מדרש הלכה קדום בשרידי המגילה 4Q249 ׳מדרש משה׳

This article presents a reconstruction and commentary of the first column of 4Q249, a fragmentary papyrus scroll in cryptic script whose title has been preserved on the verso of the first column as Midrash/Sefer Moshe (The word sefer that had been written first was later deleted by a second hand and replaced with midrash). This edition offers improvements on an earlier edition by Stephen Pfann in DJD 35. By rechecking the papyrus fibers and the material configuration of the fragments, I was able to approve Pfann’s suggestion that fragments 1, 2, 12, 3, 4 belong to column 1 of 4Q249. Fragments 9a and 9b do not materially fit, however, and cannot be included in column 1. The present edition offers new readings and textual reconstructions.
|The column deals with the laws of leprosy (צרעת). It focuses on leprosy of the house (Leviticus 14), the only treatment of this phenomenon extant in Qumran laws. Passages from elsewhere in Leviticus 11–14 are intertwined in the discussion in a midrashic way. It is suggested that Midrash Moshe commented on various parts of the Book of Leviticus, including the nonlegal sections, such as chapter 26.
|The fragmentary phrase משפט אחד that occurs twice in the text suggests that the author was indulging a midrashic technique of creating an analogy between two similar laws: the house infected by leprosy and the )היקש( house in which a corpse is found. More specifically, the question was whether the content of the infected house should be considered impure, and the scroll defines various categories for that content, apparently based on the analogy with the case of the house with a corpse. This connection was fundamental in Jewish laws of impurity, both in second Temple times and in rabbinic halakhah. The analogy made in 4Q249 is reminiscent of the tannaitic debate in m. Nega‘im 13:12.