Thu Feb 13 15:07:25 1997

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Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 15:07:24 -0500 (EST)
From: "James R. Adair" 
To: tc-list@shemesh.scholar.emory.edu
Subject: Re: professional scribes
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On Wed, 12 Feb 1997, Lewis Reich wrote:

> On 12 Feb 97 at 10:31, James R. Adair wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 11 Feb 1997, Lewis Reich wrote:
> 
> > > Isn't the question of the variety of versions of the the text at that 
> > > point a different question from whether the different versions were 
> > > being accurately reproduced and transmitted?
> 
> > One question that Tov's analysis of the Qumran material raises is, When
> > did the meticulous attention to detail that characterized the Masoretes'
> > work with the text begin?  Since there are so many different forms of the
> > Hebrew text present at Qumran, I think we can at least say that extreme
> > attention to detail did not characterize the transmission of the entirety
> > of the Hebrew ms tradition during or slightly before the first century
> > C.E. 
> 
> I'm not convinced that a variety of forms necessarily means that 
> transmission was inaccurate at that time.  It could mean that 
> different versions had been accurately transmitted, could it not?

It is certainly conceivable that a variety of versions of the Hebrew text
were being transmitted with extreme (i.e., Masoretic) accuracy in the
first century and that all of the variants arose before that time.  If it
were the case that only two or three different forms of the text had been
found at Qumran and that numerous almost identical examples of each of
these forms were extant, I would think that you could argue that each of
the variant forms was being transmitted with extreme accuracy at that
time.  However, Tov identifies five different text-types (my term, not
his), including a proto-Masoretic text-type, but I don't think that the
manuscripts within any single text-type agree with one another--or with
the medieval MT--to the same degree that Masoretic manuscripts tend to
agree with one another.  This evidence suggests (to me at least) that
concern with extremely accurate transmission of the text began somewhat
later than the time that the Qumran scrolls were written.

Jimmy Adair
Manager of Information Technology Services, Scholars Press
    and
Managing Editor of TELA, the Scholars Press World Wide Web Site
---------------> http://scholar.cc.emory.edu <-----------------

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