The Community Rule: A Critical Edition with Translation by Sarianna Metso

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Community Rule: A Critical Edition with Translation by Sarianna Metso James M. Tucker sarianna metso, The Community Rule: A Critical Edition with Translation (EJL 51; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2019). Pp. x + 60. $49. In this volume, Sarianna Metso provides a new critical edition of the Qumran Community Rule manuscripts. Under the rubric of the Community Rule, the author includes fourteen manuscripts: 1QS, 1Q29a, 4QpapSa, 4QSb, 4QpapSc, 4QSd, 4QSe, 4QSf, 4QSg, 4QSh, 4QSi, 4QSj, 5QS, and 11QFragment related to Serekh ha-Yaḥad. In addition to new transcriptions of these manuscripts and fragmentary remains, M. provides a textual apparatus, textual notes, and an English translation. The presentation of the manuscripts takes as its starting point the editorial methods of the Hebrew Bible Critical Edition series (HBCE). The volume contains an introduction, bibliography, and Hebrew text with English translation. In the introduction, M. introduces her editorial method and offers a brief history of the discovery and a physical description of the Community Rule manuscripts; theoretical and methodological considerations; and the layout of the volume. As part of a rationale for a new edition, M. draws from the editorial method of the Hebrew Bible Critical Edition series (general editor Ronald Hendel, 2016). She clearly articulates her objective, namely, “to present an archetype” of the Community Rule. An “archetype” is “the latest attainable version of the text behind the existing manuscripts witnesses” (p. 1). The application of the word “critical” modifies the textual presentation, insofar as the Hebrew text is not extant in any single Community Rule manuscript. The reader, however, should be aware that there are equally valid editorial methods apart from the HBCE editorial principles. There have been significant developments, for example, in the fields of digital humanities, scholarly digital editions, and material philology that present significant challenges to the binaries made between a diplomatic text and critical text presentation. Tara L. Andrews, in her essay, “The Third Way: Philology and Critical Edition in the Digital Era” (Journal of the European Society for Textual Scholarship 10 [2013] 61–76) highlights how a digital medium circumvents the type of editorial decisions of the traditional methods of an archetype theory (e.g., HBCE) or diplomatic theory (BHS, Biblia Hebraica Quinta, or the Hebrew University Bible Project). In other words, many of the editorial decisions discussed by M. are reflective of the medium of a print edition—along with its limitations. According to the author, the apparatus helps the reader to see the development of the [End Page 128] text, since scribes creatively contributed to the development of the tradition. For M., the manuscript of “1QS alone makes it clear that its text is an amalgamation of disparate passages most likely originating from a variety of sources” (p. 2). The Cave 4, 5, and 11 fragmentary manuscripts further attest to a heterogeneous character of the tradition. In addition to manuscript variants, the apparatus contains brief notes on paleographical issues and/or differences of transcriptions in contrast to the author’s previous work; Elisha Qimron’s editions (The Scrolls of the Judaean Desert [Hebrew] [Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 2010]), and Phillip Alexander and Geza Vermes’s edition of the Cave 4 and 5 manuscripts in Qumran Cave 4.XIX: Serekh Ha-Yaḥad and Two Related Texts (DJD 26; Oxford: Clarendon, 1998). Under the heading of “Theoretical and Methodological Considerations,” M. alerts the reader to some lingering issues pertaining to how previous editors classified some of the Cave 1, 4, and 5 manuscripts (pp. 6–7). The issues revolve around the fragmentary nature of the manuscripts, appropriation of scholarly categories, and matters of presenting the Hebrew text of the Community Rule. Since some of the Cave 4 and 5 manuscripts present “variant editions” (p. 7), M. decided to present the Hebrew text and translation in a column format (see, e.g., pp. 26–37, 42–53). The two-column format presents 1QS adjacent to 4QSb and 4QSd, albeit with a single apparatus for both columns. In addition to an apparatus, M. provides a summary of the extant manuscripts just above the apparatus. The summary provides a list of the extant...