1 Herculaneum and Qumran: Contrast and Correlation
There have been few scholarly attempts to compare the Herculaneum papyri and the Dead Sea Scrolls with each other, or even to consider both collections together when asking specific questions concerning ancient scribal culture. One reason for this is that Herculaneum and the scrolls historically are considered to be part of different ancient cultures and therefore of different modern-day fields of research.1
Nevertheless, Roland de Vaux already early on saw a potential parallel between the two sites, as he considered both to be examples of private libraries.2 And more recently Hayim Lapin has pointed to the Villa-collection as “one almost entirely unutilized body of material for comparison.”3 Indeed, in terms of both the size and date of the collection, the Villa of the Papyri provides the closest parallel to Qumran (if we specifically consider manuscript corpora from which at least a sizeable part survived into modern times). Turning back to Lincoln’s distinction between weak and strong comparisons (which was discussed in the introduction), it seems that both collections could provide good ground for a weak comparison.4
Furthermore, from a more general perspective I would argue that the most important feature that makes the Villa of the Papyri such a relevant site for the study of ancient manuscript cultures and textual engagement is the fact that the eruption of the Vesuvius in 79 CE caused the entire settlement, including the many manuscripts stored inside the Villa, to be closed off from outside interference. Following Zangenberg, I applied the notion of post-depositional processes above to refer to the different factors, both natural and human, that can affect the artefacts on a site after their original deposition.5 For the Villa of the Papyri (and most of the settlement of Herculaneum), these post-depositional processes seem to have been minimal, which caused the deposition context to remain undisturbed until the eighteenth century. This is a certainty regarding the archaeological context not encountered for many other ancient manuscript collections. These post-depositional processes are much less clear for a collection such as the Dead Sea Scrolls. We do not know for example if we are dealing with one deposition or rather several phases of deposition during which the scrolls were left in the caves, and to which degree the conditions of or motivations for these deposition phases changed over time.6 Additionally, there is some evidence that the site was disturbed by Roman legionaries.7 Whether or not either the settlement at Qumran or the caves in which the manuscripts were deposited had any visitors in the period between the Jewish Revolt against Rome and the twentieth century is a question we simply do not know the answer to.8 As such, we move on uncertain ground when, for example, we try to utilize De Vaux’s account of Cave 4 after its discovery to make inferences of the scrolls’ deposition context.
However, in the case of the Villa of the Papyri, meters of dust and ash protected an actively used manuscript collection within its ancient context. Insights inferred from the deposition context of the Villa may be significant for our understanding of not only other surviving manuscript corpora, but also ancient reading culture at large. One such insight concerns the fact that the Herculaneum scrolls were not kept in a separate, closed off area of the Villa but rather stored in the living quarters where they would be within reach.9 Whether or not this was also the case for Qumran remains open, but it opens up a possibility to explore.
One of the first points of connection between the two sites concerns Philodemus himself, who according to Strabo originated from Gadara in present-day Jordan, not far from Qumran, and in his later life moved to Athens and Rome.10 It is tempting to hypothesize whether Philodemus would have been familiar with the Dead Sea Scrolls, a manuscript collection that was situated not far from his place of birth.11 If that were the case, then Philodemus’ own journey could provide a starting point for an exploration of direct influence and the transmission of ideas between both collections. However, according to the current state of scholarship, we have no grounds to assume his familiarity with the scrolls and no reason to believe that people from Qumran, Gadara or Herculaneum were in direct contact. Nevertheless, Philodemus is a reminder of the close proximity yet also separateness of different literary milieus across the Mediterranean. In our days, we may conceptualize both manuscript collections as located in two geographically distant places, but this does not have to be the perceived social reality in the past.12 Both books and scholars have always travelled.
Ian Werrett has recently distinguished five points of connection between the sites of Herculaneum and Qumran.13 Werrett starts by noting that (1) both Herculaneum and Qumran were private residences, and that (2) the bulk of papyri from the Villa were found in what seems to have been the storage room, room V, with smaller numbers of manuscripts deposited in nearby chambers. In Werrett’s view, this is reminiscent of Qumran, where the majority of the scrolls were discovered in Cave 4 and smaller numbers coming from other caves. I consider these two points of connection proposed by Werrett to be the least convincing. There remains little doubt about the identification of the Villa as a private residence, but the evidence for Qumran is less certain. Jodi Magness has argued extensively against the identification of Qumran as a private villa or manor house after comparing the site with contemporary villas in the region.14 Also the suggestion that the locations of the deposits of both the Villa and Qumran would be similar does not seem very persuasive to me: storage in different rooms within the same building is not really comparable to different caves that are located over more than a kilometre from each other.15
Werrett proceeds by arguing that (3) the palaeographic time frame of both collections is remarkably similar. The oldest manuscripts from both Herculaneum and Qumran seem to date to about three centuries before the destruction of the sites, indicating that these collections are institutions that outlive the lifespan of an individual collectionneur or individual households. A point that is left undiscussed by Werrett is what this tells about the useful life of manuscripts in Graeco-Roman antiquity.16 Both the Villa-papyri and the Dead Sea Scrolls seem to indicate that manuscripts could occasionally remain in use for at least 250 years.17 These time frames concur with a statement by Pliny the Elder claiming to have seen documents written by Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus that were, at the time, almost 200 years old.18 As far as we can generalize based on these collections, there seems little reason to assume that papyri had a shorter lifespan than leather manuscripts. According to Popović, the useful life of literary manuscripts, “indicates that they were possibly handed down from generation to generation, confirming the value attached to them.”19 The palaeographic datings of both Herculaneum and Qumran indeed demonstrate the continued importance of these ancient manuscript collections over significant periods of time. (4) There is a remarkable underrepresentation of documentary texts, as both corpora seem to contain almost exclusively literary material. (5) Finally, both collections are multilingual. The Villa-papyri carry texts in both Greek and Latin. From Qumran we find texts in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek; the three most widespread languages of Roman Judaea.
This final observation by Werrett concerning multilingualism in both the scrolls and the Villa-papyri is of significance from a number of perspectives. The presence of manuscripts in different languages is an indication of the diversity of linguistic practices of both collections. We have seen above that Latin and Greek texts were stored together in the Villa. Also, for Qumran, we have no reason to suspect that manuscripts in different languages were stored separately from each other. This could be interpreted as an indication that both the Villa and the scrolls texts were collected primarily in order to be actively studied, read, and used in reading events together. However, there is some evidence that Greek and Latin literatures were stored in separate locations within Roman public libraries.20 It is difficult to assess how significant it is that the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Villa of the Papyri had an arrangement that differed from how we assume that Roman public libraries were organized.21
Another perspective on this issue is offered by Popović, who sees the multilingual formation of the Dead Sea Scrolls as cause to reconsider the binary oppositions between centre versus periphery, and city versus countryside.22 It is a common frame to view ancient literary culture as primarily concentrated in a multilingual urban centre of literary production and activities (for example Rome or Jerusalem). Sites such as Herculaneum and Qumran provide a counterweight to this model and demonstrate that also elites outside the major population centres had access to and interests in multilingual collections of texts.
A point of agreement on a different level can be found in the possibility that both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Villa-papyri reflect the literary collection of one or more particular movements that shaped the manuscript corpus according to their beliefs and interests. Both represent what is left of a deliberate collection of texts that were meaningful for the people that organized their reading events around them. Lapin notes that “in some way that is hard to specify this library is connected with the flourishing of Epicurean study and association at Herculaneum, much as the Qumran scrolls are related to a group at Qumran.”23 Indeed, both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Villa of the Papyri share a remarkable sense of intentionality. They do not just present us with a cross-section of Graeco-Roman and Judaean literature of the time, but rather offer a selection. However, there seems to be more to this connection between the two sites. Heuristically the analysis of the Villa of the Papyri can focus our attention on particular issues such as multilingualism or the useful life of manuscripts (both discussed above). At the same time, it can help us sharpen our thinking concerning other sites, for example regarding the status of Qumran as a scholarly collection located in the countryside. These new perspectives are the real benefit of such a comparison.
It is noteworthy that among both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Villa-papyri, we find multiple exemplars of the same composition, with both textual diversity (as evidenced in for example the different Serekh manuscripts or the copies of Philodemus’ On Rhetoric) and differences in palaeography and codicology.24 These differences may shed light on the different ways in which manuscripts could be used. Furthermore, in the previous chapters, attention was drawn to the importance of compositions that exist in multiple copies, as they demonstrate a continued interest in that composition by the group behind the collection. I argued that such manuscripts continued to be the object of study over a longer period of time, especially where it concerns manuscripts that contain scribal interventions such as marginal markings, transposition signs, and multiple scribal hands. As we have seen, both collections demonstrate such a scholarly engagement with texts on a high level.
If we push this argument further, we note that manuscripts that survived in multiple copies can shed light on different compositional strategies, especially if one of those manuscripts collects extracts that are reworked in another exemplar. Houston provides a list of eight compositions by Philodemus that are present in multiple copies.25 Dorandi hypothesizes that some of these copies might have been drafts that Philodemus would have distributed among his friends for discussion, in order to rework their comments in a final edition.26 This suggestion invites comparison with the Dead Sea Scrolls that survived in multiple copies. It is possible that these manuscripts, in a similar fashion, provide a glimpse into the sociocultural dynamics of manuscript production, consumption, and distribution. For example, Part 2 proposed to consider the opisthograph 4Q509/4Q496/4Q506 as a liturgical collection. It is possible that this manuscript was produced to function in a similar communal setting.
Apart from multiple exemplars of the same composition, both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Villa of the Papyri also share a wide variety in the quality of the extant manuscripts. Delicately produced scrolls with generous margins and low levels of scribal interventions are in both collections found side by side with simple sheets containing notes or extracts. I argued above that an elegantly written scroll such as 1QM might invite very different reading activities than a crudely produced opisthograph. Variety in manuscript production can be seen as an indication of variety in manuscript use. The Villa presents us with a similar material and palaeographic diversity. Manuscripts such as P.Herc. 1113a, characterized by Richard Janko as written by “an expert and well-trained copyist,” are found next to manuscripts written in much more irregular hands.27 If we follow this line of thought, then we suppose that collections such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Villa-papyri do not only display heterogeneity in the types of manuscripts and texts that are brought together, but also in the types of reading events that are organized by the people behind these manuscripts. Private copies, for example, might indicate that a manuscript was produced for a scribe’s own use, while in Part 2 we considered evidence for communal activities such as recitation or group reading.
This section presented a weak comparison of these two contemporary manuscript collections from the Graeco-Roman period. Though they preserve texts in different languages and from different manuscript cultures, both Qumran and the Villa can be characterized as intentional manuscript collections that reflect the specific interests and socio-religious ideas of the groups behind the manuscripts. Moreover, both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Villa-papyri demonstrate the scholarly engagement of ancient scribes with texts on a variety of levels, with high quality manuscripts preserved side by side with personal copies. This aspect of both collections is deserving of further analysis. In the next section I will turn back to the two manuscripts that featured before, 4Q509/4Q496/4Q506 and P.Herc. 1021, and compare these two opisthographic collections.
