1 The Opisthograph: An Emic Category?
In the preceding sections I addressed the different ways in which the three compositions on this opisthograph have individually been read, interpreted, and classified. Each of these texts presents its own set of questions and problems. For instance, a liturgical setting for both Festival Prayers and Words of the Luminaries is generally accepted. Both texts present a collection of prayers with particular themes that seem intended for liturgy on set times. As we have seen above, our classifications of the Dead Sea Scrolls are often calibrated to sectarian texts. Within this model a text such as the War Scroll can be understood as the reflection of the worldview of a particular sectarian community settled at Qumran. Compositions of a different genre, especially prayer texts, can problematize such an approach. The question that remains open for both Festival Prayers and Words of the Luminaries is how these texts are understood in relation to the wider collection, especially concerning the corpus of sectarian literature. These are liturgical texts, but whose liturgy are we talking about? The War Scroll however is challenging in a different way. Ever since the discovery of 1QM in Cave 1, the composition is perceived to be one of the core texts of the sectarian community at Qumran, regardless of the way scholars choose to conceptualize this community. Scholarship is still contesting though how this text would have functioned. The War Scroll as a liturgical text, a position we have discussed with a bit more detail, is just one of the points of view in this debate, the others diverging from a rule text to a battle narrative.
The varying assessments of these texts illustrate how the literary heterogeneity on many different levels in the collection at times defies straightforward classification. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls we find such a range of different texts when it comes to terminology, structure, literary themes, religious ideas, and orthography that scholars have to prioritize based on the model of the community they envisage behind the texts. To make sense of this all, they will focus on a number of questions that serves their investigation. Daniel Falk for example is interested in the origins of synagogue liturgy and therefore adopts a diachronic approach, looking for similarities with later prayers in Jewish history.1 Once scholars move from the level of literary analysis into a social reality we get different results, here reflected in different views on the presumed sectarian provenance of Festival Prayers and Words of the Luminaries. In this way, the place of an individual composition within the reconstructed history of the collection is a matter of how literary heterogeneity is understood. Which ideas and perspectives reflected in the texts do scholars assess as important? Many of these methods aim to group and classify clusters of texts within the corpus at large by a priori establishing criteria. These approaches can be characterised as etic.
The conceptual pairing emic and etic has been coined by Kenneth Pike for the linguistic opposition between ‘phonemic’ and ‘phonetic,’ and further developed for cultural analysis by (among others) anthropologist Marvin Harris.2 Within the field of Early Judaism it has been applied by Steve Mason to think through the categories “Judaism” and “Jewishness,” by Popović to understand a group’s self-understanding as expressed in texts vis-à-vis the concept of a textual community, and by Jutta Jokiranta and Alison Schofield in the context of sociological models for the Qumran community.3 Here, I will follow George Brooke’s use of the terms emic for “insider” and “cultural specific,” and etic for “outsider” and “culturally neutral.”4 My interest is with ways in which to group together and categorize the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls that would follow under the emic category. But how do we come to such a perspective? The question is how to demonstrate that the same scribe engaged with two or more compositions. Is there a way to find out which texts were copied, studied, read, or performed together by the scribes behind the scrolls? The emic point of view is difficult to trace back without the kind of evidence that other fields have at their disposal, such as Sumerian and Akkadian literary catalogues, lists of books preserved on papyri, or descriptions of book collections in ancient literary sources, all of which would fall under the emic category. In the Dead Sea Scrolls we find no explicit reflection on the notion of collection or the practice of reading.
However, that does not mean that we are left empty-handed. Though lists of compositions are indeed absent, through our manuscript evidence we may be able to get a very basic idea of the texts that were grouped together. In this context we are looking for an emic understanding of the engagement with different texts collectively. How does this work? Do we have evidence under which circumstances and with which purpose texts were brought together? Indeed, we find examples of extracts, quotations, and note-taking in manuscripts such as 4Q175 (Testimonia), 4Q265 (Miscellaneous Rules), and 4Q174 (Eschatological Commentary A).5
It has been argued that these manuscripts shed light on the many dimensions of a scribal culture that was centred around reading, writing, and studying ancient texts. We will consider these three examples briefly, starting with 4Q175. This manuscript presents us with a compilation of four passages from Exodus, Deuteronomy, Numbers, and the Psalms of Joshua (4Q379) and as such provides us with evidence for textual practices of both quotation and collection.6 Among others Tigchelaar, Lutz Doering, Popović, and Molly Zahn have argued that different textual traditions are brought together on one manuscript.7 Tigchelaar has demonstrated that the scribe of 4Q175 copied his Vorlagen without standardizing the orthography, which led to a collection of different scriptural passages that are written in both QSP and non-QSP. This feature, together with the undisciplined script of 4Q175, has brought Tigchelaar to suggest that the manuscript “was written for private use.”8 4Q175 gives us an insight into the practice of collection and demonstrates that texts do not necessarily have to be brought together because of a shared setting or function, but also, as Popović has suggested, as a “result of a reading culture in which reading, writing, and memorizing were interlinked, and writing and memorizing were not mutually exclusive in terms of oral versus written culture.”9
Similar dynamics are visible in 4Q265 (Miscellaneous Rules), which also does not present us with a traditional narrative, but can rather be read as a collection of excerpts of different legal texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls.10 Also here the relationship between these excerpts is not directly clear, but it seems probable that they were brought together to be read and studied together.11 We can imagine that legal rules could be the subject of discussion and how a scribe could note down the collection of these excerpts for such a session.
In addition to 4Q175 and 4Q265, we could also consider 4Q174, which seems to be some form of a collection or anthology of several biblical passages. Scholars have been able to identify at least Deuteronomy 33, 2 Samuel 7, and several Psalms. Where 4Q174 differs from both 4Q175 and 4Q265 is that each text is complemented with an interpretation or midrash, which seems similar to the pesharim.12 However, where the pesharim develop a historical narrative on the basis of the scriptural interpretation of one biblical text (e.g. Habakkuk or Isaiah), 4Q174 presents us a number of passages from different biblical texts that are brought together because of their thematic association.13 Brooke has proposed the title Eschatological Commentary A for this manuscript, because through the act of extracting parts from different compositions, the author is both constructing textual relations with other texts and commentating on earlier traditions.14 If we accept Brooke’s proposition, which I am inclined to do, then we may conclude that 4Q174 gives us an interesting insight in one of the many interpretational activities that the people behind the scrolls undertook: bringing together passages from different sources and, through investigation and study (or drš), opening up interpretational relations between them.
In this way, 4Q174 shows us one potential purpose for the collection and extraction of passages from different sources, even if those isolated passages do not seem to form a coherent narrative when they were brought together. What does that tell us when we consider manuscripts such as 4Q175 and 4Q265? It remains speculation, but could it be that the scriptural quotations from 4Q175 were studied and investigated just like the passages from 4Q174, but that their interpretations, the results of this investigation, were simply not written down? In other words: would it be possible that the inclusion of the commentary in 4Q174 is the result of an interpretative step that was conducted within an oral or aural study context for 4Q175 and 4Q265, and perhaps other manuscripts? Regardless of the ways in which we look at the parallels between these three manuscripts, we can at least conclude that 4Q174 tells us that collection is not a passive act, but one outcome of an active engagement with texts. We will return to this issue of collection below.
Manuscripts such as 4Q175, 4Q265, and 4Q174 provide a glimpse into some of the dynamics of the scribal culture that the Dead Sea Scrolls are part of. They offer an emic perspective on the engagement with texts, and allow us to recognize that among the people behind the scrolls we might not only find copyists, but also readers, students, and commentators. I would maintain that the corpus of opisthographic manuscripts from Qumran presents us with a similar opportunity. The manuscript 4Q509/4Q496/4Q506 can function as a case in point. It is not a scholarly construct or particular literary framework that results in scholars grouping these different texts together, but rather the tangible manuscript evidence. The emic perspective that this manuscript offers may seem quite obvious, but opens up a range of research questions that will be addressed in the next paragraphs: 4Q509, 4Q496, and 4Q506 were written down together on the same manuscript by ancient scribes. What can we infer from that tangible evidence for these texts being grouped together in antiquity? What kind of grouping or collection can we imagine this to be? Can we hypothesize about a particular setting or purpose that brought these texts together? What consequence could this have for how we conceive of ancient text collecting practices?
2 A Codicological Analysis of 4Q509/4Q496/4Q506
The main point I wish to emphasise is that the three compositions on this opisthograph were grouped together by the scribes behind the scrolls in antiquity, not by modern scholars. This is a material certainty: they are collected on the same manuscript. The first thing we may infer from the fact that multiple texts occur on the same scroll is that at least the scribe that wrote the texts on the verso was aware of the other texts on this scroll. However, that does not tell us much about how to perceive the relation between these three compositions. For what purpose were these texts grouped together? Apart from their material proximity on the same manuscript, are there features that connect these texts to each other? In order to answer these questions we have to re-examine the nature of the opisthograpic practice in the scribal culture of the ancient Mediterranean, because these issues are related to the conditions under which the manuscript was ‘reused’ after the text on the recto was written.
Daniel Falk has succinctly addressed the question of the nature of material reuse. He distinguishes two main forms: (1) “Instances where the reuse signifies that the original text is defunct” and (2) “where it is a case of creating a collection of valued works.”15 The distinction between these two forms of reuse is to a certain degree artificial. After all, we can imagine both forms occurring at the same time. The original function of the first text on the recto of an opisthograph, as far as we are allowed to speak of a single function of a text of course, may have become obsolete. That does not mean however that the text cannot serve a different purpose in a different context. Meanings can change and the proximity of one text to another text can open up different interpretational relations that were not anticipated by the first author. It is certainly possible that the text that was written first on a manuscript continued to be of value, even though it was read differently and for example performed in a different context.
Nevertheless, Falk’s distinction can be helpful as a starting point and raises the question which of the two forms of reuse would apply to our opisthograph: do we have evidence for reuse where the original is defunct or for the creation of a collection? We can approach this question both from a material and from a textual perspective. In this section we will start with the first.
The material analysis of manuscripts can be distinguished between palaeography and codicology, though the two fields of research are very much related.16 In order to assess the nature of the reuse of this manuscript we have to compare the scribal practices on both the recto and the verso. Apart from their palaeography we should inquire after aspects such as layout, stichometry, and the presence of scribal markings and corrections. An important question is the consistency of the scribal practices on both recto and verso. How do they compare? Do we encounter similarities or differences between material features of both sides on an opisthograph? In the case of our manuscript: do we see a consistent use of scribal practices across 4Q509, 4Q496, and 4Q506? The underlying hypothesis here is that discrepancies between the material features of these three texts could be indicative of a changed or changing setting of the manuscript. To provide an example, we can imagine how the presence of an inconsistently written cursive text on the verso of a scroll with a text penned in a calligraphic book hand on the recto might be an indication that the manuscript was used in a different context, and perhaps served a different purpose.17 However, if we follow this line of reasoning, we should also be open to considering the opposite scenario. Could the continuation of the material features of the recto of an opisthograph onto its verso not be an indication for a similar scribal setting for both texts, and perhaps for a similar purpose for the manuscript? A similar lay-out and writing style was probably intentional: it would make it easier to handle the scroll and to navigate between the different texts on both sides. In our analysis of the different texts on an opisthograph we should inquire after these consistencies and discrepancies between the scribal practices on both sides, in order to understand under which circumstances a given manuscript was used and reused.
As we have seen in chapter one, from the perspective of palaeography there is some ground to group these texts together. 4Q509, 4Q496, and 4Q506 are written in the same subcategory of script: the semi-formal character. We should not overstate the importance of this. Whether the semi-formal script existed apart from the formal hand as a fully independent tradition is contested. Furthermore, we have no reason to assume that the semi-formal was used for a particular type of texts: among the manuscripts that are classified as being written in a semi-formal hand we find books from the Hebrew Bible, so-called sectarian works, and other types of compositions. There does not seem to be a correlation between the semi-formal and any of our literary classifications of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In other words, the fact that different scrolls bear texts that are written in the same script type would normally not be convincing evidence that these manuscripts were part of a class or cluster of similar texts. However, in the case of our opisthograph we encounter the presence of texts written in a similar writing style on the same manuscript, which I consider to be meaningful, because it demonstrates some form of consistency in the scribal practices across 4Q509, 4Q496, and 4Q506. Equally important is the aspect of chronology: on the basis of palaeography we would date both 4Q509 and 4Q496 to the first half of the first century BCE. Both scribal hands seem contemporary. 4Q506 preserves letter forms in a different style.18 This text was probably added by a different scribe some time after the other two texts on this manuscript.
Turning to the codicological features of the opisthograph, we observe firstly that the manuscript is too fragmentary to determine size, lay-out, or stichometry precisely. 4Q509 col. III survived in 6 fragments (8–13) that have been preserved well enough to allow some form of a reconstruction: Baillet counts approximately 36 to 41 lines here and places frag. 13 at the lower end of the manuscript, which is confirmed by the presence of a margin of about 2.1 cm.19 However, this number of lines remains very tentative: only of about 22 lines is some writing legible, often little more than a single letter. This part of the composition is not preserved on any of the other copies of Festival Prayers, so we do not know the length of the text. Falk disagrees with Baillet and argues for at most 30 lines per column for 4Q509.20 He does so on the basis of the text of 4Q496 on the verso of this column, which can be compared to 1QM II, 13–III, 2. Because the text of the first four columns of 4Q496 and the text of three columns of 1QM correspond and 1QM has 20 lines per column, Falk deduces that 4Q496 also must have had about 20 lines. The fact that 4Q496 needs an extra column to cover roughly the same amount of text can be explained through its larger letter size and interlinear margins. I agree with Falk that if 4Q496 had closer to 40 lines per column, we would expect it to cover significantly more text per column than 1QM. However, there is no reason why the columns on both the recto and verso should have the exact same number of lines. Some variation in this aspect might be possible, especially when we consider other aspects of the column formation of this manuscript. There are no guiding lines to direct the writing on either side of the manuscript.21 The width of the intercolumnar margins is inconsistent. Frags. 10, 12, 23, 49, 97–99, 131, 184, and 277 all contain the margin in between two columns, which allows us to compare how the text on both sides is aligned. Since 4Q509 frag. 184 is rather elongated, it allows us to get an idea how accurately the letters at the start of a column are placed under each other. This appears to be done quite neatly, although this cannot be said of the right part of the margin that preserves the end of the column. The scribe clearly did not trouble himself with ending his lines at the same point. The absence of consistent line spacing is also apparent on frag. 184: the space between lines 3–4 for example is about a millimetre bigger than between lines 4–5. This lack of alignment and inconsistent line spacing makes a disorderly impression.22
For our research questions it is relevant to note that the inconsistent column arrangement continues throughout the different texts on the manuscript, though this is difficult to assert for 4Q506 due to its fragmentary nature. It does not look as if more attention was put into the lay-out of 4Q509 on the recto of the manuscript than into the other two texts. If we step away from Qumran and return to the issue of the opisthograph practice from a cross-cultural perspective, as addressed in the first chapter, we may note that this was unconventional. Many opisthographs from Graeco-Roman collections carried a combination of a literary text and a documentary text that are produced with different degrees of attention to lay-out and handwriting.23 Particularly frequent are examples of an official document that was apparently not of interest anymore, after which a literary text was written on its verso.24 It does on occasion happen that both sides contain relatively nicely written texts, but in many cases we find student exercises or the notes and personal copies of a scribe on the back that are written in a much less elegant hand than the text on the recto.25 After all, because the recto ceased to be of significance, the scribe did not have to make the effort of trying to preserve the same degree of elegance in his writing. In these examples a discontinuity of the quality of the scribal hands on both sides is an indication of the first of the two forms of material reuse distinguished by Falk: reuse that signifies that the original text is defunct. It is clear that such an interruption in the quality of lay-out of both sides is not present on our Qumran opisthograph: 4Q509 on the recto makes an equally disorganized impression as the texts on the verso.
Next to issues related to the format of the manuscript we should consider the presence of scribal markings and corrections. Both Baillet and Falk observe in total five examples of the fish hook paragraphus sign: four are preserved on 4Q509 on the recto and one on 4Q496 on the verso. Of special significance is the fish hook sign in the right margin of 4Q496 frag. 10 2, because the same text is preserved in 1QM col. III:
At the start of this section, we returned to Falk’s distinction between two forms of material reuse. Subsequently, we observed that an analysis of the consistencies and discrepancies between the material features on both sides of the manuscript can help us determine with which of the two forms of reuse we could be dealing with. On the basis of a range of these features such as palaeography, column arrangement, and scribal markings and corrections, we can indeed conclude that the different texts across this scroll share the same scribal practices. 4Q506 might to a certain degree be an outsider, but that could be caused by its poor preservation. Overall, the continuity of scribal practices on both recto and verso seems to be intentional. Interlinear corrections and scribal markings do not contribute to the aesthetic quality of a manuscript, but they can be useful. For example, the consistent use of a paragraphus sign as a section division on both sides would make it convenient for the person using this scroll to navigate between different parts of the text and to find the right passage. It is the homogenous presence of such scribal characteristics that opens up the possibility that the three compositions on this opisthograph are part of a collection. This becomes particularly apparent when we compare 4Q509/4Q496/4Q506 to the other opisthographs from Qumran.31
Another indication for this is the fact that this opisthograph does not seem to preserve the full texts of each of the compositions, but rather extracts.32 We can tell so primarily by considering the verso of 4Q509. Though 4Q509 survived on around 310 fragments, the reverse side of the last 130 fragments are left blank. This tells us that the top part of the manuscript’s verso was inscribed, but that the bottom part was not used. 4Q496 on the verso survived on about 115 fragments, but many of these contain no more than a few letters.33 Because this concerns a manuscript belonging to the tradition of War Scroll literature, we can compare it to 1QM and notice that the text preserved in 4Q496 corresponds to only the opening columns of 1QM. This begs the question: how does the shorter text of 4Q496 relate to the larger composition as preserved in 1QM? Palaeographic dating places 4Q496 before the manuscript of 1QM. On the other hand, the date of composition of the War Scroll is usually placed somewhere in the second century BCE: before the production of 4Q496.34 However, we may question how secure this dating exactly is. Realistically we are not able identify the exact phase of composition of the War Scroll at the time when 4Q496 was written. The materiality of 4Q496 does indicate that it probably does not contain a full composition, but rather an extract or excerpt. The question then becomes: an extract of what exactly? This does not necessarily have to be the full composition as preserved in 1QM. It is also possible that 4Q496 represents some kind of a draft or a model for the War Scroll.
