Emanuel Tov
We don’t know much about the different types of scribes. I know about what I call a scribal school that was active at Qumran, and I think all the other scrolls came from sites in ancient Israel. I can say this scribe was more precise and this was less precise. But of course, much of this is imagination, because the major issue is you don’t know the text from which they copied. In the case of the Bible, you think that you know the text from which they copied. But even there, you don’t know, because there’s not one text of the Bible. There were many, many different parallel texts, so it remains kind of guesswork what they were copying from. And in the case of other texts, also you don’t know what they were copying from.
We can’t really divide the scribes into different groups. The only thing we can know is that one scribe is more experienced than another scribe. Most scribes were quite experienced, but a few scribes were sloppy, or even apprentice scribes. Some scribes probably wrote only one sheet, one column. We think that certain documents were really only made in order to practice the writing in the beginning of a scribe’s writing career. For example, there’s one document named 4Q341. This document, if we understand it well, is merely a list of names, starting with letters, the same letters of the alphabet with a mem and then a nun and this probably has no other meaning than that. This was a writing exercise, and that’s also the name we’ve given to the document.
In a few cases, we have an abecedarium, that is the writing of the letters of the alphabet. So, we know that scribes practiced. We have a few very badly written biblical texts. One of the Psalms, and we think that this is a practice by beginning scribes. We don’t think there were master scribes, but some scribes were very, very good. Now what we do know is that scribes had different approaches. Let us put it this way. Consistency as we know it today, was hardly born in antiquity. Consistency is a product of modern society. It’s something you really have to think about. Consistency in antiquity was hardly born. Of course, there is some consistency, but not really to the extreme.
The whole idea of meticulously copying a document into a second document that is exactly the same as the text that you are copying from, hardly happens. It happens often in the case of what we now call the Masoretic text, yes, but in most other cases, it hardly happens. You see, the scribe is a little bit of an author. The scribe explains, he’s an exegete. You see sometimes the scribe explains a little bit. And you even see the scribe make changes in a legal document of the community, the rules of the community. It’s called the 1Q “Community rule.” There in column number seven, the scribe gives the punishments for misbehavior in the community. He writes, if you have a grudge against your fellow man, you get as a punishment of less rations for six months. Well, that’s not so very good. And then he crosses this out with a line, and he writes above the line, one year.
David Capes
So, it gets worse!
Emanuel Tov
He changes his mind or he was told to do so. I don’t think it was another scribe. It was he himself, but this is a scribe that creates the document while writing it. Also, in another case of a law in the same column, he changes the punishment. So, the scribe is not, as we think, someone who slavishly copies the text in front of him. In ancient time, a scribe was someone who is intimately involved in the creation of the document in two different degrees. Even in the holy text. In the text of the Holy Scripture, scribes dared to intervene and change a word here or there.
David Capes
That’s very interesting, because I know the Masoretes were very careful not to change anything. Yet, in generations earlier (these scribes were writing about the turn of the millennia some writing in what we call BC or BCE), they’re writing and they’re making some of these changes, very interesting. And we can compare those two, and we can see the difference.
Emanuel Tov
Yes, what you say is exactly correct. You are talking about the Masoretes, from the 9th or the 10th century of the Common Era, and I’m talking about the pre-Masoretes of the second century, the first century before the Common Era, and the first century of the Common Era. So they are a little bit apart, and they dare to change the word here or there. But they’re still more precise than their fellow scribes, who change much more.
David Capes
I’m reminded as I look over at my shelf, I have a lot of English Bibles over here, and when you read one translation, it’s different than the next translation, which is different from the next translation. Each of these translations are a little different, and there are people of good faith who are making these translations, and yet they sometimes differ in how they interpret or read these particular words. So we have the same phenomena in a way, today among us here. Dr Emmanuel Tov, it’s been great to talk with you today about the scribes of Qumran. I’m excited about your lecture coming up on April 5, 2025.
For those of you who can make it to the Lanier Theological Library, please come and join us for that. But for those who can’t, it’ll be streamed live online and then also available later to watch. Look at our website. We’ll be able to help direct you to that YouTube channel where that video will be found. Thank you so much. Dr. Tov.
Emanuel Tov
Thank you so much. It was my pleasure.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
