Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered - The Preterist Archive
Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered - The Preterist Archive
Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered - The Preterist Archive
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Translation<br />
Fragment 1 (1) . . . all the Righteous . . . (2) before Moses . . . (3) all the days of . . . ( 6) the years of . .<br />
. will be lengthened . . .<br />
Fragment 2 (1) [E]noch after we instructed him (2) . . . six jubilees of years (3) . . . [ea]rth among all<br />
mankind and he witnessed against them all (4) . . . and also against the Watchers. And he wrote down<br />
all the (5) . . . [the] heavens and all the paths of their hosts (i.e., the heavenly bodies), all [the months<br />
(6) . . . [in which the Rig[hteous] have not erred . . .<br />
20. Aramaic Tobit (4Q 196)<br />
For Jews and Protestant Christians the book of Tobit is outside the canon of the Bible, being counted<br />
among the Apocrypha. Catholics, however, along with the Greek and Russian Orthodox branches of<br />
Christianity, regard the book as part of the Bible in the sense that it is 'Deuterocanonical'. Although<br />
scholars for the most part believed that Tobit had originally been written in either Hebrew or Aramaic,<br />
the Semitic original version was long lost. <strong>The</strong> book's primary witnesses were two rather different<br />
Greek versions (one 'short' version and one 'long'). Thus the significance of the Qumran caches: they<br />
include portions of four Aramaic manuscripts of the book, together with one Hebrew manuscript.<br />
All of these manuscripts support the 'long' version of Tobit known from the Greek. It is now clear that<br />
the short Greek version never had a Semitic counterpart and is nothing more than an abbreviation of<br />
the long Greek text. Until very recently, however, Bible Translations into modern languages had<br />
always relied upon the short text. In the wake of the Qumran discoveries, translators have begun to<br />
work instead with the long text - still, unfortunately, having only the Greek witness; no more than a<br />
few isolated phrases of the Qumran Semitic forms have previously been published.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Semitic texts of Tobit will certainly require adjustments even of those Translations that have<br />
worked with the superior long Greek text. For example, in the portion presented here (Tobit 1:19-2:2),<br />
the latter half of the Aramaic text of 1:22 is preferable to the Greek. <strong>The</strong> New Revised Standard<br />
Version translates the portion in question thus: 'Now Ahiqar was chief cupbearer, keeper of the signet