Rhetoric and Hermeneutics: Approaches to Text, Tradition and Social Construction in Biblical and Second Temple Literature (Forschungen Zum Alten Testament) 9783161577239, 9783161577246, 316157723X

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Forschungen zum Alten Testament Herausgegeben von Konrad Schmid (Zürich) · Mark S. Smith (Princeton) Hermann Spieckermann (Göttingen) · Andrew Teeter (Harvard)

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Carol A. Newsom

Rhetoric and Hermeneutics Approaches to Text, Tradition and Social ­Construction in Biblical and Second Temple Literature

Mohr Siebeck

Carol A. Newsom, born 1950; 1982 PhD from Harvard University (Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations); since 1980 at Emory University; currently Charles Howard Candler Professor of Old Testament. orcid.org/0000-0002-0024-5475

ISBN 978-3-16-157723-9 / eISBN 978-3-16-157724-6 DOI 10.1628/978-3-16-157724-6 ISSN 0940-4155 / eISSN 2568-8359 (Forschungen zum Alten Testament) The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2019 Mohr Siebeck Tübingen.  www.mohrsiebeck.com This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was typeset by Martin Fischer in Tübingen using Minion typeface, printed on non-­ aging paper by Gulde-Druck in Tübingen, and bound by Großbuchbinderei Spinner in Otters­ weier. Printed in Germany.

To the memory of Gene M. Tucker (1935–2018) Colleague, Mentor, Friend And to the memory of Charlyne (Charky) Williams Tucker (1937–2018) Kind and Generous Friend

Preface The orientation that has guided my work throughout my career is a fascination with rhetoric, defined in the socially active way that Kenneth Burke understood it. Every text, he observed, is “a strategy for encompassing a situation.”1 What I have found so satisfying about attending to the rhetoric of texts is that it provides an ideal way of combining the interests of traditional historical criticism, which is frequently oriented to the situation that lies behind the text, with a concern for what is sometimes called the literary dimension of the text. At about the time that I entered the field of biblical studies literary approaches were becoming fashionable. Too often, however, such studies divorced themselves from the historical dimensions of the text, resulting in an intellectual thinness. Attention to rhetoric, however, allows one to see how situations and discourse are inextricably intermingled within texts. Burke’s further observation, that every text is “the answer or rejoinder to assertions current in the situation in which it arose,”2 makes his approach to understanding texts highly compatible with that of Mikhail Bakhtin, whose work on the dialogical aspects of language was becoming influential in the humanities and even the social sciences in the 1980s and 1990s. These two figures have been my intellectual lodestars. If rhetoric is about persuasion, then it is also fundamentally connected with hermeneutics, which, as Gerald Bruns described it, is about “what happens in the understanding of anything, not just of texts but of how things are.”3 All texts make claims about the nature of reality. They do this not only through their explicit arguments but also by means of their genres, their metaphors, their strategically chosen vocabulary, and much more. Some texts model new ways of being in the world and even attempt to restructure our very sense of self. Rhetoric thus has a socially constructive force that we can uncover by attending to the hermeneutical dimensions of the text. Rhetoric, dialogics, and hermeneutics all come together, of course, in the way that texts continually engage one another, explicitly or implicitly, in the complex process of “recycling” that constitutes textual and cultural tradition. Indeed, one of the most significant changes in the field of biblical studies during the past generation has been the embrace of what is often called the history of reception. 1  Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1973), 109. 2  Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form, 109 (emphasis in the original). 3  Gerald L. Bruns, “On the Tragedy of Hermeneutical Experience,” in Hermeneutics Ancient and Modern (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 179.

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Increasingly, however, it is recognized that this is no separate post-canonical phenomenon but rather a process that is integral to the production of all texts. The essays that follow are a selection from my work that engages these issues. The earliest comes from 1989; the most recent is a previously unpublished essay from my current research. They are not presented in chronological order, however, but are grouped thematically. I have attempted to give the essays a consistent style and have corrected minor errors, but I have resisted the temptation to engage in substantive revisions, with one exception. The essay entitled “‘Sectually Explicit’ Literature from Qumran” required updating in its discussion of the number and distribution of texts from the Qumran caves. Also, I have changed my mind about the sectarian status of the Sabbath Songs, and it is important to indicate that change of position. For the most part, however, it seems best to let the essays represent my thought as it was at the time each was written. Two of the essays (nos. 2 and 10) were substantially incorporated into monographs I later wrote. I have included them here, however, because they illustrate key methodological themes.

I. Essays in Method 1. “Bakhtin, the Bible, and Dialogic Truth.” JR 76 (1996): 290–306. Bakhtin’s understanding of the social dynamics of language as discourse provides a particularly useful way to read the diverse texts of the Hebrew Bible. In particular, it facilitates a strategy for reading the multi-vocality of the Bible that has shaped both individual books and the collection as a whole. This essay attempts to make the case for a dialogical biblical theology. 2. “The Book of Job as Polyphonic Text.” JSOT 97 (2002): 87–108. However the book of Job was composed, it has a unique affinity for being read as a polyphonic text. This essay, which anticipates the arguments of my book, The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations (New York: Oxford, 2003), illustrates the productivity of a Bakhtinian reading. 3. “Woman and the Discourse of Patriarchal Wisdom: A Study of Proverbs 1–9.” Pages 142–60 in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel. Edited by Peggy Day. Philadelphia: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1989. Although this essay was written some years before the essay on “Bakhtin, the Bible, and Dialogic Truth,” it forms a good complement to it in that this essay attempts to describe what I consider to be a highly monologic form of speech within the wisdom corpus. Moreover, it also highlights the social dynamics of rhetoric.

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4. “Spying Out the Land: A Report from Genology.” Pages 437–50 in Seeking out the Wisdom of the Ancients: Essays Offered to Honor Michael V. Fox on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday. Edited by Ronald L. Troxel, Kelvin G. Friebel, and Dennis R. Magery. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005. Although the development of form criticism within biblical studies contributed to theories of literary genre in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the subsequent conversation between biblical studies and genology has been sporadic at best. This essay presents and evaluates developments in genre theory that may be useful to biblical studies. 5. “The Rhetoric of Jewish Apocalyptic Literature.” Pages 218–34 in The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature. Edited by John J. Collins. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. This essay and the following one attempt to supply a lacuna in the study of apocalyptic literature and the Dead Sea scrolls. Although the analysis of the genre of apocalypse is well developed, the study of the rhetoric of apocalyptic literature more broadly has received less attention. This essay makes a case for apocalyptic literature as a kind of “epiphanic” rhetoric and suggests some methodological ways forward. 6. “Rhetorical Criticism and the Reading of the Qumran Scrolls.” Pages 683–708 in The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Edited by John J. Collins and Timothy H. Lim. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. This essay also attempts to supplement a largely untheorized approach to reading the rhetoric of the Dead Sea Scrolls and by suggesting some methodological directions for further work, as well as providing case studies.

II. Language and the Shaping of Community at Qumran 7. “‘Sectually Explicit’ Literature from Qumran.” Pages 167–87 in The Hebrew Bible and Its Interpreters. Edited by William Henry Propp, Baruch Halpern, and David Noel Freedman. BJSUCSD 1. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990. This essay raises methodological question about what one means by the term “sectarian text” and how one identifies rhetorical markers of sectarian discourse. The case study on the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice suggests how difficult such issues can be. As my final note indicates, I have now reverted to my previous judgment that the Sabbath Songs are most likely a sectarian composition. 8. “‘He Has Established for Himself Priests’: Human and Angelic Priesthood in the Qumran Sabbath Shirot.” Pages 101–20 in Archaeology and History in the

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Dead Sea Scrolls. Edited by Lawrence H. Schiffman. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990. Although this essay does not self-consciously foreground rhetorical analysis, it is guided by the fundamental question of how a set of liturgical and mystical songs serves to construct an experiential reality that underwrites the identification of members of the Qumran community as elect by giving them privileged access to the worship of the priestly angels. It is thus an example of the epiphanic rhetoric of apocalyptic literature. 9. “Constructing ‘We, You, and the Others’ Through Non-Polemical Discourse.” Pages 13–21 in Defining Identities: We, You, and the Others in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Edited by Florentino García Martínez and Mladen Popović. STDJ 70. Leiden: Brill, 2008. The sectarian literature of Qumran offers an ideal venue for rhetorical criticism, since rhetoric, as Kenneth Burke often noted, is directed both to identification and division. Although polemical speech often draws the most attention in describing sectarian rhetoric, this essay makes the case for the significance of non-polemical speech in the construction of sectarian identity. Examples are drawn from the Serek ha-Yaḥad and the Hodayot. 10. “Apocalyptic Subjects: Social Construction of the Self in the Qumran Hodayot.” JSP 12 (2001): 3–35. Rhetoric is deeply connected with forming identity, and in the Qumran Hodayot one finds a type of literature that is tailor made for identifying formation. This essay examines the strategies used in the Qumran Hodayot both for forming positive sectarian identity and for establishing a sense of separation from other identities.

III. Fashioning and Refashioning Self and Agency 11. “Models of the Moral Self: Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism.” JBL 131 (2012): 5–25. This essay examines a variety of rhetorical constructions that model forms of self and agency in order to address the problem of sin and obedience. Sometimes, too, these models served as means of separating Jews from gentiles or “the righteous” Jews from the “wicked.” The variety of alternative models, especially in the late Second Temple period, indicates that the self can indeed be a “symbolic space” serving a number of social functions. 12. “Flesh, Spirit, and the Indigenous Psychology of the Hodayot.” Pages 339–54 in Prayer and Poetry in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature: Essays in Honor of Eileen Schuller on the Occasion of Her 65th Birthday. Edited by

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Jeremy Penner, Ken M. Penner, and Cecilia Wassen. STDJ 98. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Novel interpretations of Genesis 2–3 and 6, as well as of Ezekiel 36–37, allowed the authors of the Hodayot to make radical new claims about the nature of humanity and the sectarian elect. Their focus was the status of the fleshly/dusty human body and the breath/spirit that was infused into it. Through their interpretive work these authors constructed a powerful rhetorical appeal for identification with the sectarians claims of the Yaḥad and a sense of fearful repugnance toward their former selves.

13. “Sin Consciousness, Self-Alienation, and the Origins of the Introspective Self.” Previously unpublished. This essay traces a gradual refashioning of the symbolic structures of the self and inner self-relation (the “I-me” relation) in a significant strand of late Judean and Second Temple sources. The creation of new rhetorics of the self is dependent on hermeneutical re-workings of key texts from Genesis and Ezekiel but also through the transposition of some of these central tropes from narrative and prophetic genres into the genres of prayer and psalmody.

IV. Recycling: The Hermeneutics of Memory and Reception Part A: Job 14. “Plural Versions and the Challenge of Narrative Coherence in the Story of Job.” Pages 236–44 in The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Narrative. Edited by Danna Nolan Fewell. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. The book of Job contains within itself multiple ways of telling “the same” story. Each version makes a different claim about the nature of reality and how meaning may be constructed. Indeed, even as various receptions of the book of Job in later tradition attempted to rewrite the book in new ways, they tend to finalize its meaning in a manner that the canonical book resists. 15. “Dramaturgy and the Book of Job.” Pages 375–93 in Das Buch Hiob und seine Interpretationen. Edited by Thomas Krüger, Manfred Oeming, Konrad Schmid, and Christoph Uehlinger. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 2007. This essay, though written earlier than the previous one, actually functions as something of an illustration of the claims made there about the ways in which Job lends itself to rhetorical reinvention and a kind of polyphonic debate across time concerning claims about the nature of God, humanity, and the world. Particular attention is given to the intense contestation over the

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significance of Job in post-World War I and post-World War II Germany and America. 16. “The Book of Job and Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life.” Pages 228–42 in A Wild Ox Knows: Biblical Essays in Honor of Norman C. Habel. Edited by Allen H. Cadwallader. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013. Terrence Malick’s film explicitly and implicitly positions itself as an engagement with the book of Job, especially the prose tale and the divine speeches. The philosophy of Martin Heidegger is an important influence on Malick’s films and provides a hermeneutical key to his engagement. Malick’s nuanced “reading” of the divine speeches also contrasts in intriguing ways with the largely post-religious interpretations of the mid-twentieth century plays examined in “Dramaturgy and the Book of Job.”

Part B: History and Politics 17. “Rhyme and Reason: The Historical Résumé in Israelite and Early Jewish Thought.” Pages 215–33 in Congress Volume: Leiden, 2004. Edited by André Lemaire. VTSup 109. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Little is more rhetorically contested than the “shared” history of a people. This essay looks at a broad range of short historical résumés, comparing their different rhetorical strategies for conveying the significance of a purportedly shared history. The examples demonstrate how malleable the traditions are and how they can be persuasively shaped to argue for highly divergent perspectives, even when they are placed side by side in canonical ordering. 18. “God’s Other: The Intractable Problem of the Gentile King in Judean and Early Jewish Literature.” Pages 31–48 in The “Other” in Second Temple Judaism: Essays in Honor of John J. Collins. Edited by Daniel C. Harlow, Karina Martin Hogan, Matthew Goff, and Joel S. Kaminski. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011. Fredric Jameson astutely reframed Kenneth Burke’s dictum that “language is symbolic action” by observing that a symbolic act is paradoxical in that it is both the accomplishment of an action but also a substitute for action, a compensation for the impossibility of direct action. Such was the problem ancient Israel faced in its attempt to frame the problem of aggressive foreign kings who represented threats to Yahweh’s power. This essay examines the various ways Judean literature enacted symbolic defeat upon these kings. 19. “Why Nabonidus? Excavating Traditions from Qumran, the Hebrew Bible, and Neo-Babylonian Sources.” Pages 57–79 in The Dead Sea Scrolls:

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Transmission of Traditions and Production of Texts. Edited by Sariano Metso, Hindy Najman, and Eileen Schuller. STDJ 92. Leiden: Brill, 2010. This essay is a case study of two forms of symbolic action, stemming from the recognition of strong traces of Nabonidus traditions within the stories about Nebuchadnezzar in the book of Daniel and the recovered Prayer of Nabonidus from Qumran. It attempts first to recover evidence of intense rhetorical contests among Jews of the late exilic period and then to trace the later hermeneutical need to recast the Nabonidus traditions into ones concerning Nebuchadnezzar in order to address the wounds of memory created by the defeat of Judah, the exile, and the diaspora.

Preparing a collection of essays seems like a simple enough task, but the technical aspects of scanning, converting digital formats, regularizing styles, and so forth make it a somewhat daunting task. I would not have been able to do this without the help of some key people. As always, my husband, tech guru, and resident editorial consultant, Rex Matthews, advised me and facilitated many steps in the process. My amazing research assistant, Evan Bassett, was a life-saver. I might have given up several times were it not for his ability to untangle seemingly intractable knots of digital information and to present me not only with beautifully prepared files but also carefully organized supplementary materials and check-lists for trouble-shooting. But there is another effect of preparing a selection of essays written across one’s career. It provides an occasion for reflecting on the course of that career and the factors that shaped it. My career as a scholar was strongly supported from the beginning by my colleague Gene Tucker, who encouraged me to take risks I might not otherwise have taken, gave me sage advice when I needed it, and smoothed many paths for me. He was a wise and generous colleague and friend, and his beloved wife Charky was always a welcoming and warm friend. It is with gratitude that I dedicate this book to their memory. January 6, 2019

Carol A. Newsom

Table of Contents Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XVII I. Essays in Method 1. Bakhtin, the Bible, and Dialogic Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. The Book of Job as Polyphonic Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Woman and the Discourse of Patriarchal Wisdom: A Study of Proverbs 1–9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Spying Out the Land: A Report from Genology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. The Rhetoric of Jewish Apocalyptic Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6. Rhetorical Criticism and the Reading of the Qumran Scrolls . . . . . . II. Language and the Shaping of Community at Qumran 7. “Sectually Explicit” Literature from Qumran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8. “He Has Established for Himself Priests”: Human and Angelic Priesthood in the Qumran Sabbath Shirot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9. Constructing “We, You, and the Others” Through Non-Polemic Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10. Apocalyptic Subjects: Social Construction of the Self in the Qumran Hodayot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3 19 39 55 67 83 111 131 149 157

III. Fashioning and Refashioning Self and Agency 11. Models of the Moral Self: Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 12. Flesh, Spirit, and the Indigenous Psychology of the Hodayot . . . . . 211 13. Sin Consciousness, Self-Alienation, and the Origins of the Introspective Self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 IV. Recycling: The Hermeneutics of Memory and Reception Part A: The Book of Job 14. Plural Versions and the Challenge of Narrative Coherence in the Story of Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 15. Dramaturgy and the Book of Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 16. The Book of Job and Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life . . . . . . . . . . . 273

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Part B: History and Politics 17. Rhyme and Reason: The Historical Résumé in Israelite and Early Jewish Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 18. God’s Other: The Intractable Problem of the Gentile King in Judean and Early Jewish Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 19. Why Nabonidus? Excavating Traditions from Qumran, the Hebrew Bible, and Neo-Babylonian Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 Index of Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 Index of Modern Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377 Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380

Abbreviations AB ABD AGJU ANEP ANET AOAT ATANT ATDan BA BASOR BETL BibInt BibInt BIOSCS BJS BJSUCSD BKAT BR CANE CBQ CBQMS CHANE CP DDD2 DJD DSD DSSR EdF EDSS EJL EPRO ErIsr FM

Anchor Bible Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by David Noel Freedman. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992 Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums The Ancient Near East in Pictures Relating to the Old Testament. 2nd ed. Edited by James B. Pritchard. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Edited by James B. Pritchard. 3rd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969 Alter Orient und Altes Testament Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments Acta Theologica Danica Biblical Archaeologist Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium Biblical Interpretation Biblical Interpretation Series Bulletin of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies Brown Judaic Studies Biblical and Judaic Studies from the University of California, San Diego Biblischer Kommentar, Altes Testament Biblical Research Civilizations of the Ancient Near East. Edited by Jack M. Sasson. 4 vols. New York, 1995. Repr. in 2 vols. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006 Catholic Biblical Quarterly Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series Culture and History of the Ancient Near East Classical Philology Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible. Edited by Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking and Pieter W. van der Horst. 2nd rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999 Discoveries in the Judean Desert Dead Sea Discoveries The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader. 2 vols. 2nd ed. Edited by Donald W. Parry and Emanuel Tov. Leiden: Brill, 2014 Erträge der Forschung Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Edited by Lawrence H. Schiffman and James C. VanderKam. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000 Early Judaism and Its Literature Etudes préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l’empire romain Eretz-Israel Field Methods

XVIII FRLANT HAR HDR HSM HSS HTR HUCA IBC ICC IDBSup IEJ IOS ITQ JAJSup JAOS JBL JJS JNES JSJ JSJSup JR JSNTSup JSOT JSOTSup JSP JSPSup NIB NICOT NIDB NLH NovT NTS NTTS OBO OBT OLA OTL OTP PRSt QD QR R&T RB RevQ

Abbreviations

Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments Hebrew Annual Review Harvard Dissertations in Religion Harvard Semitic Monographs Harvard Semitic Studies Harvard Theological Review Hebrew Union College Annual Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching International Critical Commentary Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible: Supplementary Volume. Edited by Keith Crim. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1976 Israel Exploration Journal Israel Oriental Studies Irish Theological Quarterly Journal of Ancient Judaism Supplements Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Jewish Studies Journal of Near Eastern Studies Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism Journal of Religion Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Supplement Series The New Interpreter’s Bible. Edited by Leander E. Keck. 12 vols. Nashville: Abingdon, 1994–2004 New International Commentary on the Old Testament New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. Edited by Katharine Doob Sakenfield. 5 vols. Nashville: Abingdon, 2006–2009 New Literary History Novum Testamentum New Testament Studies New Testament Tools and Studies Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis Overtures to Biblical Theology Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta Old Testament Library Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Edited by James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1983, 1985 Perspectives in Religious Studies Quaestiones Disputatae Quarterly Review Religion & Theology Revue biblique Revue de Qumran

Abbreviations

RHR SBLDS SBLSBS SBS SBT ScrHier SHR ST StABH STDJ STTCL SUNT SVTP SymS TDOT

TLZ VT VTSup VWGTh WBC WMANT WO WUNT WUNT 2 YNER ZAW

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Revue de l’histoire des religions Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series Society of Biblical Literature Sources for Biblical Study Stuttgarter Bibelstudien Studies in Biblical Theology Scripta Hierosolymitana Studies in the History of Religions (supplements to Numen) Studia Theologica Studies in American Biblical Hermeneutics Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah Studies in Twentieth & Twenty-First Century Literature Studien zur Umwelt des Neuen Testaments Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigraphica Symposium Series Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. Edited by G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren. Translated by John T. Willis, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and David E. Green. 16 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974–2006 Theologische Literaturzeitung Vetus Testamentum Supplements to Vetus Testamentum Veröffentlichungen der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft für Theologie Word Biblical Commentary Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament Die Welt des Orients Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2. Reihe Yale Near Eastern Researches Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

DJD Volumes Referred to in the Essays Maurice Baillet, Qumrân grotte 4.III (4Q482–4Q520), DJD VII (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982). DJD XI Esther Eshel, et al., Qumran Cave 4.VI: Poetical and Liturgical Texts, Part 1, DJD XI (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998). DJD XXII George J. Brooke, et al., Qumran Cave 4.XVII: Parabiblical Texts, Part 3, DJD XXII (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996). DJD XXIII Florentino García Martínez, Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, and Adam S. van der Woude, Manuscripts from Qumran Cave 11.II (11Q2–18, 11Q20–30), DJD XXIII (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998). DJD XXVI Philip Alexander and Géza Vermes, Qumran Cave 4.XIX: 4Qserekh Ha-Yaḥad, DJD XXVI (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998). DJD XXX Devorah Dimant, Qumran Cave 4.XXI: Parabiblical Texts, Part 4: PseudoProphetic Texts, DJD XXX (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001). DJD VII

XX DJD XL

Abbreviations

Hartmut Stegemann with Eileen Schuller, 1QHodayota: With Incorporation of 1QHodayotb and 4QHodayota–f, with translation of texts by Carol Newsom, in consultation with James VanderKam and Monica Brady, DJD XL (Oxford: Clarendon, 2009).

I. Essays in Method

1. Bakhtin, the Bible, and Dialogic Truth An interview for a candidate in Old Testament at Emory University School of Theology provided an all-too-familiar example of the impasse at which conversations between biblical scholars and theologians tend to arrive. The theologian asked the biblical scholar what he considered the theological center of the Old Testament to be. The biblical scholar demurred at the notion of a center, insisting instead on the Bible’s diversity. “Yes, of course,” said the theologian, “but surely there must be some primary theme or themes that run through the diversity – covenant? creation?” “There may be some prominent themes among certain large blocks of material,” conceded the biblical scholar, “but identifying any one or two of those as the unifying themes of the Old Testament betrays its extraordinary variety and distorts its historical particularity.” “Well,” said the theologian, “what about taking all its varied and diverse statements as claims about a single referent – God?” “Even that,” the biblical scholar argued, “runs aground when one considers the nature of biblical religions and the various local manifestations of deity. The modern conception of ‘God’ is problematic for these texts.” “I’m not trying to do violence to the historical particularity of the Bible or its cultural context,” said the increasingly frustrated theologian. “I’m just trying to find something that theology can work with.” My sympathies in this conversation were largely with the biblical scholar, defending the “pied beauty” of the variegated biblical text against the reductionist quest for a center. Nevertheless, I was troubled by the fact that the biblical scholar’s stance was essentially one of resistance only. The theologian’s expectation that biblical studies produce “something that theology can work with” struck me as an entirely legitimate expectation. But how can this be done in a way that respects the radical particularity of biblical texts? Traditional biblical theologies have attempted to negotiate the tensions between “the one and the many,” but in a way that has taken the philosophical assumptions of theological discourse for granted. One can hear this in the way the language of unity, center, or system appears in biblical theologians’ definitions of what they do: “The theology of the Old Testament may be defined as the systematic account of the specific religious ideas which can be found throughout the Old Testament and which form its profound unity” (Edmund Jacob);1 “Any ‘Old Testament theology’ has 1  This and the following quotations are collected by Ben C. Ollenburger, “Old Testament Theology: A Discourse on Method,” in Biblical Theology: Problems and Perspectives, ed. Steven J. Kraftchick, Charles D. Myers, Jr., and Ben C. Ollenburger (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995).

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I. Essays in Method

the task of presenting what the Old Testament says about God as a coherent whole” (Walther Zimmerli); “A theology of the Old Testament has the task of summarizing and viewing together what the Old Testament as a whole, in all its sections, says about God” (Claus Westermann). Despite the expressed commitments of the totality of the biblical text, the quest for system and unity often results in practice in a sharp distinction between center and periphery, if not in the outright disqualification of those texts which resist the biblical theologian’s systematization. The implications of such thinking are illustrated in a comment by Diethelm Michel. At the end of a very learned book on Ecclesiastes, he cannot help putting the book in its place theologically: “[Qoheleth’s] ‘God who is in Heaven’ is not the God of Abraham, not the God of Isaac, not the God of Jacob, not the God in Jesus Christ. That, for all the fascination which comes from this thinker, one may not overlook.”2 Here, a salvation-historical theology is implicitly treated as the center of biblical religion, and what does not cohere is marginalized or excluded. Concerning the impasse that often develops between theologians and biblical scholars, I want to suggest that part of the problem is that the type of discourse which is natural to the theologian and which has often been imported into biblical theology is not adequate for engaging the biblical text. Another model of discourse exists, however, which I think is adequate for engaging the biblical text and which does give theology something to work with. This alternative model I find in Mikhail Bakhtin’s distinction between a monologic sense of truth and a dialogic sense of truth as he works these out in his book Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics3 and in his essay “Discourse in the Novel.”4 The monologic conception of truth is fairly easy to grasp, because it is the conception of truth that has dominated modern thought for some time, characteristic not only of philosophy and theology but also of literature. There are three important features of the monologic sense of truth. First, the basic building block of monologic truth is the “separate thought,” a statement which does not finally depend on the one who says it for its truth. We customarily call this sort of “separate thought” a proposition. Pragmatically, of course, who says it may matter a great deal, but the content of the thought is not determined by the one who says it. It is repeatable by others and just as true (or untrue) when spoken by them. Bakhtin calls these “no-man’s thoughts.” The second feature of the monologic sense of truth is that it tends to gravitate toward a system. It seeks unity. These may be larger or smaller systems, but monologic statements 2  Diethelm Michel, Untersuchungen zur Eigenart des Buches Qohelet (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1989), 289. 3  Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). 4  Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1981), 259–422.

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are congenial to being ordered in a systemic way. The third feature characteristic of the monologic sense of truth is that in principle it can be comprehended by a single consciousness. No matter how much complexity or nuance in a proposition or system, a person of sufficient intellectual ability can think it. Perhaps it would be more apt to say that the proposition or system is structured in such a way that even if it is the product of many minds, it is represented as capable of being spoken by a single voice. Although the paradigmatic examples of the monologic sense of truth would be the great philosophical systems of the nineteenth century, Bakhtin insists that this sort of conception of truth is actually quite pervasive. It is the sense of truth that undergirds all sorts of critical activity, but it is also the sense of truth embedded in most literature. Bakhtin identifies the lyric poem as a particularly clear example of monologic discourse, since it works resolutely through the construction of a single voice or consciousness through which all perceptions and statements are organized. But most novels are also mono­logic. Despite the fact that they may have many different characters, drawn quite differently and acting as spokespersons for different ideologies, it is finally the author’s ideology and perspective which coordinates all the parts of the novel and gives it unity. One can see how the operation of these assumptions have created problems for the understanding of the Bible and for the conversation between theology and biblical studies. Critical biblical scholarship was founded on the perception that the Bible was not monologic. It lacked precisely those features that characterize monologic discourse. Biblical criticism used the evidence of contradiction, disjunction, multiple perspectives, and so forth, to make the case for the Bible’s heterogeneity. This was not a book that could be understood as the product of a single consciousness. Moses did not write the Pentateuch. Driven by the “self-evident” claims of monologic truth, however, biblical criticism attempted to disentangle the various voices, so that one could identify the different individual monologic voices. That seemed to be the only way to deal with the phenomenon of a text whose multivoicedness contradicted the reigning notions of authorship. In so doing, however, biblical scholarship found itself notably lacking in a theoretical framework for understanding the whole. Neither redaction criticism, which examined the latest stages of composition and editing, nor tradition criticism, which investigated the deepest layers of tradition and their reworking, provided an adequate mode of understanding the whole. Literary readings of the new critical persuasion offered to deal with the final form of the text but did so by reading the text “as though” it had been the product of a single author. Reader response approaches located the unifying consciousness increasingly in the reader. With the exception of certain deconstructive approaches, all of these attempts have begun with an unchallenged assumption of a monologic sense of truth.

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I. Essays in Method

But what if a monologic conception of truth is not the only possibility? Bakhtin developed his notions of dialogical truth and polyphony to account for what he perceived to be a radical distinctiveness in the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky. He saw Dostoevsky as the precursor of a new way of writing and a new way of representing ideas. There is also a strong ethical component in Bakhtin’s work. Dialogism is not only descriptive of certain kinds of literature; it is a prescriptive model for understanding persons and communities and for the conduct of discourse. This double orientation of his thinking makes it particularly fitting to bring to a problem of how to understand the Bible in relation to theological discourse. Compared with monologism, it is less easy to describe what Bakhtin means by a dialogic sense of truth, in large part because we are unaccustomed to thinking in these terms. The first and most important characteristic of a dialogic sense of truth is that, in contrast to monologic discourse, it “requires a plurality of consciousness … [which] in principle cannot be fitted within the bounds of a single consciousness.”5 A dialogic truth exists at the point of intersection of several unmerged voices. The paradigm, of course, is that of the conversation. One cannot have a genuine conversation with oneself. It requires at least two unmerged voices for a conversation to exist. A second important feature is the embodied, almost personal quality of dialogic truth in contrast to the abstraction characteristic of monologism. Again, the paradigm of the conversation is illustrative. The participants in a conversation are not propositions or assertions but the persons who utter them. In contrast to monologic discourse, Bakhtin says, “the ultimate indivisible unit is not the assertion, but rather the integral point of view, the integral position of a personality.”6 Consequently, this is an emphatically nonabstract understanding of discourse and of truth. In a conversation statements are not “no-man’s thoughts.” It is of the essence who says them. Third, there is no drift toward the systematic in dialogic truth. What emerges is not system but “a concrete event made up of organized human orientations and voices.”7 “Event” rather than “system” is what gives dialogic truth its unity. It is a dynamic, not a propositional, unity. One of the things that drew Bakhtin to Dostoevsky’s ability to represent the “image of an idea” in the interactions of his characters was the way he captured the dialogic nature of ideas themselves. An idea does not live in a person’s isolated individual consciousness but only insofar as it enters into dialogical relations with other ideas and with the ideas of others.8 It may attempt to displace other ideas, seek to enlist other ideas, be qualified by other ideas, develop new possibilities in the encounter with alien Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 81.  Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 93. 7  Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 93. 8  Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 87–88. 5 Bakhtin, 6

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ideas. That is how it lives. All of an idea’s interactions are a part of its identity. The truth about the idea cannot be comprehended by a single consciousness. It requires the plurality of consciousness that can enter into relationship with it from a variety of noninterchangeable perspectives. The fourth aspect of dialogic truth is that it is always open. Bakhtin’s term for this may be more elegant in Russian, but in English it has been translated as “unfinalizability.” As Bakhtin puts it, “Nothing conclusive has yet taken place in the world, the ultimate word of the world and about the world has not yet been spoken, the world is open and free, everything is still in the future, and will always be in the future.”9 There is an ethical component to this observation. Since the idea and the person who utters it are not separable, it is persons who are not finalizable. Whereas monologic conceptions make it possible to “sum up” a person, a dialogic orientation is aware that persons have never spoken their final word and so remain open and free. These notions are easier to grasp with a concrete example. In discussing Crime and Punishment, Bakhtin notes that prior to the action of the novel the character Raskolnikov has published a newspaper article (a monologic form), giving the theoretical bases of the idea which so preoccupies him. But Dostoevsky never puts that article before the reader. Rather, the content of that article is introduced by another character, Porphiry, who gives a provocatively exaggerated account of it in a conversation with Raskolnikov, who replies at various points. Raskolnikov’s comments, however, themselves contain a number of possible objections to his own perspective. They internalize a kind of dialogue about his own ideas. A third character joins the conversation with additional perspectives. Later in the book others with quite different life positions engage Raskolnikov’s idea, disclosing new aspects and possibilities inherent in it, taking it up as their own or repudiating it. As Bakhtin says, “In the course of this dialogue Raskolnikov’s idea reveals its various facets, nuances, possibilities, it enters into various relationships with other life-positions. As it loses its monologic, abstractly theoretical finalized quality, a quality sufficient to a single consciousness, it acquires the contradictory complexity and living multi-facedness of an idea-force, being born, living and acting in the great dialogue of the epoch and calling back and forth to kindred ideas of other epochs. Before us rises up an image of the idea.”10 Texts, of course, are not conversations. Even novels, although they may contain staged conversations between characters, are usually not true conversations in the sense that Bakhtin meant. Most literary works are monologic in that the voices appearing therein are controlled by the author’s perspective. They cannot address the reader directly, since they are approached only through the author’s evaluating perspective. Bakhtin, however, believed that it was possible to  9 10

 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 106.  Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 89.

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I. Essays in Method

produce in a literary work something that approximated a genuine dialogue, a mode of writing he called polyphonic. This is the type of writing that he believed Dostoevsky embodied. Polyphonic writing makes several changes in the position of the author, the role of the reader, the status of the plot, and the nature of a work’s conclusion. The relationship between the author and the characters of the book is changed in that the author must give up the type of control exercised in monologic works and attempt to create several consciousnesses which will be truly independent of the author’s and interact with genuine freedom. This is not to say that the author gives up a presence in the work, but that the author’s perspective becomes only one among others, without privilege. Bakhtin himself makes a religious analogy. The author’s relation to these free characters is like that of God who creates human beings as morally free agents.11 The reader’s position in a polyphonic work is changed in part because the function of the plot is also changed. In a monologic novel the reader is asked primarily to analyze characters, plot, circumstances.12 But in a polyphonic text the dialogic play of ideas is not merely a function of plot and character but is the motive of the entire work. As Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson, the foremost interpreters of Bakhtin, put it, “One must read not for the plot, but for the dialogues, and to read for the dialogues is to participate in them.”13 Finally, the shape of a polyphonic work is different. It would be contradictory to expect closure in such a work, because dialogue by its nature is open, “unfinalizable.” In Bakhtin’s view, Dostoevsky did not solve this creative problem well, with the exception of The Brothers Karamazov. There the novel ends “polyphonically and openly,” inviting the reader “to draw dotted lines to a future, unresolved continuation.”14 The final word, as Bakhtin insists, cannot be spoken. What Bakhtin has to say about polyphony in Dostoevsky and about dialogic truth as an alternative to monologic modes of thought may be interesting in their own right, but the pertinent issue here is what use these observations might be to biblical studies and particularly to the conversation between Bible and theology.15 As a descriptive category, polyphony is a useful model for understanding the nature of the biblical text, one that can avoid some of the distortions of the various attempts to grasp its unity in terms of center, system, and abstract summary. Since polyphonic texts by their nature draw the reader into engagement with the content of their ideas, this way of reading the Bible might also lead to nonmonological forms of biblical theology that could provide a 11  Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 240. 12  Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 249. 13 Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 249. 14  Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 253. 15  A different sort of appropriation of Bakhtin for literary study of the Bible has been proposed by Walter Reed, Dialogues of the Word: The Bible as Literature according to Bakhtin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

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way around the impasse that frequently develops between biblical studies and theology. First, let us consider the descriptive issues. The Bible certainly is not a monologic text. There is no single “author” who coordinates and controls meaning across the whole. One can easily identify a plurality of unmerged voices in the Bible. That is not to say that it is a polyphonic text in the same way that Bakhtin claims The Brothers Karamazov is, however. For Bakhtin, the polyphonic text is an intentional artistic representation of the dialogic nature of an idea. Whatever the Bible is, it is not that. Unless one wants to claim that the Holy Spirit is the polyphonic author of the Bible in the same way that Dostoevsky is the polyphonic author of Karamazov, then one has to admit that Bakhtin’s categories must be used only in a heuristic way. Although there are some things that one can say about the whole Bible in light of Bakhtin’s categories, it is easier to evaluate the potential of Bakhtin by beginning with the largest possible compositional units. These would include the Primary History (Genesis through 2 Kings) and the Secondary History (1–2 Chronicles, plus Ezra-Nehemiah). Beyond that, the compositional units would primarily be the individual biblical books. In what follows, it is possible to make only the sketchiest suggestions for how an approach based on Bakhtin’s dialogism might proceed. There are, however, four different examples which give some idea of the possibilities. The first example is a book that actually comes very close to Bakhtin’s model of a polyphonic text – the book of Job. If one makes the heuristic assumption (as I do) that a single author wrote the book, then it reads very much like a polyphonic text. The author has created a series of free and unmerged voices (the narrator, the three friends, Job, Elihu, God). The book is an intensely ideological and explicitly dialogical work. Ideas which are first presented monologically are soon subjected to a great deal of dialogical refraction as they are answered, echoed, nuanced, parodied, and placed in new relationships with other ideas.16 The way the characters use language in Job is a textbook example of the dialogical characteristic of speech Bakhtin calls “double-voicing.” The friends populate their speech with schematic renderings in the diction, accents, and style of traditional moral and liturgical discourse. The voice of the other can be heard sounding within their own speech in a mutually reinforcing dialogic agreement. Job double-voices words in a different way. For example, he uses the worlds of psalmic discourse, yet overlays them with his own intentions, so that 16  Bakhtin himself identified the book of Job as one of the influences on Dostoevsky’s dialogic style: “The influence on Dostoevsky of Job’s dialogue and several evangelical dialogues is indisputable, while Platonic dialogues simply lay outside the sphere of his interest. In its structure Job’s dialogue is internally endless, for the opposition of the soul to God – whether the opposition be hostile or humble – is conceived in it as something irrevocable and eternal. However, Biblical dialogue will also not lead us to the most fundamental artistic features of Dostoevsky’s dialogue.” See Bakhtin, “Three Fragments from the 1929 Edition Problems of Dostoevsky’s Art,” in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (n. 3 above), 272–82 (280).

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I. Essays in Method

assumptions and ideological commitments which were obscure when those words were voiced monologically suddenly become evident. It is no accident either that the climactic moment of the book is a dialogical one. Everything in the book comes down to Job’s answer, a voice that must affirm, reject, or demur. The book of Job even succeeds better than Dostoevsky in dealing with the artistic problem of devising a polyphonic conclusion. The ending of the book undermines any monologizing tendencies by thwarting all attempts to harmonize the various elements of the book. One is faced with the elusiveness of the divine speeches, the semantic ambiguity of Job’s reply, the disconcerting segue to the prose in which God explicitly repudiates what the friends have said and affirms what Job has said; and yet in the narrative conclusion God acts, and events unfold, just as the friends had promised. The apparent monologic resolution is an illusion, and the conversation is projected beyond the bounds of the book. The shape of the book grants a measure of truth to each of the perspectives and so directs one’s attention to the point of intersection of these unmerged voices. What difference does it make to read Job through a Bakhtinian model? It deals more adequately with the literary shape of the book and the way in which it makes dialogue thematic. It resists the attempt to reduce Job to an assertion, to encapsulate its “meaning” in a statement, which is still the tendency in much scholarship. It suggests a model in which the “truth” about a difficult issue can only be established by a community of unmerged perspectives, not by a single voice, not even that of God. It honors the book’s own insight about the nonabstract character of statements, the intimate relationship between a statement and the person who makes it. The congenial fit between Bakhtin and Job is itself an indication of the fruitfulness of the relationship, but other parts of the Bible are not so self-consciously committed to dialogue. Nevertheless, a Bakhtinian approach offers useful options. The Primary History, Genesis–2 Kings, provides a second example, although it is possible to look at only a fraction of it. Here even the heuristic fiction of a single author is not appropriate. This is not polyphonic writing in Bakhtin’s sense. Many things are known about scribal compositional practices, both inductively from the Bible itself and from empirical evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls and from non-Israelite ancient Near Eastern sources. It was the practice for scribes to incorporate earlier source material into their own compositions in ways that often (but not always) left the voices of those source materials unmerged. Thus, whereas a narrative like the Primary History is not a self-consciously polyphonic text, there is a kind of incipient polyphony in the cultural and intellectual practices which made use of a variety of distinctive and unmerged voices in the production of a complex narrative. Another objection to the applicability of Bakhtin’s approach might be the lack of explicit dialogical engagement among the various voices that one can identify in the Primary History. Instead of the intense dialogical engagement of a

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Dostoevsky novel or even of a Joban dialogue, the Primary History presents one with more of a “side-by-side” presentation of different textual voices, or in some instances a voice that introduces or frames another narrative voice. One does not, however, often have the self-conscious “sidelong glance” at another text, the choosing of words that reflect awareness of the presence of another voice, which Bakhtin observes so frequently in Dostoevsky. Nevertheless, juxtaposition itself can produce a form of dialogism. Bakhtin uses the analogy of a painting in which the tone of a color is affected by the surrounding colors.17 He does not explore the analogy, but one of its implications is that the viewer (or in the case of a text, the reader) may also play a role in bringing into dialogue colors/ voices that are only juxtaposed in the painting/text. It is possible here to make only the briefest suggestion of how a Bakhtinian dialogism might understand the biblical text of the Primary History. The beginning of that narrative is particularly congenial to such an approach, since it presents us with the quite distinctive, largely unmerged voices of the sources customarily identified as P (the Priestly source) and J (the Yahwistic source). The first voice one hears is that of P, a voice dominated by an idea about creation. One important aspect of this idea in its initial exposition has to do with the nature of human beings as “in the image and likeness of God.” That claim is embedded in a distinctive representation of creation as structured and orderly, full of formal symmetries, rhythmic repetitions, and coordinated and responsive wills among created beings. Without knowing more, one senses that such a claim does indeed proceed from an integral and comprehensive point of view and that it is full of yet unexpressed implications, among other things, concerning the nature of human community. As soon as it has articulated itself, however, that voice comes to be answered by another one, an ironic, skeptical voice which is of the opinion that “becoming like God” with respect to moral agency is not only a contingent matter but also deeply ambiguous. The mixture of comedic and tragic elements in J’s narrative also suggests that its great idea proceeds from a comprehensive perspective quite different from that of the voice of P, and one which also harbors implications for a very different understanding of history and community. Each of these voices taken in isolation is monologic. It is possessed of an idea that it is prepared to develop in a persuasive exposition. Juxtaposed in a complex but continuous narrative, however, they become dialogic, each casting the shadow of its own idea on the other, each being illumined by the other. The open and unfinalized question about the nature of human being in relation to the rest of creation has a much greater prominence because of the juxtaposition than it would if only one voice had been present. The lack of an authorial voice coordinating the ideas of the two “characters” allows them to “signify directly” and 17

 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 89–90.

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I. Essays in Method

so invites the reader into a more direct and active engagement with that open question than does a monologic text. Each text stands as a provocation to the other – “so how would you go on from here?” J proceeds with stories of violence, improvisation, creativity, contingency. P’s sense of the order of creation finds its continuation in the order of genealogy. Actually, both P and J use the form of genealogy, but in ways that develop the dialogical exploration of rival ideas. J’s genealogy is the occasion for comment on the consequences of human agency, namely violence and cultural creativity. P’s genealogy is the occasion for an echo of the creation order: the human likeness to God and the divine blessing. As Bakhtin himself insists, dialogue is not just about disagreement. Agreement, too, is dialogical, for agreement is an active process of testing, assimilating, and reaccentuating an utterance.18 The remarkable “duet” of the flood story in Genesis 6–9 is just such an example of dialogical agreement. The two voices tell the same story, in substantial agreement with each other, even adapting elements of each other’s perspective into the telling of the story (J expresses concern about the mixing of orders in Gen 6:1–4 and explicitly mentions the categories of clean and unclean orders; P emphasizes the theme of violence). The telling of the story in each voice, however, carries the unmistakable accents of that voice and the ideological concerns inseparable from it. P’s telling, for instance, has a more mythic and cosmic frame of reference and a sense that the significance of the story has to do with the purification and renewal of the earth. The Primeval History, because it does have two such distinct voices, lends itself well to dialogical reading, although one might object that it does not require Bakhtin to draw attention to the different visions of the world in the two voices of the Primeval History. Such observations are found in every commentary. Where a Bakhtinian approach would differ, however, is in its ability to conceptualize the unity of the text as an event of dialogic truth. The theologian whom I invoked at the beginning of this article might ask the biblical scholar what the Bible’s theology of creation is, looking for a synthesis. The biblical scholar might well reply, “well, for the Priestly writer it is X; and for the Yahwist it is Y.” Both would still be thinking monologically; both would be thinking in terms of something that can be held and articulated by a single consciousness. But a Bakhtinian approach is concerned with what resists both synthesis and disentanglement, that is, the quarrel itself. Or, put another way, dialogism foregrounds the empty space that makes possible the dialogue, the unresolved and unresolvable questions about the nature of human being, the structured or improvisational quality of the world, the extent to which certain destabilizing qualities of human character (desire, jealousy, prurient curiosity, insecurity) are the driving forces in the human propensity for shooting itself in the foot, or the extent to 18

 Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 220.

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which we are creatures of order who find our fulfillment in orderly structures. The truth about human nature, the world, and God cannot be uttered by a single voice but only by a community of unmerged voices, and that is what finds its artistic representation in the form of the Primeval History. By the same token, a Bakhtinian reading makes it very difficult to distance the text. A quarrel has a way of involving bystanders. What has been said about the Primeval History could be extended without difficulty to the whole of the Primary History of Genesis through 2 Kings. As the story goes along, the initial two voices are joined by others. How one identifies these is still an unsettled question in biblical studies, but that issue need not be resolved for present purposes. Although the voices are cooperatively engaged in telling a single, fairly coherent story, they engage in a number of unresolved dialogues about a variety of fundamental issues. The centrality of law to the establishment of community preoccupies both the Priestly writer and the Deuteronomist, although their agreement is richly dialogical in the different visions they articulate. Issues of violence, security, and abuse of power preoccupy the discussions of the proper form of governance from Judges all the way to the end of 2 Kings. The unruliness of human being, an idea initiated by the Yahwist, becomes the subject of a complex and internally unresolved reflection on the part of the Deuteronomist. One of Bakhtin’s observations about Dostoevsky’s novels was that dialogues were not so much a by-product of the plot as the other way around. The plot often seemed to be a product of the working out of the ideas which preoccupy the characters, what Morson and Emerson refer to as “the return of the obsessed.”19 It would be possible, without being too arbitrary, to read the text of the Primary History in terms of the obsessive repetition of certain unresolvable questions which are explored again and again in narrative event and in discourse. In proper polyphonic fashion, too, the Primary History stops abruptly without closure or resolution. One could draw many “dotted lines” to possible continuations of the story based on the perspectives of different voices which have already spoken, none of which is entirely validated by the narrative itself. Indeed, in the subsequent history of Israel and the emergence of Judaism, one can see a number of these possible continuations being appropriated in the unresolved dialogue of what it means to be the people of God. The preceding discussion has stressed those parts of the biblical text that take well to a Bakhtinian analysis both because they are so richly ideological and because they have distinctive voices weaving throughout. It is also possible to consider ways in which dialogism might contribute to the reading of material that is less obviously ideological and in which the presence of multiple unmerged voices is not so clear. The patriarchal narratives which follow the Primeval 19

 Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 251.

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I. Essays in Method

History provide a fairly good example. As noted above, Bakhtin’s work is not concerned only with a particular sort of artistic representation but is based ultimately on a claim about the nature of ideas themselves. Bakhtin’s insights about discourse alert one to look for certain things in a text. An utterance, Bakhtin maintains, is always a reply. It always takes its shape in part in response to what has already been said, “the background of other concrete utterances on the same theme, a background made up of contradictory opinions, points of view and value judgments.”20 An utterance is also shaped by an orientation to the listener in anticipation of what might be said by one who hears it. Thus, no matter how monologic the form of the utterance, one can inquire about the way in which it is implicitly dialogized by its orientation to the already said and the yet to be said. There are, of course, pragmatic constraints on one’s ability to discern these dynamics in texts of antiquity. Nevertheless, attending to such questions opens the text in significant ways. Take, for instance, the patriarchal narratives. The patriarchal narratives are preoccupied in various ways with a persistent idea in the Bakhtinian sense – an idea about identity. An ideology of identity, one that answers the question “Who are we?” is one that most definitely has to make its utterance in the context of other words, under the scrutiny of other perspectives. Such an utterance has to be made in reply to and in anticipation of other people’s claims about who they are, who they say that we are, and so on. It also has to be made in the context of intracommunity claims, objections, questions, and counterclaims about identity. This is not to say that a well-defined polemic exists behind every utterance, but only that every utterance makes its way in a dense thicket of other existing and anticipated words. The claim of identity rooted in divine choice and in dislocation from one land to another, which is promised but not yet to be possessed, has something of the structure of a reply to ideologies of identity based on autochthonous origin and the rival claims that can be made on that basis. Similarly, the concern of the patriarchal narratives to map relations with other peoples in terms of kinship structures (embedded in narratives that establish a certain tone about how one views one’s relatives), are, one has every reason to assume, part of a long-standing interethnic conversation about identity and difference, which was important in negotiating social interactions. Unfortunately, it is only much later, in the Hellenistic period, that one has evidence of how the cultural dialogue that one can sense in the narratives of the patriarchal stories actually gets put into play in explicit interactions with ethnic others. One can see dialogical structure much more clearly in the texts themselves in the various narratives in which an alien character’s perspective is used to negotiate the identity of the hero. Here one encounters something of what Bakhtin 20

 Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 281.

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calls the “sidelong” glance, a verbal gesture by which one takes account of how one is perceived by others. One finds this for instance in the appropriation of the trickster identity in the wife-sister tales, where the righteous outrage of the deceived ruler is set over against the slippery, defensive explanations of the deceiving patriarch. Similarly, the stories of Jacob the supplanter integrate in various ways the perceptions of Jacob by the “Edomite” Esau and the Aramean Laban, even as they provide a justification of Jacob. The most morally complicated of these stories is that of Hagar and Ishmael, a narrative which establishes considerable moral distance from Abraham and Sarah, even as it ultimately sanctions their actions. One does not necessarily have access through these narratives to what other peoples actually thought about Israelites. What they give us is access to the way in which Israelite self-identity found it necessary to use the imagined views of others to get a reading on themselves and to make their claims of selfidentity in some way as a reply to those internalized views. Such an observation, which attention to the dialogical structure of identity makes possible, opens out onto a very difficult issue, unresolved in the biblical text and in many other cultural dialogues, concerning the role of the other in defining the self, and in particular the significance of ethnic otherness in defining one’s community identity. Although the statements about identity in the patriarchal narratives presuppose a dialogical situation across ethnic boundaries, it is an Israelite audience whose “apperceptive background, pregnant with responses and objections,”21 primarily shapes the articulation of the utterance. The complex history of the patriarchal narratives means that they have addressed a succession of audiences, most of which one can only guess at. One can at least talk about the orientation of this utterance toward the listener in terms of the larger narrative in which it is now embedded, the Primary History. That larger narrative takes one to the moment of the loss of the land, the decimation of population, and the reversal of Abraham’s initial journey from Mesopotamia to Canaan. Consequently, the patriarchal narratives about identity and destiny, about divine promise, about endangerment, about attempting to take fulfillment into one’s own hands (with tragic results), and about excruciating testing all attempt to establish themselves upon the conceptual horizon of an audience that stands on the other side of 2 Kings 25. There is, of course, not much that is novel in this particular observation, although Bakhtin may put a slightly different twist to it. What a Bakhtinian approach primarily adds is an awareness of the radically open and unfinalized nature of this claim. This is an idea which has a history in the world. It opens out onto what has been said in response and reply and reaccentuated appropriation, a word “tested, confirmed, verified, or repudiated”22 in its encounters with other utterances. A dialogic approach resists the impulse to 21 22

 Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 281.  Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 89.

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seal off the idea from its history, as so often happens in biblical studies. Part of what belongs to the idea is what is done with it in the multicultural jostle of the Hellenistic world, or the complex and competing words about who may claim Abraham and his promise and identity reflected in Paul’s discussion in Romans 9–11, or indeed the tense and even explosive words that are said as contemporary Jews, Christians, and Muslims negotiate what it means to be children of Abraham. There is one final way in which Bakhtin may be suggestive for the encounter of Bible and theology, specifically in relation to the problem of engaging the whole Bible theologically rather than simply one of its component books. The starting point is Bakhtin’s observation about what Dostoevsky accomplished in his novels. Although Dostoevsky had a superb ability to record and reproduce actual cultural dialogues, what Bakhtin admired was something else. Dostoevsky, he says, brought together ideas and worldviews, which in real life were absolutely estranged and deaf to one another and forced them to quarrel. He extended as it were these distantly separated ideas by means of a dotted line to the point of their dialogic intersection. In doing so he anticipated future dialogic encounters between ideas which in his time were still dissociated.23

Would it be possible for biblical theology to “play Dostoevsky” to the various ideas and worldviews of the biblical text? There are many implicit quarrels in the Bible which need only a little prodding to make them explicit. After all, Michel is correct when he says that Qoheleth’s “God who is in heaven” is not the same as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The chasm which lies between them concerning the activity of God in the course of human affairs is both wide and deep. Rather than identifying the patriarchal stories as the center by which to make Qoheleth peripheral, however, would it be possible to bring these texts and ideas together and force them to quarrel? The biblical theologian’s role would not be to inhabit the voice, as the novelist does, but rather to pick out the assumptions, experiences, entailments, embedded metaphors, and so on, which shape each perspective and to attempt to trace the dotted line to a point at which it intersects the claims of the other. I have reservations about making this suggestion. It goes against the grain of my historicist bias. At the same time, too exclusive a commitment to simply laying out the historical perspective of the text is what makes so many books with titles like “Biblical Perspectives on X” or “What the Bible Says about Y” so disappointing. Bakhtin’s insistence that dialogic ideas are not “no-man’s thoughts” does serve as a warning that the historical and cultural particularity of a voice-idea is essential to what it says. Yet, as the model of “playing Dostoevsky to the Bible” suggests, it would be a project which would self-consciously go beyond what the texts themselves explicitly say to draw out 23

 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 91.

1. Bakhtin, the Bible, and Dialogic Truth

17

the implications of their ideas as they can be revealed in dialogue with other perspectives. With these cautions in mind, it would be fascinating to make the Yahwist, the Deuteronomist, and the author of Daniel quarrel about whether the structure of history is open or closed; or to make the texts of Genesis 2–3, Zophar’s second speech in Job 20, and Daniel 7 discuss the ontological status of evil. When one begins to look at the biblical text in terms of the “symposia” that might be arranged among its voices, the possibilities are endless. Heuristically borrowing the model of Dostoevsky, the task would mean attempting to preserve the polyphony of unmerged voices with full respect for their historical and cultural particularity, but reorchestrating them in a way that creates what Bakhtin calls the “live event, played out at the point of dialogic meeting between two or several consciousnesses.”24 In the course of this essay I have attempted, briefly and in exploratory fashion, to look at some of the ways in which Mikhail Bakhtin’s understanding of dialogic truth and the polyphonic text might be of use in facilitating the conversation between the Bible and theology, Bakhtin’s approach is not a method to be applied so much as it is a perception about the nature of discourse and a provocative claim about what it takes to articulate the “truth” of an idea. Its nonsystematic, nonabstract, nonreductive emphasis on unmerged voices in the text answers the biblical scholar’s concern for respecting the variety and particularity of the Bible. The Bakhtinian emphasis on the idea in all its interactions challenges the tendency of biblical studies to let historical particularity isolate the text from substantive engagement with other discourses. There are, to be sure, both practical and theoretical problems which have not been discussed in detail. A Bakhtinian approach may exaggerate the ideological character of parts of the Bible. Too much may have been lost for one to understand the dialogical context which gives rise to many texts. Bakhtin may underestimate the difficulties involved in an attempt to “[call] back and forth to kindred ideas of other epochs.”25 Nevertheless, a Bakhtinian approach offers a number of possibilities for engaging the biblical texts, none of which can fail to give theology something to work with.

24 25

 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 88.  Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 89.

2. The Book of Job as Polyphonic Text In its structure Job’s dialogue is internally endless, for the opposition of the soul to God – whether the opposition be hostile or humble – is conceived in it as something irrevocable and eternal. Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Art1

Although the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin made only one reference to Job, the book of Job invites a more extended examination in relation to Bakhtin’s reflections on dialogue and polyphony. In this article my attention will be primarily focused on the way in which the concept of the polyphonic text provides a model for conceptualizing the unity of the book of Job, though there will be occasion to look briefly at the dialogic nature of the language employed by the various characters. Finally, even though Bakhtin’s theories illumine important aspects of the book of Job, Job exhibits features that also put in question Bakhtin’s valorization of dialogue.

The Problem of the Unity of the Book of Job Ever since the rise of historical criticism, scholars have wrestled with the problem of the relationship of the prose tale in chs. 1–2 and 42 and the poetic dialogue in the middle of the book. Historical critics noted the striking differences between the parts in their use of language, their representation of the characters, and their theological claims. In consequence, the dominant critical hypothesis has been to assume dual authorship and redaction, that is, to assume that the prose tale was a pre-existing traditional story that the author of the Job poem used as a framework.2 Historical-critical approaches, however, have largely lacked a way of theorizing the nature and unity of the book as a whole. Although the historical-critical position still has many adherents, the rise of 1 Mikhail M. Bakhtin, “Three Fragments from the 1929 Edition Problems of Dostoevsky’s Art,” in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1984), 272–82 (280). 2 For a convenient discussion of this position see Marvin H. Pope, Job: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, 2nd ed., AB 15 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973), xxiii– xxx. Not all historical-critical scholars agreed, however. See, e. g., Edouard Dhorme, A Commentary on the Book of Job, trans. Harold Knight (London: Thomas Nelson, 1967), lxiii–lxv.

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I. Essays in Method

literary, final-form readings of biblical texts, as well as a resurgence of theologically oriented readings, has challenged its assumptions and conclusions. Now it is common to find scholars who claim that the book is best understood as the work of a single author, or at least that it is best read “as if ” it were. For these interpreters the unity of the text and the very possibility of interpreting it as a whole are dependent on the assumption of an author, a single presiding consciousness whose intentionality governs the whole. In this type of literary reading the prose tale and the poetic section are assimilated to one another, as thematic and stylistic similarities are noted, foreshadowing and ironic anticipations are observed, and so on. Norman Habel’s distinguished 1985 commentary on Job gives the classic form of this position: “The text we possess can be interpreted as a literary whole integrating prose and poetic materials into a rich paradoxical totality.”3 Both the historical-critical and these literary approaches take for granted modernist notions of text and authorship. What they disagree about is how much stylistic, thematic, and conceptual difference is compatible with the assumption of single authorship. The limits of such modernist assumptions about authorship and unity have been challenged in the last few years by certain postmodern readings of Job, most notably the commentary of Edwin Good,4 which takes its cue from the work of Roland Barthes, and the programmatic article by David Clines, “Deconstructing the Book of Job,” which sketches a Derridean deconstructive reading.5 For these authors the contradictions of the book, especially as they are embodied in the prose conclusion of ch. 42, are not of interest primarily as problems of authorship. Rather, for Good, such contradictions are a disclosure of the illusion of unitary truth and an invitation to the pleasures of indeterminacy, “slipping playfully out from under the walls and fences that the search for Truth has erected around us.”6 Clines’s deconstructive reading demonstrates how the poetic and prose parts of the book of Job mutually undermine each other’s claims about retribution and how a human being should behave in the face of immense suffering, depriving both positions of their dogmatic certainty, their claim to have “divulged a truth about a transcendental signified that is one and incontrovertible.”7 A Bakhtinian approach to the classic problem of the structure, unity, and meaning of the book of Job has points of contact with all three of the positions.  Norman C. Habel, The Book of Job, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985), 9.  Edwin M. Good, In Turns of Tempest: A Reading of Job with a Translation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990). 5 David J. A. Clines, “Deconstructing the Book of Job,” in What Does Eve Do to Help? And Other Readerly Questions to the Old Testament, JSOTSup 94 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), 106–23. 6 Good, In Turns of Tempest, 181. 7  Clines, “Deconstructing the Book of Job,” 123. 3 4

2. The Book of Job as Polyphonic Text

21

Like the historical critics, it has a keen ear for the social and ideological differences embedded in different ways of using language. Like the modernist literary interpreters, it can envision a single author for the book of Job (although one of a rather different sort). And like the deconstructive critics, it challenges the notion of a unitary meaning (although in a rather different way).

Key Categories in the Work of Bakhtin8 The congeniality between the book of Job and Bakhtin’s work can be observed by noting that the most recurrent feature of Bakhtin’s thought was his preoccupation with dialogue. At the linguistic level Bakhtin argued with structuralists that the basic unit of speech is not the word or the sentence, which are grammatical abstractions, but rather the utterance.9 Since an utterance is always addressed to someone and spoken in anticipation of a reply, it always has a dialogic quality. Moreover, human utterances, at least since Adam, concern a world that is already spoken about, so that our utterances are always replies in implicit dialogue with what has already been said.10 Ideas, too, have a dialogic quality, for “the idea lives … only under conditions of living contact with another and alien thought, a thought embodied in someone else’s voice …”11 At the literary level Bakhtin was concerned with the way in which this dialogic quality of human discourse could be represented and reproduced. For Bakhtin the novel was the most adequate means of representing the dialogic quality of speech, and the novels of Dostoevsky in particular, which solved the problem of how to represent the dialogic nature of the idea. (Notably, it is in Bakhtin’s discussion of influences on Dostoevsky that he makes his one explicit reference to the book of Job.) Bakhtin distinguishes between two modes of truth – monologic truth and dialogic truth. The monologic sense of truth is expressed in terms of the “separate thought” or proposition. Such propositions are abstract in that they are repeatable by others, and their truth (or falsity) is independent of the one who says them. They are thus “no-man’s thoughts.”12 Characteristically, monologic thought is congenial to systematization, which gives it its characteristic unity. Even if a system of thought is actually the product of many minds, it has a  8  This summary is adapted from Carol A. Newsom, “Bakhtin, the Bible, and Dialogic Truth,” JR 76 (1996): 290–306; see ch. 1 of this volume.  9  Mikhail M. Bakhtin, “The Problem of Speech Genre,” in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, ed. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, trans. Vern W. McGee, University of Texas Slavic Series 8 (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1986), 60–102 (67–75). 10 Mikhail M. Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel,” in The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1981), 259–422 (279). 11 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 88 (emphasis in original). 12  Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 93.

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I. Essays in Method

structure that allows it to be comprehended by a single consciousness and spoken by a single voice. A philosophical system is thus monologic, but, according to Bakhtin, so is most literature, since it strives for the construction of a single voice or consciousness through which perceptions are organized. Although novels have many characters who may represent diverse ideologies and speak in different social dialects, nevertheless it is the author’s perspective and ideology that coordinates all the parts of the typical novel and gives the work its thematic unity. Such monologic conceptions of author, text, and truth have governed both the historical-critical study of Job and most literary and theological studies as well. For historical criticism it was precisely the perception that the book of Job as a whole lacked such monologic unity that led to the critical judgment that the prose tale and the Job poem must come from different authors. The book of Job could not be understood as the product of a single consciousness. In response, final-form critics argued that the book of Job, although containing “dissonance and tension,”13 can in fact be understood as the “product of a single mind.”14 Indeed, every commentary that contains a summary of “the message of the book of Job” tacitly assumes that the book embodies monologic truth of the sort Bakhtin identifies. Bakhtin, however, developed his notions of dialogical truth and polyphony in order to challenge the assumption that all truth must be systematic, unitary, and monological. What constitutes a dialogic sense of truth is somewhat more difficult to grasp because it is less familiar, but Bakhtin describes dialogic truth as existing at the point of intersection of several unmerged voices. In contrast to monologic truth, it “requires a plurality of consciousnesses … [which] in principle cannot be fitted within the bounds of a single consciousness …”15 The implicit paradigm is that of the conversation, which requires a minimum of two unmerged voices. Bakhtin insists that the truth expressed in such a dialogic manner does not lack unity. It is, however, the unity of an event as opposed to the unity of a system. For this reason if one attempts to “sum up” a conversation, one changes its character into something like a monologic proposition. But what distinctively characterizes a conversation is the dynamic way in which different perspectives engage one another – and that cannot be rendered by a single voice. A correlate of this claim is that, in contrast to the abstract nature of monologic truth, dialogic truth has a distinctly embodied, personal quality: “the ultimate indivisible unit is not the assertion, but rather the integral point of view, the integral position of a personality.”16 In a conversation the participants are not  J. Gerald Janzen, Job, IBC (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985), 23.  Francis I. Andersen, Job: An Introduction and Commentary (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1976), 55. 15  Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 81. 16  Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 93. 13 14

2. The Book of Job as Polyphonic Text

23

the propositions but the persons who utter them. Thus there are no “no-man’s thoughts,” for who says them is of the essence. For Bakhtin, what was persuasive about this conception was that it provided a more adequate account of the way in which ideas actually live in the world, as they seek to displace or enlist other ideas, are qualified by other ideas or develop new possibilities in the encounter with alien ideas. For that reason, the truth about the idea cannot be comprehended by a single consciousness. An entailment of this understanding of the idea is that such dialogic truth is always open, or as Bakhtin’s term has been translated, “unfinalizable.” What Bakhtin admired about Dostoevsky was his ability to represent the fully dialogic image of an idea in the aesthetic medium of the novel. In Crime and Punishment, for example, Bakhtin notes that the central character Raskolnikov is preoccupied with a great idea. Before the action of the novel Raskolnikov has written a newspaper article (a monologic form) in which he puts forth the theoretical bases of the idea. Dostoevsky, however, never simply presents the content of that article to the reader. Instead, another character, Porphiry, gives a provocatively exaggerated account of it in his conversation with Raskolnikov. As Raskolnikov replies to him, he himself brings up possible objections to his position, thus internalizing a slightly different dialogue about his own ideas. In subsequent chapters other characters from different life-positions also engage Raskolnikov’s idea, taking it up or repudiating it, disclosing new aspects of it, and other possibilities inherent in it. In Bakhtin’s words, Raskolnikov’s idea … loses its monologic, abstractly theoretical finalized quality, a quality sufficient to a single consciousness [as] it acquires the contradictory complexity and living multifacedness of an idea-force, being born, living and acting in the great dialogue of the epoch and calling back and forth to kindred ideas of other epochs. Before us rises up an image of the idea.17

This image of the idea is itself the “unified truth that requires a plurality of consciousnesses”18 to represent it, for it could not adequately be summarized monologically. Most critics would argue that Bakhtin was wrong in suggesting that Dostoevsky in fact achieved a truly polyphonic style. Nevertheless, as a theoretical ideal, Bakhtin’s model is significant. Polyphonic writing makes an important change in the position of the author. In a polyphonic text the author gives up the sort of control exercised in monologic works and instead attempts to create several different consciousnesses which are independent of the author’s and interact with genuine freedom. The author does not give up a presence in the work, but the author’s perspective relinquishes its privileged position and becomes simply one among others. Since a polyphonic work attempts to represent 17 18

 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 89 (emphasis in original).  Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 81.

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I. Essays in Method

the dialogical nature of an idea, its plot is derivative from the idea and shaped by it. Correspondingly, the reader’s role also changes. Instead of being asked merely to follow and analyze plot and character, the reader is more like a bystander suddenly caught up in a quarrel. Perhaps the most difficult aesthetic problem for polyphonic writing is the construction of an appropriate ending. For a polyphonic work to end with definitive closure would be utterly inappropriate, since the essence of dialogic truth is its open, unfinalizable character. Even Bakhtin admitted that with the exception of The Brothers Karamazov, which presents itself as a fragment, Dostoevsky did not solve this creative problem in the construction of his novels.

Literary Genres and Polyphonic Authorship Is it possible to employ Bakhtin’s categories of dialogic truth and the polyphonic text to understand the relationship between the unusual structure of Job and the way the book works? To state the obvious, the book of Job is not a nineteenthcentury novel, and there are many respects in which the features of Dostoevsky’s novels that so intrigued Bakhtin have no parallel in a work like Job. Nevertheless, Bakhtin’s insights can be used suggestively. It is also stating the obvious to say that we do not and probably cannot know how the book of Job actually came into being. The various critical theories about its composition are best understood as heuristic models, invitations to read the book “as if ” it were composed in such and such a way. Each hypothesis structures a particular way of reading the book that directs attention to features minimized by other modes of reading. With this heuristic function understood, I wish to suggest that one should read the book of Job as if it were written by a polyphonic author, such as Bakhtin considered Dostoevsky to be. Let us suppose there was a Judean author, active perhaps in the fifth century BCE, who was intrigued by two things. One was an issue in religious ideology: the nature of piety and its relationship to suffering and to good fortune. The other thing that intrigued the author was the variety of ways in which people in his culture talked about piety, suffering, and good fortune, and yet generally did not realize how these ways of talking might relate to one another or even contradict one another. My hypothetical author was thus faced with the conceptual and artistic problem of how these different ways of talking about the same thing might be mutually engaged. More particularly, this author was familiar with two quite different genres by means of which his culture regularly expressed its thoughts about piety, suffering, and good fortune. One was the didactic tale, like the stories people told of Job, in which Job’s righteousness was demonstrated to be wholly independent of good or bad fortune. The other genre was the wisdom dialogue, in which a

2. The Book of Job as Polyphonic Text

25

sufferer and his friend debated the significance of apparently unjustified suffering and the proper stance one should take. My author also had an intuitive grasp of genre uncannily like that which would be expressed by Mikhail Bakhtin and Pavel Medvedev more than two millennia later. He understood that genre is not merely a matter of forms and structures. Instead, genres are modes of “seeing and conceptualizing reality.”19 One perceives reality by means of genres that shape what one sees in the very process of making it discernible. In this sense genres are themselves like voiceideas, perspectives often rooted in distinct sociocultural contexts. What was intriguing to my Judaean author was precisely the sharply contrasting ways in which the two genres, the didactic tale and the wisdom dialogue, managed to conceptualize the same situation. Though I would argue that the contrast between the didactic tale and the wisdom dialogue forms the primary structure for the book, the author certainly makes use of additional genres and voice-ideas in constructing this polyphonic text. The speculative wisdom poem in ch. 28 is generally recognized as a distinctive voice that serves to critique the preceding dialogue and set up the ensuing alternative dialogue between Job and God (chs. 29–31 and 38:1–42:6). Whether this pair of speeches is constructed in light of a generic template is difficult to say. Bruce Zuckerman has suggested they be read in relation to ancient Near Eastern texts of appeal to a god/divine response,20 but it is not clear that these texts reflect a sufficiently conventionalized type of speech to be recognizable as a genre.21 Even if one should not recognize a generic structure here, the author has constructed two distinctively contrasting voice-ideas, which confront each other with sharply different worlds of moral discourse. Finally, there is the voice of Elihu, whom I, along with many others, take to be the work of someone other than the author of the rest of the book.22 It might seem odd, given my suggestion that one read the book as a polyphonic text, that I do not argue for Elihu as an original part of the composition. But certain features of his language mark him out as a reader of the rest of the text rather than a simple character. Unlike the other characters, he quotes repeatedly from the speeches of Job and anticipates the divine speeches in a way that suggests he is correcting its emphases. This way of envisioning Elihu, however, as an angry 19  Pavel N. Medvedev, The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics, trans. Albert J. Wehrle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 134. 20  Bruce Zuckerman, Job the Silent: A Study in Historical Counterpoint (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 97. 21  See Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), 136–37, 147–48. In my opinion attempts to characterize the speeches individually with respect to genre have also not been persuasive. 22  For a classic statement of the arguments see S. R. Driver and G. B. Gray, The Book of Job, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1921), xl–xlviii.

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reader who has boldly written himself into the book, is to see him as responding precisely as one should to an idea-driven, polyphonic text. As Bakhtin vividly put it, such writing “destroys footlights.”23 The reader, sensing himself addressed directly by the voices in the text, is drawn to reply. In the scope of this article it is not possible to examine the way in which each of the genres and voice-ideas sees and conceptualizes reality. For the present, I will examine the genres of the prose tale and the wisdom dialogue and consider the effect of the introduction of the divine voice into the composition.

The Didactic Tale I have deliberately refrained from calling the prose tale of Job a “folktale.” For one thing, “folktale” is not a genre designation but a broader category that refers to a variety of story types containing traditional characters and situations. To speak of folktale genres one would need to speak more specifically of trickster tales or hero stories or the like. Although poetic genres dealing with the exemplary sufferer are known, no evidence exists for a corresponding prose genre. Moreover, what most scholars seem to have in mind when they refer to the prose story of Job as a folktale is an impression about the style of the story and perhaps a claim about its social location. These features include the story’s linguistic simplicity, the naive and anthropomorphic representation of God, the extensive use of repetition, the non-digressive style, the setting of the story long ago and far away, the exaggeration of character and plot, the use of round and symbolic numbers, and so on. Such elements do have something in common with folk style.24 Yet, when compared with other Hebrew literature exhibiting folkloristic traits, these features in Job appear dramatically exaggerated. The Job tale may be alluding to certain conventions of traditional storytelling, but the apparent artfulness of its perfecting of these traits makes it problematic to see the prose tale simply as an unselfconscious instance of folk storytelling. As Clines suggested, the prose tale is not so much naive as pseudo-naive.25 It is still not sufficient, however, to think of the prose tale simply as an artful imitation of folk style. What is left unaccounted for in that context is its strong didacticism. In the most sustained study of the genre of the prose tale Hans-Peter Müller suggests that it be seen as a didactic tale, specifically, a “weisheitliche Lehrerzählung” (“sapiential didactic tale”).26 Such stories, Müller  Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 237.  Susan Niditch, Folklore and the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Augsburg-Fortress, 1993), 9. 25  David J. A. Clines, “False Naivety in the Prologue to Job,” HAR 9 (1985): 127–36. 26  Hans-Peter Müller, “Die weisheitliche Lehrerzählung im Alten Testament und seiner Umwelt,” WO 9 (1977–78): 77–98. In addition to the prose tale of Job, Müller analyzes the stories of Joseph, Tobit, Esther, and Daniel. 23 24

2. The Book of Job as Polyphonic Text

27

claims, are character-based stories in which the testing and reaffirming of the ethical quality of the protagonist not only reconfirms the hero’s character but also the moral coherency of the world. Although Müller’s analysis accounts well for the plot of the prose tale and its patterns of characterization, it does not fully address the prose tale’s distinctively schematic style. This very feature, however, is prominent in the type of prophetic example story one finds in the narrative known as “Nathan’s parable.”27 Although the scale of the two narratives is quite different, the stylistic similarities are striking, with their exaggeratedly simple narrative style, schematic characters arranged in contrasting pairs, verbal repetition, hyperbolic action, and even the same syntactical structure for the opening line of the narrative (“a man there was in the land of Uz”; “two men there were in a certain city”). Moreover, both attempt to make a serious moral point. Although there is certainly an affinity between the didactic tale as a genre and the prophetic example story, the didactic tale serves more generally for entertainment and edification rather than as a diagnosis of a particular situation. Thus, generically speaking, the Job tale appears to be best understood as a didactic tale that evokes certain aspects of the prophetic example story and of folktale style. Perhaps because didactic literature has been unpalatable to the modern taste, it has not been studied in much depth. The one major theoretical analysis is Susan Suleiman’s Authoritarian Fiction: The Ideological Novel as a Literary Genre.28 Although her focus is primarily on a type of realist novel, she situates her discussion within the broader context of didactic narratives, including parables, fables, and example stories. Didactic narratives are above all deeply rhetorical, for they are instruments of persuasion that attempt to form readers directly by recruiting them to certain beliefs, and so shaping attitudes and behaviors. Though such narratives posit a congruency between the world of the text and the world of the reader, they implicitly assume that the world is a confusing place, where it is difficult to perceive truth. In the story, however, truth is made accessible, and the saving knowledge of that truth can be taken back into the world as attitude and action. The genius of the didactic tale is thus the way in which it grasps reality in terms of clear moral principles and distinctions. Though didactic narratives may serve either socially conservative or progressive purposes, they have a necessarily authoritarian relationship to meaning. Within the world of didactic narrative, truth is neither plural nor elusive nor contestable, but is unitary and unambiguous. The didactic tale is thus an intensely monologic genre, in which the author’s supreme control of even contrary characters is instrumental to the 27  In B. Bat. 15b the anonymous authority who argues that Job is not a historical figure but a mashal explicitly compares the story of Job with Nathan’s parable. 28  Susan Rubin Suleiman, Authoritarian Fictions: The Ideological Novel as a Literary Genre (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).

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story’s ability to articulate its “ready-made” truth.29 Both the appeal of didactic narrative and the resistance to it are rooted in the desires that it addresses and offers to satisfy. Suleiman states the issue succinctly: “it appeals to the need for certainty, stability, and unity that is one of the elements of the human psyche.”30 In psychoanalytic terms, such narratives “infantilize” the reader. In exchange for taking up the subject position of a young child, however, the text offers a kind of “parental assurance” about truth, meaning, and value. This function helps account for the style of didactic stories, which tend to be simple and accessible, qualities that are not incompatible, however, with artistic sophistication.

The Wisdom Dialogue The wisdom dialogue could not be more different as a genre. In the wisdom dialogue there is no narrator to establish a scene or evaluate characters and their speech; nor is there any sort of plot to demonstrate the greater adequacy of one or another position. One simply has voice answering voice, as two radically opposed experiences of the world alternate in a measured and regular fashion throughout the work. Although there are only a few clear examples of the wisdom dialogue (or literary dialogue, as some prefer), Karel van der Toorn has established that these texts share a distinctive pattern with respect to form, content, mood, and social context.31 First, the form is a free-standing dialogue in which a single question is examined by two or more speakers representing contrasting perspectives. Second, the topic is that of the problem of inexplicable suffering or, more broadly, the meaningfulness of life. Third, the sophisticated style suggests a setting among the intellectual elite, perhaps professional “academics.” Finally, the genre is characterized by an exploratory stance, which van der Toorn calls the “interrogative” as opposed to the “affirmative” mood, and which Giorgio Buccellati calls the stance of critical inquisitiveness.32 29  One may read a work against its generic conventions, of course, but subversive reading strategies should not be confused with the generic conventions themselves. It is a separate question, of course, whether an author is deliberately subverting a genre. In my opinion the prose tale, taken by itself, is a “straight” didactic tale. It is the juxtaposition with a quite different genre that has encouraged subversive readings of the prose tale ever since the ancient rabbis. 30  Suleiman, Authoritarian Fiction, 10. 31  Karel van der Toorn, “The Ancient Near Eastern Literary Dialogue as a Vehicle of Critical Reflection,” in Dispute Poems and Dialogues in the Ancient and Medieval Near East, ed. G. J. Reinink and Herman L. J. Vanstiphout, OLA 42 (Leuven: Peeters, 1991), 59–75. The corpus established by van der Toorn includes the Egyptian “Dialogue of a Man with His Ba,” also known as the Lebensmüde, the Babylonian Theodicy, and the poetic section of Job. Closely related are the Mesopotamian “Dialogue of Pessimism” and the Egyptian “Complaints of KhaKheper-Re-Seneb.” 32  Van der Toorn, “Ancient Near Eastern Literary Dialogue,” 69; Giorgio Buccellati, “Wisdom and Not: The Case of Mesopotamia,” JAOS 101 (1981): 35–47 (43).

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Bakhtin himself was intrigued by philosophical dialogues of classical antiquity as generic precursors of the polyphonic novel, although he recognized that such philosophical dialogues tended not to be fully polyphonic themselves. What such philosophical dialogues do well, however, is to represent “the dialogic nature of truth, and the dialogic nature of human thinking about truth.”33 In contrast to monologic discourse which presents itself as in possession of “ready-made truth,” the philosophical dialogue shows the way in which “truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively searching for truth.”34 Bakhtin, of course, was thinking primarily of the Socratic dialogues, which differ in many respects from the more highly schematized wisdom dialogues of the Babylonian Theodicy and Job. Nevertheless, something approaching the ability to represent the dialogic sense of truth is characteristic also of the ancient Near Eastern wisdom dialogues. Buccellati notes the way in which the lack of a narrative framework in the Mesopotamian wisdom dialogues highlights the features characteristic of dialogue, thus: The alternation of different personalities is projected unto a plane all by itself, and its impact is thereby strengthened … [T]he dialog, pure and simple, emphasizes the unfolding of a thought process viewed dynamically in its becoming.35

In contrast to the disputation literature (e. g., the Sumerian composition The Date Palm and the Tamarisk), which is a static representation of two positions, something happens in the encounter of ideas in the wisdom dialogues. One might argue with Buccellati about the extent of “true contrastive growth” in the Babylonian Theodicy,36 but there can be no doubt that in the case of Job, dialogue itself is the vehicle for the emergence of possibilities of thought that were literally unimaginable at the beginning of the conversation. The forensic metaphor, by which Job begins to reframe the nature of his relationship with God, emerges unexpectedly in the course of the dialogue. In fact, to understand how it emerges one has to attend to another of Bakhtin’s observations about discourse, specifically, the phenomenon of double voicing. One of Bakhtin’s most provocative observations is that it is never possible to speak simply and directly about any topic. Instead, “between the word and its object, between the word and the speaking subject, there exists an elastic environment of other, alien words about the same object, the same theme … [The speaker’s word] merges with some, recoils from others, intersects with yet a third group …”37 In Bakhtin’s view this is the condition of all utterances. One Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 110. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 110 (emphasis in original). 35  Buccellati, “Wisdom and Not,” 39. 36 Buccellati, “Wisdom and Not,” 43. 37  Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel,” 276. 33 Bakhtin, 34 Bakhtin,

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may, however, choose to speak in such a way that the listener can clearly hear the voices of others sounding within one’s own speech. This phenomenon he called “double voicing,” because within such speech one hears the original semantic intention of the earlier speech as well as the present speaker’s separate semantic intention. This technique of double voicing permeates the speech of both Job and his friends, although they typically use different forms of it – the friends making use of what Bakhtin called “stylization,” and Job favoring parody. Stylization is a way of incorporating an earlier discourse which is considered correct and appropriate to the speaker’s present task. The semantic intention of the earlier speech and of the present speech are harmonious. For example, Eliphaz cites a doxology in Job 5:9–16 in order to add the weight of its authority to his own words. The relationship between them is one of ideological agreement, but as Bakhtin points out, agreement as well as disagreement is dialogical. For the friends, the use of such stylized double voicing is not merely an ornament, nor even simply a rhetorical strategy, but has the status of an ideological claim. Much of what they urge Job to see is the essential role that traditional speech plays, and should play, in shaping an individual’s experience of reality. The words of tradition are the very basis for their own ability to speak. Given that stance, it is inevitable that Job’s speech would be permeated by the type of double voicing known as parody, since parody “introduces into the [earlier] discourse a semantic intention that is directly opposed to the original one.”38 Its stance toward the earlier discourse is critical or subversive. The best known example, of course, is Job’s parody of Psalm 8 in Job 7:17–19, although the phenomenon is present in most of Job’s speeches. Significantly, Job’s parody of Eliphaz’s words about the comparative “righteousness” of God and humans (4:17; 9:2–4) is what first brings into the conversation the legal language that will play such an important role in Job’s further thought. The dynamics of this process involve not just Job’s parody of Eliphaz’s words, however, but his exploration and exploitation of the “internal dialogization” of the word ‫צדק‬, that is, the complex layers of meaning it has acquired through its participation in several intersecting cultural discourses. Although the wisdom dialogues are able to represent the dynamic life of an idea “born between people,” one does not (pace Buccellati) have anything approaching a proto-dialectic. Bakhtin was always at pains to distinguish dialogue from dialectic, for dialectic is ultimately monologic in its structure. Indeed, Bakhtin criticized Plato for emphasizing a dialectical movement and thus progressively reducing the genuinely dialogic elements of the Socratic dialogues, making them merely pedagogical instruments designed to teach a “ready-made” truth. In sharp contrast to the shape of Plato’s Socratic dialogues, the ancient 38

 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 193.

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Near Eastern dialogues tend to lack any linear progression of argument and do not come to a particular point of resolution, either through the defeat of one of the positions or through the development of a new perspective that transcends and reconciles the positions. This very feature has provoked considerable disappointment on the part of modem critics.39 Zuckerman, however, recognizes the distinctiveness of the ancient taste when he describes the organization of the dialogues as “essentially reiterative,” giving a pleasure akin to “listening to a musical piece of theme and variations…a cyclic progression that ultimately turns back on itself.”40 But if wisdom dialogues do not end with resolution, how do they end? With only three clear examples one must be cautious, but there appears to be an attempt to acknowledge and preserve the claims on truth of both positions. In the Babylonian Theodicy each of the participants, without abandoning his own commitments, nevertheless acknowledges something of the truth or necessity of the other’s position. The friend does not retract his view concerning the just nature of what is “lasting” in the structure of reality, yet he acknowledges the surd of an ineradicable and divinely created perversity in human nature. The sufferer does not repudiate the reality of the contradiction between his behavior and his situation, yet he entrusts himself to the mercy of the gods and the shepherdship of Shamash, god of justice. In the Egyptian “Dialogue of a Man with his Ba” there is a similar “compromise” of positions.41 The issue of the ending of the Joban dialogue is problematic, of course, since the dialogue is juxtaposed to other genres (the wisdom poem of ch. 28, the appeal in chs. 29–31, and so on) for the formation of a multigeneric work. Yet it is noteworthy that one of the persistent critical problems of the Joban dialogue is the way in which Job’s speeches in the third cycle appear to incorporate elements of the friends’ speeches, specifically versions of the “fate of the wicked” topos (24:18–25; 27:13–23) and hymnic celebration of the power of God (26:5– 14), whereas the friends grow increasingly silent (a full speech by Eliphaz in ch. 22, an abbreviated one by Bildad in ch. 25, and none from Zophar). Whatever is going on in the third cycle of Job is more complex than what happens in the Babylonian Theodicy, but to attribute it to scribal error is to evade rather than to acknowledge the issues. In the “Dialogue of a Man with his Ba” and in the Babylonian Theodicy the exhaustion of the particular dialogue, reflected in the “compromise” with which the texts conclude, is a reflex of the inexhaustibility of the dialogic situation itself. Though a thorough exegetical examination of what may be going on in the third cycle of Job must await a longer study, it seems likely that the Job poet is playing with the conventions for ending wisdom  Van der Toorn, “Ancient Near Eastern Literary Dialogue,” 69–70.  Zuckerman, Job the Silent, 249 n. 279. 41  Van der Toorn, “Ancient Near Eastern Literary Dialogue,” 67. 39 40

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dialogues. In appropriating elements of the friends’ topoi Job is doing a version of what is expected of the sufferer within this genre; yet the way in which he makes this appropriation threatens to renew the argument rather than to shape an ending for it. At the same time, and much more ominously, the withdrawal of the friends into silence signals not an appropriate ending but a collapse of dialogue. Together these two anti-movements invite the introduction of other genres into the work: the critique of the dialogue voiced by the wisdom poem (ch. 28), and the alternative search for a resolution attempted by the appeal/response (chs. 29–31; 38:1–42:6).

Making Genres Quarrel The author of Job thus had at his disposal two distinctive genres, both concerned with character, suffering, piety, and the moral coherency of the world. One, the didactic tale, is an aggressively monologic genre which is confident that it does “possess a ready-made truth”; the other, the wisdom dialogue, is a genre with considerable resources for exploring antithetical perspectives and privileging argument itself over resolution. My Judean author, so I presume, was intrigued with the problem of how one might make the two conceptualizations of reality embodied in these two genres engage one another. How can one “make them quarrel” in Bakhtin’s terms, and what comes of it if they do? How might one “dialogize” the closed structure of each genre by means of the other? The artistic problems are formidable. It is a fairly simple matter to put characters in dialogue with one another; but how does one produce a conversation between genres and the perspectives they represent? Perhaps there are many ways, but the author of the book of Job uses the simple technique of interruption and resumption. The didactic tale is permitted to begin, developing its narrative, establishing its stylistic traits, and articulating its central idea, that the highest form of piety is to “fear God for naught.” Abruptly, in what we know as ch. 3, the didactic tale is interrupted by means of the wisdom dialogue, which begins, as such dialogues tend to do, with the bitter complaint of a righteous sufferer. The wisdom dialogue is permitted to run its course, and, indeed, is succeeded by a second dialogue, one between Job and God. I will return later to consider the significance of this second dialogue. But for the moment I am simply concerned with the macrostructure of the book. The two poetic dialogues are both allowed to complete themselves. But as they reach their own end, the voice of the didactic tale resumes the story, carrying on as though it had never been interrupted. In part the “interrupted” design of the book works because the didactic tale is, by its generic conventions, a highly formulaic narrative. As surely as a story that begins “Once upon a time …” must end with “… and they all lived happily ever after,” so, once the didactic tale has

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established its trajectory in chs. 1–2, readers know how it is supposed to develop, and how it is supposed to end. We know that the three friends who come to comfort Job are supposed to provide the third and decisive test for Job, that he is supposed to say a third remarkable word of unconditional acceptance, and that the story is supposed to conclude with the restoration and reward of the hero. The book thus invites us to “hear” two things at once, measuring the difference between what we know is “supposed” to be said and what is literally being said in the interrupting dialogue. The recognizable generic differences between didactic tale and wisdom dialogue induce us to hear the two voices separately, but the positioning of the didactic tale at the beginning and end induces us at the same time to try to hear the work as a narrative unity. The juxtaposition of genres in and of itself gives the book a basic polyphonic structure. Each genre represents an integral, irreducible perspective. There is no super-authorial mediation to harmonize the two voices in the service of a single complex truth; there is only their unresolvable, unfinalizable scrutiny of each other. Since these are genres rather than characters that are set in dialogue, their mutual scrutiny is implicit rather than explicit. But it can be teased out by the reader. The monologic and self-sufficient voice of the didactic tale is quarreled with by the very fact of being interrupted, for its own language is crafted to be largely impervious to heterogeneous accents and alien voices. Just how much is “unspeakable” within its discourse is revealed in Job’s harrowing curse in ch. 3. Moreover, the great idea of the didactic tale concerning piety, which seems selfevident within its own monologic discourse is, in the dialogue, openly rejected by Job and reframed as a quite different religious relationship by the friends. But the act of interrupting has consequences for the wisdom dialogue as well. The classic form of the wisdom dialogue, as we know it in the Babylonian Theodicy, has no framing narrative. In the book of Job, however, the didactic tale speaks first, changing the conditions of speech for the genre of the wisdom dialogue. In interrupting, the genre of the wisdom dialogue must now situate itself in a new discursive context; it must articulate its own words in the shadow of what has already been said. What is the effect? For one thing the presence of the didactic tale deprives the wisdom dialogue of its anonymous character. Once the didactic tale frames the dialogue, then the contrasting voices of the dialogue are no longer anonymous voices, as they are in the Babylonian Theodicy, but persons: Job, Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar. In the prose tale Job is a subject of narrative, and in the dialogue he becomes a speaking subject. No longer simply a pole in an argument, he becomes a character, a character capable of saying surprising things. To be sure the passion and daringness of Job in the dialogue are elements that an author might develop from within the generic possibilities of the wisdom dialogue alone. But the juxtaposition of the didactic tale, with its static character-type of the undeviatingly accepting pious protagonist, and the wisdom dialogue, with its different but nearly equally static character-type of the

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complaining skeptic, produces something that is more than the sum of its parts. It produces a character who has made a decisive break with a previous worldview and a previous identity within that worldview. Thus, I would argue that the juxtaposition and dialogization of genres that the Judean author planned for the book of Job is in significant measure what makes possible a character who is far more free and far more dangerous than the conventional sufferer in an ordinary wisdom dialogue. Finally, the reader’s relation to the characters is changed. Whereas the reader of the independent wisdom dialogue shares with the characters an ignorance of the actual causes of the suffering under discussion, in the polyphonic text of Job the reader knows the unique circumstances of Job’s suffering. The introduction of a second dialogue (chs. 29–31; 38:1–42:6) following the wisdom dialogue, however, raises additional questions. In contrast to the Babylonian Theodicy, in which the gods are spoken about but are never part of the dialogic process, in Job the introduction of this second dialogue means that God does not remain beyond the frame but becomes a participant, contesting what has been said and offering another construction of reality. But can the dialogic process, as envisioned in the book of Job, sustain the divine voice? Or does its presence repress all possibility of dialogue? Is the divine voice finally the author’s voice, privileging its perspective over all others, and so making the book a monologic utterance? This is how the book is most commonly read, and there are many strong arguments for seeing in the divine voice one that is intended to supersede the other voices, articulating a truth that finalizes the conversation. Not only is this voice God’s, but it is also given the climactic place in the dialogues as the last extended speech. Moreover, in contrast to Job’s anticipation that he would have a genuinely open dialogue with God (Job 13:20–27; 23:3– 7), there is the reality of Job’s inability to “fill my mouth with arguments” once God appears. The form of God’s speech, also, with the dominance of rhetorical questions, seems to mock at the possibility of dialogue, for rhetorical questions do not seek a genuinely dialogical response. One might object that the divine speeches are oblique and elusive, teasing and ambiguous; but ambiguity and elusiveness, although they may contribute to richness of meaning, are not at all the same thing as a dialogic mode of truth. It is, of course, true that this climactic moment of encounter between God and Job does require an answer from Job. It is he who has the last word. But Job’s response in ch. 40 is initially silence – an inability or refusal to speak. When God insists on a reply (40:7), Job responds in 42:1–6 not only with an acknowledgment of God’s power but also a recapitulation of the essence of their exchange. Job cites God’s words, but not as a subtle double-voicing and without a trace of parody. Rather, God’s quoted words stand out as authoritative speech. To God’s claim that he has “obscured counsel without understanding” Job acknowledges that he has spoken without insight of things that he “did not understand.” Job

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recalls further the command of God to hear and respond to God’s questions, and in his final utterance Job either retracts his words or abases himself before God. Thus Job’s words seem utterly undialogical, for they are not even clearly words of assent but simply words that bow the knee before the one “who can do all things.” Considered in these terms, the poetic section of the book, despite all its contending voices, looks rather monologic and leads one to reassess the apparent openness of the dialogue. Is there not after all a development formed by the progressive disqualification of voices shown to be inadequate? The friends’ speeches, although eloquent, pale in comparison with the stunning energy and subversive power of Job’s speeches, and the conventionalities of the friends’ perspectives are exposed by Job’s critical and parodying utterance. Yet Job’s speeches, however remarkable when compared with the friends’, cannot match the terrible sublimity of God’s speech from the whirlwind. The foundations of Job’s critique, rooted in the mistaken assumption of retributive justice and developed by means of an inappropriately anthropomorphic legal metaphor, are exposed as deficient. The reader is thus apparently encouraged to embrace the vision of the divine speeches with their non-anthropocentric representation of the world in which the chaotic, although contained within the reliable structures of creation, is nevertheless an irreducible element in existence. Despite its extraordinary ability to represent certain aspects of the dialogic nature of ideas, the wisdom dialogue appears to be incapable of resisting the finalization produced by incorporating God as a character within the dialogue. It cannot find a way to validate a continuing claim on truth by the voices of Job and the friends once God has spoken, and so their speeches seem to be positioned as provisional perspectives only, whose function is completed in setting up the divine speeches. They are no longer autonomous, and within the design of the poetic section they do not “mean directly” nor are they able to scrutinize and contest God’s speech. One could resist this conclusion somewhat by observing that Job’s final words, though apparently words of retraction and self-abasement, are in fact words with a “loophole.” Their semantic and syntactic ambiguity allow them to be construed as words with a “sidelong glance” at other possible but not explicitly articulated replies.42 Although Bakhtin does not say exactly how he understands Job’s reply, he must have taken it in some similar way, for his comment, quoted at the head of this article, asserts that “the opposition of the soul to God – whether the opposition be hostile or humble – is conceived in [Job’s dialogue] 42  Dale Patrick, “The Translation of Job 42.6,” VT 26 (1976): 369–71; William Morrow, “Consolation, Rejection, and Repentance in Job 42:6,” JBL 105 (1986): 211–25. Bakhtin describes a loophole as “the retention for oneself of the possibility of altering the ultimate, final meaning of one’s words … This potential other meaning, that is, the loophole left open, accompanies the word like a shadow” (Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 233).

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as something irrevocable and eternal.” One needs to push Bakhtin’s argument, however, for it touches on an issue that he was consistently reluctant to address, namely, the effects of power on dialogue. Here, it would seem, dialogue is forced underground by power. What it cannot say outright it hints at through possible double or triple meanings. Ultimately, however, it is not the character Job but the polyphonic author who manages – also constrained by power – to find a way to reassert the continuing claim on truth by voices that seem to have been silenced by God. For God’s speech to be dialogically engaged one needs to have a voice that is alien with respect to the poetic dialogue and so escapes being organized by its point of reference. In the book of Job this alien voice is provided by the resumption of the didactic tale. By means of the ironic juxtaposing of these two earnest attempts to secure closure (the divine speech and the happily-ever-after ending of the didactic tale), the author ensures that no closure can take place. Indeed, the author of the book of Job plays a trick on both genres, for it is the resolutely monologic voice of the didactic tale, the voice of the single, ready-made idea, which is forced, quite contrary to its own intrinsic intentions, to revive the contending voices that the divine speech has just quelled. When God in the prose conclusion (42:7) declares that Job has spoken correctly, the unfinished business of Job’s objections comes back into view. And even though God rebukes the friends (42:8–9), the narrative conclusion in 42:10–17 seems a wink of the polyphonic author behind God’s back, validating the friends’ claims in the wisdom dialogue, since the story ends just as the friends said it would: as soon as Job engaged in self-scrutiny and turned toward God, God would restore him to well-being, and he would go to the grave in ripe old age. By means of this ironic and self-contradictory conclusion of unmerged divine and narrative voices, the author has framed the perfect ending for a polyphonic work, simultaneously gesturing in the direction of closure while signaling that the issues raised are far from settled. But the achievement of the book as a whole is to depict the image of an idea concerning the nature of piety. Although articulated first by the distinctive voice of the prose tale, that idea loses its monologic quality with the eruption of Job’s curse and the ensuing dialogue. In that dialogue, rival perspectives concerning what is required of a person of piety not only contest one another directly but enlist the aid of associated ideas, disclosing a complex entailment among a variety of ideas (about human nature, God, violence and justice, the order of the world, the nature of good and evil, and so forth), a network of implications and engagements among ideas one could never have guessed at from the bare monologic statement in ch. 1. Read as a polyphonic work, the purpose of the book of Job is not to advance a particular view: whether that be of the prose tale, or that of the friends, or that of Job, or even that of God. Rather, its purpose is to demonstrate that the idea of piety in all its “contradictory complexity” cannot in principle “be fitted within the bounds of a

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37

single consciousness.” The truth about piety can only be grasped at the point of intersection of unmerged perspectives. The proper response to such a book, as the author of Elihu intuitively grasped, is to inject oneself into the conversation, but with the awareness that the final word can never be spoken. At least this is what one would like to say, in good Bakhtinian fashion. But however much Bakhtin’s notions of dialogic truth and polyphony may illumine the structure of the book, the play of genres, and the dialogic construction of the image of an idea, Bakhtin’s valorization of dialogue cannot explain and indeed threatens to obscure other important dimensions of the book. One might say that the book of Job serves not only to illustrate Bakhtin’s concepts but also to reveal their limits. It is not simply a matter of the silences that a Bakhtinian approach cannot address.43 More telling is the inability of such a perspective to address the very speech situation upon which the whole story is founded. The narrative tension set up by the prose tale, which provides the occasion for all the talk that follows, emerges from an irresistible curiosity to know something that utterly eludes dialogue. For Job simply to be asked if he “fears God freely” would not only raise the specter of the lie, but also, and more significantly, the limits of the most honest dialogue to evoke truths that may be hidden from one’s own consciousness. The knowledge that is sought can be satisfied only by listening to a type of coerced speech, to words forced out by pain. Nor are these suffering-induced words ever reclaimed for dialogue, for though overheard and commented upon (42:7b), the one who spoke them is not addressed directly (42:8–9), except perhaps in disingenuousness (42:7a). Though this aspect of the book eludes Bakhtin’s approach as he himself developed it, it invites extensions of his work in directions that will allow the various kinds of speech situations embedded in the book of Job to be understood in their relation to one another.44

43 Cf. André Neher’s discussion of Job in The Exile of the Word: From the Silence of the Bible to the Silence of Auschwitz, trans. D. Maisel (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1981). 44  See, provisionally, Aaron Fogel, Coercion to Speak: Conrad’s Poetics of Dialogue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985); also Adam Zachary Newton, Narrative Ethics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).

3. Woman and the Discourse of Patriarchal Wisdom: A Study of Proverbs 1–9 A casual reader asked to describe Proverbs 1–9 might reply that it was the words of a father talking to his son, mostly about women. While that might be a naive reading, its very naiveté brings into focus some of the features of Proverbs 1–9 that have not always been sufficiently attended to in scholarly discussions. First, these chapters are virtually all talk. They are, to use a currently fashionable word, discourse. But even more importantly, discourse, the dialogic, social dimension of language, becomes a central topic of these chapters. Second, the cast of characters is severely limited, and the privileged axis of communication is that from father to son. The reader’s locus of self-identification, that is, the subject position established for the reader, is that of the son, the character who never speaks. Third, discourse embodies and generates a symbolic world. Consequently, it is significant that though woman is not the sole topic of the chapters, talk about women and women’s speech occupies an astonishing amount of the text – men, preoccupied with speech, talking about women and women’s speech. What role, then, does sexual difference play in this symbolic world both in making men’s speech possible but at the same time rendering it problematic?

Proverbs 1:2–9 Although it is widely recognized that the father/son address of Proverbs 1–9 is not to be taken literally, very little attention is generally given to the significance of the fictional level established by these terms. It is a rather minimal fiction, but nonetheless important. The father, who speaks, is the “I” of the discourse. The son, addressed in the vocative and with imperative verbs, is the “you.” Though other types of speech are occasionally embedded within it, the fiction never moves beyond this repeated moment of address. The linguist Émile Benveniste has drawn attention to the peculiar nature of the pronouns “I” and “you.” What is unique to them becomes evident when one asks what they refer to. They don’t refer either to a concept (the way that nouns like “tree” do), nor do they refer to unique individuals (the way that proper names do). Instead, “I” and “you” are linguistic blanks or empty signs filled only when individual speakers and addressees appropriate them in specific instances of discourse. Their oddity among linguistic signs is related to “the problem they serve to solve, which is none other

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than that of intersubjective communication.”1 In fact Benveniste claims that it is through language that our subjectivity, our ability to constitute ourselves as subjects, is made possible. “Consciousness of self is only possible if it is experienced by contrast. I use I only when I am speaking to someone who will be a you in my address. It is this condition of dialogue that is constitutive of person.”2 The striking prominence of the pronouns “I” and “you” and the repeated use of vocative and imperative address in Proverbs 1–9 are clear indicators of what is at stake in these chapters: the formation of the subjectivity of the reader.3 Because of the social nature of discourse in which subjectivity is established, it can never be ideologically neutral. There is no Cartesian self that can be established apart from all else, but always a self in relation. The emergence of subjectivity is always in the context of ideology. In a well-known analogy the Marxist theoretician Louis Althusser speaks of the way in which ideology “recruits” subjects, “hails” them as a policeman might: “Hey, you there!” The individual, recognizing himself or herself as the one addressed, turns around in response to the hailing. And with that gesture he or she becomes a subject, takes up a particular subject position in a particular ideology. Althusser uses the term interpellation for this process.4 The actual hailing by ideology is seldom as direct as one finds in the instruction literature of Proverbs 1–9. But here the intent is explicit and self-conscious. The reader of this text is called upon to take up the subject position of son in relation to an authoritative father. Now that would be a rather banal statement if this were a piece of children’s literature, used exclusively in a school setting and then outgrown. But clearly it is not. The intended readers identified by the text include not only the naive youth (v. 4) but also the mature sage (v. 5). All readers of this text, whatever their actual identities, are called upon to take up the subject position of son in relation to an authoritative father. Through its imitation of a familiar scene of interpellation the text continually reinterpellates its readers. The familiar scene, a father advising his son, is important. Proverbs 1–9 takes a moment from the history of the patriarchal family and gives it a privileged status as a continuing social norm.5 The choice of the patriarchal family as the symbol of the authority structure of wisdom has important implications. Since it is in the family that one’s subjectivity is first formed, the malleability called for 1  Émile Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics, trans. Mary Elizabeth Meek, Miami Linguistics Series 8 (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami, 1971), 219. 2  Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics, 224–25. 3  Because of the masculine subject position offered to the reader, I will refer to the reader as “he.” 4 Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy, trans. Ben Brewster (London: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 174–75. 5  I say “family” because the mother’s authority as well as the father’s is invoked (1:8; 4:3; 6:20). In no way is she seen as constituting an independent voice, however, but serves as a confirmer of what is presented as essentially patriarchal authority.

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in the text is made to seem innocent, natural, inevitable. In addition the symbol of the family causes the discourse to appear to stand outside of specific class interests. This is not a landed aristocrat speaking, not a senior bureaucrat, not a member of the urban middle class or a disenfranchised intellectual, but “your father.” Families are not ideologically innocent places, but because everyone has one, they give the appearance of being so. The specific social dimensions of Proverbs 1–9 are also cloaked by the preference for abstract terms, such as “righteousness, justice, and equity” (1:3). The pragmatic meaning of these terms is seldom clear from the text. And yet it is precisely in the struggle to control the meaning of such terms that one finds evidence of ideological conflict between social groups.6 Occasionally, one can catch a hint as to the social location of wisdom discourse, but the type of speech used in Proverbs 1–9 largely serves to deflect that inquiry. What is important for Proverbs 1–9 is the issue of interpellation and the need for continual reinterpellation.

Proverbs 1:10–19 The first speech that is addressed to the son is precisely about how to resist interpellation by a rival discourse (“My son, if sinners try to persuade you, do not consent,” v. 10). Because the discourse of the “sinners” is presented by the father, their alleged speech is really completely controlled by the father. In fact the sinners’ speech is crowded with negative markers: they are made to describe their own victims as “innocent” (v. 12a). Their metaphor for themselves is that of death itself, Sheol swallowing up life (v. 12b). They act gratuitously, “for the hell of it” (Heb. ḥinnām, v. 11). Assuming, with many commentators, that v. 16 is a late marginal comment drawn from Isa 59:7, the father follows an interesting rhetorical strategy in soliciting the son’s agreement to his point of view. He first reiterates his admonition (v. 15) and then poses a challenge: “in vain is the net spread in full view of the bird” (v. 17). The wise son, the reader who can “deconstruct” the discourse of the sinners, won’t be trapped in their net of words. Since the self-incriminating elements of the hypothetical speech are hard to miss, the reader enjoys a moment of self-congratulation, a moment that bonds the reader closer to the father. The father then confirms the reader’s judgment in v. 18, making explicit the self-destructive quality of the sinners. But what else is going on here? Who and what is the son really being warned against? It seems scarcely credible that the advice should be taken at face value 6  Both the Soviet Union and the United States used the term “human rights.” Only when the term is precisely defined does one become aware of the assumptions of totalitarian socialism implicit in the use of this term by Soviet speakers and bourgeois liberalism and capitalism by American speakers.

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as career counseling. It is much more likely that this depiction of brigands is a metaphor for something else. Indeed, v. 19 confirms it. The summary statement of the address explains that “such are the ways of all who cut a big profit.” Here at least is one clue to the social location of the text, though we still do not know precisely what economic activity is identified by the pejorative phrase. A closer look at the sinners’ speech offers a different avenue of approach. The structure of authority embodied there is strikingly different from that of the overall discourse of Proverbs 1–9. The persuaders are not fathers hierarchically related to the son, but peers. Their speech uses the cohortative rather than the direct imperative. Featured pronouns are not the counterposed “I-you” pair but the often repeated “us,” “we.” The egalitarian subtext is made explicit in v. 14b, “we will all share a common purse.” The rival discourse against which the father argues can be made visible in its general outlines: it is one with a horizontal rather than a vertical structure of authority, based not on patriarchal family affiliation but on common enterprise, and one that offers young men immediate access to wealth rather than the deferred wealth of inheritance. What lurks under the surface is the generational chasm, the division of power between older and younger men in patriarchal society. The genuine appeal to younger men of the set of values just described is cleverly defused by associating them with what is clearly outside the law.

Proverbs 1:20–33 Here and in ch. 8 the father’s discourse is interrupted by speeches of personified wisdom. These speeches serve to buttress what the father has said, however, and belong to the same cultural voice that speaks through the father. Although the pronouns and inflected verb forms identify wisdom as female, the significance of her gender emerges more clearly in the later part of Proverbs 1–9. Here I want to focus on the relative positions of speaker and addressee established in the speech. That Ḥokmot (personified wisdom) is an extension of the cultural voice that speaks through the father can be seen in the complementary authoritative position she occupies. Where the father is the authoritative voice in the family, Ḥokmot is the corresponding public voice (“in the streets,” “in the public squares,” v. 20) who occupies the places that are physically symbolic of collective authority and power (“at the entrance of the gates,” v. 21). She also has the power to save from disaster (vv. 26–33). Although she addresses a plurality of listeners, the frequent second-person forms identify the reader as directly addressed. Perhaps the most interesting feature of the text is that it posits a past to the relationship between Ḥokmot and the reader. Her first words are “How long will you …” (v. 22). The reader’s subjectivity is furnished not only with a past but with a guilty one. As one who is “naive,” “cocky,” and

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“complacent” (v. 22), he has refused advice and correction. The reader discovers himself in the text as always, already at fault. And the fault is recalcitrance before legitimate authority. The two paired speeches of ch. 1 have attempted to construct a subject who is extremely submissive: perennially a son, willing to forgo the attractions of nonhierarchical order, and yet despite it all, somehow never quite submissive enough. But one may sense, lurking behind this nearly supine persona, a shadow figure of significant power. A world made of discourse, a symbolic order, an ideology exists only by consensus. If it cannot recruit new adherents and if those whom it reinterpellates do not recognize themselves in its hailing, it ceases to have reality. Ḥokmot may threaten the recalcitrant with destruction, but the inverse is also true: enough recalcitrance and Ḥokmot ceases to exist.7

Proverbs 2 The problematic aspects of discourse already present in ch. 1 are given a sharper focus in the carefully constructed composition of Proverbs 2. One can summarize the argument as follows: Accept my words and internalize them with the help of God (vv. 1–11), and they will protect you from the man who speaks perversely (vv. 12–15) and from the strange, smooth-talking woman (vv. 16–20). The world is presented as a place of competing and conflicting discourses: the words of the father, the words of the crooked man, the words of the strange woman. One is hailed from many directions, offered subject positions in discourses that construe the world very differently. Far from valuing the plurality of discourses that intersect a culture, Proverbs 1–9 seeks the hegemony of its own discourse. If one has internalized a discourse, one is insulated from, or as the text more polemically puts it, protected from other voices. But how is this to occur? How is one’s subjectivity formed in that definitive way? Verses 1–11 make the astute observation that allegiance precedes understanding, not the other way around. We should not be surprised that these wisdom discourses do not closely define the pragmatic content of wisdom and contrast it with the competing discourses, seeking to convince the hearer of its superiority. Rather it repeatedly asks first for allegiance (“accept my words,” “treasure up my strictures,” “incline your ear,” “extend your heart,” vv. 1–2). Nor is the allegiance passive. It must involve active participation (“call out,” “seek,” vv. 3–4). Only then does understanding follow (“then you will understand fear of Yahweh,” v. 5; “then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, 7  James L. Crenshaw has drawn attention to the problematic nature of authority in ancient instruction literature. See James L. Crenshaw, “Sapiential Rhetoric and Its Warrants,” in Congress Volume: Vienna, 1980, ed. John A. Emerton, VTSup 32 (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 16.

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every good path,” v. 9), for at that point habituation to the assumptions, values, and cultural practices of the group will make them seem one’s own (“for wisdom will come into your heart and your soul will delight in knowledge,” v. 10). As Althusser pungently paraphrases Pascal, “Kneel down, move your lips in prayer, and you will believe.”8 For this reason it isn’t surprising that the metaphors of “way,” “path,” and “track,” which occur throughout Proverbs 1–9, appear in this chapter with particular density (twelve occurrences in vv. 8–20). “Way” or “path” may be a hackneyed metaphor for customary behavior, but its connotations are worth some reflection. A path is a social product, made by many feet over a period of time. But its purely physical record of customary social behavior is often transposed in terms of a teleology and a will (“Where does that path lead?”). A path does not, in fact, exclude movement in any direction. It only makes its own direction the easiest, most natural, most logical way of proceeding. As each individual “freely” chooses to walk the path, that act incises the path more deeply. Finally, a path orders the world in a particular way as it establishes relations between place and place, relations that are not necessarily the shortest distance between two points. It is understandable why, in a chapter that construes the world as a place of conflicting discourses, the metaphor of the path figures so prominently. Customary social behavior, represented by the image of the path, is a type of nonverbal discourse. Manners, dress, food, orientation to time, divisions of labor, and so forth, are all elements of a social group’s discourse, alongside its explicit words. Words and ways are related, as the parallelism of v. 12 suggests. But against whom is the father arguing so strenuously? Who are the man and woman whose speech the son is warned about? Of the man all we learn is that he is associated with inversion of values (he delights in what is bad, v. 14a; his words are all “turned about,” v. 12) and with perversion of values (“twisted,” “crooked,” v. 15), the opposite of the quality of “uprightness” and “perfection” associated with the father’s advice (v. 21). His function is definitional. He simply serves to signify whatever stands over against “us,” the group of the father’s discourse. It is with the symbol of the strange woman, however, that the text discovers its primary image of otherness. For a patriarchal discourse in which the self is defined as male, woman qua woman is the quintessential other. Much ink has been spilled in attempting to clarify why she is identified as a “strange” or “foreign” woman, whether the terms refer to an ethnic, legal, or social status. But it may not be an either/or question. Whether the terms were originally ambiguous or have only become so after the passage of years, any and all of the possible interpretations underscore the quality of otherness that she already possesses as 8

 Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy, 168.

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woman in male discourse. As a foreigner, she would recall the strong Israelite cultural preference for endogamy over exogamy, the choice of same over other. If, as seems to be clearly the case in ch. 7, she is an adulteress, then she may be called strange/foreign because she is legally “off limits.”9 Or, if 2:17 is meant to suggest that she has left her husband (“one who has abandoned the companion of her youth”), then she is strange/foreign because she is an anomaly who no longer has a place in the system of socially regulated sexuality and now belongs on the side of the chaotic. In any case her otherness serves to identify the boundary and what must be repressed or excluded. Woman is a much more serviceable symbol for this definitionally important “other” than was the man of vv. 12–15 because she can be posited as a figure of ambivalence, both frightening and attractive. Her words are described as “smooth,” a term that suggests both pleasure and danger (= slippery). Once experienced, the ambivalence has to be tilted in the proper direction, and so she is identified with the ultimate boundary, death. A textual problem in v. 18 provides a clue to the psychological basis for the equation. Judging from the parallelism and the meaning of the verb, one expects the text to read “her path sinks down to death, her tracks are toward the shades.” As it stands, it reads “her house sinks down to death … .” If the MT is a textual corruption, it is in truth a Freudian slip, for “house” is a common symbolic representation of woman or womb.10 The ambivalence is the attraction and fear of a return to the womb. The strange woman is the devouring woman, for “none who go in to her will return” (v. 19). With this text one can begin to see the significance of sexual difference for the existence of patriarchal discourse. Invoking the strange woman as a threat provides a basis for solidarity between father and son. Her difference makes available a shared sameness for father and son that bridges the generational divisions of patriarchy that were visible in Proverbs 1. But more importantly the woman and her discourse exist as a persistent irritant located, to borrow Julia Kristeva’s phrase, at the margin.11 In the following chapters she continues to preoccupy the father’s advice. He can never quite be finished with her. The competition she  9  Mieke Bal observes that “there is a verb in Dutch for ‘to commit adultery,’ which is literally ‘to go strange,’ to go with a stranger (vreemd gaan).” Mieke Bal, Lethal Love: Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories, Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987), 43. 10  We can be certain that the error is not a meaningless one since the image of the house recurs in chs. 5, 7, and 9. For a discussion of the house/female body symbolism in the Samson story see Mieke Bal, Lethal Love, 49–58. 11 See Julia Kristeva, “Women’s Time,” in The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril Moi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 187–213; Julia Kristeva, “A New Type of Intellectual: The Dissident,” in The Kristeva Reader, 292–300. Ironically, Roland Barthes entitled an early review of Kristeva’s work “L’Etrangere,” the strange or foreign woman, referring to her Bulgarian nationality and the unsettling quality of her work. See Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (London: Methuen, 1985), 150.

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represents is the cause of the father’s speech, the incentive for its very existence. The strange woman figures the irreducible difference that prevents any discourse from establishing itself unproblematically. That is to say, she is not simply the speech of actual women, but she is the symbolic figure of a variety of marginal discourses. She is the contradiction, the dissonance that forces a dominant discourse to articulate itself and at the same time threatens to subvert it. Those dissonances can no more be eliminated than can sexual difference itself. And their existence is a source of slow but profound change in symbolic orders.

Proverbs 3 In giving discourse a privileged position and in representing the world as a place of conflicting discourses, Proverbs 1–9 appears to acknowledge the socially constructed nature of reality and the problematic status of truth. Such reflections were part of the broader wisdom tradition, as the saying in Prov 18:17 illustrates: “The one who argues his case first seems right, until someone else is brought forward and cross-examines him.” The implications are disturbing for the representatives of authority. What can ensure that the content given to the terms “righteousness, justice, and equity” or “wisdom, knowledge, and discernment” can be stabilized according to the values of the tradents of Proverbs 1–9 and not captured by rival discourses? The text has attempted to buttress its authoritative position by claiming the symbol of the patriarchal father and by discrediting the other voices as alien and criminal. Thus the signifiers point to the father and to the law. Though powerful, that is not sufficient. What is needed is an anchorage beyond the contestable social world, in short, a transcendental signified to which all terms point and from which they derive their stable meanings.12 In a provisional way the parallel between the speech of the father and the speech of Ḥokmot in ch. 1 provided this anchorage. But that strategy is not fully developed until ch. 8. In ch. 3 we encounter the first sustained effort to provide the transcendental signified that stops the threatening slippage of meaning. The first indication is the initial call for hearing: “My son, don’t forget my teaching (Heb. tôrātî) and let your heart guard my commands” (Heb. miṣwôtay). Various paired terms refer to the father’s instruction throughout the chapters. But this particular pair has resonances of God’s tôrāh and miṣwôt to Israel and so subtly positions the father in association with divine authority. The benefits of long life and peace that are promised (v. 2) also suggest that the father’s teaching and commands derive from transcendent power. In v. 4 it is made explicit. The father’s advice will be validated both in the social and in the transcendent 12 The illusory nature of the transcendental signified is argued by Jacques Derrida in Writing and Difference, trans. by Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1978), 278–80.

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realms (“before the eyes of God and humankind”). For several further verses the father actually speaks on behalf of God, urging the son to obedience to God and promising rewards. The appeal parallels in structure and motivation the father’s call for obedience to himself in vv. 1–4. It comes as no surprise that in the MT the passage concludes v. 12 with the metaphor of God as a father reproving his son. It is not enough to ground the authority structure of Proverbs 1–9 in the patriarchal father. The authority of the transcendent Father of fathers is needed. Having claimed access to the transcendent realm through the alignment of the father and God, the chapter next turns to secure the stability of its comprehensive terms of value, “wisdom,” and “understanding” (vv. 13–21). A variety of linked images carries the argument. First wisdom is compared with riches. Then it is personified as a woman holding riches and honor in one hand, long life in the other. The tableau may well be an evocation of the Egyptian goddess Maat, but the meaning of the image does not require knowledge of the allusion. A figure who holds life in her hand belongs to the transcendent. References to her pleasant ways and safe paths recall the paths of the strange woman of ch. 2 and establish this figure as her opposite. As death belongs to one, life belongs to the other. The chain of association completes itself with another mythic image, wisdom as the tree of life. Such a phrase sets up an intertextual play with Genesis 2–3. Here the two trees of Genesis are condensed into one – knowledge that gives life. In the Genesis narrative the quest for knowledge was marked as rebellion and resulted in exclusion from the source of life. Here it is submissive obedience that is correlated with wisdom and with life. Here it is submissive obedience that is correlated with wisdom and with life. In Genesis the desire “to be like God” with respect to wisdom (“knowing good and evil”) was a mark of hybris. Here the one who finds wisdom (v. 13) is blessed precisely because he is like God, having found that by which God created the world (vv. 19–20). Wisdom is not one discourse among others but the stuff of reality itself. The values of the father are built into the structures of the world.

Proverbs 4 In Prov 4:3–4 the father speaks and says “I was a son to my father; a precious only son to my mother. And he taught me and said to me … .” In part this is a strengthening of the claim to authority, as fathers quote earlier fathers. But there is another function. I made the point earlier that the subject position of the reader in Proverbs 1–9 is that of the son, established through the fiction of direct address by the father. But the situation is somewhat more complex than that. There is always a measure of identification between father and son, so that a son understands and thinks “when I grow up, that’s what I will be.” The fatherstatus already exists as potentiality in the son. That identification is, of course,

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vital in negotiating the intergenerational divide of patriarchal society. For the young male deferral is not endless. So, in Proverbs 1–9, where the reader is continually reinterpellated in the subject position of the son, ch. 4 speaks of the transformation of sons into fathers in the chain of tradition. The male subject is to a certain degree apportioned between father and son. One is always a subordinate son to the collective authority of the symbolic order. But its transcending father-status is what underwrites the father-status of those who occupy positions of authority within it. Each of the following poetic sections of Proverbs 4 is built up by a playful use of one or more metaphoric conceits that employ various cultural codes. Despite the apparent heterogeneity, the various sections all relate to the familiar issues of subjectivity, discourse, and allegiance. In vv. 5–9 what appears to be an economic code (“acquire wisdom,” “with all of your acquisition, acquire understanding”) is combined with an erotic code (“don’t abandon,” “love,” “embrace”). What seems to connect the two is the notion of the relationship as a transaction between the son and wisdom, an exchange of value. Verses 10–19 develop a code of movement: way, lead, walk, paths, steps, run, stumble, go, come, road, go straight, avoid, cross over, etc. At least some of the possible connotations have been discussed above in connection with ch. 2. The most curious of the codes is the rewriting of the self as a series of body parts in vv. 20–27: ear, eyes, heart, flesh, mouth, lips, eyes, pupils, feet. Intertwined with this inventory of the body are terms from a code of physical orientation (incline, extend, twist away, turn aside, twistedness, crookedness, make distant, straight, in front, straight before, swerve to right or left). The values associated with straightness and twistedness were made explicit in ch. 2. What is of more interest is the subdivision of the body. There are two other similar poems in 6:12–15 and 6:16–19. In the first of these we are introduced to the man “who goes about with a twisted mouth.” What is wrong with his speech is made evident in v. 13. He allows other body parts to act, improperly, as speaking mouths, setting up commentaries or other discourses that invert the words of the mouth. “He winks with his eyes, communicates with his feet, instructs with his fingers.” No wonder his speech is duplicitous. In the numerical poem that follows there is a catalog of the crucial body parts and their characteristic misuses: arrogant eyes, a lying tongue, hands shedding innocent blood, a scheming heart, feet that speed to whatever is bad. The self is not presented as a simple entity. Or perhaps it is better to say that various parts of the body can represent the whole by synecdoche. The individual’s subjectivity can be seen as invested in each of these parts, any of which has the power to work his ruin. But it seems odd that one part of the body, that part that males traditionally have considered to be the privileged representation of their subjectivity, is not mentioned. Although the phallus is never referred to explicitly, the problems of that important but unruly member are taken up in chs. 5–6.

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Proverbs 5–6 If the image of the woman has figured importantly in the first chapters of Proverbs 1–9, it utterly dominates the second half of the text. The most vivid and extensive representations are those of the strange woman. As in ch. 2, her sexuality is repeatedly associated with speech. She has a “smooth tongue” (6:24), “smooth words” (7:5), “smooth lips” (7:21). In the most explicitly erotic description it is said that “her lips drip with honey” and the inside of her mouth is “smoother than oil” (5:3). That she figures as the father’s chief rival for the allegiance of the son would be clear simply from the length and intensity of the attack on her, but in 7:21 it is even said that she misleads the naive youth with her “teaching,” a term used of the father’s instruction as well (4:2). The fear that the father has of her is revealed in one of the images used to describe her deceptiveness. In patriarchal thinking it is woman’s lack of the phallus and the privilege that the male associates with its possession that grounds woman’s inferiority. In the father’s phantasm the danger is that behind that reassuring smoothness, that visible absence of the phallus, there lurks something “sharp as a two-edged sword” (5:4). The fantasy is that she not only possesses a hidden super potency but that it is a castrating potency as well. She threatens to reverse the body symbolism on which the father’s authority is established. The simple opposition between male and female is fundamental to the symbolic order of patriarchy, but it does not exhaust the role of woman in the symbolic economy. The triple association of sexuality, speech, and authority needs to be followed a bit further. The association of authority with speech is clear. In Proverbs 1–9 the father speaks, the son is spoken to. The father’s control of speech is further indicated in that the speech of the sinners and of the strange woman does not reach the son directly but only as filtered through the father’s speech. And in general, the silencing of women in patriarchal society is both symbol and result of the inferior status based on their perceived sexual “lack.” On the other hand, sexuality is by its nature dialogical, as the term “intercourse” well suggests. Culturally, it is closely associated with speech: courting speech, seductive speech, love songs, whispered sweet nothings. The point at which the horizontal speech of the woman’s sexuality comes into conflict with the vertical speech of the father’s authority is precisely at the point of generational transition, when the boy becomes a man. In her provocative study of the Samson story Mieke Bal makes reference to the moment of sexual maturity as the point at which “the trinity of the nuclear family is sacrificed to the alienating relationship with the other, the fourth person.”13 The sexual maturation of the son is a critical moment not only in psychoanalytic terms but also a critical moment for the social and symbolic order. It is the moment at which the patriarchal family 13

 Bal, Lethal Love, 57.

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will be successfully replicated or threatened. The system of approved and disapproved sexual relations forms a language through which men define their relations with one another. Proverbs 5:7–14, 15–20; and 6:20–35 set up three parallel situations: the woman outside the group/the proper wife/the wife of another man inside the group.14 It is interesting to see how the benefits and consequences of each are described. Sexual relations with the first woman (“approaching the door to her house,” 5:8) are described in terms of depletion: “… lest you give to others your wealth and your years to the merciless; lest strangers batten on your strength and your labors in the house of a foreigner. You will be sorry afterwards when your flesh and body are consumed” (5:9–11).15 Although there is an obvious element of psycho-sexual fantasy here, it is overwritten by social references. The others/the merciless/the strangers/the foreigner who are the devourers here are all masculine nouns and imply the community of males to whom the woman belongs. Exogamy is deplorable because it results in the alienation of wealth. The communal context is further indicated by the concluding lament: “I was quickly brought to ruin in the midst of the congregation and assembly.” Going outside deprives a man of standing in his own group as well. By contrast appropriate sexual relations have a centripetal direction. In 5:15– 20 sexual connections are described under the figure of water contained and dispersed. “Drink water from your own cistern and running water from your own well. [Don’t] let your springs overflow outside, streams of water in the public squares. Let them be for yourself alone, not for strangers with you.” Because there is a considerable subjective investment in one’s own proper wife (“your cistern, your well, for yourself alone”), the selfhood of individual males and the solidarity of the community is severely threatened by adultery. The “foreign” woman of 6:20–35 is not ethnically foreign but off limits because she is “the wife of one’s neighbor.” As in the first example, the code of property crops up, here in a comparison between theft and adultery (vv. 30–31). The point of comparison is not between the rights of the male to the woman or property but to the social rather than the merely private dimensions of the offense. The criminal is in each case the object of contempt or scorn, though much more so in the case of the adulterer.16 Not only will the wronged husband refuse an offered settlement; the entire community is implacable in its judgment of “his reproach which can 14 Not all commentators understand 5:7–14 to refer to social or ethnic outsiders. Some argue that adultery is at issue. The language is probably intentionally ambiguous and polyvalent. But the contrast between “others, strangers, foreigner” in 5:9–10 and “your neighbor” in 6:29 (where adultery is explicitly at issue) suggests that the connotations of social or ethnic alienness are to the fore in 5:7–14. There is also a sharp contrast in the relation between improper sex and money in 5:9–10 and 6:35, implying different social situations. 15  Reading wĕniḥamtā in v. 11. Cf. LXX. The Greek text also suggests that “your wealth” in v. 9 may be an error for “your life,” which would fit the parallelism better. 16  I read v. 30 as an implied question.

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never be effaced” (v. 33). The code of behavior between men and women is raised up in these passages as an important code of signifying behavior among groups of men. Metaphorically, in the social fabric of patriarchy woman is the essential thread that joins the pieces. But equally she indicates the seams where the fabric is subject to tears. Although much of the advice offered in Proverbs 5–6 about relations with women appears to be strictly pragmatic, one often has a sense of a curious slippage between the literal and the symbolic. When one understands from Prov. 5:15–20 that a good marriage will protect a man from foreign women and “thy neighbor’s wife,” one also remembers the themes of protection associated with personified wisdom in 4:6–9. When the ruined son recollects in Prov. 5:12–13 how he “hated discipline,” “despised criticism,” and never listened to his teachers, his regrets seem to refer to more than just the lesson on sex. Is the strange woman not a problem in sexual mores after all, but an allegory of folly? The final pairing in ch. 9 of the allegorical women Ḥokmot and Kesilut (Wisdom and Folly) would seem to point in that direction. But it would be a mistake to pose the pragmatic and the allegorical as either/or alternatives. When symbolic thinking is carried forward by means of concrete objects or persons, statements and actions pertaining to these concrete entities can never be merely pragmatic on the one hand or simply metaphorical on the other. All customary praxis involving women is nonverbal symbolic construction. All use of the feminine in symbolic representation implicates behavior. So long as a society’s discourse is carried on by males alone, that fact is scarcely noticeable. But as women enter into public discourse as speaking subjects, the habit of patriarchy to think symbolically by means of woman is thrown into confusion. Woman cannot occupy the same symbolic relation to herself that she does to man. With that change the long, slow crisis of the symbolic order is at hand.

Proverbs 7–9 Something of the both/and, pragmatic/symbolic totality of woman in the discourse of Proverbs 1–9 can be seen in the two great paired poems of Proverbs 7 and 8. Although very different in style and content, these poems of the strange woman and of personified wisdom form a diptych. Chapter 8, with its strong mythic overtones, is written largely in the symbolic register; ch. 7 largely in the realistic. But in the framing of ch. 7 there are certain elements that establish its relationship to ch. 8 and disclose its mythic dimensions. In the father’s account of the meeting between the vapid youth and the strange woman the words are ominous and negative. The woman is associated with many of the wisdom tradition’s bad values, yet appears to be an ordinary, mundane character. The setting is twilight, so that the woman arrives with the onset of “night and darkness”

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(v. 9). She is associated with concealment and with the appearance of what is illicit (v. 10). Where wisdom tradition values quietness, she is “noisy” (v. 11), and her movement is characterized as restless, vagrant, and flitting. When she is still, she is “lying in wait” (v. 12), a predatory quality that is made explicit in vv. 22– 23. Her smooth speech “turns” the young man (v. 21). The symbolic register is more explicitly evoked in the introductory and concluding remarks of the father. Calling wisdom “sister” and “kinswoman” (v. 4) introduces explicit personification. Those words also set up a relation of equivalence between wisdom and “the wife of your youth” from ch. 5, instilling actual marriage with the protective values of wisdom. Similarly, the father’s concluding words in vv. 24–27 expose the monstrous, mythic dimension of the strange woman. She is not just a woman who has seduced a simple-minded young man. She is a predator who has slain multitudes. Indeed, her vagina is the gate of Sheol. Her womb, death itself. Chapter 8 is radically different in style. Where the strange woman’s speech is passed through the father’s admonitory speech, wisdom speaks autonomously. Although there are traces of the erotic associated with her (“love” in v. 17, perhaps the reference to “delighting” in vv. 30–31, and the allusion to the man waiting and watching at her gate in v. 34), her speech and self-presentation are thoroughly unlike the strange woman’s. Her movement is public, direct, and authoritative. Unlike the smooth, seductive, but deceptive speech of the strange woman, wisdom’s is like that of the father: “straight,” “right,” and “true,” not “twisted,” or “crooked.” Her voice, of course, is the cultural voice that speaks through the father, the voice that grounds the social fathers: the kings, rulers, princes, nobles of vv. 15–16. Hers is the voice that mediates between the transcendent father and his earthly sons. But how can it be, when so much energy has been invested in disclosing the terrifying dangerousness of woman as represented in the strange woman, that Proverbs 1–9 turns to woman also for its ideal representation of the central term of value, wisdom itself? In fact it is not surprising at all. Thinking in terms of sexual difference, of woman as man’s other, difference serves to articulate both what is inferior and what is superior. Toril Moi develops Julia Kristeva’s understanding of women’s position of marginality in patriarchal thinking in a way that precisely explains the symbolic projection of Proverbs 7–8: If patriarchy sees women as occupying a marginal position within the symbolic order, then it can construe them as the limit or borderline of that order. From a phallocentric point of view, women will then come to represent the necessary frontier between man and chaos; but because of their very marginality they will also always seem to recede into and merge with the chaos of the outside. Women seen as the limit of the symbolic order will in other words share in the disconcerting properties of all frontiers: they will be neither inside nor outside, neither known nor unknown. It is this position that has enabled male culture sometimes to vilify women as representing darkness over chaos, to view them as Lilith or the Whore of Babylon, and sometimes to elevate them as the representatives of a higher and purer nature, to venerate them as Virgins and Mothers of God. In the first

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instance the borderline is seen as part of the chaotic wilderness outside, and in the second it is seen as an inherent part of the inside: the part that protects and shields the symbolic order from the imaginary chaos.17

Wisdom’s self-presentation as a divine figure in ch. 8 not only serves to anchor wisdom discourse in the transcendent realm. It also positions her as the counterpart of the strange woman. One is the gate of Sheol, the other the gate of Heaven. Together they define and secure the boundaries of the symbolic order of patriarchal wisdom. Chapter 9 draws the conclusion self-consciously with its explicit parallel of personified wisdom and folly.

Conclusion Analyzing the symbolic structure of Proverbs 1–9 is not merely an antiquarian exercise. Phallocentric constructions of the world continue to be deeply dependent on such uses of sexual difference for their articulation. A good illustration of the profound psychic attachment to this mode of thinking as well as the symbolic dimensions of apparently “realistic” speech is the 1987 film Fatal Attraction. Its subtitle could easily have been “cling to the wife of your youth, and she will save you from the strange woman.” In the film the viewer’s subjectivity is rigorously identified with that of the male character, Dan. He is consistently depicted as a good but naive and occasionally impulsive man, an object of seduction. The “strange woman,” Alex, is portrayed as belonging to the margin in many ways. Her family background is obscure, her employment with the company recent. She has no husband or recognized lover. She stands outside the realm of socially ordered sexuality. Her apartment is located in an ambiguous commercial/ residential neighborhood, where workers ominously carry about large pieces of butchered animals (“like an ox to the slaughter,” 7:22). Like the strange woman of Proverbs 7 she has a brilliant power of speech, always more than a match for her male victim. But also like the strange woman of Proverbs, it is only an illusion that we encounter her and her speech directly. She is not a speaking subject but rather is an effect of someone else’s speech, the paternal speech of the film itself.18 When the predatory seduction has been accomplished, the chaotic, monstrous dimensions of Alex become evident: madness, violence, an uncanny unstoppable will. In an allusion to the tradition of horror films, Alex is drowned (we see her staring eyes and parted lips) and yet comes back from the dead. Against the inbreaking of chaos, the male character proves himself to be finally helpless. It is “the wife of his youth” who must rescue him. The wife has  Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics, 167.  For an excellent discussion of the problem of enunciation and subjectivity in film see chapter 5 of Kaja Silverman, The Subject of Semiotics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983). 17 18

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been presented, as is the wife of Proverbs 5, as herself a deeply erotic, desirable woman. Equally, she is the center of the domesticity of the patriarchal family. Her symbol is the house, where, more than once, we see the brightly burning kitchen hearth. It is in her climactic appearance, however, that we glimpse her mythic status. In contrast to the frantic, ineffectual, and messy struggle of the husband, her single shot is decisive. But it is her bearing when the camera turns to view her that has such an effect on the viewer. She stands framed in the doorway, quiet, impassive, erect, authoritative. She is a dea ex machina and, for one familiar with Proverbs 1–9, a figure evocative of Ḥokmot. As is well known, the original end of the film was changed by the director in response to the reaction of the audience in test screenings.19 He had originally filmed an ending that was a twist on the Madam Butterfly theme, in which Alex’s suicide would implicate Dan as her murderer. Preview audiences, however, disliked the ending. They recognized the mythic structure of the film and insisted on its “proper” conclusion. The version of the film as we have it is thus the result of a collective writing. The extraordinary emotional reaction from subsequent audiences, especially among men, confirms how deep is the investment in the patriarchal positioning of women as the inner and outer linings of its symbolic order. Although the similarity of the symbolic positioning of woman in Fatal Attraction and Proverbs 1–9 is unmistakable, it is the difference in their manner of presentation that makes Proverbs 1–9 of particular interest to feminist analysis. Where the film skillfully attempts to naturalize its discourse, to conceal its speaking subject, and mask its interpellation of the viewer, Proverbs 1–9 emphasizes precisely these features. Certainly Proverbs 1–9 also makes its own claims to universality and transcendent authority, but its explicit self-consciousness about the central role of discourses in competition provides an internal basis for questioning its own claims. Having learned from the father how to resist interpellation by hearing the internal contradictions in discourse, one is prepared to resist the patriarchal interpellation of the father as well. For the reader who does not take up the subject position offered by the text, Proverbs 1–9 ceases to be a simple text of initiation and becomes a text about the problematic nature of the discourse itself. Not only the dazzling (and defensive) rhetoric of the father but also the pregnant silence of the son and the dissidence that speaks from the margin in the person of the strange woman become matters of significance. Israel’s wisdom tradition never examined its patriarchal assumptions. But its commitment to the centrality of discourse as such and its fascination with the dissident voice in Job and Qohelet made it the locus within Israel for radical challenges to the complacency of the dominant symbolic order. 19 Myra Forsberg, “James Dearden: Life After ‘Fatal Attraction,’” New York Times, July 24, 1988, 21.

4. Spying Out the Land: A Report from Genology Biblical studies has a natural affinity with genology, the study of genres, but has had a strangely on and off again relationship with that discipline. For biblical studies the investigation of genres largely took shape as part of the development of form criticism. Although Gunkel was in conversation with several disciplines (e. g., classics, Germanics) that were concerned with the nature of genres, he did not apparently read literary theory.1 Despite this, or more likely because of it, early form criticism included some elements that made it among the most progressive developments in genre criticism of the time. Form criticism, of course, was not primarily interested in literary genres but in the oral Gattungen that came to be recorded in written texts. In this regard form criticism might be seen as an early investigation of issues similar to those that intrigued Mikhail Bakhtin in his reflections on “speech genres” and their function in discourse,2 though form criticism’s focus was primarily on the reconstruction of oral Gattungen. More significantly, form criticism’s attention to the Sitze im Leben of speech forms was a significant contribution to the sociology of genres. Indeed, this contribution was acknowledged in the work of Robert Jauss, a leading figure of the Konstanz school of “reception aesthetics,” which emphasizes the function and reception of literary genres in their historical and social contexts. Jauss contrasts the relative neglect of attention to these aspects of genre in many strands of literary studies at the turn of the century with the development within biblical studies of “a concept of genre that is structural as well as sociological,” describing briefly the work of Gunkel, Dibelius, and Bultmann.3 Despite its accomplishments, however, early form criticism was marked by a tendency toward rigidity in its assumption that oral forms were “pure forms,” with a tight connection between their life settings and their structures.4 A new interest in the potential of genre theory for biblical studies was part of the “literary turn” of biblical studies in the 1970s and was reflected in the SBL Genres Project, initiated by Robert Funk. Groups were established to investigate the genres of parable, pronouncement story, miracle story, letter, and 1  See Martin Buss, Biblical Form Criticism in Its Context (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 227–28, for a discussion of influences on Gunkel. 2  Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, ed. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, trans. Vern W. McGee, University of Texas Slavic Series 8 (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1986). 3  Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti, Theory and History of Literature 2 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 100–101. 4  Buss, Biblical form Criticism, 251, 255, 259.

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apocalypse. Results from some of the groups were published in various issues of Semeia and have been quite influential in shaping the discussion of these ancient genres.5 Since that time, of course, various individual scholars have used genre theory in their research,6 but the conversation between biblical studies and genre studies continues to be sporadic. In this essay I wish to make a brief and selective review of some of the trends in genre theory and their possible usefulness in biblical studies. In order to organize this discussion I will examine the approach and findings of the Apocalypse Group of the SBL as published in Semeia 14, Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre (1979), noting how subsequent developments in genre theory might change the assumptions, approaches, and questions to be posed in a study of the genre of apocalypse. My comments are in no sense a criticism of the work of the Apocalypse Group. To the contrary, the quality of the analysis of this deservedly influential work remains impressive and its results valuable. But not surprisingly, the framework of genre studies has changed significantly, so that now one would probably approach the issues somewhat differently. Characteristic of genre studies of the time, the Apocalypse Group frames the task primarily as one of definition and classification, so that the authors describe their purpose as that of identifying “a group of written texts marked by distinctive recurring characteristics which constitute a recognizable and coherent type of writing.”7 The metaphors and images that appear in the description refer to the “members” of the genre, to texts “belonging” to the genre, and to the genre’s “boundaries.” In several of the chapters, grids are presented that list the various features of form and content on one axis and the names of the apocalypses on the other axis. Each feature attested in the apocalypse is marked with an x. Over the past quarter-century, however, genre theorists have become increasingly dissatisfied with an approach that defines genres by means of lists of features. The objections are of several sorts. Definitional and classificatory approaches are now seen as not representing well the functions of genre in human communication. As Alastair Fowler remarks, genre primarily has to do with communication. “It is an instrument not of classification or prescription, but of meaning.”8 Moreover, classificatory schemes are by their very nature static, whereas genres are dynamic. Thus Fowler memorably objects that the classification approach tends to treat genres as though they were pigeonholes, when in fact genres are more like pigeons.9 “Mere” classification obscures the way in  See Semeia 11 (1978), 20 (1981), 22 (1981), 29 (1983), 36 (1986).  E. g., Richard A. Burridge, What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). See also the review by Adela Yarbro Collins, “Genre and the Gospels,” JR 75 (1995): 239–46. 7  John Collins, “Introduction: Toward the Morphology of a Genre,” Semeia 14 (1979): 1. 8  Alastair Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 22. 9  Fowler, Kinds of Literature, 36. 5 6

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which every text – however it relates to similar texts – whether “by conformity, variation, innovation, or antagonism” will change the nature of the genre and indeed give rise to new genres.10 The objections from poststructuralists such as Derrida are, not surprisingly, even stronger. In characteristically paradoxical fashion, Derrida claims that while “a text cannot belong to no genre” he would rather “speak of a sort of participation without belonging – a taking part in without being part of, without having membership in a set.”11 In my opinion there is much to be said for following Derrida’s lead and thinking of genre in relation to a text’s rhetorical orientation so that rather than referring to texts as belonging to genres one might think of texts as participating in them, invoking them, gesturing to them, playing in and out of them, and in so doing, continually changing them. With respect to apocalypses, this shift in how one thinks about texts and genres accommodates better not only the multigeneric nature of many apocalypses but also their irreducible particularity. It also allows one to think more flexibly about apocalypses and the penumbra of related kinds of texts. Classification continues to have its defenders in genre theory but often in a way that quite changes the nature and purposes of classification from a descriptive enterprise to that of a critical category devised by the critic for the purposes of the critic. Thus Adena Rosmarin, in The Power of Genre, argues that genre can be seen as a kind of intentional category error in which two things that are not the same are brought together “as if ” they were the same. Drawing on art historian E. H. Gombrich’s dictum that “all thinking is sorting, classifying,” she argues that it is the critic who draws together different texts for productive purposes. This is how we can explain texts that are different – “Composed upon Westminster Bridge” and “The Windhover” – as if they were the same kind of thing, namely, a sonnet … . We can always choose, correct, invent, or define a class wide enough to make the desired [category] mistake possible … . The initial thesis of a rhetorical and pragmatic theory of explanation, then, is that the inevitability of making mistakes is not the bane of criticism but, rather, its enabling condition. It makes classification possible, and classification enables criticism to begin.12

Thus for the neopragmatist genre critic such as Rosmarin, the “validity” of a genre category has to do with its potential for creating new critical insight rather than with its correspondence to the author’s own sense of genre.  Fowler, Kinds of Literature, 23.  Jacques Derrida, “The Law of Genre,” in Modern Genre Theory, ed. David Duff (Harlow, Essex: Longman, 2000), 219–31 (224, 230). 12  Adena Rosmarin, The Power of Genre (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 21–22. For a similar approach, see Ralph Cohen, “History and Genre,” New Literary History 17 (1986): 203–18. 10 11

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The authors of Semeia 14 initially appear to have some sympathy for a pragmatic approach to genre of this sort because they observe that the use of the term Apokalypsis in ancient manuscripts is “not a reliable guide to the genre.” Rather “an ‘apocalypse’ is simply that which scholars can agree to call an ‘apocalypse.’”13 If this is the case, then there would be little objection to a classificatory approach that defines the genre of apocalypse in terms of a clustering of features of form and content. Nevertheless, it does not seem to me that the authors of Semeia 14 intended their clarification of the genre apocalypse simply to function as a convenience for critics but in some sense to make explicit the tacit assumptions held by ancient writers about how one composes an apocalypse. That is to say, I judge that their critical act was not intended so much as a constructive act as a reconstructive one. If this is the case, then the limitations of the classificatory approach have to be addressed. Even if one wishes to move beyond classification, however, the fact remains that genre recognition involves some sort of mental grouping of texts on the basis of perceived similarity. Scholars have struggled to find more-apt ways of describing this process. One of the most popular of these explanations is developed from Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblance. In Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein posed the question of what is common to the various things we call games: “board games, card games, ball games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? … If you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. … We see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail. – And I shall say: ‘games’ form a family.”14 Adapted and popularized by Fowler as a means of thinking about genre,15 the notion of family resemblance does seem to get at aspects of the perceptual processes by which the mind sorts things that belong together from those that seem not to belong together. One might, of course, argue that classification by means of features is simply the systematic and self-conscious application of a model of family resemblance, but this is not usually the way in which genre theorists invoke the model. Fowler insists that it is neither “as an inferior substitute for a class” nor “a mere preliminary to definition.”16 Instead, it makes the “blurred edges” of genres of the essence. Indeed, among its more radical proponents, the family-resemblance model appears to dissolve category boundaries in a fairly decisive manner. But for this very reason the approach runs into problems of its own. For example, texts in Group A might exhibit features a, b, c, Group B might exhibit features b, c, d, and group C might exhibit features c, d, e, and so forth. 13 Collins,

“Introduction: Toward the Morphology of a Genre,” 2.  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958), 31–32. 15  Fowler, Kinds of Literature, 41–42. 16  Fowler, Kinds of Literature, 41. 14

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One is left with the uncomfortable conclusion that the family-resemblance model could produce a genre in which two exemplars in fact shared no traits in common! As John Swales remarks, “family resemblance theory can make anything resemble anything.”17 Another attempt to describe how genre recognition and genre competence take place invokes the notion of intertextuality. Jonathan Culler describes the way in which readers make sense of texts as follows: “A work can only be read in connection with or against other texts, which provide a grid through which it is read and structured by establishing expectations which enable one to pick out salient features and give them a structure.”18 One of the appealing aspects of this account is that it suggests the tacit and unselfconscious way in which people acquire a sense of genre by reading many texts. Culler’s account also attends to the communicative function of genre as establishing “a contract between writer and reader so as to make certain relevant expectations operative and thus to permit both compliance with and deviation from accepted modes of intelligibility.”19 In many respects the practice of the Apocalypse Group could be described as a highly intentional form of intertextuality, because they read texts closely in relation to one another in order to cultivate a disciplined sense of genre recognition. But they did so with a much more limited purpose than that which Culler ascribes to intertextuality. Culler’s model is not only about genre recognition but also about the dynamics of genre deviation as part of the text’s communicative purpose. Culler does not, however, draw the implications for the history of genres that Fowler does in his reference to an author’s practice of “conformity, variation, innovation, or antagonism,” by means of which the very body of intertexts is changed with each new instance, so that ultimately the very genre itself may be transmuted into something else.20 While the Apocalypse Group did not include an attempt to establish a diachronic map of the changing nature of the apocalypses, the intertextual approach described by Culler and Fowler could well be adapted for purposes of this sort. As helpful as the invocation of intertextuality can be, it is based on a hypothetical sense rather than an empirical finding of how readers actually acquire a sense of genre, and in fact it is in some ways mistaken about the nature of this process. One of the most promising developments in exploring how people do recognize and engage genres emerges from cognitive science and its radical overturning of our understanding of how mental categories are formed and 17  John Swales, Genre Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 51. See also the extended examination of the family-resemblance model by David Fishelov, Metaphors of Genre: The Role of Analogies in Genre Theory (University Park, PN: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), 53–68. 18  Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), 139. 19  Culler, Structuralist Poetics, 147. 20  Fowler, Kinds of Literature, 23.

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function. Because genres are categories of speech or literature, they function in much the same way as other mental categories. The key insight of the cognitive theory of categories is that conceptual categories are not best thought of as defined by distinctive features possessed by every member of the group but, rather, by a recognition of prototypical examples that serve as templates against which other possible instances are viewed. In a series of experiments in the 1970s, Eleanor Rosch showed that this is how categorical structures function.21 For instance, even though robins, ostriches, swallows, eagles, and penguins are all birds, people tend to treat robins and sparrows as “typical” members of the category birds and ostriches and penguins as “atypical.” Thus robins and sparrows are the prototypes for the category “bird.” The category can be extended to cover other birds that do not conform to the prototype (e. g., those that are large or do not fly or do not sing), but the birds that do not closely resemble the prototypes have a marginal status. Categories are thus structured with central and peripheral members. Indeed, membership in a category may be a matter of degree.22 One of the advantages of prototype theory is that it provides a way for bringing together what seems so commonsensical in classificatory approaches, while avoiding their rigidity. At the same time it gives more discipline to the familyresemblance approach, because not every resemblance or deviation is of equal significance.23 As applied to genre categories, prototype theory would require an identification of exemplars that are prototypical and an analysis of the privileged properties that establish the sense of typicality. How would this approach compare with the project of the Apocalypse Group? In fact, it appears that they intuitively worked with something like a prototype model. Consider the following statement: There is a general consensus among modern scholars that there is a phenomenon which may be called “apocalyptic” and that it is expressed in an ill-defined list of writings which includes (on any reckoning) the Jewish works Daniel (chaps. 7–12), 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch and the Christian book of Revelation. The list is generally agreed to be more extensive than this, but its precise extent is a matter of dispute.24

The apocalypses named are clearly recognized as “prototypical,” though a prototype theory of genre would find the dispute about the extent of the genre category not to be a problem that requires solving by recourse to a strict definition. Also similar to prototype theory is the distinction made by the Apocalypse 21  Eleanor Rosch, “Cognitive Representations of Semantic Categories,” Journal of Experimental Psychology (General) 104 (1975): 192–233; Rosch, “Principles of Categorization,” in Cognition and Categorization, ed. Eleanor Rosch and Barbara B. Lloyd (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1978), 27–48. 22  Michael Sinding, “After Definitions: Genre, Categories, and Cognitive Science,” Genre 35 (2002): 186. 23  Swales, Genre Analysis, 52. 24  John J. Collins, “Introduction: Toward the Morphology of a Genre,” 3.

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Group between “a few elements [that] are constant in every work,” a larger number that may or may not be present, as well as elements distinctive to particular works.25 Thus there is a distinction between central or privileged properties and those that are more peripheral. To this point, prototype theory may sound as though it is not much different than a slightly chastened form of definition by features. But there are other aspects of prototype theory that differentiate it from traditional forms of category definition. Categories are not simply collections of features but also involve cognitive models or background framework schemata. The difference between the two approaches can be illustrated by a classic example.26 By definition, the concept “bachelor” means “an unmarried adult male.” But no one really thinks of the Pope, Tarzan, or a Muslim with three wives as a bachelor. The category is implicitly related to a script-like semantic frame that understands the course of a typical man’s life as beginning with childhood, progressing to a period of sexual maturity, and involving (or not) marriage to one woman. Only in relation to that “idealized cognitive model” does the category “bachelor” make sense.27 The significance of this analysis of cognitive models for genre is that “elements” alone are not what trigger recognition of a genre; instead, what triggers it is the way in which they are related to one another in a Gestalt structure that serves as an idealized cognitive model. Thus the elements only make sense in relation to a whole. Because the Gestalt structure contains default and optional components, as well as necessary ones, individual exemplars can depart from the prototypical exemplars with respect to default and optional elements and still be recognizable as an extended case of “that sort of text.”28 The members of the Apocalypse Group seem to have anticipated something like the gestalt notion as essential to genre recognition in their discussion of what they called “the inner coherence of the genre.” As they noted, “the different elements which make up our comprehensive definition of the genre are not associated at random but are integrally related by their common implications.”29 Specifically, they note “transcendence” as the key to the relationships, linking the manner of revelation, the existence of a heavenly world, the nature of its beings, and the function of apocalyptic eschatology. “There is, then, an intrinsic relation between the revelation which is expressed in the apocalypse as a whole and the eschatological salvation promised in that revelation.”30 Thus an element like pseudepigraphy, which is surely a central category for the genre apocalypse, 25 Collins,

“Introduction,” 9–10.  Sinding, “After Definitions,” 193–94. 27  The term “idealized cognitive model” is from George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 68. 28  Sinding, “After Definitions,” 196. 29  Collins, “Introduction,” 10. 30  Collins, “Introduction,” 11. 26

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may nevertheless be absent even from one of the prototypical exemplars (the book of Revelation). Certain “default” features characteristic of prototypical apocalypses (e. g., resurrection of the dead) do not, however, appear in all of the Jewish apocalypses (e. g., the Apocalypse of Weeks and Testament of Levi 2–5) and may be represented by different content in others (e. g., the way in which revealed knowledge conveys present salvation in Gnostic apocalypses). The gestalt structure (or idealized cognitive model) organizes and authorizes the extension from the prototypical cases to those that are atypical. Prototype theory, however, challenges the classificatory approach in a more fundamental way. Classification, no matter how nuanced, tends toward a binary logic. Does a text belong or not belong? Does it belong to this genre or to that one? Thinking in terms of prototype exemplars and a graded continuum challenges this artificial manner of assigning texts to generic categories.31 In a witty analogy, Marie-Laure Ryan describes the existence of both “highly typical” and the “less typical” texts of a genre as encouraging one “to think of genres as clubs imposing a certain number of conditions for membership, but tolerating as quasi-members those individuals who can fulfill only some of the requirements, and who do not seem to fit into any other club.”32 Though it may seem to be a mere quibbling over metaphors, metaphors are quite important in how we think. Thus the prototype and family-resemblance approach to genre seems to me to offer advantages for how one would think about Jubilees or the Temple Scroll or revelatory discourses in relationship to the genre apocalypse in contrast to a classificatory approach that talks of the boundaries of the genre and the problem of borderline cases. One final aspect of prototype theory remains to be noted, and it is one that raises the issue of the limits of this approach. Michael Sinding, one of the strong advocates of prototype theory, argues that, in contrast to the historically oriented family-resemblance approach as developed by Fowler, prototype theory operates ahistorically. That is to say one can read the prototypical exemplars out of historical order and thus without a sense of how one text influences or imitates another “and still have as good a grasp of the genre, as a genre, as anyone.”33 Here, too, the Apocalypse Group works with a similar perspective in that they define their concern as that of “phenomenological similarity, not historical derivation.”34 For the purposes of genre recognition, this ahistorical approach can certainly be justified. But developing a sense of the genre is not the only matter to be pursued. Some of the most interesting issues in genology are precisely those of genealogy.  Sinding, “After Definition,” 192.  Marie-Laure Ryan, “Introduction: On the Why, What, and How of Generic Taxonomy,” Poetics 10 (1981): 118. 33  Sinding, “After Definitions,” 193. Sinding argues against Fishelov and Fowler, who stress the role of literary tradition. 34  Collins, “Introduction,” 1. 31 32

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The recognition of the historical nature of genres was a surprisingly late development in genre theory. Until the emergence of Romanticism, most genre criticism treated genres as transcendent or “natural” forms that were valid, descriptively and prescriptively, across historical periods.35 This explains various attempts to identify biblical compositions in terms of classical genres, such as, for instance, Theodore Beza’s comparison of Job with classical tragedy. Romanticism’s new recognition of genres as dynamic entities historically and culturally conditioned was given its classic expression in Hegel’s lectures on aesthetics. Not surprisingly, this new historicist understanding of genres soon found an intriguing model in Darwin’s theory of evolution, developed most fully in Ferdinand Brunetiere’s L’evolution des genres, published in 1890. Although the evolutionary model has been criticized, it has received a recent defender in David Fishelov, who argues that a more careful use of Darwinian analogies can be of significant use in understanding why some genres are productive at particular periods and then become extinct or “sterile,” as Fishelov would prefer to describe them.36 For reasons that should be evident, this is an extremely important issue for understanding the genre of apocalypse, because it is possible to date the emergence of apocalypses (sometime in the third century bce) and to date their demise within Judaism (in the aftermath of the Bar Kochba revolt), though they continued to be composed in Christian circles, including the Gnostics. Moreover, most of the Jewish apocalypses and many of the Christian ones can be dated with reasonable certainty, and patterns of influence often can be traced. The relationships among these documents have frequently been explored with respect to ideas, motifs, or theological perspectives, but rarely has the focus been on describing the evolution of the genre as such. Another aspect of the historicist perspective on genre has to do with the relationship of different genres to one another in succeeding historical periods. The Russian Formalists, in particular, took up the question of the evolution of genres not as isolated developments but in relation to the genre system as a whole.37 Whether or not one could describe a hierarchy of genres within the Second Temple period, as the Russian Formalists proposed for various epochs in Western literature, is a difficult question. But it is worth asking how one might describe the relationships among the narrative, historiographical, poetic, paraenetic, apocalyptic, halakic, and other genres that flourished during the Second Temple period. Were some more dominant than others? Are certain genres absorbed into others? And how might one describe the radical restructuring of the genre 35  For an excellent, succinct review of the history of genology, see David Duff, “Introduction,” in Modern Genre Theory, ed. David Duff (Harlow, Essex: Longman, 2000), 1–22. 36  Fishelov, Metaphors of Genre, 35–52. 37  These ideas are developed by Viktor Shklovsky, Theories of Prose, trans. Benjamin Slier (Elmwood Park, IL: Dalkey Archive, 1990); and Yuri Tynyanov, “The Literary Fact,” in Duff, ed., Modern Genre Theory, 29–49.

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system in the period after the destruction of the Temple and especially after the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt? Shklovsky drew attention to the fact that genre change is not simply continuous development but often discontinuous or, as one might say, that it requires not only evolutionary but revolutionary models.38 Even though Shklovsky rightly challenged the simple linearity of the nature of genre change, his own metaphors – the knight’s move in chess or an inheritance that proceeds from uncle to nephew rather than from father to son – suggest a rather schematic sense of motivated directionality. While this may be adequate for an investigation of large-scale changes in genre systems, the change that takes place in particular genres is generally much less tidy. Fowler describes a process of continuous metamorphosis in which “every literary work changes the genres it relates to. This is true not only of radical innovations and productions of genius. The most imitative work, even as it kowtows slavishly to generic conventions, nevertheless affects them, if only minutely or indirectly.”39 Fowler’s observation might be recast in terms of Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of texts as utterances in dialogical relationship to one another.40 Not only is every utterance unique but also it must be conceived of as a reply to what has gone before. Thus every instance of a genre can be understood as a reply to other instances of that genre and as a reply to other genres, whether or not self-consciously conceived of as such. The dialogical relationship carries forward the ever-changing configuration of the genre. Bakhtin, however, recognized not only the continuous transformation of genres but also their profound conservatism. In a paradoxical formulation he asserted that “a genre is always the same and yet not the same, always old and new simultaneously.”41 This paradox was contained in what he referred to as genre memory, the fact that new iterations of a genre always contained archaic elements, “A genre lives in the present, but always remembers its past, its beginning. Genre is a representative of creative memory in the process of literary development.”42 Bakhtin’s formulation thus brings together the synchronic and diachronic elements of genre.43 With respect to the problem of the genre of apocalypse, this perspective may be of particular use for understanding the internal dynamics of late Christian and Gnostic apocalypses, which stand chronologically far from the beginnings  Duff, “Introduction,” 7.  Fowler, Kinds of Literature, 23. 40 Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, University of Texas Slavic Series 1 (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1981), 281. 41  Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 106. 42  Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 106. 43  Clive Thompson, “Bakhtin’s ‘Theory’ of Genre,” Studies in Twentieth Century Literature 9 (1984): 35. 38 39

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of apocalyptic. But it may also be a fruitful approach to the issue of the multigeneric nature of apocalypses. Many apocalypses contain paraenesis, historical résumés, dream reports, and a variety of other small genres. These, too, have genre memory and retain archaic elements even as they are newly contextualized and transformed by being incorporated into apocalypses. As so often, Bakhtin is more suggestive than systematic. To understand better the issues posed by the origin of the genre of apocalypse, its multigeneric quality, and its relation to what the Apocalypse Group terms “related texts” one might turn again to the intersection of cognitive theory and genre theory. Cognitive theory has concerned itself extensively with the mechanisms of mental creativity, particularly the notion of “conceptual blending” in the work of Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner.44 Although this is a highly complex and subtle theory to which I cannot begin to do justice in this short essay, it understands certain forms of creative thinking as occurring when two or more mental schemata are brought together and integrated in networks of “mental spaces.” This is, in essence, how we think by means of metaphors or the way we integrate a figural scenario and a political scenario in political cartoons. The extension of this theory to genre is only in its initial stages, and its usefulness remains to be demonstrated.45 Nevertheless, it might well provide a more rigorous way in which to investigate, for instance, how late prophetic vision accounts, parabiblical narrative, historical résumés, and other such forms are creatively blended to produce what we recognize as apocalypses. Or, one might use an approach of this sort to understand the way in which apocalypses and testaments are brought together to create novel types of texts that occupy the periphery between genres. A final perspective on genres that holds particular promise for the investigation of apocalyptic literature comes from the work of the Bakhtin circle. For Bakhtin and his colleagues, genre is not simply a literary form but a mode of cognition. The metaphor invoked by Pavel Medvedev was genre as a means of seeing: “Every genre has its methods and means of seeing and conceptualizing reality, which are accessible to it alone … . The process of seeing and conceptualizing reality must not be severed from the process of embodying it in the forms of a particular genre. … The artist must learn to see reality with the eyes of the genre.”46 Medvedev compares the different ways of conceptualizing reality that are accessible to a graph as opposed to a painting, or to a lyric poem as opposed 44 Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities (New York: Basic Books, 2002). 45 Michael Sinding, “Conceptual Blending and the Origins of Genres” (paper presented at the Cognitive Approaches to Literature Session, Modern Language Association Convention, Philadelphia, PA, 28 December 2004). See now his essay “From Words to Worldview: Framing Narrative Genres,” Poetics Today 38 (2017): 363–91. 46  Pavel N. Medvedev, The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics, trans. Albert J. Wehrle (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 133.

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to a drama or a novel. Genres are thus ideological instruments in that they are the expressions of mental structures or world views. Thus the exploration of the genre apocalypse needs to include the question of what kind of thinking is performed by the genre qua genre. But how might one approach this question? Bakhtin’s own work on the genre of the novel led him to privilege the particular configurations of space and time, the chronotope, as he called it, as that which defines and distinguishes different genres.47 Thus the adventure novel of ordeal has a repertoire of characteristic physical settings (journeys, voyages, exotic locales, marketplaces, etc.) as well as a repertoire of characteristic ways of handling time (abrupt meetings and partings, coincidental arrivals, a series of episodes that are largely interchangeable in sequence, etc.). By contrast the Bildungsroman has a quite different repertoire of privileged places and constructions of temporality. These differences have implications for the kind of characters who can inhabit these different worlds. Indeed, they are very different ways of construing reality itself. Although the chronotope has mostly been explored in relation to narrative structures, there is no reason why it would not be fruitful for other types of literature. Apocalypses, in particular, are deeply concerned with the nature and significance of time and with the relation of certain privileged spaces to one another and to time. The distinctive character of the apocalyptic seer and the privileging of apocalyptic knowledge as a moral and religious virtue are integrally related to the chronotope characteristic of apocalypses. To go beyond superficial observations would require considerable, detailed work, but the aptness of Bakhtin’s conception of the chronotope for research on apocalypses should be evident. One could, of course, go on and on, but I hope in this short essay to have shown ways in which the conversation between biblical studies and genology can continue to be highly productive. Although it is always hazardous to attempt to predict the future of an intellectual inquiry, I suspect that the most creative work in genology yet to be done will take place at the intersection of the Bakhtinian understanding of genre and the understanding that is developing in conversation with cognitive theory. Not only can cognitive theory help refine the intuitive insights of Bakhtin and Medvedev concerning the cognitive force of genre, but the Bakhtin circle’s emphasis on the social and historical dimensions of genres can also prevent cognitive theories from becoming too abstract. Given the rich tradition of the study of oral and written forms in biblical studies, there is every reason to think that this discipline can play an important role in the developing discourse concerning genre.

47

 Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 85.

5. The Rhetoric of Jewish Apocalyptic Literature Although apocalyptic literature has been intensively studied by academic biblical criticism for more than a century, relatively little attention has been given to its rhetorical formation and function. Perhaps not surprisingly, many of the rhetorical studies that have been undertaken have been focused on New Testament apocalyptic texts, specifically the book of Revelation,1 Mark 13,2 and certain of the writings of Paul,3 since in these cases the persuasive function of the text is highly prominent. Moreover, rhetorical analysis has been a well-developed method in New Testament studies for some time. Much less attention has been given to the rhetoric of the Dead Sea Scrolls4 and Jewish apocalypses.5 An impetus to the use of rhetorical criticism in apocalyptic literature was provided by studies of modern millennial rhetoric by Barry Brummett6 and Stephen D. O’Leary.7 While there has been some attempt to apply O’Leary’s categories to ancient apocalyptic,8 Brumett and O’Leary are less useful as models to be applied 1  Adela Yarbro Collins, Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984); Greg Carey, Elusive Apocalypse: Reading Authority in the Revelation to John, StABH 15 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1999). 2  Adela Yarbro Collins, “The Apocalyptic Rhetoric of Mark 13 in Historical Context,” BR 41 (1996): 5–36; C. Clifton Black, “An Oration at Olivet: Some Rhetorical Dimensions of Mark 13,” in Persuasive Artistry: Studies in New Testament Rhetoric in Honor of George A. Kennedy, ed. Duane F. Watson, JSNTSup 50 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 66–92; Vernon K. Robbins, “Rhetorical Ritual: Apocalyptic Discourse in Mark 13,” in Vision and Persuasion: Rhetorical Dimensions of Apocalyptic Discourse, ed. L. Gregory Bloomquist and Greg Carey (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1999), 95–122. 3  Robert G. Hall, “Arguing Like an Apocalypse: Galatians and an Ancient Topos outside the Greco-Roman Rhetorical Tradition,” NTS 42 (1996): 434–53; James D. Hester, “Creating the Future: Apocalyptic Rhetoric in 1 Thessalonians,” R&T 7 (2000): 192–212; James D. Hester, “A Fantasy Theme Analysis of 1 Thessalonians,” in Rhetorical Criticism and the Bible: Essays from the 1998 Florence Conference, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Dennis Stamps, JSNTSup 195 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2002), 504–25. 4 Carol A. Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran, STDJ 52 (Leiden: Brill, 2004); see also Newsom, “Rhetorical Criticism and the Reading of the Qumran Scrolls,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. John J. Collins and Timothy Lim (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 683–708, and the literature cited there. 5  Greg Carey and L. Gregory Bloomquist, ed., Vision and Persuasion: Rhetorical Dimensions of Apocalyptic Discourse (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1999). 6  Barry Brummett, Contemporary Apocalyptic Rhetoric (New York: Praeger, 1991). 7  Stephen D. O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). 8 Paul L. Redditt, “The Rhetoric of Jewish Apocalyptic Eschatology,” PRSt 28 (2001): 361–71.

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than as exemplars of how rhetoricians analyze analogous forms of apocalyptic discourse in a different cultural environment. Many of the issues that are relevant to a study of the rhetoric of apocalyptic literature have been investigated by scholars who do not necessarily frame them in self-consciously rhetorical terms.9 One of the issues that will require clarification is how a specifically “rhetorical” study of apocalyptic literature takes such studies and situates them in ways that relate to the broader academic culture of rhetorical analysis which tends to cut across the humanities and social sciences. With a field of study as young and unformed as the rhetorical criticism of apocalyptic literature, a number of basic issues require discussion.

What is Rhetoric? The default definition of rhetoric is the “art of persuasion,” but that is too narrow, unless one has a very expansive notion of persuasion. George A. Kennedy argues for a much broader understanding, seeing rhetoric not simply as an art or skill but as “a form of mental and emotional energy” that is invested in acts of communication intended to influence a situation.10 While there can be varying degrees of rhetoric in different acts of communication, all have rhetorical dimensions that can be analyzed. Other scholars stress the constructive aspects of rhetoric that derive from the nature of humans as symbol-making creatures. Thus Lloyd Bitzer expansively declares that “rhetoric is a mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action.”11 To borrow Nelson Goodman’s title, rhetoric is a way of worldmaking. Thus rhetoric has epistemic dimensions, or, as Walter Jost and Michael Hyde have argued, a close relationship with hermeneutical activity in discerning and communicating meaning.12 Because it is linked to communication, rhetoric has an inherently social dimension also. One of Kenneth Burke’s definitions of rhetoric is “the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by  9  E. g., George W. E. Nickelsburg, “The Apocalyptic Construction of Reality,” in Mysteries and Revelation: Apocalyptic Studies since the Uppsala Colloquium, ed. John J. Collins and James H. Charlesworth, JSPSup 9 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), 51–64; Adela Yarbro Collins, Cosmology and Eschatology in Jewish and Christian Apocalypticism (Leiden: Brill, 1996). 10 George A. Kennedy, Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 3–4. 11 Lloyd F. Bitzer, “The Rhetorical Situation,” in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader, ed. John L. Lucaites, Celeste M. Condit, and Sally Caudill (New York: The Guilford Press, 1999), 219. 12  Walter Jost and Michael J. Hyde, “Introduction: Rhetoric and Hermeneutics: Places along the Way,” in Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in Our Time: A Reader, ed. Walter Jost and Michael J. Hyde (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 1–42.

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nature respond to symbols.”13 Cooperation is closely linked to the concept of “identification,” whereby persons who are not the same are induced to identify with one another. But, of course, the correlate of identification is division. Thus rhetoric “considers the ways in which individuals are at odds with one another, or become identified with groups more or less at odds with one another.”14 The notion of social identification discloses another aspect of rhetoric – desire. Sappho (frg. 90) calls persuasion “Aphrodite’s daughter.” Similarly, Burke makes “courtship” one of his metaphors for rhetorical appeal and relates it to the concept of mystery, whereby desire is stimulated “at that point where different kinds of beings are in communication.”15 One should, of course, also think of aversion and “othering” as the negative correlate of this dimension of rhetoric. The point of this discussion is to encourage a broader rather than a narrower definition of rhetoric as better suited to apocalyptic literature, which, though it contains elements that are explicitly persuasive in nature, oftentimes presents itself in ways that do not overtly foreground persuasion. It does, however, construct a symbolic world that makes claims about the nature of reality, constructs highly desirable symbolic objects, invites readers to identify with its representative figures and values, and oftentimes envisions a social world in which identification and division are sharply figured.

Is Rhetorical Criticism a Method? Not all rhetoricians consider rhetorical criticism to be a method. Raymie McKerrow prefers the terminology of critical practice.16 This is not to say that rhetorical criticism is undisciplined but rather that its critical and self-conscious way of asking questions of a text often cannot be reduced to a series of steps to be followed. As rhetorician Edwin Black puts it: Methods, then, admit of varying degrees of personality. And criticism, on the whole, is near the indeterminate, contingent, personal end of the methodological scale. In consequence of this placement, it is neither possible nor desirable for criticism to be fixed into a system, for critical techniques to be objectified, or critics to be interchangeable for purposes of replication, or for rhetorical criticism to serve as the handmaiden of quasiscientific theory.17 13

43.

 Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969),

 Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 22.  Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 115. 16 Raymie E. McKerrow, “Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis,” in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader, ed. John L. Lucaites, Celeste M. Condit, and Sally Caudill (New York: The Guilford Press, 1999), 450–52. 17 Edwin Black, Rhetorical Criticism: A Study in Method (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), x–xi. 14 15

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Many of the studies in biblical rhetorical criticism would fit the descriptions of Black and McKerrow, though there have been attempts to construct more selfconscious rhetorical critical methods, from Phyllis Trible’s stylistic rhetorical criticism,18 to George Kennedy’s classically based program,19 to Vernon Robbins’ socio-rhetorical criticism.20 In contrast to Black, Robbins does claim for both his approach and that of Kennedy the status of “scientific” inquiry.21 While humanistic rhetorical criticism may debate the significance of method, this is not the case for those approaches that join rhetoric with social science. One of the most potentially useful of these hybrid approaches is known as symbolic convergence theory, which has been described as “an empirically based study of the shared imagination,” and which is explicit about its indebtedness to rhetoric.22 Symbolic convergence theory studies what it calls “fantasy themes,” that is, imaginative constructs that appear in verbal or written communications. As these constructs become shared (as they “chain out”), they begin to create a convergence of people’s symbolic worlds, so that people come to share a common “rhetorical vision.” These imaginative constructs can be triggered by “symbolic cues,” that is, words, phrases, or images that index the rhetorical vision. While this approach was originally developed to understand group dynamics, it has been extended to study historical texts and movements as well, including apocalyptic literature.23 A key method employed by symbolic convergence theory is content analysis, a technique used in the social scientific study of communications and particularly prominent in ethnographical research.24 Content analysis is primarily concerned with identifying and analyzing themes in discourse. Although developed without reference to rhetorical theory, it is essentially a form of rhetorical analysis focusing on what rhetoricians call topoi or loci. Closely connected with content analysis is frame analysis, which attends to the often implicit interpretive frameworks that organize perception and communication. Here, too, social scientists have reinvented the rhetorical wheel, and some would encourage a more self-conscious collaboration between rhetoric and social science. Content and frame analysis makes use of quantitative and/or qualitative methods, often 18  Phyllis Trible, Rhetorical Criticism: Context, Method, and the Book of Jonah (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1994). 19 George A. Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 32–38. 20  Vernon K. Robbins, Exploring the Texture of Texts: A Guide to Socio-rhetorical Interpretation (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996). 21  Robbins, Exploring the Texture of Texts, 132. 22  Ernest G. Bormann, “Rhetorical Vision,” in Encyclopedia of Rhetoric, ed. Thomas O. Sloane (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), http://www.oxford-rhetoric.com/ entry?entry=t223.3220. 23  Hester, “Creating the Future”; Hester, “A Fantasy Theme Analysis.” 24  For an overview, see Klaus Krippendorf, Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2004).

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computer assisted (e. g., Atlas.ti, MaxQDA, NVivo). While there might well be some place for quantitative analysis in the study of apocalyptic rhetoric, the sometimes fragmentary nature and complex history of translation of the documents present methodological problems. More productive would be qualitative methods, which are accessibly described by Ryan and Bernard.25 Although biblical scholars may be reluctant to engage some of these approaches since some forms of content and frame analysis can be reductive, careful and appropriate use of the tools and techniques of qualitative research can bring welcome rigor to the study of the rhetoric of apocalyptic literature.

What Is Apocalyptic Literature? The past half-century has seen a prolonged discussion about the referent of the term apocalyptic literature. In the 1960s and 1970s it was common for scholars to construct lists of topical features that characterized apocalyptic literature,26 but this approach was often deemed to create a mishmash of genres and types of literature that had quite different characteristics. Paul Hanson’s influential distinction between the genre apocalypse, apocalyptic eschatology as a cognitive construct, and apocalypticism as worldview or social movement has proven helpful in sorting out different but related phenomena.27 At about the same time as Hanson’s work, a rigorous and quite successful attempt to define the genre of apocalypse was conducted by the Society of Biblical Literature Apocalypse group and published in Semeia 14 (1979), though it left the complex problem of the communicative and social function of apocalypses unresolved.28 Also unresolved was the relationship between apocalypses and texts that shared rhetorical features and themes with apocalypses but which were not of that genre. Even more perplexing was what to make of the sporadic appearance of certain apocalyptic features in texts not characterized overall by an apocalyptic worldview. Greg Carey has helpfully suggested that one think in terms of apocalyptic discourse, “the constellation of apocalyptic topics as they function in larger early Jewish and Christian literary and social contexts…, a flexible set of resources that early Jews and Christians could employ for a variety of persuasive tasks.”29 25  Gery W. Ryan and H. Russell Bernard, “Techniques to Identify Themes,” Field Methods 15 (2003): 85–109. 26  E. g., Klaus Koch, The Rediscovery of Apocalyptic, SBT 2/22 (Naperville, IL: Allenson, 1972), 18–35. 27  Paul Hanson, “Apocalypticism,” IDBSup, 27–34. 28 Lars Hartman, “Survey of the Problems of Apocalyptic Genre,” in Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East: Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Apocalypticism, Uppsala, August 12–17, 1979, ed. David Hellholm (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1983), 329–43. 29  Carey, Elusive Apocalypse, 10.

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By invoking the rhetorical category of topics, Carey brings the discussion back to the usefulness of the lists constructed by Koch and others. By characterizing them as discursive resources, however, he avoids the unhelpful debates as to whether a particular text is or is not an apocalyptic text and how much apocalyptic content is needed to qualify for such status. For the purposes of this chapter apocalypses are the privileged texts for analyzing the rhetoric of apocalyptic literature. But I take the category of apocalyptic literature to extend also to a wide variety of other genres that exhibit topoi, tropes, and figures that overlap with those in apocalypses.

Notes Toward a Rhetorical Criticism of Apocalyptic Literature Ideally, an article such as this would harvest a deep literature of established analysis based upon a consensual methodology. Those circumstances, however, do not yet exist. What follows is rather a set of suggestions and hypotheses about categories that might prove useful in doing the kind of rigorous rhetorical analysis suggested above. Since rhetoric is a form of symbolic worldmaking, one can begin by asking what the privileged spaces of this world are, who inhabits it, and how the characters relate to one another and to the symbolic world.30 Also, one must consider the representation and configuration of time. Moods and patterns of emotion are also part of the stock of rhetorical motives. Finally, one should think of the literature, in Thomas Farrell’s terms, as a “rhetorical forum,” which delimits who may speak and what may be spoken about, that is, what the key rhetorical topoi are.31 From these various analyses it should also be possible to gather some sense of how the rhetoric of apocalyptic literature related to the competition for social capital in the world of ancient Judaism.

Apocalyptic Literature as Epiphanic Rhetoric Before turning to these specific issues one might ask in general what kind of rhetoric characterizes the apocalypses. While one can find examples of explicit arguments (e. g., 1 Enoch 2–5; Ezra’s debates with the angel in 4 Ezra), much of apocalyptic literature is not presented as argument. Description, vivid imagery, and testimony are far more prominent. To invoke Stanley Cavell, apocalyptic  Nickelsburg, “The Apocalyptic Construction of Reality.”  Thomas Farrell, “Practicing the Arts of Rhetoric: Tradition and Invention,” in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory, ed. John L. Lucaites, Celeste M. Condit, and Sally Caudill (New York: The Guilford Press, 1999), 88–95. 30 31

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literature is less concerned with “giving evidence” than in “making evident” the nature of reality.32 It is in a profound sense epideictic rhetoric, which etymologically means to “show forth.” Or, to take a cue from the meaning of apocalypse itself, one might call it an epiphanic rhetoric. The importance of this strategy is indicated in a classic article on persuasion by Raphael Demos, who observes that “often the reason why so much discussion among individuals is futile is that what one person realizes vividly, the other does not. Evocation is the process by which vividness is conveyed; it is the presentation of a viewpoint in such a manner that it becomes real for the public.”33 This insight into the persuasive function of vividness helps account for some of the most distinctive tropes of apocalypses and brings one back to the other issues listed above. Apocalypses are overwhelmingly presented as first-person testimonies of individuals, a feature they share with the genre of testaments. Moreover, although some of the content may be parenetic in nature, the testimony largely consists of a disclosure of what the seer has himself seen and experienced and been told (e. g., 1 En. 14:2; Dan 10:7; 4 Ezra 3:1). The seers, too, are not just anonymous persons but persons of high religious status whose testimony has particular authority. Vividness is conveyed through a variety of strategies. The seer’s extreme emotional state is often described (1 En. 14:13–14; Dan 7:28; 8:27; 10:8–10; Apoc. Ab. 10:1–2; 4 Ezra 10:27–28; etc.), a technique that can elicit mirroring responses from the audience. This is especially the case given the intimacy constructed through the fiction that the seer is speaking directly to me, the reader, through his book. Apocalypses are also strikingly visual. The seer does not merely report that he saw a vision: he describes the images he saw (Dan 7; 8; 4 Ezra 13; 2 Bar. 36; 53), so that they are shared with the reader, who must mentally visualize them on the basis of the words. Similarly, in those apocalypses that feature a heavenly journey, the seer does not give an analytical summary but rather a sequential descriptive narrative, rich with detail, that creates a virtual experience for the reader (1 En. 17–19; 20–36; 2 En. 3–22; Apoc. Zeph.; 3 Bar.). In other genres of apocalyptic literature, too, vivid description may be employed, as in the description of the chariot throne and the angelic priests in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice. While the evocations of transcendent reality are persuasive in and of themselves, the repetition of similar descriptions in a variety of apocalypses and related literature contributes significantly to the socially persuasive nature of a shared apocalyptic rhetorical vision.

32  Stanley Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say? (New York: Scribner, 1969), 71; cf. Jost and Hyde, “Introduction: Rhetoric and Hermeneutics,” 17–24. 33  Raphael Demos, “On Persuasion,” Journal of Philosophy 29 (1932): 225–32.

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Apocalyptic Literature’s Central Characters While the apocalyptic seer is the primary person in apocalypses, he is fundamentally a mediator between the other two primary categories of characters: God and the angels on the one hand and the earthly recipients of his testimony on the other. Indeed, one of the core aspects of the rhetoric of apocalyptic is the identification of the audience with the seer, the audience and the seer with the angels, and the angels with God. Thus apocalyptic literature plays with the Burkean features of mystery, transcendence, and hierarchy to construct its appeal. Concerning the relationship of the seer and his audience, occasionally the seer’s audience is located within the fictive setting of the apocalypse, as Enoch discloses his revelations to Methuselah (1 En. 83:1) or Baruch speaks to the Jerusalemites and writes to the exiles and the nine and a half tribes (2 Bar. 77–87). The audience for the apocalypse as a whole, however, is either not specified or is identified as remote from the seer’s own time. First Enoch opens with this characterization: “not for this generation do I expound, but concerning one that is distant I speak,” and describes them as “the chosen” (1 En. 1:2–3; trans. Nickelsburg; cf. Dan 12:4, 10).34 This trope simultaneously constructs and obliterates a deep gulf of time separating the seer from his audience. Though they are distant in time, the book of testimony allows the seer and the reader to be virtually contemporaneous. Thus the reader is invited to a special and intimate relationship with the revered figure. Even where this relationship is not explicitly defined, the pseudonymous character of the seer serves much the same purpose. The seers all occupy a particularly meaningful moment in time: Enoch and Noah from before the judgment of the Flood, Abraham and Moses at the inauguration of covenants, Isaiah at the time of Manasseh’s apostasy, Baruch, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Ezra at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Exile. Thus the character of the seer also serves to index a paradigmatic time that is hermeneutically normative for the symbolic world of the apocalypse, so that the audience identifies its own time as like that of the seer’s. The relationship between the seer and the heavenly beings unites the features of mystery, hierarchy, and transcendence into a rhetoric of the sublime. This is manifested primarily in physical descriptions of God, the chariot throne, the heavenly court/temple, and the attendant angels. Strongly dependent upon Ezekiel 1, descriptions of God and God’s immediate environs (e. g., Dan 7:7–9, 1 En. 14; 71; 2 En. 22; Apoc. Ab. 18; 4QShirShabb song 12) emphasize features that stress the wholly otherness of deity: fire, blinding light, paradoxical combinations of hot and cold, the unheimlich creatures of the throne, and the very 34 George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of Enoch Chapters 1–36; 81–108, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Augsburg-Fortress, 1993).

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fact that the scene overwhelms the seer’s capacity to describe it. Although the seer’s reaction is often incapacitating fear, he is strengthened so as to be able to endure the divine presence. His vivid descriptions also make what is utterly transcendent virtually present to the reader. Yet the reality always evades the impressionistic description, so that the sight cannot be clearly grasped, and the wholly otherness of God is once again asserted. Thus the religious desire for the presence of God and the thrilling danger of that presence are central to the appeal made by apocalyptic literature. One of the most striking features of apocalyptic literature is its highly developed angelology. Like the seer himself, the angels are mediating figures who provide the rhetorical space for the negotiation of the identity/difference of human and divine beings. Strikingly, descriptions of angels are constructed from the imagery of God’s appearance, and angels can elicit the same reaction of fear (Dan 8:16–18; 10:4–19; 2 En. 1; Apoc. Ab. 11). In certain texts angels are even called “gods” (’ēlîm, ’ĕlôhîm; 4QShirShabb; 11QMelchizedek), and the highest ranking angelic figures may take on features elsewhere associated with God (Melchizedek in 11QMelch; the “Son of Man” in Dan 7:13 and 1 En. 48–49). Yet they are also associated with human beings, Melchizedek as the nephew of Noah (2 En. 70–71) and the Son of Man as Enoch himself (1 En. 71). Elsewhere this desire for identification with the angels is manifested in the angelic transformation of Enoch in 2 Enoch 22 and in the celestial imagery used to describe the exalted righteous dead (Dan 12:1–3; 2 Bar. 51:10). For the most part the identification of angels and humans is constructed by analogy. The heavenly army parallels the earthly army, the kingdom of Michael in heaven and of Israel on earth (1QM XVII, 7–8; cf. Dan 7:18, 27). In heavenly journeys, too, the seer often experiences the angelic worship of God, which is analogous to Israel’s worship (e. g., 1 En. 40; 2 En. 17; 21; T. Levi 3). In the apocalyptic literature from Qumran, however, the relationship exceeds that of analogy, as the community believed itself to already enjoy communion with the angels (1QHa XXVI; 1QM VII, 6). In the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice vivid descriptions, repetitious language, and nondiscursive syntax seem designed to create a numinous experience of actually being in the presence of the angels who serve in the heavenly temple.

The Figuring of Space in Apocalyptic Literature The privileged places of the symbolic world of apocalyptic literature manifest a similar focus on the relationships between the heavenly and the earthly, separation and interpenetration. One of the major tropes of apocalyptic literature is boundary crossing. Negative boundary crossing is represented both by the watchers who come down from heaven to earth to mate with human women,

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to disastrous effect (1 En. 6–16; 85–88), and by the arrogant king who makes war on the holy ones, hurls stars to the ground, and exalts himself above every god (Dan 7:21; 8:10; 11:36). More frequent, however, are the positive boundary crossings. Angels sent by God descend to earth for judgment (1 En. 9–10) but more frequently to reveal heavenly truths to the seer or otherwise help him (Dan 9; 10; 4 Ezra; Apoc. Ab. 10). And the seer is often summoned into the heavenly realm (1 En. 12–36; 2 En.; Apoc. Ab. 10; Asc. Isa.) so that he may see rather than simply be told about heavenly things. Although often represented as physically separate, the earthly and heavenly realms may also interpenetrate in the privileged psychic space of dreams and visions (Dan 7:8; 1 En. 83–90; 4 Ezra 9:38– 10:59; 11:1–12:39; 13:1–58). While many of the dreams are symbolic, in some instances heavenly figures appear within the visions and interact with the seer. Although it is somewhat less clear, the sacred space of the temple or the activity of worship itself may also be an occasion for the interpenetration of heaven and earth (4QShirShabb). In many instances the spaces of apocalyptic literature are rhetorically constructed through the trope of the journey, which the seer narrates. These accounts can also be categorized as rhetoric of the sublime. As in the divine speeches in the book of Job, to which they may be indebted, the seer is shown ultimate things. Enoch’s journeys take him to the limits of the earth and its cosmic supports, as well as places connected both with creation and with eschatological events (1 En. 17–19, 20–36; cf. Test. Levi 3; 3 Bar.). Even more sublime are the journeys through multiple heavens, in which the mysterious processes of the heavenly bodies, meteorological phenomena, places of primordial and eschatological judgment and reward, and celestial worship are described (e. g., 2 Enoch). Analogously, even though no actual journey is involved, the progressive description of the heavenly temple in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice from the outside portals to the presence of the chariot throne of God, creates a similar effect of penetrating into the overwhelmingly holy space of the heavenly temple.

Key Topoi of Apocalyptic Literature In Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric, Stephen O’Leary asserted that the three primary topoi of apocalyptic literature are evil, time, and authority.35 O’Leary, however, was focused primarily on the history of Christian apocalyptic literature. For the Jewish apocalyptic literature under consideration here, it is more helpful to recognize as the two fundamental topoi (1) knowledge, 35

 O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse, 16.

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hidden and revealed; and (2) patterns of order, which are the primary objects of that knowledge. Authority, time, and evil can be seen as aspects of these two. Knowledge Hidden and Revealed The claim to disclose hidden knowledge is the way in which apocalypses assert their authority. Though the means are varied (the seer’s visions or heavenly journeys, teaching by angels, access to heavenly books), the knowledge the seer obtains is always represented as inaccessible to ordinary human understanding. The elusive and difficult nature of the knowledge is also figured through the seer’s reactions to the revelations he receives. Frequently, the seer is baffled and disturbed by what he sees or hears and requires the assistance of someone even higher in the hierarchy of knowledge, usually an interpreting angel (Dan 7:15; Apoc. Zeph. 3:6; 6:16), though occasionally it is God who explains (e. g., Apoc. Ab. 19–32). Only Enoch is not represented as asking questions or as being baffled by what is revealed to him (1 En. 93:1–2), perhaps because of his unique status as one who “walked with the ʾĕlōhîm” (Gen 5:22). The use of symbolic visions requiring interpretation is a common device (e. g., Dan 7; 8; 2 Bar. 36–42; 53–76; 4 Ezra 13), and the encoding/decoding of these visions models the trope of knowledge hidden and then revealed. Indeed, since the code is usually not too difficult to decipher, the reader often understands even before the angelic explanation. The text thus construes the reader as an insider, as someone empowered by knowledge. Apocalypses may sometimes pose genuine challenges to the reader’s understanding, however, as in the complex coded history of Daniel 11 or the puzzling numbers of Dan 12:5–12. Prophetic texts, too, become oracular phenomena that must be decoded in order to unlock hidden meanings that pertain to the reader’s present situation. This is explicit in texts like Daniel 9 or the Qumran pesharim, which use various interpretive techniques to disclose new meaning in older prophecies, but it is also implicit in the intertextual allusions that the discerning reader recognizes and interprets as meaningful. Thus the rhetoric of apocalyptic literature can also be characterized as a rhetoric of hermeneutics. Knowledge of mysteries is one of the primary topoi of apocalypses that also appears in related literature of other genres. A rich vocabulary for such knowledge exists in the Qumran scrolls, though the two most common terms are daʿat (“knowledge”) and rāz (“mystery”).36 Sometimes the bearers of this knowledge are heavenly, as in the Sabbath songs where God is called “God of knowledge” and the angels referred to as “divine beings/angels/spirits of knowledge.” Indeed, the wings of the cherubim are even called “wings of knowledge” (11QShirShabbVII, 6). Knowledge is thus an indicator of closeness to God, and 36 See Samuel I. Thomas, The “Mysteries” of Qumran: Mystery, Secrecy, and Esotericism in the Dead Sea Scrolls, EJL 25 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009).

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so it is a desirable object that gives the human who possesses it an intimacy with the heavenly world. The term rāz has somewhat more specific overtones, as it often seems to refer to a phenomenon that is perplexing or paradoxical to ordinary understanding and that can only be grasped if one perceives what it is that makes the observable phenomena hang together. Thus the “mysteries of all of the words of his servants the prophets” (1QpHab VII, 5) alludes to the hidden meanings made manifest only by the inspired exegesis of the Teacher of Righteousness. Similarly, the “mysteries of sin” (1QHa XIII, 38) has to do with aspects of the divine plan that account for the perplexing vitality of the unrighteous or the distressing sins of the righteous. Thus in the rhetoric of apocalyptic the superficial, phenomenal world is not the true reality. Reality lies hidden and is only perceived by those who have special knowledge. In several of these texts the elusive phrase rāz nihyeh occurs (1QS XI, 3; 1Q27 1 I, 3; 4Q416 2 I, 5; etc.). Although the translation is debated, it is probably to be understood as “the mystery of existence,” that is, the insight into what makes everything hang together – the cosmos, history, human nature, eschatological judgment, indeed, the whole plan of God for the world (cf. 1QS III, 15–16). To appreciate the rhetorical use of the topos of mystery, however, one needs to recognize how it is used as a “tease.” Although there are detailed descriptions of hidden things in apocalyptic literature (e. g., cosmological and earthly geography, as well as celestial mechanics in 1 Enoch 17–36, 72–82; the plan of history in 1 Enoch 83–90, Daniel 11, Apocalypse of Abraham 19–32; the nature and function of the two spirits in 1QS III-IV), for the most part references to knowledge and mysteries are merely allusive. One thanks God for revealing mysteries (1QHa V, 19; IX, 23) but declines to say what they are. One refers to the “seven wondrous words” of the angelic high priests but does not cite them (4QShirShabbd 1 I, 1–29). One speaks of the “mysteries of God” (1QS III, 18) but without further specification, except to say that they are “wondrous” (1QHa V, 19; IX, 23). Similarly, although both 1/4QMysteries and 1/4QInstruction indicate that the author and those of his circle have access to the “mystery of existence,” the texts only hint at the specific content of this mystery. The taste of mysterious knowledge that is given stimulates the desire for more, which is always the deferred promise of apocalyptic literature. Furthermore, the asserted possession of such hidden knowledge serves rhetorically to distinguish the world into two groups of people, those who have access and those who do not. The vision is sealed from the “magicians who teach transgression,” so that they “did not perceive the everlasting mysteries or contemplate with understanding” (4QMystb 1a II–b, 1–3). Similarly, the angel tells Daniel that “none of the wicked will understand, but the wise will understand” (Dan 12:10). Thus the claim to knowledge is also a claim to moral and religious status and is a primary instrument for developing the trope of dualism so prominent in apocalyptic literature.

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The rhetoric of knowledge takes specific form also in the prominence given to books and to scribes. Heavenly books are particularly significant.37 Books of life record those who will be granted a beatific afterlife (e. g., Dan 12:3; Jub. 30:22; Apoc. Zeph. 9:13), books of deeds record acts of righteousness and evil (e. g., Dan 7:10; 1 En. 89:62–64; 2 En. 19:5; Jub. 30:20), and books of fate contain the account of predestined events (e. g., Dan 10:21; Jub. 5:13–14; 4QAgesCreat A 1, 3–4). Several of the apocalyptic seers are scribes, including Enoch, Daniel, Ezra, and Baruch, and for each of them acts of reading and writing play a significant role. Moreover, the apocalyptic books themselves are often identified as having been written by the seers and then transmitted through the generations among a select group (e. g., 1 En. 92:1; 108:1; Jub. 1:5; 10:12–14) or as sealed and made unavailable until the time when they were to be opened (e. g., Dan 12:4; 2 En. 35). In a culture in which few could read or write, books in general had a mysterious and numinous quality and so served as part of the authoritative appeal of apocalyptic literature.38 While all genres of writing were composed by scribes, it is largely only in apocalyptic literature that the figure of the scribe and his privileged access to knowledge is foregrounded. The account of Ben Sira is the only notable exception (Sir 38:24–34). This suggests that apocalyptic literature may have functioned socially to increase the social capital of a certain type of scribe. Indeed, the trope of hidden wisdom gleaned from primordial or heavenly sources and restricted to a scribal elite was a development of first millennium BCE Mesopotamian scribes, whose culture seems to have influenced Jewish scribes of the eastern diaspora during the Second Temple period.39 Notably, both Enoch and Daniel have affinities with Mesopotamian settings and/or traditions. Patterns of Order as Mysterious Knowledge Although the content of the revealed knowledge found in apocalypses is varied, it is overwhelmingly concerned with the discernment of patterns of order.40 This order may be cosmological, historical, or moral. Order is at the heart of the symbolic imagination of apocalyptic literature and shapes its rhetoric. The mind-numbing enumeration of the movements of the heavenly luminaries and 37  See Leslie Baynes, The Heavenly Book Motif in Judeo-Christian Apocalypses: 200 BCE–200 CE, SJSJ 152 (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 38 Susan Niditch, Oral World and Written Word: Ancient Israelite Literature (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996). 39 See Karel van der Toorn, “Revelation as a Scholarly Construct in Second Temple Judaism,” in Kein Land für sich allein: Studien zum Kulturkontakt in Kanaan Israel/Palaestina und Ebirnari für Manfred Weippert zum 65. Geburstag, OBO 186 (Fribourg: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandehoeck & Ruprecht, 2002); van der Toorn, “Why Wisdom Became a Secret: On Wisdom as a Written Genre,” in Wisdom Literature in Mesopotamia and Israel, ed. Richard J. Clifford, SymS 36 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007). 40  Yarbro Collins, Cosmology and Eschatology, 56.

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the illumination of the moon in its phases in 1 Enoch 71–82 is testimony to an imagination that finds satisfaction in patterns that are symmetrical and mathematically beautiful. More significantly, the patterns of time established by the sun and moon are part of the divine mysteries that the apocalyptic sages sought to understand. The complex calendrical texts from Qumran are an attempt to construe the orderliness of creation. In fact, one of the texts that lists the times of service for the priestly orders appears to describe the sequence as it would have occurred in the first year of creation, so that the order of the priesthood and the primordial order of time are connected.41 Closely related to calendrical concerns is the effort to discern patterns in longer units of time.42 Patterns drawn from the cycles of liturgical time, the sabbatical cycle and the jubilee cycle, were frequently used to give order to historical time. Thus Jubilees organizes the history of the world from creation until the entry of Israel into the land of Canaan in a series of forty-nine jubilee periods, with the entry occurring in the fiftieth jubilee. Each jubilee consists of seven “weeks” of years. The use of sabbatical and jubilee periods to structure historical time occurs in many apocalyptic texts, including Daniel 9, 11QMelchizedeq, 4QAges of Creation, 4QApocryphon of Jeremiah, 4QAramaic Levi Document, and the Apocalypse of Weeks (1 En. 93:1–10; 91:11–17). Oftentimes combinations of seven and ten are used, inspired in part by Jeremiah’s prophecy of seventy years (Dan 9:24–27; cf. Jer 25:11–12; 29:10). Other tropes are used for discerning order in history besides calendrical ones. Apocalyptic rhetoric famously privileges the times of the beginning and the end, which in Burke’s terms “essentialize” all that goes between.43 Narrative emplotment and resolution is a way of framing and resolving opposition or contradiction. That is to say, narrative can function as rhetorical theodicy. Thus Enoch explains the origin of evil as the transgression of the watchers in primordial times. Although judgment was executed quickly, the consequences will affect all of history until the eschaton (1 En. 6–16; 83–90). In this presentation, all of history is one uncompleted act. Other apocalyptic accounts of history identify repeated patterns. First Enoch 83–90 also presents history in part as a cycle of the repeated endangerment of the righteous and their deliverance. Second Baruch 53–74 organizes history into a pattern of alternating bright and dark waters. Daniel 11, a detailed account of Hellenistic political history, structures those events into a pattern of alternating aggression and containment by the King of the North and the King of the South.44 Elsewhere, Daniel 2 and 7 structure history in terms of a four-kingdoms schema in which sovereignty passes from one empire to the next 41  James C. VanderKam, Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Measuring Time (New York: Routledge, 1998), 79. 42  Yarbro Collins, Cosmology and Eschatology, 55–138. 43  Kenneth Burke, The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1970), 226–32. 44  Richard J. Clifford, “History and Myth in Daniel 10–12,” BASOR 220 (1975): 23–26.

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until all are destroyed. One of the features of these historical accounts is the narrative emplotment that culminates in a rising sense of crisis as history draws to a climax, and God intervenes to bring events to an end. This rhetorical pattern is what Yarbro Collins aptly described as “crisis and catharsis.”45 The order of history is also figured through the device of the vaticinia ex eventu, prophecy after the event. History is not open but predetermined, though it must play itself out. Thus the apocalyptic seers Enoch, Daniel, Baruch, and others can be told about events in advance of their happening. Since the reader stands at the end of the sequence, not only does the “accuracy” of the prediction lend authority to the apocalyptic message, but the reader is also induced to perceive a pattern within events that persuasively constructs the actual prediction. Although no historical account is given in the Two Spirits Treatise, it articulates apocalyptic literature’s ideology of history similarly: “From the God of knowledge comes all that is and shall be. Before they existed, he established their entire design, and when they come into being at their ordained time, they fulfill their works according to his glorious design, without change” (1QS III, 15–16; my trans.). To study history and discern its order is to be given access to the most profound mysteries. The third major way in which apocalyptic literature’s “blessed rage for order” expresses itself is in the representation of moral order. Here is where apocalyptic literature manifests one of its signature tropes: dualism. Most cultures use various forms of binary classification to structure reality. Binary thinking is a radical simplification of reality that rhetorically emphasizes clarity at the expense of nuance and ambiguity. Not all forms of binary classification are dualistic. Some binary pairs are complementary (e. g., yin and yang). Dualism, however, is a form of mirror image opposition. Each of the pair is strikingly similar yet utterly opposite. Although dualism structures a number of realms of experience, in apocalyptic literature dualism is most commonly used as a pattern of moral order: the relationship of good and evil, righteous and wicked. Not all apocalyptic literature exhibits dualistic imagery to the same degree. The most developed dualistic patterns occur in texts like the Two Spirits Treatise, which uses it as a pattern to structure cosmic reality, angelic orders, human groups, and even the internal moral psychology of the righteous. Complementing this text, the Qumran War Scroll applies the dualistic frame to political realities both heavenly and earthly. These texts, along with the Visions of Amram, may well reflect the influence of Zoroastrian dualism and so constitute a distinctive use of the trope. But most other apocalypses and related literature not only make use of the dualism of the righteous and the wicked, inherited from the symbolic worlds of Israelite sapiential and psalmic literature, but also some form of transcendent 45 Yarbro Collins, Crisis and Catharsis; cf. Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968).

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dualism. Although traditions about demonic spirits and adversarial angels were part of Israelite culture before the development of apocalyptic literature, dualism organizes this material to develop etiologies of evil (e. g., the fallen watchers of 1 Enoch 6–16 and the evil spirits that come from the slain giants) and to construct an angelic or demonic opponent for God, variously known as Mastema (“malice”), Belial (“worthlessness”), Satan (“adversary”), or “Melkiresha” (“king of evil”). Oftentimes the counterpart to these evil beings is symmetrically framed as the archangel Michael, who is probably to be identified also as Melkisedeq and the Angel of Truth. In addition to this transcendent dualism, there is also an asymmetrical dualism, in which the opponent of God and Michael is represented as a human king, as in Daniel 7–12, though one can already see the impetus to provide an angelic counterpart to the hostile king in the figure of the “Prince of Greece” (10:20). The emplotments that naturally follow from dualistic imagery are either alternation (e. g., the dark and bright waters in 2 Baruch 53–74) or struggle, which is far more prominent in apocalyptic literature. The two may be combined, as in the alternating victories for the forces of light and darkness in the stylized eschatological battles in the War Scroll (1QM I, XV–XIX). It is not possible to do justice to the various aspects of apocalyptic rhetoric in such a short essay. It has not been possible here, for example, to treat the social functions of apocalyptic rhetoric. In part, this is because apocalyptic literature served a variety of functions as it was employed in a wide range of rhetorical situations. Nevertheless, it is possible to set apocalyptic literature alongside other types of literature being produced in late Second Temple times and get some sense of what it was doing in its cultural environment. Like the sapiential tradition, it made claims about knowledge and righteousness. Like historiographical literature, it attempted to render history meaningful. Like liturgical literature, it constructed models of worship and means of encountering God. Yet through its claims of access to heavenly mysteries, to knowledge of the plan of history, and to the worship of the angels, it positioned itself as superior to these other attempts to understand reality. While individuals persuaded by the apocalyptic claims would not necessarily reject other forms of literature and their ways of knowing, the rhetorical vision of apocalyptic literature was astonishingly successful in colonizing the minds of a significant part of Second Temple Judaism, at least until the debacle of the Bar Kochba revolt in the mid-second century CE. The impact on Christianity was profound, and indeed, the apocalyptic rhetorical vision remains a significant presence in many Christian cultures to the present day.

6. Rhetorical Criticism and the Reading of the Qumran Scrolls Since rhetorical criticism is a method that is seldom employed in the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, this essay will attempt to make the case for its usefulness. In order to do this, it will be necessary to define the relevant terms and set them in historical perspective, to examine the distinctive features of Qumran literature that make rhetorical criticism both important and problematic, and to discuss whether and in what way rhetorical criticism is in fact a method. Given the rather unsystematic nature of rhetorical criticism, many modern handbooks of rhetoric introduce their subject by a variety of case studies, and here, too, it seems best to complement general discussion by a set of examples that illustrate certain aspects of rhetorical analysis.

Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism – A Capsule History Rhetoric is the art of using language effectively and persuasively. Although in some sense every culture has its implicit norms and recognizes in a pragmatic sense what counts as speaking well, the self‐conscious study of rhetorical technique was developed by the ancient Greeks in the fifth century BCE. Since the modern Western conception of rhetoric derives from this tradition, a capsule history of the ways in which rhetoric has been understood is helpful in determining what is involved in developing a rhetorical criticism suitable for Qumran studies.1 Throughout the centuries rhetoric has had a chequered history. In fifth‐century Athens developments in legal and civic culture put a premium on the ability of its citizens to speak persuasively in cases where “truth” was in dispute and the shaping of opinion was necessary for taking action. Even in its earliest formulations rival theories of rhetoric placed more weight respectively on rational argumentation (Protagoras) and eloquence (Isocrates). Rhetoric was viewed with suspicion by Plato for its assumption that truh was inaccessible, but Aristotle was able to give it a philosophical foundation by arguing that there are different kinds of knowledge, some of which are amenable to dialectical reasoning 1  This summary follows Thomas M. Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990) in significant measure.

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and some (particularly probabilistic forms of knowledge) suitable to rhetorical argumentation. Despite the prominence of Aristotle in modern understandings of rhetoric, it was the Isocratean tradition that was more influential in antiquity, especially as it was developed by the Roman rhetorician Cicero. In Hellenistic society and in republican and early imperial Rome rhetoric was the foundation of a good education and a primary means of social advancement in the administrative structures of kingdoms and empires. The Ciceronian ideal of “the good man skilled in speaking” embodied a model of eloquence in the service of philosophy and statesmanship that provided a cultural ideal which remained influential into the nineteenth century. Perhaps in part because it was such a self‐consciously cultivated skill in later Roman culture, the practice of fine speaking eventually became a rather artificial enterprise, though it continued to enjoy significant cultural prestige. As a pagan cultural practice, rhetoric was viewed with ambivalence by early Christian intellectuals, many of whom were, however, well educated in rhetorical theory. In De Doctrina Christiana Augustine developed a theory of Christian rhetoric that appropriated and transformed pagan rhetorical norms for the purposes of the new faith. Although the influences on Augustine have been debated, recent work sees him as largely working out of a Ciceronian model.2 He does, however, use both the Psalms and the writings of Paul as models of eloquence to be imitated by his readers. If Augustine represents the tradition of Ciceronian eloquence, Boethius preserves the Aristotelian emphasis on enthememic argumentation as central to rhetoric. Both traditions were influential in the rhetorical education in the Western Middle Ages. With the renewed interest in classical culture in Renaissance humanism a new flourishing of rhetorical study developed. As Conley observes, the Renaissance was a time of both political and intellectual turbulence and uncertainty. Rhetoric was prized “not so much as an alternative to uncertainty as a way of managing it.”3 But whereas some of the earlier Renaissance rhetorics focused on methods of developing probabilistic arguments on either side of disputed issues, the highly influential work of Peter Ramus reduced rhetoric to matters of style and delivery, truth being the province of dialectic, understood essentially as syllogistic logic. In the seventeenth century, too, rhetoric was excluded from claims to truth, which was increasingly seen as the province of science and philosophical rationalism. But a growing attention to human psychology concluded that it was not so much reason that persuades as it is the affections and sentiments. Thus for both good and ill, rhetoric, which manipulates the affect, was seen as the means by which persons are persuaded.

2 3

 Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition, 77.  Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition, 110.

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During the eighteenth century, philosophy largely rejected the significance of rhetoric. Rhetoric, however, found fruitful ground by recasting itself as the means by which the standards of taste in polite society were established. Cultivation in belles lettres and elocution provided a rising middle class with the means by which they might be recognized as ladies and gentlemen. Rhetoric in the nineteenth century generally followed in the tracks laid out by rhetoricians of the previous generation and, although important in education, was an intellectually marginalized field. The twentieth century, however, saw an astonishing revival of interest in rhetoric, which was conceptualized in ways that were both novel and yet a return to the political concerns of its classical roots. In part as a result of the deep distress at the ways in which propaganda had been involved in the violent conflicts and totalitarian movements, interest turned to the ways in which rhetoric could provide a critique of the uses of language for mystification as well as the construction of a “new rhetoric” that could provide the basis for a rational culture of argumentation.4 The linguistic turn in philosophy also brought forth a new rapprochement between philosophy and rhetoric, including claims for the epistemic significance of rhetoric.5 Social‐scientific interest in the functions of language, in such fields as anthropology, socio‐linguistics, and cultural analysis, has also drawn upon rhetorical theory to analyse how language use is related to the construction of knowledge and culture. How far rhetoric has moved from its nineteenth‐century conceptualization is evident in Lloyd Bitzer’s definition: Rhetoric is a mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse. … The rhetor alters reality by bringing into existence a discourse of such a character that the audience, in thought and action, is so engaged that it becomes [a] mediator of change.6

While this very brief account of the career of rhetoric cannot do justice to its complex history, it does indicate how variously the study of rhetoric has been understood and the often culturally specific contexts within which those reformulations of rhetoric have taken place. In light of this sprawling history of rhetoric, one might be forgiven for wondering whether it is appropriate or helpful to 4  E. g., Kenneth Burke, Counter-Statement (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1968); Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969); Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, trans. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1969). 5  Barry Brummett, “Some Implications of ‘Process’ or ‘Intersubjectivity’: Postmodern Rhetoric,” in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader, ed. John L. Lucaites, Celeste M. Condit, and Sally Caudill (New York: The Guilford Press, 1999); Robert Scott, “On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic,” in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader, ed. John L. Lucaites, Celeste M. Condit, and Sally Caudill (New York: The Guilford Press, 1999), 131–9. 6  Lloyd F. Bitzer, “The Rhetorical Situation,” in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader, ed. John L. Lucaites, Celeste M. Condit, and Sally Caudill (New York: The Guilford Press, 1999), 219.

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attempt to fashion a rhetorical criticism for a collection of Semitic texts which have only recently become part of the West’s cultural heritage. What has Athens to do with Khirbet Qumran? The response to this doubt, however, is that one of the trajectories in the study of rhetoric is the recognition that while the particular sense of what constitutes speaking well may differ from one culture to another, the persuasive use of speech is a human universal. This recognition is especially characteristic of the modern study of rhetoric. Nevertheless, the recognition of cultural diversity and the lack of a self‐conscious reflection on rhetorical practice in ancient Semitic cultures means that there is a risk of drawing on the classically derived Western rhetorical tradition in ways that could produce anachronistic and inappropriate approaches to Qumran literature. These methodological concerns are addressed more directly below. Before turning to that topic, however, it is necessary to review briefly how rhetorical criticism has been appropriated in biblical studies.

Rhetorical Criticism in Hebrew Bible and New Testament Studies Although rhetorical criticism of the Bible has roots as old as the patristic period, the modern application of rhetorical analysis to the critical repertoire of biblical studies is quite recent, especially in respect of the Hebrew Bible. Indeed, it is usually dated to James Muilenburg’s 1969 essay, “Form Criticism and Beyond.”7 As the title suggests, Muilenburg’s purpose in calling for a rhetorical criticism was an attempt to reform and extend form criticism’s preoccupation with ideal types and to focus as well on concrete instances of discourse in which various ideal forms were imitated and combined in distinctive ways for the purposes of a historically specific utterance. Even so, Muilenburg tended to focus his own analysis on literary features within the texts rather than on their social functions as means of persuasion. Those who followed Muilenburg were even less attentive to issues of occasion, audience, and persuasive force, so that what began as a call for a rhetorical criticism became instead a form of literary stylistics.8 A number of studies on the prophets, however, have focused on their presumed roles as orators addressing specific rhetorical situations with a variety of rhetorical techniques. Some of these studies have attempted to use Aristotelian categories (not entirely productively, in my opinion),9 while others have been more eclectic in their approach.10 Other texts as well, including narrative ones,  James Muilenburg, “Form Criticism and Beyond,” JBL 88 (1969): 1–18.  E. g., Phyllis Trible, Rhetorical Criticism: Context, Method, and the Book of Jonah (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1994).  9  See Yehoshua Gitay, Prophecy and Persuasion (Bonn: Linguistica Biblica, 1981). 10  E. g., Michael V. Fox, “The Rhetoric of Ezekiel’s Vision of the Valley of the Bones,” HUCA 51 (1980): 1–15; Richard J. Clifford, Fair Spoken and Persuading (New York: Paulist Press, 1984).  7  8

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have been analyzed with respect to their rhetoric.11 Nevertheless, there has been relatively little methodological reflection on the outlines of a proper rhetorical criticism in Hebrew Bible studies. Even Alan Hauser’s survey article in Rhetorical Criticism of the Bible opts to conflate rhetorical and literary criticism.12 The situation has been quite different in New Testament studies. There, rhetoric is explicitly understood in its traditional sense, in which the text is “a vehicle of communication and interaction between the author and the audience,” and rhetorical criticism “investigates the use of traditional devices to produce an effect in an audience.”13 Although there were occasional analyses of rhetoric in late nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century New Testament scholarship,14 most rhetorical criticism of the New Testament has been produced since the 1970s. Because the New Testament writings were composed in Greek by authors who were arguably acquainted to some degree with the norms of Hellenistic rhetoric, classical rhetoric has dominated New Testament rhetorical criticism, especially of the epistles.15 While there are recognizable Hellenistic rhetorical techniques in the epistles of Paul, he also appears to exhibit a suspicion of the suitability of rhetoric for Christian preaching,16 thus raising the question of the extent to which his own writings should be understood as a studied attempt to embody rhetorical eloquence. This application of classical rhetorical analysis to the New Testament approach has also been criticized from other perspectives, however, as overly rigid, as unnecessarily limiting the scope of rhetorical criticism, and as misleadingly privileging classical rhetorical categories for a literature that also draws on Jewish traditions of composition that have different norms for effective speech.17 11  See the essays in Stanley E. Porter and Thomas H. Olbricht, eds., Rhetoric and the New Testament: Essays from the 1992 Heidelberg Conference, JSNTSup 90 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993); Porter and Olbricht, eds., Rhetoric, Scripture, and Theology: Essays from the 1994 Pretoria Conference, JSNTSup 131 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996); Stanley E. Porter and Thomas H. Olbricht, eds., The Rhetorical Analysis of Scripture: Essays from the 1995 London Conference, JSNTSup 146 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1997). 12  Alan J. Hauser, “Notes on History and Method,” in Rhetorical Criticism of the Bible: A Comprehensive Bibliography with Notes on History and Method, ed. Duane F. Watson and Alan J. Hauser, BibInt 4 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 3–19. 13  Benjamin Fiore, “NT Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism,” ABD 5:716. 14  E. g., Johannes Weiss, “Beiträge zur paulinischen Rhetorik,” in Theologische Studien: Herrn Wirk. Oberkonsistorialrath Professor D. Bernhard Weiss zu seinem 70. Geburtstage dargebracht, ed. C. R. Gregory, et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1897); Rudolf Bultmann, Der Stil der paulinischen Predigt und die kynisch-stoische Diatribe (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1910). 15  Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979); George A. Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1984). 16  Timothy H. Lim, “Not in Persuasive Words of Wisdom, but in the Demonstration of the Spirit and Power,” NovT 29 (1987): 145–8. 17  Duane F. Watson and Alan J. Hauser, eds., Rhetorical Criticism of the Bible: A Comprehensive Bibliography with Notes on History and Method, BibInt 4 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 111; Vernon

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Thus some attempts have been made to derive norms also from Hebrew forms of speech and composition.18 Others have championed the use of the rich resources of modern rhetorical theory as a necessary complement to the classical tradition.19 The most programmatic proposal is that of Vernon Robbins,20 who calls for a “revalued and reinvented rhetorical criticism” that partners literary, rhetorical, and theological approaches with a variety of social‐scientific ones (hence “socio‐rhetorical criticism”) to move beyond what he sees as the “restrained” rhetorical analysis characteristic of most New Testament scholarship.21 Although beginning with specific texts, Robbins’ approach goes beyond what has traditionally been understood as rhetorical criticism and moves in the direction of cultural studies. The issues confronting the development of a rhetorical criticism for the Dead Sea Scrolls are not, of course, exactly the same as those found in New Testament (or even Hebrew Bible) studies. But the robust methodological discussion that has taken place particularly among New Testament scholars is an important resource for this enterprise.22

Rhetorical Criticism and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Prospects and Problems The near absence of rhetorical criticism in Qumran studies is both surprising and unfortunate. Although virtually any text lends itself to rhetorical criticism, the literature of a sectarian community has particular affinities for this type of analysis. As Kenneth Burke once observed, rhetoric “considers the ways in which individuals are at odds with one another, or become identified with groups more or less at odds with one another,”23 certainly an apt description of the way sects position themselves and make their appeal. As a sectarian K. Robbins, “The Present and Future of Rhetorical Analysis,” in The Rhetorical Analysis of Scripture: Essays from the 1995 London Conference, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Thomas H. Olbricht, JSNTSup 146 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1997), 40–1. 18  E. g., Thomas L. Brodie, “Greco-Roman Imitation of Texts as a Partial Guide to Luke’s Use of Sources,” in Luke-Acts: New Perspectives from the Society of Biblical Literature Seminar, ed. Charles H. Talbert (New York: Crossroad, 1984), 17–46. 19  Lauri Thurén, The Rhetorical Strategy of 1 Peter with Special Regard to Ambiguous Expressions (Abo: Abo Academy Press, 1990); William Wuellner, “Rhetorical Criticism and Its Theory in Culture-Critical Perspective,” in Text and Interpretation: New Approaches in the Criticism of the New Testament, ed. Patrick J. Hartin and Jacobus H. Petzer (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 171–85. 20  Vernon K. Robbins, The Tapestry of Early Christian Discourse: Rhetoric, Society, and Ideology (London: Routledge, 1996); Robbins, Exploring the Texture of Texts: A Guide to Socio-rhetorical Interpretation (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996); Robbins, “The Present and Future of Rhetorical Analysis.” 21  Robbins, “The Present and Future of Rhetorical Analysis,” 26–7. 22  For an overview, see Watson and Hauser, Rhetorical Criticism of the Bible. 23  Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969), 22.

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organization that drew extensively upon adult converts for its membership, the Qumran community was deeply involved in using language to effect persuasion. To join the community required a decision to separate oneself from previously held identities, perspectives, and beliefs, and to embrace new ones defined by the community. This new world of meaning was not totally new, of course, but was constructed in relation to the central religious and cultural symbols of the broader Jewish community. Thus the community’s texts are often engaged in explicit and implicit struggle with other ways of understanding the meaning and significance of these symbols. Since the sectarian movement existed in the midst of a variety of other ways of being Jewish, the plausibility of the community’s own structures, practices, beliefs, and dispositions required continuing acts of self‐persuasion by members. These were enacted through formal instruction and examination, rituals, liturgies, biblical interpretations, and a variety of other formal and informal speech practices, as well as non‐verbal forms of symbolic communication. Applying rhetorical criticism to the sectarian texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls offers both serious challenges and great rewards. (Although my focus in this discussion is on the sectarian texts, much of what is said applies also to the non‐sectarian ones.) Perhaps the most obvious challenge is that we do not know precisely how the various texts from Qumran were used and by whom. Thus important aspects of the rhetorical situation are simply unknown. But the problem may not be as serious as it first appears. Scholars can make educated guesses about the likely purposes and contexts of use for particular texts, even if the specific details remain elusive. And, as discussed below, the rhetorical situation need not be construed simply as some necessarily objective state of affairs to which a speech or a text is a response. Deducing the rhetorical situation is in many respects simply a particular instance of the hermeneutical circle. A second challenge is that the texts found at Qumran, even the specifically sectarian ones, may come from different periods within the community’s life and in many cases have been reworked numerous times to meet changing needs. Thus the very model of an author addressing an audience in a particular context is too simplistic. It is important to remember that one does not have access to any particular author’s psychological intentions in a text. What is being analyzed is the force of the language itself. Indeed, even to speak of the community is somewhat misleading, since the people who occupied the site of Qumran and who were responsible for the preservation of the scrolls appear to have been only one part of a much larger and more complex religious movement. Scholars have not yet been able to determine with certainty how the communities referred to in the texts relate to one another. A third difficulty is that, since there was no self‐conscious, second‐order reflection on the characteristics of persuasive speech among Semitic scribes comparable to what developed in Greek culture, the more informal norms for

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what constituted persuasive and eloquent speech have to be inductively identified. While some work has been done on comparative norms for halakhic argumentation,24 little attention has been given to this question more generally. Finally, many of the texts are poorly preserved and fragmentary. Beginnings and endings, crucial loci for understanding the rhetoric of texts, are often missing. Some things that one would like to know simply cannot be known. Nevertheless, so long as one is aware of the limitations of the evidence, there is a great deal that can be learned about the general nature of the persuasion that various texts undertake.

Rhetorical Criticism as a Method To what extent is rhetorical criticism a “method”? Here, as with the question of definition, the issue is disputed. Both Kennedy, who champions a relatively narrow conception of rhetorical criticism, and Robbins, who advocates a highly expansive understanding, outline their programs in five logically coordinated steps, though Robbins does not necessarily see his as sequential.25 Robbins does, however, claim for both of these approaches the status of “scientific” inquiry.26 Many modern rhetoricians have a more relaxed attitude toward the issue of method, and some reject the terminology of method altogether, preferring that of critical practice.27 While rhetorical criticism is a disciplined and self‐conscious way of asking questions about a text and its intended effects, it cannot helpfully be reduced to a series of steps to be followed in each case by every critic. Rhetorician Edwin Black’s comments are apt. Methods, then, admit of varying degrees of personality. And criticism, on the whole, is near the indeterminate, contingent, personal end of the methodological scale. In consequence of this placement, it is neither possible nor desirable for criticism to be fixed into a system, for critical techniques to be objectified, or critics to be interchangeable for purposes of replication, or for rhetorical criticism to serve as the handmaiden of quasi‐ scientific theory.28

24  E. g., Daniel R. Schwartz, “Law and Truth: On Qumran, Sadducean, and Rabbinic Views of Law,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls, Forty Years of Research, ed. Devorah Dimant and Uriel Rappaport, STDJ 10 (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 229–40. 25  Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation, 32–8; Robbins, Exploring the Texture of Texts. 26  Robbins, Exploring the Texture of Texts, 132; Robbins, “The Present and Future of Rhetorical Analysis,” 26. 27 Raymie E. McKerrow, “Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis,” in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader, ed. John L. Lucaites, Celeste M. Condit, and Sally Caudill (New York: The Guilford Press, 1999), 450–2. 28 Edwin Black, Rhetorical Criticism: A Study in Method (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), x–xi.

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From this perspective, with which I sympathize, the effective rhetorical critic is less in need of a technical method than of a well‐equipped toolkit, the skill to use the tools, and the discernment to know which one is needed. Whether for Qumran texts or biblical ones, the selection of appropriate tools will depend in part on the scope and focus of the rhetorical analysis one is undertaking, whether it is (1) the analysis of the rhetoric of a single text, (2) the inductive recovery of the norms of persuasive argumentation within a culture through the comparative examination of similar texts, (3) elucidating the implicit cultural conversation within which the text is situated (i. e., the rhetorical situation construed in larger socio‐cultural context), or (4) some combination of these aims. It may be helpful, however, to discuss some of the most frequently used forms of analysis. Identifying the Rhetorical Situation and Problem Persuasive speech attempts to effect change of some sort. The often cited though rather cumbersome definition of Bitzer is as follows: “a complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or potential exigence which can be completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action as to bring about the significant modification of the exigence.”29 While seemingly commonsensical, the definition is misleadingly objective and especially problematic for analyzing texts in which the record of the actual circumstances of composition and delivery are unknown. What is lacking in Bitzer’s definition is an appreciation of the extent to which the rhetor by his rhetoric actively shapes the situation to which his utterance is simultaneously a response.30 Speakers, for example, may have reasons for using the language of crisis to create a sense of urgency on the part of the audience whether or not an objective crisis exists. Thus, just as one distinguishes between the actual author of a text and the implied author constructed by the text, so one might think in terms of an implied rhetorical situation called into being by the text. Assessing Genre Genres serve as proffered contracts between writers and readers, providing common expectations for what the text in question is intended to do and what means it is likely to use. Thus the type of rhetorical techniques, the nature of the arguments and warrants employed, and even the emotional affect induced will differ depending on the genre of the text in question. The audience, in  Bitzer, “The Rhetorical Situation,” 220.  See Richard E. Vatz, “The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation,” in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader, ed. John L. Lucaites, Celeste M. Condit, and Sally Caudill (New York: The Guilford Press, 1999), 226–31. 29 30

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recognizing the genre of a speech or text, will index a repertoire of similar texts. That genre is properly a rhetorical as well as a literary category, however, is suggested by Burke’s understanding of form in psychological terms, as “the creation of an appetite in the mind of the auditor, and the adequate satisfying of that appetite.”31 The rhetorical force of an utterance, however, might also consist of surprising or even frustrating that appetite. Recognizing Types of Rhetoric Classical rhetoric categorized three main types: judicial, deliberative, and epideictic. As George Kennedy defines the terms “the species is judicial when the author is seeking to persuade the audience to make a judgment about events occurring in the past; it is deliberative when he seeks to persuade them to take some action in the future; it is epideictic when he seeks to persuade them to hold or reaffirm some point of view in the present, as when he celebrates or denounces some person or some quality.”32 Although these categories are derived from the characteristic speech situations of Greek civic culture, they are fairly generalizable. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to attempt to use them as a procrustean bed. Rhetorical theorist Thomas Farrell makes use of a different grid, identifying “speaker‐centered,” “message‐centered,” and “constituency‐ centered” forms of rhetoric, each of which correlates with different argumentative emphases and core values. Speaker‐centered rhetoric, not surprisingly, correlates with arguments emphasizing ethos and with the norm of authority. Message‐centered rhetoric emphasizes stasis (issues) and the norm of integrity, whereas constituency‐centered rhetoric is oriented to krisis (judgment) and the norm of conscience.33 These and other analytics should be used heuristically, since their value is in helping to clarify what the speaker is attempting to do with words and what strategy she is employing. Observing Relationships Between Speaker and Audience The speaker/audience relationship is key to understanding rhetoric. Yet even texts that are not overtly rhetorical may be analyzed in this fashion. As James Boyd White observed, every text constructs a character for the author and reader and establishes the relationship that exists between them.34 Sometimes these identities and relationships are explicitly named in the text, but often they  Burke, Counter-Statement, 31.  Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation, 19. 33  Thomas Farrell, “Practicing the Arts of Rhetoric: Tradition and Invention,” in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader, ed. John L. Lucaites, Celeste M. Condit, and Sally Caudill (New York: The Guilford Press, 1999), 91. 34  James Boyd White, When Words Lose Their Meaning: Constitutions and Reconstitutions of Language, Character, and Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 14–18. 31 32

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are implied simply through the tone, style, or diction. In either case, the reader or hearer is invited to recognize him‐ or herself in that character or to become more like that character. Thus rhetorical persuasion may not simply be about changing one’s ideas or emotions but even one’s very identity or sense of self. Analyzing Argumentation Classical rhetoric, with its passion for reducing the multiplicity of rhetorical phenomena to a small number of categories, divides the modes of argumentation into three: ethos (focusing on the character of the speaker), pathos (the appeal to the emotions of the audience), and logos (logical argumentation), which itself can be analyzed in terms of inductive and deductive arguments. Here again, though the categories can be helpful, they can easily become artificially restrictive, as they only begin to scratch the surface of the infinite ways in which speakers actually construct arguments. For the rhetorical critic who wishes to develop an ear for the subtleties of argumentation, immersion in Perelman and Olbrechts‐Tyteca’s The New Rhetoric is invaluable.35 One of the rare articles on rhetoric in a Qumran text also attempts to identify inductively the nature and norms of argumentation in 4QMMT.36 While it is not possible to survey all of the possibilities for argumentation, there are a few issues worth highlighting. First is the relationship between rational argument and explanation on the one hand and metaphors and tropes on the other. Where parties share many of the same assumptions, explicit arguments may be the preferred form of persuasion; but where world views are strongly divergent, then evocative metaphors, narratives, and other such tropes may predominate, because there is no common ground for arguments to have persuasive power. The difference in these strategies is that between “giving evidence” and “making evident.” Giving evidence through arguments addresses the level of beliefs as they bear on a problem. Making evident through vivid evocation addresses the more fundamental level of the grounds that underlie beliefs.37 Second is the way the text frames the issue with which it is concerned. Just as a photographer frames a scene, including some things and excluding others, so does the author of a text. An issue may be narrowly framed or in a panoramic manner, and what is excluded from view may be as important in persuasive 35 Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, trans. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1969). 36  Carolyn Sharp, “Phinehan Zeal and Rhetorical Strategy in 4QMMT,” RevQ 18 (1997): 207–22. 37  Walter Jost and Michael J. Hyde, “Introduction: Rhetoric and Hermeneutics: Places along the Way,” in Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in Our Time: A Reader, ed. Walter Jost and Michael J. Hyde (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 12–20.

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speech as what is said. Closely related to such framing is what Burke called “vocabularies of motives” and “terministic screens,” that is, the choice of particular terms of value by which the author wishes his audience to construe the issues at stake. But as Burke observed, “even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function also as a deflection of reality.”38 Thus persuasion takes place even in the most seemingly straightforward accounts of a situation. These key terms of value, however, may often be empty signifiers, that is, terms widely used in the society but requiring to be given specific content in any particular utterance, for example terms such as “righteous” and “wicked.” Or, the critical terms may be those whose meaning is contested in a given society (e. g., “covenant” or “purity”), so that the text attempts to give the ideologically critical term its own accentuation by using it in novel ways or associating it with a different repertoire of value terms than occurs in the speech of others.39 What is done to words is a part of what is done with words. Recognizing What is Not Said Classical rhetoric recognized in the enthememe a form of logical argument in which often one of the premises of the argument was not stated, precisely because it was based on such widely held opinion (doxa) that it could be taken for granted. As Michael Calvin McGee puts it, “doxa is silent, and it should be kept silent, unless it becomes itself the source of grievance.”40 In modern rhetorical theory the notion of doxa has been expanded to include the internalized sense of reality in a community by which a culture produces a sense of its own naturalness and inevitability. These assumptions are, in Bourdieu’s formulation, what “goes without saying because it comes without saying: the tradition is silent, not least about itself as a tradition.”41 In bringing to consciousness what is hidden, perhaps even from the speaker himself, and in seeing where doxa becomes the source of grievance and so becomes suddenly visible, rhetorical criticism joins ideological criticism.

38  Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996), 45. 39 Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1981), 275–85; V. N.  Voloshinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 21–2. 40  Michael Calvin McGee, “Text, Context, and the Fragmentation of Contemporary Culture,” in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader, ed. John L. Lucaites, Celeste M. Condit, and Sally Caudill (New York: The Guilford Press, 1999), 71. 41  Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 167 (italics in original).

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Reflecting on the Significance of Formal Features Although style has been demoted from the previously dominant position that it held in rhetorical theory, formal features of the text (e. g., repetition, use of contrast pairs, crescendo effects) should be scrutinized. Not only are they often indicators of points of emphasis, but in some cases they even embody aspects of the argument or assumptional background (e. g., a strongly binary style and a dualistic worldview). The list of possible matters to be examined in an act of rhetorical criticism could be extended indefinitely, but these should serve to suggest some of the places one might begin. To complement the theoretical discussion, two case studies illustrate ways in which rhetorical criticism might be conducted.

Case Study I: The Rule Texts One of the novel genres discovered in the sectarian literature of Qumran is the serek or “rule.” Texts of this type include the Damascus Document, the Community Rule, and the Rule of the Congregation. (Although the War Scroll also uses the term serekh, it refers to the order for the conduct of the eschatological war and so will not be considered here.) These texts appear to be composite documents that describe the way of life in the community. Although scholars have debated the possible functions of these rules, there is a general consensus that they were associated in some fashion with instruction in the ethos, beliefs, and practices of the community. Perhaps they were to be read and studied by the maśkîl, the figure Phlip S. Alexander calls “the spiritual mentor” of the community,42 or perhaps they were used more directly in instruction of new members, even being memorized by initiates, as James Charlesworth suggests.43 In either case, one of the important purposes of the texts is to serve in the formation of the sectarian. Significantly, both the Damascus Document and the Community Rule begin with an explicitly motivational section, before turning to the more detailed information about the sectarian community. In these motivational sections one can see examples of a rhetorical appeal designed to consolidate the member’s commitment to the life of the community. Despite the similar function, however, the rhetoric in these two texts is quite different.

 Philip S. Alexander, “Rules,” EDSS 2:800.  James H. Charlesworth, et al., Rule of the Community and Related Documents (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), 1. 42 43

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The Damascus Document The Damascus Document exists in multiple fragmentary copies from Caves 4, 5, and 6, as well as in two partial but relatively well‐preserved medieval copies found in the Cairo Genizah.44 This rule consists of a long hortatory section, usually termed the Admonition, followed by a collection of laws. The basic structure thus suggests that the admonition serves to provide the motivation and self‐understanding that would make the reader/listener receptive to the laws that follow. Indeed, as one looks at the Admonition itself, it moves from more general exhortation at the beginning to incorporate discussion of particular legal positions held by the sectarian community in the latter parts. Although the very beginning of the Admonition is preserved only in very fragmentary fashion in 4QDa, the section with which the Cairo Genizah manuscript A begins gives a good sense of the general rhetorical strategies of the Admonition. The Admonition is quite explicit about giving its audience an identity, as it addresses them directly. “And now listen, all you who know righteousness and who understand the works of God” (CD I, 1–2). Any contemporary reader would recognize the style of the address: the speaker takes up the position of a wisdom teacher addressing his students (cf. Prov 5:1–2; Ps 78:1–4; Sir 3:1; 1 En. 91:3). Later the admonition will make reference to important teachers in Israel’s history (CD I, 11; IV, 8; VI, 2–3, 7, 11), so that the speaker implicitly claims to stand in continuity with an ancient authoritative tradition of instruction. In contrast to the typical wisdom custom of referring to students as “my sons,” however, the speaker explicitly attributes ethical and religious understanding to his audience. They are neither unformed nor uninformed. This rhetorical positioning is significant. It lessens the distance between the speaker and the audience and it sets up an implicit contrast between themselves, as those who possess this vital knowledge, and others who do not. Thus the sectarian interest in drawing a line between insiders and outsiders is already established through the characterization of the speaker and his audience. As the speaker turns to the content of his message, he also invokes language that the audience would recognize as like that of the prophets: “For he [God] has a dispute with all flesh and will execute judgment against all who spurn him” (CD I, 2). Thus the speaker adds to his own authorization. But in contrast to much prophetic rhetoric that often directed its indictments to the people, who are themselves portrayed as guilty (cf. Micah 6), here the audience has been characterized as those who do not spurn God. What the speaker will tell them will be directed not toward getting them to change their identity but to reinforce their existing identification with the good and their sense of separation from and opposition to the evil. The polarizing language also strategically simplifies 44

 See Charlotte Hempel, The Damascus Texts (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000).

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reality. While many people might have considered the choices that Jews must make about the interpretation of God’s will and law to be complex and subject to much debate, the rhetoric of this address allows for no such ambiguity. There are two options: right and wrong. And the speaker and his audience belong to those who have it right. Since the speaker’s task is not to change the minds of his audience so much as to confirm them in their identity, he proceeds by reciting to them several versions of their own history (CD I, 1–II, 1; II, 2–IV, 6; V, 15–VI, 11). He seeks to give them a sense of how they have emerged out of a much longer story about Israel, and indeed, about the history of the world. That this is not a previously unknown story is evident from the fact that it is narrated in a very allusive fashion. Scholars have difficulty in identifying all of the references with certainty, because often very little information is given. But those who are members of the community would have had little difficulty in making the connections. This is a story that they already know well, and the recitation of it serves not to give new information but to reinforce their solidarity with this vision of their place in the world. Despite the allusive style, the major elements of the story are intelligible to the biblically literate reader. The first recounting of the history runs from CD I, 3 to II, 1. It is framed, as the introductory lines indicate, as the story of God’s judgement against those who scorn him. Thus the focus is primarily on the villains. No story has an absolute beginning, of course, and it is rhetorically important where a speaker chooses to begin. This speaker frames the story by reference to the Babylonian destruction of Judah and the Temple, more or less as it had been interpreted in the Deuteronomistic tradition. “For when, in their unfaithfulness, they abandoned him, he hid his face from Israel and from his sanctuary and gave them over to the sword” (CD I, 3–4). Later references to Nebuchadnezzar confirm the reference. The traumatic event of the Babylonian destruction of the Temple was a central experience in early Jewish self‐understanding, and so makes an effective rhetorical point of reference. But why is the destruction of the Temple for the people’s unfaithfulness not the end of the story rather than the beginning? Here the speaker makes use of another traditional prophetic motif, the notion of a remnant saved from the destruction (CD I, 4–5; cf. Jer 31:7; Mic 2:12; Zeph 3:13). Thus an ending makes way for the story of an unexpected beginning, one that takes place at divine initiative. Just as stories do not have objective beginnings, neither must they deal with time in a uniform fashion. The speaker skips over what is not relevant to the story he is shaping and selects for emphasis what is vital. So here, some 390 years are passed over to get to the next relevant event, God’s visiting the remnant, now referred to as “the shoot of the planting” to cause them to grow. Here one approaches the more recent history of the audience, perhaps a generation or so before the speaker’s present.

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The allusive style makes it uncertain exactly when this part of the history takes place (if the 390 years are symbolic rather than literal), though the original audience would have recognized the events immediately. The time that the speaker refers to is in critical ways presented as analogous to the judgement on Judah at the time of Nebuchadnezzar, since this period, too, is referred to as “a time of wrath” (CD I, 5). Most likely, it is an allusion to the time of the crisis in Jerusalem that led up to the persecution by Antiochus IV Epiphanes (c. 175–165 BCE). By establishing this analogy, the speaker rhetorically prepares the audience for a similar development in the plot – danger and destruction followed by a divine nurture of a chosen remnant. But as the story comes closer to the present, the events are more detailed and complex. Instead of being simply the passive recipient of God’s salvation, the community at this point in its history is described as “like blind persons” for some twenty years (CD I, 9–10). The critical act in their salvation thus is God’s decision to “raise up for them a Teacher of Righteousness, in order to direct them in the way of his heart” (CD I, 11). The story of their salvation is thus the story of right teaching. The speaker’s own teaching is a conduit for the knowledge imparted by the Teacher of Righteousness. Moreover, the audience has been addressed from the beginning of this section as “you who know righteousness.” Just as the beginning of the section established a contrast between the audience and their opposites, “those who spurn” God, so here their identity is framed by the contrast with “the congregation of traitors” (CD I, 12). Significantly, the speaker spends far more time describing the congregation of traitors than those to whom he is speaking. Their awful fate in fact forms the climactic conclusion to this section and illustrates what happens to those who spurn God. “The wrath of God was kindled against their congregation, to destroy all their multitude, for their deeds were unclean before him” (CD I, 21–II, 1). Presumably these are also events that the ancient audience could have readily identified and which would have served as confirmation that what the speaker said was true. But it is not finally the audience’s ability to correlate the speaker’s interpretation with events that is the lynchpin of the act of persuasion. More significant is the speaker’s ability to relate the events of the recent past to scriptural prophecies: “This is the time concerning which it was written…,” continuing with a citation of Hos 4:16, “like a straying heifer, so has Israel strayed.” While the correlations that the speaker makes may seem arbitrary to a modern reader, within scripturally oriented sectarian communities the ability to correlate events of the present with scriptural predictions by means of an allegorical hermeneutics is a powerfully persuasive tool. That the speaker uses it at the climax of the first movement of his speech is certainly intentional. Although he will repeat and expand his arguments in the following sections of the Admonition, the speaker has already accomplished his purpose of reinforcing the community’s identity

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by locating them within a meaningful history, distinguishing them sharply from outsiders who are very negatively characterized, and situating their choice as literally one between life and death. The Community Rule Like the Damascus Document, the Community Rule is also a text for the maśkîl or instructor in his work in the formation of members. It is in many ways quite different from the Damascus Document, however. Possibly, the Damascus Document reflects life in the sectarian communities that existed in the towns and villages of Judah, while the Community Rule pertains to the more rigorous form of sectarian life practised at the site of Qumran itself; but it is not possible to be certain. Even more than the Damascus Document, the Community Rule appears to have been assembled from a variety of pre‐existing materials. It also exists in more than one edition, some longer or shorter, some having different materials at the beginning or end of the document.45 Nevertheless, there are indications of intentional rhetorical shaping, most clearly in the placement of motivational material before discussions of sectarian theology and procedure. One of the shorter versions (4QSb = 1QS V–IX) began with a motivational section presented as a series of infinitives and a treatment of a ritual of entry into the community (the solemn oath), followed by sections dealing with the procedures of life within the community. In the expanded version represented by 1QS, four columns of material were added at the beginning, but replicating the same rhetorical shape – first a motivational paragraph cast in infinitives (I, 1–17), then a description of a ritual of entry (the covenant ceremony, I, 18–III, 12). Afterwards comes a theological teaching (III, 13–IV, 26). Although this additional material gives the document something of a reduplicated structure, the basic rhetorical movement from motivation to instruction is preserved and even emphasized. 1QS shows additional evidence of rhetorical shaping in the materials chosen for the conclusion. After the body of diverse procedural and regulatory materials, the document concludes with two sections pertaining to the maśkîl himself, instructions for the maśkîl (IX, 12–26) and a hymn of the maśkîl, couched in the first-person singular (X, 1–XI, 22). Since the maśkîl embodied the highest values of the community, it makes sense that the materials pertaining to him are placed at the end. He represents the epitome of what the disciplines and teaching of the community were designed to produce. That these materials are very intentionally placed here is indicated by the fact that there are strong verbal echoes between the introductory materials in cols. I–II and the materials pertaining to the maśkîl in IX, 12–XI, 22. The shift from third‐person instruction 45 See Sarianna Metso, The Textual Development of the Qumran Community Rule (Leiden: Brill, 1997).

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to first‐person confessional speech in the concluding hymn provides a powerful representation of just the sort of “I” that the sectarians aspired to become through their training. Thus the rhetorical shape of 1QS as a whole shows a clear progression analogous to the life of the sectarian: from motivation to admission, to instruction, to life together, and finally to the ideal figure embodied in the leadership of the maśkîl. It is frustrating not to know how 1QS was actually used, since much of the rhetorical effect of a text depends on how a reader or hearer engages it. Recent studies, however, have emphasized the widespread practice in antiquity of memorizing texts that served as a kind of educational curriculum, a practice referred to as “writing on the tablets of the heart.”46 Given these practices, it seems likely that the Community Rule would have been memorized, at least by the maśkîl himself, and likely by the members he taught. Moreover, the existence of two very small, “portable” copies of the Community Rule (4QSf and 4QSj) lends credence to the use of these scrolls in some sort of private study.47 Thus the rhetoric of the document would be internalized and become part of the self‐understanding of the sectarian. Although one might expect that the motivational rhetoric of the Community Rule would follow the same pattern as that of the Damascus Document, it is quite different in its tone and strategy. Whether these differences reflect different times and social settings in the history of the movement’s development, and hence different audiences, or simply the different tastes of different instructors is difficult to say. Whereas the plural imperatives of the Damascus Document and the recitation of a mutually known history give a highly personal quality to its opening motivational rhetoric, the Community Rule begins with a highly formalized and quite impersonal form of speech. The first several lines are couched in infinitives, forms of speech that give no information about the speaker or the addressee. Infinitives rather shift the focus to purpose: “in order to do x,” or “for doing y.” Thus, rather than conferring identity by means of reminding people of who they are and the place they occupy in a history of God’s judgement and salvation, the Community Rule’s infinitives do two things. They identify the purposes of the teaching and thus the desires that motivate those who seek this teaching – you are what you desire. It is difficult to render the style of the Hebrew adequately in English. Translators often add a phrase to smooth out the translation, e. g. “(The Instructor shall teach them) to seek God … (he shall teach them) to do what is good and upright.” But the sequence of infinitives is actually an allusion to the way the book of Proverbs opens, “The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel: For learning about wisdom and 46  David M. Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 124–34. 47  Philip Alexander and Géza Vermes, DJD XXVI, 5.

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instruction, for understanding words of insight, for gaining instruction in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity; to teach shrewdness to the simple, knowledge and prudence to the young” (Prov 1:1–4 NRSV). This allusion implicitly likens the discipline of life in the community to the discipline of learning wisdom. Although using a rhetorical strategy and verbal style different from the Damascus Document, the Community Rule also presents itself as a wisdom teaching and the maśkîl as a wisdom teacher. But what is it exactly that the Community Rule presents as the desires of those who seek its wisdom? The first few lines are framed in value terms that would express the desires of any good Jew of the Second Temple period: To seek God with [a whole heart and soul] in order to do what is good and right before Him as he commanded by the hand of Moses and by the hand of all his servants the prophets; and to love all that he has chosen and to hate all that he has rejected, in order to keep far from evil and to cling to all good works; and to do truth and righteousness and justice in the land, and not to walk any longer in the stubbornness of a guilty heart and promiscuous eyes, to do all manner of evil. (1QS I, 1–7)

This is Deuteronomistic‐style rhetoric, widely used in religious literature of the period. If one understands the sectarian community to have drawn many of its members from adult seekers, then the rhetoric of the opening lines addresses the person not from the beginning as an “insider” of the sect but in terms of the values he shares with virtually all Jews. The purpose of the teaching of the Community Rule, however, will be to transform the outsider into an insider, as it teaches him that the only way in which he can actually fulfil those desires is through the special knowledge and disciplines available within the sectarian community. Thus, as the motivational introduction continues, it recasts, and one might say reinterprets, those words of common value in terms of specifically sectarian vocabulary and concepts: And to bring in all those who volunteer freely to do the statutes of God in the covenant of grace, to be united in the council of God, in order to walk before Him in perfection [according to] all that he has revealed with respect to the times appointed for them, and to love all the children of light, each man according to his lot in the council of God, and to hate all the children of darkness, each man according to his guilt in the vengeance of God. (1QS I, 7–11)

Whereas the initial lines had used the unmarked vocabulary common to all Jews, here the “covenant” is understood in relation to the sectarian “council of God”: walking in perfection can only be done in light of “all that he has revealed.” The predestinarian worldview of the sect is reflected in the phrase “the times appointed for them.” And the general reference to loving what God has chosen and hating what he has rejected is recast in sectarian terms as the “children of light” and “children of darkness.” While everyone may have the same religious desires to serve God, only those who are “brought into” the sectarian community will be able to fulfil them.

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What one sees reflected in this motivational introduction is an index of the highly competitive religious marketplace that was late Second Temple Judaism. As Kenneth Burke observed about rhetoric in general, it is concerned with “the ways in which the symbols of appeal are stolen back and forth by rival camps.”48 Many teachers and movements competed to represent themselves as the true or correct way, and the rhetoric of the opening of the Community Rule situates itself within that horizon of rival teachings.

Case Study II: The Hodayot (Thanksgiving Hymns) The Admonition section in the Damascus Document referred to an important period in the formation of the community when, after twenty years of blindly groping for direction, God sent them a “Teacher of Righteousness” who guided them in the right way. It may well have been through his leadership that a somewhat disorganized religious movement crystallized into a sect with a strong sense of identity and purpose. For reasons that are not clear, the sectarian documents do not give the personal names of their leaders, so scholars have not been able to identify this important religious leader, other than to ascertain that he was a priest, perhaps even the high priest who served from 159 to 152 BCE.49 Both the Damascus Document and the Qumran pesharim indicate that he was engaged in controversies with an opponent referred to as “the scoffer” (CD I, 14) and “the liar” (1QpHab II, 1–3; V, 9–12; 4QpPsa I, 26–II, 1), and was harassed and persecuted by a figure called the “wicked priest,” probably Jonathan the Hasmonean (1QpHab XI, 4–8). While it is not possible to ascertain whether or not the Teacher was the author of any of the Qumran sectarian literature, as has sometimes been suggested, several of the Thanksgiving Hymns are presented in the voice of a persecuted leader. Most scholars assume either that these hymns are actually the composition of the Teacher of Righteousness himself or that they were composed by members of the community in order to represent his life and experience, though it is also possible that they were the hymns of various leaders.50 For present purposes, however, let us assume that these Hodayot were heard by the Qumran community as compositions of the Teacher. As hymns or thanksgiving prayers, the compositions are formally addressed to God, as they begin with the words, “I thank you, O Lord.” But thanksgiving prayers were traditionally not private expressions but intended to be recited in a communal context. They may have been addressed to God explicitly, but they 48  Quoted in Robert H. Heath, Realism and Relativism: A Perspective on Kenneth Burke (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1986), 212. 49  See Michael Knibb, “Teacher of Righteousness,” EDSS 2:918–19. 50  Carol A. Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran, STDJ 52 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 287–300.

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were intended also to have an effect on the community who overheard them. And it is this rhetorical dimension that is of particular interest here. Unfortunately, we do not know precisely in what setting the Thanksgiving Hymns were used and who recited them. One plausible suggestion, based on an analogy with the practices of the Therapeutae, is that they were publicly recited after communal meals.51 However, it is also possible that, on analogy with the biblical Psalms, they were memorized as part of the educational curriculum of the sect. The rhetoric of the prayer tradition that is developed in the Thanksgiving Hymns has several important features that are relevant to the effectiveness of these compositions in the sectarian context. First, the prayers are framed in the first-person singular, as the confession of the speaker’s innermost thoughts and feelings to God. Thus, if these prayers were believed to represent the words of the Teacher himself, then no matter how much time had passed since the death of the Teacher, every time they were recited, they would make his voice and his leadership once again present to the community. Second, in prayer only one voice speaks. The one who prays may quote the words of others, his friends or his foes, but he alone controls what is said and the way matters are presented. Finally, the tradition of prayer out of which the Hodayot develop is one that elaborately displays the speaker’s subjectivity: his humiliation and triumphs, his hopes and fears, and even the sensations of his body. It is an extraordinarily personal and intimate rhetoric. Even though the Hodayot of the Teacher take up many issues of conflict and community disaffection, the rhetoric of the Hodayot shifts the focus from whatever the content of the conflict was about and instead places it on the suffering but courageous persona of the Teacher. Thus the hymns invite the listener (both God and the human audience) to feel compassion for and to accept the Teacher who presents himself. One might describe it as a deeply “speaker‐centered” rhetoric with a focus on ethos and pathos. Analyzing one such prayer may help to illustrate how effective this rhetoric could be. In 1QHa XIII, 24–XV, 552 the speaker alternates between describing the antagonism of his opponents and the effect of their opposition to the speaker with expressions of divine assistance. In the first movement of the prayer (XIII, 22–6) the Teacher draws on traditional language to identify himself as the “orphan” and “the poor one,” terms that signaled rectitude and piety, as well as vulnerability. Then he describes the conflict, using traditional images from psalms of complaint. He is “a cause of controversy and quarrels with my neighbors, and an object of jealousy and anger to those who enter into covenant with me,” etc. 51 Bo Reike, “Remarques sur l’histoire de la form (Formgeschichte) des textes de Qumran,” in Les manuscrits de la mer Morte: Colloque de Strasbourg 25–27 Mai 1955, ed. Jean Daniélou (Paris: Paris University Press, 1957). 52  Column and line numbers follow Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (Leiden: Brill; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997).

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Echoing traditional psalmic language, these are not objective descriptions but phrases that position the speaker as the innocent, wronged one. Only toward the end of the passage is the specific, sectarian context of the dispute suggested: “with the secret you had hidden in me they have gone around as slanderers to the children of destruction.” To betray esoteric knowledge to those outside the restricted group is hardly the type of misfortune that a traditional psalm of complaint or thanksgiving would address. Here the speaker is using traditional forms of speech to colonize the new moral territory of sectarian ethics. Since the actual betrayers are unlikely to be part of the audience, the speaker’s words can be understood as a sort of “spin control,” an interpretation of a possibly ambiguous event that the speaker casts as rank betrayal. But despite the wicked efforts of the betrayers, God has supported the speaker: “But in order to [show your gre]atness through me, and on account of their guilt, you have hidden the spring of understanding and the foundation of truth” (XIII, 25–6). In point of fact, who was entitled to disclose what to whom (and even what counted as “disclosure”) may have been disputed issues. But the language of the psalm dispels all ambiguity – what happened was a victimization of the speaker. The speaker is vindicated, his opponents are judged, and their efforts are shown to have been in vain. If one looks at the whole text, however, it is not simply so much interested in demonstrating divine judgement as it is in taking the hearer back again and again to a focus on the conflict itself and in particular the effect of the conflict on the speaker (XIII, 26–32; XIII, 35–XIV, 6). The nasty quality of the opponents is captured through the imagery of snakes with darting tongues and poisonous venom. But it is the description of the distraught emotional state of the speaker that truly forms the central focus of this part of the prayer. Thus the composition solicits sympathy for the speaker. As the prayer turns to a description of divine assistance, the attention turns away from the speaker himself to the topic of God’s assistance. Surprising as it would be to someone who was familiar only with biblical psalmody, the relief offered to the speaker appears to have to do with God’s provision of a community which boldly confronts its members about moral shortcomings. “[But you, O my God,] you opened my ears with the ins[tru]ction of those who reprove justly” (XIV, 3–4). Gradually, the focus moves from the speaker’s own reception of instruction to the instruction of the community and the benefits it provides: “You refine them in order to purify from guilt [and from s]in all their deeds by means of your truth. And in your kindness you judge them with overflowing compassion and abundant forgiveness, teaching them according to your command” (XIV, 8–10). Even though the speaker casts these events in wholly positive terms, the aspects of community life to which he refers would have had the potential to create social friction and disaffection. (Even the Community Rule recognizes that the

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practice of mutual reproof can lead to social friction and has to be controlled carefully; see 1QS V, 25–VI, 1.) Although it would be difficult to draw the lines of connection too specifically, one might suggest that his hodayah is a response, in general terms at least, to the system of moral evaluation, mutual critique, and status hierarchy that the social structure of the community created and which could well have provided the environment in which “refractory murmurers” might have been a recurring problem. Thus the author seems to be acknowledging that even though the very practices of the community may have produced dissatisfaction in some members, they are nevertheless the very source of what supports the speaker. But the appeal is bolstered by the further description of the benefits that will accrue to all who stand with the speaker – communion with the angels and the role of the community as both the world tree and as a spring of light in which all the guilty will be burned up (1QHa XIV, 12–19). Yet once more the speaker describes the scenario of conflict and relief (XIV, 19–36). Again, the cause of distress is described as defection: “they, who had attached themselves to my witness, have let themselves be persuaded by […],” (XIV, 19). The speaker’s distress is presented under the image of a sailor caught in a raging storm, while deliverance comes in the image of a secure and fortified city, apparently an image of the covenanted community which the leader directs. In some ways it may seem curious that the community – which apparently has been the source of the “refractory murmurers” – is represented as sure and reliable. And that the leader, who is clearly a figure to be reckoned with, prefers to represent himself as deeply vulnerable, rescued from death and dissolution by the strength he receives from this community of God’s truth. But perhaps this staging of images is highly strategic. In situations where the loyalty of a group is in doubt, there may be an advantage in putting before them images of their proper role and crediting them with fulfilling their function, even if their past performance has been a bit shaky. If this is indeed the rhetorical strategy of the composition, then it ends in a provocative fashion, for the final preserved lines of the composition apparently follow yet another description of faithless defection. But instead of concluding with a confident assertion of God’s deliverance of the speaker, the composition ends instead with language of the speaker’s distress. Thus the prayer seems to end with an implicit plea. Four times the audience has been told that in his distress God has always aided the speaker. In the final two cases this aid has been described as manifested through the faithful life of the community itself. By leaving the final act of deliverance unstated, the text implicitly calls upon the community to recognize its support of the speaker as the needed act of divine deliverance. Whether the rhetoric was successful, we cannot know. It is clear, however, that much thought and art went into the shaping of these Hodayot of the Teacher and that they were attempts to affect the reality of a situation through speech.

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As these examples have attempted to demonstrate, language was a vital instrument in the creation and maintenance of the sectarian community. Carefully crafted speech aided in transforming outsiders into insiders, gave a sense of identity and purpose to members, and was a means of addressing and transforming conflicts. Rhetorical criticism opens up the mechanisms by which language was put to these uses. As a means of analysis rhetorical criticism is an important complement not only to literary criticism but also to social‐scientific approaches, ritual studies, and theological analysis of the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Suggested Reading Although there are very few self‐consciously rhetorical critical analyses of Qumran texts, three by Carolyn Sharp (“Phinehan Zeal and Rhetorical Strategy in 4QMMT,” RevQ 18 [1997]: 207–22), Steven D. Fraade (“Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in Miqṣat Ma‘aśê Ha-Torah (4QMMT): The Case of the Blessings and Curses,” DSD 10 [2003]: 150–61), and Jesper Høgenhaven (“Rhetorical Devices in 4QMMT,” DSD 10 [2003]: 187–204) concern aspects of 4QMMT. Carol A. Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran, STDJ 52 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), focuses on 1QS and the Hodayot. Earlier works by Newsom incorporated into that volume contain additional reflections on aspects of rhetorical criticism (Newsom, “Apocalyptic and the Discourse of a Sectarian Community,” JNES 49 [1990]: 135–44; Newsom, “Kenneth Burke Meets the Teacher of Righteousness,” in Of Scribes and Scrolls: Studies on the Hebrew Bible, Intertestamental Judaism, and Christian Origins, ed. Harold W. Attridge, John J. Collins, and Thomas H. Tobin, S. J. [Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1990], 121–31; Newsom, “Apocalyptic Subjects: Social Construction of the Self in the Qumran Hodayot,” JSP 12 [2001]: 3–35). Reuven Kimelman’s rhetorical analysis of the Amidah prayer (“The Literary Structure of the Amidah and the Rhetoric of Redemption,” in The Echoes of Many Texts, ed. William G. Dever and J. Edward Wright [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997], 171–218) is also valuable as a model for comparable work on liturgical texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls. It should also be recognized that many studies on Qumran texts, even though they do not identify themselves as rhetorical analyses, nevertheless contain valuable insights into rhetorical structures in the texts. For persons interested in doing rhetorical criticism on Dead Sea Scroll texts, an acquaintance with the rhetorical tradition is indispensable. Thomas Conley’s history, Rhetoric in the European Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990) is an excellent starting place, complemented by Brian Vickers’ In Defense of Rhetoric (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). The recent Encyclopedia of Rhetoric (Thomas O. Sloane, ed. [New York: Oxford University Press,

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2001]) is a superb reference work. Two extensive collections of essays, Walter Jost and Wendy Olmstead, eds., A Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004) and John L. Lucaites, Celeste M. Condit, and Sally Caudill, eds., Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader (New York: The Guilford Press, 1999) provide not only a contextualized exploration of critical issues in rhetoric but also an important survey of recent critical and theoretical trends. No encounter with modern rhetoric would be complete without Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts‐Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, trans. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1969) and Kenneth Burke, preferably, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969) or The Rhetoric of Religion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), but a more accessible entrée into the field is James Boyd White’s elegant When Words Lose Their Meaning: Constitutions and Reconstitutions of Language, Character, and Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). The field of rhetorical studies in biblical literature is too recent to have comparable resources. The articles by Thomas Dozeman (“Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism,” ABD 5:710–15) and Benjamin Fiore (“NT Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism,” ABD 5:715–19) in the Anchor Bible Dictionary provide an excellent overview, as do the essays and bibliography of Duane F. Watson and Alan J. Hauser, Rhetorical Criticism of the Bible: A Comprehensive Bibliography with Notes on History and Method, BibInt 4 (Leiden: Brill, 1994) and Duane F. Watson, The Rhetoric of the New Testament: A Bibliographic Survey (Blandford Forum, UK: Deo Publishing, 2006). For examples of rhetorical analysis the collections edited by Stanley E. Porter and Thomas H. Olbricht, Rhetoric and the New Testament: Essays from the 1992 Heidelberg Conference, JSNTSup 90 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), Rhetoric, Scripture, and Theology: Essays from the 1994 Pretoria Conference, JSNTSup 131 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), The Rhetorical Analysis of Scripture: Essays from the 1995 London Conference, JSNTSup 146 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1997), and by Stanley E. Porter and Dennis L. Stamps, Rhetorical Criticism and the Bible: Essays from the 1998 Florence Conference, JSNTSup 195 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002) provide rich resources. Programatic approaches to rhetorical criticism of very different sorts can be found in George A. Kennedy’s New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1984) and Vernon K. Robbins’ Exploring the Texture of Texts: A Guide to Socio-rhetorical Interpretation (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996) and The Tapestry of Early Christian Discourse: Rhetoric, Society, and Ideology (London: Routledge, 1996). Given the recentness of this endeavor, however, rhetorical criticism of the Dead Sea Scrolls should not be constrained by the models already embodied in biblical studies but should also takes its cue from the extensive resources of rhetorical theory and practice, ancient and modern.

II. Language and the Shaping of Community at Qumran

7. “Sectually Explicit” Literature from Qumran The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Sectarian Library? For the first forty years after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls there was an almost universal consensus that the scrolls found in the eleven caves around Khir­bet Qumran formed the remains of a sectarian library belonging to the community whose headquarters were located at nearby Qumran. By an assumption that is nearly as widely held, this community has been regarded as an Essene fellowship. Subsequently, however, there have been suggestions that the “sectarian library of Qumran” was neither a library nor particularly sectarian. Hence it has become necessary to reconsider the question whether one can in fact identify “sectually explicit” literature among the Dead Sea Scrolls and, if so, what such texts indicate about the nature of the scrolls as a whole. One of the most radical challenges has come from Norman Golb. In his article entitled “Who Hid the Dead Sea Scrolls?”1 Golb challenges three of the fundamental assumptions of what can be called the prevailing consensus about the Dead Sea Scrolls. He denies that the evidence is adequate to connect the Dead Sea Scrolls with the reports of Essenes given by Philo, Josephus, and Pliny; he denies the connection between the site of Khirbet Qumran and the caves in which the scrolls were found; and, finally, he rejects the notion that the scrolls themselves should be understood as constituting a community library, that is, an intentional collection of manuscripts belonging to a single community. On what grounds does Golb challenge these widely held views? He suggests that the hypothesis that these writings constitute the library of an Essene sectarian community “resulted primarily from the sequence in which the finds were made.”2 The fact that the manuscripts in Cave 1 were found first and that some of these manuscripts showed affinities with Essenism allowed the nearby site to be identified as an Essene community center and led scholars to attribute discoveries in other caves to this hypothetical Essene community. In the process the substantial diversity of the contents of the other caves was not recognized and their contents were erroneously attributed to this same Essene community. In Golb’s view a different sequence of discovery that did not begin with Qumran Cave 1 would have resulted in a different, better hypothesis – that after the fall of Galilee to the Romans and even during the initial months of the siege of 1 2

 Norman Golb, “Who Hid the Dead Sea Scrolls?,” BA 48 (1985): 68–82.  Golb, “Who Hid the Dead Sea Scrolls?,” 69.

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Jerusalem, the manuscripts found in the eleven caves were brought by a variety of individuals from Jerusalem, individuals who reflected great diversity of religious practice and belief, certainly not all members of a sectarian organization. The manuscripts that they brought were stored in a number of caves and only by merest chance have been mistaken as the remains of a sectarian library. I do not intend to review each of Golb’s arguments. Since my interest is in whether the manuscripts from the caves can be viewed as a sectarian library, there are two matters in particular that I think may be set aside. First is the issue of whether or not the community described in the Serek ha-Yaḥad should properly be termed “Essene.” To be sure, the word “Essene” does not appear in the documents from Qumran. Indeed, it is not clear what its Hebrew or Aramaic equivalent would be. The description of the sectarian organization found in the Serek ha-Yaḥad, though strongly evocative of the descriptions of the Essenes given by Josephus and Philo, also differs significantly from them.3 Even though there is good warrant for describing the community as at least “Essene-like,” it is probably better scholarly practice not to use the terms Qumran and Essene as though they were interchangeable. Purists might argue that the proper expression to use is “Yaḥad,” drawn from the community’s own terminology. The question with which I am more concerned, however, is whether the community referred to in the Serek ha-Yaḥad should be considered responsible for the collection of manuscripts found in the eleven caves. The other issue that I do not intend to consider here in any detail is Golb’s rejection of the connection between the ruins of Khirbet Qumran and the caves and scrolls. Golb rather disingenuously obscures the connections between the pottery found in the caves and the pottery found in the ruins of the nearby site. He suggests, rather lamely it seems to me, that when the Jerusalemites “had brought the bundles or sackfuls of texts from the capital to the desert caves for hiding” that “the Jewish inhabitants of the site and surrounding area might well have contributed to the sequestration by supplying storage vessels.”4 The relationship of the site to the caves and their documents is an important issue, bearing on the interpretation of the scrolls. A positive correlation between the ruins and the scrolls strongly supports the hypothesis that the scrolls form the remains of a community library. Even if it could be shown that the ruins have nothing to do with the manuscripts found in the caves, however, one would still have to ask whether the scrolls represent an intentional collection or an accidental congeries. Consequently, it seems worthwhile to consider the manuscripts without presuppositions as to their relationship with the ruins of Khirbet Qumran.

3  See Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran in Perspective, with the collaboration of Pamela Vermes (Cleveland, OH: Collins and World, 1977), 125–30. 4  Golb, “Who Hid the Dead Sea Scrolls?,” 80.

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If Golb’s hypothesis were correct, and the scrolls were deposited by a diverse group of unrelated individuals, one might reasonably expect the caves to contain a random hodge-podge of a broad spectrum of Jewish literature. According to the view that the caves contain a sectarian library, one would not necessarily be forced to claim that everything in the caves is of sectarian authorship – that is a different question altogether. But one should expect to see some evidence, just from examining the content and distribution of the manuscripts themselves, that they in some way represent an intentional collection. One way of obtaining such information is to chart the number of nonbiblical manuscripts that exist in multiple copies, noting especially those that are found in more than one cave. If the manuscripts that occur in multiple copies can be shown to have a distinctive profile (in terms of content, idiom, style, etc.) and to have affinities with the Serek ha-Yaḥad, then one has good grounds for the hypothesis that the community referred to in that text was the agent responsible for the collection of texts found in the eleven caves. Table 1 indicates the number of copies and the distribution of texts that occur in five or more copies.5 In some cases (mishmarot, pesharim) the type of text rather than the individual composition is counted for purposes of tabulation. In others where closely related texts may represent source material or alternate rescensions (Milḥamah, Temple Scroll), these related texts are also counted. Although uncertainty remains about the assignment of some fragmentary texts, the overall pattern is not significantly affected. It should be obvious at a glance that the distribution is not a random one, such as Golb’s hypothesis should produce. While it will be necessary to discuss the criteria for determining the provenance of a text in more detail below, I will anticipate the results of that discussion here. Texts that can be securely identified as products of the sectarian community known as the Yaḥad include the following: the pesharim, the Serek ha-Yaḥad, the Serek ha-Edah, the Damascus Document, the Hodayot, and the Berakot.6 To this group one should probably add the War Scroll (at least in its final form). The Miqṣat Ma‘aśe ha-Torah are also of Qumran provenance, according to Qimron and Strugnell.7 The books of Enoch and Jubilees probably antedate the establishment of the Yaḥad but have strong theological affinities with the sectarian documents, Jubilees even being alluded to in the Damascus Document. The large number of mishmarot and calendrical texts from Cave 4 may or may not be Qumran compositions but are perhaps, like Jubilees and the 5  Since this article was originally published before many of the Dead Sea Scrolls had been published, I have updated the chart to reflect the current information. 6  J. T. Milik, “Milkî-ṣedeq et Milkî-reša‘,” JJS 23(1972): 95–144 (130–37). 7  Elisha Qimron and John Strugnell, “An Unpublished Halakhic Letter from Qumran,” in Biblical Archaeology Today: Proceedings of the International Congress on Biblical Archaeology, Jerusalem, April 1984 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1985), 401.

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Table 1. Distribution of Qumran Texts Existing in Multiple Copies Text Mishmarot and Calendrical Texts Pesharim (Continuous) Jubilees Serek ha-Yaḥad Milḥamah and Related Texts Book of Giants Serek ha-Edah Sabbath Songsa Damascus Documentb Hodayot Instruction Miqsat Ma‘aśe Ha-Torah Visions of Amram Enoch (1–36, 85–107)c Aramaic Levi New Jerusalem Apoc Jeremiah C Pseudo-Ezekiel Berakot Temple Scroll and Related Texts Tobit

Cave Number:Number of Copies 4:25 6:1 1:4 3:1 4:13 1:2 2:2 3:1 4:8 1:1 4:10 5:1 1:1 4:9 1:2 2:1 4:6 6:1 1:1 4:9 4:8 4:8 1:2 4:6 1:1 4:7 4:7 4:7 4:7 1:1 4:6 1:1 2:1 4:3 5:1 4:6 4:6 4:5 4:2 4:5

11:1 11:1

11:1

11:1

11:3

Total 26 18 14 12 11 10 10 9 8 8 8 7 7 7 7 7 6 6 5 5 5

a

One copy of the Sabbath Songs was discovered at Masada. Two copies of the Damascus Document were recovered from the Cairo Geniza. c Four copies of astronomical texts related to Enoch were discovered in Cave 4. b

Enochic literature, sources for Qumran literature. One calendrical text (4QOtot [4Q319]) is copied at the conclusion of 4QSe (4Q259). One manuscript of the Miqṣat Ma‘aśe ha-Torah (4Q394) also begins with a copy of a calendar.8 Similarly, whether or not the Visions of Amram can be shown to be of sectarian authorship, its articulation of a light/darkness dualism that involves angelic and human beings is very close to the ideas found in the Milḥamah and in the Serek ha-Yaḥad. Aramaic Levi is pre-sectarian but has ideological similarities with sectarian texts and is even cited by the Damascus Document.9 The sapiential text Instruction appears not to be sectarian in composition but in certain respects  Qimron and Strugnell, “An Unpublished Halakhic Letter,” 400.  Jonas C. Greenfield, Michael E. Stone, and Esther Eshel, The Aramaic Levi Document: Edition, Translation, Commentary, SVTP 19 (Brill: Leiden, 2004), 19. 8 9

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influences the Hodayot. The provenance of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice will be discussed further below. Whether or not it is a composition of the Qumran community, this text shares with the texts of sectarian authorship an adherence to the solar calendar and a preoccupation with priesthood and angelology. The New Jerusalem texts (Aramaic descriptions of a heavenly city in terms dependent on the style of Ezekiel’s temple visions) are not well understood. I hesitate to venture a judgment on their authorship or relationship to the theology of the Qumran community. Although Pseudo-Ezekiel does not have particular similarities with Qumran ideas and diction, Apocryphon of Jeremiah C does show such connections, especially with the Damascus Document.10 The provenance of the Temple Scroll has been sharply debated.11 Although Yadin claimed that several fragmentary manuscripts of the Temple Scroll were found in Cave 4, the interpretation of these fragments has been challenged by John Strugnell and Hartmut Stegemann, who believe them to be expanded pentateuchal texts but not copies of the Temple Scroll.12 According to their conclusion the Temple Scroll is attested only in two copies, both from Cave 11.The reasons for Tobit’s apparent popularity is not evident. What appears from this simple count is that most of the nonbiblical texts that exist in five or more copies and the great majority of those found in more than one of the caves are either products of the Qumran community or are closely related to central aspects of its theology and praxis. It is not the order of discovery but the pattern of multiple copies that suggests that the scrolls do not simply represent a random collection of texts. Among the texts that exist in multiple copies – and only among those – one finds descriptions of a sectarian organization that it is reasonable to identify as the social agent responsible for the collection and preservation of the group of manuscripts of which these texts form a part. The hypothesis that the scrolls from the Dead Sea caves represent a sectarian library remains the best one available. Like Golb’s hypothesis it also can account for the wide variety of the texts, both biblical and nonbiblical. But it succeeds better than Golb’s in explaining why certain texts and not others are present in multiple copies.13  Devorah Dimant, DJD XXX, 91, 103. Levine, “The Temple Scroll: Aspects of Its Historical Provenance and Literary Character,” BASOR 232 (1978): 5–23; Lawrence H. Schiffman, “The Temple Scroll in Literary and Philological Perspective,” in Approaches to Ancient Judaism, ed. William Scott Green (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1980), 2:143–58; Yigael Yadin, “Is the Temple Scroll a Sectarian Document?,” in Humanizing America’s Iconic Book: SBL Centennial Addresses 1980, ed. Gene M. Tucker and Douglas Knight (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1980), 153–69. 12  See Hartmut Stegemann, “The Origins of the Temple Scroll,” in Congress Volume: Jerusalem, 1986, ed. John A. Emerton, VTSup 40 (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 235–56. 13  One other question might be raised about the distribution of texts. That is the absence of duplicate texts from caves 7–10. While it is not impossible that manuscripts from certain of these caves might be independent of the sectarian library, one has to reckon with the fact that 10

11 Baruch

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What Does It Mean to Call a Text “Sectarian”? Even if one concludes that the scrolls represent the remains of a sectarian library, what does that conclusion have to say about the provenance of the individual texts? Dupont-Sommer represents one point of view that has been quite influential. His governing assumption is that if a nonbiblical document was found in one of the Qumran caves, then it is presumed to be of sectarian (specifically, Essene) composition. Even concerning the Targum of Job from Cave 11 (a document that gives few internal clues as to its provenance) he says “its presence in the Essene library suggests that it was written by an Essene.”14 In a less explicit fashion a similar view has informed the highly influential books of Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (1975) and The Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran in Perspective (1977), and may be said to have been characteristic of most scholars of the Dead Sea Scrolls.15 Other scholars, however, have been increasing reluctant to make such a blanket assumption. An appreciation of the diversity of the texts has led to a growing concern to distinguish sectarian from nonsectarian texts, and attempts have been made to establish the criteria that will allow this distinction to be made. In a lecture on apocalyptic literature at Qumran, given in Uppsala before the International Colloquium on Apocalypticism, Hartmut Stegemann outlined criteria for distinguishing “specifische Qumrantexte.” Such texts, he suggested, may be recognized as those that ascribe an authoritative function to the figure of the Teacher of Righteousness; or that reflect the particular rule of the Qumran community; or whose formal or terminological connections necessarily associate them with such texts.16 Before one begins to sort through the great pile of manuscript, however, it is best to think for a moment about the kind of judgment one is trying to make. What does it mean to attempt to distinguish between sectarian and nonsectarian very little manuscript of any sort was found in them. Only if they contained much more material would the absence of texts found in the other caves be of significance. 14  André Dupont-Sommer, The Essene Writings from Qumran (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1973), 306. 15 Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, 2nd ed. (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1975); Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran in Perspective, with the collaboration of Pamela Vermes (Cleveland, OH: Collins and World, 1977). 16  Hartmut Stegemann, “Die Bedeutung der Qumranfunde für die Erforschung der Apokalyptik,” in Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East: Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Apocalypticism, Uppsala, August 12–17, 1979, ed. David Hellholm (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1983), 511. Stegemann would include as specifically Qumranic the pesharim, the Damascus Document, the Serek ha-Yaḥad, the Hodayot, the thematic midrashim 4QFlorilegium and 11QMelchizedek, as well as other texts. Stegemann regards the Milḥamah as a pre-Qumran text edited and adapted by the community. Some texts may be excluded as non-Qumran compositions (noncanonical hymns in several Psalm manuscripts, the Words of the Heavenly Luminaries, the Genesis Apocryphon, the Temple Scroll, and many fragmentary compositions of various genres). There remains, however, a large “gray zone” of works whose provenance is difficult to determine.

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texts? The terms require some definition. There are at least three different things that one might mean by referring to a scroll as sectarian. First, one might mean that it had been written by a member of the Qumran community, and, indeed, in most discussions of this sort the terms sectarian or “specifically Qumranic” clearly are used to mean texts written by members of the Qumran community. But that is not the only way that the terms sectarian and nonsectarian might be used. A second possibility is that one might assert that it was the way a particular text was read that made it a sectarian text, no matter who had written it. While this criterion would include almost all of those texts written by members of the community, it might also include a number of others besides – adopted texts, one might say. Finally, one might use the term sectarian not as shorthand for facts of authorship or community use but as a way of describing content or rhetorical stance, that is, those texts that speak specifically of the unique structures of the community and the history of its separation from a larger community, and/or that develop its distinctive tenets in a self-consciously polemical fashion. This last use of the term “sectarian text” might well not include everything actually written by members of the community. Each usage points to a question worth asking. To consider only authorship is to oversimplify. It remains to be seen, though, how these are three distinct questions. Use and Readership of Texts Consider first what it would mean to think about the terms sectarian and nonsectarian as referring to patterns of text use within the community. One might argue that the criterion of use (rather than authorship) corresponds more closely to the ancient sense of what are “our writings” as opposed to “not ours” or “theirs.” As is well known, attribution of a text to a particular author is virtually ignored in ancient Israel (the special case of pseudepigrapha being an exception). It is difficult to imagine a member of the Qumran community puzzling over the question of whether a member of the community did or did not write the War Scroll or the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice or another of the texts that falls into the gray area, insofar as authorship is concerned. The large number of copies of these two texts, and, in the case of the War Scroll, the apparent existence of variant textual traditions suggest that these documents were of particular interest to the community. Whether or not these texts were written by members of the Qumran community, it is plausible that they may have influenced the self-understanding of the community as deeply as the pesharim or the Hodayot. In one sense, to focus on the use of texts within the community rather than on their authorship would be to revive a slightly more sophisticated form of Dupont-Sommer’s thesis. The presence of a document among the Dead Sea Scrolls would not be an indication of Qumran authorship but of Qumran readership and appropriation. In a rough fashion the number of copies of a document

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might be taken as indicating the frequency of its use or some measure of its importance in the community. Such an approach would seem not only to be consistent with ancient values but also to receive support from modern theorists. Discussions of the nature of texts and the reading process in literary criticism have made the point that it is not adequate simply to define a text by reference to its authorship. In a very significant sense a text is created through the reading process.17 A text written by someone not a member of the sectarian community may nevertheless become a sectarian text through the type of reading it is given in a sectarian setting. The problems with this approach, however, become evident when one considers the best documented case we have for understanding how texts were read at Qumran. Through the evidence preserved in the pesharim, we know how certain biblical books were read at Qumran. They were read as referring specifically to the history and fate of the sect and its enemies. If one understands a text not as the utterance of an author but as the product of the reading of an individual or reading community, then one would have to say that the biblical texts found at Qumran were sectarian texts. It does indeed take a strong effort of the imagination for modern scholars to set aside their own reading conventions and to appreciate fully how a member of the sectarian community did read scripture. The claim that the biblical texts found at Qumran are sectarian texts has a certain heuristic value. At the same time one cannot help but feel that such a conclusion obscures more than it clarifies. The fact that such sectarian interpretation was not simply a matter of unconscious assumption but of self-conscious effort, the results of which were embodied in special compositions, should warn us against wholly collapsing the categories of text and reading. Moreover, we really know very little about the interpretation of most texts at Qumran. While the pesharim do give an indication of how biblical texts were read and understood, there is no positive ground for thinking that other texts were read in such a manner.18 It is because the biblical texts have a peculiar 17 See the various perspectives represented by Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti, Theory and History of Literature 2 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982); and Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980). 18  A rather interesting attempt to read a nonbiblical text as it might have been read at Qumran is the interpretation of the Wiles of the Wicked Woman as an allegory of the enemies of the sect (see, e. g., Jean Carmignac, “Poèm allégorique sur la secte rivale,” RevQ 5 [1965]: 361–74; Hans Burgmann, “The Wicked Woman: Der Makkabäer Simon?,” RevQ 8 [1974]: 323–59). To be sure the scholars who advance this interpretation consider the text to be written by members of the Qumran community and consider their interpretation to be an explanation of the author’s intentions. Quite rightly, their view has not been widely accepted, for they do not make their case on those terms. Their interpretation becomes much more provocative if understood as an attempt to read the text as it might have been read at Qumran, whatever its meaning for readers in other contexts. But there are problems even so, since we do not know

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authority that they are read in this fashion – other texts that did not have such authority might well have been read according to very different conventions. While there are some texts that appear to be of non-Qumran authorship but became very influential in the Qumran community (for example, Jubilees), for the most part we simply lack information about the use or lack of use that a text received in the life of the community. Even the presence of a large number of copies of the text may be difficult to interpret. Milik, for instance, has tried to make a case from the date and condition of the Enoch manuscripts that the text ceased to be of much significance for the Qumran community fairly early in its history.19 For both practical and theoretical reasons it does not seem advantageous to use the term sectarian to designate texts that had a particular status or use within the community, irrespective of their authorship. But posing the question of the way in which particular texts were used and interpreted within the community is extremely important, even though the information available to us is often limited. Authorship of Texts Most scholars who raise the question of distinguishing sectarian from nonsectarian Dead Sea scrolls would explain that what they are interested in is the question of authorship. Was a text composed at Qumran (or by a member of the Qumran community) or merely copied and preserved by the Qumran community? Just because the ancient Semitic world was not particularly interested in the question of authorship does not mean that it is not an important question for scholarship. The problem, of course, is that since the ancient writers did not explicitly assert authorship, the assignment of authorship has to be deduced from internal criteria – historical or social allusions, distinctive vocabulary, particular theological ideas, etc. It certainly seems reasonable to assume that writings by members of a sectarian community would tend to bear distinctive traits of content, vocabulary, and style – and many undoubtedly do. But must all documents written by members of a sect be so marked? I have a scholarly friend who humorously dismisses the question of distinguishing sectarian from nonsectarian literature from the Qumran caves by saying that it is like what former Chief Justice Berger said about pornography: I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it. My friend, I would suggest, is conflating the categories of content/ style and authorship. If sectarian is assumed to mean Qumran authorship and if it could be shown that members of the Qumran community wrote material that was not readily identifiable by details of content and style, then the adequacy whether nonbiblical texts were interpreted in a manner analogous to the biblical exegesis found in the pesharim. 19  Milik, The Books of Enoch, 7.

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of my friend’s appealingly simple non-definition would be put in question. To put the matter another way, is it certain that all psalms or prayers written by a member of a sect would be discernibly different from those written by a nonmember? For some important categories of writing (for example, prayers and certain liturgical texts) stereotypical, traditional language might well have been the norm for the sectarian as well as the nonsectarian author. An example of this problem is the curious document form Cave 4 that Baillet called a “Marriage Ritual.”20 Whatever the nature of the text (its interpretation as a marriage ritual has been questioned),21 my interest is in the grounds Baillet finds for calling it Essene (or, as I would prefer, Qumranic). There is no reference to the name of the sectarian community or to the Righteous Teacher, no reference to organizational features of the community or its distinctive institutional structure, no reference to distinctive theological ideas or use of distinctive idiom. By the criteria that Stegemann and others have proposed such a text would not attract attention as possibly of sectarian authorship. What Baillet noticed, however, was that one fragment (4Q502 16) apparently cites a part of the Serek ha-Yaḥad. Although the fragment is small, Baillet’s judgment about its overlap with 1QS IV, 4–6 seems well founded.22 Because it cites a clearly sectarian text, one would be justified in concluding that this “marriage” text is also of sectarian authorship (or at the very least updated for use by a member of the sect). The existence of such a text is thus a reminder that much that does not strike us as sectarian in content may nevertheless have been written by a member of the sect. The opposite problem exists, too. Where a text makes explicit references to the organizational features of the group or to its history, one may be able to conclude quite confidently that it was written by a member of the community. But what about texts that lack such clear markers of origin but do employ a diction, style, and theological slant that has significant overlap with what one finds in the core group of texts that are of sectarian authorship? It is possible to describe the similarities and differences of content or idiom, but much more difficult to move convincingly from such descriptions to claims about authorship.23 In such cases 20 Maurice

Baillet, DJD VII, 81–105.  Joseph M. Baumgarten, “4Q502, Marriage or Golden Age Ritual?,” JJS 34 (1983): 125–35. 22  Baillet does not discuss the relationship between the paleography of 4Q502 and that of the copies of the Serek ha-Yaḥad from Cave 4. One assumes, however, that the possibility that the fragment belongs to a copy of the Serek ha-Yaḥad was investigated. Although Baillet does not discuss at length his reasons for assigning the fragment in question to 4Q502, he does say in his general introduction that some of the fragments of 4Q502 might belong to 4Q503 (Daily Prayers). Even if that were the case with the fragment that cites the Serek ha-Yaḥad, the issue with which I am concerned would be the same. Like the Marriage Ritual, the Daily Prayers are not marked by the features that one usually points to as characteristic of texts of Qumran authorship. 23  In fact the entire notion of authorship and the production of a text within a single community may become problematic categories. A case in point is the War Scroll. The different recensions of the book that exist and the complexities of its structure have suggested to many 21

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perhaps it would be better for heuristic reasons to reverse Dupont-Sommer’s presumption and to regard such texts as of non-Qumran origin. One does not “lose” the text for Qumran – the readership of the text within the community is still assumed. But one is forced to consider what other place of origin such a text might have had in Second Temple Judaism. Even if one cannot be certain that documents composed by members of the sect will contain a distinctive content, there may be some features that are clearly incompatible with sectarian authorship. In documents that are demonstrably of Qumran authorship the tetragrammaton is always avoided, except in quotations from scripture. This practice is not unique to Qumran, of course, but is arguably the norm for Jewish writings after the third century BCE.24 It means, though, that any text containing the tetragrammaton in free and original composition can be presumed to be of non-Qumran authorship. See, for example, the collection of noncanonical psalms published by Schuller.25 Calendrical assumptions might provide another criterion. While adherence to the solar calendar is reflected in texts written by the Qumran community, it is widely agreed that not every text that reflects the solar calendar is necessarily of Qumran provenance. Since the calendar was a polemical issue for the sect, however, a text that reflected different calendrical assumptions could be excluded from the list of documents written in the Qumran community. An example of such a text is 4Q507–509, the Prayers for the Feasts. The text, of which 1Q34–34bis is an additional copy, has been construed as a Qumran sectarian composition, apparently on the basis of the reference to the renewal of the covenant (1Q34bis 3 II, 6). While the language is suggestive, the adjoining reference to separating the covenanted ones “from all the peoples” (mkl h‘mym) makes one wonder if the reference might not be to Israel as a whole. None of the rest of the preserved fragments contains language that points clearly to Qumran authorship. scholars that the work has a complicated textual history. Some have argued that the work derives in whole (Leonhard Rost, “Zum Buch der Kriege der Söhne des Lichts gegen die Söhne der Finsternis,” TLZ 80 [1955]: 205–6) or in part (Peter von der Osten Saken, Gott und Belial: traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zum Dualismus in den Texten aus Qumran, SUNT 6 [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969], 88–91, 105) from a period before the emergence of the Qumran community. Because we possess so little of the literature from the period, it is extremely difficult to judge whether terms such as grl, m‘dy t‘wdwt, the pair bny ’wr/bny ḥwšk, etc., were distinct idioms developed in a relatively closed intellectual environment or whether they were rather broadly shared terms used in sectarian and nonsectarian settings for discussing predestinarian and dualistic ideas. 24 Hartmut Stegemann, “Religionsgeschichtliche Erwägungen zu den Gottesbezeichnungen in der Qumrantexten,” in Qumrân: sa piété, sa théologie et son milieu, ed. Mathias Delcor, BETL 46 (Leuven: University Press, 1978), 216; cf. Patrick W. Skehan, “The Divine Name at Qumran, in the Masada Scroll, and in the Septuagint,” BIOSCS 13 (1980): 14–44. 25  Eileen M. Schuller, Non-Canonical Psalms from Qumran: A Pseudepigraphical Collection, HSS 28 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 38–41.

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The impasse can be breached by examining the order in which the feasts appear in the cycle of prayers. One of the copies, 4Q509, is written on the recto of a papyrus scroll, the verso of which contains a copy of the War Scroll (4Q496) and a copy of the Words of the Heavenly Luminaries (4Q505). One of the fragments (4Q496 3 = 4Q509 3) contains on the verso a portion of text from the beginning of the War Scroll (= 1QM I, 4–9). The recto contains part of the prayer for the autumn New Year.26 The simplest explanation for this state of affairs is that fragment 4Q496 3 = 4Q509 3 comes from the beginning of the scroll and preserves material from near the beginning of both compositions. The question next to be asked is whether a calendrical sequence beginning with the New Year in Tishri is consistent with the calendrical practices of the Qumran community. It appears that it is not. Judging from what Milik has published on the priestly courses from Qumran, their calendar reckoning begins not with Tishri but with Nisan.27 Although it is not difficult to see how such a collection of traditional prayers for the feasts might have been valued and used at Qumran, it seems most unlikely that a cycle of prayers composed at Qumran would begin with the fall New Year if the rest of the sect’s cultic organization began its reckoning with Nisan. Consequently, one seems warranted in concluding that the Prayers for the Feasts were not written by a member of the Qumran community. The question “What kinds of texts did members of the Qumran community actually compose?” is an extremely important one. To the extent that we can answer it, the question not only provides valuable information about the life and values of the sect but also opens new perspectives on Second Temple Judaism in general. Every text whose composition cannot be placed at Qumran must have originated elsewhere. It appears, however, that the matter of distinguishing texts of Qumran authorship is not so simple as “knowing it when we see it.” Some texts that are not characterized by the style and idiom that we associate, for example, with the Serek ha-Yaḥad or the pesharim may be of Qumran authorship, while others that share important features of that style and idiom may not be, or may have a compositional history that begins in another environment. Rhetorical Function of Texts Because the issue of authorship seems to be a more subtle matter than first appears, it might be better to reserve the term “sectarian text” for another purpose than as a synonym for “Qumran authorship.” Of the three alternative meanings 26 Fragment 4Q509 overlaps 1Q34bis 2 + 1, which contains the end of the prayer for the New Year and the beginning of the prayer for the Day of Expiation. 27  J. T. Milik, “Le travail d’édition des manuscrits du desert de Juda,” in Volume du Congrès: Strasbourg 1956, VTSup 4 (Leiden: Brill, 1957), 24–25; see also Shemaryahu Talmon, “The Calendar Reckoning of the Sect from the Judean Desert,” in Aspects of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ScrHier 4 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1965), 172.

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for the term sectarian that I discussed above (authorship, use, and rhetorical purpose) the third and most restrictive category seems the most useful. A sectarian text would be one that calls upon its readers to understand themselves as set apart within the larger religious community of Israel and as preserving the true values of Israel against the failures of the larger community. A text may do this in a variety of ways. There may be overtly polemical rhetoric of an “us vs. them” sort. Or there may be references to the community’s history, or teaching about the institutional structure of the community. Liturgies that serve to constitute the community as set apart from the larger community would also be sectarian. While particular theological ideas and values may be almost always present in such sectarian documents, they do not of themselves make a document sectarian. Some self-conscious reference to separation from the larger religious community would be necessary to identify the text as sectarian. By focusing on questions of content and rhetorical purpose one restores attention to differences that are obscured when the issue is seen primarily as one of authorship or use. After all, the Temple Scroll, whoever wrote it, does not present itself as a sectarian document. The Serek ha-Yaḥad does. I certainly do not mean to diminish the significance of questions of authorship and use. It is important to attempt to discover whether members of the sectarian community wrote a text like that of the Temple Scroll and to know, whether or not they wrote it, why they read it, and how they understood it. But it must not be overlooked that the means by which the text claims its authority and achieves its persuasiveness are not those by which the Serek ha-Yaḥad or the Damascus Document achieve theirs.

A Test Case – The Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice My interest in the issue of what it means to call something a sectarian text stems directly from my work in editing the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice.28 It represents one of those texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls whose provenance seems particularly hard to determine. I would like to reexamine that question in the following pages. Certain evidence that I had previously neglected needs to be included in the discussion. In addition, more self-conscious division of the issue into separate questions of use, authorship, and sectarian rhetoric helps to clarify the relationship between the evidence one has and the assumptions one invokes in interpreting that evidence. The Sabbath Songs are a liturgical cycle of thirteen related compositions, one song for each of the first thirteen Sabbaths of the year. Although there is some 28 Carol A. Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice: A Critical Edition, HSS 27 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985); DJD XI, 173–401.

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reference to the human community and its priesthood, by far the greatest portion of the text is concerned with the angelic priesthood, the praises offered by the angels, the heavenly temple, the chariot of God, and the sacrifices offered in the heavenly temple. Ten copies are extant, eight of which come from Qumran Cave 4, one from Qumran Cave 11, and one from Masada. Two other compositions from Qumran have phraseology so similar to some of the most distinctive language of the Sabbath Songs that one must assume some pattern of influence among the texts. These other documents are the Songs of the Maśkil (4Q510 and 4Q511)29 and the Berakot texts from Cave 4.30 If one examines the Sabbath Songs with respect to content and rhetorical purpose, there is nothing clearly sectarian about them. That is to say, they do not appear to be concerned with defining and maintaining the boundaries between a religious subgroup and a dominant religious community. The songs are nonpolemical. The only contrast between one religious group and another is between the angelic priesthood and the human priesthood (see 4Q400 2 6–8). Although the human community is referred to self-deprecatingly, it appears that the angelic priesthood provides a model and projected self-image for the human speakers/hearers of the text. Deterministic language and references to the eschatological war in heaven do occur, but the references are not explicitly related to the fates of any particular human group (see 4Q402 4). The solar calendar is assumed by the date headings for each of the songs, but there is no indication in the text that the use of such a calendar is regarded as in any way distinctive or exceptional. That is to say, the calendar is not made the subject of polemic. One must remember, however, that a religious sect may have other needs as a community that do not have to do explicitly with defining the boundaries between itself and the larger religious community from which it has separated. The lack of sectarian self-consciousness in the content of the songs cannot of itself exclude Qumran as the place of origin of these compositions. Are there references to sectarian community institutional structures or history? While nothing of the sort occurs in the body of the songs, it is very significant that the heading lmśkyl occurs at the beginning of each composition, for Maśkil does appear to be the name for a sectarian office in texts of Qumran authorship (1QS and 1QSb; cf. CD).31 The terse heading lmśkyl is not without ambiguity, both with respect to the sense of the preposition (“to”?, “by”?, “for”?) and the noun (“sage” or “the Maśkil”?). But one does have to reckon here with the possibility that the heading served to identify the text as belonging to the provenance of that sectarian leader who had responsibility for community instruction (1Q3 III, 13) and for certain liturgical tasks (1QS IX, 26–X, 5; 1QSb).  Published in Maurice Baillet, DJD VII, 215–62.  Discussed and excerpted in J. T. Milik, “Milkî-ṣedeq et Milkî-reša‘ dans les anciens écrits juifs et chrétiens,” JJS 23 (1972): 95–144; see now Bilhah Nitzan, DJD XI, 1–74. 31  Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, 2nd ed., 22–25. 29 30

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Whether one is dealing with a text composed within the community or adopted by it, the similarity between the angelological and liturgical knowledge attributed to the Maśkil in 1QS/1QSb and the content of the Sabbath Songs makes it seem likely that in the context of the Qumran community lmśkyl was construed with reference to this sectarian office. It is also necessary to assess what can be known or guessed about the use of the text within the Qumran community. The number of copies found at Qumran suggests that it was a text of considerable importance. Of course, we do not have independent evidence to indicate how the text was used. I assume that it was used “as directed,” that is, read in sections over the course of the first thirteen Sabbaths of the year. If the text could be shown to be of Qumran authorship, then the assumption would be almost certainly true. But if one concludes that the text was not of Qumran authorship, then it would be less certain. While the text may well have been adopted for actual liturgical practice, there would be some chance that the text was not put into actual use but consulted only as a study text for the speculations on the heavenly world that it contained.32 There is another measure for the use of a text besides the number of copies extant, and that is the evidence for its influence on other texts. As I mentioned above, there are two documents from Qumran that may show the influence of the Sabbath Songs. One, which I have discussed in greater detail in my edition of the Sabbath Songs, is 4QBerakot. This text, which makes explicit reference to the sectarian community (4Q286 10 II, 1: ‘ṣt hyḥd “the council of the Community”), Milik interprets as the liturgy that the Qumran community used for covenant renewal on the day of Pentecost.33 The points of similarity between the Sabbath Songs and 4QBerakot concern the very peculiar terms used for the description of the heavenly temple, the chariot throne, and the angelic attendants. Since the description of such heavenly realia forms one of the principal subjects of the Sabbath Songs, whereas it appears to be more peripheral in the Berakot, it seems likely that the author of the Berakot has been influenced by the Sabbath Songs rather than the other way around. The other text that shows strong terminological and formal similarities with the Sabbath Songs, the Songs of the Maśkil (4Q510–511), is almost certainly of Qumran authorship (see below). Although it is not possible to examine all the evidence here, the Songs of the Maśkil appear to be literarily dependent upon both the Hodayot and the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice.

32 This possibility was suggested to me by Hartmut Stegemann. In my own opinion, however, I think that the liturgical use is more likely. We do know that the Qumran Maśkil was associated with other liturgical utterances (1QSb; 1QS ix–x). Elsewhere I have described the way in which liturgical recitation of these songs would have served the needs of the Qumran community (Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, 59–72). 33  Milik, “Milkî-ṣedeq et Milkî-reša‘,” 136.

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To sum up so far, the Sabbath Songs seem to have been influential within the Qumran community, judging both from the number of copies extant and from their influence on other Qumran compositions. While the Sabbath Songs do not reflect a significant degree of sectarian self-consciousness, they may well have formed part of the literature of instruction or liturgical praxis associated with the figure of the Maśkil. The question that remains is whether there is enough evidence to justify a judgment as to their authorship.34 The lack of explicit sectarian polemic is, as I have suggested above, indecisive. There are, however, two other pieces of information that are important. The first is the presence of a copy of the text at Masada. Previously, I had expressed my agreement with Yadin’s suggestion that the text might have been carried there by a member of the Qumran community after the destruction of Khirbet Qumran.35 And so it might. I must admit, though, that the suggestion has something of the flavor of the theory of epicycles introduced to save the ptolemaic cosmology from erosion by apparently contradictory empirical observations. The possibilities are more various. While the text might have belonged to a former member of the Qumran community or to a member of the “New Covenant” who lived in a city or village (see the Damascus Document), the presence of the Sabbath Songs at Masada requires one to reckon with the possibility that the text was known and used in circles quite distinct from the Qumran community. The implications of that possibility for the authorship of the text and the direction of its dissemination are quite ambiguous, however. Does one have a document from a nonsectarian source adopted at Qumran because it was congenial to the community’s interests or a document composed at Qumran but congenial to a wider readership because of its lack of explicitly sectarian rhetoric? The mere fact of its presence at Masada does not allow one to decide. There remains one piece of evidence that I did not consider in my previous discussion of the provenance of the text, evidence that I think may be sufficient to tip the balance toward the conclusion that the Sabbath Songs were not composed by a member of the Qumran community. As I noted above, in texts whose Qumran authorship seems reasonably certain, there is no use of the tetragrammaton except in direct scripture quotations. It is also the case, however, that the word ’elōhîm is avoided. The term ’elōhîm is, indeed, rare in most of the 34  For purposes of comparison with the following discussion, in my edition of the Sabbath Songs I summarized the question of the provenance of the text as follows: “To conclude, there is no internal evidence which can establish beyond question the provenance of the Sabbath Shirot. The absence of specifically sectarian references in the body of the Shirot, however, need not indicate a pre-Qumran origin for the Sabbath Songs. Strong points of relationship with the clearly Qumran 4QBerakot, the technical significance of the heading lmśkyl, plus additional points of verbal similarity with other Qumran documents are adequate to support the working hypothesis adopted here, that the scroll of the Sabbath Shirot is a product of the Qumran community” (Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, 4). 35  Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, 74 n. 5.

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nonbiblical texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls from whatever sources they derive.36 While the Sabbath Songs also avoid the tetragrammaton, they differ sharply from the pattern of usage in the texts of Qumran authorship in their frequent use of ’elōhîm. Of all words, names and terms for God would be among the most likely to be governed by convention and not left to the whim and preference of individual writers within a religious community. Consequently, the deviant use of ’elōhîm seems to point toward non-Qumran authorship of the Sabbath Songs. But the picture becomes clouded again when the relationship between the Sabbath Songs and the Songs of the Maśkil is considered. These mysterious texts share a number of similarities with the Sabbath Songs. There is an apparently similar use of lmśkyl as a heading; the individual compositions are referred to as songs (šyr) in both; there is a similarity in the imperative calls to praise that open the songs; certain terminology for describing praise is attested only in these two documents, out of the corpus of the Dead Sea Scrolls (for example, tšbwḥh/ tšbwḥwt). One fragment (4Q511 44) uses terms for the heavens and the cherubim that are almost identical to those of the Sabbath Songs. One of the most interesting points of comparison occurs in 4Q511 35, where the speaker describes God’s act of setting apart priests for himself. It is not entirely clear whether the priests are human or angelic. In either case, however, the passage is quite similar to the description of the consecration of the angelic priesthood in the first Sabbath Song (4Q400 1 i), a topic of utmost importance in the Sabbath Songs. The most distinctive point of similarity between the Sabbath Songs and the Songs of the Maśkil, however, is the striking preference for the divine epithet ’elōhîm in both texts. At the same time, the Songs of the Maśkil appear to be much more closely related to the language and idiom of the clearly sectarian documents of Qumran authorship than are the Sabbath Songs. Baillet documents extensive similarities with the diction of the Hodayot. Predestinarian and dualistic language similar to that of the documents of Qumran authorship is found (bqṣ mmšl[t] rš‘h wt‘wdwt t‘nywt bny ’w[r] [4Q510 1 6–7]; bgwrl rš‘ [4Q510 2 1]; [g]wrl ršyt by‘qwb wnḥlt ’l[why]m [4Q511 2 I, 5]; gwrl ’lwhym [4Q511 2 I, 8]). And though the terminology is rather different, there is a close parallel between the claims to insight into human nature in the Songs of the Maśkil (4Q511 63 III, 2–3) and that claimed for the Maśkil in the Serek ha-Yaḥad (1QS III, 13–15). While highly suggestive, these features alone would not constitute definitive evidence for Qumran authorship.37 What seems to make the case for Qumran 36 See the discussions of Stegemann, “Religionsgeschichtliche Erwägungen” and Skehan, “The Divine Name at Qumran.” The occurrences in 1QS VIII, 14 and 1QM X, 4, 7 are all in the context of quotations from scripture. The only exception appears to be 1QSb IV, 25 (’lwhy ṣb’[wt). In his unpublished notes on the Sabbath Songs Stegemann had already observed the uncharacteristic use of ’ĕlōhîm as grounds for doubting that the Sabbath Songs were composed at Qumran. 37  In Gott und Belial, Peter von der Osten Saken has argued convincingly that not all dualistic terms are necessarily sectarian. In his analysis of 1QM I he has attempted to show how the

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authorship in the Songs of the Maśkil is Baillet’s claim that one passage refers explicitly to the sect: tkn lmw‘dy šnh [wm]mšlt yḥd lhthlk [ b]gwrl [’lwhym ] lpy kbwd[w] (4Q511 2 I, 9–10). Although the passage is damaged, it is difficult to see how one could construe the crucial phrase other than as Baillet reads it (“du go]uvernement de (la) Communauté”).38 How should this rather complex evidence be assessed? One could assume that both texts originated in a non-Qumran priestly milieu that favored the divine epithet ’ĕlōhîm and that had a strong interest in the heavenly and demonic realms and in powerful and esoteric knowledge. That approach would fail to explain, however, why only one text (the Songs of the Maśkil) had been rewritten within the Qumran community to incorporate a more explicitly sectarian perspective. Alternatively, if one assumed that both texts originated within the Qumran community, one would have to explain why only these two texts freely use the divine epithet ’ĕlōhîm. A case might be made that the use of ’ĕlōhîm is an example of privileged speech associated with the figure of the Maśkil. The difficulty is that, in addition to being a rather ad hoc explanation for which there is virtually no positive evidence,39 one would still lack an explanation for the difference between the more strongly sectarian rhetoric of the Songs of the Maśkil and the apparently nonsectarian orientation of the Sabbath Songs. The most plausible explanation seems to be that the Sabbath Songs alone originated outside of and probably prior to the emergence of the Qumran community.40 Appropriated by the Qumran sect, this document became an important text in the community for the reasons that I have discussed in my edition of the Sabbath Songs. At some point, probably during the first century BCE, the Songs of the Maśkil were composed, under the strong influence both of the Hodayot and the Sabbath Songs. That the normally avoided divine epithet ’ĕlōhîm should be used in this sectarian composition is not as surprising as it might first appear. According to the Songs of the Maśkil, the description of the “splendor of His beauty” (4Q510 1 4) serves a quasi-magical purpose, “to frighten and ter[rify] all the spirits of the angels of destruction …” (4Q510 1 4–5). The Songs of the Qumran community drew on an existing vocabulary and literature in the development of its own sectarian terminology. 38 There are other examples of unarticulated yḥd that refer to the community. Cf. 1QS III 2, 12; IX 6; XI 8; 1QSa I 26; 1QSb IV 26. So long as mmšlt is understood to be in construct and not used absolutely (as it is in Ben Sira 7:4), one can scarcely construe yḥd as other than a noun. 39  It is perhaps relevant that the one free (that is, nonquotational) use of ’ĕlōhîm in a text of Qumran authorship occurs in a blessing spoken by the Maśkil (1QSb IV, 25). Elsewhere in that text, however, ’ādôn and ’ēl are used to refer to God. 40 It is not possible to consider here what the original Sitz im Leben of the Sabbath Songs may have been, if it was composed outside of the Qumran Community. The adherence to the solar calendar and the preoccupation with the priesthood and its angelic representatives have significant affinities with the traditions associated with Levi in the Aramaic Testament of Levi and in Jubilees. But the liturgical form of the document assumes a rather well-organized community.

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Maśkil are conceived of as words of power. In such a context the use of a normally restricted divine name is readily explicable. Is Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, then, a sectarian text? In terms of its rhetoric, no, it is not. In terms of its authorship, it appears most likely not to have been composed within the Qumran sect. But in terms of its use – that is, the way in which it was read and employed within the Qumran community (whether as a document for study or for guiding worship), the number of copies found in the caves, and the apparent influence that it had on other texts of the community – there are good grounds for thinking that the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice functioned as an adopted or naturalized text within the sectarian perspective of the Qumran community.41 The problem with “sectually explicit” literature from the Qumran caves is that it is often not sectually explicit enough. The question of determining what is sectarian or nonsectarian literature from the Qumran library cannot be a matter merely of dividing the manuscripts into two separate piles with appropriate labels. The questions of content/rhetoric, of authorship, and of use must each be posed for the document in question. With certain texts, such as the Milḥamah or the Sabbath Songs, the question “Is it sectarian?” cannot be answered either with a simple yes or no. Despite the need for nuance in assessing the relation of particular texts to the life of the Qumran community and for being sensitive to the possibility of diverse origins, there remain good reasons for assuming that the documents recovered from the eleven caves near Khirbet Qumran are indeed the remains of the library of the sect described in the Serek ha-Yaḥad.

41 Republishing this essay allows me to indicate that I have changed my mind on this matter. When the essay was originally written, scholarship was attempting to free itself from the strong bias in favor of assuming sectarian authorship of nonbiblical Dead Sea Scrolls. In the spirit of that effort, I made the strongest case possible for a non-sectarian origin. But I soon came to think that I had gone a step too far. The lmśkyl headings appear to be distinctive to texts composed by the Yaḥad. The use of ʾĕlōhîm is understandable given the numinous subject matter of the Sabbath Songs.

