Kipp Davis

This is a review of Liv Ingeborg Lied and Hugo Lundhaug, "Snapshots of Evolving Traditions: Jewish and Christian Manuscript Culture, Textual Fluidity, and New Philology," TU 175 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017) that was presented in the Book History and Biblical Literatures section at the 2017 Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting in Boston, MA.

(From the Introduction): [This essay] explores a lengthy additional note appearing in the inter column and the bottom margin of one of the oldest manuscripts found in the caves at Qumran, 4QJer-a. Tracing the history of this insertion and suggesting an alternative reconstruction and interpretation, Davis discusses whether this deliberate and carefully planned addition could fruitfully be understood precisely by its location in the margins, protecting the surrounding text of the columns, as well as by reference to the performative context of the use of the manuscript.

Papyrus manuscripts represent fourteen percent of the Qumran corpus of Dead Sea Scrolls. Recently published Judaean Desert fragments belonging to private collections contain no papyri, but there are several papyrus fragments in The Schøyen Collection and the collection housed at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth TX. The SWBTS fragments—including two papyri—are still being vetted for publication, but it has been recently revealed that the three scraps of papyri in The Schøyen Collection are likely modern forgeries. These fragments have been determined to be forgeries from a battery of elemental and multi-spectral analyses, which confirmed suspicions of the manuscript editors that were based on scribal and codicological anomalies. The situation this presents suggests an increased probability that other unprovenanced Judaean Desert papyri in other private collections could also be forgeries, but this is based on an impressionistic survey of the scribal features in the Qumran papyri. This paper will put forward a codicological analysis of these fragments in close conversation with observed features from the entire collection of papyri in the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls.

*EDIT* I have updated this paper on the basis of small corrections provided by Torleif Elgvin appearing on pp. 2–3.

A popular-level exploration of the relationship between the sales of Dead Sea Scroll manuscript fragments, Evangelicalism, and the production of forgeries. Follow the link above to the essay online. (https://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/gleanings-from-the-cave-of-wonders/)

Over 30 fragments purportedly from the Dead Sea Scrolls belonging to two private col- lections were published for the first time in Summer 2016. Virtually all of these frag- ments in The Schøyen Collection and Museum of the Bible are non-provenanced apart from verbal guarantees made by their sellers. An unusual feature of these fragments is that almost all of them correspond to texts from the Hebrew Bible, but also to a few pre- viously known compositions from antiquity. This paper examines the published frag- ments from both collections according to their observable physical properties, as well as palaeographical and scribal characteristics, and seeks to understand from these more about their potential origin—whether from antiquity or modern times.

Among the smaller fragments of the War Scroll manuscript 4Q491 is one that contains the intriguing designation ‫ספר‬ ‫התהלים‬ (frag. 17 4), that a number of scholars have interpreted as an explicit reference to the book of Psalms from the Hebrew Bible. The complicated history of the manuscript itself has dominated discussions to such a degree that little has been said about the appearance of this term apart from brief musings about the possibility of its referent. In this paper, I will conduct a close examination of frag. 17 along with another, frag. 16, that likely appeared in close proximity to it. Following a detailed description of their features and contents, I will suggest a placement of these fragments in the same context within the so-called " Self-Glorification Hymn " that appears in frag. 11 i, and then explore the interpretative possibilities behind the source of the term for both the contents of 4Q491, and for discussions about scripture and authority in Second Temple Judaism more generally.

In 2012 the Israel Antiquities Authority launched the new photographic digital database for Judaean Desert manuscripts, the Leon Levy Digital Dead Sea Scrolls Library (www.deadseascrolls.il). The site features new images of a large number of Qumran mss, with the promise of many more on the way, including for many of these fragments the first ever photographs in full colour. This paper illustrates how the new IAA photographs can assist efforts of manuscript identification, reconstruction and interpretation on a digital platform applied to one of the Cave 4Q copies of the War Scroll, 4QMa (4Q491). I will set special attention on the colour photographs and the usage of colour for increasing our knowledge about this scroll. First, I will very briefly introduce 4Q491, and its somewhat controversial history of scholarship. While the first editor identified and published the fragments all together as part of a single manuscript, others have since delivered persuasive arguments for the existence of two and even three separate scrolls among the fragments, and this is a matter that I will challenge directly through an investigation of the new digital images. Second, I will illustrate my study in two parts of the physical features of 4Q491, in a close examination of one set of fragment pieces—those assigned to frg. 11 i–ii. I will initially explore and identify patterns of damage in the overall shape of the fragment pieces and the composite whole, and will illustrate how these are most clearly discerned with the application of colour. Then I will use targeted colour selection of the RGB images to make digital transparencies of the fragments, which are a useful tool for precisely interpreting various types of surface damage. Third, the results of my physical examination of frg. 11 i–ii will be applied to the whole manuscript in terms of how to understand the scribal activity, how to classify its literary content, and finally how a new arrangement of the fragments affects the structure of the composition and its meaning.

