Editing the Dead Sea Scrolls: What Should We Edit and How Should We Do It?

Eibert Tigchelaar / Copenhagen, April 5, 2014

I.
In the 1990s the American classicist Glenn Most organized a series of conferences in
Heidelberg in which the participants reflected upon key elements of classical history of
philology in the light of new tendencies in the humanities and philology. The conference
resulted in 6 volumes in the series Aporemata: Kritische Studien zur Philologiegeschichte. In a
sense, the sequence of the conferences reflects the different stages in classical philology, as
seen by Most: collecting fragments, editing texts, commentaries, historicizing, and disciplining
classics. Each of these volumes were concluded by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, literary theorist
at Stanford University.
The important thing is that Most initiated in the field of classicists a reflection on their
own history of philology. And that too, reflection on the kinds of philology that inform and
determine our editing and scholarly research, has been a major contribution of this
conference. I have heard great papers, from many different perspectives, that all commented
on different perspectives on the project of editing or interpreting manuscript, in conversation
with what has been called new, material, or artefactual philology. Especially on the first day,
there were no less than four papers (by George Brooke, Michael Langlois, Trine Hasselbalch,
and Kipp Davis) that touched upon issues that I had wanted to discuss in my paper. George
discussed the principles that have governed previous editions, something I had thought to do
myself, Michael presented in a very sophisticated way the different steps of a what one might
call a philology of fragments, Trine covered several questions I had wanted to discuss, for
example on the reason why scrolls scholars did not use Karl Lachmann, and Kipp
appropriated and superbly illustrated my own thesis that manuscripts are scholarly
constructs, and en passant reviewed Elisha Qimrons editions. These four scholars taken
together covered a large part of my own envisaged contribution, sometimes even into details.

Fortunately, the other papers of Thursday and Friday, most of them more specific, covered
other grounds, all interesting, leaving some possibilities for reflections of a general nature.

II.
One of the problems we continuously run into is the terminology we use, and how we define
it. This goes, for example, for the term philology, which some of us clearly use in a different
way than others. Here, however, I am concerned with our use of terms like fragment,
manuscript, scroll, text, work, composition, and even cluster or constellation. In classical
philology, fragment may refer to a unit of text, often preserved through a later compiler,
from an older, but now lost work. See, e.g., the large project of Fragmente Griechischen
Historiker. Alternatively, it may refer to a physical fragment, remnant of a once larger physical
unit, often characterized by damged edges, words that are broken off, etc. Though scrolls
scholars are largely used to the last meaning, Hindy Najman used it in the first meaning,
impicitly raising the question how on a more basic level scholars interpret fragments.
With manuscripts, things are even more problematic. One might call every discrete
piece with writing a manuscript, in which case every written fragment is also a manuscript.
More usually, however, the word manuscript is used to refer to the larger whole from which
these fragments survive. The manuscript is lost, with the exception of one or more fragments.
Thirdly, the word manuscript is often used to refer to the total of all the fragments that are
believed to originate from that lost whole. Finally, it refers to the tentative scholarly
reconstruction of that original whole on the basis of the available evidence. Whereas its first
meaning (literally something written) is discrete, the other three meanings are in different
degrees scholarly constructions. Throughout all our work it is important to recognize this, also
when it comes to material philology. We all know that the assignment of many fragments to
specific manuscripts is uncertain in various degrees. This means that if a scientist states
something about a manuscript, e.g., with regard to the Zurich or Tucson C14 datings, we really
need to know which fragment has been tested. For example, was it one of the 4QEnocha
fragments which Michael believes do not really come from 4Q201? Or, to give an very common

example: if we make literary arguments about a manuscript consisting of different fragments,

whether that really is correct. Or, another one, were there really nine different 4QSa Cryptic A
manuscripts , as claimed by Stephen Pfann, and sometimes simply accepted by other
scholars?
From a theoretical and practical perspective, the concept of a work or composition
(often simply called text by many colleagues) or even book, is equally problematic. There
often are no clear textual boundaries, where texts are rewritten, expanded or excerpted, or
arranged in different orders or collections. The clearest example given in this conference by
Kipp are the 4QM manuscripts, but in other degrees the same holds true for most other works,
often with what one might call variant literary editions. Because of the different textual forms
and combinations of such texts, one might refer perhaps to clusters, as David Hamidovic has
suggested, though he has not spelled out what he would include in such a cluster and why. For
example, to what extent should one include not only the various S manuscripts, but also
4Q275 and 4Q279, already included in DJD 26 as various texts, or also 5Q13, or 1Q29a, as well as
other so-called manuscripts.

