GAZA (site). See ‘Ajjul, Tell el-.
GENESIS APOCRYPHON. One of the seven scrolls found by bedouin in Cave i at Qumran in spring 1947 is tlie Genesis Apocryphon (iQApGen). Together with three other scrolls from that cave, it was sold to Mar Athanasius Yeshue Samuel, the Syrian Metropolitan attached to
St. Mark’s Monastery in Jerusalem. Unlike the otlier scrolls, the Genesis Apocryphon was not opened until it was sold— to the State of Israel, in June 1954. After the sale, authorities turned the scroll over to J. Biberkraut for unrolling. The scroll’s beginning and end were missing and, of the twenty-two columns that survived, only the last three—the scroll’s innermost portions, as it was rolled—were more or less completely preserved. The opening portions had suffered greatiy from exposure to the elements and from the mordant inlc with which the scroll was inscribed. The ink had eaten into tlie leather, so that many of the words are blurred.
Yigael Yadin and Nahman Avigad published a preliminary edition of tlte scroll in 1956—only the five columns (2, 19-22) that could readily be deciphered. They never published the other columns, a project that recently was turned over to two Israeli scholars, Jonas Greenfield and Elisha Qimron. They have, to date, published an additional column of the scroll, column 12. In addition, J. T. Milik published fragments belonging to the missing beginning of the scroll as 1Q20. He did not succeed in reading much of the text on what are very badly darkened fragments, but recently new photographs enabled Michael Wise and Bruce Zuckerman to read and reconstruct the 1Q20 fragments as “column 0.” Moreover, Zuckerman has brought to light a previously un-Imown portion of column i, dubbed tire Trever fragment.
The importance of the Genesis Apocryphon lies in two principal spheres; language and interpretation. The scroll is written in Aramaic; as a fair amount of text has been preserved, it constitutes one of the primary witnesses to the literary use of tliat language in late Second Temple period Palestine (200 BCE-70 ce). The interpretive method of the scroll belongs to tire category designated “rewritten Bible,” in which biblical stories are retold with explanatory changes and additions. The Genesis Apocryphon is an early and significant witness to titis method of biblical interpretation, witli important connections to ±e pseudepigraphic JwMeej.
Largely following the analysis by Joseph A. Fitzmyer, the contents of the scroll can be broken down as follows: columns 0-2, the birth of Noah; 6-10, Noah and the Flood; 11, Noah’s covenant; 12-?, Noah’s division of the earth among his sons; 18, Abram in Ur and Haran; 18-19:10, Abram in Canaan; 19:10-20:33, Abram in Egypt; 20:33-21:22, Abram in the Promised Land; 21:23-22:26, Abram defeats the four Idngs; and 22:27-?, Abram’s vision of an heir.
[5ee also Dead Sea Scrolls.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Avigad, Nahman, and Yigael Yadin. A Genesis Apocryphon. Jerusalem, 1956. Editio princeps; it includes a descriptive narrative, photographs, a transcription, and an English translation of columns 2, 19-22. Barthelemy, Dominique, and J. T. Milik. Qumran Cave I. Oxford, 1955. Includes Milik’s treatment of the 1Q20 fragments (pp. 86-87 and pi. 17) which, even under infrared light, were extremely dark and thus difficult to read.
Fitzmyer, Joseph A. The Genesis Apocryphon of Qumran Cave I. 2d rev.
Ed. Rome, 1971. Contains the Aramaic text, English translation, and line-by-line commentary, with an introduction to tlte issues raised by the scroll. Excellent treatment, but rapidly becoming outdated.
Greenfield, Jonas C., and Elisha Qimron. “The Genesis Apocryphon Col. XII.” In Studies in Qumran Aramaic, edited by Takamitsu Mu-raoka, pp. Abr-Nahrain, Supplement Series, vol. 3. Leiden,
1992. Includes photograph, transcription, and English translation, with philological analysis. Only about ten new lines are clearly legible.
Michael O. Wise
World History
