The Use of Greek at Qumran: Manuscript and Epigraphic Evidence for a Marginalized Language

Abstract

Treatments of language use at Qumran have tended to marginalize the evidence for Greek language use among the Covenanters, on the basis of the observation that far more of the surviving texts are written in Hebrew or Aramaic. This paper examines the meager evidence for Greek use at the site-including the sole Greek documentary text, 4Q350, recently published epigraphic evidence, and the enigmatic Greek letters of the Copper Scroll (3Q15)-in an attempt to recognize the importance of Greek for everyday intramural business and for maintaining economic contact with exterior communities. Manuscript and epigraphic survivals demonstrate that the Covenanters' use of Greek can be characterized as primarily occurring in the context of day-to-day economic transactions, business, and trade. The evidence suggests that, like the Bar Kokhba rebels, the Covenanters attempted to "purify" their discourse and way of life, but economic realities nevertheless encouraged periodic communication in the Greek language.

Greek education and cultural identity in Greek-speaking Judaism: The Jewish-Greek historiographers

“…The presence of Greek in both documentary and literary documents at Qumran has been undervalued. 44 Particularly interesting in the framework of the present study is 4Q127, which seems to represent the genre of "rewritten scripture" in Greek 45 and may provide an interesting parallel for our historiographers, whose work is often related to this genre, too. 46 The scrolls suggest that the activity of Eupolemus and Demetrius is at home in a Jewish environment without a need for the assumption that their work was directed outward.…”