8. “He Has Established for Himself Priests”: Human and Angelic Priesthood in the Qumran Sabbath Shirot All works of scholarship are in some sense the product of cooperative and collaborative effort, but the history of the edition of the Sabbath Shirot (Sabbath Songs) has been especially characterized by such fruitful cooperation. The first portions of the text were published by John Strugnell in Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 7 as a report on work in progress on the mass of nonbiblical manuscripts from Qumran Cave 4.1 As one of a number of cooperative arrangements designed to expedite work on the Cave 4 texts, Professor Strugnell asked me to undertake the edition of the eight manuscripts of the Sabbath Shirot from Cave 4 for my Harvard University doctoral dissertation.2 Shortly after I completed that work, a ninth copy of the text from Cave 11 was published by Adam S. van der Woude.3 As early as 1965 Yadin had announced his discovery of a fragment from the Sabbath Shirot which he had found in the excavation of Masada.4 When I talked with him concerning my work on the Cave 4 manuscripts. Professor Yadin graciously suggested that we collaborate on an edition of the Masada fragment, a work that was published in the year following his death.5 The difficulty with all of these editions was that the fragmentary condition of the manuscripts led to results that were tantalizing, but frustrating. It was possible to talk about motifs and themes present in the document and details of angelology and cosmology, but it did not seem possible to reach conclusions about such fundamental matters as the length, structure, or function of the work. The breakthrough was provided by Hartmut Stegemann. In the summer of 1982 Strugnell showed the Cave 4 texts to Stegemann, who had developed a 1  John Strugnell, “The Angelic Liturgy at Qumran – 4Q Serek Šîrôt Ôlat HaŠŠabāt,” in Congress Volume: Oxford, 1959, VTSup 7 (Leiden: Brill, 1960), 318–45. 2  Carol A. Newsom, 4Q Serek Šîrôt ‘Ôlat HaŠŠabāt (The Qumran Angelic Liturgy): Edition, Translation, and Commentary (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1982). 3 Adam S. van der Woude, “Fragmente einer Rolle der Lieder für das Sabbatopfer aus Höhle XI von Qumran (11QŠirŠabb),” in Von Kanaan bis Kerala: Festschrift für Prof. Mag. Dr. J. P. M. van der Ploeg O. P. zur Vollendung des siebzigsten Lebensjahres am 4. Juli 1979: überreicht von Kollegen, Freunden, und Schülern, ed. W. C. Delsman, et al., AOAT 211 (Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982), 311–37. 4  Yigael Yadin, “The Excavations at Masada: 1963–64, Preliminary Report,” IEJ 15 (1965): 1–120. 5  Carol A. Newsom and Yigael Yadin, “The Masada Fragment of the Qumran Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice,” IEJ 34 (1984): 77–88.

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method by which to reconstruct the sequence and relative positions of the major fragments of the best-preserved manuscripts.6 Subsequently, I had the good fortune to be able to work directly with Professor Stegemann on the problems of reconstruction of the text. Ultimately, between the evidence provided by the physical characteristics of the fragments and that furnished by the significant textual overlaps of the ten manuscripts, what had been a heap of fragments became a damaged but coherent document. This meant, of course, that my editing had to be substantially redone, but this time with the possibility of asking and answering much more substantive questions than before. It had become possible to reconstruct the overall structure of the document, its contents, internal divisions, changes of style, etc., and to make much better judgments about its setting, purpose, and function.7 From the physical evidence of the scrolls, it is clear now that the text originally consisted of thirteen individual compositions, one for each of the first thirteen Sabbaths of the year. Moreover, there is indirect evidence from the content and literary structure of the text that these thirteen songs were not repeated quarterly to form a yearly cycle but were unique to the first quarter of the year. Each song opened with a formulaic heading (‫)למשכיל‬, followed by the number and date of the particular Sabbath (for instance, “By/for the Maskil, song for the seventh Sabbath on the sixteenth of the month”). Next came an imperative call to praise (‫ )הללו‬addressed to the angels. The form and content varied considerably, and there appears to have been no closing formula for the individual songs. The overall structure of the work, however, does appear to have been carefully planned. It is evident from changes in the content and style of the individual songs that the work is constructed according to a form that one might visualize as a pyramidal structure: 7 8 6 9   5 10     4 11       3 12         2 13           1 6  Hartmut Stegemann, “Methods for the Reconstruction of Scrolls from Scattered Fragments,” in Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The New York University Conference in Memory of Yigael Yadin, ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman, JSPSup 8 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), 189–220. 7 See Carol A. Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice: A Critical Edition, HSS 27 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985). This edition contains all known manuscripts of the Sabbath Shirot, not only the eight manuscripts from Cave 4 (4Q400–4Q407) but also the text from Cave 11 and the Masada fragment. See also Carol A. Newsom, “Shirot ʿOlat Ha-Shabbat,” in DJD XI, 173–401 and Florentino García Martínez, Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, and Adam S. van der Woude, “11Q Shirot ʿOlat Ha-Shabbat,” in DJD XXIII, 259–304.

8. “He Has Established for Himself Priests”

133

The first five Sabbath songs, though badly damaged, appear to concern the establishment, structure, and responsibilities of the angelic priesthood as well as accounts of their praise. There is some description of the eschatological battle to be waged by angelic forces, though this material is quite fragmentary. The style of the first portion of the work is discursive, rather parallelistic, and characterized by the occurrence of numerous finite verb forms. The sixth through the eighth songs form a clearly delineated central section. Stylistically, they are dominated by a variety of repetitious literary structures in which the number seven is prominently featured. The sixth and eighth songs are highly formulaic accounts of the praises of the seven chief and deputy princes of the angels. These two songs flank the central, seventh Sabbath song which summons to praise not only the angels but the heavenly temple itself. The character of the ninth through the thirteenth songs is quite different from that of the preceding material, both in style and content. In these five songs (again quite frustratingly damaged) there appears to be a systematic description of the heavenly temple, based in part on Ezek 40–48. The fragments from these last five songs are extremely difficult to translate even where the text is well preserved. Very few finite verbs occur in the text. Instead, the style is dominated by nominal and participial sentences, extended with sequences of elaborate construct chains. These Shirot attempt, it would appear, to create an ecstatic or numinous style for the description of the heavenly temple and the angelic praise that takes place in it. Having sketched this general overview of the structure of the scroll, I would like to survey the contents of the individual songs more closely, laying the foundation for an assessment of the nature and purpose of this extraordinary composition. Before turning to that closer survey, however, there is one other question that must be raised, that of the original provenance of the text. Was it, like the Serekh Ha-Yaḥad, a document produced by the Qumran community, or was it, like the books of Enoch and Jubilees, a work used and preserved by the Qumran community, but not initially composed by the Qumranites? In my opinion the evidence makes a Qumran origin for the text the most economical hypothesis, but the evidence is less definitive than one would wish. While the solar calendar is presumed by the date headings, the use of that calendar was not peculiar to the Qumran community.8 More significant is the introductory heading, ‫למשכיל‬. Although the word maśkîl is not exclusive to Qumran literature, the use of ‫ למשכיל‬as a heading or introductory phrase finds close parallels only in the Qumran texts, especially in the Blessings annexed to the Serekh Ha-Yaḥad and in the Cantiques du Sage, 8  See Annie Jaubert, “Le Calendrier des Jubilés et de la secte de Qumrân, Ses origins bibliques,” VT 3 (1953): 250–64; James C. VanderKam, “The Origin, Character, and Early History of the 364-Day Calendar: A Reassessment of Jaubert’s Hypotheses,” CBQ 41 (1979): 390–411.

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II. Language and the Shaping of Community at Qumran

published by Maurice Baillet.9 There are a number of passages from the body of the Sabbath Songs that use phraseology quite similar to various Qumran documents, especially the passages that are concerned with eschatological and predestinarian themes.10 What one does not find, however, are the particular terms for the Qumran community, such as ʿăṣat ha-yaḥad. There is, however, one other piece of information worth noting, and that is the relationship between the Sabbath Shirot and 4QBerakhot.11 These two documents share a number of extremely distinctive expressions (‫י קודש קודשים‬/‫טוהר ;רוקמת רוח‬/‫;רקיעי קודש‬ ‫אלוהות ;היכלי מלך‬, etc.) in addition to similar references to the divine merkābāh. Some close relationship of these texts seems assured. Milik has argued that the Berakhot is the text of a liturgy of the Qumran community, used on the occasion of the covenant renewal at Pentecost, when new members were taken into the community, the very liturgy which is alluded to and summarized in cols. I–II of the Serekh Ha-Yaḥad.12 The Qumran provenance of 4QBerakhot is established in the excerpt that Milik has published, not only by its similarities to the curses and blessings material in the Serekh Ha-Yaḥad, but also by an explicit reference in 4QBerakhot to the Council of the Community (‫)עצת היחד‬. The close similarity existing between the Sabbath Shirot and the Berakhot is sufficient to raise a presumption in favor of the Qumran provenance of the Sabbath Shirot, although the evidence is admittedly indirect.

Song for the First Sabbath The first song begins, as do all of the Sabbath songs, with a call to praise addressed to the angels. Although the column is partly broken (4Q400 1 I), it is clear that by line 3 the imperative style has been dropped and the rest of the column is devoted to an account of the establishment of the angelic priesthood and its responsibilities. A few brief quotations will illustrate:13 “[… For He has established] among the eternally holy the holiest of the holy ones, and they have become for Him priests [of the inner sanctum in His royal sanctuary], ministers of the Presence in His glorious shrine. In the assembly of all the gods …”  Cf. 1QSb 1.1; 3.22; for the Cantiques du Sage see 4Q511 2 i 1, in DJD VII, 215–62.  See, e. g., Newsom and Yadin, “The Masada Fragment,” 81. 11  Excerpts from this text and a description of its contents and function were published by J. T.  Milik, “Milkî-ṣedeq et Milkî-reša‘ dans les anciens écrits juifs et chrétiens,” JJS 23 (1972): 130–37. Bilhah Nitzan published the complete edition in Qumran Cave 4.VI. Poetical and Liturgical Texts, Part 1, DJD XI (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 1–74. 12  Milik, “Milkî-ṣedeq et Milkî-reša‘,” 136. 13  For a discussion of translation issues and justification for the restorations, some virtually certain, others merely schematic, see the sources cited in n. 7. The translations have been slightly revised from those in the original essay.  9

10

8. “He Has Established for Himself Priests”

135

(Q400 1 I, 3–4).14 Here, unfortunately, the text breaks off. Subsequent lines refer to statutes that God had inscribed “by which all the eternally holy ones sanctify themselves” (4Q400 1 I, 5, 15).15 The purity of the heavenly temple is of concern, for it is said that “they do not tolerate any whose way is per[verted]. There is n[o] unclean thing in their holy places” (4Q400 1 I, 14).16 Like their earthly counterparts the heavenly priests have responsibility for making atonement (“they propitiate His good will for all who repent of sin,” 4Q400 1 I, 16) and for teaching (“And from their mouths [come] the teachings concerning all holy matters,” 4Q400 1 I, 17).17 This rather lengthy discussion of the angelic priesthood (about 20 lines) concludes with a sentence rather similar to the one that began the section. “He has established for Himself priests of the inner sanctum, the holiest of the holy ones [g]od[like] divine beings, priests of the lofty heavens who [draw] near […]” (4Q400 1 I, 19–20).18 At this point the song begins to describe the praise that the angels offer to God, but unfortunately the text is highly fragmentary. This first Sabbath song illustrates something characteristic of the scroll as a whole, that is, that although the outer form of the document is praise of God (i. e. each song begins with a call to praise God), the subject of particular interest is the angelic priesthood itself.

Song for the Second Sabbath The text that can be assigned with reasonable probability to the second Sabbath song (4Q400 2 = 4Q401 14) appears to describe the function of the “chiefs of the realm” (‫ )ראשי ממשלות‬as those who are “to praise Your glory wondrously with the gods of knowledge and the praiseworthiness of Your royal power among the holiest of the holy ones” (4Q400 2 1).19 The topic shifts, however, from recounting angelic praise of God to an encomium of these elite angels themselves. “They are honored among all the camps of godlike beings and reverenced by mortal councils, a w[onder] beyond godlike beings and mortals [alike]” (4Q400 2 2–3).20 After several lines of such praise the only first-person speech extant in the entire scroll occurs. “But […] how shall we be considered [among] them? And how shall our priesthood [be considered] in their habitations? And our  ‫[…כיא יסד] בקדושי עד קדושי קדושים ויהיו לו לכוהני [קורב במקדש מלכותו] משרתי פנים בדביר‬ ]…[ ‫כבודו בעדת לכול אלי‬ 15 4Q400 1 I, 5: ‫ ;אלוהים חרת חוקיו‬4Q400 1 I, 15: ‫[וחוקי קוד]שים חרת למו בם יתקדשו כול קדושי‬ ‫עד‬ 16 ‫כול נ֯ [עוי] דרך ו֯ ֯א[י]ןׄ ׄטמא בקודשיהם‬ ׄ ‫לוא יכלכלו‬ 17 4Q400 1 I, 16: ‫ ;וׄ יכפרו רצונו בעד כול שבי פשע‬4Q400 1 I, 17: ‫ומפיהם הורות כול קדושים‬ 18  ‫יסד לו כוהני קורב קדושי קדושים […א]ל[והי] אלים כוהני מרומי רום ֯ה[קר]בים‬ 19  ]‫להלל כבודכה פלא באלי דעת ותשבוחות מלכותכה בקדושי ֯ק[דושים‬ 20  ‫המה נכבדים בכול מחני אלוהים ונוראים למוסדי אנשים ֯פ[לא] מאלוהים ואנשים‬ 14

136

II. Language and the Shaping of Community at Qumran

ho[lines – how can it compare with] their [surpassing] holiness? [What] is the offering of our mortal tongue [compared] with the knowledge of the go[ds …?]” (4Q400 2 5–7).21 Although such a self-reflective mediation on the part of the human community that recites the Sabbath Shirot is unparalleled in the rest of the document, it is most important for understanding the purpose and function of the text. One notes the tone of wonder and humility, but also the sense of analogy with the angelic priesthood.

Songs for the Third through the Fifth Sabbaths There are many small fragments from two of the manuscripts which in all probability belong to the third through the fifth Sabbath songs, though their precise assignment is unclear. Among the fragments are two that deserve special comment. The most tantalizing (4Q401 11) contains a reference to priests in the first line, and in the third a broken reading that is probably to be restored as a reference to Melchizedek, [“Melchi]zedek, priest in the assem[bly of God”] (]‫מלכי‬ ‫)צדק כוהן בעד[ת אל‬.22 Another fragment from the same manuscript and apparently from nearby (4Q401 22) contains in its second line the phrase “they fill their hands” (‫)מלו ידיהם‬, referring, it seems, to the consecration of the angelic priests. The fragmentary line that follows may also contain the broken remains of the name of Melchizedek (‫)מל]כי צדק‬. Whether or not the references to Melchizedek are correctly restored, these fragments at least attest to additional material concerning the angelic priesthood from the first part of the Sabbath Shirot. The ending of the fifth Sabbath song is well preserved. After badly broken references to knowledge, the promulgating of statutes, uncleanness, etc., there are several references to the eschatological war in heaven. The reference to uncleanness suggests a concern for purity in the angelic camps analogous to that which characterizes the Qumran War Scroll. The fifth Sabbath song ends with praise of God’s predestining of events (4Q402 4 11–15 = Masada ShirShabb I 1–7). A[l]l these things He has done wondrously according to the plan of His faithful love […] for from the God of knowledge came into being everything that exists forever. And from His knowledge [and] His [purpose] have come into existence all the things that were

21 ‫לשון‬

‫[י]ה ֯ם [מה] תרומת‬ ׄ ‫ודש‬ ֯ ‫מה נתחשב [ב]ם וכוהנתנו מה במעוניהם וק[ודשנו מה ידמה לקודש] ׄק‬ ]… ‫אל[ים‬ ֯ ‫עפרנו בדעת‬ 22  With one more square centimeter of leather preserved one would apparently have had the answer to the question of whether Melchizedek was indeed considered high priest of the angels in certain circles of pre-Christian Judaism. But there is perhaps an angel (one might call him Lacuna-el) who delights in denying curious scholars unequivocal evidence.

8. “He Has Established for Himself Priests”

137

eternally appointed. He makes the former things [in] their s[easons] and the latter things in their due time. And there are none among those who have knowledge who can discern [His wondrous] revelations before He makes them. And when He acts, none of the [godlike one]s can comprehend that which He purposes. For they are part of His glorious works; before even they existed, [they were part of] His [plan].23

The eschatological and predestinarian content of the passage and its intricately developed chiastic style cause one to wonder if it is intentionally framed as a conclusion for the first major section of the Sabbath songs. In any event the material that follows in the next song is strikingly different.

Song for the Sixth Sabbath All but a few fines of the sixth song are extant or can be reconstructed with confidence. As I noted above, the sixth through the eighth Sabbath songs mark the central section of the thirteen part cycle of Shirot. Significantly, the use of language changes with the sixth song. The discursive and parallelistic sentences of the well-preserved fragments from the first, second, and fifth Sabbath songs are not prominent here. Instead, after a brief introductory section, which is largely lost, the sixth song consists almost entirely of two long, highly formulaic sections. The first of these describes the “psalms” of each of the seven chief princes. One notices not only the repetition of key words in the accounts but also the emphasis on the number seven. Excerpted below is the material for the sixth and seventh chief princes (Masada ShirShabb II, 14–18 = 4Q403 1 I, 4–7). [Psa]lm of rejoicing by the tongue of the sixth to [the] God of goodness with [its] seven [wondrous] songs of joy; [and] he will cry joyously to the King of goodness seven times with se[ven words of] wondrous rejoicing. Psalm of praisesong by the tongue of the seventh of the [chief] prin[ces], a mighty praisesong to the God of holiness with i[ts] seven wondrous [praisesongs]; and he will sing praise to the King of holiness seven times s[even] words of wondrous praise [songs].24

The repetition of such formulaic passages for each of the seven princes has a hypnotic effect. Following an equally formulaic summary of the seven psalms of the seven princes, the song continues with an account of the blessings of the

23 Where the passage is partly preserved in two manuscripts, I have printed an eclectic text. ‫[ומזמו]תי֯ ו֯ ׄהיו֯ כול‬ ֯ ‫פלא ׄבנ֯ ֯ס ֯ת ֯רו֯ ֯ת ֯עד […] ֯כיא מאלוהי דעת נהיו כול היו עד ומדעתו‬ ׄ ‫֯כ[ו]ל אלה עשה‬ ‫[לתעודו]תיהם ואחרונות למועדיהם ואין בידעים נגלי [פלא] להבין לפני‬ ֯ ‫עולמים עושה ראישונות‬ ׄ ‫ׄתעודות‬ ‫עשותו ובעשותו לא ישכילו כול [אלוהי]ם מה יזום כיא ממעשי כבודו הם לפני היותם [מחשב]תו‬ 24  ‫בש[בעה‬ ֯ ‫ו]רנן֯ ` למלך הטוב שבעה‬ ֯ ‫רנות [פלאיה‬ ׄ ‫[ה]טוב בשבעה‬ ֯ ‫לאל‬ ֯ ‫[תה]לת רנן בלשון הששי‬ ]‫דברי] רנות פלא תהלת זמר בלשון השביעי לנש[יאי רוש] זמר עוז לאלוהי קודש בשבע[ה זמרי‬ ‫זמ[רי] פלא‬ ֯ ‫ד]ברי‬ ֯ ‫נ֯ [פ]ל[א]ותי֯ ה וזמר למלך הקודש שבעה בש[בעה‬

138

II. Language and the Shaping of Community at Qumran

seven angelic chief princes, each blessing consisting of seven unspecified words (4Q403 1 I, 13–16 = 4Q405 3 II, 4–5). The th[ird among the chief princes will bless in the name of] His regal loftiness all the lofty ones of knowledge with seven words of lof[ti]ness; and all [the gods of his faithful] knowledge he will bless with seven wondrous words; and he will bless all those [appointed f]or righteousness with se[ven] wondrous [wo]rds.25

Despite all the fascination with enumerating the praises and blessings of the angels, no actual words of angelic praise or blessing are quoted throughout the entire composition. While this reticence may reflect a belief in the awful transcendence of angelic speech, I think it can also help to clarify the function of the Sabbath Shirot and the strategies of language employed to carry out that function. To describe the content of the angelic praise or to quote the words of the angelic psalms would direct attention more specifically to the God who is praised. Describing the angels in the act of praise but not describing the content of praise leaves the attention on the angels themselves, and it is clearly the priestly angels who fascinate the author of this work.

Song for the Eighth Sabbath In order to clarify the structure of the composition it is better to skip over the seventh Sabbath song for a moment and look at the eighth. Although it is preserved only in rather badly damaged fragments from three manuscripts (4Q403, 4Q405, and 11QShirShabb), it is evident that the eighth song is so closely similar to the structure and actual wording of the sixth that they can be seen as virtual mirror images of each other. The primary difference is that the praises and blessings of the eighth song are attributed to the seven deputy princes (‫נשיאי‬ ‫)משנה‬. Since both sets of angelic princes utter blessings in the name of God, it is probable that one should think of them as the chief and deputy high priests of the angels. One is reminded of the expression in 1QMilḥamah II, 1, ‫כוהן הראש‬ ‫ומשנהו‬. There is further indirect evidence that these angelic princes are considered to be priests. The beginning of the eighth Sabbath song which introduces the formulaic praise and blessings of the seven deputy princes contains numerous references to the angelic priesthood. They are called the “seven priesthoods of His inner sanctum” (‫ )שבע [כהו]נת קורבו‬and are associated with “seven won­ drous territories” and “seven holy councils” (‫כוה[נות] שבע למקדש פלא לשבעת‬ ‫)סודי קודש‬. 25 ‫֯ד ֯ע ֯ת‬

]‫ולכול [אלי‬ ֯ ‫בשבעת ֯ד ׄברי ר[ו]ם‬ ֯ ‫ׄה ֯ש[לישי בנשיאי רוש יברך בשם] רום ׄמלכותו לכול רומי דעת‬ ‫פלא‬ ֯ ‫צדק בש[בעה ד]ברי‬ ׄ ׄ‫[אמתו] יברך בשבעה דברי פלא וברך לכול [נועד]י‬

8. “He Has Established for Himself Priests”

139

In fact, it appears from these and other phrases in the seventh Sabbath song that the heavenly temple was in some way considered to contain or consist of seven holy places in which served seven angelic priesthoods, headed by seven angelic high priests and their deputies.

Song for the Seventh Sabbath In turning now to the seventh Sabbath song, it is well to keep in mind the intense repetition of the number seven, both structurally and in content, that has characterized the two songs on each side, the sixth and the eighth. Numerically, as the central piece in a series of thirteen, and structurally, in the literary shaping of the cycle of songs, the seventh Sabbath song is the most deeply embedded in the text of the Sabbath Shirot. One expects something important. Fortunately, the text is relatively well preserved. The song may be divided into two parts. The first part consists of the baroque expansion of the call to praise with which each of the Sabbath songs opens. Here, in calls to praise of increasing complexity and elaboration, each of the seven angelic councils is summoned in turn to praise God. With the conclusion of these calls to praise it appears that the heavenly temple itself bursts into praise (4Q403 1 I, 41). “With these let all the [foundations of the hol]y of holies praise, the uplifting pillars of the supremely lofty abode, and all the comers of its structure.”26 Unfortunately, the latter half of most of the lines of the remainder of the song are broken, but it is clear that the scene moves to the heavenly shrine and to the presence of the throne of God, for there are references to “His footstool” (‫ )הדום רגליו‬and several phrases that recall the description of the merkābāh from Ezekiel 1 and 10. But in addition to the chariot throne of God there are other merkĕbôt that join in the praise. The song concludes as follows: “And the chariots of His shrine give praise together, and their cherubim and thei[r] ophanim bless wondrously […] the chiefs of the divine structure. And they praise Him in His holy shrine” (4Q403 1 II, 15–16).27 At this point there is sufficient evidence to make a judgment as to whether the cycle of the Sabbath Shirot was specific to the first quarter of the year or was repeated quarterly to form a liturgy for the entire year. As I have tried to indicate, the sixth through the eighth songs form a distinctive central structure, the top of the pyramid, so to speak, for the Sabbath Shirot. In these three songs the repetition of the number seven and the occurrence of sevenfold formulaic structures are arranged to highlight the occurrence of the seventh Sabbath of the year. Such a coincidence of the external calendrical and internal literary 26 27

 ‫קוד]ש קודשים עמודי משא לזבול רום רומים וכול פנות מבניתו‬ ֯ ‫באלא יהללו כול י[סודי‬  ‫ואופניה[ם…] ׄראשי תבנית אלוהים והללוהו בדביר‬ ֯ ‫והללו יחד מרכבות דבירו וברכו פלא כרוביהם‬ ֯‫קודשו‬

140

II. Language and the Shaping of Community at Qumran

structures is not accidental; yet if the cycle were repeated quarterly, the emphasis would be lost. The seventh song would fall on the 20th, the 33rd, and the 46th Sabbaths. Although these are all the seventh Sabbaths in their respective quarters, the date formulae of the Shirot are not related to a quarterly but to a yearly system. The literary structure of the cycle and its careful use of language to highlight the occurrence of the seventh Sabbath of the year argue strongly that one should understand the Sabbath Shirot as a thirteen-week cycle, specific to the first quarter of the year. This conclusion has important implications for thinking about the function of the Sabbath Shirot. The first hypothesis that many would bring to the Sabbath Shirot would be an assumption that the songs functioned to provide a way of fulfilling the obligation to conduct the Sabbath sacrifice when the Qumran community was unable to conduct the sacrifice according to traditional means.28 This otherwise appealing hypothesis runs aground if the cycle of Sabbath songs extended only through the first quarter of the year. I will return below to a discussion of alternative suggestions for the purpose and function of the document.

Song for the Ninth Sabbath The content and character of the songs change with the ninth Sabbath song, where it appears that the heavenly temple itself is being described. Characteristically, it is not merely the structures of the temple that are described but their acts of praise, for the entire temple is composed of animate, spiritual creatures. In one fragment that refers to “the vestibules of their entryways” (‫)אולמי מבואיהם‬ there is mention of divine beings “engraved in the vestibules where the King enters, figures of luminous spirits […] figures of glorious li[ght …]” (4Q405 14–15 I, 5).29 I take these engraved figures to be in some manner the celestial counterpart to the engravings of cherubim, palm trees, etc. described as decorating the Solomonic temple (1 Kgs 6) and the ideal temple of Ezekiel 40–48. In this fragment from the ninth Sabbath song it is apparently from these creatures that there arises “[… a so]und of blessing for the King of those who exalt, and their wondrous praise for the God of gods” (4Q405 14–15 I, 3).30

 See Newsom, 4QSerek Šîrôt, 11–16 and van der Woude, “Fragmente einer Rolle,” 332.  ]‫מפותח באלמי מבואו מלך ֯בדני רוח אורים […] בדני ֯א[ור‬ 30  ‫[…ק]ול ברך למלך מרוממים והלל פלאיהם לאל אלים‬ 28 29

8. “He Has Established for Himself Priests”

141

Song for the Tenth Sabbath The fragments that can be assigned to the tenth Sabbath song appear to continue the description of the heavenly temple. There are further, though badly broken, references to vestibules, brickwork or pavement, and thrones (‫כסאי‬ ‫)עולמים‬. Another fragment apparently describes the pārōket veil (or veils – both singular and plural forms are used). The syntactical relation of the phrases is obscure but the vocabulary is interesting. There is a reference to “rivers of light […] the appearance of flames of fire [… of b]eauty upon the veil of the shrine of the King […] in the shrine of His presence, the mingled colors of […] everything that is engraved upon the […] figures of god[like beings …] the veils of the wondrous shrines. And they bless … they declare …” (4Q405 15 II–16 2–6).31

Song for the Eleventh Sabbath For the eleventh Sabbath a substantial section of some seven or eight lines from the middle of the song can be reconstructed almost completely from two overlapping manuscripts (4Q405 19 = 11QShirShabb VI [frgs. 12–15]). The passage appears to describe the heavenly shrine (or shrines) and the praising of more engraved figures. But despite the good state of preservation of the text, the material is extraordinarily difficult to translate. There are almost no verbs in the passage, only long strings of elaborate construct chains, apparently set in apposition to one another. One suspects the author of striving to create a deliberately elusive and fantastic style in order to suggest something of the transcendent quality of the heavenly holy of holies. Fragmentary remains of the concluding lines of the eleventh Sabbath song are preserved in 4Q405 20 = 11QShirShabb VII (frgs. 16–18). Here one finds references again to the “priests of the inner sanctum” (‫)כוהני קורב‬, to “His glorious chariots […] holy cherubim, luminous ophanim” (‫מרכבות כבודו […]כרובי‬ ‫ )קודש אופני אור‬and “His glorious chariots as they move […]” (‫מרכבות כבודו‬ ]…[‫)בלכתמה‬.

Song for the Twelfth Sabbath As in the central seventh Sabbath song, the multiple merkĕbôt seem to be different from but associated with the merkābāh, the throne of Glory. After the references to these multiple chariots at the conclusion of the eleventh Sabbath 31 ‫כול‬

]…[ ‫רוקמת‬ ֯ ‫[…ת]פארת בפרוכת דברי המלך […] בדביר פנו‬ ׄ ‫אש‬ ׄ ‫ונהרי אור […] מראי להבי‬ ֯ ]...[ ‫מחקת […] בדני אלו[הים …] פרכות דבירי הפלא וברכו […] ישמיעו‬

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II. Language and the Shaping of Community at Qumran

song, the twelfth Sabbath song opens with that lengthy description of the appearance of the divine chariot throne, previously published by Strugnell.32 While this passage is obviously of great significance in the cycle of the Sabbath Shirot, one must note that it does not appear, in and of itself, to constitute the goal of the experience provided by this work. The description of the merkābāh does not occur in the final song but at the beginning of the penultimate Sabbath song. It forms part of a larger descriptive complex, encompassing both the twelfth and thirteenth Sabbath songs. Its function in the Sabbath Shirot may be clarified by looking at the material that follows. Unfortunately several lines immediately following the description of the merkābāh are badly damaged, though they appear to describe angelic praise in the vicinity of the chariot throne (11QShirShabb VIII [frgs. 19–20]; 4Q405 23 I, 1–5). Next comes the following passage: The godlike beings praise Him [when they fi]rst arise, and all the s[pirits] of the pure firmame[nt]s rejoice in His glory. And there is a sound of blessing from all its divisions, which tells of His glorious firmaments; and its gates praise with a voice of song. Whenever the angels of knowledge enter by the portals of glory, and whenever the holy angels go out to their dominion, the portals of entrance and the gates of exit make known the glory of the King, blessing and praising all the spirits of God at (their) going out and at (their) coming in by the ga[t]es of holiness (4Q405 23 I, 6–10).33

This description of the procession of the angels borrows from the language of Ezekiel 46 the description of the procedures for Sabbath worship in the ideal temple, and specifically the account of how the worshipers should go in and out of the gates and portals of the temple. This allusive use of Ezekiel 46 suggests that one should understand the whole of the twelfth Sabbath song as a description of the complex of events that constitute heavenly Sabbath worship. In this regard the manifestation of the merkābāh and the praise that greets it should be seen as part of that heavenly liturgy.

Song for the Thirteenth Sabbath Something is still lacking from the account of the heavenly Sabbath worship. As each of the headings of the Sabbath songs has announced, these are the songs of the Sabbath sacrifice. As yet, however, no mention has been made of such a sacrifice. One should not overlook such an important formal device as the headings 32 Strugnell,

“The Angelic Liturgy,” 336–45.  ‫הטוהר יגילו בכבודו וקול ברך מכול מפלגיו‬ ֯ ׄ‫[י]ם [בתח]לת עומדם ו֯ ֯כו֯ ֯ל ֯ר[וחי] רקי[ע]י‬ ׄ ‫אלוה‬ ׄ ‫הל ׄלוהו‬ ׄ ‫מלאכי קודש‬ ֯ ‫כבודו ומהללים שעריו בקול רנה במבואי אלי דעת בפתחי כבוד ו֯ בכול מוצאי‬ ׄ ‫ׄמספרה רקיעי‬ ‫מוצ ֯א משמיעים כבוד ֯ה ׄמלך מברכים וממהללים כול רוחות אלוהים בצאת‬ ֯ ‫לממשלתם פתחי מבואי ושערי‬ ‫בשע[ר]י֯ קודש‬ ׄ ‫ובמבוא‬ 33

8. “He Has Established for Himself Priests”

143

of the songs for guiding the expectations of the reader or hearer of the text and for indicating the focus of interest of the text itself. It is only with the thirteenth Sabbath song that the anticipation of the audience is finally satisfied. Although the incipit and first few lines of the song are not extant, fragments from very near the beginning of the thirteenth song allude to sacrificial offerings: “the sacrifices of the holy ones” (‫)זבחי קדושים‬, “the aroma of their offerings” (‫ריח‬ ‫)מנחותם‬, “the ar[om]a of their drink offerings” (‫( )ר[י]ח נסכיהם‬11QShirShabb IX [frgs. 21a–b, 22]). It appears, however, that the description of the sacrifices themselves gives way after only a few rather general lines to a description of the angelic high priests who conduct the sacrifices. There are references to their breastplates and their ephods. When the text becomes better preserved there is an account of the appearance of the splendor of these heavenly high priests (4Q405 23 II, 7–12). In their wondrous stations are spirits (clothed with) many colors, like woven work, engraved with figures of splendor. In the midst of the glorious appearance of scarlet, the colors of most holy spiritual light, they stand firm in their holy station before the King, spirits in garments of [purest] color in the midst of the appearance of whiteness. And this glorious spiritual substance is like fine gold work, shedding [lig]ht. And all their crafted [garments] are purely blended, an artistry of woven work. These are the chiefs of those wondrously arrayed for service, the chiefs of the realm of the holy ones of the King of holiness in all the heights of the sanctuaries of His glorious kingdom.34

That the thirteenth and final Sabbath song should contain such an encomium of the angelic high priests is really not surprising. From the first Sabbath song, with its account of the establishment of the angelic priesthood, through the central songs with their formulaic accounts of the praises of these seven priestly councils, to the final thirteenth song, the subject of chief interest in the Sabbath Shirot is the angelic priesthood itself.

The Function of the Text In describing the contents I have indicated something of the apparent function of the text, but this topic requires more explicit treatment. Based on the portions of the text originally published by Strugnell, several suggestions about the nature and function of the text were advanced, suggestions which seem less likely now that the complete text can be studied. As mentioned above, the possibility that the Sabbath Shirot were in some way a substitute for the cultic sacrifices of 34  ‫במעמד פלאיהם רוחות ׄרוקמה כמעשה אורג פתוחי צורות הדר ׄבתוך כבוד מראיׄ ׄשני צבעי אור רוח‬ ‫קודש קדשים מחזקות מעמד קודשם לפני [מ]לך רוחי צבעי [טוהר] ׄבתוך מראי חור וׄ ׄד ׄמות רוח כבוד‬ ׄ ‫לשר ֯ת‬ ֯ ‫אורג אלה ראשי לבושי פלא‬ ׄ ‫[או]ר וכול מחשביהם ממולח טוהר חשב ֯כ ׄמעשי‬ ׄ ‫כמעשי אופירים מאירי‬ ‫למלך ֯הקודש בכול מרומי מקדשי מלכות ֯כבודו‬ ֯ ‫ראשי ממלכות ממלכות קדושים‬

144

II. Language and the Shaping of Community at Qumran

the Sabbath is difficult to maintain in view of the fact that the cycle appears to cover only the first thirteen weeks of the year and not to have been repeated for each quarter. A second hypothesis, suggested by the vivid description of heavenly realia in the fragments, was that the outer form of the document might prove to be that of an apocalypse, and its purpose that of developing speculative material about the heavenly realm.35 While there is an extraordinary amount of information about the heavenly realm in the Sabbath songs, it would be a mistake to consider this document primarily as a speculative instrument. Its form, as can now be seen, is not that of a revelation but of an act of worship. The public character of the document as a liturgy, the careful construction of the cycle as a whole, and the careful use and manipulation of language within the individual songs suggest that one should think about the function of the cycle not so much in terms of the information it communicates but in terms of the experience that it generates and shapes for those who recited or heard it. A third possibility that can be suggested for the function of the Sabbath Shirot is that they were instruments of mystical praxis, ancestors of the later merkābāh mystical texts.36 While there is much to be explored in the relationship between the Sabbath Shirot and merkābāh traditions, the differences are as important as the similarites. For all their vivid evocation of the heavenly realm, the Shirot do not speak of ascents or use the technical vocabulary of mystical praxis. If the cycle of the Sabbath Shirot is not a substitute for cultic sacrifice, not an apocalypse, and not a vehicle for mystical ascent, what is it? Of the various suggestions based on the previously published fragments, the one which seems most fruitful is that of Johann Maier, who maintained that the texts needed to be considered in the context of priestly self-understanding.37 While my own analysis differs in many particulars from that of Professor Maier,38 I think his essential insight has proven correct. One is certainly justified in assuming that the focus on the heavenly temple and priesthood is motivated by the community’s concern for the earthly cult and priesthood. One is probably also justified in looking for some “problem” with the earthly cult to which the composition and recitation of the Sabbath Shirot is in some sense a response. In exploring possible functions of the document 35  See the remarks of Jean Carmignac, “Qu’est-ce que l’apocalyptique? Son employ à Qumrân,” RevQ 10 (1979): 18, and the observations of Hartmut Stegemann to the 1979 Uppsala Colloquium on Apocalypticism, “Die Bedeutung der Qumranfunde für die Erforschung der Apokalyptik,” in Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East: Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Apocalypticism, Uppsala, August 12–17, 1979, ed. David Helholm (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1983), 513, 518–19. 36  This possibility was suggested by Gershom Scholem in Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition, 2nd ed. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1965), 128. 37  Johann Maier, Vom Kultus zur Gnosis: Studien zur Vor‑ und Frühgeschichte der “jüdischen Gnosis”, Kairos: religionswissenschaftliche Studien 1 (Salzburg: Otto Müller, 1964), 133–35. 38  Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, 65–72.

8. “He Has Established for Himself Priests”

145

one has to attend not only to the content but perhaps even more importantly to the structure of the document and the qualities of language used in it. I would like to suggest two complementary functions that the Sabbath Shirot may have served. One is a suggestion about its possible social function within the specific experience of the Qumran community. The other is about a more general function concerning the problem of human cult per se. Consider the situation of the members of the priesthood at Qumran. They understood themselves as alone representing the true and faithful priesthood, ‫ בני צדוק‬and ‫בני צדק‬. Yet physical realities contradicted their claim. Although they were accorded special status within the community, the traditional marks of validation for their identity and legitimacy as priests of God were not accessible to them. As members of the Qumran community, they did not have authority in the Jerusalem temple; they could not conduct its sacrificial service; they possessed neither the sacred vestments nor utensils. The danger in this situation was not that outsiders would discount their claim but that their claims to represent the true priesthood would cease to remain plausible to the members of the sect themselves, especially to those who were not of the founding generation. What may have been needed in such a situation was not merely rhetorical arguments to demonstrate the authenticity of the claims of the group, but rather some form of experiential validation of their claims. For such a purpose a document like the Sabbath Shirot would have been ideally suited. The cycle begins during the first week of the year, the week that (according to the calendar of festivals recorded in the Temple Scroll) was set aside for the consecration of the priesthood. Though we do not know in what other ways that period was marked at Qumran, the recitation of the first Sabbath song, with its discussion of the establishment of the angelic priesthood, invites an analogy between the angelic and human priests. The language of the Sabbath Shirot, especially in its second half, does more than invite an analogy. It is extraordinarily vivid, sensuous language, both aurally and visually. What this does is to create and manipulate a virtual experience, the experience of being present in the heavenly temple and in the presence of the angelic priests who serve there. It is, I suspect, in order to create and maintain this sense that the text avoids explicit reference to the human community after the one brief reference early in the cycle. The result, then, is to provide the community that recites and hears these songs not only with a model for their priesthood but also with an experiential validation of their legitimacy as those permitted to share in the experience of heavenly worship. While the Sabbath Shirot does need to be understood against the background of the specific religious situation of the Qumran community, that situation does not exhaust what one can say about the text. It would be a mistake to think of the document merely as a sectarian text. Certain aspects of the religious problematic that appear to underly the Sabbath Shirot were common to a wide spectrum of contemporary Judaism, indeed, to a wide spectrum of all human religious

146

II. Language and the Shaping of Community at Qumran

experience – the problem of the necessity but the difficulty of adequate worship. Historically, it is easy to trace the concern over adequate cult from the period of the Exile onwards. The Temple vision of Ezekiel details the structures of the ideal sanctuary and its laws, claiming the authority of direct revelatory experience for the knowledge on which it is based. The Temple Scroll does much the same thing, resting its implicit claims to authority in the first-person speech of the Deity. One can trace the struggle over the institutions of the cult in the visions of Zechariah, the prophecies of Malachi, the reforms of Nehemiah and Ezra, and the uprising in the time of Antiochus IV. The conflict over calendrical issues and the emergence of movements such as that represented by the Qumran community attest to the central significance of the problem of establishing adequate cult and worship. In a way that is not directly concerned with specific polemical issues the Sabbath Shirot gives voice to this same dilemma. One quickly notices that the two qualities most frequently associated with the angels in the Sabbath songs are holiness and knowledge. Holiness is not, however, simply a given, even for the angels who have charge of the heavenly sanctuary. It must be achieved, and in the same way that it is achieved on earth, through knowledge of and obedience to proper laws, as the first Sabbath song makes clear: They do not tolerate any whose way is per [verted]. There is n[o] unclean thing in their holy places. [Statutes of holi]ness He inscribed for them. By these all the eternally holy ones sanctify themselves …; from their mouths [come] the teachings concerning all holy matters (4Q400 1 I, 14–17).39

Just as a holy cult can only be conducted by those who have knowledge of its statutes, so also adequate praise can only be expressed by those who have knowledge of the wonderful mysteries of God. Here too the superior knowledge of the angelic priests is recorded: “In the chiefs of praise-offering are tongues of knowledge; and they bless the God of knowledge together with all His glorious works” (4Q405 23 II, 12).40 Or again, “they declare His royal splendor to their knowledge” (4Q400 2 3).41 It is immediately after such a consideration of the superior knowledge of the angels and their superior ability to praise God that the one explicit reflection on the human community occurs. “How shall we be considered [among] them? And how shall our priesthood [be considered] in their habitations? And our ho[lines – how can it compare with] their [surpassing] holiness? [What] is the offering of our mortal tongue [compared] with the knowledge of the go[ds? …]” (4Q400 2 6–8).42 This is a confession of the inadequacy of all human cult, 39 See

notes 14–17.  ‫בראשי תרומות לשוני דעת [ו]ברכו לאלוהי ֯דעת בכול מעשי כבודו‬ 41  ‫וספרו הוד מלכותו כדעתם‬ 42  See note 21. 40

8. “He Has Established for Himself Priests”

147

all human praise. The centuries-long struggle over the proper forms of cultic worship not only produced groups claiming “knowledge of the hidden things in which all Israel had gone astray” (CD III,13–14), but also an anxiety that even this knowledge was not wholly adequate. The problem, in its sharpest terms, admits of no solution, and one cannot look to the Sabbath Shirot precisely as a “solution” to the dilemma. The Sabbath Shirot neither replace human worship nor do they merge the human and angelic priestly communities. In elaborating the existence of an angelic priesthood and heavenly temple, the religious imagination constructs a realm where adequate cult is maintained. This ideal realm is made vividly present through the human community’s act of worship in invoking the angelic praise and describing it in sensuous and evocative language. Significantly, the Sabbath Shirot do not speak of actual co-participation in the conduct of the cult of the heavenly temple.43 While the distinction between the human and angelic realms is maintained, a common experience is generated through the power of the language of the songs to invoke and make present the worship of the heavenly temple. Insofar as the liturgy is successful in creating the virtual experience of being present in the heavenly temple, it mutes the religious anxiety associated with the inadequacy of human worship. The experience provided by the Sabbath Shirot serves to authenticate and reward human worship while at the same time allowing for a proleptic transcendence of its limits. Whether or not the author of the Hodayot was referring specifically to his experience in the liturgy of the Sabbath Shirot, the spirituality is much the same: A perverted spirit you have purified from great sin that it might take its place with the host of the holy ones and enter into community with the congregation of the children of heaven … that it might praise your name in a common rejoicing and recount your wonderful acts before all your works (1QHa XI, 22–24).

43  The confession of the human community’s inadequacy quoted above stands in contrast, for instance, to the eschatological expectation expressed in 1QSb IV, 25–26 which speaks of actual service in the “temple of the Kingdom” and of decreeing destiny “in company with the angels of the Presence.”

9. Constructing “We, You, and the Others” Through Non-Polemical Discourse One of the notable characteristics of the human species is its proclivity for group formation. At the experiential level, the member of a group has a sense of what Bruce Lincoln calls “affinity and estrangement.”1 These are the dispositions that construct social boundaries and create a sense of belonging, the affective states that constitute a “we” that is somehow separate from “others.” The most fundamental social group, of course, is the kinship group, and evidence exists that human beings have a biologically based inclination to favor those to whom they are most closely linked genetically. In complex societies, however, this same tendency toward group formation also expresses itself in numerous associations that unite an assortment of persons who are not closely linked by kinship. In those cases forms of symbolic construction substitute for the biological foundation in creating the necessary dispositions of affinity and estrangement. The range of these symbolic constructions is virtually infinite, involving both verbal and nonverbal practices. Sometimes these constructions are subtle; in other cases they may be explicit and emphatic. For a sectarian community, such as the Yaḥad of Qumran, the task of group formation was a highly self-conscious enterprise. Intentional differentiation between “we” and “others” is most clearly marked in polemical formulations that distinguish between “children of light” and “children of darkness” or the “habitation of the wicked” and the “council of holiness.” Although this polemical language has a crucial role to play in the construction of the identity of “us” and “them” in the Yaḥad’s worldview, I want to direct attention here to the important but often overlooked role of non-polemical discourse in creating the dispositions of affinity and estrangement. To understand the crucial role of non-polemical discourse it is helpful to consider the social nature of language itself, a topic central to the work of the Bakhtin circle.2 One of their claims is that language is always socially stratified and socially stratifying. By listening to subtle differences in language, one can 1 I borrow the terms from Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 9–10. 2 See, in particular, Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1981); V. N.  Voloshinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973).

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II. Language and the Shaping of Community at Qumran

map the sub-communities within a society. This mapping of sub-communities can be traced along any number of different lines – economic class, region, relative urbanization, religion, occupation, gender, age cohort, and so forth. These social dialect groups will talk about a different range of topics, use a different but overlapping stock of words, and often give slightly different nuances of meaning to the same words. Also, the stylistic features of their speech, their speech genres, and even some of their grammatical forms will be different. Some of the social dialect groups one can identify by this kind of analysis may be loose and transient speech communities. But the cultivation of social dialects plays an important role in the identity formation of more stable and long-lived groups. “Speaking the same language” creates deep affective bonds. Anyone who has ever left a linguistic community knows how satisfying it is to talk again with someone from that community. By speaking in one’s distinctive social dialect, one reinforces his or her identity and group consciousness, no matter the subject of the conversation. The situation is more complex than this analogy suggests, however, because people always speak a variety of social dialects. Bakhtin provides an instructive illustration when he describes the “illiterate peasant … [who] nevertheless lived in several language systems: he prayed to God in one language …, sang songs in another, spoke to his family in a third and, when he began to dictate petitions to the local authorities …, he tried speaking yet a fourth language (the official-literate language, ‘paper’ language).”3 These different dialects are correlated with different identities and different social groups. Bakhtin’s peasant was a worshiper in a religious community, a comrade at the tavern, the paterfamilias in his family, and a citizen of a nation. For the most part people move unconsciously among these different dialects and corresponding identities, but it is always possible that a person will be called into more active ideological identification with one of the social dialects and indeed use it as a means by which to scrutinize other ways of speaking and being.4 For obvious reasons, a sectarian community is particularly likely to cultivate a distinctive social dialect that will give its members an identity as part of that linguistic community which will in subtle ways estrange them from people who “don’t talk like us.” Unfortunately, we do not have access to the ways Qumran sectarians actually talked. No tape recordings of their conversations were found among the scrolls. Yet from the beginning of Qumran scholarship, the elusive but distinctive style of the various sectarian writings has been noted. Admittedly, no two Qumran compositions possess exactly the same linguistic profile, and each text would share many socio-linguistic features with non-Qumran texts. This is scarcely surprising. Social dialects do not have sharp boundaries. Even 3 4

 Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 295–96.  Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 296.

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151

in living language communities, individuals speak distinct idiolects. Nevertheless, it is likely that the texts composed by members of the sectarian movement do preserve samples of the social dialect cultivated at Qumran. And scholarship has only begun to conduct the socio-linguistic analysis of Qumran sectarian literature and to analyze what it can suggest about the ways in which identity and community formation took place. Two documents suggest themselves as particularly appropriate for such analysis: the Community Rule and the Hodayot. Although the precise nature of the Community Rule is uncertain, it is probably best understood as a guide composed for the community’s teacher, the Maskil, who was charged with a crucial role in the admission, instruction, and advancement of the members of the society.5 The various sections of the document are apparently “samples” of different types of teaching materials, though the document as a whole is not without a rhetorical structure.6 Thus issues of identity formation are significant to the presumed purposes of the Community Rule. The Hodayot, especially those compositions designated the Hodayot of the community, are of interest because they are prayers composed in the first-person singular. However these prayers came to be composed, collected, and used, the first-person singular style suggests that they formed templates of some sort for patterns of experience cultivated by the sectarian community. The various means by which both of these texts served to reshape the individual and his language and to cultivate the sentiments of affinity and estrangement necessary for group formation are discussed at greater length in The Self as Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran. Here I wish to illustrate with a few examples how nonpolemical language is used for such purposes. The first eleven lines of the Community Rule offers an excellent example of how the community recast the idioms of common Judaism into their own distinctive forms of speech. In doing so, they constructed the Yaḥad as the “we” over against the “others” of the rest of the Jewish people. The Rule begins, not with exclusively “insider” language, but rather with a sophisticated rhetorical movement that takes the language of the broader linguistic community of Judaism and gradually transforms it into the distinctive accents of the sectarian community. The passage contains a dense network of scriptural allusions and echoes, that is, the language that belongs both to “us” and to “others.”7 Even so, the syntax and style of the passage is distinctively Qumranic, though no 5  See, e. g., Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (New York: Penguin Press, 1997), 97; Philip S. Alexander, “The Redaction-History of Serekh ha-Yaḥad: A Proposal,” RevQ 17 (1996): 439; Carol A. Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran, STDJ 52 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 101–3. 6  Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space, 105–7. 7  See Preben Wernberg-Møller, “Some Reflections on the Biblical Material in the Manual of Discipline,” ST 9 (1955): 41 n. 1.

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II. Language and the Shaping of Community at Qumran

single stylistic feature is unique to Qumran. One notes the long series of infinitive clauses, the stylistic preference for polar terms (good/bad; love/hate) and paired terms (heart/soul/; good/upright), and an involved syntax in which qualifying phrases are piled up, one after another. Habits of speech are also habits of the mind, and I would argue that aspects of the ideology of Qumran are in fact reflected even at the level of syntax and style. Thus, even when the content of the passage is what every Jew could endorse, the sectarian simply speaks differently. The other noteworthy thing about the passage involves its semantics. The passage divides into two parts that mirror one another, lines 1–7a and 7b–11. Several formal literary devices articulate this structure.8 Semantically, in lines 1–7a all of the expressions are what I would call the ordinary, unmarked language of common Judaism. However, with the sentence that begins in line 7b (“and to bring in all who volunteer freely”) the specifically sectarian diction is introduced. To a significant extent what had first been expressed in common language is now restated in sectarian terms. Thus “to love what he has chosen” (lines 3–4) becomes “to love all the children of light” (line 9), and “to hate what he has rejected” (line 4) becomes “to hate all the children of darkness” (line 10). Similarly, “to do what is good and right before Him as he commanded by Moses and by all his servants the prophets” (lines 2–3) is glossed as “to walk before Him in perfection [according to] all that he has revealed with respect to the times appointed for them” (lines 8–9). To make a sectarian one must remake his language. If one teaches him to speak differently, he will no longer be at home among those who speak a different social dialect. The Yaḥad constructed new identities for its members by teaching them to speak in ways that were subtly but significantly different from the ways in which others spoke, or, if they joined the community as adults, in ways that were different from those that they had used before. Very little is more closely identified with one’s own self than speech. As a physical process, speech engages the body, but it is also an activity of the mind. In speaking, one actively takes up a subject position within a discourse. Ownership of the discourse, and the identity that comes from it is strongly enhanced through the activity of speaking in its terms and accents. Thus it is important to look not only at texts that model new ways of speaking, like the beginning of the Serek ha-Yaḥad, but also to look at those speech practices by which individual sectarians themselves learned to make such speech their own. In the Serek ha-Yaḥad there are a significant number of references to speech practices that would have served just such purposes. The most significant are the examination for membership (1QS V, 20–21; VI, 13–16) and the annual examination to determine one’s ranking in the community (V, 24). Frustratingly, 8

 Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space, 111–13.

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the text says little about how the examination was carried out. The examination for membership was apparently public, for the person “stands before the Many” and is questioned concerning “his insight,” “his spirit,” and “his deeds with respect to Torah” (VI, 15, 17, 18). It is less clear whether the annual examination was public, but the criteria are similar. Unfortunately, no account is given of the content or style of the examination, although I would suspect that the vocabulary and style with which the individual was to give an account of himself would be similar to the vocabulary and grammatical style of the Serek ha-Yaḥad. In any event, the individual had to learn how to speak about himself in ways that were approved by the community. Becoming increasingly adept at this articulation resulted in enhanced status. In this way a person internalized the identity of a member of the community by learning to represent himself in the distinctive social dialect of the sect. The issue of how discursive practices serve to confer identity upon a person who is entering into a well-defined community has been of interest to anthropologists, and the study of the formation of sectarian identity in the Yaḥad may be illumined by such approaches. A particularly helpful series of studies is presented by Dorothy Holland and her associates in Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds.9 One member of that team studied the formation of identity in Alcoholics Anonymous. While a modern self-help group may seem a long way from the world of Qumran, some of the processes of identity formation are not that dissimilar. The research of Holland’s group focused on how new members of Alcoholics Anonymous developed new identities by learning to tell their personal story (i. e., how one became an alcoholic and how one eventually decided to seek help) according to the normative model. The personal story in AA has certain standard elements: a characteristic plot, specific turning points, and even certain preferred terms and expressions. Newer members first listen to older members tell their stories. When new members begin to articulate their own stories, they will be challenged and corrected by older members if they deviate from the norms of the structure and paradigmatic events for the personal story. Through this process, the anthropologists argue, the person “becomes an alcoholic.”10 That is to say that the identity of alcoholic is owned through learning to tell one’s own story in these terms. Despite many obvious differences, the practice of the personal story in Alcoholics Anonymous is highly suggestive for the way in which the Hodayot may have functioned at Qumran in relation to the acquisition of a new identity. We know little, unfortunately, about the actual use of the Hodayot at Qumran. I find most plausible the suggestion originally made by Bo Reike that Qumran  9  Dorothy C. Holland, et al., Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). 10  Holland, et al., Identity and Agency, 66.

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practice may have been similar to what Philo describes concerning the banquets of the Therapeutae, in which after the banquet, the leader would recite a hymn in praise of the deity, either of his own composition or one that had been written by someone else. Then others would similarly stand and recite such hymns.11 Even if this is not the case for Qumran, I think most of the theories concerning the origin and use of the Hodayot of the community would be more or less compatible with what I am suggesting about their function in terms of identity formation. What is important is that the Hodayot are first-person singular speech. A person who listened to such first-person speech recited by others, who learned how to compose such a piece for himself, or who even took up and read such a piece as his own prayer would be drawn into a self-understanding shaped according to the patterns embedded in the Hodayot. A pre-formed prayer that one appropriated for one’s own would function in relation to the speaker in ways similar to the work of a creed (“I believe in God the Father”) or a pledge of allegiance (“I pledge allegiance to the flag”). These speech acts strategically obscure who the speaking subject is. The ambiguity about exactly whose words these are (the author’s? mine?) make them a powerful instrument in the formation of identity.12 Like the Serek ha-Yaḥad, the Hodayot are a fascinating recasting of traditional materials into a distinctively sectarian form that negotiates the transformation of a nonsectarian into a sectarian identity. Although the Hodayot borrow much from Israelite psalms, they change the syntax of religious speech. Whereas the Israelite thanksgiving psalm was correlated with the complaint psalm, at Qumran there are only thanksgivings. Lament motifs are used in the Hodayot, but those motifs are always contained within a structure of speech that begins “I thank you, O Lord” or “Blessed are you, because …” Thus there is only one normative stance from which to speak. Moreover, whereas in Israelite psalmody the speaker is an active agent in his own story, crying out to God for help, the Hodayot remove moral agency from the speaker’s self-account. The speaker becomes primarily a witness to the deity’s gracious redemptive power. The Hodayot are often described as didactic, which they are. Even more important than the theological content, however, is the fact that the Hodayot also provide normative patterns of emotional experience that are practiced and appropriated by the one who recites them. A number of these patterns can be identified, but one of the most striking makes use of a sharp shift in point of view. First the speaker describes the powerful knowledge he has of divine mysteries (e. g., 1QHa V, 9–19; IX, 7–20), a knowledge that puts him in an exalted circle. Then abruptly, the perspective shifts, and the speaker describes himself as he appears from a God’s-eye-view. These are Niedrigskeitsdoxologie passages 11  Bo Reike, “Remarques sur l’histoire de la form (Formgeschichte) des textes de Qumran,” in Les manuscrits de la mer Morte: Colloque de Strasbourg 25–27 Mai 1955, ed. Jean Daniélou (Paris: Paris University Press, 1957), 38–44. 12  Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space, 198–202.

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in which the nothingness and corruption of the speaker’s human condition is emphasized (e. g., 1QHa V, 19–22; IX, 21–23). The same emotional pattern can be identified also in the Maskil’s hymn that concludes the Serek ha-Yaḥad (1QS X, 1–XI, 22). The frisson produced by the transition from the exaltation of heavenly mysteries to utter abnegation is analogous to that produced by standing on a mountain cliff, simultaneously exalted and terrified by the heights and depths of the overwhelming environment. Both are examples of the sublime. Since the experience cultivated in the Hodayot crucially involves stimulating the sense of disgust at the speaker’s humanness, I call it the cultivation of the “masochistic sublime.” This emotional pattern is quite different from what one finds in biblical psalmody and seems to be a distinctive pattern of subjectivity. A person who recites such first-person prayers, for whom this becomes his own language becomes different from others outside the sect in a profound way. In other ways, too, the language a sectarian learns to speak and the sentiments he learns to hold by listening to or reciting the Hodayot render alien alternative languages of piety. One can observe this by taking a passage in which the Hodayot describe God’s gracious redemption of the speaker and the speaker’s own moral incapacity and setting it alongside texts such as Psalm 119 and Sir 15:11–16. As is typical of the Hodayot, in 1QHa IV, 17–25 there is a relentless consistency in the way in which all moral initiative is attributed to God and utter moral incapacity is attributed to the speaker, even as the speaker largely uses the inherited moral vocabulary of Second Temple Judaism. If one immerses oneself in this carefully shaped discourse, the language of a composition like Psalm 119 sounds alien. A very different quality of self speaks in the psalm. In the psalm the speaker foregrounds himself in the language, saying “I do this” or “I do that.” The very number of verbs of which “I” is the subject is striking. The speaker’s inward gaze results in a brash self-recommendation as he unashamedly names his moral accomplishments. Ben Sira fares even worse. Ben Sira asserts that “it was [God] who created humankind in the beginning, and he left them in the power of their own free choice. If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice. He has placed before you fire and water; stretch out your hand for whichever you choose” (Sir 15:14–16; NRSV). Whereas Ben Sira says that God placed persons in the hand of their free will (yēṣer), the speaker of 1QHa VII, 16 says that “the inclination (yēṣer) of every spirit is in your hand.” Whereas Ben Sira says, “If you choose (taḥpōṣ),” the hodayah says that it is God’s choosing (bāḥartāh) that first makes obedience possible (1QHa IV, 33). By contrast to the hodayah’s subtle analysis of how the moral life is possible for one who lacks moral autonomy, Ben Sira’s advice appears as the equivalent of the shallow slogans “Just do it” or “Just say no.” Not only Ben Sira’s language but also the persona that his language creates for him would have seemed flawed to someone shaped in the Yaḥad. The comparison I have suggested here is purely heuristic.

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It is not intended to show how a sectarian actually read Sirach or Psalm 119 but simply to illustrate how immersion in a particular discourse of piety can render alien and even repellant other possible forms of piety. The community we have come to know as the Yaḥad cultivated sentiments of affinity for the group and estrangement from other groups in a variety of ways. In this brief essay I have attempted to suggest that as scholars examine these various mechanisms, we need to pay as much attention to the non-polemical discourses of the community as we do to the explicitly polemical language of “we” and “they.”

10. Apocalyptic Subjects: Social Construction of the Self in the Qumran Hodayot Subjectivity The term “subjectivity” is one that requires clear definition. In the sense in which I am using it, subjectivity refers to the culturally specific way in which the meaning of one’s self is produced, experienced, and articulated.1 Perhaps the most helpful definition is an adaptation of Clifford Geertz’s formulation. Subjectivity has to do with the ways in which people represent themselves to themselves and to one another.2 Several important points follow from this definition. First, subjectivity, no matter how natural it feels to an individual, is not natural but rather belongs to the sphere of the symbolic. It is a matter of representation. A person’s sense of self is not just given as a part of physical existence but is constructed through the symbolic practices of a person’s culture. Language is by far the most important of these symbolic practices, though other non-linguistic symbolic practices (e. g., class, ethnic, and gender specific systems of garments) also play significant roles in constructing subjectivity. It is not just language as such that is crucial for the formation of subjects but language as discourse, the way in which language is used to give meaning to the world, to organize it, to structure institutions and behaviors. These historically specific forms of discourse offer a person access to meaning: a sense of who one is; what experiences mean; what matters and what does not; how one is related to others; how the world works. This is to say that selves, or subjects, are rhetorically produced. It is also to say that this sense of who one is, is not produced in isolation from other social constructions but rather as part of them. The terms, metaphors, and images that construct a certain kind of self imply a 1  As Chris Weedon puts it, “[s]ubjectivity is used to refer to the conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions of the individual, her sense of herself, and her ways of understanding her relation to the world” (Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987], 32). 2 Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 58. Geertz goes on to caution against confusing the particular modern Western notion of the self with subjectivity itself: “The Western conception of the person as a founded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgment, and action organized into a distinctive whole and set contrastively both against other such wholes and against its social and natural background, is, however incorrigible it may seem to us, a rather peculiar idea within the context of the world’s cultures” (Geertz, Local Knowledge, 59).

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corresponding kind of society and vice versa. It is in thinking about the relation of subjectivity to social discourses that one appreciates a certain double meaning in the word. On the one hand, subjectivity connotes an active relation to meaning and so a kind of empowerment (to be a subject rather than an object). On the other hand, it connotes a subordinate position (to be subject to a particular construction of meaning and possibility and constrained by it).3 Because meaning is so intimately related to the distribution of power in a society, subjectivity, too, is implicated in the ways in which power is distributed, retained, or redistributed. Consequently, it is important to remember that subjectivity is not just a symbolic formation but a socially symbolic formation. This is not to imply that subjectivity is produced merely as a product or by-product of a general cultural conversation. The forms of subjectivity available in a culture are elements of its active discourse. As with other symbolic structures, the self may become the representational space in which the fundamental tensions within the culture are symbolically explored. In fact, such appears to be very much the case with one of the representations of the self at Qumran, as I have attempted to show in an earlier article.4 It is equally important to remember that there is never just one language of the self in a society, but rather multiple languages. This fact is central to the social significance of forms of subjectivity. Sometimes these multiple, and often conflicting, languages of the self are compartmentalized in particular social roles, so that an individual can move from one to the other without being aware of it. But there are also situations in which tensions between rival constructions of the self can become self-conscious and acute. In these circumstances the cultivation of a distinctive subjectivity may be an act of cultural resistance. By nurturing a distinctive discourse of the self, one is progressively alienated from a socially dominant language of the self or from a previous sense of self. The content and structure of this new subjectivity serves as a condensed critique of the dominant culture. It is difficult not to think in contemporary terms about the counter-cultural forms of subjectivity nurtured during the 1960s and the role they played in contesting established social and political structures, or the role of the black “soul” in relation to the dominant white culture from W. E. B. DuBois to the present. With respect to the Qumran community, its status as a sectarian religious movement means that the cultivation of a language of the self would have been crucial both for the formation of its own social cohesiveness and for its role in contesting other constructions of meaning in the discursive community of Second Temple Judaism. 3 Cf. Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster (New York: New Left Books, 1971), 169, 182. 4  Carol A. Newsom, “Knowing as Doing: The Social Symbolics of Knowledge at Qumran,” in Ideological Criticism of Biblical Texts, ed. David Jobling and Tina Pippin, Semeia 59 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 139–53.

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The Formation of Subjectivity at Qumran The Qumran community had to be intentional and explicit in the formation of the subjectivity of its members. As a voluntary society with a sectarian character, it had to detach members from their prior identities and offer them new ones. They had to be made into subjects of a new discourse. In general, societies cohere and can reproduce themselves to the extent that members find their subject positions persuasive. The process begins so early in a person’s life and is reinforced from so many directions that the discursive formation of subjectivity is rendered almost invisible. A person’s subjectivity has a quality of obviousness and inevitability. The task of a sectarian community is twofold. It must simultaneously undermine that sense of obvious inevitability that characterizes the subjectivity created by the dominant discourse and provide a new subjectivity that is compellingly persuasive. The reason that the formation of the subject has to become so intentional in a sectarian community is not just that the society is often concerned with adult converts. It is also because the sect exists as a marginal phenomenon. Even for persons raised in Essene households in the villages and towns of Judea, the discourses of dominant non-Essene Judaism implicitly called into question the plausibility of Essene life. The formation of an alternative subjectivity is part of the counter-discourse of the sect. It is part of the way it challenges structures of meaning taken for granted in other Jewish communities. This phenomenon is not hard to recognize in obviously polemical language, in formulations like “children of light and children of darkness.” It is, however, also present in more subtle ways in non-polemical aspects of the discourse of the self, such as the denial of an autonomous moral will which one finds in some Qumran texts. The restructuring of the self that takes place through these non-polemical elements also serves to estrange the subject from the world outside the sect. The self who is formed in this way now has dispositions, desires, motivations, and behaviors that are incompatible with other discourses. The discourse that had previously formed one’s identity appears now flawed. One ceases to feel at home in it or in the institutions founded on and supported by it. The new identities offered by the Qumran community were not, of course, absolutely new. In developing its repertoire of terms and images of self-representation the Qumran community drew on highly traditional languages of the self, grounded in the familiar idioms of prayer and worship, wisdom instruction, cultic language, and much more. It is actually quite difficult to isolate elements that could be identified as unique in the discourse of the self at Qumran. Yet no one can read the Qumran sectarian literature without sensing the distinctive quality of the subjectivity it sought to produce. What happens in the language of the self at Qumran is precisely what Bakhtin called “re-accentuation.”5 5

 “Every socially significant verbal performance has the ability – sometimes for a long period

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Ordinary words, words traditionally important for self-representation, such as “righteousness” or “spirit,” may be given a slightly different nuance by being associated with a different range of terms or employed in unusual constructions. Emphases may be different. Not infrequently in the Hodayot the conventional exaggeration of pious clichés (e. g. “no one can direct his steps”) may be taken not in its ordinary sense as a loose expression of pious humility but as the very basis for understanding one’s situation. The presence of traditional elements is extremely important. They allow a person entry into the discourse because of their familiarity and the value already attached to them. In the re-accentuation of terms, however, and in the new utterance that is constructed out of these traditional elements, it is possible to create the sense that one is only now understanding the true meaning of words that had long been familiar and important. The subject who is called into being is also experienced as at once familiar and new, a self that is recognizable but truly known for the first time. It is actually not possible to give any adequate account of the formation of subjectivity at Qumran. That subjectivity was produced by the entire range of practices, utterances, and symbolic enactments that took place in the community. Everything from the etiquette between members in formal and informal settings, to the symbolism of ceremonial occasions, to the texts of prayers and hymns, to the organization of space, gestures, and clothing, and much, much more, contributed to the formation of the way in which the sectarian represented himself to himself and to others. Concerning some of this we have limited information: from the Serek ha-Yaḥad (if it mirrors actual practices) and from Josephus (if he is speaking – and speaking accurately – about Qumran or a community closely related to it). Much that it would be necessary to know, however, is no longer accessible at all, because it was simply part of the texture of everyday life that is not preserved in any record. Moreover, even in a sectarian community it would be necessary to reckon with the existence of multiple languages of the self, especially in a community that had a historical existence of over 200 years.6 It is important to be clear that there are some kinds of questions that cannot be answered because we no longer possess all the information we would need. What we do possess are some of the central writings of the Qumran community. of time, and for a wide circle of persons – to inflect with its own intention certain aspects of language that had been affected by its semantic and expressive impulse, imposing on them specific semantic nuances and specific axiological overtones; thus, it can create slogan-words, curse-words, praise-words and so forth” (Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist [Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1981], 290). 6  Hermann Lichtenberger’s analytical work on the anthropology of Qumran, Studien zum Menschenbild in Texten der Qumrangemeinde, SUNT 15 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980), provides an inventory of many of the languages of the self employed in Qumran literature.

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The proper question is not one about the formation of subjectivity at Qumran in some complete sense, but the formation of subjectivity in a particular text, such as the Hodayot or the Serek ha-Yaḥad. This narrower focus on the way in which a discourse of the self is developed in a particular text or form of speech is not a terribly disappointing restriction, since the Serek ha-Yaḥad and the Hodayot are both texts that are self-consciously devoted to the formation of languages of self and community. In this article the focus will be on the Hodayot. In order to address the question of the formation of subjectivity in the Hodayot, one must first pose some preliminary questions.

Hodayot: Authorship and Sitz im Leben For present purposes it really does not matter who wrote the Hodayot. The issue of authorship per se would matter only if one held to a romantic model of authorship and expressive subjectivity. Some of those assumptions can in fact be detected in the scholarly literature that asserts that in the Hodayot we have a record of the unique and personal experiences of the Righteous Teacher.7 That position, at least in its pure form, is now seldom seriously advocated. It has largely been replaced by a much more sophisticated question about the persona or personae who are represented by the “I” of the Hodayot. Whoever wrote them, do the instances of “I” in hodayot, or at least some of them, refer to the Righteous Teacher? The case for distinguishing the Hodayot into two groups, generally identified as the “hodayot of the Teacher” and the “hodayot of the community,” has been made persuasively by Jeremias and refined by many others.8 Whether and how this first group of hodayot refers particularly to the Righteous Teacher is a question that I cannot take up here. It is evident, however, that in a number of the compositions the persona of the speaker is that of a persecuted leader of the community, whether the Righteous Teacher or some other figure. These I take to comprise X, 1–19; XII, 5–XIII, 4; XIII, 5–19; XIII, 20–XV, 5; XV, 6–25; XVI, 4–XVII, 36.9 7  For example, Gert Jeremias, for those compositions he believes written by the Righteous Teacher: “Wir haben damit die Psalmen, in denen wir mit Sicherheit den Lehrer der Gerechtigheit als Verfasser erkannten, besprochen … [S]ie zugleich einen Einblick in das Fühlen und Wollen ihres Verfassers erlaubten” (Der Lehrer der Gerechtigkeit, SUNT 2 [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963], 264). 8  Jeremias, Der Lehrer der Gerechtigkeit; J. Becker, Das Heil Gottes, SUNT, 3 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964); Heinz-Wolfgang Kuhn, Enderwartung und gegenwärtiges Heil. Untersuchungen zu den Gemeindeliedern von Qumran mit einem Anhang über Eschatologie und Gegenwart in der Verkündigung Jesu, SUNT 4 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966). 9  With small modifications column and line numbers are given according to the reconstruction of the scroll by Émile Puech, “Quelques aspects de la restauration du Rouleau des Hymnes (1QHa),” JJS 39 (1988): 38–55. Puech’s reconstruction, developed independently from the earlier but unpublished work of Hartmut Stegemann, agrees in all but minor details with that of

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Should these compositions be set aside as not bearing on the formation of the subjectivity of the ordinary sectarian? I think not. Even if they are understood as representing the perspective of a leadership class or of a single, historical leader, they would still be in many respects a model of ideal sectarian subjectivity. To be sure, a leader would have certain roles that the ordinary sectarian would not be expected to fill, but even in his distinctive situation and experiences the leader would embody exemplary characteristics and dispositions that the composition would offer as an ideal model of proper sectarian character. Portraits are also mirrors. Nevertheless, I am reserving these texts for examination in another context. The fact that they offer an identification with rather than an identification as the “I” of the text does introduce a level of complexity into the process by which the reader’s subjectivity is formed. The issue of the Sitz im Leben of the Hodayot is both more complex and more significant for the question of the construction of subjectivity than the issue of authorship. To understand what is involved requires some thought about the nature of the pronoun ‘I’, the linguistic basis of subjectivity, and the relationship between readers and texts. The work of French linguist Émile Benveniste and its adaptation by literary and film critic Kaja Silverman are extremely helpful for revealing what is at stake. Benveniste’s work draws attention to the linguistic peculiarity of the pronouns “I” and “you.”10 These pronouns do not refer to a concept in the way that a word like ‘tree’ does but ‘to something very peculiar which is exclusively linguistic: “I refers to the act of individual discourse in which it is pronounced, and by this it designates the speaker … .The reality to which it refers is the reality of the discourse. … And so it is literally true that the basis of subjectivity is in the exercise of language.”11 What Benveniste is pointing to is the fact that the pronouns “I” and “you” are empty markers that can only be filled in concrete instances of discourse. “I” simply means the one who says “I.” It is through instances of discourse that a speaker establishes his or her identity. Benveniste uses the term “speaking subject” to refer to the person who produces the speech, the one who is the referent of the signifier “I” in the act of discourse. He uses the term “subject of speech” to refer to the “I” as signifier. The “subject of speech” is the pronoun itself but more generally can be thought of as the representation the speaker makes for himself or herself in the speech, all the elements that stand in for the speaker at the level of the discourse. Clearly, Benveniste is basing his analysis on everyday, conversational discourse. But the Hodayot, as written texts, are not everyday discourse. In order to make use of Benveniste’s insights into the relationship of subjectivity and the pronoun “I,” we Stegemann. Their reconstructions should be considered definitive for the order of the text of 1QHa and have been followed in recent translations and study editions. 10  Émile Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1971), 217–30. 11  Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics, 226.

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will have to consider the way the peculiarities of literary texts affect the problem. Here the work of Kaja Silverman is important. Silverman is not interested simply in instances of first-person speech but rather in how literary texts of all sorts form subjectivity. She sees in Benveniste’s analysis a structure that can illumine this process. Silverman suggests that a third category needs to be added to Benveniste’s “speaking subject” and “subject of speech.” She would add the category “spoken subject.”12 This refers to the subject constituted by identification with the subject of speech. This multiplication of categories may seem irritatingly obscure and jargony, but it proves very useful in sorting out what goes on in the process of reading a text and the way in which it forms subjectivity. In everyday conversation, such as Benveniste considered, the speaking subject, the subject of speech, and the spoken subject coincide, that is, the speaking subject is the one who performs the act of identification with the subject of speech. I am the one speaking; the pronoun “I” refers back to me; and I identify myself with that pronoun and what I predicate in relation to it. But in literary texts (poems, narratives, films, and so on) that is not necessarily the case. Instead the three subjects are generally distinguishable. Although the parallels are not exact, it may help to think of the speaking subject as equivalent to the author/implied author (as the producer of the speech), the subject of speech as the narrator or central character, and the spoken subject as the reader who is invited to identify with the central character or narrating voice. The process by which this act of identification is produced is referred to as “suture,” a term that comes from the semiotics of film. The outcome of successful suture is that the reader/hearer/viewer agrees to be “spoken” by the text, agrees to be represented by the signifiers of the discourse. The consequence of suture is that the reader gains access to a symbolic order, the symbolic order of the text, and so becomes a subject in that discourse. The presence of the subject in the discourse is not direct, however, but always mediated by that linguistic substitute or stand-in. This may be a pronoun (“I”), a personal name (“Carol”), a term of classification (“citizen”), a fictional character (“Robinson Crusoe”), and so on. The formation of subjectivity in a symbolic order depends upon the subject’s willingness to become absent to itself by permitting a fictional character, sometimes simply called “I,” to stand in for it. In Deuteronomy, for instance, the speaking subject is Moses (or the implied author), the subject of speech is “you,” and the spoken subject is the reader or hearer who agrees to be represented by the pronoun “you.” In order to have access to the world of meaning structured in Deuteronomy and to have a place in it, the reader/hearer has to become absent to himself/herself and allow that character “you” to represent him/her.

12 Kaja Silverman, The Subject of Semiotics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 43–53, 194–201 (47).

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The structure by which the subject is formed through language is the same whether one is talking about everyday speech or literary texts; but the degree of identification is not the same. It is for this reason that the question of Sitz im Leben is important for the issue of the formation of subjectivity in the Hodayot. The Hodayot and other first-person singular texts like them present some distinctive features. As literary texts the Hodayot are not simply everyday speech. The question is whether they are more like “Now I lay me down to sleep …” or “Call me Ishmael … .” Consider for a moment a text like a traditional prayer (“Now I lay me down to sleep …”) or a creed (“I believe in God the Father Almighty …”) or a pledge (“I pledge allegiance to the flag …”). Such first-person texts are tremendously powerful agents for the formation of subjectivity because they combine aspects of everyday speech and literary speech. As in everyday speech, the speaking subject (the one who recites) and the spoken subject (the one who agrees to be represented) coincide. When I say, “Now I lay me down to sleep … ,” the signifier “I” refers to me, not to the anonymous soul who first wrote it. As with literary texts, however, the symbolic order constituted through “Now I lay me down to sleep …” (the childlike ethos of its rhythms and rhymes, the simple piety, the orientation to death, the belief in a soul that is the essence of the self and that survives the body, and so on) comes already formed. In order to pray that prayer I have to become absent to myself (that is, to a self formed through other discourses and symbolic orders) and allow the signifier “I” and all that is predicated of it to stand in for me. Another way of putting it would be to say that such a speech act strategically obscures who the speaking subject is. It is precisely this ambiguity about whose words these are that makes such a first-person singular prayer, creed, or pledge so powerful an instrument in the formation of subjectivity. But now we have to return to the questions: Are the Hodayot more like “Now I lay me down to sleep” or “Call me Ishmael”? Do they summon one to identify with the “I” or as the “I” of the speech? In either case the Hodayot are important in the formation of subjectivity; but they would do their work in different ways depending on how they were read. This question is an extremely difficult one to answer because we have almost no information about how the Hodayot were used. There have been various suggestions: that they were recited as part of the annual covenant ceremony; that they were the texts of communal daily prayers; that they were recited at meals; that they were read privately; or that there were multiple occasions for use. The suggestion that seems to me most plausible is that originally made by Bo Reike.13 Reike drew attention to Philo’s description of the banquets of the Therapeutae and Therapeutroides. At those banquets, when the exposition of scripture is concluded, the head of the community “rises 13 Bo Reike, “Remarques sur l’histoire de la forme (Formgeschichte) des textes de Qumran,” in Les Manuscrits de la Mer Morte: Colloque de Strasbourg 25–27 mai 1955, ed. Jean Daniélou (Paris: Paris University Press, 1957), 38–44.

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and sings a hymn composed in honor of the Deity, either a new one of his own composition, or an old one by poets of an earlier age.”14 Following him other members of the community would sing hymns as well. Reike suggested that the communal meals at Qumran provided a similar occasion for which the prayers of the Hodayot might have been written and recited. If Reike is correct, then the Hodayot (at least those called the hodayot of the community) would be like “Now I lay me down to sleep” in that they could be selected as the individual’s “own” prayer. Even if one assumes a form of use in which a designated reciter read the Hodayot at the covenant ceremony or for daily worship, it still seems that in hearing the words spoken each individual would have understood them as prototypical rather than as unique to the reciter. For the purposes of this analysis I am adopting Reike’s suggestion as my working hypothesis. Even if this reconstruction of the Sitz im Leben should turn out not to have been the case, the basic thrust of my argument would not be affected. However they were read or recited, repeated exposure to the Hodayot would have created what Geertz calls a template, “inducing in the worshiper a certain distinctive set of dispositions … which lend a chronic character to the flow of his activity and the quality of his experience.”15

“I” and “You” in the Hodayot I refer to the Hodayot as “prayer,” using that term broadly to designate language addressed to God, not merely precative language. In asking about the formation of subjectivity through the Hodayot, it is crucial to take account of how that particular form of speech is involved. Although the prayer of the Hodayot is uninterrupted and continuous, it is not, as Fisch has properly observed about the Psalms, a monologue.16 Indeed, monologue is a category that has been rather thoroughly eroded in recent discussions about language. It is by now a commonplace to say that all our utterances are implicitly addressed to an other. Even speech to oneself can be recognized as inherently dialogical, an “I” talking to its “me,” as Kenneth Burke says, quoting Herbert Mead.17 Even though all speech 14  Philo, Vit. Cont. 80 (from the translation of David Winston, Philo of Alexandria: The Contemplative Life, the Giants, and Selections [New York: Paulist Press, 1981], 55). 15 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 95. One might compare Svend Holm-Nielsen’s discussion of the “I” of the Hodayot as a distributive “I” that represents the community as such and thereby also each individual member of it. See Holm-Nielsen, “‘Ich’ in den Hodajoth und die Qumrāngemeinde,” in Qumrān-Probleme: Vorträge, ed. Hans Bardtke (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1963), 222. 16  Harold Fisch, “Psalms: The Limits of Subjectivity,” in Poetry with a Purpose: Biblical Poetics and Interpretation (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988), 104–35. 17  Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form, 3rd ed. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1973), 380.

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may have dialogical elements, there are obviously different degrees to which the character of the word as addressed may be marked in various genres. Prayer by its very nature is highly explicit in its orientation to an other. One of the principal effects of this self-conscious awareness of the other is that the speaker constitutes himself in the gaze of and at least in part from the perspective of this other. In addressing God the speaker becomes aware of how he must appear in the eyes of God, an awareness that is present in the words themselves and thus in the “verbal shape” the speaker assumes in the discourse.18 The relationship of speaker and addressee in prayer is in many ways a special case of dialogical speech. Although in general my words and the verbal shape I give myself will change depending on whether I address someone of higher or lower status, an intimate or a stranger, the language of prayer implies a uniquely definitive relationship. The radically “other” quality of the addressee of prayer means that the speaker is constituted not as tenant or landlord, daughter-in-law or matriarch, but as such, as a person. Armed with the tools of a hermeneutics of suspicion, modern critics are inclined to dispute the universalizing pretense of the discourse of prayer. All kinds of social hierarchies and interests are smuggled into the language of prayer, critics claim; and indeed they are. The specific social interests and identities of the Qumran community saturate the language of the Hodayot. But the relationship between speaker and addressee in prayer tends to mask these social dimensions precisely because of the universal and absolute quality of the speech situation. Consequently, the language of prayer with its address to an absolute “you” is a very powerful instrument for the formation of subjectivity. Prayer also differs from many ordinary forms of address in the degree to which the identity and character of the “I” and the “you” are the explicit topics of discourse. They are not, of course, equally represented or of the same significance in the discourse of prayer. At least in the biblical tradition, prayer begins with the address to and characterization of God. In prayers of praise, such as the Hodayot, explicit discourse about God often dominates. Since I am specifically concerned with the formation of sectarian subjectivity, it is not the construction of the image of God per se that interests me; rather it is in the ways in which the act of constructing that image simultaneously constructs the speaker. Equally 18  Cf. V. N. Voloshinov’s comments in Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 86: “Orientation of the word toward the addressee has an extremely high significance. In point of fact, word is a two-sided act … . As word it is precisely the product of the reciprocal relationship between speaker and listener, addresser and addressee. Each and every word expresses the ‘one’ in relation to the ‘other.’ I give myself verbal shape from another’s point of view, ultimately from the point of view of the community to which I belong. A word is a bridge thrown between myself and another. If one end of the bridge depends on me, then the other depends on my addressee. A word is territory shared by both addresser and addressee, by a speaker and his interlocutor” (emphasis in the original).

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important is paying attention to the precise ways in which the speaker inserts himself explicitly into the discourse of the prayer. One can see this, for instance, in the way in which the opening address of the Hodayot defines a subject position for the speaker. As is well known, all the preserved introductory formulas of the Hodayot are variations of “I thank you, O Lord, that …” or “Blessed are you, O my God, because …”. Even though the compositions do not imitate the form of the classical thanksgiving psalm, the introductory formulas orient the reader to thanksgiving as the paradigmatic mode of experience. From the variety of relationships between worshiper and God in the repertoire of biblical tradition the Qumran community has selected one – benefaction – as its privileged expression. Although a variety of moods, attitudes, and expressions occur in the Hodayot, they are all subordinated to the fundamental relationship established in the opening words that cast the speaker in the role of recipient. The divine gift is variously described: as deliverance from deadly peril; as a spirit of insight that transforms the speaker; as pardon for sin; as election to the lot of the righteous, and so on. All that follows is an exploration of the significance of the fundamental characterization of the speaker as recipient of a divine gift. That is what constitutes him as subject. This is not to say that no one in Israel felt thankful to God before the Qumran community. The point is rather about the syntax of religious speech. In the biblical tradition psalms of thanksgiving are linked with psalms of complaint as correlated forms of speech. The thanksgiving may even explicitly recall the previous appeal: “Yahweh my God, I cried out to you, and you healed me” (Ps 30:3). More broadly, Israel’s praise frequently recalled past deliverance, the memory of which formed the basis for present appeals. The “conversation” with God involved both stances. At Qumran that link does not exist. It is not by mere chance that the Qumran community did not produce a collection of texts that began “Hear my cry, O Lord …”. To be sure, lament motifs are used in the Hodayot; but they are contained within the frame of thanksgiving. Moreover, even in the recollection of distress, there is seldom a recollection of a cry for help – at most the speaker represents himself as having “held fast.” Where thanksgiving and complaint exist as two parts of a single religious orientation, such as Jacobsen has illumined in his study of personal religion in Mesopotamia and Israel,19 the thanksgiving has one meaning. Where the connection is broken and thanksgiving alone is present, it has a different meaning and different implications for the formation of subjectivity. The speaker in the biblical lament or thanksgiving is a moral agent in his own story: although he may be vulnerable, he cries out and is answered. That is not the case at Qumran. As will be seen more clearly in the 19 Thorkild Jacobsen, “Personal Religion,” in Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976), 147–64.

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analysis of the first hodayah discussed below, he is not an agent but an agency through whom God works. There is another aspect of the subject position of the speaker in the Hodayot that bears comparison with the speaker in the Psalms, and not just in psalms of thanksgiving. Like the speaker in the Psalms, the speaker in the Hodayot is a witness, one who testifies about what God has done. Both the Psalms and the Hodayot locate an important part of the speaker’s subjectivity in this very act of declaring.20 The speaker encounters himself, comes to experience himself, as one who praises God. Moreover the act of praise locates the speaker in relation to a community. In the Psalms the praise of God serves to build up the larger community of worshipers (Ps 22:27–31). In the Hodayot it joins him with the angelic chorus of praise, beings who also “make known your glory in all your dominion, because you have shown them what [they had] not se[en …]” (1QHa V, 17). In contrast to the Psalms, however, the act of praise in the Hodayot is characterized by its self-conscious relation to the theme of knowledge. The one who recites the Hodayot encounters himself not only as one who praises God but also as one whose sense of self is constituted in a particular way by his relation to knowledge. Much of the characteristic quality of the voice that one encounters in the Hodayot can be traced to the construction of the speaker as one who knows and confesses that knowledge in praise of God. That knowledge is a ubiquitous theme in the Hodayot is quickly established simply by a survey of the frequency of such terms as ‫“( שכל‬insight”), ‫“( מחשבת‬plan”), ‫“( רז‬mystery”), ‫דעת‬ (“knowledge”), ‫“( בינה‬understanding”). It is also present in what various commentators have described as the didactic quality of the Hodayot, the way in which recitation of the content of sectarian knowledge forms part of the prayer. In more subtle ways, too, literary devices in the Hodayot provide the one who speaks them with the experience of being one who knows hidden things: word plays and subtle intertextual citations of Scripture create a texture of hidden meanings (see, e. g., 1QHa VII, 12–20). The speaker’s subjectivity is not, however, constructed unproblematically as one who has powerful knowledge. The divine gift of such knowledge also makes the speaker into an object of knowledge to himself, a moment of self-reflexive perception that creates a crisis of subjectivity. The speaker appears to himself as “a thing constructed of dust and kneaded with water,” characterized by “sinful guilt … ignominious shame, and a source of pollution,” ruled by “a spirit of error” (1QHa V, 19–22). Much more radically than in the Psalms, the speaking voice in the Hodayot is divided against itself. As I have attempted to show elsewhere, the subject constituted in the Hodayot is neither resolved into the 20 For the relationship of speaking and subjectivity in the biblical Psalms, see Fisch, “Psalms: The Limits of Subjectivity.”

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powerful subject of knowledge nor the abject object of knowledge but is constituted as the unstable intersection of the two.21 The sense of a divided self cultivated in certain of the Hodayot is one of the formative structures of the self. It is, however, only one manifestation of a more general figure that is constitutive of the self. Hodayot such as the ones in cols. 5 and 9 construct the self at the point of conflict. In these instances it is the conflict between the perceiving “I” and the “I” that is the object of perception. Elsewhere in the collection of the Hodayot, however, the figure of conflict is used in different ways to construct the subject who recites them. Two examples will serve as the textual basis for the second half of this article.

Generating the Self in Symbolic Narratives of Conflict The fundamental feature of the self as it is produced in the Hodayot is that it is formed at the site of contradiction. In the examples to be considered in this and the following sections contradiction takes the form of conflict between opposing forces: God and the wicked. How the speaker is situated within that conflict is what confers identity. In cols. X–XI there are a number of relatively well-preserved hodayot that consist almost wholly of highly figurative accounts of distress and deliverance. These compositions are located immediately before the extended sequence of hodayot that represent the persona of the persecuted leader (found in cols. XII– XVI), where themes of conflict are also prominent. At least one of the hodayot in cols. X–XI, the one in X, 1[?]–19, and perhaps a second of these compositions in XI, 1[?]–18 also present the persona of the persecuted leader. My focus is on the community hymns, though I do wish to consider the disputed composition in XI, 1[?]–18 as well, since I think it addresses the problem of the formation of sectarian subjectivity whether it is finally judged to be a community hodayah or one of the persecuted leader. The short hodayah in 1QHa X, 20–30 is shaped by a traditional motif from the literature of personal psalmody, a narrative of attack and deliverance. Roughly speaking, the hodayah divides into two parts: first, a summary and interpretation of the event, followed by the vivid description of the attack and its resolution. Norbert Lohfink gives a more detailed analysis of its structure. He discerns an introduction (lines 20–22) followed by two parallel strophes introduced by ‫והמה‬ (“and as for them,” lines 22–23 and 23–25) in which the theological meaning of the situation is described. A longer strophe (lines 25–28), introduced by ‫ואני‬ 21  Carol A. Newsom, “The Case of the Blinking I: Discourse of the Self at Qumran,” in Discursive Formations, Ascetic Piety and the Interpretation of Early Christian Literature, Semeia 57 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 1:13–23.

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(“and as for me”), recalls the speaker’s words and feelings at the time of the crisis. The conclusion (lines 28–29) resolves the tension of the dramatic recollection in parallel statements introduced by ‫ ואני‬and ‫והם‬, statements that have strong verbal links with the introduction. The whole of the hodayah is brought to an end with a modified citation from Ps 26:12 (lines 29–30).22

Text and Translation: 1QHa X, 20–30 ‫) אודכה אדוני‬20( ‫כי שמתה נפשי בצרור החיים‬ ‫) ותשוך בעדי מכול מוקשי שחת‬21( ‫כ[י] עריצים בקשו נפשי‬ ‫) בבריתךה‬22( ‫בתומכי‬ ‫והמה סוד שוא ועדת בליעל‬ ‫לא ידעו כיא מאתכה מעמדי‬ ‫) ובחסדיכה תושיע נפשי‬23( ‫כיא מאתכה מצעדי‬ ‫) על נפשי‬24( ‫והמה מאתכה גרו‬ ‫בעבור הכבדכה במשפט רשעים‬ ‫) אדם‬25( ‫והגבירכה בי נגד בני‬ vacat ‫כיא בחסדכה עמדי‬ ‫ואני אמרתי חנו עלי גבורים‬ ‫) כלי מלחמותם‬26( ‫סבבים בכל‬ ‫ויפרו חצים לאין מרפא‬ ‫ולהוב חנית באש אוכלת עצים‬ ‫) וכהמון מים רבים שאון קולם‬27( ‫נפץ זרם‬ ‫להשחית רבים‬ ‫) אפעה ושוא בהתרומם גליהם‬28( ‫למזורות יבקעו‬ ‫ואני במוס לבי כמים‬ ‫ותחזק נפשי בבריתך‬ ‫) והם רשת פרשו לי תלכוד רגלם‬29( vacat ‫ופחים טמנו לנפשי נפלו בם‬ ‫ורגלי עמדה במישור‬ vacat ‫) מקהלם אברכה שמכה‬30(

(20) I thank you, O Lord, that you have placed my soul in the bundle of life, (21) and that you have protected me from all the snares of the pit; [for] ruthless people sought my life when I clung (22) to your covenant.

22 Norbert Lohfink, Lobgesänge der Armen: Studien zum Magnifikat, den Hodajot von Qumran, und einigen späten Psalmen, SBS 143 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1990), 49–51.

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As for them – they are a council of deception and a congregation of baseness. They do not know that my station comes from you (23) and that by your kindness you save my life; for from you come my steps. And as for them – on account of you they have menaced (24) my life, so that you may be glorified in the judgment of the wicked and manifest your strength through me before mortal (25) beings; for by your kindness do I stand. vacat And I said, Warriors have encamped against me, surrounding me with all (26) their weapons of war. Arrows for which there is no cure destroy, and the flame of the spear devours trees with fire. (27) Like the roar of mighty waters is the tumult of their shout, a pulverizing rain destroying a multitude. And when their waves mount up, deception and (28) nothingness burst forth toward the constellations. But as for me, though my heart melted like water, my soul held fast to your covenant. (29) And as for them, the net they spread against me seized their feet, and the snares they hid for my life – they themselves fell into them. vacat But my feet stand upon level ground. (30) (Far away) from their assembly I will bless your name. vacat

As a biblical thanksgiving prayer the event it recalls is one “recollected in tranquility.” That is to say, the crisis it narrates in such vividness is contained temporally through an act of recollection and textually through the calm certainties expressed at the beginning and end of the prayer. As in biblical thanksgiving psalms, the “events” narrated belong to the realm of symbolic expression and are not literal descriptions. In contrast to biblical thanksgiving psalms, however, the narrative is not a symbolic representation of a genuinely recollected anomic experience (illness, conflict, bad fortune), but a representation of the speaker’s situation within a quasi-mythic account of the world. The function of the description in the hodayah is normative.23 Situating the speaker within the account of contending forces, the hodayah gives him a subject position within this symbolic order. The threat and deliverance is not a moment of the past but 23  This is not to deny the paradigmatic function of the biblical thanksgiving psalms, which provided a normative structure for experiencing anomic events. To the extent that thanksgiving psalms eventually were separated from their original life settings and became part of the general language of piety then they too could be seen as providing a template for the meaning of one’s life per se, not just a particular experience within it.

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an integral part of the speaker’s fundamental condition, one that the hodayah enables to be experienced over and over again. In several ways the pattern of similarities to and differences from classical psalmody enables one to grasp how a traditional language of the self is reinflected in this hodayah to produce a quite different experience of self. Comparable to the Psalms that feature enemies, the plot of the hodayah defines the identity of the speaker oppositionally in relation to the “council of deception” and “congregation of baseness” who attack him. This oppositional structure is underscored linguistically by the prominence of the contrasting independent pronouns “they” and “I,” which occur at structurally significant points. Despite the emphasis that the pronouns seem to place on this relationship of “they and I,” this relationship is more complex than that between the classical psalmist and his enemies. In the hodayah both parties, “they” and “I,” are primarily related by the “you” who is God. In terms of the plot the fundamental opposition turns out not to be between the speaker and his enemies but between the enemies and God. The speaker notes that it is “on account of you that they have menaced my life” and that the ultimate purpose of the attack is “so that you may be glorified … and manifest your strength through me.” Already in the Psalms the psalmist may represent himself as pious and his enemies as impious, or even say that God’s enemies are his enemies (Pss 119:21–22; 139:19–24). The opposition between the psalmist and his enemies, however, remains fundamentally a human conflict, in relation to which the psalmist actively seeks divine aid, giving as his reason the fact that he is on God’s side and his enemies are not. What happens in the Hodayot is what Kenneth Burke would call the “perfecting” of a motive. The impiety of the enemies is now adduced not merely as a characteristic but as the basis for their actions. One of the consequences of the transfer of the fundamental opposition from speaker vs. enemies to God vs. enemies is the increasing passivity in the representation of the speaker of the hodayah. The classical psalmist may be unable to deliver himself from his foes, but he does appear as an agent in his own drama, calling on God for help and often promising something of value, his praise, in return (e. g., Ps 142). In the hodayah under consideration there is no recollection of a cry for help. The self constructed in this and similar hodayot is not an agent but, one might almost say, a site of divine activity. It serves as a ground situated between God and the ruthless, an object to be attacked, an object to be defended. In formal terms the speaker’s self is what allows for a sort of “communication” between the polar terms of the conflict. God does not so much act for the speaker (as in the Psalms) but rather through him (cf. 1QHa XII, 8, 23; XIII, 15). In essence the meaning of the speaker’s life is rhetorical. He is a sign. If the speaker is a sign, he is also a reader of signs and a reader of himself as a sign. It is this quality that lifts him above the status of passive object and gives him a means of participation in the drama. In contrast to the ruthless ones’

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inability to interpret (“they do not know …”), the speaker provides the correct but hidden meaning of the events. The speaker is made to be an observer of himself, and a significant portion of his identity is invested in that perceiving “I.” In this hodayah, however, attention is not focused primarily on creating the self as an instrument of God’s knowledge. Here the major work is to create the self as a register of the cosmic conflict that structures all of history and of the divine purpose that underlies it. It would appear that all of that is accomplished in the first six lines of the of the hodayah before the vacat. From the perspective of simple information, the second part is purely repetitious. But its dramatic form, presenting the speaker’s sensations in the face of attack, points to its particular function. Subjectivity may be a condensed form of explanation, but for it to have persuasive effect it must be grasped not as explanation but as an experience of the most immediate sort. The second part of the hodayah makes use of a variety of poetic and imagistic devices to create an immediate experience of the subjectivity it cultivates. The emotional structure of the passage is one of rising terror, crisis, and resolution, a structure clearly marked in the text by the repetition of independent pronouns (“And as for me, I said … and as for me … and as for them …”). Such a pattern suggests that the moment of crisis will hold the key to the experience of the self that is to be grasped. The recitation begins with the speaker’s recollection of an experience of terror and utter vulnerability. The governing image is one of war, which, according to Lohfink, is developed through a series of associatively linked images of weapons, fire, storm, even a storm of apparently cosmic dimensions.24 All of this suggests the utter inability of the speaker to protect himself. The climactic moment is the speaker’s confession of simultaneous terror and trust: “though my heart melted like water, my soul held fast to your covenant”; or one might translate the consonantal text in a way that emphasizes the passivity of the speaker even more: “though my heart melted like water, you strengthened my soul through your covenant” (l. 28). The terminology of the self is worth noting. Seven times the speaker uses a noun to refer to himself. In six of these cases it is ‫“( נפש‬soul/life”). Here at the climactic moment of the narrative the speaker uses a double designation, paralleling ‫“( נפש‬soul”) with ‫“( לב‬heart”). These two terms, like their rough English equivalents, do not, of course, refer to two different parts of the self, but they do mark the inner conflict for the subject who experiences himself as the scene of this cosmic confrontation. They are the inner emotional correlates of the external forces. The resolution of the crisis begins with the strengthened soul’s overcoming of the melting heart, a resolution that is then depicted in the external frame. The violent attack 24  Lohfink, Lobgesänge der Armen, 51. There remains, however, considerable disagreement about the precise meaning of ‫( למזורות יבקעו‬translated here as “burst forth toward the constellations”).

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is turned reflexively on its perpetrators, leaving the speaker standing securely “on level ground,” an image that recalls the reference to divinely ordained steps and station in the first part of the prayer. That double sensation of terror and trust is the key to the formation of subjectivity in this composition and is its paradigmatic moment. Because he shares a certain common ground with them, the speaker is vulnerable to the onslaught of the massed forces of the wicked. That vulnerability is real and must be experienced as such. Through the knowledge that the speaker has been granted of the cosmic drama and of his role as a sign in it, however, he understands that his fate is under the protection of God. Thus, the overcoming of terror by trust, the strengthening of his soul, is the inner, subjective correlate of the ultimate victory of God over the forces of wickedness. His own subjectivity, the emotional as well as the cognitive patterns that form his identity, becomes a warrant for the plausibility of the sectarian world.

Self and Other The fundamental characteristic of Qumranic subjectivity is that it is produced at the point of contradiction or of contending forces in a moment of crisis and is often represented as a bifurcated or divided self. Although there is generally some resolution of the division, the dividedness is not decisively overcome. The structure of the self is, as the title of Huppenbauer’s excellent book has it, Der Mensch zwischen zwei Welten.25 This symbolic structure is present both in 1QHa IX,26 where it is represented in terms of a crisis in the knowing subject, and in 1QHa X, 20–30, where it is a crisis in the emotional register. Despite the similarity in the formal structure of the self in these two compositions, there seems to be a significant difference between the representation of subjectivity. The speaker in the latter hodayah may experience conflicting emotions, but the narrating voice seems quite as stable and unified as the voice of a traditional thanksgiving psalm. The crisis, when it comes, is not one that involves a significant decentering of self. The difference, of course, is where the element of negativity is located. The condition for unifying the speaking self is the externalizing of the negative.27 Insofar as the negative can be projected outward, the self is unified and its boundaries are defined with clarity. The very fact that the speaker is 25  Hans W. Huppenbauer, Der Mensch zwischen zwei Welten: der Dualismus der Texte von Qumran (Höhlel) und der Damaskusfragmente. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Evangeliums, ATANT 34 (Zürich: Zwingli Verlag, 1959). 26  Newsom, “The Case of the Blinking I.” 27  Not coincidentally, the decisive resolution of inner division by the removal of falsehood from the individual’s flesh is the symbolic representation of the eschatologically transformed self in 1QS IV, 18–23.

