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

158 EXCERPTED MANUSCRIPTS AT QUMRAN
Although in the case of many manuscripts, especially those poorly preserved,
the degree of uncertainty will remain large, the existence of
excerpted manuscripts urges caution: the accidents of preservation and
the decay of time are not the only causes of fragmentary remains. It is
possible that, for some manuscripts, the textual remains are brief and
unusual because the scroll itself was brief, selected, arranged—in a word,
excerpted. This is but the first cautionary tale told by the excerpted manuscripts,
however. They also urge caution with regard to notions such as
the “Qumran scribal practice” since some are written in that practice and
some are not. It is hard to believe that excerpted texts not written in that
practice originated from outside the community given these texts probable
function(s) within the community. 199
The excerpted texts also offer something of a middle ground between
the theories of Tov and Ulrich on the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls
for the formation and history of the biblical text (see §3). In the main,
they do not align neatly with the three dominant text families, though
they often share the expansionistic and harmonistic tendencies that also
mark the SamP, and they can, therefore, be slotted with the “proto-
SamP” group (or groups), if such a category and categorization is
allowed. And yet, in the case of the texts of Canticles, the manuscripts’
chronological priority indicates that they ought to be taken seriously as
possible (early) text-forms. Alongside the options of (non-)alignment and
early text-form, then, the genre of excerpted manuscripts with its functional
gestalt provides yet another, and equally possible, explanation for
these text-forms. Here too, then, the excerpted manuscripts urge caution:
the two options that Ulrich has lifted up—that of “aberrant” and
“vulgar,” on the one hand, and “oldest…best…most authentic,” on the
other 200 —are actually two extremes on a continuum that is highly variegated
and complex. 201 The excerpted manuscripts reveal that functionality
can dictate form, and, given the often poor states of preservation,
one must proceed carefully in analyzing such form and what it means in
any particular scroll. Text-function also raises significant socio-religious
issues that urge reexamination of the Dead Sea Scrolls with reference to
these very issues within the specific location of Qumran. In §3 above,
199. Note also the dates of many of the excerpted manuscripts, which places them
in the middle or the latter half of the community’s existence (see Table 1 below).
200. Ulrich, “The Absence of Sectarian Variants,” 180.
201. Similarly, like Flint’s opposition of “true psalter” or “secondary collection,”
Ulrich’s opposition of scrolls of “peculiar ‘sectarians’ or…of general Judaism” (“The
Qumran Biblical Scrolls,” 73), may also be overly polarized. For interesting reflections
relating to the subject, see Brooke, “E Pluribus Unum,” 107–19.