69 TEXTS AND VERSIONS Patrick W. Skehan George W. MacRae, S.J. Raymond E. Brown, S.S. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1 General: Flack, E.E., B.M. Metzger, et al., The Text, Canon, and Principal Versions of the Bible (Grand Rapids, 1956). Kenyon, F.G., Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts (rev. ed.; N.Y., 1958). Price, J.M., The Ancestry of Our English Bible (3rd ed.; N.Y., 1956). Reumann, J., The Romance of Bible Scripts and Scholars (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1965). Robinson, H.W., The Bible in its Ancient and English Versions (Oxford, 1940). "Bible IV: Texts and Versions," NCE 2, 414-91. 2 Old Testament: Ap-Thomas, D.R., A Primer of Old Testament Text Criticism (2nd ed.; Oxford, 1964). Bentzen, A., Introduction to the Old Testament (Copenhagen, 1948) 1, 42-101. Eissfeldt, OTI 669-721. Kahle, P.E., The Cairo Geniza (2nd ed.; Oxford, 1959). Noth, M., The Old Testament World (Phila., 1966) 301-63. Roberts, B.J., The Old Testament Text and Versions (Cardiff, 1951). Robertson, E., The Text of the Old Testament and the Methods of Textual Criticism (London, 1939). Wurthwein, E., The Text of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1957). 3 New Testament: Duplacy, J., O`u en est la critique textuelle du Nouveau Testament (Paris, 1959); "Bulletin de critique textuelle du Nouveau Testament," RSR 50 (1962) 242-63, 564-98, 51 (1963) 432-62; 53 (1965) 257-84. Greenlee, J.H., Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism (Grand Rapids, 1964). Gregory, C.R., The Canon and Text of the New Testament (N.Y., 1907). Lagrange, M,-J., Introduction `a l'`etude du Nouveau Testament: II. Critique Textuelle, 2, La critique rationelle (Paris, 1935). Lake, K., The Text of the New Testament (6th ed.; London, 1943). Metzger, B.M., Annotated Bibliography of the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (Studies and Documents 16; Copenhagen, 1955); Chapters in the History of New Testament Textual Criticism (NTTS 4; Leiden, 1963); The Text of the New Testament (N.Y., 1964). Souter, A., The Text and Canon of the New Testament (rev. ed.; Naperville, Ill., 1954). Taylor, V., The Text of the New Testament (London, 1961). Vaganay, L., An Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (London, 1937). Vogels, H.J., Handbuch der Textkritik des Neuen Testaments (2nd ed.; Bonn, 1955). V"o"obus, A., Early Versions of the New Testament (Stockholm, 1954). 4 English Bible: Baikie, J., The English Bible and Its Story (London, 1928). Bruce, F.F., The English Bible (Oxford, 1961). Butterworth, C.C., The Literary Lineage of the King James Bible 1340-1611 (Phila., 1941). McCormick Quarterly 19 (May 1966) - whole issue. May, H.G., Our English Bible in the Making (Phila., 1962). Moulton, W.F., The History of the English Bible (London, 1937). Pope, H., English Versions of the Bible (rev. ed.; London, 1952). Robertson, E.H., The New Translations of the Bible (London, 1959). Simms, P.M., The Bible in America (N.Y., 1936). Weigle, L.A., The English New Testament: From Tyndale to the Revised Standard Version (N.Y., 1949). For modern versions in various languages see The Cambridge History of the Bible - the West from the Reformation to the Present Day, ed. S.L. Greenslade (Cambridge, 1963). Bible Translator 12 (1961) 153-68 deals with the simplified-English versions. 5 OUTLINE Introduction (ss 6-9) Hebrew Text of the Old Testament (ss 10-51) (I) Texts of the Ancient Period (A) Format and Age of the Mss. (ss 13-14) (B) Qumran Mss. (ss 15-29) (a) Origins, Script, Orthography (ss 15-17) (b) Textual Characteristics (ss 18-29) (i) Historical Books (ss 21-22) (ii) Major Prophets (ss 23-24) (iii) Minor Prophets and Writings (ss 25-28) (iv) Deuterocanonical Books (ss 29) (C) Mss. from Masada and Other Areas (ss 30-32) (II) Texts from the Medieval Period (A) Samaritan Pentateuch (ss 33-34) (B) Origen's Second Column (ss 35) (C) Vocalized Medieval Mss. (ss 36-42) (a) Model Codices (ss 39-41) (b) Mss. with Divergent Vowel Systems (ss 42) (D) Cairo Geniza Mss. of Sirach (ss 43) (III) Editions from the Modern Period (A) Textus Receptus (ss 45) (B) Critical Editions (ss 46-48) (C) Compilations of Variants (ss 49-51) Greek Versions of the Old Testament (ss 52-79) (I) The Septuagint Before AD 100 (A) The Legendary Origin (ss 53) (B) Problem of Unified Origin (ss 54-55) (C) The Earliest LXX and Subsequent Revisions (ss 56-63) (a) The LXX in Alexandria (ss 58) (b) Earliest Palestinian Revision: "Proto-Lucian (ss 59) (c) Further Palestinian Revision: "Proto-Theodotion (ss 60- 61) (d) Other Indications of Early Revision (ss 62-63) (II) Later Renderings and the Work of Origen (A) Aquila (ss 65) (B) Symmachus (ss 66) (C) Theodotion (ss 67) (D) Origen's Hexapla (ss 68-71) (E) Lucian of Antioch (ss 72) (III) Manuscripts and Editions of the LXX (A) Manuscripts (ss 73-77) (a) Papyri (ss 75) (b) Great Uncial Codices (ss 76) (c) Minuscule Mss. (ss 77) (B) Printed Editions (ss 78-79) (a) Editions of Historical Import (ss 78) (b) Modern Critical Undertakings (ss 79) Other Ancient Versions of the Bible (ss 80-118) (I) Aramaic and Syriac Versions (A) The Aramaic Language (ss 80-81) (B) The Targums (ss 82-87) (a) Origins (ss 82-84) (b) Babylonian Targums (ss 85) (c) Palestinian Targums (ss 86-87) (C) Syriac Versions (ss 88-95) (a) Origins (ss 88) (b) Churches with a Tradition of Syriac (ss 89) (c) Bible Versions (i) Tatian's Diatessaron (ss 90) (ii) Old Syriac Bible (ss 91) (iii) Peshitta Bible (ss 92) (iv) Syro-hexaplar OT (ss 93) (v) Harclean NT (ss 94) (vi) Syro-Palestinian Bible (ss 95) (II) Latin Versions (A) Old Latin OT from the Greek (ss 97-99) (B) Latin Psalters (ss 100-103) (C) Vulgate OT from the Hebrew (ss 104-105) (D) Latin New Testament (ss 106-107) (a) Vulgate (ss 106) (b) Old Latin (ss 107) (E) Later History of the Vulgate (ss 108-111) (III) Coptic Versions (A) The Coptic Language (ss 112-113) (B) Coptic Old Testament (ss 114) (C) Coptic New Testament (ss 115-116) (IV) Other Oriental Versions (A) Ethiopic Version (ss 117) (B) Versions from Western Asia (ss 118) Greek Text of the New Testament (ss 119-150) (I) Problem of the Best Text (Criticism Before the 20th Century) (A) Great Uncial Codices (ss 120-122) (B) Textus Receptus (ss 123-124) (C) Differentiation of Textual Traditions (ss 125-132) (a) First Attempts (ss 126-129) (b) Westcott and Hort (ss 130-132) (II) Problem of the Earliest Text (Criticism in the 20th Century) (A) Revised Classification of Traditions (ss 134-140) (B) New Discoveries (ss 141-150) (a) Papyri (ss 142-143) (b) Early Versions (ss 144-146) (c) Patristic Citations (ss 147-150) The English Bible (ss 151-176) (I) Before Printing (ss 151-153) (II) Printed Bibles: Protestant (A) 16th-Century Translations (ss 155-159) (B) King James Tradition (ss 160-163) (C) New Translations (ss 164-166) (III) Printed Bibles: Catholic (A) From the Vulgate (ss 168-171) (B) From the Original Languages (ss 172-175) (IV) Printed Bibles: Jewish (ss 176) [footnote:] The last two sections, Greek Text of the New Testament and The English Bible (ss 119-176), were written by R.E. Brown; the subsection on Coptic Versions (ss 112-116) was written by G.W. MacRae; the rest was written by P.W. Skehan. INTRODUCTION 6 A detailed knowledge of how the books of the OT have been preserved and transmitted is more possible now than at any period since these inspired writings began - in pre-Christian times - to be collected into the groupings of "the Law, the Prophets and the other Books" (Foreword to Sir). This is in part because of unforeseen ms. discoveries (the "Dead Sea Scrolls" since 1947; various Gk papyri of early date, especially since 1920), in part because of intensive study now that the development of printing and photography has made exact reproductions of original sources easily available. 7 Knowledge of this history of transmission is important: (1) for a proper appreciation of the fidelity and care with which the piety of believers has surrounded these sacred books throughout their history, and of the substantial integrity of their text as we have it; (2) for an insight into the opportunities of, and the limitations or, those who translate and explain thes literature at first hand; and (3) as a foundation for understanding such questions of textual criticism as are bound to arise in texts with so long a period of recopying and of translation. This knowledge at the present time cannot be static; it needs to be full and clear enough to put into proper perspective recurrent claims regarding new advances in biblical study - claims sometimes valid, often fantastic. 8 The material to be described consists of our textual evidence for the original Hebr and Aram form of most OT books, for the Gk "Septuagint" or LXX translation of the OT (mostly pre-Christian, and including some books composed or chiefly preserved in Greek), and, finally, for other ancient versoins (Jewish Aramaic, Syriac, Latin, Coptic, etc.). The principal textual value of these last versions is their evidence as to underlying Hebr or Gk forms of early date. The Jewish Aram renderings (targums) pertain to the OT only; the other versions suppose complete bibles, and for convenience both the OT and NT translations into these languages will be described together. 