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

108 EXCERPTED MANUSCRIPTS AT QUMRAN
correct, excerption is attested as early as second-millennium
Mesopotamia. Two other examples, from the late-second millennium
Levant, might be found in two Ugaritic tablets (KTU 1.7–8) that are
apparently excerpts from the larger Baal cycle (KTU 1.1–6). 4 More proximate
to Qumran in both location and time, but still predating it, are the
Ketef Hinnom rolls (amulets?), which may be interpreted as extractions
of sorts. 5 Still more examples, both early and late, could be added to this
list. 6 Notable among them, and one that deserves special mention given
its affinities to the texts under discussion here, is the Nash papyrus (second
half of the second century B.C.E.), which contains the Decalogue
and the Shema on a single leaf and that most scholars deem to have been
a lectionary text of some sort. 7
Given this long and well-attested practice, it should come as no surprise
to find excerption at Qumran. Indeed, Hartmut Stegemann first
treated excerpted biblical manuscripts in an article-length study in 1967. 8
4. Specifically, sections from KTU 1.3 cols. 1–3 and 1.4 cols. 1, 4, and 7. See Nick
Wyatt, Religious Texts from Ugarit: The Words of Ilimilku and His Colleagues (Biblical
Seminar 53; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 148–52. Note that the parallel
texts are not in order. Wyatt wonders if both tablets are scribal exercises (148) and,
on KTU 1.7, comments: “the use of mythological material for such work, and the
‘noncanonical’ order of the text is eloquent testimony not only of the freedom with
which the text was probably used, but of the existence of scribal schools apparently
specializing in this genre of literature. This has implication for our understanding of
the transmission of mythological tradition and also our estimate of the innovative role
of [the scribe] Ilimilku in the larger texts.” For similar dynamics in the Qumran material,
see below.
5. See Klaas A. D. Smelik, Writings from Ancient Israel: A Handbook of Historical and
Religious Documents (trans. G. I. Davies; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991),
161–62. Smelik himself interprets the data differently (see note 138 below).
6. See, e.g., Emanuel Tov, “106–108. Introduction to 4QCant a–c ,” in Qumran Cave
4.XI: Psalms to Chronicles (ed. E. Ulrich et al.; DJD 16; Oxford: Clarendon, 2000),
196n2; and idem, “Excerpted and Abbreviated,” 581 and n1 for further data. As but
one additional example, not mentioned by Tov, note that the Nag Hammadi Codices
(VI, 5 ) have excerptions of Plato’s Republic 588a–589b. (I thank J. Zangenberg for
reminding me of this point.) See the edition by Howard M. Jackson, James Brashler,
and Douglas M. Parrot in The Nag Hammadi Library in English (ed. J. M. Robinson; 3d
rev. ed.; San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990), 318–20.
7. See Julie A. Duncan, “Deuteronomy, Book of,” in EDSS 1:200; idem, “Excerpted
Texts of Deuteronomy at Qumran,” RevQ 18 (1997): 44; Sidnie A. White (Crawford),
“The All Souls Deuteronomy and the Decalogue,” JBL 109 (1990): 194n6; Emanuel
Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (2d rev. ed.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 118;
and William F. Albright, “A Biblical Fragment from the Maccabean Age: The Nash
Papyrus,” JBL 56 (1937): 145–76.
8. Hartmut Stegemann, “Weitere Stücke von 4QpPsalm 37, von 4Q Patriarchal
Blessings und Hinweis auf eine unedierte Handschrift aus Höhle 4Q mit Exzerpten
aus dem Deuteronomium,” RevQ 6 (1967): 193–227, esp. 217–27.