SCRIBAL PRACTICES AND APPROACHE S ... - Emanuel Tov

Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts from the Judean Desert 5
7). To some extent, each of these groups reflects internally similar scribal habits, but the
discrepancies appearing within each group resemble those between other texts in the Qumran
corpus.
c. Background of the documents
A description of the scribal practices reflected in the documents from the Judean Desert is more
encompassing than the name of the geographic area implies. It appears that many, if not most, of
the literary texts found in the Judean Desert had been copied elsewhere in Israel. Therefore, the
contents and scribal practices reflected in them represent not only the persons who passed
through, lived, and wrote in the Judean Desert, but to an even greater extent the culture and scribes
of Palestine as a whole. 7 At the present stage of research, the wider scope of the literary
documents of the Judean Desert corpora is a mere assumption. However, it may be supported by
research into either the content of the texts or their physical components, that is the material
(leather and papyrus), the sinews used for sewing the sheets of leather, and the ink.
Some of the letters found in the Judean Desert (Wadi MurabbaÆat and Nah≥al H≥ever)
mention localities in Judea, and were written either in the area or brought there, but for the
Qumran texts, the largest segment of the corpora from the Judean Desert, we have no sound data
with regard to the geographic origin of texts written outside Qumran.
Furthermore, with the exception of the dated documents from Murabba>at and Nah≥al
H≥ever, the dates of the documents also remain hypothetical, although paleography and AMS
(Accelerated Mass Spectometry; carbon-14) analysis provide an ever-increasing probability
regarding their dating. 8 The latter procedure, however, has so far only been applied to a very small
number of texts (Bonani et al., “Radio-carbon Dating”; for criticisms, see Doudna, “Dating”; idem,
4Q Pesher Nahum, 675–82; B. Thiering, “The Date and the Order of Scrolls, 40 BCE to 70 CE,” in
Schiffman, Jerusalem Congress, 191–8). The paleographical dates applied to the documents range
from the fourth century BCE to the first century CE for the Jericho documents, from 250 BCE to 70
CE for the Qumran texts, 9 from 150 BCE to 70 CE for the Masada texts, and from 75 BCE to 135 CE
for the texts from Wadi Murabba>at, Nah≥al H≥ever, and Nah≥al S≥eat Papyrus
and the Letter Found near Yabneh-Yam,” BASOR 165 (1962) 34–42.
11 For an initial analysis of the Cryptic A script (4QHoroscope [4Q186], 4Q249, 4Q298, 4Q317 as well as the more
fragmentary texts 4Q250, 4QMish E [4Q324c], and 4Q313 [unclassified frgs.]), see Pfann, “4Q298” and idem, “249a–z
and 250a–j: Introduction,” DJD XXXVI, 515–46.