Sunday, September 24, 2023

Emanuel Tov on the Presence of Some of the Book of the Apocrypha at Qumran

  

The evidence from Qumran includes only a few of the so-called Apocrypha, that is books found in the LXX canon (ch. 8.2) and not in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Sirach, Tobit) and the Pseudepigrapha, that is Jewish Second Temple compositions not found in the Masoretic or LXX canons (e.g., Jubilees, 4QLevi ar [4Q213-214], 4QTJud ar [4Q538], 4QNaph [4Q215]). We do not know whether these books were equally as authoritative as the books of the Hebrew Scripture for the Qumran community. The fact that compositions were found at Qumran is not sufficient to determine their authoritative status, but the use of the quotation formula (as Scripture or not) and other evidence is more compelling. Jubilees probably had a special status at Qumran since many copies were found there and the book was quoted as if it were Scripture. The Temple Scroll probably was also considered authoritative; five copies were found at Qumran, with the main one, 11QTa, representing a luxury copy. (Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible [4th ed.; Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2022], 115)