the cache of documentary texts – such as land deeds, bills of sale, loan receipts, and other contracts – originally attributed to Cave 4.36 These are of a decidedly different character than the literary compositions, and are comparable to a number of other documents found in various locations throughout the Judean Wilderness (e.g., Nahal Hever, Nahal Seelim [i.e., Wadi Seiyal], and Wadi Murabbaat).37 Many of these documentary texts, including those allegedly from Cave 4, were not unearthed in controlled archaeological excavations, but were delivered to Bethlehem or Jerusalem by members of the Bedouin tribe during the 1950s (as were many of the Qumran Scrolls more generally). Since then, the provenance of the Cave 4 documentary texts has been disputed, and based on convincing evidence it doubtful that they should be attributed to that cave, or to the site of Qumran.38 Instead, they seem to have come from other sites in the Judean Desert. Consequently, those documents will not be included in this volume.
Finally, a few words should be said about the place of the Aramaic portions of the Book of Daniel (2:4b–7:28) in this project. In previous scholarship Daniel has typically been treated as one of the “biblical” texts from Qumran, and not as one of the Aramaic scrolls (in the rare event that they are discussed as a corpus). As evidence of this we need look no further than the lengthy edition of Die aramäischen Texte vom Toten Meer by Klaus Beyer, in which Daniel found no place, or the distinguished official editions of the Dead Sea Scrolls published by Oxford, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, where Daniel is justifiably treated in the volumes dedicated to Biblical Texts (and not in those dedicated to the Aramaic Texts). It is easy to see why this separation has taken place, since Daniel has secured an important place in the Jewish and Christian canons. Yet, there is a sense in which this distinguishes between texts that are quite naturally and strikingly related if we think outside of (or better, prior to) the boundaries of canon that, at least in the case of Daniel, were not as clearly defined in the second to first centuries BCE as they would be four or five centuries later. For this reason I have chosen to consider those manuscripts containing the Aramaic portions of Daniel among the Qumran Aramaic scrolls in hopes of gaining a better appreciation for Daniel’s place among these texts. A further decision in the case of Daniel is whether to include manuscripts currently containing only Hebrew text from Dan 1:1–2:4a or 8–12, since we might reasonably assume that they once contained Aramaic as well. For reasons of economy, and because we cannot be entirely sure of the missing contents of the Hebrew-only manuscripts (4QDanc, e, 6QpapDan), I have chosen not to include them in the following manuscript profiles.
The single, fragmentary manuscript of Ezra found in Cave 4 (4Q117) has been included for purposes of comparison, although it is of a different compositional nature than Daniel, and in my opinion somewhat less closely associated with the main corpus of Aramaic writings kept and copied at Qumran. The issues of composition and coherence in Daniel and Ezra is discussed against the backdrop of the broader Qumran Aramaic corpus in the section on language (Chapter 3). While Daniel and Ezra are included in this study, the very brief snatches of Aramaic found in Gen 31:47 and Jer 10:11 are not. No copy with the relevant verse of Genesis has been found at Qumran, though a few words of Jer 10:11 are found in 4QJera 5i.3–4 and 4QJerb 7. The brief appearance of Aramaic at these points is interesting, but these are very short passages in Hebrew books, which do not comprise substantial Aramaic compositions in their own rights. As a result, I consider them to be of a different nature than the Aramaic texts treated below.
In light of the above discussion, the manuscripts included in this volume are:39
From Enoch through Abram
-
1. 4Q201 (Enocha)
-
2. 4Q202 (Enochb)
-
3. 4Q204 (Enochc)
-
4. 4Q205 (Enochd)
-
5. 4Q206/4Q206a (Enoche/Book of Giantsf)
-
6. 4Q207 (Enochf)
-
7. 4Q208 (Astronomical Enocha)
-
8. 4Q209 (Astronomical Enochb)
-
9. 4Q210 (Astronomical Enochc)
-
10. 4Q211 (Astronomical Enochd)
-
11. 4Q212 (Enochg)
-
12. 1Q23 (Book of Giantsa)
-
13. 1Q24 (Book of Giantsb)
-
14. 2Q26 (Book of Giants)
-
15. 4Q203 (Book of Giantsa)
-
16. 4Q530 (Book of Giantsb)
-
17. 4Q531 (Book of Giantsc)
-
18. 4Q532 (Book of Giantsd)
-
19. 4Q533 (Book of Giantse)
-
20. 6Q8 (papBook of Giants)
-
21. 4Q529 (Words of Michael)
-
22. 4Q571 (Words of Michaela)
-
23. 6Q23 (papWords of Michael)
-
24. 4Q534 (Birth of Noaha)
-
25. 4Q535 (Birth of Noahb)
-
26. 4Q536 (Birth of Noahc)
-
27. 1Q20 (Genesis Apocryphon)
From Jacob through Aaron and His Family
-
28. 4Q537 (Testament of Jacob?)
-
29. 1Q32 (New Jerusalem?)
-
30. 2Q24 (New Jerusalem)
-
31. 4Q554 (New Jerusalema)
-
32. 4Q554a (New Jerusalemb)
-
33. 4Q555 (New Jerusalemc)
-
34. 5Q15 (New Jerusalem)
-
35. 11Q18 (New Jerusalem)
-
36. 4Q538 (Testament of Judah/Words of Benjamin)
-
37. 4Q539 (Testament of Joseph)
-
38. 1Q21 (Levi)
-
39. 4Q213 (Levia)
-
40. 4Q213a (Levib)
-
41. 4Q213b (Levic)
-
42. 4Q214 (Levid)
-
43. 4Q214a (Levie)
-
44. 4Q214b (Levif)
-
45. 4Q540 (Apocryphon of Levia?)
-
46. 4Q541 (Apocryphon of Levib?)
-
47. 4Q542 (Testament of Qahat)
-
48. 4Q543 (Visions of Amrama)
-
49. 4Q544 (Visions of Amramb)
-
50. 4Q545 (Visions of Amramc)
-
51. 4Q546 (Visions of Amramd)
-
52. 4Q547 (Visions of Amrame)
-
53. 4Q548 (Visions of Amramf)
-
54. 4Q549 (Visions of Amramg?)
The Assyrian to Persian Exiles
-
55. 4Q196 (papTobita)
-
56. 4Q197 (Tobitb)
-
57. 4Q198 (Tobitc)
-
58. 4Q199 (Tobitd)
-
59. 1Q71 (Daniela)
-
60. 1Q72 (Danielb)
-
61. 4Q112 (Daniela)
-
62. 4Q113 (Danielb)
-
63. 4Q115 (Danield)
-
64. 4Q243 (Pseudo-Daniela)
-
65. 4Q244 (Pseudo-Danielb)
-
66. 4Q245 (Pseudo-Danielc)
-
67. 4Q246 (Apocryphon of Daniel)
-
68. 4Q242 (Prayer of Nabonidus)
-
69. 4Q552 (Four Kingdomsa)
-
70. 4Q553 (Four Kingdomsb)
-
71. 4Q553a (Four Kingdomsc)
-
72. 4Q550 (Jews at the Persian Court)
-
73. 4Q117 (Ezra)
Translations or Possible Translations
-
74. 4Q156 (Leviticus?)
-
75. 4Q157 (Job Translation)
-
76. 11Q10 (Job Translation)
Miscellaneous Texts
-
77. 3Q14, 4 (Tobit?)