III.
A differentiation between fragment, manuscript, and work, is important for the discussion
what we want to edit, and how. But how does that relate to what has been called old or
Lachmannian philology, versus new, material or artefactual philology? For an
assessment, it is important not only to refer to a method, and the result of the application of
the method, but also to the suppositions, theoretical views and the aims that gave rise to those
methods. In Lachmanns case, but also in the case of most classical philologists, the
supposition is that works are the product of authors, the text of which gradually deterioriated
through scribal errors in the coure of transmission. Lachmanns aim was to reconstruct on the
basis of the manuscript evidence a stage of the text of the composition that preceded all the
preserved witnesses. His method was one of recension and stemmata. Lachmann introduced

his scientific method in order to replace earlier textual editing where editors on the basis of
their aesthetic feeling of the text corrected and emended texts.
As Trine has indicated, Lachmanns method has never been used in Dead Sea Scrolls
for a variety of reasons, not the least because there simply was not enough material to apply
this method. It seems, however, that in medieval studies and in Scrolls studies not primarily
the method, but rather the suppositions and aims are criticized. First, the supposition that in
these fields texts are unique works of genius authors, which afterwards only deteriorate
through the hands of scribes. In contrast, medievalists and many scrolls scholars see these
scribes who change texts as continuating the author-role. Therefore, the aim that one should
retrieve the original work has become irrelevant.
One might argue that in some respects scrolls scholars were material or even
artefactual philologists avant la lettre. Because of the fragmentary nature of the manuscripts
and texts, the first aim was to join fragments, and edit manuscripts. Because of the paucity of
the material, the establishment of a critical text was not only difficult, but also unnecessary. At
the same time, at an early stage editors already realized that attention for artefactual details
would facilitate the construction of manuscripts. This already started with Jzef Milik and
John Strugnell, was further developed by Hartmut Stegemann, and, culminated in the work of
EmanuelTov.
Interestingly, however, in many cases concern for the artefact was a tool, not an aim.
This is clear from the treatment of biblical manuscripts, where most editions simply arranged
the remaining fragments in the order of the biblical text, and were more interested in variant
readings and the like than in the physical characteristics of the manuscript. It also appears
from the fact that the Stegemann method has hardly been applied to (one might also says
tested on) biblical manuscripts. It took more than fifteen years before a Gttingen PhD
student (Eva Jain) worked on the biblical scrolls. In contrast, the last decade has shown how a
material philology shed new light on such so-called biblical manuscripts. Ironically, such a
material philology is only possible because we can compare the text of the fragments to that
of the Masoretic text. If we hadnt known the MT we could not have known that some texts

were excerpts, or only covered half of a book, etcetera. It therefore comes as no surprise that
most of the detailed discussions of this conference concern biblical scrolls, or texts connected
to the few otherwise largely known texts, like S and H. (The only exception is Kipps
presentation on the Apocryphon of Jeremiah C.)

IV.
Things are much more difficult in the case of fragmentary manuscripts of hitherto unknown
texts, such as the Apocryphon of Jeremiah C, 4QInstruction, or many other texts of which we
have even less fragments. Sometimes they might with varying degrees of plausibility be
reconstructed with the Stegemann method. Sometimes, the existence of multiple partially
overlapping copies enables one to reconstruct a larger text than that of any of the individual
fragmentary manuscripts. I want to make some comments on the editing of such cases, which
actually constitute a large amount of the manuscripts.
My thesis is that in such cases we need to construct the text of a work, for different
practical reasons. One very pragmatic reason is that we have to translate our work to other
scholars in neighboring fields. We cannot simply transcribe four, six, or eight, fragmentary
manuscripts, and then leave it to, for example a biblical scholar to independently construct
the text of MMT, the Vision of Amram, or of Barkhi Nafshi. Qimron has understood that
necessity, though there are some problems with his concrete project. Another reason is that
the construction of the text of the work is heuristic with respect to the text and construction
of the individual manuscripts. All of us, who have gone through the painstaking work of
constructing one text out of fragments of different manuscripts, and then apply again the
resulting text to the individual manuscripts, will have experienced both the likelihoods and
the problems of readings and constructions, as well as the physical relationship between the
fragments. It will also illustrate more clearly the degree of variance between the manuscripts.
This is a typical case, very common in the scrolls, where neither Lachmannian textual
editing not material philology are directly helpful, and in some cases perhaps even
counterproductive. We can only appreciate the variance or mouvance between manuscripts,

