Endnote 4 – Is the Temple Scroll a Sixth Book of the Torah—Lost for 2,500 Years?

Yigael Yadin believed that fragments of a document from Cave 4 (Rockefeller Museum No. 43.366, published in Yadin, The Temple Scroll [Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983], supplementary plates 38 and 40) belonged to a copy of the Temple Scroll. As Professor John Strugnell has correctly pointed out, these fragments are from “a Pentateuch with frequent non-biblical additions” [4Q364 and 365] (quoted in Wacholder, The Dawn of Qumran, p. 206), not from the Temple Scroll. In this same reference, Strugnell refers to other unpublished Cave 4 fragments that might quote from, or actually be the text of, the Temple Scroll. The true nature of this text can be discussed, however, only after its publication by Emile Puech. He has kindly shown me the fragments of this scroll, which are unfortunately in very poor condition. They probably come from a late second-century B.C. copy of an expanded text of Deuteronomy, evidently differing from the text of the Temple Scroll. At this time, it is at least very uncertain that even a single Cave 4 manuscript of the Temple Scroll’s text exists.