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This article discusses the manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls taken as evidence for the so-called Book of Twelve Minor Prophets. In particular, attention is paid to manuscript 4Q76, a pre-Qumranic manuscript dated to ca. 150 BCE , which has significant implications for the development of the collection of the Minor Prophets in the late Second Temple period. First, manuscript 4Q76 did not include all the twelve books but probably only three or four of the shortest ones. Second, Malachi was followed in 4Q76 by another composition, but this text was in all likelihood not Jonah, as has been previously argued. Therefore, there is actual empirical evidence of an ancient scroll where Malachi is not the last book in a scroll containing several books of the Twelve. These observations are not sufficient to prove or disprove the existence of a collection of twelve prophets, but they show that Malachi was not always the last book of a collection of (some of) the Twelve and that the books of the Twelve could be copied both independently and as various "sets of books." Thus, the idea of a fixed collection is shown to be a postcanonical concept also in the case of the Twelve Minor Prophets.
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It is frequently stated that the collection of the Twelve Minor Prophets was finished by the first half of the second century BCE and that after that it was always considered as a unity, as the Book of the Twelve.1 The last book of the Minor Prophets, the book of Malachi, would, according to many, have had a central place in the formation and closure of the collection. Some scholars have suggested that the book of Malachi existed merely as a written, literary prophecy and never formed an independent book. Instead, it was created as an appropriate ending for the books of Haggai and Zechariah, implying the dependence of the book of Malachi on Haggai and Zechariah.2 According to others, Malachi might have been purposefully composed to form the conclusion of the entire Book of the Twelve.3 Some commentators, on the other hand, argue for the independent existence of the book of Malachi prior to its attachment to the collection of the Twelve.4
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