-
78. 4Q318 (Zodiology and Brontology)
-
79. 4Q339 (List of False Prophets)
-
80. 4Q551 (Narrative)
-
81. 4Q556 (Prophecya)
-
82. 4Q556a (Prophecyb)
-
83. 4Q557 (Visiona)
-
84. 4Q558 (papVisionb)
-
85. 4Q559 (papBiblical Chronology)
-
86. 4Q560 (Magic Booklet)
-
87. 4Q561 (Physiognomy/Horoscope)
-
88. 4Q569 (Proverbs)
-
89. 6Q14 (Apocalypse)
There are many ways in which the presentation of the manuscript profiles could be ordered. For the majority of the manuscripts, I have opted for what I consider to be an intuitive ordering that follows the narrative, historical arc of the Hebrew Bible, beginning with the Pentateuch and ending with Israel’s periods of exile. In its essence, this ordering principle follows the earlier insights of Dimant and Tigchelaar discussed above. Over seventy of the texts can be arranged in this way, which tells us something significant about the contents of the corpus. Within this chronological ordering I have distinguished three main sub-groupings, aimed primarily at conceptual ease for readers. The first focuses on the earliest ancestors of Israel, beginning with the monumental figure of Enoch and ending with the generation of Abram. One could easily argue that the distinction between this grouping and the one that follows, beginning with the figure of Jacob, is arbitrary, and I do not intend the distinction to imply a break readily discernable in the literature or intended by the ancient authors; it is simply heuristic. Moreover, not all of the compositions included in the sub-groupings can be identified with certainty, the New Jerusalem text being a good example of this. Several scholars (most notably Tigchelaar) have identified the protagonist of the New Jerusalem as Jacob, though it is impossible to be sure if this is correct based on the extant text. Nevertheless, I have placed the copies of this text in my arrangement as if they concern a vision given to Jacob, discussing this identification in the relevant manuscript profiles. The third sub-grouping has a better basis for standing on its own, since it seems that, alongside the era of Israel’s early patriarchs and matriarchs up until the time of the Exodus, the exilic period was of major interest to the authors of the Aramaic literature kept and copied at Qumran. Works extant in more than one copy are presented according to the numbering of the caves, beginning with Cave 1 and ending with Cave 11. Within an individual cave, I list multiple texts in order according to their catalogue numbers.
The last two groups are not coordinated with the history of Israel as presented in the Hebrew Bible, but are instead arranged topically. Three manuscripts are – or might be – Aramaic translations of earlier Hebrew writings, and these are grouped together.40 The last group is a very interesting mix of “other” texts, which do not fit neatly into the preceding groups. Here we find what seem to be scholarly reference texts, magical or omen texts, and visionary texts. Many are badly damaged, and it is likely that some would be placed into the main, chronologically-arranged groupings were we to have more of their contents preserved. Still, as scrolls from which we may glean some useful information, and which were evidently composed in Aramaic or translated into that language, I have included them in my study.
As already noted above, Aramaic documentary texts and other Aramaic manuscripts from which we can collect little or no useful information due to their poor preservation are not included in the profiles. They are:
Documentary Texts Not Securely Associated with the Qumran Caves (Deeds, Loans, etc.)41
-
1. 4Q342 (Letter?)
-
2. 4Q343 (Letter nab)42
-
3. 4Q344 (Debt acknowledgement)
-
4. 4Q345 (Deed A)
-
5. 4Q346 (Deed of sale)
-
6. 4Q351 (Account of cereal)
Other fragmentary texts43
-
1. 1Q63–68 (Unclassified fragments)
-
2. 3Q12–13 (Unclassified fragments)
-
3. 4Q360a (papUnidentified fragments B)
-
4. 4Q488 (papApocryphon)
-
5. 4Q489 (papApocalypse)
-
6. 4Q490 (papFragments)
-
7. 4Q558a (papUnidentified)
-
8. 4Q562 (Unidentified text A)
-
9. 4Q563 (Wisdom writing)
-
10. 4Q564 (Unidentified B)
-
11. 4Q565 (Visionc?)
-
12. 4Q566 (Prophecyc?)
-
13. 4Q567 (Unidentified C)
-
14. 4Q568 (Prophecyd)
-
15. 4Q570 (Unidentified D)44
-
16. 4Q572 (Unidentified E)
-
17. 4Q573 (Unidentified F)
-
18. 4Q574 (Unidentified G)
-
19. 4Q575 (Visiond)
-
20. 4Q580 (Testamenta?)
-
21. 4Q581 (Testamentb?)
-
22. 4Q582 (Testamentc?)
-
23. 4Q583 (Prophecye)
-
24. 4Q584a–x (Varia)
-
25. 4Q585a–z (Varia)
-
26. 4Q586a–n (Varia)
-
27. 4Q587 (Testamentd)45
-
28. 5Q24 (Unclassified fragment)
-
29. 6Q19 (Text related to Genesis)
-
30. 11Q24 (Unidentified text)
Fragments that Are Most Likely Modern Forgeries
Finally, I decided not to include a small group of Aramaic fragments of potential relevance, due to their dubious provenance and the suspicion that they are modern forgeries. The first is a papyrus fragment once assumed to be from a Qumran scroll of Tobit, which is now part of the collection of Martin Schøyen (MS 5234). This fragment was labelled by some scholars as 4Q196a, based on its erroneous connection with 4Q196 (papTobita).46 However, questions linger over the provenance of the fragment, and some have now argued that it is a forgery.47 The second fragment – also papyrus – contains text from the Book of Watchers (1 En. 8:4–9:3) and was first published by Hanan and Esther Eshel.48 The fragment was owned by the Kando family at the time of its publication, but now belongs to the Schøyen Collection (MS 4612/12). It was labelled by the Eshels as “XQpapEnoch,” because the cave in which it was discovered could no longer be identified. Like the Schøyen Tobit fragment, serious evidence has been provided arguing that the Kando Enoch fragment is a forgery.49 An additional two fragments containing 1 En. 7:1–5 and 1 En. 106:19–107:1 were eventually added to the mix, both also originating with the Kando family and then being sold to Schøyen in 2009.50 The fragment with the text of 1 En. 7:1–5 is part of a scroll made of skin, while the other, containing 1 En. 106:19–107:1, is papyrus.51 Both are now justifiably considered to be modern forgeries.52 Finally, there are several unpublished fragments of Daniel that should be mentioned alongside those of Tobit and 1 Enoch.53 While the Daniel fragments have not undergone the scientific scrutiny of the Tobit and 1 Enoch fragments, there is good reason to be suspicious of their provenance and authenticity. The first was purchased by Azusa Pacific University in 2009 and contains Dan 5:13–16. It has yet to be officially published, though high-quality images are available on the university website, and efforts to publish the fragment are apparently ongoing. The other two fragments were purchased from William Kando by the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in early 2010. Since that time, there has been intense questioning of their authenticity, including by faculty members and administrators at the seminary. While it remains possible that one or more of the fragments discussed above is authentic, it is more likely that all of them are modern forgeries produced for the antiquities market with commercial intent. With such serious questions of authenticity still under discussion by scholars, I deemed it best to exclude these fragments from my study.
3 Introduction to the Manuscripts Profiles
A major goal of this book is to provide an introduction to the material features, scribal practices, and language (or writing style) of the Aramaic scrolls from the Qumran caves, resulting in a repertoire of individual manuscript profiles. While it is hoped that the profiles will be a useful starting point for those researching individual manuscripts, the ultimate goal in compiling them is to facilitate broader comparison between individual, and groups of, manuscripts. My own interests in doing such comparison concern whether we should view the Aramaic scrolls as a corpus and, if so, what we mean by the word “corpus.”
In addition to their literary contents, each manuscript bears its own, distinctive physical, scribal, and linguistic features – what I like to think of as a manuscript’s “fingerprint.” The individual manuscript profiles are aimed at providing a snapshot of these features, and thereby supplying students and scholars with a useful entry point for studying these scrolls. In criminal investigations involving fingerprints there are typically some that are well-preserved, and which therefore provide a better source of information for the investigator, while others are smudged, damaged, or barely discernable. A similar situation obtains with our scroll fragments. In some cases, such as the Genesis Apocryphon (1Q20) or the Cave 11 Job translation (11Q10), we can achieve a fairly good appraisal of the physical, scribal, and linguistic character of a manuscript. In many other cases, however, the evidence is badly damaged, and we must always be wary of how much stock we place in any one, fragmentary artifact. Another important factor to bear in mind is that of micro-generic units and literary artistry. It has become clear to me that different portions of many Qumran Aramaic scrolls engage with different linguistic and lexical registers, often within a single text. There are parts of the Genesis Apocryphon, Tobit, Aramaic Levi Document, 1 Enoch, and other texts that break into a more poetic, elevated literary style for a time. In other cases, a “scientific” section, such as the geographic description in Genesis Apocryphon (1Q20) 16–17 or the lists and computational sections of 1 Enoch, may skew linguistic data in a particular direction, or give a small fragment a distinct linguistic feel that may not necessarily represent the now-missing larger work.
