Thursday, July 16, 2009

I didn't know they are even allowed to mention the Dead Sea Scrolls in Yated Ne'eman

Normally I stay above the fray. Sniff. But this seemed post-worthy.

The Faithful Peg printed an article, which can be read here, about quasi-rabbinic ordination of women and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. This is their second extensive treatment of YCT, both written by someone called Yisroel Lichter (who, evidently, is a bit of a maven in J-blogs).

A part jumped out and bears highlighting:

This is perhaps why we continue to find so many serious breaches in the so called “scholarship” of YCT.

For example, YCT published a companion to Sefer Shmuel in which one contributor posits that our version of Sefer Shmuel is corrupt. He bases his opinion on a study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Obviously this is outright kefirah.

This refers to the Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Tanakh Companion on the Book of Samuel. As only one article in the book mentions the Dead Sea Scrolls, "The Nachash Story and the Dead Sea Scrolls" by Leeor Gottlieb, this is the place to look. Fortunately the entire article is viewable on Google Books, pg 57-77 (you can search for a word like "sea" in the book and pop right to it). Or you can buy it from its publisher, Ben Yehuda Press.

What does Leeor Gottlieb write about that relates to what Yisroel Lichter wrote? Here I will only reproduce the conclusion of the article, but a little summary first. He discusses a problematic text, compares it with the Septuagint text of Samuel which does not contain the problem because it is a little more expansive. He then refers to a fragment of a Hebrew text found at Qumran which does not read like our text, the massoretic, but agrees with the expanded version of the Septuagint. He then concludes:


You can read the whole article yourself. I ask, is this "outright kefirah"? What do you think, Inquisitive reader?

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