Tue Jan 30 00:42:06 1996

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Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 00:39:29 -0500 (EST)
From: Andrew  Gross 
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Subject: Re: Isaiah 7:11
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On Mon, 29 Jan 1996, Jim Deardorff wrote:

> On Mon, 29 Jan 1996, MR. DAVE FOUTS wrote:
> 
> > I trust you'll forgive a TC discussion from the Old Testament.  

I hope OT textual critcism is not off-limits here?  ;)


> > Recently, on another listserv (either B-Hebrew or ANE), another 
> > individual was requesting input on Isa. 7:11, wherein the great 
> > Isaiah scroll reads m'm or m'b rather than the MT's m > I know of no other manuscript with this reading, and think that 
> > though the Isaiah scroll's reading of from the mother of or from the 
> > father of (YHWH) is far more difficult, the context nowhere in the 
> > passage nor in Scripture refers to a mother or father of YHWH.
> > Any input?
> 
> Were you referring to Is 7:14 here, Dave, rather than 7:11?  (Since I 
> don't read Hebrew I need to ask, also since my RSV Bible gives no hint 
> that any "mother of YHVH" or "father of JHVH" enters in anywhere.)

The reading "mother of" is the variant in the Qumran scroll, and that is 
why you don't see it in the RSV.

As for the original question, perhaps the laryngeals had weakened so much 
at this stage of Hebrew that the scribe sometimes substituted alef for 
ayin.  Because the Qumran reading is so difficult and unattested 
elsewhere, it could easily just be dismissed.  My suggestion -- and I 
know he'll have something to say about the weaening of laryngeals -- is 
to check out E. Y. Kutscher's massive monograph on the Isaiah Scroll and 
see what he has to say about this variant.

I believe it is called _The Language of the Isaiah Scroll_ and was 
published by Brill.

 
> But perhaps you or another on the list can fill in some background for me 
> on the entire passage.  Who is it that is speaking in Is 7:13-17 on?  The 
> RSV English makes it seem as if it is Ahaz still speaking at this point, 
> because 7:13 starts out "And he said," and if it had been Isaiah himself 
> speaking, it should have read, "And I said..."  Yet I feel it must have 
> been Isaiah, the prophet, speaking there!  

D. Winton Thomas actually suggested the emendation to "And I said...".  
The NJPS translation keeps the 3rd person singular subject -- with Isaiah 
as the speaker -- and assumes that Isaiah's name was simply elided.  I 
think this is a reasonable way to understand this passage.



andrew gross

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