Change in Scripture: Rewriting and Interpreting (Beihefte Zur Zeitschrift Fur Die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft): Rewriting and Interpreting 3110240483, 9783110240481

Table of contents :
Contents
1. Introduction
Introducing Changes in Scripture
2. Methodological Issues
Changing Scripture
The Evolutionary Production and Transmission of the Scriptural Books
Rewritten Bible, Variant Literary Editions and Original Text(s): Exploring the Implications of a Pluriform Outlook on the Scriptural Tradition
Talking About Rewritten Texts: Some Reflections on Terminology
3. Changed Texts
The Pentateuch as Found in the Pre-Samaritan Texts and 4QReworked Pentateuch
David’s Three Choices: Textual and Literary Development in 2 Samuel 24
The Legs and the Wings of the Grasshopper: A Case Study on Changes in the Masoretic Text and in the Old Greek Translation of the Book of Leviticus
Uncovering a New Dimension of Early Judean Interpretation of the Greek Torah: Ptolemaic Law Interpreted by its Own Rhetoric
Doubled Prophecy: The Pilgrimage of the Nations in Mic 4:1–5 and Isa 2:1–5
The Quotations and References of the Pentateuchal Laws in Ezra-Nehemiah
The Textual Connections between 1QM 1 and the Book of Daniel
Changing Scripture? Scribal Corrections in MS 4QXIIc
4. Deuteronomism in Later Literature
The Book of Ben Sira and Deuteronomistic Heritage: A Critical Approach
The Deuteronomic Legacy of 1 Maccabees
The Deuteronomistic Ideology and Phraseology in the Book of Baruch
The Use of Different Aspects of the Deuteronomistic Ideology in Apocryphal Psalms
Judith and Deuteronomistic Heritage
A Deuteronomic Heritage in Tobit?
5. Indices
Index of Modern Authors
Index of Passages

Citation preview

Changes in Scripture

Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Herausgegeben von John Barton · Reinhard G. Kratz Choon-Leong Seow · Markus Witte

Band 419

De Gruyter

Changes in Scripture Rewriting and Interpreting Authoritative Traditions in the Second Temple Period

Edited by Hanne von Weissenberg, Juha Pakkala and Marko Marttila

De Gruyter

ISBN 978-3-11-024048-1 e-ISBN 978-3-11-024049-8 ISSN 0934-2575 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. ” 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ⬁ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Contents 1. Introduction ....................................................................................

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Hanne von Weissenberg & Juha Pakkala & Marko Marttila: Introducing Changes in Scripture .................................................

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2. Methodological Issues ....................................................................

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John J. Collins: Changing Scripture.................................................

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Eugene Ulrich: The Evolutionary Production and Transmission of the Scriptural Books ...................................................................

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Hans Debel: Rewritten Bible, Variant Literary Editions and Original Text(s): Exploring the Implications of a Pluriform Outlook on the Scriptural Tradition ..............................................

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Molly M. Zahn: Talking About Rewritten Texts: Some Reflections on Terminology ...........................................................

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3. Changed Texts ................................................................................ 121 Sidnie White Crawford: The Pentateuch as Found in the Pre-Samaritan Texts and 4QReworked Pentateuch...................... 123 Anneli Aejmelaeus: David’s Three Choices: Textual and Literary Development in 2 Samuel 24 ........................................... 137 Kristin De Troyer: The Legs and the Wings of the Grasshopper: A Case Study on Changes in the Masoretic Text and in the Old Greek Translation of the Book of Leviticus ........................... 153 Robert Kugler: Uncovering a New Dimension of Early Judean Interpretation of the Greek Torah: Ptolemaic Law Interpreted by its Own Rhetoric ........................................................................ 165

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Contents

Reinhard Müller: Doubled Prophecy: The Pilgrimage of the Nations in Mic 4:1–5 and Isa 2:1–5................................................. 177 Juha Pakkala: The Quotations and References of the Pentateuchal Laws in Ezra-Nehemiah .......................................... 193 Hanna Vanonen: The Textual Connections between 1QM 1 and the Book of Daniel .......................................................................... 223 Hanne von Weissenberg: Changing Scripture? Scribal Corrections in MS 4QXIIc ............................................................... 247 4. Deuteronomism in Later Literature............................................... 273 Pancratius C. Beentjes: The Book of Ben Sira and Deuteronomistic Heritage: A Critical Approach .......................... 275 Francis Borchardt: The Deuteronomic Legacy of 1 Maccabees...... 297 Marko Marttila: The Deuteronomistic Ideology and Phraseology in the Book of Baruch................................................ 321 Mika S. Pajunen: The Use of Different Aspects of the Deuteronomistic Ideology in Apocryphal Psalms........................ 347 Anssi Voitila: Judith and Deuteronomistic Heritage ..................... 369 Stuart Weeks: A Deuteronomic Heritage in Tobit? ........................ 389 5. Indices ............................................................................................. 405 Index of Modern Authors .............................................................. 407 Index of Passages ............................................................................ 413

1. Introduction

Introducing Changes in Scripture Hanne von Weissenberg & Juha Pakkala & Marko Marttila* The study of the Hebrew Scriptures and the literature of the Second Temple period is currently in a state of transformation. The discovery and full publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls has been instrumental in this process and it is only now that their full impact is starting to be felt in the field of Biblical Studies. Some may characterize the current state of research as a “post-Qumran” period of transformation. The Qumran material is fundamentally modifying our understanding of many central questions, such as the textual development of the Hebrew Scriptures, the formation of the canon, and biblical interpretation in the Second Temple period. The texts from Qumran also provide valuable information about scribal techniques in this period. With the Qumran evidence, it has now become clear that the texts of the Hebrew Scriptures continued to be edited and changed until much later than what has traditionally been assumed. Moreover, the evidence seems to suggest that the editing processes were more radical than assumed. Changes to the older texts were not restricted to expansions. Rewriting and rearranging were not uncommon. In addition to the impact of the Qumran texts, the integration of Septuagint scholarship and its contributions into the center of Biblical Studies has been a welcome development. Although the importance of the Greek versions has been known since the early days of Septuagint scholarship, one may observe a growing awareness of the possibility that the Greek witnesses may preserve an older stage of the textual development than the Masoretic text even in wider biblical scholarship. This volume represents an attempt to build upon this relationship by enhancing the correspondences between the field of Septuagint studies and other fields of biblical research. It is notable that approaches from different perspectives and different fields of Biblical Studies, including Qumran and Septuagint studies, are now coming to similar conclusions regarding the pluriformity of the texts and changes still being made to

*

For technical finishing of this volume we are especially grateful to Katri Saarelainen.

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them at the turn of the eras (cf. Aejmelaeus, Collins, and Ulrich in this volume). Attention is also drawn to the existence of parallel texts in the Hebrew Bible and the developments between texts that are literarily dependent on one another. Although parallel texts and the use of older texts to shape new texts have been the focus of attention in some segments of Biblical Studies, their full implications for the field and for the methodology of studying the Hebrew Bible have remained limited. In other words, this volume seeks to draw attention to the “empirical” evidence1 not only from Qumran and the Septuagint, but also from passages in the Hebrew Scriptures and other literature that have been shaped by the use of other texts, and thus show how a source text was changed in its new context. The latter category consists of parallel passages where the older text was used as explicit quotations (for example the quotations of the Torah in Ezra-Nehemiah) or as a source text on a more general level (for example, Mic 4:1–5 and Isa 2:1–5, or Dan 11–12 and 1QM). The later Second Temple literature, for example the so-called deuterocanonical literature (or the called Old Testament Apocrypha), also contains many examples of how older texts were used as sources for the new composition. Especially the use of the Deuteronomistic literature in younger texts is a well-known but still not fully explored phenomenon. Because the Deuteronomistic literature contains very characteristic phraseology and theological themes, it is well suited for the study of its later use. Moreover, it is probable that at least Deuteronomy but perhaps also other parts of the Deuteronomistic literature were considered normative in the late Second Temple period. Our understanding of changes and editorial processes of the Hebrew Scriptures have been limited by our implicit conceptions as well as the inherited terminology that continues to be used to describe the phenomena detectable in the late Second Temple compositions and manuscripts. Although most scholars currently see the formation of the biblical canon as a long and complicated process rather than a series of clearly definable or distinguishable steps, much of the scholarly discussion has been and continues to be colored by the existence of the Jewish and Christian canons of the Hebrew Bible. Despite the fact that these sacred collections were formed at a much later date, their canonical form and shape have made it difficult to look beyond their borders.

1

The idea that two or more parallel passages available for comparison may be called empirical derives from Jeffrey Tigay, Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985).

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It is now evident that a clearer use of terms and concepts is essential. Terms such as “biblical,” “sacred,” “authoritative,” “canon,” and “scriptural” carry different connotations for different people and the divergence of opinion on these terms has affected the discussion. The scholarly debate is, in part, hindered by the lack of commonly agreed vocabulary to describe the complex processes of textual transmission and interpretation. Attempting to avoid anachronistic labels, scholars are redefining the terminology they use. Although it seems preferable to avoid the use of the terms “canonical” or “biblical” when discussing the textual evidence of the pre-canonical, late Second Temple era, terms such as “scriptural” or “authoritative,” now used by many, may create new difficulties (see Zahn’s article in this volume). Many of the contributions in this volume imply that the use of the term “authoritative,” when dealing with changes in the texts of the Second Temple period, should be reappraised and re-evaluated. Although a number of texts from the Second Temple period claim to be authoritative, our knowledge is limited as to how the authoritativeness of texts was defined, understood, perceived, gained and possibly lost in the Second Temple period. For example, many legal and prophetic texts claim or imply that they originate from a divine revelation. Regardless of these claims, in the end their status was dependent on a community accepting the claim for authority.2 More attention should perhaps be given to the communities and contexts that regarded certain texts to be authoritative. This being said, it is likely that not all texts were necessarily viewed as equally authoritative or sacred in the late Second Temple period. On the contrary, there are indicators suggesting that certain compositions held a higher status than others. For example, it is probable that the Torah had received a general and widely accepted status as an authoritative text in the late Second Temple Jewish contexts, whereas the same may not be the case with all the other text of Hebrew Scriptures. On the other hand, the Temple Scroll, which may be an attempt to present an improved version of Yahweh’s revelation, complicates the discussion on how authoritativeness was perceived. The Reworked Pentateuch texts from Qumran also challenge our preconceived ideas, but in a different way, for the authors of these texts seem to have taken the freedom to rearrange and alter the pentateuchal text in a relatively late setting when the Pentateuch already was per-

2

James C. VanderKam, “Revealed Literature in the Second Temple Period,” in From Revelation to Canon: Studies in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Literature (JSJSup 62; Leiden: Brill, 2000), 1–30 (2–3).

