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

146 EXCERPTED MANUSCRIPTS AT QUMRAN
along with text-functionality, it becomes clear that a “biblical” scroll may
be both more and less than that. And again, given the opacity of some of
our data, we seem cast back to certain presuppositions, at least to some
degree with certain texts. In deciding matters on a case-by-case or scrollby-scroll
basis, the text-critical data proper that have been culled by
Ulrich, Tov, and so many others must be given the most weight. Those
data are considerable and the closest approximation to “hard-data” we
have. Even so, the excerpted manuscripts clearly manifest a functionality
for (certain) scrolls and demonstrate that such functionality can impact
the overall form and composition of a scroll and that that has bearing, in
turn, on the text-critical data it preserves. This is no small contribution to
the discussion and also constitutes another piece of “hard-data”—one that
warrants that caution is in order with some of these scrolls. In some
cases, that is, both Tov and Ulrich may be guilty of overstating the evidence.
Attention must be paid to the most specific (hence: “hyper-local”)
aspects of the Dead Sea Scrolls insofar as those aspects may determine
how useful or un-useful these documents are for larger theories of the
biblical text. In the absence of unambiguous confirming or disconfirming
evidence we must, despite all of our hard work, still admit to no small
degree of uncertainty regarding the “standard” or “representative” nature
of the Qumran Scrolls for Early Judaism. 152 We can speculate about that
but we must be wary of overstating the case or overestimating the evidence,
and we should be quick to admit what is hypothesis and what is
more and less certain than hypothetical. This is, at least in part, what the
excerpted manuscripts contribute to these larger discussions.
To underscore the point in a different way, I conclude this section with
some comments by Jonathan Z. Smith:
[C]omparison is never a matter of identity [only]. Comparison requires the
acceptance of difference.…That this is not the working assumption of many
152. Esp. since, as Ulrich notes, “[t]he primary and most straightforward evidence
available for the nature of the scriptural text near the end of the Second Temple
period is provided by the scrolls of the Scriptures from Qumran and other places in
the Judaean Desert” (“The Qumran Biblical Scrolls,” 73). For the latter, note Tov’s
comment (Textual Criticism, 191) that “it should be remembered that all the texts found
in the Judean Desert, except for the ones found at Qumran, reflect .” Ulrich
strengthens his case that the Qumran scrolls are entirely representative by appealing
to the New Testament and Josephus (e.g., “The Qumran Biblical Scrolls,” 78–80;
idem, “The Text of the Hebrew Scriptures,” 96–98), but at this point the work of
Stanley on citation in Greco-Roman and Early Jewish literature, as well as at Qumran
(see note 103 above), becomes extremely important and raises doubts on how convincingly
the NT and Josephus actually confirm Ulrich’s position. Also important is
how Stanley’s findings fit nicely with data about excerption.