4Q108 (or 4QCant
c) is a fragment containing a portion of the
Song of Songs (3:7–8) in
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
.
[Dead sea scrolls - Song of Songs]
Fragments from three such scrolls were found in Cave 4 at
Qumran
Qumran ( he, קומראן; ar, خربة قمران ') is an archaeological site in the West Bank managed by Israel's Qumran National Park. It is located on a dry marl plateau about from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, near the Israeli ...
. These, and
6Q6 from Cave 6, estimated from 2nd century BCE, comprise the total witness to the Song from the
Dead Sea Scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls (also the Qumran Caves Scrolls) are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts discovered between 1946 and 1956 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine, near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the ...
, known so far.
Identification
It is evident that 4Q108 is not from the other two manuscripts of the Song found in the cave. The last two words of Song 3:7, ''g'bore Israel'' ("warriors of Israel") are already accounted for in
4Q106; and the letters of
4Q107 are formed by an observably different hand to 4Q108. The manner of composition (''
ductus
In anatomy and physiology, a duct is a circumscribed channel leading from an exocrine gland or organ.
Types of ducts
Examples include:
Duct system
As ducts travel from the acinus which generates the fluid to the target, the ducts become large ...
'') of the letters ''aleph'' and ''shin'' differs between the manuscripts. Additionally, the
lacuna in the second column of 4Q107 does not provide enough space to accommodate 4Q108.
Contents
4Q108 is a "tiny fragment"
containing only ten letters from two lines — five letters each from verses seven and eight of chapter three. The five letters from verse seven are: (''lmh''), the last three letters of the name ''Solomon''; and (''šš'') (''shesh''), the ''six'' in the word ''sixty''. The five letters from verse eight are a single word (''’ăḥūzî''), the passive participle of the verb meaning ''grasp''. So 4Q108 reads:
*
sup>7Behold the seat of So''lomon six
y warriors surrounding it, from the warriors of*
srael, 8all of themequipped
ith sword ...
Features
*The
Masoretic Text
The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; he, נֻסָּח הַמָּסוֹרָה, Nūssāḥ Hammāsōrā, lit. 'Text of the Tradition') is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in Rabbinic Judaism. ...
spells the verb of verse eight with only four letters (); 4Q108, however, contains a consonant (''vav'') representing one of the distinctive vowels () of the passive participle.
*The passive construction used here — ''aḥuzi ḥereb'' (grasped of sword) — is not unique to either the Song (see
Ezekiel
Ezekiel (; he, יְחֶזְקֵאל ''Yəḥezqēʾl'' ; in the Septuagint written in grc-koi, Ἰεζεκιήλ ) is the central protagonist of the Book of Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible.
In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Ezekiel is ac ...
43:6) or to Hebrew.
[Y Blau, ''Leshonenu'' 18 (1950-1952): 67-81. ]
See also
*
List of Hebrew Bible manuscripts
A Hebrew Bible manuscript is a handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) made on papyrus, parchment, or paper, and written in the Hebrew language. (Some of the Biblical text and notations may be in Aramaic.) The oldes ...
*
Biblical manuscript
A biblical manuscript is any handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Bible. Biblical manuscripts vary in size from tiny scrolls containing individual verses of the Jewish scriptures (see ''Tefillin'') to huge polyglot codices (multi-ling ...
*
Tanakh at Qumran
The Dead Sea Scrolls (also the Qumran Caves Scrolls) are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts discovered between 1946 and 1956 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine, near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the nor ...
References
External links
*
Emanuel Tov
Emanuel Tov, ( he, עמנואל טוב; born September 15, 1941, Amsterdam, Netherlands as Menno Toff) is a Dutch Israeli, emeritus J. L. Magnes Professor of Bible Studies in the Department of Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has ...
'A Categorized List of All the "Biblical Texts" Found in the Judean Desert.'''Dead Sea Discoveries'' 8 (2001): 67-84.
4Q108 at the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library
{{Dead Sea Scrolls
Dead Sea Scrolls
1st-century BC biblical manuscripts
Q4,108