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ceived as authoritative. Traditionally it has been assumed that the pentateuchal text had become relatively stable much earlier.3 It is now evident that not all texts that became part of the canonical collection were regarded authoritative when first composed, and not all segments of a tradition that were compiled in the composition of a larger literary work began their existence as a sacred text with an elevated status. Some texts may have been regarded as authoritative rather early in their development, whereas others may have undergone a long process in this respect. Moreover, the self-proclaimed or implied authority, such as those texts in the Pentateuch that are presented as divine speech, may have enhanced the development towards accepted authoritativeness. On the other hand, there may have been different kinds of perceived authoritativeness. For example, some texts may have been regarded as possessing sacred or divine authority, while other may have had merely general authority to guide the actions of a community without any divine aspect. 1–2 Kings and 1–2 Chronicles may have been authoritative accounts of Israel’s history, but it is not certain that these texts were regarded to possess authority as revelation until relatively late. The existence of just a few fragments of these books among the Dead Sea Scrolls may imply that they were not regarded to be authoritative Scriptures on the same level with the Torah. What is important for the present volume is the often-assumed link between authoritative status and textual immutability. It has become increasingly clear that maintaining the exact wording of a composition was not regarded as essential.4 The aforementioned Reworked Pentateuch-texts are a case in point. The evidence we have challenges the ideal of the immutability of sacred and authoritative texts and reveals a reality of texts being changed, revised, and corrected in the course of their compilation and transmission. In some cases the development towards being an authoritative text seems to go hand in hand with the changes. In other words, a text may remain authoritative primarily because of the changes because then it keeps up with the developments

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For example, according to Reinhard G. Kratz, “The Legal Status of the Pentateuch between Elephantine and Qumran,” in The Pentateuch as Torah (ed. G. N. Knoppers and B. M. Levinson; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 77–103 (93), the editorial processes of the Torah were completed by the end of the fourth century BCE. See, for example, Michael Segal, “Between Bible and Rewritten Bible,” in Biblical Interpretations at Qumran (ed. M. Henze; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 10–28 (16). “The active intervention of scribes in these texts [= the Bible] was accepted in this period [= late Second Temple period] and was not viewed as an affront to the sanctity of the text. The text was of secondary importance to the composition itself, and thus scribes allowed themselves the freedom to ‘improve’ these works.”

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taking place in the society and thereby remains relevant for the community.5 These are only some thoughts about the authoritativeness of texts raised by the contribution of this volume, and another volume may be required to discuss the details of how the concept was understood in the Second Temple period and how it is or should be used in modern scholarly discussion. Growth of a text is evidently the result of scribal activity, but our perception of the role of the scribes in the formation of authoritative and sacred texts has been refined. The scribes should not be seen as merely mechanical copyists or redactors who updated the older text to accommodate it to the changes that had taken place in the society, but rather as independent and theologically creative authors. Even more so, each scribe may have had his own approach and principles concerning the older text, and each one of them was not only a copyist, but also a potential editor, redactor, interpreter and author. One should take into consideration that each scribe was an individual who had his own perception of and position towards the older text. This applies to questions such as authoritativeness of the older text and the possibility of changing it in the new edition, version, copy or composition he was creating. A text may have been regarded as unchangeable in the social and historical context of the scribe, but the individual scribe may have had a different view. For example, the Pentateuch was probably regarded as having considerable authority during most of the Second Temple period. This did not, however, hinder the author of the Temple Scroll from creating an alternative edition of God’s revelation. This also means that the Second Temple period probably contained many different perceptions and traditions towards the texts. Some of the traditions may represent the mainline tradition, some of them may have been individual or sectarian ones, some possibly loose ends without continuity, and some may have been harmonized towards a more authoritative tradition (cf. recensions of the Septuagint towards the Masoretic text). Moreover, a single stream of tradition may have undergone different kinds of phases, and different scribal approaches towards the transmitted text. Some scholars assume that there were different scribal schools with different techniques in transmitting the older text.6 5 6

As pointed out by James A. Sanders, Torah and Canon (2nd edition; Eugene: Cascade Books, 2005), xxiii: “What ended up in a canon was indeed ‘adaptable for life.’” Eugene Ulrich defines the work of these two scribal schools and their attitude towards the text as either “exact” or that of “creative reshaping.” Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible (SDSRL; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 11, 23–27. Sidnie White Crawford calls the two “the conservative and the revisionist scribal tradition,” and points out that texts from both “the conservative scribal tradition” and from the “re-

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Rewriting, implicit exegesis and the more explicit interpretation should be seen on a continuum: similar processes in the growth and transmission of texts and traditions can be detected both in the texts that ended up in the Jewish and Christian canons and in texts that were excluded from it. What is called “inner-biblical” exegesis by some scholars is the activity of learned scribes dealing with their authoritative traditions and texts, and it is equally attested in texts that never became part of the Jewish and Christian canons. For example, the Community Rule was regarded as an authoritative text by the Qumran movement and revised as such in this tradition.7 Reworking of traditions took place from the very early times in the formation of the books until the last decades of the Second Temple period and possibly beyond in the case of some books. Earlier scribes created literary traditions that were again reworked by later scribes: texts gained authority through the interplay between textual authority and exegetical creativity. As already noted, subjecting the text to exegetical creativity may in fact have increased its authoritativeness. George Brooke has suggested that “some, if not all, texts moved from authority to canon … not least because such texts attracted and provoked the very reworkings [parabiblical and rewritten forms] with which we have been concerned.8 Or, as Hans Debel has formulated it in his contribution to this volume, the adaptability of the text granted its overall stability. The exegetical activity of the scribes was formative for the developing collection of authoritative literature while the decisions of delimitation and exclusion happened independently of this exegetical activity. The interpretation and rewriting of texts and their gradual changes in authoritativeness are two different, albeit related processes. We still have only limited information about the attitude of the scribes toward the older text. As each scribe may have related different-

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visionist scribal tradition” are now parts of the collection we call the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible; White Crawford, “Understanding the Textual History of the Hebrew Bible: A New Proposal,” in The Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. A. Lange, K. De Troyer and S. Tzoref; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, forthcoming). Charlotte Hempel, “Pluralism and Authoritativeness: The Case of the S Tradition,” in Authoritative Scripture in Ancient Judaism (ed. M. Popovi°; JSJSup 141; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 193–208. George J. Brooke, “Between Authority and Canon: The Significance of Reworking the Bible for Understanding the Canonical Process,” in Reworking the Bible: Apocryphal and Related Texts at Qumran: Proceedings of a Joint Symposium by the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature and the Hebrew University Institute for Advanced Studies Research Group on Qumran, 15–17 January, 2002 (ed. E. G. Chazon, D. Dimant and R. A. Clements; STDJ 58; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 85–104.

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ly to his source text, only a slow and painstaking investigation of the different texts may provide a more profound understanding of the scribal practices and editorial processes. Although we will probably never know the exact development of all texts, a better understanding of the practices and processes will increase our possibility of using the Hebrew Scripture for historical purposes. In this enterprise the “empirical” evidence and the arduous comparison of different witnesses – from Qumran, Septuagint and parallel texts and passages – is imperative.

The Contributions to This Volume The contributions of this volume are divided into three main sections: The first section (chapter 2) deals with general and methodological questions as well as with basic concepts and terminology. The second section (chapter 3) consists of concrete examples from the Hebrew Bible, Qumran and Septuagint on how the texts were changed, corrected, edited and interpreted. The contributions of the third section (chapter 4) will investigate the general influence and impact of Deuteronomistic ideology and phraseology on later texts. Here the first main question will be, is the influence general or more direct. Are there quotations or allusions? In his paper “Changing Scripture,” John Collins draws attention to central questions concerning changes made to Scripture by scribes. He notes that there is considerable scribal variation until the turn of the era and even beyond, but concludes that scribal variation may not have been problematic because until quite late “authority resided in a book rather than in a particular textual form of that book.” 4QReworked Pentateuch (4Q158, 4Q364–7) as well as the differences between First Esdras and Ezra-Nehemiah and the three variant editions of Esther would seem to validate this assumption. In some cases the changes were so extensive that a new composition that attempted to transform the older tradition was created. Collins draws particular attention to Deuteronomy, Jubilees, and the Temple Scroll as well as the rewritten texts. The question of whether the new composition attempted to replace or supplement is central in this discussion. Collins refers to the recent debate between Bernard Levinson and Hindy Najman about the relationship between Deuteronomy and the Covenant Code. Here it is necessary to ask: Can we determine whether the new composition tried to replace the older one or supplement it? Did the author of the new

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composition regard the older composition as authoritative? If an older text was extensively used, the older text had at least some authority for the author of the new text (cf. also Vanonen in this volume on 1QM and Daniel). Collins further discusses Jubilees and the Temple Scroll. Although Jubilees may not have intended to replace Genesis and Exodus, Collins assumes that it still supersedes them in some respects. He notes: “Where it differs from or adds to the traditional Torah, there is no doubt in Jubilees as to which formulation has the higher authority.” Jubilees is an authoritative text in the making that could have easily ended up in the Hebrew Canon. According to Collins, the Temple Scroll is different from Jubilees in the sense that it clearly claims to be authoritative by presenting itself as Yahweh’s revelation. In his paper “The Evolutionary Production and Transmission of the Scriptural Books,” Eugene Ulrich presents the development of the Hebrew Scriptures as evolutionary. The texts would have been constantly adapted to their environment by integrating agencies. The rapidly changing social, political and religious contexts of the Second Temple period meant a constant growth of the texts. Acknowledging that the stages may overlap, Ulrich also distinguishes four stages in this growth: composition, redaction, transmission and reception. Ulrich’s perspective emphasizes the complex nature of the editing, as there may have been various different processes that influenced the growth of the texts. Ulrich additionally provides several background assumptions that are crucial for the study of these editorial processes. For example, he emphasizes that the pluriformity of the texts in the Second Temple period should now be acknowledged (cf. Collins and Aejmelaeus). While the Qumranic text should not be regarded as sectarian, the Masoretic text should not be the starting point of textual research. As some of the contributions in this volume show, in many cases the Masoretic text does not preserve the oldest reading. All witnesses should be evaluated on their textual merits on an egalitarian basis. Any talk of the Urtext or “original text” may cause more confusion than clarity. Ulrich’s paper is a very welcome contribution to the discussion about the general principles of investigating the editorial processes of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Dead Sea Scrolls have changed the scholarly understanding of the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible. The evidence of the Scrolls has made it clear how the late Second Temple period was a time of scribal creativity, a period during which the scriptural text was still developing and pluriform. In his article “Rewritten Bible, Variant Literary Editions and Original Text(s): Exploring the Implications of a Pluriform Outlook on the Scriptural Tradition,” Hans Debel wants to raise

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two implications that arise from the new evidence: Firstly, he calls into question the possibility of reconstructing an “original” text. Debel sees the dissolving of the “Urtext” into different compositional stages as one of the most important conceptual changes in recent scholarship, although he suggests that scholars have difficulties embracing the full implications of this change. Based on his critical attitude towards our ability to reach the “original text,” Debel offers constructive remarks on the editorial principles of the Oxford Hebrew Bible project. Secondly, he discusses the relationship of alternative editions of scriptural books to the rewritten compositions. Debel demonstrates how both result from the same dynamic process of writing and rewriting tradition. While he builds upon the work of Eugene Ulrich and his theory of variant literary editions, Debel moves forward to suggest the removal of the distinction between “variant literary editions” and “rewritten Scripture.” He points out that before the stabilization of the text form and the authorization of an “unchangeable,” immutable text, the authority was situated rather in the tradition than in the specific wording of a composition. “Variant literary editions” and “rewritten Scripture” are two forms of rewriting the tradition, and should be seen on a “sliding scale” or a “spectrum,” rather than two distinct phenomena. The so-called “rewritten Bible texts” found at Qumran were discussed in the early years of the Dead Sea Scrolls discoveries in a way that tended to reflect pre-Qumran assumptions about the shape of the Hebrew Bible. Molly Zahn’s article “Talking about Rewritten Texts: Some Reflections on Terminology” tackles the important question regarding appropriate terminology in the ongoing attempt to arrange and evaluate the new data presented by the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the post-Qumran research, both the wealth of new material and the varying uses of terminology have resulted in a great deal of confusion. Zahn seeks to refine the terminology, with a particular focus on the terms “Bible“ and “Scripture” and make us aware of the implications arising from the use of these terms. Importantly, she reminds us that, both in our investigation of the new materials and in the terminology, the question of authority should be distinguished from literary issues. Her contribution is a welcome improvement, as more often than not the labels used in the scholarly debate create more ambiguity than clarity as they – often unintentionally – associate the literary relationships between compositions with the status or authority of a given work. In her contribution “The Pentateuch as Found in the Pre-Samaritan Texts and 4QReworked Pentateuch,” Sidnie White Crawford focuses on the “pre-Samaritan” family or group of manuscripts, which was pro-

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duced by scribes applying certain exegetical principles. White Crawford proposes a new label for these texts: “harmonistic/expansionistic.” Whereas the harmonization and content editing are the main exegetical techniques found in the Samaritan Pentateuch, both the Pentateuchal manuscripts from Qumran and the Reworked Pentateuch texts move beyond what is attested by the Samaritan Pentateuch. Importantly, the Reworked Pentateuch contains evidence of editing of the older text, not only in narrative sections but also in the legal material, as well as the addition of new material. This scribal approach continued in the production of new compositions such as the Book of Jubilees and the Temple Scroll. Other texts from Qumran (i.e., phylacteries, mezuzot, 4QTestimonia) show that this text type was used at Qumran. White Crawford puts forward a theory according to which the existence of the harmonistic/expansionistic texts is not accidental but a product of a scribal group or school, at home both in the priestly circles of Jerusalem and Mount Gerizim. White Crawford proposes that this text type was preserved in the Jerusalem temple alongside the protoMasoretic text. Apart from the specifically Samaritan editing of certain passages, the development of the text ceased in the North after the destruction of the sanctuary of Mount Gerizim, and the separation of the “northern Yahwists” later known as the Samaritans, from the southern form of Judaism. At Qumran, however, the growth of the texts continued, resulting, for instance, in the writing of the texts currently known as the Reworked Pentateuch-manuscripts. Anneli Aejmelaeus’ paper, “David’s Three Choices: Textual and Literary Development in 2 Samuel 24,” deals with the Prophet Gad’s message to David after he had a census taken of the population. Through a comparison of the witnesses, she shows that the Masoretic text was edited “at such a late stage … that traces of the older form can be seen in the Septuagint.” Although many Greek witnesses were later harmonized towards the Masoretic text, a careful evaluation of the different readings, including the Chronicles, may reveal the original Septuagint reading. In addition to demonstrating the importance of the Greek witnesses – still often forgotten and neglected in the study of the Hebrew Bible – Aejmelaeus shows that a comparison of the Greek and Hebrew texts provides significant information about editorial processes and scribal changes of the late Second Temple period. Notably, we are not only dealing with grammatical and stylistic changes, for Aejmelaeus points out that behind most of the changes are theological and ideological motives. Moreover, she sees that these changes took place as late as the 1st century BCE or even at the turn of the Common Era. Although this may challenge many conventional conceptions, it is well

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in accordance with the increasing evidence from Qumran that many texts of the Hebrew Scriptures continued to be edited much later than what has been commonly assumed (cf. also Collins and Ulrich in this volume). She concludes that the Books of Samuel needed to be theologically polished in order to be included in the collection of the Prophets. In other words, editorial changes were a prerequisite for these books to become part of the authoritative collection of texts. Without ignoring the other witnesses, Kristin De Troyer’s contribution, “The Legs and Wings of the Grasshopper: A Case Study on Changes in the Masoretic Text and in the Old Greek Translation of the Book of Leviticus,“ also deals with the differences between the Hebrew and Greek versions. Although only a short text that, at first glance, only seems to contain a small difference, Lev 11:21 illustrates what kind of developments took place in the Hebrew Scriptures. The oldest text was not very clear as to how the grasshoppers moved forward, which was an important factor in the evaluation of whether the Israelites were allowed to consume them or not. The ambiguity caused the Old Greek, preserved in the Schøyen Greek papyrus, to make a change emphasizing that the grasshopper had legs and thereby was not a creeping animal. Later the Old Greek was changed into a more easy reading, now witnessed in A, B* and some minuscules. The Temple Scroll, on the other hand, added that the grasshopper also had wings, which would undoubtedly distinguish it from the creeping animals. Ironically, the Masoretic text already begins the verse by noting that the grasshopper is one of the flying animals. Perhaps the youngest attempt to provide clarity is the Masoretic insertion of the Qere #+ in the margin. De Troyer’s example is illustrative because it shows, on a micro-level, how ambiguities in the text were potentially a major cause of editorial changes and interpretative exegetical activity. Whereas it has been long recognized that the Greek Pentateuch depended on the Koine Greek of the Egyptian documentary and legal papyri for its terminology, Robert Kugler, in his article “Uncovering a New Dimension of Early Judean Interpretation of the Greek Torah: Ptolemaic Law Interpreted by its Own Rhetoric,” demonstrates how the Greek Pentateuch was used to adjust the Ptolemaic law. Through a case study of a legal dispute Kugler shows how Judeans in Hellenistic Egypt were able to employ the language of the Greek Torah to reinterpret and adapt the Ptolemaic legal rhetoric. In his paper “The Pilgrimage of the Nations in Mic 4:1–5 and Isa 2:1–5,” Reinhard Müller discusses the vision about the pilgrimage of the nations to Zion, which is found in two parallel passages, Mic 4:1–5 and Isa 2:1–5. A comparison of these passages casts light on the editori-

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al processes of these books. The example is significant because it provides “empirical” evidence for various editorial techniques by successive editors. Arguing that the vision was originally composed in the book of Micah, Müller shows how Mic 4:1–3 was copied and inserted in a changed form into a new context in Isa 2:2–4. Later Mic 4:5 was added on the basis of Isa 2:5, which was not part of the vision but originally had a different context. Finally a later editor added Mic 4:4, missing in Isa 2:1–5. The example illustrates how individual passages may have been copied from other books and changed in the process in order to fit better in their new context. Moreover, the original text may have later been influenced by the context of the copy, Isa 2:5 in this case. Parallel texts may have been later harmonized in a way that disregards the original order of influence. The example also shows that one parallel passage may continue developing later regardless of the other passage. The copied text may, in some cases, preserve the more original reading while the original text was later expanded (Mic 4:4). Müller’s examples emphasize the complexity of the editorial processes. In his contribution “The Quotations and References of the Pentateuchal Laws in Ezra-Nehemiah,” Juha Pakkala investigates the quotations and other related uses of the Torah in Ezra-Nehemiah. Notably, in no single case does the quotation or purported quotation correspond exactly to a known pentateuchal text. There are two possible explanations for this. Either the authors of Ezra-Nehemiah were convinced that quoting a text in an altered form would not compromise the authority and message of the pentateuchal text, or they used a different version of the Pentateuch from the ones currently known. Although not an explicit quotation, Neh 8:13–18 in particular suggests that the latter was the case. It would seem that the editorial processes of the Pentateuch were much more radical and substantial than what is traditionally assumed. This would also mean that the Pentateuch was still far from being a stable and fixed text in the fifth to third centuries BCE and that there were several fundamentally different versions during these centuries. One would have to assume that the scribes of these centuries, whether those behind the Pentateuch or those in Ezra-Nehemiah quoting the Pentateuch, were not very concerned about the exact wording of the pentateuchal texts, or at least they did not transmit them very faithfully (cf. Collins in this volume). Substantial changes, relocation of material, rewriting (such as paraphrasing), omissions and additions seem to have taken place in the transmission of texts that were regarded to be authoritative. In her paper “The Textual Connections between 1QM and the Book of Daniel,” Hanna Vanonen discusses the use of the Book of Daniel in

