The Elohistic Psalter and the Writing of Divine Names at Qumran

The Qumran scrolls have given us an idea of the variety of scribal practices employed in the writing of Divine names. Many scribes abstained from writing the Tetragrammaton and other Divine names, replacing them in various ways. However, in scrolls where the Divine name is avoided, the avoidance is inconsistent. Other scrolls attest to various forms of correction or augmentation of the Divine name. In recent studies, the data from the entire corpus were collected by Emanuel Tov. The practice in Psalms Scroll 11QPsa was given particular scholarly attention.
|Our refined understanding of Divine names in Qumran may be applied to the so-called “Elohistic Psalter” (EP). In the wake of a recent study on the Book of Psalms, the EP has been commonly ascribed to a neo-Elohistic theology rather than being viewed as the outcome of scribal practices. I oppose this view and aim to reinforce the old understanding of the EP as a scribal product. Parallels from Qumran attest not only to the replacement of the Tetragrammaton with Elohim, but also to the use of titles such as Adonay, El, YHWH Adonay, and a series of awkward Divine titles that also appear in the EP. Furthermore, the inconsistent use of Elohim and YHWH within the EP conforms with the similar use of those titles in scrolls from Qumran.