The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (60 page)

For the editio princeps of 11Q10, see J. P. M. van der Ploeg et
al., Le Targum de Job de la grotte XI de Qumrân
(Leiden, 1971); for a new edition, see F. Garcia Martinez, E. J. C. Tigchelaar and A. S. van der Woude,
DJD,
XXIII, 79-180. For the Targums of Leviticus and Job (4Q156, 157), see J. T. Milik,
DJD,
VI, 85-91.

(11Q
10
,4Q
157
)

XXVIII
(Job xxxvii,
24-30)
(24) [Re]member that His works which they see are great.
(25) Every man looks at Him,
and the sons of men from afar search for Him.
(26) Behold, God is great,
and His days are numerous beyond knowledge
and the sum of His years is infinite.
(27) Behold, [He counts] the [rain] clouds
and He establishes the downpours.
(28) And His clouds let down dr[ops of water
on] a multitude of people.
(29) If He who spreads [the] cl[ouds] of His thunder
and spreads [His] light [... and co]vers.
For by them He judges peoples...

 

XXIX
(Job xxxvii)
(11) With it (water) He wipes the cloud[s],
and brings fire out of the cloud.
(12) He speaks and they listen to Him
and proceed with their works.
He appoints them over all
that He has created on earth:
(13) either for striking or for (benefiting) the
earth;
either for famine or shortage;
or for something good to be on it.
(14) Listen to this, Job, and arise!
Observe the might of God.
(15) [Do you] know what God has put on them
and how He has made light to shine from the cloud?
(16) [Do you k]now how to robe the cloud with
mi[ght]?
(17) Because your robe ...
For He possesses knowledge...
(18) [Do you know how to] beat the cloud
[to] compress [it into a mir]ror?
(19) He knows...

 

XXX
(Job xxxviii)
(3) Please gird [your] lo[ins] like a man,
[and I will que]stion you and you will answer me.
(4) Where were you when I made the earth?
Explain it to me if you possess wisdom.
(5) Do you know who fixed its measures?
Who stretched a line over it?
(6) Or to what were its foundations joined
or who set its cut stone
(7) when the morning stars were shining together
and all the angels of God exclaimed together?
(8) Can you shut in the sea with gates
when it bursts forward from the womb of the abyss,
(9) when the clouds were made into its robe
and the haze its swaddling-clothes.
(10) Can you set boundaries to it ... ?
(11) Did you say, Up to here!
And you must not go beyond... [your wa]ves.
(12) In your days did you order [the morning]
(13)... the win[gs] of the ear[th] ...

XXXI
(23)...
for the day of battle and revolt.
(24) ... from where will (the wind) go out
and will it blow before Him on the earth?
(25) Who fixed a time for the rain
and a path for the quick clouds
(26) to bring it (the rain) down to a land of wilderness
with no man on it,
(27) to satiate the low-lying and isolated (places)
to produce sprouting grass.
(28) Has the rain a father
and who begets the mist of dew?
(29) And from whose womb did ice come out
...
(30) The waters contracted like a st[one] because of
Him,
and the face of the ab[yss?] ...
(31)... Pleiades or the fence of Orion ...

(1) the mountain goats, and the birth p[angs] ...
(2) ... their months are completed,
and do you know when they give birth,
(3) delivering their young and ejecting them,
and do you send away their birth pangs?
(4) They raise their young and make them go;
they depart and do not come back to them.
(5) Who has set the wild ass free
and who has loosed the onager's rope,
(6) to whom I gave the desert for his home
and made the salty land his dwelling.
(7) He laughs at the great commotion of the city
and his master's urging he does not hear.
(8) He chooses for himself mountains for [pasture]
and he goes after everything green.
(9) Does the wild ox wish to serve you
or will he lodge in your stable?
(10) Will you tie [the wild ox] with a yoke
and will he plough(?) in the valley [aft]er you?
And will you...
Will you depend on hi[m because] great is
[his strength]?

(20) Will you frighten him (the horse) with a strong...
his... is fear and dread.
(21) He searches out the valley, he trembles and
rejoices,
and mightily advances towards the sword.
(22) He laughs at fear and does not shudder,
and does not turn back from the sword.
(23) Upon him hangs a lance,
a javelin and a sharp sword,
(25) and at the sound of the trumpet, he says, Aha,
and from afar he smells the battle,
and he enjoys the rattle of the weapons and the war
cries.
(26) Does the hawk get excited because of your wisdom
and spread his wings towards the winds?
(27) Or does [the eagle] rise at your order
and the bird of prey build [its] nest on high?
(28) It dwells on the rock and nests...