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1QM. Particular focus is on the connections between Dan 11–12 and the first column of 1QM. Although 1QM contains many Biblical references, Vanonen argues that the main referent was the Book of Daniel or a closely related tradition. She describes the textual connection between 1QM 1 and Daniel as allusive. Although there do not seem to be any intended quotations, Dan 11:40–12:3 and 1QM 1:1–9a share vocabulary, structure and themes. Explaining some of the incongruence between Daniel and 1QM, she notes that 1QM may have been later edited, possibly expanded. Vanonen’s contribution is significant because it draws attention to the processes taking place when a new composition was created using an older and highly esteemed tradition (cf. also Jubilees). Although the older tradition was used rather freely and there do not seem to be any intended quotations, the author of 1QM apparently wanted the readers to notice the connection between the new composition and the older tradition (cf. the scholarly discussion concerning the relationship between 1–2 Kings and Chronicles or the Covenant Code and Deuteronomy and Collins on Jubilees in this volume). A further question to be explored would be the authoritativeness of Daniel for the author of 1QM. With the discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars are for the first time able to investigate the scribal practices that were in use in the writing of the authoritative texts of the late Second Temple period. In her article “Changing Scripture? Scribal Corrections in MS 4QXIIc,” Hanne von Weissenberg focuses on examining the scribal practices and in particular the supralinear scribal corrections of manuscript 4QXIIc. Intriguingly, while the manuscript displays several characteristics of the Qumran Scribal Practice and attests to several scribal interventions, the general tendency of this scribe appears to have been an attempt to correct his linear text in faithfulness to his Vorlage. In light of her analysis of the scribal corrections, von Weissenberg suggests that the scribe might have been required to “proofread” his copy and make corrections according to his Vorlage. This suggests that a large number of scribal corrections in a manuscript does not necessarily indicate scribal creativity. The contributions of the volume’s third section (chapter 4) focus mainly on the deuterocanonical books. The main issue is to analyze what kind of traces the Deuteronomistic heritage has left in a selection of deuterocanonical books. In other words, Deuteronomistic literature will be used as a case study to investigate how this vast corpus of literature was used in later, and especially in late Second Temple period, literature. In this section the general influence and impact of Deuteronom-

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ism on later texts will be examined, as will the phenomenon of how the Deuteronomistic texts were quoted and alluded to. It will be asked if later authors could change the quoted texts in the new context and if so, how were they changed. If applicable, what is behind such changes and how does it relate to the question of the authority of the Deuteronomistic texts? To what extent can we talk about a movement and ideology in late Second Temple literature? Attention is also given to the question of whether the later uses of Deuteronomistic phraseology are only of a literary nature. There has been controversy among scholars on how to evaluate the Deuteronomistic influence in the Book of Ben Sira. Some scholars argue for Ben Sira’s strong adherence to the Deuteronomistic ideas, whereas others deny ties between Ben Sira and the Deuteronomistic legacy. In his contribution “The Book of Ben Sira and Deuteronomistic Heritage: A Critical Approach,” Pancratius C. Beentjes has undertaken a twofold approach to this topic. First, he examines whether there are recognizable collocations, allusions or quotations that link Ben Sira to the Deuteronomistic corpus of literature. Beentjes points out that, in addition to lexical similarities, the contexts where similar expressions are used should also be akin. The second step is to analyze Ben Sira’s possible adoption of major Deuteronomistic themes. As a result of his detailed analysis Beentjes recommends that scholars be cautious because Ben Sira’s dependence on Deuteronomistic literature and ideology seems to be relatively modest. Ben Sira was a very creative author who combined useful material from different sources and modified it according to his own principles. The Deuteronomistic heritage was only one stream for the sage who was active at the beginning of the second century BCE Beentjes suggests that the Deuteronomistic phraseology was probably a kind of common religious language in Ben Sira’s time. Therefore, Ben Sira’s text transmits Deuteronomistic tone, although deeper connections can only rarely be detected. Perhaps the Deuteronomistic heritage is most evidently present in Ben Sira’s teaching of the Law. The First Book of Maccabees is an important source that describes the events from the beginning of the Jews’ rebellion against Seleucid rule until the Judean autonomy. The book itself was composed during the Hasmonean period. As is the case with almost all deuterocanonical works, the author of 1 Maccabees was also well aware of traditions that preceded him. Therefore, it is relevant to examine the relationship between 1 Maccabees and Deuteronomism. In his paper “The Deuteronomic Legacy of 1 Maccabees,” Francis Borchardt first approaches his theme by analyzing quotations of Deuteronomy in 1 Maccabees. Ac-

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cording to him, there are three explicit legal references in 1 Maccabees that stem from Deuteronomy. In two cases out of three the issue is cultic, and one text deals with the rules of war. In the second and third sections of his article, Borchardt examines both the nature of Deuteronomistic phraseology and the Deuteronomistic themes used in 1 Maccabees. As a result of this analysis it seems that the most prominent Deuteronomistic ideas in 1 Maccabees are the struggle against idolatry, observance of the Law and loyalty to the covenant. Many other characteristically Deuteronomistic features also occur in 1 Maccabees. Borchardt finds an explanation for the strong Deuteronomistic legacy in the circumstances in which 1 Maccabees originated. Law, the cult and the land were three main issues for Maccabees and Hasmoneans. If the author of 1 Maccabees attempted to highlight the accomplishments of the Maccabees, it was only natural that he turned to the sources in which similar emphases were found. In this case, it was the Deuteronomistic literature. The Book of Baruch is branded by its deep adherence to earlier traditions. Although perhaps slightly provocatively, it can be said that no sentence is original in this book but can be derived from the sources that the author or rather a group of authors had available. In his article “The Deuteronomistic Ideology and Phraseology in the Book of Baruch,” Marko Marttila sheds light on the reception of the Deuteronomistic phraseology and ideology in Baruch. The strongest concentration of Deuteronomistic expressions can be found in Baruch’s prayer of penitence (Bar 1:15–3:8). Marttila points out that not only does the vocabulary unite Baruch with his Deuteronomistic predecessors, but Baruch also shares certain theological convictions that were fundamental for the editors of the Deuteronomistic History. In the Deuteronomistic spirit, Baruch repeatedly emphasizes that the people of Israel have been disobedient to their God even though Yahweh has shown his great mercy and brought the people out of Egypt. However, after the long confession of sin, the Book of Baruch looks confidently to the future – if the people remain loyal to the Law. Other characteristically Deuteronomistic themes in Baruch are, above all, the struggle against idolatry, the centralization of cult, the inheritance of the land, divine retribution, and the fulfillment of prophecy. One topic that is missing is the reference to the Davidic dynasty. Marttila argues that this omission may be due to the fact that for the author(s) of Baruch, who lived in the second century BCE, it was the Torah that had become the quintessence of the religion. Therefore, there was no need to expect a new Davidic king. In his contribution “The Use of Different Aspects of the Deuteronomistic Ideology in Apocryphal Psalms,” Mika Pajunen focuses on the

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Deuteronomistic heritage in apocryphal psalms. As such, the concept of ‘apocryphal psalms’ is quite extensive because some early editions of the Bible include more psalms than the Hebrew Bible. For closer inspection, Pajunen has chosen three apocryphal psalms discovered at Qumran. The oldest text is represented by 4Q380, which, according to Pajunen, served as a source for the compiler of Ps 106. On the basis of this argument, 4Q380 is older than the traditional deuterocanonical books. 4Q380 adheres to Deuteronomistic legacy when referring to the election of Zion, retribution for wrong deeds and the importance of observing the commandments. Some changes, however, have also occurred, as the author of 4Q380 shifted the viewpoint from the collective to the individual. Pajunen points out that the author of 4Q381 chose a different way. This author attempts to actualize a passage from Deuteronomy 28 for his own audience. A familiar text from the tradition was thus tied together with actual concern about foreign practices. The author of 11QapocrPs goes a step further by transferring the familiar phraseology into a new setting that has also required certain redefinitions. This author was particularly concerned with the power of God over the evil spirits. It was not a problem for him to place Deuteronomistic idioms into a new context. Pajunen’s contribution indicates that the freedom to modify Deuteronomistic texts and phraseology may even increase in later texts. Deuteronomistic heritage can be observed in a twofold way in the Book of Judith. In his paper “Judith and Deuteronomistic Heritage,” Anssi Voitila points out that the figure of Judith resembles a number of heroes who are mentioned in the Deuteronomistic History, such as Deborah, Jael, David and Miriam. More important than these affinities on a narrative level, however, are the speeches and prayers in Judith because they reveal the author’s intentions and convictions. According to Voitila’s analysis, the confession of sin is one theme that closely links Judith to the Deuteronomistic pattern of retribution. The Book of Judith stresses this through personal prayer where one is to submit himself to God’s mercy. Concepts of “Law” and “covenant” are mentioned in Judith, but they do not play any greater role. Instead, the author of Judith seems to favor exclusive monolatry – a feature that combines him with the nomistic editors of the Deuteronomistic History. Even though the Book of Judith originated in the Hellenistic period when monotheism began to be an established doctrine in Judaism, the author of Judith does not explicitly deny the existence of other gods. It is sufficient for him to stress that Yahweh is the only God for Israel. Consequently, there is no need to promote Yahweh worship for foreigners.

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The Book of Tobit shows an acquaintance with several earlier traditions. Especially familiar for the author(s) were the patriarchal narratives from Genesis and the story of Job. It would thus not be surprising if the Book of Tobit revealed affinities with Deuteronomistic ideas as well. However, in his article “A Deuteronomic Heritage in Tobit?” Stuart D. Weeks warns against over-simplifications by reminding us that not all biblical ideas of retribution and mercy are Deuteronomistic. The same is valid for topics such as the promised land or the Jerusalem Temple. As Weeks’s analysis indicates, there are only seldom similarities between Tobit and Deuteronomistic literature. Even when they touch upon apparently similar concepts, such as Israel’s past and future, the tone is different in these works. Tobit portrays a deity whose power is not limited to the land of Israel, even though God’s special relationship with Israel is presupposed, of course. That God is surrounded by angels is one aspect in Tobit’s theology, but this feature clearly distinguishes Tobit from Deuteronomistic literature. Weeks argues that Tobit has subsumed many traditions, both biblical and nonbiblical, to create a story that exhorts its readers to piety. Certain echoes from Deuteronomism can also be found in this outcome, but they are not the most central elements in the story of Tobit. Instead, Tobit’s emphasis on piety seems to be independent of the systematic presentation of any specific religious ideology.

