The Jewish World around the New Testament: Collected Essays I 3161496140, 9783161496141

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Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Herausgeber / Editor Jörg Frey (München) Mitherausgeber / Associate Editors Friedrich Avemarie (Marburg) Judith Gundry-Volf (New Haven, CT) Hans-Josef Klauck (Chicago, IL)

233

Richard Bauckham

The Jewish World around the New Testament Collected Essays I

Mohr Siebeck

Richard Bauckham, born 1946; 1973 PhD University of Cambridge, England; 1977–87 Lecturer in the History of Christian Thought, 1987–92 Reader in the History of Christian Thought, University of Manchester, England; 1992–2007 Professor of New Testament Studies, St Mary’s College, St Andrews University, Scotland; now emeritus Professor, St Andrews University, and Senior Scholar, Ridley Hall, Cambridge.

e-ISBN PDF 978-3-16-151522-4 ISBN 978-3-16-149614-1 ISSN 0512-1604 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament) Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

© 2008 by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, Germany. 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, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was typeset by Martin Fischer in Tübingen, printed by Gulde-Druck in Tübingen on non-aging paper and bound by Buchbinderei Spinner in Ottersweier. Printed in Germany.

Table of Contents 1. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

2. The Martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah: Jewish or Christian? . . . . . . .

3

3. Enoch and Elijah in the Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 4. The Rise of Apocalyptic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 5. The Delay of the Parousia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 6. A Note on a Problem in the Greek Version of 1 Enoch 1. 9. . . . . . . 89 7. The Son of Man: ‘A Man in my Position’ or ‘Someone’? . . . . . . . . . 93 8. The Apocalypses in the New Pseudepigrapha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 9. Pseudo-Apostolic Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 10. Kainam the Son of Arpachshad in Luke’s Genealogy . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 11. The List of the Tribes of Israel in Revelation 7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 12. The Parting of the Ways: What Happened and Why. . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 13. The Messianic Interpretation of Isaiah 10:34 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 14. The Relevance of Extra-Canonical Jewish Texts to New Testament Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 15. Josephus’ Account of the Temple in Contra Apionem 2.102–109 . . 221 16. Life, Death, and the Afterlife in Second Temple Judaism . . . . . . . . . 245 17. What if Paul had Travelled East rather than West? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 18. Covenant, Law and Salvation in the Jewish Apocalypses . . . . . . . . . 269 19. The Restoration of Israel in Luke-Acts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 20. Paul and Other Jews with Latin Names in the New Testament . . . . 371 21. The Horarium of Adam and the Chronology of the Passion . . . . . . 393 22. The Spirit of God in us Loathes Envy (James 4:5) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421

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Table of Contents

23. Tobit as a Parable for the Exiles of Northern Israel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433 24. The Continuing Quest for the Provenance of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461 Particulars of First Publication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485 Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487 Index of Ancient Persons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532 Index of Modern Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538 Index of Place Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546

1. Introduction Most New Testament scholars would now agree that the New Testament writings belong wholly within the Jewish world of their time. However much some may be in serious conflict with other Jewish groups, these disagreements take place within the Jewish world. Even New Testament works authored by and / or addressed to non-Torah-observant Gentile Christians still move within the Jewish world of ideas. Their God is unequivocally the God of Israel and of the Jewish Scriptures that they treat as self-evidently their own. Jesus for them is the Messiah of Israel and the Messiah also for the nations only because he is the Messiah of Israel. This is not to deny the obvious influence of the non-Jewish Greco-Roman world in which the New Testament writings also belong, but that influence was felt right across the Jewish world in varying ways and to varying degrees. The most profound influence of Hellenistic thought in the Jewish world of the first century ce is to be found, not in the New Testament, but in Philo of Alexandria, such that it was Philo, more than any of the New Testament writers, who prepared the way for the kind of profound engagement with Hellenistic philosophy that later Christian scholars, such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen, pursued. The essays collected in this volume were written over the course of thirty years of study of the New Testament and early Judaism, and their topics are quite diverse, but they all share that basic perspective on the historical place of the New Testament writings within late Second Temple Judaism. In an essay I wrote to introduce students and beginning scholars to the relevance of extra-canonical Jewish literature to the study of the New Testament (chapter 14 in this volume) I said: ‘The NT student and scholar must use the Jewish literature in the first place to understand Judaism. Only someone who understands early Judaism for its own sake will be able to use Jewish texts appropriately and accurately in the interpretation of the NT .’ Accordingly the present volume includes some essays that make no or only passing reference to the New Testament but are intended as contributions to the understanding of Second Temple Judaism and its literature: these include chapters 15 (on Josephus), 16 (on Jewish beliefs about death and afterlife), 18 (on the Jewish apocalypses), and 23 (on the book of Tobit). Most of the

2

1. Introduction

essays in this volume relate some part or feature of the New Testament to the literature, religion or life of Jews in that period. The main literary sources for late Second Temple Judaism are the Apocrypha, Old Testament pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the works of Josephus and Philo. Rabbinic literature, though of much later date, can be relevant when used with caution, and we should not forget that the New Testament itself is evidence of the Judaism of its period, not only in the sense that the early Christian movement from which it comes was itself Jewish, but also in the sense that it refers to other forms and aspects of the Judaism of its period. As well as the literary sources, there is also documentary and epigraphic material, both from Palestine and from the Diaspora. Among these sources, these essays make most use (besides the New Testament) of the Apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, which have long been my special interest, though many of the essays do also refer to and discuss other sources. Among the sources, the most problematic as evidence for late Second Temple Judaism are the rabbinic literature, because of its date, and the so-called Old Testament pseudepigrapha. I do not say ‘the Pseudepigrapha’ because, unlike the Apocrypha, these are not a defined body of literature with even approximately agreed boundaries, but an indefinite category. While some of these writings can be conclusively shown to be early Jewish writings, the fact that most of them are known only from manuscripts of Christian provenance means that, not only is their date often hard to determine, but also whether they are of Christian or Jewish origin may be more debatable than some scholars have assumed. It is interesting that this issue of the Jewish or Christian provenance, either of Old Testament pseudepigrapha themselves or of traditions they transmit, is common to both the first and the last of the essays in this collection, showing that this is an issue of which I have long been aware. In chapter 21 I provide new arguments for the Jewish provenance of a text generally thought to be most likely of Christian origin. The essays appear in the chronological order of their original publication, except that chapter 3 belongs so obviously with chapter 2 that I thought it best to place it out of chronological order. There is not much in these essays on which I have significantly changed my mind. Chapter 4 covers a large topic on which much has been written since I wrote it, but the most important point that would be different if I were to write it now is that I would not use the term ‘apocalyptic’ to refer to a kind of eschatology or a set of ideas, but only in a literary sense with reference to the literary genre apocalypse. To chapters 2 and 20 I have added appendices updating my treatments with reference to subsequently published information and discussion, but it would have been impractical to do this in other cases. Special thanks are due to Patrick Egan, who compiled the indices.

2. The Martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah: Jewish or Christian?* From the standpoint of biblical theology “the establishment of the date of the apocalyptic tradition of the martyrdom of the returning of Elijah is of great importance” (J. Jeremias).1 Almost all references to the martyrdom of the returning Elijah are to be found in early Christian literature and are references to the joint martyrdom of Elijah and Enoch at the hands of Antichrist:2 the question of the origin of this Christian tradition of the martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah has, therefore, been regarded as a major line of inquiry in the search for a pre-Christian Jewish tradition of the martyrdom of Elijah. W. Bousset in 1895 sifted early Christian traditions about Antichrist to reconstruct a pre-Christian tradition which included the return of Enoch and Elijah to denounce Antichrist and to suffer martyrdom.3 But texts of some importance to the question have come to light only since Bousset wrote, including the relevant section of the Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah, on which Jeremias’s case for a pre-Christian tradition of Elijah’s martyrdom depends heavily. This article is an attempt to reexamine the origins of the Christian tradition of the martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah. To facilitate this a diagrammatic analysis of the relevant texts is included. The table lists only motifs which occur in more than one of the texts. The texts (which include several that were unavailable to Bousset) are: (A) Rev 11:3–13. (B) Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah (in G. Steindorff, Die Apokalypse des Elias [TU 17/3 a; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1899]). (C) Ethiopic Apocalypse of Peter, chap. 2 (tr. in E. Hennecke and W. Schneemelcher (eds.), New Testament Apocrypha [ed. R. McL. Wilson; London. Lutterworth, 1965], 2. 669). (D) Tertullian, De anima 50. * First publication: Journal of Biblical Literature 95 (1976) 447–458. 1 TDNT 2 (1964) 941. 2 Jeremias (TDNT 2 [1964] 941 n. 106) cites one rabbinic reference to Elijah’s death. For the death of Elijah in Lactantius and Commodian, see n. 19 below. 3 The Antichrist Legend (London: Hutchinson, 1896 [German original, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1895]) 203–11. – The term “Antichrist” is strictly anachronistic with reference to Jewish literature, but for convenience I have used it throughout this article with reference to both Jewish and Christian concepts of an eschatological adversary.

4

2. The Martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah: Jewish or Christian?

(E) Hippolytus, De Antichristo 43, 46–47; In Danielem, 35, 50. (F) Acts of Pilate 25 (Greek text in L. F. K. Tischendorf, Evangelia apocrypha [Leipzig: Mendelssohn, 1876] 331; Latin text, ibid. 404–5). (G) Ephraem Syrus, Sermo de fine extremo (in T. J. Lamy [ed.], Sancti Ephraem Syri hymni et sermones 3 [Mechlin: Dessain, 1889] 207–10). (H) Ephraem “Graecus,” Sermo in adventum Domini (in J. S. Assemani [ed.], Sancti Ephraem Syri opera omnia quae exstant [Rome: Salvioni, 1746], 3. 141–42). (I) Ps.-Ephraem “Latinus,” Sermo de fine mundi (in C. P. Caspari, Briefe, Abhandlungen und Predigten [Christiania: Malling, 1890] 219). (J) Ps.-Hippolytus, De consummatione mundi 21 (in P. A. Lagarde [ed.], Hippolyti Romani quae feruntur omnia graece [Leipzig: Teubner, 1858] 104–5). (K) Ps.-Hippolytus, De consummatione mundi 29 (ibid., 111). (L) Ps.-Methodius, Revelationes 14 (Greek and Latin) (Greek text in A. Vassiliev, Anecdota graeco-byzantina [Moscow: Imperial University, 1893] 38; Latin text in E. Sackur, Sibiyllinische Texte und Forschungen [Halle: Niemeyer, 1898], 95–96). (M) Visio Danielis (Greek) (in A. Vassiliev, Anecdota, 43). (N) Ps.-Methodius, Révélations 6 (Syriac) (tr. in F. Naum, Révélations et légendes [Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1917] 31). (O) Syriac (Clementine) Apocalypse of Peter (tr. in E. Bratke, “Handschriftliche Überlieferung und Bruchstücke der arabisch-aethiopischen Petrus-Apokalypse,” ZWT 36/1 [1893] 471–72). (P) Ethiopic (Clementine) Apocalypse of Peter (tr. in E. Bratke, “Handschriftliche Überlieferung,” 483). (Q) Latin Tiburtine Sibyl (in E. Sackur, Sibyllinische Texte, 186). (R) Greek Tiburtine Sibyl (in P. S. Alexander, The Oracle of Baalbek [Dumbarton Oaks Studies 10; Washington: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, 1967] 22). (S) Apocalypse of Ps.-Shenoute (in E. Amélineau, Mémoires publiés par les membres de la mission archéologique française au Caire (1885–1886) 4/1 [Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1888] 345). (T) Bohairic History of Joseph 31–32 (tr. in F. Robinson, Coptic Apocryphal Gospels [Texts and Studies 4/2; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1896] 146–47; Arabic in J. K. Thilo, Codex apocryphus Novi Testamenti [Leipzig: Vogel, 1832] 58–61). (U) Apocalypse of Ps.-John 8 (in L. F. K. Tischendorf, Apocalypses apocryphae [Leipzig: Mendelssohn, 1866] 77). (V) Syriac Apocalypse of Ezra (tr. in F. Baethgen, “Beschreibung der syrischen Handschrift ‘Sachau 131’ auf der königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin,” ZAW 6 [1886] 209). (W) Adso, Libellus de Antichristo (in E. Sackur, Sibyllinische Texte, 111–12). (Y) Adso, Libellus de Antichristo (longer text) (in PL 90: 1186).

Ps.-Hippolytus 21 adds John. History of Joseph (Arabic) adds “Schila” and Tabitha. 6 Tertullian: “They are reserved to die, so that they may extinguish Antichrist with their blood.” 7 There is a gap in the MS . 8 Tischendorf’s Latin text das 3 ½ days; his Greek text 3 days. 9 Is is not quite clear that the Apocalypse of Elijah intends to describe an ascension: “They will raise cries of joy towards heaven, they will shine, and all the people and the whole world will see them.”

4

5

x

kills them

E

x

x x

everyone sees them

they rise

x

in the sight of all

destroy Antichrist

(x)9

x

ascend to heaven x

x

x

x

x

x

renewed conflict with Antichrist

are raised by Michael and Gabriel

x x

in the streets of Jerusalem

the great ciry

x

x

x

x8

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

H

x

(x)7

x

x

x

I

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

M

x

x

x

N

x

x

x

x

x

O

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

P

x

x

x

x

Q

x

x

x

x

x

R

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

S

x

x

x5

T

x

x

x

x

U

x

x

x

V

W

x

x

x

x

x

x

L

x4

K x

J x

x

(x)6

(x)6

x

x

x

x

x

G

x x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

F

4 days

3 days

x x

bodies lie unburied

3 ½ days

on the altar

x x

fights them

x

Antichrist enraged

conquers them

x

x

expose Antichrist

plague enemies

x x

fight Antichrist

preach repentance

x

x

prophets

x

descend

x

witnesses

Elijah and Enoch

x

D x

x

C

Enoch and Elijah

B x

A

Explicit quotation of Rev 11

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

Y

2. The Martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah: Jewish or Christian?

5

6

2. The Martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah: Jewish or Christian?

The date and interrelationships of many of these texts have not been established and cannot be on the basis of examining only this one element of the eschatological traditions they share. But it is important to notice that none of the texts F–Y may be dated before the fourth century10 and many are much later. Undoubtedly, eschatological traditions in early and medieval Christianity were transmitted in relatively stable forms; the same apocalyptic texts were frequently updated and adapted to new circumstances, and late texts are therefore by no means worthless evidence of early tradition. But they must nevertheless be used with care in attempts to investigate the origins of traditions. Since it is rarely possible to prove that a tradition did not exist at an earlier date than the evidence attests, the temptations to project traditions further back than the evidence warrants must be painstakingly resisted. Of the pre-fourth-century texts, there is, of course, no doubt of the date of Tertullian and Hippolytus. The Apocalypse of Peter dates from the early second century, but we shall see that the Ethiopic version’s reference to Enoch and Elijah may not belong to the original apocalypse. The Apocalypse of Elijah is even more problematic. It has commonly been regarded as a third- or fourth-century Christian redaction of early Jewish material,11 and most scholars have thought that its account of Enoch and Elijah is dependent on the account of the two witnesses in Revelation 11,12 though perhaps also embodying independent Jewish tradition. Jeremias thought that a Jewish tradition of the martyrdom of Elijah could probably be discerned beneath the Christian redaction,13 but much more confident of the Jewish provenience of the work is J.-M. Rosenstiehl.14 He regards it as substantially an Essene work of the first century b. c., expanded in chap. 2 by another Jewish author of the third century a.d. Its account of the return of Enoch and Elijah he regards as wholly Jewish and pre-Christian, related to Revelation 11 only via a common source. 10 An earlier date for the Acts of Pilate has sometimes been advocated, but G. C. O’Ceallaigh (“Dating the Commentaries of Nicodemus,” HTR 56 [1963] 21–58) has demonstrated a terminus post quem at 555 for the earliest part (Part I) of the work. The Descent into Hell (which includes chap. 25) is later. 11 E. Schürer, review of Steindorff’s edition, TLZ 24 (1899) 7–8; W. Bousset, “Beiträge zur Geschichte der Eschatologie,” ZKG 20 (1899) 103–12; H. Weinel, “Die spätere christliche Apokalyptik,” : Studien zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments (Gunkel Festschrift; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1923), 2. 164–66. 12 E. g., D. Haugg, Die Zwei Zeugen: Eine exegetische Studie über Apok 11, 1–13 (NTA bh 17/1; Münster: Aschendorf, 1936) 94; M. Black, “Servant of the Lord and Son of Man,” SJT 6 (1953) 10 n. 1; W. Wink, John the Baptist in the Gospel Tradition (SNTSMS 7; London / New York: Cambridge University, 1968) 14 n. 1. 13 TDNT 2 (1964) 939–41. 14 L‘Apocalypse d’Elie (Paris: Geuthner, 1972).

2. The Martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah: Jewish or Christian?

7

Rosenstiehl’s arguments do not carry complete conviction.15 A final conclusion as to the date of the Apocalypse of Elijah can only be reached after a fuller study of the traditions it contains, and since the present inquiry is part of such study the question of date must be regarded as still open. Initially, however, we may notice from the table that the Apocalypse of Elijah’s account of Enoch and Elijah obviously has close affinities not only with Revelation 11 but also with the Christian tradition of the fourth century onwards. These affinities provide the obvious indications of date, and we shall require strong evidence for dating as early as the first century b.c. a tradition which is otherwise attested for the fourth century and later but not before. It should also be noticed that the undoubtedly strongly Jewish character of the Apocalypse of Elijah need not mean that it always preserves pre-Christian Jewish tradition. Some of its striking points of contact with Jewish apocalyptic are not with extant pre-Christian apocalyptic but with the so-called Neo-Hebraic apocalyptic of the Christian era.16 It is probable that a two-way traffic in apocalyptic traditions between Judaism and Christianity continued long after the first century,17 and not beyond possibility that a Jewish tradition of the martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah could have resulted from the influence of Christian traditions based on Revelation 11. J. Munck, in a survey of many of the texts included in the table, argued, against Bousset and Jeremias, that there was no Christian tradition of the return of Enoch and Elijah independent of Revelation 11 and therefore no evidence of a pre-Christian tradition of their martyrdom. Revelation 11, subjected to a mistaken exegesis by such writers as Hippolytus and Ps.-Hippolytus, gave rise to the whole Christian tradition of the return of Enoch and Elijah.18 In his major contention that the martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah is a tradition deriving from exegesis of Revelation 11, we shall see that Munck was probably correct. But it is less likely that all aspects of the tradition derive from Revelation 11. An expectation of the return of Enoch and Elijah is attested in preChristian Judaism, though much more rarely than the expectation of Elijah alone. 4 Ezra 6:26 expects the appearance of those who had not died (cf. 7:28; 13:52), but doubtless means not only Enoch and Elijah, for Jewish writers of this period exalted others (Moses, Baruch, Ezra) to the privilege of excaping death. But 1 Enoch 90:31 does seem to refer to the return of 15

See some critical comments in a review by P. M. Parvis, JTS 24 (1973) 588–89. This is especially true of the description of Antichrist: see J.-M. Rosenstiehl, “Le portrait de l’Antichrist,” Pseudépigraphes de l’Ancien Testament et manuscrits de la Mer Morte (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967), 1. 45–60. 17 Cf. M. Buttenwieser, Outline of the Neo-Hebraic Apocalyptic Literature (Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye, 1901) 1. 18 Petrus und Paulus in der Offenbarung Johannis (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde og Bagger, 1950) 81–118. 16

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2. The Martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah: Jewish or Christian?

Enoch and Elijah specifically, probably at a period when only these two were thought to have escaped death. The survival of this tradition in Christianity and its lack of attestation in Judaism ought perhaps to be associated with the popularity of the Enoch literature in some early Christian circles and its corresponding lapse from favor in Judaism. Certainly early Christian writers tended to regard Enoch and Elijah as the only two who had escaped death (Irenaeus, Adv. haer. 5.5.1; cf. 4 Ezra 1:39; Apocalypse of Paul 20). If early Christian writers took over from Judaism the expectation that Enoch and Elijah would return to earth before the Judgment, it is not so clear that they took over specific functions that the two were to perform. In 1 Enoch 90:31 they appear to have no function. Among Christian writers Hippolytus at least seems to have used no extra-scriptural traditions except the mere expectation of Enoch and Elijah’s return. His accounts are closely dependent on Revelation 11 and he does little more than identify the two witnesses as Enoch and Elijah: his explanation that they are to be martyred “because they will not give glory to Antichrist” (De Antichristo 47) is surely an intelligent deduction from the text rather than a sign of the influence of independent tradition. But it is noteworthy that he apparently found it unnecessary to argue for his identification of the witnesses: he cites Mal 4:5–6 for the return of Elijah but seems to regard as unquestionable the identification of the second witness as Enoch. Arguably, once one witness had been identified as Elijah, Enoch’s claim to be the other was obvious, for these were the two men who had not died. But it is more probable that an existing tradition of the return of Enoch with Elijah influenced Hippolytus’ exegesis. Lactantius and Commodian show attempts to interpret Revelation 11 in the light of an alternative tradition of the return of Elijah alone,19 and patristic authors who gave close attention to the text of Revelation 11 were quite capable, like modern scholars, of finding that the characteristics of the two witnesses in 11:5–6 recall Elijah and Moses and Jeremiah but not Enoch.20 The identification with Elijah and Enoch was not obvious from the text, and its prevalence in the early church must probably be explained by reference to an independent tradition of the return of Enoch and Elijah in the light of which Revelation 11 was interpreted. The tradition in most of the texts other than Hippolytus goes further than naming Enoch and Elijah in its divergence from Revelation 11. At least from the time of Ephraem Syrus, the tradition seems to assume an independent 19 Lactantius (Inst. 7,17) and Commodian (Carmen de duobus populis 833–64) are both patently dependent on Rev 11:3–13, but Lactantius speaks only of one figure, Elijah, and Commodian speaks first of Elijah alone (833, 839, 850) and then of prophetae (856–62). The tradition of the return of Elijah alone also appears in Justin, Dial. 49; Sib. Or. 2:187; Tertullian, De resurrectione 22; De anima 25. 20 Hilarius, In Matt. 20:10 (PL 9.1032); Victorinus, In Apoc. 11:5 (PL 5.334).

2. The Martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah: Jewish or Christian?

9

life of its own, so that the story as told in most of the texts bears little resemblance to the story of the two witnesses, and only in a few cases (J, W) does it appear that the writer himself made any reference to the text of Revelation 11. In terms of the motifs listed in the table, there are two accounts (C, N) which have no point of contact at all with Revelation 11, and one (H) which coincides only in describing the two as prophets. All the others agree with Revelation 11 at least in recounting the martyrdom, but six of these (D, L, M, T, U, V) coincide with Revelation 11 only at this point, and three (G, P, R) only at this point and at the resurrection. It is true that most of the accounts are much briefer than Rev 11:3–13; but this only highlights the significance in the tradition of recurrent motifs which are not found at all in Revelation 11. The idea that the purpose of Enoch and Elijah’s mission is to expose Antichrist’s deceits is found in sixteen of the texts (B, C, G, H, I, J, K, L, N, O, P, S, T, U, W, Y), while the motifs of Antichrist’s rage against Enoch and Elijah occur in seven texts (B, G, L, M, O, R, S). Other features clearly not derived from Revelation 11 are found occasionally: Enoch and Elijah come to fight Antichrist (B, F, N, R), they are put to death on the altar (U, V), they are raised by Michael and Gabriel (G, P), their conflict with Antichrist continues after their resurrection (B, S), and they finally destroy Antichrist (B, N, S). The tradition is by no means uniform, and the omission of some motifs is doubtless often determined by the nature of the context or a desire for brevity; but most of the texts given in the table recount the return of Enoch and Elijah in the context of a sequential prophecy of the events of the last days and may, therefore, be expected to convey what was regarded as the main point of the tradition. Only a few of the texts (D, F, T) are in the nature of more incidental allusions. Therefore the degree of divergence from Relevation 11 and the recurrent prominence of motifs not derived from Revelation 11 is striking. The point of most consistent divergence is the purpose of the mission of Enoch and Elijah. The two witnesses in Rev 11:3–13 are preachers of repentance; they are not represented as preaching against Antichrist specifically; they encounter Antichrist only when their witness is completed. In the Enoch and Elijah tradition, almost without exception,21 the two prophets are sent against Antichrist, after his reign has begun. This may mean that they are the instruments of his destruction (B, D, N, S), but it most commonly means that they expose him as an imposter. They denounce him either to his face or to the people or both, and this is what provokes his rage and their 21 The exceptions are Hippolytus, who follows Revelation 11 closely; the Latin Tiburtine Sibyl (Q), where the mission of Enoch and Elijah is “to announce the Lord’s coming”; and the Syriac Apocalypse of Ezra (V), which has no reference to the purpose of their coming. Adso – and thence the whole Western medieval tradition – gives them the additional role of converting the Jews to Christianity.

10

2. The Martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah: Jewish or Christian?

martyrdom. The fact that some accounts (B, G, H, K, O) give details of the verbal exchange between Antichrist and the two prophets illustrates the prominence of this theme in the tradition. Sometimes the people at large are convinced by this exposure of the false Messiah (L), sometimes the faithful are encouraged or reclaimed (I, W, Y), sometimes “few believe” (H). It is clear, therefore, that Bousset was correct in drawing attention to the characteristics of the Enoch and Elijah tradition which distinguish it from Revelation 11. But his conclusion, that such texts as K, L, U, V represent substantially a pre-Christian Jewish tradition uninfluenced by Revelation 11, was too hasty.22 According to Bousset the pre-Christian tradition was that Enoch and Elijah would return to denounce Antichrist and would be slain by him. The motif of resurrection after three days he regarded as originating in Revelation 11 and appearing only in texts influenced by Revelation 11.23 In fact, it is very doubtful whether the resurrection can be regarded as a secondary addition to a tradition which already included the martyrdom. It seems, on the contrary, that the resurrection has dropped out of the tradition in those texts which conclude the story with martyrdom, just as the ascencion has been omitted by almost all the texts which include the resurrection. There are some texts evidently dependent on Revelation 11 which omit both resurrection and ascension (E, J, W), and in many cases the motive for such an omission is clear. In most of the texts the account of the last days has been compressed so that the general resurrection follows swiftly upon the martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah, and their individual resurrection becomes redundant.24 In other cases, (D, T) the allusion to the tradition is in order to make a particular point which depends on the martyrdom, not the resurrection.25 If there was a pre-Christian tradition, it must either have included both martyrdom and resurrection or have included neither. Those who, like Rosenstiehl, regard the account in the Apocalypse of Elijah as Jewish will argue that there was a Jewish tradition of both martyrdom and resurrection. It is much more probable that both features entered the tradition from Revelation 11. Apart from the debatable case of the Apocalypse of Elijah and the brief reference of Tertullian, the martyrdom is attested before the fourth century only in Hippolytus, who quite clearly derived it from Revelation 11. Thus two centuries before the texts from which Bousset constructed a pre-christian tradition, Christians were iden22

Antichrist Legend, 208–9. Ibid., 209–10. 24 It is interesting to note that in Acts of Pilate 25 the resurrection and ascension of Enoch and Elijah are related in the language of 1 Thes 4:17, thereby assimilating them to the general resurrection and rapture of the saints. 25 Munck has argued at length that there was never a tradition of martyrdom without resurrection (Petrus und Paulus, 100–109). 23

2. The Martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah: Jewish or Christian?

11

tifying Enoch and Elijah with the two witnesses of Revelation 11. It would be surprising if the later tradition showed no influence from Revelation 11, and such influence is surely responsible for the near unanimity of the texts in expecting the martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah. A more profitable approach to the question of pre-Christian tradition is to examine those three texts (C, H, N) which are remarkable for not mentioning the martyrdom.26 These texts are the most dissimilar from Revelation 11 and the most likely to reflect entirely independent tradition. One of them, chap. 2 of the Ethiopic version of the Apocalypse of Peter, would be the earliest Christian reference to the return of Enoch and Elijah, if it could be shown to be part of the original early second-century apocalypse. But the Ethiopic text of chap. 2 is suspect. A general comparison of the Ethiopic of the Apocalypse of Peter with the Greek fragments and the patristic citations suggests that, while “on the whole the Ethiopic presents the original contents of the Apocalypse”,27 in detail it is scarcely a reliable witness to the original text. Moreover, the text of chap. 2 shows some degree of confusion. One part represents the “house of Israel” as following the false messiahs; another represents them as suffering martyrdom at the hands of the deceiver. The transition from the several false messiahs to the one Antichrist is oddly abrupt; and in favor of the originality of the former motif rather than the latter may be cited chap. 1 of the Ethiopic and vv. 1–2 of the Akhimimic text, which must represent at least a summary of this part of the apocalypse. In this case the Apocalypse of Peter belongs with 2 Peter and the synoptic apocalypse in knowing of false prophets and messianic pretenders of the last days, rather than of the single Antichrist of 2 Thessalonians. The parable of the fig-tree and its explanation would then have been introduced around an original prophecy of false messiahs who would lead the people astray. The introduction of Enoch and Elijah at the end of chap. 2 seems almost an afterthought, unnecessary to the interpretation of the parable and perhaps intended to clear up the difficulty of the preceding text: it is the preaching of Enoch and Elijah which will enlighten the Jews as to the true nature of Antichrist and so make them martyrs.

26 Not only do all the other texts in the table refer to the martyrdom, but also other texts which were not sufficiently important to be included: Philippus Solitarius, Dioptra 3.10; John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa 4.20; Honorius of Autun, Elucidarium 3.9. The only other example that I know of referring to the return of Enoch and Elijah without the mention of their martyrdom is in the Arabic (Clementine) Apocalypse of Peter (A. Mingana, Woodbrooke Studies [Cambridge: Heffer, 1931], 3. 359). But the martyrdom may be included in the section Mingana omits (p. 360), as it evidently is in the version described by Bousset (Antichrist Legend, 74). 27 C. Maurer in E. Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha (ed. R. McL. Wilson; London: Lutterworth, 1965), 2. 665.

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2. The Martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah: Jewish or Christian?

This is a conjectural explanation of the text, but it illustrates the difficulty of using it as evidence that the tradition of Enoch’s and Elijah’s return to denounce Antichrist was already known in the early second century. On the other hand, the singular absence of reference to the martyrdom may indicate an early (though not necessarily second-century) tradition. It might be understood contextually, if the point of the reference to Enoch and Elijah is to explain how the Jews are to recognize Antichrist as an imposter. But even so the context of reference to martyrdom was one in which other writers would not be able to resist adding that Enoch and Elijah too would seal their witness in blood. The point is well illustrated by comparing this text with a parallel one in the later Ethiopic (Clementine) Apocalypse of Peter (P), which is certainly dependent on it: (C)

(P)

… he will kill with the sword and there shall be many martyrs. Then shall the boughs of the fig-tree, that is the house of Israel, sprout, and there shall be many martyrs by his hand: they shall be killed and become martyrs. Enoch and Elijah will be sent to instruct them that this is the deceiver who must come into the world and do signs and wonders in order to deceive. And therefore shall they that are slain by his hand be martyrs and shall be reckoned among the good and righteous martyrs who have pleased God in their life.

… they will be beheaded and become martyrs. In that day will be fulfilled what is said in the Gospel: when the branches of the fig-tree are full of sap, know that the time of the harvest is at hand. Shoots of the fig-tree are those righteous men called, who become martyrs at his hand, and the angels will bring them to the joy, and no hair of their head will be lost. Then Enoch and Elijah will descend. They will preach and put to shame that tyrannical enemy of righteousness and son of lies. Then they will be beheaded, and Michael and Gabriel will raise them up and bring them into the garden of joy, and no drop of his (sic) blood will fall on the ground…

In the second text the preaching of Enoch and Elijah against Antichrist is retained, but no longer serves to make martyrs of anyone but Enoch and Elijah themselves. The parallelism of language between the account of the martyrs and the account of Enoch and Elijah shows the extent to which they are here portrayed as examples of martyrdom, the very last of all the martyrs. This was the dominant trend of the tradition. The Apocalypse of Peter may thus be evidence that the tradition of the return of Enoch and Elijah to denounce Antichrist first existed independently of the tradition of the martyrdom. The same early tradition may also survive in Ephraem Graecus (H), where the martyrdom is not mentioned. The process of assimilation to Revelation 11 can be seen rather clearly in Ps.-Hippolytus: in chap. 21 (J) the motif of exposing Antichrist has been introduced into an

2. The Martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah: Jewish or Christian?

13

account drawn from Hippolytus and dependent on Revelation 11; in chap. 29 (K) the motif of martyrdom has been added to an account of the mission of Enoch and Elijah very similar to that in Ephraem Graecus.28 The Syriac version of Ps.-Methodius (N) seems to represent another form of the tradition which did not include the martyrdom, a form in which Enoch and Elijah come to destroy Antichrist. It is a quite distinctive account: … when he comes to Jerusalem, Enoch and Elijah will leave the land of life; they will rise up against him, they will withstand him and he will curse them. When he sees them, he will melt like salt in the presence of water, and he will be the first to be punished, before all men, together with the demons who entered into him…

The only close parallel to this account is at the end of the Apocalypse of Elijah, where Enoch and Elijah descend a second time from heaven, and “pursue the Son of Iniquity and kill him, without his being able to speak. In that day he will be destroyed before them like ice destroyed by the fire…” The destruction of Antichrist by Enoch and Elijah then reappears in the Apocalypse of Ps.-Shenoute (S), which is dependent on the Apocalypse of Elijah. Perhaps also to be connected with this tradition is Tertullian’s statement that “they are reserved to die, so that they may extinguish Antichrist with their blood” (morituri reservantur, ut Antichristum sanguine suo extinguant). This is a reinterpretation of the destruction of Antichrist in terms of the martyrological idea that the death of the martyr rebounds in judgment on the persecutor and thereby secures his destruction. It is possibly a reinterpretation independent of Revelation 11 but more probably Tertullian, like Hippolytus, identified Enoch and Elijah with the two witnesses and understood their death in the light of Rev 12:11, 15:2 as a conquest of Antichrist. This motif of the destruction of Antichrist by Enoch and Elijah is likely to be of Jewish origin, as is also the alternative tradition of his destruction by the archangel Michael, which found its way from Judaism into the Christian tradition:29 the elimination of the last great enemy of the people of God was a messianic function in both Jewish and Christian apocalyptic.30 A Christian author is unlikely to have originated a tradition in which Enoch and Elijah are permitted in this way to usurp the role of Christ.31 But the messianic 28 For the relationship of Ps.-Hippolytus to Ephraem Graecus, see W. Bousset, Antichrist Legend, 41–42. 29 See W. Bousset, Antichrist Legend, 227–31; M. Buttenwieser, Outlines, 43; Jewish Encyclopedia, 8. 536–7. 30 Jewish: 2 Apoc. Bar. 40:1–2; M. Buttenwieser, Outlines, 31, 35, 38. Christian: 2 Thes 2:8; Rev 19:11–21; W. Bousset, Antichrist Legend, 224–25. 31 This is undoubtedly why it appears rarely in the Christian sources. Ps.-Shenoute (S), which is dependent on the Apocalypse of Elijah, retains the motif, but the Greek Ti-

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2. The Martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah: Jewish or Christian?

expectations of first-century Judaism were more varied and could easily have accommodated a tradition in which Enoch and Elijah were a pair of messianic figures appearing at the end to combat and destroy Antichrist. Such a tradition has not survived in extant Jewish texts, but a messianic role for Elijah is attested,32 while Enoch in the Similitudes of Enoch assumes the messianic functions of the Son of Man. We may now attempt a classification of the traditions: Ia. The return of Enoch and Elijah (purpose unspecified): 1 Enoch 90:31. Ib. The return of Enoch and Elijah as the two witnesses of Revelation 11: Hippolytus (E). Ia. The return of Enoch and Elijah to destroy Antichrist: Syriac Ps.-Methodius (N). II b. The return of Enoch and Elijah to destroy Antichrist by suffering martyrdom: Tertullian (D). III a. The return of Enoch and Elijah to expose Antichrist: Apocalypse of Peter (C), Ephraem Graecus (H) III b. The return of Enoch and Elijah to expose Antichrist and suffer martyrdom: Ps.-Hippolytus 29 (K) etc.

Ia and probably II a are pre-Christian Jewish traditions. III a may also be a Jewish tradition, though we cannot be sure. The martyrdom appears only in the secondary development of each, probably in each case under the influence of Revelation 11. Certainly there is no evidence that this development had already taken place in Judaism. The majority of the texts belong to III b, with greater or less assimilation to Revelation 11. The tendency of many of the texts is to emphasize the martyrological aspects of the tradition, not only by taking over the martyrdom motif itself from Revelation 11 but also by incorporating additional martyrological features such as Antichrist’s rage (B, G, L, M, O, R, S)33 and the sacrificial understanding of martyrdom attested by death on the altar (U, V).34 The tendency to represent Enoch and Elijah primarily as exemplary martyrs of the last days is illustrated by the Ethiopic (Clementine) Apocalypse of Peter (P), quoted above, and is also to be seen in the account in the Apocalypse of Elijah, where Enoch and Elijah appear among a sequence of martyrs burtine Sibyl (R), which is also dependent on the Apocalypse of Elijah, replaces it with the intervention of Christ himself, who raises Enoch and Elijah and then fights and destroys Antichrist. 32 TDNT 2 (1964) 931; Str-B, 4. 782–84; J. A. T. Robinson, “Elijah, John and Jesus: An Essay in Detection,” NTS 4 (1957–58) 263–81, esp. pp. 268–70. 33 The rage of the persecutor is a stock feature of martyrdom stories: Dan 3:13, 19; 11:30; Bel 8; 2 Macc 7:39; 4 Macc 8:2; 9:10; Acts 7:54; H. Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford: Clarendom, 1972) 22, 26, 54, 66, 190. 34 The same understanding is found in the Apocalypse of Elijah, when Antichrist throws the blood of the martyr Tabitha on the temple and when the Sixty Righteous Men are burned on the altar.

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comprising Tabitha, Enoch, and Elijah, and the Sixty Righteous Men, and where the martyrological aspect of the tradition is strongly emphasized by the details of the narrative, including those which it shares with Revelation 11. A narrative of idealized martyrs of the end-time can be paralleled from pre-Christian Jewish apocalyptic: the incident of “Taxo” and his seven sons in chap. 9 of the Assumption of Moses. But it was a Christian innovation to cast Enoch and Elijah in this role. Seen in the light of the rest of the evidence for the Enoch and Elijah tradition, the Apocalypse of Elijah has the characteristics of a relatively late version, taking up varied elements of eschatological tradition and elaborating them into an extended narrative of the reign of Antichrist. By means of incorporating two distinct forms of the tradition of Enoch and Elijah (III b and II a), the Apocalypse of Elijah was able to relate two distinct comings of Enoch and Elijah: first to denounce Antichrist and suffer martyrdom and then a second time at the end to destroy him. Possibly the second belonged to an original Jewish Apocalypse of Elijah, but the first may be credibly attributed to the third- or fourth-century Christian redaction which was responsible for the present form of the work.35 To conclude: the Christian tradition of the return of Enoch and Elijah provides no evidence of a pre-Christian Jewish tradition of their martyrdom. The martyrdom is a Christian innovation deriving via Rev 11:3–13 from the Christian innovation of the martyrdom of the Messiah.

Additional Note A: More texts Since completing the article that is reprinted here as the above chapter, I have come across a variety of other Christian36 apocalyptic works that contain the tradition of the martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah. They are all relatively late texts and they do not suggest that any modifications of my argument in the article are needed, but they are listed here and tabulated in the same way as the my original set of texts in order to supplement the evidence: (A1) Arabic Sibyl A (E. Y. Ebied and M. J. L. Young, ‘An Unrecorded Arabic Version of a Sibylline Prophecy,’ Orientalia Christiana Periodica 43 [1977] 279–307). (B1) Arabic Sibyl B (E. Y. Ebied and M. J. L. Young, ‘A Newly-Discovered Version of the Arabic Sibylline Prophecy,’ Oriens Christiana 60 [1976] 83–94). 35 I have discussed the account of Enoch and Elijah in the Apocalypse of Elijah more fully in “Enoch and Elijah in the Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah” (chapter 3 below). 36 The Falasha Apocalypse of Ezra, like other Falasha literature, is a de-christianized version of an originally Christian text.

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(C1) Greek Apocalypse of Daniel (Diegesis Danielis) 14:1–15/14:1–12 (Klaus Berger, Die griechische Daniel-Diegese [SPB 27; Leiden: Brill, 1976] 18, 144–148; G. T. Zervos, ‘Apocalypse of Daniel [Ninth Century A. D.]: A New Translation and Introduction,’ in James Charlesworth [ed.], The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1 [London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1983] 755–770).37 (D1) Apocalypse of Leo of Constantinople 21 (Riccardo Maisano, L’Apocalisse Apocrifa di Leone di Constantinopoli [Nobiltà dello Spirito NS 3; Naples: Morano, 1975] 98–99). (E1) Oracles of Leo the Wise 5.36–39 (E. Legrand, Les Oracles de Léon le Sage, La Bataille de Varna, La Prise de Constantinople: Poëmes en grecs vulgaires [Collection de Monuments pour servir à l’étude de la langue néo-hellénique, NS 5; Paris: Maissonneuve/Athens: Coromilas, 1875] 49). (F1) Andreas Salos Apocalypse, 286–289 short text (L. Rydén, ‘The Andreas Salos Apocalypse: Greek Text, Translation, and Commentary,’ Dumbarton Oaks Papers 28 [1974] 197–261, here 212–213, 223–224). (G1) Andreas Salos Apocalypse, 286–289 long text (Rydén, ‘The Andreas Salos Apocalypse,’ 212, 223–224 n.). (H1) Two Sorrows of the Kingdom of Heaven 8 (Máire Herbert and Martin McNamara, Irish Biblical Apocrypha [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989] 21). (I1) Karshuni Testament of our Lord Jesus 6 (J. Ziadé, ‘Un testament de N. S. concernant les invasions des Mongols, ’ ROC 21 [1918–19] 261–273, 433–444, here 443; Juan Pedro Monferrer Sala, Apócrifos Árabes Cristianos [Madrid: Trotta, 2003] 240–241). (J1) Coptic Vision of Daniel 80–81 (Otto Meinardus, ‘A Commentary on the XIV th Vision of Daniel: According to the Coptic Version,’ Orientalia Christiana Periodica 32 [1966] 394–449, here 447).38 (K1) Falasha Apocalypse of Ezra (J. Halévy, T zâza Sanbat [Commandements du Sabbat] accompagnés de six autres écrits pseudo-épigraphiques admits par les Falachas ou Juifs d’Abyssinie [BEHE .H 137; Paris, 1902] 195).

This list is still far from exhaustive. Like other apocalyptic traditions this one made its way far and wide in a variety of Christian traditions. For some further examples, see J. T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumrân Cave 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976) 119–123; Berger, Die griechische Daniel-Diegese, table facing page 148; Richard Kenneth Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981) 95–101, 136–140; David Dumville, ‘Biblical Apocrypha and the Early Irish: A Preliminary Investigation,’ Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 73C (1973) 299–338, here 308–311.

37 On this apocalypse, see Lorenzo DiTommaso, The Book of Daniel and the Apocryphal Daniel Literature (SVTP 20; Leiden: Brill, 2005) 130–141, 356–359. 38 On this apocalypse, see DiTommaso, The Book of Daniel, 179–184, 456–458.

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2. The Martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah: Jewish or Christian? A1

B1

C1

D1

E1

x

x39

F1

G1

H1

I1

J1

x

x

K1

Explicit quotation of Rev 11 Enoch and Elijah

x (x)41

x40

(x)42

(x)43 x44

Elijah and Enoch

x

witnesses (x)45

prophets

x

descend fight Antichrist

x

preach repentance plague enemies

x

expose Antichrist

x

Antichrist enraged

x

x

x

fights them

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

conquers them kills them

x

x

x

on the altar

x

x

x

bodies lie unburied 3 ½ days

(2½)

x

x

x

x

x

x

x x

x

x

x

x

3 days

x

4 days in the streets of Jerusalem

x

x

the great ciry

x

everyone sees them they rise

x

x x

x

x

x

x

x

x

are raised by Michael and Gabriel renewed conflict with Antichrist ascend to heaven in the sight of all destroy Antichrist

39

With John the evangelist. With John the evangelist. 41 Two unnamed men. 42 Two unnamed men from heaven (Enoch and Elijah) and one unnamed man from earth (John the evangelist). 43 Two unnamed men. 44 With John the evangelist. 45 Here they are called ‘preachers ( ) of the truth’. 40

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Additional Note B: A pre-Christian Jewish tradition of the return of Enoch and Elijah? In the first paragraph of the chapter I said that Wilhelm Bousset ‘in 1895 sifted early Christian traditions about Antichrist to reconstruct a preChristian Jewish tradition which included the return of Enoch and Elijah to denounce Antichrist and to suffer martyrdom.’ This statement was mistaken.46 Bousset’s purpose in the whole book was to reconstruct a tradition about Antichrist that early Christians inherited from Jewish sources.47 I must have assumed that he considered ‘the return of Enoch and Elijah to denounce Antichrist and to suffer martyrdom,’ which he treats at some length in the course of working through the whole reconstructed narrative,48 to be part of this pre-Christian Jewish tradition. In fact, however, at this point he draws some distinctions between the original Jewish tradition and the form in which it appears in early Christian literature. He states that the ‘original Jewish expectation, as is still to be seen in the Gospels,49 was for the return of Elias alone (Malachi iv.1).’50 He notes that this expectation of Elijah alone is found also in the second book of the Sibylline Oracles (2.187), in Justin (Dial. 49, where it is attributed to the Jew Trypho), in Lactantius and Commodian,51 and in the later Jewish apocalyptic literature. After showing the way in which the existing tradition about Enoch and Elijah was adapted by the author of Revelation 11, he concludes: Still, with all this, one point remains unexplained – the origin of the idea of the two witnesses. There can scarcely be a doubt that it cannot have emanated from a Jewish source. Here the return of Elias is expected, while the expectation of the two witnesses would seem to have never been more generally diffused, as is shown by the later Jewish tradition.52

Bousset’s view seems to be that in Jewish tradition Elijah alone was expected, but that in a Christian version of the tradition, pre-dating Revelation, Enoch 46 This was pointed out to me in a personal letter from Barry Blackburn, dated 23 May 1979. 47 For recent critical assessments of Bousset’s overall thesis about the Antichrist tradition, see Gregory C. Jenks, The Origins and Early Development of the Antichrist Myth (BZNW 59; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1991) 5–13; G. W. Lorein, The Antichrist Theme in the Intertestamental Period (JSPS up 44; London/New York: T. & T. Clark International [Continuum], 2003) 1–7, 237. 48 Wilhelm Bousset, The Antichrist Tradition, tr. A. H. Keane (London: Hutchinson, 1896) 203–11. 49 Mark 9:11–13. 50 Bousset, The Antichrist Tradition, 207. 51 See n. 19 above. 52 Bousset, The Antichrist Tradition, 210.

2. The Martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah: Jewish or Christian?

19

was added. In addition, he states clearly that the author of Revelation was ‘personally responsible for the incident about the resurrection of the witnesses after the third day,’ since this is clearly a Christian contribution53 (but why should it not have been already part of the Christian tradition that added Enoch to Elijah?). What is wholly unclear is whether Bousset thinks that the role of denouncing Antichrist and consequent martyrdom at his hands were already to attributed to Elijah in Jewish tradition or belonged to that Christian redaction of the tradition that added the second figure, Enoch. If Bousset’s view were the latter, then he was in essential agreement with my own argument in the chapter above. However, he was mistaken in supposing that the idea of the eschatological return of Enoch and Elijah together had no non-Christian Jewish source. It is true that it is not to be found in rabbinic literature or in the medieval Jewish apocalypses that have parallels to many of the other traditions about Antichrist in the Christian apocalypses. Its absence from rabbinic literature may be due to the lack of a scriptural basis for expecting the return of Enoch, by contrast with the explicit prophecy relating to Elijah (Mal 4:1). The medieval Jewish apocalypses, on the other hand, reflect non-scriptural traditions abundantly. The absence of Enoch from them is perhaps to be attributed to the controversial nature of the figure of Enoch in Jewish tradition from the second century ce onwards. In any case, there is a pre-Christian Jewish reference to the return of Enoch and Elijah in a text Bousset neglected: 1 Enoch 90:31.54 This text deserves a little more attention than I gave it in the chapter above. It belongs to the Animal Apocalypse of 1 Enoch 85–90, which dates from the Maccabean period. In a work attributed to Enoch and in view of Enoch’s assumption to heaven without dying (Gen 5:24; 1 Enoch 87:2–4), it is not very surprising to find this expansion of the already existing belief that Elijah would return at the end (Mal 4:1; Sir 48:10). 1 Enoch 90:31 reads: After that, those three who were clothed in white and who had taken hold of me [Enoch] by my hand, who had previously brought me up (with the hand of that ram also taking hold of me), set me down among those sheep before the judgment took place.55

The three are the angels who had taken Enoch up to heaven at the end of his earthly life (87:2–4). The ram is Elijah, whose assumption to paradise 53

Bousset, The Antichrist Tradition, 210. There is a useful table of the sources used by Bousset and their contributions to his reconstructed Antichrist tradition in Jenks, The Origins, 8–9, while Jenks, The Origins,10, lists Jewish works of the Second Temple period not used by Bousset, including 1 Enoch. 55 Translation from George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: A New Translation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004) 134. 54

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has also been described earlier in the Animal Apocalypse (89:52), which makes it clear that Elijah joined Enoch in paradise. No other assumption to paradise has been mentioned in this Apocalypse’s grand review of biblical history. This makes very improbable the alternative suggestion: that the ram of 90:31 is Judas Maccabeus (depicted as a ram in 90:9–10).56 Most scholars have agreed that the ram must be Elijah.57 The last phrase of 1 Enoch 90:31 (‘before the judgment took place’) is problematic. The judgment has already been recounted (90:20–27) and has been followed by an account of the New Jerusalem (90:28–30). No further judgment follows. It may be that the text is ‘completely corrupt.’58 If not, then according to Nickelsburg ‘either the verse has been (accidentally?) transposed from its chronologically correct location between vv 19 and 20, or that “before the judgment took place” is a scribal gloss that ties Enoch’s and Elijah’s return to earth to the tradition of their participation in the judgment.’59 It would seem easiest to suppose that, whatever the origin of the last phrase in the present Ethiopic text, the verse did not originally place the coming of Enoch and Elijah before the judgment. In that case, the significance of their return is not difficult to decide. They return in order to participate in the new age along with the rest of God’s faithful people. What is clear is that they do not oppose an Antichrist figure or die at his hands. Those features of the later tradition are absent from this earliest reference to the return of Enoch and Elijah.

Additional Note C: A non-Christian Jewish tradition of the return and martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah? In a brief response or addendum to my article,60 Alexander Zeron pointed out the relevance of a passage I had not cited: Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiq56 J. T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumrân Cave 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976) 45. 57 Matthew Black, ‘The “Two Witnesses” of Rev. 11:3 f. in Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic Tradition,’ in Ernst Bammel, C. Kingsley Barrett and W. D. Davies (ed.), Donum Gentilicium: New Testament Studies in Honour of David Daube (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978) 227–237, here 228 and n. 1; idem, The Book of Enoch or 1 Enoch (SVTP 7; Leiden: Brill, 1985) 279; Patrick A. Tiller, A Commentary on the Animal Apocalypse of 1 Enoch (SBL Early Judaism and Its Literature 04; Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1993) 377–378; George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001) 405. 58 Tiller, A Commentary, 379. 59 Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 405. 60 Alexander Zeron, ‘The Martyrdom of Phineas-Elijah,’ JBL 98 (1979) 99–100.

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uities 48:1. This passage, probably from the late first century, is the earliest evidence of a tradition, later found in the Pseudo-Jonathan Targum to the Pentateuch (Exod 4:13; 6:18; 40:10; Deut 30:4; cf. Num 25:12) and occasionally in rabbinic literature (Pirqe R. El. 29), that identified Elijah with the high priest Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron.61 We need not discuss the exegetical origins of the tradition here. What is important for our present purposes is that the version of the tradition in Pseudo-Philo refers to the death of the returning Elijah: And in that time Phinehas laid himself down to die, and the Lord said to him, ‘Behold you have passed the 120 years that have been established for every man. And now rise up and go from here and dwell in Danaben on the mountain and dwell there many years. And I will command my eagle, and he will nourish you there, and you will not come down to mankind until the time arrives and you be tested at that time; and you will shut up the heaven then, and by your mouth it will be opened up. And afterward you will be lifted up into the place where those who were before you were lifted up, and you will be there until I remember the world. Then I will make you all come, and you [plural] will taste what is death (Bib Ant. 48:1).62

Here Phinehas is commanded to hide on a mountain, where God nourishes him, until the time – many centuries later – when he is to re-appear in the world as the prophet Elijah, unequivocally identified by the information that he will both conjure up a drought and put an end to it. Elijah’s ascension is then predicted: ‘you will be lifted up into the place where those who were before you (priores tui) were lifted up.’ Presumably this is paradise, and there Elijah and the others remain until, at the end time, God brings them back to the earth. Only then will Phinehas-Elijah and the others die. This reference to the death of Phinehas-Elijah in the eschatological future seems to be unique among the texts that identify Phinehas and Elijah. Who are the ones who had been lifted up to paradise before PhinehasElijah? Certainly they include Enoch, whose translation to heaven PseudoPhilo has noted in its place, following Genesis 5:24 (Lib. Ant. 1:16). Perhaps Pseudo-Philo’s statement that Enoch ‘was not found’ (non inveniebatur), where Genesis has ‘was not,’ is intended to assimilate Enoch’s ascension to 61 Martin Hengel, The Zealots, tr. David Smith (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989) chap. IVB ; Robert Hayward, ‘Phinehas—the Same is Elijah,’ JJS 29 (1978) 22–34; Richard Bauckham, ‘Messianism According to the Gospel of John,’ in John Lierman (ed.), Challenging Perspectives on the Gospel of John (WUNT 2/219; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006) 34–68, here 36–37. 62 Translation from D. J. Harrington, ‘Pseudo-Philo,’ in James Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1983) 297–377, here 362. For the argument that Phinehas is here identified with Elijah, see Frederick J. Murphy, Pseudo-Philo: Rewriting the Bible (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) 184–185; Howard Jacobson, A Commentary on Pseudo-Philo’s Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, vol. 2 (AGAJU 31; Leiden: Brill, 1996) 1060.

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that of Elijah (cf. 2 Kgs 2:17).63 Pseudo-Philo nowhere indicates that any other of his characters belong in the same category. According to 2 Baruch (13:3), Baruch does, and according to 4 Ezra (14:9), Ezra does, but these lived long after Elijah’s ascension.64 Later rabbinic literature supplies other names of ‘those who entered paradise alive’: Eliezer the servant of Abraham, Serah the daughter of Asher (Gen 46:17), Bithiah the daughter of Pharaoh (1 Chron 4:17, identified with the Egyptian princess who rescued Moses), Jabez (1 Chron 4:9–10), Hiram king of Tyre, Ebed-melech the Ethiopian (Jer 38:7–13; 39:15–18), Jonadab the Rechabite and his descendants (Jer 35), the servant of Rabbi Judah the Prince, Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, and the Messiah.65 Of these, Eliezer, Serah, Bithiah, and perhaps Jabez, lived before the time of Phinehas, while Hiram lived before the time of Elijah’s ascension. We have no evidence that precisely these persons were already, in the late first century ce, when Pseudo-Philo wrote, thought not to have died, but, in some cases at least, this idea about them was based in ingenious exegesis of the kind that certainly was employed in Pseudo-Philo’s time and often presupposed by Pseudo-Philo’s text. Some of these persons, therefore, may be those, besides Enoch, who had already been translated to paradise before Phinehas-Elijah was. Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities has much in common, especially in its eschatological themes and language, with the two apocalypses of roughly the same date: 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch.66 The notion of a group of people who had not died and whom God would bring to earth at the end-time is found in 4 Ezra (6:26; 7:28; 13:52; 14:9), which provides the closest parallel to the Biblical Antiquities in this respect. The group are defined as ‘those who were taken up, who from their birth have not tasted death’ (6:26). The following passage is especially illuminating for our purposes: For my son the Messiah shall be revealed with those who are with him, and those who remain shall rejoice four hundred years. After those years my son the Messiah shall die, and all who draw human breath. Then the world shall be turned back to primeval silence for seven days, as it was at the first beginnings, so that no one shall

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Zeron, ‘The Martyrdom,’ 100. 2 Macc 15:13–16 is sometimes cited as evidence of a belief that Jeremiah had ascended without dying. This is not at all certain, but in any case, for our purposes, is not relevant, since Jeremiah lived after the ascension of Elijah. 65 Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, vol. 5 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1925) 95–96. The Messiah is included in the list of nine (including Enoch and Elijah) in Derek Ere Zuta 1, because he was thought to have lived at some point in Israel’s history and to have then been taken up to heaven, whence God will bring him to earth in the last days. This tradition is probably also presupposed in 4 Ezra 7:28. 66 M. R. James, The Biblical Antiquities of Philo (London: SPCK , 1917) 46–58; Harrington, ‘Pseudo-Philo,’ 302. 64

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be left. After seven days the world that is not yet awake shall be roused, and that which is corruptible shall perish (4 Ezra 7:28–31 NRSV ).

In this passage those who are with the Messiah apparently share in the messianic kingdom, at the end of which both the Messiah and all living humans die. The latter must include those who had been taken up without dying and who return to earth with the Messiah at the beginning of the messianic kingdom. The idea seems to be that everything in this world must revert to nothing before it can be recreated in the world to come. No mortal being, not even the Messiah himself, can enter the new creation without dying and rising again. The issue seems to be the same as that with which Paul deals in 1 Corinthians 15:50–52, though the solution is rather different.67 It is not easy to parallel at all precisely these expectations of the death of the Messiah and the reversion of all creation to chaos (though cf. 2 Bar 44:9), but it is notable how closely the end of this passage and the following verses (4 Ezra 7:31–35) are paralleled by Biblical Antiquities 3:10, including the idea of another, everlasting world to come. In view of the close parallels at these and other points between the eschatological expectations of 4 Ezra and Pseudo-Philo, it is reasonable to find in 4 Ezra 7:28–31 an explanation of the expected death of the returning Elijah in Biblical Antiquities 48:1. Phinehas-Elijah will finally taste death because every human must; it is the only way into the new creation. But he will die, not be killed. Thus, while Zeron was right to find in Biblical Antiquities 48:1 an expectation that both Enoch and Elijah (along with others who ascended without dying) will eventually die, he was mistaken to call this death ‘martyrdom.’68 This expectation has little in common with the expectation found in the Christian apocalypses that Enoch and Elijah will come to denounce Antichrist and will be put to death by him. Both the manner of their death and the rationale for it are quite different. Two studies that relate quite closely to the chapter above were published, coincidentally, around the same time. The first was the major work by Klaus Berger: Die Auferstehung des Propheten und die Erhöhung des Menschensohn: Traditionsgeschtichtliche Untersuchungen zur Deutung des Geschickes Jesu in frühchristlichen Texten (SUNT 13; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976). The second was a journal article: Johannes M. Nützel, ‘Zum Schichsal der eschatologischen Propheten,’ BZ 20 (1976) 59–94. 67 Rabbinic literature often denies that either Enoch or Elijah escaped death. This may be due to a comparable sense that human nature as it exists in this world is mortal and there can be no exceptions to the universality of death. Denying that Enoch and Elijah ascended without dying deals with this concern in one way, affirming that they will die following their future return does so in another. 68 Zeron, ‘The Martyrdom,’ 100.

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Berger’s book argues that there was a pre-Christian Jewish tradition in which a prophet (or prophets) would come in the last days, be put to death and be raised up by God prior to the general resurrection. This expectation of the pre-eschatological resurrection of a final prophet lies behind the early Christian accounts of the resurrection appearances of Jesus and the early Christian understanding of that event. For evidence of the pre-Christian Jewish tradition Berger relies on tradition-historical analysis of (1) Mark 6:14–16; (2) Rev 11:3–13; (3) the tradition of the eschatological return, martyrdom and resurrection of Enoch and Elijah in a large number of Christian texts, most of which are also the texts listed and analysed in my chapter above. The arguments deserve fuller discussion than can be given here, but what is most problematic about the whole argument is that Berger can cite no non-Christian Jewish text that speaks of the resurrection of a martyred eschatological prophet. Everything depends on distinguishing pre- or nonChristian elements from Christian elements in Christian texts. The lack of even a single unequivocally non-Christian Jewish text containing the preChristian Jewish tradition Berger constructs must throw serious doubt on the whole argument, especially as there are non-Christian Jewish texts that speak of final prophets (especially Elijah) without the element that is crucial for Berger’s case: their pre-eschatological resurrection. Nützel’s article, written just before the publication of Berger’s book, is nevertheless in a sense a reply to Berger’s main argument. He is responding to a suggestion made by Rudolf Pesch, made first in a lecture in Tübingen in June 1972 and then in a published version of the lecture in 1973.69 Between giving the lecture and publishing the article Pesch had read Berger’s work in a version70 earlier than the one Berger published in 1976.71 It was primarily Berger’s evidence that Pesch presented, briefly, in his 1973 article,72 when he argued that there was, at the time of Jesus, a widespread Jewish expectation of the resurrection and ascension of the final prophet, prior to the general resurrection, and that this expectation lies behind the early Christian beliefs about Jesus. Nützel’s article is an examination of the most important of the texts that both Berger and Pesch cite as evidence for this alleged expectation. He discusses, as of prime importance, the Apocalypse of Elijah and Revelation 11:3–11, and then, more briefly, the Apocalypse of Peter, the various Sibylline texts that contain the tradition about the return of Enoch 69 Rudolf Pesch, ‘Zur Entstehung des Glaubens an die Auferstehung Jesu: Ein Vorschlag zur Diskussion,’ ThQ 153 (1973) 201–228. 70 Berger’s Habilitation dissertation, Hamburg. 71 Klaus Berger: Die Auferstehung des Propheten und die Erhöhung des Menschensohn (SUNT 13; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976) 5. Pesch’s article generated a controversy among German scholars. Berger, Die Auferstehung, 5–6, lists contributions to this up to 1976, but not Nützel’s article. 72 Pesch, ‘Zur Entstehung,’ 222–226.

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and Elijah, Lactantius (Div. Inst. 17.1–3), a reference to the return of Elijah in one version of the Lives of the Prophets, and the Arabic Apocalypse of Schenoute. Like Berger, he engages in tradition-historical and redactional analysis, especially of Rev 11:3–13 and Apocalypse of Elijah 3:7–20a,73 and detects behind these two texts non-Christian Jewish traditions of the return, martyrdom and resurrection of two eschatological prophets, but insists that these traditions did not include the ascension of the prophets to heaven after resurrection. Moreover he argues that the time and place of these two instances of such a tradition (first century bce, Egypt, and late first century ce, Asia Minor) make them of no value for establishing a tradition widespread in Palestine at the time of Jesus. Mark 6:16 provides only dubious evidence for such a tradition. Nützel’s study comes considerably closer to Berger’s view of the tradition than my own does, but he nevertheless rules it out as plausible or relevant background for early Christian beliefs about the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus.

73

In the chapter and verse division used by Nützel, this is 3:7–21.

3. Enoch and Elijah in the Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah* The account of Enoch and Elijah in the Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah has come to light since W. Bousset in 1895 first attempted to reconstruct from the early Christian traditions about Antichrist a pre-Christian Jewish tradition which included the return of Enoch and Elijah to denounce Antichrist and suffer martyrdom at his hands.1 Its relevance to this question has not gone unnoticed. The majority of scholars, noticing the close parallels between the Apocalypse of Elijah’s account of Enoch and Elijah and the account of the two witnesses in Rev. 11: 3–13, have concluded that the Apocalypse of Elijah is dependent on Rev. 11, though perhaps also embodying independent Jewish tradition.2 They have generally held the Apocalypse of Elijah to be a third- or fourth-century Christian redaction of earlier Jewish material.3 J. Jeremias, arguing for a pre-Christian Jewish tradition of the martyrdom of the returning Elijah, thought that beneath the Christian recension of the Apocalypse of Elijah could probably be discerned a Jewish tradition attested also in Mk. 9: 12 and lying behind Rev. 11: 3–13.4 J. Munck, in a careful treatment of most of the early Christian material about Enoch and Elijah on which Bousset’s case rested and also of the Apocalypse of Elijah, argued, against both Bousset and Jeremias, that there was no Christian tradition of the return of Enoch and Elijah independent of Rev. 11 and therefore no evidence for a pre-Christian tradition of the * First publication: Elizabeth A. Livingstone ed., Studia Patristica, vol. XVI Part II (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1985) 69–76. 1 W. Bousset, The Antichrist Legend (Eng. tr., London, 1896), pp. 203–11. 2 E. g. D. Haugg, Die zwei Zeugen: Eine exegetische Studie über Apok 11,1–13 (Neutestamentliche Abhandlungen 17. 1; Münster, 1936), p. 94: ‘De Elias-Apok kennt und verwertet das 11. Kap. der Jo-Apok sehr reichlich, wenn sie sich auch verschiedene Änderungen erlaubt’; M. Black, ‘Servant of the Lord and Son of Man’, SJT 6 (1953), p. 10 n. 1: ‘As the passage [in the Apocalypse of Elijah] is also drawing on Rev. 11, it is difficult to say which parts are Jewish, which are Christian’. 3 E. Schürer, review of Steindorff’s edition in TLZ 24 (1899), cols. 7 f.; W. Bousset, ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte der Eschatologie’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 20 (1899), pp. 103–12; H. Weinel, ‘Die spätere christliche Apokalyptik’, in : Studien zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments II (Gunkel Festschrift; Göttingen, 1923), pp. 164–6. 4 TDNT 2, pp. 939–41.

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martyrdom of either. Munck regarded Rev. 11, especially as interpreted by Hippolytus and Ps-Hippolytus, as the source of the whole Christian tradition on the subject.5 Similarly W. Wink dismissed Jeremias’ argument with the observation that the account in the Apocalypse of Elijah ‘is obviously a haggadic expansion of Rev. 11: 3–12’.6 On the other hand, J.-M. Rosenstiehl, in his recent edition of the Apocalypse of Elijah7, has argued that the work is essentially an Essene work of the first century b.c., expanded in ch. 2 by another Jewish author of the third century a.d., and hardly at all affected by Christian editing. For Rosenstiehl, the Apocalypse of Elijah’s account of the return of Enoch and Elijah is wholly Jewish and is related to Rev. 11 only via a common Jewish source. Rosenstiehl’s arguments, while demonstrating the strongly Jewish character of much of the material embodied in the Apocalypse of Elijah, are not wholly convincing.8 Certainly it is not enough to show that a text could be pre-Christian in order to prove that it is, and Rosenstiehl’s technique of providing many parallels from Jewish literature but few from Christian literature entails a distorted view of the work’s affinities with other texts. We shall see that for its account of Enoch and Elijah the parallels in extant literature are all from Christian writers of the fourth century and later. Moreover, some of the Apocalypse of Elijah’s most remarkable points of contact with extant Jewish apocalyptic are not with pre-Christian apocalyptic but with the socalled ‘Neo-Hebraic’ apocalyptic: this is true, for example, of its description of Antichrist.9 In such cases we should not too readily suppose that there was no interaction between Jewish and Christian apocalyptic traditions after the first century: it is more likely, as Buttenweiser thought, that ‘in the course of its development, the Christian apocalyptic drew freely from younger Jewish sources, and, on the other hand, the later Jewish writings were influenced directly or indirectly by the apocalyptic of the Church’.10 While it seems beyond question that the Apocalypse of Elijah is in some degree a Christian recension of Jewish material11, it need not therefore be the case that the Jewish traditions it preserves are pre-Christian. It is not even beyond possibility that 5

J. Munck, Petrus und Paulus in der Offenbarung Johannis (Copenhagen, 1950), pp. 81–118. 6 W. Wink, John the Baptist in the Gospel Tradition (Cambridge, 1968), p. 14 n. 1. 7 J.-M. Rosenstiehl, L’Apocalypse d’Elie (Paris, 1972). In this paper I have employed Rosenstiehl’s chapter and verse numbers. 8 Cf. some criticisms in a review by P. M. Parvis in JTS 24 (1973), pp. 588 f. 9 See J.-M. Rosenstiehl, ‘Le portrait de l’Antichrist’, in M. Philonenko et al., Pseudépigraphes de l’Ancien Testament et Manuscrits de la Mer Morte I (Paris, 1967), pp. 45–60. 10 M. Buttenweiser, Outline of the Neo-Hebraic Apocalyptic Literature (Cincinnati, 1901), p. 1. 11 Clear examples of Christian editing are 1:2, 6 f., 19; 3:13, 10, 35, 66. For a longer list of possible allusions to the NT , see Schürer in TLZ 24 (1899), col. 7.

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a Jewish tradition of the martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah resulted from the influence of Christian traditions based on Rev. 11. I have attempted elsewhere to trace the development of the Christian tradition of the return of Enoch and Elijah.12 The dominant Christian tradition from the fourth century onwards13 is so far different from the account of the witnesses in Rev. 11 that it is difficult to accept Munck’s argument that this was its sole source. I Enoch 90: 31 (cf. also IV Ezra 6: 26) is evidence that there was a Jewish tradition of the return of Enoch and Elijah, and two texts which were unavailable to Bousset (ch. 2 of the Ethiopic version of the Apocalypse of Peter; Syriac version of Ps.-Methodius) seem to preserve traditions uninfluenced by Rev. 11. But at least from the time of Hippolytus the two witnesses of Rev. 11 were identified as Enoch and Elijah, and the tradition of the martyrdom and resurrection of Enoch and Elijah is probably to be attributed wholly to this identification. A common tendency of the tradition was towards emphasizing this martyrological aspect. This paper attempts to place the account of Enoch and Elijah in the Apocalypse 12 See my article, ‘The Martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah: Jewish or Christian?’ in JBL 95 (1976), pp. 447–58 (reprinted as chapter 2 above). 13 The following list is of the Christian apocalyptic texts to which I refer by name only in the rest of the paper: Adso: Libellus de Antichristo, in E. Sackur, Sibyllinische Texte und Forschungen (Halle, 1898), pp. 111 f.; longer text in PL 90:1186. – Visio Danielis: in A. Vassiliev, Anecdota Graeco-Byzantina (Moscow, 1893), p. 43. – Ephraem Graecus: Sermo in adventum Domini, in J. S. Assemani ed., Sancti Ephraem Syri opera omnia quae existant III (Rome, 1746), pp. 141 f. – Ps.-Ephraem Latinus: Sermo de fine mundi, in C. P. Caspari, Briefe, Abhandlungen und Predigten (Christiana, 1890), p. 219. – Ephraem Syrus: Sermo de fine extremo, in T. J. Lamy ed., Sancti Ephraem Syri Hymni et Sermones III (Mechlin, 1889), pp. 207–10. – Syriac Apocalypse of Ezra: translated in F. Baethgen, ‘Beschreibung der syrischen Handschrift “Sachau 131” aus der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin’, ZAW 6 (1886), p. 209. – Hippolytus: De Antichristo, 43, 46 f.; In Danielem 35, 50. – History of Joseph: Bohairic translated in F. Robinson, Coptic Apocryphal Gospels (Texts and Studies 4.2; Cambridge, 1896), pp. 146 f.; Arabic in J. K. Thilo, Codex apocryphus Novi Testamenti (Leipzig, 1832), pp. 58–61. – Ps.-Hippolytus: De consummatione mundi 21 and 29, in P. A. Lagarde ed., Hippolyti Romani quae feruntur omnia graece (Leipzig, 1858), pp. 104 f., 111. – Apocalypse of Ps.-John: in L. K. Tischendorf, Apocalypses apocryphae (Leipzig, 1866), p. 77. – Ps.-Methodius: Revelationes, Greek in Vassiliev, op. cit., p. 38; Latin in Sackur, op. cit., pp. 95 f. – Ps.-Methodius (Syriac): translated in F. Nau, Révélations of légendes (Paris, 1917), p. 31. – Apocalypse of Peter: Ethiopic version ch. 2, translated in E. Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha II (ed. R. McL. Wilson; London, 1965), p. 669. – Arabic (Clementine) Apocalypse of Peter: in A. Mingana, Woodbrooke Studies III (Cambridge, 1931), p. 359. – Ethiopic (Clementine) Apocalypse of Peter: translated in E. Bratke, ‘Handschriftliche Überlieferung und Bruchstücke der arabischaethiopischen Petrus-Apokalypse’, Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theologie 36.1 (1893), p. 483. – Syriac (Clementine) Apocalypse of Peter: translated in Bratke, art. cit., pp. 471 f. – Apocalypse of Ps.-Shenoute: in E. Amélineau, Mémoires publiés par les membres de la mission archéologique française au Caire (1885–1886) IV .1 (Paris, 1888), p. 345. – Greek Tiburtine Sibyl: in P. S. Alexander, The Oracle of Baalbek (Dumbarton Oaks Studies 10; Washington, D. C., 1967), p. 22.

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of Elijah within the broad context of the early Christian tradition of the return of Enoch and Elijah. Twice in the Apocalypse of Elijah Enoch and Elijah descend from heaven. Their first appearance (3:25–39) is in the context of an extended narrative of the sufferings of the faithful during the tyranny of Antichrist. Antichrist encounters a series of opponents: the virgin Tabitha, who denounces him, suffers martyrdom, and rises to denounce him again (3: 16–24); Enoch and Elijah, whose rather similar career is described at greater length (3: 25–39); and the Sixty Righteous Men, who denounce Antichrist and are martyred (3: 51–4). Such a narrative of martyrs of the last days is not unknown in Jewish apocalyptic: the account of ‘Taxo’ and his seven sons in the Assumption of Moses is somewhat comparable.14 A sequence of martyrs similar to that in the Apocalypse of Elijah is found in a Christian text, the Arabic version of the History of Joseph chs. 31–32, in which Antichrist is to slay not only Enoch and Elijah but also ‘Schila’ (= the Sibyl)15 and Tabitha ‘because of the rebukes with which they rebuked and exposed him while they lived’. The portrayal of Enoch and Elijah in the Apocalypse of Elijah 3: 25–39 is as exemplary martyrs of the last days, following Tabitha in the vaguard of the resistance to Antichrist. Many of the features of the account, both those which have parallels in Rev. 11 and some which do not, are characteristic martyrological motifs, to be found in both Jewish and Christian literature. Thus the understanding of persecution and martyrdom in terms of warfare (3: 25, 31, 37, cf. 50 f.) is to be found in the popular IV Maccabees as well as in Revelation and later Christian literature. The rage of the persecutor is a stock theme in stories of the martyrs16; leaving the bodies of the martyrs unburied is a practice variously attested17; and the idea that the whole city or even the whole world witnesses the martyrs’ conflict is again to be found in the Maccabean literature18 as well as in Rev. 11. Even the resurrection and glorification of Enoch and Elijah find parallels in stories of the Christian martyrs, who are said to ‘shine’19 and who are seen in visions ascending to heaven or appearing alive after their martyrdom.20 In Acts of Paul 11: 4 Paul tells Nero that, ‘I will arise and appear to you in proof that I am not dead, but alive to my Lord Christ Jesus, who is coming to judge the world’; 14 On Taxo, see most recently J. J. Collins, ‘The Date and Provenance of the Testament of Moses’, in G. W. E. Nickelsburg ed., Studies on the Testament of Moses (SBL Septuagint and Cognate Studies 4; Cambridge, Mass., 1973), pp. 22–6. 15 So W. E. Crum, ‘Schila und Tabitha’, ZNW 12 (1911), p. 352. 16 Dan. 3:13, 19; 11:30; Bel 8; II Macc. 7:39; IV Macc. 8:2; 9:10; Acts 7:54; H. Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford, 1972), pp. 22, 26, 54, 66, 190. 17 Musurillo, op. cit., p. 80; I Macc. 7:17; Josephus, BJ 4:316 f. 18 III Macc. 4:11; 5:24; IV Macc. 17:14. 19 E. g. Musurillo, op. cit., p. 234. 20 Ibid., pp. 182, 184; Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha II , pp. 385 f.

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and he does so, much as Tabitha and Enoch and Elijah rise up and prove to Antichrist that they ‘live for ever in the Lord’ (Apocalypse of Elijah 3: 23, 34, 36). The sacrificial understanding of martyrdom, while not present in the Apocalypse of Elijah’s account of Enoch and Elijah, is emphasized in the stories of Tabitha, whose blood Antichrist is to ‘throw on the temple’ so that ‘it will become salvation for the people’ (3: 21 f., 24), and of the Sixty Righteous Men, whom Antichrist order to be burned on altars (3:54). In the Syriac Apocalypse of Ezra and the Apocalypse of Ps.-John Antichrist slays Enoch and Elijah on the altar, but in the Apocalypse of Elijah features drawn from the death of the witnesses in Rev. 11 are preferred. The parallels with Rev. 11 are concentrated in 3: 31–33, 38, and are too close to be attributed to coincidence: … The Shameless One will hear and be enraged and fight against them in the marketplace of the great city. They will be three days and a half dead, in the market-place, and all the people will see them. But the fourth day they will arise… They will raise cries of joy towards heaven, they will shine, and all the people and the whole world will see them.

The parallels are all the more striking in view of the fact that the Apocalypse of Elijah shows little other evidence of dependence on Revelation.21 But the author writes in general with relative independence of scriptural sources. He may have remembered details from Rev. 11 as he composed his narrative of Enoch and Elijah, or they may have already entered the tradition on which he depended. Equally significant are the differences from Rev. 11. There the two witnesses are preachers of repentance who apparently come into conflict with Antichrist only at the end of their three-and-a-half year period of ministry. In the Apocalypse of Elijah, however, Enoch and Elijah ‘descend’ specifically to ‘fight’ Antichrist, which seems to mean primarily to denounce him (3:25). The verbal assault is also renewed after their resurrection (3: 33). This last feature, of renewed conflict with Antichrist after resurrection, is unparalleled elsewhere in the tradition, except in the Apocalypse of Ps.-Shenoute, which is almost certainly dependent on the Apocalypse of Elijah. But the idea that Enoch and Elijah’s mission is to expose Antichrist by denouncing him as an imposter is found in most of the early Christian texts22 and, along with the names Enoch and Elijah, constitutes the most 21

2:4, 24 are parallel to Rev. 9:6, but the context is entirely different and the saying may well be an apocalyptic commonplace. 1:9; 3:58 (the name on the forehead and the seal on the right hand) are somehow related to Rev. 7:3; 13:16; 14:1, 9, but in Rev. it is the beast, not God, who seals his servants on both the forehead and the right hand. 3:97, 99 are ultimately but not directly dependent on Rev. 20:4. 22 Apocalypse of Peter, Ephraem Syrus, Ephraem Graecus, Ps.-Ephraem Latinus, Ps.-Hippolytus, Ps.-Methodius (Greek and Latin), Visio Danielis, Syriac (Clementine)

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important point at which the tradition diverges from Rev. 11. Similarly in the motif of Antichrist’s rage against the two (3: 31, 37, cf. 20, 40, 54), which is also absent from Rev. 11, the Apocalypse of Elijah aligns itself with the Christian tradition attested from Ephraem Syrus onwards.23 The tradition that Enoch and Elijah would return to expose Antichrist as a deceiver is one which probably antedates the tradition of their martyrdom. It is found without mention of the martyrdom in ch. 2 of the Ethiopic version of the Apocalypse of Peter (though this may be a later addition to the original early second-century Apocalypse of Peter), and also in Ephraem Graecus.24 In this tradition Enoch and Elijah are preachers against Antichrist, a theme not incompatible with the motif of martyrdom by Antichrist which was commonly added to it under the influence of Rev. 11. But in the development of the tradition the portrayal of Enoch and Elijah as martyrs frequently became very much the dominant motif. A useful illustration of this development is a comparison of a passage from the Ethiopic (Clementine) Apocalypse of Peter with the Ethiopic version of the Apocalypse of Peter just mentioned, on which it is dependent: Apocalypse of Peter (Ethiopic ch. 2)

Later (Clementine) Apocalypse of Peter (Ethiopic)

… he will kill with the sword and there shall be many martyrs. Then shall the boughs of the fig-tree, that is the house of Israel, sprout, and there shall be many martyrs by his hand: they shall be killed and become martyrs. Enoch and Elijah will be sent to instruct them that this is the deceiver who must come into the world and do signs and wonders in order to deceive. And therefore shall they that are slain by his hand be martyrs and shall be reckoned among the good and righteous martyrs who have pleased God in their life.

… they will be beheaded and become martyrs. In that day will be fulfilled what is said in the Gospel: when the branches of the fig-tree are full of sap, know that the time of the harvest is at hand. Shoots of the fig-tree are those righteous men called, who become martyrs at his hand, and the angels will bring them to the joy, and no hair of their head will be lost. Then Enoch and Elijah will descend. They will preach and put to shame that tyrannical enemy of righteousness and son of lies. Then they will be beheaded, and Michael and Gabriel will raise them up and bring them into the garden of joy, and no drop of his (sic) blood will fall on the ground …

Apocalypse of Peter, Ethiopic (Clementine) Apocalypse of Peter, Apocalypse of Ps.Shenoute, History of Joseph, Apocalypse of Ps.-John, Adso. 23 Ephraem Syrus, Ps.-Methodius (Greek and Latin), Syriac (Clementine) Apocalypse of Peter, Greek Tiburtine Sibyl, Apocalypse of Ps.-Shenoute. 24 The only other Christian texts I know which relate the return of Enoch and Elijah without mentioning their martyrdom are Ps.-Methodius (Syriac) (see below) and the Arabic (Clementine) Apocalypse of Peter.

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Whereas in the first text the function of Enoch and Elijah is to expose Antichrist to those who are to be martyred by him, in the second text, while their preaching against Antichrist is retained, it no longer serves to make martyrs of anyone but Enoch and Elijah themselves. The parallelism of language in the references to the martyrs in general and to Enoch and Elijah in particular shows the extent to which they have here lost their unique role in the events of the last days and become merely the outstanding and final examples of martyrdom. A rather similar trend is revealed by the Apocalypse of Elijah, where Enoch and Elijah come second in a series of martyrs and it is apparently the later martyrdom of the Sixty Righteous Men which effectively convinces men that Antichrist is not the Messiah he claims to be (3: 54 f.). The strongly martyrological character of the Apocalypse of Elijah’s account is not an infallible indication of a late date. Tertullian’s brief reference to the return of Enoch and Elijah is entirely to their martyrdom. But Tertullian does seem to allot them a distinctive role: ‘they are reserved to die, so that they may extinguish Antichrist with their blood’ (morituri reservantur, ut Antichristum sanguine suo extinguant) (De Anima 50). The Apocalypse of Elijah’s series of martyrs seems rather to indicate a writer who is spinning a narrative of the reign of Antichrist out of various diverse traditional materials available to him. The Apocalypse of Elijah is not an altogether coherent piece of work but nor does it altogether lack artistic skill. Antichrist’s reign of terror builds up to a climax in the slaughter of the Sixty Righteous Men and his defeat then begins in earnest. The resurrections of Tabitha and of Enoch and Elijah had shown the limitations of his power: his victims rise from the grave, while he himself can perform all the miracles of the true Messiah except that of raising the dead (3: 10). But until the slaughter of the Sixty he is allowed to do his worst: then angelic interventions begin. Eventually the angels ‘come down and fight him in a battle of many swords’ (3:81), and the cosmic conflagration of the last judgment begins (3: 82 f.). Oddly the destruction of Antichrist and the coming of Christ to inaugurate the millennium follow the last judgment (3: 91–7). The destruction of Antichrist is accomplished by Enoch and Elijah appearing a second time (3: 91), as they had threatened (3: 35). This coming belongs in the series of angelic interventions, as the first belonged in the series of martyrs. They ‘descend and lay aside the flesh ( ) of the world ( ), and put on their flesh ( ) of spirit ( )’ (3: 91). Presumably this means that while their first appearance was in mortal flesh, to die as martyrs, they come now in ‘spiritual flesh’ to oppose Antichrist with power. On their first appearance they fought him as the martyrs fight him, by words and suffering; now they fight him as the angels did (3: 81), with

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power to destroy him. ‘In that day he will be destroyed before them like ice by the fire’ (3: 93). Two comings of Enoch and Elijah are not found in any other text. But the idea that they return in order to destroy Antichrist is found in the Syriac version of Ps.-Methodius: … when he comes to Jerusalem, Enoch and Elijah will leave the land of life; they will rise up against him; they will withstand him and he will curse them. When he sees them, he will melt like salt in the presence of water, and he will be the first to be punished, before all men, together with the demons who entered into him …

It is possible that Ps.-Methodius selected this one feature of the tradition represented by the Apocalypse of Elijah, but much more probable that he preserves a distinct tradition which the author of the Apocalypse of Elijah has combined with the more usual tradition that Enoch and Elijah come to denounce Antichrist and be martyred. It is a remarkable tradition to find in a Christian author, for the elemination of the last great enemy of the people of God is a task reserved for the Messiah both in Jewish and in Christian apocalyptic.25 A Christian author is unlikely to have originated a tradition in which Enoch and Elijah are thus permitted to usurp the role of Christ26, but it is quite conceivable in Judaism, where messianic expectations were more diverse and whence the alternative tradition of Antichrist’s destruction by the archangel Michael found its way into Christian apocalyptic.27 J. A. T. Robinson has questioned whether in first-century Jewish eschatology Elijah was as often the forerunner of the Messiah as he was himself a messianic figure28, and we know that Enoch, exalted to the role of Son of Man, assumed messianic functions in the Similitudes of Enoch. It is entirely possible that a Jewish tradition portrayed Enoch and Elijah as a pair of Messiahs appearing at the End to combat and destroy Antichrist. That the author of the Apocalypse of Elijah preferred this tradition may perhaps be attributed to a desire to preserve, if somewhat artifically, the 25 Jewish: II Bar. 40: 1 f.; Buttenweiser, op. cit., pp. 31, 35, 38. Christian: II Thess. 2:8; Rev. 19:11–21; Bousset, Antichrist Legend, pp. 224 f. 26 This is undoubtedly why it appears rarely in Christian sources. Ps.-Shenoute, which is dependent on the Apocalypse of Elijah, retains the motif, but the Greek Tiburtine Sibyl, which is probably also dependent on the Apocalypse of Elijah, replaces it with the intervention of Christ himself, who resurrects Enoch and Elijah and then fights and destroys Antichrist. 27 See Bousset, op. cit., pp. 227–31; Buttenweiser, op. cit., p. 43; Jewish Encyclopedia VIII , pp. 536 f. 28 J. A. T. Robinson, ‘Elijah, John and Jesus’, NTS 4 (1957–8), pp. 268–70. Also for Elijah as a messianic figure, see Jeremias in TDNT II , p. 931; for rabbinic traditions of Elijah as a military deliverer of the last days, see Strack-Billerbeck, Kommentar IV , pp. 782–4. L. Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia, 1913–38) IV , p. 235, cites a late tradition in which Elijah slays Samael (thereby assuming the role of Michael).

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link Tertullian made between the martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah and the destruction of Antichrist. The martyrs’ ‘victory’ over Antichrist (3: 50) is finally actualized when the greatest of the martyrs return in heavenly power to destroy him.

Additional Note Important publications on the Apocalypse of Elijah that have appeared since the chapter above was written include: Wolfgang Schrage, ‘Die Elia-Apokalypse,’ in Werner Georg Kümmel et al. (ed.), Apokalypsen (JSHRZ 5/3; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1980) 195–288; Albert Pietersma, Susan Turner Comstock and Harold W. Attridge (ed. and trans.), The Apocalypse of Elijah based on P. Chester Beatty 2018 (SBL Texts and Translations Pseudepigrapha Series 9; Chico, California: Scholars Press, 1981); O. S. Wintermute, ‘Apocalypse of Elijah (First to Fourth Century A. D.): A New Translation and Introduction,’ in James Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1983) 721–753; K. H. Kuhn, ‘The Apocalypse of Elijah,’ in H. F. D. Sparks (ed.), The Apocryphal Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984) 753–773; David T. M. Frankfurter, ‘Tabitha in the Apocalypse of Elijah,’ JTS 41 (1990) 13–26; David T. M. Frankfurter, Elijah in Upper Egypt: The Apocalypse of Elijah and Early Egyptian Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993); Albert-Marie Denis, Introduction à la littérature religieuse judéo-hellénistique, vol. 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000) 618–628.

Frankfurter, ‘Tabitha,’ argues that the figure of Tabitha is a combination of the Egyptian goddess Tabithet and Bithiah, the daughter of Pharaoh who rescued Moses. In some Jewish traditions the latter is regarded as one of those, like Enoch and Elijah, who ascended to heaven without dying. I published the following review of Frankfurter, Elijah, in Journal of Ecclesiastical History 46 (1995) 488–490: Elijah in Upper Egypt: The Apocalypse of Elijah and Early Egyptian Christianity. By David Frankfurter. (Studies in Antiquity and Christianity.) Pp. xviii + 380. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993. n. p. ISBN 0–8006–3106–4.

The Apocalypse of Elijah, which was composed in Greek but survives only in Coptic (a Sahidic and an Achmimic version), has been widely recognized, by scholars who have studied it, to have originated – or, at least, reached its present form – in late third-century Egypt. But the interest of most scholars who have studied it has been in identifying an earlier Jewish source or at least Jewish traditions within it. This interest goes back to a period of scholarship when source criticism was the dominant method of study of the

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so-called Pseudepigrapha (Jewish and Christian works written under Old Testament pseudonyms), but it persists into the treatment of the Apocalypse of Elijah in volume 1 of The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. J. H. Charlesworth (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1983), a collection of works supposed either to have been written by Jews before 200 C. E. or to preserve Jewish traditions from that period. A work such as the Apocalypse of Elijah, which belongs to the tradition of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature that goes back to the second century B. C. E., certainly does need to be placed and studied within that tradition, but it also needs to be placed and studied within the context of its composition (final redaction). The classification of such works as Pseudepigrapha unfortunately has a tendency to isolate them from this context. David Frankfurter’s book is a very welcome attempt to reverse this tendency and to study the Apocalypse of Elijah as evidence of late third-century Egyptian Christianity. Whatever sources the author may have used (and Frankfurter makes some important fresh contributions to this question, discounting any notion of a Jewish Urtext), clearly the composition of the work as we have it needs to be explained from its Egyptian Christian context. While Frankfurter handles the Jewish apocalyptic background of the work competently, he is also fully at home in the literature and history of Roman Egypt, Christian and non-Christian. His exploration of the relation of the Apocalypse of Elijah to that Egyptian context constitutes a massive advance in study of the Apocalypse of Elijah, as well as a significant contribution to the history of Egyptian Christianity. It is a model of the kind of work which needs to be done on many of the Christian apocalypses (both those bearing Old Testament pseudonyms and those bearing New Testament and other Christian pseudonyms). (He quite correctly points out, incidentally, that the Apocalypse of Elijah is not generically an apocalypse, though it bears this title in the Achmimic recension. Didymus the Blind called it the Prophecy of Elijah, distinguishing it from an Apocalypse of Elijah which he also knew. But it is nevertheless closely related to the tradition of apocalyptic literature.) The Apocalypse of Elijah has usually been dated by reading chapter 2 (a narrative prophecy of the reigns of a series of kings of Egypt) as vaticinia ex eventu, and attempting to identify the historical persons and events to which cryptic reference is made. Frankfurter convincingly shows that this approach is mistaken. The chapter paints a picture of the eschatological future in traditional Egyptian mythological and prophetic colours. It employs very traditional Egyptian motifs, deriving especially from Egyptian priestly circles in which very ancient Egyptian traditions were preserved and adapted for conservative nationalist ends. This is one of the points where Frankfurter postulates a certain syncretism in which native Egyptian traditions are integrated into a Christian apocalyptic outlook. At some other

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such points it could be questioned whether his zeal to find native Egyptian resonances for the imagery may not go too far, privileging Egyptian over more obvious Jewish and Christian backgrounds to particular motifs. But in general he has established that the Apocalypse of Elijah has its roots not only in the Jewish and Christian apocalyptic tradition, but also in native Egyptian prophetic literature. Since he does not accept earlier arguments for the late third-century date based on alleged vaticinia ex eventu, his case for this date rests on establishing more general correlations between the text and the historical and social conditions of Egypt in that period. He sees in the text’s rigorist treatment of martyrdom a millennialist ( a term which he uses in its social scientific sense as characterizing a kind of popular movement, not just religious ideas) response to the Decian and Valerian edicts, which is all the more intelligible when set against the background of socio-economic decline in third-century Egypt and the evidence of ‘nationalistic’ revolts by a variety of groups during the century. His case for seeing the Apocalypse of Elijah as a Christian manifestation of wider nationalistic oppositional sentiments is strengthened by some evidence for Christian millennialism in rural Egypt at this time (the account by Dionysius of Alexandria of how he had to refute a literalist interpretation of Revelation current in Arsinoe). Finally, he rightly draws attention to the way the Apocalypse of Elijah places its apocalyptic expectation in the context of a contemporary dispute about fasting, and reconstructs a possible scenario in which the extreme fasting characteristic of the milieu of the work came under criticism from ecclesiastical authorities who associated it with Manicheanism. It is a little disappointing to find that, in his thorough account of evidence on attitudes to fasting in Egyptian Christianity, there is actually no real evidence for the case that opposition to Manicheanism affected attitudes to fasting and led to condemnation of extreme fasting by Christian groups. It should also be said that the use of cross-cultural evidence of millennialism in reconstructing the context of the Apocalypse of Elijah sometimes comes close to the hazardous method of using social scientific models to fill in gaps in the evidence, rather than to interpret the evidence. Inevitably, Frankfurter’s reconstruction of the context, while making full use of all the evidence there is, involves a certain amount of conjecture, but he paints a very plausible picture. In arguing for a relative difference between the Apocalypse of Elijah and the Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature in general, Frankfurter stresses not only the work’s native Egyptian affinities, but also its relatively popular and rural background, distinguishing it from apocalypses whose background is highly literate and learned. There is certainly something in this contrast (the Apocalypse of Elijah is a far less sophisticated literary work than many of the apocalypses), but the rural context is very insecurely based

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in the text (as Frankfurter really acknowledges in n.51 on p. 98). That the text is designed for oral performance is probably true, but then so was the book of Revelation, which is nevertheless a work of immense learning and literary complexity. That the author’s relationship to Jewish and Christian traditions is predominantly oral rather than textual I do not think he has proved. The fact that allusions to Scripture are not distinguished, as quotations, from the rest of the author’s words is not an indication of orality, but a literary feature of almost all the Jewish and Christian apocalypses. Pseudepigraphy requires it (Elijah cannot quote the New Testament!). But finally I wonder if Frankfurter’s full and useful discussion of the significance of attribution to Elijah should not have taken more seriously the possibility that the text was not originally attributed to Elijah at all. The facts that 1:5–6 refers to the incarnation as a past event (with only a partial attempt to correct this in the Sahidic recension), and that 4:7–19; 5:32–34 refer to Elijah in the third person, are features inconsistent with the pseudonym (and such inconsistency is rare in works employing biblical pseudonyms), while no aspect of the implied author is at all specific to Elijah. These are questions which do not detract from the value of this most impressive study, which succeeds in integrating a remarkably wide range of evidence into an illuminating historical reconstruction of the origin of a text.

4. The Rise of Apocalyptic* Apocalyptic is currently a growth area in biblical studies. Fresh study, more reliable texts, new editions, even hitherto unpublished documents are enriching our understanding of the intertestamental apocalyptic literature. In addition, there has been fresh debate over the origins of apocalyptic and its relation to Old Testament prophecy, while in the wake of E. Käsemann’s notorious claim that ‘apocalyptic is the mother of all Christian theology’1 the importance of apocalyptic as the intellectual matrix of primitive Christianity is increasingly recognized. More and more, apocalyptic must be seen as a crucial historical bridge between the Testaments. All this raises serious theological questions. Is apocalyptic a legitimate development of Old Testament religion? The historical investigation of apocalyptic origins cannot avoid a theological assessment, which has its implications also for New Testament theology to the extent that apocalyptic was a formative factor in early Christian theological development. In this way the question of the theological continuity between the two Testaments themselves is involved in the problem of the status of apocalyptic. Moreover, as James Barr points out,2 the status of apocalyptic raises the question of the status of the canon in which it is only marginally represented. Can an intertestamental development be seen as providing theological continuity between the Testaments? In this article we shall be concerned primarily with the rise of apocalyptic up to he flowering of Hasidic apocalyptic in the mid-second century bc. We shall be asking (in Part I) the historical question of the origins of apocalyptic, in the light of some recent studies, and (in Part II ) the theological question of the theological legitimacy of apocalyptic as a development of Old Testament religion.

* First publication: Themelios 3/2 (1978) 10–23; reprinted in: Carl R. Trueman, Tony J. Gray, Craig L. Blomberg ed., Solid Ground: 25 Years of Evangelical Theology (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 2000) 43–68. 1 ‘The beginnings of Christian theology’, JTC 6 (1969), p. 40 (= E. Käsemann, New Testament Questions of Today, London: SCM , 1969, p. 102). 2 ‘Jewish apocalyptic in recent scholarly study’, BJRL 58 (1975–6), pp. 28–29.

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I. Origins Apocalyptic in the prophets The most important recent investigation of the origins of apocalyptic in Old Testament prophecy is that of Paul D. Hanson.3 Hanson argues that apocalyptic eschatology developed in the early post-exilic period (late sixth and early fifth centuries) as a development rooted in the prophetic tradition. The extent of the development of apocalyptic in this period, as he estimates it, is indicated by his revision of the usual terminology: he uses the term ‘proto-apocalyptic’ for Second Isaiah, since he points in the apocalyptic direction; Third Isaiah and other prophetic material from the early Persian period (Zech. 9–13; Is. 24–27) he calls ‘early apocalyptic’; Zechariah 14, which he dates in the mid-fifth century and thinks marks the point at which apocalyptic eschatology is fully developed, is ‘middle apocalyptic’; Daniel, from the mid-second century, is already ‘late apocalyptic’.4 (To avoid confusion, in this article I shall use the term ‘apocalyptic prophecy’ to designate apocalyptic material within the Old Testament prophetic books, i. e. Hanson’s ‘early’ and ‘middle’ apocalyptic.) Hanson admits a chronological gulf between Zechariah 14 and ‘late’ apocalyptic, but the special characteristic of his thesis is that he considers apocalyptic eschatology to have already developed in all essentials before this gulf. This enables him to stress the continuity between prophecy and apocalyptic to an unusual degree, and to deny the importance of the non-Israelite influences (Iranian and Hellenistic) which have so often been regarded as contributing significantly to the development of apocalyptic. Such influences, he argues, enter the pictures only at a late stage when apocalyptic’s essential character was already developed. Of course such a thesis can only be maintained if an appropriate definition of apocalyptic is used. Hanson’s focuses on apocalyptic eschatology and relates it to prophetic eschatology, distinguishing the two in terms of the kind of balance which each maintains between myth and history. The characteristic of classical prophecy is he dialectic it maintains between the cosmic vision of Yahweh’s plans and the prophet’s responsibility to 3 The Dawn of Apocalyptic (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975). See also Hanson’s articles: ‘Jewish apocalyptic against its Near Eastern environment’, RB 78 (1971), pp. 31–58; ‘Old Testament apocalyptic re-examined’, Int 25 (1971), pp. 454–479; ‘Zechariah 9 and the recapitulation of an ancient ritual pattern’, JBL 92 (1973), pp. 37–59; ‘Apocalypticism’, Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible: Supplementary Volume (Nashville, Tennessee; Abingdom, 1976), pp. 28–34. 4 In this article I accept, as Hanson does, the usual critical conclusions as to the unity and date of the books of Isaiah, Zechariah and Daniel. Readers who maintain the traditional conservative views on these issues will naturally have to differ very radically from both Hanson’s and my own reconstructions of the rise of apocalyptic.

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translate that vision into concrete historical terms. Prophetic eschatology is ‘a religious perspective which focuses on the prophetic announcement to the nation of the divine plans for Israel and the world which the prophet has witnessed unfolding in the divine council and which he translates into terms of plain history, real politics and human instrumentality’.5 What apocalyptic lacks is that last clause. The balance between vision and history is lost. Despairing of the realization of the vision in the historical sphere, the apocalyptists were increasingly content to leave it in the realm of myth. Apocalyptic eschatology is ‘a religious perspective which focuses on the disclosure… to the elect of the cosmic vision of Yahweh’s sovereignty – especially as it relates to his acting to deliver his faithful – which disclosure the visionaries have largely ceased to translate into terms of plain history, real politics, and human instrumentality’.6 This apocalyptic eschatology developed among the disciples of Second Isaiah (to whose tradition belong not only Is. 56–66 but also Zech. 9–14) in the post-exilic Palestinian community. Second Isaiah’s prophecies of glorious restoration remained unfulfilled, and in the bleak conditions of the early Persian period the visionary group which maintained his eschatological hope increasingly presented it in purely mythical terms, in images of sheer divine intervention and cosmic transformation. To the possibility of fulfilment through human agency and favourable historical conditions they became indifferent. As the sociological context for the development of apocalyptic eschatology Hanson postulates an intra-community struggle between this visionary group on the one hand, and on the other hand the hierocratic group, a Zadokite priestly group which adopted a pragmatic approach to restoration. By contrast with the visionary programme of Second Isaiah and his followers, this latter group were at first inspired by the more pragmatic restoration programme of Ezekiel, and through the preaching of Haggai and Zechariah they succeeded in harnessing eschatological enthusiasm to their policies. After the rebuilding of the temple they won control in the community and thereafter discouraged all eschatological expectation as a threat to the stability of their achievement. The visionary group, on the other hand, consistently opposed the rebuilding of the temple in the name of their transcendent eschatology and waged the most bitter polemic against the hierocratic party. Their own political powerlessness encouraged their visionary indifference to the sphere of political responsibility. Hanson’s reconstruction of this community struggle is speculative at best and probably the weakest part of his thesis. In particular it leads him 5 6

Hanson, The Dawn of Apocalyptic, p. 11. Ibid.

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to a polarization of the prophetic tradition of Second Isaiah, Third Isaiah and Zechariah 9–14 on the one hand, and on the other hand the tradition of Ezekiel and Zechariah 1–8. The former he regards as the tradition in which apocalyptic emerged, while the latter only used apocalyptic motifs to legitimate a pragmatic political programme. Such a polarization does far less than justice to the significance of Ezekiel and Zechariah 1–8 in the development of apocalyptic,7, as Hanson himself has begun to recognize in a subsequent modification of his treatment of Zechariah.8 To treat Zechariah 9–14 as belonging to the tradition of Third Isaiah rather than to the tradition of Ezekiel and Zechariah 1–8 is to ignore the evidence that these chapters are quite heavily dependent on Ezekiel and relatively little dependent on Isaiah 40–66.9 This in itself suggests that the emergence of apocalyptic must be reconstructed according to a less rigid classification of prophetic traditions. This is not the place to attempt an alternative reconstruction in detail, but what seems needed is greater recognition of the common features of the various post-exilic prophecies. Despite the varying emphases there is a common conviction that the eschatological promises of restoration in Second Isaiah and Ezekiel remained largely outstanding despite the restored city and temple. In all of these prophecies there is therefore a degree of dependence on and reinterpretation of the earlier prophecies, and all are more or less apocalyptic (according to Hanson’s definition) in the extent to which they depict the coming salvation in terms of Yahweh’s direct intervention and radical transformation of historical conditions. The distinctive aspect of Haggai and Zechariah (1–8) is that they focused these apocalyptic hopes on the rebuilding of the temple and the leadership of Joshua and Zerubbabel. But these historical realities soon proved incapable of measuring up to the hopes aroused, and so those who subsequently kept alive the eschatological expectation were not opponents of Haggai and Zechariah but successors who sought to remain faithful to their prophecy. There is, however, a great deal of value in Hanson’s analyses of Isaiah 56–66 and Zechariah 9–14. He shows convincingly how various features of apocalyptic eschatology emerge in these passages. Thus, judgment and salvation are no longer prophesied for the nation as a whole but respectively for the faithless and the faithful within Israel.10 The doctrine of a universal 7 For the contrary view that apocalyptic arises in the tradition of Ezekiel and Zechariah, cf. H. Gese, ZTK 70 (1973), pp. 20–49; R. Noth, ‘Prophecy to apocalyptic via Zechariah’, VTSup 22 (Congress Volume, Uppsala 1971), pp. 47–71. 8 Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible: Supplementary Volume, pp. 32, 982–983. 9 M. Delcor, RB 59 (1952), pp. 385–411: contacts with Ezekiel listed, p. 386, relation to Third Isaiah discussed, pp. 387–390. R. A. Mason, ZAW 88 (1976), pp. 227–238, claims that continuity of themes shows that Zech. 9–14 stands in the tradition of Zech. 1–8. 10 E. g. Dawn, pp. 143 f., 150–151.

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judgment is adumbrated in Isaiah 63:6, 66:16,11 and eschatology takes on cosmic dimensions. Beyond the judgment lies a new age radically different from the present age and inaugurated by a new act of creation: this idea has its background in Second Isaiah and is already developed in such passages as Isaiah 65:17–25; Zechariah 14:6–9.12 These elements compose the transcendent eschatology of divine intervention and cosmic transformation which forms the central core of apocalyptic belief. Hanson also shows how this development entails the revivification of ancient mythical material, especially the Divine Warrior myth, to depict the coming eschatological triumph of Yahweh.13 Here Hanson follows the pioneering work of his teacher F. M. Cross, whose studies of Canaanite myth in relation to the Old Testament revealed the extent to which ‘old mythological themes rise to a new crescendo’ in apocalyptic.14 Other studies have shown the extent to which Canaanite myth continues to be used even in Daniel and Enoch,15 while the apocalyptic assimilation of myth extended also to Babylonian, Iranian and Hellenistic material. This ‘remythologization’ of Israelite religion was not, however, a reversion to an ahistorical worldview, but serves to represent an eschatological future which is now understood to transcend the categories of ordinary history. Hanson has succeeded in demonstrating that the transcendent eschatology which characterizes apocalyptic emerged in post-exilic prophecy as an internal development in the Israelite prophetic tradition in response to the historical conditions of the post-exilic community. This is an important conclusion. On the other hand, there remains a significant gulf, which is not only chronological, between this apocalyptic prophecy of the fifth century and the Hasidic apocalyptic of the second century. Apocalyptic prophecy is not pseudonymous, though it is often anonymous. It does not include extensive surveys of history in the form of vaticinia ex eventu. Its angelology is relatively undeveloped. The temporal dualism of two ages is emerging, but the spatial dualism of heaven and earth, which also characterized intertestamental apocalyptic, is not yet apparent. Moreover, the transcendent

11

Ibid., pp. 185, 207. Ibid., pp. 155–161, 376–379, 397. 13 On the Divine Warrior myth: ibid., pp. 300–323, 328–333. 14 F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 90, cf. pp. 144, 170, 343–346. 15 Daniel: J. A. Emerton, JTS (NS) 9 (1958), pp. 225–242; Cross, op. cit., p. 17; M. Delcor, VT 18 (1968), pp. 290–312; idem, Le livre de Daniel (Paris: Gabalda, 1971), pp. 32, 210–211. Enoch: M. Delcor, RHR 190 (1976), pp. 3–53; R. J. Clifford, The Cosmic Mountain In Canaan and the Old Testament (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1972), pp. 182–189; J. T. Milik, The Books of Enoch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), pp. 29, 39. 12

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eschatology of apocalyptic prophecy does not yet include the transcendence of death, so central to later apocalyptic belief.16 In other words, although Hanson has demonstrated the continuity between prophecy and the apocalyptic prophecy of the early Persian period, there still remains a problem of continuity between this apocalyptic prophecy and the later apocalyptic of Daniel and the intertestamental literature. To the origins of this later apocalyptic we now turn. We shall see that it is really the heir of post-exilic prophecy and owes its transcendent eschatology to that source. But we shall also see that this is not the whole story, for the alternative derivation of apocalyptic from wisdom has some validity, and there is moreover a significant discontinuity between the self-understanding of apocalyptic prophecy and that of the later apocalyptists. Daniel and mantic wisdom The most radical rejection of the derivation of apocalyptic from prophecy is that of Gerhard von Rad, who argued that apocalyptic is not the child of prophecy but the offspring of wisdom.17 This proposal has been widely criticized,18 as being at least one-sided. In this section and the next, we shall argue that, while von Rad’s thesis was too generalized and cannot be treated as an alternative to the derivation from prophecy, it does have some validity in relation to the background of the books of Daniel and Enoch. In both cases, however, the wisdom background needs more careful definition than von Rad gave it. An important attempt to refine von Rad’s argument is H. P. Müller’s proposal to derive apocalyptic not from proverbial but from mantic wisdom.19 For alongside the wise men whose type of wisdom is represented by the book of Proverbs, the ancient Near East had also mantic wise men, 16

Probably a doctrine of resurrection appears in Is. 26:19, which Hanson considers ‘early apocalyptic’ (op. cit., pp. 313 f.), but he does not discuss it. 17 G. von Rad, Old Testament Theology 2 (ET Edinburgh and London: Oliver and Boyd, 1965), pp. 301–308, is the original version of his argument; this was completely revised for the fourth German edition: Theologie des Alten Testaments 2 (Munich: Kaiser, 1965), pp. 316 ff. (not in ET ); and developed again in Wisdom in Israel (ET London: SCM , 1972), pp. 263–282. 18 For criticism see P. Vielhauer in New Testament Apocrypha 2, ed. W. Schneemelcher and R. McL. Wilson (London: Lutterworth, 1965), pp. 597–598; W. Zimmerli, Man and his Hope in the Old Testament (London: SCM , 1971), p. 140; K. Koch, The Rediscovery of Apocalyptic (London: SCM , 1972), pp. 42–47; W. Schmithals, The Apocalyptic Movement (Nashville, TN : Abingdon, 1975), pp. 128–131; J. Barr, art. cit., p. 25. 19 ‘Mantische Weisheit und Apokalyptik’, VTSup 22 (Congress Volume, Uppsala 1971), pp. 268–293. Müller’s argument takes up von Rad’s in the sense that, although von Rad failed to distinguish mantic from proverbial wisdom, his thesis did in the end concentrate on the mantic aspect of wisdom: Wisdom in Israel, pp. 280–281. Cf. also J. J. Collins, JBL 94 (1975), pp. 218–234.

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whose function was to divine the secrets of the future by various methods including the interpretation of dreams, omens, mysterious oracles, and the stars.20 There is little trace of a class of mantic wise men in Israel, but two Old Testament figures who rose to prominence in foreign courts did so by virtue of their successful competition with the court diviners in the practice of the mantic arts: Joseph at the court of Pharaoh and Daniel at the court of Nebuchadnezzar. It is the case of Daniel which suggests that one of the roots of apocalyptic lies in mantic wisdom. Daniel was not a prophet in the sense of classical Israelite prophecy.21 His activity in chapters 2, 4, and 5 consists in the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams and of the mysterious message on Belshazzar’s palace wall. In each case he is called in after the failure of the other diviners at court. Clearly he belongs among them (2:18), and as a result of his success becomes their chief (2:48; 4:9; 5:11). His function is exactly theirs: the disclosure of the secrets of the future. Of course the source of his supernatural knowledge is the God of Israel, and his success is designed to bring glory to the God of Israel as the God who is sovereign over the political future. Daniel is the representative of the God of Israel among the magicians and astrologers of the Babylonian court, but he represents him in the practice of mantic wisdom (cf. 5:12). It is, moreover, this aspect of the Daniel of chapters 1–6 which most plausibly accounts for the ascription to him of the apocalypse of chapters 7–12. We must therefore take seriously the claim that apocalyptic has roots in mantic wisdom. There are strong formal resemblances between the symbolic dream with its interpretation in mantic wisdom and the apocalyptic dream or vision with its interpretation. The latter also has roots in prophecy (especially Ezekiel and Zech. 1–6), but the connection with mantic wisdom is hard to deny in the case of Daniel, where Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and its interpretation in chapter 2 corresponds so well to Daniel’s dream-visions and their interpretation in chapters 7 and 8. Besides their dream-interpretation, the mantic wise men were doubtless responsible for the literary prophecies of the ancient east, such as the Mesopotamian ‘apocalypses’ which have

20 Old Testament references to mantic wise men: Gen. 41:8; Est. 1:13; Is. 44:25; 47:10–13; Jer. 50:35–36; Dan. 2:2, 48; 4:4–5; 5:7, 11. On mantic wisdom in Mesopotamia, see A. L. Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), pp. 206–227; on interpretation of dreams in particular, see idem, The Interpretation of Dreams in the ancient Near East: With a Translation of an Assyrian Dream-book (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1956). 21 In later times he could be loosely called a prophet (Mark 13:14), as could David (Acts 2:30), in the sense that they gave inspired predictions.

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been compared with Jewish apocalyptic in certain respects.22 These provide precedent, which cannot be found in Israelite prophecy, for the long reviews of history in the form of predictions from a standpoint in the past, such as we find in Daniel 11 and other Jewish apocalypses.23 The astrological aspect of mantic wisdom is naturally less well represented in Jewish parallel material, but it is noteworthy that interest in astrological prediction recurs at Qumram. The argument about the date of Daniel may have been conducted too simply in terms of a choice between the sixth and second centuries. We may now be able to recognize the book’s dual affinities, with Babylonian mantic wisdom on the one hand and with Hasidic apocalyptic on the other, which indicate the probability of a developing Daniel tradition,24 which has its roots as far back as the exile in Jewish debate with and participation in mantic wisdom, developed in the Eastern diaspora, and finally produced Daniel apocalypses on Palestinian soil in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes.25 This is all the more probable in view of the similar chronological development which the Enoch tradition underwent (see below). The key to the emergence of apocalyptic in such a tradition is undoubtedly a growing concern with eschatology. Apocalyptic, like mantic wisdom, is the revelation of the secrets of the future, but in its concern with the eschatological future apocalyptic moves beyond the scope at least of Babylonian mantic wisdom.26 Thus, while Daniel’s interpretations of the dream of chapter 4 and the oracle of chapter 5 belong to the typical activities of the Babylonian diviners, his eschatological interpretation of the dream of chapter 2 is already in the sphere of apocalyptic. Hence it is chapter 2 which provides the point of departure for the apocalypse of chapters 7–12, which 22 A. K. Grayson and W. G. Lambert, JCS 18 (1964), pp. 7–30; W. W. Hallo, IEJ 16 (1966), pp. 231–242; R. D. Biggs, Iraq 29 (1967), pp. 117–132; W. W. Hallo and R. Borger, BibOr 28 (1971), pp. 3–24; H. Hunger and S. A. Kaufman, JAOS 95 (1975), pp. 371–375. Note that Hunger and Kaufman (p. 374) suggest that their text dates from the reign of Amel-Marduk, son of Nebuchadnezzar II . 23 The device of vaticinia ex eventu is used in the texts published by Grayson and Lambert, Hunger and Kaufman, and in Hallo and Borger’s Sulgi text. Most of these texts are probably anonymous, but Hallo and Borger’s (like the Jewish apocalypses) are pseudonymous. 24 The products of the Daniel tradition are not limited to our book of Daniel: to the ‘court-tales’ of Dan. 1–6 must be added 4Q Prayer of Nabonidus and the lxx Additions to Daniel; and to the ‘apocalypse’ of Dan. 7–12 must be added the (still unpublished) fragments of a Daniel apocalypse from Qumran: 4QpsDana–c. 25 That Dan. 1–6 originated in circles of Jewish mantic wise men in the eastern diaspora, and Dan. 7–12 in the same circles after their return to Palestine, is argued by Collins, art cit. (n. 19). 26 Mesopotamian ‘apocalyptic’ (n. 22 above) has no properly eschatological features, at most a cyclical view of history: cf. Hallo, art. cip., p. 241.

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interprets the future according to the pattern of the four pagan empires succeeded by the eschatological kingdom. But even this contrast between mantic wisdom and apocalyptic may be too sharply drawn. If Nebuchadnezzar’s prognosticators would not have given his dream an eschatological sense, the Zoroastrian magi who succeeded them at the court of Darius might well have done.27 Precisely the four-empires scheme of chapter 2, with its metals symbolism and its eschatological outcome, has close parallels in the Iranian material which has been plausibly suggested as its source.28 We touch here on an old debate about apocalyptic origins: the question of the influence of Iranian eschatology.29 Whatever the extent of the influence, it is clear that there are parallels, of which the Jews of the diaspora cannot have been unaware. Not even eschatology decisively differentiates Jewish apocalyptic from the products of mantic wisdom, insofar as eschatology developed also to some extent in non-Jewish mantic circles. It becomes increasingly clear that apocalyptic, from its roots in mantic wisdom, is a phenomenon with an unusually close relationship to its nonJewish environment. At every stage there are parallels with the oracles and prophecies of the pagan world. This is equally true as we move from the Persian to the Hellenistic age. Hellenistic Egypt has an ‘apocalyptic’ literature of its own: pseudonymous oracles set in the past, predicting political events, eschatological woes, and a final golden age.30 There is an extensive Hellenistic literature of heavenly revelations and celestial journeys sometimes remarkably similar in form to those of the apocalyptic sees.31 It is not surprising that H. D. Betz concludes that ‘we must learn to understand apocalypticism as a peculiar manifestation within the entire course of Hellenistic-oriental syncretism’.32 Nevertheless this close relationship of Jewish apocalyptic to its nonJewish environment is misunderstood if it is treated merely as syncretistic. Undoubtedly there is considerable borrowing of motifs, symbols, literary 27 For the mantic activity of the magi at the courts of Media and Persia, cf. S. K. Eddy, The King is Dead (Lincoln, NB : University of Nebraska Press, 1961), pp. 65–71. 28 D. Flusser, Israel Oriental Studies 2 (1972), pp. 148–175. The Iranian sources are late, but are based on a lost passage of the Avesta and the parallels are too close to be fortuitous. Note how the passage from the Zand-i Vohuman Yasn (p. 166) incorporates precisely the connection between mantic wisdom and apocalyptic in terms of symbolic dream / vision: Ahuramazda gives Zarathustra a vision of a tree with branches of four metals, which he explains as four periods. M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism 1 (London: SCM , 1974), pp. 182–183, prefers to trace Dan. 2 to Hellenistic Greek sources. 29 Cf. Hengel, op. cit., p. 193; J. J. Collins, VT 25 (1975), pp. 604–608. 30 C. C. McCown, HTR 18 (1925), pp. 357–411; Hengel, op. cit., pp. 184–185. 31 Ibid., pp. 210–218. 32 ‘On the problem of the religio-historical understanding of apocalypticism’, JTC 6 (1969), p. 138.

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forms – not only by Jew from Gentile but also vice versa.33 Undoubtedly Judaism after the exile, especially in the diaspora but increasingly also in Palestine, was not immune from the moods and concerns of the international religious scene. The relationship, however, was not one of passive absorption of alien influence, but of creative encounter and debate in which the essence of Israelite faith was reasserted in new forms. This element of debate is already in evidence in the encounter with Babylonian mantic wisdom. Daniel, as we have seen, practises it among but also in competition with the Babylonian diviners, to show that it is the God of Israel who is sovereign over the future and gives real revelation of the secrets of destiny (2:27 f., 46). Such a tradition of debate found one of its most natural expressions in the Jewish Sibylline Oracles, in which an internationally known pagan form of prophetic oracle was adopted as a vehicle for a Jewish eschatological message. The message, drawn from Old Testament prophecy, of God’s judgment on idolatry and his purpose of establishing his kingdom, was attributed to the ancient prophetesses, the Sibyls, largely, it seems, with an apologetic aim, to gain it a hearing in the non-Jewish-world. Of course the bulk of Jewish apocalyptic was written for an exclusively Jewish audience, but behind it lay a close but critical interaction with its non-Jewish environment such as the Sibyllines bring to more deliberate expression. This kind of relationship is hazardous. The appropriation of pagan forms and motifs can become insufficiently critical and the voice of authentic Jewish faith can become muffled or stifled. We cannot suppose that the Jewish apocalyptists never succumbed to this danger, but on the whole the risk they took was justified by the achievement of an expression of prophetic faith which spoke to their own age. From its potentially ambiguous relationship with paganism, apocalyptic emerged in the crisis of hellenization under Antiochus, not as the expression of hellenizing syncretism, but as the literature of the Hasidic movement, which stood for uncompromising resistance to pagan influence. How did apocalyptic succeed in retaining its Jewish authenticity and avoiding the perils of syncretism? This is the point at which the derivation of apocalyptic from mantic wisdom fails us, and needs to be supplemented with the derivation from Old Testament prophecy. The two are after all not entirely dissimilar. While Jewish practitioners of mantic wisdom were entering into competition with the Babylonian fortune-tellers, Second Isaiah, the father of apocalyptic prophecy, was also engaged, at a greater distance, in debate with his pagan counterparts, exposing the impotence of the Babylonian gods and their prognosticators (Is. 44:25; 47:13) by contrast with Yahweh’s 33

Hengel, op. cit., p. 185: ‘It is not improbable that Egyptian “apocalypticism”… and its Jewish counterpart had a mutual influence on each other.’

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sovereignty over the future revealed to his servants the prophets (Is. 44:26; 46:9–11). The apocalyptic heirs of Jewish mantic wisdom were not prophets, but their concern with God’s revelation of the future made them students of Old Testament prophecy, and the more they concerned themselves with the eschatological future, the more they sought their inspiration in the prophets. With the cessation of prophecy in Israel, the apocalyptists became the interpreters of Old Testament prophecy for their own age. So while the form of their work was stamped by its continuity with pagan oracular literature, its content was frequently inspired by Old Testament prophecy. Again we can see this in Daniel. His eschatological dream-interpretation in chapter 2 is, if not inspired by, at least congruous with the eschatological hope of the prophets. Taken as the fundamental idea of the apocalypse of chapters 7–12, it is then filled out by means of the interpretation of Old Testament prophecy. Thus the Hasidic apocalyptists stood in a tradition with its origins in mantic wisdom, but filled it with their own dominant concern to achieve a fresh understanding of prophecy for their own time. In that sense they were also the heirs of post-exilic apocalyptic prophecy. Enoch and consmological wisdom We have traced the emergence of apocalyptic between the exile and the Maccabees, between prophecy and mantic wisdom, in the tradition which produced our book of Daniel. We must now look at the emergence of apocalyptic in another tradition which spans the same period, the Enoch tradition. The discovery of the Aramaic fragments of Enoch at Qumran, now available in J. T. Milik’s edition,34 is most important for the study of apocalyptic origins. With the exception of the Similitudes (1 Enoch 37–71), fragments of all sections of 1 Enoch have been found: the Book of Watchers (1–36), the Astronomical Book (72–82), the Book of Dreams (83–90), and the Epistle of Enoch (91–107). There are also fragments of a hitherto unknown Book of Giants. These discoveries clarify the issue of the relative dates of the parts of the Enoch corpus.35 The generally accepted date of the Book of Dreams (165 or 164 bc) may stand, but the pre-Maccabean date of the Astronomical Book and the Book of Watchers, hitherto disputed, is now certainly established on palaeographic evidence. The Astronomical Book (now known to have been much longer than the abridged version in Ethiopic Enoch 72–82) cannot be later than the beginning of the second century, and Milik would date it in the 34 35

The Books of Enoch (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976). On the relative dates, cf. also P. Grelot, RB 82 (1975), pp. 481–500.

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early Persian period.36 The Book of Watchers cannot be later than c. 150 bc, and Milik thinks it was written in Palestine in the mid-third century.37 He is almost certainly correct in regarding chapters 6–19 as an earlier written source incorporated in the Book of Watchers; these chapters he regards as contemporary with or older than the Astronomical Book.38 While Milik’s very early dating of the Astronomical Book and chapters 6–19 is uncertain, the important point for our purpose is their relative age as the earliest part of the Enoch corpus. This means that apocalyptic was not originally the dominant concern in the Enoch tradition, for the apocalyptic elements in these sections are not prominent.39 The expansion of chapters 6–19 with chapters 1–5, 21–36 to form the Book of Watchers had the effect of adding much more eschatological content to this part of the tradition. Then in the Maccabean period a full-blown Enoch apocalypse appeared for the first time in the Book of Dreams. So we have a development parallel to that in the Daniel tradition. Also like the Daniel tradition, the Enoch tradition has its roots in the Jewish encounter with Babylonian culture, but in this case over a wider area than mantic wisdom.40 The circles which gave rise to the tradition had an encyclopedic interest in all kinds of wisdom, especially of a cosmological kind: astronomy and the calendar, meteorology, geography, and the mythical geography of paradise. In all these areas of knowledge they were indebted to Babylonian scholarship,41 while the picture of Enoch himself as the initiator of civilization, who received heavenly revelations of the secrets of the universe and transmitted them in writing to later generations, is modelled on the antediluvian sages of Mesopotamian myth.42 But, once again as in the Jewish involvement in mantic wisdom, this Jewish encyclopedic wisdom is not only indebted to but also in competition with its pagan counterpart. Civilization is represented as an ambiguous phenomenon, with its sinful origins in the rebellion of the fallen angels (1 Enoch 7:1; cf. 69:6–14) as well as an authentic basis in the divine revelations to 36

Milik, op. cit., pp. 7–9. Ibid., pp. 22–25, 28. 38 Ibid., pp. 25, 31. 39 Eschatological material appears only in 10:12–11:2 (which may have been expanded when chs. 6–19 were incorporated in the Book of Watchers); 16:1; 72:1; 80. 40 The debate with mantic wisdom is reflected in 1 Enoch 7:1; 8:3. 41 Milik, op. cit., pp. 14–18, 29–31, 33, 37–38, 277; P. Grelot, RB 65 (1958), pp. 33–69. 42 P. Grelot, ‘La Légende d’Hénoch dans les apocryphes et dans la Bible: origine et signification’, RSR 46 (1958), pp. 5–26, 181–210; R. Borger, JNES 33 (1974), pp. 183–196. Grelot, ‘Légende’, p. 195, concludes that the Babylonian exile was the Sitz im Leben of the origin of the Enoch legend, whence a continuous tradition reached the Hasidim of the Maccabean age. It is not always easy to distinguish Canaanite and Babylonian sources: cf. Grelot, ‘Légende’, pp. 24–26; RB 65 (1958), p. 68; and n. 15 above. 37

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Enoch.43 The true astronomy which Enoch learns from the archangel Uriel is not known to the pagan astrologers who take the stars to be gods (80:7) and distort the calendar (82:4 f.). The true wisdom which Enoch teaches is inseparably connected with the worship of the true God. So the scientific curiosity of the Enoch circle retains a genuinely Jewish religious core. Von Rad’s derivation of apocalyptic from wisdom relied heavily on the evidence of 1 Enoch, but he was mistaken to generalize from this evidence. Only in the Enoch tradition was encyclopedic wisdom (as distinct from the mantic wisdom of the Daniel tradition) the context for the development of apocalyptic. Von Rad explained this development simply from the wise men’s thirst for knowledge, which led them to embrace eschatology and the divine ordering of history within the sphere of their wisdom. There may be some truth in this, but the increasing dominance of eschatology in the Enoch tradition demands a more specific explanation. Perhaps the most promising is that the Enoch tradition shows from the start a preoccupation with theodicy, with the origin and judgment of sin. The myth of the Watchers, the fallen angels who corrupted the antediluvian world, is a myth of the origin of evil. Though the Watchers were imprisoned and the antediluvian world annihilated in the flood, the spirits of their offspring the giants became the evil spirits who continue to corrupt the world until the last judgment (15:8–16:1). Already in the earliest section of the Book of Watchers (6–19), eschatology emerges in this context: the judgment of the antediluvian world prefigures the final judgment44 when the wickedness of men will receive its ultimate punishment (10:13 = 4Qnc1:5:1 f.) and supernatural evil be entirely eliminated (16:1; 19:1). With the expansion of the Book of Watchers, the emphasis on the final judgment increases. Enoch, who in chapters 6–19 was primarily the prophet of God’s judgment on the Watchers at the time of the flood, now becomes, naturally enough, the prophet of the last judgment (1–5). Also, for the first time in Jewish literature, a doctrine of rewards and punishments for all men after death is expounded (22 = 4QE nc1:22):45 this 43 So the Enoch writings do not identify Enoch with an antediluvian sage of pagan myth. They present Enoch in opposition to the pagan heroes and sages, who are identified rather with the fallen angels and their offspring the giants: cf. Milik, op. cit., pp. 29, 313. 44 In 10:20, 22 it is clear that the deluge and the final judgment are assimilated; cf. also the description of the deluge as ‘the first end’ in 93:4 (Epistle of Enoch). 45 On this passage see Milik, op. cit., p. 219. In view of the mention of Cain’s descendants (22:7), ‘the souls of all the children of men’ (22:3) must mean all men, not just all Israelites, as R. H. Charles thought: The Book of Enoch (Oxford: Clarendon, 1912), p. 46. So a doctrine of general rewards and punishments after death was already developed in pre-Maccabean apocalyptic tradition. This is a decisive refutation of the thesis of G. W. E. Nickelsburg Jr, Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism (Harvard Theological Studies 26: Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1972), who argues that a doctrine of rewards and punishments after death developed at the time of the Antiochan crisis with reference only to the martyrs and persecutors of the

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too expresses a concern with the problem of evil, the problem of the suffering of the righteous at the hands of the wicked (22:5–7,12). So the Enoch tradition included a strong interest in the problem of evil, which was first expressed in the antediluvian legends of chapters 6–13, but also gave rise to increasing preoccupation with eschatology. This was its point of contact with apocalyptic prophecy, which therefore began to provide the content of Enoch’s prophecies of the end.46 Apocalyptic prophecy was also much concerned with theodicy, specifically with the problem of Israel’s continued subjection to the Gentile powers, but this specific problem does not (at least explicitly) appear in the Enoch tradition until the Book of Dreams, in which the tradition at last related itself to the prophetic concern with Israelite salvation history. The special mark of the Enoch tradition, linked as it was to prehistoric universal history, was its treatment of theodicy as a cosmic problem. This proved a reinforcement of a general tendency in apocalyptic to set the problem of God’s dealings with Israel within a context of universal history and cosmic eschatology. The pre-Maccabean Enoch tradition left a double legacy. On the one hand, much as in the Daniel tradition, the tradition became a vehicle for the interpretation of Old Testament prophecy. In the Hasidic Book of Dreams and the (probably later) Epistle of Enoch, we have classic expressions of the apocalyptic view of history and eschatology inspired by Old Testament prophetic faith. On the other hand, however, Enoch’s journeys in angelic company through the heavens and the realms of the dead, discovering the secrets of the universe, are the first examples of another aspect of later apocalyptic literature. We need to distinguish two types of apocalypse. There are those which reveal the secrets of history: the divine plan of history and the coming triumph of God at the end of history. These could be called ‘eschatological apocalypses’. But there are also apocalypses which reveal the mysteries of the cosmos: the contents of heaven and earth, or the seven heavens, or heaven and hell. These could be called ‘cosmological apocalypses’.47 The Hasidic apocalypses – Daniel, the Enochic Book of Dreams, the Tetament of time. His discussion of 1 Enoch 22 assumes a post-Maccabean date (p. 134 n. 15, p. 143), which the 4QE n fragments now render impossible. 1 Enoch 22 (cf. also 10:14; 27:2–3) is therefore of crucial importance for the origins of Jewish beliefs about the afterlife, as is the fact that the Enoch tradition, unlike other apocalyptic traditions, never expresses belief in bodily resurrection, but rather the doctrine of spiritual immortality which is also found in Jubilees and probably at Qumran. This is a striking instance of the continuing distinct identity of the various apocalyptic traditions. 46 The apocalyptic passages of the pre-Maccabean parts of 1 Enoch are especially indebted to Third Isaiah: 5:6 (cf. Is. 65:15); 5:9 (cf. Is. 65: 19–20, 22); 10:17 (cf. Is. 65:20); 10:21 (cf. Is. 66:23; Zech. 14:16); 25:6 (cf. Is. 65:19 f.); 27:3 (cf. Is. 66:24); 72:1 (cf. Is. 65:17; 66:22); 81:9 (cf. Is. 57:1). 47 This distinction, in different terminology, is made by I. Willi-Plein, VT 27 (1977), p. 79.

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Moses48 – are eschatological apocalypses. But the cosmological interest did not die out, and was by no means divorced from eschatological apocalyptic, since the secrets of heaven were believed to include the preexisting realities of the eschatological age. Cosmology really came into its own in the late Hellenistic apocalypses of the Christian era, such as 2 Enoch and 3 Baruch, in which the eschatological hope has disappeared and apocalyptic is well on the way to the pure cosmology of Gnosticism. As the revelation of cosmic secrets the apocalypse became the typical literary form of Gnosticism. So we see once more how apocalyptic, from its origins in the Jewish encounter with the Gentile cultures of the diaspora, retained a somewhat ambiguous position between Jewish and Gentile religion. Its continuity with Old Testament prophetic faith cannot be taken for granted. Each apocalyptist had to achieve this continuity by creative reinterpretation of prophecy in apocalyptic forms. His success depended on the vitality of his eschatological hope inspired by the prophets, and when this hope faded apocalyptic easily degenerated into cosmological speculation of a fundamentally pagan character. Apocalyptic as interpretation of prophecy The continuity between prophecy and apocalyptic occurred when the apocalyptists assumed the role of interpreters of prophecy. They did not always do this nor always to the same extent, for as we have seen there are other aspects of apocalyptic literature, but this was the dominant aspect of the major tradition of eschatological apocalypses. In this tradition the transcendent eschatology of post-exilic prophecy was taken up and further developed in a conscious process of reinterpreting the prophets for the apocalyptists’ own age. The apocalyptists understood themselves not as prophets but as inspired interpreters of prophecy.49 The process of reinterpreting prophecy was already a prominent feature of post-exilic prophecy, but the post-exilic prophets were still prophets in their own right. The apocalyptists, however, lived in an age when the prophetic spirit was quenched (1 Macc 4: 46). Their inspiration was not a source of new prophetic revelation, but of interpretation of the already given revelation. There is therefore a decisive difference of self-understanding between prophets and apocalyptists, which implies also a difference of authority. The authority of the apocalyptists’ message is only derivative from that of the prophets.

48

For the date of the Testaments of Moses, see n. 52 below. This is argued most recently by Willi-Plein, art. cit. Cf. also D. S. Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic (London: SCM , 1964), ch. 7. 49

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So when Jewish writers with a background in the mantic wisdom of the Daniel tradition or the cosmological wisdom of the Enoch tradition inherited the legacy of post-exilic prophecy, they did so as non-prophetic interpreters of the prophetic tradition which had come to an end. There may course have been other groups without a wisdom or diaspora background who stood in greater sociological continuity with the prophetic tradition, maintaining the eschatological hope of the disciples of Second Isaiah and influencing the Enoch and Daniel traditions. The strong influence of Isaiah 49–66 on the apocalyptic of the Book of Watchers50 and Daniel51 is suggestive in this respect. To such a group we might attribute the eventual compilation of the book of Isaiah. But even in such a tradition a theological discontinuity occurred (perhaps gradually) when consciousness of independent prophetic vocation disappeared. The puzzling apocalyptic device of pseudonymity is at least partly connected with this apocalyptic role of interpreting prophecy. The Testament of Moses, which may well be a Hasidic work contemporary with Daniel,52 is the least problematic example: as an interpretation of Deuteronomy 31–34 it puts its interpretation of Moses’ prophecies into Moses’ mouth. Similarly Daniel 7–12 has been attributed to Daniel because its fundamental idea is the scheme of the four empires followed by the eschatological kingdom, which derives from Daniel’s prediction in chapter 2. Of course the apocalyptist does not interpret only the prophecies of his pseudonym, but the pseudonym indicates his primary inspiration.53 Pseudonymity is therefore a device expressing the apocalyptist’s consciousness that the age of prophecy has passed: not in the sense that he fraudulently wishes to pass off his work as belonging to the age of prophecy, but in the sense that he thereby acknowledges his work to be mere interpretation of the revelation given in the prophetic age. Similarly the vaticinia ex eventu are not a fraudulent device to give spurious legitimation to the apocalyptist’s work; they are his interpretation of the prophecies of the past, rewritten in the light of their fulfilment in order to show how they have been fulfilled and 50

See n. 46 above. For Daniel’s (and general Hasidic) dependence on Third Isaiah, cf. Nickelsburg, op. cit., pp. 19–22. 52 There are two possible dates for the Testament of Moses (also called Assumption of Moses): c. 165 bc (with ch. 6 as a later interpolation) or early first century ad. The former is supported by J. Licht, JJS 12 (1961), pp. 95–103; Nickelsburg, op. cit., pp. 43–45, and in Studies on the Testament of Moses, ed. G. W. E. Nickelsburg (Cambridge, MA : SBL , 1973), pp. 33–37; J. A. Goldstein in ibid., pp. 44–47. 53 In later apocalypses, such as those attributed to Ezra and Baruch, there is no longer any question of interpreting the pseudonym’s prophecies. The authors of 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch doubtless chose their pseudonyms because they identified with the historical situation of Ezra and Baruch after the fall of Jerusalem. 51

II. Theological issues

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what still remains to be fulfilled. In pseudonymity and vaticinia ex eventu the apocalyptists adopted a form which was common in pagan oracular literature and made it a vehicle of their self-understanding as interpreters of Israelite prophecy.

II. Theological issues The problem of theological evaluation Discussion of the origins of apocalyptic cannot really be isolated from a theological evaluation of apocalyptic. Implicitly or explicitly, much recent discussion has involved the judgment that apocalyptic is a more or less degenerate form of Israelite faith. Von Rad, for example, was clearly led to deny the connection between prophecy and apocalyptic because he believed the apocalyptic understanding of history compared so badly with the prophetic, and even Hanson, despite his strong argument for the continuity of prophecy and apocalyptic, still treats pre-exilic prophecy as the high point of Old Testament theology, from which apocalyptic is a regrettable decline, however much it may be an understandable development in post-exilic circumstances. Moreover, the general theological outlook of the scholar can determine which new theological developments in the rise of apocalyptic he selects as the really significant ones. An older generation of scholars regarded the development of Jewish belief in life after death as a major landmark in the history of revelation, and so, however unsympathetic they may have been to other aspects of apocalyptic, this feature alone guaranteed the positive importance of apocalyptic. Recent scholarship in this area has paid remarkably little attention to this central apocalyptic belief, so that von Rad barely mentions it, and Hanson can argue that apocalyptic eschatology was in all essentials already developed before the introduction of a doctrine of immortality or resurrection. Almost all modern attempts either to denigrate or to rehabilitate apocalyptic focus on its attitude to history. So discussion of Wolfhart Pannenberg’s evaluation of apocalyptic in his systematic theology has centred on whether he is correct in supposing that apocalyptic gave real significance to universal history as the sphere of God’s self-revelation.54 To a large extent recent discussion has rightly concentrated on the apocalyptic view of history in relation to eschatology, since this takes us to the heart of the problem. The real issue is whether theology may seek the 54

E. g. H. D. Betz, JTC 6 (1969), pp. 192–207; W. R. Murdock, Int 21 (1967), pp. 167–187.

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ultimate meaning of human life and the ultimate achievement of God’s purpose beyond the history of this world. For many modern scholars, pre-exilic prophecy is the Old Testament theological norm partly because it did not do this, while apocalyptic is a serious decline from the norm, even a relapse into paganism, because it did. Thus for Hanson the transcendent eschatology of apocalyptic prophecy is ‘myth’ not merely in the literary sense (which is undeniable) but in a sense akin to Bultmann’s. In their literal expectation that Yahweh was going to establish his kingdom by direct personal intervention rather than human agency, and in a way which involved radical transformation of this world beyond the possibilities of ordinary history, the disciples of Second Isaiah were mistaken. Such language of divine intervention and cosmic transformation could only be valid as a mythical way of illuminating the possibilities of ordinary history. So when the apocalyptists did not translate it into pragmatic political policies but took it to mean that ordinary history would really be transcended with the arrival of salvation, they were engaged in an illusory flight from the real world of history into the timeless realm of myth. For the Christian the validity of transcendent eschatology is in the last resort a problem of New Testament theology. While the apocalyptic hope was certainly modified by the historical event of Jesus Christ, the New Testament interprets this event as presupposing and even endorsing a transcendent eschatology of divine intervention, cosmic transformation and the transcendence of death. The final achievement of God’s purpose and the ultimate fulfilment of humanity in Christ really do lie beyond the possibilities of this world of sin and suffering and death, in a new creation such as apocalyptic prophecy first began to hope for on the strength of the promise of God. Of course the new creation is the transformation of this world – this distinguishes Christian eschatology from the cosmological dualism of Gnosticism – but it transcends the possibilities of ordinary history. So it seems that a serious commitment to the New Testament revelation requires us to see apocalyptic eschatology as essentially a theological advance in which God’s promises through the prophets were stirring his people to hope for a greater salvation than their forefathers had guessed. This must be the broad context for our evaluation of apocalyptic. It still remains, however, a serious question whether the apocalyptists in fact abandoned the prophetic faith in God’s action within history, and the prophetic demand for man’s free and responsible action in history. Have they in fact substituted transcendent eschatology for history, so that history itself is emptied of meaning, as a sphere in which God cannot act salvifically and man can only wait for the End? To answer this we must look more closely at the apocalyptic attitude to history in the context of the post-exilic experience of history to which it was a response.

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The negative view of history The apocalyptic attitude to history is commonly characterized by a series of derogatory terms: radically dualistic, pessimistic, deterministic. The apocalyptists are said to work with an absolute contrast between this age and the age to come. This age is irremediably evil, under the domination of the powers of evil, and therefore all hope is placed on God’s coming intervention at the end, when he will annihilate the present evil age and inaugurate the eternal future age. In the history of this age God does not act salvifically; he has given up his people to suffering and evil, and reserved the blessings of life in his kingdom wholly for the age to come. So the apocalyptists were indifferent to the real business of living in this world, and indulged their fantasy in mere escapist speculation about a transcendent world to come. It is true that they engage in elaborate schematizations of history and emphasize God’s predetermination of history, but this is purely to show that God is bringing history to an end, while their extreme determinism again has the effect of leaving man with no motive for responsible involvement in the course of history. This is the wholly negative view of history commonly attributed to the apocalyptists. Like so much that is said about apocalyptic, it suffers from hasty generalization. It would not be difficult to make it appear plausible by quoting a secondhand collection of proof-texts, and especially by preferring later to earlier apocalyptic, and emphasizing texts which are closer to Iranian dualism at the expense of those most influenced by Old Testament prophecy. We have seen that the apocalyptic enterprise, with its potentially ambiguous relationshipi to its non-Jewish environment, was hazardous, and the above sketch has at least the merit of illustrating the hazard. But it does no justice to the apocalyptists to draw the extreme conclusions from a selection of the evidence. The apocalyptic view of history must be understood from its startingpoint in the post-exilic experience of history, in which the returned exiles remained under the domination of the Gentile powers and God’s promises, through Second Isaiah and Ezekiel, of glorious restoration, remained unfulfilled. Those who now denigrate apocalyptic rarely face the mounting problem of theodicy which the apocalyptists faced in the extended period of contradiction between the promises of God and the continued subjection and suffering of his people. The apocalyptists refused the spurious solution of a realized eschatology accommodated to Gentile rule and the cult of the second temple: they insisted on believing that the prophecies meant what they said, and undertook the role of Third Isaiah’s watchmen, who are to ‘put the Lord in remembrance, take no rest, and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem’ (Is. 62:6 f., rsv).

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So the apocalyptists did not begin with a dogma about the nature of history: that God cannot act in the history of this world. They began with an empirical observation of God’s relative absence from history since the fall of Jerusalem. It did not appear to them that he had been active on behalf of his people during this period. Consequently the common apocalyptic view, which goes back to Third Isaiah,55 was that the exile had never really ended.56 Daniel 9 therefore multiplies Jeremiah’s seventy years of exile into seventy weeks of years to cover the whole period since 586. It was of the history of this period that the apocalyptists took a negative view. Daniel’s four world empires are not a scheme embracing all history, but specifically history since Nebuchadnezzar and the exile. The Enochic Book of Dreams contains an allegorical account of the whole history of the world since creation (1 Enoch 85–90), but again the negative view characterizes only the period since the end of the monarchy. In this period (89:59–90:17) God is represented as no longer ruling Israel directly but as delegating his rule to seventy ‘shepherds’, angelic beings who rule Israel successively during the period from the fall of Jerusalem to the end. The number seventy indicates that the author is reinterpreting the seventy years of exile of Jeremiah’s prophecy. God in the vision commands the shepherds to punish the apostates of Israel by means of the pagan nations which oppress Israel during the whole of the post-exilic period, but in fact they exceed their commission and allow the righteous also to be oppressed and killed. God is represented as repeatedly and deliberately refusing to intervene in this situation. Evidently this is a theologically somewhat crude attempt to explain what the author felt to be God’s absence from the history of his people since the exile. Later the idea of angelic delegates developed into the idea of Israel’s being under the dominion of Satan during this period. It was the ‘age of wrath’ (CD 1:5) in which Satan was ‘unleashed against Israel’ (CD 4:12). This view of post-exilic history came to a head in the crisis of Jewish faith under Antiochus Epiphanes. This was the climax of the age of wrath, ‘a time of trouble, such as never has been’ (Dan. 12:1; cf. Testament of Moses 8:1). The Hasidic movement, which produced the apocalypses of this period, was therefore a movement of repentance and suffering intercession,57 seeking the promised divine intervention to deliver the faithful. This was not a retreat from history but precisely an expectation that God would vindicate his people and his justice on the stage of history, though in such a way as to transcend ordinary historical possibility. 55

C. Westermann, Isaiah 40–66 (London: SCM , 1969), pp. 348–349. M. A. Knibb, HJ 17 (1976), pp. 253–272. 57 Hengel, op. cit., pp. 179–180; cf. Dan. 9; 11:33, 12:3; 1 Enoch 83 f.; Testament of Moses 9; 12:6. 56

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The apocalyptists faced not only the absence of God’s saving activity from history since the exile, but also the silence of God in the period since the cessation of prophecy. ‘There is no longer any prophet, and there is none among us who knows how long’ (Ps. 74:9). Behind apocalyptic lurks a fear that God had simply abandoned his people, and against that fear apocalyptic is a tremendous reassertion of the prophetic faith. In apocalyptic God’s silence was broken by the renewal of his past promises in their relevance to the present. God had not abandoned his people; his promised salvation was coming. Sometimes, perhaps, the apocalyptists broke God’s silence with speculations of their own, forced too much contemporary relevance out of the prophecies, answered too precisely the unanswerable ‘how long?’58 But their work ensured the survival of hope. It is true that the act of divine deliverance for which the apocalyptists looked far transcended the great events of the salvation-history of the past. So the image of a new exodus is less common in apocalyptic than the image of a new creation. In the Enoch literature the dominant type of the end is the deluge, in which a whole universe was destroyed.59 This universalization of eschatology resulted in part from the historical involvement of post-exilic Israel in the destiny of the world empires, and in part from the pressure of a universal theodicy which looked for the triumph of God over every form of evil: we saw how this developed in the Enochic Book of Watchers. The apocalyptists dared to believe that even death would be conquered. So they expected an act of God within the temporal future which would so far transcend his acts in past history that they could only call it new creation. This is the expectation which gives rise to the temporal dualism of apocalyptic: its distinction between this age and the age to come which follows the new creation. The terminology of the two ages does not emerge in apocalyptic until a late stage, becoming popular only in the first century ad, as the New Testament evidences.60 This is significant because it shows that apocalyptic did not begin from a dualistic dogma, but from an experience of history. For this reason the contrast between the two ages is never absolute. There is no denial that God has been active in the past history of Israel, and this can even be emphasized, as in the Enochic Book of Dreams. His coming eschatological intervention transcends, but is not wholly different in kind 58 In fact the apocalyptists were less addicted to setting dates for the end than is often thought: L. Hartman, NTS 22 (1975–6), pp. 1–14. 59 1 Enoch 83 makes the flood a cosmic catastrophe; cf. n. 44 above. 60 In 1 Enoch the terminology of the two ages appears only in the Similitudes, now almost universally admitted to be no earlier than the first century ad. The classic statement of the doctrine of the two ages, from the end of the first century ad, is 4 Ezra 7:50: ‘The Most High has made not one age but two.’ For possible rabbinic examples from the first century bc, see M. Delcor, Le Testament d’Abraham (Leiden: Brill, 1973), pp. 41–42.

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from his past acts.61 Even in late apocalyptic where the dualism is sharpened, this world remains God’s world. It is not totally given over to the powers of evil. So the temporal dualism of apocalyptic is not cosmological dualism. Apocalyptic eschatology does not therefore arise from an abandonment of the prophetic faith that God acts in history. It would be better to say that the apocalyptists held on to this in the face of the doubt which the universal experience of history provokes. Because they believed he had acted in the past they hoped for his action in the future. But they saw the world in terms which demanded the hope of total transformation as the only appropriate expression of faith in a God who rules history. In a sense, then, the prophetic faith could only survive the post-exilic experience by giving birth to eschatological faith. We may be grateful for that. Nevertheless, there was surely a danger. The apocalyptists might be so intent on eschatology that they could forget that God does act in history before the end .They might despair of history altogether, and the experience of God’s absence from their own history might become the dogma of his absence from all history. So the Hasidic apocalyptists have often been contrasted with their contemporaries the Maccabees. The former are said to have deduced from their eschatology a quietist attitude of waiting for divine intervention, so that they held aloof from the Maccabean revolt and were unable to see the hand of God in the Maccabean victories. We can see how this might have happened, but it is not really clear that it did. It is true that the book of Daniel refers to the Maccabees only as ‘a little help’ for the martyred Hasidim (11:34), but this need not be as disparaging a reference as is often thought. More probably it indicates that Daniel was written when the Maccabean resistance had only just begun. The Enochic Book of Dreams, written a year or so later, regards the Maccabean victories as the beginning of God’s eschatological victory and Judas Maccabaeus as a practically messianic agent of God’s eschatological intervention (1 Enoch 90:8–18). The truth would seem to be that the apocalyptic hope mobilized support for the Maccabees. Of course the Maccabean revolt did not turn out actually to be the messianic war, though it was a notable deliverance, but it does not follow that the apocalyptists must have concluded that their expectations of it were entirely misplaced. The fact that the Hasidic apocalypses were preserved without modification, and Daniel was even canonized, suggests otherwise. An historical event like the Maccabean deliverance could be regarded as a provisional realization of God’s promises, an act of God within history 61 A typological view of history is still quite clear in 2 Baruch, a late first-century ad work which reflects growing dualism. 2 Baruch 63 tells of the deliverance of Jerusalem from Sennacherib in terms which prefigure the end.

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which anticipated and kept alive the hope of the greater deliverance still to come. Transcendent eschatology need not empty history of divine action; it can on the contrary facilitate the recognition and interpretation of God’s action in history. Again I do not wish to say that this was always the case. In this as in other respects the apocalyptists were walking a theological tightrope, and there was no guarantee that they would keep their balance, other than their study of Old Testament prophecy. It seems that in the end they did not. The overwhelming disappointment of Jewish apocalyptic hopes in the period ad 70–140 proved too great for the healthy survival of the apocalyptic hope. The great apocalypses of that period – the Apocalypse of Abraham, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra – are the last great eschatological apocalypses of Judaism. In 4 Ezra in particular we can see the strain under which the apocalyptic theodicy was labouring. There is a deepening pessimism, an almost totally negative evaluation of the whole history of this age from Adam to the end, a stark dualism of the two ages. This apocalyptist does not surrender his eschatological faith, but we can see how short a step it now was to cosmological dualism and outright Gnosticism. Apocalyptic eschatology at its best spoke to a contemporary need. It was not identical with the faith of the pre-exilic prophets, but nor was the experience of history in which it belonged. Perhaps it is true that transcendent eschatology was gained at the cost of a certain loss of awareness of the significance of present history. This loss was recovered in the New Testament revelation, but it is worth noticing that it was recovered in a way which, so far from repudiating the apocalyptic development, took it for granted. The significance of present history was guaranteed for the New Testament writers by their belief that in the death and resurrection of Jesus God had already acted in an eschatological way, the new age had invaded the old, the new creation was under way, and the interim period of the overlap of the ages was filled with the eschatological mission of the church. So it is true that the apocalyptic tendency to a negative evaluation of history is not to be found in New Testament thought, but this is not because the New Testament church reverted to a pre-apocalyptic kind of salvation history.62 It is because the apocalyptic expectation had entered a phase of decisive fulfilment. Apocalyptic determinism We have still to answer the charge of determinism against the apocalyptic view of history. Von Rad made this a major reason for denying apocalyptic 62

Contra W. G. Rollins, NTS 17 (1970–71), pp. 454–476.

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an origin in prophecy.63 He correctly stresses the apocalyptic doctrine that God has determined the whole course of the world’s history from the beginning: ‘All things which should be in this world, he foresaw and lo! it is brought forth’ (Testament of Moses 12:5). This is the presupposition of the comprehensive reviews of future history and of the conviction that the end can come only at the time which God has appointed (Dan. 11:27, 29, 35 f.). It is the secrets of the divine plan, written on the heavenly tablets of destiny, which the apocalyptist is privileged to know: ‘what is inscribed in the book of truth’ (Dan. 10:21); ‘the heavenly tablets… the book of all the deeds of mankind, and of all the children of flesh that shall be upon the earth to the remotest generations’ (1 Enoch 81:2). Von Rad correctly points out that this differs from the prophetic conception, in which Yahweh makes continually fresh decisions, and issues threats and promises which are conditional on men’s sin or repentance (Jer. 18:7–10). Granted that the apocalyptists share the prophetic concern for Yahweh’s sovereignty over history, is their deterministic way of expressing it a denial of human freedom and responsibility and so a retreat from human involvement in history? Determinism certainly belongs more obviously in the context of apocalyptic’s continuity with the pagan oracles than it does in the context of its debt to Old Testament prophecy. Pagan divination was generally wedded to a notion of unalterable fate. There are no threats or promises calling for an ethical response, simply the revelation that what will be will be. The forms of oracle which apocalyptic shares with its pagan neighbours, including the vaticinia ex eventu, tend to reflect this outlook. Their popularity in the centuries when apocalyptic flourished may partly reflect the fact that the nations of the Near East had lost the power to shape their political future. A genre which made the seer and his audience mere spectators of the course of history corresponded to the mood of the time. Again we can see the hazardous nature of apocalyptic’s relationship to its environment. In its attempt to express in this context the sovereignty of the personal and ethical God of Israel there was the risk of confusing him with fate. The avoidance of this risk depended on the apocalyptists’ ability to place alongside a passage like Daniel 11, with its deterministic emphasis, a passage like Daniel’s prayer in Daniel 9, with its conviction that God judges his people for their rebellion and responds in mercy to their repentance and to the prayers of intercessors like Daniel. It is no solution to this paradox to excise Daniel’s prayer as later interpolation,64 for the conviction that God would respond to repentance and intercession was at the heart of the Hasidic movement and appears in all their apocalypses. All their 63 64

Wisdom in Israel, pp. 268–277. As von Rad does: Old Testament Theology 2, p. 309 n. 19.

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pseudonymous seers were noted intercessors: Daniel (Dan. 9; Testament of Moses 4:1–4), Enoch (1 Enoch 83 f.), Moses (Testament of Moses 11:14, 17; 12:6).65 Belief in the divine determination of all events clearly exists in tension with the conviction that the covenant God responds to his people’s free and responsible action. The former does not result in fatalism because it is only one side of the apocalyptic faith. Positively, the apocalyptic belief in divine determination of history functioned to support eschatological faith in the face of the negative experience of history. In an age when it was tempting to believe that God had simply abandoned the historical process and with it his promises to his people, the need was for a strong assertion of his sovereignty. This functions, first, to relativize the power of the pagan empires in stressing that it is God ‘who removes kings and sets up kings’ (Dan. 2:21). So his purpose of giving the kingdom to his own people is assured of success at its appointed time. Secondly, the apocalyptic belief emphasizes that in the last resort the promise of eschatological salvation is unconditional, as it was also for the prophets. For their sins, Moses predicts, Israel ‘will be punished by the nations with many torments. Yet it is not possible that he should wholly destroy and forsake them. For God has gone forth, who foresaw all things from the beginning, and his covenant is established by the oath’ (Testament of Moses 12:11–13). Similarly Second Isaiah had met the despair of the exiles with the message of Yahweh’s sovereignty over the nations and his irrevocable purpose of salvation for his people. So the determinism of apocalyptic must be judged not as an abstract philosophy, but by its function within its context, which is precisely to counter fatalistic despair, to lay open to men the eschatological future, and call men to appropriate action. In terms of that function the gulf between the prophetic and apocalyptic concepts of history is by no means so unbridgeable as von Rad assumes.66 Apocalyptic and the canon We have defended the apocalyptists as interpreters of prophecy for their own generation. A literature as varied as the apocalyptic literature must be evaluated with discrimination rather than generalization, and we have recognized the theological hazards which the apocalyptists did not always avoid. But they lived in an age whose dominant mood encouraged just such a flight from historical reality as eventually issued in Gnosticism. So if their hold on the full reality of Old Testament salvation history seems sometimes 65 On the significance of this theme in Testament of Moses, see A. B. Kolenkow in Studies on the Testament of Moses, pp. 72–74. 66 Wisdom in Israel, p. 270.

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precarious we should not be surprised. It is more surprising that they kept hold of it as well as they did. They faced the problem of believing in the God of the prophets against the evidence of history. Their transcendent eschatology was both a solution, in that the problem of history demands a solution which transcends history, and an aggravation of the problem, as apocalyptic hopes remained unfulfilled. But with New Testament hindsight, we can see that this was their theological role between the Testaments: to keep Jewish faith wide open to the future in hope. The apocalyptists occupy an essentially intertestamental position. They interpret the prophets to an age when prophecy has ceased but fulfilment is still awaited. They understand their inspiration and their authority to be of a secondary, derivative kind. Their transcendent eschatology, which is apocalyptic’s theological centre, is already developed in post-exilic prophecy,67 and the apocalyptists’ role is to intensify it and enable their own generation to live by it. It was by means of apocalyptic that the Old Testament retained its eschatological orientation through the intertestamental age. In this sense apocalyptic is the bridge between the Testaments, and it corresponds to the character of apocalyptic that it is represented, but not extensively represented, in the Old Testament canon.

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Probably even resurrection: Is. 26:19. But the development of this doctrine remains a very significant development in the intertestamental period.

5. The Delay of the Parousia* Early Christianity was both continuous and discontinuous with firstcentury Judaism. Its theology shared many features of contemporary Jewish thought, though these were given a distinctively Christian character by their relationship to Christianity’s unique faith in Jesus Christ. As in the case of many other issues, an adequate account of the understanding of the delay of the parousia in early Christianity must reflect both the continuity and the discontinuity with Judaism. In some respects the problem1 of the delay of the parousia was the same problem of eschatological delay which had long confronted Jewish apocalyptic eschatology; in other respects it was a new and distinctively Christian problem, in that the End was now expected to take the form of the parousia of Jesus Christ in whose death and resurrection God had already acted eschatologically. Our subject therefore needs to be approached from two angles: from its background in Jewish apocalyptic and in terms of its distinctively Christian characteristics. Within the limits of this lecture, I can attempt only one of these approaches, and I have chosen the former, both because almost all previous study has entirely neglected this approach,2 treating the delay of the parousia as a uniquely Christian issue,3 and also because it is only when we relate the Christian understanding of the delay * The Tyndale Biblical Theology Lecture 1979. First publication: Tyndale Bulletin 31 (1980) 3–36. 1 By using the word ‘problem’ I do not mean to endorse the hypothesis (now generally abandoned) of a crisis of delay in early Christianity. I mean simply that the delay raised questions which had to be answered. 2 The only significant exception is the important work of A. Strobel, Untersuchungen zum eschatologischen Verzögerungsproblem auf Grund der spätjüdisch-urchristlichen Geschichte von Habakuk 2.2 ff. (Supplements to Novum Testamentum 2. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1961). 3 E. g. O. Cullmann, Christ and Time (ET , London: SCM , 1951) 86–90; Salvation in History (ET , London: SCM , 1967) 236–47; H. Conzelmann, An Outline of the Theology of the New Testament (ET , London: SCM , 1969) 307–17. It is remarkable that the school of ‘Consistent Eschatology’, for which the interpretation of Jesus and the early church by reference to Jewish apocalyptic was a methodological principle and which postulated a major crisis of delay in early Christianity, seems not to have asked how Jewish apocalyptic coped with the problem of delay: cf. M. Werner, The Formation of Christian Dogma (ET , London: A. & C. Black, 1957).

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to its Jewish apocalyptic background that we shall be able to appreciate its distinctively Christian features in their true significance. So if this lecture on biblical theology seems to linger rather long over Jewish extracanonical literature, I hope you will find that this procedure is justified by its contribution to an understanding of the New Testament.

I. Eschatological delay in Jewish apocalyptic The problem of eschatological delay was familiar to Jewish apocalyptic from its earliest beginnings. It could even be said to be one of the most important ingredients in the mixture of influences and circumstances which produced the apocalyptic movement. In the face of the delay in the fulfilment of the eschatological promises of the prophets, the apocalyptic visionaries were those who believed most fervently that the promises remained valid and relevant. Despite appearances, God had not forgotten his people. His eschatological salvation, so long awaited, was coming, and now at last it was very close at hand. In almost all the apocalypses there is no mistaking both a consciousness, to some degree, of the problem of delay, in that the prophecies had so long remained unfulfilled, and also the conviction of their imminent fulfilment. It goes only a little beyond the evidence to say that in every generation between the mid-second century bc and the mid-second century ad Jewish apocalyptists encouraged their readers to hope for the eschatological redemption in the very near future. At the same time there is very little evidence to suggest that during that long period the continued disappointment of that expectation discredited the apocalyptic hope or even diminished the sense of iminence in later generations. The apocalypses of the past were preserved and treasured; and passages whose imminent expectation had clearly not been fulfilled were nevertheless copied and by no means always updated. Each apocalyptist knew that his predecessors had held the time of the End to be at hand, but this knowledge seems to have encouraged rather than discouraged his own sense of eschatological imminence. Clearly the problem of delay was an inescapable problem at the heart of apocalyptic eschatology, but the tension it undoubtedly produced was not a destructive tension. It was a tension which the apocalyptic faith somehow embraced within itself. The problem was felt but it did not lead to doubt. The question we need to ask, then, is: how did Jewish apocalyptic manage to cope with the problem of delay? The key to this question – and the theme of much of this lecture – is that alongside the theological factors which promoted the imminent expectation there were also theological factors accounting for the fact of delay. These two contrary sets of factors were held

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in tension in apocalyptic. They were not harmonized to produce a kind of compromise: expectation of the End in the fairly near future but not just yet. The factors promoting imminence and the factors accounting for delay (or even, as we shall see, promoting an expectation of delay) are held in paradoxical tension, with the result that the imminent expectation can be maintained in all its urgency in spite of the continuing delay. Strobel has shown that many of the apocalyptic references to the delay allude to the text Habakkuk 2:3, which seems to have been the locus classicus for reflecting on the problem of delay.4 ‘The vision is yet for the appointed time. It hastens to the end and will not lie. If it tarries, wait for it, for it will surely come and will not be late.’ This text and the history of its interpretation contain the basic apocalyptic ‘explanation’ of the delay, insofar as it may be called an explanation. It appeals to the omnipotent sovereignty of God, who has determined the time of the End. Even though it is longer in coming than the prophecies seem to have suggested, this apparent delay belongs to the purpose of God. It will not be ‘late’ according to the timescale which God has determined. Now it cannot be said that this explanation explains very much. The delay remains incomprehensible to men, but is attributed to the inscrutable wisdom of God. But it is important to notice that the effectiveness of this explanation derived not so much from its power as an intellectual explanation, but rather from its quality as an affirmation of faith in God which calls for an appropriate response. Acknowledging the sovereignty of God and the truth of his promises, the apocalyptic believer is called therefore to wait patiently, persevering in obedience to God’s commandments in the meantime. As the Qumram commentary on Habakkuk 2:3 puts it: ‘Interpreted, this concerns the men of truth who keep the Law, whose hands shall not slacken in the service of the truth when the final age is prolonged. For all the ages of God reach their appointed end as he determines for them in the mysteries of his wisdom.’5 Thus the apocalyptic ‘solution’ to the problem of delay was practical as much as theological. The believer’s impatient prayer that God should no longer delay was balanced by the attitude of patient waiting while, in his sovereignty, God did delay. And these two attitudes remained in tension: the apocalyptists maintained both. On the one hand the impatient prayer was met by the assurance that God would bring salvation at the appointed time and therefore with an exhortation to patience; on the other hand the believer’s patient waiting was encouraged and supported by the assurance that there would be only a short time to wait and therefore 4

Strobel, op. cit., chs. 1 and 2. 1QpHab 7:10–12; trans. in G. Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968) 239. 5

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by an exhortation to hope. In this way the tension of imminence and delay was maintained and contained within the apocalyptist’s faith. Essentially this is why the problem of delay did not discredit or destroy the apocalyptic hope. From the beginning apocalyptic faith incorporated the problem of delay. It was a real problem creating a real tension: there is genuine anguish in the apocalyptists’ prayers ‘Do not delay!’ (Dn. 9:19; 2 Baruch 21:25) and ‘How long?’ (Dn. 12:6; 2 Baruch 21:19). But the tension was held within a structure of religious response which was adequate to contain it. I have admitted that the basic apocalyptic response to the problem of delay – the appeal to the sovereignty of God – provided little in the way of explanation. Later we shall see how some apocalyptists, especially in the later period, filled out this explanation with some attempts at more positive understanding of the meaning of the delay. For much of the period when apocalyptic flourished, however, it would seem that the problem of delay was contained mainly by the appeal to the sovereignty of God to balance the urgency of the imminent expectation. It is necessary to ask whether this was theologically legitimate. In other words, it may be that the fact of delay ought to have discredited the apocalyptic hopes, if only it had been squarely faced in the cool light of reason. What I have called the structure of religious response by which apocalyptic contained the problem may have been no better than a psychological means of maintaining false expectations. History could supply many examples of unfulfilled prophecies which managed to maintain their credibility long after they deserved to do so, often because believers who have staked their lives on such expectations are not easily disillusioned. Is there any reason to put the apocalyptists in a different category? I believe there is a good reason at least to take the apocalyptic faith very seriously indeed. The problem of delay in apocalyptic is no ordinary problem of unfulfilled prophecy. The problem of delay is the apocalyptic version of the problem of evil. The apocalyptists were vitally concerned with the problems of theodicy, with the demonstration of God’s righteousness in the face the unrighteousness of his world. They explored various possibilities as to the origins of evil and the apportioning of responsibility for evil,6 but of primary and indispensable significance for the apocalyptic approach to the problem of evil was the expectation of the End, when all wrongs would be righted, all evil eliminated, and God’s righteousness therefore vindicated. The great merit of the apocalyptic approach to theodicy was that it refused to justify the present condition of the world by means of an abstract exon6

Cf. the survey in A. L. Thompson, Responsibility for Evil in the Theodicy of IV Ezra (SBL Dissertations Series 29. Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1977) ch. 1.

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eration of God from responsibility for the evils of the present. Only the overcoming of present evil by eschatological righteousness could vindicate God as righteous, and only the hope of such a future triumph of righteousness could make the evils of the present bearable. Of course, this was no armchair theodicy, but was produced by concrete situations of injustice and oppression in which the apocalyptists lived and suffered: the continued oppression of Israel by the Gentiles, and / or the sufferings of the righteous remnant of Israel with whom the apocalyptists often identified themselves. It is not always easy for us to appreciate the apocalyptists’ concern for righteousness in these situations: the desire for Israel’s vindication and her enemies’ condemnation can seem to us like mere narrow nationalism, and the apocalyptists’ conviction of belonging to the righteous remnant which is unjusty suffering while sinners prosper can seem to us like arrogant self-righteousness. Undoubtedly those defects sometimes mar the apocalypses, but it is important to realize that the genuinely ethical character of the apocalyptic hope is far more dominant. What is at stake in the sufferings of God’s people is the righteousness of God, which, as often in the Old Testament, means at the same time justice for the oppressed and against the oppressor. It is true that the apocalyptists often fail to see that the problem of evil extends to the sinfulness of the righteous themselves, but they have an agonizingly clear grasp of the problem of innocent suffering. When the problem of theodicy is posed in that form I think we still have much to learn from them. Moreover, the special characteristic of the apocalyptists’ grasp of the problem is that, out of their own situation, they were able to see the universal dimensions of the problem of evil, the universal dominance of evil in ‘this present evil age’, as they came to call the present. This universal challenge to the righteousness of God demanded a universal righting of wrongs, an elimination of evil on a universal, even cosmic, scale. I have dwelt on this aspect of apocalyptic because I hope it will enable us to see the real meaning of the problem of eschatological delay. The imminent expectation expresses the extremity of the situation, the intensity of the apocalyptists’ perception of the problem of evil, in its sheer contradiction of the righteousness of God. Surely God can no longer tolerate it. Yet he does: there is the problem of delay. What is greatly to the credit of the apocalyptists is that in this dilemma they abandoned neither the righteousness nor the sovereignty of God, which make up the theistic form of the problem of evil. Their belief in the powers of evil was not dualistic: God remained in ultimate control. And so in the face of the delay, they continued to hold that God is righteous – his eschatological righteousness is coming – and that he remains sovereign – the delay belongs to his purpose and the End will come at the time he has appointed. This is the tension of imminence and delay, the tension experienced by the theistic believer who, in a world of injustice,

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cannot give up his longing for righteousness. Thus we do not, I think, have the right to ask the apocalyptist to explain the delay in any complete sense, because the problem of evil is not susceptible to complete theoretical explanation. The tension which apocalyptic faith contained within itself is the tension which all forms of theism must somehow contain if they take the problem of evil seriously. It is a tension which cannot be resolved by explanation but only by the event of the final victory of God’s righteousness. I conclude, therefore, that the apocalyptists rightly maintained the tension of imminence and delay, and that in some degree that tension must remain a feature of Christian theology. The promise of God’s eschatological righteousness presses in upon the present, contradicting the evils of the present, arousing our hopes, motivating us to live towards it. Because the righteousness of God himself is at stake in this expectation it demands immediate fulfilment. That the fulfilment is delayed will always contain a hard core of incomprehensibility: the greatest saints have protested to God against his toleration of evil, and have done so in faith, because of their conviction of his righteousness. But must the delay remain completely incomprehensible? The difficulty of the mere appeal to God’s sovereignty is that it is in danger of evacuating the present in which we live of all meaning. The present becomes the incomprehensible time in which we can only wait, and it must be admitted that the apocalyptists do sometimes approach this bleakly negative view of the present. This danger, however, was partially met in the Jewish apocalyptic tradition itself in attempts to find some positive meaning in the delay. Such attempts become particularly evident in the later period of Jewish apocalyptic, especially after the fall of Jerusalem in ad 70, and they have parallels in the Christian literature of the same period. I think this fact must correspond to a certain intensification of the problem of delay in late first-century Judaism. This was not due to the mere continuing lapse of time; it is a mistake to suppose the problem of delay necessarily increases the longer the delay. The problem is itensified not by the mere lapse of time, but by the focusing of expectation on specific dates or events which fail to provide the expected fulfilment. In the case of Jewish apocalyptic, the Jewish wars of ad 66–70 and 132–135 were disappointments of the most extreme kind, for so far from being the onset of eschatological salvation, they proved to be unprecedented contradictions of all the apocalyptists had hoped for. Consequently the apocalyptic writers of the late first century are engaged in a fresh and agonizing exploration of the issues of eschatological theodicy. The imminent expectation seems if anything to be heightened, but it seems to require that on the other hand some meaning be found in the interval of delay. So we will turn to four specific examples of the problem of delay in the late first century, two Jewish examples and then for comparison two Chris-

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tian examples which are relatively close to the Jewish discussion. In all of them we shall be looking especially for attempts to understand the delay.

II. Four examples from the late first century AD (a) A Rabbinic Debate There is a well-known rabbinic tradition of a debate about the delay of eschatological redemption7 between R. Eliezer b. Hyrcanus and R. Joshua b. Hananiah.8 If authentic, this debate will date from the late first century ad. Unfortunately its authenticity cannot be assumed as uncritically as it has generally been.9 Neusner, in his classification of the traditions of R. Eliezer according to the reliability of the attestation, places this tradition in his least well attested category, ‘The Poor Traditions’:10 this means not only that the attestation of the tradition is late, but also that its content is largely unrelated to earlier traditions. Traditions in this category are not thereby shown to be inauthentic, but their authenticity is very difficult to establish with any degree of certainty. There are, however, some things to be said in favour of our tradition: (1) It belongs to a group of traditions which together form a coherent set of opinions on issues which were certainly matters of concern to the rabbis in the period immediately after ad 70. In other words, they are historically appropriate to Eliezer’s historical situation, and they are mutually consistent.11 (2) Neusner also concludes that this group of traditions represent in substance what we should have expected Eliezer to have thought about these topics, on the basis of the best attested sayings of Eliezer.12 (3) Furthermore, there is a passage in the Apocalypse of Ezra(c. ad 100) which proves that the contrasting views of R. Eliezer and R. Joshua, as represented in our tradition, were held and debated during their lifetimes: in 4 Ezra 4:38–42, Ezra puts forward as a suggestion the attitude to the problem of eschatological delay which our tradition attributes to R. Eliezer, while the angel’s reply maintains the position attributed to R. Joshua. Thus, even if we cannot be quite sure that R. Eliezer and R. Joshua themselves held

7 For the sake of simplicity, in this and the following section I am ignoring the problems of the distinction between expectation of the messianic kingdom and expectation of the age to come. They do not greatly affect our topic. 8 Midrash Tanhuma Be uqotai 5; y Ta an. 1:1: b Sanh. 97 b–98 a. The text’s are given in translation in J. Neusner, Eliezer ben Hyrcanus (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973) I 477–79. 9 E. g. Strobel, op. cit. 23–26. 10 Neusner, op. cit. II 235, no. 57. 11 Ibid. II 417–21. 12 Ibid. II 421.

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the opinions attributed to them, we can at least be sure that those opinions were debated in the late first century. In the briefest version of the debate the issue is succinctly stated as follows: R. Eliezer says, ‘If Israel repents, they will be redeemed’. R. Joshua says, ‘Whether or not they repent, when the end comes, they will forthwith be redeemed, as it is said, “I the Lord in its time will hasten it” (Is. 60:22).’13

R. Joshua maintains the traditional apocalyptic appeal to the sovereignty of God, who has determined the time of the End. When the appointed time arrives, the eschatological redemption will come as God’s sovereign grace to Israel, in no way dependent on Israel’s preparation. R. Eliezer, on the other hand, makes the coming of redemption conditional on Israel’s repentance. The idea of Israel’s repentance before the End was not new,14 but the view that it is a condition for the arrival of redemption is at least rare in the earlier literature,15 though it subsequently became a common rabbinic view. It seems probable that Eliezer’s saying represents a reaction to the disaster of ad 70, when hopes of redemption were dashed and Israel experienced instead a catastrophe which could only be interpreted as divine punishment. The conclusion must be that Israel was unworthy of redemption. Only when Israel repented would redemption come. Eliezer’s position could mean that the divinely appointed date for the End had actually been postponed because of Israel’s sins,16 as some late Rabbis certainly held.17 Alternatively it could mean that there is no such thing as a fixed date for the End,18 or, finally, it could mean that Israel’s repentance is itself part of God’s predetermined plan. This is the view suggested by a longer version of the debate: R. Eliezer says, ‘If Israel does not repent, they will never be redeemed…’ R. Joshua said to him, ‘If Israel stands and does not repent, do you say they will never be saved?’. 13 Midrash Tan uma Be uqutai 5 (Neusner, op. cit. I 479). The use of Is. 60:22 with reference to this issue is well attested for this period: Ecclus. 26:8; 2 Baruch 20:1 f; 54:1; 83:1; Ep. of Barnabas 4:3; cf. Ps-Philo, Lib. Ant. Bib. 19:13; 2 Pet. 3:12. Cf. further rabbinic references in Strobel, op. cit. 92 n. 6. 14 Cf. Testament of Moses 1:18. It is presupposed in the message of John the Baptist, but his teaching in Mt. 3:7–10 par. Lk. 3:7–9 seems to run counter to any suggestion that Israel’s redemption was a necessary condition for the coming of the Kingdom. Similarly Lk. 13:6–9 embodies the idea of delay in order to give time for repentance, but explicitly not until repentance. 15 But cf. Testament of Dan 6:4; Acts 13:19–21. 16 This is how Eliezer is understood by Strobel, op. cit. 23–26. 17 b Sanh. 97 b; b ‘Abodah Zarah 9 a. 18 This is how Eliezer is understood by E. E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (ET , Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1975) I 669.

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R. Eliezer said to him, ‘The Holy One, blessed be he, will raise up over them a king as harsh as Haman, and forthwith they will repent and be redeemed’.19

In other words redemption cannot be indefinitely postponed by Israel’s failure to repent, because God himself will stir Israel to repentance. The importance of this debate is that R. Eliezer’s view is an attempt to understand the delay. The meaning of the delay is not totally hidden in God’s mysterious sovereign purpose. It is the time in which God graciously waits for his people to repent and chastises them until they repent. (b) The Apocalypse of Baruch The Apocalypse of Baruch dates from the late first or early second century ad. The pseudonym Baruch and the historical setting immediately following the fall of Jerusalem in 586 bc are transparent vehicles for the author’s own reactions to the tragedy of ad 70. The note of imminent expectation pervades the book (20: 1 f,6; 23:7; 48:39; 54:17; 82:2; 83:1; cf. 48:32), most memorably expressed in the often-quoted lines: The youth of the world is past, the strength of creation is already exhausted. The advent of the times is very close, yea, they have passed by. The pitcher is near to the well, and the ship to the port. The course of the journey is reaching its destination at the city, and life approaches its end (85:10).20

The events of ad 70 have not dampened but inflamed the expectation of redemption, but it is clear that the delay, while Israel is humiliated and the Gentiles triumph, is an agonizing problem, especially as Baruch sees God’s own honour at stake in the fate of his people (5:1; 21:21). The problem of delay is focussed in Baruch’s question, ‘How long will these things endure for us?’ (81:3; cf. 21:19), and his prayer that God may ‘now, quickly, show thy glory, and do not delay the fulfilment of thy promise’ (21:25).

19 y Ta‘an. 1:1 (Neusner, op. cit. I 477). I follow Neusner (I 479, cf. II 418) in preferring this version to that in b Sanh. 97 b, which attributes the saying about the cruel king like Haman to R. Joshua. (Urbach, op. cit. I 669 f., II 996 n. 63, prefers the latter.) Neusner, op. cit. II 419 f, also finds evidence in Pesigta Rabbati 23:1, that Eliezer did believe in a fixe date at which redemption must come. 20 Quotations from 2 Baruch are adapted from the translation by R. H. Charles (in R. H. Charles and W. O. E. Oesterley, The Apocalypse of Baruch (London: SPCK , 1917)), with reference to the French translation in P. Bogaert, Apocalypse de Baruch (Sources Chrétiennes 144. Paris: Éditions du Cerf., 1969) I 463–528.

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Alongside the imminent expectation, Baruch recognizes theological factors which account for the delay. First among these is the traditional appeal to the divine sovereignty. Baruch has a strong sense of the qualitative difference between God and man, the majesty and sovereignty of God over against the dependence and frailty of man (14:8–11; 21:4–10; 48:2–17; 54:1–13). One aspect of this is the eternity of God (21:10; 48:13) contrasted with the transitoriness of man (14:10 f, 48:12). Unlike man, who cannot even foresee the outcome of his own brief life, God surveys the whole course of the world and is sovereign over all events, determining their times (48:2 f; 54:1; 56:2 f). Consequently only God knows in advance the time of the End which he has appointed (21:8; 48:3; 54:1). Baruch’s repeated use of the phrase ‘in its time’ (5:2; 12:4; 13:5; 20:2; 51:7; 54:1; cf. 42:8) stresses that the End will come only at the time which the eternal sovereign God has appointed. This theme therefore provides a certain counterbalance to the urgency of the imminent expectation. A minor attempt to fill out this appeal to the divine sovereignty over the times is the idea that God has determined a fixed number of people to be born into this world, so that the End cannot come until that number is complete (23:2–5). (A similar idea, of a predetermined number of the righteous, is found in 4 Ezra 4:36.) This scarcely constitutes an explanation of the delay: it simply appeals again to the inscrutable divine decree.21 Baruch, however, has something more substantial to contribute to the understanding of delay. I observed earlier that the imminent expectation in apocalyptic is connected with the apocalyptic perception of the character of God, in particular his righteousness. It is the contradiction between the righteousness of God and the unrighteousness of present conditions which fires the expectation of God’s immediate coming in judgment. It is therefore of the greatest interest that Baruch’s understanding of the delay is also related to the character of God, in this case to his longsuffering (patience, forbearance). As Baruch himself is reminded by the angel (59:6), this quality belongs to the central Old Testament revelation of God’s character, to Moses on Mount Sinai: ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness…’ (Ex. 34:6): the description of God to which the Old Testament frequently refers (Nu. 14:18; Pss. 86:15; 103:8; Joel 2:13; Jon. 4:2; Wisdom 15:1; cf. CD 2:4). In Baruch’s words, Moses was shown ‘the restraint of wrath and the abundance of longsuffering’ (59:6).22 God’s longsuffering is that quality by which he bears with sinners, holds back his wrath, refrains from intervening in judg21 Cf. Ezra’s (unanswered) queries in 4 Ezra 5:43–45: why could not all the predetermined number of men have lived as a single generation? 22 Baruch refers to the other characteristics of God according to Ex. 34:6 in 77:6 (merciful, gracious, faithful) and 75:5 (merciful, gracious).

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ment as soon as the sinner’s deeds deserve it, though not indefinitely.23 As Baruch correctly sees, it is this quality of God which accounts for the whole history of this sinful world: ‘the longsuffering of the Most High, which has been throughout all generations, who has been long-suffering towards all who are born, sinners and righteous’ (24:2).24 Baruch’s use of this theme is unlikely to be original; his references to it are too casual (12:4; 21:20 f; 24:2; 48:29; 59:6; 85:8). The related and nearly contemporary Apocalypse of Ezra also employs the theme of God’s patience (3:30; 7:33,74; cf. 9:21), and includes it in a formal meditation on the character of God according to Exodus 34:6 f (7:132–139).25 Evidently the apocalyptic tradition had already related its eschatological concerns to the classic features of the character of God, and seen not only God’s sovereignty but also his longsuffering in the delay. The attribution of delay to God’s patience does not always enable Baruch to take a positive view of it. In his grief over the fall of Jerusalem and the contrasting prosperity of her enemies, Baruch, like Jeremiah before him (Je. 15:15; cf. Jon. 4:2), reproaches God for his patience, for restraining his wrath while his people’s enemies triumph (11:3; cf. Is. 64:12; 4 Ezra 3:30). And in his impassioned plea for God to hasten the judgment, Baruch prays: How long will those who transgress in this world be polluted with their great wickedness? Command them in mercy, and accomplish what thou saidst thou wouldst bring, that thy might may be known to those who think that thy longsuffering is weakness (21:19 f).

It is worth noticing in that passage how God’s mercy is opposed to his longsuffering. His mercy here means his mercy to the righteous who suffer; the coming of God in judgment is at the same time mercy to the righteous and condemnation to the wicked (82:2).26 In other words Baruch asks that God in his mercy to the righteous should put an end to his longsuffering towards the wicked. He is aware, then, that his plea that God should no longer delay, while it is founded, as prayer must be, on the character and promises of God, appeals only to one aspect of God’s dealings with men against another. Baruch knows that if the imminence of the judgment is demanded by God’s mercy to the righteous (which goes hand in hand with 23 Note Strobel’s remark (op. cit. 31): ‘der für unsere Begriffe anscheinend nur psychologische Begriff der “Landmut” im hebräischen Sprachgebrauch einen ausgesprochen chronologischen Bedeutungsgehalt hat’ (my italics). 24 Like Paul (Rom. 2:4), Baruch can also sometimes connect this slightly negative quality of long-suffering with the more positive quality of kindness (48:29; cf. 13:12; 82:9). 25 On this passage, see Thompson, op. cit. 202 f, 301–3. 26 Baruch holds the common Jewish view of this period, that God will show mercy to the righteous and strict justice to the wicked; cf. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London: SCM , 1977) 421.

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his judgment on the wicked), the delay in jugdment is also founded on the character of God, on his longsuffering, which restrains his wrath towards the wicked (but therefore also delays his mercy to the righteous). Baruch’s attitude to God’s forbearance varies according to the aspect of the fall of Jerusalem which he considers. When he laments the humiliation of Israel at the hands of her godless enemies, God’s tolerance of the situation seems incomprehensible to Baruch. When, however, he considers God’s patience with Israel it becomes a more positive concept (85:8). For Baruch interprets the fall of Jerusalem as God’s chastisement of his people for their sins (1:5; 4:1; 13:10; 78:6; 79:2): ‘They were chastened then so that they might be forgiven’ (13:10). Although the fall of Jerusalem was God’s judgment on Israel, it was a judgment which manifested God’s patience with them. It was a warning judgment, designed to bring them to repentance, whereas when the final judgment comes there will no longer be any time left for repentance (85:12). In this way the delay gains the positive aspect of a respite, in which God’s people, who would perish if the final judgment came sooner, are graciously granted the opportunity of repentance.27 In the paraenetic sections of the book Baruch urges this lesson on his readers (44:2–15; 46:5 f; 77:2–10; 78:3–7; 83:1–8; 84:1–85:15). Finally we must notice the initially puzzling statement in which God says: ‘Therefore have I now taken away Zion, so that I may hasten to visit the world in its time’ (20:2).28 The meaning of this verse must be that because God wills the repentance of his people before the End, he has stirred them to repentance by destroying Jerusalem. The fall of Jerusalem brings the End nearer, in that it brings about a precondition of the End, the repentance of Israel. The thought is similar to R. Eliezer’s saying about the cruel king like Haman. Here it is even clearer than in R. Eliezer’s case that there is no contradiction between this thought and the idea, which Baruch stresses, that the End will come at the time God has determined. That God will ‘hasten to visit the world in its time’ does not mean that he will advance the date of the End, but that, now Jerusalem has fallen, the appointed time of the End is fast approaching. The present time of delay retains in the Apocalypse of Baruch a predominantly negative character: Baruch’s expressions of the miseries and worthlessness of this life have often been cited as prime examples of apocalyptic pessimism.29 In the shadow of the tragedy of ad 70 this aspect is hardly surprising. More remarkable, for our purposes, are the traces of a positive theological understanding of the delay in terms of God’s longsuffering and his desire for his people’s repentance. Here Baruch fills out the 27 Baruch’s hints that the delay can also benefit Gentiles are less explicit, but cf. 1:4; 41:4; 42:5. 28 This verse is dependent on Is. 60:22; cf. n. 13 above. 29 21:13 f; 83:10–21; but cf. 52:6: ‘Rejoice in the sufferings which you now endure.’

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reported sayings of R. Eliezer.30 The urgency of the imminent expectation is not diminished by this recognition of the positive character of the delay: the two are held in tension. (c) 2 Peter 3 2 Peter 3 contains the most explicit treatment of the delay of the parousia in the New Testament. It is also, as we shall see, the most thoroughly Jewish treatment, reproducing exactly the arguments we have been studying in the Jewish literature. In fact the passage 3:5–13 contains nothing which could not have been written by a non-Christian Jewish writer, except perhaps the use of the simile of the thief, derived from Jesus’ parable, in verse 10. It is possible that the author is closely dependent on a Jewish apocalyptic writing in this chapter, just as he depends on the epistle of Jude in chapter 2.31 The problem of delay has been raised by false teachers, who so far as we can tell from the letter combined eschatological scepticism with ethical libertinism (ch. 2), apparently supporting the latter by appeal to Paul’s teaching on freedom from the Law (2:19; 3:15). Whether, as has often been thought, both these features were connected with a Gnostic or proto-Gnostic form of over-realized eschatology32 is less certain, since there is no clear hint of this in 2 Peter, but it is certainly a real possibility.33 The allegation of the ‘scoffers’ that the delay of the parousia disproves the expectation of the parousia is met in verses 8 and 9, with what I take to be two distinct arguments. The first reads: ‘But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that one day before the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand 30 Strobel, op. cit. 32 f, thinks that Baruch agrees with R. Joshua rather than R. Eliezer, because he holds that R. Eliezer thought the date of the End was postponed on account of Israel’s sins, while Baruch held to God’s unconditional determination of the End. 31 D. von Allmen, ‘L’apocalyptique juive et le retard de la parousie en II Pierre 3:1–13’ Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie 16 (1966) 255–74, attempts to identify specific verses as quoted from a Jewish apocalypse, but, in view of the way he uses Jude, it is unlikely that the author of 2 Peter would quote without adaptation. It is possible that he is using the apocryphal writing quoted in 1 Clement 23:3 f and 2 Clement 11:2 f. 32 E. g. C. H. Talbert, ‘II Peter and the Delay of the Parousia,’ Vigiliae Christianae 20 (1966) 137–45, who holds that their realized eschatology was the real basis of their denial of the parousia: ‘it seems that their question about the delay of the parousia, just as their appeal to the stability of the universe, is but an argument used to justify a position held on other grounds’ (p. 143). Cf. also E. Käsemann, Essays on New Testament Themes (ET , London: SCM , 1964) 171. 33 In parallel passages where the reality of future eschatology is defended against overrealized eschatology, it is the reality of future resurrection which is usually given special attention (1 Cor. 15; 1 Clement 23–26; 2 Clement 9–12; ‘3 Corinthians’ 3: 24–32), but it is quite possible that the author of 2 Peter deliberately preferred to deal with the question of future judgment because for him the ethical implications of traditional eschatology were paramount and he clearly regarded the eschatology of the ‘scoffers’ as an excuse for their immoral behaviour (cf. also Polycarp, Philippians 7).

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years as one day.’ Precisely what this argument is intended to prove is a matter of debate among the exegetes, who divide into two schools: (1) those who interpret the verse according to parallels in contemporary Jewish and Christian literature, and conclude that it is not intended to meet the problem of delay;34 (2) those who interpret the verse as an answer to the problem of delay, and conclude that the author has here produced an original argument which has no known precedent or parallel in the literature. The first school point to the many rabbinic and second-century Christian texts in which an eschatological chronology is based on the formula ‘A day of the Lord is a thousand years’. This seems to have been a standard exegetical rule, derived from Psalm 90:4 (‘a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past’), but existing as an independent formulation. The procedure is to quote a biblical text in which the word ‘day’ occurs; then the rule ‘A day of the Lord is a thousand years’ is cited, with or without a further quotation of Psalm 90:4 to support it; the conclusion is therefore that where the text says ‘day’ it means, in human terms, a thousand years. The rule was sometimes applied to the creation narrative, in order to yield the notion that the history of the world is to last six thousand years, six ‘days’ of a thousand years each, followed by a millennial Sabbath: this calculation lies behind the widespread millenarianism of the second century.35 Or, similarly, the rule could be applied to texts which were thought to mention the day or days of the Messiah (Is. 63:4; Ps. 90:15): in another tradition of debate between R. Eliezer and R. Joshua, R. Eliezer concluded that the messianic kingdom would last a thousand years, but R. Joshua argued that ‘days’ (plural, Ps. 90:15) implies two thousand years.36 The application of the rule was not always to eschatological matters:37 it was also very commonly used to interpret Genesis 2:17 in accordance with the length of Adam’s life.38 But all of these instances are chronological calculations: the point is not, as originally in Psalm 90:4, to contrast God’s everlasting life with the transience of human life, but simply to yield the chronological information that one of God’s days, when Scripture mentions them, is equal to a thousand of our years. 34 F. Spitta, Der zweite Brief des Petrus und der Brief des Judas (Halle: Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1885) 251–257; Strobel, op. cit. 93 f; von Allmen, art, cit. 262. 35 Ep. of Barnabas 15:4; Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 5:28:3; cf. b Sanh. 97 a. 36 Midrash on Psalms on Ps. 90:4; Pesiqta Rabbati 1:7 (where R. Eliezer is the later R. Eliezer b. R. Jose the Galilean). There are further calculations on a similar basis in Pesiqta Rabbati 1:7; b Sanh. 99 b; Justin, Dial. 81. 37 As von Allmen, art. cit. 262 n. 1; cf. Strobel, op. cit. 93. 38 Jubilees 4:30 (the earliest example of this use of Ps. 90:4); Gen. R. 19:8; 22:1; Midrash on Psalms on Ps. 25:6; Justin, Dial.81; Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 5:23:2; Pirge de R. Eliezer 18. Gen. R. 8:2 uses the rule to prove from Pr. 8:30 that the Torah preceded the creation of the world by 2000 years.

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If these parallels are to govern the interpretation of 2 Peter 3:8, then the verse means that the ‘day of judgment’, mentioned in verse 7, will last a thousand years. Verse 8 is then not a contribution to the debate about the delay, but an explanation of the eschatological expectation set out in verse 7. Now it is true that 2 Peter 3:8 appears to cite the current exegetical rule in the first half of the saying (‘one day before the Lord is as a thousand years’)39 and then, in the second half, to back it up by citing Psalm 90:4. It is also a sound hermeneutical principle to expect a writer to follow the exegetical methods of his contemporaries.40 In this case, the resulting exegesis of verse 8 is very hard to sustain in context: (1) The introductory words (‘But do not ignore this one fact, beloved’) formally signal a fresh line of thought, not an explanatory footnote to verse 7. (2) If verse 8 means that the day of judgment will last a thousand years, it contributes nothing to the argument against the ‘scoffers’. It is hard to believe that in such a brief section the author would have allowed himself this entirely redundant comment. (3) There is actually no parallel to the idea that the day of judgment would last a thousand years, and it is difficult to see how it could fit into the eschatology of 2 Peter 3. Must we then conclude, with the majority of exegetes, that the author’s use of Psalm 90:4 in this verse is entirely unprecedented?41 Not at all, for there are in fact two relevant Jewish parallels which, so far as I can tell, the commentators have not noticed, presumably because Strack and Billerbeck missed them. The first is a piece of rabbinic exegesis which belongs to the tradition of apocalyptic interpretation of the revelation to Abraham in Genesis 15. It is ascribed to the early second-century Rabbi Eleazar b. Azariah, and although the attestation is late, the fact that it seems closely related to the traditions embodied in the Apocalypse of Abraham42 perhaps permits us to consider 39 This is closer to Ps. 90:4 than the usual formulation of the rule, but, for , see Ep. of Barnabas 15:4 ( ), and, for , see Justin, Dial. 81; Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 5:23:2; 5:28:3. 40 Von Allmen, art. cit. 262 n. 1. 41 E. g. J. N. D. Kelly, A commentary on the Epistles of Peter and of Jude (London: A. & C. Black, 1969) 362. 42 Apocalypse of Abraham 28–30: the text is partly corrupt and in ch. 29 has suffered Christian interpolation, so that it is difficult to be sure of the chronological reckonings. It seems that the whole of this ‘age of ungodliness’ is reckoned as one day of twelve hours (perhaps on the basis on Gen. 15:11), and perhaps each hour lasts 400 years (as in ch. 32) rather than 100 years (as the present text of ch. 28 seems to indicate). In any case, the general approach to Gen. 15 is similar to that in Pirqe de R. Eliezer 28, and it is relevant that L. Hartman, ‘The Functions of Some So-Called Apocalyptic Timetables’, NTS 22 (1975–6) 10, considers that the message of the ‘timetable’ in the Apocalypse of Abraham ‘is not a calculation of the end, but rather an attempt to solve the moral and religious problem posed by the situation of the faithful’.

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it in this context. From the text of Genesis 15 it is deduced that the period during which Abraham (according to 15:11) drove away the birds of prey from the sacrificial carcasses was a day, from sunrise to sunset. The birds of prey are taken to represent the Gentile oppressors of Israel during the period of the four kingdoms. Therefore, R. Eleazar says, ‘From this incident thou mayest learn that the rule of these four kingdoms will only last one day according to the day of the Holy One, blessed be he’.43 The reference to ‘the day of the Holy One’ must be to the maxim ‘A day of the Lord is a thousand years’. The relevance of this text is that, unlike the other rabbinic texts already mentioned, it does relate to the delay of the End, for in Jewish apocalyptic the period of the four kingdoms is precisely the period of delay. Moreover, I doubt whether the exegesis is primarily intended as a chronological calculation,44 again unlike the other texts. The point is that the rule of the four kingdoms ‘will only last one day’, i. e. that although for oppressed Israel the time seems very long, from God’s eternal perspective it is a very brief period. This reflection therefore has the function of consolation for Israel, in that it relativizes the importance of the period of Gentile domination. It thus provides a parallel to the thought of 2 Peter 3:8, which is surely that those who complain of the delay have got it out of perspective: in the perspective of eternity it is only a short time. With the second parallel we are on chronologically safer ground, for it comes from the Apocalypse of Baruch. In a passage clearly inspired by Psalm 90, Baruch reflects on the contrast between the transience of man and the eternity of God: For in a little time are we born, and in a little time do we return. But with thee the hours are as the ages, and the days are as the generations (2 Baruch 48:12 f).45 43 Pirqe de R. Eliezer 28: translation from G. Friedlander, Pir ê de Rabbi Eliezer (New York: Hermon Press, 19652) 200. I owe my knowledge of this text to P. Bogaert, op. cit. II 88, who quotes from the same tradition in Yalqu Shim‘oni 76. 44 If the text were interpreted chronologically, then perhaps it would be plausible to suggest a date of origin for the tradition when the end of a period of one thousand years from 586 bc was approaching. But even in the case of texts which appear to be more interested in chronology, such calculations of date cannot be trusted: if 4 Ezra 10:45 f; 14:11 f were taken literally and according to modern chronology, the End would have been far distant in the future when the book was written; similarly Ps-Philo, Lib. Ant. Bib. 19:15 (accepting the very plausible emendation proposed by M. Wadsworth, ‘The Death of Moses and the Riddle of the End of Time in Pseudo-Philo,’ JJS 28 (1977) 14 f). 45 As R. H. Charles, The Apocalypse of Baruch (London: A. & C. Black, 1896) 75, ad loc., notes, we should have expected ‘the ages are as the hours and the generations are as the days’; perhaps this should caution us against seeing too much detailed significance in the two halves of the saying in 2 Pet. 3:8.

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At least this text proves that it was possible for a contemporary of the author of 2 Peter to read Psalm 90:4 in its original sense of a contrast between God’s endless existence and man’s brief span of life. In its immediate context in 2 Baruch it is not directly related to the problem of delay, but it is an instance of Baruch’s frequent theme of God’s sovereignty over the times, which, as we have seen, is one of the themes which serves to balance the theme of eschatological imminence. These two parallels seem to me to illuminate the meaning of 2 Peter 3:8. This verse is not, as Käsemann complains, ‘a philosophical speculation about the being of God, to which a different conception of time is made to apply from that which applies to us’.46 It does not mean that God’s perception of time is so utterly unrelated to ours that the very idea of delay becomes quite meaningless and nothing can any longer be said about the time until the parousia. Rather the verse contrasts man man’s transience with God’s everlastingness, the limited perspective of man whose expectations tend to be bounded by his own brief lifetime with the perspective of the eternal God who surveys the whole of history. The reason why the imminent expectation of the apocalyptist tends to mean to him the expectation of the End within his own lifetime is, partly at least, this human limitation: he is impatient to see the redemption himself. The eternal God is free from that particular impatience.47 The implication is not that the believer should discard the imminent expectation,48 but that he must set against it the consideration that the delay which seems so lengthy to him may not be so significant within that total perspective on the total course of history which God commands. In 2 Peter 3:9 the author offers his positive understanding of the delay: ‘The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.’ I hope that adequate comment on this verse has already been provided by the whole of our study of the Jewish apocalyptic material. The problem of delay is here met in a way which had become standard in the Jewish thinking of the time:49 in fact this verse is a succinct statement 46

Op. cit. 194. Cf. Augustine’s saying, quoted by C. Bigg, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistles of St Peter and St Jude (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1901) 295, and repeated by M. Green, The Second Epistle General of Peter and the General Epistle of Jude (London: IVP , 1968) 134, that God is patiens quia eternus. 48 T. Fornberg, An Early Church in a Pluralistic Society (Coniectanea Biblica: NT Series 9. Lund: Gleerup, 1977) 68, thinks that ‘2 Pet. 3:8 is the earliest example of the explicit abandonment by an orthodox Christian writer of the expectation of a speedy Parousia’. 49 Fornberg, ibid. 71, who wishes to stress the Hellenistic and non-Jewish character of 2 Peter, neglects the Jewish parallels to 3:9 in favour of the parallel in Plutarch, De sera numinis vindicata. But the whole context makes the Jewish parallels the relevant ones. 47

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of the ideas about the delay which we have traced in Jewish apocalyptic. There is first of all the appeal to God’s sovereignty: he is not late in fulfilling his promise (this point is made by means of the standard reference to Hab. 2:3);50 the delay belongs to his purpose. Then the positive meaning of the delay is explained as R. Eliezer and the Apocalypse of Baruch explained it. God restrains his anger in order to give his people (now Christians rather than Jews) opportunity to repent.51 The author of 2 Peter, then, met the problem of delay as posed by the ‘scoffers’ from the resources of the Jewish apocalyptic tradition. His arguments were not novel arguments hastily contrived to meet the unexpected crisis of delay. They were arguments familiar in contemporary Jewish circles where the problem of delay was part and parcel of the apocalyptic tradition. Like the author of the Apocalypse of Baruch, the author of 2 Peter recognized that alongside the theological factors which make for imminence must be set theological factors which account for delay. Against the apocalyptists’ longing for eschatological righteousness, which this writer clearly shared (3:13), must be set the patience of God who characteristically holds back from condemning the sinner while he may still repent. The believer must hold the two sides of the matter in tension. Only God from the perspective of eternity knows the temporal point at which they meet, where the tension will be resolved in the event of the End. The problem of delay is thus contained within the expectation, as it always had been in the Jewish tradition. (d) The Apocalypse of John Finally, we turn to the Apocalypse of John, which, rooted as it is in the apocalyptic tradition, employs the traditional Jewish approaches to the problem of delay, but also, being a deeply Christian apocalypse, employs them with far more creative Christian reinterpretation than we have found in 2 Peter. 50

Cf. Ecclus. 35:18, but there is the emphasis is very different. The must mean, initially at least, all the readers. The Christian mission is not here in view: contra A. L. Moore, The Parousia in the New Testament (Supplements to Novum Testamentum 13. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966) 154. The further comment, in 3:12, that Christians by living holy lives may ‘hasten’ the coming of the End is the observe of 3:9. The reference to Is. 60:12 was traditional (see n. 13 above), though it is usually God who is said to hasten the time of the End. There are, however, rabbinic parallels, such as the saying of R. Judah, ‘Great is charity, for it brings redemption nearer’ (b Baba Batra 10 a), and the saying of R. Jose the Galilean, ‘Great is repentance, for it brings redemption nearer’ (b Yoma 86 b). As we have already noticed in the case of R. Eliezer and the Apocalypse of Baruch, this idea need not contradict the view that God has appointed the time of the End; it only means that God’s sovereign determination takes human affairs into account. 51

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By now it should come as no surprise to learn that the imminent expectation and the delay of the parousia both feature in Revelation. The note of imminence is more obvious, owing to the emphasis it receives in the opening and closing sections of the book (1:1,3; 22:6,7,10,12,20). The motif of delay is somewhat less evident to us, but would have been clear enough to John’s readers: it can be found principally in the section chapters 6–11. We should notice first how the imminent expectation receives a thoroughly Christian character: if is the parousia of Jesus Christ which is expected. Not simply the End, but Jesus, is coming soon (2:16; 3:11; 22:7,12,20; cf. 1:7; 3:3; 16:15). Moreover, this Jesus has already won the eschatological victory over evil (3:21; 5:5; 12:7–11); as the passover Lamb he has already accomplished the new Exodus of the End-time (5:6–10; cf. 15:3); he already holds the keys of death, and rules the world from his Father’s throne (1:18; 3:21; 1:5). It has frequently been said that, by comparison with Jewish apocalyptic, the problem of eschatological delay was less acute for the early church because of the element of realized eschatology in Christian thinking. No longer was the future expectation paramount, because in the death and resurrection of Jesus in the past God had already accomplished the decisive eschatological act.52 There is truth in this argument – and, as we shall see, it is this past act of God in Christ which gives the present time of delay its positive meaning in Revelation – but it should also be noticed that the tension of ‘already’ ands ‘not yet’ in early Christianity also functioned to heighten the sense of eschatological imminence. For if the victory over evil has already been won, it seems even more necessary that the actual eradication of evil from the world should follow very soon. The powers of evil at work in the world loom large in the imagery of Revelation: the problems of theodicy which they pose are, in one sense, not not alleviated but intensified by the faith that Christ has already conquered them. Thus the characteristic tension of imminence and delay in Jewish apocalyptic seems to be, if anything, sharpened by the ‘already’ of Christian faith, since it contributes to both sides of the tension. The message of Revelation is conveyed as much by literary impact as by conventional theological statement, and this is true of the motif of delay in chapters 6–11. In those chapters John portrays the movement from Christ’s victory on the cross towards the fulfilment of that victory at the parousia, and he structures that movement in the series of sevens: the seven seals, the seven trumpets, and the further series of seven bowls which follows in chapter 16. In chapter 5 the reader has heard of the victory of the Lamb, who is declared worthy to open the scroll, i. e. to release into the world God’s 52

Cf. Cullmann, Christ and Time, 86–90, though Cullmann does acknowledge that the ‘already’ of primitive Christianity did intensify the eschatological expectation.