9 As for the Gk NT, our knowledge of the way in which its books were preserved and transmitted reached a truly scientific stage at the end of the 19th cent., somewhat in advance of our knowledge og the OT situation. But here also there have been significant 20th-cent. discoveries, especially of early papyrus copies of NT books. Once again the early versions add important evidence, helpful in determining the type of Gk text from which they were translated. Thus in both Testaments the field of textual criticism is one that has made rapid progress in our times. HEBREW TEXT OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 10 No ms. actually written by the author or editor of any OT book is extant; all existing copies are the work of later scribes. Though Jewish tradition at all periods has placed a high value on faithfulness in transmitting both oral and written materials (see for this E.A. Speiser, IsrEJ 7 [1957] 201-16), the antiquity of a particular copy was of no special moment. This is illustrated by the practice of relegating to a geniza, or repository of discarded sacred texts, any mss. too worn for continued public use. In the case of the Cairo Geniza (--> 37 below) the practice has proved an accidental boon to scholarship, but this was in no way anticipated by those who stored the ms. materials it contained. 11 No OT book composed wholly or in part before the Babylonian Exile of the Jews (587-539 BC) has come down to us in even a fragment actually written in that period. Our earliest extant evidences are from Qumran cave 4 (--> Apocrypha, 68:68-69); and they represent the period ca. 250-175 BC. For several later OT books, fragmentary scrolls are now known that date to approximately 100 years after the composition of the book: thus for Eccl (4QQoh^a), Dn (4QDan^c), and Sir (the text from Masada). Not so long ago it would have been impossible to point with assurance to any OT Hebr ms. that came within 1000 years of the date of composition of the work it contained; the most ancient OT ms. that contains the date of its own preparation is the Cairo Prophets of AD 895 (--> 39 below). We shall now discuss the three main periods in the history of the transmission of the OT text, the ancient, the medieval, and the modern. Since we shall speak frequently of the Hebr text, it is perhaps worth noting that the limited portions of the OT transmitted in Aramaic share in all respects the history of the Hebr books of which they form a part. A frequent standard of reference will be the MT. This will be explained more fully below (--> 32, 37); for the moment we may say that the MT refers to the standardized consonantal Hebr text established about the end of the 1st cent. AD and transmitted with great fidelity into the medieval period. 12 (I) Texts of the Ancient Period (ca. 250 BC-AD 135). During this period it was not the practice to give any OT book a separate title or to add the name of its copyist and date. For the dating of the materials, therefore, apart from general archaeological considerations connected with their discovery, the science of Hebr paleography is necessary. Its results are an approximation; but for the periods of rapid development of the style of writing the results can be rather precise, and for the ancient period as a whole they yield relative certainty with a maximum leeway of about 50 years in difficult cases. The most significant single study is that of F.M. Cross, BANE 133-202. 13 (A) Format and Age of the Mss. The mss. known to us from this period have all been found since 1947 (except the Nash papyrus; --> 31 below). The writing is in columns, covering only one side of skins of leather or, very infrequently, of sheets of papyrus (by implication in Jer 36); these are ruled vertically and horizontally for the purpose with a dry point. No Hebr codex (i.e., a book with pages written on both sides) is known before the medieval period. The skins were stitched - the papyrus sheets were glued - together side by side to form scrolls. The complete Isaiah scroll from Qumran (1QIs^a) is an excellent example of this format; it consists of 17 strips of well-prepared leather sewn together into a scroll, 24.5 ft. long when unrolled and 10.2 in high. Its text is in 54 columns, with an intentional main division after col. 27, i.e., at the middle of the book (the end of ch. 33, of 66 chapters). The columns in this ms. average 30 lines of writing each; but the columns in other texts from this period have a range of from 9 to 65 or more lines. 