Bibliography Brooke, George J. “Between Authority and Canon: The Significance of Reworking the Bible for Understanding the Canonical Process.” Pages 85–104 in Reworking the Bible: Apocryphal and Related Texts at Qumran: Proceedings of a Joint Symposium by the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature and the Hebrew University Institute for Advanced Studies Research Group on Qumran, 15–17 January, 2002. Edited by Esther G. Chazon, Devorah Dimant and Ruth A. Clements. STDJ 58. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Crawford, Sidnie White. “Understanding the Textual History of the Hebrew Bible: A New Proposal.” In The Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Edited by Armin Lange, Kristin De Troyer and Shani Tzoref. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, forthcoming. Hempel, Charlotte. “Pluralism and Authoritativeness: The Case of the S Tradition.” Pages 193–208 in Authoritative Scripture in Ancient Judaism. Edited by Mladen Popovi°. JSJSup 141. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Kratz, Reinhard G. “The Legal Status of the Pentateuch between Elephantine and Qumran.” Pages 77–103 in The Pentateuch as Torah. Edited by Gary N. Knoppers and Bernard M. Levinson. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2007.

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Sanders, James A. Torah and Canon. 2nd edition. Eugene: Cascade Books, 2005. Segal, Michael “Between Bible and Rewritten Bible.” Pages 10–28 in Biblical Interpretations at Qumran. Edited by M. Henze. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005. Tigay, Jeffrey. Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985. Ulrich, Eugene. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible. SDSRL. Leiden: Brill, 1999. VanderKam, James C. “Revealed Literature in the Second Temple Period.” Pages 1–30 in From Revelation to Canon: Studies in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Literature. JSJSup 62. Leiden: Brill, 2000.

2. Methodological Issues

Changing Scripture John J. Collins “How can you say, ‘We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us,’ when, in fact, the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie” (Jer 8:8)

We do not know precisely what Jeremiah had in mind in his scathing denunciation of scribal activity on the Torah. Many scholars think that the prophet was opposed to any written Torah.1 He was certainly concerned that the authority of the prophet to speak for God was being usurped by the scribes, as indeed it was. But it is also established beyond doubt that scribes frequently changed the supposedly revealed texts that they transmitted. Ironically, the book of Jeremiah is itself a prime example of scribal composition, where the original oracles of the prophet are now overshadowed by the accretions, often ideological, of scribal transmission.2 Of course, Jeremiah’s judgment on such accretions reflects a particular perspective, which is not inevitable. Religious traditions sometimes value the contributions of the editors, who gave the material its canonical shape, more than those of the prophets. It is often assumed that these editors were attempting to preserve and explicate the true meaning of their sources, and undoubtedly this was often so. But Jeremiah’s outburst should warn us that a “hermeneutic of suspicion” towards the ideological underpinnings of scribal activity is not entirely anachronistic. Claims to speak with divine authority were especially fraught with implications for power in ancient society, and were inevitably, and properly, contested.

1

2

For a summary of the discussion see William L. Holladay, Jeremiah 1 (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 281. It has been suggested that the verse summarizes Jeremiah’s view of Josiah’s reform, but most scholars reject that view as exaggerated. See e.g. Christl Maier, Jeremia als Lehrer der Tora: Soziale Gebote des Deuteronomiums in Fortschreibungen des Jeremiabuches (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002); Carolyn Sharp, Prophecy and ideology in Jeremiah: struggles for authority in DeuteroJeremianic prose (London: T & T Clark, 2003).

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The Case of Deuteronomy The role of scribes not only in the transmission of the biblical tradition but also in its development has received renewed attention in recent years.3 Michael Fishbane’s classic study of inner biblical exegesis was a pioneering work in this regard.4 Fishbane’s student, Bernard Levinson, built on this foundation in his influential study of the hermeneutics of legal innovation in Deuteronomy. But, wrote Levinson, “in the end, however, inner biblical exegesis does not provide a satisfactory model to describe the achievements of the authors of Deuteronomy. The concern of the authors of Deuteronomy was not to explicate older texts but to transform them. Neither ‘interpretation’ nor ‘exegesis’ adequately suggests the extent to which Deuteronomy radically transforms literary and legal history in order to forge a new vision of religion and the state.”5 Rather than the continuity of tradition, Levinson sought to emphasize “the extent to which exegesis may make itself independent of the source text, challenging and even attempting to reverse or abrogate its substantive content, all the while under the hermeneutical mantle of consistency with or dependency upon its source.”6 So, he concludes, “Deuteronomy’s use of precedent subverts it. The old saw of Deuteronomy as a pious fraud may thus be profitably inverted. Is there not something of an impious fraud – of pecca fortiter! – in the literary accomplishment of the text’s authors?”7 Levinson’s view of the matter has not gone unchallenged. Hindy Najman accuses him of assuming “a contemporary conception of fraudulence, and a contemporary conception of piety towards tradition."8 Ideas of authorship in antiquity were very different from their modern counterparts.9 Anonymity was often the norm, but the attribution of 3

4 5

6 7 8 9

William M. Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualization of Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); David M. Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart (New York: Oxford, 2005); Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007). Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985). Bernard Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (New York: Oxford, 1997), 15. Jeffrey Stackert, Rewriting the Torah: Literary Revision in Deuteronomy and the Holiness Legislation (FAT 52; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 2007) takes a similar view. Levinson, Deuteronomy, 15. Levinson, Deuteronomy, 150. Hindy Najman, Seconding Sinai. The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism (JSJSup 77; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 5. Karel van der Toorn, see chapter “Authorship in Antiquity,” in Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge: Harvard University

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texts to specific figures was also a significant practice, not least as a way of claiming authority for a text.10 Karel van der Toorn distinguishes between “honorary authorship,” whereby a work was attributed to a patron, often in the interests of political propaganda (e.g. the Laws of Hammurabbi) and pseudepigraphy, whereby authors attribute their work to a (fictive) author from remote times in order to present their work as a legacy from the venerable past.11 Pseudepigraphy was very widespread in the ancient world, and was motivated in various ways.12 To regard it simply as fraud or deception in all cases would obviously be simplistic. Even when works were denounced as forgeries in antiquity, the issue was not necessarily authorship in the modern sense. Tertullian famously denounced The Acts of Paul and Thecla, because it served “as a licence for women’s teaching and baptizing.”13 But the same Tertullian wrote that Luke’s gospel ought to be ascribed to Paul and Mark’s to Peter, because “that which disciples publish should be regarded as their master’s work.”14 Najman suggests that works like Deuteronomy, that reformulate the revelation given to Moses on Mt. Sinai, should be compared to modern discourses that are inextricably linked to their founders, such Marxism or Freudianism. “When someone proclaims ‘Back to Marx!’ or ‘Back to Freud!’ she claims to represent the authentic doctrine of Marx or Freud, although she may express it in different words . . . In some ancient cultures, the way to continue or return to the founder’s dis-

10

11 12

13 14

Press, 2007), 27–49; Leo G. Perdue, “Pseudonymity and Graeco-Roman Rhetoric,” in Pseudepigraphie und Verfasserfiktion in frühchristlichen Briefen (ed. J. Frey et al.; WUNT 246; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 2009), 27–59 (28–39), (“Authorship in Antiquity”), Jed Wyrick, The Ascension of Authorship: Attribution and Canon Formation in Jewish, Hellenistic, and Christian Traditions (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004). Perdue, “Pseudonymity,” 29: “while in the ANE authorship may at times have been viewed as collective, i.e. texts were produced by the scribal communities, attribution to individuals was a significant practice especially among the composers of the wisdom corpora.” Philip R. Davies, “Spurious Attribution in the Hebrew Bible,” in The Invention of Sacred Tradition (ed. J. R. Lewis and O. Hammer ; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 258–75 (259), says that scribal communities in the Ancient Near East considered authorship to be unimportant, but does not reconcile this with the phenomenon of pseudonymous attribution, which he also notes. van der Toorn, Scribal Culture, 34. The literature is vast. See Wolfgang Speyer, Die literarische Fälschung im Altertum (Munich: Beck, 1971); Bruce M. Metzger, “Literary Forgeries and Canonical Pseudepigrapha,” JBL 91 (1972): 3–24; and the essays in Pseudepigraphie und Verfasserfiktion (ed. Frey et al.). Tertullian, De Baptismo, 17. Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, 6.5.

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course was precisely to ascribe what one said or wrote, not to oneself, but rather to the founder.”15 There is some precedent for this in antiquity, in the Greek philosophical schools. The Neo-Pythagoreans thought it most honorable and praiseworthy to publish one’s philosophical treatises in the name of Pythagoras himself.16 Najman does not suggest that there was a “Mosaic school,” but suggests an analogy nonetheless. So, to rework an earlier formulation of the law of Moses is not to claim that the rewritten text represents the words of the historical Moses but “to update, interpret and develop the content of that text in a way that one claims to be an authentic expression of the law already accepted as authoritatively Mosaic.”17 Levinson’s argument that Deuteronomy is a deliberate subversion of the older Covenant Code is based in large part on its reworking of key terms from the older text. So, for example, the Deuteronomic writers rework the key terms in the altar law of Exodus “ in such a way as finally to make it prohibit what it originally sanctioned (multiple altar sites as legitimate) and command the two innovations it could never have contemplated: cultic centralization and local, secular slaughter… The antithetical reworking of the original text suggests an extraordinary ambivalence on the part of the authors of Deuteronomy, who retain the old altar law only to transform it and who thereby subvert the very textual authority that they invoke.”18 Najman counters: “If one intends to replace an earlier code, why should one exert so much effort to incorporate and preserve its wording? Why should one constantly remind the reader of the earlier text, already accepted as authoritative, which one wishes to supplant?”19 In her view, the ambivalence that Levinson perceives arises from his assumption that Deuteronomy was intended to replace an older authoritative law. Najman argues that there is no reason to think that the Deuteronomic writers wanted to suppress the older law: “Instead, there is good reason to think that they intended the Covenant Code to be preserved alongside the Deuteronomic Code, with the latter serving as the authentic exposition of certain laws in the former.”20 Approximately two thirds of the laws in the Covenant Code are not repeated in Deuteronomy, and are presumably not annulled. Moreover, both the Covenant Code and Deuteronomy

15 16 17 18 19 20

Najman, Seconding Sinai, 12. Iamblichus, De Vita Pythagorica, 198. Najman, Seconding Sinai, 13. Levinson, Deuteronomy, 46. Najman, Seconding Sinai, 22–23. Najman, Seconding Sinai, 24.

