Multiple Authorized Versions of the Same Work

Connected with ideas of textual unfinishedness and accidental publication is the reality that some works exist in multiple authorized versions. Chapter 4 looks at two examples from widely differing contexts in antiquity: Qumran and Herculaneum. The author explores the similarities and differences in the textual multiplicity of the Serekh texts (community rules) found at Qumran and the multiple versions of Philodemus’s works from the Herculaneum library, especially his On Rhetoric. The fact that multiple authorized versions of the same work were common in places as disparate (geographically, culturally, and so forth) as Qumran and Herculaneum gestures to the ubiquity of the phenomena. Yet the differences of multiplicity at each place offers insights in ancient textual culture.