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orion 4QMish(c) correction



I erred in quoting M. Wise as translating Mish(c) A.2.6 as 
"Aristobulus rebels".  Wise read:

                   )B HRQNWS MRD( 

and rendered this: "Hyrcanus rebelled . . ."

This is an important point in Wise's discussion of this text, for 
Wise argues from this for a pro-Aristobulus II tendenz for the text 
(on the grounds that MRD is pejorative and was applied to Hyrcanus).

However it looks to me like this syntax has been mistakenly rendered.
In other lines the routine word order is V-S, with the verb followed 
by the subject.  Applying this pattern elsewhere to the above reading 
one should read Hyrcanus at the end of a clause, then the start of a 
new clause with someone else rebelling.  The information in this is 
that the rebel is someone other than Hyrcanus, and that it is 
contemporary with Hyrcanus.  The reconstructed correct reading 
should be:

     (when...) Hyrcanus, (X) rebelled . . .

The rebel would have been named in the lacuna following the verb.  
Comparative examples from the same text:

     A.2.4  . . . YSWD  B'H  $LM(tsade)YWN . . .
                         . . . foundation, came Shelamzion . . . 
                                  ("Shalamzion came...")

     D.2.4      . . . HRG 'MLYWS . . .
                        . . . killed Aemilius . . .  
                           ("Aemilius killed...")              

Another broken one but with the same V-S word order illustration:

     A.3.2       . . . HG)W'YM HRG $( . . .
                      ( . . . the g)entiles, killed Sh( . . .
                        "Sh(--) killed . . ."

There are no comparative examples that Wise has rendered S-V similarly 
to "Hyrcanus rebelled" .  I hope readers on this list realize that in 
discussing published texts it is routine to offer one's own 
corrections, etc., while being grateful for the work that went into a 
first publication.  And on this important text, Michael Wise is the first, 
and at this date, apparently still the only one who has published on 
this text.  For English translation the fragments (4Q322-324A) are in Wise, 
Abegg, Cook _The Dead Sea Scrolls_, 1996.  The fullest treatment 
Wise has given these fragments, with Hebrew transcription, is in his book, 
_Thunder in Gemini_, 1994.  (An earlier article in the Wise et al 
1994 publication of a New York Academy of Sciences conference in New 
York in 1992 also discussed Mish(c); it is an earlier and 
less-complete version of the article in _Thunder in Gemini_.)  I hope 
this is helpful--

Greg Doudna
Copenhagen