This chapter discusses the putative Vorlage of the biblical quotations. The discussion questions the entire procedure by which previous scholarship frequently asserts that the Qumran commentators modified this or that word of holy scripture simply by comparing the pesherite lemmata to the Masorceic Text. Such a procedure is highly questionable. Even if, for argument’s sake, it is granted that the pesherite lemmata are proto-Masoretic Texts, the sheer number of different readings enumerated should at the very least give one pause to reflect as to what these supposedly unmodified readings were...

This chapter discusses the putative Vorlage of the biblical quotations. The discussion questions the entire procedure by which previous scholarship frequently asserts that the Qumran commentators modified this or that word of holy scripture simply by comparing the pesherite lemmata to the Masorceic Text. Such a procedure is highly questionable. Even if, for argument’s sake, it is granted that the pesherite lemmata are proto-Masoretic Texts, the sheer number of different readings enumerated should at the very least give one pause to reflect as to what these supposedly unmodified readings were and how they were so.