Great Psalms Scroll (11QPsᵃ)

Demonstrates that the order and contents of the Psalter were not yet fixed in the 1st century CE, providing evidence for a more fluid canonical process than previously assumed.

The Great Psalms Scroll, designated 11QPsᵃ (or 11Q5), is one of the finest manuscripts recovered from Cave 11 at Qumran. Discovered by Bedouin in 1956, it was acquired by the Palestine Archaeological Museum and published by James A. Sanders in 1965. The scroll consists of 28 columns of well-preserved text on five large sheets of parchment, measuring approximately 4.6 meters in length. It dates paleographically to the first half of the 1st century CE, making it one of the latest scrolls copied before the Qumran community's destruction.

The scroll preserves 41 psalms from the canonical Psalter (primarily from Psalms 101–150, the last third of the book) plus seven additional compositions. What makes the scroll remarkable is not merely its contents but their arrangement: the psalms appear in a different order from the Masoretic Text, with non-canonical compositions interspersed among the canonical ones. This arrangement has generated one of the most important debates in Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship.

The canonical psalms in the scroll include most of Psalms 101–150, but in a rearranged order. For instance, Psalm 119 (the great acrostic psalm on the Torah) is followed not by Psalm 120 but by Psalm 135, then 136. The ordering varies significantly from the Masoretic sequence, particularly in the latter third of the Psalter. Notably, the first two-thirds of the Psalter (Psalms 1–89) appear to have been fixed by this period — Qumran manuscripts of these psalms follow the Masoretic order — but the final section was apparently still fluid.

The non-canonical compositions include: Psalm 151, previously known only from the Greek Septuagint; a "Plea for Deliverance" (sometimes called Psalm 155); an "Apostrophe to Zion"; a "Hymn to the Creator"; a version of 2 Samuel 23:7 (David's Last Words); Sirach 51:13–30 (from the apocryphal book of Ben Sira); and — most remarkably — a prose composition titled "David's Compositions" (DavComp).

David's Compositions is a prose inventory of David's literary output. It states that David wrote 3,600 psalms (tehilim), 364 songs for the daily offering (one for each day of the solar calendar), 52 songs for the Sabbath offerings, 30 songs for festivals, and 4 songs for the stricken — totaling 4,050 compositions. The note attributes David's prolific output to "the spirit of prophecy given to him by the Most High." This inventory connects to 1 Kings 4:32, which says Solomon "spake three thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five," suggesting a tradition of quantifying the literary output of Israel's great figures.

Psalm 151, which the Masoretic tradition does not include, is a first-person poem attributed to David describing his youth as a shepherd, his anointing by Samuel, and his victory over Goliath. The Qumran Hebrew text is longer than the Greek Septuagint version and may actually represent two originally separate compositions that the Greek translator combined. The opening lines read: "Smaller was I than my brothers, and the youngest of the sons of my father. He made me shepherd of his flock, and ruler over his young goats."

The scholarly debate centers on whether the scroll represents an alternative edition of the Psalter (a genuine variant collection of biblical psalms) or a liturgical compilation (an anthology arranged for worship use that happens to include most of the canonical psalms). James Sanders, the editio princeps editor, argued for the former: the scroll represents a different, equally valid edition of the Book of Psalms. Peter Flint largely supported this view, arguing that the Psalter's final form was still being established in the 1st century CE and that the Qumran collection represents a living textual tradition.

Against this, Gerald Wilson and others argued that the scroll is a secondary liturgical collection, not an alternative Psalter. On this view, the canonical Psalter was already essentially fixed, and the scroll's rearrangement reflects a worshipping community's practical needs rather than a different canonical tradition. The debate has significant implications for the history of the biblical canon: if Sanders and Flint are right, the process of canonizing the Psalms was still ongoing well into the 1st century CE.

The scroll's calligraphy is among the finest from Qumran. The scribe used a formal bookhand and left generous margins. Divine names are written in paleo-Hebrew script (an archaic letter form), a practice attested in other Qumran scrolls that may reflect reverence for the divine name. The parchment is well preserved, with only minor lacunae at the edges of some columns.

For the study of the Psalms, the scroll raises important questions: Did David really write all the psalms attributed to him? How were the psalms collected and arranged? When did the Psalter reach its final form? The Great Psalms Scroll suggests that the process was more complex and longer than previously imagined — that the Psalter was a living collection, still receiving additions and being rearranged into the early Roman period.

• 41 canonical psalms plus 7 non-canonical compositions, arranged in an order different from the Masoretic Text
• Includes Psalm 151 in Hebrew, previously known only from the Greek Septuagint
• 'David's Compositions' attributes 4,050 literary works to David, guided by the spirit of prophecy
• Evidence that the final third of the Psalter (Psalms 101–150) was not yet fixed in the 1st century CE
• Includes Sirach 51:13–30 interspersed among canonical psalms
• One of the latest scrolls copied at Qumran, dating to approximately 30–50 CE
• Divine names written in paleo-Hebrew script within the otherwise standard Jewish bookhand
• Debate continues whether the scroll represents an alternative Psalter or a liturgical anthology

The Great Psalms Scroll directly illuminates how the Book of Psalms came to be. The canonical Psalter — 150 psalms arranged in five "books" — is the form preserved in the Masoretic Text and used in Jewish and Christian worship. But the Qumran scroll shows that this arrangement was not universally accepted in the 1st century CE; other orderings and additional psalms were still in circulation. Psalm 151's account of David the shepherd boy connects to 1 Samuel 16:11–13, where Jesse's youngest son is called from tending sheep to be anointed by Samuel. The psalm's first-person voice — "I made a flute for myself, and a lyre from my own hands" — resonates with 1 Samuel 16:23, where David plays the lyre to soothe Saul's troubled spirit. The "David's Compositions" prose section, by attributing 364 songs to David (matching the 364-day solar calendar), places David's psalmody in a cosmic liturgical framework. Every day of the year has its proper psalm. This connects to the Levitical worship described in 1 Chronicles 25, where David organizes singers and musicians for the Temple, and to the superscriptions of the canonical Psalms, which assign many of them to specific liturgical occasions.