Books in Brief
006
The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English
Florentino García Martínez, trans.
(Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1994), $30.00
The Dead Sea Scrolls in English
Geza Vermes, ed.
(New York: Penguin, 1995), Fourth Edition, $12.95
The Dead Sea Scrolls on Microfiche
Emanuel Tov, ed., with Stephen J. Pfann
(Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1993), $1084.25
Companion Volume to the Dead Sea Scrolls Microfiche Edition
Emanuel Tov, ed., with Stephen J. Pfann
(Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1995), Second Revised Edition, $51.75
The Dead Sea Scrolls Catalogue: Documents, Photographs and Museum Inventory Numbers
Compiled by Stephen A. Reed, revised and edited by Marilyn J. Lundberg, with collaboration of Michael B. Phelps
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), $89.95 cloth, $64.95 paper
A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls: The Hebrew and Aramaic Texts from Cave Four
Ben Zion Wacholder and Martin G. Abegg, eds.
(Washington, DC: BAS), Fascicle One (1991), $25.00; Fascicle Two (1992), $59.95; Fascicle Three (1995), $89.95
A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls
Robert H. Eisenman and James M. Robinson, eds.
(Washington, DC: BAS, 1992, 2nd printing), $195.00
The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations. Vol. 1, Rule of the Community and Related Documents
James H. Charlesworth, gen. ed.
(Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), $99.00
After BAR’s ten years of campaigning for greater accessibility to the scrolls, BAR readers are entitled to a survey assessing the current state of play. Scholars commonly divide their research materials into primary and secondary sources. For the scrolls, the primary sources are the scrolls themselves, photographs, transcriptions, catalogues and translations. Secondary sources are what other scholars have published about the scrolls. This review covers the main primary sources that have recently become available.
Two main contenders now vie for the honor of best English-language translations. The most comprehensive is Florentino García Martínez’s The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English. This is a thoroughgoing revision and expansion of his earlier Spanish collection. It is a monumental work—the most extensive piece of original research undertaken by any scrolls scholar in the last decade.
Though obviously produced in some haste, there are remarkably few typographical errors in the García Martínez volume—in some places there are aberrations regarding capitalization, which a thorough proof-reading should sort out before a second printing. There are also some unfortunate omissions, such as 4Q448, the so-called Prayer for King Jonathan, that is important for defining the character of the collection of scrolls as a whole. How, for example, does a text probably composed in praise of Alexander Jannaeus come to be in a collection that is consistently anti-Hasmonean? It is also a pity that Biblical quotations in non-Biblical documents are not always identified.
In places García Martínez’s translation is overly cautious in attempting to render the text accurately. Sometimes the results are incomprehensible, as is the case in one of his translations from 4Q477, the so-called Rebukes by the Overseer. Whereas other translators render a phrase from fragment 1, column 2, line 8, as “he also loves his near kin” or as “he also loves his blood relation,”a García Martínez’s translation is “also he who loves the covering of his flesh.” The former are working with the insightful suggestion of 008Magen Broshi regarding the phonetic spelling of a phrase also found in CD 7:1–2; García Martínez is working with a different consonantal reading that is overall less satisfactory and less meaningful.
Cheaper but more limited in scope is Geza Vermes’s The Dead Sea Scrolls in English. This volume offers virtually nothing that has not already appeared in translation elsewhere. In this new fourth edition, Vermes and his publisher have at last included line numbers loosely located in the margins at five-line intervals, but unfortunately there is no complete representation of 4QMMT, either in its parts as six manuscripts or as a wholly reconstructed text. Vermes submitted his typescript to the press before MMT was officially published as part of the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert (DJD) series, by Oxford’s Clarendon Press; he apparently felt so constrained by legal processes elsewhere that he neglected even to provide all that had been made available in preliminary published form by MMT’s official editors, Elisha Qimron and John Strugnell. Nor are there any translations of the extensive 4Q copies of the Damascus Document other than those that have already been published by their editor, Joseph Baumgarten, in various learned articles. In fact, Vermes’s collection is heavily dependent on what has been offered in translation by others in some published form. The book is full of careful reconsiderations of the work of others, but it does not offer original readings or reconstructions of the photographs.
This dependence on others means that Vermes’s work gives only a slender updating of what is now available. Though 113 pages longer than the 1987 edition, 50 of those pages are taken up with introductory material. That is the major advantage of Vermes over García Martínez. Vermes’s book offers not only translations but also four chapters of introduction and analysis. Both volumes contain very helpful lists of Qumran manuscripts. Like García Martínez, Vermes makes several minor typographical errors that will need some cleaning up for a reprint.
One can quarrel with the particular renderings of any editor or translator. My preference is that technical terms be rendered closely; so I would rather read “Belial,” as the Biblical adversary is called in García Martínez, rather than “Satan,” as Vermes generally, but not always, translates the term. García Martínez renders rbym as “many,” which is preferable to Vermes’s choice of “congregation.” Vermes includes a translation of the newly recovered column 12 of the Aramaic Genesis Apocryphon in which Ararat is spelled with the consonants hwrrt. So it is surprising to find him following the unlikely reading of his student Timothy Lim in taking the same name in 4Q252 1:10 as Turarat.b
These are minor quibbles offered to illustrate the character of what might be problematic in either volume of translations. But the message is clear: Those still suffering from scroll fever will wish to acquire both volumes. If you want ready access to more or less the full range of texts, you will want the more expensive García Martínez volume. On the other hand, if you want texts and standard introductory information on who was responsible for producing and collecting them, you will find better value in Vermes.
Are all the scrolls now published in photographic form? Just about. The manuscripts from the Judean Desert are available principally in two forms. The most complete edition of photographs is that edited by Emanuel Tov with the collaboration of Stephen J. Pfann, The Dead Sea Scrolls on Microfiche. The 134 fiches (usually 49 exposures per fiche) are accompanied by two companion volumes. One volume contains instructions on how to use the fiches, a list of the numbers identifying negatives associated with any particular manuscript, chronological information about the taking of the photographs, some historical information about the discoveries and a section on the history of the photography. The other volume, in the original publication, contained an inventory of photographs, identifying the fragments by negative rather than by manuscript (this second volume, as described below, now appears in expanded form.)
Although somewhat clumsy to use, two features of the microfiche edition make it indispensable to scholars. First is its comprehensiveness. Nearly everything is there, and not just from Qumran, but from the other Judean desert sites that have produced manuscripts. The gaps are very minor: A few items have not yet been photographed; some photographs in other collections are needed to supplement the ones included here; and additional photographs need to be taken of badly damaged manuscripts to make the text more legible.
The second valuable feature of the microfiche collection merits attention. It is well known that many of the original manuscripts vary in quality. In many instances, two exposures of the same negative are included with different elements in each exposure enhanced. Often what is not clear in one is clearer in the other and vice versa.
The difficulty of using this microfiche collection is greatly reduced by the BAS two-volume set of photographs edited by Robert H. Eisenman and James M. Robinson, A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Though these volumes contain less than a third of the number of exposures in the microfiche edition, they include the photographs of the Qumran Cave 4 texts that had not yet been released in 1991 when the volumes first went to press. We need not rehearse the saga of the publication of these volumes, covered in many issues of BAR, but it should be noted that scholars who wish to check a reading can save themselves much time by flicking through the Facsimile Edition. If the print in the edition is either too small or too faint, too dark or unfocused, then recourse can be made to the microfiche edition.
Greatly in favor of the Facsimile Edition is the ease with which any previously unpublished Cave 4 manuscript can be traced through a sequence of plates taken over several years. By keeping a marker in one page and turning to another, quick and easy comparison can be made and the history of the identification and sorting of the fragments readily discerned. One is struck by two things in the process. The skill of the original team, especially Jozef Milik and Strugnell, in putting fragments together is truly amazing. Also, it is possible to “watch” many of the fragments deteriorate over the seven-year period during which the Palestine Archaeological Museum (PAM) photographs were taken. It is often only the earlier photos that contain small but significant extra pieces of manuscript that later crumbled away or fell off during handling. Thus the plates produced for the DJD series, under the general editorship of Emanuel Tov, consist of the best parts of the available photographs, so that each manuscript is represented to the fullest extent possible in its most legible form.
It is unfortunate that the editors of BAS’s Facsimile Edition thought it necessary to provide plate numbers for their prints in addition to the PAM numbers. This introduces an unnecessary layer of complication, since the 1,785 plates are all published in the order of their PAM serial numbers in any case. It would have been very helpful if one could simply have turned from the fiche catalogue or SBL Resource volume (see below) to the relevant plate—without having to consult the index in which the PAM numbers are listed.
The two volumes accompanying the microfiche have been revised. The Companion Volume to the Dead Sea Scrolls Microfiche Edition, edited by Emanuel Tov with the collaboration of Stephen J. Pfann, is now available in hardback updated to June 1994. The second volume has now been combined with the fascicle catalogues of the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center of Claremont; part of the SBL Resources for Biblical Studies series, The Dead Sea Scrolls Catalogue: Documents, Photographs and Museum Inventory Numbers contains a comprehensive list of documents from Qumran, Masada and elsewhere; a list of 009photographs in the Rockefeller Museum (formerly the Palestine Archaeological Museum), the Shrine of the Book and several other collections; and a list of the Rockefeller Museum inventory numbers. Since those responsible for the fiche and those at Claremont concerned with the scrolls are constantly in touch with one another, these revised volumes are improvements incorporating each other’s corrections where appropriate. Also of note in the Dead Sea Scrolls Catalogue is a very helpful list of sigla (brief codes identifying manuscripts by number, by the cave in which they were found, and by the texts they contain) used in the card concordance.
