Biblical Perspectives: Early Use and Interpretation of the Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Proceedings of the First International Symposium of ... (Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah) 9004109390, 9789004109391

Citation preview

BmLICAL PERSPECTIVES: EARLY USE AND INTERPRETATION OF THE BmLE IN LIGHT OF THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

STUDIES ON THE TEXTS OF THE DESERT OF JUDAH EDITED BY

F. GARCIA MARTINEZ A.S. VANDER WOUDE

VOLUME XXVIII

BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVES: EARLY USE AND INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLE IN LIGHT OF THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS Proceedings of the First International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 12-14 May, 1996

EDITED BY

MICHAEL E. STONE AND

ESTHERG. CHAZON

BRILL LEIDEN . BOSTON' KOLN 1998

This book is printced on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Biblical perspectives : early use and interpretation of the Bible in light of the Dead Sea Scrolls : proceedings of the first international symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated literature, 12-14 May 1996 / edited by Michael E. Stone and Esther G. Chazon. p. cm. - (Studies on the texts of the desert of J udah, ISSN 0169-9962 : 28) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 9004109390 (alk. paper) I. Bible-Criticism, interpretation, etc.-History-Congresses. 2. Dead Sea scrolls-Criticism, interpretation, etc.-Congresses. I. Stone, Michael E., 1938. n. Chazon, Esther G. Ill. Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature. IV. Series. BS531.B498 1997 296.1'55-DC21 97-41496 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature : Proceedings of the ... International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature. Leiden ; Boston ; Koln : Brill I. Biblical Perspectives: early use and interpretation of the Bible in light of the Dead Sea Scrolls. - 1997 Biblical perspectives: early use and interpretation of the Bible in light of the Dead Sea Scolls : 12 - 14 May, 1996 / ed. by IVlichael E. Stone and Esther G. Chazon. - Leiden ; Boston; Koln: Brill, 1997 (Proceedings of the ... International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature : I) (Studies on the texts of the desert ofJudah ; Vol. 28) ISBN 90-04--10939-0

ISSN 0169-9962 ISBN 90 04 10939 0 © Copyright 1998 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands

All rights reserved. No part qf this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval .rystem, or transmitted in a1!Jl form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate .fees are paid directlY to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are suiject to change. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS

CONTENTS

Priface ..................................................................................................

V11

The Status of the Torah in the Pre-Sinaitic Period: St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans GARY A. ANnERSON ........................................................................ . Scripture and Law in 4Q265 JOSEPH M. BAUMGARTEN ................................................................ 25 Shared Intertextual Interpretations in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament GEORGE G. BROOKE ...................................................................... 35 Looking for Legal Midrash at Qumran STEVEN D. FRAADE ........................................................................ 59 "Narrative Exegesis" in the Dead Sea Scrolls IDA FROHLICH ................................................. ............ ............ ....... 81 A Common Heritage: Biblical Interpretation at Qumran and its Implications MENAHEM KISTER .......................................................................... 10 1 For King Joshua or Against? The Use of the Bible in 4Q448 EMMANUELLE MAIN . ................................................................. .... 113 Patriarchs Who Worry About Their Wives. A Haggadic Tendency in the Genesis Apocryphon GEORGE W.E. NICKELSBURG ........................................................ 137 Post-Biblical Rib Pattern Admonitions in 4Q302l303a and 4Q381 69, 76-77 BILHAH NITZAN ............................................................................ 159 A Note on the Use of the Bible in I Maccabees U. RAPPAPORT ............................................................................. 175 The Case of the Day of Atonement Ritual LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN ............................................................ 181

VI

CONTENTS

AncientJewish Astrology. An Attempt to Interpret 4QCryptic (4QI86) FRANCIS SCHMIDT ......................................................... ................

189

The Use of Biblical Terms as Designations for Non-Biblical Hymnic and Prayer Compositions ElLEEN M. SCHULLER .......•.................•......................................... 207 On Something Biblical About 2 Maccabees R. SCHWARTZ ....•.......•...•................................................. 223

DANIEL

The Rewritten Book ofJoshua as Found at Qumran and Masada EMANUEL Tov .............................................................................. 233 Index qfAncient Sources ...................................................................... 259 Index qfModern Authors ........... ............ ................... ........... ........... ..... 289

PREFACE

This volume is the first published by the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature. The Orion Center was established in 1995 at the initiative of a group of scholars in the Institute ofJewish Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Its major aim is to address the issues in the history of the Jewish people, its culture, thought and language, which arise out of the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The continued, energetic publication of the remaining fragmentary manuscripts means that within a few years, all of the manuscripts from Qumran will be available. How do these manuscripts affect the accepted views about Judaism in the crucial Second Temple Period in which Christianity originated and from which Rabbinic Judaism emerged? The Orion Center holds an International Symposium each year on a central theme, posing to it the issues arising from the Center's integrative concern. The first International Symposium addressed the question of biblical interpretation in the Second Temple Period. How has the new information available from the Dead Sea Scrolls affected our understanding of how the Bible was interpreted in antiquity? Ten invited major lectures and a number of briefer communications addressed this theme. The papers were immediately published on the Orion Center internet site (http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.ill) and, subsequently, in forms revised by the authors in light of the Symposium discussion, were prepared for publication in the present volume. Brian Kvasnica of the Orion Center staff was responsible for the internet publication of these papers. The International Symposium was supported by the Orion Foundation, the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Hebrew University ofJerusalem. Without this support, in particular without the continued assistance of the Orion Foundation, the present volume could not have been prepared. The Editors, moreover, express their particular thanks to Dr. Avital Pinnick who has copy- and style-edited this volume and, in this capacity, has done much to improve its format and presentation. She was also responsible for the indices.

Vlll

PREFACE

Dr. Hans van der Meij of Brill Academic Publishers has been a most gracious and helpful publisher and we are pleased to thank him for his support. Finally, we wish to thank our colleagues in the world of Scrolls scholarship who have encouraged us in this endeavor and given generously of their time and energies. E. STONE G. CHAZON Jerusalem,June 1997 - Sivan 5757 MICHAEL

ESTHER

THE STATUS OF THE TORAH IN THE PRE-SINAITIC PERIOD: ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS GARY

A.

ANoERSON

Harvard Divini~ School

In his recent book, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, Lawrence Schiffman declares that he wishes to correct a fundamental misreading of their importance. I For some forty-five years, he writes, these scrolls have been interpreted and understood mainly in terms of how they pertain to the history of early Christianity with little sustained attention to the history ofJudaism proper. There is no doubt a large degree of truth to this claim. Schiffman's argument is sharpened by observing that the role ofJewish law in the formation of the sect and in its selfdefinition has been one of the major lacunae in the study of these texts. But the problem that Schiffman has isolated is not limited to the history ofJudaism alone; somewhat paradoxically it has also had a deleterious effect on how these texts have been employed in Christian materials as well. In the present essay I would like to extend an argument I made earlier about the role of the Law prior to Sinai in Jubilees and the Dead Sea Scrolls to the writings of PauI.2 I hope to show that an acquaintance with certain legal categories of Second TempleJudaism are absolutely imperative for understanding a fundamental metaphor of Pauline thought. I

Let me begin with a consideration of the place of the Sinaitic revelation in the Torah in general. A striking feature of the final canonical form of the Bible, one that pre-modems and modems have attended to, is the uneven fit between law and narrative. This is certainly true within the Sinai narrative itself where, time and again, one is faced with narrative incongruities between a particular legal pericope and its narrative frame. 3 But even more striking is how this problem afI L.H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: The History qf Judaism, the Background qfChristiani~, the Lost Library qfQy.mran (philadelphia andJerusalem:Jewish Publication Society, 1995). 2 G.A. Anderson, "The Status of the Torah in the Pre-Sinaitic Period: The Retelling of the Bible in Jubilees, and the Damascus Covenant," DSD I (1994) 1-29. 3 Perhaps the best treatment of this problem is A. Toeg, 'rO:::l iii1n lnr.l Gerusalem: Magnes Press, 1974).

2

GARY A. ANDERSON

fects the final form of the Torah as a whole. In this larger frame of reference one must reckon with the almost complete isolation of the Sinaitic revelation from the patriarchal narrative that anticipates it. Not only is precious little said about the law prior to its delivery, but occasionally what seems to be an intimation of that law, such as the narrative regarding not eating the sinew of the thigh (Gen. 32:33), the burning of Tamar (Gen. 38:24),4 or the story about the "bridegroom of blood" (Exod. 4:24-26), stands in an very uneasy if not outright contradictory relationship to Sinai itself. The disparity between these two blocks of material is so great that the tendency of all interpreters is to bridge this gap in one fashion or another. In a metaphoric sense Exod. 19 functions as a semi-permeable membrane that separates two very different bodies of material. Because nature abhors such an imbalance, some sort of equilibrium, or homeostasis, must be attained. Perhaps the only group of interpreters who have resisted this tendency are modems but they do so by altering the material so that no gross inequality exists. For in the perspective of modern source criticism the patriarchal stories came from the epic sources (J and E) sources which correspondingly took far less interest in the narrative of law-giving. For the epic sources, law-giving was a brief interlude between the promises made to the Patriarchs and their fulfillment in the giving of the land. This solution of modern source-criticism comes at the expense of the final form of the biblical text and will provide little help for understanding the vast majority of biblical interpreters who take their Bible whole. Here one might argue, albeit somewhat polemically, that Philo's declaration that the Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob represent "living exemplars of the law" (EIl'l'UXOl VOllot)5 constitutes a more astute grasp of the Bible's overall shape than that of Well haus en, Noth and other moderns. I should add one caveat here. It is not the case that the gap between law and patriarchal narrative is altogether unbridged in the Bible. Sinai tic law is intimated in the pre-Sinaitic period. The law of the Sabbath is perhaps our best example, a law that is revealed by our Divine narrator already in Gen. 2: 1-3 and later is revealed at least in partial form just after the Exodus from Egypt in the story about the giving of the Manna (Exod. 16). But one should also mention the way in which certain Sinai tic laws are narrativized prior to 4 The law revealed at Sinai is doubly problematic. First of all, it has not been revealed yet; secondly, it contradicts the Genesis text (stoning is prescribed, not burning). On this contradiction see L. Finkelstein, "The Book of Jubilees and the Rabbinic Halakha," HTR 16 (1923) 55-57. 5 De Abrahamo 5.

STATUS OF THE TORAH IN THE PRE-SINAITIC PERIOD

3

Sinai. D. Daube showed that the law of slave-release was anticipated in just this fashion. 6 The law of slave-release requires that one pay a slave his wages when his period of enslavement comes to a close. This law is anticipated in the story of the Exodus when the Egyptian women, who see the Israelite slaves about to leave, hasten to divest themselves of their precious possessions (Exod. 3:21-22; 11 :2-3; 12:35-36). The Israelites go forth not simply as redeemed slaves, but as slaves who have received material compensation from their former masters. 7 In some senses we could say lhat what documents like Jubilees or the biblical retellings in the Damascus Covenant are doing when they have the Patriarchs observe the law is to extend the project that Daube sees as already present in incipient form in the Torah itsel£ Indeed, many of the standard examples of this process are those cases where the Patriarchs anticipate the positive commands given in the Torah such as the laws of sacrifice, distinguishing clean from unclean, or keeping sacred festivals. Equally important, though rarely reflected upon, is a quite different category of legal knowledge. This would be the problem of how the Patriarchs are punished or not punished. The issue posed by the legislation of Sinai is not simply what was known when, but what were the consequences of such knowledge regarding human accountability for personal and corporate sin. A good example of this can be found in the sexual dalliance between Reuben and Bilhah. According to the Bible neither Reuben nor Bilhah were punished for this act of impropriety, yet the Book of Leviticus is quite explicit about the punishment which ought to be meted out for such actions; they should be put to death (Lev. 20: 11). This fact is emphasized by the angelic intermediary who instructs Moses to keep this sin in mind when he teaches Israel the commandments: 8 And you, Moses, command the children of Israel and let them keep this word because it is a judgment worthy of death. And it is a defileD. Daube, The Exodus Pattern in the Bible (London: Faber & Faber, 1963) 55£f. Nohrnberg has carried this theme one step further in Like unto Moses (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995) 136. He notes that when Moses is saved from the Nile, his own mother is brought to Pharaoh's home in order to suckle him: "The servants are doing their masters' living for them, and the royal house is paying for what ordinarily a child secures for free. For the mother takes wages for nursing her own son. The despoiling of the Egyptians, a motif that turns up three times in the exodus narrative proper (Exod. 3:21-22, 11:2, 12:35-36), has already begun." 8 The translation for this section of Jubilees is that of O. Wintermute in The Pseudepigrapha qf the Old Testament, vo!. 2 (ed. J.H. Charlesworth; Garden City: Doubleday, 1985). 6

7 J.

4

GARY A. ANDERSON

ment. And there is no forgiveness in order to atone for a man who has done this, forever, but only to execute him and kill him and stone him and to uproot him from the midst of the people of our God. For any man who does this in Israel should not have life for a single day upon the earth because he is despicable and polluted. Gub. 33:13-14)

But then how, one might ask, does the Book of Jubilees understand the leniency accorded to Reuben? Is the Law of God subject to human contingency and hence, temporal development? Hardly so. The Law, according to Jubilees, is eternal; it is the human understanding of it that is contingent and temporal. At this point in time Reuben is ignorant of the command. By being ignorant, his sin does not imply any willful violation of the Torah and his wrongdoing is tolerated by the hand of heaven. Our writer concludes, "Let them not say, 'Reuben had life and forgiveness after he lay with his father's concubine' ... For the ordinance and judgment and law had not been revealed till then (as) completed for everyone, but in your days (it is) like the law of (appointed) times and days and an eternal law for everlasting generations ... there is no forgiveness for it ... On the day when they have done this they shall be killed" (Jub. 33: 15-1 7). Oddly this explanation of ignorance does not work for Bilhah. Our writer explains that Reuben came upon her while she was sleeping in bed (Jub. 33:3). This peculiarity can only be explained in view of the parallel problem of Tamar in Gen. 38. For there it is quite evident thatJacob knows this action is wrong and that death by fire was the proper punishment. Our writer deduced that Jacob could have drawn the same conclusion here as well and as a result had to construct some other literary artifice in order to preserve the innocence of Bilhah. Our supposition is confirmed by the fact that a pre-Sinaitic law about just such an action can be found. Just prior to Abraham's death he gathers his children to teach them the commandments that he knows. 9 One of those commands reads as follows: And when any woman or girl fornicates among you, you will burn her with fire, and let them not fornicate with her after their eyes and hearts Gub. 20:4).

This command is put into the mouth of Abraham in order to make Tamar violate a publicly revealed command and so be liable for its stipulated punishment. The Dead Sea Scrolls show a similar tendency to that ofJubilees. Though the texts we possess do not fill out the patriarchal era with 9 It is certainly significant that Abraham gives these commands in two different places, first to his children at large Gub. 20) and later to Isaac alone (21). Isaac, representing the line of election, receives a far more specific set of commands including those commands that pertain to cultic service.

STATUS OF THE TORAH IN THE PRE-SINAITIC PERIOD

5

the same range of detail, they disclose how those very same exegetical decisions had a correlative affect on sectarian self-definition. As I have shown elsewhere, the Dead Sea Scrolls show us how central Num. 15:22-31 was in the development of these sectarian tendencies.1O Num. 15:22-31 is a very volatile text." It went to the dangerous extreme of requiring the penalty of karet (ni~) for each and every violation of the law, a legal ruling that is without parallel in the rest of the Torah.'2 Rabbinic thinking, no doubt sensitive to this explosive possibility, defused the potential for such damage by presuming that Num. 15:22-31 was not at all a general law for Torah-violation; rather it addressed the problem of a single category of sin alone, that of idolatry (M. Horayot 2:6). For the Covenanters at Qumran, however, Num. 15:22-31 was used for precisely this end: it provided grounds for finding virtually all of Israel outside of the sect guilty of intentional sin and, therefore, worthy of ni~. In addition to this, Num. 15:22-31 served one additional function. It provided a rational for appending cereal and drink offerings to each and every purification offering, a legal ruling unknown elsewhere in Jewish law. In order to show the similarity of the Qumranic approach to the Book ofJubilees let us consider the second observation first, the law that each and every purification offering required a corresponding cereal and drink offering. In the Temple Scroll this is evident in the laws for Sukkot: llQTemple 28:6-9

Num. 29:20-22a

A. On the third day [of Sukkoth]: eleven bulls, two rams, fourteen lambs, and a single goatJrom the herdfor a purification qifering,

A'. On the third day: eleven bulls, two rams, fourteen lambs that are one year old and unblemished.

B. along with the cereal and drink offerings according to the law regarding the bulls, the rams, the lambs, and the goat.

B'. Cereal and drink offerings shall accompany the bulls, rams, and lambs in proportion to their number in accordance with the law.

C.

C'. And a single goat for a purification offering in addition to the Tamid and its cereal and drink offerings.

10 These findings have now been corroborated, in part, by the dissertation of Aharon Semesh, mp?o tDl111, Ph.D. dissertation, Bar nan University, 1995,218-38. 11 I have discussed the use of this text in far greater detail elsewhere. See my articles, "The Interpretation of the Purification Offering (tajj) in the Temple Scroll (IlQT) and Rabbinic Literature," JBL III (1992) 17-35, and "Intentional and Unintentional Sin in the Dead Sea Scrolls," in Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish and Near Eastern Ritual, Low, and Literature in Honor qfJacob Milgrom (ed. D. Wright, D.N. Freedman and A. Hurvitz; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1995) 49-64. 12 On the legal severity of this chapter, see A. Toeg, "Num. 15:22-31 - Midrash

6

GARY A. ANDERSON

In this text the law regarding the special treatment for the purification sacrifice (C') has no correlate in the Temple Scroll. This is because the law has been reworked in such a form that it now becomes identical to the treatment of the other sacrifices on that day. An exact duplication of this type of exegetical recombination can be found in Jubilees regarding the laws of the sacrifices for New Year's day: Jubilees 7:3fP3

Numbers 29:2ff

A. You shall offer the burnt offering as a soothing odor to the Lord, a bull son of the herd, a single ram and seven sheep, each one year old.

N. [you shall offer] one young [bull], one ram, seven sheep (each a year old), and a he-goat, to make atonement with it for himself and for his sons.

