Rethinking Biblical Scholarship: Changing Perspectives 4 (Copenhagen International Seminar) [1 ed.] 9781844657278, 1844657272

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RETHINKING BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP

Copenhagen International Seminar General Editors: Thomas L. Thompson and Ingrid Hjelm, both at the University of Copenhagen Editors: Niels Peter Lemche and Mogens Müller, both at the University of Copenhagen Language Revision Editor: James West Published Argonauts of the Desert: Structural Analysis of the Hebrew Bible Philippe Wajdenbaum The Bible and Hellenism: Greek Influence on Jewish and Early Christian Literature Thomas L. Thompson and Philippe Wajdenbaum Biblical Narrative and Palestine’s History: Changing Perspectives 2 Thomas L. Thompson Biblical Studies and the Failure of History: Changing Perspectives 3 Niels Peter Lemche Changing Perspectives 1: Studies in the History, Literature and Religion of Biblical Israel John Van Seters The Expression ‘Son of Man’ and the Development of Christology: A History of Interpretation Mogens Müller Japheth Ben Ali’s Book of Jeremiah: A Critical Edition and Linguistic Analysis of the Judaeo-Arabic Translation Joshua A. Sabih Origin Myths and Holy Places in the Old Testament: A Study of Aetiological Narratives Łukasz Niesiołowski-Spanò Rethinking Biblical Scholarship: Changing Perspectives 4 Philip R. Davies

Rethinking Biblical Scholarship Changing Perspectives 4

Philip R. Davies

First published in 2014 by Acumen Published 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© Philip R. Davies, 2014 This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notices Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein.

ISBN: 978-1-84465-727-8 (hardcover) British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Contents

Acknowledgements

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Introduction Niels Peter Lemche

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PART I: METHOD 1. Do Old Testament studies need a dictionary?

3

2. Whose history? Whose Israel? Whose Bible? Biblical histories, ancient and modern

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3. What is ‘minimalism’ and why do so many people dislike it?

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4. ‘House of David’ built on sand: the sins of the biblical maximizers

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PART II: HISTORY 5. The origin of biblical Israel

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6. God of Cyrus, God of Israel: some religio-historical reflections on Isaiah 40–55

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7. Scenes from the early history of Judaism

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8. Josiah and the law book

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9. Judaeans in Egypt: Hebrew and Greek stories

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PART III: PROPHECY AND APOCALYPTIC 10. Amos, man and book

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11. ‘Pen of iron, point of diamond’ (Jer 17:1): prophecy as writing

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12. Reading Daniel sociologically

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13. And Enoch was not, for Genesis took him

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Contents

14. Divination, ‘apocalyptic’ and sectarianism in early Judaism

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PART IV: CANON 15. What is a bible?

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16. The Jewish scriptural canon in cultural perspective

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Bibliography Index of ancient sources Index of authors

231 247 251

Acknowledgements

The works in this volume appeared originally in the following journals and books and are republished here by the kind permission of the respective publishers and editors. Chapter 1: “Do Old Testament Studies Need a Dictionary?” In The Bible in Three Dimensions (JSOT Sup, 87), David J. A. Clines, Stanley E. Porter & Stephen E. Fowl (eds), 321–35 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990). Chapter 2: “Whose History? Whose Israel? Whose Bible? Biblical Histories, Ancient and Modern”. In Can a History of Israel Be Written? (JSOT Sup, 245), L. L. Grabbe (ed.), 104–22 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997). Chapter 3: “What is ‘Minimalism’, and Why Do So Many People Dislike It?” In Historie og konstruktion. Festskrift til Niels Peter Lemche I anledning af 60 års fødselsdagen den 6. September 2005, Mogens Müller & Thomas L. Thompson (eds), 76–86 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums Forlag, 2005). Chapter 4: ‘“House of David’ Built on Sand: The Sins of the Biblical Maximizers”. Biblical Archaeology Review 20 (1994): 54–5. Chapter 5: “The Origin of Biblical Israel”. In Essays on Ancient Israel in its Near Eastern Context. A Tribute to Nadav Na’aman, Y. Amit, E. Ben Zvi, I. Finkelstein & O. Lipschits (eds), 141–8 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006). Chapter 6: “God of Cyrus, God of Israel: Some Religio-Historical Reflections on Isaiah 40–55”. In Words Remembered, Texts Renewed. Essays in Honour of John F. A. Sawyer (JSOT Sup, 195), Graham Harvey, Wilfred Watson & Jon Davies (eds), 207–25 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995). Chapter 7: “Scenes from the Early History of Judaism”. In The Triumph of Elohim (Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology), D. V. Edelman (ed.), 145–82 (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1995). Chapter 8: “Josiah and the Law Book”. In Good Kings and Bad Kings (Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 393), Lester L. Grabbe (ed.), 65–77 (London: T&T Clark, 2005). Chapter 9: “Judaeans in Egypt: Hebrew and Greek Stories”. In Did Moses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period (JSOT Sup, 317), L. L. Grabbe (ed.), 108–28 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001).

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Chapter 10: “Amos, Man and Book”. In Israel’s Prophets and Israel’s Past: Essays on the Relationship of Prophetic Texts and Israelite History in Honor of John H. Hayes (LHBOTS 446), Brad E. Kelle and Megan Bishop Moore (eds), 113–31 (London: T&T Clark, 2006). Chapter 11: “‘Pen of Iron, Point of Diamond’ (Jer 17:1): Prophecy as Writing”. In Writings and Speech in Israelite and Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy, M. Floyd & E. Ben Zvi (eds), 65–81 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 2000). Chapter 12: “Reading Daniel Sociologically”. In The Book of Daniel in the Light of New Findings (BETL 106), A. S. van der Woude (ed.), 345–61 (Leuven: Peeters, 1993). Chapter 13: “And Enoch Was Not, for Genesis Took Him”. In Biblical Traditions in Transmission: Essays in Honour of Michael A. Knibb, C. Hempel & J. M. Lieu (eds), 97–107 (Leiden: Brill, 2006). Chapter 14: “Divination, ‘Apocalyptic’ and Sectarianism in Early Judaism”. In Berührungspunkte: Studien zur Sozial- und Religionsgeschichte Israels und seiner Unwelt, Ingo Kottsieper, Rüdiger Schmitt & Jakob Wöhrle (eds), 409–23 (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2008). Chapter 15: “What is a Bible?”. In Whose Bible is it Anyway? (JSOT Sup, 204), P. R. Davies, 56–80 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995). Chapter 16: “The Jewish Scriptural Canon in Cultural Perspective”. In The Canon Debate, L. Martin McDonald & J. A. Sanders (eds), 36–52 (Peabody, MA: Hendricksen, 2002).

Introduction Niels Peter Lemche

When Philip R. Davies published his In Search of ‘Ancient Israel’,1 now more than twenty years ago, it was immediately adopted by the students at the Theological Faculty in Copenhagen as their preferred textbook. Its refreshing style and provocative questions to established scholarship were understood to be in line with the teaching they received in the field of Old Testament studies and the issues presented by this little book made their study meaningful. Philip Davies’s claim that the psalms of the Old Testament should be seen as texts from the Academy of Psalm writing in Jerusalem in the Persian period is amusing, while also pointing to an important issue in biblical studies: where, when and for what purpose the literature in the Old Testament was written. Another, perhaps even more important, part of the book dealt with the various ‘Israels’ found in biblical scholarship: • Historical Israel, that is, the Israel that once existed in central Palestine. • Biblical Israel, that is, the Israel that appears in the pages of the Old Testament. • Ancient Israel, that is, the fictive Israel created by mixing biblical Israel with the ideas of modern scholars about biblical Israel, applying a system of rationalistic paraphrases of the biblical texts about biblical Israel. The logical distinction between these three views of Israel may be one of the most important contributions to changing perspectives, which, in a comprehensive way, created a new discussion within biblical scholarship on almost every subject which had appeared to be settled in earlier scholarship. Philip Davies’s logical distinction between such cognitive levels is unavoidable, though not many biblical scholars have really understood the implications of the necessary separation between fact and fiction. His insistence on different kinds of ‘Israel’ is perhaps the clearest expression of what has guided Davies’s work for many years, and the clarity thereby brought to the discussion constitutes the leitmotif of contributions to this volume. The young Philip Davies began his discussion with traditional Old Testament scholarship in Qumran studies, a field then dominated by decisions which had

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been made by the first generation of Qumran scholars, who also had reserved the publication of texts for their own rather limited circle. This did not prevent Philip Davies from publishing extensively within this field, including a series of books and several articles. This interest in the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls also included Second Temple studies generally, and led to a special concern for the new dating of central parts of the Hebrew Bible, such as the Pentateuch. Davies here is among the staunchest supporters of dating this literature to the Persian period, a conservative position in comparison with some of his comrades in arms, such as Thomas L. Thompson and this writer. Philip Davies has published about two hundred articles, and more than one collection of his essays has already appeared – Whose Bible is it Anyway?2 – centring on the status of biblical studies within the Church, Synagogue and the academy. More recently On the Origins of Judaism3 includes a series of essays on early Judaism. Several studies are devoted to the question of canon, or rather the process that led to the canonization of scripture. Most notable is Scribes and Schools from 1998,4 in which Davies places the canonization of books found in the Old Testament within a context not only of the ancient Near East but also the classical world. In recent years he has become engaged, among other things, with the theme of cultural memory, and has produced a number of related titles, including The Origins of Biblical Israel5 and Memories of Ancient Israel,6 in which a number of Davies’s favourite themes are taken up, including the identity of biblical Israel. While these books include many valuable observations, they also suggest that Davies has yet to find his standing on the question of how cultural memory relates to history. The present volume takes up several of these themes, opening with a series of chapters on method. Characteristically, he opens his discussion in the very first chapter dealing with questions about language: “Do Old Testament Studies Need a Dictionary?” This essay is centred on two kinds of languages: the scholarly language used in academia, where the normal rules of discourse among scholars pertain; and what he calls ‘Bibspeak’, a word he coins to denote the language of pretenders, having a background and standing as scholars within religious congregations. Because language is creative, ‘Bibspeak’ insulates those who use it from the academy and locates them rather within their religious context. It is a major theme of Davies’s scholarship to separate religiously grounded discussions from scholarly ones. ‘Bibspeak’ represents a distortion of academic pursuit and turns scholarship towards religious goals. Davies does not intend to deny religious people their right to speak in their own language in their conversations with colleagues similarly persuaded, but it becomes a problem when ‘Bibspeak’ is considered an academic language, for it is far from the discourse of critical scholarship. Chapter 2 addresses the same theme. “Whose History? Whose Israel? Whose Bible? Biblical Histories, Ancient and Modern” addresses the question of how to write a history of ancient Israel, as well as the role of the Bible in writing such a history. Once again, separating different issues matters, as does clarifying terminology. Here Davies deals with three separate phenomena: history, historiography and metahistory. It is clear that history exists, that is, something

Introduction

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happened in the past, so history belongs to the past, though literarily it is a dead end. Historiography is writing about the past. It can be ancient or modern, but historiography is a narrative which explains the past to its contemporary generation. As such, historiography is more about the present than about the past. Some writers would add ‘and about the future’ as well. The third kind of history included here, ‘metahistory’, is a study of historiography and its relationship to history. Metahistory has as its object the study of history rather than history itself, and particularly the invention of history as an aspect of historiography. ‘Minimalism’ is a term disliked by Philip Davies. “What is ‘Minimalism’ and Why Do So Many People Dislike It?” is, in this light, a highly ironic title. It is the result of a conversation between Davies and other ‘minimalists’, considering their project as a ‘return to reason’. This overview of the discussion between ‘minimalists’ and self-acclaimed ‘maximalists’ demonstrates a rhetoric from the maximalist side, which has often been an embarrassment not only to ‘minimalists’ but also to many who do not wish to be identified with any such groupings. As expressed by a Canadian reader of a discussion between William G. Dever, P. Kyle McCarter, Thomas L. Thompson and Niels Peter Lemche, which was published by Hershell Shanks in the Biblical Archaeological Review: all behaved nicely, apart from one (Dever), who behaved like a street fighter. Davies mentions four reasons for ‘minimalism’ becoming a target of hatred among some conventional (conservative) scholarship. It opposes fundamentalism and conservative positions; it reacts strongly against biblical archaeology as spadework, and it sides with academic studies in general and academic methods of historical studies in particular. Finally, ‘minimalism’ should be understood as a continuation of a respected line of critical biblical studies. In short, it is a return to reason. Davies’s final chapter in Part I, “Method”, takes up a specific subject: the Tel Dan stele and its alleged mention of David, otherwise never attested outside of the Old Testament, in any context of the Iron Age. As Davies pointedly notes, David is not mentioned in this inscription. What is written is bytdwd, which most scholars translate as ‘House of David’, signifying the ‘kingdom of Judah’. However, the inscription uses word separators except in this singular case, suggesting that the expression is not to be read as ‘House of David’ but, rather, as a singular word: bytdwd, eventually ‘Beytdowd’. Davies here aligns himself with scholars such as Ernst Axel Knauf, Thomas Römer and Albert de Pury, none of whom are ‘minimalist’ in any respect, but scholars who respect a separation between academic studies and Church-related exposures of Old Testament themes. The reason why ‘minimalism’ is hated is well illustrated in this chapter. The Tel Dan inscription has been appropriated to the ‘Holy Writ’ of modern Zionism and any critique of the ‘official’ interpretation of the word bytdwd is presented as an attack on – in Dever’s words – ‘western civilization’. The chapters in Part II, “History”, might easily be understood as especially ‘minimalist’ contributions – or, indeed, deconstructions – of ancient Israelite and Judaean history. These six studies, however, show that the difference between a ‘minimalist’ and a more traditional, historical-critical scholar is

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hardly a fundamental one. It is only a matter of degree. The same basic ideas of scholarship are shared. The themes vary considerably and demonstrate Davies’s command of the field. Included are studies on “The Origin of Biblical Israel”, Cyrus of Persia (“God of Cyrus, God of Israel”), Judaism(s) (“Scenes from the Early History of Judaism”), the so-called “Deuteronomistic Reform” (Davies does not use this term in “Josiah and the Law Book”), and the Exodus (“Judaeans in Egypt: Hebrew and Greek Stories”). None of these studies are exclusively about history. Rather, Davies’s interest lies in the history of the formation of the traditions about the emergence of the biblical concept of Israel, in the Persian influence on the formation of the image of God in Judaism, in the traditions of Josiah’s reform and, not least, in the Exodus traditions. This last chapter provides an overview of stories about the Exodus in the Old Testament, Manetho and Hecataeus, representing a way of arguing, which is hardly foreign to a critical history of traditions. If anything, the view of long-established tradition history is broadened by these essays, but not changed. Rather, conflicting versions of the Exodus exist and their internal relationship is not always obvious to the scholar studying the variables of the Exodus story. Davies’s discussion of the reform of Josiah should also be considered within tradition history. It is not so much about the historicity of an event, although Davies hardly shares the opinio communis. The chapter is, rather, primarily devoted to the dating of 2 Kings’ story of Josiah. The result of such reflection is that Davies does not consider the story as rooted in the late seventh century BCE. He rather finds the content of this story best related to the Exilic or Persian period. Perhaps the most important study in this part is that about the emergence of Judaism from a mixture of Judaisms, or indeed, Juda-isms, sketching a development from a phenomenon that had yet to mature into Rabbinic Judaism. The study includes yet another discussion of Hecataeus as a source for Hellenistic Judaism, but also a review of the debate about Ezra and Nehemiah, especially about recent trends in scholarship, which question the reliability of the stories about these heroes of Judaism. Prophecy has been the part of Old Testament studies most resistant to change. Davies includes five studies related to prophecy and Apocalyptic in Part III: on Amos (“Amos, Man and Book”), prophecy as literature (“‘Pen of Iron, Point of Diamond’: Jer 17:1”), prophecy as writing (“Reading Daniel Sociologically”), the Enoch tradition (“And Enoch Was Not, for Genesis Took Him”) and, finally, a general study on “Divination, ‘Apocalyptic’ and Sectarianism in Early Judaism”. In his study of a traditional prophetic figure like Amos, Davies follows the same method as in the chapters, dealing with his studies on history. He is at odds with much traditional research, which searches for the man behind the book, in this case the Book of Amos. He notices the little, but odd, departure from studies in the composition of the book by authors (students) who created this book out of different sayings by the prophet to an interest in the prophet himself as the author of his book. He sharply notes that prophets did not write books, but mostly formulated short, poignant prophecies. Books rather reflect the situation in which they came into being. Following this line of argumentation, the Book of Amos cannot be understood as representing a situation in the eighth century

Introduction

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BCE – the assertion of the book itself – but a situation of a rather later date, when the sanctuary of Bethel had come within the Judaean sphere of interest. This case study on the Book of Amos is followed by a more general discussion on Prophecy as a literary phenomenon. This repeats many of the points in the chapter on Amos, but puts them into perspective. Prophecy in the Old Testament is a literary phenomenon. Without mentioning the ‘minimalist’/‘maximalist’ alternatives, Davies bypasses this confrontation by mentioning that his view of the literary process that led to prophetic literature is basically the one shared by Hermann Gunkel. His change of perspective was not a revolution, but a continuation of critical biblical studies. His Enoch article is about Enoch, of course, but as Davies stresses at the beginning of the chapter, it is a study in Pentateuchal criticism, centring on the narrative in Genesis 6:1-4. The point of comparison is the variant in 1 Enoch 6-11, where we find a more developed story. For Davies it is clear that Genesis 6:1-4 can only be considered a fragment of a tradition, widely known at the time, when the note Genesis 6:1-4 was incorporated in its present literary context in the Primeval Story. The brevity and character of the Enoch tradition in Genesis approximates an Anti-Enochite revision of the Enoch tradition in early Judaism. As such, the Enoch traditions represent an alternative which makes sense when Genesis 1–11 is not viewed as the privileged story about the origins of humankind in early Judaism. In this way, Davies’s chapter on Enoch joins his other discussions about the origins of Judaism(s) already presented. The final chapter in Part IV offers a general discussion of Apocalyptic and sectarianism in early Judaism, based on Rainer Albertz’s effort to distinguish prophecy from apocalyptic when viewed as two parallel phenomena;, however, here the emphasis is on apocalyptic. Accordingly, Davies does not point out a specific root for apocalyptic but rather speaks of its place within a Near Eastern tradition of divination, dating to a ‘very early time’. Part V, “Canon”, comprises two studies: “What is a Bible?” and “The Jewish Scriptural Canon in Cultural Perspective”. Insisting on terminological clarification, Davies sees the relationship between the two terms ‘bible’ and ‘canon’ as central. A bible – ‘book’ – is not automatically a canon. On the other hand, a canon without a bible is odd. A bible is a book, that is, a compilation of pages which can be bound into a book. Prior to the book, we have individual scrolls. With the introduction of the book, scrolls gradually disappeared. However, and this should not be forgotten, there is no single Bible, but many, as the various branches of Christianity have never agreed on the contents of their bibles. Davies remarks pointedly that to speak of a bible as the Bible is removing it from an empirical status to an ideal one. Davies does not say it directly, but calling a bible the Bible changes its status from a book to a fetish. Another point concerns the confusion of terms when students and scholars identify the canon with the bible. Empirically, they are two different things, and a canon does not need a bible. The funny thing is that the Hebrew canon is older than the Christian one, but the Christian Bible is older than the Jewish one that first appeared sometime in the early Middle Ages, as represented by the Codex Aleppo and the Codex Leningradiensis. The end of the game is that canonical

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criticism does not represent the empirical fact of the existence of many bibles; there is no universal canonical criticism based on a universally acknowledged Bible, but certainly it is possible to study the various editions of the bibles individually. A note concluding this chapter deals with biblical theology. In the light of what has already been said it is hardly surprising that the concept is a surprise to Philip Davies. The final chapter summarizes what has already been said, but demands that studies on the formation of the Jewish canon are cultural phenomena and should be seen in context with similar processes elsewhere. It is also a natural process that is found in most societies and not necessarily limited to a phenomenon put down in writing. Following this line of argument, the chapter presents a history of writing from an agrarian society through its various stages towards a scribal society. It does not really insist that scribal literature is the result of an oral tradition. Rather, scribal literature originates among scribes who are not so much educated to write literature as having a background in ‘archives and libraries’. A variant to this line of scribal activity is ‘non-scribal writing’, exemplified in books like Ruth, Canticles, Jonah and Esther. Both the chapter and the book end with discussions about the fixing of the list of writings considered canonical and the authority of the canon. Together, the sixteen chapters of this book show – apart from the obvious – that the author indeed knows his way around the Old Testament, and has provided us with most interesting glimpses of his scholarship: how a ‘minimalist’ has worked within his paradigm of changing perspectives. ‘Minimalists’, including Philip Davies, have often been accused of being postmodern, as if this were a problem in itself. The shift away from the historic referent behind (or the referent assumed to lay behind) a certain textual tradition may have affinities to a shift in the main outlook from history to texts with a purported historic content that relate to a general shift of interest from the artefact and the people who produced that artefact to the people who are interpreting the artefact and producing theories about its time and context. Generally, the methodology reflects classic critical scholarship. The perspective and goal is clear: to liberate biblical studies from constraints formed by religious ties of various sorts. Why is this change of perspective on the hate-lists of so many scholars who belong to the religious establishment? Philip Davies has discussed this subject extensively in this book as well as in several other articles and books. It has to do with an innate interest among religious institutions in mind control. Changing perspectives, as evidenced in this book, is about setting humanity free to make its own decisions. It includes a demand to return to reason, not in any banal way, but according to the meaning that formed the European Enlightenment. Seen in this light, scholars described as destroyers of Western civilization – these ‘minimalists’ – are those who are truly continuing the Western tradition of reason over against a religious establishment, which has never been ready to accept the freedom of the mind. ‘Minimalism’ is a European phenomenon that goes hand in hand with the general separation between a sacral and a secular sphere of life. It is definitely not limited to religious matters, but shows up in almost every aspect of present-day European civilization.

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Notes 1. In Search of ‘Ancient Israel’: A Study in Biblical Origins (JSOT Sup, 149) (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992). 2. Whose Bible Is It Anyway? (JSOT Sup, 204) (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995). 3. On the Origins of Judaism (London: Equinox, 2011). 4. Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures (Library of Ancient Israel) (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998). 5. The Origins of Biblical Israel (LHB/OTS 485) (London: T&T Clark, 2007). 6. Memories of Ancient Israel: An Introduction to Biblical History – Ancient and Modern (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008).

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1 Do Old Testament studies need a dictionary?

I had better start with an apology for any misunderstanding there may be about the topic. I am not going to talk about the Classical Hebrew Dictionary, nor even about primary languages like Hebrew or English. My topic is a metalanguage, the language of biblical scholarship. In fact, what I am ultimately investigating is the nature of biblical scholarship – and in this context, Old Testament scholarship. What does biblical scholarship have in common with other kinds of scholarship, on the one hand, and what does it have with other biblically related pursuits which are not scholarship, on the other hand? Even to approach this topic on a broad front is well beyond a short paper such as this one, and so I have chosen to focus on the language of biblical scholarship as one particularly important and useful aspect. Examining the language not only involves concrete data, but also responds to the philosophical view that analysis of language is the only way to analyse thought. According to this philosophy, language is seen not as reflecting the real world, but as constituting the world, or, better, constituting worlds. This view of language has dominated most recent work on parable, of course, and is therefore no stranger to biblical scholarship itself. In the light of such an understanding of language, or metalanguage, or discourse (for the terms are often used interchangeably), it is reasonable to ask what kind of world is constituted by the language of biblical scholarship, and what is the relationship of this world to other worlds created by other forms of discourse, such as nonacademic biblical study or non-biblical scholarship. One basic way of describing relationships between languages is through a dictionary, in which words and phrases in one language are given their correspondences in another. In the second part of this essay I shall offer some sample entries for such a dictionary. But first, I offer some comments about the language of biblical scholarship. As I have said, I am confining my remarks to Old Testament scholarship, and indeed, I do not prejudge the issue of whether Old Testament and New Testament scholarship exhibit the same dialect.

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Academic Bibspeak I begin with an obvious point about the genesis of the language of biblical scholarship, which I shall call Academic Bibspeak. It has a mixed character, in which at least three main components can be identified. First, biblical terms and concepts – ‘prophets’, ‘wisdom’, ‘sin’, ‘salvation’, ‘righteousness’, ‘covenant’, ‘holiness’, ‘God’. Second, terms drawn from the discourse of Christian doctrine and ecclesiology – the ‘theology’ of books, persons and authors in the Old Testament (and of the Old Testament itself!), prophets ‘preaching’ or ‘exercising a ministry’, ‘piety’ (in the Psalms, for example), ‘worship’ in the Temple. Most obvious among these elements is the term ‘Old Testament’ itself. Third, Academic Bibspeak also uses terms and concepts from other critical disciplines – text criticism, structuralism, historical criticism, social-science modelling. Now each of these sets of terms belongs to a language or type of language – biblical, Christian, critical – which has its own distinct way of construing the world – or, if you like, constitutes its own distinct world. And when Academic Bibspeak takes over these terms it inevitably imports some elements of these worlds into its own world. For example, in using the word ‘prophet’ scholars are adopting a biblical classification of a function or type of person. But scholars who deal with such social functions recognize the total inadequacy of such a term for social description. ‘Prophets’ can be ‘true’ or ‘false’, and essentially the only qualification a prophet has for being so regarded is that the Old Testament calls a person one. To argue in other terms what a prophet is involves first and foremost abandoning the term ‘prophet’ and replacing it by, for example, ‘intermediary’. The terms ‘tribe’, ‘covenant’, and ‘Gentile’ also carry special biblical resonances. The ‘tribes’ of Israel are not tribes in any non-biblical, i.e. anthropological, sense. Parallels drawn to the biblical covenant are not with Hittite ‘covenants’ but with Hittite treaties. ‘Gentile’ accepts a distinction which makes no sense in any world which is not Judaeo-centric. Likewise with Christian terminology; ‘messiah’, ‘the Fall narrative’, ‘salvation’ are terms impossible to subtract from the world-view of Christian doctrine; they inevitably import the categories and values of that religion. The use of the term ‘God’ with a capital letter implies a belief in one god and, I think most would agree, implies the god of Christianity. Must biblical scholarship be monotheist, even deist? Finally, the use of critical terminology implies an acceptance of a world-view which rejects supernatural explanation and privileged access to knowledge, and which affirms natural cause and effect, the autonomy of texts, the value of sociological modelling, and so on. Functionally, it can also be said to be non-theist: divine activity does not play a role in critical language. The problem arising from the adoption of the terminology and conceptuality of three other languages into Academic Bibspeak is simply this: have they been assimilated into a language which exhibits its own (reasonably) coherent worldview, or have they resulted in a language which has no clear world-view of its own, but drifts in and out of three different world-views? And if the latter (as I believe is the case), is such drifting deliberate or unconscious? If deliberate,

Do Old Testament studies need a dictionary?

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the difficulty lies with the practitioner; if unconscious, the language itself is the disease.

The socio-religious factor One way to approach the questions just raised is by considering Old Testament study from a sociological point of view (in however elementary a fashion). I don’t know whether there is any other language with the same sort of composition as Academic Bibspeak. It may be claimed that other academic discourse is equally mixed. Whether this is true or not (and I doubt that it really is), the question of the status of the language we use is a matter for our own concern. What we need is a clear understanding among ourselves of what kind of worldview we as biblical scholars express, or wish to express through our language. Such a consensus has not come into being, however, and indeed the problem of language itself has scarcely been raised, let alone debated. One reason for this, I propose, lies in the social status of biblical studies, where one can see a relationship of biblical study to other academic subjects and to non-academic biblical studies which parallels the linguistic relationship and may very well reinforce it. The socio-religious aspect of the problem itself has two dimensions. First, academic study of the Bible – or at least what is claimed to be academic study – is taught in both universities and seminaries (or theological colleges, in British parlance), and these two types of institution are not themselves necessarily devoted to the same description of reality, at least insofar as that reality is the object of academic study. The two types of institution would not in the last analysis want to pursue academic study for the same ends and would not want the same kind of language in which to express that study. The second dimension is that even in the university sector biblical scholarship is pursued, and the subject taught, largely by persons who are Christian, and most of these ordained. The Old Testament is studied mostly by, and taught mostly by, people who in admittedly varying ways and to varying extents, accept biblical values for themselves. Neither of these sets of circumstances is to be deplored in itself. Religious denominations are entitled to train their ministrants and the holding of religious beliefs does not in itself render any person unfit for scholarship. But these considerations do not efface the problem, though they often provide a convenient pretext for complacency. If one were to ask why a practising orthodox Muslim might not be employed to teach Islam in a British university one might very well be told that his religious beliefs would inform his academic work and that he would be promoting his religion rather than analysing it critically. Are Christians exempt from this, especially when they are ordained? The problem is that Muslims do not have an equivalent of Academic Bibspeak in which the elements of Islamic doctrine can be blended in with critical terminology so as to disguise the fact that the critical work is conducted in Islamic categories, with Adam and Jesus as prophets, the Quran as word of God and the five pillars of Islam adopted into the vocabulary of the analysis of Islam. If it is true (as it seems to me at least) that Old Testament scholarship has hitherto been essentially male, white, Western and Christian, then the feminist, black and Third World challenges to the traditions of our craft – and especially its language – do

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not go far enough, at least insofar as these operate within the boundaries of Christianity. Academic Bibspeak in the university system in Britain and in many other countries belongs where Old Testament scholarship is found, namely in faculties or departments of divinity or theology. That means, of course, Christian theology, since when any other theology becomes included in the curriculum the terms ‘religious studies’ or ‘comparative religion’ are used. The ethos in which academic Old Testament study takes place is religious if not confessional. This is a unique situation for an academic discipline, and it is buttressed by external as well as internal prejudices. Many if not most of our fellow academics in other disciplines, and nearly all of our students, take it for granted that theology/biblical studies is rather different from other subjects in the way it is pursued. Colleagues are benignly suspicious of academic Bible study: a Sheffield University pro-vice chancellor (the equivalent of an American college vice-president) once asked, on a visit to my department, whether it was possible to do research in biblical studies. On another occasion, the British Secretary of State for Education stated publicly that a university lecturer in theology who ‘lost his faith’ should not expect to be entitled to insist on his tenure. Prospective students, too, usually tell me that they want to do Biblical Studies to strengthen or inform their religious (Christian) faith with more knowledge. This is a reasonable aim in life, but what is odd is that they assume that a British university is a normal place to expect to do this. And why not? In many Western countries everybody assumes that. Germany is the other extreme: the German system does not yet pretend that theology in the university is not at the service of the Church. Hence it appears that the ambiguities of Academic Bibspeak persist at least partly because they are needed in order to allow colleagues in seminaries and in universities to speak the same language (even when the two institutions know perfectly well that they exist to serve different ends); they permit students to pursue a religious quest in the belief that they are being academic at the same time; and they also permit what is a religiously based discipline, theology, to justify itself as a critical discipline. The ambiguities of the language of biblical scholarship are, then, sustained by the ambiguity of biblical scholarship in the academic community, as a branch of a peculiar discipline called ‘theology’ which – unlike other disciplines – has for its content not a body of data but an unverifiable theory, and which can mix descriptive and prescriptive language without too much difficulty. Now, I do not overlook the immense benefits biblical scholarship enjoys by virtue of this privileged status. Without the external prejudices, particularly of our students, most of us who teach the subject would be out of a job. The number of people who want to study the Old Testament out of sheer intellectual curiosity is very small. It is an enormous pity, but there we are. It seems that the Bible is interesting as ‘word of God’ but otherwise rather boring. In Britain at least, it is necessary to explain on nearly every occasion, even to the most intelligent lay person, that one can be a biblical scholar without professing any religious commitment. It would not however seem to be in our interests to

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change the socio-religious circumstances; the price to pay, nevertheless, may be that we shall never be practising in a truly critical environment. The only other obvious alternative is to persuade people that the Bible is something which is intellectually rewarding in its own right, a proper object for academic curiosity, and that its treasures are open for the general public to marvel at. As far as I can see, novels, television, radio and the cinema occasionally treat the Bible in this way (as well as the opposite at other times!); why don’t biblical scholars? The answer: a large number of us don’t really believe in the (non-Christian) religious value of the Bible anyway.

What is a critical language? I am not going to give a full definition of a critical language. That is itself a major task. However, I shall assume that all academic biblical scholars wish to think of themselves as being critical. I shall just put forward one essential requirement. It seems to me a basic principle that a critical language cannot adopt the terminology and conceptuality of its subject matter. If one is using biblical terms to analyse the Bible itself one cannot possibly avoid a biblical solipsism. Interpreting scripture by scripture is good rabbinic doctrine and good Reformation doctrine, but very bad academic criticism. The starting point, it seems to me, of all biblical criticism is a criticism of its language: in other words, a determination to impose a non-biblical language upon the subject matter and not to take over the terms that the subject matter gives. As I said earlier, it is impossible to take over the terms without also taking over something of the concepts. And to the extent that one builds biblical concepts into one’s academic discourse, one will to that extent end up with a Bible criticized according to biblical canons. I observe that this technique widely passes for scholarship, and I ponder whether it is more dangerous than out-and-out fundamentalism because its closedness is concealed, even from the practitioner, who thinks (s)he is describing when in reality (s)he is only paraphrasing. This basic requirement (not a definition!) of criticism, that one should use coherent categories of analysis, language and conceptuality which are not those of the subject matter itself, seems to me to drive a very sharp wedge between both the critical and the confessional contexts in which biblical scholarship operates, one which makes me personally very sceptical about the extent to which compromise between the two is possible. Critical Bible study must start somewhere other than the Bible; it must have not a biblically prompted agenda, but its own agenda of inquiry. It must end up with its own answers to its own questions, and not with a sort of targum, with biblical categories transferred into a modern idiom. There is a possible objection to this requirement, which is an objection indeed often heard from conservative scholars who dabble in hermeneutics, that wherever one starts from will be as subjective as if one starts from the Bible itself, and that objective criticism is a myth. That is both true and obvious. Nevertheless it both misses the point and gives the argument away. For the point is not about subjectivity versus objectivity. It is about

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circularity. To use a simple metaphor, it is about whether the subject matter is a hard currency or a soft one, whether it can be exchanged or not into another currency. If a currency cannot, it has no value. Studying Marxist thought in Marxist categories is equally uncritical, and the end result will always be the same: inbreeding generates freaks. Critical judgments are arrived at by describing one system in terms of a second and independent system. Hence, feminist criticism of the Old Testament and indeed, biblical criticism of feminism, both fulfil this basic requirement. This does not mean that the result of either or both is critical. That judgment involves further criteria. On the other hand, to analyse the Bible in terms of Christian doctrine does not seem to me entirely to fulfil the requirement insofar as the one system is derived in large part from the other. However, because they are by no means identical, an impression of critical operation can be given. Biblical scholars will readily, and rightly, claim that Christian doctrine very often distorts biblical language in much the way that films notoriously distort novels (‘you’ve read the book, now believe the doctrine!’). By way of clarification of the issue I offer two illustrations. The first is a recent review by Walter Brueggemann of some Jeremiah commentaries, which appeared in the journal Interpretation. Having criticized the work of Holladay, Brueggemann turned his attention to Robert Carroll and William McKane.1 Carroll is accused of a ‘defiant pugilism’, of a ‘negative, abrasive relation to the literature’, which regards the Deuteronomistic redactor of Jeremiah as uncritical, unthinking and intolerant. McKane is reproached for his refusal to follow the ‘claim’ that the book of Jeremiah is the ‘word of the Lord’ since McKane declares that ‘all language is human language’. Carroll is seen as resisting the values of much of the text, while McKane is seen as being wilfully indifferent to them. Brueggemann protests that the interpreter cannot ‘dismiss the claim of the text, but must see what the claim means’. (The claim is, I understand, that the book of Jeremiah is the ‘word of God’ – though whether the book itself really makes that claim I doubt: the opening reads ‘words of Jeremiah’.) Now, my impression is that both scholars have taken the claims of the text seriously enough, but with different results: McKane has concluded that any claim to divine origin cannot mean anything to a critical interpreter, or mean anything in critical language. Carroll, on the other hand, has examined the claims of the text and decided he doesn’t like them. For Brueggemann neither of these strategies is good enough: for him not only is attending to them an indispensable task of responsible interpretation, but attending to them means affirming them. The values of the text are there, it seems, in order to be co-opted. Brueggemann’s justification for this is that the interpreter ought to ‘be reflective of a double loyalty to the scholarly community and the community of faith’. This claim, which Brueggemann articulates and practises with much more passion and much more subtlety than the very many interpreters who would agree with him, at least confirms that he shares my view of the socio-religious status of biblical scholarship. I also concede that the language of biblical scholarship permits Brueggemann this dual nationality, for it does not oblige the user to declare him or herself in allegiance as a scholar to one rather than the

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other. I am suspicious of the notion of scholarship which regards itself equally at the service of academia and ecclesia. How far is it compatible to ‘attend to’ (i.e. affirm, uphold) the ‘claim of the text’ and conduct a critical analysis of the text? Ultimately, if not immediately, there will be conflict. How will it be resolved? Brueggemann gives an answer: loyalty to the ‘community of faith’ will prevail, because Brueggemann will not allow the interpreter the freedom to be indifferent to or even to reject the ‘claims’ of the literature being studied. ‘Attend to’ is a worthy entry in the vocabulary of Academic Bibspeak because it disguises what it really means, and prompts one to ask whether freedom to agree or disagree is a value of Brueggemann’s ‘community of faith’. I doubt, nevertheless, that Brueggemann would assent to the implications I have drawn from his words. If so, the fault lies with his language rather than his principles, and it is language rather than principles – far less individual scholars – that I am criticizing. Quite possibly Brueggemann is a victim of Academic Bibspeak. Let us therefore concentrate on the kind of interpretation he advocates. Is it not critical? An enormous number of people find it thus, as well as stimulating, well-written and scholarly. Nevertheless, I suggest the following definition of the kind of writing Brueggemann appears to endorse: A type of literature, oral or written, which has its starting point in a fixed canonical text, considered the revealed word of God by the author and his audience … an activity which finds its locus in the religious life of the community …

This sentence is very slightly adapted from Gary Porton’s definition of midrash.2 Midrash is a non-critical exercise addressed to a religious community in which its scriptures are interpreted in such a way as to make their meaning relevant to that community. What is criticism, then? Criticism is an exercise which assigns a priori no privilege to the values of the text over the values being used to analyse it. I could add that by using for criticism criteria which can easily apply to other literature also, and by using canons of historiography which can be applied to non-biblical history, criticism aims not only to understand the Bible by reference to the world, but the world by reference to the Bible, a task beyond the range of midrash. By way of a second illustration I offer an extract from a much-used academic text book: [On Zephaniah:] He denounced the sins both cultic and ethical that Manasseh’s policy had allowed to flourish as a prideful rebellion against Yahweh which had invited his wrath (e.g. chs. 1:4-6, 8f., 12; 3:1-4, 11). Announcing that the awful Day of Yahweh was imminent (e.g. ch. l:2f., 7, 14-18), he declared that the nation had no hope save in repentance (ch. 2:1-3), for which Yahweh had offered one last chance (ch. 3:6f.). [On Jeremiah:] Savagely attacking the idolatry with which the land was filled, he declared it an inexcusable sin against the grace of Yahweh who had brought Israel from Egypt and made her his people (ch. 2:5-13) … While pleading with

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Rethinking biblical scholarship Judah, he also hoped for the restoration of Israel to the family of Yahweh (chs. 3:12-14; 31:2-6,15-22). Into this ferment of resurgent nationalism, and yet of anxiety, the Deuteronomistic law fell like the thunderclap of conscience … 3

To render this into a reasonably objective and critical comment upon the biblical texts (which furnish the sole basis for the report, as the references convey) would require considerable recasting. At the very least, one would reserve judgment on the reliability of the poetry in the books of Zephaniah and Jeremiah as objective social analysis, one would not presume to make the reader’s own value-judgments for him or her, and one would refrain from speculation designed to enhance the biblical appeal. Such a recasting might run something like this: The book of Zephaniah criticizes what it sees as cultic and ethical practices which may have been encouraged in the reign of Manasseh. They are presented as amounting to rebellion against the deity Yahweh and inviting his anger. An imminent ‘day of Yahweh’ is threatened, which can be averted only by ‘repenting’ of these practices, for which Yahweh had given one further opportunity. The book of Jeremiah strongly attacks the worship of deities other than Yahweh, claiming that it amounts to a ‘sin’ against the ‘grace’ of Yahweh who, as his worshippers believed, had once brought the nation out of Egypt and adopted it. Jeremiah is represented as pleading with the nation and looking forward to its return to the cult of Yahweh. It was at this time, when apparently the royal policy aimed to assert independence of the Assyrian monarch, that, according the book of Kings, a law-book (possibly a version of the book of Deuteronomy) came to be found in the Jerusalem temple, providing, it seems, a convenient pretext for a change in the organization of the national cult.

Sample entries in a dictionary The final part of this essay consists of some excerpts from a book provisionally entitled A Critical Dictionary of the Old Testament. The aim of the entries is to represent extremely conservative scholarship (unlike the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament) – that is, to be content with describing, as objectively as language can be, what we appear to know with good reason, and to disregard any radical speculation or unwarranted inference from the literature. Terminology used by the Bible itself is as far as possible either avoided or carefully glossed, and the same is true of terminology hallowed by Christian and Jewish tradition. In the past some of this language has had the effect of making the Bible too familiar (‘congregation’, ‘angel’, ‘redeem’), while at other times unnecessarily mystified (‘ark’, ‘psalm’, ‘covenant’). Terms implying value judgments are obviously rejected, like ‘false prophet’ and ‘idolatry’.

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A collection (strictly collections) of writings composed in Palestine in the Persian and Hellenistic periods, subsequently adopted by two religions, Judaism and Christianity, as all or part of their canon of scripture. Both traditions find in this literature a body of belief which legitimates their respective religion, with attendant implications for critical scholarship. Also called Hebrew Bible, though the two corpora are not identical in arrangement, and the original languages of the literature included Aramaic. The canon itself dates from about the first or second century CE. Like most other religious literature known to us, it contains myths, ethical teaching, poetry (including erotic poetry) and various kinds of narrative, including historiographical and quasi-historiographical. The contents reflect as a whole the ideals (admittedly quite varied) of the scribal classes of the elite of the city of Jerusalem in the Persian province of Yehud, drawing – to an extent which remains disputed – on sources from the earlier (Iron II) kingdoms of Judah and Israel. No straightforward correspondence between this literature and the ancient societies of these kingdoms, or of Yehud, ought to be drawn without corroborative support from archaeology, since several such inferences have in the past turned out on the evidence of archaeology to be erroneous (see PATRIARCHS, CONQUEST, DAVIDIC EMPIRE, YAHWISM). THEOLOGY Any kind of ideology concerned with the existence and activity of deities. When in narrative form may also be known as MYTHOLOGY. ISRAEL (a) A probably fictitious entity supposedly composed of the elements of two nation-states formed in Palestine during the Iron II period under the kings David and Solomon. It is probable that these two royal figures are based on historical characters, but extra-biblical confirmation is still awaited. Israel is said to have been made up of twelve or perhaps thirteen ‘tribes’ and have originated outside Palestine – contrary to the best archaeological evidence available. (b) The name given to a kingdom centred in the Ephraimite hill-country of Palestine between the end of the tenth and the end of the eighth centuries BCE, possibly deriving its name from a group mentioned in the MERNEPTAH STELE. CANAANITES In the Hebrew Bible, counterpart to the fictitious twelve-tribe ‘Israel’ (see ISRAEL (a)), supposedly the indigenous people of Palestine ‘driven out’ by this Israel and used negatively to define ‘Israel’ as a distinct ethnic and religious group. Outside this ideological framework, the term can only mean ‘inhabitants of Palestine’, strictly speaking including what the Hebrew Bible calls ‘Israel’. COVENANT The term is used in modern English only of biblical treaties and taxfree donations. Applies in particular to a theoretical analysis of the structure of Judaean religion in which the deity and the people were connected through the sort of political treaty well-known over a long period in the ancient Near East. This theory, prominent in the book of Deuteronomy, became so fashionable that other covenants were proposed by the compilers of the Hebrew Bible, many of which are simply promises by the deity without any conditions (e.g. to Noah, Abraham, David, Phinehas). The covenant theory of religion has remained an important element in Judaism and Christianity (see COVENANT, NEW). OLD TESTAMENT

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Amalgamation of deities. The Old Testament offers a number of names for the deity or deities it presents – Yahweh, Yahweh Sebaoth, El, Elohim, El Elyon; others have been suspected to underlie personal or place names, like Shelem or Sedeq. Also other deities’ characteristics, but without their names, can be transferred to a deity with another name – e.g. as with Ba’al. Hence the Old Testament shows widespread evidence of syncretism, to the point where it ends up with only one deity, addressed by title or epithet rather than name (Lord, King of Kings, Highest, Ancient of Days, Elohim). The reason for this development is hardly debated by scholars, perhaps because of a latent belief among them that it came about by some form of divine revelation. One possible explanation is the establishment of the Persian province of Yehud as a small temple-society around a single city (Jerusalem) in the sixth century BCE; since the usual ration of public deities in the ancient Near East was one god per city, one god for the province of Yehud may have evolved naturally, though not without a great deal of influence from Iranian religious ideas (see SATAN, ANGELS, UNIVERSALISM, DUALISM, ESCHATOLOGY, LAW [DIVINE]). MONOTHEISM Belief in existence of one deity only. Often claimed to be a doctrine in the Old Testament and widely assumed by scholars to be preferable to a cult of many deities, for reasons unconnected with critical scholarship. See also SYNCRETISM. PROPHET Widely used of any person called nābî’ in the Hebrew Bible; also of the eponyms of the books in the LATTER PROPHETS or of any other authors of parts of this section – i.e. Deutero-Isaiah, Trito-Isaiah, Deutero-Zechariah. Prophetic individuals may be historical or fictional, a pseudonym or a collective, and it is often impossible to tell for certain which of these options obtains any one case (e.g. Isaiah, Ezekiel, Malachi). It is possible that some of these persons (where historical) functioned as one or other kind of intermediary in ancient Judaean or Israelite society, but the heavy editorial activity apparent in the literature precludes any serious investigation of this possibility (see PROPHECY). SYNCRETISM

Notes 1. W. Brueggemann, “Jeremiah: Intense Criticism/Thin Interpretation”, Interpretation 42 (1988): 268–80; W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah (Hermeneia) (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1986); R. P. Carroll, Jeremiah (Old Testament Library) (London: SCM Press, 1986); W. McKane, Jeremiah (International Critical Commentary) (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986). 2. G. Porton, “Defining Midrash”, in The Study of Ancient Judaism, J. Neusner (ed.) (New York: Ktav, 1981), 62. 3. J. Bright, A History of Israel (London: SCM Press, 1980), 299.

2 Whose history? Whose Israel? Whose Bible? Biblical histories, ancient and modern

Addressing the questions The thematic questions of this volume are (1) whether a history of ancient Israel can be written and (2) how the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible can be used in such a history. My immediate answers are as follows. (1) Histories of ancient Israel certainly can be written, and the multitude of such enterprises testifies to that. But ‘a history’ (of anything) both means someone’s history, and indeed a history of something. ‘Ancient Israel’ is not an agreed historical datum. For some it is more or less the society described within the biblical books. For others it is an as yet little known and relatively short-lived highland kingdom of the Iron Age. Most historians operate, sometimes even critically, between these two poles. But precisely what ‘ancient Israel’ is, or was, is currently at the core of discussing about modern historiography. Histories of an ancient Israel, then, are possible; the history of the ancient Israel is not. (2) Regardless of who one is or what is one’s Israel, for a modern critical history, the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible can be used in reconstructing history in two ways, primary and secondary. In the primary respect, the writings in this collection are part of the intellectual history of an ancient society that identified itself (among other things) as, or as part of, ‘Israel’, and the first task of the historian is to discover (or provide) the historical context of these writings, on the principle that the historical testimony of any work will be relevant in the first instance to the time in which it was written. Unfortunately, the literature in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament very largely does not identify its authors, nor the time, place or occasion of their production. For that reason, determination of the historical setting of any biblical text is difficult. The task is, moreover, made even more difficult because the historical framework into which they need to be fitted cannot be derived from the texts themselves, because that would already imply their use in a secondary respect (see below). Put simply: texts can’t verify their own historical value.

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In the secondary respect, what these writings may say about historical events might be used to build a picture of the periods that they claim to be describing. A basic assessment of the validity of any text will be provided by the results of the primary exercise, when date, setting, genre and authorship have been decided (in most cases, of course, provisionally). But even then, a reasonable amount of independent data is needed to gauge how far these stories provide a reliable account. The nature and extent of such data is in many cases so restricted that this exercise will be fairly piecemeal – though it has tended to be remarkably more successful in disposing of the historical reliability of some texts than in enhancing it. Some items narrated in the biblical literature accord with episodes narrated in other ancient literature, or implied by non-literary data. But such cases are actually rather rare, too rare to justify an appropriation of biblical narrative as a basis for critical historical reconstruction. Moreover, even cases where independent testimony is available, discrepancies in detail or evaluation remind us of the tendency of all literary sources to tell us what the author wanted to have happened rather than what we want to know. I would therefore have to conclude that the use of biblical historiographical narrative for critical reconstruction of periods that it describes (rather than periods in which it was written) is precarious and only possible where there is adequate independent data. If we have no positive grounds for thinking that a biblical account is historically useful, we cannot really adopt it as history. True, the result will be that we have less history than we might. But what little we have we can at least claim we know (in whatever sense we ‘know’ the distant past); this, in my opinion, is better than having more history than we might, much of which we do not know at all, but constitutes merely unverifiable stories. Herodotus knew the difference.

History and Bible Contrary to the principle just set out, many modern ‘histories of ancient Israel’ deal largely with the secondary use of biblical narrative, basing their accounts on what the narratives say happened rather than on the evidence of such narratives for the ideas of their own time. They take as the basis of their history a set of writings whose own historical context and authorship are unclear and unexamined. Moreover, the ‘Israel’ that explicitly or implicitly promotes the agenda of the scholarly ‘history of Israel’ is actually a creation of authors of texts in the Hebrew Bible, and not something generated from research into contemporary historical archives or artifacts, whose date and provenance is known. Without external data it is technically impossible to write a critical history of ancient Israel. The picture of Israelite history famously developed by Julius Wellhausen was based on a source-critical analysis superimposed on a history derived from the biblical material. It was a brilliant exercise in using the contradictions of the narratives to reverse their own account and to put the development of law later than prophecy. The principle that sources tell us about the time they were written was explicitly embraced. But how could documents be

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dated in the first place? To do this, Wellhausen needed to accept the reliability of some narratives. Why were 1 Samuel and Ezra historically reliable but not Genesis? Why were the prophetic books taken as evidence of the monarchic period? Because Wellhausen’s source-critical analysis was not applied in the same way to other ‘historical’ books, the results of his reconstruction of Israelite religion were methodologically insecure. Put simply, Wellhausen separated out the Pentateuchal documents and assigned them to various points in a history narrated by other books. The success of demonstrating the historical unreliability of one part of the literature depended on assuming the historical reliability of the rest! The one exception were the books of Chronicles.1 Now, to be entirely fair to Wellhausen, he worked before the advent of Near Eastern archaeology. He deserves such criticism a good deal less than his successors who, having at their disposal a range (however limited) of non-biblical data relating to the periods and areas which the biblical narratives claim to describe, still choose to slot these data in the biblical schema instead of using them to construct an independent one. Such data do point to the existence of a kingdom called ‘Israel’,2 and we can be reasonably confident in our limited knowledge of this kingdom from these sources, because the dating and locus of the sources is known (or largely agreed on), and the sources emanate from various directions; in the case of non-literary sources, additionally, there is no possibility of deliberate deception (forgery excluded!). Only texts, as a rule, can consciously lie. But do these various sources refer to what the biblical narratives call ‘Israel’? Not exactly. The sources offer the beginnings of an opportunity to interrogate these biblical narratives for their basic schematization and categorization, but the challenge has until recently been declined by modern ‘biblical historians’ who prefer the much easier (and more popular) recourse of taking the biblical parameters as the grid on which all the data, biblical and non-biblical, are laid out. For the biblical literature, it is of course a home game, from which an honourable draw is the worst that these narratives usually manage. To challenge the primacy of biblical narratives in setting the agenda for ‘ancient Israel’s history’ is not anti-biblical, despite some of the rhetoric currently in flow, but a methodological procedure. Any modern critical history of ancient Israel has to start, then, by evaluating the biblical profile by testing it with non-biblical sources. We cannot take the biblical story as a ‘first draft’. To assign to non-biblical data the role of ‘elucidating’, ‘confirming’ (or equally, of ‘denying’) the biblical narrative (or ‘biblical record’3) will mean that the many remaining gaps in our knowledge are occupied by biblical data. More importantly, because less often debated, major biblical categories like ‘pre-exilic’, ‘United Monarchy’, ‘Canaanites’ and ‘Israelite’ remain in place, though historically unclear, inaccurate or inappropriate.4 If the fate of the non-biblical data is to be made to fit into the remnants of a framework that they themselves have not sponsored, then they are not being properly utilized. Their capacity to generate different frameworks, categories and interpretations is hamstrung. It may be impossible to construct an Israel in detail equal to biblical dimensions on the basis of the few data – though archaeologists such as Dever are keen to do so5 – but that is what the method demands.6

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What has emerged from the current unscientific7 process of modifying the biblical story through sporadic, eclectic use of non-biblical data is a range of conclusions, from a maximal evaluation of the historicity of the biblical sources to a minimal one. The range is possible because the synthesis of a fairly comprehensive literary pattern in the Bible and a set of suggestive but partial non-biblical data permit a wide range of choices. The individual historian is permitted by this procedure to pick and choose the evidence, interpret it, and exegete the relevant biblical texts, all in such a way that a greater or lesser measure of congruence or dissonance between bible and non-bible is arrived at. In all this, the real point of dispute becomes not method (there is no method in this process) history but the question of how one treats the bible. As Whitelam has pointed out, biblical history has largely been a subdiscipline of theology and not of history. The accusations of ‘minimizing’ that greet this programme are at first sight puzzling, until it strikes one that what is being minimized is not history (despite the naive [or disingenuous?] claims of Halpern8) but the Bible! What is ostensibly an argument about history turns out to be an argument about sacred scriptures.9 Only this conclusion explains why the label ‘minimalist’ has emerged in what should be a complex discussion of what is in reality a spectrum of views. Such ridiculous terminology only betrays the extent to which the writing of histories of ancient Israel is still driven by an agenda concerned with the reliability of the biblical sources – an issue in which an historian has to be impartial. The related label ‘sceptic’ reveals even more clearly a religious dimension to this debate. It is only in religious language that to believe is good and to doubt bad; for a historian, to doubt is good and to believe is bad! The label ‘sceptic’ honours a historian – unless a biblical one, where faith in biblical narratives is expected! In fact, to abandon a biblical profile and create one instead from other sources is not only possible, but has been done on quite a large scale already. Some decades ago, the ‘patriarchal age’ and the ‘conquest’ were regular ingredients of ‘histories of Israel’, and that either might be totally unhistorical was inconceivable. The arrival of Thompson’s Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives10 was met with some resistance, even though the ground had been prepared by Gunkel, Alt and Noth. The same was true of Gottwald’s Tribes of Yahweh:11 the thesis that the Israelites did not come from outside Palestine was initially curious, and indeed, unacceptable12 because it so totally contravened a basic tenet of the biblical definition of Israel. Attempts to salvage ‘two legs, or a piece of an ear’ remain on the margins of the debate. ‘Biblical historicity’ is not a principle. It should not even be a bone of contention among historians. It is simply a possibility that needs to be tested. And to a considerable degree that testing has been done, with widely agreed results. We cannot write a critical history in which a ‘patriarchal age’ and an Israelite ‘conquest of Canaan’ figure. We have had, in such cases, to create a new framework from non-biblical evidence. It is not unreasonable to extend the analysis to biblical texts about the monarchic period. It is not unreasonable to argue that these narratives are pretty reliable. But it is not reasonable to protest at the challenge or to call names at those whose challenge is entirely justified.

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It is unfortunate that while biblical studies has recently embraced and applied literary, anthropological and sociological theory, there are too few biblical historians who care about the principles, methods and techniques of history. The whole discipline of ‘biblical history’ is concerned with the outcomes of history writing rather than with the questions of what historical knowledge is and how we arrive at it. For while history is not a natural science, it does constitutes a form of social knowledge, always provisional and never final, which we attain by the application of explicit methods and arguments that guarantee and authorize that knowledge. More discussion about historical method and less about the historicity of individual persons and events is badly needed.

Ownership of history Ancient ownership The question of ‘whose history’ or ‘history of what’ can be asked of both ancient and modern historians of Israel. The former were clearly for the most part members of one or more intellectual elites. Their individual and class interests, psychological, political, economic, are for the modern historian to discover. Their narrative(s) in Samuel–Kings contain(s) a thread consisting of names of kings and their deeds, partial, sometimes confused, but partly verified and perhaps further verifiable – though it needs to be acknowledged that the chronologies of the kings (biblical versions differ) are the result not of careful contemporary recording but subsequent scribal editing in the interests of a wider historical schema.13 This thread, then, is possibly the relic of contemporary annals. But it has been hugely embellished with accounts of fabulous empires, a fabulously wise and wealthy monarch who had a magnificent temple built in Jerusalem; of prophetic miracles and confrontations, and of cult reforms. The plot of the books of Kings (the same is true of Chronicles) is dictated by clear ideological considerations to which the name ‘Deuteronom(ist)ic’ is given. Such ‘Deuteronomic’ ideas are that ‘Israel’ is a single twelve-tribe nation latterly divided into two kingdoms, that it settled throughout the whole of Palestine and that ‘Israelite’ and ‘Canaanite’ are distinct ethnic and cultural entities, that a Davidic line is the only legitimate one (and that all the Judaean kings belonged to it). The exploits of Joshua, the institution of the ‘judgeship’, the ‘empire’ of David and Solomon and the conflict between prophet (a Deuteronomistic invention) and king are by-products of this ideology. This is a history of an Israel; surely not a history that Judaean peasants might have told, or a merchant from Jaffa, or a priest of a local sanctuary, or foreign mercenary, or a pragmatic royal political adviser, or any number of religious intermediaries. This history is one of innumerable possibilities, but the one that came down to us. The idea that we can filter its point of view, its ideology, throw away the ‘story’ and keep the ‘facts’ is risible. There is no objective history of Israel any more than there is an objective ‘ancient Israel’. Modern historians need to write their own story (or stories), and define their own ancient Israel. The story written by an ancient elite (or elites) cannot pre-empt our own attempt

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to reconstruct our own story of the past, neither because it just happened to be the best preserved, nor because it is scripture.

Modern ownership Nor, of course, will moderns all agree on what story they wish to tell. Whose history, or what history, are we moderns telling? This question has two meanings: who are the people, or what is the territory, that we are writing a history of? And who are ‘we’? The problems inherent in the use of the name ‘Israel’ are widely understood. Is ‘Israel’ essentially an ethnic designation, a cultural one or a geographical one? Each of these alternatives (which are not entirely exclusive of each other) implies a different kind of history: a national history, a regional history, or an intellectual/cultural history.14 In each case, fundamental difficulties have to be overcome: what is the territory we can call ‘Israel’ in antiquity (and is the term appropriate for more than a few centuries of human history?); what sort of identity, if any, was implied by the self-designation ‘Israelite’ in ancient times? Where and when does ‘Israelite culture’ begin and end, and how does one characterize and identify it? This last question is surely the fundamental question for a modern historian of ancient Israel: what exactly do we now mean by ‘Israel’? For many historians, a history of ancient Israel is simultaneously of a people and of a land between the Mediterranean (mostly confined, however, to the upland areas) and the Jordan (and perhaps a little beyond) between the hills of the Carmel range and the Upper Galilee and the Sinai peninsula. But neither the area west of the Jordan nor its population constituted any more of a real entity in the past than they do now. An ‘Israel’ covering the whole of Palestine is a myth, if by ‘Israel’ we mean a single people, society or state. Within the area defined just now flourished briefly a mountain kingdom known (among other things) as Israel. In the surrounding territory lived Philistines, Phoenicians, Arameans, Hittites – people differentiated by ethnic and cultural identities as well as political allegiances. Under what name can any history link their fortunes? Most modern ‘histories of Israel’ do cover a geographical area consisting of Palestine, treating both it and its inhabitants as ‘Israel’. This is actually a kind of colonialism, and the term is apposite, because our European historiographical tradition belongs with colonialism, and because the issue of the ownership of history is most acute in areas once colonized and now trying to reassert an independent history.15 The history of the Bible’s use is also a colonial one (intruders always win over the indigenous people) and it has subsequently served colonialism, both Christian and Jewish, internal and external, very well. The modern historian of ‘ancient Israel’ lives, however, in a post-colonial world, and should realize perfectly well the contemporary implications of retrospectively colonizing the whole area west of the Jordan with ‘Israelites’. For ‘history’, as every historian should know, is not about the past but about the present.16 Histories have frequently had identity-forming functions and as such aim to promote ideological and political conflict. The island lying to the west of Britain may be called ‘Ireland’, ‘the island of Ireland’; its northern region may be known as ‘Northern Ireland’ or ‘Ulster’ or the ‘Six Counties’. Each term

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implies a different history, and the choice of use will often betray one’s political allegiance to a ‘loyalist’ or ‘republican’ (or ‘Protestant’ or ‘Catholic’) cause. Whether or not ‘Ireland’ is a unity is an issue for which a large number of people have been murdered and, as I write, are still being murdered. Whether ‘Israel’ is ‘Palestine’ is only one of a number of such cases. Thus, there is an Israeli history of Israel/Palestine. But there can be a Palestinian one, too. How can they accept the Zionist history without condoning their own lack of political rights? No-one has a right to deny them a story. The recovery of marginal histories, for example by feminists and by third world historians, and the recognition of those marginal histories by academic institutions and by governments further illustrates the politics of history and confronts every would-be ‘biblical historian’ or ‘historian of ancient Israel’ with a challenge to be aware of whose history he or she will be writing. We need multiple histories, because there can be no neutral history. Whoever says there can, will probably claim to be able to tell it, and ought to be ignored. Writing a ‘history of Israel’, then, may be interpreted as a theological statement, and will inevitably constitute a political one. The resulting story will also be only one of many possible ones. And yet, cannot one history be better than another? Should we merely accommodate an ever-growing plurality in a celebration of postmodern entropy? Or can any historian of this particular piece of the earth’s surface we are concerned with lay claim to a ‘better’ history than another? Can academic historians do anything except add to the pile of histories? That is the question driving the remainder of this essay. For I do not believe that the role of the historian is merely to tell stories over again, however much these stories accommodate ever more data and ever more sophisticated levels of theoretical explanation. To explain what I think modern historians of ancient Israel should do I need to propose a revision and clarification of terminology.

History, historiography and metahistory Many problems in scholarship begin at the level of terminology (as I have shown above). Abandoning, then, whatever use I may have adopted previously in this essay (for the benefit of simplicity or convenience), I now propose some basic distinctions and definitions. First, I think it is necessary to distinguish ‘history’ and ‘historiography’: the former to refer to ‘the past’ and the latter to refer to a narrative which claims to relate that past. The following quotation illustrates the distinction rather well: ‘To suggest that many things in the Bible are not historical is not too serious. But to lose biblical history altogether is to lose our tradition.’17 With these words, Frank Cross employs two different senses: ‘not historical’ means ‘not belonging to history’ in the sense I am defining ‘history’, that is, not part of the past. ‘Biblical history’, on the other hand, means the biblical story.18 Cross implies that the biblical story loses its value if too much of it turns out to be unhistorical. Here he illuminates, in fact, an important aspect of modern biblical history writing. Biblical scholarship wants to hold onto its received story (because that is the theological value

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it has acquired) but also wants its received story to be validated as a critically reconstructed history. What Cross (and others) dream of is a history that has critically secured data but the old biblical framework. In other words, a ‘history’ (story) that is history (real past). This wish explains, I think, why ‘history’ remains particularly ambiguous in some areas of biblical scholarship. There is, however, yet a third meaning of ‘history’: the name of a discipline taught in schools and universities. It is this usage that makes possible a confusion in the meaning of the term ‘historian’. For we can, and do, refer both to Thucydides and Livy or to Braudel and Collingwood – and many of our fellow academics – as ‘historians’. But while modern historians may write stories about the past, they very often do other things that do not result in stories and do not pretend to be narratives. Historians also deal with the philosophy of writing about the past, about method, about very circumscribed pieces of data or moments of time. They argue about interpretation and the evaluation of data. In doing so they would claim, I think, neither to be writing a story of the past, however brief, nor discovering the past as something objective, beyond the limits of the methods of the human sciences. In such activities, Thucydides might be their subject at times, but he would not be their colleague. We thus have three senses in which we use the word ‘history’ and at least two possible areas of confusion, as ‘history’ and ‘historian’ enjoy different meanings. A preliminary task in fulfilling the agenda set for the contributions in this volume is to point to the potential muddle and mischief and suggest some precise terminology. I turn now to the three terms under discussion.

History Of the three possible meanings of ‘history’ just outlined (the past, a story about the past, a discipline), I propose that we think of retaining the first and using different terms for the other two. The only reason for this is that there are alternative names for the others which still retain the verbal element ‘history’ in them. I am not suggesting that my preferred usage is the ‘right’ one, or the only one; I merely propose to use the word in one sense only, and that this sense might be the most appropriate, at least for the purposes of the kind of discussion we are engaged in. A particular advantage of using ‘history’ to mean ‘the past’ is that this sense is both the most basic (logically) and the most problematic. Any definition of ‘history’ invokes ‘the past’ in some way. And yet the term ‘the past’ is one of the most elusive of all signifiers. The singular noun plus definite article imply some kind of unity, and not just a temporal unity but a metaphysical one. This ‘past’ insinuates itself as a massive whole to which we have different degrees of privileged access, and yet which we somehow acknowledge as beyond our total control or even comprehension. As ‘past’ it seems invulnerable to the manipulations of human consciousness: we experience the present, we create the future: the past we cannot change. Rather like the idea of an infallible and all-knowing god, ‘the past’ is an indispensable resource for ideologues: the term signifies some kind of objective truth to which a hierophant has access and can impart to others. (It is here that the use of the term ‘competence’ comes into play; those

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who espouse such a view of the past can best attack opponents on such grounds because such an attack also reinforced the idea of the past as a set of objective data which the historian controls.) I invoke deities and use the word ‘hierophant’ with deliberation, because the notion of an objective past, an objective ‘history’ makes sense only if it is indivisible and universal. Such a past cannot belong to anyone, and is beyond the power of any human or group of humans to conceive. It can only mean the totality, to the very minutest detail, of everything that has happened. But in order for ‘history’ in this sense to be invoked as a reality this totality must be comprehensible as a whole. As Berkeley clearly understood, such a notion implies a transcendental observer, for only from a transcendental position could such an objective ‘history’ be grasped. No human can understand ‘all history’. This is not an idle argument. The belief in a single transcendental being who can comprehend, indeed control, all history is precisely a biblical belief: it is one of the major tenets of biblical historiography. Modern ‘biblical historians’ do not merely parrot the biblical framework in their own historiography: they often subscribe to the same belief in the same God, and thus they also inherit the possibility of a notion of objective history. When I claim, then, that there is no ‘objective’ history I am implying a world-view incompatible with that of the biblical writings (except perhaps Qoheleth) for whom history was defined by divine deeds (or so they claimed in their writings; they may have thought differently). So a certain kind of religious belief might well dictate a certain definition of ‘history’.19 But whether or not there is a being that can do so, no human can see the past sub specie aeternitatis. As Cross observed, we are born into narratives about the past; history is already ‘storied’ for us; we learn about it as story. We may believe we can ask with Ranke ‘how it actually happened’. But what is the ‘it’? ‘It’ must remain an Idea, accessible to human knowledge only through representation, through signifiers such as relics, texts and memories. The advent of film and videotape has made little difference: the camera cannot present more than an eye can see, and cannot escape the partiality of an observer. The form in which this ideal ‘history’ must be clothed to be humanly apprehended is historiography.

Historiography By this term I designate a particular kind of writing about the past. The various ways in which thus can be done have been brilliantly illuminated by Hayden White in his study of nineteenth-century historiography.20 Its genres are narrative ones, telling the story of something, be it an institution, a nation, an epoch, or a person. The beginning and ending of the story will be selected with some degree of arbitrariness, selection of the data known will be determined by considerations of relevance to the plot; gaps will be filled by deduction or surmise; and, in general, the finished product will employ all the characteristics of a narrative: plot, sequence, character, point of view, and so on. Most important of these is, of course, plot. But historiography is a metagenre: it comprises a number of genres, as it has done over different periods. It also partially embraces overlapping genres concerned with the past, such as myth, legend, historical fiction

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and autobiography. Sometimes these genres have indeed fallen within the orbit of historiography: while modern biblical historians conventionally distinguish myths, legends/sagas and historiography in e.g. Genesis 1–11, Genesis 12–50 and 2 Kings respectively, these generic distinctions are not clearly marked by the literature itself: we cannot see signs that these authors made such distinctions. In the Hellenistic age, it is true, historiographers claimed to tell the truth while others merely offered tales. Although abundant evidence of what we would now call plagiarism, distortion and invention in these authors shows that these charges were largely rhetorical, there as at least a conceptual distinction between true and untrue writing about the past. Thucydides wrote only about the very recent past, to which he was a witness or had access to witnesses; other historians in ancient or mediaeval times were dependent largely on older sources which they had little means of evaluation other than by common sense. Thus the conventions of historiographical genres vary over time and culture. Ancient historiography cannot be transformed into modern historiography any more easily than a Euripides drama can into Shakespeare or Shakespeare into Beckett. The conventions of modern historiography are different, both because of our sense of the past as something objective, our attachment to objectivity itself, our access to many different forms of information from the past, and our rational disposition that requires us to ‘show what we know’; for although rhetoric in historiography still plays well, we pride ourselves that we argue and deduce what happened in the past from evidence and by method. At least, that is how the genre of critical historiography works. There are other genres, found especially in the media and the more popular forms of sensational literature. Critical historiography is now typically practised as an interdisciplinary academic exercise and patronized by the state or the consumer, rather than a divine, royal or ecclesiastical patron. Critical historiography is no longer the rehearsing of older stories, transcribing of memories, inculcating of moral values or the inventing of appropriate episodes. We now claim to judge an historiographical work on the basis of its accuracy and its intention to report the past ‘as it was’. Yet critical historiography remains narrative, and its methods do not guarantee reliability (analogy and probability are two of its necessary but fallible rules). Few readers of historiography are competent to debate every issue in such a work; and so we react to this type of story as we do to narratives generally: namely, we respond to its ideology and its rhetoric. The same facts can portray Oliver Cromwell or Christopher Columbus or Josef Stalin as villain or a hero (or both); Napoleon’s place in European history depends on whether or not the twentieth century is brought into view. Most people’s idea of Claudius is from Graves and of Caesar from Shakespeare. Because it is narrative, historiography attracts us and in attracting us it unties our disbelief or our ignorance and confronts us with what we like to think of as a real past, just as our own memories of childhood do. For this reason, it is better not to confuse historiography and history. But neither should it be concluded that any historiography is better than another. Comparison and evaluation is possible, as with most narratives, on the basis of conformity to criteria that the genre invokes. We cannot fairly compare a critical

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historiography with a piece of historical fiction or with an ancient Hellenistic historiography. But we can compare any modern historiographies that claim to be critical ones. That is because there exist conventions to the genre of ‘critical historiography’ (the word ‘critical’ is hardly ever used, but the claim exists in the form of generic markers), and even if we cannot challenge a historiography on the basis of our command of all the surviving data, we can judge it on whether or not it adheres to the dominant requirement of the genre. These are: to contain nothing that the data contradicts, never to promote the improbable over the probable (without specific argumentation), to evaluate all sources of information critically, and to exclude obvious bias from description. Generic features include footnotes, bibliographies, discussion of alternative interpretations, and priority of primary over secondary sources. These features invoke a particular relationship between ‘history’ and ‘historiography’ that can form the basis for comparison and evaluation. It is also possible to compare the modern genres of historiography with ancient ones – favourably, if we use the criteria of the modern genres. An ancient historiographer may well dislike our modern ones for lack of edifying prose, or moral example, or splendour of theme. Critical historiography makes claims to knowledge (of a certain kind) and invites discussion about how such knowledge is obtained. But historiographical genres did not (and do not) always claim superiority on the basis of their claim to knowledge. Fashion, political correctness, chauvinism and other kinds of prejudice have usually produced a more favourable reception. So what is the point of continuing to write critically informed stories about the past? One obvious reason would seem to be that previous stories are not good enough, and thus may be the case in two ways. More data (hard or soft, artifactual or theoretical) are becoming available which contradict or challenge or render inadequate earlier historiographies, or previous critical historiographies are methodologically defective. But new historiographies also arise because previous accounts fail to satisfy aesthetically or ideologically, and a better narrative for the same data needs to be attempted. Such a motive is not as frivolous as may seem. For as long as there is the implicit (or explicit) claim that a historiography is history, historiographers have the power to manipulate people’s ideas in a way that is dangerous. To say simply ‘but these are the facts; this happened’ in the context of a narrative which interprets these ‘facts’ is to impose not just data but a world-view. If there can be no objective and reliable historiographies, then at least let there be enough of them so that the reader can see how loosely interpretation may sit on data and may realize that history-as-story is never the same as history-as-fact. Let there be fascist and Marxist, Zionist and Palestinian, Western and Oriental historiographies, minimal and maximal, so that, indeed, no reader may ever pardonably be deluded into believing in objective historical truth.21

Metahistory I use this term not in the sense adopted by Hayden White, but to denote the academic discipline that studies historiography and its relation to history. What goes on in university history departments (and in sociology and archaeology

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too) is not always the production of new narratives. It may be the application of a theory or a model to a set of data, or comparison of one historiographical account with another, and both with the data they employ. It may be concerned with factors that historiographic narratives commonly exclude, such as climate, diet or comparative data. As an academic discipline, ‘history’ is not necessarily historiography, but may be (and here I think it best fulfils its social responsibility) to investigate and police both history and historiography, to insist again and again on the dangers of mistaking historiographies for history and exposing the ideological factors at work in every story about the past. Narrative is not the only possible genre in which historians can work, any more than literary critics. The essays in the present volume make that clear.

Application If metahistory is to establish itself as the main activity of historians, then we shall see a tension between them and historiographers. The latter will seek, or at least they will achieve, representation of their history as real, as fact, as ‘the past’, and their stories will create an attitude towards it. The historiographer may well seek to obscure the distinction between her/his ‘historiography’ and ‘history’, to deposit their narrative in that Holy of Holies marked ‘The Past’. Many of these perpetrators will be people of integrity and scholarship, who seek to create a story whose elements are transparently derived from knowledge meticulously gained and documented, with methods and prejudices that are not concealed. But for every such historiographer there are a thousand ambitious, demagogic charlatans, seeking to exploit our fascination with this absent cause, ‘The Past’ and hijack it for political, personal or mercenary ends. (For an example, replace ‘history’ with ‘heritage’.) We may cut our teeth on each other within the academy. But outside the academy ‘history’ is still invoked to kill people, to indoctrinate them, to subjugate them, to capture them, captivate and delude them. There are three things a historian can (and perhaps should) do these days. One is to encourage the production of historiographies, and encourage people to read many of them, so that they may learn in how many different ways ‘history’ may be represented, and perhaps even ask themselves why these stories differ. The second is to expose deceits practised in the name of history, dispel stories parading as truth, enforced and fictive identities parading in the form of genealogies. Also, incidentally, to remain sceptical, minimalist and negative. We need not fear that we ever be anything but a minority. The invention of history will never cease.

Notes 1. It would be interesting to speculate how Chronicles would fare without our knowledge of Kings. The differences allow us to devalue Chronicles; but if it were the only account it would probably be accorded much greater historical value. On the other hand, the

Whose history? Whose Israel? Whose Bible?

2.

3.

4.

5. 6.

7.

8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

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existence, and generally low estimate of Chronicles’ historical reliability should not automatically enhance the historical value of Samuel and Kings. There exists a widespread perception that in my In Search of ‘Ancient Israel’ (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992) I denied the existence of an ancient Israel. That perception represents a very serious misreading of the book, and so we seem to be dealing with that unfortunate phenomenon whereby books are labelled and discussed without reference to the contents and by those who have not read them. The word ‘record’ is quite often used with reference to biblical sources. I allude to it here merely to be able to make the point that whether it is a record is precisely the issue! While ‘narrative’ or ‘story’ are neutral with regard to historical reference, ‘record’ implies an event, as does ‘testimony’ (beloved of more conservative-evangelic writing) or ‘witness’. The word ‘account’ lies ambiguously between the two. Unfortunately even competent archaeologists can fall unwarily into the trap, speaking, for instance, of the ‘United Monarchy’ period, although the archaeological record gives no warrant for such a description. For example, I. Finkelstein, “The Archaeology of the United Monarchy: An Alternative View”, Levant 28 (1996): 175–97. I single out Finkelstein not so much as the most recent, but as a scholar whom I would certainly not accuse of misuse of the biblical sources. Indeed, his article implicitly undermines the notion of a ‘united monarchy’. See W. G. Dever, “The Identity of Early Israel: A Rejoinder to Keith W. Whitelam”, JSOT 72 (1996): 3–24. It has been pointed out that since the biblical story is the only one we have, there is no choice. But that is an argument one could make from the Aeneid about the origins of Rome or of Maori oral traditions about the arrival of Polynesians in New Zealand. Since modern Westerners do not accept either of these sources as historical, we actually prefer to maintain our relative scientific ignorance of these important historical events to a fuller ‘knowledge’ that we deem unscientific. But whether because the biblical narratives are written in prose or, more probably, because their story is part of our cultural prehistory, or because belief in their historicity is a religious commitment, these narratives escape the brutal interrogation they require as to whether the story they are telling should be setting the agenda for part of the history of the ancient world. To use the word ‘scientific’ these days in connection with biblical studies (pace Bibelwissenschaft and sciences religieuses) is to incur the almost automatic accusation of being positivistic. But science derives from scientia, ‘knowledge’ and, I submit, retains essentially that sense (my argument is not etymological). I think there is such a thing as historical knowledge, and, like the natural sciences, it is a function of method. What you ‘know’ depends on how you come to ‘know’ it. B. Halpern, “Erasing History”, Bible Review (December 1995): 26–47 (the title says it all). Perhaps this is not so strange, on reflection. Since the Reformation, an incredible weight has been placed on the literal, historical reading of the Bible (and the Bible itself has borne an additional weight as the defining document of Christian belief). For average Israelis, too, biblical studies is simply their own history. T. L. Thompson, The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1974); see also J. Van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975). N. K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1979). The theory was first developed, of course, by G. Mendenhall, “The Hebrew Conquest of Palestine”, Biblical Archaeologist 25 (1962): 66–87.

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13. See J. Hughes, Secrets of the Times: Myth and History in Biblical Chronology (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990). 14. A similar dilemma underlies the apparent contradiction of such categories as ‘nonreligious Jew’ or ‘Arab Israeli’ (remember that ‘Israeli’ and ‘Israelite’ are identical in Hebrew). 15. The expression ‘land of the Bible’ represents merely a different kind of colonialism, the religious imperialism of Judaeo-Christianity. Its use even in Amihai Mazar’s Archaeology of the Land of the Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1990) – though whether author’s or publisher’s choice is unknown – reveals just how easily this territory is assimilated to the literary world of the Bible. 16. The reader is referred to the excellent demonstration by K. Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History (London: Routledge, 1996). 17. In “Are the Bible’s Stories True?” Time (18 December 1995): 46–53, quoted on p. 53. 18. The suggestion that while parts of the biblical story can be rejected as unhistorical, we should not reject the total story is incoherent. Should a historian decide at some point that although such-and-such a biblical datum ought to be dismissed as unhistorical, to do so would destroy the framework and so it must be regarded as historical? 19. This is not an issue specifically between religious believers and non-believers, but about the discourses that surround a discipline that combines religious and secular elements to a peculiar degree. Both Dever and Halpern have indicated (in personal communications) that they are either agnostic or atheist; this does not prevent them from arguing for what I would regard as a view of history that is theistic (as, I would argue, was Karl Marx’s also). 20. H. White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973). 21. I cannot praise variety more eloquently than Diana Edelman, “Saul ben Kish in History and Tradition”, in The Origins of the Israelite States (JSOT Sup, 228), V. Fritz & P. R. Davies (eds), 142–59 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996): ‘There can never be a definitive reconstruction of the past; there can only be a range of creative associations by individuals who have been influenced by their own life experiences as well as by the data they believe to be reliable and choose to link together in chains of meaning’ (143). It is possible, but not necessarily preferable, to create a ‘history by consensus’, in which a majority of individuals agree that one creation of events best suits the evidence. Such a consensus cannot guarantee, however, that the creation accurately captures the actual events. Most histories are created by linking together individual data into chains of cause and effect based on logical processing; real life does not necessarily operate by the same neat, rational principles. What is plausible then, is not necessarily what actually happened. Ultimately, it is the meaning assigned to actual events rather than the events themselves that holds importance for humans and influences their lives. The attempt to establish a ‘history by consensus’, whose accuracy can never be verified, is a potentially dangerous goal. Such a consensus obscures the individualistic and creative nature of the historiographic enterprise, defining an unnecessary orthodoxy that discourages fresh investigations and creative imaginings and which results in a form of thought policing. Also relevant to this viewpoint is the following statement of H. Marrou: ‘the fruitfulness of historical knowledge is to be found primarily in the dialogue which it generates within us between the Self and the Other’ (in A History of Education in Antiquity [London: Sheed & Ward, 1956], xii).

3 What is ‘minimalism’ and why do so many people dislike it?

‘It is arguably a century or more since an approach to the Bible has provoked such a strong reaction as that represented by what has come to be commonly termed “biblical minimalism” or “revisionism”.’1 I want to add a few remarks on so-called ‘minimalism’ and reactions to it, as this phenomenon illuminates the nature of biblical criticism at the opening of the twenty-first century. I hope that my good friend Niels Peter Lemche will appreciate this essay as one outcome of our discussions on ‘the return to reason’ in biblical studies.

What is ‘minimalism’? There have been numerous books, lectures and articles attacking something called ‘minimalism’ or ‘revisionism’ or some other term. But what do these terms refer to? Though others are sometimes implicated, Thomas Thompson, Niels Peter Lemche, Keith Whitelam and Philip Davies, all currently based in just two universities, Copenhagen and Sheffield, are most often named. The institutional location may suggest collusion, but is misleading. All four started their work independently, and none set out to create or join a new school; they do not feel they belong to one, either. Such collegiality as they now feel derives mostly from sitting alongside each other in the stocks. But their work does have some common elements, including the separation of ‘historical Israel’ from ‘biblical Israel’ to the extent that the Israel of the Bible is regarded as an invention, a fiction, something Thompson describes as an ‘intellectual transformation of antiquity’.2 They agree that this invention dates from later than the period it presents, but disagree about that date. Whitelam is more concerned with modern representation of Israel, though he has also written on Israelite origins in a similar way to the others. Both the separation of the two ‘histories’ and the dating of the biblical literature have been attacked, but usually separately, perhaps because each issue worries a different constituency: biblical scholars seem generally more concerned with the dating, and outsiders with the notion of invented history. The logical connection between the two theses is frequently ignored, which is disappointing, since (see below) there is a logic.

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The approach is also widely described as ‘novel’ or ‘radical’, as a breach with a previous consensus. This claim is especially curious, since the approach is actually fairly mainstream: it accelerates and rationalizes a trajectory that much of mainstream scholarship has been embarked on for a long time, and with a recently increased momentum. Indeed, in principle its view of the fictionality of much biblical ‘history’ is widely endorsed, even by some of its critics: There can be none of what I have called ‘nostalgia for a biblical past that never existed’.3

But even if the ‘minimalist’ or ‘revisionist’ approaches were radical, it remains a puzzle why they should attract so much antagonism, even abuse. In the article cited earlier, Whitelam has documented a number of the accusations and epithets amid what he calls the ‘rhetoric of rejection’ employed by most of minimalism’s opponents. Among these are ‘passing fad’ (Dever), ‘circle of dilettantes’ (Rainey), ‘virulent’ (Shanks), ‘anti-Zionism approaching anti-Semitism’ (Rendsburg), ‘nonsense spewing forth from the pen of these scholars … twaddle’ (Rendsburg), ‘ideological claptrap … ignorant pronouncements of neo-Nazi “thought police”’ (Kitchen). It has additionally been described as postmodern, deconstructive, dead, nihilistic, sceptical, and its practitioners deemed ignorant and incompetent. Whitelam understandably wonders why so much effort is expended on such a worthless enterprise undertaken by such an incompetent crew.

Who dislikes it? The answer to Whitelam’s question lies less with ‘minimalism’ itself than with those interests which it seems to threaten. Here several different constituencies can be identified, each with its own concerns and lines of attack. They can be divided into ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, that is, biblical scholars and nonbiblical scholars (or in some cases biblical non-scholars). I deal first with the outsiders.

Outsiders The most evident ‘outsider’ constituencies are fundamentalist or religious conservatives (both Jewish and Christian) and biblical archaeologists. I define the former as any for whom biblical historicity is a matter of religious commitment that overrides the commitment to open-minded research (this definition does not necessarily include all who still accept the authority and inspiration of scripture); while I define biblical archaeology as a pseudo-science, conducted largely by amateurs and dedicated to the confirmation of the biblical record, a definition that can be supported by historical documentation.4 Some forms of Zionism constitute a third constituency, but its interests are closely aligned to those of fundamentalism or biblical archaeology and need no separate treatment here; but the presence of this constituency explains the charges of ‘antisemitism’, which otherwise have no foundation whatsoever.

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Fundamentalists/extreme conservatives Many fundamentalists and extreme religious conservatives are well aware that there is a critical consensus about the imperfect historical reliability of the Bible, but apart from the occasional outburst they tend ignore it. They do not read or do much biblical criticism and students in their seminaries are largely protected from unhealthy exposure by regular ideological immunization (indeed, the attack on ‘minimalism’ is part of this immunization). The general uneducated (and even educated) public agrees with their view that the Bible is history and should be read as such. Some members of this constituency who desire scholarly engagement with biblical history concentrate on ancient Near Eastern studies, especially Assyriology or Egyptology, from where they can claim to be experts in real history and snipe at biblical scholarship from a position of assumed expertise about the Bible, without ever engaging in analysis of the formation or character of the biblical literature itself, something that to most fundamentalists and conservatives is inappropriate and even blasphemous. Two somewhat different examples of criticism emerging from this constituency are A Biblical History of Israel5 and On the Reliability of the Old Testament.6 The former aspires to sophistication, the other does not. Both attack what they describe as an approach that espouses programmatic scepticism. The first argues that a responsible historian should trust the Bible’s testimony and that to address it with an attitude of doubt, scepticism, or a demand for proof is unreasonable. The other holds that one should read the Bible as one reads other ancient Near Eastern texts, without demanding absolute proof or building fanciful theories. The plea of Provan et al. to trust the ‘testimony’ of the Bible must be regarded as special pleading, until or unless the authors illustrate this principle from other ancient literature in, e.g. a Homeric History of Greece or Virgilian History of Rome. The language of ‘trust’, ‘belief’ and ‘scepticism’ also betrays a lack of understanding of the essence of criticism, a word that implies judgment and probability rather than a quasi-religious attitude. Kitchen’s book also urges that to demand certainty of the biblical narrative before accepting it is unreasonable and offers the dictum that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But this means that while criticizing those who want absolute proof, he insists on absolute disproof. And of course such a general principle would allow anyone to assert that Jesus had three wives and ten children. Both books deal with the issue in terms of belief or disbelief rather than probability, with the language of commitment rather than of judgment. Both they are different in outcome: Provan et al. in fact deliver a ‘biblical history’ hardly different from that of John Bright, while Kitchen appears to accept that the reliability of the Bible may well be 100 percent. What is significant about this constituency’s attacks on ‘minimalism’ is that they apply equally to all mainstream biblical criticism. It is true that prior to recent ‘minimalist’ writings biblical historians have indeed tended to follow the biblical narrative where there were no specific grounds to abandon it, but it has rarely been a critical principle that one should believe the biblical account unless it could be disproved. (I say ‘rarely’ because many readers may immediately think of John Bright, or rather, the early Bright.) Rather, the biblical account has generally been followed by historians whenever there was nothing to put in its

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place. Historians do, of course, vary in their assessment of evidence that runs contrary to the biblical narrative; but as soon as they judge such evidence to be strong enough, they follow it and depart from the biblical version. So-called ‘minimalist’ scholars do not differ in this: they do not follow any new or more stringent principle, nor do they have some hidden presupposition; they simply accept more readily certain arguments against the Bible’s historical reliability as a whole. They may be wrong, but the kinds of reasons and argumentation they offer are totally orthodox. Why, then, the attacks on ‘minimalism’? Several reasons can be offered. First, ‘minimalist’ writings have been circulated, by opponents and sensationalizers, among groups that would normally be ignorant of biblical scholarship at all, and this visibility has punctured the firmament separating biblical criticism from the wider circle of bible readers. In a sense it is an ‘own goal’. Faced with the need to respond, rather than denounce these views as representing the direction of biblical criticism as a whole (which would be less productive), this constituency prefers to characterize these approaches as a virulent form of it, as something to be rejected equally by right-thinking persons of critical as well as evangelical persuasions. They find it more profitable to suggest that only a few madmen have these opinions than to admit that they represent a critical discipline that cannot be pilloried and will not go away. But the language typical of this constituency has also been taken up elsewhere. Dever7 calls ‘revisionism’ ‘the most deadly attack on the Bible and its veracity …’, adopting the language of a group that elsewhere in the same book he strongly rejects – but for whom he knows he is writing! This schizophrenic posture may reflect Dever’s personal confusion, but it also points to the longstanding alliance between fundamentalism and biblical archaeology that even one of its long-standing opponents now find he needs to use.

Biblical archaeologists Biblical archaeology has seen its world crumble. Despite the efforts of Albright and his school, first the patriarchal age, then the exodus and then the conquest have been ‘erased from history’ (to use Baruch Halpern’s phrase) – or at least from mainstream history. What is worse, it was the West Bank survey by Israeli archaeologists that confirmed the fictionality of these traditions. Worse still, this conclusion largely vindicated biblical scholars against archaeologists. Alt, Noth, Mendenhall, Gottwald, Thompson, Van Seters, were, to varying degrees, right. Biblical archaeology, defending the Bible’s historicity, was wrong. But the war must go on, for there is an entire industry at stake. Here the issue is not – as with the fundamentalists – a matter of Biblical inerrancy but of the claim of biblical archaeology to reveal ‘biblical Israel’. If the ‘minimalist’ approach is right, what archaeologists unearth are relics not of a society described in the Bible (a two-in-one kingdom; ethnically, religiously, culturally distinctive, differentiated from ‘Canaanites’), but of ancient Palestinians (Canaanites) who paid taxes to a king of Israel or Judah. What makes them ‘Israelite’ (and whether they would have used that description of themselves) is a good, but tricky, question, often unanswerable by the archaeologist.

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‘Minimalist’ scholars rub the salt in the wound by insisting on the priority of archaeology over the biblical text when constructing a history of Palestine. Like fundamentalists, the biblical archaeology industry was able to cope with the results of biblical criticism because that they made little or no impact on their customers (many of whom are fundamentalists). Digs continued, students flocked, tourists learned the litany. But thanks to the publicity given (but not sought) by ‘minimalists’, their opinions have either to be faced – or rewritten! One other crucial ingredient should be noted. The process of gnawing away at the historicity of biblical Israel has now reached a sensitive point: the ‘United Monarchy’ stands in the front line, Abraham, Moses and Joshua having disappeared; threatened now are Davidic Jerusalem and the crucial biblical notion of a single ‘Israel’ that later divided into two separate kingdoms. Perhaps at this point it is the trunk rather than the branches of the biblical archaeology industry that seems threatened by the axe; if so, the vehement protest is not unexpected. But does it have no option other than to distort and demonize? The two constituencies just discussed have long been allies, and have, for their own reasons, invented a cabal called ‘minimalists’, distorting the views of the scholars concerned and glossing over its strong continuity with mainstream biblical criticism. Linking it with other cultural sins of deconstruction and postmodernism assembles sufficient prejudices to damn the entire enterprise among the popular audience to which these attacks are directed. For the scholars singled out do not deny an ancient Israel; nor have they abandoned belief in history. So why are they damned as a threat to the ‘moral and religious traditions of the West’?8 Is it lest anyone read them and find out how reasonable their views are? One characteristic that fundamentalists, evangelic conservatives and biblical archaeologists have is an expectation that their word will be accepted on trust. They are not known for their generosity towards critics. My conclusion is that the motivation for the extreme reaction of these constituencies is not fear of a small coterie of European intellectuals, but of the direction of mainstream biblical criticism, which has, on the whole, been evolving for decades, if not longer, towards the kind of positions that ‘minimalists’ are occupying. This fear is very well grounded: the so-called minimalists will not necessarily be proved right, but what they articulate is an agenda that has been progressing for decades.

Insiders Opposition to minimalism among professional biblical scholars exhibits a quite different character: little misrepresentation and no abuse. This may be because biblical scholars are more courteous, but more probably because they do not really accept the caricature of ‘minimalism’ that the outsiders have created. (The internal debates are also mostly conducted before an audience of fellowscholars rather than the unlearned and religiously conservative public before whom the outsiders mostly perform.) Biblical scholars by and large do not feel threatened, either; they are better informed about the wide spectrum of views that their discipline displays and the complex nature of the issues. Nevertheless it is evident that some feel a boundary has been breached. How far are they

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correct in this view? The following summary states, I think, a broad consensus of biblical critics: • The history of Israel as recorded in the first six books of the Bible does not correspond to our present historical knowledge. • The twelve-tribe system, ethnic uniformity and religious distinctiveness ascribed to ‘Israel’ in much of the Bible did not characterize Israel and Judah in the Iron Age. • All the biblical books in their present form, and several of them in their origin, date from the sixth century and later. • The authors/editors of the ‘Deuteronomistic history’ and the Chronicler wrote histories that are dominated by obvious theological agendas and combine indiscriminately historical or realistic episodes with miraculous or legendary material. Much of this consensus is the result of applying archaeological findings that were at first contested. That process continues: now they are confronted by archaeological data about the likelihood of large central Palestinian state in the tenth century and also about Iron Age Jerusalem. If one interpretation of the data is correct – and the ‘if’ applies to any interpretation: the accuracy of the Bible can hardly any longer remain as a default option – then the portrait of ‘Israel’ in 1–2 Samuel and 1 Kings is also substantially misleading, though the so-called ‘divided monarchy’ of 2 Kings does refer to entities for which we have corresponding archaeological and historical information and of course includes descriptions of corroborated historical events. The suggestion that that biblical ‘Israel’ is a fiction is hardly wild or radical in this context. It may be exaggerated, but that the narrative from Genesis to Kings is more like fiction with some fact in than it is fact with some fiction in is a fair appraisal, and to suggest that this state of affairs also characterizes some other biblical ‘history’ is not unreasonable if there are indications from archaeological findings that this could be the case. Such a conclusion leaves the problem of what this fiction means – though the question already needs to be posed for Genesis to Joshua. The earlier the date of a fictional biblical portrait or its sources, the more acute the problem of explaining its fictionality; if the portrait is late, whether or not earlier sources are employed, the more that fiction becomes more amenable to explanation. This logic (to which I referred earlier) makes the observable reflex among some biblical scholars for ‘early’ dates to biblical sources and books rather curious. Moreover, the spread of literary criticism in the discipline, and the increasing appreciation of the integrity of larger literary units and of the creative role of those once dubbed ‘redactors’ makes the possibility of ‘late’ composition much less objectionable than fifty years ago. The literary critic who treats large sections of biblical texts as ‘authored’ has helped the historian to appreciate that indeed they may have been authored rather than merely patched up from older sources. But perhaps there remains a theological problem in replacing history by fiction (or by such synonyms/euphemisms as ‘story’, ‘narrative’, ‘tradition’). For

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James Barr the historicity of the Bible has now been so undermined that it can no longer be used as a basis for critical historiography. Yet he also notes:9 The striking thing about biblical criticism is that it is not really a theological problem any more. The majority of central theologians find no difficulty in it.

So far, so good: But elsewhere he comments (p. 100): It seems to me that the cutting of the link of continuity presents a threat to religion of a kind and magnitude quite different from what happened when various books or strata came to be dated ‘late’. If it should be proved to be historically correct, then theology would have to consider how it should be met.

If this analysis is correct, then theology and biblical studies were always on a collision course. At some point the variance between the biblical version of Israel’s history and the critically reconstructed one might always become such that one could no longer revise the biblical one but needed to abandon it. Here is a striking illustration of the tension that there has always been between theological and historical stakes in biblical criticism. Yet I doubt that theology does have a serious problem with an almost complete break from biblical history. In New Testament studies, Rudolf Bultmannn decades ago developed a hermeneutical answer to this issue in his notion of kerygma, and his separation of the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith; and von Rad’s Theology of the Old Testament10 adopted a similar approach in addressing a theology of traditions and not history, effectively distinguishing the ‘Israel’ of history from the ‘Israel’ of faith. As for linguistics, according to Avi Hurvitz the idea that classical Hebrew could have been written by Persian period scribes11 is ‘non-conformist’ and ‘far-reaching’.12 But again, the opposite is true: in fact biblical scholars had been dating, and still do, biblical books and parts of books without much sense that there was a quasi-scientific table that would restrict their literary-critical conclusions; post-exilic redactional insertions had rarely been identified by their language rather than their content or their theology. It is Hurvitz’s suggestion that we can fairly precisely date texts using a quasi-mathematical table that is non-conformist and radical. Finally, Ernest Nicholson defines ‘revisionism’ as a denial of ‘the gains of literary analysis and form-critical research of previous generations’.13 But quite apart from the widespread unease about the validity of such atomistic methods of textual reading, it is clear that they have so far provided no consensus about the formation of any of the biblical literature. The evidence of the recensional history of some of the Dead Sea Scrolls in any case suggests that a good deal of textual development can take place in a matter of less than 200 years. It is, I think, fair to say that this aspect of the debate does require much more discussion, but the debate itself has been proceeding for some time. But ‘debate’ it will be.

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Evaluation The creation of ‘minimalism’, and attacks on scholarly positions that are claimed to constitute it, reflect some critical issues in modern biblical studies. 1. Fundamentalism and conservative positions have not been defeated by the critical tradition. They never will be. Their attacks on ‘minimalism’ are in fact an attack on biblical criticism itself, which they reject but which they do not continuously antagonize. The existence of an uncritical dogmatic literalist culture lying largely outside the academy nevertheless constitutes an ongoing threat to biblical criticism, and ‘minimalism’ has made this culture bare its teeth in the unpleasant way that any historian of biblical criticism will find familiar from the past. 2. Biblical archaeology, with a long history of association with the goals of fundamentalists and conservatives, has been largely amateur and doctrinaire, its funding often dependent upon making connections between a site and the Bible. The major advances in our understanding of Israelite history have come from biblical scholars themselves and were opposed by archaeologists out of ignorance of biblical criticism and/or dogma. The situation has drastically improved, and we can talk about ‘post-Zionist’ and hopefully ‘post-biblical’ archaeology in Israel and Palestine,14 but ‘biblical archaeology’, like fundamentalism, will persist, especially in the USA. Until archaeologists of ancient Palestine learn about biblical criticism and respect its techniques and learn how to read texts as well as artifacts, archaeology will continue to exert a negative influence on our understanding of where the Bible came from. 3. Academic theology, at least some forms, has an interest in history, and specifically a stake in the continuity of a real historical Israel and the biblical one. But it has long had the resources to construct systems to accommodate a high level of fictionality in biblical history and the question of invented tradition. ‘Minimalism’ represents no radical threat to it. 4. ‘Minimalism’ is best understood as a set of arguments that sharpen lines already drawn, extending a long and respectable agenda of biblical criticism. If its conclusions are to be rejected, some other form of solution to the problems it addresses will inevitably be needed. These problems are provoked not only by archaeology but also by literary-historical criticism. But the issues also represent a challenge to do a better history: to explain the creation of the biblical writings as an achievement that constitutes a part of the real history of ancient Palestine – the most abiding and influential part. If the Bible now seems not to make historical sense, it is not that the Bible is wrong, or invalid, or useless, or that its value should be denied. It is because we are not reading it properly. The ‘minimalist’ debate is a useful reminder of how much misreading there is and how widespread, deep-seated and vociferous it is; and also how nasty its defenders can become when they feel threatened. Should we not carry the fight?

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Notes 1. K. W. Whitelam, “Representing Minimalism”, in Sense and Sensitivity: Essays on Reading the Bible in Honour of Robert Carroll, A.G. Hunter & P. R. Davies (eds), 194–223 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 194. 2. T. L. Thompson, The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past (London: Jonathan Cape, 1993), 33. 3. W. G. Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 62 (my italics). 4. Y. Shavit, “Archaeology, Political Culture, and Culture in Israel”, in The Archaeology of Israel: Constructing the Past, Interpreting the Present, N. A. Silberman & D. Small (eds), 48–61 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997); Z. Zevit, “The Biblical Archaeology versus Syro-Palestinian Archaeology Debate in its American Institutional and Intellectual Contexts”, in The Future of Biblical Archaeology: Reassessing Methodologies and Assumptions, J. K. Hoffmeier & A. Millard (eds), 3–19 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004). 5. I. W. Provan, V. Philips Long & T. Longman III, A Biblical History of Israel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003). 6. K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003). 7. Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know?, 3. 8. Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know?, 292. 9. J. Barr, History and Ideology in the Old Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 58. 10. G. von Rad, Theologie des Alten Testaments I–II (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1960); English translation Old Testament Theology I–II (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1965). 11. As suggested in P. R. Davies, In Search of ‘Ancient Israel’: A Study in Biblical Origins (JSOT Sup, 149) (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992). 12. A. Hurvitz, “Can Biblical Texts Be Dated Linguistically? Chronological Perspectives in the Historical Study of Biblical Hebrew”, in Congress Volume 1998, A. Lemaire & M. Saebø (eds), 143–60 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 143. 13. E. Nicholson, “Current ‘Revisionism’ and the Literature of the Old Testament”, in In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel, J. Day (ed.), 1–19 (London: T&T Clark, 2004). 14. This is discussed by Shavit, “Archaeology, Political Culture, and Culture in Israel”. See also A. Elon, “Politics and Archaeology” in the same volume, 34–47.

4 ‘House of David’ built on sand The sins of the biblical maximizers

A recent Biblical Archaeology Review article trumpets the discovery of a new inscription found at Tel Dan that allegedly mentions the name ‘David’ and refers to the kingdom of Judah as the ‘House of David’.1 On this basis it is suggested that Biblical scholars ignore the theories of the ‘Biblical minimizers’2 – that is, those of us who stubbornly insist that Biblical stories, like any other ancient accounts, ought to be verified before being accorded the status of facts. As it turns out, neither claim made for the Tel Dan inscription – that it contains the name ‘David’ and that it contains the term the ‘House of David’ as a reference to the kingdom of Judah – is factually true. The discussion that follows is a reply not only to the Biblical Archaeology Review article, but also to the more scientific paper written by Tel Dan excavator Avraham Biran of Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem and his palaeographer Joseph Naveh of Hebrew University.3 The critical Semitic letters in the inscription on the fragment of a monumental basalt stele from Tel Dan are dwdtyb (dwdtyb) which Biran and Naveh translate ‘House of David’. Each word in this 13-line inscription is separated from its neighbours by the customary dot or mark that scholars call a word divider. There is no word divider, however, between BYT (House) and DWD (David) – the only exception in the surviving words of the fragment. Despite the fact that there is no word divider between the first three letters and the last three letters to indicate that we have two words here, Biran and Naveh nevertheless read these six unseparated letters as two words, rather than one. Biran and Naveh do not provide an argument for this, even though the context does not demand the reading they have given to these six letters. They say only that ‘House of David’ was ‘apparently regarded as one word’. But this is an argument in reverse: because we have decided to divide the word into two, the two words must originally have been put together for some reason. Having divided these six connected letters into two words, and thus produced the possibility of translating its second part as David, Biran and Naveh say that ‘House of David’ is the ‘dynastic name of the kingdom of Judah’, in the same way that the phrase Bit Humri, literally ‘House of Omri’, designates the northern kingdom of Israel and, indeed, the land itself.4

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This does not end their speculation, however. The letter preceding the six letters listed above is the last letter in the three-letter Hebrew word for ‘king’: [ml]k (K[lm]). As indicated by the brackets, Biran and Naveh have supplied the first two missing letters to form the word ‘king’. Thus they read ‘the [kin]g of the House of David’. The reconstruction of two of the letters that make up the word for ‘king’ represents speculation among 10 or 20 letters that might as plausibly be suggested. To say that ‘the previous line probably ended with the other two letters of the word for king’ is simply misleading. How is the ‘probability’ judged except to the degree the reconstruction supports their own reading? It is worth noting that no Assyrian inscription reads ‘king of the House of Omri’, nor does the equivalent phrase occur in any Biblical text. The restoration of the first two letters of the word for king is purely conjectural. But let’s leave this wishful thinking and return to the critical six letters, bytdwd, to see what they really might mean. Admittedly there are two verbal elements here, of which the first is beth, house. But the probability is that the second element completes a place-name, such as Beth Lehem (House of Bread) or Bethlehem (one word), as it is commonly written in Latin letters. It seems intrinsically more likely that a place-name composed with beth would be written as one word, rather than a phrase meaning ‘House of David’, referring to the dynasty of David.5 Such a place-name could be Beth-dod (the W serving as rudimentary vowel, a so-called mater lectionis; the same last three letters are consistently used to spell the last syllable of the Philistine city of Ashdod) or Bethdaud (with a slightly different vowel pronunciation). All these place-names are quite reasonable suggestions. I am surprised that Biran and Naveh have not even bothered to consider these more plausible alternative readings – though I can guess why! They seem anxious to find a Biblical relevance to the inscription, regardless of whether it is there or not. There are other possibilities as well that Biran and Naveh do not mention. For example, in a contemporaneous inscription, the famous Mesha stele or Moabite stone,6 the phrase ’r’l dwdh (hdwd l)r)) appears. The second word remains somewhat of a puzzle. Some scholars, though a minority, translate it ‘David’ and regard it as the name of the founder of the ruling dynasty of Judah. (Presumably Biran and Naveh do not, or they would have said so.) But the final heh makes this meaning unlikely. The noun dawidum is also found in a cuneiform text from Mari (eighteenth century BCE), offering another possible clue, though the meaning of this term remains unclear. In the Bible DWD can mean ‘beloved’ or ‘uncle’, and in one place (1 Samuel 2:14), it means ‘kettle’. So a number of ways of understanding DWD present themselves, most of them more plausible than translating ‘David’. I hope I have given some idea of the possibilities for a wide variety of meanings of bytdwd other than ‘House of David’. It will not do simply to jump to the conclusion, uncertain at best, that the Dan inscription mentions the House of David. In our search for its meaning, one thing is sure. We will get nowhere until we can see the difference between what a text says, what it might say and what

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we would like it to say. If being a ‘Biblical minimalist’ means refusing to see what is not there, then I prefer to remain a minimalist, though I resent the inaccurate and sneering epithet. I submit that this is far preferable to the stance of the ‘Biblical maximalists’ who, in matters of the Bible and archaeology, place the Bible before both archaeology and the conventions of scholarly argument. Speaking for myself, I prefer the open mind that refuses to jump to erratic if gleeful conclusions. The arbitrary reading of bytdwd as Beth David, House of David, creates still another problem when Biran and Naveh suggest that the inscription may throw light on the Biblical episode described in 1 Kings 15:16-22. There King Asa of Judah seeks the assistance of Ben-Hadad, king of Aram, in Asa’s war with Israel. Ben-Hadad supplies the requested assistance by attacking Israel and capturing Dan and other cities. The inscription, however, claims that Aram defeated both Israel and Judah. Despite the best efforts of Biran and Naveh to make the episode referred to in the Bible ‘fit’ with the text of the inscription – thereby ‘throwing light’ on the Bible (or vice versa) – they must nevertheless recognize that if this inscription refers to the events narrated in the Biblical passage, then there is a likely contradiction, since according to the Biblical version, Israel and Judah cannot have been fighting together. It’s a bit mischievous even to raise the possibility of a parallel between the Dan inscription and the Bible without conceding that such a parallel must show the Biblical account to be in error!7 I have to say that Biblical ‘maximalists’ are pretty shameless in wanting to ‘have their cake and eat it too’ where Biblical parallels to archaeological evidence are concerned! If a Biblical text fits, then the fit proves the accuracy of the Bible; if it doesn’t fit, then the event must be something not recorded in the Bible. Their strategy is clear: put the possible parallel into bold relief, then use the small print to show that it is more likely a contradiction. Whether this bias is less honest than creating ‘David’ by splitting a word and then claiming to ‘discover’ him, I will leave to the readers to choose! I find one more mistake in Biran’s and Naveh’s interpretation. They suggest that the author of the inscription was a Syrian general. But the references to the author’s father, and specifically to ‘my father’s land’, strongly imply a king’s son. Who?8 I am not the only scholar who suspects that the figure of King David is about as historical as King Arthur. But that does not make my position negative, or ‘minimalist’. The creation of this figure still needs explanation. What prompted the writers to invent this glorious figure and his impossibly huge ‘empire’? How did they hit upon this name? These are, after all, historical questions too, and perhaps inscriptions such as this one can help us to arrive at an answer if we manage to interpret them in a responsible manner.

Notes 1. H. Shanks, “‘David’ Found at Dan”, Biblical Archaeology Review 20(2) (1994): 26–39. 2. See the introduction to the article cited above (n. 1).

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3. A. Biran & J. Naveh, “An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan”, Israel Exploration Journal 43 (1993): 81–98. 4. See the Assyrian inscriptions in J. B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 280–81, 284–5 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969). 5. But even in the Mesha stele, the place-names Beth-diblathaim and Beth-baalmeon are written as two words, not one. 6. A. Lemaire, “‘House of David’ Restored in Moabite Inscription”, BAR 20(3) (1994): 30–37, has, implausibly in my view, conjecturally restored a reference to ‘House of David’ elsewhere in this inscription. 7. The caption on page 38 of the article cited in n. 1 reads ‘New Inscription May Illuminate Biblical Events’, highlighting the possibility that the text of the article, for all its wishful invocation of the Bible, in fact ultimately denies. 8. The probable answer to this question is given in an article by E. A. Knauf, T. Römer & A. de Pury, which also contains further criticisms of Biran’s and Naveh’s interpretation of the Dan inscription: “BaytDawid ou BaytDod? Une relecture de la nouvelle inscription de Tel Dan”, Biblische Notizen 72 (1994): 60–69.

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5 The origin of biblical Israel

It is a pleasure to offer the following essay to a fine colleague and scholar, whose grasp of archaeological and biblical data is equally competent. Although he may not agree with my conclusions, Nadav Na’aman will perhaps appreciate the extent to which his own research has contributed to them. The most important development in recent years in the study of the history of ancient Israel and Judah has been, in my opinion, the interest in Judah during the Neo-Babylonian period, a period previously somewhat neglected (or even disguised as the ‘Exilic period’), and strangely so, since it offers the most peculiar anomaly: for the entire period, a province called ‘Judah’ was in fact governed from a territory that, as the Bible would describe it,1 was ‘Benjamin’ (see Lipschits & Blenkinsopp 2003). The former capital of the kingdom of Judah, Jerusalem, was replaced by Mizpah. In the majority of modern histories of Israel and Judah that I have consulted, no explanation is offered for this choice.2 How long this state of affairs continued remains unclear, but, as Hayes and Miller suggest (Miller & Hayes 1986: 476), it was probably only in the middle of the fifth century (at the earliest) that Jerusalem was restored as the capital of Judah, and the fact that no scriptural record indicates otherwise is significant. Indeed, if Jerusalem had been the capital before the time of Artaxerxes, the story of Nehemiah would be pointless (on this question, see now Edelman 2005; and on the destruction and restoration of Jerusalem, see Lipschits 2005). Thus, for well over a century, the political life of Judah was centred on a territory which had once been part of the kingdom of Israel. How, when and why it became attached to Judah is unknown. Perhaps when the Assyrians divided the territory of the former kingdom of Israel into provinces, the territory we know as ‘Benjamin’ was allocated to Assyria’s vassal Judah;3 or perhaps it was annexed by Josiah.4 The Babylonians, like the Persians, presumably regarded it as part of Judah, and probably many Judaeans also. The attitude of the ‘Benjaminites’ themselves is unclear, but possibly Jeremiah’s attitude to the temple and to the political leadership in Jerusalem is indicative.5 But not only was this territory – the most densely populated part of the NeoBabylonian province (Lipschits 2003) – the focus of political life in Judah, but also its religious life. Whether or not the remains of the Jerusalem temple

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continued as a site of religious activity, such activity would not have involved those inhabitants of the territory of Benjamin, who still had their own sanctuaries. Indeed, despite the rhetoric about the centrality and uniqueness of Jerusalem in Judah’s literature, we cannot take it as a historical fact that Jerusalem was the only sanctuary active in the territory of Judah-and-Benjamin even prior to the Neo-Babylonian period. Thus, Mizpah itself, Bethel and Gibeon, to name three, presumably continued during the sixth and much of the fifth century as active cult centres; the archaeological evidence (usually rather poorly retrieved and reported) supports this conclusion.6 Blenkinsopp has argued that of these cult centres, Bethel was pre-eminent.7 In the first place, if the tradition of 2 Kings is correct, Bethel was a royal sanctuary during the existence of the kingdom of Israel. Second, the biblical tradition associates it with Jacob, the eponymous ancestor of Israel. Third, the extensive polemic in the Judaean scriptural canon against Bethel points to it having been the chief rival to Jerusalem. The extensive traces of anti-Benjaminite propaganda in these writings, especially the so-called ‘Deuteronomistic history’ has been thoroughly documented (e.g. Edelman 1991; Brettler 1995: 109–11; Amit 2003; Guillaume 2004; Blenkinsopp 2005). But the stories associated with the transfer of the ark and the golden calf episode (connected with the legend of Josiah’s destruction of Bethel) show that a Bethel–Jerusalem rivalry constituted a major issue in the production of much of the Judaean literature that came to be canonized. This rivalry may have extended over some time, but will have become acute especially at the moment when Jerusalem ceased to function as a capital city and a sanctuary and again when it reasserted its supremacy over Bethel and Mizpah.8 As already said, these observations represent nothing new or original: they are essentially a summary of recent conclusions. My own rather modest contribution consists in exploring an important implication of these conclusions, starting from the fact that for over a century the major sanctuary9 in the province of Judah was almost certainly Bethel (following Blenkinsopp 1998, 2003). Its connection with Jacob, presented in Genesis as the eponym of Israel, may have emerged as late as the Neo-Babylonian but more probably originated in the period of the kingdom of Israel in connection with its status (or as the reason, if the connection is even earlier) as one of the two royal sanctuaries (repeatedly asserted in the books of Kings). In this connection, the association of Jacob with Esau also suggests a major development in the Neo-Babylonian period, because even if Esau himself is possibly associated with Jacob from an earlier period, his identification with Edom surely belongs to the Neo-Babylonian (or Persian) period, when Edom was the immediate neighbour of the territory, and not when it was relatively remotely located beyond the Rift Valley to the southeast. The anti-Benjaminite ideology found throughout the Judaean canonical writings (though largely absent from the Pentateuch) includes material that might originally have a Benjaminite origin itself, as in the account of the rise of the kingdom of Israel, beginning with a conquest of the territory by Benjamin, a sequence of ‘judges’ initiated by a Benjaminite, an account of how Benjamin confronted the forces of other tribes, and how Benjamin finally provided the first king of Israel. Again, whether this account crystallized specifically in the

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Neo-Babylonian and early Persian period is difficult to establish, but the people of Benjamin may have felt no strong attachment to the identity of Judah, and possibly supported the Neo-Babylonians before as well as after the final days of the Judaean kingdom (a view represented by the Benjaminite Jeremiah). They may rather have thought of themselves as the rump of ‘Israel’, an identity nurtured and sustained by the cult at Bethel, even after the Judaean Anschluss, whenever that occurred, and especially when, in a kind of reversed Anschluss, they had the opportunity either to incorporate (or exclude) Judah in their own history. Possibly the pro-Judaean Deuteronomistic History was partly provoked by a pre-existing pro-Benjamin one? The role of Bethel in the sixth–fifth centuries BCE to my mind offers a solution to one of the fundamental problems of biblical studies: from what time, and why, did Judaeans call themselves by the name ‘Israel’? Until fairly recently, this identification was not seen as problematic because it was accepted that there had been a United Monarchy bearing the name Israel, in which Judah and Jerusalem were pre-eminent. But that assertion can no longer be made as a historical fact: on the contrary, it is counter-indicated by the archaeological evidence (see conveniently Auld & Steiner 1996), which also suggests quite separate settlement and social evolution for Israel and Judah (see e.g. Finkelstein 1988). At no time in the history of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel is there a plausible occasion for the adoption of the name ‘Israel’ by ‘Judah’, or at least for the persistence of that name. Judah pursued its own political career independently of Israel, and indeed, sometimes against Israel’s interests. By the reigns of both Hezekiah and Josiah, Israel had ceased to exist as a kingdom and the adoption of the name is scarcely conceivable as the name for a larger entity including both kingdoms. For the adoption of the name ‘Israel’ in Judah we are obliged to look for a period when ‘Israel’ was dominant and ‘Judah’ subordinate, and a period of time in which an identity ‘Israel’ could be permanently absorbed by a ‘Judaean’ population. However, we do not need to look specifically for a political definition of ‘Israel’, since in fact ‘Israel’ in the Judaean literature is used in a primarily religious sense when not referring to the kingdom that bore the name. ‘Israel’ was, in fact, becoming a social and religious term in the Persian period, and not a political one – quite distinct in usage from the name of the defunct kingdom. The ‘all-Israel’ entity is part of an invented history that seeks, among other things, to explain the integration of Judah into Israel; the result, and not the basis, for Judah’s adoption of the identity of ‘Israel’. The ‘Israel’ we are looking for, into which Judaeans incorporated themselves, is a religious rather than a political body, and the locus for such a religious body is the community long served by the Bethel cult, the home of Israel itself, or rather ‘himself’: Jacob. Addressed as ‘children of Jacob’ (or rather more simply, just ‘Jacob’) and venerating him as their ancestor, worshippers at Bethel were indeed ‘Israel’; and from 586 onwards this identity affected all or most of those Judaeans who lived in Yehud. With the Jerusalem temple in ruins and the royal house and aristocracy removed, they had no place nor institutional support for any ‘traditions’ of ‘Zion’ or of ‘house of David’. In a period of over a century, thus spanning at least four generations, the religious identity of ‘Israel’ could very

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easily permeate the population of ‘Benjamin-Judah’ in such a way that the later restoration of political and cultic supremacy to Jerusalem could not challenge it, let alone remove it; instead, the restored Jerusalem community sought to detach the population of Samaria10 from the name while implying a rightful claim to its territory. The process that saw Bethel defamed and destroyed in the Persian era and Israelite stories revised and overlaid with Judaean ones also included (again if Blenkinsopp 1998 is correct) the removal of Bethel’s Aaronite priesthood to Jerusalem, thus transferring the hierodules of Jacob/Israel to the ‘city of David’. Likewise needing to be absorbed or retained was the figure of Jacob.11 It remains to explore whether the merging of Judah and Israel (or specifically ‘Jacob’) can be traced in datable Judaean literature. We can begin with texts such as Isaiah 2:3: And many people will go and say, ‘Come let us go up to the mountain of Yhwh, to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of Yhwh from Jerusalem’.

The name ‘Jacob’ occurs at least 40 times in Isaiah, but is especially concentrated in chs 40–55 (22 times). This is a totally unexpected phenomenon in a poet supposedly exiled among the ‘Zionists’ and addressing them (I use the term precisely: the ‘exile’ was a deportation of Jerusalemites, whose descendants presumably were responsible for lobbying for the restoration of their beloved city). But I have argued before (Davies 1995, following the arguments of others) that the contents of Second Isaiah stem largely if not entirely from Judah in the fifth century, when the issue of Jerusalem’s claims and the claims of its ‘children’ were being advanced in a way that did not, as in Ezra and Nehemiah, seek to exclude the indigenous population. For this poet, the returning Zionists (to whom he is sympathetic, if not even one himself) are part of ‘Israel’; they are ‘Jacob’ and should be welcomed by Jacob’s other descendants. The conjunction of ‘Jacob’ and ‘Judah’ is extremely rare in the Hebrew Bible but its seven instances are significant. One – again – is from Second Isaiah: Hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, and have come out of the waters of Judah, who swear by the name of Yhwh, and make mention of the god of Israel, but not in truth, nor in righteousness. (Isa. 48:1)

Another from Trito-Isaiah: And I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an inheritor of my mountains: and my elect shall inherit it, and my servants shall live there. (Isa. 65:9)

The following reference may be an allusion at the end of the Judaean monarchy, but is a unique collocation and may more probably be the result of a redactional addition during the editing of the book of Jeremiah:

The origin of biblical Israel Declare this in the house of Jacob, and publish it in Judah …

47 (Jer. 5:20)

Here McKane’s comment (McKane 1986: 128) is surely correct: ‘The form of address in v. 20 is new, but bq(y tyb almost certainly functions as a synonym of hdwhy and is not a reference to the northern kingdom’. Yet the absence of further comment on this unique appellation is surprising! See also 30:10, 31:7, 11; 33:26; 46:27-8, where ‘Jacob’ apparently refers to Judaeans (2:4; 10:16, 25 cannot be decided). The collocation in Lamentations also fits the proposed period very well: The Lord has swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and has not shown pity: he has thrown down in his wrath the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; he has brought them down to the ground: he has polluted the kingdom and its princes. He has cut off in his fierce anger all the horn of Israel: he has drawn back his right hand from before the enemy, and he burned against Jacob like a flaming fire, that devours round about. (Lam. 2:2-3)

See also Lam. 1:17 where Jacob is collocated with Jerusalem. In the two collocations of Jacob and Judah in Hosea 10:11 and 12:2, on the other hand, the terms are not synonymous: ‘Judah’ and ‘Jacob’ apply to different political entities. The same is true of Micah 1:5. The difference in usage does not necessarily reflect a difference in dating, but rather a difference in linguistic usage, and possibly in the underlying ideology. I have here outlined an answer to the question of why Judah took the name of Israel. The implications of the answer for the history of biblical traditions are considerable and will of course have to be addressed (in a book currently in preparation). Here let me only suggest that the development of Judaean historiography may be a response to the situation in the Neo-Babylonian period (a situation that may already have been anticipated when the territory of Benjamin was added to that of Judah, whenever that occurred), but also, more precisely, as a redaction of traditions already embedded in Benjamin, which required ‘correction’ in the light of the recent restoration of Jerusalem as capital and sanctuary of the province. One result of the political and religious events of the sixth and fifth centuries was the creation of ‘biblical Israel’ itself.

Notes 1. The question of the origin of tribal names and the ‘twelve-tribe system’ is complex and lies well beyond the scope of this essay. But the term is convenient, and perhaps justified for this period (and the monarchic era) if it signifies that the inhabitants were the ‘southernmost’ of those that comprised the kingdom of Israel. 2. J. Bright, History of Israel (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press/London: SCM Press, 1960), 310: ‘probably because Jerusalem was uninhabitable….’; M. Noth, The History of Israel (London: A & C Black, 1960), 288, concurs, adding that probably ‘Mizpah had not suffered so badly as other Judean cities’. G. Ahlström, The History of Ancient

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3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Rethinking biblical scholarship Palestine from the Palaeolithic Period to Alexander’s Conquest (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 800–801, offers no explanation. B. Oded, “Judah and the Exile”, in Israelite and Judaean History, J. H. Hayes & J. M. Miller (eds), 435–88 (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press/London: SCM Press, 1997), 476, states that ‘Gedaliah settled in Mizpah’; J. M. Miller & J. H. Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1986), 423–4, suggest that Mizpah was Gedaliah’s choice, but also suggest that, unlike Jerusalem, it had not been destroyed, and also that it ‘probably continued as the capital of Judah for over a century’. A. Zertal, “The Province of Samaria (Assyrian Samerina) in the Late Iron Age (Iron Age III)”, in Judah and the Judean in the Neo-Babylonian Period, O. Lipschits & J. Blenkinsopp (eds), 377–412 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003) suggests that the southern border of Samerina was the ‘Jericho-Nasbeh-Eqron line’ (384), following Aharoni, but this is no more than a guess on the part of either. The earlier date is problematic if we assume that Sennacherib divested Hezekiah of most of his territory; the latter is problematic in view of Na’aman’s own essay on Josiah’s foreign policy (N. Na’aman, The Kingdom of Judah under Josiah (Tel Aviv Reprint Series, 9) (Tel Aviv: Institute of Archaeology, 1992) [= “The Kingdom of Judah under Josiah”, Tel Aviv 18 (1991): 3–71]. The story in 2 Chron 13 of Abijah’s capture of the territory of Benjamin from Jeroboam looks improbable but possibly comprises an attempt to solve the question of when Benjamin and Judah did combine into a single administrative unit. The separate identity of ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Judah’, evidenced in Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, is most frequent, however, in Jeremiah. Whether Jerusalem itself was regarded as part of ‘Judah’ (as opposed to ‘Benjamin’?), and by whom, is another question too large for this paper. But contrast the statements in Josh. 18:28 and Judg. 1:21 with the very similar (but contradictory) ones in Josh. 15:63 and Judg. 1:8. For a convenient summary of the data, see C. Carter, “Ideology and Archaeology in the Neo-Babylonian Period: Excavating Text and Tell”, in Judah and the Judean in the Neo-Babylonian Period, O. Lipschits & J. Blenkinsopp (eds), 301–22 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 310–18, esp. 307–11. For more details on Bethel and Gibeon, see J. Blenkinsopp, “Bethel in the Neo-Babylonian Period”, and Edelman, “Gibeon and the Gibeonites Revisited”, both in Judah and the Judean in the Neo-Babylonian Period, Lipschits & Blenkinsopp (eds), 93–107 and 153–68, respectively. See note 6. In fact, ‘pre-eminent’ is perhaps misleading: he does not consider the status of the others at all. But I take it that ‘pre-eminent’ is at least implied. A fuller defence of Blenkinsopp’s thesis will appear in the second volume of essays on the Neo-Babylonian period (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005). Edelman argues (King Saul in the Historiography of Judah [Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991] and “Gibeon and the Gibeonites Revisited”) that Gibeon (in her view, the true home of Saul) is also attacked in the pro-Jerusalem literature, suggesting that city’s continued importance in the Neo-Babylonian and early Persian period (which would imply the continued status of its own sanctuary also). It is possible that the polemics of Deuteronomy in favour of a single (unnamed) sanctuary reflects a period in which several Yahwistic sanctuaries were thriving and a drive for centralization was in process, but possibly not resolved. Arguments for a fifth-century dating of Deuteronomy are given in P. R. Davies, “Crypto-Minimalism”, JSS 50 (2005): 117–36. The continuing function of other sanctuaries in the Neo-Babylonian period can be presumed, though their importance is not reflected in anything like the same degree in the biblical literature as is Bethel. Edelman, “Gibeon and the Gibeonites Revisited”, for example, makes a case for Gibeon continuing to flourish. The nature of relationships between the Neo-Babylonian Yehud and the province of

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Samerina/Samaria is likely to have been cordial, and indeed bethel may well have continued to attract worshippers from the north. The hostility between Jerusalem and Samaria, reflected in the book of Nehemiah, may be a literary rather than historical one, but in either case was probably a part of the process by which Judah once again separated itself from the historical community of Israel while laying claim to rightful ownership of the identity of the religious community of ‘Israel’. 11. The pre-eminence of Jacob was nevertheless diminished by introducing a grandfather who immigrated from Babylonia and was associated primarily with Hebron (and likewise, Isaac was connected to Beersheba). These sites probably still belonged to the province of Judah in the sixth and fifth centuries, but were largely populated by Edomites, and at some point Edom was given administrative independence – becoming identified with Jacob’s estranged brother in the process?

6 God of Cyrus, God of Israel Some religio-historical reflections on Isaiah 40–55

I John Sawyer has made a reputation for boldness: his Semantics in Biblical Research1 broke ground that has since been richly harvested; his From Moses to Patmos2 preceded the fashion of canon criticism and far exceeded the imagination of virtually all of its practitioners. Latterly he has devoted much of his scholarly effort to prophecy in general3 and the book of Isaiah in particular.4 This essay is offered to him as a reflection of both his audacity and also his current interest, though its strong historical emphasis betrays more of my own inclination than his. ‘Second Isaiah’ or ‘Deutero-Isaiah’ (Isaiah 40–55) has, like the book of Deuteronomy, secured a time and setting blessed by a virtual scholarly unanimity: both compositions serve as literary beacons of respectively those linchpins of biblical history (and fermenting vats of literary productivity), the ‘Josianic reform’ and the ‘Babylonian exile’. This essay is a contribution to recent efforts at dislodging Isaiah 40–55 from its assigned place, and in so doing will revise some traditional notions about the history of the cult of Yahweh and the religion of Judah in antiquity. An appropriate starting point for this investigation are the most explicit of historical references in Isaiah 40–55, viz., the naming of Cyrus in 44:28 and 45:1-7. The relationship between these passages and the famous inscription of the Persian king now housed in the British Museum5 has been invoked and examined many times. According to the Cyrus Inscription the ‘lord of the gods’ (Marduk), also ‘protector of his people’, searched for a ‘righteous ruler to take his hand’ and pronounced the name of Cyrus as future ruler of the world. Marduk ‘beheld Cyrus’s good deeds and upright heart’, as a result of which Babylon was overcome without any battle, and subsequently ‘all the kings of the world brought tributes’ to Cyrus, while the new ruler of the world rebuilt cities and sanctuaries. Similarly, in Isaiah 45 Yahweh ‘grasps Cyrus’s hand’, to empower him to ‘subdue nations’ and ‘open gates’; as a result, the wealth of Egypt and the Sabaeans will come to Cyrus. These parallels, first noted almost a century ago6 continue to be noted, but almost inevitably with the demurrer that the writer of the Hebrew poems cannot

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have been dependent on the inscription; they must have been written before Cyrus’s capture of Babylon. This assertion is often supported by the claim that the poetry constitutes genuine prediction (by virtue of being ‘prophecy’, or in a book of ‘prophecy’). At all events, the similarities between the texts tend for the most part to be regarded as each dependent on either a ‘Babylonian court style’7 or, with greater form-critical precision, the genre of ‘royal oracle’.8 A more precise definition of the relationship has been offered by Morton Smith,9 arguing that the parallels between the biblical texts and the inscriptional all involve only the first part of the inscription, which speaks of the king in the third person, and which, on Smith’s view, represents propaganda from the Babylonian priesthood, originating from before Cyrus’s arrival in Babylon, and paralleled only in Isaiah 40–48, whereas to the second part of the inscription there are ‘almost no parallels in II Isaiah’.10 Smith’s verdict on a close comparison of Isaianic texts and the inscription is that ‘the parallels demonstrate literary dependence’.11 However, since the statements of Second Isaiah about the capture of Babylon are inaccurate, they must, he concludes, have been written before the peaceful capture of that city. The lack of parallels with the second part of the inscription, which tells of the favourable treatment of Babylon by its new ruler, are claimed to support this contention. Thus, the sentiments of the author of the Hebrew text are the result of successful Persian propaganda. The poet must have been persuaded by agents of the Persian king, before Cyrus’s arrival in Babylon. Smith deduces further that contacts of the same kind might have led to the transmission of further Persian ideas, such as the creation of the world, a doctrine which (he claims) cannot be found in any Hebrew text whose origins we can securely date earlier than the sixth century. The extent to which Isaiah proclaims this doctrine, which he claims to have existed ‘of old’ (40:21, 28, etc.) testifies to its very novelty (a typically Smithian insight!). And finally, he offers us a parallel between some texts from Isaiah 40, 44 and 45 and Yasna 44, one of Zoroaster’s Gathas. The parallel texts deal with the supreme deity as the source of justice, creation of the heavenly and earthly beings, of light and darkness, of wisdom. These parallels, which involve the same material as the parallels to the Cyrus inscription (chs 40–48) suggest to Smith ‘relationship to the same tradition’. Why such parallels might have been taken up by Second Isaiah is left by Smith deliberately unanswered. I take note of Smith’s suggestion because it raises the issue of whether the poetry of Isaiah 40–55 is influenced by the ideology of the Achaemenid empire, an issue that will resurface later in this discussion. Also, it seems to have been endorsed in large measure by Mary Boyce, who speaks of the ‘exalted trust in Cyrus which the unknown Persian propagandist’ had instilled in the prophet’,12 and actually makes a complete circle out of Smith’s case by arguing that since the Zoroastrian influence came from Achaemenid agents, Cyrus must have been a Zoroastrian.

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II There are two objections to Smith’s thesis, one minor and one major. The minor objection is that the parallels with Second Isaiah in the Cyrus inscription are not restricted to the first part. Its final section includes the following:13 All the kings of the entire world from the Upper to the Lower Sea, those who are seated in throne rooms, (those who) live in other [types of buildings as well as] all the kings of the West land living in tents, brought their heavy tributes and kissed my feet in Babylon …

This may be compared with Isa. 45:14: ‘The wealth of Egypt and the merchandise of Ethiopia, and the Sabaeans, men of stature, shall come over to you and be yours, they shall follow you; they shall come over in chains and bow down to you. They will make supplication to you …’. There are differences between the two passages, but the parallel should not necessarily be excluded, even though the same sentiments are also present in the first part of the inscription. The more important difficulty is that Smith’s view requires Second Isaiah to have been in Babylon. This does not seem at first sight an insuperable objection, since this is where scholarly consensus places the poet. However, this consensus, having come about in a curious and rather uncritical way, has recently been coming under attack. An impressive review of the history of this consensus, and of the argumentation on which it is based, has been offered by Christopher Seitz,14 who has added his weight to some recent doubts that Second Isaiah is to be located in Babylon. These doubts (as will presently be shown) seem to be increasing as the current scholarly interest in the redactional history of the contents of the book of Isaiah as a whole intensifies. Seitz reminds us that for Bernhard Duhm, as well as for a number of other scholars earlier this century, there was no question of a Babylonian provenance for these poems.15 Duhm in fact stated forcefully that the author of Isa. 40–55 was definitely not to be located there.16 More recently Arvid Kapelrud,17 James D. Smart18 and Hans Barstad19 have also proposed objections against a Babylonian setting. Not all of the earlier scholars (including Duhm himself) opted for a setting in Palestine, though the more recent critics have been more in agreement. In Barstad’s view, the reason for this difference is that until fairly recently scholarship merely accepted the biblical claim that Judah was virtually denuded of population, religion and culture after 586 BCE, so that the notion of prophetic activity such as Second Isaiah implied was simply not considered.20 Barstad points, however, to not only the existence of the book of Lamentations – which the scholarly consensus sets in Jerusalem – but its similarity in many respects to some of the ideas of Second Isaiah. (It may also be worth remembering that Martin Noth placed the composition of his ‘Deuteronomistic History’ in Palestine during the ‘exilic period’, a view surreptitiously abandoned by most of his successors.) The exilic setting is also being to some extent undermined (though less obviously) by the current trend towards denying the original independence of 40–55

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from 1–39 (in some form). This independence (and not a distinct geographical setting) was, of course, the foundation of Duhm’s own argument for a ‘Second Isaiah’. Several scholars now suggest that Second Isaiah is to be understood as commentary on a collection which corresponds to the present ‘First Isaiah’, deliberately expanding an existing Isaianic corpus by adding a series of poems. The implications of this view are, on the conventional dating of chs 40–55, that First Isaiah was substantially developed before the end of the seventh century. Not all commentators are content with boxing themselves into this corner,21 in view of the considerable amount of analysis which –resuming Duhm’s own agenda – identifies a good deal of post-exilic material in Isaiah 1–39.22 The recent study by Jean Marcel Vincent23 assigning the whole of 40–55, with the rest of Isaiah, to the postexilic Jerusalem priesthood, has been virtually ignored, though Ronald Clements accepts some of Vincent’s arguments, and, pursuing his own thesis that Isaiah 40–55 is developed consciously out of 1–39, observed that while a Babylonian setting remains likely for ‘at least some of the material’, a Palestinian origin is ‘an increasingly probable deduction to make from so much of the recent research into the origin of these enigmatic chapters’.24 The issue of single authorship versus redaction is, however, not one which can be taken up here, important though it is.25 It is enough to comment that once the unity of Isaiah 40–55 is broken, arguments for a Babylonian setting would have to be made for each unit, and certainly could not be successful. Indeed, the redaction itself would surely have to be placed in the post-exilic period, effectively destroying the conventional figure of ‘Second Isaiah’ and relegating his poems to a minor source. The assumption of a single author of 40–55 as a series of poetic meditations on an existing Isaiah scroll does not necessarily contradict the view of a poet impelled into his outbursts by the prospect of a Persian deliverer, but it still alters significantly the understanding of why and how the poems were written. It is possible to imagine a series of poems conceived both as a direct response to the unique historical circumstances of an exiled poet-cum-prophet and also as a literarily sophisticated gloss on a scroll of prophecies, but such a feat perhaps exceeds the capacity of all but the most credulous. Why need a poetic tosafist actually live in Babylon? Or even personally experience exile? Seitz has shown, in fact, how the notion of an exilic poet asserted itself independently of Duhm’s carefully constructed arguments for an independent redactional history to chapters 40–55, and has also reviewed the arguments against a Babylonian exilic setting.26 The most compelling of these arguments are as follows: 1. The opening call of 40:1-2 (and other places) addresses itself to Jerusalem and not to exiles. 2. The exiles to be gathered in are from all the parts of the world, not just from Babylon (43:5-6). 3. Cyrus is depicted as coming ‘from a far country’ (46:11), which seems inappropriate for a Babylonian perspective. 4. The complaint about refusal to offer sacrifice (43:22-4) is invalid except in Jerusalem or some other sanctuary city.

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Seitz adds that Zion itself is presented as in exile (49:21) without the sense of physical deportation. This is consistent with the well-known topos of exile as designating the state of Judah throughout the Persian and Graeco-Roman periods.27 In short, the fate of Jerusalem and the promised return of its children is a theme which suits better a setting in that city rather than in exiled communities, and the notion of exile in these chapters, is ideological rather than concrete. The evidence of composition in Judah is stronger than the evidence for Babylonia; and the question of dating is open. There are really only two possible indications of a Babylonian context for the poems. One is the reference to Babylonian gods, including specific mention of Bel and Nebo.28 Barstad notes, however, that since Judah had been under the Babylonian yoke for several decades before the exile, and was administered by the Babylonians as a province until the advent of Cyrus, references to alien gods might naturally name Babylonian deities (he cites in support Jer. 50:22; 51:44).29 The other piece of evidence is the inaccuracy of the prediction of Cyrus’s bloody capture of Babylon. That suggests, the argument runs, that the poem was written when Cyrus’s seizure of the city was imminent but before the peaceful surrender of the city to his forces – and this strongly implies Babylon as the place of composition. This argument may be seized upon by defenders of exilic authorship, and so some discussion is called for here. One could, of course, fall back on the argument that while chs 40–55 are as a whole later and non-Babylonian, there are one or two earlier poems. But multiple authorship ought to be argued for on linguistic and stylistic grounds, and not appealed to as a deus ex machina. In any case, it is unnecessary if, as has been argued, we ought to doubt the reliability of Cyrus’s own propaganda about the event.30 It is his view that the city was taken peacefully. But is that the truth of the matter? The argument for a Babylonian setting based on the inaccurate reference to Cyrus’s activities is circular: it requires its conclusion as a premise. Thus, if the poet lived in Babylon at about the time of Cyrus, the inaccurate prediction of his destructive entry into Babylon establishes a date prior to 538. But if the poet lived some way from the city, or indeed, lived at another time, the error is equally explicable. The inaccurate prediction may as well be an inaccurate record or memory. And if a record or memory, it may be either accidentally or deliberately inaccurate. Poets are allowed this sort of thing, though we could know in this case which alternative to choose. A half-century after Cyrus Xerxes I razed the fortifications laid by Nebuchadnezzar, destroyed the Esagila and melted down the statue of Marduk.31 From 482 onwards, Babylon could be deemed to have been destroyed – just as much as Jerusalem was claimed to have been destroyed in 586. Moreover, the event would doubtless be seen as poetic justice. Just as Cyrus was the Yahweh-elected liberator of the Judaeans, so was

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his successor the Yahweh-inspired avenger of the Judaeans in destroying the city that had destroyed Jerusalem and exiled some of its inhabitants. Just as for the Chronicler it was David who planned the Temple, so for this author Cyrus destroyed Babylon – whether himself or through his dynasty is not poetically important. In other words, once we have established the date of the poet we can ask why he wrongly attributed the destruction of Babylon to Cyrus. We cannot assume the date as a premise and then argue from it back to our starting point. The ‘error’ is not evidence of any particular date. The evidence of a Babylonian setting for the author of Isaiah 40–55 is so slight, then, as to be virtually absent. Where this paper goes beyond recent criticism is in suggesting that the question of date is also open. It is time to ask again: at what time and place does this collection of poems make best sense? If arguments for a Babylonian setting were dictated largely by romantic notions of an exilic herald (and fellow sufferer) and the theological mileage to be gained from such a figure, what better arguments, if any, can be used to find the real historical context of Second Isaiah?

III The starting point for a search after historical context, as I stated earlier, must be the ideology of the collection of poems taken as a whole, not items picked randomly. Accordingly, the best opening step is backwards, to look at the scope of the poetry, the wood rather than the trees. From such a perspective some interesting features appear. But before looking at these, we ought to consider a feature that does not appear! This is the matter of returning exiles. Cyrus’s role as liberator in Second Isaiah concerns only marginally (at best) his release of deportees. In fact, such an act remains entirely to be inferred. He is proclaimed (see below) rather as world-conqueror and restorer of the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem. The poetry expresses the aspirations, not of immigrants about to return from deportation but inhabitants of underpopulated, devastated cities awaiting a glorious future. This observation supports Barstad’s argument that there is no ‘second exodus’ motif in Second Isaiah.32 Barstad, however, believes that the poet of 40–55 wrote in the sixth century in Judah, and, while making occasional reference to the exiles in Babylon,33 offered wider promises to Judah of deliverance from the Babylonian yoke under which Judah lay during most of the sixth century. With this view, as will be seen presently, I do not wholly concur, though it is an important step in the right direction. The lack of prominence given to a return of exiles is worth stressing, since its prominence is so often taken for granted. Here I shall for the most part summarize Barstad’s treatment. The poems, at any rate, make fairly little of the arrival of immigrants from Babylon. As Barstad argues, the opening proclaims the coming of Yhwh (hwhy Krd, 40:3; cf. Kyhl) hnh, v. 9), not of immigrants; this divine presence is then contrasted with human feebleness (wdsx-lk hd#&h Cyck, v. 6). The following image of the shepherd feeding and carrying the flock in v. 11 does not refer to a trek from Babylon to Jerusalem: there is no

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identifying of the flock with exiles: the nearest antecedent to the object pronoun here is the ‘cities of Judah’ (v. 9). Perhaps the image ought to be compared with that in Psalm 23. Nor is there a ‘new exodus’ to be seen in 41:17-20, which refers to the blossoming of the desert, a time of prosperity (cf. Amos 9:11-15, etc.). In all other references to ‘leading’ Barstad finds only the use of metaphorical language, of a kind paralleled throughout the Bible. The restoration promised by the voice, by the poet, does not have a return from Babylon especially in mind;34 where the gathering of exiles is mentioned, a general return from all areas is mentioned (a point also noted, as mentioned earlier, by Seitz).35 Let us now look at the features that collectively characterize the theme and outlook of the poet. These are the creation of a world empire by Cyrus (including the punishment and degradation of Babylon); the gathering of the scattered nation of Israel from all corners of the world to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the nation, with Jerusalem as the centre of worldwide worship of Yahweh, criticism of the use of idols as vain and Yahweh as the supreme and creating deity. These elements coalesce into a vision of the new historical world discerned in the near future, in which under the one supreme god (naturally in a Hebrew text, named as the god of Judah) a single world order will be achieved and sustained, in which this god alone will be aniconically worshipped at his central temple in Jerusalem, and his own chosen people restored to a place of security and prominence. The ‘Servant’ poems, to which great prominence has traditionally attached, perhaps by reason of a bias towards referentiality as well as because of its importance in New Testament studies and Christian theology, are quite difficult to specify referentially and may constitute a motif rather than a specific character. In part, they probably elaborate the role of Israel in bringing about the world order. The people will not achieve it themselves: rather, Yahweh and the Persians will, though the suffering of the Judaeans will have played a part in bringing this new order about. Passivity and obedience are an appropriate role for many in achieving the new world order.36 This exegesis is not intended to exhaust the theme of the ‘servant’. The scenario which the poems collectively depict is not a particularly unusual one within the literature of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, and its details are represented in passages conventionally dated before and after the exile. The vision of a new world order is thus not an easily datable item. However, there are features of this particular expression of that theme which make it possible to suggest likely historical contexts.

Cyrus as world ruler The idea that the political future of the Judaeans would be under a Persian king is more significant for dating than is often recognized. There is no expectation of a future native dynasty hinted at here. With this view we may contrast texts which suggest some kind of national royal or non-royal dynasty or ruler (e.g. Ezek. 34:23-4; Jer. 23:5, Jer. 33:15-17; Amos 9:11; Zech. 12:7-8). The poems here take for granted that the role of ‘anointed’ has passed not just to Cyrus but to the Persians, for the role of Jerusalem as a centre for the kings of the world to come to implies a world empire, and this can only be a Persian one. The fate

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of Jerusalem does not await the destruction of the Persian empire, but will be achieved within it. Jerusalem will be a city of the Persian empire, perhaps replacing Babylon as a religious and cultural centre. It is possible that this vision is an unusually percipient prognostication, not shared by any other Judaean writings from the period. More likely it comes from a time when such an empire was already well and securely established, and the expectation of a native dynasty abandoned – and thus not in the time of Cyrus but of his successors. There are other biblical texts in which this view of the historical world order is explicated. 2 Chron. 36:22-3 (= Ezra 1:1-2): Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, ‘The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may the Lord his God be with him. Let him go up.’

Whether it was Cyrus who authorized the building of the Temple is dubious: the building certainly did not take place until later, and the decree is of dubious authenticity,37 but here we encounter an example of the tendency to assign sponsorship of the entire restoration programme to the founder of the Persian empire (just as Nebuchadnezzar became the archetypal haughty oppressor, supplanting Nabonidus in Daniel 4). Additionally we may compare the role of David as first temple builder (according to the Chronicler) with Cyrus’s role as second temple builder, underlining the view that Cyrus and his successors are the truly chosen heirs of the native Davidic dynasty. The biblical literature displays an almost unanimously benevolent attitude towards Persian world rule. The book(s) of Esther also endorse the idea of a world order governed by the law of the Medes and Persians – and thus permit a Judaean queen to be envisaged, and Jews protected, as well as threatened, by the law of the ‘Medes and Persians’. Daniel, although tempered by the experience of oppressive (non-Persian) rule, retains in its older narratives (chs 1–6) the idea of Yhwh the lord of history assigning government of the entire world to non-Judaean kings, who in turn ‘inherit’ his ‘kingdom’ (2:37; 4:34ff.; 5:30). In fact the idea of a universal world order decreed by Yahweh is retrojected into the Neo-Babylonian period. Jeremiah 27–29 represent Nebuchadnezzar as allotted the world empire by Yahweh, and in the closing verses of 2 Kings EvilMerodach (Amek-Marduk) frees Jehoiachin from confinement and sits him at the ‘king’s table’ (25:29-30). Most commentators have detected here a hint of hope for the future of a Davidic dynasty; but it is equally likely that the hint is of the incorporation of the Davidic monarchy into the new world-empire: EvilMerodach is here the inheritor of the ‘Davidic covenant’. Indeed, Jer. 25:9; 27:6 and 43:10 refer to Nebuchadnezzar as Yahweh’s ‘servant’ (the other two ‘servants’ in Jeremiah being Jacob and David). What may be seen in all these texts is a Yahwistic ideology of world-empire, in which the Judaean national god ensures the well-being and triumph of his

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own nation by means of benevolent world empires which he controls. This ideology presupposes a certain political order, one which did not develop until the fifth century.

The gathering of the scattered nation of Israel to Jerusalem This idea is attested in several prophetic texts: Isa. 11:12 (‘He will raise an ensign for the nations, and will assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth’); Jer. 23:3 (‘Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply’ [cf. v. 8, referring to the dispersion of ‘Israel’ in the ‘land of the north’]); Jer. 31:8 (‘Behold, I will bring them from the north country, and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, etc.’); Ezek. 11:17, ‘Therefore say, “Thus says the Lord God: I will gather you from the peoples, and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.”’); other such texts include Micah 2:12, 4:6; Zechariah 10:8-12. The idea of a scattered Israel to be restored in the future can be found in texts from throughout the Persian period and into the Hellenistic (for example, Daniel 9, the Damascus Document, 11QMelchizedek, I Enoch, Jubilees).38 In reflecting this idea (and not, as we have seen, the idea of only a return from Babylon), Second Isaiah thus reflects a very common idea in the biblical literature. The poems of Isaiah 40–55 address the city of Jerusalem (and the cities of Judah) in promising this mother a return and increase of its lost children (49:20-25; 54:1), namely a population which comes from afar (49:22: ‘nations’, ‘peoples’), brought from many places (49:23 ‘kings’, ‘queens’): a vision best (if rather loosely) described as ‘eschatological’. Such a prospect may have been prompted by the hope of an act of repatriation by Cyrus. But it is just as likely, and perhaps more likely, to have been based on some concrete action. From a rapidly growing volume of research it is becoming clear that under the Persians a new social structure emerged in Judah, including an enforced (not a permissive) repopulation of areas previously uninhabited, the goal being economic regeneration – followed in the time of Xerxes by military strengthening. Judah became a province of some regional importance, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem may have felt encouraged to hope that Jerusalem would become the major city of the Persian empire in the satrapy; the biblical texts which speak of the extent of the land promised to Abraham and then embraced by David in his ‘empire’ come close to a definition of the satrapy ‘Beyond the River’. At any rate, the cult of the god of Samaria (as Yahweh had been, according to the evidence of the Mesha stele and a Kuntillet ‘Ajrud inscription) was established in Jerusalem (as well as perhaps in Samaria). This did not happen suddenly: the Elephantine papyri suggest that Jerusalem was not seen as the sole authority even on religious matters. Some antagonism between the two regions must have occurred.39 But at all events, the vision of Jerusalem as a major religious centre, economically prosperous and populous is one which at least fits (we can say no more) the perceived policy of the Persian empire towards the province of Yehud; the actions being taken were steps toward those hopes which Isaiah 40–55 expresses.

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Idols as vain The oft-expressed puzzle here (recognized too often to need citing) is that the invective against idols is so silly. Worshippers of deities that are represented in the form of idols do not make the mistake of thinking that these images are the gods. The puzzle is not intractable, once it is asked: for what kind of audience is the poet writing this polemic? What point is he actually trying to make? In the first place, there is little to be achieved by ridiculing images unless the hearers themselves have some attachment to them. Thus, the poet is not merely reiterating some ancestral abhorrence of Judaeans to images. Why do this? Not because his audience is in danger of worshipping other deities – such worship is not criticized; monolatry is not the issue. If the audience were in danger of adopting other gods, we would find the sort of rhetoric we get in Deuteronomy, which deals with other deities but makes less fuss about idols. The polemic is not directed against other gods as such but against gods as represented by idols. No: the issue here is whether gods are to be represented in material form, and in making this point the poet is attacking, not other deities, but the iconic worship of the god Yahweh. This attack is supported by the claim that Yahweh is the creator and cannot be created/made, and also by castigating the makers of idols (44:9-21) – this passage does not specify non-Judaean gods or idolmakers and I take it to refer primarily if not exclusively to Judaean craftsmen making images of Yahweh. The reason for the attack is given elsewhere: Yahweh cannot be represented in any form (40:18) because he is to be invisible (√rts: 45:15). In what historical context is a ban on images of Yahweh most probable? 1. Iconic worship of Yahweh was not previously discouraged. 2. Yahweh is being perceived and represented as a creator deity, not a local national or royal one. 3. There is a precedent, or an occasion, for the banning of icons. 4. The ban presumably refers in the first place to a temple, where the issue would be public. Whether or not all these conditions apply to the issue of Second Isaiah’s invective, it is worth asking in what political, social and religious context they might all be represented. We can begin by suggesting that the iconic worship of Yahweh (and Asherah) was normal during the period of the Israelite and Judaean monarchies (perhaps most commonly by a bull?) and continued until the Persian period, possibly even into the Persian period, if the much-discussed drachma coin from Yehud40 does in fact display how the Persian authorities imagined Yahweh to look, namely as a warrior in a chariot.41 If the political dimension of the vision of the poems is consonant with Persian policy of the economic and political revival of Yehud, and the role of Jerusalem as the centre of the cult of Yahweh the universal god consistent with Persian religious policy, then we may reasonably suggest that the presentation of Yahweh as aniconic is part of that development whereby the old local deity, probably still worshipped in Jerusalem during the sixth century, becomes identified with the high god of the Persian empire, elsewhere known under the names of

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Marduk and Ahuramazda. The latter, as is known, was worshipped aniconically (as opposed to Anahita). Whether the attempt claimed by Xerxes to suppress daiva-worship42 is in any way connected with a move to reform certain local cults is dubious. But even without it, there is every reason to suppose, given the treatment of Persian kings in the biblical literature, that a tacit recognition of Marduk, Ahuramazda and Yahweh as the same high god was widespread in Judah, and that Second Isaiah gives us a glimpse into the process whereby the creation of the cult of the high god Yahweh was promoted in the temple city of Jerusalem so favoured, it seems, by the Persians.

IV By way of a postscript, we may now return briefly to Morton Smith’s wider interest in things Persian. The supposition of Persian, specifically Zoroastrian influence on Judaism has, as is well known, been suggested many times.43 The idea that Judaism was highly influenced by Zoroastrian doctrines was very popular at the turn of the century, but has become rather less fashionable as Religionsgeschichte has lost respectability. It was first mooted as early as the eighteenth century, and in this century Bousset and Bertholet were its chief advocates.44 A number of scholars currently adhere to this view, but it would be fair to say that mainstream opinion does not favour the view. The claimed areas of influence are well-known, and include angelology, eschatology (including resurrection, judgment, heaven and hell), dualism, creation and, as Boyce claims, purity.45 The obstacle to reaching a conclusion on this claim is the late date of most of the Persian sources. This difficulty is often used to deny or minimize the possibility of influence, but in fact it does no more than guarantee a good deal of doubt about any conclusion either way (for the question of Persian influence on the cult of Yahweh remains open regardless of what the religion of the Achaemenids actually was!). In any case, there are no indisputably earlier Hebrew texts to prove that the ideas just listed obtained in Judah before the Achaemenid period.46 It is inherently unreasonable to assume that Persian religious ideas had no influence at all on the religion of a province whose temple was built, according to its own writers, by Persian decree, and whose religious leaders came to Judah under Persian auspices. It cannot be denied, on the other hand, that in many respects Jewish doctrines differ from Zoroastrian ones. The question must be the extent to which the religion of Judah in the sixth (fifth?) century onwards was shaped according to the principles of Zoroastrianism. And such an evaluation will obviously depend on one’s estimate of the alternative influence – the religion of Judah in the preceding period. That religion, as I have argued elsewhere, can be reconstructed, very partially, by artefactual and other archaeological criteria, or it can be rebuilt from texts whose present shape (at the very least) comes from Persian period Judah. Such considerations make the evaluation of the extent to which the Persian (and Graeco-Roman) religion of Judah was essentially a localized form of

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Zoroastrianism very difficult indeed to assess. Nevertheless, the question is one of fundamental importance to our understanding of the history of religion in general and of Judaism in particular.47 It is not an issue I have sought to address directly in this paper, but any attempt to reconstruct the evolution of the cult of Yahweh, with which this paper does deal, must confront this basic question sooner rather than later.

Notes 1. J. Sawyer, Semantics in Biblical Research: New Methods of Defining Hebrew Words for Salvation (Studies in Biblical Theology 2/24) (London: SCM Press, 1972). 2. J. Sawyer, From Moses to Patmos: New Perspectives in Old Testament Study (London: SPCK, 1977). 3. J. Sawyer, Prophecy and the Biblical Prophets, rev. edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). 4. J. Sawyer, “The ‘Daughter of Zion’ and the ‘Servant of the Lord’ in Isaiah: A Comparison”, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 44 (1989): 89–107. 5. The text may be read in J. B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3rd edn, A. Oppenheim (trans.), 315–16 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969); D. W. Thomas (ed.), Documents from Old Testament Times, T. Fish (trans.) (London: Nelson, 1958), 92. 6. R. Kittel, “Cyrus und Deuterojesaja”, Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 18 (1898): 149ff. 7. H. Gressmann, Der Messias (FRLANT, 19) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1929), 59–60. 8. C. Westermann, Isaiah 40–66 (London: SCMP Press/Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1969), 154, alluding also to Psalm 2 and a ‘number of smaller units’ within the Hebrew Bible. 9. M. Smith, “II Isaiah and the Persians”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 83 (1963): 415–21. 10. “II Isaiah and the Persians”, 415. 11. “II Isaiah and the Persians”, 417. 12. M. Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism (Handbuch der Orientalistik), II, 45 (Leiden: Brill, 1982). 13. The translation is taken from ANET. 14. C. R. Seitz, Zion’s Final Destiny: The Development of the Book of Isaiah – A Reassessment of Isaiah 36–39 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992). 15. Besides Duhm himself (Das Buch Jesaja [HKAT] [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1892]), the list of older commentators includes Georg Ewald (Die Propheten des alten Bundes I [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1867]); K. Marti (Das Buch Jesaja [KHAT] [Tübingen: Mohr, 1900]); G. Hölscher (Die Propheten [Leipzig: J. C. Heinrichs, 1914], 322); C. C. Torrey (The Second Isaiah: A New Interpretation [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1928]); Sigmund Mowinckel (“Die Komposition des Deuterojesanischen Buches”, ZAW 8 [1931]: 87–112, 242–60). 16. Duhm, Das Buch Jesaja, xviii. 17. A. Kapelrud, “Levde Deuterojesaja i Judea?”, Norsk Teologisk Tidskrift 61 (1960): 23–7. 18. J. D. Smart, History and Theology in Second Isaiah: A Commentary on Isaiah 35, 40–66 (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1965). 19. H. Barstad, “Lebte Deuterojesaja in Judäa?” NTT 83 (1982): 77–87.

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20. An analysis of this biblical ideology of the ‘empty land’ can be found in R. P. Carroll, “Textual Strategies and Ideology in the Second Temple Period”, in Second Temple Studies 1: Persian Period (JSOT Sup, 117), P. R. Davies (ed.), 108–24 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991). 21. One exception is H. G. M. Williamson, “First and Last in Isaiah”, in Of Prophets’ Visions and the Wisdom of Sages: Essays in Honour of R. Norman Whybray on his Seventieth Birthday (JSOT Sup, 162), H. A. McKay & D. J. A. Clines (eds), 95–108 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993). In asserting that Second Isaiah has a sixth-century Babylonian setting, yet was composed as an addition to First Isaiah, he finds himself impelled to date the creation of First Isaiah in the pre-exilic period (the inevitable Josianic setting!) and thus to cut a path (cul-de-sac?) in a different direction from that taken by most of his colleagues who see Second Isaiah as an integral part of the developing corpus of Isaiah as a whole – not to mention in defiance of O. Kaiser, who is not cited in this article. 22. E.g. J. Vermeylen, Du prophète Isaïe à l’apocalyptique. Isaïe i–xxxv, miroir d’un demimillénaire d’expérience religieuse en Israël, 2 vols (Etudes bibliques) (Paris: Gabalda, 1977–8); O. Kaiser, Das Buch des Propheten Jesaja: Kapitel 1–12, 5th edn (ATD, 17) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981) (English translation: London: SCM Press/ Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1983). See also the recent work of B. Gosse, who relates the redaction of the entire book of Isaiah to priestly circles, linking the process to elements in both the Psalms and Proverbs (e.g. “Isaïe 1 dans la rédaction du livre d’Isaïe”. ZAW 104 (1992): 52–66. 23. J. M. Vincent, Studien zur literarischen Eigenart und zur geistigen Heimat von Jesaja, Kap. 40–55 (Frankfurt and Bern: Peter Lang, 1977). 24. R. E. Clements, “Thematic Development in Isaiah”, JSOT 31 (1985): 95–113 (110). 25. The recent study by R. G. Kratz, Kyros im Deuterojesaja-Buch. Redaktionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zu Entstehung und Theologie von Jes 40–55 (Forschungen zum Alten Testament, 1) (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1991), divides Grundtext from Erweiterung first in 45:1-7, then in the other Cyrus material (41:1-5; 21-29). The results are applied to an investigation of the growth of 40–55, seen as originally a collection of rîbs, salvationoracles and oracles against the nations, whereby a greater role for Cyrus as world-conquering divine agent develops. The ‘Servant Songs’ and the anti-idol polemic emerge as the product of secondary layers. By contrast, A. Laato, The Servant of Yhwh and Cyrus: A Reinterpretation of the Exilic Messianic Programme in Isaiah 40–55 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1992), takes the view that Isa. 40–55 comprise a literary unit: traditional themes and language of royal ideology, from both Judah and Assyria, inform the ‘Servant Songs’ and are applied to Cyrus. Isa. 40–55 is, on his view, an attempt to adapt an exilic messianic programme to the early post-exilic period, when there was no royal figure. 26. Zion’s Final Destiny, 205–7. 27. See M. Knibb, “The Exile in the Literature of the Intertestamental Period”, Heythrop Journal 18 (1977): 253–72. 28. The name ‘Marduk’ is nowhere mentioned, let alone denounced in the Bible, though present in the name ‘Mordecai’. 29. “Lebte Deuterojesaja in Judäa?”, 82–3. 30. See, for example, A. Kuhrt, “Nabonidus and the Babylonian Priesthood”, in Pagan Priests, Religion and Power in the Ancient World, M. Beard & J. North (eds), 119–55. London: Duckworth, 1990). 31. See, however, A. Kuhrt & S. Sherwin-White, “Xerxes’ Destruction of Babylonian Temples”, in Achaemenid History II: The Greek Sources. Proceedings of the Groningen 1984 Achaemenid History Workshop, H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg & A. Kuhrt (eds), 69–78

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32. 33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

40.

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(Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 1987), who cast doubt on the reliability of the (Greek) accounts of Xerxes’ activities in this respect. H. Barstad, A Way in the Wilderness: the ‘Second Exodus’ in the Message of Second Isaiah (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1989). Barstad allows that one text only, 48:20-22, might link an exit from Babylon with the exodus, though spoken from the perspective of Judah. Yet he is right to point out (as do several other commentators) that the call to ‘flee’ (√xrb) does not suggest a return home, but the avoidance of a catastrophe (so Jer 50:8; 51:6, 45). Perhaps exiled Judaeans are being addressed – but perhaps not. There are perhaps some hints of it, nevertheless. In 52:2-6 Zion is spoken of as ‘captive’; this is followed by a reference to Egypt, then Assyria, suggesting a third, contemporary oppression by Babylon. Shortly afterwards (11-12) comes ‘Depart, depart, go out thence, touch no unclean thing; go out from the midst of her, purify yourselves, you who bear the vessels (weapons?) of the Lord. For you shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go in flight [contra 48:20!], for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rearguard.’ Here the reference to departing, and the use of Nwzpx (elsewhere only referring to the Exodus, Exod. 12:11, Deut 16:2). However, Barstad’s suggestion that the theme is one of holy war ()cy, lk) is worth considering. There is no context of exit from Babylon; at best such an event could only be inferred. Important parallels which Barstad does not cite are Jer. 31:10 (‘Hear the word of the Lord, O nations, and declare it in the coastlands afar off; say, “He who scattered Israel will gather him, and will keep him as a shepherd keeps his flock.”’), Micah 2:12 (‘I will surely gather all of you, O Jacob, I will gather the remnant of Israel; I will set them together like sheep in a fold, like a flock in its pasture, a noisy multitude of men.’) I am not insisting here on a single identity (or any identity) for the Servant, nor on a discrete collection of ‘Servant Songs’. I simply suggest that they suggest that the purposes of Yahweh may be furthered by various types of ‘service’, from suffering to world-domination. For a recent summary of the long debate on the authenticity of the decree ascribed to Cyrus in Ezra (and the rest of the Aramaic ‘sources’), see L. L. Grabbe, Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), I, 32–6 (and the bibliography cited). The most recent authority to argue against the authenticity of Ezra 1:1-4 is J. Briend, in a paper given at the Institut Catholique de Paris on 15 December 1993, who denies that it resembles the form of an official document but reflects rather biblical prophetic idiom. That the dispersion of Jews over the world is still presented as totally the result of forced deportation or exile (the term golah conveys this) shows the power of the biblical myth over modern religious thought. Of course it is partly the result of unwilling and enforced migration, but just as much, especially in the ancient world, was it voluntary and undertaken for economic and other reasons. From the time of the Babylonian deportation onwards, the majority of emigrants have not in fact wanted to return to Judah. We should probably understand the presentation of ‘Israel’ in the books of Joshua to Kings as a refraction of the claims of Jerusalem over Samaria and of Judah’s claim to the title of ‘Israel’. But the real history (by which I do not mean the treatment of Samaria in Nehemiah, which is probably a polemic to explain the priority of Jerusalem) underlying this ideological struggle in the Persian and Hellenistic period remains to be investigated – including when and why the temple on Mt Gerizim was built and how there is such as thing as a ‘Samaritan Pentateuch’. See conveniently Y. Meshorer, Jewish Coins from the Second Temple Period (Tel Aviv: Am Hassefer and Massada, 1967), 36–8 and plate I, coin no. 4, and Ancient Jewish

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41.

42. 43.

44.

45. 46.

47.

Rethinking biblical scholarship Coinage I: Persian Period through Hasmonaeans (New York: Amphora, 1982), 21–8; cf. Grabbe, Judaism I, 71–2. It is probably significant that Ezekiel’s vision (ch. 1) stresses the form of Yhwh as a human (or like a human: the force of the k is uncertain), just as texts from the Hellenistic period also represent him as such, together with the other minor deities who carry out his instructions (cf. Daniel 7 and 8–12 passim). It is possible that in the wake of the aniconic reform Yhwh was conceived as human in form, even if not to be represented (and Gen. 1:27 appears to reflect this perception). But such remarks can only be suggestions until further research is done on the history of the religion of Judah based on principles other than rewriting the Bible. See Boyce, History, II, 173–7. There is a convenient survey in E. Yamauchi, Persia and the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1990), 458–66, though his assessment of the evidence is rather prejudicial; see n. 46 below. W. Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums im späthellenistischen Zeitalter (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1902); A. Bertholet, History of Hebrew Civilization (English translation) (London: Harrap, 1926). Zoroastrians 76–7. As, for example, Yamauchi, Persia and the Bible, 459, tries, by claiming that Genesis 1 and the levitical rules on purity are ‘earlier’. He also claims that there are ‘pre-Isaianic references to angels’ but in this case, as in every other, refrains from citing the texts he is thinking of. These statements are, like the entire book, essentially apologetic and do not contribute to the debate in any serious way. The thesis that Judaean religion in the Persian period represents a fusion of the local cultic traditions and the local deity Yahweh with a high god cult, such as Nabonidus and, later, the Achaemenids promoted, has been advanced by T. L. Thompson in his Early History of the Israelite People from the Written and Archaeological Sources (Leiden: Brill, 1992). I am grateful to Thomas L. Thompson, N. P. Lemche, Diana Edelman, and above all to Lester Grabbe for invaluable advice and criticism in the preparation of this essay.

7 Scenes from the early history of Judaism

Judaism and Judaisms The perception of Judaism in the Second Temple period has undergone a marked change in the last few decades. It is now frequently represented as a pluriform phenomenon; indeed, so much so that it has become commonplace to speak of the existence not only of various forms or types of Judaism but even of several ‘Judaisms’ before rabbinic Judaism emerged as the authorized (though still not the only) form.1 This new profile has emerged from research in different areas. The idea of a single or ‘normative’ Judaism that held the field earlier this century has persisted in some quarters, but has been steadily undermined for several decades. The rediscovery and subsequent re-evaluation of Jewish and early Christian apocalyptic literature that flourished early in this century led to a dichotomy between ‘rabbinic’ and ‘apocalyptic’ Judaism that for a long time absorbed the attention of scholarship, especially a New Testament scholarship that was seeking to define the precise relationship between Jesus, the early Church, and their Jewish background.2 Among Old Testament/Hebrew Bible scholars, the thesis of Plöger, which was reformulated by Hanson, that two streams of Judaism were present from the early part of the ‘postexilic’ period, has been quite influential.3 Both scholars represented the dichotomy as one between ‘theocratic’ and ‘prophetic’ groups or ‘streams’, in which rabbinic Judaism’s supposed emphasis on legalism placed it on the ‘theocratic’ and ‘non-eschatological’ side. It was necessary to this kind of analysis, especially Hanson’s, that the eschatological/ prophetic/apocalyptic stream was peripheral, and that the other element was therefore dominant, sociologically ‘central’ and normative. More recent developments have disposed of this dichotomy. First of all, the relationship between the rabbinic literature and the Juda-ism(s) of the first century CE has been redefined: rabbinic Judaism is now treated by the majority of scholars as a second-century CE phenomenon that cannot be read back into the Second Temple period and which, moreover, as a system of thought and practice, has its own discrete points of origin beyond the Second Temple period.4 There is currently no consensus as to the nature, role or importance of the Pharisees

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– or, indeed, their relationship to rabbis. Second, the Dead Sea Scrolls, whether they are to be integrated into a single sectarian ideology or contain substantial amounts of literature from various sources within Judaism, have widened the range of ideas and practices recognizable as ‘Jewish’.5 The combination of cultic, legal, eschatological and apocalyptic elements in this archive has demonstrated clearly that the Judaism of the period cannot be easily sociologically (or ideologically) divided by means of these categories. Finally, if further evidence of great diversity were needed, the vast amount of so-called pseudepigrapha dating from this period provide a ready store of examples. The outcome of these developments is the now widely shared (though admittedly not unanimous) perception that what is called ‘Judaism’ in the period before the fall of the Second Temple (and in effect a good deal later) was in reality a set of cultural/religious options. Sometimes they overlapped, sometimes they competed, and they ranged from what sociologists might nowadays call ‘civic religion’ to quite exclusive sects. It is no longer possible to maintain unchallenged the notion of a ‘normative’ Judaism in the Second Temple period,6 although there remains a lively debate about what E. P. Sanders has described for the period 63 BCE–66 CE as a ‘common Judaism’.7 The extent of basic practices and, to a lesser extent, beliefs shared by many Jews does not, however, amount to a ‘Judaism’, any more than observing the first day of the week, Christmas and Easter amounts to a Christianity; but the question of common practice will be addressed at the end of this essay. Whether or not ‘common Judaism’ is an appropriate term, the idea of a ‘common denominator’ of Judaism, philosophically as well as historically, needs to be addressed. The replacement of the concept of ‘Judaism’ by the concept of ‘Judaisms’ solves one problem only to create another, perhaps even more fundamental one, namely what it was that made any ‘Judaism’ a Judaism. On this question a good deal is taken for granted in modern (as in older) scholarship, and some disagreement is also evident. The nature of this problem can be illustrated neatly through two recent books on Judaism in the Second Temple period. One is G. Boccaccini’s recent account of what he calls ‘Middle Judaism’,8 which affirms that ‘Judaism is to be seen not as an ideologically homogeneous unit but … as a set of different ideological systems in competition with one another’ (13–14) and which characterizes ‘Judaism’ as a ‘genus’ (18–20). The other is L. H. Schiffman’s history of Second Temple Judaism,9 which states in conformity with the new paradigm that ‘Judaism is not a monolithic phenomenon’, and speaks in the next sentence of ‘all these “Judaisms”’ (1), but which nevertheless prefers to speak thereafter of ‘approaches’ to (one) Judaism that stand ‘in a dynamic and interactive relationship to each other’ (4).10 What, in the case of Boccaccini, is common to these ‘different ideological systems’ that makes them ‘Judaisms’, or, in the case of Schiffman, what is the ‘Judaism’ that all of these interacting manifestations ‘approach?’ Even if ‘Judaism’ is, as Boccaccini says, something of a generic term, the genus itself requires a definition, which is not given. In Boccaccini’s treatment the essential nature of ‘Judaism’ emerges differently, and indeed, only implicitly. At first glance, since the title of his book, Middle Judaism, requires an ‘Early

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Judaism’ of some kind, and since the character of Middle Judaism, according to Boccaccini, is divergence, ‘Early Judaism’ ought to describe some common starting point for that divergence. If an attempt were to be made to identify the contours of that ‘Early Judaism’ that is implied by Boccaccini, one or two hints could be followed: for example, he refers to Ben Sira as ‘reaffirming the centrality of the covenant and the retributive principle’ (80). Although he remarks that Job and Qoheleth challenged this centrally affirmed notion, the word ‘centrally’ looks very much as if it is functioning here rather like ‘normative’, with Job and Qoheleth representing dissenting and marginal viewpoints. Again dealing with Ben Sira, Boccaccini speaks of ‘the postulates of a theology of the covenant being reaffirmed’, defining these postulates as ‘the freedom of human will and the retributionary principle’ (116). Here again there is a hint of a normative ‘Early Judaism’ in the guise of a ‘covenant theology’. But it is nonetheless uncertain whether, despite these remarks, Boccaccini intends to commit himself to a definition of ‘Early Judaism’; it is clear to me both from some of his writings but chiefly from private conversations with him, that he is not prepared to identify any single ‘Early Judaism’;11 if so, then we are left without an account of what ‘Early Judaism’ was, and thus, without a definition of the genus ‘Judaism’, historically speaking, though Boccaccini seems to suggest something rather like Deuteronomism as a ‘central’ feature of it. Schiffman, on the other hand, gives a direct definition of ‘Judaism’: ‘the collective religious, cultural and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people’ (1). This might be interpreted as a tautology, if the word ‘collective’ means no more than ‘sum total’, i.e. ‘whatever Jews do’; but it seems fairly clear that Schiffman means instead some kind of unity, or at least cohesion. His notion of ‘tradition and civilization’ comes into view when he is discussing the penetration into Yehud of ‘Hellenistic cultural values’. He speaks of the ‘rural peasantry’ of Yehud having ‘no intention of abandoning their ancestral way of life for the new cultural symbiosis’ (71). (It is interesting that Schiffman describes this way of life as ‘Hebraic’ rather than ‘Jewish’; he is perhaps trying to avoid tautology here!) Shortly before this, too, he writes of the ‘religious tradition’ that the ‘Hellenizers’ were challenging (68). Finally (98), where he is discussing ‘sectarianism’ he observes that these divergent expressions of Judaism should not be taken as ‘independent Judaisms’ because that term ‘ignores the vast body of commonality which united them around adherence to the law of the Torah’ (98). Here the language is a bit evasive: he does not want to repudiate ‘Judaisms’ entirely, so he adds ‘independent’. He also appears to regard the ‘ancestral way of life’ as centring on the Torah. It seems reasonable, then, to ascribe to Schiffman the view that the various ‘approaches’ to Judaism are versions of a common heritage, whose core is the Torah, and which can be denned over against the ‘Hellenizing’ influences that tried to distort it. This perspective should be seen as justifying the central argument of Schiffman’s book (against Neusner, though this is not explicit) that rabbinic Judaism is continuous with earlier ‘approaches’ to Judaism and deeply rooted in the preceding Jewish tradition. If I am interpreting both Schiffman and Boccaccini correctly, they appear to diverge quite significantly in their assessment of ‘Judaism’. Schiffman has

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replaced ‘normative Judaism’ by ‘collective Judaism’, but the change is hardly more than linguistic. There is in his account a ‘Jewish tradition’ from which various ‘approaches’ developed. Boccaccini’s presentation of ‘Middle Judaism’ as manifold and divergent does not, on the other hand, explain what the various Middle Judaisms diverged from, and in fact leaves one wondering what these often quite different Judaisms could have had in common. But both scholars seem to agree on one thing, namely, a descriptive rather than a prescriptive approach to ‘Judaism(s)’. But there is another difference between the two scholars of some relevance: for Schiffman, Jewish civilization is a matter essentially of the practice of the population. Boccaccini’s agenda, however, is ‘Jewish thought’ rather than a religious system: his ‘Middle Judaism’ is defined by a set of thinkers and writers, not by a culture or a common tradition. It is a ‘Jewish thought’, a cluster of intellectual systems expressed by individual authors. His ‘Judaism’ is constituted by literary relics, and accordingly, he could presumably argue for an ‘Early Judaism’ that similarly was expressed by literary works. But which literary works would be chosen? The biblical literature is hardly reducible to any kind of religious core, or religious system. In the end, then, there is a divergence over the very nature of ‘Judaism’ in these two works, and (as will be argued presently) it is not a divergence that can be left aside. There is a substantive issue here: did Judaism arise and develop as traditional social practice (with the peasants at times to the fore), or as a religious system or systems developed by intellectual reflection? And if we wished to answer ‘both’, we could not avoid asking how the relationship between the two rather different phenomena is to be understood and expressed. There is, then, much of a fundamental nature that needs to be said on the problem of Judaism – not merely what its content was, but what sort of a thing it was in the first place. However desirable according to the canons of logic, neither of these questions can be disposed of in advance of exploring the origins of ‘Judaism’, because only by such an historical investigation can it be discovered what ‘Judaism’ came to be. But our investigation can at least start without a definite a priori conception of what it ought to have been, or what it claimed to have been.

Juda-ism and Judaism As Neusner, Boccaccini and others have demonstrated, by concentrating on the doctrinal and literary aspects of ‘Judaism’ in the last two centuries BCE, a diversity of ideas sufficient to justify the use of the ‘Judaisms’ can easily be exposed. And yet, the replacement of ‘Judaism’ by ‘Judaisms’, rather than resolving the issue of what ‘Judaism’ is, exacerbates it. The plural ‘Judaisms’ requires some definition of ‘Judaism’ in the singular, in order itself to have any meaning. Nevertheless, this does not mean that Schiffman’s programmatic description of ‘Judaism’ as ‘the culture of the Jewish people’ can simply be accepted as valid. This formulation supposes that the ‘Jewish people’ logically precedes ‘Judaism’, whereas many Jews in the ancient world became so by voluntary or compulsory conversion to a religion that previously existed, so that in their case it was adherence to ‘Judaism’

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that made them ‘Jews’. Schiffman’s formulation also means that the origin of Judaism and of the Jewish people are one and the same question. Yet even he does not call the Israelites of the ‘pre-exilic’ period ‘Jews’. But if he had said (as indeed he may even have meant) that ‘Judaism is the culture of the people of Judea’, he would have provided us with a proposition worth exploring. Even if ‘Judaism’ came to embrace many non-Judaeans (in the strict sense), it remains likely that the culture of Yehud/Judea must lie in some way at the origins and early development of ‘Judaism’. In order to avoid tautology and introduce linguistic and historical precision, I shall therefore apply the distinction between ‘Jewish’ and ‘Judaean’. Although in Hebrew (ydwhy) and in Greek (io)udaioi) there is a linguistic distinction between the two meanings, the terms are not synonymous in English, nor in most other modern languages in which Jewish scholarship is conducted; nor, in fact, was it synonymous in the ancient languages either; if Paul called himself a ‘Jew’, he may have understood it to mean ‘Judaean’ in an ethnic sense, but he did not understand it to mean that he came from Judah. To begin, a historical distinction can be made between ‘Judaism’ and ‘Judaism’ by examining the word io)udaioj itself. The term implies a self-conscious cultural and religious identity and appears first several times in 2 Maccabees where, as Schwartz notes, it ‘parallels and contrasts with “Hellenism” (hellenismos) and even “foreignism” (allophylismos)’.12 As Schwartz also rightly notes (13), it is only when such a concept as ‘Judaism’ comes into consciousness, that is, becomes conceptualized, that there is a need argue about what that concept denotes. Up to that moment, it may be a matter either of loyalty to a particular Temple and cult, or residence in Yehud/Judea, or perhaps of membership in a society ethnically defined in some way, or any combination of these. But the conscious ‘-ism’ is a prerequisite, or at the least a symptom of the emergence of Judaism. Indeed, it is also a prerequisite of ‘Juda-ism’ as a concept rather than as an unreflected way of being. Schwartz notes that ‘as long as “being Jewish” [in my terminology, ‘being Judaean’] was basically a matter of place or race, there was no reason to assume that all should agree about belief or practice, any more than all French or all women do’.13 ‘Juda-ism’ and ‘Judaism’ imply the selfconsciousness of a system of belief and/or practice, as opposed to unreflected participation in the culture or cultures of Yehud/Judea. What does this mean? It means that no genus of ‘Judaism’ is logically and historically possible until the emergence of ‘Juda-ism’ as a concept looking for a definition. And Judaism, the idea of a Judaean way of life, does not necessarily entail ‘Judaism’ or ‘Judaisms’, though it implies them insofar as ‘Juda-ism’ comes to be defined in different ways by different Judaeans. To put it as simply as possible, three stages can be posited: a Judaean culture that has not yet been conceptualized and that therefore is not a ‘Juda-ism’; ‘Juda-ism’, which constitutes the culture of Judea as an object of definition, and finally ‘Judaism’ and ‘Judaisms’, according to which ‘Juda-ism’ develops into something more than (but also different from) the ‘culture of Judea’. ‘Judaism’, then, has a prehistory, and without understanding that prehistory no attempt can be made to begin writing the history. All three stages certainly cannot be merged under the single heading of ‘Judaism’ without leaving ‘Judaism’ itself ultimately inexplicable.

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A study of the origins and prehistory of ‘Judaism’ is quite possible along critical and historical lines, so long as the above distinctions are adopted at the outset.14 The origin of Judaism is contained within the history of ‘Juda-ism’, which itself has a moment of conception (in both senses) within the cultural history of Yehud/Judea. Recognizing that Judaism has a beginning, not in the mists of antiquity or in some other inaccessible source, but in historical and cultural events and processes, is an important first step in a historical approach to this religion.15 Despite its stories about itself, Judaism did not begin at a ‘point’, whether with Abraham, Moses or Ezra. The history of Judaism is not the history that Judaism has itself generated. Its characterization of itself as a ‘revealed’ religion,16 as timeless, is a theological claim and not a historical one (as the rabbis understood much better than many modern scholars). Historically, it came into being by means of distinct cultural processes. It will not do to skate over these historical processes by appealing to a ‘tradition’ that cannot be shown. Tradition is a product of a series of discrete developments and innovations that, nevertheless, becomes conceptualized by members of a society and by scholars as implying a repository of an essence that, though modified, does not undergo a change of character. My own view is that as a historical term rather than a purely sociological or theological one, it is virtually useless, and what it claims to represent should be analysed dynamically in such a way as to expose its conception and evolution. Certainly, the implications that the terms carried of some essence that is somehow beyond the particularities of history must be rejected. The various ‘Judaisms’ or ‘approaches to Judaism’ discussed earlier have to be seen as part of the development of Juda-ism and Judaism, not as mere variations on an already established ‘tradition’ whose essence is given in some undefined past. The practical wisdom of a Ben Sira, the mantic wisdom of the followers of the Enoch cult, the beliefs and rites of the Samaritans and the regimented lifestyle of the yahad all have to be fitted into the history of Judaism that needs to be constructed, in which ‘Judaism’ is not a ‘given’ at the outset (nor at the end, for that matter) but something that participates fully in the ever-changing flux of human thought and behaviour.

False origins An account of the origins of Judaism, including its prehistory, needs first of all to clear away a number of assumptions and theories that do not pass critical reflection and yet serve very commonly as agreed starting points. A majority of scholars apparently accepts the view that the production of scriptures and the activities of Ezra and Nehemiah were important early stages in the formation of Judaism. It is first necessary, then, to see how far either of these two factors belongs to the origins of Judaism.

Scriptures The notion that the Jewish scriptures provide an account of the earliest form of Judaism, or form its historical foundation, is unworkable on a number of

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grounds. First, the scriptures do not have their own intrinsic religious system. Their contents cannot be transcribed into a coherent set of beliefs and practices without the aid of an external framework of systematic theology that controls a hermeneutical process, such as is the case with both rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. The possible religious systems that could be derived from the scriptures are numerous. Second, the scriptures cannot have described, or arisen directly from, an actual historical religious system, far less one that can be reconstructed from its contents. Such an assumption, which often seems to be present in scholarly accounts of Judaism, ignores the distinction between a culture and a literature, between a way of life and a set of ideas preserved in the writings of unknown authors, between the literature that became the scriptures of later Judaism and the actual lifestyle of Judaeans. ‘Community of faith’ is one common way of overriding this distinction, implying that all the scriptural writings emerged and were shaped by a society conscious of its own values and desirous of expressing these in writing. Preliterate societies do not work this way. Literary sources, necessarily coming from the educated elite, as the Jewish scriptures do, might in certain restricted cases represent an attempt to prescribe social practice, but literature of the kind found in the Jewish scriptures is not the means by which the literate seek to influence the behaviour of the illiterate, or the rulers the behaviour of the ruled. The religion to be practised by an agrarian society will lie almost entirely outside the area of literary discourse. Peasants who have neither the facility nor the time to read or write books cannot be presumed to have lived according to the doctrines of learned literature; they themselves have left no reliable written record of their beliefs. The historian is only able to deduce their culture from archaeological research. In the Iron Age, the culture of the peasant seems to have been polytheistic, concerned with fertility and based on local and domestic shrines. Its folklore would probably have comprised such things as local legal practices, local stories about ancestors and places, and a collection of proverbial sayings. Even if all the foregoing observations were rejected, it would remain unlikely that peasant religion would have been concerned with torah, purity and the workings of the cult, or speculation on the origin of evil; nor would it have included a national historiographical tradition concentrating on the deeds of kings and prophets. The Jewish scriptures as representative of a Jewish society at any time is historically impossible. Third, not all Judaisms seem to have taken scriptures as their basis. The literature of Enoch, Tobit and Ben Sira does not do so, nor the Mishnah. The Hekhalot literature does not, either; indeed, most of the works translated in Charlesworth’s two-volume Old Testament Pseudepigrapha do not. Moreover, many of the writings that explicitly base themselves on scriptural texts (e.g. the Qumran pesharim) arise from forms of religious belief or cultural behaviour that are minimally represented in the scriptures, such as messianic expectation or the belief that future events can be divined from texts. The scriptures function as an important part of most ancient Judaisms, but they did not, as scriptures, create Judaism. That does not mean that as part of the created culture of Judah they did not play an important role in the cultivation of Juda-ism.

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Fourth, scriptures, as a corpus, and as religiously authoritative, do not necessarily pre-date Second Temple Judaism. Many of these writings are widely accepted as products of the Second Temple period. But the view that torah and prophecy are already firmly established in written (not necessarily final) form by the end of the Babylonian exile needs to be challenged because it is precarious. I have argued elsewhere, as have others17 that the books of the Jewish Bible are not from the Iron Age, or even from the so-called exilic period, but from the Persian and Hellenistic periods. It is fairly widely conceded that all of these books in their present form must have come from this time. I have argued that the society constituted in Yehud in the fifth century BCE onwards generated, in the literature now preserved in the Bible, its own literary tradition, including its history, wisdom teaching, cultic poetry and prophetic corpus. Even accepting this thesis only in part, it has to be conceded that the formation of this later-tobe-biblical literature and the formation of a Judaean culture in the Persian period are contemporary processes, in which the literature is not prior to the culture, but part of its expression. One is unjustified in programmatically setting the biblical literature, or any substantial part of it, as something that Second Temple society inherited rather than something it created. The accumulation of the arguments just given makes it impossible to affirm that as a body of literature, or as individual works, written and rewritten, the writings adopted as the Jewish scriptures articulate an early stage of Judaism; they do not describe a religious system, they are not a blueprint for the religion of Judaism, they are not a description of a culture or expression of a tradition. They are part of the intellectual process by which Juda-ism was articulated, and later, when adopted as a religious scripture, they played a vital role in the definition of most Judaisms, including, eventually, rabbinic Judaism. But from the historical point of view, the relationship between Judaean culture, Judaism, and the scriptures is one of a fascinating and complex interaction. It is truer to say, if that relationship were to be simplified, that Judaism adopted the literature as scripture rather than that the scripture preceded and determined Judaism; the notion of a scripture without a Judaism is nonsensical, and until and unless scriptural, the literature could not play any decisive role in the formation of a ‘Judaism’.

Ezra and Nehemiah A second foundation of Judaism commonly offered by the relevant scholarly works is the work of Nehemiah and Ezra. These two, and especially Ezra, are commonly held to mark the beginning of Judaism; the reading of the law, the (re)making of a covenant, the establishment of social and religious exclusivity represent either the beginning or the rebirth of a religion constituted by an exclusive, ethnically defined, law-bound relationship between a people and its deity. The essential historicity of the events described in the two books has rarely been questioned; the famous exception of C. C. Torrey18 has attracted few supporters. Even Morton Smith abandoned most of his instinctive scepticism at this point and treated the accounts of these books as substantially historical reportage, even though he recognized a good deal of divergence from what he construed as the real state of affairs. Significantly, he suggested that the

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events related to a community within the society, the self-styled ‘children of the Exile’.19 Other scholars have also regarded this early ‘Judaism’ as pertaining to a select group – Weinberg calls it a Burger-Tempel-Gemeinde20 – whose culture was gradually adopted by the society of Yehud as a whole, and indeed, presumably by those in Samaria too, a factor that is given too little attention. Such a process, by which a certain culture and organization spread from an elite group outwards to encompass a society, may well be essentially correct. But the source material, namely the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, presents difficulties for historical reconstruction that have always been recognized. To begin with, there is no general critical consensus about the chronology of the two figures. This is a result of the confusion caused by the books themselves, which keep the two characters largely apart from one another but apparently date Ezra to about the same time as Nehemiah. There appears no way in which these difficulties can be resolved, as long as historical reconstruction remains the primary agenda of scholarship on these books. From the point of view of the historicity of the events described in these books, serious doubts have to be entertained. The stories of Nehemiah and Ezra do not commend themselves as reliably informative; their contradictions and the overt symptoms they bear of editorial attempts to overcome some of these inconsistencies lead one to question how far, as accounts of the origin of ‘postexilic’ Judaean society, they are to be treated as historiographical. The present form of these books points to the original independence of the Ezra and Nehemiah materials, and the connection of the two figures is rather slim. At what point were Ezra and Nehemiah associated? Both Ben Sira and the author of 2 Maccabees know of Nehemiah, but neither mentions Ezra. In the case of Ben Sira, this is an extremely eloquent silence. The only justifiable conclusion from this silence about Ezra is that he remained separate from Nehemiah until the end of the second century BCE at the earliest. Had Ezra and Nehemiah been historically associated, the fact that the literary evidence does not associate them until centuries after their ascribed dates is inexplicable. Certainly, Ezra seems to fall under the greater suspicion, since he is unattested elsewhere until the first century CE. But even in the case of Nehemiah, the enmity expressed towards the Samarians suggests that the book has a secondary theme in denying any legitimacy to these would-be temple builders and may be evidence that the narrative postdates the separation of the Judaean and Samarian Yahwistic communities and the building of a Samaritan temple. Although a firm date for these events cannot be set, recent trends in scholarship suggest that they did not occur until the Hellenistic period.21 In fact, how small or great any historical kernel may be cannot really be assessed: the imprecisions in these books are widely accepted; their historical reliability remains a matter of charitable assumption.22 To speculate endlessly and fruitlessly about the possibilities of events for which there is as yet no other evidence and about the authenticity of ‘official’ documents of which no other copies exist and which we know cannot in any case all be entirely authentic is to strain at gnats while swallowing a camel. Some recent trends in Ezra and Nehemiah studies, however, offer a departure from questions such as the priority of one or, other, the identity of Ezra’s

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lawbook, the nature of the reforms of Nehemiah, or the authenticity of the Aramaic documents. Greater attention is being been paid to their literary and ideological aspects.23 The recent and widely supported challenge to the view that these books belong to the Chronicler’s work has also reopened the question of their purpose. Consequently, attention is being diverted away from the historicity of the details and towards the more promising quest for the historical circumstances that might account for the production of such narratives. If such a new agenda for historical research has yet to become fully explicit, it is surely more productive for the historian of Judaism to accept the clear evidence that these books are far removed from the time they describe and to ask about the function of stories and of characters such as these in such a later period. Indeed, this approach also seems the best way to account for the literary form of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Such an approach might begin with the observation that the two books, or the tales attached to the two characters, claim to describe the origin of Judaism, two stories, which inherently contradict one another by assigning functions to each that undermine the functions of the other, have been flimsily entwined by an editor, and no earlier than the second century BCE. Hence, it appears plausible that competing claims about the origin or the true founder of ‘Judaism’ (and in each case the ‘Judaism’ is differently conceived) have been reconciled editorially, with the happy result not only that these ancient rivals were accommodated into a single and perhaps mutually acceptable legend, but also, unhappily, that modern and so-called critical historians are chasing historical scenarios that never existed. An investigation into these books, then, needs to be first focused on the end of the second century BCE or perhaps later, when a hitherto unknown (to our extant sources) Ezra confronted Nehemiah for the post of founder of Judaism. From here can be explored the subsequent point at which a literary compromise was reached to the satisfaction of both sets of proponents, who thereafter could not deny one without the other. But it can be said that, thereafter, Ezra seems to have been the more popular figure. Perhaps this superiority suggests simply that the ‘Ezraite’ definition of Judaism prevailed, as indeed, it seems to have in the form of rabbinic Judaism, whereas the builder of the walls of Jerusalem under imperial patronage perhaps looked suspiciously like a predecessor of Herod the Great. This historical agenda can be carried further by involving another account of the origins of ‘Judaism’, which has not found its way into the biblical literature, and yet another ‘founder’. It is contained in the Damascus Document (CD), whose date of composition is probably not too far removed from that of the Ezra story.24 According to the Damascus Document, the exilic punishment on Israel led to the restoration of a remnant, to whom the true divine will about sabbaths, feasts and laws was given. While the rest of Israel went astray, this chosen remnant remained to await the divine judgement on Israel and on the Gentiles, anticipating salvation and vindication for themselves.25 The revelation of the law and the foundation of this ‘true Israel’ is credited to a figure known as the ‘Interpreter of the Law’ (hrwth #$rd). The account is different in scope, in literary form and in some details, from both Ezra and Nehemiah. But these differences are mostly attributable to the literary genre in which the story is

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embedded, and to the fact that CD’s ‘Judaism’ is yet again different from that implicitly advanced in either Ezra or Nehemiah. The similarities between the three accounts are even more striking and significant; they presuppose the same story of Israel’s ‘pre-exilic’ past (though the historical narrations of that period have quite different emphases)26 and the exile as punishment for that past. All three accounts, significantly, speak of a covenant with the members of the elect group that is based on a lawgiving, and all three allude to a process of interpretation of that law and deal with issues of holiness and separation from ‘outsiders’ (and indeed from other Judaeans, the ‘people of the land’ or ‘builders of the wall’). In these respects the accounts all reflect a certain common perspective on ‘Judaism’. The Damascus Document seems to belong broadly to the same ideological circle as Jubilees, Enoch and Daniel, which, in addition to other resemblances they share, deny that any ‘restoration’ took place immediately after the end of the ‘exile’ and ignore or belittle the building of a Temple at about that time. These works are datable to the period suggested earlier for the appearance of Ezra as a contender to Nehemiah, and betray a conscious conflict over the matter of the ‘origins’ of Israel. It seems pertinent to recall the theory of Smith that the Nehemiah covenant was, like that of CD, a sectarian one. Rather than understanding the history of Judaism to begin with a firm historical tradition, what is found is a range of competing traditions, clustering around the same period, with only Nehemiah attested before 200 BCE as a builder of Jerusalem (Ben Sira 49:13). The case of Ezra and Nehemiah represents, therefore, a microcosm of the issue outlined earlier about the relationship between scriptures and Judaism: a literary text cannot be taken as a matter of course, whether scriptural or not, in isolation as an historical basis for explaining the origin of Judaism; rather, the context of that literary work must first be found, and in this case the material itself reflects a certain stage in the evolution of Judaism(s). When critically examined, Ezra and Nehemiah presuppose the existence of what they are supposed to be founding and can provide information only about a period much later than the Persian era, contributing to a quite different story about the origins of ‘Judaism’. Regarding ‘Juda-ism’ in the Persian period, however, the self-designation of the colony of Elephantine as ‘Judaeans’ and the preservation of a culture that is both similar to Iron II Judah but which also shows traces of local assimilation in custom and personnel are interesting features revealed in the letters that have been excavated at the site. Since it had been probably founded under the Assyrians, few if any of this military colony were native Judahites or Judaeans. ‘Judaean’ identity is perhaps to be taken as ethnic in the technical sense and not necessarily in the strictly genealogical sense, since an ethnos is a community that assumes an identity that genealogy only expresses. It is likely that if the Elephantine garrison had been originally composed of Judahites, all its members over the succeeding generations, whatever their origin, automatically would have assumed the label and the identity ‘Judaean’, including their choice of cult and of personal names. This is known to have been the case with other military colonies

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in the Hellenistic period. Such cases, if established, provide one example of the spread of ‘Juda-ism’ beyond Judah/Judea, in which the evolution of Judaisms in Judah played a fairly peripheral or at least indirect role. It would accordingly be misleading to speak of the culture of these colonies as a ‘Judaism’ undifferentiated in nature from other ‘Judaisms’. In this paper, however, I cannot even begin to deal with such intriguing cases of ‘Judaism’. I merely wish to underline that other than this archive, which is not even from Judah anyway, very little is known as yet about the culture of native or non-native Judaeans in the fifth century BCE beyond artefactual (including some inscriptional) evidence.27

Scenes from Judah in the Hellenistic period Hecataeus of Abdera From about the beginning of the Hellenistic period (ca. 300 BCE), several references to Judaeans by non-Judaean authors are known. Of these the most interesting, and the most discussed, is that of Hecataeus of Abdera.28 A summary of his accounts of Judaean history and constitution is preserved in the work of the first century BCE plagiarist Diodorus Siculus (40.3);29 a further excerpt from his book ‘written entirely about the Jews’, is preserved in Josephus,30 but the extent of its authenticity remains disputed, and it will not be considered here. According to the preserved testimony, a pestilence in Egypt at some time (Hecataeus gives no chronological clues) prompted the inhabitants to expel certain strangers who practised alien rites; of these deportees, some landed in Greece, but the larger number in Judea, which was then uninhabited. They settled under the leadership of Moses, who founded several cities, including Jerusalem, where he established a temple. He also set up ‘forms of worship and ritual’, laws, and political institutions. He divided the people into twelve tribes, forbade images to be made of their sole deity, and appointed priests, who were to be not only in charge of the cult but also political leaders and judges. Thus, he says, ‘the Jews have never had a king’ but are ruled by a high priest, who enjoys great power and prestige. Moses also instituted a military education and led the people to many conquests against neighbouring tribes, after which he apportioned the land equally, but reserving larger portions for the priests. The sale of land was forbidden, specifically so as to avoid oppression of the poor by the rich through accumulation of land. The people were also enjoined to reproduce. In marriage and burial their customs differed from those of others, though their traditional practices were disturbed under the Persians and Macedonians. The Judaeans’ laws claim to have been words heard by Moses from God. It is immediately apparent that at least superficially this account demonstrates some Hellenistic features. For instance, Moses appears as a typical colony founder. There is also a patently Egyptian legend underlying the account of the origin of the Judaeans in Egypt; In a passage almost certainly reproduced from Hecataeus, Diodorus elsewhere (1.28.1-3) reproduces an Egyptian legend or myth that most of the civilized world came about through colonization from Egypt: thus Belus led colonists to Babylon, Danaus to Greece, and others to

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Colchis and Judea.31 A few elements of Hecataeus account are also traceable in Manetho’s stories preserved in Josephus, notably the name Moses and the immediate connection between the departure from Egypt and the foundation of Jerusalem. But how accurately might this account reflect (a) the profile of Judaean culture at the end of the fourth century and (b) the account of their history that the Judaean themselves had? It has been widely surmised that Hecataeus must have had some Judaean information, whether from Judaeans living in Egypt or from those in Judea itself. A study of this account by D. Mendels has proposed that Hecataeus’ account is fairly accurately preserved and reflects Judaean ideas emanating from priestly circles from his own time.32 Mendels’s contention is based on correspondences between the account and the situation described in Ezra and Nehemiah, which he takes to be a reliable portrait of Yehud in the Persian period. Although I have earlier argued against this view, many of Doron’s observations and arguments nevertheless suggest that Hecataeus was fairly closely reflecting the state of affairs in Judea during his own time. Mendels notes that the Judaeans are said to have occupied a land that was ‘utterly uninhabited’ after leaving Egypt. This, as he notes, conflicts with the Pentateuchal tradition, but is in accordance with the ideology represented in Nehemiah and Ezra that maintains that the returnees from exile had come to an empty land. He cites Nehemiah 2–4 and Judith 5:19; but as noted by R. P. Carroll33 the ideology of the ‘empty land’ appears even more emphatically in Jeremiah 32 and Leviticus 25–27 and so can be seen as a perception outside the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. These books, on the contrary, do not stress the concept of the ‘empty land’; indeed, in them we meet the ‘people of the land’ on several occasions, though in an entirely negative sense. Hecataeus’ view, then, is reflected in some biblical texts, giving support to Mendels’s contention that Hecataeus reports a perspective of the land as having been ‘empty’ from the point of view of the immigrants who would have been the ancestors of his informants.34 As for Moses having founded Jerusalem and other cities, Mendels suggests that because of the authority of Moses during the Persian period and particularly the authority of his ‘law’, Hecataeus may have understood Moses also to have been a city-founder. To support his explanation, he claims that the role of David is underplayed in Ezra–Nehemiah. Rather than focusing on unconvincing parallels in Ezra–Nehemiah, there are other divergences from what became the canonical version of Judaean history that need to be considered together and not piecemeal. Moses is credited with conquest, with the creation of twelve tribes and with the division of land. These activities correspond in some measure to the story in the book of Joshua, where, however, another hero is credited with conquest and land allotment. The statement that the Judaeans had always been ruled by priests and never by a king is blatantly contradicted by the canonical history as well as by Ezra–Nehemiah, where references are made to David (Ezra 3:10), a king of Israel who built the temple (Ezra 5:11), Solomon (by name, Neh 13:26), and Israelite ‘kings’ generally (Ezra 4:20 – in a letter from the Persian king that many scholars consider authentic; 9:7 and Neh 9:32). This is an interesting state of affairs: Hecataeus’ source did not seem to know of the

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books of Samuel, Kings or Chronicles but did know of some stories that appear in Joshua, though differently ascribed. He also knows of something like an ‘Exodus’. It cannot be insisted that the reliability of Hecataeus’ information is simply erratic. Since there is no evidence to the contrary, this account may just as well preserve a precious insight into the early stages of the formation of the Pentateuchal tradition, a national history of the people of Judea in the process of being written (and created), and – most curious of all – clustering around a hero with an undoubtedly Egyptian name. Was Hecataeus garbling the book of Exodus, or the other way round? Since neither story appears to accord with the archaeologically derived historical knowledge we have at present, this will not be an easy question to answer!35 Quite apart from our lack of ability to date the formation of the Pentateuchal tradition, some degree of credence ought to be given to Hecataeus’ account simply because he appears to be quite accurate in other details regarding the Judaeans’ account of their history. He knows that the laws governing cult and ritual are ascribed to Moses and even that Moses is claimed to have heard them from God. In calling this cult monotheistic and aniconic he is presumably also observing correctly. He even knows that Moses appointed judges (see Numbers 11)! He is also correct, as far as is known, about the high priest being the ruler of the Judaeans, and his observations about land tenure fit with what most scholars believe was the practice – at least during the monarchic period. Of course, the sorts of changes in land tenure often posited for this earlier period are just as plausibly set in the Persian and Hellenistic periods, so that some, or even all of the ‘prophetic’ material in the Bible protesting at the accumulation of land must at least be considered as possibly emanating from this later period.36 Finally, there is the matter of military education. The widespread use of Jews as mercenaries is well-known from the Assyrian period (when the Elephantine colony was set up) to the Hellenistic period. The likelihood that Judaeans were trained in the military arts is quite high, in view of this and of their initial success during the Maccabean wars, when a quite effective militia seems to have been organized. In any case a military aspect to Judaean culture is probably betrayed in its literature, in the elaboration not only of the military victories in Joshua and the ‘holy war’ ideology of Deuteronomy and Deuteronomistic writings, but also in the depiction of the Israelites in the wilderness as a nation-army. That material strongly suggests a self-image of Judaeans as a nation of warriors. Indeed, one title given to their deity, tw)bc hwhy, probably means ‘Yahweh of armies’ (whether astral or earthly is not very important: probably both). The account of the Judaeans by Hecataeus furnishes an extremely important, and certainly undervalued, source of information about the culture, and especially about the historiographical activity of Judah at the dawn of the Hellenistic era. If Hecataeus is as reliable in all matters as he is in those that can be tested, his work reflects ‘Juda-ism’ at a relatively early stage of formation; the Temple cult, priesthood and a distinctive land tenure system have been established, but only a rudimentary history has yet been formed to explain who these ‘Judaeans’ are, where they came from, and how they got their deity. Between the beginning

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of the third century and its end, when Ben Sira wrote his scroll, the extent to which practices, beliefs and historiography have developed can perhaps be traced. The more or less contemporary descriptions by Theophrastus, Clearchus and Megasthenes37 should also be consulted. Rather than an ancient Judaean ‘tradition’, a dynamic process of ideological formation is revealed, the end product of which is a conscious ‘Juda-ism’, a developed identity of which any Jerusalem literatus can be proud. No doubt the impact that the Ptolemaic administration made, notably in respect of economic exploitation, urban development and bureaucratic intrusion even into the rural areas, facilitated that development by presenting Judaeans with a culture in the face of which their own identity needed to be more strongly defined and articulated.

Ben Sira Ben Sira (end of third century BCE) is a key figure in the evolution of Judaism, both because of the time and place he occupies and also because of the influence his writings had in different kinds of Judaism. A wisdom teacher whose work belongs to a well-known Near Eastern genre,38 he was also devoted to the cult and the priesthood of Jerusalem. He was aware of a Mosaic lawbook, the ‘book of the covenant of the Most High God’ and also spoke of ‘the law’ (torah), which will be considered presently. He was familiar with the cultural world of Hellenism, which he did not oppose, though his writings demonstrate above all a fusion of the traditional ethos of wisdom with something more specific, a Jewish, or Judaean culture.39 The kernel of Ben Sira’s culture, his ‘Juda-ism’, is the temple and priesthood itself; but Ben Sira shows himself familiar with native Judaean literature, which he not only has read, but can imitate and which he intends to augment through his own writing (see 24:30-31). He attests to a Judaean education, whose curriculum, whatever Greek elements it contains, includes native literature in the ‘national tongue’ of Hebrew. This literature and its contents he has absorbed and is passing on as ‘wisdom’. Thus, by his time Judah must have possessed a substantial body of writing in its own language (whether a living language or a book language), which continued to be taught and learned but which also was extended. How did this literature come about, and what was Ben Sira’s knowledge of it and attitude to it? The Judaean literature that became in the end ‘scripture’ was hardly originally conceived for this purpose, not least because there was no concept of ‘scripture’ nor was there yet a religious system that would require it. This literature has achieved the status it has in Ben Sira’s time by being adopted by the educated as part of a Judaean school curriculum,40 and this status is consistent with the aims of its creation. For behind its production and development lie two distinct motives: one was to generate a cultural and social identity, the other to refine that identity and oppose it to the identities that other cultures and peoples were furnishing for themselves. If the matrix for the initial formation of this literature is the Persian period, it has to be allowed that it was the Hellenistic matrix that expanded, shaped and refined that corpus. The outcome of this activity is the production of a ‘tradition’ of a similar kind to the ‘highland tradition’ of Scotland or the druidic

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fantasies of Welsh bards, or indeed, the stories and ritual of the United States of America known as Thanksgiving. The invention of an identity, which these stories and rituals accomplish, is part of the creation of nationhood. Its creation and sustenance are often left in the care of the wise men, the elders, such as Ben Sira.41 It must be made clear that Ben Sira does not know the five books that now constitute the Pentateuch in their now canonical form. He is more knowledgeable about Adam and Enoch than the modern reader of Genesis would be; he may well be ignorant of Genesis 2–3 and seems not to have heard of either Ezra or of Joseph’s exploits in Egypt. It is as clear that Ben Sira does not regard this literature as what might now be termed ‘scripture’. He does not cite proof texts from the literature, nor does he exegete passages from it.42 Commentators generally assume, nevertheless, that he identifies ‘wisdom’ with ‘law’ and by ‘law’ (torah) they assume he means the five books of Moses, the earliest body of Jewish scriptures. This is unlikely. First, Ben Sira’s discourse lays primacy on wisdom, with which the ‘fear of the Lord’ is more or less synonymous. Nowhere does he write that this wisdom is coextensive with a prescribed body of writing, not even his own. The ‘law which Moses commanded’ is probably only Deuteronomy (in some form), since (1) this book is the only book that claims to be ‘commanded’ by Moses,43 (2) Ben Sira’s use of the terms ‘words’ and ‘commandments’ (1:26; 2:15) echo particularly the vocabulary of Deuteronomy;44 (3) the phrase ‘law that Moses commanded’ is in parallel to ‘book of the covenant of the Most High’ (24:23), which, as a single ‘book’ comprising a covenant, can only be Deuteronomy. This conclusion would suggest in turn that the Mosaic ‘constitution’ to which Hecataeus referred was also some form of Deuteronomy. It is true that Ben Sira regards the words of Moses as commandments of God, just as Hecataeus wrote that the Judaeans regarded the words of Moses as heard from God. But, does he regard Moses’ writings as from God in an essentially different way from his own words, which, according to the same discourse (24:30-32) are ‘prophecy’ and elsewhere are ‘wisdom’ and will be a ‘bequest to future generations’ (24:33) just as Moses’ words were (24:23)?45 ‘Torah’, as Ben Sira uses the term generally, is no more the summation of divine wisdom than are Ben Sira’s own words. True, he uses the word torah to refer to the ‘law of Moses’, but more often he means not some concrete Mosaic lawbook but something more abstract. Thus, for instance, in 41:8 he condemns those who have ‘forsaken the min of the Most High God’. ‘Wisdom’ and ‘law’ are for Ben Sira synonymous, where ‘law’ approximates to the Stoic meaning of nomos and wisdom consists in discovering and living according to it. Thus, Ben Sira’s use of torah equates it with wisdom, and that torah can be concretely manifested in a particular form of teaching, be it his own or the book of the covenant by Moses. But it does not seem that torah has yet acquired the sense of a technical term for a collection of writings. In 39:1 both senses are used: the ‘law of the Most High’ that Ben Sira’s scribe studies is the goal of all wisdom and embraces not only the contents of many writings but also empirically learned laws, while the ‘law of the Lord’s covenant’ (39:8) is specifically a book, and – as suggested earlier – most probably Deuteronomy.

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It is incorrect, then, to find in Ben Sira a Jewish teacher who already sees the study of scripture and its interpretation as the essence of his Judaism. The effect of this misunderstanding is to retroject a later development onto an earlier period and thus to ensure that this development, the emergence of the category of ‘scripture’, will be interpreted out of its proper historical context. For Ben Sira, the demarcation between ‘scripture’ and ‘interpretation’ is not yet a valid one; his understanding of ‘Judaism’ is that it is the fullest expression of divine wisdom, the fulfilment of the ‘law of the Most High God’. This includes due worship in the cult, respect for the ‘covenant’ that is expressed in the law of God as given to Moses, and study of prophecy and wisdom. His own words do not stand over against a ‘scripture’ as an interpretation of them, but alongside the Judaean literature, as part of it. Ben Sira’s Judaism is not a revealed religion in Schiffman’s sense: ‘… based on the belief that God revealed himself to the Jewish people through the agency of Moses’. If that were so, Ben Sira’s book would not be, as it so obviously is, a genuine book of wisdom, such as the Wisdom of Solomon is not. A comparison of the two writings is highly instructive. Ben Sira’s Juda-ism draws on the Mosaic covenant book for its political manifesto and on other writings for a cultural resource; but the cult and priesthood are emphasized as the symbol of national unity and identity, and wisdom is the basis of its ethic. Ben Sira’s torah is not the torah of later Judaism, as many modern scholars (including both Schiffman and Boccaccini) suppose.

Juda-ism in conflict The importance of the Maccabean revolt for the definitive transition from Judaism (as arguably found in Ben Sira) to Judaism is that it took the form of a religious war. Whatever the root causes of that conflict, which were at least as much economic and political as religious, Antiochus IV was seen by the Judaeans who resisted him to have attacked the foundation of Juda-ism, its major symbols of national identity, the high priesthood (in which he was not, of course, the initiator), and the cult. Inevitably, a cultural conflict became a religious war: 1 Maccabees represents the protagonists as Israel on the one hand and the ‘nations’ on the other, and narrates this conflict as a replay of the time of the Judges. Similarly, the author offers the Maccabees to the readers as descendants, literal and spiritual, of the zealously xenophobic and anti-idolater Phinehas. Nevertheless, this nationalistic and xenophobic level is not the only one that 1 Maccabees, an account of the war according to a keen promoter of the Hasmonean dynasty, sustains. Alongside the conflict between Israel and the nations is set another, between ‘apostates’ and ‘pious’ within Judea. Naturally, righteousness lies with the victors: a dispassionate assessment is no more to be expected than historical accuracy in an historian of this period. Some apparently fundamental elements of Judaism emerge here as key issues in the religious struggle – circumcision, diet, sabbath, holy books. These are identified as the features upon which Antiochus’ attempts to eliminate Judaean culture were focused (apart from the obvious case of the Temple cult). These practices (presumably fundamental to Schiflman’s ‘traditional Judaism’) become

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dominant characteristics of Judaism in due course. Yet, do they constitute that clearly recognizable Judaism which, according to 1 Maccabees, Antiochus recognized and tried to destroy, which ‘hellenizers’ tried to reform, and which others defended with their lives? Was the Maccabean war about the preservation of such practices, as definitions of an agreed ‘Judaism?’ It needs to be recognized that for some Judaeans these practices were apparently not fundamental. At the same time, the historical circumstances, social context and ideological agenda of the Jewish accounts of the Maccabean war must be borne in mind. The most cherished prize of the victor is the right to define the history of the past, and all the Jewish sources for the Maccabean period (Daniel excepted) stem from well after the establishment of the Hasmonean dynasty, thus reflecting what were subsequently understood or perhaps decreed to have been the issues involved in the defence of ‘Judaism’. In other words, the Judaism that was successfully ‘defended’ was the Judaism of the victors, not simply ‘the people of Judah’ but those among the people of Judah who fought and won (or, perhaps, those who led those who fought and won). Those things that Judaeans came to revere as the trophies of independence are represented as the issues over which the struggle was joined. Circumcision, dietary customs, sabbath observance and holy books emerged as issues that for the Hasmoneans, or their various supporters, especially denned Judaism; but the possible status of these practices before the Maccabean period needs to be considered. Was it the case that the victors stood for a clearly accepted definition of Judaism, or did their success enable them to impose the definition that they wished? How much of the unity of ‘Judaism’ that the Hasmoneans achieved is to be retrojected? Given the nature of the evidence, this question cannot be answered very fully, yet it is important that it be asked, if only to avoid being ensnared as historians in the propaganda of the past and being misled into endorsing a view of Judaism that is not critically based. Circumcision is prominent as a custom which, according to 1 Maccabees, some Jews tried to conceal, others abandoned, and the Maccabees enforced. The custom was practised among many people in the Levant during all preceding periods, and while a distinguishing feature of being Judaean, it was not entirely distinctive; certainly it cannot always have been an outward sign of the covenant of god and people that it later came to be.46 What caused it to become a central feature of Juda-ism, and the major religious symbol of all Judaisms – and when?47 As an initial attempt to answer, it can be noted that circumcision became a mark of difference only when publicly shown, and that it was in the Hellenistic city (as 1 Maccabees implies), and particularly the gymnasium, the bath and the stadium, i.e. where nudity was the norm, that the circumstances arose in which the traditional habit of circumcision might become an issue of loyalty or identity. Nudity was normal and natural among Greeks, and circumcision was seen by them as a deformity. Judaeans who encountered this cultural contradiction (hardly a majority, one supposes) could become for the first time self-conscious about circumcision, regarding it a cultural aberration and not a norm. They could react in one of two ways: give it up or cover it up on the one hand, or reassert it with pride as a mark of their own culture. If circumcision had been universally perceived as an inalienable mark of Judaism, then those

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who abandoned or neglected it were abandoning Judaism. However, it is not clear that circumcision was so perceived by Judaeans collectively before the Maccabean conflict. More significantly, perhaps, those Judaeans who resented Hellenism, and especially its culture of nudity, could oblige other Judaeans to resist it by enforcing circumcision upon them. Circumcision would thus serve as both an expression of anti-Hellenism and also a measure against it. These observations make possible the following sketch of the history of circumcision: even before the Hellenistic period it was a common practice among Judaeans and several other neighbouring peoples. With the advent of Hellenism, the custom was being mocked, and in time it was being broken by those who accepted the view that it was deformity. The practice of nakedness in Jerusalem itself exacerbated the situation and led to certain groups not only exalting circumcision as the highest mark of ‘Juda-ism’ (because of its degree of incompatibility with features of Hellenism) but, when open conflict broke out, forcibly imposing circumcision on other Judaeans. Simultaneously, circumcision might have been an obvious target of Antiochus IV (though I suspect that the measure banning it may have been invented by the Judaean historians). With the establishment of the Hasmonean dynasty, whose support included some groups who were strongly pro-circumcision, the new rulers enforced the old custom of circumcision, extended it to conquered neighbours and enabled it to emerge in various Judaisms as the most important index of all, the mark of Jewish membership of the covenant. It is difficult to see any other context for the emergence of circumcision into such prominence, and the dating of this development, if correct, is extremely important in reassessing the origin and early development of Judaism.

Official Judaism Let us now return to the question of scriptures. Here I find helpful the analysis by Neusner of the distinction between what he calls ‘testament’ and ‘torah’.48 ‘Testament’ refers to a religious system, or a text or texts, that does not have a potential for engendering a total religious system, whereas torah does. Neusner traces the evolution from testament to torah in the case of the scriptures over the period 500 BCE–700 CE. However, a similar kind of distinction might be made on a more limited scale between a testament that belongs with a certain group and operates only within a restricted social and temporal boundary, and a body of texts that is given the status of a national symbol, and thus acquires the possibility of becoming the nucleus of a religious system that embraces ‘Israel’ in a fuller sense than any testament. In an interesting study of the Temple Scroll,49 Wayne O. McCready has argued that this document represents an attempt at creating the ‘Jewish worldview’ for which many looked to them. Hence, while the Hasmoneans created the matrix for a ‘Jewish worldview’ through their establishment of a politically united and independent ‘Israel’, they did not in fact fulfil this potential, and it was left to ‘sectarian’ groups to articulate that vision, and inscribe the ‘torah’. In large measure I think that Neusner’s distinction and McCready’s application of it to a specific case, clarify the issue of scripture as it developed in the Hasmonean period. Neusner is correct in insisting that the development

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of a fully fledged ‘torah’ does not occur until much later than our period, but McCready is probably correct to see in what we call ‘sectarian’ circles the earliest attempts to define a torah, albeit for a group that consciously set itself against the political and religious authorities of their time. The Temple Scroll itself, and the attempt which is evident in the Damascus Document to organize a community around the laws of ‘scripture’ show, nevertheless, that a certain body of literature was taken by all Judaeans as a benchmark, against which all systems had to be judged. It is, I suggest, in the aftermath of the Maccabean revolt that dissenting groups can attack each other on the basis of their understanding and application of an agreed set of texts. The establishment of such a bench mark is not indicative of a consensus which somehow emerged among Judaeans, but the outcome of a political and social act of uniformity, by which I mean one politically imposed (though not against dissent) and accepted by all Judaeans. The attempts to turn the writings thus declared definitive of ‘Judaism’ into torahs of ‘Judaism’ can first be seen in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but do not succeed in defining a total and abiding religious system until the completion of the social and intellectual architecture which the rabbis undertook. The process by which ‘literature’ became ‘scripture’ can be documented. We have seen that the ‘book of the law of Moses’ had apparently achieved such a status by the time of Ben Sira (and probably earlier), and there were other books that he read, knew and venerated. But Josephus is able to say in the first century CE that ‘we have twenty-two books’; we know that the Jews had many more, including some used by Josephus himself. Is he inventing a convenient alphabetic figure, or is some authority responsible for deciding how many, and what they are? If so, from what time does such an authority exist, and why would such a decision require to be made? 2 Macc 2:13 narrates that Judas collected the ‘scattered books’ just as Nehemiah had once done ‘to found his library’; according to 1 Macc 1:56-57 they had been targets for destruction by Antiochus. It is a reasonable inference from this text that the Hasmoneans set up a library of books which were regarded as ‘holy’; such a policy both matched the library-building of other cities (e.g. Alexandria, Rhodes) in the Hellenistic world (and so again we find Judaism developing in imitation of Hellenism!) but also of establishing a literary archive capable of functioning as a cultural canon, and indeed, as it turned out, a religious canon too; culture and religion are rather hard to distinguish in the Hasmonean period, because the cultivation of a religious norm was unavoidable. The restoration of independence under a new priestly and later royal dynasty claiming to have been chosen by God as deliverers and having succeeded with the help of groups with different aims could not help making decisions about religious and cultural norms. Parties devoted to different definitions of ‘Judaism’ had to be appeased, controlled, or marginalized; it appears that several changes of allegiance took place as those called ‘Sadducees’ and ‘Pharisees’ came in and out of favour with the rulers, while other groups, represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls, removed themselves from the established cult and priesthood and either preserved or invented other versions of ‘Judaism’. While ‘Judaism’ had been defined in the mid-second century by external conflict, now it was being defined by internal conflict, with the

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possibility of an ‘authorized’ form of practice because of political independence. Thus, specific Temple rites, festivals, calendar, taxes, laws – everything ‘Jewish’ was a matter of political decision and could not be avoided. The Hasmoneans were forced to make explicit a ‘Judaism’ – and indeed, they apparently exported it to their neighbours in the process of political expansion in Palestine. From this moment on, there are not only several ‘Judaisms’ but authorized and unauthorized Judaisms, central and peripheral Judaisms, priestly and non-priestly Judaisms, because of the identification of certain religious practice with the state. The banner under which the Maccabees and their allies had fought was now enshrined at the centre of their political ideology – ‘Judaism’.

‘Common Judaism’ In a recent volume devoted to Judaism, E. P. Sanders has attempted to express its essential uniformity for the period of Roman administration.50 He describes what he calls ‘common Judaism’, a picture based largely on the Mishnah and Josephus and thus inevitably representing certain beliefs and practices at the expense of others. His attempt to find what was common in Judaism, what made Judaism ‘Judaism’, is nevertheless an important contribution to the problem discussed above and intended, it seems, as a further challenge to those scholars who wish to find different competing Judaisms in the first century CE. Unlike his earlier volume on Palestinian Judaism,51 this book attempts to grasp the realia rather than the theory of Judaism, and Sanders plausibly suggests the Temple as a practical and symbolic expression of ‘Judaism’ for many people during the period of Roman administration, including the reign of Herod. This exercise is marred only by the inclusion of a chapter on ‘common theology’, which attempts to explore what the ‘common Jew’ thought when performing the ‘common acts’. The more a scholar addresses the texts, the products of the literate, the further away one moves from the ‘common Jew’ and the more divergence is found. It is precisely in practice that convergence is most readily encountered, but precisely because conformity of practice obscures and relegates disparity of belief; it does not exhibit conformity of belief. Insofar as Sanders claims a fairly wide degree of conformity in practice among Palestinian Jews in (mainly) the first century CE, he is probably correct. I have suggested that this conformity was imposed as part of the reconstruction of an independent Judah. The Temple cult is in any case one of the oldest and most important ingredients of ‘Judaism’ and capable in most cases of retaining loyalty in practice regardless of philosophical differences. It also must not be forgotten that under the Romans, including under Herod the Great, political circumstances may have been such as to encourage both greater loyalty to the Temple itself and greater divergence of philosophy corresponding to different perceptions of Jewish identity and aspirations under imperial rule. How far Judaeans expressed their resistance violently during this period is disputed.52 Whatever the overt political manifestations, assertion of sovereignty under direct foreign rule is likely to have taken the form of increased attachment to national symbols, of which the Temple was the most obvious. The examples of popular loyalty to the Temple and its cult are many (as Sanders

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points out). Ironically, they confirm Herod the Great’s policy, as a Roman client, of rebuilding and enlarging the Temple. Thereby Herod aimed to consolidate the cultural unity and the pacificity of his Judaean subjects, just as by his displays of munificence outside his territories, he sought to consolidate an empire-wide ‘Judaism’ as a secure and respected philosophy within the Hellenistic culture of its environment and to bind the Judaean ethnos outside Judea to its Palestinian ‘homeland’ and its ‘king’. Virtually all of the elements of Sanders’s ‘common Judaism’ gain their rationale from the Temple. This increased fervour for the Temple carried through a process that can be observed from the beginning of the current quest. The Temple cult had long been a central feature of Judaean life, but perhaps only in the 160s BCE did it become explicitly a symbol of resistance to Hellenism and a focus for the raising of Juda-ism to consciousness, in opposition to those who would readily diminish its status and in the last resort bring it to ruin. By the first century CE, it was now the central and uniting symbol for every form of Judaism, including the Diaspora. The symbols of the Temple – holiness, agricultural festivals, tithing, priesthood, divine presence, atonement – became so pervasive that its removal in 70 CE necessitated the creation of a Judaism based on those symbols. It will be for another essay to argue that adherence to min was not an alternative to the Temple cult, but a supplement to and extension of it.

Conclusions My suggestion in this paper has been that the emergence of Judaism can be traced by a series of discrete historical developments and was characterized by distinct phases, beginning with the formation of cultural habits and customs, then the cultivation of those as a distinct way of life in opposition to ‘Hellenism’ and finally, as a set of competing and ever more religious definitions of that culture. The catalyst for the last development was the religious character that the ‘Maccabean revolt’ was given and the subsequent embroiling of the Hasmoneans in religious (not exclusively cultic) matters through their adoption of a religious ideology in support of their bid for power, their assumption of the high priesthood, and the lobbying of groups with whom they had been obliged to associate in their bid for power. Juda-ism, by which I mean the culture that all those who called themselves Judaeans adopted as their mark of identity, increasingly took on the form of a religion. The picture I have sketched is rather simplified, both because of the paucity of the evidence and also because of the scope of the discussion. I have, in any case, been attempting not to rewrite single-handedly a new history of Judaism, but to establish the thesis that it ought to be approached by certain methods and using certain kinds of evidence. I have also ignored non-Palestinian Judaism. Outside Palestine, Judaism assumed varied forms, such as those that Hellenistic associations and societies took, or as a philosophical system that absorbed Stoic, Platonic, Pythagorean and Epicurean metaphysics and ethics. (Nor do I mean to imply that these developments were exclusively non-Palestinian.) But the

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Temple cult in Jerusalem remained the one uniting force, later to be replaced by other systems, in which its symbolism was retained or displaced, such as the rabbinic law: yet this process was gradual, and it must be remembered that other Jewish temples existed in the Hellenistic period in Elephantine, Leontopolis, ‘Araq el-Emir, Gerizim and Cyrenaica, some of which may have outlasted the one in Jerusalem. Of the elements in Judaism that have been overemphasized by Christian scholarship, scripture is the most prominent. Only among certain kinds of Judaism (Christianity, some writers of Dead Sea Scrolls, the Alexandrian allegorists, probably other non-Palestinian members of the Jewish ethnos), did the Jewish literature serve important dogmatic and philosophical purposes. Rabbinic Judaism embraced it only in the second century CE as a canonical expression of Judaism. In the end, the emergence of Judaism in all its forms is a topic of immense scope and complexity. It appears for the most part to have come to assume the form of a religion (more properly, ‘religions’), though it had roots that spread more widely, and never, until this day, has it been adequate to define Judaism exclusively as a religion. The elements that formed and defined it – cult, culture, nationalism, Hellenism, reaction to Hellenism, political independence, loss of Temple, the imposition of the fiscus iudaicus which required Judaism to be defined in a way that was not previously necessary, and Christianity, first as a sect, later as imperial power – all these factors can to a greater or lesser extent be mapped as influences on the history of Judaism. Such a history of Judaism, which is not merely a history of Jewish writings or of Jewish thought but a cultural history, can be written, but the more the variety is probed the less can any single essence of ‘Judaism’ be grasped. In the twentieth century, Judaism can be found as a religious denomination in the USA, in the Yeshiva, in the Eastern European htetl, in various forms of Zionism (social, religious and imperialist), as a nation-state, or as a recognizable and influential sub-culture in Hollywood or New York. ‘Judaism’ remains to this day an idea, or a cluster of ideas, worked out in forms that are sometimes related and sometime not. To say that Judaism came into existence as an idea and has remained such is an overstatement, but perhaps a useful antidote to the many accounts of it that assume it to be much simpler or restricted a phenomenon than it was, or indeed that it still is.

Notes 1. It is important to bear in mind that the Judaisms that preceded the emergence of rabbinic Judaism were not obliterated but persisted; indeed, they continued in some cases to influence the development of Judaism (e.g. Gnosticism, Hekhalot literature, Kabbalah, and Hasidism). 2. Especially influential on a whole generation was the thesis of E. Käsemann that Christian theology derived from ‘apocalyptic’ Judaism; see “The Beginnings of Christian Theology” (English translation), Journal for Theology and Church 6 (1969): 17–46; J. J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination (New York: Crossroad, 1984), is subtitled An Introduction to the Jewish Matrix of Christianity. 3. O. Plöger, Theocracy and Eschatology (trans. from German) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968);

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4.

5.

6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

Rethinking biblical scholarship P. D. Hanson, The Dawn of Apocalyptic (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1975). For a survey and critique of this view, see my “The Social World of Apocalyptic Writings”, in The World of Ancient Israel, R. E. Clements (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1989), 251–71. I refer in particular to the work of Jacob Neusner, who adopted the terminology of ‘Judaisms’ partly as a consequence of his conclusion that rabbinic Judaism, the ‘Judaism of the Two Torahs’ that came into being during the first two centuries of the Common Era had no single precursor. He has also sought to compare and contrast some features of these Judaisms. See e.g. his essay, and the others, in W. S. Green, (ed.), Judaisms and their Messiahs in the Beginning of Christianity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987). For an account of the use and abuse of rabbinic material in the study of first-century Judaism, see E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (London: SCM Press, 1977), 33–75. In contrast to the situation twenty years ago in Qumran scholarship, there exists no consensus on this point at present. For the purposes of this essay, whether the Scrolls express one or more Judaisms is not important, though it is universally conceded that the range of ideas present in the Scrolls can hardly be the exclusive property of one sect, whatever sect it might have been (and here there now is no agreement, either). It should be acknowledged that there remains some dissent. Among the few who have contested this view are H. Maccoby, but his premises and methods of argumentation have induced little scholarly confidence in, or assent to, his conclusions. See his Revolution in Judea: Jesus and the Jewish Resistance, 2nd edn (New York: Taplinger, 1980). See also the recent debate between C. A. Evans, “‘Mishna and Messiah’ in Context: Some Comments on Jacob Neusner’s Proposals”, JBL 112 (1993): 267–89 and J. Neusner, “The Mishna in Philosophical Context and Out of Canonical Bounds”, JBL 112 (1993): 291–304. G. Boccaccini, Middle Judaism: Jewish Thought 300 BCE to 200 CE (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg-Fortress, 1991). L. H. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition: A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV, 1991). The irony of this choice of term is probably unintentional: ‘Approaches to Ancient Judaism’ was Neusner’s title for a series of books that he and others edited and wrote. Boccaccini’s ‘postulates’ of free will and retribution, which for him characterize ‘covenant theology’, both lie just as obviously at the heart of the ideology of ancient Near Eastern wisdom writing generally and are reflected in the book of Proverbs. Yet Proverbs has no ‘covenant’ concept. Why does Boccaccini then think that Ben Sira, as a wisdom teacher, is echoing Deuteronomistic ideas rather than the basic premises of wisdom teaching? Behind his interpretation of Ben Sira might be suspected the common assumption that the earliest form of Judaism was some kind of ‘biblical religion’. D. Schwartz, Studies in the Jewish Background of Christianity (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1992), 11. See also M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 2 vols (London: SCM Press, 1974), 95–7. Schwartz, Studies, 13. It is clear from these remarks that I would regard Hengel’s Judaism and Hellenism to be conceptually inadequate in respect of what he calls ‘Judaism’, which he nowhere defines as he does ‘Hellenism’. On the other hand, his work opens the way towards treating ‘Judaism’ (even ‘Juda-ism’) as a product of ‘Hellenism’. I am unhappy with the description ‘religion’ but let the reader take this in its widest possible sense. ‘Judaism is fundamentally a revealed religion’, in Schiffman, From Text to Tradition, 17.

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17. I am here drawing on the perspective outlined in my In Search of ‘Ancient Israel’ (JSOT Sup, 148) (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992), esp. 94–161; see also N. P. Lemche, “The Old Testament – a Hellenistic Book?”, SJOT 55 (1992): 81–101 for a more radical position. 18. C. C. Torrey, Ezra Studies (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1910). 19. M. Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics that Shaped the Old Testament (New York: University of Columbia Press, 1971); see also, however, his “The Dead Sea Sect in Relation to Ancient Judaism”, NTS 7 (1961): 347–60 for an early perspective on the early ‘sectarian’ character of Judaism. 20. See the convenient collection of J. Weinberg’s essays in his The Citizen Temple Community (JSOT Sup, 151) (Sheffield: JSOT, 1992) and the further discussion in P. R. Davies, Second Temple Studies 1: Persian Period (JSOT Sup, 151) (Sheffield: JSOT, 1991). 21. See the discussion and bibliography in J. D. Purvis, “The Samaritans and Judaism”, in Early Judaism and its Modern Interpreters, R. A. Kraft & G. W. E. Nickelsburg (eds), 81–98 (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress/Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1986). 22. I am here consciously advancing beyond my own remarks in In Search of ‘Ancient Israel’, 75–93 and esp. 86, where my use of the Nehemiah-Ezra material was criticized for failing to meet the critical standards I was demanding of others. I hope that my approach here comes closer to those standards. 23. See e.g. T. C. Eskenazi, In an Age of Prose: A Literary Approach to Ezra-Nehemiah (SBLMS 36) (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1988); D. J. A. Clines, “The Perils of Autobiography”, in What Does Eve Do To Help? and Other Readerly Questions to the Old Testament (JSOT Sup, 94), 124–64 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1990); J. C. VanderKam, “EzraNehemiah or Ezra and Nehemiah?”, in Priest, Prophets and Scribes: Essays on the Formation and Heritage of Second Temple Judaism in Honour of Joseph Blenkinsopp (JSOT Sup, 149), E. Ulrich et al. (eds), 55–75 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1992); D. Kraemer, “On the Relationship of the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah”, JSOT 59 (1993): 73–92. 24. CD and ‘Damascus Document’, strictly speaking, refer to the medieval manuscripts of a text known to have originated in the same way as many of the Qumran texts. Unfortunately, it is impossible to reconstruct with certainty any supposedly ‘original form’ from the Qumran fragments, despite assertions to the contrary. Much of the Qumran material simply does not overlap. For a survey of the Q material and its readings, see M. Broshi (ed.), The Damascus Document Reconsidered (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1992). 25. For fuller discussion, see my The Damascus Covenant (JSOT Sup, 25), 56–104 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1982). 26. Nehemiah 9; CD 2.14-3.12. 27. K. Hoglund’s Achaemenid Imperial Administration in Syria-Palestine and the Missions of Ezra and Nehemiah (SBLDS 125) (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1992) is an excellent study of the period, except for its assumption that the stories of Ezra and Nehemiah are historically reliable. It also suffers from an agenda based on the biblical narratives. The Elephantine garrison, as far as their archive shows, wished to rebuild their temple to Yaho/u, to which end they sent letters first to the sons of the governor of Samaria, then to the governor of Judah. They venerated other gods and goddesses and apparently did not know of Passover (contrary to what is often asserted). 28. There is a convenient summary of the literature and issues in L. L. Grabbe, Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian, 2 vols (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), I, 173; for this particular account, see 216–18. Text, translation and discussion are in M. Stern (ed.), Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, 3 vols (Jerusalem: Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974), 1.20–35; further discussion in Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism

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29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

Rethinking biblical scholarship 1.255–6; 2.169 and E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, G. Vermes, F. Millar & M. Goodman (eds), 3 vols, rev. edn (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986), 3.1.671–7. The ascription by Diodorus (or by Photius? Diodorus’ text is preserved in Photius’ Bibliotheca) of these comments to Hecataeus of Miletus (ca. 500 BCE) is generally taken as an error. Contra Apionem I, 183–204; see Stern, Greek and Latin Authors: 1.35–44, who takes it as basically authentic, as does the revised edition of Schürer. For the text and translation, see Stern, Greek and Latin Authors, 1.169. D. Mendels, “Hecataeus of Abdera and a Jewish ‘patrios politeia”’, ZAW 95 (1983): 96–110. R. P. Carroll, “Textual Strategies and Ideology”, in Second Temple Studies I: Persian Period (JSOT Sup, 151), P. R. Davies (ed.), 108–24 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992). The argument could be pressed further: such an attitude points to a strongly imperialistic or at least colonial mentality on the part of the immigrants and strengthens the suspicion that they were not conscious of being (and perhaps were not in reality) of the same stock and nationality as those who lived in the land being colonized. The strenuous efforts of the writer of Isaiah 40–55 to persuade the Judaeans that the newcomers really were ‘daughters of Zion’ suggests that the indigenous inhabitants (specifically, their hitherto ruling classes) were not convinced of shared roots with the new immigrants, either. Deuteronomy, after all, has the Moses who has led the Israelites out of Egypt legislating for the constitution of the people. Does Moses’ death belong in the original Deuteronomy, or is it introduced when that book is inserted into the larger historiographical context? An original form of Deuteronomy could easily be reconstructed on the basis of Hecataeus’ information. For a detailed analysis of the relevant prophetic texts, though in the context of very conventional datings, see most recently R. Kessler, Staat und Gesellschaft im vorexilischen Juda. Vom 8. Jahrhundert bis zum Exil (VTSup 47) (Leiden: Brill, 1992). The implications of land tenure for the development of Judaean society in the Second Temple period are discussed by H. Kreissig, Die sozialokonomische Situation im Juda zur Achamenidenzeit (Schriften zur Geschichte und Kultur des alten Orients 7) (Berlin: Akademie, 1973); H. Kippenberg, Religion und Klassenbildung im antiken Judäa (SUNT 14) (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978). Theophrastus (ca. 370–285 BCE) describes Judaeans as philosophers, performing burnt offerings, looking at the stars while praying, and fasting. Clearchus (early third century), like Theophrastus, classes the Judaeans as ‘philosophers’ and traces their origin to India; Megasthenes, too (ca. 300) associates the Judaean philosophers with India (anticipating Max Weber?). In this section I am developing some of the material to be found in my In Search of ‘Ancient Israel’, 134–54; conversely, some matters receive a fuller treatment there than they do here. The traditional ethos of wisdom I take to be empirical, non-nationalistic, ethical and thoroughly represented by the writer of Qohelet. Indeed, a study of Jewish philosophy might well start with this text, perhaps the oldest Judaean philosophical text that exists. Qoheleth does not deny the traditional wisdom dualism between wise and foolish, but he does deny that these are synonymous with the religious categories of righteous and wicked. In a fuller study it would have been possible to analyse his ideas for evidence of a growing awareness of a development towards a religious rationalizing of wisdom, possibly one of the deepest and earliest roots of what would emerge as ‘Judaism’. But this must await another study.

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40. On the Jewish school, see Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, I. 76–83. 41. On the production of history in connection with ‘nationhood’ and its cultural roots and implications, see J. Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983). 42. ‘Ben Sira hat in seinem Buch weder ein zusammenhangendes Stuck des A.T. ausgelegt, noch hat er beabsichtigt, ein Glaubensbekenntnis umfassender Art abzulegen. Er hat die Schriftstellen und biblischen Redewendungen einfach für seine Gedanken verwendet … Ben Sira eine Schriftauslegung befolgt hat, die einem griechisch geschulten Leser verständlich war’ (T. Middendorp, Die Stellung Jesu Ben Siras zwischen Judentum und Hellenismus [Leiden: Brill, 1973], 90–91). An interesting case is 3:1-6, where Ben Sira exhorts children to honour their father and mother; he even says that it is the Lord’s will. Yet he represents this as his own advice, and does not say that this is a divine written commandment. The ‘commandments’ (1:26) and ‘words’ (2:15) are not synonymous with scripture. 43. The phrase, including the words that follow, is probably a quotation from Deut 33:4. 44. See also 42:2: ‘do not be ashamed of the law and covenant of the Most High’, a hendiadys referring to the Mosaic lawbook. It is one of a list of things of which not to be ashamed, however. 45. I cannot help but think of 2 Tim 3:16; possibly ‘all scripture/literature is divinely inspired, etc.’ refers there to a distinct body of writings – but does the author here exclude his own work? If so, he was subsequently proved wrong! 46. The evidence from the Bible is intriguing and worthy of a detailed study. Deuteronomy and Jeremiah contain the expression ‘circumcision of the heart’, a Deuteronomistic topos. A further Deuteronomistic (?) text. Josh 5:2, contains an account of a circumcision of all Israelites after crossing the Jordan. Although Josh 4:2 ascribes to this operation some importance, circumcision is not connected with any covenant ceremony nor given any religious rationale. Exod 4:26 provides an aetiology of some sort, which continues to defy explanation, though it has suggested to some commentators that circumcision was thought to be connected with marriage and that failure to circumcize might cause divine retribution. The key text is Gen 17:10-14, where circumcision is named as a mark of the covenant. Unfortunately, this passage cannot be dated, and so the process of connection between circumcision and covenant remains obscure. 47. According to the fifth-century Herodotus, ‘the Phoenicians and Syrians in Palestine themselves confess having learned it from the Egyptians’ (2.104.3); see the text and discussion in Stern, Greek and Latin Authors, 1.1–3. This does not have to be a true claim; the report confirms, however, that the custom was followed in the Levant and not regarded as a peculiarly Judaean phenomenon by outsiders. 48. J. Neusner, Testament to Torah (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1988). 49. W. O. McCready, “Sectarian Separation and Exclusion – the Temple Scroll: A Case for Wholistic Religious Claims”, in Origins and Method: Towards a New Understanding of Judaism and Christianity – Essays in Honour of John C. Hurd (JSNT Sup 86), B. H. McLean (ed.), 360–79 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993). 50. E. P. Sanders, Judaism, Practice and Belief 63 BCE–66 CE (London: SCM/Philadelphia, PA: Trinity International, 1992). 51. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (London: SCM Press, 1977). 52. See, for example, D. M. Rhoads, Israel in Revolution, 6–74 CE: A Political History Based on the Writings of Josephus (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1976); R. A. Horsley, Jesus and the Spiral of Violence: Popular Jewish Resistance in Roman Palestine (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1987); M. D. Goodman, The Ruling Class of Judaea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

8 Josiah and the law book

The most important decision in the history of Israelite religion is made with a dating of an essential part of Deuteronomy to the time of Josiah.

(Rainer Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, I, 199) The remarkable narrative about Josiah in the DtrH has proved to be a pivotal text in biblical scholarship and has shaped the entire discipline of Hebrew Bible. It provides the fundamental linchpin by which modern critical scholarship reconstructs the development of Israelite/Judean religion and the compositional history of much of the biblical literature.

(Marvin Sweeney, King Josiah of Judah: The Lost Messiah of Israel, 5) Über Alter und Herkunft des Dt sind die Akten jedenfalls nicht geschlossen.

(Otto Kaiser, Einleitung, in das AT, 124) What we can’t show, we don’t know.

(Jacob Neusner, passim)

Josiah’s ambitions The various historical questions surrounding Josiah have been very thoroughly covered elsewhere in this volume, and my own contribution is conceived largely as a methodological one, in which I shall engage with two of my colleagues in the Seminar. My starting point is Nadav Na’aman’s study on the politics of the kingdom of Judah under Josiah (Na’aman 1991, rep. 1992), which offers a very fine critique of scholarship on the reign of Josiah, summarized as follows. The first part of Na’aman’s study argues that the town lists of Judah and Benjamin in Joshua 15 and 18 reflect, despite some editorial enhancement, the situation in seventh-century Judah. The second part deals with the chronology of the decline of Assyrian power, often thought to have occurred suddenly in the early part of Josiah’s reign, prompting a policy of Judaean expansion over adjacent territory. Na’aman shows this proposed scenario to be unlikely; on the contrary, the Assyrians seem to have ceded control over Palestine in a more or

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less orderly way to Egypt, so that the Judaean king had little or no opportunity for the exercise of political independence; in short, there was no ‘power vacuum’. In connection with the death of Josiah, Na’aman argues that Necho marched through Palestine (rather than sailing his army to a Phoenician port, the more usual procedure) not to do battle with Babylonia but in order to receive the pledge of loyalty from the local kings that required to be renewed on the accession of a new sovereign pharaoh. Noting that nothing is said in 2 Kings of a battle with Josiah, Na’aman deduces that Josiah died not in battle but by assassination or execution for some reason, possibly a suspicion of disloyalty on Necho’s part; thus Josiah’s visit to Megiddo may have been in response to a summons to pledge his loyalty personally before the new pharaoh.What might have provoked Josiah’s execution? Although Na’aman allows that effective control of Palestine passed to Egypt as Assyrian power declined, Josiah might nevertheless have enjoyed (or felt he had) some freedom to ‘unify’ and ‘crystallise’ (41) his kingdom, while the efforts of the Egyptians were, as usual, concentrated on the coastal and valley districts. Only a limited expansion of borders, however, could have been even contemplated, let alone achieved; no grand design for extensive territorial gains. This reconstruction makes sense of a death that otherwise, as Miller and Hayes (1986: 402) remark ‘remains a mystery’. While 2 Kings 23:29 possibly hints at military confrontation in its use of wt)rql and its comment wydb( whbkryw, (chariot and, perhaps ‘soldiers’), military confrontation is not explicitly mentioned; and )rq does not necessarily mean ‘meet in battle’, nor are Mydb( necessarily ‘soldiers’. Nor is the chariot an inappropriate way to transport a royal corpse even in peacetime. The account of Josiah’s death is tantalizingly vague, even mysterious – and perhaps deliberately so. At any rate, the hint of a military defeat allows 2 Chron. 35:20-24 to show the pious king dying of battle-wounds in Jerusalem, in turn encouraging most modern scholars to conclude that Josiah went into battle, even though it leaves them puzzled over the motives for such a suicidal venture.1 Even if Na’aman is not correct over Josiah’s manner of death, his analysis of the political situation is well-grounded in the evidence. The often-asserted expansion of Judah under Josiah did not, and could not, take place. Statements such as ‘He [Josiah] attempted to restore the kingdom or empire of David in all detail’ (Cross 1973: 283) Na’aman dismisses as ‘built on shaky foundations’; there are, he says (44), ‘no grounds for the assumption that Josiah attempted to conquer the entire north and to impose his reforms throughout the territory of Palestine’ – a conclusion already anticipated by a few earlier historians.2 There remains, however, some apparent epigraphic evidence to the contrary in letters from Arad and Meṣad Ḥashavyahu. Arad ostraca 1–18, dated to the reign of Josiah or his successor, belong to a collection sent to Eliashib, a military commander, and most give instructions for the provisioning of troops. However, these instructions are not necessarily evidence of Judaean military resurgence or of Judaean refortification of Arad. Under Egyptian jurisdiction Josiah would have been permitted or required to take responsibility for providing garrisons (Greeks, ‘Kittim’, are especially mentioned) and agricultural workers in adjacent

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areas, following the practice reflected much earlier in the Amarna correspondence. From Meṣad Ḥashavyahu the complaint from a worker (possibly from the time of Josiah or his successor) points rather to Judaeans obliged to work in the vicinity of the fortress (see Davies 1991: 76–7, 11–16; for a convenient discussion, Smelik 1991: 93–115). The evidence of these ostraca is entirely consistent with known Egyptian practice during its periods of rule over Palestine and does not contradict Na’aman’s reconstruction. The conclusion of Na’aman’s arguments is that ‘The picture of Josiah’s reign, as reflected in this discussion, is far removed from the description of those years as reflected in the book of Kings, and no less distant from the sketch of his period presented in modern historiography’ (Na’aman 1992: 55). This points to a not unfamiliar state of affairs; a misleading biblical portrait further distorted by the speculations of biblical scholarship; in this case the thesis of a golden period of Josian Wiederaufbau. That portrait has to be redrawn – but not just in respect of territorial ambition or achievement, but also for other aspects of his reign. The presentation of Josiah in 2 Kings is, then, misleading, and modern scholars have often magnified the distortion. But let us not be too arrogant about this; it can be extremely easy to fall back on seemingly innocent biblical details as historical data. Thus, Na’aman himself reports at the beginning of his essay what he says we know about Josiah: that he succeeded Amon, ‘who had been murdered by his courtiers; the rebellion was quashed and the conspirators executed; Josiah was crowned at the age of 8 and was supported by his mother and by those circles which had ensured his accession’; Josiah then ‘assumed full authority only upon reaching maturity’ (Na’aman 1992: 3). But compare the text of 2 Kings, where the support of Josiah’s mother is not mentioned: merely her name is given. And as for when Josiah assumed ‘full authority’ – we are told only that he issued an order at the age of 18. So here too Na’aman is drawn into saying things about Josiah that we do not really know, however minor these details may be! The value of a regular seminar of historians is that we can alert each other to our lapses, ‘keep each other honest’, as far as we can. More, rather than less, scepticism is needed if we are interested in historical knowledge, as distinct from scriptural testimony.

Josiah’s ‘reform’ I now wish to pick up Na’aman’s baton and run a little further with it. Does the account of Josiah’s reform also belong to the idealization evident in respect of his territorial ambition? In modern scholarship, Josiah’s assumed policy of expanding a newly independent Judah into territory formerly of the kingdom of Israel is founded, after all, in the report of his religious reform; or, the other way round, the reform is commonly explained as part of his measures to signal, or consolidate, his political independence. But if that independence could never have been achieved, only at best a modest acquisition of territory beyond the Judaean border, then the modern explanation given for Josiah’s reform does not hold. Indeed, we are left unclear as to what it was intended to achieve. Religious

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reforms at the beginning of a king’s reign are not uncommon: they serve to commend the new monarch to his subjects and deity. But this reform was not undertaken until well into his reign. The account in 2 Kings does not in fact portray Josiah as expanding his territory; it takes his control over the erstwhile kingdom of Israel for granted, conveniently erasing (from the time of Hezekiah onwards) any hint of Assyrian domination. Na’aman has suggested that Josiah could not have been portrayed as subservient to Assyria because he was a just king, as Hezekiah before him. This is plausible, and both Hezekiah (2 Kings 18) and Josiah are credited with a religious reform; but, according to the scheme of 2 Kings, any good king following a bad king would have to undertake religious reform, and freedom from Assyrian influence is required to make this plausible. Given this theo-logic, whether either king actually did perform the Deuteronomistic requirement is really not easy to affirm. The historical reality of Hezekiah’s resistance – as debated in an earlier seminar (Grabbe 2003) – is that he lost most of his territory and paid off Sennacherib with a large fortune. The mere fact that Jerusalem was not taken and that the Assyrian king departed has permitted Hezekiah to be accorded the rank of a righteous king. The case of Josiah is more interesting. What qualified him for the same status? Was it his ‘heroic’ death? Or was it, indeed, some seemingly pious act? Was Josiah credited with a reform because his status required it, or was his status prompted by some Deuteronomistically approved deed that he accomplished? I shall try and arrive at an answer, if only provisionally. The reform story falls into three episodes: the discovery and verification of the law book, followed by the covenant (22:3–23:3); and the destruction of religious objects and places (23:4-20). A third episode (23:21-24), comprising the celebration of the Passover and removal of certain religious practitioners, refers again to the law book. Whether the second episode is intrinsically connected to the first is unclear; the literary structure of 2 Kings 22–23 remains disputed and there is a possibility either that the law book motif was inserted into a reform narrative or a reform narrative developed after a story of the discovery of a law book (see Lohfink 1985). It should also be noted that Josiah’s reforming activities are confined to Judah and its immediate environs, notably Bethel – with the exception of a single brief notice about the territory of Samaria (2 Kings 23.19). What other evidence have we for either? We should begin (as have many previous scholars) by seeking allusions to a reform or echoes of it (or lack of either), in other biblical texts. Then the nature of the law book itself requires analysis.

The impact of Josiah’s reform There seems little hint of any reform in other biblical literature that might be assigned to the period, for instance the books of Jeremiah or Zephaniah. Albertz (1994: 200) points to Jer. 8.7-8, suggesting a written law in the hands of priests. But this text does not mention any reform. He also mentions Jer. 22:15, 31:2-6 and 44:18 as offering some support for the idea of a ‘climate of reform’. But

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there is nothing clear or direct in the book – whose hero is a contemporary of Josiah and which has received substantial Deuteronomic editing – that a major religious reform has taken place. Sweeney (2001: 129–313) has more recently analysed a wider range of prophetic texts (Zephaniah, Nahum, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Hosea, Amos, Micah and Habakkuk), concluding that ‘Prophets who were contemporary with Josiah actively addressed aspects of his reform program and frequently point to aspects that are not evident in the DtrH account of his reign’ (310). Space does not, unfortunately, permit a detailed appraisal of Sweeney’s lengthy discussion. But those texts that he cites in support pointing to the centrality of Jerusalem hardly indicate unambiguously the time of Josiah rather than a later period; several texts are said to refer to aspects of the reform not mentioned in 2 Kings (and so cannot in fact corroborate it!); and several other texts are said to have provided legitimation for the reforms, including the re-unification of the divided kingdoms, but do not necessarily presuppose it. Having assessed Sweeney’s evidence and arguments, I have not found any convincing reference to a reform as described in 2 Kings 22–23, and very little that suggests any religious reform at all at this time, with one important exception, to which I shall return presently – and which does not involve a law book. I maintain, then, that we do not have any text that, in the absence of 2 Kings 22–23, would lead us to suggest a religious reform. This must be required of any independent corroboration. A few texts might refer to such a thing, if it had happened, but do not entail it having happened). In short, Sweeney’s arguments (the fullest panoply yet assembled) depend on the assumption that there was a reform, and do not provide adequate evidence that there was one. Such absence is significant if not conclusive.3 This conclusion brings us, then, to the question of the law book. As is well known, De Wette can be credited with having bequeathed to us the realization that Josiah’s law book was the book of Deuteronomy, or some form of it. This identification provided him with a vital key to detaching the law from the Mosaic origins of Judaism, and thus to developing a critical reconstruction of the history of Israel’s and Judah’s religion. (It is, however, worth recalling that de Wette regarded D as the latest of the Pentateuchal sources, and that his identification of the law book as Deuteronomy has not been universally accepted to the present.4) Yet it takes no genius to see that the identification of Deuteronomy with the Josianic law book is precisely what the author of 2 Kings 22 intends. The language and ideology of the framework of 2 Kings is Deuteronomistic, and even before Noth’s theory of the ‘Deuteronomistic History’ it could have been realized that any Deuteronomistic account of the finding of a law book would present that law book as Deuteronomy (rather than, say, Leviticus or the ‘Covenant Code’ of Exodus). The writer of the law book story wishes to make it clear that in the days of the kings of Judah, the scroll of Deuteronomy, which had been lost temporarily, was recovered and used as the basis of a religious reform, and with the full authority of a Davidic king, no less. Albertz’s comment that ‘… it is only possible to assess Josiah’s cultic reform more precisely when the identity of the law book which provided its basis has been established’ (198–9) misses the point. We know what the law book of the story was: but we

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do not know if the story of its ‘discovery’ (or some modern rationalization, like a deliberate planting of the scroll soon after composition) is true! Our question now is: is a seventh-century origin (or perhaps earlier) for Deuteronomy likely? Is it a plausible Josian law book?

Dating the law book The method of dating Deuteronomy has to proceed entirely on internal evidence, interpreted in the light of what little we know of the history of Judah, its society and its religion, during the entire period in which Deuteronomy may have been written, which includes the monarchic period, the exilic period and the Second Temple period. For simplicity I will assume ben Sira’s early second-century reference to the ‘scroll of the covenant of El Elyon, the law that Moses commanded us’ (24:23) as the terminus ad quem. In asking about the date of Deuteronomy, I am not trying to reopen a debate: that debate has never stopped – as the quotation from Kaiser at the top of this essay shows (for an excellent account of the history of discussion, see Lohfink 1985). Obviously a brief discussion paper cannot cover the range of themes and topics in Deuteronomy that would need to be addressed in order to arrive at a sound theory. The following represent a small selection of the most significant topics. Before commencing, it is important to accept that many parts of the book may have originated at a time different from the law collection itself. The first introduction (1:1-4:40) and the final chapters 27–34 are widely understood as arising from a subsequent editing process; we must therefore not seek to date the presumed ‘law-book’ on the basis of any material in these chapters. I shall also exclude the second introduction in 4:44–11:32 and concentrate only on the legal material, chs 12–26. In this core legal material (for convenience I shall treat it as a ‘document’) we find a sketch of a society that reflects some historical circumstances but is essentially utopian, and in some parts impractical. Its utopian character is expressed through a fictional past setting in which the utopia remains a future possibility: when ‘Israel’ comes into ‘the land Yahweh your god is giving you as a possession’ (12:1; 15:4, etc.). The key question for its dating is: what purpose does such a document serve, and in what kind of historical and social context would its definition of ‘Israel’ have any meaning or impact? These questions will be considered (very briefly) with respect to the definition of ‘Israel’, the ‘nations’, the ‘covenant’, the role and function of the king, and the centralization of the cult.

The definition of ‘Israel’ In the legal core of Deuteronomy, ‘Israel’ designates a society, and its members are called l)r#&y-ynb. What this ‘Israel’ consists of is not specified in much detail. The double mention of the ‘tribe’ of Levi might indicate a tribal structure for the whole, but no other ‘tribe’, or set of tribes, is mentioned, nor does a tribal

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structure have any organizational role. The repeated mention of ‘the land’ implies a territorial dimension to ‘Israel’, and the acquisition of this land is by military conquest (19:1; 20:16). The laws concerning the king (ch. 17) also imply a territorial state. Yet (see below), the role of the monarch is in fact virtually ceremonial. Deuteronomy’s ‘Israel’ is scarcely historical. In the monarchic period, there existed two kingdoms, one called ‘Judah’ and the other sometimes known as ‘Israel’. The results of recent Iron Age archaeology in central Palestine strongly suggest that the areas later represented by the two kingdoms underwent separate settlement. The biblical claim that they were united under David and Solomon (and a few years under Rehoboam) is equally without any archaeological support, and indeed, there are strong indications to the contrary (see Finkelstein & Silberman 2001 for an overview and archaeological reconstruction). The notion of this ‘Israel’ acquiring the land through conquest and annihilation of the previous occupants is also utopian; indeed, the presentation of ‘Israel’ as coming from outside the land contradicts the archaeological evidence, which can reveal no non-indigenous population element in central Palestine in the centuries prior to the establishment of the two kingdoms (the Philistines did not settle in the highlands). But utopias have a function; it is no good dismissing them as ‘fiction’, as if that resolved the most important question. In what historical context does such a utopian ‘Israel’ (something larger than Judah) have a role? The notion that Josiah wished to reunite Judah and the erstwhile kingdom of Israel has been discussed already; it is highly improbable, but a previously united ‘Israel’ is also improbable. In the kingdom of Israel itself, before 722 BCE, such an ambition might be entertained – and indeed many scholars have considered Deuteronomy to be an originally Israelite document, perhaps brought south in the wake of Samaria’s destruction. But, apart from other considerations that exclude this (see below), such a theory does not explain the discovery and adoption of this document in late seventh-century Judah. How and to what effect could Josiah’s Judah be represented in this ‘Israel’? Indeed, even if Deuteronomy’s origin lay in the kingdom of Israel, on what basis would Judah call itself by that name?

The ‘nations’ The legal section of Deuteronomy refers to ‘Canaanites’ once, in 20:17 (‘Canaan’ occurs only once in the whole book, in 32:49). But there are many references to ‘the nations’, which fall into two categories. In 14:2, 15:6, 17:4, 18.9, 14 and 26:19 the phrase refers to all other nations, undifferentiated. ‘Israel’ is to be quite distinct from these, creating the dichotomy Israel/nations that still persists in our modern use of the term ‘gentiles’. The second category is ‘the nations that you will dispossess’: these are characterized as (a) occupying the land that ‘Israel’ has been promised and will take over, and (b) practising religious customs that are abhorrent to Yahweh and that ‘Israel’ is not to imitate. Let us concentrate on the nations dispossessed. These are specified as seven in Deut. 7:1 and 20:17 (‘Girgashites’ is missing, probably accidentally, from

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20.17) and are to be destroyed, along with their culture. What kind of social and political background gives rise to this notion of two nations of entirely different cultures in the same space, one indigenous, the other immigrant? Is this a historical reality or, again, a utopian one? That nation and culture are synonymous is an important principle in Deuteronomy, for ‘Israel’ itself is defined by its culture – specifically its covenant-determined religion. ‘Canaanite is as Canaanite does’ we might say; and the same for ‘Israel’. While it can be argued that some cultural difference existed between population elements in early Iron Age Palestine – for instance, between highland farmers and those living under a city-state regime – the stark animosity towards the Canaanite ‘nations’ that Deuteronomy betrays probably does not belong to Iron Age history, because the kingdom of Israel (if not Judah) was evidently composed of several population elements, among whom there was a widely shared set of religious practices. Religious persecution, let alone genocide, as ordained by Deuteronomy, thus translates into civil war, which monarchs and ruling elites on the whole do not seek to provoke. Certainly, religion can be used to promote chauvinistic sentiments and practices, which can aid a monarch; but Deuteronomy’s remedy would be disastrous for a monarchic state. Even if we translate ‘nations of Canaan’ into ‘enemies of the royal cult’, Deuteronomy’s ideology appears over-enthusiastic. What, precisely, would a call to wage war on ‘Canaanites’ achieve – even supposing one could identify a ‘Canaanite’ in the first place? Deuteronomy’s ‘war’ is of course, not physical or even military but ideological: the framers of the document do not intend that ‘Canaanites’ shall be wiped out. But the issue might well be of rightful ownership of the land, of membership of ‘Israel’, of proper worship of the deity; and it might involve conflict between indigenous and immigrant populations. Such a context can be postulated in the history of Judah. But not for the seventh century.

The ‘covenant’ Garbini (2003: 65) makes the point that the notion of a covenant between deity and people is quite startling. He claims that: For all Near Eastern peoples a ‘covenant’ between a god and his people simply made no sense: the covenant concerned only the king and his dynastic god and the king was legitimate just because of this direct relationship with the god. It was through it that the king could grant the prosperity of his people and legitimated his own function. This is clear even from the Biblical text, where it is written, just about Josiah: ‘And the king stood by a pillar and made a covenant (wayyikrot ‘et ha-berit) before Yahweh’ (2 Kgs 23:3). The question was never posed why this book, which supposedly guided the steps of the pious Josiah, does not contain any mention of covenant rites or pillars of this kind. The same ceremony, besides, was said to have been celebrated at the time of Solomon, as it is clear from the narrative of 1 Kings 8, in spite of

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all deuteronomistic amplifications. Consecrating the temple, Solomon made a covenant (8:23) with Yahweh, god of the dynasty (8:25), invoking his protection on the people, especially in the hard moments of war and famine.

This point can, however, be put more positively, as it has been by Geller in an essay on the role of Deuteronomy in the history of monotheism (Geller 2000: 300). He describes Deuteronomy as a ‘radically new type of association of individuals … . Israel is, in the deuteronomic formulation of covenant, ultimately each Israelite’. (This phenomenon, of the direct bond between the god and every individual, is of course strengthened rhetorically by the use of the singular ‘you’ in large sections of the book.) Geller further notes the denial of collective responsibility for sins in Deuteronomy 34. Deuteronomy marks the beginning of a personal definition of ‘Israelite’ religion – one might even say the fount of Judaism. In short, we have here, as Geller implies, a stage on the development of ‘torah’ into an organ of personal religiosity and not a body of social teaching upheld by a state institution (be that the monarchy or the priesthood). How such a notion arose in the first place is an intriguing question. What sort of conditions prompted the emergence of a religion that was both social and individual? But again, the key question is: how does this personal character of Deuteronomy’s covenant make sense in a small monarchic state? What is the goal and effect of such a redefinition of religion? And again, one does not have to reply that Deuteronomy is simply ‘utopian’; it is necessary to suggest a context in which this vision makes sense, among a community that had formed itself, or wished to, into a community of such a kind that membership entailed individual responsibilities, especially religious ones. Weinfeld, among others (Weinfeld 1972: 59–157) has argued, in defence of a Josianic date for Deuteronomy, that the Assyrian vassal-treaty form (exemplified by those of Esarhaddon) supplies a model for Deuteronomy. But to be valid, this argument has to show that knowledge of such literary forms vanished at a certain point. However, the influence of Assyria on the diplomatic rhetoric and literature (as well as the imagination) of the ancient Near East persisted for several centuries. A seventh-century terminus a quo for Deuteronomy is not particularly indicative. More pertinent, again, is the question: under what circumstances would a suzerainty treaty inspire a new theory of religion as a covenant between a deity and a nation, both corporately and individually conceived? And under what circumstances would such a concept acquire currency?

The role and function of the king The king of ‘Israel’ appears in only two texts in the legal material of Deuteronomy. The first runs: 17:14-15: When you come to the land which Yahweh your God is giving you, and possess it, and inhabit it, and say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are about me, you shall in any case make king over you one whom

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Yahweh your God will choose: one from among yourselves you shall make king over you, and not put a foreigner over you, one who is not your own kin. He shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, in order to multiply horses: for Yahweh has said unto you, ‘You shall from now on return no more that way.’ Nor shall he take many wives, or else his heart will turn away: nor shall he accumulate silver and gold. And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself a copy of this law in the presence of the levitical priests. It shall remain with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear Yahweh his god, observing all the words of this law and these statutes. Thus he will not exalt himself above his fellows, nor turn not aside from the commandment, either to right or left, so that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his descendants, in the midst of Israel.

It is unlikely that the threat of a foreign king was substantial in the monarchic period (the canonized texts do not relate that this ever happened or was even threatened); even under the Assyrians and Babylonians, there was a native king on the throne – but this is a trivial matter. The major issue is this: two of main functions of a king (according to both modern sociology and also ancient monarchs themselves) are security and justice; the former protects the people from external threats and the latter from internal exploitation. Both contribute to social order. Without these functions, the role of a king is redundant. The passage quoted proposes to abolish the role of monarch; to replace his right to be the fount of justice and to have a cavalry force. Elsewhere, Deuteronomy prescribes the rules for war (20) from which the king is entirely absent. There, as here, authority is conferred exclusively on the priests. The king is subject to the law that they hold and they, not he, dictate its contents. The king becomes a constitutional monarch. The same question returns, but with rather more force: at what point in the history of Judah does such a political revolution make sense, even as a utopian ideal? When might the rule of a Judaean monarch be replaced by a book of laws? There is no parallel at all in the monarchic period for any such notion, and indeed it is an absurd idea for such a time. The ancient law codes of Mesopotamia have, like the Assyrian suzerainty treaty, undoubtedly served as one model for the book of Deuteronomy, but in a complete reversal from the ancient tradition whereby the king issues his law code, as representative of the god. There are no plausible explanations why a king should accept a reform that deprives him of the essential powers of monarchy, justice and warfare. To suggest that Josiah was very young at the time and that the document is an attempt on the part of priests to control royal power is naive. Would the priests have the power to do this, against the opposition of all those retainers whose privilege depended precisely on the preservation of the power of the monarchy? The notion that such reform was instigated by the ’am ha-’aretz, as Albertz also suggests (Albertz 1994: 201), is contradicted by the fact that these people would hardly have transferred authority over warfare or justice to the priesthood. In short, the belief of most biblical scholars that a scroll depriving the monarch of all real powers (and in effect destroying the institution of monarchy)

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is a plausible product of seventh-century Judah is astonishing and can only be explained by assuming that such scholarship is taking the fact for granted and thus either ignoring the absurdity or fabricating an implausible rationalization for it.

Centralization of the cult Albertz rightly dismisses the idea of Würthwein (1976) that the centralization of the cult in Deuteronomy indicates the exilic period, asserting that ‘there was no longer any conflict over the centralization of the cult in the early post-exilic period’, on the grounds that it is presupposed by Deutero-Isaiah and Ezekiel. But he cannot be thinking of the realties of life in Judah during the neo-Babylonian period, when the capital was at Mizpah. We do not know whether Jerusalem had any kind of sanctuary at this time, but evidence does suggest that several sanctuaries in the vicinity of Mizpah functioned: Gibeon, Mizpah itself, and especially Bethel. How, and when, Jerusalem was reinstated as capital is not clear; the process of building the Persian period temple is itself unclear, and it is unthinkable that the change of capital from Mizpeh to Jerusalem was achieved without some resentment, nor the reinstatement of Jerusalem as the central sanctuary. Indeed, the replacement of Bethel by Jerusalem as the chief sanctuary of Judah in the mid-fifth century explains a great deal about the Josiah tradition, as I shall now suggest.

What did Josiah do? Once the 2 Kings account of a Josianic reform is put into question rather than assumed, there seem to be no compelling, even cogent reasons, for thinking that a text such as Deuteronomy (specifically the legal material) comes from this time. On the contrary, for every single topic discussed there are more plausible contexts. I have not set out here to argue in detail for a fifth-century date, but I have noted that all of the features discussed fit well with such a period. Deuteronomy fits the context of an immigrant population, based around a temple, in conflict with some of the indigenous population as well as with Samaria, and encouraged to live and exercise their control by means of a written law, controlled by the priesthood. But if such a date provides a better context for the core of Deuteronomy, we still need to account for the story of Josiah’s reform as a later legend; but this follows fairly easily. Those population elements claiming to be the true ‘Israel’ (against the indigenous ‘dispossessed nations’) would require that the document on which their position depended was not ancient. Even better: that its imputed origin replicated the present situation: ‘Israel’ seeing itself threatened by the ‘people of the land’. But the document requires further authentication: it must have been known, as a written source, and been authorized by a legitimate Judaean king. Why Josiah? This brings us back to another question already raised: was Josiah commemorated for having done anything to earn the reputation?

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The core element of the story of Josiah’s reform (2 Kings 23) concerns his destruction of Bethel, and this act is echoed in 1 Kings 12:25–13:34 (cf. 2 Kings 10:29) as well as in Exodus 32 (see Blenkinsopp 1998, 2003). If Josiah were executed for some offence against the pharaoh, the destruction of Bethel, signalling Judaean control over an area adjacent to Jerusalem itself, might have constituted such an act. Over a century later, when Jerusalem was being reinstated as the major sanctuary of the Persian province of Judah, perhaps at the expense of Bethel (see Blenkinsopp 2003), such an act would easily have identified Josiah as a righteous figure, and provided the context for the retrospective introduction of Deuteronomy into the earlier history of Judah. Indeed, the ‘Deuteronomic reform’ of 2 Kings 22–23 should then be seen, not as a historical event, but as an disguise for a new Jerusalem-centred community to seek to impose its definition of ‘Israel’, its god and its religion, and specifically its written law, on an ‘idolatrous’ indigenous population. In short, the fifth century BCE provides a plausible context for both the law book of Deuteronomy and the story of Josiah’s reform. In a number of ways. That case will, of course, have to be argued in more detail, but I suggest that even in the brief outline given here, it offers a better account of things than the idea of a ‘Deuteronomic reform’ under Josiah. The king’s assault on Bethel earned him a reputation as a Deuteronomic champion, but the real ‘reform’ took place nearly two centuries later, and, as often happens, history was rewritten to give that reform the necessary authentication.

Notes 1. Two motives that have been suggested are obedience to a treaty or understanding with Babylonia, against which Necho was marching; and a defence of Josiah’s newly won territories. The biblical reports, perhaps significantly, state no motive for such an engagement. 2. Cf. J. M. Miller & J. H. Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1986), 401: ‘It is highly doubtful, however, that Josiah extended Judean borders … except in the case of Bethel’; G. Ahlström, The History of Ancient Palestine from the Palaeolithic Period to Alexander’s Conquest (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 764, ‘[I]t is unrealistic to think that Josiah could have extended his kingdom in this period to include the Assyrian province of Samerina, perhaps also Magidu and Gal’aza, territories of the former kingdom of Israel, as well as part of the coast, as if often maintained.’ 3. I cannot refrain from commenting here on the oft-quoted dictum that ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’. True, but as a principle it cannot cope with cases of extra-terrestrial abduction, charges of wife-beating or fairies in my garden. It allows anything to be true that is not contradicted. Not surprisingly, those who invoke this principle seem to confine it to the Bible and keep it well away from real life! 4. This opinion has from time to time been challenged, though usually in terms of an exilic date (e.g. G. Hölscher, “Komposition und Ursprung des Deuteronomiums”, ZAW 40 [1922]: 161–255; E. Würthwein, “Die Josianische Reform und das Deuteronomium”, Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 73 [1976]: 365–423). For a review of the history of scholarship on Deuteronomy, see O. Kaiser, Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 4th edn (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1978), 113–20.

9 Judaeans in Egypt Hebrew and Greek stories

The problem Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh; for with a strong hand he will send them out; indeed, with a strong hand he will expel them from his land. (Exod. 6:1) When [Pharaoh] lets you go, he will drive you out completely. Speak now to all the people, and tell each one to ask, man and woman, of their neighbour, for gold and silver jewellery. And Yahweh caused the Egyptians to look favourably on the people. (Exod. 11:2-3) And a mixed crowd also went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, indeed, a lot of livestock. (Exod. 12:38)

Most treatments of the narrative in the book of Exodus about the enslavement and subsequent departure of the descendants of Jacob note the existence in it of several strands. Some of these are contradictory. For instance, the main theme of the narrative of departure itself has a reluctant Pharaoh permitting the Israelites to leave only after a series of plagues, and even then being pursued by an army. However, as the passages just quoted show, there are also present statements about the Pharaoh ‘driving out’ these Israelites; others about the Israelites leaving with goodwill, and even gifts, from their Egyptian neighbours,1 and a suggestion that accompanying the Israelites were others.2 Commentaries that allude to the presence of different conceptions about the departure seem generally content to account for such discrepancies by remarking that the Exodus story results from a combination of different story elements and a series of successive redactions. The nature and history of the ‘Exodus’ story are matters of wide disagreement. It is difficult not to recognize the essential literary, if not mythical quality of the narrative: the child miraculously saved; the burning bush; the dramatic plagues; the historicizing of the agricultural festivals of Unleavened Bread and ‘Passover’; the miraculous drying of the sea; the huge numbers of emigrants

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(2–3 million); stylized lawgiving(s) on the holy mount. The literary composition has been explained in various ways: as a product of the weaving of different documents (such as the classical four-source hypothesis),3 or as part of an ancient historiographical narrative in which a series of themes coagulated, under the influence of the cultic activity of a union of tribes, into a national epic;4 or even as a sixth-century biography of Moses.5 No review of the range is particularly useful, for no secure conclusions are achievable. But the arguments in favour of an elaborated narrative incorporating several distinct motifs, with an uncertain level of historical precision, seem strong.6 However, despite the widespread recognition that the narrative of Exodus is the probable result of a literary combination of themes and episodes, the idea has persisted that this account of a departure from Egypt was initially prompted by, or at least continues to reflect, an event. It remains a widely held view that this story came into Israelite–Judaean tradition as the result of experiences of, if not all, then at least some population elements, and hence developed into a central feature of the national ‘historical memory’, or even an early oral or written national historiography. Between the literary history and the assumed event, however, lies a gap, and since there is no consensus over the date of the supposed event or the earliest level of the Exodus story, that gap cannot be measured; nor can it be bridged. It is better described as a chasm. Yet, for most scholars, in that chasm lies the reason why there is an Exodus story at all. ‘Fiction’ remains too close to ‘forgery’ and ‘fraud’ to comfort many biblical scholars, for whom ‘tradition’ is a more congenial euphemism. Yet a tradition with a chasm in it is not a tradition. Traditions are supposed to be continuous, and there is no demonstrable continuity between supposed event and story. The reason for the belief that a historical event underlies the narrative is hard to express in terms of historical methodology. Two reasons can be identified, though neither is particularly sound. One is: why else would such a story have been invented? It is thought that slavery and escape are not the kinds of events that a national historiography simply invents: it is too unflattering. Another is the wide range of allusion to the story (or at least to an original ‘being brought out of Egypt’) throughout the canonized literature. A third basis is the realization that Semites regularly did visit (and leave) Egypt during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages (though no more so than in earlier or later times). William Johnstone has conveniently summarized the literary evidence for second millennium contacts between Semites and Egyptians:7 For the descent of Semites into Egypt: the Beni Hasan mural (c. 1890) the Hyksos invasion (c. 1720–1570) the captive lists of Amenophis II (mid-16th c.) For the sojourn of Semites in Egypt a text naming Asiatics with Asiatics receiving Egyptian names (mid-18th c.) a text of Rameses II mentioning the ’apiru in building operations (13th c.) a text of Rameses IV mentioning ’apiru in the army (12th c.)

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For attainments by Asiatics in Egypt Dod (David?) as chamberlain at the court of Amenophis IV (early 14th c.) the rule by a Syrian between XIX and XX dynasties (end of 13th c.) For the departure of Semites from Egypt the tale of Sinuhe (20th c.) the expulsion of the Hyksos (16th c.) the pursuit of two runaway slaves (copy of text from the end of 13th c.)

Johnstone also provides a succinct but cogent critique of any attempts to fit the Exodus story into a historical framework:8 numbers (2–3 million people); locations (Pithom, Sinai, Sea of Reeds), absence of Egyptian power from Palestine; the absence of any named Pharaoh, the two midwives, the plagues. Johnstone’s conclusion is that the story reflects, in a broad way, the collapse of Egyptian power in the Levant from the end of the Late Bronze Age and the emergence of small kingdoms in Syria–Palestine. The story is a mythic account of Israelite origins: Israel’s religion is not founded on historical events; rather, Israel’s religious writers are using a narrative form of presentation in which history provides the general framework: for the filling in of the detail, historical circumstances are only one source among many. The complex narrative is the medium for expressing a prior religious tradition: the historical events in Exodus are not the source, but the vehicle, not the basis but the confirmation, not the proof but the proving-ground.9

To these observations one could add Sarna’s list10 of seventeen items of ‘undeniable Egyptian colouring’, including the title ‘pharaoh’, the making of bricks, the ‘birth stool’ (Exod. 1:16), and some of the plagues. Indeed, one has to add the very name of Moses (plus Aaron?) and probably Hophni and Phinehas, to the list of arguments for strong Egyptian influence on the story. But is a singular event the most reasonable explanation for such features, as many scholars are tempted to suppose? Or even a narrative that, whatever its historicity or lack of it, is the exclusive creation of Judaean scribes giving a basic belief a narrative expression? For even Johnstone’s comments just quoted leave some murky areas: what do we know of ‘Israel’s religion’ that would generate such a narrative as a vehicle? What, if any, are the ‘historical details’? Why a ‘complex narrative’, and what (and from where) the ‘tradition’? What, in fact, lies behind the story as a cause for it? And indeed, if we acknowledge the complexities, including the contradictions and tensions within the present account, do we not need to confront the possibility of a single storyline expressed or developing in various forms? If so, why the particular variations? For it is surely necessary to ask why, given the overwhelming affirmation of the Exodus as a divine defeat of the Egyptians and as a liberation, echoes of a fundamentally contradictory account (expulsion, gift-laden departure) should either have been preserved or introduced into it. For these are not exactly

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incidental features, even if not prominent. They hint at different conceptions of the circumstances, ones that directly challenge the dominant theme of a conflict between Yahweh and the Pharaoh, in which the deity makes the Pharaoh resist the Israelite departure so as to prove his superiority. Deploying the argument that a story such as slavery in Egypt would not have been ‘invented’, one may equally well ask whether these would have been ‘invented’, one may equally ask whether such details as these would have been ‘invented’ either. The suggestion of a single account fares no better against this objection: even creative biographies try not to contradict themselves. No: contradictions of this sort mentioned earlier are not accounted for by historical explanations, nor by authorial intent. They exist despite such solutions. They belong to the life of a story itself, to the biography of a tale that develops over time, told by different persons for different purposes and with different configurations.

A comparative ‘solution’ This paper is an attempt to apply the perspective of the history of a story without appealing either to a unique historical episode or a unique religious tradition. It deals with the history of a story, not an event. Insofar as it is methodologically informed, it draws upon the study of folklore,11 from which we know about the fluidity of stories often told, and the impossibility of reconstructing ‘original’ accounts, of the irrelevance of historical fact to the life of the story and toleration (perhaps even celebration) of the fact that variants exist. But the history of the ‘Exodus’ story (to give its canonized name) cannot be confined to an exegesis of the canonized narrative, because it also belongs elsewhere. The same story, or at least some version of it, also appears in Egyptian writers at the beginning of the third century BCE, and looks to be somewhat older. It is disappointing that both commentators on the book of Exodus and biblical historians generally ignore these accounts. The reason, so far as one can deduce it, is that since they hold the Exodus story to be the primary witness to an ancient event, non-Jewish versions from the Ptolemaic period can only be dependent on the Jewish version(s), and thus of no historical value in themselves. But actually it cannot be proven that the canonized Jewish story is ancient, is true, or is based on an event. That does not mean the story is necessarily recent, untrue or unhistorical; but it ought to oblige a historian to acknowledge that the story is also an Egyptian one and to ask about the relationship between the Egyptian and Judaean forms, and about their joint and separate history. What distinguishes my approach from virtually all others, then, is a recognition that we do not know the date and origin of the canonized story (or its sources), and thus we cannot assume either that it constitutes the ‘standard’ version (or that it lies closer to any historical reality). My agenda is to explore versions of a single narrative in both Judaean and Egyptian sources aware that I know at the outset nothing about the origins of either version, or of the story itself.

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The Egyptian sources Manetho12 Although Manetho is not the earliest witness to the story, his account is the fullest and the best known. In his treatise Against Apion (I.73–105) Josephus Flavius quotes from Manetho, the early third-century Graeco-Egyptian historian, about an ancient invasion of Egypt by a people called ‘Hyksos’ (understood to mean ‘shepherds’ in Egyptian), who occupied Egypt for 511 years, and who were finally driven from most of the land, but confined to an area called Avaris which they fortified. Unsuccessful in capturing this stronghold, the Egyptian king Thummosis came to an agreement with them by means of which they left; and 240,000 consequently left and travelled to Syria. They built a city ‘in that country that is now called Judea … and called it Jerusalem’. A second excerpt (Apion I.228–52) concerns a king Amenophis (erroneously, as it has turned out, dismissed by Josephus as a ‘fictitious’ ruler) who, 518 years (as Josephus’ reckons it after Manetho’s data) after the ‘shepherds’ had been driven out by Tethmosis (sic), wished to rid his country of lepers and other diseased persons, 80,000 of whom were sent east of the Nile to work in quarries. Some leprous priests were sent to the old Hyksos capital of Avaris, and these appointed a ruler among them called Osarsiph, a priest of Heliopolis, who made them forswear the Egyptian gods and follow new laws. Osarsiph then wrote to the ‘shepherds’ in Jerusalem (whose ancestors had been expelled in the earlier episode) and invited them to assist him in a war against Amenophis. Subsequently the Jerusalemites did invade Egypt, and behaved cruelly. Osarsiph, once he had joined the Jerusalemites, came to be known as Moses. Amenophis, having returned from Ethiopia, then drove the shepherds and the lepers back to Syria. As is well known, Josephus calls Manetho to witness as to the antiquity of the Jews: in respects of the first of Manetho’s stories, he accepts that Manetho is accurately conveying ancient sources, and says: ‘these shepherds … were none other than our ancestors’. But he rejects the second story, arguing that Manetho has abandoned his ancient chronicles and proceeds at some length to discredit it as ‘rumour’ and ‘incredible stories’. He does not in fact deny the story outright, but says that the diseased persons in question were Egyptians. The importance of Manetho’s accounts (assuming Josephus to have preserved them correctly) has been somewhat overshadowed by the polemic use to which they were subsequently put and perhaps also by scholarly attention to the anti-Jewish nature of a good deal of non-Jewish writing in the classical period.13 It is thus tempting, in implying the primacy of the Jewish scriptural account, to explain many deviations in non-Jewish writing as the result of deliberate distortion. Given the hatred between Egyptians and Jews in Alexandria documented in the first centuries BCE and CE, it is probable that each side used a version of the same story against the other, Egyptians accusing the Jews of having been oppressors who were once driven out (and had now insidiously made their way back?), Jews arguing (as for example, the author of the Wisdom of Solomon will have believed) that their god, as their canonized scriptures said, had once

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defeated the oppressing Egyptians and liberated his chosen people from them. The Egyptian version was also used against Jews by later anti-Jewish authors (as, of course, the Jewish version was used by Jewish and Christian authors). Beyond the Exodus story itself, there is evidence in Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel of contemporary hostility to Egypt itself, presumably reflecting the Persian or early Hellenistic period. Thus it is quite probable that the story of a Judaean departure from Egypt in antiquity could have been told in a polemical fashion by both Judaeans and Egyptians well before the Ptolemaic period when they surface in the preserved literary record. Manetho’s account contains two episodes of departure from Egypt: first the shepherds to Jerusalem, and then the lepers ‘to the borders of Syria’. But it is only with the second that he explicitly associates the name of Moses.14 The story about the Hyksos shepherds, which is set somewhat earlier, has, in the work of some previous scholars, been linked with the career of Joseph, and this, of course, is how Josephus understands it. But at first sight it is the invasion of people from Jerusalem into Egypt and, indeed the name ‘Osarsiph’ – in other words the second episode – that suggest connections with the Jewish Joseph story and the departure under Moses. It is not impossible to reduce the two episodes in Manetho’s account to accidentally or deliberately garbled versions of an earlier Jewish scriptural account of respectively Joseph and then Moses, despite Josephus. But that is not by any means a necessary conclusion. It is important first of all not to read Manetho in the light of the Judaean version, but on its own terms. Undoubtedly an important element in his presentation is the Greek-Hellenistic ethnographic tradition and the chauvinistic programmes of native historians to assert the supreme antiquity of their own nation. In support of this, Manetho offered an account, also cited by Josephus (Apion, 93–105) of how Danaos, the ancestor of the Greeks, was Egyptian. It has been suggested15 furthermore that the nature of Manetho’s account may belong with native Egyptian anti-Semitic stories, generated by the Assyrian and then Persian invasions of the country, and in both cases Judaean soldiers were among the invaders and/or the garrison troops (as the Elephantine papyri, for example, show). But the Egyptian story about the expulsion of Judaeans from Egypt is clearly older than the third century BCE, and some information very much older. In at least part of his account of the ‘Hyksos’, Manetho was drawing upon a Demotic source, and thus a story older than himself. How much older is impossible to say, but his information about the Hyksos is accurate to a considerable degree, including names of Egyptian kings and the name of the capital city. It is improbable that Manetho’s story is a Ptolemaic invention, and the fact that it has earlier origins (how much earlier cannot be said) alone make a comparison with the Judaean version of the story even more intriguing.

Hecataeus of Abdera The idea that Manetho, or his sources, is manifesting a deliberate anti-Semitic or anti-Judaean bias, even if correct, does not mean that the Egyptian story of the expulsion of Judaeans, as told in the Ptolemaic era, is itself necessarily

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the product of anti-Judaean ideology, because we find elements of that story contained in a nearly contemporary (perhaps slightly older?) writer, Hecataeus of Abdera, who is generally conceded to have exhibited a good knowledge of contemporary Judaean culture, without any evidence anti-Judaean bias. For Hecataeus,16 we have, as for Manetho, the element of insecurity afforded by the loss of any original documents: his writings have been preserved by others. Thus, a summary of his accounts of Judaean history and constitution is preserved in the work of Diodorus of Sicily (40.3);17 and a further excerpt from his book ‘written entirely about the Jews’, in Josephus,18 but the extent of its authenticity remains disputed, and it will not be considered here. It is widely recognized that some writings ascribed to Hecataeus are probably not from him at all.19 However, there is reasonable confidence in the sections of his writings to be considered presently, and thus we may date them more or less precisely to the early Ptolemaic period (c. 300 BCE). Hecataeus, like the canonized Jewish narrative, knows of only one story of Judaeans leaving Egypt.20 According to the preserved material, a pestilence in Egypt at some time (Hecataeus gives no chronological clues) prompted the inhabitants to expel certain strangers who practised alien rites; of these deportees. Some landed in Greece, but the larger number in Judea, which was then uninhabited. They settled under the leadership of Moses, who founded several cities, including Jerusalem, where he established a temple. He also set up ‘forms of worship and ritual’, laws, and political institutions. He divided the people into twelve tribes, forbade images to be made of their sole deity, and appointed priests, who were to be not only in charge of the cult but also political leaders and judges. (Thus, he says, ‘the Jews have never had a king’ but are ruled by a high priest, who enjoys great power and prestige.) Moses, continues the account, also instituted a military education and led the people to many conquests against neighbouring tribes, after which he apportioned the land equally, but reserving larger portions for the priests. The sale of land was forbidden, specifically so as to avoid oppression of the poor by the rich through accumulation of land. The people were also enjoined to reproduce. In marriage and burial their customs differed from those of others, though their traditional practices were disturbed under the Persians and Macedonians. The Judaeans’ laws claim to have been words heard by Moses from God. Now, it is again clear that, at least superficially, Hecataeus’ narrative demonstrates some Hellenistic features. Moses appears as a typical colony founder, city-builder and lawgiver. It is also evident that Hecataeus is well-informed about the main features of Judaean society in his own day. It has for this reason been widely surmised that he must have had some Judaean information, whether from Judaeans living in Egypt or from those in Judea itself. Mendels, suggesting that Hecataeus’ account emanates from priestly circles from his own time,21 draws attention to correspondences between Hecataeus’ account and the situation described in Ezra and Nehemiah. For reasons that I cannot elaborate here,22 I cannot be as confident as Mendels that Ezra and Nehemiah offer a reliable portrait of Yehud in the Persian period, though it hardly matters, since a later date for these books could perhaps even strengthen Mendels’s argument. Indeed,

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many of Mendels’s observations and arguments do suggest that Hecataeus was fairly closely reflecting the state of affairs in Judea during his own time. Thus, he notes that the Judaeans are said to have occupied a land that was ‘utterly uninhabited’ after leaving Egypt. This, as he observes, conflicts with the Pentateuchal tradition, but is in accordance with the ideology represented in Nehemiah, Ezra (and Chronicles) that maintains that the returnees from exile had come to an empty land ‘enjoying its sabbaths’.23 Hecataeus’ view, then, is reflected in some biblical texts, giving support to Mendels’s contention that Hecataeus reports a perspective of the land as having been ‘empty’ from the point of view of the immigrants who would have been the ancestors of his informants.24 This view persisted. There are, however, details that diverge from the canonized Judaean version. Jerusalem (and other cities) is said to have been founded by Moses, who is credited also with having conquered the land. He is also said to have been responsible for the creation of twelve tribes and for the division of land. In the Judaean version of the story, the conquest and division of the land are assigned to Joshua. Hecataeus’ statement that the Judaeans had always been ruled by priests and never by a king is also strongly opposed to the contents of the books of Samuel and Kings. Thus, Hecataeus’ sources do not seem to have known of the contents of the books of Joshua–Kings, or Chronicles, or his researches did not extend as far as these books, if they already existed. However, in assigning the laws governing cult and ritual to Moses; in stating that Moses is claimed to have heard them from God; in calling this cult monotheistic and aniconic; and in recognizing the Judaean system of land tenure as unusual, Hecataeus is in agreement with the Judaean descriptions. He even knows that Moses appointed judges, as reported in Numbers 11. He is correct, too, as far as is known, about the high priest being the ruler of the Judaeans. Then there is the matter of military education. The widespread use of Jews as mercenaries is well-known from the Assyrian period (when the Elephantine colony was set up) to the Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman periods. There were Jewish military colonies not only in Egypt, but in North Africa, Syria and no doubt elsewhere. The likelihood that Judaeans were trained in the military arts is quite high, in view of this and of their initial success during the Maccabean wars, when a quite effective militia seems to have been organized. In any case a military aspect of Judaean culture is betrayed in the elaboration not only of the military victories in Joshua and the ‘holy war’ ideology of Deuteronomy and Deuteronomistic writings, but also in the depiction of the Israelites in the wilderness as a nation-army. That material strongly suggests a self-image of Judaeans as a nation of warriors. Indeed, one title given to their deity, Yhwh Sebaoth, probably means ‘Yahweh of armies’ (whether astral or earthly is not very important: probably both). Hecataeus appears to understand Judaeans as an ancient race, founded by Moses and ruled by high priests, devoted to their laws and of military renown. But here the focus is on the story of the departure of Moses and his followers from Egypt. Here a pestilence (loimikē) was ascribed by the populace to a divine (daimonion) cause, namely that traditional observances had fallen into disuse,

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and aliens were practising different rites, upon which aliens were driven from the country. Of these, some settle in Greece, but the majority into Judaea. Their leader was Moses and he founded Jerusalem, and created the Judaean constitution. Reflected here are several of the features observable in Manetho. First is an aetiology of ancient peoples, Judaean and Greek, whose origin is attributed to Egypt (which is hence the oldest of the civilizations). In a passage almost certainly reproduced from Hecataeus, Diodorus elsewhere (1.28.1–3) reproduces an Egyptian legend or myth that most of the civilized world came about through colonization from Egypt: Belus led colonists to Babylon, Danaos to Greece, and others to Colchis and Judea.25 But some other elements of Hecataeus’ account are also traceable in Manetho’s stories. Among these is the idea of a plague (or leprosy), the name ‘Moses’ and the immediate connection between the departure from Egypt and the foundation of Jerusalem. These features suggest that Manetho’s story is fundamentally Hecataeus’, whether or not he used Hecataeus as a source. The outlines of the story are close enough, and the crucial elements are plague/disease; expulsion; Moses; Jerusalem. In Manetho’s case we also have the theme of religious nonconformity. The curious feature is that this version exists in both pro-Judaean and anti-Judaean forms: anti-Judaism is not likely to have played any role in creating the version, though the version was exploited for such purposes.

The history of the story It remains possible that the narratives of Hecataeus and Manetho are a garbled form of a Judaean story of an ‘exodus’, in which the plagues, the name of Moses and the departure of a group of people to(wards) Judah have been transformed. But it is equally possible (since we do not know the date of the Judaean or of the Egyptian story) that the opposite is true, and that the story of the plagues, and the transformation of an expulsion into a miraculous escape is a Judaean revision of an older, Egyptian story known to Hecataeus and Manetho. However, it is probably simplistic to think in these terms, for the nature and longevity of contacts between Judaeans and Egyptians makes it very likely that the story developed to some extent through interaction. It must be conceded that Hecataeus reports reliably on a number of matters, and that he may have acquired information from Judaeans themselves;26 if so, he has cleverly exploited the Exodus story as one about the greater antiquity of the Egyptian race, a fairly standard device of Hellenistic historians, especially from one known to have been attached to Egyptian antiquity, since he wrote a treatise about it. But such an explanation does not easily explain the divergence of Hecataeus (or Manetho) from the Judaean version. Manetho, after all, seems to have got his information about the Hyksos from Egyptian sources; why could not Hecataeus have taken his story from Egypt also? It seems to me probable that we are dealing with a story that has two versions, and thus we must also recognize that both versions have undergone some development of their own. Indeed, between Hecataeus and Manetho there are

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differences as well as similarities; for example, in the role played by the plague. In the same way, documentary critics have pointed out differences in the story between either J and P or D and P: for example, in the manner of description of the waters of yam suph receding. It is, then, the case that the canonized Judaean story is the result of a process of expansion and elaboration: the tensions referred to at the beginning of this essay illustrate this further. We are therefore considering a story that in both versions has enjoyed a certain amount of development. This development should be seen against the background of Egyptian as well as Judaean history, and especially the history of interaction of the two. From at least as early as the second millennium, Egypt regarded Palestine as part of its own sphere of influence, an influence that is most clearly documented for us in the Amarna letters, as a weak Pharaoh was losing control over his nominal vassals in the cities of the region. Egyptian claims on Palestine were continually exerted before and afterwards, and documented in the Merneptah stela, the campaign reports of Shoshenq, the ambitions of Necho, and the annexation of Palestine by Ptolemy I. The idea that the people who lived there were in some sense the offspring of Egyptian civilization (as, even more ambitiously, Hecataeus suggests of the Greeks too!) and yet of a quite different religion and culture could give rise to the explanation that they were originally from Egypt. This is perhaps a counterpart to Johnstone’s suggestion (see above) that the Exodus story may have developed as a reflection of the wane of Egyptian power over Palestine. From the Judaean point of view, Egypt is viewed, at least in the canonized literature, in both friendly and hostile terms; as a refuge in time of war or famine, but also as a potentially hostile neighbour. The growing number of Judaeans in Egypt during the Second Temple period and the virtual integration of Judah into the Ptolemaic economy in the third and second centuries BCE probably reinforced both sentiments. The story of the ‘Israelites’ having been enslaved there and having escaped underlined the feeling that Egypt was always a potential master regarding the inhabitants of Palestine as his property, and the story asserted that independence from Egypt had been won (once and for all) through a divine victory. But these contexts are not isolated from one another. Without prejudging the antiquity of the story, let us begin in the middle of the seventh century BCE, when the Egyptian king Psammetichus I, as part of his strategy to gain control of the country, stationed garrisons in various places within his country: Elephantine, Naukratis and Daphne (Tahpanes). These troops comprised mercenaries from areas such as Greece and Libya and also Syria (Phoenicia, Samaria) as well as Judah.27 Later, Judaean troops were said to have been in the Egyptian army at the battle of Carchemish,28 for it seems that at this time Judah was both subject to Assyria and under the control of Egypt. At the time of the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzar in 586 BCE (according to 2 Kings 25:26 after the assassination of Gedaliah) many Judaeans went to Egypt. Jeremiah 43–44 expresses hatred both of these Judaean immigrants and of Egypt, threatening destruction at the hand of the Babylonians. In 44:1 and 15 the locations of Judaean communities are names as Migdol, Tahpanes, Memphis and Pathros (Pathros denotes Upper Egypt, where Elephantine–Syene lay). According to Aristeas 12–14 Ptolemy III (246–221) later transported thousands

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of Judaeans to Egypt as military colonists and slaves. In the early second century BCE a high priest from Jerusalem, Onias IV, fled with his supporters to Leontopolis and built a temple there. The large Jewish population of Alexandria was one of the consequences of this history of Judaean immigration to Egypt, and the conflicts between Jews and Egyptians in this city are well documented. There is, accordingly, an almost continuous process of Judaean settlement in Egypt over the entire Second Temple period. Moreover, the increasing use of Aramaic, then Greek, in Egypt probably facilitated the interchange of stories. A degree of knowledge among Egyptians and immigrated Judaeans of each other’s stories is to be expected; and among such stories may have been one about the origin of the Judaean race in Egypt. There was certainly a lively interest within Judah itself towards émigrés to Egypt. The comments in Jeremiah are hostile. But Isaiah 19 addresses Jewish settlements in Egypt, combining threats against Egypt itself with positive references to such groups, concluding with the hope of conversion: In that day Egypt shall be like women: afraid and fearful of the shaking of the hand of Yahweh of armies. The land of Judah shall be a terror to Egypt, everyone mentioning it shall be afraid in themselves, because of the plan that Yahweh of armies has devised against it. In that day five cities in the land of Egypt will speak the language of Canaan, and swear to Yahweh of armies; one shall be called the City of Destruction (MT or: ‘City of the Sun’, with some mss and Vulgate; or: ‘City of Righteousness’ LXX). In that day there will be an altar to Yahweh in the middle of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to Yahweh at its border. It shall be a sign and a monument to Yahweh of armies in the land of Egypt: for they shall call to Yahweh because of the oppressors, and he will send them a saviour, a hero, who will deliver them. Yahweh will be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians will know Yahweh in that day, and will perform sacrifice and oblation; yes, they will make a vow to Yahweh and fulfil it. Yahweh will strike Egypt: strike it then heal it: and they shall return to Yahweh, and plead with him, and he shall heal them. (Isa. 19:16-22)

The ‘City of Destruction’ (’ir haheres, MT) of ‘of the Sun’ (’ir ha’eres) in v. 18 are generally identified as respectively Leontopolis and Heliopolis; in the former a Judaean colony certainly existed at the site later known as tell elyahudiyah (whose cult would, according to Jer. 43:13, be dismantled). The date and the unity of the contents of Isaiah 19 is disputed, of course, and opinions range between the seventh century (Schoors) and the Seleucid period (a possibility entertained by Kaiser, who thinks of the fourth century as the earliest possible date, identifying ‘Assyria’ with the Seleucid kingdom29). I have cited this passage in full, without the space to analyse it, because it bears a curious relationship to the ‘Exodus’ story. It speaks of future settlements in Egypt, and of future deliverance from Egypt: and without any overt reference to an Exodus story. That the future deliverer is a second Moses (as Kaiser, for example, suggests) is to miss the point. There is no hint of a first Moses. Has this passage any connection with an ‘Exodus’ story? What of Isa. 52:4 ‘For thus says Lord

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Yahweh, “My people went down previously into Egypt to settle there; and the Assyrians oppressed them without cause”’? The well-known fifth-century papyri from Elephantine30 (situated in the middle of the ‘land of Pathros’) illustrate some of the features of Judaean military colonies in Egypt. The Elephantine colony, which included women and children, observed its own customs, and, to judge from the onomastic evidence, there is little evidence of assimilation, although oaths in the name of foreign gods were taken, and some syncretism is evident. It had its own sanctuary, where sacrifices were offered to Yahu, though other deities are also mentioned. In 410 BCE, according to one document,31 the local priests of the god Khnum (represented by a ram) were upset by the colony and built a wall inside it. They stopped up a well, prevented meal-offerings being offered, and dismantled the sanctuary, plundering its treasurers, and prompting an appeal to the Persian authorities, and subsequently letters to Jerusalem and Samaria.32 Permission was subsequently granted from Jerusalem and by the satrap.33 However, in 399 Persian sovereignty over Egypt ended for over half a century, and the consequences for the colony and its sanctuary were no doubt serious. The sequence of documents ends in 399/8, and although Persian hegemony was restored in 343, it lasted only twelve years. Presumably the colonists were driven out; it is hard to imagine that they remained, or wished to. To sum up the thrust of the preceding remarks: the arrival and settlement of Judaeans (among other ‘Asiatics’, Nubians, and Greeks) in Egypt during the Persian and Ptolemaic periods, which has been sketched here; the evidence of a lively interest in such settlements in the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the evidence of tension between Egyptians and Judaeans forms a background to the development of stories about the arrival and departure of Judaeans among both Egyptian and Judaeans. Many of these immigrants were military, and thus could be seen as invaders. The case of Elephantine suggests antagonism towards Judaean practices on the part of certain cults, and it is likely that the members of the colony were forcibly driven out by the Egyptians. None of this is to suggest that the ‘historical Exodus’ is to be seen in any one of these events. But just as a pattern of events involving Asiatics in Egypt in the second millennium has been posited as a general context for an ‘Exodus’, so an even better documented pattern of Judaean colonies and settlements in Egypt during the Second Temple period may provide a context for the development of the story – by both Egyptians and Judaeans.

Reflections What cannot be done, here or elsewhere, now or in the future, is to reconstruct the development of the story we have been investigating. However, certain outlines can perhaps be drawn. The name Moses is Egyptian, despite his Semitic etymology and the story of his birth. Even on the basis of an exegesis of Exodus, it has been surmised that Moses has been converted from an Egyptian into an Israelite. According to

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the Egyptian versions, however, the people expelled were in fact aliens, either invaders (Manetho on the Hyksos) or foreign ‘learned priests’ (Hecataeus). However, Manetho’s Moses story refers to his followers as lepers, not necessarily foreigners. The Egyptian story features the practice of ‘different religious rites’ (Hecataeus) by those to be banished, or characterizes them (Manetho) as developing a religion in which the Egyptian gods were rejected and sacred animals sacrificed. In both cases this seems a natural reflection of a characteristic for which the Jews were widely known among the Greeks. But the Judaean story itself makes as a pretext for departure from Egypt a celebration of an Israelite feast (Exod. 5:1). There is also the theme of the plagues on Egypt in Exodus, which is echoed also in the Egyptian version as either a cause of the country’s misfortunes (Hecataeus) or as the condition of those to be driven out. Manetho has the lepers working in stone quarries: the Judaean version has them working on store-cities (is that such a difference?) Finally, we should not forget the problem with which we started: the hints in the Exodus story that the escape was really an expulsion, as in the Egyptian version. From where did this notion come? Does the theme of ‘hardening the heart of Pharaoh’ also have some origin in the transformation of this Pharaoh from one who wished to be rid of these people to one who wished to keep them enslaved? And is the fact that Moses has two foreign wives (Midianite in Exodus, Cushite in Numbers) at all connected with the importance of the theme of ‘foreignness’ in the Egyptian story; or Miriam’s leprosy with Manetho’s lepers? Of course one cannot determine in individual cases such as these; but the capacity to generate explanations for such incidental details strengthens the approach being advocated in this paper. As an illustration of the way in which Judaean and Egyptian versions of the story may have continued to be combined, Artapanus, the second-century BCE Alexandrian Jew,34 relates an expedition by Moses to Cush (Ethiopia). Manetho’s ‘Osarsiph’ account has the Egyptian king Amenophis leading an expedition to Ethiopia during the belligerence of the ‘lep[ers’ and their Jerusalem allies, before returning to expel them. Expeditions to Ethiopia are, of course a stock item of Egyptian historiography, but the parallel is suggestive. Let me end with Moses’ other name. The hint in the Judaean story of a nonIsraelite element included in the departing horde (Exod. 12:38) seems to recur in Num 11:4,35 where a separate entity from the ‘people of Israel’ is named hassaphsuph. The term is a hapax in biblical Hebrew, although its derivation from √Ps) is generally accepted. Given the abrupt manner in which this unique term is introduced into the narrative, however, it is not unreasonable to wonder whether it represents an originally extraneous element; and if so, whether its close similarity with Manetho’s other name for Moses, Osarsiph, is entirely coincidental. A direct borrowing from one source to the other is unlikely, however: the original word (Egyptian?) perhaps belongs to the common story and has been deployed differently by the extant literary sources. The pattern of differences between the two versions of the one story, and the fluctuations within the two versions, suggest to me that we have here not a case

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of one version distorting another, nor indeed of a stable autonomous version among either Judaeans or Egyptians. While we have not been able to show, in the best manner of biblical tradition historians, exactly how each historical circumstance effected a change in the text, I have tried to cast the Exodus story into a different perspective, one in which questions of originality and historicity give way to a realization that people tell stories to each other, even Judaeans and Egyptians, and that in the process stories are borrowed (Ahiqar, after all, joins Tobit’s family!) and change their nationality. But they continue to develop. My suggestion is that the Exodus story has grown in much the same way. I would not want to assert that it originated as an account of the Hyksos; nor with an escape of Judaean mercenaries from a military colony; nor that it began as an Egyptian story with an Egyptian hero driven out in order to avert a plague. But all these, of course, remain possibilities with which we can play.36

Notes 1. The ‘neighbours’ of Exod. 11:2 must be Egyptians, as the great majority of interpreters understand, and not fellow Israelites. The following sentence makes this clear, as does 12:36. 2. Exodus 12:38: br br(. 3. T. N. Sarna, “Exodus, Book of”, in Anchor Bible Dictionary II, 689–700 (New York: Doubleday, 1992), rightly speaks of a ‘veritable kaleidoscope of topics and literary genres’ and ‘apparent doublets, inconsistencies, redundancies and interpolations’ (693), as well as ‘seeming differences in ideological and theological outlook’ (694). The fullest account of such inconsistencies, and an explanation on source-critical grounds, following the New Documentary Hypothesis of Graf and Wellhausen, can be found in S. R. Driver, Exodus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911); see also his Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, 22–42 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1909). The commentary by J. P. Hyatt, The Book of Exodus (New Century Bible) (London: Oliphants, 1971), follows this line of explanation, and B. S. Childs also incorporates it in his Exodus: A Commentary (Old Testament Library) (London: SCM Press/Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1974). For a revised source-critical approach, see J. Blenkinsopp, The Pentateuch (New York: Doubleday, 1992), esp. 141–60. The view taken in this essay is that the literary process is largely irrecoverable, though not undetectable. 4. This is the thesis of M. Noth, Überlieferungsgeschichte des Pentateuch (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1948) (English translation: A History of Pentateuchal Traditions, B. W. Anderson [trans.] [Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972]), and applied in detail in his Das zweite Buch Mose: Exodus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1959) (English translation: Exodus: A Commentary, J. Bowden [trans.] [Old Testament Library] [London: SCM Press, 1962]). 5. J. Van Seters, The Life of Moses: The Yahwist as Historian in Exodus–Numbers (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press/Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1994). See also his The Pentateuch: A Social-Science Commentary (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999). 6. The historicity of the events as a basis for the biblical narrative, which has always had its firm supporters, is most recently defended by J. K. Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). However, these explanations rarely bother to deal directly with the evidence of literary complexity and its implications (e.g. Hoffmeier,

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7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

Rethinking biblical scholarship Israel in Egypt, 7–10). Critiques of the source-critical and tradition-historical solutions to the composition of the Pentateuch are nevertheless available in R. Rendtorff, The Problem of the Process of Transmission in the Pentateuch (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990) – though this is focused on Genesis rather than Exodus; R. N. Whybray, The Making of the Pentateuch: A Methodological Study (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987); T. L. Thompson, The Origin Tradition of Ancient Israel: The Literary Formation of Genesis and Exodus 1–23 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987). W. Johnstone, Exodus (Old Testament Guides), 19–20 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990). Ibid., 20–38. Ibid., 36 “Exodus, Book of”, 697–8. The literature on folklore is too vast to document here. The most frequently cited authority among biblical scholars is the work of Parry and Lord, which will certainly suffice for the present purpose. See A. B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (New York: Athenaeum, 1960); for for the influence of folklore studies on Old Testament/Hebrew Bible research, see P. G. Kirkpatrick, The Old Testament and Folklore Study (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988). For a collection of the relevant sources and discussion, see M. Stern (ed.), Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, 3 vols (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974); C. R. Holladay, Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors, I: Historians (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983). E.g. Mnaseas, Lysimachus, Cheraemon, Apion; later Tacitus (Histories 5:3-4), one of several explanations given by him of the origin of the Jews (see, e.g. L. H. Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World, 184–96 [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993]), though not Strabo (see, e.g. J. G. Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism, 72–5 [New York: Oxford University Press, 1985]). A version of the same story is related by Strabo (16:2.35.760), who describes Moses as a Jewish priest who left because of a dislike of Egyptian worship of animals. T. Säve-Söderbergh, “The Hyksos Rule in Egypt”, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 37 (1951): 53–71. There is a convenient summary of the literature and issues in L. L. Grabbe, Grabbe, Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian, 2 vols (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), I, 173; for this particular account, see 216–18. Text, translation and discussion are in Stern (ed.), Greek and Latin Authors, I. 20–35; further discussion in M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism (London: SCM Press, 1974), I. 255–6; II: 169 and E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, G. Vermes, F. Millar & M. Goodman (rev. and ed.) (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986), III.1, 671–7. The ascription by Diodorus (or by Photius? Diodorus’ text is preserved in Photius’ Bibliotheca) of these comments to Hecataeus of Miletus (c. 500 BCE) is generally taken as an error. Apion 1.183–204; see Stern, Greek and Latin Authors I:35–44, who takes it as basically authentic, as does the revised edition of Schürer. For a detailed recent discussion, see B. Bar-Kochva, Pseudo-Hecataeus, ‘On the Jews’: Legitimizing the Jewish Diaspora (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996). I have already discussed this account in “Scenes from the Early History of Judaism”, 145–82 (see this volume, Chapter 7). D. Mendels, “Hecataeus of Abdera and a Jewish ‘patrios politeia”’, ZAW 95 (1983): 96–110 (= Identity, Religion and Historiography: Studies in Hellenistic History, 334–51 [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998]). An outline of the main reasons will be found in my “Scenes from the Early History of Judaism” (this volume, Chapter 7).

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23. Mendels cites Neh. 2–4 and Jud. 5:19 as evidence of this ideology (“Hecataeus of Abdera”: 99 [=338]; but as noted by R. P. Carroll, the ‘empty land’ appears even more emphatically in Jeremiah 32 and Leviticus 25–27 and so can be seen as a perception outside the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. See R. P. Carroll, “Textual Strategies and Ideology”, in Second Temple Studies, I: Persian Period, Philip R. Davies (ed.), 108–24 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991). 24. The argument could be pressed further: such an attitude points to a strongly imperialistic or at least colonial mentality on the part of the immigrants and strengthens the suspicion that they were not conscious of being (and perhaps were not in reality) of the same stock as those who lived in the land being colonized. The strenuous efforts of the writer of Isa. 40–55 to persuade the Judaeans that the newcomers really were ‘daughters of Zion’ (see chapter 6 of this volume) suggests that the indigenous inhabitants (specifically, their hitherto ruling classes) were not convinced of shared roots with the new immigrants, either. 25. For the text and translation, see Stern (ed.), Greek and Latin Authors, I:169. 26. V. Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1915), 92–5; Mendels, “Hecataeus of Abdera”. 27. The Letter of Aristeas 13 speaks of Jews sent to Egypt to help Psammetichus. 28. According to Berossus, quoted by Josephus (Apion I.136–7). 29. O. Kaiser, Isaiah 13–19 (Old Testament Library) (London: SCM Press, 1980), 108–9; see also J. Vermeylen, Du prophète Isaïe a l’Apocalyptique (Paris: Gabalda, 1977), I, 324. 30. On the Elephantine texts, see A. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century BC (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923); E. G. Kraeling, The Brooklyn Museum Aramaic Papyri (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953); B. Porten & A. Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt, I: Letters (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1986). Subsequent references to individual texts in the Cowley and Porten & Yardeni editions are given by number only. 31. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century BC, 27; Porten & Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt, A4.5. 32. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century BC, 30–31; Porten & Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt, A4.7–8. 33. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century BC, 32–3; Porten & Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt, A4.9–10. 34. Preserved in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 9:27, from Alexander Polyhistor. 35. Observed by M. Noth, Exodus (London: SCM Press, 1962); and B. Levine, Numbers 1–20 (Anchor Bible Commentary) (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 320–21. 36. Since this paper was originally presented, my attention was drawn by Lester Grabbe to chapter 2 of E. S. Gruen, “The Use and Abuse of the Exodus Story”, in his Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition, 41–72 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998), which brilliantly illuminates the creative impulses and contexts that shaped the various tellings of the Exodus story in the Hellenistic literature.

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III Prophecy and apocalyptic

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10 Amos, man and book

The relationship between literature and history has always lain at the centre of biblical exegesis. In recent years some literary critics have ignored history or relegated its importance in biblical studies, seeing the Bible as a contemporary text to be addressed by self-consciously modern authors. John Hayes is not such a scholar; on the contrary, he has distinguished himself by his work on Israelite and Judaean history. But he has also shown a keen interest in the prophets, in which the literary and historical issues – we can say, of the relationship between the author and the book – have been to the fore. In this tribute to John Hayes I want, therefore, to make some observations about the prophet as author and as a literary character: as creator and as creature. I shall take Amos as my example, and Hayes’s influential 1988 commentary on Amos as a starting point. My thoughts are unlikely to provoke his agreement, but a man with such a fine sense of humour will surely derive some amusement from my impudence.

1. Searching for unity in Amos Hayes’s commentary set a new agenda for Amos studies in suggesting a unified message in the book and a precise historical context for that message. His interpretation is, as he makes clear, somewhat innovative: During the past century of research on Amos, scholars have repeatedly defended a number of conclusions about the book and activity of the prophet, some of which have reached the level of presupposed axioms from which any interpretation must begin … None of these conclusions can withstand close scrutiny; all should be discarded as interpretative assumptions. (Hayes 1988: 13)

These ‘interpretative assumptions’ he lists as follows: • Amos was the earliest of the ‘classical’ prophets • He addressed a nation prosperous under Jeroboam II

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Rethinking biblical scholarship He delivered a large number of short addresses His primary concerns were social justice For him, the essence of religion was ethical behaviour Amos offered a pessimistic view of Israel’s future He saw Assyria as the instrument of divine punishment The book is the product of a long editorial process.

Hayes concluded that Amos delivered his speeches on one occasion, at the autumn festival in 750, at a time of prosperity, but of economic retrenchment; and the enemy to which Amos alludes threateningly is not Assyria, but a coalition formed against Assyria by the very nations listed in the oracles in 1:3ff. Moreover, Amos ‘never unequivocally proclaimed the total destruction and end of the people’ (39); 9:11-15 in particular ‘should be considered authentic to the prophet Amos’ (223). As for the origin of the book: ‘it is easier to assume either that Amos wrote his own words, whether before or after delivering them, or, more, likely, that they were written down by someone in the audience’ (39). A number of other commentaries have followed Hayes’s lead in defending all or nearly all of the book of Amos as the work of the prophet, including promises of survival, and in most instances finding a rhetorical and theological unity to the book’s contents. Andersen and Freedman (1989), Paul (1991) and Sweeney (2000) all follow Hayes in challenging the ‘traditional’ critical view (as represented, for instance, by the commentaries of Mays [1969] and Wolff [1977]), that the original words of Amos consists of short sayings, and that the book has been secondarily supplied with doxologies (4:13; 5:8-9; 9:5-6) and, especially, the final words promising restoration and addressing a defeated and exiled Judah (9:11-15). These final verses, then, far from being a corrective or an afterthought, are claimed as central to the prophet’s message. According to the still more usual view, these final verses seem, in their positive forecast, to overturn the message of unqualified destruction that appears to characterize the rest of the book. The counter-argument offered is that such a message would nevertheless make little sense. Sweeney, for instance, contends that the prophets would surely not have confronted their listeners with the unavoidable prospect of destruction or exile without offering some grounds for positive reaction that might avert that fate: Such a contention seems to be the more morally defensible and intellectually consistent route insofar as it portrays the prophets – and G-d – as figures who are ultimately interested in effecting constructive change in ancient society and indeed as figures who are themselves morally accountable. (Sweeney 2006: 178)

Shalom Paul had made a similar point: Punishment for punishment’s sake is not the prophetic ideal. The prophet’s chastisement is meant to serve as a transitional stage to a period of future restoration, at least for the surviving remnant. (Paul 1991: 289)

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This view has a certain logic, even common sense: but quite apart from the contention of Jeremiah 28:8-9 that ‘the prophets who preceded you and me from ancient times prophesied war, famine, and pestilence against many countries and great kingdoms’, it does not follow necessarily that these final words actually do come from Amos, even if he may have agreed with such sentiments. Does the oracle against Israel in 2:6-16 imply a call to repentance? If so, should the same not also be true of the other oracles in 1:3–2:3? From the opposite perspective, Auld points out (1986: 22) that ‘nowhere in the preserved public words of Amos do we find any intercession for his people (assuming he did regard them as ‘his’ people), since the intercession within the visions – if that is the correct term – takes place after the destruction has occurred’.1 Sweeney appeals further to Amos 5:4 and 6, where we find the exhortation to ‘seek me and live, but do not seek Bethel’; ‘seek Yahweh and live’. These sayings, as he rightly points out, have not generally been regarded as later additions to an original message, and hence it has been, at least implicitly, acknowledged that Amos did call for a change of behaviour that could avert the threatened punishment (2006: 182): Such exhortation establishes the fundamental rhetorical purpose of Amos’ portrayals of coming judgment – and restoration. Amos’ oracles can not be taken individually as past scholars have done, but as components of a larger well designed text – whether oral or written – that presents a rhetorical argument designed to convince its audience to adapt the book’s viewpoint and recommended course of action.

Andersen and Freedman also attribute virtually all of the book to the prophet, including 9:11-15, but they do so on largely literary grounds – that the book is a ‘highly structured unity’ and because they ‘recognize the early prophets, and Amos in particular, as versatile verbal craftsmen, quite capable of using cultic and wisdom pieces as well as the more direct oracles in their speeches’ (Andersen & Freedman 1989: 144). But the first of these can as well indicate an editor with some literary skill, while the second is a mere assertion that contradicts a large body of work on the Hebrew Bible generally. The evidence of their own commentary points, if anything, towards a highly competent assembly of various pieces of material into a coherent and well-structured whole!2 Nevertheless, Hayes and his successors have a point: the ‘traditional’ critical view effectively sees the message of the prophet and that of the book as in tension. This view holds that the words of Amos were transmitted and retained a relevance for succeeding generations, so that the book in its canonized form addresses readers that the prophet did not originally confront. If this understanding is correct, that tension is not really a problem; indeed, it may in fact be something that ancient, as well as modern, readers were well able to sustain, seeing the words of a prophet from the past coming home to them in a different place and time. This traditional view of the book makes sense of the fact that the words of Amos, or at least a book in his name, was preserved well after he is supposed

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to have lived, suggesting that they had some ongoing relevance. But as usually formulated, that view also maintains that a prophetic ‘tradition’ – or a set of short oracles – about Israel, that in fact turned out to be correct, was preserved, yet somehow re-applied to Judah after the fall of Israel, and then contradicted, first in 9:8c (regarding Israel? or Judah?) and then by 9:11-15. The final words, when read from an exilic or postexilic standpoint, are not, then, seen to apply to the ‘house of Israel’ that had long disappeared, but refer to Judah, which can also see itself in some way as ‘Israel’. In arguing against this understanding of the growth of the book, Hayes is right to point out that there is ‘no evidence whatever’ for any ‘disciples’ developing and transmitting an ‘Amos tradition’ (39). It certainly has to be conceded that at the heart of scholarship on biblical prophecy lies a deep chasm of ignorance about how and why prophetic scrolls were really written down, then copied and recopied, reworked and canonized (‘how the book of Amos came into being remains unknown’, Hayes [39]).3 The ‘traditional’ view may not in fact be wrong, but it is rather hypothetical, and hardly a model of coherence. The efforts of Hayes, Andersen and Freedman, Paul and Sweeney to find a more coherent interpretation are understandable. Yet are they on the right track by simply assigning virtually everything in the book to the original prophet? In addressing this question, we may as well maintain the focus on 9:11-15 and the reference to the ‘falling (or “fallen”) booth of David’ (tlpnh dywd tks, v. 11). In what sense would an eighth-century prophet have used this term in addressing Israelites? For Hayes, ‘at a minimum, Amos may have considered the Davidic house to represent the only viable political entity among his people’ (Hayes 1988: 226), or, as an alternative, Amos ‘actually exhibits a pro-Davidic bias’ (227). Andersen and Freedman, with Paul, assume Israelite awareness of a once glorious past, when Judah and Israel were united under David. Paul speaks of a ‘nostalgic reflection upon the ideal period of David’ (291); for him, the ‘fallen booth’ was the ‘concomitant result of the rupture of the United Kingdom’. Andersen and Freedman likewise regard the ‘fallen booth of David’ as the ‘empire’ that ‘had happened long ago’ (916), a ‘nostalgia’ that ‘must have started early and increased steadily over the years’. On this interpretation, the more plausible translation ‘falling’ for tlpnh should surely be preferred; it is strange, then, that some supporters of an eighth-century date prefer ‘fallen’, as the exilic dating understandably favours (Andersen and Freedman 885; Paul 288)! Hayes, indeed (followed by Sweeney) insists that the ‘booth of David’ is described as ‘falling’, not ‘fallen’, and so is still in existence, though in a weak state relative to its neighbours, especially Israel (224). Hayes’s case for the ‘authenticity’ of 9:11-15 is sustained by a unique reconstruction of the historical context. Otherwise, there remains a high degree of implausibility in Amos’ presumed purpose in offering his Israelite audience the prospect of a Judaean resurgence. Sweeney, for instance, sees in these verses a possible attempt by Amos to elicit repentance from his audience by employing utopian images of the idyllic future to follow a change of attitude. As for the specifics of such an idyll (2006: 178):

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Given the presentation of Amos as a Judean who appears at the northern Israelite sanctuary at Beth El at a time of Judean subservience to northern Israel and the Jehu dynasty, such an idyllic scenario would call for the rejection of the house of Jehu and the restoration of Judean, Davidic kingship over Israel.

The suggestion that Amos uttered such words at Bethel is nevertheless problematic. The view that the ‘booth of David’ referred to a once-united kingdom depends, of course on accepting that such an entity actually existed – which the present state of discussion leaves far from certain.4 Perhaps, as Sweeney suggests, there were (Judaean) traditions (whether based on historical reality or not) that underlay Amos’ words – but even so, could Amos have really been unaware that these might not be shared, let alone welcomed, by Israelites? Even allowing for a memory of a historical ‘united monarchy’ among the population of Israel, the biblical traditions themselves imply a good deal of animosity between the two ‘houses’, beginning in the time of David himself – an animosity perhaps fuelled by the quite different policies and relationships towards Assyria which Israel and Judah promoted. It is doubtful that any political ‘unity’, whether or not it had ever existed, would have been welcomed by Israelites. In short: to present rule under a member of the Davidic dynasty as a reward for repentance would have been tactless and counter-productive. Hayes, as usual, is alert to the problem. He offers at least a partial solution: Amos was calling for an uprising against Jeroboam, inviting his hearers to switch their allegiance to Jerusalem. His threats against the ‘house of Israel’ are confined to the ruling dynasty in Israel, which will be toppled by an invading force (Aram and Philistia5). The ‘house of Jacob’ in 9:8 denotes, by contrast, the wider Israelite nation, some of whom would survive (220). Judah would be strengthened by the fall of the Israelite dynasty and could turn its attention to recovering territory from Edom (225). Amos, as understood by Hayes, was not tempting his hearers with the prospect of rule under a Davidic king, but inviting a rebellion in favour of the pretender Pekah (whom Hayes identifies in 1:5b as Nw)-t(qbm b#$wy [76–7]). This suggestion makes good sense of Amaziah’s message to the king in 7:10 (but Amos’ expulsion from Bethel must then have been an extremely mild reaction!). But if Amos is not inviting the allegiance of its hearers to the Judaean ruling dynasty, the promise about the future of Judah has no resonance in Bethel at all. Indeed, such words might well hinder the impact of his call for a rebellion against Jeroboam. An additional problem is how such positive predictions for Judah here fit with 2:4-5, which, despite their curious content Hayes also takes to be authentic words of Amos (and which unfortunately there is no space here to discuss).6 But beyond the difficulties of 9:11-15, there are other problems with systematizing the entire contents of the book as a coherent message of an eighth-century prophet. I noted earlier Sweeney’s allusion to Amos 5:4 and 6 as a call to repentance. But the verb #$rd implies, of course some kind of cultic activity, and the book’s critique of cultic behaviour deserves more attention than it generally receives, especially since no specific cultic malpractice is adduced and it is hard

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to see exactly what an eighth-century Amos would have been objecting to. In 4:4 we find Bethel and Gilgal as places where ‘sin’ ((#$p), while 5:5 specifically threatens doom on them, as well as on Beersheba. The reference to Beersheba looks very much out of place here, but it recurs in 8:14. Paul suggests (163) that some Israelites used to cross the border to visit Beersheba. But what would Amos have against this (non-Israelite) sanctuary? Is there perhaps some other agenda requiring an attack on a sanctuaries challenging Jerusalem through their geographical proximity? But an eighth-century prophet is unlikely to have held the view that Jerusalem was only the proper place for worship, and had he expressed that view, his effectiveness at Bethel would surely have been rather minimal. We might think of 5:21-5: ‘I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies … Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?’ (5:25). But these statements seem to relate to all sacrifice, without discrimination, presumably including Jerusalem.7 Religious practice without a cult makes no sense in any period of ancient Israelite or Judaean history, except perhaps the Babylonian exile, and Amos the prophet can hardly have favoured the abolition of cult. Most commentators thus understand that the words mean only that cultic behaviour should be accompanied by social justice. But this attitude hardly justifies an attack on the sanctuaries themselves? There is a hint of idolatrous practice, perhaps, in 5:26 and 8:14, where again Beersheba is mentioned, and there are threats against deities invoked in Samaria and (perhaps) in Dan. But no critique on the lines of Hosea or Isaiah 40–55 seems to be part of Amos’ agenda. Yet in such criticisms we encounter an issue intrinsic to the rhetoric of the book of Amos that has yet to find a satisfactory explanation. Amos is here presented as calling for these sanctuaries to be abandoned, and as predicting their destruction. This certainly runs counter to the widely prevailing traditional view (from which, admittedly, Hayes excepts himself) that Amos was concerned only with social ills and not bothered about cultic matters. There are further difficulties facing any attempt to create more coherence in the book of Amos on the basis of a prophet whom we believe we can reconstruct behind the book. But quite apart from these is the question of whether we have a secure knowledge of such a figure in the first place.

2. Searching for the prophet What we know about the prophet Amos is frequently taken for granted, but is far from solid, as the advocates of the ‘traditional’ view of the book generally recognize. The superscription in 1:1 is agreed (even by the scholars mentioned earlier) to be editorial, and follows the pattern of many such headings in the Book of the Twelve, which seem based on the correlations of 2 Kings (the correlation here with Uzziah conforms to the statement of 2 Kings (15:1).8 Where does this historical dating, and the other information in 1:1, come from? Some of it could be derived from elsewhere in the book: the dating to Jeroboam II from either from

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7:9 (the culmination of the third vision report) or 7:10 (the narrative). ‘Among the herdsmen’ could be derived from 7:14, though this cannot be certain: however, if noqed is not a ‘clarification’ of boqer,9 then the entire phrase ‘who was among the noqedim from Tekoa’ might have been part of an original collection of Amos sayings rather than editorially deduced; the reference to Tekoa certainly must come from elsewhere,10 and the same appears true of ‘two years before the earthquake’ (or ‘for two years …’). The reference to the earthquake might be partially deduced or amplified from 1:2, but the ‘two years’ is presumably derived from elsewhere – possibly reflecting some obscure chronological deduction, but also possibly a memory of an event associated with the words of Amos.11 Thus ‘two years before the earthquake’ and ‘from Tekoa’ are the only data that could not be created out of the contents of the book itself. If the scroll of Amos’ words had an original title, then, it may have been ‘Words of Amos of Tekoa: what he saw about Israel. Two years before the earthquake’: author, content, date (the latter being sufficient as long as the earthquake was remembered).12 If the narrative of 7:10-17 is reliable, of course, then we can add its details to our knowledge of the prophet. But even those scholars who regard it as a reliable report accept that it appears to be secondary to the vision cycle in which it is embedded and which it interrupts (including Hayes [231]). That obviously raises a question about its provenance. Was it transmitted together with the words of Amos (though not among his ‘words’?). Even scholars of the ‘traditional’ persuasion largely assume that it relates a real event, including Wolff (308), though he observes that the story is primarily about Amaziah and his fate, not about Amos, Israel or Jeroboam. Why, then, was it inserted into a scroll of Amos’ words? What exactly is its function? It certainly fulfils several incidental functions: offering data about the circumstances of Amos’ call and about his profession, and repeating the threat of exile for Israel. But a complicating issue is the parallel story in 2 Kings 13, in which an unnamed prophet prophesies the destruction of Bethel’s altar. A Judaean connection, a Jeroboam, the Bethel altar and eating bread are shared features of both narratives. (Auld [28] adds the ‘lion’ [Amos 1:1; 3:4, 8; 5:20]). If we have more than a coincidence here, then one story is influenced by the other (or both by a common tradition). The issue of historicity in the case of Amos is thus rather fraught. By way of illustrating the possibilities of exploiting the Kings narrative, I shall allude to Christoph Levin’s far-reaching deductions (Levin 1995). He suggests that the phrase ‘house of Jeroboam’ in 7:9 implies Jeroboam I, the founder of the ‘high places’ and of the kingdom of Israel, rather than Jeroboam II. This connection would give a particular emphasis to the promise of restoration of the ‘fallen/falling booth of David’, since this restoration would amount to a reversal of Jeroboam’s ‘sin’ – both in setting up Bethel and in breaching the unity of the kingdom. Thus, ‘the message of Amos about the end of Israel will have included the entire history of the northern kingdom, up to its downfall’ (310) and ‘at the time of the later conclusion to Amos the connection between Amos and Jeroboam I was still current’ (313). In Levin’s view, the relationship between 2 Kings 13 and Amos 7:10-17 confirms that this identification continued to be made when the latter narrative was inserted into the Amos scroll. The author

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of the superscription, however, misunderstood Amos 7 and placed Amos in the time of Jeroboam II, leading also to a misreading of the point of the message that the prophet had given. Other scholars have explored with less radical conclusions the relationship between 2 Kings 13 and Amos 7:10-17. Ackroyd (1977), for example, complicated the issue by noting the case of 2 Chronicles 25:14-16, in which the Judaean king Amaziah is challenged by an (unnamed) prophet. Whatever view is taken of this intriguing aspect of the Amos narrative, we must not allow ourselves to assume that the narrative has its origin in a historical event involving Amos that was reliably transmitted. And since so much of what we know, of think we know, about the prophet Amos is derived from this narrative, any interpretation of the book that is based on a detailed reconstruction of Amos’ career and historical context requires a good deal of conjecture. The profile of the prophet is simply not a historical ‘given’, as even Hayes seems to me to believe. I do not, of course, wish to argue a historical Amos out of existence simply by raising doubts or from a prejudicial scepticism. That a written collection of oracles entitled as suggested above is quite probable. It is certainly not unreasonable that written collections of prophetic words were lodged in the palaces and temples of Israel and Judah; we have ample evidence of such texts, and of their preservation in archives (see e.g. Floyd & Ben Zvi 2000; Huffmon 2000). But we cannot be confident that everything in the book comes from this prophet, nor that the legend about him in 7:10-17 really is reliable. The insertion of the narrative itself suggests that the scroll was later modified and that the original contents did not lie or were not simply retrieved in their pristine state until their incorporation in a Scroll of Twelve Prophets. But equally, as suggested above, the ‘traditional’ idea that the scroll was transmitted as an ongoing religious or theological resource, teaching Judaeans a lesson about the fall of Israel before being reapplied to Judah itself, is not the only alternative. There is another possibility, one that also maintains a coherence within the book without assigning the entire contents to a prophet whose profile cannot really be reconstructed with great confidence.

3. The unity of the book of Amos Arguments about the ‘unity’ of a prophet’s message are in the end arguments about the unity of the book itself. While it is never wise to presume that all biblical books must display some kind of literary unity, we should always expect to discover a certain integrity of purpose and theme. But these are not necessarily the result of a single author; they are as much a product of a reasonably skilful editor, or even of a process of transmission in which the shape and purpose of the document is gradually acquired,13 in some cases bringing originally disparate contents into a meaningful shape. How do we, then, decide whether the book of Amos is best understood as the product of a single prophet (as Hayes and the other commentators mentioned earlier argue), or a longer process of redaction (the ‘traditional’ critical view), or a single process of composition, using existing and newly created material? While there should be no presumption

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in favour of any of these, the existence of the superscription and the narrative of 7:10-17, and of different forms and diction (the hymn fragments, the occasional Deuteronomic phrases – all of which have been identified and discussed at length in the commentaries) show that the prophet Amos himself was not simply ‘the author’ of the book bearing his name while, if the contents were even largely Amos’ own words, the fact of their preservation well beyond their immediately relevant context points to purposes, ‘messages’ in the book beyond those of the prophet himself. Apart from Hayes, himself, virtually every commentator has concluded that that the book of Amos – and the message of the prophet himself – is primarily concerned with social justice in Israel. But the book itself has other features that do not fit this topic. The prediction about the ‘booth of David’ does not fit (and, I have suggested, does not fit any plausible historical scenario for the prophet himself). Neither do the hymnic passages (Amos 4:13; 5:8; 9:5-6), whose lofty creation theology is close in sentiment and language to Second Isaiah (compare Isa. 45:7 with Amos 5:8-9). But particularly awkward (a factor relatively unremarked) is the attack on Israelite sanctuaries, especially Bethel (and its priest), which points to other concerns as well, and related to cultic worship. The book’s invective has, in fact, three targets: Israel as a whole, the city of Samaria, and Bethel (sometimes with other sanctuaries). The first assault on Israel in 2:6-16 is quite general, as it is in ch. 3, where ‘Samaria’ in vv. 9 and 12 is perhaps singled out because it is the royal seat and thus the seat of royal luxury and oppression. That critique is resumed in 4:1. But Bethel is singled out for punishment in v. 14 and again, with Gilgal, in 4:4. After this, Samaria is mentioned again in 6:1 and (indirectly) in 8:14, while in 5:4-5 Bethel (and other sanctuaries) are also singled out again. In chapter 6 the sins of Samaria are laid out: wealth and oppression, and in chapter 7, while the first two visions relate to ‘Jacob’, the third vision (7:7-10) speaks not just of the destruction of Israel but specifically of the ‘sanctuaries of Israel’. The use of ‘Jacob’ is also important here. It occurs six times in the book altogether: we find ‘house of Jacob’ in 3:13 and 9:8, and ‘pride of Jacob’ in 6:8 (which Hayes thinks [188] may be a reference to Samaria; the literal, abstract meaning would be, as Wolff notes [282], unusual for Amos) and again in 8:7. ‘Jacob’ alone occurs in 7:2 and 9:8. The proximity of ‘Jacob’ and ‘Bethel’ in Amos 7–9 is especially significant, since Bethel was the sanctuary especially connected with that ancestor. The fate of the sanctuaries of Israel remains a topic in the book until the end: even if in 8:3 lkyh means ‘palace’ rather than ‘temple’, v. 5 alludes to new moons and sabbaths, and v. 10 to religious festivals (Mkygh). The section also ends: those who swear by Ashimah of Samaria, and say, ‘As your god lives, O Dan,’ and, ‘As the way of Beer-sheba lives’ – they shall fall, and never rise again.

The vision series then culminates in 9:1-4 with a vision of an altar being destroyed and the people killed and exiled. Which altar? Most, including Mays

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(152), Paul (274). Andersen and Freedman (835) and apparently Hayes (‘worshipers at the royal festival’, 217), assume Bethel. The text then moves on to the prospect of exile, until it returns to the ‘booth of David’. What, then, might we expect the ‘booth’ of David’ to refer to? The almost universal assumption is the Judaean dynasty; but the context suggests rather that it is the sanctuary of Jerusalem. This meaning creates a more powerful opposition than the political regimes of Israel and Judah; the hegemony of Jerusalem versus the existence of other sanctuaries, and especially Bethel. And this is an opposition that we could not plausibly assign to an eighth-century prophet. And yet Hayes is right: ‘there is nothing in the book that would indicate the Israelites were officially practicing any form of religion other than Yahwism’ (39). Although, as early as the Masoretic tradition, 5:26 seems to be interpreted as an indication of idolatry, twks seems to be the same word as used in 9:11, where, I have suggested, it means the Jerusalem sanctuary, while Mkyhl) does not have to be translated as a reference to multiple deities. Hayes’s comment underlines a crucial aspect of the book’s critique: while the crimes of ‘Israel’ and ‘Samaria’ are all too clearly spelled out, those of Bethel (and other sanctuaries) are not. It is almost as if their existence were of itself an offence: or, perhaps, that while offering no specific pretext for their own destruction, they are guilty just by being Israelite. The themes of social injustice, national destruction, exile, cult and Bethel are thus interwined in the book of Amos in a way that is hard to attribute to an eighth-century prophet. But the ‘intertwining’ forms a kind of pattern, with a gradual shift of emphasis from national, social transgressions towards more specifically cultic ones (though neither of these aspects is ever entirely absent; they are juxtaposed throughout) suggests that the end of the book may not be, after all, an afterthought or a correction, contradicting the ‘social’ message of the remainder: rather, it may be precisely the culmination of the book’s main theme: the supersession of Israelite sanctuaries by Jerusalem, but within the context of a broader supersession of ‘Israel’ by Judah. Or, rather, of ‘old’ Israel by ‘new Israel’. Such a wider supersession can indeed be discerned in the book itself. In his comments on chapter 9, Hayes separates the ‘booth of David’ in 9:11, meaning the Judaean royal house, from the ‘remnant’ of ‘Jacob’ in 9:8, which means the rump of the kingdom of Israel (221–2); a similar distinction is made by Paul, for whom, however, the ‘booth of David’ is a unified ‘Davidic’ empire (284–5; 284). As long as both verses are assigned to an eighth-century prophet, such a differentiation is unavoidable, but problematic. Wolff also finds two distinct addresses: for he concludes that 9:8, though not from Amos but his disciples, refers to survivors of the kingdom of Israel, and regards 9:11 as a later addition emanating from, and referring to Judah. But at least his different entities relate to different times and purposes. Mays, however, while agreeing that 9:11 comes from, and relates to, exilic Judah, asserts that ‘In its present form the text of 8b simply contradicts the rest of the oracle and makes the foregoing pointless’ (160). In fact, he suggests emending the text from yk sp) to )lh ‘shall I indeed not destroy the house of Jacob’.

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Mays seeks a greater consistency in what the ‘traditional’ interpretation sees as the book’s closing Judaean gloss, but he overlooks that fact that after the fall of Samaria, and especially in texts of the sixth to fifth century BCE, ‘Jacob’ is apparently used in prophetic texts to refer to Judah: Hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, and have come out of the waters of Judah, who swear by the name of Yhwh, and make mention of the god of Israel, but not in truth, nor in righteousness. (Isa. 48:1) And I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an inheritor of my mountains: and my elect shall inherit it, and my servants shall live there. (Isa. 65:9)

This phenomenon is also evident in 46:3 and 58:1, but can also be discerned in First Isaiah (Isa. 10:20-21; 14:1; 29:22) as well as in Jeremiah (2:4; 5:20; 10:16, 25; 30:7,10, 18; 31:7,11; 33:26; 46:27-28; 51:19), Micah (5:7, 8) and in Lamentations (1:17 and in 2:2-3: ‘Yahweh has swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and has not shown pity … he burned against Jacob like a flaming fire …’). When and why the name ‘Jacob’ was transferred from the kingdom of Israel to Judah is too large a question to consider in detail here. But it is likely to be connected (either as a period of origin or as one of reinforcement) with the period after Benjamin was annexed to Judah. This process, too, is extremely difficult to reconstruct, but it almost certainly occurred after the fall of Samaria.14 Another crucial question here is the precise status of Bethel, both religiously and politically, not only in the eighth century but in the succeeding era. For according to Joshua 18:22, Bethel is allotted to the tribe of Benjamin. Yet in to Judges 1:22 it was taken over by the ‘house of Joseph’. According to 2 Kings 23, Josiah sacked Bethel, which scholars usually take to be part of an attempt at expanding his territory (but which on a careful reading of 23:19 is not included in the territory of Samaria). In Ezra (implicitly 2:28) and in Nehemiah 11:31 it belonged with Judah: The people of Benjamin also lived from Geba onward, at Michmash, Aija, Bethel and its villages.

At all events, during the Neo-Babylonian era the territory of Benjamin was at the political heart of Judah. Blenkinsopp has argued (1998) that at this time Bethel also became the major sanctuary of Judah. Unlike Jerusalem, it was not destroyed by the Neo-Babylonians (nor, apparently, had been under by the Assyrians when Samaria fell). This fact might seem to favour of an eighthcentury date for Amos, when Bethel was presumably still a royal Israelite sanctuary; but it does not, since the memory of Bethel’s earlier prestige will have lingered, especially as Bethel remained a sanctuary in Judah until some point in the Persian period which we cannot as yet determine. But the same it probably true of Gilgal and Beersheba. However, during the Neo-Babylonian

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period, Beersheba would have been in the territory of Edom. This fact explains why Amos 9:12, proclaiming the restored sovereignty of the Jerusalem temple, embraces the reconquest of Edom in its utopia: how else could Jerusalem ensure the destruction of all its Yahwistic rivals? The above observations, though far too brief, permit the statement of a new hypothesis about the origin and purpose of the book of Amos. It was compiled in the fifth century BCE (or possibly somewhat later) as part of a much wider process of text-production in which the former political hegemony of Benjamin and the privilege enjoyed by its sanctuaries was removed and Jerusalem became not only once more the capital of Judah, but also for the first time championed as the only legitimate sanctuary for Yahwists (for an amplification of this process, see Edelman 2005). How do the contents of the book of Amos fit this agenda? First, we can reasonably assume that a collection of ‘words of Amos’ formed the starting point: here were oracles that denounced Israel’s depravity and were probably preserved in Bethel, the royal sanctuary; it was, after all, the custom for prophetic oracles to be addressed to the king and to be deposited in the royal archives (as mentioned earlier). There is, correspondingly, little reason for them to have been kept anywhere else (except possibly Samaria) – certainly not Jerusalem; Amos the prophet had no message for Judah and his message for Israel had little relevance in Judah. The growth of the book begins, then, after Bethel has become part of Judah and as its status is being challenged by Jerusalem. The oracles create a pretext for a scroll that not only denounces Israel and proclaims its death as divine punishment, but is expanded to identify Judah as the ‘remnant’ of ‘Jacob’ that has been divinely preserved. The destruction of Yahwsitic sanctuaries (Bethel, Gilgal, Beersheba – and Samaria?) is now explicitly included, and the story of the prophet who prophesied the destruction of Bethel, of which we find a version in 1 Kings 13, is exploited in an inserted narrative that denounces the high priest of Bethel (possibly, indeed, Amos was ‘identified’ as the unknown prophet, if Levin’s hypothesis is correct). Finally, as a climax, the restoration of Jerusalem as the sole temple of the sole god (the monotheistic features of the book ought not to be overlooked, especially the hymnic passages and 9:7, though not 3:2 which nevertheless might reflect a covenant theology not present in the original oracle collection) is proclaimed as a divine promise.15 Amos is thus a book that betrays the same processes that we find elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible: the denunciation of the now defunct kingdom of Israel and the claim of Judah to be the legitimate survivor of an ‘Israel’ (the tradition that this ‘Israel’ once included both former kingdoms is not assumed in the book, however). But why did Judaeans need to take on the identity of Israel? Two answers may be given: first, because for over a century most Judaeans had come to be addressed by their god as ‘Jacob’, which, we may infer, was standard practice in Benjaminite sanctuaries, and probably other Israelite sanctuaries also. This identity could not have been denied without effectively proclaiming and enforcing a new god in Judah: hence the strategy of identifying Judah as the remnant of Jacob, so securing the legitimacy of the returning Judaeans (almost

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all, presumably, ‘Zionists’ in the strict sense) as representatives of the ‘god of Jacob’. A second reason was the existence of a Yahwistic Samaria: no doubt for some time after the restoration of Jerusalem as capital of Judah both Judah and Samaria coexisted relatively peacefully as Yahwistic entities, to the extent of sharing a common canonized Torah (with minimal textual divergences). Jerusalem’s ambitious claim for pre-eminence as the only seat of the universal god Yahweh could not therefore deny some degree of legitimacy to Samaria, while requiring by all means possible to characterize its population either as secondary Yahwists (see 2 Kings 17:24-28; note the pointed reference to Bethel in v. 28) or, more harshly, as formerly chosen by Yahweh but later rejected because of its sins. Or, as the Chronicler chooses, effectively ignored altogether.

4. Conclusion: Amos: book rather than man My hypothesis has much in common with Hayes. I agree with him that the book has a fairly unified message that makes sense within a reasonably specific political context. I also agree that the core of the book consists of some probably genuine oracles from an Amos, perhaps even written by the prophet himself – since in the ancient Near East oracles were regularly transmitted to their recipient in writing (see Floyd & Ben Zvi 2000) – though whether the original Amos was from Tekoa or was at least a Judaean we shall never be certain. I further agree with Hayes about the importance of 9:11-15 to the message of the book as a whole. I would, however, disagree with him about the content of what the prophet Amos said (or even wrote); they most probably were individual, short pieces collected and then copied onto a scroll, and dealt mostly with social behaviour. Whether the foreign nation oracles or visions, both neat rhetorical units, subsequently disturbed, are also to be attributed to Amos or to some later contributor to the book, is also very hard to say – but also relatively unimportant. The rhetorical arrangement looks more likely the product of the author of the book, not of the original oracle collection. The unifying agenda of the book of Amos, ay any rate, is one of turning a scroll of collected oracles from the past to legitimize later Judaean assumption of the mantle of ‘Israel’. Its purpose is to justify Jerusalem’s triumph over Bethel, Judah’s over Israel. If recent work on prophecy has moved towards any broad conclusions, it is that surely we should pay closer attention to what the existence of prophetic literature tells us about the history of Israel and Judah rather than trying to make plausible historical figures from their heroes. I hope that despite his almost certain disagreement. John Hayes will agree with me that history is still not only very important, but can be a lot of fun.

Notes 1. It might be countered that the first two visions of Amos (7:2, 5) the prophet intercedes. But according to 7:2 the locust plague was already over (lwk)l hlk_M)): NRSV: ‘When they had finished eating’, the locusts have already consumed or are only about to

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3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

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Rethinking biblical scholarship consume. The emendation to hlkm )wh yhyw proposed by C. C. Torrey, “Notes on Am 2:7; 6:10; 8:3; 9:8-10”, JBL 13 [1894]: 61–3, esp. 63) is followed by J. L. Mays, Amos (Old Testament Library) (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press/London: SCM Press, 1969), 127, while H. W. Wolff translates (without emendation) ‘about to finish off’. Paul (228) on the contrary insists that the destruction has occurred, and Amos is asking for pardon and for no further action (hyht )l, v. 4). Likewise, hlk)w in 7:4 is more probably a simple perfect: the fire had already consumed, despite NRSV ‘was eating up’. It might be that Amos is interceding, but not to avert the punishment, rather for there to be no more of it (so ldx, v. 5). The rhetorical study of K. Möller, A Prophet in Debate: The Rhetoric of Persuasion in the Book of Amos (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), by contrast, does not attempt ‘to establish an Amosian authorship’ (118) on the basis of a coherent structure, though Möller does in fact prefer a date before the end of the kingdom of Judah. I have discussed the problem – without providing any definite solution – in an essay on the literary origins and transmission of the prophetic literature (“‘Pen of Iron, Point of Diamond’ [Jer 17:1]: Prophecy as Writing”, in Writings and Speech in Israelite and Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy, M. Floyd & E. Ben Zvi [eds], 65–81 [Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 2000]). The debate about the historicity of the United Monarchy continues unresolved. See I. Finkelstein, “The Archaeology of the United Monarchy: An Alternative View”, Levant 28 (1996): 177–87, and A. Mazar, “Iron Age Chronology: A Reply to I. Finkelstein”, Levant 29 (1997): 157–67, for the beginning of the ceramic aspects of the debate; for a good review and discussion of the wider question, see G. Knoppers, “The Vanishing Solomon: The Disappearance of the United Monarchy from Recent Histories of Ancient Israel”, JBL 116 (1997): 19–44. The debate remains intense and unresolved. The problem here is that deportation was unlikely to be foreseen at the hands of the Philistines or Arameans: to where would they have exiled Israelites? And why? By contrast, deportation was a well-known Assyrian imperial strategy – not merely a punitive measure, but politically and economically rational. ‘The generality of the statements concerning Judah’s wrongdoings make it difficult to know to what Amos was referring’ (J. H. Hayes, Amos: The Eighth-Century Prophet – His Times and His Preaching [Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1988], 103). But Hayes does try to impart a political/ethical meaning to this Deuteronomistic-sounding language. Note the interesting but speculative suggestions by M. Bič, “Der Prophet Amos – Ein Haepatoskopos?”, VT 1 (1951): 293–6, that Amos was a cultic official (a hepatoscoper) and the suggestion by R. C. Steiner, Stockmen from Tekoa, Sycomores from Sheba: A Study of Amos’ Occupations (Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2003) that Amos supplied sacrificial animals for the Jerusalem temple. Table and analysis of the superscriptions is given in Davies, “‘Pen of Iron, Point of Diamond’”, 66–9. On the problematic chronology of Uzziah (see Hayes, Amos, 45). In the case of the superscription of both Hosea and Micah more than one Judaean king is named; why not here, since Amaziah reigned in Judah during the first part of Jeroboam’s reign? A simple explanation is that the editors took Amos to have uttered his words within a year, and perhaps, ideally, shortly before Jeroboam died. Paul (248) claims that there is simply no contradiction between the terms (which to many interpreters seem to imply different kinds of animal); but even if he were right, the use of two different words remains to be explained. Especially since, as most commentators point out, Tekoa is not a place for sycamores (see Steiner, Stockmen from Tekoa, Sycomores from Sheba, for amplification).

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11. Zech. 14:5, of course, alludes to an earthquake in the time of Uzziah, and the possibility of an inventive link with this on the basis of 1:2 cannot be ruled out. 12. Several commentators find the collocation of ‘seeing’ and ‘words’ troublesome, though it occurs also in Isa. 2:1 and Micah 1:1. My proposal to separate the two as indicated in my translation here avoids that issue, and could also apply to the Micah superscription, but not to the Isaiah text. 13. The very fact that a document was preserved and copied itself presupposes a certain purpose, whether or not that purpose coincides with that of the text’s original author. 14. The account in 1 Kings 12:16-21 that links Benjamin with Judah in the time of Rehoboam is almost certainly secondary; note the statement in v. 20 that ‘There was no one who followed the house of David, except the tribe of Judah alone’ and v. 21, where Rehoboam ‘assembled all the house of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin’. Yet see further 2 Chron. 13:19, the Judaean king Abijah, the successor of Rehoboam, captured it from Jeroboam. 15. It may be added that the oracle against Judah in 2:4-5 reflects the concerns of the ruling elite in Jerusalem in the fifth century onwards for the acceptance of the torah of Yahweh as the basis of social and religious life.

11 ‘Pen of iron, point of diamond’ (Jer 17:1) Prophecy as writing

Prophecy as literature Sometimes the obvious is not obvious, and not least in biblical studies. Of the sociological/anthropological studies of ‘Israelite prophecy’,1 few if any noted that intermediaries do not write their words in big books; few have followers who write down their words, and fewer still have schools of editors reworking it for later generations. The phenomenon of ‘prophecy’ in ancient Israel and Judah is not essentially a social one but a literary one: what makes the case of these societies unique is that they produced ‘prophetic’ scrolls. From these scrolls (and from some others) emerges the idea of a single institution of ‘prophecy’, and in some of the less critical literature, even of our own day, this literary and ideological invention has been reverted to historical description: one speaks of ‘the prophets’ as if dealing with a historical institution. But ancient intermediaries do not as a rule keep records of their intermediations, nor are these preserved over centuries. This is not to deny that written texts of such a kind are occasionally found, as at Mari, the Sibylline literature or among the Mormons. Nor should one deny that the culture that produced the literature to be canonized as the Jewish scriptures might be regarded as unique in this respect. But the indisputable evidence that the so-called ‘prophetic’ books were created as literary artifacts and indeed were mostly brought into their present shape by scribal editing surely places a burden of proof on those who want to associate them primarily with the spoken words of named individuals. The premise that ‘biblical prophecy’ presents us prima facie with a literary phenomenon, and the insistence that any connection between these scrolls, each one marked by the name of an individual, and their eponyms needs to be analysed rather than assumed, will surely be taken as yet another manifestation of revisionist scepticism, of the kind that adamantly refuses to accept both the plain statements of holy scripture (or even of ancient texts) and the accumulated wisdom of theological commentators and historians of ancient Israelite religion looking for material to write about. But I simply regard such a stance as good methodology: what we can see is what we know, and what we would like to think needs to be argued for. It would be convenient to assume that the ‘prophets’

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of the four scrolls of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Twelve really existed and had some influence on the behaviour of their society, because without them most of the dominant portraits of that religion (notably that of Romantic Protestantism, which flourished in Germany in the nineteenth century and North America in the twentieth) collapse. But analysis of the books (in nearly every case the only evidence we have for these characters) suggests considerable caution.

What do the books know of the prophets? Let us start with the connections made between prophets and the books named for them. I shall confine myself to the Book of the Twelve for the moment, since the other three prophetic scrolls clearly present a different phenomenon by virtue of their length and compositional history – and indeed Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel each need to be taken separately with regard to their composition. Their shape, structure, and indeed, their existence, may well arise from individual and not identical causes. Here is a table of the correspondences between the individual prophetic ‘books’ of the Twelve and the historical data about the eponym: Prophet

Date

Hosea b. Beeri

‘in the days of Uzziah, Jothan, Ahaz, and Hezekiah of Judah, and Jeroboam of Israel’

Detail

Joel b. Pethuel Amos

‘in the days of Uzziah king of Judah and Jeroboam of Israel, two years before the earthquake’

‘among the herdsmen of Tekoa’

Jonah b. Amittai

(dates can be inferred from 2 Kings 14:25 but not actually given in the book itself)

not much, but probably to be undersood as deliberate fiction

Michah of Moreseht

‘in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah’

Obadiah

Nahum the Elkoshite Habakkuk Zephaniah b. Cushi b. Gedaliah b. Amariah b. Hizkiah

‘in the days of Josiah b. Amon of Judah’

Haggai

‘in the second year of Darius’

Zechariah b. Berechiah

‘in the second year of Darius’

Malachi

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The sequence of prophets here has probably been arranged, as Jones has argued, following others,2 not just in a chronological order, but in such as way as to reflect the kind of scheme we see in Daniel: a division of history into epochs of world empires. In the case of the Prophets, the earliest collection apparently comprised nine prophets, three assigned to each of three empires (Assyria, Babylonia Persia). Jones’s suggestion is based on the variable placement of Jonah, Joel and Obadiah in the LXX and the Qumran texts. Accordingly, Hosea, Amos and Micah are the three assigned to the Assyrian period. That these three, and not Joel, Obadiah or Jonah, have chronological assignations (correlated with 2 Kings) supports his contention that they form a distinct group; but on the same hypothesis, two of the prophets of the Babylonian period (Nahum, Habakkuk), and one of those from the Persian period (Malachi) do not have any chronological assignments at all, and this raises a question about the coherence of any overall editing with such a scheme in mind. The rather uneven interest in the precise dating of these prophets may betray the fact that precise chronology is not of particular importance; what matters is a broader interest in world history, or was such a schematization self-evident? But I am not here much concerned about the redactional arrangement of these prophetic collections, since it certainly belongs already to a literary stage. What is important for my purpose is to note that apart from the chronological information, where it occurs, which is in some cases the result of a editing concerned to link the books to the history now in the books of Kings, there is very little indeed of biographical information about any of these characters. Hence, we have no basis for deducing that the any transmission of assumed ‘traditions’ about such prophets contained biographical information about them. This strikes me as worthy of an explanation. Material orally transmitted about an individual generally accumulates legendary stories about the character. Were the presumed ‘disciples’ of Hosea, Micah or Amos never asked about their hero? Is this lack of information about the individuals in itself, then, an indication that in the composition of these books oral transmission did not play any significant role? I suppose that many will deny such an inference. However, it is probably fair to draw a comparison, or rather, a contrast, with the cycle of stories about Elijah and Elisha. Here we have material that is widely regarded as redolent of oral storytelling. Without necessarily endorsing or denying that impression, we can accept that the text associates, with Elisha at least, a ‘circle’ of prophets, to whom the preservation of such legends might be attributed. Yet the contrast between such narratives, which are biographical (I do not necessarily mean they are reliably so) and the sayings that make up the bulk of the Minor Prophets, is vivid: on the one hand, legends, and hardly any not dicta; on the other, the opposite. If any analogies are to be drawn at all between the intermediaries described in the Elijah and Elisha (and related) materials in aid of positing circles of disciples who transmit prophetic words, the marked contrast in the character of the material thus (ex hypothesi) produced is eloquent. Apart from the superscriptions, the personal information about the prophets in the Book of the Twelve is meagre. The marriage of Hosea hardly counts as

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such and the episode in Amos 7 shows clear signs of a literary construction that makes it doubtful that the story arise from oral (or written) traditions traceable to the time of the prophetic character himself. We can conclude that any disciples of such prophets, if they ever existed, would have remembered little about the individuals they revered, and transmitted (or even invented) minimal, if any, information about their persons and lives. There appear, of course, occasional firm connections between the time of the eponymous prophet and the content of the book assigned to him: references to Assyrians or Babylonians or Edomites.3 But while these might tempt a scholar to suggest a solid traditional linkage between a named prophet and the words connected to him, such a suggestion is not really required. The assignation of a date to a prophet may as well be the result of a (correct or otherwise) editorial inference from the contents. In this case, linkage between a prophetic scroll, an eponymous prophet, and a historical context may as plausibly arise within an literary editorial and compositional process as from a tradition linking a historical prophets with the book named after him. Once a collection is attached to a prophet with an assigned date, the aggregation of further material will correspond to the characteristics of the existing material in that scroll. In other words, to posit a ‘tradition’ that links a body of material to a prophet of a particular historical moment is not always necessary. The issue, however, will not be fruitfully debated by asking for proof; my own experience shows that this only invites the charge of ‘sceptic’ or ‘minimalist’. A necessary condition for a debate about the origin and growth of ‘prophetic’ literature must be the existence of an alternative but realistic model for the creation of prophetic literature which does not substantially go back to an oral performance, orally transmitted by hearers and acolytes before being committed to writing. I am therefore going to propose an alternative model, not with the claim that it is definitive or resolves all problems, but in order to challenge the theory of oral transmission by ‘disciples’ to show that it is necessary as well as plausible.

Oral distinct from written? In her discussion of orality and writtenness in biblical literature, Susan Niditch4 comments as follows: [E]specially for the compositions of the classical prophetic corpus, oral performances that are written down through dictation or later recreated via notes by someone at home in the oral-compositional medium seems a distinct possibility, not only because of the style of the works of the classical prophets – which, granted, could have been created by a writer familiar with formulaic composition – but also because of the assumed life setting or social context behind the literature.

She later quotes John Niles (p. 125):5

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It sometimes happens that people who are not born into a dominantly oral culture, or whose education has led them into very different realms, imitate the style and content of an oral poetry and compose new songs that read like traditional ones.

and comments: It is possible that some works of the Hebrew Bible were composed in writing by writers who are fully conscious of and immersed in the oral culture. It is, of course, extremely difficult if not in many cases impossible to distinguish between oral-traditional imitative written works and orally-performed works that were then set in writing. [my italics]

The words italicized point to the presence of an assumption: that even while we cannot actually tell oral from written composition, we must assume that the former is to some degree present. But the issue is not of modern invention, of course. In the 1970s it was highlighted in a debate between David Gunn and John Van Seters about the presence of ‘oral traditional composition in the Court History’ of 2 Samuel.6 It has been a hallmark of Van Seters’s work that what has often been taken as evidence of ‘oral’ composition can be shown, on close analysis, to be the result of literary composition. In his view, oral techniques may well underlie literature that is nevertheless both originated and transmitted in written form. One can, in fact, go further back still to view this debate: as Floyd has recently pointed out,7 Gunkel proposed that transcriptions of prophetic oracles, collected and circulated by the prophets themselves following a lack of success in their oral pronouncements, formed the raw material from which scribal redaction in the exilic and (chiefly) post-exilic periods generated prophetic scrolls, but also created further scrolls on the same pattern.8 One of the cardinal errors of intervening research on prophecy actually replicates what Mowinckel did to Gunkel’s work in respect of the Psalms: arguing that the existence of discrete genres (oracle of salvation, messenger speech, lawsuit accusation, lament, dirge, oracle against foreign nation, etc.) arose directly out of specific occasions in cult, and enabled that cult to be reconstructed. Similarly, the ‘ministry’ of a ‘prophet’ has not infrequently been reconstructed from the literary genres that the book bearing his name employs. As with a great deal of biblical scholarship, we may need to go back to the beginning of the twentieth century to retrace our steps.9 The idea that prophecy is largely a literary phenomenon is both chronologically and logically a fine place to start. And, in my view, with some modification, Gunkel’s model will work quite well.

Oracles in writing It seems, or should seem, strange to the modern critic that the sayings of prophets in a pre-industrial society should develop into the literary form of the prophetic

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book. We have ample evidence from Uruk,10 Mari11 and Assyria12 that some intermediaries would write messages and send them to a king or perhaps a client.13 That practice is described also in 2 Chron. 21:12, where Elijah is said to have sent a letter to Jehoram composed in true Deuteronomistic style. I do not, of course, conclude that Elijah sent a letter to anyone; but the details suggest that the writer and reader would not have found such behaviour strange. Such letters, if sent to the palace or temple (or even generated within it), were, upon receipt, obviously filed by those very orderly scribes responsible for archiving anything and everything. Thus, the notion of literarily preserved oracles catalogued in archives is reasonable. We may well think of an intermediary dictating an oracle to be sent to the court or temple, or even dictating it in the palace or temple itself. And while it is likely that such people did speak publicly (as the books sometimes have them do, though explicit reference is not very usual), it need not be assumed that written words sent to the recipient were also proclaimed publicly. Conceivably they were never spoken except by the scribe to the recipient.

From scrap to scroll But a collection of written oracles in a royal or temple archive does not lead automatically to a prophetic scroll. How would such individual communications come to be collected into larger literary units? Before attempting an answer, it is probably worth considering briefly a non-answer, prompted by Jeremiah 36.14 The story of Jeremiah’s scrolls, effortlessly misread by many scholars,15 explains that the scrolls came into existence (a) because the prophet was incapacitated and (b) in order to be read out aloud by Jeremiah’s understudy. It also appears to imply that the oracles had all been spoken by God to Jeremiah but not yet uttered (as v. 3).16 No doubt the story is intended to account for a lengthy scroll of Jeremiah (containing all his words, each one of them dictated by God). But the narrative is not interested in giving an account of why there are prophetic scrolls in general; on this level, indeed, it would fail, since Jeremiah’s scroll is merely an accident arising from Jeremiah’s incapacity. And indeed, the main thrust of the story seems to be not on the creation of the scroll, but on its status. The repetition of the sequence: Yahweh spoke–Jeremiah dictated–Baruch read–the people hear runs throughout the narrative, illustrating the fact that written prophetic scrolls, though actually produced by people like Baruch (scribes), originate from the mouths of people like Jeremiah and ultimate from deities like Yahweh. By insisting that it came about by divine dictation, via Jeremiah to Baruch, the story effectively puts the book on a par with the scroll(s) of Moses17 as divine words. Prophecy (at least Jeremiah’s) has the status of torah.18 There is yet another claim being made here, too. Like their patriarch Baruch, the copiers of prophetic scrolls do not originate, but faithfully transmit the divine revelation that the divinely called prophet received. That they did in fact add material to these scrolls made it all the more important that they claimed to be writing the words of a prophet. The rabbis later effected a similar move in representing their words as Mosaic Torah.

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But now I return to the thread: if Jeremiah 36 tells us nothing about how prophetic scrolls came into existence, what explanation can be offered for such a development? Let me return to the story in Chronicles that Elijah wrote a Deuteronomistic oracle to the king. The Chronicler is probably not unaware that this is something that is done, or has been done. He perhaps knows of such people; possibly he has to deal with them every now and then, with some misgivings, since he takes the view that all prophets should be members of the levitical caste and thus able to deliver prophetic messages personally within the Temple and under priestly control (as was likely the custom in major city-temple states in the ancient Near East). But whether or not the Chronicler is aware of, or concerned with, prophetic activity in fourth-century BCE Jerusalem (or whenever he wrote), he was probably aware that archives surviving from the monarchic period19 contained prophetic messages in the form of letters, thus commencing with the name of the writer. It seems that the so-called ‘messenger-form’ was standard for such correspondence. It would thus seem reasonable to invent such an activity for Elijah. How does one file such letters? Most likely by the name of the sender. Oracles from persons with the same name will be filled in sequence. Where there are several such files, a corpus already begins to build up along the shelves or in the boxes. Should these files ever need copying they would probably be copied onto a single piece of leather (more probably than onto papyrus), and that single piece would bear the name of the writer. Lo and behold, a prophetic scroll can very easily be created by archivists! This procedure, though I suggest it seriously, is not supposed to account for the origins of all the ‘prophetic’ books in the Jewish scriptures – though it does explain the incoherence of many of them even after several copyings (and in this case, as usual, copying entails editing). I suggest it only as a stage in the evolution. On the model of prophetic book production I am advancing, material is grouped into single scrolls for convenience and is intended to be consulted or retrieved or scanned by the curious – if intended to be read at all. For the scrolls of Isaiah, Jeremiah, as also many of the ‘Minor Prophets’ (before their assemblage at some point onto a single scroll) do not really seem intended to be read for edification or pleasure – though we may have to reckon with the possibility of oral performance, perhaps in liturgical contexts. I would not care to say how much of the material in the prophetic books was assembled by the mechanical process of copying onto a single scroll. I suggest nevertheless that the archiving mentality may have been responsible for a key element in the process: the production of books of oracles, attached to names. By indexing larger scrolls, putting similar kinds of material together, oracles of doom, of hope, against foreign nations, as well as for bringing together smaller scrolls into larger ones, the archiving process proceeds. And what would be the value of such work, apart from keeping records in good condition? Within the context of a culture concerned to assemble whatever it could about the history to which it was laying claim, these materials would provide a useful resource.

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Creating prophets and prophecy But there is a further process implicated in the production of prophetic scrolls that extends beyond the archival (though it is partly a continuation of the previous process), and this is a compositional one. Further copying of that single scroll will have contributed in most cases to that scroll’s acquiring further attributes, whether of detail, expansion, or structural organization. I am not sure how far our literary-critical methods are sufficient to determine such processes with precision, but the accumulated work of scholarship has demonstrated that the evidence is there, even if that evidence allows many and differing interpretations. At all events, our literary-critical methods and sensibilities are, in several cases, adequate to detect with some probability cases where a text has undergone expansion, whether internally or by means of supplementation. Some scribe has read the material and, in copying it, tried to explain it, interpret it, create from it some kind of message, give it some purpose and coherence. But the motivation for such an intervention seems to me both crucial and problematic for our understanding of the emergence of a kind of scroll that is unique in the literature of the ancient Mediterranean–Near Eastern world. We can learn from ben Sira that ‘ancient prophecies’ were studied along with law and proverbs by the educated person in the second century BCE. We can infer the same from the ending to the book of Hosea. But how and why did collections of prophetic sayings ascribed to ancient individuals attract the kind of interest that would ultimately condemn them to canonization? We need to posit another distinct phase. The problem is perhaps approached by means of the analogies provided by ben Sira: laws and proverbs – to which we can add psalms. The collection of Instructions forms a well-known ancient Near Eastern genre, and such collections were effectively canonized by being repeatedly copied and perhaps used and enjoyed by the restricted literate class around the court and temple as well as, most probably, studied and coined in scribal schools, as part of the education (to read, learn, copy, take to heart, add to). The editing of scrolls such as Proverbs is therefore a minimal exercise; mostly it is a canon of collections of sayings gathered onto a single scroll and archived, as it were, in the ‘Solomonic shelf’ (together with Song of Songs and Qoheleth, and, if a Greek library, with yet more ‘Solomonic’ works). The Psalms scroll is also a canon of collections of liturgical poetry, gathered onto a single scroll and housed in the ‘David shelf’.20 Here, a little more editing has happened: some copyists and archivists have suggested links between some of the poems and the life of David as narrated in other canonical writings (on the Samuel shelf?). This, however, is a rather marginal form of interference and does not result in scrolls that exhibit a great deal of literary organization. The books of law are a much more complicated matter. Here, various legal collections have become bound up with what I think is an essentially historiographical21 enterprise. The combination of law and narrative is not surprising, since the laws are a vehicle for political philosophy, tracing the contours (and filling in some of the spaces) of an ideal ‘Israelite’ society: militaristic (Numbers), ordered by grades of holiness (Leviticus) or construed as a client society governed by a political treaty with its divine patron (Deuteronomy). That

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these lists of laws should be integrated with a history of the nation – its national and tribal ancestors, its constitution and its acquisition of land – is not hard to understand, though extremely hard to reconstruct in detail.22 If the scrolls of the Mosaic canon evidence a greater level of literary editing than those of the Davidic and Solomonic canons, the prophetic scrolls (which I would prefer to see as canons in themselves, a ‘prophetic canon’ being a creation only of the Common Era23) exhibit in many cases at least as much complexity, and less obvious principles of organization, as well as of purpose. The development of a historiographical corpus within the scribal schools facilitated the reference to such ‘prophetic’ compositions (although most of these prophets are unknown to the historiographical corpus, anther argument against a theory of long oral tradition), and permitted the contents of these scrolls to be read against a definite and specific context: the fall of the Northern kingdom, the law book of Josiah, the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib, the rebuilding (or lack) of the ‘second Temple’. This emerging historiographical picture emerging from the work of Judaean historians enabled the ‘prophetic’ books to develop various kinds of contextualizing. The insertions of what is now Isaiah 36–39 or Jeremiah 52 into the ‘prophetic’ scrolls’ are merely striking (and unusual) examples of explicit utilization of historiography by the compilers of the prophetic literature. The superscriptions (which do not provide historical references in every case) are further instances. But many of the materials have relatively clear contexts: a story in Amos 7 puts him under Jeroboam; Ezekiel flits between Tel Abib and Jerusalem in the aftermath of the first deportation; the poems of ‘Isaiah’ and ‘Jeremiah’ are integrated with stories that put them under specific rulers and political situations. A further aspect of this negotiation between historiographical and ‘prophetic’ literary collections is the production of the idea of ‘prophecy’ as an institution of divine guidance of national history, visible in the ‘Deuteronomistic’ materials. Whether that was in any way inspired by the ‘prophetic’ materials, or influenced the development of them, may be an irrelevant or unanswerable question, but it seems plausible that, just as the historiography provided a context for some the prophetic scrolls, so the idea of a ‘succession of prophets’ that we find in both the prophetic scrolls and the ‘Deuteronomistic History’ provides a further, and probably fundamental, link between the two corpora.24 In other words, we have evidence of various processes of ‘historicization’ within these ‘prophetic’ collections. Such evidence needs careful examining from the perspective not of a tradition history which places the historical context at the beginning of the process but of a history of literary production that sometimes accumulated ‘historical’ contexts.

The dangers of monolithic explanations But before these suggestions gather too much momentum, it is important to appreciate in all this that the prophetic books came into existence in several different ways (we must remember again that the category ‘prophetic’ is a purely

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canonical one) and as the result of a number of processes. There is a danger, perhaps, of assuming that the result of a process (in this case four prophetic scrolls) is the deliberate outcome of a consistent purpose (one outstanding example of this is the assumption that Judaean literature is the history of growth of a single canon). The truth may be messier: that at different times and in the case of different literary materials there were varying motives, and that the emergence of large prophetic scrolls, let alone a canon of prophetic literature, was not foreseen or intended from the beginning. For instance, the book of Jonah is a ‘prophetic’ scroll only by virtue of being copied onto a prophetic scroll and thus classified and canonized accordingly. Isaiah I still prefer to think of as a collection of collections, while Jeremiah shows evidence of more consistent editing, though to what end remains elusive. The greater the length of a scroll containing unconnected (or loosely connected) material, however, the more difficult it is to introduce coherence. Thus two of the three ‘major prophets’, Isaiah and Jeremiah still seem to me to attain the kind of coherence that, given a single scroll, a copyist/ editor may try, with limited success, to introduce, while the scroll of Ezekiel may, on the contrary, have begun its life as a coherent piece of writing, a coherence that it arguably retains in large measure. Among the smaller units of the ‘minor prophets’ scrolls, Obadiah and Nahum may have originated as single poems, not as collections of oracles from intermediaries, though if so, Obadiah has been transformed by means of 1-425 into a prophetic oracle. It is therefore a mistake to assume that a consistent theological, ideological or literary purpose drives the process of production. Just as the raw materials may have been written messages from historical intermediaries, or individual poems (as contained in Isaiah 40–55, for example), so the material may have been expanded for reasons of archival economy, scribal commentary and clarification. Yet do even these processes alone explain the bulk of the material in Isaiah or Jeremiah, or Ezekiel? Did so many oracles against foreign nations find their way into the royal or temple archives? Did the copyists/editors add more? But why? In my opinion (and it cannot be more than an opinion) we ought to reckon with an ongoing process of literary composition. ‘Prophetic’ oracles continued to be composed and were incorporated, either immediately or at some later stage, onto existing scrolls alongside the already existing material.

Prophecy as political and social critique What would be the motivation for extensive further composition? What is the reason for continuing to ‘write prophecy’? We need to discover a further motivation and some elaboration for these products. Why write in the style of intermediaries? Why cultivate (and even create) eponymous ‘prophets’? The answer is not easy to provide, and can only be conjectural in any event. But the contents largely express social critique. Or, to put it another way in terms of the position being constructed here, the form of messages from intermediaries offers a pretext for political and social critique. By preserving criticisms of ostensibly dead ‘prophets’ on ostensibly past monarchs and societies, a writer/copyist/editor can

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permit his own frustrations, ideas and sentiments expression, if he wanted, as well as (more safely) have another go at writing a poem condemning or threatening Egypt or Edom. Because of the pseudonymity, such sentiments avoid being read explicitly as direct attack upon contemporary society, but also gain authority, when read as such an attack, because of the antiquity of the prophet. To understand ‘biblical prophecy’ as an expression of social critique, then, I think we need to address less the functions of intermediaries, be they ‘central’ or ‘peripheral’, and consider the social and ideological climate of the scribal class in Second Temple Jerusalem. How did they relate to the ruling class – Persian administrators, Judaean aristocracy, priestly families? Did these professional writers typically adopt any particular religious opinions or practices? Were they underemployed, giving them time for composing in their leisure? Were they relatively homogeneous in their political, social or religious affiliations? Research into the highly intriguing problem of the genesis of ‘prophetic’ literature needs to clarify the motivations of these groups, for it is only among them, I suggest, that we can find any plausible explanation of why there are such things as the scrolls of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Zechariah and Hosea.

Prophecy and world order There is one further aspect of the matter that ought not to be ignored. It is frequently remarked that many of the prophetic books seem to follow different orbits around the theme of world order: is Israel to have final victory over its enemies? Or will all come to Zion? Will the world-ruling Yahweh finally vanquish them all, or forgive them all? The debate between the ‘prophetic’ word and wise counsel, which may or may not have been a reality in the monarchic state, becomes sterile under a world-empire. But the claims of a monotheistic cult whose local deity is also identified as the high god provoke questions such as whether or not a foreign kind may not be Yahweh’s anointed, the descendant of David, Temple-builder even. In much of the ‘prophetic’ literature can be detected the kind of interest in the political implications of such a colonial monotheism that fit as well if not better with the scribes employed by the administrative centre, be that the colonial governor’s or the high priest’s, than with intermediaries. Among the motives for the generation of the material in the prophetic scrolls – and perhaps the editing of these scrolls – may lie an intellectual agenda, allied to historiography.26 It is an agenda more apparent in some apocalyptic literature, where the course and order of world history is more explicitly addressed. But, as mentioned earlier, the arrangement of the Book of the Twelve may betray the interest in a system of successive world empires that the book of Daniel also shows.

Summation I have not attempted here (and I do not feel myself able) to propose a detailed account of the generation of prophetic scrolls. I have tried only to sketch a

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model (essentially Gunkel’s) that regards ‘prophecy’ as a literary phenomenon throughout. But the model also recognizes that the processes involved in the preservation, archiving, copying and enlargement of such literary artifacts may be varied and not driven by the intention of producing a prophetic ‘canon’, or even producing the large documents that have resulted. Comprising such a model is a number of suggestions. I have suggested that behind the generation of prophetic material lies social critique, but it is the critique of the literate, servants of the established governing class. Also embedded in the process may be an interest in the ordering of history, specifically in terms of what will happen in the future. I have suggested, finally, that the emergence of the notion of ‘prophecy’ as a social and theological institution (a series of men sent by God to remind his people of their covenant obligations and warn them of impending consequences) in both the ‘Deuteronomistic History’ and some of the prophetic scrolls (e.g. Zechariah, Amos). None of the suggestions made in this paper is original. I have conceived my project at this session to promote discussion of the many issues rather than to propose a firm hypothesis. I hope that the above sketch will contribute to productive discussion, though it may be in the correction of many of these suggestions that the real progress will be made.

Notes 1. The most influential of these is R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1980). Also the work of T. W. Overholt (Prophecy in Cross-Cultural Perspective: A Sourcebook for Biblical Researchers [Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1986]; Channels of Prophecy: The Social Dynamics of Prophetic Activity [Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1989]). 2. B. A. Jones, The Formation of the Book of the Twelve (SBLDS 149) (Atlanta, GA: Scholars, 1995), 54. 3. However, I exclude considerations of social contexts. Abuse of wealth, cultic and religious laxity and so on, are capable of being applied to almost any period from the early Israelite and Judaean monarchies to the Graeco-Roman period. 4. S. Niditch, Oral Word and Written Word (Library of Ancient Israel) (Nashville, TN: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 117. 5. J. Niles, “Understanding Beowulf: Oral Poetry Acts”, Journal of American Folklore 106 (1993): 131–55. 6. D. M. Gunn, “Narrative Patterns and Oral Tradition in Judges and Samuel”, VT 24 (1974): 286–317; “David and the Gift of the Kingdom (2 Sam 2-4, 9-20, 1 Kgs 1-2)”, Semeia 3 (1975): 14–45; “Traditional Composition in the ‘Succession Narrative”’, VT 26 (1976): 214–29; “On Oral Tradition: A Response to John Van Seters”, Semeia 5 (1976): 155–61; J. Van Seters, “Oral Patterns or Literary Conventions in Biblical Narrative”, Semeia 5 (1976); “Problems in the Literary Analysis of the Court History of David”, JSOT 1 (1976): 22–9. 7. M. Floyd, “Prophecy and Writing in Habakkuk 2,1-5”, ZAW 105 (1993): 462–81. 8. H. Gunkel’s views on the development of written prophecy are conveniently set out in “Propheten II.B”, RGG2 IV (1930): 1538–54. 9. Or one can, of course, go earlier still. Classical and mediaeval portraits of the prophets typically depict them as writing directly from divine dictation. They are authors of books, not oral declaimers.

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10. Presented in ANET, 604. 11. ANET, 623–32. See, inter alia, A. Malamat, “A Forerunner of Biblical Prophecy: The Mari Documents”, in Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross, P. D. Miller, P. D. Hanson & S. D. McBride (eds), 33–52 (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1987). The relevant literature is published by J.-M. Durand, Archives epistolaires de Mari I/1 (Archives royales de Mari 26) (Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations 1988). 12. I might add the reference to a prophet in Lachish 16 (see conveniently, D. Pardee, Handbook of Ancient Hebrew Letters [SBL Sources for Biblical Study, 15] [Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982], 110–11; G. Davies, Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991], 6). But the very fragmentary nature of the text really permits no inferences about written oracles of Judaean prophets. I also leave out of consideration literature that is better described as ‘mantic’ which, indeed, may be relevant to some of the biblical ‘prophetic’ literature, but which can be generally agreed as literary from the beginning. Such literature includes vaticinia ex eventu, and divinatory texts. 13. It seems probable that most if not all of the examples stem from intermediaries attached to the court. 14. I apologize for repeating myself here: I have dealt with this before. 15. W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah 2: A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah Chapters 26–52, 253–62 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1989): ‘This chapter has attracted great attention, in that it allows one to see the process by which oral tradition becomes written text’ (p. 253). (He continues: ‘It therefore becomes particularly important to inquire as to the authenticity of the narrative’, but proceeds not to do so: instead we get the assertion, ‘Since Baruch took part in the events narrated, one may presume that it is composed by him’ [253–4])!) 16. It is possible that the ‘house’ Judah is supposed to have heard them before and is being given a second chance. Why they would hear oracles ‘against Israel’ (v. 2) is unexplained, and the LXX reading ‘against Jerusalem’ is more coherent. 17. See L. A. Schökel, “Jeremias como anti-Moisés”, in De la Torah au Messie, Mélanges Henri Cazelles, M. Carrez, J. Doré & P. Grelot (eds), 245–54 (Paris: Desclée, 1981). I assume a single scroll, probably of Deuteronomy (so ben Sira) but the possibility of a five-scroll or four-scroll collection is not ruled out. 18. On this thesis, see J. Blenkinsopp, Prophecy and Canon: A Contribution to the Study of Jewish Origins (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977). However, I dissent from his treatment of Jeremiah 36 as with his statement that ‘It would be widely agreed that the process of which we are speaking began with the activity of disciples who either committed to memory or wrote down the words of the master as the occasion warranted’ (p. 100). However, in typically sage fashion, he also asks shortly afterwards: ‘Is it not possible, for example, that even at an early stage propheticism and scribalism were quite closely related?’ 19. The extent of survival of archives from the monarchic period into the Persian period must be a matter largely of inference, but in principles it is unlikely that the Babylonians destroyed such valuable material, much of it necessary for continued administration. It can be argued with some plausibility that minimal details of the reigns and activities of Judaean and Israelite monarchs were derived by the writers of the books of Kings from such archives, surviving into the Persian period. 20. This is merely a variation on the idea of ‘colleges’ somewhat playfully presented in P. R. Davies, In Search of ‘Ancient Israel’ (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992), 120–23. 21. Here I should explain that I use ‘historiography’ as a metageneric classification, and do not wish to become involved in distinctions, real or otherwise, between ‘history writing’

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22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

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and other forms of narrative set in a ‘realistic’ past (for a discussion of which, see J. Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983]). The reader is again referred for detailed consideration of biblical historiography and its design to Van Seters, In Search of History. See J. Barton, Oracles of God: Perceptions of Ancient Prophecy after the Exile (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1986). The notion of a ‘Deuteronomistic’ edition of prophetic scrolls is one explanation of this phenomenon, but may be too crudely formulated. Note also the (added?) phrase hwhy M)n at 8a. I have discussed such an agenda in more detail in “The Audiences of Prophetic Scrolls: Some Suggestions”, in Prophets and Paradigms: Essays in Honor of Gene M. Tucker (JSOT Sup, 229), S. Breck Reid (ed.), 48–62 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996).

12 Reading Daniel sociologically

The present paper falls into three parts. First is a brief description of what I take a sociological approach to mean; second is a survey of recent scholarship on Daniel, illustrating the development of relevant trends; and third is an exercise in sociological reading.

What is a sociological reading? All forms of literary analysis are reductionist; that is, they reduce the text under consideration to those features which can be managed and interpreted by the method being applied. The most common form of reductionism in biblical studies is religious, in which the production and meaning of biblical literature is explained in terms of religious experiences, religious motives. Literary reductionism as practised at the moment reduces the text to a pattern of formal linguistic signs whose meaning, according to many scholars, is generated by the reader. In historical reductionism the biblical literature is examined as a product of an historical mind for an historical audience, omitting questions of aesthetics and assuming that authorial intention is unproblematic. Sociological analyses reduce literature to a function of society. However, since it holds that religion and aesthetics are cultural features of a society, and that human history is the history of human society, it embraces and integrates many other methods and is thus arguably more comprehensive. Nevertheless, it does leave out both God and the individual mind as inaccessible factors: it reduces to the human, indeed, to the collective human. Two sociological attitudes are to be distinguished. A functionalist approach conceptualizes a society in which the meaning of the parts is analysed in terms of its function within the whole system, and society is regarded synchronically, as a system always tending to stability. The various conflict theories regard society as the product of conflicting or competing interests, and a diachronic analysis therefore usually provides a better perspective. A moment’s reflection will show that both perspectives have been applied to ancient Israelite society, though usually without much sociological sophistication. But with regard to a sociological approach to ancient

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literature, either approach construes the possible relationship of literature to society differently.1 What is the place of literature in a sociological analysis? Here must be raised a distinction between idealism and materialism, if only conceptually. In the history of Western thought an idealist and a materialist perspective may be broadly distinguished: the former holding that ideas constitute what is real and manifest themselves in the outward structures of the world, including society: put crudely, ideas shape history. The materialist view sees ideas as products of a human mind whose consciousness is an epiphenomenon of material processes, from the chemical to the economic. The conflict between the two philosophies goes back at least to the classical world; Platonists and Epicureans, for example, can be set on either side. In more recent times the idealist philosophy nourished until Feuerbach overturned Hegel and in turn inspired Marx. Freud, who began as a neurologist, belongs firmly on the materialist side. However, the relationship between work and thought, which Marx so clearly raised, has continued in the twentieth century as a central question: as examples of the many varied positions, one could cite the works of Mannheim, Althüsser, Habermas, Foucault and Jameson. If there is currently no consensus on how literature and society actually relate, it can be said that the challenge to relate them has never been felt more strongly than in the present. The ‘new historicism’ which has emerged in recent years, partly as a reaction to the anti-historicism of literary theory and yet also using its insights, offers a number of models. Basic to most of them is the premise that ‘reality’ is a social construct, that what counts as knowledge is to a great extent socially determined and defined. Literature is one of the forms that knowledge takes. Hence several writers see literature (and art generally) as a channel for the circulation of social energy – ‘invisible bullets’ in Stephen Greenblatt’s phrase. Works of art, in his view, are ‘cultural transactions’ (p. 4) which function in the process of negotiating power or transforming energy within a society.2 This is a broadly functionalist analysis. However, knowledge is also power, and the creators and interpreters and manipulators of knowledge exercise through this control of knowledge power over society. Literature can thus be seen as an exercise in power, and indeed be seen to signify the interests of a particular class. Fredric Jameson, for instance, drawing explicitly on Marx and implicitly on Levi-Strauss, finds society characterized by class struggle, and views literature as an attempt to conceal, or paper over, the tensions in a way which makes them bearable to victims and invisible to perpetrators. For many Marxist critics the aim of criticism is to expose the tensions and interests which every text must contain within itself. Here we find sociological reading aligning itself with an otherwise generally anti-historical body of post-structuralist literary theory, which also sees its task as filling gaps, reading against the grain of a text, showing how it inevitably undermines its own ideology. One important thing can be said: the notion that the meaning of a text lies on its surface is currently accepted by very few scholars of literature. Modern critical reading, including sociological reading, bears a kinship to psychoanalysis: it deals with self-deception, with ambiguity. It is also as much an art as a science. Central to such reading is the function of symbolization. It is through the creation and

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manipulation of cultural symbols that ideology (e.g. literature) works, and a major technique of sociological analysis of texts is through the decoding of the symbols they use, symbols by means of which texts access and reinforce, corrupt, or subvert the social reality of the reader. Literature uses language and language is a social medium; literature must thus encode the symbols and values of society. In a subtle enough analysis, a piece of literature may show itself to encode more than one symbolic world. It can simultaneously express the values of a class or a sect and suppress those of another class, or indeed, of the society as a whole. The ‘other’, to use the jargon, may well be found lurking between the lines of any writing, awaiting exposure by the critic. Personally, I incline to a more cautious view of the relationship between literature and social reality. The concept of an objective social world somehow independent of the human mind is not to be entertained. One may distinguish an external subjective (‘etic’) and an internal subjective (‘emic’) account, but a ‘social world’ can be articulated only through the perception of it by human minds. Hence the ‘social world’ reflected in a piece of literature will represent a social world internalized by the author, whose own perception may be a complex of personal, familial, sectarian and wider social constructions. A sociological description of the unknown author of a text can aim to express the social world(s) delineated in the text, and thus perhaps the values and social location of the authors as seen by themselves. It cannot proceed without further ado to place the authors into some objectively constructed social system. While certain kinds of literature are amenable to such analysis (birth records, for instance) the sociology of biblical texts is an exercise in the sociology of knowledge, and the relationship between the social world constructed by the text and the social system from which the text arose will be a hermeneutical one. This point is an important one, because there is an inbuilt tendency in the discipline of biblical studies to take biblical statements about social reality as if they are reliable descriptions of an objective state of affairs. Now, certain premises can be established for ancient literature such as the book of Daniel. One is that we know too little of its society to be able to transfer much knowledge usefully into our interpretation of the literature. As always was the case, more history is read out than is read in. But we can say that all biblical literature is a product not of ‘Israel’ (whatever that is), but of a class or classes: the literate classes, from which for the present purposes we can probably exclude artisans, leaving on current estimates at the most 7% of the population. Consequently, everything written expresses the interest of these classes, from whom the readers are also drawn, of course, but also more precisely the interests of particular class or even particular groups within a class. Writing is an economic function, requiring finance and time, either leisure or patronage; there is an ideology simply of writing in itself. Writing is the result of a certain social privilege but also the means for the exercise of power, through the manipulation of knowledge. These are all commonsense arguments (whether accepted or not), and force us to acknowledge reading and writing as a social activity.

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Trends in the direction of reading Daniel sociologically Interest in the social setting of Daniel is not, of course, a recent innovation. I cannot here review the numerous attempts to determine the historical and social setting of the book.3 Let me, however, comment on one particular approach which is pertinent to sociological analysis and which has dominated recent discussion, namely the form-critical. The ultimate objective of form-criticism, according to most of its practitioners, is to determine the social setting to which the form applies.4 However, the enormous amount of form-critical study on Daniel has yielded surprisingly little illumination of the social basis of its composition. Several reasons may be suggested for this lack of success. One is the concentration on apocalyptic as a whole, rather than Daniel, and with it the assumptions that (a) there must be some correlation between a genre and a social setting and (b) the genre apocalyptic reflects a certain world-view which exists independently of the genre.5 Another reason is that the original social setting of a genre does not prescribe the social setting of any particular example of that genre, as Gunkel was at pains to point out, though many of his followers have forgotten. In any case, Daniel cannot be called an apocalypse; it can only be said to contain apocalypses.6 Daniel is early, composed of more than one genre, and while the various genres employed might throw some light on the cultural background of the authors, the selection and combination of genres is not itself to be explained by form-critical methods. As an example of the limitations of form-criticism in sociological analysis we can take the genre of chapters 1–6. Here a ‘wisdom’ connection has long been postulated. Montgomery referred to Daniel 6 as ‘wisdom tales’, while in his famous essay on the Joseph story von Rad proposed the genre of ‘wisdom novella’,7 and although he did not himself identify Daniel 1–6 as examples of such didactic narratives, connections between the Joseph story and Daniel have long been recognized and von Rad’s proposal was developed in the work of others. The term Diasporanovelle was introduced by A. Meinhold for the Joseph and Esther stories8 and developed by W. Lee Humphreys, who proposed that these tales were composed as models for a diaspora life-style, classifying them as ‘court-tales’ and refining the genre into two different kinds, contest and conflict stories.9 This classification is now widely supported and since developed by a number of scholars.10 But consensus about a Sitz im Leben for the genre has remained elusive. H.-P. Müller ’s detailed work does not in the end lead to any particular social setting for the composition of the genre of these particular examples of it.11 Other examples of generic discussion also remain purely at the level of literary or linguistic application.12 In his recent study of the court-tale genre,13 Wills points out that the presence of Ahiqar at the military colony of Elephantine leads one to doubt whether the court-tales necessarily circulated in the court and indeed, it remains an open question whether they were composed there. Wills also cites (195–6) the case of Onksheshonq, who is not a courtier but a farmer and whose Instructions suggest a lower social context. He is able to conclude from his detailed analysis that the Jewish court tale is the product of the administrative and

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entrepreneurial class, imparting scribal ideals but also the group represented by the hero; in other words, it is not necessarily linked either to the court or the diaspora. Much the same might be said for the genre of prophetic or night vision, which in the opinion of several scholars develops into the apocalyptic vision.14 Here again, there is little to be learned about the social location of the authors of Daniel from the literary genres. Once it is accepted that literature is a scribal activity, and thus inevitably associated with a certain class, and that this class has available to it a multitude of genres, which may be selected for a number of reasons, the value of a form-critical approach for a sociological analysis is substantially diminished. My own conclusion, that apocalyptic genres are a species of mantic narrative to be ascribed to no particular group but to the scribal classes of the Hellenistic Levant generally15 was intended as an antidote to the rash of apocalyptic/sectarian authorships which had been proposed for such literature. It does not state a great deal more than the obvious,16 noting that Daniel supports the temple and priesthood and apparently approves of political service of foreign kings in principle, and locates the authors somewhere within the ‘establishment’, by which I would mean the retainer (possibly even ruling) class including priests and other administrative officials. Before concluding this section of the paper, I should mention some interesting connections between the book of Daniel and some of the Qumran literatures, namely the presence of maskilim and rabbim in 1QS. There are other tantalizing links between Daniel and the literature from Qumran – such as the exilic timetable, 4QPrNab (cf. Dan 4), and 4QDibHam (Dan 9). But it is becoming less and less certain that the Qumran literature has a single community authorship. I should certainly allow that important ideological connections between the literature of the yahad and the book of Daniel may emerge after more prolonged and detailed comparison, but as yet we are hardly entitled to claim evidence of any historical connection, as opposed to a literary one. That the authors of, say, 1QS were influenced by Daniel does not mean they were members of the same group or a related group. There is simply no evidence beyond a few scraps of terminology, which may or may not be significant, to draw any conclusions. The sociological setting of each text is certainly quite different, with 1QS clearly the product of a closed community, unlike Daniel. Daniel, as we know, had a wide influence on subsequent Jewish literature, and there seems as yet no significant relationship with the texts from Qumran. My remarks indicate that while we can discover something of the social setting of the book of Daniel by methods previously used, I do not see that for the present we can go any further with them. A different set of questions and procedures might be in order. I do not suggest in any way that the methods or conclusions I have mentioned are necessarily wrong-headed, sterile or have always been badly applied. I merely suggest that insofar as one is interested in the social setting of the book of Daniel, presuppositions about the nature of literature as a social product ought to be explicit. However, especially at a time when methodological obfuscation often parades as intellectual sophistication, methods are to be judged by their results and not their elegance. Accordingly, I shall offer a couple of examples of a sociological reading of Daniel.

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Sociological readings of Daniel By way of preface to what follows, I shall explain that in each reading I am using two different concepts. One is that of the symbolic world or universe, by which is meant the construction of reality shared by a certain group, which essentially defines that group, and which is communicated by means of symbols – in this case, linguistic symbols. This concept is fairly widely understood and referred to in biblical studies. The other concept is perhaps less well-known: it is the concept of conflict: that a text is produced in order to mediate and overcome political and social conflict. The concept is not dissimilar to that expressed by Levi-Strauss in respect of myth and Freud in respect of dreams. It is used in the analysis of literature by Fredric Jameson.17 For Jameson literature contains within itself indications of the conflict which for him, as a Marxist, necessarily constitutes the structure and dynamic of society. One does not, however, require to be a Marxist in order to pursue the notion that all literature, not just myths and dreams, represents an ordered articulation of a subterranean chaos. Needless to say, none of these scholars/scientists is in any way responsible for my own use or abuse of the concept. First, then, I shall offer a discussion of a few of the more important symbols used in the book of Daniel, and their possible relevance to the symbolic social world of the implied readers. Then I propose a slightly different approach, concentrating on the contradictions and paradoxes which, according to the theory adopted, hold the key to the most profound relationships between text and society.

1. Some central symbols The symbols I have chosen are the book, the court and the secret. As I hope to show, they are related to one another and can also be interpreted with reference to the social world of their authors. Book This symbol, which I take to include writing, appears in quite different, yet important contexts. First references to books open and close the book: 1:4: Youths, in whom was no blemish … to teach them the book and language of the Chaldeans. 1:17: As for these four youths. God gave them knowledge and skill in every book and discipline. 12:1: At that time your people shall be delivered, every one found written in the book. 12:4: You, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end.

Perhaps it is fortuitous that these occurrences of sefer (‘book’) in Daniel are distributed as they are, two in the opening verses, and two in the closing ones.

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Or is this not an accidental arrangement? The ‘books’ of chapter 1 are those of the Chaldeans, humanly written, learned excellently by the heroes. In 12:1 is a secret book, divinely written, with the names of the righteous inscribed. The final book mentioned (12:4) is presumably the book written by Daniel, something both earthly and heavenly, a human book of the secrets of heaven. Daniel moves from reader of earthly books to writer of heavenly books: this last book surely stands for none other than the book of Daniel itself, which is of heavenly content if in human script. Although the word ‘book’ is not used, perhaps we should add to the pattern of references observed in chapters 1 and 12 the central reference in 7:1: In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head as he lay in his bed. Then he wrote down the dream, and told the sum of the matter.

Other references in Daniel make a connection between writing and judgment, whether condemnation or deliverance. In chapter 5 is the story of judgment decreed against a king by writing on the wall, while in 7:10 we have books opened for judgment against the beasts symbolizing the kings of kingdoms. In 9:2, by contrast, Daniel ‘perceived in the books’ the years of the exile according to Jeremiah. Here is written divine decree about the judgment, including the deliverance, of Jerusalem. Daniel, then, is a book in which everything significant is done by writing. Political power is exercised in writing, including the political power of the deity. Judgment is in writing. The book of Daniel also, of course, a writing. Is it a heavenly book which the reader must, like Daniel, decipher? Whatever we conclude from this, it is unmistakeable that we are in a world in which writing, reading and deciphering (reading is deciphering!) are key symbols.18 I think the presence of books here betokens more than mere narrative description. There is an ethos of writing, even an ideology of writing, which Daniel conveys. First, there is human and divine writing; human writing and books can be learnt and studied; divine writing, however, conceals its meaning from such study. Another feature is that by writing, people are either condemned or delivered; kings rule by decree. But there is an esoteric deliverance by writing too, and Daniel’s own book is not to be public. In our age, where writing is commonplace, we can fail to appreciate the power of writing; scholars too easily assume that the scriptures were written as a matter of course. But where writing is a means of communication confined to a privileged few, where it permits secrecy between the literate, writing is power. The book of Daniel speaks the ideology of the literate, and it boasts the power of writing to exercise not only earthly political power, but also the secrets of heaven and the ultimate deliverance of whoever can read, or perhaps whoever will be a disciple of the literate maskil. Of course the authors of Daniel are scribes; this is tautologous. But more than that, they betray their high view of the art of writing and of their own skill. Not content with the public power that writing gives them – exhibited in the mere presence of Daniel at the royal court – the scribe communicates by reading and

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writing with God himself, through study of scriptures, through the reading of signs. A mantic ideology, but more than that: clearly also one which holds writing as the gateway to divine secrets. In Daniel, writing is a symbol of authority and power; I should say political power – in chapters 1–6 kings do it, and administrators, and Daniel is presented as one of these administrators. But in the second part of Daniel we find Daniel writing, and we find scriptures. Through the symbol of writing political power and scripture (the book of Jeremiah and ultimately the book of Daniel itself) are related. Chapters 6 and 7 illustrate that quite dramatically and suggest a language of political power, an interest in political power. Can we relate this observation at all to the historical situation at the time of composition of the book? Unfortunately, we know too little of the political arrangements made in Jerusalem under Antiochus IV or of the effects of the writing classes of the power struggle between Oniads and Tobiads. The hatred of Antiochus that is evident in Daniel suggests a particular interest, however, and loss of political power may well be a motive. Is the celebration of the power of the literary evidence of a displacement from direct political power? Reid’s interesting conclusion, which he reaches on entirely different grounds, that the authors of Daniel are members of a ‘falling elite’ strikes one as a plausible hypothesis,19 which we can bear in mind as we proceed. The court We found just now two acts of writing in chapters 6 and 7, which signal, along with other signs, the major transition in the book of Daniel from story to vision, and a corresponding change from third to first person. The change of scene is particularly interesting. In chapters 1–6 the action takes place in or around the court, where Daniel and his friends properly belong, after chapter 1. Now, is this setting also the natural home of the authors of Daniel? Collins, for example, thinks not; he thinks that the maskilim are uninterested in political ambition.20 Instead he thinks they seek purity and communion with angels. This reading strikes me as a little perverse. There is scant concern for purity in the book,21 and while Daniel receives revelations from angels and expects, no doubt, to be with them after his death, it is curious to imagine a group of authors withdrawn from the world to the extent of wanting to commune with heavenly beings. Is it not possible that talking with angels requires decoding into social description? I agree with Collins that we should not automatically take the court-tales as representing the life-style of the authors. But it is hard to imagine them rejecting such an ambition; had they, one might have expected some hint of disapproval of Daniel’s lifestyle. If political ambition is disowned, as Collins argues, then it is disowned with reluctance, from necessity. The court remains the centre of interest of the entire book, its values affirmed and its importance for political life maintained. We should not overlook the equation of earthly and heavenly court. There is abundant evidence that in the ancient Near East ruling deities were depicted with all the trappings of a court; kingship and deity were nearly always conjoined, where they were not indeed identified; gods are enthroned, like Baal, and kings addressed as sons of the deity. In a hierocracy such as

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Persian-Hellenistic Yehud, the temple and priests become the court, and the relationship between this earthly court and the court of the deity is blurred still further. Hence the court is a symbol throughout Daniel; but it changes from the earthly court to the heavenly court. In chapters 1–6 Daniel is located in the royal court, while in chapter 7 Daniel stands, in his vision, in the court of Elyon. And even though the setting of the rest of the visions is not the court, Daniel is attended by a heavenly courtier (angel) and made privy to those matters which belong properly to the royal court – judgment and enthronement in chapter 7, royal-political policy and warfare in chapters 10–12. The warring angels of this final apocalypse are the counterparts of the human satraps and generals by whom, as much as kings, the political map of the Persian and Graeco-Roman world was drawn. The overriding interest in chapters 10–12 on political events, in the machinations of kings, betrays a fascination with the workings of the court, where, as in chapters 1–6, the centre of the authors’ interest really lies. Here too we have evidence of the affiliation of the authors, and an endorsement of the suggestion that they are indeed a deprived elite still interested in and privy to political machination but now at the level of the heavenly court. Daniel may not be a counsellor to Babylonian and Persian kings, but he is still welcome at the real seat of political power, where history is truly made – in the imagination of the authors, that is. The court is a positive symbol, the natural home and setting of the authors’ imagination. Secret We can easily recognize the device of the secret as a means of denying the apparent reality of affairs, as one of the mechanisms of coping with ‘cognitive dissonance’. Reid contrasts the withdrawal of the book of Daniel from active confrontation with reality with the attitude in the historical apocalypses of Enoch, where conflict and confrontation with the world are encouraged and action is foreseen. He finds here further evidence of a falling elite. But of course, the notion of the secret is easily derived from the culture of manticism which in the Persian-Hellenistic world was widespread, whether in the technical business of dream interpretation and astrology or the ‘mysteries’ of those popular religions which seized the imagination of the masses; the belief in the workings of an unseen world, of a vertical order as well as a horizontal one, are not particular characteristics of apocalyptic, but a major part of the Zeitgeist. The natural world has its signs which the mantic can decipher for the benefit of a king or a more lowly customer. Knowledge of things unseen is everywhere sought and widely claimed. So is the secret a peculiar symbol in the book of Daniel? Probably yes: at any rate, the hero is characterized by his mediation of secrets above everything else. Daniel is a decipherer, unlike Enoch. He would like to decipher for kings and exercise political power. The Daniel of the visions is in fact not so different, for even in chapters 1–6 his ability to decipher secrets was always due to his god providing him with the answer (2:29-30). In chapters 7–12, we are, then, merely privy to the process whereby Daniel produces the answer. The secret is revealed to Daniel, as it always was (though this was not narrated in 1–6); and Daniel announced it; now Daniel narrates both the secret

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and the interpretation in his own book. The book – to return to the first symbol – is the vehicle of revelation. But are these secrets open or closed? The fiction of the book is that they remain closed until the ‘time of the end’. Now, secrets mean power; they also potentially define a group, namely, those who are privy to the secret, and indeed shared secrets often play a major role in defining a group, in sustaining its isolation from outsiders. There is abundant evidence of this mechanism in the literature from Qumran. The importance of the symbol of the secret in Daniel may indeed function in some such way – marking those who have it from those who do not, a mechanism for group definition. Are the authors of Daniel, losing power and influence, basing their prestige on their access to secrets as well as their literacy? I do not think there is anything sectarian in the book as we have it, but the symbols suggest an ideology which will lead to that. There is an ambivalence between the desire for political power and the rejection of it which poises the authors on a brink. It might be objected, nevertheless, that Daniel is a book for public consumption, and that its secrets are therefore not esoteric, but offered publicly. Yet is must be borne in mind that in Second Temple Palestine books are not written for public consumption, since the public cannot read. It is necessary to think of ancient literature as written for private, even internal consumption, to reinforce the world-view of insiders and not to persuade outsiders. At any rate, I think this possibility always worth bearing in mind. In this event, in what sense the ‘secrets’ of Daniel are ‘open’ is itself an open question. From the three symbols I have selected, I have drawn, perhaps overdrawn, some lines of sociological description, suggesting a profile rather different in some ways from what is offered elsewhere. I would insist, however, that I have merely proposed a sample of a method which analyses symbols. In the end, such a method can only claim to reveal what the text itself hints at as the world-view of its authors, rather than any objective social reality. And of course, my reading is still a subjective one, as any other. But the theory of a falling elite, adhering to symbols of its erstwhile power and acquiring symbols of sectarian identity is one which is open to confirmation or denial by other considerations.

2. Ideological conflict A second level of sociological analysis searches for tensions and contradictions in the text as evidence of a social tension that the text cannot avoid betraying, though in a suppressed form. Although I am not necessarily convinced of the universal validity of this approach, it can best be tested by a practical attempt at exegesis. Certainly, the book contains many opportunities to be exploited in this way. The most obvious one is that in the tales (1–6) the ending is typically harmonious, with the now chastened king promoting Daniel or his friends and accepting the sovereignty of their god (and let us note that chapter 5 is an apparent exception, but at the end the kingdom is only transferred, not removed). In the visions, the kings/kingdoms await judgment, their rule represented as increasingly rebellious and the entire dispensation of human empires to be brought to

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an end at a predetermined time, through warfare. One part points to compromise, the other to victory. Correspondingly, the kingdoms of human monarchs and of the Jewish god are represented in the tales as simultaneous if not identical, the one not contradicting the other; a good king expresses and exercises the sovereignty of God. In the visions, on the other hand, the two are in principle incompatible, and the sovereignty of God remains something to be manifested in the end – i.e. not simultaneously but successively. This ambiguity between acceptance of a role under a foreign king and a desire for all non-Jewish kingdoms to be destroyed and replaced is well observed, and has been explained as the result of a change in political conditions between the composition of the two halves of the book, principally the advent of Antiochus IV. Yet the ambiguity remains, in a muted form, even within the tales: chapter 2 and chapter 5 already hint at the destruction of kings and the cessation of the empire sequence, while chapter 7 might well be pre-Antiochene in origin. So the problem is not answered by suggesting that the visions are really only antiAntiochus;22 in that case why an end to the entire sequence of monarchies, and not just an untimely death for the tyrant, as in chapter 5? Seen from the point of view of theology, this ambiguity is a problem, at least if translated into dogma. But seen from a sociological (or psychological) perspective, ambiguity does not exist in order to be resolved, but as a symptom of something possibly deepseated and significant. Ambiguity characterizes private and social personality; many individuals in fact live privately, socially and professionally with respectively different value-systems. A social situation can certainly engender ambiguity, and a colonial society is an excellent example. For instance, the Judaean ruling class under the direct rule of the Romans both cooperated with the ruling power from which their own power was derived, and also resented the source of that power. The outbreak of the 66 CE war with Rome can be plausibly analysed with this factor in mind.23 The history of the Hasmonean dynasty is an excellent example of the coexistence of strongly Hellenistic notions of kingship with a nationalism that extended to forcible circumcision of non-Jews. What does the opposition between the ‘rule of men’ and the ‘kingdom of Elyon’ actually signify if translated into political and social terms? If the rule of Elyon can be exercised through non-Jewish monarchs (as Daniel admits), how is it to be exercised without any monarchs at all? Are the maskilim really uninterested in political power; do they seek the abolition of political power, of politics, of the arena in which their social identity acquires meaning? It does not seem to me a plausible assumption to make about any elite (and there is no doubt that the authors of Daniel are an elite), except perhaps in anticipation of the Schadenfreude a deprived elite might have in the downfall of their usurpers. We might, I suppose, find a hint of a rival Jewish faction in 11:30 and perhaps even 12:2; but these are slim allusions, if allusions they be, to any deeply resented party. I shall pursue this question further presently, in the light of my consideration of a second ambiguity, namely that Daniel reflects a priestly perspective.24 This attribution is probably wrong, as I shall argue, though it raises an important topic. The temple in Daniel is ambiguously evaluated, it seems to me. It

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is present in the book of Daniel essentially in its absence. In the visions it is, from the point of view of the author, desecrated and destroyed; in the tales it is distant. The fact that during Daniel’s career in Babylon the temple was rebuilt is in the book of no apparent significance at all. There is no doubt that in chapters 8–12 the cessation of the twice-daily tamid sacrifice is paramount; the vision of chapter 8 is called ‘vision of the evenings and the mornings’ (8:13-14, 26; an allusion to Genesis 1 also?); in chapter 9 the angel arrives at the time of the evening sacrifice (v. 21), and speaks of the cessation of ‘sacrifice and offering’ (v. 27); chapter 12 ends with predictions of the end of the present distress, again measured in evenings and mornings (vv. 11-12). The only references to a priest, however, are to two ‘anointed ones’ in 9:25-26. In the tales, we find Daniel praying in 6:11ff., with his window open towards Jerusalem, three times a day, including ‘making petition’ (Nnxtm). These references, taken together, suggest conventional temple piety. But what is it about the temple that matters? The predominant weight given to the tamid suggests the function of atonement. Now, in the absence of the temple cult, what effects atonement? In chapter 6 Daniel prays towards Jerusalem. For what? Filling in the gaps, we might say that he prays for the restoration of the exile, among other things. Prayer replaces the temple sacrifice, replaces the temple. In chapter 9 we find what I think is a related ambiguity, or perhaps even contradiction: Daniel’s prayer. answered at the time of the evening tamid, is one which scholars have found problematic, a prayer found in essentially the same form in 1 Kings 8:15-53, Ezra 9:6-15, Neh. 9:6-37, 4QDibHam, in 2 Baruch and in the Jewish liturgy for the Day of Atonement.25 Scholars have rightly puzzled over the contradiction between the theology of this prayer and that of the rest of the book, since the prayer implies the sins of Israel as cause for the events of history and as determinant of the end of the present distress. Again, as a theological contradiction this may have to stand; but a resolution may be found from another perspective. As far as the temple itself is concerned, the paradox is that chapter 9 brings the temple, its priesthood and cult more to the fore than any other, and yet the story shows the efficacy of intercession outside the temple. Now, in chapter 12 we find a move from the temple taken further. The tamid timetable remains, but we find in v. 10 ‘many shall be purified and whitened and purged …’. The imagery here is of purification by fire, and the achievement of righteousness, certainly by the insight of the maskilim who ‘make many righteous’ (v. 3), in what Ginsberg has argued is a deliberate allusion to the Servant of Isa. 53:11.26 If so, then by suffering is purification and righteousness achieved, as well as by understanding secrets. But this is achieved without the temple. Does Daniel envisage the restoration of the temple? Perhaps that is implied in the timetables of chapters 9–11, but not, I think, in chapter 12. The stories of course prefigure this conclusion: Daniel is no priest, and yet he intercedes; in the absence of the temple he is the priestly figure, as are the maskilim. The authors of Daniel pay lip-service to the temple, but prefer their own real service. Daniel bemoans the damage to the temple, but offers an alternative. A similar ploy can be seen in the Mishnah which so lovingly celebrates the departed temple but nevertheless replaces priest with rabbi and cult with

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law-observance, sacrifice with tithing, temple holiness with domestic holiness. Perhaps in Daniel can be seen the anticipated demise of the temple as an indispensable place of purification and atonement? Such an ambiguity is not hard to find elsewhere in Jewish writings of the late Second Temple period, and thus in this respect Daniel shares a more widespread ideology. The attitude to the temple, like the attitude to foreign rule, is loaded with ambiguity. But while foreign imperium is destined to be replaced by direct divine rule, the role of the temple is to be replaced by other activity, exemplified by the behaviour of the maskilim: intercession, teaching righteousness, suffering. In each case, it is possible to detect both an adherence to the values of an established state of affairs and also the framing of an alternative. It may not even be that the authors of Daniel were entirely conscious of what they were revealing in this book about their own orientation; intention does not matter. The fact is that the text reveals it, and from a certain perspective we can view a mentality, a fragment or two of a world-view, a social construct of reality. These suggestions towards a kind of sociological, or ideological (as some would prefer) reading of Daniel have perhaps advanced not a great deal towards a developed hypothesis. But more accomplished practitioners may achieve better results; and the moral I wish to leave is that in a field where new data are a rare treat, it is the invention and adoption of new methods that offer us the hope of seeing yet more in texts, and in understanding them in different ways, throwing light also upon ourselves, who read them, and, like the authors of Daniel, look for the secrets under the surface.

Notes 1. For a convenient recent summary, see A. D. H. Mayes, The Old Testament in Sociological Perspective (London: Marshall Pickering, 1989). 2. S. Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). 3. For a partial critique, see my “The Social World of the Apocalyptic Writings”, in The World of Ancient Israel, R. E. Clements (ed.), 251–71 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 4. It is currently more common to use the word ‘genre’ for the German Gattung, though ‘form-criticism’ has a long history in scholarly usage. On the original sociological aspects of Gunkel’s own work, see M. J. Buss, “The Idea of Sitz im Leben – History and Critique”, Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 90 (1978): 157–70. 5. J. J. Collins (e.g. The Apocalyptic Imagination [New York, Crossroad, 1984]) seems to make these assumptions in his concept of an ‘apocalyptic community’. The idea that an ‘apocalyptic tradition’ was carried by a specific social group can be found in O. Plöger (Theocracy and Eschatology [Oxford, Blackwell, 1968]), M. Hengel (Judentum und Hellenismus [Tübingen: Mohr, 1969]; English translation: Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period [London, 1974]) and F. García Martínez (“Qumran Origins and Early History: A Groningen Hypothesis”, Folia Orientalia 25 [1988]: 113–36), though not all agree in including Daniel in their purview. P. D. Hanson (The Dawn of Apocalyptic [Philadelphia, PA:

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6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

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Fortress Press, 1975]) excludes Daniel from these considerations, and also recognizes that ‘apocalyptic traditions’ may be carried at different times by different groups. There remains some confusion on this. Despite the rather precise classification of the genre in J. J. Collins, “Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre”. Semeia 14 (1979): 1–20, he has also referred to Daniel 7–12 as ‘an apocalypse’ and in the most recent of his essays on the set (J. J. Collins & J. H. Charlesworth [eds], Mysteries and Revelations: Apocalyptic Studies since the Uppsala Conference [JSPS, 9], 11–32 [Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991]) he states with reference to Dan 7–12 and Jubilees that he ‘would now speak simply of the dominant genre of these works as wholes. I would also allow for cases of mixed genre …’ (14). J. A. Montgomery, Daniel (International Critical Commentary) (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1927); G. von Rad, “The Joseph Narrative and Ancient Wisdom”, in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1966). A. Meinhold, “Die Gattung der Josephgeschichte und des Estherbuches: Diasporanovellele I, II”. Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 87 (1975): 306–24; 88 (1976): 79–93. W. L. Humphreys, “A Life-Style for Diaspora: A Study of the Tales of Esther and Daniel”, Journal of Biblical Literature 92 (1973): 211–23. J. J. Collins, “The Court-Tales in Daniel and the Development of Apocalyptic”, Journal of Biblical Literature 94 (1975): 218–34; L. M. Wills, The Jew in the Court of the Foreign King (Harvard Dissertations in Religion, 26) (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1990). See also M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period I (London: SCM Press, 1974), 30–31. H.-P. Müller, “Marchen, Legende und Enderwartung. Zum Verständnis des Buches Daniel”, Vetus Testamentum 26 (1976): 338–50. See also his study of Lehrerzählung in “Die weisheitliche Lehrerzählung in Alten Testament und seiner Umwelt”, Welt des Orients 9 (1977): 77–98. He argues in his first article that Daniel originated as a hero of Märchen, a genre which typically relates a story of the rise to eminence of a humble hero. However, Daniel became a hero of Legende, which Müller defines as a more formal, religious kind of writing; here the ideological interest shifts from the possibility (or not) of social elevation to that of religious conflict, of one god versus another, or of religion against idolatry, or righteous against wicked. In his second article Müller analyses Daniel 1–6 as Lehrerzählungen, whose primary feature is conflict, in line with the analysis of Lee Humphreys. However Müller stresses more than Humphreys the opposition of virtue and vice in the portrayal of the protagonist and antagonist. But although a court setting for the tales is obvious, we cannot simply conclude that the tales themselves function only within court circles, or even originate there. E.g. S. Niditch & R. Doran, “The Success Story of the Wise Courtier: A Formal Approach”, Journal of Biblical Literature 96 (1977): 179–97; P. Milne, Vladimir Propp and the Study of Structure in Hebrew Literature (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1988). B. Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrangnis: eine formkritische Untersuchung zu Daniel 8 und 10–12 (St Ottilien: Eos, 1977), is almost exclusively formal, its conclusions regarding Sitz im Leben unoriginal and superficial. The more recent work of D. Hellholm, “Methodological Reflections on the Problem of Definition of Generic Texts”, in Mysteries and Revelations, Collins & Charlesworth (eds), 135–63, is even more abstract. Form-criticism has effectively split into two directions: genre-criticism, which is more and more linguistically orientated and the other in danger of confusing the Sitz im Leben of the genre itself with the actual setting of the individual compositions. Wills, The Jew in the Court of the Foreign King. S. Niditch, The Symbolic Vision in Biblical Tradition (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983).

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15. “The Social World of the Apocalyptic Writings” (cited in n. 3 above). 16. Even though I appear (not for the first time) to have been misunderstood by Collins (Mysteries and Revelations, 24 n. 1) who thinks I have adopted the term ‘millennarian’ in place of ‘apocalyptic’, whereas I merely wished to point out that ‘millenarian’ is a sociologically defined term, while ‘apocalyptic’ is not, and (vainly, as it seems) attempting to enforce the literary-generic definition that Collins himself had argued for! 17. See especially, F. Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (London: Methuen, 1983). 18. In 6:23 Darius also ‘wrote’ a decree commanding his subjects to ‘fear and tremble’ before the god of Daniel. However, the decrees in chapters 2 and 3 are not specifically described as being ‘written’, nor does chapter 4, though obviously representing an account written by Nebuchadnezzar, contain any reference to writing. 19. S. B. Reid, Enoch and Daniel: A Form Critical and Sociological Study of Historical Apocalypses (Berkeley, CA: Bibal Press, 1989), categorizes the authors of Daniel, using the typology of B. R. Wilson (Magic and Millennium: A Sociological Study of Religious Movements of Protest among Tribal and Third-World Peoples [London: Heinemann, 1971]) as ‘revolutionist/non-resistant’. This does not necessarily mean an abandonment of political ambition at all, but rather the cognitive dissonance mechanism of a onceprivileged elite in decline. 20. J. J. Collins, “Daniel and His Social World”, Interpretation 39 (1985): 131–43. 21. Collins (“Daniel and His Social World”, 135) insists against S. Towner (Daniel [Atlanta, GA: John Knox, 1984], 24–6) that chapter 1 is about dietary laws. Independently of Towner, I also argued that chapter is about other issues (Daniel [Old Testament Guides] [Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985]). 22. So apparently Collins, “Daniel and His Social World”, 138f., though the argument is a little confused. 23. See M. D. Goodman, The Ruling Class of Judaea (Cambridge: Cambrdige University Press, 1987). 24. J. H. C. Lebram, “Apokalyptik und Hellenismus im Buche Daniel”, Vetus Testamentum 20 (1970): 103–524. 25. For an examination of this prayer in its various forms (and an unconvincing conclusion about its origin), see A. Lacoque, “The Liturgical Prayer in Daniel 9”, Hebrew Union College Annual 47 (1976): 119–42. 26. H. L. Ginsberg, “The Oldest Interpretation of the Suffering Servant”, Vetus Testamentum 3 (1953): 400–404.

13 And Enoch was not, for Genesis took him

This paper deals with Pentateuchal criticism. But it also involves 1 Enoch and I hope is especially appropriate for dedication to Michael Knibb, a treasured colleague and friend. I begin with the Genesis account of the ‘heavenly descent’ in 6:1-4, and with the observation that this short passage bristles with difficulties.1 First among these is what Blenkinsopp calls ‘the garbled state of the text’:2 the sequence of events is not unambiguously clear.3 Second: the episode does not fit into any interpretative scheme for either Genesis 1–11 as it now stands, or for the J4 narrative within it. For most interpreters find in these chapters (or at least in J) a pattern of human misdeeds or rebellions followed by divine response, and accordingly regard this episode and the Flood as another instance. But the language of 6:1-4 itself contradicts this interpretation, for in fact the offspring are called gibborim and ’anshey shem, terms whose usage elsewhere in the Bible connotes approval. Moreover, no causal connection between heavenly descent and flood is declared in the text: rather, the divine remedy for the mixing of human and divine natures is a shortening of human lifespan. The reason given for the flood itself as stated in 6:5 is human wickedness. This wickedness is presented rather as a gradual deterioration of human behaviour manifested in the deeds and words of Cain and Lamech (which in the J narrative immediately precede the heavenly descent). The line of Cain, the murderer, from which all humans are descended, produces even more murder (and will continue to do so: see 8:21).5 There is no hint of wickedness apparent in the union of divine beings and human women. The story in Gen 6:1-4 is therefore curious, tantalizing in its brevity and lack of clarity, and infuriating in its inconsequentiality. It was for this reason that Martin Noth proposed that it could well be an addition to the narrative later than either J or P.6 Yet he was unable to conjecture why the story might have been added, and it is hard to see the purpose of such an insertion (one might almost say ‘interruption’) into what would have been otherwise a coherent sequence of events. In view of the use of the divine name, however, the majority of commentators accept that it should be assigned to J. It is therefore necessary to find a reason (and that is the purpose of this essay) for the inclusion. A reasonable assumption is that in view of the story’s incoherence and inconsequentiality it

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was not composed de novo but represents a reworking of an existing tale. That assumption (which many commentators share) I hope to confirm in what follows. However, it still remains to discover a reason why it should have been included at this point in J’s narrative.

Genesis and 1 Enoch We have a fuller version of the story of Gen 6:1-4 story narrated in 1 Enoch 6–11,7 where it seems probable that two versions of the story have been interwoven.8 In both versions the descent of the heavenly beings is presented as the origin of evil on earth; in one the Flood is sent to wipe out the evil from the earth, while the leader ’Asael (= ’Azazel9) is bound and set under a rock in the desert; in the other the leader, whose name here is Šemiḥazah, must first witness their offspring destroy each other, ‘for length of days they have not’, then they shall be bound for seventy generations ‘underneath the rocks of the ground’. The existence of two version of the story certainly complicates any exegesis, though it also supports the suggestion that the story pre-dates 1 Enoch (we need not imagine two variants being simultaneously invented, then being rather awkwardly combined). But in both versions the cause of wickedness on the earth is the descent of the heavenly beings, and the view of evil as something originally supernatural is intrinsic to 1 Enoch as a whole. However, it contradicts the view of J, which is that sin originated with human disobedience; and here, I suggest, lies the reason for its inclusion in Genesis in a way that severs the connection between the descent, wickedness and punishment, by denying that the nephilim were evil and that the incident provided the cause for the Flood. The preservation of the story in the Enochic Book of the Watchers (and allusions in other Enochic writings) draws attention, however, to the figure of Enoch in the early chapters of Genesis, where he receives very brief mention. In the geneaology of the Yahwist (Gen 4:17-18) nothing special is hinted about him at all; he is the son of Cain, who built a city for him and named it after him. In P, however, he is placed between Yared (in J Irad is his son) and Methuselah and it is said (Gen 5:22-23) that he ‘walked with God after he begot Methuselah for three hundred years, and had sons and daughters: and Enoch lived for 365 years’. There are two strange things in this P record: Enoch apparently did not die, and he lived the number of years in a solar year. We have, as in Genesis 6:1-4 the impression of a story that is known but not fully told. We find a fuller account of Enoch in the books of Enoch, explaining how he taught a solar calendar and how he was translated to heaven. However, given that Genesis 5 is a brief genealogy, it is doubtful that P has deliberately omitted further information: indeed the additional information here is notable.10 Contrasted with J’s treatment of Enoch in 4:17-18, 5:21-23 represents an adequate account of his importance. The difference between J and P in respect of Enoch is an issue to be taken up later. What is the relationship between the Genesis material and the Enoch stories? Scholarly orthodoxy prefers the conclusion that the stories in Enoch are an expansion of the Genesis text.11 But this solution, which certainly seems

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superficially the simplest, does not account for the evidence.12 First, there is a logical problem: if Gen 6:1-4 is a truncated version of an earlier and fuller story, as seems to be the best explanation, then the fuller story known to the writers (and readers) of Genesis was probably also known to the writers of the Enoch text, since they cherished the figure of Enoch. These writers would therefore hardly need to expand brief allusions in Genesis when they could utilize the fuller story to which these allusions point. Second, the Enoch story takes account of material elsewhere in the scriptures. The most significant of these is the ceremony of the scapegoat in Leviticus 16. Here the name of ’Azazel is mentioned, but neither its significance nor the significance of sending of the chosen goat into the wilderness is provided. Again, however, a rationale is provided in 1 Enoch by the imprisonment there of ’Azazel,13 from whom human sin originated and to whom it is being returned by the scapegoat. On the majority view, here also 1 Enoch in addition to expanding brief Genesis references will have creatively explained another ancient ritual as well. However, since it has been shown that the Genesis allusions to the fall of deities and to Enoch must refer to an earlier story, it is logical that this earlier story was connected to the ritual of the scapegoat that gives cultic expression to its theology of the cause of sin. So far my argument has been that a story (and a ritual) about the origin of sin from a heavenly invasion lies behind the Genesis narrative – which largely conceals that story. This story, rather than the Genesis abbreviation alone, is a more likely source for the 1 Enoch version – which, as has been noted, in its extant form (1 Enoch 6–11) already indicates the conflation of two versions of that story. The history of this narrative is more complex, therefore, than current explanations suggest. Finally, the fact that in the J narrative in Genesis both the figure of Enoch and the narrative of the descent of heavenly beings exhibit the same kind of suggests that the connection of the descent story with the figure of Enoch underlies not only 1 Enoch but J’s narrative also. If this argument is sound, then one and the same reason perhaps underlies both features. Why would J (but not necessarily P; see later) suppress an Enoch tradition? Boccaccini has argued at length that the kernel of that tradition is a view of the origin and nature of sin, and that a competing view understood sin as arising from human disobedience.14 In illustrating this phenomenon, he shows how a compromise of ‘Enochic’ and its alternative (which he calls ‘Zadokite’) views appear in works such as ben Sira, Daniel and the Qumran scrolls. Ben Sira is an extremely important testimony because his book seems to reflect a wider range of options (despite Boccaccini’s arguments15). For he celebrates a ‘glorious Adam’,16 and imputes no disobedience to him. He also grants Enoch in 44:16 and 49:14 a more worthy mention than does Genesis, including (in 44:16) a reference to his ‘repentance’ (also absent from Genesis). However, unlike Boccaccini’s ‘Enochic Judaism’, ben Sira does not believe in any afterlife or eschatological judgment. Unless he is a rather unrepresentative writer, his Wisdom suggests a fluidity of notions about the nature and origin of sin at the beginning of the second century BCE. At all events, he hardly endorses the viewpoint of Genesis against that of Enoch and thus implies that Genesis as we now have it was not understood by him as a definitive account.17

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The evidence that Boccaccini reviews for a negotiation between ‘Zadokite’ and ‘Enochic’ Judaism, if perhaps channelled rather too narrowly, is persuasive and provides a realistic context for the attitude of Genesis 1–11 towards Enoch and Enochic traditions. For in advocating a myth that sin originates in human disobedience, Genesis 2–4 opposes the myth of a heavenly origin. The effacing of much of the character of Enoch (in both J and P) is in accordance with that strategy, for Enoch’s ascent to heaven has no place in the theology of these chapters. However, this is not the extent of the treatment. The Enochic story of the heavenly descent has also, as discussed above, been amended by detaching from it any connection with the origin of sin in the world and thus denying its significance as an account of the origin of sin. But the revision in fact goes a good deal further. There are elements in Genesis 1–11 that suggest a deliberate reworking of the story of the heavenly descent, a transposition into the alternative story. In the Book of the Watchers the angels also bring knowledge of arts and sciences to humans. In that story also, the birth of giants leads to bloodshed, and the earth cries out and its voice is heard in heaven. The perpetrator does not die but remains imprisoned in the wilderness. All these features, omitted in Genesis 6:1-4, reappear in connection with the figure of Cain. In Genesis 4 it is the descendants of Cain who invent the arts and sciences; it is after Abel’s murder that the earth cries out because of the blood and is heard in heaven, and it is Cain who remains in the wilderness.18 Indeed, in his words ‘my sin is too great for me to bear’ (Gen 4:13) may lie an allusion to the fate of the scapegoat (the ‘’Azazel’ goat) itself, condemned not to die but to wander in the desert under the weight of Israel’s iniquities. It is an improbable coincidence that these three features of the Enoch story are all applied to Cain. The only other solution is that the author(s) of the 1 Enoch story have moved these details from Cain to ’Azazel. Did they, then, also invent the scapegoat ritual? I am arguing, then, that Genesis, or rather J in Genesis 1–11, contains a deliberate anti-Enochic revision of human origins in which heavenly agency (even the snake is a creature that Yhwh made) is entirely absent. It is a product of that negotiation between myths of evil that Boccaccini has discussed at such length within Second Temple Jewish literature. The issue is not one of priority as between 1 Enoch and Genesis. Assigning specific dates to texts and to stories is extremely difficult: both are usually products of ongoing rewriting and retelling. What can sometimes be reconstructed, however, is a relative chronology: certain stories (or versions of stories) imply the existence of others. As far as the relationship between Genesis and 1 Enoch is concerned, we know that the earliest extant manuscript of 1 Enoch is older than the earliest of Genesis; but that proves little. In any case, 1 Enoch itself often shows an awareness of scriptural texts. But it can be demonstrated that the myth in the Book of the Watchers is not elaborated from Genesis but a version of a story of heavenly descent, including the introduction to humans of both violence and heavenly knowledge, that is older than both it and Genesis; and that J’s narrative is a radical revision of that story.19 In the final part of this essay, I want to turn back to the narrative of Genesis 1–11 and to the two strands that it comprises.

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J and P in Genesis 1–11 The attitude towards Enoch in J and in P is quite different. As noted, P refers to Enoch’s lifespan and to his being ‘taken’ by God. By contrast, Genesis 6:1-4 and the figure of Cain both exhibit features characteristic of J. It is J that has rewritten ’Azazel into Cain and stripped the story of heavenly descent of its original significance. It is also J’s genealogy that denies Enoch any distinction at all. But what of P’s stance on the question of the origin of evil? P actually gives us no account at all. In 1973, Cross observed that ‘There is no account of primordial human rebellion in the Priestly strata of Genesis 1–11. Save for the rubric in Genesis 2:4a, P is absent in chapters 2 and 3 … That a Priestly narrative once existed without an account of man’s rebellion and sin is very hard to believe.’20 Having insisted (Gen 1) that when God created the world it was good, it now states, at the onset of its own Flood narrative (Gen 6:11) that ‘the earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence’. It is an abrupt and enigmatic assertion.21 What explanation might P have offered? Would P have agreed with J, or with 1 Enoch, or with some other view? There are several clues to the answer: first, P acknowledges at least something of the Enoch story in 5:21-23; second, P is ideologically and probably literarily connected with the authorship of Leviticus, in which the scapegoat ceremony appears, and in which the eating of blood is forbidden (Leviticus 16); third, the P Flood narrative contains indications of a calendrical reckoning similar to that used in the Enochic literature, namely months of thirty days each.22 Fourth, and finally: the Noachic covenant (Gen 9:1-7) focuses on the shedding of blood, something else for which there is no other description other than the widespread bloodletting in the Enochic story of the giant offspring – and the phrase ‘the earth was corrupt’ rather than ‘humans were corrupt’ fits very well the details in 1 Enoch that the earth cried out because of the blood shed on it. Indeed, the remedy of the universal flood, is not only a reversal and then renewal of creation (as more or less universally recognized), but is also appropriate for a Priestly writer as a means of purification. The most likely answer, therefore, is that the author(s) of P agreed with the authors of 1 Enoch in respect of the origin of evil. If P’s account of the origin of evil would have been the story of a heavenly descent, was that story in fact originally included in its narrative? The consensus on this maintains it was not, because P is generally held to be later than J.23 On that view, P would have had that story already available in the narrative (J’s narrative). But elsewhere, P narratives stand alongside J narratives as doublets (creation: ch. 1, chs 2-4; spread of humanity: ch. 10, ch. 11:1-9: genealogies: 4:17-24: ch. 10) or, as in the case of the Flood, combined (chs 6–9). There is no other case of P’s omitting an episode that J also narrates. Moreover, that P would have been content with J’s version of the heavenly descent is doubtful, since it does not convey the necessary significance, and, if P’s Noachic covenant alludes to the bloodshed caused by the giant offspring of the union of heavenly and earthly beings, then J’s form of the narrative does not provide that detail. The basis of an alternative explanation for the absence of a P version of the origin of evil has been provided by Blenkinsopp, who has also noted that

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‘The P version of human origins has no explicit account of what happened to bring about the deluge.’24 (He finds it in embedded in the genealogies with their decreasing lifespans.)25 Blenkinsopp has argued that J is in fact a supplement to P. While this view has not gained widespread acceptance (though inertia rather than strong counter-arguments seem to motivate this reluctance), it offers a cogent solution for our present problem. The present narrative in Genesis 6:1-4 is not in fact a grudging recognition that a story of a heavenly descent was well known and therefore had to be dealt within somewhere: it lay precisely here already, in the P narrative, preceding the flood story (where its placement still induces several commentators to take it as a pretext for the flood).

Conclusions and implications I have concluded that both the narratives interwoven in Genesis 1–11 engage in different ways with an earlier story of primeval origins that is also preserved in the Enochic literature. The intention of J was to replace the earlier myth, already associated with the figure of Enoch, with a new one, in which sin originated in human disobedience. To this end the earlier story has been mutilated, key elements from it transposed to Cain, and the figure of Enoch all but obliterated. The view that Enoch represents a later development of Genesis – still maintained by the majority of commentators on 1 Enoch – cannot explain the configuration of the Genesis narrative. I have argued that in the fascinating interplay of contending traditions and ideologies that Second Temple texts reveal, the canonized text itself cannot be exempted from consideration and that the early part of Genesis represents part of a conflict well documented in other literature. For the Bible does not, of course, have a privileged status, even historically, in an examination of the emergence of Judaism(s) in the Second Temple period (and what ‘Second Temple’ itself implies is not historically very precise or accurate: it is actually ideologically loaded). The historian will also be aware that the Enochic account of the origin of sin has actually prevailed over the Yahwist’s in subsequent Christian mythology. Lucifer (the Fallen Angel, Satan, the devil, the Serpent) survived J’s attempt to reduce him to a mere creature (and a crawling one at that) to instill evil in human hearts, while the problem of the origin of evil continues to threaten the intellectual foundations of all monotheistic systems.26

Notes 1. For a useful discussion and (improbable) proposal, see D. J. A. Clines, “The Significance of the ‘Sons of God’ Episode (Genesis 6.1-4) in the Context of the ‘Primeval History’ (Genesis 1–11)”, JSOT 13 (1986): 33–46. 2. J. Blenkinsopp, The Pentateuch: An Introduction to the First Five Books of the Bible (New York: Doubleday/London: SCM Press, 1992), 75. 3. One oddity, for example, concerns the nephilim. Did they perish in the flood? The story narrates that only Noah’s family survived (7:1). What, then, of the phrase ‘and also afterwards’ in 6:4? This perhaps betrays a recognition that nephilim did survive the flood; for these

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4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

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giants are encountered by the spies in Numbers 13:33 (did one of the nephilot marry into Noah’s family?). And is the connection between this nephilim tradition in Numbers and the idea of a ‘fall’ (npl) from heaven intrinsic or secondary? The verb does not occur in 6:1-4. In using the symbols J and P I am not necessarily endorsing the conclusions of the New Documentary Hypothesis regarding these sources. I do, nevertheless, accept that there are two sources here, and as far as Genesis 1–11 goes, they may as well be given the conventional sigla. P. R. Davies, “Sons of Cain”, in A Word in Season: Essays in Honour of William McKane (JSOT Sup, 42), J. D. Martin & P. R. Davies (eds), 35–56 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1986). M. Noth, A History of Pentateuchal Traditions, B. W. Anderson (trans.) (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972), 28 n. 83. Although Jubilees is clearly related to the Enoch literature, the version of the story in Jubilees 5 appears to be a slightly harmonizing rewriting of the Genesis account. See P. D. Hanson, “Rebellion in Heaven, Azazel, and Euhemeristic Heroes in Enoch 6–11”, JBL 96 (1997): 195–233; G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch: Chapters 1–36; 81–108, 171–2 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001). Hanson’s suggestion that a single account has been converted into a double account by the addition of material about ’Asael is largely followed by Nickelsburg, who thinks that the ’Asael material is drawn from an independent myth of a single fallen angel that revealed hidden knowledge. But Leviticus 16’s connection of ’Azazel with human sin makes this suggestion improbable. Nickelsburg then has to regard the accusation of bringing sin against ’Asael in 1 Enoch 13:1-3 as an ‘interpolation’ (p. 172). He notes here also that Šemiḥazah is more common in the Book of Giants, while ’Azazel predominates in 4Q180 and in the Animal Apocalypse and Parables, but his argument that the name ’Azazel gradually supplanted Šemiḥazah is a little tendentious. It seems safer to accept that the tradition about descending heavenly beings was transmitted in more than one form. Against Nickelsburg’s suggestion that the revealing of secrets and the introduction of sin are separate themes is the fact that both are connected with Cain in Genesis; the line is characterized both by the invention of arts and sciences and by increasing violence. On the alternation of names, see J. T. Milik, The Books of Enoch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 131. The form ‘’Azazel’ is used in the Qumran Aramaic fragment 4QEnGiantsa (=4Q203). See also L. Stuckenbruck, The Book of Giants from Qumran (TSAJ 63) (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 77–87, esp. p. 82 n. 59: ‘The identification of “As/zeal” or a comparable form … as the biblical Azazel does not constitute a problem as may initially seem.’ Stuckenbruck also discusses here the alternation of Šemiḥazah and ’Azazel/’Asael as leaders of the group. Nevertheless, the wording ‘and he was not, for God took him’ does provoke some puzzlement: it is a very odd and elliptical expression. The possibility that it has been made deliberately obscure (by J?) cannot be ruled out, but that can only be a conjecture, and one that does not need to be established. E.g. G. W. E. Nickelsburg, “Apocalyptic and Myth in 1 Enoch 6–11”, JBL 96 (1977): 383–405; J. J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination (New York: Crossroad, 1984), 38f.; M. Delcor, “Le mythe de la chute des anges et de l’origine des géants comme explication du mal dans le monde dans apocalyptique juive: Histoire des traditions”, RHR 190 (1976): 3–53. As is well known, Milik (Books of Enoch) proposed that the Enoch story was earlier than Genesis. M. Black (The Book of Enoch or 1 Enoch: A New English Edition [Leiden: Brill, 1985], 124–5) favours this opinion but remains open to the alternative that both Genesis and Enoch go back to an earlier source (the position advocated in this essay). Although 1 Enoch mentions also the name of Šemiḥazah as the leader of the descending

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15. 16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24. 25. 26.

Rethinking biblical scholarship heavenly beings, ’Azazel is the name preserved in 4Q180. P. S. See Alexander, “The Enochic Literature and the Bible: Intertextuality and its Implications”, in The Bible as a Book: The Hebrew Bible and the Judaean Desert Discoveries, E. D. Herbert & E. Tov (eds), 57–69 (London: British Library and Oak Knoll Press in association with The Scriptorium: Center for Christian Antiquities, 2002), for a discussion of this text. G. Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis: The Parting of the Ways between Qumran and Enochic Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998); Roots of Rabbinic Judaism: An Intellectual History, from Ezekiel to Daniel (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002). Boccaccini, Roots of Rabbinic Judaism, 134–50. Yet again we are faced, nevertheless, with a complex tradition, for the figure in Ezekiel 28:12-19, used as a metaphor for the king of Tyre, once glorious, has fallen. For a nuanced analysis of shared features of ben Sira and 1 Enoch, see R. A. Argall, 1 Enoch and Sirach: A Comparative Literary and Conceptual Analysis of the Themes of Revelation, Creation and Judgment (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 1995). For an appraisal of ben Sira’s connection between women and sin (and other theories of the origin of evil in early Judaism), see P. R. Davies, “The Origin of Evil in Early Judaism”, Australian Biblical Review 50 (2002): 43–54. The ‘mark of Cain’ may have a connection with the Mishnaic tradition that a ‘mark’ was placed upon the goat in the wilderness, specifically a ‘thread of crimson wool’: see m. Yoma 6:6. For a recent essay in a similar direction, see A. Bedenbender, “Traces of Enochic Judaism within the Hebrew Bible”, in The Origins of Enochic Judaism: Proceedings of the First Enoch Seminar. University of Michigan, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy June 19–23, 2001, G. Boccaccini (ed.), 39–48 (Freiburg: Herder, 2003), who speaks of ‘mythological competition’ and ‘counter-reactions’. F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 306. Cross used this to argue (in my view, wrongly) that P was never an independent narrative. C. Westermann (Genesis: An Introduction [Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992], 53) seems to suggest that P is not interested in the reason for the Flood, only the decision to bring it. But P does give a reason (the earth was corrupt); it is the lack of explanation of that reason that is curious. On the precise details of P’s calendar there remains a good deal of discussion, with which there is no space here to engage, and which does not matter here. For a recent discussion and a proposal that P uses a 364-day calendar also in Gen 1, see S. Najm & P. Guillaume, “Jubilee Calendar Rescued from the Flood Narrative”, JHS 5(1) (2004). One unexplained issue is the 365 days of Gen 5:23. This figure does not reflect the 364 days of the Enochic (or Qumranic) calendar. It has possibly been scribally altered, though there is hardly a plausible motive for this. More likely, we have a variant version of a lunisolar calendar. This view is nevertheless currently under challenge by a number of particular Jewish scholars influenced by Y. Kaufmann: for a good recent discussion, see E. Nicholson, The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century: The Legacy of Julius Wellhausen (Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1998), 218–21. Unfortunately, Blenkinsopp’s important proposal for the priority of P in Genesis 1–11 is omitted from this otherwise useful book. Blenkinsopp, The Pentateuch, 9. Blenkinsopp, The Pentateuch. His view of P’s account of the origin of evil has been maintained in recent private discussion. This paper should not conclude without proper acknowledgement that many of the ‘implications’ sketched here were spelled out over twenty years ago by Margaret Barker (“Reflections upon the Enoch Myth”, JSOT 15 [1980]: 7–29) – and of course have been pursued since in numerous publications.

14 Divination, ‘apocalyptic’ and sectarianism in early Judaism

… the beginning of the formation of the apocalyptic tradition is not the Maccabean crisis (175 BCE), as had been thought on the basis of the book of Daniel, for a long time regarded as the earliest apocalypse. Rather, the oldest parts of the book of Enoch go back into the third century and indeed possibly to the end of the fourth. As … the Aramaic book of Daniel was already an apocalyptic book from the end of the third century. But this makes it chronologically impossible to understand the apocalyptic writings as a continuation of later prophecy, since the canon of the prophets was closed towards the end of the third century. Rather, we must reckon that the latest parts of the prophetic writings (Zech. 9–14; Isa. 24–27) arose partly in parallel to the earliest apocalyptic writings. (R. Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, II, 565)

The following essay aims to extend the above remarks of Rainer Albertz. As far as they go, they are absolutely correct: we cannot regard ‘apocalyptic’ as arising out of prophecy; rather, both are ‘in parallel’. But more can be said about the matrix from which biblical prophecy and ‘apocalyptic’ both emerge. Each represents a literary expression of divination – the discovery and communication of divine messages to humans.1 We can, however more easily gain an understanding of that matrix by focusing first on the nature of what we call ‘apocalyptic’, and especially the problems it has raised in recent scholarly debate.

1. ‘Apocalyptic’ in recent discussion The near-consensus over ‘apocalyptic’ that reigned forty years ago (when both Rainer Albertz and I were students) has long been abandoned.2 A widely held view had been established by the work of H. H. Rowley and buttressed by David Russell.3 Their account rested on three major propositions: that the book of Daniel was the earliest, archetypal ‘apocalyptic’ work, written in a time of persecution in the second century BCE; that it delivered a message of imminent salvation in an imminent eschaton; and that ‘apocalyptic’ derived from prophecy. Russell attempted to refine the definition further by listing a host of

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typical features, including pseudonymity, periodization of history, symbolism and dualism. Rowley’s assertion of Daniel’s archetypal status (1944) was denied almost immediately by T. F. Glasson, who argued for the priority of I Enoch.4 Though opposed by Russell,5 his view was at least partly confirmed when the Qumran Aramaic Enoch fragments were published by Milik, and the earliest sections, the Astronomical Book and Book of the Watchers are now usually dated to the third century.6 But while Rowley had dated all of Daniel to the early second century BCE, most scholars now agree that some or all of the tales in chs 2–6 are older.7 However, chronology is not a crucial issue, since the whole question of a direct relationship between 1 Enoch and Daniel is uncertain.8 The visions of Daniel have been modelled in both form and theme on the tales, while chapter 7 is clearly based on chapter 2 and the later chapters derived from chapter 7. Both visions and tales in Daniel also combine the themes of revelation and divine deliverance from persecution. The book thus appears to have reached its present form(s) by means of an internal and coherent evolution of its own distinctive materials (we may exclude the story of Susannah as a relatively late expansion). The Daniel and Enoch materials have therefore developed over the same period, but have separate textual origins and literary histories. It is true that the religious upheavals of the mid-second century BCE have provided the occasion for some parts of both collections, and stimulated more precise speculations about the eschaton. But even here the materials in each literary collection seem to have no direct connection with each other.9 Although both Daniel and 1 Enoch contain apocalypses (it incorrect to say that either collection is itself an apocalypse), their themes and genres otherwise overlap hardly at all. Both have heroes who convey divine secrets, employ periodization of history, predictions of the end times, and feature both angelic mediators and a heavenly book. But unlike Enoch, Daniel does not travel to the heavens. Daniel’s heavenly book (12:1) contains the names of the righteous, while Enoch’s (81:1; 103:2; 106:19) has the secrets of all things; moreover, Enoch reads its contents while Daniel does not. In the vision of the heavenly throne, which both texts share (Dan 7; 1 Enoch 14; 18; 46; 84) no clear dependence of one on the other can be seen; each may be an independent elaboration of a basic genre represented also in Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1.10 The conceptual and literary differences may imply a different social context, if the respective heroes are characteristic of those responsible for the literature. At any rate, the substantial independence of the two literary collections renders any theory of a single Judaean ‘apocalyptic tradition’ problematic. Partly for this reason, Sacchi proposes to redefine ‘apocalyptic’ as the ‘Enochic tradition’, and Gabriele Boccaccini has refined this suggestion by positing an Enochic ‘Judaism’, distinct from a Mosaic or Zadokite one.11 He posits a literary-theological relationship between 1 Enoch, Daniel and the Qumran scrolls that reflects antagonisms and accommodations between ‘Enochic’ and ‘Zadokite’ groups.12 The main problem with ‘apocalyptic’ (and especially ‘apocalypticism’) has been its imprecision and a consequent lack of agreement about what kind of phenomena the term represents, as K. Koch argued in 1970.13 The roots of Koch’s

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‘perplexity’ lay in something more fundamental: to what kind of phenomenon does the word ‘apocalyptic’ refer, since it is used as a literary, social and theological category. The core of any definition is clearly a literary text – historically the term is derived from the Apocalypse, the book of Revelation and works subsequently named after their resemblance to it14 but these works came to be understood as comprising a genre, and from this genre a theological system was derived; then that system was taken to be an expression of ‘apocalypticism’, as a kind of world-view. (This process, however, had also occurred in the case of ‘prophecy’ and ‘wisdom’.) Koch articulated well the problems of defining ‘apocalyptic’, but his recommendation for a clearer form-critical definition – which was entirely justified – has nevertheless led some subsequent research in wrong directions. In the 1970s a Society of Biblical Literature work group devoted its efforts to defining a genre of apocalypse. But this ultimately proposed a ‘generic framework’ or perhaps a combination of genres, and did not succeed in making a clear distinction between apocalypses and the broader use of ‘apocalyptic’ as a theological category, as Koch had wished. Nor was any specific Sitz im Leben proposed for the genre. Consequently, in Collins’s account of the apocalypse, genre, ‘apocalyptic’ could be present without apocalypses and indeed could generate apocalyptic communities that did not write any apocalypses – such as those reflected in the Qumran texts.15 A second problem with ‘apocalyptic’, as fundamental as the problem of definition, has been the argument about its relationship to prophecy and to wisdom. The issue is complicated because both ‘prophecy’ and ‘wisdom’ themselves had also been extended from literary to theological and social categories, making comparisons with ‘apocalyptic’ even more obscure.16 The derivation of ‘apocalyptic’ from prophecy was endorsed by Plöger and Hanson17 but challenged by G. von Rad, who suggested that Daniel shared more with wisdom.18 Despite initial resistance,19 the connection with wisdom has since become widely accepted, though with some important modification.20 Formal connections with wisdom are clear: hero of the book of Daniel seems to represent a group calling itself maskilim (12:3) and the tales in chs 1–6 represent the well-known wisdom genre of the court-tale.21 It is even clearer here that connections with biblical prophecy are slim, and the strong links between Enoch and wisdom were explored further by Stone.22 But if we extend the comparison beyond the literary forms and consider the social context, both prophecy and apocalyptic are concerned with divination, and a common basis in this important, but often neglected aspect of ancient Judaean and Israelite religion, should be explored.23 If the role of eschatology in apocalyptic has been rather overemphasized, prediction of the future is certainly a significant feature of most apocalypses; but this too is an essential component of divination of all kinds. It is in order to discover the future that most divinatory practices are conducted, and apocalyptic literature can be considered as a kind of ‘literary divination’, concerned essentially with revealing heavenly secrets, especially concerning the past and the future (and thus implicitly the present).24

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2. The cultural matrix of ‘apocalyptic’ According to Collins, ‘apocalypticism’ – the worldview that he claims to be distinctive of apocalypses – enshrines belief in a supernatural world interacting with the visible, earthly order.25 Yet this symbolic universe is characteristic of the entire ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman worlds, where it was also believed that the transcendental reality could be accessed through divination. If there is anything distinctive that requires us (or entitles us) to continue using the term ‘apocalyptic’ as a phenomenon beyond the literary classification of an apocalypse, we must define it in a rather more precise way, in terms of a specific and well-attested cultural feature. ‘Divination’ may therefore indicate the location of such a feature, but is still too broad and too general to define ‘apocalyptic’. The close links between divination and ‘apocalyptic’ was in fact recognized by VanderKam, who, following an examination of Mesopotamian divinatory literature comments: ‘These data about omen literature and its developments in new contexts appear to be of extraordinary value for explaining the evolution of Enochic lore in the early Hellenistic period.’26 He further observes that Enoch’s prototype Enmeduranki was the patron of the diviner class of baru priests. This major advance in our understanding of the cultural matrix of apocalyptic had been anticipated by the identification of ‘mantic wisdom’ for which the Münster biblical scholar H.-P. Müller deserves the credit – and for which he has received far too little recognition.27 Since his proposal first appeared, the ‘mantic’ features of both Enoch and Daniel have been recognized and acknowledged by others,28 and it is his work more than any other that in my view has established the current level of work on ‘apocalyptic and wisdom’. In comparison with instructional wisdom, to which von Rad had pointed, Müller identified four tendencies of ‘mantic wisdom’: an increasing emphasis on prediction of the future; a notion that all events are ordained; a basis of knowledge in communication from the transcendental world; and, perhaps most importantly, its preference for ciphers that need to be decoded or interpreted. Müller did not provide a succinct definition of what manticism is. However, as VanderKam has made clear, it clearly derives from divination. I would explain both terms and their relationship as follows: ‘divination’ is the practice of discerning the will of the gods by means of revelation or hermeneutics, inspiration or mechanical devices; ‘manticism’ is the professional (scribal) culture that explores the metaphysical assumptions underlying divination (that there is a transcendental world to be accessed), examines how and why secrets might be obtained from it, and attempts to organize empirical observations into knowledge of the unseen world. Müller did perhaps not sufficiently recognize the empirical basis of divination, widely attested in Babylonian texts and identified by Stone as Listenwissenchaft. But in other respects his mantische Weisheit is a wellgrounded and attested scribal culture, which we encounter especially clearly in Mesopotamia, though it evidently existed across the entire ancient Near East. It is in Mesopotamia that the figure of Enoch has his origins as Enmeduranki,29 while Daniel is also set in the eastern Jewish diaspora. Mesopotamian mantic lore is extensively recorded and has been studied for over a century.30 It did

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indeed reflect a world-view, a ‘symbolic universe’ in which the experiences and the unseen world were unified: natural and supernatural phenomena were linked by an esoteric code to historical and natural events. The world resounded with interlocking meaning, and associations of phenomena could be predictive. Oppenheim, followed by most other students of the subject, rightly treats the learned mantic tradition as an intellectual more than a religious pursuit, because, though undertaken ultimately for purposes of divination, it was also driven by curiosity. Among the various kinds of literary texts that the learned tradition generated, the recording of observed omens was fundamental. Here instances of associations (such as a comet or an abnormal birth with a subsequent plague, assassination, military defeat) were recorded, usually in the form of a protasis and apodosis. Such lists of omens and their consequences constituted empirically derived rules, from which reliable prediction would be possible. This kind of correlation can be observed in other typical Near Eastern scribal genres: apodictic legal codes (which, as the name implies, preserve the ‘if … then’ formula), while instructional wisdom, without such a formula, nevertheless correlated certain virtues with certain outcomes. Physiognomic description also correlated with certain character traits; such correlations were horoscopic (and hence predictive) but not necessarily astrological (as we find at Qumran in 4Q186 and 4Q561).31 The scribal mind – we might even say its ‘philosophy’ – was thus remarkable consistent over a whole range of topics, and common to all these is the accumulation of knowledge by observation, deduction and inference. In this respect it is unwise to divorce or even to contrast ‘instructional’ and ‘mantic’ wisdom too strongly: the essential difference is simply in the object of knowledge: the natural world, as against the supernatural. In both fields the nature of their interaction was also a major concern. The pervasive practice of divination and manticism in Babylonian may be illustrated by the two most popular (from a wide number) of techniques: astronomy and dreams.

2.1. Astronomy and the chronicling of events Astronomical divination is represented by omen lists and diaries.32 The lists are in the usual protasis-apodosis form and correlate astral phenomena with (usually) political events, for example, from the great omen series Enuma Anu Enlil. Here we find explanations such as: When in the month Ajaru, during the evening watch, the moon eclipses, the king will die. The sons of the king will vie for the throne of their father, but will not sit on it. [Enuma Anu Enlil 17.2]

The Astronomical Diaries constitute a related literary genre: a more systematic, chronological record of celestial phenomena and their correlation with important political events. Each diary was divided into two parts: astronomical observations, arranged day by day – the positions of the planets, moon, eclipses, solstices, equinoxes, etc., and the rising and setting of Sirius; and then events and circumstances supposedly predicted by these omens (prices of goods, river

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water levels, political events). In this case the observations led not towards a knowledge of the heavenly world, but of the history of the human world. Indeed, this format provided the basis for the Neo-Babylonian Chronicle series,33 which probably originated under Nabonassar (747–733), when we also find a renewed interest in astronomical research. The format of the Chronicles resembles the apodoses of omens and although they are concerned with the recent past, they in turn seem to have prompted an interest in chronicles of the distant past.34 These more distant events were generally explained in terms of the anger of the gods arising from a ruler’s impiety (here we may see a convention that reappears in the books of Kings). The authors of the Chronicles undoubtedly belonged to the world of diviners, but it is widely agreed that these chronicles are academic and did not serve the usual royal propaganda functions. An ultimately divinatory activity has thus led to the very borders of historiography by way of a quite logical process. Van Seters claims that the purpose of the chronicles reflects an objective interest in antiquity; but it may be more accurate to say that what is being sought by the authors is a pattern, a meaning, in history: the mantic agenda has therefore not entirely vanished. For in both astronomy and history, the practitioners of mantic wisdom sought to comprehend not only individual events in the future, but kinds of correlation that might produce broader prediction; with the creation of the chronicle, the way was open to determine the meaning of history – indeed, in an important sense, of create ‘history’ as a concept that endowed the sum total of events with a single meaning. But ‘history’ in anything like the modern sense requires the theological counterpart of a monarchic theism by means of which a single will and purpose for the future could be posited instead of the arbitary behaviour of a number of often rival deities. The biblical historiographies and the calendrical form of history that we find in both 1 Enoch and Daniel represent significant steps towards such an achievement, though based on different theories of causality. The ‘apocalyptic’ scheme is typologically older. For the Deuteronomic historiography at least, diviniation of the future is impossible since the future is dependent upon present human behaviour. Another literary genre, again closely connected to the omen lists, astrological diaries and chronicles, is the so-called ‘Akkadian prophecies’ (sometimes also called ‘Akkadian apocalypses’).35 These are ‘pseudoprophecies’, written after the event but, in two cases (see footnote) containing some genuine prediction. Its feature of dismissing reigns as ‘good or ‘bad’ may underlie the formulae used in the book of Kings, but more important for our purposes is the regular anonymity of the rulers mentioned, which is characteristic of the historical reviews in Enoch, Daniel and elsewhere. These works can also embrace eschatology: the Uruk prophecy states: ‘His reign will be established forever. The kings of Uruk will establish dominion like the gods.’ These extant texts all date from the Persian or Seleucid period, and the possibility of contemporary features should not be ignored: but the genre appears to have originated before the first millennium. Also worth noting are the first-person texts dubbed ‘poetic autobiographies’ ‘told in the first person by a king’,36 rather like Daniel 4 or the Nabonidus fragment (4Q242).

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These brief comments can do no more than indicate the breadth of literary genres and of interests that stem ultimately from the astronomical concerns of Mesopotamian mantic wisdom.

2.2. Dream interpretation The other main relevant aspect of mantic wisdom is dream interpretation. Dreams were regarded as ‘communications brought by a spirit messenger’,37 and their interpretation also generated lists of dreams and their meaning, including the Assyrian-Babylonian Dream Book, collected in the time of Asshurbanipal and which forms the basis of Oppenheim’s work.38 Again it has the familiar protasis-apodosis structure: in the left column is what a person sees himself doing in a dream, and on the right what this predicts. Each dream is also classified as either good or bad (like the reigns of kings past, encountered earlier).39 Oppenheim distinguished between ‘message dreams’ in which the meaning is given, and ‘symbolic dreams’ in which recourse to omen lists was required. Both kinds are also found in the Hebrew Bible: the closest parallels to the Mesopotamian symbolic dream are in the Joseph story and in Daniel, both of which set the hero in opposition to foreign mantics. However, many dreams in the Bible, as well as Enoch and Daniel, are actually reported as visions – sometimes ‘night visions’. In Jewish texts the two kinds of dreams are often combined, with the appearance of angelic dream interpreters, perhaps, as Flannery-Dailey suggests, under the Hellenistic influence of the Greek oneiros.40 She also notes continuities with the Jewish dream-interpretation and mantic wisdom: … the authors of early Jewish dreams were male priests and/or scribes familiar with a temple milieu, including the practice of sacrifice, dream incubation, and dream interpretation, and furthermore that they were involved in the reading and interpretation of Scripture. This conclusion offers additional evidence for the continuities that connect these dream texts with their ancient Near Eastern counterparts.41

The existence of dreams, dream reports and [night] visions in the Hebrew Bible points to familiarity with divination and specifically with the literary forms typical of manticism. A specific relationship between the Akkadian dream-vision and Daniel 7 has been argued in detail by Kvanvig.42 However, divination itself is rarely mentioned and indeed widely condemned in the Hebrew Bible, though references to Urim and Thummim and to the taking of lots betray a recognition and even approval of certain kinds – possibly those requiring a mere divine ‘yes’ or ‘no’ rather than a message. We have therefore to consider the manner in which manticism persisted in early Judaism and is represented in the Hebrew Bible itself – being careful to distinguish between these two. Since the Hebrew Bible on the whole condemns divination, ‘prophecy’ is almost always presented as the result of either verbal communication or a vision that is explained by the deity himself or one of his angels – never by recourse to a book of dreams and their interpretation.43 Among the priestly activities mentioned in Leviticus, for example, divination nowhere occurs. We are not even told how

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the priestly Urim and Thummim were operate, while the Psalms, despite possible hints of divinatory activity in an implied divine response, do not explicitly allude to such an activity. What has been called ‘apocalyptic’ literature is also represented very sparsely in the Jewish biblical canon; it is very often preserved in Aramaic and the literary tradition seems to have been carried on by groups about whom we know very little from biblical sources. In some – but not all – cases such writings and traditions exhibit a clear sectarian matrix. What may be deduced from these observations? 2.3.1. The Enochic myth and the book of Genesis I alluded earlier to the view that post-exilic Judaism comprised two ‘streams’, one of which might be called ‘apocalyptic’. As noted earlier, in the most recent elaboration of this hypothesis, Boccaccini has reconstructed an ‘Enochic’ and a ‘Zadokite’ Judaism, difffering ideologically over the belief in the origin of sin, thus endorsing Sacchi’s thesis that the Watchers’ fall is the mythical foundation of the world-view represented by 1 Enoch. Opposing this world-view, the Mosaic–Deuteronomic model of Judaism holds that sin is constituted by disobedience to the divine commands, and that history is the outcome of the divine response to the covenant, not to a cosmic plan.44 The idea of such a rivalry of views about sin is fruitful, but I have argued elsewhere that the story of the Watchers’ descent in 1 Enoch is also implied in the Priestly literature, together with the tradition of a ‘glorious Adam’ and a calendar of 30-day months.45 However, while the ‘founding myth’ of the Enoch literature is shared by P, it cannot be said that either P or the Enochic literature endorses divination, and it is reasonable to conclude that divination – or what was regarded as divination – was excluded from the cult at Jerusalem at some point. But manticism itself persisted independently in the search for meanings beyond the natural world, in which accumulated lore was theoretically extended by fictional revelation. This often took the form of revelations to heroes of antiquity, but, as the written text of scriptures began to codify law, prophecy and wisdom, the written text itself became an object of mantic interpretation, as has been thoroughly and convincingly demonstrated by Barton.46 It also took the form of accounts of heavenly journeys, visits to the Chariot-Throne; and these may have had a counterpart in actual mystical practice, possibly deriving from ancient priestly traditions once established at the Jerusalem Temple.47

3. Synthesis: apocalyptic and manticism ‘Apocalyptic’ represents the ongoing literary tradition of manticism, though in the Jewish content increasingly divorced from a practice of divination, at least in the Jerusalem temple cult. It is not confined to apocalypses, nor is it absent from the Hebrew Bible, where traces remain within the prophetic corpus. It is an error to regard it either as (a) distinct ideological strand, (b) a strange or minority worldview, or (c) a late development. Indeed, it is questionable whether the term has any usefulness; indeed whether it is not a highly misleading one. The features

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regarded as ‘apocalyptic’, both in form and content, are all derived from a mainstream culture originally linked to the practice of divination, which sought to give this practice some theoretic or scientific basis or to illustrate it – the former by means of omen lists or chronicles or even pure astrological observation, the latter by means of accounts of otherworldly journeys (paralleling the earthly journey of individuals such as Sinuhe or Wen-Amon or Ahiqar) or fictional writings from an ancient sage reporting visions or dreams. We should not, however, forget the presence of ethical exhortation in this literature. How does that relate to a mantic culture? I indicated earlier that the distinction between instructional, this-worldly wisdom and mantic, otherwordly wisdom, should not be drawn too sharply: these reflect not different cultures, or even social settings, but different aspects of a single scribal, intellectual quest. Evil and good are not necessarily predetermined, even if they can be foreseen; and they can be understood as divine reward and punishment. Impiety and evil, especially royal impiety and national evil, were linked; individual misfortunate could be the result of offence given consciously or not to a diety. Divination could be used not only to foresee the outcome but also to divine the cause, and thus to permit it to be rectified. The book of Daniel is an excellent example of the combination of what might be appropriately be called ‘ethical’ and ‘metaphysical’ wisdom (or philosophy?); the genre of the tales belongs to a tradition of scribal ethics within the royal court, but the ‘divinatory’ or ‘mantic’ element also has a place here as a vehicle for demonstrating the superiority of native ‘wisdom’, as Wills demonstrates.48 In early Judaism, divination was not so much banished as textualized: the divine will had already been authoritatively made known, both regarding the course of natonal affairs and the ethical requirements of Israel’s deity. As is well known, ‘wisdom’, became accommodated to ‘torah’, and both came to be enshrined in literary monuments. But paradoxically these textual resources themselves became the object of a kind of divination. Scripture could be interpreted as a set of signs, and subject to exegesis – both ‘inspired’ and rule-based. The former is exemplified by the Qumran pesharim (and in the Bible itself, Daniel 9) and the latter by the rabbinic middot, but also the use of atbash and gematria. Speculation about what lies above the earth or beyond the present was discouraged, but did not cease even among Judaism’s religious leaders. ‘Apocalyptic’, is short, is not a problem for historians of religion. The many proposals for its ‘roots’ miss the simple fact that it has very broad roots indeed. It reflects the common religious practice and literary scribal tradition of the entire ancient Near East from very early times.49 What has caused ‘apocalyptic’ to be seen as a curiosity is its relative absence from the Hebrew Bible, along with the practice of divination which was its counterpart in the cult. The really important question for historians of ancient Judaism is the emergence of antagonism towards divination, and with it, towards an excess of speculation about the other world and about the past and future – an antagonism that may have led to the exclusion of certain groups and the rise of sects for whom such speculations gave the opportunity of an explanation for their situation. If the entire category of ‘apocalyptic’ is abandoned as a scholarly figment, a quite different and more interesting perspective emerges.

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Notes 1. J. C. VanderKam, “The Prophetic-Sapiential Origins of Apocalyptic Thought”, in A Word in Season: Essays in Honour of W. McKane, J. D. Martin & P. R. Davies (eds), 163–76 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1986), rightly questions how far prophecy and wisdom can in fact be distinguished both form each other and with respect to their relationship to apocalyptic. 2. Convenient summaries of the recent history of research are in G. W. Nickelsburg, “The Study of Apocalypticism from H H Rowley to the SBL”, SBL Seminar Papers 33 (1994): 715–32; see also J. J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination (New York: Crossroad, 1984) (reprint: Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 13–32; “Apocalyptic Literature”, in Early Judaism and its Modern Interpreters, K. A. Kraft & G. W. E. Nickelsburg (eds), 345–70 (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1986); P. D. Hanson, “Apocalypticism”, in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Supplementary Volume, 30–31 (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1976); “Apocalyptic Literature”, in The Hebrew Bible and its Modern Interpreters, D. A. Knight & G. M. Tucker (eds), 465–88 (Philadelphia, PA: Chico, 1985); E. Nicholson, “Apocalyptic”, in Tradition and Interpretation: Essays by Members of the Society for Old Testament Study, G. W. Anderson (ed.), 189–213 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979); P. R. Davies, “The Social World of the Apocalyptic Writings”, in The World of Ancient Israel, R. E. Clements (ed.), 251–71 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); P. Sacchi, Jewish Apocalyptic and its History (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 13–30, 35–47; H. Kvanvig, Roots of Apocalyptic: The Mesopotamian Background of the Enoch Figure and of the Son of Man (WMANT 61) (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1988), 1–39; E. Tigchelaar, Prophets of Old & The Day of the End: Zechariah, the Book of Watchers & Apocalyptic (OTS 35) (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 1–15. 3. H. H. Rowley, The Relevance of Apocalyptic (London: Athlone, [1944] 1963); D. S. Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic 200 BC–AD 100 (London: SCM Press, [1964] 1971). 4. T. F. Glasson, The Second Advent (London: Epworth Press, 1945), 14ff., 28ff. 5. Russell, The Method and Message, 342–5. 6. J. T. Milik, The Books of Enoch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 4–7; M. E. Stone, Scriptures, Sects and Visions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 27–47, and “The Book of Enoch and Judaism in the Third Century BCE”, CBQ 40 (1978): 479–92; Sacchi, Jewish Apocalyptic, 47, 61–62; Tigchelaar, Prophets of Old, 140–44. On a probable third-century dating of the Book of Giants (possibly a component of an original Enoch cycle), see L. T. Stuckenbruck, The Book of Giants from Qumran (TSAJ 63) (Tübingen: Mohr, 1997), 28–31. 7. Collins, Apocalyptic Vision, 27–59; The Book of Daniel (Hermeneia) (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 35–7; P. R. Davies, Daniel (OTG) (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1985), 40–56. 8. On the relationship between Enoch 1–36 and Dan 7, see Kvanvig, Roots of Apocalyptic, 602, who suggests some connection between the ‘son of man’ figure and Enoch’s Mesopotamian prototypes. 9. It is in a way typical of the frustrating relationship (or lack of it) between the books that while both present a calendrical scheme of 490 years, the figure is calculated differently: Daniel: 70 × 7; Enoch (in the Apocalypse of Weeks contained within in 92–105) calculates ten unequal periods, though there are seven periods between Enoch and the time of the author. See Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch, 1: A Commentary on the Book of Enoch, Chapters 1–36; 81–108 (Hermeneia) (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001), 439–49. 10. The appearance of the ‘son of man’ figure in the Parables of Enoch (37–71) may possibly

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11.

12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

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be influenced by the appearance of the figure in Daniel 7, but this work by general consent postdates Daniel and is not present in the Enoch collection at Qumran. See further Kvanvig, Roots of Apocalyptic, 558–71, who suggests some degree of influence the other way. Sacchi, Jewish Apocalyptic, 13–30: he comments: ‘I have used the term “apocalyptic” to indicate all the works that reflect the problematic of the Enoch tradition’ (26); on ‘Enochic Judaism’, see G. Boccaccini, Roots of Rabbinic Judaism: An Intellectual History, from Ezekiel to Daniel (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002) and Beyond the Essene Hypothesis: The Parting of the Ways between Qumran and Enochic Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998); see also D. R. Jackson, Enochic Judaism: Three Defining Paradigm Exemplars (JSTS 49) (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2004), who considers ‘Enochic Judaism’ to be a Qumran sectarian creation from an ‘Enochic’ paradigm. While he does not explicitly equate ‘Enochic literature’ with ‘apocalyptic’, J. C. VanderKam (Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition [Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1984]) lends this identification considerable weight. Pace M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism (London: SCM Press, 1974), I, 218–47 and F. G. Martinez and A. S. van der Woude, “A ‘Groningen’ Hypothesis of Qumran Origins an Early History”, RQ 14 (1990): 521–42, who see such a tradition carried by the Essenes and manifested in the Qumran scrolls. K. Koch, Ratlos vor der Apokalyptik: eine Streitschrift über ein vernachlässigtes Gebiet der Bibelwissenschaft und die schädlichen Auswirkungen auf Theologie und Philosophie (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1970) (the English edition bore the rather misleading title The Rediscovery of Apocalyptic). On the origin of the term, see M. Smith, “On the History of APOKALYPTO and APOKALYPSIS”, in Apocalypticism, D. Hellholm (ed.), 9–20 (Tubingen: Mohr, 1983). Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 141–2, 205–6. On the problems of ‘prophecy’, see e.g. R. P. Gordon (ed.), ‘The Place Is Too Small for Us’: The Israelite Prophets in Recent Scholarship (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1995); P. R. Davies (ed.), The Prophets: A Sheffield Reader (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996). On the definition of ‘wisdom’, see S. Weeks, Early Israelite Wisdom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); S. Tanzer, “Response to George Nickelsburg”, in Conflicted Boundaries in Wisdom and Apocalypticism (SBL: Symposium, 35), B. G. Wright III & L. M. Wills (eds), 39–49 (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2005). O. Plöger, Theocracy and Eschatology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968); P. D. Hanson, The Dawn of Apocalyptic (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1975). Both scholars suggested a broad comparison of two ‘streams’ in postexilic Judaism, one of which led from prophecy to apocalyptic. The issue is already addressed in O. H. Steck, “Das problem theologischer Strömungen in nachexilischer Zeit”, EvTh 28 (1968), 445–58. G. von Rad, Old Testament Theology I–II (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1965), vol. 2, 301–15. The connection had also been proposed in 1919 by G. Hölscher, “Die Entstehung des Buches Daniel”, TSK 92 (1919): 113–39. It appears that von Rad considered Daniel prototypical rather than of especial interest because of its canonical status. See e.g. P. van der Osten-Sacken, Die Apokalyptik in ihrem Verhältnis zu Prophetie und Weisheit (THE 157) (Munich: C. Kaiser, 1969); I. Willi-Plein, “Das Geheimnis der Apokalyptik”, VT 27 (1977): 62–81. For a different evaluation, see J. Z. Smith, “Wisdom and Apocalyptic”, in his Map is not Territory, 67–87 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1978). A ‘Wisdom and Apocalypticism in Early Judaism and Christianity’ programme was established in 1994 within the Society of Biblcal Literature. See B. G. Wright III & L.

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21. 22.

23.

24.

25. 26. 27.

28.

29. 30.

31.

32.

33.

34. 35.

Rethinking biblical scholarship M. Wills, Conflicted Boundaries in Wisdom and Apocalypticism (SBL: Symposium, 35) (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2005) for a collection of major contributions. On the Jewish court-tale, see L. M. Wills, The Jew in the Court of the Foreign King (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1990). Stone, Scriptures, Sects and Visions; specifically on Listenwissenschaft, see his “Lists of Revealed Things”. On the figure of Enoch, VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth; Kvanvig, Roots of Apocalyptic. Little detailed work on divination in the Hebrew Bible and early Judaism has been published; the major work in English is F. H. Cryer, Divination in Ancient Israel and its Near Eastern Environment (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994). The major study of Israelite religion (Z. Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches [London: Continuum, 2001]), does not discuss divination at all. R. Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, J. Bowden (trans.) (OTL) (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press; London: SCM Press, 1994), 210, mentions dream-interpretation. The definition of C. Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Christianity (London & New York: Crossroad, 1982), comes closest to formulating this definition. On apocalyptic interest in history, see G. L. Davies, “Apocalyptic and Historiography”, JSOT 5 (1978): 15–28. J. J. Collins, “Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre”, Semeia 14 (1979): 1–20, and Apocalyptic Imagination, 7. VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth, 70. H.-P. Müller, “Magisch-mantische Weisheit und die Gestalt Daniels”, UF 1 (1969): 79–94; “Mantische Weisheit und Apokalyptik”, in Congress Volume, VTSupp 22, 268–93 (Leiden: Brill, 1972). Astonishingly, Müller makes no appearance in the Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism. See, however, J. J. Collins, The Book of Daniel (Hermeneia) (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 49–50. John Collins regards Daniel figure as a ‘mantic’, a court diviner (Daniel, 49–50); more cautiously, VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth, 188: ‘the Jewish Enoch displayed clear mantic traits’. See also Kvanvig, Roots of Apocalyptic, 214–342 for an extensive discussion of the Mesopotamian roots of the Enoch tradition. VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth; Kvanvig, Roots of Apocalyptic, 214–342. A. L. Oppenheim, “The Interpretation of Dreams in the Ancient Near East: With a Translation of the Assyrian Dream Book”, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 46 (1956); G. Conteneau, La Divination chez les Assyriens et les Babyloniens (Paris: Payot, 1940). See also VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth, 59–62. On these texts and their Mesopotamian antecedents, see M. Popovic, “Physiognomic Knowledge in Qumran and Babylonia: Form, Interdisciplinarity, and Secrecy”, DSD 13 (2006): 150–76. O. Neugebauer, Astronomical Cuneiform Texts, 3 vols (New York: Springer, 1983); A. J. Sachs & H. Hunger, Diaries and Related Texts from Babylonia, 5 vols (Vienna: Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1988–2001); F. Rochberg-Halton, Aspects of Babylonian Celestial Divination (Vienna: Horn, 1988). A. K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (Locust Valley, NY: J. J. Augustin, 1975); A. Finkel & R. J. van der Spek, Babylonian Chronicles of the Hellenistic Period (forthcoming); J. Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 79–92. Van Seters, In Search of History, 91. A. K. Grayson, Babylonian Historical-Literary Texts (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975) and Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles. Five have been preserved, of

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36.

37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

44.

45.

46.

47.

48. 49.

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which the Dynastic Prophecy and Uruk Prophecy are most directly relevant. See also M. Nissinen, “Neither Prophecies nor Apocalypses. The Akkadian Literary Predictive Texts”, in Knowing the End from the Beginning: The Prophetic, the Apocalyptic and their Relationships (JSPS 46), L. L. Grabbe (ed.), 134–48 (London: T&T Clark, 2003). A. K. Grayson & W. G. Lambert, “Akkadian Prophecies”, JCS 18 (1964): 7–30, 8. See also H. Ringgren, “Akkadian Apocalypses”, in Apocalypticism, D. Hellholm (ed.), 379–86 (Tubingen: Mohr, 1983), for further discussion of the genre. Cryer, Divination in Ancient Israel, 267. See more recently J.-M. Husser, Dreams and Dream Narratives in the Biblical World (Biblical Seminar, 63) (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999); F. Flannery-Dailey, Dreamers, Scribes, and Priests: Jewish Dreams in the Hellenistic and Roman Eras (SJSJ 90) (Leiden: Brill, 2004). Oppenheim, “The Interpretation of Dreams”, 184. Flannery-Dailey, Dreamers, Scribes, and Priests, 202–3. Ibid., 269. Kvanvig, Roots of Apocalyptic, 442–555. On the biblical attitude towards divination, see the judicious comments in VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth, 71–5, who also acutely observes that ‘permissible’ mantic techniques (he thinks especially of dream-interpretation) was placed by Jews ‘within the framework of their monotheistic theology’ (75). Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis; cf. Sacchi, Jewish Apocalyptic, 32–71. It is not improbable that the prayer in Daniel 9, contradicting the view in other chapters of history as a struggle between supernatural powers, was added as a corrective, possibly together with the translation of a major part from Aramaic, sustaining the book’s place among the canonized literature. Davies, “And Enoch Was Not” (this volume, Chapter 13). This tradition seems to be effective as late as ben Sira, whose references to Enoch and Adam contradict those of the Yahwist in Gen 2-4, who diminishes Adam and unlike P has nothing remarkable on Enoch. Yet he strenuously opposes dream-interpretation (ch. 34). The increasing interest in ben Sira and apocalyptic is reflected in several essays in Wright and Wills, Conflicted Boundaries, especially A. T. Wright, “Putting the Puzzle Together”, and the literature cited there. A. T. Wright, The Origin of Evil Spirits (WUNT 198) (Tübingen: Mohr, 2005) assigns the origin of the tradition of evil spirits in Judaism and Christianity to 1 Enoch’s exegesis of Gen. 6.1-4; the treatment, however, simply assumes the chronological priority of the biblical text without any serious discussion or argument. J. Barton, Oracles of God: Perceptions of Ancient Prophecy after the Exile (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1986). Barton also cogently undermines (226–34) the notion of ‘apocalyptic’ as a distinct body of literature or of doctrine in favour of classifying it as being simply concerned with the disclosure of divine mysteries and secrets, following Rowland, The Open Heaven. This has recently been argued by P. Alexander, Mystical Texts from Qumran: Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and Related Manuscripts (London: T&T Clark International, 2006). See also Rowland, The Open Heaven, 78–123. L. M. Wills, The Jew in the Court of the Foreign King (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1990). For some indications of the scope for comparative study of ‘apocalyptic’, see D. Hellholm (ed.), Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East (Tubingen: Mohr, 1983). It remains questionable whether the word or the concept would have existed, however – let alone to have become a distinct category of either literature or ideology – but for the invention of the term in the context of Judaism and Christianity.

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15 What is a bible?

Elsewhere in this book (‘Whose Bible is it Anyway?’) I have used the terms ‘Bible’, ‘bibles’, ‘biblical studies’, ‘bible studies’ and ‘the Bible’, and tried to make clear that the terminology is important. Thus, ‘the Bible’ is a confessional designation, ‘biblical authors’ an anachronism, and so on. In this chapter disputes about discourses are over and we are going to do ‘biblical studies’ not ‘scripture’. In this newly self-conscious discipline, as in any other, the first thing is to define the object of study. The objects of biblical studies are bibles themselves; not what their contents mean or how they were first written. Accordingly, the first question to be asked is ‘what is a bible?’ Note the lower case, since every respectable biblical scholar owns several different bibles. (In a confessional discourse, the question means nothing, since ‘the Bible’ is already a ‘given’, and either one accepts one Bible only or one does not care much about the differences.)1 In this chapter, then, and before engaging in any ‘biblical interpretation’, I want to answer this basic question in terms of bibles’ historical and literary formation and their typical features. I am able to give only the briefest of sketches of what is a complicated and sometimes controversial subject, but the question cannot be bypassed and in any case a thorough examination is unnecessary to make what is a fairly simple point.

What is a bible? The historical answer By the consent of common usage and reference, and as a matter of empirical observation, a bible is a book. But the Greek term for ‘bible’ was biblia, ‘books’, not biblion, ‘book’. The same is true in the Latin biblia, as in the authorized Latin biblia vulgata and as preserved in the standard critical edition of the Hebrew (Masoretic) text, the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (these words are all plural). Modern English examples, however, have ‘The Bible’ or ‘Holy Bible’ on their cover (usually with the name of the particular ‘version’ as well). At some point in history, or more accurately, over a period of history, the word ‘bible’ came into existence, transformed into a singular noun. Yet we still talk equally of the ‘books of the Bible’ or the ‘book of Isaiah’, acknowledging that

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a bible is really not only a book but also a collection of books. The way the contents of bibles are commented on and interpreted, especially in academic discourse, generally respects the plurality more than the unity. There are very few readings of a bible as a single book,2 and even one-volume biblical commentaries are commentaries on individual books bound in a single tome, and not continuous exegesis across the entire contents.3 The components of a bible, then, were not only written and copied first as individual scrolls but have more commonly been interpreted as such than as parts of a single book.4 And yet it is, physically speaking, a single book, which is how libraries, booksellers and customers treat it. What makes these biblia a bible is first and foremost the invention of the codex, a technological innovation that enabled many hitherto individual books (scrolls) to be bound as a single object (see below). It is important, to recognize then, that the possibility of a bible is in the first instance a technological achievement. The presumption that many people have that its unity and singularity are somehow intrinsic, that its contents belong naturally together, is illusory, as we shall see. The earliest codices of Christian scripture contain different collections of writings; some of these collections we now call ‘bibles’, if we happen to think either that they contained all that their owner regarded as Christian scripture (and not just a part, as the very first codices did), or that they contain more or less what our own modern bibles do. But the earliest codices containing the range of Christian scriptures vary sufficiently to show that they did not simply transfer into one format a collection that, although physically separate, was already firmly fixed. Thanks to the codex, scriptural ‘books’ (‘scrolls’) that were once independent artifacts (literary and physical) gradually ceased to exist, at least in any physical form, as individual works of literature, and were transmitted only as components of larger volumes in which they were now bound together (‘bibles’). Thus, while it is now quite permissible to treat an entire bible from a literary point of view (see later) as a unified corpus, a single piece of literature, any kind of historical treatment must recognize a process in which collections of scrolls that were recopied into Christian codices finally issued in ‘bibles’ with standardized contents – though, it must be added, various standardized contents, since Christian scriptures have never achieved a single definitive form. That is the reason why we need to speak of ‘bibles’ in the plural. To refer to ‘the Bible’ is a convenient way of speaking but which is at the same time dangerously loose: it runs the risk of moving from empirical to ideal.

Bible and canon It is also important to remember that ‘canon’ and ‘bible’ are not synonymous terms. Many textbooks and even monographs fall into the error of treating ‘bible’ as if it meant ‘canon’.5 A bible is a physical artifact, a canon is a list of contents. The canon is what a bible contains – though, as I shall mention later, I know of no bible that contains only the canon. There has always been other

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matter as well. Yet when students or scholars speak of ‘Bible’ they usually, or often, mean something more like ‘canon’: a ‘biblical’ book means a ‘canonical’ one. When they speak of the ‘origins’ or ‘history’ of ‘the Bible’ they also usually mean the origin or history (or more commonly prehistory) of the canon. But while ‘bible’ and ‘canon’ can be used interchangeably much of the time without creating great confusion, as soon as we examine the history of bibles and canons we recognize that the terms must ultimately be kept distinct, for it is, as we shall see, possible to have a canon without a bible and vice versa. The former case was once true of Judaism and the latter (very probably) once true of Christianity. Let me explain this.

Judaism: canon without bible The holy writings of the Jews were written, and remained until the Middle Ages, on individual scrolls (with smaller compositions sometimes written on a single roll, such as the Minor Prophets, counted by Jews as one book). However, over a period between the composition of the books and the Talmudic period (sixth century CE) the Jews, under the authority of the rabbinate, defined a body of writings. There was, at the latest by the first century CE, a recognized collection of five Jewish ‘books of the law’ or ‘books of Moses’, constituting a fixed number and order; other categories such as ‘prophets’ or ‘writings’ were referred to, but did not yet seem to constitute a fixed collection (we cannot identify from the Qumran scrolls any such thing as a ‘canon’).6 The proper terminology for the literature we are dealing with at this period would be ‘sacred writings’ or ‘holy books/scrolls’. The Latin-derived English word ‘scripture’ can be used only if it is remembered that in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek there is no term which denotes ‘scripture(s)’ as distinct from ‘writing(s)’ or ‘literature’. In the Qumran scrolls we generally find allusions to the sacred literature introduced by the simple formula ‘it is written’ or ‘as it says’ without explicit reference to a defined body of texts; in ben Sira 24.23 the author refers to ‘the scroll of the covenant of the most high God, the law which Moses commanded us’; in Daniel 9.2 the prophecy of Jeremiah is found ‘in the scrolls’, and in the New Testament we find the term ‘the law and the prophets’. But there is as yet no Jewish bible, nor a Jewish ‘canon’. In the first century CE, both Josephus and the author of 4 Ezra assert a fixed number of scrolls/books which constitute the sacred writings of the Jews,7 though they disagree slightly on the number of sacred books that the Jews possess (twenty-two as against twenty-four). Both writers, in different ways, represent these books as inspired. Later still, the rabbis subsequently debated which scrolls ‘defiled the hands’ and which not, suggesting that they wanted to draw a clear line between some books and others. They also coined the term ‘outside books’. So an agreed list of Jewish writings ‘defiling the hands’ was set some time after the first century CE (the so-called ‘council of Jamnia’ may be only a convenient fiction) and indeed from the first century CE onwards we can see a standard Hebrew text also being imposed on the wide variety of texts that the Qumran scrolls have demonstrated to us, as well as a series of Greek translations that follow this adopted Hebrew text.8 The earlier Greek translation called the Septuagint is something of a curiosity. It is not a single translation of all

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the sacred literature. The ‘letter of Aristeas’ (from which the term ‘Septuagint’ derives because of the number of translators reputedly engaged in it) is probably a fiction, but in any case seems to refer only to a translation of the (five) books of the law. In fact we have no clear evidence of the date or provenience of other Greek translations now called the ‘Septuagint’. The idea of a Jewish Greek ‘canon’ is dubious; the evidence of Philo of Alexandria is that the law was venerated, but his references to other books now in the Jewish scriptures are sparse. We are not on safe ground in speaking of a Greek Jewish ‘canon’ until we reach the second-century translations into Greek by Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion of the books regarded as sacred in Hebrew. From the ninth century, apparently, Jews began to put their scriptures into codices.9 Among modern printed Hebrew bibles, the standard critical text, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (which is not a Jewish bible, but a critical edition of the books of the Jewish canon with some Masoretic annotations) is based on the eleventh-century Codex Leningradensis. Another critical edition, based on the Aleppo Codex from the tenth century is being prepared by the Hebrew University Bible Project.10 Most other Jewish Hebrew bibles are based on the printed edition of Daniel Bomberg (1524/5), which itself is based on various mediaeval manuscripts, but also used chapter and verse divisions from the Vulgate alongside the traditional liturgical Jewish divisions. The word ‘bible’ is a Christian term which most Jewish scholars have now adopted. For this reason, there is no Hebrew or Jewish term corresponding to what Christians would call ‘bible’. We find other terms: torah, which refers to the contents of the five books of Moses; miqra’, which means ‘scripture’; and tenakh, which is an acronym of the three divisions of the Jewish scriptures.11 One can nevertheless refer to the Jewish scriptures as a ‘bible’. What is the correct terminology? Christian (and Jewish) scholars have coined the term ‘Hebrew Bible’, although the tenakh is not entirely in Hebrew, and of course translations into other languages exist.12 The modern Jewish Publication Society English translation13 bears the title A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures, although the word ‘bible’ is used to describe it in the preface and on the back flap. I prefer the term ‘Jewish bible’. The main point of the preceding discussion is to explain that Jewish bibles are a more recent phenomenon than Christian ones, both in physical existence and in nomenclature. However, the Jewish ‘canon’ (the nomenclature and to some extent the concept is also Christian) is older than the Christian one. It should be remembered, however, that in Judaism as well as in Christianity, ‘canon’ does not imply fixed order. The imposition of a fixed order, though largely a matter of tradition and chronological or generic arrangement, is finally a result of printing.

Christianity: bible without canon The birth of Christian bibles cannot pre-date the adoption of the codex form by Christians in preference to the more popular scroll (or roll) format.14 If we are investigating the origin and history of Christian bibles, our chronological starting point is the time when the possibilities for a single book of scripture existed, and that is somewhere in the fourth century of our era. There are earlier

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codices of holy books, but not complete sets of Old and New Testament writings. The earliest New Testament manuscripts, for example,15 which go back to the second century (e.g. P1, P5, P52) apparently contain only single books (though we cannot always be sure). By the third century we have papyri with more than one text, and the Chester Beatty papyrus P45 has four gospels and Acts. None of these is a bible, nor even a New Testament, but the putting together of a chosen group of gospels may well have had the effect of ‘canonizing’ that particular set, for we have no codices that contain the four canonical ones together with any others, though the order of these gospels is not uniform. Like most inventions, the codex improved. It seems at first to have been impossible or impracticable to have made a codex large enough to accommodate all the writings of modern Christian bibles. But from the fourth century at least codices of 1600 pages and more were made, large enough to accommodate all the scriptural writings; and hence it is from this time that we can speak properly of a ‘bible’. Had a codex of this capacity proved impossible to produce, we would never have had bibles at all, but rather collections of gospels, letters and who knows what else? What would they have been called? How did the codex, which has remained the form of book that we know today, come into being, and quickly emerge – which seems to have happened – as the format most popular with Christians. The new format (as was noted when it is first recorded in the first century CE)16 was to be of service to travellers and to libraries; it was both less bulky and allowed immediate access to the inner contents without the necessity of unrolling.17 Despite its convenience, the evidence is that the codex equalled the popularity of the scroll only in the late third century CE; yet Christian writings (not just what we now call ‘scriptures’) appear to form an exception to the rule, for they were already favoured by the codex well before 300 CE. It is not clear why Christian writings differed from the trend, though several possibilities have been suggested, including that they were largely used when the owner was travelling (e.g. on missionary work), or that they were regarded as ‘informal’ literature, where the codex was apparently less resented than in the case of formal literary works which, fashion dictated, should still be in the older scroll format. Nevertheless, the earliest large codices that we could regard as ‘bibles’ come from the fourth to fifth century, namely those known as Alexandrinus and Sinaiticus, followed by Vaticanus.18 (At about the same time the works of Virgil were also put into a single codex.) These codices share much in common, but they also differ slightly in content and a good deal in order (see Table 1). They should correctly be described not as different version of ‘the Bible’ but as different bibles. They show that there was a widely agreed view about what scriptures were on the whole to be included in such books, but there is apparently no strict list, and a bible might contain writings that were not ‘scriptures’. It does not follow that because it is included in a bible, Athanasius’ letter to Marcellinus or Eusebius’s summary of the Psalms are ‘part of the canon’ nor, indeed that the inclusion of 1 and 2 Clement or Hermas means that they were necessarily regarded as ‘canonical’, though Hermas is still found in the ninthcentury Latin Codex Sangermanensis, while 1 and 2 Clement are in the Coptic

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canon, together with the Apostolic Constitutions, after the book of Revelation. But we cannot be certain that a codex, even after the formation of a canon within a particular Church, might not still include books that were not part of that canon. The creation of the idea of a ‘canon’, which seems to have been unrelated to the parallel Jewish development, except in the contribution of Jerome when translating the Vulgate,19 is not presupposed by the existence of bibles. On the other hand, the establishing of a canon may well presuppose the popularity of the codex format.20 If so, the situation with respect to the Christian churches was the opposite of that in rabbinic Judaism: bible preceded canon. Whether this is something of an exaggeration or not, it remains a fact that the contents of Western bibles have continued to change, sometimes with and sometimes without a corresponding change of canon. For no single Christian canon has ever reigned: the Catholic, Protestant, Ethiopic, Orthodox (Greek and Russian), Coptic and Syrian canons differ. The Ethiopic church has both a narrow and a wider canon. In many cases canons were, and is, a matter of uncertainty. (The contents of the Vulgate were not settled until 1546.) ‘Canon’, then, is, like ‘bible’, a category of which there are several members. Whether a piece of writing is ‘canonical’ and whether it is in a bible, is a matter of where and when you choose to ask. For the earliest stages in the development of both, ‘biblical’ is easier to define than ‘canonical’, of course, because we can consult an ancient bible and see immediately what was in it. And anything that was in it was obviously ‘biblical’: there is no other rational definition! Any book that has been included in a bible is, after all, a biblical book: that is a matter of fact and not for discussion. Whether the contents of the earliest bibles are ‘canonical’ is a different matter, involving an understanding of what the term might have meant at any particular time. (Canonical criticism, then, is not central to biblical studies but concerns a related topic.) Thus, for example, the New Testament of the Peshitta (dating from the fifth century) omits four of the Catholic epistles (2 and 3 John, Philemon, 2 Peter). The Ethiopic New Testament canon has thirty-five books. But no Ethiopic biblical manuscripts contain the whole New Testament … The evidence of the variability of canons and bibles is most evident to Westerners in the case of the different Catholic and Protestant bibles. The European Reformers changed the Western (‘Catholic’) canon by omitting those books which were not in the Jewish scriptures. There had, indeed, been dispute about certain books from the time of Jerome. But the official bible of the church (and unofficial ones, like translations, were prohibited until the sixteenth century) derived from the early Greek bibles, not the Jewish (Hebrew) scriptures. Extreme veneration for ‘canon’, which is currently so pervasive in confessional studies, is a rather recent development. Luther was not so respectful as to refrain from meddling with it, indeed from changing it permanently – though his own changes were tempered by his successors.21 Even so, the ‘Apocrypha’ was not formally separated until the sixteenth century (the King James Version always printed it between the testaments), and not until the nineteenth century was it omitted from Protestant bibles. Now it is tending to come back into Protestant bibles! Since there are several ways in which the ‘Greek’ parts of the

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Old Testament can be incorporated in a ‘Protestant’ framework, several different bibles are now available to customers. It is not difficult to understand what canon criticism tends to go along with a rejection of historical criticism, for historical methods can easily expose the variability through time of ‘canon’ and expose it as a fluctuating phenomenon, stable only if idealized and abstracted from the concrete realities.

Table 1 Contents of the earliest Christian codices.29 Old Testament Vaticanus Sinaiticus Alexandrinus … Genesis … Genesis Genesis Exodus Exodus Leviticus Leviticus Numbers … Numbers … Numbers Deuteronomy Deuteronomy Joshua Joshua Judges Judges Ruth Ruth 1–4 Kings 1–4 Kings 1–2 Chronicles … 1 Chronicles … 1–2 Chronicles 1–2 Esdras … 2 Esdras Hosea Psalms… Esther Amos Proverbs Tobit Micah Ecclesiastes Judith Joel Song of Solomon 1, 4 Maccabees Obadiah Job Isaiah Jonah Wisdom Jeremiah Nahum Sirach Lamentations … Habakkuk Esther Joel Zephaniah Judith Obadiah Haggai Tobit Jonah Zechariah Hosea Nahum Malachi Amos Habakkuk Isaiah Micah Zephaniah Jeremiah Joel Haggai Baruch Obadiah Zechariah Lamentations Jonah Malachi Epistle of Jeremy Nahum Psalms Ezekiel Habakkuk Proverbs Daniel Zephaniah Ecclesiastes Esther Haggai Song of Solomon Tobit Zechariah Wisdom Judith Malachi Sirach 1–2 Esdras

198 Isaiah Jeremiah

Baruch Lamentations Epistle of Jeremy Ezekiel Daniel

New Testament Vaticanus Matthew Mark Luke John Acts Romans 1–2 Corinthians Galatians Ephesians Philippians Colossians 1–2 Thessalonians

Rethinking biblical scholarship Job

1–4 Maccabees An epistle of Athanasius on the Psalter and a summary of the contents of the Psalms by Eusebius Psalms (including 151) Canticles taken from other parts of the scriptures Job Proverbs Ecclesiastes Song of Solomon Wisdom Sirach

Sinaiticus Alexandrinus Matthew … Matthew Mark Mark Luke Luke John John Romans Acts 1–2 Corinthians James Galatians 1–2 Peter Ephesians 1–3 John Philippians Jude Colossians Romans 1–2 Thessalonians 1–2 Corinthians Hebrews Galatians 1–2 Timothy Ephesians Philippians The original order is rather uncertain Titus Colossians from this point Hebrews 9 to the end, Philemon Acts 1–2 Thessalonians the Pastorals and Revelation were James Hebrews recopied in the 15th century. 1–2 Timothy (Vaticanus had earlier been entirely 1–2 Peter 1–3 John Titus recopied in the 10th and 11th Jude Philemon centuries) Revelation Revelation Epistle of Barnabas 1–2 Clement … Hermas … Note: I am indebted to Dr J. K. Elliott for supplying the data in this table.

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The shape of modern bibles The issue of the canon in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had much to do with the emergence of humanism: Erasmus was a severe critic of several canonical books, and Luther, far from elevating bible over church, treated the canon with some disdain, regarding any book that did not ‘preach Christ’ as unworthy to be included. Bibles, however, were much affected by the appearance of vernacular translations and the invention of printing. The printing press, made bibles into a mass product, and translation made this product consumable. But far from standardizing bibles (though it did help to fix the order of contents), printing has preserved and even enhanced their variety. After the codex it was the second great technological innovation to affect the development of bibles. There is no modern bible that includes only a canon. Indeed, some contain an amalgamation of canons. My own copy of the New Standard Revised Version is, like virtually all Christian bibles in English, prints a translation from Hebrew where a Hebrew original exists and from Greek where it does not (with one exception). It has the same contents as a Jewish Bible for its Old Testament, but a different arrangement. Its Daniel is a translation of the Hebrew/Aramaic version of the book, with those parts included in the earliest Christian (Greek) version between the two testaments, as three different books (The Song of the Three Jews; Susanna; and Bel and the Dragon). Its Esther, however, is a translation of the Greek, though those parts additional to the Hebrew are marked. The NRSV, then, is not merely a revised translation of the old RSV, politically corrected and so on. It is actually offering customers a different set of contents, a different selection of books. Some of what is ‘biblical’ in the NRSV was not biblical in the older RSV. This is understandably puzzling to many of my own undergraduate students, who often assume that they have ‘the Bible’ with them in class, only to discover that their or that their classmates’ bibles are defective for the purposes of the class. The simple fact is that my NRSV does not contain anyone’s canon, but is a mixture of Jewish, Catholic and Protestant ones. Canon is not bible; bible is not canon! In any case, scriptures do not form the entire content of modern bibles any more than of the earliest ones. The extra non-scriptural material in bibles also various and can be little or much. As with all bibles since the Vulgate, the individual books are given titles, and divided into chapters and verses. My NRSV also has a list of contents, maps and charts, a cross-referencing system, a concordance, a preface, and an introduction to each book. These are part of one of the bibles I own. Most of the others (old RSV, Jerusalem Bible, King James, New International Version) have similar material, though no two are identical. They often have running heads (my NRSV does not) which tell me what is going on in the text, or what some editor thinks is going on. There are sometimes marginal notes to suggest alternative readings or to point to the original language. None of this stuff s any part of the ‘canon’, and while some of it represents a traditional component, my impression is that most of the added material in modern bibles is quite recent. The ‘final form of the text’ may be a theologically useful idea, but it can hardly apply to the range of modern English bibles. Modern translations

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may be either literal (RV) or governed by ‘dynamic equivalence’ theory (GNB), in which the aim is to try to reproduce the same impact in the target language as in the source language,22 or they may be quite paraphrastic (J. B. Phillips’s translation). There is also a Reader’s Digest Condensed Bible, an Amplified Bible, and we ought not to overlook the famous Cotton Patch Bible. The final form of their bible has long been customized for different requirements of bible-reading Christians.23 Calling these ‘versions’ or ‘translations’ is misleading, since there is no single object of which they are a version, nor single text from which they translate. They are, simply, different bibles. To illustrate this point, let us take one example of different bibles and how they render a parallel verse (1 Sam. 13:1): Masoretic text: l)r#$y-l( Klm Myn#$ yt#$w wklmb lw)#$ hn#$-Nb

(‘Saul’s age was one when he became king and he reigned two years over Israel’) Septuagint: (1 Kingdoms 13.1) This sentence is left out of most mss. The few that have it give ‘thirty’ as Saul’s age. King James Version ‘Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel’ New Revised Standard Version ‘Saul was …b years old when he began to reign; and he reigned … and twoc years over Israel’ (Note b. states: ‘The number is lacking in the Heb text …’ and note c. ‘Two is not the entire number; something has dropped out.’) New International Version ‘Saul was [thirty] years old when he became king, and he reigned over Israel [forty-] two years.’

It is possible that there are words missing in the Hebrew. But there is nothing wrong with the grammar or syntax of anything in the verse. This bible says Saul was a year old when he started and that he ruled for two years. The NRSV is incorrect to say that numbers are lacking. It should say that ‘numbers may be lacking, or else the verse is hard to reconcile with other stories about Saul’. But at least it does not invent figures. The NIV does invent them, making a guess at what number ought to be there (based partly on a guess in some LXX manuscripts, which is no defence). The King James Version is the most interesting. It takes the Hebrew exactly as it stands, but takes the two years of his rule to run only as far as the action in the following verse, which is ingenious, if the less probable meaning literally.

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What is the point of this illustration? Simply that modern bibles do things go beyond rendering the canon into English. They add, explain and harmonize, not just through their ancillary material, designed to ensure that no reader misunderstands what they are supposed to read. But any reader who does not think that her bible says Saul became king at the age of one can read another bible instead. What is important for every reader of an English language bible to remember is that it should never be thought of as ‘the Bible’. If there is some authoritative, inspired, scripture that Christians possess, where is it? It is, as far as the majority of churchgoers are concerned, legion. The bible of theology is not a real bible that anyone can touch, read or give the meaning of; it is some kind of Platonic ideal. As I understand the discipline, biblical studies is about real bibles, not ideal ones. These differing bibles are not to be called ‘versions’ or ‘translations’ either. What are they versions or translations of? And how reliable are they as translations? They are prone, as the example shows, of massaging the text of previous bibles to make something less problematic. In many instances, the word ‘mistranslation’ would be better.24 A word might now be said about Jewish bibles. Over the centuries between the rabbinic period and the Middle Ages the scriptural scrolls were added to, in the form of vocalization and correction – the work of the so-called ‘Masoretes’. A full Masoretic bible includes their voluminous apparatuses (the ‘masora’ proper), and even when omitted, their corrections and their punctuation, which often determine the exact sense, are included in every Hebrew bible and incorporated into every Jewish translation. The accentual marks which indicate the way the text is to be read out (or sung) are not translated. We can rightly speak of different Jewish bibles, then, though, unlike Christian bibles, the form of the scriptural text itself is consistent, apart from occasional variations stemming from different mediaeval traditions.25 The best-known Jewish Bible to many scholars is the BHS, the standard critical edition. Jews never use it in worship, nor do Christians. I know a few colleagues who take it to church to follow the lesson. But they do not, as far as I know, interrupt the lesson to offer a textual emendation. BHS is a non-liturgical bible, which is an interesting creature indeed. (Whether, with its critical apparatus, it is any use to final-form biblical theologians like Watson, I cannot guess.) If, as a biblical scholar, I am concerned to explain the phenomenon of so many bibles, so many ‘final forms’ (which are of course anything but final!), I cannot escape historical-critical methods. Literary critics will be content to read whatever bible is in their hands, scripture scholars will minimize in some way the wonderful prolixity of bible production; only historians, perhaps are seriously interested in the basic question: ‘what is a bible?’. To know why the various bibles that I own are the way they are, therefore, I need to know a lot of history. Bibles have a history because they are human artifacts, subject to the decision of humans: authors, church leaders, church councils, translators, publishers. Whatever bible you possess has been manufactured for you by a host of people who in differing ways have contributed to its format and contents. This process will continue; new bibles will come into existence, probably new canons as well (as the NRSV illustrates, and as the

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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has accomplished). Biblical studies ought to be concerned with what bibles are becoming in our own age as much, if not more, than about hypothetical societies, conjectured authors and religious beliefs of two thousand years ago. Bibles are not ancient texts. After all, before the fourth century of our era there were no bibles at all. The problem with historical criticism is not what Brevard Childs, Francis Watson and some literary critics claim. It is that historical critics (including myself) have expended their energies on examining the origins of the contents of bibles, getting drawn into a debate in which theological agendas run free. The origins of the biblical literature, as anyone who follows scholarly and popular discussions will recognize, is a matter of intense interest because of the importance these questions hold for some people’s religious beliefs. It is very easy for any historian to be drawn into a position in which he or she is ‘defending’ or ‘attacking’ ‘the Bible’. By contrast, there is little religious interest in the history of bibles. But this is where the historical work needs to be done, where we have more evidence and where the cultural role of bibles in our societies can be more directly addressed.

What is a bible? The literary answer Although it is perhaps the most important, history is not the only means by which one can answer the question ‘what is a bible?’. Confronted with any one bible, a legitimate literary approach to the question ‘what is a bible?’ can be generated. Every bible, after all, is a piece of literature between two covers, and is entitled to be read as a single work with a single meaning, if the reader desires to find or to create one. There is also the question use, and the use of bibles is to be read, either as a whole (which is rare) or in parts, or even piecemeal (which is the most common). In fact, bibles as a whole are rarely read even by professional literary critics. These prefer to read individual books, or stories, or groups of books. But here I am concerned with reading bibles, i.e. wholes. An obvious way in which to read individual books is to construct the author of a text and try to reconfigure his or her meaning. But as a collection, the bible is not the product of any one time or place, nor of any one author or group of authors. An historical-critical reading of a bible can only lead one in the direction of atomism – the fault, not of the historical critic, but of the nature of a bible’s contents. If one wants to read a bible as a whole, this kind of historical methodology needs to be displaced. But interest in reading a whole bible does not have to be confined to a purely individual and synchronic reading, for there is an historical dimension to this exercise too: one can apply holistic readings to creators and readers of historical bibles rather than to the authors of the text which bibles include. Any bible will mean different things to different readers, of course, and modern literary theory foregrounds the reader in the act of creating meaning. But my interest in this chapter is in the shape and form of what is read, and so, begging the indulgence of competent literary critics, I will confine my remarks

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to the sense in which the Gestalt of various bibles turns them into different books and different stories; and although this section is about literature and not history, there remains an historical aspect to the subject of literary reading. Different bibles lend themselves more readily to certain kinds of readings. The most obvious differences between Christian and Jewish bibles in this respect is, of course, the inclusion of the New Testament. Throughout the history of bible exegesis the ‘Old Testament’ parts of Christian bibles have been exploited typologically, although the historical has recently come to the fore. But the juxtaposition of two ‘testaments’ in a bible implies a reading strategy in which the New Testament provides the fulfilment, explanation or actuality, of what is an antecedent figure, or provisional dispensation, in the Old. But more specific ways of relating the two testaments depend on a Christian bible’s particular format. It has been observed too commonly to need citation that the Christian bible opens with the beginning of history and ends with the end of history. Or that it begins with an earthly garden (Genesis 2) and ends with a heavenly city (Revelation 21). Indeed, there is a dramatic inclusio in the references to the river and the tree of life in Genesis 2 and Revelation 22. We cannot say whether this perception, either consciously or unconsciously, prompted the placing of the book of Revelation at the end of most early Christian codices. But the possibility cannot be dismissed. Another obvious structural feature is the transition from the prophets to the gospels. In the Christian bible the prophets are the foretellers of Christ. Specifically, Malachi ends the Old Testament (unless, like my NRSV, the Apocrypha gets in the way), with its prediction of the ‘messenger’ (ch. 3), explicitly taken up by the story of John the Baptist Those early New Testament codices that begin with Mark tell this story more clearly, while those that begin with John tell the story of the Word of God that brought life and light again to a dark world (cf. Genesis 1). Of the early biblical codices, this scheme works only for Vaticanus, of course (see table), though since Sinaiticus ends with Job, this particular bible can have a rather different plot: the righteous sufferer redeemed and his lost family restored. If, like Alexandrinus, the Old Testament ends with books of Wisdom, the biblical story is one of wisdom incarnated in the person of Jesus. Reading a bible as a whole need not be chiastic: if the Old Testament is seen to be divided into law, history, wisdom and prophets, and the New Testament into gospel, history (Acts), epistles and Revelation, further possibilities are open. Vaticanus has the order Law, History, Wisdom Prophecy, Gospel, History, Epistle, Apocalypse: the two sets of genre can easily be matched. Thus, given the freedom that every reader has to make a meaning from a bible, it is reasonable to suggest that the order and contents of some ancient bibles is affected by a literary reading of the entire contents. Perhaps I am suggesting that within certain limits, each of the compilers of Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus and Vaticanus was constructing a literary and aesthetic ‘canon’.26 But of course alongside the holistic readings of ancient bible compilers stands the right of the modern bible reader to read holistically what is a single book. However, I would not be able to read the NRSV holistically in the same way as its predecessor, the RSV, because in that crucial gap between the Old and New Testaments lies a

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series of writings that need to be integrated into the overall sequence. (I have yet to do this to my own satisfaction.) But what of the Jewish bible? Let us remember that there is little likelihood of a ‘holistic’ reading of a bible prior to its appearance in codex form. By that time, there was no tradition of reading as one book. It was possible for Josephus, of course, to paraphrase the books in historical order, but almost certainly to do so he read what he regarded as the books of the prophets (everything except the Torah) in the order dictated by chronology and not following any ‘canonical’ order. The rabbis, too, read their scriptures holistically, but not according to any order. There was for them no ‘before and after’ in scripture. It was not read linearly, as a codex tended to encourage. Indeed, any student of rabbinic sermons can share their delight in weaving the most improbable texts together into a web of coherent argument. The unity of scripture was synchronic rather than diachronic, and canonical sequence features little if at all in rabbinic biblical interpretation Torah was privileged, and read liturgically in an annual cycle; prophetic books were read in parts, and some other texts at festivals. But, as I argued earlier, until the Middle Ages ‘Jewish Bible’ is anachronistic in fact and in concept. The order of contents of Jewish bibles differs from all Christian bibles: Law is followed by Prophets (which include the historical books of Joshua–2 Kings, excluding Ruth) and then Writings (which include Ruth, Lamentation, Daniel, Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles). The interesting thing is that there is no grouping of ‘historical’ books, as in Christian bibles – perhaps reflecting simply a history of collection; perhaps a conscious desire to de-emphasize history (along with eschatology) in the rabbinic period – who knows? How do we explain Joshua to Malachi as ‘prophets’? Chronicles after Nehemiah? There are also variations in the order of the last section, the Writings. Chronicles now appears last in standard Jewish bibles, but in some codices it is first. Psalms, Job and Proverbs vary in their sequence, as do the Megillot (Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther). Most remarkably, some manuscripts have these five appearing after each book of the Torah (reflecting an ancient connection made by the Midrash Rabbah, a rabbinic commentary on the law and megillot). We can see certain principles at work in some biblical manuscript sequences: from Genesis to Kings the order is chronological. Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel are in chronological order (in terms of the assigned dates of their eponyms). But this order is not found in every Jewish bible. The five festival scrolls have a liturgical connection. But there is no way of bringing these various principles to bear on a single process. The final order or books in modern printed Jewish bibles is the result of a combination of purpose, habit and accident. Unlike Christian bibles, there is no room for suggesting that order could prompt different holistic readings of miqra. ‘Holistic’ readings of the Jewish bible, then, are difficult if not impossible to specify for individual Jewish codices. It is in this respect, among others, that a crucial difference needs to be recognized between ‘Jewish bibles’ and ‘Christian bibles’: the former are relatively late and did not create a mark on the

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development of Jewish attitudes to scripture, already enshrined in liturgy and in halakhah and haggadah.27 It is legitimate, of course, now that there are Jewish bibles, for them to be read holistically by anyone, Jew or otherwise. Indeed, many modern literary critics who tend to holistic ways of reading are Jewish (I think of Robert Alter and Meir Sternberg in particular).28 Let me now underline this last section. In the place of the confessional ‘canonical criticism’, a descriptive analysis of different bibles can in some cases suggest holistic motives in the organization of particular bibles. Something not unlike a ‘canonical process’ may thus be at work in the production of individual bibles. But the process is peculiar to each bible; there is no single underlying principle at work that determines the shape of the contents. Nowadays, as I have argued, reading a bible is more than reading ‘the canon’, or even ‘a canon’. The basis for reading a bible as a whole is its existence as a single volume. But this volume exists in many forms. For this reason, no appeal can be made to any normative ‘canonical’ or ‘final form’. There is every case for recommending readers to read books that they can buy. And bibles are what people can buy. They cannot buy, and cannot read, a canon. I hope that the forgoing discussion has made it clear that on the simple issue of ‘what is a bible’, confessional and non-confessional, theological and humanistic disciplines have to go quite different ways. Biblical studies should study bibles, and scripture can study scripture, if first it can come to terms with the fact that churchgoers will tend to think that ’scripture’ is whatever bible they happen to be reading. And why not? History is on their side.

Appendix: what is biblical theology? One of the ways in which the discipline of Scripture obliquely addresses the question ‘what is a bible’ is by means of the curious genre of ‘biblical theology’, which attempt to restate the contents of ‘the Bible’ in theological terms, thus transforming the raw material of ancient literature into a product usable by systematic theologians, Christian ministers, or even ordinary Christians. The genre29 emerged from dogmatic theology in the seventeenth century as an enterprise of collecting biblical proof texts30 to support Reformed doctrine. The rise of Pietism and a heightened dependence on ‘the (Protestant) Bible’ led to a growing independence, and authority, to this ‘biblical theology’ in the face of ecclesiastical authority. Its separation from dogmatics thus became gradually clearer. With J. P. Gabler (who is often canonized as the founder of Biblical Theology) came the move towards an historically descriptive account, in which elements that were applicable to his time were distinguished from those that were not. Despite Gabler’s own Christian beliefs, he recommended the removal of inspiration, authority and homogeneity from Biblical Theology and thus in principle initiated a non-confessional discourse. The introduction of an historical, evolutionary perspective led to the separation of Old and New Testament Theologies, first apparent in the work of G. L. Bauer at the end of the eighteenth century. Modern commentators often review this procedure favourably,

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endorsing what they see as a process by which Biblical Theology became more critical, descriptive and academic. But it remained, of course, inevitably confessional, because the ‘theology’ was Christian – not that the practitioners were necessarily trying to, for instance, import Christian doctrines into the Old Testament; but the assumption was still that a theology of the Christian scriptures was valuable for Christian belief and practice. It served no other obvious academic function. It was also (and still is) frequently confused with ‘religion of ancient Israel’, on the assumption that it was a reliable record of what Israelites should have done. This assumption was entirely uncritical. The revival in the twentieth century of a reaction to the history-of-religions approach, represented by dialectical theology, has underscored the difficulty of separating systematic and historical modes of description as Gabler proposed. The nature of the enterprise is such that any complete separation is impossible. The danger, as canonical criticism also demonstrates, is that if history can be used to buttress theology, it cannot be dictated to by theology and so may well become an embarrassment. Can Christian theology allow itself to follow in the footsteps of the study of ancient Israelite religion? Since the efforts of von Rad and of the biblical theology movement in their different ways to find a way of reconciling history and Old Testament theology, the growing realization that this religion does not correspond to any ‘biblical religion’ puts the status of Old Testament theology in particular into question. Thus Rainer Albertz, for example (a former student of von Rad), has recently sought to establish that a history of Israelite religion is a ‘more meaningful comprehensive Old Testament discipline’ than OT theology, because of its historical, concrete and comparative nature.31 Here, yet again, we can see the issue of confessional and nonconfessional discourse emerging in Albertz’s suggestion that history of Israelite religion should replace Old Testament theology. The suggestion that one might replace the other implies some sort of common function and common space. In fact, Albertz seems to me to end up with a not dissimilar picture from that which some Old Testament theologians might develop. Studying a religion and studying bibles are different things completely, and to suggest that one should replace the other is curious. What should not be allowed, though, is that studying the Old Testament will of itself yield any insight into ancient Israelite religion, without the benefit of genuine historical research into ancient Palestine. I doubt, in any case, whether ‘Old Testament Theology’ or ‘New Testament Theology’ can achieve the necessary blend of historical and systematic ingredients that such a discipline would require. Mere description of the views of the individual biblical writers does not yield a theology. On the other hand, any attempt to be systematic will involve value judgments about the differing statements in the biblical books about humanity, god(s), ethics, and so on. Description must yield to evaluation if any kind of systematic account is to be offered. Such a systematic enterprise can only serve the Christian religion. I would not in theory be able to rule out the possibility of an Islamic or humanistic or Marxist ‘biblical theology’, but what would such an enterprise serve? The ‘Old Testament’ is a Christian entity, and no amount of trying to be ‘descriptive’ will do anything other than deliver a confessional account of its contents.

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Given that this genre continues to show signs of life, how does one judge which is a better and which a worse Old Testament Theology? Many Old Testament Theologies are taxonomic: one finds the category in which the largest amount of biblical material can be stored (e.g. Eichrodt: ‘covenant’; von Rad: ‘sacred traditions’; Preuss: ‘election’), then, by dividing the drawer into compartments, one fits in everything possible. What doesn’t fit has to be ignored or glossed. The winner is the one with the least left over and the neatest drawer. Or a ‘middle’ or ‘centre’ point (Mitte) is found and the contents arranged round it.32 Or the New Testament is taken as the point of departure and the Old Testament is conformed to it.33 But having performed this operation, what is to be done with it? What has been shown? What learnt? The function and purpose of ‘Old Testament Theology’ puzzles me (New Testament Theology puzzles me equally, but the New Testament is not my area of interest). It’s easy to say what it is not and what it does not do: it is not a history of Israelite religion.34 It is not the theology of any religion that ever existed historically. It is not Jewish theology, and without the New Testament it is not Christian theology either. (Biblical Theology, dealing with an entire Christian bible could serve Christian theology, but hardly just part of it.) It is not a theology that any modern Christian is expected to adopt. What is the purpose of doing and redoing it?35 As far as I can see it is a totally academic exercise (in the idiomatic as well as the literal sense) yet paradoxically one which, unlike biblical studies, or Christian theology, offers little or no scope for a non-confessional discourse. What might correspond to ‘biblical theology’ in biblical studies is what is contained in the succeeding pages of this book. These are studies of the characterization of the deity, of the way in which the power of the deity was employed to explain and control economic inequality, of the way in which what is seen as a history run wild is mythically presented as the death of an old god and the birth of a new generation. These studies are no more systematic than were the authors of the literature themselves. Nor do they commend themselves as correct, doctrinally or otherwise. They are simply instances of the way in which texts that deal with metaphysics, society, ethics and history in terms of myth, i.e. in terms of stories about gods, can engage a reader whose own social world finds no place for these myths (he has others). John Barton has suggested36 that some of the best biblical interpretation was coming from non-believers. Perhaps ‘reading against the grain’ is more exciting. But we should remember that the grain is not in the text but in the history of reception. Perhaps modern reader and ancient author need to collaborate in finding some better way to exchange ideas than ‘biblical theology’ can allow either to do. Not being theologians and not being Christian is, after all, something that modern agnostics and the authors of miqra have in common.

Notes 1. Those interested in comparing my treatment with a confessional one can consult J. W. Miller, The Origins of the Bible (New York: Paulist Press, 1994). It is subtitled

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2.

3.

4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

13. 14.

15.

Rethinking biblical scholarship ‘Rethinking Canon History’, and has a useful annotated bibliography of ‘recent canonical studies’ (220–43). On the other hand, John Barton’s What is the Bible? (London: SPCK, 1991), devotes a chapter (21–38) to ‘The Book and the Books’ which includes several of the points being made in this chapter. R. Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible (London: Viking Press, 1991) has a chapter “From Scrolls to Books”; but despite its title, this is about canon, not the bible. An eminent exception is N. Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (Toronto: Academic Press Canada, 1983). Cf. A. Wilder, “‘Jesus’ Parables and the War of Myths”, in Essays on Imagination in the Scripture, J. Breech (ed.), 43–70 (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1982); Cf. also J. F. A. Sawyer, From Moses to Patmos: New Perspectives in Old Testament Study (London: SPCK, 1977). Where units larger than a single book are given a continuous treatment this is usually not because of a canonical connection, but because of a hypothetically reconstructed original source, such as the Yahwist or the Deuteronomistic history. I have not overlooked biblical theology, which is not continuous, commentary though it aims to embrace the entire contents of a bible in a single system. The Cambridge History of the Bible, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963–70) aims at the kind of description being attempted in this chapter, but still deals at length with the pre-history of the contents and their interpretation; the discussion of the physical forms of bibles over the centuries is comparatively thin. See the very valuable discussion of this in J. Barton, Oracles of God: Perceptions of Ancient Prophecy after the Exile (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1986). Josephus, Against Apion 1.37–43; 4 Ezra 14:45. 4 Ezra refers to seventy esoteric books besides which are apparently even more precious. See E. Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992); on the classification generally, see 114–17; for individual books, passim. The earliest Jewish scriptural codex known is the Cairo Codex, from the ninth century, containing only the Prophets. There is a tenth-century codex, also from Cairo, containing only the Pentateuch, and from this time also we find codices of the whole scriptures. See Tov, Textual Criticism, 46–7. To date only one volume has been published: M. H. Goshen-Gottstein, The Hebrew University Bible, the Book of Isaiah, Vols I–II (Jerusalem: Hebrew Bible Project 1975, 1981). [Jeremiah and Ezekiel have since been added.] Torah, Nevi’im and Ketuvim: law, prophets, writings. The term ‘Hebrew Bible’ would be appropriate if ‘Greek Bible’ were used as its counterpart. However, this Greek Bible would be Christian, including what we now call the ‘New Testament’. Since ‘Hebrew Bible’ was coined to replace ‘Old Testament’ with what term should we replace ‘New Testament’? A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1962, 1978, 1982). See C. H. Roberts & T. C. Skeat, The Birth of the Codex (London: The British Academy, 1983). Much of what follows is documented there. See also Skeat’s contribution “Early Christian Book-Production: Papyri and Manuscripts”, in The Cambridge History of the Bible vol 2, The West: From the Fathers to the Reformation, 54–79 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969); F. G. Kenyon, The Story of the Bible, 2nd edn (London: John Murray, 1964); T. S. Pattie, Manuscripts of the Bible (London: British Library, 1979). In some of what follows I am indebted to Dr J. K. Elliott of the University of Leeds, whose seminar paper, ‘Manuscripts, the Codex and the Canon’ was delivered in Sheffield in March 1995 (published in JSNT 63: 105–23).

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16. Martial, I.2. 17. The earliest codices containing Christian scriptures were probably written on papyrus, though remains of such books are now only fragmentary, and they were gradually replaced, largely or wholly, by parchment codices. 18. According to T. S. Pattie (lecture at the University of Sheffield, 9 March 1995), at least two hundred sheep had to be killed to make the Codex Sinaiticus. 19. Jerome’s dismay in discovering that he could not translate several scriptural books from Hebrew into Latin is related an issue that informed the notion of canon, namely authenticity and antiquity, but rather than presuppose a notion of canon, this issue is one that contributed to its formulation. 20. The Muratorian canon, once commonly dated to the second century, may be from the fourth: see A. Sundberg, “Canon Muratori: A Fourth Century List”, HTR 66 (1973): 1–41; E. Ferguson, “Canon Muratori: Date and Provenance”, Studia Patristica 18 (1982): 677–83. 21. In Luther’s printed New Testament the books he disliked (Hebrews James, Jude and Revelation) are grouped at the end, in that order. 22. See E. A. Nida, & C. R. Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation (Helps for Translators, 8) (Leiden: Brill, for the United Bible Societies, 1969). 23. An excellent account of these and many other bibles will be found in A. Kubo & W. F. Specht, So Many Versions? 20th Century English Versions of the Bible, revised and enlarged edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1983). It lists 159 translations (part or whole) between 1900 and 1982. 24. A fine example of the willingness of one modern bible to mistranslate its original is found in the in the NIV at Matt. 24.34: a)mh_n le/gw u(min o{ti ou_ mh_ pare/lqh| h( genea_ au)/th e(/wj a)_n pa/nta tau~ta ge/nhtai. The translation is given as ‘I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened’, which seems unexceptionable; but a footnote reads ‘The word “generation” (Gr. genea), although commonly used in Scripture of those living at one time, could not here mean those alive at the time of Christ, as none of “these things” – i.e. the worldwide preaching of the kingdom, the tribulation, the return of the Lord in visible glory, and the regathering of the elect – occurred then. The expression “this generation” (here may mean that the future generation … will … see the return of the Lord’ (my italics). My attention was drawn to this example by F. Zindler, Dial an Atheist, 129–30 (Austin, TX: American Atheist Press, 1991). 25. Tov, Textual Criticism, 2–13 has a survey of these. 26. For this suggestion I am indebted to my colleague Margaret Davies. 27. Although there are early Aramaic translations (of Job and Levicitcus) attested for the Second Temple period, and arguments in favour of Pentateuchal targums in the rabbinic period. Targums are, in my view, mediaeval compositions. In any case, their existence carries no implications for the existence of otherwise of a Jewish ‘bible’. 28. Curiously, despite their sophistication, each has a tendency to ignore a simple distinction between a declared or created literary unity and a presumed authorial unity. Or perhaps they are misread by Christian critics who do not understand what may be their rabbinic discourse. The rabbis believed in the unity of scripture, though obviously not in any fundamentalistic sense; they remained perfectly clear of the distinction between theology and history. 29. The bibliography on this topic is immense. The fullest account is H.-J. Kraus, Die biblische Theologie. Ihre Geschichte und Problematik (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1970); D. L. Baker, Two Testaments, One Bible (Leicester: Lutterworth Press, 1976). For Old Testament theology, see conveniently H. Graf Reventlow, Problems of

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30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35.

36.

Rethinking biblical scholarship Old Testament Theology in the Twentieth Century (London: SCM Press, 1985; original German 1982), 1–43 especially (and the bibliography on pp. 1–2); G. Hasel, Old Testament Theology: Basic Issues in the Current Debate, 4th edn (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991) also offers an excellent account of the origins of Biblical, and then OT Theology, with an extensive bibliography; and still a useful account is R. C. Dentan’s Preface to Old Testament Theology, 2nd edn (New York: Seabury Press, 1963). Hasel, Old Testament Theology: Basic Issues, 11–12. R. Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period 1: From the Beginnings to the End of the Exile (London: SCM Press, 1994), 16. Graf Reventlow, Problems of Old Testament Theology, 125–33; Hasel, Old Testament Theology: Basic Issues, 139–71. Hasel, Old Testament Theology: Basic Issues, 172–93. This is explicitly rejected, for instance in H. D. Preuss, Theologie des Alten Testaments I. JHWHs Erwählendes und Verpflichtendes Handeln (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1991). In his opening section, Preuss also agrees that the OT doesn’t have ‘a theology’ of its own. Childs’s revival of Biblical Theology responds not so much to a concern about these weaknesses, but about the over-historicization which initially led to the distinction between ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Testament theologies. But Childs’s as a confessional discourse is not logically inconsistent. Another attempt to revive Biblical Theology is that of R. W. Moberly (see his “The Nature of Christian Biblical Theology”, in From Eden to Golgotha: Essays in Biblical Theology, 141–57 [Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1992]). J. Barton “Should Old Testament Study Be More Theological?”, Expository Times 100 (1989): 443–8.

16 The Jewish scriptural canon in cultural perspective

Let me begin with two fundamental observations. One is that canon formation is a cultural phenomenon; the other is that canon formation is a natural process in any literate (and perhaps even non-literate) society. The Jewish canon, to be understood culturally, needs to be seen in perspective.1 These statements imply, of course, a certain definition of canon. This volume is about particular canons, those of Judaism and Christianity, and a good deal of discussion about these canons assumes that ‘canon’ is a religious phenomenon, and that its formation and effect are to be described in religious categories, namely in terms of what that society believed and/or what the theologians or authorities of that religion determined (e.g. ‘authority’ and ‘inspiration’). But in the hellenized world of early Judaism and the New Testament, the most influential canon was that of the educated Greek speakers, and it included the works of Homer (pre-eminently), of Euripides, Menander, and Demosthenes, of Hesiod, Pindar, Sappho, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Aesop. The canon(s) of the Greeks and Greek-speakers, promoted in the schools and libraries, represented the best examples of the fundamental genres or the basic modes of cultural life: philosophy, epic, drama, poetry, and history. Greek literature did not form a religious canon at all, any more than the ‘Western canon’ of such literary critics as Harold Bloom,2 referring to the fundamental works of English literature, including Shakespeare, Milton, and Dickens. The second statement with which I opened is that canon formation is a natural process. Again, books on the Jewish and Christian canons tend to focus on one particular (and not inevitable) process of canonizing: the drawing up of fixed lists. Now in the process of arguing about what is ‘the best’, individual critics and aficionados often will draw up their own list. Institutions like schools and universities can also impose such lists on their entrants and members. And these lists can be called ‘canons’. This was also the case in the Hellenistic world. But these various lists are not created ad hoc; such canons are in fact versions of what a wider group (a class, a nation, a civilization) holds to be its own canon. These individual canons are always derived from a collection of works that are already canonized. One cannot simply declare a work canonical if it has no canonical pedigree; one can affirm or deny that a work’s canonical status is formally recognized by a particular group.

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We do not, then, begin to understand the origin, nature and history of the Jewish and Christian canons if we confine ourselves to processes in which religious authorities drew up lists of inspired or authoritative religious texts. We have to ask not only why these works came to be considered at all, but also why they were preserved up to that point, and, most importantly, where the idea of a canon came from. As far as we can tell, the idea of a fixed number of religiously authoritative writings is a peculiarity of Judaism and Christianity; and, since the two canons are historically and culturally connected, we are probably talking about a single phenomenon. But despite the importance of the biblical canon in Christianity (and to a lesser extent in Judaism), these canons cannot be taken as representative examples of human canonization. They constitute an unusual and particular instance of a common human cultural process. To understand why there are canons at all, including these two canons, we have to look at canonizing as a common and natural activity of literate societies.

1. Literacy in ancient agrarian societies Cultural processes like canonizing are perhaps best understood by the widest possible form of comparison. In most cultural studies, where human behaviour, whether individual or social, is being investigated, a small sample is not at all desirable. However, in a short chapter one cannot survey the entire range of human canonizing. Rather, we can look at the process in the great civilizations of the world in which Judaism and Christianity first developed, the world dominated politically and culturally first by Egypt and Mesopotamia, then by Persia, then Greece and Rome. Fortunately, the literatures of Egypt, Babylonia (understood in the cultural sense, including Assyria), Greece and Rome are well enough preserved for us to know their canons, and to understand why and how they came into being. We can assume that the inhabitants of Palestine were aware of the literatures of those civilizations that ruled and colonized them, and, certainly in the case of the Greek canon, that many Jews in the Diaspora were taught the works of the Greek canon. By looking at the canons of these civilizations, then, we are not only making a comparative study but a historical one. The Jewish (and Christian) canons did not originate in a vacuum, but out of a world of which canons were a natural part. In the widest sense of the word, we can speak of oral canons, of works that form the core of a society’s spoken literature.3 For canonizing is not confined to literate societies. But writing, and the emergence of a literate class within a society, has decisive effects on the production of canons. These are (a) the representation of canons in written texts and (b) the formal education of a literate class. Written texts enable canons to be physically represented, and represented in historical forms. Writing makes explicit the process of editing, a process that in oral cultures is more elusive. The existence of writing makes possible the canonization of specific texts rather than of stories, tales, lore, rites, however much or little such things may change in oral societies. The restriction of writing to a particular group of people constitutes canonizing as a class process, for

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those who can read and write learn to do so, and practise their skill, as distinct operations within the social system: as clerks, administrators, diplomats. Writing accords control of public knowledge to one layer of society, and represents one of the most obvious mechanisms by which complex societies are formed, by the differentiation of functions and by the creation of hierarchies. The creation of a literate class forming part of the state administration illustrates both processes. And it is within these groups that the literary canons of the ancient Near East originate; as repositories not of a society’s literature, but of the literature of a class. (The case of ancient Greece is different; here the emergence of political rule by citizens and the lack of political power exercised by temples created different conditions.) But literacy itself does not immediately generate a canon, for a canon is a collection of literature, not merely texts, and the ability to write does not mean the ability to write literature. Indeed, the writing of literary texts, as distinct from administrative texts such as tax receipts, records of gifts to a temple, or lists of personnel or names of classes of objects (heavenly bodies, for example) does not come about as a matter of course. Writers on literacy in ancient Israel and Judah4 sometimes obscure this fact. Nor does the ability to write mean that existing oral compositions will necessarily begin to be written down. This is another erroneous assumption that some scholarship on biblical literature has made. Writing down folk tales, legends, or myths does not help preserve them. These texts are quite satisfactorily preserved orally and do not need to be written. Indeed, writing them down has the opposite effect. In an ancient agrarian society 95 percent (or more) of the population cannot read, though they can hear; writing down restricts communication to the privileged class. Writing is power, and no cultural analysis of writing, and thus of canonizing and canons, must pretend otherwise.

2. Early uses of literacy The production of literature arises from various causes. We can identify two main arenas for such activity: the state and the scribal community. Scribes (this is the most convenient term to use for the literate class) learned and practised writing in the service of the state, at least in the societies of the ancient Near East. In Greece, and in the Hellenized world, this ceased to be the case as literacy spread further.5 But in the beginning, literacy is a function of the state and represents an important instrument of its control. In its service, scribes perform the tasks of writing letters to and from king and palace: drafting military reports such as the letters from Lachish, and conducting diplomatic correspondence between states and among themselves, as at Arad.6 Temple scribes also wrote divinations, lists of sacrifices, and records of cultic activity. Prophets, perceived as official messengers of the gods, and in the service of a temple or members of prophetic guilds, were consulted by kings, elders, and perhaps occasionally individuals. They sometimes – perhaps even quite often – wrote their oracles. At any rate we have not only the evidence of such texts at Mari,7 but also the phenomenon of written Judaean prophecy.8 Priestly

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scribes wrote lists of omens and the text of hymns and prayers. Although these liturgical items could have been learned orally, writing them down could have served a number of purposes. Written texts are easier to keep secret from unauthorized access. The written form also protects more securely the precise wording, important in any religious ritual; inaccuracy could prevent efficacy. Changes in wording could also be effected authoritatively and efficiently by means of written texts. The point is that writing permits control of data. The written text has a sanctity that an oral recitation does not, even where oral recitation is the purpose for which the text is written (there is some evidence that silent reading was an art developed only in classical times). In order to understand the mentality and culture of the scribal class, it is important to recognize that writing was regarded as a gift of the gods, not a mere convenience nor a human invention. And while this claim certainly helped to preserve the aura of the scribe and his craft (the ‘his’ is deliberate here), it is probably true that even the scribes regarded: writing as something of a miracle, or at least a kind of esoteric art, enabling what other people said to be reproduced verbally by someone who had never heard the original words spoken.9 Writing in the service of the scribal class involves us in the vexing question of the ‘scribal school’. The existence of such schools, by which is meant here not merely groups with a common interest but a formal institution of instruction and study, is well-known in an ancient Egypt and Babylonia. At some point there will have been a scribal school also in Jerusalem (and Samaria), perhaps even during the monarchic period. While the scribal art seems to have been largely hereditary, and thus passed on from father to son (the ‘father–son’ language remained traditional for instruction, as for example in the book of Proverbs), the growth of the class would entail the training of non-hereditary members and the necessity for ensuring a common education. Increasing complexity and specialization also broadened the scope of scribal activity. Scribal education would involve in the first instance the knowledge of how to write the characters (and probably to write in more than one language and alphabet). Alphabetic script, with less than thirty signs, held clear advantages over the syllabic cuneiform system, with hundreds of signs and some choice in the manner of transcription (since syllables can be divided in different ways). Without the theory of scribal schools, the discipline of palaeography is of course impossible, so we need to conclude that the controlled evolution of writing styles is due to the existence of some official schooling that guaranteed consistency.10 The advent of large administrative empires in the ancient Near East – Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian – led to the establishment of common imperial languages, scripts, and styles. The Assyrians earn the credit for applying standards that were largely followed by their successors, including the use of Aramaic as the international language of correspondence in the Levant (replacing Akkadian, the language used in the Amarna correspondence between Egypt and Palestine in the Middle Bronze period). With the emergence of the scribal school, the scribal community acquires an institution that formally represents it, much as the sanctuary represents the priesthood or the palace the king. Here not only scribal skills were passed on, but also scribal values. The skills comprised

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several levels. At the basic stage the scribe needed to be able to write accurately. He also needed to be able to write in the correct style and language. How do you phrase a treaty document, a legal contract (such as a loan or a marriage document), or a prayer of petition? This level corresponds to the skills one acquires nowadays at a secretarial college. The third level is a matter of worldview, of professional attitude. A scribe serves the king or temple, and here lies both a privilege and a danger. The scribe must, of course be trustworthy, since he will sometimes write in the name of a ruler, and that ruler will probably be illiterate. His words are the king’s words. As an administrator, he will acquire knowledge that will often see him consulted by the ruler on matters within his expertise. On the other hand, he will also be in direct communication with scribes who serve other masters: other kings, who may be equal, superior, or inferior to his own ruler. Diplomatic skills entail the cultivation of professional virtues: honesty, tact, prudence, restraint, rationality, and the careful acquisition of relevant knowledge. They can be acquired through formal training, and there need be little doubt that a good deal of the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible, in which such virtues are upheld (e.g., in the book of Proverbs), reflects the values of the scribal class who no doubt originated many of the wise sayings, and certainly were responsible for collecting them and writing them down (see Prov 25:1). The scribal school thus generates, as well as preserves, traditions of writing, and in this preservation and cultivation of genres we can see the beginnings of the canonizing process. The school will both train its new scribes in writing the genres required for service to the king or temple, and generate forms that serve the education of the scribe as a member of the class, such as what we call the ‘wisdom literature’, including not only proverbs and didactic speeches, but also narratives that demonstrate the perils and rewards, virtues and vices, that a scribe may need or encounter in his service at court. Of these scribal tales three in particular, Sinuhe, Wen-Amon, and Ahiqar, were widely known. Esther and the tales of Daniel are biblical examples.11 Another important dimension of the world of the scribe is that it includes relations with other states. The cosmopolitan aspect of scribal culture is due to specific factors: first, that the work of scribes brought them into communication with their counterparts in other societies, through their diplomatic activities: second that these activities required them to have a knowledge and understanding of other societies; third, that in their interest in the acquisition of knowledge they did not respect the boundaries of their own society but took a natural interest in the world beyond. Scribal stories like Wen-Amon, Sinuhe, and Ahiqar (or like Tobit and the Joseph story) all involve travel to other countries. Finally, as indeed with the middle-class intellectuals of our own day, the culture of the scribe is less geographically rooted; he belongs to a class that exists in every society that has evolved into a state, sharing with scribes everywhere the precious secret of writing and the arts and responsibilities that it affords. It is not difficult to see how loyalty to a profession and to the intellectual agenda of a class often overrides an affiliation with one particular society. The amplest illustration of this frame of mind is the biblical wisdom literature itself (Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes) in which the norms of behavior are individual and universal,

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in contrast to the chauvinistic theology of Israel and its national god who runs the world in accordance with a contract with one chosen people. Let us not forget, though, that scribes are responsible for both literatures – their writings in the service of the state and in the interests of their own class do not necessarily cohere. Such is the nature of diplomats, who are never rulers themselves but always ‘servants of the state’ (or of the monarch).

3. Archives and libraries The modern reader can distinguish archives and libraries, though there is no universally accepted definition of that difference, and indeed it is not clear how far ancient literary collections represent such a distinction. For the purposes of analysis, archives preserve administrative texts and records, libraries literary works. Records are generally preserved as long as they remain pertinent to the affairs of the state, and are then discarded (ancient archives that have been excavated show that such texts were in fact thrown out after a certain period). A library contains writings collected for their intrinsic worth, reflecting the cultural interests of the individual ruler (Ashurbanipal, for example, or numerous individual book collectors in the classical world) or the temple or city, or the scribal school and class. The essential point is that the contents of archives are not the subjects of canonization, while those of libraries, generally speaking, are. The primary criterion for canonizing is not administrative usefulness, and documents that have a short shelf life obviously do not become canonized. They have no continuing value. Both archives and libraries entail classification. The importance of archiving for our study of canonizing is that it illustrates the role of the scribe as an accumulator and organizer of knowledge. In their role as custodians of written documents, the scribes needed to develop or learn the habits of accurate classification, so that records could be consulted and retrieved. The excavation of many ancient libraries unfortunately took place before the importance of such things was appreciated, with the result that we cannot reconstruct as we would like the categories by which the ancient archivists classified their documents. However, there is sufficient evidence that this was done by means of boxes, shelves, rooms and buildings. These archives represented to the scribe something quite wonderful and valuable: knowledge in a material and circumscribed form. And, being the (selfstyled) intellectuals of their day (they not only called themselves in Hebrew soferim, ‘writers’, but also hakamim, ‘intelligentsia’), the scribes were fascinated by their ownership of knowledge that could be physically represented. They sought not only to organize the knowledge of their world of work, but to acquire and organize the knowledge of the entire world: lands, animals, stars – whatever could be named and listed. An entire science of listing developed early as part of scribal culture. Without being too fanciful, we could say that the scribe wished to archive the world, to embrace its secrets within the confines of a written archive – to which he and his class alone, of course, would have access! One example in the Bible of such accumulated knowledge of the natural world,

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and the pride taken in it, is found in Job 28, where already the limited extent of this knowledge is being recognized. But the scribal intellectual was interested also in the origins and ends of things: the beginnings of humanity, the causes of death and evil, the mysterious engines of history, the hidden rules of personal success (ethics) and the ideal structure of human society. All these concerns are clearly recognizable in the Hebrew Bible: the early stories of Genesis are highly intellectual despite their apparent simplicity, as they seek to explore the nature of humanity and the origin of evil; the prophetic books, and to an extent the ‘historical’ books probe the meaning and destination of history, including the fate of Israel, Judah, and the nations. Political philosophy can also be found in the ideal societies sketched in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And of course the organizing of laws falls within the scribal concern too, for scribes were closely associated with the administration of justice. In early Judaism, indeed, the ‘intellectual’ and the judge were subsumed into a single institution, the rabbinate – and no doubt, even early, the scribe, regarded as wise and knowledgeable, would regularly serve as a judge or arbiter in disputes. Hence in the biblical story it is Solomon’s wisdom, the property above all of the scribes, that enables him to exercise justice. Archiving, then, is the practical aspect of the intellectual task of acquiring, storing, and classifying knowledge. And canons are, in a sense, the result of a classification, an organizing, of a certain kind of knowledge as well as of acts of discrimination. But that knowledge is not preserved in the Jewish canon in the scientific form of lists, nor contained in the genres of everyday commercial or political transactions. It is not the material of an archive, but of a library. Scribal knowledge moves, with the scribal art, beyond lists into literature.

4. Scribal literature We can now move from the first important topic in our study of canonizing, the scribe, the canonizer, to that which is canonized, the literature. What makes literature different from mere writing? One obvious difference is that literature is designed to be read in a different way. Literature is not merely information. It functions differently. It may be possible to define what literature is in a few paragraphs; but this is unnecessary, since all readers of this book will know that there is an essential difference between a timetable, a receipt, a contract, on the one hand, and a novel, a poem, a joke, on the other. This is not to say that a huge gulf bridges the two. Quite the opposite: the transition from one to the other is easy and the distinction sometimes blurred. A letter, for example, may be an official communication, couched in the required terminology and fulfilling little more than a formal acknowledgement. But a letter may also be a highly literary form, such as we find everywhere in the classical world, and in the New Testament. There is no sudden transition from writing to literature that requires an explanation. After all, stories, myths, proverbs and jokes are full-fledged genres of oral communication that do not require the invention of writing. Writing came into a world that was already full of (oral) literature.

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Why should the gift of writing be employed for the preservation of literature? It is a real and serious question. Ancient societies like Israel and Judah had storytellers, poets, singers, messengers. In an oral recitation, large numbers of nonliterate people could hear. A text, on the other hand, can be read by only one, literate, person at a time. There is no obvious advantage in writing ‘literature’ and we therefore need to look carefully to discover why the literature in the Hebrew Bible was indeed written at all, and who, if anyone, was supposed to read it. A simple example of the problem is the royal inscription. For some reason, we have no ancient royal inscriptions from any kings of Judah or Israel,12 so we shall take Mesha, the king of Moab. He had an inscription (the ‘Mesha stele’ or ‘Moabite Inscription’) written that celebrated what he had done during his reign, featuring his successful liberation of his people from the hegemony of Israel. Now, why did he have this written? I suggest two reasons, connected with the content and the author. As for the content: writing, as said earlier, was widely understood (and especially by non-practitioners) as containing some peculiar virtue. What was written was fixed (and so Pilate was able to say ‘what I have written, I have written’). Whatever may have happened was past and recalled only by human memory, which could indeed change anything. But events fixed in writing were more real than events that happened. I mean this not in any metaphorical or exaggerated sense, but very seriously and very exactly, for writing is a challenge to collective memory, and, together with collective (and for a lifetime only, individual) memory, is the only sense in which ‘history’ exists in the ancient Near East). ‘What happened’ means what is remembered by the majority of the people (that is, told in story, myth, legend), or what is written, and thus understandable only by the literate, who are, of course, among the rulers. This is not, of course, to say that what is written is more accurate, for writers can lie as easily as speakers, and usually more deliberately. But writing transfers public knowledge from the people to the state. So Mesha fixes his ‘history’. In the second place, he also fixes himself. There is a well-known ancient genre in which writers justify their deeds to the god (Nehemiah’s memoir is the best biblical example). To some extent this is, of course, a fiction, since the gods do not need to be told anything in writing. The real audience is human. But while a victorious king can shout his triumph at the battlefield, he will soon have to leave, and eventually he will die. An inscription ensures that his word, his presence, remains forever (or until a successor effaces it). So inscriptions are not placed in public places such as a public square, temple, or a throne room in order to be read by any passer-by. No doubt the contents of the inscription can quickly become public knowledge, but there is rarely anyone in the vicinity to read it. What matters is that it is written, and this regardless of whether it is read at all. In a related way, it is important for all official documents to be not only written but kept, for thus the knowledge remains, even if it is never consulted. So, even to this day, in the words of the letter to the Hebrews, Mesha, more literally than Abraham, ‘being dead, still speaks’. Let us now look at a different kind of reading. The book of Nehemiah contains a story of an assembly in Jerusalem at which the law was read out to the

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people (chapter 8). In Jeremiah 36 is an account of how the prophet orders his scribe Baruch (Jeremiah apparently being illiterate) to write, down all his prophecies in order that Baruch could read them out to the people. Whether or not we choose to believe that either of these events is an accurate account of a particular event, they do show that public recitations were one means of reading written texts. The question for this category of reading is, why use a written text at all? It is an interesting question for Jeremiah 36 whether Jeremiah should be understood to have spoken his prophecies earlier. But in any event, he can remember them all perfectly, and presumably, had he been able to address the inhabitants of Jerusalem, he would have done so without the need for any written text. The reason the text is written is that Baruch cannot learn them by heart in a short space of time, and of course, they need to be reproduced exactly, because they are not really Jeremiah’s words, but those of his god. We do not, then, have in this story any reason why prophetic books as a whole should have come into existence, merely a theological explanation that equates written prophecy with written law, and makes prophecy, through writing, an eternal and fixed word of the deity. The case of the recital of law is presumably different. Although we know that in practice laws were generally applied in all ancient Near Eastern societies (including Israel and Judah) locally by elders, according to the local tradition, it was the habit of kings, in pursuit of their claim to have legitimate authority to rule others, to defend the rights of all and thus to proclaim laws that were in theory obeyed in their realm. Laws are among the earliest of literary texts. It is unlikely that they were intended to be learnt by heart by judges; more likely their function was closer to that of the royal inscriptions discussed earlier.13 But with the advent of large empires, in which as a result of deportation or voluntary migration populations were often distanced from their native society and lived in proximity to other populations, the administration of law became a more serious political, administrative issue; to the extent that local ethnic groups were able to practise their own customs, they would administer their own justice, according to their own legal traditions. However, the Persians, at any rate, seem to have promoted the notion of written laws that could be applied throughout the empire to different ethnic groups. Thus Ezra’s law is not merely for Judah, but for anywhere within the satrapy of ‘Beyond the River’ (Ezra 7:25). In more complex and variegated societies, such as empires generate, the value of writing as against speech is enhanced. Bigger empires, like bigger businesses, mean bigger bureaucracy, and bureaucracy means paperwork, and paperwork means writing down. Inevitably, written laws will tend to prevail over oral traditions, regardless of the fact that practice will always follow local customs as well – at least, such was universally the case until the rise of the modern nation-state. Thus, some texts are written for public consumption, and ‘heard’ rather than ‘read’. However, it remains doubtful whether we can actually identify any piece of (Hebrew) biblical law that was written for the purpose of being read out; Deuteronomy is the most likely candidate, since that document itself calls for its recitation.14 It is certainly unlikely that most of the contents of the Hebrew Bible were known to the largely illiterate population of Judah through recitation,

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any more than through reading. The point I wish to underline again is that the literary canon is not a popular phenomenon. It is a class phenomenon, the creation and property of the literate, mostly on their own behalf but partly on behalf of the state. This observation brings us to a third category of reading: class reading. Here we focus particularly on those texts that were generated and used within the scribal school, which, as I said earlier, is the quintessential institution of the scribal class. It is also here, I suggest, that the process of canonization has its heart. The literary canon of ancient Judah, part of which comprised also the canon of the Samaritans, was hardly developed publicly in a society that was illiterate, apart from the small scribal class, and whose canon was oral. It was within the scribal school, and the scribal community, that certain writings achieved a classic status. Classic works are those that are continually copied (and copying usually meant editing; the notion of a fixed text is post-canonical) and retained as models of their kind, as points of reference for future literary composition, or as definitive accounts of an important theme or issue. The mechanisms by which this canonizing occurred were copying and teaching, and the criteria were functional (teaching how certain forms of writings were properly executed, teaching scribal values) and aesthetic (the most elegant, beautiful, valuable achievements of literary art). As a class whose profession was writing, and performing tasks that devolved from writing, notably archiving, scribes necessarily accumulated their own literary heritage. These classic works would form their canon; indeed, culturally a canon is nothing else than the classics, until or unless it becomes divorced from its culture, as with the Jewish and Christian canons, when it ceased to be a cultural heritage and became a religious one. As examples of canonized literary works we can suggest collections of psalms (the book of Psalms is an agglomeration of several canonized lists) and proverbs. In both cases functionality and aesthetics play a role. Other examples include genealogies, legal stipulations, prophetic oracles of various forms, such as the accusation, the tirade against a foreign nation, and the letter from the deity, the so-called messenger-speech. But in the canon we have inherited these building blocks of scribal formation are overshadowed by more ambitious, complex structures. These are mostly narrative structures: historiographies, origin myths, ethnographies. They attest the deployment of the more simple forms in combination. The first eleven chapters of Genesis are an example of easily recognizable simple narratives rewritten and combined into a longer but unified narrative. The same is true of the stories of the ancestors. In some cases we can guess at intermediate stages in the process by which these larger units were developed, but however little or much scholars agree on this, it is clear that the scribes of Judah, as far as the preserved evidence lets us conclude, went far beyond their Near Eastern counterparts in their development of historiographical and prophetic genres, and, I think, also in their intellectual ambition. For instance, in the final connected narrative of the origins and history of ‘Israel’ they constructed an idealized past society, rooted in their one true god and descended from a single ancestor, a society created by divine rescue, the giving of divine law and the donation of a land subsequently lost and only

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partly regained. In some cases these more extensive works reflect the interest of colonial masters (the Chronicler is an obvious example). But on the whole they serve the scribal class, both as an intellectual class curious about the past, the future, the structures of history and society, and about their own and their society’s place in the ‘scheme of things’, and also as members of the leadership of a society that was wedded to a single deity and a single temple, and later as an ethnos comprising people scattered over the Near East and beyond. Finally, a word needs to be said about private reading. Jeshua ben Sira, a scribe and teacher in Jerusalem at the beginning of the second century BCE, speaks of the activities of the scribe, who studies law, prophets, and wise sayings. The book of Ecclesiastes ends with an editor’s warning that while the book is worthwhile reading, some books would be better not written and this one needs reading with care. Most dramatically of all, the book of Hosea ends with the statement: ‘Those who are wise understand these things, those who are discerning know them’, identifying the readership of the prophetic books with the use of terminology with which the scribal class identified itself. While individuals do not create canons, we must nevertheless reckon that at some point individual scribes took the trouble to read and study the works of their canon. The reasons given in the verses just cited point clearly to a religious motivation. For ben Sira, torah is the highest expression of wisdom (the scribe’s ambition) and is to be found in the canonized writings, though torah is not exactly equated with the literature. It would not be correct, then, to suggest that the scribal canon became a religious canon at some defined point when that canon was fixed; but at least in the Ptolemaic period (ca. 315–200 BCE) it was identified as divine and as a repository of the essential values of the religion of Judaeans. Perhaps it would be more accurate, and more far-reaching, to say that within Judea itself, the national culture was becoming a religious phenomenon. This conclusion is not so obvious as it may seem: most ancient canons were not religious, and the reason why the Jewish one is religious has to do with the fact that Judaean culture was regarded, at least in Judea itself, as a matter of religion. That the Greeks could not see their culture in such a way exposes one of the fundamental causes of tension among them.

5. Non-scribal writing To conclude this review of cultural processes of canon formation it is necessary to look at a small number of books that may have originated outside the scribal class and which thus point to a wider circle of literacy at some stage. I include among these the books of Ruth, Song of Songs, Jonah, and Esther. Two of these are short novels, featuring women, with little evident religious content; Jonah is a satirical story about a prophet, and the Song of Songs a collection of love poems. Debates about the date and origin of all except Esther point to some ambiguity about them. We know that the scribes often wrote short stories, but usually about their own kind, and never about women. Esther, perhaps, is not really about Esther at all, but about Mordecai; but Ruth is undoubtedly about

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women. As for the Song of Songs, no doubt the scribes enjoyed erotic poetry, but would they have written and canonized it? Not impossible, and there are parallels to such collections in Egypt15 – but, again, the Song has a strong female voice. Is the female presence in several of these works coincidental? Whether or not these writings can be assigned to the scribal class, we do know that during the age when the center of ancient Western civilization was swinging from Asia to Europe (something that began, as far as the Levant was concerned, already under the Persians), the rather more rigid structures of the agrarian societies of the ancient Near East were being undermined. The enlargement of empires territorially, the spread of the use of the lingua franca of first Aramaic and then Greek, the (now largely voluntary) emigration of populations and mixing of ethne, the introduction of coinage and expansion of trade, accelerated, among other things, the power and cultural ambition of a once tiny, but now rapidly growing, class that had wealth, knowledge of the world, and a certain impatience with backward chauvinism. Even the Jews of Judah, who were able to sustain the basic structures of their own religious culture, were outnumbered by Greek-speaking ‘Judaeans’ for whom the Greek way of life was manageable alongside the embrace of their Jewish religion. While most Judaean farmers remained illiterate, many Jews from the cities of the Persian, Greek, and Roman empires could read and write, as their lifestyle required. So, perhaps, could their wives, whose household labor was usually delegated to slaves, and who were therefore free and keen to be educated, to read and to write. In Jerusalem, both ben Sira and the author of Ecclesiastes taught private pupils. As scribes themselves, they filtered the typical scribal modes of understanding; ben Sira commended the scribal tradition, while Ecclesiastes challenged traditional wisdom with the common sense of the individual. Probably both authors spoke and read Greek, though only Ecclesiastes shows it. But their pupils no doubt mostly spoke a good deal of Greek, and their world was ot that of the scribal intellectual, the scholar, the diplomat. It was the world of the estate, the villa, the seaport, the merchant, the financier. What was the canon of this new, but still Jewish class? In many cases it was already Greek, for the Greeks had their public schools, theaters and libraries, unlike the Jews. Greek literature contained, as the Jewish scribal canon did not, both romance and exotic locations, including the sea (in which only Jonah in the Hebrew Bible has any interest). To what extent do the books of Ruth, Esther, the Song of Songs, and perhaps Jonah, reflect a different class of literature? If they do not, it remains a problem that they have all been edited in different ways so as to modify their radical implications. Ruth’s women give way to a male genealogy; in the Greek version of Esther the presence of the deity is introduced: Jonah is embedded in a book of twelve prophets, its voice now a member of a chorus, while the Song, textually unedited, as far as we can tell, was quickly allegorized. The conundrum is that these books were canonized. By whom, and how, if their contents needed revising and their ideology bending? This question brings us to the verge of the topic of canon-fixing. Before we engage that, some consideration of the cultural context of the Jewish canon in particular is required.

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6. The Jewish canon The amendments to the books of Ecclesiastes and Hosea offer clues to an important stage in the development of the Jewish scriptural canon, namely its function increasingly as a religious resource. I have mentioned that for ben Sira, torah represented the essence of Jewish culture; Psalm 1 also redefines the collection of Psalms as literature for the ‘wise’ to enable them to live according to the divine will. This development, I suggest, tells us less about the canon than about the culture itself. It is not that the canon is narrowly religious by a process of selection; rather that Judaean culture (at least its urban, intellectual, literary culture) itself became more and more focussed on its deity and its cult. Intellectual questions became more and more, it seems, determined by Judah’s monotheism and Jerusalem’s cult. How and why this happened, how the religion of Judaism within Judah began to define itself is well beyond the scope of this essay and indeed constitutes a major agenda of contemporary research into early Judaism. But we can see the effects in its literary canon. What has been said up to now implies that the Jewish scriptural canon is not a careful selection of ancient Hebrew literature but represents more or less all that there was. It thus became a religious canon not by exclusion of inappropriate works but, where necessary, by emendation. This is not to say that no other literary works existed, or that in fixing the canon (see below) exclusion was not deliberately practised. Indeed, while I have been referring throughout this essay to a ‘Jewish canon’, it would be more correct to speak of several canons: the Mosaic canon (the Pentateuch), the prophetic canon (four collections of books of oracles and stories), canons of psalms and proverbs (each of these two biblical books is a canonical collection of poems and wise sayings). This fact in part explains reference to ‘law, prophets, and writings’ in sources from the Graeco-Roman period such as the books of Maccabees, the New Testament, and Josephus – none of these speak of anything like a canon, but a list of collections of holy books, i.e., canons (plural). There were other writings, possibly other canons that for some reason were abandoned. That is to say, other writings were, for some Jews, at one time, regarded as canonical, part of the classical literary repertoire. We have come to appreciate in recent decades that in the Graeco-Roman period no single normative Judaism existed, but that numerous groups, not only Sadducee and Pharisee, but also the adherents of the Enochic calendar responsible for the Qumran scrolls, vied for the claim to be true servants of the god of Israel. The scribal class was involved in this division, naturally, but how far back do such divisions go: to the Hasmoneans? To the time of Nehemiah? Somewhere in between? We cannot tell. I have up to this point spoken deliberately of a single ‘scribal class’. This remains a correct description, but differences of ideology between, say, the Deuteronomic and the priestly literature, suggest different scribal traditions, affiliations, or colleges. Yet these variants were obviously not seen as incompatible, and their views are amalgamated in the scriptural canon, often even in individual scrolls.

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In the Graeco-Roman period, the figure of Enoch was celebrated by many Jews in an Enochic canon, which possibly included the (five?) books of Enoch and the book of Jubilees, which promoted the merger of Enochic calendar and Mosaic traditions. But the Enochic canon was an Aramaic one, though Jubilees was written in Hebrew. Enoch himself is only minimally represented in the book of Genesis, Enochic myths being systematically rewritten (see Gen. 6:14). At once we can see how and why: a different theory of the origin of sin was preferred, one that provided an anthropological and theological basis for the rule of Mosaic torah by originating sin in the human will, not in a fall from heaven.16 Tobit, Sirach, and the first book of Maccabees (all originally in Hebrew) are also works not endorsed in the scriptural canon, but for reasons we cannot know. Yet despite these few cases, we can conclude that the Jewish scriptural canon represents, as far as we know, and in the light of the range of texts from Qumran, almost the totality of the Hebrew literary classics. That the canon as a whole was subject to some overall revision remains a possibility, indicated by the presence of a chronological system that points to the recapture of the temple by Judas Maccabee in 164 BCE.17 By contrast, we can point to much more extensive Jewish literature in Greek. Yet as far as we know, no Jewish Greek canon was born. For this there are cultural and social, rather than theological reasons. There was no class basis, no institution, and no function for a corpus of Jewish classics written in Greek: the Greek language, in any case, had its own classics.

7. Fixing the canonical lists We turn finally to what many writers on the Hebrew canon regard as their central problem: the fixing of a canonical list. Again from a general cultural perspective we can draw attention to such lists among the scholars of the Greek libraries and schools. But the impetus behind their listings seems to have been concern for the preservation of genuine works, followed by a concern for a stable text (again, reflected in the selection of official Masoretic Text forms in Palestine). It is not clear that in the case of the Jewish scriptural canon such concerns came into play: though there are numerous examples of pseudepigrapha, these are not in Hebrew and were hardly perceived as seriously compromising the ‘genuine’ writings of Moses or Isaiah or Jeremiah. Who, then, set forth a Jewish biblical canon, and why was a Jewish canon fixed? Just as oral texts do not necessarily become written by some inevitable law, neither do canons become fixed. The modern ‘Western canon’ of English literature contains broadly agreed members, but cannot be ‘fixed’ except arbitrarily by an individual critic. There is no authority with the power to achieve this. The ‘why’ and the ‘who’ in this case belong inextricably together. Such canons obviously entail a political authority: who was a position to decree, as both Josephus and the writer of 4 Ezra assert, that the Jews have a fixed number of holy books, even if the arithmetic of the two authors does not exactly

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coincide? Even if, by some natural process connected with the transformation of essentially literary into essentially religious classics, it was argued that the written Torah ended with Moses, psalms with David, wisdom with Solomon, and that prophecy was dead, leaving all religious authority to interpreters of texts, who had the power to insist on this, and indeed, to initiate the standardization of the Hebrew text? With many other scholars, I conclude that the fixing of a canonical list was almost certainly the achievement of the Hasmonean dynasty. The presence of Daniel in this list suggests that the rise of this dynasty is the terminus a quo. One also sees the Hasmoneans struggling to maintain the unity of their realm by siding in turn with different parties and by engaging in external conquest and internal repression, promoting the use of Hebrew on their coins and very probably rekindling political messianism in the figure of the priest-king. More particularly, 2 Macc. 2:13-14 reports that Judas ‘collected all the books that had been lost’ in the same way that Nehemiah had once founded a library. The notice plausibly points at least to the existence of such a collection, presumably an official one in the temple, in the author’s time. Given that the Hasmoneans, for all their later Hellenistic leanings, were brought to power by a coalition of reactionary parties opposed to what they saw as Hellenizing innovation, we could assume that they were interested in fixing some kind of norm, by way of defining what it was they stood for, as in the case of the calendar. Such definitive decisions may well have alienated the writers of the Qumran scrolls, for instance, accelerating the formation of sectarian groups. An officially sponsored system of Jewish schooling, modelled on the Greek but replacing Homer with Moses, Euripides with Isaiah, is also likely to have been a Hasmonean initiative; the rabbinic school system probably had a precursor. The endorsement of an approved ‘canon’ for such schooling is more likely to have come from the Hasmoneans than from Herod or any of Herod’s successors. So to go with their geographically ‘Davidic’ realm and their revived ‘Israelite’ monarchy, the Hasmoneans (which of them we can only guess) are the prime candidates for having installed an official list of Jewish writings, a canon for all, a basis for devotion and for education, a cultural resource to define the newly independent Jewish state, a response to the totalitarianism of Greek language, learning and literature. The Hebrew canon was fixed, if this supposition is correct, as a matter of political policy and not through any internal logic of the canonizing process itself leading to ‘completion’. But the story of the fixing of the canon is not complete, for the Hasmoneans had control of a Jewish state that soon dissolved and after two revolts against Rome disappeared. The most remarkable episode in the history of the Jewish scriptural canon is the creation of a Jewish religion built upon the language of Hebrew (never to be a Jewish vernacular until the twentieth century) and study of the Hebrew scriptures. It is also worth pointing out that a Greek Jewish scriptural canon was never fixed, so that Christianity did not inherit a definitive form of the ‘Old Testament’, several versions of which exist in various denominations today.

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8. Canon and authority The rabbis, then, though they occasionally picked over one or two cases (Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs), did not fix the scriptural canon; they inherited it. They may have formalized its tripartite division, for although both Torah and Prophets are well established as names for canonical collections before the rabbinic period, the name ‘Writings’ for the remainder was apparently not established before the rabbinic period. Yet this canon did not entirely suit the purposes and program of the rabbis. For the rabbinic agenda was focussed on Torah, and in a real sense it was the Torah that was the rabbinic canon (as it had earlier been the canon of the Sadducees). While the scriptural canon of Torah remained closed, a larger canon of Torah was generated through the addition of the Mishnah and then the Talmud. Indeed, within Judaism Torah itself remains in principle open-ended, ever subject to new interpretation and clarification, always generating new rulings and definitions. Here the contrast between Christian and Jewish understandings of canon is most evident. Although some texts from the Prophets and Writings were incorporated into synagogue liturgy, particularly the Five Scrolls (Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther), the exegesis of all these Jewish writings was directed towards the Torah, and it was the Torah that was read through in the annual synagogue liturgical cycle. Rabbinic Judaism is not a religion of the Hebrew Bible, but a religion of Torah. Theologically, the prophets have always been regarded as teachers of Torah, and rabbinic exegesis of the Writings always tends toward its assimilation to Torah also, as a reading of the Midrash Rabbah to the Five Scrolls will quickly illustrate. The juxtaposition of the five festival scrolls with the five books of Moses in this Midrash is also significant. Because a fixed literary canon was something the rabbis inherited rather than created, they also found it necessary to integrate this collection into their religious system, and this they did by sanctifying the physical scrolls themselves. Unable or unwilling to find a way of separating the content of Torah from non-Torah, they separated scrolls that contained the scriptural writings from all others, which they called ‘outside scrolls’. Thus, rabbinic discussion of the canon, such as it is, turns precisely on whether a particular scroll ‘defiles the hands’ (i.e., is scriptural) or not. For, of course, since the Jews, unlike the Christians, did not use such a thing as a biblical codex, a single book containing all of scripture, there was no such thing as a ‘Bible’. The earliest Jewish scriptural codex is medieval. Finally, the rabbis also inherited a fixed biblical text. This, too, like the scroll that untamed it, was treated as a physical entity; its letters were sacred. The Masoretes, the rabbinic textual scholars, proceeded to hedge around this text, fixing its pronunciation by marking vowels, noting its irregularities, counting, annotating, and in some rare cases replacing unacceptable readings (by annotating, not changing, the written text). The written words and letters themselves thus became holy objects and the writing of a Torah scroll was, and is, subject to certain stringent rules, the breaking of which makes the scroll profane and unusable. In a religion without a cult, the Torah scroll has become the most sacred object in Judaism.

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9. Conclusion By way of conclusion, some general reflections on the cultural effects of canon are in order. Canon and authority go hand in hand. Until or unless a canon is fixed, it operates as an arbiter, a definer, of class values. Its authority is enforced by the teacher and the group ethos. It is open, but it is also in the nature of canons to be self-referential: canonical works proclaim themselves as such by being quoted, rewritten, interpreted, and in the canon of the Jewish scriptures one can readily see how the parts refer to each other.18 Once a canon becomes a religious collection, the nature of its authority changes: divine sanction is invoked, even divine authorship can be claimed. This process does not of itself preclude the continuity of the canonizing process: ben Sira, for instance, seems to have thought his own words a deserving companion to the wisdom of the ancients (Sir 39:6-9). The fixing of a canon is a further step that both entails a political and religious authority capable of dictating and imposing uniformity, and also creates a dichotomy between canon and non-canon, making the canon itself a symbol of the distinction between human and divine knowledge. Thereafter the natural processes by which canons would grow are shut off, and the mode of interpretation takes over: the fixed text, the fixed collection is subject (as we have seen preeminently in the case of the Masoretic Text) to commentary that must remain formally outside. The meaning of the contents of the canon can, and will, forever change, but that change will not be reflected in the text, but in the framework of understanding that informs its reading. Control of meaning lies with the reader as much as, perhaps more than, with the author. The latest phase in the conjunction of canon and authority is therefore control of the politics of reading. With or without a Reformation, the Latin text of the Bible would eventually have been accessible in translation anyway, and the authority of the church over the act of reading it would have waned. The invention of printing and the rise of the nation state ensured that. But Protestant Christianity, faced with a gap left by the removed authority of church, pope and priest, has allowed the Bible to fill much of that gap, and evangelic Protestant biblical scholarship still seeks to direct the reader to the ‘true’ meaning of the scriptural text. Yet the Bible addresses a much wider constituency, and at the beginning of the twenty-first century the Western world, at least, faces the challenge and the dilemma of a canon which remains culturally one of its most precious resources but with its associated context of authoritative reading and confessional loyalty growing ever weaker. ‘Bible as literature’ hermeneutics in a real sense is partly re-engaging an earlier stage of canon formation, when aesthetic and utilitarian considerations governed the perception of what was ‘classical’, allowing freedom to criticize its contents on moral and cultural (as well as religious) grounds. Indeed, there are signs that the canon itself can be remade. Thus, for example, the New Revised Standard Version does not contain any Christian or Jewish canon. At the time when Catholic biblical scholarship was tending to adopt the Protestant Old Testament canon, there began a move towards reintegration of the apocryphal books into that canon. In this age of individualism and high literacy

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rates, the authority of the autonomous reader is paramount and thus the role of the canon less and less aligned to any particular class or society. The study of human culture and of the Jewish scriptural canon shows us, in any case, that no authority is ever autonomous, and, indeed, no canon either.

Notes 1. A more detailed account of such an approach to the canonizing of the Hebrew scriptures is given in my Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures (Library of Ancient Israel) (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998). 2. H. Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Age (New York and London: Harcourt Brace, 1994). 3. On this see S. Niditch, Oral Word and Written Word (Library of Ancient Israel) (Nashville, TN: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996). 4. E.g. A. Lemaire, Les écoles et la formation de la Bible dans I’ancien Israel (Fribourg: Editions universitaires, 1981); A. Millard, “An Assessment of the Evidence for Writing in Ancient Israel”, in Biblical Archaeology Today, 301–12 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1985). 5. For Greek and Hellenistic cultures, the role of writing and canons is well covered by H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, G. Lamb (trans.) (London: Sheed & Ward, 1956). 6. For the texts referred to, see G. Davies (ed.), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 7. A. Malamat, “A Forerunner of Biblical Prophecy: The Mart Documents”, in Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross, P. D. Miller, P. D. Hanson & S. D. McBride (eds), 33–52 (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1987). The relevant literature is published by J.-M. Durand, Archives épistolaires de Mari I/I (Archives royales de Mari 26) (Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1988). 8. On the written origins of prophetic literature, see my “‘Pen of Iron, Point of Diamond’ (Jer 17:1): Prophecy as Writing”, in Writings and Speech in Israelite and Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy, M. Floyd & E. Ben Zvi (eds), 65–81 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 2000) (and this volume, Chapter 11), and that volume generally. 9. Some readers may recall the scene from the film Black Robe in which a word spoken by a native chief to one of the Europeans is conveyed by writing to another, who is then able to repeat, to the astonishment of the speaker, what was secretly said, without the benefit of any oral transmission. 10. However, it remains a possible flaw in paleographical analysis that schools may have developed slightly different writing traditions and their script may have evolved at different rates. The analogy with pottery typology is instructive. 11. See L. M. Wills, The Jew in the Court of the Foreign King (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1990). 12. The so-called ‘Hezekiah’ inscription once found in the Siloam tunnel does not name any king, and its ascription to him is only traditional. 13. On the function of such laws, see B. S. Jackson, “Ideas of Law and Legal Administration: A Semiotic Approach”, in The World of Ancient Israel, R. E. Clements (ed.), 185–202 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 14. See Deut 31:10-13. This part of Deuteronomy perhaps reflects the same social and political situation as do Ezra and Nehemiah: the production of an (imperially sponsored) written legal code. It is an unlikely practice in a native monarchy, where the king is the law.

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15. See M. V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985). 16. See my “Women, Men, Gods, Sex and Power: The Birth of a Biblical Myth”, in A Feminist Companion to Genesis, A. Brenner (ed.), 194–201 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993). 17. On this see J. Hughes, Secrets of the Times: Myth and History in Biblical Chronology (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990). 18. The classic exposition of this feature of the Hebrew scriptures is M. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), though this work remains essentially taxonomic and does not offer any plausible analysis of the cultural and social processes that generated the intertextual phenomena.

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VanderKam, J. C. 1986. “The Prophetic-Sapiential Origins of Apocalyptic Thought”. In A Word in Season: Essays in Honour of W. McKane, J. D. Martin & P. R. Davies (eds), 163–76. Sheffield: JSOT Press. VanderKam, J. C. 1992. “Ezra-Nehemiah or Ezra and Nehemiah?” In Priest, Prophets and Scribes: Essays on the Formation and Heritage of Second Temple Judaism in Honour of Joseph Blenkinsopp (JSOT Sup, 149), E. Ulrich et al. (eds), 55–75. Sheffield: JSOT Press. Van Seters, J. 1975. Abraham in History and Tradition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Van Seters, J. 1976. “Oral Patterns or Literary Conventions in Biblical Narrative”. Semeia 5: 139–54. Van Seters, J. 1976. “Problems in the Literary Analysis of the Court History of David”. JSOT 1: 22–9. Van Seters, J. 1983. In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Van Seters, J. 1994. The Life of Moses: The Yahwist as Historian in Exodus–Numbers. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press/Kampen: Kok Pharos. Van Seters, J. 1999. The Pentateuch: A Social-Science Commentary. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Vermeylen, J. 1977–8. Du prophète Isaïe à l’apocalyptique. Isaïe i–xxxv, miroir d’un demimillénaire d’expérience religieuse en Israël, 2 vols (Etudes bibliques). Paris: Gabalda. Vincent, J. M. 1977. Studien zur literarischen Eigenart und zur geistigen Heimat von Jesaja, Kap. 40–55. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Weeks, S. 1994. Early Israelite Wisdom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Weinberg, J. 1992. The Citizen Temple Community (JSOT Sup, 151). Sheffield: JSOT. Weinfeld, M. 1972. Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Westermann, C. 1969. Isaiah 40–66. London: SCMP Press/Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press. Westermann, C. 1992. Genesis: An Introduction. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. White, H. 1973. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Whitelam, K. 1996. The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History. London: Routledge. Whitelam, K. W. 2002. “Representing Minimalism”. In Sense and Sensitivity: Essays on Reading the Bible in Honour of Robert Carroll, A. G. Hunter & P. R. Davies (eds), 194– 223. London: Sheffield Academic Press. Whybray, R. N. 1987. The Making of the Pentateuch: A Methodological Study. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Wilder, A. 1982. “Jesus’ Parables and the War of Myths”. In Essays on Imagination in the Scripture, J. Breech (ed.), 43–70. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press. Williamson, H. G. M. 1993. “First and Last in Isaiah”. In Of Prophets’ Visions and the Wisdom of Sages: Essays in Honour of R. Norman Whybray on his Seventieth Birthday (JSOT Sup, 162), H. A. McKay & D. J. A. Clines (eds), 95–108. Sheffield: JSOT Press. Willi-Plein, I. 1977. “Das Geheimnis der Apokalyptik”. VT 27: 62–81. Wills, L. M. 1990. The Jew in the Court of the Foreign King. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Wilson, B. R. 1971. Magic and Millennium: A Sociological Study of Religious Movements of Protest among Tribal and Third-World Peoples. London: Heinemann. Wilson, R. 1980. Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press. Wolff, H. W. 1977. Joel and Amos (Hermeneia). Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press (German 1975). Wright, A. T. 2005. The Origin of Evil Spirits (WUNT 198). Tübingen: Mohr. Wright, III, B. G. 2005. “Putting the Puzzle Together: Some Suggestions Concerning the

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Index of ancient sources

Bible Genesis 1–11 170–72 1:27 64 2–3 80 2-4 170, 187 2:4a 171 4:13 170 4:17-18 168 4:17-24 171 5:21-23 168 6:1-4 167–71, 187 6:11 171 7:1 172 8:21 67 9:1-7 171 17:10-14 91 Exodus 1:16 106 4:26 91 5:1 116 6:1 104 11:2-3 104 12:11 63 12:38 104, 116 32 103 Leviticus 16 169, 171 25–27 77, 119 Numbers 11 78, 111 11:4 116

Deuteronomy 1:1-4:40 97 4:44–11:32 97 7:1 98 12–26 97 12:1 97 14:2 98 15:4 97 15:6 98 16:2 63 17:4 98 17:14-15 100 18:9 98 18:14 98 19:1 98 20:16-17 98 26:19 98 27–34 97 31:10-13 228 32:49 98 33:4 91 34 100 Joshua 4:2 91 5:2 91 15 92 15:63 48 18 92 18:22 133 18:28 48 Judges 1:8 48 1:21 48 1:22 133

5:19 119 1 Samuel 13:1 200 1 Kings 8:15-53 163 8:23-25 100 12:16-21 137 12:25–13:34 103 2 Kings 10:19 103 13 129, 130, 135 14:25 139 15:1 128 17:24-28 135 18 95 22:3–23:3 95, 96, 99 23:4-20 95, 103, 133 23:1-24 95 23:29 93 24:23 97 25:26 113 25:29-30 57 Isaiah 2:1 1 2:3 46 6 176 10:20-21 133 11:12 58 14:1 133 19:16-22 114 29:22 133 36–39 146

248

Index of ancient sources

40–55 46, 51, 90 40:1-2 53 40:3-9 55 40:18 59 40:21 51 40:28 51 41:1-5 62 41:17-20 56 41:21-29 62 43:5-6 53 43:14 54 43:22-24 53 44:9-21 59 45:1-7 62 45:7 131 45:14-15 52, 58 46:3 133 46:11 53 48:1 46, 133 48:20-22 63 49:20-25 58 49:21-23 54, 58 52:4 114 52:11-12 63 54:1 58 52:2-6 63 53:11 163 58:1 133 65:9 46, 33

31:11 47, 133 31:15-22 10 32 77, 119 33:15-17 55 33:26 47, 133 36 143 43–44 113, 219 43:10 57 43:13 114 44:18 95 46:27-8 47, 133 50:8 63 50:22 54 51:6 63 51:19 133 51:45 63 51:44 54 52 146

Jeremiah 2:4 47, 133 2:5-13 9 5:20 47, 133 3:12-14 10 10:16 47, 130 10:25 47, 130 22:15 95 23:3 58 23:5 56 25:9 57 27–29 57 27:6 57 28:8-9 125 30:7 133 30:10 47, 133 30:18 133 31:2-6 10, 95 31:7 47, 133 31:8 58 31:10 63

Ezekiel 1 64, 176 11:17 58 34:23-4 56 Hosea 10:11 47 12:2 47 Amos 1:1 129 1:3ff. 124, 125, 128 1:5 127 2:4-5 127, 137 2:6-16 125, 131 3:2 134 3:4-8 129 3:13 131 4:1 131 4:4 128, 131 4:13 124, 131 5:4-6 125, 128, 131 5:8-9 124, 131 5:20 129 5:21-25 128 5:26 128, 132 7:2-5 135 7:7-10 131, 146 6:1 131 6:8 131 7:2 131 7:9 129

7:10-17 129–31, 141 7:10 127 7:14 129 8:3 131 8:7 131 8:14 128, 131 9:1-4 131 9:5-6 124, 131 9:7 134 9:8 127, 131, 132 9:11-15 56, 124–7, 132, 135 9:12 134 Obadiah 1-4 147 Micah 1:1 137 1:5 47 2:12 58, 63 5:7-8 133 Zephaniah 1:2ff. 9 1:4-6, 8ff., 12 9 2: 1-3 9 3:1-4, 11 9 3:6 9 Zechariah 10:8-12 58 14:5 137 12:7-8 56 Psalms 23 56 Proverbs 25:1 215 Job 28 216 Lamentations 1:17 47, 133 2:2-3 47, 133 Daniel 1–6 155, 159–61 1:4 157 1:17 157 2 162 2:29-30 160 4 156

Index of ancient sources 2:37 57 4:34ff. 57 5 158, 162 5:30 57 6–7 159 6:11 163 6:23 166 7 176 7–12 160–61 7:1 158 7:10 158 8 163 9–11 163 9 156, 163 9:2 158, 193 9:25-26 163 10–12 160 11:30 162 12 163 12:1 157–8, 176 12:2 162 12:3 177 12:4 Ezra 1:1-4 57, 63 2:28 133 3:10 77 4:20 77 5:11 77 7:25 219 9:6-15 163 9:7 77 Nehemiah 2–4 77, 119 8 219 9 89 9:6-37 163 9:32 77 11:31 133 13:26 77 1 Chronicles 157–8

2 Chronicles 13:19 137 21:12 143 25:14-16 130 35:20-24 93 36:22-23 57 2 Timothy 3:16 91 Revelation 21 203

249 4 Ezra 14:45 208

Dead Sea Scrolls CD (Damascus Document) 2.14-3:12 89 4QPrNab (4Q242) 156, 180 4QDibHam 156 4Q186 179 4Q561 179

Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha Other ancient sources Ben Sira 1:26 80, 91 2:15 80, 91 3:1-6 91 24:23 80, 193 24:30-31 79 24:33 80 39:1 80 39:6-9 227 39:8 80 41:8 80 42:2 91 1 Maccabees 1:56-7 84 2 Maccabees 2:13-14 84, 225 1 Enoch 14 176 18 176 44:16 169 46 176 49:14 169 81:1 176 84 176 103:2 176 106:19 176

Enuma Anu Enlil 17.2 179 Elephantine Letters 119 Letter of Aristeas 12-14 113, 119 Diodorus Siculus 1.28 43, 112 40.3 76 Josephus, Contra Apionem I.37-43 208 I.73-105 108, 109 I.183-204 90 I.228-52 108 Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 9.27 119 1 Clement 196 2 Clement 196 Shepherd of Hermas 193

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Index of authors

Aharoni, Y. 48 Ahlström, G. 47, 103 Albertz, R. 92, 95, 96, 101, 175, 186, 206, 210 Alexander, P. 174, 187 Amit, Y. 44 Andersen, F. A. 124, 125, 132 Argall, R. A. 174 Auld, A. G. 45, 125, 129

Childs, B. S. 117, 202, 210 Clements, R. E. 53 Clines, D. J. A. 62, 89, 172 Collins, J. J. 87, 159, 165, 166, 173, 177, 178, 184 Conteneau, G. 186 Cowley, A. 119 Cross, F. M. Jr 93, 171, 174 Cryer, F. H. 186, 187

Baker, D. L. 209 Barker, M. 174 Bar-Kochva, B. 118 Barstad, H. 52, 54, 55 Barton, J. 151, 187, 210 Bauer, G. L. 205 Beard, M. 62 Bedenbender, A. 174 Ben Zvi, E. 130, 135 Bertholet, A. 60 Biran, A. 38 Black, M. 173 Blenkinsopp, J. 43, 44, 103, 117, 133, 150, 167, 171, 172, 174 Bloom, H. 228 Boccaccini, G. 66, 67, 68, 88, 170, 174, 176, 182, 185 Bousset, W. 60, 64 Boyce, M. 51, 64 Brettler, M. Z. 44 Briend, J. 63 Bright, J. 47 Broshi, M. 89

Davies, G. 150, 228 Davies, P. R. 46, 48, 62, 89, 94, 136, 150, 173, 184, 187, 209, 228, 229 Delcor, M. 173 Dentan, R. C. 210 De Pury, A. 39 De Wette, W. M. L. 96 Doran, R. 165 Driver, S. R. 117 Duhm, B. 52, 61 Durand, J.-M. 150, 228

Carroll, R. P. 62, 119 Carter, C. 48

Edelman, D. 44, 48, 134 Eichrodt, W. 207 Elliott, J. K. 208 Eskenazi, T. C. 89 Evans, C. A. 88 Ewald, G. 61 Feldman, L. H. 118 Ferguson, E. 209 Finkel, A. 186 Finkelstein, I. 98, 136 Fishbane, M. 229 Flannery-Dailey, F. 181, 187 Floyd, M. 130, 135, 149

252

Index of authors

Fox, M. V. 208, 229 Freedman, D. N. 124, 125, 132 Frye, N. 208 Gabler, J. P. 205 Gager, J. G. 118 GarbiniG. 99 Geller, S. A. 100 Ginsberg, H. L. 166 Glasson, T. F. 176, 184 Goodman, M. D. 91, 166 Gordon, R. P. 185 Goshen-Gottstein, M. H. 208 Gosse, B. 62 Grabbe, L. L. 63, 64, 89, 95, 118 Graf Reventlow, H. 209 Grayson, A. K. 186 Green, W. S. 88 Greenblatt, S 153 Gressmann, H. 61 Gruen, E. S. 119 Guillaume, P. 44, 174 Gunkel, H. 142, 149 Gunn, D. M. 142, 149 Hanson, P. D. 65, 88, 173, 177, 185 Hasel, G. 210 Hasslberger, B. 165 Hayes, J. H. 43, 93, 103, 123, 125, 126, 129, 131, 132, 136 Hellholm, D. 165, 187 Hengel, M. 88, 118, 165, 185 Hoffmeier, J. K. 117 Hoglund, K. 89 Holladay, W. L. 118, 150 Hölscher, G. 61, 103, 185 Horsley, R. A. 91 Huffmon, H. 130 Hughes, J. 229 Humphreys, W. L. 155, 165 Husser, J.-M. 187 Hyatt, J. P. 117 Jackson, D. R. 185, 228 Jameson, F. 153, 157, 166 Johnstone, W. 105, 106, 113, 118 Jones, B. A. 140, 149 Kaiser, O. 62, 92, 103, 114, 119 Kapelrud, A. 52 Käsemann, E. 87

Kenyon, F. G. 208 Kessler, R. 90 Kippenberg, H. 90 Kirkpatrick, P. G. 118 Kittel, R. 61 Knauf, E. A. 39 Knibb, M. 62 Knoppers, G. 136 Koch, K. 176, 185 Kraeling, E. G. 119 Kraemer, D. 89 Kratz, R. G. 62 Kraus, H.-J. 209 Kreissig, H. 90 Kuhrt, A. 62 Kvanvig, H. 181, 184 Laato, A. 62 Lacoque, A. 166 Lambert, W. G. 187 Lebram, J. H. C. 166 Lemaire, A. 39, 228 Levin, C. 129 Levine, B. 119 Lévi-Strauss, C. 153 Lipschits, O. 43 Lohfink, N. 95, 97 Lord, A. B. 118 Maccoby, H. 88 Malamat, A. 150, 228 Marrou, H. 228 Marti, K. 61 Martinez, F. G. 185 Mays, J. L. 131, 136 Mazar, A. 136 McCready, W. O. 91 McKay, H. A. 62 Meinhold, A. 155, 165 Mendels, D. 77, 90, 118 Meshorer, Y. 63 Middendorp, T. 91 Milik, J. T. 173, 176, 184 Millard, A. 228 Miller, J. M. 43, 93, 103 Miller, J. W. 207 Milne, P. 165 Moberly, R. W. 210 Möller, K. 136 Montgomery, J. A. 155, 165 Mowinckel, S. 61, 142

Index of authors Müller, H.-P. 155, 165, 178 Na’aman, N. 43, 48, 92, 93, 94 Najm, S. 174 Naveh, J. 36–9 Neugebauer, O. 186 Neusner, J. 67, 88, 91, 92 Nicholson, E. W. 174, 184 Nickelsburg, G. W. 173, 184 Niditch, S. 141, 149, 165, 228 Niles, J. 141, 149 Nissinen, M. 187 North, J. 62 Noth, M. 47, 52, 96, 117, 119, 167, 173 Oded, B. 48 Oppenheim, A. L. 179, 181, 186, 187 Osten-Sacken, P. van der 185 Overholt, T. W. 149 Pardee, D. 150 Pattie, T. S. 208 Paul, S. M. 124, 132 Plöger, O. 65, 87, 177, 185 Popovic, M. 186 Porten, B. 119 Preuss, H. D. 207, 210 Pritchard, J. B. 39 Provan, I. W. 29 Purvis, J. D. 89 Rad, G. von 165, 185 Reid, S. B. 151, 166 Rendtorff, R. 118 Rhoads, D. M. 91 Roberts, C. H. 208 Rochberg-Halton, F. 186 Römer, T. 39 Rowland, C. 186, 187 Rowley, H. H. 175, 184 Russell, D. S. 175, 184 Sacchi, P. 176, 182, 185 Sancisi-Weerdenburg, H. 62 Sanders, E. P. 66, 85, 88, 91 Sarna, T. N. 106, 117 Säve-Söderbergh, T. 118 Sawyer, J. 208 Schökel, L. A. 150 Schoors, A. 114 Schürer, E. 90, 118 Schwartz, D. 69, 88

253

Seitz, C. R. 52, 56, 61 Sherwin-White, S. 62 Silberman, N. A. 98 Skeat, T. C. 208 Smart, J. D. 52 Smelik, K. A. D. 94 Smith, J. Z. 72, 89, 185 Smith, M. 51, 60 Specht, W. F. 209 Spek, R. J. van der 186 Steiner, R. C. 45, 136 Stern, M. 89, 91, 118 Stone, M. E. 184 Stuckenbruck, L. T. 173 Sundberg, A. 209 Sweeney, M. A. 92, 96, 126 Taber, C. R. 209 Tcherikover, V. 119 Thompson, T. L. 64, 118 Torrey, C. C. 61, 89, 136 Tov, E. 208 Towner, S. 166 VanderKam, J. C. 89, 178, 184, 185 Van Seters, J. 91, 117, 142, 149, 151, 186 Vermeylen, J. 62, 119 Vincent, J. M. 53, 62 Weeks, S. 185 Weinberg, J. 89 Weinfeld, M. 100 Westermann, C. 61, 174 Whybray, R. N. 118 Wilder, A. 208 Williamson, H. G. M. 62 Willi-Plein, I. 185 Wills, L. M. 155, 165, 186, 187, 228 Wilson, R. 149, 166 Wolff, H. W. 136 Woude, A. S. van der 185 Wright III, B. G. 185 Würthwein, E. 102, 103 Yamauchi, E. 64 Yardeni, A. 119 Zertal, A. 48 Zevit, Z. 186 Zindler, F. 209