Variants in two Dead Sea Isaiah scrolls

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungbook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

24 March 2010

Cave one brought to the archaeological world, two different manuscripts of the book of Isaiah. 1QIsa^a and 1QIsa^b. The two manuscripts have variants that are interesting to look at but which scholars unfortunately are using to substantiate their own petty ideas.

We have already said that during the time of the copy of these manuscripts there were clearly a concept of one authoritative text, a text that resemble the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition. All three texts are in Hebrew that we discuss here. These texts are defective texts since the scribes made mistakes and then sometimes correct them or attempted to do so. Maleachi Martin identified sometimes four different hands that tried to correct these texts (Maleachi Martin, The Scribal Character of the Dead Sea Scrolls, vol. I-II [Louvain: 1958]).

Additions in 1QIsa^a in Isaiah 51:3

The Isaiah scroll from cave one, manuscript a, added a phrase from verse 11 to verse 3 in chapter 51 "sorrow and sighing shall flee" nsw ygwn w'nhh. Scholars do not consider alternatives and think that this represents a phase in the growth of the book of Isaiah earlier. But, that is not the case. It is possible that the book of Isaiah may have been used as a hymnal or the like, and then additions were made in the following way:

MT verse 3: sswn wsmhh bh twdh wqwl zmrh

MT verse 11: sswn wsmhh ysygwn nsw ygwn w'nhh

1QIsaa verse 3: sswn wsmhh bh twdh wqwl zmrh nsw ygwn w'nhh

1QIsaa verse 11: sswn wsmhh ysygwn nsw ygwn w'nhh

Very likely, the scribe's familiarity with a well known hymn or the text itself, caused his enlightened mind to include from verse 11 an anticipated pharse when he was copying verse 3. There is a second point here, the reader dictating to the scribe made a slip of the eye by confusing sswn wsmhh of verse 3 with exactly the same words in verse 11. An earlier phase in the growth of the book of Isaiah is out of the question here.

Although not related to this particular variant, Emmanuel Tov is contemplating this growth theory also suggested by Y. Zakovitch (Tov 1992: 341 at footnote 19). In Seventh Day Adventist scholarship, any growth theory has to be applied to the author himself. Growth can only take place within the days of Moses for Moses' books and growth can only take place within the days of Isaiah for Isaiah's books. In fact, Isaiah wrote as a youth, as a man of 50 and also as a geronti. Each has its own style.

Nature of 1QIsa^a

Although the text 1QIsa^a agrees in general with the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition, there are a few variants which could be indicative of the date of the origin of the scroll.

Orthography of 1QIsa^a

E. Y. Kutscher worked on the Hebrew linguistic variants between 1QIsa^a and the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition. For the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition reading dmsq, 1QIsa^a reads drmsq. The form of 1QIsa^a agrees here with the form of the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition of the book of Chronicles which also uses drmsq. A. van der Kooij unfortunately employed literary criticism to date the book of Chronicles and then superimposed the late dating of these books to a conclusion that the 1QIsa^a form is also late.

Variants between 1QIsa^a and 1QIsa^b

In Isaiah 45:2 of the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition, the word hdwrym is used which is interpreted by the Targumic scribe as the definite article h+ the word dwr meaning "wall" + the plural, thus, with the final result as "walls". Both the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition and the Targum support the reading here as hdwrym. The socalled LXX or socalled Septuagint does not. A variant originated in the Septuagint in this point when the reader pronounced the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition /d/ of the word hdwrym too soft and the copyist to the Hebrew text used by the Septuagint, with his Aramaic mind, heard the Aramaic word htwrym meaning "mountains". As a result he translated the word as twras, the Greek word for mountain. Although the tradition holds that the Septuagint was translated before the copies of the Isaiah scroll of cave one at Qumran were made, this is not necessarily the case. None of the extant manuscripts of the "Septuagint" pre-dates 250 CE and those who do, is not conventionally called "Septuagint" because they do not compare to the majority of readings selected by the method of eclecticism to reconstruct our modern concept of Septuagint (see Brooke McClean; Ralphs; Gottingen edition).