B. And he prepared the [he-goat] first and put some of its blood on the flesh that was on the altar he had made, and all the fat he laid on the altar where he offered the [burnt]-offering; and he did also with the [bull] and the ram and the sheep, and he laid all their flesh on the altar.

B'.

C. And he put all their [cereal] qffirings, mixed with oil, on it. And afterwards he sprinkled wine on the fire he had previously made on the altar, and put incense on the altar, and made a soothing odor acceptable before the Lord his God.

C'. Their cereal offering: wheat mixed with oil, 3/ I 0 for the bull, 2110 for the ram and a 1110 for each sheep.

D.

D'. And a he-goat from the herd as a purification offering to effect purgation for yourselves.

Again the laws for the purification sacrifice (D') have been reworked so that they fit imperceptibly into the laws of the other animal sacrifices. All of them, as a group, receive cereal and drink offerings (C). This is not an insignificant decision because it bespeaks a common sectarian understanding of this very difficult and vl.latile text. Both groups understood Num. 15:22-31 to be a general ruling about the nature of the rlt~~n hatla't offering and so generalized its prescriptions over the entire legal corpus of the Torah. This is a complete reversal of the situation found in rabbinic writings wherein Num. 15 is limitHalakha," Tarbiz 43 (1974) 16-20. 13 The text is adapted slighdy from the translation of Charles [reworked by Rabin] found in H. Sparks, The Apocryphal Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).

STATUS OF THE TORAH IN THE PRE-SINAITIC PERIOD

7

ed to the specific problem of the idolater alone. 14 The recent publication of a fragment from the Damascus Covenant by Joseph Baumgarten allows us to say even more. The covenanters construed the penalty of karet, n.,;:" as a form of banishment (rD,.,J) and this banishment could take two different forms. Firstly, those who sinned inadvertently (i1JJrD::J) were banned temporarily from the community. This period of extirpation was, Baumgarten rightly argues, "[a] valid substitute for sin offerings." In other words, the roster of various periods of banishment found in the penal code (IQS 6:24-7:25) was a replacement for the n~C!ln offering of Lev. 4/Num. 15. Secondly, in contrast to this lenient approach to inadvertencies, all those who sinned with "a high hand" shared a single punishment: permanent banishment. One further wrinkle, at Qumran the concept of inadvertent/intentional sin was not simply a category of the will; it was also directly related to knowledge. The law was divided into two categories: 1. those laws which were plainly revealed in the Torah of Moses (n,'?J:J) and 2. those laws which had hitherto been hidden from public view but now, thanks to the inspired exegesis of the sect, were being made known (n,.,no:J). Sins against those unknown laws were understood as inadvertent by definition, whereas sins against the known laws were frequently classified as intentional, again almost by definition. If we carry this sectarian halakhic framework back to the patriarchal period we will notice a striking homology. In some senses the covenanters are not unlike the Patriarchs. They both have a set of revealed laws for which they are accountable in every way and both stand in a state of partial, if not complete, ignorance regarding a set of hidden laws that still await full disclosure. In light of this I think we can better understand two texts, the first being a statement of purpose about admission into the sect, the other being the concluding paragraph of a detailed retelling of the patriarchal era. 1. Everyone who enters the council of the community shall enter the covenant of God in the presence of all those who have freely entered [in the past]. And they shall take upon themselves a binding oath (Num. 30:3) to return to the Torah of Moses [revealed law] according to all which he commanded with all [their} heart and soul (Deut. 30:2) and to all which has been revealed from it by the sons of Zadok [hidden law], the priests, the guardians of the covenant, and interpreters of his wilL .. [They shall separate themselves] from all evil men who walk in a wicked path. For they are not reckoned 14 In Rabbinic materials Lev. 4 was the general law for the ~C!ln sacrifice. In contrast, the covenanters at Qumran believed that Lev. 4 outlined the prescriptions for the ordination of the High Priest.

8

GARY A. ANDERSON

among [those of] his covenant because they do not search out nor interpret his statutes so as to discern the hidden laws (n"nOJ). For [in these hidden matters] they have strayed [inadvertently _'.lJn I5] so as to incur guilt. But toward the revealed laws (n,'?JJ) they have acted in a high-handed fashion (intentionally, Num. 15:30) so as to raise up wrath for judgment and the executing of revenge according to the curses if the covenant (Deut. 29: 18, 19, 20). (lQS 5:7-12) 2. Because the first members of the covenant [i.e. those responsible for the exile] became liable, "they were given over to the sword" (ps. 78:62). "They had forsaken the covenant of God" (2 Chron. 28:6) and chosen their own will. "They turned after their" stubborn "heart" (Num. 15:39) so that each did his own will. But for those who hold fast to the commandments of God [i.e. the sect itself or their immediate progenitors], who remained from them, God established his eternal covenant so as to reveal the hidden laws (m,nOJ) which all Israel had "strayed" (,.vn) from, [the laws regarding] "his holy Sabbaths" (Neh. 9: 14), his glorious festivals, his righteous ordinances, his true ways, and the objects of his desire, concerning "which if a man does them he shall live thereby" (Lev. 18:5). (CD 3:10-16) In these texts the generation of the exile - a moment in time, we must remember, that had not ended in the perspective of the sect l6 has suffered and continues to suffer because of their conscious violation of the Torah. In addition they have now become inadvertent violators of the hidden law. The covenanters, on the other hand, had been faithful - or pledged renewed faithfulness - to the Torah and as a result gained knowledge of these hidden laws. We can draw three different conclusions from this Jewish material. First, we must emphasize that the revelation of the law, whether Sinaitic or Messianic, is a true bonum or moment of grace. The revelation of the law allows for complete human sanctification. But the revelation has another, not unrelated, quality. It reveals the magnitude of human sin. To come to knowledge of hidden commands, whether they be of a moral or cultic order, revealed in far sharper terms the nature and depth of human waywardness, especially the waywardness of those outside the sect. Their fate was already sealed, of course, by virtue of their high-handed rebellion against the n"n

15 16

On the verb i1l1n as a marker of inadvertent sin in the scroils, see E. Qimron. M.A. Knibb, "Exile in the Damascus Document," ]SOT99 (1983) 99-117.

STATUS OF THE TORAH IN THE PRE-SINAITIC PERIOD

9

iliDO, but each revelation of the n'inOJ provided further clarification of the depths of their error. In the words of the Damascus Covenant, this Messianic Torah "reveal[ed] the hidden laws (n'inOJ) from which all Israel had stTqyed ('l'n)." Secondly, there is a striking legal homology between the era of the Patriarchs and that of the sect. Both have received laws to which they are accountable; but both stand this side of a corpus of law that is, as yet, unrevealed. Our third conclusion is perhaps more a summary observation. Let us step back from the legal detail we have examined and face squarely the larger hermeneutical horizon in which they sit. In Jubilees and Qumran we see two groups who deeply revere and love the Torah. My language of endearment here is altogether conscious and devoid of sentimentality. These Jewish sectarians, like their later rabbinic counterparts, stood in an uncompromising position of adoration vis avis Sinai. Should it come to the attention of one of these readers that the laws of Sinai were contradicted in some way by the actions of the Patriarchs then it is the actions of the Patriarchs that are in need of correction or further interpretation not vice versa. The mythic importance of Sinai was capable of trumping any particular irregularity that stood in its way. In short, the textual membrane of Exod. 19 was extremely permeable and the nomoi of Exod. 20 and beyond were capable of grasping, possessing and even transforming everything that stood before them. 11 Like the writers ofJubilees and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Paul also had a keen interest in the way the law functioned in the patriarchal period. And just like these sources Paul was very much interested in why individuals prior to Sinai were held accountable to the full weight of the law. Indeed numerous commentators have noted the close correspondence of the situation of Reuben in the book ofJubilees to the Pauline dictum that "where there is no law neither is there any transgression [of that law]" (Rom. 4:15),17 But none of these commentators, to my knowledge, has spelled out what the wider implications of this parallel might be. In this sense we can say with some justification that Christian material cannot always be illuminated by 17 This was already noted by R.H. Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudtpigrapha 0/ the Old Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1913) 2.64; see also the commentary of J.A. Fitzmyer, Romans. A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Anchor Bible 33; Garden City: Doubleday, 1993) 385.

10

GARY A. ANDERSON

Second Temple sources without first placing those sources in a trajectory ofJewish development. Paul's argument in Rom. 4 concerns the way in which Abraham became righteous. For Paul, it is crucial that this status accrues to Abraham prior to the reception of any legal commandment. Unlike workers who earn their wages according to a contractual norm, the reward given to Abraham takes place apart from any such agreement. In Paul's idiom, it is due to grace alone (Rom. 4:4-5). One might suppose that the Abrahamic era of "faith" would have come to a close with the revelation of the Mosaic Torah. With the revelation of a broader covenantal charter and the election of a specific people to uphold it, the promise made to Abraham could now be actualized. Not so for Paul, for if the inheritance of Abraham comes through the law then the specific form of the promise made to him would be superseded: "For if those who are to inherit the promise do so through the law, then faith is nullified and the promise is voided" (Rom. 4:14). In a grand reversal of the way traditional Jewry had read their Bible, Paul claims that the promise made to Abraham trumps the moment of Torah-revelation. The Torah given to Moses becomes a secondary or epiphenomenal moment in the history of God's people. What then is the purpose of the law? Its purpose is purely instrumental. The law exposes human error (Rom. 7: 13); it "locks up" (Gal. 3:22) all things under sin in order to demonstrate the need for faith. Abraham is important for Paul, not simply because he was a man of faith qua faith, but also because of the temporal moment in which Abraham found that faith. "[I]he law brings wrath," Paul asserts, "but where there is no law, neither is there violation of that law." By this statement Paul declares that the law revealed on Mt. Sinai brought humankind into a state of legal accountability. The law itself was not evil, but after its revelation human nature is weighed in the balance and found wanting. Here the reader must pause. Just what situation is Paul imagining? Earlier in Romans he had argued that all people stood condemned in God's eyes, both Jew and Gentile (Rom. 1:18fl). The Gentiles were condemned by a universal, natural law, the Jews by their revealed law. Yet in Rom. 4 Paul avers that the Jews knew no law prior to Sinai. If this is so must we not make the rather unhappy deduction that even the "natural" law was unknown to them? Paul's statement, "where this is no law, neither is there transgression," would seem to apply to Jews alone and only for that brief amount of time prior to the revelation at Sinai. This problem has befuddled ancient and modern commentators alike. For Origen the way around this problem was to expand vastly

STATUS OF THE TORAH IN THE PRE-SINAITIC PERIOD

11

the role of the natural law at the expense of the references to the Mosaic law. Indeed Origen frequently understood the term nomos, vOI-I.O~, as referring to the natural law even in those contexts where almost all other commentators would say Paul had the Jewish law in mind. 18 One example of this would be the Origen's exegesis of "where there is no law, neither is there violation." Origen begins with the standard characterization of the verse: Some might argue, [that the text] "if there is no law then there is no transgression," shows that no one committed a transgression prior to Moses. And if no one did, then no one was blameworthy, neither Cain, nor any of those who through their sins suffered the consequences of the flood. Nor did the Sodomites commit transgression and, prior to them, neither did Adam and Eve. 19 Such a conclusion for Origen was completely nonsensical. The only way to save this Pauline text from such error was to understand the reference to law in a non-Mosaic fashion. Scripture says that the law inscribed naturally (q)UcrtK6~) in us - [that is] in the tables of our fleshly hearts [which are] engraved by God brought wrath (oPYIlv) to Cain, to those destroyed in the flood, and [... ] even the Sodomites. And if [it is true that] "where there is no law neither is there transgression" [then one must concede that] there was transgression among these. Thus, a law was in them but not the law of Moses, rather the law that was older than that of Moses, the law written not on stone tablets but in the tablets of our fleshly hearts.2o In the view of most modems, it is presumed that Paul has bracketed the particular examples of Cain, the generation of the flood and the Sodomites and considered the question of human culpability in the pre-Sinaitic era in the broadest, most general terms. In short, Paul has telescoped biblical history from the time of Adam and Eve to that of Sinai and, in so doing, foreshortened the prominent examples of wrongdoing that Origen listed. But for Origen such a reading of Paul was nonsensical, perhaps bordering on the anti-theological. Paul knew the Bible inside and out and would hardly "bracket" such fundamental moments in biblical history as the flood or Sodom and 18 This peculiar feature of Origen is nicely laid out by T. Heither, Translatio Religionis: Die Paulus deutung des Origenes (Bonner Beitrage zur Kirchengeschichte 16; Koln: Bohlau Verlag, 1990). She in particular noted that wherever nomos is used in

the context of human sin, Origen always understands the law in question as the naturallaw. In addition, see the fine treatment of M. Harl, "Origene et la semantique du language biblique," VC 26 (1972) 161-87. I am indebted to my student R. Lay ton for assistance in this section of my argument. 19 J. Scherer, Le Commentaire d'Origene sur Rom iii.5-v.7 (Cairo: Impr. de l'lnstitut fran~ais d'archeologie orientale, 1957) 200. 20

Commentaire d'Origene, 204.

12

GARY A. ANDERSON

Gomorra. The Pauline argument could only be saved by transforming these allusions to Jewish law into references to the natural law. Quite the contrary tendency is to be found in John Chrysostom. Here we can find the inner Jewish element of Paul's argument creeping into texts where it originally had no place. Consider Rom. 2: 12, "all who have sinned law-lessly will also perish law-lessly, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law." This text is understood by nearly all commentators to define the equal level of culpability accorded both Jew and Gentile, the former perishes under the Mosaic law (" [he] will be judged by the [Mosaic] law), the latter under the moral law (" [he] will perish apart from the [Mosaic] law [but not apart from the moral law]").21 Chrysostom sees no such thing. He concludes that those who lived prior to Sinai perished in a more lenient manner:22 For those who commit the very same sins as our ancestors will not suffer the same punishment. It is possible to learn this in a concise fashion from the wise teacher of the entire world, I mean, the blessed Paul, who says, "All who sin apart from the law die apart from the law, all who sin by the law are judged through the law." What it means is something like this: those who lived prior to the Mosaic law will not receive the same judgment as those after the law. Rather those who sin after the giving of the law fall under a stiffer penalty. "For all who sin apart from the law, die apart from the law," that is, the very fact of not having the teaching and assistance of the law makes their punishment more moderate. "All who sin by the law, through the law they are judged." These people, he says, since they had the law as a teacher and did not as a result show moderation but instead committed the same sins, they will pay a greater punishment.

Being law-less meant they lived in an era prior to the reception of any positive law. To perish law-less!J was to perish under a lighter legal burden, a privilege only extended to the generation that lived prior to Sinai. Those who came after the giving of the law were extended no such mercy; in their cases retribution was swift and sure. These patristic writers indicate the difficulties of making sense of these two sides of the Pauline argument. Though there is a certain 21 So the commentary of C.K. Barrett, The Epistle to the Romans (New York: Harper and Row, 1957) 49, "In i.19 if. Paul showed that the Gentile was guilty of a responsible act of rebellion against the Creator; lack of a special revelation did not excuse him. In the same way lack of a revealed law is now seen not to open a way of escape from judgement. The fact is first laid down in general terms: 'Those who have sinned outside the sphere of the law.. .' The law of Moses is the plainest statement (outside Christian revelation) of the claim of God upon his creatures, but the claim is independent of the statement of it, and failure to acknowledge the claim can never be anything other than culpable." 22 Chrysostom, PG 53.149.

STATUS OF THE TORAH IN THE PRE-SINAlTIC PERIOD

13

communality to both - Paul wishes to show the general culpability of all mankind - there is also a distinctive line of argumentation proper to each. And these distinctive arguments cannot be harmonized. Heikki Raisanen has observed that Paul's thought is confused on this issue and that Paul is fundamentally inconsistent in his use of the term V6JlO~.23 E.P. Sanders has also noticed this inconsistency, but has attempted to make sense of it.24 For Sanders, the key point of emphasis in the Pauline system is the fact that salvation cannot proceed along two separate tracks, one Jewish, another Gentile. Paul begins with an answer: salvation is through Jesus Christ alone. From this "answer" Paul works backward to the question: in what way does humankind stand in need? In this way Sanders believes he can explain why the "Christological answer" given can be defined without too much ambiguity whereas the "Anthropological problem" is susceptible to a variety of formulations depending on the rhetorical needs of the moment. In Paul's mind the Gentiles stand condemned in the eyes of God for violation of a natural law that is written in their hearts (Rom. 1: 18-32). This law was made manifest in the very fabric of creation and no human being can escape knowledge of it. The Gentiles, in respect to their guilt, are without excuse (Rom. 3:9). One might presume that such an understanding would carry over to the Jews as well, since they had a similar relationship to the created order, but here is where the Pauline argument takes a decidedly different turn. For Paul, the Jewish people are a privileged people, they possess the positive revelation of God (Rom. 3:2). Because of this revealed law they are both more honored and more responsible. Hence, Paul is willing to gloss the general affirmation that God shows no partiality to the Jew with the important clarification that in regard to glory as well as punishment the Jew is first (Rom. 2:9-11). The law has two aspects. On the hand, it is spiritual, a true bonum given to the Jews that they as an elected people are privileged to possess. On the other hand, it is a stern and uncompromising judge, penetrating and articulating with utter precision the nature of human sin. And so Paul avers, "no flesh can be justified before [God] through the works of the law, for through the law, is the knowledge of sin" (Rom. 3:20). The idea that Abraham's faith was significant because of the epoch in which it took place allows us to understand what Paul means when he says that "the law brings wrath." In this case Paul H. Raisanen, Paul and the Law (philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986). See E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London: SCM, 1977) and, most recently, Paul, the Law and the Jewish People (philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983). 23

24

14

GARY A. ANDERSON

has in mind the coming of the Sinaitic law and the clear condemnation that it would prescribe for all human sin. 25 For as Paul repeatedly emphasized, the Jews know their condemned status by virtue of the law of Moses (Rom. 3: 19-20). This argument is quite different from his earlier argument about Gentile culpability. The natural law no longer commands center-stage when Paul takes up the problem of sin prior to Sinai. When dealing with this issue Paul adopts the standard Jewish picture that prior to the revelation of the law there can be no transgression of it. The 6PrTl or wrath of God presumes a conscious violation of a known precept. We can better appreciate the subtle nuance of Paul's exegetical point by recalling the parallel in Jubilees. For in that book we noted that a variety of aberrant patriarchal behaviors were condoned by the writer precisely because they occurred prior to Sinai ("Let them not say, 'Reuben had life and forgiveness after he lay with his father's concubine.' ... For the ordinance and judgment and law had not been revealed"). All of those Patriarchs would have stood under strict judgment had they committed those offenses after Sinai. 26 For Paul, as well, this moment of pre-Sinaitic existence was one of leniency. Yet Paul is quite unique in terms of his evaluation of this era ofleniency. For Jewish interpreters this particular aspect of the patriarchal age was hardly salutary. Quite the reverse, it pointed out the need for a higher moral norm which would, in turn, result in the potential for true sanctification. Paul draws exactly the opposite conclusion. The revelation of this higher moral norm could only result in clearer and more precise grounds for condemnation; legal leniency, or its Pauline correlate, imputed righteousness, was mankind's only possible escape from the fiery wrath of God. In this sense the patri25 The fact that the law gives us such knowledge was already affirmed in Rom. 3:20, "for through the law comes the knowledge of sin." But perhaps the most famous expression of this notion is to be found in his letter to the Galatians: "Why then the law? It was added in order [to show us] our transgression [translation mine], until the offspring would come to whom the promise has been made" (3:19). Does this make the law in any way an evil thing?" "Certainly not," Paul asseverates (3:21). "Why then the law? On the one hand to show us our trespasses, but also to be our disciplinarian until the coming revelation of Christ (3:23)." 26 We should also note that this concept of when the Sinaitic laws are revealed has both a personal dimension in addition to its historical one. In my earlier essay ("Torah Before Sinai") I noted that Rashi was able to exonerate the sons of Noah from the coming judgment of the flood by an appeal to their age. Since those sons had not reached the age of majority when they would become accountable to the commandments, they could not be punished with death for violating them. A very similar point is made by Paul in Rom. 7:9-13. Only when Paul came of age did the commandments lead to death. Not of course because those laws were bad in and of themselves, but because they exposed his behavior for what it was, sin.

