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4QReworked Pentateuch C and the Literary Sources of the Temple Scroll: A New (Old) Proposal 1
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Abstract This essay proposes a new understanding of the literary history of the Temple Scroll in light of its relationship with 4QReworked Pentateuch C (4Q365 + 365a). It begins from the argument that 4QRP C includes the five fragments labeled 4Q365a (4QTemple?), and that 4QRP C should be regarded as an expanded edition of the Pentateuch. Substantial parallels between 4QRP C (both 4Q365 and 4Q365a) and the Temple Scroll raise the possibility that an expanded Pentateuch resembling 4QRP C could have constituted the main source with which the Temple Scroll’s redactor worked. This proposal departs from the usual understanding of the Scroll as comprised of several lightly-reworked, independent sources. Instead, it situates the composition of the Temple Scroll more firmly in the context of the ongoing scribal reworking of scripture in the Second Temple period.
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Historiography in the Dead Sea Scrolls
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Abstract Historiographical writing is woefully under-represented in the Scrolls. This fact may be due in part to ideological reasons. The sectarians were not disposed to preserve the praises of the Maccabees, and they seem to have been far more interested in the niceties of halakah than in historical records. But in part it is also due to chance. The pesharim presuppose familiarity with historical traditions, whether oral or written, that have not survived. The so-called annalistic texts provide a glimpse of the form those traditions may have taken. These texts are not historiography on the grand scale of the books of Maccabees or Josephus, but they are historical records, however minimal, and they show that Judeans between the Maccabees and Josephus, including the sectarians known from the Scrolls, were not entirely indifferent to historical memory.
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The Use of Greek at Qumran: Manuscript and Epigraphic Evidence for a Marginalized Language
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Abstract Treatments of language use at Qumran have tended to marginalize the evidence for Greek language use among the Covenanters, on the basis of the observation that far more of the surviving texts are written in Hebrew or Aramaic. This paper examines the meager evidence for Greek use at the site—including the sole Greek documentary text, 4Q350, recently published epigraphic evidence, and the enigmatic Greek letters of the Copper Scroll (3Q15)—in an attempt to recognize the importance of Greek for everyday intramural business and for maintaining economic contact with exterior communities. Manuscript and epigraphic survivals demonstrate that the Covenanters’ use of Greek can be characterized as primarily occurring in the context of day-to-day economic transactions, business, and trade. The evidence suggests that, like the Bar Kokhba rebels, the Covenanters attempted to “purify” their discourse and way of life, but economic realities nevertheless encouraged periodic communication in the Greek language.
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Notes on the Three Qumran-Type Yadin Fragments Leading to a Discussion of Identification, Attribution, Provenance, and Names
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Abstract The identification of the three Qumran-type Yadin fragments as Qumran Cave 11 fragments is dubious in one case, and erroneous in the other two cases. This raises the more general question how we need to deal with unprovenanced Dead Sea Scroll fragments.
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Papyrusfragmente, evtl. aus dem Wadi Murabbaʿat
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Abstract The article is a publication of a lot of tiny papyrus fragments from the collection of the Museum of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Jerusalem. The fragments are archaeologically unprovenanced, they might come from Wadi Murabbaʿat. Six of them have legible remains of letters. Two of them may be identified as fragments of Mur174 (from the same museum’s collection), one might be part of Mur115, one of Mur133. The appendix gives a few improved reconstructions of Mur115, by the late H. J. Polotsky.
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Light Against Darkness. Dualism in Ancient Mediterranean Religion and the Contemporary World. Edited by Armin Lange, Eric M. Meyers, Bennie H. Reynolds III and Randall Styers. Journal of Ancient Judaism Supplements 2. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011. Hardcover. Pp. 368. € 84.95. ISBN 978-35-255-5016-8.
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The Relation between Roman and Local Law in the Babatha and Salome Komaise Archives: General Analysis and Three Case Studies on Law of Succession, Guardianship and Marriage. By Jacobine G. Oudshoorn. STDJ 69. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Hardcover. Pp. xiv + 456. € 161.00/US$ 224.00. ISBN 978-90-041-4974-8.
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New Idioms Within Old: Poetry and Parallelism in the Non-Masoretic Poems of 11Q5 (= 11QPsa). By Eric D. Reymond. Society of Biblical Literature Early Judaism and Its Literature 31. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011. Paperback. Pp. xiv + 228. $29.95. ISBN 978-1-58983-537-5.
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