SCRIBAL PRACTICES AND APPROACHE S ... - Emanuel Tov

Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts from the Judean Desert 205
The number of imperfectly written letters in the Qumran scrolls is very large. Even in well-preserved texts,
segments of the ink of many letters were chipped off, for example, when a word was written on a crack in the leather,
or when the leather cracked subsequent to the writing, such as the truncated final mem of µyçna in 4QJer d 8 (Jer 43:9),
which resembles a bet. At a later stage, some such letters were conceived of as ‘broken’ letters.
(g) Suspended letters. In four words in MT, a letter is written as a ‘hanging’ letter. In retrospect, these letters
are now regarded as having been added after the completion of the linear text with the intention of correcting the
earlier, shorter, text. In Judg 18:30 hç n m, a suspended nun corrected an original hçm to hV,n"m], as indicated by the
vocalization of MT. This tendentious addition was apparently meant to correct an earlier reading which ascribed the
erecting of the idol in Dan to one of the descendants of Moses (b. B. Bat. 109b).
For a similar correction, though not a tendentious one, see the correction in 4QJer a XI 7 (Jer 17:16) of ˚yp to
˚ynp indicated by the addition of a supralinear nun (˚y n p).
In three other verses in MT, guttural letters that had possibly been wrongly omitted by the original scribes were
added in the same way: Ps 80:14 r [ ym; Job 38:13 µy [ çr ibid., v 15 µy [ çrm). A different explanation for one of the
three verses can be found in b. Qidd. 30a where it is said that the letter >ayin in Ps 80:14 r [ ym ‘marks the middle of
the Psalms.’
The four suspended letters in MT mentioned above reflect practices which are very well documented in the
Qumran scrolls, in which many letters and words were suspended as correcting elements (§ f below). In 1QIsa a
alone, there are many such instances, such as in the second word in that scroll, why [ çy. It is not coincidental that
three of the four instances pertain to the letter >ayin, since in many Qumran texts numerous laryngeals and
pharyngeals were also added supralinearly as corrections, especially in 1QIsa a .
Several of the aforementioned paratextual elements that are now part and parcel of the medieval texts, and are
also referred to in rabbinic literature, were not meant by their scribes to be transmitted as such to subsequent
generations. These elements (categories c–g above) were meant to correct the manuscript, just like any other
correction in the Judean Desert texts, but when the details of the biblical text were fixed (sanctified), paradoxically
these corrections were transmitted. From the point of view of the scribes who inserted the corrections, however, it
would have been more appropriate to simply correct the text without leaving traces of the correcting procedure.
The above analysis shows that almost all categories of paratextual elements in the medieval manuscripts were
present in the biblical and nonbiblical texts from Qumran. None of these categories is characteristic of the biblical
text, as they all reflect scribal practices employed in texts of all kinds. Conversely, most of the scribal features of the
Qumran texts also have been perpetuated in the medieval texts, which points to the Qumran texts as being
typologically related to the medieval texts, although not necessarily their immediate precursors. At the same time,
three practices are not reflected in the Masoretic manuscripts.
• Ketiv/Qere notes.
• Crossing out elements with a line (ch. 5c2).
• Scribal signs written in the margin and between the lines (all the categories of sections 5c1, 3–6).
The fact that the medieval texts reflect no scribal signs or instances of elements crossed out with a line is
meaningful with regard to our understanding of these texts, and may be an indication of their careful copying
procedures. It is equally significant that the only paratextual feature of the medieval text of MT which is not
paralleled in the Qumran texts is that of the Ketiv–Qere notations. These notations were not included in Scripture
scrolls circulating when the Qumran scrolls were written. However, these notes, based on an early oral tradition,
were probably put into writing only at a late stage in the development of MT. 274
When viewed against the background of the MT corpus as a whole, the 15 instances of dotted letters (mainly in
the Torah) and the one (two?) instance(s) of parenthesis should be considered very rare. That is, in the great
majority of Qumran manuscripts in which cancellation dots are found, they occur with far greater frequency than in
the texts which have been passed down to us as the medieval MT. By the same token, the practice of suspending
letters is far more frequent in the Qumran scrolls than the four examples in MT. Likewise, the number of unusual
letters (large, small, unusual shapes) was many times greater in the Qumran scrolls than in the medieval texts of
MT.
d. Special writing of divine names
The divine names were written in a special way in many Hebrew Qumran texts:
274 See my study “The Ketiv-Qere Variations in Light of the Manuscript Finds in the Judean Desert,” Text, Theology and
Translation, Essays in Honour of Jan de Waard (New York: United Bible Societies, 2004) 183–91, forthcoming.