Subject: tc-list sam. pent.

From: Jim West <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 13:38:46 +0000

I am not a little amused that several of you seem to place such great weight
on the sam. pent.  Your main reason appears to be that it is, in a few
places, in harmony with the famed Qumran materials.

One problem.  If the Qumran caves were some sort of genizah, as has been
suggested (rightly so it seems to me)- then the texts there were there
BECAUSE they were found faulty or useless.

What we have then, if we support the sam. pent. with qumran, is genizah
material compared to tendentious scribalism.  Are we, then, any better off?

I realize that Qumran's texts are the darlings of hebrew Bible TC.  But in
all honesty it seems a little silly to me to suggest that they are somehow
so god awful superior to anything else.

I have nothing but respect for you folk- and am merely a general
practitioner among experts.  But it seems to me that the basis of scholarly
work is to question existing presuppositions.  Yet that doesn't seem to
happen much, does it?

Best,

Jim

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Jim West, ThD
Quartz Hill School of Theology

[email-masked]
http://web.infoave.net/~jwest

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From: Yuri Kuchinsky <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 14:17:38 -0500 (EST)

On Fri, 29 Jan 1999, Jim West wrote:

> I am not a little amused that several of you seem to place such great
> weight on the sam. pent.  Your main reason appears to be that it is,
> in a few places, in harmony with the famed Qumran materials.
> 
> One problem.  If the Qumran caves were some sort of genizah, as has
> been suggested (rightly so it seems to me)- then the texts there were
> there BECAUSE they were found faulty or useless.

But, Jim, this was not why mss were put away in a genizah.

> I realize that Qumran's texts are the darlings of hebrew Bible TC.  

That's because they are the earliest OT mss we have. Do you usually tend
to prefer later mss to earlier ones?

> But in all honesty it seems a little silly to me to suggest that they
> are somehow so god awful superior to anything else.

I'm puzzled by your attitude, Jim.

> practitioner among experts.  But it seems to me that the basis of
> scholarly work is to question existing presuppositions.  Yet that
> doesn't seem to happen much, does it?

But Jim, you seem to be doing the opposite of what you preach. Because you
seem to be accepting existing and widely accepted presupposition that Sam.
Pent. is unreliable.

Best wishes,

Yuri. 
                                                         
Yuri Kuchinsky || Toronto
                                
http://www.trends.net/~yuku/bbl/bbl.htm                  
                                                         
The goal proposed by Cynic philosophy is apathy, which is
equivalent to becoming God -=O=- Julian

---

From: M A Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 23:44:39 EST

>been suggested (rightly so it seems to me)- then the texts there were
there
>BECAUSE they were found faulty or useless.

A peculiar comment,  sounding much like the now-discredited claims of
Burgon that the old uncials Aleph, B, C, D survived _because_ they were
considered faulty and thus were not used as much as all those other
"good" MSS which are now non-extant due to having  "worn out" from
constant use. 

What I find amusing is that West applies this argument to the "early" and
"minority" Qumran texts, yet would never imitate Burgon in claiming
anything similar in regard to the "early" and "minority" Greek texts of
the NT (not that I would advocate such -- it just seems to me
contradictory to see West making this argument).

In any case, a genizah more frequently would be a receptacle for worn-out
"good" texts and not merely a trashcan for aberrant or faulty texts. If
the Qumran site in fact were a genizah as opposed to a mere hiding place
(and this is hardly certain), then the possibilities would include that
these texts were considered "good" and not necessarily  "faulty' by any
means.  

==============================================================
Maurice A. Robinson, Ph. D.
Professor of Greek and New Testament
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
Wake Forest, North Carolina, USA