14 At present over 190 OT mss. are known to us from this ancient period, recovered from various places in the Judean desert: the caves around Qumran, caves in the Wadi Murabba`at, caves in the Nahal Hever, and the fortress at Masada (--> Apocrypha, 68:106-110). Oldest are three mss. from Qumran cave 4, the community library of the Essenes. These, in the judgment of F.M. Cross, date as follows: 4QEx^f, ca. 250 BC; 4QSm^b, ca. 200 BC; and 4QJer^a, ca. 175 BC. On external grounds, the latest mss. at Qumran are not later than AD 68; those at Masada not later than AD 73; and those from the other sites (caves of Murabba`at and Hever) not later than AD 135. Manuscripts prior to the 1st cent. BC are rare; perhaps most Qumran mss. date from that century, with the 1st cent. AD also well represented. The 2nd-cent. AD mss. from Murabba`at occupy a place apart and will need to be described separately (--> 32 below). 15 (B) Qumran Mss. (a) ORIGINS, SCRIPTS, ORTHOGRAPHY. The wealth of ms. material from Qumran, including more than 100 fragmentary copies of OT books from cave 4 alone, shows an extraordinary variety in age, in format, in script, in orthography, and in the affiliations of the texts represented. Despite the clear evidence of a scriptorium at Qumran, it has yet to be shown that any single biblical ms. was copied there from another ms. also extant. The origins of the material are in most cases best explained by the communal ownership of property as provided in the rules of the group (--> Apocrypha, 68:94): They are chiefly mss. that their individual former owners brought along into the community's holdings. The age of these scroll fragments spreads over three full centuries: ca. 250 BC-AD 68. Dn and Kgs are known on papyrus, as is Tb, though the great bulk of the OT texts is on leather of varying thickness and quality. Some mss. have wide columns, some narrow, with the number of letters to a line ranging from about 15 to over 70; the variation in number of lines to the column has been mentioned above (-->13). 16 At least until the 1st cent. BC, two separate alphabets were in use: the archaic one now labeled "paleo-Hebrew," derived from the Canaanite alphabet employed since pre-exilic times; and various developing forms of the Jewish "Aramaic" script, familiar in its later stages as the square-letter alphabet of printed Hebr bibles. A few OT mss., and a scattering of nonbiblical ones, combine the two alphabets by normally employing the square-letter script, changing to the archaic letters either for the sacred name YHWH alone or for varying combinations of divine names. This practice does no seem to be older than Herodian times; it occurs also in the latest period of Qumran. Both these alphabets represent, of course, the standard 22-letter consonantal system of writing Hebrew. The spelling, however, in either script, may be a notable sparse one, with the weaker letters w, h, y, and aleph (') used to a very limited extent to represent vowels. It may, on the other hand, in either script be an expanded orthography in which, as in Syriac, every o or u vowel, however slight, is represented by a w in the consonantal text. The ends of the words may then offer an unexpected -h attached to pronoun suffixes, or an aleph to follow any word ending in i, o, or u. When first encountered in the complete Isaiah scroll, this expanded type of spelling was a notable puzzlement to scholars; but it is recognized now as an attempt in the last centuries BC to furnish fuller pronunciation guides than the standard orthography affords. Also it sometimes offers limited hints of a distinctive dialect in the speech of those who used it. 17 Neither script nor orthography seems to have much connection with the nature of the text being copied. The paleo-Hebrew script is used for 12 mss.; all the books of the Pentateuch are represented (Lv in 4 mss.), but so is Job; and there are some nonbiblical fragments in the same script. Of two texts of Ex in this archaic script, one is very close to the standard text, the other is in the "Samaritan" recension (--> 33-34 below) and has, sporadically, the expanded type of spelling. In the more usual Aram script we may speak of a conservative spelling in some mss., of an expanded one in others; but the same OT book may be represented both ways in texts that are otherwise closely akin. Final publication of all the material may show a trend to less careful copying in the mss. with expanded orthography; but this is by no means assured. 