Redaction and Sectarianism in the Qumran Scrolls

Evidence of recensional history in the production of many of the Dead Sea scrolls has been available for a long time. It has in any case been confirmed that at least the three texts mentioned (1QM, 1QS, CD) are the result of redaction, thanks to the discovery of fragments containing passages found in these manuscripts yet exhibiting significant variants. G. VERMES has offered a comparison of 4QS fragments a and d with their parallel texts in 1QS. The publication of all the 4QM fragments afforded potentially further evidence for (or against) such a theory of terminological and ideological development. In an earlier study of the term 'Sons of Zadok' in the Qumran manuscripts the author had suggested that this phrase is confined to only one literary stratum in 1QS, and did not at any time designate any community at all, as most commentators continued to hold.