if we create the text of a work to which these manuscripts are related, even if the resulting text
never existed in that form.
Often, I admire my colleagues who are dealing with texts existing in tens or hundreds
of copies, who patiently collate these manuscripts, discern the recensions, and sometimes
even textually edit them. For example, my former colleague David Levenson working on
hundreds of manuscripts of the Latin Josephus. In contrast, a mere transcription and physical
description of some Dead Sea scrolls fragments, seems an easy task. However, as several here
can affirm, the careful construction of a text as part of a work, demands both many technical
skills, and the ability of imagination, built both on the knowledge of the textual world and on
knowledge of the materiality of the scrolls one is working with. The latter is, as Kipp stated,
and has been noted with respecy to Qimrons treatment of the War Scroll, one of the
shortcomings of Qimrons edition. Though exemplary in constructing literary texts from
fragmentary manuscripts, on the basis of excellent paleographical and grammatical skills, and
a thorough background in biblical, scrolls, and rabbinic literature, he sometimes overlooks or
disregards physical clues in the manuscripts.

V.
I want to go back to my initial question.
What should we edit and how should we do it? The question what should one edit ofen
pertains to the economy and the sociology of scholarly fields. In many fields there is a surplus
of not yet edited texts, and a scarcity of means or competent editors. The choice what one
should edit immediately pertains to the position of the field within the humanities and
academia. In Scrolls studies the situation seems the reverse, a scarcity of material and a
surplus of willing scrolls scholars, so that we do not need to make choices and can even write
notes on the smallest newly found fragments. Nonetheless, the question what one should
edit may still be asked. At the moment there are still difficult scrolls that are still awaiting a
first transcription. See, for example, 4Q147 and 4Q148, in a difficult cursive script, which even
Milik left untranscribed, but which deserve a new try, given the great photographs that are

now available. See also the hundreds of small Cryptic A manuscripts, which Jonathan Ben-Dov
is now dealing with. And, as you know, it is many of the early DJD volumes that need a reedition.
However, my question, what should one edit, also refers to something different.
Michael basically argued for an edition of fragments, and traditionally the DJD series has
published manuscripts. This, of course, seems to be what a Material philology should aim to
do. I, however, tender, that we should also create editions of works, in some ways like, in other
ways differently from Qimron. This would seem to be contrary to the Material Philology, and
back to some form of old philology. It might also be contrary to what Michael has proposed.
So what kind of objections might one raise against this project.
1. Given the fact that variance between manuscripts is almost the default, it is
impossible, or at least not preferable to present one specific text.
2. Such a text would be arteficial, not attested in any concrete manuscript.
3. It would be the product of editorial of scholarly imagination or interpretation.
One might caution that such a project would be very much Milik-like, who combined brilliant
insights with just as many problematic suggestions, and who even (in his suggestions, not in
his editions), argued that specific manuscripts were parts of one work, and gave suggestions
that are now unanimously rejected. An example is his claim that 4Q180 and 4Q181 (Pesher on
the Periods) formed the beginning of the work, that ended with 11Q13 (Melchizedek).
Nonetheless, we should consider this, aware of the dangers. First, such an edition
should never be a mere collection and reshuffling of different fragments, as, for example, done
by Michael Chyutin in his work on the Aramaic New Jerusalem, or even sometimes by
Qimron, in his edition of the Apocalypse of Jeremiah C and of Pseudo-Ezekiel. Rather, it
should always be based on the work with, and an edition of manuscripts, including a study of
all the usual scribal practices related to artefacts. It also must be based on a clear description
of all editorial decisions and considerations, something that is missing from many editions.
Wouldnt the presentation of such a text based on both multiple manuscripts and on
the editors interpretation be arteficial? Yes, it would, in all kinds of respects, but the

alternative would be to confine oneself to the transcription and description of fragments, and
lay them out next to another, or serially in an edition, basically telling the user to puzzle it all
out themselves, because as editor we do not want to. You see, this raises many new questions,
both very practical, namely that each edition is written for a specific audience, and theoretical
or even philosophical, about the nature of texts, and our evaluation.

Recapping: what should one edit. Both traditional scrolls editions and Material Philology
argue that one should edit manuscripts. I agree that we indeed need to do this, but I also argue
that in particular cases it is vital that we move beyond manuscripts and edit texts.