Reading the human body: Physiognomics and Astrology in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hellenistic-Early Roman Period Judaism

This study deals with two manuscripts from the Dead Sea Scrolls whose contents are physiognomic and physiognomic-astrological. These manuscripts contain material that was unknown to have existed in this form in Hellenistic-Early Roman period Judaism (ca. third century CE-first century ?CE) before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls near Qumran 1. The to manuscripts are fragmentary, the style of both texts is succinct, and some of the terminology is enigmatic. Despite these difficulties, the manuscripts contain enough to understand some of the arcane things these texts reveal to their intended reader. The two texts considered here are the Hebrew manuscript 4Q186 (hereafter named 4QZodiacal Physiognomy) and the Aramaic manuscript 4Q561 (hereafter named 4QPhysiognomy ar).2 The intention of this study is the reconstruction and understanding of what remains of these texts; what sort of texts they represent, what their sense is, and which functions they may have had and in what contexts. The approach is comparative, understanding these two texts in relation to other physiognomic and strological writings, mainly from Babylonian and Greco-Roman traditions. The ancient Jewish manuscripts from Qumran share certain features with texts from these other traditions, but, not surprisingly, they also exhibit some peculiar and distinct features of their own.