A Qumran Origin for the Masada Non-Biblical Texts?

A QUMRAN ORIGIN FOR THE MASADA NON-BIBLICAL TEXTS?

EMANUEL TOV The Hebrew University

The publication of the Hebrewand AramaicMasada texts by S.Talmon in a very ne edition calls for further thoughts on the nature of this corpus.1

1. Background The texts found at Masada form a small corpus comparable in nature to the much larger corpus found at Qumran. The exact number of texts found at Qumran or, for that matter, at any site in the Judean Desert will never be known because it is often unclear whether any two fragments re ect the remains of one or two di fferent scrolls. In the minds of scholars, the presumed total number of Qumran scrolls has increased considerably since the initial inventory lists were made. In the rst decade, scholars estimated there to be 700 or less di fferent copies, while one generation ago they spoke of 800 copies. In the meantime this number has increased to some 850 items, and the nal list will be even longer. The Masada corpus comprises a mere fteen literary texts in He- brew (and one in either Hebrew or Aramaic), found in various loci at Masada. The following analysis excludes the ostraca in Hebrew and Aramaic and the ostraca and papyrus texts in Latin and Greek. The 720 ostraca and thirty papyri and ostraca in Latin and Greek are less relevant to the topic under investigation since they derived from the Roman soldiers, while the literary texts were probably brought to Masada by the Zealots and also the Essenes.

1 All the Masada texts (with the exception of MasSir and MasShirShabb) had been published preliminarily by S. Talmon, who also prepared their nal publication together with an introduction: S. Talmon and Y. Yadin, Masada VI, The Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963 -1965, Final Reports, Hebrew Fragments from Masada (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1999) 1 -149. This section also contains a contribution

2. The nd-sites of the Masada fragments An analysis of the nd-sites of the texts at Masada could shed some light on the nature of the texts. The facts known about the nd- ing of the texts in each locus are described in detail in E. Netzer, Masada III:2 1. Casemate 1039 in the north-western section of the wall, nick- named Òthe casemate of the scrolls.Ó According to Netzer ( Masada III, 418), this casemate was occupied by a Zealot family, and the various items found there were collected from di fferent places at Masada either by the Zealots or, more likely, by the Romans (Netzer, Masada III, 422). This casemate contained a large collection of vessels, cloth, mats, baskets, leather articles, silver and bronze shekels struck during the rst revolt against Rome, as well as seven texts: 3 MasGen (1039-317) [Mas 1] (previously this fragment was consid- ered to contain the book of Jubilees) MasLeva (1039-270) [Mas 1a] MasPsa (1039-160) [Mas 1e] Mas apocrJosh (1039-211) [Mas 1l] MasShirShabb (1039-200) [Mas 1k] Mas pap paleoUnidenti ed Text (r) and Mas pap paleoText of Samaritan Origin (v) (1039-320) [Mas 1o] Mas Unidenti ed Text heb or ar (1039-274) [Mas 1p] 4 by C. Newsom and Y. Yadin. The second part of the volume (pp. 151 -252) contains The Ben Sira Scroll from Masada by Yadin (ÒIntroduction, Emendations and CommentaryÓ), E. Qimron (ÒNotes on the ReadingÓ), and F. Garc’a Mart’nez (Bibliography). 2 E. Netzer, Masada III, The Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963 -1965, Final Reports, The Buildings —Stratigraphy and Architecture (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1991). 3 The inventory numbers of the Masada texts contain the number of the locus followed by the name of the item. In addition, the Masada texts are known with a different type of inventory number, relating to the collection of the texts from the Judean Desert as a whole. These numbers are listed in E. Tov with the collaboration of S. Pfann, Companion Volume to The Dead Sea Scrolls Micro che Edition (Leiden: Brill/IDC, 1995 2); a revised version appeared in P.W. Flint and J.C. VanderKam (eds), The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years (Leiden: Brill, 1999) 2.669-717, and the nal version is to appear in DJD 39. 4 Originally this text was classi ed by Talmon as an Aramaic text, and in the nal publication as ÒAramaic?Ó (Talmon, Masada VI, 18, 136), but no certainty can be had regarding the language of this document. The few preserved words allow us to con- ceive of this text as either Aramaic or Hebrew, and since no other Aramaic texts have been found at Masada, the pendulum probably swings in the direction of Hebrew. The reading in line 2 is certain, but no such form is known from either Hebrew or Aramaic (it is described as an Òapparently Aramaic vocableÓ by Talmon, Masada VI, 137). The same reading may be included also in line 1 of a small scrap of this text: