The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible

by Ulrich, Eugene

• ISBN13: 9780802846112
• ISBN10: 0802846114
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-06-01
• Publisher: Eerdmans Pub Co

Summary

The Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran provide the oldest, best, and most direct witness we have to the origins of the Hebrew Bible. Prior to the discovery of the Scrolls, scholars had textual evidence for only a single, late period in the history of the biblical text, leading them to believe that the text was uniform. The Scrolls, however, provide documentary evidence a thousand years older than all previously known Hebrew manuscripts and reveal a period of pluriformity in the biblical text prior to the stage of uniformity. In this important collection of studies, copublished by Eerdmans and Brill, one of the world's foremost experts on the Dead Sea Scrolls outlines a comprehensive theory that reconstructs the complex development of the ancient texts that eventually came to form the Old Testament. Eugene Ulrich, who has examined all the texts closely, is the pioneer of the "multiple literary editions" theory that is replacing older views of the origins of the Bible. His work in this volume represents the leading edge of research in the exciting field of Scrolls studies.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix	(5)
Abbreviations and Sigla	xiv
PART 1 THE SCROLLS AND THE HEBREW BIBLE	3	(162)
1. The Community of Israel and the Composition of the Scriptures	3	(14)
2. The Bible in the Making: The Scriptures at Qumran	17	(17)
3. Double Literary Editions of Biblical Narratives and Reflections on Determining the Form to Be Translated	34	(17)
4. The Canonical Process, Textual Criticism, and Latter Stages in the Composition of the Bible	51	(28)
5. Pluriformity in the Biblical Text, Text Groups, and Questions of Canon	79	(20)
6. Multiple Literary Editions: Reflections Toward a Theory of the History of the Biblical Text	99	(22)
7. The Palaeo-Hebrew Biblical Manuscripts from Qumran Cave 4	121	(27)
8. Orthography and Text in 4QDan^(a) and 4QDan^(b) and in the Received Masoretic Text	148	(17)
PART 2 THE SCROLLS, THE SEPTUAGINT, AND THE OLD LATIN	165	(125)
9. The Septuagint Manuscripts from Qumran: A Reappraisal of Their Value	165	(19)
10. Josephus's Biblical Text for the Books of Samuel	184	(18)
11. Origen's Old Testament Text: The Transmission History of the Septuagint to the Third Century C.E.	202	(22)
12. The Relevance of the Dead Sea Scrolls for Hexaplaric Studies	224	(9)
13. The Old Latin Translation of the LXX and the Hebrew Scrolls from Qumran	233	(42)
14. Characteristics and Limitations of the Old Latin Translation of the Septuagint	275	(15)
Acknowledgments	290	(2)
Index of Modern Authors	292	(6)
Index of Ancient Literature	298