How to use the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls Database

I have been looking around the resources we received for the Qumran DSS DB. I wanted to try and verify something I have read often; can anyone prove/disprove this assertion using the resources, as my Hebrew is not good enough to do it on my own? --->

Most Bibles, if you check 1 Sam 17:4, will say Goliath was 6 cubits tall. (Some say in feet).

The books I have read on the DSS say that the 1st copy of Samuel from Cave 4 reads Goliath's height as 4 cubits not 6. Using the Biblical DSS Bible Reference Index, I think this would refer to 4Q51 Samuel.

So my question - does it show 4 cubits? Can someone highlight the Hebrew word for the number in this manuscript and in say the ESV to show the difference? That would be greatly helpful to me and others I suspect. I can't tell if it actually says that, or if the text is missing there.

Second question - in that same area, if I compare the ESV and the DSS text, look at the Hebrew for "he was armed..." in 1 Sam 17:5 of ESV. To me it appears that is shown as 1 Sam 17:4 in 4Q51 Samuel. True?

Thanks!

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Comments

David Knoll

1) 4QSamA (4Q51) agrees with Josephus and reads ארבע [א]מות (the letter א is reconstructed) meaning 4 cubits.

2) הוא לבוש in verse 5 (He was dressed with) was not prteserved in the scroll and is part of a (plausible) reconstruction. You can see that it is confined in brackets.

Note: The reconstructions in the Logos edition of this scroll look prima facie very similar to the reconstructions of Cross in DJD but he is given no credit.

Kevin Becker

Thanks to the morph tagging (which includes glosses) you can look at each word to see even if you don't know Hebrew well enough to translate.

Of course you should be careful with this, its possible to misunderstand idioms etc.

Also if you can use sympathetic highlighting to help. If I open the ESV and hightlight the whole verse you can see the word that is different is not highlighted.

EDIT: I see David beat me to the punch

David Knoll

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/228314#Comment_228314

Also if you can use sympathetic highlighting to help. If I open the ESV and hightlight the whole verse you can see the word that is different is not highlighted.

I think this can be hazardous. There is no difference in highlighting between the preserved text and the reconstructions. We should always bear in mind the difference between what we see and what we think (Or rather Cross thinks) ought to have been written in the scroll.

Kevin Becker

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/228317#Comment_228317

I think this can be hazardous. There is no difference in highlighting between the preserved text and the reconstructions. We should always bear in mind the difference between what we see and what we think (Or rather Cross thinks) ought to have been written in the scroll.

This is a good caution

Alan Macgregor

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/228321#Comment_228321

I think this can be hazardous. There is no difference in highlighting between the preserved text and the reconstructions. We should always bear in mind the difference between what we see and what we think (Or rather Cross thinks) ought to have been written in the scroll.

This is a good caution

Absolutely! A lot of textual reconstruction is about "filling the blanks"! We should be careful about what we have inside the brackets, either letters or words. It's the same with epigraphical texts on funerary jars or bits of engraved masonry.

That said; it's great to have the DSS biblical texts available at such a modest price. Even better is the fact that they are collated in a workable database.

I haven't seen the problems some have described with the NH Greek texts because Gentium is my default Greek display text.

Looking forward to working through some research on Deuteronomy, though when I can make the time. [:D]

DMB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/228317#Comment_228317

David ... I noticed your comment about Cross. Could you expand?

In the Logos product page 'Fresh transcriptions of every biblical Dead Sea Scroll, including Greek fragments. The Logos transcriptions are substantially the same as those found in the DJD volumes, but are the result of a fresh, expert analysis that takes into account scholarly work done on the scrolls since the DJD volumes were published.'

I'm guessing from your comment, there's more to the story?

Kevin Becker

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/228339#Comment_228339

I suspect that the footnotes for the ESV relies on the same reconstruction we see in this database. For the average user double checking the footnotes I doubt they will want to go that extra step and be cognizant of the caveat "as long as the reconstruction is correct." The info section says that this transcription is done by Dr. Stephen Pfann, not Cross.

To really chase that down a topic like this one would have to swing by a seminary/university library to track down journal articles on the subject; I don't imagine they are currently available in Logos.

