Page 275 - History of The Quranic Text | Kalamullah.Com

THE OLD TESTAMENT AND ITS CORRUPTION 255

Santin property, totalling one-third and one-eighth of one dinar for
the year sevenand twenty and three hundred. Written by Ibrahim bin
Hamrnaz in the month of Rabi' al-Awwal of this same year, and I
have placed my faith in Allah.

A total of seven Arabic fragments have been reproduced in the Facsimile
Edition of theDead Sea Scrolls; the one above is the most legible and complete.
At least five other Arabic fragments, one of them of considerable length,
were found in the Wadi Murraba'at cave but were not seen fit by the
authors for inclusion in this edition, although they have been reproduced
elsewhere.!"
Whatever the explanation for these Arabic fragments may be - that
the caves were never properly sealed, or were sealed but rediscovered over
ten centuries ago, or that portions were sealed and others were not - the
fact is that absolutely none of the OT fragments can be pigeon-holed
definitively into one of the two golden periods of 66-70 C.E.and 132-135
c.E. ll9 This sheds light onJ.T. Milik's statement concerning the Minor
Prophets Scroll, that "there are even striking similarities to the script of
medieval manuscripts." 120 If an Arabic fragment from the I Oth century
C.E. lay within these caves, what would have prevented someone from
depositing OT fragments in any century up to and including the tenth as
well? Excavations from the 1950s already concluded that these caves
were "inhabited repeatedly from 4000 B.C. to the Arabian period", 121 so
unless the implication is that Jews wholly abandoned these caves from
135 C.E. to the 20th century, even as Medieval Muslims enjoyed access to
them, then the premise for assigning dates is utterly void. What conceivable
proof is there that no Jews entered the Wadi: Murabba'at in 35] , or 5] 3,
or even 700 C.E.?122

118 ibid, pp. 342-346.
119 The parchments taken from Qumran, which on occasion differ considerably
fromthe Masoretic text,werewrittenbymembersof the Essene community. Thiswas
a monastic order that soughtto practice the strictestJudaism, believing for example
that "the bowels mustnot performtheir wontedfunctions" on the Sabbath. [Dictionary
ifthe Bible, p. 268.J The eventual disappearance of thisordermeansthat allthematerial
from Qumran whichfollows the textualvariantspreferredbythe Essenes, musthave
beenscribedwhilst the order wasstillalive. On the other hand, theWadIMurabba'at
texts coincide more or less with the one text type that is still current, and so could
havepossibly originatedat any point up until the MiddleAges.
120 See Wurthwein, p. 164.
121 ibid, p. 164.
122 Thisisquitepossible, since "someJewishgroupshad continuedtolive in Palestine
probably right through the Moslem domination". [Dictionary if the Bible, p. 720.]