SCRIBAL PRACTICES AND APPROACHE S ... - Emanuel Tov

Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts from the Judean Desert 19
In the Judean Desert texts, a special arrangement of poetical units is known almost exclusively for
biblical texts (including Ben Sira [2QSir and MasSir]) with only a few such layouts occurring in
the nonbiblical poetical compositions. Thirty texts were written completely or partially in a
special layout, while twenty-seven other scrolls of the same biblical books were written without a
stichographic arrangement; for details, see ch. 5b. It is difficult to ascertain whether the use or nonuse
of a special layout follows a pattern, and to what extent the choice was a result of the personal
preference of the scribe.
By the same token, different layouts are recognized for the writing of calendrical texts (see the
beginning of ch. 5b).
(10) Orthography
While orthography was determined to a large extent by tradition and the guidance of scribal
schools, at least within the scribal school that was active at Qumran and other places personal
preferences of scribes are clearly visible when the practices of specific scrolls and scribes are
compared. Thus the differences in orthography between scribes A and B of 1QIsa a and A and C of
1QH a are clearly recognizable (see TABLE 1).
(11) Employment of number signs
Several documentary and literary texts present numerals with the Aramaic numeral signs. In
parallel copies of the same text, the individuality of the scribes (or different scribal habits?) can
easily be seen. Some scribes use number signs, while others write the numbers in full. See ch. 5c9.
(12) Writing of the Tetragrammaton
While most scribes of the Qumran texts presented the Tetragrammaton in the square script,
twenty-eight (twenty-nine?) texts written in the Qumran scribal practice used the paleo-Hebrew
script for this purpose. Differing practices were in vogue even within that scribal environment as
thirty-five texts written in the Qumran scribal practice employed the square script (contrast the
data in ch. 6 TABLE 1 with TABLE 2).
e. Identification of scribal hands
With the aid of paleographical analysis different scribal hands can be identified within the same
documents, although scholars often disagree on key issues (see below on 1QIsaa ). For example, the
identification of scribal hands is also crucial in the case of three fragments ascribed to different
scrolls in Tov, “The Jeremiah Scrolls from Qumran,” RevQ 14 (1989) 189–206, and now named
4QJerb , 4QJerd , and 4QJere . These fragments had previously been assigned to the same scroll
(then named 4QJerb ).
Several Judean Desert scrolls were written by more than one scribe. Seven of the nine
examples of Hebrew scrolls written by more than one scribe which are mentioned in TABLE 1
pertain to texts written in the Qumran scribal practice, a fact which may further strengthen the
idea of a Qumran scribal practice (ch. 8a).
For long scrolls especially, it is difficult to ascertain how many were written by more than one
scribe. The usual procedure was probably that each scroll, long or short, was written by a single
scribe, with the involvement of more than one scribe being the exception rather than the rule.
1QIsaa , a long scroll, was written by two scribes, as was 4QApocryphal Psalm and Prayer
(4Q448; illustr. 11), 11 a very small scroll. Changes of hand in the middle of the text are recognizable