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chapter 17 Deuteronomy in the Temple Scroll and Its Use in the Textual Criticism of Deuteronomy*

Sidnie White Crawford

The Temple Scroll has been studied from many different angles since its initial publication by in 1977.1 A quick perusal of its bibliography yields articles on the laws of the Temple Scroll, its theology, the architecture of its Temple plan, its relationship to Jubilees, MMT and the , and its method in the reuse of scripture, to cite just a few examples.2 There have not, however, been many studies of the Temple Scroll from a text-critical point of view.3 In this article I will explore the question of whether or not the text of the Temple Scroll can be useful when pursuing the textual criticism of the .4 In other words, I will not be investigating how the Temple Scroll uses Deuteronomy for its own purposes, but whether or not the Temple Scroll can be used as evidence in recovering the “earliest inferable

* It gives me great pleasure to dedicate this article to Moshe Bernstein, longtime colleague and friend in all things . 1 Yigael Yadin, Megillat ha-Mikdash (3 vols.; : Exploration Society, 1977) [Hebrew]; The Temple Scroll (3 vols. and supplement; rev. Eng. ed.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983). 2 See, e.g., the voluminous bibliography in Lawrence H. Schiffman, The Courtyards of the House of the Lord: Studies on the Temple Scroll (STDJ 75; Leiden: Brill, 2008). 3 The most thorough treatment is still the early study of , “The ‘Temple Scroll’ and Old Testament Textual Criticism,” in Eretz Israel, Harry M. Orlinsky Volume (vol. 16; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1982), 100–11, 255* [Hebr. with Eng. summary]. Tov recognized that the Temple Scroll reflected readings in agreement with the and the Samaritan Pentateuch (255*). See also Lawrence H. Schiffman, “The Septuagint and the Temple Scroll: Shared Halakhic Variants,” in Courtyards, 85–94; idem, “The Deuteronomic Paraphrase of the Temple Scroll,” in Courtyards, 443–70. 4 George Brooke has suggested forcefully that “the rewritten scriptural texts need to become much more explicitly part of the arsenal of the text critic, playing their full part in the de- scription of the fluid transmission of the texts of the various scriptural books in the late period.” George J. Brooke, “The Rewritten Law, Prophets and Psalms: Issues for Understanding the Text of the Bible,” in The Bible as Book: The and the Judaean Desert Discoveries (ed. E. Herbert and E. Tov; London/New Castle; The British Library & Oak Knoll Press, 2002), 31–40, at 38.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi ��.��63/9789004355729_019 320 Crawford text” of Deuteronomy.5 This “earliest inferable text” is the goal of the Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition project, for which I am responsible for the edition of Deuteronomy. Since this earliest inferable text is the goal of that project and this study, in cases where I use the term “preferable reading” in comparing vari- ants I mean the reading that leads to that earliest inferable text. In the case of the phrase “secondary reading,” I mean that the variant in question arose after the earlier preserved reading. It is universally agreed that the book of Deuteronomy served as a source for the composer/redactor of the Temple Scroll. The Temple Scroll utilizes passages from Deuteronomy throughout its text; the first extant column, column 2, uses Exodus 34 and Deuteronomy 7 as its source texts. This use of Deuteronomy continues throughout the work. At its end, beginning in column 51, the com- poser/redactor begins reproducing the text of Deuteronomy almost verbatim, with very few interpolations from other biblical books.6 Thus this section of the Temple Scroll has been aptly called the “Deuteronomic Paraphrase.”7 A text-critical study of the Temple Scroll for the book of Deuteronomy logically begins here. For the purposes of this study I decided to select a limited section of the Deuteronomic Paraphrase, a section that reproduces a running text of Deuteronomy with no major interpolations from other biblical books or from the composer/redactor of the Temple Scroll. I have chosen columns 60:10 through 61:15 (according to Qimron’s critical edition), which reproduce Deut 18:5–14, 20–22, 19:15–21 and 20:1–3.8 In what follows, the text preserved

5 The phrase comes from Ronald Hendel: “[the] critical aim [is] to approximate the corrected archetype of each biblical book” where “archetype” refers to “the latest common ancestor or the earliest inferable state of the text.” Ronald Hendel, “The Oxford Hebrew Bible: Its Aims and a Response to Criticisms,” HEBAI 2 (2013): 63–99, at 64. 6 The exception to this is the large interpolation called “The Law of the King” in cols. 57–59. 7 Schiffman, “Deuteronomic Paraphrase,” 443–70. Schiffman (445) defines the Paraphrase as “the sections of the Temple Scroll which follow the order of Deuteronomy and in which the Deuteronomic text serves as the basic text for the legal exposition of the scroll. Further, we refer to a block of text in which several sections of Deuteronomy appear in the same order as they do in the canonical book.” 8 , The Temple Scroll: A Critical Edition with Extensive Reconstructions (Beer Sheva/Jerusalem: Ben Gurion University of the Negev Press and Israel Exploration Society: 1996). Qimron’s edition in these columns differs only slightly from Yadin’s original edition. The edition found in James H. Charlesworth, The Temple Scroll and Related Documents (The : Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek Texts with English Translations, vol. 7; Tübingen/ Louisville: Mohr Siebeck and Westminster John Knox, 2011) is identical to Qimron’s in these columns.