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

140 THE REWRITTEN BIBLE AT QUMRAN
status at Qumran. This conclusion indicates that we must put aside our
categories of canonical and noncanonical when investigating the Qumran
literature, as well as any notion of a fixed, unchangeable biblical text. In
the case of Jubilees, the biblical text could be changed quite extensively,
and the resulting work accepted as authoritative.
4QREWORKED PENTATEUCH
4QReworked Pentateuch (abbreviated here as 4QRP) is a grouping of
five manuscripts from Qumran Cave 4: 4Q158 and 4Q364–367. 26 The
manuscripts preserve portions of the Torah from Genesis through
Deuteronomy. The scribal method used in each manuscript is transparent;
the scribe or scribes began with a base text of the Torah; where we
can determine it for 4Q364 and probably 4Q365, it was the proto-
Samaritan text. 27 Then the scribe reworked the text in various ways,
most notably by regrouping passages according to a common theme and
by adding previously unknown material into the text. Two examples will
suffice. First, in 4Q366 fragment 4 col. 1, the following pericopes concerning
the Sukkoth festival are grouped together: Num 29:32–30:1 and
Deut 16:13–14:
[And on the seventh day, seven steers, t]w[o rams, fourteen sound year-old
lambs, and their cereal offering and their drink offering for the steers, the
rams, and the lamb]s according to [their] number [according to the commandment;]
and one he-[go]at for the sin-offering, besides [the continual
burnt offering, and its cereal offering and its drink offering.]
26. John M. Allegro, Qumrân Cave 4.I (4Q158–4Q186) (ed. J. M. Allegro and A. A.
Anderson; DJD 5; Oxford: Clarendon, 1968), 1–6, plate 1. Emanuel Tov and Sidnie
White, “4QReworked Pentateuch” (DJD 13), 187–352. Michael Segal has recently
argued that 4Q158 is a separate composition and that we should not classify it as a
manuscript of 4QRP. See his article, “4QReworked Pentateuch or 4QPentateuch?” in
The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty Years after Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July
20–25, 1997 (ed. L. H. Schiffman, E. Tov, and J. C. VanderKam; Jerusalem: Israel
Exploration Society and the Shrine of the Book, 2000), 391–99. However, if I am correct
in arguing that 4QRP is the result of scribal intervention into a previously established
text rather than a new composition by an author, then the division into separate
compositions is less meaningful. Each manuscript is simply the product of more or less
scribal intervention. Also, we must consider the overlaps among the five manuscripts;
for a listing, see Emanuel Tov, “Introduction,” in Qumran Cave 4.VIII: Parabiblical Texts,
Part 1 (ed. H. W. Attridge et al.; DJD 13; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 190–91; and
idem, “4QReworked Pentateuch: A Synopsis of its Contents,” RQ 16 (1995): 653.
27. Tov, “Introduction” (DJD 13), 192–96.