4Q380

As I was looking around for Psalm 106 I found it was one of the psalms missing from the Cave 11 Psalter. Which is strange given that the Chronicler quotes it. Mind, the Chronicler's psalm did not make the Odes among the Christians as did, say, the Prayer of Manasses...

Eventually I turned up Mika Pajunen's 2011 work on 4Q380 (pdf). Strangely not many scholars unassociated with Pajunen have bothered since then; I think she made a good case, but hey. Also Pajunen tends to date DSS to postBiblical times, like 11Q11's Psalm 91 and 4Q381's Manasseh; 4Q380 is an exception to her rule.

4Q380 is a collection of odes which parallel the Prophets, and not the Psalms. One of them is attributed to Obadiah. Another - the one we care about - parallels Isaiah from chapters 60 on, which wax Zionist. Whether or not this likewise-Zionist ode now in 4Q380 was ascribed to Isaiah doesn't matter; it was ascribed to the Zionist Prophet and that was Prophetic enough. Psalm 106 took that Zionist paean, forced it into a Diaspora context, and did whatever else it deemed good to do. The Chronicler (or postChronicler) then took the frame for this new Psalm 106; which 11Q5 did not do.

This constrains TritoIsaiah or at least its source-prophet > 4Q380 > Psalm 106 (with or without vv. 6-46) > 1 Chronicles 16. Also by the way the Zadokite Fragment concerning "Damascus" treated 4Q380 (and not Psalm 106) as Scripture.

All this has clear implications for, say, Habakkuk 3 (which will get into the LXX Odes). Jewish poets felt free to compose paraProphetic hymns on Obadiah's and ?Isaiah's behalf. Most such extranea wouldn't get into the main Prophetic books. But as we see of Manasses: some did get into (say) Chronicles, at least for the Ethiopians. For Irenaeus' part, Baruch was a legitimate extension of (LXX) Jeremiah.