18 (b) TEXTUAL CHARACTERISTICS. Because the Qumran mss. here described do in fact open up an entirely new period in the history of the text, and because they have so far been published only in part, their systematic classification has yet to be attempted. In any case, they are quite fragmentary, to the point that when one of them provides as much as 10 per cent of the complete text of a biblical book, it is counted among the more substantial witnesses. As contrasted with the integral Masoretic and Samaritan texts known from the medieval period, and with the indirect evidence of the LXX, the Qumran mss. offer a sampling and a means of probing into the antecedents of these other witnesses rather than a separate basis for future editions of the text. The sampling, as has been said, is of extraordinary variety even textually. This does not mean that any large number of real variants (discounting scribal errors, harmonizations, etc.) have emerged in addition to those previously known. Rather, a great number of the alternative readings and expansions for which the medieval mss. in the MT tradition offer no counterpart (but which were already known from Gk or Samaritan sources) are here found intermingled with other texts very close indeed to the MT. Also, for the first time it becomes possible to verify in Hebr mss. what has always been known, both from the nature of the collection as such and from indirect LXX evidence: Each of the books of the OT has its own separate history of transmission. 19 Let us illustrate from the Qumran mss. how one important type of textual variant developed, namely explanatory expansions. Many a scribe copying OT texts during this ancient period felt free to embody in his text as he copied it the results of his study, whereas in modern times these interpolations would appear as footnotes or cross references. Thus in the oldest ms. we possess (4QEx^f), at Ex 40:17 we find the words "On the first day of the second year from their leaving Egypt, the Tabernacle was erected." The reference to "leaving Egypt" is not in the MT of this verse, though Ex 16:1 and 19:1 do contain it. Although the phrase is found not only in our oldest surviving copy from Qumran but also in the Samaritan and Greek texts, it must be evaluated as an expansion to make the wording clearer and more explicit. Similarly, in a Qumran ms. (4QDt^n), in the text of the Ten Commandments, the reaons for keeping the Sabbath day as given in the MT are expanded, for Dt 5:15 is followed by the insertion of a related passage (Ex 20:11) which has an added reason. Even the Samaritan text of Dt does not have this enlargement, although in the Gk tradition it turns up as an insertion into Dt 5:14 in the Codex Vaticanus only, not in any other ms. For a difficult phrase in Is 34:4 that has been translated "And all the hosts of heaven shall moulder away" (a phrase that was omitted by the earliest LXX translator) the scroll 1QIs^a supplies from Mi 1:4 the words "and the valleys split open," because the contexts are similar, and the Hebr letters of the former passage suggest, if anything, the latter. This type of copying does not indicate the text was regarded as any less sacred; the words used to fill out a particular passage are those of the Bible itself. This is, however, far from the rigid adherence to unalterable consonants of the standardized text, an adherence that became the universal rule shortly after AD 70. 20 Full evaluation of the texts from this ancient period requires that all of them be published, and this has not yet been done. As of now, the thousands of fragments of the community library from cave 4 have been sorted out, some significant results have been presented, and the material has been organized and photographed. A permanent system of reference for these mss. has been developed: For instance, 4QEx^f means that of the mss. from the 4th cave at Qumran, the 6th (f) copy of Ex is being referred to; if a text is on papyrus (pap), or is in the paleo-Hebrew script (paleo), or is a translation (LXX, targum), that fact will be included before the name of the biblical book, thus 4QpaleoEx^m for a ms. in the old script. The most suitable current approach to these materials would seem to be a provisional description of the state of the text at Qumran by books or groups of books, with individual mss. that are textually noteworthy mentioned in passing. 