Authoritative Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity: Their Origin, Collection, and Meaning 3161560949, 9783161560941

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Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Herausgeber/Editor Jörg Frey (Zürich) Mitherausgeber/Associate Editors Markus Bockmuehl (Oxford) ∙ James A. Kelhoffer (Uppsala) Tobias Nicklas (Regensburg) ∙ Janet Spittler (Charlottesville, VA) J. Ross Wagner (Durham, NC)

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Authoritative Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity Their Origin, Collection, and Meaning Edited by

Tobias Nicklas and Jens Schröter

Mohr Siebeck

Tobias Nicklas, born 1967; 2000 Dr. theol.; 2004 Habilitation; currently Professor of New Testament at Universität Regensburg; since 2018 Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies »Beyond Canon« (DFG-Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe 2770), Universität Regensburg. Jens Schröter, born 1961; 1992 PhD; 1996 Habilitation; currently Professor of New Testament Exegesis and Theology and New Testament Apocrypha at the Faculty of Theology, HumboldtUniversität zu Berlin.

ISBN 978-3-16-156094-1 / eISBN 978-3-16-158992-8 DOI 10.1628/978-3-16-158992-8 ISSN 0512-1604 / eISSN 2568-7476 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament) The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2020 Mohr Siebeck Tübingen, Germany. www.mohrsiebeck.com This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was typeset by Martin Fischer in Tübingen using Minion typeface, printed on nonaging paper by Gulde Druck in Tübingen, and bound by Buchbinderei Spinner in Ottersweier. Printed in Germany.

Table of Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Konrad Schmid Textual Authority in Ancient Israel and Judah: Factors and Forces of its Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Jörg Frey The Authority of the Scriptures of Israel in the Qumran Corpus . . . . . . . . . . 23 Matthias Henze 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra, and Israel’s Scriptures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Natalio Fernández Marcos The Meaning of the Septuagint in the Process of Authorization of Israelite Writings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Armand Puig i Tàrrech Jesus and the Jewish Writings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Dieter T. Roth The Use of Jewish Writings and Their Collections in the New Testament Gospels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Jens Schröter The Use of »Canonical« and »Non-​canonical« Texts in Early Christianity and its Influence on the Authorization of Christian Writings . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Martin Meiser Die Autorität der Schrift bei Paulus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Benjamin J. Ribbens / ​Michael H. Kibbe »He Still Speaks!« – The Authority of Scripture in Hebrews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Susanne Luther Strategies of Authorizing Tradition in the Letter of James . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

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Judith M. Lieu Marcion, the Writings of Israel, and the Origins of the »New Testament« . . . 225 Jean-​Daniel Dubois What Kind of Jewish Bible Did the Gnostics Use? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 Tobias Nicklas Authority and Canon according to Some Ancient »Christian« Apocalypses: 5  Ezra and the Tiburtine Sibyl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 Juan Chapa Early Christian Book Production and the Concept of Canon . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 Thomas J. Kraus Hebrew Psalm 91 / Greek Psalm 90: Collections and Contexts, and a Text of Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313 Index of Ancient Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 Index of Modern Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338 Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347

Introduction This volume is based on papers presented at the symposium »Authoritative Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity: Their Origin, Collection and Meaning« in Barcelona, 25–27 May 2017. The conference was organized as a collaboration between the Ateneu Universitari Sant Pacià in Barcelona, the Humboldt-​Universität zu Berlin, and the Universität Regensburg, and as part of a series of meetings on »New Perspectives on the Formation of the New Testament« (2015), on the Eucharist (2013), and on Gnosticism (2011). Our leading ideas can be formulated as follows. In 1968 Hans von Campenhausen published an outstanding and still highly influential study on the formation of the Christian Bible.1 Almost exactly fifty years later, the perspectives on the processes that have led to the formation not only of the Christian, but also of the Jewish Bible are in need of fresh consideration. First, a current perspective cannot be restricted to the »Christian Bible,« but has to take into account that the early Christians were engaged in a process of authorization of writings that had begun in Israel and Judaism before the emergence of Christianity and was continued in the first centuries CE by Judaism and Christianity in their respective ways. These processes did not take place independently of each other, but in (at least partly) controversial debate and competition. The formation of the Christian Bible therefore cannot be separated from the processes that led to the Jewish Bible. This is one of the reasons why the paradigm of a »parting of the ways« was repeatedly called into question in recent scholarship and has to be reconsidered, perhaps even to be replaced by a different model.2 In any case, early Christianity may be regarded as an inner Jewish movement, and the differentiation between Judaism and Christianity as a complex and long-​lasting development that is reflected not at least in the reception and re-​interpretation of Jewish authoritative writings. The processes leading to collections of normative texts started in Israel and early Judaism. Even if it is debated at what time the idea of authoritative or even »holy« texts occurred, it is likely that after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and the loss of political independence texts became increasingly important for the identity formation of the Jewish religion. In these processes the Torah played a key role as the first normative Jewish text corpus. 1  Hans von Campenhausen, Die Entstehung der christlichen Bibel (1st edition; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1968; repr. in Beiträge zur historischen Theologie 39; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003). 2  See, e. g., Tobias Nicklas, Jews and Christians? Second Century ›Christian‹ Perspectives on the »Parting of the Ways« (Annual Deichmann Lectures 2013) (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014).

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Introduction

After this, other collections, like the prophetic books, Psalms, and sapiential writings led to the emergence of corpora that served to construct an »identity« of the people of Israel, its history and self-​perception, its relationship to God, and its ethical orientation. These writings, however, were not regarded as »canonical« in the sense of fixed texts. They rather existed as (partly quite diverse) collections with flexible text forms. This is proven, for example, by the so-​called »Reworked Pentateuch« texts from Qumran. They even could be translated from Hebrew into Greek with the Greek text being regarded as of the same authority as the Hebrew, at least by Diaspora Jews like Philo of Alexandria or by Christian authors like Justin Martyr and others. The emergence of authoritative text corpora was accompanied by a constant process of interpretation and rewriting, demonstrated, for example, by Philo’s commentaries, texts belonging to the so-​called »Rewritten Bible,« or »parabiblical texts« such as Jubilees, the Genesis Apocryphon, the Apocryphon of Moses, or additions to biblical books as to Daniel and Esther. These processes are presupposed by early »Christian« authors who often quote »Scripture« or »the (holy) Scriptures« as authority and occasionally refer to »the Torah and the Prophets (and the Psalms).« However, early Christian authors developed a distinct view on the writings of Israel: in many cases their faith in Jesus Christ became the key and starting point of their views on the Scriptures of Israel. This resulted in a peculiar use of these writings besides that in Judaism – although many hermeneutical and methodological principles are comparable. A remarkable component of this reception of Jewish writings appears in early Christian apocalypses, which can even appear as expanded and reinterpreted Jewish apocalyptic writings. Moreover, the emergence of early Christian writings marked a new step in the development of authoritative writings and their collections. The »New Testament« occurred first in form of various collections of writings – gospels, letters of Paul, Acts, and the »Catholic epistles« – and not as a book. This is corroborated by the manuscript evidence. In the second and third century the idea of a New Testament was not that of a »book,« but of a new perspective on the God of Israel and his revelation through Jesus Christ, documented in narratives about Jesus, letters to communities and individuals, theological tractates, a history of the early Christian movement, and so forth. Against this background, the emergence of the New Testament canon in the second and third century raises questions that need to be reconsidered. Marcion’s place in early Christianity was thoroughly scrutinized more recently by Judith Lieu;3 against this background also his role in the development of the 3  Judith M. Lieu, Marcion and the Making of a Heretic: God and Scripture in the Second Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); but see also Lieu’s contribution in the present volume.

Introduction

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New Testament needs reconsideration. The emergence of the Fourfold Gospel was brought into discussion with a provocative thesis by Francis Watson.4 Research on non-​canonical writings of early Christianity has highlighted that the distinction of »accepted«  – eventually »canonical«  – writings from those that were disputed or rejected as »apocryphal« was a complex process in which different perspectives on the meaning of Jesus Christ, his origin, and his earthly activity emerged. Eventually, it has to be taken into consideration that there was no formal decision of the early Church about the New Testament canon or the Christian Bible. Certain writings were accepted as authoritative as the Christian church regarded them as being in agreement with the apostolic creed and because they were acknowledged by most Christian congregations. The different contributions of this book offer a wide range of approaches to these ideas. They bring together perspectives from scholars dealing with the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint, early Jewish writings beyond the canon, New Testament and early Christianity including so-​called Gnostic literature. We are grateful to the contributors of this volume as they bring together so many fresh and fascinating ideas coming from very different parts of the field. A special gratitude is due to Dr. Luigi Walt from the Universität Regensburg Centre for Advanced Studies »Beyond Canon« (DFG-​Kollegforschungsgruppe FOR 2770) who prepared the manuscript for publication and to Judith Bauer and Judith König for their help with many details of this process. We would like to thank the publishing house Mohr Siebeck, mainly Dr. Katharina Gutekunst and Elena Müller, for taking care of the process of publication. We do not want to finish this introduction without a special word of thanks to a very special person without whom the wonderful symposia in Barcelona would not be possible. Armand Puig i Tàrrech has always been the »heart« of the Barcelona conferences, bringing together eminent scholars from different backgrounds, creating an atmosphere of friendship and mutual exchange, and communicating the results into church, academy, and society. He is not only well-​known as a scholar of highest international reputation, a former SNTS president, whose work on Jesus was translated into several languages and who published about as different topics as the Eucharist in ancient Christianity, Jesus’s parables, apocryphal Gospels, Biblical hermeneutics, and the symbolism of Antonio Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia.5 He is also an outstanding academic leader and,  Francis Watson, Gospel Writing: A Canonical Perspective (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013). just refer to Armand Puig i Tàrrech, Jesus: An Uncommon Journey. Studies on the Historical Jesus (WUNT II/288; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010); idem, Jesús. Un perfil biogràfic (Barcelona: Proa, 2004; translated, e. g., into Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, English, French, and German); idem, Un Jesús desconocido. Claves de lectura del Evangelio gnóstico de Tomás (Barcelona: Ariel, 2008); idem, ed., Els evangelis apòcrifs, Vol. 1 (Barcelona: Proa, 2008; translated into Spanish and Italian) and Vol. 2: Textos gnòsticos (Barcelona: Proa, 2015); idem, La Sagrada Família segons Gaudí. Comprendre un símbol (Visions 40; Barcelona: Pòrtic, 2008); idem, Teologia de la Paraula a la llum de la Dei Verbum (Col·lectània Sant Pacià 112; Barcelona: Ateneu 4

5 We

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Introduction

perhaps even more, a churchman dedicated to the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, a person who builds bridges and opens doors, a dedicated »pastor« and priest of his community who knows to connect social commitment with deep spirituality. But first and foremost we got to know him as a wonderful host, a person full of humour, and with a heart of gold – in one word: a real friend. That is why we want to dedicate this volume to him, but at the same time hope that our collaboration will continue for many years. Regensburg and Berlin, April 2019

Tobias Nicklas and Jens Schröter

Universitaria Sant Pacià, Facultat de Teología de Cataluña, 2015); but many, many others could be mentioned.

Textual Authority in Ancient Israel and Judah Factors and Forces of its Development Konrad Schmid The books of the Bible were not written as the books of the Bible. They evolved over time in terms of their literary history, as well as in terms of their canonical history.1 In other words, literary history and canonical history of the Bible do not coincide, but they overlap. This article will ask about factors and forces that were relevant for the development of texts’ authoritativeness in ancient Israel and Judah.2 Of course, this is a broadly researched topic,3 but because the problem is multi-​levelled, the field is still very open in many respects. This paper is structured in two main parts. The first part aims at clarifying three points about the developing authority of writings in ancient Israel and Judah that seem to be basic, but are nonetheless contested in scholarship. In light of these remarks, the second part tries to identify the main factors that triggered processes of authorization for writings that later became biblical.

1  See, e. g., Konrad Schmid, The Old Testament: A Literary History (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012). 2  For the notion of »authoritativeness« over against »authority« see, e. g., Eugene Ulrich, »From Literature to Scripture: Reflections on the Growth of a Text’s Authoritativeness,« DSD 10 (2003), 3–25; George J. Brooke, »Authority and the Authoritativeness of Scripture: Some Clues from the Dead Sea Scrolls,« RevQ 25 (2012), 507–23; Mladen Popović, »Prophet, Books and Texts: Ezekiel, Pseudo-​Ezekiel and the Authoritativeness of Ezekiel Traditions in Early Judaism,« in Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism, ed. idem (JSJSup 141; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 227–251. 3  See below n. 5 and in addition the following recent contributions that use the term and concept of »authority« with regard to the Bible: Dan Batovici and Kristin de Troyer (eds.), Authoritative Texts and Reception History: Aspects and Approaches (BibInt 151; Leiden: Brill, 2017); Phillip M. Lasater, »Text Reception and Conceptions of Authority in Second Temple Contexts: A Response to Judith H. Newman,« in Jeremiah’s Scriptures. Production, Reception, Interaction and Transformation, ed. Hindy Najman and Konrad Schmid (JSJSup 173; Leiden: Brill, 2017), 263–267; Diana V. Edelman (ed.), Deuteronomy-​Kings as Emerging Authoritative Books: A Conversation (ANEM 6; Atlanta SBL 2014); Mladen Popović (ed.), Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism (JSJSup 141; Leiden: Brill, 2010).

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1.  Cornerstones of Textual Authority in Ancient Israel und Judah 1.1.  Judaism gradually developed into a book religion, and this process came to a first peak in 70 CE Judaism and Christianity are often identified as »book religions,«4 which is true insofar as holy writings play a central role in them. However, it is a truism that Judaism and Christianity emerged gradually over centuries as religions that are centred mainly on texts. This development has a counterpart in the evolution of both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures as Bibles. Neither the writings of the Hebrew Bible nor those of the New Testament were conceived as »biblical« by their authors at the time of their writing. These texts only became »biblical« over the course of time, a process that has been described in different ways by various recent contributions.5 4 See, e. g., Siegfried Morenz, »Entstehung und Wesen der Buchreligion,« TLZ 75 (1950), 710–716; repr. in Religion und Geschichte des alten Ägypten: Gesammelte Aufsätze (Cologne: Böhlau, 1975); Siegfried Hermann, »Kultreligion und Buchreligion: Kultische Funktionen in Israel und in Ägypten,« in Das ferne und das nahe Wort, ed. Fritz Maass (Berlin: A. Töpelmann, 1967), 95–105; Carsten Colpe, »Sakralisierung von Texten und Filiationen von Kanons,« in Kanon und Zensur, ed. Aleida and Jan Assmann (Beiträge zur Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation 2; Munich: Fink, 1987), 80–92; Jan N. Bremmer, »From Holy Books to Holy Bible,« in Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism, ed. Mladen Popović (JSJSup 141; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 327–360, here 333–336. For methodological distinctions see Jörg Rüpke, »Heilige Schriften und Buchreligionen: Überlegungen zu Begriffen und Methoden,« in Heilige Schriften. Ursprung, Geltung und Gebrauch, ed. Christoph Bultmann, Claus P. März, and Vasilios N. Makrides (Münster: Aschendorff, 2005), 191–204; Andreas A. Bendlin, »Wer braucht ›heilige Schriften?‹: Die Textbezogenheit der Religionsgeschichte und das ›Reden über die Götter‹ in der griechisch-​römischen Antike,« Heilige Schriften, ed. Bultmann, 205–228. 5 See, e. g., Odil H. Steck, »Der Kanon des hebräischen Alten Testaments: Historische Materialien für eine ökumenische Perspektive,« in Vernunft des Glaubens. Wissenschaftliche Theologie und kirchliche Lehre, ed. Wolfhart Pannenberg et alii (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), 231–252; repr. in Verbindliches Zeugnis 1: Kanon, Schrift, Tradition, ed. Wolfhart Pannenberg and Theodor Schneider (Dialog der Kirchen 7; Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1992), 11–33; John J. Collins, »Before the Canon. Scriptures in Second Temple Judaism,« in Old Testament Interpretation: Past, Present and Future. Essays in Honor of Gene M. Tucker, ed. James Luther Mays, David L. Petersen, and Kent Harold Richards (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), 225–244; repr. in John J. Collins, Seers, Sybils and Sages in Hellenistic-​Roman Judaism (VTS 54; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 3–21; Jan Assmann, Fünf Stufen auf dem Wege zum Kanon (MTV 1; Münster: LIT, 1999), repr. in Religion und kulturelles Gedächtnis: Zehn Studien (Munich: Beck, 2000), 81–100; Jürgen van Oorschot, »Altes Testament,« in Heilige Schriften, ed. Udo Tworuschka (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000), 29–56; William Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualization of Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Timothy Lim, The Formation of the Jewish Canon (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012); Heinz-​Josef Fabry, »Das ›Alte Testament‹,« in What is Bible?, ed. Karin Finsterbusch and Armin Lange (CBET 67; Leuven: Peeters, 2012), 283–304; Tal Ilan, »The Term and Concept of Tanakh,« in What is Bible?, ed. Finsterbusch and Lange, 219–234; Tobias Nicklas, »The Development of the Christian Bible,« in What is Bible?, ed. Finsterbusch and Lange, 393–426; Michael Satlow, How the Bible Became Holy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2015); Armin Lange, »Canonical History of the

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For the Hebrew Bible’s formation as authoritative literature and its sociological background, a fundamental distinction is needed: the Hebrew Bible is a library containing books that partially go back to the First Temple period, but all of the books were reworked in exilic and postexilic times and therefore are no longer immediate witnesses to ancient Israelite religion. Rather, they reflect the religious decisions and convictions of the Judaism(s)6 during the Persian and Hellenistic eras.7 But when did Judaism (or Judaisms) begin? Usually, the term »Judaism« is applied to the religion of ancient Israel and Judah only when this religion was no longer exclusively based on the temple cult and the monarchies of Israel and Judah – and that means no earlier than the so-​called Babylonian exile.8 The term Ἰουδαϊσμός »Ioudaismos« is first attested in the Maccabean period, and it reflects the encounter with »Hellenism.«9 Shaye Cohen, however, prefers to render this term with »Jewishness« rather than »Judaism.«10 Be that as it may, one should recall that, until 70 CE,11 ancient Judah’s religion remained centred primarily on the sacrifices in the temple of Jerusalem, with the same situation applying to the Samarians at different periods as well. Of course, at that time, some synagogues in the diaspora and in the land alike had already been established, and the worship in these settings focused on liturgical and probably exegetical readings from what were considered Israel’s holy writings. In the Hebrew Bible, very few passages clearly show that specific texts were considered to be authorities. John J. Collins’s recent study of the Torah’s normativity from Deuteronomy to Paul argues that the Torah’s authority in the Second Temple period was not as central as usually assumed.12 Indeed, by no means do all texts from the Second Temple period witness explicitly to the notion of the Torah as an authoritative text. Characteristic Hebrew Bible,« in Textual History of the Bible, Vol. 1: The Hebrew Bible, ed. Armin Lange and Emanuel Tov (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 35–81; Timothy Lim and Kengo Akiyama, ed., When Texts are Canonized (BJS 359; Providence RI: Brown University Press, 2017); Lee M. McDonald, The Formation of the Bible, 2 vols. (London: T&T Clark, 2017).  6  See Diana V. Edelman (ed.), The Triumph of Elohim: From Yahwisms to Judaisms (CBET 13; Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1995).  7  See Christoph Levin, »Die Entstehung des Judentums als Gegenstand der alttestamentlichen Wissenschaft,« in Congress Volume Munich 2013, ed. Christl M. Maier (VTS 163; Leiden: Brill, 2014), 1–17.  8  Marc Z. Brettler, »Judaism in the Hebrew Bible? The Transition from Ancient Israelite Religion to Judaism,« CBQ 61 (1999), 429–447.  9 Steve Mason, »Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History,« JSJ 38 (2007), 457–512. 10  Shaye J. D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Oakland: University of California Press, 1999). 11 See Daniel R. Schwartz, »Introduction: Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? Three Stages of Modern Scholarship, and a Renewed Effort,« in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? On Jews and Judaism Before and After the Destruction of the Second Temple, ed. idem and Zeev Weiss (AJEC 78; Leiden: Brill, 2012), 1–19. 12  John J. Collins, »The Transformation of the Torah in Second Temple Judaism,« JSJ 43 (2012), 455–474; idem, The Invention of Judaism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017).

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for the period is what Hindy Najman has called »the vitality of scripture within and beyond the ›canon‹.«13 In places like Elephantine, the Torah seemed neither present as a text nor followed by the Jews there.14 One should, therefore, be careful about interpreting pre-​70 CE phenomena within the Hebrew Bible from a perspective governed by post-​70 CE perceptions of Judaism. The texts of the Hebrew Bible were composed in a time when there was neither a Bible nor a Judaism that could be identified as a »book religion.« Or as Reinhard Kratz has put it, we have to safeguard the essential difference between »historical and biblical Israel«15 – biblical Israel has a Bible from the time of Moses onward, whereas historical Israel does not. In historical terms, the Bible is a post-​biblical phenomenon. 1.2.  Texts become authoritative not primarily because they claim authority, but because they are deemed authoritative A specific text’s authoritative outlook does not guarantee that it will become authoritative, normative, or canonical. Especially the apocalyptic literature that never, or only partly, became canonical in Judaism and Christianity is proof of this observation. More than most other texts, those that are considered apocalyptic exhibit extensive strategies for claiming divine origin.16 They claim to go back to heavenly revelations and visions, usually received by one of the great figures of the past such as Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Baruch, or Ezra.17 Yet these very texts had a hard time finding their way into a canon. The Syriac and the Ethiopic Bibles

13  Hindy Najman, »The Vitality of Scripture within and Beyond the ›Canon‹,« JSJ 43 (2012), 497–518. 14  Reinhard G. Kratz, »Temple and Torah: Reflections on the Legal Status of the Pentateuch between Elephantine and Qumran,« in The Pentateuch as Torah: New Models for Understanding Its Promulgation and Acceptance, ed. Gary N. Knoppers and Bernard M. Levinson (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 77–103: idem, »Zwischen Elephantine und Qumran. Das Alte Testament im Rahmen des Antiken Judentums,« in Congress Volume Ljubljana 2007, ed. André Lemaire (VTS 133; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 129–146; idem, »Elephantine und Alexandria. Nicht-​biblisches und biblisches Judentum in Ägypten,« in Alexandria, ed. Tobias Georges et alii (COMES 1; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2013), 193–208. See also comprehensive treatment by Gard Granerød, Dimensions of Yahwism in the Persian Period: Studies in the Religion and Society of the Judaean Community at Elephantine (BZAW 488; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016). 15  Reinhard G. Kratz, Historical and Biblical Israel: The History, Tradition, and Archives of Israel and Judah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 16 See, e. g., Ernst Haag, Das hellenistische Zeitalter. Israel und die Bibel im 4. bis 1. Jahrhundert v. Chr. (Biblische Enzyklopädie 9; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2003); Michael Tilly, Apokalyptik (UTB 3651; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012); Florian Förg, Die Ursprünge der alttestamentlichen Apokalyptik (Arbeiten zur Bibel und ihrer Geschichte 45; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2013). 17  See Hindy Najman, Itamar Manoff and Eva Mroczek, »How to Make Sense of Pseudonymous Attribution: The Cases of 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch,« in A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism, ed. Matthias Henze (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 308–336.

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were more receptive to these writings than others, but even the Apocalypse of John remained contested for many centuries. On the other hand, texts like Song of Songs or Qoheleth became biblical despite pursuing a very limited, literary strategy of authorization. They are ascribed to King Solomon,18 and they are rather untheological (in the case of Song of Songs) and even sceptical (Qoheleth). Even more astonishing is the book of Esther’s canonical status. It neither mentions God nor is its authorship linked to a figure from Israel’s past.19 For these writings, a specific reception was apparently much more important for their authority than their production. It is fairly safe to say that when investigating the process of how biblical writings became biblical – that is, how their authority as normative writings came about – both perspectives need to be taken into account. An authoritative text is first and foremost a text that is considered to be authoritative by a certain community,20 but an authoritative text also needs some features in and of itself that bring a community to consider it authoritative. Therefore, the factors of textual production and reception play a role in a text’s becoming authoritative. 1.3.  The development of textual authority in ancient Israel and Judah must consider the originally political role of some core texts The kernel of the Hebrew Bible canon is the Torah. The Torah is its most authoritative element and, in historical terms, it is the oldest part of the biblical canon.21 Why did the Torah become authoritative?22 Over the past few decades, we have 18  See Niels Peter Lemche, »Solomon as Cultural Memory,« in Remembering Biblical Figures in the Late Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods: Social Memory and Imagination, ed. Diana V. Edelman and Ehud Ben Zvi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 158–181; see also Joseph Verheyden (ed.), The Figure of Solomon in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Tradition: King, Sage and Architect (TBN 16; Leiden: Brill, 2013). 19  See Harald Martin Wahl, »›Glaube ohne Gott?‹ Zur Rede vom Gott Israels im hebräischen Buch Esther,« BZ 45 (2001), 37–54. The LXX of Esther offers some theological interpretation: Kristin de Troyer, Die Septuaginta und die Endgestalt des Alten Testaments (UTB 2599; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005), 26–48. 20 See David Carr, »Canonization in the Context of Community: An Outline of the Formation of the Tanakh and the Christian Bible,« in A Gift of God in Due Season, ed. Richard D. Weis and David Carr (JSOTSup 225; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 22–64. 21  See Knoppers and Levinson, The Pentateuch as Torah (n. 14). For recent approaches to its composition see Thomas Römer, »Zwischen Urkunden, Fragmenten und Ergänzungen: Zum Stand der Pentateuchforschung,« ZAW 125 (2013), 2–24; idem, »Der Pentateuch,« in Die Entstehung des Alten Testaments, Vol. 1, ed. Walter Dietrich et alii (Theologische Wissenschaft 1/1; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2014), 52–166; Konrad Schmid, »Der Pentateuch und seine Theologiegeschichte,« ZTK 111 (2014), 239–271; Reinhard G. Kratz, »The Analysis of the Pentateuch: An Attempt to Overcome Barriers of Thinking,« ZAW 128 (2016), 529–561 and Jan C. Gertz, Bernard M. Levinson, Dalit Rom-​Shiloni, and Konrad Schmid, ed., The Formation of the Pentateuch: Bridging the Academic Cultures between Europe, Israel, and North America (FAT 111, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016). 22 See Catherine Hezser, »Torah als ›Gesetz‹? Überlegungen zum Torahverständnis im antiken Judentum,« in Ist die Tora Gesetz? Zum Gesetzesverständnis im Alten Testament,

10

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learned that this process was fuelled by two very important political factors that developed the notion of textual authority within the Torah.23 The first one is the formation of the book of Deuteronomy within its Neo-​Assyrian political context as the kernel of the kernel of the Hebrew Bible canon. Since the 1960s scholars like Rintje Frankena and Moshe Weinfeld have pointed out that the book of Deuteronomy is a subversive reception of Neo-​Assyrian vassal treaties.24 In the 1990s Eckart Otto and Bernard Levinson confirmed this approach.25 The recent findings in Tell Tayinat prove that those vassal treaties were also employed in the western region of the Assyrian Empire and thus in all likelihood also applied to Judah, probably under King Manasseh.26 What does »subversive reception« of Neo-​Assyrian vassal treaties mean? The vassal treaties obliged the leaders of subdued people and nations to be loyal to the Neo-​Assyrian king and not to engage in any other political relations. What does the book of Deuteronomy do? It also claims Israel’s complete loyalty, but toward God himself rather than an earthly king, whether the Neo-​Assyrian or the Judean king. In Deuteronomy’s language, this claim upon Israel reads as follows: ‫ְׁש ַ ֖מע יִ ְׂש ָר ֵ ֑אל‬ ‫הו֥ה ֶא ָ ֽחד‬ ָ ְ‫ֹלהינּו י‬ ֖ ֵ ‫הו֥ה ֱא‬ ָ ְ‫י‬ ‫ֹלהיָך‬ ֑ ֶ ‫הו֣ה ֱא‬ ָ ְ‫וְ ָ ֣א ַה ְב ָּ֔ת ֵ ֖את י‬ ֥‫ל־ל ָב ְבָך‬ ְ ‫ְּב ָכ‬ ֖‫ּוב ָכל־נַ ְפ ְׁשָך‬ ְ ‫ל־מא ֶ ֹֽדָך‬ ְ ‫ּוב ָכ‬ ְ

Hear, O Israel: YHWH, our God, is one YHWH. You shall love YHWH, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

Frühjudentum und Neuen Testament, ed. Udo Rüterswörden (BThS 167; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 119–139. 23  See Konrad Schmid, »Anfänge politikförmiger Religion: Die Theologisierung politisch-​ imperialer Begriffe in der Religionsgeschichte des antiken Israel als Grundlage autoritärer und toleranter Strukturmomente monotheistischer Religionen,« in Religion – Wirtschaft – Politik: Forschungszugänge zu einem aktuellen transdisziplinären Feld, ed. Antonius Liedhegener, Andreas Tunger-​Zanetti, and Stephan Wirz (Zurich and Baden-​Baden: Pano and Nomos, 2011), 161–177. 24  Rintje Frankena, The Vassal-​Treaties of Esarhaddon and the Dating of Deuteronomy (OTS 14; Leiden: Brill, 1965), 122–154; Moshe Weinfeld, »Traces of Assyrian Treaty Formulae in Deuteronomy,« Bib 46 (1965), 417–427; idem, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972). 25  Eckart Otto, »Treueid und Gesetz. Die Ursprünge des Deuteronomiums im Horizont neuassyrischen Vertragsrechts,« ZAR 2 (1996), 1–52; idem, Das Deuteronomium: Politische Theologie und Rechtsreform in Juda und Assyrien (BZAW 284; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999); Bernard M. Levinson and Jeffrey Stackert, »Between the Covenant Code and Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty: Deuteronomy 13 and the Composition of Deuteronomy,« JAJ 3 (2012), 123– 140. Carly L. Crouch, Israel and the Assyrians: Deuteronomy, the Succession Treaty of Esar­had­ don, and the Nature of Subversion (SBL Ancient Near East Monographs 8, Atlanta: SBL, 2014) argues against this assumption. 26  See Hans-​Ulrich Steymans, »Deuteronomy 28 and Tell Tayinat,« Verbum et Ecclesia 34 (2013), 1–13.

Textual Authority in Ancient Israel and Judah

11

As Bill Moran pointed out many years ago, »to love« in this context is not primarily an emotional, but a political term, borrowed from Neo-​Assyrian imperial propaganda and meaning »to be absolutely loyal to.«27 To give another example from the opening of the Decalogue (Deut 5:6–7): ‫ֹלהיָך‬ ֶ֔ ‫הו֣ה ֱא‬ ָ ְ‫ֹכי י‬ ֙ ִ ‫ָ ֽאנ‬ ‫אתיָך ֵמ ֶ ֥א ֶרץ ִמ ְצ ַ ֖ריִ ם‬ ֛ ִ ‫הֹוצ‬ ֵ ‫ֲא ֶ ׁ֧שר‬ ‫ִמ ֵּב֣ית ֲע ָב ִ ֑דֽים׃‬ ‎‫ֹלהים ֲא ֵח ִ ֖ ֜רים‬ ֥ ֨ ִ ‫֥ה־ל ָ֛֩ך ֱא‬ ְ ‫֣‏ל ֹא יִ ְה ֶי‬ ַ‫ל־ּפ ָ ֗ ֽני‬ ָ ‫ַע‬

I am YHWH your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.

This statement of intolerant monolatry is a theological reformulation of the political message of the vassal treaties: »You shall have no other kings before me.« Why is this political redirection of loyalty important for the topic of authoritative writings in the Bible? As the book of Deuteronomy replaces the Neo-​Assyrian king with God as the object of absolute loyalty, God himself becomes a lawgiver.28 He is the one who stipulates the regulations according to which Israel should live. And these stipulations can be found in the textual body of the book of Deuteronomy. This is why the notion of textual authority has its biblical roots in the book of Deuteronomy,29 which probably originated in the late seventh century BCE.30 The second important political factor that was imperative for the development of textual authority was the so-​called Persian imperial authorization of the Torah. This is a much debated issue that also has been the subject of many misunderstandings.31 If we stick to the facts, the following elements need to be taken into account: Firstly, the Persian Empire did not have a central, imperial legislation. Instead, the existing local laws, sanctioned by the central Persian administration, served the function of imperial law in the Persian Empire. Secondly, there can be no doubt that the imperial procedure of authorizing local laws existed in the Persian Empire. The question, however, is whether the Torah was the result of such 27  William L. Moran, »The Ancient Near Eastern Background of the Love of God in Deuteronomy,« CBQ 25 (1963), 77–87. 28  See Konrad Schmid, »Divine Legislation in the Pentateuch in its Late Judean and Neo-​ Babylonian Context,« in The Fall of Jerusalem and the Rise of the Torah, ed. Peter Dubovský, Dominik Markl, and Jean-​Pierre Sonnet (FAT 107; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 129–153. 29  Thus, e. g., Frank Crüsemann, »Das ›portative Vaterland,‹« in Kanon und Zensur, ed. Aleida and Jan Assmann (Munich: Fink 1987), 63–79. 30  Nathan MacDonald, »Issues in the Dating of Deuteronomy: A Response to Juha Pakkala,« ZAW 122 (2010), 431–435; cf. Reinhard G. Kratz, »Der literarische Ort des Deuteronomiums,« in Liebe und Gebot. Studien zum Deuteronomium. Festschrift zum 70. Geburtstag von Lothar Perlitt, ed. Reinhard G. Kratz and Hermann Spieckermann (FRLANT 190; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 101–120; Juha Pakkala, »The Date of the Oldest Edition of Deuteronomy,« ZAW 121 (2009), 388–401; idem, »The Dating of Deuteronomy: A Response to Nathan MacDonald,« ZAW 123 (2011), 431–436. See also the overview provided by Karin Finsterbusch, Deuteronomium. Eine Einführung (UTB 3626; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012). 31  See Konrad Schmid, »Persische Reichsautorisation und Tora,« TRu 71 (2006), 494–506.

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an imperial authorization. Admittedly, there are no direct hints to this event, but there are many indirect ones. I will discuss only two. The first is that, without pressure from outside, one can hardly explain why such different legal materials found their way into the Torah. The D and P strands are complete opposites in their theology. The Torah represents a compromise in terms of its theologies and laws. The second hint is that some of the best external evidence for imperial authorization of the Torah comes from the book of Ezra. In Ezra 7:26, there is a striking formulation that uses the »law of your God« in direct conjunction with the »law of the king« (‫י־א ָל ָ֗הְך וְ ָד ָת ֙א ִ ּ֣די ַמ ְל ָּ֔כא‬ ֱ ‫)ּד ָ ֣תא ִ ֽד‬. ָ In the context of Ezra 7, it would not be clear what could be denoted by a »law of your God« plus a »law of the king« – which would apparently be separate from the »law of your God.« Rather, Ezra 7:26 seems to identify the »law of your God« with the »law of the king.« In other words, according to Ezra 7:26, the law of the Jewish God is at the same time the law of the Persian king. The most plausible interpretation of this wording is that it results from a process where the Torah is acknowledged as being in the status of Persian imperial law, issued by the Persian king. Taken together, it becomes clear that the textual authority of the Bible has its roots in the specific political theology of some of its writings. It is abundantly clear that this textual authority could only develop the way it did within post-​ monarchical historical contexts. Otherwise, the competing authority of the king would always have been a significant hindrance. The loss of kingdom and statehood in Israel and Judah was one of the most important preconditions for the Torah’s rise as authoritative Scripture.32

2.  Strategies of Constructing Scriptural Authority 2.1.  The Divinization of the Torah and the Domestication of Prophecy The idea that the Torah as such is divine is not promoted by the Torah itself. Of course, the Torah includes divine speeches and divine laws, but this pertains only to parts of it, and they are embedded in the framework of the Pentateuchal narrative. The text of the Torah does not claim to have been written by God himself. There is only one small piece of text that is said to be written by the finger of God – the first version of the Ten Commandments – but the first tablets were destroyed by Moses before they even reached Israel (Exod 34:27–28). Even the alleged Mosaic origin of the Torah is not a feature from the Torah itself. Only small portions are traced back to Moses, such as Exod 17:14 (battle against Amalek); Exod 24:4 (Covenant Code); Exod 34:28 (Ten Commandments); Num 33:2 (wandering stations); Deut 31:9 (Deuteronomic law); and Deut 31:22 (Song of Moses). 32

 See Peter Dubovský et alii, The Fall of Jerusalem (n. 28).

Textual Authority in Ancient Israel and Judah

13

Nevertheless, there are some redactional elements in the Torah that aim at securing an elevated status for its texts and, in historical terms, the most important redactional features are at the very end of the Torah’s literary development. But how old is the Torah? We know that the Torah grew over centuries before it reached its final status. Its oldest texts date back to the ninth or eighth century BCE, which we can adduce from the development of both Hebrew and the scribal culture in ancient Israel and Judah.33 Before the ninth century BCE, there is not yet a fully developed state in Israel or in Judah with a bureaucracy and administration to allow for the necessary education for writing down extensive texts. The epigraphical finds datable to the tenth century BCE – i. e., the Gezer calendar, the Qeiyafa inscription – are not clearly Hebrew in language or script. The most plausible explanation for this is that an identifiable Hebrew language did not yet exist. One can observe different local languages like Israelite, Judahite, Moabite, and Ammonite written in kindred, yet slightly different scripts, each of which developed from the Phoenician alphabet. Epigraphy from the ninth century is still puzzling. The most extensive regional, literary texts are the Mesha Stele, which is a Moabite inscription, and the Balaam inscription from Tell Deir ‘Allah which is an Aramaic text. Only in the eighth century do we have literary texts from Israel and Judah that qualify as Hebrew, such as the Khirbet el-​Qom texts and the Siloam inscription. And it is from this time onward that biblical texts might have been written down. Of course, some of the oral traditions reworked in the Torah may reach back to the second millennium BCE. But their first literary versions cannot predate the ninth century BCE, whereas the Torah’s latest texts belong to the late Persian period, meaning the late fourth century BCE. This can be deduced from the translation of the Torah into Greek around 250 BCE;34 the references to the Torah as an arguably fixed 33  See Christopher Rollston, Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010); Ron E. Tappy and P. Kyle McCarter, Literate Culture and Tenth-​Century Canaan: The Tel Zayit Abecedary in Context (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2008); Israel Finkelstein and Benjamin Sass, »Epigraphic Evidence from Jerusalem and Its Environs at the Dawn of Biblical History: Facts First,« in New Studies in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and its Region: Collected Papers. Volume XI, ed. Yuval Gadot et alii (Jerusalem: Tel Aviv University, Israel Antiquities Authority, Hebrew University, 2017), 21–26. Matthieu Richelle, »Elusive Scrolls. Could any Hebrew Literature Have Been Written Prior to the Eighth Century BCE?,« VT 66 (2016), 556–594 and Erhard Blum, »Die altaramäischen Wandinschriften aus Tell Deir ’Alla und ihr institutioneller Kontext,« in Meta-​Texte. Erzählungen von schrifttragenden Artefakten in der alttestamentlichen und mittelalterlichen Literatur, ed. Friedrich-​Emanuel Focken and Michael Ott (Materiale Textkulturen 15; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016), 21–52, argue for the possibility of earlier literature. See also William M. Schniedewind, »Scribal Education in Ancient Israel and Judah into the Persian period,« in Second Temple Jewish »Paideia« in Context, ed. Jason M. Zurawski and Gabriele Boccaccini (BZNW 228; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017), 11–28. 34  See, e. g., Folkert Siegert, Zwischen Hebräischer Bibel und Altem Testament: Eine Einführung in die Septuaginta (Münster: LIT, 2001), 42–43; Manfred Görg, »Die Septuaginta im Kontext spätägyptischer Kultur: Beispiele lokaler Inspiration bei der Übersetzungsarbeit

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document in Chronicles and Ezra-​Nehemiah;35 and the fact that the Torah does not yet expect a cosmic judgment in contrast to Hellenistic texts in the Prophets from the late fourth and early third centuries BCE (e. g., Isa 34:2–4; Jer 25:27–31).36 This much, or this little, of a timeframe is what can be assumed for the Torah’s formation. In literary terms, its scriptural authority is expressed particularly in the Torah’s final verses of Deut 34. They probably belong to the redactional closure of the Torah in the late fourth century BCE.37 The final verses in Deut 34 try to divinize the Torah by divinizing its central figure, Moses. This can be readily seen in the burial notice in Deut 34:6: ‫מֹואב‬ ָ֔ ‫»( וַ ּיִ ְק ּ֙ב ֹר א ֹ֤תֹו ַבּגַ ֙ ְי ְּב ֶ ֣א ֶרץ‬and he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab«). Who is »he« in this verse? According to the narrative context Deut 34, »he« can be none other than God himself. Already the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint found this unconvincing and replaced »he buried him« with »they buried him« (καὶ ἔθαψαν αὐτὸν ἐν Γαι ἐν γῇ Μωαβ), but this is certainly an inferior reading. The original text of Deut am Pentateuch,« in Im Brennpunkt: Die Septuaginta. Studien zur Entstehung und Bedeutung der Griechischen Bibel, ed. Heinz-​Josef Fabry and Ulrich Offerhaus (BWANT 153; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2001), 115–30; Siegried Kreuzer, »Entstehung und Entwicklung der Septuaginta im Kontext alexandrinischer und frühjüdischer Kultur und Bildung,« in Septuaginta Deutsch. Erläuterungen und Kommentare zum griechischen Alten Testament, ed. Martin Karrer and Wolfgang Kraus (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2011), 3–39; Stefan Krauter, »Die Pentateuch-​Septuaginta als Übersetzung in der Literaturgeschichte der Antike,« in Die Septuaginta und das frühe Christentum / The Septuagint and Christian Origins, ed. Thomas Scott Caulley and Hermann Lichtenberger (WUNT 277; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 26–46; Felix Albrecht, »Die alexandrinische Bibelübersetzung: Einsichten zur Entstehungs-, Überlieferungs‑ und Wirkungsgeschichte der Septuaginta,« in Alexandria, ed. Georges et alii (n. 14), 209–243. The oldest manuscript of the Greek Pentateuch is Papyrus Rylands 458, dating to the mid-​second century BCE. Cf. James W. Wevers, »The Earliest Witness to the LXX Deuteronomy,« CBQ 39 (1977), 240–244; Kristin de Troyer, »When Did the Pentateuch Come into Existence? An Uncomfortable Perspective,« in Die Septuaginta: Texte, Kontexte, Lebenswelten, Internationale Fachtagung veranstaltet von Septuaginta Deutsch (LXX.D), Wuppertal 20.–23. Juli 2006, ed. Martin Karrer and Wolfgang Kraus (WUNT 219; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 269–286, here 277; Gilles Dorival, »Les origins de la Septante: la traduction en grec des cinq livres de la Torah,« in La Bible grecque de Septante, ed. Marguerite Harl et alii (Paris: Cerf, 1988), 39–82. 35  Cf. Federico García López, »‫תורה‬,« TWAT 8:597–637, esp. 627–630; Georg Steins, »Tora­ bindung und Kanonabschluss. Zur Entstehung und kanonischen Funktion der Chronikbücher,« in Die Tora als Kanon für Juden und Christen, ed. Erich Zenger (HBS 10; Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1996), 213–256. 36  See Odil H. Steck, Bereitete Heimkehr: Jesaja 35 als redaktionelle Brücke zwischen dem Ersten und dem Zweiten Jesaja (SBS 121; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1985), 52– 54; W. A. M.  Beuken, Jesaja 28–39 (HThKAT; Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 2010), 300–327; Konrad Schmid, »Das kosmische Weltgericht in den Prophetenbüchern und seine historischen Kontexte,« in Nächstenliebe und Gottesfurcht: Beiträge aus alttestamentlicher, semitistischer und altorientalischer Wissenschaft für Hans-​Peter Mathys zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Hanna Jenni and Markus Saur (AOAT 439; Münster: Ugarit, 2016), 409–434. 37  See Konrad Schmid, »The Late Persian Formation of the Torah: Observations on Deuteronomy 34,« in Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B. C.E, ed. Oded Lipschits, Gary Knoppers and Rainer Albertz (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 236–245.

Textual Authority in Ancient Israel and Judah

15

34 claims that God himself buried Moses, and this is also why no one knows his burial place »to this day,« as stated in 34:6b (‫ת־ק ֻב ָ֣ר ֔תֹו ַ ֖עד ַהּי֥ ֹום ַה ֶּזֽה‬ ְ ‫יׁש ֶא‬ ֙ ‫)וְ ֽל ֹא־יָ ַ ֥דע ִא‬. The burial notice points out the intimate relationship between God and Moses that the Torah in its final shape attempts to propagate. This is even more strongly indicated in the final three verses of Deut 34:10–12: ‫א־קם נָ ִ ֥ביא ֛עֹוד‬ ֙ ָ ֹ ‫וְ ֽל‬ ‫ֹׁשה‬ ֑ ֶ ‫ְּביִ ְׂש ָר ֵ ֖אל ְּכמ‬ ‫הוה‬ ֔ ָ ְ‫ֲא ֶׁש ֙ר יְ ָד ֣עֹו י‬ ‫ל־ּפ ִ ֽנים׃‬ ָ ‫ָּפ ִנ֖ים ֶא‬ ‫ּמֹופ ִ֗תים‬ ְ ‫ל־הא ֹ֜תֹות וְ ַה‬ ָ֙ ‫ְל ָכ‬ ‫הוה‬ ֔ ָ ְ‫חֹו י‬ ֙ ‫ֲא ֶ ׁ֤שר ְׁש ָל‬ ‫ַל ֲע ׂ֖שֹות ְּב ֶ ֣א ֶרץ ִמ ְצ ָ ֑ריִ ם‬ ‫ל־ע ָב ָ ֖דיו‬ ֲ ‫ּול ָכ‬ ְ ‫ְל ַפ ְר ֥עֹה‬ ‫ל־א ְר ֽצֹו׃‬ ַ ‫ּול ָכ‬ ְ ‫ּולכֹל֙ ַה ָּי֣ד ַה ֲחזָ ָ ֔קה‬ ְ ‫ּמֹורא ַהּגָ ֑דֹול‬ ֣ ָ ‫ּול ֖כֹל ַה‬ ְ ‫ֲא ֶׁש ֙ר ָע ָ ׂ֣שה מ ֶֹׁ֔שה‬ ‫ְל ֵע ֵינ֖י ָּכל־יִ ְׂש ָר ֵ ֽאל׃‬

Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom YHWH knew face to face, regarding all the signs and wonders that YHWH sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his servants and his entire land, and regarding the strong hand and all the great terrors that Moses performed in the eyes of all Israel.

This passage is replete with loaded terms and does not look very original at first sight.38 Nevertheless, if examined more closely, one can detect that formulaic language usually attributed to God is redirected to Moses. Performing »signs and wonders« in Egypt is God’s task in the Torah, rather than Moses’ task (cf. Deut 6:22, 28:6; etc.). And »a strong hand« is otherwise exclusively attributed to God in the Torah, not to Moses (cf. Deut 4:34; 26:8; Jer 32:21). Thus, the intention of these very last verses in the Torah becomes clear: They claim that Moses is closer to God than to other human beings. And for Deut 34, Moses does not just signify Moses, but also the Torah. Therefore, the Torah is not divine according to Deut 34, but it is closer to God than to the humans. The opening sentence of the passage of Deut 34:10 points in the same direction: ‫א־קם נָ ִ ֥ביא‬ ֙ ָ ֹ ‫וְ ֽל‬ ‫ֹׁשה‬ ֑ ֶ ‫֛עֹוד ְּביִ ְׂש ָר ֵ ֖אל ְּכמ‬ ‫הוה‬ ֔ ָ ְ‫ֲא ֶׁש ֙ר יְ ָד ֣עֹו י‬ ‫ל־ּפ ִ ֽנים׃‬ ָ ‫ָּפ ִנ֖ים ֶא‬

Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom YHWH knew face to face.

Deut 34:10 highlights two points: Firstly, Moses was a prophet; and secondly, there were many prophets after Moses, but none like him. 38  See in more detail Konrad Schmid, »Der Pentateuchredaktor: Beobachtungen zum theologischen Profil des Toraschlusses in Dtn 34,« in Les dernières rédactions du Pentateuque, de l’Hexateuque et de l’Ennéateuque, ed. Thomas Römer and Konrad Schmid (BETL 203; Leuven, Peeters 2007), 183–197; see also Christophe Nihan, »›Un prophète comme Moïse‹ (Deutéronome 18,15). Genèse et relectures d’une construction deutéronomiste,« in La construction de la figure de Moïse / The Construction of the Figure of Moses, ed. Thomas Römer (Transeuphratène. Supplément 13; Paris, Gabalda 2007), 43–76; idem, »›Moses and the prophets‹: Deuteronomy 18 and the Emergence of the Pentateuch as Torah,« SEÅ 75 (2010), 21–55.

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Obviously, this statement takes up Deut 18:15: ‫נָ ִ֙ביא ִמ ִּק ְר ְּבָך֤ ֵמ ַא ֶ֙ח ֙יָך‬ ‫מנִ י‬ ֹ ֔ ‫ָּכ‬ ‫ֹלהיָך‬ ֑ ֶ ‫הו֣ה ֱא‬ ָ ְ‫י� ִ ָ֥קים ְלָך֖ י‬ ‫ֵא ָ ֖ליו ִּת ְׁש ָמ ֽעּון׃‬

A prophet from among your brothers like me YHWH your God will raise up; you shall listen to him

Deut 18:15 is part of the so-​called Deuteronomic law on the prophets, and it promises a continuous chain of prophets to Israel. Deut 34:10 significantly transforms Deut 18:15: Moses is no longer one among many prophets with equal or comparable standing, but rather the prophet par excellence, to whom no one will compare. Diachronically, the development from Deut 18 to Deut 34 witnesses to the supreme elevation of Moses above all other prophets. He is more than all other prophets. Deut 34:10 has an exact counterpart in Josh 1, which opens the next canon section, the »Nevi’im.«39 The elevation of »Moses« above all prophets corresponds to Joshua’s obligation to obey »Moses’s Torah.« Joshua is the first prophet to come after Moses, but, despite being a prophet, he is not like Moses. He therefore receives no new laws; instead, he should obey the Mosaic law. At the end of »Nevi’im« in Mal 3, the book of Malachi takes up Josh 1,40 effectively conjoining the literary complex of Joshua–Malachi as a redactional unit that, as exegetical »prophecy,« is theologically subordinated to the incomparable Mosaic »prophecy« in the Torah. Mal 13:22

Josh 1:7, 13 ‫ׂשֹות‬ ֙ ‫מר ַל ֲע‬ ֹ ֤ ‫אד ִל ְׁש‬ ֹ ֗ ‫ַר ֩ק ֲח ֙ ַזק ֶו ֱֽא ַ֜מץ ְמ‬ ‫ֹׁשה ַע ְב ִ ּ֔די‬ ֣ ֶ ‫ּתֹורה ֲא ֶ ׁ֤שר ִצּוְ ָ֙ך מ‬ ֗ ָ ‫ל־ה‬ ַ ‫ְּכ ָכ‬ Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to act in accordance with all the Torah that my servant Moses commanded you … ‫ֹׁשה ַע ְב ִ ּ֑די‬ ֣ ֶ ‫ּתֹורת מ‬ ֖ ַ ‫זִ ְכ ֕רּו‬ ‫אֹותֹו ְבח ֵֹר ֙ב‬ ֤ ‫יתי‬ ִ ‫ֲא ֶׁשר֩ ִצ֙ ִּו‬ ‫ל־ּכל־יִ ְׂש ָר ֵ֔אל‬ ָ ‫ַע‬ ‫ּומ ְׁש ָּפ ִ ֽטים׃‬ ִ ‫ֻח ִ ּ֖קים‬

‫ת־ה ָּד ָ֔בר‬ ַ ‫כֹור ֶא‬ ֙ ָ‫‏ז‬ ‫הו֖ה‬ ָ ְ‫ֲא ֶׁ֨שר ִצָּו֥ה ֶא ְת ֶכ֛ם מ ֶ ֹׁ֥שה ֶ ֽע ֶבד־י‬ ‫יכ ֙ם ֵמ ִנ ַ֣יח‬ ֶ ‫ֹלה‬ ֵ ‫הו֤ה ֱא‬ ָ ְ‫מר י‬ ֹ ֑ ‫ֵלא‬ ‫ת־ה ָ ֥א ֶרץ ַה ּֽז ֹאת׃‬ ָ ‫ָל ֶ֔כם וְ נָ ַ ֥תן ָל ֶכ֖ם ֶא‬

39  See Konrad Schmid, »La formation de Neviim: Quelques observations sur la genèse rédactionnelle et les profils théologiques de Josué-​Malachie,« in Recueils prophétiques de la Bible. Origines, milieux, et contexte proche-​oriental, ed. Jean-​Daniel Macchi et alii (MdB 64; Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2012), 115–142. 40 See Wilhelm Rudolph, Haggai – Sacharja – Maleachi (KHC 13/4; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1976), 290–293; Odil H. Steck, Der Abschluss der Prophetie. Ein Versuch zur Frage der Vorgeschichte des Kanons (BThS 17; Neukirchen-​Vluyn, Neukirchener Verlag, 1991); Arndt Meinhold, Maleachi (BK 14/8,6; Neukirchen-​Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2006), 404–405; Hans-​Peter Mathys, Vom Anfang und vom Ende. Fünf alttestamentliche Studien (BEATAJ 47; Frankfurt a. M.: Lang, 2000), 30–40.

Textual Authority in Ancient Israel and Judah

17

Mal 13:22

Josh 1:7, 13

Remember the Torah of my servant Moses, the statutes and ordinances that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.

Remember the word that Moses the servant of YHWH commanded you, saying, »YHWH your God is providing you a place of rest, and will give you this land.«

Deut 34 and Josh 1 make use of the traditional authority of prophecy. Prophets are experts, not only in ancient Israel and Judah, but also in the ancient Near East at large, and their expertise is based on divine revelation. By making Moses the prophet par excellence, and by subordinating all other prophets to him, the Torah connects to the authority of the prophets, but it overrides this authority by elevating Moses above them. In addition, within the same context, the Torah stresses that Moses is dead. Moses’s death makes clear that his prophecy is preserved in his written testament: the Torah. 2.2.  The Rise of Scriptural Exegesis The basic structure of the ways the Torah’s law corpora connect with each other shows that the Torah contains not »law« alone, but »law« with »interpretation.«41 Within the Moses story that occupies Exodus through Deuteronomy, one finds a peculiar perspective regarding the Sinaitic law, on the one hand, and on its promulgation in Transjordan, on the other. From Exod 19 onwards, Moses receives all the laws from God on Mount Sinai. This huge text block that extends to Num 10 is introduced by Exod 19:3: ‫ֹלהים‬ ֑ ִ ‫ל־ה ֱא‬ ָ ‫ּומ ֶ ֹׁ֥שה ָע ָל֖ה ֶא‬ ‫וַ ּיִ ְק ָ ֙רא ֵא ָל֤יו יְ הוָ ֙ה‬ ‫מר‬ ֹ ֔ ‫ן־ה ָ ֣הר ֵלא‬ ָ ‫ִמ‬ ‫אמ ֙ר ְל ֵב֣ית יַ ֲע ֔קֹב‬ ַ ֹ ‫ּ֤כֹה ת‬ ‫וְ ַת ֵּג֖יד ִל ְב ֵנ֥י יִ ְׂש ָר ֵ ֽאל׃‬

Then Moses went up to God and YHWH called to him from the mountain, saying; Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites …

Moses indeed receives the laws, but he never conveys them to Israel. Only a few elements are recorded as being passed on to Israel by Moses. The promulgation of the entire law to the people only takes place later on in the book of Deuteronomy, which (in narrative terms) covers the last day of Moses’ life, when Moses passes the laws on to the people through his farewell speech, introduced by Deut 1:1:42

41 See Eckart Otto, »Rechtshermeneutik im Pentateuch,« in Die Tora: Studien zum Pentateuch. Gesammelte Aufsätze (BZABR 9; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009), 490–514, esp. 490– 496. 42  On this narrative structure of the Pentateuch and on ‫ באר‬in Deut 1:5 see Eckart Otto, »Mose, der erste Schriftgelehrte: Deuteronomium 1,5 im Narrativ des Pentateuch,« in Die Tora: Studien zum Pentateuch. Gesammelte Aufsätze (BZABR 9; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009), 480–489.

18

Konrad Schmid

‫ֵ ֣א ֶּלה ַה ְּד ָב ִ ֗רים‬ ‫ל־ּכל־יִ ְׂש ָר ֵ֔אל‬ ָ ‫ֲא ֶׁ֙שר ִּד ֶ ּ֤בר מ ֶֹׁש ֙ה ֶא‬ ‫ְּב ֵ ֖ע ֶבר ַהּיַ ְר ֵ ּ֑דן‬

These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan.

The setting is clear enough. However, for any reader of the Torah, it is immediately obvious that the laws Moses receives on Mount Sinai are different from the laws that Moses passes on to the people in Transjordan. This is evident from comparing the legal material in Exodus–Numbers with the material in Deuteronomy. Apparently, the Torah itself reckons with a Mosaic interpretation of the divine laws from Mount Sinai. The Torah does not hide this information. Instead, the Torah lays it open to its readers by acknowledging that the laws from Mount Sinai are different from the laws from Transjordan. Nevertheless, the Torah considers the legislation on Mount Sinai and the legislation in Transjordan to be basically identical, which the double transmission of the Decalogue before both text blocks indicates. The process of interpretation is thus already embedded in the text of the Torah itself.43 The Torah includes God’s law from Mount Sinai and its Mosaic interpretation. It is not a single law or text that has become canonical in the Torah, but the law or text plus its exegesis by Moses. This feature of the Torah is another relevant element for strategies of these texts’ authorization. The laws of the Torah are thus considered to be fundamental rather than simply unchangeable. Of course, exegesis is always dangerous. It opens the door for new perspectives. However, it is even more dangerous to claim the invariable truth of texts. Texts that are immunized against interpretation necessarily become invalid after time: their authority will not prevail. The Torah is different: its authority persists because it was kept fluid. The Torah is not only a text; it as a text that includes its own commentaries.44 The book of Deuteronomy is basically a commentary of earlier legal materials, especially in the so-​called Covenant Code (Exodus 20–23) and thus, the process of interpretation is canonized within the Torah itself.

43  See Jean Louis Ska, Introduction to Reading the Pentateuch (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 52: »the Law was of divine origin, and its validity was therefore ›permanent‹; it could not be abrogated. Consequently, a ›new law‹ was considered to be a form of an old law. It was both identical and different. In practical terms, only a new ›updated‹ formulation was valid.« See also Reinhard G. Kratz, »Innerbiblische Exegese und Redaktionsgeschichte im Lichte empirischer Evidenz,« in Das Judentum im Zeitalter des Zweiten Tempels (FAT 42; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 126–156; Bernard M. Levinson, Legal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Jan C. Gertz, »Schriftauslegung in alttestamentlicher Perspektive,« in Schriftauslegung, ed. Friederike Nüssel (TdT 8; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 9–41. 44  See Konrad Schmid, »Die Schrift als Text und Kommentar verstehen. Theologische Konsequenzen der neuesten literaturgeschichtlichen Forschung an der Hebräischen Bibel,« JBT 31 (2016), 47–63.

Textual Authority in Ancient Israel and Judah

19

2.3.  The Transfer of Cultic Elements to Scripture In religious-​historical terms, there can be little doubt that the rise of Scripture is in some way connected to the decline, and eventually the end, of the temple cult – an end witnessed in ancient Judah by the two destructions of the Jerusalem temple in 587 BCE and 70 CE. I have dealt with the gradual sublimation of the temple cult in Scripture elsewhere.45 In this context, I offer one example of how the authority of Scripture was imagined in cultic terms in a well-​known Second Temple period text. According to Neh 8:5–8, Ezra reads the Torah to the people, and this is presented as follows: ‫וַ ּיִ ְפ ַּ֙תח ֶעזְ ָ ֤רא ַה ֵּ֙ס ֶפ ֙ר‬ ‫ל־ה ֔ ָעם‬ ָ ‫ְל ֵע ֵינ֣י ָכ‬ ‫ל־ה ָ ֖עם ָה ָי֑ה‬ ָ ‫י־מ ַ ֥על ָּכ‬ ֵ ‫ִ ּֽכ‬ ‫ל־ה ָ ֽעם׃‬ ָ ‫ּוכ ִפ ְת ֖חֹו ָ ֽע ְמ ֥דּו ָכ‬ ְ ‫הו֥ה‬ ָ ְ‫יְב ֶרְך ֶעזְ ָ ֔רא ֶאת־י‬ ֣ ָ ַ‫ו‬ ‫ֹלהים ַהּגָ ֑דֹול‬ ֖ ִ ‫ָה ֱא‬ ‫ל־ה ֜ ָעם‬ ָ ‫וַ ַּי ֲֽע ֙נּו ָכ‬ ‫מן‬ ֙ ֵ ‫ָא ֵ ֤מן ָא‬ ‫יהם‬ ֶ֔ ‫מ ַעל יְ ֵד‬ ֹ ֣ ‫ְּב‬ ‫וַ ּיִ ְּק ֧דּו וַ ּיִ ְׁש ַּת ֲחֻ ּ֛ו‬ ‫יהו֖ה‬ ָ ‫ַל‬ … ‫ַא ַ ּ֥פיִ ם ָ ֽא ְר ָצה׃‬ ‫ַ �וּֽיִ ְק ְר ֥אּו ַב ֵ ּ֛ס ֶפר‬ ‫ֹלהים ְמפ ָ ֹ֑רׁש‬ ֖ ִ ‫תֹורת ָה ֱא‬ ֥ ַ ‫ְּב‬ ‫וְ ׂ֣שֹום ֶׂ֔ש ֶכל‬ ‫ּיָבינּו ַּב ִּמ ְק ָ ֽרא׃‬ ֖ ִ ַ‫ו‬

And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he stood higher than all the people. And as he opened it, the entire people stood. And Ezra praised YHWH, the great God, and all the people responded, »Amen, Amen!« with their hands uplifted.46 And they bowed and threw themselves down before YHWH with their faces to the ground … And they read from the book, from the Torah of God, section by section, enabling comprehension and that the people understood the reading.

The scenery in Neh 8:5–8 resembles synagogue worship, and thus hardly fits a date before the third or second century BCE.47 It displays how Scripture could be envisioned as an object of cultic veneration, which can only be explained through a transfer of cultic elements to Scripture. This change took place in the Second Temple period and was even enforced after 70 CE. 2.4.  The Construction of a Theocratic Political Ideology The last element to mention here pertains to the development of the idea of theocracy. Sociologically, ancient Near Eastern texts can only become fully 45 See in more detail Konrad Schmid, »The Canon and the Cult: The Emergence of Book Religion in Ancient Israel and the Gradual Sublimation of the Temple Cult,« JBL 131 (2012), 291–307. 46  1 LXXB lacks »with their hands uplifted.« For the expression see Ps 28:2. 47  See Antonius H. J.  Gunneweg, Nehemia (KHC; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlag, 1987), 112; Arie van der Kooij, »Authoritative Scriptures and Scribal Culture,« in Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism, ed. Mladen Popović (JSJS 141; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 55–71, esp. 62–63.

20

Konrad Schmid

authoritative in a non-​monarchic environment or in an environment where the monarch is not considered to be the ultimate power. Of course, traditional monarchies of the ancient Near East in general or the Levant in particular were conceived as subordinated to God as the ultimate king. Monarchies usually represent the heavenly realm as well as the earthly one: while there is a divine king, there is also a mundane king who is the divine king’s son or steward. However, postexilic texts in ancient Judah developed the idea of a direct and immediate theocracy (e. g., Ps 145; Josh 24), an idea with which the Torah is basically in agreement. That is, the Torah does not propagate the idea of monarchy for Israel and Judah. A king for Israel is only mentioned in Deut 17,48 but this king is first and foremost determined to be a full and obedient servant of the Torah. In Gen 1, the topic of a human created in the image of God, traditionally part of royal ideology in the ancient Near East, is redirected to all human beings: Not just kings, but every man and every woman is created in the image of God.49 If according to the Torah God has no direct monarchic representative on earth, his power and will are present on earth not through a king, but through the text of the Torah. This notion seems to be why 50 % of all laws in the Torah include exhortations and admonitions to fulfil them.50 A good example appears in Deut 15:18, the concluding verse of the law commanding the release of slaves in the seventh year: ‫ׁשה ְב ֵע ֶ֗ינָך‬ ֣ ֶ ‫לֹא־יִ ְק‬ ‫ְּב ַׁש ֵ ּֽל ֲח ָ֙ך א ֹ֤תֹו ָח ְפ ִׁש֙י ֵ ֽמ ִע ָּ֔מְך‬ ‫ִּ֗כי ִמ ְׁשנֶ ֙ה ְׂש ַכ֣ר ָׂש ִ֔כיר‬ ‫ׁשׁש ָׁש ִנ֑ים‬ ֣ ֵ ֖‫ֲע ָ ֽב ְדָך‬ ‫ֹלהיָך‬ ֶ֔ ‫הו֣ה ֱא‬ ָ ְ‫ּוב ַר ְכ ָ֙ך י‬ ֵֽ ‫ְּב ֖כֹל ֲא ֶ ׁ֥שר ַּת ֲע ֶ ֽׂשה׃‬

Do not consider it a hardship when you send him out from you as free person, because for six years he has given you services worth the wages of a hired laborer; and YHWH your God will bless you in all that you will do.

Implementing the laws of the Torah depends basically on insight, voluntariness, and even on the promise of divine benefit, but not on a coercive, executive power. In post-​587 BCE Judah, there was no longer any such power.

48  See Bernard M. Levinson, »The Reconceptualization of Kingship in Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History’s Transformation of Torah,« VT 51 (2001), 511–534. 49  See Annette Schellenberg, Der Mensch, das Bild Gottes? Zum Gedanken einer Sonderstellung des Menschen im Alten Testament und in weiteren altorientalischen Quellen (ATANT 101; Zurich: TVZ, 2011). 50  Tikva Frymer-​Kenski, »Israel,« in A History of Ancient Law, Vol. 2, ed. Raymond Westbrook (HdO 72/2; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 975–1046, here 979.

Textual Authority in Ancient Israel and Judah

21

3. Conclusion The emergence of scriptural authority in ancient Israel and Judah must be assessed within the wider framework of its religious, cultural, social, and political history. One can identify five main historical factors for why the Hebrew Bible became biblical. The first factor is the book of Deuteronomy and its theological reformulation of Neo-​Assyrian political ideology. The book of Deuteronomy identifies God himself as the object of exclusive loyalty, and no longer the Neo-​ Assyrian king. The second is the formation of the Torah within the Persian imperial context and its probable status as an imperially authorized law. The third is the prominent reception of prophecy in the Torah, especially in the redactional framework responsible for its final shape, which was apparently used in order to establish a peculiarly prophetic proximity of the Torah to God himself. The fourth is the reception of cultic elements in the perception and treatment of Scripture after the loss of the temple. And finally, the fifth is the interpretation of post-​monarchic, Second Temple Judah as a theocracy, which elevates the Torah’s authority to a level formerly reserved only for a king.

The Authority of the Scriptures of Israel in the Qumran Corpus* Jörg Frey In the discussion about the concepts of scriptural authority and the variations of the range of authoritative Scriptures in the period of the emerging biblical canon, we can turn to the evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls, in particular the Qumran Corpus or the Qumran Library, if the category is appropriate.1 The textual discoveries from the Dead Sea, in particular from the 11 (or now perhaps 12)2 caves near Khirbet Qumran, but also other locations such as Masada or Naḥal Ḥever, have brought to light an enormous gain of evidence that allows scholars to close the gap between the time of the composition of the Scriptures that now make up the Hebrew Bible and the formation of the (Rabbinic) Hebrew canon. Before 1947, only a scant number of Hebrew fragments from that * First published under the same title in Jörg Frey, Qumran, Early Judaism, and New Testament Interpretation: Kleine Schriften III, ed. by Jacob N. Cerone (WUNT 424; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), 403–428. 1  The terms are not completely exchangeable. »Dead Sea Scrolls« can include the entirety of texts from the Qumran Caves and some other locations in the Judaean Desert or near the Dead Sea, especially the biblical manuscripts found at Masada, Wadi Murabba’at, and Naḥal Ḥever, but it is less useful to include all the writings from very different historical periods. »Qumran Corpus« is the most neutral term, as it only points to the entirety of written documents found at the location of Qumran, while »Qumran Library« includes some assumptions about the character of a library, such as a conscious collection, preservation, usage, and perhaps even storage of the writings by a certain group of owners or users. In my view, the Qumran Corpus shows traits of such an activity, in spite of its diversity, as its presence at Qumran and in the Caves is not merely accidental. Cf. Armin Lange, »The Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls – Library or Manuscript Corpus?« in From 4QMMT to Resurrection: Melanges qumraniens en hommage à Émile Puech, ed. Florentino García Martínez, Annette Steudel, and Eibert Tigchelaar (STDJ 61; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 177–193. For an introduction into the Qumran Corpus, see Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra, Qumran. Die Texte vom Toten Meer und das Antike Judentum (Jüdische Studien 3; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016); further Hartmut Stegemann, The Library of Qumran: On the Essenes, Qumran, John the Baptist, and Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998); and James C. VanderKam and Peter W. Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2002). 2  In winter 2016/17, archaeologists of the Hebrew University discovered an additional cave where they found arrowheads and pottery, including storage jars and scroll fragments, but no scrolls themselves. See the press information of the Hebrew University from February 2017 at (last accessed on May 27, 2019).

24

Jörg Frey

period were known, such as the small Papyrus Nash.3 As a result, scholarship was mostly dependent upon the testimony of Greek sources (e. g., Philo and Josephus, some passages from the Septuagint and the New Testament writings, and some Pseudepigrapha handed down to us in secondary translations) for reconstructing the development of the biblical canon. From Qumran, we got hold of a bulk of Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts for the first time from the period between the final redaction of the latest texts of the Hebrew Bible (i. e., the book of Daniel in the mid-​second century BCE) and the collection of the Mishnah, in the second century CE. From the more than 900 manuscripts that have been preserved at Qumran (at least in small fragments), more than 200 are biblical manuscripts and many others quote or refer to biblical texts in various ways. Thus, the Qumran Library has brought new light from material evidence (i. e., real manuscripts) where previous scholarship only could refer to external evidence or lists of narrative writings. From that additional evidence, we can now gain insights into the processes of writing and composing texts, quoting and commenting on earlier or authoritative writings, and assembling writings into major groups or collections. However, there are some caveats that need to be made in advance in order to proceed cautiously with our analysis: the material evidence itself needs interpretation, and scholars have intensely debated the issue of criteria of »scriptural« authority at Qumran. Furthermore, it is also necessary to distinguish between the image represented by the entirety of the »Qumran Library« and the evidence given from individual writings or manuscripts. We must also distinguish between the views that can be reconstructed from the writings attributable to the group or community linked with the library (i. e., the »sectarian« writings) and the views expressed in writings with an origin outside that group. In spite of all uncertainties, these distinctions, hard won within the scholarly discussions and literature, should not be abandoned in favor of a less refined and monolithic picture.4

3  Papyrus Nash from the second century BCE contains the Ten Commandments in a mixed textual form and the Shema Israel. Up until 1947, the papyrus was considered the earliest extant manuscript of a Hebrew Bible text. 4 See below, section 2.2. In view of the uncertainties of the attribution and the problems of the categories such as »sectarian,« Florentino García Martínez has suggested that scholars abandon that distinction; cf. Florentino García Martínez, »¿Sectario, no-​sectario, o qué? Problemas de una taxonomía correcta de los textos qumránicos,« Revue de Qumrân 23 (2008), 383–394. The problems are avoided when the Groningen school now uses the category of a »textual community,« but there is the danger that precise historical distinctions are lost in the great »cultural« picture, cf. Mladen Popović, »Reading, Writing, and Memorizing Together: Reading Culture in Ancient Judaism and the Dead Sea Scrolls in a Mediterranean Context,« Dead Sea Discoveries 24 (2017), 447–470; idem, »Qumran as Scroll Storehouse in Times of Crisis? A Comparative Perspective on Judaean Desert Manuscript Collections,« JSJ 43 (2012), 551–594; and idem, »The Ancient Library of Qumran between Urban and Rural Culture,« in The Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran and the Concept of a Library, ed. Sidnie White Crawford and Cecilia Wassen (STDJ 116; Leiden: Brill, 2016), 155–167.

The Authority of the Scriptures of Israel in the Qumran Corpus

25

Furthermore, we should be very cautious with the terms used to describe the phenomena: As we shall see below, the term »canon« which has been taken from later Christian conciliar decisions, is anachronistic and thus problematic for Second Temple Judaism in general. In particular its judicial implications are inappropriate for the whole period (including the New Testament), because in Ancient Judaism, there was no single official body that could have the function to decide on the »canon« as a fixed or even closed list of authoritative writings.5 Also, »Bible,« a term that implies the singularity of one book, should not be used for the period before the Hebrew Scriptures were bound together in a codex.6 So, these terms, when unavoidable, will be used in scare quotes to mark their inappropriateness, even if they are used due to the lack of better terms. Rather than interpreting the Qumran evidence with the concepts adopted from church tradition, we should try to rethink our traditional categories from the evidence available during the period when »the Bible« or »the canon« was made, reconsidering how the »authority« of Scriptures or authors was constructed and marked, and how that authority was dealt with in the life (or other writings) of the related communities. Therefore, I will first describe the conceptual changes demanded by the Qumran discoveries (1), and then give a brief sketch of the contents of the Qumran corpus and some important insights regarding the classification of the relevant manuscripts (2). Subsequently, I will discuss some criteria of authority or even »canonicity« (3) and present the evidence for some selected texts (4). In the end, I will present a few conclusions (5) with regard to the authority of Scriptures in the Qumran community and with regard to the canon debate in general.

1.  The Qumran Library as a Paradigm-​Shift in Canon-​Research and the Pattern of a »Canonical Process« In Christian theology, but also in Jewish scholarship, the issue of scriptural authority and canonicity is an issue which has always been overshadowed by »dogmatic« viewpoints. Whereas »conservative« views usually tend to date the authority of the relevant writings as early as possible, often simply uncritically accepting the fictional historical data provided within these texts that was used by the author or receiving communities as a means of authorizing the text, »critical« views are more inclined to accept a later date or to allow for a longer period of ambivalence, with the implication that in the formative or even normative period, the debates are still considered open and flexible. The common 5  See Timothy H. Lim, »Authoritative Scriptures and the Dead Sea Scrolls,« in The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Timothy H. Lim and John J. Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 303–322, here 304. 6  Thus also Lim, »Authoritative Scriptures and the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 5), 304.

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assumption on both ends of the spectrum is that age or »originality« is an argument for higher validity and authority. Sometimes, there are arguments supporting the »maximalists« and others supporting the »minimalists.« In those cases, a view of a gradual development can help to cope with the evidence or bridge the wide gap between the different viewpoints. This is what has happened in scholarship on the »canon« of the Hebrew Bible in the discussions following the Qumran discoveries, in particular the biblical manuscripts, and their scholarly assessment. Before that period, a major paradigm was widely accepted, namely the view of a three-​stage development of the tripartite Hebrew canon. The view was based on indirect evidence of certain narrative accounts and so-​called »canon lists,« such as Nehemiah 8–9 and Ben Sira’s »Praise of the Fathers« (Sir 49:8–10), 2 Maccabees 2:13–15, the prologue to the Greek translation of Ben Sira (LXX Sir prol.), Josephus’s apology against Apion (c. Ap. 1.37–42), 4 Ezra 14.37–48, and also a few Rabbinic passages (m. Yad. 3.2–5; 4.6; and b. B. Bat. 14b–15a).7 From those sources, it was usually suggested that the Pentateuch was canonized already around 400 BCE (according to Nehemiah 8), the collection of the prophets was, then, added around 200 BCE (as is suggested by the »Praise of the Fathers,« Sir 44–50), and the decision on the writings was made by the Rabbis at a certain »Synod of Jamnia« or Javneh between 70 and 100 CE where, according to this pattern, the final shape of the Hebrew canon and its text were also defined. This »canon« was considered to be a clearly defined list of writings with the implication that it had always been quite clear which writings were considered canonical and which other writings were considered non-​canonical. If a writing was not mentioned in a certain list or catalogue, it was considered to be excluded. Finally, scholars thought that canonization also implied a fixed and unchangeable text.8 The pattern was basically introduced by the Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz in the late nineteenth century,9 who also introduced the anachronistic term of a »synod« or »council« of Javneh.10  7  See the sources in Lee M. McDonald, »Appendix A: Primary Sources for the Study of the Old Testament / Hebrew Bible Canon,« in The Canon Debate, ed. Lee M. McDonald and James A. Sanders (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002), 580–582. For discussion of these testimonies, cf. Michael Becker, »Grenzziehungen des Kanons im frühen Judentum und die Neuschrift der Bibel nach dem 4. Buch Esra,« in Qumran und der biblische Kanon, ed. M. Becker and J. Frey (BThS 92; Neukirchen-​Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2009), 195–253, here 218–248.  8 Cf. the description of the »old« paradigm in Eibert Tigchelaar, »Wie haben die Qumrantexte unsere Sicht des kanonischen Prozesses verändert?« in Qumran und der biblische Kanon, ed. Becker and Frey (n. 7), 65–87, here 66–67; and Michael Becker, »Grenzziehungen des Kanons im frühen Judentum« (n. 7), 195–198.  9  Heinrich Graetz, »Der Abschluß des Kanons des Alten Testaments und die Differenz von kanonischen und extrakanonischen Büchern nach Josephus und Talmud,« Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 35 (1886), 281–298. 10  See Jack P. Lewis, »Jamnia Revisited,« in The Canon Debate, ed. McDonald and Sanders (n. 7), 146–162; cf. also David E. Aune, »On the Origins of the ›Council of Javneh‹ Myth,« JBL

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The traditional pattern which could be found in most standard introductions has been criticized at numerous points. In the meantime, it has largely been abandoned or modified, not at least due to the influence of the Qumran discoveries. A view that was merely based on a few lists of texts had to be considered insufficient, especially when the genre and function of those lists was not considered, and when the new material evidence provided a considerably better basis for inquiry. The »old« pattern did not aptly consider different degrees of authority or the fact that a writing could have authority in certain factions or regions without being universally accepted. Finally, the link between canonical authority and textual fixation can no longer be maintained in view of the insights from Qumran. Due to the Qumran discoveries, the strict three-​stage pattern has been changed to concepts of a more flexible and fluid development of the Hebrew canon,11 as a process that might have begun early and been finished late, without clear-​cut points of decision or clear-​cut borders. The new paradigm has become known under the term »Canonical Process,« introduced by Jack Sanders12 in view of his edition of the Psalms scroll from Qumran Cave 11 (11QPsa).13 The discovery of such a »biblical« manuscript has puzzled interpreters: In this manuscript, the Psalter is certainly considered authoritative, inspired, or even »canonical« as a composition of David, but the arrangement of the Psalms differs from the later canonical form, and a number of »apocryphal« pieces are included, such as Psalm 151 from the LXX, two of the psalms known only from Syriac tradition, a passage 110 (1991), 491–493, who assumes that Graetz followed a remark by the Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza about a »concilium Pharisaeorum.« 11 Cf. Tigchelaar, »Wie haben die Qumrantexte unsere Sicht des kanonischen Prozesses verändert?« (n. 8), 68–76. 12 Cf. James A. Sanders, »The Scrolls and the Canonical Process,« in The Dead Sea Scrolls After Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment, ed. James C. VanderKam and Peter W. Flint, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 2.1–22, here 7–10; idem, »The Canonical Process,« in The Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol. 4: The Late Roman-​Rabbinic Period, ed. Steven T. Katz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 230–243; idem, »The Issue of the Closure in the Canonical Process,« in The Canon Debate, ed. McDonald and Sanders (n. 7), 252–263; see also Armin Lange, »The Status of the Biblical Texts in the Qumran Corpus and the Canonical Process,« in The Bible as Book: The Hebrew Bible and the Judaean Desert Discoveries, ed. Edward D. Herbert and Emanuel Tov (London: British Library, 2002), 21–30; idem, »The Parabiblical Literature of the Qumran Library and the Canonical History of the Bible, in Emanuel: Studies in Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, and Dead Sea Scrolls in Honor of Emanuel Tov, ed. Shalom M. Paul et alii (VTSup 94; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 305–321; James VanderKam, »Questions of Canon Viewed Through the Dead Sea Scrolls,« in The Canon Debate, ed. Lee McDonald and Sanders (n. 7), 91–109; Eugene Ulrich, »From Literature to Scripture. Reflections on the Growth of a Text’s Authoritativeness,« DSD 10 (2003), 3–25; 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, ed. Esther G. Chazon, Devorah Dimant, and Ruth Clements (STDJ 58; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 85–104. 13  James A. Sanders, The Psalms Scroll of Qumrân Cave 11 (11QPsa) (DJD 4; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965).

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from Sirach 51, and a kind of »bibliography of David« claiming him as poet and author. The crucial question was: Is this a biblical manuscript, or should we consider this version of the psalter to be a different composition, an »apocryphal« writing? These were the observations that called for a change of the ruling patterns of thought and caused a paradigm shift in the views of the growth of the canon. Within the new framework of a Canonical Process, we can distinguish between various steps of authorization: (a) the authorization of books, (b) the collection of authoritative books in (sub‑)collections which may be still open for additions or, at some point, considered complete, (c) the explicit closure of a collection by the exclusion of other, less authoritative or inacceptable books, mostly due to some challenges that call for such a decision, and (d) the finalization and fixation of the text.14 Such a process might be observed with regard to various sub-​collections separately. Furthermore, these processes are, to a certain extent, group-​specific. In the Second Temple period, different Jewish factions (Pharisees, Sadducees, Qumran »Sectarians,« or various groups of Diaspora Judaism) could draw on different »collections« of books with more or less authority until, finally, the Rabbinic movement shaped its Hebrew canon. This final canon certainly differed from what was considered authoritative previously at Qumran or what was read in the Diaspora. But during the Second Temple period, there was no »orthodoxy« or »normative« institution to efficiently decide on the validity and authority of certain writings within the entirety of contemporary Judaism. The pattern of a »canonical process« implies that the growth of a canon is an extended and complex development that was not usually controlled by a single institution. The process is not considered from a teleological perspective. That is to say, during the process the final result is still open, so it is inappropriate to understand the process only from its final product, the resulting »canon.« And even when a canon has been closed by decision of a certain institution or just practically, the canonical process has not necessarily arrived at an end: debates about the interpretation and the mutual relation of the canonical writings can go on, producing something like a »canon within the canon« or other interpretive rules for managing internal diversity.

14  Cf. also Eugene Ulrich, »The Notion and Definition of Canon,« in The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Developmental Composition of the Bible (VTSup 169; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 265–279; see also idem, »The Developmental Composition of the Biblical Text,« in The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Developmental Composition of the Bible (VTSup 169; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 1–15.

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2.  The Qumran Corpus Having presented the particular relevance of the Qumran evidence for canon research, we can now turn to the evidence itself, the Qumran corpus (i. e., the writings found in the 11 caves from Qumran).15 2.1.  The Qumran Corpus – An Overview As is widely known, the corpus of roughly 900 manuscripts includes more than 200 manuscripts of biblical texts.16 Around 20 more biblical texts have been found at some other locations near the Dead Sea.17 The precise numbers vary since assembling fragments to distinct manuscripts is often uncertain and subject to debate and revisions, and – even more importantly – it is for some manuscripts debatable or uncertain whether or not they are »biblical« manuscripts.18 Furthermore, with regard to manuscripts attested only by a few fragments, we cannot really decide whether they contained a whole biblical book or only parts of it (as a florilegium, for liturgical use etc.).19 But more important than the actual numbers are the proportions: according to the comprehensive list of texts 15  Cf. my more extensive description of the corpus in Jörg Frey, »Qumran,« RAC 28 (2017), 550–592, here 557–572; English translation: »Qumran: An Overview,« in idem, Qumran, Early Judaism, and New Testament Interpretation: Kleine Schriften III, ed. Jacob N. Cerone (WUNT 424; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), 45–81. 16  Cf. the precise presentation in Eugene Ulrich, Die Handschriften biblischer Bücher von Qumran und den anderen Fundorten, Vol. 1 of The Biblical Qumran Scrolls (Leiden: Brill, 2010); Armin Lange, Handbuch der Textfunde vom Toten Meer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009). 17 In recent years, a number of additional fragments have been published from private collections, but their connection with other extant manuscripts is unclear, and the authenticity of unprovenanced artefacts has been questioned in a number of cases. Other questions arise from the debates about the legal and ethical issues concerning artefacts from the private antiquities market. See, e. g., the collection Gleanings from the Caves: Dead Sea Scrolls and Artefacts from The Schøjen Collection, ed. Torleif Elgvin, Kipp Davis, and Michael Langlois (LSTS 71; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), and the list of unprovenanced fragments by Eibert Tigchelaar, »A Provisional List of Unprovenanced, Twenty-​First Century, Dead Sea Scrolls-​ like Fragments,« DSD 24 (2017), 173–188; cf. also the discussion about the authenticity of some fragments in Kipp Davis, »Caves of Dispute: Patterns of Correspondence and Suspicion in the Post-​2002 ›Dead Sea Scrolls‹ Fragments,« DSD 24 (2017), 229–270; and idem et alii, »Nine Dubious ›Dead Sea Scrolls‹ Fragments from the Twenty-​First Century,« DSD 24 (2017), 189–228, where nine newly presented fragments are classified as modern forgeries. 18  An example for this is the Psalms scroll from Cave 11 (11QPsa) mentioned above; another interesting case is the so-​called »Reworked Pentateuch« (4Q158, 4Q364–4Q367), a series of manuscripts of (several) books of the Pentateuch with remarkable additions or patchworks of various passages (thus, e. g., in 4Q158 fr. 1 a combination of elements from Gen 32 and Exod 4). 19 Cf. most recently the investigation of the Psalms manuscripts by Eva Jain, Psalmen oder Psalter? Materielle Rekonstruktion und inhaltliche Untersuchung er Psalmenhandschriften aus der Wüste Juda (STDJ 109; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), who assumes that some of the Qumran manuscripts of the Psalter (4Q83 and 4Q88) are not a psalter preceding the protomasoretic psalter but rather shaped from particular needs within the context of the Yachad (cf. ibid., 292, 296, 300).

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in DJD volume 39,20 from the entirety of the biblical manuscripts from Qumran (except the Tefillin and Mezuzot), ca. 200 are in Hebrew, five in Greek, and three (so-​called Targums) in Aramaic. Eleven or twelve biblical manuscripts are written in palaeo-​Hebrew script. Only four are written on Papyrus, two of them are in Greek. From the books of the Hebrew Bible, only Esther is missing. Genesis with 19 and Exodus with 16, Deuteronomy with 30, Isaiah with 21 and the Psalms with 36 manuscripts are attested most frequently; the historical books are attested less frequently.21 Greek manuscripts only represent the Pentateuch,22 and Aramaic Targums have been found on Leviticus and Job. The most ancient biblical manuscripts (4QEx–Levf and 4QSamb) might originate at around 250 BCE, a palaeo-​Hebrew scroll of Job (4QpaleoJoba) possibly around 200 BCE, and a scroll of the Twelve Prophets around 150 BCE,23 although the vast majority of copies come from the first century BCE or first century CE. Apart from the biblical manuscripts, the corpus includes Hebrew or Aramaic manuscripts of writings previously known from the Septuagint (Tobit, Ben Sira, Ps 151 LXX, Bar 6) or other »Pseudepigrapha,« hitherto known only from ancient translations, in particular texts from the Enochic tradition (all parts of the composition of 1 Enoch, except the »Parables« 1 En. 37–71) in a total of 11 Aramaic manuscripts, the Book of Giants in 10 manuscripts, and Jubilees in 15 or 16 manuscripts and some related texts). Furthermore, there is a large number of »new« parabiblical texts, such as the Aramaic Genesis Apocryphon from Qumran Cave I (1QapGen); other Aramaic compositions linked with priestly forefathers such as Levi, Qahat, and Amram; continuations of prophetic traditions and books; writings linked with Jeremiah; a Pseudo-​Ezekiel-​Text and an Aramaic description of the New Jerusalem, which is also linked to Ezekiel; as well as several writings from the Danielic tradition. Apart from that, we find a noticeable number of exegetical texts. This includes the new (and exclusively Qumranic) genre of Bible commentaries (pesharim) which quote the texts together with an explanation (using the word pesher = interpretation) that relates the text to aspects of the history or present experience of the community, or contains expositions of eschatological texts, or has expositions of Scripture in the context of the present »Last Days.«24 20  Emanuel Tov, »Categorized List of the ›Biblical Texts‹,« in The Texts from the Judaean Desert: Indices and An Introduction in the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Series, ed. idem (DJD 39; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 165–184; cf. also VanderKam and Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (n. 1), 103–153. 21  See Tov, »Categorized List« (n. 20): Genesis 19 or 20; Exodus 17; Leviticus 13; Numbers 7; Deuteronomy 30; Joshua 2; Judges 3; 1–2 Samuel 4; 1–2 Kings 3; Isaiah 21; Jeremiah 6; Ezekiel 6; Minor Prophets (in one book) 8 or 9; Psalms 36; Job 4; Proverbs 2; Ruth 4; Canticles 4; Ecclesiastes 2; Lamentations 4; Daniel 8; Ezra-​Nehemiah (in one book) 1; and 1–2 Chronicles 1. 22  But cf. the large Minor Prophets Scroll from Naḥal Ḥever (8ḤevXII gr). 23  See B. Webster, »Chronological Index of the Texts from the Judean Desert,« in The Texts from the Judaean Desert, ed. Tov (n. 20), 351–446. 24  Cf. the more complete descriptions of the contents of the library in Frey, »Qumran«;

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Most important among the »new« texts are the Rule texts (in particular the Community Rule (1QS, with numerous additional manuscripts),25 the Rule of the Congregation (1QSa), and the Damascus Document (CD, already discovered in the Cairo Geniza at the beginning of the twentieth century, but now attested in numerous manuscripts from Qumran Cave 4). These texts not only include the rules of a distinct community often called »yaḥad,« but also provide a halakhic interpretation of Scripture, accounts of the history of Israel and the community, and aspects of a dualistic sapiential teaching (in particular in the »Treatise on the Two Spirits« 1QS 3.13–4.26). The War Rule (1QM, with additional manuscripts from Cave 4) provides a liturgical instruction concerning a final war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, but also this text is more a »liturgical« rule than an apocalyptic prediction. One could also mention the Temple Scroll (11QT a) among the Rule-​texts, although that impressive scroll could also be considered a »parabiblical« work drawing intensely on Deuteronomy and the final section of Ezekiel. A very important group of texts within the corpus is also the large number of calendrical texts, many of them following the (Enochic) 364-​day solar-​calendar, or providing synchronisms and calculations between that calendar and the lunisolar calendar followed by the Jerusalem temple. Another important group are the poetic and liturgical texts, collections of prayers (most importantly the »Hodayot« 1QHa with numerous additional manuscripts), blessings, curses, or an »angelic liturgy« known as Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, which is also attested in numerous manuscripts. Furthermore, there is a group of sapiential texts that represent a type of Israelite wisdom which differs from that of the canonical books and that already links wisdom with dualistic or apocalyptic elements. Other texts provide astrological or physiognomic knowledge. One text in particular reports a list of rebukes by a community official (which might be from a local community archive), another text congratulates a king named Jonathan (probably Alexander Jannai). Despite the range of genres represented in Qumran, there is a striking lack of historical documents or »documentary texts« within the library. 2.2.  The Important Distinction between »Group-​specific« Texts and Texts from Outside The vast diversity of the texts present in the corpus has raised questions about its unity. Does such a wide variety of ideologically different texts constitute a

Stegemann, The Library of Qumran, 80–138, and VanderKam and Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (n. 1), 209–310. 25  For a recent introduction, cf. Jörg Frey, »The Rule of the Community,« in Early Jewish Literature: An Anthology, ed. Brad Embry, Ronald Herms, and Archie T. Wright, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017), 2.95–127.

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well-​collected library?26 Does it represent the collecting activity of one single group, living at Qumran, or even one single »sect« within ancient Judaism, or do we have to conclude that the corpus has been assembled from various collections, libraries, or places? Are parts of the corpus »imported« into Qumran from some other place, possibly from Jerusalem? And were they hidden at once, shortly before the arrival of Roman troops in 67 CE, or were there several separate disposals of manuscripts, with the corpus consisting of several different collections?27 Be that as it may – and in my view the arguments for the unity of the corpus as a possession of the group inhabiting or using Khirbet Qumran are still strong – one distinction should not be overlooked: Not only the biblical texts but also the vast majority of the other texts (pseudepigrapha, parabiblical texts etc.) are not composed by the »yaḥad« or the particular community to which the users of the Qumran settlement belonged. They were read and possibly even copied and finally stored there, but the texts do not originate within the Qumran community and only at some point in time did they become a property of the community living at Qumran. This means that the Qumran library is far more than merely the literary heritage of a certain Jewish »sect«28; rather, it is a (somewhat selective, but still very broad) representation of the literary heritage of Palestinian Judaism between the third century BCE and the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. Although the criteria for »sectarian« or »non-​sectarian« texts are often a point of dispute, and some uncertainties remain,29 we can assume that only a minority of texts, in particular the large rule texts (1QS, 1QSa, CD, MMT), the Hodayot and other prayer collections, and the pesharim were authored within the yaḥad, some other texts were adopted and possibly reworked by the yaḥad (thus, e. g., the War Rule), but the majority of parabiblical, exegetical, and sapiential texts and in particular all non-​Hebrew texts are probably adopted from precursor groups or from outside the community and were only read, copied, and 26  Cf. now the discussions in White Crawford and Wassen, ed., The Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran (n. 4); see also Stökl Ben Ezra, Qumran (n. 1), 150–162. 27  Cf., for an overview, the article by Popović, »Qumran as Scroll Storehouse in Times of Crisis?« (n. 4), 579–585. See for more details the proposals by Stephen Pfann, »Reassessing the Judean Desert Caves: Libraries, Archives, Genizas and Hiding Places,« BAIAS 25 (2007), 147–70; and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra, »Old Caves and Young Caves: A Statistical Reevaluation of a Qumran Consensus,« DSD 14 (2007), 313–333. 28  In the discussion of non-​specialists, this term is often linked with the idea of a marginal, irrelevant group, although a sociological definition of the term does not necessarily imply this. 29  See the important articles by Devorah Dimant, »Qumran Sectarian Literature,« Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period (CRINT 2; Assen: van Gorcum, 1984), 483–550; and – more nuanced  – eadem, »The Vocabulary of the Qumran Sectarian Texts,« Qumran und die Archäologie, ed. Jörg Frey, Carsten Claußen, and Nadine Kessler (WUNT 278; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 347–395; additionally, see Armin Lange, »Kriterien essenischer Texte,« in Qumran kontrovers. Beiträge zu den Textfunden vom Toten Meer, ed. Jörg Frey and Hartmut Stegemann (Einblicke 6; Paderborn: Bonifatius, 2003), 59–70; Charlotte Hempel, »Kriterien zur Bestimmung ›essenischer Verfasserschaft‹ von Qumrantexten,« in Qumran kontrovers, ed. Frey and Stegemann, 71–84.

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stored by the people living at Qumran.30 But this insight enhances rather than diminishes the scholarly importance of the corpus: it is not simply the heritage of a »marginal« group but provides a wide spectrum of the literary production of Second Temple Judaism (with only some well-​known texts missing, such as 1–2 Maccabees, the Wisdom of Solomon etc.). Thus, for reconstructing the views or the halakhah of the yaḥad, we have to draw on the »sectarian« or »group-​specific« texts, whereas more general aspects of scriptural interpretation or theological motifs (and also many aspects which are relevant for understanding the language and thought of New Testament texts) can be discussed on the background of the entire library. For some issues the »non-​ sectarian« texts prove to be even more illuminating than the »sectarian« texts. The questions regarding the authority of certain texts or collections of the later canon can, therefore, be applied to the various and not always clearly distinguished parts of the Qumran corpus or to the corpus as a whole, and depending on the way the questions are designed, the answers will differ. We have to decide, therefore, what we are looking for: Are we simply looking for the views of the Qumran Community or the yaḥad, asking, for example, which writings were kept, used, or considered authoritative within that particular group, how were they quoted, or how was scriptural authority defined, marked, or dealt with? Or do we use the Qumran corpus as a source for reconstructing the wider process of composing, continuing, supplementing, collecting, and »canonizing« writings which ultimately resulted in various »canons« (the Hebrew Rabbinic canon and, due to a different and more extended process, the Greek collection of the Septuagint)?

3.  Criteria of Authority or »Canonicity« For assessing the authority of Scriptures within the Qumran corpus, a number of criteria have been considered, but their validity deserves some reflection. At first, scholars simply began by counting which books from the later Hebrew canon have been found at Qumran and determined how many copies of each individual work have been preserved. Such an inquiry can show that those writings (all books except Esther) were known at least to some people in the community, and that some of the books were read and copied more frequently than others. But what does the mere presence of a writing in the corpus tell us about its actual authority or scriptural status? And what does it mean that other writings which were not included in the later Hebrew canon (e. g., Jubilees, Enochic 30  Devorah Dimant, in her (now updated) article »The Qumran Manuscripts: Contents and Significance,« in Interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Collected Studies (FAT 90; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 27–56, considers that the »sectarian« texts occupy only a third of the collection; cf. eadem, »The Library of Qumran in Recent Scholarship,« in The Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran and the Concept of a Library, ed. White Crawford and Wassen (n. 4), 7–14, here 8.

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books etc.) were found much more frequently than, for example, the books of Kings or Ezra/Nehemiah? So, what can be relevant criteria for ascribing scriptural authority to a writing? In an attempt to assemble what he popularly (and anachronistically) calls a »Dead Sea Scrolls Bible,« Peter W. Flint has considered nine criteria that indicate the authoritative recognition or »canonical« claims of a particular writing:31 His criteria deserve to be enumerated here: (a) A first indication is explicit »statements that indicate scriptural status.«32 The criterion means that authors are classified as prophets, such as Ezekiel (in CD 3.20–4.2), or a book is called the book of a prophet, such as Daniel in the Midrash on Eschatology33 (4Q174 2.3). It should be noted, however, that there is also text in which the Book of Jubilees is cited in the same manner (4Q228). In that poorly preserved composition, Jubilees seems to be referred to by its Hebrew title Division of times, with the quotation formula »For thus it is written in the Divisions [of the Times]« (4Q228 1 1.9; cf. 1.1),34 and the authoritative status of Jubilees is further confirmed by a quotation in an explicit reference to »the rules […] laid out in detail in the Book of Time Divisions by Jubilees and Weeks« (CD 16.2–4).35 (b) A second criterion is »the appeal to prophecy.«36 Such an appeal is obvious in the passage on »David’s compositions« in the Psalms Scroll from Cave 11 (11QPsa 27.2–11) where it is said that David wrote 3600 psalms and songs (of course including those in the present book) with the explicit remark: »All these he composed through prophecy which was given him from before the Most High.«37 This means that 11QPsa – or, rather, any form of the Psalter – is considered a prophetic or »inspired« book, regardless of whether or not its textual arrangement and form corresponds to the form of the later canonical psalter. (c) A third aspect is particular »claims of Divine authority.«38 Such a claim of high authority is also implied in the note that the message of a book is from God or from an angel. A prominent example is Jubilees, which claims to be an angelic rendering of what is written on heavenly tablets. Likewise, the Temple Scroll presents itself as a revelation by God himself, spoken in the first person, so that 31  Peter W. Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Evidence from Qumran,« in Emanuel, ed. Paul et alii (n. 12), 269–304, here 294–304. See also the abbreviated presentation in VanderKam and Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (n. 1), 172–177. 32  Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 294. 33  On this composition, see Annette Steudel, Der Midrasch zur Eschatologie aus der Qumrangemeinde (4QMidrEschatab). Materielle Rekonstruktion, Textbestand, Gattung und traditionsgeschichtliche Einordnung des durch 4Q174 (»Florilegium«) und 4Q177 (»Catena A«) repräsentierten Werkes aus den Qumranfunden (STDJ 13; Leiden: Brill, 1994). 34 VanderKam and Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (n. 1), 172. 35 VanderKam and Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (n. 1), 172. 36  Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 294. 37  Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 294–295. 38  Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 295.