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attacked by enemies of God gives him identity with God. But to the extent that the negative is represented as within oneself, then the defining boundaries tend to dissolve. Even in those compositions that are constructed as symbolic narratives of conflict, the self is seldom depicted as unambiguously unified. The reason for this is quite apparent. Since, according to the sectarian worldview, those whom God has chosen do not possess any intrinsic merit but owe any claim to righteousness purely to the generosity of God, there remains a tantalizing and disturbing degree of similarity between the righteous and the wicked, the saved and the damned. One of the hodayot from 1QHa XI provides a good example of the way in which this ambiguity can be exploited in the representation of the self and its paradigmatic story of distress and deliverance. The hodayah in 1QHa XI, 1(?)–18 is an extremely difficult text, not because of poor transmission but simply because its intricate poetics make such extraordinary demands on the reader. The beginning of the composition is lost, and it is not evident whether it begins at the very top of col. XI or whether it is a continuation of the composition that begins in X, 31–39. This hodayah has given rise to a variety of widely divergent interpretations of the birth imagery that dominates it. One line of interpretation sees it as an account of the birth of a messianic figure.28 That is certainly wrong. The entire description is explicitly introduced as an extended simile: “I was in distress like a woman in labor giving birth to her firstborn” (1QHa XI, 7). To be sure, the metaphor of birth is a commonplace for the in-breaking of eschatological events; but here eschatological motifs are used in the service of the speaker’s account of his own experience.29 Somewhat more plausible is the suggestion that the text describes the birthing of the community by its leader, generally understood to be the Teacher of Righteousness.30 There are other texts that refer to the leader’s nurture of the community in metaphorical terms (e. g. 1QHa XV, 20–22). In those instances, however, the relationship between the leader and the community is significantly developed. Here the emphasis is not on the relationship between mother and child but on the dangers of the birth process. Betz’s argument, like the messianic 28  The basic arguments for this interpretation were laid out by John V. Chamberlain, “Another Qumran Thanksgiving Psalm,” JNES 14 (1955): 32–39; André Dupont-Sommer, “La mère du Messie et la mère l’Aspic dans un hymne de Qoumrân,” RHR 147 (1955): 174–88; Mathias Delcor, “Un Psaume Messianique de Qumran,” in Mélanges bibliques rédigés en l’honneur de André Robert, ed. André Robert, Travaux de l’Institut catholique de Paris 4 (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1956): 334–40. 29  For various refutations of the messianic hypothesis see Sigmund Mowinckel, “Some Remarks on Hodayot 39:5–20,” JBL 75 (1956): 265–76; Lou H. Silberman, “Language and Structure in the Hodayot (1QH 3),” JBL 75 (1956): 96–106; Glenn Hinson, “Hodayoth, III, 6–18: In What Sense Messianic?,” RevQ 2 (1960): 183–204; Schuyler Brown, “Deliverance from the Crucible: Some Further Reflexions on 1QH III.1–18,” NTS 14 (1967–68): 247–59; Svend HolmNielsen, Hodayot: Psalms from Qumran, ATDan 2 (Aarhus: Universitetsforlaget, 1960), 61–64; Johann Maier, Die Texte vom Toten Meer (München: Friedrich Reinhardt, 1960), 2:73. 30  Otto Betz, “Die Geburt der Gemeinde durch den Lehrer,” NTS 3 (1957): 314–26.

176

II. Language and the Shaping of Community at Qumran

interpretation, goes astray in focusing on the particular image in isolation from its deployment in the hodayah as a whole. Although most fully developed, the image of the pregnant woman is grouped with two other images that also characterize the speaker’s situation, a storm-tossed ship and a besieged city. What is common to all three images is the element of life-threatening danger.31 The most convincing interpretation of the text is that which takes it as a highly developed metaphorical representation of the crisis and deliverance (pun intended) of the speaker. In this view it is similar to the hodayah in X, 20–30.32 The first narrative movement, the story of the successful birthing, occurs in lines 7–10. Then there follows a brief transitional passage in lines 10–12 before the account of the unsuccessful birthing of the other pregnant woman in lines 12–18.

Text and Translation: 1QHa XI, 1–18 ]…[ )1–2( ]…[ …‫ האירותה פני‬..]…[ )3( ]…[ ‫) […] לכה בכבוד עולם עם כול‬4( ]…[ ‫]ומ‬..[‫ פיכה ותצילני מ‬.]…[ )5( ‫ יחשיבוני‬.]… ‫ עתה נפש[י‬vacat )6( ‫וישימו נפש[י] כאוניה ב[מ]צולות ים‬ ]‫) וכעיר מבצר מלפני [אויביה‬7( ‫אהיה בצוקה כמו אשת לדה מבכריה‬ ‫כיא נהפכו ציריה‬ ‫) וחבל נמרץ על משבריה‬8( ‫להחיל בכור הריה‬ ‫כיא באו בנים עד משברי מות‬ ‫) והרית גבר הצרה בחבליה‬9( ‫כיא במשברי מות תמליט זכר‬ ‫) מכור הריה‬10( ‫ובחבלי שאול יגיח‬ ‫פלא יועץ עם גבורתו‬ ‫ויפלט גבר ממשברים בהריתו‬ ‫) משברים‬11( ‫החישו כול‬ ‫וחבלי מרץ במולדיהם‬ ‫ופלצות להורותם‬ 31 See,

e. g., Hinson, “Hodayoth, III, 6–18,” 201. the text is to be grouped with the hodayot of the persecuted leader is debated. Jeremias (Der Lehrer der Gerechtigkeit, 171) counts it as such; Becker (Das Heil Gottes, 54) considers it probable; and Kuhn (Enderwartung und Gegenwärtiges Heil, 21–26) rejects it. I find Kuhn’s reasoning the most persuasive. Even if it could be shown that the sect understood this hodayah as referring to the persona of the Teacher of Righteousness, it would not greatly affect my interpretation. What is at issue in this composition is not a question of leadership functions per se but the identity formed by the community’s sectarian worldview. 32 Whether

10. Apocalyptic Subjects: Social Construction of the Self in the Qumran Hodayot

177

‫) בכור הריה‬12( ‫ובמולדיו יהפכו כול צירים‬ ‫והרית אפעה לחבל נמרץ‬ ‫ומשברי שחת לכול מעשי פלצות‬ ‫) אושי קיר‬13( ‫וירועו‬ ‫כאוניה על פני מים‬ ‫ויהמו שחקים בקול המון‬ ‫) כיורדי ימים‬14( ‫ויושבי עפר‬ ‫נבעתים מהמון מים‬ ‫וחכמיהם למו כמלחים במצולות‬ ‫) כול חכמתם בהמות ימים‬15( ‫כי תתבלע‬ ‫ברתוח תהומות על נבוכי מים‬ ‫ויתגרשו לרום גלים‬ ‫) ומשברי מים בהמון קולם‬16( ]‫ובהתרגשם יפתחו ש[או]ל [וא]בד[ון‬ ‫) עם מצעדם‬17( ‫[כו]ל חצי שחת‬ ‫לתהום ישמיעו קולם‬ ‫ויפתחו שערי [שאול כול] מעשי אפעה‬ ‫) ויסגרו דלתי שחת בעד הרית עול‬18( ‫ובריחי עולם בעד כול רוחי אפעה‬ (1–2) […] (3) […] You have caused my face to shine […] (4) […] for yourself with eternal glory, together with all […] (5) […] your mouth and you saved me from […] and from […] (6) vacat Now [my] soul […] they regard me, and make [my] soul like a ship on the depths of the sea (7) and like a fortified city before [its enemy]. I was in distress like a woman giving birth to her firstborn, when her pangs have come upon her (8) and sharp pains are upon her womb opening,33 causing spasms in the crucible of the pregnant woman. As children come to the womb opening of death, (9) so she who is pregnant with a manchild suffers in her birth pangs. For at the womb opening of death she delivers a male, and in the birth pangs34 of Sheol there bursts forth (10) from the crucible of the pregnant woman a wonderful counselor with his might, and the manchild is delivered from the mouth of the womb by the one who is pregnant with him.

33 The several occurences of ‫ משברים‬and ‫ משברי מות‬contain a play on words involving ‫ׁש ֵּבר‬ ְ ‫ַמ‬ (“womb opening”) and ‫ ִמ ְׁש ָּבר‬mishbar (“breakers”). See Isa 37:3; 2 Sam 22:5. 34  ‫ חבלי שאול‬is another play on words, relating ‫“( חבל‬bonds”) and ‫“( חבל‬labor pains”). It is also possible that other nuances are echoed, for other synonyms also exist: ‫“( חבל‬destruction”) and ‫“( חבל‬fetus”).

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II. Language and the Shaping of Community at Qumran

All wombs act suddenly,35 (11) and there are sharp pains at the time of their births and shuddering for those pregnant with them. And so at the time of his birth all these pangs come (12) upon the crucible of the pregnant one. And she who is pregnant with nothingness36 is subject to painful labor, and the womb opening of the pit is subject to all the things (that cause) shuddering. (13) And the foundations of the wall quake like a ship upon the surface of the waters, and the clouds thunder with tumultuous noise, and the dwellers in the dust are (14) like those who go down to the seas, terrified by the roar of the waters. And their sages are for them like sailors on the deeps, (15) when all their wisdom is reduced to confusion by the tumult of the seas, when the deeps boil up over the sources of the waters, and the waves surge up on high, (16) and the breakers of the water with their noisy roar. And as they seethe, Sh[eo]l [and Aba]d[don] open up; [al]l the arrows of the pit (17) together with their retinue make their sound heard at the abyss. (18) Then the gates of [Sheol] open [for all] the works of nothingness. Then the doors of the pit close upon the one who is pregnant with injustice, and the eternal bars upon all the spirits of nothingness.

As with the text in col. X, the body of this composition begins by exploring the experience of hostility from enemies. A series of images – ship at sea, besieged city, woman in labor – is used to describe the situation. The sequence of images suggests that the common element is one of imminent danger from forces over which one has no control.37 In that regard the passage is similar to the presentation of the self in 1QHa X, 20–30. With the introduction of the image of the pregnant woman, however, the hodayah comes upon its dominant symbol, one that becomes the focus for the rest of the prayer. Traditionally, Israelite poets invoked the simile of a woman in labor to describe the physical anguish and fear that overcomes persons about to be attacked in war (e. g. Ps 4:5–7; Jer 6:23–24; 35 The plural verbs and pronouns in lines 10–11 have been a source of difficulty for translators and interpreters. The simplest solution is to read these lines as general statements, similar to the observation in 1.8 that “children come to the womb opening of death.” 36  ‫ אפעה‬is parallel to ‫ שוא‬in 1QHa X, 28 and may be related to ‫( אפע‬Isa 42:14, parallel to ‫)אין‬. The word ‫ אפעה‬means “serpent” in Isa 30:6; 50:5; Job 29:16. A learned play on words is likely. 37 The only image that might initially suggest a different nuance is ‫“( כעיר מבצר‬like a fortified city”); but Holm-Nielsen (Hodayot) observes correctly that “the words need not indicate strength, but merely a town with a surrounding wall, which could be besieged in war, cf. 1 Sam 6:18, in contrast to the unfortified village. According to Jastrow, it can simply mean ‘besieged town’ in Rabbinic usage. In any case it is obvious that the expression does not indicate strength, if it is correct to read the following ]‫מלפנ[י אויב‬, as is mostly done” (Hodayot, 53).

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179

49:24; Isa 13:7–8a; 21:3).38 There is no parallel in the Hebrew Bible, however, for the elaboration of the metaphor as it is carried out here, especially in its exploitation not only of the physical pain connected with labor but also of the results of labor, the birth of a child. If the composition merely made use of the “plot” of labor and delivery, then it would be very similar to the dramatic structure of the hodayah in X, 20–30. But that is not all that is going on here. What is most striking about the composition is the double structure of plot and symbolic characters. There is not one pregnant woman here but two. The speaker has, one might almost say, an “evil twin” whose parallel but contrasting fate is narrated in the second half of the composition. Such a doubling and inversion of the symbol chosen to represent the speaker’s own subjectivity suggests that questions of identity rather more complex than those encountered in 1QHa X, 20–30 are being worked on here. Doubling, as the trope that dominates the symbolic structure of this hodayah, is even present on the linguistic level in the use of puns. Although word play is present in other Qumran literature, it is not generally characteristic of the Hodayot. Here, however, double meanings abound. The expressions ‫ משברים‬and ‫ משברי מות‬contain a play on words involving ‫“( ַמ ְׁש ֵּבר‬womb opening”) and ‫“( ִמ ְׁש ָּבר‬breakers”). A similar ambiguity is exploited in the phrase ‫חבלי שאול‬, where ‫“( ֵח ֶבל‬labor pains”) is brought together with ‫“( ֶח ֶבל‬bonds”). Even the term for womb is not the ordinary one but the expression ‫“( כור‬crucible”), which is employed in constructions that pun on ‫“( בכור‬firstborn”). Finally, the fetus of the second pregnant woman is called ‫אפעה‬, a word that is probably a play on ‫“( אפעה‬serpent”) and ‫אפע‬/‫“( אפעה‬nothingness” [see n. 36 above]). The emphasis on doubling in the representation of symbolic characters and narrative structure and in the manipulation of language suggests that one should consider more closely the strategic significance of the central image of the pregnant woman. A pregnant woman is, after all, an ambiguously dual being, one body with two lives. A woman pregnant with a ‫“( גבר‬a manchild”) represents this duality even more, since she combines the two genders in one body. A woman pregnant with ‫“( אפעה‬viper” or “nothing”) is a monstrous combination of the human and the non-human and/or of being and non-being. It remains to be seen, of course, the extent to which the speaker’s identity is invested not only in the image of the woman but also that of the ‫“( גבר‬manchild”) with whom she is pregnant. As will be seen in what follows, the ‫ גבר‬plays a crucial role in the symbolic dynamics by which the underlying problem of subjectivity is resolved in this hodayah. As in so many of the Hodayot, meaning is constructed along two axes. There is the linear, syntagmatic movement forward of the phrases and sentences 38 See the analysis of the image in K. Pfisterer Darr, “Like Woman, Like Warrior: Destruction and Deliverance in Isaiah 42:10–17,” CBQ 49 (1987): 560–71.

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II. Language and the Shaping of Community at Qumran

themselves; there is the vertical, paradigmatic, retarding movement of a dense intertextuality. Within the four lines of text that narrate the plot of the birth there are no fewer than nine specific biblical allusions (respectively, Jer 4:31; 13:21; 1 Sam 4:19; Mic 2:10; Isa 37:3; 2 Sam 22:5 [twice]; Isa 66:7; 2 Sam 22:6; Isa 9:5). I mean it more than half facetiously when I say that the narrating voice speaks a pregnant language. The reader or hearer formed by the poetics of the Hodayot will attend not only to the manifest, surface meaning but simultaneously to the inner meaning that is being constructed through the juxtaposition of biblical allusions. The intertextuality and the punning wordplays work together to create the sense of a double structured language. Consider lines 7b–8, “I was in distress like a woman giving birth to her firstborn, when [her] pangs have come upon her and sharp pains are upon her womb opening, causing spasms in the crucible of the pregnant woman” (‫אהיה‬ ‫בצוקה כמו אשת לדה מבכריה כיא נהפכו ציריה וחבל נמרץ על משבריה להחיל בכור‬ ‫)הריה‬. The phrase ‫“( כמו אשת לדה‬like a woman giving birth”) is from Jer 13:21, and the term ‫“( מבכריה‬her firstborn”) apparently from Jer 4:31.39 Both biblical passages occur in the context of judgment against a sinful Jerusalem and describe the anguish and even death that she faces. The succeeding allusion has overtones that are even more grim, for ‫“( כיא נהפכו ציריה‬when [her] pains have come upon her”) is an allusion to 1 Sam 4:19, where Eli’s daughter-in-law dies giving birth to the inauspiciously named Ichabod when she hears about the capture of the ark. There, too, the larger context is one of judgment on a failed priestly house. In keeping with the pattern, the phrase ‫“( וחבל נמרץ‬and sharp pains”) is taken from a passage of judgment in Mic 2:10. While the manifest content of the speaker’s words have established that his situation is one of acute distress, each of his phrases is drawn from a context in which the distress is directly related to sinful failure. It is important to stress that the speaker neither explicitly claims nor repudiates these overtones of guilt. They merely hang in the air like a whisper of anxiety that is not even consciously acknowledged. To this point at least, although intertextual allusions have been thick, there has been no reason to assume a double meaning for any of the words. That changes, however, with the unusual form ‫משבריה‬. What is odd is that the context requires the word ‫מ ְׁש ֵּבר‬, ַ “birth canal” or “womb opening”; and yet that word is always used in the singular (2 Kgs 19:3//Isa 37:3; Hos 13:13). How a reader actually pronounced the word is unclear, for the plural form that is written certainly suggests the similar sounding ‫“( ִמ ְׁש ָּב ִרים‬breakers”), which always occurs in the plural (2 Sam 22:5; Jon 2:4; Pss 42:8; 88:8; 93:4). The unusual form requires that the speaker either violate context or grammatical form. A contra39  Joseph M. Baumgarten and Menahem Mansoor (“Studies in the New Hodayot (Thanksgiving Hymns)–II,” JBL 74 [1955]: 188–95 [189 n. 8]) suggest that the scribe has reversed the resh and yod of ‫מבכירה‬, the form found in Jer 4:31. For other suggestions see the discussion of Holm-Nielsen, Hodayot, 53.

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181

diction is forced upon the reader at the linguistic level. At the level of meaning the double voicing of the word requires him to acknowledge the moment of birth as the moment of danger. A further pun underscores the point. It has been inconclusively debated whether ‫“( כור‬crucible”) was or was not a slang term for “womb” in Hebrew or Aramaic usage of the author’s day.40 In either case, its metaphorical use here is clear and evocative, as most translators recognize. The next pair of phrases initially appear simply to draw out the image of danger, in which the image of the womb opening (and perhaps the birth waters that flow through it) is overlaid with the image of the waters of death: “as children come to the womb opening of death, and she who is pregnant with a manchild suffers in her birth pangs” (‫)כיא באו בנים עד משברי מות והרית גבר הצרה בחבלים‬. Here again, the language is pregnant with hidden meaning that only becomes evident if one attends to the intertextual allusions. The first half of the line is actually formed from a juxtaposition of two biblical phrases: ‫כי באו בנים עד־‬ ‫“( משבר וכח אין ללדה‬for children come to the womb opening, but there is no strength for birthing,” 2 Kgs 19:4//Isa 37:3) and ‫מות‬-‫“( כי אפפני משברי‬for the breakers of death have encompassed me,” 2 Sam 22:5). The splicing produced by the hodayah does indeed effectively gloss “womb opening” as the place of the “breakers of death.” But something else occurs as well, something that is evident only to one who attends to the pattern of intertextual reference. Whereas the previous descriptions of the speaker’s distress had been taken from words of judgment upon a sinful people, both of these phrases come from a different context. They were both attributed to faithful Israelite kings who were delivered from distress by God. The first phrase comes from the words of lament with which Hezekiah prefaces his pious request that Yahweh turn away the Rabshakeh from the gates of Jerusalem. The second phrase comes from the thanksgiving song of David that he sang “on the day when Yahweh delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul” (2 Sam 22:1). What is particularly interesting is that the surface context of the hodayah and the subtext of the biblical allusions are not “in sync.” Whereas the syntagmatic movement of the surface context still describes distress, the paradigmatic index of the intertextual allusion speaks of impending deliverance. Only in the next line, which describes the successful birth, do surface content and intertextual allusion converge. Danger and promise coexist in the tension between the syntagmatic and paradigmatic dimensions of the text, as they do for the pregnant woman. The final synchronization of these two levels of language resolves the tension, as the successful birth does for the woman in labor. 40  Baumgarten and Mansoor (“Studies in the New Hodayot,” 190) cite the Aramaic ‫ כורא‬in b. Šab. 140b, which according to Marcus Jastrow’s A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York: The Judaic Press, 1971), 625, is a euphemism for the female pudenda. Silberman (“Language and Structure,” 101–103) rebuts the analysis of the Aramaic word and its relevance for 1QHa XI.

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The final section of this part of the hodayah (lines 9–10) reads: “for at the womb opening of death she delivers a male, and in the birth pangs of Sheol there bursts forth from the crucible of the pregnant woman a wonderful counselor with his might” (‫כיא במשברי מות תמליט זכר ובחבלי שאול יגיח מכור הריה פלא יועץ‬ ‫)עם גבורתו‬. Here, the phrases from David’s psalm of thanksgiving that recollected his distress, ‫“( משברי מות‬breakers of death”) and ‫“( חבלי שאול‬bonds of Sheol,” 2 Sam 22:5, 6), are paired with phrases that evoke divinely ordained, redemptive births. The phrase ‫“( תמליט זכר‬she delivers a male”) is the phrase used of Zion in Isa 66:7 to describe God’s faithfulness in restoring Jerusalem: “Before she was in labor she gave birth; before her pain came upon her she delivered a son” (NRSV). Similarly, ‫“( פלא יואץ‬wonderful counselor”) comes from Isa 9:5 where it describes the birth of the king who brings redemption. The occurrence of this latter phrase has caused much speculation about the possible “messianic” meaning of the hodayah, speculation that has been soundly refuted. The significance of the phrase cannot be determined by taking it out of context but only by realizing that here it is part of an elaborately developed conceit for describing the distress and deliverance of the speaker along much the same lines as that of 1QHa X, 20–30. Only in this case, given the nature of the metaphor, deliverance is the successful delivery of a baby. It is thus no accident that the child is given a name redolent of overtones of redemption and divine election. Any question about its further significance, however, must be asked not in isolation but rather in terms of the symbolic economy of the whole composition. Before that can be made clear, it is necessary to examine the rest of the hodayah. The material that follows, from the end of XI, 10 to the beginning of XI, 12, is difficult because of the plural forms. As I understand the text, there are four short hemistichs in an A-B-B’-A’ grammatical pattern (verbal clause/nominal clause/nominal clause/verbal clause). In terms of content the three hemistichs with plural forms are general statements about the nature of pregnancy and delivery: the moment of crisis comes suddenly when its time arrives, and with it all the pains associated with labor. It should be clear why the metaphor of pregnancy is so appealing to the author of the hodayah. It has a predestinarian, eschatological structure, with a “judgment” of life or death at its final moment. The final hemistich of this series returns from the general to the particular (“and so at the time of his birth all these pangs come upon the crucible of the pregnant one”). But who is the referent of its masculine singular pronoun and who is the pregnant woman? At this point in the composition it would seem obvious that the pronoun and noun would point back to the figures already mentioned, though it seems a bit redundant since their crisis has been successfully resolved. That initial clarity of reference is quickly put into question, however.41 Immedi41  Brown (“Deliverance from the Crucible,” 249) addresses the problem of the reference without, however, considering the ambiguity to be strategic.

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183

ately following this line the speaker introduces a new character, the ‫הרית אפעה‬ (the woman “pregnant with nothingness”) whose own moment of crisis occupies the remainder of the hodayah. Does the reference of ‫“( ובמולדיו‬and at the time of his birth”) and ‫“( כור הריה‬crucible of the pregnant one”) then point forward to this woman and her monstrous fetus? The description of her labor echoes two of the terms from the immediately preceding lines (‫חבל נמרץ‬/‫מרץ‬, “sharp pains,” and ‫מעשי פלצות‬/‫פלצות‬, “shuddering”), further associating the new figure with that description. I am perhaps belaboring what may seem a small point, but the ambiguity produced by this juxtaposition is a strategic one. The reader’s first impulse is certainly to identify with ‫ ובמולדיו‬and ‫ כור הריה‬as the symbolic terms representing his subjectivity in this text. But then he must draw back. Has he just committed the error of identifying with the figure that is in fact his polar opposite? The service this ambiguity performs is to draw attention to the play of same and opposite in the symbolic structure of the composition and implicitly to the problem of identity that the composition addresses. The whole symbolic economy of this composition is organized around the comparison and contrast of the two female figures. They are, in their pregnant state, quite alike. Specifically, both are subject to the pains and dangers of labor, described in similar terms. But for one, the outcome is the birth of extraordinary new life, while for the other the outcome is death.42 Who or what the second woman represents is never made explicit. What we do know is that she shares a similarity of condition with the speaker but experiences a diametrically opposite fate. That pattern, however, provides an adequate clue to the meaning of the figure. One of the ambiguities that the sectarian speaker of the Hodayot has to confront is why his fate is different from that of other human beings. He can make no claim to possessing intrinsic special value, for he is essentially the same as the others. He is only a creature of clay and water, impure and guilty. Sheol has every right to him. In the representation of the two pregnant women, the composition acknowledges that common identity and all the claims of death upon it. 42  The use of paired, positive and negative female figures is a frequent device used by male writers to structure their symbolic worlds. Usually they are presented as paired protecting and threatening figures, such as the wife and the seductress, Wisdom and Folly in Prov 1–9. See ch. 3 of this book, “Woman and the Discourse of Patriarchal Wisdom: A Study of Proverbs 1–9.” The reason for this symbolic use is insightfully discussed by Toril Moi (Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory [London: Methuen, 1985], 150) who suggests that because women occupy a marginal position in the symbolic order they come symbolically to represent its limit or border. They can take on the properties alternatively of the protecting, shielding qualities of the border or of the chaotic realm that lies on the outside of the border. Pregnancy, not only as the radically female role but also as the liminal state between being/nonbeing of the fetus is an especially powerful symbol. What is distinctive about the hodayot is the use of the pregnant woman as a direct metaphor for the figure of the speaker. Perhaps the appeal of such a symbol is also related to the strategic position on the margin of symbolic orders occupied by sectarian movements.

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But if that common (and terrifying) aspect of oneself is acknowledged, what accounts for the diametrically opposite fates? On the symbolic plane it is nothing visible but rather that which is hidden in each woman. What is hidden in one is the viper/nothingness, and in the other the manchild, the wonderful counselor. Symbolically, the manchild is to the pregnant woman as the ‫“( בינה‬insight”), the ‫“( תורה‬teaching”), the ‫“( סוד אמת‬secret of truth”), the ‫“( רוח‬spirit”), and the ‫“( דעת‬knowledge”) are to the speaker in other compositions (see, e. g., 1QHa VI, 8; XIII, 9–11; XX, 11–13). It is the divinely given insight that accounts for the crucial difference between the self and the other. Here, too, the aspect of divine knowledge is the characteristic emphasized in the identification of the manchild and the wonderful counselor. Not only does ‫“( יועץ‬counselor”) have overtones of effective understanding,43 but so does the complementary phrase ‫“( עם גבורתו‬with his might”). As Wernberg-MØller has shown, ‫ גבורה‬often has the nuance of powerful knowledge rather than physical might.44 The speaker’s subjectivity in this hodayah is represented by both the pregnant woman and the child to whom she gives birth. The same double structured identity, formed at the intersection of human vulnerability and powerful divine knowledge that one encounters in 1QHa IX is also developed here. In this complex hodayah, however, it is also connected with the attempt to distinguish the speaker’s identity from that of his other, his enemy. The resolution of the narrative is similar to that of 1QHa X, 20–30, in which the evil that the opponents attempted recoils upon themselves, though here it is somewhat more complex in its workings. The prayer opened with the speaker describing his attack by others in terms of a ship at sea, a besieged city, and a pregnant woman. Having been “delivered” by negotiating the dual death/life values available in the images of childbirth, and having cast his opponents in the role of a monstrously pregnant woman, he then describes her death in childbirth through the echoing images of trembling city walls and a storm at sea. The symbolic negativity of the vulnerability and deathwardness that menaced the speaker at the beginning of the composition has been cast out and placed on the other. The subliminal overtones of guilt registered in the intertextual allusions are explicitly attached to the other, who is said to be “pregnant with iniquity.” What is interesting about this composition is that it shows how the imagery of a bifurcated experience of self can be manipulated in such a way as to discharge at least temporarily the disturbing threat to the self that such a subjectivity entails. The way this is done, of course, is by projecting that inner division outward through the image of a symbolic other. This is not to say that the Hodayot definitively resolved a divided subjectivity through the symbolic magic of its imagery and use of language. If anything, they do the opposite, calling into being and 43 44

 See Mowinckel, “Zwei Qumran-Miszellen,” 297–98.  Preben Wernberg-Møller, The Manual of Discipline, STDJ 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1957), 74.

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enhancing the sense of a self constructed at the intersection of human nothingness and divine intentionality. But the tension inherent in such a structure of the self is periodically discharged through symbolic structures that allow one to grasp proleptically the eschatological resolution of life and death, good and evil, the saved and the damned.

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11. Models of the Moral Self: Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism The great sage and scribe Jesus Ben Sira was, for the most part, a writer in confident control of his message, one who seldom engaged in direct polemics with other points of view. On occasion, however, his irritation with claims that he finds wrong-headed comes sharply into view. One of these moments is in ch. 15 of the Wisdom of Ben Sira, where the sage stoutly objects to those who – as he characterizes them – claim that it is God’s fault that they have sinned. In response, Ben Sira mounts a vigorous defense of the Deuteronomic view of moral agency, in which persons have free will and the unimpeded capacity to choose between “life and death” (Sir 15:15–17). It is difficult to know who Ben Sira’s opponents actually were, because it is unlikely that he gives a fair representation of their position in the whiny words he attributes to them, “It was the Lord’s doing that I fell away … . It was he who led me astray” (15:11–12). In some ways the position sounds closest to the moral anthropology articulated three hundred years later in the book of 4 Ezra. There Ezra sharply questions the model of free human agency and attributes the moral failure of the vast majority of persons to the “evil heart” with which humans were created, and which God did not act to remove or correct. While we do not know if the argument that Ezra makes had already been developed by contemporaries of Ben Sira, ample evidence exists for the emergence of a variety of often startling alternatives to the Deuteronomic model of moral agency in various strands of Second Temple Jewish literature. Curiously, although interest in models of moral psychology has been lively in NT studies, especially as focused on the figure of Paul, this topic has been rather neglected by Hebrew Bible and Second Temple scholars, though a revival of interest in biblical anthropology in general – especially among German-speaking scholars – suggests that interest in this subject may be rising.1 In other disciplines, the “self ” – moral and otherwise – has become a subject of intense research in fields as diverse as neuroscience, cultural history, philosophy, theology, 1 See, e. g., Bernd Janowski and Kathrin Liess, eds., Der Mensch im Alten Israel: Neue Forschungen zur alttestamentlichen Anthropologie, Herders biblische Studien 59 (Freiburg im Breis­gau: Herder, 2009); Andreas Wagner, ed., Anthropologische Aufbrüche: Alttestamentliche und interdisziplinäre Zugänge zur historischen Anthropologie, FRLANT 232 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009); and Christian Frevel, ed., Biblische Anthropologie: Neue Einsichten aus dem Alten Testament, QD 237 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2010).

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psychology, and anthropology. If biblical studies were to reinvigorate its own examination of the self constructed in the Hebrew Bible and early Judaism, which of these fields might provide helpful conversation partners? And what might our field contribute to an interdisciplinary conversation? Among the different disciplines, neuroscience and anthropology offer particularly useful insights. What makes neuroscience intriguing is its finding that the anatomical structures of the brain responsible for the sense of self are also the ones involved in religious experience. The claim, made most forcefully by Patrick McNamara in The Neuroscience of Religious Experience,2 is that religion and the self co-evolved and that religion is the most important of the cultural means by which a unified or executive self – what can also be described as conscious agency – is constructed and maintained. Because neuroscience is based on the anatomy and chemistry of the brain, it can identify what features and processes of the self are universal. One of the things it reveals is that the default state of consciousness is fragmented and conflicted. Different physiologically and genetically based systems, as well as acquired beliefs and preferences, compete within the person, leading to an unsystematic and uncoordinated series of impulses and desires.3 The executive self that mediates among these impulses and allows the person to act with coordinated intention over time does not simply emerge biologically by default. It is much more a cultural achievement, historically facilitated and transmitted in large part by religious practices.4 Because the self is culturally constructed on an anatomical substructure, remarkably diverse ways exist for achieving the executive self required for human flourishing. Here is where anthropology is helpful, particularly that branch often called “ethnopsychology.” In ethnopsychology, anthropologists investigate “local theories of the person”5 or “indigenous psychologies,”6 that is, symbolic accounts of how the self is constituted in diverse cultures. Most useful for my purposes are the cross-cultural studies of how human agency is conceptualized. 2  Patrick McNamara, The Neuroscience of Religious Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 3  McNamara, Neuroscience of Religious Experience, 32–38; cf. David Haig, “Intrapersonal Conflict,” in Conflict, ed. Martin Jones and Andrew C. Fabian, Darwin College Lectures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 12–16. 4  Haig, “Intrapersonal Conflict,” 21; McNamara, Neuroscience of Religious Experience, 38. 5  See, e. g., Bradd Shore, Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of Meaning (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 65. 6  See, e. g., Paul Heelas, “Indigenous Psychologies,” in Indigenous Psychologies: The Anthropology of the Self, ed. Paul Heelas and Andrew Lock, Language, Thought, and Culture (London: Academic Press, 1981), 3. See also Kim, Uichol, Kuo-shu Yang, and Kwang-kuo Hwang, eds., Indigenous and Cultural Psychology: Understanding People in Context, International and Cultural Psychology (New York: Springer, 2006); and Emma Cohen and Justin L. Barrett, “In Search of ‘Folk Anthropology’: The Cognitive Anthropology of the Person,” in In Search of Self: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Personhood, ed. J. Wentzel van Huyssteen and Erik P. Wiebe (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 104–22.

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Despite the immense cultural variety, it is possible to identify a small number of variables that each indigenous psychology must address, thus facilitating comparison. Both neuroscience and anthropology, however, tend to frame their analyses synchronically, as snapshots of a situation at a given time. What the historical disciplines, including biblical studies, can distinctively contribute is a study of changes in the conceptualization of the self over time. While there are numerous excellent studies of the development of the modern western self 7 and on the philosophical debates concerning Greek conceptions of the self,8 little or no attempt has been made to trace the changing conceptions of the self in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism. Is this even possible? To be sure, fewer data exist than for modern or even ancient Greek studies, but there is enough evidence to make the inquiry worthwhile, especially if one focuses on the moral self, which is a primary concern of the biblical and early postbiblical texts. In the following discussion, I wish to look specifically at the issue of moral agency. To that end I will (1) present a heuristic model from ethnopsychology for representing human agency; (2) briefly describe the contours of the default model of moral agency assumed in the Hebrew Bible; and (3) examine some of the most significant alternatives to the classic Deuteronomic model that are developed in Second Temple literature, along with the possible reasons for their development and their social functions.

A Tool for Mapping Models of Agency One of the problems in cross-cultural or historical inquiry is that of identifying analytical categories that facilitate comparison without improperly imposing the categories native to the researcher. In an important study in ethnopsychology, Paul Heelas and Andrew Lock devised a grid for representing the major vectors that structure cross-cultural models of human agency. They work with two coordinates: location and control. Location refers to the differentiation every society makes between the perceiver and his or her environment. Roughly speaking, this is a differentiation between self and other or between internal and external, though how these terms are given specific cultural realization can admit of considerable difference. The second vector, control, is a way of conceptualizing

7 E. g., Jerrold Seigel, The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). 8  For an overview of primary sources and secondary studies, see Emma Wasserman, The Death of the Soul in Romans 7: Sin, Death, and the Law in Light of Hellenistic Moral Psychology, WUNT 2/256 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 15–49.

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Figure 1. Nature of Control versus Locus of Control. From Indigenous Psychologies: The Anthropology of the Self (ed. Paul Heelas and Andrew Lock; Language, Thought, and Cu lture; London: Academic Press, 1981), 33. Used by permission.

activity or passivity, that is, whether a person is seen as “in control” or “under the control” of someone or something else (fig. 1).9 The two polar models of psychology that these vectors construct are what Heelas and Lock call idealist and passiones.10 The idealist model is one in which even the external world is understood as dependent on the self. Their example is mystical Tibetan Buddhism, though one might also include here a variety of new age “mind-over-matter” psychologies. Passiones psychologies (from Latin passio: “being acted upon or controlled externally”) are those in which the self is seen as controlled by external forces. They illustrate by reference to the Dinka culture, which sees the world of spirits as the active subject and the individual as the object acted upon (see fig. 2).11  9  Andrew Lock, “Universals in Human Conception,” in Heelas and Lock, eds., Indigenous Psychologies, 33. 10  Heelas, “The Model Applied: Anthropology and Indigenous Psychologies,” in Heelas and Lock, Indigenous Psychologies, 39–43. 11  See R. Godfrey Lienhardt, Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), 149.

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Figure 2. Examples of Indigenous Psychologies. From Heelas and Lock, eds., Indigenous Psychologies, 41. Used by permission.

While these extremes are easy to conceptualize, what does it mean to conceive of the self as controlled by forces located internal to the person? Actually, this is not an uncommon model. One could think of the ancient theory of the four humors, which are located within particular organs of the body but exercise control over the whole person. Not surprisingly, given what neuroscience says about the default state of consciousness as divided and conflicted, it is commonplace across many cultures to envision the self as internally divided, with one aspect attempting to control another, as in the Greek conception of the internal division of the self into reason, passion, and appetites. More difficult to illustrate is the possibility of a theory of the person in which an externally located element was conceived both as part of the self and in control. Perhaps some versions of the notion of an “external soul” would fit this model. Even in the modern secular imagination, however, the use of little angel and devil figures on each side of a person’s head, representing the moral conflict of an individual, suggests the way in which a person’s impulses are simultaneously experienced as externalized but still very much one’s own – the metaphorical better and worse angels of our nature.

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It would be misleading to think of this schematic model as a set of pigeonholes for static views of the self that are characteristic of cultures as undifferentiated wholes. First, the lived experience of agency includes both control and lack of control, a sense of internal capacity and external restriction. As Heelas notes, every culture will find some way of acknowledging each of these dimensions, though they may be masked or muted, relocated or transformed in some fashion.12 Second, although one model may predominate in a culture, often a variety of alternative models of the self may coexist, serving different purposes.13

The Default Model of Moral Agency in the Hebrew Bible Although the model of the moral self in the Hebrew Bible has its own variations and complexities, it is clear that in terms of the Heelas and Lock model, the common Israelite conception of the self would be in quadrant A – an internalized conceptualization of the self in control. The heart (‫ )לב‬is the locus of the person’s moral will, and it is this organ that is responsible for a person’s words and actions. It is, as Thomas Krüger puts it, the “moral control and guidance center” of the person.14 It is the executive self. While ‫ לב‬is the most important term for the conceptualization of moral agency in First Temple texts, the term ‫רוח‬, “spirit,” is also significant.15 This term has a very broad range of meaning. When applied to a person, it may represent simply the animating breath (as a synonym for ‫)נפש‬. But it can also designate a person’s capacities: their skill or wisdom. It can refer to a person’s disposition, covering both what we would treat as one’s emotional state (“a troubled spirit,” “a calm spirit”) and one’s motivation, intention, or will.16 So far, what I am describing still fits into the category of an internalized conceptualization of the self in control. The capacity of the person to make moral choices is assumed in most of the biblical literature and is made

 Heelas, “Model Applied,” 7.  This phenomenon has been studied recently by combining the Heelas and Lock model with Robert MacLaury’s cognitive “vantage theory,” which demonstrates the cognitive means by which dominant and recessive vantage points of cultural perception can shift from figure to ground to presupposition as needed for particular purposes, even though one vantage will be the preferred default. See Jane H. Hill and Robert E. MacLaury, “The Terror of Montezuma: Aztec History, Vantage Theory, and the Category of ‘Person,’” in Language and the Cognitive Construal of the World, ed. John R. Taylor and Robert E. MacLaury, Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 82 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995), 277–329. 14  Thomas Krüger, “Das ‘Herz’ in der alttestamentlichen Anthropologie,” in Wagner, Anthropologische Aufbrüche, 109. 15  The most extensive recent study of the uses and function of ‫ רוח‬and the comparable terms in Greek is John R. Levison, Filled with the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009). See also his The Spirit in First Century Judaism, AGJU 29 (Leiden: Brill, 2002). 16  Sven Tengström, “rûaḥ,” TDOT 13:376–77. 12 13

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thematic in Deuteronomic discourse. This is the conceptualization of the normal state of affairs. The Hebrew Bible, however, recognizes exceptions to this normal condition. Most frequently, external interference is exercised via the ‫רוח‬.17 What facilitates this conceptualization is both the nonmaterial nature of the human ‫ רוח‬and the fact that the term “spirit” also characterizes God and other divine beings. In discussing ‫רוח‬, it is important to distinguish between two things. The ‫ רוח‬that belongs to a person innately (as vitality, capacity, disposition, will) may be enhanced by God. In this case the person is conceptualized as a container. The person is “full of ” a spirit, or God “fills” them with a spirit. Most commonly, this has to do with skill, wisdom, or a capacity for leadership, and as an enhancement of a natural capacity it appears still to be understood as a part of the persons “own” agency.18 In contrast to this are the cases where a spirit from God is represented as metonymically related to a person, that is, contiguous but external. Here the spirit “comes upon (‫ ;היה על‬e. g., Num 24:2; Judg 3:10), “rests upon” or “grips” the individual (‫ ;צלח על‬e. g., Judg 14:6, 19).19 In these cases the person is empowered or impelled to do something he otherwise lacks either the capacity or the intention to do. Both the verbs and the prepositions used suggest that this type of experience was felt to be an external control of a person’s agency. This model, however, clearly represents an exception to normal human agency. While this conceptualization of internal agency and its occasional override is relatively clear, one must also account for ordinary success or failure in exercising good moral choice. To give a full answer to this question would involve much more than what can be done here, but it is possible to identify the critical issues in the Hebrew Bible that can serve as a basis for the remainder of the discussion. Three elements form the fundamental grammar of the moral self in the Hebrew Bible: desire, knowledge, and the discipline of submission to external authority. These elements may be nuanced by other aspects of moral psychology, such as the role of shame in Ezekiel’s account of the reconstruction of failed moral agency, or the role of memory in Deuteronomy in facilitating good moral choice. Nevertheless, the fundamental grammar of the moral self across the Hebrew Bible is constructed by the relation of desire, knowledge, and submission. 17 The ‫ לב‬may be affected also, but whether the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart (Exod 4:21; 9:12; 10:20, 27; 11:10; 14:4, 8, 17) or God’s making fat the heart of the people (Isa 6:10a) is actually conceived of as an act of external control requires more analysis than can be provided here. 18 Levison, Filled with the Spirit, 48–51, 74–81. 19 While the great majority of instances follow this pattern, there are three that might represent the spirit as becoming internal to the person, using the preposition ‑‫( ב‬2 Sam 23:2; 1 Kgs 22:23; 2 Kgs 19:7). In two of these, however, the issue is how the spirit directs the individual’s speech, which may account for the choice of the preposition. Only in 2 Kgs 19:7 is it said that God “places a spirit in” (‫)נתן בו‬, though here, too, the spirit is an external agent that overrides the king’s own perception and intentionality.

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Desire is not in and of itself negative, but, unless informed and disciplined, it is unruly and untrustworthy as a guide to moral conduct. After all, desires are – in neuroscientific terms – the uncoordinated impulses of our default consciousness. Not surprisingly, the semantics and imagery of desire play a prominent role throughout the Hebrew Bible: in Genesis 2–3, in other narrative texts, in the Psalms, and in wisdom and prophetic literatures. More important than desire in and of itself is the relation between knowledge and desire. In Genesis 2–3 the combination of desire and knowledge is deemed to be particularly dangerous, apparently because desire is seen as having the upper hand, using the knowledge of good and bad to accomplish its unpredictable ends (Gen 3:6, 22). Elsewhere, however, in the wisdom literature knowledge is precisely what evaluates desires and enables the individual to resist destructive ones and to learn to desire what is good. Michael Fox is correct in arguing that the wisdom tradition has an essentially Socratic understanding of the relation between knowledge and desire – “to know the good is to desire it.”20 Knowledge is not simply about states of affairs, however. It is also relational knowledge. Thus, in Hosea, in Deuteronomy, and elsewhere, knowledge of God is cultivated as the basis for correct moral decision making. This type of relational knowledge touches on the third leg of moral decision making, what I have identified as submission to an external authority. This authority may be human (the father and the wise in the wisdom tradition), or it may be divine (God or the Torah of God), but it is a recognition of the fact that the coordination of desire and knowledge is not conceived of as an individual project but is always placed in a collective or social context.21 Moral failure generally involves a combination of these three elements, though one or another may be stressed. That is, the problem may be framed as obsessive desire, as often in Ezekiel; or it may be framed as a failure of the understanding or even self-deception, as often in Proverbs and Jeremiah; or it may be framed as recalcitrance or rebellion against authority, as often throughout the prophetic corpus. The interaction of the three elements and their ratios construct a dynamic model that accounts in a flexible way for the experience of both good and bad moral decision making. The human being is in no sense 20  Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 10–31: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 18B (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 935–38. 21  The modern Western analysis of moral formation is more likely to see deference to authority as potentially morally problematic, as in the infamous Milgram experiment, where individuals inflicted what they thought was severe pain on experimental subjects when told to do so by the researcher conducting the experiment. See Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (London: Tavistock, 1974). Submission to proper authority is a more prominent value in societies in which the socially embedded self rather than the autonomous self is the norm. Jonathan Wyn Schofer (The Making of a Sage: A Study in Rabbinic Ethics [Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004], 17–22) provides an insightful discussion of the role of “subjection” and “chosen subordination to Torah and to God” as an integral part of moral formation in The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan.

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ontologically defective – the capacity for moral agency is presumed – but neither is a person innately moral. Reliable moral decision making is a project accomplished between the individual and her community, as desire and knowledge are both shaped in relation to reliable external authority. One might object that there are expressions of what looks like a radically pessimistic view of moral functioning in several places in the Hebrew Bible – in the Yahwist’s negative judgment on humanity in the Primeval History, in the “fool” in the wisdom tradition, in Eliphaz and Bildad’s negative characterization of humanity in Job, and in the despair articulated by Ezekiel and Jeremiah over the status of the human heart. These cases each represent different issues. The Yahwist’s judgment that “the whole inclination of the thoughts of their heart was only bad all the time” (Gen 6:5) is indeed a negative judgment on human moral anthropology. This is clear from the fact that even the radical intervention of the flood changes nothing. People are as bad after the flood as they were before (Gen 8:21).22 Though the Yahwist’s perspective has played a large role in shaping Western thought, it is actually a minority perspective in the Hebrew Bible. The case of the fool in Proverbs poses a different issue. Though it is possible that Proverbs holds that some people are simply “born fools,” it is more likely that the inveterate fool is “made” rather than “born.” Where early resistance to the discipline of wisdom is not overcome, it can harden into intractable moral disorder.23 More radical is the judgment of Eliphaz and Bildad that humanity is “loathsome and foul, a being that drinks wrongdoing like water” (Job 15:16; cf. 4:17–21; 25:4–6). This negative anthropology, however, is specifically generated by a contextual desire to emphasize the ontological difference between the divine and the human. It remains an isolated perspective in the Hebrew Bible. Finally, concerning Ezekiel and Jeremiah, it is important to recognize that these prophets use the language of moral agency to address a national political crisis and failure. Thus, their pessimism is context specific, although it is articulated as a crisis in moral psychology per se. The Judean mind, which should have been capable of making good moral choices, has revealed itself as so thoroughly defective or corrupted that it is incapable of restoration by the ordinary means of discipline, knowledge, and the redirection of desire. Thus, the very possibility of moral agency is put in question. Both prophetic books reinstate such agency, however, through a divine intervention that transforms the moral organ of the heart itself (Jer 31:33–34; Ezek 36:26–27). These negative moral psychologies, L. Petersen, “The Yahwist on the Flood,” VT 26 (1976): 444–45. sages of Proverbs never explicitly address the question as I have posed it. While they do recognize differences of moral aptitude even among children, the strong emphasis on instruction and discipline in childhood indicates an assumption that few, if any, are born without the capacity for moral selfhood. See the nuanced discussion by Michael Fox, “Who Can Learn? A Dispute in Ancient Pedagogy,” in Wisdom, You Are My Sister: Studies in Honor of Roland E. Murphy, O.Carm. on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, ed. Michael L. Barré, CBQMS 29 (Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association, 1997), 62–77. 22 David 23 The

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though they represent minor voices in Israelite thought, become important touchstones for the development of more complex and varied approaches in Second Temple literature.

Moral Agency in Second Temple Literature Changes in the conceptualization of the moral self are not unmotivated. Rather, they are an integral part of larger historical and cultural changes. What, then, accounts for the development of new models of the self in Second Temple Judaism? Several interrelated factors appear to be at work. First and most important is the increasing centrality of the Torah in Jewish religious life. If obedience to Torah is vital, then what makes possible or impedes such obedience is vital also – and provides a lively field for contestation. The second and related factor is social differentiation based on Torah – both between Jews and Gentiles and between different groups of Jews. Divergent theories of the person are frequently employed as boundary-marking mechanisms. New religious movements and sectarian forms of religious organization are thus particularly productive contexts for the construction of new models of the moral self. The third factor is the increasing interaction with other cultures – Mesopotamian, Persian, and Hellenistic – all of which provided new resources for symbolizing the self. Investigating what generates new conceptualizations of the moral self is important, but also important is examining the associated effects of such changing conceptualizations. Significantly, the new models of moral selfhood in Second Temple Judaism frequently focus on the phenomenon of inner moral conflict. By contrast, earlier Israelite literature seldom focused on that issue. The emphasis there is much more on the acquisition of proper insight and the formation of proper desires, so that one does not in fact experience moral conflict but is drawn reliably to what is right (e. g., Deut 4:1–9; 30:6–10; Prov 6:20–24; 7:1–5; 8:1–11). One of the effects of the new focus on inner moral conflict is nothing less than the creation of a different kind of “inner life,” a form of quasi-introspective subjectivity that was simply unavailable with earlier models of the moral self. One is accustomed to thinking of “the birth of subjectivity” as occurring in Greco-Roman culture. But one might argue that a parallel but quite different birth of subjectivity occurs also in Semitic-speaking Judaism, though this has not yet been fully analyzed and explored. One can categorize the variety of ways of thinking about moral agency in Second Temple Judaism as follows: 1. Moral agency is affirmed. This perspective is a reiteration of the Deuteronomic view. There is nothing wrong with the human moral “equipment.” Each person is capable of and responsible for his or her own moral choices.

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2. Moral agency is internally impaired, but the impairment can be overcome. The impairment may be due to an internal force inherent in persons, or the impairment may come from the outside in the form of demonic spirits. Individuals are still envisioned as active moral agents and held responsible for their actions. 3. Moral agency is denied – with certain exceptions. The texts that broach this rather radical notion do so via a reflection on the creation accounts in Genesis 1–3 and conclude that the majority of humanity, as created, is simply not capable of moral agency. In what follows, I develop each of these categories with pertinent examples. I will, however, concentrate on examples from the Dead Sea Scrolls for two reasons. First, they are simply some of the most interesting and highly developed models of moral psychology. Second, one might think that different and even contradictory models of moral psychology must be held by different groups of Jews, much as Ben Sira distinguishes sharply between his own position and that of his opponents. But that is not necessarily the case. All of the perspectives I have identified occur in texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls, either those authored by sectarians or texts that deeply influenced their thinking. This variety is not as surprising as it might sound. Even logically contradictory models are often found side by side in a culture because they serve different purposes or are invoked in different contexts. Accounting for divergent models within the same community prompts reflection on what these models do. Moral Agency Is Affirmed This position is articulated early and late in Second Temple Judaism. It occurs around 180 BCE in Sirach (“If you choose, you can keep the commandments”; Sir 15:15) and around 100 CE in 2 Baruch (“We have become each his own Adam,” that is, free to choose good or evil; 2 Bar 54:19). Moreover, the Essene Damascus Document explains the purpose of its own teaching as “so that you may choose what [God] desires and reject what he hates” (CD II, 15), and the Qumran Community Rule refers to its members as “those who freely volunteer” (1QS I,11; V, 1) and requires that they individually swear a binding oath (1QS V, 8). Not surprisingly, in the Qumran documents this model of moral agency occurs largely in contexts that describe a decisive act of commitment. In such rhetorical contexts, what other model would do? Moral Agency Is Internally Impaired, but the Impairment Can Be Overcome Even those traditions that affirm moral agency in the strongest terms know that people sometimes do not choose rightly, because of competing desires, impulses, and fears. To speak of impairment, however, is something else. It is a claim

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that some problem with the moral faculty itself predisposes persons to make bad moral choices. The classic example of such internal impairment is the rabbinic model of the ‫יצר הרע‬, the evil or bad inclination innate in human beings. The phrase (but not the concept) is drawn from Gen 6:5, where the Yahwist justifies the flood by observing that “all the inclination of the thoughts of [the human] mind was only evil all the time.” Where the Yahwist is simply making a descriptive observation about human conduct, rabbinic thought reifies the ‫יצר‬, making it a part of the moral faculties of the person. While there are references in rabbinic literature to a “good” ‫יצר‬, it is described as developing subsequently to the ‫ יצר הרע‬and is a reactive rather than a proactive force.24 The rabbinic anthropology is thus not one of internal moral dualism but a discourse about inner moral conflict and moral formation. Recent research has made it clear that the fully developed rabbinic concept of the ‫ יצר הרע‬is not to be found in the literature of the Second Temple, nor has that expression acquired the status of a technical term.25 Nevertheless, there are texts that move toward such a conceptualization. One of these is in the opening admonition of the Damascus Document. By and large this passage uses vocabulary drawn from the familiar biblical language of moral choice and moral failure, but several features indicate that the understanding differs from the earlier biblical texts. The admonition takes the form of a historical review that encompasses a span “from ancient times until now” (CD II, 17), thus suggesting that the pattern it describes is diagnostic of the human condition per se. The key phrases for moral failure are introduced at the beginning. The audience is warned against “the thoughts of a guilty inclination [‫מחשבות יצר‬ ‫ ]אשמה‬and lustful eyes.” Note what has happened to the phrase from Genesis. The noun ‫ יצר‬has moved from being the nomen regens to being the nomen rectum in the construct phrase “the thoughts of a guilty inclination,” not “the inclination of the thoughts.” “Inclination” is no longer simply a descriptive term but one that identifies a force internal to the human that has to be intentionally resisted. That “guilty inclination” is paired with “lustful eyes” suggests that the impairment of the moral faculty has to do with disordered desires. In fact, the key negative term in the passage is not ‫ יצר‬but ‫רצון‬, “that which pleases a person,” that is, what a person desires. The generation of the flood is destroyed “because they acted upon their desire”(‫ ;בעשותם את רצותם‬CD II, 20–21). That  Schofer, Making of a Sage, 87–88. the classic study by Frank Chamberlain Porter (“The Yeçer Hara: A Study in the Jewish Doctrine of Sin,” in Biblical and Semitic Studies: Critical and Historical Essays by the Members of the Semitic and Biblical Faculty of Yale University, Yale Bicentennial Publications [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1901], 93–156) argued that the concept of the ‫ יצר הרע‬was already substantially attested in Second Temple literature, more recent research by G. H. Cohen Stuart in The Struggle in Man between Good and Evil: An Inquiry into the Origin of the Rabbinic Concept of Yeṣer Hara‘ (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1984) makes a strong case that the full development of the concept belongs to the rabbinic period. 24

25 While

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this is not just an incidental desire but something constituent of the human moral condition is suggested by the repeated use of ‫ רצון‬in the negative phrase “to choose the desire of one’s spirit.” Even more telling than the examples of moral failure is the way in which Abraham is described as “not choosing the desire of his spirit” (CD II, 2–3). That is to say, it is not that Abraham had good desires but rather that he, too, was characterized by wrongful desire but chose not to follow it. Thus, there is something constitutively impaired in human moral psychology – a wrongful desire – that must and can be resisted. How is the resistance possible? It is not through something else internal to the human spirit but rather the ‫מצות אל‬, the precepts of God. In rabbinic thought, too, it will be the internalizing of the ‫ תורה‬that is most effective in resisting the ‫יצר‬ ‫הרע‬.26 Thus, the Damascus Document works with the triad of desire, knowledge, and submission to external authority. Desire is reified as an innate inclination in the human that by itself leads to evil. It is resisted through knowledge of the very story of human good and evil and of the salvific effects of the precepts of God. Through knowledge and submission one acquires the moral agency that allows one to “choose what [God] desires and reject what he hates” (CD II, 15). In choosing for God, however, one is choosing against one’s “natural” self and its desires. If one were to map this model on the Heelas and Lock chart, it would straddle the vector of internal control, since persons may either control or be controlled by their ‫ רצון‬and guilty ‫יצר‬. Thus, it highlights the experience of inner moral conflict. This model is presented at a strategic rhetorical location in the Damascus Document, before the presentation of the laws and their interpretation that make up the bulk of the document. Knowing this about humans in general and oneself in particular becomes a powerful motivation to make the total commitment required by this covenanted community. Thus, while this model of the moral self is important in its own right, it is also a tool and mechanism for recruiting and binding new members to the sectarian organization. Moral Agency Is Externally Impaired, but the Impairment Can Be Overcome Alongside the model of moral agency in which one’s own desire or guilty inclination was seen as an internal impairment of the moral faculty, another model was simultaneously developed  – the notion of external demonic forces that cause a person to do wrong. Although ancient Israel apparently lacked a robust belief in demonic activity, sufficient traces exist in the Hebrew Bible to indicate that belief in demons played some part in popular religion. Traditionally, however, what demons did was to inflict illnesses and sudden death. They did not have, as part of their job portfolio, the moral corruption of human beings. Yet by the mid-second century BCE that notion was relatively common and eventually 26

 Schofer, Making of a Sage, 71.

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became a staple of early Christian moral thought.27 Two lines of development can be traced. The earliest attestations of demonic forces as impairing a person’s moral functioning are in certain apotropaic prayers that stem from the late Persian or early Hellenistic period. In the Aramaic Levi Document, Levi prays: “Let not any satan rule over me to lead me astray from your way” (ALD supp. 10)28 and, similarly, in the Plea for Deliverance from the 11QPsalms scroll, the speaker prays: “Let neither a satan nor an impure spirit rule over me; let neither pain nor an evil inclination take possession of my bones” (11Q5 XIX, 15–16). The use of the term ‫שטן‬, “adversary,” suggests that the background for this notion of moral corruption as caused by external forces is to be found in the figure of the adversary who incites David to commit sin in 1 Chronicles 21 and who attempts to get Job to blaspheme God, though here the term is used to designate a class of evil spirits.29 What is particularly intriguing about the Plea for Deliverance is the parallelism of the second line. “Pain” was, of course, a traditional symptom of demonic attack. Here, however, it is parallel to “evil inclination,” suggesting that this text conceives of the evil inclination not as a natural part of the human constitution but as a result of demonic activity. This model introduces an important psychological complexity. One’s impulse to do something evil, which is very much an internal psychological experience, is identified not as “one’s own” impulse but as an alien force acting within one. The apotropaic prayer invokes divine assistance against this force, asking that God grant the speaker “a spirit of faithfulness and knowledge.” This spirit, it is generally agreed, is not an external divine spirit but simply a strengthening of the person’s own innate spirit.30 Thus, there is an asymmetry in the way evil – as alien force – and resistance to evil – as strengthened innate spirit – are conceptualized here. A different etiology for demonic spirits is found in Jubilees, which draws on the Enochic tradition of the fall of the Watchers, itself a development of the tradition in Gen 6:1–4 concerning the “sons of God and the daughters of men.” In 1 Enoch, the offspring of the angelic watchers and the human women are giants with voracious appetites. When they are killed in the flood, their bodies are destroyed, but their spirits, deriving from their angelic fathers, persist on the earth as evil spirits who hungrily prey on people (1 En. 15:8–16:1). According to 1 Enoch, they have the traditional task of demonic spirits, causing physical  For an overview, see Greg J. Riley, “Demon,” DDD2: 235–40.  Michael E. Stone and Jonas C. Greenfield, “The Prayer of Levi,” JBL 112 (1993): 257, 259. 29 David Flusser, “Qumran and Jewish ‘Apotropaic’ Prayers,” IEJ 16 (1966): 197. Armin Lange, “Considerations Concerning the ‘Spirit of Impurity’ in Zech 13:2,” in Die Dämonen: Die Dämonologie der israelitisch-jüdischen und frühchristlichen Literatur im Kontext ihrer Umwelt, ed. Armin Lange, Hermann Lichtenberger, and K. F. Diethard Römheld (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 261. 30  Lange, “Spirit of Impurity,” 262. 27 28

11. Models of the Moral Self

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illness and sudden death. But they are also said to “lead astray.”31 Jubilees elaborates this notion. When the evil spirits begin to lead astray the children of Noah, and Noah prays that God bind all of the evil spirits, the angel Mastema, who is in charge of them, argues that 10 percent should be left free, since their function in the world, “to corrupt and lead astray,” is necessary precisely because “the evil of the sons of men is great” (Jub. 10:1–14). Apparently, through their seductions, the demonic spirits cause morally susceptible humans to demonstrate their weak moral nature by committing sins that render them subject to judgment. Here again, what earlier conceptions of moral psychology attributed to a person’s own desires and flawed perceptions is externalized, but in a manner that does not absolve the individual of the moral responsibility to choose (this is not demonic possession). Moreover, the demonic spirits can be resisted, for when Mastema tempts Abraham, he proves himself righteous (Jub. 17:15–18:19). While this account of demonic activity can be understood simply as a general theory of moral and natural evil, in Jubilees it serves an additional sociopolitical purpose. It is an explanation for the radical difference between Israel and the Gentiles.32 Jubilees recasts the tradition from Deut 32:8 about the assignment of the nations to the various “sons of God,” saying rather that God “chose Israel to be his people … [but he] made spirits rule over all [other peoples] in order to lead them astray from following him” (Jub. 15:31–32). For Gentiles, external demonic control is decisive. For Israel, it is a matter of moral struggle (cf. Jub. 19:28–29). As sectarian organizations appropriated this notion, they spatialized it, marking the outside world as the place of demonic attack, the inside world as the place of protection. For example, the Damascus Document explains that “on the day that a person takes it upon himself to return to the Torah of Moses [that is, to join the community], the angel Mastema will turn aside from following him, if he keeps his words” (CD XVI, 4). Similarly, in the covenant renewal liturgies at Qumran, entry into the community is associated with rituals of cursing that exclude Belial, the spirits associated with him, and the people of his lot (1QS II, 4–10; 4QBera 7 II, 1–12). Even for the person who has sought refuge in a community of holiness, the problems associated with moral agency are not entirely resolved. Indeed, 31  The text of this verse is corrupt. See the discussion of George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1–36; 81–108, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 268, 273. The evidence could support an emendation of the underlying Aramaic text either from the verb ‫“( תעי‬to lead astray”) or from ‫“( רעע‬to shatter”). Because 1 En. 19:1 seems also to speak of the “spirits of the angels” leading humans astray morally and religiously, Nickelsburg prefers to emend to ‫ תעי‬here also. See also Archie T. Wright, The Origin of Evil Spirits: The Reception of Genesis 6.1–4 in Early Jewish Literature, WUNT 2/198 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 155–57. 32  James C. VanderKam, “The Demons in the Book of Jubilees,” in Lange et al., eds., Die Dämonen, 352–54.

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religious communities often find it important continually to restage the crisis of inner moral conflict. The most sophisticated and remarkable theory of moral conflict is the Two Spirits teaching in the Qumran Community Rule (1QS III, 13–IV, 26). Scholars debated for some time whether this text, with its teaching about the spirits of truth and deceit, light and darkness, was essentially a text about psychological phenomena (the internal aspects of character that direct and characterize human motivation)33 or a text about cosmological phenomena (transcendent spirits and angelic beings). The consensus has grown that it is about both.34 Indeed, among other things, it explains how one’s experience of inner moral conflict is in fact part of a larger cosmological drama that extends from before creation until the eschaton. The text describes how, when God created humankind, God set for them two spirits in which to walk, the spirits of truth and deceit, light and darkness (1QS III, 17–19). Although the language of “spirit” is notoriously polyvalent, I would agree with Arthur Sekki that these spirits have a transcendent reality but are not to be simply identified with the angelic beings, the “prince of light” and the “angel of darkness.” The two spirits are better understood as transcendent cosmological forces that are instantiated both in angelic agents and in humans.35 Though transcendent, they exist also “in the innermost part of [a person’s] flesh” (1QS IV, 20). They are thus more reified than simply characterological traits and are envisioned as forces internal to a person. The text draws attention to and explains the psychological experience of inner moral conflict as the struggle of these two spirits within a person. The struggle is not simply internal and psychological, however. Because even the most righteous person has some measure of the spirit of deceit within himself, he is vulnerable to being led astray by the Angel of Darkness and the spirits of his lot (1QS III, 21–24). Thus, there are some similarities to the operation of the demonic forces in Jubilees. In contrast to Jubilees, however, defense against this evil force is not simply through the strengthening of one’s own righteousness through piety and obedience but also through an external force that operates on one’s own internal spirit of truth (1QS III, 24–25). Thus, it is finally impossible to make a clear separation between “internal” and “transcendent” spirits, between characterological motivations, on the one hand, and good and evil angelic forces, on the other. On the Heelas and Lock chart, the Two Spirits model occupies the point of intersection of both 33 This is argued most explicitly by Preben Wernberg-Møller, “Reconsideration of the Two Spirits in the Rule of the Community,” RevQ 3 (1961): 413–41. See also the detailed review of varying positions by Arthur Everett Sekki, The Meaning of Ruaḥ at Qumran, SBLDS 110 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 194–219; and Hermann Lichtenberger, Studien zum Menschenbild in Texten der Qumrangemeinde, SUNT 15 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980), 123–42. 34  John J. Collins, Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls (London: Routledge, 1997), 40–41. 35  Sekki, Meaning of Ruaḥ, 198–200.

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vectors, as it represents the drama of moral conflict as simultaneously internal and external, psychological and cosmological. One other thing is noteworthy. To what aspect of the self is this teaching addressed? It is not addressed to the individual’s spirit of truth or to his spirit of deceit. Functionally, this discourse implicitly posits (and, in so doing, helps to create) an “executive self,” a cognitive function that can perceive both spirits and recognize their struggle within himself. To be sure, this executive self identifies the spirit of light and truth as its ideal and desired self. Although that fully unified self will be available only eschatologically, when God removes the spirit of deceit from the innermost part of his flesh (1QS IV, 20), the knowledge provided about the structure and dynamics of the self motivates the sectarian to submit to the disciplines of the community that are designed to enhance the proportion of the spirit of truth within him. Thus, knowledge makes the self desire a purified version of itself and desire the external disciplines that will make him good.36 Moral Agency Is Denied – with Certain Exceptions One of the most startling reconceptualizations of moral psychology builds on terminology from Genesis 6, as well as Genesis 1 and 2, in order to question whether the majority of humanity possesses moral agency at all – not because of any demonic interference but as a result of the way in which they were created. The two texts from the orbit of Qumran that explore this possibility are a pre-sectarian wisdom text called 4QInstruction and a sectarian text from Qumran, the Hodayot or Thanksgiving Hymns. There is ample evidence that 4QInstruction was highly influential in the development of Qumran sectarian thought and, in particular, on the Hodayot.37 Both texts think through the issue of human moral anthropology using the categories of “flesh” and “spirit,” a set of terminology familiar to New Testament Pauline scholars.38 But these two texts, though using the same categories, develop significantly different moral anthropologies.

36  For a neuroscientific description of how such an ideal self is posited and achieved, see McNamara, Neuroscience, 44–58. He refers to the process as “decentering.” 37  Armin Lange, Weisheit und Prädestination: Weisheitliche Urordnung und Prädestination in den Textfunden von Qumran, STDJ 18 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 148–70, 297; Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, To Increase Learning for the Understanding Ones: Reading and Reconstructing the Fragmentary Early Jewish Sapiential Text 4QInstruction, STDJ 44 (Leiden, Brill, 2001), 196–98, 206; and in particular Matthew J. Goff, “Reading Wisdom at Qumran: 4QInstruction and the Hodayot,” DSD 11 (2004): 263–88. 38 For an excellent review of the issues, see Jörg Frey, “Flesh and Spirit in the Palestinian Jewish Sapiential Tradition and in the Qumran Texts: An Inquiry into the Background of Pauline Usage,” in The Wisdom Texts from Qumran and the Development of Sapiential Thought, ed. Charlotte Hempel, Armin Lange, and Hermann Lichtenberger, BETL 159 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2002), 367–404.

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III. Fashioning and Refashioning Self and Agency

Before turning to the texts themselves, one might ask where the categories of “flesh” and “spirit” come from. Apparently, they are derived from Gen 6:1–3, where, in the wake of the intermarriage of angels and human women, God declares, “my spirit shall not abide in humans forever, since he is flesh.” 4QInstruction and the Hodayot do not “exegete” this text so much as take its categories to indicate the characteristic difference between the divine (spirit) and the human (flesh). And yet humans do have spirits, since they are animate. Nevertheless, the qualitative difference between divine and human is figured as the difference between “spirit” and “flesh.” This qualitative difference is the basis for the otherwise oxymoronic phrase “the spirit of flesh” (e. g., 4Q416 1 12; 4Q417 1 I, 17; 1QH IV, 37).39 4QInstruction is a pre-sectarian text, probably roughly contemporary with Ben Sira, that embodies a complex merging of eschatological and sapiential thought.40 The text is extremely difficult, and a variety of interpretations have been offered, but in my opinion the puzzle of its theory of moral anthropology has been persuasively solved by John Collins.41 He argues that 4QInstruction preserves the earliest account of a theory of a double creation of humankind, based on the fact that there are two accounts of creation in the Bible, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2–3. These two accounts are interpreted in light of the “spirit/flesh” polarity described in Gen 6:1–3. From the perspective of 4QInstruction, there are two kinds of people in the world. Genesis 1 recounts the creation of a “spiritual people,” who are made in the likeness of the holy ones (interpreting Gen 1:27 “in the image and likeness of ‫ ”אלהים‬as referring to angelic beings, holy ones). To these fortunate persons has been given the capacity to become moral agents, though they must work hard to obtain the necessary insight to actualize this capacity.42 But God created another type of human, the “spirit of flesh” that is not able to discern between good and evil, that is, that lacks moral capacity. This is the being created in Genesis 2 from the dust of the earth. It can be described as having a spirit in that it is animate. But its animating spirit is characterized by “flesh,” and so it can never become a moral agent, since it is only a “spirit of flesh.”  Citations of the Hodayot follow the numbering of DJD XL.  See the review and discussion of the issues in John Kampen, Wisdom Literature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 40–44. 41  John J. Collins, “In the Likeness of the Holy Ones: The Creation of Humankind in a Wisdom Text from Qumran,” in The Provo International Conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls: Technological Innovations, New Texts, and Reformulated Issues, ed. Donald W. Parry and Eugene Ulrich, STDJ 30 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 609–18. 42 Jean-Sébastian Rey (4QInstruction: sagesse et eschatology, STDJ 81 [Leiden: Brill, 2009], 302–3) is skeptical of this interpretation, seeing the categories as referring simply to those who have and who have not applied themselves to the study of the “mystery of existence,” arguing that if the categories refer to persons created as spiritual or fleshly, there would be no point to the exhortations to persevere in meditation on the mystery of God (302 n. 81). Rey, however, fails to distinguish between the capacity for moral selfhood and the actualization of that capacity. 39 40

11. Models of the Moral Self

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In this novel understanding of humanity one can see again the impulse to use a theory of moral agency in order to differentiate between elect and nonelect. In this respect it serves a function similar to the theory of demonic agency in Jubilees as a means of differentiating two groups. As a theory of moral agency, 4QInstruction is, on the one hand, quite radical, since it denies to the vast majority of persons – Jews as well as Gentiles – the capacity to be moral agents. But with respect to its primary focus, it is probably not as radical as it first appears, since the authors of 4QInstruction are not interested in people who have a spirit of flesh but only in the spiritual people, who are the ones with the capacity for moral agency. In their process of developing moral agency, the spiritual people are not dissimilar to the addressees of earlier sapiential literature – they realize their capacity through the acquisition of knowledge and discipline, though in this case the knowledge in question is an esoteric body of lore known as the “mystery of existence,” the ‫רז נהיה‬.43 The Qumran Hodayot clearly know and draw on 4QInstruction, citing some of its characteristic language, but the Hodayot significantly change the model of moral selfhood.44 For the Hodayot, all people, including the speaker, are characterized as being “flesh” or a “spirit of flesh,” which is synonymous with being incapable of moral action.45 In contrast to 4QInstruction, which uses the two creation accounts to distinguish between two types of people, the Hodayot ignore the creation account of Genesis 1 and draw only on Genesis 2. The speaker refers to himself (as a part of common humanity) as a ‫יצר עפר‬, “a vessel of dust,” and a ‫יצר חמר‬, “a vessel of clay.” As an animated being, he is characterized by a spirit, but this spirit is a “spirit of error” (lQHa IX, 24), “a spirit of perversion” (V, 32; VIII, 18; XIX, 15), and a “spirit of flesh” (IV, 37; V, 30). Thus, as created, no one possesses moral agency, since the moral faculty is so defective as to produce only guilty actions. In contrast to 4QInstruction, which is concerned to differentiate “horizontally” between two kinds of people, the Hodayot are focused on the radical “vertical” difference between God and humankind. Not surprisingly, the passages from the Hodayot known as the Niedrigkeitsdoxologien (i. e., glorifications of God based on the lowliness of humankind), which describe humanity as a thing “constructed of dust and kneaded with water,” characterized by “sinful guilt … obscene shame, and a source of impurity,”46 43  This complicated concept refers to knowledge concerning the structures of the natural world, the course of human history, and the hidden principles that guide them. See Benjamin G. Wold, Men, Women and Angels: The Qumran Wisdom Document Musar leMevin and Its Allusions to Genesis Creation Traditions, WUNT 2/201 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 20–24, 234–35; Matthew Goff, “The Mystery of Creation in 4QInstruction,” DSD 10 (2003): 165–74. 44  For a more developed discussion, see ch. 12 in this volume, “Flesh, Spirit, and the Indigenous Psychology of the Hodayot.”. 45  See the discussion by Frey, “Flesh and Spirit,” 378–85. 46  The term was coined by Heinz-Wolfgang Kuhn, Enderwartung und gegenwärtiges Heil: Untersuchungen zu den Gemeindeliedern von Qumran, SUNT 4 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &

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have links to the negative anthropologies expressed by Eliphaz and Bildad, which also draw a contrast between God and humanity.47 The one who speaks in the Hodayot is not, of course, simply a “vessel of clay” with a “spirit of flesh.” He is a moral agent. But how, if the Hodayot do not link this status to Genesis 1, do they account for it? As so often in Qumran literature, the solution is based on exegesis, and the key is Ezekiel’s negative anthropology and its resolution. In Ezek 36:26–27, the utter moral incapacity represented by the people’s “heart of stone” is resolved when God removes the heart of stone and supplies instead a “heart of flesh.” That part of Ezekiel’s imagery would not suit the Hodayot, however, with the Hodayot’s use of flesh in the negative sense. They draw instead on the other part of the promise, “I will put my spirit into you” (‫)ואת רוחי אתן בקרבכם‬. On at least five occasions the Hodayot use this distinctive phraseology to thank God for the gift of the spirit that enables the knowledge that makes moral agency possible (IV, 29; V, 36; VIII, 29; XX, 14–15; XXI, 34). As Ezekiel indicates, this is God’s own spirit, also referred to in the Hodayot as “[God’s] holy spirit” (VI, 24; VIII, 20, 21, 25; XV, 10; XVII, 32; XX, 15). In contrast to Ezekiel, however, where the defective piece of moral equipment is definitively removed, the speaker of the Hodayot is not freed entirely from his “spirit of flesh,” since he still expresses distress and anxiety about its power (lQHa IV, 37; cf. V, 30–32). This defective spirit remains as an alienated and rejected part of the self. The Hodayot differ from Ezekiel also in that the “otherness” of the divine spirit remains palpable, even after it has been placed in the speaker. Even though the speaker’s knowledge and voice are made possible by God’s spirit in him, he does not simply identify his subjectivity with this divine spirit. Instead he observes it acting through him, constituting his very capacity for agency. “As for me, dust and ashes, what can I devise unless you desire it? What can I plan without your will? … What can I say unless you open my mouth?” (lQHa XVIII, 7–9). Selfhood in the Hodayot is thus constituted as a fundamental experiential drama, a crisis not so much of inner conflict as of inner contradiction between the defective “spirit of flesh”/“spirit of perversion” and the holy spirit. This odd but extremely powerful model of selfhood serves a variety of functions, marking the boundary between sectarian and nonsectarian, binding him to the community – but also providing an experiential warrant for the central theological affirmation of God’s absolute control of all cosmos and history. What the speaker experiences in the microcosm of his selfhood is an index of Gods surpassing agency in the world.

Ruprecht, 1966), 27–28. Examples include lQHa V, 30–33; IX, 23–25; XII, 30–31; XX, 27–31; cf. 1QS XI, 9–10, 20–22. 47  Frey, “Flesh and Spirit,” 397–98.

11. Models of the Moral Self

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Concluding Comments The preceding discussion has attempted to make a programmatic case for the timeliness of a renewed examination of the various notions of the self in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism by focusing on the issue of moral agency. Recent work in the neuroscience of the self, as well as cross-cultural studies of agency, provides a context in which one can see how the particular formulations of the moral self in biblical and extrabiblical texts provide the necessary elements required for the development of an executive self, configuring and reconfiguring the basic options for constructing agency. A more fine-grained study of particular formulations, which this study could only begin to sketch, can clarify the culturally specific grammar of moral agency in this literature and the ways in which that basic grammar could be inflected for different purposes. By focusing on changes between the models of the moral self in the biblical and Second Temple texts, this study has underscored the need to historicize particular formulations of moral agency. Yet it is evident that the variety of models of the moral self cannot be arranged in any simple chronological development. The diversity of models within closely related texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls makes evident that a variety of different and even logically incompatible models could coexist not only within the same community but even within a single text. Thus, what comes to the fore is the way in which the social and rhetorical functions of a way of conceptualizing the moral self must always be a part of the study of the self. While the rhetorical and strategic uses of models of the self suggest that no simple correlation exists between model and deeply held subjective experience, the various models of the self do delineate the range of ways in which individuals in the culture might render their experience articulate. Thus, by exploring these models, we come as close as possible to recovering the subjective experience of selfhood in Jewish antiquity.

12. Flesh, Spirit, and the Indigenous Psychology of the Hodayot* The Hodayot are unlike both biblical psalmody and most of Second Temple prayer and psalmody in the degree to which the “I” who speaks describes and reflects on what one might call his “sense of self.” This essay attempts to uncover some of the conceptualizations of the self present in the Hodayot and to demonstrate how they differ from antecedent conceptualizations, even as they make use of older materials and motifs. The object of this type of inquiry is often referred to as “indigenous psychology.” This term is borrowed from anthropology and refers to folk theories about the nature of the person and its relation to the world, theories that are often embodied in unselfconscious language usages, as well as in explicit statements.1 Even where these conceptualizations of the person are not self-consciously explicit, it is often possible to deduce them from an analysis of the metaphors and even the syntax of the texts.

Theoretical Models For several decades there has been a growing interest in the anthropology of the self, an inquiry that has increasingly become tied to cognitive studies (cognitive linguistics, cognitive study of metaphor, cognitive anthropology).2 Cognitive studies has made the case that certain basic facts about our embodied nature entail the recognition that some universals exist in our ways of thinking and of conceptualizing ourselves.3 Nevertheless, these universal determinants leave a * It is with great pleasure that I dedicate this essay to Eileen Schuller, whose critical text editions and interpretive work are foundational for all future study of the Hodayot. 1  Paul Heelas, “Indigenous Psychologies,” in Indigenous Psychologies: The Anthropology of the Self, ed. Paul Heelas and Andrew Lock (London: Academic Press, 1981), 3. See also Uichol Kim, Kuo-shu Yang, and Kwang-kuo Hwang, eds., Indigenous and Cultural Psychology: Understanding People in Context, International and Cultural Psychology (New York: Springer, 2006). 2  See, e. g., Roy G. D’Andrade, The Development of Cognitive Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 158–169. Also important for this topic is George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1999). Cognitive studies is beginning to make an impact on biblical studies. The most comprehensive study, based in cognitive grammar, is Ellen J. van Wolde, Reframing Biblical Studies: When Language and Text Meet Culture, Cognition, and Context (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009). 3  Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh, 41–43; Paul Heelas, “Universals in Human Conception” in Heelas and Lock, Indigenous Psychologies, 19–36.

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Figure 1. Nature of Control versus Locus of Control. From Indigenous Psychologies: The Anthropology of the Self (ed. Paul Heelas and Andrew Lock; Language, Thought, and Culture; London: Academic Press, 1981), 33. Used by permission.

significant amount of room for particular and varied realizations in different cultures – and, indeed, within a culture.4 A particularly helpful and flexible model for analyzing universal and particular features in indigenous psychologies is one developed by Paul Heelas and Andrew Lock, which focuses in particular on the capacity for agency.5 The model assumes two universal coordinates, identified as location and control. First, location: every culture must have some ability to differentiate between a self and its other, a conceiver and its environment. In large part, this is the distinction between internal and external, although the nature of what constitutes internal and external admits of considerable variety. Second, control: this has to do with how activity and passivity are conceptualized. Is a person “in control” or envisioned as “under the control” of someone or something else? The accompanying figure 1 illustrates the coordinates. 4  Zoltán Kövecses, Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 209, 215–228. 5  Paul Heelas, “Indigenous Psychologies,” 3–18, Heelas, “The Model Applied: Anthropology and Indigenous Psychologies,” 39–63, and Andrew Lock, “Universals in Human Conception,” in Heelas and Lock, Indigenous Psychologies, 19–36.

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Figure 2. Examples of Indigenous Psychologies. From Heelas and Lock, eds., Indigenous Psychologies, 41. Used by permission.

Working with this set of coordinates, Heelas and Lock plot out a number of ethnographically well-studied indigenous psychologies, as illustrated in figure 2. Here the polar opposites are what they call “idealist” and “passiones” psychologies. In the idealist psychology the external world is envisioned as dependent upon the self, as in Tibetan Buddhist thought, in which “the world and all phenomena which we perceive are but mirages born from our imagination.”6 The self is in control, and the location of this control is internal, in the mind. Other examples would include certain new age “mind over matter” psychologies, such as EST (Erhard Seminars Training) or A Course in Miracles.7 In contrast, passiones psychologies (from the Latin passio, “being acted upon or controlled externally”) conceive of the self as controlled by external forces. The illustration given by Heelas is the Dinka, who conceive of the world as the active subject and the person as the object acted upon. The Dinka do not even possess a category equivalent to “mind.”8 Other examples of this type of indigenous psychology 6  A. David-Neel, Magic and Mystery in Tibet (London: Corgi, 1971), 242, cited in Heelas, “The Model Applied: Anthropology and Indigenous Psychologies,” 40. 7  A Course in Miracles, 2nd ed. (New York: Viking, 1996). 8  Heelas, “The Model Applied,” 41.

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might be astrology, in which human fates are controlled by stars, or certain forms of popular Christian pre-determinism. These two extreme types of indigenous psychology are easy enough to grasp: a strong sense of a self in control joins easily with an internalized sense of the location of this control. A strong sense of the self as controlled coordinates well with a conceptualization of the source of control as external to the self. But many indigenous psychologies operate as what Heelas calls “modified passiones” psychologies, that is to say, they have a strong sense that the self is controlled but locate the source of that control internal to the person.9 One familiar model of the person controlled by forces internal to the body is the medieval theory of the four humors, each of which is located in a particular organ of the body but which exercise control over the disposition of the person. Even in less elaborately theorized indigenous psychologies of the person, the self may be envisioned as composed of a multiplicity of internally located active agents. The cognitive theorists of metaphor, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson examined metaphors of the self in contemporary American English (though the pattern applies to many cultures) and found that such a complex model of the person is often in play. One aspect of the self, which they term “the subject,” is the experiencing consciousness. It can often be contrasted with one or more “selves” that represent the person’s body, emotions, actions, inclinations, and so forth. The subject is always represented metaphorically as a person, but the various selves can be represented as a person, a location, or an object. For example, emotions may be personified as agents: “I was seized by anxiety.” “He is struggling with his emotions.” The consciousness may be construed as a location: “Are you out of your mind?” Or the subject may act on its self as an object: “I had to force myself to go.” The experiencing subject is thus engaged by other aspects of the self that are represented as in some sense over against it.10 Even in a contemporary western indigenous psychology that largely stresses the autonomous nature of the self (lower left quadrant of the model), there are areas of experience in which the embedded metaphors slide over toward the lower right, as the subject experiences being controlled or potentially controlled by objectified aspects of itself. One final comment is necessary before turning to the Hodayot. Heelas makes it clear that human experience actually requires acknowledgment of both poles of each coordinate. A cultural or subcultural indigenous psychology may tend toward an idealist or passiones model, but it will also include some recognition of the other mode of conceptualizing reality, though these less preferred ways of envisioning the self may be masked, muted, relocated, or transformed.11  Heelas, “The Model Applied,” 42.  Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh, 267–279. 11  Heelas, “The Model Applied,” 46. The non-reductionist aspects of this analysis have recently been given a more systematic basis by combining the Heelas/Lock model with Robert  9

10

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The Indigenous Psychology of the Hodayot If one were to map the Hodayot’s theory of the person onto Heelas and Lock’s model, one would certainly locate it far out on the pole of the self under control. But are the forces controlling the self externally located or internally located? In the broadest sense the forces are certainly external, in that everything is attributed to the will of God. “In your hand is the inclination of every spirit, [and all] its [activity you determined before you created it” (VII, 26–27). “Without your will nothing comes to pass” (XVIII, 4). “What can I say unless you open my mouth” (XX, 35–36).12 One could add many similar statements. From this perspective the Hodayot’s indigenous psychology is radically passiones. At a finer grain of detail, however, the indigenous psychology is more complicated. This complexity has to do with the ambiguity of “spirit” and its relation to the self. In the Hodayot the term spirit (‫ )רוח‬is, among other things, used to identify the motivating force within a person.13 The unimproved person, that is, one’s condition without the intervention of God, is represented as being at the mercy of “a spirit of error” (‫“ )רוח התועה‬a perverted spirit” (‫ )רוח נעוה‬and the wonderfully oxymoronic “spirit of flesh” (‫)רוח בשר‬. Sometimes the spirit of flesh is represented as the basic nature of the self (“your servant is a spirit of flesh,” IV, 37; cf. IX, 24; XI, 22), but it may also be objectified as a force opposed to the subject, as in the political metaphor (“and a perverted spirit rules me,” V, 32; cf. VIII, 18). The term “spirit of flesh” can also simply stand as an equivalent for “any human” (“[how can] a spirit of flesh understand all these things?” V, 30). The individual whom God has chosen, however, is transformed through the gift of a spirit or spirits from God. Although originating externally, this spirit becomes internalized, as one of the Hodayot’s favored locution suggests, by describing it as “the spirit that you have placed in me” (‫נתתה בי‬, IV, 29; V, 36; VIII, 29; XX, 15; XXI, 34; cf. VIII, 20). This is a very important locution that will be examined more closely below. Here, however, it is sufficient to note that if one maps the Hodayot’s indigenous psychology on Heelas’ grid, it can be mapped either in the upper right or the lower right quadrant, depending on whether the author is focusing at the highest metaphysical level of explanation or is focusing more specifically on the internal psychological dynamics of the individual. MacLaury’s cognitive “vantage theory,” which demonstrates the cognitive means by which dominant and recessive vantage points of cultural perception can shift from figure to ground to presupposition as needed for particular purposes, even though one vantage will be the preferred default. See Jane H. Hill and Robert E. MacLaury, “The Terror of Montezuma: Aztec History, Vantage Theory, and the Category of “Person,” in Language and the Cognitive Construal of the World, ed. Jane H. Taylor and Robert E. MacLaury, Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 82 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995), 277–329. 12  Column and line numbers follow DJD XL. All translations are my own. 13  Arthur E. Sekki, The Meaning of Ruaḥ at Qumran, SBLDS 110 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 94.

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Before one can further explore the Hodayot’s indigenous psychology, however, it is necessary to look at the composition’s conception of the physical self and its relation to earlier Israelite conceptions. The Hodayot commonly use the term ‫“( בשר‬flesh”) both literally as a reference to the physicality of the body specifically (e. g., XVI, 34) and metonymically as a term for humankind (e. g., V, 33).14 Used synonymously with ‫ בשר‬in many cases is ‫“( עפר‬dust,” “dirt”; cf. XXI, 17 with XXIV, 6 and XVI, 34 with XXI, 25), which is equally if not more frequent than ‫ בשר‬as a term for the person conceived of as a physical being. Synonymous with ‫עפר‬, is the noun ‫“( חמר‬clay”), especially in the parallel locutions ‫יצר עפר‬ (“vessel of dust,” VII, 34; VIII, 18; XXI, 7, 23, 34) and ‫“( יצר (ה)חמר‬vessel of clay,” III, 29; IX, 23; XI, 24; XII, 30; XIX, 6; XX, 29, 35; XXI, 38; XXII, 19; XXIII, 13, 28). The background to this general conception is easy enough to identify – the creation story in Genesis 2, where human beings are shaped (‫ )יצר‬by God from the dust of the earth (‫ )עפר‬and made into living beings when God breaths into them the breath of life (‫)נשמת חיים‬. The folk idea behind the myth (common to many cultures) is that of making a clay figure and blowing breath into it, thus animating it. Elsewhere, the term ‫ רוח‬is substituted for ‫נשמה‬, as in Ps 104:29, “you gather back their breath (‫ )רוח‬and they expire and return to their dust (‫)עפר‬.” In other texts ‫( בשר‬flesh) substitutes for the originary dust/clay as the term for the material as opposed to the animating element of a person. See, for example, Gen 6:3, “my spirit (‫ )רוחי‬will not abide in humankind forever, for they are flesh (‫)בשר‬.” The potential for anthropological speculation in these metaphors, however, is little developed in the biblical texts (e. g., Qoh 12:7). One can easily see, however, how ‫ בשר‬as inanimate matter becomes a negatively marked term in the Hodayot, where spiritual perception is essential to salvation. For the most part, the biblical texts envision the created, self-replicating human to be a psycho-somatic unity. The ‫ נשמה‬or ‫ רוח‬and the ‫ בשר‬function together. To be sure, one can distinguish between the subject and the self in that various body parts (heart, kidneys, liver, bowels, eyes, ears, mouth, lips, tongue, hands, feet) can be seen as agents or objects observed by the conscious subject.15 14  Jörg Frey’s recent study, “Flesh and Spirit in the Palestinian Jewish Sapiential Traditions and in the Qumran Texts: An Inquiry into the Background of Pauline Usage,” in The Wisdom Texts from Qumran and the Development of Sapiential Thought, ed. Charlotte Hempel, Armin Lange, and Hermann Lichtenberger, BETL 159 (Leuven: University Press, 2002), 367–404, provides an excellent survey of the usages of ‫בשר‬. As he observes, even though many of the usages overlap those of the Hebrew Bible, “flesh” often has a negative connotation in the Hodayot (378–385). 15 In “Weak or Sinful? Body of Rhetoric – on the Use of Physical Metaphors in Romans 3 and the Hodayot,” in Jesus, Paulus und die Texte von Qumran, ed. Jörg Frey and Enno Edzard Popkes, WUNT 390 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 251–62, George Brooke observes that the bones and internal organs ordinarily are used to represent emotional states, whereas external and visible parts of the body serve to represent the action and intention of the person. The heart, however, can serve in both capacities.

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But in terms of overall agency, the person assumed by the majority of biblical texts is to be located primarily in the “self in control/internalized” quadrant. It is not a fully idealist model, but what Heelas would describe as a modified idealist model, since there are numerous instances in which the self can be felt as under the control of internal or external forces. In general, however, narrative, legal, psalmic, and wisdom literatures assume a self who is an autonomous and responsible agent. Some intriguing exceptions to this conceptualization exist, however, which exploit the semantic possibilities of the term ‫ רוח‬for describing psychological experiences that deviate from the norm. In contrast to ‫נשמה‬, which is largely restricted to the notion of breath, ‫ רוח‬has a wide range of meanings. It can refer to breeze or wind, to breath, to an animating quality, to an internal character disposition or inclination, to a talent or capacity, to an external disposition sent by God, and to divine beings who lack material substance. The boundaries between these meanings are not always easy to determine. In the most detailed recent study of the meanings and functions of ‫רוח‬, John Levison attempts to correct what he considers to be a too sharp differentiation between the animating human spirit that is the breath of God and the divine spirit that is bestowed as a temporary or permanent charisma.16 Although one may argue about the interpretation of particular examples, he makes a persuasive case that many of the passages interpreted as temporally specific divine interventions should rather be understood as simply the manifestation of that spirit God had given a person at birth or as a certain enhancement of that individual’s native spirit. In this category he discusses the cases of the artisan Bezalel and the court counselors Joseph and Daniel.17 For the purposes of the present essay, however, the psychologically interesting cases are those occasions on which God sends a ‫ רוח‬that overrides the subjective autonomy of a person. Some of these spirits are positive; some are negative. Particularly in the Deuteronomistic History, but also in certain of the prophets, and occasionally in the Pentateuch, ‫ רוחות‬from God are conceptualized as forces external to the self that overpower an individual’s autonomy. The spirit from God that comes upon the elders in the wilderness (Num 11:17, 26), on Balaam (Num 24:2), on Othniel (Judg 3:10), on Gideon (Judg 6:34), on Samson (Judg 14:6), and others is identified as the causal force behind their actions, actions that they would not have had the natural capacity or inclination to do. The “evil spirit” that comes upon Saul (1 Sam 16:14) or the “lying spirit” that influences the prophets of Ahab (1 Kgs 22:22) clearly override the autonomous intentions of the individuals involved. In the case of the lying 16  John R. Levison, Filled with the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009). A succinct digest of his findings is presented in Levison, “Holy Spirit,” NIDB 2:859–79. 17  Levison, Filled with the Spirit, 48–51, 74–81.

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spirit, the prophets would presumably not even be aware that they were being manipulated by an external force. What is of greatest importance, however, is the syntax of ‫ רוח‬in these situations. In the biblical texts the overwhelming number of sentences conceptualize the ‫ רוח‬that overrides the individual’s autonomy as metonymically related to the human subject. That is, it is external but contiguous. Most often this relationship is identified by the preposition ‫על‬. The spirit from God may “be upon” or be “placed upon” or “rest upon” the person (Num 11:17, 25; 24:2; Judg 3:10). It may “fall upon” (Ezek 11:5) or be “poured out upon” (Isa 44:3; Ezek 39:29; Joel 3:1), or “rush upon” someone (Judg 14:6, 19; 15:14; 1 Sam 16:13). It may also be said to “clothe” a person (Judg 6:34). Moreover, it often exercises external agency in that it “impels,” (Judg 13:25), “terrifies” (1 Sam 16:14), “carries off ” (2 Kgs 2:16), “takes away” (Ezek 37:1). Finally, it may “turn away from” a person (1 Sam 16:23). Even in cases where the author is speaking of a lasting prophetic charisma, the external terminology is used, as in Isa 11:2 (“The spirit of YHWH will rest upon him”) or 42:1 (“This is my servant whom I uphold. … I have put my spirit upon him [‫)]נתתי רוחי עלו‬.” In only a small minority of cases (three that I have identified) does the spirit appear to be represented as internal to the person affected, and in two of these cases the locution probably expresses something other than a psychological claim. In 2 Sam 23:2 the spirit “speaks in me” and in 1 Kgs 22:23 YHWH places the lying spirit “in the mouth” of the prophets. In both of these cases the issue is speech. Thus the author may be more concerned with tracing the action in question back to the external cause and not talking about the metaphysical relationship between the spirit and the human person. Only in 2 Kgs 19:7 is it simply said of the King of Assyria, “See, I am putting in him a spirit (‫)נתן בו רוח‬, and he will hear a rumor, and he will return to his land.” Even in this case, the externally originating spirit temporarily overrides the subjective autonomy of the individual and is not to be confused with it, since the king presumably would not have had the disposition to respond to the rumor as he did without being directed by the spirit. To summarize, in the biblical texts in which the spirit sent by God is conceptualized as an agent that overrides the subject’s autonomy for better or for worse, it is represented as an external phenomenon that is metonymically related to the subject, whether this changed condition is temporary or lasting. By contrast, the spirit that one has by virtue of birth is often referred to as “in” an individual, using the preposition ‫( ב‬Gen 6:3; Num 27:18; Ps 51:12). In these cases the spirit in a person is often associated with his capacity for knowledge, as in the claim by Elihu that “it is the spirit in humans, the breath of Shaddai that gives them insight” (Job 32:8). This is the case even where that intelligence is so exceptional as to be characterized as “a divine spirit,” as with Joseph (Gen 41:38) and Daniel (Dan 4:5–6; 5:11). In the instance of Daniel, it is possible that his native capacity was enhanced in response to his fidelity (1:17), but

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the situation is not like those described above in which the preposition ‫ על‬occurs. It is simply the enhancement of the abilities that he natively possessed (1:4; 6:4).18 The sense of interiority is also suggested in those expressions using the verb “filled” (‫)מלא‬. While these cases certainly can suggest direct divine action (Micah in Mic 3:8; Bezalel and his associates in Exod 28:3; 35:31, 34), Levison argues that at most the verb suggests the enhancement of a quality already possessed by the persons in question and may simply identify the persons as having been given exceptional native capacities.19 The strongest evidence for this interpretation is the parallel between heart and spirit in Exod 28:3: “You shall speak to all the wise of heart, whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdom, and they shall make Aaron’s vestments.” To summarize, in biblical texts, references to the breath of God that animates humans and that is responsible for their varied native gifts and talents is represented as interior to the person, even when God may enhance or strengthen that capacity for a person. The basis for this conceptualization is simply the experience of the breath that is breathed in and out of the physical body. The divine spirit that overrides the person’s native capacities or inclinations is almost always represented as an external entity that becomes metonymically associated with the person.

Spirit and Flesh in the Hodayot As the discussion at the beginning of the article suggested, in the Hodayot the spirit that characterizes the ordinary, unimproved person is quite negatively described: the spirit of error, the perverted spirit, the spirit of flesh. It is specifically God’s holy spirit that “purifies” the speaker (VIII, 30) and draws him near to God’s understanding (VI, 24).20 This holy spirit is not something that he possesses by right of birth but is external to his original status. But how does the speaker conceptualize this relationship between the purifying spirit and his own person? In the portions of the Hodayot that are preserved, when the speaker uses the particular phrase “your holy spirit,” he tends to use the verb and preposition ‫“( הניפותה על‬to sprinkle over”; IV, 38; XXIII, 33).21 Although this phrase is unattested in the biblical text, it is consistent with the syntax and conceptualization of the placing of the spirit upon a chosen individual. It should be noted, however, that in a third instance the expression is ‫( הנפותה בי‬XV, 10), which suggests a different model, the sprinkling of spirit that penetrates into the  See the discussion of Joseph and Daniel in Levison, Filled with the Spirit, 48–51, 74–81.  Levison, Filled with the Spirit, 55–57. 20  See Sekki, The Meaning of Ruaḥ, 72–84, for a discussion of the phrase “holy spirit.” 21  In biblical Hebrew the verb ‫ נוף‬ordinarily means “wave,” but when the reference is to rain or snow the verb apparently means “sprinkle” (Ps 68:10; Sir 43:17). 18 19

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interior of the person. Perhaps one should not make too much of this phraseology, since the preposition ‫ ב‬can also express the relationship “upon.” Other evidence, however, suggests that a model of placing the divine spirit internally within a person is indeed the primary conceptualization present in the ­Hodayot. When the noun is simply “spirit,” as opposed to “holy spirit,” the verb and preposition used is not ‫ נוף על‬but ‫נתן ב־‬.22 The speaker thanks or blesses God or explains that he has understanding “because of the spirit you have placed in me” (‫ ;נתתה בי‬IV, 29; V, 36; VIII, 29; XX, 15; XXI, 34). One might ask if there is a substantive difference between “the spirit” and “your holy spirit” that would account for the different pattern of usage, but there does not appear to be. In XX, 14–16, the two expressions apparently refer to the same internal experience of insight: “I know you, my God, by means of the spirit that you have placed in me … By your holy spirit you have [o]pened up knowledge within me (‫”… )לתוכי‬ Here the two terms, “spirit” and “your holy spirit,” appear to be synonymous, and both have to do with the interior experience of the speaker. The shift in verbs and prepositions between the biblical locutions concerning the spirit and those in the Hodayot is telling. What had been seen as an external spirit applied to a fundamentally autonomous self is no longer the operative model. Rather, the originally external spirit from God becomes conceptualized as moving from outside to inside. Nor is the self construed any longer as a simple autonomous subject. As is often the case in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the change is not simply a novel creation of the authors but is a conceptualization based on scriptural interpretation, in this case the prophet Ezekiel’s meditation on the problem of human moral psychology. Frustrated by the people’s utter inability to fulfill the divine laws and commandments, Ezekiel can only envision a solution in which God removes the heart of stone from the people and gives them a heart of flesh and puts a new spirit within them (Ezek 11:19; 36:26–27; ‫)רוח חדשה אתן בקרבכם‬.23 Ezekiel essentially envisions a new creation of the people, an idea that is given graphic depiction in the vision of the valley of dry bones. There, again using the phraseology ‫( נתן רוח ב־‬37:6, 14), the passage describes how people are given new life as the four winds summoned by the prophet enter the reconstituted bodies. What Ezekiel is describing is not a temporary or even a permanent overriding of the people’s natural inclination but a completely new being, one now capable of obedience to God’s statutes and ordinances (36:27). Thus it is clear why Ezekiel’s locutions involve the preposition ‫ ב־‬rather than ‫על‬. 22 The one occurrence in which “your holy spirit” might be used with ‫ נתן ב־‬is almost completely reconstructed (VIII, 20) and cannot be used as evidence. 23  Note also the language of “sprinkling” (‫ )זרק‬so as to purify the people in Ezek 36:25. Although the verb is different from the Hodayot’s ‫ נוף על‬the imagery is quite similar, suggesting the influence of Ezekiel on the conceptualization of the gift of the spirit.

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Although the Hodayot appropriate Ezekiel’s phrase, they understand the result in ways that are significantly different from Ezekiel’s. For one thing, what Ezekiel had described as a collective experience of the people is represented as an individual experience in the Hodayot.24 More significantly, in the Hodayot the gift of the spirit from God does not result in the removal or eradication of the previously defective spirit in the speaker. Instead, a much more complex model of the self develops. Perhaps because the spirit from God is particularly identified with knowledge, understanding, and insight, the speaker identifies his subjectivity with it. It becomes his “experiencing consciousness,” in Lakoff and Johnson’s terminology, that which says “I.” But while this internalized divine spirit does not entirely override the rest of the person’s intentionality, as in the common biblical model, or replace it, as in Ezekiel’s model, it does enable the speaker to become aware of those other aspects of his self (his “spirit of flesh,” “spirit of error,” and “perverted spirit”) that he now experiences as part of himself but as an objectified aspect that struggles for control over him. These aspects of the self are resisted, however, because his subjectivity is now constituted by a spirit that is both internal and also external, in that it is a gift from an external divine source that has been placed internally in him, not temporarily cloaking him, but lastingly constituting his essential self. Because that new subjectivity does not eliminate the negative “perverted spirit,” the speaker of the Hodayot creates something that is quite novel in Israelite and early Jewish indigenous psychologies – the model for a complex interior life in which conflicting desires, impulses, and intentions are given a theoretical basis. Moreover, the Hodayot, as first-person singular prayers, provide a mechanism for cultivating the experience of such an interior life.25

A New Model of the Body? Given this strikingly transformed sense of the person as understood through the psychological category of the spirit, one might ask if there is any corresponding change to the conceptualization of the self as body. The expression “you have placed a spirit in your servant” implicitly constructs the person as a container into which something can be put. This is not the only expression that suggests the metaphor of the person as container, however. In col. XIII the speaker says “you have hidden in me your law (‫ חבתה בי‬XIII, 13) and refers later to “the ­mystery that you have hidden in me” (XIII, 27). Since knowledge is particularly Filled with the Spirit, 207.  For a discussion of the way in which the Hodayot shape the speaker’s experience of his own self see Carol A. Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran, STDJ 52 (Leiden: Brill, 2004; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 196–208. 24 Levison, 25

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characteristic of the spirit that God places in a person, these expressions apparently belong to the same general conceptualization. In all these places, however, although the physical body is implicitly part of the “me” referred to, the physicality of the person is not emphasized. If, however, one looks at the Niedrigkeitsdoxologien, one also sees container imagery used for the physical body. These stereotypical passages describe the person as a thing constructed of clay and kneaded with water. The metaphor of the body as pottery is explicit. The terms ‫( מבנה עפר‬V, 32) and ‫( יצר החמר‬IX, 23), i. e., “structure of dust” and “vessel of clay,” are synonymously used as parallels for ‫“( מגבל המים‬kneaded with water”). The imagery, though alluding to Gen 2:7, is more graphic about the process and materials (cf. also XX, 28; 1QS XI, 21–22). But what kind of pottery is it? The phrases that follow suggest that this “pottery body” is conceived of as a vessel, a container, for the person is also described as a ‫מקור נדה‬, “a source of menstrual pollution.” Here a very literal analogy is drawn. Just as the female body contains fluids that can pollute, so the speaker envisions himself as a container of impurity. The following image, ‫“( כור העוון‬a crucible of iniquity”) also describes the body in terms of a container, for in antiquity crucibles were pottery containers used for processing of liquified metals. Although the term ‫ יצר‬has a range of meaning broader than English “vessel,” the frequent use of the expressions ‫יצר‬ ‫ (ה)חמר‬and ‫( יצר עפר‬eighteen occurrences) may also refer to the embodied person as a pottery container. Is that notion of the person, the embodied self, as a container also part of biblical conceptualization? A few expressions conceive of the body as a container of liquids. The expression ‫ מקור דם‬is used of the womb in Leviticus (Lev 27:18), and ‫ מקור דמעה‬describes the eyes as a “fountain of tears” in Jeremiah (Jer 8:23). Speech is often envisioned as a liquid that pours forth from the mouth (e. g., Pss 19:3; 72:2; 94:4; 119:171; 145:7; Prov 10:11; 15:2, 28; 18:4; 19:28). But notably, these images are used of specific parts of the body, not as images for the person as a totality. Moreover, even though the notion of humans as shaped from clay like pottery is attested numerous times in the Bible, the image is used only to refer to human mortality (e. g., Ps 103:14; Job 4:19; 10:9) or to the relationship between the potter and the pot (e. g., Isa 29:16; 45:9), not to the person as a container of anything. To be sure, the body was conceived of as having an inside, as the term ‫“( קרב‬innards”) suggests, and the ‫ נפש‬or ‫ רוח‬is often located there (e. g., 1 Kgs 17:21; Zech 12:1). Presumably, the conceptualization of persons as containers also informs the statement by God concerning Bezalel that “I have filled him with a divine spirit” (Exod 31:1). Thus the representation in the Hodayot of the person as a container builds on available conceptualizations but develops them more vividly. Moreover, both the references to the spirits and torah that are placed or hidden within the person and the descriptions of the impurities contained in the person develop a greater sense of an interior space that is the locus of self-awareness and self-consciousness.

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It is difficult to say whether this imagery for the body and the imagery for the implanting of the spirit, both sharing the conceptual metaphor of the person as a container, were specifically linked or developed in relation to one another. If they had been, one might have expected imagery of the spirit as a liquid. Already in Proverbs spirit can be envisioned as a liquid (“I will pour out my spirit to you,” 1:23). But there is no pouring of the spirit into the container of the body in the Hodayot, except perhaps in the suggestive change of the idiom ‫ נוף על‬to ‫ נוף ב־‬in VIII, 20. Even if that is the case in this instance, this possible image of the spirit poured into the body was not developed as a prominent trope in the Hodayot. More likely, general shifts in the conception of the interiority of personhood simply found their way unconsciously into parallel but uncoordinated imagery for the placing of the spirit in the person and the representation of the physical body as a container.

Concluding Observations It is quite possible that the yaḥad operated with a variety of models of the self, some of them more or less continuations of the traditional biblical indigenous psychology. Nevertheless, it is striking that there is not just one but two models for a self with a complex and conflicted interior life, the model of the Hodayot, explored above, and the model embodied in the Two Spirits Treatise. While there are certainly significant differences between the two,26 they share a number of broad similarities. Both documents construct dualistic models of the self, one through the imagery of the God-given spirit and the spirit of perversity/ error/flesh, the other through the imagery of the two spirits of truth and deceit. Where the Two Spirits Treatise is more explicit about the contention between these spirits in the heart of a person (IQS III, 23), the Hodayot express the psychological anguish caused by the persistent presence of the perverted spirit and its attempt to “rule over” the speaker. In different ways both documents locate the complex interior experience of the individual in the context of the cosmic struggle between good and evil. Even though not all recensions of the Serekh ha-Yaḥad contained the Two Spirits Treatise, for at least many of the communities of the yaḥad,27 it was a model of the self that was explicitly taught. The central importance of the Hodayot is generally acknowledged. Thus the creation of a normative type of indigenous psychology with a distinctive form of interior self-experience was intentionally cultivated by the movement. What is difficult 26 The

hodayah in col. 7 may reflect the influence of the Two Spirits Treatise.  Alison Schofield’s suggestion that the different recensions of the Serekh ha-Yaḥad were developed in different communities of the yaḥad is highly plausible. See Schofield, From Qumran to the Yaḥad: A New Paradigm of Textual Development for The Community Rule, STDJ 77 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 7. 27

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to judge is the causal relationship between developing theological ideas of the sectarian movement and developing models of indigenous psychology. It is not inevitable that a dualistic worldview will produce a dualistic psychology, though it is easy to see how useful such a psychological model could be for constructing and maintaining that view of reality. Perhaps it would be better to say that the community’s theological worldview and the indigenous psychologies of the Hodayot and the Two Spirits Treatise were mutually produced and mutually reinforcing. Even though the clearest representation of the models of the self constructed in the yaḥad occur in these texts, it is likely that other sectarian texts contain additional evidence for understanding the indigenous psychology of the sect. Thus further research is needed. Moreover, the approaches of cognitive anthropology suggest new ways in which scholars might compare the indigenous psychologies represented in a variety of Jewish literature produced during the late Second Temple period.

13. Sin Consciousness, Self-Alienation, and the Origins of the Introspective Self Although cultural concepts are historical artifacts, it is difficult to catch them in the act of coming into being. Generally, such constructs are built up as modifications of existing concepts and may be motivated by a variety of cultural needs. Their development tends to be irregular rather than simply linear, and divergent models may flourish alongside one another. During the past generation or so, it has been widely recognized that the form of introspective subjectivity that characterizes modern Western consciousness and the sense of self is just such a cultural construct and that it differs significantly from the models of the self that characterize many other cultures, ancient and modern. The origins, genealogy, and development of the Western self have been explored in some detail, most notably in the magisterial works of Charles Taylor1 and Jerrold Siegel.2 In an influential article Robert Di Vito argued that the ancient Israelite conception of the self presents a sharp contrast with the self of Western modernity. Using Taylor’s account, Di Vito identifies four elements characteristic of the modern sense of self or personhood. These include (1) social “self-sufficiency and self-containment,” (2) “sharply defined personal boundaries,” (3) a sense of “inner depths,” and (4) “a capacity for autonomous and self-legislative action.”3 By contrast, he identifies the Israelite self as reflected in the texts of the Hebrew Bible as (1) “deeply embedded, or engaged in its social identity,” (2) “comparatively decentered and undefined with respect to personal boundaries,” (3) “relatively transparent, socialized, and embodied” and, indeed, “altogether lacking in a sense of ‘inner depths,’” and (4) “‘authentic’ precisely in its heteronomy,” that is to say its obedience to and dependence upon certain others.4 Although scholars have recently questioned Di Vito’s sharp contrast as overdrawn,5 he rightly 1  Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). 2  Jerrold E. Seigel, The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 3  Robert A. Di Vito, “Old Testament Anthropology and the Construction of Personal Identity.” CBQ 61 (1999): 217–38. 4  Di Vito, “Old Testament Anthropology,” 221. 5  See, most pointedly, Christian Frevel, “Von der Selbstbeobachtung zu inneren Tiefen: Überlegungen zur Konstitution von Individualität im Alten Testament,” in Individualität und Selbstreflexion in den Literaturen des Alten Testaments, ed. Andreas Wagner and Jürgen van Oorschot, VWGTh 48 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2017), 13–43.

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points to significant differences between ancient Israelite and modern Western cultural selves in relation to the role of interiority. As Taylor himself observed, and as Di Vito agrees, every human culture employs a basic interior/exterior difference in terms of its sense of the self. Not only is there a sense of the me and the “not me,” but there is also a sense of what a person may keep “inside” and what she or he may manifest outside. In Israelite literature this expresses itself in terms of the concern about the hypocrite (lit., “one who conceals himself,” ‫)נעלם‬, who has an inner intention that is belied by his or her outer expression (e. g., Ps 28:3; Prov 26:24). The inner/outer distinction is not necessarily negative, however, since any thought might be described as inner speech (“And David said to his heart,” 1 Sam 27:1). In ancient Israel, as in Homeric Greece, many aspects of the emotional, volitional, and rational self are conceptualized in terms of the loci of body parts.6 In this way of thinking, a general inner/outer distinction can also be observed, with the bones and the internal organs related to emotional and volitional states and the outer parts of the body to actions and intentions, though the heart, in particular, has a distinctive role in relation to emotion, volition, and reflection.7 The use of specific body parts and the lack of a comprehensive term for body or self should not be taken to mean that there was no sense of psychic unity, of course. Rather, in the felicitous expression of Jan Assmann concerning the Egyptian self, appropriated for Israelite culture by Bernd Janowski, the self was conceived of as “constellative,” that is, as composed of an interactive network of elements.8 Just as one can identify a basic inner/outer differentiation that is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the development of an introspective self, so one can identify a basic capacity of the human mind to execute a reflexive gesture that is part of self-awareness, intentionality, and self-control, that is, the individual’s ability to distinguish between the self as knower or agent (“I”) and the

6  The most comprehensive discussion is to be found in Thomas Staubli and Silvia Schroer, Body Symbolism in the Bible, trans. Linda M. Maloney (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001). Their work refines and updates Hans Walter Wolff, Anthropologie des Alten Testaments (München: C. Kaiser, 1973). 7  George J. Brooke, “Weak or Sinful? A Body of Rhetoric – on the Use of Physical Metaphors in Romans 3 and the Hodayot,” in Jesus, Paulus, und die Texte von Qumran, ed. Jörg Frey and Enno Edzard Popkes, WUNT 2/390 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 251. 8  Jan Assmann, “A Dialogue Between Self and Soul: Papyrus Berlin 3024,” in Self, Soul, and Body in Religious Experience, ed. Albert I. Baumgarten, et al., SHR 78 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 386; Bernd Janowski, “Konstellative Anthropologie. Zum Begriff der Person im Alten Testament,” in Biblische Anthropologie: Neue Einsichten aus dem Alten Testament, ed. Christian Frevel, QD 237 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2010), 64–87; Bruno Snell, Die Entdeckung des Geistes: Studien zur Entstehung des europäischen Denkens bei den Griechen (Hamburg: Claaszen & Goverts, 1946), had famously challenged the notion of psychic unity in Homeric Greece, a view persuasively refuted by Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity, Sather Classical Lectures 57 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 21–63.

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self as object of knowledge or action (“me” or a “me” equivalent).9 Cognitive linguists have noted that this distinction is often represented in various ways in language as the differentiation between a “subject” and its “self.”10 In English, one might say “I hardly know myself anymore” or “I had to drag myself out of bed this morning,” as though the subject and self were different things. A similar distinction is evident in Hebrew, as when the psalmist says, “Why are you downcast, O my soul?” (Ps 42:6) or Exodus says that Pharaoh hardened his heart (Exod 9:34). Since the soul (‫ )נפׁש‬and the heart (‫ )לב‬are virtually equivalent to a person himself, this way of speaking splits the subject from the self in order to articulate awareness of one’s own emotional state or one’s settled determination as an intentional act. Thus it does not necessarily reflect a developed interiority or deep introspection, though such could not develop without the basic capacity for self-reflexive awareness. Although all humans have the psychological and symbolic mechanisms to support the development of an introspective self, only some societies in fact develop these resources as a culturally salient feature of the self. Nor is this a phenomenon that is either “on” or “off.” The nature and quality of inwardness, if it is developed, will vary between cultures and within cultures over time in order to serve a variety of functions. While scholars debate the extent to which such a sense of interiority was developed with First Temple Israelite culture,11 by the later Second Temple period there are indications of the development of some significantly different models of the Jewish self, certain of which are indeed characterized by a form of inner depths. The forms that they take, however, are not identical to those developed at a roughly contemporary time in ancient Greece, though in some cases creative cultural mixtures take place in the Hellenistic environment. And they certainly are not identical to the description Taylor gives of the modern western self. In fact, the inwardness I will be tracing develops without diminishing the Israelite self ’s social embeddedness and even accentuates its heteronomy. Although interior selfhood can be developed in response to a variety of social and cultural needs, in ancient Israel the problem of sin and moral evil appears to have been a particularly significant locus. Confrontation with the apparently radical nature of human moral incapacity initiates a reformulation of anthropology and leads both to conceptualizations and to practices that construct an introspective self characterized by self-examination, self-reflexive emotional  9 Todd F. Heatherton, “Neuroscience of the Self and Self-Regulation,” Annual Review of Psychology 62 (2011): 365, traces the distinction back to William James. 10 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 270–76. 11  Contrast Frevel, “Von der Selbstbeobachtung zu inner Tiefen” with the more skeptical position of David A. Lambert, How Repentance Became Biblical: Judaism, Christianity, and the Interpretation of Scripture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), who argues that the dimension of interiorized subjectivity has been wrongly read into many biblical texts.

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distress, and a desire to resolve inner conflict. To reiterate, my claim is not that people did not ever experience such things until a particular historical moment. It is rather that such things only become the focus of cultural attention, naming, and shaping at a certain point in late Judean and early Jewish history. That cultural shift, however, does have implications for the experience individuals have of themselves.12 Before tracing this development, it is necessary to lay out briefly the background assumptions concerning the self and  moral agency in ancient Israel. The grounding assumption of virtually all relevant Israelite texts from the First Temple period (and, indeed, many from the Second Temple period) is that persons have moral capacity and are presumed capable of freely using it. Persons are exhorted and commanded to do things or to refrain from doing things; persons make plans and carry them out; persons commit themselves by promises, oaths, and covenants; and persons are judged in accordance with their conduct. Mental state is sometimes taken into consideration, as wrongful acts committed intentionally and unintentionally may be punished differently or require different remedies (e. g., Lev 4:2, 13–14, 22, 27; Num 15:22–36). But even in the cases of deeds committed unintentionally, the person is held responsible in some fashion. Human intentionality is not completely autonomous, however. In various ways divine intentionality may shape or override human agency (e. g., Gen 50:20; 2 Kgs 19:7), though this situation is presented as the exception rather than the norm. The causes of moral failure are various, but can generally be grouped as failures involving defective knowledge or understanding,  wrongful desire, or a self-regarding and stubborn will. But these forces are never described as pitted against one another in a form of intractable internal conflict.13 Successful moral formation produces a unity of knowledge, desire, and will. Correspondingly, failure in one of these areas will generally be correlated with failure in the others. They are dependent variables. Thus, not truly knowing God means that one’s desires will be misdirected and one’s will resistant to proper rebuke. A stubborn will is implicated in one’s resistance to receiving wisdom and thus in desiring things that are not in the end good. Being drawn by destructive desires results in clouded perception and reluctance to receive instructive rebuke. Lack of formation will almost certainly result in moral failure, but that state of moral chaos should not be confused with some ontological flaw in human being itself.14 12 Carol A. Newsom, “Predestination and Moral Agency in the Hodayot,” in The Religious Worldviews Reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 28–30 May, 2013, ed. Menahem Kister, Michael Segal, and Ruth A. Clements, STDJ 127 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 193–211. 13  Di Vito, “Old Testament Anthropology,” 230. 14  Genesis 2–3 arguably represents a partial exception to the overall pattern. That narrative does give an etiology for a primordial change in the composition of human (moral) reasoning

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The regnant model of moral agency was a highly flexible and adaptable one. It was used not only to think about individuals but was also applied to the nation as a whole by means of the implicit cognitive metaphor, the nation is a ­moral agent. Indeed, this extension appears to be the place where the model first comes to crisis, through the traumatic experience of the destruction of the kingdom of Judah and of the temple in 587 BCE. The event was understood as a radical failure of moral agency, resulting in the punishment of the nation by God. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that what taxes the model is not the warranted destruction itself but the difficulty of thinking through the possibility of a future on the other side of destruction that would not simply repeat the pattern of failure. The imagery by which this situation is thought through pushes past the model of functional failure and toward the imagery of intrinsic defect. In doing this, the texts in question make use of but intensify the self-reflexive attention that allows a person to focus on his or her own intentions, emotions, and motivations. They develop a model of what I would term “self-alienation.” That is to say, a critical aspect of the self is strongly objectified in a manner that makes it a repellent and horrifying and yet undeniably and inextricably one’s own self. This, I would argue, is where one finds one of the important sources of the development of an introspective self in Second Temple Judaism. In Jeremiah, in a late post-exilic addition to Deuteronomy, and in Ezekiel, new tropes are introduced that begin to objectify the heart as the locus of profound and intrinsic moral incapacity. These tropes may have been employed initially simply as emphatic rhetorical gestures, not as reflective speculations about anthropology. But tropes have their own momentum, regardless of the intentions of their speakers, and later uses of them may run down paths never foreseen by their inventors. The prophet Jeremiah appears to have been the source of these critical new tropes.15 In Jeremiah, the problem of moral failure is framed in a variety of ways, but among the most important is the failure of understanding (5:4–5, 13, 21; 6:10; 8:4–9; 9:3, etc.). This is a failure of the rational organ, the heart. Jeremiah’s trope hovers between a functional failure and a material solution. The heart, which should have been capable of receiving instruction (‫)תרה‬, has inexplicably proven impervious. As Jeremiah envisions the solution, it involves a physical placing of the teaching into the body (the that has problematic consequences, though it cannot rightly be described as a “fall.” The flood story does finally render a negative judgment on human moral capacity in Gen 6:5 and 8:21, though whether the flood and creation stories are necessarily parts of a single narrative with a single point of view, as the classical documentary hypothesis assumed, is now debated. In any event, Genesis 2–3 plays little role in reflections on moral agency and the self in First or Second Temple Judaism, and when it is finally invoked, as in the Qumran Hodayot, it is not the change in human cognitive composition that is highlighted but our creation from dust. 15  Werner E. Lemke, “Circumcision of the Heart: The Journey of a Biblical Metaphor,” in A God So Near: Essays on Old Testament Theology in Honor of Patrick D. Miller, ed. Brent A. Strawn and Nancy R. Bowen (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 306–7.

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“interior,” ‫ )קרב‬and writing or inscribing it onto the heart itself (31:33–34). Although the trope may be inspired by the idiom for memorization, “to write on the tablet of the heart,” something more radical than memorization is in play here, since the result obviates the need for the failed process of teaching and learning.16 The image of physical intervention is novel and draws attention to the heart as objectified, problematic thing. More striking is the trope found in both Jeremiah and Deuteronomy in which the heart is envisioned as having a foreskin that must be removed or circumcised before the heart can properly function as a moral organ. The conceptual metaphors underlying this image are complex. The heart is analogized to the penis with its foreskin. But the foreskin, which was simply a symbol of something that is removed in order to consummate a covenant in Gen 17:11–14, is here treated as an objective impediment to the covenant and to obedience. The facilitating conceptual link is presumably the use of the term “uncircumcised” to identify ethnic outsiders who do not recognize YHWH or know the requirements of the covenant and who, in their uncircumcised state, are incapable of obedience.17 In this image, the heart that a person (i. e., the nation) is born with is intrinsically defective and incapable of covenant obedience. Only through a surgical act that changes the physical organ is one empowered to be obedient. Initially, in Jer 4:4 and Deut 10:16 this transformation is referred to as something that a person can do for himself, in keeping with the assumptions about free moral agency that form the grounding assumptions of First Temple moral discourse. In the wake of the disaster of 587, however, both Jeremiah and a late redactional addition to Deuteronomy reject this possibility. In Deut 30:6 the circumcision of the heart is no longer something the people can accomplish for themselves. Instead, it is a transformation that YHWH effects for the people.18 While both of these texts objectify and problematize the heart, they do not fully develop a dynamic of self-alienation or the introspective possibilities that are opened up by it. One does find this, however, in Ezekiel, whose development of the trope of the radically defective heart is the most dramatic. In Ezekiel the heart is figured through an outrageous, physically impossible image. The heart of the people has in fact been a heart of stone, one that would be incapable of 16 Jeremiah’s image is a reversal of his earlier image for intractable sin: “The sin of Judah is inscribed with an iron stylus, engraved with a diamond point on the tablet of their heart” (17:1). 17  This, despite the fact that some non-Israelite peoples also practiced circumcision. For Jeremiah, however, even circumcision of the penis counts for nothing if there is no circumcision of the heart (Jer 9:24–25). 18 Marc Zvi Brettler’s careful exegesis (“Predestination in Deuteronomy 30:1–10,” in Those Elusive Deuteronomists: The Phenomenon of Pan-Deuteoronomism, ed. Linda S. Schearing and Steven L. McKenzie, JSOTSup 268 [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999]) demonstrates the difference between Deut 10:16 and 30:6 and makes a plausible case that human agency does not play a role in the entire passage of Deut 30:1–10, which draws upon the language and imagery of Jeremiah.

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acting as a heart. For the people to become an effective moral agent this heart has to be removed and a heart of flesh, a proper heart, put in its place (11:19; 36:26). By making the defective heart into an objectified, problematic focus of concentration, the heart is no longer simply the representation of the “me” that is the person (or the nation as person). It is in some sense a now alienated aspect of the self, an intractable but inescapable problematic part of the person. This rhetorical gesture by itself does not create interiority, of course. And indeed, Ezekiel’s concerns are not primarily anthropological; they are theocentric. What he wants of persons is that “they will know that I am YHWH.” The main effect of the transformation is that they are now capable of obedience and will no longer defile the holy places. But there is one element of their transformation that is of significance for an account of the origins of interiority. And that is the emotion that Ezekiel attributes to the reconstructed nation/person – the sense of moral disgust focused on their own prior actions. But what makes this a significant innovation? In his recent work on the genealogy of repentance, David Lambert argues that repentance, as it is classically formulated in Jewish and Christian tradition, is an expression of a fully developed interiorized subjectivity that does not make its appearance within Judaism until the Hellenistic period at the earliest.19 Classical repentance involves introspective self-examination, remorse, and resolution to transform one’s behavior. It is not only an act of introspection but also one of agency, since forgiveness by God is seen as consequent upon the act of repentance. The biblical phenomena that scholars have typically referred to as acts of repentance, Lambert argues, are not expressions of interiorized psychological states but are social phenomena, that is, social enactments of self-diminution that serve to restore a relationship in which the generous and compassionate disposition of the superior (god) can be turned toward the inferior party (person, nation). These social performances are agential, in that the confessions and changes of behavior are transactions that effect desired results; but the texts pay no attention to possible interior mental states and do not depict inner selfreflection as a part of the process. What makes Ezekiel’s account so significant is that it does describe a developed act of introspection, and yet, the act is not agential in that it does not serve to accomplish any outcome. It is, I would suggest, the earliest example of a form of introspection that does not lead directly to the classical western model that associates introspection and inner depths with autonomous agency, as in Taylor’s analysis, but to an alternative model developed in numerous later Second Temple texts in which introspective subjectivity is associated precisely with a displacement of agency, as YHWH gives the person the gift of knowledge, including knowledge of self. 19

 See n. 11.

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In Ezekiel’s account YHWH acts for his own sake in reconstructing the nation as a moral agent. The people’s response has no effective force. Their response is the result, not the cause, of YHWH’s action. Indeed, the act of introspection occurs not only after the transformation of the people but also after their restoration. In the scenario Ezekiel describes, after they receive their hearts of flesh and are restored, the people first perform an inner act of remembering (36:31). They remember their evil ways and their actions that were the opposite of good, and consequently they “loathe themselves” (‫)קוט‬. Literally, they feel nausea in their own presence.20 The description of this act of remembering and the emotional response to it is a self-reflexive and a self-reflective action that is unparalleled in earlier literature. It precedes and is connected with the social sense of being “ashamed and humiliated” (v. 32), but it is represented as a distinct element. Undoubtedly, the model of social shame, in which one is diminished in the eyes of another, plays an important role in shaping the interior emotional drama that Ezekiel describes. Indeed, what introspection does is to move the function of the social other into one’s own psychic space and, through the subject/self differentiation, to see and judge oneself as though from the perspective of an other. The earliest appropriation of Ezekiel’s imagery that is extant is in Psalm 51.21 What had been a way of talking about the transformation of the nation through the recreation of heart and spirit in Ezekiel 36 is here appropriated for an individual psalm of petition, articulated by a voice that speaks in the first-person singular. Although the specific appropriation of Ezekiel occurs in vv. 12–14, the psalm shares with Ezekiel a general orientation to the moral framework of sanctity/disgust, reflected in the vocabulary of “blotting out,” “washing,” “cleansing,” 20  Earlier in 6:9 and 20:43 Ezekiel also uses the motif of self-loathing (‫ )קוט‬in connection with the people’s recognition that “I am YHWH,” though in these cases no mention is made of the transformation of the people by God. That the people’s emotion is cast specifically as moral disgust is significant. Ezekiel’s theological understanding is based on the category of sanctity, and in the structure of moral emotions, disgust is the negative correlate of sanctity. In her analysis, Jacqueline E. Lapsley (Can These Bones Live?: The Problem of the Moral Self in the Book of Ezekiel, BZAW 301 [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000], 129–42) emphasizes the vocabulary and concepts of psychological shame, alongside the language of self-loathing. Though not unrelated, shame per se does not have the same intrinsic relationship to the moral framework of sanctity that disgust does. Moreover, Ezekiel’s choice of a visceral term here to describe the emotion points clearly to disgust. See Paul Rozin, Jonathan Haidt, and Clark R. McCauley, “Disgust,” in Handbook of Emotions, 3rd ed., ed. Michael Lewis, Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones, and Lisa Feldman Barrett (New York: Guilford Press, 2008), 757–76. 21 Erich Zenger (Erich Zenger and Frank-Lothar Hossfeld, Psalms 2: A Commentary on Psalms 51–100, trans. Linda Maloney [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005], 21) notes not only the influence of Ezekiel 36 but also echoes of Jeremiah and Second Isaiah in the psalm. As Lemke (“Circumcision of the Heart,” 315) observes, “the conjoining of ‘spirit’ and ‘heart’ is unique to Ezekiel and not found in either Deuteronomy or Jeremiah.” Thus the prominent use of the pair here in Psalm 51 is a strong indication that Ezekiel is the primary intertext.

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and “purging” in vv. 3–4, 9–11, as well as the representation of the “crushed” heart and spirit as a sacrifice presented to God in v. 19. As in Ezekiel, sin is framed as a congenital and inescapable condition. In contrast to Ezekiel, however, the speaker has an awareness of this condition before the transformation occurs, not merely as a result of it. How this is possible is not explored by the psalm, but it is a necessary part of the speech-act of petition. What results is a vivid depiction of profound self-alienation and entrapment, one that is not merely retrospective but describes the speaker’s present experience. In the act of self-contemplation, the speaker figures his condition under highly physical images of filth (vv. 3–4, 9, 11) and disease (v. 9). Those elements most closely identified with the knowing and willing self, the heart and spirit, are radically defective and have to be transformed and newly created, as in Ezekiel (vv. 12–13).22 The space between the speaking voice and its distress at its self is the space of interiority. It is not possible in this short article to trace the complex development of forms of introspective consciousness as they appear in various Second temple texts. But a few examples will suggest some of the ways that self-alienation stemming from the recognition of moral evil funds a continuing experience of selfdivision and introspective reflection. Petitionary prayers are not a common genre in Second Temple Judaism, especially if one excludes the prayers embedded in narrative contexts. But the ones that are extant also articulate the kind of introspection and self-alienation that is modeled in Psalm 51. Particularly striking is 11QPsa XXIV (Syriac Psalm 155). Here the alien element is not the malfunctioning heart or spirit but sin itself. The psalm depicts sin not simply as something that one does but as an alien and inimical entity located within a person. Although the passage begins with fairly traditional imagery, it then introduces the novel tropes of sin as disease and as a “parasitic plant”;23 The sins of my youth cast far from me, and let my transgressions not be remembered against me. (12) Purify me, O Lord, from (the) evil affliction, and let it not return again to me, Dry up (13) its roots from me, and let its le[av]es not flourish within me. … (lines 11–13a; trans. Brand).

22  Although v. 8 is notoriously difficult, the context between vv. 7 and 9 suggest that references to “hidden” and “in secret” may refer to the internal organs, which, as Zenger notes, “were regarded as the seat of feelings and decisions (‘conscience’)” (Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, 13). He further suggests that the recognition of sinfulness in v. 7 “describes the ‘wisdom’ that, according to v. 8, God gives the petitioner (13). God’s gift of self-recognition that leads to selfdisgust is a frequent motif in the Qumran Hodayot. The verse in Psalm 51, however, is too difficult for certainty. 23  Miryam T. Brand, Evil Within and Without: The Source of Sin and its Nature as Portrayed in Second Temple Literature, JAJSup 9 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 40.

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Although “affliction” can sometimes designate a disease or pain that might be construed as the result or punishment for sin (cf. 2 Sam 7:14; Isa 53:8; Ps 89:33), that does not appear to be its significance here. Brand is correct in my opinion in taking it as a way of describing the condition of sinfulness or of the propensity to sin, as the following trope of the plant refers back to the affliction. That striking image represents the condition of sinfulness as an objectified, alien entity within a person that has a hostile power and vitality of its own. And yet, it is one’s own sinfulness. Moreover, the speaker is himself powerless against it. His agency consists only in recognizing it, being distressed by it, and beseeching God to destroy it. In earlier sources (e. g., Deut 29:17; Sir 3:28) a similar image of a poisonous weed is used of the wicked who are other than the speaker and his audience. In 11QPsa XXIV (Syriac Psalm 155), however, the image describes the speaker’s own situation and perhaps the condition of humankind in general. This imagery of sin presents the speaker as a context, a scene inhabited by an aspect of itself that causes distress. The subject thus becomes an observer of this interior scene, a subject position that is critical for the development of introspection. Other prayers of supplication develop the category of the interior alien in different ways. In the Plea for Deliverance (11QPsa XIX) the speaker asks for purification from sin and for positive qualities (“a spirit of faithfulness and knowledge”). He continues: “Let not a satan rule over me, nor an impure spirit; let pain and evil inclination not have control over me.” What is striking here is the combination of both internal and external forces as alien wills that threaten the speaker’s desire for righteousness. While there is some debate as to whether the “impure spirit” is an internal disposition or an external evil spirit,24 the parallelism with “satan” inclines me to think that it, too, is a demonic spirit. Pain and the evil inclination, however, are clearly internal phenomena. Pain is typically the effect of either demonic attack or of sin, and perhaps it stands here metonymically for one or both of them. Both pain and the evil inclination are of concern because they “rule over” or “have control over” the speaker as competing hostile wills. The blurring of the boundaries between external alien entities and internal ones is not surprising.25 After all, when demons become active in causing moral as opposed to physical destruction, they operate precisely on the thoughts and on the moral inclination of a person (see Jub 12:20–21). What the speaking subject fears is that intimate aspects of himself – his own intentions 24  Miryam T. Brand thinks it is an internal disposition (Brand, Evil Within and Without, 209). Armin Lange argues that it is demonic (Armin Lange, “Considerations Concerning the ‘Spirit of Impurity’ in Zech 13:2,” in Die Dämonen: Die Dämonologie der israelitisch-jüdischen und frühchristlichen Literatur im Kontext ihrer Umwelt, ed. Armin Lange, Hermann Lichtenberger, and K. F. Diethard Römheld [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003], 260–1). 25  Ishay Rosen-Zvi argues that one line of development in early Rabbinic thought treats the ‫ יצר‬as a kind of internalized demonic force (Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Demonic Desires: Yetzer Hara and the Problem of Evil in Late Antiquity [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011], 127).

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and his own thoughts may in fact be taken over and controlled either by an external alien force that operates within him or by an alienated aspect of himself which evades his control and from which he desires to be free. As the Plea for Deliverance indicates, significant developments occur during the Second Temple period in the understanding of the term “inclination” (‫)יצר‬. The occurrence of that word in Gen 6:5 and 8:21 (“the inclination of the thoughts of the mind”) does not designate an objectified entity but is simply a summary term for an observable tendency that characterizes human plans and actions. The Plea for Deliverance is probably the earliest evidence for its reinterpretation as a feature of anthropology, though in Second Temple literature the term never achieves the privileged status that it has in later Rabbinic Judaism. Its role as an objectified and problematic feature of anthropology is also evident in the Damascus Document (CD II, 16) where the syntax of Genesis (“the whole inclination of the thoughts of his [i. e., the human’s] mind were only evil, all the time”) is recast as “the thoughts of a guilty inclination.” In the extended passage the guilty inclination (‫ )יצר‬plays the same role as “lustful eyes,” “desire” (‫ )רצון‬and “stubbornness of heart.” Although “lustful eyes” and “stubbornness of heart” are clichés common in earlier prophetic literature for moral failures, the language of “inclination” and “desire” points toward an objectified, internal moral defect. Nor is this a problem characterizing only the wicked. It is a feature of humanity in general, as one can see in the claim that Abraham differed from the watchers and the sons of Noah in that Abraham “did not choose what his own spirit desired” (II, 2–3). Two things are significant here. The first is that humans are described as having an inherent bad desire. The second is that the moral life involves choosing against one’s own desire. To do this requires that one scrutinize and become aware of what one’s desire is and then to engage in an act of repudiation of what is an intrinsic aspect of one’s nature. This model of the human self mandates practices of introspection for the identification and management of inner conflict. In one sense this passage simply describes something that is a universal human phenomenon – the ability of self-reflexive humans to monitor their emotions and desires and to practice self-inhibition.26 But, as discussed above, this automatic process is not always and everywhere named and made a topic of cultural reflection. Only where it is framed in such a way does the common human capacity for self-monitoring become an element of a cultural introspective self. The book of Proverbs, for example, is also deeply concerned with the 26 “[Practicing self-regulation] requires the executive aspects of the self (the “I” as knower) that allow people to change according to social context, including altering their thoughts, actions, and emotions. Thus, people need to inhibit their impulses, stifle their desires, resist temptations, undertake difficult or unpleasant activities, banish unwanted and intrusive thoughts, and control their emotional displays, all of which are difficult to do but are necessary for staying in the good graces of others” (Heatherton, “Neuroscience of Self and Self-Regulation,” 366).

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differentiation between good and destructive desires and the inhibition of bad desires (as illustrated in the various erotic motifs to be found in Prov 6–8). But it does not objectify problematic desire itself or locate it as an inherent aspect of the human constitution. It does not configure the process of choosing as a form of self-alienation and the perfecting of a good self as accomplished through the rejection of those alienated elements within oneself. Thus one sees in the Damascus Document a different and more introspective construction of the self. The structure of the self that the Damascus Document alludes to in its hortatory section is represented more vividly in the later work of 4 Ezra. In 4 Ezra the term “evil heart” is apparently also derived from Gen 6:5 and 8:21 and functions similarly to that of the evil inclination.27 Like it, the evil heart is an inherent feature of human nature (4 Ezra 3:21–22, 25–26; 7:63–72). Using a trope similar to the plant image in 11QPsa XXIV, 4 Ezra 4:30 speaks of an evil seed. “For a grain of evil seed was sown in Adam’s heart from the beginning, and how much the fruit of ungodliness it has produced until now, and will produce until the time of threshing comes!” (trans. Stone).The pathos of this condition is the pathos of introspective awareness. Although 4 Ezra is not fully systematic in its presentation, it asserts that the evil heart is something that both Adam and his descendants are “burdened with,” which is to say that it is inherent. Thus even though the Torah is also placed within the heart (3:22), the heart’s flawed nature (also referred to as “the evil root”) makes obedience impossible for all but a very few. “For an evil heart … has brought us into corruption and the ways of death, and has shown us the paths of perdition and removed us far from life – and that not just a few of us but almost all who have been created!” (7:48; trans. Stone). But the heart is also the organ of consciousness,28 and so Ezra articulates the anguish of a consciousness that perceives both its moral responsibility and its innate inability to fulfill this responsibility, the split between a subject-heart who desires righteousness and a self-heart that is incapable of it. O earth, what have you brought forth if the mind is made out of the dust like the other created things! … But now the mind grows with us, and therefore we are tormented, because we perish and know it … For all who have been born are involved in iniquities and are full of sins and burdened with transgressions (8:62–69; trans. Stone).

Although there are social dimensions to Ezra’s distress (after all, it is the relentless judgment of God that makes the situation acute), the emotional focus of this passage is on the interior drama of consciousness and the split self. The contrast between the speaking voice in 4 Ezra and that which one finds in First Temple texts is striking, as is the anthropology that informs these texts. 27  Michael E. Stone, Fourth Ezra: A Commentary on the Book of Fourth Ezra, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 63 n. 18. 28  Stone’s preferred translation for Latin sensus, which probably reflects Greek νους and Hebrew ‫( לב‬Stone, Fourth Ezra, 232).

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During this period new cultural models of the self are developed, slowly and probably without programmatic intention. One of the effects of these new models is the creation of what can rightly be called an introspective self, though one that has features somewhat different from the self developed in Greco-Roman culture. Moreover, the texts that I have selected for examination here do not exhaust the varieties of the introspective self in Second Temple Judaism. Beliefs concerning demonic spirits, structures of dualistic thought, insights derived from exegesis of particular biblical texts, as well as the encounters with Greek thought mediated through the cultural blending that took place in Hellenistic society generate a family of models for an introspective self. Moreover, the experience of a “self ” is not a fixed and singular one but fluidly moves among a variety of cultural possibilities, cued by context and available symbolic structures. Thus individuals would have experienced a variety of self-models. Attending to the ways in which such models develop and come into being, however, allows us to grasp their nature as historically and socially contingent artefacts. In the case of the Second Temple Jewish introspective consciousness, I have attempted to show that it has a major point of origin in the traumatic desymbolization that occurred in the wake of the destruction of the kingdom of Judah in 587 BCE, as the moral frameworks by which it had understood the nature of political events was overwhelmed by events. Though it may be the case that the aftershocks of such cultural earthquakes can resonate for centuries, it seems unlikely that an increasingly negative anthropology and the introspective consciousness that it facilitated could simply be explained as belated consequences of collective trauma. Rather, these models of anthropology and the experience of the self they made possible must have answered to a variety of social needs and proved useful for diverse cultural purposes. The investigation of those issues, however, must remain as an agenda for future research.

IV. Recycling: The Hermeneutics of Memory and Reception Part A: The Book of Job

14. Plural Versions and the Challenge of Narrative Coherence in the Story of Job It changes things quite a bit to see the canonical Job not as the source, the original impugned or misunderstood by later interpreters, but rather as one voice among others competing to define Job and the significance of his story. Mark Larrimore1

Where does a story reside? In a text‑ and author-focused culture one might tend to think in terms of a written document. But for a story that is traditional and has become part of a cultural heritage, the authorized written version is only one of its loci, and perhaps not the most important one. Such stories are carried in the memory of many people, in a variety of contexts, and in a number of versions. The story may be alluded to, retold, unconsciously or intentionally revised, or used as a template for another narrative. So it is with the story of Job. In a culture formed significantly by Jewish or Christian tradition, many people will have some rough sense of the story of Job. Most will know Job primarily as a figure of extreme suffering, often as an innocent sufferer. Whether he is remembered as a figure of patient endurance or angry protest will vary. If called upon to tell the story, some could give an account or the most important characters and narrative actions – God and the accuser and the decision to test Job, Job’s loss of his possessions and the death of his children, the tension between Job’s response and the responses of his wife and friends, the confrontation between Job and God, and the restoration of Job at the end. And yet, those retelling the story might well find themselves telling a story somewhat at odds with what is preserved in the canonical version. This is partly because of the body of already existing variant versions of the Job story that compete with the canonical version in influencing cultural memory, but also partly because the story invites new adaptation to changing cultural and religious contexts. This quality of the Job story as an “oft told tale” with a variety of permutations is not simply a feature of the oral precedents to the canonical book or its later reception history; it is also present in the canonical book itself, which appears to flaunt the notion that the story was never a single one, but rather a story that 1  Mark Larrimore, The Book of Job: A Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 40–41.

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demands a variety of differing, even contradictory ways of telling the tale. One of the most important historical critical insights into the book is the recognition that the prose tale (1:1–2:13; 42:7–17) and the poetic sections (3:1–42:6) differ sharply from one another in generic features, style, characterization, and ideological perspective. Bruce Zuckerman expresses the puzzled reader’s sense of the book’s challenge to narrative coherency well: “Like oil and water, the Prose Frame Story and the Poem naturally tend to disengage from one another despite all efforts to homogenize them. The book of Job therefore appears to be at odds with itself; and however one may attempt to resolve its contradictory picture, the result never seems to be quite successful.”2 The canonical book of Job is no product of clumsy editing, however. The segue between the prose and poetry is carefully developed (2:10–13; 42:7–8), and the narrative tension created by the accuser’s prediction that Job will curse God to God’s face (1:1–11; 2:5) only finds its climax in the encounter between Job and God at the end of the poetic section (40:1–5; 42:1–6). Thus the canonical book of Job creates something analogous to an optical puzzle. When looked at one way, it appears to be two sharply different ways of telling the story of Job, abruptly juxtaposed to one another; but when looked at another way, the story becomes a complex, dramatic whole. Throughout the centuries readers have employed different strategies to address the challenges to narrative coherence posed by the book, as it brings together different approaches to the story of Job. In what follows, I will first briefly treat the evidence for a plurality of Job stories. Then I take up the ways in which the canonical book of Job simultaneously preserves and merges radically different ways of telling his story.

Job in Cultural Memory That Job is not an Israelite but rather a resident of the land of Uz (1:1) itself suggests that the biblical version is an adaptation of an older ancient Near Eastern tale. Job’s three friends, too, have non-Israelite names and places of origin (2:11). That stories were shared across national boundaries in the ancient world and adapted to new contexts is well attested, as one sees in the close relationships between the biblical flood story and the Mesopotamian versions in Atrahasis and in the Gilgamesh epic. Although no other versions of the Job tale are extant in ancient texts, a reference by the prophet Ezekiel strongly suggests the existence of a traditional tale about Job with currency among other peoples. In Ezek 14:14–20, the prophet insists that if a land is radically faithless to God, then even if “Noah, Danel, and Job” were resident in it, “they would save only 2 Bruce Zuckerman, Job the Silent: A Study in Historical Counterpoint (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 14 (order of sentences reversed).

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their own lives by their righteousness” (v. 14). They would save “neither sons nor daughters” (v. 16). What does the reference suggest about how the Job story was current among the sixth-century exiles of Judah? One may judge in part by the company in which Ezekiel places him. Noah, of course, is the hero of the Israelite version of the Mesopotamian flood story. Danel is a character known from an Ugaritic legend about a long-childless king, whose eventually granted son, Aqhat, is killed by the goddess Anat. Unfortunately, the text breaks off before the reader knows if Aqhat is restored or not. Ezekiel’s characterization of these three figures both does and does not correspond to the written versions of the stories preserved about them. Noah and Job are known for righteousness in the biblical stories, but not so Danel. Noah saves his children by his righteousness (Gen 7:7), but neither Job nor Danel saves his children in the versions of their stories known to us. While it is possible that Ezekiel is playing fast and loose with the stories of these figures, his rhetorical point would be compromised if audiences did not recognize the stories to which he alludes. Thus, it is likely that Ezekiel knows versions of the stories of these three figures that did connect their extraordinary righteousness, not only with their own survival, but also with their ability to preserve their families from danger. If so, then Ezekiel’s version of Job and the canonical version preserved in the prose tale would represent two variants. Although scholars debate the date of the composition of the biblical book of Job, the majority opinion favors a date in the early post-exilic period (probably later than Ezekiel’s reference).3 This ambitious literary work, which combines a version of the traditional tale with an exceptionally sophisticated poetic dialogue, would initially have circulated among a scribal elite. Moreover, in the largely oral cultures of antiquity, even a written text with cultural authority would have been complemented by a variety of oral versions, some derived from and some independent of the written version. This is clearly attested for Job. In the New Testament, the epistle of James reminds its recipients that “you have heard of the endurance of Job” (Jas 5:11), suggesting that they know the story from hearing rather than reading. Moreover, the allusion by James implies that the salient feature of the “heard and remembered” story was of Job as a steadfast sufferer. Job’s vehement attacks against God in the canonical book are either not known or are suppressed in the cultural memory that James represents. Even more explicit is the testimony of Bishop Theodore of Mopsuestia (late fourth – early fifth century CE). Bishop Theodore denigrated the canonical book of Job as paraded learning by a show-off author, inferior to the oral tale popularly told both by Jews and others.4 3   See, e. g., C. L.  Seow, Job 1–21: Interpretation and Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 41–45.  4  Dimitri Zaharopoulos, Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Bible: A Study of His Old Testament Exegesis (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), 45–48.

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Alongside the oral traditions about Job, there is evidence of one literary reworking of the Job story that is dependent on – but not particularly constrained by – the canonical Job in its Septuagint version. That is the Testament of Job. This text was probably composed in the first century BCE or CE in Alexandria, Egypt, by a Greek-speaking Jew.5 Here, at the end of his long life, Job gives an account of his experiences to the sons and daughters born to him after his restoration. In this retrospective account, however, the narrative situation is cast in quite different terms from what is in the canonical book. In the Testament Job’s trials arise because his opposition to idolatry has aroused the enmity of Satan. Moreover, God explains to Job in advance that Satan will attack him, but that if Job steadfastly endures these trials, he will be restored. Thus, the dramatic tension and the religious issues framed by the book of Job and the Testament are quite different. As in the book of James, this retelling is focused on the virtue of patient endurance (hypomone), and it is even possible that it is this narrative tradition rather than the prose tale of canonical Job to which James refers.6 Even though the Testament of Job was only rarely copied, certain persistent features of the iconography of Job are indicative of the persistence of the story as it was told in the Testament.7 The Christian interpretation and retellings of Job similarly suppress the anger and impiety found in the canonical book. Pope Gregory’s Moralia in Job (late sixth century CE) employed a variety of interpretive approaches to present Job as an exemplary sufferer whose words must be understood according to their interior meaning.8 A different technique for reading with tradition and against the grain of the canonical book is reflected in the medieval French play La pacience de Job. The author displaces the angry and bitter words of Job onto other characters and so simplifies the narrative tension of the canonical book and leaves Job as the traditional model of patient endurance.9 Perhaps in part because Job was esteemed as a righteous Gentile and even as a type of Christ in Christian interpretation, Rabbinic interpretation of Job displays more ambivalence. Thus some rabbinic traditions draw attention to the impiety of Job in the dialogues and cast him as “rebel, blasphemer, and heretic.”10 The medieval Jewish commentary tradition, however, though operating with high levels of philosophical sophistication, finds ways to diminish the dissonance within the book and give it a religiously and philosophically acceptable meaning.11  Russell P. Spittler, “Testament of Job,” OTP 1:830–33. Book of Job, 41.  7 Larrimore, Book of Job, 48; Spittler, “Testament of Job,” 836.  8 Seow, Job 1–21, 195.  9  Larrimore, Book of Job, 140. 10  Seow, Job 1–21, 122. 11  Seow, Job 1–21, 126–41.  5

 6 Larrimore,

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The canons of cultural acceptability, of course, change with the times. The loosening of religious orthodoxy’s dominance in Western culture and the horrific traumas of the two world wars in the twentieth century made the traditional version of Job seem inadequate, if not repulsive, to many. What had been suppressed in readings and appropriations of the canonical book suddenly stood out as the “real” Job. The repentant, reconciled, and restored Job of the prose ending became the intellectual scandal of the book.12 This hermeneutical shift is most strikingly displayed in literary retellings of the story, in particular by the handling of the God character and the ending of the story. Three post-World War II plays can illustrate. In Archibald MacLeish’s J. B. (1958),13 both the frame story and the dialogues are clever cultural translations of the ancient story to a mid-century America. In the metaframe that introduces and punctuates the play, MacLeish casts the cynical but compassionate Nickles (i. e., “Old Nick,” the Satan character) as more morally sympathetic than the pompous Zuss (i. e., “Zeus,” the God character). Even though the divine speeches and J. B.’s reply are taken verbatim from the book of Job, MacLeish evades the apparent submission by Job by suggesting that J. B.’s response is simply a means of manipulating a deity in whom he no longer has faith. Moreover, the conclusion of the play is no restoration. Rather, J. B.’s wife locates what comfort there is to be found in a post-theistic humanism where the human heart is the only source of light and warmth. In Wolfgang Borchert’s Draussen der Tor (1947; translated as The Man Outside),14 the prologue represents God (“the Old Man”) as a grieving but utterly incompetent figure who identifies himself as “the God no one believes in now.” At the end of the play Beckmann, the Job figure, a German soldier broken in body and spirit who has returned from the Russian front to a fire-bombed Hamburg, cries out, “Where is the old man who calls himself god? Why doesn’t he speak? Answer! Why are you silent? Why? Will none of you answer? Will no one answer? Will no one, nobody answer me?”15 With that cry the play ends. There is no answer from a whirlwind, because God is as impotent and defeated as Beckmann. Finally, in Elie Wiesel’s play The Trial of God (1986),16 which creatively combines elements from the biblical books of Job and Esther, the Job character Berish embodies the spirit of Job, as he is simultaneously alienated from and deeply 12  Elie Wiesel, The Town Beyond the Wall, trans. Stephen Becker (New York: Athenaeum, 1964), 52. 13  Archibald MacLeish, J. B.: A Play in Verse (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958). 14 See Wolfgang Borchert, The Man Outside: Prose Works, trans. David Porter (London: Hutchinson International Authors, 1952). 15  Borchert, Man Outside, 127. 16 Elie Wiesel, The Trial of God (as it was held on February 25, 1659, in Shamgorod): A Play in Three Acts, trans. Marion Wiesel (New York: Shocken, 1986).

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entangled with God. As he and his household are again menaced by a gathering pogrom, Berish refuses the offer of the local Catholic priest to save himself by a sham conversion and insists rather on remaining in a stance of protest that can be the only expression of his paradoxical faith – one that echoes the opening words of Job 27. “I live as a Jew, and it is as Jew that I shall die – and it is as a Jew that with my last breath, I will shout my protest to God. And because the end is near, I shall shout louder! Because the end is near, I’ll tell Him that He’s more guilty than ever.”17 In contrast to the book of Job, however, where Job’s protest eventually elicits a divine response, the last sound in Wiesel’s play is “the deafening and murderous roar” of the pogrom.18 In an inverse mirroring of the older retellings of the story of Job that suppressed the notes of anger and rebellion found in canonical Job, these twentiethcentury recastings of the story repress the notes of abasement, repentance, reconciliation, and restoration that conclude the book. When placed in the context of oral traditions and reception history, both traditional and contemporary, the canonical book of Job truly does remain, as Larrimore describes it as “one voice among others competing to define Job and the significance of his story.”19 Nevertheless, it is the central one.

Paradoxical Coherence and the Narrative Art of Canonical Job The multiple ways in which the story of Job has been told point to the tendency of these other versions to tell a relatively simplified, monologic story. Turning to the canonical book after considering other versions underscores the astonishing manner in which the canonical work refuses such simplifications. Modern scholarly discussion has generally agreed on the distinct literary elements in the book of Job, though no agreement exists as to how they came to be present in the book. Although one can never know how the present book of Job actually came together, what matters is the recognition of the different styles and genres and how they construct a distinctive way of presenting the story. The prose tale is readily identified as the story that runs from 1:1 to 2:13 and then resumes in 42:7–17. It is a didactic narrative20 including a beginning with two complete episodes (1:1–22; 2:1–10) and a conclusion (42:7–17). To many readers the middle seems to be missing, particularly the exchange between Job and his friends and the prose tale’s version of God’s appearance and reply to  Wiesel, Trial of God, 156.  Wiesel, Trial of God, 161. 19  Wiesel, Trial of God, 148. 20  Hans-Peter Müller, “Die weisheitliche Lehrerzählung im Alten Testament und seiner Umwelt,” WO 9 (1977): 77; Carol A. Newsom, The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 41–51. 17 18

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Job (2:11–13; missing episode; 42:7–10). Didactic tales characteristically feature predictable characters and plots, strong narratorial voices, and sufficient redundancy so that a reader is carefully guided through the story.21 Thus it is not difficult to project, at least in a schematic fashion, what would have happened in the missing middle of the prose tale. The first two episodes establish Job as a figure of exemplary righteousness (1:1, 8; 2:3). In keeping with the pattern of the Israelite wisdom didactic narratives, Job’s virtues will be tested and reaffirmed.22 Thus the accuser’s challenge that Job’s righteousness is implicitly conditional upon his continuing to receive God’s blessing (1:9–11; 2:4–5) sets up the narrative necessity of a test of Job’s virtue, which follows in two episodes, as his possessions, children, and health are taken away (1:13–19; 2:7–8). Job’s response to the calamity confirms his continuing unconditional righteousness (1:20–22; 2:10). Since traditional stories often test the hero through three trials, the appearance of Job’s friends on the scene (2:10–13) intimates that they will be the means of his third trial. Indeed, the words of Job’s wife in urging Job to “curse God” (2:9) suggests that the friends will play a similar role, prompting Job to rebuke and correct them, as he did his wife. With the three tests successfully completed, the story could then conclude with God’s appearance and his rebuke of the friends and approbation of Job (42:7–10), and the restoration of the hero (42:11–17). My claim is not that such a missing episode actually existed and was cut out, but only that the expectations set up by the didactic tale make it easy for a reader to project what might have come next. Whether or not this is precisely the version of the Job story that was known by James and Theodore of Mopsuestia, it fits with the traditional cultural memory of Job as an exemplary sufferer who steadfastly endures and who models a type of piety to be emulated. Though the story’s stance has not been highly regarded in the disillusioned world of modern criticism, its moral imagination is worthy of serious engagement.23 Nevertheless, there are certain indications that the version of the prose tale in the canonical book of Job may also embody a certain ironic distance from its own project. It is almost too perfect a representation of the wisdom didactic tale not to be self-conscious about its own performance (“the briefest and most precise example”24). Its highly repetitive style and symmetrical and balanced scenes have often been likened to naive folktale style but in fact are better characterized as faux-naive.25 21  Susan Rubin Suleiman, Authoritarian Fictions: The Ideological Novel as a Literary Genre (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). 22 Newsom, Book of Job, 49–51. 23  Newsom, Book of Job, 51–65. 24 Müller, “Die weisheitliche Lehrerzählung,” 77. 25  David J. A. Clines, “False Naivety in the Prologue to Job,” HAR 9 (1985): 127–36.

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More telling than the stylistic exaggerations, however, are the ethical discomforts that the tale provokes if one compares it with other wisdom didactic tales. Bad things happen to the heroes in those tales, of course. Joseph is imprisoned; Tobit is blinded; Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are thrown into a fiery furnace; and Daniel spends the night with hungry lions. Nevertheless, what happens to Job is excessive in comparison with all other tales of its type. In the other wisdom didactic tales, nobody close to the hero dies, as Job’s children die. Other fates can be reversed and the characters made whole in the happy ending that concludes the wisdom didactic tale. But Job’s dead children remain dead, even though ten more are born to him. Even in the case of the testing of Abraham, the test is arranged in such a manner that Isaac need not actually die (Gen 22:12). Moreover, no hero in a wisdom didactic tale has to undergo a second endangerment in the way that Job does after demonstrating his virtue. The second area of ethical discomfort arises from God’s role. While the legitimacy of the divine testing of faithful followers is accepted as appropriate, as the case of Abraham demonstrates, the depiction of God verbally jousting with the accuser over their rival views of Job’s motivations is disturbing. More pointedly, the vividness and relentlessness of Job’s destruction, with God’s explicit consent, has no parallel in other narratives, where those who endanger the heroes are humans with bad motivations (Gen 37:28; 39:17–18; Dan 3:15; 6:5) or accidents of fate (Tob 2:10). God’s role, by contrast, is in protecting the heroes (Dan 3:28; 6:22; Tob 3:16–17). Even if some readers, ancient or modern, are disquieted by aspects of the prose story, the tale itself makes no place to explore the problematic aspects of the relationships it has set up among the characters. Indeed, it cannot. As a wisdom didactic story, it has a genius for modeling virtue tested and affirmed. But it lacks the capacity to self-reflexively examine the assumptions on which it is based. If one wishes to do that, then another way of telling the story is needed. That, of course, is precisely what the author of the canonical book of Job did. The figure of the exemplary or emblematic sufferer was one that attracted considerable attention in the ancient Near East, most particularly in Mesopotamian literature. A variety of poetic genres represented such a sufferer, though most of the compositions more closely resemble biblical thanksgiving psalms than the book of Job (e. g., Ludlul Bēl Nēmeqi, the Sumerian “Man and His God,” and the Akkadian “Dialogue between a Man and His God”).26 The exception is the Babylonian Theodicy, a wisdom dialogue in which a sufferer and his friend take turns debating the causes and cures of the sufferer’s misfortune and the issue of a moral world order. In both texts the sufferer’s experience leads him to question divine justice and the moral order of the world. The friend’s role is to reiterate the traditional advice for dealing with inexplicable suffering (i. e., to pray 26

 See Newsom, Book of Job, 73–79.

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for mercy, to wait patiently for a reversal of fortune, and to admit that divine purposes are unknown and unknowable). The general similarities between Job 3–27 and the Babylonian Theodicy are striking enough, but even small details, such as the opening address to the other speaker with complimentary or deprecatory evaluations of his wisdom, strongly suggest that the two compositions are self-conscious instantiations of a genre with well-defined characteristics. The Babylonian Theodicy and the other ancient Near Eastern examples of the wisdom dialogue are not narrative genres. Often, the characters are not even given names. No background to the encounter is supplied, and no real resolution occurs. Thus, the genius of the wisdom dialogue is of a very different order than that of the didactic wisdom tale. It serves not to provide a model to be emulated but a way of framing reality in terms of an argument that crystallizes points of contradiction. As Buccellati describes it, “[T]he dialog, pure and simple, emphasizes the unfolding of a thought process viewed dynamically in its becoming.” It “reflect[s] the spirit of critical inquisitiveness.”27 The wisdom dialogue in Job does, however, have a dramatic momentum that differs from other examples of the genre. Both the nature of the interaction between Job and his friends and Job’s own developing views show change across the three cycles of the dialogue. In the first set of exchanges the friends toss out a range of traditional theodicies and suggest actions that Job can take to induce God to change his situation.28 Job himself begins in such a state of traumatized despair that his only desire is for death (ch. 3). His mounting anger, however, begins to push him to a kind of angry play, as he parodies the friends’ words and traditional hymns and prayers. Through his mockery of Eliphaz’s words in 4:17 Job stumbles upon the notion of a trial with God (9:2–4), a mode of relating to God that offers a true alternative to the humble prayer that tradition recommended (13:13–27; 16:18–21; 19:23–27; 23:3–7). Job’s parodic attack in ch. 12 on the notion of a divinely directed world order appears to be the trigger for the friends’ shift in the second cycle to a defense of the idea of the dire fate of the wicked (chs. 15, 18, 20). Job largely ignores them until his final speech in ch. 21, which shockingly depicts the triumph of the wicked, and thus the absence of moral order in the world. That speech provokes Eliphaz’s violent denunciation of Job as being himself one of the wicked (22:1–20), initiating the third cycle. As commentators have long noted, the third cycle degenerates into disorder and incoherence. Rather than attempt to repair some imaginary scribal error, however, scholars should recognize that wisdom 27 Giorgio

43.

Buccellati, “Wisdom and Not: The Case of Mesopotamia,” JAOS 101 (1981): 39,

28  See Carol A. Newsom, “The Consolations of God: Assessing Job’s Friends across a Cultural Abyss,” in Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of David J. A.  Clines, eds. J. Cheryl Exum and H. G. M. Williamson (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), 347–58.

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dialogues tend to end with irresolution and even paradox (cf. the Babylonian Theodicy and the Dialogue of Pessimism). Recasting the Job story as a debate about the nature and origin of human suffering, the disposition of God, and the moral coherency of the world (or lack thereof) is a bold way of challenging the meaning and significance of the traditional tale of Job. The wisdom dialogue is by nature a skeptical genre that eschews any meaningful resolution. Its radical openness is the opposite of the closed world of the prose story. Truly, the wisdom dialogue and the wisdomdidactic tale are oil and water, as Zuckerman describes them.29 But the author of canonical Job has not simply composed two different ways of telling the Job story on separate scrolls, as it were. He has inserted the one into the midst of the other. Thus he must create a bridge from the irresolution of the wisdom dialogue to the emphatic closure of the prose tale. He does this by adding other elements. The poem on wisdom in ch. 28 delivers a poetic judgment on the futility of the wisdom dialogue itself as a means for grasping the coherency that undergirds the cosmos. Thus it clears the way for the third major section of the book, the final speeches of Job and God.30 Both Job’s final speech and God’s speech from the whirlwind are rhetorical masterpieces. Job’s speech in chs. 29–31 is an extraordinary act of self-assertion. Job delineates the familiar moral world of ancient Near Eastern culture and defines his place in it. His act of self-clearance in ch. 31 not only persuasively justifies himself but also constructs a character for God (vv. 2–4, 6, 13–15, 23, 28, 35–37), who cannot but acknowledge Job’s righteousness and the injustice of his treatment. Yet, as readers know, the shock of the divine speeches (chs. 38–41) is that they construct a God who is utterly alien to Job’s image of God and a world whose vastness and strangeness seems to have little in common with Job’s parochial village. It is a world of beauty and terror, order and violence – but not, it appears, a world based on principles of justice. The divine speeches differ as radically from the rationalism of the wisdom dialogue as they do from the narratively embodied virtues of the prose tale. Yet as a rhetoric of the sublime they provide release from the blockage that had threatened to leave the story stranded, suspended in mid-arc.31 Job’s enigmatic and grammatically ambiguous response in 42:2–6 clearly enacts some “subsidence” on his part, but it does not disclose just what he has now grasped through the seeing of his eyes (v. 5). Nevertheless, Job’s response, when he does face God, is clearly not a cursing (1:11; 2:5), and so the prose story may resume its account of the end of Job’s testing and his restoration.  Zuckerman, Job the Silent, 14.  Since I take the Elihu speeches to be a later addition to the composition by a frustrated reader, I will not deal with them here. See Newsom, Book of Job, 200–33. 31  Newsom, Book of Job, 252–56; Tod Linafelt, “The Wizard of Uz: Job, Dorothy, and the Limits of the Sublime,” BibInt 14 (2006): 94–109. 29 30

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Had the author of the canonical book of Job wished to write a seamlessly coherent literary version of the Job story, he undoubtedly could have done so. Instead, he has produced a work that requires the reader to negotiate both its intense centrifugal and centripetal forces in a manner that makes simple coherence not only impossible but undesirable. There is no doubt that in some sense the book is a coherent whole. One can, by emphasizing its centripetal forces, read it as a profound deepening of the Job story that achieves its power through its complex characterization of Job. The bitter eruption from Job in ch. 3 at the end of seven days and nights of silence, so utterly different from his previous words, suggests an inner transformation that makes him into character of exceptional potential. Both the emotional scope of Job’s words in the chapters that follow and his radical exploration of notions that were literally unthinkable apart from his furious engagement in the dialogue transform him from a traumatized figure into a dangerous one. After the dialogue exhausts itself, Job reinscribes himself in chs. 29–31 as a figure of dignified nobility. Although the reader is in some sense privy to Job’s encounter with the transcendent sublimity of the divine that forms the climax of the book, Job’s own appropriation of the divine words in an interior dialogue (42:2–6) intimates a character profoundly transformed by his encounter – yet in ways that remain just beyond the reader’s grasp. In this manner one might read the canonical book of Job as one among many other ways of telling the Job story – a virtuoso version, perhaps, but still one version to be accepted or rejected, praised or condemned. Yet if one emphasizes the centrifugal forces, then the book is not simply one among other ways of telling the story but rather a polyphonic composition that simultaneously enacts at least three utterly different ways of rendering the Job story, each one of which implicitly questions the others. Elsewhere, I have suggested how one might grasp the polyphonic unity of such a composition by imagining staging it as a piece of avant garde theater, with different casts of characters enacting the different parts of the book, yet all remaining visible to the audience throughout the play, even if the voices of the actors are sometimes muted so that their continuation of their version of the Job story is mimed and not heard.32 Reading the book of Job in this fashion, one recognizes both the author’s genius and his humility. He cannot displace other versions of Job by composing his own. But he takes that fact seriously and makes it the central aesthetic trope of his composition. His own work, by presenting a plurality of Job stories, not only takes its place among others but becomes a continuing source for the generation of new ways of telling the Job story.

32

 Newsom, Book of Job, 259–60.

15. Dramaturgy and the Book of Job The association of Job with drama is such a commonplace in modern cultural understanding that it comes as a surprise to realize that it is a comparatively recent hermeneutical perspective. To be sure, the earliest reference to Job as influenced by Greek tragedy comes from Bishop Theodore of Mopsuestia in the fifth century. According to Bishop Theodore the author of the Book of Job was “a learned Hebrew who was especially well versed in the science of the Greeks [and who] mingled the story [of Job] with exquisite utterances borrowed from the poets.”1 But only in one of the excerpts from Theodore’s commentary on Job there is a brief reference to “tragedies” as the source of his inspiration, so we do not know more specifically what Theodore intended by this comparison between Job and Greek tragedy.2 What is more striking is the splendid isolation of Bishop Theodore’s comparison of Job and tragic drama in patristic and medieval interpretation of Job. With respect to genre it was not tragedy to which the patristic interpreters compared Job but epic, both because of its subject matter (Job as spiritual warrior engaged with Satan in “a heroic combat of cosmic significance”) and because it was thought to be written in hexameter verse.3 Whence, then, comes the association of Job with drama? One might assume that it derives from the popular tradition of medieval mystery plays. Surprisingly, however, Job is conspicuous by its absence from the major cycles of mystery plays. The most thorough investigation, that of Barbara Lewalski, summarizes the situation as follows: “From the period before 1650 we have record of only one neo-Latin Job play, three in English (all lost), and a very few in French, German, and Italian; by comparison there are in Latin alone a dozen plays on the subject of Joseph.”4

1  Bishop Theodore’s position is preserved in Isho’dad of Merv, a ninth century Nestorian author. Cited in: Dimitri Zaharopoulos, Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Bible: A Study of His Old Testament Exegesis (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), 47. For the Syriac text see J. M. Vosté, “L’œuvre exégétique de Théodore de Mopsueste au IIe concile de Constantinople,” RB 38 (1929): 382–95, 542–54. 2  Jacques Paul Migne, Vol. 66 of Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Graeca (Paris: Migne, 1864), 698. 3  Barbara K. Lewalski, Milton’s Brief Epic: The Genre, Meaning and Art of Paradise Regained (Providence: Brown University Press, 1966), 17, 22. According to Lewalski, Depanius Floras, Isidore of Seville, and the Venerable Bede all classify Job as heroic epic. 4  Lewalski, Milton’s Brief Epic, 28.

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The hermeneutical groundwork for the interpretation of Job as drama is apparently laid by early Protestant theological interpretation of Job, coupled with the new humanistic education. Reformation biblical commentators were fascinated with the story of Job as exemplifying the moral and spiritual struggle of the individual soul and so were drawn to its inherent dramatic content.5 Even so, relatively few of the Protestant exegetes explicitly compare Job to drama in generic terms. The most striking instance occurs in the opening pages of Theodore de Beza’s commentary on Job, in which he explicitly says that Job might be called a tragedy “both for the matter (than which nothing can be thought or imagined more grave and weightie), and also for the exceeding worthinesse of the persons, that here talke and reason together.”6 One can see the influence of Aristotle on Beza’s criteria. He hesitates, however, saying that one might deem it a tragedy “if it were not that it is shut up with a joyfull and wished ende.”7 Nevertheless, he proceeds to give an explicit analysis of the book as a drama in five acts, specifying the chapters and verses that belong to the various scenes within each of the five acts.8 Apart from Beza, several other Reformation writers describe Job as a tragedy.9 In a more popular vein Hans Sachs, the Meistersinger of Nürnberg, did take Job as the subject for one of his plays in 1547, though he entitles it a comedy and makes much of the reconciliations among the characters at the end of the work.10 Sachs’ play, however, appears to have been one of very, very few. By contrast, the many poetic treatments of Job at the time show the continuing dominance of the interpretation of Job as epic, and it is as epic that Job is taken by John Milton as the model for Paradise Regained.11 Something happens to change the picture between 1650 and 1750, although I have not yet been able to document the missing links. My strong suspicion is that the crucial development is the growing influence of Neoclassical aesthetics. In any event, by the eighteenth century the comparison between Job and classical Greek drama had become a critical commonplace. In his second lecture on Job, Bishop Robert Lowth indicates the state of opinion. His intent to inquire into the nature of the poem of Job, he says, “will possibly appear to some Milton’s Brief Epic, 23. de Beza, Job Expounded, trans. Abraham Kitson (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1589), no pagination.  7 Beza, Job Expounded.  8  His analysis is as follows: Proem and Act 1, Scene 1 (1:1–2:9); Act 1, Scene 2 (2:10); Act 2, Proem (2:11–13); Act 2, Scene 1 (3:1–26); Act 2, Scene 2 (4:1–7:22); Act 2, Scene 3 (8:1–10:22); Act 2, Scene 4 (11:1–14:22); Act 3, Scene 1 (15:1–17:16); Act 3, Scene 2 (18:1–19:29); Act 3, Scene 3 (20:1–21:34); Act 3, Scene 4 (22:1–24:25); Act 3, Scene 5 (25:1–31:40); Act 4 (32:1– 37:24); Act 5 (38:1–42:9); Epilogue (42:10–17).  9  These include Aquace D’Albiac, Joannes Oecolampadius, Mercerus and Joannes Brentius. See Lewalski, Milton’s Brief Epic, 20. 10  Hans Sachs, “Ein comedi, mit neunzehen personen, der Hiob, und hat 5 actus,” in Hans Sachs, ed. Adelbert von Keller (Hildesheim: G. Olms Verlagsbuchhandllung, 1964), 6:29–55. 11  Lewalski, Milton’s Brief Epic, 28–36.  5 Lewalski,

 6 Theodore

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a superfluous and idle undertaking, as the point seems long since to have been finally determined, the majority of the critics having decidedly adjudged it to belong to the dramatic class.”12 Nor, says Lowth, do they merely mean that it is largely a dialogue. Rather, “they speak of the regular order and conduct of the piece, and of the dramatic catastrophe; they assert, that the interposition of the Deity is a necessary part of the machinery of the fable; they even enumerate the acts and scenes, and use the very same language in all respects, as if they spoke of a Greek Tragedy.”13 Lowth spends the rest of the essay strenuously rebutting the comparison between Job and Greek drama. His main argument is that, according to Aristotle, action, that is, fable or plot, is central to the composition of a tragedy. In contrast, Lowth argues, “the Poem of Job contains no plot or action whatever, not even of the most simple kind; it uniformly exhibits one constant state of things, not the smallest change of fortune taking place from the beginning to the end.”14 One might object that the prologue and epilogue supply just such action and plot, but Lowth denies that these are part of the poem proper, considering them to be “substituted merely in the place of an argument or comment, for the purpose of explaining the rest.”15 Lowth anticipates yet another objection. Perhaps one might claim that “this dispute [with the friends] itself possesses in some degree the form or appearance of an action.”16 Not so, says Lowth, and distinguishes the function of the dialogue in Job from plays like Oedipus at Colonus, in which there is more talk than action. I am not fully persuaded by Lowth’s distinction. What is curious, however, is why he argues with such strenuousness. What is at stake for him in his refutation of what was then the dominant interpretation of Job as tragic drama? The answer appears toward the end of the lecture. “But though I have urged thus much against its claim to that title [of tragedy], let it not be understood that I wish to derogate from its merits. That censure will rather apply to those who, by criticizing it according to foreign and improper rules, would make that composition appear lame and imperfect.”17 Lowth’s lecture on Job constitutes a significant moment in the challenge to Neoclassical genre theory. Both in Renaissance and Neoclassical poetics the Aristotelian division of genres (epic, lyric, and drama) was central. Moreover, genres were assumed to be “static, universal categories whose character did not 12 Robert Lowth, Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews Translated from the Latin of the Right Rev. Robert Lowth, trans. G. Gregory (London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1787), 386–87. 13  Lowth, Lectures, 388–89. As representative of this view Lowth cites Calmet, Hare, and Carpzovii. 14 Lowth, Lectures, 393. 15  Lowth, Lectures, 388. 16  Lowth, Lectures, 398. 17  Lowth, Lectures, 403.

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alter across time.”18 Hence to Lowth’s opponents it would have seemed obvious that Job must be one of the three, and the only serious question would have been whether Job was an epic or a drama. Since it does not entirely fit the Aristotelian criteria for drama, then it would appear as a flawed drama. Even though Lowth was strongly embedded in the Neoclassical tradition himself, here he breaks with its assumptions and anticipates the historical approach to genre that becomes the hallmark of Romantic genre theory. The poem of Job will be misunderstood and misevaluated if it is judged against norms that in fact are alien to it. Indeed, Lowth is representative also of an emerging “Orientalism,” which saw in Hebrew poetry a more primitive, experientially immediate, and sublime literature derived from nature alone,19 and it is as an example of this type of literature that it must be read and judged. Lowth’s arguments essentially won the day. Certainly in nineteenth and early twentieth century critical literature, only Heinrich Ewald championed the analysis of Job as possessing “the plan and development of a true drama,” which, he argued in agreement with Neoclassical genre theory, “is involved in the nature of the thing itself ” and so not due to Greek influence on Job.20 But as biblical scholarship turned more self-consciously to historical-critical categories and sought to trace patterns of historical influence, the impulse to compare Job with Greek drama, even in formal terms, receded. The discovery of various Mesopotamian and Egyptian dialogue texts provided more persuasive parallels for the genre of the Joban dialogue. The only strenuous attempt to argue that Job was intentionally composed as a tragic drama derived from Greek models was made, not by a biblical scholar or a classicist but by a learned amateur, Horace Meyer Kallen, who in 1918 published The Book of Job as a Greek Tragedy.21 Kallen was a prominent academic, a professor of social philosophy at the New School for Social Research, an early leader of the Society for the Social Scientific Study of Religion, as well as a theorist of cultural pluralism. Persuaded of a distinct affinity between the Book of Job and the tragedies of Euripides – parallels that he lays out in considerable detail – he puzzled over how the author of Job might have become acquainted with the 18  David Duff, “Introduction,” in Modern Genre Theory, ed. David Duff (Harlow, Essex: Longman, 2000), 4. 19 For a discussion of Lowth and Orientalism see Brian Hepworth, Robert Lowth (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1978), 77–98. 20  Heinrich Ewald, Commentary on the Book of Job, trans. J. Frederick Smith (London: Williams and Norgate, 1882), 66–67. 21 Horace Meyer Kallen, The Book of Job as a Greek Tragedy: Restored with an Introductory Essay on the Original Form and Philosophic Meaning of Job, with an introduction by George Foot Moore (New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1918). Kallen was anticipated to a degree by the biblical scholar Nathaniel Schmidt, The Messages of the Poets: The Books of Job and Canticles and Some Minor Poems in the Old Testament. With Introductions, Metrical Translations, and Paraphrases (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1911), 87–89, who considers whether there might be indirect dependence of Job upon Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound.

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work of Euripides. Musing over several possible modes of cultural transmission, he invokes the following scenario: Imagine our author on a visit to Egypt or the Syrian coast, where Greeks live and Persians rule, a passionate humanist among the wise, seeing the wonders of the cities under the guidance of one of his brethren from the Jewish community, and perhaps himself only just enough acquainted with the Greek to catch the drift of what he hears, to retain its generic essence, but to miss the ardent and varied life of it, much as might an American in France, ill-acquainted with French. Imagine him present, alone or with his guide, during one of the great festivals at a performance of Bacchae or Orestes or Bellerophontes or any other of the favorite dramas of the period. What would he see, and hear, and what, under such circumstances, would most stand out in his uncloyed mind?22

Despite the introductory essay by George Foot Moore, which cautiously but encouragingly described Kallen’s book as “a serious hypothesis which invites serious consideration from Biblical scholars,”23 reviewers largely rejected the ingenious arguments and speculations of Kallen, although the classicist Moses Hadas did give Kallen’s thesis a cautious but appreciative discussion in his study of Hellenistic cultural diffusion.24 While the category of tragedy has continued to play a role in the interpretation of Job (as one finds in the writings of Paul Ricoeur,25 Harold Fisch,26 and Lee Humhreys27), those discussions are more concerned with whether Job can be interpreted in relation to a “tragic vision” than a comparison to the genre of tragic drama. William Whedbee does invoke classical dramatic form when he argues for reading Job as comedy28 (unconsciously echoing the intuitions of Hans Sachs), but that interpretation has won few adherents. This, in brief, is the story of the rise and fall of the attempt to interpret the genre of Job as drama. The hypothesis appears to have been examined and found to be wanting. But is it that simple? Biblical scholars may have turned away from the comparison between Job and drama as an explanation for the author’s intention in composing the book, but the comparison is frequently invoked for heuristic and pedagogical purposes. Indeed, with a more pragmatic and less Book of Job as a Greek Tragedy, 24. Foot Moore, introduction to The Book of Job as a Greek Tragedy: Restored with an Introductory Essay on the Original Form and Philosophic Meaning of Job, by Horace Meyer Kallen (New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1918), xii. 24  Moses Hadas, Hellenistic Culture: Fusion and Diffusion (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 133–40. 25  Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 310–26. 26  Harold Fisch, Poetry with a Purpose: Biblical Poetics and Interpretation (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988), 26–42. 27  W. Lee Humphreys, The Tragic Vision and the Hebrew Tradition, OBT 18 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 94–123. 28  J. William Whedbee, “The Comedy of Job,” Semeia 7 (1977): 1–39. See also Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), 196–97. 22 Kallen,

23 George

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historicist understanding of genre than that which was current in Romantic literary theory, scholars have even begun to revive the notion that Job is best understood by means of the genre of drama, as a recent article by Françoise Mies has argued.29 This suggestion echoes what poets and playwrights have long implied through their own creative work, that Job both is drama and is a source for drama. So before one forecloses the discussion about the relation between Job and drama, it is important to consider what dramatists have understood about the Book of Job and whether their insights may be significant not only for the history of the reception of the book but perhaps also as a means to reinvigorate our own critical reflections on genre, hermeneutics, and the Book of Job. Poets and dramatists have been transposing the Book of Job into theater for over 600 years, if one begins with the fifteenth century French mystery play, The Patience of Job,30 although the bulk of the works have appeared in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While it is difficult if not impossible to assemble a comprehensive bibliography of such efforts, even partial results leave one stunned at the number, range, and ideological difference of the efforts. Leaving aside musical works, librettos, poems, and so forth, and concentrating strictly on dramatic and theatrical works, one can still identify dozens upon dozens of works. To be sure, most of these are obscure works that richly deserve their obscurity. But a brief listing of just some will give an indication of the scope and variety of those who have rendered Job dramatically. One might include Goethe’s Faust as the most distinguished example, although Goethe only adapts the conversation between God and the Adversary for his Prologue in Heaven. More direct dramatic renderings of Job include those of a nineteenth century French socialist,31 a German expressionist painter and poet,32 at least two German National Socialists,33 German anti-Nazis,34 a Polish seminarian by the name of Karol Wojtyla,35 a 29  Françoise Mies, “Le genre littéraire du livre de Job,” RB 110 (2003): 336–69. See also Pauline Shelton, “Making a Drama out of a Crisis? A Consideration of the Book of Job as a Drama,” JSOT 83 (1999): 69–82. 30  Albert Meiller, ed., La Pacience de Job, Mystère Anonyme du XVe Siècle (ms. fr. 1774) (Paris: Klincksieck, 1971). 31  Pierre Leroux, Job, Drame en Cinq Actes, Avec Prologue et Epilogue, par le Prophète Isaie, Retrouvé, Rétabli dans son Intégrité, et Traduit Littéralement sur le Texte Hébreu (Paris: E. Dentu, 1866). 32  Oskar Kokoschka, “Job,” trans. Walter H. Sokel and Jacqueline Sokel, in Anthology of German Expressionist Drama: A Prelude to the Absurd, ed. Walter H. Sokel (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963), 158–71. 33  Kurt Eggers, Das Spiel von Job dem Deutschen. Ein Mysterium (Berlin: Volkschaft-Verlag für Buch, Bühne und Film, 1933), and Theodor Haerten, Die Hochzeit von Dobesti. Ein Drama (Berlin: Scholtze, 1935). 34  E. Wiechert, Das Spiel vom Deutschen Bettelmann (München: Albert Langen-Georg Müller Verlag, 1934 [c. 1933]). 35  Karol Wojtyla, The Collected Plays and Writings on the Theater, trans. Boleslaw Taborski (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987), 19–74.

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variety of German, British, and American post-war writers,36 many with an existentialist bent, a Lebanese Christian mystic,37 a post-Holocaust Jew,38 and a left-wing Israeli,39 not to mention the many Jewish and Christian synagogue and church basement dramatic adaptations of the Book of Job for the edification of young people. The Everyman Players of Kentucky, directed by Orlin Corey, staged his adaptation of the Book of Job in repertoire from 1957–1980, performing off-Broadway for two seasons, at the Brussels World fair, and conducting five widely acclaimed international tours.40 The fashion of adapting Job for the stage was so well known during the early twentieth century that it became the leading trope in a Polish comedy translated by the novelist Joseph Conrad and performed to great success in London in 1931 as The Book of Job: A Satirical Comedy.41 In this play one of the main characters is a police official who has published a book entitled, The Book of Job, a Poetic Drama. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. In order to make some sense of this wildly varied literature, it is important to distinguish those Job dramas that simply adapt the text of the Book of Job itself from those in which the playwright makes freer use of the form, characters, and ideas of the book. One might think that there is little to say about the first category, since the adaptation of the actual text of Job for performance would not appear to offer scope for much interpretive activity, but that is not necessarily the case. Whenever a playwright, director, or producer considers the Book of Job as a potential text for a staged drama, he or she must do basic dramaturgical work. In adapting a non-theatrical text into a script, a dramaturg has to read and interpret the material with an eye to which features in it could be translated to the stage and rendered as drama. It is not difficult to see what has attracted dramaturgs to the Book of Job. The preponderance of direct dialogue is the most obvious. But there are other significant features. The prologue in heaven, which sets up action on earth that will be considered from a heavenly perspective, gives 36  Most notably, Archibald MacLeish, J. B.: A Play in Verse (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958); I. A. Richards, “The Book of Job,” in Internal Colloquies: Poems and Plays of I. A. Richards (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), 301–25; Robert Frost, “A Mask of Reason,” in The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems, ed. Edward Connery Lathem (New York: Henry Holt, 1979), 471–90. 37  Mikail Nu’aymah, Ayyub: Masrahiyah fi arba’at fusul (Job, A Play in Four Acts) (Beirut: Dar Ṣadir, 1967). 38  Elie Wiesel, Le procès de Shamgorod tel qu’il se déroula le 25 février 1649: pièce en trois actes (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1979); The Trial of God (as it was held on February 25,1649, in Shamgorod). A Play in Three Acts, trans. Marion Wiesel (New York: Shocken, 1986). 39  Hanoch Levin, Yissure ’iyyob we-’akherim (Tel Aviv: ha-Kibuts he-Me’uḥad, 1988). Translated into English by Barbara Harshav as “The Sorrows of Job,” in Modern Israeli Drama in Translation, ed. Michael Taub (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1993), 1–44. 40  Orlin Corey, The Book of Job: Arranged for Stage (Anchorage, KY: Children’s Theatre Press, 1960). 41  Bruno Winawer, The Book of Job. A Satirical Comedy, trans. Joseph Conrad (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1931).

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God and the Adversary something like the function of an audience within the book. Thus one has that beloved dramatic trope of the play within a play. Moreover, the appearance of God speaking from the whirlwind toward the end of the book evokes the deus ex machina of classical drama (one of the features Kallen and Hadas consider so strikingly evocative of Euripidean drama). The primary difficulty in adapting Job to the stage is, as Bishop Lowth implied, the fact that talk seems to dominate to the exclusion of action in the long dialogues. If a dramaturg is to successfully adapt the Book of Job, she must discern the dramatic action, not only in the prologue and epilogue, but also in the dialogues. Unfortunately, most of the persons who have adapted the text of Job for the stage have not left dramaturgical notes. But there is one exception. In the early 1970s the Union of American Hebrew Congregations established a religious theater series that was designed to help adults and young adults of all faiths adapt and perform plays based on biblical texts. Not surprisingly, the first (and so far as I have been able to determine, the only) publication in this series was Michael Gelber’s Job Stands Up: The Biblical Text of the Book of Job Arranged for the Theater.42 The book includes the adapted text of Job (along with musical scores and lyrics). The first fifty pages of the book, however, contain short dramaturgical notes. As a dramaturg, Gelber reads the book looking for the kind of action or conflict that can be represented as drama. As he observes, “In the theater, a stage director’s function is to translate the plot into clear, explicit, producible action.”43 Through close reading of the text Gelber makes the case that the three cycles of speeches (contra Lowth) do in fact represent dramatic shifts in the engagement between Job and his friends. Gelber notes, for instance, the way in which Eliphaz’s speeches set the tone for the other two friends in each cycle and the nearly conspiratorial nature of their coordination. This observation causes Gelber to reflect on other intertexts that might provide the key to the “producible action” present in the Book of Job. In Gelber’s opinion it is the category of the inquisition that ties all of these dramatic situations together and suggests that the friends represent a “mentality … not unlike that of the Inquisitors in Spain, the witch hunters in Salem, Massachusetts, the judges at the trials for espionage in the U. S. S. R., the law courts in Hitler’s Germany and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s hearings in the United States, for all inquisitors aim to squeeze out a confession from the accused.”44 Gelber’s discussion of Job aptly illustrate the specific focus of dramaturgical hermeneutics. It continually asks wherein lies the action, and to what other actions more familiar to the audience may it 42  S. Michael Gelber, Job Stands Up. The Biblical Text of the Book of Job Arranged for the Theater (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1975). Gelber was a prominent Jewish educator and reformer of rabbinic training in America. Although clearly a talented dramaturg, I have been unable to discover what theatrical training or experience he may have had. 43  Gelber, Job Stands Up, 9. 44  Gelber, Job Stands Up, 9.

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be compared? While somewhat different from the hermeneutical perspective typically adopted by biblical scholars, these dramaturgical questions could be of significant value in biblical interpretation more broadly. If the work of dramaturgs who adapt the Book of Job for the stage is recognizable to biblical scholars as a kind of interpretation, that is not necessarily the case with playwrights who borrow more freely from the Joban text. Indeed, they have engaged Job in so many different ways and for so many different cultural contexts that it is impossible to make any meaningful generalizations about them. But one can ask how specific playwrights read the Book of Job. What was it that arrested their attention, that they saw as some “unfinished business” in the text that provided the source for their own creation of dramatic action? By looking over their shoulders, as it were, one realizes that many of the aspects of the Book of Job that generate new dramas are indeed aspects of the book that are also exegetical and hermeneutical cruxes for the biblical scholar. Of all the various appropriations of Job for drama that I alluded to above, there are two distinctive clusters. One is the set of German Job plays written between 1933 and 1953. The other is the set of post-World War II plays composed in America. The German plays tend to focus on the nature of Job’s character and suffering. With one exception they show very little interest in exploring a problematic relationship between Job and God. The American plays, by contrast, show less interest in the sufferings of Job and are much more concerned with the problematic nature of God’s role in things and the relationship between God and humankind. The German plays can be divided into pre-war and post-war groups. Particularly interesting for their symmetry and contrast are two written within months of each other in which Job serves as an allegorical figure for the German nation. One was written by Kurt Eggers, a National Socialist writer who became an important figure in the SS,45 and the other by Ernst Wiechert, who was an outspoken anti-Nazi writer.46 Both adapt features of the medieval mystery play to their representations of Job. Both call their figures “Job the German” or “Job’s German son.” For both the suffering produced by World War I and its aftermath

45  Eggers (1905–1943) worked various jobs and studied philosophy and theology before discovering his talent for writing. The passionate nationalism of his writings quickly brought him into National Socialist circles. He became one of Nazism’s leading authors and public relations agents, writing numerous plays, musicals, folk stories and military songs to satisfy the Third Reich’s penchant for festivals and ceremonies. 46 Wiechert (1887–1950), the son of a forester, was a schoolteacher in Königsberg. He moved to Berlin in 1930 and became a bestselling author. His best-known work was his 1932 novel, Die Magd des Jürgen Doskocil. Over the next few years he appealed to students in Munich to think critically about the ideology of the ascendant National Socialist party, thereby earning himself a name as a resistance writer. He was eventually sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he spent four months, an experience that eventuated in his book Der Totenwald.

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provided the point of identification of Germany with Job. Both are of rather poor literary quality. Wiechert’s play, Das Spiel vom Deutschen Bettelmann,47 was a radio play broadcast on New Year’s eve of 1932. The play intentionally looked back to the suffering sustained by the German people during and after World War I and forward to what Wiechert hoped would be a material and spiritual resurrection of the nation. Wiechert does not deeply engage the formal aspects of the Book of Job (prologue, dialogue with the friends, speeches from the whirlwind, etc.). Nor does he populate the play with the characters of the Book of Job, apart from Job himself. Nor does the plot of the play follow the Book of Job. Wiechert’s Job is rather a wealthy, heedless, and arrogant young man whose world comes apart on his wedding day, when war erupts. On the battlefield he confronts the horrors of war, and comes back to find his property being auctioned off. Job, his wife, and child become wandering beggars, and are told that they must beg from “der Herr der Welt,” whose name is Pilatus. Thus the sufferings of Wiechert’s Job are also merged with the suffering of Christ. Pilatus treats the Job family with contempt, throwing them in prison. There, however, Job realizes that the face of Pilatus is appallingly similar to his own face, and this recognition leads Job to confess to God his own sin and guilt and to pray for mercy. Job’s confession prompts an angelic voice to announce that the time of suffering is over. Despite its seeming distance from the Book of Job, Wiechert’s play does in fact engage the book. What attracts his hermeneutical attention is the description of Job with which the book opens, in particular the description of Job as both a righteous man and a rich man. But whereas the prose tale of Job attempts to demonstrate the compatibility of virtue and wealth, Wiechert demurs. He represents Job as a spoiled and arrogant child. When his teacher speaks to him about learning virtue, young Job says he wants to learn to be “groß und reich.” When the pastor asks him for his favorite Bible verse, he replies: Im Buche Hiob, am Verse drei, das Wort will ich mir legen bei: „Und er war herrlicher denn alle, die gegen Morgen wohneten.“

For all his arrogance, however, Job is not evil but becomes a person of deep introspective conscience. And thus his suffering, far from meaningless, becomes redemptive suffering. So, Wiechert hoped, would Germany read its history in the first third of the twentieth century. Eggers’ play, Das Spiel von Job dem Deutschen, was also published in 1933. Although he, too, freely changes the Job story, he engages many more of its formal aspects, characters, and conflicts. Above all Eggers takes the conflict between 47 Ernst Wiechert, Das Spiel vom Deutschen Bettelmann (München: Albert Langen-Georg Müller Verlag, 1934, c. 1933).

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God and the Adversary in the Book of Job and reads it as a thoroughly dualistic, indeed eschatological conflict between good and evil. In the play the archangel Michael and the Adversary engage in a heavenly debate about the nature of humanity. To settle the dispute God tells the Adversary to test “Job den Deutschen” and either triumph or die. Eggers’ Job is a wealthy and righteous man who has a wife and seven sons. As in Wiechert’s play, the idyllic situation is shattered by war. Job responds with confident militancy, calling for beating plowshares into spears and lances and praising his sons’ eagerness for battle. They sing heroic songs that express their willingness to die for the glory of the homeland. When the seven sons are in fact brought back dead from the war, Job’s wife questions God and blasphemes. Job rebukes her and reasserts his faith in God. Instead of three friends coming to comfort Job, Eggers turns to the mystery play tradition and has three symbolic figures come to torment and test Job – poverty, plague, and vice. But Job remains steadfast. His courage and faith result in a heavenly reward, and in the last scene, his soul is brought before the throne of God, and the German people, whom he represents, are promised rule over all the nations of the world. Although Eggers’ representation of the Book of Job is made to serve his National Socialist concerns, it is of hermeneutical interest in that, far from being a simple tour de force, it actually blends significant elements from the interpretation of Job as epic with the interpretation of it as drama. Ideologically, in the comparison between Wiechert and Eggers one sees how the figure of Job could become a site of struggle for the interpretation of the situation of the German nation in the 1930s. The most literarily and hermeneutically interesting pre-war play is Theodor Haerten’s Hochzeit in Dobesti.48 Hermeneutically, what engages Haerten in the Book of Job is Eliphaz’s movement from initial sympathy for and confidence in Job to his conviction that Job is one of the wicked. Here is psychological dramatic action – but Haerten adds a twist. What if Eliphaz was right and Job was wicked? Haerten sets the play in early twentieth century rural Germany, depicting Job and his friends as prosperous farmers. In the play the farmers are gathered at Farmer Menalkas’ house on the evening before the wedding of his son. Job is not present. Indeed, as the night unfolds, they are brought the news that Job’s house has burned down and all his family and possessions with it. Then Job himself arrives on the doorstep, half-mad and suffering from terrible ailments. Gradually, suspicions begin to arise that it was Job himself who burned down his own house, trapping his family inside and burning them to death, driven to this irrational action by his collapsing financial situation. For a long time Menalkas 48  Haerten (1898–1968), a dramatist, director, and producer won the 1943 Düsseldorf Immermann prize, which during its first incarnation (1937–1943) was awarded to producers of “Aryan” literature that reflected National Socialist ideology. The prize was re-established in 1947.

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defends Job against these suspicions, but when it becomes clear that Job is guilty, Menalkas rejects him with disgust. On one level the play is a fascinating exploration of the psychology of trust and mistrust, ostensible rectitude and hidden evil, and even of the tragic mixture of guilt and mental instability. But Haerten’s National Socialist sympathies add another deeply disturbing dimension to the play. As the friends discuss Job, they describe him as someone who was always a bit strange and unstable, something that they repeatedly attribute to the fact that his mother was a gypsy. At the end of the play Job dies, and there is a sense that the community has been cleansed from a mysterious and murky evil. As dawn breaks, the dreadful night is over and the new day can turn to the joyous events of the wedding in Dobesti. After the war Job continued to be a text of importance to Germans. Perhaps the best Joban drama in terms of literary quality is one that makes no direct link with the Book of Job, although it echoes structures and situations from Job. This is Wolfgang Borchert’s 1946 play, Draußen vor der Tür49 (translated into English as The Man Outside50). Borchert himself was opposed to the Nazi regime, arrested several times, and imprisoned for nine months, although his acts of resistance consisted mainly of forms of satire. In his post-war play, the central character is Beckmann, a soldier who served on the Russian front and who returns, broken in body and spirit, to a devastated Hamburg. Although the focus of the play is on the suffering of Beckmann, its most transparent connection with Job lies in its framing. The play is introduced by a prologue between an Undertaker (that is, Death, who has grown fat during the war) and the Old Man, who identifies himself as “der Gott, an den keiner mehr glaubt.”51 He is a totally ineffective figure who can only cry, “Kinder, Kinder. Und ich kann es nicht ändern! Kinder, meine Kinder!”52 The action of the play opens with Beckmann, longing to die, throwing himself into the river Elbe. His suicide attempt is foiled when the river refuses to drown 49 Wolfgang Borchert, Das Gesamtwerk (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1949), 117–85. See also Borchert, Draußen vor der Tür und ausgewählte Erzählungen (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1975). 50  Wolfgang Borchert, The Man Outside: Prose Works, trans. David Porter (London: Hutchinson International Authors, 1952). For further reading on Borchert and his work, see Gordon J. A.  Burgess, The Life and Works of Wolfgang Borchert (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2003); Erwin J. Warkentin, Unpublishable Works: Wolfgang Borchert’s Literary Production in Nazi Germany (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1997); James L. Stark, Wolfgang Borchert’s Germany: Reflections of the Third Reich (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1997); Winfried Freund and Walburga Freund-Spork, Wolfgang Borchert, Draußen vor der Tür (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1996); Gordon J. A. Burgess and Hans-Gerd Winter, eds., “Pack das Leben bei den Haaren”: Wolfgang Borchert in neuer Sicht (Hamburg: Dölling u. Galitz, 1996); Fulgentius Hirschenauer and Albrecht Weber, eds., Interpretation zu Wolfgang Borchert: Verfasst von einem Arbeitskreis (München: R. Oldenbourg, 1966); Heinz E. O. Hartmann, Wolfgang Borchert: ein unbequemer und gefährlicher Mahner? (Fürstenfeldbruck: Steinklopfer-Verlag, 1960). 51  Borchert, Das Gesamtwerk, 124. 52 Borchert, Das Gesamtwerk, 125.

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him and casts him back onto the riverbank. Here and at various points in the play, Beckmann engages in a strange conversation with a hallucinatory figure simply called “the Other,” who is relentlessly optimistic. Whether this figure embodies an irreducible life force or an obscene denial of reality has been debated by critics. Following his failed suicide, Beckmann encounters four people (a young widow, an army colonel, a cabaret owner, and the woman who lives in his dead parents’ flat). His encounter with each is a failed attempt to reconnect with some social community. Although not necessarily hostile to Beckmann, each fails him because they can only engage him on their own terms, not in relation to his actual need. Thus Beckmann remains radically alone. At the end of the play, Beckmann describes himself as someone who comes home only to find the door slammed and himself outside the door. Cheated even of his wish for death, he rages at the now absent “Other” and at the God who has failed. Wo bist du, Anderer? Du bist doch sonst immer da! Wo bist du jetzt, Jasager? Jetzt antworte mir! Jetzt brauche ich dich, Antworter! Wo bist du denn? … Wo ist denn der alte Mann, der sich Gott nennt? Warum redet er denn nicht!! Gebt doch Antwort! Warum schweigt ihr denn? Warum? Gibt denn keiner Antwort? Gibt keiner Antwort??? Gibt denn keiner, keiner Antwort???53

With that cry the play ends. There is no answer from a whirlwind, because God is as impotent and defeated as Beckmann. Borchert’s evocation of a suffering Job excluded from human society and forsaken by an impotent God fit the atmosphere of despair of 1946. But by 1953 German playwrights were focused on another aspect of the Job story, not Job the forsaken but Job the survivor, the one who begins again, who takes up a new life after everything that he had was destroyed. Horst Mönnich composed a radio play called Hiob im Moor,54 It was a kind of “docudrama,” in that it was a dramatization of the true story of the Schlarb family – seven brothers and their families – Danube-Swabian farmers from Yugoslavia, who became refugees in post-war Germany.55 Resisting the fate of so many who were scattered, they persisted in their search for land to farm, until in 1948 they were given the right to farm swampy moorland in southern Bavaria. Through almost unimaginable hardship, they managed to live from the land and to keep the family of 70 persons together.

Das Gesamtwerk, 185. Mönnich, Hiob im Moor: Ein Hörspiel (Hamburg: Baken-Verlag, 1966). A prolific author of novels, radio and television plays, and a best-selling history of the BMW company, Mönnich (1918–2014) was a founding member of Gruppe 47, the informal association of German writers that encouraged the development of a new post-war German literature. Both his fiction and nonfiction writings often involve socio-economic issues. 55  Detailed information about the Schlarb family may be found at http://www.schlarb.com (last accessed December 28, 2018). 53 Borchert, 54 Horst

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Mönnich’s play begins with a narrator reading the opening verses of the Book of Job and two listeners saying, “Eine alte Geschichte. Sie steht in der Bibel.” Then the listeners begin to consider whether it is also in some way their own story. The narrator resumes, but rather than continuing to narrate the Book of Job, says “Es waren sieben Brüder Schlarb.” And so the radio play tells the story of the Schlarb family’s experience, first as penniless economic migrants out of Germany in the eighteenth century and as penniless refugees returning to Germany at the end of World War II, integrating allusions to the story of Job throughout the play. It sees in the figure of Job – as in the hero Jacob Schlarb – a character of indomitable courage in the face of the loss of nearly everything. Ten years after the first broadcast of the play, Mönnich was asked to publish it in 1963. But, as he describes in the afterword, he was uncertain. What had happened to the Schlarb family? The original broadcast version had apparently concluded with the heroic Jacob walking through the moor, conjuring up a future of land and houses. But what if it turned out that everything had actually fallen apart after the first hopeful but precarious beginnings that Mönnich had documented in his play? What if hopelessness had overtaken them after all? So Mönnich revisited the Schlarb family and discovered that the farms were still prosperous, though now specialized as livestock and chicken farms, and that many of the young people had left to find opportunities elsewhere. In other words life was no longer lived on the heroic plane but in the everydayness of existence. And so the ending of the play was slightly changed for the published edition. Mönnich only vaguely evokes the ending of the Book of Job in his play (although he alludes to it more explicitly in his afterword). Rather he evokes Gen 8:22, as he describes the settlement that became Schlarbhofen, “ein Dorf wie tausend Dörfer auf unserer Erde, mit Sommer und Winter, Frühling und Herbst, mit Säen und Ernten, mit Tod und Geburt.”56 The ending of both Job and the Schlarb family is interpreted not as the return of prosperity but the return of the ordinary. Whereas the character of Job and the significance of his suffering has been the preoccupation of German playwrights, American and British authors have focused more on the character of God and the nature of Job’s relationship with God. Although less explicitly engaged with the effects of the world wars, the Anglophone plays do reflect the loss of innocence generated by the events of the twentieth century. The best-known American adaptation of the Job story is Archibald MacLeish’s J. B.57 Although a popular and critical success when first Hiob im Moor, 78. (1892–1982) was not only a poet and playwright but a significant public figure, serving as a speechwriter for Franklin Roosevelt and later as Librarian of Congress and in several other government posts from 1939–1946. His liberal democratic politics earned him the suspicion of staunch anti-Communists. The term “fellow traveler” is said to have been coined to describe him when Roosevelt nominated MacLeish for Librarian of Congress. 56 Mönnich, 57 MacLeish

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performed in 1956, it is now regarded with aesthetic condescension by most critics. Less well known is Job’s Comforting, by British literary theorist I. A. Richards.58 Both authors make use of the structure of the Book of Job as containing a “play within a play.” But whereas the biblical book drops the trope of having God and the Adversary comment on Job’s response after the first two chapters of the prologue, both MacLeish and Richards make this feature central to their works. Indeed, what God learns becomes the focal point of the plays. Their critical hermeneutical starting point is the ambiguity and irony of the biblical text, for MacLeish the ambiguity of Job’s last words in 42:6, and for Richards, the irony of God’s rebuke of the friends and approval of Job in 42:7–9. Indeed, their interpretations anticipate the exegetical discussions of these verses that have particularly preoccupied biblical scholars in recent years. Although MacLeish’s play is mostly composed in contemporary dialogue, he uses the actual text of Job for the speech from the whirlwind and Job’s reply, though with added stage directions to suggest Job’s emotional state. When Zuss and Nickles, the God and Adversary characters, discuss what has just happened, Nickles takes Job’s words at face value, as humble abasement. Zuss, however, realizes that J. B. no longer has either love or respect for this cold, indifferent deity. J. B. will no longer confront God, but simply say what he must in order to quiet the deity, to “manage” him. Thus one might say that J. B. does not sin with his lips, but in this post-religious play, his heart no longer turns to God but judges him. Richards’ play similarly focuses on God’s changed awareness. But where ­MacLeish’s play is seriously earnest, Richard’s is wryly ironic. In contrast to ­MacLeish’s transposition of the characters to twentieth century America, ­Richard’s approach to the text is expressed in the subtitle: “The Book of Job, abridged and re-arranged, and with one single sentence added.”59 The rearrangement of the text (which is extensive but quite artful) serves to increase the pathos of Job and to enhance the cruel insensitivity of his friends. Richards also develops the role of Satan by making him the narrator of the prologue. Richards’ interpretive commentary is contained in the stage directions, which indicate that Satan and Jahweh are invisibly present and observing as the action and dialogues take place. In reaction to Job’s first speech (which consists of chs. 29–31 together with ch. 3), the stage directions say that “Satan rises to stand over Jahweh, looking down on him. Jahweh hangs his head.”60 When the 58 Richards is best known for his works of literary theory, especially The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language Upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism (with C. K Ogden [New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1946]) and The Philosophy of Rhetoric (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965). He was also, however, a theorist of education, and after his move to the United States in 1938, his research focused on the teaching of English as a second language. Only in the late 1950s and 1960s did he turn to poetry. 59  Richards, Internal Colloquies, 301. 60  Richards, Internal Colloquies, 312.

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friends begin to speak their supposed words of comfort, “Satan looks ironically at Jahweh, who buries his face in his hands.”61 Finally, hearing Job speak ch. 19, “Jahweh, still unseen, rises and, with Satan’s aid, takes off and rends his robe … goes across to prostrate himself at Job’s feet.”62 The speech from the whirlwind is performed not by Jahweh but by Shaddai in “a highly sardonic, almost a sarcastic tone.”63 As Shaddai speaks, Jahweh shakes his head sadly. For Richards the key to the play is 42:7–8, which he divides between Shaddai and Jahweh. Thus both aspects of the deity declare to the friends “Our wrath is kindled against you because you have not said of us the thing that is right, as Job has.”64 In case we should miss the point, Richards adds his “one single sentence” to the text, having Shaddai say, “And so has our servant Dinah.”65 Thus Dinah’s perspective on the deity, which Richards had translated as “Will you be absolute for Jahweh yet? Say to him ‘Thou fool!”’66 is explicitly endorsed by the joint godhead, Shaddai/ Jahweh. Giving the play its final ironic touch, Richards does not include the rest of the epilogue but instead has Satan step forward and close the play by reciting Job 28, “Where shall wisdom be found?”67 In Richards’ play, as in Macleish’s, God is judged by a human character and found wanting – and God now knows. The issue of knowledge is also central to Robert Frost’s play, A Masque of Reason,68 but here it is human knowledge – or the impossibility of it. One of the central themes in all of Frost’s poetry is “a tension between a human desire for ultimate causes and designs and a natural world that always refuses to satisfy that desire.”69 In the Book of Job, Frost sees just that kind of refusal, yet he is amused by interpreters’ relentless attempts to wrest meaning from it. In Frost’s play Job, his wife, and God run into one another some thousand years after the events of the Book of Job. God, clearly embarrassed and awkward, apologizes to Job “for the apparently unmeaning sorrow you were afflicted with in those old days” and thanks him for “the way you helped me establish once for all the principle there’s no connection man can reason out between his just deserts and what he gets.”70 Together they “stultif[ied] the Deuteronomist and change[d]  Richards, Internal Colloquies, 313.  Richards, Internal Colloquies, 321. 63  Richards, Internal Colloquies, 322. 64 Richards, Internal Colloquies, 324. 65  Richards, Internal Colloquies, 324. 66  Richards, Internal Colloquies, 308. 67  Richards, Internal Colloquies, 325. 68  Frost (1874–1963) is one of the most important American poets of the twentieth century. Although his fairly conservative poetry lost favor with critics for a time, his reputation as a poet seems again to be rising as aspects of his work are perceived to be congenial to the “linguistic turn” in philosophy and the ascendency of neo-pragmatism. 69  Robert Faggen, Robert Frost and the Challenge of Darwin (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 3. 70  Frost, The Poetry, 475. 61 62

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the tenor of religious thought.”71 Although Job initially appears to accept this interpretation, he realizes it is unsatisfying and presses God further for the real reason. Finally, God explains. “I was just showing off to the Devil, Job, as is set forth in chapters One and Two.”72 To which Job replies, “I expected more than I could understand and what I get is almost less than I can understand.”73 So ends the quest for wisdom. Strikingly, Frost’s play was written in 1945, one year before Borchert’s Draußen vor der Tür, and although both concern the absence of the answer for which humans hunger, the ironic intellectualism of Frost’s work could not contrast more sharply with the pained existential cry of Borchert. It is only with Elie Wiesel’s Le procès de Shamgorod (translated into English as The Trial of God)74 that one finds a play that matches it in existential intensity. One might argue that Wiesel’s play has little to do with Job. It does not directly engage the Book of Job, but rather represents actions that take place in 1649 in the Polish village of Shamgorod. And indeed, the play’s primary intertext is not Job but the Book of Esther, for it situates the play on the night of Purim and has the central action of the play – the trial of God – take the form of a make-believe game, often performed in costumes and masks. Moreover, the events are situated after one pogrom and just before another, a counter image to the Book of Esther, which tells of a pogrom foiled. The origin of the notion of a trial of God, as Wiesel explains in his stage directions, comes from his own experience, when, as an inmate of a concentration camp, he witnessed a trial of God conducted by three rabbis. But the figure of a trial of God inevitably evokes Job, though with a difference. Job wished to have a trial with God. The protagonist of Wiesel’s play, Berish, wishes to have a trial of God. But once one begins to think of Wiesel’s play in relation to the Book of Job, the conversation turns rich. Berish is clearly a Joban figure, bent on indicting God for crimes against humanity. Although the three Purimspielers match the numbers of Job’s three friends, they play a different role. They are the judges in the trial of God. But they also invite comparison with the messengers who come to Job in ch. 1, for as it turns out, each of them is someone who alone escaped destruction in a pogrom and becomes now a witness, although a traumatized and reluctant witness. But the strongest intertextual relationship with the Book of Job, and the most interesting one, is the figure of the stranger, Sam. When the Purimspiel of the trial of God is almost aborted because there are judges and a prosecutor but no one to defend God, this stranger volunteers  Frost, The Poetry, 475.  Frost, The Poetry, 484–85. 73 Frost, The Poetry, 485. 74 Wiesel (1928–2016), known above all for the novels in which he writes about his experience of the Shoah, has also written explicitly on the figure of Job. See his Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits and Legends, trans. Marion Wiesel (New York: Summit Books, 1985) and “Job,” in Peace, in Deed: Essays in Honor of Harry James Cargas, eds. Zev Garber and Richard Libowitz (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 119–34. 71 72

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to take on the role of defender. When Berish and the Purimspielers try to place him, the stranger replies “It’s possible … I travel a lot. I meet many people. That’s my favorite pastime: to meet people … To gamble. To win.”75 Here one clearly recognizes the Adversary of Job 1–2. What Wiesel does hermeneutically with the book is to explore the dramatic potential of the Adversary. As many biblical commentaries observe, the Adversary in Job is not the opponent of God but in a sense is God’s defender. Here Wiesel takes that notion and examines it. What is most horrifying in Wiesel’s play is the way in which the stranger Sam’s defense of God succeeds. The Purimspiel judges, each of them survivors of terrible massacres, are nevertheless desperate to believe in the goodness of God, and they are drawn in as Sam repeats the sophisticated ways in which theologians have framed the horrors of cruelty in ways that would speak of God’s care rather than indifference (e. g., that our justice is not God’s justice, that the very fact that some Jews survive despite attempts to destroy them is evidence of God’s mercy, that it is human beings who are to blame for the cruelty in the world, that God is found with the victims, not the killers). He is so persuasive that at the end the judges are awed by him and declare “You are a tzaddik, a Just, a rabbi, a Master – you are endowed with mystical powers; you are a holy man.”76 And at that declaration, Sam pulls out his Purim mask and puts it to his face, the mask revealing, not concealing, his true identity. As they recognize him as the Adversary, all shout in fear, and Sam speaks the closing words of the play, “So – you took me for a saint, a Just? Me? How could you be that blind? How could you be that stupid? If you only knew, if you only knew … .”77 The play ends, not with the sound of a whirlwind bespeaking the revelatory presence of God but with the “deafening and murderous roars” of the mob breaking into the inn to kill all the Jews. But Wiesel’s Joban character, far from abasing himself in dust and ashes, but also far from declaring God irrelevant and merely to be managed, remains, as Wiesel thought Job should have remained, a defiant figure, but one of singular faith: “I lived as a Jew, and it is as Jew that I shall die – and it is as a Jew that, with my last breath, I shall shout my protest to God!”78 And so, with an insistence that the issues of theodicy and faith must remain unresolved in the face of the Shoah, Wiesel claims that, at least for Jews, there can be no resolution of the Book of Job. As I have attempted to demonstrate in this very brief review, the relationship between dramaturgy and the Book of Job has been long and complex. The hypothesis that the Book of Job is in some way directly influenced by Greek drama is, pace Theodore of Mopsuestia and Horace Kallen, most unlikely. On historical critical grounds one can confidently say that the author of Job did not set The Trial of God, 114–15.  Wiesel, The Trial of God, 160. 77  Wiesel, The Trial of God, 161. 78  Wiesel, The Trial of God, 156. 75 Wiesel, 76

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out to write a drama. But generic categories do not only function to guide the production of works. They can also be invoked by readers in heuristic fashion to discern important intertextual relations among categories of texts, no matter what the intention of the original author. The persistence with which Job has been read in relation to the genre of drama from the Reformation to the present certainly is an index of the fruitfulness of that generic comparison. In my investigation of selected dramas based on the Book of Job, I have attempted to show that in both dramaturgical adaptation of the text of Job and dramaturgical transformation of the book, dramaturgs employ interpretive perspectives both akin to and different from those exercised by biblical scholars. This relationship suggests the importance of developing conversations between biblical scholars of Job on the one hand and dramaturgs and scholars of the theater on the other. The astonishingly wide variety of plays inspired by the Book of Job is a very rich hermeneutical resource, since every playwright who seriously engages Job does so by meditating on some ambiguity, irony, or obscurity in the text, as well as the questions of her own time and culture. They and we stand side by side as we both fish in the deep waters of this endlessly fascinating book. We would do well to exchange information about what lures we put on our fishing poles as we cast for meaning.

16. The Book of Job and Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth … . When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (Job 38:4, 7). Epigraph for The Tree of Life

The philosophy of Martin Heidegger and the book of Job may seem like odd companions for a filmmaker, but Terrence Malick is no ordinary filmmaker. Nor is his knowledge of philosophy and biblical texts some superficial smattering of intellectual gloss. As an undergraduate at Harvard University in the 1960s Malick studied philosophy under Stanley Cavell and Hubert Dreyfus, eventually writing an undergraduate thesis on Heidegger, who was just beginning to make an impression on American philosophy.1 Malick’s thesis was an impressive piece of work, and was later partially recycled as the introduction to his translation of Heidegger’s Vom Wesen des Grundes, published in 1969 as The Essence of Reasons by Northwestern University Press.2 Although Malick initially intended to become an academic philosopher and even taught for a year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,3 he soon came to find academic philosophy too confining and instead pursued an MFA at the American Film Institute Conservatory. At the time this essay was written, Malick had made only six films in his then forty-year career (Badlands, 1973; Days of Heaven, 1978; The Thin Red Line, 1998; The New World, 2005; The Tree of Life, 2011; To the Wonder, 2012). These films all dealt in one way or another with the same issues that drew him to Heidegger. What interested Malick in particular was Heidegger’s concept of “world” and the focus on lived experience. As Martin Woessner suggests, this approach to philosophy “is about the creation, sustenance, and possible collapse of worlds defined by human temporality and, furthermore, by human freedom.”4 1  Terrence Malick, “The Concept of Horizon in Husserl and Heidegger” (BA thesis, Harvard University, 1966). 2  Martin Woessner, “What Is Heideggerian Cinema? Film, Philosophy, and Cultural Mobility,” New German Critique 113 (2011): 129–30, 137–38. 3  Malick continued his Harvard studies with a Rhodes scholarship at Oxford, working with Gilbert Ryle. Ryle, however, was uncongenial toward Malick’s interests in Husserl and Heidegger. 4  Woessner, “What Is Heideggerian Cinema?,” 138.

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Not only the fragility of worlds, however, but the minute sensuousness and focused attention with which everyday realities are imbued in Malick’s films suggest his continuing concern with the philosophical issues of his youth. Although there are other philosophical influences on his films, most notably American Transcendentalism,5 it is Heidegger who is most often identified as Malick’s philosophical conversation partner.6 Less often explored, at least before The Tree of Life, is the presence of religious and specifically biblical imagery in Malick’s work, though Peter Biskind, among others, has pointed to these elements.7 What is most often remarked is the repeated use of an “Eden” theme in which a paradise is lost (or discovered never to have been simply a paradise) because of human propensity for deceit and/or violence, a trope that intersects well with Heideggerian themes. Although there are suggestions of this trope in Badlands,8 it is more explicit in Days of Heaven. This film takes its title from Deut 11:21, which describes the promised land as a place that the Israelites may possess “as the days of heaven upon the earth,” that is, forever, providing that they obey God and keep the commandments. If they do not, they will be cursed and cast out. Days of Heaven takes its governing plot device from another biblical narrative motif, the passing off of a man’s wife as his sister in order to secure refuge and advantage, much as Abraham does with respect to Sarah (Gen 12:10–20; 20:1–18) and Isaac with respect to Rebekah (Gen 26:6–11). In Days of Heaven, Bill, his wife Abby and his sister Linda are fleeing the consequences of Bill’s having attacked and perhaps killed a man. Working as harvesters at a wheat farm in the Texas panhandle, which is depicted in stunningly beautiful imagery, Bill becomes aware that the owner appears to have a romantic interest in his wife and facilitates her marriage to the owner by claiming that Abby is his sister. Their life in this Edenic world is short lived, however. Since Bill cannot relinquish his own desire for Abby, their 5  Stacy Peebles, “The Other World of War: Terrence Malick’s Adaptation of The Thin Red Line,” in The Cinema of Terrence Malick: Poetic Visions of America, ed. Hannah Patterson, 2nd ed. (London: Wallflower, 2007), 157–58. Kent Jones, “Light Years: Terrence Malick Returns to the Landscape of His Childhood and Sees All the Way to Eternity in His Immense New Film,” Film Comment 47.4 (2011): 26, makes a case for the affinity of the thought of Johannes Scotus Eriugena (a ninth-century Neoplatonist) and Malick’s films, though without establishing a direct connection. The similarities, however, are striking. 6 Marc Furstenau and Leslie MacAvoy, “Terrence Malick’s Heideggerian Cinema: War and the Question of Being in The Thin Red Line,” in Patterson, The Cinema of Terrence Malick, 179– 91; Robert Sinnerbrink, “A Heideggerian Cinema? On Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line,” Film Philosophy 10 (2006): 26–37. 7 Peter Biskind, “The Runaway Genius,” in Gods and Monsters: Thirty Years of Writing on Film and Culture (London: Bloomsbury, 2005), 257. Malick’s screenplays often have more overt references to biblical imagery and themes than the finished films. In contrast to his academic engagement with philosophy, Malick does not, to my knowledge, have formal training in theology. 8  The idyll in the woods where Kit and Holly make their home in a treehouse is evocative of certain “cast adrift” utopias, such as the Swiss Family Robinson.

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duplicitous relationship has tragic consequences. Bill and Abby are cast out from their promised land, though not before bringing death and grief to others.9 Since the film is set circa 1915, one recognizes that the rural way of life represented in the film and the landscape itself are also at the moment of transition between traditional life and industrialized modernity. Indeed, the depiction of nature goes beyond what is needed for the development of the plot and raises the possibility that the landscape itself is a character in the film. This tendency to engage the viewer intensely with the reality of the natural world becomes more pronounced in subsequent films. Edenic motifs also populate Malick’s 2005 film, The New World, which retells the history of the Jamestown settlement and the story of Captain John Smith and Pocahontas. When the English sight the coast of what we now call Virginia, it does appear to them as a place where creation can begin anew. As the film plays out, however, one becomes aware of the two different ways of being in the world embodied by the native inhabitants, “the naturals,” as they are called, and the English settlers. Though it may seem clichéd and romanticized to contrast the balance and harmony of the Indians’ relationship with the world with the struggle to overcome nature represented by the English, Malick’s imagery is more subtle. Though the English settlers’ instrumentalist view of nature is certainly judged as problematic, visual imagery also suggests ways in which the Indians’ world also constructs structures of entrapment for themselves. The viewer, who is located some four centuries after the action of the film, however, grasps what is just beginning to be lost and sees the collapsing of a world. Woessner perceptively connects the visual representation of this contrast with Heidegger’s category of the “fourfold,” the “somewhat mystical-sounding neologism for describing the interaction between the earth, the sky, divinities, and mortals.”10 One of the recurring visual features of Malick’s films is the camera’s upward gaze, taking in trees, sunlight, wildlife, the sky, which Woessner describes as “photographic representations of the fourfold itself.”11 He cites Heidegger, who observes that “mortals are in the fourfold by dwelling. But the basic character of dwelling is to spare, to preserve. Mortals dwell in the way they preserve the fourfold in its essential being, its presencing.”12 This mode of being as dwelling figures also in the films discussed below.  9  Hubert Cohen, “The Genesis of Days of Heaven,” Cinema Journal 42 (2003): 46–62, has analyzed the biblical allusions in detail, though perhaps a bit heavy-handedly. See also the brief remark by Stanley Cavell, “An Emerson Mood,” in The Senses of Walden, expanded ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 156. 10  Woessner, “What Is Heideggerian Cinema?,” 153. 11  Woessner, “What Is Heideggerian Cinema?,” 153. 12  Martin Heidegger, “Building, Dwelling, Thinking,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 150; cited in Woessner, “What Is Heideggerian Cinema?,” 153.

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The two of Malick’s films that bear the closest connection to one another in terms of his philosophical and religious perspectives are The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life. In both, worlds are seen as collapsing. The Thin Red Line recounts the battle of Guadalcanal in World War II. War brings an acute collapse of world not only to American and Japanese soldiers caught up in the battle but also to the Melanesian inhabitants of the island. In The Tree of Life it will be the world of a single family. As in his previous films Malick uses voice-overs to construct the consciousness of characters and to draw attention to the key issues with which the film is concerned. In The Thin Red Line, however, Malick does not confine the voice-over to a single character, as in Badlands and Days of Heaven, but shares it among several characters. It is Witt, however, whose perspective is the key to the film.13 The issues he articulates are those of the relation of finite beings to Being itself. The tropical island is a place of surpassing natural beauty, and Malick’s camera often lingers on an image of a plant or an animal that has no direct relation to the plot but is of the utmost thematic significance, since it is a concrete existing thing to be perceived in all its wonder and glory and mortality. This almost overwhelming beauty, however, is also located in a place of surpassing human violence. Witt, with his untutored but perceptive mind and the Southern drawl that metonymically represents it, struggles to comprehend his relationship to the revelatory experience both of the natural world and other persons, the puzzle of his mother’s calm acceptance of her own death as he and his fellows face the possibility of their own deaths, his sense of finitude and the totality of Being that encompasses all. At one point Witt muses, “maybe all men got one big soul that everybody’s part of, all faces of the same man – one big self.” Yet this one big soul is not simply a benign unity. “You’re death that captures all, and you, too, are the source of all that’s gonna be born.” Later, confronting the carnage of war, he muses, “Is this darkness in you too? Have you passed through this night?” The notion that Being itself may have passed through a dark night is challenging. Though Witt’s words suggest a religious dimension to his experience, it is not possible to map it onto any traditional Christian theology. Toward the end of the film an inexperienced commander has endangered his men and sends two shaky soldiers to reconnoiter the position of the Japanese. Witt volunteers to go with them and, when the Japanese are sighted, sends them back to warn the platoon, deploying himself as a decoy to lead the Japanese away. When the Japanese soldiers surround Witt they are camouflaged with tree branches, strange creatures half human and half tree, the world of nature and the world of the human oddly combined. Witt stares at them and at his impending 13  In what is perhaps the best single essay on The Thin Red Line, Hubert Dreyfus and Camilo Salazar Prince make a compelling case that Malick uses four subject positions to delineate four different ways of experiencing and responding to world collapse; see Hubert Dreyfus and Camilo Salazar Prince, “The Thin Red Line: Dying without Demise, Demise without Dying,” in The Thin Red Line, ed. David Davies (New York: Routledge, 2009), 29–43.

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death for an extended time. His expression is not fear so much as a sense of wonder and perhaps recognition. The encounter takes place in a clearing within the jungle. Whether intentional or not, the image of a clearing is resonant, for it is a privileged metaphor in Heidegger for a space in which things are revealed, yet a space always contained by that which remains concealed and not yet accessible.14 A gunshot kills Witt, and Malick cuts to Witt’s last sight – sunlight streaming through the leaves of a tree. The final scene of the film shows the surviving soldiers embarking on a ship that will take them away from Guadalcanal. One of Witt’s platoon mates stands at the stern of the ship, looking out at the wake made by the ship. The sea is, as Kaja Silverman observes, “Malick’s primary metaphor both for the totality to which we all belong and the experiences through which it is revealed to us.”15 As the soldier gazes at the sea, we hear his voice: Where is it that we were together? Who were you that I lived with … walked with? The brother … the friend … darkness, light, strife, and love – are they the workings of one mind, the features of the same face?

As his voice continues in an apostrophe, Silverman suggests that the “you” who is addressed encompasses his own soul, the soldiers on the ship, and being as a whole.16 O my soul, let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made. All things shining.

Both Witt and this soldier remain compelled by the mystery that is Being itself, not something that is transcendent but something that is manifested always and only through the complex, multiform and wondrous phenomenal world itself, manifested in death as well as in life, in the Janus-like relation of death and life in finite beings. These final words embody Heidegger’s sense of human dwelling. These themes make their appearance also in The Tree of Life. There, however, the issues are framed in much more explicitly religious terms, both because of the religious identities of the film’s characters and because of Malick’s choice to introduce the film with an epigraph from the book of Job. After the blackand-white text of Job 38:4, 7 is present on the screen for several seconds, it is succeeded by an enigmatic image of subtly changing flame-like light, which is Malick’s non-anthropomorphic God image. The antecedents of The Tree of Life in Malick’s thinking actually predated The Thin Red Line. After completing Days of Heaven in 1978, Malick began working  Richard Polt, Heidegger: An Introduction (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 9. Silverman, “All Things Shining,” in Flesh of my Flesh (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 125. 16  Silverman, “All Things Shining,” 131. Originally, I, like many interpreters, had assumed that this was Witt’s posthumous voice, since it articulated a perspective congruent with his earlier thoughts. However, the voice is that of the actor who gazes out to sea, a figure who has not been a developed character in the earlier scenes of the film. 14

15 Kaja

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on a project provisionally called “Q,” which was to deal with the origins and nature of life itself. The screenplay for Q was never completed, and Malick went on to make other films.17 But the long, twenty-minute sequence in The Tree of Life that traces the history of the universe from the big bang to the end of the age of the dinosaurs certainly owes much to this unfinished project. The contextualization of this sequence within a film about a particular family is, however, the point of intersection with the story of Job. The film tells the story of the O’Brien family of Waco, Texas, in the 1950s and later as they grapple with the death of the middle son, RL. The present-day action of the film takes place on what is apparently an anniversary of RL’s death. It features Jack, now middle-aged and a successful architect. Though the film is not explicit, it appears that his mother is now also dead, though at one point he has a conversation on the telephone with his father. The environment in which he works is a natureless enclave of tall, sterile office buildings in Houston,18 a sharp contrast from Jack’s childhood, which was deeply enmeshed with the fields, woodlands and rivers of the areas near his home. Having established the present-day situation, the largest part of the film focuses on the family as they were in the 1950s. The mother is presented as a gentle and grace-filled person, receptive to joy. She is, however, also somewhat passive in ways that complicate the family dynamics. The father is a deeply religious and loving but quite authoritarian figure who is baffled by the fact that he has played by the rules and yet never received the success in life he felt he was due. He is a talented musician, but for reasons that he himself does not seem to fully understand, he did not pursue his passion for music but became an engineer instead, leaving him with significant regrets. Though a talented inventor also, he encounters frustrations in his professional life. RL, the middle son, is very much like his mother. Jack, the older son, and the one through whom the story is focused, is in many ways like his father, though he looks to RL and his mother as those who modeled a way of being in the world that he yearns for. They, as much as the scenery of his youth, are presented as the lost Eden. Here, too, is the Heideggarian theme of the collapse of a world, a theme resonantly figured also in the book of Job.19 Jack is presented in his middle-aged present as spiritually lost. His initial voice-over, which takes place as the God image is depicted on the screen, takes the words of an uncertain prayer. “Mother … brother … it was they who led me to your door.” The film plays out in a variety of modes. A major portion of  Biskind, “The Runaway Genius,” 258. the 2007 screenplay, Malick describes Jack’s environment as “A new hell; entirely of our times; a glass box. The sky is covered over. Man has shut himself in”; see Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life, Screenplay, first draft, 2007 (http://www.scribd.com/doc/126837071/The-Tree-ofLife-script or, http://www.scriptslug.com/assets/uploads/scripts/the-tree-of-life-2011.pdf), 12. 19  Philippe Nemo, Job and the Excess of Evil, trans. Michael Kigel (Pittsburg, PA: Duquesne University, 1998), 17–41, explicitly connects the situation in Job to Heidegger’s Angst. 17

18 In

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the film is a flashback to Jack’s childhood, his relationships with his parents and brothers, and the psychological process of growing from childhood to the edge of puberty. The flashback is not a simple realist depiction but is deeply colored by Jack’s memory of his childhood, though it is not simply a transcript of his memory. In addition, there are other scenes that depict in symbolic or even surreal fashion Jack’s current psychic state, as he struggles through his acts of memory and emotion to understand how his mother came to reconcile herself to RL’s death and to the world in which such things happen. In this process he comes to own that hard won act of acceptance for himself. The biographical flashbacks are relatively easy to integrate into the psychic history of Jack. More difficult is the long sequence that traces the process of the creation of the cosmos and of life, plus a later shorter sequence depicting the death of the planet when the sun becomes a red giant. These scenes are not depicted as the experiences of any of the characters. They are, rather, experiences for the viewer. We see the creation of the universe and the long process that leads to the emergence of life and the very violent struggle by which life establishes itself on earth. The images the viewer sees, however, are juxtaposed with voiceovers from the characters in ways that present the viewer with thematically important issues that are correlates of the issues with which the characters struggle. That the film is to be understood as in conversation with the book of Job is made evident in several ways. The epigraph is unmistakable, of course. Moreover, its presence invites one to consider the long sequence of creation and animals imagery in relation to the divine speeches from the whirlwind, which similarly take up issues of creation (Job 38) and the animal world (Job 39–41). Though the film makes scant use of extended speech, it depicts, about halfway through the film, a sermon at the O’Brien’s church. The sermon is on the book of Job and is a reminder to the congregation that misfortune comes to all. The good and the pious are not exempted.20 Other connections with the book of Job might seem forced, were it not that Malick’s 2007 provisional screenplay made the connection with the book of Job much more explicit. Fortunately for the artistic quality of the final film, Malick has modulated and secreted these connections rather unobtrusively. In the 2007 screenplay, the neighbors’ reaction is described as follows: The men of the neighborhood speak among themselves in hushed voices as they set their sprinklers out at dusk. The fall of the O’Brien house strikes awe in them. A family once happy and prosperous, brought down in sorrow and doom.21

Malick almost entirely eliminates the repressed element of schadenfreude from the 2011 film, though the neighbors’ role finds an echo in the film as Mr. O’Brien, 20  Malick cast his own parish priest, the Revd Kelly Koonce of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd of Austin, Texas, as the preacher in the film. 21  Malick, Tree of Life, 4.

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watering his yard after the funeral, shoos off a neighbor with the admonition that “you go on now, we are all right, we are all right.” But there remains a trace of the anxiety that the grief that has befallen the O’Briens could strike anywhere. An even more transparent allusion to the book of Job occurs in the screenplay shortly after the announcement of RL’s death, when Mrs. O’Brien is visited by three friends, Betty, Jan and Ruth, who transparently play the role of the three comforters by offering the potted theodicies that one hears all too often at visitations and funeral parlors. In the film only a few of these lines are incorporated, some spoken by Mrs. O’Brien’s mother-in-law and one, apparently, by the parish priest: “He’s in God’s hands, now.” To which Mrs. O’Brien retorts, “He was always in God’s hands.” In the earlier screenplay the mother was much more obviously the Job character whose faith was devastated by the loss she suffered. In that version the adult Jack observes, “It broke your heart. Never afterwards were you the same – your faith in goodness shaken – though carefully you kept it secret, lest our faith be shaken, too. In vain! We knew.”22 One must use the 2007 draft screenplay only as the merest touchstone for understanding the 2011 film, of course, for the two are different aesthetic constructions. In the 2007 version the projected film was much more tightly connected with Malick’s vision of project Q and had not yet been fleshed out with his decision to use significant material from his own family and childhood to construct the densely textured back-story of Jack and RL’s childhood and family.23 The film is truly a different project than the one sketched in 2007. Nevertheless, even though Malick’s allusions to the book of Job are more subtle in the film, they are sufficiently direct to invite sustained discussion. In the material that follows my purpose is not to argue whether or not Malick “intended” certain engagements with Job so much as to say that, as with any literary text, the reader may with appropriate warrant engage two texts in conversation. Following the opening of the film, with the epigraph from Job, the light image that figures God and the adult Jack’s voice-over (“Brother … Mother … it was they who led me to your door”), one sees Mrs. O’Brien as a child on a farm, an ethereal score from John Tavener24 providing the soundtrack. She is an artless embodiment of Heidegger’s dwelling. Her voice-over in this scene is an adaptation from Thomas à Kempis,25 describing the “way of grace and the way of  Malick, Tree of Life, 6. only is the film set in Waco, where Malick lived as a child. David Sterritt notes that “Malick resembled the young Jack in numerous ways. Malick was the oldest of three brothers, fought often with his father, and felt extremely close to his mother. His youngest brother was a gifted classical guitarist … [who] died in an apparent suicide.” RL is also represented as a precocious guitarist and dies young. A neighborhood boy depicted with a burn scar on his head alludes to Malick’s other brother, who was burned in a car accident (David Sterritt, “Days of Heaven and Waco: Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life,” Film Quarterly 65 [2011]: 55). 24  John Tavener, Funeral Canticle (London: Chester Music Ltd., 1996). 25  Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, bk. 3, ch. 54. 22

23 Not

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nature.” Nature in this context primarily means human nature, since the natural world figures in her imagery as a manifestation of grace.26 Although the two ways largely serve to figure the different orientations to the world of Mrs. and Mr. O’Brien, her stance is worth comparing to that of Job in the prose tale. One of the things she finds lacking in the way of nature is that it “finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it and love is smiling through all things. No one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end.”27 Though there is no direct comparison of Mrs. O’Brien and the Job of the prose tale, her affirmation is a version of the stance of radical acceptance of life that the figure of Job models in the prose tale. She asserts, though perhaps without knowing the full measure of what she is promising, that she “will be true to you [i. e., God] whatever happens,” much as Job insists that “we receive good from the hand of God; shall we not also receive misfortune?” (2:10). Although Job’s statement is uttered after rather than before his devastation, neither character can sustain the stance of radical acceptance with which he or she began. In contrast to the 2007 screenplay in which Mrs. O’Brien’s loss leads her into Job-like despair and disillusionment, Malick is much less forthcoming about the spiritual dimensions of her grief in the film. That she rejects the platitudes of her would-be comforters is evident; that her grief is overwhelming is palpable; but we simply are not given access to her emotional and spiritual life beyond a few days after the news of RL’s death. Instead, it is Jack’s decades-long grief and emptiness that become the piritual void that is placed before the viewer. “How did I lose you … wandered … forget you … .” As he wonders, “How did she bear it? Mother …” the film again shows her on the afternoon of the funeral. We hear her inner thoughts, her fragmented prayers. “Was I false to you? … Lord … why? Where were you? … Did you know?” Notably, these last two questions are rephrasings of two of the questions that God poses to Job in the divine speeches: “Where were you … ?” “Do you know … ?” Here, however, they are reframed as lament. As her voice-overs begin, the film cuts again to the light image that figures God, and the film begins its twenty-minute sequence that traces the cosmos from the origins of the universe to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Her last question is, “Who are we to you?” Though that is not a citation from Job, it is a question that the book acutely poses. In Malick’s films, the soundtrack is in many respects as much a character as any one of the actors. Here in this sequence as the characters’ voices fall silent the dialogue between Job and God is reconfigured as a dialogue between the extraordinary images projected on the screen and the equally extraordinary music. The images of the creation of the universe  Later in the film, nature will also be shown in its brutality and indifference.  The camera rests on the child RL and then focuses on the courier who brings her the telegram announcing RL’s death as she says these final two statements, lending a sense of tension to the scene. 26 27

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brilliantly capture the sublimity of God’s speech to Job in ch. 38, where Job is shown the founding of the earth and its remotest recesses. Malick uses images from the Hubble telescope, some altered, to suggest the earliest moments of the formation of the cosmos, the gaseous clouds out of which the stars and galaxies form, and finally the almost overwhelming beauty of a spiral galaxy, viewed first edge on and then face on. The immensity of the scenes depicted, billions of years in the past, thousands of light years in expanse, are literally overwhelming. Juxtaposed to this sublime imagery, however, is a single female voice, singing the “Lacrimosa” from Zbigniew Preisner’s Requiem for my Friend (1998). The voice possesses its own sublimity of grief. It is a voice that insists on being heard – if there is anyone other than the audience to hear it. The juxtaposition poses starkly the mother’s question, “Who are we to you?” Is there a place in the immensity of the universe for human love and human grief? Is it of significance? Or is human existence some mere epiphenomenon of accidental chemistry? If Malick’s cosmic imagery initially seems to channel the opening of the speeches from the whirlwind in Job, it soon becomes evident that the purposes for which the images are invoked are quite different. Before noting the divergence, however, one should appreciate the striking similarities. Both begin with the remotest origins of the cosmos, what Job calls the “founding.” Just as the imagery in Job moves in the course of ch. 38 from the far reaches of the cosmos to the meteorological phenomena that one can observe upon the earth, so Malick moves from the cosmic structures to those emergent features of the young earth that begin to construct an environment hospitable to life. Similarly, just as the divine speeches in Job move from a consideration of cosmic and earthly structures to a consideration of the life of wild animals, so Malick traces the emergence of life forms upon the earth and their beautiful but often violent interactions. The purposes of this display of cosmos and life, however, differ sharply in the book of Job and Malick, though they are not without points of contact. In Job, the divine speeches serve to disabuse Job of his inadequate notion that reality can be subsumed under the rubrics of innocence and guilt. Much that humans experience not just as bad but as wrong, as an acute conflict between “is” and “ought,” resists such reductive analysis. Job had sought to frame a cosmos that was simply his own parochial moral order writ large. God’s relation to the world must be analogous to Job’s own relation to his social world, the benign patriarch who stands surety for the moral order. But if Job has been construing the godhead through a reading of Durkheim, God appears to have been reading Rudolf Otto, for the God of the divine speeches presents to Job as the wholly other – a numinous being who is mysterium, tremendum et fascinans.28 Thus, as God’s 28  See Carol A. Newsom, The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 234–58, for an analysis of the rhetoric and argument in the divine speeches.

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speeches relentlessly move from the secure foundations of the world to the fiery breath and scaly face of Leviathan, Job must acknowledge the ineradicable presence of the chaotic as part of creation. Thought the book is reticent, it certainly suggests that even as Job had implicitly argued that he was an image of God, one can also see the image of God in Behemoth and in Leviathan. In contrast to the thematic force of the rhetoric of the divine speeches in Job, Malick seems initially to be making an evolutionary, and perhaps even a teleological argument. The implicit narrative of his images appears at first to follow the same logic as an ancient Near Eastern creation account, from chaos to order. He follows events from the big bang to the progressive development of galaxies, our solar system, the planet Earth, and the gradual development of an environment congenial to life. With single and then multicellular and then complex plant and animal life, we seem to be witnessing a teleological development. Malick is careful to continue the representation of violence in this process, however, as creatures eat one another, most poignantly represented in the image of the injured and dying plesiosaur on the shore, juxtaposed to the image of the sharks still circling the flow of blood in the water from their attack. Teleology seems to reassert itself in the episode of the dinosaurs, however, where a velociraptor (shades of Jurassic Park) encounters a dying herbivorous dinosaur in a shallow stream. After a first aggressive movement, the carnivorous dinosaur pauses and instead seems to contemplate, touching the dying creature as though it recognized and was moved by the spectacle of death. We appear to be witnessing the birth of empathy, which paleontologists have suggested must have been a characteristic necessary to the life of social dinosaurs, though not, so far as one knows, exercised in an interspecies encounter such as Malick envisions. Just as it appears that Malick and the book of Job are pursuing quite different arguments by means of their respective accounts of cosmos and animal life, Malick executes a scene cut that brings the two books back into closer agreement. Lest one should think that Malick was in fact making a teleological claim about the nature of reality, the scene of dinosaur empathy cuts to a view of the asteroid that is, at that very moment, plummeting to Earth, where it will put an end to dinosaurs, their empathy, and all the rest of their emotions. The cosmos may be a place congenial to the development of the moral sentiments, but it is also a place utterly indifferent to them. Teleology and accident seem both to be equally the case. In the book of Job the issues are framed more in terms of justice than in terms of empathy, but the underlying question is much the same. Are those things that make humans human – love, grief, a passion for justice – merely human characteristics without any grounding or manifestation in the larger cosmos and what gives rise to it? Or, do they also have a place in the transcendent? Malick is more forthcoming on this question than is the book of Job. In a complex scene toward the end of the film Malick attempts to render Jack’s psychic experience, as he tries to fathom how his mother worked her way to an

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acceptance of RL’s death. We see Jack wandering through a desert landscape, an image that has been used several times to depict Jack’s dark night of the soul. But he also finds himself before a door frame. Doorways are important symbols for The Tree of Life. They mediate the boundaries of entry into life at birth and exit from life at death. But they also mediate between the alienation of the desert where Jack finds himself and another place where other possibilities exist. Jack is beckoned forward by a female figure in a flowing gown. This figure has appeared in other dream-like sequences in the film. She is what one could call a “spirit guide,”29 who seems to mediate particularly at the boundaries of life and death. She is an enigmatic character who suggests that counterposed to the divine reality that is figured by the vast and inhuman forces of cosmic violence is an equally true empathetic divine reality that is present in life and its course in the world. After Jack crosses through the doorway, his voice-over utters a prayer to God. “Keep us, guide us, till the end of time.” Once again, the words of prayer engage dialogically with images. Here, the images are of the end of time, that is, the future in which the sun will become a red giant and incinerate the earth. The brutal hostility of these images is difficult to bear – they seem so fully on the side of death rather than life. Yet that is what the film shows as we hear Jack’s words of petition – the incineration of the earth. It is not unlike the face of Leviathan. Just at the most devastating point in the images of the death of earth, where a wholly burnt and barren planet is silhouetted by a now-shrunken sun, however, the spirit guide addresses Jack: “Follow me.” Jack follows the spirit guide to a seashore, a potent symbol in Malick’s film for the place of intersection between the realms of time and eternity, life and death, the human and the divine. The seashore is a threshold space, much as the doorway is a space between one realm and another. On the seashore, the family and all the people they knew wander about. The parents and RL are present as they were in the 1950s. Jack is present both in his child self but also in his adult self. The scene is a prolonged depiction of love on the edge of parting. Above all, it depicts the mother’s emotional desire to hold on to RL but her knowledge that she must relinquish him. The mother finally parts from her son in an image that combines a doorway through which he must pass and an expanse that appears to be a seashore from which the sea had receded. As the camera follows the mother across a similar space of seashore, she is comforted by the spirit guide and makes her statement of acceptance: “I give him to you. I give you my son.” Her words depict the conclusion to her struggle to continue following the way of grace and its radical acceptance of reality. Now, however, she knows the full cost of that path. The phrase “radical acceptance” is one I borrow from Dorothee Soelle, who describes that stance as follows: “It is impossible to remove oneself totally from suffering, unless one removes oneself from life itself, no longer enters into relationships, makes oneself 29

 The film credits refer to the character simply as “guide.”

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invulnerable. … The more strongly we affirm reality, the more we are immersed in [suffering].”30 Though neither Mrs. O’Brien’s words nor Soelle’s description of radical acceptance is identical with Job’s stance in the prologue, they are both congruent with Job’s words: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return there; YHWH has given, YHWH has taken; blessed be the name of YHWH” (1:20). The book of Job is more reticent than is The Tree of Life concerning the relation of the divine to the human longing for meaning and, in Job’s case, to the place of justice in the world. Though the divine speeches may properly be viewed as a corrective to Job’s narrow understanding of God and world, they give little warrant for suggesting an active role for God in the establishment of moral order beyond the work “to mediate its ebb and flow and to balance the conflicting needs.”31 Moreover, Job’s own reply in 42:6, from which one might deduce some clue as to what he has understood through his encounter with the divine speeches, is deeply enigmatic and subject to a variety of divergent translations.32 The only remaining clue is the prose conclusion to the book, though there Job speaks no further words. Scholars are sharply divided concerning how to relate the conclusion to the rest of the book. If the prose prologue and conclusion are to be understood as the remains of a once independent tale, then the actions of Job in the conclusion are simply the manifestation of the stance he articulates in chaps. 1–2. But if one reads the prose conclusion as the conclusion to the entire book, then it can be seen as Job’s choice of a stance in light of his encounter with the voice from the whirlwind. What Job learns from that voice truly enacts a collapse of the world that had previously sheltered him. The collapse does not take the shape he had feared (that God might be a predatory phenomenon), but the quality of the world he encounters is quite close to the view of nature one encounters in Malick’s films, in which nature is simultaneously the place of glory and indifference, life and death. Though many readers object to the prose conclusion in Job as a false happy ending and focus on the bad faith of God in “restoring” what cannot be restored, the conclusion is more interesting if one focuses instead on the choices Job makes and what they signify. Where he refused to be comforted when the friends came “to comfort and console” (2:11), now Job engages in those actions that signal consolation in ancient Israelite culture, which were, as Gary Anderson observes, the cessation of ritual mourning practices and the resumption of normal life.33 Though there  Dorothee Soelle, Suffering, trans. Everett R. Kalin (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), 88.  Norman C. Habel, The Book of Job, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985), 38. 32 See Carol A. Newsom, “The Book of Job,” NIB 4:629 for a variety of possible translations of the line. 33  Gary A. Anderson, A Time to Mourn, a Time to Dance: The Expression of Grief and Joy in Israelite Religion (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), 9–14. See also Carol A. Newsom, “The Consolations of God: Assessing Job’s Friends across a Cultural Abyss,” in Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of David 30 31

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are only a few accounts of consolation in the Hebrew Bible, these actions variously included receiving comforters (2 Sam 10:2), getting up, washing, anointing with oil, and putting on clean garments (2 Sam 12:20), eating (2 Sam: 12:20; Jer 16:7, “the cup of consolation”), worshiping (2 Sam 12:21; Ezra 9:5), and, above all, having sex (Gen 24:67; 38:12–18; 2 Sam 12:24; 1 Chron 7:22–23). Indeed, the change in Job’s receptivity to consolation suggests that the final phrase in Job 42:6 is most aptly rendered “and I am comforted concerning dust and ashes,” that is, the condition of finite humanity. In the prose conclusion, though Job’s leaving his ash heap is not explicitly narrated, he receives his brothers and sisters and shares a meal of consolation with them (42:11). Their gifts to him are apparently the “seed money” that God blesses in a return of Job’s prosperity (42:11–12). Such blessing is not a magical act but rather implies Job’s resuming his activities as a householder. Similarly, the fact that Job has ten more children implies that he also resumes sexual relations with his wife. The sensuous names he gives his three daughters (“Dove,” “Cinnamon,” and “Horn of Eye Shadow”) is a life-affirming gesture.34 Like Mrs. O’Brien, Job knows that he cannot guarantee his children’s safety in a world that is at once supportive of human desire for making social community and also often arbitrary in its treatment of what humans have made. The sublime wonder and terror that characterize the divine speeches and Malick’s depiction of the cosmos are the context within which human life must situate itself. Both Mrs. O’Brien and Job model the process by which one may come to an unromanticized view of the world as a place of “darkness, light, strife, and love” and choose to dwell there.

J. A.  Clines, ed. J. Cheryl Exum and H. G. M. Williamson (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), 347–58. 34 Suggestively, Job’s actions in the epilogue can readily be mapped onto Heidegger’s concept of authenticity or “being-toward-death.” As Dreyfus and Prince put it, “If an individual’s current ‘world’ or identity collapses, the individual will accept the collapse and show steadfastness as well as flexibility by accepting the anomalies in his or her current experience as the basis of a new identity. Such authentic individuals are open to the possibility of ‘world collapse,’ and thereby the possibility of taking up a new identity and making a new beginning” (“The Thin Red Line,” 38). What Job does not exhibit in chs. 3–31 is modelled in the epilogue.

Part B: History and Politics

17. Rhyme and Reason: The Historical Résumé in Israelite and Early Jewish Thought The American humorist Mark Twain once remarked that history may not repeat itself, but it certainly does rhyme. Although he expressed the idea cleverly, he is not the first person to have observed the human tendency to look for patterns in history and to reason by means of them. As universal as this tendency may be, it does not find expression in the same way in every culture, nor is the concern to discern such patterning equally intense. But one cannot read the literature of Second Temple Judaism, both canonical and noncanonical, without being struck by the frequency of what one can call “historical résumés,” that is, schematic narratives that recount the major events in history, often in ways that highlight the “rhyming” quality of history. While some of the most remarkable examples occur in apocalypses (e. g., the Apocalypse of Weeks and the Animal Apocalypse in 1 Enoch or the Cloud Vision in Syriac Baruch), the phenomenon is much more widespread, occurring in liturgical and prayer texts (e. g., Ps 106 and Neh 9), in narrative fiction (Achior’s recitation of Israelite history in Judith), and in Jewish Hellenistic historiography (Josephus’ speech before the walls of Jerusalem in the Jewish War). Though extremely popular in the Second Temple period, such historical résumés are also found in earlier Israelite literature, in the Deuteronomistic History (e. g., Josh 24, 1 Sam 12) and in prophetic texts (Ezek 20). Although I will not be able to explore the question of the origin of this phenomenon in this paper, I think it most likely that it developed in liturgical contexts, perhaps along the lines of the recitations cited in Deut 6:20–23 and 26:5b–9. My concern here is rather with the baroque variety of the developed phenomenon. Indeed, the extraordinary literary variety of such texts prevents one from speaking of the historical résumé as a genre. Nevertheless, the use of the résumé as a principle of composition in such diverse texts suggests that it was an important cultural mode of cognition. And it is that – the historical résumé as a mode of cognition – that is my focus. What I mean is simply that narrating history is a way of thinking, a way of constructing meaning from events by casting them in narrative or story form. The relationship between narrative and cognition has attracted considerable interest in several fields in recent years. Cognitive science, for instance, has argued that narrative is fundamental to human cognition per se. The brain organizes spatio-temporal phenomena in narrative patterns.1 Through narrative, 1 Mark

Turner, The Literary Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 13–14.

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coherence is produced. But narrative does not merely organize – it also explores and creates. The human mind thinks by projecting one story onto another and blending them in ways that produce new insight – and this is the source of symbolic thinking. Indeed, as cognitive theorist Mark Turner observes, “Narrative imagining – story – is the fundamental instrument of thought. Rational capacities depend upon it. It is our chief means of looking into the future, of predicting, of planning, and of explaining.”2 Though the insights of cognitive science are directly helpful at points, their focus tends to be on the basic processes of thought themselves. More immediately relevant to my purposes is the lively discussion that has taken place in recent years among theorists of historiography concerning the relationship between narrative and history. Increasingly, the claim is made that narrative plays an essential role, not only in conceptualizing and recounting history but even in the structure of historical events themselves. (See, among others, historians Louis Mink,3 Hayden White,4 Allen Megill,5 Reinhart Koselleck,6 and philosopher Paul Ricoeur.7) One might think that, if I am interested in the relationships among narrative, history, and cognition, that I should turn to the great historiographies of the Hebrew Bible, the Deuteronomistic History and the Chronicler’s History. But the historical résumés offer certain advantages. Not only are they numerous and varied, but because of their strongly schematized structure, they lay bare certain cognitive features that are present but largely implicit in the longer historical narratives. Moreover, tracing the career of the historical résumé in early Judaism may also suggest some limitations to the power of historical cognition that have been overlooked by recent theorists. One other consideration recommends the historical résumés of Israelite and early Jewish literature as an object of interest. These résumés represent the origin of one of the most significant historiographical phenomena in western culture – that of the “master” or “grand narrative.” One of the functions of all historical cognition is to discern some sort of coherence in the events of the past. But the degree and scope of coherence varies. What one calls master narratives articulate the authoritative account of some extended segment of history; the grand The Literary Mind, 4–5.  Louis O. Mink, “Narrative Form as a Cognitive Instrument,” in Historical Understanding, ed. Brian Fay, Eugene O. Golob, and Richard T. Vann (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), 182–203. 4  Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987). 5  Allen Megill, ‘“Grand Narrative’ and the Discipline of History,” in A New Philosophy of History, ed. Frank Ankersmit and Hans Kellner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 151–73. 66   Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts, trans. Todd Samuel Presner, et al. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002). 7  Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer, 3 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984–1988). 2 Turner, 3

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narrative offers the authoritative account of history generally.8 These narratives have a special function. As one recent writer observed, “A master narrative that we find convincing and persuasive differs from other stories in an important way: it swallows us. It is not a play we can see performed, or a painting we can view, or a city we can visit. A master narrative is a dwelling place that encompasses our ideas about the history of our culture, its possibilities, and our own identity. We are intended to define our lives within it.”9 For many centuries it was the Christian theological version of the grand narrative that dominated western culture. But the intellectual prestige of the grand narrative actually reached its zenith as it began to be secularized in the eighteenth century’s focus on universal history (as reflected in Kant, Schiller, Hegel, and others). The concept of the grand narrative of universal history continued to be influential up until the middle of the twentieth century, its last great practitioners being Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee. Master and grand narratives have been officially proclaimed dead by postmodernism, of course. But even though few would defend the program on theoretical grounds, there is ample evidence that attempts to discern coherence on a broad scale continues. What, after all, is Samuel Huntington’s controversial book, The Clash of Civilizations, if not an attempt to construct a master narrative of East and West and to use it for the purpose of discerning the future. Master narratives may take on new forms, may be slightly less ambitious than the “universal histories” of old, but they are unlikely to disappear, because they answer to a persistent human desire to seek coherency over the largest possible scale. Thus by studying the Jewish master narratives that stand at the source of this tradition, we may be able to perceive some of the features responsible for the extraordinary appeal of this cultural form. Before turning to the historical résumés themselves, one last bit of theoretical scene setting is necessary. Of the various accounts of how narrative coherence is achieved, I find most helpful that of Paul Ricoeur in Time and Narrative, in particular his analysis of narrative structure and its relation to temporality. As Ricoeur observes, narrative involves two types of temporality. There is the chronological temporality of a succession of events, one following the other. This is the episodic dimension of narrative. But this so-called “natural” order to time provides only minimal coherence, the coherence one finds in a simple chronicle. It is only as these events are emplotted, organized “into an intelligible whole” that they become a story. Ricoeur calls this the act of “configuration” of the events. Emplotment, the configuration of the events, allows them to be experienced not simply as a series but to be “grasped together” in “the unity of one  Megill, “‘Grand Narrative,’” 152–153.  Robert Fulford, The Triumph of Narrative: Storytelling in the Age of Mass Culture (New York: Broadway Books, 1999), 32. 8 9

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temporal whole.” Emplotment “extracts a figure from a succession.”10 Although Ricoeur notes that this configuration allows one to translate the plot into one “thought” or “theme,” he rightly insists that this is not an atemporal dimension. Rather, emplotment bends time, so that instead of a sense that things could go on forever, “the configuration of the plot imposes the ‘sense of an ending’ … on the indefinite succession of incidents.”11 Moreover, when a story is repeated and well-known, emplotment also allows one to invert the “natural” order of time, so that one can “read the ending in the beginning and the beginning in the ending.”12 Thus Ricoeur draws attention to two coordinated but distinct forms of temporality in narrative: the chronological time of the succession of events and the configured time of emplotment. Yet there is one other aspect of temporality that Ricoeur does not investigate, but one that occurs frequently in the historical résumés – and that is the temporality of rhythm, which serves both to enhance the configuration by repeating it but also to undermine its effect of closure by this same repetition. One of the significant features of historical narratives (and of many traditional fictional narratives, for that matter) is that the audience is generally assumed already to know the material. The events are familiar, and their sequence generally agreed upon. Thus telling the narrative does not serve to convey information. Indeed, much more is known than can be put into any particular version of the story. The cognitive power of narrative is rather to construct and convey significance. To tell the story is to establish certain criteria of relevance: which of the things that everyone knows belong in the story and which things do not. Thus the narrator must first identify the “subject of history.” For the historical résumés this is most commonly the people of Israel, but not always. The scope of the story is another element – what will be the relevant beginning point and the relevant ending point? Obviously, this element is closely connected with the emplotment of events – what sort of configuration governs the narration and allows it to be grasped as a temporal whole, so that the end and the beginning are seen as compellingly meaningful or true? The knowledge that the audience possesses of the set of events and details that might be chosen for narration is largely passive knowledge. If the emplotment succeeds in creating coherence, then what is left out will not be noticed by the audience as an omission that threatens the plausibility of the narration. Instead the details not chosen will simply be experienced as not relevant to the story in question. The configured plot thus acts as a filter that clears away the static that could be caused by too much information, even as it organizes the relevant details into a meaningful pattern.

 Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 1:66.  Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 1:67. 12  Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 1:67. 10 11

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Significantly, this means that many stories can be told from the same body of cultural tradition. Different subjects and different emplotments select different events and details. While such stories could be told as rival stories in ideological conflict with one another, it is just as likely that they will be seen as different but equally true stories. This potential for multiple stories to be told from the same body of traditional material is of the greatest importance for cultural change and adaptation, for it allows new knowledge to be derived from that which is already known and familiar. Here I can only touch on a few representative examples of historical résumés, and I will concentrate on those represented in the canonical literature. The résumés in 1 Samuel 12 and Joshua 24 present an instructive contrast in techniques of emplotment. 1 Samuel 12, Samuel’s speech, constructs a strongly “rhyming” history, that is, it organizes the relevant history according to three cycles of similarly structured events (the period of the Exodus, the period of the Judges, and the immediate crisis provoked by the aggression of the Ammonite king Nahash). The résumé is set under the rubric of the “saving deeds,” the ṣidqôt of Yahweh, and its locus is specifically on the provision of leadership. This emphasis is reflected in the selection of details, which include an abundance of personal names of various leaders. The cognitive problem to be addressed is how the people should assess the moral significance of their request for a king. The pattern constructed in the résumé consists of the following elements: a Situation that leads to Oppression, provoking an Outcry, followed by God’s Provision of Leadership, and the Result. But the first two cycles are not entirely parallel. In the Exodus cycle the people are merely victimized by oppression. In the cycle of the Judges the people’s “forgetting Yahweh” is the situation that provokes oppression as punishment, and the outcry includes a recognition of the people’s sinfulness. Thus Samuel actually presents the people with two possible historical analogies – to which analogy does the present situation belong, if either? The people apparently see their situation simply as victimization, or so Samuel initially presents it (“and when you saw that Nahash … came against you …,” v. 12a). But in fact, the situation is one of sinful failure, as Samuel shows by framing the people’s very outcry for help as itself an act of “forgetting Yahweh.” “And you said to me, “No, a king must reign over us”–even though Yahweh your God is your king.” The people recognize the aptness of the analogy and confess, “we have added to all our sins the evil of asking for a king for ourselves” (v. 19b). The act of historical cognition in 1 Samuel 12 emphasizes configuration more than chronology, emplotting the past in ways that emphasize a strong cause and effect relationship between events, and making the past usable as a series of analogies to guide thinking about the present. The forms of historical cognition in Joshua 24 offer a contrast. Here, as Joshua seeks to get the people to reaffirm their devotion to Yahweh, he recites the people’s history – or rather Joshua quotes Yahweh’s recitation of the people’s history

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beginning with Terah and ending with the audience’s present moment in the promised land. In this résumé there is no pronounced cyclical repetition. Events are not represented as strongly causally connected to one another. Instead, they are presented more episodically, in terms of chronological sequence. “This happened, then that happened, then this happened … .” This is not to say that the résumé is without configuration, of course. But if one may think of configuration as consisting of both paradigmatic and syntagmatic elements, or, one might say, metaphoric and metonymic, then here the metonymic is more evident. The account begins with a pronounced genealogical structure, connecting Terah to Abraham and Nahor, Abraham to Isaac, and Isaac to Esau and Jacob, before continuing with the story of Jacob’s children. Similarly, there is geographical metonomy, as the story is primarily emplotted as a journey – from Transeuphrates to Canaan, then to Egypt, then out of Egypt, into the wilderness, to the land of the Amorites, across the Jordan to Jericho, and finally to secure occupation of the land. Though episodic in structure, the events are carefully selected to establish a central theme  – divine protection. God multiplies Abraham’s offspring, frees the people from Egypt, defeats the Egyptian army, delivers the Amorites into Israel’s hands, requires Balaam to bless Israel, and defeats Israel’s enemies in Canaan by means of a plague. While journey plots are often episodic and metonymic, the figure of the journey itself has metaphorical force. Journeys often figure transformation of identity, as they tell a story of leaving one place and arriving in another. The crises of the journey provide the knowledge that effects transformation. Thus journey plots invite one to see, as Ricoeur put it, the end in the beginning and the beginning in the end. And so it is here. The story began with a description of the ancestors who lived beyond the Euphrates and worshiped other gods. In light of the story of the journey the people are given a choice – will they serve the God whom they have come to know as deliverer from danger during the journey or will they, in a sense, reverse the journey and serve the gods of their ancestors beyond the Euphrates (or, indeed, will they go too far into a new identity in a new land and serve the gods of the Amorites)? As 1 Samuel 12 and Joshua 24 illustrate contrasting forms of emplotment, Psalms 105 and 106 provide an opportunity to examine the issue of multiple histories. Certainly in the United States, and I suspect in most other countries, heated debates rage over the adequacy of histories that omit all controversial and embarrassing episodes versus those that highlight just such events that depict the nation at its worst. I freely acknowledge that irresponsibly tendentious history writing occurs, but often the way the debate is framed seems to assume that there is only one history to be told and that the task of the historian is to get it right. But is that the case? The historiographical assumptions reflected in the pairing of Psalms 105 and 106 implies a different way of understanding historical cognition. Stylistic differences suggest that these two poems were not intentionally composed as a pair; but they do appear to have been intentionally

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placed next to one another in the psalter in a manner that draws attention to their contrast. Psalm 105 recounts the history of Israel from Abraham to the promised land as a story of divine providential protection: protection from oppression in Canaan, from famine, from oppression in Egypt, from dangers in the wilderness. Psalm 106 retells much of the same period in such a way that it is perceived as a period of almost constant rebellion. It is certainly not the case that one telling is right and the other wrong. Rather, each one tells the truth, but – intentionally – not the whole truth. But how is it possible to read them together – as many readers do – without a sense that the common history has been falsified? Here one sees the vital cognitive role played by the force of internal narrative coherency. Each poem emplots the story differently, a choice that dictates a different selection of the relevant beginning and ending points, and a different configuration of temporality. These choices establish different criteria of relevancy, so that what is left out is not denied so much as it is just not immediately relevant for the process of meaning making. Thus, much like Joshua 24, Psalm 105 makes use of a journey motif, which begins with Abraham and ends in the promised land. Despite certain rhythmic elements, the narrative has a strong linear movement. The natural sense of an ending that a journey story has – arrival at the destination – is enhanced by the way the psalm explicitly frames the story with the theme of fulfillment of a divine promise to Abraham, which marks the beginning (vv. 8–11) and the ending (vv. 42–45) of the account, giving the story wholeness and completion. The intense closure of the narrative does not invite one to think of how history might continue after “he gave them the lands of nations … that they might keep His laws and observe His teachings” (vv. 44–45). The psalm gives no indication of how far the speaker stands chronologically from the events described. Indeed, the psalm’s rhetorical purpose is to make this time in some sense the audience’s own, to allow them to dwell within the master narrative. This is history in which recollection serves as normative prescription. By contrast, Psalm 106 establishes the criteria of relevance for its account of the history through the confession in v. 6 (“We have sinned like our ancestors; we have gone astray, done evil”). In contrast to the linearity of Psalm 105, Psalm 106 has an intensely repetitious structure. Only one thing happens, over and over – the rebellion of the people against God. The period framed is ostensibly much longer than that of Psalm 105, since Psalm 106 begins its account in Egypt and concludes with the speakers’ present situation in exile and diaspora. But that is somewhat misleading. Those who construct narrative also shape time, slowing it down by narrating many episodes from a short period, speeding it up by choosing few events from a larger period. So here, some 27 verses and all of the episodes described with specific details occur in the Exodus and Wilderness period. The long centuries from the entry into the land until the captivity and dispersion are foreshortened into 10 verses of extremely generalized narration,

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with most of that referring to the period of the Judges. It is as though nothing new can happen, so that the very act of telling history exhausts itself. All that one needs to know occurred at the beginning. The rhetorical purpose of the psalm, however, is to recite history in such a way that a future does open. Thus there is no resounding closure, such as one finds in Psalm 105. That would be counterproductive. Rather, the recitation concludes by creating the sense of a curiously unfinished story. In vv. 44–46 God hears the people’s cry of distress in exile and in his ḥesed makes their captors compassionate toward them. But that is not a satisfying ending. Anyone who knows narrative knows that something more needs to happen to bring the story to a conclusion. By reawakening the sense of being in the midst of an unfinished story, the narrator rekindles hope. For people do see their lives, individually and collectively, as unfolding stories – which is why narrative history is such a powerful tool of social construction. The concluding plea for deliverance in v. 47 also harks back to the first episode, the one at the Sea of Reeds, which is, significantly, the only incident in the résumé in which, despite the people’s rebellion, God delivered them “for the sake of his name” (v. 8). So at the end, the speaker envisions a parallel event (“gathering us from among the nations”) that would bring successful completion to the story and be an occasion for “praising your holy name” (v. 47). What then does the pairing of these highly selective and sharply contrasting recitations of Israel’s history suggest about the nature of historical cognition? Instead of the model of a single unified history that must be narrated in a single way, this material suggests that history sometimes can only be rendered adequately by juxtaposing multiple narratives, each with its own coherency, each with its own truth. To be sure, each rendering must be answerable to agreedupon facts; history can be falsified. But historical cognition is always partial and therefore requires multiple tellings from a variety of perspectives. The historiographical practices of ancient Israel, as exemplified in Psalms 105–106 complicate the very notion of the “master narrative” and allow one to ask if the postmodern critique has been too simplistic. In an essay on “Master Narratives and the Patterns of History,” Robert Fulford describes the consternation attending the celebration in 1992 of the five hundredth anniversary of Columbus’ voyage and what he describes as the collapse of “the master narrative centered on Christopher Columbus.”13 But one need not be forced to choose between the intolerable ideological closure of a single master narrative and the incoherence of proliferating micronarratives. As the Israelite practice suggests, it is possible to combine the human desire for comprehensive narrative coherency with the reality of history’s complexity. 13

 Fulford, Triumph of Narrative, 36.

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In Ezekiel 20, one encounters perhaps the most bizarre manifestation of the historical résumé. This chapter is often referred to as a “revisionist” history of Israel, though this is to understate the nature of its discrepancy from other renditions of Israel’s history. It is probably not the case that Ezekiel depends on divergent traditions not otherwise represented in the surviving sources, though that cannot be ruled out entirely. He seems rather to engage in an intentionally inventive recasting of tradition. Not only does he trace Israel’s history of apostasy back to an otherwise unattested worship of Egyptian idols (v. 8), but even the description of the wilderness period alludes to violations of Sabbaths and other laws (v. 13) that appear to belong to Ezekiel’s imaginative construction rather than to commonly held tradition,14 as does his distinction between the giving of two sets of laws, one that gives life and another, punitive set of “not good laws” that lead to death.15 As with Ezekiel’s allegorical histories of Israel in chs. 16 and 23, ch. 20 is not so much a venture in revisionism as it is a foray into an intentionally grotesque historiography. I do not wish, however, to take refuge in the distinction made by Block, between “true reconstruction of the past” and Ezekiel’s “rhetorical” purposes.16 All of the historical recitations in the biblical text are “rhetorical”; applying that label does not solve the puzzle of Ezekiel. Nor do I wish simply to declare him a bad historian and move on. Since my concern is with historical cognition, what I want to know is what historiographical dilemma leads someone like Ezekiel to construct a historical summary that both he and his audience would recognize as at odds with the received tradition, not just in its emphasis but in many of its facts. What is at stake? Perhaps the answer can be found in a statement by the philosopher of history R. G. Collingwood. Collingwood asserted that “every present has a past of its own, and any imaginative reconstruction of the past aims at reconstructing the past of this present.”17 One of the functions of history writing is to show how the present emerges out of the past. Seen in this perspective, Ezekiel’s grotesque history is in fact an accusation that a crisis exists in historical understanding itself. The present that he confronts simply cannot, in his view, be explained in light of the existing constructs of history. The radical apostasy of this present requires a history that can do justice to it and serve as an adequate past for this present. As many commentators have rightly noted, Ezekiel constructs the history of Israel precisely by projecting his accusations about present failures into 14  Daniel I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel: Chapters 1–24, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 633. 15  I do not find persuasive the recent attempt of Scott Walker Hahn and John Seitze Bergsma, “What Laws Were ‘Not Good’? A Canonical Approach to the Theological Problem of Ezekiel 20:25–26,” JBL 123 (2004): 201–218, to argue that the “not good” laws refer to Deuteronomy. 16  Block, Book of Ezekiel: Chapters 1–24, 640. 17  R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 247. Cited in Megill, “‘Grand Narrative,’” 163.

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the past.18 Ezekiel has, as it were, taken the dictum of Collingwood and radically literalized it, inventing the only past that can account for this present. A later, and rather different sense of a crisis in historiography seems to be reflected in the book of Daniel, first in the diaspora stories of Daniel 1–6 and subsequently in the apocalypses of Daniel 7–12. The radical move that the book of Daniel makes is to “change the subject”–literally. Every writing of history must determine what the subject of history is to be. In the rest of the Hebrew Bible the subject of history is the relationship between Yahweh and the people of Israel. Daniel 2, in particular, changes the subject of history, and the radicalness of this move can scarcely be overstated. The subject of history for Daniel 2 is not the history of Israel but the history of sovereignty, the history of malkût. Evidently, the traditional history that organized itself primarily by reference to Yahweh and Israel was perceived as no longer adequate to present realities. Instead, Daniel takes an alien master narrative and inserts Israel into its story. This claim requires some nuancing. Within biblical tradition the common references in historical résumés to the nations and their kings as instruments of punishment for the apostasy of the people had been supplemented in the prophets by other models concerning the relationship between Yahweh and foreign monarchs. Thus one finds in Ezekiel and Jeremiah a depiction of Nebuchadnezzar as the servant of Yahweh, and in Second Isaiah a representation of Cyrus as Yahweh’s anointed, not to mention the positive role given to the Persian monarchy in Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. The court stories in Daniel 1–6 owe much to this tradition concerning Yahweh’s business with the foreign rulers. But this tradition does not, properly speaking, have a “world historical” perspective. Such a perspective is, however, supplied by the four kingdoms schema employed in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2. As is now well known, this schema appears to originate in a Persian historiographical tradition, which understood the Persians as heirs to a succession of empire that passed from the Assyrians to the Medes and then to the Persians. The schema shows up in later Roman historiography with the Greeks and Romans added to the sequence. But it also developed in a different way as oppositional literature, in which the accession to power of the fifth kingdom is not a description of present reality but a prediction concerning the immanent future, which will transform reality.19 Although it is often speculated that examples of this oppositional schema existed in Persian and Babylonian versions, these are not attested, and the earliest extant version is Daniel 2. The four kingdoms schema in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream raises several issues from the perspective of historical cognition. How, for instance, does a  Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, AB 22 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983), 383.  The classic account is that of Joseph Ward Swain, “The Theory of the Four Monarchies Opposition History under the Roman Empire,” CP 35 (1940): 1–21. See also David Flusser, “The Four Empires in the Fourth Sibyl and in the Book of Daniel,” IOS 2 (1972): 146–175. 18 19

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descriptive Persian historiographical schema become transformed into a predictive oppositional device? In the Persian version, and even in some of its later uses in Rome, the schema hardly even warrants the designation “historiographical.” It is more of a chronicle: first this empire rules, then that one, then another one, and so forth. It lacks what Ricoeur calls “configuration.” It lacks a plot. What Daniel 2 (or its precursor) manages to do is to emplot the schema and so make it into a real story about sovereignty. Where does the plot come from? In Daniel 2 the schema is not presented first of all as straight historical narration but as a symbolic dream. The use of symbolic figures becomes increasingly important in the historical résumés of apocalyptic literature. In some cases they may be trivial and not cognitively significant; but that is not the case here. Here the symbols show precisely how the mind works to make new cognitions. Cognitive scientists describe the activity of thought as operating by “blends” in which different image schemas or story lines arc brought into a common mental space, where aspects of the various “input” images or plots arc used to organize perception of the “target” domain.20 This process is easier to illustrate than to describe in abstract language. The Persian account is organized simply as a continuity schema: kingdom a, kingdom b, kingdom c, and so forth. To turn it into opposition literature one needs to blend the continuity schema with a discontinuity schema. In Daniel 2 several intersecting figures and images serve this purpose. The simplest is the numerical figure. The number four is a widespread figure for completion. The cognitive theorists would trace this back to our very physical embodiment, as we organize space in relation to our bodies, which have a front, a back, and two sides. We then project this schema of completeness onto time and events. Thus to organize thinking about kingdoms into a sequence of four suggests completion. After that, whatever happens is discontinuous. Note that Daniel never refers to the eternal kingdom as the fifth kingdom. It is not a part of the sequence as such. The sequence of the metals – gold, silver, bronze, iron – figures decline, and such a figure is used by Hesiod to represent decline and renewal of world ages (Works and Days, 106–201). Here, however, that potential significance is not developed. Indeed the fourth kingdom appears to be militarily the strongest. More significant is the description of the fourth metal as not simply iron but iron mixed with pottery. Klaus Koch is correct, in my opinion, in seeing this detail as something that the author of Daniel inherits from his sources rather than creates,21 but Daniel certainly makes good use of it. The primary discontinuity image in Daniel 2 is the contrast between the statue, which contains all of 20  See, e. g., Turner, The Literary Mind, 16–25; Turner, Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 16–19. 21  Klaus Koch, Daniel, BKAT 22 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchen Verlag, 1986–), 137–138, 202.

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the metals, and the rock. These are multivalent images. But in diaspora culture the statue of various metals certainly evokes the idol polemics (and so figures the gentiles), whereas the rock probably alludes to the passage in Second Isaiah that urges the exiles to “look to the rock from which you were hewn” (Isa 51:1). The images and the thought process at this point are quite similar to what one finds in political cartoons.22 Two images are placed in a frame, and their interaction models the political situation. If one “puts on stage” a rock and a statue, what might happen next? The plot suggests itself at once. The rock can be thrown at the statue, and if the bottom of the statue consists of iron and clay – a figure of simultaneous strength and fragility – then that is just the place at which it will break, bringing the whole down. Thus the rock both displaces and replaces the statue and becomes the symbol of a new sovereignty (continuity) but of a different sort of sovereignty (discontinuity). The mind, of course, blends these images intuitively and virtually unconsciously. What the cognitive scientists demonstrate is that even seemingly obvious images and dead metaphors are in fact powerful instruments for cognition. Here in Daniel 2 they facilitate the appropriation and transformation of an alien historiographical schema into a new way of understanding Israel’s own world historical significance. The other significant issue raised by the historical résumé in Daniel 2 concerns the relation of past and future and the power of historical recital to unite them. Daniel 2 represents the earliest example of a Jewish historical résumé that functions to predict the future. As is well known, historical résumés in apocalyptic literature make extensive use of vaticinia ex eventu. The seer is fictively placed at a time before the events in question and is given revelatory knowledge about the future by a dream, a vision, or other means. Although I do not wish to dismiss as irrelevant this fictive setting as part of the text’s claim to authority, I am more interested in what the author of the apocalypse is actually doing. Whether self-consciously or simply intuitively, the author of the apocalypse is in fact scrutinizing history for patterns that he can demonstrate as having been operative in the past and by means of which he can predict the future. He does not so much seek the revelation of history as revelation by means of history.23 While the accuracy of apocalyptic predictions is not impressive, they were not wrong to attempt to use history for cognition of the future. It is one of the primary purposes for which one engages in historical understanding. In an article entitled “The Unknown Future and the Art of Prognosis,” historian Reinhart Koselleck cites Kant’s dictum that “recalling the past … occurs only with the

22  See the analysis of political cartoons as blends in Turner, Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science, 120–126. 23  Carol A. Newsom, “The Past as Revelation: History in Apocalyptic Literature,” QR 4 (1984): 40–53.

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intention of making it possible to foresee the future.”24 Koselleck himself explicates the conditions as follows. History does not just run in a unique, diachronic succession but always already contains repetitions … in which unique changes and the recurrence of the same or similar (or at least comparable) phenomena occur together … Ideas about the future rest upon a structural repeatability derived from the past.25

Or, as I would put it, what the apocalyptic writers perceived was that the rhyme of history facilitates reasoning about the future. Their use of the historical résumé was not a sharp departure from earlier uses, however. The pre-apocalyptic résumés of the Hebrew Bible also project likely futures, though their sense of history as formed by the interacting agencies of Israel and Yahweh prevented them from moving into actual prediction. Yet already with Ezekiel, who locates the engine of history in the concern of Yahweh for his holy name, the historical résumé in Ezekiel 20 moves smoothly from historical retrospection into a prophetic oracle predicting the coming fate of Israel. The examination of history for the presence of patterns capable of predicting the future, however, occurs in striking fashion in the apocalyptic portion of Daniel, with chs. 8 and 11 containing the most subtle and perceptive examples. Here the author develops what can best be called an insight into the ironic structure of human political power. In each chapter the focus narrows and the detail increases. Chapter 8 traces history from the rise of the Medo-Persian kingdom to the time of Antiochus, under the figure of a ram, a he-goat, and their horns. The rhythm of history is clear. As each protagonist appears to reach the pinnacle of its power, it is destroyed. The very height of the power of the Persian ram attracts the aggression of the Greek he-goat (vv. 5–7). When the he-goat’s conspicuous horn (Alexander) is at the peak of its power, it is mysteriously broken (v. 8a). And so, when the little horn grows as high as the host of heaven and casts some of stars to the ground, one can be confident that it “will be broken, not by [human] hands” (v. 25b). The most ambitious attempt to discern the rhyme and reason of history, however, is the immensely detailed résumé of Ptolemaic and Seleucid history in ch. 11. It is likely that the author actually made use of a Greek source for the construction of the account.26 What is impressive, however, is that without flinching from the messiness of history the author seeks to discern not only the unique details of history but their embeddedness in what Koselleck calls “structural repeatability.” Because it takes so seriously the detail of historical reality  Koselleck, Practice of Conceptual History, 133.  Koselleck, Practice of Conceptual History, 136–137. 26  Lester L. Grabbe, “A Dan(iel) for All Seasons: for Whom Was Daniel Important?” in The Book of Daniel: Composition and Reception, ed. John J. Collins and Peter W. Flint, VTSup 83 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 1:234. Somewhat more cautiously, Uriel Rappaport, “Apocalyptic Vision and Preservation of Historical Memory,” JSJ 33 (1992): 222–223. 24 25

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and focuses on a comparably limited period of history, the account in Daniel 11 is much less schematized than other historical résumés, much less regularly rhythmic; but it is far from a mere chronicle. The author narrates the events so that they display a repetitious pattern, a pattern that discloses something like an inner rule that governs the historical process and that provides the basis for projecting the future. The figure that governs this history is, as Richard Clifford described it almost thirty years ago, that of “containment.”27 What the author depicts is not precisely a “balance of power” between the King of the North and the King of the South, for the King of the North is more frequently described as the aggressor, and it is sometimes Rome rather than the King of the South who turns him back and contains him. But as Clifford describes it, the author focuses “not so much on the evil of the [Seleucid and Ptolemaic predecessors of Antiochus IV] but on their persistent inability to effect a permanent rule by reason of their containment of each other.”28 So long as the King of the North cannot successfully sweep away the King of the South, so long as he cannot capture and hold Egypt, history remains in balance. One can see the force of the pattern on the author’s imagination most clearly in certain places where he gives the historical facts a bit of a nudge. In vv. 9 and 10, for example, campaigns of Seleucus II and Antiochus III are described in ways that suggest they were attempts to invade Egypt itself, when they were not.29 History will break free of its moorings only when the King of the North does two things: when he sweeps away Egypt and when he challenges a heavenly rather than an earthly kingdom. Thus Antiochus IV’s two invasions of Egypt (vv. 26 and 29) and his rage against the holy covenant (vv. 30b–39) presage the breaking of the containment. In the prediction, which begins in v. 40, an attack by the King of the South precipitates an invasion by the King of the North that “sweeps through like a flood.” And this time “not even the land of Egypt will escape.” This, in turn, allows the author to predict Antiochus IV’s death and the end of history itself. Even though the future did not turn out as predicted, the analysis of Daniel 11 remains an impressive attempt to discern within history the patterns that organize the dynamics of power and its “structural repetitions.” Space does not permit an examination of the historical résumé in the extracanonical literature of the Second Temple period, where it has its greatest flourishing, primarily in apocalypses. Although the scope and sophistication of these works is often impressive (as in the great Animal Apocalypse of 1 Enoch), many of the techniques of composition are the same as those developed in earlier résumés. Yet there are also innovations and new directions. Perhaps the  Richard J. Clifford, “History and Myth in Daniel 10–12,” BASOR 220 (1975): 23–26.  Clifford, “History and Myth,” 24. 29  John J. Collins, Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 378–379. 27 28

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most striking is the attempt to coordinate structures of epochal, historical time with significant patterns of calendrical time through the use of sabbatical and jubilee patterns.30 But one also notes a shift in the scope of history, which tends to become truly universal, extending from creation to eschaton and attending more specifically to the place of Gentiles (e. g., in the Animal Apocalypse in 1 Enoch and the Cloud Vision in Syriac Baruch). The subject of history similarly shows certain changes, especially in the Enochic tradition. Although the events alluded to are those familiar from the Bible, the subject of history becomes somewhat more abstract. In particular in the Apocalypse of Weeks, Klaus Koch has remarked that the protagonists are actually the abstract qualities of qušṭāʾ (righteousness) and šiqrāʾ (deceit). So striking is this shift that Koch dubs the author of the Apocalypse of Weeks “the Hegel of antiquity.”31 And, similarly, in the Animal Apocalypse, though Israel is not displaced from its preeminent place, it is the “plant of righteousness” that is the true subject of history, a subtle reconfiguration that affects the way both primeval history and eschatological events are configured. But perhaps the most significant issue raised by the noncanonical historical résumés is when and why they cease to be written. This issue brings one back to the reflections of Paul Ricoeur on time, narrative, and history. Ricoeur calls historical narratives “allegories of temporality.” The impetus to construct historical narratives is the attempt to endow human existence with meaning in the face of “the corrosive power of time.”32 Thus for Ricoeur historical existence is necessarily tragic in structure. And the writing of history is an act very much like that of the tragic poets, who endeavor through emplotment, through mythos, to resist those situations in which “meaninglessness threatens the meaningful,” in which configured time triumphs over merely chronological time.33 Indeed, for Ricoeur narrative is the only mode adequate to the tragic structure of temporality. For the most part the historical résumés of Israelite literature comport well with Ricoeur’s observations on the function of historical narrative. But in the apocalyptic résumés the attempt is made to use the resources of configuration to figure the end of time itself, the end of history, and thus the end of tragedy. The last historical résumés – in 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch – are written in the aftermath of the failed revolt against Rome. After the devastating Bar Kochba revolt, however, they cease to be written altogether. If that were all, it might simply be a case of one form of historical cognition overreaching and thus discrediting itself. But 30  Klaus Koch, “Sabbatstruktur der Geschichte,” ZAW 95 (1983): 403–431; Devorah Dimant, “The Seventy Weeks Chronology (Dan 9,24–27) in the Light of New Qumranic Texts,” in The Book of Daniel in the Light of New Findings, ed. Adam S. van der Woude, BETL 106 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1993), 57–76. 31  Koch, “Sabbatstruktur,” 422. 32  White, “The Metaphysics of Narrativity: Time and Symbol in Ricoeur’s Philosophy of History,” in The Content of the Form, 181. 33  Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 1:44.

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the context suggests something more radical. It is not just the historical résumé but the entire enterprise of constructing meaning through narrative history that is rejected by Judaism in the wake of the Bar Kochba revolt. From that time and for many, many centuries Judaism turns its back on the resources of history to resist “the corrosive power of time” and instead turns to ahistorical, and one might even say, atemporal forms of thought in the Mishnah, the Talmud, and the Rabbinic hermeneutics of the various midrashim. Through that act the claim is implicitly made that at least in certain situations tragedy overwhelms even the resources of historical narrative and that other means of cognition not only serve better but perhaps even effect a means of redemption from history. As I have attempted to show, the study of the Israelite and early Jewish historical résumés offers a rich arena in which to explore forms of historical cognition that are not only the historical antecedents of western historiography but that are in large part similar to patterns of historical thinking that continue to be employed. Perhaps even more significantly, they offer perspectives from which to examine and critique assumptions in our own historiographical practice and to illumine the limits of the enterprise of historical cognition itself.

18. God’s Other: The Intractable Problem of the Gentile King in Judean and Early Jewish Literature Throughout the Hebrew Bible where the God of Israel is represented as having an opponent, this opponent is more often framed, not as another god, but as a human king.1 To be sure, the rivalry between YHWH and Baal is explicit in the Elijah-Elisha cycle and in the book of Hosea, but this is the exception that proves the rule. There the conflict is much more an internal debate about the Israelite deity to whom honor should be paid, for Baal was certainly, for many centuries, a deity associated with Israelite and Judean worship.2 One can find a few references to Babylonian gods as humiliated deities in Second Isaiah (Isa 46:1) and in Jeremiah (Jer 50:2–3; 51:44), but for the most part the gods of other nations are simply ignored. Not so their kings. From beginning to end in Israelite and early Jewish literature, from Pharaoh of Egypt to Pompey of Rome,3 a succession of kings appears as the opponent of the God of Israel. The opposition between YHWH and the foreign king is in one sense an asymmetrical relationship. They belong to different orders of being. But their opposition stands in, of course, for a more complex set of relationships that includes both identity and opposition. YHWH and the Judean king are different in that YHWH is a deity and the Judean king is not. But they are linked in a relationship of identity in that they are both kings. More than that, in Judean royal ideology, it is YHWH who as divine king (1) authorizes the earthly king’s rule (“I have found my servant David; with my holy oil I have anointed him; my hand shall always remain with him,” Ps 89:20–21), (2) associates him with YHWH’s own rule (“sit at my right hand,” Ps 110:1), and (3) even adopts the earthly king as son (“you are my son; today I have begotten you,” Ps 2:7). Thus they mirror one another’s identity as king. Although each ancient Near Eastern culture had somewhat different ways of articulating this relationship, all of them in one way or another understood the earthly king to manifest the divine royal authority and to receive his own royal identity from that of the

1 The exception, of course, is the mythic opponent of God in creation accounts, typically the Sea, Rahab, or Leviathan (cf. Pss 74:12–14; 89:10–11; Isa 27:1; 51:9–10). See John Day, God’s Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea: Echoes of a Canaanite Myth in the Old Testament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 2  Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities in Ancient Israel (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990), 12–14, 41–60. 3  Pharaoh: Exodus 5–15; Pompey: Psalms of Solomon 17.

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deity.4 Thus both vertical relationships mirror the other: YHWH and his king, the foreign god and his king.

YHWH

Foreign god



Davidic king

Foreign king

The opposition between these two sets of forces is, of course, the relationship of military and political aggression that so characterized the ancient Near East. It manifested itself on the ground in the presence of the foreign armies led by their king. But since the Judean royal ideology spoke of YHWH as the effective power of the Judean king’s military success (“I will crush his foes before him and strike down those who hate him,” Ps 89:23), it becomes a quite natural “shorthand” for the entire set of oppositions to be summed up in terms of YHWH versus the foreign king. One can represent the opposition in terms of a diagonal line This configuration has the advantage of being able to attribute even reverses of the foreign king not inflicted by the Judean king as nevertheless due to the Judean god.5

YHWH

Foreign god



Davidic king

Foreign king

But the other sets of oppositions (the upper and lower parallel lines of the square: human king versus human king; deity versus deity) also find their symbolic embodiments. The outcome of king versus king opposition was enacted in rituals of surrender, abasement, humiliation, and punishment (Judg 1:5–7; 2 Kgs 25:5–7; 2 Chr 33:11; cf. Esarhaddon’s holding the Tyrian and Egyptian rulers on a leash, ANEP 447).6 The outcome of deity versus deity opposition was enacted in the capture of divine images or symbols and their placement in the 4  See, e. g., Ronald J. Leprohon, “Royal Ideology and State Administration in Pharonic Egypt,” CANE 1:273–87 (esp. 274–75); J. Nicholas Postgate, “Royal Ideology and State Administration in Sumer and Akkad,” CANE 1:395–411. Philip Jones, “Divine and Non-Divine Kingship,” in A Companion to the Ancient Near East, ed. Daniel Snell (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), 330–42. 5  E. g., the death of Sennacherib in 2 Kgs 19:37/Isa 37:38 and 2 Chr 32:20–21. The Assyrians made use of the same motif. As Cynthia Chapman observes in The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter, HSM 62 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 148, “when an Assyrian king failed to catch and kill a fleeing king, the annals often noted his death by some natural catastrophe that was understood as the revenge of the Assyrian king’s gods.” 6  The Assyrian inscriptions regularly refer to rituals of submission performed by defeated kings (bowing in submission, kissing the feet of the Assyrian king), to being carried away in fetters, and occasionally to more gory symbolic acts, such as decapitation of the king (see Esarhaddon’s report of the defeat of Abdimilkutte of Sidon, ANET, 291). Defeated kings might even

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temples of the victorious deity. In both of these cases we have several accounts of the Judeans on the losing side (e. g., the deportations and executions of various Judean monarchs in 597 and 586, and the capture of the ark, described in 1 Samuel 4–6, and of the temple vessels, described in 2 Kgs 24:13; 25:13–17, in 2 Chr 36:7,18, and in Dan 1:2).7 Thus the “diagonal” configuration of YHWH versus the foreign king is only one of several ways in which this set of oppositions was articulated, but it is the one that figures most prominently in the literary texts of the Hebrew Bible. Before turning to particular texts, there are two terms from my title that require clarification. The first is the term Other. It has a number of different, often overlapping uses in contemporary critical discourse. It is easiest to say what I do not mean. I do not find particularly useful for this investigation the various Lacanian usages. Thus in using the term Other I do not mean the “specular” other of Lacan’s hypothetical mirror stage of human development, the other that embodies the elusive image of wholeness that persons both desire and fear. Nor do I mean the Lacanian “symbolic” other, the alien Other of language and the symbolic order that structures our subjectivity. Better, but still not quite adequate for my purposes, is the common anthropological use of the Other to refer to that person or group of people symbolically constructed as foreign or alien so as to serve as a definitional boundary for the self or for one’s own group. In poststructuralist discussions of identity formation, the other is the devalued half of a binary opposition.8 What is helpful about these perspectives is that they recognize that identity is always dialogical – the other is necessary for the self to exist. As warrior kings, YHWH and his Judean counterpart must have opponents – that is definitionally necessary to warrior kings. Such is the logic of Psalm 2, which opens with the conspiracy of “the kings of the earth” against “the one enthroned in heaven.” Their presence and provocation are what permits the assertion of identity of the divine king and his Davidic representative through derisive laughter and annihilating fury. But in contrast to the way this definitional Other functions in forming identity, the individual foreign king does not neatly fit the description of “the devalued half of a binary opposition.” Occasionally, to be sure, one finds language that inscribes the foreign king as the dragon of chaos as opposed to the creator deity, as in be required to wipe the Assyrian king’s sandals with their beards as a symbol of “compromised masculinity,” as noted by Chapman, Gendered Language of Warfare, 39. 7  The deportation of divine statues, or “godnapping,” was a regular practice of Mesopotamian kings. See Steven W. Holloway, Aššur Is King! Aššur Is King! Religion in the Exercise of Power in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, CHANE 10 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 145–46; Zainab Bahrani, Rituals of War: The Body and Violence in Mesopotamia (New York: Zone Books, 2008), 159–75. 8  This approach is associated in particular with the analysis of Jacques Derrida (e. g., in Positions [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981]) and is an important element in Judith Butler’s theoretical description of identity as performative (Gender Trouble [London: Routledge, 1993]).

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Ezek 32:2–8, a passage that vividly depicts Pharaoh king of Egypt as “a dragon in the seas,” destroyed by YHWH in language evocative of the cosmogonic battle. But in most of the cases where the opposition between YHWH and the foreign king is described, this type of “othering” is not the rhetorical strategy employed. Consequently, some additional analysis of the Other is needed to explain the dynamics. I think what is lacking can be supplied by aspects of Emanual Levinas’s account of the Other. There is much of Levinas’s thinking that is not germane. But one aspect of his discussion seems to be quite significant for this inquiry. In Totality and Infinity Levinas describes the Other not in terms of that which is opposite to me but rather as that which is separate from me, that which is radically exterior to me, that which is utterly transcendent, exceeding me. The encounter with the Other makes me aware that the world is not simply my possession or an extension of me, but that I share the world.9 And it is the matter of sharing the world that I think illumines the remaining aspect of the problem. The ideological claims concerning sovereignty that are made on behalf of any divine king are more or less incompatible with sharing the world with another sovereign who makes ultimate claims. Consequently, such an Other presents problems. In fact, intractable problems, which brings me to the second important term of my title – “intractable.” In his book Exclusion and Embrace, Miroslav Volf examines the dynamics of the encounter between self and other and catalogues the ways in which the logic of exclusion deals with the problem of the other.10 These strategies of exclusion are four: elimination, domination, assimilation, and abandonment.11 For my purposes the equivalent of abandonment is “simply ignoring the problem.” And that is what most of the divine royal ideologies do. They ignore the parallel claims of other nations concerning their deities and the kings who represent them on earth. When no active military/political conflict exists, this is the most effective strategy. When active conflict exists, however, then the rival and incompatible claims have to be ideologically resolved in some fashion. And the nature of the conflict will dictate which of the strategies – elimination, domination, assimilation – is most effective in defusing the discomfort and cognitive dissonance represented by this theo-political Other. I am, of course, primarily considering ideological strategies as they are represented in the Hebrew Bible and related texts. So it is necessary to consider the  9 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 198–203. 10 Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996). I think one can take it for granted that in antiquity there would be no resolution of the problem by an ethical “embrace” of the claims to sovereignty by the deities of other nations. Obviously, I am adapting Volf ’s analysis for a sort of ideological problem that is different from the concrete ethical issues he is concerned with, but I find the logical analysis of exclusion very helpful. 11  Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, 75.

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interface between reality and ideology. Particularly helpful for this issue is the trajectory of rhetorical and ideological analysis that runs from Kenneth Burke through Fredric Jameson. Kenneth Burke’s dictum that “words are strategies for encompassing situations” and his characterization of utterances as “symbolic acts” are perspectives that should always be borne in mind when reading texts of any nature, but particularly those engaged in negotiating power relations.12 Even more useful, however, is Jameson’s analysis of the relation of history to text. “History,” he says, “is not a text, not a narrative, master or otherwise, but … it is inaccessible to us except in textual form.”13 That is to say, one has to render historical reality in some symbolic or narrative fashion if one is to grasp it and engage it at all. What the literary text does is to draw the historical reality into itself where it is malleable, and by narrativizing it, to make it possible to invent “imaginary or formal ‘solutions’ to unresolvable social contradictions.”14 This is the symbolic act that relieves the tension of the contradiction, the tension of the intractable problem of sharing the world with rival claims. But the problem, as Jameson concludes, can be seen in Kenneth Burke’s play of emphases, in which a symbolic act is on the one hand affirmed as a genuine act, albeit on the symbolic level, while on the other it is registered as an act which is “merely” symbolic, its resolutions imaginary ones that leave the real untouched, suitably dramatiz[ing] the ambiguous status of art and culture.15

With these preliminary theoretical considerations in mind, I want to examine the ways in which – depending on the particular political circumstances – the varying symbolic strategies of elimination, domination, and assimilation are worked out in various texts to attempt to resolve the anxiety producing contradiction represented by the foreign king. One feature of these strategies which is particularly striking is the extent to which the foreign king’s psyche  – his thoughts, beliefs, perceptions, and misperceptions – become the preoccupation of the biblical and early Jewish texts. This concern with what is going on in the foreign king’s head is not evenly distributed, however, but becomes both more prominent and differently inflected as the strategy moves into the part of the spectrum represented by domination and assimilation.

12  These and related ideas permeate Burke’s extensive works. Particularly recommended are A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969); A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969); and Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966). 13  Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 35. 14  Jameson, Political Unconscious, 79. 15  Jameson, Political Unconscious, 81.

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Elimination The simplest way to deal with the disturbing claims implicit in the foreign king is to kill him – physically, if possible; but certainly, within the text. Three examples that serve as temporal bookends illustrate this strategy: on the one hand, the Song of the Sea in Exodus 15, a very early Hebrew composition; and on the other hand, the death of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, as it is described in Daniel 7 and 11, and the death of Pompey, as it is described in the Psalms of Solomon. The Song of the Sea frames this mythic-legendary confrontation in terms of the conflict between two warriors, the triumphant warrior YHWH and the defeated and destroyed warrior Pharaoh, whose chariots, army, and officers are all drowned in the sea. Pharaoh’s perception of the situation is of no interest whatsoever. He is given no thoughts or words. Similarly, in the apocalypses in Daniel, Antiochus IV is said to have spoken “big words” in Dan 7:8b, 20b, and 25a; and in 8:25b and 11:36 there are references to his considering himself great, but there is neither an exploration of the content of his boasts nor any interest in a “recognition scene” in which he perceives that he was mistaken. Similar is the treatment of the death of Ptolemy in the Psalms of Solomon. The psalmist prays “Do not delay, O God, to repay them [i. e., the Gentiles] on their heads, to declare dishonorable the arrogance of the dragon. And I did not wait long until God showed me his insolence pierced on the mountains of Egypt” (2:25),16 a description then filled out with the details of Pompey’s death. Pompey is cited as having spoken one arrogant statement, “I shall be lord of land and sea” (2:29), but he, too, apparently dies in ignorance of the true state of affairs, namely, “that it is God who is great …king over the heavens” (2:29–30).

Elimination Plus Domination Even when the foreign king dies, there may be an interest in giving him a more developed psychological experience of the meaning of his death. In these situations, I would say that the text is interested not simply in elimination of the rival but in psychological domination as well as elimination. In the prose traditions of the Exodus, the domination and manipulation of Pharaoh’s psyche is a central trope. Most famously, Pharaoh is not even his own agent, but has his heart repeatedly “hardened” by God, so as to prolong the drama of the contest between God and Pharaoh (Exod 4:21; 9:12; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:4, 8). Nevertheless, it is not enough merely to manipulate him. The theme of knowledge is made explicit. In Moses and Aaron’s first encounter with Pharaoh, he says, “Who is YHWH, that I should listen to him and let Israel go? I do not know YHWH, and I will not 16

 Translation by Robert B. Wright in OTP 2:653.

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let Israel go” (Exod 5:2). And the drowning at the Reed Sea is twice described in terms of this purpose. In Exod 14:4, “I will gain glory for myself by means of Pharaoh and all his army; and the Egyptians shall know that I am YHWH”; and similarly in vv. 17–18. Thus the text is concerned not just that Pharaoh die but that he die in the knowledge that another monarch has dominated him. A similar combination of elimination and domination occurs in the way in which 1 Maccabees, but even more, 2 Maccabees, deals with the death of Antiochus IV. In 1 Maccabees 6, Antiochus, already frustrated by a failed attempt to plunder a temple, hears news of the defeat of his army by Judah. He takes to bed, “sick from disappointment” and finally dying. On his deathbed he “recall[s] the wrong [he] did in Jerusalem,” plundering the Temple vessels and killing the inhabitants, and sees that as the reason that he is now “dying in bitter grief in a strange land” (1 Macc 6:12, 13). But this is not an explicitly theological moment of recognition. That is supplied by 2 Maccabees, however. There in 2 Maccabees 9 Antiochus responds to a similar set of frustrations by an outburst of rage and intent to destroy Jerusalem utterly. “But the all-seeing Lord, the God of Israel, struck him with an incurable and invisible blow” (v. 5). The events are described in full melodramatic mode. As Antiochus succumbs to his disgusting disease, his arrogance diminishes, and he declares, “It is right to submit to God and not to think one’s mortal self equal to God” (v. 12). Moreover, he promises to free Jerusalem, to make its inhabitants equal to citizens of Athens, to make lavish offerings to the Temple, and even to “become a Jew and to visit every inhabited place, proclaiming the power of God” (v. 17). Here the text moves not only to domination but seems to toy with the notion of assimilation by conversion. But that is just a feint. What the reader is treated to is purely the pleasure of the domination, humiliation, and ultimate rejection and elimination of the vile Antiochus, who gives up hope of recovery because, the narrator informs us, “the judgment of God had justly come upon him” (v. 18).

Domination and the Strategy of False Consciousness Where the foreign king actually dies, one can successfully make use of the strategy of elimination, with or without domination. But what if the king inconveniently does not die? In the monarchical period, the strategy is to compose texts that make the case for domination. The best examples of this strategy are the poems concerning the “King of Assyria” in Isa 10:5–19 and 37:21–29.17 17  Scholarly opinion is divided as to the date and identity of the king in Isa 10:5–14 and the relationship between these verses and vv. 15–19. For present purposes, the identification of the king is not crucial, though I am inclined to associate this passage with Sennacherib and to consider the sections as parts of one rhetorical whole; cf. Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 19 (New York: Doubleday, 2000),

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Obviously, in light of the extraordinary conquests and threats against Jerusalem, the competing ideology of Assyrian sovereignty must be confronted. One cannot ignore or share space with this. The available ideological strategy is to assert domination through contesting claims of agency, as well as to make threats. Here, however, no “recognition scene” is described, perhaps because the relationship between YHWH and Sennacherib does not have a completed plot and a definitive outcome. But the king’s psyche is quite clearly the focal issue of these texts. His thoughts and words are extensively represented in both poems. In Isaiah 37, Sennacherib is presented as bragging about ascending mountains, felling the forests of Lebanon, digging wells, and drying up the streams of Egypt.18 In ch. 10, the claims are more explicitly military, concerning what the king has done to peoples, their kings, their lands, and their wealth. What is threatening about these claims is that they are true. The king of Assyria and his predecessors have in fact done what he boasts about.19 What kind of strategy for encompassing this situation can the prophet offer? Rather than excluding and ignoring the Assyrian royal rhetoric, it is brought into the text itself, and the facts that are asserted are implicitly acknowledged. The prophet’s strategy is to shift the plane of the argument to raise the question of agency. In ch. 37 what the king claims regarding his cutting of forests and digging wells would not seem to be a direct challenge to YHWH, but the repetition of the emphatic pronoun ’ănî in vv. 24 and 25 suggests that it is the very claim of personal agency that is offensive. The mocking “have you not heard” that begins YHWH’s counterclaim (v. 26) casts doubt on the king’s own understanding of the nature of his actions. YHWH goes on to claim that it was he, not the king, who in fact determined all of these deeds and planned them “from days of old,” including Sennacherib’s military victories. Thus psychological domination comes from disclosing the king’s consciousness to be false consciousness, as well as by relocating effective agency. YHWH does not threaten Sennacherib with elimination here but concludes rather with a final image of physical domination that makes use of the binary opposition between human and animal. Sennacherib is represented as an unruly animal who can be controlled and led about by placing “my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth,” a humiliating punishment that was often inflicted on defeated kings and nobles after a military defeat (see ANEP, 447). In Isaiah 10 many of the same strategies are employed. Here, the king’s own words, in which he brags about what he has done to other peoples and cities and 256. The words attributed to the king in Isaiah 10 telescope the achievements of more than one Assyrian king. 18  Cf. ANET, 276, 291. 19  The cities listed had all been conquered by Assyrian monarchs: Calno (738 BCE), Carchemish (717), Hamath (738 and 720), Arpad (740 and 720), Samaria (722), Damascus (732).

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what he will therefore do to Jerusalem, are surrounded by a series of images that use the trope of tools and the relation between tool and tool user. The king is variously a rod and a club (v. 5), an ax, a saw, a rod and a staff (v. 15). The imagery efficiently organizes the relationship of agency, inscribing the king as a mere instrument, an inanimate object. The notion that such an object might have its own intentionality or engage in aggression against the one who wields it is the point of the parody – and provides the force of the poem’s claim that despite the Assyrian king’s victories over other cities, he will not in fact be able to do the same to Jerusalem, because the intentionality that wields the king’s power is not his own. After the initial description of the king as the rod of God’s own anger (v. 5), the king’s words are introduced with the line, “But this is not what he intends, nor does he have this in mind” (v. 7). Yet it turns out, he is wrong. From the perspective of the audience for Isaiah’s words, the king is disclosed as psychologically dominated by having his fundamental misperception of the situation disclosed. Having contained the Assyrian king’s boasting through these tropes, the poem also concludes with a threat of physical domination, the claim that YHWH of hosts “will send a wasting sickness among his stout men” (v. 16). This is perhaps a taking of credit for an outbreak of plague that put an end to Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem.20 Despite the fact that Judah ended up as a vassal state dominated by Assyria, events permitted enough ideological space to make claims that the relationship of domination ran in the other direction.

Assimilation – and a Hope for Elimination The situation changed decisively with the Babylonian hegemony in the ancient Near East, and the agonized struggle to interpret events and plan strategies within the resources of the available ideologies of power is reflected above all in the book of Jeremiah. This book strains under the tension of its various interpretive strategies. In the poetic oracles in chs. 50–51, which a brief narrative describes as the contents of a scroll thrown into the Euphrates as a sign act of Babylon’s destruction (51:59–64), the imagery is of pure elimination, indeed annihilation. Although most of the imagery is directed against the city itself, Nebuchadnezzar figures repeatedly. He is “the arrogant one” who will fall “with no one to raise him up” (50:31–32). He is the object of the lament of the people of Zion, who accuse him of devouring them, provoking God to promise vengeance (51:34–39). Although there is a brief reference to Babylon as an instrument, “the golden cup 20  Josephus preserves a tradition from Berossus that Sennacherib’s army suffered an outbreak of plague (Ant. 10.21–23). Whether this is to be associated with Herodotus’s account of mice attacking the bows and quivers of Sennacherib’s army, as Josephus surmises, is suggestive but uncertain.

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in the Lord’s hand” (51:7), for the most part these poems speak in the pure idiom of the elimination of Babylon and its king as God’s Other. Utterly different is the interpretation of the prose portions of Jeremiah. These texts describe an ideological conflict between two Judean parties, one urging surrender to Nebuchadnezzar and one urging resistance and rebellion (see especially, Jeremiah 25; 27–29; 37–38). The party urging resistance had, of course, the traditions of “Zion theology” upon which to draw, with its ideological commitment to the inviolability of Zion (Jer 7:4). The party urging submission had to employ their ideological resources in a new way. Here one has to be careful to track what was apparently a tradition that developed over time.21 It is difficult, if not impossible, to uncover the terms of the argument as they unfolded in the final years of Zedekiah’s reign. The differences between the Septuagint and the MT, however, allow one to discern some of the layers of this novel interpretation in the developing text of the book of Jeremiah. Concerning the characterization of Nebuchadnezzar, the Septuagint text corresponding to MT 27:5–6 appears to be the least developed. Here YHWH speaks: “Because I have made the earth through my great strength and by my lofty effort, I will give it to whoever seems good in my eyes. I have given the earth to Nabouchodonosor, King of Babylon, to serve him, and the wild animals of the field to work for him.” What is said here goes far beyond mere instrumental use of a king for a specific purpose. Nebuchadnezzar is not identified here as the rod of God’s anger. Nor is there any hint here, as is expressed elsewhere in the book of Jeremiah, of the Judeans’ own sin as reason for Nebuchadnezzar’s power over them. This statement reflects a truly novel configuration – the assimilation of the foreign king into the one whom YHWH chooses as his royal representative on earth. This new role does not mean a displacement of the Davidic monarch, however, since Nebuchadnezzar’s fiefdom is broader than Judah. In the Septuagint it is “the earth,” in the MT “all these lands.” For the first time, YHWH establishes an imperium. Where does such an idea come from? It appears to be difficult to ground it in native Judean ideologies, at least not entirely. The old tradition in Deuteronomy 32, that the Most High apportioned the nations according to the number of the gods, is not really parallel, though it does provide some analogy for Judah’s god making decisions about the governance of the nations. But neither is Jeremiah’s claim likely to be simply an appropriation of what Nebuchadnezzar was saying about himself. Neo-Babylonian kings did not use the titulature of king of the 21  Indeed, the prose traditions themselves may reflect an internal conflict between those Jeremiah traditionists who remained in Judah and those in the Babylonian diaspora. Such, at least, is the argument advanced by Carolyn Sharp, Prophecy and Ideology in Jeremiah: Struggles for Authority in the Deutero-Jeremianic Prose (London: T&T Clark, 2003). See in particular her summary on pp. 157–59.

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world.22 More likely, the book of Jeremiah is appropriating and adapting imperial ideological constructs, but probably Assyrian ones known in Judah from the long period of Assyrian hegemony. To illustrate, one might consider the beginning of Sennacherib’s annals: Sennacherib, the great king, the mighty king, king of the universe, king of Assyria, king of the four quarters (of the earth); the wise ruler, favorite of the great gods, guardian of the right. … The god Assur, the great mountain, an unrivaled kingship has entrusted to me, and above all those who dwell in palaces, has made powerful my weapons; from the upper sea of the setting sun to the lower sea of the rising sun all humankind he has brought in submission at my feet. (col. 1.1–4, 10–15)23

Thus in a radical move, Jeremiah both assimilates Mesopotamian imperial ideology and assimilates the foreign king, who is now positioned not as an opponent but as a chosen king, creating a three-tiered hierarchy of sovereignty: YHWH, Nebuchadnezzar, Zedekiah.24 A comparison of the LXX and the MT illustrates the development and naturalization of this new conception, as the MT adds to the king’s name the epithet “my servant,” which it also inserts into Jer 25:9. This phrase echoes the frequent royal designation “David my servant” and so emphasizes the parallel between YHWH’s choice of Nebuchadnezzar and his choice of David.25 This is not merely an instrumental but a personal relationship. At the same time the MT attempts to bridge the distance between this breathtaking new assimilation of the foreign king and the tradition of elimination by incorporating a time limit for his rule: “All the nations will serve him and his son and his grandson, until the time of his own land comes. Then many nations and great kings shall make him their slave” (27:7). Nevertheless, a vitally important new possibility is added to the repertoire of ways in which the threatening otherness of the foreign king can be dealt with. 22 David Vanderhooft, “Babylonian Strategies of Imperial Control in the West: Royal Practice and Rhetoric,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period, ed. Oded Lipschits and Joseph Blenkinsopp (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 249. The exception is Nabonidus, who modeled his titulature after that of the neo-Assyrian kings. See Paul-Alain Beaulieu, The Reign of Nabonidus, King of Babylon, 556–539 B. C., YNER 10 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 143, 214. 23  Daniel David Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924), 23. I am not claiming that the authors of Jeremiah had direct access to Assyrian inscriptions but rather that the gist of Assyrian imperial rhetoric would have been familiar to Judeans who were involved in political matters. 24 Cf. Ezek 17:11–21, where YHWH is represented as the guarantor of the vassal treaty sworn by Zedekiah to Nebuchadnezzar (cf. 2 Chr 36:13), a not uncommon practice in antiquity. Perhaps the recent fact of the swearing of the oath of fealty in the name of YHWH facilitated the ideological innovations in the Jeremianic tradition. 25  “David my servant”: 2 Sam 3:18; 7:5, 8; 1 Kgs 11:13, 32, 34, 36, 38; 14:8; 2 Kgs 19:34; Isa 37:35; Jer 33:21, 22, 26; Ezek 34:23, 24; 37:24, 25; Ps 89:3, 20; 1 Chr 17:4, 7.

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Assimilation Only With the exile and the gradual realization that the Davidic dynasty might not be restored, the strategy of assimilation, innovated in extraordinary circumstances by Jeremiah, was developed to good advantage in negotiating the new state of affairs introduced by the conquest of Cyrus the Persian. The ways in which Cyrus was assimilated to the Davidic dynastic role have been often recounted,26 so a brief summary will suffice, focusing on the Cyrus oracle in Isa. 44:24–45:13. It is important to remember, however, the religious propaganda free-for-all that was Babylon in the years leading up to and just after the conquest by Cyrus. First, there had been the furor over Nabonidus, who claimed authorization for his kingship through the moon god Sin, although for most of his kingship publicly adhering to the official Babylonian theology that acknowledged Marduk as the dynastic god.27 Second, there was the decision by Cyrus, presumably in cooperation with the priests of Marduk, to present himself as having been chosen by Marduk for rulership (“[Marduk] pronounced the name of Cyrus, king of Anshan, declared him to be the ruler of all the world,” ANET, 316). Morton Smith may (or may not) have been too imaginative in envisioning Persian agents infiltrating Babylon and persuading various segments of the population to participate in a joint propaganda campaign to prepare the way for Cyrus,28 but it is important to situate Second Isaiah’s own positioning of Cyrus in the context of the lively discursive struggle to account for Cyrus’s stunning success. Moreover, for the first time the foreign king was not someone threatening violence against Judah or the Judeans. Thus assimilation becomes the most useful way of encompassing the new imperial ruler.29 As in Jeremiah, Second Isaiah begins the assimilation of Cyrus by identifying YHWH as the creator, and as the agent who has determined everything that will happen. Here, however, the assimilation of Cyrus to the Davidic tradition is much stronger. Cyrus is “my shepherd” and “YHWH’s anointed.” YHWH not only grasps his right hand but also gives him a throne name. Above all, he charges Cyrus to rebuild Jerusalem and refound the Temple, tasks previously carried out by the Davidic kings.

26  See, e. g., Roddy L. Braun, “Cyrus in Second and Third Isaiah, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah,” in The Chronicler as Theologian, ed. M. Patrick Graham, Steven L. McKenzie, and Gary N. Knoppers, JSOTSup 371 (London: T&T Clark International, 2003), 146–64. 27  Beaulieu, Reign of Nabonidus, 49–50,137–38, 203. 28 Morton Smith, “II Isaiah and the Persians,” JAOS 83 (1963): 415–21. 29 See the similar analysis of Lisbeth Fried, “Cyrus the Messiah? The Historical Background to Isaiah 45:1,” HTR 95 (2002): 373–93. In particular, “I suggest instead that the Deutero-Isaianic writer wrote as a contemporary of Cyrus, and that he wrote to legitimize him as the Davidic monarch, heir to the Davidic throne. The line of the Achaemenid kings would now take the place of the Davidides” (374).

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One significant difference between Jeremiah and Second Isaiah is that in Jeremiah’s assimilation of Nebuchadnezzar, no attention at all was given to Nebuchadnezzar’s consciousness. In Jeremiah’s view, does Nebuchadnezzar know he has been given the rulership of the world? The issue never comes up. For Jeremiah’s limited purposes, it did not matter. The persistence of the exile, however, and the succession of Persia to imperial rule, made the issue of the foreign king’s psyche once more a matter of concern. One can see Second Isaiah negotiating this issue in the Cyrus oracle. The theme of what Cyrus knows or does not know occurs intensely in vv. 4–6a. “For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name, I give you a title, though you do not know me. I am YHWH and there is no other; besides me there is no god. I arm you, though you do not know me, so that they may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is no one besides me.” Here it is made explicit that Cyrus is not aware of the true state of affairs, though the ultimate purpose of this election of Cyrus is universal knowledge of the nature and power of YHWH. (The “so that you may know” phrase in v. 3b is probably a secondary addition.) Why would Cyrus be said not to know? Perhaps because of his public declaration that his kingship comes from Marduk. Thus the claim of false consciousness again has a role to play, although in this case a more subtle one. Colluding in Assimilation? What was missing in Second Isaiah, Cyrus’s awareness of the source of his imperial power, is, of course, made explicit in the decree of Cyrus that concludes the book of 2 Chronicles and begins the book of Ezra: “Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: YHWH, 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” (2 Chr 36:23a; Ezra 1:2). A long and inconclusive debate has raged as to whether this decree is or is not authentic, though the balance of opinion currently favors the skeptics.30 I doubt the issue will ever be resolved. I would like to lay out two alternative possibilities, however, either of which I think makes sense in the context of the power relations of empire. First, the Persians did represent themselves in Babylon as kings authorized by the Babylonian gods and in Egypt as the successors of the Pharaohs, authorized by the Egyptian gods.31 What is not known is whether or not they extended this practice to the minor peoples of the empire. One could imagine good reasons for doing so. The subject peoples 30 See Lester Grabbe, “The ‘Persian Documents’ in the Book of Ezra: Are They Authentic?” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, ed. Oded Lipschitz and Manfred Oeming (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 541–44. For arguments in favor of authenticity, see Elias J. Bickerman, “The Edict of Cyrus in Ezra 1,” in Studies in Jewish and Christian History (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 1:71–107. For a nuanced analysis see H. G. M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, WBC 16 (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1985), 6–15. 31  Fried, “Cyrus the Messiah?” 383–86.

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would receive the dignity and ideological power of being able to affirm that their Persian overlord reigns at the command of their own god. The advantage to the Persians is that people who have acknowledged that Persian rule is what their own god desires are less likely to join in revolts. If such a practice were in fact the case, then the Persian overlords would themselves be colluding in assimilation to local religious ideologies throughout the empire as a strategy of rule. But there is no hard evidence that this was the case, outside of the contested biblical passages in Ezra and 2 Chronicles. The other option is that the Judeans themselves, aware of the Persian practices with respect to the gods of Mesopotamia and Egypt, constructed by analogy a Persian acknowledgment that Persian rule was authorized by the God of Israel. It is not difficult to appreciate the ideological double bind of a persistent life under imperial control without native kingship. In the ancient Near East kingship is divinely authorized. There may be bad kings, but kingship itself mediates the divine rule on earth. Nativist revolts (as opposed to revolts by satraps) were usually associated with a claimant to the native throne (the likely expectations of restoration of the Davidic monarchy associated with Zerubbabel [Zech 3:8–10; 4:6–7]; the revolts of Nidintu-Bel and Arakhu, each of whom took the name of Nebuchadnezzar and claimed to be the son of Nabonidus32). If revolt in the name of one’s own kingship was not possible, then there were strong ideological pressures to envision the imperial ruler as divinely authorized by one’s own god. Otherwise the world simply did not make sense. Assimilation with Domination – and Back to Elimination What appears in Chronicles and Ezra in brief form (the conscious and explicit confession by the king that he has received rule from YHWH) becomes the obsession of the narrative cycle in Daniel 1–6.33 Much more than in previous texts, the consciousness of the king becomes the field of struggle itself. Here the genre of court stories (which regularly patronize or even satirize kings) is turned to a new purpose. In Daniel, the king rather than the courtier becomes the protagonist. This is especially true of what I would call “the Nebuchadnezzar cycle” in MT Daniel 1–4. Although originally probably separate stories, with ch. 1 composed as an introduction to Daniel 1–6, in the MT tradition especially, the material in chs. 1–4 have been carefully linked to form something almost like a Bildungsroman for Nebuchadnezzar, showing the slow and painful development of his consciousness of the source of his sovereignty.34 As has often been 32  Beaulieu, Reign of Nabonidus, 232. See also Pierre Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, trans. Peter T. Daniels (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 115, 120. 33  One might also note also the story of Alexander the Great and the Jewish high priest, preserved by Josephus, Ant. 11.329–39. 34  Evidence exists in the Old Greek of Daniel that chaps. 4–6 (or 3–6) may have circulated

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noted, the theme of divine sovereignty is carried throughout the narratives by the various doxologies uttered by the kings, mostly at the end of the chapters, doxologies that have a crescendo pattern.35 At the end of ch. 2, Nebuchadnezzar praises the God of Daniel as “God of gods and Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries,” though the juxtaposition of ch. 3, where Nebuchadnezzar builds the statue of gold and demands worship of it, suggests that he has not in fact grasped the full meaning of the revelatory dream. At the end of ch. 3 he answers his own earlier rhetorical question concerning what god could save the three young men from his hand by blessing “the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego who sent his angel and delivered his servants who … disobeyed the king’s command” (3:28). But then he makes a decree offering to protect this deity from insult and blasphemy by means of his own royal power, suggesting again that he has still not quite grasped the principle involved. Chapter 4 tells the story of Nebuchadnezzar’s redemptive humiliation for his arrogant presumption. Cast in the form of a public letter to all the peoples of the earth, the letter is framed by doxologies in which he explicitly affirms the Most High God’s sovereignty and his confession that “he is able to bring low those who walk in pride” (4:37). The story makes clear that Nebuchadnezzar receives back his own kingship only after he has uttered his confession concerning divine sovereignty. The domination of Nebuchandezzar by YHWH in this story is what makes the outcome ideologically satisfying. The final two stories stand as counterpoints: Nebuchadnezzar’s son Belshazzar serves as the negative counterpart to Nebuchadnezzar’s redeemed consciousness (a point underscored in the MT) and is summarily eliminated. In the final narrative concerning Darius the Mede, the concluding doxology is not simply a personal confession by the king but “a decree that in all my royal dominion people should tremble and fear before the God of Daniel” (6:26). Not only are the foreign kings happily dominated by the sovereign God of Israel but also all the peoples of the empire will be as well. Fredric Jameson would recognize in this narrative cycle a clear example of the use of narrative to invent formal and imaginary solutions to unresolvable social contradictions. By positing the kings’ acknowledgment of YHWH’s sovereignty, and indeed the recognition of it as the source of their own sovereignty, the text can create a tightly framed narrative world in which YHWH’s sovereignty is indeed a present reality, exercised through the foreign kings. If there were ways in which the imperial rulers did in fact “collude” in the wording of their proclamations, then the cycle of stories would not be wild fantasies so much as they would be narrative ways of opening up the ideological space made possible by such royal rhetoric. In any event, such was the tradition embedded in Chronicles and separately as the core of the narrative cycle. See John J. Collins, Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 4–7. Later editorial activity in the MT tradition, however, links the Nebuchadnezzar stories tightly together. 35  Sibley Towner, “The Poetic Passages of Daniel 1–6,” CBQ 31 (1969): 317–26.

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Ezra, which the author of Daniel presumably knew. The Daniel stories appear to be a highly stable way to discharge cognitive dissonance by asserting YHWH’s sovereignty within the context of foreign imperial rule. The problem with symbolic acts, however, as Jameson warned, is that such an imaginative resolution is “symbolic only.” The contradiction cannot be put to rest once and for all. And the tension surfaces in the Daniel cycle in the content of the revelatory dream to Nebuchadnezzar in ch. 2. A debate exists as to whether the eschatological elements of the dream are secondary, for the resolution proposed by the dream is quite different from that devised by the narrative cycle.36 The resolution in the dream is, once again, the strategy of elimination. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, were all broken in pieces and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth (2:35).

In the end, elimination is the only ideologically stable option. Although various strategies for dealing with the foreign king as YHWH’s other may answer particular situations, the ideology of divine sovereignty is incompatible with other rival claims. Even the re-establishment of a kingdom under the Hasmoneans does not fully resolve the cognitive dissonance, and the eschatological projection of the elimination of rival claims to sovereignty, both on earth and in heaven, becomes the project of apocalyptic literature.

36  The case has been most forcefully argued by Reinhard Kratz, Translatio Imperii: Untersuchungen zu den aramäischen Danielerzählungen und ihrem theologiegeschichtlichen Umfeld, WMANT 36 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1991), 33–35, 55–62. But see John J. Collins, review of Translatio Imperii, by Reinhard Kratz, JBL 111 (1992): 702–4, who questions the somewhat circular argumentation.

19. Why Nabonidus? Excavating Traditions from Qumran, the Hebrew Bible, and Neo-Babylonian Sources One of the most fruitful places for examining the transmission of traditions and the production of texts is surely the literature associated with the figure of Daniel. Even before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars explored the differences between the versions of Daniel found in the Masoretic Text of Daniel and the Septuagint, with its additional narratives and poems, as well as the different version of Daniel 4–6 in the Old Greek manuscripts. The Qumran finds showed that there was an even more extensive Danielic literature, with two compositions featuring Daniel making historical and eschatological predictions in a court setting (4Q243–244 [4QpsDana-b], 4Q245 [4QpsDanc]), and two compositions using language or motifs similar to those of Daniel 2 and 7 (4Q246 [4QapocrDan], 4Q552–553 [4QFour Kingdomsa–b]).1 The longstanding suspicion of scholars that Daniel 4 was originally a narrative about Nabonidus received additional support from the discovery of 4Q242 (4QPrNab).2 These texts are evidence both for the complexity of the Danielic tradition and the creativity of its authors, as they appropriated and recycled useful elements, combining them with usable bits and pieces from other literary and oral traditions in order to produce new compositions. Nowhere are we better positioned to examine this process than with the texts that were originally associated with Nabonidus, for in addition to the Jewish narratives, we also have an extensive neo-Babylonian literature, including both Nabonidus’ own self-presentation in his inscriptions and literary representations of Nabonidus by his enemies.3 Although this material has been intensively studied, recent research on the 1  For discussion of these texts see Peter W. Flint, “The Daniel Tradition at Qumran,” in The Book of Daniel: Composition and Reception, ed. John J. Collins and Peter W. Flint, VTSup 83 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 2:329–67; and Loren T. Stuckenbruck, “The Formation and Re-Formation of Daniel in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. James H. Charlesworth (Waco, TX: Baylor, 2006), 1:101–30. 2  The identification was originally suggested by Paul Riessler, Das Buch Daniel, Kurzgefasster wissenschaftlicher Kommentar zu den Heiligen Schriften des alten Testaments 3/3/2 (Stuttgart: Roth, 1899), 43, and by Fritz Hommel, “Die Abfassungszeit des Buches Daniel und der Wahrsinn Nabonids,” Theologisches Literaturblatt 23 (1902): 145–50. The official publication of the Prayer of Nabonidus is John J. Collins, “Prayer of Nabonidus,” in DJD XXII, 83–93. 3  These documents have recently been edited and translated by Hanspeter Schaudig, Die Inschriften Nabonids von Babylon und Kyros’ des Grossen samt den in ihrem Umfeld entstandenen Tendenzschriften, AOAT 256 (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2001).

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historical Nabonidus may shed additional light on the composition and development of the Jewish Nabonidus literature. In addition, two questions have not heretofore received sufficient attention. First, to the extent that one can peer through the Jewish Nabonidus texts to the early stages of their composition, what can one say about the motivation for their composition and their possible function as social rhetoric? Second, since important comparative material exists, is it possible to develop a model that suggests how the authors of this literature actually produced new stories from their source material? The Corpus of Jewish Nabonidus Literature One of the initial issues to be explored is the extent of Jewish Nabonidus literature. The Prayer of Nabonidus is the one text explicitly identified with him. But within the canonical book of Daniel, Daniel 4 is widely agreed to be originally a Nabonidus story.4 To this one can add Daniel 5, since it is a story about Nabonidus’ son Belshazzar. It has also been suggested that other compositions of the Daniel cycle may have originated as stories about Nabonidus, notably Daniel 3. Although the details of the narrative do not correspond to anything actually done by either Nebuchadnezzar or Nabonidus, the erecting of a strange image and requiring worship of it may well preserve a parodic echo of Nabonidus’ notorious championing of the moon god Sin.5 Indeed, two of his most controversial actions were the installation of a new and non-traditional cult statue of the moon god in Sin’s temple in Harran and his attempt to persuade the priests of Marduk that the Esagil temple in Babylon actually belonged to the moon god, because of the iconography of the lunar crescent found there.6 In addition, PaulAlain Beaulieu has argued that the motif of the fiery furnace in Daniel 3 is actually derived from a literary topos that was part of the Neo-Babylonian school curriculum. Together, these elements strongly suggest that the basic structure of the narrative may go back to the sixth century.7 The case for Daniel 2 as originally a Nabonidus narrative is weaker but not without plausibility. Of the Neo-Babylonian kings only Nabonidus had an interest in ominous and revelatory dreams or recorded them in his inscriptions.8 Dreams, however, are not uncommon elements in Israelite and early Jewish  See n. 2.  Martin McNamara, “Nabonidus and the Book of Daniel,” ITQ 37 (1970): 144–48. See also Paul-Alain Beaulieu, “The Babylonian Background of the Motif of the Fiery Furnace in Daniel 3,” JBL 128 (2009): 273–90. 6  Paul-Alain Beaulieu, “Nabonidus the Mad King: A Reconsideration of His Steles from Harran and Babylon,” in Representations of Political Power, ed. Marlies Heinz and Marian H. Feldman (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 139. 7  Beaulieu, “The Babylonian Background,” 283–85. 8  Paul-Alain Beaulieu, The Reign of Nabonidus, King of Babylon, 556–539 B. C., YNER 10 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 218; Ehulhul Cylinder I.15–26 (Schaudig, Inschriften Nabonids, 416–17, 436); Harran Inscription I.11; III.1–2 (ibid., 488, 496; 493, 498); 4 5

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storytelling, as the notable parallel of Pharaoh’s dream in Genesis 41 demonstrates. Still, it is not the fact of the dream but the role it plays in the narrative of Daniel 2 that is suggestive. The narrative is dated to “the second year” of the king’s reign, and it is thus quite likely that the king’s distress at the ominous dream is intended to suggest anxiety as to the security of his reign. In Daniel, of course, the dream and its interpretation are a Hellenistic era composition, since they contain references to a sequence of kingdoms, ending with that of the Greeks (vv. 36–44). Some scholars have suggested, however, that this particular dream or elements of it are secondary, since its eschatological orientation contrasts quite sharply with the way in which the narratives in Daniel 1–6 in general tend to accommodate to gentile power by representing the kings as recognizing the power of the Judean god.9 While any argument about an earlier version of Daniel 2 must be speculative, it is the case that Nabonidus, a usurper who was not part of the dynastic family, was anxious about the legitimacy of his kingship. In an inscription composed during his first regnal year, Nabonidus himself reports an ominous dream he had concerning the conjunction of the moon (Sin) and the great star (Marduk). A “young man” in the dream tells him that “the conjunction does not involve evil portents.”10 Nabonidus goes on to report that in the dream Marduk “called him by name.” The similarity to Daniel 2, which concerns an ominous royal dream interpreted by a young man in an agreeable fashion, is thus quite intriguing. Scholars are generally in agreement that the various narratives in Daniel 2–6 originally circulated separately and were secondarily brought together to form a narrative cycle, for which ch. 1 was composed as an introduction.11 Thus of the five core chapters (Daniel 2–6), four have a significant claim to have been originally composed about Nabonidus and his son Belshazzar.12 These chapters, plus the Prayer of Nabonidus, amount to a striking amount of Jewish literature composed about this last king of Babylon. While the Prayer of Nabonidus continued to be copied as a Nabonidus text, the fact that the narratives in the Babylon Stele VI–VII (ibid., 519–20, 525–26); Inscribed Bead (ibid., 545). Nabonidus’ claims to revelatory dreams are ridiculed in the Verse Account V.10–11 (ibid., 569, 576).  9  E. g., Reinhard Kratz, Translatio Imperii: Untersuchungen zu den aramäischen Danielerzählungen und ihrem theologiegeschichtlichen Umfeld, WMANT 63 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1991), 134–48. 10  Beaulieu, Reign of Nabonidus, 111; Schaudig, Inschriften Nabonids, 514–29, particularly 518–19 and 525. 11 Klaus Koch, Das Buch Daniel, EdF 144 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1980), 61–66; John Collins, Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 35–38. For a different view of the earliest Daniel book see Ranier Albertz, “The Social Setting of the Aramaic and Hebrew Book of Daniel,” in The Book of Daniel: Composition and Reception, ed. John J. Collins and Peter W. Flint (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 1:183–97. 12 An argument made already by Wolfram von Soden, “Eine babylonische Volksüberlieferung von Nabonid in den Danielerzählungen,” ZAW 53 (1935): 81–89.

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actively redacted Daniel tradition were transferred to the more famous figure of Nebuchadnezzar is a good indication that Nabonidus’ “shelf-life” as a figure of interest to Jews was relatively brief.13 Thus, it is likely that Jews would only have composed literature about Nabonidus during or shortly after his reign. Purpose and Function of the Jewish Nabonidus Literature Why or for what purpose might such literature have been composed? And is the apparent function of the collection of Daniel narratives the same as that of the originally independent compositions? The answer to this latter question, I would suggest, is partly yes and partly no. It is usually assumed that the story cycle took shape in the Persian period and received its final editing in the early Hellenistic period.14 For about a generation after Lee Humphreys’ influential article,15 the collection was largely understood as modeling a “life-style for diaspora,” that is, as optimistic narratives that suggest how the Jewish diaspora could participate in the opportunities of gentile society without compromising loyalty to their god. More recently, scholars have tended to interpret the narratives as literature of resistance against gentile imperial rule.16 There is some truth to both interpretations, as the narrative collection performs a vital ideological function that is both accommodationist and resistant. It is resistant insofar as the narratives contest the kings’ understanding of the source of political power, which in the case of the Persian kings was declared to be from Ahura Mazda.17 But it is accommodationist in that, by narrating stories in which the kings come to recognize that rulership comes from the God of Daniel and his friends, the 13 Nor

was Nabonidus a figure of interest to the Greeks. Although his book must be used with considerable caution, Ronald Sacks assembles the relevant information and draws the appropriate conclusion when he states that “to the Greeks, Nabonidus was nothing more than a name in a list” (Images of Nebuchadnezzar, 2nd rev. and exp. ed. [London: Associated University Presses, 2004], 97). 14 Collins, Daniel, 36. 15 W. Lee Humphreys, “A Life-Style for Diaspora: A Study of the Tales of Esther and Daniel,” JBL 92 (1973): 211–23. 16  Daniel Smith-Christopher, “Prayers and Dreams: Power and Diaspora Identity in the Social Setting of the Daniel Tales,” in Collins and Flint, The Book of Daniel: Composition and Reception, 1:266–90; Matthias Henze, “The Narrative Frame of Daniel: A Literary Assessment,” JSJ 32 (2001): 5–24; David Valeta, Lions and Ovens and Visions: A Satirical Reading of Daniel 1–6 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2008). 17  See the stereotypical statement in Persian royal inscriptions, exemplified by Darius’ Behistun inscription: “I am Darius the Great King, King of Kings, King in Persia, King of countries, son of Hystaspes, grandson of Arsames, an Achaemenian … by the favor of Ahuramazda I am King; Ahuramazda bestowed the kingdom upon me” (Roland G. Kent, Old Persian, 2nd rev. ed. [New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society, 1953], 119). The Persian kings, however, did legitimate their kingship in Babylon and Egypt by reference to the native gods. See Pierre Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, trans. Peter T. Daniels (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 43–45, 475–78.

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imperial rule is legitimated for Jews as representing the choice of their own God “who gives it to whom he wishes” (Dan 4:14). This complex representation of gentile imperial power makes good sense of the theological-ideological function of the narrative cycle. In part, it also serves as a plausible account of important functions of the individual narratives. For instance, concerning the Prayer of Nabonidus, Susan Ackerman has noted the significance of the particular affliction that affects Nabonidus, “grievous boils” (šḥn’ b’yš’). The affliction is distinctly linked to the god Sin in Mesopotamian tradition. Yet in the Prayer of Nabonidus “the idols” are powerless. “The God of Israel has thus usurped from Sin the ability to inflict and cure skin ailments.”18 What this type of interpretation does not explain, however, is why suddenly, in the reign of Nabonidus, there would have been an intense production of such literature. It is likely that something else was at stake in the origins of this literature, something that has to do not only with negotiating Jewish/gentile theo-political ideologies but also with an internal Jewish exilic debate. One is hampered, of course, by the fact that the oldest versions of these narratives no longer exist. Nevertheless, I think it is possible to identify certain key elements in the narratives that go all the way back to the beginning. Despite the many differences between them, both the Prayer of Nabonidus and Daniel 4 have as their central focus the public proclamation by the king of his recognition of the power of the Most High God because of what God has done with respect to the king. And both narratives relate this experience to the king’s absence from Babylon, behind which lies the historical memory of Nabonidus’ sojourn in Teima. Both are in some way indebted to Nabonidus’ own Harran inscription, as I discuss below. Similarly, in their present form, both Daniel 2 and 3 conclude with the king’s recognition of the power of the god of the Jews (Dan 2:47; 3:28–29). Thus if anything seems to be at the core of the story tradition, it is the king’s public recognition of the god of the Jews. To understand more clearly why such narratives might have been composed, it is important to recall the controversies surrounding Nabonidus’ kingship. He was a polarizing figure, not simply – or even primarily – because he was a usurper, though his own defensiveness about his legitimacy may point to some opposition on that score. Much more problematic was his advocacy of the supremacy of the moon god Sin and his championing of a theology that would equate Sin with Anu, Marduk, and Nabu.19 The enmity of the priests of Marduk was recorded not only in the polemical “Verse Account of Nabonidus,” but also in their composition of the “Cyrus Cylinder,” which provided theological 18 Susan Ackerman, “The Prayer of Nabonidus, Elijah on Mount Carmel, and the Development of Monotheism in Israel,” in The Echoes of Many Texts, ed. William G. Dever and J. Edward Wright, BJS 313 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 60. 19  For a discussion of Nabonidus’ theological programme, see most recently Beaulieu, “Nabonidus the Mad King,” 137–66.

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legitimation for Cyrus as king of Babylon.20 Both of these texts were composed after Cyrus’ conquest, and Amelie Kuhrt has suggested that perhaps they do not so much indicate opposition to Nabonidus during his reign as an attempt to curry favor once the new Persian regime was a fait accomplit.21 Those arguments, however, have been persuasively refuted by Peter Machinist and Hayim Tadmor.22 Nabonidus was a divisive figure both during his reign and in the years following. These documents, plus the fact that Sippar and Babylon were taken by the Persians without a fight, have often been interpreted to mean that pro-Cyrus sentiment existed even before his entry into Babylon. Nabonidus, of course, also had his supporters, not only during his reign but after it. The Dynastic Prophecy has confirmed a claim already known from Berossus that Nabonidus surrended to Cyrus, was spared and exiled to a remote place in the Persian empire, where he may even have been appointed as governor.23 That he continued to be supported by a segment of the Babylonian population is indicated by the fact that two revolts against the Persian king Cambyses were led by individuals who claimed to be the sons of Nabonidus.24 Were the Jewish exiles similarly divided? If they were, of course, it would have been for different reasons than the Babylonians. But there is some indication that the same division of opinion between support for Nabonidus and Cyrus existed among the Jews as well. The prophet known as Second Isaiah explicitly championed Cyrus as Yahweh’s anointed in an extended oracle in Isa 44:24–45:8. There, Cyrus is referred to not only as “anointed” but is also called “My shepherd,” and he is given the responsibility of rebuilding Jerusalem and the temple (Isa 44:26–28). He is thus positioned in the role of successor to David and Solomon. This framing of Cyrus is often interpreted as a counter to the claims of the priests of Marduk that it was Marduk who had summoned Cyrus to kingship over Babylon.25 This is likely one of the functions of the oracle, as it is introduced in Isa 44:24–26a by remarks denigrating Babylonian diviners. The harshest polemics, however, follow the Cyrus oracle in 45:9–13, where the prophet appears to confront Jewish opponents. “Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making?’ Or ‘Your work has no handles!’” (v. 9b). Possibly, the Inschriften Nabonids, is the most authoritative and recent edition of these texts.  Amelie Kuhrt, “Nabonidus and the Babylonian Priesthood,” in Pagan Priests, ed. Mary Beard and John North (London: Duckworth, 1990), 119–55. 22  Peter Machinist and Hayim Tadmor, “Heavenly Wisdom,” in The Tablet and the Scroll, ed. Mark E. Cohen, Daniel C. Snell, and David B. Weisberg (Bethesda, MD: CDL, 1993), 146–51. Piotr Michalowski (“The Doors of the Past,” ErIsr 27 [1993]: 184), having analyzed Nabonidus’ claim to interpret omens and read ancient texts for himself, observes that in addition to the priests of Marduk, “the king undoubtedly alienated much wider circles of priests, scribes and scholars.” 23  Beaulieu, Reign of Nabonidus, 231. 24  Beaulieu, Reign of Nabonidus, 232; Briant, 120. 25  ANET, 315–16. 20 Schaudig, 21

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resistance of his audience was simple incredulity; but one ought also to consider the possibility that the Jewish exilic community was divided between those who remained loyal to Nabonidus and those who saw in Cyrus a liberator, and that this division might account for the sudden production of literature in which Nabonidus is represented as acknowledging the God of the Jews. Rainer Albertz considers such a division of loyalty likely and locates continuing support of Nabonidus with “the narrow circle of exilic leaders at court, the descendants of David and Hilkiah,”26 that is to say the aristocratic members of the royal and high priestly families who were particularly dependent on Nabonidus for their support and station. There may have been others, however. Although the evidence is indirect, the fact that most of the sites in northwest Arabia referred to in the Harran inscription were later important centers of Jewish settlement has suggested to some that Nabonidus may have settled Jewish soldiers and laborers in this region during his ten-year sojourn there.27 Thus a significant number of Jews may have had reason to favor Nabonidus against his enemies. Whether or not Teima was a site of Jewish support for Nabonidus, the circles around Jehoiachin’s sons would have had the motive to sponsor literature directed at the Jews in Babylon designed to secure a favorable opinion of Nabonidus by representing him as object of Yahweh’s healing and care (the Prayer of Nabonidus), as one whom Yahweh had chosen to be king over the nations (Daniel 4), and as one who ultimately came to recognize in the Most High God the source of his sovereignty and well-being (both Daniel 4 and the Prayer of Nabonidus). Moreover, the genre of court stories, which form the basis for Daniel 1–6, would have been quite at home among the scribes of the Judean royal family. One might object that the king is represented in a quite negative light in Daniel 2–4. Even von Soden, who has argued for the origin of these narratives in traditions about Nabonidus, distinguishes between the Prayer of Nabonidus, which he describes as friendly toward the king, and the narratives in Daniel, which he sees as grounded in the anti-Nabonidus propaganda of the priests of Marduk.28 I would agree that elements in Daniel 3 and 4 reflect and make parodic use of the negative characterizations of Nabonidus’ actions by his opponents. In the plot line of these stories, however, in contrast to the propaganda directed against Nabonidus, the king is presented as one who comes to a proper recognition of the power of the Most High God, in this case the God of the Jews. Moreover, the 26 Rainer Albertz, Israel in Exile: The History and Literature of the Sixth Century B. C. E., trans. David Green (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), 111. 27 C. J. Gadd, “The Harran Inscriptions of Nabonidus,” Anatolian Studies 8 (1958): 87; Rudolf W. Meyer, Zur Geschichte und Theologie des Judentums in hellenistisch-römischer Zeit, ed. Waltraut Bernhardt (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1989), 99–101. 28  Wolfram von Soden, “Kyros und Nabonid: Propaganda und Gegenpropaganda,” in Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte der Achämenidenzeit und ihr Fortleben, ed. Heidemarie Koch and David N. Mackenzie, Archaeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran 10 (Berlin: Reimer, 1983), 61, 63.

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genre of the stories has to be considered. It is characteristic of court stories to exploit the stereotypically dangerous and volatile power of the king for the sake of a dramatic plot line, even when the king is viewed favorably (as in Ahiqar, the Joseph story, and Esther). By focusing on the character of the king and his gradual redemption from misperceptions about the source of his sovereignty, Daniel 2–4 negotiate in an imaginative fashion the terms upon which Jews can support a gentile monarch. If the early versions of these stories ended in a fashion similar to the ones now extant, with recognition of the power of the God of Daniel and his friends, then they cultivate an ultimately positive attitude to the king who is their subject. While the precise doxological formula in 3:31–33 may be a later redactional element, since it corresponds closely with the one in 6:27–28, the logic of the plot lines in the narratives suggests that the recognition of the god of the Jews by the king is indeed an old feature of the stories. A second objection might be raised as to the representation in Daniel 5 of Belshazzar, Nabonidus’ son, as an arrogant and blasphemous idolater who is judged worthy of death. This, too, may actually fit the dynamics of the politics of the era. Significant conflict apparently existed between Nabonidus and his son, conflict that became overt after Nabonidus returned from Teima and not only removed Belshazzar from his administrative responsibilities but also dismissed officials Belshazzar had appointed during his absence. Moreover, Belshazzar apparently did not share Nabonidus’ advocacy of the moon god Sin. During Nabonidus’ absence in Teima, the royal inscriptions in Babylon, supervised by Belshazzar, returned Marduk to full honor, a policy that was abruptly reversed when Nabonidus returned.29 In two late inscriptions Nabonidus expresses this (apparently unfulfilled) wish to Sin: “And as for Belshazzar, my eldest son, my offspring, establish the fear of your great godhead in his heart. May he not commit any sin.”30 Although the book of Daniel records Belshazzar’s death (5:30), there is no confirmation in cuneiform sources that he died during the transition to Persian rule. A negative portrayal of Belshazzar, however, is not inconsistent with attempts to cultivate a favorable disposition toward Nabonidus. Thus far I have attempted to make a plausible, though necessarily speculative, case for the context that would explain the sudden appearance of numerous narratives about Nabonidus in which he variously receives healing from the God of the Jews and comes to acknowledge the sovereign power of this God. I have placed this context in the years just before and just after the Persian conquest, when the populace of Babylon, and, as I have argued, also the Jewish exiles, were divided in their support of Cyrus or Nabonidus. Thus the oracles of Second Isaiah and the narratives about Nabonidus would represent the competing 29 30

 Beaulieu, Reign of Nabonidus, 63–65, 203–5.  Beaulieu, Reign of Nabonidus, 64.

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propaganda for these kings by their Jewish supporters. Although court stories and prophetic poetry are very different genres, it is worth asking if there are any common themes in their representation of these two kings. Both literatures share an anti-idolatry rhetoric, though in Second Isaiah it is the prophet who critiques idols (41:6–7; 42:17; 44:9–20; 46:1–7), whereas in the Prayer of Nabonidus it is the king himself. More intriguing is the issue of whether or not the king in question knows or acknowledges the God of the Jews. This is a central feature of the Nabonidus stories. In Isa 41:25b, too, there is a brief reference to Cyrus as “one who calls upon my name.” But the long Cyrus oracle in 45:1–8 says the opposite: “I call you by name … so that you may know that I am YHWH … though you do not acknowledge me,” 45:3b, 4b) and “I engird you, though you do not acknowledge me, so that they may know, from east to west, that there is none but me” (45:5b–6a). It is difficult to know quite what to make of these claims, except that the issue of whether or not a king can be said to acknowledge the God of the Jews appears to have been important in persuading the Jewish audience to support him – and that the rhetoric of Second Isaiah sounds a bit defensive on the question of Cyrus’ acknowledgment. The Relation of Jewish Nabonidus Literature to Neo-Babylonian Texts The likelihood of a sixth-century origin of the traditions behind the Prayer of Nabonidus and Daniel 4 received an important confirmation in 1956, when the two Harran Stelae of Nabonidus were discovered.31 From the comparison of this inscription with the Prayer of Nabonidus and particularly with Daniel 4, it became evident that some of the distinctive features of these narratives clearly reflected acquaintance with Nabonidus’ own self-presentation in this inscription.32 Thus it is possible to examine the transmission of tradition across cultural and linguistic lines. But how could the contents of Nabonidus’ stelae become known to Jews? And what about the genre of this inscription might have made it an appealing subject for appropriation and reuse by the Jews? There is much that is not known about the distribution of the text, i. e., whether copies were circulated in Babylon or in Teima, but as the editor of the Harran stelae notes, “the clear purpose of these inscriptions was publicity.”33 Although the largely illiterate population could not read the inscription itself, writings designed for the public were communicated by public reading.34  Gadd, “Harran Inscriptions,” 35–92.  Meyer, Zur Geschichte und Theologie, 111. More recently, Klaus Koch, “Gottes Herrschaft über das Reich des Menschen: Daniel 4 im Licht neuer Funde,” in The Book of Daniel in the Light of New Findings, ed. Adam S. Van der Woude, BETL 106 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1993), 77–119 (89–98). 33  Gadd, “Harran Inscriptions,” 90. 34  Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 11–14. 31 32

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The genre of the inscription is also important. Nabonidus’ inscription is written very much in the style of narû (i. e., stela) literature. These texts, many of which served as curriculum materials in the first level of Babylonian education, were “fictional accounts of the deeds of famous kings allegedly inscribed on steles (narûs) to instruct present and future generations.”35 These narû compositions represent the king as addressing other kings, officials, or a broader audience of the king’s subjects and giving advice. The king is depicted, not as a military leader, administrator, or even as a source of justice, but rather as a teacher of religious truth and of wisdom. As Beaulieu observes, “this, no doubt, corresponded to the ideal figure of the king promoted by official circles in the time of the Babylonian Empire.”36 He also notes that posing as a religious leader and teacher of wisdom was one of the things that the Verse Account mocks about Nabonidus, though it is grounded in his own self-presentation. If the Jews wished to compose literature in which Nabonidus could be pictured as confessing the power of the Most High God, then the narû style of the Harran inscription, with its representation of the king as a religious teacher, provided a very congenial template for such a composition. Moreover, the audacity of Nabonidus’ actual cultic reforms would have contributed to his suitability for this more radically imagined religious instruction. Beaulieu underscores the fact that Nabonidus’ restoration of the Sin cult was not simply a restoration but a significant departure from tradition. “The deity about to take up residence in the restored Ehulhul is a deity with the same name as the old one but with a different theology and a different appearance. For the new deity to be accepted, Nabonidus must emphasize his role as religious leader, as teacher of rituals and cultic prescriptions.”37 How much the newness of Nabonidus’ reforms was understood by the Jewish authors of Nabonidus literature cannot be known. But Beaulieu argues that the radical nature of Nabonidus’ innovations is evident in the rhetoric of the Harran inscription.38 These historical features make Nabonidus a particularly suitable Babylonian king to represent in a fictionalized role as a religious teacher who announces the supremacy of the Jewish god. The uses made of the Harran inscription by the Prayer of Nabonidus and by proto-Daniel 4 appear to be independent of each other.39 All three compositions, however, share a cluster of distinctive elements: (1) the first-person style in which the king speaks; (2) the address to a public audience with the purpose  Beaulieu, “Nabonidus the Mad King,” 141.  Beaulieu, “Nabonidus the Mad King,” 142. 37  Beaulieu, “Nabonidus the Mad King,” 147. 38 Beaulieu, “Nabonidus the Mad King,” 147. 39  Although early reconstructions of 4QPrNab often enhanced its similarities to Daniel 4, Matthias Henze (The Madness of King Nebuchadnezzar, JSJSup 61 [Leiden: Brill, 1999]) persuasively concludes that “the discrepancies between the Prayer of Nabonidus and the tale of Nebuchadnezzar’s madness are significant enough to exclude the possibility of a direct literary relationship” (68). Henze also rejects the notion of a linear traditio-historical development (68–69). 35 36

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of praising and giving honor to a deity, thus representing the king as a religious teacher; (3) a retrospective narrative having to do with the king’s absence from Babylon; (4) the motif of a set time of years, after which the king returns to Babylon (though it is unclear whether the return itself was an element in the Prayer of Nabonidus). In the Prayer of Nabonidus, as in the Harran stele, the location of Teima is specifically mentioned as the location of his sojourn. These common elements are so distinctive that they do seem to indicate an awareness of the Harran stele by the authors of the Jewish texts. The elements that I have detailed more or less exhaust the points of similarity between the Harran inscription and the Prayer of Nabonidus, insofar as it is preserved. The pattern of similarities with Daniel 4, however, is more sustained and more striking, as can be seen in the accompanying chart. Some of these similarities, of course, may be simply fortuitous, and despite the similarities, the author of Daniel 4 certainly takes the narrative in very different directions. To this complicated picture one would need to add the divergence of the Old Greek of Daniel 4 from the Masoretic Text. Though it is not possible to develop the specific arguments here, it appears that the MT (though itself containing some late and secondary literary features, such as the “court contest” framing in 4:3–4) probably preserves a version closer to the structure of the original narrative than does the Old Greek.40 In any event, the author of proto-Daniel 4 used more of the structure of the Harran inscription as a framework for his narrative than did the author of the Prayer of Nabonidus. I have identified 9 points of formal and content similarity (see chart): 1. The summary of the text as a testimony to a “great work” or “signs and wonders” of the deity 2. The first-person address to a public audience 3. The king’s self-deprecating reference to himself 4. The central place of a revelatory dream 5. The absence from Babylon at the command of a deity 40  The issues are extremely complex. Some have defended the priority of the MT. So David Satran, “Early Jewish and Christian Interpretation of the Fourth chapter of the Book of Daniel” (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1985), 62–86; and Pierre Grelot, “La Septante de Daniel IV et son substrat sémitique,” RB 81 (1974): 22. Others have defended the priority of the OG. So Rainer Albertz, Der Gott des Daniel: Untersuchungen zu Daniel 4–6 in der Septuagintafassung sowie zu Komposition und Theologie des aramäischen Danielbuches, SBS 131 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1988); and Lawrence Wills, The Jew in the Court of the Foreign King: Ancient Jewish Court Legends, HDR 26 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990). For my purposes, the major issue is the placement of the doxology that begins the account in the MT and that occurs at the end of the account in the OG. Collins (Daniel, 220–21) gives good reasons for assuming that the OG has assimilated to the pattern of the other narratives that place the doxologies at the end. But he also notes that the doxologies in the MT of chs. 4 and 6 may represent a redactional stage in which these chapters circulated separately. If the Harran inscription was a model for the composition of proto-Daniel 4, then its rhetorical structure may have prompted the composition of framing doxologies, but there is no way of knowing with certainty if this was the case.

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6. The set term for the absence 7. The hymnic praise of the deity 8. The return to Babylon, facilitated by a change in attitude of the king’s subjects 9. Concluding praise of the deity. Models for the Social Reception of Jewish Nabonidus Literature That the Harran inscription served in lesser (Prayer of Nabonidus) or greater (Daniel 4) degree as a partial template for the construction of the Jewish narratives seems well established. It remains to be considered, however, precisely how these narratives would have worked as social propaganda for the context in which I am suggesting they functioned originally, namely, as attempts to sway Jewish exilic opinion toward Nabonidus, when some in the community were championing Cyrus and the Persians as the instruments of Yahweh’s will. One might object that these narratives were “just stories,” court tales, entertainments. Although later generations, exemplified by Josephus (A. J. x.186–218), may have taken the Daniel narratives as history, one might assume that the original audience would have known that the stories were not factual. Two different but perhaps complementary responses may be made to this objection. First, it may not be necessary that one actually believe in the facticity of stories for them to have their effect. Fiction’s access to truth is not dependent on its complete correspondence with facts. The main gist of the Nabonidus literature that underlies Daniel 2–5 and the Prayer of Nabonidus is that the Most High is sovereign – not the idols, not the gentile kings. That is the core belief of the audience to whom these narratives are addressed. And so to make Nabonidus the humiliated but ultimately redeemed king who recognizes this – even in a literary fiction – is to generate a sense of good will toward him. That is the modest case for the Nabonidus narratives as pro-Nabonidus propaganda. A stronger case may also be made. Perhaps one should not be so sure that the original Jewish audience recognized the distance between the fictional Nabonidus of the narratives and the actual Nabonidus. The persistence by segments of the American population in believing things about President Barack Obama that are manifestly untrue (e. g., that he is a Muslim or that he was not born in the United States), even in the face of frequent proofs to the contrary, is simply a recent instance of a common phenomenon. When important aspects of their worldview are at stake, subcultures can and will believe things that are manifestly not factual.41 The worldview of the Judean exiles and their descendants 41  Most of the research done on this phenomenon concerns conspiracy theories. For an entertaining recent survey see David Aaronovitch, Voodoo Histories (London: Jonathan Cape, 2009). But positive false rumors are also often believed with tenacity by populations whose sense of well-being is invested in them. (My thanks to Mladen Popović for alerting me to this work.)

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in Babylonia was under significant stress after the destruction of the kingdom and the devastation of the temple of YHWH. Significant psychic motivation existed for at least some Jews of the Babylonian exile to take as fact what had perhaps been written in the circles around Jehoiachin’s sons as fiction. In either case – the more modest or the stronger case – narratives about how Nabonidus came to recognize the power of the God of the Jews would have solicited positive feeling toward him. It is also possible that Nabonidus’ own rhetoric facilitated this Jewish re-interpretation of his religiously idiosyncratic behavior. Beaulieu notes that as part of his attempt to identify Sin with other major Mesopotamian deities, including Marduk and Nabu, Nabonidus favored the common name ilu (“god”) for Sin, especially in the logographic plural form DINGIR.MEŠ, and that this terminology was particularly in use in the Harran region. Indeed, Beaulieu observes, citing research by Han J. W. Drijvers, that “pagan Syrian inscriptions from this region dated to the first two centuries of our era still address the god of Harran as ellaha, echoing the theology favored during the late Assyrian and Babylonian empires.”42 Thus Nabonidus’ veneration of the moon god, especially as it was conveyed in the Aramaic vernacular that was common in Mesopotamia, was expressed as his veneration of ellaha, the same term by which the Jews acknowledged their god, YHWH. In this fashion, the linguistic overlap may have facilitated the interpretation of Nabonidus’ notorious religious differences with the priests of Marduk in terms that allowed Jews to entertain the notion that he actually venerated their own god. Although the court stories of the proto-Daniel narratives were most likely originally composed self-consciously as fictions, one should leave open the possibility that they may have functioned among the Jewish populace who heard and retold them as believable accounts of the last king of Babylon. Indeed, in light of his possibility, it is tempting to read Second Isaiah’s references to Cyrus as one who was chosen by Yahweh “though you do not acknowledge me” as perhaps a defensive counterthrust to the claims being made for Nabonidus. Methodological Issues Rarely in biblical studies do scholars have access not only to variant literary traditions about the same figure and also to documentary sources that appear to have been used in the composition of the literary traditions. But in the instance of Nabonidus that is the case. Does this abundance of source material allow one to formulate insights into the process of the creation of the literary materials? Perhaps. Older attempts at understanding the development of narratives like the 42  Beaulieu, “Nabonidus the Mad King,” 152; Han J. W. Drijvers, “The Cult of Sin Lord of the Gods at Samatar Barabesi,” in Cults and Beliefs at Edessa, EPRO 82 (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 123–24, 141–42.

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Prayer of Nabonidus and Daniel 4 often relied on source and redaction critical methods.43 Although such approaches often produce careful observations about differences among the literary sub-units of a composition, they often are too mechanical in their understanding of the nature of literary production, too much governed by a cut and paste model of composition. Much more promising are studies in oral composition and performance, especially as the focus on the role of type scenes and motifs has given way to a broader concern for orality and its relation to cultural memory.44 But there is also some insight to be gained from recent work in cognitive literary theory, specifically, the notion of “conceptual integration” or “blending,” which is described as “a basic cognitive operation for creating new meanings out of old.”45 As a fundamental mental process, blending is present in a wide variety of phenomena, from grammar, to semantics, to metaphor, to mathematics, to political cartoons, to narratives, and so forth. In the introduction to their article on blending, which they entitle simply “A Mechanism of Creativity,” Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier cite a fake newspaper story that circulated after the Pathfinder space probe crash landed on Mars, bouncing on its inflatable balloons. This landing coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of “the Roswell incident,” in which many people believed there had been a government cover-up of an alien spacecraft landing in New Mexico in the United States. The fake news story purported to be a Martian wire service report in which Martians claimed there had been a crash landing of an alien spacecraft, and the Martian government insisted it was just a high atmosphere balloon and swamp gas. The humor is created through the blending of the Pathfinder story and the Roswell story, a blending facilitated by the overlap of certain key elements that occur in both narratives: a spacecraft crash landing on another planet and a balloon. The process of composition is also facilitated by inputs from the repertoire of stereotypical space alien narratives as well as of newspaper reporting styles and genres. As Turner and Fauconnier stress, this process of conceptual blending is not simply a description of a compositional technique. Rather, the blend that results has new meanings that were not present (indeed could not be present) in either of the input narratives. What they do not say explicitly, though I think they would agree, is that all creation is blending of some sort. There is nothing new under the sun – and yet, amazingly, there always is. How might this model of creative blending illumine what occurs in the use of the Nabonidus Harran inscription in the creation of the Prayer of Nabonidus and proto-Daniel 4? Jews would probably have become acquainted with the 43  Wills’s analysis of the Old Greek of Daniel 4 in The Jew in the Court of the Foreign King is an excellent example. 44  See, e. g., the essays in Performing the Gospel: Orality, Memory, and Mark, ed. Richard A. Horsley, Jonathan A. Draper, and John Miles Foley (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006). 45  Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier, “A Mechanism of Creativity,” Poetics Today 20 (1999): 397–418.

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inscription through public readings of it.46 Such a long inscription would not be remembered verbatim. Instead, the memory of it would be stored as a template, an outline with key points of content. In this fashion it could be passed on orally to others. This schematic template serves as the input narrative from the Harran inscription. The author of the Prayer of Nabonidus, so far as we can tell, used only a few elements of this template, though they are distinctive: a first-person public proclamation by Nabonidus, honoring a god for his miraculous works by recalling past events that the king himself has experienced, relating to the fixed period of time he spent at Teima. The author of the Prayer of Nabonidus blended this template with another narrative template. In contrast to the example used by Turner and Fauconnier, one cannot be certain if another specific narrative was involved. But that is not a matter of great consequence. As Turner observes in The Literary Mind, “we do not recognize each story as wholly unique. Instead we know abstract stories that apply to ranges of specific situations.” We know “conceptual categories of stories.”47 Thus one need not identify another specific source for the Prayer of Nabonidus but simply another story type. And that turns out to be quite simple. In the Prayer of Nabonidus the king is represented as someone who is (a) suffering from illness, (b) is healed, and who (c) writes a document containing a prayer that praises the god who has healed him. This is the story type represented by the account in Isaiah 38 of Hezekiah’s illness, healing, and the thanksgiving psalm described as “a writing of King Hezekiah of Judah, after he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness” (Isa 38:9).48 The very genre of thanksgiving psalm involves a public performance, since such compositions were designed to glorify the deity to other worshipers. Moreover, the description of this thanksgiving in Isaiah 38 as something written brings the narrative details even closer to the motifs of the Prayer of Nabonidus. While it is possible that Isaiah 38 itself is in fact the other specific narrative template, such an assumption is not necessary. More importantly, as Turner and Fauconnier argue, the effect of such a blend is new meaning, not simply a combination of old meanings. To graft a Yahwistic illness/healing/thanksgiving narrative onto Nabonidus’ first-person account of his experiences of the miraculous deeds of Sin is to create something highly novel – a narrative in which a Babylonian king acknowledges the saving power of the God of the Jews – and yet to do so in terms that echo the rhetoric of Nabonidus’ own inscriptions. In Turner and Fauconnier’s example of narrative blending, the seriousness of the narrative of the NASA mission and the silliness  See n. 34.  Mark Turner, The Literary Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 10. 48  The Prayer of Nabonidus is often compared with the story of Manasseh, his repentance, and his prayer (2 Chr 33:12–13; Pr Man). See John Collins, “Prayer of Nabonidus,” 87. The similarity to the account of Hezekiah in Isaiah 38 is, however, much greater. 46 47

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of the narrative of the Roswell conspiracy theorists simply results in a new parodic narrative. But the blending of two serious narratives  – one concerning Nabonidus’ strenuous attempts to foster the worship of the Moon God and the other concerning divine healing of a king in a Yahwistic context – combine to create a blended narrative that, whether or not recognized as fictional, takes its place within the repertoire of believable narratives about the relationships between gods and kings. The relationship between proto-Daniel 4 and the Harran inscription is more complex. As indicated above, much more of the template of the Harran inscription is appropriated in Daniel 4. But Daniel 4, at least in its present form, shifts the focus of the story from one in which a dream is briefly summarized to one that is largely centered on a dream report and its interpretation. Moreover, it inverts the issue of fault. Nabonidus’ stele inscription blames the sin of the populace of Babylon for the deity’s decision to cause the king to leave Babylon. The Jewish story blames the king’s own hubris. One can certainly find parallels for each of these narrative patterns in the Jewish repertoire (dream interpretation: Genesis 41; Judges 7; royal disobedience, chastisement, and reform/repentance: 2 Samuel 12; 2 Chronicles 33), though it is not evident that all of these specific narratives existed before the composition of proto-Daniel 4. But the general insight of the cognitive theory of “blends” is persuasive. The Jewish narratives can be constructed through creative blending of a Babylonian inscription and stock elements from the repertoire of traditional Jewish narratives. What I have attempted to suggest in this necessarily speculative study is that one can peer back to a certain extent through the transmission of traditions in the Danielic literature and identify some of the social dynamics that may have produced the literature originally, and also to see how it may have functioned in that context. The basic points are these: (1) Nabonidus was likely an object of interest to Jews only for a short time, during and just after his reign; (2) the Jewish literature composed about him focused on his recognition of the God of the Jews, a feature that would recommend him to a Jewish audience; (3) the contemporaneity of this Nabonidus literature with Second Isaiah, which features God’s choice of Cyrus, suggests that these two bodies of literature represented a division within the Jewish exilic community of a theo-political nature, a division that was analogous to the split within Babylonian society more broadly. I have also attempted to show how the Jewish compositions were aware of and made use of Babylonian literature by and about Nabonidus, in particular, his Harran inscription. Finally, I have attempted to connect the data that we have from this ancient composition and its source material with modern cognitive theories about the processes of creativity, in the hope that it will assist our work in understanding the production of texts and the transmission of traditions. Although Nabonidus himself may have ceased to be a figure of continuing interest to Jews, the narratives originating about him in proto-Daniel continued to be

337

19. Why Nabonidus?

creatively adapted for diaspora Jews, incorporating new traditions and blending new narrative elements over a period of several centuries. Comparison of Harran Stela, Prayer of Nabonidus, Daniel 449 Harran Stela

Prayer of Nabonidus

Daniel 4

1. Identification of the nature of the communication: announcement of the great work/ miracle of the deity (I.1) (This is) the great mir- (1) The words of the (3:31–32) King Nebuchadneacle of Sin … p[ra]yer which Nabonizzar to all people and nations … The signs and wonders dus, King of [Baby]lon, [the great] king prayed … that the Most High God has (5) Pro[cla]im and write to worked for me I am pleased give honor and exal[tatio]n to relate … to the name of G[od Most High, and I wrote as follows … 2. First-Person Style (I.7) I (am) Nabonidus …

(2–3) [I, Nabonidus …] I was smitten

3. Self-deprecating reference; chosen for kingship by deity (I.7–11) I (am) Naboni[no parallel preserved] dus, the only son, who has nobody, in whose heart was no thought of kingship… . Sin called me to kingship …

4. Revelatory Dream (I.11) [Sin] made me have a [no parallel preserved] dream and said … .

(4:1) I, Nebuchadnezzar

(4:14, 31, 33) The Most High … may set over it even the lowest of men… . I blessed the Most High, and praised and glorified the Ever-Living One… . Then and there my reason was restored to me … and I was reestablished over my kingdom. (4:15) I, King Nebuchadnezzar, had this dream … .

5. Absence from Babylon and/or punishment at command of deity (4:21–22) It is the decree of (I.23) [Sin] made me leave (1–2) … [smitten] with a my city Babylon … . bad disease by the decree of the Most High. … you will be driven away from men G[o]d in Teima … .

49  Translation of Harran stele follows Oppenheim, ANET, 562–63, with minor changes; translation of Prayer of Nabonidus follows Collins, “Prayer of Nabonidus”; translation of Daniel 4 follows the NJPS.

338 Harran Stela

Recycling: History and Politics

Prayer of Nabonidus

Daniel 4

6. Set term for the absence/punishment (II.11–12) Then the (pre(2–3) [I…] was smitten for (4:22, 31) You will be … seven years… drenched with the dew of dicted) term of ten years heaven; seven seasons will arrived… . pass over you… . When the time had passed… . 7. Hymnic praise of the deity’s supremacy after the events recounted (II.14–20) O Sin, lord of [conclusion not preserved, (4:31) I blessed the Most the gods… who is able but presumably contained High, and praised and glorito illuminate the heaven the promise of praise] fied the Ever-Living One, and to crush the netherwhose dominion is an everworld…king of kings, lord lasting dominion… . of lords… . 8. The return to Babylon, facilitated by the king’s vassals or subjects [no parallel preserved] (4:33) My companions and (III.4–9) [I dispatched a nobles sought me out, and messenger] from Teima I was reestablished over my [and he went to] Babykingdom… . lon… . When they saw [him], the kings of the nearby regions came up to kiss my feet… . 9. Concluding praise of the deity [conclusion not preserved, (III.28–29) I fulfilled the command of Sin, the king but presumably contained the promise of praise] of the gods, the lord of lords who dwells in heaven, whose name surpasses that of (all) the (other) gods in heaven… .

(4:34) So, now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise, exalt, and glorify the King of Heaven, all of whose works are just and whose ways are right… .

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Woessner, Martin. “What is Heideggerian Cinema? Film, Philosophy, and Cultural Mobility.” New German Critique 113 (2011): 129–57. Wojtyla, Karol. The Collected Plays and Writings on Theater. Translated with introductions by Boleslaw Taborski. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987. Wold, Benjamin G. Men, Women, and Angels: The Qumran Wisdom Document Musar leMevin and its Allusions to Genesis Creation Traditions. WUNT 2/201. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005. van Wolde, Ellen J. Reframing Biblical Studies: When Language and Text Meet Culture, Cognition, and Context. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009. Wolff, Hans Walter. Anthropologie des Alten Testaments. München: C. Kaiser, 1973. van der Woude, A. S. “Fragmente einer Rolle der Lieder für das Sabbatopfer aus Höhle XI von Qumran (11QŠirŠabb).” Pages 311–37 in Von Kanaan bis Kerala: Festschrift für Prof. Mag. Dr. J. P. M. van der Ploeg O. P. zur Vollendung des siebzigsten Lebensjahres am 4. Juli 1979: überreicht von Kollegen, Freunden, und Schülern. Edited by W. C. Delsman, et al. AOAT 211. Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982. Wright, Archie T. The Origin of Evil Spirits: The Reception of Genesis 6.1–4 in Early Jewish Literature. WUNT 2/198. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005. Wuellner, Wilhelm. “Rhetorical Criticism and Its Theory in Culture-Critical Perspective.” Pages 171–85 in Text and Interpretation: New Approaches in the Criticism of the New Testament. Edited by Patrick J. Hartin and Jacobus H. Petzer. NTTS 15. Leiden: Brill, 1991. Yadin, Yigael. “The Excavations at Masada: 1963–64, Preliminary Report.” IEJ 15 (1965): 1–120. –. “Is the Temple Scroll a Sectarian Document?” Pages 153–69 in Humanizing America’s Iconic Book: SBL Centennial Addresses 1980. Edited by Gene M. Tucker and Douglas Knight. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1980. Yarbro Collins, Adela. “The Apocalyptic Rhetoric of Mark 13 in Historical Context.” BR 41 (1996): 5–36. –. Cosmology and Eschatology in Jewish and Christian Apocalypticism. Leiden: Brill, 1996. –. Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984. –. “Genre and the Gospels.” JR 75 (1995): 239–46. Zaharopoulos, Dimitri. Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Bible: A Study of His Old Testament Exegesis. New York: Paulist Press, 1989. Zuckerman, Bruce. Job the Silent: A Study in Historical Counterpoint. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Index of Sources Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Genesis 1 206–8 1:27 206 1–3 199 2 206–7, 216 2–3 17, 47, 196, 206, 228, 229 2:7 222 5:22 77 6 205 6–9 12–13 6:1–3 206 6:1–4 12, 202 6:3 216, 218 6:5 197, 199, 229, 235 7:7 243 8:21 229, 235 8:22 266 12:10–20 274 17:11–14 230 20:1–18 274 22:12 248 24:67 286 26:6–11 274 37:28 248 38:12–18 286 39:17–18 248 41 323, 336 41:38 218 50:20 228 Exodus 4:21 195, 310 5:2 311 9:12 195, 310 9:34 227 10:1 310 10:20 195, 310 10:27 195, 310

11:10 195, 310 14:4 195, 310–11 14:8 195, 310 14:17 195 14:17–18 311 15 310 28:3 219 31:1 222 35:31 219 35:34 219 Leviticus 4:2 228 4:13–14 228 4:22 228 4:27 228 27:18 222 Numbers 11:17 217, 218 11:25 218 11:26 217 15:22–36 228 24:2 195, 217, 218 27:18 218 Deuteronomy * 163, 195–96, 229 4:1–9 198 10:16 230 11:21 274 29:17 234 30:6 230 30:6–10 198 32 314 32:8 203 Joshua 24

293–94, 295

364

Index of Sources

Judges 1:5–7 306 3:10 195, 217, 218 6:34 217, 218 7 336 13:25 218 14:6 195, 217, 218 14:19 195, 218 15:14 218

2 Kings 2:16 218 19:3 180 19:4 181 19:7 195, 218, 228 19:34 315 24:13 307 25:5–7 306 25:13–17 307

1 Samuel 4–6 307 4:19 180 12 293–94 12:12a 293 12:19b 293 16:13 218 16:14 217, 218 27:1 226

1 Chronicles 7:22–23 286 17:4 315 17:7 315 21 202

2 Samuel 3:18 315 7:5 315 7:8 315 7:14 234 10:2 286 12 336 12:20 286 12:21 286 12:24 286 22:1 181 22:5 177, 180–2 22:6 180–2 23:2 195, 218 1 Kings 6 140 11:13 315 11:32 315 11:34 315 11:36 315 11:38 315 14:8 315 17:21 222 22:22 217 22:23 195, 218

2 Chronicles * 317–18 33 336 33:11 306 33:12–13 335 36:7 307 36:13 315 36:18 307 36:23a 317 Ezra * 146, 317–18 1:2 317 9:5 286 Nehemiah * 146 Esther * 269 Job *

9–10, 19–37, 76, 241–51, 253–71 1–2 19, 33, 270, 285 1 19, 36, 269 1:1 242, 247 1:1–11 242 1:1–22 246 1:1–2:13 242, 246 1:8 247 1:9–11 247

Index of Sources

1:11 250 1:13–19 247 1:20 285 1:20–22 247 2:1–10 246 2:3 247 2:4–5 247 2:5 242, 250 2:7–8 247 2:9 247 2:10 247, 281 2:10–13 242 2:11 242, 285 2:11–13 247 3 32, 33, 249, 267 3–27 249 3:1–42:6 242 4:17 30, 249 4:17–21 197 4:19 222 5:9–16 30 7:17–19 30 9:2–4 30, 249 10:9 222 12 249 13:13–27 249 13:20–27 34 15 249 15:16 197 16:18–21 249 18 249 19 268 19:23–27 249 20 249 21 249 22 31 22:1–20 249 23:3–7 34, 249 24:18–25 31 25 31 25:4–6 197 26:5–14 31 27 246 27:13–23 31 28 25, 31–32, 250 29–31 25, 31–32, 34, 250–1, 267 29:16 178

365

31 250 31:2–4 250 31:6 250 31:13–15 250 31:23 250 31:28 250 31:35–37 250 32:8 218 38 279, 282 38–41 250 38:1–42:6 25, 32, 34 38:4 277 38:7 277 39–41 277 40 34 40:1–5 242 40:7 34 42 19–20 42:1–6 34, 242 42:2–6 250–1 42:5 250 42:6 267, 285, 286 42:7 36 42:7a 37 42:7b 37 42:7–8 242, 268 42:7–9 267 42:7–10 247 42:7–17 242, 246 42:8–9 36–37 42:10–17 36 42:11 286 42:11–12 286 42:11–17 247 Psalms * 167–69, 172–74, 196 2 307 2:7 305 4:5–7 178 8 30 19:3 222 22:27–31 168 26:12 170 28:3 226 30:3 167 42:6 227 42:8 180

366 51 232–33 51:3–4 233 51:9–11 233 51:12 218 51:12–13 233 51:12–14 232 51:19 233 72:2 222 78:1–4 96 88:8 180 89:3 315 89:20 315 89:20–21 305 89:23 306 89:33 234 93:4 180 94:4 222 103:14 222 104:29 216 105 294–96 105:8–11 295 105:42–45 295 105:44–45 295 106 294–96 106:6 295 106:8 296 106:44–46 296 106:47 296 110:1 305 119 155–56 119:21–22 172 119:171 222 139:19–24 172 142 172 145:7 222 Proverbs * 196–97 1–9 39–54, 183 1 45, 46 1:1–4 100–1 1:2–9 39–41 1:4 40 1:5 40 1:8 40 1:10 41 1:10–19 41–42 1:11 41

Index of Sources

1:12a 41 1:12b 41 1:14b 42 1:15 41 1:17 41 1:18 41 1:19 42 1:20 42 1:20–33 42–43 1:22 42–43 1:23 223 1:26–33 42 2 43–46, 47, 48, 49 2:1–2 43 2:1–11 43 2:3–4 43 2:5 43 2:8–20 44 2:9 44 2:12 44 2:12–15 43, 45 2:14a 44 2:15 44 2:16–20 43 2:17 45 2:18 45 2:19 45 2:21 44 3 46–47 3:1–4 47 3:2 46 3:4 46 3:12 47 3:13 47 3:13–21 47 3:19–20 47 4 47–48 4:2 49 4:3 40 4:3–4 47 4:5–9 48 4:6–9 51 4:10–19 48 4:20–27 48 5–6 48, 49–51 5 52, 54 5:1–2 96

Index of Sources

5:3 49 5:4 49 5:7–14 50 5:8 50 5:9 50 5:9–10 50 5:9–11 50 5:11 50 5:12–13 51 5:15–20 50, 51 6–8 236 6:12–15 48 6:13 48 6:16–19 48 6:20 40 6:20–24 198 6:20–35 50 6:24 49 6:29 50 6:30 50 6:30–31 50 6:33 51 6:35 50 7–9 51–53 7 45, 51–53 7:1–5 198 7:4 52 7:5 49 7:9 52 7:10 52 7:11 52 7:12 52 7:21 49, 52 7:22 53 7:22–23 52 7:24–27 52 8 42, 46, 51–53 8:1–11 198 8:15–16 52 8:17 52 8:30–31 52 8:34 52 10:11 222 9 51, 53 15:2 222 15:28 222 18:4 222 18:17 46

19:28 222 26:24 226 Qoheleth * 16 12:7 216 Isaiah 6:10a 195 9:5 180, 182 10 312 10:5 313 10:5–14 311 10:7 313 10:15 313 10:15–19 311 10:16 313 11:2 218 13:7–8a 179 21:3 179 29:16 222 30:6 178 37 312 37:3 177, 180–1 37:21–29 311 37:24 312 37:25 312 37:26 312 37:35 315 38 335 38:9 335 40–66 300 41:6–7 329 41:25b 329 42:1 218 42:14 178 42:17 329 44:3 218 44:9–20 329 44:24–26a 326 44:24–45:8 326 44:24–45:13 316 44:26–28 326 45:1–8 329 45:3b 317, 329 45:4b 329 45:4–6a 317 45:5b–6a 329

367

368 45:9 222 45:9b 326 45:9–13 326 46:1 305 46:1–7 329 50:5 178 51:1 300 53:8 234 59:7 41 66:7 180 Jeremiah *

196–97, 229, 298, 316–17 4:4 230 4:31 180 5:4–5 229 5:13 229 5:21 229 6:10 229 6:23–24 179 7:4 314 8:4–9 229 8:23 222 9:3 229 9:24–25 230 13:21 180 16:7 286 17:1 230 25 314 25:9 315 27–29 314 27:5–6 314 27:7 315 31:7 97 31:33–34 197, 230 33:21 315 33:22 315 33:26 315 37–38 314 49:24 179 50–51 313–14 50:2–3 305 50:31–32 313 51:7 314 51:34–39 313 51:44 305 51:59–64 313

Index of Sources

Ezekiel *

146, 196–97, 208, 220, 229, 298 1 74, 139 6:9 232 10 139 11:5 218 11:19 220, 231 14:14–20 242 14:14 243 14:16 243 16 297 17:11–21 315 20 297, 301 23 297 20:8 207 20:13 297 20:43 232 32:2–8 308 34:23 315 34:24 315 36 232 36:25 220 36:26 231 36:26–27 197, 208, 220 36:27 220 36:31 232 36:32 232 37:1 218 37:6 220 37:14 220 37:24 315 37:25 315 39:29 218 40–48 133, 140 46 142 Daniel * 17 1 323 1–4 318 1–6 298, 318, 323 1:2 307 1:4 219 1:17 218 2 80, 298–300, 319–20, 322–23, 325 2–4 327

Index of Sources

2–5 332 2–6 323 2:35 320 2:36–44 323 2:47 325 3 319, 322, 325, 327 3:15 248 3:28 248, 319 3:28–29 325 3:31–33 328 4 319, 322, 325, 327, 329–34, 336–38 4–6 321 4:5–6 218 4:14 326 4:37 319 5 322, 328 5:11 218 5:30 328 6:4 219 6:5 248 6:22 248 6:26 319 6:27–28 328 7–12 82, 298 7 17, 73, 77, 80, 310 7:7–9 74 7:8 76 7:8b 310 7:10 79 7:13 75 7:15 77 7:18 75 7:20b 310 7:21 76 7:25a 310 7:27 75 7:28 73 8 73, 77, 301 8:5–7 301 8:8a 301 8:25b 301 8:10 76 8:16–18 75 8:25b 310 8:27 73 9 76, 77, 80

10 76 10:4–19 75 10:7 73 10:8–10 73 10:20 82 10:21 79 11 77, 78, 80, 301–2, 310 11:9–10 302 11:26 302 11:29 302 11:30b–39 302 11:36 76, 310 11:40 302 12:1–3 75 12:3 79 12:4 74, 79 12:5–12 77 12:10 74, 78 Hosea * 196 4:16 98 13:3 180 Joel 3:1 218 Jonah 2:4 180 Micah 2:10 180 2:12 97 3:8 219 6 96 Zephaniah 3:13 97 Zechariah * 146 3:8–10 318 4:6–7 318 12:1 222 Malachi * 146

369

370

Index of Sources

Ancient Near Eastern Texts Egyptian “Dialogue of a Man with his Ba” * 31

Mesopotamian Atrahasis 242 Babylonian Theodicy 29, 31, 33–34, 249–50 The Date Palm and the Tamarisk 29 Babylon Stele VI–VII 323 Behistun Inscription 324 Cyrus Cylinder 325–26 “Dialogue Between a Man 248 and His God” Dialogue of Pessimism 250 Ehulhul Cylinder I.15–26 322 Gilgamesh Epic 242 Harran Inscription   * 327, 329, 332, 334–38  I.11 322  III.1–2 322 Ludlul Bēl Nēmeqi 248 “Man and His God” 248 Neo-Assyrian Annals  Esarhaddon 306  Sennacherib 315 Verse Account of Nabonidus  * 325–26  V.10–11 323

Ugaritic Aqhat 243

Deuterocanonical Books Tobit * 115 2:10 248 3:16–17 48

Sirach * 156, 189, 199 3:1 96 3:28 234 7:4 128 15 189 15:11–12 189 15:11–16 155 15:14–16 155 15:15–17 189 38:24–34 79 1 Maccabees 6 311 6:12 311 6:13 311 2 Maccabees 9:5 311 9:12 311 9:17 311 9:18 311 Prayer of Manasseh * 335

Pseudepigrapha Apocalypse of Abraham 10 76 10:1–2 73 11 75 18 74 19–32 77, 78 Apocalypse of Zephaniah * 73 3:6 77 6:16 77 9:13 79 Aramaic Levi Document * 202 Ascension of Isaiah * 76

Index of Sources

2 Baruch * 199, 303 36–42 77 36 73 51:10 75 53–74 80, 82 53–76 77 53 73 54:19 199 77–87 74 3 Baruch *

73, 76

1 Enoch * 113, 133 1:2–3 74 2–5 72 6–16 76, 80, 82 9–10 76 14 74 14:13–14 73 14:12 73 15:8–16:1 202 17–19 73, 76 17–36 78 19:1 203 20–36 73, 76 40 75 48–49 75 71 74, 75 71–82 80 72–82 78 83–90 76, 78, 80 83:1 74 85–88 76 85–90 (“Animal Apocalypse”) 302–3 89:62–64 79 91:3 96 92:1 79 93:1–2 77 93:1–10; 91:11–17 (“Apocalypse of Weeks”) 62, 80, 303 108:1 79 2 Enoch * 76

371

1 75 3–22 73 17 75 19:5 79 21 75 22 74, 75 35 79 70–71 75 4 Ezra * 72, 76, 189, 236, 303 3:1 73 3:21–22 236 3:22 236 3:25–26 236 4:30 236 7:48 236 7:63–72 236 8:62–69 236 9:38–10:59 76 10:27–28 73 11:1–12:39 76 13 73, 77 13:1–58 76 Jubilees * 113, 119, 128, 133, 203 1:5 79 5:13–14 79 10:1–14 203 10:12–14 79 12:20–21 234 15:31–32 203 17:15–18:19 203 19:28–29 203 30:20 79 30:22 79 Psalms of Solomon * 310 2:25 310 2:29 310 2:29–30 310 Testament of Levi 2–5 62 3 75, 76

372

Index of Sources

Testament of Job * 244

Dead Sea Scrolls CD (Damascus Document) * 95, 96–102, 115, 123, 126, 199–201, 203, 235–36 I, 1–2 96 I, 1–II, 1 97 I, 2 96 I, 3–4 97 I, 3–II, 1 97 I, 4–5 97 I, 5 98 I, 9–10 98 I, 11 96, 98 I, 14 102 I, 21–II, 1 98 II, 2–IV, 6 97 II, 2–3 201, 235 II, 15 199, 201 II, 16 235 II, 17 200 II, 20–21 200 III, 13–14 147 IV, 8 96 V, 15–VI, 11 97 VI, 2–3 96 VI, 7 96 VI, 11 96 XVI, 4 203 1QpHab (Pesher Habakkuk) II, 1–3 102 V, 9–12 102 VII, 5 78 XI, 4–8 102 1Q21 (1QTLevi ar) * 114 1Q27 (1QMyst) 1 I, 3 78

1QS (1QSerek ha-Yaḥad) * 95, 99–102, 112–14, 120, 123, 124–25, 129, 133, 149–56, 160–61 I–II 99 I, 1–7 101 I, 1–11 151–52 I, 1–17 99 I, 7–11 101 I, 11 199 I, 18–III, 12 99 II, 4–10 203 III–IV 78 III, 2 128 III, 12 128 III, 13–15 127 III, 13–IV, 26 81, 99, 204–5, 223–24 III, 15–16 78, 81 III, 17–19 204 III, 18 78 III, 21–24 204 III, 23 223 III, 24–25 204 IV, 4–6 120 IV, 18–23 174 IV, 20 204, 205 V–IX 99 V, 1 199 V, 8 199 V, 20–21 152 V, 24 152 V, 25–VI, 1 105 VI, 13–16 152 VI, 15 153 VI, 17 153 VI, 18 153 VIII, 14 127 IX, 6 128 IX, 12–26 99 IX, 12–XI, 22 99 IX, 26–X, 5 124 X, 1–XI, 22 99, 155 XI, 3 78 XI, 8 128 XI, 9–10 208 XI, 20–22 208 XI, 21–22 222

Index of Sources

1QSa (1QSerek ha-Edah) * 113 I, 26 128 1QSb (1QRule of Benedictions) * 113, 124–25 IV, 25 127, 128 IV, 25–26 147 IV, 26 128 1QM (1QMilḥamah) * 81, 95, 113, 114, 117, 129, 136 I 82, 127 I, 4–9 122 II, 1 138 VII, 6 75 X, 4 127 X, 7 127 XV–XIX 82 XVII, 7–8 75 1Q34bis (1QLitPr) II, 6 121 1QHa (1QHodayota) * 102–6, 113–15, 117, 125, 149–56, 161–85, 205–8, 211–24 III, 29 216 IV, 17–25 155 IV, 29 208, 215, 220 IV, 33 155 IV, 37 206–8, 215 IV, 38 219 V, 9–19 154 V, 17 168 V, 19 78 V, 19–22 155, 168 V, 30 207, 215 V, 30–32 208 V, 30–33 208 V, 32 207, 215, 222 V, 33 216 V, 36 215, 220 VI, 8 184 VI, 24 208, 219 VII, 12–20 168

373

VII, 16 155 VII, 26–27 215 VII, 34 216 VIII, 18 207, 215, 216 VIII, 20 208, 215, 220, 223 VIII, 21 208 VIII, 25 208 VIII, 29 208, 215, 220 VIII, 30 219 IX 174, 184 IX, 7–20 154 IX, 21–23 155 IX, 23 78, 216, 222 IX, 23–25 208 IX, 24 207, 215 X–XI 169 X, 1–19 161, 169 X, 20–22 169 X, 20–30 169–74, 176, 178–79, 182, 184 X, 28 173 X, 31–39 175 XI 175–85 XI, 1–18 169, 175–85 XI, 7 175 XI, 7b–8 180 XI, 22 215 XI, 22–24 146 XI, 24 216 XII–XVI 169 XII, 5–XIII, 4 161 XII, 8 172 XII, 23 172 XII, 30 216 XII, 30–31 208 XIII 221 XIII, 5–19 161 XIII, 9–11 184 XIII, 13 221 XIII, 15 172 XIII, 20–XV, 5 161 XIII, 22–26 103 XIII, 24–XV, 5 103 XIII, 25–26 104 XIII, 26–32 104 XIII, 27 221 XIII, 35–XIV, 6 104 XIII, 38 78

374 XIV, 3–4 104 XIV, 8–10 104 XIV, 12–19 105 XIV, 19 105 XIV, 19–36 105 XV, 6–25 161 XV, 10 208, 219 XV, 20–22 175 XVI, 4–XVII, 36 161 XVI, 34 216 XVII, 32 208 XVIII, 4 215 XVIII, 7–9 208 XIX, 6 216 XIX, 15 207 XX, 11–13 184 XX, 14–15 208 XX, 14–16 220 XX, 15 208, 215, 220 XX, 27–31 208 XX, 28 222 XX, 29 216 XX, 35 216 XX, 35–36 215 XXI, 7 216 XXI, 17 216 XXI, 23 216 XXI, 25 216 XXI, 34 208, 215, 216, 220 XXI, 38 216 XXII, 19 216 XXIII, 13 216 XXIII, 28 216 XXIII, 33 219 XXIV, 6 216 XXVI 75 4Q171 (4QpPsa) I, 26–II, 1 102 4Q180–181 (4QAgesCreat A–B) * 80 A 1, 3–4 79 4Q213, 213a, 213b, 214, 214a, 214b (4QLevi a–f ) * 80, 114, 128

Index of Sources

4Q242 (4QPrNab) * 321, 325, 327, 329–338 4Q243–244 (4QpsDana–b) * 321 4Q245 (4QpsDanc) * 321 4Q246 (4QapocrDan) * 321 4Q256 (4QSb) * 99 4Q259 (4QSe) * 114 4Q260 (4QSf ) * 100 4Q264 (4QSj)

* 100

4Q266 (4QDa)

* 96

4Q286 (4QBera) * 125, 126, 134 7 II, 1–12 203 10 II, 1 125 4Q300 (4QMystb) 1a II–b, 1–3 78 4Q319 (4QOtot) * 114 4Q383(4QapocrJerA) * 80 4Q385a, 389–390, 387, 387a,388a, 390 (4QapocJerCa–f ) * 80, 115 4Q 385, 386, 388, 391 (4QPsEzeka–e) * 115

375

Index of Sources

4Q394–399 (4QMMTa–f ) * 93, 113

23 II, 7–12 23 II, 12

4Q400 (4QShirShabba) * 73, 75, 76, 117, 123–29, 131–47 1 I 127, 134 1 I, 3–4 135 1 I, 5 135 1 I, 14 135 1 I, 14–17 146 1 I, 15 135 1 I, 16 135 1 I, 17 135 1 I, 19–20 135 2 135 2 1 135 2 2–3 135 2 3 146 2, 5–7 135 2, 6–8 124, 146

4Q415–418a (4QInstructiona–e) * 205–7 4Q416 1 12 206 4Q416 2 I, 5 78 4Q417 1 I, 17 206

4Q401(4QShirShabbb) 11 136 14 135 22 136 4Q402 (4QShirShabbc) 4 124 4 11–15 136 4Q403 (4QShirShabbd) * 138 1 I, 1–29 78 1 I, 4–7 137 1 I, 13–16 138 1 I, 41 139 1 II, 15–16 139 4Q405 (4QShirShabbf ) * 138 14–15 I, 3 140 14–15 I, 5 140 15 II–16 2–6 141 19 141 20 74, 141 23 I, 1–5 142 23 I, 6–10 142

143 146

4Q496 (4QpapMf ) * 122 4Q502 (4QpapRitMar) * 120 4Q503 (4QpapPrQuot) * 120 4Q505 (4QpapDibHamb) * 122 4Q507–509 (4QPrFêtesa–c) * 121 4Q510–511 (Shira–b) * 124–25, 127–28 4Q510 1 4 128 4Q510 1 4–5 128 4Q510 1 6–7 127 4Q510 2 1 127 4Q511 2 I, 5 127 4Q511 2 I, 8 127 4Q511 2 I, 9–10 128 4Q511 35 127 4Q511 44 127 4Q511 63 III, 2–3 127 4Q543–548 (4QVisions of Amrama–f ) * 81 4Q552–553 (4QFourKingdomsa–b) * 321 11Q5 (11QPsa) XIX 234 XIX, 15–16 202 XXIV 233–34, 236

376

Index of Sources

11Q13 (11QMelch) * 75, 80 11Q17 (11QShirShabb) * 138 VI 141 VII 141 VII, 6 77 VIII 142 IX 143 11Q19 (11QTa) *

113, 114, 115, 123, 146

Mas 1k (Mas ShirShabb) I, 1–7 136 II, 14–18 137

Ancient Jewish Writers Josephus * 160

Ant. 10.21–23 313 Ant. 10.186–218 332 Ant. 11.329–39 318

New Testament Romans 9–11 16 James 5:11 243–44

Rabbinic Works Baba Batra (B. Bat.) 15b 27

Index of Modern Authors Aaronovitch, David ​332 Ackerman, Susan ​325 Albertz, Rainer ​323, 327, 331 Althusser, Louis ​40, 44 Anderson, Gary A. ​285 Baillet, Maurice ​120, 128, 134 Bakhtin, Mikhail M. ​4–17, 19–26, 29–30, 32, 35–37, 64–66, 149–50, 159 Bal, Mieke ​45, 49 Barthes, Roland ​45 Baumgarten, Joseph M. ​181 Beaulieu, Alain ​322, 333 Benveniste, Émile ​39–40, 162–63 Bergsma, John Seitze ​297 Bernard, H. Russell ​71 de Beza, Theodore ​254 Bickerman, Elias J. ​317 Biskind, Peter ​274 Bitzer, Lloyd ​68, 85, 91 Black, Edwin ​69–70, 90 Block, Daniel I. ​297 Borchert, Wolfgang ​245, 264, 269 Bourdieu, Pierre ​94 Brand, Miryam T. ​234 Brettler, Marc Zvi ​230 Brooke, George ​216 Brown, Schuyler ​175, 182 Brummett, Barry ​67–68 Buccellati, Giorgio ​28–30, 249 Burgmann, Hans ​118 Burke, Kenneth ​68–69, 80, 88, 92, 94, 107, 165, 172, 309 Butler, Judith ​307 Carey, Greg ​71–72 Carmignac, Jean ​118, 144 Cavell, Stanley ​72–73 Chamberlain, John V. ​175 Chapman, Cynthia ​306–7 Clifford, Richard J. ​86, 302

Clines, David J. A. ​20, 26 Collingwood, R.  G. ​297–98 Collins, John J. ​56, 61, 206, 320, 321, 331 Conley, Thomas M. ​83–84, 106 Crenshaw, James L. ​43 Culler, Jonathan ​59 D’Andrade, Roy G. ​211 Delcor, Mathias ​175 Demos, Raphael ​73 Derrida, Jacques ​46, 57, 307 Di Vito, Robert A. ​225–26 Dostoevsky, Fyodor ​6–11, 13, 16–17, 23–24 Dozeman, Thomas ​107 Dreyfus, Hubert ​276, 286 Drijvers, Han J. W. ​333 Dupont-Sommer, André ​116–17, 121, 175 Eggers, Kurt ​261–63 Emerson, Caryl ​8, 12–13 Eriugena, Johannes Scotus ​274 Ewald, Heinrich ​256 Farrell, Thomas ​72, 92 Fauconnier, Gilles ​65, 334–36 Fiore, Benjamin ​107 Fisch, Harold ​165, 168 Fishelov, David ​63 Fowler, Alastair ​56, 58–59, 64 Fox, Michael V. ​86, 196 Fraade, Steven D. ​106 Frevel, Christian ​225, 227 Frey, Jörg ​205, 216 Fried, Lisbeth ​316 Frost, Robert ​268–69 Fulford, Robert ​296 Geertz, Clifford ​157, 165 Gelber, S. Michael ​260 Gitay, Yehoshua ​86

378

Index of Modern Authors

Golb, Norman ​111–13, 115 Good, Edwin M. ​20 Grabbe, Lester L. ​317 Grelot, Pierre ​331 Gunkel, Hermann ​55 Habel, Norman C. ​20 Hadas, Moses ​257, 260 Haerten, Theodor ​263 Hahn, Scott Walker ​297 Hanson, Paul ​71 Hauser, Alan J. ​87 Heatherton, Todd F. ​236 Heelas, Paul ​191–94, 204, 212–15, 217 Heidegger, Martin ​273–74, 277 Henze, Matthias ​330 Hinson, Glenn ​175 Holland, Dorothy C. ​153 Holm-Nielsen, Svend ​165, 175, 178 Høgenhaven, Jesper ​106 Humphreys, W. Lee ​324 Huntington, Samuel ​291 Huppenbauer, Hans W. ​174 Hyde, Michael J. ​68 Jacob, Edmund ​3 Jacobsen, Thorkild ​167 Jameson, Fredric ​309, 319 Janowski, Bernd ​226 Jauss, Hans Robert ​55 Jeremias, Gert ​176 Johnson, Mark ​211, 214 Jones, Kent ​274 Jost, Walter ​68, 107 Kallen, Horace Meyer ​256–57, 260 Kennedy, George A. ​70, 90, 92, 107 Kimelman, Reuven ​106 Koch, Klaus ​299, 303 Koselleck, Reinhart ​290, 300–1 Kratz, Reinhard ​320 Kristeva, Julia ​45, 52 Krüger, Thomas ​194 Kuhn, Heinz-Wolfgang ​176 Kuhrt, Amelie ​326 Lakoff, George ​211, 214 Lambert, David A. ​227, 231

Lapsley, Jacqueline E. ​232 Lemke, Werner E. ​232 Levinas, Emmanuel ​308 Levison, John R. ​194, 217, 219 Lewalski, Barbara K. ​253 Lichtenberger, Hermann ​160, 204 Lincoln, Bruce ​149 Lock, Andrew ​191–94, 204, 212–15 Lowth, Robert ​255–56 Machinist, Peter ​326 MacLeish, Archibald ​245, 266–67 Maier, Johann ​144, 175 MacLaury, Robert E. ​194, 214–15 Malick, Terrence ​273–86 McGee, Michael Calvin ​94 McKerrow, Raymie E. ​69–70 McNamara, Patrick ​190, 205 Medvedev, Pavel N. ​25, 65–66 Megill, Allen ​290 Michel, Diethelm ​4 Milik, J. T. ​119, 122, 134 Mink, Louis ​290 Moi, Toril ​52–53, 183 Mönnich, Horst ​265 Morrow, William ​35 Morson, Gary Saul ​8, 12–13 Mowinckel, Sigmund ​175 Muilenberg, James ​86 Müller, Hans-Peter ​26–27 Nickelsburg, George W. E. ​203 O’Leary, Stephen D. ​67–68, 76 Olbrechts-Tyteca, Lucie ​93, 107 von der Osten Saken, Peter ​121, 127 Patrick, Dale ​35 Perelman, Chaim ​93, 107 Pope, Marvin H. ​19 Porter, Frank Chamberlain ​200 Prince, Camilo Salazar ​276, 286 Puech, Emile ​161 Reed, Walter ​8 Reike, Bo ​153, 164–65 Rey, Jean-Sébastian ​206 Richards, I.  A. ​267–68

Index of Modern Authors

Ricoeur, Paul ​290–92, 303 Riessler, Paul ​321 Robbins, Vernon K. ​70, 88, 90, 107 Rosemarin, Adena ​57 Rosen-Zvi, Ishay ​234 Rost, Leonhard ​121 Ryan, Gery W. ​71 Ryan, Marie-Laure ​62 Satran, David ​331 Schaudig, Hanspeter ​321 Schmidt, Nathaniel ​256 Schofer, Jonathan Wyn ​196 Schofield, Alison ​223 Schroer, Silvia ​226 Schuller, Eileen M. ​121 Sekki, Arthur E. ​204 Sharp, Carolyn ​93, 106, 314 Silberman, Lou H. ​175, 181 Silverman, Kaja ​162–63, 277 Sinding, Michael ​60–62 Smith, Morton ​316 Snell, Bruno ​226 von Soden, Wolfram ​323, 327 Spengler, Oswald ​291 Staubli, Thomas ​226 Stegemann, Hartmut ​115, 116, 120, 127, 131–32, 144, 161–62 Strugnell, John ​115, 131 Stuart, G. H. Cohen ​200 Suleiman, Susan Rubin ​27–28, 247 Swain, Joseph Ward ​298 Swales, John ​59 Tadmor, Hayim ​326 Taylor, Charles ​225–26, 231

van der Toorn, Karel ​28, 79 Toynbee, Arnold ​291 Trible, Phyllis ​70 Turner, Mark ​65, 290, 334–36 Twain, Mark ​289 Vermes, Geza ​116 Vickers, Brian ​106 Volf, Miroslav ​308 Voloshinov, V.  N. ​166 Weedon, Chris ​157 Wernberg-Møller, Preben ​184, 204 Westermann, Claus ​4 Whedbee, J. William ​257 White, Hayden ​290 White, James Boyd ​92, 107 Wiechert, Ernst ​261–63 Wiesel, Elie ​245–46, 269–70 Williams, Bernard ​226 Williamson, H. G. M. ​317 Wills, Lawrence ​331 Wittgenstein, Ludwig ​58 Woessner, Martin ​273 van Wolde, Ellen J. ​211 Wolff, Hans Walter ​226 van der Woude, Adam S. ​131 Yadin, Yigael ​115, 131 Yarbro Collins, Adela ​81 Zenger, Erich ​232–33 Zimmerli, Walther ​4 Zuckerman, Bruce ​25, 31, 242, 250

379

Index of Subjects Agency ​191–194, 212–14 Apocalyptic literature – see also Genre, apocalypse – characters ​74–79 – definition ​71 – dualism ​81–82 – history ​80–81, 298–303 – mystery and knowledge ​77–79 – order ​79–81 – rhetoric ​67–68, 71–73, 76 – space in ​75–6 – time in ​80 Bakhtin, Mikhail – chronotope ​66 – dialogic/monologic truth ​4–8, 10, 14, 16–17, 21–24, 29–30, 32–37 – double-voicing ​9, 30 – genre ​65–66 – polyphony ​8–9, 19, 22–24, 26, 29, 33–34, 36–37, 251 – on Job ​19 – social dialect ​150–151 Biblical theology ​3–4 Body and anthropology ​48–49, 194, 221–223, 230; see also Flesh and spirit Cognitive theory ​65, 211, 214, 221–222, 289–290, 299–300, 334–335 Community Rule ​99–102, 151–153, 204–205 Conceptual blending, see cognitive theory Content analysis ​70–71

Genre ​24–28, 30–34, 55, 91–92, 253 – apocalypse ​56, 58, 61–66, 71 – didactic narrative ​26–28, 246–248 – Job and ​253–258 – prayer ​165–169, 233–234 – theory ​56–65 – wisdom dialogue ​28–32, 248–250 Heidegger, Martin,, 273, 275, 277 Historiography – and narrative ​291–92, 298, 303–4 – historical résumé ​289, 293–296, 298–304 – master/grand narrative ​290–292, 296 – pattern and prognosis ​300–302 – theory ​290, 297 Hodayot – authorship and Sitz im Leben ​153–154, 161, 164–165 – intertextuality ​179–183 – moral agency ​207–208 – Niedrigkeitsdoxologie ​154 – rhetoric ​102–106, 154–155, 165–168, 171–174, 179 – self and agency ​215–219 – subjectivity and identity ​153, 162, 165–169, 171–176, 179, 183–185

Damascus Document ​96–99, 200–201 Doestoevsky, Fyodor ​6–9, 13, 16, 21, 23–4

Identity ​14–16, 149, 152–153; see also Subjectivity and self-formation Ideology ​40–43, 54, 309 – kingship ​305–306, 312–313, 315–316 – patriarchal family ​40–42, 45–47, 49, 52–54 Indigenous psychology ​190–194, 211–215 Interiority, see Self, introspective

Fatal Attraction ​53–54 Flesh and spirit ​205–208, 215–221 Four kingdoms schema ​298–99

Job – and drama theory ​253–257 – as polyphonic text ​9–10, 251

Index of Subjects

– didactic tale (prose tale) ​26–28, 33, 246–248, 286 – divine speeches ​34–36, 250 – dramatization of ​258–60 – in film ​273, 278–286 – in Germany ​245, 261–266 – in Great Britain ​267–268 – in post-Holocaust literature ​ 245–246, 269–270 – in the United States ​245, 266–268 – in cultural memory ​241–246 – structure and composition ​19, 243, 246–247, 251 – unity ​19–21, 24–25, 242 – wisdom dialogue ​28–33, 248–250 Malick, Terrence​ – Days of Heaven ​274–275 – The New World ​275 – The Thin Red Line ​276–277 – The Tree of Life ​277–286 Maskil ​99–101, 125–129, 133 Moral agency – and demonic spirits ​202–204 – and the evil inclination (yēṣer hā-raʿ) ​ 200–201, 235–236 – in Hebrew Bible ​194–199, 228–232 – in Second Temple Judaism ​190, 198–208 Nabonidus ​326–29, 333 – in Babylonian literature ​325, 329–332, 336–338 – in Jewish literature ​321–325, 327–333, 335–338 – religious reforms ​322 Other, The – definition and theory ​307–309 – in group identity formation ​149–151, 174–175 – in sectarian prayer ​174–176, 184–185 – foreign king as ​305, 309, 310 – Antiochus IV ​311 – Cyrus ​316–317 – Nebuchadnezzar ​314–319 – Pharaoh ​310–311

381

– Pompey ​310 – Sennacherib ​311–313 – strategies for resolution ​308–320 – woman as ​44–45, 49–52 Patriarchal family ​40–42, 45–47, 49, 52–53 Patriarchal narratives ​14–15 Priestly source ​11–12 Primary history ​10–13 Primeval history ​11–12 Qumran library, profile ​111–115 Rhetoric – see also Apocalyptic literature, S­ ectarianism – and symbolic acts ​309, 319–320 – definition and scope ​68–69 – history of ​83–85, 106–107 – method ​69–70, 90–95 – rhetorical criticism (biblical) ​86–88, 107 – rhetorical criticism (Dead Sea Scrolls) ​ 88–90, 95–106 – royal ​312–313, 315 Scribal practices  10, 329 Sectarianism – and identity ​149–156, 159 – literature, criteria ​116–123 – rhetoric ​88–89, 122–123, 128–129, 150 Self – see also Subjectivity and self-formation – ancient Israelite ​225–226 – and cognitive metaphor ​214, 221–23 – history of ​191, 225 – introspective ​198, 227, 231–33, 236–37 – neuroscience of ​190 – self-alienation ​229, 231, 233–36 Semeia ​ 14, see Society of Biblical ­Literature, Apocalypse Group Sin ​227, 232–35 Society of Biblical Literature – Genres Project ​55 – Apocalypse Group ​56, 58, 60–62, 71 Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice – angelic praise ​137–139, 142

382

Index of Subjects

– angelic priesthood ​134–139, 143, 146 – chariot throne ​139, 141–42 – heavenly temple ​140–41 – provenance ​123–129, 133–134 – reconstruction ​131–32 – structure and function ​132, 139–140, 143–147 Spirit  194–195, 217–221 – see also Flesh and spirit

Subjectivity and self-formation ​39–44, 48, 157–166, 169–174 – see also Hodayot and subjectivity Wisdom – personified ​42, 47, 51–54 – “strange” woman and  44–45, 49, 52–54 Yahwistic source ​11–12