The Varieties of DSS Hebrew as Reflected in Two Syntactic Traits, and the Sociolinguistic Situation Underlying the Qumran Hebrew Variety

This paper offers a provisional evaluation of both the use of the particle ’et preceding a nominal functioning as a direct object and of the reversed word order, as these two groups of syntactic hallmarks are often regarded to be emphatic. The first part of this paper describes a selection of cases from Manuscript a of the Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) in which ’et is used differently compared with the Masoretic book of Isaiah (MT). Next, it provides selected examples within non-biblical Dead Sea Scrolls, in order to investigate the double direct object and the shift in verb complementation. The second part of this paper deals with four categories affected by the phenomenon of reversed word order in both the biblical and non-biblical DSS, i.e., subject preceding the verb, direct object preceding the infinitive, apposition, and binary expressions. The conclusion suggests two alternatives to emphasis as the main cause of the alleged idiosyncrasies in the use of ’et and in reversed word order, respectively. The results reveal some insights into the increased frequency of the particle ’et both in the biblical and non-biblical DSS, under certain syntactic circumstances, and into the shift from initial-focus to end-focus in a number of categories—albeit in a transitional stage—prevalent in non-biblical DSS.