2 4Q509/4Q496/4Q506 Revisited
As I have argued in the previous chapter, the Qumran opisthograph 4Q509/4Q496/4Q506 displays a form of textual variety that is very similar to P.Herc. 1021. We can also think of the Qumran papyrus as an ‘opisthographic collection.’ In the case of this opisthograph, extracts were selected and brought together from different compositions (both sectarian and non-sectarian) on one manuscript, which indicates that these texts were not only deposited together, but also actively read and discussed by different people together. Also within the scribal and reading culture of the Dead Sea Scrolls there is evidence for recitation and group reading as communal activities.28 The fact that several scribal hands were involved in the copying of the texts on this opisthograph also suggests the collective engagement of groups of scribes.29
Opisthography in these instances testifies to a diversity in the scribal engagement of texts that a more general overview of collections often does not seem to account for. After all, scholarship generally groups different redactions of a given composition together as one text within a corpus of literature. However, in this way no attention is paid to the possibility that there could be different reading practices connected to each of these manuscripts.30 As I have argued, a scroll such as 1QM might invite different types of reading activities than a version of the War Scroll on an opisthograph.31 In line with Longacre’s analysis of the Psalm manuscripts from Qumran, a “large, prestigious high-register” manuscript such as 1QM could have been intended for communal reading.32 On the other hand, a small, compact manuscript written in semi-formal such as 4Q509/4Q496/4Q506 is easier to transport and more suitable for study purposes. These considerations also open up important questions about our understanding of genre and the Sitz im Leben, as this was possibly also determined by the concrete manuscript forms, in terms of format and scripts, that compositions were mediated through; questions how the interpretations of the 4Q509, 4Q496, and 4Q506 were influenced by their proximity on the same manuscript.
Texts that circulated together on a single text-bearing artefact, were read together and, as such, became subject to interpretational processes—what scholars such as Zahn have called ‘exegetical techniques.’33 Of special interest in this regard are manuscripts that preserve multiple compositions (either in extracted form or in their entirety) that eventually would become part of the Hebrew Bible. The implication of this study would be that, much like the compositions we encounter on opisthographic manuscripts, also the reception of works from the Hebrew Bible are facilitated by the material circumstances of their transmission. I think this is very plausible, but difficult to reconstruct in detail without the presence of corresponding evidence. For most of the time of the composition of the books from the Hebrew Bible no material has survived that allows us to evaluate how these texts were understood and which reading events they became a part of. However, a number of manuscripts preserve evidence that allows us to get closer to the exegetical techniques of ancient scribes as they engaged with biblical materials.34
An interesting example is offered by the Reworked Pentateuch manuscripts from Cave 4.35 The five exemplars that passed down to us differ in the exact materials they preserve, but each contains a collection of different fragments from the Pentateuch that in some instances are combined with exegetical remarks that were added to provide an interpretative framework. Zahn in her 2011 study of these texts has demonstrated the different methods of textual reworking that are employed within the Reworked Pentateuch manuscripts, distinguishing between varying categories of compositional techniques such as omission, rearrangement, paraphrasing, and the addition of both new material and material from elsewhere.36 The latter distinction between new material and material from elsewhere is important for Zahn, but is difficult to make for the opisthograph 4Q509/4Q496/4Q506.37 Nevertheless, the purposes of these techniques are very comparable: both the Reworked Pentateuch manuscript 4Q158 and the Qumran opisthograph harmonize extracted passages at the level of their syntax and/or vocabulary (see for example the similar blessing formulae present in both 4Q509 and 4Q506), but they also reinforce the connections between different (past or future) events. This highlights that these exegetical techniques coupled with a dynamic engagement with extant manuscripts are present across what we perceive to be literary genres and traditions (such as Bible, rewritten scripture, and liturgy).
We have seen how on the Herculaneum opisthograph P.Herc. 1021 extracts from different compositions were collected in order to create a new composition. In the process of bringing different texts together and ‘reviving’ them in a different manuscript and within the context of a different reading event, new meanings could be created. Texts are always influenced by the texts around them, and it is the intertextual processes of reading texts in different settings and with different contexts that new and original readings and interpretations are established. A manuscript such as P.Herc. 1021 challenges us to consider these aspects also for the Dead Sea Scrolls. I would propose that similar processes—the collection of extracts from different texts on one manuscript in order to influence how these extracts are read—take place for the Qumran opisthograph 4Q509/4Q496/4Q509 on different levels.
