More Notes on A. Penna's analysis of Qumran Isaiah

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungbook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

12 March 2010

A. Penna already had an influence on the thinking tank of textual criticism in 1957 that is echoed in the works of Trebolle Barrera and also of Emmanuel Tov in 1992, and, we may add, the current conventional view.

When we talk about "thinking tank of textual criticism" we are talking about a story very similar to Darwin's Evolution theory, or modern German biologist Jörg Hacker's anthropomorphism of bacterial microbodies, that they can plan, think, wish, remember etc (see Der Spiegel 11 March 2010).

When the thinking tank begin to take stock of what they have found, they end up with providing the broad view, a view that will push all uncomfortable overweight into clothes too small to wear.

The three models that preceded the Model of Tov et al, were all such broad pictures of the "world of the texts". What is interesting to this analyzer is how comments of A. Penna became the building stone of Tov's current model (which is the conventional one now). What Tov did not look at, is that the comments of Penna and his data presented do not match.

The source for A. Penna is his articles on the matter, especially the article "La Volgata e il Manoscritto 1QIsa" Biblica 38 (1957): 381-395.

What we intend to do is to translate one of the most important citations from this article and make some notes about it.

A. Penna wrote:

"Dal confronto fra la Volgatta e 1QIsa non risulta affatto che S. Gerolamo possedesse un manoscritto ebraico risalente a 1QIsa. La conclusione potrebbe apparire attraente e forse  imporsi presso qualcuno, che supponesse un'identita perfetta fra 1QIsa ed il testo  masoretico in tutto il libro, fuori dei pochi casi elencati  qui sotto. Cio e falsissimo: basta scorrere brevemente il manoscritto, che offre un testo molto affine a quello masoretico, ma  non identico. Spesso con 1QIsa concordano, oltre alla Volgata, una o piu versioni antiche. Ma nessuna di esse si puo considerare nell'insieme come la riproduzione del "testo" d'Isaiah, quale compare in 1QIsa. Si ha piuttosto la documentazione di una pluralita di "testi" che esercitano il loro influsso prima di cristallizzarsi in una forma ben delineata e precisa. E si noti che una certa liberta nelle tradizione manoscitta ebraica e provata anche per un tempo  molto posteriore."

We translate:

"From the comparison between the Vulgate and 1QIsaa it does not turn out at all that Jerome possessed a manuscript going back to the Hebrew of 1QIsaa. Perhaps the conclusion could appear attractive and the impression could enforce itself on someone, that it supposed a perfect identity between 1QIsaa and the Masoretic text in all the book, outside of the little cases listed here underneath [his excellent list of all the variants that the Vulgate shares with 1QIsaa as opposed to the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition or Hebrew or very Word of God]. This is false: sliding through the manuscript briefly, it offers a text much analogous to that of the Masoretic text, but not identical. Often with 1QIsaa they [variants] agree, besides the ancient Vulgate, also more versions. But none of them can be considered itself in its entirety like the reproduction of the Isaiah, which appears in 1QIsaa. The documentation is that it had rather a plurality of texts that exercised their influence before crystallizing itself in a form very delineated and specific. And you notice that freedom certainly in the Jewish and tried Masoretic tradition also for a time much posterior to this one."

(A. Penna 1957: 387).

I find it very strange that Penna tries to drive a wedge between a manuscript very similar to 1QIsa and the Vulgate, and then to hop on a theory of fluidity in the Jewish manuscripts as a reason why the Vulgate displays this form it does. The whole concept of fluidity in the Jewish manuscripts is a misperception based on a broad picture about the stance of textual criticism ideology. Of course he is a feeder to Emmanuel Tov and Trebolle Barrera's view of textual criticism later and that view was the greatest hurdle to this researcher in his own research since it did not answer all the questions that one brings to data. This researcher had no choice but to change and throw out the concepts of these scholars regarding the  broad picture of textual criticism and to spent over a decade to find and reevaluate the data in order to come up with another broad view that do fit the data, in this researcher's view, better.

The broad picture of this researcher resulted in a hermeneutics of affirmation rather than a hermeneutics of suspicion. It also resulted in a presentation of truth as opposed to attempts to truth (like the translations represented in the ancient versions, be it Latin, Coptic,  Greek, Syriac, Armenian, Arabic, etc.). Our modern English translations like the KJV, NIV, RSV etc. are closer to the truth than the attempts to truth of the ancient versions.

A literal translation of the Hebrew of the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition is the very Word of God as opposed to an ancient translation that is based upon defective manuscripts like 1QIsaa, as one finds in the comparisons of the data presented by A. Penna but denied in his descriptions of the conclusions. 

We have pointed out that the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition was the goal in both 1QIsaa and in Jerome, but the modus operandi to get there was different than what one can get in a person copying with direct access to the perfect copy.

We must remember, that in 230 CE Origen suggested that they must bribe the Jews for better copies. Why? Because access to the pure and perfect copies by Christians were not possible. [We deal here with the subject of Christian-Jewish polemics]. Thus, even if a perfect copy was in the public library of Rome, the modus operandi of copying was to rely on memory, dictation. Thus, someone had to go in and memorize three verses, come out and dictate it to a scribe who committed slips of the ear  sometimes based on slips of the tongue and hindered by slips of the memory. The examples of A. Penna and M. H. Gottstein abounds in their data presented between 1QIsaa  and the consonantal text of the Masoretic Tradition.

Look at the identical cases he cites for example in Vulgate Isaiah 52:6 which it shares with 1QIsaa and the Greek (namely the omission). Penna's word "affato" = "at all" in his opening remark of this citation is just too strong and goes totally against his data in his lists. It escaped scholars conclusions in the decades that followed this remark and still do.