SCRIBAL PRACTICES AND APPROACHE S ... - Emanuel Tov

Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts from the Judean Desert 15
Stegemann, Library of Qumran, 51–5 holds a maximalistic view on this issue, assuming that
most Qumran scrolls were written on site. According to him, one of the main occupations of the
Qumran community was the preparation of leather for the writing and mass-production of written
texts. These were, in turn, offered for sale to the outside world, and Stegemann pinpoints the
places in the community buildings in which the scrolls were manufactured, stored, and offered for
sale. 34 Golb, The DSS (see n. 33), expressing a minimalist view, claimed that none of the Qumran
documents was written locally (Golb did not express himself with regard to other documents from
the Judean Desert).
As a result, there is no consensus regarding where the Qumran documents were copied, but
since most scholars believe that at least some, if not many, of the texts from Qumran were written
locally (see ch. 8a with regard to the possibility of a Qumran scribal practice), it remains correct to
refer to the texts found at Qumran as the Qumran corpus, as long as the necessary reservations are
kept in mind.
Masada. There is no reason to believe that any of the Masada texts were penned at Masada
itself, even though the Zealots and presumably also the Essenes remained at Masada long enough
to have embarked upon such activity. On the other hand, there is apparently some evidence of
tanning of hides at Masada (Netzer, Masada III, 634–5) which could imply some scribal activity.
Furthermore, some scribal exercises were mentioned in § b above. However, probably none of this
evidence is relevant to our evaluation of the literary texts found at Masada which were probably
not produced there.
It is probable that the only writing performed at Masada pertains to the Hebrew, Aramaic, and
Greek ostraca inscribed before the destruction of the fortress, and to Latin ostraca and some Greek
papyri inscribed during the Roman occupation. Other papyrus and leather texts may have been
imported (for an analysis, see Cotton and Geiger, Masada I, 1–2).
Other sites. A similar type of reasoning applies to the texts found at the other sites in the
Judean Desert. Few scholars have claimed that texts were actually written in Wadi Murabba>at,
Nah≥al H≥ever, or Wadi Sdeir.
In short, it appears that the scribes of the Judean Desert texts remain as anonymous today in
identity and origin as they were two generations ago. However, while a generation ago the corpus
of Qumran documents and their scribes were identified with the Qumran community, this claim is
not made today, although undoubtedly a number of texts (one third of the texts found there? [ch.
8a2]) were copied by that community. By the same token, the documents found at Masada
should not be identified with the people who occupied that site. All these documents, including
the letters found at Nah≥al H≥ever and Wadi Murabba>at, reflect the work of scribes from all of
Israel, possibly including some local scribes.
d. Characteristic features of individual scribes
Because of the lack of external data on the scribes who copied or wrote the documents found in
the Judean Desert, our sole source of information regarding them is the scribal activity reflected in
the documents themselves. Whether a text under discussion is a copy of an earlier document or an
autograph (§ h below), the scribal practices reflected in it do provide information which is relevant
to the study of these scribal practices. However, in the analysis of these practices it is often
difficult to distinguish between the personal input of the scribes and elements transmitted to them.
Thus the division into sense units (sections) and the specific layout of poetical units embedded in
34 This theory has been rejected in a detailed analysis by F. Rohrhirsch, Wissenschaftstheorie (see previous note), and
idem, “Die Geltungsbegründungen der Industrie-Rollen-Theorie zu Chirbet Qumran und En Feschcha auf dem
methodologischen Prüfstand: Relativierung und Widerlegung,” DSD 6 (1999) 267–81.