Hi Stephen, and list, Stephen Goranson wrote:
"In discussing Ian Young's article--peculiar it is since Prof. Young elsewhere champions simultaneous diversity--one might at least note his exclusion, shunting aside from the already small canon sample Mas Gen as if a copy of non- canon Jubilees. Mas Gen is *non*-MT. Skewing the analysis of the small. smaller sample. And perhaps consider Talmon's suggestions on different groups (and note different find areas). Samaritans...stabilized? If Masada were stabilized--a bit of a curious word for Masada at war--should we take it that stabilization reigned throught the land, all ownerships, no sects, everywhere? Was the MT stabilized before 70? Before Christianity?" I reply: Re MasGen: The manuscript preserves 8 complete words and 3 incomplete words. It has 3 minor variants from the MT (twice missing a locative he and one additional 'et probably meaning "with"). With this little text preserved, can we base any case on it? It could be a copy of Jubilees (as has been found at Masada- this was Talmon's original theory), or a copy of Genesis, or a copy of some other Genesis apocryphon. I don't know. If a Biblical scroll, it would be the only Torah manuscript from the Judean Desert outside Qumran which has a single variant against the MT. Gene Ulrich has recently argued that evaluating the tiny fragment is a matter of perspective. In the context of the textual variety exhibited by the Qumran scrolls one would not stress the relationship of this scroll and its variants with the MT. However, since I separate Qumran from Masada by a considerable period of time, I evaluate the fragment in the context of the Masada and Bar Kochba era evidence. Don't forget that even medieval manuscripts exhibit the same small scale variants against each other. Are you going to find a sentence in a medieval manuscript with a couple of minor variants like this in it, and declare that the Biblical text in the medieval period was not yet stabilized? Stabilized doesn't mean that scribes stopped making errors or being sloppy on occasion. BTW I discuss all these matters in more detail in a forthcoming study in the Festschrift for Alan Crown, who, yes it is true, thinks highly of the first century BCE deposit theory. The fact that I have argued for diversity in the Hebrew language doesn't mean I am diversity obsessed. I go through the arguments for textual diversity in the first century to explain the Masada scrolls in my article in Dead Sea Discoveries 9, 2002, p.364-390, and find them unconvincing. I don't think I ever said Masada was stabilized! What could that mean? I mean, as you know Stephen, from my article, that I think the Biblical text was stabilized (i.e. no large scale or "true" variants, and a drastic reduction in the volume of minor variants) BEFORE Masada. So yes, I think that all the various groups we know of in Judaism (not the Samaritans) shared a common Biblical text by the late first century. Different sects don't have to have different Bibles- look around you today. The process of stabilization was finalized between the mid-first century BCE (Qumran) and the late first century CE (Masada). This is the explicit testimony of Josephus, Against Apion 1:42 (late first century CE): "Although such long ages have now passed, no one has ventured either to add, or to remove, or to alter a syllable [of the scriptures]." Qumran dated 68CE is in drastic contrast to that. And put that together with the fact that references to people and events later than the mid-first century BCE are not found in the scrolls, and you already have a strong case that the scrolls were put in the caves in the mid-first century BCE. Regards, Ian Young Sydney University _______________________________________________ g-Megillot mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.McMaster.CA/mailman/listinfo/g-megillot