STATUS OF THE TORAH IN THE PRE-SINAITIC PERIOD

15

archal and messianic eras were comparable; in both eras it was faith in God's promise that brought redemption. So far we have seen Paul divide up Jewish history into three eras: the period before Sinai, from Sinai to the advent of the Messiah, and the messianic era. But if this model is to do justice to Paul's complete thinking on the subject then this periodization of the Torah would have to admit at least one more category, that being the era of Adam. 27 The text where this fourth category is made known is Rom. 5:12-14. In this famous text Paul compares the sin and condemnation of the First Adam to the righteousness and salvation of the Second. Before addressing the interpretation of these three verses it will be helpful to locate them within the larger frame of the chapter. The section reads: 12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all, with the result that all eventually sinned. 28 13 Sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. 14 Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come. 15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man's trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. 16 And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man's [act of] sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. 17 If, because of the one man's trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. 18 Therefore just as one man's trespass led to condemnation for alii so one man's act of righteousness led to justification and life for all. 9 For just as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners so by the one man's obedience will the many be made righteous. 29 20 But the law came in, with the result that the trespass 27 See, in addition, G. Friedrich, "Hamartia ouk ellogeitai, Rom 5,13," TLZ 77 (1952) 523. 28 The last clause in this verse is particularly problematic and has spawned articles in the hundreds. It is not only difficult from the perspective of what Paul meant but also of how Paul was received in the early Church, especially Augustine. Our reading reflects the recent article of J.A. Fitzmyer who has argued on the basis of parallel usages in other Greek writers that the preposition phrase is a "consecutive usage." SeeJ.A. Fitzmyer, "The Consecutive Meaning of eph' ho' in Romans 5.12," .NTS 39 (1993) 321-39. 29 Verse 19 is one spot where this difficulty is most obvious, for the verse would seem to imply that our present sinfulness is an imputed one, that is, one that exists outside the bounds of anything we have done. The remarks of Chrysostom are altogether appropriate: What he says seems indeed to involve no small question: but if anyone attends to it

16

GARY A. ANDERSON

multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, just as sin exercised dominion in death, so grace might also exercise dominion through justification leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The first thing to be noted about the text is the rather difficult syntax with which it opens. The first sentence of this paragraph, 'just as sin came into the world ... " is never completed. As Fitzmyer has noted, one would have expected Paul to have said, 'Just as sin came into the world through Adam (and with it death, which affects all human beings), so through Christ came uprightness (and with it life eternal). "30 Indeed, Irenaeus, when he summarizes the Pauline argument of Rom. 5, finishes the Pauline phrase in exactly this way.31 Yet Paul himself leaves this correlative element unfinished. Instead he provides a long gloss on the first part, a gloss that seems at odds with his overall argument. For rather than continuing with a comparison of the two Adams, Paul articulates the peculiar state of human culpability that obtained between Adam and Moses. During this period, death reigned over all human flesh, even over those who had not sinned in the fashion of Adam. For many New Testament scholars this long gloss is awkward at best, unintelligible at worst. Paul had just asserted that, through diligently, this too will admit of any easy solution. What then is the question? It is the saying that through the offence of one many were made sinners. For the fact that when he had sinned and become mortal, those who were of him should be so also, is nothing unlikely. But how would it follow that from his disobedience another would become a sinner? For at this rate a man of this sort will not even deserve punishment if, that is, it was not from his own self that he became a sinner. What then does the word "sinners" mean here? To me it seems to mean liable to punishment and condemned to death. Chrysostom has adopted what New Testament scholars would call a "participationist" view of sin as opposed to a perspective which views sin as "concrete acts." That is, he describes sin as a power whose rule is inaugurated by Adam's disobedience and hence whose effects perdure even over us irrespective of what we do. That we were made sinners, Chrysostom argues, is simply elegant shorthand for saying we became liable to Adam's punishment and condemned to death. Indeed, Chrysostom's understanding of this verse is simply restated by many NT scholars. For example Barrett notes that the terms "sinners" and "righteous" is verse 19 cannot refer to character, that is, one's own deeds. Rather the terms refer to relationship. Thus, "Adam's disobedience did not mean that all men necessarily and without their consent committed particular acts of sin; it meant that they were born into a race which had separated itself from God. Similarly, Christ's obedience did not mean that henceforth men did nothing but righteous acts, but that in Christ they were related to God as Christ himself was related to his Father" (117). 30 31

Romans, 406. Against Heresies 11121.10: "For as by one man's disobedience sin entered, and

death obtained [a place] through sin; so also by the obedience of one man, righteousness having been introduced, shall cause life to fructify in those persons who in times past were dead." The translation is from the Ante-Nicene Fathers (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1868) 5.454.

STATUS OF THE TORAH IN THE PRE-SINAITIC PERIOD

17

Adam, all human flesh fell under the sway of sin and death with the end result that all sinned. Yet here he tells us that during the era of the Patriarchs sin was not legally reckoned. So why did those people die? The Reformers were not so dumbfounded and solved the problem by understanding the term "reckoned" as referring to a human subject. Sin was not reckoned by humankind even though it was reckoned by Godp2 Modems have rightly rejected this opinion but they have not always been able to offer an alternative. In the words ofBultmann: "Wie kann sie [die Siinde] den Tod nach sich gezogen haben, wenn sie nicht angerechnet wurde? [How could sin lead to death if this sin was not reckoned?]."33 Bultmann's response is at least honest: "no answer can be given." It remains "vollends unverstandlich." C.K. Barrett makes a similar observation: "[since] no law existed between Adam and Moses, [... ] it might be expected that in that period no deaths would take place. This, however, was not so. Paul notes the anomaly, but without offering a formal explanation. "34 Cranfield attempts to make Paul more clear by arguing that the term "reckoned" means that it is not a "clearly defined thing."35 But this answer begs the question. It seems to be little better than that of the Reformers. For what does "not clearly defined" mean and just for whom is it so unclear - God? EvenE.P. Sanders fails to find a solution, "[T]he statements of Rom. 2 and Rom. 5 are not harmonious. Rom. 2 argues that the .sFIDe law judges everyone; Rom. 5:12-14 that, during the period from Adam to Moses, sin led to death even without the law. Paul then inconsistently says that law is required for sin to be counted, but that it was counted anyway."36 In order to understand Paul we must avoid the temptation to assimilate the First Adam/Second Adam typology of Romans to that of Paul's earlier letter to the Corinthians. Though they appear to have a similar interest - contrasting what was wrought by the first Adam in contrast to the second - in fact what they emphasize is quite different. In Corinthians, Paul is interested in what bodilY nature is inherited from the different Adams, while in Romans the issue is

32 Melanchton wrote (Corpus reformatorum, Melanchton, XV, 921) : "ubi non est lex, non agnoscitur, non accusatur peccatum in nobis ipsis. Loquitur enim Paulus de judicio nostrae conscientiae." Cited from G. Friedrich, "Hamartia ouk ellogeitai," 523. 33 R. Bultmann, Theologie des KT (1948) 248, cited from G. Friedrich, "Hamartia ouk ellogeitai," 523. 34 Barrett, Romans, 112. 35 C.E.B. Cranfield, "On Some of the Problems in the Interpretation of Romans 5:12," Scottish Journal of Theology 10 (1969) 339. 36 Sanders, Paul, the lAw and the Jewish People, 35-36.

18

GARY A. ANDERSON

that of legal culpabiliry. Accordingly we hear nothing about the matter of Mosaic law (1 Cor. 15); rather Paul turns his attention to bodily creation and re-creation (1 Cor. 15:42-49, cf. Gen. 2:7).31 Paul's point is that all mankind possesses a body like that of Adam, a body that comes from the earth and returns to the earth. There is hardly a hint that human sin was a causative factor. Indeed, one could infer just the opposite as Paul presumes that Adam was fashioned as a mortal being. The language is also unqualifiedly universal and so no distinction is made between Jew and Gentile. In Rom. 5 a very different rhetorical interest is at stake. The utilization of Adam is no longer quite so universal. He has consciously set Adam within the framework of Jewish salvation history. This becomes altogether clear at the end of this chapter when Paul returns to theme ofJewish law: "But the law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more (v.21). so that, just as sin exercised dominion in death, so grace might also exercise dominion through justification leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." These verses show clear links in diction with the opening argument of this section: The "entrance" of the law (v. 20) recalls the entrance of sin and death (v. 12) whereas the rule of death wrought by the law (v. 21) corresponds exactly with the rule of death inaugurated by Adam (v. 14).38 Verses 12-14 and 20-21, frame the entire literary unit and provide the overall legal framework for the understanding of the two Adams. 39 The key to understanding this entire section are these last two verses. Not only does Paul return to the theme that opened this unit (5: 12-14), that of the dominion of sin and death, but Paul continues this same theme in the very next section of his letter (Rom. 6: 1-14). Paul returns to the issue of the dominion of sin and death after the giving of the Torah because he had left that element of his equation unfinished in the first portion of his argument. Earlier he was satis37 It should occasion no surprise that this section from Corinthians was very important to Origen in regard to his idea that there were two falls, the first being prior to the creation of man. When Adam is created from the dust of the earth in Gen. 2:7 he is, according to this reading of Paul, already mortal. 38 The correlation of the opening and concluding parts of this section were also observed by Barrett, Romans, 118. 39 Not too surprisingly, many scholars who find it hard to understand vv. 12-14 also find it hard to understand vv. 20-21. Both are unexpected Jewish legalisms. Bultmann writes ("Adam and Christ According to Romans 5," in Current Issues in New Testament Interpretation [ed. W. Klassen and G. Snyder; New York: Harper and Row, 1962] 159) that "with verse 19 the train of thought could be closed." Verse 20ft lead the discussion back to the law, in Bultmann's view, an idea that had been inaugurated in vv. 13-14, but Bultmann derives no importance of this fact for the understanding of Paul's argument.

STATUS OF THE TORAH IN THE PRE-SINAITIC PERIOD

19

fied to describe the reign of death that Adam initiated, a reign that continued unabated from Adam to Moses (w. 13-14). The concluding section (w. 20-21) does two things. It extends the reign of death from Moses to the present day and then contrasts this entire epoch of the death's tyrannical rule with the eschatological kingdom of life. Again it must be emphasized that the language is altogether legal and forensic. In the eschaton grace rules "through [imputed] righteousness with result of eternal life. "40 The notion that each Adam inaugurated a period of tyranny, one of terror, the other of grace, was not lost on patristic writers. Irenaeus is particularly perceptive in this respect. He argues that the revelation of the law had two purposes. On the one hand it made human beings responsible for their sins. On the other, it showed that Death was truly a robber and a tyrant for he took human life even without justification. But the law coming, which was given by Moses, and testitying of sin that it is a sinner, did truly take away his [Death's] kingdom, showing that he was no king, but a robber; and it revealed him as a murderer. It laid, however, a weighty burden upon man, who had sin in himself, showing that he was liable to death. (Against Heresies III 18.10)

This understanding is quite frequent in the Church Fathers. In fact, Rom. 5 is frequently attached to early the early Christian myth of Christus Vutor, the idea that Christ as a valiant warrior had bested the powers of Sin and Darkness during his three-day descent into the depths of Hades. This is well attested in the Hymns of Ephrem on this subject but also quite in evidence in Aphrahat as well. Just prior to introducing the Christus Victor motif, Aphrahat has this to say about Rom. 5, The righteous know that Death rules by Divine Decree on account of Adam's transgression of the commandment, just as the Apostle [paul] says: "Death ruled from Adam to Moses, and even over those who did not sin, and so it was that it came upon all men just as it came upon Adam." How did Death rule from Adam to Moses? When God gave him a command he warned him and said, "on the day you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will die by death." When he transgressed the command and ate from the tree death ruled over him and all his children. He ruled even over those who did not sin, by means of the transgression of the command given to Adam. Why does 40 E. Kasemann, Commentary on Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980) 157, was quite right to emphasize the apocalyptic tone of the language here. The reign of death is not a benevolent one, it exacts its price regardless of the moral standing of its servants. Its mode of rulership is fundamentally irrational. But so, on the other side, in Paul's mind is the reign of grace. It offers its riches in the same irrational fashion, taking no account of human merits in the process.

20

GARY A. ANDERSON

it say "until Moses"? Moses announced that his kingdom would end; [whereas] Death had thought his kingdom eternal. 41

Aphrahat, like Irenaeus, also underscores the tyrannical rule of Death and declares that his rule as such was terminated by Moses who received the revelation that the dead would again rise. But this is almost never alluded to in discussions of Patristic readings of Rom. 5. The myth of Christus Vzctor is frequendy tied to this Rom. 5 passage but very infrequendy commented upon by modern scholars, either New Testament or Patristic. This is certainly due to the legacy of Augustine's reading of eq>' ~ in Rom. 5:12 and its alleged influence on his understanding of Original Sin.42 The importance of patristic observations about legal culpability should not be lost on us if we wish to understand the peculiarity of the Pauline interlude in vv. 13-14. Let us consider those verses again: Sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come." Paul oudines three discrete eras of legal responsibility. First is the era of Adam himself. Adam heard a commandment from God to which the penalty of death was attached. He violated that command and so the punishment logically followed. Second is the era of the Patriarchs. These individuals, though they heard no such commandment, died anyway. This was proof for Paul that death ruled irrespective of human accountability. In the Irenaean reading of Paul, this tyrannical rule of Death was made clear to the Israelites at Sinai when they themselves fell under the full responsibility of the law. For though they now were to be held accountable for their wrongdoing they could clearly infer that death's reign over their immediate ancestors was not just. Their own sins may have been similar to that of Adam but not those of their ancestors. A framework very much like the Pauline one can be found in Exodus Rabbah (32: 1). In this text the Rabbis attempt to exegete the curious phrase of Ps. 82:6, "I said you are [as] gods nevertheless you shall die as [A]dam." This verse is presumed by the Rabbis to Aphrahat, Demonstration 22.1-2. The Christus VIctor motif follows in 3ff. The literature on this problem is too massive to cite here. For the nature of the problem in its New Testament context with some reference to early patristic thought, see the useful summary of Fitzmyer, Romans, 409-17. A fine summary of the patristic usage of this verse in relation to Augustine can be found in the article of D. Weaver "From Paul to Augustine: Romans 5:12 in Early Christian Exegesis," St. Vladimir's Theological Qyarter!J 3 (1983) 187-206. He traces the entire history with only the question of seminal transmission in view. 41

42

STATUS OF THE TORAH IN THE PRE-SINAITIC PERIOD

21

be a reference to the status of Israel just after hearing the commandments. If Israel had waited for Moses and had not done that deed [worshipped the golden calf] there would not have been any exiles nor would the angel of death have ruled over them. For thus scripture says: "The writing was the writing of God inscribed (min) on the tablets." What does harut mean? R. Judah says, "free (n'in) from exiles." R. Nehemiah says, "free from the angel of death." When Israel said: "All which God said we will do and we will hear," then the Holy One Blessed be He said, "I commanded the first man with a single command that he might keep it and I established him as a ministering angel. For scripture says: 'Behold the man was like one of us' (Gen. 3:22). And if these people do and keep the 613 commandments, apart from the inferences of the general rules, the specific cases, and the finer points, is it not logical the they live forever?" ... But when they said, "These are your gods 0 Israel" (Exod. 32:8) then death came over them. The Holy One Blessed be He said: "You have walked in the manner of the first man who could not withstand temptation for even three hours ... '1 said you were [as] gods' (Ps. 82:6) but you walked in the manner of the first man, 'therefore you shall die like Adam'" (Ps. 82:7)

This text, like Paul, invokes two central movements in the advent of mortality. It begins with the figure of Adam who broke a commandment that was punishable by death, and concludes with those at Sinai who also consciously chose to disobey such a commandment. But what of those in between? Our midrash over the textual space of the patriarchal era in silence. What is striking about the relationship of this midrash to Paul is not the similarity of comparing Adam's sin to the sins of Israel after Sinai, but the highlighting of the difficulties created by the intervening patriarchal period. What is passed over in silence by rabbinic midrash assumes center stage in the writings of Paul. Paul constructs an exegetical framework that is at one and the same time Jewish and anti:Jewish. The question he engages is this: both Adam and the generation at Sinai heard commandments which were punishable by death if they were disobeyed. But the Patriarchs who lived in between these two eras did not hear any such commandments; thus the sins which they committed should not have led to their death. Yet they all died. How is one to explain this? A consideration of the parallels from Jubilees and the Dead Sea Scrolls gives ample indication that this question captured the imagination of early Jewish biblical interpreters. At one level Paul shares with these Jewish readers a common hermeneutical horizon. Yet there is one rather important difference. Jewish sources always and everywhere attempted to provide scriptural reasons for the legal incongruities of the pre-Sinaitic

22

GARY A. ANDERSON

era. This was a stock and trade item in the tool box of these interpreters. Paul, though familiar with this type of argument, avoids it. In the mind of Paul, unlike the author of Jubilees or the Damascus Covenant, the non-retributive factor that operates in the patriarchal period is not a problem that needs exegetical explanation; rather it is a rrwdel that can be correlated to the present messianic era. Let us, by way of summary, consider the radicality of the Pauline understanding. As we saw earlier, Exodus 19 stands as a sort of semi-permeable membrane in the Bible. On one side of the divide is the era of the Patriarchs in which the mandates of the Torah are rather casually if not blithely ignored whereas on the other side the centrality of these commandments could hardly be more emphatically underscored ["you shall keep my statutes and ordinances, by doing so one shall live, I am the LORD." (Lev. 18:5)] This severe imbalance sought some sort of equilibrium and in virtually any Jewish document one would care to consult, outside of the Pauline correspondence, the tendency was for the ethos, if not the norms, of Sinai to cross over into the era of the Patriarchs. oB The Torah ofJudaism was larger than the Torah of the Bible. The Torah of Judaism was the fundamental mytholegumenon that tied together all parts of the Bible. If Reuben remains unscathed in spite of his violation of a precept of Torah, the only explanation must be his ignorance of said violation. His violation is an act of inadvertence and can be assimilated to Sinaitic mores. Is Tamar nearly punished by fire for an act that has not been clearly proscribed nor attached to a definite penalty? Then, our early commentator reasons, Abraham must have given that very command and penalty for its violation a generation back. The fundamental spirit that informs this hermeneutical strategy is one of eros. True, the commands will reveal human sin, but their revelation will also allow for the sanctification of the world. Love for Torah, for its own sake, provides sufficient motivation for these rather ingenious exegetical artifices. For Paul a quite different mytholegumenon is at work. The fundamental integrating principle of the Bible cannot be obedience to Torah. As a result Paul saw no need to articulate a legally compelling reason for the deaths of those between Adam and Moses. But to what positive end is Paul's argument made? Stated differently, why highlight the incongruity of how death was meted out prior to the law? No doubt because this understanding quite aptly and ably 43 One frequendy finds, side by side the portrayal of patriarchal ignorance about the commands given at Sinai, their ability to prefigure them or even to know [and teach!] them in detail.

STATUS OF THE TORAH IN THE PRE-SINAmC PERIOD

23

provided a necessary counterpoint to another, more important theme in Paul's gospel, namely that our release from the tyranny of death is even more incongruous. Death, a merciless despot who destroys, regardless of merit, is replaced with a life-giving benefactor who bestows riches regardless of moral stature. In sum, Paul and other Jewish writers of this period were common heirs to a fractured foundation narrative. For Jewish writers the solution, though capable of varying formulation, was singular in nature: the lives of the Patriarchs were somehow brought into alignment with the norms of Sinai. For Paul, this chronological divide and the fracture it created served as the fulcrum upon which he could rest the plank of the Gospel and so sever the religion of Sinai from that of Abraham. A legacy whose roots can be traced back to those humble caves at Qumran but whose branches extend forward to the present day.

SCRIPTURE AND LAW IN 4Q265 JOSEPH

M.

BAUMGARTEN

Baltimore Hebrew College

Among Qumran "halakhic" writings, 4Q265 stands apart through the remarkably diverse character of its contents and the multiple literary genres which are represented among its fragments. Following tentatively the enumeration of the ten fragments listed in the Preliminary Qy,mran Concordance, we may describe these contents as follows: Frg. 1 preserves one column with penal rules similar to those found in the Community Rule and the Cave 4 manuscripts of the Damascus Document. It twice refers to a food penalty of "half his bread," which is considerably more severe than the one quarter reduction mentioned in 1QS 6:25. The second column has another penal rule and then goes on to describe the stages in the examination of neophytes by the Overseer and the Many. Frg. 2 twice uses the citation formula, "as is written :nn::l itl)tI;[::ll; the latter introduces a quotation from Isa. 54: 1-2, concerning the future exultation and expansion of Zion, but the context for these citations, as well as that of the word notl)' in frg. 3 is missing. Frg. 4, which has two lines and the bottom margin of a column, contains a well known biblical quotation, "[Have] we [not al]l [one father? Has not one God] created us? Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother?" intl; ,tI; tl;1'iT 1J'::l' ,ntl; ::JtI; tl;1'iT 1iT'ntl;::J tl)'tI; '1J::JJ l]1'O 1JtI;i::J (Mal. 2: 10). This biblical rhetoric is immediately followed by a rule prohibiting young lads and women from partaking of the paschal offering. We shall return to this interesting pericope later. Frgs. 5-6 derive from the top of a column. The extant words iTo]"TtI;iT 'l]1ir and n'i5:liT1 suggest some allusion to fruits of the soil, but the context remains obscure. Frg. 7 has two columns assigned to it in the Preliminary Concordance, although there is no join between them and their paleographic features are different. The first column, with approximately 39 letter spaces per line, consists of Sabbath rules also found in the Damascus Document. One of them serves to clarify the restriction on using implements to save a drowning man; it permits the use of a garment to draw him up.

26

JOSEPH M. BAUMGARTEN

Col. ii, with approximately fifty letter spaces per line, can best serve to illustrate the medley of subjects found in juxtaposition in 4Q265. The beginnings of the first two lines both refer to the Sabbath day. Line 3 begins with the restrictive phrase, "Let no man of the seed of Aaron sprinkle, l''iii~ .IJ.,r~ tD'~ f' ';[~]. It seems that this pertains to a ban on sprinkling the waters of purification from corpse impurity on the Sabbath. Such a law is found in m. Pes. 6.2, where sprinkling is listed as m::ItD, a rabbinically prohibited activity on the Sabbath. l:l'tD~ ~'i11 i11~~ ~'iltD n':J,n il~m n:::ltDil n~ iln1., ilJ'~' n1:::ltD. The general rule formulated by R. Akiba is that any procedure which can be done in preparation for the paschal sacrifice before the Sabbath does not override the Sabbath, n:::ltDil n~ iln1i i1:J'~ n:::ltD :::l".IJ~ iln'tD.IJ'? .,tDEl~tD il:J~'?~ '?:J. Hence, even though the paschal sacrifice overrides the Sabbath, the purification of those who are to perform it does not. R. Eliezer dissents and permits both. In the Preliminary Concordance, the beginning of the fourth line is restored to read: I:l,':::l I:l'~' '?'iJ I:li['] nO[Elil]. This reading presents substantial difficulties. Aside from the problem of the unparalleled designation of the day of the Passover as a fast day, there is a lack of continuity with the preceding context which pertains to purification on the Sabbath. In the sectarian calendar, as is known, the Passover sacrifice invariably occurs on Tuesday. The subject of purification and the restriction of sprinkling on the Sabbath is found in another Cave 4 text, 4Q274, a portion of which of which we presented elsewhere in a preliminary publication. I The following is a parallel relevant to the text of 4Q265 under consideration:

4Q274 1 ii CliC!) 0:J:)1 rni1 m1tii't~ii'r n~ 1'" [ 11' itD~ J ':1 n:JtD:J r .,~ n:JtDil Cl1':J '.Il':JtDil1'''[.Il "1[n' Cl~1 ":11' J mtD' itD~ i [.Il i1iilt!l:J .IlJ' .,~ pi n:JtDii [ J

1

2 3

The first line refers both to the sprinkling of the purification water and the bathing and washing of garments associated with it. 2 Naturally, the prohibition of sprinkling on the Sabbath applies also to the laundering of garments. Hence, I would suggest that the samekh in line 4 of our text belongs to the verb 0:::l:J, and that the I J. Baumgarten, "The Laws about F1uxes in 4QTohoraa (4Q274)," Time to Prepare the Way in the Wilderness (ed. D. Dimant and L.H. Schiffman; Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1995) 1-8. 2 Sprinkling and washing on the third and seventh day after corpse impurity are likewise associated in 11 QT 50, 14-15 and 4Q512 xii 5-7.

SCRIPTURE AND LAW IN

4Q.265

27

great fast day alluded to in the sequel is the 'Sabbath' of the Day of Atonement. The tentatively restored reading would be: ['?~ cm 1~ni' '?~ OJ1 n::ltDil 01'];J l'-;ii~ llilr.l tD'~ I' ';[~]

[

0'i1:l:::lil] 01'::l 01~1

'?m

0·1['::l] '10[::l;:)']

Line 5 continues the subject of the Sabbath with the rule, also found in CD 11 :5-6, permitting a shepherd to go two thousand cubits outside his settlement to graze animals. Line 6 refers to another limit known from the Temple Scroll, that of thirty ris from the Temple, the locus within which the slaughter of blemished animals was banned (llQT 52:17-19). Since the end ofthe line is missing, it is not clear whether this limit is applied here to the same law. Lines 7-10 shift to an entirely different subject, that of the eschatological Council of the Community (in'i1 r1~l]) described in 1QS 8: 1-1 O. This Council is to have a quorum of fifteen, twelve laymen and three priests. Its future establishment was expected to bring an end to the ages of evil and usher in goodwill and atonement for the earth. The description of this millennial hope is couched in phraseology similar to that of 1QS. The Council will be a "most holy dwelling" which offers up a "sweet odor." In 4QpIsad 1:3 it is likened to the sapphire among the stones on the High Priest's breastplate. The pesher is based on the phrase C"'E)O:J Tr1iO'i in Isa. 54: 11, which may conceivably have something to do with the word C'~':J[Ji1l "the prophets" at the beginning of line 8. The following section, lines 11-14, takes us abruptly into the narrative concerning Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. We had occasion in 1992 to discuss this version of the Eden narrative and its intimate connection with Jub. 3. 3 What is stressed here is the sacred nature of Paradise, which impelled the author to postpone the introductions of Adam and Eve to the garden until after their respective purifications and their conjugal intercourse. Adam was brought to Eden forty days after his creation, while Eve was not admitted until the eightieth day. This revised chronology serves as a paradigm for the variation in the period of postpartum purification for a new mother depending on the sex of the infant, forty days for a boy and eighty for a girl, as set forth in Lev. 12. Lines 15-17 of our text cite the substance of this leviticallaw, as does Jub. 3. The following schematic summary of the topics touched on in the extant portions of the seventeen lines of the column which we have 3 J. Baumgarten, "Purification after Childbirth and the Sacred Garden in 4Q265 and Jubilees," Proceedings if the First Meeting if the International Organization for Qymran Studies, Paris 1992 (ed. GJ. Brooke; Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1994) 3-10.

28

JOSEPH M. BAUMGARTEN

described should suffice to bring out the difficulty of finding the connecting thread: 1. Sabbath rules; 2. Prohibition of priestly sprinkling on the Sabbath; 3. Permission to walk two thousand cubits to graze animals on the Sabbath; 4. The eschatological Communal Council; 5. Adam and Eve in Paradise; 6. Purification after childbirth.

The first three topics do pertain to one subject, the Sabbath, which indeed serves as one of the major topical rubrics of the Damascus Document, r1:JrDi1 '?l1. However, the fourth subject, the Communal Council of the future, pertains neither to the Sabbath, nor to anything ostensibly legal. The fifth topic, the revision of the Garden of Eden narrative, does have halakhic application, as is evident from the sequel which follows it, but the application is to the entirely distinct subject of postpartum purification. Of course, it would be inappropriate to expect to find in Qumran works the discrete subject classifications and the distinctions between halakhah and aggadah which only emerged in Jewish literature much later. The topical rubrics found in the legal section of the Damascus Document are but rudimentary manifestations of the methodology which ultimately resulted in the order of the Mishnah. Yet, one is able in the Damascus Document to distinguish between the paraenetic prologue and the corpus of laws and to find associative links in the arrangement of rules within the latter. The genre of most Qumran writings is capable of being approximately defined; in the case of 4Q265 the diverse contents do not fit any readily recognizable anthological theme. Did Qumran scribes combine unrelated works in order not to waste space? This seems to be illustrated elsewhere by the copying of different compositions on the verso and recto of the same scroll. It may also be pertinent to the presence of the sectarian calendar at the beginning of 4Q394, one of the manuscripts of MMT. As one of the editors observes, the calendar appears unrelated to the halakhic letter, whether form-critically or even in terms of subject matter. It is a list of another genre prefixed in this manuscript for uncertain reasons.4 However, what we have in 4Q265 is not merely the juxtaposition of unrelated works in the same scroll, but the collection of brief 4 ] . Strugnell, Appendix 3, in Q.umran Cave 4: Miq~at Ma'aJe ha-Torah (ed. E. Qjrnron and]. Strugnell; DJD 10; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994) 203.

SCRIPTURE AND LAW IN

4Q.265

29

pericopes on diverse subjects in one document. Were there Qumran anthologies of excerpts from larger works culled for individual use? While reflecting on these questions, I was delighted to come upon Emanuel Tov's recent study, "Excerpted and Abbreviated Biblical Texts from Qumran."5 While his paper deals primarily with biblical texts, its findings may also be relevant to anthologies from non-biblical Qumran compositions, including "halakhic" ones. In his survey, Tov lists some fifteen texts, most of which contain excerpts from one or several biblical books, while a few consist of abbreviations of one biblical book. He offers a classification of these texts by their apparent purposes: a. liturgical collections: here he places the tefillin and mezuzot and all the anthologies of the Psalter. The latter were probably meant for devotional reading. b. exegetical-ideological anthologies: this is illustrated by 4QTestimonia, a small anthology of three pentateuchal texts and one from 4QapocrJoshua. The common theme is apparently the Messiah. c. copies made for personal reading: examples include 4QDeutQ, which has segments of the poem in Deut. 32, and 4QCanta -b , with abbreviated versions of several chapters of the Song of Songs. In the possible adaptation of this classification to non-biblical texts, particularly 4Q265, the first heading, liturgical collections, may be left out of consideration. The exegetical-ideological category appears to be more pertinent, although it still requires the identification of a common theme which unites the discrete elements found in one anthology. In the case of 4QTanl).umim the common theme is consolation. 4QFlorilegium is now described by A. Steudel as a "thematic pesher" and she has renamed it 4QMidrEschat. 4QOrdinances (4Q159),6 because of its combination of "halakha" with pentateuchal narrative and pesher, is most relevant to our text. The laws in 4QOrdinances range over a wide variety of topics: frg. 1 deals with portions of the harvest for the poor, the one time halfshekel tax (under the rubric t:l'Y1lJi1 :"jO~ '?[lJj), and the equation of the measures ephah and bat in accordance with Ezek. 45: 11. Mter a vacat we find the following phrases, which are clearly narrative in nature: z:li1J';[.l:::l ?.D, r:::J.Di1 ?[.D i1jw,r.l ~ifD "~iw[' '.l:::l 'fD.D ifD~ ".l.Di1

I believe that the first line alludes to the purification of the people by sprinkling after the making of the golden calf. The second line refers 5 E. Tov, "Excerpted and Abbreviated Biblical Texts from Qumran," RevQ 16 (1995) 581-600_ 6 Qumran Cave 4.1 (ed. ].M. Allegro; DJD 5; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968) 6-9.

30

]OSEPH M. BAUMGARTEN

to its burning by Moses. The consequences of the sin of the golden calf are also, in my opinion, alluded to in frg. 5, which includes pesher comments on the death of the sinners, the role of the Levites, and Moses' self-imposed isolation outside the camp: ]itDEl ,mr.l" L;l~ 6[ElJJ:l r,L;l 'J:::l vacat i]6~ itD~' C!lEltDr.l:J[ L;lil~il] n~ iltD'r.l nnp:::l[ ]"1:::liil itDEl ilr.ltD ,~~,[ L;l~ 'tDp:::lr.l L;l,;:, 5 ] , ilp '~:::l ili,rii'l tD'i[ iL;l ]frtD,r.l i:::li "i[tD~

jL,,5[

Translation 1 2 3 4 5

[when God plagued] them and they died. The interpretation [ vacat The sons of Lev[i ] [] in law. As to that which he sai[d, ] [] when Moses took [the tent ] [all who sought God went out there. The interpretation of the matter [ ] 6 [to se]ek the Law in distress and [ ] 7 [whic]h Moses spoke [ ] 8 []all[]

Frgs. 2-4 include a reference to Lev. 25:42, which forbids the use or sale of an impoverished Israelite as a slave, but the remainder of the extant text deals with legal matters: a twelve-member court, the prohibition of transvestitism and the penalty for a husband who defames his bride. 4Q265 thus resembles 4QOrdinances in its legal contents and its literary form. Both texts contain medleys of rules which do not appear to follow any particular subject classification or scriptural sequence. They also embrace biblical quotations and narrative allusions which are not strictly "halakhic," although they may have served as support for the rules propounded by Qumran exegetes. The genre of these miscellaneous legal and narrative texts should now be added to the heterogeneous classification of Qumran compositions, although their functional purpose has yet to be clarified. Let us now narrow our focus to one fragment of 4Q265, which juxtaposes a biblical citation with a very specific "halakhic" ruling. The passage quotes Mal. 2:lO: "Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother?" The following line, which is the last of the column, reads: nOElli n[:::lt:::l] iltD~' C!l'C!l.llt i.llJ L;l;:,~,' [L;l~]

Let [neither] a young lad nor a woman eat the paschal [sacrifi]ce.

