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Document Details :

Title: Old Texts and Modern Mirages
Subtitle: The «I» of Two Qumran Hymns
Author(s): GARCÍA MARTÍNEZ, Florentino
Journal: Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses
Volume: 78    Issue: 4   Date: Dec. 2002   
Pages: 321-339
DOI: 10.2143/ETL.78.4.595

Abstract :
Few Qumran texts have been more hotly discussed in recent times than the hymns Maurice Baillet published 20 years ago as part of one of the copies of the War Scroll from Cave 4. These hymns have been preserved in the first column of fragment 11 of 4Q491, which Baillet entitled the “Canticle of Michael and the canticle of the Righteous”. Apparently, one of the reasons for the interest in these badly fragmented hymns has been the possible importance of the first one for an understanding of some ideas present in the New Testament. The titles given to some of the studies of the text by scholars of the Dead Sea scrolls clearly reveal this focus, and this of course is why some New Testament scholars have intensively studied this manuscript within the framework of so-called “Angelomorphic Christology”. This research has produced very valuable results, but has reached no agreement on the identity of the protagonist of the hymn which Baillet attributed to Michael, the person who speaks in it using first person singular forms.

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