Biblical Archaeology Review

The reference to a female figure in the third person need be no problem if the song was sung antiphonally by Miriam and the women with her. This phrase would then possibly belong to the part sung by the women.

These manuscripts were previously referred to as Pentateuchal Paraphrases.

The fragment is discussed in detail in Sidnie A. White, “4Q364 and 365: A Preliminary Report,” The Madrid Qumran Congress, ed. J. Trebolle Barrera and L. Vegas Montaner, Studies in the Texts of the Desert of Judah 11 (Leiden: Brill; Madrid: Editorial Complutense, 1992), pp. 222–224. I am very grateful to Sidnie White and to Eileen Schuller for several helpful comments that have improved my study of this fragment.

Although it might be thought that the circular object above the head of one of the processioners is perhaps significant to my interpretation, I am inclined to agree with Pirhiya Beck that it is the abandoned remnant of a processioner’s head, an artist’s mistake.

The translation is by Marvin Pope, Job, Anchor Bible 15, 3rd ed. (Garden City: Doubleday, 1973), p. 227. Although traditionally understood to contrast the worship of two separate deities, the passage can also be taken to set in contrast appropriate and inappropriate ways of worshiping the same deity, namely God.

Flavius Josephus, Jewish Wars 2.128–29.

Pirhiya Beck, “The Drawings from Horvat Teiman (Kuntillet ‘Ajrud),” Tel Aviv 9 (1982), pp. 36–40.

Saul M. Olyan, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel, SBLMS 34 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), p. 73.

William G. Dever, “Material Remains and the Cult in Ancient Israel: An Essay in Archaeological Systematics,” The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth, ed. Carol L. Meyers and Michael O’Connor (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1983), p. 573.