4QNumbersᵇ and an Expanded Pentateuchal Text
4Q27 preserves a Hebrew Numbers text with harmonizing expansions shared with the Samaritan Pentateuch, revealing editorial plurality before distinctly Samaritan revisions.
- Artifact date
- Late Hasmonean or early Herodian period
- Findspot
- Qumran Cave 4
- Current location
- Israel Antiquities Authority collections
What archaeologists can actually examine
4QNumbersᵇ, cataloged as 4Q27, preserves substantial but broken portions of Numbers in Hebrew. At several points in Numbers 20-21 it incorporates language drawn from Deuteronomy, paralleling major expansions in the Samaritan Pentateuch. These agreements show that an expansionist Pentateuchal form circulated among Jews before the surviving medieval Samaritan manuscripts. Yet 4Q27 does not contain every Samaritan reading and lacks grounds for calling its copyist Samaritan. It is evidence for shared Second Temple scribal techniques, especially harmonization and supplementation across Torah narratives.
Deuteronomy appears inside Numbers
Preserved expansions import related material from Deuteronomy 1-3 into the Numbers 20-21 narrative.
Pre-Samaritan is a textual label
Shared expansions predate extant Samaritan codices but do not identify the Cave 4 copyist as Samaritan.
Torah copies were not yet uniform
4Q27 circulated alongside other recognizable Pentateuchal forms in the Second Temple period.
Harmonization was broader than one sect
Comparable scribal techniques occur across traditions, weakening claims of a unique recension school.
Follow the evidence from discovery to debate
Move through the find in a deliberate order: establish its provenance, examine the surviving object, place it in time, and then weigh the scholarly interpretation.
How the find came to light
The manuscript was recovered from Qumran Cave 4, where thousands of fragments from hundreds of scrolls required lengthy sorting and joining. Eugene Ulrich and Frank Moore Cross assigned and studied the Numbers pieces, with Nathan Jastram preparing the official edition in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert XII. Reconstruction mapped fragments across chapters 11-36. Comparing the preserved expansions with the Samaritan Pentateuch changed interpretation: readings once treated as late sectarian additions could now be located within a pre-Samaritan Jewish textual tradition centuries earlier.
What you are looking at
The leather manuscript survives as numerous fragments rather than a continuous roll. Hebrew square script, line spacing, margins, and reconstructed columns support a late Hasmonean or early Herodian copy. Its most significant content is not decorative but textual: passages from Deuteronomy appear inserted into related Numbers narratives, supplying speeches or details known elsewhere in the Torah. Some fragments preserve ordinary wording close to other traditions. Because gaps interrupt the scroll, scholars must distinguish actually preserved expansions from readings merely inferred for missing portions.
Where it belongs in history
Palaeography generally places 4Q27 in the late first century BCE or early Herodian period, while the textual form it copies may be older. It circulated during an era when multiple Pentateuchal editions coexisted: texts close to the later Masoretic tradition, Greek-related readings, expansionist witnesses, and independent mixtures. 'Pre-Samaritan' describes characteristic harmonizing readings shared with the Samaritan Pentateuch, not a proven ethnic owner or a fully formed Samaritan canon. Later Samaritan ideological changes must be separated from earlier common editorial material.
Consensus, questions, and debate
Older text-type models treated pre-Samaritan manuscripts as a coherent local recension. Recent scholarship stresses internal diversity and notes that harmonization was widespread across Jewish scribal culture. Molly Zahn argues that the features are concentrated rather than uniquely Samaritan. A recent study of major additions further distinguishes expansions shared by 4Q27 from Samaritan-only changes and warns against dating texts by a simple ladder from short to expanded. Scholars agree on important shared readings, while debating labels, editorial stages, and whether some additions improve or complicate narrative coherence.
The biblical record beside the artifact
The surviving scroll directly witnesses Numbers, especially wilderness narratives including Numbers 20-21 and portions extending toward Balaam and later chapters. Expansions around Numbers 20:13 and 21 incorporate language from Deuteronomy 1-3, making Moses' retrospective speech part of the earlier narrative. This helps readers see that ancient copyists sometimes aligned parallel Torah accounts. It does not authorize silently inserting all such material into modern base texts; instead it documents one ancient edition and supplies evidence for evaluating individual readings.
