Studies on the Texts of Desert Judah Transforming Proverbs

This study presents a palaeographic, linguistic, and intertextual analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls manuscript 4Q185. The text merges Proverbs tradition with eschatology and reflections of history form Pss 78,105 and 106. The text offers a reinterpretation of Isa 40:6-8. This is the first published monograph on 4Q185 Sapiential Admonitions B, an enigmatic Dead Sea Scroll’s wisdom text. The author offers a new edition that is based on the IAA images and aided by the Göttingen Qumran-Digital database. In an intertextual analysis, she shows that the text of 4Q185 radically transforms the sapiential discourse manifested in Proverbs, by integrating both eschatological tropes and the discourse on memory and national identity reflected in Pss 78, 105 and 106. Before it was conserved in the manuscript, the text underwent literary growth: the section discussing Isa 40:6–8 proves to be a redactional insertion.