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purpose of establishing his Kingdom. The Lamb’s victory on the cross is the fundamental achievement of that purpose; all that remains is its outworking in world history. So John’s original readers would move into chapter 6 full of expectancy: a rapid series of apocalyptic judgments would quickly crush all opposition and inaugurate the Kingdom. This expectancy, however, is deliberately frustrated throughout chapters 6–11. The impressive quartet of horsemen who are released into history when the Lamb opens the first four seals turn out (6:8) to be disappointingly moderate judgments, affecting only a quarter of the earth. The readers’ sense of disappointment will correspond to the cry of the martyrs, ‘How long?’, at the opening of the fifth seal (6:10). With the sixth seal, however, expectation will mount again: the familiar apocalyptic imagery heralds the actual arrival of the day of judgment. But again John holds his readers in suspense, inserting a long parenthesis (ch. 7) before the final, seventh seal. The series of trumpets follow a similar pattern. The judgments are now intensified, but they are still limited, this time affecting a third of the earth and its inhabitants. Instead of accomplishing a swift annihilation of the enemies of God, it becomes clear that these judgments are preliminary warning judgments, designed, in the patience of God, to give men the opportunity of repentance. Following the sixth trumpet, however, we are told that these judgments have not brought men to repentance; they remain as impenitent as ever (9:20 f). Once again, therefore, the readers’ expectation will rise: God’s patience must now be exhausted; surely the final judgment of the seventh trumpet will now follow. Once again, however, John frustrates this expectation, inserting a long passage between the sixth and seventh trumpets, just as he had done between the sixth and seventh seals. Only when we reach the seven bowls (ch. 16), with which ‘the wrath of God is ended’ (15:1), do we find an uninterrupted series of total judgments moving rapidly to the final extinction of the evil powers. In this way John has incorporated the motif of delay into the structure of his book, especially in the form of the parentheses which precede the final seal and the final trumpet. John’s understanding of the meaning of the delay we shall expect to find in the content of these parentheses, and also in the episode of the fifth seal (6:9–11), which is his first explicit treatment of the issue of delay. The martyrs’ cry ‘How long?’ (6:10) is the traditional apocalyptic question about the delay (Dn. 12:6; Hab. 1:2; Zc. 1:12; 2 Baruch 21:25; 4 Ezra 4:33,35), and the problem from which it arises – the problem of justice and vindication for the martyrs – dates at least from the time of the Maccabean martyrs. The answer to the question is also traditional. The delay will last ‘a little while longer’ (cf. Is. 26:20; Hg. 2:6; Heb. 10:37; the same motif in Rev. 12:12; 17:10) until the predetermined quota of martyrs is complete. This

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idea is clearly akin to 2 Baruch 23:2–5 (discussed above) and even closer to 1 Enoch 47 and 4 Ezra 4:35–37: the last passage may suggest that John has taken over even the depiction of the scene from tradition. John has therefore taken over this tradition about the meaning of delay without modification, except that he has placed it in the context of the significance of martyrdom according to his work as a whole.53 For John, Christian martyrdom belongs to the Christian’s discipleship of Jesus and the Christian’s participation in Jesus’ own witness and victory through the cross. In that context the meaning of the delay in this passage goes deeper than the idea of an arbitrarily decreed quota of martyrdoms. In advance of his final victory over evil by power, God has already won the victory of sacrificial suffering, the victory of the slain Lamb. He has done so because he prefers to come to sinners in grace, rather than in merely destructive wrath. But the Lamb’s mission and victory must be continued in the followers of the Lamb. Therefore the vindication of the martyrs must wait until all have sealed their witness in blood and God’s purposes of grace for the world have been fulfilled through them. The logic of delay here is the logic of the cross. This is the significance which 6:9–11 will gain as the rest of Revelation unfolds the significance of the martyrs. John does not, in so many words, attribute the delay to the longsuffering of God, but characteristically he pictures this motif. Chapter 7, the parenthesis between the sixth and seventh seals, opens with the picture of the four angels holding back the four winds of the earth, to prevent them from harming the earth: a picture of what Baruch called ‘the restraint of wrath’ (2 Baruch 59:6). God holds back the release of his final judgment on the world until the angels ‘have sealed the servants of God on their foreheads’ (7:3): in other words, the delay is the period in which men become Christians and are therefore protected from the coming wrath of God. (Paradoxically, this protection makes them potential martyrs: 7:14.) Thus, from the treatment of delay within the seven seals section, we learn that God delays the End for the sake of the church, so that the Lamb may be the leader of a vast new people of God drawn from every nation and sharing his victory through suffering. The treatment of delay in the seven trumpets section is less easy to follow, because the parenthesis between the sixth and seventh trumpets (10:1–11:13) is probably the most obscure passage in Revelation, as the wide variety of suggested interpretations shows. It will be easier to begin with the latter part of it: the story of the two witnesses (11:3–13). With many commentators, I

53

Cf. G. B. Caird, The Revelation of St John the Divine (London: A. & C. Black, 1966) 87; J. Sweet. Revelation (London: SCM , 1979) 142.

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take this as a parable of the church’s mission to the world.54 The witnesses are two because of the Deuteronomic requirement of two witnesses. They prophesy for three and half years (11:3) because this is the symbolic figure (taken over from Daniel) which John uses to designate the ‘little while’ of the delay. Along with many Old Testament allusions in the passage, the fact that the witnesses’ career is modelled on that of Jesus is noteworthy: their dead bodies lie in the street of the city ‘where their Lord was crucified’ (11:8), and after three and a half days they are raised and ascend to heaven. In all probability the final words of the section, ‘the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven’ (11:13), are intended to indicate sincere repentance.55 In other words, the men who after the judgments of the six trumpet-blasts remained impenitent (9:20 f) are now brought to repentance through the suffering witness of the church. Thus the question with which the original readers may well have concluded chapter 9 – ‘Surely God will no longer be patient?’ – is answered in chapter 11. Yes, he will be patient because he has another strategy to reach the impenitent, a strategy which began with the sacrifice of the Lamb and continues in the suffering witness of his followers. This is John’s further answer to the meaning of delay: not only is the delay for the sake of the church itself (ch. 7), it is for the sake of the church’s witness to the world. God’s desire that sinners should repent does not stop at simply giving them time, or even at inflicting warning judgments on them; more than that, God actively seeks them in the mission of his Son and his church. The delay of the parousia is filled with the mission of the church. We turn to the problematic chapter 10. The episode of the seven thunders (10:3 f) has puzzled the commentators. Probably the seven thunders represent a further series of warning judgments, like the seals and the trumpets.56 The command to ‘seal up what the seven thunders have said’ (10:3) is odd, 54 I have discussed this passage briefly in ‘The Role of the Spirit in the Apocalypse’, EQ 52 (1980) 66–83. Commentators who take a similar view include H. B. Swete, The Apocalypse of St John (London: Macmillan, 21907) 134–41; M. Kiddle, The Revelation of St John (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1940) 176–206; Caird, op. cit. 133–40; G. R. Beasley-Murray, The Book of Revelation (London: Oliphants, 1974) 176–87; R. H. Mounce, The Book of Revelation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977) 222–9; Sweet, op. cit. 181–9. 55 So Swete, op. cit. 141; R. H. Charles, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Revelation of St John (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1920) I, 291 f; Caird, op. cit. 139 f; L. Morris, The Revelation of St John (London: Tyndale Press, 1969) 152; G. E. Ladd, A Commentary on the Revelation of John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972) 139 f; BeasleyMurray, op. cit. 187; Sweet, op. cit. 189. 56 J. Day, ‘Echoes of Baal’s seven thunders and lightnings in Psalm xxix and Habakkuk iii 9 and the identity of the seraphim in Isaiah vi,’ VT 29 (1979) 143–51, finds a Ugaritic reference to the seven thunders of Baal, which are reflected in Ps. 29. Probably, therefore, John’s reference to ‘the seven thunders’ (10:3) is to a standard apocalyptic image which derives ultimately, like much apocalyptic imagery, from Canaanite mythology.

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since John has not written what they said, and he is told not to write it: there is no document to seal up. Some have suggested that the content of the seven thunders is to be kept secret: John is not to reveal it as he has revealed the content of the seven trumpets.57 In that case, there are to be further warning judgments, but John’s readers are not permitted to know about them. This explanation has the disadvantage of seeming to contradict verse 6, where the angel swears that there will be no more delay. The alternative suggestion is that the seven thunders represent a further series of warning judgments which are revoked.58 They are sealed up because they are not do occur. Here ‘seal up’ is being used as the antithesis of ‘open the seal’ in chapter 6: if to ‘open the seal’ means to release the contents of the document into history, then to ‘seal up’ would mean to prevent the seven thunders being released into history. On this view, verse 6 follows logically: God has cut short the series of warning judgments, and so there will be no more delay before the final judgment of the seventh trumpet. However, when we turn to the angel’s statement in verses 6 f, there are further problems. These verses are dependent on Daniel 12:6 f, where in reply to Daniel’s question ‘How long?,’ the angel swears that it will be ‘for a time, two times, and half a time; and that when the shattering of the power of the holy people comes to an end all these things would be accomplished’. John’s angel appears to contradict Daniel’s: instead of three and a half times (years) of delay, there will be no more delay.59 But if John means to indicate that the words of Daniel’s angel are inappropriate at this stage of history because there is now to be no more delay, it is strange that, almost immediately (in 11:2 f), he goes on to use Daniel’s period of three and a half years as his own symbol of the period of delay before the End, during which the power of the new holy people, the church, is being shattered in martyrdom. On grounds of structure60 I would reject the suggestion61 that in chapter 10 John stands at the end of the three and a half years and then in chapter 11 recapitulates the three and a half years.

57

So Swete, op. cit. 128; W. Hendriksen, More than Conquerors (London: Inter-Varsity Press, 1962) 124; Morris, op. cit. 139; Ladd, op. cit. 143. 58 So A. M. Farrer, The Revelation of St John the Divine (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964) 125; Caird, op. cit. 126 f; Mounce, op. cit. 209 f. 59 All commentators now agree that (10:6), should be translated ‘there shall be no more delay’. The words probably echo Hab. 2:3. 60 The whole section 10:1–11:13 is a unit closely associated with the sixth trumpet (9:13–21) by means of 9:12 and 11:24. It is clear from 10:8 that 10:8–11 succeeds the episode of the seven thunders: John is forbidden to reveal the content of the thunders but instead is given a new commission to prophesy (10:11). This commission is fulfilled initially in 11:1–13, more expansively in chs. 12–14. 61 Hendrikson, op. cit. 125; Morris, op. cit. 140.

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We seem, then, to be faced with a straight contradiction. In 10:1–7 we are told that there are to be no more warning judgments and no more delay before the final trumpet-blast which is about to sound.62 In 11:1–13 (to which 10:8–11 is introductory) we find a delay which is filled with the church’s mission: if God has revoked further warning judgments it is not because his patience is ended, but because he purposes to reach men through the church’s witness. I tentatively suggest that John intended this contradiction. The days of the sixth trumpet in which he placed himself are the days in which ‘the time is near’ (1:3; 22:10), when the final ‘woe’ is coming ‘soon’ (11:24), when there is to be no more delay (10:7). And yet, while God does still delay, the church is called to bear her faithful witness in prophecy and martyrdom (11:1–13). The tension of imminence and delay is here starkly set out, and John makes no attempt to resolve it: he only knows that the church must live in this tension. To conclude: Revelation maintains the typical apocalyptic tension of imminence and delay, now sharpened and characterized in a peculiarly Christian manner. The imminent expectation focuses on the parousia of the already victorious Christ: and the book ends with the promise, ‘I am coming soon’, and the church’s urgent response, ‘Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!’ (22:20). But the manner of the victory which Christ has already won – a sacrificial offering to ransom sinners from every nation (5:9) – gives fresh meaning to the delay, which now becomes the time of the church’s universal mission, characterized by suffering witness in discipleship to the crucified Christ. In this way, it should be noticed, the apocalyptic theodicy problem of innocent suffering gains a fresh perspective. Innocent suffering still cries out for eschatological righteousness (6:10; cf. 18:1–19:3). But on the other hand, God delays the parousia not simply in spite of his people’s sufferings, but actually so that his people may suffer that positive, creative suffering which comes to the followers of the cross of Christ.

62 Some have sought to evade the difficulty by arguing either (1) that 10:6 f means only that there will be no more delay before the period of three and a half years (so Charles, op. cit. I, 263, 265 f; Caird, op. cit. 127 f; Mounce, op. cit. 211; Sweet, op. cit. 127 f), or (2) that 10:6 f means only that when the seventh trumpet sounds there will be no more delay (so Swete, op. cit. 129). But these are evasions which miss the point of the passage.

6. A Note on a Problem in the Greek Version of 1 Enoch 1. 9* 1 In Codex Panopolitanus (C) the opening clause of 1 Enoch i. 9 reads: 2 … The quotation of this verse in Jude 14 differs considerably: … Cf. Ethiopic: ‘And behold! he comes with ten thousand 3; Pseudo-Cyprian: ‘ecce venit cum multis milibus nuntiorum holy ones…’ suorum…’4 Although it is widely agreed that Jude has inserted ,5 at three other points where his version differs from C it is likely that he is closer to the original Aramaic: (a) : Jude agrees with the Ethiopic and Pseudo: Jude’s ‘prophetic perfect’7 is found also Cyprian against C;6 (b) in Pseudo-Cyprian; (c) :8 Jude agrees with the Ethiopic and, more importantly, with the Qumran Aramaic fragment (4Q

* First publication: Journal of Theological Studies 32 (1981) 136–138. 1 MS . . 2 MS . 3 M. A. Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch (Oxford, 1978), vol. ii, pp. 59 f. 4 Ad Novatianum, xvi; text in R. H. Charles, The Book of Enoch (2 nd edn., Oxford, 1912), p. 275. 5 Presumably as a Christological interpretation, but perhaps also by analogy with other theophany texts (Isa. xl. 10, lxvi. 15; Zech. xiv. 5) which were also applied to the parousia in primitive Christianity. 6 In favour of the originality of Jude’s version here are Charles, op. cit., p. 8; M. Black, ‘The Maranatha Invocation and Jude 14, 15 (I Enoch 1: 9)’, in Christ and Spirit in the New Testament; in honour of C. F. D. Moule, ed. B. Lindars and S. S. Smalley (Cambridge, 1973), p. 195 (‘It is a definite possibility that should be restored in the Aramaic text’); C. D. Osburn, ‘The Christological Use of I Enoch i. 9 in Jude 14, 15’, N. T. S. xxiii (1976–7), pp. 335 f.; cf. J. vander Kam, ‘The Theophany of Enoch I 3 b–7, 9’, V. T. xxiii (1973), pp. 147 f. J. T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumrân Cave 4 (Oxford, 1976), p. 186, unaccountably prefers in C, corrected to , as rendering Aramaic . 7 Jude’s aorist is widely regarded as equivalent to a prophetic perfect: e. g. J. B. Mayor, The Epistle of St. Jude and the Second Epistle of St. Peter (London, 1907), p. 45; J. Chaine, Les épîtres catholiques (2 nd edn., Paris, 1939), p. 322; W. Grundmann, Der Brief des Judas und der zweite Brief des Petrus (Berlin, 1974), p. 42. 8 The best attested reading in Jude (cf. discussion in Osburn, art. cit., pp. 337 f.); on the variants, including P72, which add , see below.

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Enc 1 i. 15): [ ] [ ].9 The readings of C in the first two of these cases have been explained: (a) both and may derive from an original , the phrase with , as Knibb suggests,10 or possibly from an original which the Targum renders in Mic. i. 3 (a theophany text on which , 1 Enoch i. 4–6 depends), where the Septuagint has ;11 (b) like the Ethiopic’s ‘he comes’, is a more idiomatic rendering of an Aramaic prophetic perfect, while is the more literal translation.12 It is more difficult, however, to explain the reading of C at (c). A possible solution to this difficulty may be found by considering the early Christian treatment of a very similar eschatological theophany passage: Zech. xiv. 5 b, which the Septuagint renders: , . Like many other Old Testament theophany texts, this was from an early stage in primitive Christianity interpreted Christologically of the parousia of the Lord Jesus. It is explicitly quoted in Didache xvi. 7, but probably also lies behind many other early Christian texts: Matt. xvi. 27, xxv. 31; Mark viii. 38; Luke ix. 26; 1 Thess. iii. 13; 2 Thess. i. 7; Rev. xix. 14; Apocalypse of Peter i (Ethiopic); Ascension of Isaiah iv. 14; Sibylline Oracles ii. 242, viii. 221. It was the main source (though compare also Deut. xxxiii. 2; Ps. lxviii. 18) of the expectation that the Lord at his parousia would be accompanied by a retinue of angels. The early church usually (and correctly) understood in Zech. xiv. 5 to be the angels, the divine Warrior’s heavenly army. It is given this sense in Matt. xvi. 27, xxv. 31; Mark viii. 37; Luke ix. 26; 2 Thess. i. 7; Apocalypse of Peter i (Ethiopic); Sibylline Oracle ii. 242; and probably in 1 Thess. iii. 13. But although ‘the holy ones’ was commonly used to mean angels in Judaism (and especially in the Qumran texts),13 in the ordinary usage of the early church usually meant Christians, not angels. Probably the only New Testament texts in which are angels are 1 Thess. iii. 13 (echoing Zech. xiv. 5); Jude 14 (quoting 1 Enoch i. 9); Eph. i. 18; Col. i. 12 (both, if they do refer to angels, echoing an established phrase).14 Most of 9

Milik, op. cit., p. 184 and Plate IX . Op. cit. ii, p. 59. For = ‘for’, see J. A. Fitzmyer, The Genesis Apocryphon of Qumran Cave I: A Commentary (2 nd edn. Rome, 1971), p. 96; and especially 1Q GenApoc xxi 14. 11 vander Kam, art. cit., pp. 147 f. 12 Ibid., p. 148; Osburn, art. cit., p. 337. The prophetic perfect is rare in Aramaic, but does exist: M. Black, art. cit., p. 196; idem, ‘The Christological Use of the old Testament in the New Testament’, N. T. S. xviii (1971–2), p. 10 n. 13 S. F. Noll, Angelology in the Qumran Texts (unpublished Ph. D. thesis, University of Manchester, 1979), pp. 220–2, lists fifty-four examples of and meaning angels in the Qumran texts. 14 Cf. E. Lohse, Colossians and Philemon (Philadelphia, 1971), pp. 35 f.; cf. QS xi. 7; Wisd. v. 5. 2 Thess. i. 10 echoes Ps. lxxxviii. 7 LXX , but probably with reference to Christians, not angels. 10

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the passages which reflect an interpretation of Zech. xiv. 5 as referring to angels do so by introducing the word (Matt. xvi. 27, xxv. 31; Mark viii. 38; Luke ix. 26; 2 Thess. i. 7; Apocalypse of Peter i (Ethiopic); Sibylline Oracle ii. 242). The variant readings at Jude 14 (beginning with P72), which introduce , also attest that was not easily understood to mean angels, but needed an explanatory gloss.15 It is therefore not surprising that some early Christian texts provide evidence of an alternative interpretation of Zech. xiv. 5 in which (especially in the light of the teaching of 1 Thess. iv. 14, 16 f.) were taken to be Christians. In Rev. xix. 15 it seems (cf. xvii. 14) that the heavenly army is composed of the Christian martyrs. Didache xvi. 7 quotes Zech. xiv. 5 with explicit reference to the Christians who will rise from the dead and accompany the Lord at his parousia. Finally, in Ascension of Isa. iv. 14 the two traditions of interpretation are combined: ‘the Lord will come with his angels and with the hosts of the holy ones’ (and compare 16, which makes clear that ‘the holy ones’ are the Christian dead). It is this combination of the two early Christian interpretations of Zech. xiv. 5 which is reflected in the Greek version of 1 Enoch i. 9.16 Early Christian readers would immediately understand as a reference to the angels (cf. Deut. xxxiii. 2; Ps. lxviii. 18; Dan. vii. 10; Matt. xxvi. 53; Heb. xii. 22; 1 Clem. xxxiv. 6) and as a reference to Christians. The reading of C must therefore be explained either as a Christian interpretative gloss on a Greek text which originally rendered the Aramaic more accurately, or possibly (though this, of course, would need to be supported by other evidence) as an indication that C represents an originally Christian translation of 1 Enoch.17

15 The use of the term ‘the holy angels’ was a way of preserving the traditional epithet but removing the ambiguity: Mark viii. 38; Luke ix. 26; Acts x. 22; Rev. xiv. 10; Hermas, Vis. II . ii. 7; III , iv. 1 f. 16 Note that Ascension of Isaiah derives from those Christian apocalyptic circles which must especially have valued the Enoch literature. 17 J. Barr, ‘Aramaic-Greek notes on the Book of Enoch (II )’, J.S.S. xxiv (1979), p. 191, concludes tentatively: ‘It seems at first sight probable that the translation of Enoch into Greek belonged to the same general stage and stratum of translation as the LXX translation of Daniel.’

7. The Son of Man: ‘A Man in my Position’ or ‘Someone’?* A critique of Barnabas Lindars’s proposal Professor Barnabas Lindar’s new book, Jesus Son of Man,1 is a work of major importance for the ‘Son of Man’ debate, and deserves the closest consideration. Its importance lies as much in its discussion of the extension and development of Son of Man sayings in Q and the four Gospels as in its novel proposal on the meaning of Jesus’ use of the phrase, but my comments here are largely concerned with the latter. Lindars stands within the general trend of Son of Man scholarship pioneered (in its recent phase) by Geza Vermes and pursued also by Maurice Casey, which takes as the clue to Jesus’ usage the examples of bar nash and bar nasha as a form of self-reference in later Jewish Aramaic. But, like Casey, he rejects Vermes’s claim that there are examples in which bar nasha is an idiomatic form of exclusive self-reference (a periphrasis for ‘I’), and agrees with Casey that all the examples in which bar nasha functions as a self-reference are examples of the generic use, in which self-reference is possible because the speaker is included among those to whom bar nasha refers. But whereas Casey recognized only a properly generic use (bar nasha = ‘mankind’, ‘each and every man’), Lindars claims that there are examples of ‘the idiomatic use of the generic article, in which the speaker refers to a class of persons, with whom he identifies himself’ (bar nasha = ‘a man in my position’). ‘It is this idiom… which provides the best guidance to the use of Son of Man in the sayings of Jesus’.2 He proceeds to use this idiom as a criterion of dominical authenticity: only Son of Man sayings which use the phrase as this kind of self-reference can be considered authentic. On this basis, Lindars identifies (in chapter 3) six Son of Man sayings from Mark and Q as authentic, and (in chapter 4) adds three passion predictions: a total of nine authentic Son of Man sayings which can be plausibly interpreted according to the ‘idiomatic generic’ use of bar nasha. * First publication: Journal for the Study of the New Testament 23 (1985) 23–33. 1 London, 1983 2 B. Lindars, Jesus Son of Man, p. 24.

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This brilliantly argued case unfortunately, it seems to me, fails at two points: in the use of rabbinic examples to establish the idiom, and in the application of the idiom to sayings of Jesus. On the first point, it should first be noticed that Lindars discusses only four passages in which bar nash(a) is a self-reference, and considers two of these examples of the alleged ‘idiomatic generic’ use. These four passages are the four adduced in Vermes’s abbreviated discussion in Jesus the Jew.3 Lindars does not discuss the other five passages included in Vermes’s more extended, original discussion.4 This is unfortunate. The known cases of bar nash(a) as a self-reference are so few that any attempt to determine their exact nuance should take all of them into consideration. It is especially unfortunate for Lindars’s own case, since two or three of the passages he does not discuss would fit the idiom he is attempting to establish as well as or even better than the two passages which are his actual evidence for it. His discussion of these two passages (jBer. 3 b; jSheb. 38 d, with parallels) does not convince me that they are not examples of the properly generic use (bar nasha = ‘mankind’). In the first, Simeon ben Yohai is, of course, only interested in requesting two mouths for those who are going to use one to recite the Torah, and really only interested in requesting two mouths for himself, since it is he who wants to do this, but possession of one or two mouths is a feature of human nature and so his prayer has to be that God would create mankind, human nature as such, with two mouths. Lindar’s argument, that bar nasha refers to a class of men of which Simeon is in fact the only member, though in principle there might be others, seems rather contrived. Any statement about one person which could in principle also be true of other similar people, if there were such people, would by this argument become ‘generic’. In the second example (jSheb. 38 d) I see even less reason to prefer Lindars’s interpretation to the properly generic one. To understand the sense of Simeon’s conclusion as simply, ‘No man perishes without the will of heaven’, seems both obvious and wholly appropriate to the context. More to the point would have been a passage not discussed by Lindars (jBer. 5 b: ‘The disciple of bar nasha is as dear to him as his son’5), where one has to concede that the generic sense of bar nasha is a qualified generic sense. It applies not to every man, but to every man who has a disciple (i. e. every rabbi). But this is a natural way of using a noun generically, because the qualification is obviously provided by the context (just as it is ‘A man who…’ or ‘A 3

G. Vermes, Jesus the Jew (London, 21976), pp. 164–67. G. Vermes, ‘The Use of BAR NASH / BAR NASHA in Jewish Aramaic’, in PostBiblical Jewish Studies (Leiden, 1975), pp. 147–65 (reprinted from M. Black, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts [Oxford, 31967], pp. 310–28). 5 Quoted, ibid., p. 160. 4

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good man…’). It does not justify postulating an idiom in which bar nasha refers to a limited class of men (‘a man in my position’) where the limitation is not obviously provided by the context. Even if Lindar’s ‘idiomatic use of the generic article’ were established from the later Jewish evidence, it has to be stretched considerably to accommodate most of the six allegedly authentic sayings discussed in chapter 3. The saying which it fits most easily is the first (Mt. 8.20 = Lk 9.58), where bar enasha could in that case be rendered ‘everyone in my position’ (this is what the idiomatic generic use ought to mean). But it certainly cannot be said that ‘the generic usage is essential to the purpose of the saying’, as Lindars claims.6 If the Son of Man were an exclusive self-reference (and Lindars must admit that this is how the Evangelists understood it), it would still be a perfectly adequate reply to the disciple’s words in Mt. 8.19 = Lk. 9.57. In saying 3 (Mt. 12.32 = Lk. 12.10) the case for a generic sense is a good one, but here it is the proper generic sense (‘mankind’), and Lindars makes no attempt to argue for the special idiomatic generic sense in which the reference is restricted to a class of men. It should also be noticed that a simple indefinite sense (‘a man’) would also be an appropriate interpretation, since in this kind of generalizing context (‘Everyone who speaks a word against a man’) there is no real difference between the generic and indefinite senses. A good test of whether the alleged idiomatic generic sense can really be detected in the sayings examined in chapter 3 is to try the translation, ‘everyone in my position’, since the idiom means that what is said of bar enasha is said of every man in the class to which the speaker belongs. This translation appears possible in saying 5 (Mt. 9.6 = Mk 2.10–11 = Lk. 5.24), but impossible in sayings 2,4 and 6, because in these sayings what is said of bar enasha actually applies to one man only, even if there could in principle be other people to whom it could be applied. Thus in saying 2 (Mt. 11.19 = Lk. 7.34) Jesus is not suggesting that his hearers are saying, ‘Behold, a glutton and a drunkard…’ about a whole class of non-ascetic evangelists. It will not do to claim that ‘the generic bar enasha raises the matter to the level of a principle’,7 because the statement about bar enasha is not made in the form of a principle, but in the form of a statement of a specific fact about one man, precisely parallel to the preceding statement about John the Baptist. Bar enasha could be made generic only by changing the grammatic structure of the sentence and spoiling the parallelism with the statement about the Baptist. Of course, the statement does not exclude the possibility that there could be other people in a similar position (non-ascetic evangelists) who 6 7

Lindars, op. cit., p. 30. Ibid., p. 33.

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would incur the same treatment;8 but it does not refer to them. As a matter of fact, the translation of bar enasha which Lindars himself offers for this saying is not, ‘everyone in my position’ (or something of that kind), but ‘someone else’.9 This translation makes good sense, but ‘someone else’ is indefinite, not generic. The suspicion that ‘generic’ and ‘indefinite’ are being misleadingly equated is confirmed in the discussion of saying 4 (Lk. 11.30): ‘It is another case of the generic usage… Just as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites… so there is a man who will be a sign to the present generation’.10 But this is not a generic usage. ‘A man’ here is neither ‘each and every man’ nor ‘each and every member of a class of men’, but just one man. Bar enasha, in that case, would be indefinite (‘a man’, ‘someone’), not generic (‘each and every man’). The role of being a sign to the present generation might be one which a number of men could, in principle, fulfil, but the saying is a statement about only the one man who does (or will) fulfil it. Again, only a grammatical change (which Lindars suggests, but does not insist on, as the meaning of the postulated Aramaic original11) could make bar enasha generic here: ‘so a man may be to this generation’.12 Is it not easier to explain bar enash(a) as indefinite? Lindars makes the same move in the discussion of saying 5, where he offers the translation, ‘But that you may know that a man may have authority…’,13 but in the case of saying 6 no such suggestion is made. Lindars’s exegesis of saying 6 (Mt. 10.32–33 = Lk 12.8–9) is attractive and plausible, but it involves no real attempt to make bar enasha generic, as distinct from indefinite. Lindars’s paraphrase of the first half of the saying is: ‘All those who confess me before men will have a man to speak for them (i. e. an advocate) before the judgment seat of God…’ The point is intended to be that Jesus stresses that there will be an advocate, rather than that he himself will be the advocate (though this is implied). But then bar enasha means ‘someone’ (indefinite), not ‘each and every man’ (generic) or ‘each and every member of the class of men that includes me’ (idiomatic generic). In this saying, any appeal to the special idiom seems to have become quite redundant. According to Lindars’s own exegesis, Jesus is not identifying himself with some class of people (advocates at the last judgment) but referring to himself obliquely as ‘someone’. Reconsideration of sayings 2, 4 and 5 suggests that this is also likely to be the idiom there. 8 9 10 11 12 13

Cf. ibid., p. 33. Ibid., pp. 33, 174. Ibid., p. 41. Ibid., p. 42. Cf. ibid., p. 172. Ibid., p. 45; his italics.

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Besides the six Son of Man sayings discussed in chapter 3, Lindars believes that three passion predictions, discussed in chapter 4, are authentic because they use the alleged idiomatic generic idiom. The argument of this chapter (too intricate to be discussed here) involves reconstruction and interpretation of the sayings which can really only be justified if the alleged idiom has already been established as characteristic of Jesus’ usage. The argument of chapter 4 requires that of chapter 3 for its premise; it cannot come to its aid. I conclude that this highly ingenious attempt to make Jesus’ usage conform to an otherwise attested idiomatic use of bar nasha is a failure, though an heroic one. The idiom is not convincingly attested elsewhere, and it cannot explain all of even the small number of sayings of Jesus which Lindars judges authentic. However, as will become apparent, I do not consider Lindar’s exegetical work to be wasted.

Where do we go from here? Recent study of the available Jewish evidence seems to me to lead to the following two conclusions, which must be taken as premises for further discussion of ‘Son of Man’ in the Gospels: (1) ‘Son of Man’ was not a recognized title for an apocalyptic figure, and cannot therefore by itself constitute an allusion to Daniel 7.14 Only Son of Man sayings which otherwise allude to Daniel 7 could have been understood as allusions to the figure in Dan. 7.13 on the lips of Jesus. (2) The later Jewish evidence for the use of bar nash(a) as a self-reference seems to be evidence only for the properly generic use, where what is said of bar nash(a) is true of all men (unless the context provides an obvious qualification of ‘all’) and therefore also of the speaker. There is no real support for bar nash(a) as an exclusive self-reference equivalent to hahu gabra (Vermes),15 or for Lindars’s idiomatic generic use. These conclusions imply that, if Jesus’ use of ‘Son of Man’ conformed to an accepted usage for which we have evidence, there would seem to be only two possible types of authentic sayings: (1) Authentic Son of Man sayings are those in which allusion to Daniel 7 is explicit apart from the phrase ‘Son 14 For the growing acceptance of this point in recent scholarship, see G. Vermes, ‘The Present State of the “Son of Man” Debate’, JJS 29 (1978), pp. 130–32. 15 J. A. Fitzmyer, ‘Another View of the “Son of Man” Debate’, JSNT 4 (1979), p. 58, seems to admit that Vermes’s interpretation applies in one case: the Cairo geniza fragment of the Palestinian Targum to Gen. 4.14 (see Vermes, ‘The Use of BAR NASH ’, p. 159). Clearly bar nash is here a substitute for ‘I’, but it may be a substitute introduced precisely in order to give an additional, generic nuance: no man (such as Cain) can hide from God.

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of Man’ itself.16 (2) Authentic Son of Man sayings are those which conform to the properly generic use (Casey). However, neither of these possibilities is at all satisfactory. The major problem in each case is that such a body of authentic sayings makes it very difficult to account for the later proliferation of Son of Man sayings in the Gospel traditions, particularly in the light of Lindars’s very valuable study of the use of ‘Son of Man’ in Q and the four Gospels. Lindars shows that there was never a Son of Man Christology in the early church: the use of ‘Son of Man’ was purely a feature of the literary editing of the sayings of Jesus. But in that case there has to have been a sufficient body of authentic Son of Man sayings to establish ‘Son of Man’ as a characteristic self-designation of Jesus, which could then be extended to other sayings. Lindars also demonstrates that, although in the Gospels ‘Son of Man’ becomes at least quasi-titular, it is not understood as a true messianic title but as a self-designation of Jesus, which not even the Evangelists (except perhaps Mark) regard as everywhere carrying an allusion to Dan. 7.13. This makes it difficult to regard ‘Son of Man’ as a title for Jesus which originates purely from exegesis of Dan. 7.13. To account for Son of Man sayings which have nothing to do with Dan. 7.13, it seems there must have been some authentic sayings of this type. Thus the possibility that the original Son of Man sayings (whether authentic or not) were only sayings which allude to Dan. 7.13 is ruled out. But Casey’s view, that the only authentic sayings are those in which bar enash(a) can carry the properly generic sense, is also problematic. Very few sayings can plausibly be given this sense without becoming incredible (e. g. Mt. 8.20 = Lk. 9.58) or rather banal, and it could be argued that Casey, like Lindars, has extended his list of authentic sayings by including cases where the meaning he accepts is really indefinite, not generic.17 But the fewer the authentic Son of Man sayings and the more restricted the types of Son of Man sayings which are regarded as authentic, the more difficult it is to account for the existence of inauthentic Son of Man sayings. Three or four authentic sayings in which bar enash(a) means ‘mankind’ are not likely to have given the impression that the term was a characteristic self-designation of Jesus or to have suggested a connection with Dan. 7.13. 16 Against the thesis of A. J. B. Higgins, The Son of Man in the Teaching of Jesus (SNTSMS , 39; Cambridge, 1980), it is important to emphasize that, of the future Son of Man sayings, it is those in which the allusion to Dan. 7.13 is most explicit which have the best chance of authenticity, since the phrase ‘Son of Man’ itself cannot convey the idea of an eschatological judge. 17 E. g. Mt. 11.19 = Lk. 7.34, which M. Casey, Son of Man: The Interpretation and Influence of Daniel 7 (London, 1979), p. 229, calls a ‘general statement’, on the authority (ibid., p. 240 n. 13) of Colpe and Jeremias, but in fact both these scholars are quite explicit in interpreting it as indefinite, not generic: C. Colpe, TDNT, VIII , pp. 431–32 (especially n. 241), and J. Jeremias, New Testament Theology, I (E. Tr.; London, 1971), pp. 261–62.

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A further possibility, however, should be explored: that Jesus used bar enash (probably, rather than bar enasha) in the indefinite sense (‘a man’, ‘someone’), which is itself a very common usage,18 but used it as a form of deliberately oblique or ambiguous self-reference. This possibility has been suggested by my criticism of Lindars above, and would in fact preserve as correct a good deal of Lindars’s exegesis of the sayings he accepts as authentic.19 It should be noticed that although this use of bar enash is grammatically indefinite, meaning ‘someone’, in practice it can easily and naturally (like ‘someone’ in English) refer to a definite, though unidentified, person.20 (Vermes gives an example from jYeb. 13 a: ‘I am sending you bar nash like myself’.21) Thus it could be used as an oblique self-reference, in which the self-reference would normally be exclusive but implicit. Jesus would be referring to an unidentified ‘someone’, but those who fully understood his meaning would infer that the ‘someone’ was himself. Since the indefinite use (like ‘a man’ in English) can have a generic sense in certain contexts (e. g. jBer. 5 c; jKet. 35 a22), there will be no need to exclude the generic sense with self-reference in the few cases where it works (notably Mt. 12.32 = Lk 12.10), but in a much larger number of sayings the plausible meaning is indefinite, referring not to ‘everyone’ but to ‘someone’ (Mk 2.10 = Mt. 9.6 = Lk. 5.24; Mk. 2.28 = Mt. 12.8 = Lk 6.5; Mk. 8.31 = Lk. 9.22; Mk. 9.12; Mk. 9.31 = Mt. 17.22 = Lk 9.44; Mk. 10.33 = Mt. 22.18 = Lk. 18.31; Mk. 14.21 = Mt. 26.24 = Lk. 22.22; Mk. 14.41 = Mt. 26.45; Mt. 8.20 = Lk. 9.58; Mt. 11.19 = Lk. 7.34; Mt. 12.40 = Lk. 11.30; Mt. 26.2; Lk. 12.8–9 [cf. Mk. 8.38 = Lk. 9.26]; Lk. 22.48; Jn 1.51). This proposal permits the authenticity of a similar range of sayings to those accepted by Casey and Lindars (to determine precisely which sayings are, by this criterion, authentic, would of course require detailed discussion), while allowing them, in some cases, a more natural exegesis, in other cases, a very similar exegesis. It also has other advantages. It would not, in the first place, necessarily exclude the authenticity of some Son of Man sayings which allude to Daniel 7. (The most obvious candidate for authenticity here would be Mk. 14.62.) In such sayings, the use of the indefinite ‘a man’ (bar enash) would be neither a title nor unambiguously a self-reference, but a literal echo of Dan. 7.13 (ke-bar enash). There seems no reason why Jesus 18

Cf. Vermes, ‘The use of BAR NASH ’, pp. 155–56. The suggestion has been made with reference to a few sayings (J. Y. Campbell, ‘The Origin and Meaning of the Term Son of Man’, JTS 48 (1947), p. 152, of Mt. 11.19; Colpe, TDNT, VIII , pp. 430–33; Jeremias, op. cit., pp. 261–62, both of Mk 2.10; Mt. 11.19; Mt. 8.20), but I know of no attempt to see it as Jesus’ characteristic usage in a substantial number of sayings. 20 So Campbell, art. cit., pp. 151–52. 21 Vermes, ‘The Use of BAR NASH ’, p. 156. 22 Quoted in ibid., pp. 158–160. 19

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could not have exploited the coincidence between his accustomed form of oblique self-reference and the language of Dan. 7.13, so that bar enash in a saying alluding to Dan. 7.13 becomes the same kind of veiled hint of his own status as other authentic son of Man sayings convey. This would not at all imply that bar enash has any connection with Dan. 7.13 in sayings which do not themselves allude to Daniel 7. The indefinite use therefore permits the authenticity of a wide range of types of Son of Man sayings, including some future Son of Man sayings which allude to Daniel 7. This makes the process by which ‘Son of Man’, understood in Greek translation as quasi-titular,23 was extended to other sayings, whether freshly created sayings or sayings in which ‘Son of Man’ was not original, quite readily intelligible. Once ‘Son of Man’ was understood as quasi-titular, this extension was simply an extension of the same kind of usage as was known in the authentic sayings. It might appear a disadvantage of the proposal that it cannot appeal to parallels in later Jewish Aramaic.24 But if Jesus’ use of bar enash was a form of deliberately ambiguous self-reference, then ex hypothesi there do not need to be parallels to it. If Jesus had used a well established form of indirect self-reference, such as hahu gabra, the self-reference would have been explicit and easily recognized in most contexts.25 But if Jesus wished to refer to himself in a way which was not necessarily immediately obvious, so that his hearers had to infer or guess the self-reference, then it is understandable that he should adopt a way of speaking which was not so well recognized an idiom. For such a purpose the use of the indefinite ‘a man’ or ‘someone’ is well suited. It is in fact a relatively straightforward development of the natural use of ‘a man’ with reference to the speaker in contexts which make the reference entirely obvious (e. g. Jn 8.40).26 The ambiguity of the self-reference will vary from saying to saying, from cases where the self-reference is obvious in the context (Lk. 22.48), through cases where the self-reference is deliberately unstressed (Mt. 10.32–33 = Lk. 12.8–9, following Lindars’s exegesis), to cases where the saying has a somewhat enigmatic or riddling27 character (Lk. 11.30; the passion predic23 The translation of bar enash by the definite is sufficiently explained by the translator’s wish to avoid the ambiguity of Jesus’ own idiom: in his mind was a definite person, Jesus (cf. Casey, op. cit., p. 230). 24 But cf. Paul’s use of (as a modest form of self-reference) in 2 Cor. 12.2. 25 Of course, in particular contexts hahu gabra may be ambiguous, as Vermes (‘The Present State’, p. 126) shows; but it remains true that an established idiom has less scope for ambiguity than an innovatory idiom. 26 Note how easily the omission of in Jn 8.40 would produce an oblique selfreference quite comparable with Mt. 11.19 = Lk. 7.34. 27 Cf. e. g., indirect and riddling references to himself and his mission in Mt. 11.4–5 = Lk. 7.22; Mt. 12.41–42 = Lk. 11.32–33; Mk 3.27. For an interpretation of Son of Man say-

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tions28), and cases where some hearers might easily assume Jesus’ reference to be to a figure other than himself (sayings alluding to Daniel 7). This does not make the proposed usage inconsistent, but rather reveals an habitual form of oblique self-reference which in all cases expresses Jesus’ accustomed reticence about his status and authority, for which there is abundant evidence. The point is not that Jesus did not wish his God-given role and authority to be recognized, but that he wanted people to recognize them for themselves. Claims are easy to make and as easily dismissed. By his oblique self-reference Jesus avoided claims, but invited people to think for themselves about the implications of the undeniable facts of his ministry. Then, in the paradoxical situation of the suffering and rejected prophet, he made the only kind of claim which is appropriate to that situation: a reference to future vindication, in which the obliqueness of the self-reference serves to leave the vindication to God who alone can vindicate him. For the present, three brief illustrations must suffice: (1) Mk. 2.10–11. The reference to ‘a man’ follows naturally as a response to v. 7, but the point is not that Jesus’ healing of the paralytic demonstrates the general principle that men have authority to forgive sins. Jesus neither denies nor asserts that others have such authority, but points to his healing as evidence that at any rate one man, himself, does have it. Thus he claims no more than his deed demonstrates, and the obliqueness of the self-reference serves to make his authority not so much a claim as an inference which his hearers may draw for themselves from what they see. (2) Lk. 11.30. Here the self-reference is less obvious, more enigmatic, but the implication is similar. To those who see the significance of Jesus and his ministry, he is a sign. To those who do not, who cannot recognize the evidence which is before their eyes, there is no point in claiming to be a sign. All that can be said is that there is someone who is a sign. (3) Mt. 26.64 = Mk. 14.62 = Lk. 22.67–68. Jesus avoids a direct claim to messiahship which, if his accusers cannot believe it from the evidence they already have (cf. Lk. 22.67), he cannot prove. Although, in the context, the allusion to Dan. 7.13 must amount to a self-reference, the obliqueness makes his status one which he leaves it to God to vindicate. The allusion to Dan. 7.13 is made not because Jesus prefers the ‘title’ Son of Man to those offered by the high priest, but because (along with Ps. 110.1) it is appropriate to the thought of eschatological vindication and allows an indefinite third person reference. ings as riddling self-references, see also G. Lindeskog, ‘Das Rätsel des Menschensohnes’, Studia theologica 22 (1968), pp. 149–75, though he takes Son of Man to be an apocalyptic title. 28 Following Jeremias’s interpretation of these as riddles (op. cit., pp. 281–82).

8. The Apocalypses in the New Pseudepigrapha* The publication of The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (henceforth OTP), edited by J. H. Charlesworth,1 is a major event for the current renaissance of pseudepigrapha studies and for biblical studies generally. The purpose of this article is to offer some assessment of the treatment of apocalyptic literature in vol. 1 of OTP,2 with the interests of NT students and scholars especially in mind. OTP is the first collected edition of the pseudepigrapha in English translation since 1913, when The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (henceforth APOT), edited by R. H. Charles, was published. Its most obvious difference from APOT is the very much larger number of works which are included. APOT contained only six apocalyptic works (4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, 3 Baruch, 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch and Sib. Or. 3–5). OTP includes these six, three of them in longer forms (4 Ezra with the additional chs. 1–2, 15–16; 2 Enoch with the final chs. 69–73; and the complete collection of Sib. Or. 1–14), and in addition thirteen other works in its section ‘Apocalyptic Literature and Related Works’. None of these thirteen appear in APOT. In fact there are also two more works which really belong in this section of OTP, since they are unambiguously apocalypses (Ladder of Jacob and Ascension of Isaiah), but which have been assigned to vol. 2.3 OTP’s selection of apocalypses is also larger than that projected for the series Jüdische Schriften aus hellenistisch-römischer Zeit (henceforth JSHRZ) or included in The Apocryphal Old Testament, edited by H. F. D. Sparks.4 * First publication: Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26 (1986) 97–117; reprinted in: Evans / Porter ed., New Testament Backgrounds: A Sheffield Reader (Biblical Seminar 43; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) 67–88. 1 Vol. 1: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments (New York: Doubleday; London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1983). 2 In order to keep this article within reasonable bounds, I shall not discuss the testaments, which are also in vol. 1, even though some of them include apocalyptic material. 3 Since this article was written before the publication of vol. 2, I cannot discuss these two works. Presumably they are included in vol. 2 because they are regarded as legendary expansions of the OT , but they are no more so than 1 Enoch or the Apocalypse of Abraham, both of which include narrative material as well as apocalyptic visions. 4 This volume, from Oxford University Press, was not yet published when this article was written. I owe the information about its contents and those of JSHRZ to J. H. Char-

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Of course, biblical scholars have never depended solely on APOT for their knowledge of the pseudepigrapha, but it has tended to influence their sence of the range of pseuepigraphical works which are really relevant as ‘background’ to the NT . Certainly, the common views of the character of ancient Jewish apocalyptic have been largely based on APOT’s selection of apocalypses, and illuminating parallels to the NT have usually been sought in these. The standard studies of apocalyptic are based on these apocalypses, usually with the addition of the Apocalypse of Abraham. As OTP becomes the standard work of reference, this may or may not change. Much depends on whether OTP’s additional apocalypses can really be treated as in any way reliable evidence for the Judaism of the NT period, a question which requires careful assessment in each case. In what follows I shall offer comments on OTP’s treatment of each apocalyptic work, with the exception of the two calendrical works (Treatise of Shem and Revelation of Ezra), which belong in a distinct category of their own. These comments will, I hope, be of use to those who will be using OTP as a work of reference. I shall then offer some more general comments on the range of apocalypses which have been selected for inclusion in OTP. (1) 1 Enoch (E. Isaac) is probably the most important non-canonical apocalypse for students of the NT , though its direct influence on the NT has often been vastly exaggerated (as here: p. 10). It has also been the object of a great deal of important recent research, rather little of which is reflected in Isaac’s introduction and notes. Essentially Isaac gives us an introduction to and translation of the Ethiopic version of 1 Enoch. Controversy is likely to surround his use of the Ethiopic manuscripts, in particular his judgment that one manuscript (Lake Tana 9) is not only the oldest but very much the best, so that its readings are usually to be preferred.5 His translation is of this manuscript, correcting only its obvious errors, though many variants in other manuscripts are given in the apparatus. As far as a reader who is not an Ethiopic scholar can judge, a fair number of this manuscript’s unique or unusual readings are preferable, sometimes because they agree with the Greek version against other Ethiopic manuscripts (e. g. at 1,9; 24.5), but its readings cannot be preferable in every instance. This translation may supplement, but cannot replace, that of Knibb (whose edition of Ethiopic Enoch6 appeared after Isaac’s work was completed).

lesworth, The Pseudepigrapha and Modern Research with a Supplement (SBLSCS , 7S; Chico: Scholars Press, 1981), pp. 29–30. 5 This judgment is maintained in greater detail in E. Isaac, ‘New Light Upon the Book of Enoch from Newly-Found Ethiopic MSS ’, JOAS 103 (1983), pp. 399–411. 6 M. A. Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978).

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The Greek versions of 1 Enoch are cited quite often in the apparatus, the Qumram Aramaic fragments only rarely. But the latter, though very fragmentary, are evidence of 1 Enoch in its (probably) original language, while the Greek versions cover about forty chapters of the book. In view of the special importance of 1 Enoch among the pseudepigrapha, should we not have been given translations of all versions, Greek, Ethiopic, and Aramaic, in parallel columns? (2) 2 Enoch (F. I. Andersen). Of all the apocalypses in APOT, 2 Enoch has always been the most puzzling and controversal. Some have insisted that it is Christian and of relatively late date, and the problems of provenance and date have scarcely been helped by disagreements over the relative priority of the two recensions, longer and shorter. Andersen’s principal achievement is to provide us with a translation (of the two recensions in parallel) based on more and better manuscripts than previous translations, though he is the first to insist on its provisionality. More work on the text still needs to be done before we have an entirely secure basis for answering other questions. Andersen rightly argues that the question of priority between the two recensions should not be hastily answered: the evidence is too complicated to allow the assumption that either the shortest or the longest text is always the original. Andersen inclines to regard 2 Enoch as an ancient work from some group (perhaps of God-fearers) on the fringes of Judaism, but he is more frankly cautious about his conclusions than many contributors to this volume: ‘In every respect 2 Enoch remains an enigma. So long as the date and location remain unknown, no use can be made of it for historical purposes’ (p. 97). Rereading 2 Enoch in Andersen’s translation, I found myself constantly deciding that the material must be ancient. But a great deal of patient study of all the available parallels to 2 Enoch’s contents will be necessary before NT scholars are able to base anything on quotations from 2 Enoch. (3) 3 Enoch (P. Alexander) is the one Merkabah text already quite well known to NT scholars, through Odeberg’s edition and translation. Alexander’s improved translation is based on a corrected text, and is accompanied by abundant, very informative notes. The introduction is in fact a masterly brief introduction to Merkabah mysticism in general, including its relationship to ancient Jewish apocalyptic and specifically to some of the texts in OTP. The links between aspects of apocalyptic texts of the first and second centuries ad and the Merkabah texts are becoming increasingly apparent, and make an acquaintance with the latter essential for scholars interested in the former. Perhaps this justifies the inclusion of at least one Merkabah text in OTP, but not necessarily the inclusion of this text, which, despite its dependence on some very old traditions, is in Alexander’s view to be dated in the fifth or sixth century ad, i. e. it is probably not, as Odeberg thought,

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one of the earliest, but one of the later, Merkabah texts. Reliable translations of the other major texts are an urgent need. (4) Sibylline Oracles (J. J. Collins). Although the Sibylline Oracles are part Jewish, part Christian, and were written over a long period (book 14 is probably seventh-century), they form a continuous tradition of writing, and it is extremely useful to have for the first time an accessible translation of the whole collection, with excellent introductions and notes. Particularly neglected but important are the Jewish parts of books 1–2, which were left out of APOT, and also out of Hennecke’s New Testament Apocrypha, in which translations of only the Christian parts of books 1–2 were given.7 However, Collins overestimates the possible extent of Jewish material in book 2 (p. 330), because he has taken no account of M. R. James’s demonstration that 2.196–338 is dependent on the Apocalypse of Peter8 (in fact, it is largely a poetic paraphrase of Apoc. Pet. 4–14). Since the passages in book 2 which are paralleled in book 8 (p. 332) are precisely the parts of this section which are not borrowed from the Apocalypse of Peter, the priority of book 8 to book 2 can also be demonstrated, with implications for the date of both books. (5) Apocryphon of Ezekiel (J. R. Mueller and S. E. Robinson). The Apocryphon of Ezekiel survives only in a few fragments: the five which can be fairly securely identified are translated here (though the two longest are not, despite the claim in the section heading, new translations). Clement of Alexandria in fact gives a little more of fragment 5 than is translated here (while the Chester Beatty papyrus gives a good deal more, but in a highly fragmentary, untranslatable state). It would have been useful to have had some reference to other possible fragments (such as the quotation in Tertullian, De res. 22). That the work dates from the late first century bc or early first century ad is well established. Its parable of the resurrection (the longest fragment) is well known, but has probably not been given the attention it deserves as evidence of Jewish ideas about resurrection in NT times. It also has some relevance to the study of Gospel parables (cf. Matt. 22.2; Mark 12.9), as may the expansion of Ezekiel’s image of the shepherd in fragment 5. (6) Apocalypse of Zephaniah (O. S. Wintermute). Of the apocalypses which OTP adds to APOT’s selection, this is the only one which has a real chance of being a pre-Christian Jewish work (apart from the fragmentary Apocryphon of Ezekiel). It has also been extraordinarily neglected by schol7 E. Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha, ed. W. Schneemelcher and R. McL. Wilson (London: Lutterworth, 1963, 1965), II , pp. 709–19. 8 M. R. James, ‘A New Text of the Apocalypse of Peter’, JTS 12 (1911), pp. 39–44, 51–52. The material is all ultimately Jewish in origin, but reached the Sibylline Oracle via the Apocalypse of Peter.

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ars.9 Its inclusion in OTP is therefore fully justified, and any discussion which served to bring it to general scholarly attention would be welcome. While Wintermute’s treatment is not wholly satisfactory, it is a significant start. His notes to the text are gratifyingly extensive. It is unfortunate that he apparently wrote before Martha Himmelfarb’s dissertation became available:10 her discussion of the Apocalypse of Zephaniah (which she continues to call ‘the Anonymous Apocalypse’) within the broad context of tours of hell in Jewish and Christian apocalyptic is one of the most important contributions so far to the study of this apocalypse. It has the general effect of vindicating a fairly early date. Wintermute has also missed Scholem’s discussion of the passage quoted by Clement of Alexandria:11 both Scholem and Himmelfarb would have alerted him to the contacts between these texts and the Merkabah literature. The texts in question are three: a short quotation in Clement of Alexandria, a brief manuscript fragment in Sahidic, and a long manuscript fragment in Akhmimic. The two Coptic fragments are from manuscripts which also contained the Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah. Clement’s quotation is explicitly said to be from the Apocalypse of Zephaniah; the Sahidic fragment contains the words, ‘I, Zephaniah, saw these things in my vision’; but the Akhmimic fragments contains no indication of the identity of the seer (and has therefore sometimes been called the Anonymous Apocalypse). Two problems arise: (a) Are Clement’s quotation and the Sahidic fragment from the same Apocalypse of Zephaniah? (b) Are the Sahidic and Akhmimic fragments from the same work? Wintermute answers both questions affirmatively, but probably with too much assurance. It is true that the two Coptic fragments are closely related in style and content, but we could be dealing with two distinct apocalypses, either by the same author or one based on the other. My hesitation about identifying the Akhmimic text as the Apocalypse of Zephaniah arises from 6.10, in which the seer refers to events of the Babylonian exile as past historical events. This could be a slip on the author’s part, but ancient pseudepigraphal writers, including apocalyptists, were usually careful to avoid such blatant anachronisms. (In the apocalypses in this volume, I think the only other examples are Greek Apocalypse of Ezra 9 Surprisingly it is not mentioned in G. W. E. Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature Between the Bible and the Mishnah (London: SCM Press, 1981) or in C. Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalpytic in Judaism and Early Christianity (London: SPCK , 1982). 10 M. Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell: The Development and Transmission of an Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature (diss.; University of Pennsylvania, 1981; University Microfilms 8117791). I have not yet seen this work in its published form (Philadelphia, 1983). 11 G. G. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 21965), pp. 18–19.

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1.19; 2.1; 4.11; 5.22; Vision of Ezra 38; Apocalypse of Sedrach 15.2–5 – an indication that the authors or redactors of these late Christian apocalypses had lost any real sense of the historical identity of the pseudonym.) If the seer is therefore a post-exilic OT figure,12 not many candidates are available. I wonder whether the text might be the Apocalypse of Zechariah,13 which in the Stichometry of Nicephorus is listed after the Apocalypses of Elijah and Zephaniah.14 Some support for this suggestion, which can only be conjecture, may come from the fact that the visions are partly modelled on those of Zech. 1–6 (though this is also true of the Sahidic fragment).15 At any rate, the relationship between the Sahidic and Akhmimic texts cannot be regarded as settled. Just as problematic is the relationship between these texts and the quotation in Clement: the difficulties in supposing that the latter is from the same work as even the Sahidic fragment alone seem to me greater than Wintermute allows (p. 500). I agree with Wintermute that there is no reason to regard the Coptic texts as (a) Christian work(s), though I am more inclined than he is to see 10.9 as a minor Christian embellishment. On the other hand, 8.9 (‘my sons…’) does not have to be a ‘homiletical aside’, indicating that the text was meant to be read in a religious assembly. It could be that the seer is represented as recounting his visions to his sons (cf. Isaiah’s apostrophes to ‘Hezekiah and Jasub my son’, which punctuate his account of his vision in Ascension of Isaiah 4.1; 8.24; 9.22; 11.16), perhaps in a testamentary context (cf. Enoch’s account of his visions, mixed with homiletical comments to his sons, in 2 Enoch 40–47). The extraordinary incoherence of the Akhmimic text (which not even the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra equals) must, it seems to me, result from abbreviation. We know from other cases where more than one recension survives that scribes not infrequently tried to abbreviate apocalypses (cf. 2 Enoch, 3 Baruch, Ascension of Isaiah, Apocalypse of Peter), sometimes resulting in the kind of non sequiturs and abrupt transitions which the Akhmimic text here shows. But in that case we cannot rely on the length 12

A NT pseudonym seems ruled out by the purely OT context of the account: cf. 3.4; 6.10; 7.7; 9.4; 11.4. 13 The quotation which Origen (comment on Eph. 4.27, in J. A. F. Gregg (ed.), ‘The Commentary of Origen upon the Epistle to the Ephesians: Part III ’, JTS 3 [1902], p. 554) ascribes to Zechariah the father of John (cf. next note) would not be out of place in the work of which the Akhmimic text is part. 14 It is there called, ‘Of Zechariah the father of John’, but this may be a mistaken Christian identification of the seer. The ancient lists of apocryphal books nevertheless include this work among the OT apocrypha in the chronological position of Zechariah the prophet. 15 This dependence on Zech. 1–6 needs to be studied in connection with Himmelfarb’s study of the ‘demonstrative explanations’ in tours of hell: Tours of Hell, ch. 3.

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given for the Apocalypse of Zephaniah (or for the Apocalypse of Zechariah) in the Stichometry of Nicephorus for calculations related to our fragment (cf. OTP, pp. 497–98). The manuscript which contained our Akhmimic fragment could have included abbreviated versions of two apocalypses (Apocalypse of Zephaniah and Apocalypse of Zechariah?) as well as the Apocalypse of Elijah. Probably the most important aspect of the Coptic texts is that they may well be, along with a fragment of the Apocalypse of Elijah,16 the earliest examples, in the apocalyptic tradition, of detailed visions of the punishments of the damned in hell. The tradition of such visions is very old (cf. 1 Enoch 22; 27), and from brief references to such visions in apocalypses which do not actually describe them (2 Apoc. Bar. 59.10–11; Apocalypse of Abraham 21.3; Ascension of Isaiah 1.3;17 4 Ezra 7.84; 3 Apoc. Bar. 16.4 S; 2 Enoch 40–41; cf. Bib. Ant. 23.6), we can be sure that they were to be found in apocalypses of the NT period. Scholars have tended to think of the genre of the apocalyptic tour of the punishments of hell as belonging to a later period, from the second century ad onwards,18 but in fact the evidence is good that it flourished already in the first century ad.19 These Coptic ‘Apocalypse of Zephaniah’ texts may well be among the early sources of the whole tradition. At least in the present abbreviated texts, they refer only in a perfunctory way (9.4) to the parallel tradition of visions of the bliss of the righteous in paradise. These rather extended comments may serve to welcome one of the more important ‘newcomers’ to the pseudepigrapha, and also to indicate that much work needs to be done on it. (7) 4 Ezra (B. M. Metzger). Here the words ‘a new translation’ included in the title of this, as of other sections of the volume, are quite misleading: the translation is that of the rsv Apocrypha (prepared by Metzger), first

16 This is the fragment quoted in the apocryphal Epistle of Titus. It is published, with related material, in M. E. Stone and J. Strugnell, The Books of Elijah: Parts 1–2 (SBLTT , 18; Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1979), pp. 14–26. 17 In my opinion this is not meant to be a reference to any of the contents of the present Ascension of Isaiah, but refers to a lost Testament of Hezekiah, which must have been a work of the first century ad or earlier, in which Hezekiah described his descent to Hades (the idea no doubt developed from Isa. 38). 18 The classic treatments are the Christian apocalypses of Peter, Paul and the Virgin; cf. also, in OTP, the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra and the Vision of Ezra. In both Jewish and early Christian apocalyptic the genre flourished right through the medieval period. 19 The account of the punishments in hell in the early second century Apocalypse of Peter must be based on a Jewish apocalypse, perhaps that of Elijah: cf. my discussion in ‘The Apocalpyse of Peter: An Account of Research’, in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (ed. H. Temporini und W. Haase; Berlin, New York: de Gruyter), 2.25.6, pp. 4712–4750; and Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, ch. 5.

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published in 1957, and only slightly amended here.20 Notes to the text are purely textual, and the marginal references do not even include the important parallels in 2 Baruch. The study of 4 Ezra is not advanced by this contribution, but probably we should not expect it to be, since 4 Ezra is one of the few non-canonical apocalypses on which much of the basic scholarly work has already been done. Much more disappointing is the treatment of the additions to the original apocalypse: chs. 1–2 (5 Ezra) and 15–16 (6 Ezra), which were not included in APOT, though they have always been well known from their inclusion in the Protestant Apocrypha, as well as the appendix to the Vulgate. OTP includes them as part of the translation of 4 Ezra, bur readers are given practically no guidance on what to make of them. Metzger’s introduction to 4 Ezra scarcely mentions them, except to inform us (with unjustified dogmatism) that ‘Near the middle or in the second half of the third century four chapters were added… by one or more Christian writers’ (p. 520). In fact, 5 Ezra has been most commonly and most plausibly dated in the second century, as most recently by Daniélou21 and by Stanton.22 It is scarcely conceivable that both 5 and 6 Ezra come from the same author. 5 Ezra is a patently Jewish Christian work. In the case of 6 Ezra, which lacks any overtly Christian characteristics, the Jewish or Christian origin of the text is certainly open to debate, Against the usual, but not very wellfounded, belief in its Christian origin, Schrage23 and Harnisch24 have argued that it is a purely Jewish apocalyptic work, to be dated perhaps earlier than 4 Ezra. Such arguments should have been discussed and assessed in OTP, which may thus have missed an important opportunity of rehabilitating a neglected Jewish apocalypse. Even if 5 and 6 Ezra are both Christian, they bear the same kind of relationship to underlying Jewish apocalyptic traditions as do several other Christian works included in OTP, and are also probably earlier in date than the other Ezra apocalypses (apart from 4 Ezra) which OTP includes. They therefore merit the same kind of extended treatment as pseudepigraphal works in their own right. Furthermore, the same principles which have led to the inclusion of 5 and 6 Ezra and the later apocrypha in OTP should also have led to the inclu20

Metzger points this out: OTP, p. 518. J. Daniélou, The Origins of Latin Christianity (ET , ed. J. A. Baker; London: Darton, Longman & Todd; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), p. 18. 22 G. N. Stanton, ‘5 Ezra and Matthean Christianity in the Second Century’, JTS 28 (1977), pp. 67–83. 23 W. Schrage, ‘Die Stellung zur Welt bei Paulus, Epiktet und in der Apokalyptik. Ein Beitrag zu 1 Kor 7,29–31’, ZTK 61 (1964), pp. 139–54. 24 W. Harnisch, Eschatologische Existenz (FRLANT , 110; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973), pp. 72–74. 21

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sion of a translation of the Armenian version of 4 Ezra.25 This is, in effect, a rather thoroughly revised version of 4 Ezra, including substantial additions to the text. Stone argues that these did not originate in Armenian, but derive from the Greek text behind the Armenian version and date from the fourth century at the latest. Though they constitute a Christian version of 4 Ezra, they may depend on early Jewish sources.26 The inclusion of these additions to 4 Ezra in OTP would have been particularly useful because they belong to the same category of material inspired by 4 Ezra as do the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra, the Vision of Ezra and the Apocalypse of Sedrach. With their inclusion, OTP could have given us a fairly complete collection of apocalyptic works inspired by 4 Ezra.27 Another missed opportunity! (8) Greek Apocalypse of Ezra (M. E. Stone). The translation of this work was made from one manuscript (that used by Tischendorf) and was completed before the publication of Wahl’s edition of the text,28 which is based on two manuscripts, but in fact the latter would have made practically no difference to the translation. The introduction and notes are thorough and learned, and constitute the fullest study of this work so far produced (fuller than Müller’s in JSHRZ).29 It is important to realize that this work’s OT pseudonym, which is one of the criteria for its inclusion in OTP, probably results simply from the fact that its author took 4 Ezra as a model for the kind of work he wished to write (a debate with God about his righteousness and mercy in judging sinners). It is no necessary indication of the Jewish (as opposed to Christian) character of its contents, and there is no real reason to regard this work (which is unquestionably Christian in its present form) as a Christian edition of an earlier Jewish apocalypse. (The same comments apply to other Ezra apocrypha: Vision of Ezra and Questions of Ezra.). As Stone recognizes, the work itself is Christian, but, as both the jumbled nature of its contents and the parellels with other works indicate, it is closely reliant on several sources, probably Jewish as well as Christian. That there is ancient Jewish apocalyptic material here is very probable. Its reliable identification 25

M. E. Stone, The Armenian Version of IV Ezra (University of Pennsylvania Armenian Texts and Studies 1; Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1979). 26 Stone, Armenian Version, p. ix; cf. also M. E. Stone, ‘Jewish Apocryphal Literature in the Armenian Church’, Le Muséon 95 (1982), p. 292. Stone promises to give detailed evidence for this in his forthcoming Textual Commentary on the Armenian Version of 4 Ezra. 27 The Syriac Apocalypse of Ezra and the Falasha Apocalypse of Ezra are also inspired by 4 Ezra. 28 O. Wahl (ed.), Apocalypsis Esdrae, Apocalypsis Sedrach, Visio Beati Esdrae (PVTG , 4; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977). 29 Once again, it is a pity that it was written too soon to take account of Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell.

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must await further study especially in conjunction with paralled material in other Jewish and Christian apocalypses. In view of the nature of the work and the state of scholarship on it, Stone wisely draws almost no conclusions about date or provenance: ‘a date sometime between ad 150 and 850 is probable. Its provenance cannot be discerned’ (p. 563). (9) Vision of Ezra (J. R. Mueller and G. A. Robbins). This work is quite closely related to the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra, but the relationship is not one of simple dependence in either direction. I would be inclined to date it later than the Greek Apocalypse, partly because the role of Ezra is further removed from his role in 4 Ezra, which provided the original inspiration for this cycle of Ezra apocalypses. However, even the date which Mueller and Robbins suggest (between 350 and 600 ad) is, on present evidence, too precise: it might even be earlier, it could certainly be later. As Mueller and Robbins recognize, this work’s closest relationships (apart from with other works in the Ezra cycle) are with the apocalypses of Peter, Paul and the Virgin, and the apocryphal Apocalypse of John. This raises an important issue about the criteria for inclusion in a collection of OT pseudepigrapha. All these apocalypses, whether they bear OT or NT pseudonyms, are Christian works which draw on Jewish apocalyptic sources and traditions. In fact, the Apocalypses of Peter and Paul are probably closer to ancient Jewish apocalyptic sources than are the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra and the Vision of Ezra. To distinguish here between OT pseudepigrapha, which bear an OT pseudonym, and NT apocrypha, which bear a NT pseudonym, is to draw a quite artificial distinction among works which are closely related to each other and are equally useful, but also equally problematic, means of access to Jewish apocalyptic traditions. (10) Questions of Ezra (M. E. Stone), of which Recension B is here published in translation for the first time, is an intriguing work, much of whose content must surely go back to ancient Jewish sources. But not even Stone can decide whether it originated in Armenian or not. This is an extreme case of the tantalizing character of so many of the ostensibly late pseudepigrapha, which seem to preserve early material but offer no clues to their time of origin. (11) Apocalypse of Sedrach (S. Agourides). It is annoying to find that this work has been given verse numbers which do not correspond to those in Wahl’s edition (1977).30 Although Agourides’s work was completed without knowledge of Wahl’s edition, the verse numbers could easily have been brought into line with what is likely to remain the standard edition of the Greek text. 30

See n. 28 above.

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This work is related to the apocalypses of the Ezra cycle, but presses further the theme of the seer’s debate with God in relation to his compassion for sinners. Agourides’s arguments for seeing it as a Jewish work which has been only superficially Christianized should be considered carefully, but do not carry complete conviction. The claim that much of its doctrinal content is ‘atypical of medieval Christianity’ (p. 606) is too broad a generalization to be useful. In the many centuries of Christian history during which the Apocalypse of Sedrach could, on present evidence, have originated, there is plenty of evidence of minority Christian viewpoints not dissimilar to those of the apocalypse. Its general doctrinal tendency is consistent, for example, with the views of some of the ‘merciful’ Christians (misericordes) reported by Augustine (De civ. Dei 21,17–27). Views less extreme but tending in the same direction are found in the Apocalypse of Paul and the Apocalypse of the Virgin, and even though their ideas about mercy for the damned probably derive from Jewish sources, the popularity of these apocalypses shows that there were Christian circles in which such ideas were welcomed and propagated.31 Moreover, the apocalyptic genre of the seer’s debate with God was attractive precisely to writers, whether Jewish or Christian, who wanted a vehicle for some degree of protest against the official theology. The attribution of the apocalypse to Sedrach is not easy to explain if it is Christian, but not much easier to explain if it is Jewish. The problem disappears if we accept the suggestion32 that the name is a corruption of Ezra. This is not to deny that Jewish sources have undoubtedly been used (e. g. the substitution of Christ for Michael in ch. 9 is transparent), but the identification of Jewish material requires caution. The intriguing possibility that 6.4–6 preserves a pre-Christian parable of the prodigal son, which Jesus deliberately adapted to make a different point, should not be dismissed without further consideration, but it is also possible that the author has deliberately used only the beginning of Jesus’ parable (as he understood it), leaving open the possibility of the prodigal’s repentance, which forms the theme of the later part of his work. (12) 2 Baruch (A. F. J. Klijn). Klijn’s introduction is largely a translation of his German introduction in JSHRZ. It is a commendably thorough treatment within its scope. (13) 3 Baruch (H. E. Gaylord, Jr) is the most neglected of the apocalypses which were included in APOT, no doubt partly because it seems to have little relevance to NT studies. But this neglect is mistaken, arising as it does 31 On the place of the teaching of these apocalypses, as well as the Apocalypses of Sedrach and Ezra, in the early Christian tradition, see now E. Lupieri, ‘Poena aeterna nelle più antiche apocalissi cristiane apocrife non gnostiche’, Augustinianum 2 (1983), pp. 361–72. 32 M. E. Stone, ‘The Metamorphosis of Ezra’, JTS 33 (1982), p. 6.

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from the tendency to restrict relevance to the mere search for parallels. A proper understanding of early Christianity requires a rounded picture of the religious context in which it originated and grew, and in this sense it is as important for the student of the NT to understand aspects of contemporary Judaism which bear little resemblance to anything in the NT as it is for him to study those which influenced early Christianity. If early Christians did not share the concerns of 3 Baruch, it is at least worth asking why they did not. Precisely because the NT scholar is unlikely to find 3 Baruch very interesting, he should make the effort to study it! It is a post-70 ad Jewish apocalypse which reacts very differently to the catastrophe from the way in which the authors of 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch reacted. Baruch’s attention is turned away from the fate of the earthly Jerusalem and the problems of history and eschatology, and towards the mysteries of the heavenly realms. But this interest (which includes meteorological and astronomical topics as well as more obviously religious subjects) had always been a feature of the Jewish apocalypses, as we have recently been becoming more aware. 3 Baruch survives both in Greek and in a Slavonic version. As in APOT, the translations of the two versions are here printed in parallel, since the differences between the two are such that any other treatment of them would be very misleading. By far the most important advance on APOT is in the textual basis for the translation of the Slavonic and in the resulting estimation of the value of the Slavonic for access to the original apocalypse. The translation is based on Gaylord’s forthcoming edition of the Slavonic text, for which he has examined all known manuscripts of the Slavonic (though, unfortunately, in one respect the translation here is not as definitive as that in his forthcoming edition will be: see p. 655). From this it now becomes clear that where the Slavonic and the Greek diverge, it is the Slavonic that is frequently more original and represents a less Christianized version of the apocalypse than the extant Greek manuscripts do. Thus Gaylord’s work on the Slavonic not only takes us closer to the original apocalypse; it also increases our confidence that 3 Baruch is an originally Jewish work. (Gaylord himself is unwilling to assert this last conclusion, because he thinks that too sharp a distinction between Jewish and Christian works in the first two centuries ad may be artificial. He has a point.) Gaylord’s work on 3 Baruch is thus a striking instance of the great importance of work on the Slavonic versions of the pseudepigrapha. Gaylord seems to me too cautious about identifying 3 Baruch with the Baruch apocryphon known to Origen, especially since he concludes for other reasons that 3 Baruch was written before Origen. The problem is that there were seven heavens in the work known to Origen, whereas in both our versions of 3 Baruch Baruch gets no further than the fourth heaven. However, precisely Gaylord’s vindication of the greater originality of the

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Slavonic indicates that both our versions of 3 Baruch are abbreviated. 16.4–8 in the Slavonic must be an abbreviation of an originally longer ending in which Baruch travelled to higher heavens in order to view the punishments of the damned and the resting-place of the righteous. An early abbreviation of 3 Baruch by Christian copyists is easily explained, in that material on hell and paradise was readily available in well-known early Christian apocalypses such as those of Peter and Paul (the latter perhaps drew some of its material on these subjects from 3 Baruch), whereas 3 Baruch would have been copied and read for the sake of its more unusual material on the contents of the lower heavens. (14) Apocalypse of Abraham (R. Rubinkiewicz and H. G. Lunt). There can be no real doubt about the Apocalypse of Abraham’s place among the ancient Jewish apocalypses: it should be the least controversial of OTP’s additions to the apocalypses in APOT. But since it has been preserved only in Slavonic, there is room for doubt about the originality of everything in the Slavonic version. Rubinkiewicz’s suggestions of Bogomil interpolations (p. 684)33 probably go too far (23.5–11 seems to me the passage most likely to have been adapted under Bogomil influence), but in a Slavonic apocryphon they are always possible. Nor can we tell what might have been omitted as objectionable in Bogomil eyes (e. g. reference to bodily resurrection). However, most of the contents of the apocalypse have sufficient parallels in other early Jewish documents to give us confidence in their originality. The translation offers few really major differences from that of Box and Landsman,34 but it has a better textual basis, and it stays closer to the original, with the result that, so far from clearing up obscurities in Box and Landsman’s translation, it extends obscurity to passages Box and Landsman had made relatively clear. It is as well that the English reader thereby gains a sense of the real difficulty of the Slavonic text. The French translation in the new edition by Philonenko-Sayor and Philonenko35 (which appeared too late to be noticed here) quite often makes plausible sense of passages which Rubinkiewicz and Hunt deliberately leave obscure.36 The scholar who cannot read Slavonic will probably have the best access he can have to the text by using these two new translations together. 33 He discussed these at greater length in R. Rubinkiewicz, ‘La vision de l’histoire dans l’Apocalypse d’Abraham’, in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (ed. H. Temporini and W. Haase; Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1979), 2.19.1. 34 G. H. Box and J. I. Landsman, The Apocalypse of Abraham (London: SPCK , 1918). 35 B. Philonenko-Sayor and M. Philonenko, L’Apocalypse d’Abraham: Introduction, texte slave, traduction et notes (= Sem 31 [1981]). 36 E. g. their paraphrase of 10.12 (10.11 in OTP’s numbering) is clearly, in the light of the following verse, the correct interpretation.

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The notes are purely textual. For help in understanding the text the reader must go to Box (whose notes are still very useful) and to Philonenko. The introduction is also disappointing: the work’s relation to other Abraham traditions, its close affinity with the Ladder of Jacob, its important relationship to Merkabah mysticism, all go unmentioned. Its particular response to the fall of Jerusalem is hardly adequately characterized. (15) Apocalypse of Adam (G. MacRae) is the only Gnostic apocalypse included in OTP, chosen because of its arguably pre-Christian character. (16) Apocalypse of Elijah (O. S. Wintermute). There was an ancient Jewish Apocalypse of Elijah, probably existing as early as the first century ad, but this is not it. The ancient apocalypse survives probably in three reliably attributed quotations, the rather complex evidence for which has been collected in the edition by Stone and Strugnell.37 These are more reliable evidence for the contents of the original apocalypse than anything in the Coptic Apoclaypse of Elijah, which is translated here, and should certainly have been included in OTP (they are nearly as extensive as the fragments of the Apocryphon of Ezekiel). It seems that out of the original Jewish Apocalypse of Elijah developed two later works, whose precise relationship to it can only be guessed: the Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah, translated here, which in its present form is a Christian work of perhaps the forth century, and the Hebrew Apocalypse of Elijah, which, although in its present form is later, is as likely as the Coptic Apocalypse to preserve material from the original apocalypse. It could well have been included in OTP, both for this reason and as a representative of the large body of medieval Hebrew apocalypses, in the same way as 3 Enoch is included as a representative of the Hekalot literature. The Coptic Apocalypse itself is an interesting work, for which Wintermute provides a thorough introduction and useful notes. He is wisely cautious about the identification of a Jewish stratum (though he is sure it exists) until much more work on this and related documents is one. It is not clear to me how his suggestion (plausible in itself) that the title Apocalypse of Elijah is only a secondary identification resulting from the Christian account of Elijah’s martyrdom (p. 722), is consistent with his acceptance of the view that a common ancestor lies behind this and the Hebrew Apocalypse of Elijah (p. 729). He has not noticed the Coptic Apocalypse’s dependence on the Apocalypse of Peter (at 3.1–4; 5.26–29). (17) Apocalypse of Daniel (G. T. Zervos). Again it is an unnecessary inconvenience to have the text divided into chapters and verses different from those in Berger’s edition,38 which is bound to remain the standard edition of 37 38

Stone and Strugnell, Books of Elijah. K. Berger, Die griechische Daniel-Diegese (SPB , 27; Leiden; E. J. Brill, 1976).

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the text (despite some deficiencies: OTP, p. 756) and the fullest commentary on the work. Zervos folllows Berger in dating the work to the early ninth century, on the basis of an alleged reference to the coronation of Charlemagne in 7.14. Even if this reference is not quite certain, the date is approximately correct. This is therefore one of the very large number of Byzantine apocalypses from the early medieval period, which include a confusingly large number of other Daniel apocalypses, the Armenian Vision of Enoch, and the several versions of Pseudo-Methodius. The fact that this text is attributed in one manuscript to Daniel and in another to Methodius is an indication of the fact that in the Byzantine period these were regarded as the two most appropriate pseudonyms for historical-eschatological apocalypses. Whether there is any particular justification for choosing this rather than other Byzantine apoclypses for inclusion in OTP I am not sure,39 but it is an extremely interesting work, which illustrates rather well the way in which such late apocalypses do preserve early material. But Berger’s commentary on this work (invaluable as an introduction to the whole field of later Christian apocalyptic) is an education in the vast complexity of the task of understanding how early traditions passed to an through such later apocalypses.

General comments It is likely that OTP will be criticized for including works which are too late and / or too Christian to be evidence for the Judaism of the period before 200 ad. There probably are some works which should not have been included. On the other hand, provided readers of OTP are fully aware of the character of the late works and of the problems of detecting early Jewish material in such works, inclusiveness can well be regarded as a virtue. Widening horizons is always better than restricting them. Many of the apocalyptic ‘newcomers’ in OTP merit at least further study, which may or may not vindicate their relevance to the study of the NT and early Judaism. While the question remains open, it is better to have them brought into the limelight for a time rather than left in the shadows where they have been until now. The real problem is whether OTP, in selecting apocalyptic works other than those which because of their undoubtedly early date and Jewish 39 An equally well qualified candidate for inclusion might be the Tiburtine Sybil, on which see P. J. Alexander, The Oracle of Baalbek: The Tiburtine Sibyl in Greek Dress (Dumbarton Oaks Studies, 19; Washington, D. C.: Dumbarton Oaks Centre for Byzantine Studies, 1967); D. Flusser, ‘An early Jewish-Christian Document in the Tiburtine Sibyl’, in Paganisme, Judaïsme, Christianisme: Mélanges offerts à Marcel Simon (ed. A. Benoit, M. Philonenko, C. Vogel; Paris: E. de Boccard, 1978), pp. 153–83.

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character must be included, has not made a quite arbitrary selection. I have already pointed out several examples of works which are excluded, but whose claim to inclusion is at least as good as that of some works which have been included. The point should not be pressed too far, lest we be in danger of regarding the limits of the pseudepigrapha as another ‘canon’ to be fixed. Rather than discussing what the limits should be, it would be more profitable to establish that the pseudepigrapha must remain an open and fluid collection, not to be closed and fixed by OTP any more than it should have been by APOT. Once the limits of the OT pseudepigrapha have been opened to include works which are not even probably Jewish works of the period before 200 ad, then the limits can never be closed again, because the range of such works which may to some degree depend on early Jewish sources or preserve early Jewish traditions is very large indeed, and scholarly judgments about them will always vary. However, there is one issue which may make the very concept of a collection of OT pseudepigrapha, as OTP has conceived it, less than useful. A collection of ‘OT pseudepigrapha’ can hardly include the Apocalypse of Peter, the Apocalypse of Paul, the apocryphal Apocalypse of John, or a host of other Christian apocalypses bearing NT pseudonyms. Yet, as I have already pointed out above, such apocalypses are closely related to the Christian apocalypses which bear OT pseudonyms, some of which are included in OTP. The distinction, which the concept of the ‘OT pseudepigrapha’ forces, is quite foreign to the nature of the literature itself. Charlesworth’s claim that the NT apocrypha ‘only infrequently were shaped by early Jewish tradition’ (OTP, p. xxvii) may be more true of other categories of NT apocrypha, but it is quite untrue of apocalypses. The impression (which OTP is bound to propagate) that a Christian apocalypse written under the name of Ezra or Daniel is, in some undefined sense, more ‘Jewish’ than one written under the name of Thomas or the Virgin Mary, is wholly misleading. Both classes of apocalypse are equally likely to preserve early Jewish apocalyptic material. Moreover, the two classes can only be adequately studied together, as one class, as well as in relation to older apocalyptic writings. It is a further danger of the concept of ‘OT pseudepigrapha’ that it tends to encourage the study of relatively late works primarily by means of their affinities with earlier works, whereas they also need to be very thoroughly related to the historical and literary context to which, in their present form, they belong. It will not advance our understanding of the Christian apocalypses with bear OT pseudonyms if, by their inclusion in the OT pseudepigrapha, they are artifically extracted from their place in the broader tradition of Christian apocalyptic literature.40 40

I do not mean here to exclude their possible relationship also to later Jewish apoca-

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I would suggest that the student of ancient Jewish apocalyptic, especially in the NT period, really needs to be acquainted with four bodies of literature, which for practical purposes can be distinguished as follows: (1) Apocalypses which were written or probably written before 200 ad, and which have suffered no more than minor editing at a later date. This category will include both Jewish works (1 Enoch, 2 Enoch?, Sib. Or. 3–5, 11, Apocryphon of Ezekiel, Apocalypse of Eliajah fragments, ‘Apocalypse of Zephaniah’, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, 3 Baruch, Apocalypse of Abraham, Ladder of Jacob) and Christian works (NT Apocalypse of John, Shepherd of Hermas, Ascension of Isaiah, Apocalypse of Peter, Sib. Or. 1–2, 7–8, 5 Ezra), since in this period at least Christian apocalyptic was still in very close contact with Jewish apocalyptic. (With the exception of Sib. Or. 12–14, it is probable that no Jewish apocalypses from after 200 ad have been preserved outside categories (3) and (4) below.) (2) Christian apocalypses, whether bearing OT or NT pseudonyms or others (e. g. Methodius), written during the period from 200 ad to at least 1000 ad. This is a very large body of literature. (3) The Hebrew Merkabah texts written from c. 300 ad onwards (see Alexander’s list in OTP, pp. 250–51). (4) The Hebrew apocalypses, such as the Hebrew Apocalypse of Elijah, the Book of Zerubbabel, the Secrets of Rabbi Simon ben Yo ai.41 The apocalyptic tradition should be envisaged as essentially a continuous stream, which after c. 200 ad divided into the three streams (2), (3) and (4), which from then on producted distinct bodies of literature (though they were not without influence on each other).42 But because the tradition was essentially continuous and also notably conservative, preserving and at the same time constantly reusing and adapting earlier material, all three later branches of the tradition are capable of illuminating ancient apocalyptic. They may throw light on the meaning of ancient material, they may preserve ancient traditions and reflect the contents of ancient apocalypses which as such are no longer extant, they may even contain as yet unidentified ancient documents. Because the apocalyptic literature we have from the period before 200 ad has almost exclusively been passed down to us via lyptic. Later Christian and later Jewish apocalyptic probably developed with more crossfertilization than is often recognized. 41 A convenient, if not wholly satisfactory, collection of translations is in G. W. Buchanan, Revelation and Redemption (Dillsboro, North Carolina: Western North Carolina Press, 1978). See also the listing and description of some of the works in categories (3) and (4) in A. J. Saldarini, ‘Apocalypses and “Apocalyptic” in Rabbinic Literature and Mysticism’, Semeia 14 (1979), pp. 187–205. 42 Of course, further divisions occur within (2): Ethiopia, for example, has its own apocalyptic tradition.

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stream (2), the Christian stream, we have tended to look especially to this stream for further light on ancient apocalyptic. Recently, the light which stream (3) can throw on ancient apocalyptic has begun to be appreciated. The contribution of stream (4) has as yet been scarcely at all explored. It should be stressed that all three later streams can only contribute reliably to the study of ancient apocalyptic if they are first of all understood in their own right, as literature of their own period. If they are simply plundered for parallels or scoured for ancient-looking material, serious mistakes are likely to be made. In relation to this classification of apocalyptic literature, it can be seen that OTP tends to distort the picture: it does not even include all of (1); it includes a fairly arbitrary selection of (2), one example, not the earliest, of (3), and no examples of (4). Even this, however, is probably better than a very narrowly defined collection of ancient Jewish apocalypses. For the student of ancient apocalyptic must be encouraged to acquaint himself with the later phases of the tradition. Otherwise he will not be able to perform even such necessary tasks as assessing arguments for a late date for 2 Enoch or for the Parables of Enoch, or assessing the extent of Christian editing in a work such as 3 Baruch. He will therefore have to venture into many unfamiliar areas, such as Byzantine history or Merkabah mysticism or Bogomil religion or Ethiopian Christianity, and will have to rely heavily on specialists in such areas. But this simply highlights once again the necessarily cooperative and interdisciplinary nature of peudepigraphal studies. Finally, it is worth pointing out that serious attention to the collection of apocalypses in OTP, for all its deficiencies, ought to change our common impressions of Jewish apocalyptic and its relationship to the NT . Used with proper discrimination for the light they can shed on Jewish apocalyptic in NT times, these documents bring to light a concern with a very wide range of apocalyptic revelations: tours of the seven heavens with their various meterological, astronomical and angelological secrets; tours of hell and paradise; revelations of the secrets of the creation and the primeval history; visions of the glory of God and his worship in heaven; anguished demands for answers to problems of theodicy; as well as interpretation of history and the events of the last days. Most of these themes go back in some form as far as the early parts of 1 Enoch, and scholars such as Stone43 and Rowland44 have pointed out how mistaken it is to see eschatology as the only or even in every case the central concern of Jewish apocalyptic. But the prominence of some of these topics in some of the later apocalypses helps to focus our attention more carefully on their presence in the earlier literature too. What 43 44

M. E. Stone, Scriptures, Sects and Visions (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982). Rowland, Open Heaven.

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we have still to take full account of is the fact that most of the concerns of Jewish apocalyptic in NT times do not appear in the NT writings. Heavily influenced by apocalyptic as primitive Christianity undoubtedly was, it was also highly selective in the aspects of apocalyptic which it took over. This is a fact about the NT which can only be appreciated by diligent study of pseudepigraphal works which do not look at all relevant to the NT !

9. Pseudo-Apostolic Letters* New Testament scholars are now nearly unanimous in the opinion that at least one NT letter, 2 Peter, is pseudepigraphal,1 but opinions are still to a greater or lesser extent divided over the authenticity of a considerable number of other NT letters which have been alleged to be pseudepigraphal. It seems unlikely that further progress will be made without the use of some fresh criteria for distinguishing pseudepigraphal from authentic letters. This article aims to derive such criteria from the study of undoubtedly pseudepigraphal letters among the Jewish pseudepigrapha and the NT apocrypha.2 The problem of pseudepigraphy in the NT has often been set within the very large context of the general phenomenon of pseudepigraphy in the ancient world, without sufficient appreciation of the fact that the pseudepigraphal letter is a genre with some special features of its own. In the first section of this article we shall explain these specific features of the pseudepigraphal letter by setting it within the context of a comprehensive classification of types of letters in antiquity. The pseudepigraphal letter itself will be subdivided into a series of types, which for the sake of clarity will in this first section be simply explained without reference to actual examples from ancient Jewish and Christian literature. Then, in sections II and III , comprehensive accounts of ancient Jewish pseudepigraphal letters and of pseudoapostolic letters among the NT apocrypha will demonstrate that all such letters do in fact conform to the types of pseudepigraphal letters explained in section I. This will establish the presumption that any pseudepigraphal letter in the NT ought also to conform to one of these types, and * First publication: Journal of Biblical Literature 107 (1988) 469–494. 1 For the history of the debate about the authenticity of 2 Peter and the growth of the current consensus, see my article “2 Peter: An Account of Research”, in ANRW 2.25.5 (1988) 3719–3724. 2 The most useful previous attempts to do something of this kind are those of D. Guthrie: New Testament Introduction (3 d ed.; London: InterVarsity, 1970) 672–77; and “Acts and Epistles in Apocryphal Writings,” in Apostolic History and the Gospel: Biblical and Historical Essays presented to F. F. Bruce on his 60 th Birthday (ed. W. Ward Gasque and R. P. Martin; Exeter: Paternoster, 1970) 328–425. But Guthrie missed the most important Jewish examples and failed to see the importance of the issue of the addressees of a pseudepigraphal letter.

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therefore in the last two sections of the article conformity to the types of pseudepigraphal letter known from ancient Jewish and Christian literature outside the NT will be used as a criterion to test the pseudepigraphy or authenticity of NT letters.

I. Types of Pseudepigraphal Letters Types of letters Authentic Letters

Pseudepigraphal Letters

A. Real letter content: specific general

AP . Real letter content: specific 1. imaginative 2. historiographical 3. unchanged situation 4. typological situation 5. testamentary 6. general AaP. Real letter not in letter form content: 1–6 (as above)

Aa. Real letter not in letter form content: specific general B. Letter-essay content: general C. Literary letter (only formally a letter) content: usually general D. Work not in letter form, wrongly called a letter

BP . Letter-essay

DP . Work not in letter form wrongly called letter EP . Misattributed work

The diagram is an attempt at a rough classification of types of letters in the ancient world, made primarily with a view to understanding the types of pseudepigraphal letters which will be studied in this article.3 For the purposes of this article and the diagram, authentic letters are defined as those whose professed author is in some sense the real author, and include letters which may have been written, partly or even wholly, by a secretary or colleague of the professed author,4 so long as the professed author authorized the letter; 3 Because the purpose is different, this classification differs from that of W. G. Doty, “The Classification of Epistolary Literature,” CBQ 31 (1969) 195–98; idem, Letters in Primitive Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1973) 4–8. His category of “non-real” letters fails to indicate that in most cases these are fictional versions of the other types. 4 For the role of secretaries in ancient letter-writing, see G. J. Bahr, “Paul and Letter Writing in the First Century”, CBQ 28 (1966) 465–77.

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that is, it was sent out in the author’s name with the author’s consent. For the purposes of this article, a pseudepigraphal letter is defined as one whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past. This definition excludes letters falsely attributed to someone during his own lifetime. Such letters were written in antiquity5 and could quite properly be called pseudepigraphal letters, but since it is very unlikely that any NT letter belongs in this category they will not be considered in this article. Nor is this article concerned with letters whose real authors did not intend them to be pseudepigraphal, but which later came to be mistakenly attributed to other authors. A good deal of ancient literature is pseudepigraphal in this sense of mistaken attribution;6 and this type of pseudepigraphal letter is included in the diagram as type EP , but letters in this category will be mentioned only in order to be left out of the discussion. Some NT letters may well belong in this category (Hebrews almost certainly does), but this article will not help to identify them. Originally and properly the letter is a literary genre that enables a writer to address a specific person or persons directly. It is a literary substitute for speaking to someone in person, used when for some reason (most commonly, geographical distance) the contents of the letter cannot be communicated orally. Thus, what makes a letter a letter is not so much the nature of its contents, which can vary enormously,7 but the fact that the content is directly addressed by one person to another (or, of course, more than one person in either case8). Hence the really essential feature of the literary form of the letter is the parties formula in which the sender(s) and the recipient(s) are named or specified in some other way. In order to write a letter, an author must name himself and must name or otherwise specify his adressees.9 (An anonymous letter is a defective letter, a deliberate abuse of the form, as the recipient’s reaction to its anonymity shows.) In special cases, the addressees may be an extremely large group: Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4 addresses a letter to “all peoples, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth” (a conventional hyperbole for all his subjects). But even so, the addressees must be specified and directly addressed. Type A, the authentic real letter, is the original type of letter, and the model of which types AP , B, BP , and C are imitations. Type A is the letter 5 Jerome (Apol. 3.25) complains of a forged letter put about under his name, and if 2 Thessalonians is authentic, 2:2 seems to mean that forged letters attributed to Paul circulated during his own lifetime. 6 See B. M. Metzger, “Pseudepigraphy in the Israelite Literary Tradition”, in Pseudepigrapha I: Pseudopythagorica – Lettres de Platon – Littérature pseudépigraphique juive (ed. K. von Fritz; Entretiens sur l’antiquité classique 17; Geneva: Vandoeuvres, 1971) 194–98. 7 Doty, Letters, 15–16. 8 For coauthorship, see Cicero Ad. Att. 11.5.1. 9 For these features of the definition of a letter, see Doty, Letters, 193.

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whose real author writes in his own name with the intention of addressing the recipient(s) named or otherwise specified in the parties formula. In every such letter the contents are intended for the recipient(s), but the nature of the contents can vary from material which bears very specifically on the recipient’s situation or relationship with the author and which would make no sense addressed to anyone else, to material of a very general character (say, an account of the author’s philosophical views) which could be addressed to any interested reader. Many letters, of course, contain a mixture of relatively specific and relatively general contents, but a letter that is largely or even exclusively general in content is still a real letter (type A) so long as it is genuinely meant for its specified addressee(s).10 Even though the special value of the letter genre for most letter writers is that it makes it possible to communicate relatively specific material, there is nothing to prevent a letter writer who wishes to communicate very general material to the recipient(s) from doing so.11 However, the fact that a real letter can contain general material that would be of interest to readers other than the specified addressee(s) makes possible the extension of the use of the letter genre to types B and C. For type B, I rely on M. L. Stirewalt’s study of the “Greek letter-essay,” but I would define it a little less restrictively than he does.12 This is a letter which, while formally and really addressed to a named recipient, is also explicitly intended to be read by a much wider readership, to whom its main content will be equally relevant.13 For example, Epicurus, addressing an account of 10 Of course, it is possible for a letter to be really meant for its specified addressees, but for the writer also to have in mind the possibility of future publication for a wider readership; see Doty, Letters, 2–3. For simplicity, and because it is scarcely relevant to psdeudepigraphal letters, this possibility is not included in the diagram. 11 NT scholars sometimes argue that a letter whose content is of general applicability must be a “literary letter” (my type C), not a real letter; see, on James, S. Laws, A Commentary on The Epistle of James (Black’s NT Commentarie; London: A. & C. Black, 1980) 6. But from this point of view there is no reason why James should not be a real letter, written and delivered to actual Jewish Christian communities. 12 M. L. Stirewalt, Jr., “The Form and Function of the Greek Letter-Essay”, in The Romans Debate (ed. K. P. Donfried; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1977) 175–206. I do not consider it essential that a type B letter should be “supplementary in some way to another writing” (Stirewalt, “Form,” 176). 13 “The letter-setting behind the letter is triangular, I-thou-they” (Stirewalt, “Form,” 204). Col 4:16 probably does not put Colossians in this category, since the letter is presumably written for the Colossians and has their own situation in view. That the Laodiceans may also find it valuable is quite secondary to its purpose. To the extent that Paul envisaged the wider circulation of his letters to specific churches, his letters are type A verging somewhat toward type B. I am not convinced by the argument of K. P. Donfried (“False Presuppositions in the Study of Romans,” CBQ 36 [1974] 332–55 [reprinted in The Romans Debate, 120–48]) to the effect that Romans actually belongs to type B. The later church (cf. the Muratorian Canon) came to think of Paul’s letters as implicity type B letters; that is, while addressing specific churches Paul was implicitly addressing all churches.

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his philosophy to Pythocles, says that “many others besides you will find these reasonings useful” (ap. Diogenes Laertius 10.85). Such a letter may often be a response to an actual request from the recipient and is therefore a real letter, but it is also written for the benefit of others to whom the recipient is expected to pass it on. The specified recipient is thus, as it were, a stage on the way to the general publication of the work for an indefinite readership. Type B letters are therefore very similar in function to dedicated treatises and are readily distinguishable only by their use of the letter form, consisting of at least a formal letter opening.14 Type C letters are those which, while retaining the form of a real letter, naming and addressing a specific recipient, are actually letters only in form. The named addressee is (though he may be a real person) only fictionally the addressee, for the work is in fact intended for a general readership. Since type C letters do not differ in form, but only in intention, from type A letters (which can, of course, be published later for a general readership), it will not be easy to identify them with certainty,15 but some ancient letters, such as those of Seneca, are normally considered examples of type C. It should be noted that the element of fiction which type C letters introduce into the use of the letter form creates a distinction between the supposed addressee(s) and the real readers. This is a distinction that (as we shall see) characterizes most pseudepigraphal letters. The only really essential formal feature of a letter was the letter opening, consisting of at least the parties formula, normally also a greeting. There were, of course, in the ancient world more extensive letter forms, which have been usefully studied, but they were not essential to the letter and do not affect the argument of this article. The fact that only a letter opening is required to make a letter a letter means that a letter could easily be written that also belonged to another literary genre. A speech or a sermon that would have been delivered orally had the author been able to visit the addressees becomes a letter when instead he writes it down for them and adds an epistolary opening and perhaps also an epistolary conclusion. Genres that are written forms of oral address (speeches and sermons) are the most obvious genres to be combined with that of the letter,16 but in principle almost any genre could also be a letter. The papyri offer examples of legal documents in letter form. The book of Revelation is an apocalypse put into 14

The dedicated treatise is more likely to confine direct address to the dedicatee to the preface and conclusion, but this is not an absolute distinction. 15 Doty therefore rejects the use of intention as a criterion for distinguishing types of letters (“Classification,” 194–95). I agree that it cannot be a basis for distinguishing letter forms, but it is nevertheless a real distinction. 16 See J. L. White, “Saint Paul and the Apostolic Letter Tradition,” CBQ 45 (1983) 435–56.