21 (i) Historical Books. The 15 fragmentary mss. of Gn found at Qumran show a comparatively uniform text. Readings that coincide with LXX materials do exist; but a high degree of standardization of the text of this book clearly antedates all our evidence. In Ex through Dt, on the other hand, there is great variation in the Qumran witnesses: sometimes very close to the MT, at other times including all the systematic expansions found in the "Samaritan" text, and again often showing agreement, regular or sporadic, with readings known from the Gk tradition, whether primitive LXX or "proto-Lucianic" (--> 59 below). Exodus exists in 15 mss., Lv in 9, Nm in 6, and Dt in 25. Notable is 4QpaleoEx^m, in the archaic script, from the early 2nd cent. BC, with extant portions of some 40 columns of text out of an original 57; it contains the repetitious expanded form known previously only from Samaritan sources. The text of 4QNm^b, with sizable portions preserved, agrees with the Samaritan text in a number of expansions, but quite frequently with the earliest strata of LXX texts against the MT, even where the Samaritan and the MT coincide. Among texts of Dt, interest has so far centered on a fragment (4QDt^q) that contains only the ending of the Song of Moses, Dt 32:37-43. This is arranged by lines or half-lines of its verse form, and is notable for its witness to LXX readings found in no Hebr source previously known. Discussion of this text has elicited the fact that readings of the same type are verifiable at Qumran in the early and central portions, as well as in the ending, of the Song (P. Skehan, BASOR 126 [1954] 12-15). In general, the Palestinian type of text for these books may be seen as an expanding, harmonizing type, distinct from the received MT, and showing in part a kinship with the "proto-Lucianic" reworking of the LXX. An interesting combination of elements is furnished by a Dt ms. (5Q1) dated by J.T. Milik early in the 2nd cent. BC. This has, so far as it is preserved, a text close to the MT, but about a century later it was "corrected" at four points on the basis of a Hebr text with LXX associations! 22 For Jos, Jgs, and Kgs, the Qumran mss. are comparatively limited in number and in the extent of their preserved text; two, three, and four mss. respectively exist for these books. Within this body of material there seems to be a definite kinship in all cases with LXX sources. For Sm, the mss. are exceptional both for the quantity of text preserved (in 4QSm^a, 1st cent. BC) and for the age of the earliest witness (4QSm^b, late 3rd cent. BC). There is a series of other witnesses that attest indirectly to the same general type of text found at Qumran (use of Sm by the Chronicler in the 4th cent. BC; LXX materials in two stages, 3rd-1st cents. BC; and Flavius Josephus, end of 1st cent. AD), and there are sharp differences between all these witnesses and the MT. The Qumran evidence for Sm is bound to occupy a unique place in text-critical study for the future, for it provides new insights into the complex problems of text transmission that have long been recognized as particularly acute in 1-2 Sm. 23 (ii) Major Prophets. There have been extensive discussions of the Qumran mss. of Is: Two substantial witnesses from cave 1 have been published: the complete scroll, described above (--> 13, 16) as to its format and the unusual orthography used in its second half, diverges in many respects from the MT. In the beginning it gave rise to rather inflated hopes of providing access to a hitherto unattainably early stage in the transmission of the book. Though interesting and instructive, the ms. is textually rather disappointing: secondary to the MT in most of the instances in which the two diverge, with no genuine kinship to the Hebr prototype of LXX Is. In its divergencies it is unique among the 18 Qumran mss. of Is, which otherwise combine to establish that the textual tradition of the book was already standardized by the 2nd cent. BC to a degree elsewhere observable only for Gn. If in the beginning 1QIs^a tended to be overrated, the same has been true for different reasons of 1QIs^b, which is habitually referred to as quite close to the MT. Sober enough in its spelling, 1QIs^b by no means comes close to the degree of faithfulness in transmitting the narrowly standardized text of Is that may be observed in any good medieval Hebr ms. of the book, and such qualities as it possesses have been appreciated rather by contrast to 1QIs^a than by any more exacting standard. 