Two Perspectives on Two Pentateuchal Manuscripts from Masada

TWO PERSPECTIVES ON TWO PENTATEUCHAL MANUSCRIPTS FROM MASADA

EUGENE ULRICH

I am grateful for this üpportunity to honor and celebrate Emanuel Tov-an admired scholar, an enriching colleague, and a trusted friend. For over thirty years we have been walking the same road together, and I thank hirn für teaching me much. In this artiele I would like simply to offer another episode in our ongoing conver sation concerning the histüry of the biblical text. As with most good conversations, I hope that this study offers some new light and that our future conversations will push and refine our knowledge yet further. Specifically, I would like to inquire more elosely into the textual nature of two of the Pentateuchal MSS found at Masada and recently published. 1 Just as the prevailing view of the scriptural scrolls from Qumran is that they portray a pluriform text with variant literary editions of many books, so too the prevailing view of the scriptural scrolls from Masada is that, in contrast, they uniformly display a elose relationship to the proto-Masoretic Text.2 Tov hirnself has already led the way in formulating some of the nuanced cüntext that should be kept in mind:

The fact that aIl the texts left by the Zealots at Masada (dating until 73 C.E.) reflect m is also important. But there is a snag in this description. While on the one hand it was claimed. . . that those involved in the transmission of m did not insert any change in m and as a result its inconsistency in spelling as weIl as its mistakes have been preserved for posterity, on the other

I Shemaryahu Talmon and Yigael Yadin, Masada VI: Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963-1965: Final Reports (Jerusalern: Israel Exploration Society/Hebrew University of J erusalem, 1999). 2 See, as representative examples, Shemaryahu Talmon, "Masada: Written Material," Encyclopedia qf the Dead Sea Serolls (ed. L. H. Schiffman and J. C. VanderKam; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 1.521-25, esp. 523; Talmon and Yadin, Masada VI, 25, 38, 46, 55, 68, 89, 93; Lawrence H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Serolls (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994), 172. 454 ULRICH

hand, there never existed any one single text that could be named the Masoretic Text. In fact at a certain stage there was a group of Masoretic texts and naturally this situation requires a more precise formulation. Although at one time an attempt was made not to insert any changes in m, at that time the texts within the group of Masoretic texts already differed internally one from another. ... The wish to preserve a unified textual tradition thus remained an abstract ideal which could not be accomplished in reality.3 In an attempt to gain even sharper focus for categorizing the Masada scrolls, we can study two of the MSS from the Pentateuch that sur vived there: MasGen and MasLev".

1. GENESIS (MAsGEN)

Only one tiny fragment of Genesis, 5.6 X 4.5 cm, was found at Masada.4 It contains merely eight comp1ete words and six other let ters from three broken words, but it can be identified as containing parts of Gen 46:7-11.5 Talmon offers the following transcription, altered here only by the insertion of the brackets at the end of the first line (since the MS is broken off) and by the shift to the 1eft side plus the insertion of brackets at the right to indicate, as Talmon notes, that the words constitute the ends of the lines:

[ ] 1J'1~r.l [ 1 :l1p ll' n~ 1J ['1~r.l 2 1,Jn lJ,~1 ' [JJ] i [ 3 rr.l'I '~i[ry 4 'I' 'JJi [ 5

Talmon gives the following reconstruction, again altered only by the insertion of the brackets at the end of the first 1ine, the brackets at the beginning of the 1ines, and the verse numbers:

[vac] 1J'1~r.l [In~ ~'Ji1 I1l1r '1:11 I'JJ nlJJI] 1 Jlpll' n~ 1J ['1~r.l 1J'~Ji1 '~1iV' 'JJ nlr.liV i1'~I8] 2

3 Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism qf the Hebrew Bible (2d ed.; Minneapolis: Fortress; Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2001), 28-29; emphasis in the original. 4 For the edition of MasGen, see Talmon and Yadin, Masada VI, 31-35. 5 Unfortunately, no other biblical MS from the Judean Desert is preserved for Genesis 46.