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

JAMES C. VANDERKAM 475
second copy of Isaiah from Cave 1 but with more archaic forms for the
letters he and t[et; it dates from the second half of the first century B.C.E. 30
When he edited the texts, the Masada scroll of the book had not yet been
found, so that the two fragments became the first evidence for the ancient
Hebrew version of the book. Yet, in his estimation, they showed remarkable
similarities with the medieval copies from the Cairo Geniza.
ce texte est assez semblable à celui de la Geniza du Caire pour avoir permis
l’identification sûre d’un fragment très reduit. De plus, la disposition
matérielle, pour autant que l’on puisse la rétablir, semble être la même que
dans le ms. B: une ligne par verset de deux hémistiches répartis en deux
colonnes dont seule la première commence à partir d’une marge fixe. Cela
pourrait renforcer l’idée que les mss. du Caire ont été copiés sur des mss.
de Qumrân. 31
Baillet drew these rather large conclusions from a very small textual base.
The first fragment contains traces of five letters (one on one line and four
on the next line), two of which bear a supralinear circlet and one a supralinear
dot, expressing degrees of uncertainty in identifying them. Most of
the preserved leather functions as a sizable bottom margin. It comes as
no surprise, therefore, that Baillet was not certain where the fragment
belonged in the text of the book. He suggested two possibilities: 6:14–15
and 1:19–20. The fragment would fit in 6:14–15 (using the Greek verse
numbers) if one reads Ny) in the second line; but, as Baillet noted, the
second letter would be rather long for a yod. Also, the text at the beginning
of line 2 would not be long enough to fill the space if line 1 is correctly
restored by retroverting the Greek. If the fragment is assumed to
come from 1:19–20, where no evidence from the Cairo Geniza copies is
extant, the word in the second line would have to be read as Kr).
Obviously much remains uncertain about fragment 1.
Fragment 2 is larger and hence more definitively locatable. It comes
from the far left side of a column (most of the leather contains the space
that presumably separated two columns, although nothing of the second
column has survived) and preserves letters from the ends of six consecutive
lines, with a few letters on three other lines visible above these.
Baillet identified the letters and words as coming from Sir 6:20–31. The
version of 2Q18 is not in exact agreement with that of Geniza ms A. At
the end of v. 22 2Q18 has xk[n where ms A has hxwkn; for vv. 23 and
24 2Q18 2 has space for two lines and thus probably had the longer text
30. Ibid., 75.
31. Ibid.