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it even supersedes the Mosaic speech of the book of Deuteronomy. However, both books, the Temple Scroll and Jubilees, were most likely not composed in the yaḥad. It is, therefore, a different question because we are now asking what authority was ascribed to these two books in the yaḥad community. Thus, the Qumran evidence shows that, at least within the community related to the library, not just books contained within the later Hebrew canon enjoyed scriptural authority. Within the yaḥad, a similar claim of authority is made with regard to the »righteous teacher,« probably the founding figure of the yaḥad whom God has given insight to understand the Scriptures. This means that within the yaḥad community, the claim of inspiration and authority is (also) made for the interpretation given to the foundational teacher whose interpretation of the Scriptures and in particular the halakhic issues is ascribed to a particular revelation of divine insight. (d) A fourth criterion linked with the former one but particularly related to the Psalter is the presence of »Davidic superscriptions« in manuscripts of the Psalter: while the Qumran manuscripts normally do not add Davidic superscriptions to non-​Davidic psalms, the introduction of the two autobiographical Psalms 151A and 151B in 11QPsa makes a Davidic claim and thus also the claim of a scriptural status for those two psalms.39 (e) Only at the fifth position does Flint mention the criterion of the »quantity of manuscripts preserved,« showing that writings were »extensively used at Qumran which indicates their popularity and most likely their authoritative status.«40 The mention of this criterion after the explicit claims mentioned before shows that the sheer quantity of manuscripts is already a weaker argument, a fact that may be due to certain accidental circumstances and deserves further interpretation. In the Qumran corpus, it is striking that in the list of the writings represented by a particularly high number of manuscripts, Jubilees is number 6 (after Psalms, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Genesis, and Exodus), and 1 Enoch is number 8 (after Leviticus). On the other hand, it is unclear what it means if a writing included in the later Hebrew canon is only scarcely attested in the library. Does the non-​attestation of Esther mean that the writing (or Purim) was rejected? Or is it by pure accident that Esther is the only writing of the later Hebrew Bible that is missing in the Qumran corpus? The number of manuscripts obviously depends on numerous accidental factors. Which manuscripts were preserved and what has been lost through the centuries? Which manuscripts were taken out of the caves centuries ago and which remained there until their discovery? Was a particular writing important for certain topics, such as Jubilees for debates about the calendar or chronology? In any case, the figures provide researchers with information about the Qumran community’s interest in particular books or about which books the covenanters 39 40

 Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 295–296.  Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 296.

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occupied themselves with in terms of intense exegetical work. The correspondences with the numbers of scriptural quotations in New Testament writings (where Genesis, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and the Psalms are also the most frequently quoted or alluded to) can further indicate that these writings (or, the Torah as a whole, Isaiah, and the Psalms) were considered to be among the most important books in a broader range of Jewish groups in the first century CE. (f) An additional criterion is the existence of translations of a certain text into Greek or into an Aramaic (Targum) version,41 which may indicate its authority or importance. Greek translations were found from books of the Pentateuch (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), from the Twelve Prophets (at Naḥal Ḥever), and most likely also from 1 Enoch (pap7QEn gr). Targums are also present in Qumran for the books of Leviticus and (in two versions) Job which has also been considered a Mosaic writing, that is, a writing of the very old days (cf. b. B. Bat. 14b and 15a). (g) The authority of biblical texts at Qumran is most strongly documented by the existence of commentary works, in particular the unique type of the pesharim which explicitly quote and interpret the Scriptures either following a biblical text or assembling quotations referring to a particular topic,42 but also other commentaries.43 Since the genre of the pesher commentary is only found at Qumran, it is probable that the yaḥad community actually »invented« this kind of interpretation. Peter Flint counts six pesharim on Isaiah, two each on Hosea, Micah, and Zephaniah, one each on Nahum and Habakkuk, and three on the Psalms. Some others are unidentified or doubtful. Most interesting is the fact that there is also a fragmentary pesher on the Enochic Apocalypse of Weeks (4Q247), a section from 1 Enoch which was apparently important for eschatological calculation.44 Apart from the very special pesher-​commentaries, there are a number of other exegetical works probably from the yaḥad, for example, a Paraphrase of Genesis and Exodus stories (4Q252) which cannot be easily classified.45 For the vast number of so-​called »parabiblical« texts remodeling scriptural figures, certain aspects of the Pentateuch, or the prophetic writings, it cannot be ascertained whether they were composed within the yaḥad community or not. If the criteria of »sectarian« origin, in particular a certain community terminology, are valid, these texts rather testify to a usage, continuation, or creative combination of other writings already considered authoritative or exemplary in wider circles of Second Temple Judaism.  Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 296. are the Midrash on Eschatology and the 11QMelkizedek text. 43  Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 296. 44  Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 297. 45 Cf. Annette Steudel, »Die Rezeption autoritativer Texte in Qumran,« in Qumran und der Biblische Kanon (n. 7), 89–100, here 92. 41

42 Examples

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(h) Another important criterion is that books are »quoted or alluded to as authorities.«46 But the category of quotations is difficult to evaluate, »because the difference between definite allusion and general scriptural imagery is not always clear.«47 Within the group-​specific (or »sectarian«) writings, we can distinguish between quotations with introductory formulae like »as God said« (referring to Mal 1:10 in CD 6.13–14), »as he said« (in the Midrash on Eschatology, 4Q174 3.7 introducing 2 Sam 7:11), or »it is written« (as in CD 11.19–21, introducing a quotation from Proverbs), or, in other passages, quotes from Isaiah or Jeremiah.48 Other quotations from various writings (Genesis, Leviticus, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Psalms, Proverbs, Lamentations, but also Jubilees) lack a clear introductory formula but also point to some kind of authority.49 (i) The last criterion mentioned by Flint is more generally a »dependence on earlier books«: »Several Qumranic texts show a more general dependence on particular earlier works, which suggests that those works were authoritative to the later writers.«50 This is already true for books most probably composed outside the yaḥad, such as the Genesis Apocryphon, remodeling Genesis stories; the Book of Jubilees, drawing on Genesis and Exodus; or the Temple Scroll, heavily drawing on Exodus through Deuteronomy. In those cases, it is not always clear what authority is actually ascribed to the scriptural writings and how these writings are in some manner superseded by the Parabiblical Texts, which seem to claim an even higher degree of revelation, such as the Temple Scroll or also the Book of Jubilees. Flint also mentions Ezra (providing the term »yaḥad« = community in Ezra 4:3) and Kings (as a source of a retelling of Elijah stories in 4Q481a and 4Q482), but in view of the small number of manuscripts of both scriptural writings, it is doubtful what authority was actually ascribed to these books. In addition to Flint’s criteria, further evidence might be added that could point to a particular and somewhat »canonical« authority, especially from the observation of the manuscripts and their material shape. Here we might consider the use of palaeo-​Hebrew in a number of manuscripts (especially of the Torah), or also observations from the so-​called scribal marks (which are admittedly still difficult to interpret). But as the late Odil Hannes Steck has shown for the great Isaiah Scroll, those scribal marks in 1QIsaa seem to refer to a particular structuring and reading of a text, that is these scribal marks are evidence of exegetical work done on the text of Isaiah.51 46 Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 297–299, here 297; cf. also VanderKam and Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (n. 1), 175–176. 47  Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 297. 48 Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 298. 49  Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 298–299. 50  Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 299. 51  See O. H. Steck, Die erste Jesajarolle von Qumran(1QIsa): Schreibweise als Leseanleitung für ein Prophetenbuch (SBS 173.1; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1998).

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4.  Writings Considered Authoritative We can now use these criteria (and additional observations) with reference to the Qumran corpus, and – in a narrower selection – to the writings that probably originated in the yaḥad,52 to ask what can be said about the authoritative character of the Scriptures of Israel, in the later period of Qumran (1st century BCE – 1st century CE), in which the majority of manuscripts were crafted? What can be said about the views of the community and its practice regarding Scriptures and their authority, and what can be said about the situation and developments in the wider context of contemporary Palestinian Judaism? In the present context we can only discuss some important cases and hint to the remaining problems.53 (a) An authoritative or even »canonical« status seems to be clearly indicated for the Torah as a whole: almost all palaeo-​Hebrew manuscripts are manuscripts from the Pentateuch, and six manuscripts actually contain more than one book of the Torah, which points to the fact that the Pentateuch was already considered a unit. The Torah is often quoted as authoritative in the texts of the yaḥad54 and beyond, and also the quantity of manuscripts preserved is impressive, with a peak for Deuteronomy.55 However, in spite of the authoritative status of the book(s) of the Torah, it is quite striking that the text was still not completely unchangeable. In some manuscripts, passages are inserted or presented at a different place. Thus 4QpaleoLev contains material from Numbers, 4QDeutj has Ex 12:43–46 after Deut 8:20–21, and 4QNumb contains some inserted parts of speech from Deuteronomy. The problems are most obvious but not limited to the manuscripts of the so-​called »Reworked Pentateuch« 4Q158 and 4Q364–367, in which we can find a different song of Miriam which is much longer than the short hymn from Exod 15:21, and also some other insertions and expansions. Of course, this is not the case in the majority of the Torah manuscripts (as far as we can see from the preserved fragments), but at least such an expansion was 52  Such a selection is presented in Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 301, including 1QS, CD and the D texts, 1QM and the other War texts, 1QHa, 4QFlor (= 4Q174) and 4QTest (= 4Q175), 11QMelch and the pesharim. Of course, this selection could be questioned at various points, e. g.: Is the whole of 1QS »sectarian,« or instead is the Treatise on the Two Spirits »pre-​sectarian«? Or: Is the War Scroll based on a pre-​sectarian version which was, then, expanded and reworked? All these questions cannot be discussed here and show that every selection of »sectarian« texts is subject to questions. In any case, there is the expectation to come closer to the historical truth by focusing on the material that shows most clearly the signs of the yaḥad community. 53  On the biblical manuscripts, see the information in Lange, Handbuch der Textfunde vom Toten Meer (n. 16), and the presentation of the readings in Ulrich, The Biblical Qumran Scrolls (n. 16). 54  See the table in Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 302. 55  See the table in Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 302, and also the numbers given above.

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still possible at a time when the authority of the books of the Torah was already unquestioned. The intense scholarly discussion whether this is a biblical manuscript or simply an Apocryphal composition only shows that our categories of »biblical« or »canonical« may contain undue implications and that our common idea of what »canonicity« means is still inappropriate for the time when these Torah manuscripts were crafted. (b) Prophets: The authoritative status of the prophetic books also seems to be clear. Isaiah is attested in a large number of manuscripts (21), interpreted in various pesher commentaries, and quite frequently quoted in the writings from the yaḥad (e. g., the Damascus Document and 11QMelchizedek). Jeremiah and Ezekiel are less frequently attested among the biblical manuscripts, and there are no pesharim preserved on these two books. But Ezekiel is also quoted in the Damascus Document and in the Midrash on Eschatology.56 Furthermore, it is expanded upon and interpreted in the (perhaps »non-​sectarian«) Pseudo-​Ezekiel text. Jeremiah is also quoted in some other texts (4Q177, 4Q396, 397),57 chapters 40–44 are remodeled in the Jeremiah Apocryphon, and Lamentations is also quoted in 4Q179 (A Lament for Zion).58 Nevertheless, the origin of these texts in the yaḥad cannot be ascertained. However, Jeremiah and Ezekiel were clearly considered authoritative in the yaḥad, and Lamentations was probably included as a Jeremiah tradition, even if the status of the book is hard to ascertain.59 The authority of the book of the Twelve Prophets is also quite clear: It is considered to be a unified work as is attested in, for example, the large Greek manuscript from Naḥal Ḥever (8ḤevXIIgr).60 This unity is also likely attested to in the majority of the Hebrew manuscripts from Qumran. But of course it cannot be ascertained that all the other manuscripts representing parts of the Twelve actually contained the whole book. We have a number of pesharim on single parts of the book, on Hosea, Nahum, and Habakkuk, which clearly demonstrate that these books were considered prophetic and inspired in the yaḥad community, even with the interesting implication (expressed in 1QpHab 7.4–5) that the prophet himself, as the author of the book, did not know the real meaning of the words he uttered, so that only the present community, through the revelation given to the righteous teacher (and, through him, to the yaḥad) can now understand what the words actually referred to. 56  See the table in Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 302–303; and also VanderKam and Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (n. 1), 179. 57  See the table in Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 302–303. 58  Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 299. 59 Cf. also recently Eibert Tigchelaar, »Jeremiah’s Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Growth of a Tradition,« in Jeremiah’s Scriptures, ed. Hindy Najman and Konrad Schmid (JSJSup 173; Leiden: Brill, 2016), 289–306. 60  VanderKam and Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (n. 1), 139, summarize that »seven manuscripts indicate this to be so; the other three (4QXIId , 4QXIIf and 5Qamos) are so fragmentary that each contains parts of only one book.«

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A general problem can be considered with regard to the Jeremiah tradition. The book of Jeremiah, clearly considered an authoritative writing, is included within the Qumran corpus in different textual versions, the shorter version later known from the LXX, and the longer version, known from the Masoretic canon. As both texts are present in Hebrew in the Qumran corpus, we must conclude that they were read and studied simultaneously in the Qumran community. This means, that even if the book was considered authoritative or even »canonical,« its shape was not yet definitely finished. Again, our image of »canonicity« appears to be inappropriate with regard to the period in which the Qumran manuscripts were crafted and used. The question is whether this plurality of versions was merely a specific feature of a »sectarian« community or of a group of learned scribes and scholars, whereas the majority of contemporary Jews were already on the »pre-​Masoretic« track. But maybe such an explanation would be an all-​too smooth excuse for keeping up with our familiar views of authority and canonicity. We should rather reckon with the possibility that such a plurality of traditions was still extant in the wider context of contemporary Palestinian Judaism and that such a plurality of texts and traditions was still available or even made up the scriptural basis in the time of the formation of the early Christian traditions. (c) It is particularly striking that the book of Daniel, finalized only shortly before the period of the yaḥad community, is attested in eight Qumran manuscripts, that is, in more copies than Jeremiah or Ezekiel.61 The fragments cover all chapters of the book with the exception of chapter 12.62 Despite lacking chapter 12 in the Daniel manuscripts, we have a quotation of Dan 12:10 in the Midrash on Eschatology introduced with the phrase that it is »written in the book of Daniel the Prophet« (4Q174 2.3–4). So, it is clear that Daniel was already considered to be a prophet in the yaḥad community, although in the later formation of the Hebrew canon, the book was compiled within the writings, whereas the collection of the Septuagint and the later Christian tradition keeps it as a prophetic book. Furthermore, the Qumran corpus presents a number of additional Aramaic Daniel traditions, including three Pseudo-​Daniel texts (4Q243–245), the Prayer of Nabonidus, as a close parallel to Daniel 4, the so-​called »Son-​of-​God Text« 4Q246, related to Daniel 7, and the so-​called Four-​Kingdoms Text 4Q552–553 related to the pattern presented in Daniel 2 and 7. These texts draw upon material already contained within the book of Daniel. The Qumran corpus, therefore, shows not only the prophetic status and scriptural authority of the book of Daniel but also 61 On the Daniel manuscripts, see VanderKam and Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (n. 1), 137–138; and also Peter W. Flint, »The Prophet Daniel at Qumran,« in Eschatology, Messianism, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Craig A. Evans and Peter W. Flint (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 41–60. 62  Concerning the extant texts, cf. Eugene Ulrich, »Index of Passages in the ›Biblical Texts‹,« in The Texts from the Judean Desert: Indices and Introduction to the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Series, ed. Emanuel Tov (DJD 39; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 185–201, here 200.

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gives some glimpses into the formative period of the book or the traditions used there and, thus, in the formative period of Jewish Apocalypticism with which the Qumran community was closely related from its very roots.63 (d) What about the »prophetic« or »historical« writings from Joshua through Kings? Joshua is in the background of an »Apocryphon of Joshua,« which is also quoted in 4QTestimonia (4Q175), a messianic florilegium probably written by the same scribe who also copied the large manuscript 1QS. Although in contrast with the carefully crafted manuscript of 1QS, 4Q175 might be instead a private work, collecting some quotations put together by a learned member of the community. In any case, we can conclude that Joshua was studied by certain people in the yaḥad. Furthermore, the Qumran manuscripts include the two different versions of the book, known from the Masoretic text and the Septuagint. Therefore, the phenomenon of textual plurality observed for the book of Jeremiah is similar for the book of Joshua. Messianic passages of 2 Samuel are used in the Midrash on Eschatology (4Q174), demonstrating that this book – or relevant parts of it – were also considered authoritative in the community. However, the general number of manuscripts of all those works from Joshua to Kings is much lower than that of the books of Isaiah or of the Twelve Prophets.64 What was their authority? Were the books considered authoritative, »canonical,« or even »divinely inspired«? Or were they simply considered important as a report of Israel’s sacred history? Were they transmitted together with the other prophetic writings that refer to the same period of Israel’s history, but validated only with regard to some pivotal passages or sayings? It is very likely that we simply do not have the appropriate categories to evaluate their status within the community. (e) We can only briefly discuss the Psalter, which is attested in the large number of 36 (mostly quite fragmentary) manuscripts. Psalms are quoted frequently, used as prophetic texts, considered Davidic and inspired, and serve as a model for the poetry of the Hodayot and other poetic and liturgical texts composed in the yaḥad. But the problem of different book forms discovered with regard to Jeremiah is probably also posed in view of the Psalms, as not only the unique scroll 11QPsa with its additional pieces (»David’s Compositions,« Sirach 51, an »Apostrophe to Zion,« and the Psalm 151A–B, known from the Septuagint)65 are included but also some other Psalms manuscripts seem to represent a different 63 See also Jörg Frey, »Zur Bedeutung der Qumran-​Texte zum Verständnis der Apokalyptik im Frühjudentum und im Urchristentum,« in Apokalyptik und Qumran, ed. idem and Michael Becker (Einblicke 10; Paderborn: Bonifatius, 2007), 11–62, here 23–26. 64 See the table in Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 304, who provides the various manuscript statistics: Joshua: 2; Judges: 3; 1 Samuel: 4; 2 Samuel: 3; 1 Kings: 3; 2 Kings: 1. 65  See VanderKam and Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (n. 1), 125–127; and, more recently, the contents analysis by Christiane Böhm, Die Rezeption der Psalmen in den Qumranhandschriften, bei Philo von Alexandrien und im Corpus Paulinum (WUNT II/437; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 5–84.

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sequence of the Psalms than the Masoretic Psalter. Scholarship has, therefore, developed the view that there were different Psalters simultaneously used within the Qumran community, or at least present within the Qumran corpus.66 But many questions regarding the interpretation of the evidence is open due to the fact that most manuscripts are very fragmentary and do not support overly confident conclusions.67 But even if the great Psalms scroll from 11Q is considered an »apocryphal« composition and the peculiarities of some of the other Qumran psalms manuscripts might be explained from particular interests of usage, as Eva Jain claims in her recent monograph,68 the call for revision of traditional views about scriptural authority cannot be considered obsolete, as the similar situation – a plurality of textual forms in spite of the authority of the book or its author – is also present with regard to Jeremiah. (f) An interesting instance is also the book of Job, for which we also have a manuscript in palaeo-​Hebrew and also an Aramaic Targum of Job. These manuscripts point to the status of the book as an authoritative and supposedly very old writing. Other books from the Ketuvim, such as Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, or Sirach, as well as Chronicles and Ezra are uncertain in their status with a rather low number of manuscripts.69 (g) Most interesting is the question of whether books that did not make it into the later Hebrew canon actually had a higher authority, or even a »canonical« status within the Qumran community or – at least – in parts or certain periods of the community. Important candidates for such an inquiry are Tobit, certain parts of the Enochic corpus, and the book of Jubilees. With regard to Tobit, caution is appropriate.70 The writing, attested in the Qumran corpus in four Aramaic manuscripts and a Hebrew manuscript, was certainly read and retold within the community, but there is no indication that the narrative was ever considered authoritative or »scriptural.« 66 Cf. Peter W. Flint, The Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls and the Book of Psalms (STDJ 17; Leiden: Brill, 1997); idem, »The Book of Psalms in the Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls,« VT 48 (1998), 453– 472; Heinz-​Josef Fabry, »Der Psalter in Qumran,« in Der Psalter in Judentum und Christentum, ed. Erich Zenger (HBS 18; Freiburg i. B.: Herder, 1998), 137–163; Ulrich Dahmen, »Psalmentext und Psalmensammlung: Eine Auseinandersetzung mit P. W. Flint,« in Die Textfunde vom Toten Meer und der Text der Hebräischen Bibel, ed. idem and Armin Lange (Neukirchen-​Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2000), 109–126; idem, Psalmen‑ und Psalterrezeption im Frühjudentum: Rekonstruktion, Textbestand, Struktur und Pragmatik der Psalmenrolle 11QPsa aus Qumran (STDJ 49; Leiden: Brill, 2003) 67  This is the main conclusion in the recent work by Eva Jain, Psalmen oder Psalter. Materielle Rekonstruktion und inhaltliche Untersuchung der Psalmenhandschriften aus der Wüste Juda (STDJ 109; Leiden: Brill, 2014). 68  Even that conclusion is, however, an interpretation, and even if Jain tries to stick as much as possible to the sheer material evidence, she cannot avoid interpreting the evidence. The questions are, therefore, still open, and Jain’s possibly all-​too cautious conclusions remain somewhat disappointing. 69  See VanderKam and Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (n. 1), 180. 70  See VanderKam and Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (n. 1), 182.

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Things are different quite with regard to the Enochic traditions,71 from which we have a strikingly large number of twelve Aramaic manuscripts, including four manuscripts of the Astronomical Book (4Q208–211), the first (4QEnastra) is to still be dated in the late third or early second century BCE,72 so that the Qumran discoveries have led to a thorough reconsideration of the roots and origins of the Jewish Apocalyptic tradition – long before the Maccabean crisis or the finalization of the Book of Daniel.73 All parts of 1 Enoch with the only exception being the Parables (chapters 37–71) have been discovered at Qumran, including a Greek version of the Letter of Enoch in Cave 7 (7Q4, 7Q8, and 7Q12).74 Furthermore, some of the Aramaic manuscripts even contain several parts of 1 Enoch. Thus, the evidence already points to the growing (but not yet »finalized«) Enochic corpus. The age of some of the manuscripts might lead the conclusion that the book was held in high esteem but also that this manuscript was not regularly used. Was Enoch considered a prophetic book, as we can see later in the New Testament (e. g., in Jude 14 where Enoch is quoted and called a prophet)?75 An argument for such a conclusion could be that there is also a pesher commentary on the Apocalypse of Weeks (4Q247), and if the attribution is correct, this means that the yaḥad community actually commented on that foundational chronological passage from the Enochic tradition as it did with other prophetic writings or the Psalms.76 But interestingly, the Qumran rule texts do not quote or draw on Enochic passages. This is surprising, in light of the calendrical authority of the Enochic tradition (including the Book of Jubilees) and its significance regarding an eschatological chronology. This may be because the book was probably still in a state of growth and reshaping, and its status was not definitely fixed. It is, therefore, questionable when Flint considers it a certainty that 1 Enoch had canonical status among the Qumran community and therefore includes it among the number of prophetic books.77 71  On the Enoch tradition in the Qumran corpus, see also Frey, »Zur Bedeutung der Qumran-​Texte zum Verständnis der Apokalyptik« (n. 63), 26–29. 72  On the dating, see basically Józef T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: The Aramaic Fragments from Qumran (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 7 and 273; on the manuscripts, see further George W. E. Nickelsburg, »The Books of Enoch at Qumran. What We Know and What We Need to Think about,« in Antikes Judentum und Frühes Christentum. Festschrift Hartmut Stegemann, ed. Bernd Kollmann, Wolfgang Reinbold, and Annette Steudel (BZNW 97; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1999), 99–113; idem, 1 Enoch I (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 9–12. 73  See Frey, »Zur Bedeutung der Qumran-​Texte zum Verständnis der Apokalyptik« (n. 63), passim. 74  Cf. Émile Puech, »Sept fragments de la Lettre d’Hénoch (1 Hén 100, 103 et 105) dans la grotte 7 de Qumrân (=7QHén gr),« Revue de Qumrân 18 (1997), 313–323. 75  On the reception of Enoch in Jude, see Jörg Frey, Jude. 2 Peter: A Theological Commentary (tr. Kathleen Ess; Waco: Baylor University Press, 2018), 119–129. 76  The word pesher, however, is not preserved in the extant fragments. 77  VanderKam and Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (n. 1), 179.

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(h) The best candidate for »canonicity« of a writing that did not make it into the later Hebrew canon is Jubilees. The book is attested in the Qumran corpus in 14 or 15 Hebrew manuscripts. In addition to this, there are also some related texts: three manuscripts of »Pseudo-​Jubilees« (4Q225–227) and a manuscript that cites Jubilees by mentioning its Hebrew title (4Q228). Furthermore, Jubilees is referred to as an authoritative tradition in the Damascus Document (CD 16.3–4).78 There is also a text drawing on Jubilees (thus called Pseudo-​Jubilees) in a manner, other texts continue or draw on canonical prophets. These observations, together with the sheer number of manuscripts which far exceeds the attestation of most of the later »canonical« writings, most clearly points to an authoritative or even quasi-​canonical position of Jubilees at least for parts of the Qumran community.79 Jubilees, which is also part of the Enochic tradition, was apparently considered more authoritative than the other Enochic works or any other writing from the range of texts we are used to calling »Pseudepigrapha.« (i) There were possibly some other writings considered authoritative in the Qumran community: A famous quotation of such a »non-​canonical« text occurs in the Messianic florilegium 4QTestimonia, where the »Apocryphon of Joshua« is quoted as an authority or source for Messianic issues. After the mention of the Prophet like Moses (Exod 20:21 according to the Samaritan tradition), the Royal Messiah (Num 24:15–17) and the Priestly Messiah (Deut 33:8–10), the writing is quoted for introducing a negative »anti-​Messianic« figure in contrast with the three positive Messianic figures. But as mentioned above, the text of only one sheet is probably a private note for study or discussion than a public text, and it is striking that the entry about the three Messianic figures in 1QS, probably crafted or copied by the same scribe as 4QTestimonia, does not contain the reference to the figure from the Apocryphon of Joshua. There are some more references to other texts as a kind of authority. In CD IV 14–18, there is an allusion to a writing of Levi, the son of Jacob, although we do not know an exact parallel in the preserved writings ascribed to Levi. The next parallel is in the Greek Testament of Dan 2:4 (from the later Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs). The example, however, shows that it was possible to refer to some other texts as authoritative, most of which are no longer extant. Mention should also be made of the enigmatic Book of Hagi/Hagu, mentioned several times in the Qumran writings and also the pre-​sectarian sapiential texts (1Q/4QInstruction),80 but the shape and contents of that book are unclear.

78  Cf. Flint, »Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls« (n. 31), 294; VanderKam and Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (n. 1), 178 and 196–99. 79  Cf. also Steudel, »Die Rezeption autoritativer Texte in Qumran« (n. 45), 95. 80  Cf. Steudel, »Die Rezeption autoritativer Texte in Qumran« (n. 45), 95.

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5. Conclusions Is it possible to compose a »Dead Sea Scrolls Bible,« an enterprise undertaken by T&T Clark publishers and clearly inspired from a publishers’ selling perspective?81 This book, boldly entitled »Bible,« presenting English translations of the portions and fragments of »biblical« books as actually preserved in the Qumran corpus is structured in three parts, according to the later Hebrew canon. The first one is called »Torah,« that is, writings related to Moses, including the five books of the actual Torah, the Pentateuch, and Jubilees, which actually belongs to the Enochic tradition but is also related to Moses. The question remains whether Jubilees can simply be added to the Torah, or whether the book actually aims at superseding the Pentateuch with an even »higher« form of revelation, an angel dictating to Moses from the heavenly tablets. These conceptual problems are not considered in the so-​called »Dead Sea Scrolls Bible.« Furthermore, possibly due to a publisher’s concern to not disturb readers, the portions from the Book of Jubilees preserved at Qumran are not included in the present »Bible,« in spite of a heading and introductory passage on Jubilees within the first part of the »Torah.«82 The concept of that book is, therefore, quite incoherent and problematic. The second part »Prophets,« then, includes the preserved portions from the books of the second part of the Hebrew canon, Joshua through Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve, along with 1 Enoch and Daniel. Thus, Daniel is added to the prophets along with 1 Enoch (of which only larger portions are preserved at Qumran whereas the part of the Parables was possibly still in the making), whereas the Enochic Book of Jubilees is presented in the context of the Torah. Again, the portions from Enoch are not presented in translation, although their »canonicity« is suggested in the introductory section,83 with a rather poor reason given for that omission: »because the text is available elsewhere, and because of the admittedly speculative nature of including it even in a Dead Sea Scrolls Bible.«84 But if things are admittedly so speculative, why create a separate part? And if Enoch could be considered authoritative, why not present the texts of that book (and of Jubilees)? The third part, called »Other Books,« includes the Writings from the later Hebrew canon without Esther (which is only mentioned as missing in the Qumran corpus with some considerations about the reasons85) but with the addition of Ben Sira, the Epistle of Jeremiah, and Tobit, which are presented in their extant 81  Martin G. Abegg, Peter W. Flint, and Eugene Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible: The Oldest Known Bible Translated for the First Time Into English (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999). For the scholarly basis, see also the tables and argument in VanderKam and Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (n. 1), 178–180. 82 Cf. Abegg, Flint, and Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible (n. 81), 196–198. 83  Cf. Abegg, Flint, and Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible (n. 81), 480–481. 84 Abegg, Flint, and Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible (n. 81), 481. 85  Abegg, Flint, and Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible (n. 81), 630–631.

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portions, although the authoritative character of Tobit is quite questionable. On the other hand, the portions from the books later considered part of the Hebrew canon, but uncertain in their status at Qumran (e. g., Chronicles or Ezra–Nehemiah) are presented in the »Dead Sea Scrolls Bible.« This procedure of simply adding some writings to the three categories of the later Hebrew canon (and attributing Daniel to the Prophets) is certainly questionable as we do not know about the precise status of authority of many of those writings. And of course, the term »Bible« (with the implication that all those books are included in one book) is anachronistic and misleading. This is not only a problem of a popularizing English »edition« of the Scriptures considered authoritative for the Qumran community. The leading German standard introduction to the Old Testament states »In general, the canon of Qumran is equal to the canon of the Hebrew Bible.«86 This statement is wrong, even with the qualification that the Qumranites did not yet have a closed »list« of books that made up their Bible. The historical truth is more complicated, in various respects: (a) We have to see that the Qumran corpus (thus representing wide parts of the literary activity in Judaea in the period before 70 CE) does not yet give evidence for a fixed list of »canonical« texts, although there certainly was a strong feeling about the authority of certain texts, including the Pentateuch, of course; the Prophets, in particular Isaiah and the Twelve; and also the Psalms, read in a prophetic manner.87 We could consider this »core group« of texts a kind of »Canon within the Canon«88; however, it is still the question whether we should actually speak of such a wider canon including, for example, Ezra–Nehemiah or Chronicles, which are almost unattested in Qumran. It is also striking that, for halakhic reasoning, Qumran »sectarian« writings usually refer to those texts known from the later Hebrew canon, rather than to others. Enoch, for example, is not cited for halakhic issues, although its relevance for calendar issues is obvious. Consequently, the idea of a totally »open« canon might also be inappropriate. (b) »Canonical« authority seems to be presupposed in particular for the Pentateuch, even in the debate with outsiders: This can be shown from the halakhic text 4QMMT where quotes from the Torah are used in part B to support the particular halakhic views of the »we-​group« in debate with an outside viewpoint, and prophetic texts from the Torah are used in part C to support a particular view of history.89 At least with regard to the Torah, the authority was considered

86   Heinz-​Josef Fabry, »Der Text und seine Geschichte,« in Die Entstehung des Alten Testaments, ed. Erich Zenger (7th edition; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2008), 36–59, here 45. 87  Cf. Steudel, »Die Rezeption autoritativer Texte in Qumran« (n. 45), 90. 88  Thus Tigchelaar, »Wie haben die Qumrantexte unsere Sicht der kanonischen Prozesse verändert?« (n. 8), 81. 89  Cf. Steudel, »Die Rezeption autoritativer Texte in Qumran« (n. 45), 98

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a literary authority, not an oral or mediated one. This is evidenced by the rule in 1QS 6.6–8 which demands that members should study in the book of the Law. On the other hand, a diachronic analysis of 1QS might suggest that earlier versions of the rule were still lacking some scriptural quotations, so that we may assume that the references to the Scriptures, not only the Torah but also the Prophets, was gradually enhanced during the lifetime of the Qumran community. The community is, thus, in a period or process of »scripturalization.« Most interesting is the fact that the writings composed in the yaḥad after the redaction of the Damascus Document (ca. 100 BCE) were only exegetical writings, thematic and continuous pesharim.90 (c) The authority of those books was felt strongly in spite of various book forms, which were studied, transmitted, and stored together without any institutional need of harmonizing or standardizing the texts to a »valid« form. This is, possibly, the most important observation from the Qumran evidence: In spite of the authority of the books mentioned, there was still a certain openness of the form of some books, and an even greater fluidity of the text. Although the Pentateuch was certainly attributed canonical authority, it was not impossible to insert additions, such as those in the Reworked Pentateuch, and the debate whether this is a biblical manuscript or an »Apocryphal« composition obviously mirrors our problems with the categories: This is not an ancient debate. Thus, it is generally difficult to draw a clear border between Scripture and a »reworked,« »continued,« or interpreted Scripture. Did the Qumranites really see a difference between the book of Jeremiah and Lamentations, or between the book of Ezekiel and continuations such as Pseudo-​Ezekiel texts?91 (d) The most general methodological point the Qumran corpus has brought for our understanding is the reshaping of our concept of authority and canonicity in terms of the pattern of a canonical process which is not determined by its »end product,« nor directed by a distinctive institution, but that goes on differently in different groups and at different places. This process started early and was not finished even with the debates of the Rabbis in the Tannaitic period. While a book or its alleged author could be considered prophetic, the text was still open to some changes, relocations, or expansions, and the fact that various forms existed side by side was no decisive problem for its readers or interpreters. Moreover, the body of writings considered by the Qumran covenanters to be authoritative was not uniform. Judges and/or Kings are certainly less important than the Psalms and Isaiah, and even a very particular text such as the Apocalypse of Weeks could stimulate pesher interpretation.

 Thus Steudel, »Die Rezeption autoritativer Texte in Qumran« (n. 45), 99.  Cf. Tigchelaar, »Wie haben die Qumrantexte unsere Sicht der kanonischen Prozesse verändert?« (n. 8), 82. 90 91

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It is this understanding of fluid authority or also spiritually interpreted authority which could also inspire our views about the Scriptures, in various Jewish groups of that period, including the early Jesus movement and the New Testament.

2 Baruch, 4 Ezra, and Israel’s Scriptures Matthias Henze 1. Introduction Scholars working on the rich literature of what has come to be called Early Judaism – Judaism roughly from the time of Alexander the Great to the emperor Hadrian – have long noted the predominance of the Bible in their discipline. It is often taken for granted that the books of the Bible, understood as a collection of authoritative writings that are held to be divinely inspired and therefore stand apart from all other books, were as authoritative in Early Judaism as they have been since the era of the Sages. This assumption, which is ubiquitous but rarely made explicit, has had several consequences for how ancient Jewish literature has commonly been interpreted. It has meant, for example, that the books of the Hebrew Bible are considered to be normative, whereas other books are not. Instead of reading all early Jewish writings on their own grounds, non-​biblical books are typically read in relation to the Bible: they become extra-​biblical, para-​ biblical, pseudo-​biblical, or the Bible rewritten. The predominance of the biblical paradigm has also meant that the way in which we read early Jewish books, and the methods and categories we employ in doing so, are borrowed from modern historical biblical scholarship.1 One group of ancient Jewish texts that has particularly been affected by this trend are early Jewish apocalypses. Apocalyptic texts tend to be different from most biblical texts in both form and content, and reading them in relation to the canonical texts has not always served them well. This point was made already forty years ago by Michael E. Stone. In an article titled »The Book of Enoch and Judaism in the Third Century B. C. E.« published in 1978, Stone voiced his skepticism about the scholarly urge to relate all ancient Jewish literature to the Bible. Two years prior, in 1976, Józef Tadeusz Milik had published his classic study of 1 Enoch, The Books of Enoch, thus raising the scholarly awareness of 1 Enoch, a hitherto largely unknown text.2 Stone took advantage of this new interest in 1 See, for example, Eva Mroczek, »The Hegemony of the Biblical in the Study of Second Temple Literature,« JAJ 6 (2015), 2–35. 2  Józef T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumrân Cave 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976).

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1 Enoch to make a more general observation about the place of this little-​known apocalypse in the canonical processes, and, more specifically, about the origin of apocalyptic literature in general: In principle, there is no reason to think that the body of literature that is transmitted as the Hebrew Bible is a representative collection of all types of Jewish literary creativity down to the fourth century. It is a selection of texts and the process of transmission and preservation that created this selection reflects the theological judgment of certain groups in Judah and Jerusalem before and after the Babylonian exile. It is specious, therefore, when faced by a third-​century phenomenon, either to seek its roots in the Bible or to relegate it to foreign influences. Circles other than those transmitting the biblical books existed, or else those involved in transmitting the biblical books did not allow a considerable part of the intellectual culture of their day to be expressed in them.3

Stone makes the perhaps obvious yet all-​important point that the books included in what came to be the Bible are not all there was in the library of Second Temple Judaism. The biblical books, carefully selected and declared authoritative by »certain groups in Judah and Jerusalem,« are not even representative of all forms of early Jewish literature. Other, lesser known texts were in circulation that never made it into the Hebrew Bible. In order to understand the origin of these texts, it is not enough to look either to the Bible or to foreign influences, as has typically been done, particularly by those scholars who seek to explain the rise of apocalyptic thinking in early Judaism.4 Rather, we need to recognize, in Stone’s words, the existence of »circles other than those transmitting the biblical books.« Stone’s was an early call to recognize the diversity of Second Temple Judaism and not to assume that the emerging biblical canon stood at the centre of all things. In this essay I will focus on two texts, 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra, two Jewish apocalypses from the late first century CE. Like 1 Enoch, these are apocalyptic compositions; and like 1 Enoch, they have a complicated relationship with the biblical canon. 1 Enoch has never been part of the Hebrew, Greek, or Latin Bibles, but it is part of the Ethiopic Bible, and, as Jörg Frey writes in this volume, no fewer than eleven Aramaic fragmented manuscripts of 1 Enoch were discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and so there are good reasons to believe that 1 Enoch may have been considered authoritative by the members of the Qumran community.5 3 Michael E. Stone, »The Book of Enoch and Judaism in the Third Century B. C. E.,« CBQ 40 (1978), 479–492, here 490–491. 4  See, e. g., Paul D. Hanson, The Dawn of Apocalyptic (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975); and his »Apocalypticism,« IDBSup. (1976), 28–34; the scholarly discussion about the origins of the apocalyptic worldview is summarized by John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature (3rd edition; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 15–46. 5 See Jörg Frey, »The Authority of the Scriptures of Israel in the Qumran Corpus,« in the present volume. On 1 Enoch, see Michael A. Knibb, Essays on the Book of Enoch and Other Early Jewish Texts and Traditions (Leiden: Brill, 2009); idem, »The Book of Enoch or Books of Enoch? The Textual Evidence for 1 Enoch,« and Loren T. Stuckenbruck, »The Early Traditions related to 1 Enoch from the Dead Sea Scrolls: An Overview and Assessment,« both in The

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2 Baruch and 4 Ezra have much in common – in origin, content, and transmission.6 Both are preserved in a Syriac biblical manuscript, the Codex Ambrosianus, or Milan Bible (7a1), of the seventh century CE.7 Liv Ingeborg Lied has argued that the compiler of the Codex Ambrosianus has arranged the books in the codex roughly in their chronological order, with the intention of creating a particular version of the history of ancient Israel from creation to the great Jewish War.8 Thus, the order of the last books in the codex runs as follows: Susanna / Esther / Judith / Ben Sira / 1–2 Chronicles / 2 Baruch / 4 Ezra / Ezra-​Nehemiah / 1–4 Maccabees / and book 6 of Josephus’s Jewish War.9 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra were included in the codex, Lied suggests persuasively, to fill in some gaps in the history of ancient Israel and to shed more light on the crucially important time of the Babylonian exile than the books of the Hebrew Bible could offer. 2 Baruch precedes 4 Ezra in the codex because its opening scene is set on the eve of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, whereas 4 Ezra famously begins »in the thirtieth year after the destruction of our city« (4 Ezra 3.1),10 that is, three decades later. It therefore follows 2 Baruch. The aim of this paper is to gain some clarity about the specific status of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra vis-​à-​vis the emerging biblical canons, to the extent that this is possible. It will be helpful to organize our discussion around three questions that give the essay its structure. First, I begin by considering the scriptural basis of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra. Which ancient texts and associated traditions are already considered authoritative in these two apocalypses and how are these base texts used? Second, I wonder about the authoritative status of the two apocalypses themselves. What claims to authority do the authors of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra make for their own books, and how are these claims made? And third, I briefly turn to the reception histories of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra. What can we say about the Early Enoch Literature, ed. Gabriele Boccaccini and John J. Collins (JSJSup 121; Leiden: Brill, 2007), respectively 21–30 and 41–63.  6 Matthias Henze, »4 Ezra and 2 Baruch: Literary Composition and Oral Performance in First-​Century Apocalyptic Literature,« JBL 131 (2012), 181–200.  7 On the textual histories of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra, see Matthias Henze, Jewish Apocalypticism in Late First Century Israel: Reading Second Baruch in Context (TSAJ 142; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 16–21; Michael E. Stone, Fourth Ezra: A Commentary on the Book of Fourth Ezra (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 1–9; Lutz Doering, »Textual History of 2 Baruch,« and Karina Martin Hogan, »Textual History of 4 Ezra,« both in Textual History of the Bible, Vol. 2B: Baruch/Jeremiah, Daniel (Additions), Ecclesiasticus/Ben Sira, Enoch, Esther (Additions), Ezra, ed. Frank Feder and Matthias Henze (Leiden: Brill, 2019), respectively 39–44 and 471–481.  8 Liv I. Lied, »Die syrische Baruchapokalypse und die ›Schriften‹  – Die syrische Baruchapokalypse als ›Schrift‹,« in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the Scriptures, ed. Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar (BETL 270; Leuven: Peeters, 2014), 327–349; and eadem, »2 Baruch and the Syriac Codex Ambrosianus (7a1): Studying Old Testament Pseudepigrapha in Their Manuscript Context,« JSP 26 (2016), 67–107.  9  Antonio Maria Ceriani, ed., A Facsimile Edition of the Peshitto Old Testament Based on Codex Ambrosianus (7a1) (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2013). 10  All translations are taken from Michael E. Stone and Matthias Henze, 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch: Translations, Introductions, and Notes (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013).

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transmission of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra, their manuscript traditions, and their status in early Judaism and early Christianity? In other words, I begin with the texts and traditions that are already considered scriptural in 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra, then look at the self-​presentation of our two texts and their own respective claims to authority, and end with a short consideration of the status of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra themselves based on their textual histories.11

2.  Scripture in 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra Which ancient texts and traditions are considered authoritative in 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra? Not surprisingly, the authors of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra appear to have been familiar with many of the books that are now in the Hebrew Bible. They are intimately conversant with Scripture and constantly allude to it, so much so, that there are few passages in either apocalypse that are not informed, in one way or another, by what was to become Scripture. Naturally, some biblical books were more influential than others. Both 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra make ample use of the book of Genesis, for example, though their interest is not in the book per se or even in specific text passages but in some of the book’s main figures: Adam, who brought sin and mortality into the world (2 Bar 17–18; 48.42–50; 4 Ezra 3.20–27; 7.116–126);12 and Abraham, the »beloved of God,« to whom God revealed the secrets of the eschaton (2 Bar 4.3–4; 4 Ezra 3.12–14) and whose name is synonymous with Israel’s past (4 Ezra 6.8–10), a period in Israel’s history that marked the beginning of eschatological expectations (2 Bar 57.1–3).13 Exodus and Deu11 There

are only few programmatic essays that explore in any systematic way the awareness and use of Scripture in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha and at the same time look at the authoritative claims made by the early Jewish and Christian authors themselves. One example is James L. Kugel, »Early Interpretation: The Common Background of Late Forms of Biblical Exegesis,« in Early Biblical Interpretation, ed. idem and Rowan A. Greer (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1986), 13–106. See also Robert A. Kraft, »Scripture and Canon in Jewish Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha,« in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, Vol. 1: From the Beginnings to the Middle Ages (Until 1300), ed. Magne Saebø (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 199–216. With regard to 1 Enoch, see George W. E. Nickelsburg, »Scripture in 1 Enoch and 1 Enoch as Scripture,« in Texts and Contexts: Biblical Texts in Their Textual and Scriptural Contexts: Essays in Honor of Lars Hartmann, ed. Tord Fornberg and David Hellholm (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1995), 333–354; and for 4 Ezra, James R. Davila, »Seven Theses Concerning the Use of Scripture in 4 Ezra and the Latin Vision of Ezra,« in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the Scriptures, ed. Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar (Leuven: Peeters, 2014), 305–326. 12 John R. Levison, Portraits of Adam in Early Judaism: From Sirach to 2 Baruch (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1988); and, more recently, his »Adam and Eve,« in The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism, ed. John J. Collins and Daniel C. Harlow (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 300–302. 13  Jon D. Levenson, Inheriting Abraham: The Legacy of the Patriarch in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012).

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teronomy are frequently invoked, mostly in conjunction with Moses, who, like Abraham, was the recipient of extensive esoteric revelations (2 Bar 4.5; 59; 4 Ezra 12.37–39; 14.1–12), who gave Israel the Torah (2 Bar 17–18; 4 Ezra 3.19; 12.42; 14.20), and on whom the characters of Baruch and Ezra are modelled. Both Baruch and Ezra are community leaders who cite the Mosaic command to choose life and not death in an attempt to place themselves in a direct line with Moses (Deut 30:15, 19; 2 Bar 19.1; 46.3; 4 Ezra 7.129). The authors of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra develop a pattern of sin and punishment based on the book of Deuteronomy: the recent destruction of Jerusalem is seen as an act of divine punishment,14 and the remnant community that was spared and for whom the books are written now needs to repent in order to secure passage into the world to come, an apocalyptic appropriation of traditional Deuteronomic theology that has its origin in the book of Deuteronomy.15 There are historical overviews in both books, in the vision of the cloud in 2 Baruch 53–74, and right in the first vision in 4 Ezra 3.4–36, that draw on the Pentateuch, the Deuteronomistic History, and, to a lesser degree, on 1 and 2 Chronicles. 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra are apocalyptic texts, with a deep concern for eschatology. It does not surprise to see the biblical prophets play an influential role, including the prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, and others. The prophetic influence is especially pronounced in 2 Baruch. In the Hebrew Bible, Baruch is the scribe of the prophet Jeremiah, and 2 Baruch presents itself as a sequel to the biblical book of Jeremiah, both in form and in content: in form, since 2 Baruch is cast as a prophetic book in the biblical tradition, and in content, since Baruch here becomes the successor of Jeremiah (2 Bar 2.1; 5.5; 9.1–10.5; 33.1).16 The book of Daniel is invoked frequently in 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra because of its apocalyptic character.17 In 4 Ezra Daniel’s influence is made explicit in Ezra’s fifth vision, where the interpreting angel offers this interpretation of Ezra’s symbolic dream vision: »The 14 Michael E. Stone, »Reactions to Destructions of the Second Temple: Theology, Perception, and Conversion,« JSJ 12 (1981), 195–204. 15  George W. E.  Nickelsburg, »Torah and the Deuteronomic Scheme in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha: Variations and Some Noteworthy Examples of Its Absence,« in Das Gesetz im frühen Judentum und im Neuen Testament: Festschrift für Christoph Burchard zum 75. Geburtstag, ed. Dieter Sänger and Matthias Konradt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006), 222–235. 16  Matthias Henze, »From Jeremiah to Baruch: Pseudepigraphy in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch,« in Biblical Traditions in Transmission: Essays in Honour of Michael A. Knibb, ed. Charlotte Hempel and Judith Lieu (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 157–177; and idem and Liv I. Lied, »Jeremiah, Baruch, and Their Books: Three Phases in a Changing Relationship,« in Jeremiah’s Scriptures: Production, Reception, Interaction, and Transformation, ed. Hindy Najman and Konrad Schmid (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 330–353. Mark F. Whitters, »Baruch as Ezra in 2 Baruch,« JBL 132 (2013), 569–584, argues that Baruch’s leadership role is partially modelled after that of biblical Ezra. 17  Benjamin E. Reynolds, The Apocalyptic Son of Man in the Gospel of John (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck), 50–51.

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eagle which you saw coming up from the sea is the fourth kingdom which appeared in a vision to your brother Daniel« (4 Ezra 12.11). It is worth mentioning that there are several scriptural books that do not appear to have been considered by the authors of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra, among them Ruth and Esther. In this regard, the use of Scripture in 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra is not unlike what we find in the New Testament and in the Dead Sea Scrolls.18 While the presence of Scripture in 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra is pervasive, there are very few direct quotations of, or unmistakable allusions to scriptural books. When in the opening narrative of 2 Baruch the seer protests that God’s intention to destroy Jerusalem violates the divine promises of old, God counters that the prophecy of Isaiah 49 that God will always protect the holy city was intended for the heavenly Jerusalem, not the earthly city in which Baruch lives. God is here quoting Scripture. »Or do you perhaps think that this is the city about which I said: ›On the palms of my hands I have inscribed you‹ [Isa 49:16]?« (2 Bar 4.2). This is the closest we come to a direct quote from Scripture in 2 Baruch. Much more commonly, the authors of both texts make use of biblical paraphrase. For example, both 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra invoke Moses and refer to Deut 30:19, »I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death« (2 Bar 19.1; 46.3; 4 Ezra 7.129).19 Apart from a small handful of indirect quotations from Scripture, the apocalyptic authors focus on biblical characters and stories and on the traditions that came to be associated with them. Especially pronounced is their interest in interpretive traditions that are not scriptural, in the sense that they are not part of our Bibles.20 Some of these interpretive traditions are known to us from other early 18 A

possible exception is the expression, »[they] have fled under your [God’s] wings« in 2 Bar 41.4, which, according to Pierre-​Maurice Bogaert, L’Apocalypse syriaque de Baruch. Introduction, Traduction du Syriaque et Commentaire (SC 144/145; Paris: Cerf, 1969), 2.75, is taken from Ruth 2:12. With regard to Ruth in the New Testament, the genealogy of Jesus in Matt 1:3–5 (cf. Luke 3:32–33) includes the names of Perez, Aram/Ram, Amminadab, Nahshon, Salmon, Boaz, Obed, Jesse and David that are also found in the genealogy in Ruth 4:18–22; less certain is the possible allusion in 2 John 8 to Ruth 1:6. Esther is never mentioned in the New Testament, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra. As for the Dead Sea Scrolls, there are four fragments of the book of Ruth and none of Esther. See Timothy H. Lim, »Authoritative Scriptures and the Dead Sea Scrolls,« and Jörg Frey, »Critical Issues in the Investigation of the Scrolls and the New Testament,« both in The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Timothy H. Lim and John J. Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 303–322 and 517–545. 19  Hindy Najman (with Itamar Manoff and Eva Mroczek), »How to Make Sense of Pseudonymous Attribution: The Cases of 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch,« in A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism, ed. Matthias Henze (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 308–336; Michael Becker, »Rewriting the Bible: 4 Ezra and Canonization of Scripture,« in Rewritten Bible Reconsidered: Proceedings of the Conference in Karkku, Finland, August 24–26, 2006, ed. Antti Laato and Jacques van Ruiten (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2008), 79–101, here 82. 20  In this regard, 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra are no different than many other early Jewish readers of the Bible: cf. Michael E. Stone and Theodore A. Bergren, Biblical Figures Outside the Bible (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1998); see also the many examples in James L. Kugel,

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Jewish and Christian texts, whereas others appear to be original to 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra. In many of these cases we see the familiar conflation of the biblical text and its interpretive traditions, to the extent that the two have become one and the same. Put differently, when 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra make use of Scripture, they do so in a particular interpretive context. For them there is no such thing as the biblical text only; the biblical text and its received traditions always blend together. To give a concrete example, early in 2 Baruch God tells the seer about the heavenly Jerusalem that God had previously shown to Adam, Abraham, and Moses: I showed it to Adam before he sinned, but when he transgressed the commandment, it was taken away from him, as was also Paradise. And after these [things], I showed it to my servant Abraham by night, between the halves of the sacrifices. And furthermore, I also showed it to Moses on Mount Sinai when I showed him the likeness of the tabernacle and of all its implements. And now, see, it is preserved with me, as is also Paradise (4.3–6).

This short passage revolves around three individuals, Adam, Abraham, and Moses. The reader immediately understands the biblical allusions – to Genesis 3, 15, and Exodus 19 – but the author’s interest is clearly not in the biblical text, or even in the story as it is told in the Bible. These authors are interested in the expanded exegetical traditions associated with these stories, and, in this particular case, especially in the fate of the heavenly Jerusalem, which is mentioned in none of the three biblical base texts. God built Jerusalem even before God intended to create Paradise (2 Bar 4.3). Adam, Abraham and Moses all saw the heavenly city, but God took it away from them, and it now rests with God until the end of time.21 There is a rich tradition in early Judaism about the heavenly Jerusalem that goes back to Ezekiel’s vision of the new temple.22 The author of 2 Baruch almost certainly knew of that tradition but chose to go a different route. Instead of dwelling on the measurements and architecture of the new Jerusalem, 2 Baruch emphasizes the city’s primordial origin and its association with God’s earliest revelation to Adam, Abraham, and Moses. Another example. Later in the book in the vision of the cloud, 2 Baruch includes a long description of the wicked king Manasseh, his evil deeds, and his punishments (2 Bar 64). The biblical base texts are 2 Kings 21 and 2 Chronicles 33. King Manasseh was a colourful monarch who spawned multiple fanciful traditions, many of which the author of 2 Baruch knew and used. But there are also elements in 2 Baruch’s version of the Manasseh story that are without parallel, most notably the account of his death: »For although his petition was heard with the Most High, in the end he fell into the brazen horse, and the brazen horse

Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible As It Was at the Start of the Common Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). 21  Henze, Jewish Apocalypticism (n. 7), 78–83. 22  Lorenzo DiTommaso, The Dead Sea New Jerusalem Text (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005).

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was melted« (2 Bar 64.8).23 2 Baruch follows the basic story in the Bible, but the main interpretive ingredients of this version of Manasseh’s story go well beyond the biblical text and include several traditions we won’t find in Scripture. Clearly the authors of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra were familiar with much more than just the biblical text. To summarize, a strong case can be made that the authors of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra were aware of many of the books that later came to be considered biblical. Robert Kraft calls this »Scripture consciousness,« a shared awareness among early Jewish authors of a body of authoritative writings.24 Unfortunately, the evidence does not permit us to venture much beyond this admittedly general claim. »Scripture consciousness« is not the same as »canonical consciousness,« for example, an awareness of a particular text form and/or of a limited collection of authoritative writings at the exclusion of others. The mention of a few personal names of certain biblical figures in 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra, the use of certain biblical phrases, and the imaginative reinterpretation of certain biblical stories cannot be seen as indicators that our authors were consciously following a particular text form that alone was considered authoritative at the time. The fact that in 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra, the text of Scripture and its interpretations have become inseparable makes it impossible to describe the exact nature of the scriptural base text with any degree of certainty. Most importantly, the authors of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra were primarily interested in some of the biblical characters, certain biblical motifs, and in the interpretive afterlives of these characters and motifs.

3.  2 Baruch, 4 Ezra, and Claims to Authority Only few early Jewish writers refer to themselves in their books. One of them is the author of the book of Ben Sira. In a brief postscript to his book in Sir 50:27–28, the author, a certain Jesus son of Eleazar son of Sirach of Jerusalem, introduces himself by name and comments on the process of writing his book. His »mind poured forth wisdom. Happy are those who concern themselves with these things, and those who lay them to heart will become wise.« The book of Ben Sira is worth reading, in the words of its author, because it was written by a known sage, and because those who commit themselves to serious study will be »happy« (the language may allude to Ps 1:1–2) and become wise (compare Dan 12:3 and 4 Ezra 14.13).25 23  Matthias Henze, »King Manasseh of Judah in Early Judaism and Christianity,« in On Prophets, Warriors, and Kings: Former Prophets Through the Eyes of Their Interpreters, ed. George J. Brooke and Ariel Feldman (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2016), 183–228. 24  Kraft, »Scripture and Canon« (n. 11), 201–203. 25  See Michael A. Knibb, »Apocalyptic and Wisdom in 4 Ezra,« JSJ 13 (1982), 56–74, here 62.

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For the authors of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra it was not enough simply to compose their books. They felt the need to make authoritative claims for their writings. And yet, the strategies they employ differ significantly from what we see in Ben Sira. In brief, unlike Jesus son of Eleazar, who gives his name and who relies on the authority of his own learning and standing, these authors never disclose their identity. Instead, they maintain that their books are inspired and that what is written in them is based on revelation, a claim similar to the claims made, explicitly or implicitly, by the authors of the biblical books. Of the variety of ways in which the authors of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra assert authority, I mention four. The first and perhaps most obvious literary technique intended to assert authority is the use of pseudepigraphy.26 Pseudonymous attribution is a literary device that actively engages with, elaborates on, and reinterprets a particular scriptural tradition.27 Instead of understanding pseudepigraphy as an attempt to deceive the reader and to make false claims that the text in question is something that it actually is not,28 a more helpful understanding of the use of pseudepigraphy as a rhetorical device recognizes that the choice of protagonist is deliberate, and that writing under a pseudonym is a technique intended to invoke scriptural figures, together with the rich post-​biblical traditions that came to be associated with them. In our case these figures are Baruch, companion of Jeremiah and witness of the destruction of the temple, and Ezra, restorer of the Mosaic Torah and community leader of the returning exiles.29 Both individuals are invoked and, at the same time, transformed in our texts. In the Hebrew Bible, Baruch and Ezra are both scribes, Baruch the scribe of the prophecies of Jeremiah (Jer 36), and Ezra scribe of the Mosaic Torah (Ezra 7:1–5; Neh 7:72–8:12). In 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra, they continue to compose texts, but now their scribal activity is expanded,  Wolfgang Speyer, Die literarische Fälschung im heidnischen und christlichen Altertum: Ein Versuch ihrer Deutung (München: Beck, 1971); Pierre-​Maurice Bogaert, »Le Nom de Baruch dans la Litérature Pseudépigraphique. L’Apocalypse Syriaque et le Live Deutérocanonique,« in La littérature juive entre Tenach et Mischna. Quelques problèmes, ed. Willem C. Van Unnik (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 56–72; Hindy Najman, »How Should We Conceptualize Pseudepigrapha? Imitation and Emulation in 4 Ezra,« in Flores Florentino: Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Early Jewish Studies in Honour of Florentino García Martínez, ed. Anthony Hilhorst, Émile Puech, and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 529–536; Jörg Frey et alii, ed., Pseudepigraphie und Verfasserfiktion in frühchristlichen Briefen (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009); Bart D. Ehrman, Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 27  Najman, »How to Make Sense of Pseudonymous Attribution« (n. 19), 326. 28  According to Annette Y. Reed, »The Modern Invention of ›Old Testament Pseudepigrapha‹,« JTS 60 (2009), 403–436, this is how Johann Albert Fabricius (1668–1736), who coined the term »Pseudepigrapha,« intended it to be understood. See his Codex Pseudepigraphus Veteris Testamenti (Hamburg: Felinger, 1713 [2nd edition, 1722–1723]). 29  Edward J. Wright, Baruch Ben Neriah: From Biblical Scribe to Apocalyptic Seer (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003); Balázs Tamási, »The Sources of Authority in Second Baruch,« in Scriptural Authority in Early Judaism and Ancient Christianity, ed. Isaac Kalimi, Tobias Nicklas, and Géza G. Xeravits (DCLS 16; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013), 225–250; Robert A. Kraft, »›Ezra‹ Materials in Judaism and Christianity,« ANRW 19/1 (1979), 119–136. 26

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so that both write books not found in the Jewish Bible: Baruch a letter sent to the exiles (2 Bar 77.11–26; 78.1–86.3), and Ezra some ninety-​four books that cover the entire biblical canon but reach well beyond to include some seventy esoteric texts (4 Ezra 14.42–44). Also in the Hebrew Bible, both are associated with the Babylonian exile, with destruction, displacement, and, ultimately, with the promise of survival: Baruch is promised his own life as a prize of war (Jer 45:5), and Ezra restored the religious life of Israel after the exile (Neh 7:72–8:12). As apocalypses, 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra mark a transition of yet another kind, no longer the transition from the First to the Second Temple period but from this world to the next. Baruch and Ezra again emerge as community leaders in our texts, though now they have become latter-​day seers who guide the community through the tumultuous end of time. The full extent of Baruch’s and Ezra’s transformation from biblical characters to protagonists in their own books becomes even clearer when we consider yet another role they have assumed, that of the prophet. Whereas in the book of Jeremiah, Baruch remains largely passive and in the shadow of Jeremiah, in 2 Baruch he has become a prophet of his own, whose prophecies are rooted in the book of Jeremiah but whose message reaches to the end of time.30 Similarly, the Ezra of 4 Ezra acts as a prophet and seer. As Michael Stone and others have pointed out, Ezra undergoes a significant transformation in 4 Ezra, and the fourth episode in particular (4 Ezra 9.26–10.60) marks the turning point in the book.31 As already noted, both Baruch and Ezra are prophets after the model of Moses. Baruch repeatedly casts his own message as an extension of that of Moses, for example, when he writes in his letter, »Moses spoke to you beforehand … See, I, too, say to you …« (2 Bar 84.5–6). Similarly, Ezra is the new lawgiver (4 Ezra 14.21). Each book ends with especially poignant scenes that combine a re-​appropriation of the Sinai pericope with the story of Moses’s death in Deuteronomy 34. In 2 Baruch God tells Baruch to ascend a mountain, where he will die after forty days (2 Bar 76.4). And Ezra is told to withdraw from the people, so that for forty days he can receive the revelation that enables him to restore the Torah and to write many books (4 Ezra 14.45). In sum, pseudonymous attribution ties 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra directly to the biblical tradition and enables the authors to continue to write with scriptural authority. 30  Edward J. Wright, »Baruch: His Evolution from Scribe to Apocalyptic Seer,« in Biblical Figures Outside the Bible, ed. Michael E. Stone and Theodore A. Bergren (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1998), 264–289. 31 Michael E. Stone has long argued that the fourth vision reflects a genuine religious experience: »I am proposing that a fairly complex psychological process took place that involved a conversion like ›intensification‹ experience, a very powerful waking vision, and then a ›death‹ experience, a revelatory vision and blessing« (Ancient Judaism: New Visions and Views [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001], 100); see also Loren T. Stuckenbruck, »Ezra’s Vision of the Lady: The Form and Function of a Turning Point,« in Fourth Ezra and Second Baruch: Reconstruction After the Fall, ed. Matthias Henze and Gabriele Boccaccini (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 137–150.

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The second literary device intended to assert authority is closely tied to the first: this is the claim that what we read in 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra is based on divine revelation.32 2 Baruch opens somewhat abruptly with a divine declaration. God announces to Baruch on the eve of Jerusalem’s destruction, with no particular context, that since the evil committed by the city’s inhabitants has surpassed that of the northern tribes, God has decided to offer Jerusalem up to the enemy (2 Bar 1.2–2.2). What holds the book as a whole together is the continuous revelatory dialogue between God and Baruch that ensues.33 The situation is slightly different in the case of 4 Ezra. The book opens thirteen years after the destruction of Jerusalem (4 Ezra 3.1). The first to speak is not God but the seer Ezra, who is agitated over the fall of the city. The author prefers to have Ezra speak to a mediating angel rather than directly to God. In either case is it the revelatory dialogue that gives shape to both apocalypses and that holds their diverse parts together. Through it, the seer, and with him the reader, is privy to knowledge about God’s intentions for Israel that would otherwise be inaccessible. That knowledge, it turns out, is a precondition for the believer to gain access to the world to come. A third strategy by which the authors of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra lay claim to authority are the many complex ways in which their books interact with, and are modelled on Scripture. Since the scriptural books were already authoritative, writing in the scriptural idiom implied that the new books, too, would have authority. As we have already noted, the interaction between 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra, and Scripture takes many forms. For example, both 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra deliberately take the form of a biblical prophetic book. Both open with a date formula. »In the twenty-​fifth year of Jeconiah, king of Judah, the word of the Lord was upon Baruch, son of Neriah. And he said to him …« (2 Bar 1.1), and »In the thirtieth year after the destruction of our city, I, Salathiel, who am also called Ezra, was in Babylon« (4 Ezra 3.1). These date formulas closely follow the date formulas in biblical prophecy (Jer 1:1–3; Ezek 1:1–3; Hos 1:1; etc.). It is clear right from the beginning, then, that the authors of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra continue to write in the literary genre of biblical prophecy by imitating its form.34 Furthermore, the revelatory dialogue that gives shape to both books is a direct extension of similar forms of dialogue with God in the books of the prophets, as well as in Job. Also, as already noted, there is the towering figure of Moses, the biblical archetype after

32  Michael E. Stone, Secret Groups in Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 108–118. 33  The literary genre of the revelatory dialogue (offenbarender Dialog or Offenbarungsdialog) is instrumental in both texts. See Henze, Jewish Apocalypticism (n. 7), 128–148; and Karina Martin Hogan, Theologies in Conflict: Wisdom Debate and Apocalyptic Solution (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 222–231. 34  Nickelsburg, »Scripture in 1 Enoch and 1 Enoch as Scripture« (n. 11), 339.

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whom both Baruch and Ezra are modelled. Their messages are cast as direct extensions of the Mosaic revelation on Mount Sinai.35 For the fourth way, finally, in which 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra assert authority, we need to look at each text separately. 2 Baruch ends with an epistle Baruch sends to the exiles (2 Bar 78.1–86.3).36 In a brief postscript, Baruch asks the recipients to read his letter out loud during their public gatherings, preferably on their fast days: »Therefore, when you receive the letter, read it in your assemblies with care, and meditate thereon, above all on the days of your fasts. And remember me through this letter, as I, too, remember you through it, always« (2 Bar 86.1– 3). Lutz Doering compares this passage to a Letter by Dionysius of Corinth sent to the Romans (Eus., Hist. Eccl. 4.23.9–11), in which Dionysius makes a similar statement about the liturgical reading of two letters: »Today we have celebrated the Lord’s holy day, on which we have read your letter, from which we shall always draw advice whenever we read it, as also from the earlier one, which was dispatched to us by Clement.«37 Of particular interest to us is what Baruch’s plea says about the self-​understanding of the epistle and hence of 2 Baruch as a whole. Presumably »the days of your fasts« on which Baruch asks his recipients to read his letter are holy days during which sections from Scripture were usually read. If this is so, then Baruch effectively aligns the reading of his own letter with that of Scripture: he wants his own text to be read out publicly in the context of the public reading of Scripture. This is precisely what happened with the Epistle of Baruch, according to the manuscript evidence. Manuscripts containing chapters 78–86 of 2 Baruch circulated independently from the rest of the apocalypse, and in great numbers, and short sections of the epistle were, in fact, read together with other scriptural passages during the services on special holy days. Turning to 4 Ezra, the final chapter is a fitting conclusion to the apocalypse: in a scene that closely follows the call narrative of Moses in Exodus 3–4, God commissions Ezra to restore the Scriptures of Israel. Ezra takes with him five scribes, 35 The Sages, too, link their own teachings back to Sinai, most famously in the first chapter of Avot, a rhetorical manoeuvre intended to claim authority. Daniel Boyarin has called this »the apostolic succession in the Mishna« (Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-​Christianity [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004], 74–86). The authors of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra also reach back to Moses on Mount Sinai, though not through »apostolic succession,« but by fully integrating the Mosaic tradition into their own apocalyptic programme. In other words, these authors do not think of their apocalypses as standing apart from, let alone competing with the established tradition of the Mosaic Torah, nor do they wish to bypass it. Rather, they have fully incorporated it into their own apocalyptic vision. 36 Mark F. Whitters, The Epistle of Second Baruch: A Study in Form and Message (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003). 37  Lutz Doering, Ancient Jewish Letters and the Beginnings of Christian Epistolography (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 488; see also 1 Thess 5:27 and Col 4:16. Hans-​Josef Klauck, Die antike Briefliteratur und das Neue Testament: Ein Lehr‑ und Arbeitsbuch (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1998), 209–215.

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drinks a divine potion, and over a period of forty days dictates ninety-​four books: twenty-​four exoteric books intended for general consumption, and seventy esoteric books that are reserved for »the wise among your people« (4 Ezra 14.46). At the beginning of the same chapter, God had explained to Ezra that Moses saw on Mount Sinai many more things than are publicly known: »These words you [Moses] shall publish openly, and these you shall keep secret« (4 Ezra 14.6). Ezra’s division of the ninety-​four books into a smaller, exoteric, and a larger, esoteric corpus thus mimics the Mosaic revelation on Mount Sinai. If the reader of Ezra’s account is to believe, as has been proposed, that the book of 4 Ezra itself is supposed to be among the seventy secret books, then this final scene in 4 Ezra provides much information about the book’s self-​understanding and the place it claims for itself in Israel’s ancient library. The twenty-​four books that Ezra wrote first, widely considered by modern interpreters to be a reference to the canonical writings, are intended for »the worthy and the unworthy« alike (4 Ezra 14.45), that is, for everyone (Josephus, C. Ap. 1.38–40).38 The significantly larger number of seventy secret books are assigned clear priority, as God leaves little doubt that it is these secret books that contain the most relevant revelations: »For in them is the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom, and the river of knowledge« (4 Ezra 14.47).39 In other words, 4 Ezra acknowledges the existence of a public collection of texts, consisting of twenty-​four books. We are told that these are widely-​known books and that Ezra rewrites all of them after the exile. But then the author adds to this another, significantly larger corpus of secret writings, whose nature and content are not disclosed. 4 Ezra may be one of these writings, but we do not know anything about the other texts. We may conclude, then, that the author knows of two groups of writings that are rather unequal in size, availability, and, ultimately, in their significance.40 38  Armin Lange, »From Literature to Scripture: The Unity and Plurality of the Hebrew Scriptures in Light of the Qumran Library,« in One Scripture or Many? Canon from Biblical, Theological, and Philosophical Perspectives, ed. Christine Helmer and Christof Landmesser (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 29–51. 39  Jean-​Daniel Kaestli, »Le récit de IV Esdras 14 et sa valeur pour l’histoire du canon de l’Ancien Testament,« in Le Canon de l’Ancien Testament. Sa formation et son histoire, ed. idem and Otto Wermelinger (Le Monde de la Bible 10; Genève: Labor et Fides, 1984), 71–97; Christian Macholz, »Die Entstehung des hebräischen Bibelkanons nach 4 Esra 14,« in Die Hebräische Bibel und ihre zweifache Nachgeschichte, ed. Erhard Blum, Christian Macholz, Ekkehard W. Stegemann (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1990), 379–391; Michael Becker, »Grenzziehungen des Kanons im frühen Judentum und die Neuschrift der Bibel nach dem 4. Buch Esra,« in Qumran und der biblische Kanon, ed. idem and Jörg Frey (BTS 92; Neukir­ chen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2009), 195–253, 244–248. 40 David M. Carr, »Canonization in the Context of Community: An Outline of the Formation of the Tanakh and the Christian Bible,« in A Gift of God in Due Season: Essays on Scripture and Community in Honor of James A. Sanders, ed. Richard D. Weis and David M. Carr (JSOTSup 225; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 22–64; Becker, »Rewriting the Bible« (n. 19), 88–100.

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In the closing scenes of 2 Baruch and of 4 Ezra, both authors relate their own writings to Scripture, albeit in different ways. In the case of 2 Baruch, there does not seem to be any competition or even distinction between exoteric and esoteric. Indeed, 2 Baruch appears to avoid any sectarian tendencies and presents itself as an apocalyptic programme for the post-​70 Jewish community that is inclusive and universal. The author of 4 Ezra, by contrast, emphasizes that the seventy esoteric writings are more significant than Scripture, that they are secret, and that they are intended exclusively for »the wise,« a circle of the learned that presumably included the author of 4 Ezra as well. Finally, it should be noted what the authors of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra do not do with Scripture: nowhere does either author use Scripture to bolster their own authority, at least not in the manner in which the Sages quote Scripture in order to claim authority for their own point of view.41 Herein lies a principle difference in the use of Scripture between the apocalyptic texts and the rabbinic writings. The Sages will make their point and then quote Scripture to back it up; the apocalypticists, by contrast, much like the sectarians at Qumran, also make ample use of Scripture, but rather than quoting from the Bible, they become fully conversant with the received text, make its language their own, and continue to write in the biblical idiom.

4.  The Reception Histories of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra What can we say about the reception histories of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra and their respective status? Scholars are in general agreement that both apocalypses were originally written in Hebrew, most likely toward the end of the first century CE, in or around Jerusalem. They were initially translated from Hebrew into Greek and then from Greek into other languages. No Hebrew manuscript of either text survives. There are also no ancient Jewish texts that explicitly refer to, or quote from the Hebrew text.42 In other words, there is no external textual evidence that might give us any information about the origin of either book, the circles from which they stem, their original status, or their first translators and transmitters. 41  Davila, »Seven Theses« (n. 11), argues that in the dialogues between Ezra and Uriel in 4 Ezra 3–9, Ezra appeals to the authority of Scripture as the foundation of his arguments. Uriel does the same, »but more often he uses scripture for atmosphere and his arguments rest on independent reasoning« (307). 42 There are, however, a number of alleged quotations from Greek 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra in early Patristic writings: see Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B. C. – A. D. 135) III.2, ed. Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, and Martin Goodman (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1987), 753–754; Pierre-​Maurice Bogaert, L’Apocalypse syriaque de Baruch (n. 18), 2.272–275; Michael E. Stone, Textual Commentary on the Armenian Version of IV Ezra (SBLSCS 34; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), ix; idem, »Les Livres d’Esdras et leur numérotation dans l’histoire du canon de la Bible latin,« RBén 110 (2000), 5–26.

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All the evidence we have are the books themselves and their respective textual histories. With regard to 2 Baruch, the oldest surviving textual witness dates from the fourth century CE. This is the Greek version of 2 Bar 12.1–13.2, 13.11–14.3, attested on a single fragmentary sheet of papyrus from Oxyrhynchus, and first published by Grenfell and Hunt in 1903.43 The only complete text of 2 Baruch is a Syriac translation, made from the Greek, and preserved in the Codex Ambrosianus, also known as the Milan Bible (7a1), of the seventh century CE. In the codex, 2 Baruch begins with a superscription, »The Book of the Revelation of Baruch, Son of Neriah, that was translated from Greek into Syriac,« which confirms that the apocalypse was translated from Greek into Syriac. There are also three Syriac lectionaries that include passages from 2 Baruch. Two of them, Lectionaries 1312 and 1313, date from 1255 or 1256 CE and are part of the collection of Syriac manuscripts in the British Library, and a third manuscript, from 1423 CE, is housed at the Konath Library and is part of a private collection in Southern India.44 Then there is an Arabic version of 2 Baruch, preserved in a single, tenth-​century manuscript from the Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, Codex 589.45 Finally, the Epistle of Baruch was transmitted as part of the apocalypse (2 Baruch 78–86), as well as independently of it. There are around forty manuscripts that contain the Epistle but not the rest of 2 Baruch. What does all of this suggest about the status of 2 Baruch in antiquity? Unfortunately, our evidence about 2 Baruch is largely limited to the Syriac tradition. The two most important pieces of evidence are the Milan Bible and the Syriac lectionaries that contain parts of Baruch’s epistle. As observed above, 2 Baruch is included in the Milan Bible, but it is not found in the other three complete Syriac Bibles that date prior to the year 1200 CE, the Paris Bible (8a1), the Florence Bible (9a1), and the Cambridge Bible (12a1), nor is it attested in any of the Syriac pre-​twelfth-​century CE biblical manuscripts that contain other deutero-​canonical works.46 It is difficult to account for its presence in the Milan Bible. In any event, the manuscript evidence strongly suggests that 2 Baruch was not widely known in antiquity. The lectionaries indicate that part of the epistle of Baruch 43  Bernard P. Grenfell and Arthur S. Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1903), 3–7; Albert-​Marie Denis, Concordance grecque des pseudépigraphes d’Ancient Testament: Concordances, corpus des textes, indices (Louvain-​la-​Neuve: Université Catholique de Louvain and Institute Orientaliste de Louvain, 1987), 367. 44 Liv I. Lied, »Nachleben and Textual Identity: Variants and Variance in the Reception History of 2 Baruch,« in Fourth Ezra and Second Baruch, ed. Henze and Boccaccini (n. 31), 403–428. 45  Frederik Leemhuis, Albertus F. J. Klijn, G. J. H. van Gelder (ed.), The Arabic Text of the Apocalypse of Baruch: Edited and Translated with a Parallel Translation of the Syriac Text (Leiden: Brill, 1986); unfortunately, 2 Bar 1.1–3.2 and 25.3–29.4 are missing from the Arabic. 46  Lucas Van Rompay, »The Textual History of the Deutero-​Canonical Texts: The Syriac Texts,« in Textual History of the Bible, Vol. 2, ed. Feder and Henze (n. 7), forthcoming.

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(2 Bar 72.1–73.2) was read on Easter Sunday. It was not one of the central texts, however, and its use in the liturgy was limited.47 Not surprisingly, 2 Baruch was soon forgotten in the West until it was rediscovered by Antonio Maria Ceriani in the late 19th century CE in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. The situation of 4 Ezra is rather different. Its Hebrew text was also translated into Greek, but the Greek, in turn, was then translated into seven daughter versions: Armenian, Ethiopic, Georgian, Latin, and Syriac, plus there are two Arabic versions and fragments of a Coptic version. At a later stage, tertiary versions in Armenian, Hebrew, Latin, Slavonic, and Syro-​Arabic were produced from these daughter versions. In an effort to understand the relationship between these versions, Bruno Violet, A. F. J. Klijn and Michael E. Stone have arranged them in synopses.48 Of the different branches of these stemmas, the Latin and Syriac versions are especially closely aligned and form one branch. The Latin version has received much attention from modern scholars, though lately the other versions have begun to gain more recognition. 4 Ezra, then, enjoyed a much greater popularity already in antiquity than 2 Baruch. What made the real difference in 4 Ezra’s preservation and dissemination, though, was its inclusion in the Vulgate.49 Yet even here it was met with some opposition, not least by Jerome himself, since it stands outside the Hebraica veritas and must be placed among the Apocrypha, and since it represents a Jewish form of eschatology. As Karina Martin Hogan has shown, 4 Ezra nonetheless found its way into the Vulgate, not because of Jerome but because of Ambrose of Milan, the »champion of 4 Ezra.«50

5. Conclusion It is time for three concluding thoughts. One. It is important to realize, with Michael Stone, that there were Jewish groups in Second Temple Judaism that were different from those circles in Judah and Jerusalem that produced the books of the Bible. Even though they read the same scriptural texts and were heirs to the 47  It was the fourth of a total of seven passages (Num 10:1–10; 1 Sam 21:1–7; Isa 61:10–62:5; 2 Bar 72.1–73.2; Nah 2:1–8; Isa 60:11–16; 1 Cor 15:20–28), with all the other pericopes taken from canonical books; see Lied, »Die syrische Baruchapokalypse« (n. 8), 336. 48 Bruno Violet, Die Esra-​Apokalypse (IV. Esra). Band 1: Die Überlieferung (GCS 18; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1910); idem, Die Apokalypsen des Esra und des Baruch in deutscher Gestalt (GCS 32; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1924); Albertus F. J. Klijn, Die Esra-​Apokalypse (IV. Esra) (Berlin: Akademie-​Verlag, 1988); and Stone, Textual Commentary (n. 42), 1990. 49  Alastair Hamilton, The Apocryphal Apocalypse: The Reception of the Second Book of Esdras (4 Ezra) from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999). 50  Karina Martin Hogan, »The Preservation of 4 Ezra in the Vulgate: Thanks to Ambrose, not Jerome,« in Fourth Ezra and Second Baruch, ed. Henze and Boccaccini (n. 31), 381–402, 392–393.

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same Israelite traditions, they had different world views and, as a way of expressing themselves, produced their own books. Four decades ago Michael Stone pointed to 1 Enoch as one such text. 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra are two more examples from the late first century CE, and several other texts could be added to the list. The Second Temple period was a time of great diversity and extraordinary literary creativity, in which ancient intellectuals not only preserved the received texts but thought new thoughts and composed new texts at an astonishing rate. New thoughts and ideas required new forms of literary expression. As Stone aptly pointed out, not all of these texts, or the ideas expressed in them, neatly fit the biblical mould. Two. The authors of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra employ several strategies to assert authority for their apocalypses, among them (1) the use of pseudepigraphy; (2) the claim that what is recorded here is divinely revealed; (3) the engagement with Scripture; and (4) the attempt by the authors to situate their own books in relation to Scripture, in the case of 2 Baruch by asking the audience to read it together with Scripture, and in the case of 4 Ezra by claiming superiority for the secret writings. This is how the authors themselves saw their texts. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing how successful they were, that is, whether 2 Baruch or 4 Ezra were considered inspired and thus authoritative by early Jewish groups other than the groups that produced them. Three. Eventually, scribes picked up 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra and translated them. We know, for example, from the Syriac tradition that both apocalypses were included in the Codex Ambrosianus, that they are also included in a small handful of lectionaries, and that excerpts were read publicly during the services. 4 Ezra enjoyed greater recognition than 2 Baruch. It was translated into more languages and ultimately found its way into the Vulgate. There is much we do not know. A systematic study of the textual histories of Israel’s ancient writings, particularly of the so-​called Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, a thorough examination of their (secondary and tertiary) translations and manuscript traditions, and an inquiry into their use in the ecclesial traditions, daunting as such a task may be due to its scope and the language skills it requires, remains an urgent scholarly desideratum today.

The Meaning of the Septuagint in the Process of Authorization of Israelite Writings Natalio Fernández Marcos »Christianity is unique among the world religions in being born with a Bible in its cradle.«1 This book was the Hebrew Bible in its Greek translation, the Septuagint. What we now call the Septuagint is the result of a translation process and new accretion that extended over a period of four centuries plus a debate on the authority of some of these books which lasted three further centuries. But the first translation of the Hebrew Torah, the Pentateuch, occurred in Alexandria at the time of the King Ptolemy II Philadelphos (285–246 BCE). The impact and cultural significance of this version for western civilization was enormous. The Hebrew was the language of a small Near Eastern people without political influence, a kind of hortus conclusus, closed to the surrounding nations. With the translation from a Semitic language to an Indo-​European one, the Greek of the koiné, the lingua franca of the inhabited land or oikoumene, the Torah became for the first time the »light to the nations« (Isa 49:6 LXX). In Christian theology it was in words of Eusebius of Caesarea the »morning star« (stella matutina) which announced the »sun of justice« (Mal 3:20).2 As a new version the Septuagint was also the first interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. Every translation is an interpretation, but particularly in this case where the translators’ Vorlage was a consonantal text susceptible to different readings. It is like the execution of a musical score. However, in Western culture and in the history of Western theology the Greek Bible has been clamorously forgotten. Dethroned in the fifth century by Jerome’s Latin translation, later known as the Vulgate, the Latin Church lost every contact with the Greek and with the Orthodox Church. In the Renaissance the first Polyglot Bibles rescued the Septuagint in one of their columns, but it was 1 Christopher F. Evans, »The New Testament in the Making,« in The Cambridge History of the Bible, Vol. 1: From the Beginnings to Jerome, ed. Peter R. Ackroyd and Christopher F. Evans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 232–284, here 232. 2  Brian Walton, Preface to the London Polyglot (1657), A2: Quae versio instar stellae matutinae gentes densissimis ignorantiae tenebris inmersas ad Evangelium recipiendum paratiores reddidit, cum quae de Christo ab Apostolis promulgata erant a Prophetis in linguam sibi notam transfusis multo antea praedicta fuisse legerent, unde versionem hanc ostium ad Christum, non sine causa, appellavit S. Chrysostomus.

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considered under the prejudice of being the Bible of the Orthodox Church, only the Vulgate being true and placed in the middle of the page between the Hebrew and the Greek as Christ between the two thieves, the Synagogue and the Orthodox Church.3 The Reformation adhered to the Hebrew Bible following Jerome’s principles, and Luther in his translation of 1534 included only the books of the Hebrew Bible. The other books of the Septuagint were translated and included among the Apocrypha. Even at the time of Campenhausen biblical scholars were not aware of the importance of the Septuagint for the birth and development of the Christian canon. Campenhausen in his famous monograph does not mention the Greek Bible in the discussion on the birth of the Christian canon.4 It was only in the second part of the twentieth century when the Septuagint was rediscovered. As a consequence of the finds of new papyri and the discovery and publication of the Qumran documents we became aware of the relevance of the LXX for Biblical studies. Already in 116 BCE Sira’s grandson was conscious of the great divergencies between the Hebrew and Greek Bible when he wrote in the Prologue 1:19 about his translation: »for what was originally expressed in Hebrew does not have the same force when it is in fact rendered in another language. And not only in this case, but also in the case of the Law itself and the Prophets and the rest of the books the difference is not small when these are expressed in their own language« (NETS, 719).5 These differences between both Bibles were usually attributed to the incompetence of the translators, to the diverse translation techniques or to the re-​ elaboration of the original in favour of a concrete theology. But the discovery and publication of the Qumran documents provided a silent revolution in the history of the Biblical text. Not only the Greek fragments found in caves 4 and 7, but particularly the fragments of the Twelve Prophets from Naḥal Ḥever have demonstrated the existence of a Hebraic revision of the Septuagint toward the MT as early as the second half of the first century BCE. Not only those issues but the discovery of fragments of the books of Samuel and Jeremiah (4QSama,c and 4QJerb,d) in cave 4, the text of which is close to the Vorlage of the Septuagint in those books, has confirmed that the Septuagint in some Biblical books supports a Hebraica veritas, older and probably more genuine than that of the MT, that is, the Hebrew textus receptus. In other words, in some Biblical books it was not the Septuagint, which corrected the Hebrew text, but it is the Proto-​Masoretic text which has been corrected and adapted to the orthodox ideology of the temple 3  Jiménez de Cisneros, »Preface to the Reader« in the first volume of the Biblia Políglota Complutense (Alcalá de Henares, 1514–1517). 4  See Hans von Campenhausen, Die Entstehung der christlichen Bibel (1st edition; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1968). 5  Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright, A New English Translation of the Septuagint (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

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and of the Pharisaic movement previous to the standardization of the Hebrew text circa 100 CE. In contrast, the Septuagint with all its divergences in some books is the oldest and most genuine Biblical text and must be used as a Bible of its own and not as an instrument to correct the MT. Nowadays scholars tend to consider a double transmission of the Biblical text through the Hebrew Bible and through the Septuagint, each of which has to be treated on its own. I will take as an example of the Christian Bible of the middle of the fourth century the codex Vaticanus (Vatican Library, Gr. 1209), the first complete Bible documented in a single volume or codex. This Bible differs from the Hebrew Bible in several aspects: the content and number of books, the titles of many of the books and their order and disposition.6 In contrast with the classical distribution of the Hebrew Bible in the three corpora, Torah, Nebi’im and Ketubim, the Greek Bible divides the material into four sections: Pentateuch, Historical Books (Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1–4 Kingdoms, 1–2 Paralipomena, 1–2 Ezra), the Books of Wisdom or Poetical books (Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Job, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobit), and Prophetical Books (The Twelve, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Baruch, Lamentations, Epistle of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel).7 1–4 Maccabees are not found in Vaticanus, but they are included in Codex Sinaiticus of the fourth century, and in Codex Alexandrinus of the fifth century. The collection of Psalms that includes Ps 151 is followed by a collection of Odes, some of them of Christian origin, taken from the New Testament. The relative openness of the Old Testament portion of these oldest codices also corresponds to that of its New Testament: Codex Sinaiticus contains the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas, and Codex Alexandrinus 1 and 2 Clement. I insist that the Greek Bible is a different and peculiar Bible of Hellenistic Judaism and early Christianity, just as the Hebrew Bible was followed by Pharisaic Judaism, the Samaritan Pentateuch by the Samaritan Jews, and a Bible that probably included 1 Enoch and the book of Jubilees by the community of Qumran. In addition to all these quantitative differences that include the so-​called »deuterocanonical« (or »apocryphal«) books a series of inner divergences can be detected: for instance, Greek Jeremiah, and accordingly its Hebrew Vorlage, is 1/6 shorter than the Masoretic Hebrew; Greek Job lacks 390 verses of the Hebrew with the result of a different interpretation and shape of Job’s character; Greek Proverbs have 140 verses fewer than the Hebrew Proverbs. Furthermore it has some paremiological material coming from the Hellenistic tradition. Moreover, there are 6 A survey of these differences can be found in Henry Barclay Swete, An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900), 197–288. 7  In this order in B and Swete’s edition, but not in Rahlfs’s edition who places Esther, Judith and Tobit behind 1–2 Ezra, followed by 1–4 Maccabees of codex Alexandrinus. 1–4 Maccabees are extant also in Codex Sinaiticus of the fourth century.

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many qualitative divergences that can be only reproduced if the autonomy of the Septuagint as literary work is respected. And it could be hyperbolically stated that since the day after the translation, the Jews were well aware of the differences between the Hebrew and the Greek Pentateuch. However, the Jewish reactions to this embarrassing situation were twofold. There were those who opted for the theory of inspiration of the Septuagint, a tendency that culminated in Philo of Alexandria, and which was followed in Christian circles by Augustine. For Philo in the first century CE the translators were prophets and hierophants like Moses. He places the translation at the same level as the original Hebrew, as if they were two sister Bibles. One may conclude that the revelation happened at two distinct moments in history. On Mount Sinai when God himself, according to Philo, delivered the commandments and dictated the Torah to Moses, and in Alexandria when the translators, also inspired by God, translated the Torah into Greek. Such are the formulas used by Philo in Vita Mosis II, 37 concerning the procedure of the translators secluded on the island of Pharos: »as if inspired by the deity, prophesied not some one and others another but all the same names and words as if an invisible prompter (ὑποβολεύς) were whispering them to each.« Further on, he insists that both the original and the translation are like two sisters, indeed like a single text in content and form, and that the translators are prophets and hierophants like Moses (Vita Mosis II, 40). But there are also traces of a philological tendency among the Jews, in those who tried to correct the Septuagint towards the proto-​Masoretic text on the way towards standardization. These corrections were carried out in a dual direction: one towards the Hebrew in order to improve the first translation and make it identical to the Masoretic text; and the other toward a better Greek style avoiding the frequent Semitisms of the original. The pre-​Christian papyri witness both tendencies, which would later lead to the kaige revision (50 BCE–50 CE) on the one side, and to the Proto-​Lucianic revision of the first century CE on the other. The best witness of the kaige revision are the Greek fragments of the Twelve Prophets discovered in Naḥal Ḥever, a systematic correction of the Greek Bible towards the Hebrew text which is very close to the Masoretic and which, according to Barthélemy’s interpretation, constitute the predecessors of the Jewish translation of Aquila.8 After this brief survey on the birth and early development of the Greek Bible it can be stated that the Septuagint in one of its multiple forms »has grown to be a theologically equal edition of the holy books of Judaism.«9 The New Testament is built in a permanent dialogue with the Old or First Testament. But this constant Barthélemy, Les Devanciers d’Aquila (VTS 10; Leiden: Brill, 1963).  Morgens Müller, »Biblia semper interpretanda est. The Role of the Septuagint as a Hellenistic Version of the Old Testament,« in Sophia – Paideia. Sapienza ed educazione (Sir 1,27). Miscellanea di studi offerti in onore del prof. Don Mario Cimosa, ed. Gillian Bonney and Rafael Vicent (Roma: LAS, 2012), 17–31, here 29. 8 Dominique 9

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intertextuality is carried out through the text of the Septuagint. The arguments and proofs of the authors of the New Testament are based on the text of the Greek Bible, not on the Masoretic text. And this kind of intertextuality is facilitated by the textual polymorphism of the Septuagint in New Testament times. The influence of the Septuagint in the New Testament is manifold. It permeates the language of the New Testament: for example Luke imitates the language of the LXX just like Greco-​Roman authors imitate Thucydides or Xenophon, Cicero or Virgil. The LXX is the main source of New Testament quotations as it is the source of inspiration for the redaction of numerous passages or pericopes.

1.  The Different Forms of Scripture in New Testament Times 1.1.  The Old Greek When Matt 1:23 uses the famous verse of Isa 7:14 as a prophecy of the virginal birth of Jesus, he relies on the LXX which translates the Hebrew `lmh, »young girl«, by παρθένος, virgin, while the other Jewish translators render it by νεᾶνις, girl. As Wolfgang Kraus states: »Dieser Sachverhalt, dass sich ntl. Argumentationen nur mit LXX-​Zitaten durchführen lassen und der Hebräische Text dies nicht ermöglichen würde, gibt es im NT an vielen Stellen.«10 In Heb 11:21 Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, »bowing in worship over the top of his staff«. The last sentence is a quotation of Gen 47:31 according to the Septuagint: καὶ προσεκύνησεν ἐπὶ τὸν ἄκρον τῆς ῥάβδου αὐτοῦ, »and he bowed upon the top of his staff.« However, the Masoretic text reads: »Then Israel bowed himself on the head of his bed.« The Greek translator read differently, that is, with diverse vocalization, the Hebrew word mtth (which can mean both bed and staff with different reading, mittah and matteh). Not only Heb 11:21 but Theodoret of Cyrus in his question 111 on Genesis is a good witness of this reading’s reception in early Christianity. In Heb 1:6 it is written: »And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says: ›Let all God’s angels worship him‹« (καὶ προσκυνησάτωσαν αὐτῷ πάντες ἄγγελοι θεοῦ), a quotation from Deuteronomy 32:43 according to the Greek. The Hebrew Masoretic text omits this line and reads quite differently: »Praise, nations, their people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants.« 10 Over 120 passages of the New Testament, cf. Wolfgang Kraus, »Die Bedeutung der Septuagintazitate im Neuen Testament auf dem Hintergrund der alttestamentlichen Textgeschichte,« in Handbuch zur Septuaginta, Vol. 1: Einleitung in die Septuaginta, ed. Siegfried Kreuzer (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2016), 678–695, here 690. And Kraus adds a set of New Testament quotations where this connection between LXX and New Testament functions, while such connection is not possible with the Hebrew text.

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Precisely this verses which lack in the Hebrew have been transmitted by the Septuagint which reads verse 43 in an expanded form of eight lines: καὶ προσκυνησάτωσαν αὐτῷ πάντες υἱοὶ θεοῦ (»let worship him all the sons of God«). In the past, it was thought that this reading of the Septuagint could be attributed to contamination from the New Testament throughout centuries of common transmission and the frequent liturgical reading. But nowadays we are convinced that it is not true. The reading of the Septuagint is supported by the Qumran fragments of cave 4 whsthww lw kl ´lhm. As is well known the sons of god of the Hebrew are translated by angels in some passages of Job (1:6; 2:1), and Psalm 8:5: »And you diminished him a little in comparison with angels«, translation of the LXX and Vulgate for the Hebrew ´lhm. This case is particularly interesting because it is a witness of a textual pluralism extant at the time of the New Testament authors which confirms the existence of a Hebraica veritas different from that of the Masoretic Text, present in the Septuagint and in the fragments of Qumran, and demonstrates that the reading of the LXX cannot be due to the influence of the text of the New Testament on the scribes.11 1.2.  The Kaige-​Revision According to Barthélemy’s interpretation, the fragments of Dodekapropheton discovered in a cave of Naḥal Ḥever, a few kilometers to the south of En-​Gedi, belong to a revision of the Old Greek in order to accommodate it to the Proto-​ Masoretic Hebrew that, since the first century BCE, begins to be prioritized against the other extant Hebrew texts attested at Qumran.12 This tendency would later be finalized in the new Jewish translations of Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion. This Hebraising revision was called kaige, because it translates by this Greek particle, καίγε, the Hebrew particles gm/wgm. Barthélemy’s interpretation was fundamental for any further study on the history of the biblical text. A new image of the Pre-​hexaplaric Septuagint was open before our eyes, a zone in shadows almost unknown for us. There were only the scarce quotations of the Jewish-​Hellenistic Historians, Philo, Josephus, the citations of the New Testament, some pseudepigraphic writings and Justin. This new evidence had important consequences for the study of the Old Testament citations in the New. For example, John 19:37 and Rev 1:7 are quoting Zech 12:10, not according to the Old Greek: ἐπιβλέψονται πρός με ἀνθ’ ὧν κατωρχήσαντο, »and they shall look to me 11 Natalio Fernández Marcos, La Biblia griega. Septuaginta, Vol. 1: Pentateuco (2nd edition; Salamanca: Sígueme, 2016), 442; and Kraus, »Die Bedeutung der Septuaginta-​zitate« (n. 10), here 684–686. 12  See Barthélemy, Les Devanciers d’Aquila (n. 8). Critical edition and study of these fragments in The Greek Minor Prophets Scroll From Naḥal Ḥever (8ḤevXIIgr), ed. Emmanuel Tov et alii (DJD VIII; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).

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because they danced triumphantly,« but according to the textual form found in the kaige-​revision: καίγε ὄψονται εἰς ὃν ἐξεκέντησαν, »they will look on the one whom they have pierced,« obviously because this text conformed much better to the passion’s narrative.13 The New Testament would have not been the same if the LXX translation had not existed. The Greek of the Septuagint was the starting point for the proofs of Scripture and New Testament theology. Most of the proofs of Scripture could not have been made relying on the Masoretic Text, unless the link of the Septuagint had been introduced. First of all the authors of the New Testament used the wide corpus of Scripture as it had been transmitted by the Septuagint, not the fixed canon of the Hebrew Bible standardized at the end of the first century CE. Moreover, in New Testament times there was no established Hebrew canon, a Bible (this title is anachronistic), but a set of fluid Hebrew texts, all of them authoritative, but none canonical. Taking into account the progress of Septuagint studies in recent decades, the discoveries and publication of the Qumran documents, and the evidence of textual pluralism around the time of the change of era, one cannot exclusively look to the standard text of the Septuagint or to the text of the uncial manuscripts of the fourth and fifth centuries. The problem of the Old Testament citations in the New has become much more complex. 1.3.  The Antiochene Text Besides the kaige-​revision there is another revision or recension, the Antiochene or Proto-​Lucianic text, attested since the first century CE. Its aim is to improve the style of the Septuagint Greek correcting the Semitisms and making the translation more readable.14 Traces of this revision can also be detected in the New Testament, concretely in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans 11:3–4 when quoting the text of 3 Kgds 19:14.18. Old Greek: 14 … τὰ θυσιαστήριά σου καθεῖλαν καὶ τοὺς προφήτας σου ἀπέκτειναν ἐν ῥομφαίᾳ, καὶ ὑπολέλειμμαι ἐγὼ μονώτατος … 18 καὶ καταλείψεις ἐν Ισραηλ ἑπτὰ χιλιάδας ἀνδρῶν, πάντα γόνατα, ἃ οὐκ ὤκλασαν γόνυ τῷ Βάαλ. (»… they tore down your altars and killed your prophets with a sword, and I alone am a remnant … and you will leave seven thousand men in Israel, all the knees that did not bow a knee to Baal«) Antiochene: 14 … τὰ θυσιαστήριά σου κατέσκαψαν καὶ τοὺς προφήτας σου ἀπέκτειναν ἐν ῥομφαίᾳ, καὶ ὑπελείφθην ἐγὼ μονώτατος … 18 καὶ καταλείψω ἐξ Ισραὴλ ἑπτὰ χιλιάδας ἀνδρῶν, πάντα τὰ γόνατα ἃ οὐκ ἔκαμψαν γόνυ τῇ βάαλ.

13  Both translations are based on different readings of the Hebrew consonantal text due to the permutation of letters ‫ר‬/‫ד‬: daqar = »to pierce through«, and raqad = »To dance.« 14  See Natalio Fernández Marcos and José Ramón Busto Saiz, ed., El texto antioqueno de la Biblia griega, II, 1–2 Reyes (Madrid: Instituto de Filología del CSIC, 1992).

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Rom 11:3–4: 3 […] τοὺς προφήτας σου ἀπέκτειναν, τὰ θυσιαστήριά σου κατέσκαψαν, κἀγὼ ὑπελείφθην μόνος […] 4 κατέλιπον ἑπτακισχιλίους ἄνδρας, οἵτινες οὐκ ἔκαμψαν γόνυ τῇ Βάαλ.

In the sequence of Paul’s argumentation the meaning of the quotation basically does not change. But if we pay attention to the vocabulary and other details it is patent that Paul is following a text very similar to that of the Antiochene revision, because there is a multiple agreement with the Antiochene text. He uses the verb κατασκάπτω instead of καθαιρέω and the passive aorist ὑπελείφθην instead of the passive perfect ὑπολέλειμμαι. Moreover, in the second part of verse 4, it is clear that he is following the Antiochene text. First of all in the use of the verb κάμπτω for the rarer ὀκλάζω. Of all the New Testament, Rom 11:4 is the only passage where the name of Baal in feminine appears15. τῇ Βάαλ is a typical reading of the Antiochene revision which preserves the feminine before the proper name Baal, because we have the testimony of the feminine noun αἰσχύνη as an euphemism to avoid the pronountiation of the cananaean divinity Baal. It is the same phenomenon, already known in the Hebrew Bible, of the substitution of the name Bšt for Baal that can be appreciated in a series of proper Hebrew names.16 1.4.  Symmachus’s Readings in the New Testament A typical reading of the Jewish translator Symmachus is twice attested in the New Testament. The first in Rom 12:19: γέγραπται γάρ, ἐμοὶ ἐκδίκησις, ἐγὼ ἀνταποδώσω. The same quotation with identical text is repeated in Heb 10:30. It makes reference to Deut 32:35 where it is written: ἐν ἡμέρᾳ ἐκδικήσεως ἀνταποδώσω, »in a day of vengeance, I will repay.« Obviously, it is not an exact quotation of the Old Greek of the Septuagint but a quotation of Symmachus, a reading which we know through the Syrohexapla and which contains exactly the words of the Epistles to the Romans and Hebrews. One might object that Symmachus as an author of the second century CE cannot be cited by an author of the New Testament who writes at least one century before. That is true, but just as Barthélemy saw in the kaige-​revision the predecessors of Aquila and that many Theodotionic readings present in the New Testament, especially in Revelation, can be explained as a product of this revision prior to the historic Theodotion, in a similar way I maintain that Symmachus also had his Jewish predecessors in the kaige-​revision, and that some Symmachian readings before the historical Symmachus can be explained in the same way.17  This reading is also confirmed by Asterius of Emesa, a witness of the Antiochene revision.   Pierre-​Maurice Bogaert, »Baal au féminin dans la Septante,« in Die Septuaginta. Texte, Theologien, Einflüsse, ed. Wolfgang Kraus and Martin Karrer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 416–443. 17  Natalio Fernandez Marcos, »Símmaco y sus predecesores judíos,« in Biblische and Judaistische Studien. Festschrift für Paolo Sacchi, ed. Angelo Vivian (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1990), 15 16

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As we have seen we have in the New Testament a set of quotations preceded by the formula »it is written« or »to be fulfilled what the Lord said through the prophet« (Matt 1:23). But in view of the different forms of Scripture cited, today it is not sufficient to be aware of this fact. The question is, where is it written? In the Masoretic text, in Qumran, in one of the multiple current forms of the Septuagint? We have also realized that »the Septuagint soon became the preferred ›biblical text‹ and thus the connecting link between the Hebrew text and the Christian reception.«18

2.  The Process of the Authorization of the Christian Bible I would like to emphasize some external factors that contributed to the production of the Christian Bible, particularly the transition from the scroll to the codex and the generalization of the use of the codex in the fourth century. Because only in the fourth century does a movement from a loose collection towards a closed canon arise. We should bear in mind that the Greek Church officially never defined the exact contours of the Old Testament corpus. Christians considered themselves to be the heirs of the collection of Jewish Scriptures in Greek. But the history of the formation and composition of the Old Testament within the Greek Church remains in the shadows, the point of departure as well as the point of arrival.19 The ancient evidence concerning the authority of Scripture always refers to a corpus of books or specific books, never to textual forms of those books or the language in which they are written, although tacitly people understand that they are referring to the Hebrew Bible. But this is not at all evident, for instance, in the case of Philo, Josephus and the authors of the New Testament. I am convinced that Philo as well as the authors of the New Testament are thinking of the Bible in Greek dress not in Hebrew. However, the ancient hypothesis of a Hellenistic canon was based on two assumptions which nowadays have been discounted:

193–202. Martin Karrer, »Der Septuaginta-​Text im frühen Christentum,« in Handbuch zur Septuaginta, Vol. 1 (n. 10), 663–677, here 674: »In Einzelnen zeichnen sich eine Aufwertung des antiochenischen Textes in der Rekonstruktion des Old Greek und die Erkenntnis ab, dass Vorformen der in die Hexapla aufgenommenen jüngeren Zeugen (Theodotion, Symmachus und Aquila) in die Entstehungszeit des Christentums und punktuell vor sie zurückreichen.« 18 Müller, »Biblia semper interpretanda est« (n. 9), here 23. 19 Éric Junod, »La formation et la composition de l’Ancien Testament dans l’Église grecque des quatre premiers siècles,« in Le canon de l’Ancien Testament, ed. Jean-​Daniel Kaestli and Otto Wermelinger (Genève: Labor et Fides, 1984), 105–151, here 106; and Miltiadis Konstantinou, »Old Testament Canon and Text in the Greekspeaking Orthodox Church,« in Text, Theology and Translation: Essays in Honour of Jan de Waard, ed. Simon Crisp and Manuel Jinbachian (London: United Bible Societies, 2004), 89–107, here 106–107.

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a) a concept of Hellenistic Judaism as being different from the Palestinian one. New evidence has revealed the strong Hellenization of Palestine;20 moreover, the Greek fragments found in Qumran, Naḥal Ḥever and Masada confirm this Hellenization even in Bar Kokhba’s times; b) the idea that most of the deuterocanonical/apocryphal books had been composed in Greek and on Egyptian soil. This assumption has also been refuted, first by the Cairo Geniza findings (1896) of portions of Ecclesiasticus in Hebrew, and more recently by the findings in caves 2 and 4 of Qumran and in Masada of more fragments of Ecclesiasticus in Hebrew,21 and fragments in Aramaic and Hebrew of Tobit. The question remains if Egypt did not create any tradition of an Alexandrian canon, how is it possible to explain the wider Old Testament canon of the Christian Church according to the wider corpus of books attested in the Greek Bible? The answer must come from the sociological context and ecclesiastical use. When Christianity arose, Judaism was not uniform but plural. In relation to our concern, there was the group of the Samaritans that recognized only the Pentateuch or the group of the Pharisees that would recognize the threefold corpus, Torah, Nebi’im and Ketubim. The group of the Diaspora Jews in Alexandria included the deuterocanonical/apocryphal writings and the group of Qumran may have included some of the pseudepigrapha, such as 1 Enoch and the book of Jubilees, authoritative. Besides the many forms of the Septuagint used by the New Testament authors, the uncertainties of the early Christians as to the way of quoting the Deuterocanonical books are only the natural consequences of the uncertainties into which the Church was born. These are reflected in the different lists of books held as canonical or authoritative and especially in the Muratorian Fragment produced around the middle of the fourth century in the eastern part of the Roman empire,22 which lists the Wisdom of Solomon among the New Testament Scriptures between the Letters of John and Revelation, a sign that it was not included at that time in the canon of the Old Testament. The other reason for recognizing these books was the constant use made of them by the Christiaan authors in their quotations. As Beckwith states: »The great difference between the two communities [Jewish and Christians] was that, from the second century onwards, some 20 Martin Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus (2nd rev. edition; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1973) and G. Scott Gleaves, Did Jesus Speak Greek? The Emerging Evidence of Greek Dominance in First-​Century Palestine (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2015). 21  Pancratius P. Beentjes, The Book of Ben Sira in Hebrew: A Text Edition of All Extant Hebrew Manuscripts and a Synopsis of All Parallel Hebrew Ben Sira Texts (VTSup 68; Leiden: Brill, 1997). 22 Lee Martin McDonald and James A. Sanders, ed., The Canon Debate (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002), 595; for another view on the date of the Muratorian Fragment, see José Manuel Sánchez Caro, »Sobre la fecha del canon muratoniano,« in Plenitudo Temporis. Miscelánea Homenaje al Prof. Dr. Ramón Trevijano Etcheverría (Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, 2002), 297–314.

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Christians started to treat these books as Scripture, to call them Scripture and to quote them with the traditional formulas for quoting Scripture.«23 This tradition was strongly supported by the statement of personalities such as Origen and Augustin in favour of the Septuagint. Origen in his Letter to Africanus 2.5 (ca. 240 CE) values highly many of the books associated with the LXX. As for the text of Susanna, a supplement of the LXX of Daniel, absent from the Hebrew Bible, he states that in such cases one should rely on the providence and remember the verse of Prov 22:28: »Thou shalt not remove the ancient landmarks which thy fathers have set« (μὴ μέταιρε ὅρια αἰώνια, ἃ ἔθεντο οἱ πατέρες σου). Likewise Augustine in De civitate Dei 15.42 defends the inspiration of the Septuagint with words very similar to those of Philo: spiritus enim, qui in prophetis erat, quando illa dixerunt, idem ipse erat in Septuaginta viris, quando illa interpretati sunt. As Barthélemy comments: »Ce que l’Église dans son ensemble a reconnu comme Écriture Sainte ne peut être rejeté ensuite comme inauthentique par la critique biblique.«24 It would be Jerome, the first among the Fathers, who would reply that the Hebrew text and canon was the norm. In 393, he uses the expression Hebraica veritas for the first time. His Latin version of the Hebrew Scriptures will spread out to the West, though not without struggle, but his strict position of the canon limited to the books found in the Hebrew Scriptures will not succeed. It is true that we do not know exactly when the Septuagint first existed as a whole. Moreover, we know that from the very moment of its birth, it was subjected to constant revision and later to Christian recensions. However, we also know that the LXX, in all its textual forms, has been utilized primarily by the authors of the New Testament, has been the »Bible of the Apostles«, and used exclusively by early Christian writers, although they unashamedly recur to Aquila, Symmachus as well as Theodotion in their commentaries in order to clarify the meaning of the Biblical text. But this increasing awareness of the importance of the Septuagint and of its differences from the Hebrew Bible should not result in speaking of the Septuagint as an alternative to the Hebrew Bible. Neque enim sic nova condimus ut vetera destruamus, as was said by Jerome in the Preface to his translation of the Wisdom books of Solomon. The two veritates, Hebraica and Graeca have to co-​exist, just like the books of Chronicles co-​existed with the books of Samuel and Kings or the Gospels co-​existed in a fourthfold redaction. Moreover, this is so because also the LXX witness a Hebraica veritas, since in several instances it can be proven that the Septuagint mirrors an older text than the one found in the medieval manuscripts which today constitute the Hebrew Bible. 23 Roger T. Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church (London: SPCK, 1985), 392. 24  Dominique Barthélemy, »La place de la Septante dans l’Église,« in Études d’histoire du texte de l’Ancien Testament, ed. idem (2nd rev. edition; OBO 21; Fribourg and Göttingen: Éditions Universitaires and Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978), 111–126, here 119.

Jesus and the Jewish Writings Armand Puig i Tàrrech 1.  General Remarks When the historical-​critical method was predominant in New Testament studies, two lines of thought emerged with regard to Jesus’s relationship with the Scriptures. One of them argued that Jesus himself would have carefully reflected on the Old Testament when thinking out his mission and message.1 In contrast, Bultmann and his school took the opposite view, that the Old Testament quotes in the Gospels were largely the result of interpretation by the early Christian Church.2 In my opinion, neither of these positions should be considered as the correct answer to the problem covered by this paper. Jesus interprets the Scriptures but it is not his main concern as preacher of the Kingdom. The Scriptures belong at the core of Jesus’s Jewish identity but they are not placed explicitly at the centre of his message. For Jesus, the Torah and the Prophets do indeed contain God’s will, but God’s design is to be found not only in Israel’s Scriptures but above all in Jesus’s own words and deeds, which in turn draw on significant elements from Scripture.3 In this paper, the expression »Scripture(s)« is limited to the texts that are quoted or clearly alluded to in the synoptic Gospels. In fact, there is no material that can be directly linked with writings other than Scripture; in the words attributable to Jesus and in the synoptic Gospels the only explicit intertextual references are to the writings of the Old Testament.4 Moreover, in the statements and 1  A well-​known representative of this position is Charles Harold Dodd in his book According to the Scriptures: The Sub-​structure of New Testament Theology (2nd edition; London: Collins, 1965 [1951]). 2  See D. Moody Smith, Jr., »The Use of the Old Testament in the New,« in The Use of the Old Testament in the New and Other Essays: Studies in Honour of W. R. Stinespring, ed. James M. Efird (Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1972), 3–65, here 21. 3  See Martin Hengel, »Jesus und die Tora« [1978], in his Jesus und die Evangelien. Kleine Schriften V (WUNT 211; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 352–374. See also François Vouga, Jésus et la Loi selon la tradition synoptique (Genève: Labor et Fides, 1988); William Loader, Jesus’ Attitude Towards the Law: A Study of the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000). 4 See recently, with exhaustive bibliography, Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2016). See also Rainer Riesner, Jesus als Lehrer. Eine Untersuchung zum Ursprung der Evangelien-​Überlieferung (3rd edition; WUNT II/7; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1988 [1981]), 97–245; Steve Moyise, Jesus and Scripture (London: Continuum,

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discourses that biblical scholarship regards as coming close to Jesus’s historical words, the tendency is even stronger. Jesus limits himself to using Scripture when in dialogue with his opponents. The Scriptures Jesus knew would have included the Targums, which appear to have been commonly used in first-​century Aramaic-​speaking Galilee.5 There are no arguments arising from an authoritative »tradition of the elders« in Jesus’s discourses and he does not quote writings from any other Jewish source of his time (such as the documents found at Qumran, for instance).6 Conversely, Jesus employs the Scriptures in a way that is not so different from that of the rabbis, although unlike the rabbis of his time Jesus does not present himself as someone whose »delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law [he] meditate[s] day and night« (Ps 1:2). When Jesus goes out to a deserted place to pray (Mark 1:35) while it is still »very dark,« Scriptures might well have formed the content of his prayer; on the other hand, when he has to teach the disciples how to pray to God, Jesus does not explicitly mention any text from the Scriptures (see Matt 6:9–13 par. Luke 11:2–4). Thus, Jesus does not live without the Scriptures but his life does not consist only of them and his preaching of God’s coming Kingdom is not built upon the Scriptures and their eventual fulfilment.7 However, as will be seen, the sacred Jewish texts are not far from Jesus’s life. Although Jesus does not quote the Scriptures very often, he employs them in relation to specific moments in his life and work. Scripture thus emerges almost implicitly as providing illuminating points of reference for Jesus’s decisions. Although Jesus shows familiarity with the rabbinic rules of interpretation later known as the middot,8 he does not consider himself primarily as an interpreter of the Scriptures.9 Accordingly, he displays no interest in the »tradition of the elders,« the teachings of the sages that were handed down orally in rabbinic scholarly settings and provided material for the rabbis to interpret the Scriptures and to solve halakhic problems. Jesus does not quote any such teachings, although the contemporaneous schools of Hillel and Shammai do. However, on various 2010); Werner Gitt, So steht’s geschrieben (8th rev. edition; Bielefeld: Christliche Literatur-​ Verbreitung, 2011). 5  See Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans, »Jesus and Israel’s Scriptures,« in Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research, ed. B. Chilton and C. A. Evans (NTTS 19; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 281–335, here 209–309. Unfortunately, the extant targumim are not earlier than the third or fourth century. It is, accordingly, difficult to distinguish which traditions (texts and homilies) were found in Galilean synagogues of the first century. 6 Although the importance of the Qumran documents for a proper understanding of Jesus’s religious environment and his teaching is undeniable, Jesus never quotes a sectarian text from Qumran. 7  Pierre-​Marie Beaude, L’accomplissement des Écritures. Pour une histoire critique des systèmes de représentation du sens chrétien (Cogitatio Fidei 104; Paris: Cerf, 1980). 8  Chilton and Evans, »Jesus and Israel’s Scriptures« (n. 5), 287–296. 9  Jesus did not set out to comment on a particular list of biblical passages, as suggested by Dodd, According to the Scriptures (n. 1).

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occasions, when required, Jesus enters into typical rabbinic discussions about the Sabbath and other matters related to the Scriptures. In any case, in relation to the Scriptures, Jesus moves, as it were, backwards, towards what he claims to be God’s original will, as expressed by the Scriptures. But he does not move, as it were, forwards, towards the rabbinic interpretive traditions, which are called, somewhat contemptuously, »human tradition« in contrast to »the commandment of God« (Mark 7:8), that is, the text of the Scriptures. Jesus displays evident reflection on the normative texts he quotes from the Scriptures, as, for instance, in the conundrum he presents to the scribes in his address to the people in the temple, based on Psalm 110:1 (see Mark 12:35–37). Jesus affirms that David uttered the words of the psalm while »in the Holy Spirit« (ἐν τῷ πνεύματι τῷ ἁγίῳ, v. 36) (see also Matt 22:43: ἐν πνεύματι).10 For Jesus, the Psalms are inspired Scripture and because of that have a normative character. The Torah and the Prophets are viewed similarly. Scripture conserves »the commandment of God,« as stated in Mark 7:8 with reference to the quotation of Isa 29:13 in Mark 7:7 (see also Matt 15:3 on Exod 20:12 and Deut 5:16; and Matt 15:4 on Exod 21:17 and Lev 20:9). The commandments are »the word of God« (Mark 7:13 par. Matt 15:6), which is made void through the interpretative tradition of the scribes akin to the Pharisees. Thus, for Jesus, who quotes Exod 3:6 as the divine word, God who speaks through the sacred texts is a God »not of the dead, but of the living« (Mark 12:27 par. Matt 22:32 and Luke 20:38). The divine inspiration of Scripture is implied by Jesus’s use of the biblical text. For Jesus, Scripture means above all the Torah, the prophet Isaiah, and the Psalms, which are the Scriptures he quotes most often.11 Summing up, Jesus’s person, message, and authority (ἐξουσία) (see Mark 1:22, 27) depend on a quite direct and personal relationship with God as Father.12 Scripture is employed by Jesus against the background of something more important, namely God’s reign, presence, and will. However, Jesus does not dismiss 10  In the parallel text at Luke 20:42 a different wording is used: »For David himself says in the book of Psalms.« However, this change does not imply a different notion of Scripture. For Luke too, David was a »prophet« who had foreseen and spoken in advance about Christ’s resurrection, as is evident from Acts 2:30–31. 11  These three sets of scriptural texts might correspond to the biblical books belonging to the synagogue of Nazareth, as Theissen suggests; see Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide (London: SCM, 1998), 356. Jesus also mentions a number of well-​known biblical figures (Moses, David, Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, Elijah, Elisha, Jonah) and some not Jewish cities (Sodom, Tyre, Sidon) and refers to the concept of the eschatological banquet (compare Matt 8:10–11 par. Luke 13:28–29 with Isa 25:6). On the other hand, the notion of Israel as a vineyard (Isa 5:1–2, quoted in Mark 12:1 par. Matt 21:33) seems to have been introduced into the traditions relating to Jesus prior to Mark, but it is absent from Luke 20:9 and Gos. Thom. 65; see my article »The Sayings of Jesus at the Beginning of the Canon,« Early Christianity 7/1 (2016), 47–70. 12  See Agustí Borrell i Viader, »L’autoritat de Jesús, és l’autoritat de Déu?,« Revista Catalana de Teologia 36/1 (2011), 99–113: »Jesús es presenta com el qui parla en nom de Déu en els temps definitius« (112).

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Scripture, but rather goes directly (and sometimes via the Scriptures themselves) to the source of the revelation they contain. Additionally, on limited but significant occasions, Jesus alludes to himself through the Scriptures, even though he uses the concept of fulfilment of earlier prophecy very rarely in his preaching.13

2.  Scripture as God’s Design 2.1.  A Biblical Text as Key to Understanding All Scripture The brief dialogue between Jesus and the scribe might well have entered the synoptic Gospels through two, probably oral, traditions.14 Mark 12:28–33 would represent one Judaeo-​Hellenistic tradition, which is also found in modified form in Matt 22:34–40. On the other hand, there appears to have been a second tradition, represented by Luke 10:25–29, that Matthew knew as well, bearing in mind the minor agreements between Matthew and Luke.15 In Luke 10:29, the dialogue of Jesus and the scribe ends with a key question: »And who is my neighbour?« – in other words, »Whom should I love?« This question about one’s neighbour, which remains implicit and unanswered in the other two Synoptics, merits a clear response in Luke in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30–37).16 If we compare Mark 12:28–33 and Luke 10:25–28, the relationship between Jesus and the scribe is a basically positive one, in contrast to Matthew 22. Although in Luke 10:25 the scribe wants to »test Jesus« and in Mark 12:28 he comes to Jesus after hearing the argument with the Sadducees and »seeing that he answered them well,« the scribe is praised after the dialogue, both in Mark (12:34: »You are not far from the Kingdom of God«) and in Luke (10:28: »you have given the right answer; do this and you will live«). In both cases the reason for praising the scribe that he has accepted both commandments to love, reciting Deut 6:(4)–5 and Lev 19:18b. In Mark 12:32, moreover, the scribe reprises Jesus’s own words and emphasizes his agreement with Jesus (»You are right, Teacher; you have truly said«). In Luke 10, on the other hand, the scribe demonstrates his agreement by mentioning

13  Mark 9:13, applied to John the Baptist, is a probable exception; see Vittorio Fusco, »Gesù e le Scritture di Israele,« in La Bibbia nell’antichità cristiana, Vol. 1: Da Gesù a Origene, ed. Enrico Norelli (La Bibbia nella Storia 15/a; Bologna: Dehoniane, 1993), 35–63: »è difficile individuare qualche caso in cui tale aspetto (l’idea di adempimento) risalga a lui« (61). 14  Cf. Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus (Mt 18–25) (EKK I/3; Zurich and Neukirchen: Benziger and Neukirchener, 1997), 269–271. 15  The differences between Mark and Luke in this respect are so great that it is difficult to think of only one tradition being represented, according to François Bovon, L’Évangile selon saint Luc (9,51–14,35) (Commentaire du Nouveau Testament III/b; Genève: Labor et Fides, 1996), 84. 16  Luke 10:29 forms a link between the two parts of the pericope (10:25–28 and 29–37).

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the command to love as though it were already a well-​known teaching.17 Jesus’s rather generic question, »What is written in the law? What do you read there?« (Luke 10:26), thus effectively contrasts with the very specific response of the teacher of the Law. Both the rhetorical nature of the text in Luke and the tone of plausibility conveyed by the text in Mark are evident.18 Two basic questions arise concerning the scribe’s dialogue with Jesus. The first and most essential relates to the Law and its fundamental teaching. The second, emerging from Jesus’s response, relates to the interpretation of the term »neighbour« in Lev 19:18b. The first point is not, however, equivalent to a simplifying reduction of the teachings of the Law, as if they could all be reduced to a single commandment. Neither the scribe’s question nor Jesus’s response allows us to speak of the nullification of the commandments. The subject is rather the focus of the Law on a commandment that is »the first of all« (Mark 12:28) / »the greatest« (Matt 22:36) and whether one can say that in the Law there is an irreducible core that fully expresses God’s will. Jesus could have responded negatively or could have chosen a different teaching from the Torah, but he chose to focus on its ethical dimension in relation to the two fundamental relationships of each human being: with the divine and with the rest of humanity, with God and with his or her neighbour. Moreover, Jesus expresses this choice of focus by quoting two texts from Scripture. With regard to God, Jesus cites Deut 6:4–5, the daily recitation of the Shema, which all Jews would have known by heart: God must be loved with all one’s being, ability, and commitment. With regard to the neighbour, he cites Lev 19:18b, a text pertaining to a series of prescriptions regarding the consequences of Israel being a holy people. What is surprising is that love for one’s neighbour, the second commandment, is made comparable with love for God, which is the »first (commandment)« (Mark 12:29; Matt 22:38). Matt 22:39 then affirms that the second commandment »is like it« (ὁμοία αὐτῇ) and Mark 12:31 that »There is no other commandment greater than these.« Mark 12:33 goes so to refer additionally to Hos 6:6 (»I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice«) (see also 1 Sam 15:22): love, for God and for one’s neighbour, against the background of these two commandments, is more important than making large and expensive offerings of animals in the temple of Jerusalem. The appearance of Lev 19:18b is, therefore, unexpected, both from the question (the scribe was asking Jesus about the first of the commandments and not the first two) and from the answer (Jesus uses the term »neighbour« rather than the more nationalistic »brother«). 17 Joachim Gnilka underlines Jesus’s agreement with the scribe: see Gnilka, Das Evangelium nach Markus (Mk 8,27–16,20) (EKK II/2; Zurich and Neukirchen: Benziger and Neukirchener, 1979), ad loc. 18  In Matthew there is a more tense relation between Jesus and the scribe, a Pharisee who wants to »test« Jesus after he has »silenced the Sadducees« (Matt 22:34–35). Now it is his turn. However, after Jesus’s response the scribe offers nothing in reply apart from an eloquent silence.

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To summarize, Jesus does not attempt to establish an exegetical rule by which all other commandments would be subordinate to the two commandments he cites, as though all the rest were derived from those two. The formulation in Matt 22:40 (»On these two commandments hang [κρέμαται] all the law and the prophets«) is not an exegetical rule but a hermeneutical principle, a key criterion according to which every commandment should be connected to the double commandment of love,19 since without this double commandment, God’s design would vanish, even if the other commandments were still observed. On the other hand, the second commandment (»love your neighbour as yourself«) could be viewed as having a purely nationalistic, intra-​Jewish, interpretation, but, as the parable of the good Samaritan reveals, the commandment is also of universal application. Indeed, in the parable the Samaritan is a foreigner and the nationality of the person he helps is unstated, he is simply »a neighbour.« 2.2.  One Biblical Text as Key to Understanding Another If there is one statement attributed to Jesus that can be regarded as entirely novel, and, consequently, as probably authentic, it is what he says about divorce (see Mark 10:2–9).20 John P. Meier concludes that the Qumran documents »do not forbid divorce,« in contrast to »the total prohibition of divorce and remarriage taught by the historical Jesus.«21 However, Judaism unanimously accepted divorce as a prerogative of the husband who could dismiss his wife for any »shameful« conduct by her, the nature of this shamefulness varying between the different rabbinic schools (Hillel and Shammai). Thus, in regard to divorce, which was a common issue in daily life and in rabbinic debate at the time of Jesus, the discontinuity between Jesus and the Judaism of his time, with its use of Deut 24:1 as a key text, is complete.22 Accordingly, when the Pharisees approach Jesus and ask him about the lawfulness of divorce and specifically about the document that enables a husband to dispose of a wife, Jesus takes the Scriptures in earnest, as containing commandments from Moses. However, he points out that the commandment in question is not the last word on divorce. The »first word,« as it were, »from the beginning of creation« (ἀπὸ δὲ ἀρχῆς κτίσεως) (Mark 10:6), is to be found in the book of Genesis (1:27; 2:24), and this has priority over Deut 24:1, since it is God’s word and not simply a commandment of Moses! Moreover, although the commandment 19  Cf. Luz, Matthäus (Mt 18–25) (n. 14), 282. Luz, at n. 101, observes that for Rabbi Akiba (2nd century CE) Lev 19:18b is one of the great principles of the Torah. 20  Gerd Theissen, in a private talk, suggested that two moments in Jesus’s life have the highest degree of authenticity: his baptism by John and his outright rejection of divorce. 21  John P. Meier, »The Historical Jesus and the Historical Law: Some Problems within the Problem,« CBQ 65 (2003), 52–79, here 74–75. 22  »Jesus’s prohibition of divorce seems to come out of nowhere in Judaism and to go nowhere in Judaism« (Meier, »The Historical Jesus and the Historical Law« [n. 21], 79).

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exists, it did not come about by a change in God’s design but »because of your hardness of heart« (Mark 10:5), which led to Moses having to establish such a rule. Nonetheless, the first word, given at the beginning, on the relationship between a man and his wife, leads to the following conclusion: »What God has joined together, let no one separate« (10:9). Jesus does not discount Moses but contrasts the Mosaic commandment with God’s original design as expressed in Scripture, the time of the »beginning« (ἀρχή) with the period of »hardness of heart« (σκληροκαρδία). Thus, divorce is not the result of God’s will but of human insensitivity. Scripture shows the way God has chosen for humankind from the very beginning, that of living together. When a man and a woman become one, they have attained this goal in the highest degree. The argument from the »beginning,« that is, from God’s design, becomes the criterion for interpretation.23 Scripture has to be internally validated, so that the divine will can emerge as the primary concern of interpretation. A second example of God’s design as the criterion for truth and as a rule of interpretation is found in another debate, this time between Jesus and the Sadducees, concerning the final resurrection (see Mark 12:18–27), with Jesus’s opponents here rejecting belief in resurrection, which was associated rather with Jewish movements influenced by apocalypticism, including those of Jesus and of the Pharisees. Again Scripture is the focus of argument, as the Sadducees attempt to demonstrate on the basis of Scripture that there is no resurrection. Starting from the so-​called law of the levirate (see Deut 25:5), applied to a woman who had married seven brothers, the Sadducees ask Jesus about her status as wife in relation to those seven husbands, once all of them were raised from the dead. Clearly, Deut 25:5 says nothing about resurrection, but the Sadducees use this text to test Jesus. In his response Jesus appeals to the ultimate criterion of the truth, namely, God’s design. First of all, he shows how the reasoning the Sadducees have used is wrong, in other words it is entirely inappropriate to link resurrection with marriage, as in heaven men and women are »like angels« and do not conform to any earthly status of husbands or wives. Secondly, Jesus offers an argument to demonstrate that at the end of time there will be a general resurrection, an argument based on God’s design. In contrast, the Sadducees have mistakenly quoted and interpreted Deut 25:5 and have even cast doubt on God’s omnipotence by attempting to establish something that would happen in »heaven,« the Lord’s dwelling place, with regard to which husband belongs to which wife. Jesus was 23 The interpretation of one text in terms of another similar one is the seventh rule of interpretation according to the baraita from the introduction to Midrash HaGadol. However, for divorce Jesus employs a criterion – not just a rule – that effectively annuls one text and assigns complete primacy to another. This criterion probably relates to the protection of the weaker party, namely, the woman, who could be dismissed by the husband and left without any means to live in dignity.

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clearly hoping for a better answer, as indicated by his telling the Sadducees twice that they were »wrong« (Mark 12:24, 27). However, their attempt to entrap him is doomed to failure because Jesus’s primary focus is God’s almighty design. As Jesus retorts, »You know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God« (12:24). From the book of Exodus, the normative character of which is recognized by the Sadducees, Jesus quotes God’s words to Moses from the burning bush, where God presents himself as »the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob« (Exod 3:15). In this declaration about the three ancestors of Israel, does God intend to say that they are dead and that he can only be the God of the dead? Could the God who is the creator of life and who lives forever characterize himself in such a way when he reveals himself to Moses? No, God is the source of life and Moses is a faithful witness of God’s epiphany! God must, therefore, be God »of the living« (Mark 12:27), a statement that most truly reflects the nature of God. God’s design and will is to be the God of those who live, that is who are called to life, including through resurrection. As with divorce, Jesus argues from the »beginning,« from God’s original condition as God of the living, not of the dead, and points to God’s own explanation of himself in order to infer God’s design for humankind. In contrast to Mark 10:2–9 (on divorce), where a first passage of Scripture was the key to another, in Mark 12:18–27 (on the resurrection of the dead) the first text provides both a key to and a correction of the interpretation of another text, which had been read by the Sadducees in a wrong and misguided way. 2.3.  One Biblical Text as the Implicit Key to Understanding Another One of the rules that most determines interpersonal relationships is the »law of retaliation,« which appears three times in the Torah (Exod 1:24; Lev 24:20; Deut 19:21), its most popular expression being »An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.« In Matt 5:38 it is raised as one of the commandments issued by God to his people, the formulation »You have heard that it was said« emphasizing the normative nature of a law that structured, among other things, social interaction in Israel. Proportionate retaliation is legitimate and even encouraged in the Torah as a guarantor of social balance: the guilty must not remain unpunished and should be paid back in accordance with their misdeeds. However, it is clear that in Jesus’s ethics there is no place for retaliation. The story narrated in Luke 9:51–56 is significant in this respect. The two sons of Zebedee ask for divine punishment on a Samaritan town that refused to receive Jesus. As Elijah did with the soldiers who tried to capture him and ended up being consumed by »fire […] from heaven« (2 Kgs 1:10–12) that the prophet orders as punishment, the two brothers want to do the same as Elijah (!) and »to command fire to come down from heaven« (Luke 9:54) against the Samaritan town. Jesus flatly opposes this and rejects the retaliation proposed by James and John.

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Although what is at play in this account is not so much the strict application of the law of retaliation (the Samaritans have not harmed Jesus or his disciples) as a spirit of retaliation that seeks divine punishment for those who have »transgressed« the sacred nature of hospitality, Jesus completely rejects the possibility of vengeful and vindictive divine punishment of the Samaritans. This radical rejection of revenge and, by implication, of the law of retaliation is suggested by a verse from the Torah (Lev 19:18a), the second part of which (v. 18b) is employed by Jesus in reiterating the second major commandment: »You shall love your neighbour as yourself« (see Mark 12:31). The entire verse (Lev 19:18) reads as follows: »You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.« In an apodictic manner, Lev 19:18 unconditionally rejects revenge and rancour and is consequently clearly consistent with Jesus’s ethical perspective on relationships with one’s neighbours, expressing both a prohibition on retaliation against neighbours and a commandment to love them. According to Lev 19:18 – and also Matt 5:38–47, which employs the same sequence against retaliation and in favour of love towards neighbours – there can be no love for neighbours if the law of retaliation is carried out. This law is, in the first place, a »rule of returned evil,« »wound for wound« (Exod 21:25), whereby aggression is responded to with aggression. Jesus establishes the »rule of good instead of evil,« in other words, a reversal of the rule of retaliation, that may be inspired by the first half of Lev 19:18, taken as interpretamentum of Exod 21:25. Jesus goes beyond simple opposition to the application of the law of retaliation, for example, in not responding to a blow with another blow in return (thus, Matt 5:39, »Do not resist an evildoer«); instead, Jesus adopts a more radical form of rejection by replacing it with the »rule of good instead of evil,« as developed in the concept of turning the other cheek (Matt 5:39 par. Luke 6:29), an approach that entails allowing violence to be done to oneself and overcoming the desire for retaliation. Jesus replaces the law of retaliation with the »rule of good instead of evil,« based on Lev 19:18, »You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people,« and the only rule capable of eliminating retaliation. This same »rule of good instead of evil,« which is the antithesis of the law of retaliation, is also found in the substitution of the rule of restoring a cloak (Exod 22:25–26) by that of giving a cloak (Matt 5:40 par. Luke 6:29). Once the law of retaliation is substituted by the »rule of good instead of evil,« an extension of this rule is the »covenant of forgiveness,« that is to say, the commitment expressed in the Lord’s Prayer, taught by Jesus to his disciples, by virtue of which an offence endured is not retained, as with retaliation, but forgotten: »We ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us« (Luke 11:4). Forgiveness, the antithesis of retaliation, is part of God’s new covenant. God is asked to forgive sins that are committed, with the understanding that each person will in turn forgive anyone who has committed offences against him or her. Accordingly, in

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formulating the Lord’s Prayer Jesus makes use of a legal allusion that evokes Lev 19:17, where forgiveness is worded in terms of non-​hatred: »You shall not hate your brother in your heart« (RSV). Jesus’s words respond to the design of God himself and to God’s behaviour in forgiving humankind’s sins. In the Lord’s Prayer, the request to »forgive us our sins« (Luke 11:4) effectively expresses the identity of God as the one who forgives, that is to say, the one who does not hate (see Lev 19:17) or retaliate (see Lev 19:18). In short, the forgiveness God offers, and to which a human being should be committed, is fundamental to the message of Jesus, which rejects retaliation and is inspired by a literal and radical interpretation, albeit only an implicit one, of Lev 19:17–18. Jesus thus undertakes two hermeneutical processes: on one hand introducing the idea of »forgiveness« as an alternative to the »revenge« of the law of retaliation, which is countered by the »law of returned good,« and on the other hand moving the focus of forgiveness onto God and his design (see Matt 6:12 par. Luke 11:4). From the beginning (ἀρχή), the God Jesus proclaims is the God of forgiveness.24 The law of retaliation thus becomes empty and without purpose. 2.4.  A Non-​biblical Element as the Implicit Key to Understanding a Biblical Text The preceding section raised the issue of the use Jesus implicitly makes of Lev 19:17–18 with regard to retaliation and hatred towards fellow human beings. As the law of retaliation cannot be integrated into Jesus’s ethical system, he employs Lev 19:17–18 to show that this law has, in practice, no purpose. The preceding section also showed that the antithesis to the law of retaliation is the law of forgiveness and that, accordingly, the ultimate reason given by Jesus for setting aside the law of retaliation is God’s original design for human behaviour. Similar comments apply to another major theme, the definition of »neighbour.« Jesus selects Lev 19:18b as a »second commandment« (»You shall love your neighbour as yourself«) and considers it as an interpretive criterion for all Scripture, along with the complete and unconditional love of God, without restriction or hesitation (Deut 6:5: »You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart …«). Nonetheless, the question arises, as asked of Jesus by the scribe: »Who is my neighbour?« (Luke 10:29). This same question underpins one of the most radical and perplexing rules in Jesus’s preaching, »Love your enemies« (Matt 5:44 par. Luke 6:27), which demonstrates, according to Matt 5:44–45 par. Luke 6:27, 35, that enemies too must be included in the category of »fellow human being,« meaning that even those who oppose you and act against you should be considered your neighbours. Although this appears to be an impossibly difficult rule to apply, a mere desideratum with no sense of reality, Jesus refers it to the ultimate reality, namely, God’s design, 24 This elemental characteristic of God is expressed, for example, in Ps 99:8: »O Lord our God, you answered them; you were a forgiving God to them.«

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which is the same now »as at the beginning.« Jesus mentions two things that have affected human life since the world began, namely, the sun (see Gen 1:16) and the rain (Gen 2:5), and reminds his listeners that God makes the sun rise for everyone, »evil and good,« and sends rain on everyone, »righteous and unrighteous« (Matt 5:45 par. Luke 6:35). In other words, God is the father of all, both your friends and your enemies, and considers everyone his »neighbour,« both those who obey him and do good, and those who only do evil. God regards all human beings as being close to him and in the same way each person should consider all other human beings as »neighbours,« without discriminating against anyone and regardless of any hostility they might bear to him or her. This is how Lev 19:18, the second commandment of the Law of Moses, should be interpreted according to Jesus, an interpretation rooted in God’s design, in his original will, revealed from the beginning of creation, by virtue of which all humanity is a »neighbour« of the creator. The sun and the moon do not discriminate against anyone because God, who sends them, makes no distinction among people (see Matt 22:16). This reflects the earliest (ἀρχή) state of affairs and corresponds to God’s original design. In this argument an element that is not specifically biblical, even if alluded to in the Bible, namely, the image of God as generous father who sends sun and rain, phenomena that affect, and are recognized by, all humanity, is employed to help explain God’s design towards humanity. If God is the father of all and loves everyone, then enemies are also neighbours. This is the meaning of Lev 19:18. Jesus »translates« God’s original and primary design for the interaction of human beings with a parable in which love towards enemies is seen from the perspective of one of the enemies, a Samaritan, a particularly despised foreigner to whom the phrase »You shall […] hate your enemy« (Matt 5:43) could easily apply. In this parable (Luke 10:30–37), God’s original design is represented by a theoretical enemy who acts as a friend, a »neighbour,« of the man left half-​dead at the roadside. The parable is presented as Jesus’s response to the question by the teacher of the Law about who his neighbours are (v. 29). At the end of the parable the roles are reversed and it is Jesus who asks the teacher of the Law about who has behaved like a neighbour (v. 36). The answer is »the enemy,« in other words, the Samaritan, »the one who showed him mercy« (v. 37). The »enemy« who shows mercy towards someone left for dead acts as that person’s »neighbour« and not as his »enemy.« By turning the enemy into a neighbour Jesus effectively breaches the division between good and evil and the righteous and the unrighteous (see Matt 5:45 par. Luke 6:35) and reveals the true purpose of God’s design in making the sun and the rain affect everyone. The parable of the Good Samaritan is, then, effectively a reinforcement of the instruction to »love your enemies« (Matt 5:44 par. Luke 6:27) on the basis of Jesus’s interpretation of the commandment to »love […] your neighbour as yourself« (Luke 10:27b). Love towards enemies corresponds

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to the original design of our father in heaven, who, as at the beginning, sends his gifts to »evil and good« and to »righteous and unrighteous.« With great skill the parable focuses on the subject from an unexpected angle, so that the theoretical enemy becomes someone who decisively behaves as a neighbour. The radical consequences of the parable contain an ironic feature: you should allow yourself to »be loved by enemies,« especially if you are on the verge of death and even if the only one taking care of you is a Samaritan! Conversely – and this is God’s original design – you must love your enemies. Two other cases also provide examples of Jesus’s radical rereading of the Scriptures to arrive at an interpretation that reinforces the commandments and encourages behaviour consistent with their broader significance. In Matthew, Jesus’s interpretation of the commandments from the Decalogue not to murder and not to commit adultery have been subsumed into two different units, which have come to be known as the first and second antithesis (respectively, Matt 5:21– 26 and 5:27–30). For present purposes, however, the focus is on the way Jesus interprets the Scriptures in reference to these two prohibitions. The commandment not to murder is found in both versions of the Decalogue (Exod 20:13 and Deut 5:17) and the appropriate penalty is, as expected, death (Exod 21:12; Lev 24:17; Num 35:16–18), in accordance with the law of retaliation. However, the question Jesus raises regarding the prohibition of murder is not about the law of retaliation (which merited, as has already been shown, interpretation in its own right) but about how it is possible to keep this commandment. Similar comments apply to the commandment not to commit adultery (see Exod 20:14; Deut 5:18), in relation to which Jesus does not focus on the punishment to be incurred by an adulterer (see, for example, Lev 10:10 or John 8:2–11) but on how one can avoid falling into the sin that the Law prohibits. In both cases (Matt 5:21–22; 5:27–28), Jesus goes to the root of the transgression that leads to murder or adultery. Whereas the Law of Moses specifies the sin and its due punishment, Jesus points out what has led to the sin. In the case of murder, a process of violence against another person begins, develops and will end, almost inevitably, in the transgression. In this way, Jesus focuses attention less on the actual commission of the sinful deed as on the growing intention within a person to commit it. Accordingly, Jesus outlines a progressive worsening of attitude by the sinner (first, irritation, then insults or curses) via the hyperbolic image of three courts of judgement: a local Sanhedrin, the general Sanhedrin of the whole of Israel, and the court of God (Matt 5:22). Thus, there are three successive steps, which, once taken, lead to the death of the other person. In the case of adultery, the origin is located in the eyes that see what is desired and »anticipate« what is to come and in the heart that imagines it as already done. Jesus approaches the fundamental requirements of Scriptures (here, the Decalogue) and reads them not from a casuistic perspective, focussing on the events that might have occurred, but rather from a perspective of trying to explain the

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conditions needed in order to fulfil those requirements. In doing so, Jesus recognizes, indirectly, that what is said in Scripture sometimes seems insufficient for fulfilling God’s design. At the same time, however, this design must be preserved and maintained. God’s design underlies the Scriptures, which must, then, be read in a way that permits that design to be fulfilled. Jesus’s point of departure with regard to Scripture is that it expresses God’s design but not with uniform intensity. For this reason, Jesus seeks a unifying principle for all Scripture and finds it in the double commandment to love. 2.5.  Wrong Interpretations of Scripture: The Qorban in the Tradition of the Elders Jesus’s teaching contains an example of his outright rejection of an interpretation of Scripture that was in practice against the Law. This has to do with the qorban, or »offering« to God, by which a son could exclude his parents from the usufruct of his property and leave them in practice without means of support (see Mark 7:9–13 par. Matt 15:3–6). The use of this legislation led to an evident transgression of one of the most important commandments, namely, »Honour your father and your mother« (Exod 20:12 par. Deut 5:16), or, in its negative formulation, »All who curse father or mother shall be put to death« (Lev 20:9). The Law thus expresses very clearly the care and help for parents that children should provide; the relevant commandment must be scrupulously observed and does not offer curtailment of any kind. Rather, Jesus emphasizes what the commandments say and the background of God’s will against which they say it, just as he declares that the enemy must not only not be hated (a position of indifference) but is also to be loved and to be presented to God in prayer (see Matt 5:43–44: see above). In this way, for Jesus the Law is not diminished but refocussed and taken back to its original source in the divine will. The text of Mark 7:9–13 may, accordingly, be considered as a reaffirmation of the Law in the face of erroneous interpretation that alters the character of that Law. Jesus emphasizes the Law’s prescriptions regarding the duties of a child towards its parents, citing two biblical texts (Exod 20:12 par. Deut 5:16; and Lev 20:9) regarded as »the commandment of God« (Mark 7:9) and »the word of God« (v. 13). Moreover, the quotation of these two texts, placed one after the other, is preceded by the formula »Moses said« (v. 10). The authority ascribed to Scripture is, thus, complete, with its divine origin indicated by the characterization of both »the commandment« and »the word« as being »of God.« Also, just as in Mark 10:3–5 (regarding divorce), »Moses« is spoken of in completely positive terms and equated, as its author, with the Law itself. While in Mark 10:3–5 the words borrowed from the Torah (Gen 1:27; 2:24) are decisive for Jesus’s condemnation of divorce, despite divorce being supported by another text from the Law (Deut 24:1), in Mark 7:9–13 the observance of the commandment to honour one’s father and mother is emphasized on the basis of the Law and its divine source. In both

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cases, however, the Law, with Moses as its representative, is considered as an authoritative text, even if different levels of importance may be established within this Law; accordingly Gen 1:27 and 2:24 are »superior« to Deut 24:1 because they represent the original divine will »from the beginning of creation« (Mark 10:6). Something similar may be deduced in Mark 7:9–13, where instead of a contrast between two texts of Scripture, on the one hand Scripture is understood as the commandment and word of God, and, on the other hand, »your tradition that you have handed on« (v. 13) or »your tradition« (v. 9). This tradition, in the immediately preceding words (v. 8), is labelled as »human tradition« (τὴν παράδοσιν τῶν ἀνθρώπων). The contrast is, thus, absolute, with Law (Torah) as divine and tradition as human, so that neither God nor Moses, his prophet, has anything to do with this tradition. The antithesis between »Moses« (v. 10) and »you« (v. 11) is clearly marked and while Moses promotes honouring one’s father and mother, »you,« on the other hand, promote doing nothing »for a father or mother« (v. 12), via an interpretation of the Law that allowed the practice of qorban. The tradition of the Pharisees / rabbis thus becomes an antithesis to, rather than a continuation of, the words of Moses. By their teachings the rabbis distance themselves from the Torah’s commandments and ultimately from the tradition of interpretation that is supposed to unite them with Moses in accordance with Pirke Abot 1.1, whereby the teachings of the rabbis derive from Moses, who transmitted his teachings to the men of the »Great Synagogue,« and so on, until the rabbis of the first century. Although it is not certain that this text from Avot was already known at the time of Jesus, in Mark 7:9–13 a clear distinction is drawn between divine teachings (those of the Law of Moses) and human teachings (those of Jesus’s rabbinic contemporaries). The accusations of v. 9, »rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition,« and v. 13, »making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on,« employ the verbs »reject« (ἀθετεῖτε) and »make void« (ἀκυροῦντες), which have a legal connotation and, accordingly, imply a breach of the Law (!) on the part of the rabbis who propose or permit the practice of qorban. It appears, as Focant suggests, citing Légasse,25 that in the first century the law of qorban was commonly employed.26 However, regardless of the extent of application,27 it is clear that Jesus declares himself to be radically opposed to a rabbinic interpretation that justified a son’s failure to help his elderly parents at 25 Camille Focant, L’Évangile selon Marc (Commentaire Biblique – Nouveau Testament 2; Paris: Cerf, 2004), 279. 26 The formula »I declare qorban,« that is to say, an offering to God of parental property, was interpreted as an irrevocable vow and according to Numb 30:2, the one who makes a vow »shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.« 27  At the end of the first century, there was rabbinic debate about revoking the oath made as part of qorban (cf. m. Ned. 5.6), but it seems that this was not possible at the time of the ministry of Jesus in the fourth decade of that century; see Joachim Gnilka, Das Evangelium nach

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their time of need and to withdraw their usufruct of his property. For Jesus, the legal loopholes emerging from a »skilful« interpretation of the Law could not be used to justify the breaching of that very Law, in this case, moreover, one of the Ten Commandments, namely, to honour one’s mother and father. An initial consequence of Jesus’s stance here concerns the relationship between a specific commandment of the Law and its interpretation, namely that if an interpretation of a commandment invalidates the Law that interpretation should be assumed to be erroneous and unacceptable. The law of qorban is, therefore, both erroneous and unacceptable. A second probable consequence concerns in general the relationship between the Law and the interpretative traditions of the rabbis, which by virtue of their transmission over the generations (cf. Mark 7:13) acquire an authority similar to that possessed by Scripture. However, in Mark 7:9–13 a contrast is implied between, on the one hand, the commandments and the word (»of God«), and, on the other hand, »your« tradition, which nullifies what comes from God and must, therefore, be considered as purely »human« (v. 8). In combination with the absence of references or direct allusions to rabbinic tradition in his arguments and dialogues with rabbis of the time, Jesus’s outright opposition to the legislation on qorban (Mark 7:9–13) supports the conclusion that Scripture was the only authoritative element in his teaching and that rabbinic tradition occupied at best only a secondary place.

3.  Scriptures as »Source of Inspiration« for Jesus’s Actions 3.1.  Wheat Picked on the Sabbath This episode (Mark 2:23–26 par. Matt 12:1–4 and Luke 6:1–4) seems to run counter to the above comments on the qorban. While at Mark 7:9–13 Jesus affirms that nothing can cast doubt on the authority of the commandment of the Decalogue to honour one’s father and mother, here another commandment of the Decalogue – to rest on the Sabbath – is reinterpreted in order to justify a specific transgression of this precept. The significant point of issue is what guides Jesus’s reasoning in each case. As they pass through the crops, Jesus’s disciples start plucking ears of wheat and eating the grains. The time, then, is obviously close to harvest. We are not told directly why they do this but it may be understood by Jesus’s reference to David and his men when they were »in need of food« (Mark 2:25). Unexpectedly the Pharisees suddenly appear, as though spying on Jesus (cf. 3:2), and ask Jesus: »Why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?« (2:24). The Law indeed Markus (Mk 1,1–8,26) (EKK II/1; Zurich and Neukirchen-​Vluyn: Benziger and Neukirchener, 1979), ad loc.

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states: »In ploughing time and in harvest time you shall rest« (Exod 34:21). The subject of the question is, then, the Sabbath, rather than a possible theft of grain, since, according to Deut 23:26, »If you go into your neighbour’s standing grain, you may,« as the disciples do, »pluck the ears with your hand« (as long as you do not »put a sickle« to it). Jesus could have engaged in a typically Pharisaic casuistic argument about the Sabbath, on the basis of Deut 23:26, regarding actions that would be allowed (for example, plucking ears of wheat) or prohibited (for example, reaping them).28 Instead, Jesus’s response goes to the heart of the issue and seeks to justify the disciples’ action on principle. Jesus accordingly refers to a scriptural text that has no explicit connection to the law of Sabbath rest but that has to do, rather, with the actions of David, to which paradigmatic and authoritative value is attached. 1 Sam 21:2–7 recounts what happened in the sanctuary of Nob when David needed bread for himself and his men and how the high priest Ahimelech (Abiathar, according to Mark 2:26) gave him some of the bread of offering, consecrated to God, which only the priests can eat (cf. Lev 24:9). However, in the story as narrated by Jesus (Mark 2:23–26) David acts on his own initiative in eating the bread and distributing it to his companions.29 The tertium comparationis linking the two episodes is undoubtedly the need for food, which affects both David and his men and Jesus and his disciples, and the inevitable effect of this situation, namely, transgression of the law of the Sabbath, as formulated in the Decalogue (cf. Exod 20:8–11; Deut 5:12–15). However, this absolute prohibition may be treated as only relative in the face of a pressing need such as that resulting from lack of food, just as the prohibition on eating the bread of offering was relaxed for David and his companions. The example of David cannot be refuted and indeed goes unchallenged by the Pharisees. Indeed it is possible that David’s »transgressive« behaviour in relation to the bread of offering was the inspiration for the actions of Jesus and his disciples here. In any case, the Pharisees’ complaint elicits an immediate response from Jesus, from a perspective of principle rather than casuistry, that insists on the maintenance of human life when under threat, in this case from hunger. In Mark 2:23–26 Jesus justifies his behaviour by reference to David, but it is also possible that David’s actions, transmitted through Scripture (1 Sam 21), in fact served as the inspiration for Jesus as the Messiah / anointed one, suggesting and endorsing a course of behaviour that permitted an apparently absolute prohibition from Scripture itself (Exod 20:8–11) to be treated as relative. 28 Philo (Mos. 2.22) and the Talmud of Jerusalem (Shab. 7.9b) adopt the same point of view as that of the Pharisees in Mark 2:24 and prohibit the gathering of crops on the Sabbath; cf. Focant, Marc (n. 25), 126. Jesus could have begun a scholarly debate on the limits of the Sabbath precept and proposed a »liberal« solution. 29  It is clear that Jesus presents David as acting with complete authority, the same authority with which Jesus allows the disciples to pluck the ears of corn. Cf. Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus (Mt 8–17) (EKK I/2; Zurich and Neukirchen-​Vluyn: Benziger and Neukirchener, 1990): David is »souveräner Akteur« (230).

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It is evident, then, that Jesus does not abolish the Sabbath rules but interprets the Sabbath rest on the basis of the original design of God, who does not want to endanger the life of the human being he created but to maintain it.30 The life of a person is at stake here, just as it is in the practice of qorban, which is, accordingly, denounced by Jesus. On these grounds the Law is reasserted in one case (the qorban) and assigned only a relative importance in the other (the disciples’ hunger on the Sabbath). Jesus’s point of reference is less the letter of the Law and more its basic intention, which is the preservation of human life, an intention that also forms part of God’s design, which lies behind the Law.31 This same understanding informs that part of the tradition concerning Jesus that adds to the episode a logion underlining the priority of human life over fulfilment of the Sabbath laws: »The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath« (Mark 2:27).32 This statement is evidently connected with the creation narrative, in which the Sabbath was »created« / »made« (ἐγένετο) by God himself. The creator rests on the seventh day and consequently the Sabbath rest on the seventh day is reflected in God’s own rest (see Exod 20:8–11). To some extent, Jesus’s argument here is similar to the one he employs in the case of divorce, where he affirms with Scripture that »from the beginning of creation« God indissolubly united man and woman, who, therefore, despite Deut 24:1, cannot be separated (see Mark 10:6). The principle of the protection of people’s lives, which is consistent with God’s design and applies both to elderly parents in need (qorban) and to disciples hungry on the Sabbath (the episode of the ears of wheat), extends to other episodes related to the Sabbath. For example, in Mark 3:1–5 (par. Luke 6:6–10) Jesus ironically asks whether the Sabbath, a day devoted to the God of life, is not an appropriate day to offer a fuller life to someone with a withered hand. The question »Is it lawful […] on the Sabbath …?« (v. 4) is rhetorically equivalent to asking whether the Law is intended to do evil and, even worse, if God can allow evil on the day he created for rest. That the Law does not prevent good being done on the Sabbath is demonstrated in the argument in Matt 12:11–12, arising from the case of a sheep rescued on the Sabbath from a pit into which it had fallen and the death of which would jeopardize its owner’s livelihood, since the sheep was the only animal he had. A similar argument is found at Luke 13:15–16, to do with the ox and the ass that have to be led to the trough even on the Sabbath, so that they do not suffer illness from lack of water and thus cause irreparable damage to their owner. The context here is of a woman with a chronically deformed spine who requires the restoration of life on the Sabbath and precisely because the Sabbath  Luz, Matthäus (Mt 8–17) (n. 29): »Hunger gilt den Rabbinen als Lebensgefahr« (230).  Focant, Marc (n. 25), 127. 32  The statement is not found in Matthew and Luke. On the other hand, all three Synoptics coincide in another logion, of a Christological nature (Mark 2:28 par. Matt 12:8 par. Luke 6:5), with which the episode closes. 30 31

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is the day devoted to God the creator, it is also the day on which life is given. In this way, the Law is seen to be subject to the saving purpose of God made manifest on the day God consecrated to himself and Jesus regards the Sabbath as the day most appropriate for healing because it especially dedicated to God, whose purpose is life lived fully and unlimited by illness. The laws concerning Sabbath rest may, therefore, be assigned only a relative importance. 3.2.  The Expulsion of the Traders from the Temple This episode is recounted in the synoptic source and in John. In the first (Mark 11:15–17 par. Matt 21:12–13 and Luke 19:45–46) it comes after Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem and at the end of his ministry. In the second (John 2:13–17), the ejection of the traders and the overthrowing of the tables of the moneychangers is completed by a driving out of the animals, »the sheep and the cattle.« In the first source Jesus justifies his action from what »is written,« specifying two prophetic texts (Isa 56:7 and Jer 7:11 in a form that is close to that of the LXX) that refer to »my house« (Isa) and to »this house, which is called by my name« (Jer).33 In the second source, in John, it is »his disciples,« not Jesus, who »remembered that it was written« in a text (in this case at Ps 69:9) that again refers to »your house.« Although it is obvious that this last citation is secondary, it is not clear whether that is also true of the two citations of the prophets by Jesus himself in the synoptic source. In reality, Jesus’s actions are not directly related to either Isa 56:7 or Jer 7:11. The context of Isaiah (57:6–7) is of foreigners, both within Israel and abroad, who had no access to the temple or the cult, even though they scrupulously observed Israel’s religion, and to whom a promise is given that they will be able to present their offerings in the temple like the Jews, »for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples« (v. 7). This is the text that underlies Mark (11:17). In contrast, both Matthew (21:13) and Luke (19:46), which exclude the words »for all peoples,« are more consistent with the actions of Jesus, which have nothing to do with worship by foreigners. Moreover, neither does Jesus’s intolerance of trading in the temple enclosure (specifically in the court of the gentiles, where those selling and buying or changing the money collected) have much to do with praying, which took place in the courts that surrounded the sanctuary and that were reserved for Jews. In Jer 7:11, the point of the text is a denunciation of »all these abominations« (v. 10), detailed in v. 9: idolatry, theft, murder, adultery and false vows. Those who behave in this way go to »this house, which is called by my name« as if nothing 33  »My house« is the key term that allows Isa 56:7 and Jer 7:11 to be exegetically related (in Jer 7:11 the term appears in a part of the verse that is not cited by the synoptic source) in accordance with the rule of gezera shawa; see Chilton and Evans, »Jesus and Israel’s Scriptures« (n. 5), 288–289.

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had happened, turning it into »a den of robbers« (v. 11). This expression must be interpreted as a single unit the significance of which is that the temple has become a shelter for criminals, people for whom »truth is cut off from their lips« (v. 28). However, there is nothing to suggest that Jesus carried out the symbolic action of expelling the traders from the temple because they were corrupt or exploitative. Rather, everything indicates that this action was directed against them because by conducting business in the temple courts they had changed the holy nature of the temple. In this way Jesus did not try to purify the temple of the bad uses made of it but to point to its destruction: the temple has become an obsolete institution regarding God’s design on it.34 This can be deduced from Matthew 23:38 par. Luke 13:35, where Jesus does not accept that the temple has a continuing function because of the refusal of his message by »Jerusalem«, namely, Jewish religious leaders and people of the town (Matthew 23:37 par. Luke 13:34).35 Accordingly, interpretation should be focussed on John 2:16 and Zech 14:21, the last words of the book of Zechariah, »And there shall no longer be traders in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day,«36 where the context (14:16–21) refers to the arrival of the nations at the temple in Jerusalem and to the holiness of the most ordinary of objects such as »the bells of the horses« (v. 20), »every cooking pot in Jerusalem and Judah« (v. 21), or »the cooking pots in the house of the Lord,« which »shall be as holy as the bowls in front of the altar.« This invasion of holiness that penetrates everything and nullifies the distinction between the sacred and the profane will result in the end of trading within the temple of the Lord,37 which is precisely the basic idea reflected in John 2:16: »Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!,« an expression that includes not only the characteristically Johannine term »Father« but also two terms that are key to understanding the significance of Jesus’s prophetic action: »market(place)« (οἶκος ἐμπορίου) and »house«  / »temple« (οἶκος). The antithesis of »marketplace« (»traders«) and »my Father’s house« (»the house of the Lord of hosts«) unites the inter-​related texts of Zech 14:21 and John 2:16.38 Some explanation of Jesus’s action in the temple was, however, considered necessary in order for it to be understood by those directly affected and by astonished onlookers as Jesus disrupted, albeit momentarily, the trade practised in the great court of the gentiles, an action that forms part of the eschatological 34  Pace Luz, Matthäus (Mt 18–25) (n. 14), 186–187. See my forthcoming article »Jewish Apocalypticism and the figure of Jesus.« 35  The fate of Jerusalem as symbol of the Jewish people is also expressed in Matthew 23:35–36 par. Luke 11:50–51. 36  The word »trader« translates Hebrew kena‘ani, which the LXX have poorly interpreted as »Canaanite« (Χαναναῖος). 37  Trade is completely incompatible with holiness since it is based on money. It is accordingly excluded altogether from the eschatological vision of Zechariah and from the purified temple. 38 R. E. Brown considers John 2:16 to be »an implicit allusion« to Zech 14:21; see The Gospel According to John (I–XII) (AB; New York: Doubleday, 1966), ad loc.

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dimension of his ministry. For Jesus, the temple of Jerusalem does not belong to the new time in which two masters, God and mammon, could not be served (see Matt 6:24 par. Luke 16:13). Looked at together, the texts of Mark 11:15–16 and John 2:13–16 reveal a series of terms referring to trade: »buying,« »selling,« »carry,« »coins,« »money changers,« »tables« , »seats,« »doves,« »cattle, sheep,« »marketplace.« The resulting image is of the temple as a market and not as a house dedicated to God. The logion of John 2:16 most probably reflects the words Jesus used when carrying out his prophetic action before the expectant people, words that explain Jesus’s radical gesture towards the temple, which, according to Jesus, had changed from »my Father’s house« to »a marketplace.« However, these words are also consistent with the eschatological prophecy of Zechariah 14, according to which »the Lord will become king over all the earth« (v. 9) and »there shall no longer be traders« at the time that God alone reigns (v. 21). Bearing in mind John 2:16, it appears, then, that Zech 14:21 had a decisive influence on Jesus’s action in the temple, an old reality which will be destroyed.39 Once more it is Scripture that seems to have inspired his decisions and his actions. 3.3.  The Last Supper The account of the last supper is text-​critically complex. As is well known, there are two traditions, that of Mark and Matthew (Mark 14:22–26; Matt 26:26–30) and that of Paul and Luke (1 Cor 11:23–25; Luke 22:14–20). Again, Luke represents an intermediate stage. One of the most outstanding differences is the expression »my blood of the covenant« (Mark 14:24 par. Matt 26:28), which in Luke 22.20 and 1 Cor 11:25 appears as »the new covenant in my blood.« This last expression (ἡ καινὴ διαθήκη ἐν τῷ αἵματί μου) must of necessity be connected with Jer 31:31 (LXX 38:31) (διαθήκην καινήν), since the expression is only found in the Old Testament there and Jer 31:31–34 is the only Old Testament prophecy that announces a »new covenant.« However, in the Jeremiah passage there is no reference to »blood« and probably for this reason a rather artificial expression (»the new covenant in my blood«) has been constructed to unite both elements and to provide a reason for this connection. Jeremiah 31 also emphasizes that the »new covenant« will be very different from the one of Sinai, as internal, »everlasting,« irrevocable (Jer 32:40), and observed by all Israelites (31:34), on whose hearts the Law will be inscribed (31:33). The tradition underlying 1 Corinthians and Luke seems to be responsible for the addition of the expression »new covenant« from Jer 31:31 to the words that Jesus would have spoken at the last supper. Such a re-​reading of prophetic Scripture was not random but had as its point of departure the expression »blood 39  Sandra Huebenthal deals with the role of Zechariah in New Testament writings. See her Transformation und Aktualisierung. Zur Rezeption von Sach 9–14 im Neuen Testament (SBS 57; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2006).

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of the covenant« in the tradition underlying Mark and Matthew and probably used by Jesus during the last supper. At this culminating point of his life, Jesus refers to two unique elements that are key to understanding the significance of his meal with the disciples immediately before the passion, namely, »my blood« and »covenant.«40 Jesus had never before employed these terms, neither speaking about »my blood«41 nor, more importantly, referring to his life and death as a »covenant,« a term that recalled the covenant that God established with Noah, as representative of humankind, and with the cosmos (Gen 9:9), with Abraham and the nations descended from him (Gen 17:4), and, especially, with the people of Israel to whom God committed himself at Sinai (Exod 19:5; Isa 56:4; Ezek 16:62) and with King David, the Lord’s anointed (Ps 89:28). It is God who proposes, guarantees, and fulfils the covenant, with the agreement, tacit or explicit, of the other party. At the last supper, then, Jesus, taking the cup of wine into his hand, employs a term the use of which was usually associated with God and applies it to himself and his own life: »This is my blood of the covenant« (Mark 14:24 par. Matt 26:28). This expression, which is unique in the synoptic tradition, bears a close resemblance to Exod 24:8, »See the blood of the covenant,« which is in turn unique in the Hebrew Bible. The similarities between Jesus’s last supper in the synoptic gospels (Mark 14; Matt 26; Luke 22) and the concluding celebration of God’s covenant with Israel at Sinai in Exodus 24, are striking.42 To begin with, it should be recalled that Exodus 24 recounts the solemn acceptance by the people of the commandments contained in the covenant and entrusted by God to Moses. The people’s acceptance is expressed through the words of commitment that all of them pronounce (v. 3 and 7). Two of the most important and unusual elements of the narrative are the sacrifice (which seals the covenant before the people) and a meal (in which only a small group participates: Moses, his three companions – Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu – and the seventy elders). The culminating moment of the account in Exodus is precisely this meal, which takes place on the mountain and is shared by »the chief men (LXX: »the chosen ones«) of the people of Israel« of whom it is said »they beheld God, and they ate and drank« (v. 11). The meal followed an elaborate ceremony at the bottom of the mountain in which all the people 40  It is significant that the phrase »my blood« appears in all the New Testament accounts of the last supper: Mark 14:24; Matt 26:28; Luke 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25. 41  The closest parallel is Jesus’s references to his »cross« (Matt 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23 and Matt 10:38; Luke 14:27), although bearing the cross in these passages is related more to the life of the disciple than to any cruel suffering that this might entail. 42 N. T. Wright also notes the relationship between the death of Jesus and the renewal of the covenant, although for him »Jesus’ actions at the Last Supper are to be seen in close conjunction with his earlier actions in the Temple […] his quasi-​royal entry« (Wright, Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol. 2: Jesus and the Victory of God [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996], 561). In my opinion, the episode of the multiplication of the loaves and, in particular, the text of Exodus 24 (the ratification of the covenant) are key to understanding Jesus’s intentions at the Last Supper.

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participated and which consisted in the offering of numerous sacrifices. An altar was built for these sacrifices along with »twelve pillars, corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel« (v. 4). Half of the blood of the slaughtered animals was sprinkled »on the people« as a sign of God’s covenant with Israel (v. 8: »See the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you«). After the meal with his seventy-​three companions in God’s presence on the mountain, Moses continued up the mountain in obedience to God’s call until he entered a cloud, where he remained forty days and forty nights, as if he had disappeared forever. At the last supper Jesus’s symbolic actions with the bread and, especially, the wine, might have been based on the Exodus 24 narrative and indeed it seems that the reference to the »covenant« should be explained in this way, with Jesus indicating via a symbolic action during the last supper God’s covenant with his people and Jesus’s own death as a sacrifice linked to that covenant. The correspondence of Mark 14:24 par. Matt 26:28 (»this is my blood of the covenant«), accompanied by the expression »for you« (Luke 22:20; 1 Cor 11:24), and Exod 24:8b (»see the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you«) seems undeniable and the words that follow in Mark 14:24 par. Matt 26:28 (»[blood] poured out for many«) also evoke Exod 24:8 (»Moses took the blood and dashed it on the people«). In both sets of texts, Exodus 24 on the one hand, and Mark 14 and Matthew 26 on the other, similar language is used to link the covenant with blood shed or sprinkled on behalf of many or on behalf of the people. Jesus’s actions and words in the last supper, expressing his voluntary giving up of his life, may be viewed as to some extent parallel with the events recounted in Exodus 24 as a reaffirmation of »all the words of the Lord« (v. 3) that underlie the covenant. In both events a covenant is sealed with blood, in Exodus 24 with blood of »sacrificed oxen« (v. 5), in the last supper with the near death of Jesus. Jesus’s use of the term »covenant« linked to his coming violent death thus sets that death within the saving and merciful design of God, that is to say, within God’s covenant. The expression »my blood of the covenant« (Mark 14:24 par. Matt 26:28) implies then that the same divine covenant continues but that the means of sealing and the addressees have changed: Jesus’s announced covenant is related to »many« (an unspecified term for »humankind«) and not only to the people of Israel (as in Exod 24). Nevertheless, Jesus appears to have understood his death as a »covenant sacrifice« of the type described in Exodus 24:43 The similarities of Exodus 24 and the accounts of the last supper indicate that the covenant relationship is made with Jesus, who occupies the place of God, and 43 Also James D. G. Dunn, Christianity in the Making, Vol. 1: Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 816 (»covenant sacrifice«), followed by, among others, Brant Pitre, Jesus and the Last Supper (Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2015), 120. This does not necessarily imply that Jesus sees his death as a renewal of God’s (first) covenant with Israel (described in Exodus 20–24) or that he wants to establish the new covenant announced in Jer 31:31–34, as Dunn supposes (Jesus Remembered, 817).

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that the twelve disciples, who take the place of Moses (and his companions), are called to »eat« the bread that allows communion with the body of Jesus and to »drink« from a cup that brings communion with his blood. The sacrifice and the meal, which in Exodus 24 are presented separately in space (beneath the mountain and on it) and in time (successive actions, separated by the sprinkling of the people with the blood that becomes a mark of the covenant), are brought together in reverse in the last supper, with a meal first, followed by the spilling of blood, which together represent the fulfilment of a covenant, first symbolically with the wine and later in the bloody reality of the crucifixion. To conclude, the term »covenant« appears in Jesus’s final declaration a few hours before his death. It does not nullify the notion of »sacrifice« so often characteristic of the life of Israel but introduces a novel and surprising way of realizing God’s plan of salvation. The expression »(my) blood of the covenant« (Exod 24:8 and Mark 14:24 par. Matt 26:28) means that the blood of Jesus is the supreme representation of God’s covenant, just as his life and ministry provide a space in this world for the kingdom of God. The parallels of wording, themes and intentions between Exodus 24 and the accounts of the last supper suggest that Jesus saw in the Pentateuchal text a source of inspiration for the symbolic, prophetic, and existential act constituted by his last meal with his disciples.

4.  Scripture as a Way for Jesus to Speak about Himself There are four episodes in which Jesus appears to use Scripture to talk about his work, his future, his identity and his present situation. These are in order (a) the response to John the Baptist’s envoys (Matt 11:2–6 par. Luke 7:18–23), where Jesus identifies »the works of the Messiah« as his own by referring to a number of texts from the prophet Isaiah; (b) the parable of the tenants (Mark 12:1–12 and par.), a narrative with autobiographical tone about a murdered »son« who then becomes »the chief cornerstone« (Ps 118:22); (c) Jesus’s question about how the Messiah can be a son of David (Mark 12:35–37 and par.) in view of Ps 110:1; and (d) Jesus’s cry from the cross shortly before his death (Mark 15:34 par. Matt 27:46), which is taken from Ps 22:2 in Aramaic. Thematically, (a) and (c) are about Jesus as Messiah and (b) and (d) about his divine sonship. 4.1.  The Works of the Messiah (Matt 11:2–6 par. Luke 7:18–23) The expression »the works of the Messiah« (τὰ ἔργα τοῦ Χριστοῦ) is only found in the brief introduction to the episode of the mission of John the Baptist’s disciples in the version of Matthew (11:2) and, therefore, seems to be an interpretamentum, which does not appear in the parallel text (Luke 7:18). John, probably

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from prison,44 learns about what Jesus has been doing and sends his disciples (Luke 7:18 specifies »two«) to ask Jesus a question to which John had already deduced the answer from the information he had previously received. The envoys, following John’s instructions, do not question Jesus about the veracity of the information, as they already consider it valid, but limit themselves to drawing a conclusion in the form of a question: »Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?« (Matt 11:3 par. Luke 7:19–20). This question refers to John’s conviction, expressed in Matt 3:11 par. Luke 3:16, that »one who is more powerful than I is coming after me.« In this way, John refers to an envoy from God whose arrival John announces. The importance of this character, greater than John, is clear and it is also clear that the baptism he performs will be definitive and eschatological: »with the Holy Spirit and fire« (Matt 3:11 par. Luke 3:16).45 John might have imagined that the one who would come after him would be the eschatological Son of Man as proclaimed in Daniel 7, but instead, according to his answer, Jesus is manifested in a different way, with the miracles and prophetic signs of a Messiah or divine envoy and without the coming on the clouds of heaven expected of the Son of Man.46 Jesus’s response begins with a reference to his words and deeds (»what you hear and see«) (Matt 11:4; in Luke 7:22 the order is reversed), implying that John’s disciples had been able to see Jesus’s activity before passing on the information to John (see Luke 7:21). The list of deeds that Jesus mentions consists of the following six items: (i) »the blind receive their sight« (Isa 61:1 [LXX]; see also 29:18; 35:5; 42:18); (ii) »the lame walk« (Isa 35:6); (iii) the lepers are cleansed; (iv) »the deaf hear« (Isa 29:18; 35:5; 42:18); (v) the dead are raised (Isa 26:19); (vi) »the poor have good news brought to them« (Isa 61:1).47 The most representative texts from Isaiah are 61:1, »The Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed« (LXX adds at the end of 44  Matt 11:2 is explicit (»When John heard in prison«) and Luke 7:18 implicit, by saying that the Baptist »summoned« (προσκαλεσάμενος) two of his disciples. The place he asked them come to come is understood but not stated. 45 This observation leads Ulrich Luz to believe that Matt 11:2–6 and par. shows how Jesus considered himself the Son of Man, the universal judge who is to come (Matthäus (Mt 8–17) [n. 29], 166). The events listed in Matt 11:5 would, then, be the work of the Son of Man. However, Jesus did not come to earth on heavenly clouds, as the Son of Man was expected to do, and he had already begun to act. Accordingly, the interpretation implied by Matt 11:2 is correct and the events described indeed represent »the works of the Messiah.« 46  A quite different matter is the messianic interpretation of the figure of the Son of Man in Daniel 7, common to rabbinic literature and the Targum (see the texts in Chilton and Evans, »Jesus and Israel’s Scriptures« [n. 5], 295). 47 Of these six items, three or four also appear in the Qumran fragment 4Q521, which is similar to Isaiah 61:1–2 and is introduced by the words »the heavens and the earth will obey his Anointed« (1.ii.1). Following the order of Matthew 11 par. Luke 7, in 4Q521, this figure will »open the eyes of the blind« (1.ii.8), »revive the dead,« and »send good news to the afflicted« (1.ii.12). In 1.ii.12 it also says that »he heals the wounded,« an expression akin to Jesus’s healing of lepers.

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the verse: »and recovery of sight to the blind«), and 35:5–6, »Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer.« Other than these two texts from Isaiah, only two rather characteristic items from Jesus’s work are required for the full list: the cleansing of lepers and the resurrection of the dead, the latter also appearing in 4Q521 as a messianic deed connected with Isaiah 61. It thus appears that Jesus wanted to categorize his work by reference to two major texts from the prophet Isaiah, which would have been easily identifiable by John and his disciples. The list of six items is conceived as not just a description of Jesus’s activity but also an attempt to interpret that activity in terms of messianic expectations from Scripture as read in the interpretative context of the time (represented by, for example, 4Q521). That could explain why, interestingly, there is no reference to exorcism or the removal of evil spirits, which constitutes a significant part of Jesus’s activity but does not appear in the book of Isaiah. Thus, in Luke 13:32 Jesus describes his work by saying: »I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow.« Miracles of curing and exorcisms are also absent from the work of the Baptist, who is a prophet of the word, not of signs. To summarize, Jesus speaks of himself indirectly but the references to Scripture, specifically from Isaiah 35 and 61, give the Baptist the answer he is looking for: Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed one, announced in Isaiah 61 as the one on whom the Spirit of the Lord lies and who has been sent by God himself as his eschatological messenger.48 God’s design is rooted in the messianic nature of Jesus and the Scriptures show how this design is fulfilled. In a veiled way, but understandable enough for John the Baptist, though perhaps not for Jesus’s disciples, Jesus claims to be »the one who is to come.« In the same way that for the disciples the idea of triumphant messianism will be »corrected« to that of messianic suffering, it is also possible that the figure of »the one who is to come« imagined by John corresponds only in part to what he sees Jesus doing and John, therefore, has his doubts. Faced with such doubt, Jesus reacts with a beatitude that is also a personal appeal: »Blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me« (Matt 11:6 par. Luke 7:23). As often happens with Jesus, the question from the Baptist becomes a question for him and it is John who must accept God’s design as realized in Jesus, the Messiah of Israel. 4.2.  Rejection and Exaltation of the Son Uniquely among the parables of Jesus the parable of the tenants is dominated by a terrible drama, including violence and death. A stark contrast in behaviour is 48  Accordingly, the account of Jesus in the synagogue of Nazareth (Luke 4:16–30) takes Isa 61:1–2a and explicitly reveals Jesus as fulfilling the Scriptures – »Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing« (Luke 4:21) – and implicitly as Messiah, that who has been »anointed« (v. 18).

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noticeable throughout, with the owner of the vineyard showing an abundance of mercy, and the tenants of the vineyard, who are particularly evil. Between these two main characters are the owner’s envoys, who suffer the malice of the tenants who refuse to give the owner the part of the harvest that belongs to him. This evil reaches its climax just when the owner demonstrates his greatest faith in the tenants, sending his own son to the vineyard, thinking that the tenants will respect him. But the tenants, blinded by their desire to take control of the vineyard, decide to kill the son and heir, and throw his corpse out of the vineyard. In the versions of Mark and Matthew, the parable contains an implicit quotation from the song of the vineyard (Isa 5:1–2), with which the parable begins (Mark 12:1 par. Matt 21:33), and an explicit citation from Ps 118:22–23, found at the end of the story (Mark 12:10–11 par. Matt 21:42). However, the Gospels of Luke and Thomas omit the first citation and contain a shorter version of the second, limited to Ps 118:22 (Luke 20:17; Gos. Thom 66). Mark, Matthew, and Luke (but not Thomas) precede the (second) citation with a rhetorical question by Jesus about Scripture: »Have you not read this scripture[?]« (Mark 12:10 par. Matt 21:42) / »What then does this text mean[?]« (Luke 20:17). Luke and Thomas should probably be taken as representing the parable in its more primitive form as the opening words in all three synoptic Gospels, »A man planted a vineyard,« reflects everyday life and should not necessarily be considered as dependent on Isaiah 5.49 Nor does the »plant a vineyard – lease it to tenants – go to another country« sequence need to be related to this Old Testament text50 but may, rather, be understood as a realistic description of events within the framework of everyday life at the time.51 In contrast, it would appear that Isa 5:1–2 was added to the 49 Klyne R. Snodgrass (Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008], 287–288) takes the opposite position. However, the phrase »a man planted a vineyard« as such does not belong to Isa 5:1–2 in either the Masoretic text or the Septuagint. In Isa 5:1 the phrases are the same in MT and LXX: »my beloved had a vineyard« (MT: ‫ ֶ;ּכ ֶרם‬LXX: ἀμπελὼν ἐγενήθη τῷ ἠγαπημένῳ). V. 2 in the MT reads »[he] planted it with choice vines« (‫)ׂש ֵֹרק‬, while the LXX reads »I planted a choice vine« (ἐφύτευσα ἄμπελον σωρηχ). Only a conflation of these elements would yield more or less the text shared by Mark and Luke: »a man planted a vineyard« (Mark 12:1: ἀμπελῶνα ἄνθρωπος ἐφύτευσεν; Luke 20:9: ἄνθρωπος [τις] ἐφύτευσεν ἀμπελῶνα). Matthew has slightly modified the subject: »There was a landowner who planted a vineyard« (ἄνθρωπος ἦν οἰκοδεσπότης ὅστις ἐφύτευσεν ἀμπελῶνα). 50  While it is true that Isaiah 5 is the classic text on Israel as a vineyard, the expression »to plant a vineyard« is found in its ordinary meaning throughout the Old Testament, the first time being in Gen 9:20, where it is said that »Noah, a man of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard« (see the list in John S. Kloppenborg, The Tenants in the Vineyard: Ideology, Economics, and Agrarian Conflict in Jewish Palestine [WUNT 195; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010], 216, n. 155). Activities related to vineyards and wine production are quite common in Jewish-​ Palestinian agriculture. Moreover, if the terms »vineyard« or »vine« can represent Israel (see, e. g., Ps 80:8–14 or Ezek 28:26), the expression »to plant a vineyard« is quite often used literally without any relation to Israel (see, e. g., Deut 28:30 or Isa 37:30). 51  See Kloppenborg, The Tenants in the Vineyard [n. 50], 349. The theme of a wealthy man going away and leaving tenants in charge of his property appears quite often in the parables of both Jesus and the rabbis; see A. J. Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus: A Commentary (Grand

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tradition underlying the parable in its pre-​Marcan version and from there influenced the versions of Mark and Matthew.52 The second quote should be regarded as belonging to the original form of the parable: »The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone (κεφαλὴ γωνίας)« (Ps 118:22). Preference should again be given here to Luke (20:17) and Thomas (66),53 even though Mark (12:10) and Matthew (21:42) also have this quote, to which material from secondary sources has been added. The most obvious case is v. 23 from Psalm 118 (see Mark 12:11 par. Matt 21:42b), which »completes« the original quote. Similarly, the subsequent statement about the stone becoming an instrument of punishment (Matt 21:44 par. Luke 20:18: »The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls«) refers to divine judgment against those who caused Jesus’s death and is probably inspired by Isa 8:14 and Deut 2:44. It appears, then, that the earlier form of the story included a quotation from Ps 118:22 with its image of the stone rejected by the builders, focused not on the landowner / father but on the son and heir and his vindication. In fact, there is a natural transition from the son’s rejection by the tenants to the image of the stone’s rejection by the builders, a transition facilitated exegetically by the assonance of the Hebrew ‫»( ֵבן‬son«) and ‫»( ָ֫א ֶבן‬a stone«), which is also found in the preaching of John the Baptist, »God is able to raise up children (‫)ב ִנ֖ים‬ ָ for Abraham from these stones (‫«)א ָב ִנ֖ים‬ ֲ (Matt 3:9 par. Luke 3:8). This link in our parable is confirmed by another assonance in the citation of Ps 118:22: ‫»( ּבֹונִ ים‬builders«).54 A second argument in support of the primitive origin of the quotation from Ps 118:22 comes from the interrogative structure employed, »Have you not read this Scripture …?,« which is characteristic of the debates between Jesus and his opponents in the temple in which Scripture is also quoted, as in the controversy about resurrection (Mark 12:26 and par., quoting Exod 3:6), the question concerning the first commandment (Mark 12:29–31 and par., quoting Deut 6:4–5 and Lev 19:18), and the argument about the son of David (Mark 12:36 and par., quoting Ps 110:1). The common framework for the temple controversies is the issue of Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 361. Thomas would have omitted the reference to the planting of the vineyard, commonly understood in the Jesus tradition as yielding a Christological interpretation of the parable, which is usually avoided by Thomas. 52 See my two articles on the parable of the tenants: Armand Puig i Tàrrech, »The Parable of the Tenants in the Vineyard: The Narrative Outline and its Socio-​Historical Plausibility,« BN 158 (2013), 85–112; idem, »Metaphorics, First Context and Jesus Tradition in the Parable of the Tenants in the Vineyard,« BN 159 (2013), 75–120. 53 Thomas changes the quotation from Ps 118:22 into a judgement by Jesus: »Jesus said: ›Show me the stone the builders have rejected. That one is the cornerstone‹« (Gos. Thom. 66). 54 Hultgren’s observation that Jesus did not speak Hebrew but Aramaic (where »son« is ‫בר‬ and not ‫( )בן‬Parables of Jesus [n. 51], 363) does not take into account the probable recitation of the Psalms in Hebrew rather than Aramaic and the easily understandable nature of the wordplay by an audience with the level of religious knowledge expected of members of the temple establishment, to whom the parable was addressed.

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Jesus’s authority (see Mark 11:28), which is answered by Jesus himself with another question: »Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?« (Mark 11:30).55 The reason for the use of the quotation from Ps 118:22 (see Luke 20:17) is the vindication of the son: in the terms used in the image, the son will no longer be »the stone that the builders rejected« but will become »the cornerstone,« a complete change of status for someone who suffers an ignominious death. This announcement, expressed via the metaphor of the stone, lacks precision and clarity about the nature of the vindication the son will receive but aims at a reversal of the situation in accordance with God’s design and purposes.56 Underlying the parabolist’s statement, worded as a rhetorical question, is the strong conviction that the final destiny of the son, terrible as it is, lies in God’s hands and that God will not tolerate the injustice the son has suffered; rather, the son and his death are precious in God’s eyes.57 The son can only be vindicated by God, who can change the fate and memory of someone who has died after suffering rejection and violence. The quotation from Scripture (with the wording »Have you not read …?« or similar), as found in Luke, implicitly indicates that God’s mighty action lies behind the son’s vindication. Mark and Matthew explicitly state who will carry out this vindication: »This is the Lord’s doing, it is marvellous in our eyes« (Ps 118:23). 4.3.  Jesus, a Davidic Messiah? Among Jesus’s teachings in the temple that the synoptic Gospels place in the period immediately preceding his passion, there are four answers to two questions posed by opponents (see Mark 11:27–12:34). Two of these four questions relate directly to the person of Jesus: the teaching about the rejected and exalted son (the parable of the tenants, already discussed, at Mark 12:1–12 and par.) and the teaching about the Messiah as the son of David or his lord (Mark 12:35–37 par. Matt 22:41–46 par. Luke 20:41–44). This deals with a question addressed in the third person (Mark, Luke) or second person (Matthew) to the teachers of the Law about their affirmation that the Messiah »must be a son of David.« Jesus seems to 55  See Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 290, who alludes to N. T.  Wright’s position. Likewise, Focant, who sees in the parable »une réponse indirecte« to the rejection of Jesus’s claim of heavenly authority expressed by the his opponents (Focant, Marc [n. 25], 437). 56  Kloppenborg regards Mark 12:10–11 as an addition introduced during the transmission process »to supply a vindication for the son who would otherwise be left dead by the parable« (The Tenants in the Vineyard [n. 50], 241). However, the use of the metaphor of the stone from Ps 118:22 does not imply per se the resurrection of the son, only his vindication by God, for instance, by the posthumous clearing of the name of the innocent person who had been ignominiously killed simply because of his position as the landowner’s son and heir. Thus, the stone metaphor should be related to the parabolist’s total confidence in God’s reaction to the terrible fate of the son. 57  See Ps 116:15: »Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones.«

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doubt this affirmation, quoting Ps 110:1 and emphasizing that it is David, »moved by the Holy Spirit« (ἐν τῷ πνεύματι τῷ ἁγίῳ) (Mark 12:36 par. Matt 22:43), who says the following: »The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.« It is clear in the Psalm that David speaks of »my Lord« in reference to the one whom God, »the Lord,« causes to sit to his right and to whom God gives victory over his enemies. Jesus agrees with the teachers of the Law, who are experts in the Scriptures, that the character in Psalm 110 must be identified with the Messiah, but then raises the difficult question: »David himself calls him Lord; so how can he be his son?« (Mark 12:37 and par.). How can the teachers of the Law be right to say that the Messiah must be son of David, when it is said in the Scriptures – moreover by David himself, moved by the Holy Spirit – that the Messiah is his Lord and not his son? This text jars with the conclusions of many interpreters who strive to show that Jesus did not reject the idea of the Davidic Messiah but simply wanted to redefine it.58 However, Mark 12:35–37 offers no sign that the text from Psalm 110 was considered in relation to a different type of Messiah, one who would be humble and suffering rather than the glorious Messiah to whom God gives victory over enemies as the leader of Israel, in line with the Psalms of Solomon, which predict a military leader who will restore the people’s dominion and sovereignty.59 In Ps 110:1 the one enthroned at God’s right hand to whom God grants victory over the enemies of Israel is the Messiah and a large segment of the Judaism of Jesus’s time, including that represented by the teachers of the Law to whom Jesus alludes at the beginning of the account (Mark 12:35), held that this Messiah would be a son of David. Jesus quotes Psalm 110 and accepts a messianic interpretation, but by virtue of what is said in Scripture raises doubts about the need to interpret the figure of the Messiah there as the son of David and, accordingly, like King David, a hero of Israel and conqueror of enemies. On the contrary, the final question of the episode demonstrates that Jesus uses Psalm 110 in order to show that the Messiah does not have to be the son of David, as the teachers of the Law argue, but his lord (»my Lord«). In other words, the figure of the Messiah should be derived from a concept superior to that represented by David. This concept is not explicit in the text, although it is clear that Psalm 110 substantiates it. The Psalm, which is meant to be the word inspired by the Holy Spirit through David, makes him say that the Messiah will be not his »son« but 58  For example, Richard B. Hays, following an article by S. H. Smith: »[Jesus’s riddle would be] not a rejection of Davidic Messiahship but […] a redefinition of it« (Echoes of Scripture [n. 4], 55; emphasis added by the author). 59 »See, Lord, and raise up for them their King, the son of David […] to purge Jerusalem from Gentiles […] and their King shall be the Lord Messiah« (Psalm 17:21, 32) (tr. Robert B. Wright in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Vol. 2: Expansions of the Old Testament and Legends, Wisdom and Philosophical Literature, Prayers, Psalms, and Odes, Fragments of Lost Judeo-​Hellenistic Works, ed. James H. Charlesworth [Garden City: Doubleday, 1983–1986], 667). The background of this text is, undoubtedly, Psalm 110, interpreted messianically.

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his »Lord.« Accordingly, Jesus’s messianism did not correspond with the contemporary Jewish idea of a leader sent by God to restore the sovereignty of Israel. As for those closest to Jesus, Peter, in his confession, simply says »You are the Messiah« (Mark 8:29), with no mention of Davidic sonship. In fact, the disciples, despite their hopes that Jesus’s messianism would be a triumphant one (see Mark 8:32 and par. or Mark 10:37 par. Matt 20:21 or Luke 19:11), never say that Jesus is the son of David. It is, rather, other people and especially the sick who address Jesus in this manner.60 Jesus says nothing about this form of address but does speak about the title »son of David« precisely to cast doubt on the use of Psalm 110 as an affirmation of Davidic messianism. Jesus considers himself to be the Messiah and, as such, the lord of David, not his son. Summing up, even though Jesus is of Davidic lineage he is not the Davidic Messiah.61 This is clear from the events that mark the end of Jesus’s life, from the parable of the murdered son (Mark 12:1–12), and from Jesus’s declaration that the Messiah is David’s lord (Mark 12:35–37).62 Jesus used the Scriptures, specifically Psalm 110, which is clearly open to messianic interpretation, in order to define his notion of messianism and to separate it from the figure of David, the victorious hero of Israel.63 60  As Jesus was approaching Jerusalem for the last Passover of his lifetime (30 CE), messianic enthusiasm increases among his followers and, more generally, the townspeople. In Jericho, as Jesus comes up towards Jerusalem, the blind beggar Bartimaeus cries out to Jesus, twice calling him »Son of David« (Mark 10:47–48 par. Luke 18:38–39) (Matt 20:30–31 has two blind men). As Jesus enters Jerusalem, the celebrating crowds acclaim »the coming kingdom of our ancestor David« (Mark 11:10) or, as in Matt 21:9, call out: »Son of David.« In fact, Matthew, with his interest in presenting Jesus as Messiah, places the same cry in the mouths of the two blind men (9:27), the people (12:23; also John 7:42), a Canaanite woman (15:22) and the children of Jerusalem (21:25). It is not, then, the disciples who acclaim Jesus as »Son of David,« or »King of Israel,« but the Jewish leaders (Mark 15:32 par. Matt 27:42) or the crowd (John 12:12), and the title »King of the Jews« is used by Pilate (Mark 15:2, 9, 12; Matt 27:11; John 18:33, 39; 19:14) and his soldiers (Mark 15:18; Matt 27:29; Luke 27:37; John 19:3) and appears on the titulus crucis (Mark 15:26 par. Matt 27:37 par. Luke 23:38 par. John 19:19). Only once (Luke 19:37–38) it is said that »the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God« by saying of Jesus: »Blessed is the king.« 61  Jesus was »the son (as was thought) of Joseph« (Luke 3:23) (see also John 6:42) and Joseph was, according to both genealogies, a descendant of David (Matt 1:16; Luke 3:23). However, although Jesus was of Davidic descent, his type of messianism was distinct from that regularly associated with King David. 62  Joel Marcus writes that in the Gospel stories »the Davidic typology is both constructed and disrupted« (The Way of the Lord: Christological Exegesis of the Old Testament in the Gospel of Markus [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992], 137). Richard B. Hays comments on this by saying that »the typology is not so much disrupted as reshaped by the story of Jesus« (Echoes of Scripture [n. 4], 56). Based on the analysis in the present paper, it should probably be concluded that the Davidic typology is »more disrupted than constructed« in Jesus. 63  The purpose of the debate on the interpretation of Psalm 110 in Mark 12:35–37 concludes with Jesus’s implicit appropriation of the title »lord of David.« The superiority of Jesus as Messiah over David and his being seated at the right hand of God might suggest that Jesus regarded himself as having a divine status, as »Lord,« based specifically on Ps 110:1. From the other side,

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4.4.  The Righteous One Who Suffers on the Cross The last words uttered by Jesus from the cross were, according to Mark 15:34 par. Matt 27:46, taken from Ps 22:2: »My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?« Mark 15:34 has it in Aramaic first and then in Greek. This is not simply, then, the repetition of a verse from a psalm known by heart in Hebrew but Jesus’s appropriation of the psalm for himself as he dies on the cross, speaking in Aramaic, his mother tongue. Perhaps Jesus turned to Psalm 22 to express his deep feelings towards God at the dramatic peak of his life.64 On the cross Jesus addresses to God, as he did at Gethsemane, taking some words from Psalm 22 and saying them in Aramaic, the language he also used in his prayer at Gethsemane, with the Aramaic word abba, »Father« (Mark 14:36). It is possible, as in other cases, that Ps 22:2 has been introduced into the original story of the passion as part of a reworking of the tradition of Jesus in the passion narratives, but it seems more likely that it reflects a historical element from the very end of Jesus’s earthly life. There is a clear possibility of »embarrassment«65 in words that can be interpreted as the result of despair and protest, which makes it difficult to accept them in the light of the events they immediately follow. A possible »solution« to such »embarrassment« is that Jesus (or, rather, Mark) would have enunciated not just the first verse of the psalm but the psalm in its entirety. In that way, Jesus’s words on the cross would be a promise of hope. However, this argument fails to convince because of the lack of textual support for the rest of the psalm in the words from the cross.66 On the other hand, the similarity between the »loud cry« (φωνὴ μεγάλη) before Jesus’s death (Mark 15:37) and the statement that Jesus »cried out with a loud voice« (φωνὴ μεγάλη) Mark 14:62 (»›you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power‹ and ›coming with the clouds of heaven‹«) seems to confirm that Jesus identified himself with the eschatological Son of Man (in fact, this text in Mark combines Ps 110:1 and Dan 7:13). Mark 14:61–62 should be read in two ways: a) Jesus’s proximity to God as a kind of revelatory experience of his sonship (comparable with the epiphanies at the baptism and the transfiguration), which led post-​resurrection Christology to use Jesus’s words here to confirm his divine status; b) the relationship between Jesus and the Son of Man, a heavenly figure expected to come as a universal judge, with whom Jesus identifies himself to the extent to which he expects to be vindicated by God after his present suffering. This tendency towards identification would become absolute in post-​resurrection Christology. Therefore, in Mark 14:61–62 Jesus may be seen as awaiting God’s eschatological response in the figure of the Son of Man, although it cannot be affirmed that before Caiaphas Jesus is clearly presented as the eschatological Son of Man. On this, see Theissen and Merz, The Historical Jesus (n. 11), 552. 64 See recently Ville Auvinen, »Jesus and the Devout Psalmist of Psalm 22,« and Tobias Hägerland, »Jesus and the Scriptures: Problems of Authentication and Interpretation,« both in Jesus and the Scriptures: Problems, Passages and Patterns, ed. Tobias Hägerland (LNTS 552; London: T&T Clark, 2016), 132–150. 65  Cf. Dunn, Jesus Remembered (n. 43), 781. 66  Hays believes Mark is responsible for the introduction of Psalm 22 into the early story of the passion: »Mark has signalled his readers that the whole psalm is to be read as a prefiguration of Jesus’s destiny,« in a »reading strategy« particular to Mark (Echoes of Scripture [n. 4], 85).

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the words in Ps 22:2 (Mark 15:34) is hardly relevant. Neither may the words from the psalm be considered secondary, as that would mean ignoring the assonance between »Eloi« (»my God«) and »Elijah« and thereby casting doubt on the unquestionable authenticity of the incident of the »sponge with sour wine,« with which that assonance is related (vv. 34–36). The basic question that arises concerns the nature of the words spoken by Jesus from the psalm. Are they, as Albert Schweitzer suggested, the rebellion of someone who would have felt betrayed in his hope and now, once his work had failed, cried out in pain and impotence, Jesus’s reproach directed to a God who has abandoned him in the midst of unbearable suffering? The fact that Jesus chose the words of a psalm to express his condition is of itself very significant, as Psalm 22 represents an exceptionally emotive and bitter prayer in which the righteous person who is suffering uses the personal appeal »my God, my God« in wording that implies a direct relationship between himself and God. This is the same relationship revealed by Jesus during his life’s work as God’s messenger, herald of the Kingdom, friend of the poor, doer of great deeds, filled with the Spirit, and above all, a suffering Messiah, who understood his life to be one of giving (see Mark 14:24–25; 10:45). Jesus’s use of the words »My God, my God« may, thus, be regarded as comparable with his use of »Father« in Gethsemane (Mark 14:36). Indeed, the most obvious significance of Jesus’s decision to use a prayer from the Psalms just before he dies on the cross is that he uses a text of Scripture with the same meaning as it had when it was first written, praying with the beginning of the Psalm 22, a unique choice that reflects the personal and unbreakable relationship between Jesus and God and at the same time expresses Jesus’s situation as a righteous person who is suffering. Scripture thus provides words to a prayer which, at the same time, is a self-​interpretation made by the righteous person who is suffering and pleading to »his God,«67 a prayer offered in a context of ultimate humiliation, limitless suffering, and imminent death. It represents not just the only words that seem possible on the cross but also God’s silence. In this way, Scripture accompanies Jesus to the end.

5. Conclusions 1. For Jesus, the Scriptures are much more than a simple resource or a treasury of information, references and interpretations. Jesus was educated in the knowledge and use of the biblical text to the extent that he introduces himself as a rabbi, 67  Roland Deines, »Jesus and Scripture: Scripture and the Self-​Understanding of Jesus,« in All That Prophets Have Declared. The Appropriation of Scripture in the Emergence of Christianity, ed. Matthew R. Malcolm (Milton Keynes: Paternoster Press, 2015), 39–70, 225–234 (footnotes).

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debates with other rabbis, and quotes from Scripture in his preaching. However, the interpretation of Scripture is not the main focus of his mission and he does not share in the preoccupation with studying Scripture and fulfilling its commandments that characterizes renewal movements within first-​century Judaism. As Craig A. Evans says, »Jesus was informed by Scripture, but was not confined by it.«68 From the other side, Jesus sees himself as an »interpreter« of the Scriptures and not as someone who »fulfils« the promises made by God, which is, rather, the vision of the early Christian tradition in its attempt to present Jesus as the accomplishment of God’s salvific design (see, for instance, Luke 4:21). 2. An overall view of the scriptural texts used by Jesus leads to the conclusion that he concentrates on the Torah, Isaiah (and some other Prophets like Zechariah), and Psalms (cf. Luke 24:44), those parts of the Jewish authoritative writings that he prefers and quotes most frequently, which broadly corresponds to the use of Scripture in the Dead Sea Scrolls as well. From these three areas the texts mostly quoted are the »common« ones, that is to say, those that were apparently often commented on in Sabbath homilies in the synagogues. Thus, Jesus thus moves on a »popular« level regarding knowledge of the Bible, which is why the people who hear him immediately recognize his quotations from Scripture, rather than on a »specialized« level, like those rabbis who had been trained alongside a rabbinic master. As revealed by this paper, Jesus’s Bible is quite short, including, from the Torah: Genesis 1–2 (creation), Exodus 3 (theophany to Moses), Exodus 20 (Decalogue), Exodus 21 (the law of talion), Exodus 24 (renewal of the covenant), Leviticus 19 (enlarged Decalogue), Deuteronomy 5 (Decalogue), Deuteronomy 6 (Shema). From the Prophets: 1 Samuel 21 (David and the bread of offering), Isaiah 35 (the eschatological healings), Isaiah 61 (the works of the Messiah), Zechariah 14 (the eschatological temple). And from the Psalms: 22 (the suffering of the righteous), 110 (David’s lord), 118 (the rejected cornerstone). Moses and David, two of the most popular figures from the Scriptures, are accepted as well by Jesus and presented in a positive manner. 3. Jesus presents the preaching of the Kingdom as a way back to the beginning, to God and his design, now manifest in a specific and ongoing way in the words and deeds of Jesus, who introduces himself as God’s envoy. Jesus lives and acts according to the divine will, which he sees expressed in a threefold way: in his personal experience of God communicated through his own deeds and words; in the Kingdom as a present reality that Jesus interprets as God’s direct involvement in history; and in Scripture, which Jesus reads in a personal way without explicit reference to the rabbinic interpretive tradition – the formula »the men of old« in Matt 5:21, 33 might not be an exception. Scripture is used by Jesus in 68  See Craig Evans, »›Have You not Read …?‹ Jesus’s Subversive Interpretation of Scripture,« in Jesus Research: An International Perspective. The First Princeton – Prague Symposium on Jesus Research, Prague 2005, ed. James H. Charlesworth and Petr Pokorný (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 182–198.

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the awareness that there is also something greater (God’s reign, God’s presence, God’s will). Nonetheless, Jesus does not dismiss the Scriptures, but goes, via them or without them, to the source of the revealed text, namely, God himself. Besides that, there is also an element of inner divine revelation in Jesus, which reflects the unique relationship between Father and Son (cf. Matt 11:27). 4. The first use of Scripture by Jesus is in relation to God’s design understood as the beginning (ἀρχή). A text in Scripture can be reinterpreted explicitly by another text (divorce, as in Mark 10:2–9 and par.; the resurrection of the dead, as in Mark 12:18–27 and par.); implicitly by another text (retaliation, in Matt 5:38–40); or, instead, by a non-​biblical element (love of enemies, in Matt 5:44–45). Consistent with God’s design, the double commandment to love is understood as a focal point of Scripture (Mark 12:28–33 and par.) and Scripture has absolute priority over the tradition of the elders (Mark 7:5–13 par. Matt 15:1–9). 5. A second use of Scripture is related to Jesus’s actions and choices. On the one hand, Jesus affirms his disciples’ behaviour by resorting to Scripture for evidence, as in the case of plucking ears of wheat on a Sabbath (Mark 2:23–26 and par.) and in the expulsion of the traders from the temple (Mark 11:15–17 and par.). On the other hand, Scripture serves as inspiration for the significance of Jesus’s last supper with his disciples (Mark 14:17–26 and par.). 6. This second use of Scripture reaches a peak in a number of texts in which Jesus indirectly manifests his identity. One could speak here, with J. A. T. Robinson, of a »challenging use of Scripture.«69 Faced with the Baptist’s question, Jesus points out, with Isaiah 35 and 61, that his work, full of eschatological connotations, is that of the Messiah (Matt 11:2–6 par. Luke 7:18–23). Faced with growing opposition from the religious authorities, Jesus interprets, through Ps 118:22, the destiny of the Son in rejection and exaltation (Mark 12:1–12 and par.). In contrast to the majority opinion concerning a Davidic Messiah who would be a victorious liberator of Israel, Jesus specifies, with Ps 110:1, that his form of messianism is completely different from and also superior to the one associated with David (Mark 12:35–37 and par.). Faced with derision when crucified and dying, Jesus identifies himself, with Psalm 22:2, as the righteous sufferer in personal communication with a God who remains silent. 7. Jesus’s use of Scripture is not systematic and authoritative texts are borrowed in a selective way with definite purposes and aims. The framework for Jesus’s use of Scripture are his own choices and decisions, his actions, and his understanding of himself. Although Scripture is a genuine expression of God’s will this will is not revealed to Jesus through Scripture alone. Thus, Jesus may not be accused of opposing the law and while the Pharisees discuss debatable issues with him Jesus is never accused in the synoptic Gospels of going beyond the Torah. The 69  James A. T.  Robinson, »Did Jesus Have a Distinctive Use of Scripture?« in Twelve More New Testament Studies [London: SCM Press, 1984], 35–43).

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rabbis akin to the Pharisees thus appear to agree that Jesus’s teachings are not beyond the commonplace. Only in John’s passion narrative is Jesus is presented as transgressing the law »because he has claimed to be the Son of God« (19:7). In the Synoptics, on the other hand, it is Jesus’s actions, words and behaviour, not his interpretation of Scripture, that merit the plain refusal of Jewish authorities.70

70  The English text of this paper has been revised by Dr. John Francis Elwolde of the Theological Faculty of Catalonia (AUSP), Barcelona, and former United Bible Societies translation consultant.

The Use of Jewish Writings and Their Collections in the New Testament Gospels Dieter T. Roth 1. Introduction I would like to begin with a series of familiar verses from the Gospels: … Have you not read in the book of Moses, in the story about the bush, how God said to him, »I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?« (Mark 12:26) If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. (John 5:46) This was to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, »Out of Egypt I have called my son.« (Matt 2:15) The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, »See, I am sending my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way …« (Mark 1:1–2) Then he took the twelve aside and said to them, »See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished …« (Luke 18:31) … David himself says in the book of Psalms, »The Lord said to my Lord, ›Sit at my right hand …‹« (Luke 20:42) … everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled. (Luke 24:44)

When one has verses such as these in mind and reflects upon them with a view toward the issue of the »use« of Jewish writings and their collections in the New Testament Gospels, a question presents itself rather quickly, even if it seems rarely to be asked, namely: What is meant by the term »use«?1 For instance, Richard Hays, in the preface to his volume Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness, cites the following statement from an e-​mail by Markus Bockmuehl: »It seems both a matter of fact and part of the biblical authors’ intent 1  Stanley E. Porter has observed, »The use of the Old Testament in the New Testament raises a host of exegetical and practical questions – from questions of text type to intertextuality, from questions of allusion to the possibility of illusion, from questions of ancient understanding to modern meaning« (»Introduction: The Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament,« in Hearing the Old Testament in the New Testament, ed. idem [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006], 1–8, here 1). This observation is helpful in terms of highlighting the types of issues that are discussed in the scholarly literature, though it seems to me to be the case that which issues one focuses on is, at least in part, determined by how one understands the term »use.«

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that their engagement with the Old Testament is at least as much a function of the text’s own agency in terms of its (divine) claim and impact on them, rather than merely of their ›use‹ of it.«2 When such a statement is made, the term »use« appears to be employed with a view toward the issue of agency. That is to say, the questions being posed are: Where is the impetus for »use« found? Does »use« entail merely an agency on the part of the author upon the text or is there a function of »the text’s own agency,« as here suggested by Bockmuehl? A second possibility, however, is an understanding of »use« that focuses not on the »where« concerning the impetus of the use but rather on »what« is used. One could refer to this understanding as a historical textual perspective interested in examining which texts and collections of texts were »used.« It is a perspective that is interested in sources in that it seeks to ascertain which texts can be identified as having been »used« in the Gospels. This is done, for instance, when in the Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament the introduction indicates that »the focus of each contributor is on the NT’s use of the OT« with »all OT citations in the NT« being analysed »as well as all probable allusions.«3 Or, with a view toward Acts, when Heike Hötzinger observes that »Schriftgebrauch als prägendes Element […] erscheint« for »bereits eine erste Lektüre der Stephanusepisode Apg 6,1–8,3 zeigt deutliche Anspielungen auf alttestamentliche Texte.«4 One could also posit two further nuances to this perspective. First, the historical textual perspective can also query as to whether a Hebrew text, Targum, or the LXX is being »used« as highlighted, e. g., by Steve Moyise with reference to Paul: »So when Paul introduces a phrase or sentence with an introductory formula (IF) such as ›it is written‹, we have to ask ourselves which version of the Scriptures he has in mind [emphasis added].«5 Second, one could also locate, within this perspective, the views of more recent intertextual or narratival approaches, and the manner in which such approaches significantly expand the conception of which texts are »used« through not only considering allusions but also echoes6  Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2016), 7. K. Beale and Donald A. Carson, »Introduction,« in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, ed. Gregory. K. Beale and Donald A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), xxiii. A similar phenomenon can be observed regarding Paul, e. g., when Jean-​Noël Aletti devotes sections of his monograph Argumentation and Use of Scripture in Romans 9–11 to listing all »the references to the scriptures« in these chapters in Romans (Argumentation and Use of Scripture in Romans 9–11 [AnBib 183; Rome: Gregorian & Biblical, 2010], 31–46, 161–177, 343–355). 4 Heike Hötzinger, »Schriftgebrauch in der Stephanusepisode Apg 6,1–8,3,« in Scriptural Authority in Early Judaism and Ancient Christiantiy, ed. Isaac Kalimi, Tobias Nicklas, and Geza G. Xeravits (DCLS 16; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013), 305–346, here 305. 5 Steve Moyise, Paul and Scripture: Studying the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010), 10. 6  I here utilize one of the more popular terms employed in recent works (cf. n. 7 below). Two decades ago, Stanley E. Porter could already list fifteen terms found to have been employed with some regularity in works on how a New Testament writer may use the Old Testament (»The Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament: A Brief Comment on Method 2

3 Gregory

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or the embedding of a discussion within a larger story.7 The basic argument in these approaches to understanding the »use« of the texts is that »what« is used is far more than that which is explicitly cited.8 A final approach is not a question of »where« or »what,« but rather the question: »How« are texts used? Such an approach could be called a historical hermeneutical perspective, for the interest is in understanding the way in which a text or texts are read and employed. The inquiry into the »how« of textual use within this perspective, however, could either focus upon the techniques utilized in the interpretation of a particular text or collection of texts,9 or upon the presuppositions and foundational beliefs brought to bear upon the interpretation of a text or collection of texts. In other words, one could consider how certain exegetical techniques are employed when interacting, e. g., with Ps 110:1 or the Psalter as a collection as they are read, interpreted, and »used« in the Gospels. Alternatively, one could examine more foundational principles and presuppositions, which appear to govern the reading, understanding, and »use« of any number of such passages from texts and collections of texts. Of course, it now remains to explain the significance of seeking to parse out the numerous ways in which the »use« of Jewish writings can be understood. and Terminology,« in Early Christian Interpretation of the Scriptures of Israel: Investigations and Proposals, ed. Craig A. Evans and James A. Sanders [JSNTSup 148; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997], 79–98, here 80). 7  Cf., e. g., Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); idem, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (n. 2); or N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991). Of course, the term »intertextuality« is notoriously slippery as to what precisely is meant or envisioned when it is invoked. For a recent discussion of this issue with a view to the »use« of Scripture in John, cf. Marion Moser, Schriftdiskurse im Johannesevangelium: Eine narrativ-​intertextuelle Analyse am Paradigma von Joh 4 und Joh 7 (WUNT II/380; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016). 8  Cf., e. g., Paul Miller’s statement: »John quotes Scripture relatively infrequently. However, none of the other evangelists has assimilated the overall sweep of the biblical story as completely as John« (»›They Saw His Glory and Spoke of Him‹: The Gospel of John and the Old Testament,« in Hearing the Old Testament in the New Testament, ed. Stanley E. Porter [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006], 12–151, here 132). 9 Here, the observation of Alicia D. Meyers is relevant: »The majority of research on the use of Israel’s Scriptures in the New Testament examines correspondences between the practices of the early Jesus followers and the techniques of Jewish exegetes« (Characterizing Jesus: A Rhetorical Analysis on the Fourth Gospel’s Use of Scripture in Its Presentation of Jesus [LNTS 458; London: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2012], 10). At first glance, Dennis L. Stamps seems to move in a different direction by contending that »one needs to recognize that use of the OT in the NT is not exclusively a study of the influence of Jewish interpretative methods on the NT writers. Rather, the use of the OT in the NT takes place with a clash of cultures, which was primarily between the emerging Christian culture and the Hellenistic world« (»The Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament as a Rhetorical Device: A Methodological Proposal,« in Hearing the Old Testament in the New Testament, ed. Porter [n. 1], 9–37, here 10). Yet, his consideration of rhetoric in the Hellenistic context of the NT is largely a consideration of the issue of technique from a different perspective.

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Hopefully it is more than simply my own scholastic reflection, in this instance, akin not to the caricature of pondering the number of angels that can fit on the head of a pin but to the number of »uses« they have for a pin!10 The heuristic reason behind the distinctions I have made above is to elucidate the focus of this brief study and the precise interest it has in the question of the »use« of Jewish writings and collections. It is not the question of agency; nor the cataloguing of the sources for citations, allusions, or echoes; nor the particular techniques employed in exegesis; nor even examining a series of passages from Jewish texts or potential collections of Jewish texts in the Gospels.11 Rather, my interest is in the manner in which one pericope, in particular, may very well provide direct insight into an underlying belief relevant for the hermeneutical moves we find in the texts that have been passed down to us and thus indicate a fundamental historical hermeneutical assumption in the »use« of Jewish writings and their collections. Specifically, I will consider the controversy with the Sadducees concerning the resurrection (Mark 12:18–27 // Matt 22:23–33 // Luke 20:27–40), one element of the Lukan redaction of this pericope, and further implications that this redaction offers for the historical hermeneutical perspective of the Gospel of Luke.

2.  The Controversy with the Sadducees (Mark 12:18–27 // Matt 22:23–33 // Luke 20:27–40) In the well-​known Synoptic account of Jesus’s controversy with the Sadducees the reader is told that the Sadducees, who approach Jesus and questioned him, λέγουσιν ἀνάστασιν μὴ εἶναι (Mark 12:18; cf. Matt 22:23, Luke 20:27). For this reason, the reader has already been alerted by the evangelists themselves to the fact that as the dialogue unfolds, the Sadducees are approaching Jesus and questioning him concerning a belief that they reject. The Sadducees then proceed to recount a scenario, a »resurrection riddle,«12 in which seven brothers, in 10 Though this caricature of medieval scholastic debates remains disputed as to its origin (cf., most recently, Peter Harrison, »Angels on Pinheads and Needle’s Points,« Notes & Queries 63 [2016], 45–47), it is certainly a well-​known part of contemporary lore with references found across a broad range of academic disciplines. To mention only two examples: Dona Warren, »How Many Angels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin? The Many Kinds of Questions in Philosophy,« Teaching Philosophy 21 (1998), 257–273, and Jeffrey L. Twiss and Mike Fainzilber, »Neuroproteomics: How Many Angels Can Be Identified in an Extract from the Head of a Pin?« Molecular & Cellular Proteomics 15 (2016), 341–343. 11 Again, with a view toward Paul, it is this final sense of »use« that seems to lie behind Moyise’s approach when he states, »what is potentially more useful than just citing Paul’s answers to first-​century questions is to study how Paul interpreted Scripture« (Paul and Scripture [n. 5], 1) and then devotes chapters to Paul’s interpretation of the creation stories, Abraham, Moses, the law, the prophets, and the writings. 12  This term is used by E. Earle Ellis in his article »Jesus, the Sadducees and Qumran« NTS 10 (1963–1964), 274–79. For similarities of this style of questioning and that found in rabbinic

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faithfulness to the Mosaic command of Levirate marriage,13 all end up marrying the same woman as one brother after the next predeceases the woman. The question designed to stump Jesus follows, with each of the evangelists relating that the Sadducees wish to know whose wife she will be in the resurrection for they all had married her.14 At this point, however, the accounts diverge. Whereas Luke has Jesus’s response move directly into the substantive argument and rebuke of the Sadducees’ position, Matthew and Mark set up Jesus’s counterargument by having him utter an initial rebuke. In a Markan question and a Matthean statement, Jesus contends πλανᾶσθε μὴ εἰδότες τὰς γραφὰς μηδὲ τὴν δύναμιν τοῦ θεοῦ (Mark 12:24 // Matt 22:29). It is the meaning of this statement, first in the immediate context in Mark and Matthew and then with a view toward its absence in Luke, that is of particular interest. The central question when considering Mark 12:24 // Matt 22:29 is whether two separate issues are being addressed or whether the two issues are related to each other. In other words, is the Sadducees’ error due to two independent issues or two interdependent issues? It is clear that Jesus continues his reply by making two points: he addresses the state of individuals in the resurrection (they neither marry nor are given in marriage for they are like angels)15 and asserts that Exod documents see David Daube, The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism (JLCRS 2; London: Athlone Press, 1956), 158–163. 13  Matthew, Mark, and Luke all refer to Deut 25:5 as the prooftext for the command. It is interesting to note that the Sadducees apparently assume that the law concerning levirate marriage is relevant for an argument against the resurrection. Though the point is rarely taken up, and the present study cannot consider it further, it is quite remarkable to note how the Sadducees assume that Moses’s teaching on an issue that seems far removed from the resurrection of the dead is actually a teaching that precludes belief in the resurrection. 14 The question appears in a similar form in all three Gospels: ἐν τῇ ἀναστάσει [ὅταν ἀναστῶσιν] τίνος αὐτῶν ἔσται γυνή; οἱ γὰρ ἑπτὰ ἔσχον αὐτὴν γυναῖκα (Mark 12:23); ἐν τῇ ἀναστάσει οὖν τίνος τῶν ἑπτὰ ἔσται γυνή; πάντες γὰρ ἔσχον αὐτήν (Matt 22:28); and ἡ γυνὴ οὖν ἐν τῇ ἀναστάσει τίνος αὐτῶν γίνεται γυνή; οἱ γὰρ ἑπτὰ ἔσχον αὐτὴν γυναῖκα (Luke 20:33). Given the Sadducees’ theological commitment it is not surprising that their inquiry is »couched in such a way as to discredit Jesus« (C. S.  Mann, Mark [AB 27; New York: Doubleday, 1986], 474). Similarly, Morna Hooker noted, »Since it seems unlikely that the Sadducees regarded Jesus as an authority on doctrine or genuinely respected his opinion, they presumably set their question in order to ridicule his opinion« (The Gospel According to Saint Mark [BNTC; Peabody: Hendrickson, 1991], 282). Ernst Haenchen concurred, commenting, »Die Frage der Sadduzäer soll zeigen, wie sinnlos der Auferstehungsglaube ist« (Der Weg Jesu: Eine Erklärung des Markus-​Evangeliums und der kanonischen Parallelen [Sammlung Töpelmann II, 6; Berlin: Alfred Töpelmann, 1966], 410). Henry Barclay Swete is somewhat more cautious, though he arrives at the same conclusion, stating, »The question was perhaps partly tentative; they were curious to know the exact position which this teacher, who was known to be adverse to the Pharisees, would take with regard to the main point at issue between the Pharisees and themselves. But their purpose was hostile; the extreme case they offer for His opinion is clearly intended as a reductio ad absurdum of any view but their own« (The Gospel According to St. Mark [3rd rev. edition; London: MacMillan, 1927], 278). 15 All three Synoptics state οὔτε γαμοῦσιν οὔτε γαμίζονται (Mark 12:25 // Matt 22:30 // Luke 20:35), in the NA critical edition. Mark 12:25 and Matt 22:30 state that individuals are ὡς

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3:6 demonstrates that there is a resurrection, for God is not the God of the dead but of the living.16 The interpretive challenges and difficulties of Jesus’s response as they relate to the Scripture citation have often been discussed, most often pondering the following questions. First, how does the statement from Exod 3:6, »I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob« relate to the ensuing comment that »He is not the God of the dead, but of the living«?17 Second, how do those statements, in whatever relationship they stand, actually rebut the Sadducees and prove the resurrection of the dead? And finally, on what basis can Jesus expect these statements’ relationship to each other and ultimately to the issue of the resurrection of the dead to be so clear that he can legitimately begin his response with the above-​noted rebuke of the Sadducees knowledge of the Scriptures and the power of God?18 It would thus appear to be the case that Jesus’s response is just as much a rebuke of the Sadducees’ hermeneutics as it is a rebuke of their denial of the resurrection of the dead.19 Of course, commentators ἄγγελοι whereas Luke 20:36 refers to them being ἰσάγγελοι. For discussion of the text-​critical variants in Luke, cf. I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Exeter: Paternoster, 1978), 741. The Sadducees had assumed something about the manner of the resurrection, and this point in Jesus’s reply addresses this assumption. Cf., e. g., C. E. B. Cranfield, The Gospel According to Saint Mark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 375; William D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 3 vols. (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988–1997), 3.230; James Edwards, The Gospel according to Mark (Pillar New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 367; and Otto Schwankl, Die Sadduzäerfrage (Mk 12, 18–27 parr). Eine exegetisch-​theologische Studie zur Auferstehungserwartung (BBB 66; Frankfurt: Althenäum, 1987), 284–288. Parallels to the idea expressed here can be found in 2 Bar. 51.10; 1 En. 51.4 and 104.4, 6; 1QS IV.22–3; and 1QSb IV.24b–25. For further discussion, cf. Béda Rigaux, Dieu l’a ressuscité. Exégèse et théologie biblique (Studii Biblici Franciscani Analecta 4; Paris: Duculot, 1973), 36–37; Arland J. Hultgren, Jesus and His Adversaries: The Form and Function of the Conflict Stories in the Synoptic Tradition (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1979), 124–126; Paul B. Decock, »Holy ones, sons of God, and the transcendent future of the righteous in 1 Enoch and the New Testament,« Neot 17 (1983), 76–78; and François Vouga, »Controverse sur la résurrection des morts (Marc 12, 18–27),« LumVie 179 (1986), 53–54. 16 Cf. Mark 12:36–37; Matt 22:31–32; and Luke 20:37–38. 17 There has been some scholarly debate as to whether »He is not the God of the dead but of the living« should be understood as the conclusion of the argument or the second premise with the conclusion »therefore Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will be resurrected [and so will we]« left unspoken. In my estimation, convincing arguments that the second option is the proper perspective can be found in Schwankl, Die Sadduzäerfrage (n. 15), 403–406. 18  Richard T. France goes so far as to say, »The subtlety of the argument is such that it is hard to blame the Sadducees for not having drawn this inference from the Moses story« (The Gospel of Mark [NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002], 471). 19 Cf. the similar point made by J. Gerald Janzen, »In my reading of the Markhan [sic] pericope, both the Sadducees’ ›test case‹ and Jesus’ response to them appear to concern not only the specific issue of resurrection but also the general question of hermeneutics, in such a way as to suggest that there is an intrinsic relation between the specific and the general question« (»Resurrection and Hermeneutics: On Exodus 3.6 in Mark 12.26,« JSNT 23 [1985], 43). For a brief overview of several suggestions concerning the hermeneutic at play, cf. Adelbert Denaux, »The Controversy between Jesus and the Sadducees about the Resurrection (Matt 22:23–33) in

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have often argued that Jesus’s exegesis here is, to put it mildly, »not altogether convincing to modern ears.«20 However, the persuasiveness of Jesus’s argument to modern ears is not my current focus, nor is it to explain either the interpretive method applied to, or the actual interpretation of, Exod 3:6.21 Rather, I would like to focus on how the introductory statement relates to the two points that Jesus subsequently makes. First, it is important to note that the opening rebuke (Mark 12:24 // Matt 22:29) appears to make a general point. What is not known is τὰς γραφάς (plural) and τὴν δύναμιν τοῦ θεοῦ (in general). Unlike in Mark 12:10, where Jesus asks the chief priests, scribes, and elders if they had not read τὴν γραφὴν ταύτην (with reference to Ps 118:22), the opening comment is not made with regard to a particular Scripture but to the Scriptures as a whole. It thus seems to be the case that the specific references to God’s power regarding the resurrected state and to the passage in Exod 3:6 are individual instances of a broader problem and wider level of ignorance. If this is correct, then a second point follows, namely, that though the specifics in Jesus’s reply may be illustrative of the opening rebuke, they are first and the Context of Early Jewish Eschatology,« in Life Beyond Death in Matthew’s Gospel: Religious Metaphor or Bodily Reality?, ed. Wim Weren, Huub van de Sandt, and Joseph Verheyden (Biblical Tools and Studies 13; Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 129–152, here 146–150. 20 Dennis E. Nineham, The Gospel of St Mark (Pelican Gospel Commentaries; New York: Seabury, 1963), 321. Other examples of this sentiment include: »Such arguments are doubtless convincing only to those who are willing to accept them« (Henry Cadbury, The Peril of Modernizing Jesus [New York: MacMillan, 1937], 62); »the argument is not persuasive« (Sherman Johnson, A Commentary on the Gospel according to St. Mark [HNTC 2; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960], 201); the argument stands »auf schwachen Füßen« (Haenchen, Der Weg Jesu [n. 14], 411); »Que Dieu soit le Dieu des vivants et non des morts n’entraîne pas la nécessité de la foi en la resurrection« (Vouga, »Controverse sur la résurrection« [n. 15], 53); »The argument is that of contemporary exegesis, and the argument may not appeal to us as particularly cogent« (Mann, Mark [n. 14], 476); »The way in which the text is used here to ›prove‹ that they must be living seems entirely artificial to modern readers, but it was a normal exegesis at the time« (Hooker, Saint Mark [n. 14], 285); and »Modern exegetes would brand the transfer of Exod 3:6 from past to future as highhanded violation of the originally intended meaning« (Robert Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993], 704). As is readily apparent, Lane correctly summarizes, »The greater part of commentary opinion denies to Exod 3:6 even an implicit affirmation of the resurrection of the dead, and finds here a rabbinic type of argumentation that is without relevance for contemporary thought« (William Lane, The Gospel According to Mark [NICNT 2; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974], 428) and thus Peter Enns would seem to speak for many with his statement, »To understand Exod 3:6 as demonstrating that ›the dead rise‹ (Luke 20:37), as Jesus does, violates our hermeneutical sensibilities, and we should not pretend otherwise« (»Apostolic Hermeneutics and an Evangelical Doctrine of Scripture: Moving Beyond a Modernist Impasse,« WTJ 65 [2003], 263–287, here 270). 21 It should be noted that it is decidedly unsatisfactory to refer to Jesus’s argument as simply »rabbinic« as is, at times, too glibly done (e. g., George B. Caird, Saint Luke [Pelican Commentaries; London: SCM, 1963], 224 and Jan Willem Doeve, Jewish Hermeneutics in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts [Assen: Van Gorcum, 1954], 105). Cf. the analysis in Dan M.  Cohn-​Sherbok, »Jesus’ Defence of the Resurrection of the Dead,« JSNT 11 (1981), 64–73.

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foremost related to the issues raised by the Sadducees in their »riddle.« In other words, though there are two distinct areas in which the Sadducees’ knowledge is deficient, implicit in Jesus’s opening statement is the idea that in order to truly understand the resurrection, one must understand both the Scriptures and the power of God.22 As Otto Schwankl argued, Die Unkenntnis der Schrift und die Unkenntnis der Macht Gottes stehen nicht nur nebeneinander im Sinn von erstens – zweitens, sondern fallen auch in gewisser Hinsicht in eins. Weil die Sadduzäer die Schrift nicht verstehen, lassen sie die Macht Gottes außer acht, und weil sie die Macht Gottes nicht kennen, bleiben sie am Buchstaben der Schrift hängen und dringen nicht in ihren tieferen Sinn ein [emphasis original].23

Gundry, however, contends, »The adversative δέ, ›but,‹ which ­introduces the scriptural argument for resurrection (vv 26–27) hinders the attempt of O. Schwankl (Sadduzäerfrage, 365) to make the argument from God’s power (v 25) spill over into the scriptural argument.«24 Yet, in order for this contention to be compelling, it seems to me that the adversative δέ would have to be followed by a statement such as »concerning the Scriptures« so that the knowledge of the Scriptures becomes set over and against the knowledge of God’s power. As it stands, however, Gundry himself, just a few pages earlier, recognized the significance of this δέ and its contrastive function: »An adversative δέ, ›but,‹ and ›concerning the dead [people] that they are being raised‹ broaden the scope of Jesus’ answer from the seven brothers and their wife […] to include in the resurrection the dead people from among whom the seven brothers and their wife arise.«25 A broader scope and not a completely separate issue is being addressed. Therefore, even though Mark 12:26 // Matt 22:32 deals with a scriptural passage, it should not be assumed that for this reason the issue of God’s power is no longer an element in the response. In the context of this controversy, Joachim Gnilka contends, »Die Macht Gottes wird gerade darin erkannt, daß sie den Tod bezwingt und Tote zum Leben erweckt.«26 Since Jesus begins his response with a reference to knowledge of both 22  Craig Evans states that »implicit in this comment is Jesus’s own understanding of divine revelation: it comes through Scripture and through the power of God« (Mark, 2 vols. [WBC 34; Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001], 2.254). Whether it is Jesus’s view I do not presume to know, though I would argue that it can be posited as the view of the evangelists. 23  Schwankl, Sadduzäerfrage (n. 15), 365. 24  Gundry, Mark (n. 20), 707. 25  Gundry, Mark (n. 20), 703. Cf. also Reinhold Liebers, »Wie geschrieben steht«. Studien zu einer besonderen Art frühchristlichen Schriftbezuges (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1993), 100–101. 26 Joachim Gnilka, Das Evangelium nach Markus II/2, 8,27–16,20 (EKKNT 2; Neukirchen-​ Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1979), 159. Cf. also the comment by Emmanuelle Main, that v. 24a »caractérise l’erreur des Sadducéens comme relative aux Écritures et à la puissance de Dieu – c’est-​à-​dire son pouvoir de ressusciter les morts« (»Les Sadducéens et la Résurrection des Morts: Comparaison entre Mc 12,18–27 et Lc 20,27–38,« RB 103 [1996], 411–432). I am not persuaded by the suggestion of C. K. Barrett that the reference to the power of God should perhaps be understood as a reference to the second benediction of the Amidah prayer (where

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the Scriptures and the power of God as being requisite to avoiding the Sadducees’ error, he seems to assume that the Scripture he cites can only be properly understood if one at the same time understands the power of the life-​giving God. Thus, »›knowing the scriptures‹ is not just a matter of what one reads, it is equally a matter of how one reads.«27 That is to say, it appears to be the case that Jesus argues that knowing the Scriptures demands the recognition of the life-​giving and resurrecting power of God, and conversely that without knowing this power of God the teaching of the Scriptures cannot be properly understood. Though it is not explicitly part of Jesus’s argument with the Sadducees, the reader of the Gospels according to Mark and Mathew may well see a broader implication of this point in the light of these Gospels’ teaching concerning Jesus’s own death and resurrection, namely, that in order to properly understand the scriptural teachings concerning the Messiah and the Messiah’s atoning work, knowledge of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus becomes a necessary presupposition. In different ways, this point is worked out in Mark and Matthew through the manner in which they bring Jewish texts to bear in their respective Gospels.28 But what about Luke? As noted above, Luke does not contain the opening rebuke and it is worth asking what one is to make of this. Even if Jesus’s response in Luke is drawn from Lukan Sondergut, as sometimes posited,29 it would still have been possible for Luke to employ the general observation regarding the power of Jesus’s original reference to the »powers« [geburoth], i. e., the name of the second benediction, was changed to the singular by someone who did not recognize the allusion), and that therefore Jesus’s »attack on the Sadducees may be paraphrased, ›You know neither the Bible nor the Prayer Book‹« (The Holy Spirit and the Gospel Tradition [New York: MacMillan, 1947], 74–75). 27 Janzen, »Resurrection and Hermeneutics« (n. 19), 50. 28 Cf., e. g., the observation of Hays, who writes »Mark re-​narrates the story of Israel by seeking to show that, in the events of Jesus’ life and death, God has at last torn open the heavens and come down and that in Jesus the Christ both judgment and restoration have come upon Israel in a way prefigured in Scripture« (Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels [n. 2], 19); and »When we consider Matthew’s use of the Old Testament, the first thing that springs to mind is his distinctive manner of introducing prooftexts […] through a repeated formula in which the Evangelist addresses the reader directly in an authorial voiceover: ›This took place to fulfil what had been spoken through the prophet, saying […]‹ […] But it is probably wise not to allow this one distinctive feature of Matthew’s citation practice to monopolize the interpretation of Matthew. The understanding of Matthew’s use of Scripture will be far too narrow if we are enraptured by the formula quotations« (107–108). 29  Cf., e. g., Walter Grundmann, Das Evangelium nach Lukas (2nd rev. edition; THKNT 3; Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1961), 374: »Die Antwort aber, die Jesus gibt, hat bei Lukas gegenüber Markus eine eigene Gestalt, in der möglicherweise eine Überlieferung aus SLk sichtbar wird.« David Aune makes the stronger statement, »The hypothesis that Luke 20:34b–36 is derived from another source is preferable to that of an extensive redaction of Mark for several reasons« (»Luke 20:34–36: A ›Gnosticized‹ Logion of Jesus?« in Jesus, Gospel Tradition and Paul in the Context of Jewish and Greco-​Roman Antiquity, ed. idem [WUNT 303; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013], 116–129, here 117; this publication is a reprint of a contribution by the same title in Geschichte – Tradition – Reflexion. Festschrift für Martin Hengel zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Hubert Cancik et alii, 3 vols. [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996], 3.187–203).

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God and the Scriptures before using a slightly different tradition concerning the specifics of Jesus’s response. So why does he not do so? Though one occasionally finds a brief comment hinting at or implying a reason,30 the only argument I could find concerning the Lukan redaction at this point is in Schwankl’s monograph. In Luke’s scriptural reference he sees particular significance in the use of the verb ἐμήνυσεν and of a καί. He writes: Vor allem aber wird der Stellenwert des Schriftbeweises durch das Verbum ἐμήνυσεν merklich abgeschwächt. … Auch das καί vor dem Mosenamen wirkt relativierend: »Auch Mose’ gibt einen Hinweis; …« [die Antwort] stützt sich nicht auf die Autorität der Schrift, sondern begegnet uneingeschränkt als Lehre Jesu. Dementsprechend fehlt der einleitende Hinweis auf die Schriften und auf die Macht Gottes von Mk V. 24; Jesus gibt unvermittelt seine Antwort.31

This explanation, however, though perhaps possible, seems to me to be based on questionable assumptions. First, despite German Bible translations, including the Einheitsübersetzung, translating ἐμήνυσεν as »angedeutet,« it is not certain that ἐμήνυσεν is a verb that is markedly weaker in its meaning than Mark and Matthew’s idea of reading what is said in Exod 3:6. The meaning may very well be »make known« or »reveal« and thus not contain the notion of only hinting at something.32 Second, one could understand the καί, not as »also« but rather as »even.« Thus, the rendering of the phrase καὶ Μωϋσῆς ἐμήνυσεν would not be »Moses, also, provides a hint …,« as Schwankl would have it, but rather »even Moses made known …« For this reason, I would like to suggest that Luke omits the opening, general rebuke, not because of a point he necessarily wishes to make in this particular pericope but because of a basic hermeneutical point he wishes to make in his Gospel. 30  Cf., e. g., Craig Evans, Saint Luke (TPI New Testament Commentaries; London: SCM, 1990), 715: »Luke omits the negative reference to error, and treats these two related parts of the reply separately and more positively, developing each by a rhythmical passage with a balanced structure« or Marie-​Joseph Lagrange, Évangile selon Saint Luc (8th edition; ÉtB; Paris: Lecoffre, 1948), 515: »Lc. omet la réflexion sur les Écritures et la vertu de Dieu d’autant plus aisément que l’Écriture sera citée à la fin.« Most commentaries simply ignore the omission or make a bare reference to it, e. g., »Lk. […] omits ›Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God‹« (Alfred Plummer, The Gospel according to S. Luke [5th edition; ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1922], 469). Similarly, Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke (SP 3; Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1991), 313; William Manson, The Gospel of Luke (MNTC; New York: Harper and Brothers, 1930), 225; Marshall, Luke (n. 15), 740; and John Nolland, Luke, 3 vols. (WBC 35; Dallas: Word, 1989–1993), 3.965. 31  Schwankl, Sadduzäerfrage (n. 15), 444. Though not providing an analysis or argument, Joseph A. Fitzmyer goes in a similar direction, »The Lukan Jesus’ answer does not accuse the Sadducees of erring in their reading of Moses; instead he teaches them directly about their misconceived notions« (The Gospel According to Luke, 2 vols. [AB; New York: Doubleday, 1981–1985], 2.1305). 32  Cf. the definition in BDAG, s. v. The only other use of the verb in Luke-​Acts is found in Acts 23:30 where the meaning is clearly that of the »making known« or »revealing« of the plot against Paul.

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3.  Luke’s Use of »The Scriptures« Though Luke uses the singular »Scripture« with reference to an individual passage once in his Gospel (Luke 4:21) and three times in Acts (1:16; 8:32, 35), it is interesting to note the instances in which the plural »Scriptures,« referring to a group of sacred texts, is employed. In Luke’s Gospel, »Scriptures« is found only in Luke 24, in two encounters with the risen Christ. In the first of these well-​ known passages, Jesus appears to two individuals on the road to Emmaus even though οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ αὐτῶν ἐκρατοῦντο τοῦ μὴ ἐπιγνῶναι αὐτόν (Luke 24:16). They are discussing the events of the past few days in Jerusalem and summarize »the things« about Jesus of Nazareth, including his crucifixion, their hope that he would be the one to redeem Israel, and the fact that his body was not found in the grave (vv. 19–24). Jesus responds by rebuking their foolishness and that their heart is slow to believe ἐπὶ πᾶσιν οἷς ἐλάλησαν οἱ προφῆται (v. 25). Apparently, the prophets spoke that the Christ must suffer these things and then enter his glory. Then Luke comments, καὶ ἀρξάμενος ἀπὸ Μωϋσέως καὶ ἀπὸ πάντων τῶν προφητῶν διερμήνευσεν αὐτοῖς ἐν πάσαις ταῖς γραφαῖς τὰ περὶ ἑαυτοῦ (v. 27). This explanation apparently took place on the rest of the way and then at the table with them, where, in a clear reference back to the Lord’s Supper, Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to them, at which point their eyes are opened (v. 31). They then make the famous statement concerning their »burning hearts« as the Scriptures were being opened to them (v. 32). The knowledge of the Scriptures that they gained had to be coupled with the power of God in seeing and recognizing the risen Jesus. As Eduard Schweizer put it, »Freilich erkennen die zwei erst rückblickend, daß sich ihnen die Schriften öffneten, längst bevor sich ihre Augen öffneten.«33 In the next appearance to the disciples, Jesus first reveals himself and shows himself not to be a ghost or phantasm by telling the disciples to touch him and see that he has flesh and bones (vv. 36–38). He then expresses that he is hungry and eats a piece of broiled fish with them (v. 39). In 24:44–45 Jesus states: οὗτοι οἱ λόγοι μου οὓς ἐλάλησα πρὸς ὑμᾶς ἔτι ὢν σὺν ὑμῖν, ὅτι δεῖ πληρωθῆναι πάντα τὰ γεγραμμένα ἐν τῷ νόμῳ Μωϋσέως καὶ τοῖς προφήταις καὶ ψαλμοῖς περὶ ἐμοῦ. 45. τότε διήνοιξεν αὐτῶν τὸν νοῦν τοῦ συνιέναι τὰς γραφάς.

In that which follows, Frederick S. Tappenden rightly observes, »Rather than citing or alluding to a scriptural tradition, Jesus recounts (in compressed form) the events of the Lukan narrative (Gospel and Acts). Though the reader of Luke’s Gospel arrives at v. 46a expecting a scriptural citation, the attention is instead redirected toward the content of early Christian belief as recorded in the Lukan 33 Eduard Schweizer, Das Evangelium nach Lukas (2nd rev. edition; NTD 3; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), 247.

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narrative.«34 Thus, Sandra Huebenthal concludes, »Most interestingly, Luke does not have Jesus refer to a single text or a collection or montage of several texts, but Scripture as a whole. This […] creates room for interpretation. The τὰ περὶ Ἰησοῦ τοῦ Ναζαρηνοῦ (24.19) can only be understood adequately in the light of the Scriptures of Israel.«35 Whereas in the first encounter the Scriptures are expounded, their eyes are opened, and they see Jesus, in the second they see Jesus, their minds are opened, and the Scriptures are expounded.36 In other words, whereas in the first encounter, as noted above, the knowledge of the Scriptures is coupled with the power of God, in the second encounter the power of God is coupled with the knowledge of the Scriptures. In both instances, however, the Scriptures and the power of God are necessary to understand Jesus as the Christ. Paul Schubert referred to the conclusions to the scenes in Luke 24 as all having »the same climax which we many briefly call ›the proof from prophecy‹ that Jesus is the Christ.«37 Though he calls this a »clumsy phrase,« he is convinced that »it is commensurate to the data we are studying.«38 It seems to me, however, that the term »prophecy« is too easily misunderstood. Luke is stating something more profound, namely that the Scriptures as a whole are intertwined with the experience of the risen Christ. I would perhaps even be so bold as to state that a more appropriate term would be »the proof from the Scriptures and the power of God.« In addition, though these are the only instances in which the »Scriptures« are mentioned in Luke, there is one other, and equally interesting, passage in Luke in which the collection of texts »Moses and the prophets« is in view.39 In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, when the rich man begs Abraham to send Lazarus to his father’s house to warn the other brothers of the place of torment, Abraham replies, ἔχουσι Μωϋσέα καὶ τοὺς προφήτας· ἀκουσάτωσαν αὐτῶν (Luke 16:29). The rich man protests that if someone from the dead goes to them they will repent (ἐάν τις ἀπὸ νεκρῶν πορευθῇ πρὸς αὐτοὺς μετανοήσουσιν, v. 30) to which 34  Frederick S. Tappenden, »Aural Performance, Conceptual Blending, and Intertextuality: The (Non‑)Use of Scripture in Luke 24.45–48,« in Biblical Interpretation in Early Christian Gospels, Vol. 3: The Gospel of Luke, ed. Thomas R. Hatina (LNTS 376; London: T & T Clark, 2010), 180–200, here 181, cf. also 192–193. 35  Sandra Huebenthal, »Luke 24.13–35, Collective Memory, and Cultural Frames,« in Biblical Interpretation in Early Christian Gospels, Vol. 3, ed. Hatina (n. 34), 85–95, here 93. 36 A similar observation is made by Schweizer, »Lief die vorige Geschichte von der Schriftdeutung zur sichtbaren Begegnung, so hier umgekehrt« (Lukas [n. 33], 250). 37 Paul Schubert, »The Structure and Significance of Luke 24,« in Neutestamentliche Studien für Rudolf Bultmann zu seinem siebzigsten Geburtstag am 20. August 1954, ed. Walther Eltester (BZNW 21; Berlin: Alfred Töpelmann, 1954), 173. 38 Schubert, »The Structure and Significance« (n. 37), 173 n. 20. 39 In Acts, two further instances of the coupling of Moses and the prophets are found. In Acts 26:22–23 Paul only spoke of that which οἱ προφῆται … καὶ Μωϋσῆς said would come, namely that the Christ must suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, proclaim light to the people and to the Gentiles. In Acts 28:23 Paul seeks to convince the Jews concerning Jesus ἀπό τε τοῦ νόμου Μωϋσέως καὶ τῶν προφητῶν.

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Abraham retorts in v. 31, εἰ Μωϋσέως καὶ τῶν προφητῶν οὐκ ἀκούουσιν, οὐδ᾽ ἐάν τις ἐκ νεκρῶν ἀναστῇ πεισθήσονται. Regardless of the extent to which this final statement may have been motivated by the experience of the proclamation of Jesus’s resurrection being met with rejection,40 it seems abundantly clear that within Luke the statement is not related to some hypothetical resurrection but to Jesus being the one who rose from the dead.41 It is striking that here knowledge of or witnessing a resurrection will not lead to repentance apart from a knowledge and embrace of Moses and the prophets. Once again, both go hand in hand. As far as I can tell, in every instance in which Luke refers to the content, and understanding the content, of some type of collection with the designation »Scriptures« or »Moses and the Prophets« it is always connected to Jesus’s death and resurrection and the demonstration in word and deed of the power of God. Perhaps then, Luke does not retain the rebuke of the Sadducees and their knowing neither »the Scriptures nor the power of God« because he does not want to connect this collective perspective with the general belief in a resurrection but specifically with the resurrection of Jesus. If this is correct, then in Luke’s redactional move we find an indication of the fundamental hermeneutical perspective that Luke holds regarding the »Scriptures« (plural) and how he employs this conception in his Gospel. I would thus contend that though there are certainly points of contact with the hermeneutics found in the manner in which Paul employs the scriptures,42 there is also a different point of contact that is less often noticed. In his redactional move in Luke 20:34 and throughout chapter 24, Luke actually reveals that he is operating with a hermeneutic quite similar to the one undergirding the statement in John 2:22, ὅτε οὖν ἠγέρθη ἐκ νεκρῶν, ἐμνήσθησαν οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ ὅτι τοῦτο ἔλεγεν, καὶ ἐπίστευσαν τῇ γραφῇ καὶ τῷ λόγῳ ὃν εἶπεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς. Concerning this verse, Tobias Nicklas has rightly observed, »Das Erinnern der Jünger Jesu wird nun explizit in die nachösterliche Zeit verlagert, es erhält so eine neue zeitliche, vor allem aber auch eine qualitative Perspektive, aus der erst der vorherige Dialog angemessen verstanden werden kann.«43 The 40 Schweizer, for instance, queries, »Denkt Lukas oder seine Vorlage daran, daß Jesu Auferstehung nicht überall Umkehr bewirkte (Apg 3,15–17; 13,27–30; 17,30 f.) …?« (Lukas [n. 33], 173). 41 Cf. also Evans’s comment: »the parable comes to an end in v. 31 with what can only be a Christian reflection […] For only on the Christian background of the resurrection of Jesus is the resurrection of a single individual before and apart from the general resurrection conceivable« (Luke [n. 30], 615). 42 Classic works concerning Paul’s use of scripture are Dietrich-​Alex Koch, Die Schrift als Zeuge des Evangeliums. Untersuchungen zur Verwendung und zum Verständnis der Schrift bei Paulus (BHT 69; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1986); and Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (n. 7). 43  Tobias Nicklas, »Frühchristliche Ansprüche auf die Schriften Israels,« in Scriptural Authority in Early Judaism and Ancient Christiantiy, ed. Isaac Kalimi, Tobias Nicklas, and Geza G. Xeravits (DCLS 16; Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2013), 347–368, here 353.

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significance of the narrator’s comment in John 2 is, as Francis Moloney points out, that »something will happen at the death and resurrection of Jesus that will transform the disciples. They will believe the Scripture and the word Jesus has spoken.«44 Luke seems to betray a similar perspective concerning »the scriptures« that John sets forth here concerning »the scripture« and »Jesus’s words.« We have seen that for Luke, one aspect of the power of God (being ἰσάγγελοι) and one verse (Exod 3:6) may be used to refute the Sadducees and their denial of the resurrection, but that the overarching knowledge of the Scriptures as a whole and the power of God per se is not connected with the debate concerning the resurrection in general but rather specifically with Jesus and his resurrection. Thus, the »use« of the scriptures in this sense and as a whole takes place in the post-​Easter context for Luke in a manner similar to the way it does in individual instances in John.

4. Conclusion Though the idea that the evangelist’s belief that the death and resurrection of Jesus are central for their reading, understanding, and »use« of Jewish texts and their collections has long been recognized, I have here sought to consider the specific way in which the Scriptures and the power of God function within this hermeneutical commitment. Mark and Matthew have Jesus introduce his rebuke of the Sadducees and their »resurrection riddle« with a statement already setting forth the necessity of knowing both the Scriptures and the power of God in order to have a proper understanding of the general doctrine of the resurrection. It seems, however, that Luke may very well have sought to link the basic principle of knowledge of the Scriptures as a whole and God’s power specifically with Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection. For this reason, he does not mention the »Scriptures« (plural) until the post-​resurrection encounters with Jesus and generally links his statements referring to a group of writings in both Luke and Acts to this event. From a historical hermeneutical perspective, therefore, it may be the case that a particular Lukan redactional omission provides a key insight into how this Gospel »uses« Jewish writings and their collections. Of course, it could be the case that my analysis is not entirely persuasive or not entirely correct. In that case we can go back to discussing the question of how many »uses« the angels really do have for a pin. 44 Francis J. Moloney, The Gospel of John (SP 4; Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1998), 80. Cf. also the helpful comment by Rudolf Schnackenburg that John 2:22 shows a point often made in regard to John’s Gospel, namely, »daß der Evangelist vom nachösterlichen Verständnis her denkt und das zurückliegende Geschehen deutet« (Das Johannesevangelium: I. Teil: Einleitung und Kommentar zu Kap. 1–4 [5th rev. edition; HTKNT 4; Freiburg et al.: Herder, 1981], 367).

The Use of »Canonical« and »Non-​canonical« Texts in Early Christianityand its Influence on the Authorization of Christian Writings Jens Schröter 1.  The Origin of the New Testament Canon: Current State and Open Questions The formation of a corpus of authoritative writings in early Christianity was the result of complex, and sometimes controversial, processes in the first three centuries of the Christian era.1 From the perspective of its outcome – the New Testament as part of the Christian Bible – these processes may be described as the differentiation between »canonical« and »apocryphal« writings. Although, as is well known, this opposition appears for the first time in the fourth century in Athanasius’s well-​known festal letter,2 more than a century earlier, Eusebius, by using the word »canon« with a different meaning, characterizes Origen’s remark that he would know of only four gospels as »observing the canon of the church.«3 Eusebius also used the distinction between »accepted«, »disputed,« and »forged« writings to distinguish between early Christian texts according to 1  Overviews on the development of the New Testament canon include: James A. Sanders, Canon and Community: A Guide to Canonical Criticism (Guides to Biblical Studies; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984); Harry Y. Gamble, The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1985); Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Michael J. Kruger, The Question of Canon: Challenging the Status Quo in the New Testament Debate (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2013); idem, Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books (Wheaton: Crossways, 2012); Lee Martin McDonald, The Formation of the Biblical Canon, Vol. 2: The New Testament: Its Authority and Canonicity (London: Bloomsbury, 2017). 2  See Theodor Zahn, Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons. Zweiter Band: Urkunden und Belege zum ersten und dritten Band. Erste Hälfte (Erlangen and Leipzig: Teuchert, 1893), 203–212. Athanasius also used the term κανών on another occasion. In a remark about the Shepherd of Hermas, he declares that this writing is »not from the canon« (μὴ ὂν ἐκ τοῦ κανόνος), Decr. 18.3. For the use of the term κανών in the fourth century and its background see Christoph Markschies, Kaiserzeitliche christliche Theologie und ihre Institutionen (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 221–238. 3  Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.25.3: τὸν ἐκκλησιαστικὸν φυλάττων κανόνα. According to Eusebius, Origen formulated this remark in his first book about the Gospel according to Matthew.

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their trustworthiness and their conformity with the Christian creed.4 As a consequence of this distinction, bishops and theologians recommended that only the »canonical,« »divinely inspired« writings should be read in the communities and also privately.5 The history of the New Testament canon or of the Christian Bible as a whole may therefore be described – and, in fact, often is described – along the lines of categories developed by early Christian theologians to come to terms with a wide variety and sometimes confusing diversity of writings which circulated in early communities. Viewed from such a perspective, the New Testament canon – or the formation of the Christian Bible – may be described as the consequence of struggles between conflicting voices for power and influence, resulting in the acceptance of some of these voices, whereas others were marginalized and pushed to the edges of the majority church.6 Such a view can illuminate why in the first centuries CE certain writings gained the status of authoritative texts, while others for various reasons either remained somewhere in the background of the New Testament or were rejected completely.7 This approach can also explain how a certain corpus, called »The New Testament,«8 became an integral part of the codices containing the Christian Bible in the fourth and fifth centuries, which as a consequence differed significantly from Jewish Bibles.9 4 Cf., e. g., Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.25.1–7: ὁμολογούμενα, ἀντιλεγόμενα, νόθοι. This distinction was probably already developed by Origen. See Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.25.3–14. See Christoph Markschies, »Haupteinleitung,« in Antike christliche Apokryphen. Erster Band: Evangelien und Verwandtes, Teilband 1, ed. Christoph Markschies and Jens Schröter (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 1–180, here 67–71. 5  Besides Athanasius see Cyrill, Cat. 4.33–36. Cf. Winrich Löhr, »Norm und Kontext – Kanonslisten in der Spätantike,« BThZ 22 (2005), 202–229, here 206–212. 6  Still of fundamental importance is Hans von Campenhausen, Die Entstehung der christlichen Bibel (BHT 39; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1968, new edition 2003); Engl. transl.: The Formation of the Christian Bible (transl. J. A. Baker; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972); for a more recent overview see Lee Martin McDonald, Formation of the Bible: The Story of the Church’s Canon (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2012). 7 A collection of some of these voices can be found in Shadowy Characters and Fragmentary Evidence: The Search for Early Christian Groups and Movements, ed. Joseph Verheyden, Tobias Nicklas, and Elisabeth Hernitschek (WUNT 388; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017). 8  The designation »New Testament« was probably not used before the end of the second century for the collection of authoritative Christian writings, as the evidence from Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Tertullian suggests. See von Campenhausen, Entstehung (n. 6), 306–309. Whether it can be traced to Marcion remains uncertain. For this hypothesis see Wolfram Kinzig, »Καινὴ διαθήκη: The Title of the New Testament in the Second and Third Centuries,« JTS 45 (1994), 519–544. 9 See Konrad Schmid, »Interpretationen biblischer Theologie. Die Ordnung der Bücher des Alten Testaments in den großen Septuagintahandschriften als Schlüssel zu ihrer Theologie,« and »Zeit und Geschichte als Determinanten biblischer Theologie. Überlegungen zum Wandel des Geschichtsverständnisses im Alten Testament,« both in Schriftgelehrte Traditionsliteratur. Fallstudien zur innerbiblischen Schriftauslegung im Alten Testament (FAT 77; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 285–298 and 299–322.

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However, a limitation of this approach is that it perpetuates the views of ancient theologians concerning the meaning of certain writings for the church, forcing certain presumptions about their usage in Christian communities, and, perhaps even more importantly, encourages negative judgements about writings outside of the »canon.« Moreover, in all probability, these views do not provide an adequate picture of the ownership of books and actual reading practices in early Christian communities.10 Obviously, theologians like Irenaeus, Origen, Tertullian and others were eager to prove the authority and reliability of Christian writings and to disqualify others as »forged« or »heretical.« Thereby, they could rely on early collections of Christian writings – especially of gospels and of letters of Paul – which originated in the second century, whereas at this time there was no codex that contained both gospels and letters together, let alone a book called »New Testament.«11 The »New Testament« in early Christianity did not exist in form of a codex, nor did this term reflect the actual situation in early Christian communities regarding their access to writings and their reading practices. In other words, the »New Testament« in early Christianity was, in the first instance, a theological concept, rather than a physical reality.12 It was not a »book«, but the attempt to determine a certain view on God’s activity through Jesus Christ, summarized in creedal formulae and based on writings which would have preserved reliable tradition about Jesus and the apostles. The formation of the New Testament is therefore closely linked to the basic confessions of the emerging church, which is attested in these writings.13 From the second half of the second century onwards, this tradition and these writings were defended against conflicting views and divergent writings which, according to early theologians, caused trouble in the communities by bringing forth misconceived perceptions about God, Jesus, and the apostolic tradition. The emergence of the New Testament canon can therefore be described as the effort to establish a certain view on Christian faith and the unity of the church over and against competing concepts, conflicting writings, and divergent movements such as the Valentinians, the Marcionites and others. If the formation 10 In representations of the formation of the Christian Bible this aspect is often neglected. See below, however, footnote 14. 11  The earliest codices (3rd century) which contained more than one gospel are P75 (Luke and John) and P45 (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as well as Acts); cf. also P53 (Matthew and Acts). The case with P64+67 (Matthew) and P4 (Luke) is more complicated. These papyri were probably written by the same scribe but did not belong to the same codex. See James H. Charlesworth, »T. C. Skeat, P64+67 and P4, and the Problem of Fibre Orientation in Codicological Reconstruction,« NTS 53 (2007),  582–604. In the case of the Pauline letters, P46 (early 3rd century) contains 10 letters (including Hebrews) and P30 (3rd century) contains 1–2 Thessalonians. It is, however, very likely that the collections of gospels and Pauline letters started already in the second century. 12  See David C. Parker, Textual Scholarship and the Making of the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 57–64. 13 See Metzger, Canon (n. 1), 251–253; von Campenhausen, Entstehung (n. 6), 333–354.

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of the New Testament and the distinction between authoritative and rejected writings is interpreted within such a paradigm, the actual reading practices of early Christian communities, as far as they can be recognized, for instance, from manuscripts and amulets, are often neglected.14 It may be called into question that early Christians were well acquainted with the meticulous argumentations of the bishops and theologians, and if they were, that such disputes meant much for their self-​perception and life as ordinary Christians. In other words, the distinction between »accepted« and »rejected« writings as the prevailing paradigm of a history of the New Testament canon runs the risk of overlooking the actual meaning and usage of biblical and non-​biblical texts in early Christianity. To determine the usage of these writings, it is essential to look at the manuscripts and their characteristics. Such an approach may provide glimpses into the way Christians produced their texts and used them for personal reading or in community gatherings.15 If these writings usually circulated in the second and third centuries as individual pieces and, as we will see below, were also used for different purposes in later times, these artefacts should be considered carefully to achieve an adequate depiction of the usage of canonical and non-​canonical writings. Against this backdrop, in what follows, I wish to look at some texts which may illustrate reading practices in early Christianity. It can be assumed from the outset that the distinction of canonical and non-​canonical (or: accepted and rejected) writings was not always the decisive criterion for their reception in Christian communities. Christians did not only read the Bible, but also other texts, of which some were more closely related to biblical writings than others.16 But even with regard to the biblical texts themselves, it has to be asked what Christians actually read and how they used these texts.17 Did they read codices with one or even more writings? Was there a difference between personal usage and reading in community gatherings? Did Christians recognize a difference in status, e. g., between the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Thomas, or were the polemical remarks by early theologians intended to establish such a difference in the first place? Questions like these may be of only minor, if of any, importance for the 14  For the usage of biblical (and other) writings see, however, Adolf von Harnack, Über den privaten Gebrauch der Heiligen Schriften in der Alten Kirche (Beiträge zur Einleitung in das Neue Testament 5; Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1912); Christoph Markschies, Das antike Christentum. Frömmigkeit, Lebensformen, Institutionen (2nd edition; München: C. H. Beck, 2012 [2006]), 96–106; idem, Kaiserzeitliche christliche Theologie (n. 2), 298–334. 15  See the valuable studies in New Testament Manuscripts. Their Texts and their World, ed. Thomas J. Kraus and Tobias Nicklas (TENTS 2; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006). 16  See Tobias Nicklas, »Christian Apocrypha and the Development of the Christian Canon,« EC 5 (2014), 220–240. 17  Especially noteworthy in this regard are the studies by Thomas J. Kraus, Ad Fontes: Original Manuscripts and their Significance for Studying Early Christianity. Selected Essays (TENTS 3; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007).

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history of the New Testament canon in a narrower sense, with regards to the collecting of the writings which later formed the New Testament and the origin of codices with the Christian Bible in the fourth century. However, for a more nuanced view on the actual status and usage of biblical and related writings in early Christianity it might be necessary to ask how these texts were read and how they were used for various purposes. This may also lead to a more nuanced view on the New Testament writings, which from the very beginning were imbedded in a wider range of traditions, including texts, visual representations, and rituals.18

2.  A Preliminary Look at Early Christian Manuscripts As was often pointed out, from early on, Christians made use of the codex for the production and collection of their writings.19 One reason for the preference of this format certainly was that these books were cheap, easy to produce, they could be carried around and could also be read in a private context. This characteristic of early Christian book production is even more remarkable if it is compared to the authoritative writings of Israel. These texts were of course known to the Christians and used by them from the very beginning in their services. They were usually produced as scrolls for Synagogue services, containing the Torah or other writings like the prophets or the psalms.20 As references to these writings by early Jewish and early Christian authors demonstrate, these books were regarded as authoritative collections in Jewish as well as in Christian communities in the first century CE.21 Early Christian codices already differed from these scrolls with regard to their physical form. This does not, of course, mean 18  See Tobias Nicklas, »Neutestamentlicher Kanon, christliche Apokryphen und antik-​ christliche Erinnerungskultur,« NTS 62 (2016), 588–609; idem, »New Testament Canon and Ancient Christian ›Landscapes‹ of Memory,« EC 7 (2016), 5–23. 19  See Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 42–81; Larry W. Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artefacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 43– 93; Roger S. Bagnall, Early Christian Books in Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 70–90; Martin Wallraff, Kodex und Kanon. Das Buch im frühen Christentum (Hans-​ Lietzmann-​Vorlesungen 12; Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2013), 8–25. 20  An illuminating example of the use of scrolls in a Jewish context is described in Luke 4:16–20: Jesus stood up in the synagogue of Nazareth to read, unrolled the scroll (ἀναπτύξας τὸ βιβλίον) of the prophet Isaiah, after reading from it he rolled up the scroll (πτύξας τὸ βιβλίον) and sat down. The terms ἀναπτύσσω and πτύσσω used by Luke evidently refer to the unrolling and rolling up of a scroll, not the opening and closing of a codex. 21 At several places in the New Testament the phrase »the law and the prophets« is used for the Jewish writings: Rom 3:21; Luke 16:16; Acts 13:15; 24:14; 28:23; Matt 5:17; 7:12; 11:13 (»all the prophets and the law«); 22:40; John 1:45. See also Luke 24:44: »the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms.« In Jewish texts this phrase or similar formulations occur in the prologue of the Greek translation of Ben Sira (three times); 2 Macc 15:9; 4 Macc 18:10. A similar phrase occurs in 4Q397, frg. 14–21, l. 10–11.

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that they did not claim authority for themselves as well. They certainly did, as Paul’s letters, but also the gospels, especially demonstrate.22 Nevertheless, with regard to their form, the earliest Christian writings resembled »pocket books,« known from Greek and Roman works as, e. g., Homer, Virgil, or Martial rather than scrolls of the authoritative Jewish writings. A codex with a size of around 15 or 16 cm containing the letter to the Romans or the Gospel of Matthew would hardly have impressed anyone as a »holy text« produced for liturgical usage.23 Instead, Christian codices could be used in small gatherings and even for private reading,24 a practice which is occasionally referred to by early theologians.25 This reading practice probably included »Old Testament« writings as well, perhaps mainly shorter texts like individual psalms rather than rolls with the entire Torah or a book as long as Isaiah. Early Christian codices usually contained just one writing and were much smaller and more simply produced than the splendid codices of the fourth and fifth century.26 Collections of several writings – two or even four gospels or more than one letter of Paul – are the exception; although, Papyrus 45 and 46 are two prominent examples of codices with the four gospels and Acts and 10 letters of Paul from the third century.27 Consequently, early Christian writings usually circulated as individual texts. The close relationship between the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke or even a »Fourfold Gospel« forcefully argued for by Irenaeus28 did, by contrast, only rarely materialize in the form of Christian manuscripts. The same was true for Paul’s letters as well. In all probability, collections of these letters started at the end of the first or at the beginning of the second century, but it is rather unlikely that codices with 10 or even more of the Pauline letters were widespread among early Christian communities.29 The manuscript evidence therefore supports the conclusion that early Christians in most cases had access to one gospel (occasionally perhaps two gospels) and/or some of Paul’s letters in their libraries or at home (see fig. 1 and fig. 2). Kruger, Question of Canon (n. 1), 119–154. Wallraff, Kodex (n. 19), 17–19. 24  The »public« and »private« spheres were probably closely related to each other and there was little separation of religious and daily life. See the contributions in Public and Private in Ancient Mediterranean Law and Religion, ed. Clifford Ando and Jörg Rüpke (Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten 65; Berlin, Munich, Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2015). 25  See Harnack, Gebrauch (n. 14), 27–49. 26  See Eldon J. Epp, »Issues in the Interrelation of New Testament Textual Criticism and Canon,« in The Canon Debate, ed. Lee Martin McDonald and James A. Sanders (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002), 485–515, esp. 486–491. 27  See above, footnote 11. 28  Irenaeus, Haer. 3.11.7–9. 29  Cf. J. Schröter, »Sammlungen der Paulusbriefe und die Entstehung des neutestamentlichen Kanons,« in Receptions of Paul in Early Christianity: The Person of Paul and His Writings Through the Eyes of His Early Interpreters, ed. Jens Schröter, Simon Butticaz, and Andreas Dettwiler (BZNW 234; Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2018), 801–824. 22 See 23 See

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A codex with several gospels and apostolic letters, by contrast, did probably not exist before the fourth century. That the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John should be read together as the one unified and authoritative testimony of Jesus Christ was therefore an ambitious theological idea originating at the end of the second century, proposed not only by Irenaeus, but also other theologians and the Muratorian fragment.30 However, it is rather unlikely that many Christian communities possessed a codex with the four gospels. The strong argument for the Fourfold Gospel made by Irenaeus and the distinction between the four gospels and other gospels formulated also by Clement of Alexandria and Origen31 rather point to diversity in the usage of early gospels which these theologians wanted to adjust according to the basic convictions of the Christian faith. In addition, non-​canonical texts were also usually produced as codices, as, for example, the Egerton Gospel, the copy of the Gospel of Thomas, found on P.Oxy. 1 and P.Oxy. 1224, to name just a couple of examples. Some non-​canonical texts were also written on scrolls, as, for example, P.Oxy. 3525 and P.Ryl. 463. Both are fragments of the Gospel of Mary, and a copy of the Gospel of Thomas which is represented by P.Oxy. 654 and P.Oxy. 655 also comes from a scroll.32 Whether there is a connection between the status of these early Christian texts and their physical existence as scrolls remains unclear, although it cannot, of course, be excluded. However, the authors of non-​canonical texts also used nomina sacra and reading aids like, e. g., accents and paragraphoi.33 Hence, in the production of early Christian texts, there was hardly a major difference between texts that later gained canonical status and those that did not – with the exception that a few non-​canonical texts were written on scrolls.34 The manuscript evidence therefore points to a broad spectrum of texts which circulated in early Christian communities. The various fragments with Jesus traditions from the second and third centuries also demonstrate that there must have been Christian groups that used such texts. Of course, it would be fallacious to assume a direct correspondence between the character of certain texts and the groups that used these texts. However, there is sufficient evidence to suppose Christian groups or communities in the second and third century had a wide  Cf. also Clement, Strom. 3.93.1; Origen, Hom. Luc. 1.2.  This is also supported by the references to other gospels like the »Gospel of the Hebrews,« the »Gospels of the Egyptians,« or the »Gospel of Peter,« the latter being mentioned in the letter of bishop Serapion, cited by Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.12.3–6. 32 P.Oxy. 655 is also often attributed to the Gospel of Thomas, although in this case the evidence is less certain, because there are significant differences between the Greek papyrus and the Coptic manuscript from Nag Hammadi. 33 See Hurtado, Artefacts (n. 19), 95–134 (on nomina sacra); 155–189 (on »Other Scribal Features«). See also Larry W. Hurtado, »The Origin of the Nomina Sacra: A Proposal,« in Texts and Artefacts: Selected Essays on Textual Criticism and Early Christian Manuscripts (LNTS 584; London: Bloomsbury, 2018), 115–135. 34 See however Charles E. Hill, »A Four-​Gospel Canon in the Second Century? Artifact and Arti-​fiction,« EC 4 (2013), 310–334. 30 31

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Fig. 1: P45 (left, with Matt. 25:41–46). See (last accessed on May 27, 2019).

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Fig. 2: P46 (right). See (last accessed on May 27, 2019).

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range of reading practices, religious views, and perspectives on Christian life. For the purposes of this paper, it therefore suffices to note that the social reality as it is reflected in canonical and non-​canonical texts points to great variety of early Christian beliefs and practices.35 A first glance at canonical and non-​canonical texts therefore indicates that Christians did not regard their writings in the first place as »sacred writings.« The difference between the physical appearance of these texts and the scrolls with the writings of Israel supports such an impression. Even if the Gospel of John or Paul’s letter to the Romans – to mention just two prominent examples – were intended to provide authoritative views on Jesus Christ (as they certainly were), early Christian texts are likely to have been first produced to be circulated and read in small groups and for personal edification. The manuscript evidence may also point to the tendency towards a distinction of canonical and non-​canonical texts. This did, however, not lead to a clear-​cut distinction of accepted and rejected texts. Even if there was an inclination to produce »canonical« texts for community usage and non-​canonical ones for private reading, there is no definite difference between these texts and their usage in early Christianity. This shall be illustrated in what follows by way of some examples.

3.  Examples of the Usage of Canonical and Non-​canonical Texts in Early Christianity 1. I will start with a look at the Gospel of Thomas, mainly because the different manuscripts of this writing allow for some observations regarding its usage in early Christianity. The only (almost) complete manuscript in Nag Hammadi Codex II, a translation from Greek into Coptic, may have been part of a monastic library, as has been argued again more recently by Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott.36 This would imply that monks in the fourth or fifth century preserved the Nag Hammadi codices of which at least some, from an orthodox Christian perspective, might have appeared as deviating or heretical texts. Perhaps this was the reason why the codices at some point were removed from the library and hidden in the desert. It is fairly plausible that the Gospel of Thomas was attractive for a monastic reading since it contains instructions for followers of Jesus focused on asceticism, spirituality, and a radical ethos. These instructions could have been interpreted as guidelines for a monastic way of life, whereas monks would hardly have found instructions for prayer, sacraments, or communal life in the Gospel of Thomas. Whether monks in the fourth or fifth century actually read 35  See Early Christian Manuscripts: Examples of Applied Method and Approach, ed. Thomas J. Kraus and Tobias Nicklas (TENTS 5; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010). 36  Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott, The Monastic Origin of the Nag Hammadi Codices (STAC 97; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015).

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the Gospel of Thomas and contemplated the meaning of Jesus’s words collected in this writing, remains hypothetical. However, if the compilation of the Nag Hammadi codices, their inclusion in a monastic library, and their removal from it could be integrated into the history of the formation of the Christian Bible, it could shed light on monastic reading practices concerning canonical and non-​ canonical texts. Moreover, it could be a promising approach to read the Gospel of Thomas as an interpretation of the Jesus tradition which blurs the lines of accepted and rejected traditions. Such a perspective could be supported by the Greek papyri of the Gospel of Thomas which provide some information about the use of this gospel in early communities. As mentioned above, the Greek fragments of the Gospel of Thomas belonged to different manuscripts: two of them (P.Oxy. 654 and 655) are fragments of rolls, whereas the third one (P.Oxy. 1) belonged to a codex.37 These manuscripts therefore indicate that the Gospel of Thomas circulated in Christian circles before its translation into Coptic and integration into codex II from Nag Hammadi.38 Perhaps the Greek versions were still in use after the Coptic translation. P.Oxy. 654, perhaps from early third century, contains the incipit and the first sayings of the Gospel of Thomas (see fig. 3). It was written on a reused scroll and reveals the carelessness or limited ability of the scribe, such as the well-​known error οιτοιοιοιλογοιοι in the first line and two missing words added later over line 19 (υμεις) and 25 (οτι). Remarkably enough, however, the manuscript also contains several reading aids. The individual sayings of Jesus are separated from each other by a paragraphus, a horizontal stroke, written below the line at the left margin, five times. The paragraphus is also known from other texts. It is used, for example, to mark the change of a speaker in dramatic texts or philosophical dialogues, but also in prose texts to denote the end of a sentence.39 In lines 5, 9, 27 and 36 a coronis is used to mark the end of a saying. These reading aids, even if they were added later as has been suggested by Larry Hurtado, demonstrate that the manuscript was prepared for recitation, perhaps in a smaller circle of 37  Cf. the descriptions of the fragments by Larry W. Hurtado, »The Greek Fragments of the Gospel of Thomas as Artefacts: Papyrological Observations on Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1, Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 654 and Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 655,« in Das Thomasevangelium. Entstehung – Rezeption – Theologie, ed. Jörg Frey, Enno E. Popkes, and Jens Schröter (BZNW 157; Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 19–32; Jens Schröter, »Das Evangelium nach Thomas (Thomasevangelium [NHC II,2 p. 32,10–51,28]); Oxyrhynchus-​Papyri I 1, IV 654 und IC 655 (POxy I 1, IV 654 und IV 655): Einleitung,« in Apokryphen, ed. Markschies and Schröter (n. 4), 483–506; translation ibid., 523–526. 38 Cf. AnneMarie Luijendijk, »Reading the Gospel of Thomas in the Third Century: Three Oxyrhynchus Papyri and Origen’s Homilies,« in Reading New Testament Papyri in Context – Lire les papyrus du Nouveau Testament dans leur contexte, ed. Claire Clivaz and Jean Zumstein (BETL 242; Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 241–267. 39  Cf. William A. Johnson, »The Function of the Paragraphus in Greek Literary Prose Texts,« ZPE 100 (1994), 65–68.

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Fig. 3: P.Oxy. 654, early 3rd century. See (last accessed on May 27, 2019).

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Christians. The production of the text on a reused scroll, which is without doubt a noticeable phenomenon, should therefore not lead to the assumption that the text was regarded as less important because it did not belong to the accepted Jesus tradition. The reuse of a papyrus scroll could of course indicate that the text was not part of a Christian library with gospel codices. However, it may well have been read in a private setting or in smaller circles as part of the Jesus tradition. It would at least be premature to look at the papyrus from a »canonical« perspective and to distinguish it from the accepted Jesus tradition. The next manuscript, P.Oxy. 1, is a leaf from a codex with a comparable size to other early Christian codices (27 by 13 cm: see fig. 4). It is written with a clear handwriting and some nomina sacra: ΙΣ, ΘΥ, ΑΝΩΝ, ΠΡΑ, ΠΡΙΔΙ. The page number on the upper right edge of the verso (11) could indicate that the leaf was preceded by 10 or even 20 pages. Because the first saying on the leaf, according to the usual numbering, is logion 27, the preceding collection of words of Jesus was either much more comprehensive than the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, or the Gospel of Thomas on P.Oxy. 1 was preceded by another work. Grenfell and Hunt reported that they found the fragment together with a page of the Gospel of Matthew and they concluded that both texts may have belonged to the same Christian library. Whether this is justified or not, the condition of P.Oxy. 1 could indicate that it was used for reading in a Christian community or household, perhaps together with other early gospel texts, indicating that the canonical/ non-​canonical distinction did not determine early Christian reading practices at that time and place. P.Oxy. 655, from the first half of the third century, consists of eight fragments of a scroll with only two fragments containing identifiable text with a rather remote parallel to sayings 36–37 of the Coptic manuscript from Nag Hammadi (see fig. 5). The physical characteristics of P.Oxy. 655, with small, carefully written, majuscule letters make it probable that the scroll was produced for private reading or usage. There are no reading aids, nor is the text structured as individual sayings of Jesus. It was perhaps produced as a manual with episodes or dialogues of Jesus, comparable to, e. g., P.Eg. 2 or P.Oxy. 840. The differences between this fragment and the Coptic manuscript are remarkable, since the dialogue between Jesus and his disciples on the Coptic manuscript appears in abbreviated form as sayings of Jesus, individually introduced with »Jesus says.« The papyrus can be compared to other Christian scrolls from the same period, e. g., P.Mich. II 2.130 with parts of Hermas, Mandata in small Christian circles. The three fragments therefore indicate that Greek versions of the Gospel of Thomas, and Jesus traditions with a close relationship to it, circulated in early Christian circles. Given the close analogies between the Gospel of Thomas and especially the Synoptic Gospels, it may well be that Greek versions of this gospel  – whatever their precise relationship to the Coptic manuscript may have been – were regarded in early Christianity as compilations of the sayings of Jesus

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Fig. 4a: P.Oxy. 1, early 3rd century, recto. See (last accessed on May 27, 2019).

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Fig. 4b: P.Oxy. 1, early 3rd century, verso. See (last accessed on May 27, 2019).

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Fig. 5: P.Oxy. 655, 3rd century. See (last accessed on May 27, 2019).

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providing important information about his teaching and the meaning of his appearance on earth. Of special interest for our topic is a funerary strip from a Christian burial site in Oxyrhynchus (see fig. 6).40 The linen shroud from the fifth or sixth century matches the reconstructed saying of line 31 of P.Oxy. 654: ΟΥΚ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΤΕΘΑΜΜΕΝΟΝ Ο ΟΥΚ ΕΓΕΡΘΗΣΕΤΑΙ. The unusual introduction of the saying with »Jesus says« (λέγει Ἰησοῦς), without an article and not using κύριος, makes it likely that the scribe quoted the saying from the Greek Gospel of Thomas, probably from memory. The saying is not part of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, but it was obviously known in the Greek version, as P.Oxy. 654 shows. The shroud could thus indicate that the Gospel of Thomas in Greek was still in use in Christian Egypt in the fifth or sixth century – or at least that a saying of Jesus which is only attested in the Greek version of the Gospel of Thomas was used in a fifth or sixth century burial context in Egypt to express the hope for the buried person: »Jesus says: ›Nothing is dead that will not be raised‹.« In a similar way, the Greek fragments of the Gospel of Mary (P.Oxy. 3525 and P.Ryl. 463), the Egerton Gospel, or the so-​called »Unknown Berlin Gospel« could be included into a history of the usage of non-​canonical texts in the second and third century. This would support the evidence that the »New Testament« in ancient and medieval Christianity was surrounded by a wide range of texts that for »ordinary Christians« were of no less importance than those writings which eventually formed the New Testament. This may be supported by some examples for apotropaic or even magical use of biblical and non-​biblical texts. 2. For the next example, I refer to a Christian amulet from the third or fourth century (P.Oxy. 5073: see fig. 7).41 The text contains the beginning of the Gospel of Mark (Mk 1:1–2), introduced by ἀνάγνωτι τὴν ἀρχὴν τοῦ εὐαγγελίου καὶ ἴδε, followed by: Ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου Ἰη(σο)ῦ τοῦ Χρ(ιστο)ῦ ὡς γέγραπται ἐν Ἠσαΐᾳ τῷ προφήτῃ ἰδοὺ ἀποστέλω τὸν ἄγγελόν μου πρὸ προσώπου σου ὃς κατασκευάσει

The amulet was probably rolled up from the left to the right, therefore the left half is better preserved than the right. The opening line of the amulet obviously functioned as the title or heading for the following text. Moreover, the first line is 40 See AnneMarie Luijendijk, »›Jesus says: »There Is Nothing Buried That Will Not Be Raised.«‹ A Late-​Antique Shroud with Gospel of Thomas Logion 5 in Context,« ZAC 15 (2011), 389–410. 41  See Brice C. Jones, New Testament Texts on Greek Amulets from Late Antiquity (LNTS 554; London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 130–134. Cf. also Geoffrey S. Smith and Andrew E. Bernhard, »5073. Mark 1:1–2: Amulet,« in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Vol. 76, ed. Daniela Colomo and Juan Chapa (London: The Egypt Exploration Society, 2011), 19–23.

Fig. 6: Funerary Strip. ΛΕΓΕΙ ΙΗΣΟΥΣ ΟΥΚ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΤΕΘΑΜΜΕΝΟΝ Ο ΟΥΚ ΕΓΕΡΘΗΣΕΤΑΙ (cf. P.Oxy. 654.31). See (last accessed on May 27, 2019).

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Fig. 7: P.Oxy. 5073, Oxford, 3rd/4th century. Beginning of the Gospel of Mark, introduced by: ΑΝΑΓΝΩΤΙ ΤΗΝ ΑΡΧΗΝ ΤΟΥ ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΙΔΕ. Image courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society, London. Online source: (last accessed on May 27, 2019).

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written with straighter letters compared to the following lines. It begins more to the right and runs up to the right edge of the strip. In the first line of the quotation itself Ἰησοῦς Χριστός is written as nomina sacra ΙΗΥ and ΧΡΥ. The papyrus was probably intended to be carried around, perhaps as protection against evil spirits or other dangers. The heading obviously refers to the beginning – or the main content – of the gospel: »God will send his angel who will prepare …« As the opening line makes clear, this promise is directly related to the reader or bearer of the amulet: he or she shall read and see that this is what the gospel says. For the purpose of this paper it is not necessary to enter into a text critical discussion about the beginning of Mark’s Gospel.42 If the amulet were to be included in this debate, it would be remarkable that (besides some minor variations), in agreement with several manuscripts, it does not contain the phrase υἱοῦ θεοῦ after χριστοῦ and has an article before χριστοῦ. The amulet could therefore be an early witness for the omission of υἱοῦ θεοῦ in the textual transmission of Mark’s Gospel. Finally, it should be observed that the text breaks off after κατασκευάσει. This is obviously no coincidence, but rather indicates that there was a conscious ending of the citation on the strip, as is also indicated by the form of the final letter. Together with many other amulets, this piece is an indication that Christians did not only use biblical texts for continuous or periodical reading in private and community contexts. Biblical texts were also used for apotropaic purposes, as protection for travel and in different situations of daily life. In such contexts, not only biblical texts from the Old and the New Testament – from the Old Testament mainly psalms, especially Psalm 90, from the New Testament often the Lord’s Prayer –,43 but also non-​canonical texts were regarded as helpful. If the miniature codex with the text of P.Oxy. 840 served as an amulet, it would be an example of a non-​canonical text used for such a purpose.44 The relationship between amulets and miniature codices, however, needs to be discussed further.45 In this paper, I want to refer to another example of a Christian amulet of quite a different character. 42  See Peter M. Head, »A Text-​Critical Study of Mark 1:1: ‘The Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ,« NTS 37 (1991), 621–629; Adela Yarbro Collins, »Establishing the Text: Mark 1:1,« in Texts and Contexts: The Function of Biblical Texts in Their Textual and Situational Contexts, ed. Tord Fornberg and David Hellholm (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1995), 111–127. 43 See Thomas J. Kraus, »Septuaginta-​Psalm 90 in apotropäischer Verwendung: Vorüberlegungen für eine kritische Edition und (bisheriges) Datenmaterial,« BN 125 (2005), 39–72; idem, »Manuscripts with the Lord’s Prayer – They are More than Simply Witnesses to that Text itself,« in New Testament Manuscripts, ed. Kraus and Nicklas (n. 15), 227–266. 44  See Michael J. Kruger, The Gospel of the Savior: An Analysis of P.Oxy. 840 and its Place in the Gospel Tradition of Early Christianity (TENTS 1; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005), 18–62. 45  Thomas J. Kraus, »P.Oxy. 840 – Amulet or Miniature Codex? Principal and Additional Remarks on Two Terms,« in Ad Fontes (n. 17), 47–67.

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3. The Berlin Papyrus collection contains an amulet with an incantation and an instruction for its usage (P.Berl. 7977: see fig. 8).46 On the outer side traces of the folding of the leaf are clearly visible, demonstrating that it was folded up into a very small size.47 The text on the inner side begins with a staurogram, the only clear indication of its Christian character. This is followed by an incantation consisting of the magical words βιβλιου βηβιου σφη νοση and the instruction to tie the magical papyrus around the suffering one and to command the demon to leave the creature of God (πλάσμα τοῦ θεοῦ). As can be seen from these examples, Christians took over the praxis of producing amulets from their pagan environment. They used biblical or non-​biblical texts for these amulets, but there are also examples of magic formulae on Christian amulets. 4. My next example is another Christian amulet from the Berlin papyrus collection (see fig. 9).48 P.Berl. 11710 consists of two leaves of 7.5 by 6.5 cm size.49 Originally, they were bound together, as the holes, which are still visible, indicate. The text ends at plate B which is an indication that it was not a complete gospel text, but rather an amulet. The papyrus contains a version of the scene from John 1:49, the confession of Nathanael that Jesus is the Son of God, the king of Israel. This scene appears on the amulet in a different version here. Nathanael confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, followed by Jesus’s invitation: »Go into the sun.« Afterwards Nathanael formulates a second confession which in the Gospel of John is ascribed to John the Baptist: »You are the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.«50 Instead of the Johannine term ῥάββι on the amulet the strange word ῥαμβίου appears. On the recto of plate B the text ends somewhat abruptly after καὶ εἶπεν. On the verso the words »Jesus Christ God« appear in Coptic: ΙΗΣΟΥΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΠΝΟΥΤΕ [Π]. The text consists of two important statements about Jesus: he is the son of God and as the lamb of God he takes away the sin of the world. This makes it likely that the papyrus was used as an amulet. It shows a free adaptation of the dialogue between Jesus and Nathanael from John 1, which was adopted on the amulet in its own way. 46  See (last accessed on May 27, 2019). 47  See Franco Maltomini, »Amuleto Esorcistico,« in Literarische Texte der Berliner Papyrussammlung. Zur Wiedereröffnung des Neuen Museums, ed. Fabian Reiter (BKT X.26, Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 232–235. 48  See (last accessed on May 27, 2019). 49 See Hans Lietzmann, »Ein apokryphes Evangelienfragment,« ZNW 22 (1923), 154; Thomas J. Kraus, »P.Berol. 11710,« in Gospel Fragments, ed. Thomas J. Kraus, Michael J. Kruger, and Tobias Nicklas (Oxford Early Christian Gospel Texts; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 228–239. 50  John 1:29, 36.

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a

b

Fig. 8a–b: P.Berl. 7977, 4th/5th century. Amulet with incantation, inner and outer side. See (last accessed on May 27, 2019). Courtesy of the Berlin Papyrus Collection.

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5. The next examples belong to the so-​called »Bible oracles« or »Hermeneiai,« i. e., manuscripts with biblical passages followed by short explanations.51 First, I want to refer to the Codex Bezae which, remarkably, contains explanations entitled »Hermeneia« at the bottom of the pages containing the Gospel of Mark (see fig. 10).52 These »Hermeneiai« were probably added later, perhaps taken over from another manuscript. Besides this codex, there are several fragments with verses from the Gospel John, followed by »Hermeneiai« in the form of interpreting remarks to individual verses. Some of these fragments are in the Berlin papyrus collection. P.Berl. 1191453 is also listed in the catalogue of New Testament manuscripts as P63 (see fig. 11 and fig. 12). The papyrus consists of a double page of 18.5 by 30 cm.54 At the upper margin of the pages there are numbers which were obviously added later. Each page consists of a column with verses from the Gospel of John. After each verse a line with the word ΕΡΜΗΝΙΑ appears, followed by a sentence in Greek and a translation into Coptic. For the topic of this paper it is of interest that Biblical verses were interpreted in Greek and Coptic to give advice to the reader of the text as to how to understand the individual units. As the terms used in the interpretations indicate, the oracles probably had a pagan origin. They were perhaps intended to discover a hidden or magic meaning of the text. 6. Another example of the Gospel of John with »Hermeneiai« is P.Berl. 21315 (see fig. 13).55 The bilingual (Greek and Coptic) double leaf with a size of 7.5 by 3.7 cm contains on one page the text of John 10:29–30, followed by a »Hermeneia« of which only the title ΕΡΜΕΝ[ΙΑ] has survived.56 On the other side the biblical text is lost, but the ΕΡΜΕΝΙΑ is preserved. It reads: Καλον πρ[αγμα το] γιγνομ[ενον], followed by a Coptic translation. As traces of the folding may indicate, the leaf was perhaps used as an amulet. The interpretation »Everything will 51  See Christoph Markschies, »Heilige Texte als magische Texte,« in Heilige Texte. Religion und Rationalität (Geisteswissenschaftliches Colloquium 1; Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2013), 105–120. 52  See Otto Stegmüller, »Zu den Bibelorakeln im Codex Bezae,« Bib 34 (1953), 13–22, here 13–15. 53  See (last accessed on May 27, 2019). 54  See Stegmüller, »Bibelorakel« (n. 52), 15–22; Bruce M Metzger, »Greek Manuscripts of John’s Gospel with ›Hermeneiai‹,« in Text and Testimony: Essays on New Testament and Apocryphal Literature in Honour of A. F. J. Klijn, ed. Titze Baarda et alii (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1988), 162–169, here 163–164; Hans Quecke, »Zu den Joh-​Fragmenten mit Hermeneiai,« OCP 40 (1977), 407–414; idem, »Zu den Joh-​Fragmenten mit Hermeneiai (Nachtrag),« OCP 43 (1977), 179–181. 55  See (last accessed on May 27, 2019). 56  See Kurt Treu, »P.Berol. 21315: Bibelorakel mit griechischer und koptischer Hermeneia,« APF 27 (1991), 55–60.

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a

b Fig. 9a–d: P.Berl. 11710, 6th century. Codex (Amulet?) with the scene from John 1:49 (dialogue between Jesus and Nathanael). See (last accessed on May 27, 2019). Courtesy of the Berlin Papyrus Collection.

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d

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Fig. 10: Codex Bezae, Gospel of Mark with ΕΡΜΗΝΙΑ.

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become good« perhaps takes up the formulation ΕΡΓΑ ΚΑΛΑ from John 10:32 and gives it a general meaning. 7. Finally, I want to mention P.Berl. 3607 and 3623 (see fig. 14).57 The two parchment leaves of this papyrus are from the same codex.58 They contain the text of John 5:44; 6:1–2; and 6:41–42, in each case followed by a ΕΡΜΗΝΙΑ, in this case only in Greek. As with the previous examples, also here the Gospel of John is divided into individual sentences or small units which are interpreted by a short sentence, in this case: μαρτυρία καλή (»good testimony«); διάλυσις γίνεται (»a solution will come«), whereas the third ΕΡΜΗΝΙΑ is very fragmentary and difficult to reconstruct. As these examples demonstrate, the gospel text  – in this case the Gospel of John – was used to give advice for specific situations or general instructions for daily life. This is not dissimilar from today’s practice of using biblical verses as proverbs or blessings for life events, e. g., in baptisms or wedding ceremonies or as sayings for daily life. Of course, such a usage is far removed from ancient and modern philological and historical interpretation of biblical texts. However, if the category »authoritative texts« is not just considered from the perspective of church authorities, but also includes the usage of texts in Christians’ daily life, it may be useful also to look at usages and interpretations like these.

4.  Conclusion: Usages of Early Christian Texts and the Formation of the New Testament As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the observations concerning the production and usage of biblical and non-​biblical texts presented here are not aimed at a complete revision of the view on the formation of the New Testament canon or the Christian Bible. It still remains a plausible scenario that the New Testament writings first circulated individually, were compiled in collections of the four gospels and the letters of Paul, later also the Catholic epistles, and from the fourth century onwards were included into codices with the whole Christian Bible. It also remains plausible that in the second and third century other writings besides those that got canonical status circulated in Christian communities. Some of these writings were produced and used by Christian groups like the Valentinians, the Marcionites, and others. The differentiation between accepted, disputed and rejected writings which was developed in the course of the second and third century was therefore the result of inner and outer forces. The inner forces 57  See (last accessed on May 27, 2019). Courtesy of the Berlin Papyrus Collection. 58  See Metzger, »Greek Manuscripts« (n. 54), 165.

Fig. 11: P.Berl. 11914 (P63), 6th century. John 3:14–15, 16–18.

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Fig. 12: P.Berl. 11914 (P63), 6th century. John 4:9–10. See (last accessed on May 27, 2019). Courtesy of the Berlin Papyrus Collection.

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a

Fig. 13a–b: P.Berl. 21315, 6th century. John 10:29–30 with ΕΡΜΗΝΙΑ. See (last accessed on May 27, 2019). Courtesy of the Berlin Papyrus Collection.

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Fig. 14a–c: P.Berl. 3607 and 3623; 7th century. John 5:44; 6:1–2; 6:41–42 with ΕΡΜΗΝΙΑ.

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rooted in the claim of the New Testament writings themselves to communicate the salvation through Jesus Christ in an authoritative way. The outer forces were the collection and reinterpretation of Paul’s theology, the compilation of the four gospels, and theological reasoning that provided the foundation for Christian faith based on the accepted writings and the Christian creed. The conclusions that may be drawn from the observations presented here are much more modest. A consequence could be to interpret the New Testament writings within a wider range of usages of Christian texts in early Christian communities. From research on non-​canonical texts in the last decades we know that there was a broad spectrum of texts that cannot easily be divided into »orthodox« and »heretical« writings. The reasons for the rejection of several of these texts or at least the reluctance to allow their reading in Christian communities were probably diverse and can hardly be reduced to a paradigm of »canonical« and »apocryphal« texts. Moreover, non-​canonical writings contributed to the formation of a Christian tradition that goes far beyond the contents of the New Testament writings. The Infancy Gospels and the numerous papyri with non-​canonical Jesus traditions which are sometimes in close relation to the New Testament gospels are clear indications for a broad range of Jesus traditions in early Christianity. Regarding the manuscripts, it should not be overlooked that the system of the nomina sacra and also the staurogram appears in canonical as well as non-​canonical texts.59 And even if there are no codices which would contain a New Testament gospel together with a non-​canonical one or the letters of Paul together with apocryphal letters, P.Bodmer VII and VIII (P72), from the third or fourth century, testifies that even a codex could contain a wide spectrum of texts, among them some of the »Catholic epistles,« in this case the letter of Jude and 1 and 2 Peter, together with writings like the »Birth of Mary« (also known as »Protevangelium of James«), the so-​called »Third letter to the Corinthians,« and some other texts.60 The focus of this paper was on the usage of canonical and non-​canonical texts for different purposes. The usage of non-​canonical texts for personal and community reading as in the case of P.Oxy. 1, 654, and 655; the use of a saying of Jesus on a linen shroud for burial purposes; the use of canonical and non-​canonical texts as amulets and miniature codices as with P.Oxy. 5073 and P.Berl. 11710; the free adaptation of a scene from John’s Gospel, together with »Hermeneiai«, as on P.Berl. 11914 – all this shows that Christians lived with their texts in different ways and adopted them to various life situations. Hence, even if we stick with the 59 See Hurtado, Artefacts (n. 19), 135–154; idem, »The Staurogram in Early Christian Manuscripts: The Earliest Visual Reference to the Crucified Jesus?,« in Texts and Artefacts (n. 33), 136–154. 60  See Tobias Nicklas and Tommy Wasserman, »Theologische Leitlinien im Codex Bodmer Miscellani?,« in New Testament Manuscripts, ed. Kraus and Nicklas (n. 15), 161–188.

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formation of the Christian Bible as a process that resulted in the differentiation of canonical and non-​canonical or »apocryphal« writings, it could be useful not to lose sight of the various ways in which Christians made use of their texts and employed them in a wide range of interpretations and usages.

Die Autorität der Schrift bei Paulus Martin Meiser Das Thema ist häufig behandelt, sowohl hinsichtlich der Paulusbriefe1 als auch der vorausgesetzten Prätexte2, aber hinsichtlich der einzelnen Aspekte in unterschiedlicher Dichte. Während in der Darstellung der exegetischen Methoden3 weithin Konsens besteht, stehen Differenzen im Schriftgebrauch zwischen den einzelnen Briefen sowie traditionsgeschichtliche und biographische Grundlagen der paulinischen Schriftverwendung mindestens in Einzelheiten noch zur Klärung an.4 Das Thema dieses Beitrages sind Differenzen im Schriftgebrauch; nicht 1  Vgl. z. B. E. Earle Ellis, Paul’s Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981); Hans Hübner, Gottes Ich und Israel. Zum Schriftgebrauch des Paulus in Römer 9–11 (FRLANT 136; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984); Dietrich-​Alex Koch, Die Schrift als Zeuge des Evangeliums. Untersuchungen zur Verwendung und zum Verständnis der Schrift bei Paulus (BHTh 69; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1986); Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1989); Christopher D. Stanley, Paul and the Language of Scripture: Citation Technique in the Pauline Epistles and Contemporary Literature (SNTSMS 74; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992); Florian Wilk, Die Bedeutung des Jesajabuches für Paulus (FRLANT 179; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998); Stanley E. Porter, As It Is Written: Studying Paul’s Use of Scripture (SBLSympS 50, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008); Steve Moyise, Paul and Scripture: Studying the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010); Markus Öhler & Florian Wilk (Hg.), Paulinische Schriftrezeption. Grundlagen – Ausprägungen – Wirkungen – Wertungen (FRLANT 268; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017). 2  Vgl. z. B. Sylvia C. Keesmaat, Paul and His Story: (Re)Interpreting the Exodus Tradition (JSNTSup 181; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999); Steve Moyise und Maarten J. J. Menken (Hg.), Deuteronomy in the New Testament (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2007); Steve Moyise und Maarten J. J. Menken (Hg.), Psalms in the New Testament (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2004); Christiane Böhm, Die Rezeption der Psalmen in den Qumranschriften, bei Philo von Alexandrien und im Corpus Paulinum (WUNT II/437; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017); Helmut Utzschneider, Flourishing Bones – The Minor Prophets in the New Testament, in Septuagint Research: Issues and Challenges in the Study of the Greek Jewish Scriptures, hg. von R. Glenn Wooden & Wolfgang Kraus (SCSt 53, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006), 273–292; J. Ross Wagner, Heralds of the Good News: Isaiah and Paul »in Concert« in the Letter to the Romans (NovTSup 101; Leiden: Brill, 2002); Steve Moyise und Maarten J. J.  Menken (Hg.), Isaiah in the New Testament (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2005); Christian Wolff, Jeremia im Frühjudentum und Urchristentum (TU 118; Berlin: Akademie-​Verlag, 1976). 3  Michael Tilly, Paulus und die antike jüdische Schriftauslegung, KuD 63 (2017), 157–181, benennt Allegorese, Typologie, ultraliteralistische Exegese (Gal 3,10), Kal-​Wachomer-​Schluss, Gezera Schawa und eschatologische Schriftauslegung als Beispiele (167–179). 4  Darauf verweisen Markus Öhler und Florian Wilk, Einführung, in Paulinische Schriftrezeption, hg. Öhler/Wilk (s. Anm. 1), 1–8, hier 4.

