Subject: tc-list RE: the Isaiah scroll

From: Curt Niccum <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1998 08:35:30 -0500

The great Isaiah scroll (1QIsa-a) is reasonably similar to the MT. The
first half of the scroll (chs. 1-32) is slightly closer to the MT than
the second half. The scribe employed two scrolls for Isaiah. The second
had a fuller orthography and was apparently defective in places which
accounts for most of the variations from the MT in chs. 33-66. (By the
way, 1QIsa-b is very similar, indeed almost identical to the MT.) As for
the orthography of lw), the Dead Sea Scrolls (even 1QIsa-a) can not be
used to solve the issue of which "lo" was meant by an author (or
editor). lw) can represent any of the following: lw, l), lw), lh, l)h.
This is not only an issue of "Qumran orthography" (the existence of
which I doubt). The same fluctuation in spellings occurs in the MT as
well. Having been educated with grammars which by necessity had to
impose classifications on word usage, it becomes second nature to assume
lw (as a spelling in a ms) always means lw (as a definition in
Brown-Driver-Briggs). This can be misleading. The orthography and
morphology of Hebrew was much too fluid during the time that the
biblical text took its shape.

Curt Niccum

	-----Original Message-----
	From:	Steven Carr [SMTP:[email-masked]]
	Sent:	Wednesday, September 02, 1998 12:31 AM
	To:	[email-masked]
	Subject:	Re: tc-list "not" in Isaiah 9:3

	In message <[email-masked]>, Jack Kilmon
	<[email-masked]> writes
	>The Great Isaiah Scroll 1QIsa shows lw) (lamed waw alef).  I
have
	>cropped a JPG of the text and will be glad to attach it to a
post
	>if you, or Dr. Minton, is interested.

	Is this DSS Isaiah Scroll very similar, or reasonably similar,
or quite
	different from the later MT text?