A Textual Analysis of Pseudo-Ezekiel (4Q385 and 4Q386): Rewritten Or Merely Copies of Each Other

Chapter 6 A Textual Analysis of Pseudo-Ezekiel (4Q385 and 4Q386): Rewritten or Merely Copies of Each Other

Jana Coetzee

1 Introduction

Before the discovery of the Scrolls, our understanding of the history and development of the Hebrew Bible (HB) was based upon comparisons made between three ancient textual traditions: the Masoretic or rabbinic tradition, which later emerged as the authoritative text in Judaism, the Samaritan tradition, being a version of the Torah that was later adopted by the Samaritan community as their canonical Scriptures, and the Septuagintal tradition, which is a version of the Hebrew scriptures that served as the basis for the Septuagint— the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures.1 Unfortunately, the only sur- viving copies of these traditions were from late antiquity and the middle ages.2 The discovery of the manuscripts in the caves at Qumran filled a void in our knowledge of the development of textual traditions.3 Although the discovery of the Scrolls provided the scholarly community with much more data on the development and history of the HB, it seems that the most significant aspect of the discovery could well be the dating of the scrolls. It would, however, be erroneous to assume that the manuscripts found at Qumran all date from the same time period. Matthias Henze, for example, states that the Scrolls predate the Leningrad Codex by a full millennium, with a scroll of Daniel (4QDanc) dating from about 125 BCE.4

1 Casey D. Elledge, The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2005), 89: Emanuel Tov suggested that the manuscripts discovered at Qumran cannot always be identified with any of these three traditions. 2 Elledge, Bible, 88. 3 Elledge, 88. According to Tov and Cross most of the manuscripts from Qumran resemble the later Masoretic or rabbinic tradition. These are therefore often described as “proto-Masoretic” or “proto-Rabbinic”; Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 115: Tov suggests that thirty-five percent of all Qumran biblical manuscripts represent a proto-Masoretic form of the Hebrew Bible. 4 Matthias Henze, Biblical Interpretation at Qumran. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 2. Henze cites Professor Frank Moore Cross on the relevance of the date of the Daniel scroll: “It is no

According to Casey Elledge, Pseudo-Ezekiel (4Q385–388, 391) “portrays a creative retelling of Ezekiel’s chariot visions and the valley of dry bones that reflects the influence of apocalyptic motifs, including resurrection.”5 Pseudo-Ezekiel also forms part of what we may refer to as a collection of rewritten texts,6 with some of the writings portraying minimal alterations and differences when compared with the Hebrew Bible; however, in other instanc- es this is not always the case. The textual authority these rewritten texts held for the Qumran community and later Judaism is unclear, although according to Elledge it may be safe to assume that the Qumran community regarded them as authoritative.7 According to Brooke, “in 1988, D. Dimant and J. Strugnell considered that there were at least five and possibly six copies of this work (4Q385–90).” Brooke himself suggests that there may possibly be only three or four copies of this work.8 The best-preserved manuscript evidence for Pseudo-Ezekiel is that of 4Q385 and consists of eight fragments.9

more than about a half century younger that the autograph of Daniel. It is thus closer to the original edition of a biblical work than any other biblical manuscript in existence.” 5 Elledge, The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 93. 6 Michael Segal, “Between Bible and Rewritten Bible,” in Biblical Interpretation at Qumran, ed. M. Henze (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 10. These texts contain additions, deletions, changes and reordering of material that differs from the later Masoretic or proto-rabbinic traditions; Geza Vermes dubbed this phenomenon “rewritten Bible”: Geza Vermes, “Biblical Midrash,” in The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, by Emil Schürer, revised and edited by G. Vermes, F. Millar, and M. Goodman (Edinburgh: Clark, 1986), vol. 3, 326. 7 Elledge, The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 93. Anders K. Petersen, “Textual Fidelity, Elaboration, Supersession or Encroachment? Typological Reflections on the Phenomenon of Rewritten Scripture,” in Rewritten Bible after Fifty Years: Texts, Terms, or Techniques?: A Last Dialogue with Geza Vermes, ed. J. Zsengeller (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 14. According to Petersen these manuscripts were not meant to replace their antecedents, but to reflect their meaning in a new context in a form of applied hermeneutics. But there are also scholars such as Ben Zion Wachholder who argue that these rewritten manuscripts were meant to replace the original text. 8 George J. Brooke, “Ezekiel in Some Qumran and New Testament texts,” in The Madrid Qumran Congress: Proceedings of the International Congress on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Madrid, 18–21 March, 1991, ed. Julio Trebolle Barrera and L. Vegas Montaner (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 321–22. 9 Brooke, “Ezekiel,” 322. It is difficult to determine the order of these fragments, and the num- bering of fragments 2–4 may be misleading. As an example, Brooke refers to H. Stegemann’s calculation that 4Q385 fragment 2 represents the last preserved column of 4Q385, while fragment 3 may be placed 4 columns before that. Brooke states that if this allocation is correct, then the placing of the climactic vision of the dry bones at the end of the text may be highly significant. On the other hand, Devorah Dimant states that fragments 2 and 3 both belong to a column that deals with the biblical vision of the dry bones (Ezek 37:1–14; Parabiblical Texts, Part 4: Pseudo-Prophetic Texts, vol. 21 of Qumran Cave 4, DJD 30 [Oxford: Clarendon, 2001], 7–8). 4Q386 fragment 1i partly overlaps that of 4Q385 fragment 2, and Dimant suggests that