Here Are the Secret Papers from Madrid

073

The Madrid Qumran Congress: Proceedings of the International Congress on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Madrid 18–21 March 1991

Edited by Julio Trebolle Barrera and Luis Vergas Mantaner

(Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1992) 2 vols., 683 pp., $171.50

In early 1991 I received a personal invitation to a conference of Dead Sea Scroll scholars to be held in March in Madrid. A week before the conference, after buying two nonrefundable tickets, I was cordially “disinvited.”^a Presumably the reason for my disinvitation was that I might report on the contents of unpublished scrolls that the scholars would discuss in their papers.

That came at the height of the official editing team’s resistance to opening access to all who wished to study the scrolls. These two volumes contain the papers delivered at the conference, which, according to the introduction, indeed “centered on the discussion of unpublished manuscripts.” For the most part, the papers are quite technical and will interest only Qumran scholars. In any event, all scholars can now learn what was said at that conference-or at least rich scholars can. Ordinary scholars may balk at its hefty $171.50 price tag,

One might suppose that there were breathtaking revelations that the official team wanted to protect by barring me from the sessions. One can only wonder what the fuss was all about. As editor of BAR, I have been welcomed at innumerable scholarly conclaves, all except this one. Yet there are no earth-shaking disclosures in these volumes. As at most scholarly conferences, there were some good papers, some poor ones, some so technical as to have no place in a popular publication and still others with fresh insights of interest to anyone.

One of the “burning questions of current research,” we read in the introduction, is how to account for what scholars call the “textual pluriformity” of the more than 200 Biblical manuscripts from Qumran. Harvard’s Frank Moore Cross has long defended the existence of three local text types at Qumran, which he denominates Babylonian, Egyptian and Palestinian.^b These are (to explain the process somewhat simplistically) the antecedents that developed into, respectively, the Masoretic text (the authoritative text for Judaism), the Septuagint (the basis of the Christian Old Testament) and the Samaritan Pentateuch (authoritative for the small surviving Samaritan community).

Hebrew University’s Shemaryahu Talmon approaches the problem somewhat differently, stressing the sociological origins of the text types. Emanuel Tov, also of Hebrew University, focuses on the multiplicity of variations in the texts, even within alleged text types. As Cross describes Tov’s position in a paper in this collection, scholars tend to be either “splitters” or “clumpers.” Splitters see a new species in every individual, while clumpers include minor variations within a single species. “Tov,” says Cross, “is a splitter. I am a clumper.” Nevertheless, Cross tells us, “Tov warmly embraces the notion that there is a group we should say family of Proto-Rabbinic [Biblical] manuscripts to be detected at Qumran.”

In an illuminating paper, Eugene Ulrich of the University of Notre Dame assesses the positions of Cross, Talmon and Tov, which are generally considered very different from, if not contradictory to, one another. As Ulrich puts the problem: “Are the manifold variations between [sic] texts simply due to sporadic errors and changes by isolated scribes, or are there rational patterns that can be detected and described?”

The views of all three scholars, says Ulrich, are “partly correct”; moreover, they all “constitute important elements in the more complex map” needed to explain the history of the Biblical text.

Cross is clearly correct that different major localities of Judaism gave direction to different text types. Talmon is correct that the Masoretic text, the Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch were preserved out of a much larger assortment of texts because the rabbis, the Christians and the Samaritans each preserved their own text, while other rival ones perished with their adherents. Tov is correct in emphasizing the complexity of the material that will not fall neatly into accepted patterns.

But only Cross’ position, says Ulrich, “really constitutes a ‘theory’ of the history of the Biblical text. The other two do not appear to be ‘theories’ in the sense that they do not elaborate a large-scale schema that explains sample after sample of amassed data; rather they identify new and important factors which help explain significant facets of the total picture. Thus, they seem more properly classified as astute, important ideas or observations which correct and advance our understanding.”

Cross has focused on the origins and development of the text, Talmon on the 074final stages of the process and Tov on the complexity of the textual variations.

