4QSama and the Tetragrammaton

DONALD W. PARRY

Brigham Young University

During the past four decades students of the have witnessed a fair amount of activity with regard to divine names in the texts of the Judean desert. It is generally well known, for instance, that the sectarians employed various surrogates for the Tetragramrnaton to set it apart from common words, to protect it from erasure, or to alert a reader lest he pronounce the divine name while reading it. 1 Surrogates

I am most thankful to Professor Eugene Ulrich for reviewing this paper in its final stages and to Professor for permitting me to assist him with the 4QSam texts, to be published in DJD 17. This paper is an outgrowth of my study of 4QSam. I alone, however, am responsible for the contents of this article. 1 See for instance, Lawrence H. Schiffman, "The Use of Divine Names," in Schiffman, Sectarian Law in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Chico, Cal.: Scholars Press, 1983), 133-54; Jonathan P. Siegel, "The Employment of Palaeo-Hebrew Characters for the Divine Names at Qumran in the Light of Tannaitic Sources," HUCA 42 (1971): 159-72; George Howard, 'The Tetragram and the New Testament," JBL 96 (1977): 63-83; Patrick W. Skehan, "The Qumran Manuscripts and Textual Criticism," in Supplements to Vetus Testamentum IV (Leiden: Brill, 1957), 148-60; Joseph M. Baumgarten, "A New Qumran Substitute for the Divine Name and Mishnah Sukkah 4.5," Jewish Quanerly Review 83 (July-October 1992): 1-5; Gerhard-Wilhelm Nebe, "Psalm 104, 11 aus Hohle 4 von Qumran (4Q Psd) und der Ersatz des Gottesnamens," ZA W 93 (1981): 284-90; Patrick W. Skehan, "The Divine Name at Qumran, in the Masada Scroll, and in the ," Bulletin of the International Organization for Septuagint and 4QSama and the Tetragrammaton 107 used by the sectarians included dots in various settings; for example, two dots are located before the divine name in 4Q139; and four dots indicate the presence of the Tetragrammaton at the quotation of Isaiah 40:3 in the , in 4QTanhumim (4Q176), 1Q1saa at 40:7, 4QTest (), and elsewhere.2 Hebrew characters have also been used as surrogates for the divine name (e.g., the characters 1i1 m~, located at the end of 4Q266, are "clearly a substitution for the divine name," says Baumgarten).3 Additionally, the strange combination of charac• ters/surrogate ~m~1i1, located in the Community Rule at 8: 13, may represent an abbreviation for "He is the God.,,4 A third and equally strange apparent surrogate is found in Ben Sira MS B, at 42:17, which reads m m~"El), against the Masada scroll which

Cognate Studies 13 (1980): 14-44; H. P. Ruger, "NilN'il-Er zur Deutung von lQS 8 13-14," Zeitschrift fUr die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 60 (1969): 142-44. 2 See Howard, "The Tetragram and the New Testament," 67. Con• nected with this, Siegel, "The Employment of Palaeo-Hebrew Characters," 162, points out that the scribe of I I QPsa twice superfluously wrote the divine name, but then placed dots above and below, apparently canceling "them from reading, but not from existence, which would have been the case with erasure." 3 Baumgarten, "A New Qumran Substitute," 3. 4 Two curious surrogates for the divine name occur in the quotation ofIsaiah 40:3 located at 8: 13 of the Community Rule. The Isaiah passage reads "to go into the wilderness to prepare there the way of him"; him is spelled NilN1il and may be an abbreviation of O'il?Nil N'il, influenced by Isaiah 45:18. See Millar Burrows, The Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Viking, 1955), 383, in which he translated NilN1il as "the Lord." See also Sigmund Mowinckel, "The Name of the God of Moses," HUCA 32 (1961): 132; William H. Brownlee, The Dead Sea Manual of Discipline: Transla• tion and Notes (New Haven, Conn.: BASOR, 1951), 33 n. 29; A. R. C. Leaney, The Rule of Qumran and Its Meaning (London: SCM, 1966), 222; Ruger, "NilN1il-Er zur Deutung von lQS 8 13-14," 142-44; Howard, 'The Tetragram and the New Testament," 68.