Scholarship on the compositional history of the War Scroll leaves this possibility open; we have seen in section 5.5 that Davies and Vanonen argue that the introductory first column of 1QM (which we find in 4Q496) was possibly a later addition to the composition.
4Q506 seems to present a similar case: it survived next to 4Q496 on the verso on 62 mostly miniscule fragments. We can compare 4Q506 to the other witness of Words of the Luminaries, 4Q504, and assert that it most probably did not contain the full composition.35 We have no evidence that this opisthograph was anywhere near the roughly 4.5–5 meter that would have been required to fully write down the War Scroll and Words of the Luminaries.36 4Q509 provides a slightly more complicated picture, because we do not have a witness of Festival Prayers that is as well preserved as 1QM or 4Q504. We therefore do not know how long the composition would have been and if it would have fitted on the recto of our opisthograph in its entirety. However, my proposition would be to take as point of departure the fragments that did survive, many of which do not overlap with any of the other witnesses of Festival Prayers.37 Therefore, based on our extant evidence, we conclude that also 4Q509 only contained parts of Festival Prayers.
The presence of extracts of different texts on one scroll points towards a particular form of manuscript use. Scribal activity in the ancient world is often conceptualized as that of a copyist who tried to preserve the text of his Vorlage by transmitting it to a new manuscript. Opisthographs such as 4Q509/4Q496/4Q506 allow us to contemplate different forms of scribal activity: we can think about the scribe as a collectionneur who purposely selected passages from different texts that were for some reason relevant. This dynamic engagement with texts is reflected in the many scribal markings in the margins and scribal corrections we encounter on this manuscript.
However, before we can assess the nature of this collection of selected passages and before we can think through how this manuscript can contribute to our conception of ancient text collecting practices, we first have to approach the texts on this manuscript as literary compositions. This will be the topic of the next sections of this chapter.
3 Extracts and Excerpts
Before moving on to 4Q509/4Q496/4Q506 and the question of collection, we should briefly reflect on the concept of an ‘extract’ or ‘excerpt’—as these terms are pertinent to the present discussion on this manuscript. What do we exactly mean when we write about an ‘extract,’ and which potential scenarios should we keep in mind in this context? An extract refers to a passage, section, or, in its broadest sense, any textual unit that is taken from a larger composition. As such, it is used here synonymously with excerpt. Broadly similar definitions have been employed by Hartmut Stegemann, Lutz Doering, Emanuel Tov, Sidnie White Crawford, and Hila Dayfani.38 Crawford observes that the “underlying assumption of this definition is that there existed an earlier “complete” text of the book in question, from which the scribe chose the passages to excerpt.”39 Though it is doubtful whether we can always speak of such a fully ‘complete’ text, a central characteristic of excerpts and extracts is that they correspond to parts of a larger composition that exists in a different setting. These extracts can serve a variety of functions. Julie Duncan, Doering, Crawford, and Dayfani have each pointed to the uses of extracted passages in the context of study purposes, liturgy, or private reading because it is easier to navigate between different textual units on a smaller manuscript.40
Examples can be found in manuscripts such as 4Q175 (Testimonia), 4Q265 (Miscellaneous Rules), and 4Q174 (Eschatological Commentary A), which we have considered above. However, among others Tov has noted that many of the excerpted texts preserved on Greek manuscripts appear to have been made for educational purposes.41 A parallel in this regard can be found in Sumerian and Babylonian manuscript traditions, where large bodies of cuneiform tablets containing extracts were found that were produced as part of a basic scribal education.42 Next to that, we know that Babylonian scribes reedited larger, authoritative works into smaller collections of extracted texts in order to be used as an ‘abridged edition’ for quick reference.43 A key issue for our understanding of these extract texts is how the extract or excerpt in question relates to the larger text, and to which degree the original composition is evoked in a new context. Of course: the Babylonian tablets are the product of a scribal culture that is different from the Dead Sea Scrolls, but these comparative materials can increase our attentiveness for different scenarios and contexts of use.
4 4Q509/4Q496/4Q506 and Literary Diversity
On the basis of the material analysis of this manuscript we have come to two observations. First, we observed that this opisthograph preserves selected passages from three compositions that survived in other copies as well and, second, we noticed that the manuscript shares similar scribal features on both its recto and verso. These material considerations have led us to hypothesize that this manuscript constituted a collection of valued works. The question is how the manuscript being a collection of valued works contributes to our understanding of the literary compositions that we find on this opisthograph. If we consider the types of compositions that we find on 4Q509/4Q496/4Q506, what then could we infer from this opisthograph about the practice of collection in antiquity?
Until so far the notion of the creation of a collection on a single manuscript remained a rather abstract concept. It would be fruitful to briefly reflect on a few comparative cases that can help illustrate how such a collection could have looked like and which types of texts were likely to be brought together.
We first turn our attention to the Oxyrhynchus papyri from ancient Egypt, a corpus of roughly half a million fragmentary manuscripts that can be dated between about 300 BCE and 700 CE. There are multiple papyri from Oxyrhynchus that carry more than one composition and that seem to intend to bring related texts together.44 One opisthograph preserves P.Oxy. 1075 on its recto, which consists of the final 7 verses of Exodus, and P.Oxy. 1079 on its verso, consisting of the first 7 verses of Revelation.45 It is clear that this manuscript aims to bring parts of different scriptural works together. The intertextual relations between the two texts are not immediately clear, but Eldon Jay Epp has pointed to a number of parallels between Exodus 39–40, and Revelation 1.46 Exodus for example narrates about the consecration of the tabernacle and the installation of Aaron and his sons as priests. Revelation 1:6, which is preserved on this manuscript, refers to Jesus and “priests serving his God and Father.” Epp furthermore observes that both passages describe the presence of God within a cloud. It seems that this opisthograph was intended to bring thematically related passages from different authoritative texts together. It remains speculation, but we should not exclude the possibility that these compositions were collected on one manuscript for both reading and studying purposes, and perhaps to come to a shared interpretation for the two texts.
Our next example unfortunately did not survive as an extant manuscript, but is mentioned in a book list preserved on a papyrus. In the next chapter we will interact more closely with these book lists on papyri, but as it is related to our discussion here, it is fruitful to consider one example. Rosa Otranto has collected 19 such lists and on one of them, list 16, we find the mentioning of one manuscript that would have contained two dialogues by Plato (Hippias Major and Hippias Minor), and by Aristotle (Eudemus). Where P.Oxy. 1075/1079 tried to bring parts of different biblical books together, in this list it is philosophical texts that are being compiled. The scribe of this manuscript wanted to bring these different works together on one scroll and perhaps to create some form of a collection of authoritative dialogues.
Returning to the Dead Sea Scrolls, we could consider the leather scroll of 1QS (Community Rule), 1QSa (Rule of the Congregation), and 1QSb (Rule of Blessings) as an example of collecting related compositions.47 1QS can, somewhat impressionistically, considered to be a collection on its own: the composite nature of the composition reflected in this manuscript is widely acknowledged. At present, most scholars see 1QS as the product of a long and pluriform history of textual development.48 1QSa (‘The Rule of the Congregation’) and 1QSb (‘The Rule of Blessings’) are often referred to as ‘annexes’ to 1QS.49 On the surface, 1QSb appears to be a text of a different character from 1QS and 1QSa. Contrary to the other two compositions on this manuscript, 1QSb is not a rule text but presents four blessings that follow a similar structure.50 However, the close relationship between 1QS, 1QSa, and 1QSb was already proposed by Alexander and Vermes, and further expanded by scholars such as Hempel, Newman, and Michael Johnson among others based on vocabulary, and thematic and structural categories.51 The materials brought together in the composite document of 1QS-1QSa-1QSb unite a variety of themes and genres such as organizational instructions, rules, cosmic contemplations, and liturgy. What they do share is that they offer different reflections on an imagined future, eschatological community. The contribution of 1QSb is intriguing: the blessings it presents seem to envisage an eschatological time after the community described in 1QS has been realized.
Hartmut Stegemann understood the manuscript to be a Schriftensammlung.52 Because these three texts were written on the same side of the scroll, this manuscript reminds us that the practice of collection building is not limited to opisthographs. Interestingly, in the case of this scroll it seems that it was the same scribe that intended to bring these related texts together on a single scroll.53 1QS, 1QSa and 1QSb touches on the problem whether the presence of multiple compositions on one manuscript would allow the possibility of the creation of a new work.54 This issue will be subject to further reflection in Part 3.