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the form of a circular letter to the seven churches of Asia and containing a specific address to each church.17 There are examples of letters that lack every trace of specifically epistolary form, even the parties formula.18 In some cases this may be because the literary context in which the letter has been preserved (or, in the case of some pseudepigraphal letters, composed) provides the information that the parties formula would give (e. g., 2 Chr 21:12?; Jer 29:4?; Bar 1:10; Ep Jer 2). In other cases the letter opening may have been thought inapplicable when the letter was copied for a wider readership (Hebrews?. 1 John?, Barnabas?). It may also be that there were occasions when a speech or sermon was written and sent as a letter, but it was left to the messenger to supply the information that an epistolary opening would normally provide.19 All such cases of documents that functioned as letters but now lack epistolary form are included in type Aa (pseudepigraphal examples in type AaP). However, a written speech or sermon that lacks any element of epistolary form may often be indistinguishable from one written either for the author to read aloud to the hearers or in order to preserve it for the hearers’ benefit after they have first heard it delivered orally. Some works may therefore have been misclassified as letters in antiquity (type D). A good example is 2 Clement (first called a letter in Eusebius Hist. eccl. 3.38.4), whose text makes it clear that it is a sermon read aloud by the speaker in the actual presence of the congregation (15:2; 17:3; and especially 19:1).20 There is some evidence to suggest that ancient scribes, working on the principle that a letter is a literary substitute for oral address to specific persons, tended to classify works written in the form of direct address as letters.21 Such misclassified works must be ruled out of our discussion. 17 See E. Schüssler Fiorenza, “Composition and Structure of the Revelation of John,” CBQ 39 (1977) 367–81; White, “Saint Paul,” 444. 18 A special category here is documents that lack the parties formula but display some other epistolary features. Hebrews lacks any epistolary opening, but has a conclusion that must be epistolary (13:22–25). F. O. Francis argues for epistolary features in 1 John, which lacks a parties formula (“The Form and Function of the Opening and Closing Paragraphs of James and 1 John,” ZNW 61 [1970] 110–26), but against the view that 1 John is in any sense a letter, see R. E. Brown, The Epistles of John (AB 30; Garden City, NY : Doubleday, 1983) 86–92. 19 For the importance of the messenger in the ancient epistolary situation, see Doty, “Classification,” 193–94; Letters, 2, 30. 20 On the genre of 2 Clement, which Donfried classifies as a “hortatory address”, see K. P. Donfried, The setting of Second Clement in early Christianity (NovTS up 38; Leiden: Brill, 1974) 19–48. But, even in the case of 2 Clement, we cannot rule out the possibility that this hortatory address was later sent as a letter to other churches (Donfried, Second Clement, 47–48). 21 Thus, in the longer version of the Apocalypse of Thomas, the second part of the work, which is a discourse of Christ addressed to Thomas, is introduced: incipit epistula domini

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Pseudepigraphal letters are not, of course, distinguishable in form from authentic letters, of which they are fictional imitations. The diagram does not include type CP , which could in theory exist, but would be a rather sophisticated fiction, involving two levels of fiction, and is therefore unlikely. In fact, as will become clear, type AP 6 could well be regarded in another sense as the pseudepigraphal equivalent of type C. All letters, including pseudepigraphal letters, must specify both sender(s) and recipient(s). In the case of pseudepigraphal letters the supposed author, named in the parties formula, is not the real author. But it is important to notice also, since the point is sometimes neglected, that the supposed addressee(s), specified in the parties formula, cannot be the real readers for whom the real author is writing. The supposed addressee(s) must (except in some special cases to be considered later) be a contemporary or contemporaries of the supposed author. Not only does the “I” in a pseudepigraphal letter not refer to the real author, but “you” does not refer to the real readers. The readers of a pseudepigraphal letter cannot read it as though they were being directly addressed either by the supposed author or by the real author (except in the special cases to be noted later); they must read it as a letter written to other people, in the past. Thus, the pseudepigraphal letter, by its very nature, requires a distinction between the supposed addressee(s) and the real readers. We shall discover a few cases of pseudepigraphal letters that contrive by special devices to include the real readers in the supposed addressees. But in no indubitably pseudepigraphal letter known to me are the supposed addressees and the real readers identical. This means that a pseudepigraphal letter cannot, as scholars sometimes too readily assume, perform the same function as an authentic real letter. The authentic real letter (type A) is a form of direct address to specific addressee(s). The pseudepigraphal letter, it seems, can be this only fictionally. The real author of a pseudepigraphal letter can only address real readers indirectly, under cover of direct address to other people. This is what distinguishes the pseudepigraphal letter from most other types of pseudepigraphal literature, which do not need to have addressees at all. For the writers of the vast majority of ancient pseudepigraphal letters this was no problem. The typical ancient pseudepigraphal letter is a letter from a famous figure of the past to one of his contemporaries, and is intended to be of interest to its real readers for the same kinds of reasons as an authentic letter preserved from the past might be. Most ancient pseudepigraphal letters can be classified as either imaginative literature (type AP 1) or as historiography (type AP 2). The point of letters of type AP 1 was simply to entertain ad Thomam. See E. Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha (ed. W. Schneemelcher and R. McL. Wilson; London: Lutterworth, 1963, 1965) 2. 799 n. 1.

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or to instruct in the ways in which fiction can entertain and instruct. Letters of famous men were often written as exercises in the rhetorical schools, and pseudepigraphal letters of this kind, often in the form of collections, became in the early centuries of the Common Era one of the most popular forms of light reading. Classics of this type were the letters of Alciphron, some attributed to invented characters, some to real historical characters, such as the nineteen letters of famous courtesans. Some pseudepigraphal letter collections are really historical novels in the form of letters. The so-called Socratic Epistles (thirty-seven letters to and from philosophers and their friends in the circle of Socrates) are full of historical details in which fiction is liberally mingled with fact. The line between historical romance and serious historiography is not always easy to draw, but we should probably distinguish letters (type AP 2) that serve a more properly historiographical purpose, whether as forgeries to provide documentation for alleged historical facts not otherwise documented or as historical illustration written on the Thucydidean principle of historical speeches. Thus, types AP 1 and AP 2, which cover the vast majority of ancient pseudepigraphal letters, are types in which no problem is caused for the author by the fact that the supposed addressees of the letter cannot be the real readers. The author is not writing the type of literature in which he needs to address real readers directly. In other words, he does not want his fictional letter to perform for him and his readers the function which an authentic real letter would perform, that of making possible direct address to specific addressee(s). Both for him and for his readers, it is someone else’s letter to other people. But suppose an author wished to write, under a pseudonym, a letter with the kind of content characteristic of NT letters: religious teaching and ethical exhortation. How could the genre, which necessitates direct address to supposed readers in the past, accommodate didactic material applicable to the real readers? The problem for the author in this case is that he wants his pseudepigraphal letter to perform for him and his readers something like the function which an authentic real letter from him to his readers would perform. He wants, under cover of his pseudonym, to address his real readers, but his genre allows his letter to be addressed only to supposed addressees contemporary with the supposed author. Thus, he needs to find some way in which material that is ostensibly addressed to supposed addressees in the past can be taken by his real readers as actually or also addressed to them,. The various ways in which this can be and was done define the remaining types of pseudepigraphal letters, and they will also become our criteria for testing the alleged pseudepigraphy of NT letters. For any pseudepigraphal letter which has the didactic aims of NT letters must find some such way of bridging the gap between the supposed

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addressee(s) and the real readers, which the pseudepigraphal letter as a genre seems necessarily to create. The solution to the problem was not especially difficult if the intended real readers were a very general readership which the author is content to address in very general terms. In this case he could write a letter of type AP6; that is, he could represent his pseudonym as addressing to the supposed addressee(s) material so general that it could equally well be addressed to anyone (or, at any rate, to anyone of the author’s religion). By this means the author could do with a pseudepigraphal letter much the same as an author writing in his own name could do with a letter of type C. Even more suitable to the pseudepigraphal writer’s purpose would be a letter of type BP , in which he can explicitly say that the material addressed to the supposed recipient is also relevant to others, among whom the real readers will understand themselves to be included. In a letter of this type, the supposed recipient can even be asked or instructed to pass the material on to others, thus creating a fictional channel by which the letter written initially for the supposed addressee in the past can be supposed to have been handed down to the real readers in the present. However, in themselves these two expedients (AP 6 and BP ) only enable the pseudepigraphal writer to address a general readership in general terms. They do not enable him to do what Paul did in his authentic letters, that is, to write material of specific relevance to specific churches in specific situations. There seem to have been only three ways which writers of pseudepigraphal letters found to move beyond general didactic material to material of more specific application to their real readers (types AP 3, AP 4, AP 5), though they never reached the degree of specificity found in most Pauline letters. Two of these possibilities bridge the gap between the supposed addressees and the real readers by placing the supposed addressees in a historical situation in the past that was similar to the situation of the intended real readers in the present, so that remarks relevant to the situation of the supposed addressees will be relevant also to the situation of the real readers. One way to do this was to address supposed addressees who were ancestors or predecessors of the real readers in a situation supposed not to have changed, in relevant respects, up to the present, so that the real readers are still in the same situation as the supposed addressees once were (type AP 3). A second possibility was to depict the historical situation of the supposed addressees as a kind of type of the similar present situation of the real readers, so that what is said to the supposed addressees applies typologically to the real readers (type AP 4). In both these cases the situation of the supposed addressees has to be described sufficiently for the real readers to identify it as analogous to their own. The final possibility (type AP 5) was to write a testament or farewell speech in the form of a letter. The farewell speech was a well-established

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genre of Jewish literature, in which a biblical figure, shortly before his death, could be represented as addressing not only his immediate hearers but also future generations to whom his words will be transmitted, and with prophetic insight as foreseeing the situation of future generations, especially the generation of the end-time. The writing of such a farewell speech in letter form makes possible a pseudepigraphal letter explicitly addressed to readers living after the death of the supposed author. Thus, in some ways at least, the testamentary letter appears to be the ideal solution to the problem of writing a pseudepigraphal letter with didactic intentions. By these three means a few pseudepigraphal letter writers, as we shall see in the following sections, managed to say something relatively specific to their contemporaries. What must be emphasized, in conclusion, is that without an explicit literary device such as the testament, no pseudepigraphal letter could be addressed by a figure of the past to addressees living in the real author’s present. This would have been a blatant transgression of the logic of the genre, and therefore it is not found in any indubitably pseudepigraphal letter from antiquity. If a pseudepigraphal writer wished to address his own contemporaries under cover of the supposed addressees of a pseudepigraphal letter, then either he had to keep his content very general (types AP 6, BP ) or he had to make clear that the situation of the supposed addressees was comparable to that of the real readers (types AP 3, AP 4). Only in a very special kind of pseudepigraphal letter (type AP 5), in which the supposed author actually expresses his intention of addressing readers living after his death and foresees their situation, can the real readers of a pseudepigraphal letter be explicitly addressed. This case still needs to be established from the study of indubitably pseudepigraphal letters outside the NT . The next two sections of this article will survey Jewish pseudepigraphal letters and those attributed to apostles in the NT apocrypha, on the assumption that these categories are likely to include some of the most relevant material for comparison with the NT letters.

II. Jewish Pseudepigraphal Letters22 For the sake of completeness, we shall first mention works which were misclassified as letters in antiquity, in order to rule them out of our discussion and letters of the imaginative and historiographical types, before 22 For brief comments on such letters, see M. Smith, “Pseudepigraphy,” 212–13, 215: he sees them as largely due to Greek influence on Jewish literature, and thus to be distinguished from the indigenous Israelite tradition of pseudepigraphy. A very valuable survey of ancient Jewish letters, both authentic and pseudepigraphal, is P. S. Alexander,

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considering in detail the four didactic letters, which bear some comparison with NT letters: (1) Misclassified (type DP ), The so-called Letter of Aristeas, which is not described as a letter by the earliest writers who refer to it,23 should probably be classified as a dedicated treatise. If a letter, it is type AaP2. The book of Esther is called a letter in Add Esth 11:1, probably because the author of this colophon to the Greek Esther identified the book as Mordecai’s letter to which Esth 9:20–23 refers; but plainly the author of Esther did not intend it to be a letter. (2) Imaginative and historiographical types (AP 1, AaP1, AP 2, AaP2). These include the majority of Jewish pseudepigraphal letters, and for our purposes the two types need not be distinguished. Omitting examples of seriously disputed authenticity, we may list: 2 Chr 21:12–15; Dan 4:1–37; 6:25–28; Add Esth 13:1–7; 16:1–24; Ep. Arist. 35–40; 41–46; 3 Macc 3:12–29; 7:1–19; Eupolemus, ap. Eusebius, Praep. evang. 9.31–34.3; Josephus, Ant. 8.2.6–7 § 50–54; Philo, De leg. 276–329; Par. Jer. (4 Bar.) 6:19–25; 7:24–34. These letters call for no special discussion here. (3) Didactic letters. There are only four examples (1 Enoch 92–105; Epistle of Jeremiah; 1 Baruch; 2 Bar. 78–87), but all four are of considerable significance for our purpose. The Epistle of Enoch ( ) is the title given to the section (chaps. 91[92]–105) of 1 Enoch in the Chester Beatty Michigan papyrus of the Greek version of these chapters.24 The work also refers to itself as in 100:6, where the Ethiopic versions has “this book.” No Aramaic fragment from Qumran survives for 100:6. It may therefore be that the work was not unambiguously called a letter in the Aramaic original, but that the Greek translator introduced the term. The work is in fact Enoch’s farewell speech before his assumption to heaven. But whereas most farewell speeches in Jewish and Christian literature are represented as delivered orally and then reported as speeches in narrative works written by others, Enoch is said to have written his testament and then to have read it aloud to his sons (92:1; 93:1,3). That this written testament should have been regarded as a letter is analogous to the practice already noted of describing written sermons as letters. It may be significant that in Jewish and Christian literature only three other testaments are supposed to have been put in writ“Epistolary Literature,” in Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period (ed. M. E. Stone; CRINT 2.2; Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 579–96. 23 Josephus, Ant. 12.100; Epiphanius, De mensuris et ponderibus 9 a; Eusebius, Praep. evang. 9.38. See A. Pelletier, Lettre d’Aristée à Philocrate (SC 89; Paris: Cerf, 1962) 47; Alexander, “Epistolary Literature,” 580. 24 The title is a subscription after chap. 107, but chaps. 106–7 cannot have been originally part of the work. Only 97:6–107 survives in the papyrus.

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ten form by the testator himself, and all three are in letter form (2 Bar. 78–87; 2 Timothy; 2 Peter). The opening of Enoch’s testament in fact reads more or less like the parties formula of a letter, in which the writer names himself and specifies his addressees: “Written by Enoch the scribe… for all my sons who dwell upon the earth and for the last generations who will practise uprightness and peace” (92:1).25 The term “letter” may be inappropriate for Enoch’s testament as read aloud to his sons, but it is intelligibly applicable to Enoch’s testament as bequeathed to future generations. We may therefore regard the Epistle of Enoch as a pseudepigraphal letter of type AP 5. The description of the addressees in 92:1 is remarkable: not only Enoch’s contemporaries, his sons, but also the righteous of the last generations – which, of course, means a group of the real author’s contemporaries, the religious group to which he belonged. As an apocalyptic seer, Enoch can foresee the circumstances of this group and prophesy their future, but because he is writing a testament he can not only foresee them but also directly address them, as he does throughout the work, in direct exhortations and promises (he also turns aside to address woes to their enemies). It is clear that Enoch’s sons, to whom he reads the testament, are (as in many testaments) merely a channel through which it can be passed down to the elect of the last days, who are his real addressees. As we can see clearly from this example, the written testament is a letter with the almost unique capacity of allowing a supposed writer in one age explicitly to address readers in a later age. The three other didactic letters to be discussed are all associated with Baruch or Jeremiah. This is no accident. The reason is not just that Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles in Jeremiah 29 provided a model for such letters, though this is one factor. A further important factor is that the years immediately before and after the fall of Jerusalem, in which these three pseudepigraphal letters are set, provided a situation analogous to that of the Jews in the periods when these works were written, that is, a situation where Jews lived not only in the land of Israel but also in the Diaspora. Writers who wished to address either Jews in the situation of Diaspora or Jews in both situations (the land of Israel and the Diaspora), and who wished to do so under an OT pseudonym, rather naturally went back to the historical origin of this state of affairs, a period when (as Jeremiah 29 shows) letters were exchanged between Jews in Jerusalem and Jews in exile in Babylon. This historical situation could be treated either as a situation which had not changed up to the present, making possible a type AP 3 letter, or as a type of the similar situation in which the real readers lived, making possible a type AP 4 letter. 25 Ethiopic, trans. in M. A. Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978) 2.222. The Greek is not extant. 4QE ng 1.2.22–24 (J. T. Milik, The Books of Enoch [Oxford: Clarendon, 1976] 261) is very fragmentary: it confirms something similar to, but not exactly; the text rendered by the Ethiopic.

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The Epistle of Jeremiah seems to reflect a tradition, also found in Tg. Ps.-J. Jer 10:11,26 that Jer 10:11 (which is in Aramaic) is an extract from a letter of Jeremiah. Certainly it is based on Jer 10:11 and surrounding verses, and the rather surprising fact that it is addressed to Jews who are soon to go into exile, rather than to Jews already in exile, must result from the place of Jer 10:11 in the book of Jeremiah. This is interesting evidence for a pseudepigraphal letter writer’s careful attention to the supposed historical setting of his letter. The work is entirely devoted to warning the addressees how to react to the pagan idolatry they will encounter in Babylon. Obviously this message could still apply to Jews in the Babylonian exile when the work was written (probably late fourth century b.c.)27 because the situation was unchanged (and the letter therefore belongs to type AaP3). But it is noteworthy that the writer does not simply take this for granted, but very carefully makes the continued applicability of the letter explicit. In Jeremiah’s authentic letter (Jeremiah 29) the prophet predicted seventy years of exile; the Epistle of Jeremiah (3) reinterprets this period as seven generations: “when you come to Babylon you will remain there for many years, for a long time, up to seven generations; after that I will bring you away from there in peace.” In this way, at the outset of his work, the author establishes that his “you” means not only Jeremiah’s contemporaries, but also their descendants, up to seven generations. Because Jeremiah the prophet can foresee that the situation will not have changed by the real author’s time, he can address not only his own contemporaries, but also succeeding generations up to and including the real author’s contemporaries. This is the only example known to me of a pseudepigraphal letter, other than testamentary letters, in which the real readers are explicitly addressed along with supposed addressees in the past. This is possible in this case, as in testamentary letters, only by means of a clear and deliberate literary device, according to which the supposed author foresees the future. 1 Baruch (called in 1:1, following Jer 36:1 LXX ) is, apart from the introduction (1:1–9), in the form of a work (1:15–5:9) sent with a covering letter (1:10–14) from the Jewish exiles in Babylon to the Jews in Jerusalem.28

26

It is possible that the targum here reflects the existence of the Epistle of Jeremiah. See C. A. Moore, Daniel, Esther, and Jeremiah: The Additions (AB 44; Garden City; NY : Doubleday, 1977) 328; G. W. E. Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah (London: SCM , 1981) 38. This approximate date is securely based on v 3, but cannot be made too precise because we do not know how accurately the author reckoned the period from the fall of Jerusalem to his own time. 28 This work is called the Epistle of Baruch in Armenian, and the Second Epistle of Baruch in Syriac (the First is 2 Apoc. Bar. 78–86). We need not be concerned here with the possible previous existence of parts of the work, since it can be only in its present form that 1 Baruch is a letter. 27

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It is supposed to have been written by Baruch29 in Babylon five years after the fall of Jerusalem and is said to have been read by Baruch to the exiles (1:3–4) and then sent to the Jews still in Jerusalem, who are to recite the prayers contained in it on the site of the Temple.30 Thus, the real author contrives to write both for Jews in the Diaspora in his own day and for Jews in Jerusalem. Whether the situation of the book is simply one that remains unchanged in the author’s day (type AaP3) or whether it is typological (type AaP4) depends on whether the book should be dated in the aftermath of an event analogous to the fall of Jerusalem in 586: that is, Antiochus’s sack of Jerusalem in 169 b.c.31 or the fall of Jerusalem in a.d. 70.32 In 2 Baruch there is no doubt that the situation is typological: Baruch’s reflections on the fall of Jerusalem in 586 are really the author’s reflections on the fall of Jerusalem in a.d. 70.33 The testament device is rather extensively used in 2 Baruch:34 Baruch delivers two farewell speeches before his assumption to heaven, one (chaps. 44–46) to the leaders of the people in Jerusalem (where Baruch has remained after the destruction of the city) and another (77:1–10) to all the people. But the people then ask him if, before leaving him, he would also write his message, “a letter of doctrine and a roll of hope” (77:12),35 to the exiles. So Baruch writes two letters: one to the two and a half tribes in Babylon and one to the nine and a half tribes in exile since the fall of the northern kingdom. Rather surprisingly, the former is not recorded,36 but the latter occupies chaps. 78–86 of the book.37 Why does the author choose to record this let29 P. M. Bogaert shows that 1 Baruch was widely known as part of Jeremiah, rather than as a separate book of Baruch, and consequently it was often quoted under the name of Jeremiah (“La nom de Baruch dans la littérature pseudépigraphique: l’apocalypse syriaque et le livre deutérocanonique,” in Quelques problèmes [ed. W. C. van Unnik; RechBib 9, Leiden: Brill, 1974] 56–72). But it is difficult to believe that it was intended by its author to be a Jeremiah pseudepigraphon. If Bar 1:1 means that Baruch wrote at Jeremiah’s dictation, it is surprising that Jeremiah is not mentioned (cf. Jer 36:4, 32; 45:1). 30 In fact 1:14 has, “in the house of the Lord,” perhaps betraying that in the real author’s day there was a temple in Jerusalem. 31 Nicklesburg, Jewish Literature, 113. 32 O. C. Whitehouse in The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (ed. R. H. Charles; Oxford: Clarendon, 1912–13) 569; J. J. Kneucker, Das Buch Baruch (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1879). 33 Bogaert, “La nom,” 57–58; idem, Apocalypse de Baruch (SC 144–45; Paris: Cerf, 1969) 1. 453–54. 34 Ibid., 1. 121–26. 35 Trans. A. F. J. Klijn in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (ed. J. H. Charlesworth; 2 vols.; London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1983, 1985) 1. 647. 36 For suggestions as to the identity of this (lost?) letter; see Bogaert, Apocalypse, 1. 78–80. 37 Bogaert shows that the letter is an integral part of 2 Baruch, and its circulation as an independent work in Syriac is a secondary phenomenon (Apocalypse, 1. 67–68). Cf. the relationship between 3 Corinthians and the Acts of Paul, discussed below.

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ter, when his real readers would have associated themselves more readily with the two and a half tribes in exile?38 The answer is to be found in the logic of the typological situation. In this letter the author wants to address the Diaspora Jews of his own day, Jews who have lived in the Diaspora for generations and have no immediate connection with the fall of Jerusalem in a.d. 70. Those who were in an analogous situation after 586 were not the exiles of Judah but the exiles of the northern kingdom. Baruch’s account of the religious significance of 586 for the exiles of the northern tribes is typologically an account of the religious significance of a.d. 70 for Diaspora Jews. Although Baruch does ask that the recipients of his letter pass it on to their descendants (84:9), the author does not really exploit the potential of a testamentary letter to address future generations explicitly. He did not need to do so because instead he has made Baruch’s contemporaries types of some of his real readers (those in the Diaspora). 2 Baruch 78–86 is a clear case of type AP 4, and its applicability to its real readers depends on their recognition of its typological character.

III. Noncanonical Pseudo-Apostolic Letters Again we shall list all apocryphal letters attributed to apostles, but the first two categories need not detain us long: (1) Misattributed (type EP ). The Epistle of Barnabas, which lacks an introductory parties formula, probably only later came to be attributed to Barnabas, as Hebrews did to Paul. The Epistle of Titus is identifiable as such only from its title: it is probably an anonymous homily, misclassified as a letter (type DP ) and misattributed to Titus (type EP ). If either of these works was in fact written as a pseudepigraphal letter, it would be type A(a) P6. (2) Imaginative and historiographical (types AP 1, AP 2). These are represented only by the correspondence of Paul and Seneca, and the letter which opens the Nag Hammadi tractate called Letter of Peter to Philip (CG VIII , 2).39 38 At the time of writing of 2 Baruch, the nine and a half (ten) tribes were believed to be in a remote, inaccessible land (4 Ezra 13:40–46). The problem is not alleviated if we follow Bogaert (Apocalypse, 1. chap. 11) in taking the two and a half tribes to represent the western Diaspora and the nine and a half tribes the eastern Diaspora. On the contrary, this makes the problem of the missing letter to the two and a half tribes even more acute. 39 Presumably the title was originally that of the letter itself (132:10–133:8) but was later appropriated as the title of the tractate. On the title, see M. W. Meyer, The Letter of Peter to Philip (SBLDS 53; Chico, CA : Scholars Press, 1981) 91–93, and on the letter itself, ibid., 93–101.

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(3) Letters with mainly Gospel content. Two letters can be classed together here: the Apocryphon of James (CG I, 2) and the Epistle of the Apostles. Though their content is more comparable with that of the NT Gospels than with that of the NT letters, they are letters in form and the means by which they bridge the gap between the supposed addressee(s) and the real readers are instructive for our purpose. The Apocryphon of James belongs to the very popular second- and third-century genre of postresurrection dialogues between Christ and the disciples. But it is also a letter, with an epistolary opening and a first paragraph addressed to the recipient. Unfortunately, the recipient’s name, given in the parties formula (1:2), has been lost in the manuscript except for the last syllable (-thos); a very plausible suggestion is Cerinthus.40 The point of this letter form is to authenticate one of the chains of secret tradition by which Gnostic teaching was held to have passed down from the risen Christ to later Gnostics. The Apocryphon of James is a “secret book,” revealed by Christ only to James and Peter (1:11–12, 23–24, 35; 2:34–37) and communicated to the recipient, “a minister of the salvation of the saints” (1:19–20), so that he may pass it on to others but not to “many” (1:21–22). The work can therefore be classified as a special form of type BP :41 the content is explicitly intended for a readership wider than the recipient himself and he is to pass it on to others, but the Gnostic concern for a secret message for the few means that the wider readership is not a very wide readership, but a deliberately restricted one. The Epistle of the Apostles, which is anti-Gnostic, also contains largely Gospel material. The eleven apostles narrate the whole Gospel history in outline (chaps. 3–5, 9–12) and a long conversation with the risen Christ (chaps. 12–51). Nevertheless, it is a letter in form, addressed by the eleven apostles to “the churches of the east and west, towards north and south” (chap. 2).42 This letter form enabled the apostles to address Christians directly in a short passage of exhortation (chaps. 6–7), which is mainly concerned with urging Christians to remain in the true faith and to avoid 40

J. Helderman, “Anapausis in the Epistula Jacobi Apocrypha,” in Nag Hammadi and Gnosis (ed. R. McL. Wilson; NHS 14; Leiden: Brill, 1978) 37, following H.-M. Schenke. 41 The Apocryphon of James fits Stirewalt’s criteria for the “letter-essay” remarkably well: it is a response to the recipient’s request (1:8–10) and is supplementary to another “secret book” previously sent (1:29–31). See Stirewalt, “Form,” 186, 195, 197–99. 42 Translation from the Ethiopic in Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha 1. 192. According to the introduction (chap. 1) this means “the whole world,” but this may be a later misunderstanding (chaps. 1–6 are extant only in the Ethiopic), since chap. 30 suggests that originally the churches in all parts of the land of Israel may have been intended. The letter would then be represented as having been written before the Gentile mission. But the survival of the work only in the Coptic and Ethiopic versions makes it impossible to be sure of this.

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the false teaching of Simon and Cerinthus, who are travelling around the churches (chap. 7). Thus, the addressees are imagined as first-century Christians, troubled by the first-century heretics Simon and Cerinthus, whom second-century Christians believed to have sown the seeds of later Gnostic heresy. It is therefore set within a first-century situation which is regarded either as unchanged (type AP 3) or as typological (type AP 4) from the point of view of the real readers threatened by mid-second-century Gnosticism. (4) Didactic letters: the Epistle of Peter to James, Laodiceans, 3 Corinthians. The Epistle of Peter to James, prefaced to the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, can be included under this heading when it is regarded as a covering letter for “the books of my (Peter’s) preachings” which accompanied it, since these were of general didactic content.43 The letter functions very similarly to the Apocryphon of James, since Peter instructs James to pass on his preachings not to Gentile Christians or to any Jewish Christian (1:2) but to seventy carefully selected brethren (1:2), who in turn are to use them to instruct teachers (2:1). This is therefore an example of type BP . But there is a further feature of the letter which introduces a small element of specificity into the situation envisaged. Peter explains the need for his teaching to be carefully preserved by trustworthy teachers in the way he describes, by referring to false teachers who misrepresent him (2:3–4). From the beginnings of this danger in his lifetime, Peter concludes (by common sense, not prophecy, 2:2) that it is likely to increase in the future: “if they falsely assert such a thing whilst I am still alive, how much more after my death will those who come later venture to do so?” (2:7).44 Thus, the real author contrives to let Peter foresee the situation of those to whom his “preachings” will be passed in the future, that is, the real readers. Once again we see an explicit attempt to bridge the gap which the pseudepigraphal letter genre requires between the supposed addressee and the real readers. None of the pseudo-apostolic letters so far discussed are comparable to the major Pauline letters in being addressed to a specific church. Three noncanonical pseudo-Pauline letters of this type are known to have existed, though only two of these have survived. The lost Letter to the Alexandrians is known only from the Muratorian Canon, which describes it as a Marcionite forgery.45 The two surviving letters, Laodiceans and 3 Corinthians, 43 It is thought to have originally introduced the Kerygmata Petrou, which formed a source for the later Clementine Homilies; see G. Strecker in Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha 2. 103–6. 44 Trans. in Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha 2. 112. This reference is not sufficient to make the letter a testamentary letter. 45 The Muratorian Canon also mentions “many other” (alia plura) pseudo-Pauline letters, which is probably an exaggeration. We have no other information about them. For other possible traces of lost pseudo-apostolic letters, see W. Schneemelcher in Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha 2, 91–92: it is unlikely that they existed.

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may both be attempts to fill gaps in the existing Pauline corpus of letters. Laodiceans is certainly supposed to be the missing letter to which Col 4:16 refers, and 3 Corinthians may well be intended as the “severe letter” written between 1 and 2 Corinthians (2 Cor 2:4; cf. 3 Cor. 2:5).46 The practice of filling gaps in an existing correspondence is one that is attested also in Hellenistic pseudepigraphal letter writing, but can scarcely have been operative in the writing of NT letters, unless Ephesians really was originally meant to be Laodiceans, as Marcion believed. Laodiceans (which can be classified as type AP 6) is a remarkably incompetent attempt to fill the gap. It is nothing but a patchwork of Pauline sentences and phrases from other letters, mainly Philippians. The result is a series of highly generalized exhortations which address no particular situation and reveal no intention by the author to communicate any clear message.47 It seems as though he may really have been motivated only by the desire to produce something that would look as though Paul could have written it, and so it might be better to regard Laodiceans as a type AP 1 or AP 2 letter, rather than a type AP 6 letter in which the author actually intends a didactic message for his readers. 3 Corinthians is more interesting, and is the only extracanonical apostolic letter that bears any real comparison with the major NT letters; that is, it addresses itself to the particular situation of a particular church. It is part of the late second-century Acts of Paul. Some have argued that it was originally independent and only subsequently incorporated in the Acts of Paul,48 but their arguments are not convincing.49 All the indications are that it was composed for its context in the Acts of Paul and only later circulated separately as an extract.50 46

See Guthrie, “Acts,” 339–40. This makes it very unlikely that Laodiceans is a Marcionite work, as argued by A. Harnack and G. Quispel (see Schneemelcher in Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha 2. 130–31). The theory is based on the Muratorian Canon’s reference to a letter to the Laodiceans as a Marcionite forgery along with Alexandrians (finctae ad heresem Marcionis). This reference may be based on a confusion, since Marcion himself thought that Ephesians was the letter to Laodicea (Tertullian, Adv. Marc. 5.11.17). Otherwise the Marcionite letter to the Laodiceans must be another work, now lost. 48 A. F. J. Klijn, “The Apocryphal Correspondence between Paul and the Corinthians,” VC 17 (1963) 10–16; M. Testuz, “La correspondence apocryphe de saint Paul et des Corinthiens,” in Littérature et Théologie Pauliniennes (ed. A. Descamps et al.; RechBib 5; Louvain: Desclée de Brouwer, 1960) 221–22. 49 So W. Schneemelcher in Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha 2. 341–42; Guthrie, “Acts,” 339. The fact that material has undoubtedly been lost at the beginning and end of the Philippi episode of the Acts of Paul makes some of Klijn’s arguments weak. 3 Cor. 1:8, 2:2 clearly require previous narrative material for their explanation. 50 When it did circulate independently, the Corinthians’ letter to Paul always accompanied Paul’s reply, and frequently the narrative connecting them was retained. 47

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Paul’s letter is set within a narrative that relates the arrival of the false teachers Simon and Cleobius in Corinth, explains their teaching and the Corinthians’ decision to write to Paul about it, includes a copy of the Corinthians’ letter to Paul, relates its delivery to Paul in Philippi and the circumstances in which Paul wrote his reply. Probably (though the subsequent section of the Acts of Paul is lost) the reception of Paul’s letter in Corinth was then described. Thus, Paul’s letter is firmly anchored in a carefully described first-century situation. His addressees are unmistakably firstcentury Corinthian Christians, troubled by the first-century false teachers Simon (Magus) and Cleobius.51 The false teaching is quite carefully described and, although it comes quite close to Marcionite views, is probably not meant as a precise account of the teaching of any particular second-century Gnostic group. The description is of Gnostic beliefs with quite wide currency in the second century, and Paul’s response to them consists of typical second-century anti-Gnostic argument. However, two points should be noticed about the setting of these teachings in first-century Corinth. First, the author may well have thought that Simon and Cleobius really taught these doctrines: Christians in his time commonly traced such views back to the first-century precursors of Gnosticism. Second, he has found for them their most plausible setting within Paul’s ministry, since he knew that Paul’s authentic correspondence with Corinth had to deal with denials of the resurrection. Doubtless the author intended 3 Corinthians to be relevant to the Gnostic controversies of his own time, but he went so some lengths to give it a pseudo-historical setting which he probably thought entirely plausible. It should also be noticed that, although in its supposed first-century setting 3 Corinthians resembles a genuine Pauline letter in addressing the situation in a specific church, as far as its relevance to the late second century goes that particularity vanishes. It is not aimed at the late second-century church in Corinth – or anywhere else in particular – but only at the widespread problem of Gnostic teaching. Since in the lost section of the Acts of Paul which followed 3 Corinthians the author probably described the success of Paul’s letter in extirpating the false teaching in Corinth,52 we should probably regard the situation of 3 Corinthians as typological (AP 4) rather than unchanged. Finally, it is worth observing the rarity of apocryphal apostolic letters, by comparison with other genres of Christians apocryphal literature (Gospels, Acts, Apocalypses). The authentic letter remained a vigorous literary genre 51 For Cleobius, see Hegesippus, ap. Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.22.5. The mention of Simon and Cleobius in Apost. Const. (6.8.1; 6.10.1) may be dependent on 3 Corinthians. 52 Cf. Acts of Paul 9 (Hamburg Papyrus, p. 6). He may even have described the conversion of Cleobius to the truth.

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in second- and third-century Christianity, when many Christian leaders wrote letters to churches in their own names, but pseudepigraphal letters from that period are rare. Whatever other reasons there may be for this,53 one reason may well have been the sheer difficulty of using a pseudepigraphal letter to perform the same functions as an authentic letter.

IV. General Conclusions on Epistolary Pseudepigraphy in the New Testament The evidence examined in sections II and III establishes and illustrates the conclusion to section I. In all examples studied, pseudepigraphal letters are addressed to supposed addressees living in the past, contemporaries of the supposed author, except in the case of the testamentary letter (Epistle of Enoch) and in a special case of type AP 3 (Epistle of Jeremiah), where the supposed authors are able, by prophetic foresight, explicitly to address readers living after their deaths. In one other case (Epistle of Peter to James) the supposed author is credited with natural foresight of the situation after his death, so that he can refer explicitly to an aspect of the situation of the ultimate recipients of this type BP letter (or rather, strictly speaking, of the material for which this type BP letter is the covering letter). In other cases, where the supposed author is not credited with foresight of the situation after his death, relevance to the real readers is achieved either by making the content so generalized as not to presuppose a specific situation at all (type AP 6: Laodiceans; type BP : Apocryphon of James), or by describing the situation of the supposed addresses in such terms as to make it analogous to that of the real readers (types AP 3, AP 4: 1 Baruch, 2 Baruch 78–86, Epistle of the Apostles, 3 Corinthians). It should be noted that among the letters surveyed there is no really good example of a pseudepigraphal letter that achieves didactic relevance by the generality of its contents (types AP 6 and BP ). Laodiceans is only a poor example. The Apocryphon of James is a letter whose contents actually belong to another genre, the postresurrection dialogue. It seems that not many pseudepigraphal writers wished to produce generalized didactic works, and those who did preferred other genres, such as wisdom literature (cf. Wisdom of Solomon, Teachings of Silvanus). On the other hand, the seven pseudepigraphal letters in which there is a serious attempt to address relatively specific situations (Epistle of Enoch, Epistle of Jeremiah, 1 Baruch, 2 Baruch 78–86, Epistle of the Apostles, Epistle 53

For suggestions, see M. R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament (2 d ed.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1953) 476; Guthrie, “Acts,” 338, 344–45.

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of Peter to James, 3 Corinthians) achieve only relatively specific relevance to the real readers. Only one of them, the Epistle of Enoch, is likely to have been intended for one specific community or small group of communities. The others were meant for a wide Jewish or Christian readership. The three pseudo-apostolic letters are specific only in the sense of envisaging heretical teaching that was widespread in the author’s time. None of these letters achieves anything like the particularity of the major Pauline letters, or even of such allegedly pseudepigraphal letters as Colossians and Jude. We must now enquire whether the actual types of pseudepigraphal letters which we have discussed are applicable to any NT letters. (1) Type AP6. Are there NT letters whose content is so general that it could equally well be addressed not only to the supposed recipients but also to any Christians at any time? Only Ephesians and James seem serious candidates for this category.54 If their contents can rightly be regarded as generalized in this way, then, as far as our criteria go, they could be pseudepigraphal. Of course, they could also be authentic, since authentic real letters (type A) and authentic literary letters (type C) can also have very general content. But it is important to notice that in the case of these two letters, since they conform to no other type of pseudepigraphal letter, the possibility of their being pseudepigraphal depends upon the generality of their content. The more exegesis tends toward envisaging a specific situation as addressed in these letters, the less likely pseudepigraphy becomes. (2) Type BP. A useful means of bridging the gap between the supposed addressee(s) and the real readers of a pseudepigraphal letter was the letter whose contents are explicitly meant to be passed on to others by the named addressee. Again, of course, the presence of such a feature raises only the possibility of pseudepigraphy, since it is found also in authentic letters (type B) of which type BP letters are fictional imitations. Among NT letters, this feature is found only in the Pastorals, which frequently instruct Timothy and Titus to pass on their teaching to others (1 Tim 4:6, 11; 6:2; 2 Tim 54 Opinions differ on how far James addresses a specific situation; see the most recent assessment in P. H. Davids, The Epistle of James (NIGTC ; Exeter: Paternoster, 1982) 28–34. Davids seems to hold that the contents of James address a Palestinian situation, but that the letter was sent to Jewish Christian communities outside Palestine, probably in Syria and Asia Minor (ibid., 64). The generality of the address (Jas 1:1) is not an infallible indication that the letter was meant for all Jewish Christians indiscriminately or for all Jewish Christians outside Palestine. Specific addresses were sometimes eliminated when letters were copied for circulation beyond the churches originally addressed: see N. A. Dahl, “The particularity of the Pauline Epistles as a problem in the Ancient Church,” in Neotestamentica et Patristica (O. Cullmann Festschrift; NovTS up 6; Leiden: Brill, 1962) esp. 266–70. Against occasional attempts to see Jude as addressed generally to all churches, see R. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter (Word Biblical Commentary 50; Waco, TX : Word, 1983) 19–20.

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2:2, 14; Tit 2:2, 6, 9, 15; 3:1). It should also be noticed that, as in the Epistle of Peter to James, this type B(P) characteristic in the Pastorals is combined with foresight of the situation which will prevail after the supposed author’s death (see below). (3) Type AP5. 2 Peter is the only NT letter that explicitly addresses readers living not only during the supposed author’s lifetime but also after his death (1:12–15). It does so by a careful and deliberate use of the testament genre, which enables Peter to foresee and address a specific situation after his death.55 Since this literary device so precisely meets the need of the author of a pseudo-apostolic letter to bridge the chronological gap between the supposed author and the real readers, and since there are no known examples of its use in authentic letters, it makes the pseudepigraphal character of 2 Peter at least extremely likely. It is also worth noticing that, whereas the Epistle of Enoch clearly distinguishes the real readers as a generation subsequent to the generation of those who heard Enoch read his testament aloud, 2 Peter does not make such a distinction of generations (cf. 1:12–16; 3: 1) but only of periods before and after the apostle’s death, probably because in this case the letter was composed not so very long after the apostle’s death. 2 Timothy is also a testamentary letter, but is not exactly addressed to readers living after Paul’s death. However, Timothy seems to be being instructed with a view to his own conduct (including teaching others) after Paul’s death (2 Tim 3:5, 10–4:2, 5), and 1 and 2 Timothy both refer to the period after Paul’s death (1 Tim 4:1–3; 2 Tim 3:1–9, 4:3–4). In no other NT letter does the author or supposed author foresee the situation following his death.56 (4) Types AP3 and AP4. These two types are not always easy to distinguish, but their common characteristic is that they set the supposed readers in a situation analogous to that of the real readers. In one of the cases we have studied (Epistle of the Apostles) this situation is clearly but only briefly described (chaps. 1, 7), but in this case of a letter with mainly Gospel content, in which the orientation to a specific situation is more implicit than explicit, the specific character of the situation addressed does not need spelling out at length. In the other cases, where the whole content of the letter is angled to a relatively specific situation (1 Baruch, 2 Baruch 78–86, 3 Corinthians), the writers find it necessary to provide quite full details of the supposed historical situation, so as to locate the letter firmly within its historical situation, while at the same time showing that this situation has parallels with the real readers’ situation. Even though the context of the 55 For the use of the testament genre in 2 Peter, see Bauckham, Jude, 132, 173, 194, 196–97, 199–200, 237–38, 282. 56 Jude 17–18 is not such a reference, since the prophecy is considered fulfilled in the false teachers active as Jude is writing (v 19).

IV. General Conclusions on Epistolary Pseudepigraphy in the New Testament 145

Baruch letters could have been understood in a general way from the OT , this historical scene-setting was still thought necessary. In all three cases, the scene-setting is achieved largely by placing the letter within a narrative context, which in the case of 3 Corinthians also includes the letter to which Paul’s is a reply. Thus, whereas the authentic real letter can take for granted the situation to which it is addressed, merely alluding to what the addressee(s) do not need to be told, it is characteristic of pseudepigraphal letters of types AP 3 and AP 4 that they must describe the situation of their supposed addressee(s) sufficiently for the real readers, who would not otherwise know it, to be able to recognize it as analogous to their own. Now the large majority of NT letters, both those generally accepted as authentic and some that are often thought to be pseudepigraphal (Colossians, 1 Peter, Jude), take for granted the specific situations to which they are addressed, in the manner of authentic real letters. They do not, in the manner of pseudepigraphal letters of types AP 3 and AP 4, describe it for the benefit of readers who would not otherwise know it – often to the frustration of modern scholars! No NT letter has a narrative context, like the Baruch letters and 3 Corinthians, and in no NT letter is there historical scene-setting which clearly goes beyond what could be expected in an authentic letter. Thus, there is no unambiguous case of a type AP 3 or type AP 4 letter in the NT . The Pastorals seem to show some interest in historical scene-setting, in that the false teachers, supposed to be already active at the supposed time of writing, are described perhaps a little more fully than would be necessary for Timothy and Titus themselves (see esp. 2 Tim 2:17–18), but not decisively so. In the case of 2 Thessalonians it could be argued that 2:2; 3:11 provide all the historical scene-setting that is really necessary in this case, with the additional consideration that 2 Thessalonians could be seen as a kind of pseudepigraphal appendix to the authentic 1 Thessalonians, which thus provides to some degree the historical context for 2 Thessalonians. Thus 2 Thessalonians could be a pseudepigraphal letter of type AP 3 or AP 4, though it could also be authentic. But Colossians, 1 Peter, and Jude cannot plausibly be regarded as type AP 3 or AP 4 letters. Like the undoubtedly authentic letters of Paul, they assume a specific situation without having to describe it, because, we must conclude, it was the actual situation of the real readers, not a parallel situation in the past. In other words, they are authentic letters. The same would have to be said of James and Ephesians, if they are interpreted as addressing relatively specific situations. It might be suggested that some NT letters, if pseudepigraphal, could constitute a special case of AP 3. If they were composed within a relatively short time after the death of the supposed author and therefore after the supposed time of writing, and if they were written for the actual churches

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to which they are addressed, then the real readers in those churches could know, without having it described, that the situation in their churches had remained unchanged, in relevant respects, since the supposed time of composition and could therefore read these letters as still relevant to them. However, it should be noticed that such a suggestion would contradict what is frequently regarded as the major argument for pseudepigraphy in these cases, viz., that the situation addressed did not exist during the lifetime of the supposed author. It would in fact leave the hypothesis of pseudepigraphy with no advantage over the hypothesis of authenticity, provided that the latter includes the possibility that a colleague or secretary of the apostle could have composed the letter on his behalf. It is, of course, a theoretical possibility that NT letters could belong to a type of pseudepigraphal letter not attested among the examples studied in sections II and III . However, such a type would have to have its own way of meeting the problem of writing a didactic pseudepigraphal letter: the problem of the difference between the supposed addressee(s) and the real readers. A pseudepigraphal letter cannot simply ignore this problem, as though an apostle could easily address readers living after his death as if they were his contemporaries. It does not appear that NT writers in fact knew any way of meeting the problem besides those already discussed. Thus, our criteria derived from the study of indisputably pseudepigraphal letters outside the NT show that 2 Peter can be regarded with very high probability as pseudepigraphal, since it is so clearly designed to meet the problem posed for pseudepigraphal letter writers and does so by means of a genre (the testamentary letter) that had already been used for this purpose. It seems that the Pastorals (which show marked characteristics of type BP and type AP 5 letters, as well as possibly also conforming to type AP 3 or AP 4 letters) could very well be pseudepigraphal, as more detailed discussion in the next section will confirm. In the cases of Ephesians and James (which could be type AP 6 letters) and 2 Thessalonians (which could be a type AP 3 or AP 4 letter), our criteria make pseudepigraphy a possibility, without deciding the issue. As far as our critera go, the question of authenticity remains in these cases an open one which must still be decided on other grounds. But it seems that any other case for pseudepigraphy among the NT letters is by these criteria very implausible indeed.57 Finally, it is worth noticing that these results roughly confirm the general tendency of scholarly judgments reached largely on other grounds. 2 Peter and the Pastorals, which our criteria make probably pseudepigraphal, are the NT letters most widely regarded as pseudegraphal. Those which our 57

In the case of the Johannine letters, the real issue, as with Hebrews, is not pseudepigraphy but misattribution.

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criteria make possibly pseudepigraphal (Ephesians, James, 2 Thessalonians) are probably the next most popular candidates for pseudepigraphy. Those whose authenticity could be regarded as vindicated by this study (Colossians, 1 Peter, Jude58) are those which many scholars still regard as having a reasonable claim to authenticity. None of the letters whose authenticity is universally admitted emerges as even possibly pseudepigraphal by our criteria. This general correspondence with the scholarly consensus suggests that our criteria are reliable and should therefore be given weight in the disputed instances.

V. The Problem of the Pastorals In the light of the preceding discussion, two characteristics of the Pastorals seem readily compatible with pseudepigraphy, a third points rather strongly in the direction of pseudepigraphy, while a fourth will lead to a particular suggestion about the date and authorship of the Pastorals: (1) The personal details about Paul and Timothy can be paralleled from letters of types AP 1 and AP 2. If the Pastorals are pseudepigraphal, Timothy and Titus do not have to represent any particular sort of later leader (such as monarchical bishops) but are simply themselves, as historical characters, in the same way that Paul is. The author has thought himself into situations in Paul’s ministry and, as many pseudepigraphal letter writers did, has filled out whatever historical information was available to him with historical fiction. (2) The bulk of the didactic material in the Pastorals is given to Timothy and Titus to pass on to the churches and to particular categories of people within the churches. As already mentioned, this is a type BP characteristic,59 which makes the role of Timothy and Titus comparable with that of the supposed recipients of the Apocryphon of James. The resemblance to the Epistle of Peter to James is very striking in 2 Tim 2:2. (3) The treatment of false teachers and heresy. If the Pastorals are considered not only as general teaching, but (as they must be) also as teaching relevant to a relatively specific situation, that situation is really characterized by the threat of false teaching and the evils that flow from it. The false teachers are plainly represented as active at the supposed time of writing. Some of them are named (1 Tim 1:20; 2 Tim 2:17), and these must, of course, be contemporaries of Paul, real or imagined, not contemporaries of the real 58 For the debate about the authenticity of Jude, see R. Bauckham, “The Letter of Jude: An Account of Research,” in ANRW 2.25.5, pp. 3791–3826. 59 Of course, it is also a type B characteristic and so is compatible with authenticity as well as with pseudepigraphy.

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author. If the Pastorals are pseudepigraphal, this historical situation of the letters must be regarded as an unchanged or typological situation (type AP 3 or AP 4). Has the author done sufficient scene-setting for this to be possible? The false teachers are fairly fully characterized, probably just fully enough for the author’s purpose, provided we assume that he wished to characterize a broad range of false teaching in his own time and therefore could not afford to detail their doctrines too specifically. However, in addition to the account of false teaching at the supposed time of writing, the picture is complicated by three passages that refer to false teaching and apostasy in the future tense (1 Tim 4:1–3; 2 Tim 3:1–5; 4:3–4). It is noteworthy that two of these passages occur appropriately in the testamentary letter 2 Timothy, where Paul is explicitly instructing Timothy with a view to the period following his impending death (see esp. 2 Tim 4:6). The first two of the three passages could be understood as citations of earlier prophecies about the last days which Paul is intending to say are being fulfilled at the time of writing,60 but this cannot be the case in 2 Tim 4:3–4, and so it is better to take all three passages as really future from the standpoint of Paul when writing the letters.61 In that case they are very similar to passages in the testamentary letter 2 Peter, where Peter looks into the future after his death, the last days in which false teachers will appear, who are plainly the false teachers of the real readers’ own time (2 Pet 2:1–3; 3:1–4). Moreover, the odd phenomenon in 2 Tim 3:1–9, where the futuretense prophecy of the false teachers continues in the present tense (vv 6–8), is also amply paralleled in 2 Peter, where passages prophesying the false teachers alternate with passages describing the same false teachers in the present tense (2 Pet 2:10–22; 3:5, 16).62 How are we to understand the combination in the Pastorals of false teaching at the supposed time of writing and false teaching prophesied for the future? The answer must lie in 2 Timothy’s indications that Paul is envisaging a situation that, already bad at the time of writing, will get worse in the future (2 Tim 2:16–17; and esp. 3:13). Again this is reminiscent of the Epistle of Peter to James (2:17). So it seems that the material about false teaching in the Pastorals, when taken as a whole, amounts to a careful and deliberate attempt to bridge the gap between the situation at the supposed time of writing and the real contemporary situation of the author and his readers.

60 So J. N. D. Kelly, A Commentary on The Pastoral Epistles (Black’s NT Commentaries; London: A. & C. Black, 1964) 93–94, 192–93. 61 So M. Dibelius and H. Conzelmann, The Pastoral Epistles (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972) 64, 115, 120–21. 62 Note also that 1 Tim 4:1–5, where the prophecy of the false teachers is followed by their refutation, is paralleled by 2 Pet 3:3–10.

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(4) If, however, we take seriously the pseudepigraphal implication that the situation Paul foresees after his death is the situation of the real readers, we must also reckon with the fact that Timothy seems to be part of this situation. It seems to be one which follows Paul’s death but not Timothy’s death. In 2 Timothy, Paul is instructing Timothy how to react to it, most obviously in 3:5, where, after the prophecy of the false teachers in the future tense, Timothy is immediately told, “Avoid these people“ ( ) (cf. also 4:5). Ought we to press the apparent implication that at the real time of writing, the time Paul foresees, Timothy was still alive? It might be unwise to do so were it not for a confirmatory piece of evidence in 1 Tim 6:14, where, on a natural reading of the text, Paul expects Timothy to survive until the parousia.63 It is just possible that a pseudepigraphal writer had observed that Paul in his authentic letters tends to write as though his readers will survive till the parousia, and deliberately imitated this way of speaking, but this is not likely.64 The otherwise attested practice of postapostolic writers is carefully to avoid the implication that the apostles and their contemporaries had expected to see the parousia in their lifetime (cf. Apocalypse of Peter [Ethiopic] 1; Epistle of the Apostles 34; Testament of our Lord 1:2; Testament of our Lord in Galilee).65 If the Pastorals were written after Paul’s death but within Timothy’s lifetime, then most probably they were written by Timothy himself. This could also perhaps explain the difference between the letters to Timothy, where we learn a good deal about Timothy, and the letter to Titus, where we learn next to nothing about Titus.66

63 So Kelly, Commentary. 145. S. G. Wilson denies this, but without offering an alternative explanation of the text (Luke and the Pastoral Epistles [London: SPCK , 1979] 16–17). 1 Tim 6:15 may sound a note of caution (especially if there is an allusion to Hab 2:2, the classic text on eschatological delay), but can hardly cancel out the implication of 6:14. 64 3 Cor. 3:3 has Paul write, “the Lord Christ will accomplish his coming quickly” ( ), but this is less specific (cf. Rev 22:20) and could still be said at the real time of writing, whereas a prediction of the parousia in the lifetime of the generation of the apostles could no longer be valid in postapostolic times. 65 On these passages, see R. Bauckham, “The Two Fig Tree Parables in the Apocalypse of Peter,” JBL 104 (1985) 276–77. 66 I am grateful to members of the Ehrhardt seminar in the University of Manchester, who heard a draft of this article and made useful comments, and especially to Dr. P. S. Alexander, for several discussions about letters in the ancient world, which helped me to formulate and clarify my thoughts.

10. Kainam the Son of Arpachshad in Luke’s Genealogy* In an article in this journal1, Gert J. Steyn has recently argued that the last part of Luke’s genealogy (3,34–38) is dependent on Gen 11,10–32 and Gen 5,1–32 in the LXX version. He regards as the clinching evidence for this the occurrence of the name in Luke 3,37, where Luke agrees with the LXX (Gen 5,9–14: ; cf. also 10,24, where A has )2 against the MT and the Samaritan Pentateuch, which do not have this generation at all. Steyn’s argument, however, is very unsatisfactory for three reasons: (1) He offers no justification for dealing only with the last part of the genealogy (the generations from Terah to Adam and God). One has to presume that he does not think the earlier parts of the genealogy are dependent on the LXX , but he does not explain why the genealogy should be divided in this way. (2) He does not discuss the significant divergences from the LXX in other parts of the genealogy. (3) Most remarkably, he nowhere refers to the fact that Kainam the son of Arpachshad appears not only in LXX Gen 5,9–14; 10,24 and Luke 3,37, but also in Jubilees 8,1–5. It is true that in Luke 3,34–38 the only divergences from the LXX are minor differences of spelling (Luke 3,36: /Gen 5,12–13: ; Luke 3,37: /Gen 5,15–20: ; Luke 3,37: /Gen 11,9–14: ), but in the rest of the genealogy they are much more significant. The generations from Nathan to Abraham (Luke 3,31–34) compare with the relevant biblical passages in the LXX as follows: Luke

LXX

(A:

)

1 Chron 3,5 1 Chron 2,15; 3,1 1 Chron 2,12–13; Ruth 4,22 1 Chron 2,12 Ruth 4,21–22

* First publication: Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 67 (1991) 95–103. 1 G. T. Steyn, The Ocurrence of “Kainam” in Luke’s Genealogy: Evidence of Septuagint Influence?, in ETL 65 (1989) 409–411. 2 The additional occurrence of the name in Gen 10,22 LXX , as a sixth son of Shem, is puzzling. If it is not simply misplaced, it may represent an earlier, distinct attempt to include in the descendants of Shem.

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(A: (A:

(B: (v. 1. (A: (A:

) )

) ) ) ,

1 Chron 2,11–12; Ruth 4,21 1 Chron 2,11 Ruth 3,20–11 1 Chron 2,10–11; Ruth 4,20 1 Chron 2,10; Ruth 4,19–20 1 Chron 2,9–10 Ruth 4,19 1 Chron 2,5.9 ) Ruth 4,18–19 1 Chron 2,4–5: Ruth 4,18 1 Chron 2,1–4

In this list the differences in the form of some of the names is notable. But especially significant is the fact that Luke’s genealogy has an additional generation. The sequence of three names , and (Luke 3,33) is a point of great confusion in the manuscript tradition, partly because scribes attempted to correct the discrepany with the Old Testament and with Matthew 1,3–4, but these three names in these forms are the best reading3. Before the genealogy has no clear parallels with the Old Testament, except for the two names and his father (Luke 3,27). These represent a notable divergence from 1 Chronicles 3,17–19 (both MT and LXX ), according to which Zerubbabel was descended from David not through Nathan but through the royal line, his grandfather being king Jeconiah. (According to 1 Chron 3,19 MT , Zerubbabel was the son not of Shealtiel but of his brother Pedaiah. This discrepancy from the usual OT description of Zerubbabel as son of Shealtiel [Ezra 3,2.8; 5,2 etc] is corrected in 1 Chron 3,19 LXX .). It may be, as has sometimes been argued4, that a few of the names preceding in Luke’s genealogy are to be identified with names among the descendants of Zerubbabel in 1 Chronicles 3,19–24, but if so the genealogy is certainly not directly dependent on the text of 1 Chronicles 3,19–24. In view of these divergences from the LXX , it might be argued that Luke took over from a source a traditional genealogy taking the line of Jesus back to Abraham, as in Matthew 1,1–17, and himself used the LXX of Genesis to 3 Cf. R. Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church, Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1990, chapter 7: “Additional Note on the Text of the Lukan Genealogy”. 4 A. Hervey, The Genealogies of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Cambridge, Macmillan; London, Hatchard, 1853, pp. 115–120; J. Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus, London, SCM Press, 1969, p. 296; G. Kühn, Die Geschlechtsregister Jesu bei Lukas und Matthäus, nach ihrer Herkunft untersucht, in ZNW 22 (1923) 212–213.

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extend the line back to Adam. In order to argue, to the contrary, that Luke took over the whole genealogy as far as Adam from a source which was probably independent of the LXX , we need to return to Kainam the son of Arpachshad. In Jubilees 8,1–5 he is no mere name in a genealogy, but a figure of some significance: And on [sic] the twenty-ninth jubilee in the first week, at its beginning Arpachshad took a wife and her name was Rasu’eya, daughter of Susan, daughter of Elam, as a wife [sic]. And she bore a son for him in the third year of that week, and he called him Cainan [Syriac: Kanan; Ethiopic: Kainam]5, (2) and the child grew. And his father taught him writing. And he went forth in order that he might seek a place where he could build a city. (3) And he found a writing which the ancestors engraved on stone. And he read what was in it. And he transcribed it. And he sinned because of what was in it, since there was in it the teaching of the Watchers by which they used to observe the omens of the sun and the moon and stars within all the signs of heaven. (4) And he copied it down, but he did not tell about it because he feared to tell Noah about it lest he be angry with him because of it. (5) And in the thirtieth jubilee in the second week in its first year, he took a wife and her name was Melka, the daughter of Madai, son of Japheth. And in its fourth year he begot a son and he called him Shelah because, he said, “I have certainly been sent out”6.

The narrative serves to explain how the unlawful teaching of the Watchers, given before the Flood, continued to influence humanity after the Flood. In particular, it traces the origins of Chaldean astrology (11,8) to the Watchers, by contrast to the true astronomical knowledge which Enoch taught (4,17–18). This story about Kainam is therefore closely connected with the traditions about the teaching of the Watchers which are found in the Enoch literature (for their astrological teaching, cf. especially 1 Enoch 8,3). Jubilees had earlier referred to the story of the Watchers (4,15.22; 6,1–11; 7,21–22)7, but had not in fact mentioned their unlawful teaching (4,15 refers only to their original mission from God to give true teaching, before they sinned). 5 The spelling with a final ‘m’ recurs remarkable often in reference to the son of Arpachshad. The Ethiopic of Jubilees calls the son of Enosh Kâinân (4,13–14), but the son of Arpachshad Kâinâm (8.1). The Syriac of 8,1 may have assimilated the name of the son (Gen of Arpachshad to that of the son of Enosh. In the LXX the son of Enosh is 5,12–16; 1 Chron 1,2); the son of Arpachshad is in Gen 11,12–13; but in Gen 10,24 ms A has for the son of Arpachshad. Luke alone calls the son of Enosh, as well as the son of Arpachshad, , but since the latter occurs first in his genealogy he could have assimilated the name of the son of Enosh to it. Thus it is possible that the two names were originally distinct and that the son of Arpachshad was , not . 6 Translation by O. S. Wintermute, in J. H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Tesament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2, London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1985, p. 71. 7 For Jubilees’ dependence on the Enoch literature, see J. VanderKam, Enoch Traditions in Jubilees and Other Second-century Sources, in SBL 1978 Seminar Papers, vol. 1, Missoula, MT , Scholars Press, pp. 228–251; Id., Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition (CBQ MS , 16), Washington, Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1984, p. 180.

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Thus it seems probable that the story of Kainam’s discovery of the inscription belonged to the same cycle of traditions as those about Enoch and the Watchers, to which Jubilees is indebted. It is likely that Kainam also occurred in a genealogical tradition known to Jubilees. R. H. Charles8 suggested that Jubilees added Kainam to the line from Shem to Abraham in order to make possible the analogy in 2,23 between the twenty-two kinds of work created on the six days of creation and the “twenty-two chief men from Adam until Jacob”. This is not a convincing argument, since if Kainam is ommitted there are twenty-two names, including both Adam and Jacob, from Adam to Jacob, so that it would still be possible to reckon twenty-two. More convincing is the idea that both in Jubilees and in Genesis 11 LXX , Kainam has been added to make ten generations in the line from Shem to Terah, parallel to the ten generations from Adam to Noah9. But since Jubilees does not set out these two genealogies in schematic parallel as Genesis does (5,1–32; 11,10–26), it is less plausible that the author of Jubilees added Kainam for this reason than that he found Kainam already in the text of Genesis or in an independent genealogy of the patriarchs. Furthermore, the presence of Kainam in the genealogy cannot be isolated from the question of the various differing chronologies of the generations from Adam to Terah. In the generations from Adam to Shem the age of each patriarch at the birth of his eldest son, as given in Jubilees10, virtually agree in every case with the figures in the Samaritan Pentateuch, diverging from the MT in the cases where the Samaritan Pentateuch does so11. But in the generations from Arpachshad to Terah, where the Samararitan Pentateuch agrees with the LXX in figures which simply add 100 or 50 to those of the MT , Jubilees has a quite different set of figures, higher than the MT ’s, lower than the LXX ’s, but unrelated to either12. This means that the occurrence of Kainam the son of Arpachshad in Jubilees is not simply paral8

R. H. Charles, The Book of Jubilees or the Little Genesis, London, A. & C. Black, 1902, p. 66. 9 For the LXX , cf. R. W. Klein, Archaic Chronologies and the Textual History of the Old Testament, in HTR 67 (1974) 258. 10 These ages have to be calculated from the dates Jubilees gives. 11 Since these agreements with the Samaritan Pentateuch have to be calculated and are not explicitly textual agreements, they are not included in the lists of biblical textual variants in Jubilees and their affinities given by J. VanderKam, Textual and Historical Studies in the Book of Jubilees (HSM , 14), Missoula, MT , Scholars Press, 1977, pp. 139–198, but they could be added to his lists B and E and support his case for the affinity of Jubilees’ biblical text with the Samaritan. 12 Discussions of the divergent chronologies in the texts of Genesis in the MT , LXX and Samaritan Pentateuch (e. g. Klein, Archaic Chronologies, 253–263; G. Larsson, The Chronology of the Pentateuch: A Comparison of the MT and LXX, in JBL 102 [1983] 401–409) do not seem to have given due attention to the data of Jubilees or those of Pseudo-Philo, LAB (which appears to have yet another distinct chronology, although the transmission of figures in the text of LAB is unreliable).

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lel to his occurrence in the LXX . In Genesis 11,13 the figures of Kainan’s life (130 years to the birth of Shelah, 330 years afterwards) are the same as those of his son Shelah. This duplication, found nowhere else in the genealogy, makes it very probable that Kainan is a secondary addition to it. But this is not the case in Jubilees (where Kainam is 57 at the birth of Shelah, and Shelah 71 at the birth of Eber). In Jubilees the occurrence of Kainam in the genealogy seems to be part of a divergent tradition of the whole genealogy from Arpachshad to Terah. It is difficult to know whether the author of Jubilees derived this divergent tradition from the text of Genesis he used. VanderKam’s meticulous and exhaustive examination of the variant biblical readings in Jubilees shows that Jubilees agrees more frequently with the LXX and the Samaritan than with the MT , and concludes that it depends on an early Palestinian text of the Hebrew Bible which was closer to the Vorlage of the LXX than to the MT 13. However, in this case, Kainam occurs only in LXX and Jubilees, not in other witnesses to a Palestinian type of text (Samaritan; 1 Chronicles 1,18; Pseudo-Philo, LAB 4,9), while Jubilees’ chronology of the line from Arpachshad to Terah is unparalleled elsewhere. Jubilees may reflect a distinctive tradition of the text of Genesis 11, or it may reflect an independent genealogy which has also influenced the LXX at Genesis 10,24; 11,12–13. There is additional evidence that a form of the genealogy from Shem to Abraham which included Kainam the son of Arpachshad was already known before Jubilees14. This evidence comes from the Enochic Apocalypse of Weeks (1 Enoch 93,3–10; 91,11–17)15 and thus confirms the suggestion made above that the tradition about Kainam in Jubilees 8,1–5 was connected with the traditions about Enoch and the Watchers which Jubilees knew from the Enoch literature. The Apocalypse of Weeks divides the whole history of the world from Adam to the judgment of the Watchers at the last judgment into ten “weeks”. The clear indication of 93,3 (in which Enoch, the seventh in line from Adam, says, “I was born the seventh in the first week”) is that the weeks consist of seven generations each. The majority of 13

VanderKam, Textual and Historical Studies, pp. 116–138. The latest full discussion of the date of Jubilees is VanderKam, Textual and Historical Studies, chapter 3: he concludes that it must be dated between 163 and 140 b.c.e. The Apocalypse of Weeks has usually been dated just before or during the Maccabean revolt. VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth, pp. 142–149, argues for a date between 175 and 167 b.c.e. 15 This rearrangement of the text, long postulated by scholars, has been shown to be the original form of the Apocalypse of Weeks by the Aramaic fragments from Qumran: see J. T. Milik, The Book of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumrân Cave 4, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1976, p. 247; F. Dexinger, Henochs Zehnwochenapokalypse und offene Probleme der Apokalyptikforschung (SPB , 29), Leiden, Brill, 1977, pp. 102–109; M. Black, The Apocalypse of Weeks in the Light of 4Q Ena, in VT 28 (1978) 464–469; Id., The Book of Enoch or I Enoch: A New English Edition (SVTP , 7), Leiden, Brill, 1985, pp. 287–289, 291–292. 14

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scholars have concluded that the Apocalypse cannot be made to fit a scheme of ten weeks of generations16, but attempts to understand it as using units other than generations have all failed.17 In fact, a generational scheme works very well. If we include Kainam the son of Arpachshad, the first five weeks are as follows: 1 st week: Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch End of 1 st week: Enoch (93,3) 2 nd week: Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, Shem, Arpachshad, Kainam, Shelah End of 2 nd week: Noah’s law (93,4) 3 rd week: Eber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah, Abraham End of 3 rd week: Abraham (93,5) 4 th week: Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Perez, Hezron, Ram, Amminadab End of 4 th week: Sinai (93,6) 5 th week: Nahshon, Salmon, Boaz, Obed, Jesse, David, Solomon End of 5 th week: Temple (93,7)

Most important events noticed in the Apocalypse happen at the end of each week, i. e. on the sabbath of each week, in the seventh generation. Provided we include Kainam in the generations of the second week, Abraham occurs at the end of the third week, exactly where the Apocalypse indicates. The law made for sinners by Noah, following the growth of iniquity after the Flood (93,4) should probably be identified not with the Noahic covenant of Genesis 9,1–17, but with the testament of Noah found in Jubilees 7,20–3918. Jubilees dates this in the jubilee immediately before the birth of Kainam, but the author of the Apocalypse could easily have supposed it to have happened during the lifetime of Shelah, when Noah was certainly still alive. Kainam’s sin in connexion with the inscription could then be connected with the renewed growth of iniquity to which 1 Enoch 93,4 refers. If the genealogy continues through the biblical line to Solomon, the thirty-fifth generation, then the giving of the law at Sinai at the end of the fourth week 16 Cf. the discussion, with references to earlier literature, in Dexinger, Henochs Zehnwochenapokalypse, pp. 119–120. But C. Kaplan, Some New Testament Problems in the Light of Rabbinics and the Pseudepigrapha: The Generation Schemes in Matthew I:1–17 and Luke III: 24 ff, in Bibliotheca Sacra 87 (1930) 465–471, rightly measures the weeks in generations. 17 The most detailed alternative reckonings of the weeks are those of R. T. Beckwith, The Significance of the Calendar for Interpreting Essene Chronology and Eschatology, in RevQ 10 (1980) 167–202, and K. Koch, Sabbatstruktur und Geschichte: Die sogenannte Zehn-Wochen-Apokalypse (I Hen 931–10; 911–17) und das Ringen um die alttestamentlichen Chronologien im späten Israelitentum, in ZAW 95 (1983) 413–420: by comparison with a generational scheme both are very contrived. For the failure of attempts to reckon the weeks, cf. also VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth, p. 158. 18 Dexinger, Henochs Zehnwochenapokalypse, pp. 123–124; Black, The Book of Enoch, 289–290.

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(93,6) is approximately correctly placed and the building of the Temple accurately placed at the end of the fifth week (93,7). The generational scheme appears to fail after this, because the Apocalypse allows only one week, the sixth, for the whole period of the divided monarchy down to the destruction of the Temple, which it places at the end of the sixth week (93,8). From Rehoboam to Jeconiah there were seventeen generations (1 Chron 3.10–16). This is the main reason why most scholars have rejected the idea that the Apocalypse of Weeks uses a generational scheme. However, the mistake is to suppose that the author would count his generations according to the royal line, in which he shows no interest at all. His interests are priestly interests in the Law and the Temple, and he is much more likely to have followed a priestly genealogy. Since the Old Testament supplies no standard priestly genealogy after Phinehas, we cannot tell what genealogy he would have used. However, if we use, for the sake of illustration, the genealogy given (as that of Ezra) in Ezra 7,1–5, we can see how such a genealogy could fit the scheme of the Apocalypse. We need to go back to the fourth week to do so: 4 th week: Isaac, Jacob, Levi, Kohath, Amram, Aaron, Eleazar End of 4 th week: Sinai (93,6) 5 th week: Phinehas, Abishua, Bukki, Uzzi, Zerahiah, Meraioth, Azariah End of 5 th week: Temple (93,7) 6 th week: Amariah, Ahitub, Zadok, Shallum, Hilkiah, Azariah, Seraiah End of 6 th week: Fall of Temple (93,8)

The generation of Eleazar the son of Aaron could be more plausibly than that of Amminadab regarded as the generation of Sinai (Exod 28,1; Num 3,2–4.22). Azariah at the end of the fifth week could be considered contemporary with the building of the Temple (as in 1 Kings 4,2; 1 Chron 6,10) and Seraiah at the end of the sixth week was high priest at the time of the fall of Jerusalem (2 Kings 25,18). This simply shows that the scheme of the Apocalypse could fit a priestly genealogy, which could well record, as this one does, far fewer generations than the line of the kings of Judah. We may also allow for the fact that genealogies were frequently manipulated to fit a numerical scheme. The author of the Apocalypse of Weeks had to cover the monarchical and post-exilic periods in no more than two weeks in order to put his own generation, which received the secrets of Enoch’s revelations (93,10), in the key position at the end of the seventh week, since this was the “jubilee” position, the seventh generation of the seventh week. If his scheme fitted so well the recorded genealogies as far as the building of the Temple, we should not be surprised if he stretched it thereafter. The point of this examination of the Apocalypse of Weeks has been to show how probable it is that its author knew Kainam the son of Arpachshad

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in the genealogy of the patriarchs. Without this generation, the otherwise precise placings of Abraham and the building of the Temple at the ends of the third and fifth weeks would not be possible. Thus the occurrence of Kainam the son of Arpachshad in the genealogy from Shem to Abraham was not a peculiarity of Jubilees alone, but was more widely known, in the second century b.c. e., in the circles from which the Enoch literature comes. It remains to demonstrate that the occurrence of Kainam in the Lukan genealogy is more likely to depend on a tradition connected with Jubilees and the Enoch literature than to depend on the LXX . The Lukan genealogy has seventy-seven names from Adam to Jesus19. If the order of these is reversed, to follow the usual order of a biblical genealogy, the genealogy can be seen to have been constructed to fit a numerical similar to that of the Apocalypse of Weeks. The names in the seventh, sabbatical position at the end of each week of generations are then as follows: 1 st week: 7 th:

, 2 nd: , 8 th:

, 3 rd: , 9 th:

, 4 th: , 10 th:

, 5 th: , 11 th:

, 6 th:

,

Whereas the scheme in the Apocalypse of Weeks correlates Enoch in the seventh generation with the author’s own generation in the forty-ninth (seven × seventh) generation, this scheme primarily correlates Enoch in the seventh generation with Jesus in the seventy-seventh generation. This is a Hebraic use of seventy-seven as the fullest extension of seven, as in Genesis 4,24; Matthew 18,22. Enoch, well known to be the seventh generation from Adam (1 Enoch 60,8; 93,3; Jub 7,39; Jude 14; Lev Rab. 29,11), was considered of very special significance for that reason. Jesus as the seventy-seventh generation is thereby shown to be of ultimate significance, the furthest the generations of world history will go, both in number and in significance. However, we should also note that the Lukan genealogy has the name not only in seventy-seventh place, but also in forty-ninth place, the jubilee position, where the only namesake of Jesus among his ancestors appears (Luke 3,29). Moreover, at the end of each week preceding those in which the name is seventh, stands the name , thus parallelling in the scheme of weeks the position of as the father of Jesus, the seventy-sixth generation immediately before at the end of the list. It looks as though the author who has constructed the genealogy according to this scheme has used the key positions at the ends of the sixth, seventh 19 The seventy-seven names in modern printed editions of the Greek New Testament are found in most but not all MSS . For discussion of the textual questions, see Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus (n. 3), chapter 7: “Additional Note on the Text of the Lukan Genealogy.” Since in a list of this kind it is easier for names to drop out than for names to be added, a name which is lacking in a few MSS should not be rejected without good reason.

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and tenth weeks to point forward to the end of the whole line. According to the author’s perspective on world history, these positions do not themselves mark turning-points in history, but are significant only as pointing forward to the climax of all history in Jesus the son of Joseph. Like the scheme in the Apocalypse of Weeks, the Lukan genealogy has Abraham at the end of the third week. But unlike the Apocalypse of Weeks, which places the building of the Temple at the end of the fifth week, the Lukan genealogy ends the fifth week with David. As we have seen the biblical genealogy, if followed, would place Solomon in this position. The Lukan genealogy secures this place for David because, as we have already noticed, it adds a generation to the biblical line of David’s descent from Judah: where the Bible has only Ram, it has and . However this extra generation may have originated20, it serves an important purpose in the genealogical scheme. Unlike the Apocalypse of Weeks, which is not interested in David or the monarchy, the Lukan genealogy is intended to show Jesus’ Davidic descent. It therefore highlights David by means of his sabbatical position at the end of a week. The appearance of (Shealtiel) at the end of the eighth week might also be significant. With this name the line of non-royal descent from David via Nathan rejoins the biblically attested succession to the throne of David (1 Chron 3,17). If the Lukan genealogy thus resembles the Apocalypse of Weeks in its construction, it differs in having eleven weeks of world history rather than the ten of the Apocalypse. This difference not only gives Jesus the very significant seventh-seventy place. It also shows that the Lukan genealogy is constructed with reference to another part of the Enoch literature: 1 Enoch 10,12 (= 4QE nb 1,4,10). The archangel Michael is there instructed to bind the Watchers “for seventy generations under the hills of the earth until the [great] day of their judgment”21. From verse 14 it is clear that this day of judgment of the Watchers is the day of judgment at the end of world history. The binding of the fallen angels occurred during the lifetime of Enoch’s son Methuselah. Thus according to 1 Enoch 10,12 the whole of world history from Adam to the last judgment comprises seventy-seven generations, seven up to and including Enoch, following by a further seventy. For anyone familiar with 1 Enoch 10,12 the Lukan genealogy would clearly designate Jesus the last generation of world history before the end. These features of the Lukan genealogy, which cannot be coincidental, show it to be constructed according to an apocalyptic world-historical 20 See Jeremias, Jerusalem (n. 4), p. 293, for a suggestion that it originated by scribal error. 21 Translation of the Ethiopic from M. Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, vol. 2, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1978, p. 789, but with ‘great’ supplied from the Aramaic in 4QE nb 1,4,10.

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scheme inspired by the Enoch literature. I have discussed the nature and origin of the genealogy in more detail elsewhere22. For the present purpose, we can now draw three conclusions: (1) The generations from Adam to Abraham are integral to the structure of the whole genealogy and cannot be considered without reference to the rest. (2) The structure of the genealogy is only clear when it is seen as a descending genealogy, beginning with Adam and ending with Jesus. It is probable therefore that Luke found it in this form in a source, reversed it to form an ascending genealogy, in order to accommodate it to his narrative, and at the same time added the reference to God at the end, for his own theological purpose. But he made no other changes. (3) It cannot be completely excluded that the author of the genealogy referred to the LXX . But since the genealogy shows striking independence of the LXX in the generations between Abraham and David, it is most likely not dependent on the LXX for the generations between Adam and Abraham. An author as familiar with the Enoch literature as this author was would probably have known of Kainam the son of Arpachshad from Jubilees, and may well have known other genealogical traditions in related literature not known to us. He may even have known a Hebrew text of Genesis in which Kainam the son of Arpachshad appeared.

22

Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus (n. 3), chapter 7.

11. The List of the Tribes of Israel in Revelation 7* In a recent article in this journal,1 Christopher R. Smith has offered an ingenious explanation of the anomalous features of the list of the twelve tribes of Israel in Rev. 7.5–8. The list, he claims, is ‘a systematic reworking of a paradigmatic list of the sons of Israel grouped by maternal descent, whose otherwise perplexing features are clearly explained by the author’s design of portraying the church as the New Israel’.2 He suggests that an original list (see Fig. 1) was transformed by the author of Revelation into the list he gives by making three changes, for the following reasons: (1) Judah is moved from fourth place to first, because Christ, the head of the church, was of that tribe; (2) Dan is omitted and Manasseh substituted, in order to assimilate the list to that of the twelve apostles, in which Judas was removed and Matthias substituted. The choice of Dan as the tribe to be omitted is said to be ‘because of that tribe’s longstanding association with idolatry, and because of the Jewish tradition that the antichrist would come from the tribe of Dan’.3 (3) The sons of the handmaids are moved up, as a group of four, from the end of the list to follow Reuben near the top. This is partly because they were tribes living in ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’, the focus of Christ’s early ministry, but more especially so that the nullification of privilege based on difference of birth might represent the inclusion of Gentiles in the church. Reuben retains his place as first-born, however, to represent the inclusion of believing Israelites in the church. The first of these three arguments is plausible, but the others are unconvincing for the follow reasons; (1) The tradition that Antichrist would come from the tribe of Dan is first found in Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 5.30.2 and Hippolytus, De Antichristo 14; it is found in no Jewish text and is very unlikely to be pre-Christian. The

* First publication: Journal for the Study of the New Testament 42 (1991) 99–115. 1 C. R. Smith, ‘The Portrayal of the Church as the New Israel in the Names and Order of the Tribes in Revelation 7.5–8’, JSNT 39 (1990), pp. 111–18. 2 Ibid., pp. 115–16. 3 Ibid., p. 115.

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11. The List of the Tribes of Israel in Revelation 7

Figure 1 Original list

Judah moved up; Manasseh for Dan

Handmaids’ sons moved up

Reuben Simeon Levi Judah Issachar Zebulun

Judah Reuben Simeon Levi Issachar Zebulun

Judah Reuben

Joseph Benjamin

Joseph Benjamin

(Zilpah)

Gad Asher

(Bilhah)

Dan Naphtali

Gad Asher – Dan Naphtali + Manasseh

(Leah)

(Rachel)

Gad Asher Naphtali Manasseh Simeon Levi Issachar Zebulun Joseph Benjamin

‘Antichrist’ figures of Jewish apocalyptic are always Gentiles.4 It is true that Testament of Dan 5.4–6 predicts the apostasy of Dan, but 5.9–13 envisages the tribe’s restoration and participation in the eschatological salvation of Israel. In any case, even if there had been such a tradition, it is incomprehensible that the author of Revelation, whose Antichrist is the imperial power of Rome, should have made use of it. (2) The replacement of Dan by Manasseh is hardly a convincing parallel to the replacement of Judas by Matthias. Manasseh frequently appears in lists of the tribes of Israel, but always along with Ephraim in place of Joseph. What needs explaining is not the appearance of Manasseh in this list, but the appearance of Manasseh along with Joseph, rather than Ephraim. (3) The tribes whose territory was included in Galilee in New Testament times were Naphtali, Zebulun and Issachar, two of which are actually moved down the list by the alleged rearrangement. The tribes actually associated with ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’ in Isa. 9.1, cited in Mt. 4.15, are Naphtali and Zebulun. Gad, Asher, and Manasseh were not Galilaean tribes. (4) The idea that the rearrangement of the list nullifies the difference of birth depends on assuming that the Leah and Rachel tribes were normally 4 W. Bousset (The Antichrist Legend [London: Hutchinson, 1896], pp. 171–74] argues for the pre-Christian origin of the tradition, but can adduce only Christian sources. Besides the influence of Gen. 49.17, Jer. 8.16, and the omission of Dan from Rev. 7.5–8, the Christian tradition that Antichrist will be a Danite may have originated as an ant-Jewish interpretation of the common expectation of an Antichrist from the East, beyond the Euphrates, which was where the ten tribes were believed to be.

11. The List of the Tribes of Israel in Revelation 7

163

given priority over the Bilhah and Zilpah tribes. In fact, few Old Testament lists arrange the tribes in this way (only Gen. 35.23–26; Exod. 1.2–4; Num. 1.5–15), while, as we shall see later, in New Testament times there seem to have been two standard ways of listing the tribes, one of which gives the sons of the wives priority over the sons of the handmaids, but the other of which places the Rachel tribes at the end of the list where they belong in the order of birth. Though John’s list conforms to neither of these standard patterns, it is not at all clear that it would have been recognized as reordering precedence among the tribes. (5) It is in any case hard to see how a revision of the order of precedence among the tribes of Israel could represent the inclusion of Gentiles in the New Israel. More generally, Smith’s argument fails to consider adequately the relation between the 144,000 of the tribes of Israel (7.4–8) and the great multitude (7.9–17). He merely answers Feuillet’s arguments that the two groups must be different, but fails to consider whether the juxtaposition of the two may not assist the understanding of the first. Here I must summarize an argument I have presented in detail elsewhere.5 Literary links and parallels suggest that the vision of the 144,000 and the innumerable multitude in ch. 7 should be seen as a parallel to the vision of the Lion and the Lamb of 5.5–14.6 In 5.5 John hears that victory has been won by the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David. These two messianic titles, alluding to Gen. 49.9 and Isa. 11.1–5, both classic texts for Jewish messianic hopes in the first century ce,7 evoke the image of the messiah as a new David who wins a military victory over the enemies of Israel. But after hearing this description of the victorious messiah, John sees the slaughtered Lamb (5.6), whose blood has ransomed a people from every tribe, language, people and nation (5.9). By juxtaposing these images, John gives his Jewish Christian interpretation of Jewish messianic hopes. The conquering Davidic messiah is not repudiated,8 but his victory is shown to be by sacrifice, not military conflict, while the people he delivers are not 5

R. Bauckham, ‘The Book of Revelation as a Christian War Scroll’, Neotestamentica 22 (1988), pp. 17–40. 6 For this paragraph see also R. Bauckham, ‘The Figurae of John of Patmos’, in A. Williams (ed.), Prophecy and Millenarianism: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Reeves (London: Longman, 1980), pp 107–25. 7 For allusions to both passages together, see 4QPB less; 1QS b 5.20–29; 4 Ezra 12.31– 32; and for the Shoot of David, see 4QF lor 1.11–12; 4QpIsa frag. A; Pss. Sol. 17.24,35–37; 1 Enoch 49.3; 4 Ezra 13.10; T. Jud. 24.4–6. 8 For Revelation’s emphasis on the fulfilment of Old Testament Davidic promises in Christ, see J. Fekkes, ‘Isaiah and Prophetic Traditions in the Book of Revelation: Visionary Antecedents and their Development’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 1988), pp. 153–54.

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11. The List of the Tribes of Israel in Revelation 7

only Israelites, but from all the nations. Moreover, the second image, the slaughtered Lamb, is just as scriptural as the first: there is probably an allusion to Isa. 53.7 and certainly to the Passover lamb,9 whose blood effects the new Exodus and redeems the eschatological people of God (5.9–10, alluding to Exod. 19.6). By juxtaposing the two scriptural images of the conquering messiah and the slaughtered Lamb, John builds the notion of a messiah who conquers by sacrificial death. In ch. 7, John hears the number of those sealed from the tribes of Israel, but he sees the innumerable multitude from all nations. Just as he has deliberately juxtaposed the contrasting images of the messiah in 5.5–6, so he has deliberately juxtaposed contrasting images of the messiah’s followers in 7.4–9. The contrast is obvious in two respects: the 144,000 are counted, whereas the great multitude cannot be counted; the 144,000 are from the twelve tribes of Israel, whereas the great multitude are from all nations, tribes, peoples and languages.10 The contrasting images are parallel to those of 5.5–6: the 144,000 are the Israelite army of the Lion of Judah, while the international multitude are the followers of the slaughtered Lamb. The purpose of the contrast is the same as in 5.5–6: to give a Christian interpretation of an element of Jewish messianic expectation. Moreover, just as in 5.6 the image which conveys John’s Jewish Christian interpretation of Jewish hopes is a scriptural one, so in 7.9 the image of the innumerable multitude from all nations is a scriptural allusion. It echoes God’s promise to the patriarchs that their descendants would be innumerable (Gen. 13.16; 15.5; 32.12; Hos. 1.10; Jub. 13.20; 14.4–5; Heb. 11.12; cf. Gen. 22.17; 26.4; 28.14; Jub. 18.15; 25.16; 27.13; Lad. Jac. 1.10). By contrast with some contemporary Jewish expectations that this promise would be fulfilled by the growth of the exiled ten tribes to vast numbers in the lands of their exile,11 John has probably understood it in terms of the other form of the promise to the patriarchs: that their descendants would be a multitude of nations (Gen. 17.4–6; 35.11; 48.19; cf. Rom. 4.16–18; Justin, Dial. 119–120). Unlike the twelve tribes which can be numbered, the great multitude is innumerable because it is international, drawn not only from Israel but from all the nations. Less obvious than the contrast between the fixed number of Israelites and the innumerable multitude from all nations is the contrast between the 144,000 as an army called to military service in the messianic war, and the 9 Fekkes (‘Isaiah’, pp. 154–59) rejects Isa. 53.7 in favour of the paschal lamb as John’s Old Testament source here. 10 5.9 and 7.9 are the first two occurrences in Revelation of this fourfold expression, which John uses five more times, always varying the order or terms: 10.11; 11.9; 13.7; 14.6; 17.15. 11 Evidence in Bauckham, ‘Revelation as a Christian War Scroll’, p. 25.

11. The List of the Tribes of Israel in Revelation 7

165

innumerable multitude as victors who have won their victory by following the Lamb in his sacrificial death. That the multitude are the martyrs in heaven, who have conquered by their suffering witness as a participation in the Lamb’s own sacrificial death, becomes clear only in 7.14, which must be read in connection with later passages such as 12.11 and 15.2.12 That the 144,000 are an Israelite army is implicit in the fact that 7.4–8 is a census of the tribes of Israel. In the Old Testament a census was always a reckoning of the military strength of the nation, in which only males of military age were counted.13 Accordingly, it later becomes apparent from Rev. 14.4 that the 144,000 are adult male Israelites: those eligible for military service.14 The only divinely commanded censuses in the Old Testament were those in the wilderness (Num. 1; 26). It looks as though the repeated formula of Rev. 7.5–8 ( …) is modelled on that of Numbers (1.21, 23; etc.: …). A possible link with the census of Numbers 1 is of particular interest, since the account of the organization of the military camp of Israel in the wilderness which this census introduces considerably influenced the Qumran War Rule (1QM ). Israel, organized in the wilderness for the conquest of the promised land, was readily treated as a model for the eschatological Israel who would come from the wilderness (1QM 1.2–3) to reconquer the promised land in the messianic war.15 Of course, the number 144,000 has symbolic appropriateness, which in Revelation reappears in the dimensions of the New Jerusalem (21.16–17). But it would be natural to think of an army of all Israel, assembled for the messianic war, as composed of twelve equal tribal contingents. The small force which Moses sent against Midian was 12,000 strong, composed of 1,000 from each of the tribes (Num. 31.4–6; cf. Philo, Mos. 1.306). Moreover, not only was the return of the ten tribes and the reunion of all Israel a strong traditional element in the eschatological hope,16 so that the list of equal numbers from the twelve tribes in Rev. 7.4–8 would readily suggest to any Jewish Christian reader the eschatological restoration of the people of 12 For this interpretation, see Bauckham, ‘Revelation as a Christian War Scroll’, pp. 27–28. 13 Num. 1.3, 18, 20, etc.; 26.2, 4; 1 Chron. 27.23; cf. 2 Sam. 24.9; 1 Chron. 21.5. 14 Hence also the sexual abstinence of the 144,000 (14.4) is to be explained according to the requirement of ritual purity for soldiers in the holy war: Bauckham, ‘Revelation as a Christian War Scroll’, p. 29. 15 For the influence of Num. 1–3, 10 on 1QM , see P. R. Davies, 1QM, the War Scroll from Qumran: Its Structure and History (BibOr, 32; Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1977), pp. 28, 30–31: Y. Yadin, The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), pp. 39, 42–48, 54–56; J. van der Ploeg, Le Rouleau de la Guerre (STDJ , 2; Leiden: Brill, 1959), pp. 27–28. 16 Isa. 11.11–12, 15–16; 27.12–13; Jer. 31.7–9; Ezek. 37.15–23; Sir. 36.11; Tob. 13.13; 2 Bar. 78.5–7; T. Jos. 19.4; cf. Mt. 19.28; m. Sanh. 10.3; j. Sanh. 10.6.

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11. The List of the Tribes of Israel in Revelation 7

God.17 There is also evidence for the expectation that the ten tribes would return specifically to take part in the messianic war of liberation (Sib. Or. 2.170–76; Commodian, Carmen apol. 941–86).18 The army in 1QM , modelled on Numbers 1–2, is organized according to the traditional division of Israel into twelve tribes.19 It follows that we should not look, as Smith does, for a Christian interpretation of the list of twelve tribes within 7.4–8. This image as such is a traditional Jewish image of the people of God called to military service in the messianic war. The Christian interpretation comes in 7.9–14, which shows the same people celebrating their victory in heaven, but shows them to be an innumerable multitude of martyrs from all the nations. Smith is right in thinking that John does not list the twelve tribes in order to represent Jewish Christians only, but intends to reinterpret the twelve tribes as the new international people of God. He does this, however, precisely by means of the contrast between 7.4–8 and 7.9. We return to the names and order of the tribes. Smith has failed to consider whether we have evidence for the way Jewish writers of the first century ce listed the tribes. It so happens that we have such evidence: in Josephus and in Pseudo-Philo’s Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (LAB). (The five lists in Pseudo-Philo20 are given in Fig. 2.) We may also take into account the lists in Jubilees, the Qumran Temple Scroll,21 and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. 17 Cf. A. Geyser, ‘The Twelve Tribes in Revelation: Judean and Judeo-Christian Apocalypticism’, NTS 28 (1982), pp. 388–99. 18 For Commodian’s dependence on a Jewish apocalyptic source, see Bauckham, ‘Revelation as a Christian War Scroll’, p. 23; M. R. James, Apocrypha Anecdota (TextS, 2/3; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1893), pp. 90–94; M. R. James, The Lost Apocrypha of the Old Testament (London: SPCK , 1920), pp. 103–106; F. Schmidt, ‘Une source essénienne chez Commodien’, in M. Philonenko, J.-C. Picard, J.-M. Rosenstiehl and F. Schmidt, Pseudépigraphes de l’Ancien Testament et manuscrits de la Mer Morte, I (Cahiers de la RHPR , 41; Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967); J. Daniélou, The Origins of Latin Christianity (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1977), pp. 116–19. 19 1QM 2.2–3.7; 3.13–14; 14.16; 5.1–2; 6.10; and cf. Yadin, Scroll, pp. 79–83. 1QM 1.2–3 may indicate that the first six years of the war will be fought by the three tribes of Levi, Judah and Benjamin, who will then be joined by the lost tribes for the remainder of the forty years’ war. 20 There is a sixth list in LAB 10.3, but it is not of the same kind: the tribes are divided into three groups of four according to their response to the situation at the Red Sea. On this passage, see my discussion in ‘The Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum of Pseudo-Philo and the Gospels as Midrash’, in R. T. France and D. Wenham (eds.), Studies in Midrash and Historiography (Gospel Perspectives, 3; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1983), pp. 44–46. 21 As well as the list in 11QT 24, which will be discussed here, the tribes are also listed in 11QT 39–41, 44–45, in connection with the gates and rooms allotted to the tribes in the Temple. For the way in which they are arranged, see J. Maier, The Temple Scroll (JSOTS up, 34; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985), pp. 112–12, 114.

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11. The List of the Tribes of Israel in Revelation 7

Figure 2 LAB 8.6 Reuben Simeon Levi Judah Issachar Zebulun

8.11–14 Reuben Simeon Levi Judah Issachar Zebulun

26.10–11 Reuben Simeon Levi Judah Issachar Zebulun

25.4 Judah Reuben Simeon Levi Issachar Zebulun

25.9–13 Judah Reuben

Joseph Benjamin

Dan Naphtali

Dan Naphtali

Dan Naphtali

Gad [Asher]

Gad Asher

Gad Asher

Gad Asher

Gad Asher

Joseph Benjamin

Joseph Benjamin

Manasseh Ephraim Benjamin

Manasseh Ephraim Benjamin

Levi Issachar Zebulun Dan Naphtali

The first of Pseudo-Philo’s lists, in LAB 8.6, lists all the Leah and the Rachel tribes before the Bilhah and Zilpah tribes. This is a matriological list (i. e. arranged according to the mothers of the patriarchs), which gives precedence to the sons of the two wives of Jacob over the sons of the two handmaids. The senior wife Leah has precedence over Rachel, but Rachel’s maid Bilhah precedes Leah’s maid Zilpah, presumably because Bilhah bore her children before Zilpah bore hers (Gen. 30.1–13). (Alternatively the arrangement could be understood as chiastic: Leah–Rachel–Rachel’s maid–Leah’s maid.) In LAB 8.6 the list is simply copied from Gen. 35.23–26, the passage which Pseudo-Philo is following at this point in his work. For the same reason this list is found also in Jub. 33.22. More significant is the fact that Josephus uses this list in Ant. 2.177–83, where the biblical passage he is following, Gen. 46.8–27, has a different order (sons of Leah, sons of Zilpah, sons of Rachel, sons of Bilhah: see Fig. 3). This matriological order makes a lot of sense in Genesis: the sons of Leah’s maid follow Leah’s own because they are in a sense hers, and the sons of Rachel’s maid similarly follow Rachel’s. But Josephus rearranges it in order to give both wives precedence over the handmaids. That this was the order he regarded as standard is confirmed by Ant. 1.344, where he indicates the same order (though without naming the tribes themselves). It is worth noticing, however, that when he mentions the order in which the names of the tribes appeared on the stones of the high priest’s breastplate, he says that the order was that of birth (Ant. 3.169). Since this is not the order he himself prefers, he must be reporting what was well known.

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Figure 3 Gen. 29–30 (order of birth) Reuben Simeon Levi Judah Dan Naphtali Gad Asher Issachar Zebulun Joseph Benjamin

Gen. 46

11QT 24

Reuben Simeon Levi Judah Issachar Zebulun

Levi Judah

Gad Asher Joseph Benjamin Dan Naphtali

Benjamin Joseph Reuben Simeon Issachar Zebulun Gad Asher Dan Naphtali

At this point we may mention the unique list in 11QT 24.10–16 (see Fig. 3), which gives the order in which burnt offerings for the twelve tribes are to be offered on the six days of the Wood Festival (hence the grouping of the tribes in pairs). This list is best understood as a modification of a matriological list, which was like that preferred by Josephus but more logically places the Bilhah tribes last, after the Zilpah tribes. The author has moved to the top of the list the three tribes which composed the southern kingdom and made up the majority of Jews in his day, and his own levitical interests dictate the precedence: Levi, Judah, Benjamin. But this precedence also assures that a matriological arrangement still obtains, in that the first pair of tribes are Leah tribes. To ensure that the next pair are also of the same mother, Joseph has had to be moved up the list also along with Benjamin. Then follow the remaining four Leah tribes, the Bilhah tribes, and the Zilpah tribes. The list is of interest in illustrating how strong the matriological principle of ordering was, even when another principle was also employed. The second of Pseudo-Philo’s lists occurs in 8.11–14 and the same list reappears in 26.10–11. The genealogical section 8.11–14, which lists all the children and grandchildren of Jacob, is closely dependent on Gen. 46.8–27. Jub. 44.11–34, also closely dependent on Gen. 46.8–27, follows its order, but, as we have just seen, Josephus finds this order unsatisfactory and rearranges it. Pseudo-Philo also rearranges the list, but differently from Josephus. Pseudo-Philo has gone to some trouble to rearrange the genealogical information so that the patriarchs appear in this order: sons of Leah, sons of

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Zilpah, sons of Bilhah, sons of Rachel.22 He must have regarded this order as a normative one and attached some importance to it, despite the fact that it nowhere appears in the Old Testament. When Pseudo-Philo uses it again in 26.10–11, it is in connection with the twelve precious stones from paradise which are given to Kenaz so that he can place them on the ephod alongside the twelve precious stones Moses placed on the breastplate of the high priest (cf. 26.4, 12). They are so described as to resemble closely the stones on the breastplate.23 Like the stones on the breastplate (Exod. 28.21; 39.14), these twelve stones have the names of the twelve tribes of Israel engraved on them. They are carefully listed in order (‘first…second…’, etc.). The remaining lists in LAB (25.4; 25.9–13) are, as we shall see, modifications of this list in 8.6 and 26.10–11. Nor is this list a peculiarity of PseudoPhilo: it also occurs in Jub. 34.30, and is the order in which the testaments of the patriarchs appear in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. Moreover, it is also found, as the order in which the names of the tribes appeared on the stones of the high priest’s breastplate, in two of the Targums (Fragm. Tg. Exod. 28.17–20; Tg. Neof. Exod. 28.17–20; 39.10–13) and in Midrash Rabbah (Exod. R. 38.8–9; Num. R. 2.7).24 This must be evidence of a strong tradition of the normative status of this particular order of the tribes. The order, as we have noticed, is not found in any Old Testament list of the tribes. It is in fact a modification of the order of birth of the patriarchs (as given in Gen. 29.31–30.24; 35.16–18: see Fig. 3), obtained by moving Issachar and Zebulun, the fifth and sixth sons of Leah, who were born after the sons of the handmaids, up the list to follow the first four sons of Leah. In this way the order of birth is modified so as to keep the sons of each of the four mothers together. We see once again the strength of the matriological principle of ordering. However, this modification of the order of birth is treated in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs actually as the order of birth of the patriarchs. Issachar calls himself Jacob’s fifth son (T. Iss. 1.2), and Gad calls himself Jacob’s ninth son (T. Gad 1.2). We recall also Josephus’s statement that the tribs appeared on the breastplate of the high priest in the order of birth (Ant. 3.169). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (to Exod. 28.17–20; 39.10–13) lists the tribes on the breastplate in the order of birth as given in Genesis 29–30, but the other texts which give the order on the breastplate agree with 22 In the text as it stands, the name Asher is missing, but comparison with Gen. 46.16–17 shows that a section of text has been lost in LAB 8.13. 23 The list is probably based on a list of the stones on the breastplate: cf. W. R. Reader, ‘The Twelve Jewels of Revelation 21:19–20: Tradition History and Modern Interpretations’, JBL 100 (1981), p. 446. 24 In Num. R. 2.7, the positions of Gad and Naphtali are reversed. Reader (‘Twelve Jewels’, pp. 440–44) gives the lists in the Targums and Exodus Rabbah, but not that in Numbers Rabbah.