24 In Jer, of which Qumran provides four mss., the significant fact has been the appearance in one of these (4QJer^b) of the shorter edition of the book previously known only from the LXX. Taken in conjunction with the variety of texts observable at Qumran in Ex through Dt and in Sm, the divided evidence for Jer gives some support for a tentative hypothesis. It seems quite possible that the fuller, received text of Jer represents in the main a reworking, presumably in Palestine, of the short edition, which would then be the older; this reworking would have taken place according to the harmonizing, simplifying, and expansionist technique observable in the textual witnesses of the other books named, and seen at its fullest in the Samaritan Pentateuch. So far, nothing of note has emerged from the preliminary study of the six Qumran mss. of Ez; if the expansion hypothesis has any merit, it may perhaps be said that the whole tradition of Ez in Hebrew, Qumran included, presents us with an expanded and reworked edition of that prophet. (For the technique of expansion, --> 19 above.) 25 (iii) Minor Prophets and Writings. The evidence of the Qumran mss. for these books has not yet been fully explored. It is known that all parts of the Minor Prophets (including Hab 3) are represented among the eight mss. Where different books of the 12 Prophets are extant in the same ms., the Qumran evidence is for the MT order of the books, not that of the Gk Bible. In the Hab commentary from cave 1 (1QpHab; --> Apocrypha, 68:78), the lemmata, or citations of continuous text, do not always contain the same readings supposed by the discussion that follows them; this type of evidence for divergent texts is frequent enough in later materials in many languages. 26 Of the four mss. of Jb, one in the archaic script, and the two scrolls of Prv from which fragments survive, the text is close to the MT. The Jb targum from cave 11 (--> 83 below) witnesses to the standard MT arrangement of the chapters of that book, despite the problems of chs. 23-27 (--> Job, 31:83,90); only in the final ch. 42 does the Aramaic suggest a variant, shorter form of the Hebrew on which it was based. 27 There are some 30 mss. of Ps at Qumran, many of them very limited in the amount of text that survives. The most extensive is 11QPs^a, of the 1st cent. AD (published by J. A. Sanders, DJD 4). Its special interest is for the non-Psalm material that it combines with 40 canonical Pss. This includes two distinct compositions that have elsewhere been merged into the apocryphal Ps 151 preserved in the LXX; Sir 51:13-30 and 2 Sm 23:7ff; two hymns known earlier from Syr sources, now labeled Pss 154-155; three other late psalmlike texts previously unknown; and a prose passage crediting David with 4050 poetic works. There are slight indications that the compiler of these materials know the canonical order of the Psalter, though his own arrangement differs. A psalmlike "Apostrophe to Zion" found in 11QPs^a has again been identified by J. Starcky as one of three nonbiblical pieces in 4QPs^f along with at least three canonical Pss. For the rest, though the Pss are copied in irregular order in a number of mss., and though there are many variants, mostly inferior, our knowledge of the history of the biblical book will scarcely be increased to any notable degree by these texts. 28 Of Dn eight mss. are known. The transition from Hebrew into Aramaic and back into Hebrew occurs as in the MT; the portions of the Gk text of Dn that are not in the MT are not attested by, but rather excluded from, the Qumran evidence. The five "Megilloth" books of the Hebr canon (--> Canonicity, 67:23) are attested by the four mss. each of Ru, Ct, Lam, and two mss. of Eccl; only Est is missing. One may presume that the Qumran sectarians excluded Est on principle bocause it conflicted with their views about the religious calendar and was meaningful to their Hasmonean enemies (--> Apocrypha, 68:86). Of Ezr and Chr there is one ms. each, with a limited amount of text. 29 (iv) Deuterocanonical Books. Among these (--> Canonicity, 67:21) Bar is unattested, though a bit of the Letter of Jeremiah in Greek (Bar 6 in the Vg) was found in cave 7. Wis, Jdt, 1-2 Mc have not been found and would all be ill-matched with the Qumran community's interests. Four mss. of the original Aram text of Tb are known, and one in Hebrew. Their evidence supports the long form of the book in the Old Latin and in the Gk Codex Sinaiticus as primary. There are two witnesses of Sir at Qumran: some bits of Sir written stichometrically (by verse lines) in 2Q18, and and the alphabetic composition Sir 51:12-30 in 11QPs^a cols. 21-22 (see J. A. Sanders, "Cave 11 Surprises and the Question of the Canon," McCormick Quarterly 21 [1968] 284-98). Three Gk OT mss. from cave 4 will be discussed below (--> 56). 