The three examples presented here illustrate that several ancient contexts offer precedents for the collection of different texts on one manuscript. It seems fruitful to consider the opisthograph 4Q509/4Q496/4Q506 from a similar perspective. The proposition to consider this manuscript as a collection has already been put forward by Falk, as he argued:
What is especially intriguing about this scroll is that the prayers on both sides are form-critically of the same type, with a statement of occasion (“Prayer for the festival of n.”; “Prayer for the n day”), opening with the prayer formula “Remember, O Lord …,” and concluding with the benediction form “Blessed be the Lord who …” It is by no means accidental that these two collections of prayers with the same form for different occasions end up on front and back of the same scroll: they constitute an intentional collection in a personal scroll.55
For Falk, the foremost argument in favour of the understanding of this opisthograph as an intentional collection concerns the form-critical similarities between 4Q509 and 4Q506.
This observation ties in with our discussion of the genre of 4Q509 and 4Q506 and their relation to the wider collection at the start of this chapter. We have characterized both texts as prayer cycles that are dedicated to fixed moments in time: Festival Prayers to festivals throughout the Jewish liturgical year and Words of the Luminaries to different days of the week. We reflected on the different ways both compositions have been classified in scholarship. Scholars working on prayer texts such as Chazon and Falk have stressed the interpretational relations between the two texts and have generally grouped these texts together.56 As we have seen, there is good reason for this. Both compositions display a similar arrangement of prayers, and share a number of underlying themes. Also when it comes to terminology do we observe striking similarities; Falk rightly pointed to the repetitive occurrence of identical blessing formulae.
4Q509 is found on the recto of this manuscript, 4Q506 at the lower end on its verso. On the basis of these literary similarities, we can imagine how these two texts would be part of a collection of related works: it remains speculation, but I consider it probable that both Festival Prayers and Words of the Luminaries were read and studied in a similar setting. As Falk has noted (“the same form for different occasions”), the two texts are to a certain degree complimentary to each other: Words of the Luminaries is dedicated to the different days of the week, while the prayers of Festival Prayers are reserved for the special occasions of religious festivals. It seems to make good sense to keep such prayer cycles together.
From this perspective, we can image how someone with an interest in prayers dedicated to fixed times would bring these two compositions together. However, on this opisthograph we find a third text as well: 4Q496, a copy of the War Scroll, which has been written down on the upper part of the verso, after turning the manuscript upside down. This text is therefore ‘sandwiched’ between 4Q509 on the recto, and 4Q506 on the lower part of the verso.57 Because of its position on the manuscript, we can safely assume that it was intentionally placed as part of this collection. It shares a range of scribal practices with especially 4Q509, and the scribe of 4Q506 could not have written his text down without being aware of the presence of 4Q496.
In our discussion in the first part of this chapter we have seen how scholars have developed different opinions with regard to the character of the War Scroll. It seems scholars broadly hold different positions on the overall characterisation of the text: should the War Scroll primarily be seen as an apocalyptic rule text, or rather as a liturgical document? The proposition to read the War Scroll as a liturgical text is primarily based on the presence of a prayer cycle in the columns X–XIV. The issue how this prayer cycle both relates to and is distinct from the prayers in Festival Prayers and Words of the Luminaries, will be addressed below.
One question that remains is how the three compositions on this manuscript are understood in relation to the wider collection. We have observed above that the War Scroll is generally read as one of the core texts of the presumed sectarian cluster of texts. How Festival Prayers and Words of the Luminaries are understood in relation to the wider collection is much less straightforward: we have seen above how many scholars prefer a pre-sectarian or non-sectarian classification for these texts.
Notions such as sectarian and non-sectarian are based on the use of a distinct vocabulary and a set of socio-religious concepts that convey a particular worldview. Especially within the work of Dimant, the notion of sectarian gives expression to a particular conceptualisation of a community with a shared ideology regarding issues as dualism, predestination, and a range of religious obligations.58 In this way the concept of sectarian functions as a scholarly model of the presumed community behind the Dead Sea Scrolls. Dimant argues for example that the idea of
The questions that this line of thinking leads to are both fundamentally historical and methodological, because they are related to the broader issue of how scholarly conceptualizations on macro- or meso-level (for example regarding the outlook or worldview of a particular society or community) influence the different questions we ask on micro-level (for example concerning the particular setting of one manuscript or reading event). What are the implications of these characterisations when we move between different levels of analysis? More specifically, and returning to the discussion of this opisthograph, I would ask if categories such as sectarian, non-sectarian, and pre-sectarian are meaningful for our understanding of the ways ancient scribes engaged with their manuscripts. To what degree were the reading practices of the people behind the scrolls influenced or dictated through these notions? Does the concept of a collection of sectarian texts affect the ways in which we imagine the reading events around these texts to have taken place? And should we then assume that the people behind these scrolls primarily or exclusively organized these reading events around the sectarian texts?
It is through the analysis of manuscripts such as this opisthograph that these questions can be raised. This manuscript demonstrates in a tangible way that compositions that are classified from a modern perspective as sectarian and non-sectarian circulated together and could be put into operation within a similar setting. This raises the question how meaningful our understanding of a community as sectarian is when we know that compositions with both sectarian and non-sectarian terminology and socio-religious ideas did not only exist together, but were read and studied next to each other.
Furthermore, the study of opisthographic practices informs us about ancient collecting practices. Manuscripts that contain multiple compositions provide modern scholars the opportunity to study an emic grouping of texts: texts that are not clustered because of the use of terms or concepts that modern scholars attach importance to, but that are clustered as a result of the collecting practices of ancient scribes. Prioritizing the manuscript evidence over preconceived classifications challenges us to rethink the setting in which these texts could have been read together. In order to do so we will first return to two aspects of this opistograph here in the broader context of the Qumran collection.
First of all, the presence of what is perceived in scholarship as non-sectarian works among the Qumran collection can always be explained by arguing that this concerns literature that the people behind the scrolls had simply inherited.61 However, the fact that the three texts are together on this scroll, although they have also been preserved in other manuscripts as well, precludes an explanation for their presence arguing that these texts were simply inherited. The presence of these texts together tells us something about the collecting practices that underlie the manuscript corpus.
In this regard, the fact that we encounter texts on this opisthograph that we know from other manuscripts from Qumran is striking. Texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls that existed in multiple copies have been regarded by scholars with special interest, as it is often argued that those texts must have been considered to be of special importance to the people behind the scrolls.62 I would argue that this argument is especially valid for extracted texts. Following Johnson and David Konstan, Popović has argued how collecting selected passages is an indication that these texts were actively read and studied, perhaps in a communal context. Excerpting texts, he maintains, was “the normal mode of reading through a scroll. What people did when they read was to note down and to make extracts of passages that interested them.”63 Selecting passages from compositions that we have in multiple copies is evidence that these texts were considered to be meaningful. 4Q506, which preserves part of Words of the Luminaries, can be dated to the first century CE, which is at least two centuries younger than 4Q504, our other copy of the same composition. This implies that the people behind the scrolls continued to organize their reading events around certain texts for a significant period of time.
Second, though the identification of 4Q496 with the War Scroll is undisputed, Brian Schultz has pointed towards the many differences with the text that passed down to us in 1QM.64 We are not only dealing with extracts, but also with different redactions. In this way the manuscript evidence demonstrates a continuous active engagement with different versions of compositions. This situation is analogue to how Charlotte Hempel has characterized the dynamic and living traditions of the Community Rule. In her view, the “textually pluralistic picture attested for the Rule texts is part and parcel of the mind-set that gave us a pluriform picture of other Second Temple literature.”65 All of these different practices that we pointed at above (note-taking, correcting, textual variety, the collecting of extracts) would contribute to this textually pluralistic picture and are evidence for textual engagement on a high-level.66
4Q509/4Q496/4Q506 can therefore be characterized as the product of a ‘living’ interaction with ‘living’ texts. The notion of ‘living,’ first of all, refers to the observable forms of everyday engagement with texts that is practiced and experienced by scribes, readers, and other ‘consumers’ within a socio-religious context. In this context it is furthermore connected with how texts are perceived in scholarship from two different perspectives. The first one has to do with the perception of authorship. Though the search for the Urtext has largely been abandoned, there is still a tendency to scrutinize different manuscripts diachronically in order to arrive at a more original version of a text. Fragmentary or more coarsely produced exemplars are often used by scholarship to reconstruct better preserved manuscripts in order to get to an original version of a given text, but much less often are they seen as autonomous representatives of a living tradition in their own right. To provide just one example: the War Scroll manuscripts from Cave 4 have regularly been inspected primarily to facilitate the reading of 1QM, while paying less attention to questions pertaining to their particular function and to the reading events organized around these manuscripts. In the past decades however, scholars have increasingly focused on textual pluriformity instead of stability.67 Hempel for example has argued that texts such as the Community Rule “were not authored from beginning to end by the charismatic Teacher of Righteousness—as once suggested by some—but rather reflect complex literary developments of the kind frequently proposed with reference to biblical texts.”68
The second perspective is somewhat related. The underlying assumption of the notion of a fixed and stable text is that the reading practices related to the text, and therefore also the way in which ancient scribes engaged with their manuscripts, were also fixed and stable. The heterogeneity that is embedded in ancient reading culture is in this way neglected. Historically, scholarly investigation has often been concentrated on compositions rather than manuscripts. Scholarship on this opisthograph as well has often been directed at illuminating the composition of a better-preserved manuscript.69 However, the perception of a text can change over generations, and so do the different reading events that are concentrated around that text. While one particular manuscript of a composition might have been produced for public display or communal reading, another exemplar of the same text might be copied in order to be privately studied or to be collected together with other texts. The close-reading of manuscripts such as this opisthograph can shed light on some of these dynamics. Comparative evidence from the broader Graeco-Roman world can help us to further rethink the diversity of reading practices in the ancient Mediterranean world.