This is a good time to plug the forthcoming JBL and the languishing prepub Religious and Theological Abstracts or any of the JSOTS for that matter [:)]. The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures would probably hit topics like this from time to time (I've never used it though).

George Somsel

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/228342#Comment_228342

David ... I noticed your comment about Cross. Could you expand?

In the Logos product page 'Fresh transcriptions of every biblical Dead Sea Scroll, including Greek fragments. The Logos transcriptions are substantially the same as those found in the DJD volumes, but are the result of a fresh, expert analysis that takes into account scholarly work done on the scrolls since the DJD volumes were published.'

I'm guessing from your comment, there's more to the story?

Dead Sea Scrolls

Since June 1953 Cross has been a member of the international committee responsible for editing the Dead Sea Scrolls which had been found at Qumran in the West Bank. Cross first heard of the Scrolls while a student at Johns Hopkins University when he was shown pictures of the Isaiah Scroll by William F Albright, one of his lecturers, who later was to nominate Cross to join the Scrolls editorial team. On joining the team he was immediately allocated 61 Biblical manuscripts from Cave 4 at Qumran to prepare for publication. Initially, this involved cleaning the manuscripts in the Palestine Archaeological Museum where they were being worked on in the 'Scrollery'. As with several others on the team, Cross was financially supported between 1954 to 1960 by a John D Rockefeller subsidy.

Like Roland de Vaux, Cross was a Biblical scholar, and he used the Biblical manuscripts of Qumran to lay out a textual history of the Tanakh, and by using the non-Biblical texts he examined the development of the Jewish scribal hand from the 3rd century BC to the first century AD. He began to share certain Biblical scrolls from Qumran with his graduate students, some of whom published them in doctoral dissertations. Cross's datings of Jewish scribal writings gleaned from his work on the Scrolls and based on palaegraphical typology are still widely use in editions of the Scrolls.

He was one of only two American scholars on the scroll-publication team, being personally responsible for identifying thousands of fragments, all of which have now been published. Cross is widely regarded as a pioneer in Qumran studies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Moore_Cross#Dead_Sea_Scrolls

NetworkGeek

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/228377#Comment_228377

Thank you all, very informative and helpful!

One question - what is the "Josephus" resource David refers to in the second post?

Thanks!

Kevin Becker

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/228868#Comment_228868

One question - what is the "Josephus" resource David refers to in the second post?

Antiquities 6.171

David Knoll

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/228342#Comment_228342

I'm guessing from your comment, there's more to the story?

Cross spent several decades (!!!) of his life to the publication of 4QSamA. This scroll is very interesting because it reflects a mixed text type. Some of the readings are similar to the Hebrew Masoretic Text (henceforth: MT) others certainly reflect the Hebrew text that was translated by the Septuagint (henceforth: G). Even within G you have several manuscript families and the readings of 4QSamA can sometimes be found in the Vaticanus Codex and sometimes they can be located in the manuscripts that belong to what is termed "The Lucianic Recension" (henceforth:GL).

Where the text was preserved, all the researcher needs to do is read the text (which is not that easy sometimes), create transcriptions and note for each reading where else it is attested. But for the missing part it is more difficult. The researcher needs to decide what to print to fill the blanks and create and running text. One possible decision is to choose MT. The merits of this choice are that it is a well known Hebrew text (in fact the only Hebrew text that was preserved). Other possible choices are to use a reconstructed Hebrew text of G or GL. Of course if the reading does not fit the space you need either to choose from a different text type or try to invent a reading that would fit space requirements.

Cross chose a different way. He thinks he can predict what reading 4QSamA would use that means sometimes from MT sometimes from G and sometimes from GL. Where no version fits space requirements he created a coherent text that would fit. The thing is that as far as I can tell the Logos version copied his reconstructions.

in 1 Sam 6:4 Cross follows G in reconstructing כמספר instead of מספר in MT. Even Cross says: "Calculations of space do not give a basis, of course, for reconstructing such a small change". Interestingly, the Logos version has the same reconstruction.

In 1 Sam 6:20 G is the preferable reading but MT also fits the space and there is no certainty that לעמד had not penetrated the textual transmission earlier than 4QSamA.

In 9:21 he reconstructs with the Syriac only because in his opinion MT seems "awkward".