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Pseudo-Philo’s list in LAB 26.10–11. It looks very much as though the universally accepted tradition was that the tribes were named on the breastplate in the order of the birth of the patriarchs, and that Targum Pseudo-Jonathan merely differs from other traditions as to what the order of birth was. Thus it would seem as though the reason why the list in LAB 8.11–14 and 26.10–11 was widely given normative status, and regarded as the order in which the tribes appeared on the stones of the breastplate, is that it was treated as the order of birth. This need not have been in disregard of Genesis. It could have been based on an interpretation of Genesis which, because Gen. 30.9 says that Leah had stopped bearing children, concluded that the story of Leah’s bearing of Issachar, Zebulun and Dinah in 30.14–21 must actually have happened before 30.9. Thus there seem, in the first century ce, to have been two standard ways of listing the tribes. Both were matriological, grouping all the sons of each mother together. One, preferred by Josephus, gave precedence to the sons of the wives over the sons of the handmaids. The other, which seems to have been more popular, was a matriological modification of the order of birth, and seems to have been treated as the order of birth. On this latter list Pseudo-Philo also has two variations: in 25.4 and 25.9–13. Both these lists occur in the story of Kenaz’s discovery of the sinners among the tribes, and so the two lists should correspond. Both include both Manasseh and Ephraim, rather than Joseph, as is natural in a narrative involving the actual tribes of the Old Testament, but the first list omits Dan and Naphtali, whereas the second list omits Simeon. As a result the first list has only eleven tribes, the second twelve. If both lists were originally of twelve tribes, omitting one name to achieve the number twelve, then they were inconsistent. If both lists were originally the same, they must have been of thirteen tribes. It is impossible to be sure of the original text, but at least the problem illustrates the difficulty encountered by any one listing the tribes, not as names of the patriarchs but as actual tribes: Israel was supposed to have had twelve tribes, but in fact had thirteen. However, both these lists agree on another variation from what we have called the normative order: Judah appears first. The reason is clear: the tribes are led by Kenaz, whose own tribe was Judah (25.9). Kenaz, whom PseudoPhilo glorifies as the first and greatest of the judges, is depicted by him as a kind of forerunner of David (cf. 21.4–5; 49.1) and probably as a prototype of the future messianic deliverer of Israel from the Gentiles.25 Thus LAB 25.4 and 25.9–13 are clear disproof of Smith’s claim that in a first-century vision of the literal twelve tribes of Israel and their spiritual future, one must

25

I hope to argue this in detail elsewhere.

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expect Levi rather than Judah to head the list.26 The place of Judah in the list in Rev. 7.4–8 is entirely explicable in terms of Jewish Davidic messianism, with which, of course, John’s own belief that Jesus fulfilled the hope of a messiah of David coincided. Comparing the lists I have discussed with the list of Revelation 7, the most anomalous feature of the latter is the position of Manasseh, since this is such a complete and apparently pointless breach of the matriological principle. If we could amend the text to read Dan instead of Manasseh, the tribes would at least be grouped in matriological pairs, as they are in 11QT 24. We could then understand the list as an attempt to list the tribes in an intelligible order which failed owing to faulty memory27 (whereas no Jew who knew the Scriptures as well as John did would, simply from faulty memory, associate Manasseh with Naphtali, rather than with Joseph and Benjamin). Amending the text in this way would also eliminate the other great anomaly in the list: the presence of Manasseh along with Joseph (rather than Ephraim). It is therefore tempting to amend the text, as others have suggested. But if the present text is accepted, the following is an attempt to explain it. In Fig. 4 I suggest how the list in Revelation 7 could have resulted from the order which was widely accepted as standard at the time of writing, the order found in LAB 8.11–14; 26.10–11; and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. Column 1 gives this normative order. Column 2 is the result of the following changes: (a) The order of the Bilhah and Zilpah tribes is reversed. this could easily happen in reproducing the list from memory.28 (b) Judah is moved to the head of the list, as in LAB 25.4 and 25.9–13. (c) Manasseh and Ephraim appear as two tribes, again as in LAB 25.4 and 25.9–13. (d) Dan is omitted in order to keep the number to twelve. Column 3 is the list in Rev. 7.5–8. It is the result of two changes: (a) Ephraim is renamed Joseph. (b) Two blocks of four tribes (Levi–Zebulun; Gad–Manasseh) have changed places. This account of the origin of the order in Revelation 7 can explain the very odd place of Manasseh without supposing it to be a textual error. If it is not a textual error, then the order of the list must result from copying a written list like that in column 2 and either deliberately or carelessly moving a block of four tribes to a different position. Such a change of position could be made if a list which was deliberately ordered were copied by a writer who did not really care in what order he listed the tribes. But hardest of all to explain is the inclusion of Joseph, rather than Ephraim, along with Manasseh. This is unparalleled in any extant list of the 26 27 28

Smith, ‘Portrayal of the Church’, p. 114. Note that the last four names correctly follow the Genesis order of birth. Cf. the variation in Num. R. 2.7, noted above.

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Figure 4 Normative order Reuben Simeon Levi Judah Issachar Zebulun

Judah Reuben Simeon Levi Issachar Zebulun

Dan Naphtali

Gad Asher

Gad Asher

Naphtali

Joseph Benjamin

Manasseh Ephraim Benjamin

Rev 7 Judah Reuben Gad Asher Naphtali Manasseh Simeon Levi Issachar Zebulun Joseph Benjamin

tribes. However, there is one apparent parallel which might explain it.29 In the account of the census in Numbers 1, on which I have already suggested Rev. 7.4–8 may be partly modelled, the repeated formula introducing the number of each tribe is varied once. Whereas for every other tribe, it begins: ‘for the sons of Reuben…’, ‘for the sons of Simeon…’, etc. in the case of Ephraim it begins: ‘for the sons of Joseph, for the sons of Ephraim…’ (Num. 1.32).30 If this is why John or his source called the tribe of Ephraim Joseph, he did not, however, follow the order of the tribes in Numbers 1. That order is a unique one, related to the places of the tribes in the camp (Num. 2). It may have suggested to John or his source that the order of tribes in a military census should not be the normative order of the tribes, so that he rearranged the normative order to form an anomalous order of his own. A more plausible explanation may yet be discovered!31

29 In Bauckham, ‘Revelation as a Christian War Scroll’, p. 24, I drew attention instead to Ezek. 37.16, 19, where the name Joseph has been glossed with references to Ephraim in such a way that a reader might think ‘Joseph’ was being used as a name for the tribe of Ephraim. Since this is an account of the reunion of the twelve tribes in the messianic kingdom, ‘Joseph’ might therefore seem a suitable name for Ephraim in a list of the tribes of the eschatological, reunited Israel. 30 ‘For the sons of Joseph’ should really be understood as a rubric which covers both the reference to the sons of Ephraim which immediately follows and the reference to the sons of Manasseh in v. 34. 31 After completing this article, I came across another recent attempt to explain the order of the tribes in Rev. 7: R. E. Winkle, ‘Another Look at the List of Tribes in Revelation’, AUSS 27 (1989). pp. 53–67- The key point in Winkle’s argument is a novel explanation of the omission of Dan: that the tribe was associated with Judas Iscariot. However,

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Abstract The anomalous features of the list of the tribes of Israel in Rev. 7.5–8 are not satisfactorily explained by the arguments of C. R. Smith (JSNT 39 [1990], pp. 111–18). He misunderstands the relationship between the 144,000 (7.5–8) and the great multitude (7.9–14): the former is a traditional Jewish image which is given a Christian interpretation only in 7.9–14. Smith also neglects the many lists of the twelve tribes to be found in Jewish literature of the New Testament period. From these it appears that a list in the order of the birth of the patriarchs, but modified by the matriological principle, was widely regarded as normative. The list in Rev. 7 can be understood as derived, by changes partly intentional and partly unintentional, from this normative list.

this association is known only from Christian sources several centuries later than the New Testament.

12. The Parting of the Ways: What Happened and Why* The problem of the ‘parting of the ways’ between Judaism and Christianity (to use the increasingly popular term for a currently popular subject) is in part a problem of finding an appropriate conceptual model with which to interrogate the evidence. Recent discussion of the issue seems to indicate that one conceptual model, which used to be dominant, has now been widely, though not entirely, discredited, while another is becoming popular, if not dominant. The older model thought of Judaism as essentially a constant and Christianity as a new development which grew out of Judaism to become a new religion. Curiously this view suited the old confessional approaches of both Jewish and Christian scholarship. It could legitimate rabbinic Judaism as the legitimate heir of the religion of the Hebrew Bible, or it could legitimate Christianity as the fulfilment and successor of the religion of Israel, leaving the Judaism of the Christian era as a kind of unfulfilled, fossilized anachronism. But this model can accommodate a good deal of modern insight into variety and development within Judaism. Second Temple Judaism may be conveived as highly diverse, and rabbinic Judaism may be seen as the result of a considerable development in the post-70 period, but nevertheless all these forms of Judaism are Judaism, whereas Christianity is something else. There is one religion which continued (Judaism) and another which broke away (Christianity). This model is silently endorsed by nearly all the modern textbooks on Second Temple Judaism, which do not consider even early Palestinian Jewish Christianity part of their subject, studiously ignoring Jewish Christianity as though there were no reason even to raise the question whether Jewish Christianity was also a form of Judaism.1 The first treatment of Second Temple Judaism to pass over Jewish Christianity in complete silence was Josephus’ Antiquities, the latest is E. P. Sanders’ Judaism: Practice and Belief.2 * First publication: Studia Theologica 47 (1993) 135–151. 1 An exception is H. Jagersma, A History of Israel from Alexander the Great to Bar Kochba, tr. J. Bowden (London: SCM Press, 1985). 2 E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE – 66 CE (London: SCM Press/ Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992).

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For the new, increasingly popular model a particularly outspoken advocate is the Italian scholar Gabriele Boccaccini, in his recent book Middle Judaism.3 As well as proposing a new name, ‘Middle Judaism,’ for what was once called Late Judaism and has more recently been called Early Judaism, Boccaccini’s book is notable for its attempt to treat early Christianity consistently as one form of Judaism among others – or, more precisely and to use his own terminology, as one Judaism among others. Middle Judaism, according to Boccaccini, is the genus, while the various Judaisms of the period (Pharisaism, Essenism, Christianity and so on) are species.4 According to Boccaccini, the first century c.e. was a highly pluralistic phase of the history of Judaism, in which the most diverse Judaisms coexisted. By the end of the century, however, this diversity was largely reduced to the two Judaisms which from now on would be dominant, Christianity and rabbinic Judaism: ‘After having tried long and hard to convince one another of their own conviction that they represented the true Israel, the Christian and Pharisaic roads grew further apart, finally reaching a reciprocal estrangement. A pluralistic Judaism had generated two much less pluralistic and tolerant but more homogeneous Judaisms.’5 Boccaccini’s insistence that Christianity remains a Judaism and should be called such (even down to the present day) in the classification of religions is unusual, but his basic model is currently quite influential: that from the diversity of pre-70 Judaism two forms of Judaism survived, defining themselves in opposition to each other, and becoming two religions: Christianity and rabbinic Judaism. This model has the merit of seeing the distinction between Christianity and rabbinic Judaism as resulting as much from the development of rabbinic Judaism as from the development of Christianity. It is probably preferable to the first model, but it is also too simple, as we shall now see. As far as the post-70 developments go, this model tends to attribute too much power and influence too quickly to rabbinic Judaism as compared with non-rabbinic forms of non-Christian Judaism. We do not know how quickly rabbinic Judaism became the overwhelmingly dominant form of non-Christian Judaism. The rabbis at Yavneh set out to delegitimize all other kinds of Judaism, including Jewish Christianity (this was the purpose of the Birkat ha-Minim). They probably did not succeed fully in Palestine until the third century, in the Diaspora much more slowly and not fully

3 G. Boccaccini, Middle Judaism: Jewish Thought 300 B. C. E. to 200 C. E. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991). 4 Boccaccini, Middle Judaism, 18–21. He lists the various Judaisms as ‘Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, followers of Jesus, apocalyptics, Essenes, Judeo-Hellenists, and so forth’ (p. 214). 5 Boccaccini, Middle Judaism, 215.

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until the early middle ages.6 The opposition of the rabbis to Jewish Christianity was important for the fate of Jewish Christianity in Palestine, but it is unlikely to have been the major factor in the estrangement of Jews and Christians in the Diaspora. We have to envisage a different process whereby most Diaspora synagogues, largely independently of the rabbis at Yavneh, came to regard Jewish Christianity as not a legitimate form of Judaism. If we are not to exaggerate the influence of rabbinic Judaism, we have to say that by the end of the first century not just rabbinic Jews but most non-Christian Jews placed Jewish Christians outside the community of Israel. As far as pre-70 Judaism goes, we need to look more closely at the nature of diversity in Judaism and at Christianity’s place within that diversity. The currently fashionable talk emphasizes the diversity by talking of Judaisms in the plural.7 I think this usage is misleading, for several reasons: (a) It encourages one to think of the varieties of Second Temple Judaism as rather like Christian denominations. Just as (at least until recently) every Christian was either a Baptist or a Lutheran or a Roman Catholic or a Syrian Jacobite or something of the kind, so every Jew belonged to one of the so-called Judaisms. But this was not in fact the case at all. The groups to which we can give names (the four parties defined by Josephus, Jewish Christianity, some other much more obscure pietist groups) were a small minority of Jews. These groups advanced a specific interpretation of Judaism, self-consciously distinct from other interpretations. But the vast majority of Jews, both in Palestine and in the Diaspora, did not adhere to such a group and did not think of themselves as following any particular interpretation of Judaism. They were just Jews. J. D. G. Dunn, in his The Partings of the Ways, comes close to recognizing this problem but evades it: ‘Second Temple Judaism to a large extent, latterly at least, consisted of a range of different interest groups.’ He lists the four parties from Josephus, postulates others, and adds: ‘Not to mention the mass of the people, the people(s) of the land (am[me] ha’arets)…, and the large proportion of Jews who lived outside the land of Israel, that is, the diaspora.’8 But these two categories of Jews were not ‘interest groups’ in the way that Pharisees and Essenes were. The mass of the people who did not belong to a party cannot be regarded as another party alongside the others. 6 See P. S. Alexander, “ ‘The Parting of the Ways’ from the Perspective of Rabbinic Judaism,” in J. D. G. Dunn ed., Jews and Christians: The Parting of the Ways A. D. 70 to 135 (WUNT 66; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1993) 20–21. 7 Besides Boccaccini, see also J. Neusner, W. S. Green and E. Frerichs ed., Judaisms and Their Messiahs at the Turn of the Christian Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), especially Neusner on pp. ix–xii. 8 J. D. G. Dunn, The Partings of the Ways: Between Judaism and Christianity and their Significance for the Character of Christianity (London: SCM Press/Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1991) 18.

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(b) The talk of many Judaisms (like the corresponding talk of many Christianities in the New Testament) moves too easily from the different interpretations of Judaism in the literature to postulating distinct groups of Jews, each holding one of these interpretations. The logic of this approach is to divide Judaism into as many different Judaisms as there are extant texts from the period, since virtually every text has its own emphasis or interests which distinguish it from other texts. But numerous parallels from religious history show that somewhat differing interpretations of a religion can easily coexist within a single, even a strongly unified community, and can even be preached from the same pulpit to the same congregation without the congregation consciously perceiving the differences. The fact that much of the extant literature of Second Temple Judaism cannot easily be assigned to a specific group should not lead us to invent such groups, but rather to recognize that such literature, whoever wrote it, belonged like the Bible to common Judaism. Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities, for example, does, of course, have its own theological perspectives and emphases, but there is no reason why Pharisees, Essenes, Zealots, Christians and mere Jews should not have read it with interest and profit, without identifying it as belonging to a Judaism not their own. (c) Very importantly for our purposes, the talk of many Judaisms obscures the distinction between variety and separation or schism. The distinction between Pharisees and Sadduccees is not of the same order as the distinction between Jews and Samaritans. If we are to speak of more than one Judaism, it may be better to reserve that terminology, before the rise of Christianity, for the two Judaisms that resulted from the Samaritan schism. This is a point to which we shall return. It does, however, suggest that all those Jews who regarded Samaritans as not Jews at all but did not, even at their most polemical, say the same of each other, recognized a common Judaism which they shared but which the Samaritans did not. It may also help us to understand how they could come to think the same of Christians. (d) The final point may be another way of putting the same point. It is that the model of many Judaisms, while it makes it easy to locate Christianity as one more Judaism among the other pre-70 Judaisms, also makes it impossible to trace any roots of the parting of the ways before 70, in case there may be such roots. Dunn, for one, does want to trace such roots, and is therefore not content with the model of many Judaisms, though he uses it, but goes on to define ‘a common and unifying core for Second Temple Judaism, a fourhold foundation on which all these more diverse forms of Judaism built, a common heritage which they all interpreted in their own ways.’9 The thesis of his book is that Christians also inherited the same 9

Dunn, The Partings of the Ways, 18.

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common heritage (what Dunn calls ‘the four pillars of Judaism’) in their own way, but did so in such a distinctive way that other Jews saw it not as interpretation but as denial. The four pillars were thus each an occasion for various ‘partings of the ways’, before and after 70, of which the final parting was the cumulative result. Dunn’s ‘four pillars of Second Temple Judaism’ are monotheism, election, torah and temple. This is an accurate and useful classification of what virtually all Jews had in common. But unfortunately, because it is still an account of what various Judaisms had in common, it still sounds like an account of what, say, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Calvinists and Pentecostalists have in common. In that case the parting of the ways – or Dunn’s partings of the ways – lacks reality. We might imagine a new and very distinctive form of Christianity arriving on the scene of denominational Christianity – a form so distinctive most Christians come to doubt its right to be called Christianity. Mormonism might be an example. But the analogy rapidly breaks down. Nothing resembling the parting of the ways described by Dunn occurs. It is much better to change the model, as E. P. Sanders does in his Judaism: Practice and Belief. What Dunn regards as the common denominator of all the Judaisms, Sanders regards as ‘common Judaism’, which for most Jews (those who did not belong to the parties) simply was Judaism. Because he sees it as focused on the temple, he says it is ‘what the priests and the people agreed on.’10 However, the merit of Sanders’ account of common Judaism is that this notion actually means more than what, as it happens, Jews agreed about. Sanders shows how the temple and shared religious practices gave Jews a real sense of commonality with all other Jews.11 At one of the great pilgrim festivals at the temple, attended by Jews from all parts of the world (even if not from Qumran), what they concretely and emotively shared was not simply what different forms of Judaism had in common, but what gave them their own ethnic-religious identity as Jews. Common Judaism – the temple, the torah, the one God who was worshipped in the temple and obeyed in following the torah, election as his covenant people to whom he had given temple and torah – this common Judaism gave Jews common identity in very concrete ways. This common Judaism makes the parting of the ways a real issue, as the model of many Judaisms does not. To put it another way, Sanders’ model makes it meaningful to ask what could exclude a group of Jews from this common Judaism, in the eyes of other Jews. From this point of view, there are two groups with whom the position of Christians vis-a-vis common Judaism might usefully be 10 11

Sanders, Judaism, 47. E. g. Sanders, Judaism, 256–257.

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compared. The first is the Samaritans, whom Sanders ignores, presumably because their exclusion from common Judaism can be taken for granted in his period. But the position of the Samaritans is in fact very instructive.12 The prevalent contemporary scholarly view is that Samaritanism was a form of Judaism.13 Although the terminology is odd (in that it does not correspond to ancient usage), it indicates that Samaritanism was not simply a continuation of the pre-exilic religion of Northern Israel, but a schismatic form of post-exilic Judaism. Samaritans claimed descent from the patriarch Joseph, worshipped the God of Israel as the one and only God, kept the law of Moses rigorously, practised circumcision as a sign of the covenant, understood themselves to be the faithful part of the elect people of God. But most Jews regarded them as outside the covenant people, more or less on a par with Gentiles. The key issue was the disagreement over the true site of the one sanctuary of the God of Israel prescribed in Deuteronomy.14 As the Samaritan woman in the Fourth Gospel puts it, ‘Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain [Mount Gerizim], but you [Jews] say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem’ (4:20). This account of the issue between Jews and Samaritans was, it should be noted, still entirely accurate when John’s Gospel was written, even though no temple then stood on either mountain. Jews also regarded Samaritans as Gentile by race, or at best of dubious ancestry, but it is doubtful if this issue would have carried much weight were it not for the issue of the temple. (Other Gentiles who were circumcised and kept the law were included in the covenant people, not excluded.) Of course, the mutual antipathy of Jews and Samaritans had centuries-old roots, but in the late Second Temple period it was focused on the Samaritan rejection of the Jerusalem Temple, not just as a matter of theological debate, but as a matter of deeply felt, highly emotive popular sentiment. Galilean pilgrims 12 Cf. F. Dexinger, ‘Limits of Tolerance in Judaism: The Samaritan Example,’ in E. P. Sanders ed., Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, vol. 2 (London: SCM Press, 1981) 88–114. 13 For a survey of the issue, see J. D. Purvis, ‘The Samaritans and Judaism,’ in R. A. Kraft and G. W. E. Nickelsburg, ed., Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1986) 81–98. 14 Cf. E. Bickerman, quoted in Dexinger, ‘Limits of Tolerance,’ 109: ‘The whole controversy between Jews and Samaritans was now subordinated to the questions: Which place was chosen by God for His habitation, Zion or Gerizim?’ Whether the temple at Leontopolis was the object of a similar controversy is uncertain, since we do not really know how either its own priests or the Jerusalem temple authorities regarded it. Although Josephus attributes its foundation to a desire to rival the Jerusalem sanctuary, in the sense of attracting worshippers who would otherwise have gone to Jerusalem (War 7:431), it is unlikely that its priesthood claimed it as the single, divinely-ordained place of Yahweh’s presence on earth, as was claimed for Zion and Gerizim. The mere fact that it was not in Palestine must have greatly reduced its significance as a rival to the Jerusalem temple.

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travelling through Samaria on their way to the temple in Jerusalem risked not only being refused hospitality, as Jesus was (Luke 9:52–53), but even their lives (as in a famous incident recorded by Josephus, War 2:232–246; Ant. 20:118–136), not because they were Jews but because they were Jews on their way to the rival sanctuary. The case of the Samaritans illustrates a number of points. In the first place, it shows how central the temple was to Jewish identity (as also to Samaritan identity). That Samaritans and Jews shared all other features of common Judaism in no way mitigated the effect of the difference over the place of God’s earthly presence with his people. This alone was sufficient, in Jewish eyes, to put Samaritans as definitively outside the covenant people as uncircumcised Gentiles were. Secondly, the case of the Samaritans shows how a Jewish group’s self-identity could remain completely at odds with other Jews’ identification of them. Samaritans asserted their identity as Israel just as strongly as Jews denied it to them. Thirdly, such a conflict over identity can produce confusion over terminology, as used by outsiders as well as by the groups immediately concerned. Samaritan called themselves Israelites, as Jews did.15 But Jews called them Samaritans, when not using the more polemically abusive term Cutheans. Gentiles, who never normally called anyone Israelites, seem not to have called Samaritans Jews but adopted the Jewish term: Samaritans (Josephus, Ant. 9:290). But the relation between Samaritans and Jews was not unequivocally clear to outsiders.16 Hegesippus includes Samaritans in his list of the seven Jewish parties (apud Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 4.22.7),17 but Justin, himself a Gentile native of Samaria, does not include them in his similar list (Dial. 80.2). With such a conflict of terminology it is worth comparing the book of Revelation’s description of the synagogues at Smyrna and Philadelphia, as ‘those who say they are Jews but are not’ (2:9; 3:9). No doubt this description throws back at non-Christian Jews what non-Christian Jews said about Christian Jews. Such polemic suggests at least incipient schism of the Jew15

The Samaritan community on Delos called themselves, no doubt in order to distinguish themselves from Jews, ‘the Israelites on Delos who pay firstfruits to sacred Gerizim’ ( ‘ ): inscription quoted in E. Schürer, revised by G. Vermes, F. Millar and M. Goodman, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B. C.–A. D. 135), vol. 3/1 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986) 71. 16 The difficulty Samaritans would have had in explaining to Gentiles that they were Israelites but not ‘Jews’ may well lie behind Josephus’ statement in Ant. 9:291, which, as it stands, is adapted to Jewish anti-Samaritan polemic and cannot be true. 17 Strictly speaking, however, Hegesippus himself calls these the ‘various opinions among the circumcision, the children of Israel,’ while Eusebius calls them the ‘Jewish parties.’

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ish/Samaritan kind, rather than mere diversity, and it suggests two groups, like Jews and Samaritans, both understanding their self-identity as Jewish, while denying Jewish identity to the other. The second group whose relation to common Judaism is worth considering for comparison with that of Christians is the Qumran community. Sanders treats them as the only Jewish group which can properly be called a sect rather than a party since they excluded themselves from common Judaism by not participating in the worship of the temple.18 Decisive for their relation to common Judaism was not their distinctive halakhah or their eschatological consciousness, but their withdrawal from temple worship, constituting themselves a temporary substitute for the temple.19 We do not really know what other Jews thought of them. (Since Josephus’ account of the Essenes’ relation to the temple [Ant. 18:19]20 is so obscure, it is impossible to tell whether he is thinking of Essenes who withdrew completely from temple worship or of Essenes who, though critical, continued to participate to some degree.) The Qumran community must have been perceived as a marginal group, but their non-participation in temple worship probably did not put them outside Israel, since unlike the Samaritans their opposition to the temple was contingent (resulting from their disapproval of the practice of the priests). They strongly believed that the God of Israel should be worshipped in Jerusalem and would be again in the future. The examples of the Samaritans and the Qumran community suggest the heuristic model that Christianity began as a party, like the Pharisees, within common Judaism, and became either a group marginal to common Judaism, like the Qumran community, or a community definitively separated from common Judaism, like the Samaritans.21 That alternative leaves appropriate scope for variation and indeterminateness. Not all non-Christian Jews at one time (say, in the early second century) need have seen Christianity in precisely the same terms, not all need have been very clear about the status of Christianity, not all Christian groups need have been in precisely the same relationship to common Judaism. My suggestion is not, of course, that the Pharisees or the Qumran community or the Samaritans could be 18 Sanders, Judaism, 352. According to Sanders, the Qumran community, represented by 1QS and related documents, was a sect, while other Essenes, represented by CD , were an ‘extremist party’. 19 Sanders, Judaism, 362. 20 For discussion see T. S. Beall, Josephus’ description of the Essenes illustrated by the Dead Sea Scrolls (SNTSMS 58; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) 115–119. 21 This proposed model is not, as stated, an explicitly sociological one, but it could be developed with the aid of sociological insights: cf. the discussion of the move from reform movement to sectarian group as a sociological model for Christianity’s break with common Judaism in P. F. Esler, Community and Gospel in Luke-Acts (SNTSMS 57; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) 51–53.

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precise parallels to Christianity’s relation to common Judaism. But the model may enable us to identify, by comparison, both the similarities and the differences. One implication of the model is to direct our attention to the temple. The cases of Qumran and the Samaritans show how central the temple was to Jewish self-identity. The temple was not so exclusively important to the parting of the ways between common Judaism and Christianity. In general Dunn is right to argue that all four of his ‘pillars of Judaism’ featured in the process that separated Christianity from common Judaism: i. e. (1) the temple (we shall explicate the difference over the temple below); (2) the covenant people, in that Christians redefined the covenant people so as to include Gentiles; (3) the torah, in that Gentile Christians included in the covenant people were not obligated to keep the whole law as Jews were; (4) monotheism, in that Christians redefined monotheism to include Christology. On all four points, which were basic to Jewish self-identity, Christians interpreted what all Jews had in common in a way that other Jews eventually considered un-Jewish, unrecognizable as common Judaism. But the rest of this article will focus on the temple. There are several reasons why this will prove a useful focus: (a) the role of the temple in ‘the parting of the ways’ has been comparatively underplayed in the literature on this issue. This is true even of Dunn’s work, although he does regard the temple as the first of the four pillars that occasioned a parting of the ways,22 while Maurice Casey’s recent analysis of Jewish identity and the process of Christian departure from it omits the temple altogether.23 (b) It was in relation to the temple that there was precedent for schism between Jews and Jews, which could have provided non-Christian Jews with a category to apply to Christianity. (c) The Christian view on this point is closely connected with the Christian view of the other three pillars, in a way that is not sufficiently recognized. (d) The Christian view of the temple enables us to understand the inner dynamic which moved Christianity from being a party within common Judaism to being a community separated from common Judaism. We must first return to the centrality of the temple for the self-identity of common Judaism. Why was this so? Fundamentally, the temple was 22

Dunn, The Partings of the Ways, chapters 4–5. M. Casey, From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God: The Origins and Development of New Testament Christology (Cambridge: James Clarke/Louisville: Westminster/John Know, 1991) chapter 2. In this chapter Casey lists eight ‘identity factors’ which provide an ‘identity scale’ for measuring whether people would have regarded themselves as Jewish. This methodological approach is useful and illuminating, but its application to the parting of the ways in the rest of the book is less satisfactory. For example, Casey recognizes that a person’s or group’s self-identification and the perception of their identity by others may conflict (p. 12), but he fails to make full use of this insight in his later discussion of Jews and Christians. 23

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the place where God’s covenant people had access to his presence.24 It was where Israel’s privileged relationship to God took place. The importance of the temple in this respect by no means necessarily depended on an individual Jew’s ability to visit it, important though it was to do this if possible. Whether or not they could offer their own sacrifices by attending the temple, all Jews everywhere offered, in a sense, the daily burnt offerings every morning and evening, because these were paid for by the temple tax which all Jews paid and offered on behalf of Israel by the priests. The assiduity and enthusiasm with which Diaspora Jews paid their temple tax were not just because the temple tax was a symbolic expression of their allegiance to the religious centre of their nation; it was also actually the means by which the sacrifices offered in the temple enabled their own access to God. Also, of course, the ritual of the day of atonement effected atonement for all Jews without their having to be present. We should not underestimate the importance of the temple for Diaspora Jews even apart from pilgrimage to Jerusalem.25 As the temple was God’s gracious means of presence with his covenant people, so it defined the covenant people in distinction from others: Gentiles, who were debarred from access to his presence in the temple. The temple was the greatest, the most meaningful boundary-marker between Jew and Gentile. However fluid the distinction between Jew and Gentile might seem in a Diaspora synagogue, where Gentiles who kept some Jewish laws but stopped short of conversion attended, in the temple the distinction was dramatically absolute. On pain of death, no Gentile could pass from the outer court into the sacred precincts proper.26 In this way the temple made clear the real meaning of all the other boundary-markers – such as circumcision, food laws and Sabbath – which Jews sensitive to Jewish distinction from Gentiles stressed. With regard to Christian views of the temple, it is important to recognize, though this is rarely stressed, that the early Jerusalem church already had a highly distinctive attitude to the temple. What we know about its attitude amounts to the following three points: (1) Christians continued to partici24 For the presence of God in the Second Temple, see G. I. Davies, ‘The Presence of God in the Second Temple and Rabbinic Doctrine,’ in W. Horbury ed., Templum Amicitiae: Essays on the Second Temple presented to Ernst Bammel (JSNTSS 48; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991) 32–36. 25 Diaspora Jews had at least partial substitutes for some of the temple’s functions – forms of ritual purification, prayer regarded as a substitute for sin- and guilt-offerings – but these were peripheral to the temple’s continuing centrality both in its sacrificial effectiveness and its symbolic significance. 26 It is noteworthy that this rule and its sanction presuppose a clear, workable, accepted definition of what made one a Jew and not a Gentile. This is neglected by those who emphasize the fluidity of definitions of Jewishness in the Second Temple period.

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pate in temple worship. Evidence for this is in fact extremely sparse, but, as well as the evidence of Acts (2:46; 3:1; 5:42), we should probably also count as evidence Matthew 5:23, a saying of Jesus which takes for granted that its hearers offer sacrifice in the temple. Although this saying is preserved by Matthew at a time when certainly no Christians continued to offer sacrifices, if only because the temple no longer existed, it is difficult to imagine that it would have been initially preserved in the earliest church had the earliest Jewish Christians not continued to offer sacrifice. (2) The earliest Jerusalem church must have preserved Jesus’ prophecy of the destruction of the temple. Since this occurs in nearly all strands of the Gospel tradition in a variety of forms (Matt 23:38; 24:2; 26:61; 27:40; Mark 13:2; 14:58; 15:29; Luke 13:35; 19:44; 21:6; John 2:19; GT hom 71; cf. Acts 6:14), it must have been current in the earliest community. Therefore they must have viewed the temple as a doomed institution, in which they participated while it lasted, but which they did not expect to last long. (3) The early Jerusalem church saw itself as the new, eschatological temple of God. This is made probable by the fact that the concept of the Christian community as the eschatological temple is very widespread in early Christian literature.27 It is found in Paul (1 Cor 3:16–17; 2 Cor 6:16), Jude (20),28 1 Peter (2:5; 4:17), Ephesians (2:20–22), Hebrews (13:15–16), Revelation (11:1–2),29 the Didache (10:2), Barnabas (4:11; 6:15; 16), Ignatius (Eph. 9:1) and Hermas (Vis. 3; Sim. 3),30 and throughout this literature it is regularly taken for granted, not argued. It must therefore stem from an early stage of Christian history. But that it stemmed from the early Jerusalem church is made even more probable by Paul’s reference to James, Peter and John as those who were ‘regarded as pillars’ of the new temple (cf. Rev 3:12).31 27 On the general theme, see R. J. McKelvey, The New Temple: The Church in the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969). 28 For the temple image here, see R. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter (Word Biblical Commentary 50; Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1983) 112–113. 29 For the temple as an image of the church in this passage, see R. Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy: Studies in the Book of Revelation (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1993) 266–273. 30 Other instances of the frequently used metaphor of ‘building’ the Christian community are probably also evidence of the widespread currency of the image of the church as the eschatological temple: see Matt 16:18; Acts 9:31; 15:16; 20:32; Rom 14:19; 15:2, 20; 1 Cor 8:1; 10:23; 14:3–5, 12, 17, 26; 2 Cor 10:8; 12:19; 13:10; Gal 2:18; Eph 4:12, 16; Col 2:7; 1 Thess 5:11; Polycarp, Phil. 3:2; 12:2; Odes Sol. 22:12. 31 C. K. Barrett, ‘Paul and the ‘Pillar’ Apostles,’ in: J. N. Sevenster and W. C. van Unnik ed., Studia Paulina (FS J. de Zwaan; Haarlem: Bohn, 1953) 1–19. For an alternative interpretation, see R. Aus, ‘Three Pillars and Three Patriarchs: A Proposal Concerning Gal 2:9,’ ZNW 70 (1979) 252–261 (comparing the Jewish tradition that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were the three pillars on whom the world was supported). But the idea of pillars in the eschatological temple was current (1 Enoch 90:28–29; JosAsen 17:6; Hermas, Vis. 3:8:2) and

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That the early Jerusalem church understood itself in this way is a remarkable fact.32 The concept of the temple as a community, not a building, is found outside Christianity only at Qumran.33 (This is surely the most impressive of all parallels between Qumran and early Christianity.) At Qumran it was connected precisely with the community’s sectarian status vis-a-vis common Judaism, in that, withdrawing from the Jerusalem temple, they saw themselves as a substitute for the temple. In the Jerusalem church, the idea of the community as temple was evidently not accompanied by withdrawal from the Jerusalem temple. Unlike the Qumran community, they did not regard the temple service as invalid. And so by this criterion they remained fully part of common Judaism. Why then was it believed that the community constituted the eschatological temple? This must have expressed the conviction that in the Christian community, through the mediation of the exalted Christ, God’s promised eschatological presence in the midst of his people was taking place. The place of God’s eschatological presence – the new temple – was the church. Compared with Qumran, this Christian view was, in different ways, both less radical and more radical. Unlike the Qumran community, Christians did not regard worship in the Jerusalem temple as defiled and illegitimate, and so they could continue to participate in it. But whereas for the Qumran community the identification of the temple with the community was only an interim situation, to be succeeded by the new temple to be built by God in Jerusalem in the eschatological age, the temple envisaged in the New Jerusalem text from Qumran,34 the early Jerusalem church seems to have regarded itself as the eschatological temple. Nowhere in early Christian literature is there any trace of an expectation of an eschatological temple still to come in the future: this common Jewish expectation was evidently coheres best with other early Christian imagery. On Rev 3:12, see also R. H. Wilkinson, ‘The of Revelation 3:12 and Ancient Coronation Rites,’ JBL 107 (1988) 498–501. 32 Dunn, The Partings of the Ways, 60, recognizes but underestimates the significance of this fact. While denying that the Jerusalem church’s view of the Christian community as the new temple had any implications for their attitude to the Jerusalem temple, he inconsistently concludes from Paul’s expression of the same idea that ‘the Temple no longer functioned for him as the focus of God’s presence’ (75). 33 For the community as temple at Qumran, see B. Gärtner, The Temple and the Community in the Qumran Scrolls and the New Testament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965) 16–46; D. Juel, Messiah and Temple: The Trial of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark (SBLDS 31; Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1977) 159–168; H. Lichtenberger, ‘Atonement and Sacrifice in the Qumran Community’, in W. S. Green ed., Approaches to Ancient Judaism, vol. 2 (Brown Judaic Studies 9; Chico, California: Scholars Press, 1980) 159–171; G. J. Brooke, Exegesis at Qumran: 4QFlorilegium in its Jewish Context (JSOTSS 29; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985) 178–193. 34 For an argument that this text is a product of the Qumran community and envisages the eschatological temple, see F. Garcia Martinez, Qumran and Apocalyptic: Studies on the Aramaic Texts from Qumran (STDJ 9; Leiden: Brill, 1992) 180–213.

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replaced from the beginning of Christianity by the belief that the community itself was the eschatological place of God’s presence. Such a view in effect relativizes the Jerusalem temple more radically than the Qumran view. Whatever the value of the temple, it was highly provisional and soon to be replaced by that eschatological presence of God to which the church already had access in its own fellowship. The importance of this view for our purposes is that it explains both how the Jerusalem church could remain a party within common Judaism and how other Christian groups could move to a more marginal position from a common Jewish standpoint. From this view of the community as the eschatological temple it was possible to conclude either that Christians should (or at least could) continue to take part in the worship of the Jerusalem temple while it still stood (until, that is, God himself removed it), or that, since the temple was already superseded by the community as the new temple, Christians should not participate in the temple worship. The Jerusalem church seems to have taken the former view and by its praxis with regard to the temple maintained its standing in the Jewish community, even if with some difficulty. The author to the Hebrews is the only Christian voice from before 70 c.e. who clearly takes the latter view.35 Paul is often supposed to have taken this view, but the evidence is lacking. More likely the temple no longer mattered to Paul,36 it was in principle superseded by the Christian community,37 but Paul did not actually oppose participation in temple worship, while his principle of becoming as a Jew in order to win Jews (1 Cor 9:20) makes his behaviour according to Acts 21:26 entirely credible.38 Thus a common early Christian premise – that the church constitutes the eschatological temple – had varied consequences with regard to Christianity’s relation to common Judaism. Some Christian Jews remained regular participants in temple worship, others neglected the temple, others specifically opposed participation in temple rituals. Where Christians were 35 For the view that the argument of Hebrews presupposes that the Second Temple still stood, see B. Lindars, ‘Hebrews and the Second Temple,’ in Horbury ed., Templum Amicitiae, 410–413. 36 It is surely significant that in fourteen years (Gal 2:1) Paul only visited Jerusalem once. 37 But Dunn, The Partings of the Ways, 70, 77–79, concludes much too readily that Paul’s understanding of the death of Christ as a sacrifice made the sacrificial cult of the temple redundant. Such an argument would apply only to sin-offerings. It would leave the greater part of the sacrificial cult – for example, the regular daily morning and evening burnt-offerings – unaffected. Although the argument of Hebrews focuses on the death of Christ, the developing Christian sense of the redundancy of the temple cult must have had a broader christological basis in the sense of Jesus Christ as the way of access to God in the messianic age. 38 See J. P. M. Sweet, ‘A Hosue Not Made With Hands,’ in Horbury ed., Templum Amicitiae, 368–369, especially 388–390.

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perceived to be treating the temple in the way Samaritans did, nothing was more calculated to categorize them as sectarian, schismatic and a threat to Jewish identity. Hence controversy about the temple was evidently the occasion for the first major persecution of Christians (Acts 6–8).39 Conversely, non-Christian Jewish suspicions about Christianity could best be allayed by Christians demonstrating their loyalty and reverence for the temple. Hence the Jerusalem church elders’ advice to Paul in Acts 21:20–25. (We shall see below why it was not successful in Paul’s case.) The issue of the temple did not disappear after 70 c.e., because the temple did not cease to be central to Jewish identity. Few Jews would have expected the loss of the temple to be permanent. The temple had been destroyed before – and rebuilt before, significantly after a period more or less the length of the period between 70 c.e. and the Bar Kokhba revolt. Consequently, in Christian literature of this period, between the two Jewish revolts, the temple issue is alive and well precisely in texts in which the schism between Christianity and common Judaism is clear and painful: the Gospel of John, the Epistle of Barnabas.40 For Palestinian Jewish Christianity the effect of 70 c.e. was paradoxical. Jesus’ prophecy of the destruction of the temple was vindicated. As a messianic movement, but a non-militant messianic movement dissociated from the disastrous consequences of the revolt, and a movement, virtually unique among Jewish groups, for which the loss of the temple was no kind of problem, Jewish Christianity must have had some appeal and probably enjoyed some success in Palestine between the two revolts.41 But the destruction of the temple also had an unfortunate consequence for Palestinian Jewish Christians. While the temple stood they could maintain their place in common Judaism by worshipping in it. But once the temple was destroyed, what they could not do was participate in any movement to rebuild the temple. Such a movement was Bar Kokhba’s revolt. The attempt to build the temple was the principal raison d’être of the revolt and the main reason it gained such widespread support.42 Probably it was because Bar Kokhba 39

However, I am not convinced that Stephen and the Hellenists took the radically antitemple position that is now commonly attributed to them. But the issue cannot be discussed here. 40 For the view of the temple in Barnabas, see M. B. Shukster and P. Richardson, ‘Temple and Bet Ha-midrash in the Epistle of Barnabas,’ in S. G. Wilson ed., Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity, vol. 2 (Studies in Judaism and Christianity 2; Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1986). 41 Cf. R. Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1990) 116, 375. 42 B. Isaac and A. Oppenheimer, ‘The Revolt of Bar Kokhba: Ideology and Modern Scholarship,’ JJS 36 (1985) 47–49; L. Mildenberg, The Coinage of the Bar Kokhba Revolt (Aarau/Frankfurt am Main/Salzburg: Sauerländer, 1984) 31–48.

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looked like succeeding in this aim that he was widely regarded as Messiah.43 Christians could not regard him as Messiah (cf. Justin, 1 Apol. 31.6), but even more significantly they could not join a movement to restore the temple. Their non-participation in the Bar Kokhba revolt44 probably sealed their exclusion from common Judaism and removed the rabbis’ main rivals for dominance in Palestinian Judaism. However, we must now return to a much earlier point in the story, in order to notice the most radical implication of the common early Christian view of the eschatological temple. The identification of the Christian community as itself the new temple was, of course, an expression of the eschatological consciousness of the earliest church. The messianic age was dawning, and God was newly, eschatologically present in the midst of his people, the Christian community which constituted the core of the renewed covenant people. Another expression of this eschatological consciousness was the inclusion of Gentiles in the Christian community, fulfilling those remarkably universalistic prophecies from the post-exilic period which predicted the inclusion of the nations in the covenant people of God.45 On the basis of these prophecies, Christian could justify the inclusion of Gentiles as Gentiles, without their becoming Jews. The arrival of the messianic age made possible the Pauline, but by no means only Pauline, vision of the eschatological people of God as continuous with Israel but no longer bounded by the observances which distinguished Jew from Gentile. However, such a people of God could not have the Jerusalem temple as its temple, its place of access to the covenant God. The Jerusalem temple embodied, as the principle of its sanctity, the exclusion of Gentiles from the covenant and from access to the God of the covenant. The point is vividly made by the account in Acts 21:17–36, in which Paul’s attempt to demonstrate his loyalty to common Judaism by taking part in temple rituals fails disastrously. It does so because visiting Jews from Ephesus make a natural mistake (21:27–29). To them Paul was notorious for insisting that Gentiles were included as Gentiles, without becoming Jews, in the covenant people of God. They naturally assume that the logic of such a position must be that Paul’s Gentile converts should be admitted to the temple, and they jump to 43 Against some recent doubts that Bar Kokhba was regarded as Messiah, see A. Rheinhartz, ‘Rabbinic Perceptions of Simeon bar Kosiba,’ JSJ 20 (1989) 171–194. 44 For the Apocalypse of Peter as evidence of Palestinian Jewish Christian attitudes to the revolt at the time of the revolt, see R. Bauckham, ‘The Two fig Tree Parables in the Apocalypse of Peter,’ JBL 104 (1985) 269–287; idem, ‘The Apocalypse of Peter: An Account of Research,’ in W. Haase ed., Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II .25/6 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1988) 4738–4739. 45 On the continuation of this tradition of expectation in post-biblical Second Temple Judaism, see T. L. Donaldson, ‘Proselytes or ‘Righteous Gentiles’? The Status of Gentiles in Eschatological Pilgrimage Patterns of Thought,’ JSP 7 (1990) 3–27.

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the conclusion that Paul actually has defiled the sanctity of the temple by taking Trophimus the Ephesian into the court of the Israelites. The inclusion of Gentiles in the covenant people was actually possible only because the eschatological covenant people had its own new temple, the community itself, in which Gentiles could have access to God equally with Jews. The connexion between the image of the community as temple and the inclusion of Gentiles in the covenant is explicit in Ephesians 2:11–22 and 1 Peter 2:4–10, but already implicit in 2 Corinthians 6:16–7:1. But it was certainly not the Gentile mission that gave rise to the idea of the community as temple. The reverse was the case. From this point of view it is of great significance that the early Jerusalem church, under James’s leadership, already saw itself as the temple of the messianic age. This made possible what happened at the Jerusalem conference recounted in Acts 15, when those members of the Jerusalem church who opposed the inclusion of Gentiles as Gentiles were marginalized and the Pauline mission approved, with the qualifications stated in the so-called Apostolic Decree (Acts 15:29–29). This was given its required scriptural basis by James’ quotation of Amos 9:11–12 (Acts 15:16–17): ‘After this I will return and I will rebuild the tent of David [i. e. establish the new temple of the messianic age]… so that the rest of humanity, the Gentiles over whom my name has been called [i. e. Gentiles included as Gentiles in the covenant people of God], may seek the Lord [i. e. seek God’s presence in his temple, the Christian community].’46 Once again, the parallel and contrast with Qumran is illuminating. In both cases the community’s consciousness of access to God independently of the Jerusalem temple effectively relativized the latter. But the Qumran community, who thought the Jerusalem temple ritually defiled by the practice of the priests, constituted themselves a temple so pure as to require even more strictly restricted access than the Jerusalem temple had. As 4QF lorilegium puts it, this is ‘the house to which shall not come even to the tenth generation and for ever, Ammonite nor Moabite nor bastard nor stranger nor proselyte for ever, for his holy ones are there’ (1:3–4). The careful selection and interpretation of OT prohibitions (Deut 23:2–3; Ezek 44:6–9)47 are designed to exclude any kind of Gentile, even the issue of mixed marriages and even proselytes. By contrast the effect of the Christian community’s understanding of itself as temple was to break out of the restriction embodied in the Jerusalem temple in a quite unprecedented way. The relativizing 46 For this interpretation of Acts 15:16–17 and for the argument of the paragraph in detail, see my article: ‘James and the Gentiles (Acts 15:1.21),’ in B. Witherington III ed., The Acts of the Historians: Acts and Ancient Historiography (Cambridge University Press, 1994). 47 See Brooke, Exegesis at Qumran, 180–181.

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of the Jerusalem temple enabled both communities to redefine the covenant people, but whereas the Qumran sect did so by taking to an extreme the emphasis of Second Temple Judaism on purity and differentiation from Gentiles,48 the Christian community did so in a way quite opposite to this emphasis. Therefore, even though the earliest church’s praxis with regard to the temple maintained its place within common Judaism, its view of itself as the new temple, its eschatological consciousness of access to God independently of the Jerusalem temple, already contained the dynamic of the process which increasingly differentiated Christianity from common Judaism. The Christian reinterpretation of one of the ‘four pillars’ of Judaism (the temple) made possible the Christian reinterpretation of the three other pillars (election, torah and monotheism) in ways which were in the end decisive for the parting of the ways.49 We have already seen how this happened with respect to election, i. e. the belief that Israel was the chosen covenant people of God. The reinterpretation of the temple made possible the inclusion of Gentiles in the covenant people of God. Along with this went a new Christian attitude to the torah. Since Gentiles, as Gentiles, were now included in the covenant people and had access to the covenant God in his new temple equally with Jews, the specifically Jewish requirements of the law of Moses no longer constituted the boundary of the covenant people. These were Christian interpretations of election and torah which common Judaism rejected as denials of Jewish identity. Finally, the reinterpretation of the temple was not unrelated to the specifically Christian interpretation of Jewish monotheism. The church’s eschatological sense of access to God independently of the Jerusalem temple was connected with the christological understanding of Jesus as the eschatological presence of God with his people, which led to that inclusion of Jesus in the definition of the one God of Israel which common Judaism rejected as a denial of Jewish monotheism. It is no accident that the two New Testament books with the highest Christologies – the Fourth Gospel and the Book of Revelation – both include Jesus in the definition of the one

48 Note also how sacrifices made by Gentiles, a traditional practice in the temple, were prohibited in 66 c.e., as one of the first acts of the revolt (Josephus, War 2:409–421). 49 On universalism, torah and monotheism as the issues between Christianity and Judaism, see, besides Dunn, The Partings of the Ways, also A. F. Segal, Rebecca’s Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World (Cambridge, Massachusetts/London: Harvard University Press, 1986). Note also the mid-second-century Jewish characterization of Christianity (preserved by Justin, Dial. 17.1; 108.2) as ‘a godless ad lawless sect’ ( : Dial. 108.2), discussed by G. N. Stanton, ‘Aspects of Early Christian-Jewish Polemic and Apologetic,’ NTS 31 (1985) 383–384.

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God of Jewish monotheism,50 and both give a new, christological twist to the theme of the eschatological temple: it is Jesus himself who replaces the Jerusalem temple as the place of God’s presence with his covenant people (John 1:51, 2:19–22; Rev 21:22).

50 For Revelation, see R. Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) chapter 3; idem, The Climax of Prophecy, chapter 4.

13. The Messianic Interpretation of Isaiah 10:34* Isaiah 11:1–5 was probably the most popular text of Davidic messianism in early Judaism. Modern readers usually assume that this prophecy begins at Isaiah 11:1 and do not connect the preceding verses with it.1 Ancient Jewish exegesis, however, frequently sought the connexions between adjacent passages of Scripture. In this article we shall examine evidence that a Jewish exegetical tradition which appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch not only connected Isaiah 10:33–34 closely with the following verses, but also found a reference to the Messiah in Isaiah 10:34. This tradition of messianic interpretation of Isaiah 10:34 will then be shown to inform the preaching of John the Baptist, as it appears in the Gospels, with the implication that, contrary to many interpretations of John’s message, he did expect the coming of the Davidic Messiah.

Dead Sea Scrolls The texts 4QpIsaa (4Q161) fr. 8–10, lines 2–9:2 2 3 4 5 * First publication: Dead Sea Discoveries 2 (1995) 202–216. 1 But see O. Kaiser, Isaiah 1–12 (London: SCM Press, 1972) 156–162, for an exegesis which treats 10:33–11:9 as a unit, and connects the tree imagery of 10:33–34 with that of 11:1. 2 These fragment numbers and line numbers are those used in the editio princeps: J. M. Allegro, Qumrân Cave 4: I (4Q158–4Q186) (DJD 5; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968)13– 14. M. P. Horgan, Pesharim: Qumran Interpretations of Biblical Books (CBQMS 8; Washington, D. C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1979) 75–76, renumbers the section as fragments 7–10 (column 3), lines 6–13. The text given here follows Allegro with modifications adopted from J. Strugnell, ‘Notes en marge du volume V des “Discoveries in the Judaean Desert of Jordan,”’ RQ 7 (1970) 185, and Horgan, Pesharim, 83–85. (I have not

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6 7 8 9 2 and the th]ickets of [the forest will be cut down] with an axe, and Lebanon by a powerful one 3 shall fall (Isa 10:34) . Its interpretation concerns the Ki]ttim, wh[o] will fa[ll] by the hand of Israel. And the poor ones of 4 ] all the nations, and the warriors will be dismayed, and [their] he[arts] will melt 5 and the tall] in stature will be hewn down (Isa 10:33). They are the warriors of the Kitt[im 6 ] and the thickets of [the] forest will be cut down with an axe. Th[ey are 7 ] for the battle of the Kittim. And Lebanon by a pow[erful one 8 shall fall. the] Kittim who will be gi[ven] into the hand of his great one [ 9 ] when he flees from befo[re Is]rael [ 4Q285, fr. 5:3 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 ] Isaiah the prophet: [and the thickets of the forest ]will be cut [down 2 with an axe, and Lebanon by a powerful one shall f]all. And there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse (Isa 10:34–11:1) [ 3 ] the Branch of David and they will enter into judgment with [ 4 ] and the Prince of the Congregation, the Bran[ch of David] will kill him [ 5 ] and by wounds. And a priest [ ] will command [ 6 the s]lai[n] of the Kitti[m

Discussion There are two Qumran texts which preserve the messianic interpretation of Isaiah 10:34. The first is 4QpIsaa (4Q161), which is a continuous pesher on Isaiah 10:22–11:5 and interprets this whole section of Isaiah as prophetic of the eschatological war against the Kittim, conducted and won by the indicated doubtful letters.) Note especially that in line 3 I have preferred Horgan’s reading to Allegro’s . The translation is indebted to Allegro and Horgan. 3 Text and translation from G. Vermes, ‘The Oxford Forum for Qumran Research on the Rule of War from Cave 4 (4Q285),’ JJS 43 (1991) 88. (I have not indicated doubtful letters.) In R. H. Eisenman and M. Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered (Shaftesbury, Dorset: Element, 1992) 28–29, this is numbered fragment 7.

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Davidic Messiah, who is called both the Prince of the Congregation4 and the Branch of David.5 The second text is the only recently published 4Q285, fragment 5, made famous in 1991 by the claim of Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise that it describes the Davidic Messiah as put to death. The group of fragments to which it belongs has affinities with the War Scroll6 and evidently represent a text which, like the War Scroll and 4QpIsaa, concerned the eschatological victory over the Kittim. As a seminar of the Oxford Forum for Qumran Research showed,7 precisely these parallels with other Qumran texts make the interpretation of fragment 5 by Eisenman and Wise quite implausible. Fragment 5 is especially close to 4QpIsaa, since it is itself a pesher on Isaiah 10:34–11:1 a, the verses which are quoted in its first two lines and then interpreted. These two texts (4QpIsaa and 4Q285 fr.5) are so closely parallel that there can be little doubt they share the same interpretation of Isaiah 10:34. Both are fragmentary, but what is not quite clear in one can be clarified by the other. Isaiah 10:34 is taken in both texts to describe the defeat of the Kittim. 4QpIsaa reads the whole of the preceding passage of Isaiah as an account of the war of the sons of Light, led by the Prince of the Congregation, the Davidic Messiah, against the Kittim.8 Isaiah 10:28–32 seems to be understood to describe the Messiah’s victorious campaign which leads to his confrontation with the Kittim at Jerusalem.9 Isaiah 10:33–34 are then taken to refer to the final battle in which the Kittim are destroyed. The Messiah described in Isaiah 11:1–5 is therefore the one whose victory over the Kittim has already been described at the end of chapter 10. However, we must examine the more detailed interpretation of Isaiah 10:33–34. 4QpIsaa interprets the tall trees of Isaiah 10:33, the ‘tall in stature’ ( ) who are to be hewn down, as ‘the warriors of the Kittim’ ( ),10 and although the specific interpretation of v 34 a (‘and the thickets of the forest will be cut down with an axe’) has not been preserved,11 most likely ‘the thickets of the forest’ ( ) are taken to be the Kittim 4

5–6:3 [Allegro] = 2–6:19 [Horgan] 8–10:17 [Allegro] = 7–10:22 [Horgan] 6 Vermes, ‘Oxford Forum,’ 86, 89–90; J. T. Milik, ‘Milkî- edeq et Milkî-resa dans les anciens écrits juifs et chrétiens,’ JJS 23 (1972) 143. 7 Vermes, ‘Oxford Forum,’ 88–90. 8 Note the parallel between 5–6:2 [Allegro] = 2–6:18 [Horgan] and 1QM 1:3. 9 So J. M. Allegro, ‘Further Messianic References in Qumran Literature,’ JBL 75 (1956) 181; idem, ‘Addendum to Professor Millar Burrow’s Note on the Ascent from Accho in 4QpIsaa,’ VT 7 (1957) 183. This is also how Tg. Isaiah understands vv 28–29 (following its statement in v 27: ‘the Gentiles will be shattered before the Messiah’), though the later verses of the chapter are applied to Sennacherib. 10 8–10:5 [Allegro] = 7–10:9 [Horgan]. 11 See 8–10:6–7 [Allegro] = 7–10:10–11 [Horgan]. 5

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in general, who ‘fall by the hand of Israel.’12 , which in the context of the image of felling a forest must mean ‘with an axe,’ could easily have been understood, in the Qumran interpretation with reference to a battle, as ‘with a sword,’ as it is in the LXX ( ). The precise interpretation of v 34 b (‘and Lebanon will fall by a powerful one’) is again not entirely clear in either text, but careful attention to both texts reveals that probably ‘by a powerful one’ ( ) is understood to refer to the Prince of the Congregation and ‘Lebanon’ to the king of the Kittim. In 4QpIsaa the interpretation of this half-verse begins: ‘[Its interpretation concerns the] Kittim who will be given into the hand of his great one , which often in the Hebrew Bible refers to those with power ( ).’13 in society – nobles or princes, is here paraphrased by , which can have the same sense, and the suffix ( ) makes it clear that the reference is to God’s great one, his Messiah. An interpretation of as the Messiah would have been assisted by the fact that this word is used of the messianic ruler in Jeremiah 30:21. This messianic reading of Isaiah 10:34 b is confirmed by 4Q285, fr. 5, which quotes v 34 along with at least the first half of 11:1, and presumably interprets both verses together in the fragmentary text (lines 3–5) about ‘the Prince of the Congregation, the Branch of David.’ Here it is said that the Branch of David ‘will kill him’ ( ).14 The singular masculine object of the verb can only be the king of the Kittim (cf. 1QM 15:2).15 But if the statement is meant to be an interpretation of the Isaianic text quoted, then ‘Lebanon’ in Isaiah 10:34 b must have been understood to refer to the king of the Kittim.16 At first sight this may appear to be a difference from 4QpIsaa, since 12 8–10:3 = 7–10:7 [Horgan]. This reading is the one suggested by Horgan, Pesharim, 83–84. 13 The word could be read as or (‘the great ones of’), but the text being interpreted (Isa 10:34 b) gives a reference for ‘his great one’ ( ), not for ‘great ones.’ Horgan, Pesharim, 84, fails to recognize this. 14 Eisenman and Wise, Dead Sea Scrolls, 29, translate: ‘and they will put to death the Leader of the Community, the Bran[ch of David].’ This translation is the basis of their view that the text refers to a slain Messiah. While this translation is possible (despite the absence of before ), it does not fit the context of an interpretation of Isa 10:34–11:1, and the parallels with 4QpIsaa and 1QM make it improbable: see Vermes, ‘Oxford Forum,’ 88–89. 15 So Vermes, ‘Oxford Forum,’ 89. 16 It is likely that Isa 10:34 LXX reflects a similar interpretation of Lebanon as the king of Assyria. LXX Isa 10:33–34 removes almost entirely the MT ’s metaphor of a forest, turning all the MT ’s trees into people, slain by the sword in a battle, but it retains the word Lebanon: ‘Lebanon shall fall with the lofty ones’ ( ). Since here are not trees but people, the reference is presumably to the king with his military leaders. Note also that the reference in Isa 2:13 to ‘all the cedars of Lebanon’ appears in the Targum as ‘all the kings of the Gentiles.’ Other instances of the interpretation of Lebanon as ‘kings’ in the Targums are assembled in G. Vermes, Scripture and

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the beginning of the interpretation of v 34 b in the latter can be understood as identifying Lebanon with the Kittim,17 but this interpretation also apparently includes the words: ‘when he flees before Israel’ ( [ ] ).18 Again, the singular can scarcely refer to anyone but the king of the Kittim, who is presumably envisaged as fleeing, after the defeat of his army, and then being apprehended, brought before the Prince of the Congregation, condemned and executed. Another fragment of 4Q285 (fr.4)19 presumably refers to the same events when it says that ‘they will bring him before the Prince of [the Congregation]’ ([ ] ).

2 Baruch Among explicit interpretations of Isaiah 10:34 in extant Jewish literature, these two Qumran texts are unique in taking as a reference to the Messiah. Both the LXX of Isaiah 10:33–34 and the Targum to these verses interpret them as referring to a battle in which the enemies of Israel are defeated and slain, but neither understands as the Messiah. A different interpretation, attributed in rabbinic literature to Yohanan ben Zakkai, takes Isaiah 10:34 b to refer to the destruction of the Temple in 70 c.e.: Lebanon is interpreted as the Temple, following a widely attested exegetical tradition of understanding Lebanon in many biblical texts in this way,20 and is understood to refer to the emperor Vespasian, through whom the temple fell (Lam. R. 1:5:31; b. Gitt. 56 a–56 b). A development of this tradition concluded, by understanding 10:34 and 11:1 in close connection, that the Messiah was born at the time when the temple was destroyed (j. Ber. 2:5 a). This exegesis shares with 4Q285 and 4QpIsaa the practice of reading 10:34 in close connexion with 11:1, but it does not take to refer to the Messiah. We might therefore have to conclude that the specifically messianic interpretation of Isaiah 10:34 was a peculiarity of the Qumran community, were it not for a passage in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch which, while it is not explicitly an interpretation of Isaiah 10:34, is certainly implicitly such.21 In 2 Baruch 36–40 Baruch is given a vision and its interpretation. The vision is a prophecy of the way in which the fourth kingdom (2 Bar 39:5), Tradition in Judaism (SPB 4; Leiden: Brill, 1961) 27; cf. also R. P. Gordon, ‘Appendix 2: The Interpretation of “Lebanon” and 4Q285,’ in Vermes, ‘Oxford Forum,’ 93. 17 So Vermes, ‘Oxford Forum,’ 89. 18 This reading is Strugnell’s correction of Allegro: Strugnell, ‘Notes,’ 185. 19 Numbered fragment 6 in Eisenman and Wise, Dead Sea Scrolls, 28–29. 20 Vermes, Scripture, 26–39. 21 I had independently noticed the correspondence between 4Q285, fr.5, and 2 Bar 36–40, before noticing that this correspondence was also pointed out by W. Horbury at the Oxford Forum seminar: Vermes, ‘Oxford Forum,’ 89–90.

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i. e. the Roman empire, will be destroyed and succeeded by the rule of the Messiah. The Roman empire is symbolized by a large forest surrounded by high mountains (40:2); the Messiah and his kingdom are symbolized by a vine and a fountain (40:3; 39:7). The fountain comes to the forest and submerges it, uprooting all the trees and levelling the mountains (40:4–5). Only one cedar is left, which is felled and then brought to the vine, who denounces it for its evil rule and condemns it to be reduced to ashes like the rest of the forest (40:6–11). According to the interpretation, the cedar is the last ruler, i. e. the last Roman emperor, who, when his army is destroyed, will be bound and brought to the Messiah on Mount Zion. The Messiah will convict him of his wickedness and put him to death (39:8–40:2). The Messiah’s peaceful and prosperous rule follows (37:1; 40:3). With the help of the Qumran texts we have examined, we can see that this vision is based on an interpretation of Isaiah 10:34 very similar to that found in 4Q285 and 4QpIsaa. The whole vision can be explained as resulting from an exegesis of Isaiah 10:34 in its immediate context and in close connexion with a number of other passages which have been exegetically linked with it. The forest is the forest of Isaiah 10:33–34 a. When the account of the vision says that ‘the height of the forest became low’ (36:5), there is an echo of Isaiah 10:33 b: ‘the tall in stature will be hewn down, and the lofty will be brought low.’ The fact that the forest seems to be first uprooted (36:4–6) and then burned to ashes (36:10) is probably due to the fact that the phrase ‘the thickets of the forest’ ( ) occurs not only in Isaiah 10:34 a, where the thickets are said to be cut down, but also in Isaiah 9:17 (EVV 18), where they are said to be burned. (The phrase is found nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible.) The fact that the emperor is portrayed in 2 Baruch as a cedar is due to the fact that he is the ‘Lebanon’ to which Isaiah 10:34 b refers. The fact that the cedar is first thrown down (36:6), and then judged, sentenced and executed by the vine (the Messiah), may well be due to a sequential interpretation of Isaiah 10:34 a–11:4. First, Lebanon falls by the Messiah (10:34 b); then the Messiah, acting as righteous judge (11:3–4), kills the wicked one ( ) with the breath of his lips (11:4; note the stress on the cedar’s wickedness in 2 Bar 36:7–8; 40:1). The fact that the cedar is finally destroyed by burning (36:10; 37:1) may result from an exegetical link between the reference to Lebanon in Isaiah 10:34 b and the prophecy that Lebanon will burn in Zechariah 11:1. Alternatively, it may derive from Daniel 7:11, since the cedar has been identified as ‘the fourth kingdom’ (2 Bar 39:5), which is the fourth beast in the vision of Daniel 7.22 Other features of the vision can also be explained by exegetical links between Isaiah 10:33–11:1 and other passages of scripture. The vision’s symbol 22

This point was suggested to me by George W. E. Nickelsburg.

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of the Roman empire is not only the forest which is thrown down but also the high mountains which are levelled: ‘the height of the forest became low, and that top of the mountains became low’ (36:5). This is probably due to Isaiah 2:12–14: For the LORD of hosts has a day against all that is proud and lofty ( against all that is lifted up; and it shall become low ( ); against all the cedars of Lebanon, lofty ( ) and lifted up; and against all the oaks of Bashan; against all the lofty ( ) mountains, and against all the high hills.

),

Not only the reference to Lebanon links this with Isaiah 10:34, but also other verbal links associate it with Isaiah 10:33 b: ‘and the tall ( ) in stature will be hewn down, and the lofty will become low ( ).’23 One thinks also of Isaiah 40:4: ‘every mountain and hill shall become low ( ).’ The messianic shoot ( ) or branch ( ) of Isaiah 11:1 (usually in the Scrolls called , following the use of in Isa 4:2; Jer 23:5; 33:15; Zech 3:8; 6:12) has been interpreted as a vine, perhaps under the influence of Psalm 80, but more probably by association with Ezekiel 17:6–8, where the twig which symbolizes a scion of the royal house of Judah is said to have ‘sprouted ( ) and become a vine’ (17:6), and is later described as a ‘noble ( ) vine’ (17:8). The use of links this vine with the messianic interpretation of Isaiah 10:34 b ( ). Finally, the use of a fountain to symbolize the royal power of the Messiah24 may owe something to Song 4:15 (where a fountain is associated with Lebanon), but probably more to ‘the waters of Shiloah that flow gently’ (Isa 8:6), interpreted with the aid of a messianic interpretation of Shiloh (Gen 49:10)25 as a reference to the kingdom of the Messiah. The emphasis on the peace and tranquillity of, first, the fountain (2 Bar 36:3), and then the vine with the fountain (36:6), which is surprising in view of their destruction of the forest and the cedar, may be due not only to the statement that ‘the waters of Shiloah flow gently’ (Isa 8:6) but also to an association of the name Shiloah ( ) with (to be quiet, tranquil) or (peace). Baruch’s vision is constructed from a detailed exegesis of Isaiah 10:33–11:5, including the messianic interpretation of 10:34, in association with several other scriptural passages. This kind of exegetical basis for a vision is by no means unique. For example, the pair of visions of the harvest and the vintage in Revelation 14:14–20 are based on Joel 4:13 (EVV 3:13) in association with 23

Cf. also Ezek 17:24. 2 Bar 39:7 is not clear as to the distinction between the fountain and the vine, but from the whole account of the vision and its interpretation it is clear that the vine is the Messiah in person and most likely the fountain is his dominion or royal power. 25 This interpretation is attested in the Targums, rabbinic literature, and probably the LXX . 24

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other passages, especially Daniel 7:13–14 and Isaiah 63:3. Abraham’s dream of the cedar and the palm tree in 1QapGen 19:14–19 is probably based, rather more loosely, on Psalm 92:13 (which was applied to Abraham and Sarah because of v 15; cf. Gen. R. 41:1).

John the Baptist 2 Baruch 36–40 demonstrates that the messianic interpretation of Isaiah 10:34 was not confined to the Qumran community, but must have been more widely known and accepted in the New Testament period. This means that, in arguing, as I shall now do, that it is also presupposed in the preaching of John the Baptist I do not need to lay any weight on the possibility, which has been frequently suggested, of an association between John and Qumran, though others may find in my argument a further support for postulating such an association. The preaching of John the Baptist, as recorded in the Gospels, contains two allusions to Isaiah 10:34. The first is in Matthew 3:10 = Luke 3:9: [Luke:

]

The image of trees cut down by an axe, as an image of divine judgment, is found in the Hebrew Bible in Isaiah 10:34; Jeremiah 46:22–23; Ezekiel 31:12; and Daniel 4:10 (EVV 13), but only the first two of these passages explicitly mention the axe (Isa 10:34) or the axes (Jer 46:22), and in any case it is clear that only Isaiah 10:34 is a suitable text for allusion in this saying of John. Unlike the others it is easily susceptible to the interpretation John seems to give it, as referring not to the judgment of Gentile kings, armies or nations, but to the judgment of those within Israel who do not repent in response to John’s message. The tall trees of Isaiah 10:33, especially when associated with Isaiah 2:12–13, can readily be taken to symbolize the proud and arrogant who, priding themselves on their descent from Abraham (Matt 3:9 = Luke 3:8), refuse to admit their need of repentance. If, then, the saying alludes to Isaiah 10:34, it understands that verse differently from the texts we have already discussed: the forest is not the Roman army and Lebanon is not the Roman emperor. However, John’s interpretation does have one further point in common with that in 2 Baruch 36–40: he expects the trees to be not only felled but also burned. No doubt this agreement results from the use of the same exegetical procedure: the association of the two passages (Isa 9:17 [EVV 18] and 10:34) which use the highly distinctive phrase ‘the thickets of the forest’ ( ).

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The saying in itself cannot tell us whether John adopted a messianic interpretation of Isaiah 10:34. The axe might be wielded by the Davidic Messiah, understood to be the of Isaiah 10:34 b. But, in the light of Isaiah 10:33, it could be wielded by God himself coming in judgment. Identifying an allusion to Isaiah 10:34 does not immediately settle the much debated issue of the identity of the figure John expected to come. However, we can initially make two points. First, the reference to the axe probably does make implicit reference to a figure who wields it. The opening words of our saying, in which John envisages the imminent judgment so vividly26 that he sees the axe already positioned to chop down the trees,27 are parallel to the opening of another of John’s sayings, which uses a different image of judgment and similarly envisages the instrument of judgment already poised for action: ‘His winnowing shovel28 is in his hand…’ (Matt 3:12 = Luke 3:17). The figure implicit in the first saying becomes explicit in the second.29 Secondly, it seems most likely that, if John adopted the image of Isaiah 10:34 as an especially significant image of the imminent eschatological judgment, this was because of its connexion with the well-known messianic prophecy that follows in 11:1–5. As we have seen, there was an exegetical tradition of reading Isaiah 10:33–11:5 as a unit. Thus we should expect that John’s allusion to Isaiah 10:34 indicates some connexion between his message of imminent judgment and the expectation of the Davidic Messiah. The problem of the identity of the one who wields the axe can be resolved by attending to a second allusion to Isaiah 10:34 in the reported sayings of the Baptist. Unlike the allusion in Matthew 3:10 = Luke 3:9, which has sometimes been recognized, at least as a possibility,30 the second allusion seems not to have been noticed before. It occurs in the best attested saying of John: 26

For a similar image of the immediacy of judgment, cf. Jas 5:9. The blade of the axe is ‘placed against the lowest point of the exposed trunk (i. e. the root) in order rightly to judge the first swing of the felling operation’: J. Nolland, Luke 1–9:20 (WBC 35A; Dallas, Texas: Word Books, 1989) 147; so also R. L. Webb, John the Baptizer and Prophet: A Socio-Historical Study (JSNTSS 62; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991) 301. 28 For this translation, rather than the usual ‘winnowing fork,’ see Webb, John the Baptizer, 296–298. 29 This point is oddly neglected by Webb, John the Baptizer, who in his discussion of the identity and activities of the figure John expected (chapters 7–8) gives much attention to the image in Matt 3:12 = Luke 3:17, but none to the image in Matt 3:10 = Luke 3:9. 30 E. g. by J. A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke (I–IX) (New York: Doubleday, 1981) 469. If the saying is an authentic saying of John, then the fact that Matthew and Luke use , while Isa 10:34 MT has and Isa 10:34 LXX has is no reason to hesitate about the allusion, as Fitzmyer thinks. in this context certainly means ‘axe’ (as in Deut 19:5; Eccles 10:10), and is a good translation. The LXX uses because it replaces the image of felling trees with that of slaughter in battle. 27

202 Mark 1:7: Matthew 3:11: Luke 3:16: John 1:15: John 1:30:

13. The Messianic Interpretation of Isaiah 10:34

… … … … …

These five versions probably derive from three distinct traditions of the saying: Markan, Q (represented here by Matthew rather than Luke) and Johannine. There are two significant variations among the versions. The first is between, ‘There is coming after me the one who is more powerful than I / ranks ahead of me,’ and ‘The one who is coming after me is more powerful than I / ranks ahead of me.’ This variation occurs not only between Mark and Q(Matthew), but also between the two Johannine forms of the saying (1:30 agreeing with Mark, 1:15 agreeing with Matthew). Which is the more original we need not decide here. The second variation is between the Synoptic expression and the Johannine This should probably be regarded as a translation variant. Even without the Johannine addition ( ) to the saying in both its occurrences (John 1:15, 30), which serves to interpret it in terms of a preexistence Christology, the Johannine versions of the saying are characteristically loaded with paradox and double meaning. There is the apparent temporal paradox: ‘The one who comes after me is before me.’ And there is the apparent paradox of status: ‘The one who is following me [= is my disciple] has taken precedence over me.’ But the basic meaning must be: ‘The one who is coming after me ranks ahead of me’ (1:15) or ‘After me is coming a man who ranks ahead of me’ (1:30). With this meaning, the two Johannine versions of the same saying are equivalent to the Synoptic versions, provided that can be regarded as equivalent to . At first sight this does not seem possible, because is commonly understood to mean that the expected figure is stronger than John.31 In fact, however, the expression must refer, not to physical strength, but to the power associated with high social status. This is clear from the way the saying continues in the Synoptic versions, with John’s declaration that he is not worthy to untie (Mark, Luke; cf. also Acts 13:25) or to carry (Matthew) the expected figure’s sandals.32 In other words, the figure is so much more eminent than John that John is unworthy even to act as slave 31 Thus, when Webb, John the Baptizer, chapter 7 (and cf. 303), looks for parallels to this feature of John’s expectation in figures of Jewish eschatological expectation, he looks for references to their strength. 32 The Johannine parallel is in John 1:27. John seems to have split the traditional saying of the Baptist in two, using part of it in 1:15, 30 and part in 1:27. This division is made partly to make possible the interpretation in terms of preexistence which the Fourth Evangelist adds in 1:5, 30. But it seems that he does not intend to report the Baptist’s utterance of the saying itself: in 1:15 and 1:30 the Baptist refers back to what he had said

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to him. In this way John indicates a difference of status greater than any in human society. The phrase does not make a different point, but is John’s initial statement of the expected figure’s preeminence over him; he then explains just how great this preeminence is by means of the statement about the sandals.33 There is no difficulty in taking in this sense, but we may wonder why John should have spoken of the expected figure in this way. The answer may lie in the messianic interpretation of in Isaiah 10:34. , used as a substantive, refers to a person of powerful status in society, a prince or noble or military leader. In this sense, the LXX sometimes translates it by (Judg 5:13, 25; Jer 37:21 [= 30:21 MT ]), as well as by (Jer 14:3; Nah 2:5; Zech 11:2), (Nah 3:18) and (2 Chron 23:20). If John, speaking in Aramaic, referred to the expected figure as , the Synoptic would be a natural translation, but, in the context of John’s saying, which goes on to emphasize the figure’s eminence rather than his power as such, the Johannine would be even more appropriate. Like the tradition of exegesis we have traced in the Dead Sea Scrolls and 2 Baruch, the Baptist, it seems, read Isaiah 10:33–34 as referring to a divine judgment executed by the Messiah ( ), i. e. by the Davidic Messiah whose rule is described in Isaiah 11:1–5. Unlike that tradition, however, John was not concerned with victory over the Gentiles. The judgment he envisaged was closely connected with his own ministry of calling Israel to repentance. It was a judgment on Israel – a discriminatory judgment on the arrogant and unrepentant within Israel. These are the forest which the Messiah will fell with his axe and burn.34 The reason why John did not previously, while in 1:27 the traditional saying is not reproduced, but echoed in order to make a further point about the one who is coming after him (1:26 b). 33 J. D. Crossan, The Historical Jesus (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1991) 235, is the latest of many who have understood this saying to refer to God rather than to a messianic figure. A decisive objection to this view is that of C. H. Kraeling, John the Baptist (New York / London: Scribners, 1951) 54: ‘It is a pronouncement about one who can be and is being compared to [sic] John, albeit to the latter’s disadvantage. The fact of the comparison shows that the person in question is not God, for to compare oneself with God, even in the most abject humility, would have been presumptuous for any Jew in John’s day.’ Cf. also Webb, John the Baptizer, 284–286. 34 The parallel image of the threshing-floor (Matt 3:12 =Luke 3:17) does not portray the Messiah as winnowing the grain, but rather as acting after the winnowing has taken place, to clear the threshing-floor by shovelling the wheat into the barn and by burning up the chaff (see Webb, John the Baptiser, 292–300). Presumably it is John’s preaching which achieves the winnowing, i. e. it separates the wheat from the chaff, the repentant from the unrepentant. The Messiah, portrayed as the owner of the threshing-floor, then deals appropriately with each. If there is a scriptural source for this image, it is most likely Mal 3:19 (EVV 4:1), which not only provides an image of the burning of the chaff (as distinct from the more common image of the chaff blown away by the wind) but also relates (from

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13. The Messianic Interpretation of Isaiah 10:34

refer to the Messiah as the Lord’s Messiah or the Branch of David or by some other clear reference to the Davidic Messiah of Isaiah 11:1–5 will be that such terms were so predominantly associated with the messianic role of defeating the Gentiles. In order not to distract attention from the theme of a judgment hanging over the heads of his Jewish hearers, which they urgently needed to avoid by responding to John’s message, John only hinted at the messianic identity of the figure who would execute this judgment.35 He carefully chose and spelt out the meaning of a scriptural term for the Messiah – – which had not acquired associations from common usage, but which, as he expounded it, said what needed to be said about the figure whose coming he predicted: that he is the preeminent one whose authority surpasses all earthly rulers and judges. If this hypothesis about John’s interpretation of Isaiah 10:34 is correct, several other implications for interpreting the Gospel traditions about the Baptist may be drawn. First, since it is now clear that John did expect the Messiah described in Isaiah 11:1–5, it may be that John’s prediction that the one who comes after him will baptize with the Holy Spirit (Mark 1:8; John 1:33) and or with the Holy Spirit and with fire (Matt 3:11; Luke 3:16) derives from exegesis of Isaiah 11:4: ‘with the breath of his lips he will kill the wicked.’ Interpreting this text, the vision of the Messiah in 4 Ezra 13:9–11 reads: ‘he neither lifted his hand nor held a spear or any weapon of war; but I saw only how he sent forth from his mouth as it were a stream of fire, and from his lips a flaming breath, and from his tongue he shot forth a storm of sparks. All these were mingled together, the stream of fire and the flaming breath and the great storm, and fell on the onrushing multitude which was prepared to fight, and burned them all up…’ (cf. the interpretation given in 13:37–38).36 its context in 3:17–20) to the the theme of differentiating the righteous from the wicked in Israel, which seems to have been John’s conception of his ministry. 35 In this sense, Jesus’ reticence with regard to his messianic role, avoiding the usual titles and terms associated with the expectation of the Davidic Messiah, is continuous with John’s preaching. 36 The figure in this vision in 4 Ezra 13 is not only the Messiah of Isaiah 11:1–5 but also the ‘one like a son of man’ of Daniel 7 (see 4 Ezra 13:2). This identification of the Davidic Messiah of Isaiah 11 with the Danielic figure ‘like a son of man’ is also made, not only in the Parables of Enoch, but also in 2 Baruch 35–40 (cf. 39:5; 40:3, with Dan 7:23, 27). (For this tradition of interpretation, see G. W. E. Nickelsburg, ‘Son of Man,’ Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 6 [New York: Doubleday, 1992] 138–142). The possibility therefore arises that John the Baptist shared with 2 Baruch not only the messianic interpretation of Isaiah 10:34 but also the identification of the Messiah of Isaiah 10:34–11:5 with the ‘one like a son of man’ of Daniel 7. George Nickelsburg points out to me, in this connexion, that in Matthew 13:30, 40–41, imagery very close to that used by the Baptist in Matthew 3:12 is interpreted as eschatological judgment by ‘the Son of Man.’ However, there is no unequivocal evidence that the Baptist made use of Daniel 7. His interest in judgment on

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Secondly, it may be that the peculiarly Johannine claim that the Baptist recognized Jesus to be the Messiah when he saw the Spirit descend and remain on him ( : John 1:33) should be allowed more historical plausibility than it usually is. The statement probably alludes to Isaiah 11:2 (‘The Spirit of the Lord shall rest on him [ ]’ ), and means that John saw Jesus anointed with the Spirit by God and so knew him to be the Messiah of Isaiah 11:1–5. Thirdly, another feature peculiar to the Fourth Gospel’s account of the Baptist is that it represents him as identifying himself by quoting Isaiah 40:3 (John 1:23). In the Synoptics, this quotation is applied to John (Matt 3:3; Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4–637), but not attributed to him. That the quotation does in fact go back to John himself becomes plausible when we remember how 2 Baruch associates the image of felling of tall trees in Isaiah 10:33–34 with that of levelling mountains. The association is easily made on the basis of Isaiah 2:12–14, the more so for John the Baptist who thought of judgment coming on the arrogant within Israel, which is the theme of Isaiah 2:12–14 in its context. Thus John could have understood Isaiah 40:4, which predicts that ‘every mountain and hill shall be made low,’ as a prophecy parallel to Isaiah 10:33–34, and therefore as one which made clear, in verse 3, his own role as a voice calling for repentance in view of the coming judgment.

Israel, rather than on the Gentiles, would make Daniel 7 less appropriate for the Baptist’s use than for the authors of 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra and the Parables of Enoch. 37 Luke quotes the whole of Isaiah 40:3–5 a.

14. The Relevance of Extra-Canonical Jewish Texts to New Testament Study* Introduction Jesus was a Galilean Jew whose ministry took place almost entirely within Jewish Palestine. The earliest Christian churches were composed of Palestinian Jews (including some Jews from the diaspora who were resident in Jerusalem). When Christianity spread outside Palestine, it was among Jewish communities in the diaspora that it first made converts. Even when large numbers of Gentile converts entered the church in the course of the New Testament period, the leadership of the churches still remained largely in the hands of Jewish Christians. Most of the writers of the New Testament were Jews. The Hebrew Bible in Greek translation became the Bible of Gentile Christians, and, although they read it from the perspective of their faith in Jesus, they also read it within the Jewish traditions of interpreting Scripture which they learned from Jewish Christians. Furthermore, even Jewish religious literature which they did not regard as canonical Scripture must have been read and valued by Gentile Christians. It is a very striking fact that, apart from the Hebrew Bible itself and apart from the Dead Sea Scrolls and a few other Jewish documents which have been recovered by archaeologists in recent times, almost all of the Jewish literature which has survived from the period before 200 c.e. was preserved, not by Jews, who ceased to use it, but by Christians. Even Jewish works which were not written until the Christian church was already well established and most of the New Testament writings were already written, such as the apocalypses of Ezra (4 Ezra or 2 Esdras) and Baruch (2 Baruch and 3 Baruch), were appropriated by Christians. These facts clearly suggest, not only that first-century Judaism was the principal religious context of Christian origins, but also that the character of early Christianity was decisively determined by these origins, so much so that, in terms of the history of religions, the Christianity of the New Testament period must be seen, not as something quite different from Judaism, * First Publication: Joel B. Green ed., Hearing the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans/Carlisle: Paternoster, 1995) 90–108.

208 14. The Relevance of Extra-Canonical Jewish Texts to New Testament Study but as a distinctive form of Judaism. The fact that by the end of the first century probably the majority of Christians were Gentiles who had not adopted the full observance of the law of Moses does not contradict this description, though it is one of several reasons why Christianity was coming to be seen by most non-Christian Jews as not a legitimate form of Judaism. Yet even this ‘parting of the ways’ between Christianity and Judaism was essentially a dispute between divergent interpretations of a common religious heritage. All this is not to deny that both Jews and Christians were strongly influenced by the culture of the Greco-Roman world. Both Jews and Christians shared, in many respects, a common cultural world with their pagan neighbours. It would be a serious mistake to isolate the Jewish context of early Christianity from the wider Greco-Roman context. Nevertheless Jews of this period had a strong sense of their religious distinctiveness and the necessity to preserve it, and Christians, by worshipping the God of Israel, retained the core of this distinctiveness, while relaxing its strict connexion with observance of the law of Moses. In recent decades of New Testament study older theories which attributed a determinative influence on early Christianity to non-Jewish religious cults or ideas, such as the mystery cults or pre-Christian Gnosticism, have largely lost credibility (though very recently the parallels between the Gospel traditions and Cynicism, which was not a religious cult, but a school of Greco-Roman philosophy, have attracted fresh attention). The thoroughly Jewish character of the New Testament literature has been constantly demonstrated by the intensive study of this literature in relation to relevant Jewish literature. Moreover, such study has taken place in a period in which the study of early Judaism and its literature has itself blossomed. New discoveries, especially the Dead Sea Scrolls, serious study of works which have long been known but largely neglected, such as many of the so-called Pseudepigrapha, properly critical work on the extent to which traditions of the New Testament period may be preserved in the Targums and the rabbinic literature, and major works of historical analysis and synthesis, such as Martin Hengel’s influential work on the hellenization of Palestinian Jewish culture,1 have transformed the study of early Judaism. The resources now available to the New Testament student and scholar for understanding the Jewish context of early Christianity are abundant. There are introductory textbooks and major reference works. Editions, translations, commentaries and studies of texts make them available and more accurately usable than ever before. At 1 M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism (ET ; London: SCM Press, 1974); Jews, Greeks and Barbarians (ET ; London: SC M Press, 1980); The ‘Hellenization’ of Judaea in the First Century after Christ (ET ; London: SC m Press, 1989).

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the same time, there is much to be done. Important texts still await editing. Some have still been very little studied. Major issues of interpretation are highly debated. Students of the New Testament who take the Jewish context of early Christianity seriously cannot expect to find simply uncontroversial facts and agreed conclusions. They will encounter major debates between the leading scholars, such as that over the character of Pharisaism in the first century. They will have to learn that, as in the study of the New Testament, the textbooks sometimes make unqualified assertions, for example about the date of a work, which in fact rest on the slenderest of evidence and are highly debatable. They will find themselves trying to understand puzzling texts without the kind of help that is readily available in the commentaries for interpreting difficult New Testament texts. They will have to realise the uncertainties involved in relying, for example, on an English translation of a badly transmitted Old Slavonic version of a no longer extant Greek text which might have been translated from a Semitic original. This may make the use of non-canonical Jewish literature in New Testament study seem a dauntingly difficult task. It is! The study of early Judaism is a complex and constantly developing field of study, in reality composed of a variety of highly technical and specialized disciplines. Advanced students who wish to make original contributions to this aspect of New Testament study will have to gain some understanding of the skills and tools of these disciplines, even if only to understand the way they are deployed by the scholars they read. In fact, many New Testament researchers who have turned to Jewish texts for the sake of comparing them with the New Testament have found themselves involved in major projects of interpretation of the Jewish texts for their own sake. Some such firsthand work on Jewish material should now be virtually a prerequisite for competent historical research in New Testament studies. But students who are only beginning New Testament study or have no expectation of doing original work in the field should not be deterred from reading Jewish texts of the period along with the excellent introductory literature now available. They cannot in any case avoid the extensive references to Jewish parallels and discussions of the Jewish context in virtually all literature about the New Testament. Even a small degree of firsthand acquaintance with the Jewish texts will make a considerable difference to their appreciation of such references and discussions.

210 14. The Relevance of Extra-Canonical Jewish Texts to New Testament Study

Using the Literature The general usefulness of the extra-canonical Jewish literature for NT interpretation is obvious. Insofar as the context of Jesus, the early church and the NT writings was Jewish, these writings provide us with most of what we know about that context (along with archeological evidence and some references to Judaism and Jewish history in pagan literature). Of course, we must understand the historical context here in the most comprehensive sense. It involves not only the religious, but (insofar as the distinctions are valid in a religious culture) the political, social, economic and cultural life of the Jews in Palestine and in the western diaspora. To take a very simple example, we should not know who the ‘king Herod’ of Acts 12:1 was, we might well confuse him with the tetrarch Herod of Luke’s Gospel, and we might accuse Luke of inaccuracy in attributing to him authority in Jerusalem at this time, if we did not have Josephus’ indispensable political history of first-century Jewish Palestine. However, since most of the surviving Jewish literature is religious in purpose and content, as is the NT , it will not be surprising if the religious dimension of life (including the religious dimension of political, social, economic and cultural life) predominates in the value of the former to illuminate the context of the latter. To take a much less simple example, every serious student of the Gospels wants to know who the Pharisees were, since, although the NT offers some indications (e. g. Acts 26:5), for the most part it refers to them without explaining who they were. The Gospels are interested solely in the Pharisees’ interaction with Jesus, and so, even if their account of the Pharisees were entirely accurate, it could still be very incomplete and onesided. But the Gospels could also be suspected of having polemically distorted their picture of the Pharisees, or of having retrojected onto pre-70 Pharisaism concerns belonging to the late first century. Unfortunately, the other main sources of information about the Pharisees – Josephus and rabbinic traditions about the Pharisees – are also problematic: Josephus because he had his own agenda which made him very selective and (some would say) not wholly accurate in what he records about the Pharisees; the rabbinic evidence because the selection, preservation and redaction of rabbinic traditions about the Pharisees was controlled by the concerns of the post-70 rabbinic movement. It is not surprising, therefore, that reconstructing the nature of Pharisaism in the NT period is a complex historical task with no fully agreed conclusions, but one of vital importance to NT scholarship. One important methodological point for NT interpretation is that clearly it will not do for NT scholars simply to plunder the Jewish evidence to illustrate what the various NT texts say about the Pharisees. Of course, it is true that, for example, Matthew 19:3 can be greatly illuminated by the rab-

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binic traditions about the debate between the schools of Hillel and Shammai over the grounds for divorce. But if we are to discuss the relationship of Jesus or the early Christians to the Pharisees in broader terms, we need as rounded and accurate an understanding of the Pharisees as a Jewish religious movement as we can gain. For this purpose, we cannot allow the NT material to control the agenda, but must study the Pharisees for their own sake, with the full range of evidence available, problematic though it is. Having said that, of course, it should not be forgotten that the NT is, among other things, itself evidence of early Judaism, including Pharisaism. If the Gospels are problematic as evidence for Pharisaism, so are the other sources. What is true of the Pharisees, is true of the whole subject. The NT student and scholar must use the Jewish literature in the first place to understand Judaism. Only someone who understands early Judaism for its own sake will be able to use Jewish texts appropriately and accurately in the interpretation of the NT . The famous warning issued by Samuel Sandmel against ‘parallelomania’ in NT studies2 has its most general application here. Someone who knows the Jewish literature only in the form of isolated texts selected for the sake of their apparent relationship to NT texts will not understand those texts in their own contexts (literary and otherwise) and so will not know whether they constitute real or only apparent parallels and, even supposing they are real parallels, will not be able to use them properly. A principle which NT students and even NT scholars rarely take to heart is that, for the sake of a balanced view of the relationship of Christianity to early Judaism, it is just as important to study Jewish texts which are least like anything in the NT as it is to study those with which the NT writings have most affinity. Of course, it would be a mistake to wait until one has mastered the broad picture – whether of early Judaism or of early Christianity’s relationship to Judaism – before studying the detailed ways in which Jewish texts can illuminate specific NT texts. In this as in most fields of study, one’s understanding of the general will be enhanced by study of particulars, and the two will be constantly interrelating. What is important in the study of particular Jewish parallels to particular NT texts is never to forget that the former have a context which is essential to their meaning and relevance. This context will need to be explored in a variety of ways. The theme may need to be traced in other Jewish texts, or related to other themes. A particular word or expression or image may have to be traced in a variety of texts before the significance of its occurrence in one can be evaluated. It is usually also important to know as a whole the particular Jewish work which is being used. (Compared with modern books, all ancient Jewish works are short, 2

S. Sandmel, ‘Parallelomania,’ JBL 81 (1962) 1–13.

212 14. The Relevance of Extra-Canonical Jewish Texts to New Testament Study most extremely short. It does not take long to read one through!) No NT student would quote a verse from a Pauline epistle, without further ado, as evidence of early Christianity in general, because Paul was a highly individual and creative thinker, and even what he shared with other Christians, which was certainly a great deal, would not have been shared equally with all Christians. But early Jewish writers were also individual and creative writers, and early Judaism was more diverse than early Christianity. Precisely in what sense a Jewish text constitutes evidence of the Jewish context of early Christianity needs to be more carefully considered than it often is. It is extremely probable that all of the NT writers read some extra-canonical Jewish literature and that some of them were very familiar with some such literature. (In addition, many of them would have known Jewish oral traditions, such as the legal traditions of the Pharisees and the exegetical traditions of the synagogues.) However, it is very rarely possible to prove that a particular NT writer knew a particular Jewish writing that we know. The letter of Jude, which not only explicitly quotes (Jude 14) from part of that collection of Enoch literature we know as 1 Enoch, but can also be shown to make several allusions to parts of the Enoch literature, is very unusual. In most cases we cannot treat the Jewish literature as sources the NT writers used, but must see them as evidence of the ideas and terminology with which NT writers were familiar. But at this point we must raise two problems. One is the kind of Judaism of which a particular Jewish writing is evidence. In the unusual case of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we know at least that these writings all belonged to the library of the Qumran community. Some of the literature was written within the community and is unlikely to have been known outside it, except by other Essenes, but clearly the community also read extra-canonical religious literature which was not peculiarly its own and had either a wide or limited circulation among other Jews. These categories cannot always be easily distinguished. In the case of most other pre-rabbinic Jewish literature we do not know who wrote or read it. For a text to be relevant to NT interpretation, we need to be able to suppose (from various kinds of evidence, including the NT ) either that Christianity was influenced by (or, in relevant cases, opposed) the particular kind of Judaism represented by the text, or that in relevant respects what text says was not peculiar to the group that produced and read it, or that the writing in question was not restricted to a particular Jewish group but circulated widely. Such judgments cannot be made in isolation from current discussion of the extent of variety in early Judaism. The current trend to emphasize diversity to such an extent as to speak of ‘Judaisms’ in the plural3 has rightly 3

E. g. J. Neusner, W. S. Green and E. Frerichs ed., Judaisms and their Messiahs at the Turn of the Christian Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); G. Boccaccini,

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been challenged by E. P. Sanders’ claim that it makes sense to speak of a ‘common Judaism’ which most Jews shared and in which even those Jews who belonged to the parties, such as the Pharisees, participated.4 Much of the literature that has survived may well have circulated quite widely and have been read by Jews who differed from each other on some issues. Even literature which belonged rather exclusively to particular groups, such the Qumran community’s own writings, can be shown to share many themes, traditions and concerns with wider Jewish circles. This makes virtually all the literature of the period potentially relevant to NT interpretation, but it does not enable us to shirk the difficult questions about the extent to which a particular text in any particular case is representative or idiosyncratic. However, the reference in the last sentence to ‘literature of the period’ raises the second problem: that of the date of the literature. In the past, many scholars made rather indiscriminate use of evidence from the rabbinic literature (all of which was written two centuries or more after the NT ) as evidence for pre-70 Judaism, influenced by a misleading historical model, according to which Pharisaism was ‘normative Judaism’ and later rabbinic Judaism essentially a continuation of Pharisaism. This model, along with the uncritical acceptance of all ascriptions of traditions to early rabbis in the literature, is no longer credible. In reaction, some NT scholars are reluctant to admit the relevance of any Jewish literature which cannot be shown to have been written before the NT . But this seeming methodological stringency is a spurious kind of purism. Judaism changed after 70 ce, but not in such a way as to destroy all continuity with its past. Many of the Targums, though of uncertain date, can be shown to preserve exegetical traditions from the NT period. Their evidence must be used with care, but it is not unusable. Similarly, many of the so-called Old Testament Pseudepigrapha are of very uncertain date – and not a few included in the now standard collection edited by J. H. Charlesworth5 are much later than the NT and even of Christian origin – but that they preserve early Jewish traditions can often be argued. They cannot be used in the same way as those which are certainly pre-Christian in date, but they are not unusable. Sometimes a striking parallel between the NT and a later Jewish work can itself show (since the influence of Jesus or Christian literature on the Jewish work is Middle Judaism: Jewish Thought 300 B. C. E. to 200 C. E. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991). 4 E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE–66 CE (London: SCM Press / Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992). For this issue, see also R. Bauckham, ‘The Parting of the Ways: What Happened and Why,’ ST 47 (1993) 135–139 (= chapter 12 above). 5 J. H. Charlesworth ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1983, 1985). For discussion of some of the problems created by the scope of this collection, see R. Bauckham, ‘The Apocalypses in the New Pseudepigrapha,’ JSNT 26 (1986) 97–117 (= chapter 8 above).

214 14. The Relevance of Extra-Canonical Jewish Texts to New Testament Study not, in such cases, usually plausible) that the Jewish work here preserves an old tradition. The use of Jewish sources later than the NT for NT interpretation requires careful and informed historical judgment by a scholar well acquainted with the literature, but it cannot be ruled out. Sometimes parallels are instructive irrespective of date. This is sometimes the case, for example, in one of the most important areas of relationship between NT writings and Jewish literature: exegesis of the Jewish scriptures. Evidence from early writings, especially the Qumran pesharim (commentaries on scripture), shows that, despite some important differences, many of the techniques of exegesis known from rabbinic midrash and the Targums were already in use in the NT period. A later Jewish writing may therefore be able to illuminate the way in which a Jewish exegete is likely to have read a particular OT text, even if we cannot be confident that it preserves an ancient piece of exegesis. But this too is a field where it is important to go beyond parallels to an understanding of how Jewish exegetes worked and thought. Sometimes NT writers and the Christian exegetical traditions they used followed Jewish traditions of exegesis of particular texts, as we can demonstrate from parallels, but sometimes their exegesis was original. In the latter cases, however, they were still engaged in a Jewish kind of exegesis, with Jewish exegetical presuppositions and methods. In these cases, it is not particular parallels, but real understanding, gained from study of Jewish exegesis, of how Jewish exegesis was done, which will enable us to understand the NT texts in their Jewish context.

Example: James 4:13–5:6 The question of how the letter of James is related to Jewish religious traditions is an important issue in determining the character of this New Testament writing. Some scholars have stressed its affinities with and indebtedness to wisdom traditions, and have therefore seen James as a Christian wisdom writing. Others have pointed out its resemblance to prophetic-apocalyptic material (especially in 5:1–8). Interpretation of the law of Moses also has a significant place in the letter (especially in 2:8–13). Study of the passage 4:13–5:6 in the light of Jewish literary parallels will enable us to see how these three elements coexist and cohere within the letter. This passage is in two sections, introduced by the two parallel addresses in 4:13; 5:1, denouncing in turn two different categories of wealthy people: merchants (4:13–17) and landowners (5:1–6). Not only are the two categories of people distinct: they are also condemned in quite different terms. The merchants are denounced for their arrogant self-confidence, treating their lives as though they were entirely within their own control, without

Example: James 4:13–5:6

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reference to God. The landowners are denounced for their oppression of the poor, at whose expense they have accumulated wealth and lived in luxury. The most obvious affinities of the first section are with wisdom literature, while the second section resembles prophetic-apocalyptic traditions. This is in keeping with their respective themes. Like the rich fool in Jesus’ parable, which also has affinities with the wisdom literature, the merchants are fools to think they can make plans for themselves without reference to God’s will. They lack the religious wisdom to take into account even the obvious fact that they cannot tell what will happen tomorrow. The landowners, on the other hand, are threatened with the eschatological judgment, when justice will at last be done for the righteous whom they have defrauded and murdered. Confirming the wisdom character of the first section is the fact that Proverbs 27:1 (‘Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring’)6 certainly lies in the background to it. Also a wisdom theme is the transience of life to which verse 14 b calls attention. By contrast with 1:10–11, which uses a similar image, the point in 4:14 does not seem to be that the life of the wicked will be cut short by God’s judgment, whether at death or at the endtime, but rather that all human life is transient. The general thought is therefore not unlike Ben Sira’s reflection that, when the rich man ‘says, “I have found rest, and now I shall feast on my goods!” he does not know how long it will be until he leaves them to others and dies’ (Sir 11:19). The image which James uses – mist or (more probably) smoke that appears for only a little while before vanishing completely – is one of a traditional set of images of transience, which were frequently used in Jewish literature (biblical and post-biblical) both for the transience of human life in general and for the short life left to the wicked who will soon perish under God’s judgment. (It is very important, in a case like this, to take note of the full range of parallel material, rather than to focus prematurely on one or two texts, preempting the decision as to which are most relevant to the interpretation of James.) The most popular such image of transience was that of the grass or flowers withering, which James uses in 1:10–11 (transience of mortal life: Job 14:1; Ps 90:5–6; 103:15–16; Isa 40:6–8; fate of the wicked: Job 15:30; Ps 37:20; 1QM 15:11; 4Q185 1; 2 Bar 82:7). But the image of smoke which soon vanishes is also found frequently (transience of mortal life: 4 Ezra 4:24; apocryphal quotation in 1 Clement 17:6;7 fate of the wicked: Ps 37:20; 68:2; 6 Cf. Pseudo-Phocylides 116–117: ‘Nobody knows what will be after tomorrow or after an hour. Death is heedless of mortals, and the future is uncertain.’ But the best MSS of Pseudo-Phocylides lack these lines. 7 ‘I am as smoke from a pot’: the speaker is Moses, and the source probably a lost Jewish work.