It is interesting that the choice of text type does not appear to be ideological but what Ulrich calls “accidental.” This is true even of the Samaritan Pentateuch, which appears to have existed in a commonly available edition before the Samaritan split with Judaism. When the split came, two kinds of ideological changes were made in that text: the addition of the Tenth Commandment (relating to the Samaritan altar at Mt. Gerizim) and the use of the past tense (“the place that Yahweh your God has chosen”—that is, the Samaritan holy mountain, Mt. Gerizim) instead of the future tense (“the place that Yahweh your God will choose”—Jerusalem) where that phrase appears in Deuteronomy. Aside from these two ideological changes, there seems no particular reason for the Samaritans to have preferred the text type they adopted.

Each community that chose a text type chose something (the emphasis is Ulrich’s), but the choice had “nothing to do with the nature or quality of the text as such or the theology or ideology of that specific group.” The Samaritans chose a script, the Samaritan Pentateuch is written in the ancient Israelite paleo-Hebrew script. This was because they were conservative, the same reason they limited their scriptures to the Pentateuch and excluded the Prophets. But the text type itself was one of several that were available. The Christians chose a language, Greek, into which the Jews had already translated a particular text type. The Christian choice may have been motivated by the spreading “mission to the Gentiles” in predominantly Greek-speaking regions. But, again, the choice of text type was not the result of the theology or ideology of the text. The rabbis too chose a text type, one that is generally shorter^c and therefore a more conservative choice, but which cannot be ideologically identified. Its script is Aramaic, sometimes called Jewish script, the same type in which Hebrew is written today, as opposed to the archaic script the Samaritans chose.

Obviously, as Ulrich recognizes, the questions raised have not yet been definitively answered. But we are likely to get closer when all the Biblical manuscripts from Qumran have been published—a day that appears not far away.

Another interesting paper on celibacy—was presented by Elisha Qimron of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. As Qimron notes, celibacy is a major phenomenon in Christianity, but not in mainstream Judaism. This perhaps explains why celibacy has been a major focus of Christian scholarship. It was also practiced by some Essenes. Why, Qimron asks, did these celibate men “prefer to remain unmarried in contradication [sic^d] to the custom of the Torah?”

According to Qimron’s analysis, when Jerusalem and its Temple were contaminated by the Essenes’ opponents, the Essenes established the yahad, or community, as a temporary substitute for Jerusalem until it could again be purified. Not all members of the sect were members of the yahad, however. The yahad took on itself special burdens. It “maintained a high degree of purity similar to that which had been maintained in Jerusalem (or perhaps in the Temple).” Since “sexual intercourse was forbidden in Jerusalem, … those sectarians who considered themselves a substitute for Jerusalem were celibate.” Qimron produces extensive evidence from the scrolls in which members of the yahad are distinguished from members of the sect generally. The Essenes who lived in other cities, by contrast, were obliged to take wives and have children “according to the custom of the Torah.”

The prohibition against sexual intercourse in Jerusalem is not explicit, only deduced. The word “camp” (macheneh) in the scrolls refers in legal contexts to the expression “camp of holiness,” which is a designation of Jerusalem. This much is explicit in the still unpublished scroll known as MMT, which states, Qimron tells us, “The camp of holiness is Jerusalem” (section B, lines 29–30, 59–62 of MMT). In the Torah, the “camp” is the place where God dwells; it must remain pure. People who lived in Jerusalem in the Second Temple period and who identified the city as the “camp of holiness,” Qimron tells us, “did not engage in marital intercourse [sic] in Jerusalem.” This seems clear from a passage in the Temple Scroll: “If a man lies with his wife he may not enter any (part) of the city of the sanctuary … for three days.” Therefore those men who, as yahad members, regarded themselves as a substitute for Jerusalem until it could be decontaminated of their opponents, took upon themselves the added burden of celibacy as if they had been living in Jerusalem. A neat theory! But nowhere, as Qimron concedes, is celibacy stated as an explicit requirement, either in the scroll known as the Community Rule or elsewhere in the scrolls. “I doubt that anyone could have suggested it [celibacy] had one not known of the existence of celibacy among the Essenes from the Greek sources.”

There is much to ponder in these volumes, but they do not release their nuggets easily. Ulrich tells us that “the congress succeeded in providing a significant impetus to the publication of the scrolls,” a result much to be applauded.—H.S.

The Madrid Qumran Congress: Proceedings of the International Congress on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Madrid 18–21 March 1991