I must stress that the profiles are biased toward my own interests and questions, which concern the literary coherence of the Aramaic Qumran scrolls as a corpus. The profiles should therefore be viewed as merely one starting point for research on individual (or groups of) manuscripts. The following survey explains the rationale, parameters, and nuances of each characteristic recorded in the profiles. As a general rule, only those features that are extant in, or apply to, a given manuscript will be included in its profile; the absence of a feature means it is not present or applicable for that manuscript. While in the majority of profiles there is a certain amount of overlap with the very useful introductions of Puech in DJD 31 and 37 (or other major editions), the profiles are intended to be complementary to those volumes.
3.1 Title Line
Each profile has a heading that supplies a manuscript’s commonly-used catalogue number and, in most cases, the name assigned to it by the editors of its official publication. Most often this will be the French volumes of Émile Puech in the DJD series (volumes 31 and 37), but since some scrolls were published in the most widely-used editions outside of the DJD series – e.g., Milik’s edition of the Enoch texts – I will occasionally draw on other major editions in the title line.54 Alternative editions of parts or all of a scroll will be included in the “Select bibliography” section, discussed below. On occasion a manuscript has been the subject of a major reedition or supplementation, such as with some of the Enoch manuscripts originally published by Milik, now reedited by Henryk Drawnel. In such cases, references to two or more editions may be provided. In a few instances (e.g., with the Job and Leviticus translations), I have provided my own, alternative titles because those assigned by the original editors are potentially misleading. For Palestine Archaeological Museum (PAM) image numbers and museum inventory numbers, the reader is referred to the more extensive catalogues in DJD 39 and Tov’s further updated Revised Lists. The excellent newer images taken under the auspices of the IAA (the “B-images”) can be found as part of the online Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, at https://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/.
3.2 Content Synopsis and Significance
The profiles are not intended to serve as comprehensive introductions to the contents and scholarly treatment of manuscripts or the literary works they represent. However, it seemed beneficial to provide for each manuscript a brief overview of its literary contents, the ways in which it relates to the broader composition that it represents (if it is one of multiple copies, or is related to an otherwise-known work), and some of the major ways in which the manuscript contributes to our knowledge of Second Temple period literature. Since coherence among the Aramaic literature of Qumran is of special interest for my study, this section of the profiles will pay attention to thematic or conceptual affinities among texts within the Aramaic corpus. For more well-known texts, like Daniel and the various booklets of 1 Enoch, this section will assume some basic familiarity with the broader work under discussion. For lesser-known works, a fuller description will typically be given. I intend this part of the profiles to serve primarily as a basic introduction, a gateway to more in-depth study.
3.3 Material Remains
A brief overview of the extant physical remains of a manuscript is provided in this section. Here I also notify readers of any discrepancies in the numbering of fragments among scholarly treatments of a scroll, differences over the inclusion or exclusion of pieces or fragments, and proposed overlaps with other Qumran manuscripts.
3.4 Notes on Provenance
In view of credible allegations of forgery for some fragments that have surfaced since the early 2000s, students of the scrolls have understandably given increasing attention to the provenances and acquisition histories of the Qumran manuscripts. For this reason, the profiles include a section dedicated to summarizing what we know about the discovery and acquisition of each scroll, although in many cases this is not as well-documented as we would like.
The very large majority of scrolls from Cave 4 has a similar provenance narrative, and so, to avoid excessive repetition in the profiles, a general account is provided below. Any notes on provenance for Cave 4 texts will assume and be related to this account.
The scroll fragments from Cave 4 were initially photographed at the Palestine Archaeological Museum (abbreviated as PAM, sometimes called the Rockefeller Museum) by Najib Albina in batches called “plates” because of their placement between two plates of glass for storage and preservation. As work on the scrolls advanced, a particular fragment might have been photographed on multiple plates at different times. The PAM plates were numbered, and John Strugnell (“Photographing,” 124, 131–32) reported that two series of early images, taken in 1953, were securely linked to specific lines of provenance. The first was associated with the official excavations of Cave 4 conducted from September 22 to September 29, 1952, under the direction of Roland De Vaux, G. Lancaster Harding, and Józef T. Milik (DJD 6:3–4). This set of plates, called the “E series,” was arranged by Frank Moore Cross on PAM 40.962–985, and the fragments on this set are most securely associated with Cave 4. Eibert Tigchelaar has now made a comprehensive list of the fragments included on the E series plates. The list is currently being prepared for publication, and I thank Prof. Tigchelaar for allowing me access to a pre-publication copy for my research on this section of the profiles.55 The second series is PAM 40.575–40.637, 40.986–40.990, referred to as the “G series” because they were part of the fragments purchased by the Jordanian government. These fragments were reportedly excavated from Cave 4 by Bedouin, who then sold them to the Palestine Archaeological Museum either directly or through the Bethlehem antiquities dealer Khalil Iskandar (“Kando”) Shahin. Although the excavation of fragments in the G series was not documented, their origins in Cave 4 are widely accepted and assumed to be secure. This assumption is reinforced by the fact that some fragments found by the Bedouin were later identified as belonging to the same scroll as fragments from De Vaux’s excavations, allowing a small portion of the Bedouin fragments to be confidently linked to Cave 4 (see Ulrich’s comments in DJD 16:2). For fragments not found on the E series or G series plates, discovery by the Bedouin should be assumed. As with those in the G series, these fragments are generally accepted as genuine and as originating in Cave 4. Following the Six-Day War in 1967, the Israel Antiquities Authority took over conservation of the scrolls kept at the Palestine Archaeological Museum, eventually moving them to their current location, at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Notes on the current location of various manuscripts are regularly provided in Tov, Revised Lists.
3.5 Sample Image
An accurate visual impression of each manuscript is a crucial part of assessing its character, especially relative to the broader corpus. For this reason the available images for each have been carefully sifted, and one to several of the best preserved fragments (or, in some rare cases, an entire column or more) have been chosen as a representative sample of its physical state and scribal characteristics. At times it was most helpful to place two or more fragments next to each other, in order to give a fuller impression of the manuscript. However, it should not be assumed that such arrangements indicate a proposed reconstruction of the text, or that that they reflect the original placement of the fragments in the editions. Any sample image that does not follow scholarly reconstructions or the arrangement of the editions will include the parenthetical statement “(not a proposed reconstruction).” It must also be stressed that none of the images accurately represent the actual scale of the original manuscript, for which the reader should consult the major editions or the online Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library (https://www.deadseascrolls.org.il), maintained by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).
The majority of images used for the profiles are from the electronic versions available in Brill’s Dead Sea Scrolls Electronic Library. The remaining images – most of which either were not available or were of poor quality in the Brill set – were very kindly made available by the IAA. All IAA images can be identified by an adjoining note of credit under the image. For convenience, I have included a list of all images provided by the IAA according scroll number and as ordered in the profiles (see opposite column).
3.6 Profile of Physical Layout
Each profile includes a section at the left side of the page in which a number of the measurable traits for each manuscript are presented in a condensed format. Only those traits that can be adequately ascertained will be provided, and all measurements use the metric system of millimeters (mm), centimeters (cm), and in rare cases meters (m). Occasionally, I include scholarly reconstructions (duly noted as such) that have a reasonable probability of being correct, such as the average number of lines in a column, or of letters in a line. As a general rule, all counts and measurements have been done independently of the published editions, and are not simply taken over from them. If any of the traits listed below are not included in the “Profile of physical layout,” it may be assumed that the trait cannot be measured meaningfully for that manuscript. The full list of traits is as follows:
3.6.1 Scroll Dimensions
We have no complete scroll preserved among the Aramaic texts, but in a few cases (e.g., 1Q20 [apGen], 11Q10 [Job]) enough remains to get an idea of one or more of a manuscript’s overall dimensions. When this is the case I have provided whatever information is available.
3.6.2 Margins
The size of a scroll’s margins is one indicator of its quality, since large margins equate to more empty space and, presumably, to higher expense. The upper, lower, and intercolumnar margins (i.e., those between columns of text) are measured where extant, though it should be stressed that in some cases it is not clear whether an entire margin is preserved (e.g., the upper margin of 4Q197 [Tobb]). In such a case the measurement is followed by “(?).” Upper margins are measured to the top of the first line of writing, and lower margins to the bottom of a typical medial letter in the final line of a column (not to the top of the final line, as Ulrich does for the Daniel manuscripts in DJD 16). Intercolumnar margins typically include a certain amount of variation, since the ends of lines differ in length depending on word size and other factors. A special sub-category of intercolumnar margins is used where two columns are joined by stitching, especially since there are numerous cases where we have only one side of such a margin preserved (e.g., 4Q208 [Enastra]). In the latter situation, I supply a measurement from the column of writing to the stitched joint, parenthetically indicating the nature of the margin.
