Book Review: The Textual History of the Bible From the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Biblical Manuscripts of the Vienna Papyrus Collection

The Textual History of the Bible from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Biblical Manuscripts of the Vienna Papyrus Collection, Ruth A. Clements, Russell Fuller, Armin Lange, and Paul D. Mandel, eds. (Brill: 2023), 668 pp. Reviewed by Simcha Rosenberg.

This handsome volume, printed on glossy paper with high quality color reproductions of some of the ancient texts discussed, is a collection of the papers presented at the proceedings of the Fifteenth International Symposium of Hebrew University’s Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, cosponsored by the University of Vienna’s Institute for Jewish Studies and the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem.

The book is divided into three sections, the first of which, “The Text of the Jewish Scriptures during the Second Temple Period,” focuses mostly on the Dead Sea scrolls. The second section, “The Text of the Jewish Scriptures from the Jewish Wars to the Early Masoretic Codices,” deals mainly with Greek scripture texts. The third part is focused on “The Biblical Manuscripts in the Vienna Papyrus Collection.” This vast collection, almost all of which is from Egypt where the climate conditions are favorable for the preservation of papyrus, contains about 200 Hebrew texts from the Jewish community in late antique and medieval Egypt, 23 of which are discussed in this book.

While some of the material presented here may be of interest mainly for specialists, academics, and Masoretic scholars, many of the chapters have broader appeal to the wider circle of students of Tanakh and those interested in early Jewish practices. For example, Nancy Benovitz provides a very interesting discussion of a silver armband-amulet that is inscribed with Deut. 6:4, Psalms 91:2, and a conflated version of Deut. 6:5-9 and Deut. 11:13-21, all inscribed in Greek. This object seems to be a Jewish version of a Christian apotropaic practice known from the 6th and 7th centuries.

Geoffrey Khan’s contribution, “The Karaites and the Hebrew Bible,” gives us insights into the current state of scholarship regarding whether the Masoretes were Karaites (they were not), and the way the Karaites preserved the Tiberian Masoretic tradition after the Tiberian Masoretes themselves ended their activity. We also learn how Muslim textual practices, particularly the use of codices for their sacred texts, impacted Masoretic scholarship.

Regarding the Vienna collection documents, Elodie Attia discusses fragments that give us insights into how the Jewish community of Egypt in the 11th and 12th centuries used the Bible in the teaching of Hebrew. Leeor Gottlieb analyzes text H 12, a page from a Haftora book in the Vienna collection with Aramaic translation that was used as part of the triennial Torah reading cycle practiced in Israel. Ursula Schattner-Reiser studies some of the Vienna texts that point to the existence of both the triennial (Israeli) and annual (Babylonian tradition) public Torah reading cycles in Egypt, having dual marking indicating where to stop, as well as indicators as to the shift to acceptance of the Babylonian practice.

The contribution with the widest appeal is probably Alexander Rofe’s chapter “Midrashic Elements in Biblical Texts,” where he notes places where midrashic interpretation infiltrated versions of the biblical texts themselves. The identity of the last of the Twelve Prophets, Malachi, is obscure, as no information about him or his background is provided in the text, although based on references made there in 3:10 to bringing the tithes to the storehouse, he must have been active after the reforms detailed in Nehemiah 10:38-40 and 13:10-13. TB Megilla 15a gives a number of approaches identifying Malachi with other biblical figures, either Mordechai or Ezra (neither of whom are described as prophets otherwise) or a heretofore unknown prophet named Malachi. The Septuagint’s version of Malachi 1:1 adds words to the end of the opening verse, “place it upon your hearts.” This is a refrain familiar from the book of Haggai (1:5, 7; 2:15, 18), so this interpolation seems to be pointing to Haggai as the identity of Malachi. This interpretation is buttressed by the fact that Haggai is the only other prophet to be called the LORD’s messenger (malakh) in Hag. 1:13, making him a good candidate for midrashic identification with a prophet called Malachi.

This book contains an extensive index as well as abstracts of all the papers, making it a worthy and usable volume for all scholars of the textual aspects of Tanakh.