5 Graeco-Roman Reading Culture: Texts and Events
In recent years more attention has been paid to the social reality of reading practices and events centred around manuscripts in antiquity. Comparative evidence from the Graeco-Roman world can help shed light on different aspects of scribal engagement with texts in both the Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient collections. Such an investigation can be instructive on different levels. In the next chapters, I will consider the collection of the Villa of the Papyri from Herculaneum and focus on how a comparison of opisthographic practices in both Qumran and Herculaneum can be mutually illuminating. Here, I will take a broader approach and think through how events related to the reading of texts are deeply social events.
Scholars such as Raymond Starr and Johnson have demonstrated how different reading practices were deeply influenced by the sociocultural dynamics of ancient reading culture.70 Johnson has argued how both (1) the reading of different types of texts and (2) the reading of a given text in different contexts can lead to different reading events.71 This concurs with many of our own reading practices today. Reading scripture alone leads to a vastly different experience from for example the liturgical context of a service in a synagogue, church, or mosque. In an academic context we might appreciate the same text in even another way and, for example, ask specific questions about its structure or textual development. What Johnson has observed is that “reading is not simply the cognitive processing by the individual of the technology of writing, but rather the negotiated construction of meaning within a particular sociocultural context.”72 Despite the contextual differences within which different manuscripts could have been read, studied, and performed, scholarship often groups the different redactions of the War Scroll together as one text within a corpus of sectarian literature, neglecting the possibility that there could be different reading practices connected to each of these manuscripts. A scroll such as 1QM might invite a different type of scribal engagement than a version on an opisthograph. Popović, building on Johnson, has shown how also within the domain of Early Jewish texts there is evidence for recitation and group reading as communal activities.73 Popović applies the concept of a textual community, developed by medievalist Brian Stock to describe “groups of people whose social activities are centred around texts, or more precisely, around a literate interpreter of them.”74 Popović uses this concept for two reasons.75 First, he wants to remind us that the scrolls that are the object of our study are material artefacts. It is around these actual manuscripts that social activities in the form of reading events were centred. Popović envisions a
… lived, sociocultural context in which the presence of a substantial number of literary texts at a certain place, be that the settlement of Qumran or elsewhere, drew in people who through common study and common life formed a shared frame of reference. Reading and studying texts together would then have contributed to a continuous formation and discipline of identity and community.76
Second, he argues that “the continuous study of texts is presented as a constituent element of the community’s collective life.”77 This is implied in for example 1QS col. VI, 7, but also reflected in the practice of excerpting texts or marking passages that are of particular interest. Evidence from the Roman world may again provide an idea of how these reading events could have taken place. We know that it was a common practice among circles of elite Roman intellectuals to send copies of newly written works to friends to comment on.78 One would usually first send a draft to a close friend and if the criticism received was indeed favourable, more drafts would be spread among a larger circle of friends or one would invite a small group at home to recite the work together and comment on it. Pliny the Younger for example describes how consul and poet Silius Italicus would recite his work before his circle of friends:
and so passed his days in cultured conversation whenever he could spare time from his writing. He took great pains over his verses, though they cannot be called inspired, and frequently submitted them to public criticism by the readings he gave.79
Public recitations are also mentioned by Horace and attributed to Virgil by Aelius Donatus.80 The scholarly community of Cicero is in particular well-documented, especially in his letters to his friend Atticus. It seems that these gatherings were meant to read and recite finished works together, but also to collectively revise texts.81 These reading sessions in which works were discussed together were not institutionalized, but rather organized informally along networks of friends. Above all it were texts that brought different people together in antiquity. The production and dissemination of texts was generally not a commercial enterprise, but a social activity.82 Texts were spread among friends and private channels. Often Roman books were disseminated as a gift and in the process strengthened relationships between individuals, together with the other dynamics of gift-exchange.83 As Steve Mason has summarized: “making books public in the Roman world was a matter of disseminating the work orally and in draft copies through ever widening circles of friends and associates: it was local and social.”84 It is all these practices around which textual communities were shaped, also in Roman Judaea. When conceptualizing these activities, we may think of Brooke’s argument that reading (out), investigating, and blessing were interpretational activities organized around texts that were fully intertwined for the people behind the scrolls.85 These can all be considered reading events that were central to their textual community. Popović observed in this context how “people may gather texts for a variety of reasons, but texts also have the ability to attract or gather people around them. Thus, a collection of texts can create an intellectual community, whether real or one that only exists in the imagination.”86
Reading events were socially dynamic activities in antiquity. We can observe this in real life through a range of material features, such as the involvement of multiple scribal hands on one manuscript, scribal markings and corrections, or the noting down of extracts of relevant passages. It is through these little clues that we get a peek into the lived context of a manuscript. When considering the materiality of 4Q509/4Q496/4Q506, it seems that there is evidence for a likewise engagement of this opisthograph in a communal setting. It is around manuscripts such as these that particular reading events would have been centred. The intention was not only to store or to preserve different texts together, but also to actively read and study them. However, the three different texts of this manuscript might also reveal another dynamic. People gather texts and vice versa. But is it also possible that texts also gather other texts around them?
6 4Q509/4Q496/4Q506 as a Prayer Collection and Historical Reflection
In the preceding sections of this chapter, I have argued that this opisthograph should be considered as a collection of valued works. The scribal characteristics of the manuscript together with the shared literary affinities of the different compositions demonstrate that these texts were intentionally brought together. Furthermore, from a comparative perspective I examined a number of manuscripts that present such intentional collections elsewhere in the ancient Mediterranean world and, subsequently, briefly considered Graeco-Roman reading events to argue that this opisthograph might have been read and studied in a communal setting.
In this section we return to the opisthograph 4Q509/4Q496/4Q506 as a scribal artefact. The central question is how we can move from the analyses of individual compositions to the social reality in which this manuscript would have functioned. My proposition would be to think about this opisthograph as a prayer collection.
What exactly constitutes a collection? This question has been raised by Hindy Najman and Tigchelaar when they explore the concept and try to understand how the process of collecting can be recognized in the extant artefacts of ancient scribes.87 They provide a working definition of the concept of collection for “artefacts or for texts that contain at least two different textual or literary units or objects which originally existed separately from one another.”88
A collection could possibly also exist of parts of textual or literary units, which is suggested by Tigchelaar and Najman in their discussion of 4Q175 (Testimonia) and the War Scroll-manuscript 4Q491. 4Q175, which consists of excerpts of other works, and 4Q491, in which the Self-Glorification Hymn from the Hodayot is included, can both be recognized as a collection. Whether these existed as individual textual units—as separate literary entities—is unclear, but it does seem that they ended up as part of an intentional collection nevertheless. Hodayot can in its own right also be considered a collection of about 30 liturgical compositions that would have been brought together by one or more editors.89
A similar characterization is plausible for our opisthograph as well. The extracts circulated as parts of different literary units (compositions we now know as Festival Prayers, the War Scroll, and Words of the Luminaries) and are here deliberately brought together on one manuscript. We can argue so based on both the material characteristics of this manuscript, and by pointing at the content of the compositions. From a material perspective they form a clear unity: above we considered features such as the presence of the fish-hook sign in both 4Q509 and 4Q496, and the similar methods of scribal corrections as evidence of their affiliation. As we have seen in chapter one, the three texts are all written in a semi-formal style and display full orthography.90 Above we have viewed the compositions from a socio-religious perspective and observed how both Festival Prayers and Words of the Luminaries present similar collections of communal prayers. The different literary units that we can distinguish, the extracts of 4Q509, 4Q496, and 4Q506, existed already in different manuscripts. We may, therefore, assume that the full compositions (Festival Prayers, War Scroll, and Words of the Luminaries) were known by the people behind this manuscript. This is an important methodological consideration: the different literary units that we can distinguish within a collection already existed in a separate context, for example in a different manuscript. We can think about the relations between 4Q509, 4Q496, and 4Q506 not only as far as this opisthograph in particular is concerned, but also where it concerns the other extant exemplars of the three compositions in the opisthograph. It is on the basis of these considerations, which pertain to both the materiality of the manuscript and the character of the texts that are preserved, that we can start thinking about this opisthograph as a liturgical collection. The next step here would be to further reflect on the interpretative connections between these texts. Is it possible that the reading of one text on an opisthograph is shaped by the other texts on the same manuscript?
