Discoveries in the Judaean Desert: Volume XIV. Qumran Cave 4: IX

This volume continues the publication of the series of biblical Dead Sea Scrolls that were discovered in Cave 4 at Qumran. It contains twenty-four Hebrew manuscripts of the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, and Kings. These texts antedate by a millennium those that had previously held the title of the earliest surviving Hebrew biblical manuscripts. They document a pluriformity acceptable in the ancient biblical textual tradition before the text became standardized later in the Christian and Rabbinic period.

Some of the scrolls (e.g. 4QDeut, 4QDeut) are not properly manuscripts of biblical books but rather contain excerpts from biblical books, compiled probably for liturgical purposes. 4QJosh, the oldest extant manuscript of that book, displays a different sequence of episodes concerning the first altar built in the newly entered land. Similarly, 4QJudg attests to an early text of Judges without a lengthy Deuteronomistic insertion now found in the textus receptus. Superior textual variants from these manuscripts have been adopted in recent revised translations of the Bible.