חקר המקרא לאור המגילות הגנוזות

In all the fields of Jewish studies which have been influenced by the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls it is in that of Bible that certain results can already be taken as proven. We cannot expect the scrolls to have any bearing on the problems of the socalled "higher criticism of the Bible", since the 66 chapters of Isaiah were established as a unit long before the scrolls were written. Nor will our attitude to the Book of Habakkuk be changed, since Duhm's low dating is not accepted by anyone today. The real importance of the find lies therefore in the textual field. It would be misleading, however, to evaluate the scrolls according to the number of solutions of textual cruces they offer, and it is to be regretted that the discussion has centered around the question of their exegetical value. Although the scrolls contain by chance a number of readings which seem to us superior to the corresponding readings of the M. T., it is clear that the main difficulties encountered by the Bible commentator must have arisen hundreds of years before the scrolls were written. However, it cannot be denied that the scrolls do contain a few valuable readings. Furthermore, the linguistic and orthographic peculiarities — such as the interchange of ה and י after final e — provide material for the correct understanding of a number of orthographical remnants in the M. T. The main importance of the scrolls, however, lies in the field of text-history. It was the bad fortune of the St. Mark's Isaiah scroll that, apart from containing real variant readings, it also teemed with obvious mistakes. Curiously enough, this is not the first time that the first old Biblical manuscript to be published is full of mistakes, and thus leads scholars to underestimate its value. This has precisely been the fate of the now famous Syriac Codex Ambrosianus of the Peshitta. Detailed comparisons with the ancient versions have proved that the St. Mark's scroll contains hundreds of real variant readings, however unimportant their textual value. Luckily, however, this scroll was found together with the Jerusalem scroll, recently published. In spite of the linguistic alternations in the latter scroll, it can be said to exhibit in general the textus receptus. This, indeed, is the final blow for the theory of the a priori superiority of the LXX and the late emergence of the M. T. We are now in position to realise that, on the one hand, the basic M. T. must certainly have been in existence by the end of the Second Temple period and need not be of later origin than LXX; but that, on the other hand, it itself is the result of an immense philological activity. No a priori superiority of the LXX can be conceded, since the LXX represents just one tradition among many. Precedance must therefore be given to the M. T., which is not only superior to the scrolls, but represents a version achieved through the comparison of a much greater number of sources than we ourselves possess. Readings from any extra massoretic source should, therefore, be evaluated individually, and should be accepted only according to their inner probability. There still remains the problem of the relationship between the scrolls and other Hebrew Biblical manuscripts hitherto known. Unfortunately, existing studies in this field are of little use since we do not know which manuscripts still exhibit real pre-Masoretic material. The value of the scrolls is thus further enhanced, for they remain the only Hebrew Bible manuscript group whose value for text-critical study has been proved.