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Variorum in the Psalms Scroll (llQPsa)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

J. A. Sanders
J. A. Sanders
Affiliation:
Union Theological Seminary, New York
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Extract

Fragments of biblical psalms have been found at Qumran in Caves 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and ll; and there is the Psalms Scroll from Cave ll. There were undoubtedly more texts of the Psalter in the Qumran library than of any other biblical literature — 27 accounted for to date. By and large, the biblical psalms recovered thus far from Qumran are in very close textual agreement with the psalms of the early medieval Ben Asher manuscripts from Cairo and Aleppo (the textus receptus). In fact, all witnesses to the texts of the biblical psalms, whether in Hebrew or in early Greek, Latin, Aramaic, or Syriac translations, are in broad general agreement, that is, are of one basic recension. It is because of this that it was possible, in a comparatively short time in 1961–62, to construct a supporting critical apparatus for the scientific edition of the Psalms Scroll. The texts of the 38 biblical psalms in the Psalms Scroll are, with some interesting exceptions, the texts we have always known; the order of the psalms and the presence among them of nonbiblical psalms, however, are very surprising.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 59 , Issue 1 , January 1966 , pp. 83 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1966

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References

1 Cf. Sanders, The Psalms Scroll of Qumran Cave ll (Discoveries in the Judaean Desert of Jordan, IV [1965]), 18–49.

2 Cf. Cross, “The Development of the Jewish Scripts,” in The Bible and the Ancient Near East, ed. by G. Ernest Wright (1961), 133–202. The palaeographic analysis of llQPsa in Sanders, op. cit., 6–9, was written on the basis of Cross's article and then graciously scrutinized in MS by him.

3 A physico-chemical analysis recently conducted on uninscribed pieces of scroll leather at the University of Leeds also requires considerable tolerance, but, like the radio-carbon tests, confirms the findings of archaeology and palaeography: cf. Roland de Vaux, L'Archéologie et les manuscrits de la Mer Morte (1961), 76f.

4 Cf. Sanders, , “Pre-Masoretic Psalter Texts,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 27 (1965), 114–23Google Scholar, where a catalog and an index to all available pre-Masoretic Hebrew Psalter texts to date may be found.

4a See now Revue Biblique 75 (1965), 210–17.

5 Cf. Biblica 38 (1957), 245–55.

6 Cf. P. W. Skehan, “The Qumran Manuscripts and Textual Criticism,” Vetus Testamentum, Supplement 4 (1957), 155.

7 Cf. ibid., 154. In personal correspondence Monsignor Skehan recently again affirmed his judgment that 4Q is proto-Masoretic. The Psalter materials now available may be scaled thus: llQ — 1–10Q — Masada/Nahal Hever — MT.

8 Cross, Ancient Library of Qumran (1961), 165. Cf., now, Cross, , “The History of the Biblical Text in the Light of Discoveries in the Judaean Desert,” Harvard Theological Review 57 (1964), 281–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 286 and 295–99.

9 Cross' theory of “local texts,” advanced in his recent HTR article (cf. above, note 8), 297–99, seems to provide the clue to the importance of llQPsa in the pre-Masoretic history of the Psalter.

10 Cf. Cross, Ancient Library (1961), 198–200.

11 Cf. Allegro in The Journal of Biblical Literature 78 (1959), 343–46; Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (1962), 243f.; and P. W. Skehan's review of the latter in The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 25 (1963), 121.

12 Cf. Cross in the HTR article cited (above, notes 8 and 9), 286: “If the socalled llQPsa is indeed a Psalter, despite the bizarre order and noncanonical compositions, mostly of the Hellenistic era, then we must argue that one Psalms collection closed at the end of the Persian period (the canonical collection), and that another remained open well into the Greek period (llQ), but was rejected by the Rabbis.”

13 Reported by Y. Yadin in the Jerusalem (Israel) Post, December 20, 1964. See above, notes 4 and 7.

14 Skehan, op. cit. (VT Suppl. 4), 153.

15 Rabin, , “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the History of the O. T. Text,” Journal of Theological Studies 6 (1955), 174–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Cf. Talmon, S., “Aspects of the Textual Transmission of the Bible in the Light of the Qumran Manuscripts,” Textus 4 (1964), 95–132Google Scholar. See esp. 97f. “We have no reason to doubt that this ‘liberal’ attitude towards divergent textual traditions of the Bible was prevalent also in ‘normative’ Jewish circles … Phenomenologically speaking, the situation that prevailed in the ʻazarah (of the Jerusalem temple) may be compared, though with qualifications, with the one that obtained in the Scriptorium at Qumran. The difference consists in the fact that in the end the Temple codices were collated, probably in the first century C.E., and what is more important, that Rabbinic Judaism ultimately established a model text and strove to banish deviant MSS from circulation.”

17 Cf. Braun, Oskar, “Ein Brief des Katholikos Timotheus I über biblische Studien des 9 Jahrhunderts,” Oriens Christianus 1 (1901), 299–313Google Scholar, esp. 304–07. Cf. Otto Eissfeldt's article in Theologische Literaturzeitung 74 (1949), Cols. 595–600, which was the first after the discovery of the Qumran Caves to relate the two discoveries. Cf. also Raphael J. Bidawid, Les Lettres du Patriarche nestorien, Timothée I (1956), 71, for the dates of the letter and of the discovery.

18 Note particularly the recent treatment of the subject by Di Lella, Alexander A., “Qumran and the Geniza Fragments of Sirach,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 24 (1962), 245ff.Google Scholar

19 Mosul 1113. Cf. List of Old Testament Peshitta Manuscripts (Leiden, 1961), 113. A preliminary collation of llQ Pss. 151, 154 and 155 with Mosul 1113 is provided, due to the kindness of the Peshitta Institute for sending me photos of the latter, in Sanders, The Psalms Scroll of Qumran Cave 11 (DJDJ IV), 54–76. See now the more detailed treatment in John Strugnell's forthcoming article, “Notes on the Text and Transmission of the Apocryphal Psalms 151, 154 and 155,” to be published in the Catholic Biblical Quarterly.

20 For the loci of pseudo-Davidic psalms available in Old Latin and Arabic, cf. DJDJ IV, 60, note 1 (for which references I am indebted to John Strugnell). See now Strugnell, John, “More Psalms of ‘David,’” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 27 (1965), 207–16.Google Scholar

21 Who is to say that the Apostle Paul exhibits a “basic misunderstanding” of Torah (as does Hans-Joachim Schoeps, Paul [1961], 200)? For a recent evaluation of what archaeology in general and the scrolls in particular can mean to New Testament studies, cf. W. F. Albright, “Retrospect and Prospect in New Testament Archaeology,” in The Teacher's Yoke, ed. by J. Vardaman et al. (1964), 27–41.

22 Discoveries continue apace. Aside from those found in 1960 in the Nahal Hever and in 1964–65 at Masada (see above, note 13), there are the very valuable early fourth-century B. C. Aramaic papyri recovered from the Wadi ed-Daliyeh in 1962: see Cross, Frank M., “The Discovery of the Samaria Papyri,” The Biblical Archaeologist 26 (1963), 110–21.Google Scholar