Qumran Grotte 4 (XVIII) Textes Hebreux (4Q521-4Q528, 4Q576-579)

Abstract

(ProQuest Information and Learning: Foreign thxt omitted) Qumran Grotte 4 (XVIII) Textes Hebreux (4Q521-4Q528, 4Q576-579), ed. .mile Puech. DID 25. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Pp. xviii + 259 + 16 plates. $105.00. Puech publishes here the Hebrew texts that he inherited from J. Starcky. In a brief introduction, he recounts the story of his early association with Starcky and how he came by the manuscripts, as the latter grew unable to continue his work. Puech also explains how he rearranged some of Starcky's manuscript assignments, making sure always to give Starcky due credit for his pioneering work with these difficult manuscripts. True to his reputation for meticulously describing the scrolls, Puech provides for each of those covered in this volume a physical description of the surviving material, a survey of the scroll's contents, and a discussion of the preserved and reconstructed columns and their sizes. He also treats the manuscript's paleography and date, its orthography, and, where necessary, marginal signs in the manuscript. The result for the patient reader is a remarkable familiarity with these scrolls' sheer physicality. And as usual, Puech's paleographical observations are unparalleled in their acuity. Several of the manuscripts included in this volume are so small as to defy classification, although that hardly deters Puech. 4Q526 is but a single fragment, yet Puech deems it likely to be the remains of a testament because it preserves in one line the words the Lord to my father, `You will not . . 7 (reading for ). Likewise, he deems the single-fragment manuscripts of 4Q527 and 4Q528, and the three-fragment 4Q579, to be liturgical works because of their peculiar language. 4Q576 is from Genesis because its two fragments bear words from Gen 34:7-10; 50:3. 4Q577, consisting of eight fragments that seem to reflect an account of the flood, is called a Texte mentionnant le deluge. And 4Q578, another single-fragment work, Puech thinks was a historical composition because it likely bears the name of Ptolemy in three of its four lines. From almost any other scrolls scholar such genre claims on the basis of so little evidence might seem imprudent, but from Puech, with his encyclopedic knowledge of the scrolls' language and contents, they attain credibility hardly possible otherwise. The real interest of this DJD volume, though, lies elsewhere. Five manuscripts, 4Q521-525, provide insight into the Qumran group's attitudes toward resurrection, biblical interpretation, and the Maccabees, as well as about the relationships between their texts and early Christian literature. In addition, one of these manuscripts deepens interest in the connections between the community's ideas and those of the Temple Scroll. Chiefly because it avoids using the divine name Puech thinks 4Q521, dubbed an Apocalypse messianique, is probably a sectarian scroll. Consisting of sixteen fragments, it touches on a variety of topics. But most interesting to the majority of readers are its messianism and references to resurrection. In frg. 2 ii + 4 it uses the word tIlon, which Puech says can either be read as a plural, messiahs, with a masculine singular possessive suffix, or as the singular with the same suffix. …