216 14. The Relevance of Extra-Canonical Jewish Texts to New Testament Study Hos 13:3; Wis 5:14; 1QM 15:10; 4 Ezra 7:61; 2 Bar 82:6).8 However, the distinction between the transience of all human life and the judgment coming to the wicked is not as clear as might at first appear, especially in the later texts.9 In 4 Ezra 4:24, Ezra, who is preoccupied with the sinfulness even of the righteous, closely connects this with the transience of life (‘we pass from the world like locusts, and our life is like a mist, and we are not worthy to obtain mercy’). What becomes clear in some texts (2 Bar 14:10–14; Wis 5:7–16) is that the expectation of reward and punishment after death made a considerable difference to the significance of such traditional images of transience. The transience of this mortal life, though true of the righteous as well as the wicked, is of real consequence only for the wicked, who have set all their hopes on the worldly goods they enjoy in this life and face only judgment after death, while for the righteous, who expect eternal life and reward in the next life, it is insignificant. Ezra therefore discovers (4 Ezra 7:61) that the image of the mist that vanishes properly applies only to the wicked, who will be consumed by the fire of judgment. Especially interesting for our purposes is the passage in the book of Wisdom (5:7–16), where the wicked discover, at the last judgment, that their arrogance and wealth (5:8) have done them no good, because all such things proved as transient as their own lives (5:9–14), while the righteous whom they oppressed in their lifetime receive eternal life and glory (5:15–16). This passage helps us to see that the point in James 4:13–16 is not only that the merchants do not reckon with the transience of life, but that their plans are preoccupied with obtaining wealth which they will only be able to enjoy for the uncertain length of their transient life. The later Jewish literature therefore enables us to see that, while the primary force of the image in James 4:14 b is to highlight the transience of mortal life, it carries the overtone of judgment for those who set their hopes on this mortal life. The meaning is therefore much closer than at first appears to that of the parallel image in 1:10–11, where it is only the life of the rich that is depicted as transient. It is also closer than at first appears to the corresponding feature of the denunciation of the landowners in 5:1–6, where eschatological judgment is very clearly in view. It is also noteworthy that these traditional images of transience were never confined to wisdom literature, but already occur in the Old Testament prophets (Isa 40:6–8; Hos 13:3). In later Jewish literature they are found in apocalyptic and related literature (1QM 15:10–11; 2 Bar 14:10–11; 82:6–9; 4 Ezra 7:61) and in wisdom literature (4Q185; Wis 5:9–14; cf. Sir 14:17–19). Especially when wisdom literature takes on the notion of eschatological 8 For other images of transience, see, e. g., 1 Chron 29:15; Ps 37:6; 109:23;144:4; Eccles 6:12; Hos 13:3; Sir 14:17–19; 4 Ezra 4:24; 13:20; 2 Bar 14:10; 82:8–9. 9 It is worth noting that the Targum to Isa 40:6–8 interprets this passage as referring to the judgment of the wicked.

Example: James 4:13–5:6

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judgment, as in Wisdom 5, and wisdom motifs appear in apocalyptic, as in 2 Baruch 14:8–9, it is clear that in the Jewish literature of New Testament times wisdom and apocalyptic are by no means completely distinct traditions. Although there is truth in the observation that James 4:13–16 relates to the wisdom tradition and 5:1–6 to the prophetic-apocalyptic tradition, this distinction does not mean that there is any incongruity in their juxtaposition. The second section (5:1–6) uses the style of prophetic oracles of judgment (with 5:1 cf. especially Isa 13:6).10 In 5:5 (‘you have fattened your hearts for the day of slaughter’)11 there is a specific allusion to a prophetic text, Jeremiah 12:3, where the prophet, having complained of the prosperity of the wicked, prays: Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and set them apart for the day of slaughter.

There is an allusion to this same text in 1QH 15:17: But the wicked Thou didst create for [the time] of Thy [wrath], Thou didst set them apart from the womb for the day of slaughter….12

The Qumran psalmist shares James’ interpretation of the text as referring to the eschatological day of God’s judgment on the wicked, but in other respects the two authors have been attracted to the text for quite different reasons. The context in 1QH is a strongly predestinarian passage which contrasts the righteous, created by God for eternal salvation, with the wicked, created by God for eternal judgment. The righteous are the members of the community; the wicked are the rest of humanity. The author has seen predestinarian significance in the words of Jer 12:3: ‘set them apart (haqdi m) for the day of slaughter.’ This predestinarian exegesis of the text is not James’ interest. He has been attracted to the metaphor which Jeremiah uses: animals selected from the flock for slaughter. Since he applies it specifically to the rich, he is able to make a highly effective extension of the metaphor. By their luxurious living they have fattened themselves, as domestic animals are fattened in readiness for slaughter. This contrast between 1QH and James illustrates how relatively unhelpful it is when commentators merely give references to extra-canonical Jewish literature as texts to be compared with a NT text. It is important to study both texts before establishing 10

Cf. also Isa 14:31; 23:1, 6, 14; Jer 48:20; Mic 2:4. My translation. Since ‘the day of slaughter’ is certainly the eschatological day of judgment, must be used with the sense of 12 I have altered the translation in G. Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (London: Penguin, 3 rd ed. 1987) 203, in order to make clear the allusion to Jer 12:3. 11

218 14. The Relevance of Extra-Canonical Jewish Texts to New Testament Study precisely where the point of comparison lies. In this case, the fact that both texts allude to Jer 12:3 with reference to the eschatological judgment of the wicked is probably not coincidental, but shows that current Jewish exegesis interpreted this verse of Jeremiah eschatologically. But it is unlikely that ‘the day of slaughter’ had become simply a stock phrase for the day of judgment, used independently of its source in Jer 12:3, because both 1QH and James both make use of further, though different, features of Jer 12:3. Both authors are exegetes, making their own use of Jer 12:3 within a common exegetical tradition of referring the verse to the eschatological judgment. At first sight, such a tradition may be a little surprising, since Jer 12:3 is not as such a prophecy, but only Jeremiah’s prayer for the judgment of the wicked. However, there are features of the text which would have made it attractive to Jewish apocalyptic eschatology. The phrase ‘the day of slaughter’ would naturally be associated with other phrases using ‘day’ (e. g. ‘the day of the Lord’) which were taken to refer to the day of judgment. The word ‘slaughter’ (har g ), a rare noun (only 5 times in OT ), is used twice elsewhere in Jeremiah (7:32; 19:6) in prophecies that the valley of the son of Hinnom will be renamed ‘the valley of slaughter.’ This is the valley which gave its name to Gehenna, because these prophecies were interpreted as referring to the eschatological judgment of the wicked. The common Jewish exegetical w ) of associating, for purposes of interpretapractice (known as gez r tion, scriptural passages which use the same words or phrases, would easily lead to an association of Jer 12:3 with Jer 7:32; 19:6. James himself probably made this association, since Jer 7:33; 19:7 both state that the wicked who are slaughtered in ‘the valley of slaughter’ are to become food for the birds and animals. Interpreting Jer 12:3 in connexion with these texts, he depicts the rich as fattening themselves in order to provide the food for this gruesome eschatological feast (cf. Ezek 39:17–20; Rev 19:17–18). The connexion would be all the more appropriate since, according to Ezek 39:17, the feast is a sacrificial feast, and when Jer 12:3 asks God to ‘set apart’ the wicked for the day of slaughter, it uses a verb which indicates that they are to be devoted, like sacrificial animals, to sacrificial use. This conclusion, that behind James 5:5 b lies an exegesis of Jer 12:3 in connexion with Jer 7:32; 19:6; Ezek 39:17, is only partly based on comparison with 1QH 15:17, but is made very plausible by our general knowledge of methods of Jewish exegesis in this period. Somewhat closer than 1QH 15:17 to James’ use of Jer 12:3 would be 1 Enoch 94:9, if we could be sure that it alludes to Jer 12:3. The rich, it says, are ready for the day of the outpouring of blood and for the day of darkness and for the day of judgment.13 13

Translation from M. A. Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978) 227.

Example: James 4:13–5:6

219

Unfortunately, since neither the original Aramaic nor the Greek translation of this verse is extant, we rely on the Ethiopic version alone. The phrase ‘the day of the outpouring of blood’14 may allude to ‘the day of slaughter’ in Jer 12:3, but we cannot be sure. However, there are much broader resemblances between James 5:1–6 and chapters 94–99 of the so-called Epistle of Enoch (1 Enoch 91–108). These chapters address alternately the wicked, who are portrayed especially as wealthy and as oppressors of the righteous (94:8–95:2; 96:4–8), and the persecuted righteous (95:3; 96:1–3; 97:1), just as James addresses first the rich oppressors (5:1–6) and then their victims (5:7–11), who are said to be righteous (5:6, cf. 16). Both Enoch and James address prophetic oracles of denunciation and judgment to the rich, though the literary form differs (Enoch uses ‘Woe’ oracles), and just as in Enoch this direct address to the wicked is a rhetorical device which does not indicate that they are expected to be among the readers (cf. 1 Enoch 92:1), so we should almost certainly assume that the same is true in James. In Enoch, the rich are condemned for exploiting the poor (96:5) and for accumulating wealth which will not last (94:7–8; 97:8–10; 98:2–3). They will ‘groan and weep’ (96:2). Their ill-gotten wealth will be ‘a testimony against you’ or ‘a reminder against you for evil’ (96:4, 7; 97:7; cf. Jas 5:3). The parallels cannot prove that James was inspired by these chapters of 1 Enoch, though this is certainly quite possible, but the resemblances go considerably beyond common dependence on OT prophecy.15 They must show that James writes in a continuing tradition of prophetic denunciation of the rich. Finally we must consider James 5:4. Throughout his letter James is expounding the implications of the law of the love of neighbour (Lev 19:18 b; Jas 2:8) by alluding to the more detailed commandments in its context in Leviticus 19:11–18.16 In 5:4 he alludes to Lev 19:13 (‘you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a labourer until morning’) as well as to the fuller law on the same subject in Deuteronomy 24:14–15, and to Isaiah 5:9 (LXX ). But this is another case where James’ allusion to an OT text is illuminated by allusions to the same text in other Jewish literature. References to the law of Lev 19:13; Deut 24:14–15 are surprisingly frequent (Mal 3:5; Sir 34:27; Tob 4:14; TJ ob 12:4; Ps-Phoc 19; b. B. Me . 111 a; cf. Job 31:39; Jer 22:13). The reason why it was taken so seriously is apparent in Sir 34:25–27:

14

Cf. other phrases used in these chapters of 1 Enoch for the coming day of judgment on the wicked: 96:8; 97:1; 98:10; 99:4, 6; 102:5. 15 They are also more extensive than the resemblances between Jas 5:1–6 and the woes in Luke 6:24–25. 16 See L. T. Johnson, ‘The Use of Leviticus 19 in the Letter of James,’ JBL 101 (1982) 391–401. For a passage of Jewish ethical paraenesis which is extensively based on Lev 19, see Pseudo-Phocylides 9–21.

220 14. The Relevance of Extra-Canonical Jewish Texts to New Testament Study The bread of the needy is the life of the poor; whoever deprives them of it is a murderer. To take away a neighbour’s living is to commit murder; to deprive an employee of wages is to shed blood.

The day-labourer, who neither owned nor rented land, but was employed a day at a time on the estates of others and paid his wages at the end of each day’s work, was, of all peasant workers, in the most vulnerable position. His employment could be terminated at a few hours’ notice. He had no security. He might often be unemployed. His wages were too small to make savings possible. He lived from hand to mouth. He could well need his day’s wages to feed himself and his family that very day. Withholding his wages even until the morning was a serious matter. An employer who delayed paying his employees might without hyperbole be accused of murder. This may partly explain James’ accusation of murder in 5:6, though (especially in view of ‘condemned’) the reference may also be to misuse of the courts in order to deprive smallholders of their land and absorb their farms into the big estates. It is worth noting that allusions to the duty not to withhold the wages of the day-labourer are found in both prophetic (Mal 3:5) and wisdom (Sir 34:27; Ps-Phoc 19) contexts. Both prophetic and wisdom literature, of course, were concerned with moral instruction, and in the late biblical and post-biblical periods the teaching of the law of Moses was readily drawn upon for this purpose in both contexts. Once again, we see that there is nothing incongruous in the conjunction of prophetic-apocalyptic, wisdom and halakhic material in James. In various ways this conjunction was quite typical of contemporary Jewish literature which shared James’ concern with practical religion.

15. Josephus’ Account of the Temple in Contra Apionem 2.102–109* 1. Introduction Josephus provides our most reliable and most extensive evidence about the Jerusalem temple in the middle decades of the first century ce – on both the physical features of the temple as reconstructed by Herod and on the practice of the priests in the temple in this period. In general, more attention has been given to the material in the War and in the Antiquities, less to that in the Contra Apionem. The latter, however, includes some extremely interesting references to the temple, its priests and its practices (1.29–36; 2.76–77, 102–109, 119, 185–187, 193–198). The present essay is a detailed investigation of the longest of these passages, which offers a number of points of detailed information about the temple not precisely paralleled elsewhere. Virtually every statement of Josephus in this passage, however, raises problems of interpretation or of consistency with information elsewhere in Josephus or in other sources. These problems require thorough discussion before the value and reliability of this passage for our knowledge of the temple can be accepted. The general result will be to show that, although the Contra Apionem is Josephus’ last work, he retained, from his close association with the temple in his youth, a thorough knowledge of the temple which makes him even thirty years later a generally trustworthy witness. At the same time, the apologetic purpose of this passage has to be understood if it is to be read accurately. Finally, however closely Josephus may have depended on sources in other parts of the Contra Apionem, it will become clear that he composed this passage himself.

* First Publication: Louis H. Feldman and John R. Levison ed., Josephus’ Contra Apionem: Studies in its Character and Context with a Latin Concordance to the Portion Missing in Greek (AGAJU 34; Leiden: Brill, 1996) 327–347, with the addition of a previously unpublished section.

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2. Two preliminary questions Two preliminary questions, though they cannot be answered primarily from the Contra Apionem, are worth raising before turning to our passage, because they affect the expectations we may justifiably have of Josephus’ knowledge of the temple and its practices. 2.1. Was Josephus a priest? The question may seem unnecessary, since Josephus clearly states a number of times that he was a priest. For example, in CA 1.54 he calls himself ‘a priest by descent’ ( ). Consequently, scholars have rarely doubted that Josephus belonged to a prominent priestly family and was himself a priest. However, Tessa Rajak argues, from two passages in which Josephus refers to his connexion with the Hasmoneans, that he and his male relatives claimed priesthood only through their descent by the female line from the Hasmoneans. Her position is difficult to understand, since she admits that priesthood was transmitted through the male line, but accepts the fact that Josephus on one occasion freely declined to take the tithes which were his due as a priest (V 80) as evidence that he and his male relatives ‘did actually minister as priests.’1 There is no evidence at all that priesthood could be inherited through the female line. The genealogical records, from which Josephus himself claims to have taken his family tree (V 6), were carefully kept in order to ensure, among other things, that priests could only be those who could convincingly claim descent in the male line from Aaron. Despite Josephus’ strong tendency to self-aggrandizing claims, it is extremely unlikely that it would ever have occurred to him that he could claim priesthood by descent through the female line. That his family should have been accepted as priestly on such a basis is inconceivable. If Rajak’s interpretation of the two passages in which Josephus refers to his connexion with the Hasmoneans is correct, then Josephus was not really a priest at all. We need to consider these passages. The first is Vita 1–2: …

(V 1–2). … With us participation in the priesthood is a sign of illustrious descent. In my case, my family is not only descended from priests, but is also from the first of the 1

T. Rajak, Josephus: The Historian and his Society (London: Duckworth, 1983) 17–18.

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twenty-four priestly courses – a great distinction – and from the best of the clans in that course. Furthermore, I am of royal descent on the mother’s side. For the children of Asamonaeus, from whom she was descended, ruled our nation as high priests and kings for a very long time.

This passage clearly makes two different claims. First, Josephus comes of a very distinguished priestly clan. The first of the twenty-four priestly courses – that is, the divisions into which priestly families were divided for purposes of ministry in the temple – can only be the course of Jehoiarib (1 Chron 24:7), which appears first in the list which Josephus himself regards as definitive (Ant. 7.365–366) and which was certainly followed in temple practice in his time. The order of the courses in the list was thought to have been determined by lot (Ant. 7.366), and so it is not clear what sort of superiority attached to belonging to the first. But Josephus clearly wants to make the most of his membership of this course, and enhances it by claiming that the clan to which he belonged was the most distinguished of the clans in that course. Each course, we should note, was composed of in rabbinic literature), several clans ( in Josephus, V 2; BJ 4:155; five to nine according to y. Ta an. 68 a. Unfortunately, only in one case has the name of one of these clans been preserved for us (BJ 4.155). We do not know the name of Josephus’ clan. In addition to this claim to distinguished priestly descent, Josephus also, secondly, claims royal descent through the female line. When he proceeds to give the genealogy, it turns out that the woman to whom he refers was not his mother but his great-great-greatgrandmother, the daughter of the first Hasmonean high priest Jonathan. Josephus does not here appear to connect his priesthood with his descent from the Hasmoneans. But we should notice that the Hasmoneans also belonged to the priestly course of Jehoiarib (1 Macc 2:1; 14:29; Josephus, Ant. 12.265). (It has often been thought that the list of the courses in 1 Chron 24:7–18 must have been composed in the Maccabean period and that its placing of Jehoiarib first reflects the Hasmonean assumption of the high priesthood. But the point is not relevant here, since Josephus himself clearly did not believe this [Ant. 7.365–366].) Moreover, it seems likely that the reason Josephus can call his own clan the best in the course is that it was the clan to which the Hasmoneans belonged. It is hard to see how any clan in the course could have been considered (from the Maccabean period onwards) more distinguished than that to which the Hasmoneans belonged. (It has sometimes been thought that Hashmonai was the name of the priestly clan to which the Hasmoneans belonged.2 This may be so, but

2

J. Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (tr. F. H. and C. H. Cave; London: SCM Press, 1969) 188–189.

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it is not proved by the use of the phrase ‘house of Hashmonai’ in rabbinic literature, where it merely designates the Hasmonean royal family.) If Josephus claimed to belong to the same priestly clan as the Hasmoneans, then the sequence of thought in V 1–2 shows that he did not base this claim on his descent from a Hasmonean princess. He claims that his priestly ancestors in the male line belonged to this clan. Only his (more tenuous) claim to royal lineage is based on the more specific genealogical datum that one of his direct ancestors married the daughter of a Hasmonean high priest. It is not in the least unlikely that the high priest Jonathan should have married his daughter to a member of the same priestly clan as his own. It is much less likely that he should have married her to a member of a non-priestly family. Finally, confirmation of the fact that Josephus claims his ancestors in the male line were already a priestly family before their marital connexion with the Hasmoneans can be found in the nickname of the first ancestor he mentions. Simon ‘the Stammerer’ ( ), whose son married the Hasmonean princess, was probably so called because this physical defect disqualified him from ministering as a priest. For the same reason his grandson Matthias bore the nickname ‘the Hunchback’ (V 3–4; cf. Lev 21:20). The second passage to which Rajak draws attention is Ant. 16:187: … We, however, being of a family close to the kings (descended) from Asamonaeus, and for this reason possessing the priesthood with honour …

Rajak takes this to mean that Josephus cites his descent from the Hasmoneans (which we know from V 2–3 to have been through the female line) as the basis for his priesthood. It is possible to respond, as Seth Schwartz : it is not his priesthood as such, but does,3 that the emphasis is on ‘priesthood with honour’ that Josephus derives from his connexion with the Hasmoneans. However, in the light of our discussion of V 1–2, we can now see that in this passage Josephus does not allude specifically to his descent from the Hasmoneans, but rather to the fact that his family belonged to the same clan as the Hasmoneans. 2.2. Did Josephus ever minister as a priest in the temple? This question seems worth asking, if only because I have not found anyone else asking it, though it is not unlikely that somewhere in the voluminous literature on Josephus someone has done so. The first obstacle to answering 3

S. Schwartz, Josephus and Judaean Politics (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 18; Leiden: Brill, 1990) 4 n.4.

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the question is the fact that it seems impossible to be quite sure at what age priests were ordained for service in the temple. The Old Testament provides information on this point only for Levites, and the information is not consistent: thirty (Num 4:3, 23, 30, 35, 39, 43, 47; 1 Chron 23:3), twenty-five (Num 8:23–26), twenty (Ezra 3:8; 1 Chron 23:24, 27; 2 Chron 31:17). The rabbis discussed whether a priest was qualified to serve on reaching puberty or only on attaining the age of twenty, while claiming that the latter was actual practice (b. Hull. 24 a-b). The two views represent different ways of determining adulthood. (1QS a 1:8–15 also indicates that twenty was regarded as the age of adulthood.) We cannot really be sure that the rabbis were correct about the practice before 70. If the age of ordination was thirty, then Josephus would have qualified only in 67 c.e., and, while entitled to receive tithes (V 80), would not have had the opportunity to minister in the temple. It is possible that Josephus’ reference to tithes being brought to him, to which, as a priest ( ), he was entitled but which he did not accept, should be read in close connexion with the information that he was then about thirty (V 80). The tithes to which he refers would be the first he was offered. On the other hand, if the age of ordination was twenty, there would be about six years, from 57/58 c.e., when Josephus, a year after his return to Jerusalem from his period with Bannus (V 12), attained that age, to 64 c.e., when he was sent on embassy to Rome (V 13). In these six years he could have ministered in the temple. The course of Jehoiarib would have been on duty in the temple for thirteen weeks (one in every period of twenty-four weeks) in this period, and since apparently the days of a course’s week were divided among its constituent clans, Josephus’ own clan might (if there were seven clans in the course) have been on duty for thirteen days in these six years. Illness or impurity could have prevented his attendance on occasion. Specific duties connected with the incense and burnt-offerings at the two daily ceremonies were determined by lot. The lot might never have fallen to Josephus, but he would still have been in attendance with the other priests, and he would be likely to have offered sacrifices brought by individuals on the days when his clan served. In addition to the days on which his clan was on duty, there were the three great annual pilgrim festivals when (according to rabbinic tradition) priests of all courses took part in the sacrifices. So, if ordination was at twenty, it seems likely that Josephus did perform some sacrifices in the temple, unless, of course, he was disqualified from officiating by some physical defect. Since small blemishes and abnormalities were sufficient to bar priests from service such disqualification was not uncommon, as the presence of two such disqualified priests in Josephus’ own genealogy (V 3–4) shows. Such priests did not officiate but did enter the Court of the Priests to receive their share of the sacrifices (BJ 5.228). Prob-

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ably, therefore, they were also entitled to tithes, so that Josephus’ reference to his own entitlement to tithes (V 80) does not rule out the possibility that he was one of these disqualified priests. If he was, we should not expect him to have mentioned it. The fact that Josephus does not refer to ordination or ministry in the temple in V 12 is probably not very significant. The point was not especially important to his self-serving apologetic, which made his association with the Pharisees a more significant point to make. Whether Josephus in fact ever ministered in the temple or not probably should not make very much difference to our estimate of his knowledge of the temple and its practices. Everything that went on in the Court of the Priests was easily seen from the Court of the Israelites, from which it was separated only by a low parapet. As a young man expecting to become an officiating priest, Josephus would surely have observed with more than just ordinary devout interest. He would not have seen inside the holy place, but then, even as a qualified priest, he would probably have done this only if he were selected by lot for the specific duties connected with the incense or the shewbread (statistically less likely than that he would have sacrificed in the Court of the Priests). But as a member of a prominent Jerusalem priestly family, he would be accurately informed about the contents of the holy place, whether or not he had ever entered it.

3. Contra Apionem 2.102–109 3.1. Introduction In the Contra Apionem, of course, Josephus is engaged in a defence of Judaism and the Jews against anti-Jewish accounts by pagan writers. The passage with which we are concerned is part of his refutation of a story told by Apion about Antiochus Epiphanes’ entry into the temple. According to the story Antiochus found in the temple a Greek, reclining at table before a sumptuous feast. The man said that he had been kidnapped and imprisoned in the temple, where he was lavishly fed. Eventually he learned from the servants who fed him that he was to be the victim of a Jewish law which required that once a year they should sacrifice and eat a Gentile (CA 2.91–96). After general criticisms of the plausibility of the story (CA 2.97–102), Josephus proceeds to refute it by reference to the facts – which turn out to be facts about the temple. He argues that the strict purity rules governing admission to the courts of the temple and the temple building make it unthinkable that a Greek would have been taken into the temple. He points out that no vessels not belonging to the temple could be taken

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into it, and that no food or drink, other than those specifically authorized for sacrifice by the temple authorities, could be taken into the temple, so that there was no way the Greek could have been sumptuously fed within the temple for a year. He argues that the temple was under the strict supervision of the priests, who served in rotation, such that in the course of a year many thousands of priests would have had to know about the Greek, had he been in the temple. What Josephus says about the temple is thus carefully selected to serve his apologetic purpose of refuting Apion s slander. In order to discuss his information in detail, we shall divide it into four sections: 3.2. The courts of the temple and their restrictions on entry Sciunt igitur omnes qui uiderunt constructionem templi nostri, qualis fierit, et intransgressibilem eius purificationis integritatem. Quattuor etenim habuit in circuitu porticus, et harum singulae propriam secundum legem habuere custodiam; in exteriorem itaque ingredi licebat omnibus etiam alienigenis; mulieres tantummodo menstruatae transire prohibebantur. In secunda uero porticu cuncti Iudaei ingrediebantur eorumque coniuges, cum essent ab omni pollutione mundae, in tertia masculi Iudaeorum mundi existentes atque purificati, in quartam autem sacerdotes stolis induti sacerdotalibus, in adytum uero soli principes sacerdotum propria stola circumamicti (CA 2.102–104). All who have seen our temple’s construction know what it was like and the inviolable purity of its holiness. For it had four courts surrounding it, and each of these according to the law had its own protection. All, even foreigners, were allowed to enter the outer court; only menstruant women were prohibited from passing through it. But all Jews entered the second court, as did also their wives, when the latter were uncontaminated by any defilement. Male Jews who were clean and purified entered the third court. Priests robed in their priestly vestments entered the fourth court. But only the high priests, clad in their own special vestments, entered the sanctuary [i. e. the holy of holies].

Josephus’ concern here is to show how impossible it would have been for Antiochus to have found a Greek in the inner part of the temple, since strict rules, of increasing restrictiveness as one approached the holiest part of the temple, governed admittance to the temple’s various courts. His account of the rules is similar to his earlier account in the War:

[

]

(BJ 5.227).

The whole city was closed to persons with a discharge and to lepers, while the temple was closed to women during menstruation. Even when pure, women were not permitted to pass the boundary to which we referred above [i. e. the wall between the Court of the Women and the Court of the Israelites, cf. BJ 5.199]. As for men,

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those not completely purified were excluded from the inner court, and even those of the priests who were undergoing purification were excluded.

This passage from the War goes on (5.228–236) to explain that the Court of the Priests was entered even by priests who were disqualified by physical blemish from officiating and from wearing the priestly vestments, but only officiating priests, wearing their vestments, went up to the altar and the sanctuary ( ) – meaning here the first part of the sanctuary building, the holy place (cf. also Ant. 3.278). Only the high priest, once a year, wearing his high-priestly vestments, entered the holy of holies ( , as in CA 2.104: adytum). The passage in the War gives a little more detail, including the purity rules restricting entry to Jerusalem itself, which was not relevant to Josephus’ purpose in CA , but otherwise the two passages agree. They are sufficiently different to make it quite clear that Josephus in CA has not copied his own earlier work, but had these rules very firmly and clearly in his mind, as we would expect of a man who spent his early years in Jerusalem as a member of a priestly family. A well-known passage in the Mishnah (m. Kel. 1:6–9) gives a somewhat different account of the rules. It specifies ten4 degrees of holiness, extending from the land of Israel, which is holier than any other lands, to the holy of holies, which is the holiest place of all. We need only notice the rules restricting admission of persons on grounds of purity. Lepers are excluded from all the walled cities of Israel. From the temple mount (the so-called Court of the Gentiles)5 were excluded men and women with a discharge (in biblical and rabbinic terminology and ), menstruants and parturients (women impure through childbirth). From the terrace ( , i. e. the area immediately inside the barrier which prohibited Gentile entrance and enclosed the sacred area proper) were excluded Gentiles and people with corpse-impurity. From the Court of the Women was excluded anyone who had immersed himself that day (i. e. had not completed his purification which required both immersion and waiting till sunset). From the Court of the Israelites was excluded anyone whose atonement was incomplete (i. e. someone who had purified himself by waiting the specified period and by immersion, but had not yet offered the sacrifice required [cf. Lev 15:13–15]). From the Court of the Priests, lay Israelites were excluded except when taking part in sacrifices. From the area between the altar and the porch (of the sanctuary building) were excluded priests with a physical blemish or 4

So m. Kel. 1:6. In fact, counting inclusively, there are eleven. The term Court of the Gentiles, though convenient, is a modern term, not used in antiquity. It is potentially misleading if it suggests that the court was positively intended for Gentile use. 5

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whose hair was unloosed. From the holy place were excluded priests who had not washed hands and feet. From the holy of holies were excluded all save the high priest on the day of atonement. (The Mishnah, of course, takes for granted that women may not pass beyond the Court of the Women, but does not mention this, perhaps because it is not strictly a matter of purity: women are not regarded as intrinsically less pure than men.) Josephus and the Mishnah share the general concept of degrees of purity which increase as one nears the holy of holies, and agree on several details, such as the restriction on priests with a physical blemish (in both cases corresponding to Lev 21:21–23). However, there are significant differences. In principle, Josephus’ account should be preferred. The differences are likely to represent different interpretations of the biblical purity laws (note that in CA 2:103 Josephus claims that the rules he reports are based on the Torah – secundum legem). Josephus’ account must reflect the interpretation of these laws followed – and no doubt enforced – by the temple authorities, while the Mishnah reflects rabbinic interpretation. The most important differences between Josephus and the Mishnah are four, though the third, as we shall see, may be more apparent than real. The first two differences concern admission to the city and to the Court of the Gentiles: (1) The Mishnah excludes only lepers from the city, whereas Josephus excludes also zavim and zavot, whom the Mishnah excludes only from the Court of the Gentiles; (2) From the Court of the Gentiles the Mishnah excludes (besides zavim and zavot) both menstruants and parturients, whereas Josephus excludes only menstruants. The second difference might be explained as Josephus’ abbreviation of the rules,6 but in CA 2.103 he is quite specific that only menstruants are excluded from the Court of the Gentiles. Since the first point is an irreconcilable difference, we should see the second point also as a real difference. Leviticus 13:46 provided a clear basis on which both Josephus and the Mishnah agree in excluding lepers from the city. In debarring three kinds of people with impurity (zavim and zavot, menstruants, and parturients) from the Court of the Gentiles, the Mishnah is consistent with the way it groups these three categories of impurity together elsewhere (m. Pesah. 9:4; m. Mo ed Qat. 3:2; m. Ker. 2:1; m. Zabim 5:6). Probably the impurity of the parturient was treated as analogous to that of the menstruant on the basis of Leviticus 12:2,5.7 However, the way the rules reported by Josephus distinguish the zavim and zavot (excluded from the city), the menstruant (excluded from the Court of the Gentiles), and the parturient (excluded only 6

Jeremias, Jerusalem, 373, apparently thinks this. 11QT 48:14–17 also classifies parturients along with zavim, zavot and menstruants, and goes further than the Mishnah in excluding all three categories, along with lepers, from all the cities of Israel. 7

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from the Court of the Women), is intelligible as interpretation of the Torah. In Leviticus 15:2–15, 19–30, it is clear that the zav, the zavah, and the menstruant all have highly contagious forms of impurity. The presence of these people in the Court of the Gentiles would imperil the purity of other people entering the temple. But the account of the parturient in Leviticus 12:2–8 does not explicitly treat her impurity as contagious. The rabbis treated it as such, by analogy, but the rules followed by the temple authorities evidently adopted a more literal interpretation. The fact that the zav (Lev 15:14–15) and the zavah (Lev 15:29–30) are required to offer sacrifice on the eighth day, following the seven days of their purification, unlike the menstruant, but like the leper (Lev 14:8–10), makes it readily intelligible that the rules reported by Josephus classify the zav and zavah with the leper, excluded from the city, but treat the impurity of the menstruant less seriously. (In any case, to have excluded menstruants from Jerusalem would have been hopelessly impracticable.) The interpretation of the Torah underlying the rules restricting entry to the temple, which Josephus reports, need not be precisely the same as Josephus’ own interpretation of the law, but the latter, in Ant. 3:261, is certainly relevant. Probably Josephus is here interpreting Numbers 5:2–3, according to which three categories of impure people are to be excluded from the camp: lepers, zavim and zavot, and people with corpse-impurity. Josephus takes ‘the camp’ to be ‘the city’ (Jerusalem or all Jewish cities?), and reports that Moses banished lepers, zavim and zavot from it. This accords with BJ 5.227, and should be noted as an instance where Josephus’ own halakhah in the Antiquities agrees with that of the chief priests rather than with that later codified in the Mishnah. Josephus then says, rather ambiguously, that menstruants and people with corpse impurity Moses removed ( ) from society for seven days. If this means that they were also excluded from the city, then Josephus has added menstruants, by analogy, to the three categories in the text, and must be thinking in purely ideal terms, rather than of the practice of his time. More probably, he means only that menstruants and those with corpse-impurity must avoid contact with people. Corpse-impurity, though also contagious (Num 19:22), may have been regarded, by those who framed the rules restricting entry to the temple, as less seriously so than menstrual impurity. But this brings us to the third difference between Josephus and the Mishnah. The two texts in Josephus, especially CA 2.104, appear to say that, while the only Jewish women admitted to the Court of the Women were those free of any impurity, impure Jewish men (excepting only lepers and zavim) could enter the Court of the Women and were prohibited only from the Court of the Israelites. The Mishnah, on the other hand, excludes people with corpse-impurity from the terrace and anyone with any impurity at all from the Court of the Women. Josephus’

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apparent meaning is very surprising. It seems to attribute the same degree of purity to a pure woman and to an impure man. (This would be comparable with allowing impure priests into the Court of the Israelites, which Josephus explicitly does not do.) Moreover, the Torah would surely have been understood to exclude men with corpse-impurity (Num 19:13, 20) and men with semen-impurity (Lev 15:31) from the temple. Josephus’ apparent meaning could be correct only if the Court of the Women were understood to be, like the Court of the Gentiles, not part of the sacred precincts proper. This is possible, but it seems more likely that Josephus did not really mean to say that impure men could enter the Court of the Women. He has stated his point misleadingly because he has attached the purity requirements for women and men to their ability to enter the court they normally went to. Men did not normally stay in the Court of the Women, but passed through it to the Court of the Israelites. In that case, Josephus is in broad agreement with the Mishnah. The Mishnah’s distinctions between the purity required to enter the terrace, the Court of the Women and the Court of the Israelites may well be merely the result of the rabbis’ desire to define further degrees of holiness. The historical situation may have been the simple one that no one with any impurity could pass the barrier which enclosed the sacred area.8 The fourth difference between Josephus and the Mishnah is that the latter makes an exception to the rule that non-priests were not allowed into the Court of the Priests: they did enter ‘when they must perform the laying on of hands, slaughtering, and waving’ (m. Kel. 1:8). This may be based not on historical memory but on deduction from the text of Scripture. The Torah requires the offerers of certain sacrifices to perform these actions (Lev 1:4; 3:2, 8; 4:29, 33; 7:30), and since sacrifice took place in the Court of the Priests, the rabbis assumed the offerers must have entered the court in order to perform these parts of the ritual. Josephus agrees that an individual offering a burnt-offering killed it himself (Ant. 3.226), though Philo contradicts this (Spec. Leg. 1.198–199; 2.145–146). Sanders suggests that, since the parapet that separated the Court of the Israelites and the Court of the Priests was only 18–20 inches high (BJ 5.226), offerers performed these actions while standing in the Court of the Israelites and leaning over the parapet.9 Alternatively, Josephus may have omitted the detail that laymen were allowed into the Court of the Priests for the purpose of taking part in their own sacrifices, though not otherwise. We do not have sufficient information to resolve this point. 8 This is what E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE – 66 CE (London: SCM Press, 1992) 113, assumes without argument, and without pointing out that none of the texts actually say this. 9 Sanders, Judaism, 107, 111, 113.

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3.3. The shifts of the priests Tanta uero est circa omnia prouidentia pietatis, ut secundum quasdam horas sacerdotes ingredi constitutum sit; mane etenim aperto templo oportebat facientes traditas hostias introire et meridie rursus, dum clauderetur templum (CA 2.105). So great is the careful forethought concerning all matters that it is laid down that the priests enter at specific hours. For their duty was to enter in the morning when the temple was opened, in order to offer the sacrifices which are traditional, and again at midday, until the temple was closed.

This might mean that two successive watches of priests divided a day’s duties between them, the first coming on duty in the early morning when the temple was opened and the morning burnt-offering was offered, the second taking over from them at midday and continuing until evening when the temple closed, after the afternoon burnt-offering. But according to m. Tamid 1:1–2 the watch of priests responsible for the morning burntoffering spent the night in some of the rooms built into the wall around the inner court of the Temple (the Court of the Israelites and the Court of the Priests). According to the Mishnah, they entered the inner court (by a small gate) and prepared for the burnt-offering and the incense offering some time before the great eastern gate of the inner court was opened to let lay worshippers in, but this scarcely really contradicts Josephus’ vague expression that they entered when the temple was opened. Moreover it is confirmed by BJ 6.299, where Josephus speaks of priests entering the inner court of the temple by night. He must mean: in the early hours before dawn, in order to prepare for the burnt-offering. So it may be that each watch of priests spent twenty-four hours in the temple, coming on duty at midday, sleeping overnight in the temple, and handing over to the next watch at midday the following day. Alternatively, one watch entered the temple when it closed in the evening, and at midday handed over to another, which then served until the temple closed that evening. The only problem for either of these reconstructions is m. Tamid 5:3, according to which the vestments of priests who had not been chosen by lot to officiate at the morning burnt-offering or incense-offering were removed from them at that point, because they would not now be needing them. One would expect such priests to stay in order to sacrifice offerings brought by individuals during the rest of the morning. So it may be that the Mishnah envisages one watch handing over to another immediately after the morning burnt-offering, but, if so, we should prefer Josephus’ account. His clear statement that priests entered the temple at morning and midday makes it unlikely that there were more than two shifts.10 10

Against Sanders, Judaism, 117. His statement, ‘During the morning service the new watch of priests came in, and one of the prayers was for them (Tamid 5.1),’ seems to be

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3.4. Objects in the temple Denique nec uas aliquod portari licet in templum, sed erant in eo solummodo posita altare mensa turibulum candelabrum, quae omnia et in lege conscripta sunt. Etenim nihil amplius neque mysteriorum aliquorum ineffabilium agitur neque intus ulla epulatio ministratur (CA 2.106–107). Finally, no vessel whatever is allowed to be carried into the temple, but in it were placed only an altar, a table, a censer, and a lampstand, all of which are also referred to in the law. There was certainly nothing more; no unmentionable mysteries take place; no feast is served inside.

Josephus, we should remember, is responding to the claim that Antiochus found in the temple a man reclining on a couch before a table on which a sumptuous banquet was laid (CA 2.91). In response, he asserts that no vessel (such as would be needed to convey the food and drink for such a banquet) was permitted to be brought into the temple, which in fact contained only four items of furniture. In the list of these four items, turibulum must translate . Both words normally mean ‘censer’, but the latter was used, not in the LXX but in other Jewish Greek writers, to refer to the altar of incense in the tabernacle and the temple (Josephus, BJ 5.216, 218; Ant. 3.147, 198; Heb 9:4; Philo, Mos. 2.94; Rer. Div. Her. 226). The altar (altare) must therefore be the altar of burnt-offering. Josephus refers to one object in the Court of the Priests (the altar of burnt-offering) and three objects in the holy place (the table of shewbread, the altar of incense, and the lampstand). All these are mentioned, as he says, in the account of the tabernacle in the Torah (Ex 25:23–40; 27:1–8; 30:1–10).11 It follows that templum in this passage does not, as Thackeray’s note suggests, refer only to the temple building (the ), which contained the holy place and the holy of holies, but includes the Court of the Priests. It would be astonishing if Josephus thought there was another altar besides the altar of incense within the holy place. He may never have entered it, but its contents were extremely well known, and he himself describes them accurately in BJ 5.216 ( ). Since there do not seem to have been any items of furniture in the Court of the Israelites or the Court of the Women (though the chambers and storerooms in these courts may well have conin error. M. Tam. 5:1 says that on the Sabbath an additional benediction was said for the outgoing course of priests. This is because on the Sabbath one of the twenty-four courses, which had officiated for the previous week, handed over to the next course. The statement does not tell us at what time after the morning burnt-offering the outgoing course handed over to the incoming course. 11 For the objects in the temple according to the Temple Scroll, which basically follows Exodus, see L. H. Schiffman, ‘The Furnishings of the Temple According to the Temple Scroll,’ in J. Trebolle Barrera and L. Vegas Montaner ed., The Madrid Qumran Congress, vol. 2 (STDJ 11/2; Leiden: Brill / Madrid: Editorial Complutense, 1992) 621–634.

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tained some), templum probably refers to the whole of the properly sacred area, within the enclosure, excluding only the outer court (the so-called Court of the Gentiles). If we assume that Josephus was intending to enumerate only large items of furniture, was he correct in stating that the temple contained only these four? The Torah, to which he refers for corrobation, in fact adds two others: the ark of the covenant in the holy of holies (Ex 25:10–22), and the laver (or basin), which stood between the altar of burnt-offering and the holy place (Ex 30:17–21). Since Josephus is writing for Gentiles who have not read the Torah, he need not here explain that there was no ark in the second temple, whose holy of holies was completely empty (BJ 5:219). But the laver is problematic. Josephus, in his account of the tabernacle in the wilderness, describes the laver, following Exodus (Ant. 3.114), but makes no mention of a laver in either of his accounts of Herod’s temple (BJ 5.184–226; Ant. 15.391–402). The Mishnah, however, places a laver in the temple, between the altar and the porch (m. Midd. 3:6),12 i. e. in the same place as the Torah places it in the tabernacle. We might suppose the Mishnah’s laver to be entirely fictional, deriving from biblical precedent rather than historical memory, were it not for the information (given in m. Yom. 3:10; m. Tam. 3:8) that Ben Katin made specific improvements to the laver, information that is hard to understand except as a historical memory. If the laver was used for the purpose which the Mishnah attributes to it – for washing of hands and feet before ascending the ramp to the altar of burnt-offering (m. Yom. 4:5; m. Tam. 1:4; 2:1; following Ex 30:19–21) – then it must have been in the Court of the Priests. Perhaps Josephus failed to mention it in CA 2.106 because he thought of it as a fixture, rather than an item of movable furniture. According to the Mishnah, there were other items of furniture in the temple to which Josephus does not refer: two tables in the porch, one of marble and one of gold, on which the shewbread was laid when it was being brought into and taken out of the holy place (m. Sheqal. 6:4; m. Men. 11:7); eight marble tables, on which the priests flayed the sacrificial animals, placed in the shambles area in the Court of the Priests (m. Sheqal. 6:4; m. Tam. 3:5; m. Midd. 3:5); and two tables, one of marble and one of silver, near the altar of burnt-offering, used respectively for parts of the offering and for vessels (m. Sheqal. 6:4). These tables may be partly based on biblical precedent (Ezek 40:39–43), and their historicity may be doubted. On the other hand, Josephus himself refers to golden tables, only one of which could be the table of shewbread in the holy place, which were handed over to the Ro12

Other references to the laver are in m. Yom. 4:5; m. Sukk. 4:10; m. Sot. 2::2; m. Tam. 1:4; 2:1.

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mans during the siege of Jerusalem (BJ 5.388). It is possible that these were not in regular use, but brought out for special purposes at festivals. If Josephus’ accuracy may therefore just about be saved thus far, the impression his words give that there were no vessels in the temple is misleading. There were, of course, a very large number of temple vessels (93 according to m. Tam. 3:4), used for a variety of purposes connected with the sacrifices. They were famous (cf. P. Oxy. 840),13 and had been displayed in Rome at Titus’s triumph (BJ 7.161). Josephus refers to them as huge and of solid gold (BJ 5.388; cf. also BJ 1.152; Ant. 14.72). There is no way he could have forgotten them when writing CA 2.106. Indeed, he mentions them a few sentences later (CA 2.108). His statement that no vessels were allowed to be carried into the temple must refer to vessels other than those that belonged to the temple. Such a rule is entirely intelligible, since the temple’s own vessels were considered holy, like the temple itself (Zech 14:20–21), whereas other vessels might convey impurity. Presumably, materials for sacrifices such as flour and wine were placed in temple vessels either in the Court of the Gentiles or even outside it. Josephus therefore combines two facts – that vessels from outside the temple could not be taken into it, and that the four items he mentions were the only items of movable furniture inside the temple – to create a rather misleading impression. Large quantities of food and drink – meat, flour, bread, oil, wine – were constantly being taken into the temple, as materials for sacrifice and as the shewbread. From them a feast such as the story about Antiochus described could, with the exception of the fish, have been prepared in one of the many chambers built into the sides of the sanctuary building (BJ 5.220). In his anxiety to refute the ridiculous story, Josephus is somewhat economical with the truth. Reference to CA 2.106 has often been made in connexion with Mark’s statement (unique to the Markan account of Jesus’ demonstration in the temple) that Jesus prevented anyone from carrying an object or vessel ( ) through the temple (Mark 11:16). However, Josephus’ concern cannot be that of Mark’s Jesus. The latter is unlikely to have been especially concerned about an issue of temple purity, but in any case it is scarcely conceivable that he would have encountered people breaking the rule to which Josephus refers. Vessels other than the temple’s own may have been brought into the so-called Court of the Gentiles, but Levite gatekeepers would have seen that they were taken no further. Jesus’ action is more plausibly connected with his other actions aimed at the trade that the temple authorities were conducting in the outer court. The vessels may have contained flour,

13

See D. R. Schwartz, ‘Viewing the Holy Utensils (P. Ox. V,840),’ NTS 32 (1986) 153–159.

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oil and wine which were being brought into the outer court to be sold for sacrifices, at a profit to the temple.14 3.5. The priestly courses Haec enim quae praedicta sunt habent totius populi testimonium manifestationemque gestorum. Licet enim sint tribus quattuor sacerdotum et harum tribuum singulae habeant hominum plus quam quinque milia, fit tamen obseruatio particulariter per dies certos, et his transactis alii succedentes ad sacrificia ueniunt et congregati in templum mediante die a praecedentibus claues templi et ad numerum uasa percipiunt, nulla re, quae ad cibum aut potum adtineat, in templum delata. Talia namque etiam ad altare offere prohibitum est praeter illa, quae ad sacrificia praeparantur (CA 2.107–108). The foregoing statements are attested by the whole people and evidenced by the procedures. For, although there are four tribes of priests and each of these tribes comprises more than five thousand men, nevertheless the duties are performed by each in turn for a fixed period of days. When some have completed their term, others, succeeding them, come to perform the sacrifices, and, assembling in the temple at midday, take over from their predecessors the keys of the temple and all the vessels, to their full number, and nothing in the nature of food or drink has been brought within the temple. For such things are not even permitted to be brought as offerings to the altar, with the exception of those which are prepared for the sacrifices.

Josephus’ last remark here implicitly acknowledges the point we noticed earlier: that many of the ingredients of the alleged feast were constantly being taken into the temple for use in the sacrifices. The final sentence does not mean that only certain kinds of food and drink (such as doves and wine) – those used in the sacrifices – were brought into the temple. Since a rather good feast could be prepared from those that were, this point would not be worth making. Rather it means that those animals and other comestibles which were brought into the temple had all been specially prepared to meet the requirements of the sacrificial system. The requirement that sacrificial animals be unblemished, for example, was interpreted so stringently that animals were reared and sold under the auspices of temple officials, in order to ensure that only animals certified as fit for sacrifice were purchased and offered by the public (cf. m. Sheqal. 5:1; Lam. R. 2:2:4).15 The flour, oil and wine which accompanied most animal sacrifices were supplied by and purchased from the temple authorities (m. Sheqal. 5:4–5), who presumably took care to ensure their freedom from impurity (cf. m. Men. 8:2, 7). The temple had its own bakery in the buildings around the inner court (m. Tam. 1:3), where the high priest’s offering of cakes was made every morning, as were presumably the cakes and wafers regularly offered by individual 14 See R. Bauckham, ‘Jesus’ Demonstration in the Temple,’ in B. Lindars ed., Law and Religion (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1988) 78. 15 The specific evidence available is for birds rather than other animals.

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worshippers in the ‘peace offering’ (Lev 7:12–14) and the loaves offered by the priests at Pentecost (Lev 23:17; cf. t. Sheqal. 2:14, 177). The preparation of the shewbread, which Josephus omits to mention was the one category of foodstuff brought into the temple that was not strictly a sacrifice, seems to have been the hereditary privilege of the priestly family of Garmu (m. Sheqal. 5:1; m. Yom. 3:11; cf. m. Midd. 1:6). Though some of the evidence of the Mishnah and rabbinic literature on such points might be doubted, the cumulative evidence of a variety of detailed points, such as the remembered names of temple officials responsible for aspects of the supply, inspection and sale of materials for sacrifice,16 amounts to a good case for the widely accepted view that the temple authorities had a monopoly in the provision of animals and other materials for sacrifice.17 Josephus, CA 2.108, though I have never seen it cited in this connexion, provides valuable confirmation of this state of affairs. In the context of his apologetic argument, Josephus means that people could not bring their own animals or other food or drink into the temple – even to offer at the altar. The only sacrificial offerings which could be brought were those prepared for the purpose. In other words, nothing escaped the close supervision of the thousands of priests who were in constant control of everything that went on in the temple. Of course, a suspicious Gentile reader inclined to believe Apion’s slanderous story might think these priests perfectly capable of using such sacrificial materials to fatten up a Greek for human sacrifice. But Josephus’s point is that, since the several tribes of priests served in the temple in rotation, each serving for only a matter of days before handing over to the next, all the many thousands of priests would have to know what was going on. In effect, the matter would be public knowledge. This brings us to the problematic part of the passage: the statement that there are four tribes of priests, each comprising more than five thousand people. There are very good reasons for supposing that the number four must be a scribal error for twenty-four, and that the statement refers to the twenty-four priestly courses, to which we have already referred in our discussion of Josephus’ own membership of the course of Jehoiarib. A little more information about the way the courses operated will help to make this clear. There is abundant evidence that the system continued in operation at least from the time of the composition of 1 Chron 24:7–18, 16

Sanders, Judaism, 85–89, ignores such evidence. Against Sanders, Judaism, 88–89, it is not likely that people bought animals (other than birds) from private dealers outside the walls of Jerusalem and simply had them inspected for fitness by priests when they brought them into the temple. People would want to know, before purchasing an animal, that it met the stringent requirements for sacrifice. 17

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whether that be the late Persian18 or the Maccabean period,19 until 70 ce, and that in fact not only the memory, but the careful preservation of the twenty-four courses continued long after 70 ce.20 The Qumran Mishmarot texts (4Q319, 4Q320, 4Q321, 4Q323, 4Q324, 4Q325) contribute important new evidence.21 Whereas 1QM 2:2 refers to twenty-six priestly courses,22 a number which is readily intelligible as neatly fitting the community’s 52week solar year,23 the Mishmarot texts show that, at least for part of its history, the community recognized the same rotation of twenty-four courses as operated in the temple.24 The texts use it for calendrical purposes, especially in elaborate correlations between the community’s solar calendar and the lunisolar calendar in use in the temple. Since the courses serve, a week at a time, in strict and continuous rotation, they provide a sequence which is apparently neutral between the two calendars. The day which is called the first of a course’s period of service is always a Sunday, and its seventh and final day is always a Sabbath. But the texts also date the ‘arrival’ of a course on the Sabbath before its first day (4Q323, 324). This confirms the evidence of both Josephus (Ant. 7.365) and the Mishnah (m. Sukk. 5:8; m. Tam. 5:1) that the outgoing course handed over to the incoming course on the Sabbath, the former offering the Sabbath morning incense-offering and burnt-offering, the latter offering the Sabbath afternoon burnt-offering and incense-offering. CA 2.108 can very naturally be read as describing the ceremony on the Sabbath when the outgoing course handed over to the incoming course. Josephus puts it at midday, the same time as he has already told us one shift 18

So H. G. M. Williamson, ‘The origins of the twenty-four priestly courses: a study of 1 Chronicles xxiii-xxvii,’ in J. A. Emerton ed., Studies in the Historical Books of the Old Testament (VTS up 30; Leiden: Brill, 1979) 251–268. 19 So, most recently, J. Dequeker, ‘1 Chronicles xxiv and the Royal Priesthood of the Hasmoneans,’ Oudtestamentische Studiën 24 (1986) 94–106. 20 Cf., e. g., M. Stern, ‘Aspects of Jewish Society: The Priesthood and Other Classes,’ in S. Safrai and M. Stern ed., The Jewish People in the First Century, vol. 2 (CRINT 1/2; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976) 587–595. 21 On these texts, see M. O. Wise, Thunder in Gemini (JSPSS 15; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994) 222–232; C. Martone, ‘Un calendrario proveniente da Qumran recentemente pubblicato,’ Henoch 16 (1994) 49–76; S. Talmon and I. Knohl, ‘A Calendrical Scroll from a Qumran Cave: Mi marot Ba, 4Q321,’ in D. P. Wright, D. N. Freedman and A. Hirvitz ed., Pomegranites and Golden Bells (J. Milgrom FS ; Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1995) 267–301. 22 So also 4Q471: see E. and H. Eshel, ‘4Q471 Fragment 1 and Ma‘amadot in the War Scroll,’ in Trebolle Barrera and Vegas Montaner ed., The Madrid Qumran Congress, vol. 2, 611–620. 23 P. Winter, ‘Twenty-six Priestly Courses,’ VT 6 (1956) 215–217. 24 Against the view that the Qumran community expressed their opposition to the Hasmoneans by demoting the course of Jehoiarib from first place, see D. R. Schwartz, ‘On Two Aspects of a Priestly View of Descent at Qumran,’ in L. H. Schiffman ed., Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls (JSPSS 8; Sheffield; JSOT Press, 1990) 168–169.

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of priests handed over to the next every day (CA 2.105). On the Sabbath, we should assume, this change of shifts (within one priestly course) was replaced by the change of courses. The keys of the temple court (cf. m. Tam. 1:1; m. Midd. 1:8–9), together with custody of the fabulously precious vessels used in the temple, were transferred from the heads of one course and its constituent clans to those of the next course. Probably we should imagine all the priests of each course assembling for this ceremony, as one course arrived in the temple and the other prepared to leave. For the rest of the week each clan in the course would then take its turn to serve. If, in CA 2.108, Josephus intends to say that each of the tribus of priests serves for a specified period of days, and that on the day when the period of service of one ends, it assembles in the temple at midday to hand over to the next, then his tribus must be the twenty-four courses. In this case we have to conclude that a textual error has reduced twenty-four tribus to four. There is no difficulty in postulating such an error.25 If we were to apply what Josephus says about the rotation of the priests to four large units, each comprising six of the course, then it seems we should have to make the highly improbable assumption that all the priests of six courses stayed in Jerusalem for the six weeks in which each of their courses served in the temple for one week and, at the end of the six weeks, all assembled in the temple to hand over to the priests of the incoming six courses. Although tribus is not likely to be a translation of , which Josephus uses, rather inappropriately, but apparently following standard usage (cf. Luke 1:5, 8: ), for the priestly courses in V 2, it could easily translate , which designates the priestly courses in Ant. 7.364, 366. (Josephus reserves for the clans within a course: BJ 4.155; V 2.) However, CA 2.108 is by no means clear. Josephus need not mean that each of the (four) tribus serves in turn for a fixed period. He could mean that a unit smaller than a tribus serves for a fixed period and then hands over to another such unit.26 In that case, the number four could be original, and the tribus would be divisions much larger than the courses. The originality of the number four in CA 2.108 has been defended27 by appeal to the fact that, according to Ezra 2:36–39 = Neh 7:39–42 (cf. Ezra 10:18–22), four priestly families returned from exile: Jedaiah, Immer, Pashur and Harim. A rabbinic tradition (y. Ta an. 68 a; t. Ta an. 2:1, 216) relates that the twenty-four priestly courses, which, of course, it regards as originally of Davidic origin, were reconstituted after the exile by dividing up the four families into twenty-four. This tradition has no historical value. It is merely 25 Numbers in the Latin version of CA not infrequently differ from those in the Greek text, where the latter is extant. 26 J. C. O Neill suggested this interpretation to me. 27 Jeremias, Jerusalem, 204–205; Stern, ‘Aspects,’ 588–589.

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an attempt to explain how the twenty-four courses could exist in Second Temple times, even though only four priestly families returned from exile. It ignores other possibilities: that other priestly families returned from exile at later dates (cf. Ezra 8:2–3), and that priestly families who did not go into exile were incorporated into the division into twenty-four courses.28 But even if the twenty-four courses were originally subdivisions of larger family groups, there is no evidence that these larger groups persisted as units into which the priests were divided in Josephus time. Josephus statement about the tribus only makes sense if they were a generally recognized way of dividing the priesthood into divisions of notionally equal size. In the absence of any other evidence that four such divisions were known, it is probably easier to suppose that the number four is corrupt and that Josephus referred to no divisions other than the twenty-four courses. In that case, we cannot follow Jeremias29 and Sanders30 in accepting the figure of 20,000 (4 × 5,000) as an accurate estimate of the total number of priests. Assuming that the number 5,000 is not itself corrupt, Josephus will have originally referred to a total number of over 120,000 priests (24 × 5,000). Since Josephus is speaking specifically of priests serving in the temple by rotation, it is unlikely that he intends his figure to include women and children. Nor is he likely to be including the corresponding courses of Levites.31 It is true that the Levites were also organized into twenty-four courses, each serving for a week (Ant. 7.267), and it seems that each of these served alongside one of the priestly courses (cf. m. Ta an. 4:2). But Josephus, a priest himself, is unlikely to have called Levites priests. Moreover, the whole point of his argument is to refer to those who entered the inner parts of the temple, where Apion’s story alleged that a Greek was imprisoned. Levites, who were not allowed beyond the Court of the Israelites, would not be relevant to the argument. So we must accept (assuming 5,000 is not a textual error) that Josephus intended to say that there were more than 120,000 priests. The figure is too large to be credible. Josephus was certainly capable of exaggerating numbers. An example, near at hand and also with reference to the temple, occurs in his refutation of the next anti-Jewish story he cites from Apion. The story concerns an Idumean who is alleged to have got into the holy of holies and stolen the golden head of an ass supposed to be kept there. Josephus responds that he 28 The evidence for priestly divisions in the post-exilic period before 1 Chron 24 is complex (see Ezra 10:18–22; Neh 10:3–9; 12:1–7, 12–21). Clearly the situation changed a number of times. 29 Jeremias, Jerusalem, 205. 30 Sanders, Judaism, 78. 31 Against E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B. C. – A. D. 135), vol. 2, revised by G. Vermes, F. Millar, M. Black (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clarke, 1979) 247.

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could not, by himself, have opened the gates of the sanctuary ( ) which were 60 cubits high and 20 wide, and which took 200 men to close them every day (CA 2.119). He has usually been thought to be referring to the gates of the inner court32 – either to the eastern gate alone or to all ten gates. According to BJ 5.202, these were all the same size: each door (of the pair of doors in each gateway) was 30 cubits high and 15 wide. Josephus also says that it took 20 men to close the eastern gate, which, being of bronze, he implies was heavier than the other nine (BJ 6.293). The suggestion33 that in CA 2.119 Josephus envisages ten bands of twenty men, each closing one of the ten gates of the inner court, is implausible, not only because the eastern gate was probably much heavier than the rest, but because the Idumean in the story did not have to open all ten gates at once, but just one. All that was relevant was how many men it took to open the one gate he would need to open to get into the sanctuary. But if Josephus in CA 2.119 was referring to one of the gates (pair of doors) to the inner court, he not only exaggerated its size and vastly exaggerated the number of men needed to open it, he also misdescribed it. He says that these doors were wholly overlaid with gold (CA 2.119), whereas the eastern gate of the inner court was Corinthian bronze, and the other nine gates were overlaid with gold and silver (BJ 5.201). In fact, in CA 2.119 he must be describing, not a gate into the inner court, but the gate that led from the porch of the sanctuary building into the holy place. It was the doors of this gate which were most appropriately described as (CA 2.119), and it was through these doors that the Idumean had to pass to reach the holy of holies. In the War Josephus describes them as golden (just as the whole entrance porch was golden), and as 55 cubits high and 16 broad (BJ 5.211). But the room into which they opened (the holy place) was 60 cubits high and 20 wide (BJ 5.215). It is probably these latter figures which Josephus reproduces in CA 2.119. He may not be intentionally exaggerating: the precise figures for the doors had not stayed in his mind, but the much better-known size of the sanctuary building itself was firmly fixed in his mind. In that case, we must ask: did it take 200 priests (for they would have to have been priests) to open the doors of the sanctuary? Assuming each of the two doors was 16 cubits wide, the total width, along which people pushing the doors could stand, was 48 feet. It is hard to see how 200 men could have been used, unless ropes were needed. The figure must be an exaggeration, though the Mishnah’s view that a single priest opened these doors (m. Tam. 3:7; m. Midd. 4:2) is also hardly credible. Perhaps, as Josephus claims for the eastern gate, twenty men were 32 So H. St. J. Thackeray, Josephus, vol. 1 (LCL ; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1966) 340, notes a, c; Sanders, Judaism, 60. 33 Thackeray, Josephus, vol. 1, 340–341, note c.

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required, and Josephus has multiplied by ten. Writing perhaps thirty years after the destruction of the temple, perhaps his memory failed him, but it suited his apologetic purpose to exaggerate. This parallel case shows that we should probably not try to save the accuracy of Josephus’ figure of over 5,000 priests in each of the courses. On the basis of information in the Mishnah, Jeremias calculated that each morning ceremony (incense-offering and burnt-offering) required 27 priests, each evening ceremony (burnt-offering and incense-offering) 29, and that 28 more were needed for additional duties on the sabbath.34 Not all the details in the Mishnah may be historical, but in general these figures are credible. But priests for these duties were chosen by lot. The figures do not really help us to tell how many were in the clan (the subdivision of a course) which supplied the priests on duty on any one day, especially as we do not know whether priests worked a twenty-four hour shift or a twelve-hour one (see above). Courses and clans, being hereditary, must in any case have varied in size. Even if the twenty-four courses were roughly equal in numbers when first constituted, they could have become widely divergent in size by the first century ce. An average of 500 in a course would be a reasonable guess, and would mean that Josephus has again multiplied by ten. But there is one text which may give us better information on this point than Josephus. Pseudo-Aristeas, whose account of the temple looks as though it is based on eyewitness observation, says that more than seven hundred ministers ( ) were present ( ), and also a large number offering ( ) the sacrifices (EpArist 95). Jeremias thought that the figure of more than 700 refers to all the priests and Levites of the weekly course, while the large number (he estimates 50) bringing sacrifices are the priests of the clan actually on duty that day and carrying out the sacrifices.35 Sanders criticizes this view, claiming that the 700 must be the priests actually on duty and sacrificing in the Court of the Priests. He rightly concludes that the figure is in that case far too large, and dismisses Pseudo-Aristeas’ evidence as worthless.36 However, there is more to be said for Jeremias’ view than he allows. Since Pseudo-Aristeas says that the high priest was officiating (EpArist 96), he must intend to describe the scene on, if not a feast day, at least a sabbath (cf. BJ 5.231). On a sabbath, as we have seen, the whole of the outgoing priestly course would assemble, in order to hand over custody of the temple to the incoming course. So Jeremias’ view is plausible, except that the number probably does not include Levites (cf. EpArist 92). Of course, 700 sounds like a conventional figure. We might suppose that Pseudo34 35 36

Jeremias, Jerusalem, 201–202. Jeremias, Jerusalem, 200. Sanders, Judaism, 78–79.

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Aristeas was told both that a whole priestly course was present and that 700 was the number in a course. 700 would be the ideal figure, but would presumably also bear some relation to reality. At any rate, 16,800 (700 × 24) is a more plausible estimate of the total number of priests than 120,000. Finally, we should notice that whereas Josephus began this whole passage by describing the temple in the past tense, he has moved by the end into the present tense. This might be an unremarkable use of the historic present, if it were not for the fact that it fits a pattern seen elsewhere in CA . When describing the temple building, Josephus spoke of it, very naturally, in the past tense (CA 2.102–104), just as he does also in CA 2.119. It is when describing the ministry of the priests in the temple that he moves into the present tense. Similarly, in CA 2.76–77, Josephus remarkably describes the daily offering of sacrifices in the temple on behalf of the Emperor in the present tense, while in 2.193 he again speaks of the continuous ministry of the priests in the temple in the present tense. The present is timeless rather than historic. It means that Josephus, even when he wrote CA , could not envisage Judaism without the ministry of the priests in the temple at its heart. On this another study could be written.37

37 This chapter originated as a paper read to the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas seminar on Early Jewish Writings and the New Testament at the SNTS Conference in Edinburgh, August 1994. I am grateful to Pieter W. van der Horst and Jan Willen van Henten, co-chairs of the seminar, for inviting me to give the paper, to the members of the seminar who made valuable comments, and especially to John O Neill for his detailed and perceptive response,

16. Life, Death, and the Afterlife in Second Temple Judaism* Hope for eternal life beyond death was a remarkable development in Israelite / Jewish faith in the Second Temple period. At the beginning of that period, in the late sixth century bce, there may not have been any such belief at all. At most only a small number of Jews are likely to have held such a belief at that time. At that time and for several centuries afterwards most Jews retained the old Israelite idea that the dead exist as shades in the underworld (Sheol). Sheol is a kind of mythical version of the tomb, a place of darkness and silence, from which noone returns. This idea of the shades in Sheol is not belief in the survival of the spirit, the spiritual or mental part of a human being which goes on living when the body dies, as much Greek thought after Plato believed. The shades are not immaterial beings, but shadowy, ghostly versions of the living, bodily person, and they can hardly be said to live. They are the dead, in a silent, dark, joyless – indeed, deathly – existence, cut off from God, the source of all life. It is this view, not peculiar to Israel but common to many ancient peoples, that most of the Hebrew Scriptures take for granted. There is one Old Testament text, Daniel 12:2–3 (cf. 13) which quite certainly refers to a desirable immortality for the righteous and to judgment after death for the wicked. This occurs in what is probably the latest book of the Old Testament (mid-second century bce). A few scholars hold that it is the only reference to life after death in the Hebrew Scriptures. Many scholars see a hope for eternal life also in Isaiah 26:19 (cf. 25:7–8) and in some passages in the Psalms (especially 49:15; 73:24) – texts which cannot be dated with any degree of certainty. Other possible references to life beyond death in the Old Testament are highly debatable. So the evidence for such belief is very little within the Old Testament. But in the post-biblical period that belief in life after death which only a very few Old Testament texts suggest came to be the general belief of Judaism. Ben Sira, writing at the beginning of the second century bce, is probably the last Jewish writer of the Second Temple period of whom it can be con* First Publication: Richard Longenecker ed., Life in the Face of Death: The Resurrection Message of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) 80–95.

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fidently stated that he did not expect eternal life and judgment after death. (There are later writings which contain no reference to such a belief, but they cannot be shown to exclude it.) From the evidence of the literature of the period it would seem that by the end of the Second Temple period (late first century ce) the vast majority of Jews believed in a desirable immortality for the righteous and in punishment after death for the wicked. The one identifiable Jewish group who did not were the Sadducees. They were a small group of aristocratic families in Jerusalem who wielded much power but had little influence over the beliefs of other Jews. Since they have left us no writings, it is not clear why they stood out against the dominant trend, but it is generally thought that they were theologically very conservative and continued to reject belief in resurrection because they could not find it in the Torah. (There may also be relevance in the observation that wealthy and privileged people, who have their reward now, have less reason than others for hope beyond death.) Because both the Jewish historian Josephus and the New Testament writer Luke (in Acts 23:8) distinguish between the Sadducees who did not believe in resurrection and the Pharisees who did, it has often been thought that resurrection was a distinctively Pharisaic belief. But this is a misunderstanding. Belief in resurrection distinguished Pharisees from Sadducees, but it did not distinguish Pharisees from most other Jews. No doubt there were some other Jews besides the Sadducees who were sceptical about rewards and punishments in the afterlife. Some would have been influenced by the popular Epicurean philosophy which promoted such scepticism in the Mediterranean world generally. We have, of course, very little means of access to the beliefs of ordinary people, since even tomb inscriptions generally use conventional phrases which indicate little about beliefs. Moreover, we should remember that most of the Jewish literature we have from the period was preserved by Christians for religious use. They were unlikely to preserve literature denying life after death. Yet the literature we have rarely seems to be asserting or arguing belief in life after death against disbelief or denial. The impression we get is that by the first century ce belief in eternal life and judgment after death was fairly general in Judaism.

Circumstances of origin Thus belief in eternal life and judgment after death was a late development in Israelite religion, appearing only in a few texts within the Hebrew Bible, but became general and dominant in Jewish belief in the later part of the Second Temple period. How did this happen? There are two ways of answering such a question. One approach is to enquire into the specific historical circumstances in which belief in life

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after death originated and gained widespread acceptance. The middle of the second century bce has often been pinpointed as the period of origin. This period, the Maccabean period, was a time of severe crisis for Jewish religion. It was the period when the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes, with some Jewish support, attempted to paganize Jewish religion, and many Jews fought and died for the sake of faithfulness to God’s law. In this situation the old problem of the flourishing of the wicked and the sufferings of the righteous arose with special force. Martyrs died without seeing any reward for their sacrifice, while pagan persecutors and Jewish apostates seemed to triumph. Even if, as faithful Jews hoped, God were to intervene to overthrow his enemies and establish the kingdom of his holy ones, what of the martyrs for whom this would come too late? Surely they should participate in the future glory of God’s people? In these circumstances the expectation that God would raise the dead, reward the righteous and punish the wicked spoke with great relevance to the specific situation. It is not surprising that it appears in the apocalypses written in this period (Dan 12:2–3, 13; 1 Enoch 90:33), as well as in the rather later account of the Maccabean martyrs found in 2 Maccabees (7:9, 11, 22–23, 28–29; cf. 12:43–45; 14:36). However, it is unlikely that this was actually the historical point of origin for the belief in rewards and punishments after death. Isaiah 26:19, which very probably speaks of resurrection, is almost certainly older, as is 1 Enoch 22, which portrays the dead in Sheol waiting for their resurrection at the day of judgment. It seems that we are in fact too ill-informed by our sources to be able to know when and in what circumstances Jews began to believe in judgment after death and eternal life. The most we can say is that the circumstances of the Maccabean period may well have been important for the spread of a belief which already existed but was not widely held until this time. Our ignorance in this matter is not of crucial importance. Even if we knew the circumstances in which belief in life after death originated in the Israelite / Jewish tradition, we should not really have accounted for the importance this belief acquired. The circumstances of its origin could not explain why it became and remained general Jewish belief long after these particular circumstances had passed.

Continuity with Old Testament faith A more profitable way of understanding how belief in life after death became general in Judaism is to enquire whether this belief is an intelligible development of the faith contained in the Hebrew Scriptures. Even though it is rarely expressed in them, could it nevertheless be seen as an appropri-

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ate or even necessary consequence of belief in the God revealed in those scriptures? Was this belief in continuity with central elements in Israel’s tradition of faith? The most important point to make is that hope for resurrection is in strong continuity with the Old Testament’s portrayal of God. Essential to this is God’s sovereignty over life. All life comes from him. He gives it and takes it away. The conviction that God is the source of life and the sovereign power over life several times takes the form of the claim that God ‘kills and makes alive’ (Deut 32:39; 1 Sam 2:6; 2 Kings 5:7; cf. Tobit 13:2; Wisdom 16:13): YHWH kills and makes alive; he brings down to Sheol and raises up (1 Sam 2:6).

These biblical texts are echoed in the post-biblical texts which see God as ‘the God who makes the dead live’ (Joseph and Aseneth 20:7; cf. PseudoPhilo, Biblical Antiquities 3:10). Deuteronomy 32:39 is quoted in 4 Maccabees 18:19, where it forms the climax of a rehearsal of scriptural bases for expecting God to give the martyrs eternal life. These biblical texts in their Old Testament contexts hardly refer to the resurrection of the dead. They mean that God is the living God of unlimited power, who can save his people out of the most serious threats to life, since life is his gift which he alone grants and withdraws. He gives life to the living and rescues the living from dying. The question of new life for those who have died had not yet arisen when these texts were written. However, it is clear that if it were to arise then the God of whom these texts speak has power to raise the dead. The texts had potential meaning which later Jewish writers quite legitimately realised. The thought of God as source of life and sovereign over life is not, of course, unconnected with the thought of God as Creator. The stories of the martyrs in 2 Maccabees are in this respect very illuminating. The martyrs are confident that God will raise them to new life after death, and they base this faith on a thoroughly biblical understanding of God as ‘the Creator of the world who shaped the beginning of humankind and devised the origin of all things’ (7:11 NRSV ) and as ‘the Lord of life and spirit’ (14:46). The God who gave body and life in creation can be trusted to give them back, in new creation, to those who have given them up through faithfulness to his law to the point of death (7:11, 22–23; 14:46). The hope of resurrection did not (as has sometimes been thought) originate only in connexion with the martyrs. But the martyrs are paradigmatic. They are those who so trust God with their lives that they can give them up for him in the hope of receiving them back from him. This hope for resurrection is a radical version of the Old Testament faith, found especially in the Psalms, that God will deliver from premature death

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those who are faithful to him and trust in him. In the Psalms death frequently appears as a power which threatens the psalmists. Premature death – from illness or from the attacks of enemies – is perceived as an evil from which God can be trusted to deliver his people. Usually the expectation is that God will save the psalmists from dying prematurely, but occasionally the psalmists seem to take the further step of hoping for final deliverance from death. Two of them hope that God ‘will receive’ them (Ps 49:15; 73:24), language which probably echoes the stories of Enoch and Elijah (Gen 5:24; 2 Kings 2:3). It is noteworthy that both of these psalms (49 and 73) are preoccupied with the problem of the prosperity of the wicked. The psalmists discover hope in the reflection that the fate of those who trust in God must be different from that of those who trust in riches. God’s justice and God’s love are at stake in this. The breakthrough in these psalms is to faith that even death cannot frustrate God’s justice and God’s love. If necessary God’s justice and God’s love must triumph even beyond death. What is new here is not these psalmists’ faith that the righteous God will vindicate the righteous against their oppressors or their faith that the loving God will not abandon his people to death. These are fundamental aspects of Old Testament faith, but in these psalms they give rise to faith in life with God even beyond death. The same Old Testament faith is taken to a newly radical conclusion. Radical trust in God’s justice and faithful love is what gives these psalmists their death-transcending hope. The same trust is implicit in the one undisputed reference to resurrection in the Hebrew Bible (Dan 12:2–3) and it continues through the post-biblical Jewish writers. The Old Testament God – the Creator, the Source of life, the Lord of life – undoubtedly could raise the dead. That he would do so became clear once death was perceived as contradicting God’s righteousness and God’s love. The Old Testament God could be trusted to vindicate the righteous and to be faithful in his love for his own. If these purposes could be fully attained only beyond death, then he could be trusted to raise the dead. In this way it was precisely faith in the Old Testament God which led to the hope of resurrection as a virtually necessary implication. It cannot be over-emphasized that when Jews came to believe in life after death the ground for their belief was God. They did not conclude, as philosophers in the ancient Greek tradition did, that human nature is such that part of it, the real human person, is naturally immortal. It was not from reflection on what human nature is that Jews came to hope for eternal life, but from reflection on who God is: the sovereign Creator, the righteous Judge, the faithful Father of his people.

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Biblical features of post-biblical belief We have seen that, although belief in life after death was largely a development of the period after the composition of most of the Hebrew scriptures, it was a development of the faith in God which is expressed in those scriptures. This continuity with Old Testament theology also accounts for significant features of life after death as it was understood in Second Temple Judaism. It is these features which largely account for the distinctiveness of Jewish belief in life beyond death, as compared with the beliefs of other ancient cultural traditions such as the Greek tradition. In the first place, we should note that this Jewish tradition takes death itself very seriously. There is hope for life after death not because death is mere appearance or does not affect the real core of the person, but because God can and will raise the dead. Death is an evil which, when all the dead have been brought back from it, will itself be destroyed by God (Isa 25:7–8; Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 3:10; 4 Ezra 8:53). Secondly, for the most part the Jewish tradition of belief in life after death maintains the holistic view of the human person which is found in the Hebrew scriptures. In the Greek (Platonic) tradition human beings consist of a physical and therefore mortal part (the body) and an immaterial and therefore immortal part (the spirit or the mind). At death the body dies, but the spirit is freed to live an immaterial existence for ever. In the Jewish tradition, on the other hand, human beings are a psychosomatic whole. Their bodiliness is intrinsic to their created nature. This does not mean that nothing survives death. On the contrary, as we have seen, in the old Israelite tradition the shades of the dead are in Sheol. But this existence in death is not the eternal life beyond death for which later Judaism hopes. That can only be conceived as fully embodied life. The way in which the holistic view of the human person was maintained in Judaism varied. The older view simply thought of the dead returning to life. This could be pictured as the shades in Sheol being raised by God from the underworld to new life. As they had passed from bodily life to shadowy existence in death, so they will be brought back from that shadowy existence to bodily life. Or, alternatively, the return of the dead to life could be pictured as the rising of the corpses of the dead from their graves. These are alternative pictures, both reflecting a unitary view of the human person, which in its full bodily reality dies and is raised. A later view, which by the later Second Temple period was overtaking the older, thought more dualistically of soul and body. At death these are separated: the soul or spirit goes to Sheol or ‘the chambers of the souls,’ while the body is laid in the tomb. At the resurrection soul and body are reunited. This view is closer to the Greek one, but decisively different, in

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that the souls in Sheol are the souls of the dead, who return to life only when soul and body are reunited. Both components of human nature die. Eternal life requires both together to live again. (The words ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ [of the dead] are therefore somewhat ambiguous in the Jewish literature of this period. In some texts they refer to the shades of the dead, in accordance with the old non-dualistic view [e. g. 1 Enoch 22:3–10]. In others they refer to that part of the person which is separated from the body at death and reunited with the body in resurrection [e. g. 1 Enoch 102:4].) The third feature of Jewish belief in life after death which reflects its continuity with the faith of the Hebrew scriptures is the concern with God’s righteousness and judgment. That God governs the world in righteousness, delivers and vindicates those who suffer injustice, and judges those who act unjustly, is a pervasive theme in the Old Testament. The tensions that occur in faith in this God when the righteous suffer unjustly, while their oppressors prosper and God does not appear to intervene, are recurrent in the Old Testament. Just as Jewish eschatology believed that, for God to be God, his righteousness must finally prevail on the stage of world history, so it also held that individuals must face God’s judgment after death. The righteousness that is not apparent in this life will come to light after this life. This is why Jewish eschatology (already in Dan 12:2) expects a dual destiny after death: vindication for the righteous and condemnation for the wicked. It is why the expectation of resurrection so commonly appears in a context of judicial language about the final judgment and the perfected righteousness of God. Fourthly, individual eschatology is not divorced from corporate eschatology. The fate of the individual after death is placed within the context of the final future of God’s people in the world. This is a consequence of the way Jewish eschatology developed. It was first and foremost a hope for God’s action, in salvation and judgment, in the world, for the coming of his kingdom over Israel and the nations. When hope for the future of individuals entered the picture, it was hope that they would rise to share in the fulfilment of God’s promises for the redemption and restoration of Israel. Thus hope for life after death is not purely individualistic in the Jewish tradition. Certainly God values the individual – so much that he will not let the one he loves perish in death. But the individual belongs to a people, and finds his or her future in the future of that people and of the world. God’s final purpose for individuals, for Israel and for the world is one, and is envisaged coming about in one eschatological event (or complex of events). A result of the inseparability of individual and corporate eschatology is that individuals do not enter on their final destiny immediately at death, but must wait for the general resurrection and the last judgment at the end of history. Sheol now becomes an intermediate state in which the dead

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await their future. From an early date (cf. 1 Enoch 22) Sheol is envisaged as having distinct compartments for the righteous who await vindication and glory at the last day and for the wicked who await condemnation. Both categories of the dead already know what awaits them at the last judgment, and so, although the righteous are not yet rewarded and the wicked are not yet punished, the former do already delight and the latter do already suffer in anticipation of their respective destinies (4 Ezra 7:75–101). This seems to have been the most common view of the intermediate state in the Second Temple period. The view that the righteous already enjoy the delights of paradise and the wicked already suffer the torments of hell in the intermediate state before the resurrection at the end can also be found in the late Second Temple period and was to become dominant after that period. (This development is probably an example of the influence of non-Jewish religious traditions, of which we shall have more to say in the next section. Such traditions always portrayed the souls of the dead attaining their postmortem destiny immediately at death.)

Exceptions The features listed in the last section characterize most Jewish belief in the afterlife in the later Second Temple period. However, such beliefs were not uniform, and on occasions took forms which lack one or more of these features. In most cases this was due to influence from non-Jewish, especially Greek, traditions of belief about the afterlife. Jewish life and culture in this period was far from isolated from the increasingly international culture of the Mediterranean world. Faithfulness to the God of Israel and his law did not prevent Jews from appropriating elements of other cultural traditions which did not violate their central beliefs. These cultural traditions included both sophisticated philosophical thought and rich mythological imagery related to the afterlife. That Jewish beliefs about the afterlife were, in varying degrees and in different ways, influenced by these is natural. Some of the cases where such influence led to expressions of Jewish belief which depart from the features listed in the last section can be mentioned here. Two Jewish works of the late Second Temple period which borrow hellenistic philosophical ideas and language quite freely are 4 Maccabees and the Wisdom of Solomon. Both sound Greek in the way they speak of the righteous as not dying but only seeming to die (Wisdom 3:1–4; 4 Maccabees 7:18–19; 16:25). However, even in these works the Greek idea of spiritual immortality is qualified by Jewish elements. Although, according to 4 Maccabees the martyrs become immortal at death, this immortality is given to them, not an inherent quality of the soul. The Wisdom of

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Solomon even continues to place the future of the righteous in the context of collective and cosmic eschatology (Wisdom 3:7–8), a notion quite alien to Greek thinking. The Testament of Abraham, a Jewish work which, like Wisdom, comes from the Egyptian diaspora, portrays the afterlife in images borrowed from Platonic and / or Egyptian descriptions: here the judgment of individual souls and their assignment to their eternal destinies at death seem altogether to take the place of any expectation of resurrection and judgment at the end of history. The Jewish historian Josephus can express his own beliefs in thoroughly Greek ways and even, for the benefit of his Gentile readers, report the views of other Jews in much more Greek terms than they themselves would have used. When, for example, he claims that the Pharisees believed in reincarnation (Jewish War 2.164), he is translating their expectation of bodily resurrection – a belief which non-Jews in the Greco-Roman world found very strange – into a form which was very familiar to his Gentile readers. Such examples show that Jews were quite willing to recognize commonalty between their own religious beliefs and those of other cultural traditions. What is generally impressive, across the range of Jewish literature which we have from this period, is the extent to which borrowings from non-Jewish sources are usually made consistently with (rather than at the expense of) the distinctively Jewish shape of Jewish expectations of life after death.

Images of Afterlife In attempting to specify in more detail how the future of the dead was envisaged in late Second Temple Judaism it is useful to focus on the images that are used in the literature. Since the eschatological future has not been experienced it cannot be the object of literal description, but must be evoked by images. Though the images have conceptual content, it is in images rather than in concepts as such that the literature of our period generally portrays life after death. Some of these images become very stereotyped (and most recur in the New Testament). Several images portray the dead coming back to life. The simplest is: the dead person who now lies in the grave will stand up (e. g. Isa 26:19; Dan 12:13; 2 Maccabees 12:44; Psalms of Solomon 3:12). Or it may be said that God will raise them up (e. g. 2 Maccabees 7:9, 14). This is the image evoked by the term ‘resurrection’ (e. g. Testament of Job 4:9). A variation on this image is to imagine the dead as sleeping in the grave. In the future they will awake (Isa 26:19; Dan 12:2–3) or get up from sleep (1 Enoch 91:10; 92:3; 2 Baruch 30:2). Or God will awaken them (Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 3:10; 19:12, 13).

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A different image sees God re-creating the dead from their remains ‘as they were before’ (Sibylline Oracles 4:181–182). This picture, with its reference to bones as the part of the body that remains after decay, is inspired by Ezekiel’s famous vision of the valley of bones (37:1–14), originally a parable of the restoration of the nation, but read in later Second Temple times as a picture of God restoring flesh to the skeletons of the dead and bringing them again to life in the resurrection (4 Maccabees 18:17; 4QP seudo-Ezekiel). Another powerful image of resurrection pictures the places of the dead (the earth, the sea, Sheol, the chambers of the souls) restoring what has been entrusted to them (e. g. 1 Enoch 51:1; 4 Ezra 4:41–43; 7:32; 2 Baruch 21:23; 42:8; 50:2; Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 3:10; 33:3). This legal image makes the point that the places where the dead go at death do not own the dead, as though they had a right to keep them for ever, but are merely entrusted with the dead for temporary safekeeping. When God, who so entrusted them, reclaims his deposit, the places of the dead must surrender them back to life. All these images, with their various pictures of restoration from death to life, might seem in themselves to suggest mere resuscitation: a return to the same life as mortal people live in this life and in just the same bodily form. Indeed, some of the texts we have cited actually stress that the dead are restored just as they were before death (Sibylline Oracles 4:182; 2 Baruch 50:2). However, the concern which the texts express in this way is with the preservation of personal identity. Those who rise must be understood to be the same persons, in their distinctive embodied forms, who had died. As other images make clear, these texts are not denying that there will also be a highly significant transformation of the dead in a resurrection which is not resuscitation to this life, but entry into eternal life. 2 Baruch 49:1–51:1 is unusual in explicitly reflecting on this issue, much as Paul does in 1 Corinthians 15:35. In answer to Baruch’s question about the form in which the dead will live again, he is told that they will first be raised in precisely the form in which they died, so that they may be recognized and recognize each other as the same people who died. Then they will be transformed: the wicked into a worse condition than their present one, the righteous into glorious splendour appropriate to the eternal world in which they will then dwell. Two common and closely related images show the righteous raised into heavenly glory. According to one, which has biblical precedent in Daniel 12:3, they will shine like the stars (1 Enoch 104:2; 4 Ezra 7:78, 125; 2 Baruch 51:10; Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 33:5; 4 Maccabees 17:4–6). Because the sky and the heavenly bodies are bright and shining, Jewish tradition always imagined heavenly beings, such as God and the angels, as luminous and shining. Because the righteous dead will rise to share the incorruptible

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and undying life of the heavenly beings, they too will then be like the stars. So it amounts to the same thing when, according the second of these two images, they are said to be like the angels (1 Enoch 104:4; 2 Baruch 51:5, 10, 12). Whether they are sometimes said actually to become angels is somewhat doubtful (1 Enoch 51:4; Wisdom 5:5), but the meaning would not be significantly different. This imagery might be thought to imply that the resurrected righteous will live in the heavens rather than on earth. Perhaps this is occasionally the picture (cf. 1 Enoch 104:2; 2 Baruch 51:10; Testament of Moses 10:9–10), but more commonly it is said that, in the renewed cosmos, they will dwell on the transformed earth (1 Enoch 45:4–5; 51:5; Sibylline Oracles 4:187). Sometimes Enoch and Elijah, whom God ‘took’ to be with him in heaven (Gen 5:24; 2 Kings 2:3), are understood as representative of life beyond death, as we have already noticed may well be the case in Psalms 49:15 and 73:24. The image of assumption to heaven is thereby evoked. In Wisdom 4:10–15, Enoch, though anonymous as all biblical figures are in this work, is clearly recognizable, and functions as a paradigm of those whom God loves and ‘takes’ away from the wicked world. Their removal from the world, misunderstood by the ungodly, is therefore really a blessing to them. In the Testament of Job, Job claims that not even his children’s bones will be found in their graves, because they have been taken up into heaven (39:8–40:3). At the end of the story, three days after Job’s death, he himself is taken up to heaven in a chariot (like Elijah), but in his case it is his soul that ascends, while his body is laid in the tomb (52:1–12). This ascent to heaven at death does not seem to be an alternative to resurrection at the end of history, in which Job is promised he will participate (4:9). We have alluded to the importance of light in the image of the resurrected righteous as shining like the stars. Reference to eternal light is frequent in references to the destiny of the righteous (1 Enoch 58:3; 92:4; 108:12–13; Psalms of Solomon 3:12; 2 Enoch 65:8; 1QS 4:8). When they are said to wear garments of glory (1 Enoch 62:15–16) and to sit on thrones of glory (1 Enoch 108:12), it should be remembered that this glory is both the visible splendour of shining light and the honour which God will give them, by contrast with the dishonour they have suffered in this life. The light in which the righteous will dwell contrasts with the darkness that is the fate of the wicked (e. g. 1 Enoch 108:14). We have treated here the most common images which portray the resurrection of the dead and their transformation, in the case of the righteous, into incorruptible and immortal life. Many other images occur which portray the circumstances and character of life in the age to come, such as the descriptions of Paradise and the New Jerusalem, and those of the punishments in Gehenna.

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Conclusion Some scholars have laid great emphasis on the variety of Jewish beliefs about life after death in Second Temple Judaism. In my view this emphasis is mistaken. Most of the texts are thoroughly consistent with each other, though not every aspect of the beliefs we have outlined is present in every text. This is only to be expected, since few of the texts set out to give a full account of human destiny after death. Moreover, to a large extent, as we have seen, the texts deal in images rather than concepts: images which might not be fully consistent if taken entirely literally may nevertheless converge in the impression they convey. Although there are exceptions to the general view in certain respects, as we have noted, the texts do seem to offer a general view which we may reasonably suppose was shared by most Jews in the late Second Temple period. The fact that virtually all aspects of this view common to most of the Jewish texts are also found in the New Testament confirms this conclusion. The first Christians did not derive their understanding of the afterlife from any specific Jewish group, such as the Pharisees or the Essenes, but shared the views which had become general in the Judaism of their time. Like other Jews, they will have recognized that this Jewish understanding of the afterlife, though only rarely explicit in the Hebrew scriptures, was strongly rooted in faith in the God of Israel as he was revealed in those scriptures.

17. What if Paul had Travelled East rather than West?* The Jewish East For first-century Jews, Jerusalem was not at the eastern edge of a world defined by the Roman Empire, the Mediterranean world depicted in maps of Paul’s missionary travels in Bibles and reference works. For first-century Jews, Jerusalem was the centre of a world which stretched as far east as it did west, and, equally importantly, the centre of the Jewish diaspora, which also stretched as far east as it did west. New Testament scholars rarely remember the eastern diaspora. Of course, the New Testament texts give them very little occasion to call it to mind. The Acts of the Apostles, which probably more than any other New Testament document has fashioned the general impression we have of the geographical scope of the early Christian world, focuses, once the narrative leaves Palestine, exclusively on Paul’s missionary travels to the north-west and west of Palestine. But Acts in fact contains its own warning against taking this focus as more than a pars pro toto story of the spread of the Christian Gospel in the early years. Its precise and accurate sketch of the geography of the Jewish diaspora (2:9–11), from Parthia in the east to Rome in the west, from Pontus in the north to Arabia in the south, with Jerusalem at the centre, is programmatic. It defines, not the world that the Gospel must finally reach (1:8), since in none of these directions does it reach one of the ends of the earth, as conceived at the time,1 but the Jewish world which would be reached by Jews travelling from Jerusalem to all parts of the diaspora.2 Just such a crowd of pilgrims as Acts 2 depicts would be present at every major festival in Jerusalem and so, surely Acts implies, the Gospel would be taken home to all parts of the diaspora not just after this * First Publication: Biblical Interpretation 8 (2000) 171–184; also in J. Cheryl Exum ed., Virtual History and the Bible (Leiden: Brill, 1999) 171–184. 1 One of these, Ethiopia, does appear implicitly in Acts 8:39, as the destination to which the Ethiopian eunuch will take the Gospel when, beyond the narrative, he reaches home. 2 See R. Bauckham, ‘James and the Jerusalem Church,’ in R. Bauckham ed., The Book of Acts in its Palestinian Setting (Carlisle: Paternoster / Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995) 419–422.

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initial preaching by the apostles at Pentecost, but continually as the leaders of the Jerusalem church continued to preach their message to the crowds in the temple court. For first-century Palestinian Jews links with the eastern diaspora were as frequent and important as those with the western diaspora. Beyond the Euphrates in the east lived descendants of the exiles both of the northern Israelite tribes, deported by the Assyrians in the eighth century bce, and of the southern tribes, Judah and Benjamin, deported by the Babylonians in the sixth century bce. The largest concentrations of Jewish communities were still in the areas to which their ancestors had originally been deported. The exiles of the northern tribes, not yet regarded as ‘lost’, lived mainly in north Mesopotamia (Nisibis and Adiabene) and Media,3 while the exiles of the southern tribes lived mainly in southern Mesopotamia. In a somewhat confusing passage, Josephus seems to think that the eastern diaspora, comprising the northern as well as the southern tribes, was far more numerous than the western, comprising members only of the southern tribes (Ant. 11.131–133). His depiction of the former as innumerable myriads probably reveals his desire to see in them the fulfilment of the promises to the patriarchs, that their descendants would be innumerable (Gen 13:16; 15:5; 32:12), but, however exaggerated, it suggests the importance of the eastern diaspora in first-century Jewish eyes. Josephus also recounts (Ant. 18.311–313, cf. 379) how the two cities of Nehardea (in south Mesopotamia) and Nisibis (in north Mesopotamia) served as the collecting points for the temple tax contributions from the eastern diaspora, where the resulting huge sums of money could be kept safe until they were conveyed to Jerusalem along with the caravans of pilgrims, whom Josephus numbers at tens of thousands.4 For first-century Jews the eastern diaspora was the original, biblical and paradigmatic diaspora. It comprised members of all twelve tribes, all twelve of whom were expected, on the basis of the prophecies, to return from exile to form the re-gathered and reunited Israel of the future. Whereas much of the western diaspora resulted from voluntary migration, though deportation and enslavement played a part in its origins, the eastern diaspora was paradigmatic in that it clearly resulted, in the narrative of the Hebrew Bible, from involuntary deportation embodying God’s judgment on his people. It was therefore from the circumstances of the eastern diaspora that the Jewish theological conception of the diaspora – as divine punishment which would be rescinded in the future – derived. For these reasons the eastern diaspora had a theological and symbolic priority over the western. 3 On the Median diaspora in this period, see R. Bauckham, ‘Anna of the Tribe of Asher (Luke 2:36–38),’ RB 104 (1997) 166–169, 173–177. 4 On this passage, see Bauckham, ‘Anna,’ 174.

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Communication between Jerusalem and the eastern diaspora was frequent, especially, as already mentioned, through pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the conveyance of temple tax. There were also official letters circulated from the Jerusalem religious authorities, on such matters as the religious calendar, to the eastern as to the western diaspora.5 Jewish merchants travelled with ease along the major trade routes from Palestine as far as the Gulf and beyond (Josephus, Ant. 18.34), which were also the routes travelled by Jewish pilgrims. Natives of the eastern diaspora migrated to live permanently in Jerusalem, just as natives of the western diaspora did. (As native Aramaicspeakers, any Christian converts among the former would have been among the ‘Hebrews’ of Acts 6:1, whereas Christian converts from the latter were the ‘Hellenists.’) It should also be remembered that, whereas Palestine’s incorporation in the Roman Empire was a very recent development, Palestine’s participation in a cultural world which stretched east to Mesopotamia and Persia was very old and influential in countless ways. This participation had two cultural layers: the Aramaic-speaking civilization of the Persian Empire, in which local cultures, while by no means replaced, were to some degree assimilated to an international Aramaic culture, and the hellenization of the Middle East that followed in the wake of Alexander’s conquests, was concentrated in the Greek cities established throughout the area, and was absorbed to varying degrees by the local aramaicized cultures.6 The Romanization of the western part of this cultural world was, by comparison with aramaicization and hellenization, only the thinnest of veneers. Hence the demise of the hellenistic empires, succeeded by the Parthian empire in the east and the Roman in the west, while it divided politically the world that aramaicization and hellenization had united culturally, by no means severed the cultural links. The Greek cities of Mesopotamia, for example, maintained close cultural relationships with those of the eastern Mediterranean. An example that nicely makes the point for our present purposes is that of the Stoic philosopher Archedemus of Tarsus who left Athens to establish a Stoic school in Babylonia.7 Thus, whether we consider Paul, native of Tarsus, as a Jew of the western diaspora or Paul, trained as a Pharisaic teacher in Jerusalem, as at home in the primarily Semitic-speaking religious culture of Jewish Palestine, he would have felt part of a cultural world that stretched east of Tarsus and Jerusalem to the hellenistic cities of Mesopotamia and to 5

Bauckham, ‘Anna,’ 174–176. On the importance of both layers in our period, and against a one-sided emphasis on hellenization, see A. Wasserstein, ‘Non-Hellenized Jews in the Semi-Hellenized East,’ Scripta Classica Israelica 14 (1995) 111–137. 7 J. Neusner, A History of the Jews in Babylonia: I: The Parthian Period (SPB 9; 2 nd edition: Leiden: Brill, 1969) 9. 6

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those parts of the Jewish diaspora that had every claim to be considered the diaspora. Why should Paul not have thought of travelling east?

Why should Paul have travelled East? Paul became a Christian in Damascus, following his encounter with the risen Christ on the way there. It seems that from the beginning he understood this experience as a call to proclaim Jesus the Messiah to the nations (Gal 1:16; cf. Acts 22:14–15; 26:17–18). The impression his own account gives is that, so strong was this sense of a special vocation from God and so urgent his understanding of the task, he did not wait until he could consult those who were already apostles, but immediately set about fulfilling his call (Gal 1:17–18). But how could he decide where to begin? It would not be surprising if he were guided by two factors: providence and scriptural exegesis. He must have reflected on the fact that it was in Damascus – just outside the land of Israel – that he received his call to take the Gospel to the nations. Damascus must surely be the divinely intended geographical threshold of his mission. Where would one go from Damascus? Though it was possible to travel west through Abila to the Mediterranean coast at Berytus, no Jew from Palestine would think of Damascus as the starting-point for travelling west. The obvious routes were south and north-east. It was the route south through the Hauran and along the King’s Highway to Petra that we know Paul in fact took (Gal 1:17). All of this area composed the Nabatean kingdom which Jews often called Arabia.8 This was the area inhabited by the Gentile peoples who, according to the Genesis genealogies as understood at this time (cf. Josephus, Ant. 1.221, 239), were the most closely related to Israel9: the Arab tribes descended from Abraham by his wife Keturah (Gen 25:1–4) or through his son Ishmael (Gen 25:13–15). Ishmael’s eldest son Nebaioth (Gen 25:13) was thought to be the ancestor of the Nabateans, who took their name from him (Josephus, Ant. 1.221). Their closeness, by kinship as well as geographically, to Israel would make them the obvious starting-point for a mission to the nations. But this would have been confirmed for Paul by his reading of prophecy, specifically the later chapters of Isaiah which were pivotal both for the early church’s self-understanding and for Paul’s own understanding of his role in turning the nations to the God of Israel (Gal 1:15; cf. Isa 49:1–6). In the pilgrimage of the nations 8

J. Murphy-O’Connor, ‘Paul in Arabia,’ CBQ 55 (1993) 732–733. The Edomites, descended from Jacob’s brother Esau, had by this time converted to Judaism. 9

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to Zion it is the Arab tribes of north-west Arabia that are the first to be named: Midian, Ephah, Sheba, Kedar and Nebaioth (Isa 60:6–7), all of them descendants of Abraham (Gen 25:2–4, 13). It is remarkable that Rainer Riesner, who argues persuasively that Paul’s later missionary travels followed a geographical programme provided by Isaiah 66:19,10 does not recognize that a first-century Jewish exegete would be likely to read Isaiah 66:19–20 in connexion with Isaiah 60:9.11 Tarshish (understood in Paul’s time as Tarsus) comes first among the place names in Isaiah 66:19, but in Isaiah 60:9 it follows the Nabateans (60:7). Thus Paul had every reason to begin obeying his missionary calling in Nabatea. That Paul deliberately began his mission in Nabatea should be taken more seriously than it usually is, because it disturbs the common assumption that Paul, the strongly hellenized Jew from Tarsus, chose as an obvious matter of cultural affinity to preach in the cities of the north-east Mediterranean world. The Nabateans, in this period before their annexation as the Roman province of Arabia in 106, were among the least hellenized peoples of the Near East.12 There is rather little evidence for the use of Greek. Nabatean remained the language of government, law, religion and ordinary speech.13 But Paul, a ‘Hebrew born of Hebrews’ (Phil 3:5), that is, a native Semitic speaker,14 was certainly fluent in Aramaic as well as Greek.15 There were Jewish communities in Nabatea (probably mentioned in Acts 2:11), which no doubt Paul would use as a point of contact with sympathetic Gentiles, as was his regular missionary strategy later. Paul’s policy of prioritizing the synagogue precisely in his Gentile mission (cf. Rom 1:16) was not merely pragmatic. It corresponded to the prophetic expectation that in the last days the nations would come to Zion bringing with them the Israelites of the diaspora (Isa 11:10–12; 60:4–9; 66:18–20). Paul’s Gentile mission was therefore bound to be to the lands of the Jewish diaspora, though it was 10 R. Riesner, Paul’s Early Period: Chronology, Mission Strategy, Theology, tr. D. Stott (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) 245–253; but cf. the critique in J. M. Scott, Paul and the Nations: The Old Testament and Jewish Background of Paul’s Mission to the Gentiles with Special Reference to the Destination of Galatians (WUNT 84; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1995). 11 Therefore he denies that Paul’s purpose in going to Arabia was missionary: Paul’s Early Period, 258–260. 12 M. Hengel and A. M. Schwemer, Paul Between Damascus and Antioch, tr. J. Bowden (London: SCM Press, 1997) 112, give a somewhat exaggerated impression of hellenization in Nabatea at this time. 13 F. Millar, The Roman Near East 31 BC–AD 337 (Cambridge, Massachusetts / London: Harvard University Press, 1993) 401–407. 14 M. Hengel, The Pre-Christian Paul, tr. J. Bowden (London: SCM Press, 1991) 25–26; J. Murphy-O’Connor, Paul: A Critical Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) 36–37. 15 Hengel and Schwemer, Paul, 118–119.

