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Document Details : Title: Comment les scribes ont-ils modifié le texte biblique? Subtitle: Particularités matérielles et épigraphiques des documents écrits découverts à Qumrân, Éléphantine et Deir 'Alla Author(s): HUTZLI, Jürg Journal: Semitica Volume: 65 Date: 2023 Pages: 53-74 DOI: 10.2143/SE.65.0.3293111 Abstract : In a recent ZAW article, David Carr questions the extent to which the material conditions exist for the hypothesis of successive redactions of the biblical text according to the models of Fortschreibung that dominate in particular European scholarship. For the reconstruction of the literary growth of biblical texts Carr proposes a 'scroll approach', i.e., a method that focuses on the scroll and the process of its inscription. According to Carr, whose reflections are primarily based on the evidence of the Qumran scrolls, the simplest way to make changes to the text was for scribes (editors) to insert blocks of text at the end of a book into the space remaining at the end of the scroll. In the present study, while appreciating the methodological guiding principle of the 'scroll approach', I will point out aspects that Carr did not mention. Scribes had more options to altering a transmitted text: replacing one word by another, inserting short sentences, or deleting a word. All of these practices are well documented in the Qumran scrolls. The aim of these interventions was often to correct scribal errors, but there are also several cases of deliberate modifications to the text’s content. Seen from another angle, there are indeed indications that small, targeted content changes took place during the early period of transmission of the biblical text: certain differences in content between the biblical textual witnesses, on the one hand, and short, isolated phrases (found in all textual witnesses) that don’t fit their context, on the other, are best explained as the result of subtle editorial changes and additions by scribes. |
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