Numbers 20:1–29
1Then came the children of Israel, [even] the whole congregation, into the desert of Zin in the first month: and the people abode in Kadesh; and Miriam died there, and was buried there.
2And there was no water for the congregation: and they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron.
3And the people chode with Moses, and spake, saying, Would God that we had died when our brethren died before the LORD!
4And why have ye brought up the congregation of the LORD into this wilderness, that we and our cattle should die there?
5And wherefore have ye made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us in unto this evil place? it [is] no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates; neither [is] there any water to drink.
6And Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and they fell upon their faces: and the glory of the LORD appeared unto them.
7¶ And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
8Take the rod, and gather thou the assembly together, thou, and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth his water, and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock: so thou shalt give the congregation and their beasts drink.
9And Moses took the rod from before the LORD, as he commanded him.
10And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock, and he said unto them, Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock?
11And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts [also].
12¶ And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.
13This [ is] the water of Meribah; because the children of Israel strove with the LORD, and he was sanctified in them.
14¶ And Moses sent messengers from Kadesh unto the king of Edom, Thus saith thy brother Israel, Thou knowest all the travail that hath befallen us:
15How our fathers went down into Egypt, and we have dwelt in Egypt a long time; and the Egyptians vexed us, and our fathers:
16And when we cried unto the LORD, he heard our voice, and sent an angel, and hath brought us forth out of Egypt: and, behold, we [are] in Kadesh, a city in the uttermost of thy border:
17Let us pass, I pray thee, through thy country: we will not pass through the fields, or through the vineyards, neither will we drink [of] the water of the wells: we will go by the king’s [high] way, we will not turn to the right hand nor to the left, until we have passed thy borders.
18And Edom said unto him, Thou shalt not pass by me, lest I come out against thee with the sword.
19And the children of Israel said unto him, We will go by the high way: and if I and my cattle drink of thy water, then I will pay for it: I will only, without [doing] any thing [else], go through on my feet.
20And he said, Thou shalt not go through. And Edom came out against him with much people, and with a strong hand.
21Thus Edom refused to give Israel passage through his border: wherefore Israel turned away from him.
22¶ And the children of Israel, [even] the whole congregation, journeyed from Kadesh, and came unto mount Hor.
23And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron in mount Hor, by the coast of the land of Edom, saying,
24Aaron shall be gathered unto his people: for he shall not enter into the land which I have given unto the children of Israel, because ye rebelled against my word at the water of Meribah.
25Take Aaron and Eleazar his son, and bring them up unto mount Hor:
26And strip Aaron of his garments, and put them upon Eleazar his son: and Aaron shall be gathered [unto his people], and shall die there.
27And Moses did as the LORD commanded: and they went up into mount Hor in the sight of all the congregation.
28And Moses stripped Aaron of his garments, and put them upon Eleazar his son; and Aaron died there in the top of the mount: and Moses and Eleazar came down from the mount.
29And when all the congregation saw that Aaron was dead, they mourned for Aaron thirty days, [even] all the house of Israel.
A responsible historical conclusion
4Q27 makes the history of the Pentateuch tangible. It proves that the Torah's authority did not initially require every copy to have identical length, and that scribes could clarify one passage with words from another revered passage. The manuscript also prevents polemical caricature of the Samaritan Pentateuch as a wholesale late corruption: some of its expansions descend from earlier Jewish textual forms. At the same time, diversity was bounded; recognizable Numbers remained, and comparison across witnesses enables careful recovery of textual history.
Authoritative sources
Institutional catalogs, excavation reports, and academic publications let you examine the evidence beyond this summary.
4Q Numbers
Israel Antiquities Authority, Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital LibraryOfficial manuscript catalog and photographic record for 4Q27.
Qumran Cave 4 VII: Genesis to Numbers
Oxford University Press, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert XIIOfficial critical edition containing Jastram's material reconstruction, transcription, and analysis of 4QNumbers b.
The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Scribal Culture of Second Temple Judaism
Journal for the Study of Judaism / BrillPeer-reviewed reassessment of pre-Samaritan manuscripts including 4Q27 and the broader distribution of harmonizing techniques.
The Major Additions in the Samaritan Pentateuch Tradition
Vetus Testamentum / BrillRecent technical analysis distinguishing 4Q27's shared expansions from other Samaritan Pentateuch additions.