4QMMT

One Group Writing to Another

4QMMT is not a scroll. It is six fragmentary manuscripts from Cave 4, none of them complete, which scholars have fitted together into a single reconstructed text — and it is worth saying at the outset that the composite is itself a piece of scholarship rather than an object anyone dug up. What the composite gives is something unlike anything else in the corpus: a letter, addressed by the writers to a leader in Jerusalem, arguing a case.

The case is about halakhah — how the law is to be applied. In the Israel Antiquities Authority's summary, the text "implores the addressee to follow the strict religious rulings of the Dead Sea Scrolls community rather than the practices of an unnamed third group," and the surviving sections "deal primarily with questions of purity and impurity." A section on the calendar and the festivals is largely lost. The authority makes a further observation with real bite: the disputes here "have parallels in rabbinic literature, indicating that the Rabbis were familiar with some of the legal precepts stated in this composition" — and the rabbis attributed those positions to the Sadducees, and rejected them. Three centuries of Jewish argument are visible in a document written by one of the parties while the argument was live.

"Works of the Law"

The letter's title comes from a phrase near its close: miqsat ma'ase ha-Torah, some of the works of the law. Martin Abegg pointed out in 1994 what a reader of Paul notices immediately — that the Greek phrase Paul uses at Galatians 2:16 and 3:10, erga nomou, works of the law, is the same expression, and that until this text was published there was no known Jewish parallel to it. His article's subtitle put it without hedging: "This Dead Sea Scroll and Paul use the very same phrase."

What follows from that is argued. J. D. G. Dunn took it up in New Testament Studies in 1997 and read the parallel as supporting his own long-standing account: that when Paul rejects justification by works of the law, the works in view are the observances that marked Jews off from Gentiles — circumcision, food laws, the calendar, exactly the kind of thing this letter is about — rather than good deeds performed to earn God's favour. Others have contested that reading of the parallel. Jacqueline C. R. de Roo argued in a 2007 monograph that the phrase carries different senses in the two bodies of literature: at Qumran, God-given deeds of obedience in the pattern of Abraham; in Paul, something taken as a false route to salvation. The honest summary is that the discovery gave the debate a real Jewish comparison it had never had, and did not decide it — and a reader should be told that the phrase's presence in a Qumran letter is a fact while what it proves about Paul is a reading.

The Letter Nobody Dug Up

There is a second thing to hold on to, and it is about the object rather than the argument. Nobody has ever excavated 4QMMT. What was excavated is six damaged manuscripts, none of them complete, none of them overlapping tidily with the others; the continuous letter that everyone quotes was assembled out of them by E. Qimron and J. Strugnell and published in 1994 as the tenth volume of Discoveries in the Judaean Desert. That reconstruction is a real scholarly achievement and it is also a hypothesis, and the difference matters when a single phrase in it is being weighed against Galatians.

How much judgement goes into it can be seen in the catalogue. The Israel Antiquities Authority heads its record for the first of the six manuscripts, 4Q394, not "Miqsat Ma'ase ha-Torah" but "4Q Calendar D" — because the calendrical fragments once counted as the letter's opening are now commonly treated as a separate text. The composite has been reassembled since it was first assembled. None of that makes the letter a fiction; the halakhic core of it is solid and the polemic is unmistakable. It does mean a reader should know that the text they are being shown was put together by scholars from pieces, and that its edges are still moving. That the material was assembled at all is worth a word: for forty years the unpublished Qumran texts were held, in the Israel Antiquities Authority's own account, by "fewer then a dozen international scholars", and it took a reorganisation in the early 1990s, under E. Tov and about a hundred editors, to open them.

Scripture references

• Galatians 2:15-16 — "Works of the law" — the phrase this letter also uses
• Galatians 3:10-12 — Paul's argument from the law's own curse
• Romans 3:27-31 — The same question put a second time, to a different church
• Mark 7:1-8 — A first-century argument about purity practice, from the other side of the room

Sources

• Holding institutionIsrael Antiquities Authority, Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library: 4Q Miqsat Ma'ase ha-Torah (4Q397, 4Q396, 4Q398) — Israel Antiquities Authority · The authority's own record and account: "The text is a persuasion letter addressed to a leading figure in Jerusalem, most likely one of the high priests"; it "implores the addressee to follow the strict religious rulings of the Dead Sea Scrolls community rather than the practices of an unnamed third group"; the surviving sections "deal primarily with questions of purity and impurity"; and the parallels in rabbinic literature indicate "that the Rabbis were familiar with some of the legal precepts stated in this composition" and "attributed them to the erroneous laws of the Sadducees". Official publication given as Qimron and Strugnell, DJD 10Supports: The letter's addressee, subject matter, rabbinic parallels and publication
• ScholarshipE. Qimron and J. Strugnell, Qumran Cave 4.V: Miqsat Ma'ase ha-Torah — E. Qimron and J. Strugnell · Discoveries in the Judaean Desert 10 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), xiv + 235 pages and viii plates — the official edition, and the source of the composite text that section three describes: a continuous letter assembled by its editors out of six damaged manuscripts. Print onlySupports: The editio princeps and the reconstruction's authorship
• ScholarshipJ. D. G. Dunn, "4QMMT and Galatians" — J. D. G. Dunn, University of Durham · New Testament Studies 43:1 (1997), 147-153. Takes up Martin Abegg's proposal about the shared phrase and reads it as support for understanding Paul's "works of the law" as boundary-marking observances rather than merit-earning deeds · paywalledSupports: One side of the argument in section two, in the scholar's own publication
• ReferenceMartin Abegg, "Paul, 'Works of the Law' and MMT" — Martin G. Abegg Jr., Trinity Western University · Biblical Archaeology Review 20:6 (November/December 1994). The article that first put the parallel in front of a general readership, under the standfirst "This Dead Sea Scroll and Paul use the very same phrase" · paywalledSupports: The observation that the Qumran letter and Paul share the expression
• ScholarshipJacqueline C. R. de Roo, "Works of the Law" at Qumran and in Paul — Jacqueline C. R. de Roo · Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2007. Argues that the phrase does not carry the same sense in the two literatures: at Qumran, God-given deeds of obedience in the pattern of Abraham; in Paul, something taken as a false route to salvation. Print onlySupports: The dissenting reading of the parallel in section two
• Holding institutionIsrael Antiquities Authority: Discovery and Publication — Israel Antiquities Authority · "For the first 40 years after their discovery, the study of the thousands of text fragments was monopolized by fewer then a dozen international scholars"; "In the early 1990s, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) took major steps to advance the publication", with Emanuel Tov as chief editor and the work "divided among about 100 international scholars"Supports: The publication monopoly and its reform, in section three
• EncyclopediaWikipedia: 4QMMT

Further reading

• The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library: 4Q Miqsat Ma'ase ha-Torah
• Israel Antiquities Authority: Discovery and Publication
• Wikipedia: 4QMMT

Reflect

This is one side of an argument, written to persuade. If someone read only your side of a disagreement you are in, what would they conclude about the other person?