CHAPTER 6

THE SAMUEL SCROLLS

TWENTY-SEVEN leather fragments in Hebrew, later to be identified as fragments from a of the Book of Samuel, were retrieved, along with thousands of fragments of perhaps a hundred , from the deepest level of excavation in Cave 4 at . The Samuel manuscript would prove to be one of the most important and most instructive of the biblical manuscripts. It was discovered between 22 and 29 September 1952, and in early summer of 1953 the fragments were assigned for identification to , the first member of the new Cave 4 team of editors to arrive in . They were "wholly illegible" as well as "darkened and mostly covered with yellow crystals-evidently animal urine."! But once they were cleaned, Cross pieced them together to form generous parts of chapters 1-2 of 1 Samuel and published his results already in 1953. 2 The excavations by the scholars, however, were occasioned by the prior successes of the enterprising Bedouin in early September 1952. The Bedouin had recovered the vast majority of the fragments of 4QSama and, from 1952 until 1958, gradually brought them and the fragments of two other scrolls of Samuel, 4QSamb and 4QSamc, for purchase.I The fact that the fragments excavated from Cave 4 by the scholars proved to be part of the same manuscript offered by the Bedouin confirmed the provenance of the fragments purchased from the latter. Cave 1 contained another manuscript of Samuel, but only a few small fragments were preserved. Due to its size, 4QSama teaches us much about the history of the text. Although "only just under fifteen percent of the text of Samuel is extant on the leather fragments," 4QSama is still "the most extensively preserved of the biblical manuscripts from Cave 4" (DJD 17:3) and the fourth most extensively preserved of the entire corpus of scriptural scrolls." Since it is so well preserved, it is a potentially rich candidate for examining the four distinct types of manuscript variation: orthography, individual variants, isolated insertions, and variant or successive editions.

1 Frank Moore Cross, Donald W. Parry, Richard Saley, and , DJD 17:2, n. 3. 2 Frank Moore Cross, "A New Qumran Biblical Fragment Related to the Original Hebrew Underlying the ," BASOR 132 (1953) [C. C . Torrey Volume]: 15-26. 3 A preliminary edition of 4QSamb was also quickly published by F. M. Cross, "The Oldest Manu• scripts from Qumran," JBL 74 (1955): 147-72. Eugene Ulrich received the third manuscript in summer 1977, edited it in a year and published it in 1979: "4QSamc: A Fragmentary Manuscript of 2 Samuel 14-15 from the Scribe of the Serek Hay-yahad (1QS)," BASOR 235 (1979): 1-25. 4 (DJD 32, Part 2:25) reports that there are more than 94,000 extant words in the corpus of the preserved biblical scrolls. 1Q Isa" is virtually completely intact, containing 22,696 words (24% of the entire biblical corpus); MurXII is the second largest manuscript with 4,834 words (ca. 5.1%); 1QIsab is the third largest with 4,603 words (almost 5%); and 4QSama is fourth with 3,656 words (almost 4%). 74 THE SCRIPTURES FOUND AT QUMRAN

The four parts of this chapter will analyze the different levels of variation in the texts of Samuel. Part I will present some characteristics and differences in orthography. Part II will review a selection of the srrraller individual variants for each of the scrolls. Part III will then present the larger intentional isolated insertions, and Part IV will analyze possible variant editions.

I. ORTHOGRAPHY OF THE SAMUEL SCROLLS Cross dates 4QSama palaeographically to approximately "50-25 B.C.E., that is, in the transition from Late Hasmonaean to Early Herodian scripts" (DJD 17:5). He dates 4QSamb to approximately 250 B.C.E. (17:220) and the "semiformal" script of 4QSamc (the same hand as in 1QS, 4QTest, etc.) to approximately 100-75 B.C.E. (17:249). TABLE 1 presents in the upper section a brief, impressionistic comparison of ortho• graphic forms exhibited by the various texts for common words. The lower section of the table lists forms that are somewhat contrary to the regular practices of one or another manuscript. The orthography of 4QSama exhibits a somewhat fuller use of internal matres lectionis than the MT: 4QSama has 210 fuller readings than the MT, compared with 19 readings in the MT that are fuller than 4QSama (DJD 17:5); note, however, that the MT has ~,., at 1 Sam 2:24. In contrast, 4QSamb , probably due to the fact that it is two centuries older than 4QSama, is copied "in a surprisingly archaic orthography" (17:220), with only a single instance of a reading fuller than MT: f" at 1 Sam 20:38. The orthography of 4QSamc is consistently the fullest, often termed "baroque," using forms such as i11'~~ (2 Sam 14:25 1~~ MT) and i1~'i1 (14:27 ~'i1 MT); note, however, in 4QSamc

TABLE 1: Orthographic Characteristics

4QSama 4QSamb 4QSamc MTSam MTChr

",:1 ":I ",:1 ":I ":I ':I IN':I ';' N':I ':I ':I N" IN'" N" N'" N" N" 'ii'''N 'ii"N 'm"N 'ii"N 'ii"N iON" iON" iO'N'1 iON'1 iON" i10N" iON" i10N" iON" iON" "1' '1' '1' ,'" '1ElN 'ElN '1ElN '1ElN jii1:1ii 1ii:l ii 1ii:l ii 1m, l'Sl l'1Sl !:l"1' !:l'1' !:l'" !:l"n~" !:l'n~"El !:l'n~"El

N"IN1" N" No1" N1" N" N~ !:lN~~ ,N~" t:lN1~~ ,N1~'1 CN~~ ,N~" iTSl" i'TSl" iTSl" r'i r i 1'''N 1"N 1'''N ""N