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

BRENT A. STRAWN 145
were composed, copied, read, “performed,” and used. 146 They are manuscripts—not,
in the modern reified sense, “texts.” 147 But even if the Dead
Sea Scrolls are treated in a modern way as “texts,” that does not make
their form and content any less subject to the ideology of the community
that held them as precious. 148 It seems that, in the case of the biblical
scrolls which have often been the purview of textual critics, these communal,
rhetorical, ideological, and cultural-artifactual aspects of the
scrolls have been woefully neglected and understudied; and yet, in the
light of the benefits apparent from recent socially minded work in codicology
and papyrology, 149 it is apparent that attention to such aspects
would pay significant dividends for the biblical scrolls, 150 as it has for
study of the “nonbiblical” scrolls. 151
4. The last point raises again the issue of genre and the continuum of
kinds of documents/compositions at Qumran. When these are considered
146. I am indebted to Steve Delamarter for discussions on this point. Among
Delamarter’s work, see “The Sociology of Ethiopian Scribal Communities: A
Preliminary Report” (paper presented at the international meeting of the Society of
Biblical Literature, Groningen, Netherlands, June 2004); and “Communities of Faith
and Their Bibles: A Sociological Typology” (paper presented at the West Coast Dead
Sea Scrolls Workgroup, Vancouver, Canada, October 2004). I thank Delamarter for
sharing both of these essays with me.
147. See David C. Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), who is especially helpful in beginning to think differently
about “texts,” manuscripts, and copies.
148. See the ground-breaking study of Carol A. Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space:
Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran (STJD 52; Leiden: Brill, 2004).
149. Note esp., e.g., Michelle P. Brown, The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and
the Scribe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), esp. 71, 193, 200–71,
397–402; and Alan D. Crown, Samaritan Scribes and Manuscripts (TSAJ 80; Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 2001). I am grateful to Steve Delamarter for discussions on medieval
codicology and for bringing several key works, including these two, to my attention.
Note also Colette Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002).
150. This work is beginning to take place. Note the new monograph by Emanuel
Tov, which was unfortunately unavailable to me at the time of this writing: Scribal
Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert (STDJ 54; Leiden:
Brill, 2004); as well as the two volumes in the series, The Bible as Book: Edward D.
Herbert and Emanuel Tov, eds., The Bible as Book: The Hebrew Bible and the Judaean
Desert Discoveries (London: The British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 2002); and John
L. Sharpe and Kimberly Van Kampen, eds., The Bible as Book: The Manuscript Tradition
(London: The British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 1998)—note esp. Tov’s essay,
“Scribal Practices and Physical Aspects of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in the 1998 volume
(9–33). Prior to this more recent work the mainstay was Malachi Martin, The Scribal
Character of the Dead Sea Scrolls (2 vols.; Bibliothèque du Muséon 44–45; Louvain:
University of Louvain, 1958).
151. See, e.g., Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space, though her work is rhetorically
based, not codicological or papyrological.