30 (C) Mss. from Masada and Other Areas. The Qumran materials enumerated are paralleled, for texts of the same period, by discoveries at Masada in 1963/64 (--> Apocrypha, 68:110). Most notable is the fragmentary scroll of Sir (Y. Yadin, The Ben Sira Scroll from Masada [Jerusalem, 1965]) containing parts of seven columns of text, two hemistichs to the line, from Sir 39:27 to 44:17. The ms. dates paleographically from early in the 1st cent. BC, and it shows already many of the recensional differences that appear in the medieval Hebr Sir mss. and in the versions (--> Sirach, 33:5). A copy of Ps 150 from Masada is said to come from the end of a ms. as the arrangement of the canonical Psalter would lead us to expect. Fragments of Pss 81-85, of Gn, and of Lv are also known from Masada. With these texts should be mentioned a 1st-cent. AD ms. of Ps from Nahal Hever (--> Apocrypha, 68:108) that shows some variants from the MT. 31 Not strictly a biblical ms., the Nash Papyrus from Egypt, ca. 150 BC, contains the Ten Commandments and Dt 6:1ff. The only ancient Hebr ms. known before the Qumran discoveries, it was published by S. A. Cook in 1903 (in Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch. 25, 34-56), but only in 1937 correctly dated to the Maccabean age by W. F. Albright (JBL 56, 145-76). Among the recent discoveries it has its counterpart in a number of phylacteries and mezuzas (miniature scrolls, the former to be worn on the person; the latter to be attached to the doorpost of a house) that contain excerpts from the Mosaic Books, though not always the exact excerpts specified by later Jewish regulations, and sometimes with variant readings in the text they do contain. 32 The last group of ancient mss. to be mentioned consists of five from the Wadi Murabba`at, all published, and five or six more from the Nahal Hever (--> Apocrypha, 68:106, 108), most unpublished. A Gk ms. of the Minor Prophets from the latter site is discussed with the LXX (--> 57, 60 below). Of a Hebr ms. of Gn, two (or three) mss. of Nm, and another of Dt from the same source it has been reliably stated that their text and script are similar to those of the Murabba`at mss. The Murabba`at mss. (published by P. Benoit and J. T. Milik, DJD 2) are: one ms. of Gn-Ex-Nm; Nm by another hand; Dt; Is and the Minor Prophets. The last named (Mur88) is by far the most extensive, containing text from 10 of the 12 Minor Prophets. It is in all respects in accord with the MT tradition, showing only three meaningful variants. The other mss. confirm that the stabilization of the Hebr text, traditionally associated with the Jewish school at Jabneh (Jamnia; --> Canonicity, 67:35) toward the end of the 1st cent. AD, was in full effect in these copies left to us by refugees of the Second Jewish Revolt in AD 132-35. By the 2nd cent, AD, therefore, the consonantal Hebr text had been fixed in the form in which it is still transmitted today. Before that, however, the Qumran (and, for Sir, Masada) evidences allow us insight into a period of relative fluidity of text, varying in degree from one OT book to another. Actually the Greek and Samaritan textual evidence, along with the indirect witness of NT, Philo, and Josephus, have always made it necessary to suppose such a situation. -- (Cross, F. M., Jr., The Ancient Library of Qumran [rev. ed.; Anchor Books; N.Y., 1961]; "The History of the Biblical Text in the Light of Discoveries in the Judaean Desert," HarvTR 57 [1964] 281-99. Eissfeldt, OTI 669-95, 778-83. Goshen-Gottstein, M. H., Text and Language in Bible and Qumran [Jerusalem, Israel, 1960]. Greenberg, M., "The Stabilization of the Text of the Hebrew Bible," JAOS 76 [1956] 157-67. Milik, J. T., Ten Years of Discovery in the Wilderness of Judaea [SBT 26; Naperville, Ill., 1959]. Orlinsky, H. M., "The Textual Criticism of the Old Testament," BANE 113-32. Sanders, J. A., "Pre-Masoretic Psalter Texts," CBQ 27 [1965] 114-23; "Palestinian Manuscripts 1947-1967," JBL 86 [1967] 431-40. Skehan, P. W., "Qumran and the Present State of Old Testament Text Studies: The Masoretic Text," JBL 78 [1959] 21-25; "The Biblical Scrolls from Qumran and the Text of the Old Testament," BA 28 [1965] 87-100; "The Scrolls and the Old Testament Text," McCormick Quarterly 21 (1968) 273-83. Textus: Annual for the Hebrew University Bible Project 1-5 [1960-66]. For QL, --> Apocrypha, 68:66.)