123 - Qumran and the History of the Biblical Text

Qumran and the History of the Biblical Text
Edited by Frank Moore Cross and Shemaryahu Talmon
Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1975.
415 pp. $16.50.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Judaean wilderness has stimulated a period of unparalleled activity and progress in the study of the biblical text. The mass of textual data found in the manuscripts has completely changed our outlook and understanding of the early history of the biblical text. As a result of these new finds, the standard handbooks of biblical criticism have become hopelessly obsolete. In view of this situation, the editors of this volume have assembled a group of essays previously published to introduce the serious student to the new information that the discovery of the Scrolls has brought about in the field of textual research in the past quarter of a century.

Of the seventeen articles in the volume, eight are written by foreign scholars -Shemaryahu Talmon (four articles) and one each by M. H. Goshen-Gottstein and Emanuel Tov from Israel, Joseph Ziegler (Germany) and Dominique Barthélemy (France), and nine by American scholars-F. M. Cross (four articles), P. W. Skehan (two articles), and one each by W. F. Albright, D. N. Freedman, and J. A. Sanders.

Several of the articles are general surveys of the field, as for example, "The Old Testament Text" (pp. 1-41) and "Aspects of the Textual Transmission of the Bible in the Light of Qumran Manuscripts" (pp. 226-63) by S. Talmon, and "The Biblical Scrolls from Qumran and the Text of the Old Testament" (pp. 264-77) by P. W. Skehan.

On the basis of the late W. F. Albright's seminal article, "New Light on Early Recensions of the Hebrew Bible" (1955 [pp. 100-46]), Cross has developed the "three local texts hypothesis" that holds that three textual families developed slowly between the fifth and first centuries B.C. in Palestine, Egypt, and Babylon respectively. Cross' theory is presented in the three articles reprinted in this volume, "The History of the Biblical Text in the Light of Discoveries in the Judaean Desert" (pp. 177-95), "The contribution of the Qumran Discoveries to the Study of the Biblical Text" (pp. 278-92), and "The Evolution of a Theory of Local Texts" (pp. 306-320).

Although the theory is a systematic effort to bring some method and order into the baffling diversity of text-types and textual variants found in the manuscripts of Qumran, it is surprising that it has not attracted more comment from either European or Israeli biblical scholars. A good discussion of the theory with some penetrating criticisms may be found in S. Jellicoe's "Prolegomenon" in Studies in the Septuagint: Origins, Recensions, and Interpretation.

Talmon, who entertains some reservations regarding certain aspects

124 - Qumran and the History of the Biblical Text

of the "three local texts" theory of Cross, contributes several programmatic essays to the volume in which he propounds some new theories in the field of textual research and criticism. Of special significance is his article, "The Textual Study of the Bible A New Outlook" (pp. 321-400), in which he sets forth a number of stylistic techniques and norms that have an ongoing impact on the transmission of the biblical literature and that must therefore be taken into account when dealing with the many textual variants found in the Qumran biblical and extra-biblical texts.

The last article in the book is a list of published manuscripts and manuscript fragments from the Judaean Desert between 1947 and 1972 (pp. 401-412), as well as a brief survey of study aids (pp. 412-13), compiled by J. A. Sanders.

This volume is a valuable symposium of articles for the student and scholar interested in the Dead Sea Scrolls and their contribution to our knowledge of the early history of the biblical text. By conveniently assembling these important articles on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible from a dozen different publications, the editors have made accessible to scholars the latest results of research in the rapidly changing field of textual criticism.

Charles T. Fritsch
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey