Palaeo Hebrew And Greek Biblical Manuscripts

This volume inaugurates the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls from the main collection discovered in Cave 4 at Qumran. It continues six biblical manuscripts written in ancient Palaeo-hebrew script, four Septuagint manuscripts, and five hitherto unknown compositions. The Hebrew texts antedate by a millennium what had previously been the earliest surviving biblical codices in the original language, and they document the pluriform nature of the ancient biblical textual tradition before the text became standardized. The most extensive and significant manuscript exhibits the expanded textual tradition that formed the basis for the Samaritan Pentateuch and helps illuminate the historical and theological relationship between the Jews and Samaritans.

After a thorough survey of the fundamentals of Greek palaeograpy, the author discusses many of the distinctive features of biblical manuscripts, such as musical neumes, lectionaries, glosses, commentaries and illuminations.

Early Christology must focus not simply on "historical" but also on theological ideas found in contemporary Jewish thought and practice. In this book, a range of distinguished contributors considers the context and formation of early Jewish and Christian devotion to God alone—the emergence of "monotheism". The idea of monotheism is critically examined from various perspectives, including the history of ideas, Graeco-Roman religions, early Jewish mediator figures, scripture exegesis, and the history of its use as a theological category. The studies explore different ways of conceiving of early Christian monotheism today, asking whether monotheism is a conceptually useful category, whether it may be applied cautiously and with qualifications, or whether it is to be questioned in favor of different approaches to understanding the origins of Jewish and Christian beliefs and worship. This is volume 1 in the Early Christianity in Context series and volume 263 in the Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series>

In Numerals in Early Greek New Testament Manuscripts, Zachary J. Cole examines the distinctively Christian method of number-writing shared by early scribes and illustrates its relevance for textual criticism, Christian material and visual culture, codicology, and theology.

The essays by Shemaryahu Talmon (1920-December 15, 2010) presented in this fourth volume of his collected studies in English were written against the background of the momentous manuscript finds at various sites in the Judean Desert, including approximately 200 biblical or Bible-related manuscripts and manuscript fragments discovered at Qumran. These discoveries date from the crucial period of the turn of the era and afford scholars unprecedented information on the early transmission history of the biblical text. Talmon likens the transmission process (in agreement with Paul Kahle, and contrary to Paul de Lagarde) to a confluence of variant pristine traditions that Judaism, Christianity, and the Samaritan communities severally channeled into one fixed and closely circumscribed text form. It is his thesis that at least some of the “biblical” manuscripts and fragments from Qumran preserve original variants of the wording in the Masoretic Text, which eventually was recognized and transmitted in Judaism as the acclaimed and exclusively binding wording of the Hebrew Bible. These manuscripts and fragments evidence a “textual strategy” consisting of the interaction of the original authors and the transmitters of their work. Scribes and editors were minor partners of the authors. They did not refrain from occasionally changing wordings within a given range of “poetic license,” often adapting literary techniques and patterns that had been used by the primary creators of the texts that they copied. The 18 essays reprinted in this volume relate to a variety of phenomena that affected the biblical literature in the stages of transition from oral tradition to hand-written transmission, initially in Paleo-Hebrew, then in the square alphabet, and ultimately in the promulgation of the Masoretic version in print. Talmon’s articles published herein initially appeared over a period of about 50 years, thus giving expression to his developing thought regarding the transmission history of the biblical text up to the present time. The papers have undergone revision in the process of preparing the present volume. Scholars and students alike will benefit from owning and using this superb comprehensive collection of studies.

This collection of articles on the Dead Sea Scrolls by fellows at the Institute for Advanced Studies of The Hebrew University (1989-1990) represents the ongoing work of editing and interpreting one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the century. This volume includes articles on the contents and significance of the scrolls, the biblical scrolls, the legal rulings of the sectarians and their prayer texts.