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

172 THE COMMUNITY OF LAY READERS
page headings—all these are not considered to be canonized, since most
of these elements did not exist in the earliest extant biblical manuscripts.
Such elements are post-canonization-period inventions that serve as useful
resources and tools to assist the reader in accessing the biblical text.
4QSAM a VERSUS MASORETIC SAMUEL
Over the last two centuries a number of textual critics have recognized
that the MT of 1 and 2 Samuel has experienced transmissional corruption.
16 Various introductions to works on Samuel have summarized problems
with the MT of Samuel, followed by seriatim treatments of variant
readings in the ancient witnesses. As early as 1842, Otto Thenius 17 systematically
identified corruptions in the Samuel MT and argued for
restorations and emendations based on the LXX. His groundbreaking
work was accepted and used by Heinrich Ewald, 18 followed by Friedrich
Böttcher; 19 but later scholars believed that Thenius lacked discrimination
in his use of the LXX. In 1871, Julius Wellhausen, 20 with a proper critical
eye and perhaps a well-developed sixth sense, created a work that
sought to understand and articulate the underlying rules and principles
that may have governed the LXX translators; he also succeeded in comprehending,
to a point, the challenges connected to the textual critic’s
understanding of the transmission of the Bible. At the close of the nineteenth
century, Samuel R. Driver, author of the first serious English work
on the books of Samuel, 21 asserted that the Samuel books “have suffered
unusually from transcriptional corruption.” 22 Present scholars have also
observed weaknesses in the MT of Samuel, using descriptions such as
16. This statement pertains only to Samuel, not to the other books of the Hebrew
Bible.
17. Otto Thenius, Die Bücher Samuels, erklärt (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1842; 2d ed.,
Leipzig: Hirzel, 1864).
18. Heinrich Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel bis Christus (7 vols.; Göttingen: Dieterich,
1843–69); ET: The History of Israel (8 vols.; London: Longmans, Green, 1867–).
19. Friedrich Böttcher, Neue exegetisch-kritische Ährenlese zum Alten Testamente (Leipzig:
Barth, 1863).
20. Julius Wellhausen, Der Text der Bücher Samuelis (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1871).
21. Samuel R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text and the Topography of the Books of Samuel
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1890).
22. Ibid., i.