It has been over fifty years since the publication of the first volume of the Discoveries in the Judaea Desert series, and five years since the final volume in the series appeared in 2009. In this paper, I intend to problematise the official publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Series (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961–2011) according to the fourfold critique: first, literary presuppositions and the classification of texts; second, scribal presuppositions and the identification of manuscripts; third, textual presuppositions and the work of scribes; and finally, socio-religious presuppositions and the function of scriptures.

This volume is a collection of essays written in honour of Martin G. Abegg from a range of contributors with expertise in Second Temple Jewish literature in reflection upon Prof. Abegg’s work. These essays are arranged according to four topics that deal with various aspects of text, language and interpretation of the Qumran War Scroll, and concepts of war and peace in Second Temple Jewish literature.

The contents of the volume are divided into the following four main sections: (1) The War Scroll, (2) War and Peace in the Hebrew Scriptures, (3) War and Peace in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and (4) War and Peace in early Jewish and Christian texts and interpretation.

The Cave 4 Apocryphon of Jeremiah C from Qumran survives in several copies, and presents significant links between the prophet Jeremiah, the scriptural book of Jeremiah, and the collectors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Because the prophet is only occasionally named in the Scrolls, and there are only a few clear instances where the book is cited, Jeremiah appears to have had a limited impact on the imagination of the Qumranites. However, through a careful appraisal of the Apocryphon manuscripts, and a reconsideration of Jeremiah's influence in the Dead Sea Scrolls via his reputational authority, this study shows that clusters of traditions were tied to Jeremiah’s prophetic and priestly distinction, with an emphasis on matters of leadership and empire.

This is a public lecture that took place at TWU sponsored by the TWU Dead Sea Scrolls Institute and the Alumni Association on Re-Imagining the Scriptural Past in the Dead Sea Scrolls. A curious feature in the study of textual transmission and the development of ideology in early Judaism is the treatment of the Prophet of Jeremiah and the book that bears his name. By way of analogy to the modern phenomenon of the internet dissemination of "facts" about Chuck Norris, Dr. Davis illustrates how the reputation of Jeremiah the prophet strongly influenced a wide range of traditions and texts that survive from Second Temple Judaism.

Abstract: We are now seven decades removed from the original “discoveries” of Dead Sea Scrolls in a by-gone era, but finds of which would presently be condemned by the SBL as “looting.” These first discoveries have dramatically shaped scholarly attitudes for years in favour of tacit acceptance of huge numbers of cultural treasures on private antiquities markets, which continue to be maintained through criminal activity. Moreover, it has been 15 years since Christopher Rollston established a set of detailed methodological protocols for treating unprovenanced epigraphic Hebrew texts, and a fascinating question is why scholars continue to skirt and avoid them. The Scrolls discoveries played a significant role in the 2016 publi-cation of unprovenanced—plausibly forged—manuscripts in private collections; an act itself that is rightly construed as unethical in that it—explicitly or otherwise—“feeds the illicit market.” The original discoveries have been instrumental in eroding over time the critical scientific principle of Cartesian doubt—the systematic process of methodological scepticism in the process of sorting true and false claims—in the handling and study of cultural heritage. There is a troubling irony in the role that Hebrew palaeography has played in the treatment of authenticity claims that spans the past sixty years. This paper intends to trace the historical appraisal of palaeography as it has been used to ground authenticity claims about the Dead Sea Scrolls, and to show how this has factored progressively in to a suspension of Cartesian doubt in scholarship to allow most recently and carelessly for the publication of numerous probable forgeries. I will consider preconceptions and biases in the handling of religiously sensitive material, will draw attention to various questionable outcomes from a starting point of ubiquitous acceptance, and offer some thoughts about how disciplined, sceptical inquiry might go beyond the protection of our historical and cultural datasets to effectively improve studies of ancient manuscripts more generally.

This is a preliminary work of comparison between recently published fragments from two private manuscript collections: The Schøyen Collection and the Museum of the Bible. In this survey I analyze physical and scribal features according to eight criteria, and suggest from these findings a relatively well established pattern of correspondence that should lead us to raise serious questions as to both the provenance of these manuscripts, and ultimately their authenticity.