Texts of Jeremiah in the Qumran Library

chapter 14 Texts of Jeremiah in the Qumran Library

Armin Lange

The book of Jeremiah plays an unusual role in the Dead Sea Scrolls. For ex- ample, different from many other prophetic books, no pesher on the book of Jeremiah is preserved. Instead, several compositions have been identi- fied among the Dead Sea Scrolls that belong to the metagenre of paratextual literature.1 Various quotations of Jeremiah are also employed in halakhic, messianic, and other contexts in the Essene and non-Essene literature from Qumran.2 As illustrated by the Qumran library, on the whole, the reception history of Jeremiah is thus comparable to that of Ezekiel but is distinct from the reception histories of Isaiah and many Minor Prophets. The Qumran library is also hugely important for the study of the book of Jeremiah for another reason. In the various caves around Khirbet Qumran, up to eight manuscripts of the book of Jeremiah were found.3 The present essay

1 For the category of paratextual literature, see Armin Lange, “In the Second Degree: Ancient Jewish Paratextual Literature in the Context of Greaeco-Roman and Ancient Near Eastern Literature,” in In the Second Degree: Paratextual Literature in Ancient Near Eastern and Ancient Mediterranean Cultures and Its Reflections in Medieval Literature, ed. Philip S. Alexander, Armin Lange, and Renate Pillinger (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 3–40. 2 For surveys of Jeremiah’s reception history in the Qumran library, see George J. Brooke, “The Book of Jeremiah and Its Reception in the Qumran Scrolls,” in The Book of Jeremiah and Its Reception Reception – Le livre de Jérémie et sa reception, ed. Adrian H.W. Curtis and Thomas Römer, BETL 128 (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 183–205, and Kipp Davis, The Cave 4 Apocryphon of Jeremiah and the Qumran Jeremianic Traditions: Prophetic Persona and the Construction of Community Identity, STDJ 111 (Leiden: Brill, 2014). 3 Armin Lange, Die Handschriften biblischer Bücher von Qumran und den anderen Fundorten, vol. 1 of Handbuch der Textfunde vom Toten Meer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 297–324; Armin Lange, “The Text of Jeremiah in the War Scroll from Qumran,” in The Hebrew Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Nora David, et al., FRLANT 239 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 95–116; Armin Lange, “The Textual History of the Book Jeremiah in Light of its Allusions and Implicit Quotations in the Qumran Hodayot,” in Prayer and Poetry in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature: Essays in Honor of Eileen Schuller on the Occasion of Her 65th Birthday, ed. Jeremy Penner, Ken M. Penner, and Cecilia Wassen, STDJ 98 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 251–84; Armin Lange, “The Book of Jeremiah in the Hebrew and Greek Texts of Ben Sira,” in Making the Biblical Text: Textual Studies in the Hebrew and the Greek Bible, ed. Innocent Himbaza, OBO 273 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 118–61; Armin

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/9789004373273_015 Texts of Jeremiah in the Qumran Library 281 will focus on this latter issue, noting the importance of these Jeremiah texts in the Qumran library for the textual criticism of Jeremiah.

1 The Hebrew and Greek Texts of Jeremiah in Light of the Qumran Library

Among the versions, two different text types of Jeremiah are preserved. The first one is attested by the Masoretic text of Jeremiah and its translations (Peshitta [pesh-Jer], Targum Jonathan [t-Jer], Vulgate [v-Jer], Theodotion [Th-Jer], Aquila [Aq-Jer], Symmachus [Sym-Jer], Hexapla [Hex-Jer], and Karaite and Rabbanite Arabic translations [Arab-Jer]). The second one survives in the Old Greek text of Jeremiah and its translations (Old Latin [vl-Jer], Coptic [Cop- Jer], Ethiopic [Eth-Jer], Syro-Hexapla [Syh-Jer], Armenian [Arm-Jer], Georgian [Georg-Jer], Old Church Slavonic [OCS-Jer], and Christian Arabic translations [Arab-Jer]). MT-Jer is the only surviving Hebrew text of Jeremiah that goes back to antiq- uity in its consonantal text. However, both proto-Masoretic and non-Masoretic fragmentary Jeremiah manuscripts survive among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some of these Jeremiah manuscripts were found in one of the Qumran caves (2QJer, 4QJera, 4QJerb, 4QJerc, 4QJerd, 4QJere) while others cannot be attributed to a specific archeological site around the Dead Sea anymore (DSS F.Jer 1, DSS F.Jer 2, and XJer?). Their classification into non-aligned, proto-, or semi-Masoretic manuscripts and texts attesting to the Hebrew Vorlage of lxx4 is facilitated somewhat in the case of the book of Jeremiah due to the characteristic long texts of MT-Jer. 4QJera can be classified as proto-Masoretic in its final form, while 2QJer and 4QJerc are semi-Masoretic in character. 4QJerb attests to the Hebrew Vorlage of lxx-Jer. 4QJerd was probably a non-aligned manuscript. 4QJere as well as manuscripts DSS F.Jer 1 and DSS F.Jer 2 cannot be classified texttypologically any more as only small fragments of them have been preserved. The latter two manuscripts attest to isolated readings with lxx-Jer

Lange, “7.2 Jeremiah: Ancient Hebrew-Aramaic Texts,” in Textual History of the Bible, Volume 1B: Pentateuch, Former and Latter Prophets, ed. Armin Lange and Emanuel Tov (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 514–42; Karin Finsterbusch and Armin Lange, “Zur Textgeschichte des Jeremiabuches in der Antike: Überblick und neue Einsichten,” TLZ 142 (2017): 1137–52. 4 Lange, Handschriften, 1–32, and Armin Lange, “1.2.2 Ancient Hebrew-Aramaic Texts: Ancient and Late Ancient Hebrew and Aramaic Jewish Texts,” in The Textual History of the Bible, Volume 1A: The Hebrew Bible: Overview Articles, ed. Armin Lange and Emanuel Tov (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 112–66 (123–27).