--- title: "The Qumran Scrolls of the Book of Judges — Rezetko 2013" description: "The paper tests the usual practice of dating Biblical Hebrew from the Masoretic Text alone." authors: ["Robert Rezetko"] year: 2013 venue: "Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 13" source: "https://doi.org/10.5508/jhs.2013.v13.a2" doi: "10.5508/jhs.2013.v13.a2" licence: "CC BY 2.5 (Journal of Hebrew Scriptures)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/rezetko-2013-qumran-scrolls-book-judges-literary/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/rezetko-2013-qumran-scrolls-book-judges-literary/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2013](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2013/page/2/) / The Qumran Scrolls of the Book of Judges: Literary Formation, Textual Criticism, and Historical Linguistics # The Qumran Scrolls of the Book of Judges: Literary Formation, Textual Criticism, and Historical Linguistics **Authors:** [Robert Rezetko](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/robert-rezetko/) · **Year:** 2013 · **Venue:** Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 13, article 2 **Link:** [jhsonline.org/index.php/jhs/article/view/20646](https://jhsonline.org/index.php/jhs/article/view/20646) · **Licence:** [CC BY 2.5](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/) [**20** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W1964067393) OpenAlex, 2026-10-14 · [Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 13](https://openalex.org/S2764683527) · [licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/) - [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.5508/jhs.2013.v13.a2) - [PDF](https://jhsonline.org/index.php/jhs/article/download/20646/15763) - [DOI 10.5508/jhs.2013.v13.a2](https://doi.org/10.5508/jhs.2013.v13.a2) - [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W1964067393) **Authors (1)** 1. [Robert Rezetko](https://openalex.org/A5039983970) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2606-6182) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/103661682) · h 8 · 261 citations · 52 works Citations and author metrics: OpenAlex, 2026-10-14; authors with the same name are not always told apart. ## What it is about The paper tests the usual practice of dating Biblical Hebrew from the Masoretic Text alone. It compares MT Judges with three Qumran fragments (1QJudg, 4QJudga, 4QJudgb), above all the passage Judg 6:7–10, which MT has and 4QJudga lacks. After a long literary and text-critical argument that the MT passage is a late addition, the author examines ten linguistic features in the MT pluses and in the MT–Qumran variants (verb syntax, construct forms, suffixes, the article, and others). The late MT additions are written in standard "classical" Hebrew, with "early" and "late" features mixed at random. Manuscripts differ word by word in such details (an article here and not there, wayyiqtol in one, weqatal in another), so language was fluid in transmission and the direction of change is largely patternless. His conclusion: historical linguistics of Hebrew must work together with textual and literary criticism; a linguistic profile of the MT does not date its author. ## Ideas - I1. When the manual states a "late" or "early" feature, add the caveat that MT samples can carry late additions in classical language; frequencies per book describe the MT as transmitted, not the date of composition. - I3. Keep a list of verses where the wayyiqtol/weqatal choice varies between witnesses, as a known source of noise for any rule that depends on the verb form. ## For Mova - I2. If the Samaritan Pentateuch (or a Qumran Torah text) becomes available aligned to our trees, count the linguistic variants by type (article, conjunction, verb form, plene spelling, suffix form) between MT and SP for the five books. This is the Torah analogue of the paper's test and measures how "fluid" the text of the corpus Mova reads is. I1 is a paragraph for [languages/hbo/12-biblical-mishnaic-modern.md](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/12-biblical-mishnaic-modern/) (the dating debate). I2 and I3 need an aligned second witness of the Torah; until then they are entries for the gaps list in `13-mova-tools.md`, and a caution for verb-form rules in `tools/macula/src/prag.rs`. ## Institutions [🎓**The University of Sydney** Sydney · Australia 29 works · 67,547 citations](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/the-university-of-sydney/) · [🎓**Radboud University Nijmegen** Nijmegen · Netherlands 10 works · 892 citations](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/radboud-university-nijmegen/) Topics[Hebrew & Aramaic](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/hebrew-aramaic/) · [Semitic languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/semitic-languages/) · [Historical linguistics & language change](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/language-change/) ## Cite Cite as Robert Rezetko. 2013. The Qumran Scrolls of the Book of Judges: Literary Formation, Textual Criticism, and Historical Linguistics. Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 13. The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.5508/jhs.2013.v13.a2](https://doi.org/10.5508/jhs.2013.v13.a2) ```bibtex @article{rezetko2013qumran, title = {{The Qumran Scrolls of the Book of Judges: Literary Formation, Textual Criticism, and Historical Linguistics}}, author = {Robert Rezetko}, journal = {Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 13}, year = {2013}, doi = {10.5508/jhs.2013.v13.a2}, url = {https://doi.org/10.5508/jhs.2013.v13.a2} } ``` - [← previous Multimodality and Dialogue Act Classification in the RoboHelper Project](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/chen-2013-multimodality-dialogue-act-classification-robohelper/) - [next → Multigraph Clustering for Unsupervised Coreference Resolution](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/martschat-2013-multigraph-clustering-unsupervised-coreference-resolution/) - [↑ back to papers of 2013](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2013/page/2/)