the-bible-and-the-dead-sea-scrolls

RONALD S. HENDEL 161
following story of Saul’s military victory over Ammon and read with LXX—
and now 4QSam a [= 4Q51]—“about a month later.” 30 The difference
between these two readings rests primarily on the difference between r and
d, two letters easily confused. The other differences—the presence or absence
of the vowel markers w and y and the word division—are probably dependent
on the r / d interchange. When two readings are differentiated by a simple
graphic error, it is best to assume that the garbled text is secondary.
A more interesting issue is what takes place in the month between
Saul’s accession and his victory over Ammon. Immediately before the
phrase in question, the 4QSam a text preserves a paragraph that was lost
in MT and LXX. The full story, according to 4QSam a , is as follows:
[Now Na]hash, king of Ammon, harshly oppressed the Gadites and
Reubenites, and he gouged out a[ll] their right eyes and struck terror and
fear in Israel. There was not left a man among the Israelites bey[ond the
Jordan who]se right eye was not gouged out by Naha[sh, king] of Ammon,
except seven thousand men fled from Ammon and entered Jabesh Gilead.
About a month later… 31
The most probable explanation for the absence of this paragraph in MT
and LXX is a scribal accident, perhaps “the scribe’s eye jumping from
one paragraph break to another (both with Nahash as subject),” as Frank
Cross, the editor of this text, has suggested. 32 A break before “Now
Nahash” and before “About a month later” would supply the visual cues
for such a scribal error. 33 It has also been suggested that the longer text
in 4QSama is a secondary scribal expansion; but there are stronger reasons
for regarding it as the earlier text. 34
30. See Frank M. Cross, “The Ammonite Oppression of the Tribes of Gad and
Reuben: Missing Verses from 1 Samuel 11 Found in 4QSamuela ,” in History,
Historiography and Interpretation: Studies in Biblical and Cuneiform Literatures (ed. H. Tadmor
and M. Weinfeld; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1983), 155–56; Eugene C. Ulrich, The Qumran
Text of Samuel and Josephus (HSM 19; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1978), 69–70; P.
Kyle McCarter, Jr., I Samuel (AB 8; New York: Doubleday, 1980), 199–200; Tov,
Textual Criticism, 343–44. Some scholars do not connect this phrase with the following
story and maintain a preference for the M reading; so Alexander Rofé, “The Acts of
Nahash according to 4QSama ,” IEJ 32 (1982): 132–33; and Alessandro Catastini,
“4QSama : II. Nahash il ‘Serpente,’” Hen 10 (1988): 24–30.
31. Cross, “Ammonite Oppression,” 149.
32. Ibid., 153; see also Frank M. Cross, “Light on the Bible from the Dead Sea
Caves,” in Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. H. Shanks; New York: Random
House, 1992), 156–62.
33. 4QSama (= 4Q51) does have a paragraph break before “Now Nahash,” though not
before “About a month later” (which the scribe inserted in a supralinear correction). Paragraph
breaks are fairly fluid in biblical manuscripts, even among Masoretic manuscripts.
34. Rofé argues that in the longer text “Nahash’s gouging out of the eyes of all
Reubenites and Gadites is left unexplained. They had not given shelter to his former