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in any case commonly supposed that there were Jews in every part of the inhabited world (e. g. Philo, Leg. Gai. 283–284). After a period, perhaps more than two years (Gal 1:17–18), in Arabia Paul returned to Damascus. Why to Damascus? There were more direct routes to Jerusalem. If Paul had become persona non grata to the Nabatean authorities, as is commonly deduced from the circumstances of his leaving Damascus (2 Cor 11:32–33), there were more rapid routes out of Nabatean territory. It must be that Paul now intended to travel the other main route from Damascus: the caravan route north-east to Palmyra and thence to Mesopotamia. That way the whole of the eastern diaspora, the original diaspora not just of the Judean tribes, but of all the twelve tribes who must all be brought back to Jerusalem by their Gentile neighbours in the last days, lay before Paul. Moreover, the nations to the east were Semites. The descendants of Shem lived from Syria eastwards to India (Gen 10:21–31) – or even to China, as Josephus seems to indicate (Ant. 1.143–147). On the principle of beginning with Israel’s closest kin, these were the nations to whom Paul should turn after the Abrahamic tribes of Arabia. Prophecy explicitly envisaged the return of the eastern diaspora along with the nations of the east (Isa 11:10–12, 15–16; cf. 45:6, 22; 48:20; 49:12). Probably it was only the attempt of the Nabatean ethnarch in Damascus to arrest Paul and Paul’s ignominious flight from the city (2 Cor 11:32–33) that prevented Paul following this direction to the east. The Nabateans controlled the routes north-east as well as south, and so Paul, in flight for his life, could take only the road to Jerusalem.16 Doubtless, for Paul, this was providential guidance, an instance, as he was later to see it, of God’s ability to further his purpose through Paul’s weakness (2 Cor 11:32–12:10). From Jerusalem Paul made, as it were, a new start (cf. Acts 22:17–21), understanding the prophetic programme now to direct him first to Tarsus (Isa 60:9; 66:19; Gal 1:21; Acts 9:30) and so in an arc from Jerusalem to the furthest west (Rom 15:19, 23–24). His own origin in Tarsus no doubt now provided the providential indication that this was his own role in the eschatological events, as missionary not to the descendants of Shem but to those of Japheth.17 The apostle who, but for the antipathy of the Nabatean authorities, might have travelled to the eastern end of the earth now followed a consistent imperative towards its opposite extremity.

16

Riesner, Paul’s Early Period, 261–262; cf. Millar, The Roman Near East, 298–299. Perhaps not only the location of the places in Isaiah 66:19 in the territory of Japheth, but also the priority of Japheth in the table of the nations (Gen 10:2–5) influenced this decision. For the territory of Japheth as the area of mission which Paul regarded as allotted to him, see Scott, Paul, chapter 3. 17

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Paul in the East Paul’s missionary strategy in the east would have been similar to that which we know he followed in the west. He would have targeted the hellenistic cities with significant Jewish communities in them, like those we know him to have worked in in Asia Minor and Greece. He might, in the first place, have travelled north from Palmyra to cross the Euphrates at Nicephorium and then followed the route alongside the river Balikh to the hellenistic cities of Ichnai, Charax Sidou and Charrhae. This would also take him to Edessa, whence he could travel east to Nisibis and Adiabene, where many of the northern Israelite exiles still lived. He would be unlikely to travel further north or east to Media, but would turn south, perhaps ending this journey by crossing the Euphrates at Doura Europos, another hellenized and (at this date) Parthian city with a significant Jewish community, and thence back to Palmyra and Damascus. Another journey might take him to Babylonia, the area of the largest Jewish settlement in the east, travelling through Doura and south-east along the Euphrates to the Jewish settlement at Nehardea and then to Seleucia on the Tigris, the old capital of Seleucid Babylonia, the centre of hellenistic culture in Babylonia, with a large Jewish community. Continuing south-east he could visit Antioch in Mesene and Charax Spasinou on the Gulf, perhaps also Susa. In many of these cities he might have stirred up the kind of local Jewish opposition that he encountered in some of the cities of Asia Minor and Greece, according to Acts, but he is unlikely to have been harassed by the tolerant Parthian authorities.18 Finally, Paul could have set his sights on travelling even further east, towards the eastern end of the earth, just as the Paul of Romans intended to travel west as far as Spain. This would take him as far as Alexander’s empire had stretched, to north-east India, where the Acts of Thomas take their hero the apostle Judas Thomas. Like the Palmyrene merchants who travelled down the Euphrates to Charax Spasinou where they embarked on ships,19 Paul would no doubt have travelled by sea through the Gulf to India. Although it is intrinsically likely that some Jews had already travelled this far and settled in India, we cannot be sure that there were already Jewish communities in India at this date. One difference from Paul’s travels in the west might have been that he would probably have preached in the synagogues in Aramaic rather than Greek, and in general might have used some Greek but more Aramaic. This is difficult to judge precisely. Greek was spoken in the hellenistic cities in 18 But the civil war in Parthia during the early years of his ministry there could have complicated matters for Paul. 19 Millar, The Roman Near East, 330–331.

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which Paul would most likely have spent most of his time, and Greek is used on most Parthian coins. But Josephus, writing the first (no longer extant) version of his Jewish War in Aramaic for readers east of the Euphrates, presumably judged that this language was the most effective for reaching both a Jewish and a Gentile readership in the east. We may thus presume that the letters Paul would have written to some of his newly founded Christian communities in the Parthian empire would probably have been written in Aramaic. This is an important point for following through our speculation, because it would inhibit their circulation to the west of the Euphrates outside Syria unless they were translated into Greek. This in turn would prevent the influence of Pauline theology on Greek and Latin Christianity and their successors. But translation of Paul’s Aramaic letters into Greek would be not unlikely. Some of the earliest Christian literature in Syriac, probably all from Osrhoene, such as the Odes of Solomon, the Acts of Thomas, and some of the works of Bardaisan, were translated into Greek. The contacts with Greek-speaking Christians that would make a translation of Paul’s letters into Greek desirable and likely certainly existed at an early date. Abercius, bishop of Hierapolis, who recorded his extensive travels in a rather cryptic epitaph on his tombstone, travelled to Rome and then to the east, around the middle of the second century. He ‘saw the plain of Syria and all the cities, even Nisibis, having crossed the Euphrates. And everywhere I had associates. Having Paul as a companion, everywhere faith led the way…’20 In our present context the somewhat puzzling reference to Paul is tantalizing. Did Abercius mean that he was following in Paul’s footsteps, not only to Rome, but also to Nisibis? The lack of any other trace of a tradition that Paul ever crossed the Euphrates makes this unlikely. Perhaps Abercius meant only that, like Paul, he travelled extensively, visiting Christian communities. Perhaps he meant that his copy of the Pauline letters was something he had in common with the ‘associates’ (fellow-Christians) he encountered everywhere. Would Paul’s travels in the east have made a significant difference to Christianity east of the Euphrates? If his letters had come down to us and / or he had inspired a Luke to write a Mesopotamian equivalent to Acts, we should certainly know a great deal more about the beginnings of Christianity in Mesopotamia than we do. Though scholars who begin with the legends and find it impossible to ascertain the truth behind them tend to think Christianity did not reach Mesopotamia in Paul’s lifetime or even in the first century,21 it has to be said that the constant communication and 20

Translation in J. Quasten, Patrology, vol. 1(Utrecht / Brussels: Spectrum, 1950) 172. E. g. M.-L. Chaumont, La Christianisation de l’Empire Iranien des origines aux Grandes Persécution du IVe Siècle (CSCO 499; Louvain: Peeters, 1988) Part 1. 21

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travel between Jerusalem and the eastern diaspora makes it virtually incredible that it did not.22 Jewish pilgrims and merchants from the east would have heard the Gospel in Jerusalem and taken it back to their synagogue communities.23 This would surely have been the way Christianity initially spread to much of the diaspora, including such areas as Egypt and Cyrene, about which we know no more than we do of Mesopotamia. In addition, there is no reason to doubt the basic historicity of Addai, the apostle of Edessa, and his links with the pre-70 Jerusalem church,24 or Mari, whom traditions suggest planted the church in Seleucia-Ctesiphon, travelling there from Nisibis, in the following generation. Such names, handed down in local traditions, are often reliable even when the stories told of them are legendary.25 However, even these traditions do not indicate flourishing Christian communities as early as Paul’s lifetime, other than in Edessa. Had Paul travelled east, this might have been otherwise. The churches of Seleucia on the Tigris and Charax Spasinou on the Gulf might have been as important as those of Ephesus and Corinth actually were. Moreover, the character of the Christian theological tradition east of the Euphrates might have been different. The great Syriac Fathers, Ephrem and Aphrahat of Nisibis, evidently formed in a theological tradition influenced by the kind of Jewish Christianity that first took root in northern Mesopotamia,26 knew and used Paul’s letters, but were not deeply influenced by them. Had Paul been the apostle of the east and his letters addressed to churches of the east, this might have been otherwise.

22 In my view the address of James to ‘the twelve tribes in the diaspora’ (Jas 1:1) is actual evidence of this: see R. Bauckham, James: Wisdom of James, Disciple of Jesus the Sage (NT Readings; London / New York: Routledge, 1999) 14–16. 23 Compare the way in which Izates, before his accession to the throne of Adiabene in 36 ce, was converted to Judaism by a Jewish merchant in Charax Spasinou, while his mother was similarly converted by another Jew in Adiabene. Later Izates was influenced by a Pharisee from Galilee (Josephus, Ant. 20.34–35, 38–48). 24 Discussions of Addai have yet to take account of what is probably the earliest known reference to him in the First Apocalypse of James (CG V,3) 36:15–25. Though this text had long been published by the time he wrote, there is no reference to it in the discussion of Addai by Chaumont, La Christianisation, 14–16. By linking Addai with James of Jerusalem, it makes improbable the conclusion of Chaumont and others that, though historical, Addai’s ministry in Edessa should be dated c. 100 at the earliest. 25 Note also the possibility that relatives of Jesus were missionaries in the eastern diaspora in the early second century: R. Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1990) 68–70; and the full account now of the evidence in Chaumont, La Christianisation, 42–47 (he does not credit it). 26 R. Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975) Introduction and Part 2.

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The West without Paul The most challenging issue our counterfactual hypothesis raises is that of imagining what Christianity in the Roman Empire would have been like without Paul. The prominence of Paul in Acts and in the western theological tradition down the centuries has led to such absurd exaggerations of Paul’s significance as the claim that Paul invented Christianity or that without Paul Christianity would have remained a sect within Judaism. Since the German Liberalism of the nineteenth century Paul has been required to effect the transition between Jesus, the preacher of ethics, the fatherhood and kingdom of God, and the dogmatic Christianity which proclaimed a christocentric gospel of salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus.27 In the many versions of this view, it has been Paul who hellenized the Jewish religion of Jesus and his first followers, Paul who created Christianity as a Gentile religion for Gentiles, Paul who made Jesus the object of faith and worship, Paul who set Christianity on the road to becoming the religion of credal orthodoxy it was in the age of the ecumenical councils. All aspects of this understanding of Paul and his significance have been comprehensively refuted in recent decades, both in Pauline studies and in studies of early Jewish and non-Pauline forms of Christianity. Against such exaggerations of Paul’s role in the development of early Christianity, we must note, first, that, creative thinker though he was, not everything in Paul’s writings is originally Pauline. Rather than detecting Pauline influence wherever other early Christian writings employ terms or ideas also found in Paul, we should take such phenomena as evidence for the extent to which Paul shared a common understanding of the Gospel, a tradition to which he held himself responsible (1 Cor 15:3), common Christian vocabulary, common Christian traditions of exegesis of the Hebrew scriptures, common paraenetic traditions, and so on. It is also clear that other major writings in the New Testament, such as the Gospels of Matthew and John, the letter to the Hebrews and the book of Revelation, are not plausibly influenced by Paul to any significant extent but develop non-Pauline versions of the Christian Gospel which present it as a christocentric message of salvation through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus no less than Paul’s version does. In comparison Paul appears as no less Jewish than these others, while, conversely, later patristic credal and doctrinal development was at least as much Johannine as it was Pauline. The New Testament without Paul and his influence would still contain a range of Christian writings, each with its own idiom, nuances and creative theological developments, but 27

This is still Paul’s role in, e. g., G. Vermes, The Religion of Jesus the Jew (London: SCM Press, 1993) chapter 8.

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all sharing common features which must have characterized the Christian movement from its earliest Jerusalem form, all highly christological, all focused on an eschatological-soteriological reading of the story, as well as the teachings, of Jesus, his life, death, resurrection and future coming. Some particularly Pauline features would certainly be noticeably missing – such as Paul’s special contributions to pneumatology and his use of the cross as a cultural-critical principle, as well as his thinking about justification – but the Christianity of the New Testament would be still, from the perspective of later centuries, recognizably Christianity. Moreover, we should note, in transition to our second point, that all these non-Pauline forms of New Testament Christianity are fully supportive of the Gentile mission. The second respect in which we should not exaggerate Paul’s role is in his importance in spreading the Christian Gospel in the Mediterranean world of the Roman Empire. The Gentile mission began without reference to Paul’s apostolic calling (Acts 10–11)28 and took place quite independently of Paul in areas such as Rome and Egypt which were not evangelized by Paul. Though without Paul the issue of Gentile membership of the eschatological people of God would no doubt have been posed and debated in rather different ways, it is likely that without Paul there would have been general acceptance of the terms of the apostolic decree (Acts 15:19–20, 28–29), which did not have a Pauline theological basis but established unequivocally that Gentile Christians belong to the people of God as Gentiles, not by becoming Jews.29 The prominence of Paul’s missionary travels in Acts should not disguise their geographical limitations. In Acts, as in Romans, it is clear that Christianity – Gentile as well as Jewish – was well-established in Rome (soon to be the most important church of all) quite independently of Paul.30 Though Paul had worked with some of those Christians in Rome whom he especially mentions in Romans 16 (verses 3–4, 7, 13), it is notable that all these – Prisca and Aquila, Andronicus and Junia, Rufus and his mother (cf. Mark 15:21) – had been Christians before they met Paul. The two latter pairs must have been very early members of the Jerusalem church, as were other 28 Cf. the rather desperate attempt by Hengel and Schwemer, Paul Between Damascus, 149, to postulate Paul’s influence on the Jerusalem ‘pillar’ apostles. 29 See R. Bauckham, ‘James and the Gentiles (Acts 15.13–21),’ chapter 7 in B. Witherington III ed., History, Literature and Society in the Book of Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 154–184; and Bauckham, ‘James and the Jerusalem Church,’ 450–480. 30 On the origins of the church in Rome, see W. Wiefel, ‘The Jewish Community in Ancient Rome and the Origins of Roman Christianity’; P. Lampe, ‘The Roman Christians of Romans 16,’ both in K. P. Donfried ed., The Romans Debate (expanded edition; Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson, 1991) 85–101, 216–230; R. Brändle and E. W. Stegemann, ‘The Formation of the First “Christian Congregations” in Rome in the Context of the Jewish Congregations,’ in K. P. Donfried and P. Richardson ed., Judaism and Christianity in First-Century Rome (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) 117–127.

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travelling missionaries: Peter and Philip, Barnabas and Mark, the brothers of the Lord (1 Cor 9:5), Silas / Sylvanus. Christianity almost certainly reached Rome from Jerusalem, quite possibly even before Paul’s conversion, and soon attracted Gentiles already associated with the Jewish synagogues in the city. Even in Luke’s account of the Pauline mission in the peculiarly Pauline mission areas of the north-east Mediterranean, we can detect hints of what might have happened even there had Paul not travelled there: Barnabas and Mark go to Cyprus without Paul (15:39); Prisca and Aquila, presumably converted to Christianity in Rome, come to Corinth (18:2); the Alexandrian Apollos is teaching in Ephesus and is assisted in his understanding of the Gospel by Prisca and Aquila (18:24–26), before evangelizing in Corinth, without having met Paul (18:27–28; cf. 1 Cor 3:6). Paul was probably the most gifted evangelist and the most fertile theological thinker of the first Christian generation, though he himself would have seen only the power of God at work in his own weakness. But he worked within the context of the remarkably vigorous and creative movement which was earliest Christianity. The attempt to make Paul solely responsible for anything is either a kind of modern theological Marcionism or a reflection of the modern notion of original genius. The historical Paul is not diminished if we conclude that, although without Paul much would have been different about the way the early Christian movement would have spread across the Roman Empire, it would still have spread, with much the same long-term effects.

18. Covenant, Law and Salvation in the Jewish Apocalypses* The apocalypses are a literature of revelation in which seers receive, by heavenly agency, revelations of the mysteries of creation and the cosmos, history and eschatology. Within the common literary genre and this rather broad definition of the kind of content the genre can be used to convey, the Jewish apocalypses of this period are fairly diverse, and on the subjects of covenant, law and salvation present a spectrum of approaches such as also characterizes other Jewish literature of the same period. Apocalyptic is not an ideology but a genre, and we must abjure the habit of considering that the apocalypses propound a certain kind of Judaism different from that expressed in other forms of Jewish literature. Those who read and valued apocalypses also read and valued hymns and halakhah and retellings of Israel’s history and wisdom literature. Even those who wrote apocalypses may well have written other forms of religious literature too. Not the ideology but the kind of content determined genre. Certainly there were traditions of thought continued in a succession of apocalypses, especially the Enoch literature, but there are also groups of apocalypses characterized by their varied responses to similar issues, as in the case of 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch and 3 Baruch. Some apocalypses have more in common with certain other works of different genre than they do with other apocalypses. However we characterize the variety in early Judaism – which can easily be either smoothed over or exaggerated – we should not confuse it with the variety of literary genres. The apocalypses included are those which are non-canonical (therefore excluding Daniel), indubitably or probably non-Christian Jewish, and which date from before 200 ce. Two which fulfil these conditions – the Apocalypse of Abraham and the Ladder of Jacob – have been omitted for reasons explained in section 3.1 below.

* First Publication as “Apocalypses,” chapter 6 in Donald A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien and Mark A Siefrid ed., Justification and Variegated Nomism, vol. 1: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism (Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 2001) 135–187.

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1. The Enoch Tradition 1.1 Introduction The work we know as 1 Enoch consists of several distinct compositions, all or most of which probably existed as independent works before being incorporated in this compilation of Enochic works: (1) the Book of Watchers (chapters 1–36); (2) the Parables (or Similitudes) of Enoch (chapters 37–71); (3) the Astronomical Book (chapters 72–82); (4) the Book of Dreams (chapters 83–90); (5) the Epistle of Enoch (chapters 91–105); (6) the Noah Appendix (chapters 106–107); (7) another Writing of Enoch (chapter 108). The complete text of this corpus of Enochic writings survives only in the Ethiopic version, but Greek versions of sections (1), (4), (5) and (6) are partially extant. Whether these are from a compilation of Enochic works in Greek corresponding to the scope of the Ethiopic 1 Enoch we cannot be sure. All of the four sections partially extant in Greek are also evidenced among the fragments of Enoch writings in Aramaic from Qumran. These fragments are from several manuscripts,1 some of which show that at Qumran there was a compilation of Enochic writings somewhat different from that which we know as 1 Enoch. It comprised: (1) the Book of Watchers; (2) the Book of Giants; (3) the Book of Dreams; (4) the Epistle of Enoch; (5) the Noah Appendix. As well as manuscripts which probably contained all these five components, there are manuscripts which probably contained only the Book of Watchers, which probably contained only the Book of Giants, and which perhaps contained only the Epistle of Enoch, suggesting that these were also known as independent works. In addition, there are fragments of manuscripts of the Astronomical Book, in a considerably longer form than that preserved in the Ethiopic version, too long to be incorporated with other Enochic works in a single manuscript. Thus the Qumran fragments preserve, in fragmentary form, the original Aramaic of all sections of Ethiopic 1 Enoch, except for the Parables, which, so far as the evidence goes, was not known at Qumran, and chapter 108. (The Parables probably was first written in Aramaic, but we still know only the Ethiopic version. Chapter 108 may have been added to the Enochic collection in Greek, but is still only extant in Ethiopic.) It also appears likely that the particular collection of Enochic works we know as 1 Enoch has been

1 On the scope of the manuscripts, see J. T. Milik ed., The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments from Qumrân Cave 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976); F. García Martínez, Qumran and Apocalyptic: Studies on the Aramaic Texts from Qumran (SJDJ 9; Leiden: Brill, 1992) 46–47; L. T. Stuckenbruck, The Book of Giants from Qumran (TSAJ 63: Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1997).

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formed on the basis of the collection known at Qumran,2 with the Parables of Enoch substituted for the Book of Giants, and an abridged version of the Astronomical Book integrated into the collection. This second compilation of writings of Enoch is almost certainly also a Jewish compilation from the Second Temple period, but very probably made at a considerably later date than the compilation known at Qumran. It is probable that all the Enoch writings known at Qumran date from before the middle of the second century bce. The Book of Watchers and the Book of Giants3 (the latter written with knowledge of the former) date from the third century, as does the Astronomical Book, which many regard as the oldest of the Enochic works. The Epistle of Enoch, though it has often been dated to the first century bce, is probably pre-Maccabean,4 while the Book of Dreams was certainly written during the Maccabean revolt. Thus the Enochic writings known and valued at Qumran all date from before the foundation of the Qumran community (which may also be true of most of the pseudepigraphal works known but not written at Qumran). The absence of the Parables of Enoch shows only that it was written outside Qumran at a later date. Since it probably presupposes the Book of Watchers, but also seems to incorporate traditions both similar to and differing from those in the Book of Watchers,5 it is evidence that the Enoch writings were read and traditions about Enoch transmitted in circles outside Qumran. On internal evidence, the Parables are most plausibly dated to the first century ce before 70. The New Testament letter of Jude, which alludes to material in the Book of Watchers, chapter 80 of 1 Enoch (whether or not this is an original part of the Astronomical Book), and the Book of Dreams,6 is also evidence that 2 It is possible that 1 Enoch is a compilation of Enochic works known to the compiler only as independent works. But (1) it shares with the Qumran collection the order: Book of Watchers, Book of Dreams, Epistle of Enoch; and (2) it has the Noah Appendix (chapters 106–107) which most probably owes its place in both Enoch collections not to a preexisting connexion with the Epistle of Enoch in particular, but to its having been added to the Qumran collection as an appendix to the whole collection. See García Martínez, Qumran and Apocalyptic, 95–96. 3 On the date of the Book of Giants, see Stuckenbruck, The Book of Giants, 28–31. 4 I agree with García Martínez, Qumran and Apocalyptic, 79–94, who argues, contrary to much previous scholarship, that there are no convincing arguments for treating the Apocalypse of Weeks (1 Enoch 93:3–10; 91:11–17) as an independent work which preexisted the rest of the Epistle of Enoch. He also argues correctly that the Apocalypse of Weeks must have been written before the Maccabean Revolt, and so that the whole Epistle of Enoch, of which the Apocalypse of Weeks is an originally integral part, must also be pre-Maccabean. 5 D. W. Suter, Tradition and Composition in the Parables of Enoch (SBLDS 47; Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1979), especially chapter 4. 6 R. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter (WBC 50; Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1983) 7, 37–40, 50–53, 87–91, 94–99; idem, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1990) 137–141, 188–201, 211–216. In Jude and the Relatives, chapter 7, I

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the major Enochic writings were known and valued outside Qumran, as is the popularity of Enochic writings in post-apostolic Christianity.7 Thus, although the major Enochic writings may derive from a community or tradition that the Qumran community regarded as its predecessor,8 it would be a mistake to associate them too closely with Qumran. The Enochic tradition was continued also apart from Qumran. This is clear also from the last Enochic work9 that concerns us: 2 Enoch, which is unfortunately preserved only in an Old Slavonic version and in differing recensions that make it very difficult to distinguish earlier and later forms of the text. It is a single work (though some think the final chapters, 69–73, a secondary addition), probably presupposing at least some of the earlier Enochic writings and representing itself as Enoch’s last testament to his descendants, recounting the last revelations made to him before his final translation to heaven. Since, unlike the other Enochic works, 2 Enoch uses the scheme of seven heavens, through which Enoch ascends, viewing the contents of each and the throne of God in the highest, it is unlikely to date from before the first century ce, when other evidence suggests that that particular form of visionary ascent was first employed in apocalypses.10 If its references to the temple are to the Jerusalem temple, it would date from before 70, but they may not be. If 3 Baruch stands in a polemical relationship to it,11 then the early second century is the latest plausible date. It is clear that the various Enoch writings form a distinctive tradition of thought and writing. This does not necessarily imply that they derive from a single, historically continuous socio-religious group, though this may be plausible for some or all of the Enochic writings known at Qumran. It does mean that later writers in the tradition knew and depended on earlier Enochic writings, and that certain central themes and concerns run through the literature, in spite of some ideological variations between some of the also argued that the Lukan genealogy of Jesus derives from the same early Christian circle as the letter of Jude and depends on the scheme of history found in the Book of Watchers and the Apocalypse of Weeks in the Epistle of Enoch. 7 R. Bauckham, ‘The Fall of the Angels as the Source of Philosophy in Hermias and Clement of Alexandria,’ VC 39 (1985) 313–330; J. C. VanderKam, ‘1 Enoch, Enochic Motifs, and Enoch in Early Christian Literature,’ in J. C. VanderKam and W. Adler ed., The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity (CRINT 3/4; Assen: Van Gorcum / Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996) 33–101. 8 See now G. Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis: The Parting of the Ways between Qumran and Enochic Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998). 9 Other Jewish and Christian Enochic works, including so-called 3 Enoch and the Seventh Vision of Enoch, date from too late a period to be relevant to our present purpose. 10 R. Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead: Studies on the Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (Supplements to Novum Testamentum 93; Leiden: Brill, 1998) 84–85. 11 Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, 67.

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Enochic works. It is likely that the Book of Watchers was known to the authors of all the other Enochic works, apart from the Astronomical Book, which may have been written before the Book of Watchers. It was certainly the most influential of the Enochic writings and it set the agenda of themes and concerns which run through the others to a greater or less extent. For this reason we shall begin our survey with the Book of Watchers and discuss it at greatest length. The survey will not include the Book of Giants, whose surviving fragments are too small to provide material for our present purpose, or the Astronomical Book, whose relevance to our concerns is very limited.12 1.2 Book of Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36) From the Qumran manuscripts which begin with the first five chapters of 1 Enoch and seem to have included only the Book of Watchers, we know that these first five chapters formed the introduction to the Book of Watchers when it was an independent book and were not written as an introduction to the whole collection of Enochic works, admirably as they also fulfil this latter function. Very probably the Book of Watchers incorporates earlier sources, but we cannot easily tell how far they were rewritten in the book as we have it, and, since it was this book that was influential on the rest of the Enoch tradition and much more widely also, we are justified in considering the Book of Watchers as a unity. The book has three main themes, corresponding to successive parts of it. The first is Enoch’s prophecy of the universal judgment to come, addressed to the elect who will live at the time of this judgment, seventy generations after Enoch’s own lifetime (chapters 1–3). The second is the story of the Watchers (chapters 6–16), disobedient angels who, in the time of Enoch’s father Jared, descended from heaven to satisfy their lust for women. The offspring of these unions were the giants, who tyrannized the earth with their violence in the period before the Flood. The Watchers also corrupted humanity by revealing forbidden and dangerous heavenly knowledge. The story is a myth of the origin of evil (cf. especially 10:8). Although the Watchers were chained in the underworld, the giants were exterminated by their own violence, and the earth was cleansed of its corruption by the Flood, their evil has continued to influence humanity, since the ghosts of the giants survived as the evil spirits who are abroad in the world until the last judgment and are responsible for idolatrous religion. The story is linked to Enoch because he is commissioned by God to announce to the Watchers their irrevocable judgment. The third element in the Book of Watchers is 12

Relevant material is in chapters 80–82, which readers may easily compare with our studies of the other Enochic works.

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the cosmological tours on which Enoch is taken by the angels, revealing the mysteries of the cosmos to him (chapters 17–36). Clearly the Book of Watchers is concerned with the origin and nature of evil, and provides, probably for the first time in extant Jewish literature, a fully-fledged account of evil as due to supernatural beings who corrupt almost all humanity and the earth itself. But it is even more concerned with the judgment of evil.13 The relevance of the antediluvian world to Enoch’s implied readers in the last generation of history before the last judgment is that it was a thoroughly corrupt world whose evil was comprehensively judged by God. Only the family of Noah was saved to make a fresh start after the Flood. The world in Enoch’s time functions as a type of the implied readers’ world and the judgments on the Watchers and humanity at the time of the Flood are a type of the coming last judgment, through which the righteous will be saved from angelic and human evil. Whereas in the first judgment in Enoch’s time evil was provisionally defeated, but survived to corrupt the world again, in the second and last judgment God will remove the threat of evil altogether. The same concern for judgment also appears in Enoch’s journeys, where, alongside other cosmological secrets, he sees both the places where the dead and the Watchers are presently awaiting the last judgment, and also the places where the Watchers and the unrighteous will be punished and the righteous will enjoy the blessings of paradise after the judgment. The introductory chapters also exploit the typological parallel in that Enoch’s condemnation of the wicked (chapters 2–5) parallels his announcements of judgment to the Watchers (13:1–3; 16:2–4).14 These chapters, with their vivid evocation of the coming theophany of the divine Judge (chapter 1), and their prophecy of salvation for the elect but irrevocable doom for the ungodly, are programmatic in that they define the book’s subject as the eschatological judgment and direct the implied readers to read the rest of the book with this in mind.15 The antediluvian story, perhaps inevitably, gives the immediate impression that the book is not concerned with the specifically Israelite themes of Abrahamic or Sinai covenant and Mosaic law, but only with universal evil 13 For the eschatological judgment as the focal point of the whole of 1 Enoch, see G. W. E. Nickelsburg, ‘The Apocalyptic Construction of Reality in 1 Enoch,’ in J. J. Collins and J. H. Charlesworth ed., Mysteries and Revelations: Apocalyptic Studies since the Uppsala Colloquium (JSPSS 9; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991) 52–53. He concludes that ‘there is scarcely a page of 1 Enoch that is not in some sense related to the expectation of an impending divine judgment’ (53). 14 In both cases there is reference to hardness of heart (5:4; 16:3), and in both cases there can be neither mercy nor peace for the offenders (5:4–5; 13:1–2; 16:4). 15 On chapters 1–5 as introduction to the Book of Watchers, see especially L. Hartman, Asking for a Meaning: A Study of 1 Enoch 1–5 (ConB(NT ) 12; Lund: Gleerup, 1979).138–145.

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affecting the world as a whole.16 Sacchi argues that, in the Book of Watchers, the ‘problem of evil is not connected in any way to the Law, nor does salvation come in any way through the Covenant.’17 This enables him to interpret the Enochic tradition as distinct from and opposed to the ‘official’ or ‘nomistic’ tradition of Jerusalem in early Second Temple Judaism, which relied on Moses and the law.18 In neglecting both Moses and the prophets, the Book of Watchers ‘gives the impression of a conscious break with the tradition.’19 However, we should note that Sacchi is able to maintain this position only by ignoring chapters 1–5, which, as we have seen, must be included if we are to characterize the theology of the Book of Watchers in the only form we know it, rather than excavating sources behind it. However, before considering this question in relation to chapters 1–5, we should first reject the possibility that Enoch and his teaching are presented in the Enochic tradition, or the Book of Watchers in particular, as an alternative to Moses and the law. The real contrast is between Enoch and the Watchers, both presented in terms of the ancient idea of culture-heroes who were responsible for introducing the arts and knowledge of civilization revealed to them by the gods.20 The Watchers are negative culture-heroes, who descended from heaven with secrets that led humanity astray and proved to be only ‘a worthless mystery’ (16:3).21 In this sense the story is doubtless a polemic and warning against pagan culture and learning. But in contrast to the misleading and harmful secrets revealed by the descending and disobedient angels there is the genuine revelation of heavenly secrets given to Enoch when he ascends to heaven and keeps company with the holy angels. In this aspect, therefore, the stories of Enoch and the Watchers function to draw a sharp distinction between pagan culture and the wisdom cultivated in the Jewish circles from which the early Enochic literature comes. For this purpose, in view of the importance attached to antiquity in such contexts, the antediluvian Enoch, as ancient as any of the 16 But note that on his travels Enoch sees the land of Israel and the environs of Mount Zion and Jerusalem (unnamed and, of course, in Enoch’s time, before there was a city or temple there) (chapters 26–27), and is told about the temple in Jerusalem in the eschatological age (25:5–6). 17 P. Sacchi, Jewish Apocalyptic and its History (tr. W. J. Short; JSPSS 20; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, n. d.) 22. 18 Sacchi, Jewish Apocalyptic, 18–19, 106–107. A rather similar view is taken by M. Barker, The Older Testament (London: SPCK , 1987). 19 Sacchi, Jewish Apocalyptic, 58. 20 Bauckham, ‘The Fall of the Angels,’ 314–319. 21 This translation follows the Ethiopic rather than the Greek, with M. A. Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978) 102–103, against M. Black, The Book of Enoch or 1 Enoch (SVTP 7; Leiden, Brill, 1985) 35, 155, who prefers an emended form of the Greek text at this point. Elsewhere my quotations of 1 Enoch are from Black’s translation unless otherwise noted.

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culture-heroes to whom pagans traced their culture, was more useful than Abraham or Moses, who were also portrayed as culture-heroes in some Jewish literature. But the secrets revealed and communicated by Enoch in the Book of Watchers (chapters 17–36), as also in the Astronomical Book and in the Parables, in no way compete with the Torah. Their subject-matter is different and complementary. There is certainly a genuine element of universalism in the Book of Watchers, which persists through much of the rest of the Enochic tradition. The coming judgment is emphatically represented as a universal one (1:7–9), while, when the earth has been cleansed of evil, ‘all the children of men are to become righteous and all nations shall serve and bless me [God], and all shall worship me’ (10:21). On the other hand, Hartman has argued at length and convincingly that chapters 1–5 evoke God’s covenant with Israel as their ‘referential background.’22 We may note especially that 1:1, 3–4, 9 allude unmistakably to Deuteronomy 33:1–2 (along with other passages in the Hebrew Bible), implying that the author, like some other Jewish writers, read Deuteronomy 33–34, the last words of Moses in the Torah, as prophecy of the future history of Israel, and 33:2 as referring to the eschatological theophany of God as judge.23 The reference to Sinai as the location of the theophany (1 Enoch 1:4) is borrowed from Deuteronomy 33:1, but did not have to be had the author not wished to evoke the giving of the law by which God will judge the world.24 Hartman also shows the affinity of chapters 2–5 with the covenantal denunciation speeches of the Hebrew Bible and early Jewish literature, in which those addressed and denounced are those who had violated the covenant.25 It looks as though, while speaking of universal

22 Hartman, Asking for a Meaning. The reason for which J. J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination (New York: Crossroad, 1984) 38, rejects Hartman’s argument is not cogent. He claims that chapters 2–5 refer to the law of nature rather than the law of Moses. But the example of the works of creation which never deviate from obeying God’s commandments to them cannot supply humans with the content of what God requires of them. The meaning is that, by contrast with nature’s obedience to God’s commands to them, the apostates are disobedient to God’s commands to them (in the Torah). 23 Cf. D. J. Harrington, ‘Interpreting Israel’s History: The Testament of Moses as a Rewriting of Deut. 31–34,’ in G. W. E. Nickelsburg ed., Studies on the Testament of Moses (SBLSCS 4; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Scholars Press, 1973) 59–68. TM os 10:1–7 describes the eschatological theophany in similar terms to 1 Enoch 1:3–9, because both passages allude to the same OT sources. 24 In Deuteronomy 33:2 YHWH comes ‘from Sinai,’ whereas in 1 Enoch 1:4 he will ‘tread upon the earth upon Mount Sinai’ (a mixed allusion to Mic 1:3 and Deut 33:2). The difference does not indicate that ‘Sinai has a place in Enoch’s revelation, but it is not the ultimate source,’ as Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination, 37, suggests. Rather 1 Enoch corrects the text of Deuteronomy because it understands God to dwell in heaven, not on Mount Sinai. 25 Hartman, Asking for a Meaning, 49–95.

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judgment, these chapters focus on those who are faithful to God’s covenant with Israel and those who have committed apostasy from it. The two categories of people are designated in these chapters, on the one hand, ‘the righteous’ (Aramaic : 1:1, 8, 5:6) and ‘the elect’ ( : 1:1, 3, 8; 5:7, 8), and, on the other hand, ‘the sinners’ ( : 1:9; 5:6, 7) and ‘the wicked’ ( : 1:1, 9; 5:6, 7). Of these terms, the most interesting is ‘the elect,’ which also occurs once more in the Book of Watchers (25:5), occurs just twice in the Epistle of Enoch (93:2, 10),26 and is frequent in the Parables of Enoch (38:2, 3, 4; 39:6, 7; 40:5; 41:2; 45:3, 5; 48:1, 9; 50:1; 51:5; 56:6, 8; 58:1, 2, 3; 60:1; 61:4, 13; 62:7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 15; 70:3), often used alongside ‘the righteous’ to refer to the same people as ‘the righteous and elect.’ The prominent use of the term in 1 Enoch 1–5 is very significant. The plural of the noun (‘chosen ones,’ ‘elect’) is rare in the Hebrew Bible. On just four occasions, in closely related texts, it refers to Israel as ‘his’ or ‘your [YHWH ’s] chosen ones’ (Pss 105:6, 43; 106:5; 1 Chron 16:13). But also three times in Isaiah 65 ‘my [YHWH ’s] chosen ones’ (vv 9, 15, 22), parallel with ‘my servants’ (vv 8–9, 13–15) and ‘my people’ (v 22), refers to the righteous remnant of faithful Israelites contrasted with the apostates of Israel whom God will destroy (vv 1–8, 11–15). That this chapter of Isaiah is the actual source of the usage of ‘the elect’ in 1 Enoch 1–5 must be virtually certain since 1 Enoch 5:6 clearly alludes to Isaiah 65:15, one of the three verses in which ‘my chosen ones’ appears in that chapter. There are other echoes of this and neighbouring chapters of Isaiah in the Book of Watchers: 10:17–19 (cf. 5:9) alludes to Isaiah 65:20–23; the repeated theme that the righteous will have peace (1:8; 5:6–7, 9; 10:17) but the sinners will not have peace (5:4–5; 12:5–6; 13:1; 16:4) derives from Isaiah 57: 19, 21 (cf. 48:22; 60:17); and the idea of ‘the plant of righteousness’ (10:16, cf. 3) probably echoes Isaiah 60:21 b (cf. 61:3), while the first half of the same Isaianic verse seems to have influenced 1 Enoch 5:6–8 (cf. 10:21). Barker argues that the people whose prophet speaks in Trito-Isaiah, Israelites opposed to the innovative Deuteronomic temple establishment of the restoration period, actually were the people who preserved the Enoch traditions.27 It is less speculative to assume that the third-century author of the Book of Watchers, like many others in the Second Temple period, read the later chapters of Isaiah as the key eschatological prophecies depicting the 26 Sacchi, Jewish Apocalyptic, 115, claims that ‘for the first time the righteous are called “elect”’ in 93:2, while conceding in a footnote (5) that, ‘The word “elect” appears also in the first chapter of Enoch, where it constitutes a problem by reason of its isolated character.’ He missed the occurrences not only in 5:7, 8, but also in 25:5. He correctly refers to Trito-Isaiah, but is mistaken in thinking that the term there refers to ‘the Jews.’ He also fails to notice the significant influence which 1 Enoch 1–5 has exercised on the Epistle of Enoch. 27 Barker, The Older Testament, chapters 1, 7, 8.

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coming judgment and restoration of Israel. He saw the widespread apostasy of his own time, as he viewed it, predicted in Isaiah 65, and the faithful Israelites of his time, with whom he identified, as the elect of YHWH to whom the same chapter refers. These chosen ones were such because they constituted the true Israel, the elect nation, YHWH ’s true covenant partners, while other Israelites had excluded themselves from Israel by their apostasy. The apostasy is described only in general terms (5:4), while it is left entirely unstated what is entailed by being righteous. The righteous are evidently not sinless, since they are promised that they will be sinless after the judgement, as a result of God’s gift of wisdom to them (5:8–9).28 What is at stake seems to be a fundamental attitude and practice of loyalty to God and his law, contrasted with a fundamental refusal of obedience. The lack of reference to specific commandments of the law does not mean that they are unimportant.29 In part, this is a matter of genre.30 It is possible that behind the accusation of apostasy lie disputes about the correct interpretation of the law, but halakhic discussion does not belong to the genre of apocalypse and would not be appropriate on the lips of Enoch. Our text presupposes its readers know what is involved in keeping the law properly and focuses on the fundamental distinction between those who live by it and those who reject it. This is also why there is an absolute and apparently exclusive division of people into the righteous and the wicked, a characteristic that continues in the rest of the Enochic tradition and in other apocalypses too. (But it may be noted that in this respect chapters 1–5 seem not entirely consistent with what Enoch sees, according to chapter 22, in the place where the dead are kept awaiting the judgment. Here there are two classes of the wicked: sinners who escaped justice in their lifetime and will be assigned to punishment at the last judgment, and those ‘who were not wholly lawless’ but ‘collaborated’ with the lawless. The latter will experience neither punishment nor resurrection at the day of judgment. This passage is not only the earliest Jewish depiction of the intermediate state of the dead. It is also unique: no other Second Temple period Jewish text classifies the dead into more than the two categories of righteous and wicked.) 28 This is clear in the Ethiopic, translated by Knibb, The Ethiopic Book, 66–67, but the matter is more obscure in the additional material found in the Greek at this point. 29 On previous discussion of this issue in the apocalypses generally, see J. C. H. Lebram, ‘The Piety of the Jewish Apocalyptists,’ in D. Hellholm, Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East (2 nd edition; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1989) 177–178. 30 The Qumran community provides clear evidence that one and the same religious community could read and value apocalypses, halakhah and wisdom paraenesis. These are different genres of literature with different and complementary functions in the life of a Jewish group. There are no necessary lines of ideological difference between the genres.

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In chapters 1–5 there is no exhortation to the wicked to repent or to the righteous to continue in obedience. There is simply announcement of judgment on the apostates and mercy and peace for the righteous. Presumably, there is no possibility of forgiveness for the wicked, any more than there is for the paradigm apostates, the Watchers (12:4–14:7). As for the righteous, the text simply presupposes that they are living obediently and need primarily the reassurance that justice is going to be done. Similarly, there is no indication of the way the two attributes ‘righteous’ and ‘elect’ relate to each other: it is simply assumed that the elect are those who are loyal and obedient to God. This is generally true of the rest of the Enochic literature also, though exhortations to the righteous not to be deflected from the path of righteousness sometimes occur (e. g. 91:3–4, 19). 1.3 The Epistle of Enoch (1 Enoch 91–105) The Epistle of Enoch comprises, in the first place, introductory material, including an account of Enoch’s writing of the letter for his children and for later generations, and exhortations addressed to his children (91:1–10, 18–19; 92:1–5). Secondly, there is the Apocalypse of Weeks, a summary and interpretation of world history from creation to new creation (93:1–10; 91:11–17). Thirdly, there are several chapters of admonitions addressed to the righteous and woes addressed to the sinners in the last days (94–105). The Apocalypse of Weeks helps to set the context of the work as the writer himself envisages it. The first event after the destruction of the first temple is that ‘a perverse generation shall arise, and many shall be its misdeeds and all its doings shall be apostate’ (93:9). Then ‘the elect shall be chosen, as witnesses to righteousness, from the eternal plant of righteousness’ (93:10). There can be no doubt that these elect are the group with whom the real author identifies and whom he regards as the righteous remnant of Israel in his own time. The description of them recalls 91:2: ‘the children of righteousness and the eternal elect sprung from the plant of righteousness and uprightness’ – evidently the same people. It also recalls the description of Abraham at an earlier point in the Apocalypse of Weeks: ‘a man shall be chosen as a plant of righteous judgment; and his posterity shall come forth as a plant of eternal righteousness’ (93:5). The plant (cf. also 10:3, 16; 62:8; 84:6) is an image, drawn from Isaiah 60:21, of the chosen ones, stressing God’s gracious act of election. The picture appears to be that from the descendants of Abraham God chose those who now constitute the elect ones in a time of widespread apostasy when the rest of Israel no longer qualify for that description. Again the existence of this group is attributed to God’s act of choice. But in all cases, as in 1 Enoch 1–5, this language of election and the plant is closely associated with language of righteousness

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(93:2, 5, 10). The elect ones are also ‘the children of righteousness’ (93:2; cf. 105:2), ‘witnesses to righteousness’ (93:10) and simply ‘all the righteous’ (91:12). In this case, we may say a little more about the relationship of God’s grace and human activity in righteousness than was possible for the Book of Watchers. Here the righteous are exhorted ‘to seek and choose for yourselves righteousness, and a life of goodness’ (94:4): thus election is not envisaged as contradicting human freedom to choose the good.31 But it is also noteworthy that, in the resurrection, when for the first time people will be able to be wholly righteous forever, this is the result of God’s grace and power (92:3–5; cf. 91:17): God ‘will be gracious to the righteous and give him eternal uprightness’ (92:4). After the Apocalypse of Weeks, the righteous are not called ‘the elect’ again, no doubt because the admonitions and woes concern the contrast between the ways of life of the two categories of people. Besides ‘the righteous,’ they are occasionally called ‘holy’ (100:5), ‘pious’ (100:5; 103:9; 104:12) and ‘wise’ (98:1, 9, 99:10; 100:6; 104:12). The last is an indication of the influence of wisdom tradition, with its contrasts of wise and foolish, righteous and sinners. In line with this, we also find the image of the two ways: ‘the paths of righteousness’ and ‘the paths of wrong-doing’ (91:18–19; cf. 93:14; 94:1–4; 99:10; 104:13). All this accords with the absolute and exclusive distinction between the two groups which, as in 1 Enoch 1–5, runs through the whole of chapters 94–105. It also accords with the assumption that what is at stake is a matter of fundamental loyalty and life-orientation. The only warning to the righteous is, in effect, to keep to the way of righteousness and not to apostatize (94:3; 99:10; 104:5), while of ‘the truly righteous’32 it is said that ‘no unrighteousness has been found in them till they die’ (102:10). We hear nothing of repentance or forgiveness, though a single verse addressed to the wicked exhorts them not to do evil (104:9). The contrast between righteous and sinners is also given quite concrete social definition. The sinners are powerful, rich, arrogant, unscrupulous, and oppress the poor, such that ‘the paths of wrong-doing’ can also be called ‘the paths of oppression’ (91:19). They are not Gentiles,33 but Jewish apostates, some of whom cause others to apostatize (99:1): these ‘alter the 31 Some scholars, including Sacchi, Jewish Apocalyptic, 114, cite 98:4 as evidence that the Epistle of Enoch stresses human responsibility for sin to the extent of denying that evil was brought into the world by the Watchers or Satan. But the text of 98:4 is very uncertain: see Black, The Book of Enoch, 301. The myth of the fall of the Watchers is so integral to the rest of the Enochic literature that we should need better evidence to conclude that the Epistle of Enoch rejects it. 32 On the translation, see Black, The Book of Enoch, 113. 33 But the rulers, who ignore the complaints of the righteous against the oppressors (103:14–15), could be Gentiles. Pagans appear in 91:9, and perhaps in 99:7–10 (though here the meaning may be that Jewish apostates practise pagan idolatry).

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words of truth, and pervert the everlasting law, and count themselves to be without sin’ (99:2; cf. 98:15). The righteous, who by comparison with the wicked are few (103:9, 15), are objects of their contempt, persecution and oppression (94:11; 95:7; 96:8). This situation explains why it is that, whereas the sins of the oppressors are amply characterized, almost nothing is said about what the way of righteousness entails. It is assumed that they are pursuing that path, and what they primarily need is hope and courage, not to be intimidated by the oppressors, not to be discouraged by their apparent impunity (95:3; 96:1, 3; 97:1; 104:2, 4, 6). The message of the certain doom of the wicked provides for this need. The wicked, who might suppose that their evils go unnoticed, are assured that ‘all your iniquities are written down day by day until the day of judgment’ (98:8; cf. 104:7). The well-known formula that they will be judged according to their deeds is also used (95:5; 100:7).34 Neither of these motifs should be understood in the sense of a nice calculation of the guilt of individual deeds. Both are consistent with the holistic sense of judgment on a whole way of life, and the main rhetorical function is to stress that the wicked will not escape justice. 1.4 The Book of Dreams (1 Enoch 83–90) We need pause only briefly over this Enochic work, which contains little of direct relevance to our theme, though it continues the dominant interest of the Enoch tradition in the origin and nature of evil and especially in its coming eradication through eschatological judgment and renewal. Most of the work consists of the Animal Apocalypse, an allegory of history from creation to new creation. Up to the Flood it follows the Book of Watchers. The account of the history of Israel differs in emphasis from the Apocalypse of Weeks, in that it stresses not only the repeated apostasy of the people but also the hostility of the Gentile nations, whom God permits to punish Israel. (The relative dates of the two works, before and during the persecution of Antiochus and the Maccabean revolt, may well account for this difference.) The theme of angelic evil affecting human history is also extended from the antediluvian period, the subject of the Book of Watchers, to the period of Israel’s history from the exile onwards, in which Israel’s sufferings are attributed to angelic shepherds who abuse their God-given position over their flock. Finally, the Animal Apocalypse illustrates again the universal element in the Enoch tradition: although the Gentile nations feature in most of the 34 On this motif in OT and OT Pseudepigrapha, see K. L. Yinger, Paul, Judaism and Judgment According to Deeds (SNTSMS 105; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) chapters 1–2; and for early Christian literature, see Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, 195–198.

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history as enemies and oppressors of Israel, in the eschatological age all the nations will worship God in the temple, and the very distinction between Israel and the nations will disappear (90:33–38). The point is strikingly made by the symbolism. During the history of Israel, the pagan enemies of Israel are represented by unclean animals, following the notion found in Leviticus that the food laws serve to represent the distinction between the holy people of God and the other nations as profane. (Thus the Mosaic law, never explicitly mentioned in the Animal Apocalypse, is not absent from its conceptuality.) But in the eschatological age all the species, representing the various nations, are transformed into white bulls (90:38), as Adam had been (85:3). 1.5 E. P. Sanders on 1 Enoch Since Sanders excludes the Parables of Enoch from his discussion, this is the appropriate point at which to pause to compare our findings with those of Sanders’ investigation of 1 Enoch,35 which is one of the two apocalyptic works he discusses. Sanders’ work depends on an earlier stage of scholarly study of 1 Enoch, still dominated by the work of R. H. Charles and unaffected by the Qumran evidence, but this is not decisive for his assessment of the ideological stance of the major Enochic writings. Broadly, our findings coincide with Sanders’. It is true that, in the perspective of the texts, the righteous are the true Israel, sharply distinguished from the sinners, who are Jewish apostates or Gentile oppressors. It is true that the classifications are holistic, concerned with fundamental and permanent loyalties rather than with individual transgressions or good works. Obedience to the law is a matter of ‘staying in’ rather than ‘getting in.’ It is usually taken for granted that the true Israel will inherit the promises God in his grace has made to his elect people. Indeed, the general picture of the coming judgment is not that the righteous will come well out of the same judgment according to works in which the sinners are condemned, but that only the sinners are judged.36 Sanders recognizes that the texts tend to presuppose a rather narrow definition of the righteous or the true Israel, compared with the broader definition he finds in the rabbinic literature, but that the texts offer few clues to the criteria which distinguish the faithful from the apostates. (In passing, we may note that this enabled these writings to be popular among groups, such as the early Christians, who would have used different criteria from 35

E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Religion (London: SCM Press, 1977) 346–362. But it is debatable whether Yinger, Paul, is right to cite 60:6 as evidence of this point: I am inclined to think the reference (in a disordered textual context) is to the Flood and to the Noahic covenant. 36

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those used by the circles in which the texts originated.) The reason is that the implied readers are in no doubt that they belong to the category of the righteous, and understand the boundaries of this category from other genres of literature. (Sanders does not here make this latter point, but it would be congenial to his general approach to Second Temple Judaism.) However, it is less clear that Sanders does justice to these texts by claiming that they exhibit ‘much the same pattern of religion’ as he finds in the Rabbis.37 This claim results from isolating the particular question he is pursuing from its wider context of thought, as well as from playing down the material difference between larger and narrower definitions of the true Israel in favour of a purely formal understanding of the issue. It must be recognized that the Enoch literature deals with issues of righteousness and salvation in the context of a vision of a world presently dominated by evil. Evil on a cosmic and universal scale is the inescapable problem to which the solution is eschatological judgment. The righteous are those who are already part of God’s solution to the cosmic problem of evil. Their election and perseverance (getting in and staying in) take place in a context in which apostasy (getting out) is widespread and domination by the pagan enemies of God and his people an all too familiar fact, while behind these earthly realities the seductive and oppressive power of supernatural evil is vividly perceived. Addressed to the righteous in such a context, the texts modulate between, on the one hand, assuring them of their election, of God’s mercy to the elect and of the certainty of his promises to them, and, on the other hand, encouraging them to remain loyal to God and his law in very adverse situations. Less often remarked is the striking combination of the focus on the righteous remnant of Israel and of the universal and cosmic vision of these writings. Contrary to some caricatures of apocalyptic literature, the Enochic tradition retains the prophetic hope for the time when all the nations will acknowledge and worship the God of Israel. Not merely the vindication of the righteous, important as that is in this literature, but universal righteousness is the outcome of the contest against evil in which the righteous are currently engaged. 1.6 The Parables of Enoch (1 Enoch 37–71) Read as part of the collection of Enochic writings, the Parables of Enoch seems in many respects a less coherent version of the Book of Watchers. Most of the key themes of the latter recur, though without the narrative framework of the Book of Watchers and with more movement between the events of Enoch’s time and tableaux of the coming last judgment. As in 1 Enoch 1–5 and the Epistle of Enoch the main focus is the respective 37

Sanders, Paul, 361.

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destinies of the righteous and the sinners, and as in the Epistle of Enoch the righteous are an oppressed group while the sinners are the powerful oppressors. The most innovative and most studied feature of the Parables is the figure of the Son of Man, a heavenly being who, as the Righteous One and the Elect One, is a kind of heavenly counterpart of the righteous and elect, and who will be God’s agent in the judgment, enacting the vengeance of the righteous on their enemies. He functions as a kind of guarantee of the destiny of the righteous, who will live with him in blessedness for ever. Of the various terms for the righteous, ‘righteous’ is the most common (48 occurrences), followed by ‘elect’ (30) and ‘holy’ (17, used more commonly of the angels). Other key descriptions are ‘the righteous and elect whose works depend on the Lord of spirits’ (38:2), ‘the elect who depend on the Lord of spirits’ (40:5), ‘the faithful who depend on the Name of the Lord of spirits’ (46:8), those ‘who believe on the Name of the Lord of spirits for ever and ever’ (43:4), those ‘who have made supplication to my glorious Name’ (45:3), ‘those who hold fast to righteousness’ (61:4). These descriptions are distinctive of the Parables, not found in the other Enochic writings, and, along with the frequent use of ‘elect’ (paralleled only in 1 Enoch 1–5), serve to emphasize the grace of God and the corresponding belief, faith and reliance on God on the part of the elect. In view of what we have already said about 1 Enoch 1–5 and the Epistle of Enoch, it will not be surprising that nothing is said about the righteous deeds of the righteous (other than that they ‘hold fast to righteousness’) or their obedience to the law, presumably not because these things are denied, but because they are taken entirely for granted. They do not need exhortation to be righteous, but assurance that God and the Son of man are on their side, that they will be vindicated against the wicked, and that they have a secure destiny of blessing and righteousness. It is important that righteousness is represented as a quality (alongside mercy in 39:5 and wisdom in 48:1) which characterizes not only the coming judgment but also the life of the righteous with the Son of man for eternity (71:16–17). There is also a notion that righteousness in human and divine affairs corresponds to the order of the creation as Enoch perceives it in his cosmological journeys. The wicked are called not only sinners, but, more revealingly, ‘those who have denied the Name of the Lord of spirits’ (38:2; 45:2), those who ‘deny the name of the Lord of spirits’ (41:2; 45:1), those who ‘have denied the Lord of spirits and his Anointed One’ (48:10), those who ‘have denied the Lord of spirits’ (67:8, cf. 10) and ‘do not extol the Name of the Lord of spirits’ (46:6). These expressions might suggest Jewish apostates, as in 1 Enoch 1–5 and the Epistle of Enoch, but 46:7 characterizes them as idolworshippers and therefore presumably pagans. There and in most places the sinners are the kings, the mighty, the powerful, those who occupy or possess

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the earth (or the land). The judgment is to be a reversal of status, such that from then onwards ‘those who possess the earth will be neither powerful nor exalted’ (38:4). But there are some passages which seem to acknowledge a general class of sinners other than the powerful and the rulers (53; cf. 42). Jewish sinners seem never to be mentioned, and so the usual view that, as in other Enochic works, the righteous (called ‘the congregation of the righteous’ [38:1] and ‘the congregations of the godly’ [41:2]) are a group within the nation who considered themselves the true remnant of Israel is hard to verify. The powerful and the rulers are to be judged according to their works (45:3; 63:9; cf. 41:1), with a justice they themselves acknowledge (63:8–9). This justice requires that mercy is refused them even when at the time of judgment they ask for it (62–63; 38:5–6). But although this refusal of mercy applies to the arrogant oppressors, for Gentiles in general the Parables offers much more hope, in line with the ultimately universal emphasis of the Enochic tradition. When the Gentiles38 witness the victory of the elect over their oppressors, then they may repent and renounce their idols, and God will have compassion on them. His compassion grants salvation to those who repent, while his righteousness requires that those who do not repent must perish (50:2–5). 1.7 2 Enoch39 2 Enoch has much in common with other Enochic works, and probably presupposes specifically at least the Book of Watchers (some such background would be necessary, for example, to understand the appearance of the Watchers themselves in chapter 7). Enoch’s cosmic tour, accompanied by angels who show him cosmological and eschatological secrets, does not here take him to the edges of the world, as in the Book of Watchers, but upwards through the seven heavens to the throne of God. But this merely corresponds to a shift of cosmological picture in late Second Temple Judaism. As in the Book of Watchers and the Parables, revelations to Enoch are about the workings of the cosmos as well as eschatological matters, and the topics are probably connected by a sense that God’s judgment is part and parcel of God’s ordering of the cosmos. As in the Book of Watchers, Enoch in 2 Enoch sees the places of eschatological judgment, reward and punishment, already prepared as an integral part of creation. As in all the 38 This depends on Black’s interpretation of ‘others’ (50:2) as Gentiles: see Black, The Book of Enoch, 213. But it is in accord with the Isaianic expectation to which the description of the Son of man as ‘the light of the Gentiles’ (58:4) clearly also alludes. 39 For a survey of scholarship on 2 Enoch, see C. Böttrich, ‘Recent Studies in the Slavonic Book of Enoch,’ JSP 9 (1991) 35–42.

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Enoch literature, eschatological judgment is a very dominant theme. Similarly, 2 Enoch seems to rely on the implicit typology of its setting before the Flood: the sinfulness of humanity before the Flood parallels that of the end-time, the readers’ own time, and the Flood itself prefigures the eschatological judgment. More novel in the Enoch tradition is the considerable attention 2 Enoch gives to questions of cosmological origins: the processes of God’s creation of the world and of Adam. An important difference from the other Enoch literature is that 2 Enoch does not seem to address a situation in which the readers, a righteous minority, are troubled by widespread apostasy or by oppression. The function of eschatological promise and judgment as encouragement and consolation for the faithful is largely missing.40 Instead, there are considerable portions of ethical paraenesis, in which, exceptionally among the Enoch literature, the content of righteous living is expounded in some detail, and ethical exhortation is both accompanied by eschatological sanctions of punishment and reward and also frequently grounded in creation. But it is hardly correct to characterize the content of the exhortation as only ‘a simple ethical code,’41 since there are also cultic requirements, including animal sacrifice (2:2; 45:1–3; 59:1–5; 62:1; 66:2)42 and thrice-daily attendance at ‘the Lord’s temple’ (51:4).43 (These references are decisive in demonstrating the Jewish origin of 2 Enoch, which, if the references are to the Jerusalem temple cult, must date from before 70 ce. But the Jewish temple at Leontopolis in Egypt might be in view, if, as many have argued, 2 Enoch was written in Egypt.) Set as it is in the time of Enoch, Enoch has no reference to the covenants with Israel, the Torah or the history of Israel, except in a very indirect sense in the predictive reference to the preservation of Enoch’s books until the last generation of his descendants, when they will be revealed (35:2–3). This rather obscure statement may refer to 2 Enoch’s implied readers as ‘the faithful men.’ The ethical teaching is not obviously based on the Torah, but, as wisdom instruction, need not be seen as competitive with the Torah,44 just as Ben Sira’s wisdom was not meant to be an alternative to the law. Like the law, Enoch’s teaching is referred to as a yoke (48:8–9), no doubt because it embodies God’s commandments, also described as a yoke (34:1). 40

Chapter 50 is a partial exception, but even here the form is ethical exhortation. F. I. Andersen, ‘2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch,’ in Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1, 96 42 The book also depicts the practice of animal sacrifice by the righteous in the antediluvian period (68:5–7; 69:9–18; 70:2, 19–21), though no temple is mentioned. 43 Quotations of 2 Enoch are from the translation of Andersen, ‘2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch.’ 44 2 Enoch 47:2J seems to claim superiority for Enoch’s books over all other books ever to be written, but the relevant words are found only in recension J, and may not be original. 41

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It was not uncommon for Jews to see the essence of the Torah, without its specifically Jewish features, as known to people from the time of Adam. The strong insistence on monotheistic belief and worship throughout 2 Enoch is very typical of late Second Temple Jewish literature, and, since 2 Enoch is not plausibly a work of propaganda aimed at pagan readers, the implied readership can hardly be other than Jews and those Gentiles who attached themselves to synagogues and worshipped the God of Israel as the only god. The universalistic, not specifically Jewish, tenor of the book is therefore to be understood as a requirement for a work set in the antediluvian period and attributed to Enoch. The question is whether 2 Enoch takes for granted the specifically Jewish teaching known to its readers in the Hebrew scriptures or whether it defines a form of religion for which Enoch’s writings would take the place of the Torah of Moses. The former is more likely. But the consequence of this feature of 2 Enoch is that there are no covenantal features in 2 Enoch, no election or covenantal promises, only God’s commandments and rewards and punishments for observance or neglect of them. The major concerns of 2 Enoch’s many references to the last judgment are that nothing in a person’s life, inward or outward, will escape scrutiny, and that strict justice will be done, such that retribution or reward will correspond to merit. Several conventional motifs convey this. One is the light from which noone can hide, so that ‘there will be true judgment, without favouritism, for true and untrue alike’ (46:3J). Another is the book in which all the deeds of every person are recorded, so that they can be made known at the judgment (50:1; 52:15; 53:2–3; cf. 1 Enoch 98:8; 104:7; 2 Bar 24:1; ApZeph 7). According to 19:5(J) angels keep this exhaustive record of each life, but elsewhere Enoch himself is the scribe (50:1; 53:2–3).45 In either case, the scribe has the benefit of God’s total knowledge of a person, their inward thoughts as well as their outward deeds (53:3; cf. 66:3, 5), so that, once again, nothing can be hidden and noone can escape God’s judgment (50:1; 66:3, 5). 2 Enoch’s strong emphasis on the heart (in the biblical sense of the seat of thought and motivation) as the interior source of behaviour and on the need for purity of heart (e. g. 2:3; 45:3; 46:2; 61:1; 63:2) requires an emphasis on the full exposure of the heart to the divine scrutiny. Another aspect of judgment which emphasizes its absolute justice is the eschatological lex talionis,46 in which the punishment is described in a way that fits the crime or the reward in terms that parallel the righteous act. For example, ‘He who 45 For this role of Enoch, cf. Jub 4:23–24; TA br B10–11, and Coptic Christian literature discussed in B. A. Pearson, ‘The Pierpont Morgan Fragments of an Enoch Apocryphon,’ in G. W. E. Nickelsburg ed., Studies on the Testament of Abraham (SBLSCS 6; Missoula: Scholars Press, 1972) 244–249. 46 On this see Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, 123–124, 210–215.

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expresses anger to any person without provocation will reap anger in the great judgment’ (45:3J), while someone who willingly suffers financial loss for the sake of a brother can expect to receive ‘a full treasury’ in the age to come (50:5J; for other examples, positive and negative, see 2:2; 44:3 bJ; 45:1–2; 50:6A; 60:3). Finally, there is the image of weighing people or their deeds in the scales of justice (44:5; 49:2; 52:15).47 This motif is found also elsewhere in the Jewish apocalypses with reference to eschatological judgment (1 Enoch 41:1; 61:8; ApZeph 8:5). Tempting as it is to trace this motif to Egyptian origins,48 it is in fact no more common in Jewish and Christian literature of Egyptian origin than elsewhere,49 and its immediate source is certainly biblical: If you say, “Look, we did not know this” – does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it? And will he not repay all according to their deeds (Prov 24:12 NRSV ; cf. also Prov 16:2; 21:2; Job 31:6; Dan 5:27).

The significance of this text is that it couples the image of weighing with the formula about requiting each according to his or her deeds (also in Ps 62:12; Job 34:11; Jer 17:10), which became a standard way of describing the justice of the eschatological judgment in early Jewish literature.50 Though 2 Enoch does not use the formula, the image of weighing deeds is clearly intended in the same sense. Particularly interesting is the extended image in 44:5, which shows how it refers to the use of instruments for measuring by weight and quantity in the marketplace: Because on the day of the great judgment every weight and every measure and every set of scales will be just[,] as they are in the market. That is to say, each [person] will be weighed in the balance, and each will stand in the market, and each will find out his own measurement and in accordance with that measurement each will receive his reward (44:5J).

Evidently the just weights and measures are the divine standard of justice, and the correct price (reward) will be paid for each person’s weight or measurement on those scales.51 Peculiar to 2 Enoch seems to be the notion that a scale for weighing each person is already prepared for that person, along with a place for their judgment, before the person existed (49:2–3; 47 In 52:15 both scales and books are mentioned together at the judgment; the two images are also combined in TA br A12–13. 48 S. G. F. Brandon, The Judgment of the Dead (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967) 37–48, 120–126. 49 Pearson, ‘The Pierpont Morgan Fragments,’ 249. 50 Yinger, Paul, chapters 1–2; Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, 195–198. 51 Cf. the ‘measure for measure’ idea and terminology in Jewish and Christian literature: Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, 212.

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cf. 23:4). This is the extreme case of the notion, important in 2 Enoch, that judgment is an integral part of the cosmos as God has created and ordered it, as is expressed more generally in Enoch’s viewing of paradise and hell, already awaiting the inhabitants to be assigned to them at the last judgment (8–10; cf. 61:2–3). It is not explained how the assessment of recorded deeds or the weighing of people’s lives operates such as to produce two distinct categories of people, the righteous and the wicked. Even if there are also gradations of reward or punishment within each category (cf. 43:3J), the overall division into two categories, one destined for paradise, the other for hell, is everywhere taken for granted in 2 Enoch, as in other apocalypses and most early Jewish literature. In the Testament of Abraham (A12–14; B9) it is clear that people are assigned according to whether their sins outnumber their righteous deeds. But this crudely arithmetical notion can hardly be intended literally. We should probably think of a process of just judgment on the overall quality of a person’s whole life. In other apocalypses, we can detect the idea that the division into two categories at the judgment rests on the fundamental choice and loyalties of people, who direct their lives either in accordance with God’s commandments or in rejection of them, and that the deeds done and the lives lived are the outworking of this basic orientation of life in one or the other direction. One way in which this is expressed is the well-known picture of the two ways, one of which everyone must choose to take. This image is used of Adam in 2 Enoch 30:15J: And I [God] gave him [Adam] his free will; and I pointed out to him two ways – light and darkness. And I said to him, “This is good for you, but that is bad”; so that I might come to know whether he has love toward me or abhorrence, and so that it might become plain who among his race loves me.

It is clear that for 2 Enoch all of Adam’s descendants have the same free choice as Adam had. It may also be that 2 Enoch’s considerable emphasis on monotheistic faith and worship as opposed to polytheism and idolatry implies that other acts follow from a fundamental choice between faith in or rejection of the one true God.52 Something like this is suggested by the images of the two yokes and the sowing of two kinds of seed: I [God] know the wickedness of mankind, how they have rejected my commandments and they will not carry the yoke which I have placed on them. But they will cast off my yoke, and they will accept a different yoke. And they will sow worthless seed, not fearing God and not worshipping me, but they began to worship vain gods, and they renounced my uniqueness. And all the world will be reduced to confusion by iniquities and wickednesses … (34:1–2J: the reference is to the period before the Flood). 52

10:4J could well imply this.

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Carrying the yoke is doubtless undertaking to obey the commandments of the one true God, and the seed are the deeds that follow from such an undertaking. Using the same image of the yoke for the commandments of God as conveyed in his own writings, Enoch says that those ‘who are discerning so that they may fear God’ delight in them, but ‘those who are undiscerning and who do not understand the Lord’ renounce them and find the yoke a burden weighing them down (48:7–8). At first sight, 2 Enoch 41:2 suggests total perfectionism: someone who avoids being sent to hell is one who ‘has not sinned before the face of the Lord.’ This appears to justify Andersen’s note that 2 Enoch ‘does not admit the possibility of any remedy for sin through repentance and reparation from the human side, let alone compassion and forgiveness from the divine side.’53 But such statements are not usually intended in as absolute a sense as they seem to be. That 2 Enoch allows for repentance and forgiveness in the case of some sins we should probably conclude from the fact that for certain sins there is explicitly said to be no possibility of repentance or forgiveness: murder and other forms of serious harm against another person, and failure to fulfil a vow made to God (60–62). It is likely that for more minor sins, repentance (and sacrifice?) obtain forgiveness if repentance takes place in this life. What is truly remarkable is that 2 Enoch (a work of 72 chapters) has no reference whatever to the mercy of God. As Andersen justifiably puts it: ‘A blessed afterlife is strictly a reward for right ethical conduct.’54 E. P. Sanders judged 4 Ezra as, among the early Jewish works he studied, a unique exception to the general pattern of covenantal nomism as he defined it, especially because it lacks the notion that ‘the basically righteous but not always obedient members of Israel’ require God’s mercy in order to be saved.55 As we shall see, 4 Ezra does not in fact exclude God’s mercy entirely (10:24; 12:34; 14:34), though it so marginalizes it that all the emphasis is on the merit of good works. Had he taken account of 2 Enoch, Sanders would have found it even more worthy of the description: ‘the closest approach to legalistic works-righteousness which can be found in the Jewish literature of the period.’56 Andersen gives the verdict for him: ‘harsh legalism,’57 ‘rigorous legalism.’58 Yet we should remember that according to 2 Enoch, for those ‘who are discerning,’ Enoch’s writings, containing the commandments of God and their eschatological sanctions, ‘will be more enjoyable than any delightful food on earth’ (48:7J). Only for the undiscerning do 53 54 55 56 57 58

Andersen, ‘2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch,’ 167. Andersen, ‘2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch,’ 96. Sanders, Paul, 422. Sanders, Paul, 418. Andersen, ‘2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch,’ 167. Andersen, ‘2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch,’ 188.

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they seem a burden (48:8). And there is just one hint that 2 Enoch’s religion of the heart is not devoid of grace. After his parting summary of his ethical instruction to his children in chapter 2, Enoch prays: ‘may God make your hearts true in reverence for him’ (2:3J).

2. Apocalypse of Zephaniah59 Although the Apocalypse of Zephaniah has not yet acquired a generally recognized place among the Jewish apocalypses of the Second Temple period, there is a reasonable probability that it belongs there. But a Christian origin cannot be ruled out,60 and so, until more thorough studies are made, its evidence must be treated cautiously. It may well be the earliest extant example of a specific type of apocalypse, in which the seer is taken on a tour of the places of the dead and sees the dead in their various conditions. Whereas in Enoch’s cosmic tours, in the Book of Watchers and 2 Enoch, Enoch sees the places prepared for the dead but also many other contents of the hidden parts of the cosmos, Zephaniah’s travels in the other world are confined to the places of the dead and to sights of the living on earth in relation to their fate after death.61 Abraham’s cosmic journey in the Testament of Abraham provides the closest parallel in extant literature of the Second Temple period. The Apocalypse of Zephaniah reflects that view of the intermediate state, gaining ground towards the end of the Second Temple period, according to which the dead already enjoy or suffer, in a provisional way, the fates to which they will be finally assigned at the day of judgment.62 As far as can be gathered from the fragmentary and probably abbreviated Coptic texts, Zephaniah follows the path of a dead person through Hades to paradise. The fragmentary beginning of the Akhmimic text (1:1–2) may describe his body appearing to be dead. Evidently Zephaniah has gone into a cataleptic trance in which his soul could leave his body and be taken by an 59 It is generally thought that the long fragment of an apocalypse in Akhmimic, first called an ‘Anonymous Apocalypse’ by Steindorff, belongs to the same work as the smaller fragment in Sahidic, in which the speaker is Zephaniah. I threw some doubt on this in Bauckham, ‘The Apocalypses in the New Pseudepigrapha,’ in C. A. Evans and S. E. Porter ed., New Testament Backgrounds: A Sheffield Reader (Biblical Seminar 43; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) 71–74 (this article was first published in 1986), but for convenience I use the title Apocalypse of Zephaniah which has become standard scholarly usage. 60 10:9 almost certainly betrays a Christian editor, if not origin, and 2:2–4 (cf. Matt 24:40–41; Luke 17:34–35) needs careful assessment in relation to this issue. 61 For such apocalypses, see Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, 80, 85–86, 91–94; M. Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell: An Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983). 62 Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, 86–90.

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angel through the world of the dead. His angelic guide protects him from the angels of punishment who seize the souls of the wicked when they die (4:1–10). Entering Hades, he encounters the angel Remiel (cf. 1 Enoch 20:7), who is in charge of the souls in Hades, and another terrifying angel, who is Satan in his traditional, biblical role of judicial accuser (8:5; cf. Zech 3:1). He reads out all Zephaniah’s sins from a scroll; Zephaniah prays to God for mercy and is told that he has triumphed over the accuser; another angel reads out the record of his righteous deeds (though this part of the text is lost). He travels from Hades to paradise, where the patriarchs are (7–9). From here it is possible to look back to Hades and down into its pit, where the wicked dead are being punished. This is a text whose primary concerns are with the post-mortem judgment of the dead on the basis of their deeds done in this life and also with the possibilities for God’s mercy after death. The recording angels whom we have met in 2 Enoch appear here observing people during their lifetimes from the gates of heaven. Some record ‘all the good deeds of the righteous,’ and the records are taken to God who then records the names of these people in the book of the living (3:5–7).63 Others, the angels of Satan, record sins, so that Satan can accuse people when they die (3:9). As we can see in the case of Zephaniah himself, certainly a righteous man (4:9), two books, one of sins and one of righteous deeds, are read out in relation to each soul when it comes into Hades (7). The picture is similar to that in the Testament of Abraham (A12–13), though Satan does not appear there. As in 2 Enoch and the Testament of Abraham, the image of the two books of deeds is associated with the alternative image of the scales (8:5). We would expect that, as in the Testament of Abraham, the assessment of each soul would be a matter of whether sins outnumber righteous acts or vice versa. Unfortunately, the section of the text describing the reading of the scroll of Zephaniah’s righteous deeds (7:10–11) and what happens then is missing. But it is notable that after hearing the painfully accurate record of his sins, Zephaniah prays for God’s mercy: ‘may you wipe out my manuscript [i. e. the record of his sins] because your mercy has come to be in every place and has filled every place’ (7:8). Then, even before his righteous deeds have been read out, the angel tells Zephaniah that he has ‘prevailed’ and ‘triumphed over the accuser’ and has ‘come up from Hades and the abyss’ (7:9). This places the text firmly in the tradition that holds that even the righteous can be saved only by the mercy of God in forgiving their sins. 63 Quotations from the Apocalypse of Zephaniah are from the translation by O. S. Wintermute, ‘Apocalypse of Zephaniah,’ in Charlesworth ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1, 497–515.

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Another feature of the two books is remarkable. It is on the basis of the record of the good deeds of the righteous that God writes their names in ‘the book of the living’ (3:7; for this term, also in 9:2, rather than ‘book of life,’ see 1 Enoch 47:3; JosAsen 15:4). The biblical source of this term is Psalm 69:28: Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; let them not be enrolled among the righteous.

The idea is found quite often in the context of eschatological judgment, distinguished from the books recording the deeds of people,64 and functioning rather as a register of the elect who are to be saved (Dan 12:1; 1 Enoch 47:3; 108:3; Rev 20:15). Therefore, as in Psalm 69:28, the usual image is not of names being added to the book, but of the names of sinners being blotted out of it (Exod 32:33; Jub 30:22; 1 Enoch 108:3; Rev 3:5; JosAsen 15:4), even though the second line of Psalm 69:28 could be read (and may well have been read by the author of the Apocalypse of Zephaniah) as indicating a process of adding names, additional to the process of subtracting names to which the first line of the verse refers. The usual use of the image of the book of life therefore coheres with the covenantal view that Israelites belong to the elect people of God and will receive the eschatological promises of life unless they apostatize and are blotted out of the book of life. By contrast, the Apocalypse of Zephaniah suggests that the righteous qualify by their righteousness to be included in the people of God who will receive eschatological salvation.65 Zephaniah’s view of the wicked undergoing punishment in the abyss leads him to ask God to be merciful to them (2:8–9).66 He also learns that at a certain hour of every day, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob pray for God’s mercy on these sinners, and are joined in their prayer by all the righteous in paradise (11:1–6). We do not learn God’s response to the prayers, but Zephaniah’s angelic guide does tell him that repentance by sinners in hell after death is possible up to the last judgment (10:10–11). This is a very unusual view in the context of Second Temple Judaism (or early Christianity). 4 Ezra, for example, says, specifically of sinners after death and before the last judgment, that ‘they cannot make a good repentance so that they may live’ (7:82). But in limiting the possibility of repentance to the time before the last judgment, the Apocalypse of Zephaniah conforms to the usual view, in the Jewish 64 Our text is helpful in making the distinction clear, since scholars sometimes confuse these books: e. g. Black, The Book of Enoch, 209. 65 I know only one other example of the idea that people who live righteous lives get to have their names put into the book of life: TJ ac 7:27, a clearly Christian passage. 66 This theme is common in later Christian apocalypses which doubtless derived it originally from Jewish sources: see Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, 137.

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apocalypses, that the possibility of repentance and mercy for the wicked comes to an end at the last judgment (1 Enoch 60:5–6; 4 Ezra 7:33–34; 2 Bar 85:12–13) and that God will not listen to prayers for mercy by the damned after the judgment (1 Enoch 62:9–10). These works also, rather emphatically, deny that intercession by the especially righteous for the wicked will be possible or efficacious at the last judgment (4 Ezra 7:102–115; 1 Enoch 38:6; 2 Enoch 53:1; 2 Bar 85:12–13). This is a denial of the argument that, just as such people as Moses and the prophets had successfully interceded for the sinners of Israel in this world (TM os 11:17; 12:6; 4 Ezra 7:106–111; 2 Bar 85:1–2), surely they might do the same in the next?67 The Apocalypse of Zephaniah seems to have taken advantage of the possibility of recognizing the finality of the last judgment but allowing for intercession, repentance and forgiveness between death and the last judgment. That the principal intercessors in the Apocalypse of Zephaniah are the three patriarchs is surely significant. Despite this apocalypse’s unusual use of the image of the book of life, the appearance of the patriarchs suggests that they are pleading for the sinners among their descendants on the basis of the covenant God made with them. Though it is a much later text, it is worth comparing the medieval Hebrew Story of Daniel, according to which, at the end of history, the three patriarchs will stand at the three entrances to Gehenna and ask God to remember his covenants with them. In response God will be merciful to all Israelite sinners and none of them will be sent to Gehenna.68 While it is not likely that the Apocalypse of Zephaniah goes as far as this in its notion of the intercession of the patriarchs and the extent of God’s mercy, it evidently expresses a generous view of God’s willingness to be merciful to members of his covenant people. (There is no evidence for the author’s view of Gentiles.)

3. Responses to the Fall of Jerusalem 3.1 Introduction It is well known that the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Romans in 70 ce was a traumatic event which eventually provoked major changes in Jewish religion and thought, though many of these may have been less obvious after 70 than they were after the failure of the second Jewish revolt in 135. Some of these changes were practical accommodations to a radically changed situation, but, as the apocalypses written between 67

On this whole subject, see Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, 136–148. G. W. Buchanan, Revelation and Redemption (Dillsboro, North Carolina: Western North Carolina Press, 1978) 476. 68

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the two revolts or perhaps after the second show, the catastrophe also raised profound theological and existential questions. The perplexing issues, which actually threatened faith in the God of Israel unless they could be adequately met, concerned the covenant and theodicy. That the catastrophe was divine punishment for Israel’s sin was the most obvious interpretation available, but how could punishment to such a degree and involving the triumph of Israel’s pagan oppressors, God’s enemies over God’s people, be understood in the light of God’s covenant with Israel? Was the covenant invalidated? How were the justice, the mercy and the faithfulness of YHWH to be understood in this unexpected new event in his history with Israel? Such questions challenged not so much those who already presupposed a very restrictive definition of the true Israel who would inherit the promises (though they may well have had problems of their own unrepresented in our literature), but rather those who understood the promises to belong to the whole of ethnic Israel (excepting only those who actually renounced Jewish identity). It was natural that people accustomed to understanding God and his purposes for his people from the biblical narratives should explore these perplexing issues by putting themselves imaginatively within the story of the closest analogy in Israel’s history: the fall of Jerusalem to the armies of Nebuchadrezzar. Hence the three apocalypses attributed to Baruch and Ezra and set at the time of the fall of Jerusalem or the exile that followed. Another appropriate literary vehicle was an apocalypse attributed to one of the patriarchs to whom God gave the covenant promises that he would never forsake their descendants. Two other apocalypses probably written in the period after 70 fall into this category: the Apocalypse of Abraham and the Ladder of Jacob.69 Unfortunately, the state of the extant texts (both in old Slavonic) of these two works is such that their treatment of the topics of interest to our present concerns is obscure in the extreme, and so they have had to be omitted from the present study. 3.2 4 Ezra 4 Ezra70 is a sustained theological reflection on the justice and mercy of God in his dealings with Israel in particular and humanity in general. The special 69 There are close resemblances between the Ladder of Jacob and the Apocalypse of Abraham which probably indicate that the former is to be dated in the same period as the latter. It is remarkable that the Ladder of Jacob, misleadingly included in volume 2 of Charlesworth’s Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, has not been recognized as an apocalypse. There can be no question that generically it is. 70 Among other studies of 4 Ezra I am especially indebted to B. W. Longenecker, Eschatology and the Covenant: A Comparison of 4 Ezra and Romans 1–11 (JSNTSS 57; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991) and 2 Esdras (GAP ; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic

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problematic, as well as the agonized character, which this issue has in 4 Ezra derives from its context following the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Romans in 70. The fictional setting, according to which Ezra, in Babylon in the thirtieth year of the Babylonian exile, is in severe distress and theological bewilderment over the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in the late sixth century bce, is plainly meant to be read as typological of the situation of the real author and his readers at the end of the first century ce. The starting-point for the theological journey Ezra undertakes in the book is the apparent fact that, if the destruction of Jerusalem is understood as God’s judgment on Israel’s sin, as much of the Hebrew Bible would suggest, then God must be understood to treat even his own covenant people with merciless justice. How can this be consistent with the merciful character of the God of Israel portrayed in Israel’s scriptures and with the covenant he made with Abraham and his descendants? 4 Ezra is carefully structured in seven episodes (I: 3:1–5:20; II : 5:21–6:34; III : 6:35–9:26; IV : 9:27–10:59; V: 11:1–12:51; VI : 13:1–58; VII : 14:1–48).71 The first three are dialogues (each initiated by Ezra’s prayer to God) between Ezra and the angel Uriel, who speaks for God, sometimes directly in God’s name. At first sight it might seem that throughout these dialogues Ezra doggedly maintains his own perspective on the matter, resisting the alternative theological approach recommended by Uriel, but closer attention shows that in fact Ezra step by step accepts elements of Uriel’s case, so that by the fourth and central episode he appears to have wholly accepted Uriel’s view.72 This episode and the two which follow consist of visions which are then interpreted by Uriel. At the beginning of the fourth episode, Ezra, although he has accepted Uriel’s account of God’s justice, is no less distressed than he has been all along. The three visions of God’s eschatological judgment and salvation have the effect of consoling him, so that at the end of the sixth episode he is full of praise for God’s sovereignty (13:57–58). In the last, distinctive episode, Ezra is inspired to rewrite both the twenty-four books of the Hebrew scriptures, which had been lost, and seventy other secret books.

Press, 1995), though I differ from his views in significant ways. The fine commentary of M. E. Stone, Fourth Ezra (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990) is now indispensable for all study of 4 Ezra, though it is not especially alert to the issues that are of particular concern in the present context. There are useful reviews of scholarship in Longenecker, 2 Esdras, chapter 2, and Stone, Fourth Ezra, 9–21. 71 Chapters 1–2 and 15–16 of the work known, in English editions of the Apocrypha, as 2 Esdras, do not belong to the original Jewish apocalypse (4 Ezra) but are later Christian additions (often known respectively as 5 and 6 Ezra). 72 For the progressive character of the dialogues, see Stone, Fourth Ezra, 24–28, and his commentary on the passages.

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The whole book is evidently composed as a progressive argument, which must be understood as a whole for the message of the book to be appreciated. It may well be that, as Longenecker argues, the process of Ezra’s dispute with Uriel, conversion to Uriel’s position, and the fuller understanding which follows reflect the real author’s own dialogue with himself and the way his own thinking changed and developed.73 Stone may also be correct in arguing that the psychological process of what could be termed the author’s religious conversion is reflected especially in the fourth episode.74 But it is unlikely that the purpose of the work is autobiographical. Ezra’s intellectual and spiritual progress is more likely a rhetorical strategy designed to carry readers who start where Ezra does at the opening of the book through a process of enlightenment, conversion and consolation similar to that which Ezra undergoes. From chapters 12 and 14 it is clear that these implied readers are not the generality of Jews, but ‘the wise among your people’75 (12:38; 14:46). Plausibly they are the Jewish theological elite, such as the sages who assembled at Yavneh in the period between the two Jewish revolts. But they are not envisaged as an insider group who already perceive themselves as the few who are to be saved. They are expected to be sympathetic with Ezra’s starting-point rather than his concluding position; they need to follow Ezra on his theological journey. In that sense, although, as we shall see, the understanding of salvation which 4 Ezra read as a whole propounds is not dissimilar to that in the Enoch tradition, 4 Ezra differs from the works comprising 1 Enoch in not presupposing the narrow definition of the true Israel which the Enoch literature could evidently expect its readers to take for granted. Otherwise put, 4 Ezra does not address a sectarian audience, but rather those, such as the rabbis at Yavneh, who understood themselves as religious leaders of all Israel. The choice of Ezra, the man who taught all Israel the whole Torah (1 Esd 8:7), as the work’s pseudonymous author, is in this, as in several other respects, appropriate. Ezra’s position in the dialogues is based on an understanding of God’s purpose in creation and world history as centred on his covenant people Israel. These are the descendants of Abraham, with whom God made an eternal covenant, promising that he would never forsake them (3:15). Even after Uriel has told Ezra that he should see himself as one of the very few righteous, not one of the many sinners (Jewish and Gentile), he continues to identify himself with the whole of Israel (9:29–37; contrast the significant alternation of first and second person plurals in 14:29–35). Throughout the first three episodes it is the failure of God’s mercy that Ezra cannot under73

Longenecker, 2 Esdras, 96–98. Stone, Fourth Ezra, 32–33; also M. E. Stone, ‘On Reading an Apocalypse,’ in Collins and Himmelfarb ed., Mysteries and Revelations, 65–78. 75 Quotations from 4 Ezra are from the NRSV version of 2 Esdras. 74

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stand. He accepts that Israel has sinned, but not that this explains God’s abandonment of his people to their enemies. Although God gave Israel his law, how could he have expected them to obey it, since he did not remove the evil inclination76 which all people have inherited from Adam and hardly any succeed in resisting (3:20–23; cf. 7:48)? In any case, Israel has certainly kept the commandments much better than Babylon or the other nations, who prosper while Israel suffers (3:28–36). Having deliberately selected the one people Israel from all the nations, why has God now handed his people over to the nations who oppose God (5:23–30)? God intended Israel to rule the world, but instead the nations rule over Israel (6:55–57). These arguments imply that God has broken his covenant with Israel in that he has not exercised mercy to his people in order to fulfil his covenant promises to them. The point is reinforced by Ezra’s eloquent appeal to God’s character as merciful, revealed in the revelation to Moses which played a foundational role in the Jewish understanding of God (7:132–140; cf. Exod 34:6–7). But by this stage Ezra’s argument has developed, under pressure from Uriel’s responses, to a consideration of the whole of humanity as sinful and bound to perish unless God were merciful. This is in considerable tension with his earlier appeal to God’s declared estimation of the Gentile nations as nothing (6:56–57) and Ezra’s real concern remains Israel (cf. 8:15–16). The shift to considering sin and its punishment as universal is significant not as indicating a more sympathetic attitude to the Gentiles, but as indicating the difficulty Ezra is having, through the long dialogue that forms the third episode, in maintaining his view of ethnic Israel as having a special claim on God’s mercy. Though he cannot yet accept it, he is being prepared for the view that God is as little concerned for Israelite sinners as he is for Gentile sinners (cf. Uriel in 7:59–61). The high point of the unconverted Ezra’s argument is his prayer for God to be merciful (8:20–36). He pleads with God to consider not the sinners, but the righteous in Israel, sparing the whole people for the sake of the latter (8:26–30). He ends by claiming that God will be seen to be merciful, righteous and good, not by rewarding the righteous, if there are such, who have stored up good works, but by being merciful to those who have no such store of good works (8:32–35). It is important to appreciate in what an eloquent and appealing form Ezra voices an inclusive covenantal view of God’s gracious and forgiving relationship with Israel. It is a view that takes human and Jewish sinfulness very seriously, such that God’s covenantal promises to his people can be fulfilled only if he is gracious to those who deserve nothing. It founds this hope on the Torah’s own revelation of God’s character. This view is certainly 76

On the evil inclination in 4 Ezra, see Stone, Fourth Ezra, 63–67.

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not caricatured. It is presented so sympathetically, even persuasively, that it must be part of the book’s rhetorical strategy to allow this view its full weight. Not that the book is in the least equivocal about which view it finally endorses. But the unconverted Ezra’s position must be given its full due, which is considerable, if the need for it to be superseded is to be presented convincingly to those whose response to the fall of Jerusalem Ezra voices. In the overall context of the book, Ezra’s position in the first three episodes fails in that it cannot provide what he is seeking. It cannot account for God’s actual abandonment of his people to his and their enemies in late first-century history. Uriel’s position in the dialogues is very different from Ezra’s. Ezra’s anguished desire to understand how the destruction of Jerusalem can be consistent with the covenant promises of God to Abraham and his descendants is initially met by Uriel’s insistence that Ezra, a mortal creature of God, should not expect to understand God’s ways. Uriel does not, it should be noted, deny the covenant promises, only that Ezra can understand how God will fulfil them (5:40). All the same, the initial impression that Ezra is going to be left, like Job, in chastened agnosticism about the problem of theodicy he confronts is not entirely confirmed by the rest of the book, in which Ezra in fact learns a good deal about the outworking of God’s justice and mercy, both from Uriel and from the visions he is given.77 The key elements in Uriel’s account of the matter are a stark eschatological dualism and a corresponding distinction between the way God treats the many, who are sinners, and the way he treats the few righteous: ‘The Most High made this world [or age78] for the sake of many, but the world [or age] to come for the sake of only a few’ (8:1). This age is dominated by sin, which has frustrated God’s good intentions for humanity and for which sinners themselves, not God, are to be held responsible (8:59–61). In this age the righteous are bound to suffer while sinners prosper. Only with the advent of the age to come will God intervene on behalf of the righteous. Only then will God act in judgment on sinners and act with mercy to the righteous, and only then will the evil inclination be removed from human nature (6:26–28). Uriel agrees with Ezra that, given the difficulty of keeping the law in this age, only a few succeed in doing so, such that they can be considered righteous. But whereas Ezra found it intolerable that therefore only these few could be saved, Uriel strongly affirms that this is indeed the case. Difficult 77 According to Stone, Fourth Ezra, 373, what cannot be revealed are ‘cosmological and uranological speculation, mystical ascent and theosophical speculations’ (all to be found in other apocalypses, such as those in the Enoch tradition), whereas ‘eschatological secrets’ are seen in 4 Ezra as ‘a proper subject of revelation’ (cf. 3:14; 14:5). 78 See the ‘Excursus on the Term “Age”’ in Stone, Fourth Ezra, 218–219.

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though it may be to keep the commandments, those who do not are unequivocally to blame and deserve no mercy. God rejoices over the few who will be saved, but wastes no grief on the many who will perish (7:59–61). So Ezra should not be concerned for them either, nor should he count himself among them. As Sanders fairly puts it, with allusion to 7:20, ‘It is better for transgressors to perish than for the glory of the law to be besmirched by having mercy on them.’79 We shall return shortly to the precise terms in which the righteousness of the righteous is understood and their salvation brought about. First, it is important to notice what the visions add to what Ezra has already learned from Uriel in the dialogues. One point which the three visions consistently make is that eschatological salvation will be brought about by God alone (10:53–54) or through the sole agency of his Messiah, who achieves victory without the use of military means (12:31–34; 13:8–11, 37–38). This is a forceful rejection of the kind of militaristic messianic activism which had issued in the Jewish revolt and led to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. It also distinguishes 4 Ezra from the Enoch tradition as represented in 1 Enoch (though not in 2 Enoch), where the righteous are expected to take an active part in God’s judgment on the wicked (1 Enoch 1:1; 38:5; 90:19; 91:12; 95:3). For 4 Ezra the role of the righteous is to keep God’s law; judgment and salvation should be left to God alone. In the post-70 context it is clear how this functions to direct faithful Jews away from the political and military activism that had proved futile and instead into renewed effort to keep God’s law faithfully. The latter remained possible even in the circumstances of suffering and oppression which 4 Ezra does not expect to be lifted other than by the sheer initiative of God himself at the eschatological moment which he has already determined and which Ezra reveals to his readers at the end of the first century to be soon. In the wake of the tragedy of 70 ce, 4 Ezra does not shift emphasis from eschatological hope to keeping the commandments, as the rabbinic movement in general would eventually do, but does define rather carefully the relationship between the eschatological hope and the observance of Torah. Apart from the exclusion of human participation in God’s eschatological victory, the visions depict the eschatological events in ways that are scriptural and traditional, drawing, like most Jewish eschatology, especially on Isaiah and Daniel. By no means alien to this tradition, but probably not a feature of the hopes that had accompanied the revolt of 66–70 for most of its Jewish participants, and certainly a feature of special significance in 4 Ezra, is the fact that not the whole of ethnic Israel, but only a righteous remnant will be the beneficiaries of eschatological salvation (12:34; 13:48–49). (It 79

Sanders, Paul, 416.

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seems to have escaped the attention of most scholars writing on 4 Ezra that the Ezra of the biblical book of Ezra also expresses a remnant theology: Ezra 9:13–15; cf. also 1 Esdras 8:78, 86–90. The implied readers of 4 Ezra could understand this theology to have been learned by Ezra through the experiences recounted in 4 Ezra, set chronologically earlier than the story of Ezra recounted in biblical Ezra.) This idea of the remnant is, of course, coherent with Uriel’s insistence on the fact that only the righteous few within Israel will be saved. Uriel had used ‘remnant’ language in this sense already in the dialogues (6:25; 7:28; 9:7–8).80 Thus the visions do not simply reaffirm the traditional hope for Israel; they reaffirm it in a form different from the inclusive covenantalism expressed by the Ezra of the first three episodes and expressive rather of Uriel’s distinctive position against Ezra in those dialogues.81 This does not mean that we should downplay the traditional material which comprises most of the visions and much even of Uriel’s interpretations of the visions. The traditional hopes of God’s fulfilment of his covenant promises to his people Israel, as expressed in the prophets, are not being denied in favour of a thoroughly individualistic understanding of salvation. Rather the visions and their interpretations affirm that God will indeed fulfil his covenant promises while at the same time explaining that fulfilment as salvation only for the righteous remnant of Israel. (It is important that the remnant is emphatically the remnant of Israel: see 12:34; 13:48.) Both aspects are important to the overall message of 4 Ezra. That God, in the eschatological hope expressed in these visions, is fulfilling his covenant with Abraham and his descendants becomes especially clear in a special feature of the last vision (chapter 13). Here not only the remnant of Israel in the land participate in the messianic salvation, but also the nine and a half (or ten) exiled tribes of northern Israel, who return to the land of Israel as a ‘peaceable multitude’ (13:12, 39). Probably the author and his readers knew a tradition in which the ten tribes were expected to return to join in the messianic war against Israel’s oppressors.82 This role for the northern tribes he not unexpectedly repudiates: they are peaceable and arrive only after the Messiah has already defeated the innumerable multitude of hostile Gentile nations (13:8–13). Their function in this vision is quite different. They are a kind of eschatological surprise revealing to Ezra that the righteous remnant is not as tiny as he had been inclined to think, rather as Elijah, 80 On the terminology – ‘those who remain’ or ‘the survivors’ – see M. E. Stone, Features of the Eschatology of IV Ezra (HSS 35; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989) 103–104. 81 Demonstrating this is a major contribution of Longenecker’s work on 4 Ezra; cf. already, very briefly, Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination, 167. 82 R. Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1993) 219–220.

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thinking himself the only faithful Israelite left, learned that the remnant actually numbered seven thousand (1 Kgs 19:14–18). But the point is not simply to encourage Ezra. It shows that God will in fact fulfil his promise to Abraham that he would be the ancestor of a multitude (Gen 17:4) with whom God would maintain his covenant for ever.83 This is the covenant to which Ezra referred in his first prayer to God (3:15) and to which he felt the destruction of Jerusalem to be in inexplicable contradiction. This is the covenant promise which seemingly could not be fulfilled if only a very few were to be saved, as Ezra feared and Uriel insisted. Not until the third of his visions, which adds to the message of the second vision precisely the fact that, through the return of the ten tribes, the remnant who are finally saved will be a multitude, does Ezra discover that, after all, God will be faithful to his covenant with Abraham. This is why it is only after this vision that Ezra, finally consoled, glorifies God for the wonders of his sovereign governance of history (13:57–58). Uriel’s contrast between the few saved and the many who will perish is not contradicted by the vision, but is put in a different light: the ten tribes are a multitude (13:12, 39, 47), but the Gentile nations whom the Messiah destroys are an innumerable multitude (13:5, 11, 34; cf. 3:7).84 Thus 4 Ezra’s remnant theology finally maintains the distinction between Israel and Gentile sinners as more significant than that between righteous and sinners within Israel. The concerns of Ezra’s opening prayer (chapter 3) turn out to be fully met in the end, though he has only been able to come to appreciate this by adopting Uriel’s apparently quite contradictory theology. Incidentally, these concerns also exclude from 4 Ezra’s vision of the future any such hope for the Gentile nations as is found in the Enoch tradition. The function the ten tribes fulfil in this vision is only possible by virtue of a novel element 4 Ezra introduces into their story. Not only have they repented of the sins for which they were exiled; they also decided to leave the

83 4 Ezra is not alone in seeking the fulfilment of the promise of very numerous descendants of Abraham in the exiled ten tribes: Josephus also does so (Ant. 11.133: ‘countless myriads whose number cannot be ascertained’), alluding to the promise of innumerable descendants to Abraham (Gen 15:5). However, it is significant that, by contrast, 4 Ezra does not call the ten tribes an innumerable multitude: see below. Like 4 Ezra and also with allusion to the covenant with Abraham, Revelation 7 juxtaposes the innumerable company from all nations with the determined number (144,000) of Israelites; cf. Bauckham, The Climax, 223–225. 84 Once the importance of the term ‘multitude’ as part of the covenant with Abraham is recognized, its occurrence elsewhere in 4 Ezra acquires more significance: 7:140; 8:55; 9:22; 10:10–11. Note that in Uriel’s definitive statement in 8:1–3, the contrast is between the ‘many’ created and the ‘few’ saved (not between many and few Israelites), as is also the case in 9:19–22.