I have discussed how scholars as Falk and Chazon are in particular convinced by the form-critical similarities of Festival Prayers on the recto and Words of the Luminaries on the verso. Indeed, the similarities between the two texts are noteworthy. We encounter these similarities not only on the level of recurring formulae, as commented on by Falk, but also in the themes expressed in the composition.91 On a basic level we can characterize both as liturgical cycles dedicated to fixed moments in time. If we look further we find closer similarities: both Festival Prayers and Words of the Luminaries represent petitionary prayers.
Prayers come in different shapes, and with all kinds of cultural and socio-religious motives and intentions, such as thanksgiving or the desire to communicate with God. The texts on this opisthograph preserve an interesting set of petitionary prayers, which can broadly be defined through the shared characteristic that the praying subject requests something from the divine.92 One of the scholars outside of scrolls scholarship that explored the character of petitionary prayers is the philosopher of religion Scott Davison, who in a 2017 volume distinguished three different components to these prayers.93 There is (1) the subject that makes the request, (2) the object that he requests, and (3) the action of the subject’s requests (such as recital or meditation). Festival Prayers and Words of the Luminaries are not only both petitionary in the sense that they express a request for something, they on occasion also share similar objects. For example, the opening formulae of prayers in both compositions directly appeal to God to remember his actions in the past:
וזכרתה את נפלאותיכ ה אשר עשיתה לעני גוים Remember the wonders that you performed while the nations looked on
4Q504 1–2 II, 11–12 (Words of the Luminaries)
תפלה ליום כפורים זכו [ר א ]דוני מ [ועד רחמיך Prayer for the Day of Atonement: Remember, Lord, the festival of your mercies
1Q34bis 1–2, 6; 4Q508 2, 2 (Festival Prayers)
In both instances the petitioning subject,
אתה פדינו וסלח [נא ]לעווננו ולח [טתנ ו ]May you redeem us, and forgive us our iniquities and sins
4Q504 4, 7 (Words of the Luminaries) 4Q506 131–132, 14 (Words of the Luminaries)
ותחס עליהמה באהבתכ ה אותם ולמען בריתכ ה And you had pity on them because of your love and because of you covenant
4Q504 1–2 II, 8–9 (Words of the Luminaries)
[
ואל תז ]כור לנו עוונות רשונים [And re]member not to hold against us the iniquities or our forebears
4Q504 4, 6 (Words of the Luminaries)
תפלה ליום כפורים זכו [ר א ]דוני מ [ועד רחמיך Prayer for the Day of Atonement: Remember, Lord, the festival of your mercies
1Q34bis 1–2, 6; 4Q508 2, 2 (Festival Prayers)96
The most occurring imperative however is the appeal to remember. Implicit in this request to God to remember his acts is the understanding that the divine actions in the biblical past carry their influence up until the present. The implication is that the performance of these prayer cycles can persuade God to remember and thereby act favourably towards his people. Among others, Brooke has pointed at the special position taken up by liturgical poetry in the realization of memory: it is through cultic performances of texts that the shared past of a group or community is both formed and passed on.97
This opisthograph raises a different question that is related to the concept of predeterminism. Petitionary prayers have regularly been discussed in relation to predeterminism, because it is the expression of a particular theological perspective.98 The key question that the issue of predeterminism poses is to which degree man is capable to manipulate his own fate.99 Can we still speak of deterministic theology when it is possible to exercise influence on both presence and future through supplications directed at God? Indeed, as Schuller asks: “What is the point of petitioning the God of knowledge who has determined all things from the beginning?”100 This question is too far-reaching to be fully dealt with here, but it can be brought back to the assumption that if we indeed understand Festival Prayers and Words of the Luminaries as petitionary prayers, then that would also lead us to assume that these petitions were intended to achieve a particular effect. These petitions were directed to God in the hope that their requests (such as deliverance from evil or remembrance of the covenant) would be granted. Following this line of thought, it seems to me that Festival Prayers and Words of the Luminaries share a stronger association than only that of a similar liturgical setting; rather they can both be conceived as the product of a particular understanding of the relationship between God, providence, and human’s ability to impact his or her circumstances.
How does the War Scroll tie into this conversation? I have argued above that there are good reasons to suppose a liturgical setting for this text, but can we also read (parts of) this composition as a an appeal to God? There may be evidence pointing in that direction. Festival Prayers and Words of the Luminaries both use the designation
A next step is asking what would happen if we challenge ourselves to read this opisthograph with fresh eyes—without the contextual and interpretational histories described in sections 5.2–5.7. In other words: what are the connecting features we might discern between 4Q509, 4Q496, and 4Q506 when we abandon our preconceived notions regarding the larger traditions that these texts originate from? What immediately stands out is that this opisthograph displays a particular attitude towards its historical past. The text it preserves continuously reaches back to biblical history, particularly as it is recounted in Genesis and Exodus. It presents (and by extension revives) Moses (4Q509 frag. 2, 4; 4Q506 frag. 122, 1), Aron (4Q496 frag. 10, 4) Isaac and Jacob (4Q506 frag. 124, 6), and the sons of Japeth, Ishmael and Keturah (4Q496 frag. 13), but also the historical regions of Uz and Aram-Naharaim (4Q496 frag. 5 + 6). This opisthograph informs its readers that these names are not part of a distant past, but shape current realities. In this sense, the opisthograph reflects an emerging historical consciousness: it presents significant personages, locations, and events in Israel’s past that are foundational for its future. The text repeatedly calls on to ‘remember’ (
In the process of bringing different texts together and ‘reviving’ them on a different manuscript and within the context of a different reading event, new meaning can be created. Texts are always influenced by the texts around them, which is how literary diversity is generated. I would propose that something similar is happening for the Qumran opisthograph. We can evaluate this manuscript not only as an intentional collection, but also one that invites a way of reading of itself. The three compositions on this opisthograph to a certain degree function both as each other’s pre-texts and as each other’s con-texts. Collecting different texts together reinforces the interpretative connections between those texts. This process is also active in this opisthograph. A reading and interpretation of a given text is guided by context, which always constitutes both the material features and the nature of the surrounding texts. The presence of extracts from the War Scroll together with extracts from prayer texts for fixed occasions compels us to think about this manuscript as a liturgical collection.
In the context of Words of the Luminaries, this means comparing the text with rabbinic prayers such as the Tahanunim and Amidah: Falk, Daily, Sabbath, and Festival Prayers, 73–78.
Kenneth L. Pike, Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of Structure of Human Behavior, 2nd ed. (The Hague: Mouton, 1967); Marvin Harris, “History and Significance of the Emic/Etic Distinction,” Annual Review of Anthropology 5 (1976): 329–350.
Steve N. Mason, “Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History,” JSJ 38 (2007): 457–512; Popović, “Reading, Writing, and Memorizing Together,” 452; Jokiranta, Social Identity and Sectarianism in the Qumran Movement, e.g. 8–9; Alison Schofield, “Forms of Community,” in T&T Clark Companion to the Dead Sea Scrolls, 533–546.
George J. Brooke, “From Florilegium or Midrash to Commentary: The Problem of Re-Naming an Adopted Manuscript,” in The Mermaid and the Partridge: Essays from the Copenhagen Conference on Revising Texts from Cave Four, ed. George J. Brooke and Jesper Høgenhaven, STDJ 96 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 129–150, at 130 n. 6.
Brooke, “From Florilegium or Midrash to Commentary”; Popović, “Qumran as Scroll Storehouse in Times of Crisis?” 577; “Reading, Writing, and Memorizing Together,” 466; Charlotte Hempel, “Cutting the Cord with the Familiar: What Makes 4Q265 Miscellaneous Rules Tick?” in Sibyls, Scriptures, and Scrolls: John Collins at Seventy, ed. Joel S. Baden, Hindy Najman, and Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar, JSJSup 175 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 509–516.
Eva Mroczek, “Testimonia,” in T&T Clark Companion to the Dead Sea Scrolls, 358–361.
Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar, “In Search of the Scribe of 1QS,” in Emanuel: Studies in Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, and Dead Sea Scrolls in Honor of Emanuel Tov, ed. Shalom M. Paul et al., VTSup 94 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 439–452; Doering, “Excerpted Texts in Second Temple Judaism”; Popović, “Reading, Writing, and Memorizing Together,” 463; Molly Zahn, “Beyond “Qumran scribal practice”: The case of the Temple Scroll,” RevQ 29 (2017): 185–203.
Tigchelaar, “In Search of the Scribe of 1QS,” 451.
Popović, “Reading, Writing, and Memorizing Together,” 463.
Hempel, “Cutting the Cord with the Familiar,” 510–513.
Popović, “Reading, Writing, and Memorizing Together,” 469.
