Scrolls from Qumran Cave I

are unique, and, as we have come to recognize, required publication by the American Schools if we were to discharge our responsibilities. Thus they are presented here. We are disappointed only that expense has forbidden the use of the collotype process for the black and white reproductions.

We have omitted the transcriptions of the scrolls. With the increase in knowledge of the Jewish scripts of the Hellenistic and early Roman ages, the scholar will not use transcriptions and the student should not. On difficult or debatable readings there is now an extensive literature. The student is directed to the standard bibliographies: Chr. Burchard, Bibliographie zu den Handschriften vom Toten Meer, I [BZAW 76 (Berlin, 1957; 2nd ed. 1959)]; II [BZAW 89 (Berlin, 1965)]; the continuing bibliography of the Revue de Qumrân (Paris); and the yearly Elenchus bibliographicus biblicus edited by P. Nober (Rome);[4] and M. Yizhar, Bibliography of Hebrew Publications on the Dead Sea Scrolls 1948–1964 [Harvard Theological Studies, 23 (Cambridge, 1967)]. Vocalized texts of the Order of the Community and the Pesher to Habakkuk have been published by A. M. Habermann, Mĕgillôt Midbar Yĕhûdā. The Scrolls from the Judean Desert (Jerusalem, 1959), and E. Lohse, Die Texte aus Qumran. Hebräisch und deutsch (Munich and Darmstadt, 1964).[5]

The Isaiah Scroll (1QIsᵃ) in its fifty-four columns preserves the full text of the biblical book of Isaiah (save for a very few, small lacunae). It is composed of seventeen sheets of sheepskin averaging 26.2 cm. (10 5/16 in.) in height and varying in length, and sewn together with linen thread. The scroll is 7.34 m. (24 ft. 5/16 in.) in length. It is written in a characteristic, Hasmonaean formal hand to be dated ca. 125–100 B.C.[6] Its text has been described as “Proto-Massoretic,” that is, belonging generally to the type from which our received text was derived. Properly we should term the text Old Palestinian, marked by a baroque orthography developed in the Maccabaean Revival (later largely displaced), and characteristically expansionistic and conflate, traits shared with the traditional text and to some degree with the Old Greek.[7]

In addition to corrections in the hand of the original scribe, which are not infrequent, there are correctors of various dates, in the Hasmonaean semiformal script penned by the

[4] Before Vol. 49, 1968, the Elenchus was published in the journal Biblica.
[5] The most thorough treatments of the Order of the Community include P. Wernberg-Møller, The Manual of Discipline [Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah, 1 (Leiden, 1957)]; and J. Licht, The Rule Scroll. A Scroll from the Wilderness of Judaea. 1QS, 1QSa, 1QSb (Jerusalem, 1965). The weightiest treatment of the Pesher to Habakkuk remains that of K. Elliger, Studien zum Habakuk-Kommentar vom Toten Meer [Beiträge zur historischen Theologie, 15 (Tübingen, 1953)].
[6] See the writer’s discussion of the development of the formal Jewish hand in “The Development of the Jewish Scripts,” The Bible and the Ancient Near East, ed. G. Ernest Wright (New York, 1961), pp. 133–202, esp. pp. 166–173, and Fig. 2, line 2 (the script of 4QDtᵉ, the “type script” contemporary with 1QIsᵃ).
[7] See the writer’s address delivered on the occasion of the dedication of the Shrine of the Book, “The Contribution of the Qumrân Discoveries to the Study of the Biblical Texts,” Israel Exploration Journal, 16 (1966), pp. 81–95, and the literature cited in n. 2 (p. 82).