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zum wenigsten geht es darum, Mechanismen paulinischer Schriftverwendung, die in der bisherigen Forschung zumeist intuitiv erfasst wurden, zu klarem Bewusstsein zu bringen.

1.  Die Autorität der Schrift in brieflicher Kommunikation Die Verwendung autoritativer Texte innerhalb brieflicher wie auch innerhalb oraler direkter Kommunikation bewegt sich grundsätzlich in der Dialektik zwischen deren gemeinsam anerkanntem In-​Geltung-​Stehen und neuem, nicht immer unumstrittenen Zur-​Geltung-​Bringen des Autors, ist deshalb untrennbar mit dessen Selbstpositionierung (bei Paulus im Römerbrief; vgl. Röm 3,31fine) bzw. Selbstautorisierung (bei Paulus in der Korintherkorrespondenz sowie im Galaterbrief) verknüpft, so gewiss die autoritativen Texte Israels auch für den Apostel selbst normativ wirksam sind. Die zuerst genannte Seite dieser Dialektik lässt sich an unspektakulären, gleichwohl symptomatischen Phänomenen aufweisen. Die Wendungen δι’ ἡμᾶς (1 Kor 9,10; Röm 4,24), πρὸς νουθεσίαν (1 Kor 10,11) und εἰς τὴν ἡμετέραν διδασκαλίαν (Röm 15,4) wollen die Autorität der Schrift in der einzelnen Argumentation zur Geltung bringen, lassen aber nicht auf ihre generelle Infragestellung bei den angeschriebenen Gemeinden schließen, ebenso wenig die Gegenüberstellung κατὰ ἄνθρωπον/ὁ νόμος in 1 Kor 9,8. Röm 3,31 ist wohl an die Adresse der in Röm 3,8 aufscheinenden Gegnerschaft des Apostels gerichtet.5 Das Zitat einer einzelnen Schriftstelle leitet Paulus fast nie mit einem fragenden ἀγνοεῖτε oder οὐκ οἴδατε ein (ansonsten vgl. 1 Kor 6,2; Röm 7,1) – Ausnahme ist Röm 11,2b–4, das Zitat aus 5 Zu Röm 3,31 ist sowohl die Semantik des Verbums ἱστάνω zu klären als auch dessen Bezugspunkt. Gegen die übliche Wiedergabe mit »aufrichten« (Eduard Lohse, Der Brief an die Römer übersetzt und erklärt [KEK 4; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2003], 139) bzw. »to establish« (zuletzt u. a. Robert Jewett, Romans [Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007], 302; Frank J. Matera, Romans (Paideia; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010], 101) hat Michael Wolter, Der Brief an die Römer. Teilband 1: Röm 1–8 (EKK VI/1; Neukirchen/Ostfildern: Neukirchener/Patmos, 2014), 274, auf die Austauschbarkeit von τηρεῖν und ἱστάνειν in 1 Sam 15,11 und Mk 7,9 als Parallelen verwiesen und als Übersetzung »bewahren, befolgen« vorgeschlagen. Doch erschließt sich der Sinn der so verstandenen Aussage im Kontext nicht recht. Man wird bei der hergebrachten Bedeutung bleiben dürfen. Der Bezugspunkt des ἱστάνω ist wohl, dass sich das Alte Testament insgesamt als Verweis auf die Gerechtigkeit aus dem Glauben lesen lässt (Simon Légasse, L’Épître de Paul aux Romains [LeDiv; Paris: Cerf 2002], 271, mit Verweis auf den Nahkontext), die jetzt für Juden wie Nichtjuden die gültige heilvolle Gottesbeziehung ermöglicht und als deren Kriterium gilt (James D. G. Dunn, Romans [WBC 38 A; Dallas: Word 1988], 191). Die verurteilende Wirkung des Gesetzes (Klaus Haacker, Der Brief des Paulus an die Römer [ThHK NT 6; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1999], 96) oder die ethische Gültigkeit (Dieter Zeller, Der Brief an die Römer übersetzt und erklärt [RNT; Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1985], 93) seien nicht bestritten (vgl. Röm 3,20; 4,15; 8,3 f.; 13,8–10), sind aber in Röm 3,31 und dem näheren Kontext nicht besonders betont.

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3 Reg 19,10.14.18 –, und er erwägt nie explizit, ob seine Anspielungen den Adressatinnen und Adressaten seiner Briefe bekannt sind oder nicht.6 Als innerhalb der Korintherkorrespondenz ein erstes Mal die übliche Wendung γέγραπται γάρ fällt (1 Kor 1,19), ein erstes Mal (1 Kor 6,16) das völlig unbestimmte φησίν, gibt Paulus den Referenzpunkt nicht eigens an.7 Dass Paulus Texte aus dem Pentateuch, den Psalmen und Proverbien sowie dem Zwölfprophetenbuch und Jesaja auch im Detail als bekannt voraussetzt, zeigen die unmarkierten Einspielungen8 ebenso wie das Aufgebot namentlich genannter oder alludierter Personen9 und Institutionen im Alten Testament10 und das Phänomen der auf der Textoberfläche philologisch nicht eingebundener Personalpronomina, die nur verständlich werden, wenn  6  Methodisch feststellen kann man, ob die Identifizierung eines Zitates als Zitat, einer Anspielung als Anspielung unbedingte Voraussetzung ist, um den Text zu verstehen. Rückschlüsse auf die tatsächliche Schriftkenntnis in den von Paulus angeschriebenen Gemeinden sind hingegen kaum möglich.  7 Stellenangaben sind allerdings auch bei Lukas höchst uneinheitlich. Das muss vor Überinterpretationen warnen. Komparative Studien sind erforderlich, wie sie Florian Wilk für Paulus und Markus vorgelegt hat: Florian Wilk, »Die Schriften« bei Markus und Paulus, in Paul and Mark. Comparative Essays Part I: Two Authors at the Beginnings of Christianity, hg. von Oda Wischmeyer u. a. (BZNW 198; Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2014), 189–220.  8  Unmarkierte Einspielungen stammen aus dem Buch Genesis (Gen 2,24 in 1 Kor 6,16), Deuteronomium (Dtn 17,7 in 1 Kor 5,13b; Dtn 19,15 in 2 Kor 13,1), Psalmen (Ps 18[19],5 in Röm 10,18; Ps 23[24],1 in 1 Kor 10,26; Ps 109[110],1 in 1 Kor 15,25), Proverbien (Prov 22,8a in 2 Kor 9,7; Prov 25,21 in Röm 12,20 – Röm 2,6 lässt sich von Prov 24,12 ebenso gut ableiten wie von Ps 61[62],13), Joel (Joel 3,5 in Röm 10,13), dem Buch Jesaja (Jes 22,13 in 1 Kor 15,32; Jes 29,16 in Röm 9,20; Jes 40,13 in 1 Kor 2,16a; Jes 45,15 in 1 Kor 14,25) und Jeremia (Jer 9,22 f. in 2 Kor 10,17), paraphrasierte Erzählzusammenhänge aus den Büchern Genesis und Exodus. Die meisten dieser unmarkierten Einspielungen würden im Falle einer völligen Unkenntnis der Schrift als Maximen des Paulus gelten (ähnlich Röm 9,20 als argumentum ad hominem des Apostels), ohne dass das Argument deshalb Schaden litte (ähnliches gilt auch für Ps 143,2LXX in Gal 2,16: Ps 143,2 wird auch in Ps 155,8b = Syr Ps. III 8b unmarkiert eingespielt). Dasselbe gilt für Gal 3,11, vor allem dann, wenn das erste ὅτι kausal, das zweite ὅτι als ὅτι recitativum zu übersetzen wäre, was allerdings wenig wahrscheinlich ist.  9  Die namentlich genannten oder alludierten Personen aus dem Alten Testament sind, soweit sie Erzählfiguren sind (Adam, Eva, Abraham, Sara, Hagar, Isaak, Ismael, Rebekka, Jakob, Esau, der Pharao, Mose, die Wüstengeneration, schließlich Elia), mit Ausnahme Elias aus den Büchern Genesis und Exodus genommen; als Autorennamen werden Mose, David, Hosea und Jesaja genannt. Der Bestand ist überschaubar. Eine Beispielreihe wie in 1 Makk 2,49–60 oder Hebr 11 oder 1Clem, passim, sucht man bei Paulus vergebens; Paulus macht von dem πρὸς νουθεσίαν doch recht wenig Gebrauch. 10  Zu erinnern ist an das Passafest (1 Kor 5,7) wie an das Ritual des großen Versöhnungstages (Röm 3,25 f.); dazu vgl. Wolfgang Kraus, Der Tod Jesu als Heiligtumsweihe. Eine Untersuchung zum Umfeld der Sühnevorstellung in Römer 3,25–26a (WMANT 66; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1991), 45–70. Die alternative Ableitung von 4 Makk 17,21 f. (Eduard Lohse, Märtyrer und Gottesknecht. Untersuchungen zur urchristlichen Verkündigung vom Sühnetod Jesu Christi [FRLANT 64; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ²1963]) ist nicht unwidersprochen geblieben: 1. In 4 Makk 17 stiftet der Tod der Märtyrer Hoffnung auf die Fürsorge Gottes speziell für Israel; 2. die Initiative geht in Röm 3,25 f. von Gott aus (Dunn, Romans [s. Anm 5], 171). Dass im Neuen Testament Jesus sonst nirgends mit einem Kultgegenstand verglichen wird ­(Légasse, Romains [s. Anm. 5], 262–264), muss kein zwingendes Gegenargument sein. Wolter, Römer (s. Anm. 5), 257–259 hält an der Bezugnahme auf Lev 16 fest, aber nicht im Sinne

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man die umgebenden Texte eben als unmarkierte Einspielungen identifiziert.11 In dieselbe Richtung weist, dass auch Gottesreden längst nicht immer mit dem Verweis auf Gott als Subjekt des Redens eingeführt werden.12 Das Phänomen unmarkierter Einspielungen schon im Ersten Korintherbrief und die in 1 Kor 10,1 (οἱ πατέρες ἡμῶν) bezeugte Einbindung auch der Korinther in die Geschichte Gottes mit seinem Volk Israel können die von Florian Wilk formulierte These einer biblisch fundierten bzw. angereicherten Erstverkündigung des Apostels in Korinth bestätigen.13 Nicht so einfach liegen die Verhältnisse in Thessaloniki und Philippi. In Thessaloniki lässt sich zwar eine stark apokalyptisch durchsetzte Erstverkündigung des Apostels vermuten, wie die unkommentiert eingeführten Erwähnungen des »Satans« in 1Thess 2,18 und des »Tages des Herrn« in 1Thess 5,2 nahelegen; biblische Bezüge werden allerdings ansonsten nicht explizit sichtbar.14 Freilich fragt es sich, ob bei dem pharisäisch geprägten Paulus ein unterschiedliches Vorgehen in unterschiedlichen Städten bei grundsätzlich vergleichbarer Arbeitssituation sinnvoll anzunehmen ist. Die zweite Seite der angesprochenen Dialektik impliziert, dass man im einzelnen durchaus Kritik an der Argumentationsweise des Paulus üben kann, im Ganzen aber der Tatsache nicht entkommt, dass die Verwendung von Schriftzitaten in direkter wie brieflicher Kommunikation immer einen Akt der subjektiven Applikation unter gleichzeitiger Selbstautorisierung vollzieht. Doch schon vor jeder Sachkritik ist deutlich, dass es dem Autor Paulus freisteht, auf Schriftautorität zu rekurrieren oder eben nicht. Eine Analyse jener Themenfelder, zu denen sich kaum Schriftzitate finden, vermag wenigstens indirekt ein Licht auf die Eigenart des paulinischen Schriftgebrauchs zu werfen. Paulus, so Martinus C. de Boer,15 wählt Schriftzitate, die seinen Anschauungen entsprechen, ignoriert Schriftzitate, die seinen Anschauungen widersprechen,16 und zitiert andere, die einer typologischen Identifikation Jesu mit der ‫כפרת‬, sondern im Sinne einer funktionalen Analogie zwischen dem Tod Jesu und dem Blutritus. 11  Das betrifft das Wort αὐτά in Gal 3,12 und das ebenso unmotivierte σοι in Röm 9,7 wie das αὐτῶν in Röm 10,18. Dass biblische Inhalte verhandelt werden, ist im Fall von Röm 9,7 nur durch die Erwähnung Abrahams im Vorderteil des Verses signalisiert. 12  Vgl. 1 Kor 1,19; Röm 4,17; 9,7.9.13 etc. Eine Ausnahme ist 1 Kor 14,21. 13  Florian Wilk, Bezüge auf »die Schriften« in den Korintherbriefen, in Paulinische Schriftrezeption, hg. Öhler/Wilk (s. Anm. 1), 149–173, vor allem 157.159: Die »Präsenz von Juden innerhalb und/oder im Umfeld« der Gemeinde zieht einen ausgiebigeren Schriftgebrauch nach sich. 14  Vgl. Markus Öhler, Rezeption des Alten Testaments im 1. Thessalonicherbrief und im Philipperbrief? in Paulinische Schriftrezeption, hg. Öhler/Wilk (s. Anm. 1), 113–135, vor allem 127 f. 15 Martinus C. de Boer, Observations on the Significance of the Old Testament in Galatians, in The Scriptures of Israel in Jewish and Christian Tradition: Essays in Honour of Maarten J. J.  Menken, hg. Bart J. Koet, Steve Moyise und Joseph Verheyden (NovTSup 148; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2013), 211–226, hier 226. 16  Zum problematischen Umgang des Apostels mit Gen 17,9–14 vgl. auch Thomas Johann Bauer, »… angeordnet durch die Engel mit Hilfe eines Mittlers« (Gal 3,19). Gestalt und Rolle des Mose in den Briefen des Paulus, in Mosebilder. Gedanken zur Rezeption einer literarischen

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die Behauptungen Andersdenkender unterminieren. In manchen Fällen greift Paulus zur typologischen und allegorischen Exegese, um die Texte zu Zeugen dessen zu machen, wie er das Evangelium versteht.

2.  Der als Autorität anerkannte Schriftenbestand Was Paulus als Heilige Schrift zitiert, entspricht faktisch dem, was auch bei anderen jüdischen Autoren als Heilige Schrift gegolten hat.17 Die dominierenden Schriften sind Jesaja und die Psalmen, dann die Bücher Genesis und Deuteronomium, in gewissem Abstand auch das Zwölfprophetenbuch.18 Seltener sind die Bücher Exodus, Leviticus, Proverbien, 3 Reg und Hiob vertreten. Bezüglich der Menge dessen, was entweder überhaupt nicht oder nicht erkennbar aufgenommen wird, hat Dietrich-​Alex Koch den Ausgangspunkt der folgenden Diskussion formuliert: Die Bücher Numeri, Josua, Richter, 1 und 2 Samuel, 2 Könige, Ruth, Hoheslied, Kohelet, Klagelieder, Esther, Esra, Nehemia sowie 1 und 2 Chronik, aber auch Jeremia, Ezechiel und Daniel werden von Paulus völlig übergangen, ebenfalls alle Bücher, die über den hebräischen Kanon hinaus zur Septuaginta gerechnet werden, u. a. die Bücher Judith und Tobit, 1–4 Makkabäer, Weisheit Salomos, Jesus Sirach, Baruch und Epistula Jeremiae.19 Dass Jeremia und Ezechiel kaum vertreten sind, hat seine Parallele im Judentum dieser Zeit,20 mag aber auch thematisch begründet sein. In den meisten Fällen zeigt sich, dass der Textbefund kaum eine andere Auflistung zulässt. In anderen Fällen verbindet sich die Frage nach dem für den Apostel autoritativen Schriftenbestand mit der Frage nach der Herkunft mancher Texte, die Paulus als Zitate einführt, die sich aber nicht Figur im Frühjudentum, frühen Christentum und der römisch-​hellenistischen Literatur, hg. Michael Sommer u. a. (WUNT 390; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 211–252 (235): »Hier zeigt sich das grundlegende Problem des Paulus, dass auf der Basis der ›Schrift‹ eine zwingende Argumentation gegen die Forderung der Beschneidung der Heidenchristen […] kaum möglich war.« 17  Einen verbindlichen Textbestand und einen verbindlichen Wortlaut gab es im ersten Jahrhundert noch nicht; vgl. dazu Tilly, Paulus (s. Anm. 3), 158. 18  Man kann mit Koch, Schrift (s. Anm. 1), 33; Joseph Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AncB 33; New York: Doubleday, 1993), 573; Haacker, Der Brief des Paulus an die Römer (s. Anm. 5), 189, erwägen, ob Paulus das, was wir heute als einzelne Bestandteile des Zwölfprophetenbuches kennen, überhaupt als Einzelbestandteile wahrgenommen hat oder nicht eher als Abschnitt innerhalb des Zwölfprophetenbuches (schon in Sir 49,10 gelten sie als zusammengehörig). Der handschriftliche Befund entspricht dem: In den Septuaginta-Handschriften wurden die Zwölf Propheten gemeinsam tradiert. Allerdings ist der Prozess doch komplexer als angenommen. »Die Zwölf« werden weder in Qumran noch im Neuen Testament als literarische oder theologische Einheit wahrgenommen (Utzschneider, Flourishing Bones (s. Anm. 2), 274. 291). 19  Koch, Schrift (s. Anm. 1), 33. 20  Koch, Schrift (s. Anm. 1), 45–47.

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oder zumindest nicht ohne weiteres mit den uns bekannten autoritativen Texten in Übereinstimmung bringen lassen. In 1 Kor 1,31 sind es lediglich die Verbindung von ὁ καυχώμενος καυχάσθω und κύριος, die einen Anschluss an Jer 9,22 f. (oder 1 Reg 2,10LXX) ermöglichen. Der Vorschlag, Paulus habe »das geprägte Wort dem lebendigen Gebrauch, nicht aber einer schriftlichen Quelle«21 entnommen, ist wegen der expliziten Zitateinführung schwierig. Die Ausführungen in 1 Kor 1–4 können nahelegen, dass Paulus das Zitat in seinem vollen Wortlaut vor Augen hatte22 und stark verkürzt zitierte.23 Bessere Alternativen stehen jedenfalls nicht zur Verfügung.24 In 1 Kor 2,9 dürfte am ehesten Jes 64,3 vorauszusetzen sein.25 In 1 Kor 9,10 wird gelegentlich ein apokryphes Wort vermutet26 oder die Aufnahme eines allgemein von biblischer Sprache geprägten Wortes27 oder aber eine wiederholende Paraphrase von Dtn 25,4.28 Mit Sir 6,1929 hat 1 Kor 9,10 nur die Worte ὁ ἀροτριῶν gemeinsam. Doch ist zu fragen, ob 1 Kor 9,10b überhaupt ein Schriftzitat sein will; ἐγράφη bezieht sich bei Paulus stets auf vorangegangene Zitate30, und das ὅτι nach ἐγράφη muss nicht als ὅτι recitativum, sondern kann auch kausal

21  Traugott Holtz, Zum Selbstverständnis des Apostels Paulus, ThLZ 91 (1966), 322–330: 326, aufgenommen bei Koch, Schrift (s. Anm. 1), 36. 22  Ulrich Heckel, Kraft in Schwachheit. Untersuchungen zu 2. Kor 10–13 (WUNT II/56; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1993), 174. 23  Andreas Lindemann, Der Erste Korintherbrief (HNT 9/I; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 52; Dieter Zeller, Der erste Brief an die Korinther (KEK 5; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), 121. 24  Wolfgang Schrage, Der erste Brief an die Korinther. 1. Teilband 1 Kor 1,1–6,11 (EKK VII/1; Zürich/Neunkirchen: Benziger/Neukirchener, 1991), 206. 25 Vgl. dazu insgesamt Lindemann, 1 Kor (s. Anm, 23), 66 f. (Lit.); Zeller, 1 Kor (s. Anm. 23), 137 f. sowie Christian Wolff, Der erste Brief des Paulus an die Korinther (ThHK NT 7; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1996), 57, der auf LAB 26,13 und TgJes 64,3 als Parallelen verweist. 26  Wolfgang Schrage, Der erste Brief an die Korinther. 2. Teilband 1 Kor 6,12–11,16 (EKK VII/2), Solothurn/Düsseldorf/Neukirchen: Patmos/Neukirchener, 1995), 302. 27  Koch, Schrift (s. Anm. 1), 42, der auf Jes 28,24LXX (μὴ ὅλην τὴν ἡμέραν μέλει ὁ ἀροτριῶν ἀροτριᾶν;); Jes 28,28Sym.Theod (ἀλλ’ οὐκ εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα ἀλιῶν ἀλοήσει); Jes 45,9LXX (μὴ ὁ ἀροτριῶν ἀροτριάσει τὴν γῆν) als Bezugsstellen verweist. Auch die Rekonstruktion des Zitates von der Wendung ἐπ’ ἐλπίδι her führt nicht weiter: Die Belege ἔλπις in Jes 28 sind mit der Ausnahme Jes 28,5 alle in einem negativen Kontext, die Belege für ἐπ’ ἐλπίδι in der Septuaginta sind allesamt unpassend. Kyrill von Alexandria, in Iesaiam, PG 70, 641 A – 645 B, kommt bei der Kommentierung von Jes 28,24–29 nicht auf 1 Kor 9,10 zu sprechen. 28  Zeller, 1 Kor (s. Anm. 23), 307, wie schon Wolff, Der erste Brief des Paulus an die Korinther (s. Anm. 25), 194, der darauf verweist, dass Paulus ἐγράφη nur für Bezugnahmen auf vorangegangene Zitate verwende (1 Kor 10,11; Röm 4,23; 15,4). 29  Darauf wird in NA28 z.St. verwiesen. 30  Wolff, Der erste Brief des Paulus an die Korinther (s. Anm. 25), 194, mit Verweis auf 1 Kor 10,11; Röm 4,23; 15,4.

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verstanden werden.31 Zu Röm 11,2 kann man fragen, ob Ps 93[94],1432 oder 1 Sam 12,2233 eingespielt wird; es ist nicht gesichert, sondern nur möglich, dass überhaupt eine Einspielung beabsichtigt ist.34 Gelegentlich wird erwogen, die Wendung ἤνεγκεν […] σκεύη ὀργῆς als Reflex der Wendung ἐξήεγκεν σκεύη ὀργῆς αὐτοῦ in Jer 27LXX,25 (Jer 15MT,25) zu interpretieren,35 doch bleibt das ebenfalls unsicher. Das Fazit fällt kurz aus: Dass Paulus das Buch Jesus Sirach als Autorität angesehen hätte, lässt sich nicht anhand von 1 Kor 9,10 sichern. Die Kenntnis des Buches Jeremia lässt sich von 1 Kor 1,31 her vermuten.36 Das Buch Ezechiel dürfte Paulus mit der möglichen Ausnahme Ez 36,26 f. (dazu s. u.) kaum Anlass zur Zitation geboten haben. Dass Paulus trotz seiner apokalyptisch eingefärbten Erstverkündigung (1Thess 5,3; 1 Kor 6,2) nicht aus Daniel zitiert, könnte darauf schließen lassen, dass (seiner Überzeugung nach) zumindest einige seiner Kritiker Daniel nicht als Autorität anerkannten. Die Danielrezeption in den Evangelien kann methodisch nur bedingt als Gegenargument geltend gemacht werden. Denkbar ist ebenso gut, dass verschiedene Gruppen der Anhänger Jesu auch eine an einigen Stellen unterschiedlich umfangreiche Sammlung autoritativer Schriften voraussetzen und so die Pluriformität des antiken Judentums widerspiegeln. Die ungleiche Verteilung der Schriftzitate im Corpus Paulinum hat mit der jeweiligen Thematik zu tun: Zitate häufen sich, wo sich Paulus mit anderslautender jüdischer Schriftauslegung auseinandersetzen muss, die auch als Position innerhalb der von ihm gegründeten Gemeinden, u.U. durch Fremdmissionare eingebracht, vertreten wird.37 Im Römerbrief, der keine aktuelle Polemik erkennen

31  Johannes Chrysostomus, hom. in 1Cor. 21,3, PG 61, 174, der den Vers als metaphorische Wiederholung von 1 Kor 9,7 interpretiert. Auch Ps.-Oecumenius von Trikka, in 1Cor, PG 118, 760 AB, hat 1 Kor 9,10 nicht als Schriftzitat aufgefasst. 32  Fitzmyer, Romans (s. Anm. 18), 604; Lohse, Römer (s. Anm. 5), 305. 33  Peter Stuhlmacher, Der Brief an die Römer (NTD 6; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 148. 34 Kritisch dazu Koch, Schrift (s. Anm. 1), 18: Die eigentliche Schriftbegründung erfolgt erst durch Röm 11,2b–4. Das schließt m. E. jedoch nicht aus, dass Paulus die Wahrheit der einen Schriftstelle (Ps 93[94],14) durch eine andere (3 Reg 19,18) beweisen will. 35 Jewett, Romans (s. Anm. 5), 596. Hübner, Ich (s. Anm. 1), 52–54 bleibt skeptisch. Gelegentlich wird auch eine Anleihe von Jes 13,5Sym erwogen (Fitzmyer, Romans [s. Anm. 18], 569), so dass Röm 9,22 die Benutzung des Jeremiabuches durch Paulus nicht vollends beweisen kann. 36 Gal 1,15 taugt nicht als unterstützendes Argument. Dort führt die Wendung ἀφορίσας με ἐκ κοιλίας μητρός μου eher auf Jes 49,1 (ἐκ κοιλίας μητρός) als auf Jer 1,4, wo die Begriffe κοιλία und μήτηρ nicht unmittelbar hintereinander stehen. 37 Abraham wird in Gal 3,6 unvermittelt eingeführt. Nicht selten wird das mit der Verwendung von Abraham-​Texten seitens der Konkurrenten begründet; vgl. etwa Martinus C. de Boer, Galatians: A Commentary (NTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 185. Vorsichtiger ist Douglas J. Moo, Galatians (BECNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 187.

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lässt, wird der Aufwand mit Hinblick auf die in Röm 3,1–8 angedeuteten Verleumdungen seiner Theologie erklärbar.38 Die Sprachenfrage thematisiert er nicht, nicht einmal positiv als Voraussetzung seiner eigenen Mission unter Nichtjuden.39

3.  Termini und Themen 3.1.  Die termini γραφή, νόμος und ἐντολή Das Nebeneinander vor allem der termini γραφή und νόμος bedarf der Erklärung. Der Begriff γραφή40 bezeichnet bei Paulus das Zeugnis über das Handeln Gottes in seiner Geschichte mit Israel und der Menschheit insgesamt,41 speziell im Christusgeschehen,42 formuliert aber auch Daseins‑ und Handlungsorientierung.43 Zur den Belegen für die Daseinsorientierung zählt wohl auch Gal 3,22, wo der terminus44 auf den Charakter der Thora als autoritativer Urkunde referiert45: Die Heilige Schrift stellt die Sündhaftigkeit aller Menschen heraus,46 der der einzelne auch durch die Bindung an die Thora nicht entkommt.47 Er begegnet nie da, wo eine einzelne Halacha als Halacha gemeint ist. Das hat Parallelen im Aristeas-​Brief wie bei Aristobul,48 aber möglicherweise auch bei  Koch, Schrift (s. Anm. 1), 300. dagegen Irenaeus, haer. III 21,2, aufgenommen bei Eusebius von Caesarea, h.e. V 8,11–15 (GCS 9/1, 448–451). 40  Als Bezeichnung autoritativer Texte begegnet der Begriff bereits in 1 Chr 15,15; 2 Chr 40,5.18; 2 Esdr 6,18, für eine einzelne nichthalachische Schriftstelle 4 Makk 18,14. 41  Gal 3,8; Röm 11,2. 42  1 Kor 15,3 f.; Röm 1,2. 43 Gal 4,30; Röm 10,11; 15,4. 44 Nicht durchgesetzt hat sich die These, statt γραφή könnte ebenso gut auch νόμος stehen (Joachim Rohde, Der Brief des Paulus an die Galater [ThHK 9; Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1989], 160 Anm. 39). Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1979), 175, und François Vouga, An die Galater (HNT 9; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 85 begründen die Wahl des Begriffs γραφή mit dem passiven Charakter von νόμος, dem aktiven Charakter von γραφή; von dieser Hypothese ist m. E. nur letzteres richtig. Nach de Boer, Galatians (s. Anm. 37), 234 f., hat Paulus den Begriff hier gewählt, um die Berufung der Gegner auf die Schrift und ihre positive Wertung des Gesetzes zurückzuweisen. Moo, Galatians (s. Anm. 37), 239 sieht mit γραφή auf das Alte Testament als Ganzes referiert. 45  Franz Muẞner, Der Galaterbrief (HTKNT 9; Freiburg u. a.: Herder, 1974), 253. 46  Die Referenz des τὰ πάντα in Gal 3,22 ist umstritten: Bezieht es sich auf die Menschenwelt (Rohde, Galater [s. Anm. 44], 160), auf die geschöpfliche Welt (Moo, Galatians [s. Anm. 37], 239, mit Verweis auf Röm 8,18–22 und auf Gal 6,15 als Gegenstück), oder auf alle Dinge incl. des Gesetzes (de Boer, Galatians [s. Anm. 37], 234)? Die Vorschläge müssen nicht als einander ausschließende Alternativen aufgefasst werden. 47  de Boer, Galatians (s. Anm. 37), 234 f.; Moo, Galatians (s. Anm. 37), 239. 48  EpArist 155; 168; Aristobul bei Euseb p.e. 8.10.12, GCS 43/1, 453. 38

39 Vgl.

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Philo. Bei ihm begegnet der Begriff γραφή, auf die Heilige Schrift bezogen,49 häufig pluralisch in der Wendung ἱεραί γραφαί für die autoritativen Schriften Israels als literarisches Corpus.50 Daneben erscheint er gelegentlich im Singular,51 etwa wenn es um die Themen Übersetzung52 oder literale bzw. allegorische Auslegung geht.53 Manchmal bezeichnet γραφή auch eine Einzelstelle, zumeist nicht-h ​ alachischen Inhaltes.54 Lediglich in VitMos II 203 kann man überlegen, ob γραφή den Vorgang der Verschriftlichung dieser Vorschrift Lev 24,15 f. meint, den Namen Gottes nicht auszusprechen, oder das Aufgenommen dieser Vorschrift in die Heilige Schrift. Nach dem hier Gesagten dürfte deutlich sein, dass, ähnlich wie bei der Formel καθὼς γέγραπται55, der Gebrauch des terminus γραφή bei Paulus sich durchaus in den allgemeinen jüdischen Sprachgebrauch seiner Zeit einfügt.56 Auffallend im Vergleich zu Philo ist jedoch, dass die Kennzeichnung der autoritativen Texte als »heilig« bei Paulus mit Ausnahme von Röm 1,2; 7,12 fehlt.57 Der Begriff νόμος58 steht bei Paulus für die Summe der göttlichen Forderung,59 an der auch das Verhalten des Menschen60 sowie sein Schicksal im eschatologischen Gericht bemessen wird.61 Er ist insgesamt Identitätsmerkmal Israels.62 Eine einzelne Halacha ist in 1 Kor 9,8 f. gemeint; sinngemäß auch in Gal 5,23.63  Auf Philos eigenes Werk bezieht sich der Begriff in Ebr. 11.  Philo, Opif. 77; Her. 106; Congr. 34; Fug. 4; Abr. 61; 121; Spec. II 134. Das gilt auch für I 104. Hier geht es allgemein darum, dass Mose aus der ihm angeborenen Menschenliebe heraus den Lesern der heiligen Schriften Gemeinsinn und Gutherzigkeit einprägen wollte; Die Vorschrift Ex 23,11, das Land alle sieben Jahre unbebaut zu lassen, dient ihm dafür als Beispiel, aber er bezeichnet nicht die Halacha als einzelne Halacha mit dem Begriff γραφή. 51  Philo, Abr. 68; Mos. II 84. 52  Mos. II 40, im Zuge der Darstellung der Septuaginta-​Legende. 53 Philo, Abr. 131. 236; Praem. 65. 54  Philo, Cher. 12 (Gen 4,16); Her. 230 (Gen 15,10); Her. 266 (Gen 15,13); Abr. 131 (Gen 18,13). 55  Fitzmyer, Romans (s. Anm. 18), 264, verweist auf Dan 9,13Theod. Und 2 Kön 14,6 als biblische Vorbilder und auf 1QS 5,17; 8,14; CD 7,19 u. a. als traditionsgeschichtliche Parallelen. 56 Auch der Gedanke, dass die γραφή zu unserer Zurechtweisung geschrieben wurde, hat natürlich Parallelen bei Philo; vgl. Philo, Spec. I 104 (dasselbe Decal. 40 von den ἱεροὶ νόμοι) sowie Philo, Abr. 4, wo expressis verbis auf den protreptischen Charakter der Erzväterdarstellung verwiesen wird. 57  Gottlob Schrenk, Art. γράφω κτλ., ThWNT I (1933), 742–773, hier 751. 58 Bei Röm 7,23, vielleicht auch bei Röm 8,2, wird man die Referenz auf die Thora in Zweifel ziehen. Die Diskussion kann hier nicht im Einzelnen vorgeführt werden. 59  1 Kor 9,20; Gal 3,2.5.10; 4,4 f.21; 5,3 f.14; 6,13; Phil 3,5 f.; Röm 2,25–27; 3,27 f.; 5,13.20; 6,14 f.; 8,4.7; 13,8.10. Diesem Verständnis fügt es sich auch, dass unter diesem Begriff auch Zitate außerhalb des Pentateuchs subsumiert werden (1 Kor 14,21; Röm 3,10–18). Dazu gibt es, worauf Jewett, Romans (s. Anm. 5), 264, verweist, in vorrabbinischer Literatur kaum Parallelen. 60   Röm 3,19 f. 61  Gal 3,10; 5,18.23; Röm 2,12–15. 62  Röm 2,17.18.20.23. 63  Auch bei Philo steht der Begriff νόμος u. a. sowohl zur Bezeichnung eines Einzelgesetzes (Decal. 154.162.165.168), als auch als Verweis auf die mosaische Gesetzgebung insgesamt (Spec. 1,129.131.157). 49 50

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Der νόμος soll Sünde nicht provozieren, sondern eindämmen.64 Allerdings wird der Mensch seiner Forderung nicht gerecht,65 weswegen Gott den Zugang zu sich für beide, Juden wie Nichtjuden, neu geregelt hat.66 Auch dies wird, so Paulus, durch den νόμος bezeugt (Röm 3,21.31); auch in seinen haggadischen Partien fungiert er als Grundlage des eigenen, von Paulus neu formulierten und der Gemeinde anempfohlenen Selbstverständnisses (Gal 4,21).67 Das Nebeneinander zwischen νόμος und γραφή erlaubt Rückschlüsse auf die Nuancen beider Begriffe da, wo Paulus zwischen den Begriffen wechselt. Der Begriff γραφή umgreift beides, Gesetz und Verheißung; deshalb wechselt Paulus in Gal 3,21 f. von νόμος zu γραφή.68 Der gleichlaufende Wechsel in Gal 4,21.30 lässt sich ebenfalls begründen: Auf der Basis des νόμος könnte Paulus seine Abgrenzung gegenüber den Fremdmissionaren in Galatien nicht formulieren. Der Begriff ἐντολή steht für Einzelgebote,69 summarisch in 1 Kor 7,19,70 spezifiziert in Röm 7,8–13 (Verbot des Begehrens) und Röm 13,9 (vor allem Dekaloggebote). In 1 Kor 14,37 wird das, was Paulus den Korinthern zu sagen hat, von ihm selbst als κυρίου … ἐντολή gewertet. Sofern κύριος nicht auf Gott71, sondern auf Christus referiert,72 kann die Stelle für das hier verhandelte Problem außer Betracht bleiben. 64 Gal

3,19.24; Röm 5,20. 3,10.21; Röm 4,15; 5,20 (beide Stellen im Römerbrief sind von Röm 7,7–25 her zu interpretieren). 66 In Röm 8,3 f. wird verbunden, was in Gal 3,11 f. noch nebeneinander steht, nämlich die heilsgeschichtliche Neusetzung (so auch Röm 9,31 f.; Phil 3,9, ferner Röm 10,4: nur in heilsgeschichtlichen Sinne ist das τέλος hier = Ende) und die Begründung der faktischen Unwirksamkeit des Gesetzes. Dass Abraham die Verheißung nicht durch »das Gesetz«, sondern durch die Gerechtigkeit des Glaubens erlangt hat (Röm 4,13–16), erschließt sich für Paulus erst aufgrund seiner Schriftinterpretation unter den Voraussetzungen des Christusereignisses. 67  Zur Infragestellung der traditionellen Exegese der Passage, als symbolisiere Hagar das nicht an Jesus glaubende, geknechtete Judentum, Sara hingegen die an Jesus Glaubenden vgl. Michael Bachmann, Die andere Frau. Synchrone und diachrone Beobachtungen in Gal 4,21– 5,1, in idem, Antijudaismus im Galaterbrief? (Freiburg, CH: Universitätsverlag, 1999), 127–158: vor allem 143–145; Guido Baltes, Freiheit vom Gesetz – eine paulinische Formel? in Der jüdische Messias Jesus und sein jüdischer Apostel Paulus, hg. Armin D. Baum u. a. (WUNT II/425; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 265–314, hier 294–299. 68  Betz, Galatians (s. Anm. 44), 175; Dieter Sänger, »Das Gesetz ist unser παιδαγωγός geworden« (Gal 3,24), in idem, Von der Bestimmtheit des Anfangs. Studien zu Jesus, Paulus und zum frühchristlichen Schriftverständnis (Neukirchen-​Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2007), 158–184, hier 181. 69  In der Septuaginta begegnet ἐντολή sehr häufig ebenso pluralisch wie summarisch in der Mahnung, die Gebote einzuhalten (z. B. Dtn 4,2; 8,1; 10,13; 26,18), und wird zumeist mit φυλάσσω verbunden, nur einmal hingegen mit der Wortfamilie τηρέω (τήρησις ἐντολῶν in Sir 35[32],23BS). Vgl. ferner T. Dan. 5,1. Philo verwendet zur Bezeichnung der Einzelgebote u. a. παράγγελμα (Decal. 65.96.106.135) und παραίνεσις (Decal. 82), aber auch διάταγμα (Spec. 1,1) und νόμος (Spec. 1,12). 70  Dieser Sprachgebrauch entspricht dem bei Philo von Alexandria (Spec. 1,300; praem 79.101). 71  Wolff, Der erste Brief des Paulus an die Korinther (s. Anm. 25), 347. 72  Lindemann, 1 Kor (s. Anm. 23), 322; Zeller, 1 Kor (s. Anm. 23), 448. 65 Gal

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3.2. Themen Schriftzitate finden sich nur in den sog. vier paulinischen Hauptbriefen. Zwischen der Korintherkorrespondenz einerseits, dem Galaterbrief und dem Römerbrief andererseits bestehen thematisch deutliche Unterschiede. In der Korintherkorrespondenz sind Schriftzitate fast ausschließlich der Daseins‑ und Handlungsorientierung der Gemeinde gewidmet. Der Daseinsorientierung sind 1 Kor 1,19 sowie die Zitate in 1 Kor 15 gewidmet. Auf dem Feld der Handlungsorientierung formulieren sie generelle Mahnungen und Warnungen für die Gemeinde (1 Kor 1,31; 14,21; 2 Kor 6,2.16–18), des Weiteren Halacha in Einzelfragen, für die Gemeinde (1 Kor 6,16) wie für den Apostel (1 Kor 9,9), aber auch aktuelle Weisungen bzw. fungieren als Illustration dafür (2 Kor 8,15; 9,9). Im weiteren Sinne zur Handlungsorientierung gehören auch die Zitate, mit denen Paulus die eigene Ausführung seiner διακονία gegenüber anderen Zeitgenossen abgrenzt73 und gegenüber den Korinthern in ihrer Vollwertigkeit bekräftigt74 oder, wie in 2 Kor 4,13, ihre Motivation verdeutlicht.75 In Galaterbrief ist dem Thema Handlungsorientierung nur der generell gehaltene Vers Gal 5,14 (Lev 19,18) gewidmet; andere ethische Weisungen werden nicht mit autoritativen Texten Israels begründet. Die anderen Zitate im Galaterbrief betreffen ein in der Korintherkorrespondenz fehlendes Thema, die Rechtfertigung der beschneidungsfreien Integration von Nichtjuden in die Heilsgemeinde. Im Römerbrief wird dieses letztere Thema zu einer umfassenden heilsgeschichtlichen Konstruktion ausgebaut, unter Aufnahme methodischer Ansätze aus Gal 4,21–31, aber unter weitgehender Neubewertung der hier zu bedenkenden Phänomene. Die hier zu nennenden Ausweitungen inkludieren die Begründung der souveränen Entscheidung Gottes (Röm 9,15.17.20) ebenso wie die Amplifizierung »historischer« Beispiele über Abraham hinaus (Röm 9,10–13) 73  Vgl. Harm W. Hollander, Paul’s Use of the Old Testament and His Attack on Apollos’ Adherents in Corinth, in The Scriptures of Israel in Jewish and Christian Tradition: Essays in Honour of Maarten J. J. Menken, hg. Bart J. Koet u. a. (NovTSup 148; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2013), 179–191 (190): Paulus muss sich in 1 Kor 1–4 gegen eine Gruppe von Anhängern des Apollos absetzen, die γνῶσις beansprucht. Paulus verwendet in 1 Kor 1–4 eher den Begriff der σοφία als den der γνῶσις, weil dieser Begriff nirgendwo im AT und in der frühjüdischen Tradition pejorativ verwendet wird. Die Wahl des Begriffes σοφία gibt ihm die Gelegenheit, die einschlägigen AT-​Zitate einzubringen, mit deren Hilfe er sich gegen die Untergrabung seiner Autorität in Korinth zur Wehr setzt. 74  Vgl. Paul B. Duff, Moses in Corinth: The Apologetic Context of 2 Corinthians 3 (NovTSup 159; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2015), 212: In 2 Kor 3,6–18 beansprucht Paulus einerseits Kontinuität zur διακονία des Mose: in beiden διακονίαι wird Gottes Herrlichkeit sichtbar. Andererseits formuliert er einen Kontrast. Die διακονία des Mose war ein Dienst des Todes und der Verurteilung, der vor allem die Nichtjuden betraf; die διακονία des Paulus bringt gerade ihnen den lebendig machenden Geist und die Gerechtigkeit. 75  Der Glaube des Apostels, der ihn zum Verkündigen treibt, wird dem Glauben des Psalmbeters verglichen (Koch, Schrift [s. Anm. 1], 114 f.). Die Abwandlung von Jes 28,16c (οὐ μὴ καταισχυνθῇ) in Röm 9,33; 10,11 (οὐ μὴ καταισχυνθήσεται) hat rein stilistischen Charakter.

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und Verifizierung der Berufungsaussage in den Schriften der hinteren Propheten (Röm 9,25 f.; 10,11.13.19.20) – der Gedanke ist im Galaterbrief nur wenig deutlich in Gal 4,27 präsent.76 Neu mit Schriftzitaten gestützt wird die Sicht auf die nicht an Jesus glaubenden Juden (Röm 10,21), aber auch die Verkündigung des Paulus selbst (Röm 15,21) und anderer Zeugen des Evangeliums (Röm 10,15–18). Neu mit Schriftzitaten ist schließlich auch die Funktion der Judenchristen als Zeugen der Verheißungstreue benannt (Röm 11,2.4). Von Röm 3,8 her liegt der Gedanke nahe, dass erhöhter Rechtfertigungsdruck den Apostel zu dieser Art der Argumentation veranlasst hat.77 Deutlich ist aber auch, dass der paulinische Schriftgebrauch, der nicht selten die Schriftworte völlig von den ursprünglichen Adressaten ablöst,78 denjenigen nicht überzeugen kann, der nicht schon vorher von der Wahrheit des paulinischen Evangeliums durchdrungen ist – akzeptabel ist seine Argumentation allenfalls für christusgläubige Juden,79 nicht aber für Juden, die in Jesus von Nazareth nicht den Messias Israels sehen können. Während Paulus seine heilsgeschichtliche Konstruktion sehr stark auf autoritative Texte Israels basiert, ist dies bei anderen Themen weitaus weniger der Fall, etwa zum Selbstverständnis des Apostels, zur Ethik, und zum Thema »Heiliger Geist.« Um mit dem letzteren zu beginnen: Es ist erstaunlich, dass Paulus Ez 36,26 f. nicht zitiert. Die Vorstellung, durch den Geist sei dem Menschen die stete Orientierung an Gottes willen möglich, was dem Menschen aus eigener Kraft nicht möglich ist,80 hat ihre Parallelen in 1QH XII 29–32, zeigt also, dass auch paulinische Pneumatologie sich im jüdischen Rahmen (re‑)konstruieren lässt. Dass jede Christin, jeder Christ auch im noch unbeschnittenen Zustand den Geist hat, mag dem Apostel Erfahrungstatsache gewesen sein (1 Kor 12,1–3; Gal 3,1–5);81 aber er fasst das nicht explizit als Verwirklichung der Weissagung Joel 3,1–5 auf, obwohl er sie augenscheinlich kennt (Röm 10,13). Vielleicht wäre 76 Zum Vergleich von Röm 9,8 mit Gal 4,21–27 vgl. Zeller, Römer (s. Anm. 5), 177: Während dem Galaterbrief zufolge »die Christgläubigen im Gegensatz zu den Dienern des Sinaibundes Kinder der Verheißung sind, will Paulus hier (scil. in Röm 9,8) die Selektion innerhalb Israels verständlich machen«. 77  Auch 9,6 kann gegen einen Einwand der Gegner formuliert sein, Paulus rechne nicht mehr mit der Gültigkeit des Gotteswortes für Israel (Stuhlmacher, Römer [s. Anm. 33], 133 f.). 78  Das trifft vor allem für Röm 9,25–29 zu. 79 Vgl. aber die in den sog. Pseudo-​Clementinen sichtbare antipaulinische Polemik. 80  Auch zu dem in Röm 7 erörterten Thema findet sich bei Paulus kein Schriftzitat – Dtn 30,11–16; Sir 15,11–20; PsSal 9,4; 4 Esra 7,118–131 stellen klar, dass zu solcher Introspektion in gewissem Sinne kein Anlass besteht, der die Gegebenheit der Gehorsamsforderung gegenüber der Thora zu relativieren vermöchte. 81 Richard N. Longenecker, Prolegomena to Paul’s Use of Scripture in Romans, BBR 7 (1997), 145–168 (164) beobachtet, dass Paulus in Röm 5,1–8,39 generell wenig an Schriftzitaten bietet, weil Erfahrungen wie göttliche Gnade, Herrlichkeit und Liebe nur per analogiam aus der Heiligen Schrift zu bestätigen seien, die Heidenchristen in biblischen Traditionen aber nicht wirklich geschult seien. Allerdings sollte bedacht werden, dass Paulus im Römerbrief seine Theologie auch im Hinblick auf Gegner entwickelt (Röm 3,8).

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der Hinweis auf den faktischen Geistbesitz der durch ihn Missionierten zwecklos gewesen, weil seine Gegner schon aufgrund seines programmatischen Verzichts auf die Beschneidung keinen Anlass gesehen hätten, einen möglichen Geistbesitz als Ausweis ethischer Bewährung überhaupt anzuerkennen – Geistbesitz hat, für sich stehend, im antiken Judentum m.W. nirgends als Kriterium der rechten Erfüllung des Willens Gottes gegolten. Für das Selbstverständnis des Paulus als Apostel ist mindestens ebenso wichtig, was man als apostolische Kreuzeskonformität bezeichnen kann, die willentliche Bereitschaft, das Geschick der im Kreuz inkludierten Niedrigkeit Christi zu teilen82 – was nicht ausschließt, dass der Apostel gegenüber den von ihn gegründeten Gemeinden Autorität einfordern, manche Passagen zum Gottesknecht aus Deuterojesaja als Vorankündigungen seines eigenen Wirkens verstehen83 und seine Unersetzbarkeit in der Vermittlung des Heilsprozesses betonen kann.84 Die Frage nach der Thora in der Ethik des Paulus muss die geringe Anzahl von Zitaten, vor allem die unverständliche Gegenüberstellung 1 Kor 7,19 einerseits,85 die faktische weitgehende materialethische Analogie paulinischer zu frühjüdischer Ethik andererseits86 im Blick behalten, ferner den Umstand, dass auch frühjüdische Autoren, in einen durch die Thora gegebenen umfassenden Rahmen eingebettet, keineswegs überall mit der Thora argumentieren, wo dies möglich wäre. Paulus zieht jedenfalls aus den in Röm 3,8 sichtbar werdenden Auseinandersetzungen trotz Röm 8,3 f. keineswegs die Konsequenz, innerhalb von Röm 12,1–15,13 in ethischen Fragen stärker auf die Thora zu rekurrieren. U.a. Christuspartizipation und Christuskonformität, aber auch die Orientierung am Heiligen Geist haben mindestens gleichrangige basale Begründungsfunktion. Gleichwohl beansprucht er, seine jüdische Existenz als Hinweis auf die Treue des Verheißungswortes Gottes hinzustellen (Röm 11,1f).87 Lösen lässt sich diese Spannung durch den Gedanken, dass Paulus in dem Vater Jesu Christi niemand 82  Diese Kreuzeskonformität wird bei dem Apostel als Verzicht auf glänzende Rhetorik ebenso sichtbar (1 Kor 2,1–5) wie als Bereitschaft, Bedrängnisse bis zur Todesgefahr auf sich zu nehmen (2 Kor 4,7–15). 83  Wilk, Bedeutung (s. Anm. 1), 406. 84  Jens Schröter, Der versöhnte Versöhner. Paulus als unentbehrlicher Mittler im Heilsvorgang zwischen Gott und Gemeinde nach 2 Kor 2,14–7,4 (TANZ 10; Tübingen/Basel: Francke, 1993). 85  Andreas Lindemann, Die biblischen Toragebote und die paulinische Ethik, in Studien zum Text und zur Ethik des Neuen Testaments (FS H. Greeven), hg. Wolfgang Schrage (BZNW 47; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1986), 242–265; Udo Schnelle, Die Begründung und die Gestaltung der Ethik bei Paulus, in Die bleibende Gegenwart des Evangeliums. FS O. Merk, hg. Roland Gebauer und Martin Meiser (MThSt 76; Marburg: Elwert, 2003), 109–131. 86 Karin Finsterbusch, Die Thora als Lebensweisung für Heidenchristen. Studien zur Bedeutung der Thora für die paulinische Ethik (StUNT 20; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996). 87   Karl-​Wilhelm Niebuhr, Heidenapostel aus Israel. Die jüdische Identität des Paulus nach ihrer Darstellung in seinen Briefen (WUNT 65; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), 179.

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anders als den Gott Israels gesehen hat88 und ihm das Neue in Christus, dessen er durch seine Berufung unmittelbar gewiss geworden war, der Notwendigkeit der Begründung enthoben hat.

4.  Der Sprachmodus der Schriftzitate und ihre argumentative Funktion Für die genaue Beschreibung der Wirkweise der Schriftzitate, des Mechanismus des Schriftarguments, empfiehlt sich die Frage, in welchem Verhältnis der Sprachmodus des Schriftzitates, genauer Modus und Tempus des verwendeten Verbs, zu dem Sprachmodus des zu beweisenden oder verstärkenden Gedanken steht. Änderungen des Tempus und Modus sind nur im Fall der Exodusparaphrase 2 Kor 3,16 wirklich von Bedeutung.89 Sofern man in Röm 11,2 mit einer unmarkierten Einspielung von Ps 93[94],14 rechnet, wäre das Futur der Zusage in einen konstatierenden Aorist verwandelt, der Gottes Treue zu Israel auch für die Gegenwart festhält. Zunächst seien die Nebenmodi angesprochen. 4.1. Nebenmodi Relativ einfach ist der Fall bei einem Imperativ wie 1 Kor 1,31 – er hat unmittelbare Gültigkeit für die Adressaten, wie schon das einleitende ἵνα καθὼς γέγραπται anzeigt. Dasselbe gilt für die Imperative Gal 4,27.30;90 2 Kor 6,17abα;91 Röm 12,20; 15,10 f. sowie in der unmarkierten Einspielung 1 Kor 5,13b, für die imperativischen Futurformen Gal 5,14; Röm 13,9; 15,21 und für die futurischen Vetitive 1 Kor 9,9; Röm 9,20; 13,8. Für den Imperativ Futur in Röm 11,9 gilt das nicht92 – über die 88 Vgl. Martin Meiser, The Torah in the Ethics of Paul, in Torah in the Ethics of Paul, hg. idem (LNTS 473; London: Continuum, 2012), 120–141, hier 140 f. 89 Koch, Schrift (s. Anm. 1), 114 f. Die Änderung innerhalb von 1 Kor 14,21 ist exegetisch motivierte Angleichung der Tempora (vgl. Koch, Schrift [s. Anm. 1], 65). Die Abwandlung von Jes 28,16c (οὐ μὴ καταισχυνθῇ) in Röm 9,33; 10,11 (οὐ μὴ καταισχυνθήσεται) hat rein stilistischen Charakter. 90  Der unmittelbaren Applizierbarkeit von Gen 21,10 dient auch, dass Paulus ταύτης auslässt: nicht Hagar als geschichtliche Person, sondern Hagar als παιδίσκη steht im Vordergrund der Aufmerksamkeit (Koch, Schrift [s. Anm. 1], 121). 91  Die Zugehörigkeit von 2 Kor 6,14–7,1 zum Zweiten Korintherbrief wird hier vorausgesetzt. Zur Problematik vgl. u. a. Andreas Lindemann, »… an die Kirche in Korinth samt allen Heiligen in ganz Achaja«. Zu Entstehung und Redaktion des »2. Korintherbriefs«, in Der zweite Korintherbrief. Literarische Gestalt – historische Situation – theologische Argumentation. FS D.A. Koch, hg. Dieter Sänger (FRLANT 250; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 131–159 (143), der in diesem Text einen antipaulinischen Einschub vermutet, Thomas Schmeller, Der zweite Brief an die Korinther. Teilband 1: 2 Kor 1,1–7,4 (EKK 8/1; Neukirchen/Ostfildern: Neukirchener/Patmos, 2010), 378, der damit rechnet, dass der paulinische Text nachträglich an die falsche Stelle im Gesamtbrief eingeordnet wurde. 92  Bereits antike Ausleger haben die Psalmstelle (Ps 68,23LXX) als anstößig empfunden,

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Verwirklichung des hier Gesagten haben die Adressaten nicht zu befinden.93 Dass Imperative in Fragen der Ethik begegnen, überrascht nicht, ebenso wenig, dass sie zum Thema Heilsgeschichte ausschließlich in Passagen begegnen, die an Heidenchristen gerichtet sind (Röm 15,10 f.) – nur auf diese Gruppe hat Paulus Einfluss –, oder die das Handeln des Apostels normieren (Röm 15,21). Ein Konjunktiv im Schriftzitat thematisiert in Röm 3,4 die vom Beter bejahte Schlussfolgerung aus der Betrachtung menschlicher Sündhaftigkeit und beschreibt in Röm 9,17 die intendierte Wirkung des Handelns Gottes. Der Konjunktiv in Röm 10,6 fungiert als Vetitiv.94 Der Konjunktiv in der unmarkierten Einspielung95 1 Kor 15,25 nimmt den zweiten ὅταν-​Satz in 1 Kor 15,24 wieder auf und hat futurische Implikation; er markiert den zeitlichen Endpunkt der Herrschaft Christi: Christus muss herrschen, bis Gott96 ihm alles unter seine (i. e. Christi)97 Füße gelegt hat. Dabei ist weniger der Gedanke der zeitlichen Befristung als vielmehr der der Gewissheit der Christusherrschaft von Belang. Der Modus der Frage im Schriftzitat betrifft wesentlich rhetorische Fragen (Röm 10,6 f.; 11,34 f. sowie die unmarkierte Einspielung 1 Kor 2,16a)  – die erwartete Antwort ist in all diesen Fällen: »niemand kann es«. Ebenfalls eine rhetorische Frage ist in 1 Kor 15,55 formuliert, wo die Antwort wiederum, wie in den anderen rhetorischen Fragen, die Überlegenheit Gottes in Worte fasst. In 1 Kor 15,55; Röm 11,34 f. ist diese Überlegenheit Gottes als heilvoll gedacht.98 verstärkt bei einer christologischen Lektüre: Wie sollte Christus angesichts des Gebotes der Feindesliebe Mt 5,44 einen solchen Fluch ausgesprochen haben? Vgl. Eusebius von ­C aesarea, Ps., PG 23, 749 D – 752 A. 93  Das gilt unabhängig von der Frage, ob man die τράπεζα auf die Erwähnung des auf den zur Zeit des Paulus noch bestehenden Jerusalemer Opferkultes beziehen soll (so etwa Koch, Schrift [s. Anm. 1], 138; Stuhlmacher, Römer [s. Anm. 33], 149) oder nicht (Zeller, Römer [s. Anm. 5], 192; Lohse, Römer [s. Anm. 5], 308). Letzteres ist m. E. zu bevorzugen. 94 Der Konjunktiv in der nicht markierten Einspielung 1 Kor 15,32 ist ein Kohortativ, den Paulus natürlich nicht teilt. – Aber auch Indikative in einem Schriftzitat können thematisch durch eine finale Satzfügung aufgenommen sein, vgl. 2 Kor 6,1 f. 95 Koch, Schrift (s. Anm. 1), 19 f., hat den Zitatcharakter verneint. Dagegen verweist Lindemann, 1 Kor (s. Anm. 23), 347 auf das δεῖ, das auf Gott verweist, in dessen Auftrag Christus herrscht. 96  Für Gott als Subjekt von θῇ plädieren Uta Heil, Theo-​logische Interpretation von 1 Kor 15,23–28, ZNW 84 (1993), 27–36, hier 30 f.; Lindemann, 1 Kor (s. Anm. 23), 347: Gerade wenn Ps 109 [110] im Urchristentum bekannt war, legte sich nahe, dass im Psalmzitat dasselbe Subjekt anzunehmen ist wie in der Psalmstelle selbst. Anders Jan Lambrecht, Paul’s Christological Use of Scripture in 1 Cor. 15,20–28, NTS 28 (1982), 502–527, hier 509–511, Wolff, Der erste Brief des Paulus an die Korinther (s. Anm. 25), 387 (mit Verweis auf fehlende Markierungen des Subjektwechsels in V. 24); Wolfgang Schrage, Der erste Brief an die Korinther, 4. Teilband 1 Kor 15,1–16,24 (EKK VII/4; Düsseldorf/Neukirchen: Patmos/Neukirchener, 2001), 177, ­Z eller, 1 Kor (s. Anm. 23), 491. 97  Für diese Referenz des αὐτοῦ vgl. wiederum Lindemann, 1 Kor (s. Anm. 23), 347, aber auch Schrage, 1 Kor(s. Anm. 96), 178. 98  Bei Röm 10,6 f. ist die Frage nach der Wertung aufgrund des einleitenden Vetitivs gegenstandslos.

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Bei der Verwendung von Schriftzitaten mit einem Indikativ ist ja nach Tempus zu unterscheiden. Ich beginne mit dem Praesens. 4.2.  Zitate im Indikativ Praesens Ein Praesens kann sich sowohl auf eine gegenwärtige Setzung Gottes99 als auch auf die Legitimation gegenwärtiger Christusverkündigung100 und die gegenwärtige Erfahrung der an Christus Glaubenden (Ps 43,23LXX/Röm 8,36) oder gegenwärtig supponierte Zustände beziehen.101 Letzteres setzt die Vorstellung einer analogen Situation voraus, ersteres die Vorstellung eines analogen Handelns Gottes in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Überzeitlich geltende Statuszuweisungen sind in Dtn 27,26/Gal 3,10 und Dtn 21,23/Gal 3,13102 formuliert, ebenfalls in Ps 31,1 f./Röm 4,6–8.103 Im Präsens sind auch die Beschreibungen des Handelns Gottes in 1 Kor 3,19.20 gehalten, die unmittelbar Relevanz haben für die Gegenwart der Adressaten  – dem Praesens im Schriftzitat entspricht das Praesens im Themensatz, ebenso wie aus dem Präsens in Ps 23[24],1104 eine gegenwärtig gültige Halacha entwickelt wird (1 Kor 10,26).105

 99  Jes 28,16/Röm 9,33. Das Verbum τίθημι mag Paulus angesichts des Referenzpunktes Christus adäquater erschienen sein als ἐμβάλλω/ἐμβαλῶ. Zur Verbreitung der präsentischen Lesart ἐμβάλλω in der Handschriftentradition zu Jes 28,16 vgl. die Angaben bei Joseph Ziegler (ed.), Isaias (Septuaginta. Vetus Testamentum Graecum Auctoritate Academiae Scientiarum Gottingensis editum XIV; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ³1983), 218. 100  Jes 52,7LXX/Röm 10,15. Ist die Auslassung von ἐπὶ τῶν ὀρέων in Röm 10,15 dem Anliegen geschuldet, dass Paulus jede Assoziation, Jerusalem betreffend, vermeiden will (Koch, Schrift [s. Anm. 1], 122)? Der unmittelbaren Applizierbarkeit von Gen 21,10 dient jedenfalls, dass Paulus ταύτης auslässt: nicht Hagar als geschichtliche Person, sondern Hagar als παιδίσκη steht im Vordergrund der Aufmerksamkeit (Koch, Schrift [s. Anm. 1], 121). Die Abänderung des Singulars εὐαγγελιζομένου in den Plural εὐαγγελιζομένων hat wohl den Zweck, das Zitat auf die Tätigkeit der Verkündiger in der Gegenwart anzupassen. 101  Jes 32,5/Röm 2,24; ebenso die Praesensformen in der Zitatenkatene Röm 3,10–18. 102 Hat Paulus die Wendung ὑπὸ θεοῦ aus Dtn 21,23 ausgelassen, weil der Fluch über C ­ hristus nicht von Gott ausgehen sollte, sondern vom Gesetz, dem Paulus im Galaterbrief einen minderen Rang zuweisen will (Koch, Schrift [s. Anm. 1], 124 f., mit Verweis auf Gal 3,19 f.)? 103  David wird eigens genannt, vielleicht, weil er allgemein als Verfasser von Psalmen gilt, vielleicht, weil er in der Überschrift des zitierten Psalms erwähnt ist (beides erwägt Wolter, Römer [s. Anm. 5], 286; auf beides verweist Jewett, Romans [s. Anm. 5], 315; ersteres erwägen auch Stuhlmacher, Römer [s. Anm. 33], 68; Dunn, Romans [s. Anm. 5], 205). Eine Bezugnahme auf 2 Sam 11 muss nicht gegeben sein (so aber Haacker, Römer [s. Anm. 5], 103; Zeller, Römer [s. Anm. 5], 100; Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans [BECNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998], 219). 104 Das gilt, ob man in dem κύριος in 1 Kor 10,26 Gott (Lindemann, 1 Kor [s. Anm. 23], 231) oder Christus angesprochen sieht (Böhm, Rezeption [s. Anm. 2], 148). Ersteres ist zu bevorzugen: In 1 Kor 10,21 f. ist der Kontext das Herrenmahl, in 1 Kor 10,26 sind es die Schöpfungsgaben (Zeller, 1 Kor [s. Anm. 23], 345). 105  Auch in der Formulierung der abgelehnten Lebenshaltung 1 Kor 15,32 entspricht das Praesens in der Einspielung dem Praesens in der supponierten Gegenwart.

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4.3.  Zitate im Futur Ein Futur als Ersatz für einen Imperativ begegnet in der unmarkierten Einspielung 2 Kor 13,1 sowie in den markierten Zitaten aus Lev 19,18 in Gal 5,14; Röm 13,9 sowie Jes 52,15 in Röm 15,21,106 die auf unhinterfragte Verwirklichung drängen. In 1 Kor 6,16 begründet das Futur einen Vetitiv im Praesens: Das Futur benennt einen vom Standpunkt des Sprechers Adam aus zukünftigen Sachverhalt, der als conditio humana in der Gegenwart der Korinther Fehlverhalten ausschließen sollte. Ähnlich begründet in 1 Kor 9,9 ein im Futur formulierter Vetitiv eine gegenwärtig geltende Halacha. In 1 Kor 14,21 begründet das Futur das gegenwärtig vorgestellte Gerichtshandeln Gottes, das m.W. nicht lediglich die Unwirksamkeit der Glossolalie beweisen soll. Warum Paulus zu diesem Gerichtswort greift107, wird aus dem Kontext 1 Kor 14,20–25 deutlich, in dem Paulus den Vorrang der prophetischen Rede vor der Glossolalie begründet. Die Korinther sollen, so der Apostel, zusehen, dass es nicht zu dem durch die Praxis der Glossolalie leicht zu begründendem Urteil μαίνεσθε kommt (V. 23),108 die Nichtglaubenden also ohne Not von dem ihnen möglichen Heil ausgeschlossen werden. Durch das Zitat wird den Korinthern der letzte Ernst dessen verdeutlicht, worum es in den Urteilen V. 23 einerseits, V. 25 andererseits geht. V. 21 verstärkt den Gedanken: Ihr macht euch schuldig, wenn ihr es dazu kommen lasst, dass der Ungläubige nicht mehr als das Urteil »ihr seid von Sinnen« herausbringt. In 2 Kor 6,16–18 markieren die Futurformen die Bedingtheit der Verheißungen, die die Adressaten zur Verwirklichung der in 2 Kor 6,17abc genannten Imperative in der Gegenwart motivieren soll. Andere Futurformen sind als eschatologische Futura gemeint. Hierzu gehören die Aussagen über die endzeitliche Errettung Israels in Röm 11,26 f., aber auch die Verweise auf Gottes richtendes Handeln in Röm 2,6; 14,11, die selbstredend bereits in der Gegenwart ein entsprechendes Selbstverständnis und Verhalten seitens der Gemeinde evozieren wollen. Wieder andere Futura sind vom Standpunkt des zitierten Schriftwortes aus Futura, vom Standpunkt des Paulus aus hingegen Praesens oder Vergangenheit.109  Der imperativische Sinn ergibt sich aus dem ἵνα μή in Röm 15,20.  Auf die Schwierigkeit des angemessenen Verstehens dieser Stelle macht schon Jo­han­nes Chrysostomus, hom. in 1 Cor 36,1, PG 61, 307 aufmerksam. 108  Dass σημεῖα mehrdeutig sind, je nachdem, ob sie von Ungläubigen oder von Gläubigen interpretiert werden, zeigt Karl Olav Sandnes an Ex 7,11, an dem Zeichen, das der Pharao erhält und das ihn doch verstockt, sowie an Josephus, Bell. 6,285; 295–296, von den Vorzeichen vor der Tempelzerstörung, die die einen im Sinne einer Heilsweissagung, die anderen als Gerichtsprophetie interpretierten. Vgl. Karl Olav Sandnes, Prophecy – a Sign for Believers (l Cor 14,20–25), Bib 77 (1996), 1–15. 109 Nur deshalb ist es möglich, dass einem im Futur formulierten Schriftwort in Röm 9,27 f. ein im Aorist formuliertes Schriftwort in Röm 9,29 folgt. – In Röm 10,11.13 sind innergeschichtlicher und eschatologischer Aspekt verbunden: Wer jetzt an Christus glaubt, kann im Eschaton auf Rettung hoffen. Paulus fügt in das Jesaja-​Zitat in Röm 10,11 das aus Joel 3,5 stammende Wort πᾶς ein, um damit die Gültigkeit des Heilsangebotes für Juden und Nichtjuden (Röm 10,12; vgl. schon Röm 3,29) zu unterstreichen. 106 107

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Dahin gehören Schriftworte, die Gottes Selbstunterscheidung von menschlicher Weisheit thematisieren110, aber auch Schriftworte, die die Selektion111 innerhalb des vergangenen wie des gegenwärtigen Israel112 und die Existenz von Christusgläubigen113 als in den autoritativen Texten Israels angekündigt bezeichnen. Die Autorität der Schrift fungiert als Legitimation der Sonderexistenz der Christusgläubigen, die in einem erwählenden Handeln Gottes begründet wird, und entzieht aus der Sicht des Paulus den nicht an Jesus Glaubenden, die in der Existenz der Christusgläubigen kein Handeln Gottes zu erkennen vermögen, die Basis kritischer Rückfragen. Klar ist, dass diese Argumentation nur denjenigen überzeugt, der schon vorher von der Wahrheit der auf Jesus von Nazareth bezogenen Verkündigung überzeugt ist.114 Man wird zu Röm 10,5–8 nicht leugnen können, dass die Eliminierung aller Thorabezüge allererst den Gegensatz zwischen Lev 18,5 und Dtn 30,12–14 einträgt, der in den biblischen Prätexten natürlich nicht gegeben ist, und diese Exegese des Paulus als »höchst gewaltsam«115 beurteilen müssen. Man sollte aber sehen, dass man dem Problem der impliziten Selbstautorisierung bei Verwendung autoritativer Texte grundsätzlich nicht entkommt. Wieder andere Futura haben sowohl einen Gegenwartsbezug als auch einen eschatologischen Bezug, etwa die Maximen Lev 18,5 und Hab 2,4. Rein innergeschichtlich ist das Futur in Röm 4,18 gedacht, das den Bezugspunkt des dort ausgesprochenen Vertrauens Abrahams benennt – es hat aber nicht unmittelbar, sondern nur mittelbar Gegenwartsbezug. Aus dem gnomischen Futur Röm 9,15 folgt konsequent ein Lehrsatz über Gottes Souveränität in Röm 9,16. In Röm 9,20 entspricht das gnomische Futur dem Futur des Diatribenstils Röm 9,19. 110  1 Kor 1,19. Die Gottesrede soll ein entsprechendes Selbstverständnis der Korinther evozieren, sich nämlich an göttlicher, nicht an menschlicher Weisheit zu orientieren. 111  3 Reg 19,18 in Röm 11,4. Diskutiert wird, ob es in Röm 9,6 f. um eine Selektion innerhalb Israels oder um Neudefinition dessen geht, was Israel heißen kann. Für letzteres votieren Wolfgang Reinbold, Zur Bedeutung des Begriffes »Israel« in Römer 9–11, in Between Gospel and Election: Explorations in the Interpretation of Romans 9–11, hg. Florian Wilk und J. Ross Wagner (WUNT 257; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2010), 401–416, hier 412 f.; Michael Wolter, »It is Not as Though the Word of God Has Failed«: God’s Faithfulness and God’s Free Sovereignty in Romans 9:6–29, in God and Israel: Providence and Purpose in Romans 9–11, hg. Todd D. Still (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2017), 27–47 (37). Argumente für die erstgenannte Position sind der Restgedanke in Röm 9,27 sowie der Begriff ἐκλογή, der Röm 11,7 und Röm 9,11 verbindet. 112  Röm 9,7.9.12. In Röm 9,12 muss Futur stehen, damit (ἵνα, V. 11b) das in der Gegenwart geltende Prinzip V. 11b.12a als im Voraus festgelegt erscheint. 113 Gen 12,3 in Gal 3,8; Gen 13,15 in Gal 3,16; Hos 2,1.25 in Röm 9,25 f.; Jes 10,22 f. in Röm 9,27 f.; Dtn 32,21 in Röm 10,19; Ps 17,50 in Röm 15,9; Jes 11,10 in Röm 15,12. 114 Augenfällig ist das bei Gal 3,16; Röm 9,33; 10,6–8. In Röm 10,6–8 verkürzt Paulus das Zitat aus Dtn 30 grundsätzlich um die Bestandteile, die einen Bezug zum Gesetz enthalten (für Einzelheiten vgl. Koch, Schrift [s. Anm. 1], 129–131). 115  Ernst Käsemann, An die Römer (HNT 8a; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 41980), 275; Ulrich Wilckens, Der Brief an die Römer. 2. Teilband: Römer 6–11 (EKK VI/2; Zürich/Neukirchen: Benziger/Neukirchener, 1980), 225.

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4.4.  Zitate im Indikativ Aorist Aoristen mit Vergangenheitsaspekt116 betreffen einerseits die conditio humana117 und haben von daher Gegenwartsbedeutung, sind andererseits auf vergangene wie gegenwärtige Geschichte bezogen. Vergangenheitsbezug haben 2 Kor 8,15; Röm 9,13118 und Röm 9,17.119 Ein Gegenwartsbezug liegt da vor, wo Schriftzitate den Rückblick auf Heilssetzungen Gottes120, aber auch auf die Aktivitäten der Verkündiger incl. des Paulus selbst beschreiben121, die tatsächlich Bekehrungen zur Folge haben122, aber oft auch vergebens geblieben sind.123 Die Analogie des Tempus im Schriftzitat oder in der Einspielung wie in dem dadurch bewiesenen gegenwartsbezogenen Themensatz bringt die Analogie des Handelns Gottes in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart philologisch sinnenfällig zum Ausdruck. Das gilt etwa für 2 Kor 4,6, gleichgültig, ob man im Vorderteil des Verses eine Anspielung auf Gen 1,3124, Jes 9,1 oder Jes 49,6125 vermutet, ebenso unabhängig von der Frage, ob man in dem ἡμῶν von 2 Kor 4,6 eine Anspielung auf die Berufung des Paulus 116 Anders liegt der Fall bei gnomischen Aoristen (z. B. 2 Kor 4,13; 9,9) – dort legt sich der Gegenwartsbezug von selbst nahe. 117 Das betrifft einerseits Gen 2,7 in 1 Kor 15,45, anderseits die Genesisparaphrase in Röm 5,12–21, vor allem Röm 5,12 selbst. 118 Der Aorist in Mal 1,2 f./Röm 9,13 erklärt sich zwanglos aus dem damaligen Stand der »biblischen Einleitungswissenschaft«: Maleachi schrieb nach Mose und den in Gen 25 geschilderten Ereignissen. Paulus konnte den Aorist aber auch als gegenüber dem Leben Esaus vorzeitig verstehen. Zur Verwerfung Esaus völlig anders Philo, Leg. III 88; LAB 32,5: sie erfolgt dort wegen der fehlenden Tugend bzw. »wegen seiner Werke« (darauf verweist Zeller, Römer [s. Anm. 5], 177). 119  Dass der Pharao in Röm 9,17 auf die gegenwärtig nicht an Jesus glaubenden Juden verweisen soll (so Schreiner, Romans [s. Anm. 103], 511, mit dem Argument, im AT gehe es ja überhaupt nicht um sein individuelles Heil; Jewett, Romans [s. Anm. 5], 586), halte ich nicht für zwingend. Es geht in Röm 9,17 lediglich um die Souveränität Gottes. 120 Jes 1,9/Röm 9,29. Hierher gehört auch die im Perfekt formulierte Setzung Gottes Gen 17,5, die für die Gegenwart die Abrahamskindschaft auch von Nichtjuden umschreibt (Röm 4,17). 121  Jes 49,8 in 2 Kor 6,2; Ps 18,5 in Röm 10,18. Das σοι in Jes 49,8 ist wohl auf die Korinther zu beziehen, nicht auf den Apostel; trotzdem ist die Einordnung des Zitates an dieser Stelle aufgrund des Kontextes 2 Kor 6,3 gerechtfertigt. 122  Jes 65,1 in Röm 10,20. 123 Jes 53,1 in Röm 10,16; Jes 65,2 in Röm 10,21; 3 Reg 19,10.14 in Röm 11,3; Dtn 29,3 in Röm 11,8. 124  Christian Wolff, Der zweite Brief des Paulus an die Korinther (ThHK VIII; Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1989=, 87; Paul Barnett, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT; Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1997), 225, der aber auch möglichen Einfluss von Jes 9,1; 49,6 zugesteht (s. Anm. 77); Margaret E. Thrall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, in two Volumes. Volume 1: Commentary on II Corinthians I–VII (ICC; London/New York: T&T Clark, [1994] 2004), 315. Aus antiker christlicher Exegese verweisen auf Gen 1,3 bereits Johannes Chrysostomus, hom. in 2 Cor 8,3, PG 61, 457; Theodoret von Kyros, in 2Cor, PG 82, 401 B; Johannes von Damaskus, in 2Cor, PG 95, 725 B. 125  Ralph P. Martin, 2 Corinthians (WBC 40; Waco: Word, 1986), 80.

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oder allgemein auf christliche Bekehrung sieht. Die Vergangenheitstempora in 1 Kor 10,1–5 sind zwar tatsächlich auf Vergangenheit bezogen, aber durch den Gedanken des τυπικῶς (1 Kor 10,11; vgl. 1 Kor 10,6) auch mit Gegenwartsbezug versehen126, die Vergangenheitstempora in Gal 4,21–31 durch die Allegorese und durch das νῦν in Gal 4,25. Bei 2 Kor 9,9 hängt die Entscheidung der diesbezüglichen Einordnung davon ab, wen man als grammatisches Subjekt zu den Aoristen ἐσκόρπισεν und ἔδωκεν gelten lässt, den Frommen127 oder Gott selbst.128 Der Aorist in Gen 15,6/Gal 3,6/Röm 4,3 hat seinen Gegenwartsbezug in der Vorbildfunktion und Urbildfunktion Abrahams. Dass Aspekte der Vergangenheit (Israels) für den Blick auf die Gegenwart verwendbar sind, der einen Rückblick auf die eigene Vergangenheit impliziert, hängt an der vorausgesetzten historischen Situationsanalogie. Dass der Aorist in 2 Kor 8,15 Gegenwartsbezug hat und das Prinzip der ἰσότης illustrieren kann129, hängt nicht an der historischen, sondern an der theologischen Situationsanalogie: Die Glaubenden der Gegenwart an verschiedenen Orten sind Gottesvolk wie Israel. Ebenso historisch wie theologisch ist die Situationsanalogie in Ps 68,10/Röm 15,3.

5.  Gottesrede und Rede der Schrift In einem Beitrag zur (Selbst‑)Autorisierung der Schrift muss auch gefragt werden, ob sich für das Verhältnis zwischen der Autorität Gottes und der Autorität der Schrift Aussagen treffen lassen, die über den Allgemeinplatz hinausgehen, dass Paulus die autoritativen Texte Israels als Kundgebung des Wollens und Handelns Gottes auffasst, ob etwa den direkten Gottesreden in 1. Ps. Sg. ein höheres Gewicht für die Argumentation zukommt oder nicht.130 Zur Vorsicht rät der Textbefund: Nicht jede Gottesrede, die eine Aussage in 3. Ps. formuliert, wird bei Paulus explizit als Gottesrede markiert131; manche Gottesreden werden mit (καθὼς) γέγραπται oder λέγει γὰρ ἡ γραφή eingeleitet. Ferner kann 126  Das gilt auch für die Adam-​Christus-​Typologie in Röm 5,12–21. Der Begriff τύπος begegnet für ein Negativexempel auch in 4 Makk 6,19 127  Wolff, Der zweite Brief des Paulus an die Korinther (s. Anm. 124), 186; Thrall, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (s. Anm. 124), II 581. 128  Böhm, Rezeption (s. Anm. 2), 158. 129 Das Zitat hat tatsächlich rein illustrativen Charakter (Koch, Schrift [s. Anm. 1], 258–260; Thrall, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians [s. Anm. 124], II 543). Eine messianische Qualifizierung der Gegenwart wird wenigstens nicht explizit sichtbar (so aber Hans-​Josef Klauck, 2. Korintherbrief [NEB 8; Würzburg: Echter Verlag 1986], 69 f.; Wolff, Der zweite Brief des Paulus an die Korinther [s. Anm. 124], 174). 130  Für ersteres vgl. Otto Michel, Der Brief an die Römer (KEK 4; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 51978), 335; Hübner, Ich (s. Anm. 1), 24; für letzteres Koch, Schrift (s. Anm. 1), 32. 131  Vgl. z. B. Gen 13,15/Gal 3,16; Gen 17,5/Röm 4,17; Lev 18,15/Gal 3,12; Lev 19,18/Gal 5,14; Hos 13,14/1 Kor 15,55; Hab 2,4/Gal 3,11; Jes 28,11 f./1 Kor 14,21.

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Paulus Gottesreden für argumentative Zwecke auch in Aussagen der 3. Sg. umwandeln.132 Bei der angeschnittenen Frage kann es nur um einen graduellen Unterschied gehen, zumal nicht bei jedem Thema durchgängig die Verwendung der 1. Sg. erfolgt. 5.1.  Gottesreden in 1. Ps. Sg. In Fragen des Gemeindelebens bringt zitierte Gottesrede die Weltunterschiedenheit und ‑überlegenheit Gottes zur Sprache – dem sollen die Korinther als die »berufenen Heiligen« (1 Kor 1,2) entsprechen. 1 Kor 1,19 als das erste Schriftzitat im Ersten Korintherbrief, in 1. Ps. Sg. gehalten, benennt klar diese Differenz, der dann auch in einem erneuten Zitat, als Rede des Propheten aufgenommen, ein Imperativ abgeleitet wird, an die Adresse der Gemeinde gerichtet (1 Kor 1,31).133 Zu ähnlichen Themen wird auch der Ernst des Gerichtshandelns Gottes in zwei Zitaten in 1. Sg. benannt (Röm 14,11; 1 Kor 14,21; dazu s. o.). In 2 Kor 6,2 ist es erst Paulus, der aus der Heilsbeschreibung durch den Gedanken des νῦν, dessen Zeit auch wieder einmal vorbei sein kann, eine verkappte Gerichtsankündigung macht. Die direkten Gottesreden in 2 Kor 6,16–18 verknüpfen notwendige Weltdistanz der Gemeinde mit der Verheißung der Einwohnung Gottes und der Annahme zur Kindschaft. Da wo Paulus seine Sicht der Heilsgeschichte entfaltet, markieren direkte futurische Gottesreden in 1. Ps. Sg. die in Gottes souveräner Entscheidung begründete (Röm 9,15) zukünftige Integration von Nichtjuden in die Heilsgemeinde (Gal 3,8.16; Röm 9,7.9.25 f.; 10,19). 5.2.  Gottesrede als Rede der Schrift Mehrmals wird als Rede der Schrift eingeführt, was innerhalb des Zitates als Gottesrede aufgefasst werden muss. Zumeist134 dürfte Paulus das Verfahren zu dem Zweck gewählt haben, die Bedeutung der zitierten Prätexte nicht auf die Vergangenheit einzuengen, sondern gegenwärtige Applikation zu ermöglichen. Dasselbe könnte für 2 Kor 6,2 gelten, sofern dort zu λέγει tatsächlich Gott als Subjekt zu ergänzen ist (s. o.). Anderenfalls führt λέγει darauf, dass die Schrift »in ihrer wesenhaften Einheit Kundgebung göttlichen Willens«135 ist. Röm 9,17 hat zu einiger Diskussion Anlass gegeben. Otto Michels These, Paulus habe den Eindruck vermeiden wollen, Gott hätte direkt zu dem heidnischen  Ps 109[110],1/1 Kor 15,25; Jes 52,5/Röm 2,24.  Aber auch die Beschreibungen des Handelns Gottes in 1 Kor 3,19 f., in 3. Ps. gehalten, zielen auf Gottes Weltüberlegenheit. Das Thema ist also nicht notwendig an die Sprachform der 1. Sg. geknüpft. 134  Gal 3,8; Röm 1,17; 9,33; 10,13; 14,11. 135  Gottlob Schrenk, Art. γράφω κτλ., ThWNT I (1933), 742–773, hier 754. Die genannte Personifizierung hat ihre Parallele bei Philo, Decal. 8: Die Heilige Schrift vergleicht die Götzendiener passenderweise mit Unzuchtssündern. 132 133

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Pharao gesprochen,136 hat Kritik erfahren.137 Wenn man sich nicht mit dem Verweis darauf begnügen will, dass die Formulierungen »die Schrift sagt« und »Gott sagt« in gleicher Häufigkeit verwendet werden,138 oder die Schrift als »die personifizierte Gottesstimme«139 auffasst, bleibt noch die Erwägung,140 dass Paulus vermeiden will, eine negative Aussage dieser Art Gott selbst in den Mund zu legen.141 Das hat Analogien im antiken Judentum und bei frühen christlichen Autoren bzw. Gruppen.142 5.3.  Mose als Autorität In Gal 3,20 ist mit dem »Mittler« nach einhelligem Konsens neuerer Forschung Mose gemeint. Dass dem νόμος eine zeitlich befristete wie sachlich eingeschränkte Rolle zukommt, ist im Galaterbrief deutlich, sollte aber angesichts von Gal 3,21a in seiner Reichweite nicht übertrieben werden.143 In Röm 10,5 soll durch die Einführungsformel »Moses schreibt« wohl keine Abwertung gemeint sein.144 In Röm 10,19 wird aus dem Lied des Mose Dtn 32 zitiert. Paulus zitiert den Text als Wort des Mose, der hier als erster Belastungszeuge gegen die nicht an Jesus glaubenden Juden aufgeboten wird; innerhalb des Moseliedes ist Dtn 32,21 durch die Redeeinleitung (καὶ εἶπεν [ὁ κύριος]) in Dtn 32,20 jedoch als Aussage Gottes gekennzeichnet. Dass Paulus das übersehen haben sollte, ist kaum glaubhaft, ebensowenig, dass er in Röm 10,20 f. den Charakter von Jes 65,1 f. als Gottesrede verkannt haben sollte. Reicht hier die Erklärung aus, Gott spreche durch Mose?145 Geht auch hier die paulinische Zuweisung von Dtn 32,21 an Mose auf den Gedanken zurück, dass er negative  Michel, Römer (s. Anm. 130), 308 f.; ähnlich Fitzmyer, Romans (s. Anm. 18), 567   Charles E. B.  Cranfield, Romans 9–16 (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1979), 485; Jewett, Romans (s. Anm. 5), 583. 138  Wilckens, Römer (s. Anm. 115), 200. Vor einem vorschnellen Rückschluss von dieser rabbinischen Tradition auf Paulus warnt Hübner, Ich (s. Anm. 1), 44, der dann zu einer anderen Erklärung kommt: Paulus hält dem Pharao, der für die nicht an Jesus glaubenden Juden der Gegenwart steht, eben die Schrift vor, auf die sie sich berufen (S. 45). 139  Käsemann, An die Römer (s. Anm. 115), 258. 140  Eher unwahrscheinlich ist eine andere, theoretische Erwägung: Sofern der Ausweis als Schriftrede dem Gedanken der Applikation dienen soll, würde das gegenwärtige nicht an Jesus glaubende Israel implizit dem Pharao gleichgestellt (ohne diese theoretische Begründung Cranfield, Romans 9–16 [s. Anm. 137], 485; Schreiner, Romans [s. Anm. 103], 511); allerdings stellt sich dann die Frage nach dem Ausgleich zu Röm 11,26 f. 141  Röm 11,8 ist nur bedingt ein Gegenargument – der Text ist konstatierende Rede eines Propheten. 142  Man denke an das Phänomen der negativen Erfüllungszitate im Matthäusevangelium, in denen die übliche Formel (τοῦτο ἐγένετο) ἵνα/ὅπως πληρωθῇ abgewandelt ist zu ἐπληρώθη, um Gott nicht als Urheber eines negativen Geschehens gelten zu lassen. 143  In Gal 3,21 benennt das verneinte δυνάμενος den tatsächlich fehlenden Effekt, aber nicht die Intention. 144  Jewett, Romans (s. Anm. 5), 634, gegen Hays, Echoes (s. Anm. 1), 76. 145  Fitzmyer, Romans (s. Anm. 18), 599; Jewett, Romans (s. Anm. 5), 645. 136

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Aussagen solcher Art Gott nicht direkt in den Mund legen will? Jesaja wäre in Röm 10,20 f., obwohl es sich bei Röm 10,20 um eine positive Aussage handelt, dann zu dem Zweck genannt, um den Anschein zu vermeiden, als sollte die Aussage in Röm 10,19 eingeschränkt oder korrigiert werden. Denkbar ist aber auch, dass Paulus um des in Röm 11,2a genannten Grundsatzes willen jeden Selbstwiderspruch direkter Gottesreden vermeiden will.

6. Ertrag Die Terminologie der Schriftrezeption entspricht weithin den Gepflogenheiten im antiken Judentum. Thematische Schwerpunkte der Schriftrezeption sind manche Fragen des Gemeindelebens, seltener die Individualethik, vor allem aber die paulinische Konstruktion der Heilsgeschichte, die im Römerbrief auch die Verweigerung der nicht an Jesus glaubenden Israeliten in das Wort der Schrift gefasst sieht. Diesen thematischen Schwerpunkten lassen sich auch die verwendeten Modi und Tempora der Schrift zuordnen. Gottesreden in der 1. Ps. Sg. haben zumeist Gottes Weltüberlegenheit und sein Gerichtshandeln, vor allem aber seine Souveränität in der Gestaltung der Geschichte mit seinem Volk Israel und mit der Menschheit insgesamt zum Inhalt. Ein theologischer Vorrang im Vergleich zu übrigen Schriftzitaten kommt ihnen allerdings nicht zu.

»He Still Speaks!« The Authority of Scripture in Hebrews Benjamin J. Ribbens / ​Michael H. Kibbe 1. Introduction The essence of Hebrews’ perspective on the authority of Scripture is this: God speaks. God does not remain silent; rather, he speaks to his people. Divine speech never happens in a vacuum. If God has spoken, he has spoken to someone, and that someone is required to respond. He may have spoken in a variety of ways, at a variety of times, and to a variety of audiences, but the variety on the surface does not change the fact that the only proper response to divine speech is obedience. The formula itself  – God’s speech has authority over your life  – is largely presupposed in Hebrews. No listener is anticipated who questions the assumption that divine speech is historically, theologically, and ethically authoritative. Hebrews’ extensive citation, allusion, and reference to Scripture evidences this axiomatic truth.1 Further, no one queries »how do you know God spoke those words, or that he actually said those words?« It is in the received text – end of discussion. If God speaks, those to whom he speaks had better listen up. Far more complicated, though, is the claim that words that have faded from audibility and subsequently been committed to paper by those long dead could be spoken anew by God to the present audience. Still, Hebrews affirms just this. God spoke that word to you! Yet, the speaking of God’s past words in his audience’s present is just the beginning, for the opening lines of Hebrews seem to suggest that a new authoritative word has now been spoken. And yet, strikingly, every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (whether Father, Son, or Spirit) in Hebrews is

1 Susan Docherty, The Use of the Old Testament in Hebrews: A Case Study in Early Jewish Bible Interpretation (WUNT II/260; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 180. Alexander Samely, when discussing the rabbis’ use of Scripture, contends that the application of Scripture to a topic reveals »the assumption that Scripture is being true and relevant on some topic is axiomatic« (Rabbinic Interpretation of Scripture in the Mishnah [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002], 87; cf. 110).

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quite explicitly taken from the old. When the Father speaks, he speaks the words of the »Old Testament.«2 Likewise the Spirit, likewise the Son. This is the conundrum of Hebrews with respect to the authority of Scripture. On the one hand, a new and different word has come that fundamentally alters the role of the authoritative Scriptures in the lives of the audience. On the other hand, the new word keeps sounding suspiciously like the old – not to mention that the legitimacy of the new is dependent on the logic of the old. An in nuce form of the paradox is contained in the introductory lines of the homily: manifold means vs. once and for all,3 fathers vs. us, prophets vs. Son; but for all those contrasts, it is still one and the same God who spoke.4 And it is because he has now done so »in these last days« (1:2) – with all the eschatological freight that such a phrase is meant to bear – that the authority of old word and new coalesce to demand the attention of all who hear them spoken.

2.  Hebrews and Scripture: Hebrews 1:1–2 The first part of this essay is structured around Hebrews 1:1–2: »After speaking in the past to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, in these last days God spoke to us by a Son.« The introductory claim offers the unquestioned presupposition (God spoke then and God has spoken now) and hints at both continuity and discontinuity between the two divine speech acts, and the rest of Hebrews either explains in further detail or illustrates by use of specific Old Testament texts the basic points made here. We do not suggest that these few words from Hebrews support all of our conclusions in and of themselves; rather, they introduce the issues whose full explanation requires examination of the whole of Hebrews, and it is on the basis of that broader reading that we offer the following elucidation of the authority of Scripture in Hebrews.

2  Despite the legitimate concerns with using this term to describe Israel’s Scriptures, it remains appropriate for Hebrews given its own juxtaposition of »old« and »new« (8:8, 13). 3  The »once and for all« element is implied; see, e. g., Craig R. Koester, Hebrews: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 36; New York: Doubleday, 2001), 175; Amy L. B.  Peeler, You Are My Son: The Family of God in the Epistle to the Hebrews (LNTS 486; London: T&T Clark, 2014), 11; Gene R. Smillie, »Contrast or Continuity in Hebrews 1.1–2,« NTS 51 (2005): 543; Nicholas J. Moore, Repetition in Hebrews: Plurality and Singularity in the Epistle to the Hebrews, Its Ancient Context, and the Early Church (WUNT II/388; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 95; David Wider, Theozentrik und Bekenntnis: Untersuchungen zur Theologie des Redens Gottes im Hebräerbrief (BZNW 87; Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1997), 14. 4  Erich Grässer, An die Hebräer, 3 vols. (EKKNT 17; Zurich Benziger, 1990), 1.51; Tomasz Lewicki, »Weist nicht ab den Sprechenden!« Wort Gottes und Paraklese im Hebräerbrief (PTS 41; Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2004), 16–17, 20–21, 90–91, 141–143; Wider, Theozentrik und Bekenntnis (n. 3), 12–13.