Annette Steudel, Der Midrasch zur Eschatologie aus der Qumrangemeinde (4QMidrEschata..b): Materielle Rekonstruktion, Textbestand, Gattung und traditionsgeschichtliche Einordnung des durch 4Q174 („Florilegium“) und 4Q177 („Catena A“) repräsentierten Werkes aus den Qumranfunden, STDJ 13 (Leiden: Brill, 1994).
Hartog, Pesher and Hypomnema, 136–182. Dimant has argued that the several passages quoted in 4Q174 develop the idea of an eschatological Temple: Devorah Dimant, “4QFlorilegium and the Idea of the Community as a Temple,” in History, Ideology and Bible Interpretation, 269–288.
Brooke, “From Florilegium or Midrash to Commentary”; idem, “Controlling Intertexts and Hierarchies of Echo in Two Thematic Eschatological Commentaries from Qumran,” in Reading the Dead Sea Scrolls: Essays in Method, ed. George Brooke, EJL 39 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2013), 85–97.
Falk, “Material Aspects of Prayer Manuscripts,” 51.
The quality of a scribal hand for example is influenced by the choice and quality of writing material.
The recto of 4Q460/4Q350 for example concerns a Hebrew composition, while the verso of frag. 9 bears a Greek account listing quantities of cereals. Cf. Chapter one.
As a comparative example from a different collection, one could consider P.Oxy. 20, which survived in twelve fragments. The recto of this manuscript, which presumably was written first, concerns the parts of four columns from the second century CE. This text was written in a calligraphic uncial. The verso concerns some form of an administrative account written in a cursive hand. This is one of the examples of a manuscript from Oxyrhynchus where a second scribe used the reverse side of a literary composition as scrap paper: Bernard P. Grenfell and Arthur S. Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vol. 1 (London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1898), 46–47.
As argued above, I do not see a reason to date 4Q506 a century later than the two other texts on this manuscript as Baillet does: see section 3.10.
Baillet, DJD 7:190.
Falk, “Material Aspects of Prayer Manuscripts,” 65 n. 105.
The papyri from Qumran were typically not ruled. However, ruling lines or ruling dots do occur on at least some of the Oxyrhynchus papyri: Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches, 57; Turner, Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World, 4; Johnson, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus, 91–99.
However, we should note that many of the Dead Sea Scrolls display inconsistent column alignment and line spacing: Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches, 82–83; 104–105.
Turner, “Recto and Verso”; idem, “The Terms Recto and Verso,” 11–12.
According to George Houston, at least 182 such manuscripts are preserved from Oxyrhynchus: Houston, Inside Roman Libraries, 7.
Lama, “Aspetti di tecnica libraria ad Ossirinco.”
Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches, 146–147.
Falk has recently examined the manuscripts in which section divisions and marginal markings occur. Concerning the fish hook or paragraphus sign, his overview presents an evident overrepresentation of Hasmonaean prayer manuscripts. In fact, the sign is present on only two developed Herodian manuscripts (1QpHab and 4Q90), and in both instances it is unclear if it concerns a marking of the paragraphus type, or another (unique) type of marking. This overview does indeed indicate that the sign is hardly—if ever—used on calligraphic manuscripts. Daniel K. Falk, “In the Margins of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Bible as Notepad: Tracing Annotations and Annotation Practices in Late Antique and Medieval Biblical Manuscripts, ed. Liv I. Lied and Marilena Maniaci, Manuscripta Biblica 3 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018), 10–38, at 20, 26.
Cross, “Development of the Jewish Scripts,” 32.
An alternative explanation for these different types of section divisions could be that they were a result of scribal practices changing over time. The fact that the majority of the preserved paragraphus signs occur on Hasmonaean manuscripts suggests that this sign was simply the preferred section marker during this period. However, given that some Hasmonaean manuscripts (4Q504, 4Q163, and the palaeo-Hebrew 4Q511) also use empty lines, it seems that the choice for the type of section division was deliberate.
Erasure and blotting out of original layer of writing in 4Q509 frags. 3, 54, 98, 131, 184, and 194. Interlinear and intermarginal corrections are found in frags. 23, 30, 55, 105, and twice in 183. In 4Q496 interlinear additions and insertions are present in frags. 3, 10 (twice), 26, and 43. See also Aksu, “The Qumran Opisthograph 4Q509/4Q496/4Q506 as an Intentional Collection of Prayers.”
4Q201/4Q338, 4Q460 frag. 9/4Q350, and 4Q324/4Q355, the three manuscripts that contain a literary text on the recto and a documentary text on the verso, do not share similar palaeographic characteristics and scribal practices across both sides.
As we have seen in chapter one, the evidence regarding manuscripts with literary texts on both sides is mixed. Similar palaeography and scribal practices are encountered on both sides of 4Q503/4Q512, but less so for 4Q415/4Q414 and 4Q433a/4Q255. 4Q499/4Q497 is difficult to judge due to the poor state of preservation.
The suggestion that specifically 4Q496 might concern an excerpt of the War Scroll was first proposed in Falk, “Material Aspects of Prayer Manuscripts,” 53.
It is difficult to exactly allocate all these fragments to 4Q496 and 4Q506. Some of them are tiny and contain only traces of letters on both recto and verso. The safest conclusion is that 4Q496 survived on between 110 and 120 fragments.
Hartmut Stegemann, Die Essener, Qumran, Johannes der Täufer und Jesus: Ein Sachbuch (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1993), 157; Hanan Eshel, “The Kittim in the War Scroll and in the Pesharim,” in Historical Perspectives: From the Hasmoneans to Bar Kokhba in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. David Goodblatt, Avital Pinnick, and Daniel R. Schwartz, STDJ 37 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 29–44, at 37; Duhaime, The War Texts, 97–101; Schultz, Conquering the World, 102.
It is improbable that 4Q506 would consist of a draft from an early phase of composition of Words of the Luminaries, because 4Q504 concerns one of the oldest scrolls preserved from Qumran and most probably predates 4Q506 significantly.
This length is a very rude estimation based on the length of 1QM (2.9 meter) and 4Q504 (1.7 meter), and the construction of the lay-out of this opisthograph in Falk, “Material Aspects of Prayer Manuscripts,” 65–66.
The content of the first four columns of 4Q496 correspond to about three columns of 1QM. According to Falk both manuscripts had about 20 lines per column, but the letter size of 4Q496 (3 mm) would have been slightly larger than of 1QM (2–2.5 mm). 1QM measures about 2.9 meter. Assuming that 4Q496 contained the same text of the War Scroll in the same lay-out as the first columns, then 4Q496 would have to be over 3.5 meter.
As we cannot determine the number of lines per column for 4Q506, we may assume that it’s about the same as the 20 of 4Q496. 4Q504 has about 22 lines per column. However, the letter size of 4Q506 (about 4 mm) is slightly larger than of 4Q504 (2–2.5 mm). Altogether we may assume that the size of 4Q506 would have to be similar to the 1.7 meter of 4Q504, especially when we consider that the scribe of 4Q504 had to add the final two columns on the verso.
1Q34bis and 4Q509 for example, though both copies of Festival Prayers, preserve different parts of the composition.
Hartmut Stegemann, “Weitere Stücke von 4QpPsalm 37, von 4Q Patriarchal Blessings und Hinweis auf eine unedierte Handschrift aus Höhle 4Q mit Exzerpten aus dem Deuteronomium,” RevQ 6 (1967): 193–227; Doering, “Excerpted Texts in Second Temple Judaism”; Emanuel Tov, “Excerpted and Abbreviated Biblical Texts from Qumran,” in Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible, and Qumran: Collected Essays, TSAJ 121 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 27–41; Sidnie White Crawford, “The Excerpted Manuscripts from Qumran, with Special Attention to 4QReworked Pentateuch D and 4QReworked Pentateuch E,” in Scribal Practice, Text and Canon in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Essays in Memory of Peter W. Flint, ed. John J. Collins and Ananda Geyser-Fouché, STDJ 130 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 247–268; Hila Dayfani, “4Q37 and Excerpted Texts of Deuteronomy from Qumran,” DSD 30 (2023): 213–234.
Crawford, “The Excerpted Manuscripts from Qumran,” 248 n. 2.
Julie A. Duncan, “Excerpted Texts of Deuteronomy at Qumran,” RevQ 18 (1997): 43–62; Doering, “Excerpted Texts in Second Temple Judaism,” 37; Dayfani, “4Q37 and Excerpted Texts,” 226–227; Crawford, “The Excerpted Manuscripts from Qumran,” 259–260.
Tov, “Excerpted and Abbreviated Biblical Texts,” 39. Tov builds here on Henry Chadwick “Florilegium,” RAC 7 (1969): 1131–1160. See also David M. Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 177–199.
Petra D. Gesche, Schulunterricht in Babylonien Im Ersten Jahrtausend v. Chr. (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2001); Paul Delnero, “Sumerian Extract Tablets and Scribal Training,” JCS 62 (2010): 53–69.