3.6.3 Column Dimensions
Writing in rectangular “columns” of text was standard scribal practice for writing on scrolls in antiquity, and where the dimensions of these columns can be calculated I include them in the profiles. Measurement of height is from the top of the first line of writing to the bottom of a typical medial letter in the final line of the column (not the top of the final line, as Ulrich does for Daniel in DJD 16). In the case where two vertical column lines are inscribed during the manuscript preparation, the width equals the measurement between these lines. Where such lines are not present, an estimated average is made from the right margin to the ends of the lines of writing, which typically vary at the left side of the column. Sometimes only one of the two dimensions is preserved, most often the column width (e.g., 4Q534 [Birth of Noaha], 4Q554 [NJa]).
3.6.4 Lines per Column
Related to the column height is the number of lines in each column. In rare cases, we have all the lines in a column preserved (e.g., 4Q246 [apocrDan], 4Q542 [TQahat]), and in other cases a reconstruction may be reasonably ventured (see many of the Enoch manuscripts edited by Milik, re-edited by Drawnel). Where either situation is the case I provide this information, with the important caveat that reportage of reconstructions does not necessarily equate to a full endorsement.
3.6.5 Letters per Line
In many cases the number of letters per line, related to column width, is preserved or may be estimated with an acceptable level of plausibility. Like Milik, I count here only actual letters, and not all letter spaces (including blank spaces between words), as do, e.g., Tigchelaar and García Martínez in DJD 23. The above statement about reconstructed numbers of lines per column applies for letters per line as well: I list these as a matter of course, but do not intend this as an endorsement of the reconstruction.
3.6.6 Scribal Guidelines
Artisans of scrolls in antiquity (and still today) regularly used a sharp instrument and straight edge to lay out sheets of parchment for writing in advance, impressing lines into the leather to be followed by scribes. This could include vertical lines to indicate the width of columns and/or horizontal lines from which to “hang” the letters. Without consulting the actual manuscripts by autopsy, it can be difficult to determine whether scribal guidelines were used, since the lines can sometimes be impressed very lightly. However, where guidelines are clear from the photographs, or are mentioned in the editions, I note this feature. In some cases, the scribe preparing the manuscript employed dots of ink or punctures along the right and left edges of a parchment sheet (e.g., 4Q213a [Levib], 1Q20 [apGen]) to serve as a guide for inscribing the horizontal script lines. I mention when such dots are preserved.
3.6.7 Average Medial Letter Height
The scribes of our scrolls employed varying handwriting styles and preferences, which included the size and consistency of their scripts. For each manuscript I have determined a range of standard height for medial letters, particularly those which are “medium” sized (e.g.,
3.6.8 Space between Lines
Like margins, the empty space left between lines (connected to scribal guidelines, where present, and letter size) is an indication of the quality of a manuscript. It is important to specify that my measurements are made between the top of one line and the top of the following one (i.e., between the two horizontal script guidelines, where they exist; this is also called leading), and not the empty space between the bottom of letters in one line of writing and the top of the line below it.
3.6.9 Space between Words
Empty space left between words (i.e., kerning) can be more compact or more open, depending upon the scribe. In an effort to compare scribal practices, I have included an average range of such spacing in the profile for each scroll.
3.6.10 Vacats
An open space typically left between literary units in scrolls is conventionally called a vacat in research on the Qumran manuscripts (from the Latin for “lack” or “empty”). Vacats represent an important scribal feature of the texts studied here, most often indicating a perceived sense division in the composition (or much less often a flaw in the manuscript over which the scribe chose not to write). I do my best in the profiles to distinguish whether a vacat signals a “major” sense division (e.g., indicating a new “tablet” in 4Q203 [EnGiantsa] 8.2, or the introduction of the Noah booklet in 1Q20 [apGen] 5.29) or a “minor” sense division (e.g., between various observations on the moon’s phases in the calendar of 4Q209 [Enastrb], separate scenes from a single vision of Enoch in 4Q206 [Ene] 1xxii, or a shift in scene and plot development from Hannah’s weeping to Tobiah’s departure in 4Q197 [Tobb] 4i.4–5). Of course, I readily acknowledge that judging a vacat to indicate a “minor” or “major” sense division is a matter of opinion, and each literary pause has its own character. As a way to help readers gauge the size of vacats, I also categorize them as “small” (up to 10 mm), “medium” (11–30 mm), and “large” (over 30 mm). By doing so, I do not mean to imply that the scribes writing our scrolls knew of such a system, or that a method for using vacats was applied in any consistent way across the corpus. My choice of size breaks between the categories is inductive, based on observation of the preferences of the ancient scribes who wrote these scrolls, and is meant to be a heuristic tool for comparison of scribal practices across the corpus.
3.7 Material
The two materials used for the manuscripts studied in this book are sheets made from either papyrus plants or prepared animal skins. I simply use the term “papyrus” for the former, and “skin” to indicate the latter, although some prefer alternatively to call skin “leather,” “parchment,” or “vellum” (the different terms are often taken to imply varied manners of preparation). It is clear that varying qualities of both materials were used for the Qumran scrolls.56 However, because the profiles are not based on first-hand physical inspection I deemed it best to refrain from detailed descriptions of the materials, as are found in the occasionally florid reports of color, texture, thickness, and other physical features in the DJD series or similar editions.57
3.8 Script and Proposed Palaeographic Date
In these two sections I provide a script classification and the palaeographic date associated with it, based on epigraphic study. In the large majority of cases this information was provided by the original editor(s) of a manuscript, which I typically cite without substantial change. (My intention is not to offer a fresh palaeographic assessment of each scroll, but to include information on the assessment of others who specialize in this area.) However, occasionally the editor of a scroll did not give an evaluation, and in such cases I offer my own based on comparison with other, previously-studied scripts. This tends to occur only for small fragments that were included in the earliest DJD volumes (e.g., 1Q23 [EnGiantsa], 3Q14 [Tob?] 4, 5Q15 [NJ]). Where I relate the opinions of previous epigraphers for script analysis and palaeographic dating, I always include their name(s) in parentheses, with the necessary bibliographic information to be found in either the title line or the “select bibliography” section (see below). Scholars working in this area know well the inconsistencies in terminology across the work of various scholars, and sometimes even within the work of a single scholar. This is especially true for palaeographic terms such as formal, semi-formal, semi-cursive, and cursive, which are often left undefined and ambiguous. Chronological terms like Hasmonean and Herodian can also vary from scholar to scholar. My goal in this book is not to arbitrate or solve these inconsistencies, but simply to give the reader a sense of previous opinions associated with a given scroll.
The palaeographic study and identification of Jewish scripts has become a staple of dating the Qumran manuscripts since the extremely influential work of F.M. Cross, augmented significantly by that of J.T. Milik.58 Although the discipline has occasionally been criticized as claiming to offer more precision than the evidence allows, and of being placed on uncertain foundations, palaeography remains a widely-accepted indicator of a given copy’s date and scribal character.59 Most scholars consider the method to be generally confirmed by radiocarbon dating (see below), which itself deals in probabilities, not certainties. In recent years, scholars have begun to advance new approaches for studying the handwriting of the Qumran scrolls, growing especially out of a large-scale project based at the University of Groningen. These studies explore the development of digital palaeography and more rigorous investigations of formality and informality (the latter labelled by Cross as “cursive”) in scribal hands, with both topics addressing issues of scribal variation and the identification of scribes.60
Those studying the Aramaic Qumran texts are fortunate to have the majority of scribal hands assessed by one of the world’s most skilled and respected epigraphers, Émile Puech of the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem. Scribal hands are typically grouped under the chronological rubrics of either the Hasmonean period (roughly the early second to mid first centuries BCE) or the Herodian period (roughly mid first century BCE through first century CE), and a stylistic spectrum of categories moving from formal to cursive, with semi-formal and semi-cursive as intermediate designations. Scholars have used slightly varied systems of classification when discussing scripts and their dates, and an effort has been made to standardize this variety for the sake of the comparative charts later in this volume. For example, some scholars use quite firm dates in making a palaeographic assessment (e.g., Puech’s “la première moitié du premier s. av. J.–C., de préférence c.–75 ou le premier quart” for 4Q532 [EnGiantsd]) while others use more open-ended descriptions (e.g., Collins’ and Flint’s “early first century CE” for 4Q243 [psDana]). I have typically assigned these varied descriptions a date using quarter-century (or occasionally third-century) durations, so that the “early first century CE” assessment just mentioned would be given as 1–25 CE in the profiles and following chapters. This method may admittedly lose some of the nuance or intentional ambiguity of the original description, and so the source should always be consulted. What is gained is the ability to facilitate comparison between manuscripts. Emanuel Tov and others consider scribes who wrote in a formal hand and used other specialized practices (varied spacing and layout techniques, corrections, etc.) to have been part of a class of skilled professionals.61 It stands to reason that formal scripts penned by highly-trained scribes were reserved for writings considered “special” in some way, perhaps for communal or public use. Cursive scripts, by contrast, were often used for the matters of everyday life belonging to the private domain, such as notes, bills of sale, personal letters, legal contracts of various sorts, and personal or private copies of literary texts. By no means does this dichotomy hold absolutely, but as a general rule it is reflected in the evidence currently available, even if not all of the evidence derives from the same time and place, or occurs on the same media (skin, papyrus, pottery, stone). It may also be observed that a higher percentage of papyrus manuscripts are associated with cursive writing and the related genres mentioned above than those made of skin.
3.9 Radiocarbon Date
Some of the Qumran manuscripts have been dated using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating technology, providing a means of dating scrolls independent of palaeography. When this is the case for one of the Aramaic manuscripts treated in the profiles, I will include the proposed radiocarbon date, as found in one of the two following studies.62
Bonani, Georges, Susan Ivy, Willy Wölfli, Magen Broshi, Israel Carmi, and John Strugnell. “Radiocarbon Dating of Fourteen Dead Sea Scrolls.” Radiocarbon 34.3 (1992): 843–49.63
Jull, Timothy A.J., Douglas J. Donahue, Magen Broshi, and Emanuel Tov. “Radiocarbon Dating of Scrolls and Linen Fragments from the Judean Desert.” Radiocarbon 37.1 (1995): 11–19.64
For the sake of consistency, I provide the dates as listed in the recent treatment of van der Schoor, along with the fragment(s) from which the dating sample was taken when available.65 It should be noted, however, that Doudna offered slightly altered date ranges for some scrolls based on a newer calibration curve.66 All date ranges listed in the profiles are at 1-
The studies listed above are the results of two batches of fragments being dated. The first batch (fourteen manuscripts, including eight from Qumran) was tested in 1990 at the ETH Zürich, and the second (eighteen manuscripts with two pieces of linen, including fifteen scrolls from Qumran) in 1994 at the Arizona AMS Facility in Tucson. Of the first batch, three scrolls were written in Aramaic (4Q542 [TQahat], 4Q213 [Levia], and 1Q20 [apGen]), while the only Aramaic manuscript from the second batch was 4Q208 (Enastra). Five additional scrolls from the Judean Desert were carbon dated in the 2000s, though none of them were from among the Qumran Aramaic corpus. There is currently another dating project underway, organized by the University of Groningen, though the results have yet to be published.67
3.10 Special Traits and General Comments
In this section I provide an overall assessment of the physical features and scribal practices of each manuscript. Since what remains of individual scrolls varies widely across the corpus, aiming at consistency of presentation in this section was undesirable. I have rather let each manuscript dictate what should be included, unavoidably guided, to some degree, by my own interests. In some cases, the physical features of the manuscript are of greater interest, while in others – often those with a significant amount of text preserved – the scribal practices or linguistic features demand greater attention. The basic aim of this section is to summarize and sift through information provided elsewhere in the profile, in an effort to allow readers a quick overview of some of the more prominent features of a manuscript, including its writing and language. This section also provides space to address issues otherwise not included in the profile, and to compare a manuscript with others across the corpus.
3.11 Original Manuscript Quality
A study of the manuscripts from Qumran helps one to appreciate the wide variety of production qualities represented among them. This may be seen, for example, in the overall size of the manuscript (when it can be ascertained), formality of the script, and empty space left on the sheets of papyrus or leather, margins, line spacing, and vacats. In order to facilitate the comparison of manuscripts, I have kept in mind the five grades of manuscript quality described below, which are occasionally combined to offer further specificity in gradation (e.g., “Fair–good,” or “Very good–excellent”). While there are some indications that papyrus manuscripts were considered to be of lower quality than those written on skin in Palestine during the Second Temple period, I have not factored this into my appraisals of overall manuscript quality. I have tried to be as objective as possible in making my assessments, though it must be admitted that we lack full knowledge of ancient aesthetic norms. As a result, I have had to reckon partly by my own, inescapably anachronistic sense of what would have represented quality to ancient readers. Of course, the very poor physical state of many scrolls often impairs the task of assessing their quality, and as a rule of thumb the less remains of a scroll, the more tentative its quality grade should be considered.
Excellent: My exemplars for this category are what I consider to be the very best manuscripts of the corpus in terms of the formality, carefulness, and consistency of script, manuscript preparation and quality of skin/papyrus, regulation and size of spacing, and number and length of vacats. These exemplars include 1Q20 (apGen), 4Q203 (EnGiantsa)/4Q204 (Enc), 4Q544 (VisAmramb), and 11Q10 (Job). I rate all of these manuscripts as “Excellent” or “Excellent–very good,” with each appearing to have been written by a highly trained scribe and exhibiting the highest level of care and labor in its construction. These scrolls were presumably very valuable. The highest quality of them (e.g., 1Q20 [apGen]) generally correspond to what Tov has called de Luxe editions.68
Very good: These are manuscripts that possess many of the qualities of those listed above, under the “Excellent” heading, but in one or two ways fall short of the highest rating in what remains for us to evaluate. Examples of “Very good” manuscripts are 4Q529 (Words of Michael), 5Q15 (NJ), and 4Q112 (Dana).
Good: In this category the spacing is measurably tighter or more erratic than in the categories above, with the writing typically being less even and practiced, often manifest in a more informal script with some cursive features.69 (This does not necessarily imply that a given scribe could not write in a more formal, easier-to-read script, but simply that he chose not to do so.) There tends to be a higher number of scribal mistakes, and fewer or smaller vacats to facilitate reading. Examples of “Good” scrolls include 4Q196 (papToba), 4Q530 (EnGiantsb), 4Q550 (Jews at the Persian Court), and 4Q213 (Levia). Together, the “Good” and “Very good” categories represent the bulk of scrolls considered in the profiles, with a high number being categorized as “Good–very good,” i.e., in the upper middle section of the quality scale.
Fair: 4Q201 (Ena) is a relatively sizable example of what I consider to be a “Fair” manuscript. That copy of Enoch is closely and irregularly spaced, the margins are quite narrow, few or no vacats are used, the script is relatively erratic, and scribal corrections are fairly frequent. Other examples of this quality level are 4Q557 (Visiona) and 4Q212 (Eng). These are serviceable copies, but of a noticeably different quality level than “Very good” or “Excellent” scrolls.
Poor: For the purposes of this study, the “Poor” quality category is merely hypothetical, with none of the manuscripts in the profiles being deemed “Poor” or “Poor-fair.” I considered giving manuscripts such as 4Q542 (TQahat)/4Q547 (VisAmrame) a “Poor-fair” rating, but in the end thought it best to reserve “Poor” as an unused category at the lowest end of the quality spectrum, in recognition of a well-attested group of manuscripts poorer in quality than any of those included in this book. Here I am thinking especially of the (mainly papyrus) documentary texts found elsewhere in the Judean Desert. Examples of such manuscripts include Mur 18 (Acknowledgement of Debt) and Mur 20 (Marriage Contract), which are obviously of an altogether different quality level than the literary texts included in the profiles, likely because of their more personal intended function.