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were eventually acknowledged as Holy Scripture. The acceptance of Deuteronomy did not require the suppression of the laws in Exodus. Levinson’s analysis assumes that the Book of the Covenant was an authoritative text when Deuteronomy was written: “The authors of Deuteronomy sought to locate their innovative vision in prior textual authority by tendentiously appropriating texts like the Covenant Code…”21 This is a reasonable assumption. The Covenant Code would hardly have survived as authoritative scripture if it had not already enjoyed that status, at least in some circles, before the Deuteronomic revision. But in fact we have no explicit evidence as to what status the Book of the Covenant enjoyed in the seventh century BCE. Neither do we have any explicit evidence as to whether the authors of Deuteronomy intended that the older writing be preserved. Pace Najman, it does not seem to me that the reuse of language from an older text argues against replacement: revisions and new editions normally reuse the language of the original, but seek to supersede it nonetheless.22 The Covenant Code echoes the Laws of Hammurabi at many points,23 but surely did not regard the Mesopotamian code as authoritative. The fact that Deuteronomy does not repeat or revise all the laws of the Exodus code is a stronger argument that the older text was expected to be still available. But in fact, framing the question in terms of whether or not one code was meant to replace the other may reflect an anachronistic understanding of the function of law codes in ancient Judah. Many scholars have argued that early law codes were descriptive rather than prescriptive.24 They recorded representative rulings, and had some value as precedents, but ultimately law depended on the decision of the king or the judge. Some scholars argue that this situation changed with Deuteronomy, with its emphasis on the book of the Law.25 Others place the

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Levinson, Deuteronomy, 16. The new edition of Emil Schürer’s History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, (ed. G. Vermes et al.; 3 vols.; Edinburgh: Clark, 1973–1987) was intended not only to update the classic original but also to subvert its view of Judaism in some respects. Yet large portions of the original were repeated verbatim. The revision attested to the authoritative status of the original, but it unambiguously sought to replace it. David Wright, Inventing God’s Law. How the Covenant Code of the Bible Used and Revised the Laws of Hammurabi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 9. Michael LeFebvre, Collections, Codes, and Torah. The Re-characterization of Israel’s Written Law (London: T & T Clark, 2006), 1–30. Dale Patrick, Old Testament Law (London: SCM, 1986), 189–204; Raymond Westbrook, “Cuneiform Law Codes and the Origins of Legislation,” ZA 79 (1989): 201–22.

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transition later, in the Persian era.26 Michael LeFebvre argues that the Torah did not become a legislative text before the Hellenistic era.27 In any case, it is unlikely that the Book of the Covenant was used as prescriptive law before Josiah’s reform.28 Neither, of course, was it part of a “canon,” in the sense of an exclusive collection of authoritative texts. The authors of Deuteronomy surely intended to supersede the older code on the topics that they addressed. But ultimately, law was decided by the king, or by the competent authorities in the community after the demise of the kingship. It was not necessary to suppress the Covenant Code, which contained much material with which the Deuteronomic authors had no quarrel. The important thing was that the rulers should know which formulation offered the better guidance. In fact, even when law is understood prescriptively, its exercise always requires a competent authority to interpret it. Two other aspects of Deuteronomy should be noted. First, the book is not presented as a transcription of the revelation at Mount Sinai/Horeb. It is a secondary account of the revelation, a recapitulation by Moses on the plains of Moab – hence the name, Deuteronomy, the second law. Najman’s designation of it as “Mosaic discourse” is fully justified. It contains a prohibition (probably vain)29 against adding or subtracting anything from its formulation (Deut 13:1), but it does not preclude the existence of other accounts. But, second, it does not acknowledge the existence of any prior “book of the covenant,” despite its well documented dependence on the laws of Exodus. The source of its authority is not its relationship to an earlier book but its claim to give the substance of the revelation at Sinai, and the credibility of Moses as narrator. Echoes of other formulations that might be known to those who read or heard these laws may have added to their credibility, by evoking associations, but it is not from the earlier formulations that Deuteronomy derives its authority.

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Anne Fitzpatrick-McKinley, The Transformation of Torah from Scribal Advice to Law (JSOTSup 287; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999). LeFebvre, Collections, Codes, and Torah, 258. Wright, Inventing God’s Law, 4, suggests that the Covenant Code is to be viewed as “an academic abstraction rather than a digest of laws practiced by Israelites and Judeans over the course of centuries.” We do not know at what point this prohibition was inserted.

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The Second Century BCE It is generally agreed that the authority of the Torah had been clarified and solidified considerably by the second century BCE. “Considerably,” however, is not “absolutely.” One of the revelations of the Dead Sea Scrolls has concerned the extent of textual variation in the Hebrew scriptures, down to the turn of the era. It is now clear that textual traditions known to us from the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint were current in Hebrew in the land of Israel, as well as the precursors of the Masoretic text, and there were other variations besides.30 Variant editions of several biblical books were in circulation (Exodus, Jeremiah, Psalms).31 This in itself presents an interesting problem, as it shows that authority resided in a book rather than in a particular textual form of that book. Scribal variation was not necessarily perceived as problematic. The variants include scribal errors, but also intentional changes. Some of these consist of additions, rearrangements and paraphrases, sometimes intended to clarify the text, and sometimes tendentious.32 There is a movement towards standardization of the text in the first century CE, as can be seen from the revisions of the Greek translation of the Minor Prophets and from the prevalence of proto-Masoretic texts at Masada, but there is still considerable evidence of textual variation in the New Testament and in Josephus. Prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it was easy enough to distinguish between a biblical text that was at variance with the MT (e.g. the Samaritan Pentateuch) and a book like Jubilees, that retold the story of Genesis and part of Exodus but was clearly an independent composition. The distinction is blurred, however, in the text (or texts) known as 4QReworked Pentateuch (4Q158, 4Q364–7). This title refers to a group of five fragmentary manuscripts, which were originally thought 30

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For a concise summary see Armin Lange, “’Nobody dared to add to them, to take from them, or to Make Changes.’ Josephus, Ag.Ap.1.42. The Textual Standardization of Jewish Scriptures in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Flores Florentino. Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Early Jewish Studies in Honour of Florentino García Martínez (ed. A. Hilhorst, É. Puech and E. Tigchelaar; JSJSup 122; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 105–26, (107– 10); Armin Lange, Handbuch der Textfunde vom Toten Meer. Bd. 1: Die Handschriften biblischer Bücher von Qumran und den anderen Fundorten (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 2009). Eugene C. Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origin of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 17–50, 99–120. Michael Segal, “Between Bible and Rewritten Bible,” in Biblical Interpretation at Qumran (ed. M. Henze; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 10–28 (12). See the discussion of the Samaritan Pentateuch by Magnar Kartveit, The Origin of the Samaritans (VTSup 128; Leiden: Brill, 2009), 279–312.

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to make up a single, independent composition.33 Since there are no significant overlaps, however, they are now increasingly viewed as distinct but related compositions.34 All five manuscripts reflect Pentateuchal texts, with variations, including rearrangements and additions (notably the “Song of Miriam”). In the words of Sidnie White Crawford, “these texts are the product of scribal interpretation, still marked mainly by harmonistic editing, but with one important addition: the insertion of outside material into the text, material not found in other parts of what we now recognize as the Pentateuch.”35 But many fragments correspond to the traditional text with minimal variation. The extant fragments do not suggest any changes of speaker or setting over against other forms of these texts. Consequently, they are increasingly viewed not as distinct compositions but as expansionistic variants of the text known from our Bible.36 If this is so, it suggests that there was still great freedom in copying the scriptural texts as late as the first century BCE. 37 How far these texts were accepted as authentic scriptures, we do not know. They survive in single, fragmentary copies. It has been suggested that Jubilees relied on 4Q364, frg. 3 (Isaac/Rebekah) and that the Temple Scroll relied on 4Q365, frg. 23 (the New Oil/Wood festival), but the evidence is not conclusive.38 White Crawford believes that “we can say with almost complete certainty that 4Q364 and 4Q365 were meant by the scribes who prepared them to be read as regular pentateuchal texts.”39 Given the tolerance of textual variation that we 33 34

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Emanuel Tov and Sidnie White Crawford, “Reworked Pentateuch,” in Qumran Cave 4, VIII (ed. H. Attridge et al.; DJD 13. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 187–351. Michael Segal, “4QReworked Pentateuch or 4QPentateuch?,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Fifty Years After Their Discovery (ed. L. Schiffman, E. Tov, and J. VanderKam; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2000), 391–99; George Brooke, “4Q158: Reworked Pentateucha or Reworked Pentateuch A?,” DSD 8 (2001): 219–41. So now also Sidnie White Crawford, Rewriting Scripture in Second Temple Times (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 39. White Crawford, Rewriting Scripture, 39–40. For a list of scholars who hold this view, including now Emanuel Tov, see White Crawford, Rewriting Scripture, 56. See the discussion by Molly M. Zahn, “The Problem of Characterizing the 4QReworked Pentateuch Manuscripts: Bible, Rewritten Bible, or None of the Above?,” DSD 15 (2008): 315–39; Molly M. Zahn, “Rewritten Scripture,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. T. H. Lim and J. J. Collins; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 323–36; and her forthcoming dissertation, Rethinking Rewritten Scripture: Composition and Exegesis in the 4QReworked Pentateuch Manuscripts (STDJ 95. Leiden: Brill). The manuscripts date from the late Hasmonean period. White Crawford, Rewriting Scripture, 40. White Crawford, Rewriting Scripture, 59. White Crawford, Rewriting Scripture, 56.

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find at Qumran, this does not mean that these scribes would have made any attempt to suppress other forms of these texts. Most of their variations can be viewed as exegetical, and taken as attempts to clarify the received text and bring out its fuller significance.

