A Note on 4Q398a

This article deals with the papyrus manuscript 4Q398a (frags. 1-10), which came from a different hand than 4Q398b (frags. 11-17). At least four of the ten fragments can be isolated on physical and paleographic grounds as having been penned by the same hand (frags. 2-7). Each of the remaining four fragments probably belongs to a different hand. The separation of frag. 1 from frags. 2-7 is crucial since they have been used to reconstruct the composite text (B 21-24) based on 4Q397 1-2 and 11Q19 51:4-5. As a result, there is no unequivocal evidence to associate frags. 2-7 with MMT. While these fragments contain some words attested to in that document, they are not unique to it, and the grammatical forms of the words are not identical. In addition, some readings are uncertain, and the letter traces in line 2 of frag. 1 complicate the reconstruction of the DJD X. It is, therefore, reasonable to accept the possibility that 4Q398a does not make up MMT and, consequently, to look for better-justified relationships between these ten fragments and other manuscripts based on their physical and paleographic features.