A Newly Identified Admonition in 4Q464 5

Fragment 5 of the scroll 4Q464 proved to be difficult to decipher. It is exceedingly dark and can only be read with the help of infra-red photographs. Recently, a new such image of this fragment became available. This note demonstrates that this photograph helps clarify much of the fragment’s difficult wording. While previous scholarship on 4Q464 assumed that fragment 5 deals with the Genesis Flood, this brief study suggests that it contains an admonition alluding to the events of Israel’s past. This new interpretation of fragment 5 supports an earlier proposal that it does not belong to 4Q464, but constitutes a fragment of a now lost text.