Rewritten Scriptures There are other texts, however, that are closely based on the traditional text of the Torah, but are generally recognized as distinct compositions in their own right. These texts are often categorized as “Rewritten Bible,” a label introduced by Geza Vermes, to describe such works as Jubilees, the Genesis Apocryphon, the Biblical Antiquities of Pseudo-Philo and the Antiquities of Josephus.40 The designation is problematic, since that which is rewritten was not yet “Bible,” and so scholars increasingly refer to them as “rewritten scriptures.”41 The rewriting has much in common with what we find in expansionistic texts like 4QReworked Pentateuch. It involves harmonizing, rearranging and expansion. Some scholars see a spectrum, which ranges from minor editorial changes in the received text, to changes so extensive that they are deemed to constitute independent works.42 But, as Michael Segal has pointed out, the difference between “Bible” and “Rewritten Bible” is not simply quantitative.43 If it were, the variant editions of Jeremiah that underlie the MT and LXX would be considered different compositions. More important are differences in the literary frame, the authorial voice, and the scope of the composition. There has been extensive debate about the extent and definition of this category of writing.44 It is not strictly a literary genre.45 Individual 40 41

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Geza Vermes, Scripture and Tradition in Judaism: Haggadic Studies (2nd ed.; Studia Post-Biblica 4; Leiden: Brill, 1973), 67–126. See e.g. Anders Klostergaard Petersen, “Rewritten Bible as a Borderline Phenomenon – Genre, Textual Strategy or Canonical Anachronism?” in Flores Florentino (ed. A. Hilhorst, É. Puech and E. Tigchelaar), 284–306. Jonathan G. Campbell, “’Rewritten Bible’ and ‘Parabiblical Texts’: A Terminological and Ideological critique,” in New Directions in Qumran Studies: Proceedings of the Bristol Colloquium on the Dead Sea Scrolls, 8–10 September 2003 (ed. J. G. Campbell et al.; London: T & T Clark, 2005), 43– 68, also objects to “rewritten scriptures.” He suggests terminology along the lines of “scripture” and “parascripture.” So White Crawford, Rewriting Scripture, 14. Segal, “Between Bible and Rewritten Bible,” 16. See also Zahn, “Rewritten Scriptures.” In addition to works already cited see Moshe Bernstein, “’Rewritten Bible:’ A Generic Category which has Outlived Its Usefulness?” Textus 22 (2005): 169–96; George J.

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compositions tend to follow the genre of the prototype.46 A great amount of Jewish literature from the late Second Temple period is based on older scriptures in one way or another. For example, the fragments of Hellenistic Jewish literature preserve re-tellings of stories about the patriarchs and the exodus not only in narrative form, but also in epic poetry and even in the form of a tragedy.47 There is no question in these writings of replacing the original scriptures: they simply present (and often embellish) these stories in ways that render them more interesting for a Hellenized audience, and use them to reshape Jewish identity in a Diaspora setting. They treat the scriptures as sources for their literary imagination. This is also true of Josephus’ great re-telling of biblical history in his Antiquities, which was one of the works originally categorized as “Rewritten Bible” by Vermes. These works may have an exegetical dimension, insofar as they sometimes try to resolve problems in the scriptures, but they are not primarily works of exegesis. They are new compositions that draw their source material from the traditional scriptures. The same is arguably true of the Aramaic Genesis Apocryphon and Aramaic Levi Document. The fact that so much of Jewish literature in this period draws its source material from the Pentateuch is powerful testimony to the authoritative status of the narrative parts of the Torah. Authority in these cases means primarily literary authority. Genesis and Exodus are classic texts that are infinite-

45

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Brooke, “Rewritten Bible,” in The Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. L. H. Schiffman and J. C. VanderKam; 2 vols.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 777–81; George J. Brooke, “The Rewritten Law, Prophets and Psalms: Issues for Understanding the Text of the Bible,” in The Bible as Book: The Hebrew Bible and the Judaean Desert Discoveries (ed. E. D. Herbert and E. Tov; London: British Library, 2002), 31–40; Antti Laato and Jacques van Ruiten, ed., Rewritten Bible Reconsidered (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2008), Daniel A. Machiela, “Once More, with Feeling: Rewritten Scripture in Ancient Judaism – A Review of Recent Developments,” JJS 61(2010): 308–20. Philip S. Alexander, “Retelling the Old Testament,” in It is Written: Scripture Citing Scripture (ed. D. A. Carson and H. G. M. Williamson; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 99–121, argues that the texts so classified by Vermes, Jubilees, the Genesis Apocryphon, the Antiquities of Josephus and the Biblical Antiquities of Pseudo-Philo, do constitute a literary genre. These are all narrative texts, and do not include such compositions as the Temple Scroll. Compare Brooke, “Rewritten Bible,” 780: “Rewritten Bible texts come in almost as many genres as can be found in the biblical books themselves.” See further John J. Collins, Between Athens and Jerusalem. Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 29–63; Martin Goodman, “Jewish Literature Composed in Greek,” in The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ III.1 (ed. G. Vermes, F. Millar and M. Goodman; Edinburgh: Clark, 1986), 509–66.

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ly adaptable to new circumstances, just as the epics of Homer were classic texts for the Greeks. In the case of legal texts, however, the issues were somewhat different. We know from the Dead Sea Scrolls that halakhic disputation was common in the first century BCE, and contributed to the division between sects, probably as early as the reign of John Hyrcanus. 4QMMT provides a classic example of the halakhic mentality, which unambiguously reads the laws of scripture as prescriptive. Halakhic disputation did not immediately lead to textual standardization, as we might expect from a modern perspective, but it meant that variation in legal texts became fraught with significance. If we seek an analogy to the revision of the Covenant Code in Deuteronomy, our concern is primarily with texts that rewrite the laws of the Torah, or rewrite the narratives with a halakhic focus. Two such texts have attracted great attention in recent years. The Book of Jubilees was one of the prototypical texts adduced by Vermes. It retells the narrative of Genesis and part of Exodus, but it supplies a new literary frame: the narrative is dictated to Moses by an angel on Mt. Sinai. In this case, the re-writing is far more tendentious than anything we find in the fragments of 4QReworked Pentateuch. Much of it is concerned with a strict interpretation of halakhic issues, including a 364-day calendar, which is injected into the retold narrative. The Temple Scroll is also presented as a revelation on Mt. Sinai, but in this case God speaks directly to Moses. In contrast to Jubilees, it is entirely concerned with the legal texts of the Pentateuch. In that sense, the two books complement each other, although Ben Zion Wacholder’s suggestion that the two were parts of a single composition is universally rejected.48 Both Jubilees and the Temple Scroll are likely to date from the second century BCE.49 Neither text engages in the kind of pesher-style exegesis, which carefully distinguishes the scriptural lemma from its interpretation, that we find in the sectarian texts from Qumran, which probably date to the first half of the first century BCE.

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Ben Zion Wacholder, “The Relationship Between 11Q Torah (the Temple Scroll) and the Book of Jubilees, One Single or Two Independent Compositions,” in Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers (ed. K. H. Richards; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985), 205–16. On the date of Jubilees, James VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 17–21; for the Temple Scroll, see Sidnie White Crawford, The Temple Scroll and Related Texts (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 24–26. VanderKam and White Crawford both favor dates before the middle of the second century BCE for their respective works.

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As with Deuteronomy, there has been debate as to whether these books are intended to replace or supplement the traditional Torah. Najman has argued vigorously that they “seek to provide the interpretive context within which scriptural traditions already acknowledged as authoritative can be properly understood. This is neither a fraudulent attempt at replacement, nor an act of impiety. It is rather, we may charitably assume, a pious effort to convey what is taken to be the essence of earlier traditions, an essence that the rewriters think is in danger of being missed.”50 Moreover, she claims, “they claimed for their interpretations of authoritative texts, the already established authority of the texts themselves.”51 Their goal is to solve interpretive problems in the older texts, and to appropriate the authority of the Torah for their interpretations. So, argues Najman, while they do not replace the existing Torah, they do claim the status of Torah for themselves. Najman is aware that there are significant differences between the two compositions.52 I would suggest that these differences are important for the kind of authority claimed in each text, and for the way in which their relationship to the older scriptures is conceived.

Jubilees In the case of Jubilees, we are fortunate that the beginning of the work has been preserved. Both the short prologue and the opening chapter are attested in the fragments of 4Q216 and preserved in full in Ethiopic. From allusions to Exod 24:12–18, it appears that the setting is Moses’ first forty-day sojourn on Mt. Sinai.53 Moses is told to write down “everything I tell you on this mountain, the first things and the last things that shall come to pass in all the divisions of the days, in the law and in the testimony, and in the weeks of the Jubilees till eternity, till I descend and dwell with them through all eternity” (Jub 1:26). The actual dictation is performed not by the Deity but by the angel of the presence, who in turn derives the information from the heavenly tablets.54

50 51 52 53

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Najman, Seconding Sinai, 46. Najman, Seconding Sinai, 45. Najman, Seconding Sinai, 59. See James C. VanderKam, “Moses Trumping Moses,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls. Transmission of Traditions and Production of Texts (ed. S. Metso, H. Najman and E. Schuller; STDJ 92; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 25–44 (25–26). Hindy Najman, “Interpretation as Primordial Writing: Jubilees and its Authority Conferring Strategies,” in Past Renewals. Interpretative Authority, Renewed Revelation