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2.1.  God Has Spoken We begin our investigation by highlighting Hebrews’ declaration that God spoke in the Old Testament Scriptures. While God also spoke to the fathers and to the prophets in visions and other manifestations, »the locus of God’s spoken word for [Hebrews] was the Scriptures.«5 Interestingly, the author of Hebrews does not talk about Scripture (γραφή) or introduce quotations with γέγραπται, as Paul and other New Testament authors do; instead, Hebrews refers to Scripture as the »word of God [ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ]« (4:12),6 has God speak the words of Scripture, and often introduces Old Testament quotations with the verb λέγω.7 This is the central affirmation of Hebrews concerning the authority of Scripture: it is authoritative because it is divine speech.8 5 William L. Lane, Hebrews 1–8 (WBC 47A; Dallas: Word, 1991), 11. See similarly Lewicki, Wort Gottes und Paraklese (n. 4), 23, 141; Graham Hughes, Hebrews and Hermeneutics: The Epistle to the Hebrews as a New Testament Example of Biblical Interpretation (SNTSMS 36; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 6. 6  Jonathan I. Griffiths points out that Hebrews uses λόγος and λόγιον to refer to God’s speech to people (2:2; 4:2, 12; 5:13; 6:1; 7:28; 13:7) and to human speech to God or to others in the community (4:13; 5:11, 13:17, 22) (Hebrews and Divine Speech [LNTS 507; London: T&T Clark, 2014], 4–5, 162–164). Hebrews does not adopt a Philonic logos doctrine. For a discussion of the possibility, see Hughes, Hebrews and Hermeneutics (n. 5), 5; Ronald Williamson, »The Incarnation of the Logos in Hebrews,« ExpT 95 (1983): 4–8; Marie E. Isaacs, Sacred Space: An Approach to the Theology of the Epistle to the Hebrews (JSNTSup 73; Sheffield: JSOT, 1992), 197–201; Griffiths, Divine Speech, 162; Kenneth L. Schenck, »God Has Spoken: Hebrews’ Theology of the Scriptures,« in The Epistle to the Hebrews and Christian Theology, ed. Richard Bauckham et alii (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 323. 7  For similar lists of observations, see Peeler, You Are My Son (n. 3), 32; George H. Guthrie, »Hebrews’ Use of the Old Testament: Recent Trends in Research,« CBR 1 (2003), 274–275; Richard N. Longenecker, Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period (2nd edition; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 149–150; Isaacs, Sacred Space (n. 6), 68; Lewicki, Wort Gottes und Paraklese (n. 4), 23; Angela Rascher, Schriftauslegung und Christologie im Hebräerbrief (BZNW 153; Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 13, 31–35. The author introduces quotations with λέγω and God as the subject in 1:5, 6, 7, 13; 4:3, 7; 5:5, 6; 6:14; 7:21; 8:8–12; 10:30; 12:5–6 (διαλέγομαι), 26; 13:5; cf. 3:15; 4:4. Similarly, Christ speaks (λέγω) Scripture in 2:12 and 10:5–7, and the Holy Spirit in 3:7–11 and 10:16. Quotations are also introduced with other verbs for speech such as μαρτυρέω (7:17), φημί (8:5), and λαλέω (11:18). 8 Marie Isaacs contends that »its inspiration is accepted as axiomatic« (Sacred Space [n. 6], 68). William Lane argues that »[t]he writer’s perspective is distinctly theocentric; he confronts his readers immediately with the God who intervened in human history with his sovereign word addressed to humankind« (Hebrews 1–8 [n. 5], 9). See similarly Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, tr. Chrysostom Baer (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2006), 14; John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews, tr. John Owen (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), 31–32; George B. Caird, »Exegetical Method of the Epistle to the Hebrews,« CJT 5 (1959), 46; Markus Barth, »Old Testament in Hebrews: An Essay in Biblical Hermeneutics,« in Current Issues in New Testament Interpretation, ed. William Klassen and Graydon F. Snyder (New York: Harper, 1962), 75; Hughes, Hebrews and Hermeneutics (n. 5), 36; Harold W. Attridge, »The Psalms in Hebrews,« in The Psalms in the New Testament, ed. Steve Moyise and Maarten J. J. Menken (NTSI; London: T&T Clark, 2004), 197; Grässer, An die Hebräer (n. 4), 1:50–51; Koester, Hebrews (n. 3), 183; Smillie, »Hebrews

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God spoke the words of Scripture, and the author emphasizes the divine as the primary speaker of Scripture by seldom acknowledging the human voice.9 When introducing scriptural quotations, Hebrews ascribes the speech to God twenty-​three times, to Christ four times, and to the Holy Spirit two or three times, whereas the human author is rarely mentioned.10 In fact, at least once when the words being cited are precisely human words addressed to God (Heb 2:6–8 // Ps 8:4–6), the author deliberately avoids identifying that human speaker in order to maintain across the homily the emphasis on Scripture as divine speech. 2.2.  Long Ago to the Fathers The descriptors πάλαι and τοῖς πατράσιν highlight a few aspects of Scripture’s historical authority. First, the historicity of Old Testament narratives, particularly but not exclusively Pentateuchal narratives,11 is taken at face value. Hebrews records quotations of God making promises to Abraham (Gen 22:17 // Heb 6:14; 1.1–2« (n. 3), 544, 547; Docherty, OT in Hebrews (n. 1), 196–197; Gareth L. Cockerill, The Epistle to the Hebrews (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 43–44.  9  Lane, Hebrews 1–8 (n. 5), cvii; Guthrie, »Recent Trends,« (n. 7), 275; Longenecker, Biblical Exegesis (n. 7), 150; Peeler, You Are My Son (n. 3), 33; Docherty, OT in Hebrews (n. 1), 197. 10  For God, see 1:5a, 5b, 6, 7, 8–9, 10–12, 13; 4:3, 5, 7; 5:5, 6; 6:14; 7:17, 21; 8:5, 8–12; 10:30, 37–38; 11:18; 12:5–6, 26; 13:5. For Christ, see 2:12, 13a, 13b; 10:5–7. For the Holy Spirit, see 3:7–11; 10:16, 17. The texts spoken by the Holy Spirit (Ps 95:7–11 in Heb 3:7–11 and Jer 31:33, 34 in Heb 10:16, 17) are also spoken by God elsewhere in Hebrews (Ps 95:11 in Heb 4:3, 5; Ps 95:7–8 in Heb 4:7; and Jer 31:31–34 in Heb 8:8–12). For similar lists and summaries, see Guthrie, »Recent Trends,« (n. 7), 274; Longenecker, Biblical Exegesis (n. 7), 147–150; Peeler, You Are My Son (n. 3), 2; Koester, Hebrews (n. 3), 116. Guthrie concludes that of the 35 quotations in Hebrews God speaks 23, Christ four, and the Holy Spirit four (»Recent Trends« [n. 7], 274), which means that Father, Son, or Holy Spirit speaks 31 of 35 quotations. Only once is a human author mentioned (David in Heb 4:7), and even then it is the Spirit speaking through David. On two occasions the words of Moses are cited (9:20; 12:21), but on both occasions it is his speech within a narrative context – Scripture records that he spoke those words, but this is not the same as his having spoken Scripture. Hebrews 7:14, when talking about the laws governing the priests, affirms that Moses spoke (Μωϋσῆς ἐλάλησεν) the law (though the angels were also active in the speaking of the law [ὁ δι’ ἀγγέλων λαληθεὶς λόγος; 2:2; cf. Acts 7:38; Gal 3:19]), but Hebrews does not then include a quotation, so no speech is recorded. Hebrews 10:28 identifies the law as the »law of Moses,« but it does not identify Moses as the speaker of that law. 11  Hebrews makes only limited reference to Old Testament narrative outside the Pentateuch. The most likely reason for this is that the author has located his audience in the deuteronomic moment: still outside the promised land, but finally on the verge of entering and in need of encouragement and warning prior to doing so. Thus, most prominently, Hebrews refers to the wilderness tabernacle rather than the Jerusalem temple; God’s permanent dwelling place is in the heavenly realm rather than the land of Canaan. The vaguest of allusions to Israel’s post-​conquest life appears in Heb 11:32–38 – enough to establish continuity between the Pentateuchal past (Heb 11:2–29) and the present day, but no more than that. Such absence does not necessarily imply less authority, but simply that they are less useful for this particular rhetorical situation on account of their historical location. Matthew Thiessen helpfully locates the audience of Hebrews precisely in the deuteronomic situation – outside the land, continuing in wilderness wandering up until the present (Matthew Thiessen, »Hebrews and the End of the Exodus,«

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Gen 21:12 // Heb 11:18) and giving instructions to Moses (Exod 25:40 // Heb 8:5), as well as quotations of Moses speaking (Exod 24:8 // Heb 9:20; Deut 9:19 // Heb 12:21).12 Hebrews presumes, in these moments, that God and Moses did in fact speak these words. Similarly, the author retells the stories of Abraham meeting Melchizedek (Gen 14:17–20 // Heb 7:1–4) and of Moses establishing the covenant (Exod 24:1–8 // Heb 9:19–21), alludes briefly to narratives significant to the wilderness generation (Num 14:1–34 // Heb 3:16–19), and summarizes the lives of the saints (11:1–38). Again, in all of these allusions and summaries, the author presumes that his scriptural source has provided trustworthy information. Thus, Scripture is authoritative as a window into the past.13 The primary purpose of these stories that Hebrews presumes are historically accurate is not historiographic but covenantal, affirming the character of God and establishing guidelines for covenant relationship. Not only does Scripture tell stories about the fathers and therefore have historical authority, but Scripture was also theologically and ethically authoritative for the fathers. Hebrews 2:2 proclaims that the λόγος spoken by the angels was valid and binding (βέβαιος). Their λόγος outlined God’s covenant relationship with and covenant regulations for the fathers. The immediate implication of the authoritative (βέβαιος) character of the covenant in Heb 2:2 is that »every transgression or disobedience received a just penalty« (cf. 10:28). As a result, the author of Hebrews can appeal to Old Testament narratives and draw ethical conclusions (e. g., 3:7–4:13; 11:1–40; 12:16–17, 20). Elsewhere, the author can depend on this ethical/covenantal authority when appealing to legislative material that outlined guidelines for life and practice, including appointing priests (7:11–16, 20) and offering sacrifices (8:1–10:18; esp. 10:8). Not only does the covenantal nature of the Scriptures establish ethical authority, but it also speaks with theological authority. For instance, Heb 2:6–8 describes the nature of humanity, recounting Ps 8:4–6 in order to affirm God’s placement of humanity just below the angels in the created order, and then Hebrews wrestles with why the psalm does not accurately describe the current state of things in the world.14 Elsewhere, the author describes God’s character by articulating how NovT 49 [2007], 353–369). As a result, Israel’s history post-​Deuteronomy (i. e., conquest, monarchy, and exile) is largely off the table. 12 Similarly, Gen 2:2 // Heb 3:5; Gen 5:24 // Heb 11:5. See Schenck, »God Has Spoken,« (n. 6), 324–329; Moore, Repetition in Hebrews (n. 3), 103. 13  Schenck, building on the work of Hans Frei, identifies these uses of Scripture as »window readings« and affirms the author’s presupposition that the descriptions of history are literal and historical (»God Has Spoken« [n. 6], 323–324). 14 The function of this text is complicated insofar as it is not immediately clear whether the human person(s) spoken of in the psalm are assumed by the author of Hebrews to be humanity in general (thus a simple referent to the original created order ala Genesis 1–2) or Jesus in particular, in which case something else entirely is going on. For recent discussion see, e. g., Peeler, You Are My Son (n. 3), 66–76; David M. Moffitt, Atonement and the Logic of the Resurrection in the Epistle to the Hebrews (NovTSup 141; Leiden: Brill, 2011), 120–129; Craig

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»surely« (εἰ μήν) God will keep his promise to Abraham in Gen 22:17 (6:13–18). Similarly, Hebrews 7:21 affirms God’s faithfulness by quoting Psalm 110:4, »The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind.« God’s unchangeable nature is why the author may be drawn to the unrealized promises that he finds in Scripture – e. g., a rest that remains (4:9), an eternal priest (7:15–25), and a new covenant (8:8–12; 10:16–17).15 Thus, Scripture is historically (descriptively), ethically, and theologically authoritative in the past to the fathers. 2.3.  In These Last Days to Us In contrast to »long ago« and »to the fathers« (1:1), God spoke »in these last days« (ἐπ’ ἐσχάτου τῶν ἡμερῶν) »to us« (ἡμῖν) (1:2). Here we need to pause and note that the contrast is precisely not a matter of the content of God’s speech – that which God has now spoken is identical to that which he had already spoken. The difference is in the timing and the audience, not the words themselves. Not only was Scripture authoritative long ago for the fathers, but it also has authority ἡμῖν. Consider, for example, the citation and discussion of Ps 95:7–11 in Heb 3:7– 4:13. Psalm 95, written (the author of Hebrews claims) by David, is both an historical record of divine speech to the wilderness generation that rebelled at Meribah and Massah (Exod 17:1–7;16 Heb 3:16–19) and an actual divine speech made in David’s own day.17 But it is also a divine word in the present to the audience of Hebrews – the »today« of Israel’s decision has been pronounced anew for the same reason that it had to be spoken anew in David’s time.18 Hebrews’ logic goes L. Blomberg, »›But We See Jesus‹: The Relationship Between the Son of Man in Hebrews 2.6 and 2.9 and the Implications for English Translations,« in A Cloud of Witnesses: The Theology of Hebrews in Its Ancient Contexts, ed. Richard Bauckham et alii (LNTS 387; London: T&T Clark, 2008), 88–99; Brian C. Small, The Characterization of Jesus in the Book of Hebrews (BIS 128; Leiden: Brill, 2014), 270–273. 15 Docherty, OT in Hebrews (n. 1), 196. 16  For discussion of precisely which Pentateuchal texts are alluded to in Psalm 95, see David M. Allen, »More Than Just Numbers: Deuteronomic Influence in Hebrews 3:7–4:11,« TynBul 58 (2007), 129–149; Peter Enns, »Creation and Re-​Creation: Psalm 95 and Its Interpretation in Hebrews 3:1–4:13,« WTJ 55 (1993), 264–266; Michael H. Kibbe, Godly Fear or Ungodly Failure? Hebrews 12 and the Sinai Theophanies (BZNW 216; Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2016), 115–116. 17  Daniel Treier points to this text as an affirmation that »the text’s human properties were important to the author in certain ways« (»Speech Acts, Hearing Hearts, and Other Senses: The Doctrine of Scripture Practiced in Hebrews,« in The Epistle to the Hebrews and Christian Theology, ed. Richard Bauckham et alii [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009], 338–344). 18 Griffiths, Divine Speech (n. 6), 69; Koester, Hebrews (n. 3), 118; Lewicki, Wort Gottes und Paraklese (n. 4), 84. See Treier for a clear exposition of the historical levels of the text but also for a keen description of how the shifts in history also lead to shifts in the illocutionary acts (»Doctrine of Scripture in Hebrews« [n. 17], 339–342, 349–350). Richard T. France describes this phenomenon as a contemporization of the Pentateuchal narratives based on universal principles found between the wilderness generation and Hebrews’ audience (»The Writer of Hebrews as a Biblical Expositor,« TynBul 47 [1996], 270–272). Other scholars define

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something like this: God says there is rest available for his people (4:3). God cannot lie (6:18). His people have not yet entered into that rest (4:8). Therefore, a promised rest remains for the people of God (4:9).19 The author’s homily on Psalm 95 concludes with the famous line, »the word of God [ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ] is living and active« (4:12). Hebrews is comfortable applying the word spoken to the wilderness generation to a new audience because the word is not static or dead but living and active. The word of God invited the wilderness generation into rest and judged their hearts, and that same word continues to invite God’s people into rest and to judge their hearts.20 Two axioms lay at the heart of Hebrews’ recontextualization of God’s word to his present. First, the contemporary authority of Scripture is founded on the immutability or consistent character of God. God’s promises and warnings do not change.21 Second, the contemporary authority of Scripture depends on the continuity of God’s people. »Life as God’s covenant people connects us across history.«22 Thus, stories of how God dealt with his covenant people in the past (e. g., the wilderness generation) also prescribe how he continues to do so in the present.23 The many stories of Hebrews 11, for instance, describe God’s response to human faith, assuming that the audience can expect a similar response in their own day.24 »These last days« (ἐπ’ ἐσχάτου τῶν ἡμερῶν τούτων) is not merely a fancy way of saying »now« or »at the present time.« God’s speaking »to us« is not a simple the phenomenon differently, describing Scripture as polyvalent (Docherty, OT in Hebrews [n. 1], 113, 197) or identifying Hebrews’ genre as homiletical midrash (Lane, Hebrews 1–8 [n. 5], cxxiv). 19  For further discussion of the logic, see, e. g., Jared Calaway, The Sabbath and the Sanctuary: Access to God in the Letter to the Hebrews and Its Priestly Context (WUNT II/349; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 71–74; Jon C. Laansma, »I Will Give You Rest«: The »Rest« Motif in the New Testament with Special Reference to Mt 11 and Heb 3–4 (WUNT II/98; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 291–295. 20 For the judicial function of Scripture in Hebrews, see Griffiths, Divine Speech (n. 7), 79–82; Wider, Theozentrik und Bekenntnis (n. 3), 73–78; Lewicki, Wort Gottes und Paraklese (n. 4), 94–99. 21 Hughes, Hebrews and Hermeneutics (n. 5), 41, 47, 53. See, similarly, Docherty, OT in Hebrews (n. 1), 197; Wider, Theozentrik und Bekenntnis (n. 3), 18–19; Lewicki, Wort Gottes und Paraklese (n. 4), 20–21, 90–91. 22  Treier, »Doctrine of Scripture in Hebrews,« (n. 17), 343. Similarly Wider, Theozentrik und Bekenntnis (n. 3), 19–20; Lewicki, Wort Gottes und Paraklese (n. 4), 20–21. 23  Lane notes that Hebrews 3–4 »shows less interest in the positive exemplary function of his models of faithfulness than in the fact that their actions, responses, and death are informative of the content of Christian faith« (Hebrews 1–8 [n. 5], cxxiii). 24 Not only is God’s speech and action to the fathers also »to us« (ἡμῖν), but Hebrews also includes one instance where the speech of the fathers to God is »for us« – meaning, for us to speak to God. In response to God’s promise that »I will never leave you or forsake you« (Heb 13:5), the author asserts that his audience can speak the words of Psalm 118:6 in response, »The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?« As a record of covenantal relationship, Scripture not only conveys how God will act toward his people but also how his people should respond to him (Attridge, »Psalms in Hebrews« [n. 8], 211–212). One might argue that of all the uses of the Psalms in Hebrews, this one is most true to its original intent.

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recontextualization from τοῖς πατράσιν to ἡμῖν; rather, there has been a change of ages.25 In the Greek Scriptures, the phrase ἐπ’ ἐσχάτου τῶν ἡμερῶν refers to the dawn of the Day of the Lord and the coming of the messianic kingdom (e. g., Hos 3:5; Mic 4:1; Jer 25:19 [LXX]); here, then, Hebrews has suggested that the present time is the eschatological moment of fulfillment of God’s promises.26 Hebrews’ audience lives in »these last days,« and they have already experienced many of the eschatological expectations – the establishment of a new covenant (Heb 8:8–12),27 the gift of the Spirit (2:4), and the coming of the Davidic Messiah (1:5). As a result, the rest (3:7–4:6) and the inheritance promised to the fathers (11:4–39) are now available to the community living in these last days (4:8–11; 11:40). These promises are authoritative not simply because they are spoken by God, but because he speaks them directly to Hebrews’ own audience, and they are being fulfilled in Hebrews’ own day because God’s speaking them has taken place ἐπ’ ἐσχάτου τῶν ἡμερῶν τούτων. While many of the eschatological expectations have come to pass in the new covenant community, some eschatological events remain in the future and have hortatory implications for the audience. The coming of the judge (a conflation of Isa 26:20 and Hab 2:3–4 in Heb 10:37–38) inspires the call to faith in Hebrews 11,28 and the final divine speech act that will one day shake both heaven and earth An die Hebräer (n. 4), 1.55.  Scott D. Mackie, Eschatology and Exhortation in the Epistle to the Hebrews (WUNT II/223; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007); Schenck, »God Has Spoken,« (n. 6), 328; Hughes, Hebrews and Hermeneutics (n. 5), 53; Cockerill, Hebrews (n. 5), 90; Griffiths, Divine Speech (n. 6), 40; Lewicki, Wort Gottes und Paraklese (n. 4), 21; Paul Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 93; Lane, Hebrews 1–8 (n. 5), 10; Koester, Hebrews (n. 3), 177; Grässer, An die Hebräer (n. 4), 1:55. 27  Scholars often draw a parallel between Hebrews’ appropriation of Scripture within a new covenant perspective and the Qumran community’s similar appropriation (Timothy H. Lim, Holy Scripture in the Qumran Commentaries and Pauline Letters [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], 72–74; Radu Gheorghita, The Role of the Septuagint in Hebrews: An Investigation of Its Influence with Special Consideration to the Use of Hab 2:3–4 in Heb 10:37–38 [WUNT II/160; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003], 128; Koester, Hebrews (n. 3), 63, 118; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, »The Use of Explicit Old Testament Quotations in Qumran Literature and in the New Testament,« NTS 7 [1961], 331–333; David M. Moffitt, »The Interpretation of Scripture in the Epistle to the Hebrews,« in Reading the Epistle to the Hebrews: A Resource for Students [Atlanta: SBL, 2011], 82–85). While there are significant similarities, especially in seeing the fulfilment of scriptural promises in their community and the unveiling of mysteries, there are not only theological differences (e. g., Christological assumptions), but Hebrews’ exegetical practices also differ from the Qumran community. In particular, The Qumran pesharim, when applying the text to their own community, often ignored the historical context of the words, whereas Hebrews acknowledges the significance of »the historical sequence and events of scripture« while also seeing in them »contemporary relevance« (Docherty, OT in Hebrews [n. 1], 196; see similarly Barth, »Old Testament in Hebrews« [n. 9], 64; Fitzmyer, »Explicit OT Quotations« [n. 27], 331–344). 28  On this text, which in general has elicited far less discussion than the other OT citations in Hebrews, see Gheorghita, Septuagint in Hebrews (n. 27), 147–224. 25 Grässer, 26

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(Hag 2:6 in Heb 12:26) demands a listening ear and grateful worship for the guaranteed gift of an unshakeable kingdom. 2.4.  By the Prophets The description of God’s speech as being »through the prophets« (1:1) raises questions about what texts, exactly, merit the label »authoritative divine speech.« First, to put it in our terms, what books were included in the author’s canon? The designation »prophets« in 1:1 is not a genre-​marker to distinguish prophetic texts from poetic, narrative, and the rest. Rather, its alliterative sound and divine-​ mouthpiece connotation make προφήταις a fitting label for all those through whom God spoke prior to the coming of the Son. The Old Testament frequently enough describes a variety of figures as »prophets,«29 and Hebrews makes no distinction between the prophets and others through whom God spoke in the past,30 by quoting, summarizing, and alluding to portions of the Pentateuch, Prophets, and Writings.31 With the necessary caveats that (1) we have no reason to think that Hebrews cites every single text that its author deemed to be of divine origin, (2) Hebrews does assume some noncanonical texts to be historically accurate,32 and (3) it is impossible on historical grounds to prove the boundaries of the Jewish canon, it is generally agreed that Hebrews agrees with »what a wide range of first-​century Jews would consider authoritative and what would later become canon.«33 29  The term prophet was often applied to the patriarchs (Gen 20:7), Moses (Num 12:6–8 [cf. Heb 3:2, 5]; Deut 34:10), Aaron (Exod 7:1), Joshua (Sir 46:1), and David (2 Sam 23:2; cf. Acts 2:30). See the discussions of this point in Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1989), 39; Koester, Hebrews (n. 3), 177. 30  Hebrews connects God’s speaking to many Old Testament authors and figures, not just the prophets. For instance, Hebrews 4:7 introduces a quotation of Psalm 95:7–8 by identifying it as God speaking through David (λέγων ἐν Δαυίδ); likewise, Heb 1:5 contends that God spoke (εἶπεν), and then it quotes the words of the prophet Nathan recorded in 2 Sam 7:14. Hebrews similarly introduces quotations from Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, and Proverbs as God’s speech, and the summaries and allusions to other portions of Scripture carry the same authority, thereby implying that God spoke through (ἐν) all of these human agents. 31  On Hebrews vis-​à-​vis the authority of the Pentateuch, Prophets, and Writings, see Koester, Hebrews (n. 3), 116; Barth, »Old Testament in Hebrews,« (n. 8), 54–55; Schenck, »God Has Spoken,« (n. 6), 335; Cockerill, Hebrews (n. 8), 45–50; Guthrie, »Recent Trends,« (n. 7), 274; cf. Lewicki, Wort Gottes und Paraklese (n. 4), 25. For lists of quotations, summaries and allusions for each category, see Longenecker, Biblical Exegesis (n. 7), 140–165; George H. Guthrie, »Hebrews,« in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, ed. Gregory K. Beale and Donald A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 921; Cockerill, Hebrews (n. 8), 45–51; Rascher, Schriftauslegung und Christologie (n. 7), 22–23. 32 E. g., the allusions to the Maccabean literature and possibly the Ascension of Isaiah in Heb 11:35–37. For discussion, see, e. g., Barth, »Old Testament in Hebrews,« (n. 8), 54–55; Longenecker, Biblical Exegesis (n. 7), 148–149; Koester, Hebrews (n. 3), 116; Ellingworth, Hebrews (n. 26), 37–39. 33  Peeler, You Are My Son (n. 3), 35 n. 73.

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Second, and inevitably even more complex, what precise text tradition does Hebrews assume to be authoritative? Since the author frequently quotes passages where the Greek form of the OT differs from the Masoretic Text (e. g., Psalm 8:5 // Heb 2:7; Psalm 40:7 // Heb 10:5; Gen 47:31 // Heb 11:21), there is a consensus that Hebrews uses a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures.34 After that, though, scholars agree that the textual situation was sufficiently complex that simply comparing Hebrews’ citations to particular Greek codices (e. g., Vaticanus and Alexandrinus), as was once done,35 is unlikely to offer any firm results.36 Most scholars today suggest that the author of Hebrews was reticent to introduce intentional changes into his received text,37 which, if true, might suggest that the author took great care not to alter the revered authoritative text.38 Yet, conclusions in this area must remain tenuous given our inability to know with certainty whether a difference between the text form cited in Hebrews and that of our available Greek mss is due to an intentional change or the presence of a text tradition now lost to us. 2.5.  By a Son In contrast to the divine speech through the prophets, God speaks in the eschatological days of Hebrews’ contemporary audience through the Son (ἐν υἱῷ). Since the author contrasts God’s speech in the past through the prophets to his speech in the present through his Son, one would expect to find the Son speaking Guthrie, »Recent Trends,« (n. 7), 275–277; Lane, Hebrews 1–8 (n. 5), cxvii; Koester, Hebrews (n. 3), 116; Barth, »Old Testament in Hebrews,« (n. 8), 55; Gheorghita, Septuagint in Hebrews (n. 27), 2, 7, 225; Docherty, OT in Hebrews (n. 1), 124–127; Georg A. Walser, Old Testament Quotations in Hebrews: Studies in Their Textual and Contextual Background (WUNT II/356; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 3; J. Cecil McCullough, »The Old Testament Quotations in Hebrews,« NTS 26 (1980): 363–79; Rascher, Schriftauslegung und Christologie (n. 7), 14–22. 35  For a summary of such approaches, see Guthrie, »Recent Trends,« (n. 7), 275–277. 36  Lane, Hebrews 1–8 (n. 5), cxviii; Koester, Hebrews (n. 3), 116; Barth, »Old Testament in Hebrews,« (n. 8) 55; Longenecker (n. 7), Biblical Exegesis, 151; Gheorghita, Septuagint in Hebrews (n. 27), 24–25, 28–29; Walser, OT Quotations in Hebrews (n. 35), 3–5, 9–13; McCullough, »OT Quotations in Hebrews,« (n. 34), 363. 37  Docherty, OT in Hebrews (n. 1), 140–142; Walser, OT Quotations in Hebrews (n. 35), 139, 187–188; Gheorghita, Septuagint in Hebrews (n. 27), 7. While McCullough argues that »unless there is strong evidence to the contrary we assume that the author simply took these readings from his Vorlage« (»OT Quotations in Hebrews« [n. 34], 364), he also contends that the author did make some minor changes to his Vorlage, though those changes »did not involve […] a change of meaning in the passage and he did not depend on them to justify his particular interpretation of any passage« (ibid., 378). For other arguments toward Hebrews’ willingness to change his text see, e. g., Karen H. Jobes, »Rhetorical Achievement in the Hebrews 10 ›Misquote‹ of Psalm 40,« Bib 72 (1991), 387–396; Hughes, Hebrews and Hermeneutics (n. 5), 59; Herbert W. Bateman, Early Jewish Hermeneutics and Hebrews 1:5–13: The Impact of Early Jewish Exegesis on the Interpretation of a Significant New Testament Passage (AUStS 193; New York: Peter Lang, 1997), 240. 38  Docherty, OT in Hebrews (n. 1), 180, 194, 200; McCullough, »OT Quotations in Hebrews« (n. 34), 379. 34  E. g.,

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frequently in Hebrews. It is surprising, then, to find that Christ only speaks two times in Hebrews, and both times he speaks the words of the prophets (ἐν τοῖς προφήταις!), the words of the Old Testament.39 He does not speak a new word or a word from his earthly ministry; he speaks the words of Ps 22:22 and Isa 8:17–18 in Heb 2:12–13 and Ps 40:6–8 in Heb 10:5–7.40 These two instances of the Son speaking are examples of the most striking feature of Hebrews’ appropriation of the Greek Scriptures: its use of the Psalms.41 Other early Christian texts depend on the Psalter to explain Jesus, and some of Hebrews’ particular choices have precedent elsewhere.42 Yet, Hebrews remains unique in its appropriation of the Psalms both quantitatively, in the sheer number of psalms cited and the extent to which they drive nearly every argument in the homily,43 and qualitatively, in the directness of the divine speech acts for which the author of Hebrews credits them. As divine speech, the words of Scripture are appropriate for God to speak again in a new context, so Father speaks (the words of Scripture) to Son, Son to Father, and Spirit to us – a dramatic recontextualization of both speaker and listener. It is the first person direct speech predominant in the Psalms that is particularly ripe for recontextualization,44 and, consequently, it is the Psalms, primarily, that are spoken by God to Jesus at the ascension and enthronement, constituting him as Son and Melchizedekian Griffiths, Divine Speech (n. 6), 47; Attridge, »Psalms in Hebrews,« (n. 8), 212. 2:3 alludes to a salvation »declared at first« through Jesus, but the words of his declaration are not identified. Similarly, Heb 12:24 states that Jesus’s blood »speaks a better word than the blood of Abel,« but the author does not include that word (cf. Heb 1:3). 41  As noted above, Hebrews also uses Isa 8:17–18 in this way. The author of Hebrews may not have appreciated our modern genre distinction between psalms and prophecies; like Peter (according to Acts 2:29–31), he may simply have viewed psalms that spoke of Christ as prophecies. 42  Psalm 110:1, as is well known, is alluded to or cited more frequently than any other portion of the Old Testament in the New Testament (e. g., Mark 12:36 // Matt 22:24 // Luke 20:42–43; 1 Cor 15:27; Eph 1:20; Acts 2:34–35) and is also found numerous times in Hebrews. Psalm 2:7 (Heb 1:5) is also cited in Acts 13:33, and Psalm 8 (Heb 2:5–9) is alluded to, along with Ps 110:1, in Eph 1:20–22 and 1 Cor 15:25–28. Furthermore, the logic of Peter’s reading of Ps 16:8–11 in Acts 2:25–31 (David is still dead, so the promise that he would not remain dead must refer to someone else) is strikingly similar to Hebrew’s reading of Psalm 95. 43  See the helpful graph of Psalms citations in the New Testament in Gert J. Steyn, A Quest for the Assumed LXX Vorlage of the Explicit Quotations in Hebrews (FRLANT 23; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 12. 44  Barth, »Old Testament in Hebrews« (n. 8), 62–65; Docherty, OT in Hebrews (n. 1), 177–178; Peeler, You Are My Son (n. 3), 31–35. Docherty notes that Hebrews often interprets Scripture by offering a »precise specification of a speaker and/or addressee who is left ambiguous in the scriptural source« (OT in Hebrews [n. 1], 178). Hebrews’ recontextualization of psalmic material has led scholars to discuss the legitimacy of Hebrews’ hermeneutic, a topic on which debates continue to rage. For recent surveys of viewpoints, see Guthrie, »Recent Trends« (n. 7); Stephen Motyer, »The Psalm Quotations of Hebrews 1: A Hermeneutic-​Free Zone?« TynBul 50 (1999), 3–22; Bryan R. Dyer, »The Epistle to the Hebrews in Recent Research: Studies on the Author’s Identity, His Use of the Old Testament, and Theology,« JGRChJ 9 (2013), 104–131. 39 Cf.

40 Heb

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high priest (esp. Heb 1:5–13; 5:5–6; 7:17, 21; cf. 2:6–8).45 The Son, in turn, speaks Psalms 22 and 40 in Heb 2:12 and 10:5–7, respectively, as an affirmative response to the Father’s speech.46 Thus, some of the Psalms have been transformed into an intratrinitarian conversation. What then shall we say? First, God’s speaking ἐν υἱῷ implies not new speech content but new speech mechanism (ἐν): the same words spoken through the prophets (and others) have been spoken anew and brought to fulfillment through the Son. Second, the Son’s own speech commends the words given ἐν τοῖς προφήταις: their authority is renewed rather than undermined by him. Third, given how seldom the Son actually speaks in Hebrews, God’s speaking ἐν υἱῷ does not appear to be primarily about a verbal message that Christ speaks; rather, »the Son conveyed God’s word by who he was and what he did.«47 While at times Christ speaks some prophetic utterances, more often he is depicted as the telos of all prophetic speech.48 God’s speaking through the prophets culminated in God’s revelation of the Son. Since Scripture is living and active (4:12), its words continue to relate to the author’s community in the eschatological age to illuminate the identity of the Son who is the Christ. Scholars often identify this mode of scriptural interpretation in Hebrews as christological interpretation.49 The entire 45 Schenck, »God Has Spoken,« (n. 6), 327–329; Moore, Repetition in Hebrews (n. 3), 103; Peeler, You Are My Son (n. 3), 30, 34; Lewicki, Wort Gottes und Paraklese (n. 4), 26–27; Rascher, Schriftauslegung und Christologie (n. 7), 37–42. On the timing of the citations in Hebrews 1, particularly Pss 2:7 and 110:1, see George B. Caird, »Son by Appointment,« in The New Testament Age, ed. William C. Weinrich, 2 vols. (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1984), 1.73–81; Joshua W. Jipp, »The Son’s Entrance into the Heavenly World: The Soteriological Necessity of the Scriptural Catena of Hebrews 1.5–14,« NTS 56 (2010), 557–575; Kenneth L. Schenck, »Keeping His Appointment: Creation and Enthronement in Hebrews,« JSNT 66 (1997), 91–117. For the timing of the oath pertaining to priesthood (Ps 110:4), see Michael H. Kibbe, »›You Are a Priest Forever!‹ Jesus’ Indestructible Life in Hebrews 7:16,« HBT 39 (2017), 140–144. 46  Peeler, You Are My Son (n. 3), 17; Moore, Repetition in Hebrews (n. 3), 103; Attridge, »Psalms in Hebrews« (n. 8), 212; Barth, »Old Testament in Hebrews« (n. 8), 62–65; Schenck, »God Has Spoken« (n. 6), 327–329. While God speaks to the Son primarily at his ascension, the Son speaks Ps 40:6–8 in Heb 10:5–7 at the incarnation (Benjamin J. Ribbens, Levitical Sacrifice and Heavenly Cult in Hebrews [BZNW 222; Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2016], 143–144). As for the Son’s speaking Isa 8:17–18 and Ps 22:22 in Heb 2:12–13, no particular historical moment is identified. 47  Koester, Hebrews (n. 3), 185. See similarly Schenck, »God Has Spoken,« (n. 6), 322; Griffiths, Divine Speech (n. 6), 37; Moore, Repetition in Hebrews (n. 3), 106–107. 48  One of the results of this is a hermeneutical circle, of sorts, wherein the Old Testament explains the Christ event, and the Christ event in turn leads to a new understanding of the Old Testament. See Moore, Repetition in Hebrews (n. 3), 107; Gheorghita, Septuagint in Hebrews (n. 28), 231; Rascher, Schriftauslegung und Christologie (n. 7), 222; Lewicki, Wort Gottes und Paraklese (n. 4), 27. For different sides of the hermeneutical circle, see Caird, »Exegetical Method« (n. 8), 51; Barth, »Old Testament in Hebrews« (n. 8), 56–57; France, »Biblical Expositor« (n. 18), 268, 274; Koester, Hebrews (n. 3), 117. 49  Cf. France, »Biblical Expositor« (n. 18), 268; Hughes, Hebrews and Hermeneutics (n. 5), 57; Attridge, Hebrews (n. 8), 210; Guthrie, »Recent Trends« (n. 7), 289–290; Koester,

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Old Testament speaks about and anticipates Christ and the eschatological age.50 Therefore, the divine speech ἐν υἱῷ is not new speech but a new understanding of the old speech in light of the final Word of God, his Son. 2.6.  In Many and Various Ways Finally, the opening words of Hebrews – πολυμερῶς καὶ πολυτρόπως – describe God’s speech through the prophets of old. While there is no exact parallel in v. 2, the implied comparison is to the singularity of the Son’s revelation. The words πολυμερῶς and πολυτρόπως refer »to the various parts of Israel’s Scriptures and the various means through which they were given, respectively.«51 Yet, the two terms should probably be read together as a hendiadys to articulate »the scope and variety of the prophetic witness.«52 Hebrews’ use of Scripture throughout the rest of the book demonstrates scriptural axioms related to the scope and variety of Scripture which πολυμερῶς καὶ πολυτρόπως anticipate without articulating fully. First, since every part of Scripture is God’s authoritative speech, every word of Scripture has authority. This axiom is evident when the author places heavy stress on a word or phrase: »today« in Ps 95:7–8 (Heb 4:7–8), »forever« in Ps 110:4 (Heb 7:20–25), »new« in Jer 31:31–34 (Heb 8:7–13), and »once more« in Hag 2:6 (Heb 12:26–27).53 Second, the many and various (πολυμερῶς καὶ πολυτρόπως) parts of Scripture are unified by the singular voice of God, and Hebrews demonstrates throughout the rest of the book that »Scripture is accepted as totally coherent by the author of Hebrews.«54 Therefore, Scripture can be used to interpret Scripture. For instance, the author uses verbal analogy (gezera shawa) to interpret »rest« in Heb

Hebrews (n. 3), 117–18; Moffitt, »Scripture« (n. 27), 96. Guthrie argues for a new covenant hermeneutic that captures both the Christological and typological readings of the Old Testament (»Recent Trends« [n. 7], 289–290). 50  For a discussion of Old Testament texts used by Hebrews and whether they were previously used in messianic ways, see Hughes, Hebrews and Hermeneutics (n. 5), 57–59; Gheorghita, Septuagint in Hebrews (n. 27), 135–45; Gert J. Steyn, »An Overview of the Extent and Diversity of Methods Utilised by the Author of Hebrews When Using the Old Testament,« Neot 42 (2008), 333, 336. 51 Moore, Repetition in Hebrews (n. 3), 94. 52  Koester, Hebrews (n. 3), 177. See, similarly, Moore, Repetition in Hebrews (n. 3), 94; Cockerill, Hebrews (n. 8), 89; Ellingworth, Hebrews (n. 26), 91; Hughes, Hebrews and Hermeneutics (n. 5), 6. Scholars have debated whether identifying the plurality (πολυμερῶς καὶ πολυτρόπως) of the Old Testament speech is denigrative or not. While πολυμερῶς καὶ πολυτρόπως is contrasted to the speech of God through the Son, they still modify the speech of God (ὁ θεὸς λαλήσας) and, therefore, cannot be denigrative or detrimental (see Smillie, »Hebrews 1.1–2« [n. 3], 543–547; Moore, Repetition in Hebrews, 94–95; Koester, Hebrews, 176; Cockerill, Hebrews, 89). 53  Guthrie, »Recent Trends« (n. 7), 282; Docherty, OT in Hebrews (n. 1), 180. 54  Docherty, OT in Hebrews (n. 1), 197.

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3:7–4:13.55 Not only does the author put heavy stress on »rest« (κατάπαυσις) in Ps 95[94]:11 (Heb 3:11, 18–19; 4:1, 3), but he then uses God’s rest (καταπαύω) in Gen 2:2 to interpret the rest of Ps 95[94]:11 (Heb 4:4–11). Likewise, the use of catchwords in Heb 1:5–12 – e. g., connecting Psalm 8 and Psalm 110 due to their common interest in subjection under foot (ὑποκάτω τῶν ποδῶν αὐτοῦ [Ps 8:6(7) // Heb 2:8; ὑποπόδιον τῶν ποδῶν σου [Ps 110(109):1 // Heb 1:13]) – shows a similar interpretive impulse that Scripture interprets or clarifies other Scripture.56

3.  Continuity and Discontinuity It should be clear by now that Hebrews scarcely twitches an eyebrow without direct approval from the Old Testament. But even a cursory reading of the homily also reveals strong critique leveled at God’s speech ἐν τοῖς προφήταις: its functionaries are impotent (7:19), weak (7:28), shadowy (8:5; 10:1), obsolete (8:13), and in need of change (7:12). The new, on the other hand, is better (7:22), superior (8:6), capable (7:25), and permanent (7:28). This raises a question: has Hebrews cut itself off at the knees? Does it undermine the authority of God’s speech in the past and thereby undermine the authority of God’s speech in these last days, given how interwoven the latter is with the former?57  Docherty, OT in Hebrews (n. 1), 195–196; Guthrie, »Recent Trends« (n. 7), 282; Attridge, »Psalms in Hebrews« (n. 8), 207; Griffiths, Divine Speech (n. 6), 75–78; Lane, Hebrews 1–8 (n. 5), cxxi. 56  Lane, Hebrews 1–8 (n. 5), cxii; Guthrie, »Recent Trends« (n. 7), 279. Richard T. France argues that Hab 2:3–4 governs Heb 10:32–12:3 and, therefore, interprets the Pentateuchal narratives of Hebrews 11 (»Biblical Expositor« [n. 18], 257). The prophetic text defines faith and enables us to identify it as such in other portions of Scripture. Hebrews may similarly use Psalm 95 to interpret Numbers 14 and Deuteronomy 4–5 to interpret Exodus 19–20. 57  A. J. M.  Wedderburn contends that Hebrews’ »argument leads him to positions which seemingly call in question the presuppositions on which his previous argument had been based and on which it depended for its force and validity, leaving one wondering whether he should ever have argued in that way in the first place« (»Sawing Off the Branches: Theologizing Dangerously Ad Hebraeos,« JTS 56 [2005], 393–414, here 393). He goes on to identify Hebrews’ use (a) of spatial and temporal dichotomies and (b) cultic terminology to be the primary culprits. Yet, a significant part of the argument essentially suggests that the author appeals to Scripture as authoritative only to undermine those Scriptures later in his argument (esp. 404–406, 409–410). As a result of these issues, some scholars have concluded that Hebrews either ignored certain parts of Scripture, did not fully understand them, or revised or manipulated them to present a negative view of Judaism and the superiority of Christianity (William R. G.  Loader, Sohn und Hoherpriester: Eine traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zur Christologie des Hebräerbriefes [WMANT 53; Neukirchen-​Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1981], 244; Lillian C. Freudmann, Antisemitism in the New Testament [Lanham: University Press of America, 1994], 150–158; Susan Haber, »From Priestly Torah to Christ Cultus: The Re-​Vision of Covenant and Cult in Hebrews,« JSNT 28 [2005], 105–124; Nehemia Polen, »Leviticus and Hebrews […] and Leviticus,« in The Epistle to the Hebrews and Christian Theology, ed. Richard Bauckham et alii [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009], 213–225, esp. 224–225). For a summary 55

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We must admit that if Hebrews has undermined the authority of God’s speech in the past through the prophets, it does indeed undermine the authority of God’s speech in the present through the Son – its insistence that God can neither change nor lie and that Christ himself speaks the Old Testament require this. The burden, therefore, is to demonstrate the ongoing authority of the Old Testament in Hebrews. Below we offer two examples of precisely this point, drawn from two significant strands of Hebrews’ engagement with the Old Testament: Jesus as priest vis-​à-​vis the levitical cult, and the deuteronomic nature of Hebrews’ hortatory material. The first pertains to Jesus’s submission to the Old Testament, and the second to the audience’s submission – but in both cases two key points emerge: that the Old Testament itself is the impetus for the apparent discontinuity between the old and the new, and that what sets the new apart is not its rejection of the requirements of the old, but its actual fulfillment of them. 3.1.  Christ’s Priestly Service To put it simply: Jesus must, according to Hebrews, conform to the Old Testament requirements concerning priests and sacrifices. Jesus must be called by God as a priest, just like Aaron, rather than taking that mantle on himself (Heb 5:4–5). Jesus must be qualified for the priesthood; yet, he cannot be a typical priest since he is from the tribe of Judah (Heb 7:13–17).58 As a priest, he must (like the levitical priests) have something to offer (8:3–4) and a sanctuary in which to offer it (8:2; 9:1–14). The heavenly sanctuary must be cleansed by blood (9:23),59 just as Moses cleansed the earthly sanctuary with blood (9:19–21). Purification and forgiveness require blood application (9:22), so Jesus’s cultic ministry required blood (9:12, 14, 24–26). When Jesus does not conform precisely to the letter of the Old Testament, it is only because the Old Testament itself has offered him that opportunity. Jesus is not like the levitical priests insofar as he does not share their genealogy (7:13–17), remains forever instead of dying and being replaced (7:23–25), offers one sacrifice in heaven rather than repeated sacrifices in the earthly sanctuary

discussion as it relates to Hebrews’ discussion of sacrifice, see Ribbens, Levitical Sacrifice and Heavenly Cult (n. 46), 3–5. 58  See below for further discussion. Here, the point is simply that if the genealogical requirement of the law concerning priesthood had simply been done away with, the author need not have bothered with the extended argument that there is another legitimate (= permitted by the Old Testament) way. 59 Debate continues over the precise identity of the »heavenly things« (τὰ ἐπουράνια) that Jesus’s sacrifice must cleanse. For a recent and convincing argument that heaven itself is in view, see R. B.  Jamieson, »Hebrews 9.23: Cult Inauguration, Yom Kippur and the Cleansing of the Heavenly Tabernacle,« NTS 62 (2016), 569–587; cf. Ribbens, Levitical Sacrifice and Heavenly Cult (n. 46), 119–123, 143.

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(9:24),60 and, in a related arena, mediates a new covenant that is explicitly »not like the [old] covenant« (8:9). Yet, all of these areas of difference or newness are legitimated and warranted by the authoritative Scriptures themselves. Psalm 110:4 speaks of an eternal priesthood in the order of Melchizedek (Heb 5:5–6; 7:15–17), Exod 25:40 of a heavenly sanctuary (Heb 8:5), and Jer 31:31–34 of a new covenant (Heb 8:8–12; 10:16–17).61 Jesus and his Torah-​prescribed levitical counterparts truly part ways not in terms of whether or not the requirements of the Old Testament are binding, but insofar as Jesus fulfills those requirements to an extent unattainable by the Levites. What God always required – the atonement of sins for right relationship with him – the old covenant and its cultic affiliates performed to a limited and ultimately unsatisfactory extent; Jesus, on the other hand, does so completely.62 To note one example of many: »the law can never, through the same sacrifices offered perpetually (προσφέρουσιν εἰς τὸ διηνεκές) year after year, perfect (τελειῶσαι) those who approach […] by one offering (προσφορᾷ) he has perfected forever (τετελείωκεν εἰς τὸ διηνεκές) those who are made holy« (10:1, 14). Jesus offers a sacrifice like levitical sacrifice and in accordance with scriptural guidelines; yet, his offering could accomplish salvific efficacies the levitical cult could not. Finally, we note that even in its critique of the old covenant and levitical cult, Hebrews necessarily assumes a positive association with these on the part of its audience and builds on that association rather than undermining it. The relationship between Christ’s sacrifice and levitical sacrifice is often identified as a typological relationship, and typological connections depend on continuity.63 Further, rhetorical scholars identify Hebrews’ comparisons, including the comparison of 60  Regarding what exactly Hebrews has in mind when it locates Jesus’s sacrificial work in the heavenly sanctuary, and how that relates to the accomplishments of the cross, see the options surveyed in R. B. Jamieson, »When and Where Did Jesus Offer Himself? A Taxonomy of Recent Scholarship on Hebrews,« CBR 15 (2017), 338–68; cf. Ribbens, Levitical Sacrifice and Heavenly Cult (n. 46), 129–136. 61  Similarly, Ps 95:7–8 speaks of another rest (Heb 4:1–11) (Caird, »Exegetical Method« [n. 8], 47–48; France, »Biblical Expositor« [n. 18], 254; Guthrie, »Recent Trends« [n. 7], 289). Susan Docherty considers this approach to the Old Testament to be primarily exegetical and to parallel rabbinic practice (OT in Hebrews [n. 1], 114, 116, 178, 196, 198–199). For further discussion, see Barth, »OT in Hebrews« (n. 8), 68–70; Hughes, Hebrews and Hermeneutics (n. 6), 64, 71; Steyn, »Methods« (n. 50), 345; Moffitt, »Scripture« (n. 27), 82–85; Cockerill, Hebrews (n. 8), 57. 62 Much more could be said at this point regarding what Hebrews believes the levitical cult actually did accomplish; for a positive typological assessment of their performance (according to Hebrews), see Ribbens, Levitical Sacrifice and Heavenly Cult (n. 46), esp. 149–163. 63  Benjamin J. Ribbens, »A Typology of Types: Typology in Dialogue,« JTI 5 (2011), 85–91; cf. Caird, »Exegetical Method« (n. 8), 49; Lane, Hebrews 1–8 (n. 5), cxxiii; Isaacs, Sacred Space (n. 6), 73; Treier, »Doctrine of Scripture in Hebrews« (n. 17), 343; Ribbens, Levitical Sacrifice and Heavenly Cult (n. 46), 13–17, 236–240; Cockerill, Hebrews (n. 8), 52–53.

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sacrifices, with the rhetorical device of synkrisis.64 Encomiastic synkrisis requires the author to contrast that which he wants to promote with something of honor and validity. Thus, when Hebrews compares Christ’s sacrifice to the levitical sacrifices, it does so because the levitical institution is esteemed. The rhetoric of synkrisis does not diminish the value of the old covenant sacrifices; rather, it depends on a positive understanding of the levitical sacrifices to create the foundation for a positive rhetorical comparison. 3.2.  Deuteronomic Exhortation If Leviticus (and related cultic texts in the Old Testament) prescribe Jesus’s actions, Deuteronomy similarly speaks authoritatively regarding the audience of Hebrews. Deuteronomy is above all an exhortation to faithfulness, and Hebrews assumes that it functions as such no less today than in the past. This is demonstrated, first of all, in the many parallels between Hebrews and Deuteronomy. Both are combinations of warning and encouragement. Both tell of sin in the past (particularly Kadesh Barnea [Deut 1:19–46; Heb 3:7–4:7]) to motivate obedience in the present. Both call hardship παιδεία (»discipline« or »training«) and suggest that such hardship inevitably goes along with sonship and should inspire perseverance rather than apathy (Deut 8:1–5; Heb 12:5–17). Both call their audiences to make a decision »today« (Deut 5:1–3; Heb 3:7–4:11). Both push their audiences to move forward and experience God’s blessing rather than moving backward and thus experiencing his curse (Deut 11:26–32; 30:15–18; Heb 6:7–8). Both elicit a response to God’s word presently spoken to them from the mountain while they simultaneously stand at the door of the promised rest (Deut 4:10–12; Heb 4:11–13; 12:22–24). Both are called to persevere under the leadership of Ἰησοῦς and leave Μωϋσῆς behind (Deut 33:1–8; 34:8–9; Heb 3:1–6).65 64  Typical characteristics of synkrisis include μέν – δέ contrasts, qal wahomer arguments, arguments of superiority (κρείττων), and the application of the comparison through paraenesis. Hebrews’ discussion of sacrifice includes all of these: μέν – δέ in 8:4–6; 9:1–14; 9:6–7; 9:23; 10:11–12; a qal wahomer argument in 9:13–14; the use of κρείττων in 8:6 and 9:23; and the application through paraenesis in 10:19–39. For discussions of synkrisis in Hebrews, see Günther Zuntz, The Text of the Epistles (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), 286; Thomas H. Olbricht, »Hebrews as Amplification,« in Rhetoric and the New Testament: Essays from the 1992 Heidelberg Conference, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Thomas H. Olbricht (JSNTSup 90; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1993), 375–387; Timothy W. Seid, »Synkrisis in Hebrews 7: The Rhetorical Structure and Strategy,« in The Rhetorical Interpretation of Scripture: Essays from the 1996 Malibu Conference, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Dennis L. Stamps (JSNTSup 180; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1999), 323–347; Eric F. Mason, »The Epistle (Not Necessarily) to the ›Hebrews‹: A Call to Renunciation of Judaism or Encouragement to Christian Commitment?« PRSt 37 (2010), 5–18, esp. 13–16; cf. also Michael W. Martin and Jason A. Whitlark, »The Encomiastic Topics of Syncrisis as the Key to the Structure and Argument of Hebrews,« NTS 57 (2011), 415–439; Idem, »Choosing What Is Advantageous: The Relationship between Epideictic and Deliberative Syncrisis in Hebrews,« NTS 58 (2012), 379–400. 65  For further discussion of these parallels, see especially David M. Allen, Deuteronomy

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Beyond these conceptual and rhetorical parallels, Hebrews quotes or alludes to Deuteronomy on numerous occasions  – particularly and unsurprisingly in the »warning passages« (Heb 2:1–4; 3:7–4:11; 6:7–8; 10:26–31; 12:18–29). Consider Heb 10:26–31, for example. First, the author describes God’s wrath against the covenant breaker: that person will face a »zealous fire that is about to consume those who oppose [God]« (Heb 10:27 // Deut 29:19). Next comes a comparison between the deuteronomic judgment and that of the present day: »anyone who sets aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses« (Heb 10:28 // Deut 17:6), but »how much worse punishment [awaits] the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God?« (Heb 10:29). Then he cites Deuteronomy again to validate the warning: »we know the one who said ›vengeance is mine; I will repay,‹ and again, ›the Lord will judge his people‹« (Heb 10:30 // Deut 32:35–36). And finally, still more deuteronomic language seals the deal: »it is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God« (Heb 10:31 // Deut 4:33; 5:26). It is hard to imagine a more thoroughly deuteronomic warning than this! Hebrews clearly assumes that Deuteronomy still speaks truth both about God and about the consequences that will surely come on his people if they disregard him. The similarities and differences between the exhortations of Deuteronomy and those found in Hebrews parallel the preceding section concerning the cultic theologies of Leviticus and Hebrews. In both, the similarities pertain to the authoritative word of God. The Scriptures make clear that this is how covenant life with God works: priest, sacrifice, atonement, sacred space, obedience, perseverance, consequences etc. No changes whatsoever at this fundamental level. And in both, the differences pertain not to the divine word itself, but to the relative abilities and inabilities of its human recipients to do what it commands. As the levitical cult failed to accomplish all that was necessary, so the generation that stood on the plains of Moab and received Moses’s exhortation failed to heed it and thereby receive the full blessings of covenant life (esp. Heb 4:6). And as Jesus’s priestly ministry does what his levitical counterpart did not, so the present audience is expected to succeed where past Israelite generations failed. The inevitability of failure in Deuteronomy has been replaced by great confidence in the audience’s success in Hebrews, as particularly illustrated by the warning in Heb 6:1–8.66 After invoking the deuteronomic language of blessing and cursing at the conclusion of the warning (6:7–8),67 the author speaks words of encouragement that are unimaginable for Deuteronomy: »even though we speak in this way, beloved, we are confident of better things in your case, things that belong and Exhortation in Hebrews: A Study in Narrative Re-​Presentation, (WUNT II/238; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008); Kibbe, Godly Fear or Ungodly Failure? (n. 16), 120–137. 66  For further discussion of this point, see Kibbe, Godly Fear or Ungodly Failure? (n. 16), 134–135. 67  See esp. Allen, Deuteronomy and Hebrews (n. 65), 126–140.

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to salvation« (6:9).68 Precisely because of the changes wrought by Jesus’s better obedience, the audience is rendered capable of doing likewise. Thus once more, Hebrews suggests that at the present time there must be, and in fact is, more faithfulness to the authoritative Scriptures, not less.

4. Conclusion Hebrews wastes no time in confronting us with the authority of Scripture. What God spoke in a variety of ways in the past, he has now spoken in these last days through his Son. Fundamentally in Hebrews, Scripture is authoritative because it is divine speech. That authority emerges in a variety of ways: as accurate depiction of historical events, as summons to faith and covenant obedience, as Father’s words to Son and Son’s words to Father, as God’s words to his people and even their appropriate response to God. Scripture is authoritative because it is (not used to be) divine speech. And as God’s word in these last days, the new covenant community is no less accountable to it than the old covenant community, and even Jesus himself was bound to its requirements and aims. In fact, it was by being faithful to it and fulfilling it in ways beyond the grasp of his cultic predecessors, that Jesus brought about the »last days« context in which the call to obedience has gone out once more. The inauguration of the last days implies newness (but only newness already legitimized by the Scriptures themselves), but what is new is not the substance of God’s speech but the context into which it is spoken and the ability of those who hear to obey it.

68  Deuteronomy is far less optimistic, to put it lightly. Moses’s words are representative: »I know that after my death you will act lawlessly and turn from the way that I have commanded you« (Deut 31:29).

Strategies of Authorizing Tradition in the Letter of James Susanne Luther 1.  Scripture in the Ethical Argumentation of James The Letter of James takes up traditions and motifs from various strands of ancient literature, including the Septuagint and ancient Jewish wisdom tradition, Qumran, early Jewish writings, the New Testament, and pagan Hellenistic-​Roman literature.1 The author integrates traditions and motifs within the epistolary argumentation and admonition that serve as the basis and authoritative norms for the author’s own argumentation. Amongst these, it is those traditions and texts, which later became canonical writings that are of primary interest in the following investigation and the question to be posed is whether or not the reception of these traditions manifests a notion or construction of an authoritative role for these writings. Thus, in the following essay I will examine the use, function and authority of texts and traditions that later became Scripture in the Letter of James. I will be reading James against the background of the following leading questions: Which writings or traditions does the author consider prominent in establishing his ethical argumentation? Which writings or traditions does he consider authoritative? Does he distinguish between written Scripture and oral tradition or between the Septuagint and the tradition that we know today as the canonical New Testament writings? How does the author employ written and oral tradition within his own argumentation? Can we identify a notion of Scripture as being holy, normative or codified? Does the text manifest a conception of the authority of Scripture in general or of particular texts of Scripture or strands of tradition? Which literary strategies are employed in order to develop an argumentative authority through the reference to scriptural texts, traditions, characters or stories? The essay will (2.) identify various scriptural and traditional »authorities« drawn on in the 1  Cf., e. g., Susanne Luther, Sprachethik im Neuen Testament. Analyse des frühchristlichen Diskurses im Matthäusevangelium, im Jakobusbrief und im 1 Petrusbrief (WUNT II/394; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015); eadem, »Von Feigenbäumen und Oliven. Die Rezeption, Transformation und Kreation sprachethischer Traditionen im Jakobusbrief,« ASE 34/2 (2017), 381– 401.

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epistolary argumentation in the Letter of James (Jesus tradition, Pauline tradition, Old Testament and Wisdom tradition) and then (3.) focus on the authoritative use of references to the γραφή, its argumentative role and function.

2.  Traditional Authorities and Authoritative Tradition in James The Letter of James draws on a broad range of texts,2 but it generally does not identify its sources – with the exception of references to what James calls »Scripture.«3 Yet even without explicit identification, several strands of tradition are used as authoritative material. 2.1.  James the Brother of Jesus and the Jesus Tradition The Letter speaks with a distinctive authority, based on the claim of the author being  Ἰάκωβος θεοῦ καὶ κυρίου  Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ δοῦλος (Jas 1:1).4 Although most exegetes read the letter as a pseudepigraphical writing,5 the explicit ascription of the text to the authority of James, likely the brother of Jesus,6 might imply that 2  For a well-​structured presentation of the traditions used in the Letter of James and the possible background of the author cf. also Wiard Popkes, »Traditionen und Traditionsbrüche im Jakobusbrief,« in The Catholic Epistles and the Tradition, ed. Jacques Schlosser (BETL 176; Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 143–170. 3  Cf. Rainer Metzner, Der Brief des Jakobus (THKNT 14 [new edition]; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2017), 32: »Jakobus [ist] nur wenig darum bemüht, seine Quellen kenntlich zu machen. […] Direkte Zitate sind nur solche aus der Septuaginta, die die Bibel des Jakobus und seiner Adressaten war.« 4  Cf. Stephen Westerholm and Martin Westerholm, ed., Reading Sacred Scripture: Voices from the History of Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 22: »Letters naming James, Peter, and Jude as their authors come with the authority of these leading figures in the first generation of the church, each a ›servant‹ of the heavenly Lord with close ties to the earthly Jesus (James 1:1; 1 Pet 5:1; Jude 1).« Cf. also ibid.: »Each speaks with authority: compliance with their directives is the right thing to do and will result in God-​pleasing behavior; failure to comply will bring judgment«; cf. also Karl-​Wilhelm Niebuhr, »James in the Minds of the Recipients: A Letter from Jerusalem,« in The Catholic Epistles and Apostolic Tradition, ed. idem and Robert W. Wall (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2009), 43–54, esp. 49–54. For a discussion of authorship in the Letter of James cf., e. g., Metzner, Brief des Jakobus (n. 3), 3–13; also Niebuhr, »James in the Minds of the Recipients.« 5  Cf. Metzner, Brief des Jakobus (n. 3), 5–8, who views the identification of the author as a »programmatische Autor‑ bzw. Autoritätenfiktion,« which serves to convey authority to an anonymous text (ibid., 5). Metzner himself pleads for the option of reading James as an orthonymous writing of an unknown teacher called James dating to the second century CE (ibid., 10–13). 6  For the discussion whether the reference is made to James, son of Zebedee, or to James, the brother of Jesus, cf. Popkes, Brief des Jakobus (ThKNT 14; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2001), 64–66.

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Jesus tradition can be expected to play an important, even authoritative role.7 The parallels between the Synoptic tradition and the Letter of James have often been listed; however, the lists vary according to the forms of reference assumed to take place between the texts.8 Literal correspondences are rare, and none of the allusions or parallels to the Jesus tradition is explicitly identified as being Jesus tradition or a saying of the Lord.9 Therefore, a literary dependence between James and the Jesus tradition, as has repeatedly been claimed,10 cannot be corroborated.11 It must be assumed instead – as Jens Schröter suggests – that the Jesus tradition was not, from the outset, focused on the conservation and fixation of the original wording: from the beginning, Jesus’s teaching was passed on in a variety of traditions and in varying forms. Hence, from its earliest attestation, the Jesus tradition seems to have been a free and creative tradition; the notion of a codified, authoritative form of early Jesus tradition cannot be demonstrated.12 The observation that the Jesus tradition is not distinctly identified or marked in the Letter of James may therefore be explained by the notion of the variability of early Christian tradition and the assumption that »Jesus tradition« comprised all early  7  The assumed authority of the author himself might also indicate his argumentative authority, as will be argued below.  8 Cf. the overview in Metzner, Brief des Jakobus (n. 3), 34–37, esp. 35.  9  Metzner, Brief des Jakobus (n. 3), 37, points out that in early Christian tradition it was not common practice to identify the sources of tradition. 10  For a summary of the history of research, cf. Matthias Konradt, »Der Jakobusbrief im frühchristlichen Kontext. Überlegungen zum traditionsgeschichtlichen Verhältnis des Jakobusbriefes zur Jesusüberlieferung, zur paulinischen Tradition und zum 1 Petrusbrief,« in The Catholic Epistles, ed. Schlosser (n. 2), 171–212, here 190–192. 11  For research on the Jesus tradition in James, cf. Dean B. Deppe, The Sayings of Jesus in the Epistle of James (D. Th. Diss., Free University of Amsterdam; Chelsea: Bookcrafters, 1989); John S. Kloppenborg, »The Reception of the Jesus Tradition in James,« in The Catholic Epistles, ed. Schlosser (n. 2), 92–141; Konradt, »Der Jakobusbrief« (n. 10), esp. 190–207; Paul Foster, »Q and James: A Source-​Critical Conundrum,« in James, 1 and 2 Peter, and Early Jesus Traditions, ed. Alicia J. Batten and John S. Kloppenborg (LNTS 478; London and New York: T&T Clark International, 2014), 3–34, esp. 7–21; Peter H. Davids, »Tradition and Citation in the Epistle of James,« in Scripture, Tradition, and Interpretation: Essays Presented to Everett F. Harrison by his Students and Colleagues in Honor of his Seventy-​fifth Birthday, ed. W. Ward Gasque and William Sandford La Sor (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 113–126. 12 Jens Schröter, »Jesus und der Kanon. Die frühe Jesusüberlieferung im Kontext der Entstehung des neutestamentlichen Kanons,« in Von Jesus zum Neuen Testament. Studien zur urchristlichen Theologiegeschichte und zur Entstehung des neutestamentlichen Kanons (WUNT 204; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 271–295, here 288: »die Jesusüberlieferung [war] von ihrer frühesten Bezeugung an nicht auf die Bewahrung ursprünglicher Jesusworte und die Fixierung eines Wortlautes gerichtet […] Die Lehre Jesu begegnet vielmehr von Beginn an in einer Vielfalt von Rezeptionen, die sprachlich variabel und in ihrem Umfang erweiterbar sind. Die Jesusüberlieferung ist somit seit ihrer frühesten Bezeugung eine freie und lebendige Überlieferung, die Vorstellung von ihrer fest umrissenen, autoritativen Gestalt demzufolge aufzugeben.« Schröter speaks of the reception of Jesus tradition, e. g. in Jas, in the sense of a »secondary orality«: cf. ibid., 283. Cf. also Schröter, »Anfänge der Jesusüberlieferung. Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Beobachtungen zu einem Bereich urchristlicher Theologiegeschichte,« again in his Von Jesus zum Neuen Testament, 81–194, here 92, 97.

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Christian traditions, which »with a certain degree of probability can be ascribed to Jesus himself, or were at least attributed to him in the early church,« that is, »traditions of different origin that can only partly be traced back to Jesus himself and that only in some writings were ascribed to him, while other texts transmitted them anonymously or under the authority of other representatives of early Christianity.«13 For the use of Jesus tradition in the Letter of James this means that the author knew and used Jesus tradition, but did not identify it as such or possibly did not even know it as such. A literary dependency on early Christian texts, such as the Gospel of Matthew or Q,14 is, in my view, not attested with certainty, as the author of the Letter of James »freely elaborates, reconfigures, and adapts sayings of Jesus to new rhetorical situations such that the ultimate source of the saying is still recognizable, but much has been added, substituted, and subtracted in the process of reframing.«15 One finds a broad reception of the Jesus tradition as the basis for the epistolary argumentation, not as authoritative tradition, but in order to substantiate the argumentation and authority of the letter’s author. In this sense it is used as authoritative, normative early Christian tradition, but the exact wording of the tradition is not treated as normative or codified; it is not even specified as normative tradition. It is rather the authority of the author himself that allows for a free reception and creative transformation of the traditions for the specific use within his own epistolary argumentation.16 13 Jens Schröter, »Jesus Tradition in Matthew, James, and the Didache: Searching for Characteristic Emphases,« in Matthew, James, and Didache: Three related Documents in their Jewish and Christian Settings, ed. Huub van de Sandt and Jürgen K. Zangenberg (SymS 45; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), 233–255, here 237; cf. also Konradt, »Der Jakobusbrief« (n. 10), 196–200. Jesus is named explicitly only in Jas 2:1, while Jas 5:7–8, 11 mention the κύριος and 5:11 probably refers to God. Hence it is to be assumed that the traditions, which reflect Synoptic tradition, were either (a) at the time of reception not (yet) attributed to Jesus, or (b) that the author consciously (e. g., because the addressees were familiar with the tradition or because he wanted to conceal the association with Jesus tradition) or (c) unconsciously (e. g., because it corresponded with his use of tradition as wisdom teacher and scribe) omitted the attribution of the tradition to Jesus. However, »it seems important for Matthew to refer to Jesus as the authority behind the traditions, whereas James does not appear to feel the necessity to do so« (Schröter, »Jesus Tradition,« 240). This may, in my view, be due to the genre used, as the narrative presentation of the Gospel of Matthew was much more in need of an attribution of tradition to Jesus than the ethical paraenesis of the Letter of James. 14 Cf. Patrick J. Hartin, James and the Q Sayings of Jesus (JSNTSup 47; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991); and Jens Schröter, »Die Bedeutung der Q-​Überlieferungen für die Interpretation der frühen Jesustradition,« ZNW 94 (2003), 38–67. 15  John S. Kloppenborg, »James 1:2–15 and Hellenistic Psychagogy,« NovT 52 (2010), 37–71, here 38. 16 Cf. Kloppenborg, »The Reception« (n. 11), 141: »James, composing in an environment similar to Sirach’s scribal culture, and employing the rhetorical techniques of recitation and paraphrase, transformed the Jesus sayings grammatically and in application, and typical of the practice of aemulatio, represented the product as his own. The practice of aemulatio presupposes, on the one hand, that the audience will normally be able to identify the intertext that the author is paraphrasing, and thus will see how the author aligns himself or herself with the ethos of the original speaker, and on the other, that the audience will appreciate the artistry

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2.2.  Paul and Pauline Tradition With a view to Jas 2:14–26 in particular, but also regarding other textual parallels in the Letter of James, it has long been a point of controversial discussion whether the author of the Letter of James knew and reacted in some way to the Pauline epistles,17 either in a polemical18 or in a conciliatory19 way. The author of the Letter of James takes up Pauline traditions and motifs, once again without identifying their source, but also employs similar rhetorical and argumentative strategies as can be found in the Pauline letters (e. g., diatribic argumentation).20 A literary dependency or even the author’s knowledge of the Pauline texts cannot be corroborated with certainty from the material at hand,21 it might just as well be stated that the author of the Letter of James took up free floating traditions of Pauline origin, possibly traditions transformed by previous processes of transmission and no longer attributed to Paul22 or transformed by his use within his own argumentation. Hence, where the argumentation in the Letter of James of paraphrase and application of the old maxim to a new rhetorical situation.« Cf. also John S. Kloppenborg, »The Emulation of the Jesus Tradition in the Letter of James,« in Reading James with New Eyes: Methodological Reassessment of the Letter of James, ed. Robert L. Webb and idem (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2007), 121–150. 17 Cf., e. g., Martin Klein, »Ein vollkommenes Werk«. Vollkommenheit, Gesetz und Gericht als theologische Themen des Jakobusbriefes (BWANT 139; Stuttgart et al.: Kohlhammer, 1995), 202–203; Manabu Tsuji, Glaube zwischen Vollkommenheit und Verweltlichung. Eine Untersuchung zur literarischen Gestalt und zur inhaltlichen Kohärenz des Jakobusbriefes (WUNT II/93; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), 187–199. Others interpret the text as Paul reacting to James: cf., e. g., Theodor Zahn, Einleitung in das Neue Testament, 2 vols. (3rd edition; Leipzig: Deichert, 1906), 1.89–95. 18  Cf., e. g., Martin Hengel, »Der Jakobusbrief als antipaulinische Polemik,« in Paulus und Jakobus. Kleine Schriften III (WUNT 141; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 511–548, here 523–548. Against this position plead, e. g., Matthias Konradt, »Theologie in der ›strohernen Epistel‹. Ein Literaturbericht zu neueren Ansätzen in der Exegese des Jakobusbriefs,« VF 44 (1999), 54–78, here 65; Christoph Burchard, Der Jakobusbrief (HNT 15/1; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 4. 19 Cf., e. g., Margaret M. Mitchell, »The Letter of James as a Document of Paulinism?« in Reading James With New Eyes: Methodological Reassessment of the Letter of James, ed. Webb and Kloppenborg (n. 16.), 75–98, here 79: »The author of the Letter of James knows some collection of Paul’s letters, and writes from within Paulinism (rather than in opposition to Paul), creating a compromise document which has as one of its purposes reconciling ›Paul with Paul‹ and ›Paul with the pillars‹.« 20 Cf. Metzner, Brief des Jakobus (n. 3), 38–39. For a survey of the history of research, cf. Konradt, »Der Jakobusbrief« (n. 10), 172–190. 21  For the view that the background is to be found in common tradition rather than in literary dependency, cf., e. g., Matthias Konradt, Christliche Existenz nach dem Jakobusbrief. Eine Studie zu seiner soteriologischen und ethischen Konzeption (SUNT 22; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 317–338; Luther, Sprachethik (n. 1), 435–436; Burchard, Jakobusbrief (n. 18), 16. 22  Cf. Metzner, Brief des Jakobus (n. 3), 39, refers, e. g., to Jas 2:5 as a compound of Matt 5:3, 5 and 1 Cor 1:26–28 and suggests that »paulinische Formulierungen und Gedanken durch gemeindliche Lehre und Predigt bereits soweit moduliert und verselbstständigt worden sein [konnten], dass Jakobus sie nicht mehr als paulinische gekannt haben muss.«

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refers to aspects or motifs that manifest parallels in the Pauline tradition, the author does not specify any explicit reference to the apostle’s teaching nor does he explicitly mark his own argumentation as in dialogue with or in critique of apostolic tradition. As with other traditions, it can be stated for the Pauline tradition that the Letter of James »nimmt konventionelle Stoffe auf, die in der gemeindlichen Rezeption frühchristlicher Schriften moduliert weitergegeben wurden. Dann müssen ihm die Schriften nicht literarisch vorgelegen haben; er kann aus dem Gedächtnis formulieren.«23 But the author of the Letter of James is not just a collector and redactor of traditional material,24 he is rather the centre of authority, an adept author, who takes up a broad variety of oral or written pretexts from different strands of early Christian (as well as Jewish and possibly pagan) traditions, which he freely and creatively adapts for the argumentative purposes as well as embeds into new contexts with a specific view to his intention and his addressees. Rather than looking for authoritative early Christian traditions, the achievement and status of the author himself have to be appreciated, whose literary skills and advanced knowledge of tradition enabled him to receive divergent traditions independently, to recombine them in the context of a specific situation and specific requirements and to create a convincing new line of argument.25 The tradition-​ historical roots of the author in early Jewish and early Christian wisdom are obvious, and yet he does not quote this material as authoritative in distinction from his own authority as author and wisdom teacher:26 [W]e can see James as a sage who has made the wisdom of Jesus his own. He does not repeat it; he is inspired by it. He creates his own wise sayings, sometimes as equivalents of specific sayings of Jesus, sometimes inspired by several sayings, sometimes encapsulating the theme of many sayings, sometimes based on points of contact between Jesus’ sayings and other Jewish wisdom.27

The designation of an early Christian wisdom teacher seems to be appropriate for the author of the Letter of James, who draws on traditions, but acts as an autonomous author and teacher, whose teaching is primarily based on his own authority, but substantiated by the authority derived from his pseudepigraphical writing under the name of James, the brother of Jesus. Presented in the form of authoritative wisdom teaching, the letter asserts a claim to universal validity of  Metzner, Brief des Jakobus (n. 3), 42.  Differently the positions set forth in the commentaries by Martin Dibelius, Der Brief des Jakobus (KEK 15; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964), and Popkes, Brief des Jakobus (n. 6). 25 Cf. William R. Baker, Personal Speech-​Ethics in the Epistle of James (WUNT II/68; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), 283–290. 26  For this argument cf. Luther, »Von Feigenbäumen und Oliven« (n. 1), 381–401. 27 Richard Bauckham, James: Wisdom of James, Disciple of Jesus the Sage (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 82–83. 23 24

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the conveyed contents that are based on a new combination, reassessment and interpretation of early Christian and Jewish-​Hellenistic traditions.28 The author does not focus on the preservation and mediation of given tradition, but rather on its creative continuance and development.29 Therefore, he does not attribute any authoritative role to texts we know today as the Pauline writings of the canonical New Testament, but he uses Pauline tradition in a normative and authoritative function within his own epistolary argumentation.30 2.3.  Jewish Writings and their Collections The only tradition that the author of the Letter of James explicitly refers to or quotes from are the Jewish Scriptures: »Jakobus zitiert lediglich die Schrift, alle anderen Traditionen lässt er unvermittelt einfließen. Nirgends entsteht der Eindruck, dass er von anderen Schriften abschreibt. Für literarische Abhängigkeiten sind die Beziehungen zu wenig spezifisch.«31 Scripture (γραφή) is referred to several times in the Letter of James: the author speaks of the »royal law according to Scripture« (νόμον […] βασιλικὸν κατὰ τὴν γραφήν, Jas 2:8), of the fulfillment of Scripture (ἐπληρώθη ἡ γραφὴ ἡ λέγουσα, Jas 2:23) and he »quotes« Scripture 28  Cf. Gerd Theissen, »Weisheit als Mittel sozialer Abgrenzung und Öffnung: Beobach­ tungen zur sozialen Funktion frühjüdischer und urchristlicher Weisheit,« in Weisheit. Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation III, ed. Aleida Assmann (Munich: Fink, 1991), 193–203, who emphasizes that – over against the early Jewish wisdom tradition – the early Christian wisdom tradition was open to modulations and influences. 29  Cf. Popkes, »Traditionen und Traditionsbrüche« (n. 2), esp. 162–163.165–166, who stresses the broad, but also rather fragmentary reception of ancient traditions, as well as their situative contextualization in the Letter of James. Cf. also Dale C. Allison, Jr., »The Fiction of James and its Sitz im Leben,« RB 108/4 (2001), 529–570, here 569–570. 30 Cf. also David R. Nienhuis, »The Letter of James as a Canon-​C onscious Pseudepigraph,« in The Catholic Epistles and Apostolic Tradition, ed. Niebuhr and Wall (n. 4), 183–200. Nienhuis even states that James wrote from within a context where Pauline tradition was known, discussed, and probably even embraced as authoritative: »James was not simply aware of Pauline ideas ›in the air‹ at the time, but was in contact with a collection of Pauline letters and wrote to readers who knew those writings as religiously authoritative« (188). Nienhuis draws on evidence from the church fathers showing that »James, Peter, and John« were viewed »as a unity of apostolic authority« (192). But whether his conclusion – that »[t]he writer of James created a sort of bridge text that included careful intertextual linkages to the authoritative apostolic literature of his day in order to forge together a collection of letters under the organizing rubric of the Jerusalem pillars – James, Peter, and John (as identified by Paul in Gal 2:9). This James-​ headed collection was crafted to provide a canonical counterbalance to the Pauline collection, correcting the most pressing Paulinist misreadings that emerged over the course of the second century« (185) – is convincing, is doubtful. And whether Nienhuis’s hypothesis – that »the letter is not simply pseudepigraphic, but a pseudepigraph written for the purpose of providing a distinctive shape to the nascent collection of authoritative Christian writings – a ›canon-​conscious pseudepigraph‹. The pseudepigrapher was quite literally striving to create Scripture by carefully linking his letter intertextually with the authoritative scriptural writings of his day with the ultimate goal of restructuring the emerging collection« (195) – can be corroborated, has to remain open. 31  Metzner, Brief des Jakobus (n. 3), 41.

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and scriptural tradition (ἡ γραφὴ λέγει, Jas 4:5; διὸ λέγει, Jas 4:6). Allusions to Scripture can be found in various places (Jas 5:4–5; 5:20) and characters found in scriptural narratives are introduced into the arguments (Abraham, Jas 2:20–24; Rahab, Jas 2:25–26; Job and the prophets, Jas 5:10–11; Elijah, Jas 5:17). Each time Scripture is referred to within the epistolary argumentation or admonition, it serves as the basis and authoritative norm for the author’s own arguments; each time Scripture is referred to, a different Old Testament writing is drawn on (Gen, Exod, Lev, Deut, Prov, Isa, Jer). Moreover themes and motifs as well as style and argumentation betray a close relationship to wisdom literature, especially to Ben Sira, even without explicitly referring to or quoting this text.32 Scripture is not equated with the Law (cf. Jas 2:8), and yet Scripture is considered to be authoritative. But in what way does Scripture function as authority? Which literary strategies are employed in order to develop an authority for the arguments employed by referring to scriptural texts, traditions, characters or stories?

3.  The Authority of »Scripture«: The Notion, Function, and Argumentative Role of γραφή The Letter of James contains a number of allusions to Jewish writings and traditions, particularly to wisdom tradition, which are ingrained in the language and thinking of the author and constitute the basic framework of the epistolary argumentation. However, the authority of Jewish texts or of collections of Jewish writings (e. g., the authority of Scripture or the Scriptures) is only referred to in a few select passages and the »use« of this scriptural authority reveals a very specific notion of the relationship between the status of Scripture and the status of the wisdom teacher, who acts as the authoritative author of the Letter of James. In Jas 2:8 the text speaks of the »royal law according to Scripture« (νόμον βασιλικὸν κατὰ τὴν γραφήν, Jas 2:8)33 as a norm34 and cites from Lev 19:18LXX (ἀγαπήσεις τὸν πλησίον σου ὡς σεαυτόν). The author does not use the entire text of Leviticus verbatim, but »[i]nstead, using the approach of recitation composition, he composes a new text with a persuasive force for his 32  Cf. Richard Bauckham, »The Wisdom of James and the Wisdom of Jesus,« in The Catholic Epistles, ed. Schlosser (n. 2), 75–92. 33  The Greek text, however, does not specify whether κατὰ τὴν γραφήν refers to τελεῖν (»to fulfil according to the Scripture«) or to νόμον βασιλικόν (»the royal law according to the Scripture«): cf. Metzner, Brief des Jakobus (n. 3), 128. It seems to me that this is a reference to the Jesus tradition in Matt 22:34–40 and that the latter understanding is therefore more likely. 34  Κατά + accusative is not an introductory formula, but indicates a norm or a reason or both: cf. Walter Bauer, Kurt Aland, Barbara Aland, ed., Griechisch-​Deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der frühchristlichen Literatur (6th edition; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), 826–827.

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community.«35 Moreover, the line of argumentation alludes to Matt 22:39 and the controversy story where Jesus, in a discussion with the Pharisees, emphasizes the »first and highest commandments« – the love of God and of one’s neighbour. For ἐν ταύταις ταῖς δυσὶν ἐντολαῖς ὅλος ὁ νόμος κρέμαται καὶ οἱ προφῆται (Matt 22:40). In the Letter of James, however, it is not merely ἐντολή but νόμος, the norm of the law, that the focus is on. In Jas 2:1–13 the author refers only to the commandment to love one’s neighbor – not in order to attribute a higher value to this aspect over against the love of God, but in order to substantiate his own line of argumentation. This selected aspect of the double commandment is marked as the νόμος βασιλικός,36 and the adherence to this law is counted as righteous action (καλῶς ποιεῖτε, Jas 2:8). A violation of the law, however, is equated with sin and perpetration (Jas 2:9) for the author regards the law as an entity, and – in accordance with the Matthean Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount – considers the violation of a single commandment as equivalent to the violation of the entire law (Jas 2:10; cf. Matt 5:17–19). According to James, the law is »not simply a collection of commandments; rather, it reflects the will of the lawgiver (a point that James will not make entirely clear until 4:11–12).«37 This is illustrated – again in analogy to the Sermon on the Mount – by referring to examples from the Ten Commandments: ὁ γὰρ εἰπών· μὴ μοιχεύσῃς, εἶπεν καί· μὴ φονεύσῃς· εἰ δὲ οὐ μοιχεύεις, φονεύεις δέ, γέγονας παραβάτης νόμου (Jas 2:11; cf. Luke 18:20).38 The personification of the νόμος in this passage, which is reflected in the twice repeated formula of the »speaking« of the commandments, obscures the letter’s notion of God as the lawgiver. Yet, against the Matthean Jesus’s antithetical interpretation 35  Patrick J. Hartin, »James and the Jesus Tradition. Some Theological Reflections and Implications,« in The Catholic Epistles and Apostolic Tradition, ed. Niebuhr and Wall (n. 4), 55–70, 60; cf. Wesley H. Wachob, The Voice of Jesus in the Social Rhetoric of James (SNTSMS 106; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 120: »Technically speaking, then, James 2:8 is an ›abbreviation‹ […] of Leviticus 19:18; and the Jamesian performance of the love-​commandment is properly a rhetorical ›recitation‹ […] of an ancient authority.« Cf. also Luke T. Johnson, »The Use of Leviticus 19 in the Letter of James,« JBL 101/3 (1982), 391–401. 36  »Das Attribut βασιλικός ›königlich‹ […] kann Verschiedenes bedeuten. Es kann Herkunft (›von königlicher Herkunft‹), Stellung (›von königlicher Art, Würde, Rang‹) oder Ziel (›zum König machen‹) bezeichnen. Dann wäre das Gesetz königlich, weil es von dem Gott-​König stammt, weil es königlichen Rang hat oder weil es die Täter des Gesetzes zum ›König‹ macht. Denkbar ist auch, dass das Gesetz in Verbindung mit dem Königreich Gottes steht (2,5), und zwar in dem Sinn, dass der Herr der βασιλεία sein Gesetz den Menschen gegeben hat, damit sie Anteil an der Basileia erhalten, wenn sie es erfüllen. Oder Jakobus möchte sagen, dass das Gesetz frei macht bzw. frei (königlich) handeln lässt […], weil dem König höchste Freiheit zukommt […] Eventuell bezeichnet βασιλικός aber nur so viel wie ›maßgeblich, hauptsächlich‹ oder ›majestätisch, überragend, erhaben‹. Dann ist an die Vorrangstellung des Gesetzes gedacht. Was wirklich gemeint ist, muss offen bleiben« (Metzner, Brief des Jakobus [n. 3], 127–128). 37  Luke T. Johnson, The Letter of James: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 37A; New York: Doubleday 1995), 236. 38  Cf. Popkes, Brief des Jakobus (n. 6), 172; idem, »James and Scripture: An Exercise in Intertextuality,« NTS 45 (1999), 213–229, here 222–224.

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of the law, the Letter of James stresses its lasting validity with a view to the final judgement, a judgement without mercy for the perpetrator (Jas 2:13). The »law« is thus considered to be authoritative and yet, the term used – after implicitly referring to Matt 22 and Jesus’s »use« of Scripture as selecting from the multitude of commandments the »first and highest« – is the »law of freedom« or the »law that gives freedom« (νόμος ἐλευθερίας, Jas 2:12; cf. Jas 1:25).39 Scripture is, therefore, not – as might have been presumed for an author so deeply engrained within Jewish tradition and Jewish wisdom – equated with the Mosaic Law, but with the »royal law« or the »law of freedom.« The author alludes to Jesus tradition, where the entire law is considered to be contained in this twofold commandment of the love of God and one’s neighbour, and uses »law« in analogy to the Jesus of the Matthean controversy story in highlighting specific aspects of the law within the argumentation of Jas 2:1–13 while at the same time emphasizing the importance of respecting each single commandment of the law, for it was all given by one νομοθέτης (Jas 4:12). In referring to Jesus’s selection of the twofold »first and highest commandments« the author stresses that the »law« is considered as an entity of great authority that is not annulled through the Jesus events, but constitutes an authority that allows for a rhetorical use and an interpretation within the Jesus tradition or early Christian tradition.40 Alongside this focus on the content of Scripture, the author refers to individual passages from Scripture using an introductory formula. In Jas 2:23 the argumentation concerning the importance of the interplay of faith and works is substantiated by a reference to Gen 15:6: καὶ ἐπληρώθη ἡ γραφὴ ἡ λέγουσα· ἐπίστευσεν δὲ Ἀβραὰμ τῷ θεῷ, καὶ ἐλογίσθη αὐτῷ εἰς δικαιοσύνην. The epistolary argumentation uses an explicit reference to the fulfilment of Scripture, citing the Septuagint verbatim under the perspective »of finding a prophecy/fulfilment pattern within the Torah itself,« for he »states that the γραφή declaring Abraham righteous in Gen 15:6 was fulfilled by the deed that Abraham performed by offering his son Isaac.«41 Hence the fulfilment of Scripture is enacted within Scripture, 39 For a discussion of the term νόμος in the Letter of James and references to scholarly literature cf. Luther, Sprachethik (n. 1), 441–453. 40  Cf. Hartin, »James and the Jesus Tradition« (n. 35), 60–61: »This passage shows well James’ rhetorical usage of, on the one hand, the sayings of Jesus as seen in Matthew’s tradition of the Sermon, and on the other hand the saying found in Leviticus 19:18c. Understood within this context of a rhetorical culture, James’ intent was to perform these sayings with a freedom that enabled him to express them in new ways. He aimed at persuading his hearers how to act […]. The biblical Torah continued to function for James’ community.« Cf. also Wachob, The Voice of Jesus (n. 35), 201. 41 Johnson, The Letter of James (n. 37), 243. Cf. also ibid., 247–248: »James’ own understanding of genuine (›perfect‹) faith is revealed in the examples he cites from Torah. Both Abraham and Rahab had faith that was demonstrated by their actions. […] For James, the significance of Abraham begins and ends with his faith. The issue is only how that faith is expressed and brought to its fulfillment. And this is why James makes such an interesting use of the citation of Gen 15:6. He says that this text was itself ›fulfilled‹ by the later text of Genesis

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an argument employed as proof of the reliability and trustworthiness of Scripture and hence of its authority and relevance in application to the present. To this LXX quote the author adds καὶ φίλος θεοῦ ἐκλήθη (Jas 2:23), a phrase that is employed just like another citation from Scripture, but does neither find an equivalent in the MT nor in the LXX, but repeatedly in early Jewish literature.42 The author uses an »extracanonical« tradition with the same authoritative force within his argumentation as he uses the quote from Genesis in the first part of the verse. Scriptural tradition is used in an authoritative function in this passage in the argumentative context of what might have been a debated topic amongst the addressees who possibly knew the Pauline argumentation or at least the early Christian discourse on the topic as well as the author did. This argumentation concerning a topic highly debated in early Christianity, certainly in Pauline circles and in the Pauline tradition, is strategically bolstered up by a reference to the authority of Scripture and to a central authoritative figure of the Jewish tradition. Later on in his argument, the author quotes scriptural tradition in Jas 4:5–6 (ἡ γραφὴ λέγει, Jas 4:5; διὸ λέγει, Jas 4:6).43 However, while v. 6 quotes Prov 3:34 according to the LXX, the quote in Jas 4:5 seems to be ascribed to Scripture, but once again cannot be identified as part of the canonical writings of the Septuagint. In yet a further instance, the author of the Letter of James seems to use the formula of the Scripture »speaking,« but a clear division between the alleged »quote« and the surrounding text seems difficult. The interpretation is further complicated by various grammatical and lexical ambiguities in the Greek text.44 Different solutions have been proposed in the exegetical literature and with a view to the authoritative use of Scripture. Two options seem particularly interesting: (a) V. 5 might not be a citation at all, but rather a reference to the Scripture as a whole – for example, in taking the verse as two separate rhetorical questions, not an introduction to a scriptural citation.45 This interpretation focuses on the topic of the argumentation, the validity and trustworthiness of Scripture, and avoids the assumption of a hypothetical unidentified source for the quotation. (b) If the text is read as a quote, as the introductory formula may suggest, it might either be taken from an unknown or lost (Jewish or Christian) source or formulated from memory according to a (Jewish or Christian) source known 22, just as the ›faith‹ of Abraham in response to God’s call in Genesis 12 and 15 was brought to its fullest expression in Abraham’s obedient offering of his son.« 42  Cf. Burchard, Jakobusbrief (n. 18), 129–130; Johnson, Letter of James (n. 37), 243–244. 43  For an overview over different solutions to this crux interpretum cf. Burchard, Jakobusbrief (n. 18), 171–174. 44 Cf. Johnson, Letter of James (n. 37), 267 and 280; Metzner, Brief des Jakobus (n. 3), 223–227. 45   Cf., e. g., Johnson, Letter of James (n. 37), who translates: »Or do you suppose that the Scripture speaks in vain? Does the spirit which he made to dwell in us crave enviously?« (267; cf. also ibid., 280).

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to the author.46 Or the author may have presented it as Scripture, knowing that it actually is not.47 Untraceable »quotes« are a well-​known phenomenon in early Christianity.48 This solution would indicate a free interaction with tradition, which the author could use and possibly reformulate according to his needs. Or it might even be pondered whether the latter »use« of Scripture would indicate a rather free handling of authority, namely of texts that had not yet been formalized and canonized, so that authority and normativity could be ascribed to any tradition the author considered authoritative or normative.49 In Jas 4:6b, on the other hand, the author actually quotes Prov 3:34, but in a slight variation from the Septuagint, using ὁ θεός instead of κύριος.50 The reference to Scripture functions in this instance as a rationale for the preceding line of argumentation in v. 6a (διὸ λέγει) and is used in a normative capacity. The deep rootedness in Jewish Scripture becomes especially apparent in, for example, Jas 5:4–5, where the author includes quotes from Scripture into his own argumentation: 4. ἰδοὺ ὁ μισθὸς τῶν ἐργατῶν τῶν ἀμησάντων τὰς χώρας ὑμῶν ὁ ἀπεστερημένος ἀφ᾽ ὑμῶν κράζει, καὶ αἱ βοαὶ τῶν θερισάντων εἰς τὰ ὦτα κυρίου σαβαὼθ (Isa 5:9) εἰσεληλύθασιν. 5. ἐτρυφήσατε ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς καὶ ἐσπαταλήσατε, ἐθρέψατε τὰς καρδίας ὑμῶν ἐν ἡμέρᾳ σφαγῆς (Jer 12:3). These literary allusions to the Septuagint become part of the author’s argumentation, but at the same time his words echo words from Scripture and hence his words of rebuke and admonition assume an authority equal to the authority of Scripture. This is very closely related to the author’s claim to authoritative teaching in analogy to Jewish wisdom teachers.51 A similar »use« of Scripture can be found in Jas 5:20, where the argumentation runs as follows: γινωσκέτω ὅτι ὁ ἐπιστρέψας ἁμαρτωλὸν ἐκ πλάνης ὁδοῦ αὐτοῦ σώσει ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἐκ θανάτου καὶ καλύψει πλῆθος ἁμαρτιῶν (Prov 10:12). This allusion to Proverbs does not correspond with the LXX version, but with the early Christian paraenetic version also found in 1 Peter 4:8, 1 Clem. 49.5, and 2 Clem. 16.4 and was later considered a dominical saying.52 Depending on how this strategy for the argument is interpreted, the author either once again merely 46  Cf., e. g., Dibelius, Der Brief des Jakobus (n. 24), 264–269; cf. also Burchard, Jakobusbrief (n. 18), 171–172. 47 Cf., e. g., Douglas J. Moo, The Letter of James (PNTC; Grand Rapids et al.: Eerdmans, 2000), 190–191. 48  Burchard, Jakobusbrief (n. 18), 172, refers, e. g., to Matt 2:23; John 7:38; 1 Cor 2:9; 9:10; 2 Cor 4:6; Eph 5:14; 1 Tim 5:18; etc. 49  Cf. Dibelius, Der Brief des Jakobus (n. 24), 266: »um irgend einen προφητικὸς λόγος, ein apokryphes als heilig geltendes Buch wird es sich auch hier handeln.« 50  In analogy to 1 Peter 5:5 and 1 Clem. 30:2, cf. Dibelius, Der Brief des Jakobus (n. 24), 268. 51  Cf. Hubert Frankemölle, Der Brief des Jakobus, 2 vols. (ÖTK 17; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1994), 2.80–88, who even claims a literary dependency of Jas on Proverbs and Ben Sira (cf. here, 85–86). 52  Cf. Dibelius, Der Brief des Jakobus (n. 24), 307, with reference, e. g., to Clement of Alexandria, Paed. 3.12.91,3.

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employs words from Jewish writings, here Proverbs, in order to substantiate his argumentation, or he presupposes the original context in order to ensure the full effectiveness of this literal reference. It is interesting to note that the last three words of the verse do not specify who could function as subject to the third person singular verb καλύψει. It might refer to the sinner53 or to the one turning him back or – as in the context of Proverbs – to brotherly love. The context in the Masoretic text reads: »Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs«. In 1 Peter 4:8, where the same passage is alluded to, we find: πρὸ πάντων τὴν εἰς ἑαυτοὺς ἀγάπην ἐκτενῆ ἔχοντες, ὅτι ἀγάπη καλύπτει πλῆθος ἁμαρτιῶν.54 The subject is ἀγάπη, brotherly love, and Jas 5:20 also seems to identify, or even personify this brotherly love in the person who calls his neighbour back from sin.55 On the grammatical level the meaning of the verse is left ambiguous; the most obvious interpretation being that the sinner will be forgiven;56 but ancient Jewish parallels suggest that the one who turns a sinner back to repentance is also deserving of forgiveness.57 Hence it seems permissible to apply the forgiveness to both, to the sinner and to him who turns the sinner back.58 And whose soul is it that is being saved? The sinner’s soul or the soul of the person who turns the sinner back or possibly both?59 As the text in these two verses does not specify this clearly either, both options are possible – which means, that Jas 5:20 may actually be implying that whoever reprimands a sinner and brings him back to the  Cf. Metzner, Brief des Jakobus (n. 3), 314: »Mit ›Sünder‹ (ἁμαρτωλός noch in 4,8) meint Jakobus hier nicht generell alle Christen, die noch sündigen und einander ihre Sünden bekennen (5,16), sondern die zwischen Gott und der Welt Gespaltenen, die sich in der Gesinnung und im Tun als Feinde Gottes erweisen (4,4.8 δίψυχοι = ἁμαρτωλοί).« The sinner is someone, who is tempted, is unstable and double-​minded and is led astray by desires, cf. Jas 1:8, 14–15; cf. also Sir 2:12. 54 Cf. also 1 Clem. 49:5; 2 Clem. 16:4; cf. for a discussion Metzner, Brief des Jakobus (n. 3), 318. 55 Cf. Luther, Sprachethik (n. 1), 400–401; Metzner, Brief des Jakobus (n. 3), 318. 56 Cf., e. g., Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 201; Ralph P. Martin, James (WBC 48; Waco: Word, 1988), 220; Konradt, Christliche Existenz (n. 21), 57; Metzner, Brief des Jakobus (n. 3), 319. 57   Cf., e. g., Dibelius, Der Brief des Jakobus (n. 24), 307–308 with reference to Ez 3:18–21; Sir 3:30; Tob 4:10. 58  Cf., e. g., Franz Muẞner, Der Jakobusbrief (5th edition; HThKNT 13; Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1987), 233; Hubert Frankemölle, Der Brief des Jakobus (n. 51), 2.735; Alois Schenk-​ Ziegler, Correctio fraterna im Neuen Testament. Die »brüderliche Zurechtweisung« in biblischen, frühjüdischen und hellenistischen Schriften (FzB 84; Würzburg: Echter, 1997), 418. 59  Cf., e. g., Konradt, Christliche Existenz (n. 21), 56–57; Popkes, Brief des Jakobus (n. 6), 355–356; Burchard, Jakobusbrief (n. 18), 216; Craig L. Blomberg and Mariam J. Kamell, James (ZECNT; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), 249, who plead for the first option; the second option is preferred by, e. g., Adolf Schlatter, Der Brief des Jakobus (Stuttgart: Calwer, 3 1985), 289–290; Ben Witherington III, Letters and Homilies for Jewish Christians: A Socio-​Rhetorical Commentary on Hebrews, James and Jude (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2007), 548–549; the third option is supported tentatively by, e. g., Dibelius, Der Brief des Jakobus (n. 24), 307. 53

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right path will not only cover his own and the sinner’s sins, but also his own and the sinner’s souls will be saved from eternal death in the final judgement. This implies an ethical demand to intervene in the lives of those who are erring from the right path60 in order that they are not found guilty in the final judgement and in order not to be found guilty of any omission oneself.61 This interpretation – which in my view is suggested by the text – presupposes a certain knowledge of Scripture as well as a definite notion of the authority of Scripture with a view to the eschatological salvation on the side of the addressees. Another important aspect of scriptural authority in the Letter of James is the recurring reference to well-​known characters from the Jewish writings. The author refers in different argumentative contexts to Abraham (Jas 2:20–24) and Rahab (Jas 2:25–26),62 a male and a female character that correspond to the situation addressed in the letter, since both are examples for the paradigm of righteousness through faith.63 In Jas 5, Job and the Prophets (Jas 5:10–11) are drawn on as well as Elijah (Jas 5:17). The author assumes that the reader or hearers of his text are familiar with these characters and their stories and can therefore – without further explication – extrapolate the ethical or theological value of their commendatory mention. There is no need to recount their stories or to reflect on their importance. The strategy behind this argumentation is based on the assumption that the mere reference to the names of these characters suffices to introduce them as authoritative models of behaviour.

4. Summary In conclusion, the author of the Letter of James uses a broad variety of traditions available to him, but he usually does not designate them as received tradition nor mark their origin – with the only exception of scriptural tradition, which is sometimes introduced with formulas or through clear references to narrative characters. Nevertheless tradition is received throughout the text within the epistolary argumentation in a normative and authoritative function to substantiate and to verify the argumentation, to provide examples and models, and to form  Cf. Blomberg and Kamell, James (n. 59), 241.  Although this is not very clear from the text in James, it is much clearer in Matthew (e. g., Matt 18), and as these two texts are closely connected, it may be assumed here too. 62  For the use of the characters of Abraham and Rahab in early Jewish and early Christian literature cf. Burchard, Jakobusbrief (n. 18), 125–126. 63 Cf. Johnson, Letter of James (n. 37), 245, 247–249; cf. ibid., 249: »the examples of Abraham and Rahab together then fit the overall argument of chapter two, which concerns at the general level the translation of faith into appropriate deeds, but which at the particular level concerns the way in which the poor are treated within the community. In the examples of Abraham and Rahab, who received all the needy, the community finds models for its own reception of the poor without discrimination and with effective and not simply verbal care.« 60 61

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the language and style of the argumentation. Yet, while referring to Scripture, it is always the authority of the author, a teacher in the early Jewish wisdom tradition, who defines which texts are to be considered authoritative, even texts that are not to be identified as Scripture today. Such texts might not have been counted among the authoritative texts of his time but are regarded as normative by the author and are employed within his argumentation in a way that renders them authoritative for the recipients. It is thus the anonymous author of the Letter of James, the author who assumes the authority of James, the brother of Jesus, who is the centre of authority and authoritative teaching in the Letter of James.

Marcion, the Writings of Israel, and the Origins of the »New Testament« Judith M. Lieu According to the conventional understanding Marcion rejected the »Writings of Israel« as Scripture and introduced or used in their place as authoritative his own collection of a Gospel and »Apostolikon« (the Pauline letter collection). On this basis »Marcionism« is often used as a shorthand for the continuing tendencies within the Christian church either to actively demote the »Old Testament« or in practice to ignore it, for example by omitting readings therefrom in worship services.1 In turn, while for some that label serves to condemn such tendencies, for others Marcion rightly articulated a problem and a solution that continues to deserve a hearing. The most-​cited representative of this position is Adolf von Harnack who in his ground-​breaking and still-​fundamental study of Marcion admitted the contextual necessity in the second century of the position the church took in rejecting this route, but argued that in his contemporary context »still to retain it [the Old Testament] as a canonical foundational text is the consequence of a religious and ecclesial paralysis«: … das AT im 2. Jahrhundert zu verwerfen, war ein Fehler, den die große Kirche mit Recht abgelehnt hat; es im 16. Jahrhundert beizubehalten, war ein Schicksal, dem sich die Reformation noch nicht zu entziehen vermochte; es aber im 19. Jahrhundert als kanonische Urkunde im Protestantismus noch zu konservieren, ist die Folge einer religiösen und kirchlichen Lähmung.2

A similar conclusion was reached by the British scholar E. C. Blackman, who helped disseminate von Harnack’s reconstruction in the English-​speaking world. While Blackman drew back from Harnack’s conclusion just cited and sought to retain the Old Testament as belonging »inseparably with the New Testament,« he found himself forced to give considerable credit to Marcion’s insights and impact: Marcion degraded the Old Testament because he did not interpret it in this way [as evidence of providential action by the creator]. But he degraded it for a good reason, viz., 1  In this case »Marcionism« is viewed as a threat within and not from outside of the church, a point on which the early heresiologists are more ambiguous. 2  Adolf von Harnack, Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott. Eine Monographie zur Geschichte der Grundlegung der katholischen Kirche, with Neue Studien zu Marcion (2nd rev. edition; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1924), 217.

