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

LOREN T. STUCKENBRUCK 107
2 are difficult to read. In any case, scholars outside the official editorial
team of the scrolls were not afforded the opportunity to study the script
itself until the photographs were made accessible in 1991–93. 15
Furthermore, Milik’s translation of 4Q530 fragments in 1976, offered
without accompanying photographs, covered all the lines for column 2
with the exception of lines 17–19. 16 Finally, Milik merely summarized the
content of these lines, and his description did not suggest that they preserve
anything that might throw light on the background of Daniel.
Instead, Milik’s comment about lines 17–19 left the opposite impression:
according to him, they contain a description of divine judgment “inspired
by Dan 7:9–10.” 17 Until other scholars could consult the photographs, it
was impossible for them to attempt an independent judgment on the matter.
18 Nevertheless, in the meantime, Milik’s suggestion about the tradition-historical
relationship between 4Q530 and Daniel 7 was picked up
by at least one scholar, Florentino García Martínez, in the context of discussing
the date of the Book of Giants. García Martínez reasoned that if
Milik’s claim of literary dependence by the Book of Giants on Daniel 7 is
correct, then its composition is to be assigned to an “upper limit by the
middle of the second century BC.” 19 It is now becoming clear, however,
that the early suggestion of Milik is problematic. Since the available evidence
is not yet well known, its significance in relation to Daniel merits
some detailed discussion here.
NY: Doubleday, 1961), 149 (figure 3, line 3) and 181–88 for comparisons of the individual
letters. Cross designated this manuscript as “4Q Ps.-Enoch a ” and characterized the
script as “an unusual semicursive” to be dated somewhere between 100 and 50 B.C.E.
15. See the photographic collections published by Robert H. Eisenman and James
M. Robinson, A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls (2 vols.; Washington, DC:
Biblical Archeological Society, 1991), pls. 80, 302, 887, and 1516; and by Emanuel
Tov with Stephen J. Pfann, The Dead Sea Scrolls on Microfiche: A Comprehensive Facsimile
Edition of the Texts from the Judaean Desert (Leiden: Brill, 1993), PAM photograph numbers
40.620, 41.444, 42.496, and 43.568. See now pl. 2 in DJD 31.
16. Jozef T. Milik, The Books of Enoch, 305; see also his abbreviated account in
“Turfan et Qumran: Livre des géants juif et manichéen,” in Tradition und Glaube: Das
frühe Christentum in seiner Umwelt (ed. G. Jeremias, H.-W. Kuhn, and H. Stegemann;
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971), 122.
17. Milik, The Books of Enoch, 305.
18. As a result, Beyer, in ATTM, 264n1, and John C. Reeves, in Jewish Lore in
Manichaean Cosmogony: Studies in the Book of Giants Traditions (HUCM 14; Cincinnati:
HUCA, 1992), 104, could do no more than mention the similarity between lines
17–19 and the throne-theophany in Dan 7:9–10.
19. See Florentino García Martínez, “The Book of Giants,” in idem, Qumran and
Apocalyptic: Studies on the Aramaic Texts from Qumran (STDJ 9; Leiden: Brill, 1992), 115,
who makes this suggestion under the proviso that Milik’s conclusion would need to
be confirmed.