On Making Manuscripts, Genre, and the Boundaries of Ancient Jewish Literature

Molly Zahn’s paper introduces multiple variables by which we might speak about the literary affinities and tendencies of our texts, without privileging one supercategory. This allows us to reimagine our archive with great texture and depth, and to resist the urge to think of categories as conversation closers. I took Zahn’s reminder that “groupings are choices, and alternative groupings are both possible and desirable” to emphasize the multifaceted nature of literature during this period, and the inability of any single classification scheme to account for the entirety of our corpus. Using literary qualities as variables rather than categories allows us to redescribe hybridity in our archive, and perhaps, reimagine some of our Qumran manuscripts.