TH6317 The Interpretation of the History of Israel

Dead Sea Scrolls

Writing

Plan to draft a section a week for March 21, 28, and April 4.

Prepare

Selections from Qumran Psalm Scrolls (HTML) [0:09]
Buster, “Historical Summary in the Qumran Psalms Scrolls,” in Remembering the Story of Israel, pp. 199-249. [2:33]
Buster, “Words of the Luminaries: History as Liturgy, Conclusion,” in Remembering the Story of Israel, pp. 294-299. [0:18]

Dead Sea Scrolls

Dead Sea from satellite — The Dead Sea from Satellite

Dead Sea shore — The shore of the Dead Sea

11Q5-col18 — 11QPs^a col. 18 infrared (1961)

Image of 11QPs^a columns 20-24 (LINK)
Image of 11QPs^a column 18 infrared 1961 (LINK)

Citation of Dead Sea Scrolls

11QPs^a XVIII, 1–16
Found at the site Qumran
Cave 11
The manuscript containing Psalms, or alternatively the number (in this case 5)
If there is more than one manuscript in the cave with similar contents, a superscript letter is added to differentiate them
Some manuscripts are broken into multiple fragments, which can be numbered or lettered
Column 18 (XVIII)
Lines 1-16
Verse numbers are only used when numbers have already been given to the text, in this case Psalm 154

Textual Discoveries from Qumran and other Dead Sea Scrolls

Biblical scrolls
Hebrew and Aramaic versions of texts otherwise preserved by Christians in other languages (Jubilees, 1 Enoch)
Sectarian compositions (Community Rule, Thanksgiving Hymns)
Other previously unknown compositions (Copper Scroll)

Textual Criticism and Textual History

Textual criticism usually refers to the effort to recover the earliest text by identifying mistakes or corruptions in the available manuscripts.

Textual history usually refers to the study of the ways that textual traditions develop over time without negative judgment of the later results.

Types of variants

Interpretive variants
Oral/aural variants
Graphic variants
Memory variants

Psalm 154

Context of reflection on historical psalms

Relationship to animal sacrifice

Group identity

Media studies

Additional points from Buster

Words of the Luminaries

Liturgical time and the history of Israel

Group identity identified with highlights of the past

Group identity disassociated with failures of the past