The Problem of Reconstructing the War Scroll (Integrating Manuscripts 4Q491–4Q493)

Qimron’s new edition of the War Scroll (War Scroll [A + B]) integrates the sources of Qumran war literature into a continuous literary text. 1QM forms the core of part A of the edition, into which the text from manuscripts 4Q491–4Q496 has been integrated. In the course of preparing the edition, Qimron concluded that the manuscripts from the fourth cave are actually copies of the version in 1QM. This paper critically examines the integration of manuscripts 4Q491–4Q493 into a unified text of the War Scroll. Eighteen successive columns of 1QM were preserved, in which the lower parts of the columns were faded and torn. At the top of each column there are 16–18 continuous lines. Qimron thought it correct to complete the text at the base of the columns, to a height of 30 lines. He was of the opinion that the height of the majority of columns in the scroll manuscripts was double their width. Accordingly, the text of 4Q493, and that of sections 4, 10A, 10B, and 13 of manuscript 4Q491 was placed in the lower parts of various columns in 1QM. Qimron thought that the text of these sections supplied the missing content for some of the columns of 1QM. My own examination suggests that the added text does not complete the sequence of preceding and following columns, and in some instances interrupts the continuity of content in the columns in 1QM. In Qimron’s edition, the text of fragments 1+2+3 of 4Q491 was placed as the final column of War Scroll A. This combination, however, raises some problems: a new, exceptionally wide column was formed (no similar column exists in either 1QM or in the manuscripts 4Q491–4Q496). The content of these combined three fragments is neither continuous nor thematically structured. Above all, the content of the three fragments is not suitable as the ending of War Scroll A. According to Qimron, the texts under discussion are part of the which was thought to occur after seven ,(מלחמת המחלקות) War of Divisions years of the first war, and thus in his opinion the added text would seem an according ‘ ל[מחלקותיהמה appropriate conclusion to War Scroll A. Yet the word to their divisions’ (4Q491 1+2+3 line 6), which introduces the War of Divisions, appears only once, in the context of march and encampment. In contrast, the is the frequent term in 4Q491 1+2+3 lines 10– ,מחלקה rather than ,מערכה word 16. In addition, fragments 1+2+3 of 4Q491 repeat ordinances on subjects such as contamination and purification, war vestments of the priests, and placement of ambushes, all of which appear in the earlier columns of Qimron’s War Scroll A. It seems illogical to repeat this information at the end of the scroll. This examination has thus led to the conclusion that manuscripts 4Q491– 4Q493 are not in fact copies of 1QM; therefore, it is incorrect to combine them into a single text with 1QM. Most importantly, the paper demonstrates—as claimed in my earlier published articles—that the Qumran war literature consists of a number of independent literary consolidations. All of these,
including the War Scroll (1QM), are based on and draw from a common literary tradition dealing with the subject of eschatological war. Since these are independent literary consolidations and not copies of a single ‘original,’ they should not be combined into a single version of one text.