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because he did not find in it testimony to a redeeming God. This guiding principle of his may be commended, even while his general attitude to the Old Testament is rejected.3

This paper will challenge any such over-​simplistic reading of Marcion, particularly if it is supposed that what troubled Marcion was precisely what many modern or post-​modern readers find problematic about the deity portrayed in the Old Testament – most notably supposedly harsh acts of judgement or narrow acts of violence against any who stood in the way of the success of his chosen people.4 However, four related or consequential questions provoked by the general conventional account need to be identified. First, was the introduction of an alternative authoritative collection the direct consequence of the rejection of the old, and was the new therefore deemed to have the same status and authority as the old had hitherto held for the early Jesus movement? In this case Marcion was replacing one authoritative corpus with another. Some might go so far as to argue that there was a conscious antithetical parallel between Law + Prophets and Gospel + Apostolikon. Further, did Marcion not only adopt the term »Old Testament« for the set of writings he rejected, but also introduce that of »New Testament« for those he put in their place? That this was so was argued by Wolfram Kinzig in a significant article which took as its starting point the long-​debated question as to the origins of the designation »testament« (διαθήκη), which in its normal usage was not applied as a book title.5 Such a conclusion presupposes, first, that the textual or literary form and the unitary character of his authoritative writings were important for Marcion, and, second, that the nomenclature that he introduced had widespread influence, becoming normative, even if the church did not accept his canon.6 Yet there is a broader question about how far Marcion was an innovator and how fundamental his influence was on the long-​term development of the church C. Blackman, Marcion and his Influence (London: SPCK, 1948), 124.  See Eric Osborn’s judgement on the consequences of Tertullian’s absorption into the picture of God of those elements Marcion found unacceptable: »Yet Marcion wins on the interval between creation and cross because Tertullian’s jealous God who smites and heals, kills and makes alive, humbles and exalts and creates evil and makes peace does not reflect the love of the cross which is, for Tertullian, the world’s sole hope. […] No one will deny that Tertullian’s validation of the Old Testament has been of influence in Christian thought, and few will deny its harmful effects in promoting the fear of God and the mutual destruction of humans« (Eric Osborn, Tertullian, First Theologian of the West [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997]), 102. 5 Wolfram Kinzig, »Καινὴ διαθήκη: The Title of the New Testament in the Second and Third Centuries,« JTS 45 (1994), 519–544. »Testament« is used of writings in the form of a final deathbed deposition as in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, but this in no way applies to the »New Testament.« See further below. 6  Kinzig speculates that this would have been facilitated if Marcion’s »canon« had been formatted in a codex, a suggestion others have also made (Kinzig, »The Title of the New Testament« [n. 5], 543). 3 Edwin 4

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and her Scriptures. Was Marcion the first to conceive of a collection of authoritative writings distinctive to believers in Christ, in some way modelled on those they had received – as distinct from earlier less formalized moves towards citing Christian writings as »scripture« or in parallel with quotations from the Jewish Scriptures? On this reading the eventual New Testament canon was stimulated by and a conscious response to that introduced by Marcion: »For the explanation of that particular emergent [i. e., the New Testament consisting of Gospel plus Apostle] we must turn to the Christian Scripture which Marcion set up in place of what we have come to know as the Old Testament.«7 That response was made through expansion of Marcion’s offering, not through rejection and replacement: thus the inclusion of four Gospels instead of one, of an alternative account of the relationships between the leaders of early church (Acts), and even of a set of letters attributed to the »pillars« alongside those of Paul, ultimately can be traced back to the impact of Marcion.8 The alternative to this would be to presuppose that the »proto-​orthodox« church had already begun to move in this direction, and that Marcion’s specific response was to treat the emergent new corpus as sufficient and as independent of the »Old Testament« rather than as in some way continuous with it. Again, some have attempted a more nuanced mediating position, namely that Marcion merely accelerated a process that was already in train, or that he acted as a catalyst for crystallizing the formative elements that were already established. Marcion has also been credited with being responsible, even if not directly, for more far-​reaching developments within the early church. On this account, whereas before him there was a variety of attitudes to the Jewish Scriptures, some of which moved in a distinctly negative direction, such as the Letter of Barnabas, the response to him ensured that the church would retain them as part of its own Scriptures. The consequence of this decision, however, was the adoption a figurative, allegorical, and/or Christological reading of the Old Testament so that it spoke directly and exclusively to the message of the New Testament, of the church, and of continuing Christian experience. A further, more baleful, consequence of this strategy was the development of exegesis and polemic that actively blamed the Jews for failing to understand properly the true meaning of their (or often »our«) Scriptures, namely for failing to understand their prophetic fulfilment in Christ or the spiritual intention of its laws or more problematic 7  John Knox, Marcion and the New Testament: An Essay in the Early History of the Canon (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1941), 30–31; cf. p. 165, »the impulse toward a distinctively Christian canon was given largely by Marcion; that the organization of the new canon followed the general pattern of the Marcionite Scriptures with its twofold organization as ›Gospel and Apostle‹; that the method of the anti-​Marcionite churches was in general to accept Marcion’s Scriptures and to enlarge them …« 8  See further Judith M. Lieu, »Marcion and the Canonical Paul,« in Receptions of Paul in Early Christianity, ed. Simon Butticaz and Andreas Dettwiler (BZNW 234; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2018), 779–797.

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narratives. The association of the Jews with a mistaken literal understanding fused naturally with their categorization in various contexts as »fleshly« in contrast to the »spiritual« identity of the Christians. On this account Christian anti-​ Jewish polemic is inextricably rooted in the defence against Marcion, regardless of his own attitude to the Jews.9 These further issues serve to emphasize the wide historical and theological ramifications of the initial somewhat blander definition of Marcion’s activity. They also indicate the complexity of contextualizing that bald definition within the dynamics of the second century, particularly within a scholarly framework where other binaries, not least »orthodoxy versus heresy,« together with univocal linear models of early Christian development, have largely given way to recognition of a messier diversity with considerable local, and often untraceable, variation.

1.  Reconstructing Marcion and His Scriptural Principles All our evidence for Marcion stems from accounts by the heresiologists or from stereotyped references in broader exegetical settings. These are, inevitably but importantly, uniformly hostile, and there are, as yet, no alternative sources by which to judge them. Nonetheless, they can be investigated critically, using the criteria of plausibility in context, of distinctiveness, and of explanatory potential, alongside analysis of the perspectival bias of each of the sources, and of the growth and embellishment of the tradition.10 The picture of Marcion and his thought that emerges from these sources develops and changes in focus already between the earliest accounts. This does not mean that we should dismiss all but the earliest, Justin Martyr and Irenaeus; Tertullian, at the beginning of the third century, probably had access to Marcionite teachings and sources not available to his predecessors, and hence he often provides the starting point for scholarly accounts. On the other hand, it must not be assumed that Tertullian, even when he purportedly cites Marcion or his followers, uses language and terminology with the same meaning or implications as did they; one effect of his forceful rhetoric and love of antithesis – a pattern of thought also attributed to Marcion – is that this necessary distinction is often ignored.  9  So, influentially, David P. Efroymson, »The Patristic Connection,« in Anti-​Semitism and the Foundations of Christianity, ed. Alan T. Davies (New York: Paulist, 1979), 98–117; Efroymson argued that it is in the context of anti-​Marcionite polemic that anti-​Jewish comments become most virulent. See also Stephen G. Wilson, Related Strangers: Jews and Christians 70–170 C. E. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 207–221. 10  On the problem of reconstructing Marcion’s thought from the polemical accounts, and an attempt to do so within a second century context, see Judith M. Lieu, Marcion and the Making of a Heretic: God and Scripture in the Second Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

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The earliest references to Marcion, in Justin Martyr’s near contemporary Apology (26.5; 58.1–2), make no reference to his use of Scripture, although some have argued that behind Justin’s polemical defence of a Christian reading of the Scriptures in the Dialogue with Trypho may lie an anti-​Marcionite polemic, perhaps drawn from his lost »Work against all the schools/ heresies that have come into being« (Apol. 26.8).11 Even in Irenaeus, Marcion’s treatment of the Scriptures is implicit more than explicit, and is embedded within more pervasive concerns, namely in what Irenaeus sees as a shared inability by all heretics to understand the reasons for each »testament« and for the difference between them, and hence to recognize behind them one and the same God. (Haer. 3.12.12–13). However, rather than attempt to trace a developing summary account of his attitude to the Jewish Scriptures, a better approach is to start with a broad sketch of the main principles of Marcion’s thought in so far as it may be reconstructed from the earliest polemics, and to locate his treatment of those Scriptures within this framework. Consistently, and already from Justin and Irenaeus, it is fundamental that Marcion distinguished between the supreme God or Father, who sent his son, and the Creator God or Demiurge. Although not explicit in Justin or Irenaeus it seems likely that Marcion also described the unknown Father as good, but the Creator as »just,« again echoing Greek but also Jewish tendencies to set these qualities in a tensive relationship with each other. However, particularly characteristic of Marcion was that the Demiurge or Just God could be further characterized by inconsistency, contradictory behaviour and instructions, love of war, envy, self-​aggrandizement, ignorance … Not himself evil as such, this deity was undoubtedly the source of evil and of human failure.12 It is this that his opponents describe as slandering or blaspheming the God, who, from Irenaeus on, is identified as »the one proclaimed as God by the law and prophets,« that is, not merely the Creator but the God of the Scriptures. In this identification they were justified, for all the sources concur that the examples of such behaviour given by Marcion were taken consistently and exclusively from the Scriptures: for example, God’s ignorance of the whereabouts of Adam or of Cain; the command to circumambulate Jericho for eight days in contradiction of the rule to obey the Sabbath; God’s regret at having created humankind and his inability to have made them able to resist evil, while nevertheless punishing  So Pierre Prigent, Justin et l’Ancien Testament (EBib; Paris: Gabalda, 1964). Haer. 1.27.2: »Marcion of Pontus succeeded him [Cerdo], and developed his teaching, advancing the most daring blasphemy against him who is proclaimed as God by the law and the prophets, declaring him to be the author of evils, to take delight in war, to be infirm of purpose, and even self-​contradictory. But Jesus being derived from that father who is above the God that made the world, and coming into Judæa in the times of Pontius Pilate the governor, who was the procurator of Tiberius Cæsar, was manifested in the form of a man to those who were in Judæa, abolishing the prophets and the law, and all the works of that God who made the world, whom also he calls Cosmocrator.« 11

12 Irenaeus,

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them through the flood; the wanton violence of the bears who attacked children at Elisha’s behest (Tertullian, Marc. 2.21–27; 4.23.4–8).13 Yet for Marcion this is not to be explained as a misrepresentation or misunderstanding on the part of the Jews or of the authors of the Scriptures of the true nature of God. The Scriptures do represent the intention and self-​perception of the God they describe: the claim, »I am God and there is no other« (Isa 45:22) is the ultimate manifestation of hubristic ignorance. Just as the Demiurge is unaware of the existence of the Father, so too there is no connection or association of any kind between them. What is striking is that none of the sources until much later,14 suggest that Marcion had any interest in the origins of the Demiurge, in any pre-​cosmic »fall« or in cosmology; the reinterpretations of the early chapters of Genesis familiar from other gnostic systems appear completely absent from his thought. Yet more important than the exposure of the character of the Demiurge was the counter-​narrative of Jesus, who was sent by the Good God; according to Tertullian »in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Christ Jesus deigned to descend from heaven, a spirit of salvation« (Marc. 1.19.2).15 This narrative, too, was textually founded: there is widespread consensus that this statement – even if here parodied by Tertullian – formed the opening of Marcion’s Gospel. For his ecclesial opponents this apparent elision of Luke 3:1 and 4:31 was just one of many examples (including the absence of any birth accounts) that this Gospel was a corrupted and decimated version of Luke. From Irenaeus on it is assumed that a primary goal of Marcion’s purported mutilation of Luke was the removal of any demonstrable connection between Jesus and the »builder of this universe,« namely the God of the law and the prophets (Haer. 1.27.2).16 However, of equal if not greater importance was the demonstration that the God Jesus represented and proclaimed was »good,« thus reinforcing the total lack of any compatibility with the Demiurge. A number of sources cite Jesus’s rejection of the epithet »good,« ascribing it to God alone (cf. Luke 18:19; Tertullian, Marc. 4.36.3; Epiphanius, Pan. 42.11.17).17 Marcion was not the only one to seize upon this passage but for his opponents it is embedded within a strategy that was distinctive to him: a common accusation is that Marcion did not simply argue for the goodness of the God revealed by Jesus Christ but set that in deliberate opposition to the Creator God. A number of sources present Jesus’s twin parable of old and new garment and wineskins, and that of the good and bad fruit-​bearing trees as foundational for Marcion’s understanding of him (cf. Luke 5:36–38; 13  Marcion does not appear to have described the Creator as evil in direct opposition to the good God, although later followers may have done so. 14  See Lieu, Marcion (n. 10), 176–178, on Eznik of Kolb who does have a cosmogonic myth in his account of Marcion. 15  Cf. Irenaeus, Haer. 1.27.2 in n. 12 above. 16  Justin Martyr gives no indication that he was aware of Marcion’s use of a Gospel or indeed of Paul, who is curiously absent, at least visibly so, from Justin. 17  See Lieu, Marcion (n. 10), 207–208.

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6:43–44).18 However, it would appear that this opposition acquired a much more structural dimension in the way that Marcion’s followers presented their case. Origen describes heretics, often assumed to be followers of Marcion, as: collecting phrases whenever they find in the writings of the old covenant [scripturis veteris testamenti] a story concerning the penalties of the flood and of those who are described as killed in it [etc.] … But from the new testament they gather phrases of compassion or piety, by which the disciples were instructed by the savior and in which he apparently declared there is no-​one good except the one father God (Princ. 2.5.1).19

For Tertullian this strategy was fundamental to Marcion’s own system and method of operating, with far-​reaching theological consequences: We summon every opinion and every construction of the impious and sacrilegious Marcion against that gospel of his, which he made his own by emendation. And in order to inject credence he produced a certain commentary for it, a work from the oppositions of contradictions named Antithesis and directed to the separation of law and gospel, by which then distinguishing two gods, one of each instrumentum or, as is more commonly said, testamentum, so as from this to support a gospel to be believed according to antithesis (Marc. 4.1.1).

The implication is that this »work,« the »Antitheses,« was a literary document (cf. Marc. 1.19.4), and much effort has gone into reconstructing its contents and determining its status in relation to Marcion’s Gospel and Apostolikon: if it was included in his authoritative texts – for which there is little evidence outside Tertullian’s ambiguous account – the model of a canonical core expanded by the church would break down.20 For present purposes it is important that both Origen and Tertullian understand the whole exercise undertaken by Marcion and his followers as a literary, textual one. Understood schematically in this way, it might not seem obvious what role was needed for Paul in Marcion’s system. Yet already Irenaeus assumes that Marcion treated Paul’s letters on the same principles as he had the Gospel of Luke, »removing what was said explicitly by the apostle about that God who made the world …« (Haer. 1.27.2). The implications of this charge only become evident in the context of what he later says about those, no doubt including Marcion, who thought that »Paul alone knew the truth, through the mystery revealed to him« (Haer. 3.13.1), and more particularly in that of Tertullian’s fundamental claim that Marcionite apologetic began with an appeal to Paul who had to defend the truth of the Gospel even against Peter and the other apostles (Marc. 1.20; cf. Gal 2:11–14). Tertullian’s subsequent engagement with Marcion’s account of Paul and  Tertullian, Marc. 2.24.3; 3.15.5; 4.11.9–11; Epiphanius, Pan. 42.2.  The counter-​examples that Origen gives are taken from Matthew, not Luke. 20  On the »antitheses« see Lieu, Marcion (n. 10), 272–289, where it is argued that their original scope may have been relatively restricted but prompted growth in continuing polemic and apologetic. 18 19

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version of his letters in Book Five presupposes an extended apologetic narrative that presented Paul as the one to whom »the Gospel of truth« was revealed from the unknown Father (Gal 1:11–12) and who had to defend it against persistent attempts to »pervert« it (Gal 1:6–9); in this he was opposed by false apostles (Gal 2:4; 2 Cor 11:13), whom Marcion identified with the »pillar apostles« (Gal 2:9, 14); behind and through them and all the opposition Paul faced, ultimately it was the Demiurge or »ruler of this age« who was at work (2 Cor 4:4).21 Again, this is evidently a textually-​produced Paul, whose story is entirely drawn from the letters, apparently read as a single literary and narrative body; as such it would have served as a quasi-​foundational myth, leading to, or supporting, Marcion’s conviction that the corruption of Paul’s original, heavenly-​revealed, Gospel of truth had determined the shape and history of the church ever since, a church that owed its identity and character to those »pillar apostles.« It was this narrative of loss – again not an unusual motif in this period – which compelled his own activity of re-​claiming and re-​proclaiming the true Gospel: according to Tertullian, his followers claimed that »he was not introducing a new rule but recovering one that had been corrupted« (Marc. 1.20.1). For Tertullian this was by implication the rationale for Marcion’s editing – in Tertullian’s eyes »corrupting« – of the Gospel he himself knew as Luke – although he never makes this entirely explicit. That Tertullian was right here, although often assumed, is far from certain: while he perceives the »Gospel« as a literary entity, it is not at all obvious that Marcion would have made the same assumption in the early second century.22 The matter becomes even more complex if indeed, as a number of scholars have argued, Marcion’s Gospel is an independent or original work and is not directly derivative from canonical Luke or from an earlier form of it.23

2.  Contextualizing Marcion’s Scriptural Practices Despite their apparently radical consequences, several elements in Marcion’s system are familiar in a second century context. For example, in finding the work of the Creator problematic for his status, and in using the epithet »Demiurge,« Marcion would have been reflecting the widespread concerns in platonizing writers of the second century. For them the relationship between the unknown and 21 See further Lieu, Marcion (n. 10), 244–246 and 417. Marcion appears to have extended the opposition from the Antioch/Galatian contexts to providing a thread running throughout Paul’s ministry and letters. 22  See Judith M. Lieu, »Marcion and the Corruption of Paul’s Gospel,« ZAC 21 (2017), 121–139. 23  So most vigorously, Matthias Klinghardt, Das älteste Evangelium und die Entstehung der kanonischen Evangelien, 2 vols. (Texte und Arbeiten zum neutestamentlichen Zeitalter 60.1–2; Tübingen: Francke, 2015).

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unchangeable God and the work and effects of »becoming« manifested in the created order and in human experience produced profound philosophical dilemmas, and a key interpretive lens was supplied by Plato’s references to the Demiurge as the agent of creation (Plato, Tim. 28–29). The issue was not strictly one of moral principle in relation to God as in more recent objections to the Old Testament, but was a philosophical one grounded in the nature of ultimate reality. Within such a framework, the biblical anthropomorphisms were bound to provoke criticism or challenge, and attempts to address these are already found in Alexandrian Judaism, in particular in Philo. Indeed a number of the examples attributed to Marcion, such as divine regret, or the morality of God’s instruction to the Israelites to despoil the Egyptian spoils, were also faced by Philo.24 On a number of occasions Philo also deals with the relationship between God’s goodness and mercy and his exercise of judgement (e. g., Abr. 24–25, 28; Plant. 20). Concerns such as these might have arisen in semi-​public contexts, either in apologetic or in school-​type discussions, and may have been raised by external observers or from within the community. Although the relationship with concerns within Hellenistic Judaism is uncertain, rabbinic Judaism also refers to those who questioned the relationship between justice and mercy in God’s dealings, and perhaps related this to the shadowy claims regarding »two powers in heaven.«25 Some of these same issues are found in gnostic accounts of the Demiurge, and are used, as in Marcion, as narrative evidence of his secondary and flawed status. Yet that they were the source of a much more widespread potential for concern is shown by the fact that Justin Martyr also assumes that the Lord who appears on earth in Gen 18:1–3 cannot be »the Maker of all,« who for Justin is the one supreme God: his own solution is a Christological reading of Old Testament theophanies (Dial. 56; cf. Apol. 63). So understood, Marcion belongs within the shared intellectual milieu of the early Empire. Within this setting, in Rome just as in Alexandria although against a different intellectual background, the possibilities of exchange and debate within the framework of open »schools« at different levels of sophistication easily subjected the authoritative Jewish and Christian Scriptures to the same sort of analysis and reinterpretation as the foundational texts of Greek thought, not least Homer.26 It is within this setting that any discussion of his contribution to the evolution of the authoritative Scriptures within the Church must be located. To do this is not to under-​estimate the radical character of Marcion’s conclusions. He went much further than any of his peers in driving a wedge between 24  Philo addresses a number of these in the Questions on Genesis; on the taking of spoils from Egypt (Tertullian, Marc. 2.20) see Philo, Mos. 1.25, and also Gen. Rab. 61.2. 25  For a detailed analysis of what is summarized here, see Lieu, Marcion (n. 10), 344–346. 26  On this setting for second century Christianity, see Winrich A. Löhr, »Das antike Christentum im zweiten Jahrhundert. Neue Perspektiven seiner Erforschung,« TLZ 127 (2002), 247–262.

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the ultimate God and the Demiurge, and in denying any commonality of being or of will between them; a corollary of this was his profound anti-​cosmic stance expressed in his rejection of procreation as well as in his quasi-​»docetic« understanding of the flesh of Jesus and destiny of believers. Most importantly here, he is also strikingly idiosyncratic in appealing exclusively to the Scriptures as his authorities – even Justin makes some attempt to bring Plato into the conversation, albeit as a derivative voice. It is this that has enabled the debate whether Marcion was primarily a philosopher, a biblical theologian, or a philologian/ reader of texts. It would be wrong to attempt to present these as incompatible alternatives, or to ask whether he acquired his philosophical mindset before or after encountering the biblical Scriptures. The heresiological sources generally present him as originating within the church, even if their definition of heresy simultaneously locates him as an outsider; particularly in the east the success of the movement is among those who claim to represent a Christian identity. The long history of anti-​Marcionite polemic, while often derivative and stereotyped, confirms that his movement continued to function as an option, in terms both of group identity and of exegetical possibility, within the church as broadly defined; its audience probably included both other Christians and new potential converts.

3.  Marcion and the Scriptures It is against this background that we can return to the issues raised at the beginning of this paper. Rather than concluding that Marcion simply excluded the Old Testament it is clear that it would continue to have an evidentiary role for Marcion as the Scriptures of the Demiurge. The quotation from Origen implies that Marcionite apologetic required the maintenance of examples of the Demiurge’s character, while the evidence that the list of antitheses continued to grow indicates that this was not simply a matter of the preservation of a static and aging collection of proof-​texts.27 This apparently was also still the case in fourth century Syria when Ephraem portrays his Marcionite opponents as mockingly citing Ps 136:15, »Pharaoh sank in the sea […] his mercies are for ever,« and as asking, »Where are those mercies? […] From where does evil come?« (Ephraem, Hymni.c.haer. 39). Moreover, the scriptural narrative of the Demiurge was also a presupposition of the soteriological narrative. A number of witnesses indicate that the story of the transfiguration was understood by Marcion or his followers as the scene of a negotiation and deal between Jesus as representative of the Father and Elijah and Moses as representatives of the Demiurge; although this 27  The anonymous fourth-​century Dialogue of Adamantius contains a much longer list of antitheses; see Harnack, Marcion (n. 2), 256*–313*, although that all his examples belong in the Antitheses at any stage of its evolution is far from certain.

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appears in more detail in Ephraem, Tertullian’s allusive comments may suggest that he had some awareness of it.28 Tertullian may also indicate that Marcion’s text of Luke 9:54 had the disciples urging Jesus to call down fire »as Elijah did,« a reading that is shared with a number of other witnesses (including A C D W).29 Such references would require some explanatory knowledge of the scriptural antecedents. What is unclear from these examples is whether such knowledge was a pre-​requisite mainly for apologetic and polemical purposes in relation to »proto-​orthodox« Christianity, or whether it would also be a core element in internal doctrine and teaching. In either case, Old Testament Scripture would have a contrastive legitimating function as a reliable account of the Demiurge and hence of the human predicament, and perhaps would also illustrate the errors that had been maintained by the church as heirs of the disciples who were still under the Demiurge’s sway. Yet it was not authoritative as a source of insight into the nature of the true God or of that God’s salvific activity and purposes.30 It is at this point that Tertullian accuses the Marcionites of »forming an alliance with Jewish error« (Marc. 3.6.1–2). On the one hand they do not regard as prophetic passages that Tertullian takes as such; on the other, they argue that those passages that clearly do anticipate a messiah to come in no way apply to (their) Christ, and therefore must point to a (»Jewish«) Christ who is yet to come (Marc. 3.11.8–12; 16.1–7). Marcion suggests, Tertullian implies, »a differentiation of two Christs, as if the Jewish Christ was intended by the Creator in order to bring back the people alone from the dispersion, while yours was purposed by the highest God in order that every human race might be brought to freedom« (Marc. 3.21.1). Particularly in the light of Tertullian’s re-​use of sections of his Against the Jews in the Against Marcion,31 it seems likely that any collaboration between Marcion and Jewish exegetes is entirely an invention of his polemical imagination. If Marcion or his followers did discuss prophetic passages of the Old Testament, this would most probably have been part of a rejection of a prior Christian appeal to them rather than an independent component in their own system. There would be no reason in Marcion’s system for any extended discussion of the future for the Jews as the sole beneficiaries of the Creator’s purposes: this was not where Marcion’s 28  Luke 9:28–35; Tertullian, Marc. 4.22.1–16; Ephraem, Prose Refutations 87.16–95.39; see Lieu, Marcion (n. 10), 230–231. 29  Tertullian, Marc. 4.23.7; cf. 2 Kings 1:10. 30  It follows that the Scriptures could have no ethical value although Tertullian claims that Marcion »retained« Rom 7:12: »He then also adds, ›The law is holy and his command is just and good‹. How he so venerates the law of the Creator which he destroys, I do not know! Who detects two Gods, one just another good, when he is bound to believe that the command of either is both good and just? But if he confirms that the law is also spiritual it is similarly prophetic, and likewise figurative. Thus I must establish from this that Christ was predicted figuratively in the law, and could not be recognised by any of the Jews« (Marc. 5.13.14–15). 31  See Geoffrey D. Dunn, Tertullian’s Adversus Iudaeos: A Rhetorical Analysis (NAPSPMS 19; Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2008), 5–15 and 177–182.

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interest in the Creator lay. How Marcionite communities viewed Jewish communities when and where they encountered them is totally unknown to us. At the most, all that can be said is that followers of Marcion would have to continue to engage with the Old Testament in debate with their »orthodox« opponents. Certainly this means that Marcion did not accord the Jewish Scriptures the authority that they held for his opponents, and arguably in the Christian church as he first encountered it. Yet what role did this play in the status that he did give to his Gospel and Pauline collection? As has been seen, Marcion’s understanding of Paul as a central figure within his system was of a textualized Paul, the Paul of the letter collection. He is the first Christian thinker of whom we know to attest to the collection and to treat it as a corpus. Similarly, the textual form of the Gospel was essential for him; even those scholars who have rejected the heresiological accusation that Marcion radically edited the canonical Gospel according to Luke have assumed that he actively engaged in some sort of editorial or compilatory activity. It was suggested earlier that it is far from certain that Marcion understood the »Gospel of Christ« to which Paul referred as necessarily a written document, which he then discovered, created or re-​created, but it does seem likely that he posited some sort of relationship between the Gospel which Paul fought so vigorously to defend and the written text he himself promulgated. Here, too, he belongs somewhere on a continuum in early Christian thought in the transition from an exclusively oral or proclamatory understanding of »Gospel« to its literary application, but precisely how he relates to other points on this continuum remains a matter of debate.32 Yet there is no sense that his system was formulated or taught independently of these texts, and that he then looked for a textual authority: the reading of these texts and the development of his teaching are interdependent. Therefore Marcion did not first reject the Old Testament and then choose the Gospel and Apostolikon as its replacement; even less did he choose between two sets of available Scriptures, for there is no evidence that prior to him the Gospels (or Pauline letters) had equal scriptural status.33 On the other hand, it would seem that Marcion did assume that religious narrative or myth is irreducibly textual, and perhaps that it has no existence except as text and the interpretation or elaboration of texts. Texts are not contingent carriers of religious truth but necessary vehicles or components of it. As has been seen, Tertullian integrates this sense both with the language of »law and gospel« and with that of »testament«: … the separation of law and gospel, by which then distinguishing two gods, one of each instrumentum or, as is more commonly said, testamentum (Marc. 4.1.1, above). 32  James A. Kelhoffer, »›How Soon a Book‹ revisited: ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ as a Reference to ›Gospel‹ Materials in the First Half of the Second Century,« ZNW 95 (2004), 1–34. 33  So rightly Gerhard May, »Markion in seiner Zeit,« in Marcion. Gesammelte Aufsätze, ed. Katharina Greschat and Martin Meiser (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2005), 1–12.

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For sure, indeed, everything that he has worked at, by also preparing the Antitheses, is directed towards this, so that he can establish the difference of old and new testament, and hence his Christ as separate from the Creator, as of a different god, as alien to the law and prophets (Marc. 4.6.1).

The oppositional language of »law and gospel« as well as of »old and new« (and elsewhere of »Judaism and Christianity«) is fundamental both to Tertullian’s presentation of Marcion and to his defence against him. In each case Tertullian affirms the contrast but disputes any conclusion that it points to a radical discontinuity; for him Galatians does indeed point to »the cessation of the old and the beginning of the new things« and to the »destruction of the law and building up of the gospel,« but both pertain to one and the same God, the Creator (Marc. 5.2.1–2). Since antithesis is a core component in Tertullian’s own rhetorical style it is difficult to be confident what sense these particular oppositions carried within Marcion’s thought; certainly it cannot be assumed that they had the same valency as they do for Tertullian – still less as for subsequent theological debate.34 In a further step Tertullian also elides these oppositions with that of »testaments«: he identifies the two-​edged sword of Rev 1:16 as »the divine word (sermo), doubly sharp, in the two testaments of law and gospel« (Marc. 3.14.3).35 While at this point it seems likely that testamentum is to be understood as »ordinance« or »covenant,« elsewhere in the Against Marcion it does refer to a written document; in Marc. 4.1.1 (above) he apparently identifies testamentum as the more common (magis usui) expression for his preferred instrumentum, which undoubtedly can carry textual resonances for him – although for whom testamentum was more common is less clear.36 Throughout the second century the line between »covenant« (διαθήκη; testamentum) as dispensation and as text is a blurred one – as for some is already the case in 2 Cor 3:14. The question, therefore, is whether the move towards a textual meaning in Tertullian’s writings, which seems to be witnessed in the Against Marcion, is also indebted to Marcion’s own language, perhaps together with the epithets »old« and »new.«37 If so, the implication would be that Marcion triggered a development that was taken up by others, and specifically by Tertullian, with far-​reaching consequences. However, Tertullian’s adoption of testamentum in a textual sense is not limited to the Against Marcion but continues in his later writings (e. g., Prax. 15.1), alongside its continuing use also in the sense of ordinance;38  See Lieu, Marcion (n. 10), 398–410.  This is repeated from Against the Jews 9.18 where, however, it is »the two testaments of ancient law and new law.« 36 See Johannes E. L. van der Geest, Le Christ et l’Ancien Testament chez Tertullien (Nijme­ gen: Dekker & Van de Vegt, 1972), 16–24, on Tertullian’s somewhat idiosyncratic and also inconsistent use of instrumentum. 37 In favour of this see Kinzig, »The Title of the New Testament« (n. 5). 38  So van der Geest, Le Christ et l’Ancient Testament (n. 36), 29–35. 34 35

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that he would do this if the term was associated with the heretic seems unlikely. Indeed, in his interpretation of the transfiguration narrative he understands it as a transference »in accordance with the cessation of the old testamentum and succession of the new testamentum« (Marc. 4.22.11), which would be a dangerous concession if this was Marcion’s textual language. Indeed, it is not even certain that Marcion understood the dispensation introduced by the revelation of the father by the son as a »covenant« (διαθήκη). In addition, that the idea of »newness« was important for Marcion is certain, but it is unlikely that he would have criticized the records of the Demiurge simply for being »old«; they never had any claim to truth, even partial, but were through and through the records of a misguided and destructive deity. Undoubtedly for Marcion the authority for his system was irreducibly textual, but that authority was not legitimated by any theory as to the origin of these texts. Although he held that both Jesus and Paul were agents in the revelation that came from heaven, it remains obscure as to how he related that revelation to the texts of the Gospel and Apostolikon: they constituted records of its proclamation and its disruption but could not be directly identified with it. He claimed for himself no other source of authority, whether revelatory or spiritual, not even for his activity in recovering the original form of the Gospel and Apostolikon. For him they were sufficient and required no supplement (other than interpretation), but it would be anachronistic to gloss this by attributing to him the idea or language of »canon.« Yet at the same time the response to him undoubtedly did demand engagement not only with his philosophical principles but also with the question as to which texts were to be authoritative, how challenges to that authority were to be handled, and how the interpretation of those texts was to be regulated. Neither Marcion nor those who opposed him were working from a blank slate, but the configuration of elements on which they drew remains largely obscure. The chief outcome of any attempt to recover the principles and policies that inspired both his and their textual activity must be to further undermine any construction of the »history of the canon« as a single linear narrative (with local variations) into which all data must be inserted; it must also be to reinforce the need to address the different contexts within which, and purposes for which, authoritative texts – both the Scriptures of Israel and the components of the eventual New Testament – were studied and interpreted.

What Kind of Jewish Bible Did the Gnostics Use? Jean-​Daniel Dubois In the famous Apocryphon of John, a very-​widely known Gnostic work of the second century CE, there is a detailed interpretation of some chapters of the book of Genesis. The Gnostic figure of the apostle John is inquiring about the movement of the spirit above the waters in Genesis 1:2; the Saviour answers by exhorting him in this way: »Do not think it is as Moses said ›above the waters‹« (2.12.19–20). Then follows an interpretation of the emotion of Sophia after the birth of the demiurge. This mythical story of the demiurge’s origin certainly is not written in the Law of Moses. A little later in the same treaty, when there is an interpretation of the creation of the woman beside Adam, again the author explains »it is not like Moses said« about the »rib-​bone« of Adam (2.23.3–4) as he is distinguishing between a psychic and a spiritual female companion of Adam. At a time there was not yet a Bible with an Old and a New Testament for the Christian Gnostics of the second century, it is interesting to examine what kind of Jewish Bible the Gnostics did use. »It is not as Moses said« can recall a Johannine saying: »If you had believed in Moses, you would believe in me« (John 6:45); it is meant to underline the continuity between Moses and Jesus, while in the Apocryphon of John, there is a sharp distinction between Moses and the Gnostic reading of the Pentateuch. It corresponds to discussions between Jews and Early Christians about the hermeneutics of the literal reading of the text in Greek like in Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, about which Tobias Nicklas has written in the 2010 Budapest colloquium on Scriptural Authority in Judaism.1 In another treaty, the Gospel of Mary (BG 9.1–5), the Saviour sends the apostles for their mission ordering them with these words: »Do not lay down any rules beyond what I appointed for you, and do not give a law like the Lawgiver, lest you be constrained by it.«2 This negative attitude toward the Law of Moses is contemporary of Christian reactions against the constitution of a Biblical corpus including the first Christian texts along with what is slowly becoming the Old Testament. What then is the Gnostic attitude towards the books of Israel? We will try to answer this question without referring to a domain that is much better 1 Tobias Nicklas, »Frühchristliche Ansprüche auf die Schriften Israëls,« in Scriptural Authority in Early Judaism and Ancient Christianity, ed. Isaac Kalimi, Tobias Nicklas, Geza G. Xeravits (DCLS 16; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013), 347–368, esp. 358–364. 2  James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English (Leiden: Brill, 1977), 472.

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known and studied: what kind of New Testament did the Gnostics use. We will therefore focus rather on the Jewish sources of the Gnostics without being able to produce a survey of all the Gnostic literature available to us today. It would be the object of a whole monograph. We only can examine here a few cases that could be later explored. As there is no single Gnostic attitude toward the Jewish Bible and Jewish pseudepigrapha, we will illustrate diverse positions found among the known Gnostics of the second and third centuries. For the sake of clarity, we will start with texts coming from the so-​called Sethian Gnosis; we will pursue with the Basilidian and then with the Valentinian Gnostics.

1.  »Sethian« Texts A few generations after the writing of the Apocryphon of John, in the school of the philosopher Plotinus, around the middle of the third century, some Gnostics tried to learn about Plato’s works. They have been criticized by Plotinus as they were reading several apocalyptic treatises. According to the Life of Plotinus (16), written by the disciple Porphyry, the Gnostics of the school of Plotinus »exhibit the Apocalypse of Zoroaster, the Apocalypse of Zostrianos, the Apocalypse of Nikotheos, the Apocalypse of Allogenes, the Apocalypse of Messos and other similar books.«3 There is no way to know if the Apocryphon of John also was read in the school of Plotinus. But such an information given by Porphyry shows that Gnostics liked apocalyptic works. And this is now confirmed by the discovery of the Coptic collection of Nag Hammadi texts as two apocalypses quoted by Porphyry happened to be attested in Coptic: Zostrianos (NHC 8.1) and Allogenes (NHC 11.3). Besides, Michel Tardieu noticed that the so-​called »Anonymous Treaty of Bruce« – the second Coptic treaty of the Bruce Codex in Oxford –, is quoting the Apocalypse of Nikotheos mentioned by Porphyry. M. Tardieu was therefore tempted to identify this treaty of the Bruce Codex to the Apocalypse of Messos which was read in the school of Plotinus.4 These treatises are usually classified among the Sethian Gnostics texts, among which the Apocryphon of John is certainly the most famous one. We know from the Fathers of the Church that the Gnostics showed a very critical approach to the Jewish Bible as they, most of the time, presented the God of the Jewish Bible, Creator of the universe, in a secondary position, toward a transcendent God. Almost forty years ago, in order to find a common denominator among the Gnostics, Michel Tardieu explained that the Gnostics found the origin 3  Porphyre, La Vie de Plotin et ses écrits, in Plotin, Énnéades 1, ed. Émile Bréhier (Collection des Universités de France; Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1989), 17. 4  Michel Tardieu and Jean-Daniel Dubois, Introduction à la littérature gnostique, Vol. 1 (Paris: Cerf and CNRS, 1986), 95.

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of evil in a bad world created by the God of the Jewish Bible.5 By developing a negative attitude toward the God of Genesis, they adopted an anti-​Judaic attitude in placing a series of entities between the world of transcendence and the world below. In doing so, they produced a portrait of the God of the Jewish Bible which was bestial, foolish and arrogant, as this God is claiming to be a jealous God without anyone beside him.6 This God is surrounded by all sorts of demonic entities defined by astrological speculations or derogatory names of the Jewish God. The Apocryphon of John collects a good number of these barbaric names. The long version of the Codex 2.19.9–10 even refers to the Book of Zoroaster for anyone who would like to know more about all these entities. The Apocryphon of John is composed with a triad of Father, Mother and Son. The first part of the treaty exposes the qualities of the Father and the Son according to philosophical speculations akin to Platonism and Pythagorism of the imperial age. When the figure of the Mother appears on the scene, there is a direct link to Jewish Hellenistic traditions about Sophia which would explain the mythical scenario of the birth of the demiurge, and later, of her repentance. All this serves to propose a counter-​reading of the Genesis stories about the creation of Adam, the paradise and the origin of human generations after the Flood. In his commentary of the Apocryphon of John, Michel Tardieu remarked that the existence of four different Coptic copies of the treaty is significant of the very large diffusion of the text in Antiquity; he even called this apocryphon »the Bible of the Gnostics«7 as it is a real synthesis of the history of humanity, starting from a cosmological perspective and ending with the fate of different sorts of human beings on earth. In the more recent commentary of the short version of the Apocryphon of John, Bernard Barc takes over this designation of Michel Tardieu. He summarizes the structure of the treaty as a reading of Genesis 2–9, in order to tell Adam story as a prefiguration the whole of humanity: the descendants of Seth will constitute the group of the spirituals; and the descendants of Adam and his psychic companion will determine the group of the psychics under the domination of Cain and Abel.8 Bernard Barc has convincingly demonstrated that the rules of scriptural interpretation of the Gnostic author go back to the methods used by the Judean scribes of the Second Temple, around 200 BCE and 70 CE, and possibly a few generations later until the period of Bar Kokhba. For Bernard Barc, this implies a common treatment of reasoning by analogy when Scripture is explained by the Scripture, a clear distinction between the literal reading of the 5  Michel Tardieu, »Prurit d’écrire et haine sociale chez les gnostiques,« in Pour Léon Poliakov. Le racisme, mythes et sciences, ed. Maurice Olender (Bruxelles: Complexe, 1981), 167–176. 6  Ap. John 2.13.10–13, in reference to Isa 45:5–6 and 46:9. 7  Michel Tardieu, ed., Écrits gnostiques. Codex de Berlin (Sources gnostiques et manichéennes 1; Paris: Cerf, 1984), 26. 8  Bernard Barc, ed., Le Livre des secrets de Jean. Recension brève (NH III, 1 et BG, 2) (Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi – Textes 35; Québec, Louvain et al.: Les Presses de l’Université Laval and Peeters, 2012), 56.

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text and its hidden meaning, a certain use of speculations about etymologies and numbers like 22, 32 and 364. Besides, the Apocryphon of John shows that some passages follow the Hebrew text of the Bible and not the Septuagint.9 This is important for the myth of the Gnostics descendants of Seth. Yet, B. Barc thinks the author may not be very familiar with the Hebrew language, and is working with Greek translations of the Bible (like Aquila’s) or Greek revisions of the Bible that intended to give a literal equivalent of the Hebrew text. Even if most the biblical references are coming from Genesis, a certain knowledge of the Biblical Prophets is attested. We have already mentioned the presentation of God as a jealous God (2.13.8–9; BG 44.14–15); it comes from an affirmation of the Decalogue (Exod 20:5; Deut 5:9) interpreted with Isaiah 45:6. The presentation of the demiurge as a fiercy snake like creature with a lion’s face may recall Isaiah 27:1 and Ezechiel 1:10 and 13. And when the remodelling of Adam’s body is described to explain that Adam’s body is a material prison in this world (2.20.35–21.3; BG 54.14–19), the different substances that form him are gathered from the winds of the four corners of the earth, like a Midrashic commentary of Ezechiel 37:1–14. In this particular passage of the Apocryphon of John, the reader is confronted to Platonic references on the creation of man in the Timaeus along with Jewish traditions of the Jerusalem Targum of Genesis 2:7.10 But the Gnostic author is keen to use Genesis traditions (of Gen 1–11), considering at the same time that what comes after the Flood is the result of the foolish demiurge which sent Moses and the Prophets to the Jewish people. So the Gnostic author is able to base his commentary on the first chapters of Genesis while refuting the main traditions of Judean temple which interprets the Law of Moses and the Prophets. This particular approach to define the cultural milieu of the author of such a Gnostic apocryphon leads Barc to place him around the years 130 of the second century, around the scribes who revised the Septuagint. Scholars of Gnosticism may not have taken into account all the implications of this thesis of the commentary of Barc. If Genesis 6 presents the famous episode of the mixing of giants with daughters of men before the Flood story, the Apocryphon of John presents the opposite scenario. »It did not happen as Moses had said: they hid in an arch« (2.29.6–7; BG 73.4–6). For the Gnostic apocryphon, Noah managed to hide in a luminous cloud with many members of the  9  Bernard Barc, »Caïn, Abel et Seth dans l’Apocryphon de Jean (BG) et dans les Écritures,« in Colloque international «L’Évangile selon Thomas et les textes de Nag Hammadi» (Québec, 29–31 mai 2003) (Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi – Études 8; Québec, Louvain et al.: Les Presses de l’Université Laval and Peeters, 2007), 17–42. 10 Tardieu, ed., Écrits gnostiques (n. 7), 300–308 and 320; Roger Le Déaut, ed., Targum du Pentateuque, Vol. 1, Genèse (SC 245; Paris : Cerf, 1978), 85. Barc, ed., Le Livre des secrets de Jean (n. 8), 282, n. 177, refers to Rabbi Meir (tb Sanhedrin 38a) and to his own article »La taille cosmique d’Adam dans la littérature juive rabbinique des trois premiers siècles,« RevScRel 49 (1975), 173–185.

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immovable race while the demiurge brought darkness on the earth. This change of perspective explains that humanity is under the domination of the demiurge because he installed on all human beings a hard fatality. He sent them the Flood and brought his angels to mix with women on earth; after a first unsuccessful attempt, his angels changed into men and gave their spouses gold, silver, bronze, iron and metals of all sorts so that they would forget their providence and obstruct their heart until now (2.29.16–30.11; BG 73.18–75.10). This scenario evokes Enochic traditions which stand at the heart of many Jewish pseudepigrapha.11 It is impossible to trace direct literary relations between these different traditions. But there is no doubt that the first Gnostic literary works are anchored in these Jewish traditions. Michel Tardieu mentions here and there possible allusions of the Apocryphon of John to other Jewish pseudepigrapha: about the luminous cloud of the Sinai (BG 38.6–7; Jub. 1.2), about the place of the demiurge as a fiery aeon (BG 39.1–4; Jub. 1.3), about the creation of the angelic world (BG 38.14–41.15; Jub. 2.2), about the torments of the souls of non-​Gnostics (BG 69.9– 10 and 2 Bar 51.5–6), about the fate of the perfect souls (BG 65.2–66.13; Jub. 1.21 and 23). The difficult passage on the parts of the psychic Adam’s body of and their relations to an astrological chart (BG 49.9–50.14) refers to the Book of Zoroaster as an astrological source of the Chaldeans which may have been used either by 1 Enoch (73–74; 78–79; 93) and the Apocryphon of John.12 If we take the several passages on the figure of Sophia, there is no doubt also that the Gnostics, like the author of the Apocryphon of John, have used Wisdom eulogies of the Hellenistic Judaism (Prov 8; Sir 24; Bar 3:9–4.1; Wis 6–8; 1 En. 42). Just to take one example, in the Apocryphon of John, the eternity of the Father is defined as Aion like Wisdom before the beginning of time (Prov 8:22–23; Sir 24:9; John 1:1). Among the Gnostic texts which show a similar use of pseudepigraphical Jewish traditions, the treaty on The Reality of the Archons or The Hypostasis of the Archons (NHC 2.4) and the following treaty in the same codex On the Origin of the World (NHC 2.5) manifest elements that cannot be explained without a real proximity of Gnostic features to Jewish sources. The birth of the demiurge as an abortion looking like a lion (Hyp. Arch. 94.4–19; Orig. World 98.11–110.10) is manifestly a elaboration of the tradition about the Nephilim of Genesis 6.1–4 11  1 En. 6–8; 14–16; 19; 86; Jub. 4.15 and 22 with the Watchers (cf. 1 En 12.1); 5.20; but also Damascus Document 2.18; Ap. Gen. 2.1–18; T.Ruben 5. Cf. also Ronald Hendel, »The Nephilim Were on the Earth: Genesis 6:1–4 and its Ancient Near Eastern Context,« in The Fall of the Angels, ed. Christoph Auffarth and Loren T. Stuckenbruck (TBN 6; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 11–34; and Jason David BeDuhn on the Jewish sources of Manichaean cosmological themes, »Secrets of Heaven: Manichaean Cosmology in its Late Antique Context,« in Gnose et manichéisme. Entre les oasis d’Égypte et la Route de la Soie. Hommage à J.-D. Dubois, ed. Anna Van den Kerchove and Luciana Gabriela Soares Santoprete (Bibliothèque des Hautes Études – Sciences religieuses 176; Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 195–214. 12  Tardieu, ed., Écrits gnostiques (n. 7), 304.

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analogous to the one which is developed in 1 Enoch 6–16; 19 and 21.13 The name of the demiurge as Samael (Hyp. Arch. 94.19–34; Orig. World 100.29–103.32) is an elaboration of the theme of the idol of jealousy opposed to the Glory of God in Ezechiel 8:3–6. The image of a four-​faced chariot of cheroubim, famous in the Merkabah mysticism (Hyp. Arch. 95.26–31; Orig. World 105.1–4), goes back to Greek versions of 1 Chronicles 28:18; Sirach 49:8 and Testament of Abraham 10. It serves to distinguish the figures of Ialdabaoth and Sabaoth and to underline the dominion of Sabaoth over the powers of chaos (Hyp. Arch. 95.23–25).14 In the Paradise narrative the speculations about the two trees that can be found in 1 Enoch 25.6 and 32.3–6 are presented differently in the Gnostic treatises:15 in the Book of Enoch, the tree of life is a symbol of immortality, and the tree of knowledge is a tree of wisdom about fall and death. In the Apocryphon of John (2.21.16–22.15) this division of role in presented in an inverse way: the tree of life brings death, and the tree of knowledge brings life. In the Origin of the World (110.7–111.1), the two trees complement one another: the tree of knowledge brings the Gnostic toward the tree of life in his spiritual quest.16 According to the Hypostasis of the Archons (88.26–90.5), there is a subtle play on the tree of knowledge of good and bad and the tree of knowledge of bad and god; the first one leads to death, while the second brings Gnostics to life. In other words, there is an identification of the tree of life to the tree of knowledge, and a comparison of the double formulation of the interdiction to eat from the tree of paradise leads to the conclusion that the tree of knowledge brings life, while the tree of life from which Adam ate its fruit is an imitation of the first one and leads to death. This brief comparison between three Gnostic texts also shows that, in spite of borrowing special Jewish elements for such speculations, the Gnostic authors do not stop reinterpreting their traditions for their theological purposes. One typical example of this originality of the Gnostic author of the Hypostasis of the Archons toward his sources could be found in the narrative about the creation of the woman companion of Adam (Gen 2:21–22). The archons plunge Adam in a deep sleep which is ignorance before separating Adam’s side from his living woman; the archons then replace the missing part of Adam by creating a material body beside Adam, which makes Adam only a psychic creature, as he lost his spiritual counterpart. In other words, there is a double presentation of Adam’s help: the spiritual woman who inspires him, and the material Eve who will be dishonoured by lustful archons. The spiritual woman hides from the archons in a tree, then in the serpent, and begins to instruct Adam about the falsity and the jealousy of the Great Archon. The material woman explains how she 13  Bernard Barc, ed., L’Hypostase des archontes (NH II, 4) (Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi – Textes 5; Québec, Louvain et al.: Les Presses de l’Université Laval and Peeters, 1980), 32. 14  Barc, ed., L’Hypostase des archontes (n. 13), 35–38. 15  Barc, ed., L’Hypostase des archontes (n. 13), 89. 16  Michel Tardieu, Trois mythes gnostiques (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1974), 192–195.

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took a fruit of the tree to discover the secret of life and death. This duality in the interpretation of the figure of Eve brings out the role of the spirit for the access to knowledge and the discovery by Adam and his companion, of the malediction brought by the archons. A few comments could be added about the Sethian apocalypses that we mentioned about the school of Plotinus. Even if these treatises show many parallels to philosophical preoccupations of the Platonists during the second and third centuries, it still remains that these treatises are also based on older sources going back to speculations known in Jewish apocalyptic pseudepigrapha. The treaty Allogenes (NHC 11.3) which was read in Greek in the Roman school of Plotinus, is presented as a revelation to Messos, the spiritual son of the author called Allogenes, a figure clothed with flesh but »of another kind.« At the end of the treaty, Allogenes expresses his joy in writing his revelation: »When he said these things, he separated from me. But I was full of joy and I wrote this book. I was commissioned, my son Messos, to disclose to you the matters that were proclaimed before me. And I initially received them in great silence and then I settled into preparing myself« (68.24–34).17 The first part of the treaty (45.6–58.7) is devoted to five revelations of the angel Youel about divine realities. After a period of one hundred years, Allogenes is caught up in a vision that reveals him the divine Autogenes, the Savior and his goodness. He describes his visionary experience in the following way: When I was seized by the eternal light, by the garment that was upon me, and was taken up to a pure place whose likeness cannot be revealed in the world, then by means of a great Blessedness I saw all those about whom I had heard. And I praised them all and stood at rest upon my knowledge, and I turned to the Knowledge of the Universal Ones, the Barbelo-​Aeon. And by means of the Luminaries of the male virginal Barbelo, I saw multiple powers (58.26–59.7).18

John D. Turner who is one the commentators of this tractate insists on assigning it not to Jewish apocalyptic speculations but to Greek Platonic dialogues like Diotime’s revelation on Eros (Symp. 201d–212a) or the heavenly ascent of Er (Resp. 614b–621b), or even the use of the pre-​Socratic Parmenides,19 because the main function of the tractate is to propose a »model of individual spiritual progress,« and not, like in the Jewish pseudepigrapha, a series of tours of Heaven.20 Of course, for Turner, this Gnostic tractate is not Christian, something that we can really doubt about. The existence of Platonic sources for this tractate does 17  According to the translation of John D. Turner, L’Allogène (NH XI, 3) (Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi – Textes 30; Québec, Louvain et al.: Les Presses de l’Université Laval and Peeters, 2004), 188. 18  Turner, L’Allogène (n. 17), 183. 19  Turner, L’Allogène (n. 17), 29 and 165. 20  Cf. Martha Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell: An Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983).

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not exclude the possibility to find also Jewish frameworks of some conceptions, like in the other treaty Zostrianos. In his presentation of the visionary’s ascent that elevates Zostrianos to the divine throne and transforms him into a divine being, Turner does not hesitate to find some parallels in 3 Enoch 3–16 and the Hekhaloth literature.21 At the start of the very long tractate of Zostrianos, the visionary experiences a difficult psychological situation that nearly forces him to commit suicide, but he is stopped by the angel of knowledge that exhorts him to join a luminous cloud. In the company of this angel, the visionary visits the atmosphere and a series of thirteen aeons ruled by the demiurge. In his ascent the visionary meets several heavenly domains like the »copy of the aeons,« the »sojourns,« the »repentance,« and finally the aeons of the supreme power, Barbelo who is divided in the aeons of Autogenes, Protophanes and Kalyptos. During his ascent, Zostrianos also experiences a series of twenty-​two baptisms that will teach him about the divine realities. The four luminaries mentioned in the ascent on page 6.27–29, Armozel, Oroïaël, Daveithe and Eleleth, reappear in a series of pseudo-​etymologies (page 29.2–15) where they correspond to »words of truth and gnosis:« Armozel, a wish of the God of Truth and a joining of soul, is set over the first aeon; Oroïael, a powerful seer of the truth, is set over the second; Daveithe, a seer of knowledge, is set over the third; Eleleth, an impulse and a preparation for the truth, is set over the fourth.

Such a representation goes back to the vision of the divine throne in Ezechiel 1 or to the four angels, Raphael, Michael, Uriel and Gabriel. But there is not yet a real consensus about the interpretation of the names of the four Luminaries. Eleleth could be coming from an Aramaic expression El-​Alitha, for »God of the Height,« like the title of the tractate in Codex 11.4 Hypsiphronè.22 Michel Tardieu prefers to see in the first three Luminaries an echo of the Zoroastrian month (OhrmazdEl, first day; Oroïael < Xwar, eleventh day; Daveithe < Day, twenty-​third day), and Eleleth, a Gnostic transposition of the Iranian wisdom Xrad.23 In any case, there are so many passages in this apocalypse of Zostrianos that need to be explained with plays on words in Aramaic and Greek, that it is difficult to see this tractate only as a philosophical speculation that can be interpreted in terms of Platonic references. The twenty-​two baptisms of the ascent of Zostrianos clearly evoke Christian baptismal preoccupations. It is no wonder that Plotinus asked his disciple Porphyry to refute the Apocalypse of Zoroaster and another disciple, 21  John D. Turner, ed., Zostrien (NH VIII, 1) (Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi – Textes 24; Québec, Louvain et al.: Les Presses de l’Université Laval and Peeters, 2000), 505 et 568; and idem, Sethian Gnosticism and the Platonic Tradition (Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi – Études 6; Québec, Louvain et al.: Les Presses de l’Université Laval and Peeters, 2001), 245–246. 22  Guy G. Stroumsa, Another Seed: Studies in Gnostic Mythology (NHS 24; Leiden: Brill, 1984), 55 n. 77; Turner, Sethian Gnosticism (n. 21), 229, n. 6. 23  Tardieu, Écrit gnostiques (n. 7), 273.

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Amelius, to refute the Apocalypse of Zostrianos; Amelius even wrote »fourty books,« according to Porphyry, Life of Plotinus, 16.

2.  Basilidian Gnostics If we now turn to Basilidian Gnostics, we meet a quite different atmosphere. Basilides is a Christian philosopher who taught in Alexandria in the first half of the second century, like Valentinus who became the head of the Valentinians. Unlike Valentinus, he did not go to Rome to develop his doctrine. He is known in Alexandria for having written a certain number of books on Biblical exegesis of the Gospels.24 He is also a famous theologian and moralist for having thoughts on suffering. What is preserved of his works is mostly mentioned by Clement of Alexandria, besides two quotations in Origen commentaries on Matthew and Romans, and another one in a later refutation of Manichaeism called Acta Archelai. All these quotations and the different testimonies about Basilidians in Antiquity have been the subject of the monograph of Winrich Löhr, Basilides und seine Schule.25 It is difficult to get a precise picture of the Basilidian system as the fragments of Basilides do not correspond to the paragraphs of Irenaeus and of the Pseudo-​Hippolytus’s Elenchos about the Basilidians. Fortunately, two Coptic tractates of the Nag Hammadi collection can help to reconcile the fragments with the works of the heresiologists: the Second Logos of the Great Seth and the Apocalypse of Peter of Nag Hammadi Codex 7.2 and 3. It is interesting to use together these three sources: the fragments, the heresiologists and the Coptic tractates, in order to perceive a more coherent picture of the Basilidian system.26 As Basilides is a Christian exegete, he uses the Jewish Bible and the first Christian writings, mostly the Gospels and Pauline letters. Among texts that we call the Old Testament, one can find many allusions or quotations to the book of Genesis (this is quite understandable for Gnostics who define primordial times), but we have also references to Deuteronomy, Psalms, Proverbs and Isaiah. Among sapiential writings, Löhr suggests possible allusions to Sirach, Wisdom of Salomon and Enochic literature. Unlike the Sethian texts, Basilides seems less attracted by Jewish pseudepigrapha. If we listen to the critics of Clement of Alexandria against the Gnostics, it would seem that the Basilidians did not care much about the Law of the Old and New Testament:

 According to Agrippa Castor, quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 4.7.7.  Winrich Löhr, Basilides und seine Schule (WUNT 83; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996). 26  The same kind of approach is developed in my article, »Le docétisme des christologies gnostiques revisité,« NTS 63/2 (2017), 295–302. 24 25

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2. For if anyone knows God by nature, as Basilides thinks when he understands the exceptional faith as an intuition and as a kingdom, as a creation of good thing, as an essence worthy to be near the Creator, then he calls faith an essence and not a freedom, a nature and substance, an infinite beauty of an arbitrary creation, but not the rational assent of a free soul. 3. Therefore the commandments of the Old and New Testaments were superfluous, if anyone is saved, as Valentinus says, by nature, or if anyone is faithful and elect by nature, as Basilides supposes (Strom. 5.3.2–3).27

The argument is very common among heresiologists, either against Valentinians or Basilidians: if the Gnostics pretend to be saved »by nature,« it would mean that an ethical conduct is superfluous. But this opinion attributed to the Basilidians is not confirmed by the texts. Nevertheless, there is a Basilidian critique of the Old Testament prophets as expressed in the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter: the principalities sought after the Savior but did not find him, »nor was he mentioned among any generation of the prophets« (71.7–8).28 Obviously, such position would imply a negation of any messianic reading of Old Testament prophecies. The critique is harsher in the Second Logos of the Great Seth where the Old Testament does not know about the Saviour,29 nor does it announce the coming of the real Saviour, for it is a production of the demiurge, the Archon, and as such »false prophecy« (65.1–2). In fact, the Archon pretends to be a jealous God (64.23; cf. Exod 20:5) and there is none greater than him, or beside him (64.19–20; 53.30–31; cf. Isa 45:5–6; 44:6). He even brings the sins of the fathers upon the children for three and four generations (64.24–26; cf. Deut 5:9; Num 14:18). A special litany covers three pages of the Great Seth (62.27–65.18) against a series of laughingstocks because they are imitations of the celestial domain: Adam, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, David and his son, Solomon, the Twelve Prophets, Moses, and even John the Baptist. The presence of John the Baptist in this list shows that the critique of the Basilidians is not directed toward the Jewish Bible as such, but aims at the position of Christians who want to take the Old Testament as part of the Scriptures. A similar portrait of the position of the Basilidians toward the Old Testament is expressed by Irenaeus in his treaty Against the Heresies: »Even the prophecies themselves came from the rulers who made the world, and that the Law in particular came from their chief, him who led the people out of the land of Egypt« (1.24.5; cf. Exod 20:1).30 Among the fragments of Basilides’s works in Clement of Alexandria, there is a portrait of the demiurge which brings some nuance to the position of the Basilidians toward the Law and the rest of the Old Testament: 27  According to the translation of Robert McL. Wilson, in Gnosis: A Selection of Gnostic Texts, Vol. 1: Patristic Evidence, ed. Werner Foerster (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 81. For a commentary of this fragment, cf. Löhr, Basilides und seine Schule (n. 25), 174–190. 28  According to the translation of J. Brashler, in Nag Hammadi Codex VII, ed. Birger A. Pearson (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 30; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 221. 29  Irenaeus, Haer. I.24.6 says the same about the Basilidians. 30  According to McL. Wilson, in Foerster, ed., Gnosis, Vol. 1 (n. 27), 61.

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Those around Basilides say in explanation of this verse (Prov 1:7) that the Archon himself, when he heard the utterance of the ministering Spirit, was shocked through what was heard and seen since he received the glad news beyond (his) hopes, and his shock was called fear, which became the beginning of the wisdom (Prov 1:7) of the distinction of kinds, and separation and fulfilment and restoration. For he who is above all sends out distinguishing not only the world but also the elect (Strom. 2.36.1).31

First, it is significant that Basilides is proposing an interpretation of a famous sentence of the book of Proverbs unless it comes from the equivalent saying in Psalm 111(110):10. The enigmatic fragment seems to evoke the voice of God addressed to Adam in Paradise, but here, Adam is replaced by the Archon, and the voice of God, by the »ministering Spirit.« The commentators like to refer to the Extracts of Theodotus, 16 which give an explanation about the material presence of the dove descending on Jesus at his baptism; the Extract mentions that the Basilidians take the descending Spirit as a »minister,« »a servant« (διάκονος) while the Valentinians take the Spirit at Jesus’s baptism for the »Spirit of the Father’s thought.«32 Therefore, it may be that the whole fragment quoted by Clement is, in fact, referring to what is happening at the baptism of Jesus, a fundamental change in the history of salvation: the announcement of the Gospel news to the Archon while he is in a state of ignorance (Elenchos 7.26.1). The paragraphs devoted to Basilidians in the Elenchos 7.26 propose an interpretation of the proclamation of the Gospel to the Archon that is quite similar to the quoted fragment of Basilides. From this first proclamation to the Archon, all the rulers of the world are progressively illuminated, until the Gospel reaches the earth (7.26.1–6). In the Elenchos, the salvation history is accomplished through the work of three different »filialities,« three manifestations of the Son of the highest God. The Gospel comes from the domain of the »Sonship« (or filiality) and reaches the Archon who learns from Christ sitting at his side that he is not the God of the universe. This first teaching of Christ brings fear to the Archon (7.26.1). Then, in the next paragraph (7.26.2), it says: »This is because the Ruler33 grew wise when instructed by the Son enthroned beside him. He learned the identity of the Non-​existent, the Sonship, the Holy Spirit, the construction of the universe, and where things will be restored.«34 Instead of presenting the God of the Jewish Bible like a fool as one can find it in some Sethian texts, the Archon of the Basilidians is able to be taught. The Elenchos mentions different chapters of his catechism: God as the Non-​existent God, a typical trait of the negative 31  According to McL. Wilson, in Foerster, ed., Gnosis, Vol. 1 (n. 27), 82–83. For a commentary of this fragment, cf. Löhr, Basilides und seine Schule (n. 25), 61–78. 32  Cf. Clément d’Alexandrie: Extraits de Théodote, ed. François Sagnard (SC 23; Paris: Cerf, 1970), 88–89. 33  Or the Archon. 34  According to the new translation of David Litwa, ed., Refutation of all Heresies (Writings of the Greco-​Roman World 40; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016), 527.

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theology of the Basilidians, then the Son as Sonship, and the Holy Spirit, but also a special teaching about the cosmogony (Irenaeus explains about the complicated creation of 365 heavens in Haer. 1.24.3) and the eschatology (»where things will be restored«), an allusion to the theory of an ἀποκατάστασις at the end of times. Basilides’s fragment in Clement is more explicit about the real meaning of the theory of the Basilidians. When the Archon feels fear after the shock of the proclamation of the Gospel, he learns about »the distinction of kinds, the separation, the fulfilment and the restoration.« The first three terms are specific of the theory of the Basilidians which is a process of separation of the worldly matter in order to bring up to the celestial domain of the Sonship the filtered elements that are worthy of being brought up. »The separation of kinds« corresponds to the kind of chemical process of the φυλοκρίνησις that divides the elements of the world between heavy elements, less heavy elements and more subtle elements that will go up. This process is not described in the Elenchos like an apocalypse analogous to the Jewish pseudepigrapha, but the literary genre of the apocalypse is known among Basilidians and very manifest in the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter (cf. 73.29– 30; 80.8–11; 24–26; 82.15–20). When one considers the Old Testament quotations or references, in the different paragraphs of the Elenchos about the Basilidians, there is quite a large selection of verses: Genesis 1:3 and Psalm 33(32):9 about the creation (Elenchos 7.22.3); the place of the Spirit in the firmament (Gen 1:7; Elenchos 7.23.1); the beard of Aaron of Psalm 133(132):2 in Elenchos 7.22.15; the Sonship using the wings of the eagle (Deut 32:11; Elenchos 7.22.15); there is no God beside God (Deut 32:39; Isa 45:5; Elenchos 7.25.3); the Archon as God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Exod 6:2–3; Elenchos 7.25.4); the confession of sin of the Great Archon (Ps 32[31]:5; Elenchos 7.26.4); the great ignorance as affliction (Isa 35:10; 51:11; Elenchos 7.27.3). Most of these quotations are direct quotations from the system of Basilides himself, and not quotations coming from the work of the heresiologist. In other words, Basilides’s use of the Bible looks like what Christians of the beginning of the second century would know about the Jewish Bible. It may be summarized by references to the Torah, some Psalms, Proverbs and Isaiah. This does not stop the Basilidians thinking of the demiurge as ignorant but capable of learning about the proclamation of the Gospel.

3.  The Valentinian Gnostics The situation of the Valentinian Gnostics is much more complex. From the works of Valentinus, also a Christian teacher in Alexandria, in the first half of the second century in Alexandria, just like Basilides, and later in Rome, only a few quotations are preserved. These fragments were studied by Christoph

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Markschies,35 but it is difficult to find quotations and allusions to precise Gospel passages or Pauline letters, as the New Testament is still then under formation. Several fragments deal with the creation of Adam and refer to the book of Genesis in general. But the Fragment 6 quoted by Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 6.52.3–53.1) could concern our subject: But even the leader of those who extol fellowship, Valentinus, writes in his sermon On Friends the following words: »Much of what is written in the publicly available books is in fact found also written in the Church of God. What is shared are the words that come from the heart: the law written in the heart. This is the people of the Beloved One, the one that he loves and that loves him.« Whether by »publicly available books« he means the Jewish Scriptures or those of the philosophers, he regards the truth as a thing that is held in common.36

The first and last sentences come from the commentary of Clement who agree more or less with Valentinus about the »publicly available books.« Christoph Markschies has demonstrated that the opposition between »publicly available books« and the writings of the Church comforts the apologetic purpose of Clement’s position.37 The works of the philosophers can help reaching the content of what is written in the books of the Church. What is common in the Scriptures and in the writings of the philosophers leads to a statement about the role of the heart that can rule any human conscience. What is interesting in this fragment is also the shift made by Clement from »what is written in the Church of God« (the quotation of Valentinus) to »Jewish Scriptures« (the commentary of Clement), as if Clement well understood that the writings of the Church at the time of Valentinus were the Jewish Scriptures. Beside Valentinus’s Fragments, we have at our disposal works of his disciples, Ptolemy, Heracleon the first commentator of the Gospel of John, Theodotus and Mark the magician, besides the chapters of the Fathers who refuted the Valentinians like Irenaeus, Tertullian, the Pseudo-​Hippolytus’s Elenchos and Epiphanius. On top of that, the Coptic collection of Nag Hammadi brought out direct Valentinian tractates, from Codex I, II, V and XI. All this new documentation sheds a different light on the works of the heresiologists when they write about Valentinians. As Valentinians are Christian philosophers from the second to the fourth century who mix Plato and the Bible, their kind of Bible is mainly based on the Gospels and Pauline Letters, and not much on the Old Testament. What can we say about the use of the Jewish Bible among the Valentinians?

35  Christoph Markschies, Valentinus Gnosticus? (WUNT 65; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992). 36  According to the translation of Einar Thomassen, The Spiritual Seed: The Church of the ›Valentinians‹ (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 60; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 473–474. 37  Markschies, Valentinus (n. 35), 194–200.

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The first document that attests a real theory of a Christian reading of the Jewish Bible is the well-​known tractate of Ptolemy, Letter to Flora.38 Just written around the middle of the second century, the Letter to Flora is proposing reasons to explain why the Torah is imperfect as it contains commandments that do not agree with the nature and the thought of God (3.4). There are many studies about this document in order to discuss the position of Ptolemy toward Marcion and toward other testimonies about the disciples of Ptolemy mentioned in Irenaeus.39 If Valentinus is not very explicit about the use of the Jewish Bible, Ptolemy stands in the middle of antithetic positions like Marcion, Justin or Irenaeus, and he wants to clarify the origin of the Law of Moses and its proposed interpretation among the Gnostics. His position may not concern the division of Law, Prophets and Writings; his interest of concentrated on the Law. What is significant for the position of Ptolemy is his use of the criterion of the sayings of the Saviour, a criterion which is exterior to the Law (3.5). Ptolemy wants to prove his position by referring several times to the sayings of the Saviour (3.8; 4.3; 4.11; 5.10; 6.1–2); at the end of the Letter, he even confirms what he is saying: »We can prove all our statements from the teaching of the Saviour« (7.8).40 Ptolemy rules his conduct according to what the Saviour said about the Law of Moses. First, the Law in the Pentateuch of Moses was not promulgated by a single author (4.1). With this first statement, Ptolemy shows he is acquainted with the scholarly rules of all interpreters of classical works: before discussing the content of a passage, one had to establish the text with a real philological knowledge. Working on the commentary of John by the Valentinian Heracleon, Ansgar Wucherpfennig has shown that Heracleon was well acquainted with this rule.41 Secondly, Ptolemy proposes to divide the Law in three parts according to the words of the Saviour (4.1): the section that comes from God (not the supreme God, but the Creator; cf. 7.4), the section that comes from Moses, and the third is attributed to the Elders of the people. Ptolemy takes an example with the law about divorce discussed by Jesus in the Gospels (Matt 19:6–8). He concludes that the Law of God forbids divorce, while the Law of Moses accepts it (4.4–9). Besides, there are also traditions coming from the Elders of the people, mixed with the Law of Moses. The part of the Law that comes from God is divided in its turn into three parts: the pure legislation, like the Decalogue, that the Saviour did not 38

 Ptolémée, Lettre à Flora, ed. Gilles Quispel (SC 24bis; Paris: Cerf, 1966).

39 Winrich Löhr, »La doctrine de Dieu dans la Lettre à Flora de Ptolémée,« RHPR 75 (1995),

177–191; Christoph Markschies, »New Research on Ptolemaeus Gnosticus,« ZAC 4 (2000), 225–254; Enrico Norelli, »Le Décalogue dans la Lettre de Ptolémée à Flora,« in Le décalogue au miroir des Pères, ed. Rémi Gounelle and Jean-​Marc Prieur (Cahiers de Biblia Patristica 9; Strasbourg: Université de Strasbourg, 2008), 107–176. 40  According to the translation of McL. Wilson, in Foerster, ed., Gnosis, Vol. 1 (n. 27), 161, that we will use. 41  Ansgar Wucherpfennig, Heracleon Philologus (WUNT 142; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 55–56; in his chapter (55–103) he analyses different rules.

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abolish but wanted to accomplish; the part of the law that was intertwined with evil and injustice that the Saviour abolished (the law of the talion, for example), and the third part which is exemplary and symbolic (like ritual prescriptions about food, calendars, circumcision) – »This part is ordained according to the image of the spiritual and transcendent things« (5.8). The application of these ritual commandments has stopped at the time of Ptolemy, but their significance has become more profound: the circumcision is now that of the heart. In other words, the allegorical interpretation of some Old Testament passages is recommended by Ptolemy, just like Valentinians. Once again, it corresponds to what was usual in Alexandria in the interpretation of classical texts. David Dawson has devoted a whole chapter of his book Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria to show that Valentinus and the Coptic Gospel of Truth (NHC 1.3) were using allegorical methods when interpreting the creation of Adam.42 This allegorical approach allows integrating the Old Testament into a history of salvation which purpose is to manifest the revelation accomplished by the Saviour. In one of the fragments of Heracleon, in his commentary of John 1:23, it says: »The Logos is the Saviour, the voice in the wilderness is that symbolized by John, and the echo is the entire prophetic order.«43 Such a position is very different from Basilides. It gives a meaning to the prophets of the Old Testament when they proclaimed in advance the coming of Christ, the psychic body of the Saviour, according to Extracts of Theodotus 59.2–3: When he came to the »place,« Jesus found, ready to be put on, the Christ who had been foretold, whom the prophets and the Law had proclaimed, who was the image of the Savior. But this psychic Christ was invisible. Therefore it was necessary that he who was to come into the world, that he might be seen and touched, and be active in affairs there, should also wear a body perceptible to the senses.44

In the Extracts of Theodotus, an allegorical interpretation is explicitly proposed twice (56.5 and 62.2). This does not count other passages where Theodotus is inspired by an allegorical interpretation, like the entry of the Savior into the Pleroma, analogous to the entry of the High Priest in the temple (Extracts 26.3 and 42  David T. Dawson, Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 127–182. 43  Origen, In Joh. VI.20 (cf. Origène, Commentaire sur Jean, VI, § 108, ed. Cécile Blanc [SC 157; Paris: Cerf, 1970], Vol. 2, 210–211). This passage on grammatical terminology (Logos, Voice, Echo) has been commented by Philippe Luisier, »De Philon d’Alexandrie à la Protennoia Trimorphe. Variations sur un thème de grammaire grecque,« in Coptica – Gnostica – Manichaica. Mélanges offerts à Wolf-​Peter Funk, ed. Louis Painchaud and Paul-​Hubert Poirier (Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi – Études 7; Québec, Louvain et al.: Les Presses de l’Université Laval and Peeters, 2006), 535–555. 44  According to McL. Wilson, in Foerster, ed., Gnosis, I, 151 (cf. also Extracts 24.1; 62.2). The Biblical index of Theodotus made by François Sagnard, ed., in Clément d’Alexandrie, Extraits de Théodote (SC 23; Paris: Cerf, 1970), 241–243, indicates: Genesis (28 quotations); Deuteronomy (1); Psalms (3); Proverbs (2); Sirach (1); Isaiah (1); Daniel (1).

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the fragment attributed to Clement, Extracts 27, very close to Strom. 5.6.32–40 and Philo, Mos. 2.95–135). The Tractatus Tripartitus (NHC 1.5) spends a few pages to present the role of the prophets of the Old Testament (111–113). The general tonality of these pages evokes that of other Valentinian texts, but specific accents do not concord with all the Valentinian sources. On page 97.20–23, the spiritual beings are able to produce prophecies because of the power of the Logos who works within them. On page 111.9–23, the just of the Old Testament and the prophets did not think by themselves nor spoke by themselves; they only worked by the impulsion of the power that was in them. Prophets are therefore figures who can announce someone who is superior to them. The Logos has sown in them a hope and the seed of a quest (112.1–3). Their visions and their words are very different from each other, but one single power is at work in them (112.9–19). The Scriptures come from a single God, and not several (112.22–25); this Gnostic tractate examines like Ptolemy several hypotheses about the origin of the Jewish Scriptures, but in the end, all Jewish prophecies can only announce the coming the psychic Christ, not the real pneumatic Saviour. In other words, this Gnostic tractate is less interested in proposing an allegorical interpretation of the Jewish Scriptures than in explaining the value of Old Testament prophecies.

4. Conclusion If we compare the three kinds of Gnostic positions toward the Jewish Scriptures, the Valentinians are much closer to the positions of the Great Church of Irenaeus or Origen, than the Sethians or the Basilidians. All three positions share the idea that the Jewish Scriptures emanate from the Creator God, and as such, are coming from an inferior God. This contradicts hasty judgments about the Gnostics who rejected the Old Testament. By saying »it is not as Moses said,« the Gnostics have favoured an approach to the Jewish Scriptures that is often a reverse reading of the texts. Of course, several other tractates should have been brought up for discussion, like that of the Exegesis of the Soul (NHC 2.6) that mixes happily the words of the prophets Jeremiah, Hosea, Ezekiel with extracts of the Odyssea. Besides, the kind of Biblical text of reference is a subject that still merits more studies. Bernard Barc has shown the use of Greek revisions of the Bible behind the text of the Apocryphon of John. Einar Thomassen has shown that the Tractatus Tripartitus used Symmachus’s version of Genesis about the snake of paradise.45

45 Einar Thomassen, ed., Le Traité Tripartite (NH I, 5) (Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi – Textes 19; Québec, Louvain et al.: Les Presses de l’Université Laval and Peeters, 1989), 20.

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Individual studies on specific terms should be carried on, as Christoph Markschies did for his commentary of Valentinus’s fragments. But several parallels with Jewish pseudepigrapha are not always convincing. It is difficult to think that the Gnostics wrote their tractates with an anthology of pseudepigrapha in their hands. They were more concerned to comment the sayings of the Saviour, including when they interpreted the Jewish Scriptures. By developing an allegorical reading of the Scriptures, they managed to contribute to the history of the exegetical school of Alexandria.

Authority and Canon according to Some Ancient »Christian« Apocalypses 5  Ezra and the Tiburtine Sibyl Tobias Nicklas Handbooks on the history of the New Testament usually offer only brief treatments of apocalyptic writings as sources for the history and development of the Biblical canon(s). The debates about the status of Revelation (mainly in the East) are well-​known,1 and sometimes even texts like the Pastor of Hermas or the Apocalypse of Peter are discussed, as both of them can be regarded as long time candidates for inclusion into the New Testament, which, however, finally failed.2 Is it possible to say anything relevant about »Christian« apocalyptic writings as sources for the history of the Biblical and/or New Testament canon without just repeating well-​known facts and theories? In the following paper I will deal with three questions, which could help us to gain at least a few new insights. (1) Do apocalyptic writings use, receive and rewrite other texts in a way that already reflects these texts’ authority? (2) In what way does an apocalyptic writing create and construct its own claim for authority? (3) What can we say about a writing’s later reception history? And does this reception history show that the writing’s claims were at least partially successful? As it is impossible to deal with the unmanageable number of »Christian« apocalyptic texts3 which could be relevant for our topic, I will deal with only two, 1 For an overview of this text’s reception in the first 1000 years see Georg Kretschmar, Die Offenbarung des Johannes. Die Geschichte ihrer Auslegung im 1. Jahrtausend (CTM; Stuttgart: Calwer, 1985); for a more recent overview of the text’s reception and acceptance in the New Testament canon see Martin Karrer, Johannesoffenbarung (Offb. 1,1–5,14) (EKK XXIV/1; Göttingen and Düsseldorf: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht and Patmos, 2017), 108–35. 2 See, for example, Tobias Nicklas, »Christliche Apokalypsen in Ägypten vor Konstantin. Kanon, Autorität, kontextuelle Funktion,« in Book of Seven Seals: The Peculiarity of Revelation, its Manuscripts, Attestation, and Transmission, ed. Thomas J. Kraus and Michael Sommer (WUNT 363; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 95–118. For a recent overview regarding the Shepherd of Hermas see Dan Batovici, »The Shepherd of Hermas in Recent Scholarship on the Canon: A Review Article,« ASE 34/1 (2017), 89–105. 3  I also do not intend to discuss here what I understand as an »apocalyptic writing« – and

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but very different examples: while one might first think of texts like Revelation,4 the Apocalypse of Paul, or the Shepherd of Hermas, I concentrate on two lesser known writings, which, however, offer insights from two very different perspectives, 5 Ezra and the Tiburtine Sibyl.

1.  5 Ezra Even if the combination of 4 Ezra, 5 Ezra, and 6 Ezra (= 2 Esdras) made it into several manuscripts of the Vulgate, in our days 5 Ezra belongs to the lesser known Christian apocalypses.5 The interpretation of this rather short text (88 verses) suffers from several problems: even today many introductory questions like the text’s date and provenance,6 its formal classification as apocalypse or a prophetic text7 or even its relation to 4 Ezra8 are not adequately solved (or even dealt with). will use this term in a very broad manner. Of course, I am well aware of the discussion regarding the definition of the terms »apocalypse« and »apocalypticism.« 4 I have dealt with Revelation’s claim to authority alongside the Torah and the prophets elsewhere: cf. Tobias Nicklas, »›The Words of the Prophecy of this Book‹: Playing with Scriptural Authority in the Book of Revelation,« in Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism, ed. Mladen Popovic (JSJSup 141; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), 309–326. At the same time, Revelation’s use of Scripture has been one of the central questions of research in Revelation for a long time, and the literature produced around this question is almost unmanageable. But see the seminal discussions by Thomas Hieke, »Die literarische und theologische Funktion des Alten Testaments in der Johannesoffenbarung,« in Poetik und Intertextualität der Johannesapokalypse, ed. idem, Stefan Alkier, and Tobias Nicklas (WUNT 346; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 271–290; Adela Yarbro Collins, »The Use of Scripture in Revelation,« in New Perspectives on Revelation (BETL 291; Leuven et al.: Peeters, 2017), 11–32; and (with a focus on textual fluidity) Garrick Allen, The Book of Revelation and Early Jewish Textual Culture (SNTSMS 168; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 5  See also Robert A. Kraft, »Towards Assessing the Latin Text of 5 Ezra: The Christian Connection,« in Exploring the Scripturesque: Jewish Texts and their Christian Contexts (JSJSup 137; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), 149–162, esp. 149, who writes: 5 Ezra »exists only in Latin, which presumably was translated from Greek. The text has received minimal attention […] from modern scholarship, despite its presence on the fringes of the Latin Christian canonical scriptures.« 6  See, for example, Thedore A. Bergren, »Fifth Ezra,« in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures 1, ed. Richard Bauckham, James R. Davila, and Alex Panayotov (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2013), 467–482, esp. 473, who concludes: »I would suggest a date for 5 Ezra in the late second or third centuries, perhaps specifically between 180 and 300 C. E.« Michael Wolter, 5. Esra-​Buch. 6. Esra-​Buch (JSHRZ III/7; Gütersloh: Gütersloher, 2001), 789, writes: »Mit der üblichen Einordnung in die Zeit zwischen ca. 150 und ca. 250 n. Chr. dürfte man […] ungefähr richtig liegen, selbst wenn es dafür keine unmittelbaren positiven Indizien gibt.« 7 But see recently Veronika Hirschberger and Tobias Nicklas, »5 Ezra: Prophetic or Apocalyptic Writing?« in The Figure of Ezra in Early Judaism and Ancient Christianity, ed. Jan N. Bremmer, Veronika Hirschberger, and Tobias Nicklas (Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha 13; Leuven: Peeters, 2018), 116–130, who argue in favour of a »prophetic writing.« 8  But see recently Jens Schröter and Lillia Milbach, »The Composition of 2 Esdras:

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For a long time the message of this text seemed quite clear: Israel’s continuing sin brought God’s patience to an end – that’s why God choses a new people, which can be identified with the Church of the nations.9 In her recent doctoral dissertation Veronika Hirschberger, however, has convincingly demonstrated that both 5 Ezra’s concept of Israel and the gentes is too open to suggest this interpretation, and that the text does not exclude the possibility that Israel or parts of it will be included in the future people of God.10 In addition, 5 Ezra is, in fact, not just one text, but transmitted in two recensions which differ from each other in many (partly important) details.11 While its (probable) use of Matthew12 and Revelation does not allow a date before the first decades of the second century CE, the text’s concern for the current critical situation of Israel and its future heritage, as well as its lack of a clear idea of a »church,«13 may suggest a date not too late in the second century CE. Should we think about the times around the disastrous Bar Kokhba war (132–135 CE) after which Jews were not even allowed to enter their Holy City anymore? I think this is a good scholarly guess, but we cannot be absolutely sure.14 Comparable to the canonical Book of Revelation (and most other apocalyptic writings), 5 Ezra does not quote Scripture. At the same time, it can be called a Reflections on the Relationship of 4, 5, and 6 Ezra with Special Regard to the Use of Female Imagery,« in Bremmer et alii, The Figure of Ezra (n. 7) 97–115, and – with a somewhat different focus and result – Veronika Hirschberger, Ringen um Israel: Intertextuelle Perspektiven auf das 5. Buch Esra (Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha 14; Leuven: Peeters, 2018).  9  See, for example, the superscriptions used by Bergren, »Fifth Ezra« (n. 6), 480 (and his interpretation of the text before). 10  Cf. Hirschberger, Ringen um Israel (n. 8). But see the more traditional view expressed by Wolter, 5 Esra (n. 6), 792–793: »Esra wird […] als Gerichtsprophet zu Israel gesandt, um ihm den Verlust des Gottesvolk-​Status, den endgültigen Abbruch jeder Hoffnung und die Unmöglichkeit jeden Trostes zu bescheinigen. […] Wir können 5. Esr darum als eine Art Gegenschrift zu 4. Esr verstehen, die unter Rückgriff auf denselben fiktiven Autor und möglicherweise vielleicht ebenfalls in Reaktion auf eine jüdische Katastrophe – nämlich das Scheitern des Bar-​Kochba-​Aufstandes im Jahr 135 […] – das Ende jeder Hoffnung für Israel und den Übergang der Erwählung auf die Christenheit artikuliert.« 11  Regarding the textual transmission of 5 Ezra see Thedore A. Bergren, Fifth Ezra: The Text, Origin and Early History (SBLSCS 25; Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1990), 39–152, and (shorter) Wolter, 5 Esra (n. 6), 768–774. 12  Regarding 5 Ezra’s use of Matthew usually Graham N. Stanton, »5 Ezra and Matthean Christianity in the Second Century,« JThS 28 (1977), 67–83, is mentioned. While for Stanton Matthew is a key intertext for the understanding of 5 Ezra, Hirschberger’s recent assessment (Ringen um Israel [n. 8]) is much more reluctant. 13  Bergren’s dating of 5 Ezra (see Bergren, »Fifth Ezra« [n. 6], 472–473) depends exactly on his idea that »the ›mother‹ of the new people, is actually a paean to the Christian church. The characterization of the church as ›mother Church‹, or mater ecclesia, is a theologoumenon that developed first in the late second century, and that is not widely attested until the third century.« 14  See also Stanton, »5 Ezra« (n. 12), 70–73, and (more reluctantly) Michael A. Knibb, »The Second Book of Esdras,« in The First and Second Books of Esdras, ed. idem and Richard Coggins (CNEB; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 78.

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tapestry of scriptural echoes and allusions. That’s why it is not possible to give a comprehensive answer to question (1) here. I will concentrate on a few issues. As Theodore Bergren has convincingly shown, 5 Ezra seems to be literarily dependent on 1 Baruch.15 Veronika Hirschberger goes even further and sees 1 Baruch as a model for 5 Ezra (excluding the final verses 5 Ezra 2.42–48).16 5 Ezra does not just take over 1 Baruch’s motif of Jerusalem as Israel’s mother, but follows decisive parts of Baruch’s »story-​line«: it deals with Israel’s misbehaviour in face of God’s mighty deeds in favour of Israel, and describes the »mother’s« lament about Israel’s situation. Contrary to 1 Baruch, according to 5 Ezra, God finally turns to another people (gentem alteram). While the affinity between 5 Ezra 2.2–5a and 1 Bar 4.8–23, Jerusalem’s lament over Israel,17 is close, many of 5 Ezra’s other parallels to 1 Baruch are less specific: in many cases, they simply reflect Old Testament prophetic forms and language.18 5 Ezra thus does not necessarily expect a reader who is able to reconstruct and evaluate all its echoes and allusions to 1 Baruch. 1 Baruch, instead, seems to have been interesting for 5 Ezra both because of main lines of its overall message and because of its use of language which reminds us of Old Testament prophecy. In other words, with its use of 1 Baruch 5 Ezra both takes over parts of a story about Israel’s problematic relation to God and creates an »aura« of ancient prophecy. This can also be said about 5 Ezra’s second very important intertext, Jeremiah 7, a central passage of Old Testament cult criticism. According to Hirschberger, Jer 7 is the »key intertext« for 5 Ezra, which does not only use many motifs from Jer 7, but is also interested in its message – as far as I see, the question of appropriate and inappropriate worship binds both texts deeply together.19 Again, it is not necessary to assume that a reader of 5 Ezra has to detect all echoes of Jeremiah 7; instead the text evokes and rewrites clusters of motifs and arguments from Old Testament criticisms of Israel’s worship and applies it to a new situation. As Michael Sommer has shown, motif clusters from cult-​critical prophetic writings like Jer 6–7, but also Isa 1 or Zech 7 were used broadly in Early Christian literature without always concretely referring to their specific scriptural background.20 Perhaps all this does not mean very much regarding the authority of 1 Baruch and specific passages from some of the major prophetic books. The observation becomes important if we assume with Andreas Merkt that at least for most  Bergren, Fifth Ezra (n. 11), 257–263.  See Hirschberger, Ringen um Israel (n. 8). 17 See Bergren, Fifth Ezra (n. 11), 257–258. 18  For examples see Hirschberger and Nicklas, »5 Ezra« (n. 7). 19 See Hirschberger, Ringen um Israel (n. 8): »Die Fülle an Verbindungslinien, die zwischen den beiden Texten zu erkennen sind, erfordert es m. E., Jeremia 7 als zentralen Intertext für 5 Esra zu verstehen. Entscheidend sind dabei nicht einzelne gemeinsame Formeln oder Motive, sondern die große Anzahl dieser Verbindungen und v. a. die Äquivalenz der Grundlinien und der Strukturierung der Texte.« 20  See Michael Sommer’s current habilitation project. 15 16

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Christians in antiquity, the Bible was not first and foremost a book which was studied as a book in its material form, but a »mental and virtual entity.«21 That is to say: many (even educated) »Christians« had the chance to memorize main storylines (via partly very different media) and clusters of arguments, but did not (or at least not regularly) get access to the written text in the form of a book (or even as part of a full Bible). As far as I see, what Merkt says in reference to late antique receptions of the »New Testament,« can also be applied to 5 Ezra and its use of what we call the »Old Testament«: it is not necessary that 5 Ezra expects readers with professional scribal training, that is, readers, who could recognize all its elaborate echoes of prophetic Scripture, but readers who know that main parts of 5 Ezra’s »argument« about Israel’s unfaithfulness, its inappropriate worship and the crisis between God and his People are a (regularly repeated) part of Israel’s Scriptures. In other words, 5 Ezra constructs its claim by telling and rewriting a story which sounds like Scripture … or, more concretely, prophecy. We read about »the word of God that came to Ezra« (5 Ezra 1.1), sentences like »Thus says the Lord« (5 Ezra 1.8, 15; 2.1, 10 etc.) or »Thus says the Lord Almighty« (5 Ezra 1.33). At the same time it uses the figure of Ezra as its key »human« protagonist. Even if Ezra is explicitly mentioned only a few times (1.4; 2.10, 33, 42), his presence is assumed throughout. This does not just claim that the text is written under the authority of Ezra who in the Spanish recension is called filius Chusi (cf. 5 Ezra 1.4)22 and placed into the times of Nabuchodonosor (Nebuchadnezzar; 5 Ezra 1.4). Moreover, it creates connections to different characteristics of the »mental« figure Ezra. Via Ezra-​Nehemiah Ezra is associated with both the crisis of the Babylonian Exile and its aftermath, he gives the Torah back to Israel (and thus fulfils the function of a second Moses) and, finally, he can be associated with correct (synagogue) worship of God (Ezra 8). 5 Ezra 1.4 with its reference to Nabuchodonosor strengthens the Exile association and thus signals that Ezra, again, is related to a situation of crisis. During the time when 5 Ezra was written this had already been done by the well-​known apocalypse of 4 Ezra. It is not absolutely clear whether 5 Ezra was first designed as an independent writing or already produced as a piece which

21  See Andreas Merkt (in coll. with Tobias Nicklas and Joseph Verheyden), »Das Novum Testamentum Patristicum (NTP): Ein Projekt zur Erforschung von Rezeption und Auslegung des Neuen Testamentes in frühchristlicher und spätantiker Zeit,« Early Christianity 6 (2015), 573–595, esp. 579: »Das Neue Testament stellt im Modus seiner patristischen Rezeption […] weitgehend eine mentale und virtuelle Größe dar, eine Entität, die nicht in der physischen Form existiert, in der sie zu existieren scheint, gleichwohl aber Funktionen erfüllt, und Wirkungen entfaltet, als gäbe es sie als konkrete, einheitliche und kohärente Größe.« 22  According to Bergren, »Fifth Ezra« (n. 6), 477, »[t]he superior Spanish recension lacks verses 1–3. In v. 4, the author abandons the ›traditional‹ genealogy of Ezra found in Ezra 7:1–5 and 1 Esdr 8:1–2 in favor of one similar of Zephaniah in Zeph 1:1.«

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wanted to be read in connection with 4 Ezra from the very beginning.23 In any case, however, 5 Ezra was not only transmitted (from obviously early times) in connection with 4 Ezra, but tied in with the idea that Ezra was not just a scribe, but an important prophet in a situation of deep crisis. At least one passage, however, goes beyond these forms of very open intertextual relations. While the text otherwise shows only vague parallels to the canonical Book of Revelation,24 5 Ezra 2.38–48, and especially v. 42–48, seem to play with the visions of Revelation 7 and 14: the text speaks about the »number of the sealed« (2.38; cf. Rev 7:4), a »great crowd« (2.42; cf. Rev 7:9) which is »uncountable« (2.42 Spanish rec.; cf. Rev 7:9); it mentions their »splendid garments« (2.39), calls them »clothed in white« (2.40; cf. Rev 6:11; 7:9, 13–14; 14:4) and locates them on Mount Zion (2.40,42; cf. Rev 14:1) where they praise the Lord with songs (2.42; Rev 14:3; 15:3), and »are being crowned and receive palms« (2.45; cf. Rev 7:9).25 Although the text does not make explicitly clear who is the »tall young man who stood out above all of them« (iuvenis statura excelsus, omnibus illis eminens; 2.43), a usual »Christian«26 reader probably identifies this »tall young man« with the Risen Lord (see also the parallels in Gos. Pet. 40, the Book of Elchasai [according to Hippolytus, Ref. 9.13.1–3], or perhaps even Rev 10:1). If a reader of 5 Ezra knows that Rev 7 constructs its vision of the sealed in two parts, one consisting of 144,000 from »all tribes of Israel« (Rev 7:4–8) and one of a »great crowd from all nations and tribes« (Rev 7:9–10),27 he/she will recognize that 5 Ezra, instead, speaks of only one People of God. While 5 Ezra does not necessarily exclude Israelites from this »great crowd« (turba magna; 2.42), which consists of the ones who »confessed the name of God« (confessi sunt nomen Dei; 2.45), this is clearly different from Revelation’s idea. Even if we do not want to go so far to call this an open criticism of Revelation, 5 Ezra offers at least an alternative to Revelation’s concept of »God’s People« (if we may use this term for the »great 23  But see the current dissertation project of Lillia Milbach, »Die Rezeption jüdisch-​apokalyptischer Traditionen in christlichen Schriften, untersucht anhand des Verhältnisses von 5. und 6. Esra zu 4. Esra« (Humboldt University of Berlin). 24  For the relation of 5 Ezra and Revelation see, briefly, Tobias Nicklas, »Rezeption und Nicht-​Rezeption der Offenbarung des Johannes durch antike christliche Apokalypsen,« in Christian Apocrypha: Receptions of the New Testament in Ancient Christian Apocrypha, ed. idem and Jean-​Michel Roessli (NTP 26; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 325–348, esp. 336–40, and (more broadly) Hirschberger, Ringen um Israel (n. 8). 25 English quotes from 5 Ezra according to Bergren, Fifth Ezra (n. 11), 401–405. 26 I use the term »Christian« with some reluctance here, as it is not clear whether the readers of 5 Ezra understood themselves as »Christians« and/or used this term as a self-​designation. 27 The relationship of these two visions has been discussed controversially. For a good discussion of Rev’s concept of the people of God see Karlheinz Müller, »Noch einmal die Einhundertvierundvierzigtausend. Anmerkungen zur judenchristlichen Kompetenz des Verfassers der Johannesapokalypse,« in Mächtige Bilder. Zeit‑ und Wirkungsgeschichte der Johannesoffenbarung, ed. Bernhard Heininger (SBS 225; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2011), 132–166.

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crowd«). This observation is interesting. On the one hand it presupposes that Revelation (or at least Revelation’s ideas about the people of God) must already be well-​known and certainly be acknowledged by at least some people. On the other hand (at least for the author of 5 Ezra), Revelation’s status was open enough to leave room for alternative views. We do not know the final reason for 5 Ezra’s at least temporary success28 – its message which could soon be (mis)understood as a prophecy of the Church’s victory over Israel, its prophetic form, or its connection to 4 Ezra? At least for some Christians who included sentences from 5 Ezra in the Improperia of the liturgies of Good Friday perhaps the first reason counted most. I think, however, that the text’s early connection with the quite successful 4 Ezra helped a lot to improve 5 Ezra’s chances to survive and be accepted as »canonical« or »quasi-​canonical« at least in some strands of the transmission of the Latin Old Testament until it was officially excluded during the Council of Trent.

2.  The Tiburtine Sibyl It may come as a surprise that my second example is a rather unknown writing usually not included in collections of Christian apocryphal apocalypses.29 As a late text clothed in pagan garments it is very different from 5 Ezra. I chose it, however, because this text was surprisingly successful although it was produced only »toward the end of the fourth century, seemingly between 378 and 390.«30 Although it was originally composed in Greek, its surviving Latin version is closest to what resembles this text’s original. Contrary to both 5 Ezra, but also Revelation, the Tiburtine Sibyl (Tib.Sib.) does not use and rework the Scriptures of Israel or New Testament writings throughout, but combines the authority of the pagan woman prophet with motifs from Greco-​Roman authoritative tradition, a Gospel story and Biblical reminiscences. The Sibyl for example is introduced as »the daughter of King Priam, born from a mother named Hecuba« (Priamidis regis filia ex matre nomine Hecuba procreata; Tib.Sib. 1.2).31 After having preached

28  For a brief overview of 5 Ezra’s influence on later Christian literature see, for example, Bergren, »Fifth Ezra« (n. 6), 474–475. The most important point seems to be 5 Ezra’s receptions »in the Mozarabic and Roman ecclesiastical liturgies« (ibid., 474). 29 Tony Burke and Brent Landau, ed., New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2016), offer a very recent counter example. 30  Stephen J. Shoemaker, »The Tiburtine Sibyl: A New Translation and Introduction,« in New Testament Apocrypha, ed. Burke and Landau (n. 29), 510–525, esp. 510. 31  English translations following Stephen J. Shoemaker, Tiburtine Sibyl (n. 30). Latin texts according to Ernst Sackur, Sibyllinische Texte und Forschungen (Torino: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1963).