XXXIV
(Job xl)
...

(6) [From...] and from the cloud
God answered Job and said to him:
(7) Like a man, please gird your loins;
I will question you, and you will answer me.
(8) Would you indeed tear up the judgement
and declare me guilty so that you may be
innocent?
(9) Or do you have an arm like God
or thunder with a voice like his?
(10) Throw away, please, pride and haughtiness
and you will put on splendour, glory and honour.
(11) Throw away, please, the heat of your wrath
and observe every proud man and humble him.
(12) And every proud spirit you will smash
and you will extinguish the wicked [in] their
[pl]aces.
(13) And hide them all in the dust
[and] cover [with a]shes ...

(23) ... the Jordan its banks,
he (the hippopotamus) trusts that he will get it.
(24) When he lifts his eyes, who will restrain him,
... his nose with a hook.
(25) Will you pull a crocodile with a hook
or tie up its tongue with a rope?
(26) Will you put a muzzle on his nose
and will you pierce his cheek with your chisel?
(27) Will he speak gently with you
or will he speak with you pleadingly?
(28) Will he make a covenant with you
or will you handle him as a slave for ever?
(29) Will you play with him like a b[ird,
and] will you bind him with a string for your
daughters?

XXXVI
(
Job xli
)

(8) They cling to one another
and no breath passes between them.
(9) One holds to another,
and they do not separate.
(10) His sneezing lights fire between his
eyes
like the shine of dawn (?).
(11) Torches come forth out of his mouth;
they leap like tongues of fire.
(12) From his nostrils smoke goes forth
like burning thorn and incense.
(13) His breath spews out coals
and sparks come out of his mouth.
(14) His strength dwells in his neck
and vigour springs before him.
(15) The folds of his flesh are clinging,
mould[ed over him] like iron.
(16) [His] heart... like stone

(26) ...
and he is king over all the reptiles.
(1) Job answered and said before God:
(2) I know that Thou canst do all things
and dost not lack in strength and wisdom.
(xl, 5) I have spoken once and will not
revoke it,
a second time, and I will not add to it.
(xlii, 4) Listen, please, and I will speak;
I will question you and you must answer me.
(5) I had heard of you by the hearing of the
ear
and now my eyes see you.
(6) Therefore I am melting and dissolve
and become dust and ashes...

XXXVIII
(9) ... God. God heard the voice of Job and forgave them their sins because of him. (10) And God returned to Job with mercy and doubled all that he had owned. (11) All his friends, brothers and acquaintances came to Job and they ate bread with him in his house, and they comforted him for all the misery that God had brought on him and each gave him a ewe-lamb and a ring of gold.

And he (Aaron) shall take some [of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his finger o]n the mercy seat. And before the mercy seat - to the east - [he shall sprinkle fr]om the blood with his finger [seven times] (Lev. xvi, 14)....

... Whe[n he has made an end of atoning] for the House of Holiness [and for] the tent of meeting and [for the altar, he shall offer] a live goat (Lev. xvi, 20)....

Compared to the quantity of Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts, the Greek documents found in two of the Qumran caves, Caves 4 and 7, are remarkably few, and this scarcity is significant in itself as regards the cultural identity of the Qumran Community. Those which have been identified with certainty belong to the Greek translation of the Bible, mostly the Pentateuch. Cave 4 has yielded remains of two scrolls of Leviticus, one of leather (4Q119) and one of papyrus (4Q120), as well as one of Numbers (4Q121) and of Deuteronomy (4Q122), all dating to the second or the first century BCE. On the whole, they represent the traditional text of the Septuagint with minor variations such as a word being replaced by its synonym (harvesting by threshing, for example, or nation by people), but 4QLXX Numbers (4Q121) testifies to an effort to bring the LXX closer to the Hebrew Pentateuch. Since the translation scarcely differs from the original, there is no purpose in reproducing it. However, it is worth noting that in Lev. iv, 27 (4Q120, fr. 20, 4) the Tetragram (the divine name YHWH) is rendered semi-phonetically as
Iao,
and is not replaced, as was customary later, by the Greek
Kurios
(Lord).

