Very briefly, without time for researching it closely, isn't the fact that CD comes to us in 10th and 12th century copies a factor in trying to understand possible textcritical problems in the "messiah/messiahs" issue? Is it likely that a 10th century (Karaite?) copyist would automatically assume that the singular "Messiah" would be correct, and that the plural would have been an error (if the text being copied had a plural)? (I don't know; I'm asking!) What would the "messianology" of the copyist(s) have been?
Do any of the fragments of CD from Qumran provide ancient evidence for those "Messiah" (or "messiah") passages in CD? Bob Greg Doudna wrote, in part (responding to Russ G.): > Well, maybe they do and maybe they don't. I'm sure you know this has been > a disputed point. The singular 'messiah of/from Aaron and Israel' in four > occurrences in CD can read either as one figure or distributive construct, > equivalent to 'messiah of Aaron, and messiah of Israel', two figures. Martin > Abegg, who as you know wrote the article on Qumran Hebrew in the Flint > and VanderKam volumes, argued earlier for the singular figure reading, and > then (in the Flint and VanderKam article) corrected to endorsing the > distributive construct interpretation (FV I, 334-35). At 1QS 9.11 there are > the plural 'messiahs of Aaron and Israel', but was this a scribal copying > error (for original singular)? Maybe it was and maybe > it wasn't (an error). When all readings of an expression are one way, > except for one reading in a different text that is slightly variant, how > does one evaluate whether the variant is an error or a non-error? In this > particular case, I doubt that it is possible to know for sure one way or > the other. The point: your statement that 'most superficially, other Serekh > texts distinguish the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel' is true, if it was true. > In other words, you don't have an independent basis for knowing this, > apart from if it was so, then it was so. Let it be observed simply as a > point of fact that the expression 'messiah of Israel', standing alone, > does not occur elsewhere than in 1QSa. > > I must say that on the issue of the singular vs. plural of the CD 'messiah > of/from Aaron and Israel', although it is syntactically ambiguous (the > sense would not have been ambiguous to original authors and readers, > who would have known what was meant, > but our problem is we don't know for sure what they understood and > were thinking), I think is more likely to have been a singular figure, a > singular future anointed one. (Fitzmyer and others have justly > critiqued the rendering or understanding of heb. 'messiah' in biblical > and Qumran texts as 'Messiah', correctly noting that that is an > anachronistic translation projected back into the Qumran texts.) The > 1QS plural 'anointed ones of Aaron and Israel' I suspect is a scribal > error for this reason: it is associated with the 'prophet', and one > personal figure is associated with a second (not a second and a > third). That seems to be most expected. But who knows for sure. -- Robert A. Kraft, Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania 227 Logan Hall (Philadelphia PA 19104-6304); tel. 215 898-5827 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/kraft.html For private reply, e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Robert Kraft) ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from Orion, e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: "unsubscribe Orion." Archives are on the Orion Web site, http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il. (PLEASE REMOVE THIS TRAILER BEFORE REPLYING TO THE MESSAGE)
