Apikorus

JW, as I've said here the identification of K)RW in the Nahal Hever fragment of Ps 22:17 is not a slam-dunk. I'm not an expert in Semitic palaeography, and I'm looking at a facsimile, but I'd say I'm 70 to 80 percent sure of the reading K)RW. But K)RY is certainly a possibility.

C'mon JW -- Moshe Shulman has an anti-missionary agenda. I can understand and even sympathize with Rabbi Shulman's agenda, but I also believe it compromises his objectivity when it comes to looking at the text.

Traditional Jews like Mr. Shulman have an a priori commitment not to the "original" text -- doubtless Mr. Shulman would be quite allergic to most text-critical analyses of the Tanakh -- but rather to rabbinic tradition of the text. There is a difference, JW. And "prooftexting" is quite Jewish, as any glance at the Talmud's many biblical citations ("as it is said...") will attest.

In antiquity, Jewish scribes corrected the biblical text according to pious theological agendas and other criteria. There is ample evidence of this in the rabbinic literature (e.g. the tiqqune soferim). In fact, scholars overwhelmingly concur that the Book of Deuteronomy originated as a tendentious revision of older laws found in parts of Exodus (e.g. the "Covenant Code" of Exod 21-23).

JoeWallack

JW:
A, the whole point of my last post was to get you to identify the facsimile you're looking at. So, what is the Source?

JW:
How thoughtful of you to broaden the scope. The Torah was written by the Establishment (King/Priest) and the Prophets was written by the Reformers. Different scribal strokes for different time folks. My guess is "Isaiah" didn't just say insincere sacrifice is no longer valued but "no more sacrifice" and Redacterskillstein harmoinzed the two as best he could - long before there were any Rabbis. What's most relevant here though is the criteria of The Rabbis 1,900 years ago when they appeared to standardize the Text and presumably presented K)RY as the text with no received tradition of spelling variation. I just don't see any evidence that the Rabbis at this time made selections for Polemical reasons. Certainly the basic Christian position has always been that Jesus is all over the Masoretic Text. What examples do you have that The Rabbis probably changed something 1,900 years ago for Polemical reasons? Polemically, hasn't this pretty much been a Christian thang since the Birth of Christianity? Isn't this what Origen Confesses to us? What better Witness could we have that the Masoretic text was accurate and that it was the Christians who made changes to their Greek translations?



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

Apikorus

I've looked at the microfiche in my university library. The text is indeed almost hopelessly unreadable in Ps 22:17. It has been enhanced in the image you posted here. Elsewhere in the fragment, W and Y are generally distinguishable, as Strawn remarks.

A bit simplistic, but it is good that you recognize the importance of disparate sources of the text. What do you suppose are Moshe Shulman's views on the origins of the Torah?

andrewcriddle

No it is missing in D as well IIUC

Andrew Criddle

Notsri

In view of Swenson's and Strawn's concerns, two of Flint's comments in DJD 38 (pp. 160-61) deserve attention:

Although the photograph of frg. 9 in PAM 42.190 of frg. 9 (containing Ps 22:15-21) is very faded, most of the letters are clearly identifiable under magnification.

With waw and yod clearly distinguishable in this hand…this important variant reading [K)RW] is assured.

Frankly, I'm a bit surprised at Swenson's and Strawn's skepticism, now that I've seen the (unenhanced) photograph. Though the fragment's text is indeed generally faded and in poor condition, it appears to me that both the resh and the waw of K)RW are well preserved. It seems ironic that the most legible portion of the word would arouse their doubts.

It should also be noted that Flint reads not BW but BY in v. 18. Again, from looking at the photograph it seems Flint's determination is likely correct. One notices that the yod does not extend as low as the baseline of the bet, as one would expect if the letter were in fact a waw; the waw in the preceding YR)W does indeed extend that low.

spin

This percentage seems absurdly high to me.

The letter at the end of K)R- is as big as the YODs at the ends of two words in the following lines. Joe has already pointed out the last word BY where the YOD is plainly as big as the letter in question, but so is the YOD at the end of the first word in the line, [(CM]WTY ("my bones"), so two final YODs are the same size as the final letter in question. Is the form of this second YOD any different from the letter in question?

Again in the last fully visible line we find the word [L(]ZRTY ("my strength") and again the YOD is the same size as the letter in question. That's three final YODs which are the same size as this final letter.

Strangely enough the WAW at the end of YR)W -- just before the BY looks awfully like a YOD. The word before that ends in a WAW which is the same size as all those other letters I've mentioned.

So, what's this "70 to 80 percent sure of the reading K)RW" based on? It's not on the fragment we are looking at.


spin

Apikorus

It's probably foolish of me to try to quantify it, spin, and my lack of expertise in Semitic palaeography compounds the problem. My analysis is based not solely on the size of the characters but also on the strokes, as I tried to explain in a previous post. This scribe's yod has a slight resemblance to a caret. The top stroke on his waw is more horizontal, in my view.

Anyway, the letter in question looks to me more like a W than a Y. How much more is admittedly difficult to quantify.

spin

I must admit I've been using the photo supplied by Joe in post #73, which has the line we are looking at already modified for easier reading. If that's what you've been using, then your ideas about the WAWs of the text may be based on the digital restorer's hand rather than the scribe's.

If you look at two of the WAWs I've mentioned on the line below, in YBY+W YR)W BY, do they look any different from the YODs I've also mentioned? Do their forms seem to match the WAW that you describe? Does it evince the fact that "The top stroke on his waw is more horizontal"?

Does it look any different from the YODs I've talked about?


spin

Apikorus

Here's what I see in the restored image:

[img=http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/3474/nahalhever001mw8.th.jpg]

I've circled the legible waws in white and the legible yods in blue (with one in green).

spin

According to your color scheme, you should have another green one indicating the YOD to the right of the big hole, which should be [(CM]WTY. You also failed to indicate the WAW which is the letter before BY -- you've indicated the initial YOD but not the final WAW: YBY+W YR)W BY, which looks quite like the initial YOD.

Now once you consider only the final WAWs and YODs you find that if you didn't have the MT to refer to, you'd have quite a lot of trouble identifying which is which.

It would appear to be only editorial bias which makes the letter at the end of K)R- a WAW.

(And thanks for the effort with the image.)


spin