In 15:29 וגם יחצה ישראל לשניים with G (but reconstruction of the Hebrew יחצה from the Greek is not at all certain) instead of MT נצח ישראל לא ישקר.

I could list hundreds of examples but the main thing is that even if I don't always accept his reconstructions and even if I dislike the audacity (or presumption) to reconstruct an eclectic text in a scientific edition such as DJD, Cross worked very hard on this for many many years and his work was copied by a commercial company without his name even being mentioned!

George Somsel

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/228868#Comment_228868

Thank you all, very informative and helpful!

One question - what is the "Josephus" resource David refers to in the second post?

Thanks!

Josephus. Antiquities, vi.171

καταβὰς οὖν τις ἐκ τοῦ Παλαιστίνιων στρατοπέδου Γολιάθης ὄνομα· πόλεως δὲ Γίττης ἀνὴρ παμμεγαθέστατος· ἦν γἀρ πηχῶν τεσσάρων καὶ σπιθαμἠς ὅπλα τῇ φύσει τοῦ σώματος ...

Now there came down a man out of the camp of the Philistines, whose name was Goliath, of the city of Gath, a man of vast bulk, for he was of four cubits and a span in tallness,

DMB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/228886#Comment_228886

David ... thank you for the extra time explaining. It had not even dawned on me about the reconstructions.

George Somsel

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/228886#Comment_228886

in 1 Sam 6:4 Cross follows G in reconstructing כמספר instead of מספר in MT. Even Cross says: "Calculations of space do not give a basis, of course, for reconstructing such a small change". Interestingly, the Logos version has the same reconstruction.

That doesn't seem to be what I see. In BHS 4.2 I read מִסְפָּר סַרנֵי פְלִשְׁתִים or were you referring to the Biblical Dead Sea Scrolls? I would almost certainly expect that since the DJD reflects Cross's work.

David Knoll

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/228903#Comment_228903

That doesn't seem to be what I see. In BHS 4.2 I read מִסְפָּר סַרנֵי פְלִשְׁתִים or were you referring to the Biblical Dead Sea Scrolls? I would almost certainly expect that since the DJD reflects Cross's work.

As I said

MT מספר סרני פלשתים

G and Cross כמספר סרני פלשתים

NetworkGeek

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/228871#Comment_228871

One question - what is the "Josephus" resource David refers to in the second post?

Antiquities 6.171

Thanks!

Jose Luis Quiroga

I think that in order for us to make an idea of the quality of that translation also found in:

http://dssenglishbible.com/scroll4Q51.htm

We need to have an idea of the quality of the source:

https://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/explore-the-archive/manuscript/4Q51-2?locale=en_US

It is basically an incomplete puzzle of highly spaced pieces.

I would like to know the reference of plate and fragment from which the "translation" of that "four" came from.

Any serious translation in the web should have that for every word, or at least for every verse.

Matthew Christian

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1091657#Comment_1091657

That would be alot of data. Ironically, no one asks for that info from the Greek NT, which any print or electronic version is a compiled text. The NA28 and UBS5 are texts that don't physically exist, they are made up of the best selections from thousands of manuscripts made by editors, referred to as an eclectic text. The Hebrew Bible is typically based off of L and variants are marked in the margin, a diplomatic text. There has been some movement in NT studies to a Diplomatic text (Dr. George Robinson feels this is best exemplified in the BYZ text family but the matter is up for debate). All this to say, in DSS research, you can expect any edition to include any of the scrolls thought to include the biblical book and the various pieces will state their agreements typically. Getting a synopsis word for word of any edition would be a good amount of data period, but not that many copies of each book exist which narrows the field. I feel that many of the copies are essentially the same so I do not think that this would ultimately be beneficial, other than to find the word on a scrap that may not be part of the bigger manuscript.

DMB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1092142#Comment_1092142

That would be alot of data. Ironically, no one asks for that info from the Greek NT,

Now, that's not entirely true. They spend quite a few bucks producing the apparatus, which does involve some judgment as to which variants to display, and which mss's. From the apparatus, you can surmise the logic (guesswork) in most cases.

DSS is a different animal. They're guessing, on many of the fragments, using the later hebrew as a template, and in some cases, where the fragment would computationally appear. But I think the Lexham Biblical DSS does a decent job with the index, operating similar to an apparatus.