Some modern scholars of the socalled Septuagint are attempting to show that it is not a mistake at all and that it only proves the fluidity of the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition in those days. These scholars are agitating their position in support of a non-stable situation for our Bible in the Second Temple Period, because in this age of relativity, humanity wants to live normless. The focus on the Qumran scrolls by scholars are then done with a mono-dialectical modus operandi: proof to the "one-text-scholars" that the text was fluid and that Qumran even support that situation. In this way, dogmatism, fundamentalism, "Biblicism" and normativism is vehemently resisted. Of course support will be given by nihilists, atheists, secular scholars, those with a maximalist view of the Word of God [Catholics who are trying to add the pseudepigrapha and apocrypha, church fathers, and the papal decrees as also the Word of God; or Jews who claim the traditions of their fathers, rabbis are on an equal level with the Word of God] or liberal Protestants and even liberal Adventists. But a liberal Adventist is no Adventist. Broadminded Adventists or Enlightened Adventists fool themselves if they think that way since it does not exist in the Adventist identity. Sliding away from the Adventist identity is to slide away from Adventism itself.

It is at this point that we ask whether the two Qumran manuscripts of Isaiah a and b support the concept of "fluidity of the text".

There is a difference between 1QIsa^a and 1QIsa^b reading the same word. In fact, the variant between these two manuscripts from the same cave supports the possibility that 1QIsa^b was copied before 1QIsa^a. The only variant of 1QIsa^b in 45:2 is that the letter /d/ of the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition was misread by the reader of the Masoretic text as /r/ and the copier wrote hrwrym. It is more likely that a variant of elision will occur than a variant of inclusion. Proponents with a high view of the Septuagint tradition, attempts to show that the Septuagint was the rule and that the Masoretes misread, or changed the text in the tenth century of our age. They argue that the Hebrew scribes of the tenth century CE misread the letter /r/ as a /d/.

If it were not for the variants between 1QIsa^a and 1QIsa^b in this case, one could have argued the issue in both ways. However, a change occur, namely, that the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition is the rule and that all other versions and form different or at variant, derived from it.

The letters /d/ and /r/ is known to have been misread in the scribal traditions because of the similarity in forms. There are many such letters in Hebrew that was misread by slips of the eye. 

The scribe of 1QIsa^a was not satisfied with the reading of hrwrym and by way of elision eliminated the /w/ and kept to the reading hrrym which means "mountains". The way this elision in 1QIsa^a occurred was probably when the reader dictating said hrwrym but the scribe of 1QIsa^a heard hrrym. If the other theory of the Aramaizing of a reading similar to the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition is not accepted as an explanation of the origin of the reading in the socalled LXX or Septuagint, then the possibility exists that 1QIsa^a text (or a copy thereof) was employed by a translator of the Vorlage to our host of "Septuagint" manuscripts dating to a period after the Byzantine times. The variants listed by A. Penna and Gottstein supports such an idea. Our conclusion was that the translator to the Vetus Latina, the Targum and Vulgate of Jerome, Syriac all used copies of this defective manuscript of 1QIsa^a and that is why so many variants are shared between them as opposed to the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition or the very Word of God, in this researcher's view.

The scribes at Qumran were "sloppy" were midrashic and exegetically orientated rather than to produce a Vorlage exactly.

Evidence of PULAS instead of TURAS is Barnabas, Epiphanius (born in 315 CE and died in Constantinople in 403 CE and bishop of Constantia in 367 CE) and also Theodoretus of Antioch (born in 390 and died in 425 CE. In 423 CE he was bishop of Kyrrhos).  The word hrrym was preserved in all Greek manuscripts and uncials that were in Christian hands except minuscle 407 from the ninth century CE.

Thanks to the variants in the two manuscripts, it is possible to establish the veracity of the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition and establish the misreadings of the versions as based on defective copies of the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition due to slips of the eye, ear, hand, tongue, memory.