3.12 Select Bibliography
The purpose of this section is not to give an extensive, or even a representative, list of secondary literature on the text under discussion. Rather, it is intentionally restricted to studies that deal primarily with the physical manuscript treated in a profile, including its decipherment and transcription, scribal traits, and language (this is in addition, of course, to the major edition[s] listed in the title line). In short, the bibliography is oriented toward the specific questions addressed by the profiles. I typically limit entries to a few of the most important or recent studies, which readers may use as a starting point for further research. More general studies that do not fall under the purview of the “Select bibliography” section are often mentioned in the “Content synopsis and significance” section, at the beginning of each profile.
3.13 Script Sample
An important characteristic of any manuscript is the handwriting of the scribe(s) who copied it. Providing a sample of each scribal hand facilitates epigraphic and palaeographic comparison across the corpus. Each script sample has been constructed from the available images of the manuscript using Photoshop CS5, though they are not presented at the actual scale of the manuscript. All letters legible on the images are provided in a given script sample, with two different samples of each letter included when possible. (The absence of a letter means that it is either not present or is too badly damaged to reproduce.) When a scribe wrote two different forms of a letter, an effort is made to provide both forms in the sample.
It must be stressed that this section of the profiles is intended only to provide an impressionistic sample of a scroll’s script, not an exhaustive catalogue of every letter form. Those wishing to pursue detailed epigraphic or palaeographic study should always consult the available images of the fragments.
3.14 Corrections and Scribal Features
Another way of comparing scribes and manuscripts across the corpus is to pay attention to how corrections and emendations are made, or how scribal marks are employed to assist in the process of production or ongoing use. This section aims to gather together these features in an easily accessible format. In a manuscript where a scribal practice occurs multiple times, such as the addition of supralinear letters in 1Q20 (apGen), only a representative sample will be provided. In such cases the words “representative sample” will be added to the section heading.
3.15 Language
The language of the Aramaic Qumran texts has been an ongoing source of scholarly research, and may even comprise the greatest single topic of interest in these scrolls to date. Much focus and excitement has rightly been directed to where the dialect of these Aramaic texts fits in the wider historical spectrum of the Aramaic language, since the Qumran texts are a boon for our understanding of what Joseph Fitzmyer labeled Middle Aramaic. The question of the Aramaic dialect of the Qumran texts also has something to contribute to the question of whether they constitute a distinctive cluster of Jewish writings. Moreover, language has been the most widely-used tool for dating the original composition of several Aramaic texts from Qumran.
In an effort to capture some of the dialectical features of what is often called Qumran Aramaic, with the ultimate goal of broader comparison across the corpus, I decided to build a linguistic profile for each manuscript. It must be stated emphatically that these profiles do not aim at completeness, something that for reasons of time and space is untenable in a study such as this one. Rather, I have chosen linguistic traits that would begin to give researchers a sense of the texture and level of coherency of the Aramaic dialect(s) in these texts, starting from the level of the individual manuscripts. Deciding which traits to catalogue has been a difficult task of trial and error, and I am certain that some readers would have included traits other than those selected here. This cannot be avoided, and, if nothing else, I hope that my choices will serve to push the conversation further along.
The linguistic profiles aim to combine a variety of linguistic features: syntactic, morphological, orthographic, and lexical. In general, they are chosen either because they have been included in earlier discussions of language in these scrolls (e.g., by Kutscher, Beyer, Fitzmyer, Cook, and Muraoka), or because I deemed them worthy of inclusion on other grounds, such as the distinctive use of an idiom or linguistic construction.
The overall goal of this entire section is to gain a general impression of how each text “communicates,” as judged by its extant copies. Implicit in this goal is the recognition that, within any given language, an author is faced with numerous choices about to how get his or her ideas across in writing. The combined effect of these choices may give a text its own profile, and the comparison of such profiles may lead to the discernment of a common, shared way of communicating. For example, we may assume with relative certainty that scribes writing in Aramaic during the late Persian to early Roman periods knew that they could use either a haphel or aphel form of the causative verb in writing (whatever its relation to pronunciation), or that they had the option of either marking a direct object with a lamed or leaving it unmarked. Similarly, one could mark the genitive (or possessive) state in one of several ways. When we find a convergence of such choices, it stands to tell us something about the coherence of the group, and it is hoped that this section will help to discern such coherencies. As noted above, a cumulative overview of language, incorporating the data of the profiles, can be found in Chapter 3 of this book.
All numbering of fragments and lines in the profiles are taken from the major editions, which sometimes involve the reconstruction of groups of fragments. In most cases, this will be the DJD volumes of Puech and others, but for some texts (e.g., the Enoch manuscripts or the Genesis Apocryphon) these are not available, and other editions are used as listed in the title line of the profile. Detailed discussions of most of the linguistic features discussed below can now be found in Muraoka, Grammar.
3.15.1 Syntax
In dealing with verbal syntax, I have limited myself to tracking placement of the verb in a clause and, primarily, its relation to the clause subject. This assumes that the objects (direct and indirect) are placed later in a sentence or clause, which is the general rule both in these texts and in Aramaic dialects of this period more broadly. When an object is drawn to the front of the sentence or clause, this is typically for poetic reasons, or to place greater emphasis on the object. In order that these cases are not missed, a category for them has been included below (“Early use of the object”). For all of the syntactical categories, a parenthetical question mark “(?)” will follow uncertain cases, often where a verb or subject is partially or fully reconstructed. Since participles are technically a linguistic category of their own, when they act as verbs in a clause I will include them with the notation “(part.).” In many places, the text is too poorly preserved to determine the relative syntactic placement of an extant verb and/or subject, and in these cases no entry will be made. Imperatives and infinitives are not included in the assessment of verbs.
3.15.1.1 Verb Early in Clause: Verb-Subject/Subject-Verb/Subject Implied
Under the category of “verb early in clause” I include cases where the main verb is at or near the beginning of a clause or sentence. If a main verb is preceded by a simple modifier, such as a particle, conjunction, or adverb (e.g.,
Of course, trying to categorize neatly a verbal system often feels like an exercise in futility, since there are many nuances to how an author may construct a sentence or phrase. The categories adopted here do not always do justice to these nuances. In fact, one could often provide an extended discussion at the sentence or clause level, something impossible to include in a study of this type. Nevertheless, I hope that this necessarily imprecise treatment of syntax may give the interested researcher a rough, preliminary indication of the syntactic preferences reflected in a text or manuscript.
When both verb and subject are present in a clause, there is flexibility in the order that may be chosen by the author, hence the two profile categories of “Verb-subject” and “Subject-verb.” When the subject has been previously identified and continues to be the focus of ongoing discussion, a verb may – and often is – used without a stated subject. In these cases the subject is implied, or carried over, from earlier in the text, and is therefore placed in the “Subject implied” category.
3.15.1.2 Verb Later in Clause: Verb-Subject/Subject-Verb/Subject Implied
This category is, admittedly, somewhat ambiguous, and amounts to a catch-all for instances where main verbs are not found at or near the beginning of a sentence or clause (hence my use of the comparative “later,” rather than the absolute “late”). There is a variety of ways in which this may be done by an author, but they share the basic trait that the verb is shifted to a point later than is typical for Aramaic prose during this period. In many cases, the “verb later in clause” category will coincide with entries in the following “object early in clause” section.
The three sub-sections of this category operate in the same way as they do for “verb early in clause” category, on which see above.
3.15.1.3 Verbless Clause
Verbless clauses are fairly common in Aramaic (as in Hebrew), in which the verb “to be” (
3.15.1.4 Object Early in Clause
Cases where the object is fronted, or placed before the verb (see “Verb early in clause,” above), are recorded under this heading.
3.15.1.5 Direct Object Marker (If Present): –ל or ית
The way in which an ancient Aramaic text marked the direct object of a clause or sentence has often figured into discussions of geographic dialects and linguistic dating. In the Qumran manuscripts, we find that an author or scribe could: 1.) leave the direct object unmarked, or 2.) mark it with either a.) the prefix –
3.15.1.6 Uses of the Relative Pronoun די to Mark the Genitive Relationship or Introduce Direct Quotation
The Aramaic word
3.15.1.7 Double כול Construction
A notable syntactic construction in some Qumran Aramaic texts is the use of
3.15.1.8 Verbs of Movement
Several scholars have observed that Official (or Imperial) Aramaic has special rules governing verbs of physical movement when there is a point of destination in view.72 While these rules are not followed absolutely by ancient scribes, such verbs tend heavily to take the preposition
3.15.1.9 Copula Pronoun
There is no evidence in Old Aramaic for use of the third-person pronoun as a third linguistic element in a verbless clause. However, we do occasionally find such a usage in Official Aramaic compositions, such as Daniel and the Ahiqar narrative.75 Since this use of the pronoun as a “copula” emerges as a linguistic feature in Official Aramaic, it seemed worthwhile to determine the extent to which the feature occurs in the Aramaic writings from Qumran.
