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

180 THE COMMUNITY OF LAY READERS
The rarer verb of 4QSam a (“and when Joab carefully observed the city”)
is preferred over the common verb of the MT. Graphic similarity probably
caused the substitution of the Masoretic reading.
2 Sam 12:17
MT: wmqyw (cf. LXX BO , Syr.)
4QSam a : [w]mYrXqyw (cf. LXX L , Vg.)
McCarter50 rightly points out that graphic confusion between wa4w and
rês , ] on the one hand, and mêm and bêt, on the other, may account for the
variant reading. The verb of the MT (wmqyw) with its locational preposition
(wyl() is irregular in this setting.
OTHER VIEWS OF 4QSAM a
Not everyone would agree with these assessments of 4QSam a regarding
its five contributions to biblical study. Hans J. Stoebe, Stephen Pisano,
and Alexander Rofé, for example, prefer generally the readings of the
MT over 4QSam a . 51 Pisano, who conducts the most in-depth work in
favor of the MT versus 4QSam a and LXX, sees the majority of pluses
found in 4QSam a and the LXX as the result of “further literary activity”
52 by scribes and editors who deliberately inserted new words or
phrases into the existing text. 53 If the plus is found in LXX and 4QSam a ,
this was created when an “editor who wished to expand his text took
advantage of one word in the verse around which he made his insertion,
and concluded the insertion with the same word, leaving in his wake a
text which appears to have given rise to a textual accident in MT’s
shorter text, but which in reality is simply the result of an expansion.” 54
Pisano calls this editorial activity a “scribal technique.” If, however, the
plus is found in the MT, then it is caused by “an error in the Greek text
[and 4QSam a ] due to homoioteleuton or homoioarkton.” 55
50. McCarter, II Samuel, 297.
51. Hans J. Stoebe, Das erste Buch Samuelis (KAT 8.1; Gütersloh: Gütersloher
Verlagshaus, 1973); Stephen Pisano, Additions or Omissions in the Books of Samuel
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984); Rofé, “The Acts of Nahash,” 129–33.
52. Pisano, Additions or Omissions, 283.
53. Ibid., 241, speaking of “deliberate insertion(s).”
54. Ibid., 240.
55. Ibid., 243.