Pluralism and Authoritativeness: The Case of the S Tradition

This chapter takes the narrowing gap between the Hebrew Bible and the Qumran materials as its starting point both in terms of dating as well as the recognition that both collections testify to complex literary developments that can illuminate one another. I set out to stimulate more intellectual dialogue and less Apartheid between the scholarly debates on the emerging Bible and the textual fluidity of the S manuscripts. Both literatures witness a comparable attitude towards a pluriform and complex textual landscape which was apparently taken for granted and indicates that some – maybe all? – Jews in the late Second Temple period who had the leisure to engage with their literary heritage were accustomed to pluralities of texts.