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Re: orion Spoken DSS Hebrew
I think we can blithely forget any connection between 4Q246 (in which he
who was called "Son of God", in all probability Antiochus IV Epiphanes,
will crush and trample until the people of God arrive) and Christian
writings. The connection between the Aramaic testaments and the later
T12Pat is tenuous in that there are a only few literal likenesses in the
texts, indicating that the path from the Aramaic to T12Pat was quite
complex and thus provide only an indirect connection at best.
If the content of the word "targum" is simply "translation from Hebrew
into Aramaic", then let us use the analytical rather than the synthetic,
and do away with the confusing "targum". If there is more in the content
of the word, then its usage regarding certain Qumran texts needs to be
justified and not assumed. I don't believe this can be done. It would
follow that any gratuitous collocations of the term cannot be applied to
the Qumran Aramaic translations from Hebrew.
The David Suter observation that an analysis of text genres in Aramaic
tends to indicate a more esoteric tone and thus points away from any
popular implications of Aramaic is interesting.
As for any idea of sequestered life for the DSS people:
"Unless they are careful to act in accordance with the exact
interpretation of the law in the age of wickedness: to separate
themselves from the sons of the pit; to abstain from the wicked wealth
which defiles, either by promise or by vow, and from the wealth of the
temple and from stealing from the poor of the people, from making their
widows their spoils and from murdering orphans; to separate unclean from
clean and differentiate between holy and common; to keep the sabbath day
according to exact interpretation, and the festivals and the day of
fasting, according to what they had discovered, those who entered the
new covenant in the land of Damascus; to set apart holy portions
according to their exact interpretation; for each to love his brother
like himself; to strengthen the hand of the poor, the needy and the
foreigner;..." (CD VI, 14-21 Martinez)
The clear implication of this passage is not one of sequestered life but
living in the midst of such possibilities and not mixing the clean with
the unclean.
We have linguistic and orthographic differences in the Qumran texts that
need to be explained before we should stand at the barricades. Why was
the Great Isaiah Scroll "translated" into DSS Hebrew? Why were Job and
Leviticus translated into an Aramaic dialect? We can't answer these
questions from the texts at Qumran: they are merely flashpoints that
undermine most theories. Can a Great Unified Theory cover the fact that
there are three text traditions in the torah represented at Qumran, the
so-called Babylonian, Samaritan and Septuagint forms? Can it deal with
differences in legal rulings (like the distance for the place of the
hand)?
Jay
John J. Hays
jhays@mail.com
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I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto!