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Re: orion RE: ORION: RE: Limits & the DSS



On the question of whwther scribes do something outside their training, my
problem about falsifiability is that one cold always argue that changed
were trained ones. How do we know what scribes were trained to do except by
what they did?

But, as Fred has pointed out, there is such variation at Qumran that it
seems some scribes must have departed from what they were taught to do.
There are, for example, cases of variable orthography within a single
scroll. This is surely accounted for only by a scribe at some point in the
transmission of the text displayihg some autonomy.

I asked about the definition of scribes, because I wondered if it included
authors........I take it that ancient authors were very often scribes; are
authors allowed to depart from rules?

Philip R Davies
Department of Biblical Studies
University of Sheffield