| Notes 1. See James C. VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994), 123. 2. Other texts of the Judean desert have different dates; that is, the texts from Nahal Hever, Wadi Murabba <at, and Masada date from about 250 b.c. to a.d. 135.3. The dates of these three manuscripts are as follows: 4QSam b, ca. 250 b.c.; 4QJera, ca. 200 b.c.; and 4QExodf, ca. 275–225 b.c. See David Noel Freedman, "The Massoretic Text and the Qumran Scrolls: A Study in Orthography," Textus 2 (1962): 87–102; republished in Qumran and the History of the Biblical Text, ed. Frank Moore Cross and Shemaryahu Talmon (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), 196–211.4. See Emanuel Tov, "Scribal Markings in the Texts from the Judean Desert," in Current Research and Technological Developments: Proceedings of the Conference on the Judaean Desert Scrolls, Jerusalem, 30 April 1995, ed. Donald W. Parry and Stephen D. Ricks (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 41–77. 5. For a listing of biblical passages discovered among the DSS, see Eugene Ulrich, "An Index of the Passages in the Biblical Manuscripts from the Judean Desert (Genesis–Kings)," Dead Sea Discoveries 1 (1994): 113–29; and Eugene Ulrich, "An Index of the Passages in the Biblical Manuscripts from the Judean Desert (Part 2: Isaiah–Chronicles)," Dead Sea Discoveries 2 (1995): 86–107. 6. See P. W. Skehan, "Qumran IV. Littérature de Qumran," Supplément au Dictionnaire de la Bible 9 (1978): 805–28, gives a physical description of the biblical fragments. 7. See VanderKam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 31. 8. Lawrence H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994), 164. 9. See VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 30. It should be noted that VanderKam’s list is preliminary; in due time scholars will be able to list, with some definiteness, how many biblical texts were discovered at Qumran. For a slightly different list of extant DSS biblical texts compare Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, 163. 10. VanderKam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 31. 11. It is probably more than coincidence that the early Christian community held the same three Old Testament writings—Psalms, Deuteronomy, and Isaiah—to be of great value, for they are the most quoted scriptural books in the New Testament. 12. The majority of the Hebrew manuscripts were written in square Hebrew characters, known as Assyrian script or Aramaic script, although several texts were copied in paleo-Hebrew script. 13. See VanderKam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 152–3. 14. Commentary on Psalms (4Q171) II, in Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, 4th ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1995). 15. Commentary on Habakkuk (1QpHab) VII, in ibid. 16. In this paper the word Apocrypha is a cover term used for the books that are included in the Catholic version of the Old Testament (derived from the Old Greek translation, or Septuagint) but not included in most Protestant Old Testaments. Apocryphal books include Tobit, Judith, 1–2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and additional sections in Esther and Daniel. 17. Pseudepigrapha is a term used by scholars to represent several Jewish religious books written or extant between the fourth century b.c. and second century a.d. that did not become part of the Hebrew Bible: "One could characterize [pseudepigrapha] as a reverse form of plagiarism: the author does not publish the work of another under his own name; he publishes his work under the name of someone else" (VanderKam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 36). To our knowledge, three pseudepigrapha are attested at Qumran—Enoch, Jubilees, and the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs. 18. For an English translation of these texts and others belonging to the same category, see Florentino García Martínez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), passim; and Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, passim. On the question of whether these books were considered to be authoritative by the Qumranites, see VanderKam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 153–7, and Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, 162–7. 19. The best treatment on the subject is by Carmel McCarthy, The Tiqqune Sopherim and Other Theological Corrections in the Masoretic Text of the Old Testament (G šttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1981), who does not limit the scribal errors to eighteen, but discusses several additional errors. See also Christian D. Ginsburg, Introduction to the Massoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible (London: Trinitarian Bible Society, 1897; reprinted with prolegomenon by Harry M. Orlinsky, New York: Ktav, 1966), 352–61; and P. Kyle McCarter Jr., Textual Criticism: Recovering the Text of the Hebrew Bible (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 58.20. VanderKam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 125. 21. Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 94. 22. Ibid. 23. James A. Sanders, "Understanding the Development of the Biblical Text," in The Dead Sea Scrolls after Forty Years, ed. Hershel Shanks et al. (Washington, D. C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1991), 61. 24. Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1993), 43 n. 108. 25. Jack P. Lewis, The English Bible From KJV to NIV: A History and Evaluation (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book, 1982), 37–8, lists dozens of other details and examples of textual differences between English translations of the Bible. 