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Jubilees evidently presupposes that the story of the revelation on Sinai is familiar to readers, and so it can dispense with the narrative of the arrival at Sinai. It also clearly presupposes the existence, and authority, of “the first law.” The most explicit reference is in Jub 6:20–22, with reference to the laws of Shavuoth: “for I have written in the book of the first law, which I have written for you, that you should celebrate it at its proper time . . .” Again in Jub 30:12, à propos of Dinah and the Shechemites: “I have written for you in the words of the law all the details of what the Shechemites did to Dinah . . .” But in addition to the Torah, there was also the “testimony” !#3=, which, as VanderKam argues persuasively, should be identified with the contents of the book of Jubilees itself, although they may not exhaust the testimony contained in the heavenly tablets.55 Insofar as Jubilees claims to transmit revelation given to Moses on Mt. Sinai, it may reasonably be described as Mosaic discourse, but only in a qualified sense. Moses is not the speaker in Jubilees. His authority here is not that of a founder (although he was commonly so perceived in the Hellenistic world), but only that of a mediator. More properly, Jubilees is angelic discourse, or even mediated divine discourse. The authority claimed for it is not ultimately that of Moses, as in Deuteronomy or the Testament of Moses, but that of divine revelation. Moses is important as guarantor of its transmission, but he is not its source. Again, the discourse may reasonably be said to be “seconding Sinai,” since it supplements and provides an interpretive context for “the first Torah.” VanderKam points out that Jubilees claims to be the only revelation that survives from Moses’ first sojourn on the mountain, since the tablets with “the first law” were smashed and had to be replaced. He therefore says that “he was not seconding Sinai; he was initiating Sinai.”56 The point about precedence may be a quibble, however. Presumably the tablets that were destroyed were accurately replaced. The fact that the traditional Torah is called “the first law” would seem to grant it priority, in a sense. But the “testimony” is also revealed on Mt. Sinai, so for all practical purposes Jubilees and the “first law” are coeval and complementary.57

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and the Quest for Perfection in Jewish Antiquity (JSJSup 53; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 39–71. This article was originally published in JSJ 30 (1999): 379–410. VanderKam, “Moses Trumping Moses,” 42. Cana Werman, “’The !:#= and the !#3= Engraved on the Tablets,” DSD 9 (2002): 75–103 thinks that the “testimony” is “the preordained march of history.” VanderKam, “Moses Trumping Moses,” 31. Compare Werman, “’The !:#= and the !#3= 95: “Moses came down from Mount Sinai carrying two Torahs.” Similarly Martha Himmelfarb, A Kingdom of Priests. An-

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The body of Jubilees is made up of a rewritten narrative of Genesis and Exodus. Much of the re-writing can be explained as an exegetical attempt to resolve problems in the traditional text of the Torah, although some other traditions are also introduced, notably the Enochic story of the fallen angels.58 But Jubilees is not presented as an exegetical text, and there is no acknowledgement that its authority derives in any way from other scriptures.59 Its authority does depend on the setting at Sinai, and the reader’s acceptance that a foundational revelatory event occurred there. Verbal echoes of the older scriptures would probably have facilitated acceptance of Jubilees as a credible account of Sinaitic revelation. But this is not quite the same thing as appropriating the authority of the existing scriptures. Jubilees is presented as a distinct revelation. It is not intended to replace “the first law,” but it does supersede it in some respects. Where it differs from or adds to the traditional Torah, there is no doubt in Jubilees as to which formulation has the higher authority.60

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cestry and Merit in Ancient Judaism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2006), 54–55: “Jubilees does not attempt to nudge the Torah out of its niche and replace it, but rather embraces the authority of the Torah even as it seeks to place itself alongside it.” See also Martha Himmelfarb, “Torah, Testimony, and Heavenly Tablets: The Claim to Authority in the Book of Jubilees,” in A Multiform Heritage: Studies on Early Judaism and Christianity in Honor of Robert A. Kraft (ed. B. G. Wright; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), 22–28. Michael Segal, The Book of Jubilees. Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and Theology (JSJSup 117; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 103–43. Gabriele Boccaccini, “From a Movement of Dissent to a Distinct Form of Judaism: The Heavenly Tablets in Jubilees as the Foundation of a Competing Halakah,” in Enoch and the Mosaic Torah. The Evidence of Jubilees (ed. G. Boccaccini and G. Ibba; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 193–210, construes the use of Enochic tradition in Jubilees as an attempt to merge two forms of Judaism. This construal entails assumptions about the social history of Second Temple Judaism that are not widely shared. See also John S. Bergsma, “The Relationship between Jubilees and the Early Enochic Books,” in Enoch and the Mosaic Torah. The Evidence of Jubilees (ed. G. Boccaccini and G. Ibba; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 36–51, who notes that the influence of the early Enoch material in Jubilees is limited to the period from Enoch to Noah, and does not come close to rivaling the importance of Moses. Najman, “Interpretation as Primordial Writing,” 40, says that “Jubilees claims that its teachings are the true interpretation of the Torah” and “derive their authority from that of the Torah.” But while the teachings of Jubilees are largely interpretations of the Torah, that is not how Jubilees presents itself. Ben Zion Wacholder, “Jubilees as the Super Canon,” in Legal Texts and Legal Issues (ed. M. Bernstein, F. García Martínez and J. Kampen; STDJ 23; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 195–211, is correct that Jubilees trumps the traditional Torah in many places, even if it does not deny the Torah’s authority.

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In view of the divine and angelic authority claimed for Jubilees, the appeal to the heavenly tablets may seem superfluous. For VanderKam, they simply add another layer of assurance of the reliability of the revelation: “these tablets are a written unchangeable, permanent depository of information under God’s control.”61 James Kugel, in contrast, argues that the passages that refer to the heavenly tablets are interpolations, which stand in tension with the rest of the text in various ways.62 The argument rests on perceived contradictions between these passages and the rest of the text, and some are more persuasive than others.63 If Kugel is correct, however, this would explain why the interpolator has to trump even the angel of the presence by appealing to a still higher authority. In any case, the heavenly tablets appear as a source of truth to which both the Torah and the Testimony are subordinate. Moreover, Enoch also “wrote his testimony and left it as a testimony on the earth for all the sons of men for every generation” (Jub 4:19), and Noah is also cited as an author.64 The testimony of Enoch and Noah is not explicitly associated with the heavenly tablets, but they are further evidence that revelation is not confined to the traditional Torah. As Martha Himmelfarb has observed: “This approach not only exalts Jubilees but also, less obviously, demotes the Torah, which must share its authoritative status with another text even as both are subordinated to the heavenly tablets.”65 VanderKam and Kugel agree, however, that the author of Jubilees could not just insert his new ideas into the received text of the Torah. For Kugel, this is why the interpolator made his insertions into Jubilees rather than into the Torah itself: “By the mid-second century BCE, any major, sectarian tampering with the Pentateuch would surely have been a controversial undertaking; its text was simply too widely known, and its study too well entrenched, across the spectrum of Jew-

61 62 63 64 65

VanderKam, “Moses Trumping Moses,” 32. Similarly Najman, “Interpretation as Primordial Writing,” 50–62. James Kugel, “On the Interpolations in the Book of Jubilees,” RevQ 24 (2009): 215–72. Kugel is building on the work of Segal, The Book of Jubilees. A persuasive example is the contrasting roles of Mastema in Jubilees, 48–49. Jub 8:11; 10:13; 21:10. Himmelfarb, “Torah, Testimony, and the Heavenly Tablets,” 27. Himmelfarb, A Kingdom of Priests, 55; cf. Himmelfarb, “Torah, Testimony, and the Heavenly Tablets,” 27–28. Note also Najman, Past Renewals, 71: “Jubilees’ insistence on the pre-Sinaitic origin of its heavenly tradition could be seen to undermine the special authority that had been accorded to the Mosaic Torah,” and Boccaccini, “From a Movement of Dissent,” 193–96.

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ish groups.”66 Whether this was already the case by the mid-second century BCE may be open to question, but at least the author of Jubilees chose not to change the text. He did not, however, subordinate his rewriting to the existing text by presenting it in the form of a commentary. Rather, he seems to have claimed for his “testimony” a status equal, at least, to that of the first Torah.

The Temple Scroll In the case of the Temple Scroll, we do not have the opening column, and so there is some uncertainty as to how its revelation is presented. There is a passing reference to “Aaron your brother” in TS 44:5, and another to “those things which I tell you on this mountain” in TS 51:6. From these references, many infer that the discourse is addressed to Moses on Mt. Sinai,67 but these are the only nods to Moses in a lengthy text, and he is never mentioned by name. Najman argues that “by means of the second person singular pronoun, the reader is placed in the position of Moses, as the addressee of divine revelation on Mount Sinai.”68 But she also recognizes that the Temple Scroll is not about Moses: Moses is nothing but the implicit, initial addressee and the implicit teacher of a Torah whose authority rests primarily on its direct revelation from God.”69 Schiffman entertains the possibility that the allusions to Moses are mere lapses, where the author had not fully revised his sources, and that he did not intend to acknowledge the role of Moses at all.70 Without the opening column of the Scroll, it is impossible to know for sure whether Moses had more than the incidental role he appears to have in the extant fragments. There is no doubt, however, that the speaking voice in the Temple Scroll is that of God. Consequently, Schiffman is correct that this is a “divine” rather than a “Mosaic” pseudepigraphon. It is only “Mosaic 66 67 68 69 70

Kugel, “On the Interpolations,” 271. So White Crawford, Rewriting, 86; The Temple Scroll and Related Texts, 18. Najman, Seconding Sinai, 68. Najman, Seconding Sinai, 68. Lawrence H. Schiffman, “The Temple Scroll and the Halakhic Pseudepigrapha of the Second Temple Period,” in Pseudepigraphic Perspectives: The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. E. Chazon and M. Stone; STDJ 31; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 121–31. See also Baruch A. Levine, “The Temple Scroll: Aspects of its historical Provenance and Literary Character,” BASOR 232 (1978): 17–21, who argued that the Temple Scroll follows the Priestly understanding of revelation, according to which all commandments are attributed directly to God.

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discourse” insofar as its content resembles the discourse of Moses in Deuteronomy. It is actually presented as “divine discourse.” As such, its claim to authority would seem to be unambiguous. It would be anachronistic to say that the Temple Scroll is “canonical,” but it claims to be a direct revelation of divine law. It is true that large portions of the Temple Scroll follow the same kinds of procedures that we find in expansionistic “biblical” texts – rearranging passages and harmonizing them, to smooth out the tensions between them. But unlike Jubilees, the Temple Scroll does not acknowledge any “first law.” If the revelation is indeed set on Mount Sinai, then it would seem to be prior at least to Deuteronomy, perhaps even prior to the laws of Leviticus which were allegedly given to Moses at the Tent of Meeting. Also unlike Jubilees, there is no appeal to the Angel of the Presence or to the heavenly tablets. No further authority is needed than the voice of God. The claim to authority of the Temple Scroll is as strong as any we find in the Torah and stronger than many. There can be no doubt that it claims the status of Torah: several passages demand that the Israelites observe “the regulation of this law” (!$! &6