Eastside, westside

That whole question about a Jerushalmi Talmud / Bavli Talmud stretches further into the Targumim, where some exist in Palaestinian Aramaic and others, downstream of Hatra. Targum Jerushalmi called "Pseudo-Jonathan" - possibly composed in Palaestinian - went unknown (say) to Rashi. We can also note the 'Alaynû or the Qaddish widely popular, but not in Qumran - nor anywhere else in preIslamic "Southern Syria". Are these texts later than modern Jews think? - Sure, maybe. But maybe it's... regional bias. By then "Aramaic" had become a Semitic Romance, a collection of languages not-entirely-comprehensible to one another. So: on to Waller's bowls.

Waller provides the inestimable service of flagging a non-Jordanian text with an aleph ℵ. By "Dead Sea Plain" we are including Masada, Nehel Hever, and "4QGenesis" notably protoMasoretic and not part of the Qumran dissident sect. His ℵ - intentionally or not - tells us where some verse might have been popular in one whole side of the Near East (beyond the Qumran cult!) but not the other.

As Waller notes some "Biblical" witnesses in these bowls may not be Masoretic after all - directly. For instance: ʿAmram bar Sheshna (d. AD 875) ascribes a catena of Psalter 89:53, 106:48, 72:18-19, 104:31, 106:47 to some "later rabbis". Turns out - he was right! the bowl M 108 as published Levene (2003), 71 parallels this very catena. As with Qaddish and 'Alaynû none of it is in Qumran.

Psalm 91 is used by Jews everywhere to ward against Evil. Qumran's Cave 11 had a collection of magickal spells "11QPsAp" of which some form of Psalm 91 was one (pdf). The bowls in the Iraq do not disappoint, often splicing it with Deuteronomy 6:4 sometimes Exodus 14:31 too. But the use in each place is different.

As for that Haggada tradition, one bowl brings Isaiah 51.15 / MT Jeremiah 31:34 and Psalm 115 into the Red Sea crossing, the Prophets to illustrate how the Sea was, in fact, cloven in twain. Do we see this in Qumran? The Eastern bowls make much of Exodus 14:31-15:7...

... which the Jordan Desert, somehow, does not. The Samaritan version may be instructive: their v. 2 promises a "habitation" to the Lord; not in LXX either, although all versions more-or-less agree upon the coming mountain v. 17 upon which the Lord dwells right now. Inasmuch as Samaritans and Jews agreed inasmuch as this abode wasn't Sinai, or at least shouldn't stay there, this Sinaïtist hymn "needed work", one might say.

The Jordanian proTemple(?) tradition made more of a parallel song-of-Miriam tradition in parallel with Exodus 15:21; looking particularly at 4Q365 and Targum Jerushalmi. East-only(?) Exodus 15:1,10 do find parallels in that western tradition.

We need a Beastie Boys soundtrack for this post...