Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

Dear Dave,

Would you be so kind as to tell me which psalms scroll has ps110? I have
looked through all the various scrolls whose contents are listed in
Fitzmyer's DSS Publications and Tools and have not found mention of it.

Fitzmyer lists parts of psalms for each of the following manuscripts:

1Q10: 86, 92, 94, 95, 119
1Q11: 126, 127, 128
1Q12: 44
2Q14: 103, 104
3Q2 : 2

Cave 4:
a: 5, 6, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38 + 71, 47, 53, 54, 56, 62, 63, 66, 67, 69, 74
b: 91, 92, 94, 96, 98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 112, 115, 116, 118
c: 16, 17?, 18, 27, 28, 35, 37, 42, 45, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53
d: 104, 106?, 147
e: 76, 77, 78, 81, 86, 88, 89, 104, 105, 109, 115, 116, 120, 125, 126 129, 130
f: 22, 107, 109
g: 119
h: 119
j: 48, 49, 51
k: 99, 135
l: 104
m: 93, 95, 97, 98
n: 135, 136
o: 114, 115, 116
p: 143
q: 31, 33, 35 (32 omitted as in 4QPs(a))
r: 26, 27, 30
s: 5, 6, 88
4Q236: 89
4QPs122

5Q5: 119
6Q5: 78
11QPs(b): 141 [last word only], 133, 144, 118
11QPs(c): 2, 9, 12, 14, 43, 77, 78, perhaps 36, 86, 18
11QPs(d): 39, 43, 59, 68, 78, 81
11QPs(e): 37

MasPs: 81 - 85 (but this may be well over 100 years later)

5/6HevPs: 15, 16, and Fitzmyer mentions the possibility of what seems like
a large sequence from 7:14 to 31:22.

I think that exhausts the Dead Sea psalms evidence. I see nothing to
support your claims about order. Perhaps a lot more has come to light since
Fitzmyer's effort.

I wrote:

>> there are no fragments of Gen14 amongst the DSS (the first part of
>> Genesis is particularly poorly represented). There is also no mention of
>> Melchizedek in Jubilees (I have mentioned problems here elsewhere).
>> However, the GenAp is the first occasion in which we come across the
>> Melchizedek episode and not unstrangely it is a document in which the
>> epithet "Most High God" is quite common.

Dave started thus:

>Please notice what Ian has done here: 

Prelude to another load of Dave's obfuscation.

>first he asserts that Gen 14 is not represented; 

True or false, Dave?

>then he admits, 

Admits? That is your rhetoric. At the time, I noted a fact.

>...in an aside so hopefully not too many people will notice it, 

It was there on your little video screen, Dave. Whatever one says can be
taken down and used, so this is just more of your rhetoric (read: polemic).

>that the first part of Genesis is poorly represented.  

True or false, Dave?

>Let me expand on that: there's a gap in the material 
>between chapters 8 and 12 (which is to say nothing survives of 
>chapters 9, 10 and 11); the Genesis Apocryphon stops at 15:4 and 

The Genesis Apocryphon is not Genesis, Dave. So it's nice that they are
related, but they are also different beasts. Read my lips, Dave: you cannot
assume anything about Genesis from GenAp.

>there is nothing more of Genesis surviving until 17:12; we have only 
>the latter parts of chapters 18 and 19; chapter 20 is not preserved; 
>and he wants to make a big deal about absence of chapter 14!  Yet 
>he admits 

Admits! Gosh, you like this type of polemic. I've seen it used so often
though. Dave, would you "admit" that you are being over polemic and trying
to hide the fact that the earliest example of the Melchizedek episode is in
a text that used the same epithet for God that is found in Genesis only in
the Melchizedek episode, yet it is the common epithet in the Genesis
Apocryphon?

>it is in fact preserved.  

It had to be preserved somewhere, Dave, or we wouldn't have it at all.
Don't be vacuous there.

>From there he wants to try and 
>explain away preservation of chapter 14 

Note the presumption that the Genesis Apocryphon is by necessity based on
Genesis. And you claim to know something about text criticism. You
*blindly* accept that GenAP is based on Genesis. This is a rash assumption
that would be seen if you did a close comparison between the various texts
that deal with the same materials as GenAp. You will find that there is no
one plain source, for each has its own flavour and supports one then
another of the other varieties.

>in the GA 

Preserved in GenAP, not *Genesis*.

>by resorting to 

More jaded polemic.

>the document's use of the phrase El Elyon.  

That's called text criticism, Dave. As you said:

>[..] "It's there and it's staring me in the face, but I don't want to deal 
>with it."

You have this bad habit of not dealing with the text as it is, but trying
to make it something else to fit your presuppositions. The cave 11 psalms
scroll is anomalous because it doesn't fit your predefined ideas of how a
psalms scroll should be structured. GenAp must be based on Genesis.
Convenient, very convenient.

Let me ask:
1) is the earliest form of the Melchizedek episode that of the
   Genesis Apocryphon?
2) is the use of the means to refer to God in GenAp as "God Most
   High" a normal means?
3) is it a normal means in Genesis?
4) is it true that in a space of only five verses in Genesis the
   term is used four times and found nowhere else in the book?
5) is the term found in other books commonly thought of as older?
6) is Melchizedek speculation evidenced anywhere prior to the era
   of the Qumran documents (ie late or post biblical)?
7) is it true that the Hasmonean rulers who flourished around that
   time were known as the "priests of the Most High God", the
   epithet found in Genesis only in the Melchizedek episode?


Cheers,


Ian