SCRIPTURE AND LAW IN

4Q.265

31

The word before nO=:li1 was restored by one of the original editors to read J[n::J) , but In without n:n usually refers to a festival, and only rarely to its offering (Exod. 23: 18). The lectio jaciliodr[::JT::J) may in this case be preferable and it seems compatible with the vestiges on the facsimile. The exclusion of women and children from sharing in the paschal lamb at first sight seems odd, particularly in the light of the description in Exod. 12, where it is an offering shared by all the "souls" of each household. However, the Passover sacrifice of later generations, m", nO=:l, as the Rabbis called it, was fashioned in accordance with the deuteronomic centralization of all sacrifice in the Temple (Deut. 16:5-6). The levitical purity of all who partook of the paschal lamb was consequently a cardinal requirement. It is noteworthy that in Num. 9:6, nO=:li1 ntD.li? ,?::J' tI:?, C1'tI: tDm? C1'tI:~~ m ,tDtI: C1'tDJtI: 'i1'1, the problem of those who were impure at the time of Passover seems to pertain only to C1'tDJtI: men. The description of the paschal offerings in the days of Josiah as having been distributed CllJi1 'J::J ?::J? (2 Chron. 35: 13) is likewise susceptible of being understood as limited to males. The author of Jubilees makes this explicit when he restricts the consumption of the paschal sacrifice to men twenty years or older who are to eat it in the sanctuary of the Lord (49: I 7). A similar ruling is found in the 11 QT 17:8-9: ID"p[il] nn:m::J il"'''::J 'i11"~~' 'm~ 'iD.!)' il".!)O' i1JID [C]'iID.!) l::JO

Those twenty years and older shall perform it and eat it at night in the sacred courts. The implied exclusion of women and minors from partaking of the paschal offering was apparently a sectarian stringency, later perpetuated in Karaite exegesis. 7 The practice prevalent in the late Second Temple period was evidently more lenient, as one gathers from the description ofJosephus. He states that each offering was eaten by a fraternity of between ten to twenty people, from which were excluded "those afflicted with leprosy or gonorrhea, or menstruous women (YUVat~lV E1t£~1.111vOl ("to multiply") may refer metaphorically to the idea in Deut. 7: 13, 28:63a, I Chron. 27:23. See line 8. The meaning of the metaphor n::J'';> 1'~lO ~ine 8), is either "from its root to rear" (cf. Ezek. 19:2) or "to multiply" (cf. Gen. 1:22, Deut. 30: 16, etc.). The idea of rearing may be appropriate here, but as a reference to Israel, not to a king. It may refer to the multiplicity of Israel (cf. I Kgs 4:20, Isa. 60:22). 31 m';>'1 n[. ~ine 9). For 1'1"1';>" the defective spelling ofm1'';>', cf. 4Q262 3 I. The n [ may refer to a verb such as 1'::JtDl, in which this statement would refer to the destruction of the tree (cf.Jer. 11:16, Ezek. 31:12). This idea clearly appears in col. 2 iii (see line 6ff.). 32 ]m 1'100::l'1 ~ine 6). The author used a verb derived from 00::l ("shear," "clip," Brown-Driver-Briggs, Lexicon 493) in the plural form rather than the quadril form OO,::l, used in Ps. 80: 14 in the singular. The verb 00::l appears in Ezek. 44:20 and is quoted in b. San. 22b, b. Ned. 51a, Yalkut 2.383, Maimonides, Laws of Temple Utensils 5.6. E. Qmron assumes that OO,::l in Ps. 80:14 represents the secondary form of 00::l and that the resh is a case of dissimilation (private communication). In accordance with this plural form, the noUl'! was possibly o','m "boars". As for the content and idea of this metaphor, the author may have had in mind Isa. 18:5-6 and Jer. 22:7. 33 ~1';>::J ni::l'1 ~ine 7). The cutting of trees symbolizes the destruction of a land in Isa. 18:5,Jer. 22:7, 46:23, etc. ~1';>:::J may refer to the phrase j" ~1';>::J and the like (cf. Ps. 44: 13, 4Q504 1-2 ii 15) with the meaning of despising something. 34 The complete phrase may be: p,n '~P "epochs of wrath" (cf. I QH 3:28, frg. I 5, CD 1:5 [= 4QDb 2 i 10], 4QDb 18 v 19, 4QDa I 5 [= 4QDb 2 i 3], 4QDe II ii 13, 4QpHosa I 12) or l::J,n '~P "epochs of desolation" (cf. CD v 20 [= 4QDb 3 ii 15]). If either of these reconstructions is correct, it may refer not to the future (IQH iii 28), but to the past or the present. In any event, the words '~P, O'~P, fP in the meaning of "period/s" have been used in Jewish literature since the Second Temple days. See Y. Kutcher, "The Hebrew and Aramaic of the Dead Sea Scrolls," Mahanayim 62 (1962) 52 (l+cb.); L. Ginzberg, An Unknown Jewish Sect (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1976) 29-30; N. Wider, "The term fP in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in Hebrew Liturgical Poetry," JJS 5 (1954) 22-31.

r

170

BILHAH NITZAN

Section 2 (Frg. 3 cols. ii-iii): The guilt of Israel, who violated its covenant with God (ii 1-4)35 "with deep desire" (c£ Isa. 66:3),36 i.e., intentionally, justifies the decree of hard punishment: "God will take vengeance on you for your betrayal [thefiuit qfJ your [sc]hemes" (ii 67a; c£ Lev. 26:25; Ezek. 39:23;Jer. 6:19).31 Their explicit guilt and its punishment clarifies the idea of God's justification stated in the introduction to 4Q302/302a (1 i 1-5), where the anger of God and the afflictions brought upon Israel were already mentioned. Yet, an additional subject, a dispute between Israel and God, is presented explicitly in lines 7b-8 of this column: :J'tlli1'?, 1~.I.l n:m'? l'JJ'? '~.I.l ~,?, 1:J'1:J 1:J' and he did not confront you to argue with you and reply to your contention" (rib) (c£ Mic. 6:20). This statement may be reacting against Israel's claims. These may be polemical claims, either against God's punishment of Israel (c£ Ezek. 18:2, 20:32), against the justice of God (c£ Hab. 1:12-13, Mal. 2:17, 3:14), or others. A reference to such a dispute appears in the non-canonical psalm 4Q381 76-77 10: ['~].I.l n~'m:J '~.I.l" 1:J' :J'tll' t:l~:J '~ ("Who among you will reply and will stand in controversy with H[im]").38 In light of this, one may suggest that the author of 4Q302/302a refers to a theological polemic in his generation (to which I shall return later). In any event, this subject may relate to the word T1:J'~ in the introduction (1 i 3).39 If this suggestion is correct, the details of God's decree may close a circle begun with the subject of the Introduction. A turning point, possibly towards reconciliation with Israel, may be suggested either by the mention of God's omnipresence in lines 9-11 of this column,40 or by the word t:lmni1'? ("to have compassion"), preserved in a separated fragment, assuming it belongs to Possibly according to Num. 15:39 and Deut. 10:16. The idiom ;'~5ln tD5lD ("deep desire") may be used positively, as in I Chron. 28: 19. However, according to the context (see lines 6-7), a negative meaning such as in Isa. 66:3, ;'~5ln CtD5lJ 0;"~1PtD::J1 "in their abomination their soul takes delight," is more likely here. 37 These verses are related to CD 1:3-4, 17-18 as well. O::J'''''.I)O 'i5l inJer. 21: 14 is synonymous with o::J'n1::JtDno 'i5l, both being in the context of punishment. 38 Schuller, Non-Canonical Psalms, 215, 218. 39 The word l'i::Ji::J (1 i 3) may apply to Israel's evil dealings or to their speech which angered God on their account (cC Deut. 4:21,1 Sam. 2:23, Mal. 2:17, 3:13). O'i::Ji as a reference to God, as in Deut. 30: 1, is less reasonable in the context of frg. I i, because it refers to both blessings and curses. 40 On the one hand, the supreme rule of God over the entire universe is demonstrated here in the phrases 1::JtDO O'OtD::J O';'''~ (3 ii 9; cf. Ps. 103: 19) and O'O'::J n1~i~::J [1n'?tD] 001 (3 ii 9b-lOa; cf. Ps. 135:5-6, Jer. 10:11, Ps. 47:3, 89:10-12, 103:22, I Chron. 29:11-12, 2 Chron. 20:6). On the other hand, God's providence over a particular nation, perhaps Israel (see Deut. 32:36), may be suggested by the clause such as 3) ... 0.1) [ ... ;']~i1 ii 10b-ll), which is too corrupt to make any reasonable suggestion. 35 36

POST- BIBLICAL RIB ADMONITIONS

171

this co1umn. 41 Such a turning point may allude to the wide scope of God's sovereignty and judgment, already hinted in the praise of God as the Creator of all in 1 i 13. We may conclude thus far that the sapiental element ~J 'J'::Jil O'~:Jnil n~r::J, and even the parable attached to it, do not impart a distinct sapiental nature to the entire composition, but do direct the reader towards a sapientiallesson of the admonition, as is customary in many biblical and Qumranic compositions,42 among them admonitions including historical surveys.43 On the other hand, one may consider the exhortative nature of the composition, to suggest that its post-biblical author intended the reader, by means of the parable, to draw an inference from the historical situation to a specific situation in his own generation. God's decree, written in the imperfect form O:J'li~::J O:Ji'~ O'il'~ O'p' (3 ii 6), seems to support this assumption, even though in the preserved text itself there is no explicit data concerning any specific event. Nevertheless, the non-canonical rib pattern psalms, 4Q381 69 and 76-77, dating either to the Persian or to the hellenistic periods, are helpful for investigating the hypothetical historical background of 4Q302/302a. When each of these three non-canonical compositions, which are only partially preserved, is read separately, it is difficult to uncover a specific, actual situation. However, upon reading them as a group of compositions of the same genre, we notice a common theme. They all mention the foreign people from whose customs Israel was commanded to keep apart. 4Q381 69 mentions 41 One may suggest here a reference to Deut. 32:36 and Ps. 135: 14, seeking the compassion of God on his people at the last judgment. 42 Among biblical and post-biblical works, such calls for a sapiential lesson appear at the opening or towards the conclusion of the work. These occur not just in distinctly sapiental books such as Proverbs, Ben Sira, or the sapiential works from Qumran, as in 4Q525 14 ii 18: [...]" ;"1::1J" O'tD1'" ;"1Il00 po ;"1nIl1, and others (see DJ. Harrington, "Wisdom at Qumran," The Communiry qf the Renewed Covenant [ed. E. Ulrich and ].C. VanderKam; CJAS 10; Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993] 137-52), but also in the non-canonical psalms of 4Q38 I , the admonitions of the Damascus Covenant, and in other Qumran texts (ibid., esp. I 38f.). The psalms of 4Q381 are characterized by such calls within different contents (see Schuller, Non-Canonical Psalms, 23-24, and note their contexts). 43 Noteworthy are such calls written in the context of historical surveys, in both biblical and post-biblical admonitions. Note Deut. 32:7 ,n1 ,1, r11ltD 1l'J, in CD 1:1 ,,~ 'tDIlOJ 1l'J1 P'~ '1l'1' 1Il0tD (cf. CD 2: 14), and in 4Q381 76-77 8 ',J, [1Il0tD] [1]l'Jr11 ~~n '£)0 ;"10:Jn" 1"'::ItDr11 (cf. 4Q381 69 4-5, where the sending of prophets to teach Israel the lesson of their past transgressions is mentioned). 4Q381 76-77 8 and 4Q381 76-77 13, no"n ill'J tD'il, are written in the context ofa dispute between God and Israel. Compare Ps. 49:21, il1~ 'n::l1tD n~1 ~l 1l'J, with a similar dispute in Ps. 94: 8. None of these calls, however, is followed by a parable. Some of the biblical parables have a header or an opening call, but of a different nature (cf. Judg. 9:7, Isa. 5:1, Ezek. 19:1).

"::I

172

BILHAH NITZAN

the defilement of the land by its foreign inhabitants (lines 1-2), warning Israel to turn away from their deeds (lines 4-5a).44 1

fi [~il] 'OJ) ,::l' J)nil '~ 'm~i::l m'~iO ~?:li11 il~O~ n1J? fi~il ?~ [iln'il

2

3 4 a5 1 ... when He saw that the peoples of [the la]nd acted abominably 2 ] all the land [become] total unclean defilement, and marvelously from the beginning 3 4 ] ... and He gave to you by His spirit prophets to instruct and to teach you 5a ] ... from heaven He came down, and He spoke with you to instruct you, and to turn from the deeds of the inhabitants of c~n~ 10??' ?'~tDi1? C'~'::lJ 'nli::l C~? cm', C~::l° [ '::ltD' 'tDJ)OO ::l'tDil?' c~n~ ?'~tDil? C~OJ) i::l1" 1i' C'OO 10 C~ [

4Q381 76-77 concentrates on a polemic between God and Israel (lines 8-13),45 stating that Israel is the people of God's treasure, chosen from among many great peoples and nations (lines 5, 14-15). 5

] ,n?JO CJ) ? [~itD'

7-6 ']J'::lm ~~ ':l0 ilO~n? '?'~tDm 'i::l1

]0 'D'tDil? n~ C~::l

00 [

C~ 10~ 1J)' no~ ~oo,

r

,0]J) n~'ni1::l 10J)" i::l1 ::l'tD' C~::l '0 J)'OtD"? [ ]c~ ,~ C~'1J)? i:lOr.l r~' C~'~:ltD C'::li '~ [ ] il?'J) r~' no~ C!l:ltv? C~'~:ltDO::l ::ltD' i11il' '0 [ ] '10?n m'::l tD'il no~ 'C!lOOO C~::l n1tDJ)? m'i [ C]~::l in::l ~'il 'ilO~ r~' ~?:lJ' i'::lJ c'm~il 'J1~ [ . .. cJ)?'? nm? C'?'1J C",:10' C'::l [i C'OJ)O

5

6-7 ...

8

9 10 11

12 13

14 15 H

45

8 9 10

11

12

13 14 15

Israe]l a people His treasure [

] ... my words, and you will pay attention to the wisdom which goes forth from my mouth, and you will underst[and ] and a true judge and a faithful witness. Do you have strength to answer Him ... [ ] to proclaim. Who among you will reply, and will stand in controversy with [Him ] for many are those who judge you, and there is no number to those who witness against you. But[ ] ... Yahweh will sit in judgement with you, judging truly and without injustice [ ]His spirits, rendering you true judgement. Is there understanding you may learn [ ]Lord of Lords, mighty, and marvellous, and there is no one like Him. He chose y[ou from m]any [peoples] and from great nations to be His people, ...

See Schuller, Non-Canonical Psalms, 200-03, and commentary, 203-12. See Schuller, Non-Canonical Psalms, 215-19, and commentary, 221-26.

POST- BIBLICAL RIB ADMONITIONS

173

4Q302/302a mentions the offspring of Abraham (1 i 7), God's [ho]ly (people) Israel (1 i 10), who settled among the inhabitants of the land (1 i 12), but were commanded not to follow their customs (1 ii l-3? 11-13). Even though all these statements refer to the past, one cannot ignore the analogous situation confronting the Jews inJudaea during the postexilic period. The accusation of defiling the land of Israel by acting abominably, as mentioned in 4Q38l 69 1-2, refers to the past. Nevertheless, the verb iJJii'? ("to act as a stranger") in line 8 of this psalm may refer not to the past but to an actual reality in the author's time. It may include deeds analogous to those in the Persian era, such as the "abhorrent things that have been done in Israel and Jerusalem ... espoused daughters of alien God" (Mal. 2: 11), and other abominations "made in deep desire," as mentioned in 4Q302/302a 3 ii 5, following Isa. 66:3. Another reference to Israel's abominations may be suggested by the phrase depicting God's inspection in 4Q302/302a 3 ii 9-11, which may allude to Ps. 14:1-3 (= Ps. 53:1-4), concerning those whose "deeds are corrupt and loathsome ... altogether foul." The foreign inhabitants whose customs were followed during the Persian era may be the Samaritans or rather the Samarians, i.e. the foreign inhabitants of the Samaria district between Judaea and Galilee to whom the title, "Sidonians of Shechem," may refer Gosephus, Ant. 11.342b-346, l2.258-264a):~6 There were relationships between Jews and Samaritans not only during the Persian period (Ezra 9-10) but also in the hellenistic period after the building of the Samaritan temple at Mount Gerizim Gosephus, Ant. 11.306-312).41 According toJosephus,Jews who were excluded from Jerusalem at the time found a shelter among the Samaritans (Ant. 11.346-347). These Jews may have participated in the service of the Samaritan temple. In this context, one should consider the central place occupied by the building of the Temple in Jerusalem in the historical survey of 4Q302l302a frg. 1 ii 6-7. If its author wished to allude to a polemic with the Jews who participated in the worship of the Samaritan temple, one may tentatively suggest that the text of 4Q302/302a was composed at that time, possibly in 46 See R. Egger, 'Josephus F1avius and the Samaritans," Proceedings of the First International Congress of the Societe d'etudes Samaritaines (ed. A. Tal and M. F1orentin; TelAviv: Chaim Rosenberg School for Jewish Studies, 1991) 109-14. She has come to the conclusion that the "Sidonians of Shechem" were not Jews "but obviously their next door neighbours" (112). Cr. Neh. 13: 16. H The political circumstances which were used by the Samaritans for building their temple at Mount Gerizim are discussed by M. Mor, "Samaritan History," in The Samaritans (ed. A.D. Crown; Tiibingen: Mohr, 1989) 6-8.

174

BILHAH NITZAN

the third century BCE. 48 Clearer hints identifying the Samaritan danger at that time appear in another text from Qumran entitled "A Text aboutJoseph" (4Q372 1), published by E. Schuller. 49 That text complains of the Samaritan tendency to prevail over the tribes of Jacob, while the admonitions of 4Q38l and 4Q302/302a warn those Jews who transgress by following foreign customs. Nevertheless, the Samaritan (or Samarian) danger in the land of Israel during that period may be considered one of the putative actual situations dealt with in 4Q302l302a. Another occasion of adherence to foreign customs occurred during the hellenistic period, when the danger of adherence to Hellenism was present in Judaea (1 Mace. 1:41-53; 2 Mace. 4:7-17). However, in that case Jews followed the customs of the foreign rulers, not those of the inhabitants of the land. In any event, no matter to which nations these admonitions refer, the biblical warning against defilement of the land (Lev. 18:24-30, Ezek. 33:24-29, etc.)50 was seen during the Second Temple period as the cause of destruction and exile. In conclusion, the non-sectarian admonitions from Qumran discussed above adapted biblical motifs and patterns in new compositions, which at times refer to actual historical situations. In the early Second Temple period, the tendency to follow biblical patterns, motifs, vocabulary, style and even content was retained, as is attested in many apocryphal writings of the period. However, later and sectarian compositions of the Qumran library, among them the rib-pattern admonitions like those of the Damascus Covenant, manifest a tendency to mould traditional genres with new features. In addition, new genres were created, one of which, that of the pesharim, related to historical situations from a distinct sectarian standpoint.

48 According to Josephus, at that time (around 300 BC) the Samaritans enjoyed prosperity (Ant. 11.341, 12.257). Ben Sira 50:26 may refer to a later time. See Segal's commentary (Sefer Ben-Sira ha-Shalem, [Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1972] 349) and Josephus, Ant. 12: 156. 49 "4Q372 1: A Text aboutJoseph," RtvQ.14/55 (1990) 349-376. See esp. 4Q372 1, lines 20-21, 27. 50 Cf. Deut. 4:25-26,1 Kgs 21:26,Jer. 2:7, 32:35, etc.

A NOTE ON THE USE OF THE BIBLE IN 1 MACCABEES· U.

RAPPAPORT

Haifo University

It is common knowledge that 1 Maccabees follows the model of biblical historiography, especially that of the First Prophets (t:J'~':JJ t:J'J'tD~I). The similarities between 1 Maccabees and these books indicate that the author of 1 Maccabees intentionally imitated them and, indeed, that their impact on his writing is strong and clear. This can be seen from the following aspects. I. Citations from the Bible and familiarity with its contents, which are not limited to the First Prophets (e.g. I Mace. 7: 17 and Ps. 79:2-3).

2. Indirect references to biblical passages or verses (e.g. Mattathias' testament in I Mace. 2:49 ff. or 2:26). 3. Biblical idioms and phrases (1 Mace. 16:23-24; 2:69), including an anachronistic geographical onomasticon. 4. Imitation of biblical prototypes.'

In addition to the stylistic and verbal relations between 1 Maccabees and the First Prophets, there are other uses of biblical materials. One important aspect, which will concern us here, is the historiographical approach and the theological understanding of history displayed by the author of I Maccabees. We will try to show that the differences between his approach and the Bible are more important than the similarities, and that he did not inherit biblical historiogra-

phy unchanged. The common feature of both biblical historiography and I Maccabees is that they relate history as human. Human beings play on the historical scene. Surely God is "the Director of the play," who executes his plans through humankind. Their courage or cowardice, wisdom or stupidity, confidence in God or arrogance, are the results of some divine programme or intention. But it is through humans

• This slwrt paper was written when I was follow in the Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, in the year 1995/6. I would like to thank the Institute for the excellent conditions of research I enjf!Yed, and my colleagues professors T. Rqjak and D.R. Schwartz, for discussing with me this paper, the defaults of which are my responsibility alone. , See J.A. Goldstein, 1 Maccabees (Anchor Bible 41; Garden City: Doubleday, 1976) passim, and D. Dimant and T. Rajak (141-42), cited below in note 11.

176

U.RAPPAPORT

that God achieves his aims, not by miracles or angels or any metaphysical power. 2 Let us look more closely at God's role in the First Prophets on the one hand and in I Maccabees on the other. In I Maccabees, God's plan is usually seen as consummated, from a human perspective, post factum, i.e., after everything is finished and understood in human terms, a reference to an act of God follows. 3 In the First Prophets, however, God's intentions precede the historical event, which then runs its course accordingly, although in a human fashion. 4 The difference becomes clear when we look more closely, for example, at the election of Mattat hi as' family to save Israel in 1 Macc. 5:62: "They Uoseph and Azariah, see below] did not belong to the family of those men, through whom deliverance was given to IsraeL" This phrase is very important in 1 Maccabees. It is the cornerstone of our understanding of the work as a "dynastic book" written by a "court writer," an understanding about which, in general terms, there is a consensus among scholars. 1 Maccabees' outlook is different from the conception of God's election of Saul or David in 1 SamueL 5 There are various differences in these respective elections. Not only does the presence of a prophet at the elections of Saul and David versus the absence of one at the Maccabees' election to a significant difference,6 but even more so, the order of events. Saul and David were first chosen and anointed, and only afterwards became kings and performed their exploits. In contrast, neither Mattathias nor Judas was personally chosen. Their election is mentioned in passing, only after it had became evident through the defeat ofJoseph and Azariah (see below). This might have been mo2 Although there are miracles and direct divine intelVention here and there in the First Prophets, more in Joshua and Judges, less in Samuel and Kings, they disappear completely in I Maccabees. 3 Even this is not always so, and, surprisingly, Antiochus IV's death, though said to be a retaliation for his crimes against the Jews (6:12-13), is not defined explicitly as a divine punishment (C( to 9:54-56, but also to 7:38). 4 See I.L. Seeligmann, "The Might of Man and the Deliverance of God-Dual Causality on Biblical Historical Thought," Studies in Biblical Literature (ed. A. Hurvitz, S. Japhet and E. Tov; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992) 62-81, and what he calls il?1:l;' nl'n::l'o. Seeligmann refers to D. Busser, who noted the similarity between Judges and Samuel and I Maccabees, whereas we are more interested with I Maccabees' departure from them. 5 For Saul's election, see 8:22; 9:15-17; 10:1 (first version); 10:20-24 (second version). For David's election, see 15:10-16:13. 6 Since I Maccabees' author (see 4:46; 9:27; 14:41) and others (see Ps. 74:9) recognized that at that time prophecy had come to an end, it may be somewhat hazardous to ascertain I Maccabees' mentality through it. Nevertheless it might have selVed well his dynastic predilection for the Hasmoneans and their dynastic interest.

USE OF THE BIBLE IN I MACCABEES

177

tivated politically, to leave the path to the throne open for Simon and his descendants, as well as by the decline of prophecy in Israel. From the historiographical point of view it is noteworthy that in 1 Maccabees the divine election of the Hasmonean family is revealed only after concrete evidence is provided. Mattathias, and especially Judas, demonstrated abundantly their ability to deliver Israel. Only after the defeat of the two generals, Joseph and Azariah (who "did not belong to the family ... "), is the divine election of the Hasmoneans announced. God's election is a post factum act historiographically, although one can argue theologically that it was premeditated. God is not even mentioned explicitly in this sentence, although he is evidently the one who delivered Israel. Simon's appointment, which was constitutional and not divine, is included in a document (1 Mace. 14:27-49) and not in the text of 1 Maccabees itself; Therefore, does not necessarily reflect the author's own views. The diminution of the divine role in history is evident when 1 Maccabees is compared to the Book of Judges, with its motif of deliverance. Judges might well have served the purpose of the author of 1 Maccabees, 7 but we are not told about the choice of Mattathias and his sons to deliver Israel until they have actually done SO. 8 No wonder, then, that God's intervention in battle is not a precondition for victory. God is either not mentioned at all (battle of Judas against Apollonius, 1 Mace. 3:10-12) or he is only supposed to instill courage in the hearts ofJudas' soldiers (3: 19) or he is expected to decide the outcome of a battle, although his decision is unknown (3:60; 4:8-11) and his help is recognized postfactum (4:24-25). These cases are different from similar events in biblical historiography, such as the battle of Israel against the Phi1istines in Even Ha-Ezer (1 Sam. 7: 10) or the defeat of Sennacherib before the walls ofJerusalem. The approach of 1 Maccabees is also diametrically opposed to the expectations of Dan. 8:25 or 9:45, concerning the destruction of Antiochus IV.g There is no need here to discuss additional examples of departures from biblical historiography in 1 Maccabees. A weightier ques-

7 The author of I Maccabees was well acquainted with the Book ofJudges. See I Mace. 9:73. 8 Cf. I Mace. 2: I ("In those days Mattathias ... moved from Jerusalem and settied in Modein"), as well as 3:1, to various verses in Judges: "The Lord raised up for them a deliverer." 9 Of course, it should be mentioned that the point of departure of many apocaIypses was not biblical historiography but prophecy. See M.E. Stone, "Apocalyptic Literature," in Jewish Writings qfthe Second Temple Period (ed. M.E. Stone; CRINT 212; Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984) 384-88.

178

U. RAPPAPORT

tion is, in what way can we understand these differences as an expression of the Zeitgeist of the Hasmonean period in general and of the cultural atmosphere at the Hasmonean court in particular?IO I prefer to refrain from conclusions and only to suggest possible directions which may be productively pursued. 1. Evidently the Bible served as the primary classical model for almost every creative literary work in Judea." Even fiercely opposing movements (e.g. Hasmoneans versus Qumranites, 1 Maccabees versus Apocalypticism) drew on the Bible for inspiration and guidance. 2. God's role is depicted in contradictory ways by two opposing trends inJewish society. It is minimized among the ruling circles and maximized by the sectarian/apocalyptic opposition. This looks like a symmetrical contradiction and a kind of reaction by each party against its opponent. At the same time, both parties were distancing themselves diametrically from their biblical models. 3. To what degree is it the result of external influences and to what extent an internal development? 4. How is it related to other major trends in Second Temple period Judaism? 5. How does it enhance our understanding of the Hasmonean world view, especially since 1 Maccabees is our only complete and unreservedly pro-Hasmonean document? All of the above constitutes only one aspect, among many, which may help us check the pulse ofJudean society. I Maccabees' attitude towards Rome and towards military and political violence in general, in comparison to the Dead Sea Scrolls' sect, is another one. 12 Examination of the impact of Hellenism on 1 Maccabees, and on some other phenomena in the Hasmonean state,13 may contribute as 10 It would have been interesting to compare I Maccabees' attitude towards the divinity to the Book of Esther, where God is not mentioned at all. Yet there are differences between the two books. Their literary genre is different and, in contrast to Esther, I Maccabees mentions God very frequently. So it is too risky to draw conclusions from this interesting comparison (for which I wish to thank Pro( Tessa Rajak, who kindly discussed this paper with me). 11 See D. Dimant, "Use and Interpretation of Mikra in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha," in Mikra. Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation qf the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (ed. MJ. Moulder; CRINT 211; Assen/Maasricht: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988) 379-419; T. Rajak, "The Sense of History in Jewish Intertestamental Writing," Oudtestamentische Studien 24 (1986), esp. 132-42, which deals also with the Jewish diaspora's writings. 12 See D. Flusser, "The Kingdom of Rome in the Eyes of the Hasmoneans and as Seen by the Essenes," Zion 48 (1983), 149-176 (Hebrew). 13 See U. Rappaport, "On the Hellenization of the Hasmoneans," Tarbiz 60 (1991) 477-503 (a shorter version in English appears in Jewish Assimilation, Acculturation and Accommodation (ed. M. Mor; Studies in Jewish Civilization 2; Lanham: Creighton University, 1991) 1-13.

USE OF THE BIBLE IN I MACCABEES

179

well to the same end. To sum up, without using evaluative terminology, it seems clear that the gap within Jewish society was broadening and becoming more distinct and defined during the period under discussion.

THE CASE OF THE DAY OF ATONEMENT RITUAL LAWRENCE

H.

SCHlFFMAN

New York Universi9J

That the Temple Scroll is fundamentally a work of biblical exegesis is not as widely recognized as it should be. Ever since its initial publication, most of those who have dealt with the scroll have treated it only as a sort of re-redaction of the parts of the Torah which discuss the subjects of the scroll- Temple, purity, sacrifices and the political order. Yet in actuality, as the detailed comments of Yigael Yadin' and our own work2 have clearly shown, besides being the result of redactional and editorial activity, the scroll emerges from a tradition of biblical interpretation which has a clear prehistory. This is not to minimize the extent to which textual variations in the biblical substratum - the author's Vorlage - have contributed to the creation of the Temple ScrolJ.3 But reliance occasionally on divergent texts cannot explain the nature of this scroll. Indeed, it is certain that throughout, the author / redactor or the authors of the various sources which make up the scroll had recourse to what was already a fixed canonical Torah. 4 It was this "preexistent" Torah which was being interpreted. Only a thorough analysis of the interpretive techniques of the Temple Scroll can lay bare its true character. While such interpretations have been analyzed in many papers presented by us over the years, it is time to begin to place greater emphasis on the specific nature of the interpretations. In order to do so, we shall select the laws pertaining to the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) as a model for our discussion. Yet our purpose is to develop a model which can be applied to many Torah passages. We need not start this project from scratch. Considerable attention has already been given to the role of the Bible in the Temple Y. Yadin, The Temple Scroll, 3 vols. Gerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983). See the listings in G. Garcia Martinez, "Classified Bibliography," in E. Qimron, The Temple Scroll, A Critical Edition with Extensive Reconstructions (BeershevaJerusalem: Ben Gurion University of the Negev and Israel Exploration Society, 1996) 95-121 and F. Garcia Martinez and D.W. Parry, A Bibliography qfthe Finds in the Desert qf]udah, 1970-95 (Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1996) 386-95. 3 See E. Tov, "The 'Temple Scroll' and Old Testament Textual Criticism," Eretz:.-IsraelI6 (1981-82) 100-11 (Hebrew). 4 Contrast H. Stegemann, "The Origins of the Temple Scroll," VTSup 40 (1988) 235-56. I

2

182

LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN

Scroll, especially by Yigael Yadin and Gershon Brin. 5 Further, the work of Dwight Swanson6 has directly addressed the issue of the exegetical system of the scroll. At the outset it will be worthwhile to review his conclusions. Yet we must note that these conclusions remain primarily literary and not exegetical. In Swanson's view, all passages dependent on the Bible are constructed on a base text, which must be Pentateuchal. Secondary texts are then woven in and serve to influence the base text, and these may also come from the Prophets. Supplementary texts are often introduced because of key words or other points of contact, and they function to bring the base text into conformity with the views of the author of the scroll (or its source). The manner in which these secondary texts are employed reveals the interpretations of the author. This process is not true harmonization, 7 because the primary texts do not influence the secondary text, only the other way around. Only the base text is affected and so Swanson correctly denies that this constitutes homogenization. While he sees the non-biblical insertions as most important for understanding the view of the author, he concludes that the use of primary and secondary texts renders the Temple Scroll essentially a commentary on scripture of a type to be compared to rabbinic midrash and the use and exegesis of the Hebrew Bible in the New T(.stament. He describes the "use by the Scroll of scripture to comment on scripture, so that even the commentary comes from the words of scripture, and not the exegete himself. "8 While these observations are essentially correct, they do not really address the question of exegetical methods and assumptions. They rarely penetrate beyond the level of how the conclusions of the exegete are represented in the scroll, and do not go beyond what Yadin had termed "the composition and editing of the scroll."9 The same is the case with our study of the Deuteronomic Paraphrase which deals with the manner in which the scroll uses the Deuteronomic material. 10 But in the study that follows, and in our larger 5 G. Brin, "The Bible as Reflected in the Temple Scroll," Shnaton 4 (1979-80) 182-225. 6 D.D. Swanson, The Temple Scroll and the Bible, The Methodology qf 11 QT (Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1995) 228-32. 7 Contrast]. Milgrom, "The Scriptural Foundations and Deviations in the Laws of Purity of the Temple Scroll," Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls, The New York Universi~ Coriference in Memory qf Yigael Yadin (ed. L.H. Schiffman; Sheffield: ]SOT Press, 1990) 89-96. 8 Swanson, Temple Scroll and the Bible, 235. 9 Yadin, Temple Scroll, 1.71. 10 L.H. Schiffman, "The Deuteronomic Paraphrase of the Temple Scroll," Revo.,15 (1992) 543-68.

THE CASE OF THE DAY OF ATONEMENT RITUAL

183

project on the Temple Scroll, we seek to understand the interpretive process for which, so far, no consistent descriptive terminology or conceptual understanding has been developed. As a test case, we shall take some examples from the laws pertaining to the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) in IIQT 25:10-27:10. We will not be able in the present paper to present even the majority of exegetical issues regarding this ritual, but a few examples will suffice to indicate the need to examine the exegesis of the scroll in this manner.

I. The Law of SelfAifliction (11 QT 25:10-12) The very first law of this section, dealing with the command to "afflict" oneself, already provides us with an example of exegesis. And on the tenth of this month it is a Day of Atonement and you shall afflict yourselves on it. For any person who does not afflict him (or her)self on it on this very day shall be cut off from his (or her) people. 11

The text of the Festival Calendar of the Temple Scroll (11 QT cols. 13-29) is for the most part based on Num. 28-29 in terms of its general structure. Yet here, the scroll begins by following Lev. 23:27. The initial adaptation of the biblical text, i1ItD,I] for biblical iitD,I] and the omission of',I]':::JtDil (as in LXX to Num. 29:7), are literary adaptations, designed to make the transition smooth from the previous material in the scroll. 12 Mter omitting "you shall have a holy convocation" in Lev. 23, the passage follows the key word, the root nJ,I], and switches to dependence on Lev. 16:29, where the Torah has Cl~'ntD~J n~ iJ,I]n. Now the text of the scroll returns to Lev. 23:29, which it utilizes in its entirety. Everything we have seen so far is a literary process in which the various texts of Lev. 23 and 16 have been melded together. Beyond the obvious fact that these texts refer to the same Day of Atonement, there is no exegesis here. It is interesting to note the omission of the prohibition of lab or, but this may be either an error on the part of the author or, more likely, a result of the concern of the text here with the sacrificial elements of the holiday only. But there is one minor variation from MT here which can be considered exegetical, the shift from the biblical ilJ,I]n (pu'a~ to nJ,I]nn (hitpa'e~. The pi'el/jlu'al of this root has, throughout the Bible, the gen11 All translations are mine. For the text, see Yadin, Temple Scroll, 2.111; Qimron, Temple Scroll, 39. 12 Note the omission by the scroll of the definite article from MT O'15l:lii.

184

LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN

eral sense of "to afflict/to be afflicted." No specific information is indicated by these forms as to the nature of the affliction. By Second Temple times, as evident already in the later books of the Bible (Ezra 8:21, Dan. 10:12, cf. Ps. 107:17), the hitpacel of this root has acquired the technical sense of fasting, that is, abstention from eating and drinking. So the author of the Festival Calendar modified the Torah's language to indicate that the correct interpretation of the command to afflict oneself on the Day of Atonement was to abstain from food and drink. Now we are all aware of the many examples oflinguistic updating in this scroll, that is, the substitution of later Hebrew forms or terms for the biblical elements now outdated. But our example, even if it does reflect the development of the Hebrew language, indicates the author's interpretation of the Torah, which he wishes to make clear to his readers. We have argued here that the biblical forms used in connection with the commandments concerning the Day of Atonement led to ambiguity. That this is the case can be seen in the rabbinic debates over the interpretation of these same passages. 13 Like our author, the Rabbis were of course well aware that fasting was a central observance on the Day of Atonement. But the Rabbis were unsure as to whether the other required afflictions - abstention from anointing, bathing and sexual relations - were Torah commandments or rabbinic enactments. The debate hinged on the meaning of the pi'ell pu'al of this root. Those Rabbis who saw this as a general term for affliction included in it these additional prohibitions, whereas those who unknowingly agreed with the Temple Scroll saw only eating and drinking as Torah prohibitions. Accordingly, this example has provided for us a simple form of interpretation, in which the text substitutes one word for another to indicate an interpretation. There are numerous other examples of this approach in the text.