26. The scholar’s name was William Kilburne. See ibid. 27. Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, comp. Joseph Fielding Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1938), 327. 28. See Ellis R. Brotzman, Old Testament Textual Criticism: A Practical Introduction (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book, 1994), 108, for examples of errors. The state of the problem of errors in the MT is summarized in the preface to the first printing of the New English Bible: "The Hebrew text as thus handed down [by the Massoretes] is full of errors of every kind due to defective archetypes and successive copyists’ errors, confusion of letters, omissions and insertions, displacements of words and even whole sentences or paragraphs; and copyists’ unhappy attempts to rectify mistakes have only increased the confusion" (Harold Scanlin, The Dead Sea Scrolls and Modern Translations of the Old Testament [Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale, 1993], 31). 29. McCarter, Textual Criticism, 77–8. 30. William Hugh Brownlee, The Meaning of the Qumran Scrolls for the Bible: With Special Attention to the Book of Isaiah (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 156–7. 31. For a complete discussion of this missing verse of scripture, see Frank Moore Cross Jr., "The Ammonite Oppression of the Tribes of Gad and Reuben: Missing Verses from 1 Samuel 11 Found in 4QSamuel a," in History, Historiography and Interpretation: Studies in Biblical and Cuneiform Literatures, ed. H. Tadmor and M. Weinfeld (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1983), 148–58; and Tov, Textual Criticism of Hebrew Bible, 342–3.32. Josephus refers to this incident of King Nahash in Antiquities, trans. H. Thackeray and R. Marcus, Loeb Classical Library, 6.68–71. 33. Translation is by the author. 34. The DSS Samuel texts (4QSam a and 4QSamb) will be published by Frank Moore Cross of Harvard University and Donald W. Parry in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, vol. 17.35. See McCarter, Textual Criticism, 57–61. 36. See Tov, Textual Criticism of Hebrew Bible, 127–8. 37. Ibid., 267–9. 38. I note, however, that not all religious texts prefer Elohim. For the author(s) of Proverbs, Jehovah is the preferred name, used scores of times against the epithet Elohim, which is found three times only. In addition, it is clear that the name Jehovah was the preference of divine names for the Elephantine Jews and was used in its absolute state as well as in a host of theophoric names. See Bezalel Porten, Archives from Elephantine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 134–45. Porten asserts that "El is completely absent from the Elephantine onomasticon" (p. 135). 39. M. H. Segal, "El, Elohim, and YHWH in the Bible," Jewish Quarterly Review 46 (October 1955): 100. Similarly, Alexander Rofé detects that the author(s) of Chronicles omits the title Sebaoth in "three otherwise verbatim quotations from Samuel (1 Chronicles 13:6; 16:2; 17:25)" (Alexander Rofé, "The Name YHWH Sebaoth and the Shorter Recension of Jeremiah," in Prophetie und geschichtliche Wirklichkeit im alten Israel. Festschrift für Siegfried Herrmann, ed. R. Liwak and S. Wagner [Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1991], 309). 40. "The preponderance of Elohim in those psalms cannot be original," states Segal in "El, Elohim, and YHWH in the Bible" (see pp. 94, 104–5), because the psalmist would not have employed the awkward expressions Elohim my Elohim (Psalm 43:4) and Elohim your Elohim (Psalm 45:8). On the Elohistic Psalms, see also G. H. Parke-Taylor, Yahweh: The Divine Name in the Bible (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1975), 8–9; G. F. Moore, Judaism I (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930), 424; G. F. Moore, Judaism III (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930), 127; cf. Patrick W. Skehan, "The Divine Name at Qumran, in the Masada Scroll, and in the Septuagint," Bulletin of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies 13 (1980): 20. 41. See Skehan, "Divine Name," 20; Robert Gordis, Poets, Prophets, and Sages: Essays in Biblical Interpretation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971), 167. 42. See Parke-Taylor, Yahweh: The Divine Name in the Bible, 8; Segal, "El, Elohim, and YHWH," 101. 43. The Song of Songs is not divinely inspired poetry; we would not necessarily expect to find the name of God there. 44. See Skehan, "Divine Name," 20–1; Gordis, Poets, Prophets, and Sages, 167. 45. Segal, "El, Elohim, and YHWH," 100. 46. Notable variant readings of divine names also exist in other Samuel texts discovered in Cave 4 at Qumran. For instance, see the reading of 4QSam b at 1 Samuel 23:10.47. See Donald W. Parry, "4QSam a and the Tetragrammaton," in Current Research and Technological Developments, ed. Parry and Ricks, 106–25.48. Specifically, the Hebrew Bible lacks the Tetragrammaton on two occasions against 4QSam a and the Old Greek Bible, which both read Jehovah (see 1 Samuel 2:10; 6:20); the Hebrew Bible prefers Elohim on six occasions against 4QSama and the Old Greek Bible, which prefer Jehovah (see 1 Samuel 2:25; 6:5; 10:26; 23:14; 23:16; 2 Samuel 6:3); the Hebrew Bible (and the Old Greek) omits the Tetragrammaton on three occasions that 4QSama reads it (see 1 Samuel 1:22; 5:11; 11:9); in addition, in the phrase Jehovah, the God of Israel attested in 1 Samuel 6:3 (4QSama, Old Greek), the Hebrew Bible lacks the Tetragrammaton with the reading the God of Israel.49. See Scanlin, Dead Sea Scrolls and Modern Translations, 26. 50. See ibid., 34. 51. Ibid., 27.
Introduction
| Section 1 | Section 2 | Section 3 | |