© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004410732_007 Chapter 5 On “True” Editions: Pluriformity and Authority between Psalms and Serekh James Nati A 2013 volume dedicated to the Psalms features an essay by Peter Flint titled “The Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls: Psalms Manuscripts, Editions, and the Oxford Hebrew Bible.”1 Therein, Flint offers a summary of his views on the Psalms scrolls, views developed over the course of more than two decades of research. He devotes significant attention in this essay to the then new Oxford Hebrew Bible project (now the Hebrew Bible Critical Edition [HBCE]), thinking through some of the ways in which the Psalms may be approached in an eclectic edi- tion, and in particular how the Qumran Psalms scrolls ought to be incorporated into such a project.2 He details a series of verses to which the Qumran scrolls offer valuable textual evidence, and ultimately concludes that “[t]he Psalms scrolls are a key resource for the Psalms volume in the [HBCE] series …”3 Immediately following Flint’s essay in the volume is a short response by Geza Vermes, one that offers an “outline” on the canon and text of scripture.4 Vermes’s response is for the most part limited to general remarks, but there are two sentences that stand out. Writing about “textual elasticity of the Qumran Bible,” Vermes remarks: “Put positively, the Qumran scribes arrogate to them- selves the right to creative freedom. Such relative liberty could go hand in hand with the conviction that all they were doing was to transmit faithfully the true meaning of Scripture.”5 Vermes is here pointing out the ways in which the Qumran scrolls—biblical scrolls in particular—attest through their textual variants to the continuing development of these texts, and to the fact that the 1  Peter W. Flint, “The Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls: Psalms Manuscripts, Editions, and the Oxford Hebrew Bible,” in Jewish and Christian Approaches to the Psalms: Conflict and Convergence, ed. S. Gillingham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 11–34. 2  For an overview of the project’s aims and methods, see Ronald Hendel, Steps to a New Edition of the Hebrew Bible, TCS 10 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016). 3  Flint, “Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls,” 31. 4  Geza Vermes, “Reflections on the Canon and the Text of the Bible in Response to Peter Flint,” in Jewish and Christian Approaches, 35–37. 5  Vermes, 36–37. Italics original. 9789004410725_Collins_text_proof-02.indb 90 13 Aug 2019 6:51:13 PM