2. The Number of Rams (11o..T 25:15-16) At the end of column 25, the scroll deals with the "sin offering" of the Day of Atonement. And for the sin offering of atonement you shall offer two rams (each) as a burnt offering. One the high priest shall offer on his own behalf and on behalf of his father's house ... H 13 Sifra, ~arei Mot, chap. 7:1-5 (ed. I.H. Weiss; New York: OM Publishing, 1946) 82d-83a; b. Yoma 73b-74b;j. Yoma 8:1 (44c-d). H Yadin, Temple Scroll, 2.114; Qjmron, Temple Scroll, 39.

THE CASE OF THE DAY OF ATONEMENT RITUAL

185

In the lacuna at the top of column 26, the text must have mentioned the second ram, that of the people. 15 Both of these rams are mentioned in Lev. 16:3 and 5 although, curiously, they do not appear in the remainder of the description of the Day of Atonement ritual in Lev. 16. Above, in lines 12-15, the author adapted Num. 29:8-11 which specifies the additional sacrifices for the Day of Atonement, that is, those offered in addition to the "sin offering of atonement." Accordingly, it is clear from our text that the author expected a total of three rams to be offered on the Day of Atonement, the one of the additional sacrifice of Numbers and the two of Lev. 16. But one could also have concluded that the ram of Num. 29 was identical to that of the people in Lev. 16. This particular exegetical problem was debated by the Rabbis (baraita in B. Yoma 70b). Rabbi Judah the Prince, followed by the later halakhic tradition,16 understood the ram of Num. 29 to be the same as the ram of the people in Lev. 16 (v. 5). So in his view, a total of two rams was to be offered. According to Rabbi Eleazar son of Rabbi Shimon, who was actually following the same view as that of Philo l7 and Josephus, 18 the rams were distinct, so that a total of three rams was to be offered. It is clear that our scroll, like the other Second Temple sources, agrees that three rams were to be offered. 19 Looking at this as an exegetical problem, it constitutes a simple question. Num. 29:8 lists the additional offerings of the Day of Atonement: a bull, a ram and seven lambs. In v. II it also mentions the sin offering of the goat required as part of every festival offering. But it says that all the above is to be offered "in addition to (i:1"O) the sin offering of Atonement." Since the scroll is here based on the Numbers passage, the problem was simply to define the meaning of "the sin offering of atonement." Our author defined this sacrifice to include the two rams mentioned in Lev. 16: 3 and 5. Although the section we are discussing here involved considerable rewriting of the biblical text, it originated not in the literary harmonization of divergent sources, but in the interpretive problems posed by the divergent sources. Our author chose to follow the plain meaning of the biblical text and this conclusion was in turn reflected in his literary reworking of the material. 15 16

17 18

19

Yadin, Temple Scroll, 2.115. Maimonides, H. Yom Ha-Kippurim 1:1. Special Laws 1.188. Ant. 3.240. CC Yadin, Temple Scroll, 1.132-34.

186

LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN

3. Slaughter qjthe Goat For the Lord (110.7 26:3-7) Mter a lacuna at the top of column 26 Oines 1-3a), at the end of which E. Qjmron reads ~]~~.[, there appears essentially a quotation of Lev. 16:8 (llQT 26:3-4): "And the [high pr]iest [shall place lots on the two goats,] o[ne] lot [for the Lord and one lot for Azaz'el."20 In this passage the Bible's reference to Aaron has been replaced by mention of the high priest, designated here already as '?1'Jil lil1:lil, the term adapted from Lev. 21: 10 which is usually used in rabbinic literature. What has happened in this text is that what might have been seen as a one-time command referring to the Jewish people in the desert has been understood to apply to all generations, as the Rabbis would describe it. Indeed, this is the direct instruction at the end of the passage in Lev. 16:34. Hence, Aaron has simply been taken as the high priest par excellence. We may compare the priestly ordination ceremony (llQT 15:3-17:4) where the Temple Scroll drew the same conclusion,21 whereas the Rabbinic tradition saw it as a one-time ritual for the desert period. The text then turns to the slaughter of the goat designated for the Lord (1IQT 26:5-7): [Then] they shall slaughter2 2 the goat [on which the lot fJell [for the Lord, and the priest shall receive]23 its blood in the golden basin which is in [his ha]nd, and d]o with [its] bl[ood as he di]d with the blood of his bull. And he shall make atonement with it on behalf of all the people of the congregation. 24

Verses 9 and 15 have been combined here. Verse 9, :l'ipm, has been replaced by 1~nil", based on verse 15 where ~mD appears in the singular. Then the text continues through the remainder of 9a, until it comes to the words, "and he shall offer it as a sin-offering." These words are replaced by commands which are essentially an adaptation of the remainder of v. 15. For the biblical, "and he shall bring its blood within the curtain," the text of the scroll substitutes, "and the priest shall receive .. .in his hand." This is essentially an exegesis of the biblical material. The Bible tells us that the priest has to bring the blood to where it will be sprinkled but does not explain how. Our text specifies that the priest is to Yadin, Temple Scroll, 2.116; Qjmron, Temple Scroll, 40. Cf. L.H. Schiffman, "The MilIuim Ceremony in the Temple Scroll," New ~mran Texts and Studies, Proceedings qf the First Meeting qf the International Organization for ~mran Studies (ed. GJ. Brooke; Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1994) 255-72. 22 Reading with Qjmron. 23 So Qjmron, Yadin restores ii?llii1. 24 Yadin, Temple Scroll, 2.116; Qjmron, Temple Scroll, 40. 20 21

THE CASE OF THE DAY OF ATONEMENT RITUAL

187

collect the blood in a golden basin, and that this basin of blood is then to be brought. In this case, the scroll requires a procedure which is identical to that mentioned in the Mishnah,25 where the same expression occurs, if we are to accept Qj.mron's restoration of the Temple Scroll. The remainder of the scroll passage adapts further the words of verses 15 and 16. Especially interesting is the fact that the shortening of this material led the author to omit the words of the Bible, "and he shall sprinkle it (the blood) on the (ark) cover and before the (ark) cover." This is because the author of our scroll views the meaning of the biblical root "~:J in ritual context as a technical term for the sprinkling of the blood, in accord with usage later found in rabbinic literature; hence, it was enough to use this verb even without specifying the further details of the practice. While the understanding of atonement as sprinkling the blood is essentially a lexical issue, the introduction of the golden basin and its use for gathering the blood is an interpretation which the author must have derived from somewhere else. It is most likely that the author knew this to be the unquestioned procedure in his own day, and that he interpolated this custom into his restatement of the biblical laws. Conclusion We have discussed here several examples of biblical interpretation. Without the recognition of their character as interpretation, they might have been seen merely as the result of the literary efforts of the author of the Festival Calendar source of the Temple Scroll. 26Jn one case, the interpretive problem was simply lexical, and the author substituted an unambiguous up-to-date word for one that was not clear. In another case, the interpretation of a legal term allowed the author to delete material which he saw as repetitive. The problem of duplicate commands in the Pentateuch was resolved by the scroll with a decision that the commands were, in fact, not overlapping. In another case, details known from ritual procedure were interpolated into the text in order to make clear how the ritual was to be followed. Further investigation of the Day of Atonement ritual reveals other forms of interpretation as well, reaching the level of complexity of M. Yoma 5:4 (er. 4:3) which does not, however, mention gold. On this source, see M. O. Wise, A Critical Study qf the Temple Scrollftom Qymran Cave 11 (Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1990) 129-33. 25

26

188

LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN

the detailed midrashic interpretations which we have studied in other parts of the scroll. There is no question that the Temple Scroll is first and foremost a work of biblical interpretation, and we must see the literary activity of the authors of the various sources and of the author/redactor of the complete scroll as aimed at interpreting God's holy scriptures for theJews of the Second Temple period.

ANCIENT JEWISH ASTROLOGY AN AITEMPT TO INTERPRET 4QCRYPTIC (4QI86)* FRANCIS SCHMIDT

Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes Sciences religieuses, Paris

The two great disciplines of astrology - on the one hand, the theory of "opportunities" or lca:taPXat which teaches the opportune moment to undertake an action, and, on the other hand, genethlialogy, I which predicts the destiny of individuals on the basis of their horoscopes - are both represented in Qumran. The former is represented by the document known as Brontologion (4Q318), and the latter, by a text of zodiacal physiognomy (4QI86), to mention only the published texts. 2 I will offer an interpretation of the 4Q186 fragments as they were published by J.M. Allegro in 1968. 3 We are dealing with a document in Hebrew which is entitled 4QCryptic because it is written in cryptic fashion: the text is written not from right to left but from left to right; moreover, letters of the paleo-Hebraic or Greek alphabet are sometimes substituted for square Hebrew letters. Paleographic analysis permits the dating of this document to the older or midHerodian period. 4 Despite its fragmentary state, the repetitive and systematic character of this text of zodiacal physiognomy (a particular portrait cor"I would like to thank Laure Barthel, Devorah Dimant, and Uriel RappaportJor the criticism they qffered after reading an earlier version qf this text, and to express my gratitude to the Institute for Awanced Studies qf the Hebrew Universiry in Jerusalem, where I met with an exceptional welcome and working conditions .from January to Ju!y, 1996. [Note: This paper was translated by Jdfrey M. Green] I On genethlialogy and the theory of opportunities, see A. Bouche-Leclercq, L 'Astrologie grecque (paris: E. Leroux, 1899) 372 ff. and 458 ff. 2 On as yet unpublished astrological texts from Qumran, see E. Tov, "The Unpublished Qumran Texts from Caves 4 and 11," JJS 42 (1992) 101-36; 4Q317, Phases of Moon Crypt (ed. U. Glessmer and S. Pfann; DJD 21; in press); 4Q318 in J.C. Greenfield and M. SokolofT, "An Astrological Text from Qumran (4Q318) and Reflections on Some Zodiacal Names (With Appendices by D. Pingree and A. Yardeni)," RevQ.64 (1995) 507-25); 4Q561, Physiognomic/Horoscope aram. (ed. E. Puech; DJD 31; in press). 3 G J. Brooke has indicated that a revised edition ofJ.M. Allegro is in preparation. 4 J. Strugnell, "Notes en marge du Volume V des 'Discoveries in the Judaean Desert ofJordan,'" RevQ.7 (1970) 274.

190

FRANCIS SCHMIDT

responds to each division of the zodiac) allows the reconstruction of the general organization of the different constituent units: 1. First, the physical description of individuals;5 2. Then the indication of the "column" (,,~.l)) to which it belongs; 3. Then the spiritual description indicating in what proportions the spirit (m.,) of the individual partakes of light and of darkness. The extant passages present a consecutive text that envisages the case of three individual types (A, B, and C respectively). A, the first, consists of six parts oflight and three of darkness (frg. I ii 7-8); B, the second, whose physical traits are particularly coarse, has only one part of light as against eight parts of darkness (frg. 1 iii 5-6); while the third, C, whose qualities approach perfection, benefits, by contrast, from eight parts of light as against only one part of darkness (frg. 2 i 7). These proportions indicate that nine parts of light or darkness are attributed to every individual, and that the proportion varies depending on their horoscopes. 4. Indeed each indication ought to have concluded with an indication of the horoscope, that is to say, an indication of the sign of the zodiac that appeared on the eastern horizon at the moment of the "birth" (a point that will be discussed) of every individual whose physical and spiritual portrait is presented. In the case of A, regarding which we are the best informed, most commentators agree upon the following translation: "Thus is the birth (''''~i1) where he was born (""'): in the foot of Taurus (."tDi1 "J.,~).6 [... ] This is his animal, Taurus (."tD 'n~i1~ m')." In this interpretation, A is thus bom under the sign of Taurus, to be precise, at the moment when the foot of Taurus appears on the eastern horizon. I shall return to the translation of this passage below. 5. Perhaps a fifth category should be added: after the prediction of the physical and spiritual characteristics, that which concerns the exterior events or the social condition of the subject is related. 7 See frg. 1 ii 9: "he will be poor." In any event, this indication is attested only regarding A. 5 Within the framework of this presentation, offered at the Symposium organized by the Orion Center at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (May 12-14, 1996), I did not include the interpretation of the sequences relating to physical descriptions. I shall return elsewhere to the commentary on all of the extant fragments. 6 "In the foot of Taurus" (Carmignac's translation: "dans le pied du Taureau") rather than "on the festival of Taurus" (Allegro's translation). J. Carmignac, "Les Horoscopes de Qumran," RevQ)8 (1965) 199-217. 7 On this type of prediction and the "Fate of the Fortune," see BoucheLeclercq, L'Astroiogie grecque, 436 ff.

ANCIENT JEWISH ASTROLOGY

191

If it is conceded that these fragments of 4QCryptic are the remains of a text of zodiacal physiognomy, of which each unit is composed of the various categories indicated above, then it becomes possible, at least theoretically, to reconstruct some of the missing units, as has been done by Greenfield and Sokoloff for the Brontologion. 8 I shall begin by briefly reviewing the interpretations of these fragments which have been offered. Then I shall try to adduce the theoretical principles underlying this presentation, which permit us to understand its function. Finally, I shall make several proposals for the reconstruction of the missing units

I. The First Readings

if 4QCryptic

1. In two places (frgs. 1 ii 6 and 2 ii 7), it states that the individuals described, A and C respectively, belong to the "second vault" (Allegro) or the "seconde colonne" (Carmignac, Dupont-Sommer) ('JrDii "O.l1ii 10). Carmignac, reproduced with several nuances by Dupont-Sommer9 and Delcor,1O relying upon the relative unity of the portrait of A, posited equivalence between the sign, Taurus, which is the second sign of the zodiac (beginning the year at the vernal equinox, with the sign of Aries), and the "second column," which would thus be another way of indicating the sign Taurus. I would offer two objections to this interpretation. First, it seems dubious to me that a text such as this, which shows great precision in vocabulary, would designate the same astrological phenomenon with two different technical terms. Moreover, it appears very unlikely to me that subject C who, like A, also derives from this "second column" (frg. 2 i 7), would also be placed under the sign of Taurus for,

judging by their physical and spiritual portrait, A and C are quite different from each other. II The difference in their physique suggests that A and C do not share the same zodiacal sign. 2. Frgs. 1 ii 7-8; iii 5-6: Following Allegro,12 most commentators 8 See also M.O. Wise, "Thunder in Gemini: An Aramaic Brontologion (4Q318) from Qumran," in Thunder in Gemini. And Other &says on the History, lAnguage and Literature of Second Temple Palestine aSp Supp. Series 15; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994) 13-50. 9 "Deux documents horoscopiques esseniens decouverts a Qumran, pn':s de la mer Morte," CRAIBL (1966) 242. \0 "Recherches sur un horoscope en langue hebralque provenant de Qumran," RevQ20 (1966) 521-42, esp. 525. 11 Carmignac, Dupont-Sommer and Delcor based their interpretations only on frg. I, at a time when frg. 2 (which again mentions the "second column" in ii 7) was as yet unpublished. 12 J.M. Allegro, "An Astrological Cryptic Document from Qumran," ]SS 9 (1964) 291-94.

192

FRANCIS SCHMIDT

have related the opposition between the "House of Light" (i'~n n':J) and the "House of Darkness" (ltlnnn n':J) [or the "Pit of Darkness" (lrD,nn i':J)] to the dualism of Light versus Darkness, which is one of the characteristics of Essene doctrine. 13 "Such a conception," writes Dupont-Sommer regarding the passages in question from 4QCryptic, "is entirely in keeping with the doctrine of the Two Spirits," of which the Community Rule (CD 3: 13-4:26) gives the canonical formulation. 14 This interpretation, otherwise very suggestive, dates from a stage of research in which the general tendency was systematically to attribute all non-biblical texts discovered at Qumran to the Essene community. Since then the criteria permitting us to identifY texts as properly belonging to the community have been refined. Now specialists distinguish three groups of texts: biblical texts, non-community texts, and the community texts,15 and dualism is precisely one of the criteria retained to establish that classification. 16 Is the opposition between the "House of Light" and the "House of Darkness" here an expression of a dualistic doctrine? If so, is it sufficient to classify 4QCryptic among the community texts? Other scholars, notably those who have had access to still unpublished astrological fragments, are better qualified than I to answer these questions. Be that as it may, it seems necessary to me to begin to account for this op13 Here I retain the text ofCarmignac, "Les Horoscopes de Qumran," 203.J.M. Allegro, "Astrological Cryptic Document," and Qumran Cave 4.1 (4QJ58-4QJ86) (DJD 5; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968) 88-91 and plate 31, proposes a reading: lfD1nil ,1:1 (pit of darkness). Strugnell, 274-75, does not decide between the readings of Carmignac and Allegro, both of which he considers "not very plausible." Nevertheless, for the sense, he gives preference to the text proposed by Carmignac. Indeed, the fact that in the case of B (I iii 5-6) one reads explicidy [lfD1ni1] n':I:I is an argument in favor of the reading "House of Darkness" (lfD1ni1 n':I). 14 Dupont-Sommer, "Deux documents horoscopiques," 244. In the same direction, see Y. Licht, "Legs as Signs of Election," Tarbiz 35 (1965) 18-26 (in Hebrew, with an English summary on ii-iii); Delcor, " Recherches sur un horoscope," 526, and M. Philonenko, "Deux horoscopes qoumraniens: identification des personnages," Revue d'Histoire et de Philosophie religieuses 65 (1985) 61-66, esp. 62. For an early critique of this dualist interpretation, see R. Gordis, "A Document in Code from Qumran - Some ObselVations," JSS II (1966) 37-39, who prefers, correcdy, it seems to me, an explanation that takes account of the astrological character of the document. For Gordis, the "House of Light" and the "House (or Pit) of Darkness" would refer, respectively, to day and night, which would be the dwelling places of the individuals depicted. 15 D. Dimant, "The Qumran Manuscripts: Contents and Significance," in Time to Prepare tJu Wtry in tJu Wilderness. Papers on the Qymran Scrolls by Fellows qf tJu Institute for Advanced Studies qftJu Hebrew Universiry, Jerusalem, 1989-1990 (ed. D. Dimant and L.H. Schiffman; STD] 19; Leiden: EJ. Brill: 1995) 23-36. 16 Dimant, "Contents and Significance," 51, classifies 4QCryptic (4QI86) among the texts without terminology connected to the community.

