Texts in conversation

Compare Leviticus 21:9 and 4Q213a 3–4 3–8

Hebrew Bible · Dead Sea Scrolls, Biblical Retellings

Summary

In Leviticus, a priest’s daughter who engages in prostitution profanes her father. In 4Q213a from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the shame spreads to her brothers and ancestors, and her disgrace is said to last forever.

Passages

Leviticus 21:9

Hebrew Bible

7 They must not take a wife defiled by prostitution, nor are they to take a wife divorced from her husband, for the priest is holy to his God. 8 You must sanctify him because he presents the food of your God. He must be holy to you because I, the Lord who sanctifies you all, am holy. 9 If a daughter of a priest profanes herself by engaging in prostitution, she is profaning her father. She must be burned to death.

750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Leviticus

4Q213a 3–4 3–8

Dead Sea Scrolls, Biblical Retellings · Aramaic Levi b

12 [to take] from the females [who are foreign, and a profaner.] And now, the plagues of the men will come up 13 [upon those who] incur guilt [by taking her for themselves as] a wife. And she profanes her name and the name of her father. 14 [They judged] her to be burned [for the wrong of her] deed, in [profaning] the fathers. And every 15 [virgin] who ruins her name and the name of her fathers, and brings shame on all her brothers, 16 [the sons of] her father, the name of her disgrace will not be wiped out from all her people forever. 17 [She is cursed] for all the generations of eternity. And whoever [makes guilty] the holy ones of the people, who 18 [put the sons of Israel to shame,] and [let him not be] a holy tithe, an offering to God from

160–60 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in 4Q213a

References

“... These fragments might be diﬀerent from the rest of the manuscript or from a diﬀerent manuscript altogether, since they appear to vary somewhat, both in layout and perhaps in script. Yet, the deteriora- tion of the parchment due to the ravages of time make a deﬁnite paleographic or codicological determination impossible. So, we have preferred to leave them here, but regard them with a measure of doubt. As for content, lines 1–5 of these two fragments, which join together, seem at ﬁrst glance to deal with the Dinah story, but on further examination this is doubtful. Just how Dinah’s rape could be related to the statements made here and how they can be related to the Dinah material in chapter 1, is quite obscure. Although the Dinah incident is prominent in TPL, there is no textual or concep- tual correspondence between these two fragments of ALD and Testament of Levi. [...] The verb is used in Hebrew for the dese- cration of one’s parent, so Leviticus 21:9 where it is translated “It is her father she deﬁles”. ...”

Jonas C. Greenfield, Michael E. Stone, and Esther Eshel, eds., The Aramaic Levi Document: Edition, Translation, Commentary, SVTP 19 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 220–221.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

Fragment 3

4Q213a6 chapters

Compare Leviticus 21:9 and 4Q213a 3–4 3–8

Summary

Passages

Leviticus 21:9

4Q213a 3–4 3–8

References

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