Among the nineteen minute fragments found in Cave 7 - which contained only Greek texts - two have been identified as relics of Exodus xxviii, 4-7 (7Q1) and the Letter of Jeremiah, verses 43-4 (7Q2). The former is said to be closer to the traditional Hebrew text than to the LXX. Both are dated to about 100 BCE.

The remaining two Greek texts in Cave 4 date roughly to the turn of the era. One (4Q126) cannot be identified and the other (4Q127) is either a paraphrase of Exodus, mentioning among others Pharaoh, Moses and Egypt, or possibly an apocryphal account of Israel in Egypt.

Seventeen out of the nineteen minute Greek papyrus fragments from Cave 7 have been declared by the editors to be unidentifiable. Yet against all verisimilitude, several of them have generated sensational and even revolutionary claims, especially that they represented the earliest textual examples of the Greek New Testament.

The contention originated with a Spanish Jesuit, José O‘Callaghan, who in 1972 persuaded himself that these hardly legible scraps derived from six books of the New Testament: the Gospel of Mark iv, 28 (7Q6 1), vi, 48 (7Q15), vi, 52-3 (7Q5), xii, 17 (7Q7); the Acts of the Apostles xxviii, 38 (7Q6 2); 1 Timothy iii, 16, iv, 1, 3 (7Q4); James i, 23-4 (7Q8) and even one of the latest New Testament writings, 2 Peter i, 15 (7Q10). Of these, the case for Mark vi, 52-3 is purported to be the ‘strongest'. The real facts are the following. We are dealing with a fragment on which the written area measures 3.3 x 2.3 cm. Letters appear on four lines; these are of unknown length since both the beginning and the end of each line are missing. An unrecognizable trace of another letter is observed at the top of the fragment. In the
editio princeps
seventeen letters are identified of which only nine are certain. A single complete word has survived: the Greek
kai
= and!

The leading experts in the field, the late C. H. Roberts of Oxford and the German Kurt Aland, unhesitatingly discarded O‘Callaghan's theory. Roberts jokingly told me that if he wanted to waste his time, he was sure he would be able to ‘demonstrate' that 7Q5 belonged to any ancient Greek text, biblical or non-biblical. Yet this unlikely and clearly unprovable hypothesis was revived in the 1980s by C. P. Thiede and others, only to encounter the same fate of summary dismissal as Father O'Callaghan's a decade or so earlier.

For the
editio princeps
of the 4Q and 7Q material, see P. W. Skehan and E. Ulrich,
DJD,
IX (Oxford, 1992), 161-97, 219-42; M. Baillet
et al., DJD,
III (Oxford, 1962), 142-6. For the theory that 7Q contains New Testament texts, see J. O‘Callaghan,
Los papipros griegos de la cueva
7
deQumrân
(Madrid, 1974), and C. P. Thiede,
The Earliest Gospel Manuscripts
(London, 1992);
Re-Kindling the Word
(Valley Forge, Pa, 1996). For views for and against expressed at a symposium, see B. Mayer, ed.,
Christen und Christliches inQumran?
(Regensburg, 1992). Against the theory, see C. H. Roberts, ‘On Some Presumed Papyrus Fragments of the New Testament from Qumran‘,
Journal of Theological Studies
23 (1972),
446-7
; K. Aland, ‘Neue neutestamentlische Papyri III‘,
New Testament Study
20 (1973-4), 357-81. For the latest authoritative views, see G. Stanton,
Gospel Truth?
(London, 1995); E. Puech, ‘Des fragments grecs de la grotte 7 et le Nouveau Testament?‘, RB 102 (1995), 570-84; M.-E. Boismard (the first decipherer of the fragment), ‘Apropos de 7Q5 et Mc. 6, 52-53', ibid., 102-4.

Five badly preserved manuscripts have been classified as reworkings of the Pentateuch, i.e. copies of the Torah partly entailing rearrangements of biblical passages and partly incorporating interpretative supplements inserted into the text. The length of the supplement varies from a few words to seven or eight lines, the most significant example being the long, but broken, addition to the Song of Miriam in 4Q365 6a ii, c. Judging from the surviving passages, the original Reworked Pentateuch must have been a very substantial document, probably the longest of all the Qumran Scrolls. All the manuscripts may be dated on palaeographical grounds to the first century BCE. Only those texts which contain more or less intelligible supplements (printed in italics) are included.