This card concordance was produced in the 1950s and early 1960s. Under the title A Preliminary Concordance to the Hebrew and Aramaic Fragments from Qumran Caves II–X (Göttingen: privately printed, 1988), it was printed from a card index prepared by Hans-Peter Richter. It was the sole source used by Ben Zion Wacholder and Martin Abegg for the first fascicle of their A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls: The Hebrew and Aramaic Texts from Cave Four (published by BAS). Fascicle 2 is based on photographs and on the concordance; the recently published Fascicle 3 is the most extensive to date. It includes transcriptions of most of the fragments of the manuscripts of Tobit, the Testaments, Jubilees, Jubilee-like works, Calendars, Liturgies, all kinds of apocryphal materials and various halakhic texts, along with the six manuscripts of the infamous MMT. There is also a brief introduction full of highly suggestive comments on how the texts contained in the volume might be best understood—for instance, that MMT reflects arguments within a single movement to which the authors belonged, not a debate with the group in power in Jerusalem.
If photographs are available, why are transcriptions necessary? In fact, in many cases the photographs, even those in the microfiche edition, are difficult to decipher. Without recourse to the actual manuscripts, readings can remain ambiguous—sometimes they remain so even after consulting the actual manuscripts! So the specialist and amateur alike need to have the manuscripts mediated to them through transcriptions and translations. The most comprehensive set of transcriptions of previously unpublished Cave 4 material is now BAS’s set of three fascicles; the texts are set without photographs or translations. Even though fascicle three suitably acknowledges the Herculean labors of Jozef Milik and John Strugnell in reading the texts, all three volumes represent many hours of painstaking work on the part of their editors.
Another ongoing series of publications, the Princeton Dead Sea Scroll Project under the general editorship of James H. Charlesworth, prints the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts of Dead Sea Scrolls with parallel English translations. The first volume, Rule of the Community and Related Documents, contains all copies or recensions of the Community Rule (in Hebrew, Serek Ha-Yah
Compared with Wacholder and Abegg’s work, the volume produced under Charlesworth’s editorship is generally more conservative in its readings. Sometimes, rather surprisingly, given that it is the product of many who are members of the official Israel Antiquities Authority team, this cautious approach seems to lead to omissions. For example, two of the Cave 4 versions of the Community Rule (4QSa and 4QSc) are written on papyrus. 4QSa is a very intriguing set of fragments. It is clear from PAM 43.254 and 43.255 that four principal fragments belong to this manuscript. The smallest of these is illegible on the plate printed in Eisenman and Robinson’s Facsimile Edition; the smallest fragment does not appear at all in Wacholder and Abegg or in Charlesworth and Qimron (its existence should have been acknowledged), but the other three fragments are quite legible. Following Milik, Wacholder and Abegg are right to transcribe the three principal fragments, whereas Charlesworth and Qimron only provide two. On the other hand, though many readings are debatable, there is at least one error in Wacholder and Abegg’s transcription, which produces strange line lengths in fragment 1.
For the other papyrus copy of the Community Rule, 4QSc, the two editions are remarkably different. On the basis of what is visible of how the pieces of the fragment join together, Wacholder and Abegg correctly provide a few letters for column one in fragment 1, which means that their column numbers for the fragments are to be preferred to those of Charlesworth and Qimron, who fail to include the right-hand edge of fragment 1 in their transcription or their designation of line and column 075numbers. Until the DJD edition settles the matter (hopefully!), scholars will no doubt experience some confusion over the column numbers in this manuscript, especially if they neglect to consult the photos or the actual fragments.
Once again, however, not all the credit goes to Wacholder and Abegg, whose transcription of fragment 2 is less persuasive. Qimron has noticed that the spacing between lines and the presence of a large space after the word s
The Wacholder-Abegg volumes are bound in a reddish brown, and the Charlesworth volume comes in blue; to date, neither the red corner nor the blue corner has won by a knockout. It is obvious that we need a multiplicity of editions and transcriptions; scholars, or at least libraries, will need to purchase both sets. We can only hope that the ready availability of these preliminary proposals will be taken into account as something more definitive is produced for the DJD series.
Perhaps the most important result of having the Wacholder-Abegg fascicles and the Charlesworth series is that a vast range of new information is becoming readily available, not just for the scholar, but for students and linguistically competent amateurs. These texts can now be discussed and scrutinized freely. With these materials in hand, teachers can inspire and excite their students with the latest information, putting them at the forefront of knowledge. Furthermore, by comparing the various transcriptions with one another and with the photographs, students of the Dead Sea Scrolls can see just how easy it is to make mistakes in representing ancient fragments, however careful or skilled the editor.
All in all, the primary sources now available less than four years after the general release of texts are more than enough to enable the enquirer to find out what there is, where it is, what it looks like, and what it says.
Nonetheless, there remain many years of detailed analytical work for scholars to do. Also, despite the primary sources now on the market, there is still plenty left for the editorial team working on the DJD series to accomplish. In the first place, the Biblical manuscripts are almost entirely ignored by transcribers and translators, but they contain a mine of information on the history and transmission of Biblical texts. Secondly, the publications we have so far pay limited attention to the physical features of the manuscripts. These features, like the ragged edges of jigsaw puzzle pieces, are often significant clues as to how fragments should be pieced together into coherent texts. New and better proposals for understanding the manuscripts are bound to emerge and displace what is currently in print. A new era in scrolls scholarship has dawned. On the basis of the volumes reviewed here, the sun is bright and the barometer is steady.
The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English
Florentino García Martínez, trans.
(Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1994), $30.00
The Dead Sea Scrolls in English
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