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

474 THE APOCRYPHA AND PSEUDEPIGRAPHA
Fitzmyer has noted that the example from Tob 14:3 should not have been
cited here because only the last letter (t) of the numeral is preserved and it
is not decisive in settling the number of Tobiah’s sons. He adduces Tobit’s
age of 58 years at the time he was blinded as a clear case where the Vetus
Latina and the Qumran evidence agree (Tob 14:1 = 4QTob a ar [= 4Q196]
18.13) and concludes that the Qumran texts do in general agree with the
long recension. Yet, “there are times when it is fuller than either of
these…but also times when it is shorter than either of them. The agreement
or correspondence still has to be worked out in greater detail.” 28 One of the
great merits of Fitzmyer’s DJD edition of the Tobit manuscripts is that he
adduces the relevant Greek and Latin readings in full in his Comments.
A question worth raising about the presence of five copies of Tobit in
Cave 4 is what reason the inhabitants of Qumran would have had for
including the book in their collection of manuscripts. Is there something
about the book’s contents and teachings (e.g., about angels and demons)
that would have appealed to the Qumran group?
2. The Wisdom of Jesus ben Sira (Sirach)
The Qumran scrolls and fragments have not preserved nearly as large a
percentage of the original text of the lengthy sapiential work authored by
Jesus ben Sira, and they have also not made as large a contribution to elucidating
the book and its textual history. Nevertheless, some of the text
has been discovered there.
The parts of the Hebrew text of the book that have been identified at
Qumran are of two rather different kinds.
2Q18
M. Baillet published under the designation 2Q18 two small fragments that
he had identified as coming from Ecclesiasticus. 29 He described the hand
in which the text is written as a transitional script related to that of the
28. Fitzmyer, “Aramaic and Hebrew Fragments,” 663. See also his comments in
“Tobit” (DJD 19), 2–4; and Wise’s study of the versions for Tob 1:22 in comparison with
the superior readings of 4Q196 at this point (“A Note on 4Q196,” 566–69). Moore (Tobit,
57–58) adduces several examples that document the close but not exact correspondence
between the Qumran fragments and the representatives of the longer recension.
29. Maurice Baillet, “Ecclésiastique (Texte Hébreu),” in Les “Petites Grottes” de Qumrân
(ed. M. Baillet, J. T. Milik, and R. de Vaux; DJD 3; Oxford: Clarendon, 1962), 75–77.
See, too, Milik, Ten Years of Discovery, 32.