The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

80 SCROLLS AND HEBREW SCRIPTURAL TEXTS
1QIsa a and 1QIsa b
Among the first discoveries were 1QIsa a and 1QIsa b (1Q8). 4 Scholars
quickly and lastingly classified 1QIsa b as virtually identical to the MT,
thus validating the MT (based on medieval manuscripts) both as resting
on a text-form that was now documented a millennium earlier and as
copied with amazing accuracy through the centuries. This was a valid
and legitimate conclusion—not for the MT in general, but for the MT of
Isaiah, since the MT collection is not a unified text, and the evidence was
only from the book of Isaiah. The text-critics were also able to fit 1QIsa a
into the established categories insofar as it basically “agreed with the
MT,” though it exhibited a “baroque” orthography and a large number
of variants that could be explained for the most part as deriving from the
same text-type as the MT; it was just a somewhat deviant text, and some
considered it as a “vulgar” text.
As many more biblical manuscripts (MSS) came to light, both phenomena
continued to appear. Many texts showed intriguing variants,
documenting a certain pluriformity in the text in antiquity, while many
other texts showed close affinity with the corresponding books of the
MT. In fact, texts in general agreement with the MT were originally
claimed to “comprise some 60 percent of the Qumran biblical texts,”
though that number was subsequently reduced to “some 35 percent.” 5 I
will argue below, however, that this is not the best way to categorize and
describe the texts. That view presumes that “the MT, the SP, and the
LXX” are identifiable “text-types” to which we may compare other texts
and accordingly classify them. But this is not the case: generally, the MT
and the LXX are not “text-types,” and we ought not to use them as categories
for classifying other texts. Before the turn of the era, we have no
evidence of people comparing the MT (or the “proto-MT”) with other
textual forms and judging the MT preferable. Rather, the rabbis—to the
best of our knowledge—simply happened (with apparently no specifically
4. Both MSS were published admirably quickly, though they still lack a thorough
critical edition: for 1QIsa a , see Millar Burrows, John C. Trever, and William H.
Brownlee, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls of St. Mark’s Monastery (vol. 1; New Haven, CT:
American Schools of Oriental Research, 1950); for 1QIsa b (1Q8), see Eleazar L.
Sukenik, The Dead Sea Scrolls of the Hebrew University (ed. N. Avigad and Y. Yadin;
Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1954 [Hebrew]; ET: 1955), plus additional fragments
in Dominique Barthélemy, “Isaïe (1QIs b),” in Qumran Cave 1 (ed. D. Barthélemy and
J. T. Milik; DJD 1; Oxford: Clarendon, 1955), 66–68 + pl. 12.
5. For the original number, see Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
(Assen: Van Gorcum, 1992), 115, with his emphasis. For the revised number, see the
2d, rev. ed. of this same work (2001), 115.