ANCIENT JEWISH ASTROLOGY

193

position by an explanation of an astrological nature, one that takes note of the internal logic of the text and is coherent with the overall structure of the zodiacal physiognomy employed here. It is known that ancient astrologers elaborated a typology of the zodiacal signs. They classified them notably as human or animal, whole or mutilated, masculine or feminine, diurnal or nocturnal. The Alexandrians, in particular, conceived of various systems that arranged half the signs of the zodiac in the diurnal "party" (atpe(Jt~, or secta) of the sun, and the other half in the nocturnal "party" of the moon. 17 Of these systems, the most popular and the one which appears to be most in conformity with the rhythm of the seasons, classifies the signs from Aries to Virgo (that is, those corresponding to the spring and summer) as diurnal, and those from Libra to Pisces (that is, those corresponding to the autumn and winter) as nocturnal. 18 Arbitrary though it may be, this system did not lack a certain logic: the day began to grow longer during Aries, culminating in the summer solstice during the passage between Gemini and Cancer, then diminishing until the duration of the night and day are equal at the autumnal equinox. Conversely, from the beginning of Libra through Pisces, night predominates, reaching its maximum at the winter solstice during the passage between Sagittarius and Capricorn. 3. However, before verifYing that this is indeed the classification at the basis of the zodiacal physiognomy of Qumran, we must attempt to resolve another enigma of this document for which no explanation has yet been proposed. In analysing the spiritual dispositions of each of the subjects portrayed, the exegetes have brought out the importance of the number nine. The spiritual essence of each one, as Dupont-Sommer comments, "is curiously found to be defined by a precise proportion, expressed mathematically... The spirit of each individual comprises a total of nine parts."19 The commentators have rightly sensed that this was an instance of "astrological mathematics. "20 The difficulty here resides in the fact that whereas twelve 17 Bouche-Leclercq, L'Astrologiegrecque, 155-57. On the definition of the "parties" of the Sun and the Moon, respectively diurnal and nocturnal, see Bouche-Leclercq, L'Astrologie grecque, 103. 18 A system attested notably in the era of Augustus by Manilius, Astronomica, 2.218-20. On the Astronomica of Manilius see W. Gundel and H.G. Gundel, Astrologumena. Die astrologische literatur in tier Antike und ihre Geschichte (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1966) 141 ff., and G.P. Goold, Manilius Astronomica, with an English Translation (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1977). 19 Dupont-Sommer, "Deux documents horoscopiques," 244. 20 I take this expression from Delcor, " Recherches sur un horoscope," 526; Philonenko, "Deux horoscopes qoumraniens," 62, speaks of "arithmological preoccupations. "

194

FRANCIS SCHMIDT

(the twelve signs of the zodiac) and seven (the five planets and the two luminaries) are the preeminent astrological numbers, nine is foreign to this numerology, unless one wishes to entertain scandalous arithmological speculations. To resolve this difficulty, in my opinion one should take two facts into consideration which, in complementary fashion, introduce the number nine into the functioning of this arrangement: on the one hand the subdivision of the signs of the zodiac into de cans and, on the other hand, the determination of horoscopes not by birth but by conception.

The Subdivision

of the Signs of the Zodiac into Decans

According to certain astrologers of the hellenistic period, each sign was divided into three (or thirty) decans, that is, a division of 3 x 12 = 36 (or 360) de cans in the entire zodiacal circle. 21 This division, of Egyptian origin, permitted them to diversify their prognostications. Henceforth every season, between equinox and solstice, corresponded to three signs, or 3 x 3 = 9 decans.

The Determination

of Horoscopes l!J

Conception

The establishment of the horoscope implied knowledge of the moment when the signs and planets placed their seal on the destiny of the subject. But when should that fateful moment be situated? At the moment of birth or at that of conception? Many astrologers were convinced by physicians and maintained that the horoscope should be calculated in relation to the theme of conception and not that of birth. In practice one can only determine the moment of conception a posteriori, calculating backward from the moment of birth. One of the principal difficulties here obviously stems from the extremely variable duration of intra-uterine life. One solution consisted in arbitrarily setting the average duration of a pregnancy at nine months and determining the astrological place of conception by moving backward nine signs, starting from the date of birth. One theory, which the ancients attributed to Zoroaster or to the Egyptian school of Nechepso and Petosiris, permits us to understand how the sun, moving from sign to sign and from decan to decan, contributes to the maturity of the fetus during the entire nine months of gestation. This theory is reported by Censorinus, a RoOn the theory of decans see Bouche-Leclercq, L'Astrologie grecque, 215-40. See Bouche-Leclercq, L'Astrologie grecque, 377-79. On Censorinus, c( Gundel and Gundel, Astrologumena, 293. 21

22

195

ANCIENT JEWISH ASTROLOGY

man grammarian of the first half of the third century.22 At the moment of conception, he explains, the sun is necessarily found in a sign of the zodiac or, more precisely, in one of the decans which divide that sign. The place where the sun is found at conception is called "the place of conception." Then, as the sun passes from one sign to another, and from one decan to another, it "regards" that place of conception under different "aspects": either under an oblique and "powerless" aspect or, on the contrary, under an effective aspect that thus contributes to the development of the foetus. Having reached the ninth sign, that is, the ninth month of pregnancy, "the sun regards the degree of conception in a trigonal aspect," which is one of great effectiveness: the foetus then reaches maturity. Thus, Censorinus concludes, "the eVVEa~TJVOt, that is, children born at nine months, are born in a trigonal aspect."23 In this theory, the action of the sun is thus exercised throughout pregnancy and contributes, one might say, to making the foetus "ripen." But from conception to birth, this action is exerted with more or less intensity, depending on the position of the sun in one or another decan with respect to the place of conception.

Translation

iffigs.

1 ii 8 and 2 i 8

Most commentators have taken the word ,'?'Oi1 (frgs. 1 ii 8 and 2 i 8) as a noun ('~ir:liJ) meaning "birth, the time of birth. "24 In an astrological context, this term would have the technical meaning of "theme of geniture" (cf. Greek: 'YEVEG1 n,.,'ii (4Q504 1-2 vii 4). Here n,.,'ii designates a type of composition specifically for Sabbath, and thus a text of praise, to be distinguished from ii'?~n which is the designation for petitions on the other days of the week. 53 The ambiguity about the formation of the word makes it very difficult to know if this is to be taken as a singular or a plural; is there one song for the Sabbath or a series of perhaps seven?54 In this introductory incipit, there are interlinear traces of letters that are almost certainly to be read as j'tv (as first recognized by Puech;'>5) How do we interpret the addition of j'tv at some stage in the copying of the text?5.,> Perhaps we should think in terms of a conscious modelling on a biblical text; Neh. 12:46 with the combination n,."m ii'?iin j'tv, would be one possible source. Or and I think this is more likely - what we are seeing is a fashioning of new titles on older patterns. That is, although m.,'ii does not appear in the superscriptions of the psalms, once it is used in superscriptions as here, it is combined with j'tv on the model of the double j,mIJ j'tl) so common in the psalm titles. 50 This is especially true in the War Scroll; see 1QM 4: 14 where .,~ n",01 appears on one of the banners; also lQM 15:5 where the words of the 'll10 n"Eln 010)1"001 and cm", 'i:3' "1~ are written in the 1nll liD. 51 E. Qjmron, The Hebrew qf the Dead Sea Scrolls (HSS 29; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986) 91. 52 K.G. Kuhn, Konkordan;:; ;:;u den Qymranlexlen (Gottingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1960) 55. 53 See the discussion by E. Glickler Chazon, "A Liturgical Document from Qumran and Its Implications: The Words of the Luminaries (4QDibHam)," unpublished PhD dissertation, Hebrew University ofJerusalem (1991) 304-05 (Hebrew). 54 E. Glickler Chazon, "On the Special Character of Sabbath Prayer: New Data from Qumran," Journal qfJewish Music and Liturgy 15 (1992-93) 3 and n. 8. 55 E. Puech, "Recensions: Qymran Grotle 4, III (4Q482-4QJ20}," RB 95 (1988) 409. Baillet had noted a problem at this point, and suggested that the scribe wrote C1''', then corrected it to C1':3, but admits that this fails to explain all the traces (DJD 7 = Qumran Grotle 4, Ill, 150). 56 Puech, ibid., seems to be suggesting that these letters were at some stage erased ("des restes effaces de .ryr").

220

ElLEEN M. SCHULLER

Another example of n"'i1 as a type of composition may come in the fragmentary and puzzling text 4Q502 that Baillet had called "Rituel de Marriage." In frg. 24 2, above the standard blessing formulary itz)~ '?~itz)' '?~ l'i:J, there is an interlinear addition, either n"'i1i1 tz)'~ or m"i1 i1tz)'~. This may be a liturgical directive that a man or "her husband" are to recite a specific type of composition,

m"i1.

Finally, there is a most interesting occurrence of m"i1 in a rubrical incipit in the HodayotY The fragmentary text of lQHa 20:7 (Sukenik 12 4, frg. 54 3) can be supplemented by equally fragmentary copies in 4QHa 3 ii 5 (underlined) and 4QHb 9 ii 3 (broken line) to produce the composite text: ;,'?OO1 1'11'1[;' l?!':::l(l]o'?l This needs to be interpreted in light of the pattern that we have seen in other headings in this same work (lQHa 7:21 [frg. 10 11]; 25:34 [frg. 8 10], see discussion above). That is, I propose that the intent of the rubric is not to make a distinction between a multiple number of m"i1 and a single i1'?::ln, or a composition of praise (n"'i1) versus a prayer of petition (i1'?::ln). m"i1 is best taken as a singular, a designation of a type of composition, and the waw as an explicative, introducing i1'?::ln as the more general and comprehensive term (literally "For the maskil, a hodot, that is, a tifillah"). In support of this interpretation, we need to look at the final term in our study. (e) TIe term

,i'!Jn

When i1'?::ln occurs in the headings of the biblical psalms (Ps. 17, 86, 90, 102, 142), it is in relationship to a composition that contains some element of lament, petition, or intercession. It seems, especially at first glance, that something of this same sense is carried over in non-biblical usage. In the collection of non-canonical psalms in 4Q380 / 381, there is the distinction between the three psalms designated i1'?i1n (see p. 215) and the i1'?::ln of Manasseh (4Q38l 338).58 i1'?::ln seems a logical and deliberate choice for a psalm of repentance and a plea for forgiveness on the part of the sinful king. But even this example is not as straightforward as seems at first glance, since there

57 There are other uses of n,."., that are not in tides where it is difficult to distinguish between a more technical usage and the general "thanksgiving," e.g., IQH'

19:7 (11:4), 19:36 (11:33).

58 il?5ln is also reconstructed for 4Q381 31 5 0ii1il' l'?[o ? il'?5ln]) because of the similar content and themes in this composition. See Schuller, Non-Canonical Psalms,

138.

USE OF BIBLICAL TERMS

221

may well be some direct influence in this particular instance from the triple reference to ,n'?5:ln and '?'?5:ln', in the story of Manasseh (2 Chron. 33).59 It has been suggested that n'?5:ln is the consistent designation of prayers of petition for the week days and for the festivals. In the collection of Prayers for the Festivals (lQ34, 4Q507-509), the petition for Yom Kippur is designated Cl"'5:l:l Cl"'? n'?5:ln (1 Q34 bis 2+ 1 6). Unfortunately in the superscriptions for the other feasts, this element of the title has not survived. Baillet reconstructed the same designation for two other feasts: Cl"':l::l[n Cl"'? n'?5:ln] (4Q509 131-2 ii 5) and ],lJ'O'? n'?[5:ln] (4Q509 10 ii + 11 8) which he suggests may be the feast of Sukkot. In the Words of the Luminaries (4Q504-506), in no instance has the introductory term of the incipit for an individual prayer been preserved, but on the model of other collections, Chazon proposes restoring n'?5:ln where something of the opening section of prayers for the first, second and fourth days of the week survives. And while n'?5:ln may certainly be the original reading in all these places, the fact remains that apart from the prayer for Yom Kippur it is a reconstruction - and perhaps the usage was not quite that consistent. Although n'?5:ln clearly is a designation for a prayer of petition/lament, not all the occurrences, - biblical or in the Scrolls - fit so neatly. n'?5:ln can be the term for a divine warrior hymn as in Hab. 3; the verb '?'?5:lnn introduces Hannah's thanksgiving in 1 Sam. 2:1; n'?5:ln and n'?nn can be interchanged as we have seen in the title for Ps. 145 in the MT versus 11 QPsa. As I suggested above, in the Hodayot n'?5:ln may be used more as a synonym with m"n rather than to designate an opposite or radically different type of composition. One final text can be introduced in support of this line of interpretation, from the postscript at the end of Ps. 72:20, ", n,'?5:ln ,'?:l. At least at the final editorial level, ", m'?5:ln included not only psalms of petition and lament but examples of ,'iZ] and "oro in these first two books. This was certainly the understanding of the LXX with its rendering of m'?5:ln as U/J.V01 (the only place where n,'?e:lrl is translated this way). Similarly, later rabbinic interpretation read ,'?:l "all the prayers of David were completed" as ,'?tIl '?:l "all these were the prayers of David," thus including the psalms designated ,'iZ] and "oro within the overall designation m'?5:ln. 60

59 Although admittedly other aspects of the psalm heading are not based specifically upon 1 Chronicles; see Schuller, Non-Canonical Psalms, 155-56. 60 b. PesalPm 11 7a.

222

ElLEEN M. SCHULLER

Concluding Observations In terms of the interest of this Conference in biblical interpretation and re-use in the Scrolls, the following points can be noted: l. This paper has suggested that the Bible, and specifically the Psalter, provided a model for how non-biblical texts are named. This applies both at the level of terminology and on the more formal level of the structuring of headings. Yet it is clear that there is development beyond the biblical usage, particularly with terms like n"'iT and iT'iTn. 2. Only the more general, less technical, terms that appear in the psalm headings are taken up in non-biblical compositions. The rarer, perhaps more abstruse terms (l'~JiD, :In:J) have disappeared; they are not reused randomly to give a sort of "biblical flavour" nor reinterpreted with a new meaning. 3. Compositions that are farthest removed from specific biblical types (the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, hymns invoked against demons) are called by common biblical terms rather than given new and specialized names. 4. Even in compositions that are clearly and closely modelled upon the biblical Psalter (the collection Barkhi Nafshi [4Q434-438] would be an obvious example), it was not considered necessary to imitate the biblical psalm and provide a superscription. Perhaps the "orphan psalms" of the Psalter provided the prototype here. In those cases where there is a mixture of biblical and non-biblical psalms in a single manuscript (e.g., 11 QPs' and 4QPs~, none of the non-biblical psalms was given a designation. 6I 5. There are many examples where due to the fragmentary state of preservation, we have no idea what the text was called or if it originally had a title. Was the hymn formed by imperative summons to praise (",iT) in 4Q409 actually called m"iT or perhaps iT'iTn or even "~iD?62 Was the text attributed to Miriam in the Biblical Paraphrase (4Q365 6a ii +c) designated C1~"O ni~iD, on the model of Moses' n~m iT"~iDiT (Exod. 15:1)? We just don't know. This is only a preliminary survey, and we will always be limited by the fragmentary nature of many of these texts. But I suggest that reflection upon "what is it called?" can be one helpful way of exploring the relationship between biblical and non-biblical prayer and hymnic compositions. Although Ps. 151 in 11 QPs' 28:3 has the title 'fD' 1~ ""., ii"""ii. E. Qjmron, "Times for Praising God: A Fragment of a Scroll from Qumran (4Q409)," JQR 80 (1990) 341-47. 61

62

ON SOMETHING BIBLICAL ABOUT 2 MACCABEES* DANIEL

R.

SCHWARTZ

The Hebrew University qfJerusalem

Any handbook or commentary will tell you that I Maccabees, composed in Hebrew, is written in the tradition of biblical historiography while 2 Maccabees, composed in Greek, is not. It is not even written in Septuagint Greek. Rather, from the points of view of language, style and contents, it is a hellenistic book. We should expect nothing else from a second century BeE book based - as it states at 2:23 - on a work by someone calledJason of Cyrene. The challenge, therefore, in a framework such as this conference, is to show that I Maccabees is somewhat nonbiblical and that 2 Maccabees is somewhat biblical. The former task has often been undertaken. Namely, many have recognized that the characterization of I Maccabees needs to be qualified. For while there is obviously much in it which imitates biblical style, a very major aspect of the book is antithetical to biblical historiography. It may be taken as axiomatic, that the basis of biblical historiography is God's involvement in history. But what do we find in I Maccabees? As often, not much needs be added to the comments of C.L.W. Grimm, whose 1853 commentary is still among the best. Mter noting that 1 Maccabees' language, style and tone are simple and like that of the Hebrew Bible, which is why it is usually classed together with the

books of Samuel and Kings, he goes on to qualify that [o]nly in one not insignificant point [I wonder how far Grimm's tongue was into his cheek when he wrote that - DRS] is it to be distinguished from the old Israelite historiography and compared rather with the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, namely, that in contrast to the old theocratic pragmatism it no longer presents events in light of the supernatural, and no longer has the Deity direct events via miraculous activity and in accordance with a defined plan, forever interfering with natural causation. 1

* This paper was written during the year I spent as aflllow at Hebrew University's Institute qf Advanced Studies, wMking on a Hebrew translation and commentary on 2 Maccabees. A{y thanks to ProjeSSMS Uriel Rappaport and Israel Shat;;man, wlw invited me to their group at the Institute, and to the Institute's staff, for making it suck a pleasant year. My thanks also to Prqf. Ro.ppaport and to Prqf. Tessa Ro.jak,jM their comments on a draft qf this paper. 1 My translation, from C.L.W. Grimm, Das erste Buck der Maccabiier (Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch zu den Apokryphen des Alten Testamentes 3; Leipzig: Hirzel, 1853) xvii-xviii.

224

DANIEL R. SCHWARTZ

Further down the same page, moreover, Grimm distinguishes 1 Maccabees not only from old Israelite historiography but even from that of such later books as Ezra and Nehemiah: Nowhere do we read in 1 Maccabees that God arouses or directs the hearts of the participants in the religious struggles (such as we read in Ezra and Nehemiah; Ezra 8:31, Neh. 2:8, 12,20; 4:9; 7:5); of none of the heroes in the struggle do we hear: "God's spirit moved him," etc.

And one could go on and on about the relative absence of God in 1 Maccabees, especially after ch. 5: a few glances in Hatch and Redpath's concordance will show that there is no more God (8£0