Monday, October 2, 2017

Epistle of Jeremiah at Qumran

I believe the only bit of the deuterocanonical books that we have from a Jewish source in Greek is this little scrap of the Epistle of Jeremiah found in Cave 7 at Qumran.

pap7QLXXEpJer = Ra 804

It dates to the first century BCE, and it contains 22 letters from EpJer 43–44. 

Here's Rahlfs' text of those verses.  

ὅταν δέ τις αὐτῶν ἐφελκυσθεῖσα ὑπό τινος τῶν παραπορευομένων κοιμηθῇ, τὴν πλησίον ὀνειδίζει, ὅτι οὐκ ἠξίωται ὥσπερ καὶ αὐτὴ οὔτε τὸ σχοινίον αὐτῆς διερράγη.  44 πάντα τὰ γινόμενα αὐτοῖς ἐστιν ψευδῆ· πῶς οὖν νομιστέον ἢ κλητέον ὥστε θεοὺς αὐτοὺς ὑπάρχειν; 
And NETS: 

And when one of them is drawn away by one of those who passes by to have sexual intercourse, she chides her companion, because she was not valued as she herself was, nor has she had her cord torn.  44 Everything that happens for them is fake. How then should one consider or call them gods?
This Qumran fragment appears to have a textual variant, since the last letter on the fourth line appears to be either an epsilon or theta, and the editor (Baillet; DJD 3, p. 143) goes with theta. He proposes this reading (with preserved letters highlighted):
οὔτε τὸ σχοινίον αὐτῆς διερράγη.  44 πάντα τὰ γινόμενα αὐτοῖς ἐστιν ψευδῆ· πῶς οὖν νομιστέον ὑπάρχειν αὐτοὺς θεοὺς ἢ κλητέον αὐτοὺς θεοὺς;
The meaning is not much different: "How then should one consider them gods or should one call them gods?"

1 comment:

mwidunn said...

Thanks for this!

The "Letter of Jeremiah" is one of my favorite works from the Bible. I almost always assign it as a reading, whenever I teach the Bible's view of other religions.