Some of these processes have been addressed in Part 2, in which I argued that the Qumran opisthograph constituted an intentional collection of valued works, a conclusion that was reached on the basis of the material features of the manuscript and the content of the different extracts it bears. This opisthograph allows us to conceptualize these intertextual relationships from other perspectives as well. 4Q496, for example, derives meaning from at least two different intertextual dimensions. First, meaning is created from the surrounding texts, which can be understood here in very material terms: 4Q509 and 4Q506, which are placed on the same manuscript. These dynamics were discussed in some detail above; the form-critical similarities between Festival Prayers and Words of the Luminaries suggest a liturgical reading for 4Q496 as well. After all, someone’s understanding and interpretation of a text is also shaped by virtue of the texts surrounding it. But there is also a more vertical dimension to it: the texts collected on this opisthograph are not unique compositions, but part of a broader body of texts. 4Q496, for example, stands in a tradition of War Scroll literature and is influenced by this tradition. This relationship can be described with the classical intertextual notions of allusion and quotation; the battle narrative found in 4Q496 might not preserve the texts of 1QM cols. I and II word for word, it evidently alludes to it. We can understand 1QM as a ‘pre-text’ that 4Q496 refers to: any interpretation of 4Q496 will be motivated by previous readings of the War Scroll. In a similar fashion Words of the Luminaries manuscript 4Q504 might function as a pre-text to 4Q506. Though 4Q506 contains only extracts from Words of the Luminaries, it alludes to the larger prayer cycle that is preserved in 4Q504 and this, in turn, informs how 4Q506 could have been understood. In this way, both 4Q504 and 1QM perform as a ‘second voice’ that resonates in the opisthograph. The fact that a significant part of 1QM consists of a prayer collection inspires a liturgical reading of 4Q496 too. These different intertextual processes, both on a horizontal and on a vertical level, are cooperating forces that determine how texts are read. We can evaluate this manuscript therefore not just as an intentional collection, but also one that imposes a way of reading on itself. However, in this context we should not lose sight of the material reality. The palaeography of the manuscript suggests—at least to some degree—to distinguish between different texts. As argued in chapter one, the three sets of extracts were penned by different scribes, and 4Q506 seems to have been written at a later period.38
Nevertheless, these material concerns do not influence the fact that collecting different texts together reinforces the interpretative connections between those texts. This process is especially active in an opisthograph. The fact that parts of Festival Prayers, of War Scroll, and of Words of the Luminaries are positioned next to each other influences how each of these texts are read in their own right. In this way we can conceive the ‘opisthographic collection’ as greater than the sum of its parts; the opisthograph can function as a tool to construct a new text through selection, extraction, and note-taking.
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 document.39 But if we read the War Scroll liturgically here, does that mean that we have to read 1QM as a prayer text as well?40 This is possible and has been argued for in the past, but this opisthograph invites us also to think about the possibility of multiple genres. Could we not think of the War Scroll both as a rule text or as a battle narrative and as a liturgical document depending on the other texts that we read next to it?
Clustering and categorizing ancient texts are not neutral affairs, certainly not for the Dead Sea Scrolls. How we group different texts together influences our perception of each of those texts individually. The perception of literary homogeneity or literary diversity is therefore a result of the conceptual framework we choose to operate with when we think about the collection as a whole. However, opisthographs can provide internal collections of texts, and as such help us to critically think about our methods of both clustering and separating texts from each other based on considerations from content and genre alone. In this way the study of scribal activity on manuscript level can help us to further reflect on the literary diversity of ancient collections.
This is indeed why Houston omits the Dead Sea Scrolls from his study of ancient book collections: Houston, Inside Roman Libraries, 3.
De Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 32 n. 2.
Hayim Lapin, “Dead Sea Scrolls and the Historiography of Ancient Judaism,” in Rediscovering the Dead Sea Scrolls, 108–127, at 126.
Comparison of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Villa of the Papyri has also been encouraged by Alexander and Popović: Philip Alexander, “Literacy Among Jews in Second Temple Palestine: Reflections on the Evidence from Qumran,” in Hamlet on a Hill: Semitic and Greek Studies Presented to Professor T. Muraoka on the Occasion of His Sixty-fifth Birthday, ed. Martin F.J. Baasten and Wido T. van Peursen, OLA 118 (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 3–24, at 24; Popović, “Qumran as Scroll Storehouse in Times of Crisis?” 590.
The number of comparanda is relatively small and straight-forward. Rather than comparing the entirety of Graeco-Roman and early Judaean scribal culture with each other, the focus of this comparative exercise will be put on two collections (the scrolls and the Villa-collection) that were discovered at two particular sites within a similar time frame, which allows us to be attentive to social and historical contexts.
Zangenberg, “The Functions of the Caves and the Settlement of Qumran,” 206–209.
The most widely shared hypothesis about the deposition of the scrolls is that the caves around Qumran functioned as an emergency hiding place during the Roman destruction of Qumran in 68 CE. However, this assumption has been questioned by scholars such as Stökl Ben Ezra and Popović: Stökl Ben Ezra, “Old Caves and Young Caves”; Popović, “Qumran as Scroll Storehouse in Times of Crisis?”
The settlement and the surrounding caves should be distinguished here. The devastation of Khirbet Qumran by the Romans is widely accepted on the basis of Roman weaponry such as iron arrowheads and javelins, and the traces of violent destruction apparent in the settlement. Among others Roland de Vaux and Jodi Magness have argued that Qumran would have been occupied by a small Roman garrison for some years after 68 CE (during the so-called third occupation period): De Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 41–45; Magness, The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 62–63; Mladen Popović, “Roman Book Destruction in Qumran Cave 4 and the Roman Destruction of Khirbet Qumran Revisited,” in Qumran und die Archäologie: Texte und Kontexte, ed. Jörg Frey, Carsten Claußen, and Nadine Kessler; WUNT 278 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 239–291.
Roman presence inside the caves is less secure. The most important manuscript evidence is provided by the opisthograph 4Q460/4Q350.
Several historical sources mention earlier discoveries of manuscripts in the region. Eusebius (ca. 260–ca. 340 CE) writes that Origen (ca. 185–ca. 254 CE), for the compilation of his Hexapla, made use of a Psalm manuscript that would have been found in a jar (
The location of book collections within private residences elsewhere is subject to debate. There does not seem to be a specific architectural tradition with regard to the presence of Roman private libraries, but there is some evidence that books were often stored separately from the living quarters. One specific room in the House of Menander in Pompeii has been identified as a library room on the basis of the presence of what seem to be bookshelves, while Vitruvius notes that libraries (“bybliothecae”) should be located specifically in the east of the residence to take advantage of the morning light: Vitruvius, De architectura 6.4.1; Amedeo Maiuri, La casa del Menandro e il suo tesoro di argenteria, vol. 1 (Rome: La Libreria dello Stato, 1933), 87–89. See the discussion of these and other sources in Thomas Hendrickson, “The Invention of the Greek Library.”
Strabo, Geographica, 16.2.29. Discussion: Tiziano Dorandi, “La patria di Filodemo,” Phil 131 (1987): 254–256; Lapin, “Dead Sea Scrolls and the Historiography of Ancient Judaism,” 126.
The city of Gadara, close to modern Umm Qais, is about 100 kilometres from the site of Qumran in the West Bank. Whether or not a 1st century philosopher from Gadara would have had an interest in Judaean literature is an interesting question. Gadara at the time was a Hellenistic city in which daily life was probably dominated by Greek. However, sometime during Philodemus’ childhood the city was conquered by Alexander Jannaeus and stayed in Hasmonaean hands until Pompey’s annexation of Syria in 64–63 BCE. Philodemus’ fellow Gadarene Meleager was (apart from Greek) familiar with Syrian and Phoenician and it seems likely that Philodemus got in touch with Semitic languages as well. Nevertheless, Philodemus’ work does not reveal knowledge of any language apart from Greek. John T. Fitzgerald, “Gadara: Philodemus’ Native City,” in Philodemus and the New Testament World, 343–397.