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and prophesied in more or less the whole ancient world, the Emperor of Rome, who is (probably) called »Trojan Emperor« (Troiani imperatoris; Tib.Sib. 2.1) here, sends out legates to bring her to Rome. Already here a connection between the Sibyl’s and the Romans’ alleged roots in Troja is established. When she arrives in Rome, »one hundred men from the Roman senate had the same dream. Each one saw in a vision as if there were nine suns in the heaven, each of which had individually different qualities in themselves« (Tib.Sib. 2.2). According to the Sibyl, these nine suns »prefigure all future generations« and »the differences that you saw among them will also be a different life for humanity« (Tib.Sib. 3.1): the Sibyl thus starts to interpret the senators’ dream which at the same time represents a prediction of the future and the end of the world. Although one can, of course, discuss whether this is an »apocalypse« in the usual sense of the word, the text belongs, in any case, to the genre of revelatory literature. While the first three generations show a clear decline between a people who are »sincere and honorable, loving freedom, truthful, gentle etc.« to a time where »nation will rise up against nation, and there will be many battles in Rome« (Tib.Sib. 3.1–2; see Mark 13:8 par.), generation four sees the birth of »the Son of God named Jesus« (filius Dei nomine Iesus). Here she inserts a first short »Gospel story«: »In those days there will arise a woman from the race of the Hebrews named Mary, who has a betrothed man named Joseph. From her will be born, without intercourse with a man, of the Holy Spirit, the Son of God named Jesus, and she herself will be a virgin before birth and a virgin after birth (erit virgo ante partum et post partum). Therefore, the one who is born from her will be true God and a true human being (erit verus Deus et verus homo), as all the prophets prophesied, and he will fulfill the Law of the Hebrews. And at the same time he will add some things of his own and his kingdom will remain unto forever. At his birth the hosts of angels will be at his right and left, saying, Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.’ For a voice will come over him saying, ›This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him.‹« (Tib.Sib. 3.3–5). Although this text clearly alludes to passages from the Gospel narrative like Matt 1:18–25 and Luke 1:26–35, and quotes Luke 2:14 plus Mark 9:7 par., this is clearly not just a redactionally revised version of a Gospel but rather what I would call a »Neuinszenierung« of a story which is already part of the early Christian cultural memory.32 This is also 32  Regarding this term see Tobias Nicklas, »Eine neue alte Erzählung im Rahmen antiker Jesustraditionen. Reste eines Exorzismus auf P.Oxy. lxxvi 5072,« ASE 29/1 (2012), 13–27, and (more detailed and with more examples) idem, »Zwischen Redaktion und ›Neuinszenierung‹: Vom Umgang erzählender Evangelien des 2. Jahrhunderts mit ihren Vorlagen,« in The Gospels in the Second Century, ed. idem, Jens Schröter, and Joseph Verheyden (BZNW 235; Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2019), 311–330: »Von einer ›Neuinszenierung‹ spreche ich, wenn sich zwar wahrscheinlich machen lässt, dass ein Autor bereits vorliegende schriftliche Evangelien bzw. Jesuserzählungen kennt, dass seine Erzählung aber nicht verrät, inwiefern er diese als schriftliche Vorlagen verarbeitet hat. Die ›neue‹ nicht-​kanonische Erzählung folgt zwar grundlegenden Linien der kanonisch gewordenen Erzählung und bietet für die Erzählung

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suggested by the fact that the text seems to be not just interested in a Jesus story but in important aspects of »orthodox creed« – like the idea of Mary’s virginity even after birth (virginitas post partum)33 or the confession that Jesus is »true God and a true human being.«34 At this point of her prophecy the Sibyl is interrupted by some »priests of the Hebrews« (ex sacerdotis Ebreorum qui audientes hec verba; Tib.Sib. 3.6) who want to stop her – they are afraid that God »will remove his hand from us« (auferet manum suam a nobis? Tib.Sib. 3.7). In her response the Sibyl again connects aspects of a (not very detailed) »cultural memory« of Roman history with a Jesus story which cannot be clearly traced to »one« Gospel story alone but more or less to what a late antique Christian should know about Jesus’s death – including the idea that the »priests of the Hebrews« were fully responsible for his death. Pilate and the Roman army are not even mentioned: »In those days Caesar Augustus will have a famous name, and he will reign in Rome and will make the entire world subject to him. Then the priests of the Hebrews will gather against Jesus, on account of the many signs that he will do, and they will seize him. They will strike God with their defiled hands and will spit in his holy face with venomous spittle. Truly will he give his holy back freely to the whip, and receiving blows he will be silent. For food they will give him gall, for his thirst, vinegar. And they will hang him on the wood and kill him, but it will be of no avail to them, for on the third day he will rise again and will appear to his disciples and will ascend into heaven with them watching, and his reign will have no end« (Tib.Sib. 3.9–10). After a few rather featureless sentences on the generations of the fifth to the eighth sun35 the interpretation of the ninth sun is clearly interested in the rise of Constantine the Great: »After them will arise another king, with the name C (alius rex C. nomine), mighty in battle, who will reign for thirty years and will build a temple to God and will fulfill the law and establish justice on the earth for God’s sake« (Tib.Sib. 3.15).36 The (more or less original) text, into which several passages referring to medieval kings were inserted, culminates in the description of a final conflict and the appearance of the last Emperor: »Then will arise a king of the Greeks, whose name is Constans, and he will be king of the Romans entscheidende Motive, geht aber so frei mit diesen um, dass nicht klar ist, ob der Autor des 2. Jahrhunderts eine schriftliche Vorlage vor sich hatte oder er eine durchaus schriftlich vorliegende Erzählung nur aus mündlicher Überlieferung (z. B. durch Vorlesen) kannte.« Regarding the term »cultural memory« see, for example, Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (München: Beck, 2000). 33  As far as I know this idea can first be found in the middle of the third century in Origen’s commentaries on the Gospel of John (In Joh. 1.4) and Matthew (In Matt. 10.17). 34 This comes, of course, close to the creed of Chalcedon (451 CE). 35  I skip all the later passages inserted into the text in Medieval times (and marked by both Sackur and Shoemaker in italics). 36 Actually, Constantine the Great ruled from 306 to 337 CE, but was sole ruler of Rome only from 324.

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and the Greeks. He will be tall in stature, handsome in appearance, shining in countenance, and well-​put-​together in all of his bodily features. And his reign will end after 112 years« (Tib.Sib. 7.4).37 During Constans’s rule the world will not just flourish, but the whole world will »worship the cross of Jesus Christ« (or otherwise »be punished by the sword«). This conversion of the full number of people from the nations will, finally, lead to the conversion of the Jews. »And when 120 years38 have been completed, the Jews will be converted to the Lord, and ›his sepulchre will be glorified by all.‹ ›In these days Judah will be saved and Israel will encamp in confidence‹« (Tib.Sib. 7.6). This is a rather surprising turn: the text seems to connect ideas of something like a final »Golden Age« coming before the end of the world, with the idea of a Christian final victory and – totally unexpected – the conversion of Israel. Even if the text alludes to Isa 11:10 and quotes Jer 23:6 here, as far as I see this can only be understood as an interpretation of Romans 11:25–33 according to which the whole of Israel will be saved (Rom 11:26) after the full number of pagans has reached salvation (Rom 11:25; see also the quote of Jer 23:9 LXX in Rom 11:27). Depending on whether or not the text connects this to the rule of the final emperor, one could perhaps even go so far to say that the text identifies the »Saviour« (ὁ ῥυόμενος) from Rom 11:26 neither with Christ nor with God himself 39 as in modern interpretations but with the Roman Emperor.40

37  Of course, this Constans cannot be identical to the historical Constans, son of Constantine the Great, who ruled from 337 to 350 CE. 38 It is not clear whether the original text really contained the number 120 (or not a different number). If »120« is original, the conversion of the Jews does not happen under the final emperor. The whole argument, however, seems to make better sense if the conversion takes place during his reign. Regarding the textual problem see Hannes Moehring, Der Weltkaiser der Endzeit. Entstehung, Wandel und Wirkung einer tausendjährigen Weissagung (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke, 2000), 47: »In den angeführten Beispielen [von Zeugen der Tib.Sib.; TN] schwanken die Angaben über die Regierungsdauer des Endkaisers zwischen 100, 112 und 122 Jahren, diejenigen über die Bekehrung der Juden zwischen 110, 112, 120, 122, 125, 128 und 170 Jahren. Die von Sackur in seiner Edition bevorzugte Kombination von 112 und 120 Jahren findet sich unter den berücksichtigten Handschriften nur in einer einzigen.« 39  Regarding the current discussion of this matter see, for example, Tobias Nicklas, »Paulus und die Errettung Israels. Röm 11,25–36 in der exegetischen Diskussion und im jüdisch-​christlichen Dialog,« in Early Christianity 2 (2011), 173–197, esp. 182–183. 40  Regarding this passage (and its problems) see Moehring, Der Weltkaiser der Endzeit (n. 38) 46: »Das wohl wichtigste Ziel des Verfassers bildete der weltweite Sieg des Christentums durch die Bekehrung aller Heiden und auch der Juden, wobei in deren Fall von der Textüberlieferung her einige Unklarheiten bestehen. Sackurs Edition zufolge regiert der Endkaiser Constans 112 Jahre lang, und die Juden konvertieren nach 120 Jahren. Sackur sieht darin allerdings einen Widerspruch – offenbar hatte er erwartet, daß sich die Juden noch unter der Regierung des Constans bekehren sollten. Trotz der nach Sackus Edition maßgeblichen Zahlenangaben herrscht in der Forschung ohne eingehende Begründung die Meinung vor, daß die Juden, bereits unter Constans das Christentum annehmen beziehungsweise daß der Endkaiser die Juden verfolgen läßt.«

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After that, a final chapter describes the rise of the Antichrist (allusions to 1 John 2:18 and 22; 4:2; 2 John 7; 2 Thess 2:3) and the nations of Gog and Magog (Rev 20:8) and their defeat by the Roman king. After that this king »will come to Jerusalem, and there having laid down the diadem of his head and all his royal garb, he will hand over the kingdom of the Christians to God the Father and Jesus Christ his Son. And when the Roman Empire will have come to an end, then the Antichrist will be openly revealed, and he will sit in the House of the Lord in Jerusalem. Nevertheless, while he is reigning, two most distinguished men, Elijah and Enoch, will go forth to announce the coming of the Lord, and the Antichrist will kill them. After three days they will be resurrected by the Lord. Then there will be a great persecution, such as there was not before nor was thereafter. Nevertheless, the Lord will shorten those days for the sake of the elect, and the Antichrist will be slain by the power of the Lord by the Archangel Michael on the Mount of Olives« (Tib.Sib. 8.4). This is, again, a compilation of motifs coming from (and playing with) 2 Thess 2:4; Rev 11:1–13; Matt 24:21–22; and perhaps even 1 Cor 15:24 – with the difference that it is the King of Rome who hands over his kingdom (and not Jesus Christ). Again, this sounds more like a »Neuinszenierung« putting together well-​known motifs connected with the end times than a carefully crafted redaction or rewriting of one authoritative text. At the same time, the motif of the »Last Emperor« who is a devout Christian responsible for the Christians’ final victory and the triumph against all Evil, allows an almost total re-​interpretation of aspects of the story in Revelation: Rome is not identified with Babylon the Great Harlot (Rev 17) and it is not to be destroyed and replaced by a heavenly Jerusalem (Rev 21–22). It is, instead, God’s decisive tool against the evil kingdoms under Gog and Magog. Starting with the idea of Rome’s (and the Sibyl’s) Trojan roots the text thus integrates what he understands as a Roman history positively into what he understands as a history of the world which must end in the victory of Jesus Christ, the Lord. The final sentence, again, resembles Revelation 21: »And there will be a new heaven and a new earth and both will remain forever, and the sea will be no more. And the Lord will reign among the saints and they will reign with him unto forever.« What does this mean as a whole? The main storyline of the Tiburtine Sibyl which follows the interpretation of the senators’ dream interweaves the history of Rome with ideas of Christian eschatology. All this is connected with the idea of the Sibyl which continues both the tradition of Roman and Jewish/Christian Sibylline Oracles going back into very ancient times.41 Now, Rome, however, is not the evil power any more, but  – from a Theodosian (or post-​Theodosian) 41  On the figure of the Sibyl and its roots see, for example, Alfons Kurfeẞ, Sibyllinische Weissagungen. Griechisch/Deutsch, tr. and ed. Jörg-​Dieter Gauger (2nd edition; Sammlung Tusculum; Düsseldorf and Zurich: Artemis & Winkler, 2002), 335–379.

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period’s perspective – the good power which will not just protect the Christians but (through the Last Emperor) becomes God’s tool to overcome the evil nations around Gog and Magog. The text’s story creates authority by (a) putting itself into the mouth of the Sibyl and (b) not just referring to, but connecting and retelling two authoritative stories which were important for the identity of the new majority of Christians in the Roman Empire: a story about Rome’s glory and a story about the Christians final victory against the powers of Evil. Christian eschatology and imperial eschatology fall into each other. As the Tiburtine Sibyl’s storyline does not always refer to concrete events (like the rise of Constantine or perhaps the defeat of Valens [August 378]), but is also full of rather meaningless and open passages, it even allowed insertions related to medieval kings (when new Emperors felt themselves as the real successors of the Roman Empire). How is all this important for the overall question of this conference? Today the Tiburtine Sibyl is an almost forgotten text. It seems not to be interesting outside of small circles of scholars of ancient Byzantium and/or medieval eschatology. The point, however, is that this text was once extremely successful. Stephen Shoemaker writes: [I]n the medieval West, Tib.Sib.’s influence on Christian eschatology far outweighed that of the Apocalypse of John, and its broader impact on the medieval Christian tradition was surpassed only by the Bible and the writings of the church fathers. This oracle was immensely popular, surviving in over 130 known Latin manuscripts, as well as in Greek version and in an as-​yet-​unknown number of Arabic, Ethiopic, and Slavonic manuscripts. Moreover, its prophecies often were invested with an authority parallel to the biblical traditions – as witnessed, for instance, in the opening stanza of the famous ›Dies irae‹ hymn from the Latin Requiem Mass: ›Dies irae! Diea illa! Solvet saeclum in favilla, teste David cum Sibylla‹ … The Sibyl’s forecast regarding the end times is here invoked alongside the biblical tradition, revealing Tib.Sib. as more than just a supplement to canonical texts but as an authoritative source of Christian doctrine in its own right.42

It is absolutely clear that the Tiburtine Sibyl never claimed to become part of the Christian Biblical Canon – this text was not just too late, its »pagan« dress would have made this impossible. Nevertheless both its »Gospel story« and its »eschatological part« make it clear that for its author the Bible was probably not first and foremost a book to read (like modern scholars do), but a book representing a story which can be freely retold as long as it includes a few important motifs which already became part of something like »cultural memory.« But even more: the Tiburtine Sibyl’s great success shows that the definition of the Biblical Canon did not close the space for other authorities besides the Bible and, even more, that it did not close the space for authoritative writings besides the Bible.43 The fact, that many people did not study texts like Revelation, 2 Thessalonians or  Shoemaker, »The Tiburtine Sibyl« (n. 30), 516.  For other examples see also Tobias Nicklas, »New Testament Canon and Ancient Christian ›Landscapes of Memory‹,« Early Christianity 7 (2016), 5–23, and idem, »Neutestamentlicher 42 43

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others in detail, seems to have even made it possible to allow the Tiburtine Sibyl to both follow motifs of New Testament eschatology and at the same time partly contradict it. The Tiburtine Sibyl thus even became a successful counter-​authority against Revelation: not Jerusalem will win (as Revelation hopes), but Rome.44

3. Conclusion What can both texts tell us about the development and role of authoritative writings in ancient Christianity? First, although the disputes regarding Revelation’s enormous claims for authority (more or less) ended with the book’s acceptance into the New Testament canon,45 this did not close the doors for the production of other, even competing, even in parts opposing pieces of revelatory literature. Of course, these new writings like the ones discussed, but also the Apocalypse of Paul, the Apocalypse of Thomas (in its different forms) or the Apocalypse of the Virgin no longer had the chance to be accepted as canonical. This, however, did not mean that they could not develop broad influence at least for parts of the ancient and medieval church(es). How is this possible? Before the medieval revolution of book printing the Bible was not available for most people and/or regularly accessible in the material form of a book, but must be described as a virtual, mental entity. For these people the Bible was known in the form of virtual »stories,« broad ideas and/or clusters of motifs and lines of arguments. This means that in many cases new stories beside the Bible both have to »inscribe« themselves more or less into these basic stories (and should, in addition, be connected to other accepted authorities), but can, in parts, go far beyond them or even contradict important details of Biblical books. The question whether such a text has a chance to be at least temporarily successful in certain contexts, then also has to do with the question of whether it meets a certain group’s (or certain groups’) needs and interests within a certain time (or certain times). In the case of the Tiburtine Sibyl, for example, a radically changed relation between Roman State and Church made it possible to rewrite Revelation’s Rome critical story of the world’s end. In other words: the definition of certain writings and groups of writings first as authoritative and then as part of the New Testament canon, does not mean Kanon, christliche Apokryphen und antik-​christliche ›Erinnerungskulturen‹,« NTS 62 (2016), 588–609. 44 Somewhere in the middle between both poles we find the poetry of Commodian (probably 3rd century CE) who does not give a name to the eschatological city any more. For more information see Johannes Stettner, Veränderte Endzeitvorstellungen. Die Rezeption der Offenbarung des Johannes bei dem lateinisch-​christlichen Dichter Commodian (Diss. Universität Regensburg; forthcoming in WUNT II). 45  Of course, the text was never fully accepted, for example, in the Syrian Church.

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that this left no space any more for other authoritative, highly accepted writings with important functions for the church (or churches). Writings like these could even be produced long after the (more or less definitive) closure of the canon in the second half of the fourth century. As we have seen in the case of the Tiburtine Sibyl (and in parts also with 5 Ezra) these writings were not just used in the contexts of private edification.46 Instead, their reception in liturgies, but also iconography and even music prepared their entrance into the cultural memories of the Church (or at least parts of it).

46  That is why François Bovon’s otherwise very helpful label »useful for the soul« (see Bovon, »Beyond the Canonical and Apocryphal Books, the Presence of a Third Category: The Books Useful for the Soul,« in The Emergence of Christianity: Collected Studies III [WUNT 319; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013], 147–160) does not fully explain the evidence.

Early Christian Book Production and the Concept of Canon Juan Chapa We know that from very early on there were various writings which had an authoritative value for Christians. Some of these works were copied on a roll as any ordinary piece of literature. Others began to be transmitted in a format that soon became standard for the most popular authoritative writings, the codex.1 Those writings which later entered into the New Testament canon, as far as we can tell from what the extant witnesses tell us, were almost unanimously copied in this format (the exceptions are not relevant),2 whereas those that remained out of the canon present some variation and were mainly copied on rolls, revealing perhaps a different degree of authority. The relation between the configuration of a closed list of authoritative Christian books and a specific form of book production is a recurring topic in the debate on the canon. The views on this regard, however, cover a large spectrum. For Hans von Campenhausen, for example, that relation does not exist,3 whereas 1 For the Christian preference for the codex over the roll, see Stanley E. Porter, »What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? Reconstructing Early Christianity from Its Manuscripts,« in Christian Origins and Greco-​Roman Culture: Social and Literary Contexts for the New Testament. Early Christianity in its Hellenistic Context, Vol. 1, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts (TENTS 9; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 41–70; Roger S. Bagnall, Early Christian Books in Egypt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 70–90; Larry W. Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 43–93; Stephen Emmel, »The Christian Book in Egypt: Innovation and the Coptic Tradition,« in The Bible as Book: The Manuscript Tradition, ed. John L. Sharpe and Kimberly van Kampen (London – New Castle: The British Library – Oak Knoll Press, in association with The Scriptorium: Center for Christian Antiquities, 1998), 35–43. See also Guy G. Stroumsa, »On the Status of Books in Early Christianity,« in Being Christian in Late Antiquity: A Festschrift for Gillian Clark, ed. Carol Harrison, Caroline Humfress, and Isabella Sandwell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 57–73. 2 Only the following NT fragments are seemingly written on rolls (including original rolls and opisthographs): P12 (late 3rd century, Hebrews); P13 (3rd to 4th century, Hebrews); P18 (3rd to 4th century, Revelation); P22 (3rd century, John). 3  Hans von Campenhausen, The Formation of the Christian Bible (tr. J. A. Baker; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972), 173–174: »[T]he codex form seems to have been the rule for biblical texts even as early as the second century; but these codices were, so far as we can tell, at first still small, and hardly adequate to combine four gospels at once in a single volume, which would be necessary in order to establish a ›canonical‹ order. That there was at first no such authentic

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many scholars recognize, to a greater or lesser extent, the decisive role that the codex played in establishing the list of books that came to form the Christian Bible, especially in the case of the New Testament. These words by Harry Gamble may illustrate it: However that may be, the appearance in the fourth century of very large, multiple quire codices finally capable of containing the whole of Christian scriptures suggests that the technology of book production played a role in the delimitation of the canon, even as it did in the creation of early smaller collections. The aim of transcribing all scriptural documents in a single codex forced, in the most practical and unavoidable way, the question of precisely which books ought to be included.4

Yet, the way in which the book format influenced the configuration of a closed list of authoritative books admits more nuanced positions. Not everybody agrees that the format had a defining or limiting character in the closing of the canon. Other scholars think that the material format played only a subordinate role, as J. Keith Elliott claims: Roberts and Skeat remind us that the adoption by Christians of the codex did not in itself create the fourfold Gospel canon. That observation applies to the other sections of the New Testament as well. The New Testament canon was decided by Church authorities on theological and historical grounds, but canon and codex go hand in hand in the sense that the adoption of a fixed canon could be more easily controlled and promulgated when the codex was the normal means of gathering together originally separated compositions. (On the other hand, we also need to remind ourselves that the Jews had a canon but not the codex.)5

In any case, as Robert Kraft notes, it is fairly common to recognize that the codex has somehow conditioned our way of understanding the canon: [O]nce it was possible to produce and view (or visualize) »the Bible« under one set of physical covers, the concept of »canon« became concretized in a new way that shapes our thinking to the present day and makes it very difficult for us to recapture the perspectives of earlier times. »The canon« in this sense is the product of fourth-​century technological developments. Before that, it seems to me, things were less »fixed,« and perceptions, accordingly, less concrete.6

Certainly, the format of the codex must have exerted some influence in the process of delimiting the list of authoritative books in so far as it could comprise a arrangement is confirmed also by the variations in the sequence of the gospels, both at that time and later.« 4 Harry Y. Gamble, »The New Testament Canon: Recent Research and the Status Quaestionis,« in The Canon Debate, ed. Lee Martin McDonald and James A. Sanders (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002), 267–294, here 294. 5  J. Keith Elliott, »Manuscripts, the Codex and the Canon,« JSNT 63 (1996), 105–123, here 111. The reference to Roberts-​Skeat is from Colin H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat, The Birth of the Codex (London: British Academy and Oxford University Press, 1983), 65. 6  Robert A. Kraft, »The Codex and Canon Consciousness,« in The Canon Debate, ed. McDonald and Sanders (n. 4), 229–233, here 233.

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collection of several writings.7 As is well known, the roll, the standard format for a Greco-​Roman literary work, could not do this to the same extent. Generally speaking, one book corresponded to one roll. Of course, in the case of extensive works, more than one roll was used. In the case of shorter works (such as lyric poems, epigrammes, and the like), a single roll may have contained several independent compositions of one or even several authors. Thus, it would appear that the adoption of the codex as the favourite format for Christian books meant a significant change in the current practice and put to an end the prevailing tradition.

1.  Single-​Unit and Multiple-​Unit Codices Setting to one side the question of how the writings that came to constitute the New Testament were written, produced, or edited, the earliest witnesses of these works show that, very soon, the codex was the preferred format for authoritative writings.8 However, this need not mean that from the very beginning this type of format was chosen to contain collections of several writings. In fact, judging from the palaeographical dates assigned to the witnesses, we might be inclined to think that the earliest New Testament papyri come from single-​unit codices, for virtually all (16 of a total of 18) of the earliest fragments of the gospels that circulated in Oxyrhynchus belong to codices whose size could hardly include more than one work (and this is probably also the case for the other two fragments). As Peter Head argues, 7  The literature on the topic is extensive. Some recent works with further bibliography are: Lee Martin McDonald, The Formation of the Biblical Canon, Vol. 2: The New Testament: Its Authority and Canonicity (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 222–264; Tomas Bokedal, The Formation and Significance of the Christian Biblical Canon: A Study in Text, Ritual and Interpretation (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 125–155; Martin Wallraff, Kodex und Kanon. Das Buch im frühen Christentum (Hans-​Lietzmann-​Vorlesungen 12; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013); Michael J. Kruger, The Question of Canon: Challenging the Status Quo in the New Testament Debate (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2013), 79–118; idem, Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books (Wheaton: Crossways, 2012), 233–259; Hans Reinhard Seeliger, »Buchrolle, Codex, Kanon. Sachhistorische und ikonographische Aspekte und Zusammenhänge,« in Kanon in Konstruktion und Dekonstruktion. Kanonisierungsprozesse religiöser Texte von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Ein Handbuch, ed. Eve-​Marie Becker and Stefan Scholz (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 547–576. See also the articles by Daryl D. Schmidt, »The Greek New Testament as a Codex,« and Eldon J. Epp, »Issues in the Interrelation of New Testament Textual Criticism and Canon,« (= repr. in idem, Perspectives on New Testament Textual Criticism: Collected Essays, 1962–2004 [NovTSup 116; Leiden: Brill, 2005], 595–639), in The Canon Debate, ed. McDonald and Sanders (n. 4), 469– 484 and 485–515. 8  On this issue see, e. g., Charles E. Hill, »A Four-​Gospel Canon in the Second Century? Artifact and Arti-​fiction,« Early Christianity 4 (2013), 310–334; and Juan Chapa, »Textual Transmission of Canonical and Apocryphal Writings within the Development of the New Testament Canon: Limits and Possibilities,« Early Christianity 7 (2016), 113–133.

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[a]lthough the four-​Gospel canon was conceptualized at Oxyrhynchus (evidence include knowledge of Irenaeus and the use of excerpts from four Gospels on amulets), this does not seem to have coincided with the presence of any four-​Gospel codices. If on other grounds Oxyrhynchus seems to be generally representative of the textual situation in Egypt this suggests it might be reasonable to disconnect the two issues: codex construction from canonical conception.9

This contention seems reasonable if we consider that the format of the earliest codices of the gospels would be chosen for ease of transport (one of the advantages of the codex mentioned by Martial, perhaps also convenient for early Christian itinerant missionaries). And, although we cannot tell if an extant fragment of a papyrus comes from a one-​book codex or from a codex that contained several writings,10 the evidence may favour the idea that the earliest papyrus witnesses come from codices that contained just one work. Out of 127 different New Testament papyri (of a total of 130 published up to 2017), only fourteen cover more than one book; and, of these, only eight have been dated earlier than the fourth/ fifth century.11 The great majority, that is, each of the remaining 113 papyri, attest only a single writing.12 And this is also the general tenor of the earliest majuscule  9 Peter

Head, »Graham Stanton and the Four-​Gospel Codex: Reconsidering the Manuscript Evidence,« in Jesus, Matthew’s Gospel and Early Christianity: Studies in Memory of Graham N. Stanton, ed. Daniel M. Gurtner, Joel Willits, and Richard A. Burridge (LNTS 435; London: T&T Clark, 2011), 93–101, here 100. See also Michael J. Kruger, »Manuscripts, Scribes, and Book Production within Early Christianity,« in Christian Origins and Greco-​Roman Culture, ed. Porter and Pitts (n. 1), 15–40, here 18–27. 10  Eldon J. Epp, »Textual Criticism in the Exegesis of the New Testament with an Excursus on Canon,« in Handbook to Exegesis of the New Testament, ed. Stanley E. Porter (NTTS 25; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 45–97, here 56 (= Perspectives [n. 7], 461–495, here 473): »[N]umerous early manuscripts were poorly preserved and now are highly fragmentary – often a single leaf or only a few leaves remain – and very often they contain only a small portion of a single book. Actually, two-​thirds of the papyri and nearly one-​third of the majuscule manuscripts are preserved in only one or two leaves.« 11  See Epp, »Issues in the Interrelation« (n. 7), 488–489 (= Perspectives [n. 7], 599–600): More than one writing: 14 papyri: (a) More than one gospel: 5 papyri: P44 (Matthew + John); P45 (four gospels + Acts); P64+P67+P4 (Matthew + Luke); P75 (Luke + John); P84 (Mark + John). (b) One or two gospels + another writing: 2 papyri: P45 (four gospels + Acts, see above); P53 (Matthew + Acts). (c) Acts + other writings: 3 papyri: P45 (above); P53 (above); P74 (Acts + 1–2 Peter + 1–3 John + Jude). (d) Two or more Catholic Epistles: 2 papyri: P72 (1–2 Peter + Jude); P74 (above). (e) Two or more Pauline letters: 6 papyri: P30 (1–2 Thessalonians); P34 (1–2 Corinthians); P46 (Romans + Hebrews + 1–2 Corinthians + Ephesians + Galatians + Philippians + Colossians + 1 Thessalonians); P61 (Romans + 1 Corinthians + Philippians + Colossians + 1 Thessalonians + Titus + Philemon); P92 (Ephesians + 2 Thessalonians); P99 (Romans, Galatians, Ephesians). 12 The following updated figures are based on Epp, »Issues in the Interrelation« (n. 7), 489 (= Perspectives [n. 7], 600): Portions of a single writing: 111 papyri: (a) Portions of one gospel only: 55 papyri (21 with Matthew; one with Mark; 7 with Luke; 26 with John). (b) Portions of Acts only: 12 papyri (P8; P29; P33+P58; P38; P41; P48; P50; P56; P57; P91; P112; P127). (c) Portions of Hebrews only: 7 papyri (P12; P13; P17; P79; P89; P114; P116). (d) Portions of one Catholic Epistle only: 8 papyri: James (P20; P23; P54; P100); 1 Peter (P81; P125); 1 John (P9); Jude (P78). (e) Portions of one Pauline letter only: 22 papyri: Romans (P10; P26; P27; P31; P40;

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manuscripts. Up to the sixth century, out of 136 majuscules, we have only 27 attesting more than one book. They are distributed in the following way: from the fourth century, 0171 (Matthew and Luke), ‫ א‬and B; from the fourth/fifth century, W (Gospels); from the fifth century, A C D (Gospels and Acts) I (from 1 Corinthians to Hebrews) Q T (Luke and John) 048 (complete New Testament, except for the Gospels, Galatians, Jude and Revelation) 0166 (Acts and James); from the fifth/sixth century, 088 (1 Corinthians and Titus) and 0247 (1 and 2 Peter); and finally, from the sixth century, thirteen manuscripts containing more than one book of the New Testament.13 However, we should be aware that there are some early (3rd century) witnesses of codices containing more than one writing and that, except for P66, the most extensive extant early papyri (P45, P46, P72 and P75) contain also more than one book of the NT. This is also the case of some papyri that preserve no more than two pages (P30, P53, P92).14 It should be noted, furthermore, that we have Christian Septuagint codices paleographically dated to the second century that appear to have contained extensive texts.15 P.Baden IV 56b attests Exodus 8 and Deuteronomy 29, and P.Beatty V (pap. VI) + P.Mich. inv. 5554 attest Numbers P94; P113; P118); 1 Corinthians (P11+P14; P15; P68; P123); 2 Corinthians (P117; P124); Galatians (P51); Ephesians (P49, P132); Philippians (P16); 1 Thessalonians (P65); 1 Timothy (P133); Titus (P32); Philemon (P87); Hebrews (P116; P126). (f) Portions of Revelation to John only: 7 papyri (P18; P24; P43; P47; P85; P98; P115). 13  These figures are taken slightly adapted from the Table 6.10 in Eldon J. Epp, »Are Early New Testament Manuscripts Truly Abundant?« in Israel’s God and Rebecca’s Children: Christology and Community in Early Judaism and Christianity. Essays in Honor of Larry W. Hurtado and Alan F. Segal, ed. David B. Capes et alii (Waco, Tx.: Baylor University Press, 2007), 108–117. Among the 201 extant majuscules dated before the ninth century, only 44 contain more than one writing (22 % attesting more than one writing against 78 % containing only one) (cf. ibid., 92–93). 14 Third century codices containing more than one book: P45 (four gospels + Acts: 200– 250); P64+P67+P4 (Matthew + Luke: 175–200); P30 (1–2 Thessalonians: 175–225) and P46 (attesting all of Paul’s letters except for 2 Thessalonians, Philemon and the Pastoral letters: 200–225). From those mentioned, it is impossible to know if some codices contained the four gospels or only three or two (e. g., P64+P67+P4 and P75). P72 (Jude and 1–2 Peter) belongs to a miscellaneous codex where writings of various nature have been included. See Brent Nongbri, »The Construction of P.Bodmer VIII and the Bodmer ›Composite‹ or ›Miscellaneous‹ Codex,« NovT 58 (2016), 394–410; idem, »Recent Progress in Understanding the Construction of the Bodmer ›Miscellaneous‹ or ›Composite‹ Codex,« Adamantius 21 (2015), 172. Cf. also Tommy Wasserman, »Papyrus 72 and the Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex,« NTS 51 (2005), 137–154. The dating are those given by Pasquale Orsini and Willy Clarysse, »Early New Testament Manuscripts and their Dates: A Critique of Theological Palaeography,« ETL 88 (2012), 443–474, here 469–472. Their study comprehends 118 papyri. Up to date (April 2017), there have been published twelve more. Although P65 and P49 have been thought to be part of the same third century papyrus codex, containing Eph. 4–5 and 1 Thess. 1–2, they seem to come from two different codices. 15  Incidentally, this is something that Wallraff overlooks when he argues that the choice of the codex by Christians implied that the literature that was copied in this format was not considered sacred (see Walraff, Kodex und Kanon [n. 7], 16–18). Brent Nongbri’s review of Wallraff ’s book (JECS 22 [2014], 480–481) makes also the same point.

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5–8, 13, 25–36 and Deuteronomy 1–7, 9–12, 18, 19, 27–33.16 Thus, if Christians of the second century copied some of the sacred books of Israel in a single codex, it cannot be ruled out that they also copied at this time some Gospels or Paul’s letters in a single codex, even though we lack the evidence.17 Therefore, the scarcity of data suggests that we ought to be cautious about ascribing any early New Testament fragment to a single-​unit codex. Although, in principle, the starting point would be to suspect that it comes from codices containing only one writing, the possibility that some of these fragments – even many of them – may have belonged to multi-​unit codices cannot be excluded.18

2.  Book Production: Possibilities and Reality What remains beyond doubt is that book production techniques gradually developed and got perfected, reaching the point of producing codices capable of accommodating large quantities of text. Proof of this is Origen’s Hexapla, in the beginning of the third century, a milestone in book production technology. Although we do not have early witnesses, it seems natural to assume that he had recourse to the codex format (it is hardly conceivable that the Alexandrian teacher would have used rolls for undertaking such a project), thus bringing the final product somewhat closer to a library than to a single work.19 While we do not know if the format and layout of the Hexapla was Origen’s invention, it is 16  Alan Mugridge, Copying Early Christian Texts: A Study of Scribal Practice (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 172–173 and 178. 17 Other early codices with more than one book are: P.Ant. I 8 + III 210 (3rd century), which gathers various wisdom books together (Proverbs 5–9, 19–20; Wisdom 11–12 with title and Sirach 45), and Freer Gk MS. V (3rd century, although Turner dates it to the fourth), which seems to have contained the twelve minor prophets. There is only one opistograph that may have represented the combination of an Old Testament book with another of the New Testament (P.Oxy. VIII 1075, 1079), which attests Ex. 40 on recto and Rev. 1 (P18) on the verso. See Edwin A. Judge and Stuart R. Pickering, »Biblical Papyri Prior to Constantine: Some Cultural Implications of their Physical Form,« Prudentia 10 (1978), 1–13, esp. 8–10. 18 Epp, »Textual Criticism« (n. 10), 56 (= Perspectives [n. 7], 473–474). 19 See Anthony Grafton and Megan Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 86–132, here 96–107. The authors claim, from later fragments, that the Hexapla would have consisted of forty codices, each one of 400 leaves (800 pages) (105) and must have been a monumental enterprise in size and completion as well as costs: »For the Hexapla as we have reconstructed it, the cost of the writing alone would have been approximately 75,000 denarii. Unfortunately, the passage of the Price Edict regulating the cost of papyrus has not survived. The parchment required for a copy written on that relatively luxurious material would have cost another 75,000 denarii, for a total of approximately 150,000 denarii« (106). »Note that […] a copy of the Hexapla would have cost the same as a year’s subsistence for 38 laborers, which makes each codex of the Hexapla equal in value to one laborer’s annual subsistence« (324, n. 39). See also John S. Kloppenborg, »Literate Media in Early Christ Groups: The Creation of a Christian Book Culture,« JECS 22 (2014), 21–59, here 24.

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reasonable to imagine that the use of various columns, when codices with more than one column per page were uncommon,20 may have exerted a notable influence on the presentation of the text in future books.21 This is a fact that should not be neglected. It is also possible, then, that the tabular layout of the large fourth and fifth century Bible codices, capable of gathering in a single volume more than seventy books, may reflect the format of the Hexapla – or may even have copied it.22 In any case, it is beyond question that these large volumes, like Origen’s work, represent exceptional cases. Borrowing Wallraff’s image, it may be said that codex Sinaiticus and codex Vaticanus are to previous papyrus codices what a Mercedes car is to a Fiat or a basilica to a domestic church.23 Even if we unconsciously tend to imagine that, after these codices were produced and the canon was practically closed, the standard format for copying and transmitting the New Testament would be that of a single codex, what really happened was rather different. Only four of the 72 extant continuous-​text codices from before the sixth century contain the complete New Testament in one volume. In addition, out of the total number of manuscripts we have only 53 complete New Testament copies24 and of G. Turner, The Typology of the Early Codex (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977), 35–37. He thinks that the scribes who copied on a codex of papyrus in a single column considered it a second-​class book and suggests that codices with more than one column were meant to resemble high-​class rolls of Greek prose literature. See also Mugridge, Copying Early Christian Texts (n. 16), 64–65 and 486–488. 21  See Loveday Alexander, »Ancient Book-​Production and the Circulation of the Gospels,« in The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences, ed. Richard Bauckham (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 71–111, here 85–86: »[E]arly Christian book technology presupposes robust and vigorous intercommunity connections across the eastern Mediterranean area. And whatever their origins, these features help to create an effect of a distinctive book style which, ›though not an esoteric code, stands out as an in-​group convention that expressed a community consciousness and presumed a particular readership‹ (Gamble, Books and Readers, 78).« 22  Elliott, »Manuscripts, the Codex and the Canon« (n. 5), 110: »Up to the third century no surviving codex is known to have had more than 300 pages. After that the codex grew: B, Codex Vaticanus (4th century), had 1600 pages; Sinaiticus (4th century) 1460 pages; Codex Alexandrinus (5th century) 1640 pages. (All these figures are minima because all three are defective at the end.) This meant that more than one section of the New Testament could be included within one set of covers.« 23  Wallraff, Kodex und Kanon (n. 7), 23; Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 80. 24  David C. Parker, An Introduction to the New Testament Manuscripts and their Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 74: »[T]he facts (such as they are) militate against the likelihood that there were ever many complete New Testaments«; »[A] complete Bible is equally rare in Greek and in Latin, and […] a complete New Testament on its own is unheard of in Greek, and in Latin is as rare as a complete Bible« (ibid., 76). For Byzantine, Syriac and Coptic New Testament manuscripts cf. ibid., 77–79. The Christian lists of books on papyrus and ostracon show that no private, community or monastery libraries possessed a complete edition of the Bible. See Christoph Markschies, »The Canon of the New Testament in Antiquity: Some New Horizons for Future Research,« in Homer, the Bible, and Beyond: Literary and Religious Canons in the Ancient World, ed. Margalit Finkelberg and Guy G. Stroumsa 20 Eric

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these only about six or eight form part of a whole Bible.25 True, this may be due to the limitations of our evidence, but it does prove the exceptional character of codices such as ‫ א‬or B, as is confirmed by the absence of similar volumes in the following centuries, perhaps due also to economic reasons.26 Thus, leaving aside these extraordinary cases, the normal practice was to copy individually each of the New Testament books and group them in medium-​size collections.27 These did not seem to respond to a clear pattern for we find a variety of groupings.28 Still, the groupings attested by our papyrus sources of multi-​ (JSRC 2; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 175–194, here 186. A complete New Testament seems to appear only in six lists (ibid., 187). For lists of Christian books see also Rosa Otranto, Antiche liste di libri su papiro (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2000), 123–144. Cf. as well Hermann Harrauer, »Bücher in Papyri,« in Flores litterarum Ioanni Marte sexagenario oblati. Wissenschaft in der Bibliothek, ed. Helmut W. Lang (Wien: Böhlau, 1995), 59–77; Chrysi Kotsifou, »Books and Book Production in the Monastic Communities of Byzantine Egypt,« in The Early Christian Book, ed. William E. Klingshirn and Linda Safran (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 48–66; Herwig Maehler, »Bücher in den frühen Klöstern Ägyptens,« in Spätantike Bibliotheken: Leben und Lesen in den frühen Klöstern Ägypten, ed. Harald Froschauer and Cornelia Eva Römer (Wien: Phoibos, 2008), 39–47. 25  Parker, Introduction (n. 24), 70: »The correct number of Greek manuscripts containing the entire New Testament appears to be sixty-​one. Of these, between six and eight contain (or contained) the entire Bible.« But Epp, »Are Early New Testament Manuscripts Truly Abundant?« (n. 13), 91–92 and n. 20 notes that the list of New Testament manuscripts are often misleading, because they sometimes present as codices containing the whole New Testament some manuscripts which are defective (for example codex Vaticanus, often listed as complete, ends with Heb 9:14 and lacks the Pastorals, Philemon and Revelation; in addition, Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus contain writings that were left out of the canon). He lists 53 complete New Testament codices. Schmidt, »The Greek New Testament as a Codex« (n. 7), 476, notes that the two earliest complete New Testament codices – the minuscules 1424 and 175 – are from the ninth/ tenth and tenth/eleventh century, for these two manuscripts contain only and nothing other than the 27 canonical books. Cf. further Elliott, »Manuscripts, the Codex and the Canon« (n. 5), 110: »Only about 60 of our 3000 or so surviving continuous-​text Greek New Testament manuscripts were written as complete New Testaments, that is with all 27 books included. Some 150 contain the whole New Testament minus Revelation (which was looked upon with some suspicion by the church in the East for some time, before being eventually admitted into its canon). Even today the Eastern Orthodox churches do not include readings from Revelation in the lectionary. In total 2361 manuscripts including fragmentary manuscripts contain the Gospels, 662 including fragments contain Acts and the Catholics, 792 contain Paul and 303 Revelation.« 26  Parker, Introduction (n. 24), 74: »Why did this style of book not gain ground, but rather fade away? One possible answer may lie in parchment production. Even the wonderfully fine parchment of Codex Sinaiticus runs into a number of separate volumes, and a considerable overall thickness. And the coarser parchment which typifies the later majuscule period would have made a complete Bible even more unwieldy. Thus, the abandonment of fine parchment may have rendered the one-​volume Bible unviable.« See also Thomas S. Pattie, »The Creation of the Great Codices,« in The Bible as Book, ed. Sharpe and van Kampen (n. 1), 61–72. 27 As for the tendency to make collections, evidence from ancient libraries of papyri rolls shows that the books could be separated into groups by genre or subject, with the various groups stored in different containers, rooms, or buildings. See George W. Houston, Inside Roman Libraries: Book Collections and Their Management in Antiquity (Studies in the history of Greece and Rome; Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 84. 28 Elliott, »Manuscripts, the Codex and the Canon« (n. 5), 108–109.

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unit codices agree with those of later manuscripts. The most common were these: the four gospels (as in P45), Paul’s letters (as in P46) and Acts and Catholic Letters (as in P74), which circulated in three independent codices, although Acts may also go with the Gospels (as in P45).29 All in all, the great majority of the manuscripts of the writings that entered into the New Testament canon attest only one of these three parts – that is, the four gospels, Acts and Catholic letters, Paul, and Revelation. A few contain the 27 books and others all of them but Revelation, the majority only the gospels.30 Consequently, the fact that in spite of the existence of the great codices from the fourth and fifth centuries the books of the New Testament continued to be transmitted in various collections shows that the way in which the codex format might have influenced the canonization of some specific books is not reduced to the mere physical capacity of containing some writings between two covers.31 More importantly, the existence of these groupings shows that closing the canon did not depend on the possibility of containing all those writings in a single volume. If the great codices of the fourth and fifth centuries were the exception, it is clear that the authority of those books which were demarcated by the canon was not founded upon the mere fact of a certain number of works fitting within a single volume. As can be observed, many questions remain open. Therefore, it will be useful to explore if, in addition to the possibility of bringing together various writings, the codex format offered other features that may have influenced the concept of the canon.

29  It should be observed that, given the variety of collections, we cannot be sure that those fragmentary majuscules which attest a single writing may be taken as evidence for standard groupings. See Elliott, »Manuscripts, the Codex and the Canon« (n. 5), 109–111; Epp, »Textual Criticism« (n. 10), 56 (= Perspectives [n. 7], 474). 30  Although it cannot be excluded that the various sequences of books attested by manuscripts may reflect canonical considerations. For example, codex Vaticanus presents the same sequence as the list of Athanasius, although the canonical understanding it reveals may not necessarily be that of Egypt (the codex is more likely to have been produced in Caesarea). See Epp, »Issues in the Interrelation« (n. 7), 505–508 (= Perspectives [n. 7], 624–628). But, as Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism (tr. E. F. Rhodes; 2nd edition; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 79, note, in this respect, »[t]he only characteristic common to the whole manuscript tradition (extending also to canon lists, patristic references, and other sources which allude to the sequence of the writings) is that the Gospels stand at the beginning and Revelation at the end.« 31 Elliott, »Manuscripts, the Codex and the Canon« (n. 5), 107, thinks that the codex helped to limit the number of gospels. On the one hand, he argues, we do not have extant codices containing canonical and non-​canonical gospels, and, on the other, the fact that the codex had a limiting factor (for it implies planning how much text fits into the quire), contributed to fix the canon.

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3.  The Canon as Cross-​Reference Table The work of Eusebius of Caesarea, who has been characterized as a »Christian impresario of the codex« in continuity with Origen and Pamphilus, may cast some light on the issue.32 Wallraff has underscored the importance of Eusebius’s use of the word canon with the meaning of »table« or »synopsis.« This usage is earlier than that of κανών applied to Scripture and was employed mostly in a technical-​geometrical sense to refer to the Πτολεμαίου πρόχειροι κανόνες, the astronomical »handy tables« of Ptolemy (2nd century), the »tables which are quickly at hand« for consultation.33 Eusebius recurs to this meaning in the second part of his Chronicle, in which he presents us with a chronicle of world history (at least since Abraham), gathering in tables or charts (κανόνες) the lists of rulers and the most important facts of the nineteen kingdoms he had dealt with in the various chapters of book I (Assyrian, Persian, Jewish, Athenian etc. up to the Romans), arranged in parallel columns. It is quite possible that the use of columns adopted by Origen in the Hexapla would have aided Eusebius in the task of comparing texts word by word, while the double page of the codex permitted him to present synchronically the history of the different kingdoms.34 Eusebius likewise made use of this method for the lesser-​known tables of the Psalms, in which the system of canons worked as a way to establish a reciprocal relationship between the text and the table – between the reference and what is referred to –, a method facilitated by the codex format, difficult to imagine in a roll.35 This system is found again in the canons of the four gospels that he designed to show at first sight where each gospel agreed with the others. Given that the use of columns would have been unpractical for putting in relation similar passages, as it would have involved breaking the unity of the text,36 he solves the 32 Grafton and Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book (n. 19), esp. 178–232. 33 The use of κανών as rule in geometrical or mathematical sense occurs also in Plutarch, Soll. an. 974F and 979C. See Wallraff, Kodex und Kanon (n. 7), 28–29. 34  Grafton and Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book (n. 19), 169. Wallraff, Kodex und Kanon (n. 7), 30–31, notes that through this system »canon« not only became an ordering principle to provide a clearer layout, but also had the extra value of being a history in singular. 35  Eusebius classified the psalms in seven columns labelled 1, 2, 3 etc. In the first he collected the psalms of David, in the second those of Salomon, in the third the anepigraphoi (unlabelled), in the fourth those of the sons of Core etc. See Wallraff, Kodex und Kanon (n. 7), 31; and idem, »The Canon Tables of the Psalms: An Unknown Work of Eusebius of Caesarea,« Dumbarton Oaks Papers 67 (2013), 1–14. 36  Wallraff, Kodex und Kanon (n. 7), 32–33. In fact, as Grafton and Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book (n. 19), 195, note, Ammonius had taken extracts from the gospels of Mark, Luke and John and had placed them next to the parallel passages of Matthew. Eusebius complains in his letter to Carpianus that this system broke the integrity of the texts for it ruined the sequential thread of the other three gospels preventing a consecutive

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problem by dividing the text into numbered sections and listing the numbers in ten tables at the beginning of the codex, indicating which of the sections are common to all four evangelists, which to three or two of them, and which are specific to each one (the reference numbers were written alongside the text, and every reference number has a numeral written below it in red to indicate in which of the ten tables the reference number was located). In this way the canons at the beginning of the volume allowed the reader to find at a glance the parallel passages of the four gospels. But these canons had also a more profound function. They permitted to link the four accounts among themselves and, so to speak, transform them into a single gospel. As Wallraff points out following the etymological relation between »text« and »tissue,« through this ingenious system of canons the textus appears as interwoven of four fila (the threads of each text of the gospels). The four Gospels are, thus, knit by cross-​references to a textile structure, a web that is symbolically visible in the canon boards at the beginning of the book.37 As a consequence, Wallraff claims, it would be inadequate to pay too much attention to the word »canon« as regula fidei and thereby leave aside the meaning of canon as »list.« This sense of »canon« as catalogue or list would be as important as that of »rule,« an understanding which underlines the practical character of the canon but without excluding its literary nature.38 It seems reasonable to assume that the use of the word κανών in this sense shows the importance of having at hand some distinct information for consultation as well as indicating the capacity of cross-​referencing between the various writings collected in a single codex, as implied by the use of the tables. That is, the tables, the κανόνες, have no value by themselves but in so far as they refer to texts which are related with one another. This is also attested in the technical use of the term in astronomy mentioned above. And it is interesting to note that the codex is precisely the preferred format for the astronomical texts preserved in papyrus, being used here more frequently and earlier than in other categories of literary and subliterary texts. As a matter of fact, the majority of the astronomical codices are almanacs, some of them perhaps from the first (P.Laur. 144) and second

reading (cf. Eusebii epistola ad Carpianum et canones I-​X, in Novum Testamentum Graece, ed. Nestle-​Aland [26th edition; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994], 41*). 37  Wallraff, Kodex und Kanon (n. 7), 35; cf. Grafton and Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book (n. 19), 199: »[The Canon Tables] enabled readers not simply to rely on memory or to use rearranged texts of the Bible, but to turn the four Gospels into a single web of cross-​commentary – to move from text to text as easily as one could move from kingdom to kingdom in the Canon.« 38  Wallraff, Kodex und Kanon (n. 7), 35, affirms: »Die theologischen Konsequenzen sind nicht unerheblich: die Schrift ist dann nicht Zugemessenes, sondern Maßstab, nicht Glaubenszeugnis, sondern Glaubensregel (regula fidei), nicht geordnete, sondern verordnende Wahrheit, in letzter Instanz: norma normans, non normata.«

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centuries. And if codices and rolls were used for the monthly and five-​day almanacs, there is a clear preference for the codex in the manuscripts of πρόχειροι κανόνες and related sets of tables, for, as Jones notes, the »frequent reference to dispersed parts of a large compilation of tables would have rendered a layout in rolls very awkward.«39 In other words, the practical and ready for consultation nature of the codex was the suitable format for gathering texts that were related and that had to be read as a corpus, without breaking their unity. This suggests again that the decision on the number of writings that a codex was able to contain was not conditioned by the physical characteristics of the medium but by the possibility and necessity of cross-​referring a set of texts of similar nature, or which might be considered useful for a particular purpose. In the words of Eusebius in his letter to Carpianus, the canon permitted to find τὰ παραπλήσια, the »similarity« among the various writings.40 The codex, then, becomes the specific medium to establish homogeneity within diversity, a fundamental feature of the biblical canon. But this homogeneity does not imply that all the writings included in a codex must be of the same character, as the early miscellaneous or composite codices show.41 It is doubtful that those who collected such heterogeneous texts in a single volume saw in the final product a gathering of authoritative writings governed by a unifying principle. Rather, the miscellaneous codices seem to be products for personal use, appropriate perhaps to be employed in schools or for private teaching.42 This shows again that, although the format of these volumes may contribute to underscore a certain unity between writings of different nature, the physical condition of a codex as such is neither enough to grant authority to the writings included in it nor to suggest that all the books bound between two covers implies the notion of a closed canon.

39 Alexander Jones, Astronomical Papyri from Oxyrhynchus (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1999), 61. But the greater part of the sign-​entry almanacs are later than 161 CE. For the ephemerides it seems that rolls continued to be used until the fifth century. The primary tables pertaining to arithmetical astronomy were written either on rolls or on the back of other documents (cf. ibid.). 40 Eusebii epistola ad Carpianum et canones I–X, 33–45, in Novum Testamentum Graece, ed. Nestle-​Aland (n. 36), 42*. 41  On miscellaneous codices, see Edoardo Crisci, »I più antichi codici miscellanei greci. Materiali per una riflessione,« in Il codice miscellaneo. Tipologie e funzioni. Atti del Convegno internazionale (Cassino 14–17 maggio 2003), ed. idem and Orozo Pecere (Cassino: Università degli Studi di Cassino, 2004) (= Segno e testo 2 [2004]), 109–144; Armando Petrucci, »Del libro unitario al libro misceláneo,« in Libros, escrituras y bibliotecas (tr. F. M. Gimeno; Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2011), 249–276. 42  As Turner, Typology (n. 20), 81, notes, lying behind the title »composite« given to some codices »is the suspicion that scribes did not care to waste writing material and would wish to fill any free pages left over at the end of a codex.«

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4.  Cross-​Reference, Authority, and Models As has been said, one of the main features of the codex is to facilitate cross-​reference. In this regard, it might be useful to invoke Trobisch’s proposal on the formation of the New Testament.43 Setting aside the difficulties that his thesis and conclusions present,44 his views on how the canonical elements associated with the codex format might have affected the New Testament’s configuration are still relevant.45 In his opinion, those who produced the canonical edition would have had to take into consideration these three elements: the reader’s perspective, the macrostructure of the edition (»user interface«) that served as guide for the readers, and the traditional material that did not fit well into the whole.46 Bearing in mind these elements, Trobisch argues that the titles of the different books which are implicit in some specific writings gave way to a collection of 27 books

43  David Trobisch, The First Edition of the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 44  It is certainly difficult to prove that a canonical edition was already made at such an early time (middle of the 2nd century). See, e. g., the review by David Parker in JTS 53 (2002), 298– 305, and that by Jason T. Larson in TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism 6 (2001) plus the article by Tobias Nicklas, »Neutestamentliche Kanongeschichte als Geschichte eines Buches?« in In Mari Via Tua. Philological Studies in Honour of Antonio Piñero, ed. Israel M. Gallarte and Jesús Peláez (Estudios de Filología Neotestamentaria 11; Córdoba: El Almendro, 2016), 575– 596. One could add to these the observations of Michael W. Holmes, »The Biblical Canon,« in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, ed. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David G. Hunter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 406–426, here 421, n. 3, who writes: »The significant differences in both content and arrangement so evident in Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Alexandrinus constitute strong evidence against the hypothesis of D. Trobisch that the mid-​ second century editors of what he terms a ›Canonical Edition‹ standardized features of the LXX and placed the books in a specific order.« 45  Trobisch, The First Edition (n. 43), 44: »All of these elements – the notation of the nomina sacra, the codex form, the uniform arrangement and number of writings in the manuscript tradition, the formulation of the titles, and the evidence indicating that the collection was called ›New Testament‹ from the very beginning – are evidence of a careful final redaction. These editorial features did not originate with the authors of the individual writings. They serve to combine disparate material into a collection and to create the impression of a cohesive literary unit for readers of the work. Furthermore, these elements are so idiosyncratic that they cannot be credited to several independently operating editors but must be the work of a single editorial entity.« 46  See, as an example, Trobisch, The First Edition (n. 43), 46: »The naming of authors in the titles of specific writings is another editorial feature that illuminates the editorial concept. From the readers’ perspective these famous names seem to guarantee the reliability of the Canonical Edition. As far as the macrostructure is concerned, the authoritative names are part of a carefully woven web holding together the disparate parts of the New Testament. And seen from the perspective of the traditional material, the Fourth Gospel clearly did not intend to disclose the name of the ›beloved disciple.‹ The final editors, however, presented it as the work of John. All three perspectives therefore display a strong editorial interest in conveying the names of the prominent authors to the readers. This concern demonstrates another element of the editorial concept.«

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attributed to eight authors: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, James, Peter and Jude.47 He stresses the cross-​reference existing between the various books linked to these names and pays special attention to John 21 – as the editorial note added to the final edition of the four gospels and of the whole collection – together with Acts (esp. 15:1–19), 2 Timothy and 2 Peter.48 In this editorial activity, the codex (and the nomina sacra) would have played an essential role, bringing together disparate material in a single collection and thus creating the impression of a coherent literary unit. This would offer an authoritative edition, assuring that none of the writings (especially the shortest ones) remained out of it and this in turn would help those who considered this edition as authoritative to set themselves apart from the Jewish community which used the roll.49 Many of Trobisch’s options are certainly highly hypothetical and some of them rather unlikely, but a number of his ideas are interesting for the concept of the canon and its relation to the codex, especially the important role that the author to whom the book is attributed plays in a canonical collection. All the writings of the New Testament are explicitly, implicitly or by tradition, attributed to apostolic figures, that is, to some of the direct disciples of Jesus or of those who were close to them. Therefore, the canon is not only a list of the books attributed to people whose authority is reflected in some writings but also a list of authorities that are recognized in specific books preserved and transmitted by tradition, so that is not possible to separate the texts from the authors to whom they are attributed.50 This is a literary feature that cannot be excluded from the concept of the canon, irrespective of who had actually been the real author of a particular writing, as the ancient concept of literary authority suggests. It is well known that in classical antiquity there were authorities whose recognition was sustained by the weight the tradition had given to their works. It is obvious that among the Greeks Homer was the authority par excellence, as is 47  Trobisch, The First Edition (n. 43), 59: »The titles, with their carefully constructed cross-​ references between authors and specific text passages, connect the collection units and function as the user interface of the edition. They are the result of a deliberate redactional effort typical for anthologies to direct the interest of the readers to what the editors feel is the central message of the collection.« 48  Trobisch, The First Edition (n. 43), 79–101. 49  Trobisch, The First Edition (n. 43), 73–77. Cf. also Larson, TC (n. 44), no. 12: »From an editorial perspective, the codex was more profitable to the publisher when produced in larger numbers, and, coupled with the missionary activity of early Christians, this was certainly an important factor. The codex could also hold more texts than a scroll, and its form of binding could ensure the integrity of the collection: very short writings benefited from the protection of other larger works surrounding them.« 50 On the canonicity of the book and not of the text see Lee Martin McDonald, »Wherein Lies Authority: A Discussion of Books, Texts, and Translations,« in Exploring the Origins of the Bible: Canon Formation in Historical, Literary, and Theological Perspective, ed. Craig A. Evans and Emanuel Tov (Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology 6; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 203–239; and Eugene Ulrich, »The Notion and Definition of Canon,« in The Canon Debate, ed. McDonald and Sanders (n. 4), 21–35, here 30–32.

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proved by the high number of Iliad and Odyssey papyri discovered in the land of the Nile (Pack attests more than 3000). Naturally, Homer was not the only one. The fragments unearthed in the sands of Egypt show other figures who also enjoyed authority in various literary fields: Apollonius of Rhodes, in epic; Aeschylus, Sophocles and, especially, Euripides, in tragedy; Aristophanes and Menander, in comedy; Pindar, Alcaeus, Sappho and Bacchylides, in lyric; Theocritus, in bucolic. To these must be added the authority of Thucydides, Herodotus and Xenophon, in history; Plato and Aristotle, in philosophy; Demosthenes and Isocrates, in rhetoric. In any case, the tendency was to read literature that was transmitted down the centuries, probably due to the influence of the educational system, for in the schools Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes and Menander were those principally taught.51 But the important point here is to note that the authorities were the authors themselves, not the works they had written, as is also proved by that fact that, when literary critics disapproved them, they did not attack a specific work but the author who had written it.52 This is also an interesting question for the kind of authority reflected in the concept of canon. As is well known, the Greek word κανών originally designed an »upright object« and later became also used to mean »rule or measure that acquires the status of a model.«53 In the Hellenistic period, an age in which there existed all kind of lists, we also find lists of κανόνες, writers who were considered exemplary or models. The Greek expression for selecting these authors was ἐγκρίνειν (»include in a list;« while ἐκκρίνειν was used to mean »remove from [a list]«), so that those writers who were κανόνες on occasions were named ἐγκριθέντες, »those thought to be inside,« »the registered,« in the selective list of authors (the word gave way to the Roman expression classici, that is, writers of the first class, primae classis). These authors became πραττόμενοι, those who were »treated,« that is, elected to have a philological treatment and, thus, edited, commented etc. Their writings were copied again and again, in order to be read and studied in schools and by the educated public, so that, while the ἐκκριθέντες were left to perish, the ἐγκριθέντες remained for posterity.54 The lists of authors 51 See, among others, Raffaella Cribiore, Writing, Teaching, Students in Graeco-​ Roman Egypt (American Studies in Papyrology, 36; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1966); eadem, »Higher Education in Early Byzantine Egypt: Rhetoric, Latin, and the Law,« in Egypt in the Byzantine World, 300–700, ed. Roger S. Bagnall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 47–66; Peter J. Parsons, La Ciudad del Pez Elefante. La vida de los griegos en el antiguo Egipto (tr. Z. de Torres; Barcelona: Debate, 2009), 255–288. 52 Robert M. Grant, »Literary Criticism and the New Testament Canon,« JSNT 16 (1982), 24–44, here 27 (repr. in Stanley E. Porter and Craig A. Evans [eds.], New Testament Interpretation and Methods: A Sheffield Reader [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997], 82–101, here 85). 53  Cf. José B. Torres Guerra, »Literatura Griega: las bases del canon,« Minerva 25 (2012), 21–48, here 23–24. 54  Rudolf Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship: From the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968), 206–208.

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that in ancient times were frequently attributed to Aritophanes of Byzantium and/or Aristarchus followed a criterion of inclusivity rather than exclusivity, for they contained more names than those usually read, and were born probably in a school context. Yet, these were not official lists, but rather an expression of common opinions, as a response to the necessity of selecting and establishing the models that had to be read, studied and imitated.55 This is how the canon of the tragedians (with the three renowned authors, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides), of the nine lyric poets, three comic poets, or ten orators originated.56 Only in the eighteen-​century, through the influence of the biblical use of the word »canon,« were these lists of writers also labelled canons. But originally the κανόνες were the authors, not the lists.57 As a consequence, the κανόνες were those to be imitated, as is specifically mentioned by Quintilian in his Institutio (10.1.46–131), where he gathers the list of the authors whom anyone wishing to become a rhetorician had to know, or by Dion of Prusa in his speech 18.6–19, when he presents the list of writers who must be read by those going into politics.58 And surely this also happened in philosophy, as we know that the works of Plato and Aristotle occupied a special place in the Academy and Peripatos where their books had to be read in a particular sequence. This suggests that what was taught in the schools about literary criticism in an age of forgery played an important role.59 Thus, in contrast with the influence of the schools, the lists of books offered a relative value, because the collective judgment on the authorities was more important than the list. In other words, this collective judgment on the authorities that took shape by consensus and was transmitted from one generation to another might have also helped to produce the canonical list of the Bible. When needed, such a »list« of authorities and their writings might had been more relevant to define the identity of the Christian group than the decision of establishing the list of canonical 55 Grant, »Literary Criticism and the New Testament Canon« (n. 52), 25–28; Torres Guerra, »Literatura Griega« (n. 53), 24. 56 Torres Guerra, »Literatura Griega« (n. 53), 25, n. 16: Nine lyric poets: Alcman, Alcaeus, Sappho, Stesichorus, Pindar, Bacchylides, Ibycus, Anacreon, Simonides. Three comic poets: Eupolis, Cratinus, Aristophanes (cf. Hor., Sat. 1.4.1). Ten orators: Antiphon, Andocides, Lysias, Isocrates, Isaeus, Aeschines, Lycurgus, Demosthenes, Hyperides, Dinarchus. 57  Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship (n. 54), 207, refers that this catachrestic use of canon was suggested by Ruhnken in his work of 1768 (David Ruhnken, Historia critica oratorum Graecorum, edition of Rutilius Lupus, and often reprinted: Opuscula, Vol. 1 [Leiden, 1823], 386). See also Otto Kroehnert, Canonesne poetarum scriptorum artificum per antiquitatem fuerunt? (Doctoral Thesis University of Königsberg; Königsberg, 1897), and Lee Martin McDonald, »Hellenism and the Biblical Canons: Is There a Connection?« in Christian Origins and Hellenistic Judaism: Social and Literary Contexts for the New Testament. Early Christianity in its Hellenistic Context, Vol. 2, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts (TENTS 10; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 13–49, here 25. 58  Torres Guerra, »Literatura Griega« (n. 53), 24. 59 Grant, »Literary Criticism and the New Testament Canon« (n. 52), 44 (= New Testament Interpretation and Methods, 101).

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books by a single person or any particular body, or than the possible reaction to a crisis arisen in the second century.60 This digression has no other end than showing the relation between what is copied and included in a codex and what is left out of it. The peculiarity of the Christian codex of the Bible is that it not only gathers works of a single author (like the roll), but, like an anthology, collects the writings of various authorities and allows to recognize them as a unity with a beginning and end, given that the format offers the possibility of cross-​reference between the various books.

5. Conclusion It has been said that there were as many canons as communities,61 for it is most likely that, together with the canon as rule of faith, some communities preserved a collection of writings considered as authoritative while other Christian groups kept fewer or more than the others.62 But each collection implied a vital canon created by tradition that at the beginning and for several centuries did not feel the need to define in a list. The New and Old Testament canon, as a list strictly delimited and made up exclusively of authoritative or sacred books to which nothing could not be added or taken away, was given by the ecclesiastical authorities who begin to operate more openly and authoritatively in the fourth century. The decision was facilitated by the possibility of having all the canonical books in one volume. The codex format helped to determine those limits, in so far as it set the boundaries between the writings included between two covers and others that remained outside of those limits. The cross-​referencing between authors and writings is made easier by the format, which gives the sense of a unified book. Then, 60  See Markschies, »The Canon of the New Testament in Antiquity« (n. 24), 175–194. Also Holmes, »The Biblical Canon« (n. 44), 417, argues that early Christianity, like rabbinic Judaism, was concerned with self-​definition: »At the heart of this effort […] was the question of which traditions to accept as normative and how they ought to be interpreted.« 61  James A. Sanders, »Scripture as Canon for Post-​Modern Times,« BTB 25 (1995), 56–63, here 58: »It was becoming clear that there were probably as many canons as there were communities […] Focusing on the question of fluidity in the matter of inclusion/exclusion of different books in different communities in antiquity brought attention to the question of literature considered authoritative – that is, functionally canonical, by one Jewish or Christian community but not by another.« 62 Cf. Holmes, »The Biblical Canon« (n. 44), 419: »With Irenaeus, however, the story is, chronologically, only about half over. During the period between Irenaeus and Athanasius at least nineteen books formed a part of the floating penumbra around the relatively stable core group: not just 2–3 John, 2 Peter, Jude, James, Hebrews, and Revelation, but also the Gospel of the Hebrews, Gospel of the Egyptians, Acts of Paul, Acts of Peter, 3 Corinthians, Letter to the Laodiceans, Apocalypse of Peter, Didache, 1 Clement, 2 Clement, Letter of Barnabas, and Shepherd of Hermas – all of which were considered by someone sometime as scripture.«

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the format of the codex is particularly suitable for collecting, as in an anthology, the writings of various authorities and for presenting them as a unity. In it the list of contents reflects the synchronic character of the whole work, as suggested by the use of the word canon as table, so that the format unifies the diverse information transmitted in each of the writings collected in the volume.63 But the authority of each of those writings is only possible in the complete set, in so far as it is defined by an external entity. In other words, the content of the codex is still a collection, not the collection, and, as a collection, can only have an indirect influence on the canon. Any collection is always partial unless there is an external authority that closes it. An expert or a group of experts might collect an anthology of the 50 best novels written by Nobel Prize winners. But that list will have an authority different from that of an anthology produced by the Swedish Academy. The production of some particular books in particular formats reflects part of the reality, in the same way as a photograph can only show a partial view of something. The codex certainly contributed to define the limits, as a way of selecting some writings and leaving out others. But the material format does not allow the panoramic photograph. This is elusive to tangible or mere historical contingent factors.64 The usage of authoritative writings depends on where authority lies.65

63  In this respect, the codex contributes to the normative value of the writings. As Wallraff, Kodex und Kanon (n. 7), 48, argues concerning Eusebius’s canons, the table of contents and pinakes, the chapters divisions, and the cover and illustrations in the sacred book of the Christians also have a stabilizing function. They contribute to give to the text an aura of the immutability and untouchability. In this sense, the canon as a closed and harmonious list of catalogues is by no means merely a formal description, but it also has an authoritative and normative power. The two terms of κανών as »list« and »rule« are very similar. 64  See the interesting points raised by Francis Watson, Gospel Writing: A Canonical Perspective (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 604–619, esp. 616–619. 65 It is true that in certain circumstances the Bible codex was thought to embody the actual presence of the incarnate Christ as the Word of God, but the holiness of the divine Logos is ultimately defined by the authority, as the Quinisext Council of 692 shows when it threatens excommunication for anyone who destroys the books of the Old and New Testaments. See Claudia Rapp, »Holy Texts, Holy Men and Holy Scribes: Aspects of Scriptural Holiness in Late Antiquity,« in The Early Christian Book, ed. Klingshirn and Safran (n. 24), 194–222, here 196–200.

Hebrew Psalm 91 / Greek Psalm 90 Collections and Contexts, and a Text of Authority Thomas J. Kraus 1. Introduction A detail drawing of a sarcophagus from Me’eleyya/Meğeleyya (Apamea, Upper Syria), IGLS IV 1488, offers four lines of text on one of its long sides:1 1 Ὁ [κατοικῶν ἐ]μ βοηθίᾳ τοῦ Ὑψίστου. Ἐλέ[ϊ]σό`ν´ με κατὰ τὸ μέγα σου ἔλεος 2 Εἷς θεὸς [ὁ β]οηθο~ν τοῦ γράψαντ(ος) καὶ τοῦ ἀναγνό[σ]κον(τος). 3  Ἔτους δοψ´ μνηὶ Περιτίου β´ ἐκατεστάθι τὸ μν[η]μ(εῖον) 4 ἰνδ(ικτιῶνος) α´ 1 He that dwelleth in the help of the Highest. Release me according to your great mercy. 2 [There is only] one god, who helps who wrote and who reads that. 3 In the year 774, the second of Peritios, the tomb has been built 4 in the first indiction. (l. 1 read ἐν; ν of ἐλέϊσον is written above the line; ἔλεος is beneath σου, because the line is full; l. 3 ἐκατεστάθι with double augment, thus read κατεστάθη.)

Apart from the beginning of Ps 90LXX (in line 1) there is the popular and widespread Εἷς θεός-​formula (line 2), typical of the date, which then would be 463 (or 473) CE, and (in lines 1–2) a direct address to the writer and reader of the text, who should be protected by God. Probably, the blessing also refers to the deceased person entombed in the sarcophagus; and the inscription might be an implicit warning to tomb raiders. But the latter remains open to discussion. In addition, there is also (lines 3–4) a clear statement about the erection of the tomb (μνημεῖον) and (not represented in the transcription but visible in the drawing) a wheel with eight spokes which may represent a cross with eight beams. If that is correct, this symbol supports the protective and blessing impact of the inscription itself. The sun‑ or wheel-​shaped sign might have derived from the chi-​ rho, the most prominent form of the Christogram. Then it can be assumed that 1 The drawing is provided in William K. Prentice, Greek and Latin Inscriptions (Publications of an American Archaeological Expedition to Syria in 1899–1900: Part III; New York: Century, 1908), 184 (no. 207).

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a horizontal crossbar was added to ☧ or the loop of the rho was added to the wheel-​symbol. The four bars formed an eight-​spoked wheel thereafter, which often was enclosed by a circle.2 Such a wheel »is a non‑ and pre-​Christian symbol«3 that had been used before it was adopted by Christians. Consequently, the wheel became rather popular on sarcophagi and was accompanied by Christian elements (e. g., Biblical verses and/or crosses).4 The sarcophagus is consequently inscribed with a conglomerate of textual elements, partly formulae, that are meant to interact with each other for a specific purpose, i. e., to function in an apotropaic way. Their effectivity and message is underlined by the decorative pictorial element, the wheel, a symbol of perfection and universality. Not only might this be but definitely is this a clear indication of the manner people in late antiquity utilized certain textual and iconographic elements that were evidently available and widely known in their days, as if such elements belonged to a special and standardized programme from which people could choose. These elements were (a) put together in order to serve a clear purpose, (b) were adjusted to special material, objects and their forms, and (c) were used because of their popular and known effectivity so that they could and should interact with each other. Among such elements we find a Greek psalm, i. e., Psalm 90 according to its Septuagint number, the most popular and widespread Biblical text when it comes to the textual attestation by archaeological objects. Together with other elements this psalm, or to be more precise, as in most cases solely the beginning of its first verse, serves an apotropaic purpose on the sarcophagus: it should put the deceased under the guardianship of »the most high« and protect and help the one who wrote (and read?) the inscription. So, we can assert that the psalm had been functionalized; and such a functionalization requires that the impact and successful effect of the text or of parts from it had been widely accepted or regarded as proven. Consequently, Psalm 90LXX was seen as an authoritative help for specific situations and against certain dangers. But, first, what is this authority all about? And how is it represented by archaeological objects? Second, is there 2  This might have been true for an encircled 𝈙 to form a six-​spoked wheel as well. Cf. Frederick R. Webber, Church Symbolism: An Explanation of the more Important Symbols of the Old and New Testament, the Primitive, the Mediaeval and the Modern Church (2nd edition; Cleveland: Omnigraphics, 1938), 77. 3  Cf. Tuomas Rasimus, »Revisiting the ICHTHYS: A Suggestion Concerning the Origins of Christological Fish Symbolism,« in Mystery and Secrecy in the Nag Hammadi Collection and Other Ancient Literature: Ideas and Practices, ed. Christian H. Bull, Liv I. Lied, and John D. Turner (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 327–348, here 341. Further see Erwin R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-​Roman Period, 13 vols. (New York: Pantheon, 1953–1968), 7.175–201, to whom Rasimus refers. 4  Cf. Prentice, Greek and Latin Inscriptions (n. 1), 184 (no. 207); Louis Jalabert, »Citations bibliques dans l’épigraphie grecque,« DACL 3.2 (1948), 1731–1756, here 1733 (no. 31); Denis Feissel, »Notes d’Épigraphie Chrétienne (VII),« BCH 108 (1984), 545–579, here 577 and 579.

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a difference between the Psalm’s canonical and extra-​canonical application? In other words, does the corpus or collection the psalm belongs to or the purpose it was used for influence or even determine its text or textual tradition to a certain degree? Hence, these questions should be tackled and several issues be dealt with as follows: (1) First, the widespread, popular, and astonishingly multifarious use of Greek Psalm 90 as it is attested by archaeological objects in late antiquity is going to be demonstrated. How is this Psalm or are words, phrases, or passages from it used? How is it applied when material and/or form set clear limits (e. g., space and way of writing or inscribing letters)? How does it interact with other texts and pictorial elements? Which are most prominent? What about the Psalm used alone? (2) Second, the findings and evidence from such a brief survey provoke the question about the Hebrew version of the Psalm, i. e., Psalm 91 according to its Masoretic number. Why has this psalm received such an individual and special attention? Why was it used for apotropaic and other purposes, too? How come that it acquired authority for such a specific magical context? (3) Third, Hebrew Psalm 91 and Greek Psalm 90 are part of a set of other psalms that form a collection within the wider collection of texts in the Book of Psalms. Here, we will focus on manuscript evidence that illustrates the features of »context,« »collection,« and »authority« in relation to Psalm 91/90. The Masorah, the Septuagint, Qumran, and apotropaic papyri will set the line: in how far does an explicit context determine the transmission of and influence the textual form of the psalm? Does a canonical and extra-​canonical application of the psalm condition the reliability and accuracy of its transmission? Are these then layers of varied and qualitatively different levels of »authority«? (4) Fourth, conclusions will be drawn from (1) to (3), mainly from (2) and (3) in order to address the initial questions asked above and to unveil the two-​fold use of the same Biblical text for two different contexts.

2. Objects with Greek Psalm 90 (= Psalm 90LXX): Contexts Some years ago I have made up a preliminary database with objects that attest Ps 90LXX or at least parts, verses or just the first initial word(s) from it.5 Of course, 5 Cf. Thomas J. Kraus, »Septuaginta-​Psalm 90 in apotropäischer Verwendung: Vorüberlegungen für eine kritische Edition und (bisheriges) Datenmaterial,« BN 125 (2005), 39–73, here 47–59. Further see Thomas J. Kraus, »Psalm 90 der Septuaginta in apotropäischer Verwendung – erste Anmerkungen und Datenmaterial,« in Proceedings of the 24th International Congress of Papyrology, Helsinki, 1st–7th of August 2004, Vol. 1, ed. Jaakko Frösén, Tiina Purola, and Erja Salmenkivi (Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 122.1; Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 2007), 497–514.

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such a database is continuously growing with newly discovered, rediscovered, and edited or reedited objects so that there are approximately ninety items now known to me with something from or the whole Greek Psalm 90. Of course, there are rather striking matters of method and categorization that could be discussed.6 Also the availability of objects is a matter of concern, in other words, these are inscriptions once published which cannot be accessed anymore today because their current provenance is not known, they are kept in areas of conflict, or they are simply lost. After some attempts to make up reasonable categories (e. g., according to date, provenance, and material) research on certain groups of objects helped to form categories as follows, a mixture of material and purpose oriented categorization. First, there are two sarcophagi, the one mentioned earlier and IGLS IV 1483 = Waddington 2654,7 which cannot be dated securely, because it does not contain clear indications. It is damaged and has an inscription in four lines on its long side together with a cross in the relief. Here we find Ps 90:9–10LXX (τὸν ὕψιστον ἔθου καταφυγήν σου. οὐ προσελεύσεται πρὸς σὲ κακά, καὶ μάστιξ οὐκ ἐγγιεῖ τῷ σκηνώματί σου – »You made the Most High your refuge. No evil shall come near you, no scourge come near your tent«), which represent a benediction and blessing so that an apotropaic purpose of the inscription on the sarcophagus as a whole is obvious.8 Second, there is a group of about twelve so-​called Βους tablets,9 which offer the word or letter sequence βους. This is often associated with the Decan divinity Βως. Three tablets have the Egyptian magical name Βαινχωωωχ or Βαινχωωχ, a threefold mighty god named in Pistis Sophia 137 and 147, three other tablets the opening of Ps 90LXX. The actual purpose of these tablets is not clear – at first they were regarded as mummy labels – but carrying them with you might have protected you either against these two divinities or these two should help to protect you against other evil powers. However, if Βους 6  The number will definitely grow if objects with versions of the psalm in other languages, e. g., Syriac and, above all, Coptic, are integrated into the database. Cf. Thomas J. Kraus, »›He that Dwelleth in the Help of the Highest‹: Septuagint Psalm 90 and the Iconographic Program on Byzantine Armbands,« in Jewish and Christian Scripture as Artifact and Canon, ed. Craig A. Evans and H. Daniel Zacharias (Studies in Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity 13; London and New York: T&T Clark, 2009), 137–147, here 137–147 (139 and 140 n. 14). 7  Cf. Prentice, Greek and Latin Inscriptions (n. 1), 185 (no. 208). 8  Cf. Thomas J. Kraus, »Der lukianische bzw. Antiochenische Text der Psalmen in Papyri und Inschriften. Eine Suche nach der Stecknadel im Heuhaufen?,« in Der Antiochenische Text der Septuaginta in seiner Bezeugung und seiner Bedeutung, ed. Siegfried Kreuzer and Marcus Sigismund (De Septuaginta Investigationes 4; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 133– 162, here 140–142; Thomas J. Kraus, »›Außertextliche‹ Rezeption von LXX-​Psalm 90 – ›Lebensgeschichte‹ und Lebendigkeit eines Psalms,« in Die Septuaginta. Text, Wirkung, Rezeption. 4. Internationale Fachtagung veranstaltet von Septuaginta Deutsch (LXX.D), Wuppertal 19.–22. Juli 2012, ed. Wolfgang Kraus et alii (WUNT 325; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 825–838, here 834. 9  Cf. Thomas J. Kraus, »Βους, Βαινχωωχ und Septuaginta-​Psalm 90? Überlegungen zu den so genannten »Bous«-Amuletten und dem beliebtesten Bibeltext für apotropäische Zwecke,« ZAC/JAC 11 (2008), 479–491.

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cannot be identified with the Decan divinity at all, as seems probable due to linguistic reasons, the interpretation of the use of the tablets must be reassessed.10 Third, round or almond-​shaped, made of diverse materials, combinations of textual and iconographic elements, of signs and symbols and based on a certain programme of motives and pictorial details,11 medallions and pendants are both fascinating and complicated to investigate into. They may have a hole, others have special eyelets to put a cord through for carrying them around the neck. Some of the most popular images and symbols on them are the Rider Saint on horseback (fighting against representations of evil with his lance), the evil eye (often crossed out by diagonal lines), the Εἷς θεός-​formula, the trishagion, or the typical emblematic symbols for the evangelists. Without doubt, these phylacteries were meant to protect their bearers against all sorts of evil, illnesses and misfortune (see, for instance, an amulet from ancient Kibyra, today’s Gölhisar, Turkey12).13 Fourth, there is a group of armbands that evidently belong together.14 By my count this group consists of thirty-​four objects, of which thirty have text from Psalm 90LXX. Although the individual items differ from each other in respect of artistic quality, details of the iconographic programme employed and textual elements, the overall conception of the group can be defined as follows: »Members of the group have a thin flat band showing from one […] to eight […] iconographic or inscriptional medallions, with those bearing four medallions […] being the most common.«15 The armbands are probably from the middle of the sixth and the seventh century but giving close dates to these objects is rather difficult and can be tricky. Most of them were found in Egypt and in the region of Syria/Palestine. Thus, all of them might have derived from a common origin (or 10  I am indebted to Joachim Friedrich Quack (Egyptological Institute in Heidelberg) for discussions on that issue and for sending the relevant passages of his unpublished ›Habilitationsschrift‹. Obviously, there is no clear attestation anywhere that βους could be reduced to βως or βος. 11 See, for instance, Vicky A. Foskolou, »The Magic of the Written Word: The Evidence of Inscriptions on Byzantine Magical Amulets,« Deltion of the Christian Archaeological Society 35 (2014), 329–348, here 334–345. 12  For more details see Ünal Demirer and Thomas J. Kraus, »Ein Bronze-​Amulett aus Kibyra mit Reiterheiligem und griechischem Psalm 90,1,« ZPE 195 (2015), 58–62. 13  In general on such amulets with Psalm 90LXX see Kraus, »Der lukianische bzw. Antiochenische Text« (n. 8), 142–143 and 144–145 (focussing on IGLS V 2061 = Mich. [Kelsey Museum] 26119, just as in Kraus, »Septuaginta-​Psalm 90« [n. 5], 64–65); Kraus, »›Außertextliche‹ Rezeption« (n. 8), 833. 14  For more details see Thomas J. Kraus, »Fragmente eines Amulett-​Armbands im British Museum (London) mit Septuaginta-​Psalm 90 und der Huldigung der Magier,« JbAC 48/49 (2005/2006), 114–127 and plates 2–3. Further see Kraus, »Septuaginta-​Psalm 90« (n. 5), 52–57; Kraus, »Der lukianische bzw. Antiochenische Text« (n. 8), 143; Kraus, »›He That Dwelleth‹,« (n. 6), 141–147. 15  Gary Vikan, »Two Byzantine amuletic armbands and the group to which they belong,« The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 49/50 (1991/1992): 33–51, here 34 (= Sacred images and sacred power in Byzantium [Variorum Collected Studies Series; Aldershot/Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2003], article X, here 34).

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two geographical groups developed independently and parallel to each other to form two subgroups). The armbands are made of silver, bronze, copper alloy, or just plain iron. The majority of them is about 7.5 cm wide. Obviously, there was a certain programme of elements, which denotes that the armbands were worn as a means of protection, as something we call »amulets« and automatically link to the word »magic« and a primitive or naive sort of belief. The pool of such elements consists of textual (e. g., the Εἷς θεός-​formula, the trishagion, and invocations) and iconographic pledges (the Annunciation, the birth of Jesus, the homage of the μάγοι, the Holy Trinity, the baptism and crucifixion of Jesus, women at the tomb, the Rider Saint, the Ascension, »the evil eye,« the μάγοι, and other less common pictorial scenes). Only nine of the thirty-​four armbands are without anything from Psalm 90LXX, four have decorations only. Nevertheless, there are also certain elements that do not directly relate to a Christian background but are proofs of a syncretistic, i. e., mixed religious setting, as it could be found in Egypt and Syria/Palestine in late Antiquity. Among these are the depiction of Chnubis (the Greek name of Egyptian demon god Chnum, a ram-​god, who appears rather early as a human with a ram’s head), the evil eye, various magical signs and symbols, maybe also the stern symbol, the ἄφλαστον (see, for instance, AF 255+289, a fragment of an armband housed in the British Museum in London16). Fifth, there are also rings with the initial words of Ps 90LXX. One of them is made of silver, another of bronze. The small medallion of the rings, i. e., its dimension, determine that only a few words could be used for the inscription, though one ring has writing on the band of the ring itself. The rings are visible representations of a certain attitude and those familiar with the words could identify the message sent to evil powers: »I am protected by God, at least I strongly believe in and invoke that.«17 Sixth, the protective and hopeful character of the text of Psalm 90LXX makes it perfectly suitable for being used for the deceased (e. g., tomb chambers [and, see above, sarcophagi]). The necropolis of Gabbari (in the West of Alexandria) was also used by Christians from the fourth until the sixth century. The burial site features a tomb chamber with diverse inscriptions written in red brown ink on walls, ceilings, and in the loculi, funeral chambers. In one of these niches Psalm 90:1b is written together with crosses and acclamations.18 The other witness to such a use of Psalm 90LXX was found in Kertsch, in South Russia on the Crimea, but is probably lost now: The tomb dates to the year 491 and consists of many niches inside it with a compilation of texts written in red colour. The psalm is written in  Cf. Kraus, »Fragmente« (n. 14), 114–127.  Cf. Kraus, »›Außertextliche‹ Reception« (n. 8), 837. 18  For more details see Heinz Heinen, »Eine neue alexandrinische Inschrift und die mittelalterliche laudes regiae,« in Romanitas  – Christianitas. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Literatur der römischen Kaiserzeit, ed. Gerhard Wirth et alii (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1982), 675–701. 16 17

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full: (a) its verses 1 to 12 are written from left to right in one of the niches, i. e., it starts on the left side, continues on the back side and then on the right and then goes on in line two on the left side again, just as if to encircle the deceased person in the niche. A second niche offers verses 13 to 16.19 The text seems to function as a protective covering, even more than in the first tomb chamber mentioned above. Both tomb chambers certainly address the deceased inside, but it might be possible to save some apotropaic power for the transition to afterlife or even just link the sphere of afterlife with that. Be that as it may, the deceased are safe from all kinds of evil and disaster.20 Seventh, it is not surprising that some psalms were apt for being used on door lintels. Without doubt, Psalm 120:8LXX (»The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore«; English Standard Version) was predestined to serve such a purpose so that people entering or leaving a house went through under such a benediction.21 But also Psalm 90LXX with its wishes for guidance, protection and security is used that way. Most of these stone lintels were found in Syria and stem from different buildings; and most of them offer crosses, a wheel, or a sun-​like shape, just to mention a few non-​textual elements as well.22 Eighth, in the surroundings of a church in the burial site of ancient Petra in today’s Jordan a wall inscription written in red colour on stone was found. Although the inscription is fragmentary, most of Psalm 90LXX must have been there. The remnants probably come from the pastophorion of a church, i. e., the workroom of a priest, which was built next the sanctuary or separated from it. But why should a priest in a church (at least next to its sanctuary) be in need of protection? Evil powers might be omnipresent in order to pester and torture human beings. The letters, the writing as a ritual act, and the specific text here may help to protect whoever needs protection. It appears as if it substitutes a continuous and eternal prayer to God for help and protection.23 However, possibly with such an interpretation I am overdoing a magical interpretation of such an inscription: Greek Psalm 90 is a text of hope sui generis expressed by its repeated keywords ἐλπίς and ἐλπίζω so that the inscription might as well represent a means of strengthening and supporting the priests in the pastophorion only. 19  Cf. the editio princeps by Julian Kulakowsky, »Eine altchristliche Grabkammer in Kertsch aus dem Jahre 491,« RQS 8 (1894), 49–87 and 309–327. 20  Cf. Kraus, »Der lukianische bzw. Antiochenische Text« (n. 8), 146–147; Kraus, »›Außertextliche‹ Reception« (n. 8), 834–836. 21  Cf. Thomas J. Kraus, »›Der Herr wird deinen Eingang und deinen Ausgang bewahren‹: Über Herkunft und Fortleben von LXX Psalm cxx 8a’,« VT 56 (2006), 58–75. 22 Cf. Kraus, »›He That Dwelleth‹,« (n. 6), 140; Kraus, »›Außertextliche‹ Reception« (n. 8), 837. 23  Cf. Kraus, »›Außertextliche‹ Reception« (n. 8), 836–837. Maybe, the inscription Sal. 6715 from Salamis, Cyprus, from the sixth to the eighth century, is also relevant here. It and its text (Ps 90LXX) may serve the same purposes as the tomb chamber inscriptions, as it was written on a wall, which was inside a house.

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And, of course, there are several papyri with Greek Psalm 90 or at least with parts from it. But this is something to have a closer look at later on.

3. Psalm 90LXX and Its Specific Usages and Purposes Many representatives of the archaeological categories delineated above have the initial words, a verse or verses or even longer passages of Psalm 90LXX together with other textual but also pictorial elements. Some other come with the psalm alone. All in all, the psalm text appears to have been perfectly suitable for being used in the given contexts and for specific purposes. Moreover, for certain categories Psalm 90LXX seemed to have belonged to a special programme of elements from which the producers and designers of the objects chose (e. g., armbands). Such a programme might have represented a collection of textual, pictorial, and symbolical elements that were popular with the people and very well known for specific applications. But the psalm itself could also stand on its own, especially if we think of papyrus amulets with the whole psalm text or just passages from it. Consequently, the psalm possessed special popularity and authority; it was regarded as an apt means of protection against evil powers and, thus, compiled together with other (textual, iconographical, and symbolical) elements perfectly effective for apotropaic but also other purposes. And it is not just by chance that Psalm 90LXX was received as the most widely attested Biblical text when it comes it a text’s representation on archaeological objects. Psalm 90LXX was already the Biblical text to protect and to strengthen people who believed in its traditionally accepted power, even if its popularity spread even more after its transmission into Greek (and other languages), a process in which the psalm received a slight modification and became the psalm of hope sui generis with a clearly personified midday demon and the basilisk. Although most often the archaeological objects stem from late antiquity and are in Greek, there had been an older tradition to apply this psalm against all sorts of evil and dangers. The following examples are rather young but most of them point at a time prior to the psalm’s translation into Greek, Syriac, and Latin, and its use in the New Testament. First, there are magical bowls and fragments from the Cairo Geniza which show that parts of the psalm in Hebrew or Aramaic served the same purpose as the late ancient archaeological objects, i. e., to protect people or buildings against dangerous powers; and, second, there are sections about Psalm 91MT in the Talmud, the Targumim, the Midrashim, and the Sefer Shimmush Tehillim, »The Book of the Magical Use of Psalms,«24 which prove that the use of 24  This is a rather young magical handbook from the eleventh century, but it definitely preserves much earlier traditions about the function of the individual psalms. See the edition by Bill Rebiger, Sefer Shimmush Tehillim-​Buch vom magischen Gebrauch der Psalmen. Edition, Übersetzung und Kommentar (TSAJ 137; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010).

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this psalm was not merely officially allowed, but rather recommended for specific occasions and events. Obviously, it was sung as ‫שיר פגועין‬, »Song for the Stricken« (y. Šabb. 6.2.8b) or ‫שיר של הפגעים‬, »Song against Demons« (y. Erub. 10.11.26c) in the rabbinic tradition. Thus, the Hebrew psalm was also predestined to function as a protection against evil. Consequently, it might have not been any problem at all for Christians, i. e., people we regard or identify as Christians today, to continue a tradition that may have been existent in their days and to let the Greek version of the psalm serve an apotropaic and motivating purpose, too.25 Furthermore, two verses from Psalm 90LXX are cited in the New Testament in the context of Jesus’ temptation (Luke 4:10–11; Matt 4:6), so that the psalm also attracted the attention of early Christian writers. As these writers often commented on (a) the Psalms and (b) the canonical gospels, there is a considerable number of interpretations of and references to this particular psalm.26 Consequently, it is no surprise that Psalm 90LXX became the most widely spread and most attested Biblical text, even more popular than the Lord’s prayer.27

4. Manuscripts with Hebrew Psalm 91 and Greek Psalm 90: Contexts, Collections, and Authority 4.1. (Hebrew) Psalm 91 in Qumran The Book of Psalms was the most widely copied and received book at Qumran (and other places of the Judean desert) and today we know of thirty-​nine or even more copies from there and elsewhere,28 among which 4QPsa (4Q83)  Cf. Kraus, »Septuaginta-​Psalm 90« (n. 5), 39–73, esp. 42–45.  Cf. Kraus, »Septuaginta-​Psalm 90« (n. 5), 42–45; Brennan Breed, »Reception of the Psalms: The Example of Psalm 91,« in The Oxford Handbook of the Psalms, ed. William P. Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 297–310, here 298–230. In a future monograph I will deal in detail with transmission, reception, and impact of Ps 90LXX and focus on (a) the transition of the psalm text from Hebrew to Greek, Syriac, and Latin, (b) its reception in the New Testament, and (c) its reception by and impact on early Christian writers and texts. This work will provide the groundwork for a second monograph with editions of archaeological objects (mainly from late antiquity) with (parts of) the psalm. 27  Cf. Samson Eitrem and Anton Fridrichsen, Ein christliches Amulett auf Papyrus (Videnskapsselskapets Forhandlinger 1921.1; Kristiana: Videnskapsselskapet, 1922), 25; Samson Eitrem, Die Versuchung Christi (Oslo: Grøndahl & Søns, 1924), 11–12, here 36; Paul Collart, »Un papyrus Reinach inédit,« Aeg. 13 (1933), 208–212, here 210; Claire Préaux, »Une amulette chrétienne aux Musée Royale d’Art et d’Histoire de Bruxelles,« in CdE 10 (1935), 361–370, here 365; Leiv Amundsen, »Christian Papyri from the Oslo Collection,« in SO 24 (1945), 121–147, here 144–145; Kraus, »Septuaginta-​Psalm 90« (n. 5), 42. 28  According to the precise and nuanced discussion in Eva Jain, Psalmen oder Psalter? Materielle Rekonstruktion und inhaltliche Untersuchung der Psalmenhandschriften aus der Wüste Juda (STDJ 109; Leiden and Boston: Brill 2014), 3–7. Peter W. Flint, The Dead Sea Psalms 25 26

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might be the oldest from the mid-​second century BCE. The often fragmentary manuscripts from caves 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 11, from Naḥal Ḥever and Naḥal Se’elim (Wadi Ḥever and Wadi Seiyal, i. e., 5/6Hev and Se4 Ps), and Masada (MasPsa = Mas1e and MasPsb = Mas1f) mostly present a composition of diverse psalms, sometimes in a rather surprising and striking order (e. g., 4Q83, 4Q84, and 11QPsa), of psalms and pesharim (e. g., 1QPs = 1Q16 and 4QFlor = 4Q174), or scriptural quotations with comment and interpretation (e. g., 11QMelch = 11Q13).29 Among the psalms scrolls 4Q83, 11Q5 and 11Q6 differ from the proto-​ masoretic text (PMT) as far as the arrangements and the sequence of psalms are concerned, while the other scrolls are obviously quite close to the MT and/or the PMT.30 Of major interest among the psalms scrolls for the present study are the following: 4.1.1. 11Q5 (11QPsa)31 The scroll was written between 30 and 50 CE and contains forty-​nine compositions, of which forty are known from the 4th or 5th Book of the Masoretic Psalms or the Septuagint (cf. Psalms 93; 101–105; 109; 118–151). Eight apocryphal compositions are implemented into the sequence of the Psalms, of which four are attested in ancient sources and four others occur for the first time in 11Q5 (»Plea for Deliverance,« »Apostrophe to Zion,« »Hymn to the Creator,« and »David’s Compositions« [in prose]).32 As 11Q5 »is the largest of all extant psalms manuscripts Scrolls & the Book of Psalms (STDJ 17; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1997), 47 (see also 50), counts »thirty-​nine Psalms scrolls and seven other relevant manusripts in the caves near Qumran and other places« and writes some years later (idem, »Unrolling the Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls,« in The Oxford Handbook of Psalms, ed. William P. Brown [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014], 229–250, here 229): »Among the scrolls found in the Judaean desert, forty-​five were Psalms manuscripts or ones that incorporate Psalms. Of these, forty-​two were found near Qumran, one at Naḥal Hever, and two at Masada. Only Deuteronomy is represented by a comparable number of copies (forty-​two scrolls, thirty-​nine of them near Qumran).« Christiane Böhm, Die Rezeption der Psalmen in den Qumranschriften, bei Philo von Alexandrien und im Corpus Paulinum (WUNT II/437; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 6, relies on James C. VanderKam, Einführung in die Qumranforschung. Geschichte und Bedeutung der Schriften vom Toten Meer (tr. Markus Müller; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 21, and counts thirty-​six copies of the Psalter found in the caves near Qumran (as does Klaus Seybold, Die Psalmen [HAT 1.15; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996], 1). 29 For these and further details see Flint, The Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls (n. 28), 31–47. 30  Cf. Böhm, Die Rezeption der Psalmen (n. 28), 6, with reference to Heinz-​Josef Fabry, »Der Psalter in Qumran,« in Der Psalter in Judentum und Christentum, ed. Erich Zenger (HBS 18; Freiburg et al.: Herder, 1998), 137–163, here 147. 31 For colour images see the Internet pages of The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library (