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One Thousand Scribes
Of the approximately 850 texts at Qumran,
many show more than one scribe. In all of
the decades of study of these texts, only
three scribes have been identified across
texts, so far as I am aware. These are:
-- the same scribe wrote 1QS (1QSa, 1QSb),
4QTest, 4QSam(c), 2QJer, and wrote
corrections on 1QIsa(a)
-- the same scribe wrote 1QpHab and 11QTemple(b)
-- the same scribe wrote 4QpPs(a), 4QpHos(a),
and 4QpIsa(a)
One might think that among the remaining texts there
may be more scribe identities. Perhaps. But
a lot of texts have been worked over by a lot of persons
for four decades now and the three scribe identitities
above are the meager results from all this time.
The conclusion is that the true number of scribes
represented in the Qumran texts can hardly be estimated
on present information at less than a thousand, greater
than the number of texts. Fred Cryer is absolutely
right in outlining what he and I hope to do here in attempting
to count, catalogue, and quantify information about these
scribes. Perhaps the number may come down by one or two
hundred--or it may not.
Greg Doudna
gd@teol.ku.dk