The Dead Sea Scrolls in the Textual History and Post-History of the Historical Books

This essay re-assesses the scant manuscript testimonies of 1-2 Kings in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Starting from a typological analysis, an attempt is made to conceive the scribes' relationship with the textual tradition of Kings in general and of the Elijah- Elisha narratives in particular. I thus evaluate the »para-biblical« fragments of Kings under a new light, which might better explain the apparently variant texts within a fluid conception of scripture.