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

BRENT A. STRAWN 123
evidently contained only Deuteronomy 32; (b) 4QPs g,h and 5QPs, which
apparently contained only Psalm 119; or even (c) 4QDeut j , which
excerpts from different “biblical” texts in a rearranged order. More recent
genre theory has suggested that focusing overmuch on identical features
is mistaken. Instead, cognitive theories of genre argue that genre is the
result and creation of three aspects: (1) individual (necessary) elements;
(2) interaction of these elements; and (3) the genre’s overall gestalt. 80
Only the first of these three aspects—that of individual (necessary) elements—corresponds
to the object of study in many early analyses of genre.
This aspect is now deemed insufficient by itself for the determination of
genre even while it remains important on many levels. With reference to
the excerpted manuscripts from Qumran, the taxonomy presented above
is a step toward the identification and categorization of the individual and
necessary elements that would mark a scroll as belonging to this genre.
The five criteria identified—form, size, content, text, and scribal practice—
were presented in order of decreasing import. So, preeminent among the
characteristic (necessary) elements of this genre is the excerpted, abbreviated,
or rearranged form of the base text. Less necessary, but still
important, are the size of the manuscript in question, its content, textual
character and affiliation, and so forth. 81
The second aspect of genre concerns the interaction of the included
(whether necessary, default, or optional) elements. 82 This means that the
80. I am indebted here to Robert Williamson, Jr.’s unpublished paper “Qumran
Pesher: A Cognitive Model of the Genre,” who has brought cognitive theories of
genre to bear on the pesharim. In particular, Williamson highlights the work of George
Lakoff (Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind
[Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987]), Alastair Fowler (Kinds of Literature: An
Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1982], see esp. 39), and, for the three aspects listed above, M. Sinding (“After
Definitions: Genre, Categories, and Cognitive Science,” Genre 35 [2002]: 181–220).
81. Sinding speaks of necessary, default, and optional elements in genre analysis,
description, and identification (ibid.). As indicated above, the most necessary element
for excerpted manuscripts would be the non-continuous quotation of sections, large
or small, of a base text or texts. Default and optional elements would be present in
the prototypical member of the genre (perhaps one might compare 4QDeut n [4Q41]
or 4QDeut j [4Q37] as semi-pristine types) but may not be manifested in other exemplars.
This explains why not all of the manuscripts are short (e.g., Testimonia), why all
of them do not excerpt the same text (e.g., Deut 8:5–10), and so forth and so on. To
a large degree, the usefulness of newer genre theory is its capacity to explain differences
among exemplars that are nevertheless still of the same genre if—especially—
they share gestalt structure(s). See below.
82. See the previous note. As an example of such interaction, note the work of
George J. Brooke on the structural combination of quotation-interpretation as constitutive
of the pesher genre (“Qumran Pesher: Towards the Redefinition of a Genre,”
RevQ 10 [1979–1980]: 483–503).