THE DATE OF THE PSALMS SCROLL FROM THE CAVE OF LETTERS (5/ 6¼EVPS) RECONSIDERED

WALTER C. BOUZARD, JR. Wartburg College

The most recent investigation of the Cave of Letters has done more than produce additional artifacts to supplement the historical collection gathered in the 1960Õs under the direction of Professor . A new hypothesis about many of the previously known artifacts was unearthed in the cave as well. Professor Richard Freund, co-director of the Ò2000 Return to the Cave of LettersÓ expedition has now pub- lished his view that, pace Yadin, not all of the artifacts recovered in previous expeditions and associated by Yadin with Bar Kokhba are properly associated with that second-century revolt. Drawing upon evi- dence from the , numismatic materials from the Cave of Letters, and an array of other evidence, Freund proposes that

The objects that appear to date to the Ž rst century ce—the incense shovels and rest of the bronze hoard, the stone ware, the Psalms fragment, the First Revolt era coins—not only appear to date to the Ž rst century ce, they really do. Perhaps they were taken to the cave by Jerusalem priests  eeing the cityÕs destruction by the Romans. The second-century ce remains—BabathaÕs archive, the Bar-Kokhba letters—pose no dating di fŽ culty (they are clearly second century ce), but they should not preclude our dating of the caveÕs other artifacts to the Ž rst century ce.1 The purpose of this brief essay is to reconsider one artifact men- tioned by Professor Freund, the famous Psalms fragment known as 5/6¼evPs, in the light of this new hypothesis. Any di fŽ culties associ- ated with such an investigation have been eased considerably by the very recent publication of this text, among others, by Peter W. Flint in the Discoveries in the series.2 My own contribution

1 R. Freund and R. Arav, ÒReturn to the Cave of the Letters. What Still Lies Buried?Ó BAR 27/1 (January/February 2001) 39. 2 P. Flint, Ò5/6¼evPsalms,Ó Miscellaneous Texts from the Judaean Desert (DJD 38; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000) 141 –66. In the same volume, Flint has published other important biblical texts from Na½al ¼ever including 5/6Numbers a, X¼ev/ SeNumbers b, and X¼ev/ SeDeuteronomy.

©Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2003 Discoveries 10, 3 Also available online – www.brill.nl 320 WALTER C. BOUZARD, JR. will be to bring the fruits of that and other investigations to bear on the Freund hypothesis, articulating what can and cannot be claimed relative to the other artifacts discovered in the Cave of Letters on the basis of the Psalms fragment. The details of YadinÕs discovery of the Psalms fragment are su fŽ ciently wellknown that they need not be rehearsed in detail. On April 3, 1960, YadinÕs team, investigating Na½al ¼ever, discovered a small Psalms fragment containing Ps. 15:1 –16:1 near the western wall of the Ž rst chamber of Cave 5/6, 3 soon to be known as the Cave of Letters. 4 The following March saw the discovery of a second small biblical frag- ment, this one from the book of Numbers, found in the eastern entrance of the same cave. 5 Another biblical text discovered in Na½al ¼ever by Yadin, fragments of the Greek Minor Prophets Scroll, came from Cave 8, the so-called ÔCave of Horror.Õ6 Yadin did, of course, also Ž nd numerous non-biblical scrolls in the course of his twin expe- ditions to the Cave of Letters, most notably the Bar Kokhba letters and the Babatha archives. Indeed, it was primarily on the basis of these readily datable documents that Yadin concluded that all of the artifacts from the Cave of Letters are properly associated with the Second Revolt. The documents discovered by YadinÕs team and the subsequent study of those materials also con Ž rmed a rumor relative to the dis- covery of other scrolls that had been sold by Bedouin to the Rocke- feller Museum and other authorities in the early 1950Õs, namely, that these scrolls had been found in Israeli territory. Indeed, it is now cer- tain that the Bedouin entered the caves of Israeli-occupied Na½al ¼ever and removed documents from there rather than having discov- ered them, as they claimed, in Jordanian controlled Na½al Ñe¾elim (Wadi Seiy¨l). For example, corresponding fragments of the following

3 Cave 5/6 was so designated because it has both an eastern and a western entrance. See Y. Yadin, ÒThe Expedition to the Judaean Desert, 1960, Expedition D,Ó IEJ 11 (1961) 40. 4 See Y. Yadin, ÒThe Expedition to the Judaean Desert, 1960, Expedition D.Ó (esp. 40 and plate XXD) as well as the popular account found in his Bar Kokhba. The Rediscovery of the Legendary Hero of the Last Jewish Revolt Against Imperial Rome [London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971] 113 –4. 5 Y. Yadin, ÒThe Expedition to the Judaean Desert, 1961, Expedition D,Ó IEJ 12 (1962) 229 and plate D. 6 B. Lifshitz, ÒThe Greek Documents from the ,Ó IEJ 12 (1962) 201–7; E. Tov, The Greek Minor Prophets Scroll from Na½al ¼ever [8¼evXII Gr] (DJD 8; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990) 1.