Longacre on the larger differences between the Great Isaiah Scroll and the MT

Thanks to the still-humming ETC blogroll, I noticed that Drew Longacre just posted a short blog post at his OTTC site on the similarity of the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa-a) and the MT. This question became something of the flashpoint over the last year after the now famous Wes Huff interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast where he said it was word-for-word the same. 

Many counter-apologists jumped on this as misleading and it went round and round on the interweb (Wes later clarified in a video with John Meade). Apparently the issue is not dead since Bart Ehrman jumped into the fray this week. (I do not recommend you go down the YouTube rabbit hole on this one if you value your time). 

Drew gives some of this backstory in his post. But I want to ignore all that and higlight instead Drew’s 2013 DSD article that deserves much more attention. It addresses some of the largest differences between the Great Isaiah Scroll and the MT. Here is what he says about that:

Third, I would point out a series of difficult passages in the second half of the scroll that differ considerably from the Masoretic text, often with 1QIsa-a missing entire verses of the MT. Eugene Ulrich has argued that 1QIsa-a reflects an earlier version of Isaiah in these passages and that the MT has grown with additional verses being added. I have argued in an article that most of these passages were actually missing in the exemplar from which 1QIsa-a was copied, because it was damaged along the bottom edge. Thus, every column was physically damaged and missing one or more lines. You can see this, e.g., in how the scribe originally left blank lines for the missing verses. If correct, and I’m quite convinced it is, it means that most of the biggest differences between the Great Isaiah Scroll and the MT are easily explained as copying problems in the former.

I don’t think we’ve blogged about Drew’s DSD article here before. The full title is “Developmental Stage, Scribal Lapse, or Physical Defect? 1QIsaa’s Damaged Exemplar for Isaiah Chapters 34-66” and is online here (or in free pre-pub here). Here is the abstract:

The Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran (1QIsaa) does not generally reflect a text form earlier than the Masoretic text. Instead, the convergence in 1QIsaa of patterns of spacing irregularities, literary and textual problems, and secondary supplementations, as well as a consistent pattern of distribution, are best explained on the basis of the hypothesis of an exemplar for chapters 34–66 with a damaged bottom edge. Upon reaching the defective edge in each column of his exemplar, the scribe dealt with any lacunose or illegible text in one of two ways before continuing with the unaffected text at the top of the subsequent exemplar column. Sometimes he left blank spaces in his new copy to be filled in with the correct text from other manuscripts at a later time. At other times he attempted full or partial reconstructions of the text based on whatever text remained legible in the damaged exemplar, memory, and contextual clues.

P.S. The fact that anyone is counting spelling differences between these two texts as somehow important is hilarious to me as a NT text critic. 

Comparing New Testament Manuscripts

Recently I had some reason to compare a number of manuscripts in Acts and was happy to be able to use the CBGM tools for this, in particular the ‘Comparison of Witnesses’. The reason for this post is to point out some issues that are perhaps at first sight less intuitive. This is not criticism of the way the data set is constructed, as the actual manuscripts are always messier than what can be captured in a database.

1. Beware of comparing manuscripts to ‘A’, the reconstructed initial text. Why? Because at every place where ‘A’ has a ‘split reading’ it does not show up in the actual comparison; ‘A’ is treated as if it presents no reading here. Since the number of split readings equals around 2% of the total variant readings, there are some potential issues.

For example in Acts 1:6, we have ‘A’ and ‘01’ compared with ‘Show Agreements’ activated, and we see that the split reading at Acts 1:6/10 is simply not there.

2.    Equal does not always mean that things are the same. This caught me out when I was comparing P50 – arguably a difficult manuscript to encode – and 01. At three places differences between these two are given as ‘equal’ (‘=’) in the list (see below) despite a difference between the two: at Acts 10:28/22 (P50: ανδρι ιουδαιου; 01 ανδρι ιουδαιω), Acts 10:29/17 (P50: ουν; 01: -), and Acts 10:30/50 (P50: μου; 01: εμου).

In the actual apparatus of the ECM it becomes clear why these three differences are treated as being the same. At the first two places the original hand of P50 is deemed to have made an obvious scribal error which was corrected by the original hand, at the third place 01 is deemed to give a mere orthographic variant. This is all perfectly justifiable, but it is good to be aware of this when relying on the ‘Comparison of Witnesses’ to give you all differences. You would not get this extra information from simply relying on the list of Agreements/Differences.

3.    Not equal does not always mean that you will see the difference. The example to illustrate this comes actually from the ECM apparatus, which gives here more detailed information than the comparison of witnesses does. Nothing comes up in the comparison at Acts 10:30/10, yet the ECM tells us that P50 has a scribal error in the word απο (recorded as P50f) namely οπο. Again, I can see the rationale why such difference does not show up in the Comparison of Witnesses. However, there is some inconsistency in recording corrections by the original hand on itself in P50 (as the first two examples in 2. above). At Acts 10:30/18 the first hand corrects τη to ταυτη, which – in analogy to 10:28/20 and 10:29/17 – should probably be recorded or show up somewhere. But this time it is not found as a 'difference that is equal' or as a remark in the apparatus of the ECM.

4. Despite best intentions, the apparatus at ECM can still beat me. Again this has to do P50, and in particular how P50 is treated at the place of the split reading at Acts 10:28/34-38 in the ECM. The top line of the split reading has the support of P50C*V (so the probable reading of the original hand correcting itself). But then for the complete absence of this passage (absence, so not an omission) we find P50(C)*, and what this might mean beats me, though I trust there is a perfectly logical explanation.

As so often in scholarship, it is only by using a tool that we learn about its strengths and limitations. I am still impressed how much the data gathering and sharing by the INTF has enabled progress and deeper understanding of the textual tradition of the New Testament, yet data are never as hard as we want them to be.