SCRIBAL PRACTICES AND APPROACHE S ... - Emanuel Tov

20 Chapter 2: Scribes
in several documents (TABLE 1), but the background of these changes is often not evident. In one
case, each scribe wrote half of the scroll (1QIsa a ), while in other cases one of the scribes wrote
very little (1QpHab scribe B, 1QH a scribes B–C, 1QS scribe B, 11QT a [11Q19] scribe A), which
seems to imply that the involvement of more than one scribe was not planned from the outset. In
the case of 11QT a (11Q19), the first sheet may have been a repair sheet (see TABLE 1 and p. 125
below). In any event, the writing of a scroll by more than one scribe is not necessarily connected
to the practice known as bisection (the writing of a composition in more than one scroll), for
which see ch. 4c.
TABLE 1: Changes of Hands in Qumran Manuscripts
• 1QIsa a : Scribe A left three lines empty at the end of the last sheet written by him (at the end of col. XXVII).
Scribe B started at the beginning of the next sheet with col. XXVIII (Isa 34:1–36:2; illustr. 6). 36 It is unlikely that
the two scribes worked concurrently, since a calculation of the number of columns and sheets needed for the first
scribe’s assignment could not be easily made. This is also the main argument against the assumption that a single
scribe copied the two sections of the scroll from different Vorlagen. The assumption of different scribes was accepted
by several scholars, while others maintained that the two segments of that scroll were written by the same scribe. 37
However, the assumption of different scribes seems to be defensible not only at the paleographical level, but also at
other levels. Scribe B inserted fewer corrections in guttural letters than scribe A (Giese, “Further Evidence”), used
different scribal marks (unless some of them were inserted by later readers), and left out more sections than scribe A,
which were filled in subsequently by himself or a different hand, in small letters, between the lines and in the margin:
cols. XXVIII 18 (Isa 34:17b–35:2); XXX 11–12 (Isa 37:4b-7); XXXII 14 (Isa 38:21); XXXIII 7 (Isa 40:7); XXXIII 15–
16 (Isa 40:14a-16; illustr. 1). Scribe B also adopted a fuller orthography than scribe A. Note, for example, the
preponderance of the short form of the second person singular masculine suffix in the first part of the scroll as against
the longer form (hk–) in the second part, as described in detail by M. Martin, “The Use of the Second Person
Singular Suffixes in 1QIs a ,” Le Muséon 70 (1957) 127–44. Furthermore, scribe B consistently wrote ayk plene, but
scribe A did so only in 20 percent of the instances. Scribe A consistently wrote hk defectively, while scribe B wrote
hwk. These differences are also felt in morphology: Scribe A consistently used the forms awh and ayh, while scribe B
used the longer hawh and hayh. Scribe A employed forms of the type q e t≥altem, while scribe B used q e t≥altemah. For
further examples, see Cook, “Dichotomy” (see n. 36).
• 1QpHab: Towards the end of the composition, in the middle of col. XII 13, scribe B started to write using
larger characters, limiting his activity to the end of that column and the four lines of the next column, until the end of
the composition (illustr. 3). See Martin, Scribal Hands, I.78–81.
• 1QH a : The transitions from one scribe to another in this scroll are clearly visible in col. XI in Sukenik’s
edition where a first scribe copied the text to the middle of line 22, a second one took over for a very short stretch of
text (lines 23–26), and a third one copied lines 27–35 and at least col. XII (illustr. 7). However, the exact division
between the three scribes is not clearly visible in Sukenik’s edition, since the fragments and columns are arranged in
the wrong order. An alternative fragment order was indicated by Martin, Scribal Hands, I.59–64 and perfected by
Puech, “Quelques aspects.” In the new arrangement, scribe A copied the text until (the new) col. XIX 22, scribe B
copied lines 23–26 of that column, and scribe C penned the remainder of the column (lines 27–35) and those following.
The letters at the end of col. XI (Suk. = Puech XIX) and in col. XII (Suk. = Puech XX) are larger, different, and less
regular than the hand in the first part of that column. The division between the two hands is clearly visible in the
spelling systems, as scribe C adopted a fuller orthography than scribe A. Scribe A wrote al almost exclusively
without waw, while scribe C wrote the same word almost exclusively plene. Scribe A preferred yk, while scribe C
preferred the plene spelling ayk. By the same token, scribe A wrote almost exclusively the pronominal suffix of the
36 For an analysis of the features of the two scribal hands of Isaiah, see M. Noth, “Eine Bemerkung zur Jesajarolle vom
Toten Meer,” VT 1 (1951) 224–6; Kuhl, “Schreibereigentümlichkeiten,” especially 332–3; W. H. Brownlee, “The
Literary Significance of the Bisection of Isaiah in the Ancient Scroll of Isaiah from Qumran,” Proceedings of the 25th
Congress of Orientalists (Moscow 1962–63) 431–7; K. H. Richards, “A Note on the Bisection of Isaiah,” RevQ 5
(1965) 257–8; Giese, “Further Evidence”; J. Cook, “The Dichotomy of 1QIsa a ,” in Intertestamental Essays in Honour
of Józef Tadeusz Milik (ed. Z. J. Kapera; Qumranica Mogilanensia 6; Kraków 1992) I.7–24; M. Abegg, “1QIsa a and
1QIsa b : A Rematch,” in Herbert–Tov, The Bible as Book, 221–8 (statistics of different orthographic systems); Pulikottil,
Transmission, 18–20.
37 Martin, Scribal Character, I.65–73; Kutscher, Language, 564–6; J Cook, “Orthographical Peculiarities in the Dead Sea
Biblical Scrolls,” RevQ 14 (1989) 293–305, especially 303–4.