Socio-Religious Background and Stabilization

It is remarkable that these proto-MT scrolls were found in these unconnected sites. Some scholars even stress the priestly influence on the leadership of the revolt.

 Editor’s note: for more on ancient tefillin, see Yehudah B. Cohn, “The Origins of Tefillin,” TheTorah.com (2016). 

For references, see Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed., revised and expanded (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012), 175.

 See Tov, Textual Criticism, 174–80.

 The twenty-five texts that were found at sites in the Judean Desert other than Qumran display almost complete identity with the medieval tradition of MT when compared with codex L. On the other hand, the MT-like Qumran scrolls are merely close to L, while belonging to the same textual family. Most scholars treat the Judean Desert evidence in the same way, and therefore draw the conclusion that the Qumran scrolls display textual plurality, while the “later” texts from the other sites reflect textual uniformity. However, this is not the case. Whereas the proto-Masoretic texts from the Bar-Kochba sites are later than the Qumran texts—the scrolls found there were copied between 20 BCE and 115 CE—those from Masada (copied between 50 BCE and 30 CE) are not. As a result, the finds from the Judean Desert do not support an assumption of stabilization or of a standard text since both early (Masada) and late texts (the Bar Kochba sites) are proto-Masoretic, while Qumran reflects a textual plurality. During the same period, we thus find a stable text tradition (proto-MT) at Masada and the other sites and textual fluidity at Qumran (MT-like texts and other texts).

   Thus Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (London: SCM, 1979), 103: “The most obvious implication to be drawn from this history of the pre-stabilization period is that the subsequent status accorded MT did not derive necessarily from its being the best, or the most original, Hebrew text. Its choice as the canonical text was determined often by broad sociological factors and internal religious conflicts (cf. Geiger), and not by scholarly textual judgments.” See further my study “The Enigma of the Masoretic Text,” Fs. S. Kreuzer, WUNT (2017), forthcoming.

See my study “The Coincidental Textual Nature of the Collections of Ancient Scriptures,” in Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Qumran, Septuagint: Collected Essays, Volume 3; VTSup 167 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 20–35.

 The background of the special status of the second and the greater part of the third book of Psalms has not been clarified. In these two Psalter books, elohim is the dominant divine name, while in the other three Psalter books YHWH is the main appellation for God. This pertains to Psalms 42–72 (book 2) and Psalms 73–89 (book 3). The differences are most clearly visible in the parallel Psalms 14 and 53 where the formulation of Ps 53:3-7 strongly suggests that the Elohistic Psalter replaced the earlier YHWH with elohim. The usual explanation given for the wording of the Elohistic Psalter is the shunning away from the use of the Tetragrammaton, a feature that is also noticeable in various scribal practices in the Qumran scrolls.

 Chapters 27–29 of Jeremiah in MT differ rather consistently from the remainder of Jeremiah in at least two groups of small details: 1. The name of the king of Babylon is spelled in the MT of chapters 27–29 in its later form, Nebuchadnezzar (except for 29:21 Nebuchadrezzar), while in the remainder of the book it occurs in its original form, Nebuchadrezzar. Since the name of the king is lacking in all its occurrences in these chapters in the LXX (as well as often elsewhere in the Greek version), these added names in MT of chapters 27–29 may be recognized as a linguistically later layer. 2. Most theophoric names in Jeremiah are of the long type, for example, Yirmeyahu (241x altogether). The shorter theophoric names ending with –yah form a minority in the book (73x). On the other hand, in chapters 27–29 the short forms prevail with 35 instances as opposed to 8 long forms. These shortened forms are a sign of Late Hebrew, and accordingly their frequency rises in Chronicles and in the Qumran scrolls. The present MT form of these chapters therefore is later than that of the other chapters. Chapters 27–29 in MT thus differ from the remainder of the book in small details that were presumably changed or added at a late stage in the development of the book. The assumption that these three chapters were once contained in a small scroll is therefore inescapable.

 See the study quoted in n. 6.