Woolf, “Introduction: Approaching the Ancient Library,” 11. There are several indications for interactions between Judaea and Gadara during the Roman period. Matthew 8:28 sets one of Jesus’ exorcisms in Gadara. Edith Mary Smallwood lists Gadara as one of the cities with a large Judaean minority during the Jewish War, while the Gadarene philosopher Abnomos is described in the Talmud as having extensive knowledge of Jewish scripture: Edith M. Smallwood, The Jews Under Roman Rule: From Pompey to Diocletian, SJLA 20 (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 357; Menahem Luz, “Oenomaus and Talmudic Anecdote,” JSJ 23 (1992): 42–80, at 53–57. On Gadara in the Roman period see also Fitzgerald, “Gadara: Philodemus’ Native City.”
Ian Werrett, “Is Qumran a Library?” in The Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran and the Concept of a Library, 78–105, at 99–100.
Magness qualifies the features that Qumran shares with elite villas (such as the presence of a water system, courtyards, and dining rooms) as “too generic and utilitarian,” while in particular the “almost complete absence of interior decoration” would point to a different function for Qumran: The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, at 99. Full discussion on 90–104. See also the recent arguments put forward by Dennis Mizzi and Crawford: Dennis Mizzi, “From the Judaean Desert to the Great Sea: Qumran in a Mediterranean Context,” DSD 24 (2017): 378–406; Crawford, Scribes and Scrolls at Qumran, 215.
Magness, The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 1.
Houston determines the useful life of manuscript by considering their age “at the time the collections to which they belonged were thrown out or destroyed”; Houston, “Papyrological Evidence for Book Collections and Libraries,” 248. In this context ‘useful’ has a broad meaning: it does not have to signify that the manuscript was continuously read or studied, but rather that it was available within the collection.
Houston, “Papyrological Evidence for Book Collections and Libraries,” 248–251; Popović, “Qumran as Scroll Storehouse in Times of Crisis?” 562–564. It is possible that their useful life could have been even longer as it is unknown how long these manuscripts would have remained in use if the events of 68 and 79 CE had not taken place.
Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 13.83.
Popović, “Qumran as Scroll Storehouse in Times of Crisis?” 554.
Cf. section 8.3.
One potential explanation is that Roman public libraries were often prestige projects by the Roman elites intended to display power and to present Rome as an intellectual centre of scholarship. Dix goes even as far as proposing that Roman libraries “could have served as a kind of Roman counterpart to the Library of Congress, an official repository for a nation’s literary production.” It is possible that the specific presentation of Latin literature separate from works in Greek contributed to this objective. Dix, “ ‘Public Libraries’ at Rome: Ideology and Reality,” 289. See also the discussion in section 7.1.
Popović, “Multilingualism, Multiscripturalism, and Knowledge Transfer,” 49–57.
Lapin, “Dead Sea Scrolls and the Historiography of Ancient Judaism,” 126.
On the textual differences of On Rhetoric: Federica Nicolardi, “Beyond the Scribal Error: Clues on the History of Philodemus’ On Rhetoric, Book 1,” in Defining Authorship, Debating Authenticity Problems of Authority from Classical Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. Roberta Berardi, Martina Filosa, and Davide Massimo, BZA 385 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020), 139–149.
These eight are On Flattery (P.Herc. 222 and 1457), On the Gods (P.Herc. 26 and 1076), On Poems (P.Herc. 1425 and 1538). On Rhetoric, Book 2 (P.Herc. 1674 and 1672), On Rhetoric, Book 3, (P.Herc. 1506 and 1426), On Rhetoric, Book 4 (P.Herc. 220 and 1007 + 1673 + 224 + 1077a + 1114 + 1677a), Sketches of Epicureans (P.Herc. 239a + 1787 and 1418), On the Stoics (P.Herc. 155 and 339), History of the Academy (P.Herc. 1021 and 164): Houston, Inside Roman Libraries, 95.
Tiziano Dorandi, Nell’officina dei classici: Come lavoravano gli autori antichi (Rome: Carocci, 2007), 68–77. However, some caution is required here. We have seen that the scholarly community around Cicero is relatively well-documented in his letters, but this is less the case for Philodemus. We do not know if Philodemus similarly distributed drafts of his works among his friends.
Richard Janko, “New fragments of Epicurus, Metrodorus, Demetrius Laco, Philodemus, the Carmen de bello Actiaco and other texts in Oxonian Disegni of 1788–1792,” CErc 38 (2008): 5–95, at 82. On the variety in the quality of the Villa-papyri: Houston, Inside Roman Libraries, 105–111.
Popović, “Reading, Writing, and Memorizing Together,” 456–466.
See the discussion of the palaeography of 4Q509/4Q496/4Q506 in chapter three.
This was highlighted in a recent study on the Dead Sea Psalm scrolls by Drew Longacre. He observed “correlations between script, manuscript format, and textual contents” and subsequently argued for functional differences; Drew G. Longacre, “Paleographic Style and the Forms and Functions of the Dead Sea Psalm Scrolls: A Hand Fitting for the Occasion?” VT 72 (2022): 67–92.,
We could point to the Community Rule manuscripts 1QS and 4Q255 as another example. 4Q255 is part of the opisthograph 4Q433a/4Q255. I have proposed elsewhere to read this manuscript as a personal copy. There is no indication that 1QS was a personal copy as well. See section 2.3; Aksu, “Palaeographic and Codicological (Re)assessment.”
Longacre, “Paleographic Style and the Forms and Functions,” 16.
Zahn, Rethinking Rewritten Scripture, 12–14
Tov has provided a helpful table of scrolls that contain multiple works from the Hebrew Bible: Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches, 75. It should be noted that Tov’s table is limited to manuscripts that only consist of biblical works and not, for example, excerpts that are quoted in larger compositions, or collections of extracts (such as 4Q175).
4Q158 was published as ‘Biblical Paraphrase: Genesis, Exodus’ by Allegro in DJD 5:1–6. 4Q364–367 were published by Crawford as ‘Reworked Pentateuch’ in DJD 13:187–351.
Zahn, Rethinking Rewritten Scripture, 17–19.
See also the comments on this distinction by Crawford in “Review of Rethinking Rewritten Scripture: Composition and Exegesis in the 4QReworked Pentateuch Manuscripts by Molly M. Zahn,” DSD 20 (2013): 175–177.
This is one aspect in which the Qumran opisthograph differs from P.Herc. 1021: the extracts brought together on the Herculaneum opisthograph do seem to be written during the same period.
See section 6.2. Alternative history remains a speculative proposition, but my suggestion would be that if scholars would have encountered this opisthograph without the parallel scrolls for Festival Prayers, the War Scroll, and Words of the Luminaries, this is how the manuscript would have been read: as a liturgical collection that brings together different petitionary texts.
Intertextuality works simultaneously in different ways. The concept of ‘reverse intertextuality,’ might be useful to illustrate this. Selena Wisnom in her recent essay on intertextuality in Akkadian epic has coined this notion, which takes place “when an allusion in one text engages with an earlier text in a way that changes the way the earlier text is interpreted. That is, text B projects itself back onto text A to influence how we read text A.” It is possible that these processes are active in the opisthograph as well and that interpretations of 1QM are influenced by 4Q496 just as much as the other way around. Selena Wisnom, “Blood on the Wind and the Tablet of Destinies: Intertextuality in Anzû, Enūma eliš, and Erra and Išum,” JAOS 139 (2019): 269–286, at 279.