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

BRENT A. STRAWN 125
who employed it and the reader(s)/hearer(s) who received it? The question
of meaning(s) must wait for §4.
g. The Megilloth: An Exce(r)ption to the Rule?
The Megilloth are a useful test-case for the discussion of genre and the
material question, because the known copies of the Five Scrolls at Qumran
are physically much smaller than the average biblical scroll (see Table
2). 85 It is quite likely that these scrolls contained only the particular biblical
book attested therein. Tov’s explanation for the small size of manuscripts
of the Megilloth seems reasonable: it was “probably in order to
enable the carrying around of these scrolls.” 86 Elsewhere, however, Tov
has used the smaller size of at least some Megilloth manuscripts to argue
that they are excerpted manuscripts. He has made an especially strong
case in this regard for 4QCant a,b (4Q106–4Q107). With regard to the
material question, these two manuscripts comprise a suggestive example
insofar as Tov employs additional criteria beyond small size to argue that they
are excerpted. It should be recalled, after all, that small size is not the most
important, necessary element, and may indeed be only a default or
optional element in the genre. So Tov rightfully employs other aspects of
the taxonomy outlined above. With reference to “Qumran scribal practice,”
he notes the possible remnant of a superscription and the use of
scribal signs, including paleo-Hebrew letters in 4QCant b frag. 1. Such
phenomena “may have been related to the special character of that manuscript.”
87 With reference to the most important and necessary element—
that of excerption, abbreviation, or rearrangement—Tov argues that the
preserved text of 4QCant a,b , which is different from Canticles as preserved,
for example, in the MT, 88 is not due to scribal negligence 89 but is
instead a shortened version 90 that follows the general sequence of Canticles
85. See Tov, “106–108. Introduction to 4QCant a–c ,” 197. An exception is 4QQoh a
(4Q109), which preserves 20 lines.
86. Tov, “Dimensions,” 74. Recall Pfann’s comment above in note 49.
87. Tov, “106–108. Introduction to 4QCant a–c ,” 196.
88. Note the movement from Cant 4:7 to 6:11 (?) within one fragment (2 col. 2) in
4QCant a . See Tov, “106. 4QCant a ,” in Qumran Cave 4.XI: Psalms to Chronicles (ed. E.
Ulrich et al.; DJD 16; Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), 203, for a discussion (and pl. 24).
89. See Tov, “106–108. Introduction to 4QCant a–c ,” 196; idem., “Excerpted and
Abbreviated,” 591–92; and, further, idem, “Three Manuscripts (Abbreviated Texts?)
of Canticles from Qumran Cave 4, ” JJS 46 (1995): 88–111.
90. Better: versions because the two texts do not overlap.