3.15.1.10 Periphrastic Construction
A regular morphosyntactic feature of Official and Biblical Aramaic is the periphrastic construction, in which a finite form of the verb
3.15.2 Lexical Items
Under this heading I have catalogued a variety of words that I find of interest for discerning the scribal, linguistic, or compositional character of the scroll under discussion. Some of the words are focused on the lexical manifestation of morphological, orthographic, or phonological variation across the corpus, as with the different forms of the particle
3.15.3 Morphology
3.15.3.1 Causative and Passive/Reflexive Verb Stem Prefixes
One of the most recognizable features of Aramaic verb morphology during the second temple period is the presence of two possible prefixes for certain forms of the causative (
3.15.3.2 Object Suffixes on Verbs
Scribes composing Aramaic during the second temple period had two main options for presenting the previously introduced object of a verb, either separated from the verb (e.g.,
3.15.3.3 Assimilation and Dissimilation of Nun (Nasalization) and Other Letters
There are certain grammatical situations in which an etymologically expected nun may be either graphically present (i.e., non-assimilated) or missing (i.e., assimilated). Such fluctuation in the Qumran texts may be seen, for example, in the noun
3.15.4 Orthography and Phonology
Orthographic and phonological features are often interconnected with morphology. However, in the profiles I have included a section in the profiles focused specifically on several features that seem to reflect writing and speaking practices indicative of the Aramaic used for at least some of the Qumran texts and bordering dialects. As with many features included in the language section of the profiles, those below could arguably be categorized as morphological in addition to orthographic or phonological. In fact, they could justifiably be identified with any of these descriptors.
3.15.4.1 Long 2nd Person Masculine Singular Verbal Affix תה /תא
A distinctive trait of the Qumran texts is their occasional use of a longer ending for the 2nd person masculine singular suffix-conjugation verb in lieu of the more expected short form (e.g.,
3.15.4.2 2nd Person Masculine Singular and Plural (Pro)Nominal Suffixes כה /כא and כם
Another peculiar orthographic (and perhaps phonological) feature of the Qumran texts is use of a long (pro)noun suffix for the 2nd person masculine forms. The long forms are used rarely, but they have been discussed repeatedly in treatments of Qumran Aramaic as either the graphic representation of a genuine – but typically hidden – feature of Aramaic more generally, or as the result of Hebrew influence. In the latter case, these long endings would be distinctive to Jewish Aramaic. The singular suffix
3.15.4.3 ש or ס for Etymological /s/
In certain words that use the sound /s/ there is an observable shift in some dialects from an original etymological sin (
3.15.5 Other Notable Features
A few compositional or scribal traits related to language do not fall naturally into the standard linguistic categories discussed above. As a result, I have gathered them together under a miscellaneous heading at the end of the profiles. In general, these are features that have potential to tell us something of the compositional background and preferences of the authors who wrote these texts or, perhaps, the scribes who copied them.
3.15.5.1 Use of Negative Particle אַל (+ Prefix-Tense Finite Verb)
Scribes had several possibilities to signal negation in a clause. This included use of the negative particle
3.15.5.2 Proposed Hebraisms
A widespread feature of the Aramaic texts preserved at Qumran is the occasional use of Hebrew words, phrases, or constructions. This has been noted by many scholars in various places, but was pursued most comprehensively in the published Magisterarbeit of Christian Stadel, as well as in his subsequent work.78 The mixture of these two languages is not surprising in Jewish works, and Stadel has observed that much of the Hebrew influence in our Aramaic texts appears to be of a literary nature, deriving from Biblical, rather than contemporary or colloquial, Hebrew.79 Stadel’s categorization of Hebraisms is adopted in the profiles, and his work serves as the main – though not only – source for items included in this section. For probable, though less than certain, Hebraisms, Stadel employed the siglum [h], while for assured Hebraisms he used [H].80 Whenever one of these sigla are not found following a proposed Hebraism in the profiles, it is because either I disagree with Stadel (and therefore chose not to use his siglum), or the Hebraism has not been suggested previously. To determine which of these two options is the case, the reader should consult Stadel, Hebraismen. The avoidance of using Stadel’s sigla in cases of disagreement is intended to avoid confusion over whether the proposed Hebraism is to be attributed to Stadel or those upon whom he drew in his work (e.g., Kutscher, Fitzmyer, Beyer, Fassberg, and Puech).
3.15.5.3 Words Previously Unattested in Aramaic
Whenever I have encountered a word not previously attested in Aramaic, I have included it under this section heading in the profiles. I used no definite method for identifying such words – some of them have been noted by other scholars in the relevant literature, and occasionally I stumbled upon a word that is not clearly attested in older or contemporaneous or Aramaic textual corpora. I must stress that I did not endeavor to make an exhaustive search for such words, but merely note them as they have arisen in my study of these scrolls.
3.15.5.4 Use of בתר for a List
Several texts use the temporal preposition
3.15.5.5 Poetic Doublets and Triplets
The literary use of parallelistic doublets and, especially, triplets in Aramaic to emphasize a concept was noted already decades ago in passing by Jonas Greenfield.81 Of course, parallelism was already a very well-known (though much debated) literary poetic feature of Hebrew and cognate literatures, and so we might not be surprised to find it also used in Aramaic compositions. The use of poetic, parallelistic triplets is particularly noteworthy in the Jewish Aramaic literature kept and copied at Qumran, illustrated by the following examples:
ולא מן כול זר ולא מן כול עירין ולא מן כול בני שמ[ין
and not from any stranger, nor from any of the Watchers, nor from any of the sons of Hea[ven …
1Q20 [apGen] 2.16
ל]מ̇שט̇א ולמטעא ו̊ל̊מ̇הך בארחת טעו
to] err and to stray and to go in the ways of error
4Q537 [TJacob?] 5.2
הוא אלה עלםיה ומרא כול םעבדיא ושליט בכולא
he is the God of the ages, and Lord of everything that is done, and ruler of all people
4Q542 [TQahat] 1i.2–3
Comparable examples are found in Daniel, and would presumably once have been present in the Qumran copies:
הוא אלה אלהין ומרא מלכין וגלה רזין
he is the God of gods, and Lord of kings, and revealer of mysteries
Dan 2:47; cf. 4Q112 [Dana] 7.1
For the purposes of comparison and future study, I have catalogued in the profiles where structures of this kind are found.
This is not counting the roughly seventy Aramaic or Hebrew-Aramaic documents found at other locations in the Judean Desert, like Nahal Hever and Wadi Murabba‘at. For further details see Machiela, Library. Calculations of other scholars have been gathered by Perrin, Dynamics, 24, n. 3. Of the scholars cited there, Dimant counts 121 manuscripts at approximately 13 percent of the total corpus, Berthelot and Stökl Ben Ezra have 129 manuscripts, of which 87 contain material sufficient for comment (10 percent of the corpus), García Martínez has 120 manuscripts and 29 distinctive compositions, and Tigchelaar counts approximately 12 percent of the 930 Qumran scrolls as Aramaic.
The number varies depending on how one counts; e.g., whether one combines certain manuscripts that do not overlap, or divides up the various books of 1 Enoch into independent literary works. See the literature cited in the preceding note.
For an up-to-date and even-handed assessment of the question of the sectarian texts and who wrote them see Collins, Beyond.
Cook’s concordance is found in Abegg et al., Concordance; Cook, Dictionary; Schattner-Rieser, Grammaire; Muraoka, Grammar.
A summary of some of the main characteristics of the sectarian writings can be found, for example, in Dimant, “Sectarian”; Dimant, “Significance” (see esp. 27–29, 37–45); and Newsom, “Sectually Explicit.” The rubric “sectarian literature” should not, however, be viewed as representing a static, monolithic category, since recent studies have increasingly shown the various shades of nuance and development in different parts of this group of texts. See, e.g., Schofield, New Paradigm; Collins, Beyond.
