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:

1. 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

2. 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

3. 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 (4QDan^{c, 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 4QJer^a 5i.3–4 and 4QJer^b 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 (Enoch^a)

• 2. 4Q202 (Enoch^b)

• 3. 4Q204 (Enoch^c)

• 4. 4Q205 (Enoch^d)

• 5. 4Q206/4Q206a (Enoch^e/Book of Giants^f)

• 6. 4Q207 (Enoch^f)

• 7. 4Q208 (Astronomical Enoch^a)

• 8. 4Q209 (Astronomical Enoch^b)

• 9. 4Q210 (Astronomical Enoch^c)

• 10. 4Q211 (Astronomical Enoch^d)

• 11. 4Q212 (Enoch^g)

• 12. 1Q23 (Book of Giants^a)

• 13. 1Q24 (Book of Giants^b)

• 14. 2Q26 (Book of Giants)

• 15. 4Q203 (Book of Giants^a)

• 16. 4Q530 (Book of Giants^b)

• 17. 4Q531 (Book of Giants^c)

• 18. 4Q532 (Book of Giants^d)

• 19. 4Q533 (Book of Giants^e)

• 20. 6Q8 (papBook of Giants)

• 21. 4Q529 (Words of Michael)

• 22. 4Q571 (Words of Michael^a)

• 23. 6Q23 (papWords of Michael)

• 24. 4Q534 (Birth of Noah^a)

• 25. 4Q535 (Birth of Noah^b)

• 26. 4Q536 (Birth of Noah^c)

• 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 Jerusalem^a)

• 32. 4Q554a (New Jerusalem^b)

• 33. 4Q555 (New Jerusalem^c)

• 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 (Levi^a)

• 40. 4Q213a (Levi^b)

• 41. 4Q213b (Levi^c)

• 42. 4Q214 (Levi^d)

• 43. 4Q214a (Levi^e)

• 44. 4Q214b (Levi^f)

• 45. 4Q540 (Apocryphon of Levi^a?)

• 46. 4Q541 (Apocryphon of Levi^b?)

• 47. 4Q542 (Testament of Qahat)

• 48. 4Q543 (Visions of Amram^a)

• 49. 4Q544 (Visions of Amram^b)

• 50. 4Q545 (Visions of Amram^c)

• 51. 4Q546 (Visions of Amram^d)

• 52. 4Q547 (Visions of Amram^e)

• 53. 4Q548 (Visions of Amram^f)

• 54. 4Q549 (Visions of Amram^g?)

The Assyrian to Persian Exiles

• 55. 4Q196 (papTobit^a)

• 56. 4Q197 (Tobit^b)

• 57. 4Q198 (Tobit^c)

• 58. 4Q199 (Tobit^d)

• 59. 1Q71 (Daniel^a)

• 60. 1Q72 (Daniel^b)

• 61. 4Q112 (Daniel^a)

• 62. 4Q113 (Daniel^b)

• 63. 4Q115 (Daniel^d)

• 64. 4Q243 (Pseudo-Daniel^a)

• 65. 4Q244 (Pseudo-Daniel^b)

• 66. 4Q245 (Pseudo-Daniel^c)

• 67. 4Q246 (Apocryphon of Daniel)

• 68. 4Q242 (Prayer of Nabonidus)

• 69. 4Q552 (Four Kingdoms^a)

• 70. 4Q553 (Four Kingdoms^b)

• 71. 4Q553a (Four Kingdoms^c)

• 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 (Prophecy^a)

• 82. 4Q556a (Prophecy^b)

• 83. 4Q557 (Vision^a)

• 84. 4Q558 (papVision^b)

• 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 (Vision^c?)

• 12. 4Q566 (Prophecy^c?)

• 13. 4Q567 (Unidentified C)

• 14. 4Q568 (Prophecy^d)

• 15. 4Q570 (Unidentified D)⁴⁴

• 16. 4Q572 (Unidentified E)

• 17. 4Q573 (Unidentified F)

• 18. 4Q574 (Unidentified G)

• 19. 4Q575 (Vision^d)

• 20. 4Q580 (Testament^a?)

• 21. 4Q581 (Testament^b?)

• 22. 4Q582 (Testament^c?)

• 23. 4Q583 (Prophecy^e)

• 24. 4Q584a–x (Varia)

• 25. 4Q585a–z (Varia)

• 26. 4Q586a–n (Varia)

• 27. 4Q587 (Testament^d)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 (papTobit^a).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.

3.4 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.

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