Incorporating syntax into theories of textual transmission: Preliminary studies in the Judaean Desert Isaiah scrolls and fragments

Prior to the discovery of the Qumran and Judaean Desert scrolls and fragments, text-critical scholars conducted their investigation of variation by means of manuscript stemma, among which MT and its associated scribal school was the golden rule. With nearly seventy years of research now complete, scholars have emended their methodological framework to account for textual variation by means of the scribal practices of the Second Temple era. To analyze textual variation vis-à-vis scribal practices and approaches has required that scholars incorporate historical linguistics into existing philological methods. The linguistic categories of orthography, phonology, and morphology have received a significant amount attention, mostly in Emanuel Tov's Non-Aligned theory. However, syntax has received little attention. To test the hypothesis that syntax should likewise be incorporated into transmission theory methodology, several case studies from the Judaean Desert Isaiah corpus are presented. The conclusion of the present study affirms that syntax offers a viable method to account for the extant readings witnessed in the Judaean Desert Isaiah corpus.