This quotation comes from the revised and translated English edition of Milik, Ten Years, 139. For the original French see Milik, Dix ans, 95–96. The “literary and national renaissance” mentioned refers to the period of the Maccabees (see Ten Years, 130).
Milik, Ten Years, 51.
Milik, “Écrits.”
Milik, “Écrits,” 106.
Segert, “Sprachenfragen,” 322.
Segert, “Review,” 82.
To cite one further example, Jonas Greenfield (“Dialects,” 367) observed that “none of the Aramaic material from Qumran is of necessity Essene (or Essenoid) in origin.”
Wacholder, “Judaeo-Aramaic,” 259.
See Beyer, ATTM1, 157–61.
García Martínez, Apocalyptic.
Dimant, “Apocalyptic.” See now also Machiela, “Growth”; Machiela, “Witnesses.”
Wacholder, “Judaeo-Aramaic,” 269–70.
Wacholder, “Judaeo-Aramaic,” 273.
Similar views are espoused by Bickerman, Jews, and Wise, Thunder, 117.
Wise, Thunder, 117.
Dimant, “Qumran Aramaic.” For Dimant’s earlier statements about the non-Sectarian character of the Aramaic scrolls see “Apocalyptic,” 34–35; “Library,” 175.
Dimant, “Qumran Aramaic,” 200.
Dimant, “Themes.”
García Martínez, “Aramaica,” 437. DiTommaso, “Apocalypticism,” 456–57.
Tigchelaar, “Visionary.”
Tigchelaar, “Aramaic Texts.”
Bickerman, Jews, 51; Wacholder, “Judaeo-Aramaic,” 273.
Dimant, “Qumran Aramaic,” 203; Ben-Dov, “Hebrew and Aramaic.” See also Rabin, “Hebrew and Aramaic,” 1013–14, for a similar explanation.
For further discussion of this topic, see Machiela, “Language.”
Collins, “Conclusions,” 561.
On the idea of a revival of Hebrew during the Hasmonean period, see Machiela and Jones, “Revival.”
García Martínez, “Aramaica.”
Kutscher, “Genesis Apocryphon.”
Muraoka, “Aramaic.” See also Schattner-Rieser, Grammaire.
Fitzmyer, “Targum.” See also Stuckenbruck and Freedman, “Fragments.”
The relevant manuscripts are listed further below. They are published in DJD 27:283–317.
On the confusion over the actual findspots of the manuscripts from these locations, see the discussion of Cotton and Yardeni in DJD 27:1–6.
For evidence supporting this view, see DJD 27:283–84.
Specific codicological issues, such as the relationship between 4Q203 (EnGiantsa) and 4Q204 (Enc) or the sub-division of 4Q550 (Jews at the Persian Court), will be dealt with in the relevant manuscript profiles.
For a discussion of these texts and how they should be treated relative to the later rabbinic targums, see Machiela, “Translation,” 227–37.
I list here only the manuscripts composed with a high probability in Aramaic. It is sometimes difficult to assess the language of composition due to the very fragmentary remains.
This manuscript is written in a Nabatean script. See DJD 27:286.
Most of these fragments are published by Puech in DJD 37, though some are scattered through other DJD volumes (for which, see the catalogue in Tov, Revised Lists). A few additional fragments were originally identified by Milik, but can no longer be located. The numbers assigned to them are 4Q309 (Cursive work) and 4Q310 (papText).
Puech identified 46 fragments as part of this manuscript, though its contents remain difficult to discern. It most certainly deals with events from Israel’s past, as seen in frags. 1–2.
The two fragments of this manuscript are currently part of the collection of Martin Schøyen (MS 4612/3), and Esther Eshel has argued in Elgvin, Langlois, and Davis, Gleanings, 295–98, that they should instead be assigned to Cave 11 (11Q[?] Eschatological Fragment). See also the discussion by Tigchelaar in Humbert and Fidanzio, Khirbet Qumrân, 252.
Hallermayer and Elgvin, “Tobit-Fragment.” See also Tov, Revised List, 35. The fragment cannot belong to 4Q196 (papTobita), since it overlaps with 4Q196 18.16 (compare 4Q198 [Tobitc] 1.2). The two copies also have clearly different scribal hands.
On the provenance of the fragment, see Justnes, “Fake,” 246–51. For the assertion that it is a forgery, see Davis et al., “Dubious,” 220–21. As noted by Justnes, a second fragment of this copy containing part of Tob 7:1–3, held in a different private collection, has been reported for some years.
Eshel and Eshel, “New Fragments,” 146–57. The fragment had been previously published in Eshel and Eshel, “Watchers.”
Justnes, “Fake,” 251–54. Davis et al., “Dubious,” 216–20.
It was at this time that Schøyen also bought the fragment containing 1 En. 8:4–9:3. See Justnes, “Fake,” 255–56.
Esther Eshel once proposed that the skin fragment belonged to 4Q204 (Enochc), but that identification was later shown to be incorrect.
Justnes, “Fake,” 254–57. Davis et al., “Dubious,” 209–16.
Justnes, “Fake,” 257–66.
All French titles are translated into English for the sake of consistency.
The list is currently publicly accessible on Zenodo, at https://zenodo.org/record/5115828#.YPa95S0ZMlU.
For a description of the process for preparing leather, which accounts for the majority of our manuscripts, see Bar-Ilan, “Writing”; Tov, Qumran, 107–27. The topic is also treated in Part 4 (Scribal Practices) of this book.
Rabin, “Archaeometry,” provides a helpful discussion of the factors involved in assessing the character of skin for the Qumran scrolls.
Cross, “Development”; Cross, “Palaeography.” A recent overview and assessment of the method’s application to the Qumran scrolls is found in Tigchelaar, “Seventy Years.”
For some of the voices urging caution with using palaeographic dating, see Doudna, “Dating,” 244; Wise, “Dating,” 55–59.
See, e.g., Popović, Dhali, and Schomaker, “Artificial”; Longacre, “Formality”; van der Schoor, “Variation”; and the relevant discussion in Part 4 (Scribal Practices).
See, e.g., Tov, “Scribes,” in EDSS, 2:830–31.
See further the additional studies of Doudna, “Radiocarbon” and van der Schoor, “Radiocarbon,” the latter providing important information on the fragments sampled. Subsequent debate about the initial results may be found in Doudna, “Radiocarbon”; Rasmussen, van der Plicht, Cryer, Doudna, Cross, and Strugnell, “Effects”; Atwill and Braunheim, “Redating”; Rasmussen, van der Plicht, Doudna, Nielsen, Stenby, and Pedersen, “Contamination”; van der Plicht, “Radiocarbon”; and van der Plicht and Rasmussen, “Dating.”
See also Bonani, Broshi, Carmi, Ivy, Strugnell, and Wölfi, “Radiocarbon.”
See also Jull, Donahue, Broshi, and Tov, “Radiocarbon.”
van der Schoor, “Radiocarbon.”
Doudna, “Radiocarbon.”
On the five scrolls already dated, see Monger, “4Q216,” 44–45 and 103–5.
Tov, Scribal Habits, 125–29.
A useful, recent discussion of the complexity of these matters is found in Longacre, “Formality.”
Greenfield and Qimron, “Col. XII,” 75.
Fitzmyer, Commentary, 139–40; Stadel, Hebraismen, 24–25.
See Folmer, Aramaic Language, 589–621; Muraoka and Porten, Grammar, 268–70. Verbs of motion where there is no point of destination in view (e.g., 4Q210 [Enastrc] 1ii.4ff) are not counted.
I note here that the verb
For further discussion, see Chapter 3.
For more information, see Holmstedt and Jones, “Pronoun,” 72.
For fuller discussions of this grammatical feature, with bibliography, see the treatments of Gzella, Tempus, 245–54; and Muraoka and Porten, Grammar, 205–8.
Although it represents a different sort of linguistic shift, note also the variation in the name
Stadel, Hebraismen; Stadel, “Influences.”
Stadel, “Influences.”
The rest of his system, not used in this book, is as follows: [A] = certainly Aramaic; [a] = probably, though not certainly, Aramaic; [∅] = a false reading or indecisive evidence.
Greenfield, “Poetry,” 170.