Scribal Habits of the Aramaic Qumran Texts

Abstract In the description of the scribal habits of the Qumran corpus, usually no distinction is made between its constituent groups. Indeed, the Aramaic corpus shares the major scribal practices with the Hebrew corpus (Table 1) as well as some specific ones (Table 2). The two corpora reflect the same systems that were practiced in the last three pre-Christian centuries and the first century CE in Palestine. Further, quite unexpectedly from the angle of the scribal practices, the scribes of two scrolls may be linked to Qumran sectarian scrolls, 4QpapTob a ar (4Q196) and 4QPsDan a ar (4Q243).