An example is the UGU extract series: a collection of extracts from the diagnostic series, a large collection of Mesopotamian medicine texts. These extract tablets were probably used as a practical tool to keep useful material within arm’s reach: JoAnn Scurlock, Sourcebook for Ancient Mesopotamian Medicine, WAW 36 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2014), 295, 329.
Among the papyri of Oxyrhynchus we possess at least 400 opisthographs in a variety of genres, such as the exercises of students, but also literary texts written in scribal bookhands. How many of these concern manuscripts that could be qualified as collections of valued works is unclear. Krüger, Oxyrhynchos in der Kaiserzeit, 161.
Arthur S. Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vol. 8 (London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1911), 5–6, 13–14.
Eldon J. Epp, “The Oxyrhynchus New Testament Papyri: ‘Not without Honor except in Their Hometown’?” JBL 123 (2004): 5–55, at 19.
The major recent contributions that assess the question of the pluriform history of S are mentioned in section 2.3.
Milik, DJD 1:107–108; Charlotte Hempel, “Pluralism and Authoritativeness,” 195.
Milik, DJD 1:107–108; Charlotte Hempel, “Pluralism and Authoritativeness,” 195.
Newman remarks that the title ‘Rule of Blessings’ is “misleading because nowhere does the term ‘rule’ (serekh) appear”: Judith Newman, “Rule of Blessings (Sb),” in T&T Clark Companion to the Dead Sea Scrolls, 339–340, at 339.
Alexander and Vermes, DJD 26:9–12; Hempel, Qumran Rule Texts in Context, 109–119; idem, Community Rules from Qumran: A Commentary; Newman, “Rule of Blessings (Sb)”; Michael B. Johnson, “One Work or Three? A Proposal for Reading 1QS-1QSa-1QSb as a Single Composite Work,” DSD 25 (2018): 141–177.
Harmut Stegemann, “Zu Textbestand und Grundgedanken von “1QS” III, 13–IV, 26,” RevQ 13 (1988): 95–131.
Tigchelaar, “In Search of the Scribe of 1QS.”
Johnson, “One Work or Three?”
Falk, “Material Aspects of Prayer Manuscripts,” 53.
Take for example the catalogue of hymns and prayers from the Dead Sea Scrolls by Chazon; both Festival Prayers and Words of the Luminaries are part of the same class of ‘Liturgies for Fixed Prayer Times’: “Hymns and Prayers in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” 259–260.
See also the discussion in section 5.2.
Dimant, “Vocabulary of the Qumran Sectarian Texts,” 81. We have seen above how the War Scroll meets several of these criteria. It is one of the few texts that uses the term ‘serekh,’ while the binary opposition between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness would be an example of the dualistic thought system that is considered specific for the sectarian texts.
Dimant, “Vocabulary of the Qumran Sectarian Texts,” 88.
As we observed in the first part of this chapter, other elements associated to sectarian thought such as dualism and predestination do also not occur in 4Q509 and 4Q506.
As noted for example in Henry W.M. Rietz, “Identifying Compositions and Traditions of the Qumran Community: Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, a Case Study,” in Qumran Studies: New Approaches, New Questions, ed. Michael T. Davis and Brent A. Strawn (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 29–52.
Newsom, “ ‘Sectually Explicit’ Literature”; VanderKam, “Authoritative Literature in the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
Popović, “Reading, Writing, and Memorizing Together,” 462.
“The changes necessary to rectify this are too significant to allow for 4Q496 to be considered of the same recension as M”: Schultz, Conquering the World, 26.
Hempel, Qumran Rule Texts in Context, 271–299; idem, “Reflections on Literacy, Textuality, and Community in the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Is There a Text in This Cave, 69–82, at 72.
Popović, “Reading, Writing, and Memorizing Together.”
Hans Debel, “Rewritten Bible, Variant Literary Editions and Original Text(s): Exploring the Implications of a Pluriform Outlook on the Scriptural Tradition,” in Changes in Scripture, 65–91.
Hempel, “Pluralism and Authoritativeness,” 193.
We see this reflected in their publication in DJD 7. The three texts of this opisthograph are not published in order of the manuscript, but grouped together with other copies of the same composition. So 4Q496 for example is presented as the last of six copies of the War Scroll (4Q491–496), and is followed by 4Q497 (War Scroll-like Text A).
Raymond J. Starr, “The Circulation of Literary Texts in the Roman World,” ClQ 37 (1987): 213–223; idem, “The Used-Book Trade in the Roman World,” Phoenix 44 (1990): 148–157; William A. Johnson, “Toward a Sociology of Reading in Classical Antiquity,” AJP 121 (2000): 593–627; idem, Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire; idem, “Constructing Elite Reading Communities in the High Empire,” in Ancient Literacies, 320–330.
Johnson, Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire, 4–16.
Johnson, Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire, 12.
Popović, “Reading, Writing, and Memorizing Together.”
Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 522.
Popović, “Reading, Writing, and Memorizing Together,” 451–452.
Popović, “Reading, Writing, and Memorizing Together,” 451.
Popović, “Reading, Writing, and Memorizing Together,” 452.
Starr, “The Circulation of Literary Texts in the Roman World.”
Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, 3.7.5 (Radice, LCL).
Horace, Satires, 1.4.74–78; Donatus, Vita Vergilii, 33.
As for example argued by Gurd: Sean A. Gurd, Work in Progress: Literary Revision as Social Performance in Ancient Rome (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 49–76.
Starr, “The Circulation of Literary Texts”; Charles W. Hedrick, “Literature and Communication,” in The Oxford Handbook of Social Relations in the Roman World, ed. Michael Peachin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 167–190.
Hedrick, “Literature and Communication,” 185.
Steve N. Mason, “Of Audience and Meaning: Reading Josephus’ Bellum Judaicum in the Context of a Flavian Audience,” in Josephus and Jewish History in Flavian Rome and Beyond, ed. Joseph Sievers and Gaia Lembi, JSJSup 104 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 71–100, at 84.
Brooke, “Reading, Searching and Blessing.”
Popović, “Qumran as Scroll Storehouse in Times of Crisis?” 588. As Popović argued, the manuscript collection may “reflect a real or an imagined scholarly community” that could have existed only at Qumran or also at other sites. Ibid., 590.
Hindy Najman and Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar, “Interpreting Collection in the Dead Sea Scrolls” (paper presented at 10th Meeting of the IOQS, Aberdeen, 5 August 2019).
Najman and Tigchelaar, “Interpreting Collection in the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
Schuller, “The Classification Hodayot and Hodayot-like”; Esther G. Chazon, “Liturgical Function in The Cave 1 Hodayot Collection,” in Qumran Cave 1 Revisited, 135–149.
Based on Tov’s analysis of the orthography of the Judaean Desert manuscripts: Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches.
Falk, Daily, Sabbath, and Festival Prayers, 79, 183; “Material Aspects of Prayer Manuscripts,” 53.
Studies on petitionary prayer in the scrolls do not provide an explicit definition, but generally adhere to this characteristic: Israel Knohl, “Between Voice and Silence: The Relationship between Prayer and Temple Cult,” JBL 115 (1996): 17–30; Eileen M. Schuller, “Petitionary Prayer and the Religion of Qumran,” in Religion in the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. John J. Collins and Robert A. Kugler, SDSSRL (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 29–45, at 34–35; Daniel K. Falk, “Petition and Ideology in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” 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), 135–159.
Scott A. Davison, Petitionary Prayer: A Philosophical Investigation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 24–42.
Schuller, “Petitionary Prayer and the Religion of Qumran,” 44.
More similarities between supplications in the two texts are provided by Nitzan, who assumes these appeals to represent “a kind of crystallized model of the needs of the people, consistently repeated,” Nitzan, Qumran Prayer and Religious Poetry, 104–111.
We could add here Baillet’s reconstruction of 4Q508 30, 1:
George Brooke argues specifically that the re-use of and allusions to Psalms 105 and 106 in other texts from the scrolls can play a notable part in the process of identity formation: George J. Brooke, “Praying History in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Memory, Identity, Fulfilment,” in Functions of Psalms and Prayers in the Late Second Temple Period, ed. Mika S. Pajunen and Jeremy Penner, BZAW 486 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017), 305–319.
Schuller, “Petitionary Prayer and the Religion of Qumran”; Russell C.D. Arnold, “Repentance and the Qumran Covenant Ceremony,” in Seeking the Favor of God, vol. 2: The Development of Penitential Prayer in the Second Temple Period, ed. Mark J. Boda, Daniel K. Falk, and Rodney A. Werline, EJL 22 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), 159–175; Falk, “Petition and Ideology in the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
For a discussion of different deterministic ideas in the scrolls and ancient Judaism at large: Mladen Popović, “Apocalyptic Determinism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature, ed. John J. Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 255–270.
Schuller, “Petitionary Prayer and the Religion of Qumran,” 37.
Schuller, “Petitionary Prayer and the Religion of Qumran,” 43.
Falk, “Petition and Ideology in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” 151.
E.g. 1QM 14:16:
Hindy Najman, “The Idea of Biblical Genre: From Discourse to Constellation,” in Prayer and Poetry in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature, 301–321.