Three Fragments from Qumran Cave 4 and Their Relationship to the Temple Scroll

Authors

Sidnie White Crawford, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Date of this Version

7-1994

Comments

Published in THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW, LXXXV, No. 1-2 (July-October, 1994) 259-273. Used by permission.

Abstract

The three fragments presented in this article are part of the cache of manuscript fragments from Cave 4, discovered in 1952. John Strugnell, the original editor, placed these fragments with 4Q365, a manuscript which he named, along with 4Q364, 366, and 367, 4QPentateuchal Paraphrases (now called 4QReworked Pentateuch). The identification of these three fragments with 4Q365 is, however, problematic. Strugnell made his original identification on the basis of similarity between the handwriting of the fragments and 4Q365, and because the contents of the fragments is not incompatible with 4Q365. However, in his editio princeps of the Temple Scroll, Yigael Yadin ascribed all three fragments to the Temple Scroll (11QT^a) as a second copy of that composition, parallel to the one from cave 11. Strugnell, on the other hand, has continued to assert that these fragments belong to 4Q365, one of the manuscripts of 4QRP. Tov and I, in the editio princeps of 4Q365, have followed a middle path; we have assigned one of the fragments (identified in Yadin as pl. 40, #1) to 4Q365 for reasons I will outline below, and two of them (identified in Yadin as pl. 38, #5 and pl. 40, #2), along with three other fragments, to an appendix of 4Q365, which we have called 4Q365a. However, the identification of these fragments with either 4QReworked Pentateuch or 1 IQTemple^a is still a matter of debate. I hope in this article to clarify the status of the fragments vis-a-vis both 4QRP and 11QT^a.