Copying from a
Written Source or from Memory?
Were some readings unintentionally created
due to a scribe’s reliance on his memory? The corpora of the texts found in the
Judean Desert are too large to provide an unequivocal answer to the question regarding
whether scribes wrote based on a written source or based, sometimes or always,
on their memory. It is probably a mere impression that all copying was based on
written documents. At least, this should be the default assumption that can
never be proven (ch. 21.1).
At the same time, there are
indications that memory played an important part in the copying process. All or
most instances of harmonization (§ 4.2.4) are secondary, influenced by the
scribe’s memory of different contexts, nearby or remote. In some instances, a
scribe was first guided by his memory and subsequently corrected upon
consulting his written source. For example, in 11QPSa (Ps 145:1 in §
6.8): in this verse, upon writing יהוה, the original scribe recognized his
error, canceled the word with cancellation dots above and below, then continued
with the correct אלוהי, “my God.” This is the probable background of the error:
Having written אֲרוֹמִמְךָ, it was natural for this scribe to continue the text
as אֳרוֹמִמֽךָ יְהוָה since he remembered that phrase from the beginning of
Psalm 30 (Ps 30:2). However, he then looked at his base scroll, realized his
error, and corrected it. (Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
[4th ed.; Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2022], 298-99)
