SCRIBAL PRACTICES AND APPROACHE S ... - Emanuel Tov

226 Chapter 6: Scripts
former, the Tetragrammaton is written in paleo-Hebrew characters, while in the latter it is written
in the square script (contrast, e.g. 11QPs a XXIII 10 with 11QPs b 7 5). The scribe of
4QShirShabb g (4Q406) wrote µyhla in paleo-Hebrew, while the scribes of the other manuscripts
of ShirShabb did not. Some of these texts were written in the same period, indicating different
scribal habits rather than a different chronological background. The latter assumption was
espoused by P. W. Skehan, “The Qumran Manuscripts and Textual Criticism,” VTSup 4 (1957)
151 who ascribed the writing of the Tetragrammaton in paleo-Hebrew characters to a late stage of
the writing of the Qumran scrolls. Among other things he expressed this view regarding the
internal differences within the pesharim (Skehan, “Divine Name,” 22), assuming that the earlier
pesharim wrote the Tetragrammaton in square characters, while the later ones used paleo-Hebrew
characters, but this is not borne out by the dates now assigned to these manuscripts. 296
Probably in some manuscripts spaces were left for the paleo-Hebrew words to be filled in
later either by the scribe himself or by a special person who was entitled to write the divine
name.
• 1QpHab: According to Stegemann, KURIOS, A, 91, n. 502, the difference between the somewhat coarse pen of
the scribe and the more refined writing of the Tetragrammata written in that text (illustr. 3) shows that the latter were
written at a later stage.
• 4QpIsa e (4Q165): In this scroll, for which the use of the Tetragrammaton is not evidenced explicitly, a space
was left open in 6 4 where MT (32:6) has a Tetragrammaton. This space may have been left for a Tetragrammaton,
to be filled in possibly by a different scribe (or was the Tetragrammaton omitted intentionally, indicated by a space
in the middle of the line?).
• 11QPsa : The writing of the Tetragrammata shows much variation, both with regard to the size of the letters
and the space around them (fig. 2 7). 7 It appears that the scribe left irregular spaces, and that at a later stage someone,
possibly the original scribe himself, penned in the Tetragrammata, sometimes squeezing them in between the
surrounding words. This procedure often created the misleading impression of a ligature (e.g. IV 3, 11; X 9; XIII 8,
12; XIV 4; XVI 11), while in other instances either ample space was left around the Tetragrammaton (XIV 8) or the
paleo-Hebrew letters were very large (VIII 5). In one instance, the scribe forgot to write the Tetragrammaton, viz., in
the space left in III 4, at which point it is found in MT (Ps 121:5). A. Wolters, “The Tetragrammaton in the
Psalms Scroll,” Textus 18 (1995) 89–98, especially 93, noticed that the shape of the waw of the Tetragrammata
until VI 11 differs from that of the later occurrences in the scroll. This may imply that two different hands wrote the
Tetragrammata.
• 11QpaleoUnidentified Text (11Q22): kyhlal was written with a different color of ink.
The above evidence shows that at least in some Qumran texts, the Tetragrammaton was filled in after the
writing of the main text, and this was also the case in one manuscript of the LXX. In P.Fouad 266b (848) of
Deuteronomy (middle of 1 BCE), ample space was left (equal to 5–6 letters) for the divine names in 31 instances, e.g.
Deut 18:5, 20:13, 27:2, 28:61, 29:3. These spaces were large enough for kuvrio", although the shorter square
Hebrew Tetragrammaton was actually written in them. At some point, two dots were inserted between which the
scribe was to write the Tetragrammaton, but these dots were disregarded, as the Hebrew Tetragrammaton required
more space (see n. 276). For a good example, see frg. 49 (col. 34). The scribe who wrote the Tetragrammaton in
this papyrus was not an expert, as the yod and waw were penned identically. On the other hand, the Tetragrammata
296 The following dates have been assigned to pesharim using the square character: 4QpIsa b (4Q162; 50–25 BCE), 4Qpap
pIsa c (4Q163) (4Q163; 85 BCE), 4QpMic? (4Q168; 30 BCE–68 CE), 4QpNah (4Q169; 50–25 BCE). The following dates
have been assigned to pesharim using the Tetragrammata in paleo-Hebrew characters: 1QpHab (1–50 CE), 4QpIsa a
(4Q161; 50–25 BCE), 4QpPs a (4Q171; 50–25 BCE), 4QpPs b (4Q173; 30–1 BCE), 4QpIsa e (4Q165; 30–1 BCE). The dates
are culled from the summary list of Webster, “Chronological Index.” In a similar vein, Stegemann, KURIOS, 173–83
suggested that after the beginning of the second century BCE the Tetragrammaton was no longer used freely (that is, not
in biblical quotations) in the square script, and therefore texts displaying its free use after this period were not written
by the Essenes. This date was pushed down to the middle of the second century by É. Puech, “Les deux derniers
psaumes davidiques du rituel d’exorcisme, 11QPsAp a IV 4–V 14,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years of Research
(ed. D. Dimant and U. Rappaport; Leiden/New York/Cologne and Jerusalem 1992) 64–89 (80–85) and A. Lange,
“Kriterien essenischer Texte,” Qumran kontrovers, 59–69 (60). If this assumption is correct, all the texts included in
TABLE 2b are either early, too fragmentary to be evaluated, or non-sectarian.