The Text of the Hebrew Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls

This article examines the contribution of the Dead Sea Scrolls towards understanding the nature of the biblical text in the Second Temple period. The approximately two hundred biblical scrolls from Qumran provide evidence of the variety and fluidity of the text in this early period. Prior to the Dead Sea discoveries, three primary witnesses of the Pentateuch (Masoretic Text, Samaritan Pentateuch, reconstructed Hebrew Vorlage of the Septuagint), and two for the rest of the Bible (MT, Septuagint), were available to scholars. The scrolls from the Judean Desert thus have greatly increased the evidence at our disposal. The primary focus of this article is on the categorization of the scrolls suggested by Emanuel Tov, in his Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (2nd ed.; 2001), into five groups: texts copied using the “Qumran” scribal practice; proto-Masoretic; pre-Samaritan; texts similar to the reconstructed Vorlage of the Septuagint; and “non-aligned” texts. It is suggested here that this division is problematic because: (1) Scribal practices cannot be used to determine textual affiliation. The same scribe can copy two textually distinct scrolls, yet this does not transform them into a textual family. Thus, the first category of texts above should not be used. (2) Manuscripts can only be grouped together according to secondary readings, especially regarding content. Therefore, most of the proto-Masoretic texts, and the few examples of texts similar to the Vorlage of the LXX, cannot be combined on textual grounds. (3) The scrolls from the Second Temple period should not be viewed through the prism of the rabbinic and medieval evidence, but rather, only the early evidence should be considered. Thus the grouping of all proto-MT texts together reflects a later collection of presumably textually independent versions of each book. In addition, the comparison of the Qumran proto-MT texts to the medieval MT may lead to a skewed picture of the internal relationship between the early texts. (4) Pre-Samaritan texts of the Torah do indeed form a textual family since they all share unique secondary readings related to content. Those changes, often labelled “harmonistic,” are analyzed here extensively, leading to the conclusion that this description is misplaced. In light of the problems of this categorization, it is suggested that the Dead Sea biblical texts need to be reassessed, independent of the later evidence, in order to determine the textual affiliations between them.