The idea of an NT mss linkage is of course, already on the research side (copyist sequences).

Matthew Christian

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1092145#Comment_1092145

In terms of published editions such as Cross' which was what was discussed in the post I responded to, my statements hold true. In terms of the logos data sets, that is totally different and based most likely off the work of Abegg (just a guess). And it is not an "idea" what I said about NA28, it is accurate. That published text is a compilation of manuscripts through and through. It is great scholarship, but not a "real" text- Something I brought up as it is pertinent to the discussion of editions etc.

Jose Luis Quiroga

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1092142#Comment_1092142

Ironically, no one asks for that info from the Greek NT

No so much because it is very different to translate from this: https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.1209

or this: http://codexsinaiticus.org/en/manuscript.aspx?book=33

Where about 99.9 % of the text exists and is readable, and then compare to this: https://biblehub.com/text/matthew/1-1.htm

Than to "translate" from this: https://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/explore-the-archive/manuscript/4Q51-2?locale=en_US

Where about 0.9 % of the text exists and is readable and then "trust" this: http://dssenglishbible.com/scroll4Q51.htm

Matthew Christian

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1093040#Comment_1093040

We are saying two totally different things. You are looking at editions and manuscripts that have no relation to each other. I am saying that in order for a scholar to present ALL variants in a manuscript text they are publishing, that would be a lot of data, especially on fragmentary datum. That is my only point. I can honestly just go to the Leon levy data base for free and look at the plates myself of the DSS. Almost every fragment and manuscript is present in high resolution scans. If you really don't trust the work presented, that is your best bet. Alot of these guys have been publishing on these scrolls since 1946. The Discoveries in the Judean Desert series has most of the documents and is considered the editio precepts and can also be consulted, all published by the major DSS scholars, Abegg, Cross, Friedman, De Veux etc. As far as Logos having these variants you are concerned about, they get a e text from an editor and publisher, and make it available. They are not typically responsible for creating or offering that data. If they did, it would be an original work and they would need to do everything from the ground up, which would be a much more expensive task. The data base here is based on original work and is very fine scholarship.

James-Michael Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1091657#Comment_1091657

I am also looking for which actual plate 1Sam 17:4 is found on. Anyone know which plate number this is?

Four cubits

If anyone finds it, would you mind messaging me at discipledojo@gmail.com I'm prepping a video for the ministry site and am just trying to track down which plate this pic actually comes from so I can verify it myself over on the DSS digital archive (which you can't search by contents, as far as I've been able to find. If this is possible though and I just missed it, please let me know!).

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1091657#Comment_1091657

Jose, welcome to forums. It makes more sense to start a new thread for your question rather than resurrect a thread that has been dead since 2011. I would expect to find the data you are looking for in the apparatus for a critical text rather than in a rather popular-culture English translation.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1156284#Comment_1156284

Anyone know which plate number this is?

Biblical Dead Sea Scrolls: Bible Reference Index. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2011. is the standard Logos tool for this.

[quote]

1 Samuel 17:3
4Q51 Samuel a: Frgs. 12–14, 1 Samuel 17:3–8

1 Samuel 17:4
4Q51 Samuel a: Frgs. 12–14, 1 Samuel 17:3–8

1 Samuel 17:5
4Q51 Samuel a: Frgs. 12–14, 1 Samuel 17:3–8

1 Samuel 17:6
4Q51 Samuel a: Frgs. 12–14, 1 Samuel 17:3–8

1 Samuel 17:7
4Q51 Samuel a: Frgs. 12–14, 1 Samuel 17:3–8

1 Samuel 17:8
4Q51 Samuel a: Frgs. 12–14, 1 Samuel 17:3–8

1 Samuel 17:40
4Q51 Samuel a: Frg. 16, 1 Samuel 17:40–41

1 Samuel 17:41
4Q51 Samuel a: Frg. 16, 1 Samuel 17:40–41

Biblical Dead Sea Scrolls: Bible Reference Index (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2011), 1 Sa 17:3–41.

Jose Luis Quiroga

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1156284#Comment_1156284

These people just want you to "trust" their "scholar" "translation" that undermines trust in the standard translation.

No plate number to verify anything.

And if you keep commenting they will keep adding responses so the comments that reveal their intentions get buried under other comments.

I will bet they will comment on this too.