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land of their exile, among Gentiles, and migrate to an uninhabited region,85 ‘so that there at least they might keep their statutes that they had not kept in their own land’ (13:40). This is how it comes about that, whereas of Israel in the land only a few manage to keep the commandments adequately, all of the exiles of the ten tribes apparently succeed in doing so. They are a model of what the Israel to which 4 Ezra’s implied readers concretely belonged could have been. 4 Ezra’s ‘individualism’ – in which righteous individuals in Israel manage to keep the law while most of their neighbours do not – is thus not represented as inevitable, though it seemed so to Ezra in his ignorance of the history of the ten tribes before his third vision. All Israel could have kept the law and have been saved. But this would have only been possible through national effort and determination equivalent to the ten tribes’ journey of a year and a half to a land distant from any other nation. This determined self-isolation (assisted by divine action: 13:44) represents the kind of isolation Israel could have achieved in the land had they rigorously kept themselves apart from Gentile contamination as the Torah commanded.86 Thus the account of the ten tribes, while diverging from Ezra’s original view that observing the law was near impossible because of the evil inclination, coheres with Uriel’s view that it is not impossible but does demand very considerable determination and effort. Much study of 4 Ezra has found the question of the coherence between the dialogues and the visions highly problematic. The older source-critical approaches tended to solve the problem by dissolving the unity of the work; the more recent work which rightly sees 4 Ezra as a deliberately and carefully constructed unity tends to argue, in varying ways, that the problems Ezra raises in the dialogues, silenced rather than met by Uriel in the dialogues, are overcome by the visions, but in a psychologically or existentially 85

The name Arzareth, given to this land in 4 Ezra 13:45, probably derives from in Deut 29:28, which according to m. Sanh. 10:3 R. Aqiva and R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, contemporaries of 4 Ezra, applied to the ten tribes, debating whether it implied that they would or would not return. For 4 Ezra, the true meaning of Deut 29:28 is one of the ‘secret things’ to which Deut 29:30 refers (cf. 4 Ezra 14:6), i. e. secrets not revealed by Moses to the people in the Torah but revealed by God to Ezra and thereby to the wise among the people only (14:46). 86 Longenecker, Eschatology, 128, sees the significance of the ten tribes’ distant habitation rather in showing that ‘keeping the law does not depend on the existence of the temple, the priesthood or any sacrificial offering.’ But (1) the usual Jewish view was that the key elements of the temple cult – such as daily burnt-offerings and the day of atonement ritual – were efficacious for Israelites wherever they lived and without their attending the temple in person. As long as the temple stood, the ten tribes in exile were not without its benefits. (2) 4 Ezra nowhere shows any awareness that the absence of the temple cult could be a problem for observing the law. In the fictional historical setting, the temple had been in ruins for thirty years, but this is never a point of attention. (3) In any case, the explicit emphasis in the narrative about the ten tribes is on their remoteness from all other nations, not on their lack of access to the temple.

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rather than rationally satisfying way.87 What has been missed is the crucial role of the ten tribes in relation to God’s faithfulness to his covenant with Israel. It is this that provides Ezra at last with a rationally coherent way of understanding how God can fulfil his covenant promises without relaxing the strict demand for observance of the Torah that Uriel, along with the fall of Jerusalem itself, had persuaded Ezra God must maintain however small the number of the saved may in consequence be. The multitude of Abraham’s descendants whom God had promised never to forsake will be found after all in the form of the ten tribes who have, in their hidden remoteness, remained faithful to the Torah as very few of the Israelites in the land or in the later diaspora have been. We must now consider in more detail the question of the relation between the covenant, keeping the law and salvation in 4 Ezra. Bruce Longenecker usefully characterizes the options that have been taken by various scholars thus: (1) 4 Ezra ultimately supports a kind of covenantal framework in which God’s gracious faithfulness to ethnic Israel is assured in the end, even if it looks suspect in the present; (2) 4 Ezra redefines traditional covenantalism, narrowing the scope of divine grace and thereby limiting covenant membership to include only a remnant, a much smaller group than the whole of ethnic Israel; (3) 4 Ezra breaks out of traditional covenantal confidence in God’s faithfulness to corporate Israel and postulates another concept of the ways of God, in which salvation is a matter of the efforts of each individual in order to overcome sin and to amass works of righteousness in one’s favour before God. Perhaps these approaches can be entitled “covenantal confirmation,” “covenantal redefinition,” and “covenantal abrogation” respectively.88

In his earlier full study of 4 Ezra, Longenecker himself had taken the third view, arguing that 4 Ezra replaces the ‘ethnocentric covenantalism,’ which Ezra expresses in the early chapters and which could not cope theologically with the destruction of Jerusalem, with a ‘legalistic individualism,’ in which God’s grace, the primary quality of God in his covenant with Israel, is given up and salvation, restricted to those who fulfil the law perfectly without sin, is made to depend entirely on their good works.89 In his later work, Longenecker opts rather for the second of the three views, arguing that the third view depends on too one-sided an emphasis on certain elements in 4 Ezra. Thus 4 Ezra is ‘animated by a covenant theology,’ but one defined by an ethical rigorism, such that the benefits of the covenant are available only to exceptionally righteous people. While ‘confidence in God’s justice and faithfulness’ characterize 4 Ezra’s covenant theology, God’s graciousness, so important to the general Jewish view of the covenant, has practically 87 88 89

Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination, 168–169, is quite typical. 2 Esdras, 31–32. See the summary of his findings in Longenecker, Eschatology, 149–157.

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disappeared: ‘traditional notions such as atonement and divine mercy are practically vacuous.’90 Thus the redefinition of the covenant is not merely a matter of numbers – not all Israel but only the righteous within Israel – but a matter of the very basis on which people are saved. We have seen that 4 Ezra certainly does not regard the covenant as abrogated, though only in the third vision does it finally become clear how this can be so. We have also seen how the inclusive covenantalism with which Ezra begins his theological journey, which depends on expecting God to be merciful to those who not observe the law faithfully, is replaced by a restriction of the benefits of the covenant to those who succeed in the very demanding task of fulfilling the law in the adverse circumstances of the human condition in this age. The covenantalism with which 4 Ezra evidently expects its readers to begin, as Ezra himself does, is redefined in the course of the book. But it is not clear that the conception of the covenant that emerges from 4 Ezra is novel in itself. The understanding we have observed in the Enoch tradition similarly divides Israel into the righteous and the sinners and restricts the eschatological benefits of the covenant to the former. In Sanders’ terms, the righteous ‘stay in’ by observing God’s commandments, while the sinners, by in effect repudiating the covenant, opt out. Is this not also the case in 4 Ezra? This is what Uriel says of sinners in general, Israelite as well as Gentile: they were not obedient [to God’s commands] and spoke against him; they devised for themselves vain thoughts, and proposed to themselves wicked frauds; they even declared that the Most High does not exist, and they ignored his ways. They scorned his law, and denied his covenants; they have been unfaithful to his statutes, and have not performed his works. (7:22–24, cf. 37, 79; 8:55–56; 9:9–11)

Just as Gentile sinners have repudiated God by abandoning the commandments he gave them, so Jewish sinners have themselves repudiated the covenant by not keeping the Torah faithfully. Significantly, Uriel’s only explicit quotation of scripture91 – taken strategically from the closing words of Moses’ address to Israel in Deuteronomy92 – reminds Ezra that Moses 90

Longenecker, 2 Esdras, 99–100. The rarity of Uriel’s explicit allusions to scripture is not an indication that the author of 4 Ezra sees his position as radically novel in relation to the Hebrew Bible. Uriel is an angel who comes from God and speaks on God’s behalf; he does not need to bolster his own authority by citing scripture. 92 This, together with the allusion to Deut 29:28 in 4 Ezra 13:45 and the allusion to Deut 29:29 in 4 Ezra 14:6, shows that 4 Ezra found special eschatological significance in 91

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‘spoke to the people, saying, “Choose life for yourself, so that you may live!”’ (7:129, quoting Deut 30:19;93 and cf. 4 Ezra 8:56: ‘when they had opportunity to choose, they despised the Most High’). The difference between the righteous and the sinners seems to consist in a fundamental choice to observe the law faithfully or not to take it seriously. The latter option is described in terms of fundamental apostasy from God and his ways. Of course, it is also true, as Sanders stresses,94 that the righteous who ‘choose life’ must maintain their choice by continuous effort to be faithful to the law: loyalty must be fulfilled in obedience. But the foundational importance of the basic choice between God and apostasy, means that for the sinners who have made the wrong choice there remains, while this life lasts, the possibility of repentance, i. e. of changing the whole direction of their lives in order to align it with the law they have previously neglected (7:82; 9:11). This, after all, is what the exiles of the ten tribes did (13:42). Significant ways in which Ezra and Uriel describe the righteous are as follows:95 They are those who keep God’s commandments (Ezra: 3:35–36; 7:45, cf. 72; Uriel: 13:42) or his ways (Uriel: 7:79, 88)96 or the law (Uriel: 7:94; Ezra: 9:32) or God’s covenants (Ezra: 8:27). In this way they have stored up ‘good works’ or ‘works of righteousness’ with God (Uriel: 7:77; Ezra: 8:32–33, 36). They will be rewarded for their deeds (Ezra: 8:33; Uriel: 7:35, cf. 83, 98; 8:39) at the last judgment, when all deeds, righteous and unrighteous, will be made manifest (Uriel: 7:35;14:35) and ‘all shall bear their own righteousness and unrighteousness’ (7:105). As well as the language of ‘works,’ the language of ‘faith’ (fides) is also common. The heavenly store of works can also be called ‘treasures of faith’ (6:5), where ‘faith’ seems to mean fidelity or faithfulness in keeping the law (as probably in 5:1; 6:28; 7:34, cf. 114). The remnant are described as those ‘who have works and faith towards the Almighty’ (Uriel: 13:23; cf. Ezra: 8:30), or as those who ‘escape on account of their works, or on account of the faith by which they have believed’ (Uriel: 9:7). In these cases, ‘faith’ seems to be trust or belief in God, and the point may be that the righteous live by the faith that God will save and reward them in the eschatological future, just as this is probably the sense of the description of them as those ‘who believed the covenants of the Most High’ (Uriel: 7:83; cf. Ezra: 3:32; 5:29). In any case, it seems clear that faith and works are not alternatives but necessary complements in the the final chapters of Deuteronomy, just as we have observed is the case in 1 Enoch 1:3–9 in relation to Deut 33:2. 93 The description of the Torah as ‘the law of life’ in 4 Ezra 14:30 is probably also based on Deut 30:19–20. 94 Sanders, Paul, 416. 95 These citations show that there is no significant difference in the ways Uriel and Ezra describe the righteous. 96 For this sense of God’s ‘ways’ as his commandments, cf. 7:23–24; 8:56; 9:9; 14:31.

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righteousness of the righteous. We should also note the ways in which Uriel speaks of the fulfilment of the law by the righteous as very laborious: ‘they have striven with great effort to overcome the evil thought that was formed in them, so that it might not lead them astray from life into death’ (7:92); and the righteous have to ‘pass through the difficult and futile experiences’ in this age in order to receive their inheritance in the next (7:12–14). Finally, we should notice two passages which especially lend credence to the description of 4 Ezra’s soteriology as ‘legalistic perfectionism’:97 the righteous kept the law ‘throughout their life’ (7:94; cf. 6:32) and they are those who ‘laboriously served the Most High, and withstood danger every hour so that they might keep the law of the Lawgiver perfectly’ (7:89). Does this mean that they never transgress? It is hard to be sure, since 4 Ezra’s dualistic division of humanity into the two categories of sinners and righteous is typically expressed in extreme terms: apostates who repudiate God and his commandments, and the righteous who keep the law perfectly. It is never a case of weighing the righteous and unrighteous deeds of an individual to see which outweighs the other. As we have noticed, in 4 Ezra as in the Enoch tradition, being righteous or wicked is primarily a matter of a fundamental choice to orientate one’s life in accordance with or in repudiation of God’s law. The former choice must be faithfully maintained in order to lead to salvation, but we should not too readily conclude that keeping the law ‘perfectly’ excludes the commission of sins which are regretted and forgiven while the overall adherence of the person to God and his law is maintained.98 Since salvation is not represented as the result of weighing an individual’s righteous deeds against his or her sins, the storing up of good deeds is not a matter of calculating merit on an abstract scale, but of rewarding the kind of life the righteous person has led in faithfulness to God and the Torah. This is why, as we have seen, repentance is a possibility. We have considered the contribution of the righteous to their salvation. What of God’s grace? It is not true that God’s mercy is entirely excluded from 4 Ezra’s vision of God’s dealings with humanity. While sinners at the judgment receive merciless justice (7:33–34), it is in mercy to the righteous that God saves them in the end (12:34; 14:34; cf. 10:24). This could mean that, while the righteous have not lived completely sinless lives and would not in strictest justice merit salvation, God overlooks their comparatively minor failings in order to reward their general faithfulness. More likely, mercy is here God’s favour to the covenant people to whom he promised 97

Sanders, Paul, 409, cf. 416. Sanders, Paul, 422, takes the view that for 4 Ezra any disobedience to the law (rather than, as in other Jewish literature, only certain extreme violations) constitutes denial of God and the covenant, but Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination, 169, objects that we ‘do not know what level of legalistic performance was regarded as necessary.’ 98

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salvation. It was in God’s free grace that he chose Israel and made his covenant with this people. The terms of the covenant – understood in 4 Ezra as God’s promise to give the eschatological reward to those who themselves keep the covenant by observing the law – make salvation for the righteous both a matter of reward, within the terms God has given, but also a matter of God’s grace, in that he freely chose to make such a covenant with Israel. To suppose that for 4 Ezra God gives the righteous eschatological salvation not because they are members of his elect people but because, regardless of their corporate affiliation, they have individually merited salvation,99 is to pose a false alternative. God gives salvation to those members of his elect people who have kept the terms of the covenant and so merit the salvation promised in the covenant. The remnant, as we have seen, is the remnant of God’s elect people Israel. What God does not do, according to 4 Ezra, is exercise mercy to Israelite sinners by withholding judgment from them. Ezra had wanted God to do this because it seemed to him the only way in which God could be faithful to the covenant himself, but by the end of the third vision Ezra had learned how God will fulfil his covenant promises by rewarding only those who keep his law. Undoubtedly the result is a strong emphasis on the need to merit eschatological reward by difficult obedience to the law. (That divine assistance accompanies human effort is very rarely mentioned: 9:21–22; 13:44.) This does not make it, as Sanders thought, a unique exception to the ‘covenantal nomism’ he described: ‘the closest approach to legalistic works-righteousness which can be found in the Jewish literature of the period.’100 The idea that God will fulfil his covenant promises in the end only for the faithful remnant and not for the unfaithful mass of ethnic Israel is not new in 4 Ezra, though it is presented here as a view to which the work seeks to lead readers who are expected to begin with a more inclusive covenantalism. But 4 Ezra does rather importantly illustrate how the basic and very flexible pattern of covenantal nomism could take forms in which the emphasis is overwhelmingly on meriting salvation by works of obedience to the law, with the result that human achievement takes centre-stage and God’s grace, while presupposed, is effectively marginalized. In the case of 4 Ezra, this emphasis was a reaction to the failure of the Jewish revolt and the fall of Jerusalem, which 99

This contrast plays a key role in the argument of Longenecker, Eschatology. Sanders, Paul, 418. Sanders’ view is to some extent dependent on his sympathy with the older source-critical views of 4 Ezra, which enable him to assign at least chapters 13–14 to a later redactor who was not in agreement with the author of the original apocalypse. Recent work has demonstrated more than adequately the literary unity of 4 Ezra, indeed that 4 Ezra is a very carefully constructed whole. In his Eschatology, Longenecker, broadly speaking, finds Sanders’ view of 4 Ezra’s relation to covenantal nomism valid while rejecting Sanders’ source-critical views. 100

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for the author made it clear that God does not deal leniently with his erring people but punishes them in strict justice. As Collins rightly comments: ‘The pessimism of the book springs not so much from its lofty standards as from historical experience.’101 The seventh and last episode (chapter 14) presents the two sides of the solution Ezra has reached to the distressing dilemma that preoccupied him at the beginning of the book. They are represented by the two categories of books: the twenty-four books of the Hebrew scriptures, which may be read by ‘the worthy and the unworthy,’ and the seventy secret books which are reserved for the wise (14:45–47).102 The former, containing the law, make salvation possible: they are given to the people ‘so that people may be able to find the path, and that those who want to live in the last days may do so’ (14:22). The path to salvation is what it has always been and what Israel has always known it to be: fulfilling God’s commandments. Accordingly, in his last speech to the people, Ezra tells them that their present sufferings are God’s judgment on them for not keeping the law (14:29–33). Therefore what they must now do is put renewed effort into the demanding task of observing the law (‘rule over your minds and discipline your hearts’) in order to obtain mercy from God after death (14:34). Thus the way to salvation is genuinely open to any of God’s people who manage to follow it. In this sense, 4 Ezra remains, at the end, non-sectarian103 literature for those, like Ezra himself, who are teachers of the law to all Israel. The distinction between them, the wise, and the rest of Israel is not a soteriological distinction between the saved and the wicked.104 The secret books which can be entrusted only to the wise do not reveal the way to attain salvation, which is made known to all in the Torah. Rather they reveal to the wise what Ezra has learned105 about the way in which God will fulfil his covenant promises in spite of the fact that the people as a whole deserve the judgment God has inflicted on them by handing them over to their Gentile oppressors.

101

Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination, 169. The two categories derive from Deut 29:29, to which 4 Ezra 14:6 alludes. On the significance of the number seventy as indicating ‘secret,’ see Longenecker, Eschatology, 143–144. 103 Cf. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination, 169: ‘There is no reason to regard 4 Ezra as sectarian in any sense.’ 104 The phrase ‘the worthy and the unworthy’ (digni et indigni) in 14:45 does not mean ‘worthy and unworthy of salvation,’ but, as 12:36–38 shows, capable and incapable of understanding the eschatological secrets revealed to Ezra. 105 That the seventy books include Ezra’s own work seems clear from the parallelism between 12:36–38 and 14:45–46. 102

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3.3 2 Baruch106 2 Baruch has so many resemblances to 4 Ezra, from broad structural and thematic similarities down to precise verbal correspondences, that all scholars agree that a close literary relationship must be postulated. Most likely the author of one work was very familiar with the other work, but the direction of dependence is debated. Without being able to argue the case here, I will state my preference for the view that 2 Baruch is indebted to 4 Ezra rather than vice versa. The typological situation in 2 Baruch is similar to that of 4 Ezra in that it focuses on the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians: in this case the setting is Jerusalem shortly before and shortly after the destruction of the city and the temple. Like 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch divides into seven sections (I: 1–9; II : 10–12; III : 13–20; IV : 21–34; V: 35–47; VI : 48–77; VII : 78–86),107 which contain prayers of Baruch, dialogues between Baruch and God, symbolic visions (in sections V and VI ), and addresses of Baruch to the people. Broadly, there is a movement from problems to solutions, and from Baruch’s great distress over the destruction of Zion to consolation for himself and the people. As in 4 Ezra, much of the dynamic of the earlier sections is due to the religious problem which the fall of Jerusalem is for Baruch. However, along with these broad similarities, there are equally broad differences. One of great importance is that, whereas the revelations to Ezra are eschatological secrets to be communicated only to the wise, making 4 Ezra as a whole intended for a select circle of readers, while only 14:27–36 exemplifies the message these teachers may give the people on the basis of the Torah, in 2 Baruch the revelations to him108 lead directly to addresses to the people. By the end of the fourth section of the book Baruch is already 106 Among recent studies of 2 Baruch, the most relevant to our present concerns are G. B. Saylor, Have the Promises Failed? A Literary Analysis of 2 Baruch (SBLDS 72; Chico: Scholars Press, 1984); and F. J. Murphy, The Structure and Meaning of Second Baruch (SBLDS 78; Atlanta; Scholars Press, 1985); cf. also M. Desjardins, ‘Law in 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra,’ SR 14 (1985) 25–37. Surveys of scholarship on 2 Baruch can be found in Murphy, The Structure, 1–9; A. F. J. Klijn, ‘Recent Developments in the Study of the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch,’ JSP 4 (1989) 3–17. E. P. Sanders, Paul, does not discuss 2 Baruch except in passing in a comparison with 4 Ezra (427), but devotes more attention to 2 Baruch in his article, ‘The Covenant as a Soteriological Category and the Nature of Salvation in Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism,’ in R. Hamerton-Kelly and R. Scroggs ed., Jews, Greeks and Christians (W. D. Davies FS ; SJLA 21; Leiden: Brill, 1976) 17–20. 107 This understanding of the structure is that of Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination, 170. It has the strong advantage of depending on clear structural markers in the text, such as ancient readers required to discern major divisions of a work. Other proposals accept many of the same divisions between sections but differ at some points: see the summary of proposed structures in Murphy, The Structure, 12. 108 According to 54:4–5, God’s revelations of eschatological secrets are made to those who fear him and obey the law.

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sufficiently instructed and consoled himself to be able to instruct the people. He addresses them at the end of the fourth, fifth and sixth sections,109 while the whole of the seventh section is a letter addressed by Baruch to the exiles of the northern tribes, in effect digesting the message of the whole book into paraenesis of general application. The implied readership must be a general Jewish audience. The content and the message of the book are appropriate to this. While Baruch’s distress over the fall of Jerusalem parallels Ezra’s in its concern with the respective fortunes of God’s people and the Gentile nations (5, 11, 14), and while Baruch like Ezra implores God to show mercy to the people and is told that justice cannot be compromised (48), the peculiar intensity with which Ezra explores the problem of sin and salvation is lacking in 2 Baruch. Ezra’s convictions about the ineradicable root of sin and the near impossibility of keeping the law, his anguish about the fact that only few will be saved110 and his persistence in sceptical questioning of God’s justice, are all missing from 2 Baruch. In 2 Baruch the problem and the solution are both simpler, and Baruch is accordingly more easily satisfied and more quickly enlightened. Furthermore, the solution is not simply understanding of God’s ways, but strongly paraenetic: the book’s overall message is that, since God has not abandoned his covenant with Israel, it is imperative that Israel keep the law in order to benefit from the covenant promises. One could imagine that a Jewish leader, deeply impressed by and very familiar with 4 Ezra, the work of a colleague, wished to write a comparable work for the people in general, containing not esoteric revelations for the wise, but what needed to be said in response to the general distress over the fall of Jerusalem. 2 Baruch enters into the questioning that any Jew might have felt after 70, offers such insight into God’s ways and visions of the eschatological future as the people in general could understand, and thus provides them with the eschatological urgency and hope needed to sustain their obedience to the law. It is a full-scale apocalypse elaborating and reinforcing the message of Ezra’s concise discourse to the people in 109 The speech at the end of the fifth section (44–46) is directly addressed to the leaders of the people, but with a view to their instruction of the people generally. 110 18:1 suggests that only ‘few’ kept the law, but the reference is to Moses’ own generation (cf. 19:1). Saylor, Have the Promises, 62, translates 48:19 as ‘behold the few who have submitted to you,’ but R. H. Charles translates: ‘Behold the little ones that are subject to Thee,’ P.-M. Bogaert: ‘Regarde les humble qui te servent,’ and A. F. J. Klijn: ‘Look at the small ones who submit to you.’ Saylor’s argument for a literary connexion between 18:1 and 48:19 fails because the Syriac words ‘few’ and ‘little ones’ are different. According to 21:11, ‘while many have sinned once, many others have proved themselves to be righteous.’ ‘Many’ in 44:15 (‘the habitation of the many others will be in the fire’) is textually uncertain, but if it is read it need not mean that the saved are few. 2 Baruch simply does not seem to be exercised with the numerical problem as 4 Ezra is. Probably in consequence it also retains a relatively generous hope for the Gentile nations (72:4–5), as 4 Ezra does not.

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4 Ezra 14:27–36. Accordingly, its presentation of the problem is milder, its theological approach more familiar and less demanding, its message more encouraging and more practical. This is certainly not to deny that there are some real theological differences between 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, or that the author of the latter may have felt he had more satisfactory explanations of some problems than the former. But since it is hard to read the relationship between the two works as actually polemical, this view of their relationship can explain how they may both have belonged to the rather diverse circle of Jewish sages and teachers in the period between the two revolts, both conscious of their role as teachers of the Torah to the whole people, one concerned in his work to address the problems of this theological elite themselves lest their own belief in the God of the covenant fail, the other writing to fulfil directly his calling as a teacher of the law to Israel. In 2 Baruch’s theological response to the fall of Jerusalem there are two main elements. One is that salvation is to be found not in this transient world, but in the eternal age to come. The other is an understanding of Israel’s punishment as chastisement with Israel’s repentance in view. Both themes are announced in the first section of the book (1:5; 4), developed throughout the book and strongly affirmed in the final section, the letter. The first theme is shared with 4 Ezra,111 but is developed in a characteristic way as a dominant feature of 2 Baruch. Again and again the point is made that the present world is transient and soon to pass away (e. g. 83:9–20; 85:10), so that any good to be had in this world is worthless by comparison with the transcendent good of the age to come: ‘For that which is now is nothing. But that which is in the future will be very great’ (44:8).112 Suffering in this world is well worth bearing if it leads to eternal reward in the next (15:8). The restoration of Israel is to be understood in terms of this contrast between the two ages: … if we direct and dispose our hearts, we shall receive everything which we lost again by many times. For that which we lost was subjected to corruption, and that which we receive will not be corruptible (85:4–5).

Particularly is this true of Zion, the temple and the city (cf. 31:2–32:6), whose destruction is the fundamental problem the book resolves. The city which God promised never to forget or forsake (Isa 49:16, quoted in 4:2), the city whose glorious restoration the prophets predicted, is not the earthly Jerusalem at all, but the heavenly Zion, prepared before the creation of 111 On this point I think Murphy, The Structure, 140–142, probably misrepresents 4 Ezra. 112 Quotations from 2 Baruch are from the translation by A. F. J. Klijn in J. H. Charlesworth ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1983) 615–652.

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humanity, preserved in heaven for the faithful to enter in the age to come (4:1–6). The eternal dwelling of God with his people was never intended to be the temple that, forsaken by God, has fallen to their enemies, but rather the heavenly temple. The second theme is that Israel’s punishment by God is not intended to result in her destruction, but to produce repentance to which God will respond with mercy and restoration. Like 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch understands the Mosaic covenant especially in the terms given by the final section of Moses’ address to the people in Deuteronomy (both 19:1 and 84:2 quote Deut 30:19, which is also quoted in 4 Ezra 7:129), but 2 Baruch’s understanding of Deuteronomy 28–30 differs significantly from 4 Ezra’s. There is the same emphasis on the decisive choice between obedience and apostasy, life and death (Deut 30:19–20, to which 2 Bar 46:3; 76:5 allude), but from these chapters as whole, especially 28:58–68; 30:1–10, 2 Baruch derives the following pattern of God’s dealings with his errant covenant people: (1) Israel’s disobedience to the law; (2) God’s punishment of Israel by destruction and exile; (3) Israel’s repentance; (4) God’s mercy in restoring Israel; (5) the punishment of Israel’s enemies. This pattern is found, wholly or partially, in all of Baruch’s addresses to the people as well as the letter to the ten tribes.113 The pattern functions both to console the people with the prospect of future salvation and future punishment of their enemies, and also to require them to rededicate themselves to the fulfilment of the law, so that, point (4) being the case, point (5) may follow. Hence the paraenetic sections of the book contain many conditional propositions, such as: ‘For when you endure and persevere in his fear and do not forget his Law, the time again will take a turn for the better for you’ (44:7; cf. 32:1; 46:5–6; 75:7–8; 77:6, 16; 78:6–7; 84:6; 85:4).114 Such propositions are instances of the general principle which is 2 Baruch’s own summing up of the Mosaic covenant as taught by Moses to Israel in Deuteronomy: ‘If you trespass [sic] the law, you will be dispersed. And if you shall keep it, you shall be planted’ (84:2). Therefore Baruch can tell the tribes in exile that, assuming they are repentant, they ‘have suffered now for your good so that you may not be condemned at the end and tormented’ (78:6). Israel is chastised in this age in order to be saved in the next, whereas judgment is withheld from her enemies in this age so that they may be punished finally (13:3–11). Baruch generally addresses and speaks about the people as a whole. (In the narrative context of most of the work this means those who survived in Jerusalem after the Babylonian capture of the city, but the same message is 113 See the detail in Murphy, The Structure, 117–120, with the chart on p. 119, following the work on O. H. Steck. 114 Murphy, The Structure, 126–130, relates these to the similar conditional forms in Deuteronomy.

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also conveyed by letter to both the exiles of the southern tribes and those of the northern tribes: 77:11–26.) But this does not mean that all of ethnic Israel will be saved. With regard to humanity in general Baruch makes a clear distinction between righteous and sinners, of whom only the former will be saved (21:11; 24:1–2; 51:1–5; 54:21). As for the Israel who will inherit the eschatological promises, Baruch himself asks God: ‘For whom and for how many will these things be?,’ raising the question because he sees ‘many of your people who separated themselves from your statutes and who have cast away from them the yoke of the Law’ (41:1, 3). Such apostates and their exclusion from Israel’s salvation are, after all, clearly envisaged in the key chapters of Deuteronomy on which 2 Baruch’s covenantalism is especially based (Deut 28:18–21). As well as these apostates who have rejected God’s law, Baruch also notes that there are proselytes who have taken on the yoke of the Law. Since both categories have obeyed the Law, but only for a part of their lives, he wonders how they can be justly rewarded: ‘Their time will surely not be weighed exactly, and they will certainly not be judged as the scale indicates?’ (41:6). Though the reply in chapter 42 is at some points very obscure,115 the essential answer seems clear: the obedience of the apostates before their apostasy is not counted in their favour, while the disobedience of the proselytes before their conversion is not counted against them in the judgment. The passage is important, not only because it shows that the author is concerned about issues of equitable correspondence between obedience to the law and salvation, but also because it shows that, for 2 Baruch, the Israel who will be saved is constituted by those who either remain within the covenant by remaining faithful to the law or opt into the covenant by subjecting themselves to the law. 2 Baruch almost completely lacks (cf. 40:2) the remnant language which is so important in 4 Ezra, and therefore probably does not regard faithful Israel as no more than a minority of ethnic Israel. This is certainly a more inclusive covenantalism than 4 Ezra’s, much more like the position with which Ezra begins than the one he learns in the course of that book, and we must shortly consider the reasons for this difference. But it should be noted that, in principle, 2 Baruch’s position is no less ‘individualistic’ than the remnant theology of 4 Ezra: if it is possible to be excluded from Israel’s salvation through apostasy, then every individual’s participation in that salvation is dependent on his or her continued faithfulness to the covenant through subjection to the law. Sinners in general are ‘those who have not subjected themselves to [God’s] power’ (54:14), ‘those who do not love your Law’ (54:14), those

115

See the discussion in P.-M. Bogaert, Apocalypse de Baruch, vol. 2 (SC 144; Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1969) 76–78.

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who ‘have once rejected the understanding116 of the Most High’ (54:17), those who ‘did not know [God’s] Law because of their pride’ (48:40), and those who ‘despised [God’s] Law and stopped their ears lest they hear wisdom and receive intelligence’ (51:4).117 Jewish apostates are ‘those who have withdrawn’ (42:4), those who ‘withdraw from the way of the Law’ or ‘from the commandments of the Mighty One’ (44:3). As we have seen in earlier sections to be typical of our literature, the distinction between righteous and sinners comes down to a fundamental acceptance or rejection of the Law. With regard to sinners, 2 Baruch is notably concerned to make clear that they are those who consciously and deliberately act wrongly (48:29, 40). That being righteous is a matter of fundamental alignment of life with the law appears in descriptions of them as ‘those who subjected themselves to [God] and [God’s] law in faith’ (54:5, where ‘faith’ probably means faithfulness, as in 54:21; for righteousness as subjection to God, cf. also 66:1; 75:7) and as those who ‘always feared [God] and did not leave [God’s] ways’ (14:5; cf. 54:4; 38:4). Like 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch can speak of them both in terms of good works (14:11; 24:1) and as ‘those who have believed’ (42:2; 54:16; 59:2; cf. 54:16; 83:8), where the object of belief may be primarily the eschatological reward prepared for those who obey the law (cf. 57:2).118 Like 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch speaks of the good works that the righteous have stored up for themselves in heaven and because of which they can be confident of salvation (14:11; 24:1; 44:14). Similarly, they are ‘those who are saved because of their works and for whom the Law is now a hope, and intelligence, expectation and wisdom a trust’ (51:7), where the last phrase refers, in a way characteristic of 2 Baruch, to the understanding to be found in the Torah (cf. the similar passage in 51:3; also 38:1; 44:14). It is clear that salvation is perceived as reward for adherence to the law (cf. also 54:16; 59:2). At the same time, the righteous (or at least most of them) are not sinless (85:15) and their salvation is attributed to God’s mercy (77:6–7; 78:7; 84:10). In its frequent reference to God’s mercy (not only in Baruch’s prayer for the people [48] but also in authoritative statements) 2 Baruch resembles the Ezra of the early dialogues in 4 Ezra more than the position which 4 Ezra as a whole endorses. Without God’s mercy, none, except perhaps a very exceptional few, could be saved (75:5–6; 84:11): the implication here, unlike the similar assertion in 4 Ezra, is that many are indeed saved by God’s 116

Understanding is here knowledge of the right way to live which the Law gives. Like 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch evidently considers that Gentile nations have had the opportunity to be subject to God’s law (though perhaps not in its Sinaitic form) but have rejected it; cf. 15:3. 118 On the meaning of ‘belief’ in 2 Baruch, see Murphy, The Structure, 64–66; Yinger, Paul, 84–85. 117

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mercy. Significantly, the righteous are those who ‘have not withdrawn from mercy’ (44:14), as apostates have. God’s mercy deals with the sins of those who subject themselves to his law, but those who reject the law have cut themselves off from mercy. Therefore the book’s concluding summary of the fate of people at the judgment reads: Then he will make alive those whom he has found, and he will purge them from their sins. and at the same time he will destroy those who are polluted with sins (85:15).

As in 1 Enoch 5:8–9, sinlessness is eschatological gift for those who have proved sufficiently righteous in this life. While this view of God’s mercy contributes to 2 Baruch’s more inclusive covenantalism, as compared with 4 Ezra, and makes 2 Baruch resemble the Ezra of the dialogues more than the position which 4 Ezra as a whole endorses, 2 Baruch’s view of God’s mercy still stops far short of that advanced by Ezra in his plea to God for mercy (4 Ezra 8:20–36). For the unconverted Ezra, the exceptional people who are truly righteous secure their reward by their deeds, while God’s mercy must be mercy for sinners who have no store of good works (8:31–36). This is not 2 Baruch’s view of God’s mercy. For 2 Baruch, as for the Enoch tradition, mercy is for the righteous, who live in accordance with the law and have a store of good works, but are not perfect (as well as passages already cited, cf. 61:9). For 2 Baruch’s more inclusive covenantalism depends not only on emphasizing God’s mercy for the righteous, as 4 Ezra does not, but also on taking a more optimistic view than 4 Ezra of the possibilities of keeping the law faithfully. 2 Baruch does not mention the problem of the evil heart, and while at one point the book appears to share 4 Ezra’s view of the legacy of Adam (48:42–43) it later clarifies the point, making clear that Adam merely set an example which his descendants are free to copy or not (54:15–19).119 2 Baruch does not refer to the difficulty of keeping the law. Because the law can be kept adequately, if not perfectly, because God will be merciful to those who keep the law adequately, though not perfectly, and because the fall of Jerusalem is his chastisement of his people for their own good, not his destruction of irredeemable apostates, 2 Baruch does not face the most acute problems in Ezra’s theological journey nor require the unusual solutions he is given. E. P. Sanders contrasts the two works in order to contrast the ‘legalistic perfectionism’ unique, in the literature of early Judaism, to 4 Ezra, and the view of 2 Baruch, which he sees as representative of the covenantal 119

On the differences between 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch in this respect, see P.-M. Bogaert, Apocalypse de Baruch, vol. 1 (SC 144; Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1969) 402–405.

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nomism characteristic of the rest of early Jewish literature.120 He gives ‘the usual formulation’ of the latter as: ‘God punishes the wicked for their deeds, while bestowing mercy on the righteous.’121 Yet this contrast between 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch is probably overdrawn. As we have seen, 4 Ezra does not altogether exclude God’s mercy for the righteous, while it is difficult to tell what standard of law observance qualifies as keeping the law perfectly. With reference to 2 Baruch, it would be more accurate to say not simply that God bestows mercy on the righteous, but that God has mercy on the righteous because of their good works. As Carson puts it, mercy ‘is a kind response to merit.’122 As 2 Baruch’s discussion of apostates and proselytes (41–42) shows, the notion of salvation as the reward for the good works of the righteous does not imply a nice calculation of merit and reward, but it does make salvation dependent on adherence to God and his law. As we have seen in discussion of 4 Ezra, the idea of salvation as reward for righteousness need not be alternative to the idea of salvation as God’s covenantal grace. It is in his grace that God makes the covenantal promises and lays down the requirement of obedience to the law as the condition for receiving them. Within this general framework it is possible to emphasize the need for human achievement to the point of marginalizing grace, as 4 Ezra does, and it is possible to stress the need for human achievement at the same time as assuring people who adhere to the law that God will be merciful to them, as 2 Baruch does. While 4 Ezra’s pessimism about the prospects of salvation for Israel in the land in his time would make it thoroughly discouraging for a general audience and suitable only for a learned elite who can appreciate its novel way of maintaining God’s covenant faithfulness, 2 Baruch is addressed to Israel as a whole, encouraging that renewed adherence to the law which, along with God’s mercy, would ensure salvation. 3.4 3 Baruch This apocalypse is extant in Greek and Slavonic versions, which frequently differ in textual detail and both of which have been subject to Christian influence, though the original work was undoubtedly non-Christian Jewish.123 The differences between the versions are one factor which make interpretation difficult, but this work has proved curiously resistant to coherent interpretation for other reasons too. The fact that the interpretations 120

Sanders, Paul, 427; ‘The Covenant,’ 17–22. Sanders, Paul, 421: italics original. 122 D. A. Carson, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1981) 69. 123 This has been adequately demonstrated by D. C. Harlow, The Greek Apocalypse of Baruch (3 Baruch) in Hellenistic Judaism and Early Christianity (SVTP 12; Leiden: Brill, 1996) chapter 3. 121

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offered in the most significant recent studies – by Picard,124 Nickelsburg125 and Harlow126 – differ very widely suggests that we must be very cautious about any conclusions drawn from this work. However, certain points may be made. Since the indubitably Christian additions to the text are in every case found only in one of the two recensions, never in both, we should also be very cautious about accepting the originality of other material present in only one of the recensions. This applies to references to the fate of righteous and sinners after death which occur only in the Greek version (4:3, 4–5, 15; 10:5) as well as to 16:4–8 in the Slavonic version.127 It is likely that the original work referred to existence after death only in the special case of its depiction of the planners and builders of the tower of Babel in the second and third heavens (3–4). Scribes who expected an apocalypse to deal with this subject supplied the lack, differently in the two versions. Therefore I cannot accept Harlow’s argument that 3 Baruch substitutes personal eschatology for a national, collective eschatology such as would involve the restoration of Jerusalem.128 Surprisingly, there is no explicit eschatology at all in 3 Baruch. Another important point at which I differ from Harlow also concerns the differences between the versions. In chapters 11–16, evidently the climactic part of the revelation given to Baruch, the Slavonic version refers consistently to what the angels bring as prayers (11:4, 9; 14:2; 15:2–3), while the Greek, after first referring to prayers (11:4), subsequently refers to virtues and good works (11:9; 12:5; 14:2; 15:2).129 It is surely probable that the Slavonic is more original in this. Most other parallels to the general notion concern prayers (Tob 12:12, 15; 1 Enoch 47:1–2; 99:3; TA dam 2:7; Rev 8:3–4), but the Apocalypse of Paul speaks of deeds. The clumsy mixture of the two in the Greek version of 3 Baruch may well reflect the influence of the Apocalypse of Paul on it. Therefore I must dissent also from Harlow’s interpretation of the significance of chapters 11–16 for the meaning of the whole apocalypse: ‘A present and universal system of rewards and punish124 J.-C. Picard’s essays on 3 Baruch are now collected in Le Continent Apocryphe: Essai sur les Littératures Apocryphes Juive et Chrétienne (Instrumenta Patristica 36; Turnhout: Brepols, 1999) 55–161. 125 G. W. E. Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah (London: SCM Press, 1981) 299–303. 126 Harlow, The Greek Apocalypse. 127 In Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, 67–69, I argued that these verses in the Slavonic summarize the original ending of 3 Baruch. I no longer think this, mainly because I am impressed by the inclusio which 16:1–3 forms with 1:2 (see below). I now think that 16:4–8 in the Slavonic must have been added by a scribe who knew other cosmic tour apocalypses which follow this pattern. 128 Harlow, The Greek Apocalypse, argues this at various points; see the summary on p. 208. Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature, 300–305, also takes this view. 129 Harlow, The Greek Apocalypse, 148, notes these differences but proceeds as though the originality of the Greek version can be taken for granted.

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ments replaces any hope for an eschatological restoration of Jerusalem that would involve the collective salvation of the Jewish people.’130 Thus I cannot agree with his overall understanding of the way 3 Baruch aims to deflect concern from the restoration of Jerusalem by attention instead to individual eschatology and to good works as the only means of access to God.131 If this were the case it would be of considerable interest for our present concerns, but the evidence is against it. 3 Baruch, surely in dependence on 2 Baruch, opens with a scene in which Baruch laments and questions God about the fall of Jerusalem, posing the problem in much the same way as the opening chapters of 2 Baruch do, with evident reference to the way the event seems to contradict the special status of Israel as the covenant people by contrast with the nations. But then an angel, announcing that Baruch’s prayer has been heard, promises to reveal mysteries to him and does so by conducting him through the various heavens up to the fifth. This follows the model of other heavenly tours through the heavens, except that others proceed to the presence of God in the seventh heaven. The climax in 3 Baruch is different: he sees how the prayers of people on earth are received and rewarded in the heavenly temple, where the angelic high priest Michael officiates before God. The significance, for the overall meaning of the book, of what Baruch sees in the lower heavens is obscure, and we should probably not expect too much coherence in this kind of apocalypse, which typically discloses miscellaneous contents of the various heavens. We shall focus here on the way the events that transpire in the fifth heaven and the book’s conclusion might relate to the opening problem. Nickelsburg has provided a major key by showing how Baruch’s opening question (1:2) and Michael’s closing words (16:1–3) form an inclusio by both alluding to Deuteronomy 32.132 Admittedly, the most important part of Michael’s words for this observation (16:2) occurs only in the Greek, but here it may be permissible to rely on the Greek because we have already seen how the closing chapters of Deuteronomy were a regular resource of Jewish eschatology, including those apocalypses which wrestled with the problem of understanding God’s purpose for Israel in the light of the catastrophe of 70 ce. Deuteronomy 32 depicts the punishment of Israel by God for faithlessness and idolatry. God’s instrument is a pagan nation which 130

Harlow, The Greek Apocalypse, 156. These are two of the four themes Harlow, The Greek Apocalypse, 148, specifies; cf. 208–209. 132 Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature, 302–303; Harlow, The Greek Apocalypse, 155–156, reports and even develops the argument a little, before rejecting it on the grounds that 16:2 is only in the Greek text and that the interpretation is inconsistent with the rest of Harlow’s argument about the meaning and purpose of 3 Baruch. 131

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foolishly takes the credit for itself, not recognizing that its victory was possible only because God handed over his people to it. This is exactly the issue in 3 Baruch 1:2, and 16:2–3, by alluding to Deuteronomy 32:21–27, explains how this was an appropriate form of punishment for God to give his faithless people.133 It was a response to the evil of those of his people who did not invoke him (their guardian angels are those in chapter 13 who have no human prayers to bring, and who beg not to have to accompany such evil people). Since they did not pray for mercy, God punished their evils justly. But those angels who do bring prayers to God receive mercies in response – to a degree corresponding to their prayers (15:1–3 Slavonic). Deuteronomy 32 goes on to declare that, following his punishment of his people by means of their enemies, God will have mercy on them and vindicate them (Deut 32:36) by taking vengeance himself on their enemies. The implicit message must be that, just as God has punished his people in response to their evil, so he will have mercy in response to their prayers. Thus, despite the arguments of other scholars precisely to the contrary, it seems that 3 Baruch is solely concerned with the corporate destiny of the covenant people, not at all with the destiny of individuals after death. In a way which is parallel to but also different from 2 Baruch, 3 Baruch understands the punishment of Israel as just, and also as consistent with the covenant promises of God because God’s mercy will in the future supervene. Instead of directing attention to observance of the law, as 2 Baruch does, 3 Baruch’s implied message is that prayer for God’s mercy is the appropriate action to take.

4. The Sibylline Tradition The Jewish Sibylline Oracles are a form of prophetic oracle, not apocalypses, but they share with the apocalypses the character of literature of revelation, and so may be conveniently included here. Since two of the major books (4 and 5) were written in the wake and under the impact of the fall of Jerusalem in 70 ce, this is also a reason for considering the oracles at this point in our chapter. There were pagan Sibylline oracles, attributed to prophetesses known as Sibyls, and the Jewish oracles continue this literary tradition, making the Sibyl into a daughter-in-law of Noah, who was inspired to prophesy by the one true God. The original intention must have been to gain a hearing for their message from Gentile readers who would 133 The repetition of ‘provoke’ in both Deut 32:21 and in the virtual quotation of it in 3 Bar 16:2 indicates a lex talionis judgment, i. e. one which is just by virtue of the correspondence between the crime and the punishment.

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take them seriously as ancient prophecy. Though it is debatable whether Jewish literature that has the appearance of apologetic for Gentile readers was really intended for outsiders, some at least of the Sibyllines are very likely propaganda, promoting an ethical code that condemned the practices Jews found objectionable in pagan life (especially sexual misconduct and infanticide) and urging worship of the one God the Creator in place of renunciation of idolatry. The role of the Jewish people in this one God’s purpose is also a significant topic. Typically the Sibyllines contain many oracles of destruction on nations, places, cities and empires, condemned for their various misdeeds, and reviews of world history culminating in an imminent climax of judgment leading to a golden age on earth, in which God will be universally honoured and his people Israel central. With the exception of the conclusion to book 4 (179–192) and a probably Jewish part of book 8 (401–423) there is no reference to resurrection or judgment of the dead,134 one of the features which limits the significance of these works for our theme. The ultimate salvation of individuals is no more a concern here than in most of the Old Testament prophets. In view of their genre and implied audience, it is not surprising that the Sibyllines are a literature of the diaspora. Books 3, 5 and 11 were written in Egypt, with the bulk of the earliest (book 3) coming from the mid-second century bce, and the fifth book written between 70 ce and the Egyptian Jewish revolt of 115. The Jewish parts of books 1–2 were written in Asia Minor, probably in the first century ce. Book 4 may come from the vicinity of Palestine and was written after 70 ce. The Jewish parts of book 8 date from the end of the second century ce. The third book refers to the Mosaic law as given by God to ‘the people of the twelve tribes,’ such that whoever disobeys it is punished by humans or by God (256–259).135 Israel’s life in obedience to the law (245: ‘fulfilling the word of the great God, the hymn of the law’) is eulogized (218–247, 594–600) in terms which refer to none of the specifically Jewish features of the law but only those which are commended also to Gentiles. But as well 134 Book 2 contains a long eschatological section (154–338) in which resurrection and the judgment and destinies of the dead are prominent subjects. But most of this section (178–338) is a paraphrase of the Christian Apocalypse of Peter, supplemented by passages taken from Sibylline Oracle 8. All the material on resurrection and judgment of the dead is from the Apocalypse of Peter. This dependence on the Apocalypse of Peter was already demonstrated conclusively by M. R. James, ‘A New Text of the Apocalypse of Peter,’ JTS 12 (1911) 39–44, 51–52, but his work is not known to J. J. Collins, who therefore underestimates the extent of the Christian material in book 2: ‘Sibylline Oracles,’ in Charlesworth ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1, 330–334; and The Apocalyptic Imagination, 192. Thus the only eschatological material from the original Jewish book 1–2 is in 2:154–177. 135 Quotations from the Sibylline Oracles are from the translation in Collins, ‘Sibylline Oracles,’ 317–472.

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as the ethical requirements of the law, the cultic worship of the one God, centred on Jerusalem, is also prominent (574–594, cf. 273–294). Both are commended to Gentiles, since the Jews are to be ‘guides of life for all mortals’ (195). The Sibyllines in general, as well as most of the apocalypses we have studied, take for granted that the basic ethical commandments of the Torah are also God’s commandments to all people, and that the requirement to worship not idols, but the God who has made himself known to Israel and dwells in Jerusalem is also incumbent on all people. Therefore Gentiles are judged for ‘transgressing the holy law of the immortal God’ (599–600) and ‘because they knew not the law nor the judgment of the great God’ (686–687), this ignorance being understood as culpable. In the eschatological age, seeing the blessed state of Israel in the holy land, the Gentiles will wish to worship Israel’s God and to ‘ponder the Law of the Most High’ (719). When, finally, God puts ‘in effect a common law for men throughout the whole earth’ (757–758), the Stoic language refers to the essence of the Torah. In all this the covenant with Israel appears only in the favoured status of Israel as those given the law and the understanding it brings (585–586) and as those destined to share this knowledge with others. Jews and Gentiles alike are punished for disobeying God’s commandments and enjoy thisworldly well-being as a result of keeping them. The assumption that God’s law is for Gentiles as well as Jews – with no attempt to define the difference between its universal and specifically Jewish features – appears particularly strikingly in a passage in book 8, in which the notion of the two ways in the form in which it is presented by Moses to Israel at the end of Deuteronomy 30 expresses God’s address to all his human creatures: ‘I myself proposed two ways, of life and death, and proposed too the judgment to choose good life. But they turned eagerly to death and eternal fire’ (399–401). 4 Ezra too, quoting this very text (Deut 30:19), assumes that, though spoken by Moses to Israel, it is also the choice that confronts every human being (4 Ezra 7:127–129). The expectation that in the future the Gentile nations will also worship God and obey his law is also found in the fifth Sibylline book: ‘they will have a mind in their breasts that conforms to your [Jerusalem’s] laws’ (265, cf. 357). The Egyptian book 5 includes an impressive prophecy of judgment on Egypt’s idolatry and her conversion to the true God (484–511). Book 4 issues a call to repentance and conversion to all humanity, threatening the eschatological destruction of the world as punishment for continued disobedience to God (162–178). Books 4 and 5 both respond to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 ce, in very different ways but both much more simply than the three apocalypses we have considered. Neither seems concerned about the question of the validity of the covenant that so distressed the apocalyptists. Book 5 responds entirely with denunciation of Rome and prophecies of her doom. Book 4,

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perhaps a product of one of the Jewish baptist sects, treats all human-made temples and animal sacrifices as inappropriate to the true God (6–30), in such a way that the Jerusalem temple can hardly be an exception. This, of course, reduces the impact of the fall of Jerusalem to a minimum, and the latter is unproblematically treated as punishment for Israel’s folly and sin (115–118).

19. The Restoration of Israel in Luke-Acts* 1. Introduction It is generally recognized that an expectation of the restoration of Israel was widespread in late Second Temple Judaism, including such elements as: Israel’s return to God in repentance, the liberation of Israel from pagan rule and the overthrow of Israel’s enemies, Israel’s re-possession of the land of Israel, the return of the diaspora to the land of Israel, the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Temple in splendour, the conversion of the nations to the worship of the God of Israel and their pilgrimage to the temple in Jerusalem, the reconstitution of Israel as an independent theocracy under the rule of a legitimate king of the line of David and a legitimate high priest of the line of Zadok, the supremacy of Israel in the world. The sources of these hopes were, of course, the scriptural prophecies, with special importance given to the concluding chapters of the Torah (Deut 30–33)1 and the later chapters of Isaiah (40–66). There was also special attention given to the models provided by the Exodus and the conquest of the land, as prototypes for a new exodus from oppression and a new conquest of the land from its pagan rulers and occupiers, as well as to the empire of David and Solomon as a model of Israel as an independent theocracy dominant over Israel’s Gentile neighbours,2 but these historical prototypes were usually read through the lens of the prophecies which already worked with these models for the future. The presupposition for such hopes was, of course, that Israel’s current condition, as a result of the nation’s past sins, was far from that which God intended and promised for his people. The scriptural prophecies of restoration, mostly given with a view to the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests and exiles of Israel, were * First publication: James M. Scott ed., Restoration: Old Testament, Jewish and Christian Perspectives (JSJS up 72; Leiden: Brill, 2001) 435–487. 1 On the importance of this passage in Second Temple Jewish literature, see D. J. Harrington, ‘Interpreting Israel’s History: The Testament of Moses as a Rewriting of Deut. 31–34,’ in G. W. E. Nickelsburg ed., Studies on the Testament of Moses (SBLSCS 4; Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1973) 59–68. 2 This aspect is emphasized by S. Talmon, ‘The Concept of M and Messianism in Early Judaism,’ in J. H. Charlesworth ed., The Messiah (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1984) 79–115, esp. 83, 99, 113–114.

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not generally understood as already fulfilled in the return from exile and the foundation of the post-exilic Jewish temple state in the sixth and fifth centuries bce, nor in the period of Hasmonean rule. This was especially because, by the late Second Temple period, a large majority of Jews lived in diaspora outside the land, a condition still commonly understood as God’s punishment, while in the land itself Israel lived under the domination of oppressive pagan rulers who claimed divinity and contested YHWH ’s sovereignty over his land, or (in the case of the Herods) under their almost equally hated puppet rulers, while the land itself was defiled by Gentile inhabitants with their idolatrous worship. Of course, specific Jewish groups, such as the Qumran community, had additional reasons for deploring the status quo and hoping for change, such as a belief that the priestly ministry in the temple was so corrupt and misguided as to be invalid. But the more general picture sketched above was evidently very broadly accepted. Some controversy3 has surrounded the prominence Tom Wright, in his reconstructions of the Jewish context of Jesus and Jesus’ own intentions, has given to the idea that Jews, even those living in the land, regarded themselves as ‘still in exile’ and awaited the ‘end of’ or ‘the return from exile.’4 The idea of the Jews as ‘exiles in their own land’ is justified in the sense that Jews living in the land felt dispossessed of it by pagan rule (which, of course, had an important economic element), as well as by the way Wright tends to use ‘exile’ as a temporal rather than a geographical term, referring to the period that, in Israel’s understanding of history, ran from the Babylonian exile to the future restoration. But some misunderstandings might be avoided if one were to speak not simply of continuing exile, but of continuing exile and subjugation. The latter is how the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, even in narrating the sixth and fifth-century return from exile and even under the conditions of the relatively benign and tolerant Persian empire, speak of the returned exiles: ‘slaves in the land that you gave to our ancestors’ (Neh 9:36; cf. Ezra 9:7–9). Restoration meant liberation from slavery to oppressive pagan rule as well as return from exile.5 That this is how many Jews, in the land and in the diaspora, understood their present and future in relation

3 See A. E. Harvey, review of Jesus and the Victory of God by N. T. Wright, Theology 100 (1997) 296; C. Marsh, ‘Theological History? N. T. Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God,’ JSNT 69 (1998) 77–94; M. Casey, ‘Where Wright is Wrong: a critical review of N. T. Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God,’ JSNT 69 (1998) 95–10; L. T. Johnson, ‘An Historiographical Response to Wright’s Jesus,’ in C. C. Newman ed., Jesus and the Restoration of Israel (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press / Carlisle: Paternoster, 1999) 210–216. 4 First in N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (London: SPCK , 1992) 268–272, 299–301. 5 Wright, of course, knows this and is merely using shorthand terminology.

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to the scriptures and the promises of God is widely evidenced in the extant Jewish literature.6 The theme of Israel’s restoration has been prominent in recent studies both of the historical Jesus7 and of Luke-Acts.8 The aim of this essay is not to study the historical Jesus or even Luke’s account of Jesus’ ministry and death, which would be important in a full study of our subject but must be omitted here for reasons of space. Rather the aim is to study the restoration of Israel in the framework of understanding Luke provides for seeing the significance of the events of Jesus’ ministry and the early church through the lens of Israel’s hope and the prophecies of Israel’s restoration. It is widely agreed that in the first two chapters of his Gospel Luke creates for the beginning of Jesus’ story a setting which expresses the messianic and eschatological hopes of Israel, based in the prophetic scriptures. I 6 Useful reviews of the evidence are provided by C. A. Evans, ‘Aspects of Exile and Restoration in the Proclamation of Jesus and the Gospels,’ in J. M. Scott ed., Exile: Old Testament, Jewish, and Christian Conceptions (SJSJ 56; Leiden: Brill, 1997) 299–328; and ‘Jesus and the Continuing Exile of Israel,’ in Newman ed., Jesus, 77–100; E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE – 66 CE (London: SCM Press) 290–291; J. M. Scott, ‘Philo and the Restoration of Israel,’ in E. H. Lovering ed., Society of Biblical Literature 1995 Seminar Papers (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995) 568–569. J. M. Scott, ‘Exile and the Self-Understanding of Diaspora Jews in the Greco-Roman Period,’ in Scott ed., Exile, 173–218, discusses the evidence that diaspora Jews thought of themselves as in exile from the land. 7 Significant studies include: B. F. Meyer, The Aims of Jesus (London: SCM Press, 1979); E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (London: SCM Press, 1985); E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin, 1993); N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (London: SPCK , 1996); D. C. Allison, Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998); Newman ed., Jesus ; S. McKnight, A New Vision for Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999). 8 Significant studies include: J. Jervell, Luke and the People of God (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1972); A. W. Wainwright, ‘Luke and the Restoration of the Kingdom to Israel,’ ExpT 89 (1977) 76–79; D. L. Tiede, Prophecy and History in Luke-Acts (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980); R. C. Tannehill, ‘Israel in Luke-Acts: A Tragic Story,’ JBL 104 (1985) 69–85; D. L. Tiede, ‘The Exaltation of Jesus and the Restoration of Israel in Acts 1,’ HTR 79 (1986) 278–286; J. B. Tyson ed., Luke-Acts and the Jewish People (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988); C. A. Evans, ‘The Twelve Thrones of Israel: Scripture and Politics in Luke 22:24–30,’ in C. A. Evans and J. A. Sanders, Luke and Scripture: The Function of Sacred Tradition in Luke-Acts (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993) 154–170; J. B. Chance, Jerusalem, the Temple and the New Age in Luke-Acts (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1988); J. T. Carroll, Response to the End of History: Eschatology and Situation in Luke-Acts (SBLDS 92; Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1988); D. Ravens, Luke and the Restoration of Israel (JSNTSup 119; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995); M. Turner, Power from on High: The Spirit in Israel’s Restoration and Witness in Luke-Acts (JPTSup 9; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996); V. Fusco, ‘Luke-Acts and the Future of Israel,’ NovT 38 (1996) 1–17; P. W. L. Walker, Jesus and the Holy City: New Testament Perspectives on Jerusalem (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996) chapter 3; D. Seccombe, ‘The New People of God,’ in I. H. Marshall and D. Peterson ed., Witness to the Gospel: The Theology of Acts (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) 349–372; D. P. Moessner ed., Jesus and the Heritage of Israel (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 1999).

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shall argue that these chapters provide, more specifically, a programme of restoration corresponding closely to the kind of hopes for restoration and the kinds of readings of scriptural prophecies that, our evidence suggests, were widely held in late Second Temple Judaism. These hopes are strongly affirmed in Luke’s opening chapters9 by the attribution of them to the archangel Gabriel and to persons who speak under the inspiration of the divine Spirit (Zechariah, Simeon and probably Mary). Evidently Luke thereby provides his readers with a framework of expectation and significance within which to read the rest of the story of the Gospel and Acts. But it is also clear that this framework of hope is itself subject to interpretation by the events which fulfil it only in unexpected ways. How Luke envisages the restoration of Israel to have actually happened, or to be happening, or as still to happen in the future when he wrote, has been much discussed. Insofar as this essay has new evidence and interpretation to offer it lies principally in an attempt to look in more detail than has usually been done at how Luke’s depiction of Israel’s hope is grounded in the scriptural prophecies and relates to the ways they were understood in late Second Temple Judaism. This will bring to light neglected aspects of Israel’s restoration according to Luke (such as the restoration of all twelve tribes and the return of the diaspora to Jerusalem) and allow some refining and correction of conclusions reached by others.

2. The restoration programme in Luke 1–2 If the passages of messianic and eschatological hopes, alluding to prophecies of the Scriptures, in Luke 1–2 are read as a whole, they comprise a comprehensive programme of messianic restoration for Israel. For the purpose of close study, we shall identify the following six themes: (2.1) Elijah restores the people in preparation for the coming of the Lord; (2.2) The Davidic Messiah delivers the people from oppression; (2.3) The consolation of Israel as a light for the nations; (2.4) The redemption of Jerusalem and the return of the diaspora; (2.5) The Messiah reigns forever; (2.6) God exalts the lowly and humiliates the exalted. A seventh and final theme (2.7: the Messiah is opposed and causes division in Israel) falls, as we shall see, into a different category from the others.

9 The complex issue of Luke’s sources in Luke 1–2 cannot be pursued here. However, I am convinced that, whatever sources Luke used, he is thoroughly in control of them, and that attempts to identify pre-Lukan material by showing that it does not fit its context or is not characteristically Lukan are mistaken.

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2.1. Elijah restores the people in preparation for the coming of the Lord This theme will be treated at greater length than most of the others, both because it has been less studied than Davidic messianism and also because it has a special importance for Luke as signalling the beginning of the restoration of Israel. 2.1.1. Jewish traditions of Elijah as restorer The only indisputable reference in the Hebrew Bible to the return of Elijah in the last days associates him with restoration: Behold, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of YHWH comes. He will turn ( ) the hearts of fathers to their sons and the hearts of sons to their fathers, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse (Mal 3:23–24 {English versions 4:5–6]).

The verb has considerable eschatological resonance. Frequently (and usually, as here, in the Hiphil) it is used of God’s restoration of his people from exile to the land of Israel (e. g. Isa 49:5–6; Jer 16:15; 23:3; 24:6; 29:14; 32:37; 50:19; Ezek 39:27; Hos 11:11),10 as well as of the restoration of Jerusalem (Isa 58:12; Dan 9:25) and the land (Ezek 38:8). It can also be used of Israel’s turning back to God in repentance, which is the anticipated condition for her eschatological restoration by God (Deut 30:2; Isa 59:20; Hos 6:1). Malachi himself demanded Israel’s repentance and return to God in these terms (3:7). Both uses are found in the key passage of the Torah about the restoration from exile: Deuteronomy 30:1–5, and find echoes in later texts alluding to that passage (e. g. Neh 8:1–9; Tob 13:5–6; 14:5; 4QD ibHama [4Q504] 1–2 5:12–13; Jub 1:15; Bar 2:30, 33). In the Septuagint such verbs as , , and are used to render in these contexts. In the Septuagint version of Malachi is used, as in some other instances 3:24(4:6) (3:23 in LXX )11 of with reference to God’s eschatological restoration of Israel (Jer 16:15; in eschatological 24:6; 50[LXX 27]:19). The multivalent significance of contexts evidently stimulated the exegetical imagination of interpreters of Malachi 3:24 (4:6). The earliest extant interpretation is Ben Sira’s: At the appointed time, it is written, you are destined to put an end to wrath before the day of YHWH , to turn ( , ) the hearts of fathers to their sons 10 Note also the phrase , ‘to restore from captivity,’ in Deut 30:3; Jer 29:14; 30:2, 18; 31:23; 32:44; 33:7, 11, 26; Lam 2:14; Ezek 16:53; 39:25; Hos 6:11; Amos 9:14; Zeph 3:20. 11 LXX rearranges the last three verses of Malachi, such that this verse becomes the penultimate verse and is followed by 3:22(4:4).

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and to prepare ( ,12 ) the tribes of Israel. 11 Blessed is he who shall have seen you before he dies!13 (Sir 48:10–11 a)14

The last clause of verse 10 probably does not refer to the restoration of exiled Israel to the land, even though Ben Sira elsewhere expresses the hope that all the tribes will again possess the land (36:13, 16). The Greek version may have understood it in this sense ( has this meaning, only once renders in the rendering , in Jer 23:3 LXX ), but Septuagint (Prov 29:14). The Hiphil of often means ‘to prepare’ and is often translated by in the Septuagint. Ben Sira has taken over the first half of Malachi’s description of Elijah’s task (‘he will turn the hearts of fathers to their sons’), but for the corresponding phrase that follows in Malachi (‘and the hearts of sons to their fathers’) he has substituted a clause which probably extends Elijah’s task of restoration to a more general preparation of the people for the eschatological coming of YHWH in salvation and judgment. This may well have been influenced by identifying Elijah with the messenger of Malachi 3:1 a (an identification made by most readers, ancient and modern), who is said to prepare the way before YHWH . There is no need to suppose that Ben Sira is here influenced by Isaiah 49:6, which does refer to return from exile;15 an identification of Elijah with the Servant of Isaiah 49 would be unparalleled, as well as odd, especially as Ben Sira does not go on to attribute other aspects of the Servant’s role to Elijah. More plausible would be an allusion to Isaiah 40:3, which describes the preparation for the new exodus. The words ‘prepare [literally: clear] the way’ ( ) are virtually identical in Isaiah 40:3 and Malachi 3:1, so that the association of the two was easily made and was certainly made in early Christian traditions about John the Baptist. But it is impossible to be sure that Ben Sira made this connexion. Ben Sira’s expansion of Elijah’s restorative role is paralleled by the Septuagint version of Malachi 3:24(4:6) (3:23 in LXX ). Like Ben Sira, the Greek translators have preserved the first half of the account of Elijah’s task as it is in the Hebrew of Malachi, but have substituted a different phrase for the second half:

12

P. Winter, ‘Lukanische Miszellen,’ ZNW 49 (1958) 65–66, reads , but this cannot explain the Greek 13 With this beatitude, cf. Ps Sol 17:44; 18:6. 14 This translation follows P. W. Skehan and A. A. Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira (AB 39: New York: Doubleday, 1987) 530–532, in reconstructing the Hebrew text as far as possible (the text of MS B is fragmentary here). 15 Contra Skehan and Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, 534.

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And, behold, I will send you Elijah the Tishbite, before the great and glorious day of the Lord comes. He will restore ( ) the heart of the father to his son and the heart of a man to his neighbour, lest I come and strike the earth utterly.

Here the work of reconciling families has been extended to that of reconciling people in general in Israel. Evidently the former was thought too restricted to be adequate preparation for the coming day of wrath. Mark 9:11 (par Matt 17:11) seems best understood as reflecting the Jewish tradition of Elijah as the agent of eschatological restoration in a form which appears to generalize his role completely: ‘Elijah, when he comes first, restores all things ( ).’ (Since John the Baptist, identified with Elijah in this passage, did not ‘restore all things,’ the idea is not likely to be an early Christian innovation.) The much discussed ‘first’ ( )16 need mean no more than Malachi 3:1 and 3:23(4:5) say: ‘I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me’; ‘I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of YHWH comes’ (cf. also 3:1). No Jewish text from the Second Temple period puts Elijah and the Messiah of David in chronological order in the sequence of eschatological events, although 4 Ezra refers to a group of people who have been taken up to heaven without dying (6:26; 13:52) and who in the last days will be revealed together with the Messiah (7:28; 14:9). Doubtless these include Elijah, but he is not named and no restorative role is attributed to him.17 Since ‘all things’ in a Jewish eschatological context usually means the whole of the created world, Mark 9:11 might seem to attribute to Elijah a much larger role than any other tradition suggests, but probably we should understand it to mean simply that Elijah will restore all that has to be restored before the eschatological coming of the Lord God to save and to judge.18 Another interpretation of Elijah’s restorative role is found in a work contemporary with Luke’s, the Biblical Antiquities of Pseudo-Philo, in a passage which, while it does not mention Elijah by name, clearly alludes to Malachi 3:24(4:6). It concludes a speech of God to Israel through Joshua (a rewritten version of Josh 24:2–15): 16

See M. M. Faierstein, ‘Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?,’ JBL 100 (1981) 75–86; D. C. Allison, ‘ “Elijah must come first,” ’ JBL 103 (1984) 256–258; J. A. Fitzmyer, ‘More about Elijah coming first,’ JBL 104 (1985) 295–296; J. Marcus, The Way of the Lord (Louisville: Westminster / John Knox, 1992) 110; M. Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel (SNTSMS 102; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) 122–123. 17 Rather similarly, in 1 Enoch 90:31 Enoch and Elijah return to earth, but no role is attributed to them. It is tempting to think that 4 Ezra 6:26 b (‘the heart of the earth’s inhabitants shall be changed and converted to a different spirit’) reflects Mal 3:24(4:6), but Ezek 11:19; 36:26 are more likely the source. 18 Cf. Casey, Aramaic Sources, 125–126: he thinks that Mark 9:11 alludes to Mal 3:24(4:6) and Sir 48:10, and that therefore the is defined by the content of these texts.

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But also at the end the lot of each one of you will be life eternal, for you and your seed, and I will take your souls and store them in peace until the time allotted the world be complete. And I will restore (reddam) you to your fathers and your fathers to you, and they [the Gentiles?] will know through you that I have not chosen you in vain (LAB 23:13).

Here the ‘restoration’ of fathers to sons and sons to fathers in Malachi has been understood as the restoration of the dead to each other through resurrection.19 The eschatology of Pseudo-Philo is often close to that of 2 Baruch, and this passage is reminiscent of the portrayal of resurrection in 2 Baruch 50–51. There it is said that the dead are initially raised in precisely the form in which they died: For then it will be necessary to show those who live that the dead are living again, and that those who went away have come back (2 Bar 50:3).

Later the apocalypse speaks of the mutual receiving of earlier and later generations of the dead in a way that parallels Pseudo-Philo’s understanding of the restoration of fathers to sons and sons to fathers: For the first will receive the last, those whom they expected; and the last, those whom they had heard that they had gone away (51:13).

While neither of these passages refers to Elijah himself, it is likely that the interpretation of Malachi 3:24(4:6) which Pseudo-Philo attests20 is the 19 For reddo used of the restoration of the dead in resurrection, see also LAB 3:10 (twice); 33:3. In these cases, as in a series of other passages in Jewish and Christian literature, it is the places of the dead that ‘give back’ the dead to God: see my study of this tradition: ‘Resurrection as Giving Back the Dead: A Traditional Image of Resurrection in the Pseudepigrapha and the Apocalypse of John,’ in J. H. Charlesworth and C. A. Evans ed., The Pseudepigrapha and Early Biblical Interpretation (Studies in Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity 2; JSPSup 14; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993) 269–291. More like 23:13 is 18:5, in which God ‘gave back’ (reddidi) Isaac to his father Abraham when the latter is about to kill him in sacrifice. Perhaps this divine restoration of a son to a father when the son was as good as dead encouraged Pseudo-Philo to read Mal 3:24(4:6) in terms of resurrection. 20 It is possible that there is another example of this interpretation of Malachi 3:24(4:6) in 4Q521 2 3:2: ‘fathers will return to their sons’ ( ). The very fragmentary context of these words makes it impossible to be sure of their significance, but the use of must indicate a literal spatial movement rather than the metaphorical meaning of in Malachi. So the meaning may be that dead fathers (or ancestors) will return from Sheol to their sons (or descendants). This interpretation is given some probability by the references to resurrection elsewhere in the fragments of 4Q521 (2 2:12; 7+5 2:6). It is notable that, like LAB 23:13, this fragment of 4Q521 appears to allude to Malachi 3:24(4:6) without mentioning Elijah (though a reference to Elijah in the lost context is possible). Another allusion to Malachi in which Elijah is mentioned occurs in 4Q558 1 2:4: ‘to you I will send Elijah befo[re.’ But since this is no more than four words of Malachi 3:23(4:5) translated into Aramaic, while the very fragmentary context is quite obscure, nothing more can be said about it.

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source of the tradition, found in later rabbinic literature, that ‘the resurrection of the dead comes through Elijah’ (b. So . 49 b). As we have seen, there is no clear reference to the restoration of the diaspora in the Hebrew text of Ben Sira 48:10, though preparing ‘the tribes of Israel’ might well be thought to require a prophetic ministry in the diaspora and in that sense prepare for the return. The Greek version of Ben Sira may indicate the diaspora more clearly. But traditions found later in the Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan to the Pentateuch associate the returning Elijah precisely with the diaspora, and, even though these cannot be dated securely to the Second Temple period, they are worth noticing as evidence of the way Elijah’s biblical role of restoration could be understood. According to the Targum, Elijah will be ‘sent to the exiles’ at the end of days (Exod 6:18; 40:10), while one text specifies his role as that of beginning, on God’s behalf, the work of gathering the exiles which the Messiah of David will complete (Deut 30:4). One way in which Elijah could be related exegetically to the return from exile would be to connect Malachi 3:24(4:6), together with Malachi 3:7, with Deuteronomy 30:2, where is used of Israel’s turning to God in the diaspora. If Elijah’s restorative work is to be placed in the definitive sequence of events in Israel’s restoration portrayed in Deuteronomy 30, then Elijah’s turning of Israel’s hearts (Mal 3:24[4:6]) must relate to Israel’s wholehearted turning to God (Deut 30:2), as a result of which God will restore Israel to the land. That Elijah would be instrumental in the actual gathering of the exiles for the return could derive from observing the close verbal parallel between the first six words of Malachi 3:1 and Exodus 23:20: Behold, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me… ( ) (Mal 3:1 a). I am sending a messenger before you, to guard you on the way ( ) and to bring you to the place that I have prepared (Exod 23:20).

This comparison puts Elijah in the role of God’s messenger leading the eschatological exodus of his people from the lands of their exile back to the promised land. The parallel was certainly noticed in early Christian exegesis and accounts for the assimilation of the texts of Malachi 3:1 and Exodus 23:20 in the Gospels (Matt 11:10; Mark 1:2; Luke 7:27). Pseudo-Jonathan’s Targum to Numbers 25:12 refers to Elijah as a ‘messenger of the covenant’ (Mal 3:1) who will ‘bring the good news of the redemption ( ) at the end of days.’ This role of preparing for the eschatological redemption by announcing its coming beforehand is not explicit in other Jewish texts about Elijah. It results from another identification: this time of Elijah the messenger (Mal 3:1) with the messenger of Isaiah 52:7–10.

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All these Targumic texts identify Elijah with Phinehas the grandson of Aaron (see also Tg. Ps-Jon. Exod 4:13). This remarkable piece of exegesis is attested, as early as the first century ce, in the Biblical Antiquities of Pseudo-Philo.21 There God tells him that, instead of dying, he will be hidden away until he returns as the historical figure of Elijah. Then you will be lifted up into the place where those who were before you were lifted up, and you will be there until I remember the world. Then I will make you [plural] come and you [plural] will taste what is death (LAB 48:1).

This passage is clearly connected with the tradition found in 4 Ezra 6:26; 7:28–29; 13:52; 14:9; 2 Baruch 76:2, according to which, not only Elijah, but a whole group of people who never died will return at the end and only then die. What is not explicit in Pseudo-Philo, but is clearly stated in the Targums (Exod 6:18; 40:10; Deut 30:4), is that Elijah will be the eschatological high priest.22 But this is implicit in his identification with Phinehas, the greatest high priest after his grandfather Aaron. In the identification of Phinehas with Elijah23 there were probably a number of exegetical moves at work.24 One of these was doubtless the fact that Scripture does not record Phinehas’ death (in its reliance on the silence of Scripture this is an interesting parallel to the case of Melchizedek in Heb 7:3), along with the fact that he was given ‘a covenant of perpetual priesthood’ (Num 25:13; cf. Num. R. 21:3). Another factor is that both figures are noted in the biblical narratives for their ‘zeal’ in slaughtering idolaters (Phinehas: Num 25:11–13; cf. Sir 45:23; 1 Macc 2:26, 54; 4 Macc 18:12; LAB 47:1, 7; Elijah: 1 Kings 19:10; cf. Sir 48:2; identified: PRE 29). But finally there is the link between ‘the covenant of peace’ made by God with Phinehas (Num 25:12; Sir 45:24) and Malachi 2:4–7, referring to God’s covenant of peace with Levi and describing ‘the priest’ as a ‘messenger of YHWH of hosts.’ This links Phinehas with ‘the messenger of the covenant’ (3:1), who is Elijah, and the covenant of peace with Elijah’s eschatological ministry of reconciliation (3:23[4:6]; cf. Isa 52:7). 21

It was also known to Origen: In Joann. 6.14(7). This tradition may explain John 1:19–24: John is asked whether he is one of three eschatological figures: the Messiah (the Davidic king), Elijah (the eschatological high priest) and the prophet (eschatological prophet like Moses). 23 See M. Hengel, The Zealots (tr. D. Smith; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989) chapter IV .B for a fuller study of the evidence; and R. Hayward, ‘Phinehas – the Same is Elijah: The Origins of a Tradition,’ JJS 29 (1978) 22–34, for a theory about the origins of the tradition. 24 Against Hayward, ‘Phinehas,’ I think that the origins of the tradition are likely to be exegetical, even though the exegetical basis is explicit only in the later texts. It is characteristic of LAB to use traditions which have exegetical bases without making these bases explicit. 22

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2.1.2. The Elijah-like restorer in Luke 1 The traditions about the returning Elijah appear in two passages in Luke’s first chapter: 17

He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. 17With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared (Luke 1:16–17). 77

You will go before the Lord to prepare his ways 77 to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of sins (Luke 1:76 b–77).

We may notice first that the strong allusions to Malachi 3:1 (1:17: ; 1:76: ) and 3:24(4:6) (1:17: ) are not based on the Septuagint, with which Luke has scarcely a word in common here. Similarly, the link between Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3, which is here presupposed (especially in 1:76 b), cannot be made on the basis of the Septuagint texts of these verses, which have no words in common, but only on the basis of the Hebrew texts which use the same phrase , ‘to prepare the way’ (also in Isa 57:14; 62:10). As in many other cases in the New Testament, it is clear that the exegetical work behind these verses of Luke was done with the Hebrew texts. The key words of Malachi 3:23(4:6) are here treated in a way which is different from but parallel to the Septuagint and Ben Sira: to turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous (1:17).

Like the Septuagint and Ben Sira, Luke reproduces only the first half of the description of Elijah’s task from the Hebrew text of Malachi, and like the Septuagint and Ben Sira, he substitutes for the second half a phrase designed to extend Elijah’s restorative work beyond the reconciliation of family members. The exegetical move is the same but the content different. Luke is perhaps thinking of the duty of young men to learn from the ethical wisdom of their elders. In any case, a different kind of ‘turning’ of hearts is

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envisaged, not reconciliation of families but amendment of life in a general sense. Then in the last clause of 1:17 (‘to make ready for the Lord a people prepared’) Luke comes close to Ben Sira: ‘to prepare the tribes of Israel’ (48:10). In both cases Elijah’s task according to Malachi 3:1 and 3:23(4:6) is understood as that of moral and spiritual reformation to prepare the people of Israel for the eschatological day of YHWH . The key word (rendering , as often in LXX , though not in Mal 3:24[4:6]) characterizes Elijah’s work as restoration not only here in verse 17, but also in v 16: ‘He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God.’ This looks like an allusion to Deuteronomy 30:2 (‘[if you] return to YHWH your God’; cf. also 4:30; 30:10; Hos 14:1), though Malachi 3:7 may provide the exegetical link. As we have noted, Deuteronomy 30:1–5 is the foundational text for Israel’s hope of restoration from the exile, establishing the sequence of Israel’s ‘turning’ to YHWH followed by YHWH ’s ‘turning’ Israel’s captivity and regathering the scattered people to the land. Luke’s text here joins many other Jewish texts about the hope of restoration. The theme of preparation for the coming of the Lord recurs in Luke 1:76 b, with allusion to both Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3. The further description of the prophet’s task in verse 77 is less familiar, but there could be allusion to the role of the messenger in Isaiah 52:7, who, as we have seen, is easily identified with the messenger of Malachi 3:1 (as in Tg. Ps-Jon. Num 25:12). This verse achieves a connexion between Israel’s turning in repentance to the Lord and, not only the threat of judgment thereby averted (Mal 3:24[4:6]), but also the positive salvation to come for those who do repent, the Lord’s turning to those who have turned to him (Mal 3:7), the new exodus (Isa 52:7–12). Everything Luke says in these texts about the Elijah-like figure of the last days is paralleled in the Jewish exegetical traditions surrounding Malachi 3:23–24(4:5–6). Moreover, the central themes of these traditions are all to be found in Luke’s accounts. He makes no explicit connexion between Elijah’s task and the diaspora, but nor do any of the texts from the Second Temple period. He does not identify Elijah with Phinehas or portray him as the eschatological high priest,25 but these themes occur in extant Second Temple Jewish literature only in Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities (48:1), as does the interpretation of Elijah’s restorative work as resurrection (LAB 23:13). If Luke knew them (and there are some striking parallels between the 25 Luke’s John the Baptist is a priest, but his particular priestly lineage, carefully noted by Luke (1:5; cf. 1 Chron 24:10), would presumably disqualify him from being the legitimate high priest of the line of Aaron and Phinehas through Zadok. It would probably therefore be a mistake to connect John’s priesthood with expectations of an eschatological high priest.

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Lukan infancy narratives and Pseudo-Philo), he discounted them as inapplicable to John the Baptist, as well as, perhaps, more remote from the plain sense of the key texts in Malachi. The one outstanding difference between Luke and the Jewish traditions is that the latter often make clear and never deny that the eschatological figure of Elijah is the same human person as the historical Elijah who ascended to heaven. Luke’s innovation – entailed by the very fact that he is narrating the birth of his Elijah-like figure – is to avoid such identity, substituting the phrase: ‘in the Spirit and power of Elijah’ (1:17), for which he had some precedent in Elisha’s relation to Elijah (2 Kings 2:15). 2.2. The Davidic Messiah delivers the people from oppression Luke 1:68–73, 78–79 (i. e. the Benedictus with the two verses about John the Baptist omitted) depicts God’s liberation of Israel, by the Messiah of David, from Gentile domination and oppression, in order for God’s people to be free to serve him, rather than their enemies, in the land God has given to them for an eternal possession. In this expectation three main scriptural motifs are brought together: (1) God’s promises to the patriarchs, especially the promise of the land (vv 72–75); (2) redemption from domination by enemies in fulfilment of the promises to the patriarchs (vv 68, 74–75); (3) a new Davidic king as the deliverer of the people from their enemies (vv 69–71, 78–79). The logic of the second motif is that the exodus (redemption) from Egypt was God’s fulfilment of his promise to give the descendants of Abraham the land of Canaan (Gen 15:18–21; Exod 2:24; 6:5). So, when Israel experienced exile from the land and subjection to pagan rule in the land, God’s promises to the patriarchs require fulfilment in a new exodus, as depicted in Deutero-Isaiah. The convergence of the second and third motifs brings together the expectation of a new exodus and the hope of a new Davidic ruler, but this combination is to be found in Jewish literature as early as Isaiah 11:10–16.26 In what follows we shall not be able to study every detail 26 See M. L. Strauss, The Davidic Messiah in Luke-Acts (JSNTSup 110; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995) 292–297; G. W. Buchanan, ‘Isaianic Midrash and the Exodus,’ in C. A. Evans and J. A. Sanders ed., The Function of Scripture in Early Jewish and Christian Tradition (JSNTSup 154; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998) 98–109. Alternatively, the human agent of the liberation of God’s people might be seen as a Moses-like figure, a ‘prophet’ in the sense of an inspired leader of the people, as Moses was. The first-century ‘sign prophets’ described by Josephus (Ant. 20:97, 169–170; BJ 2.259, 261–262) seem to have cast themselves in the role of either a new Moses or a new Joshua. But it is a mistake to suppose that whereas this was the popular expectation, Davidic messianism was an eschatology of the learned élite (R. A. Horsley and J. S. Hanson, Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs [San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985] chapter 3). The new David was expected to bring justice to the poor (Isa 11:4). There is no reason to doubt the evidence of the Gospels that Davidic messianism was espoused by ordinary people.

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of Luke 1:68–73, 78–79, but we shall pick out key themes, one representing each of the first two motifs (the oath sworn to Abraham, redemption as new exodus) and two expressions of the third motif (the horn of salvation, light for those in darkness). 2.2.1. The oath sworn to Abraham He has shown the mercy promised to our fathers, and has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham

(Luke 1:72–73 a)

The covenant is that made with Abraham in Genesis 15, in which God promised to Abraham’s descendants the land of the Caananites (Gen 15:18– 21), and / or that made with Abraham in Genesis 17, in which God promised to make Abraham the ancestor of many nations and to give his descendants the land of Canaan for a perpetual possession (Gen 17:4–8). Following Abraham’s demonstrated willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac, God reiterated the promise, this time with a solemn oath: By myself I have sworn … I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies, and by your offspring shall all the nations of the world gain blessing for themselves (Gen 22:16–18; cf. Sir 44:21).

The promise of the land, which is integral to all the promises to the patriarchs, from Genesis 15 onwards, here takes the form of possessing ‘the gate of their enemies’ (cf. the interpretation in LXX : ‘inherit the cities of their enemies’), introducing the enemies from whom the land has to be won, and to whom Luke 1:71, 74 also refer. The same elements recur in God’s promise to Isaac to fulfil the oath sworn to Abraham, and his promises to Jacob: the land, innumerable descendants, blessing for the nations (Gen 26:3–4; 28:13–14; 35:11–12; cf. Ps 105:7–11). These promises, the covenant and oath are the basis of Israel’s expectation, in the Second Temple period, of recovering the land as Israel’s own possession in freedom and safety. Since, in the Roman period, Rome claimed ownership of the land it ruled, it is easy to see why, despite the presence of Jews in the land, they did not see themselves to be in possession of the land as God had promised to the patriarchs. So, just as God at the time of the Exodus ‘remembered his covenant’ with the patriarchs or fulfilled ‘the oath he swore to Abraham’ (Exod 2:24; 6:5; 4Q378 [4QP sJoshuaa] 11 2–3) and did so again on later historical occasions (Ps 106:45; 1 Macc 4:10; 4Q504[4QD ibHama] 1–2 5:9; LAB 30:7), so he could be expected to do in the future in circumstances of exile from the

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land and of oppression in the land (Lev 26:42, 45; Mic 7:20; Sir 36:10; TM os 12:13; Bar 2:34; 2 Macc 1:2; PsSol 9:10; 2 Bar 78:7). As Moses predicts in Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities: [God] will bring upon you those who hate you [cf. Luke 1:71],27 and they shall rule over you, but not forever, because he will remember the covenant that he established with your fathers (LAB 19:2).

For Israel to serve God in the land ‘without fear’ (Luke 1:74) is also Tobit’s understanding of the promise to Abraham: ‘they will go to Jerusalem and live in safety forever in the land of Abraham, and it will be given over to them’ (Tob 14:11), and the hope of possessing the land in safety, secure from oppression and attack by enemies, was a prominent part of the expected restoration of Israel (Lev 25:18–19; Isa 32:18; Jer 23:6; 32:37; Ezek 28:26; 34:28; 38:8; Zeph 3:13). In the light of such parallels it is clear that Luke 1:72–75 expresses, in familiar terms, the late Second Temple period Jewish expectation of restoration to the land and restoration of the land, on the basis of God’s sworn promise to Abraham. 2.2.2. Redemption as new exodus He has visited his people and accomplished redemption for them (Luke 1:68 b)

It was in the redemption of his people from Egypt that YHWH first ‘remembered’ and fulfilled his covenant with Abraham (cf. Gen 15:13–21; Exod 2:24; 6:5). Though not confined to the exodus, the language of God’s ‘redemption’ of his people (both and ) in the Hebrew Bible is associated especially with the exodus, and also, consequently, with the new exodus from exile and bondage expected in the prophecies of Isaiah (e. g. Isa 35:9–10; 44:22–24; 52:9; cf. also Jer 31:11; Zech 10:8).28 Just as the covenant with Abraham entailed redemption at the first exodus, so it must entail redemption again in the future. The Qumran War Scroll refers to this great salvation event of the future, when Israel will be finally delivered from all her enemies, as ‘eternal redemption’ ( : 1QM 1:12; 15:1; 18:11; cf. 14:5). The phrase ‘the redemption ( ) of Israel’ is used in documents of the Bar Kokhba revolt, and the phrases ‘the redemption ( ) of Zion’ and ‘the redemption ( ) of Israel’ occur on the coins of the two revolts.29 27

This expression for enemies is quite common in the OT ; cf. also Jub 31:17, 18, 20. H. Ringgren in TDOT 2.354–355. 29 J. A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel according to Luke I–IX (AB 28; New York: Doubleday: 1981) 432; D. Flusser, ‘Jerusalem in the Literature of the Second Temple Period,’ Immanuel 6 (1976) 44; E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B. C.–A. D.135), revised by G. Vermes and F. Millar, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1973) 605–606. 28

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As well as the word ‘redemption’ in Luke 1:68 (cf. also 2:38; 24:21), the idea that the people are liberated from their enemies in order to serve God (vv 74–75) is also an exodus motif (Exod 4:23; 7:16; 8:20; 9:13; 10:7; 19:5–6). 2.2.3. The horn of salvation He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David ( (Luke 1:69)

)

There I will cause a horn to sprout up ( ) for David; I have prepared a lamp for my anointed one (Ps 132:17) On that day I will cause a horn to sprout up ( (Ezek 29:21)

) for the house of Israel

YHWH is … the horn of my salvation (Ps 18:2 = 2 Sam 22:3)

He will give strength to his king and exalt ( ) the horn of his anointed one (1 Sam 2:10) In my name his [David’s] horn shall be exalted ( (Ps 89:25[English versions 24]).

)

Who raises the horn from Jacob, and the judge of the nations from Israel (Syriac Apocryphal Ps 154:19)30 Give thanks to him who makes a horn to sprout up ( (Sir 51:12 viii).31

) for the house of David

Cause the shoot ( ) of David your servant to sprout up ( ) quickly, and exalt ( ) his32 horn by your salvation. For we wait on your salvation all the day. Blessed are you, Lord, who makes the horn of salvation to sprout up ( ) (Shemoneh Esreh, Babylonian recension, 15 th benediction).

The three non-biblical Jewish texts here are all dependent on the texts in the Hebrew Bible, especially Psalm 132. (Ps 154:19 also echoes Num 24:17, a favourite messianic text in Second Temple Judaism.) What is striking is that Luke’s text is closest to that of the fifteenth benediction in the Babylonian 30 The psalm is known in Hebrew in 11QP sa 18:1–18, but little of the text of line 18 (corresponding to vv 18 b–19 in the Syriac) survives. Pace M. Kister, ‘Notes on Some New Texts from Qumran,’ JJS 44 (1993) 289–290, there is no reason to doubt that v 19 was part of this version of the psalm. 31 The Hebrew prayer that follows Sir 51:12 in MS B is probably not part of the original text, but nevertheless seems to be pre-Maccabean in date: Skehan and Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, 569. 32 Some MSS read ‘our.’

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version of the Eighteen Benedictions, which is the only text besides Luke’s that combines the phrase ‘horn of salvation’ from Psalm 18:2 with allusion to Psalm 132:17, making the phrase a description of the Messiah of David. This benediction is missing from the Palestinian recension known in the Cairo Geniza text of the Eighteen, but there are grounds for thinking its inclusion in the Eighteen is older than its omission.33 The text of the benedictions seems never to have been stable, and so we cannot be sure that this text was known as such in the first century ce. On the other hand, its closeness to the Hebrew prayer in Ben Sira 51:12 and to Luke 1:69 suggests that it does represent Jewish liturgical tradition and that Luke is dependent not directly or not only on the Old Testament texts but on Jewish prayer usage. While Psalm 132, followed by Sir 51:12 viii and the Fifteenth Benediction, uses a verb (Hiphil of ) which calls to mind the messianic ‘branch’ ( ) of David (Jer 23:5; 33:15; Zech 3:8; 6:12), Luke perhaps avoids this because he will use in verse 78 the Greek noun , which translates in the Septuagint and for which the corresponding verb is (cf. Ps ). But since, as elsewhere in the canticles of 131(132):17 LXX : Luke 1–2, he is clearly not working from the Septuagint, to render by may simply not have occurred to him. The significance of the fact that Luke uses precisely this way of referring to the Messiah of David at this point has not been fully appreciated. Luke is here referring to the Davidic Messiah as deliverer of his people from their enemies (v 71). It was common in the Davidic messianism of the later Second Temple period to think of the Davidic Messiah in this way,34 but most of the texts of the Hebrew Bible which refer to a future Davidic king portray him as reigning, not as saving. Texts which seem to have been commonly used in the messianism of the later Second Temple period to portray the Messiah as delivering the people are Genesis 49:9;35 Num 24:17–19 (not explicitly Davidic, but usually understood as referring to the Davidic Messiah);36 Isaiah 11:4 b (originally referring to the reigning king’s activity as judge, but interpreted later as referring to his destruction of Israel’s Gen33 E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B. C.–A. D.135), ed. G. Vermes, F. Millar and M. Black, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1979) 461–462. 34 The popularity of Davidic Messianism in the Second Temple period has been debated in recent work, though most agree it became more popular in the Roman period: for a minimalist view, see K. E. Pomykala, The Davidic Tradition in Early Judaism (SBLEJL 07; Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1995); for a maximalist view, see A. Laato, A Star is Rising (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997); cf. also Strauss, The Davidic Messiah, chapter 2; G. S. Oegema, The Anointed and his People: Messianic Expectations from the Maccabees to Bar Kochba (JSPSup 27; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998). 35 1QS b 5:29; 4 Ezra 11–12. 36 Sir 36:12; Ps 154:19; 4QT est 9–13; 1QS b 5:24; CD 7:19–21; cf. 1QM 11:6–7; Philo, De Praem. 95; Mos. 1.290; Josephus, BJ 6.312.

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tile oppressors)37 and Psalm 2 (commonly interpreted as messianic).38 All of these texts, if understood in this way, portray the Messiah’s deliverance of Israel in a way that highlights violent destruction of enemies, although Isaiah 11:4 b could be understood as destruction by judicial word rather than by military means (4 Ezra 13:10–11, 37–38). Although victory over enemies is certainly implied in Luke 1:71, verse 69, introducing the Messiah of David, portrays him positively as ‘a horn of salvation.’ Such a reference to him as positively the saviour of his people, rather than negatively the destroyer of the wicked, could not be obtained by allusion to Genesis 49:9; Num 24:17–19; Isaiah 11:4 b or Psalm 2. Nor would allusion to Psalm 132:17 alone suffice, since, although ‘horn’ is a common metaphor for power, there is nothing in that verse to suggest that the power is to be exercised in salvation rather than merely in reigning. It is the typically Jewish exegetical move of interpreting the ‘horn’ here by means of the similar phrase ‘the horn of my salvation’ in Psalm 18:3 (= 2 Sam 22:3) that produces a biblically-derived phrase depicting the Davidic Messiah as saviour: ‘a horn of salvation … in the house of his servant David.’ That the same exegetical move lies behind the Fifteenth Benediction shows that Luke was probably not original in making it, but he certainly took advantage of it. 2.2.4. Light for those in darkness The rising light from on high has visited us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace (

39

) (Luke 1:78 b–79). The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who sat ( ) in a land of the shadow of death ( ), on them light has shined (Isa 9:1[English versions 9:2]) Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death ( prisoners in misery and irons…. They cried to YHWH in their troubles, and he saved them from their distress; he brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death ( and broke their bonds asunder (Ps 107:10, 13–14).

37

),

),

1QS b 5:24–25; PsSol 17:24 ; 4 Ezra 13:10–11, 37–38; 2 Bar 40:1–2; 1 Enoch 62:2. 4QF lor 1–3 1:18–19; PsSol 17:23–24. 39 I think this reading more probable than The inclusio with v 68 is more likely to be original than created by a scribe. 38

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… to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness ( (Isa 42:7)

343

).

The words of the first half of Luke 1:79 (‘to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death’) could have been derived from Isaiah 9:1(2) alone, but, since the phrase ‘who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death’ is not found as such in Isaiah 9 but is in Psalm 107, it is likely that Luke’s wording alludes to Psalm 107 and perhaps also to Isaiah 42. In other words, Luke’s text, here as in some other instances we have observed, results from the Jewish exegetical practice of bringing together texts which share key words and phrases and interpreting them in the light of each other. Here the combination of Isaiah 9:1(2) with the other texts establishes that the darkness in which people sit is that of imprisonment, while the correlation of Isaiah 9:1(2) with Isaiah 42:7 (which is addressed to the Servant of YHWH , though strictly the subject of ‘to bring out’ is YHWH ) may also help to establish that the light in the former text is an image for the Messiah, though this might well have been deduced anyway from the rest of Isaiah 9. Thus Luke 1:78–79 depict the Messiah lighting the way of escape for his people from the darkness of captivity and into the way of peace.40 Though neither exiles in the diaspora nor Jews living under pagan domination in the land were literally in gaol, the image of imprisonment is appropriate to the way Jewish literature often portrayed their situation in subjection to their enemies (Isa 52:2; Ezra 9:8–9; Neh 9:36–37; Tob 13:10; Philo, De Praem. 164; Josephus, BJ 5.395). Surprisingly, there does not seem to be any extant Jewish text from the Second Temple period which expresses a messianic or eschatological interpretation of Isaiah 9.41 But the meaning conveyed by Luke 1:78–79 is nevertheless fully in line with common Jewish hopes. 2.3. The consolation of Israel as a light for the nations The two prophetic figures, Simeon and Anna, who recognize the infant Jesus as the promised Messiah (Luke 2:25–38), are associated respectively with ‘the consolation of Israel’ (v 25) and ‘the redemption of Jerusalem’ (v 38). The two phrases reflect Isaiah 52:9 b (though, as usually in Luke 1–2, not the LXX ): ‘YHWH has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem.’ More generally, the reason ‘the consolation of Israel’ can serve here (as also later in the rabbis) as a comprehensive term for the restoration 40 For peace, see Isa 9:6–7, but it is a very common term with reference to the messianic age to come. 41 The closest parallel to the way the image of light and darkness is used in Luke 1:79 may be 4Q434 1 1:9.

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of Israel is the importance of the verb ‘to comfort, to console’ ( ) in Isaiah 40–66 (40:1; 49:3; 51:3, 12; 52:9; 61:2; 66:13; cf. Jer 31:13; Zech 1:17; Bar 4:30; 2 Bar 44:7), beginning with the opening repetition of the term in Isaiah 40:1 as stating the theme for the whole of the succeeding prophecies of return from exile and restoration of the people and the city in the land. That the significance of the term precisely in Deutero-Isaiah is intended by Luke becomes clear in Simeon’s song, which alludes to Isaiah 52:10 (‘YHWH has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God’)

and Isaiah 49:6 b (‘I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth’).42

(Note the key words which forge the exegetical link between the two passages: ‘the nations,’ ‘the ends of the earth,’ ‘salvation.’) Isaiah 60:1–3 links Israel’s glory with the light for the nations, as Simeon’s song does. The expectation, in Deutero-Isaiah and in Simeon’s song, is that God’s salvation of his own people Israel will demonstrate his deity to the nations, who will then themselves turn to Israel’s God for salvation. This is the authentically Jewish universalism of the later prophets: God’s dealings with Israel will bring all the nations to know him as the only true God (cf. Isa 2:2–4; Mic 4:1–3; Zech 8:20–23; 14:16). Allusions to this theme in non-biblical Jewish literature of the Second Temple period are not very common, but not absent (see Tob 14:6; 1 Enoch 91:30; SibOr 3:710–723; PsSol 17:31; Philo, Virt. 119–120).43 Examples which use the light image from Isaiah as Luke does are: A bright light will shine to all the ends of the earth (Tob 13:11). I believe that each nation would abandon its peculiar ways, and … turn to honouring our laws alone. For, when the brightness of their shining is accompanied by national prosperity, it will darken the light of the others as the risen sun darkens the stars (Philo, Mos. 2.44).

2.4. The redemption of Jerusalem and the return of the diaspora We have seen that, in Luke’s account of Simeon, the Isaianic reference to ‘the consolation of Israel’ is associated, as in Isaiah, with the enlightenment of 42

Cf. also Isa 40:5; 42:6; 46:13. D. L. Tiede, ‘ “Glory to thy people Israel”: Luke-Acts and the Jews,’ in Tyson ed., Luke-Acts, 31, mistakenly quotes 4 Ezra 2:33–35 as evidence of Jewish expectation of the conversion of Gentiles. The first two chapters of 4 Ezra (often known as 5 Ezra) are not, of course, an original part of the Jewish apocalypse of Ezra (4 Ezra 3–14) but a Christian text. 43

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the nations (Isa 52:9–10). Similarly, the reference, in Luke’s account of Anna, to ‘the redemption of Jerusalem’ (Luke 2:38) would have, as its expected Isaianic counterpart, the return of the exiles to Jerusalem (Isa 52:9, 11–12). In Isaiah it is the Gentile nations, drawn by the light of the gloriously restored Jerusalem, who will bring mother Zion’s exiled children back to her (Isa 60:1–9; cf. 11:11–12; 49:22–23; 66:20). This picture is echoed by some later Jewish literature (PsSol 17:31; ?1 Enoch 57). In other texts, even if the Gentiles do not appear as agents of the return from the diaspora, the latter is still closely connected with the restoration and glorification of Jerusalem and its temple (Bar 4:36–37; 5:5–9; Tob 13:13–14; 14:5 b, 7 b; 2 Macc 2:18; PsSol 11; 1 Enoch 90:29–33). In Luke’s text it is Anna’s membership of the tribe of Asher (2:36) which evokes the association of the restoration of Jerusalem with the restoration of all the tribes of Israel to the land. I have argued in detail elsewhere44 that a competent contemporary reader of Luke would have understood Anna most readily as a returnee from the exile of the northern tribes of Israel in Media. The ten northern tribes were not, at this period, regarded as ‘lost,’ but were known still to live in the regions of their exile, especially in Media, and were regularly included in the hope for the return of all the exiles of all the tribes. They sent their temple tax and came as pilgrims to Jerusalem, as Luke himself indicates in Acts 2:9. They shared with the rest of the diaspora a hope of return to the land, and no doubt some individuals and families actually settled in Jerusalem,45 as returnees from other parts of the diaspora did. Anna would be one who had returned to Jerusalem to await the ingathering of the rest of the exiles and to maintain a constant vigil of prayer in the temple in readiness for the moment of redemption. Her importance in Luke’s narrative is to ensure that the Israel whose hopes of messianic restoration are so fully represented in Luke’s first two chapters is truly Israel as a whole, northern tribes as well as southern, exiles as well as inhabitants of the land.46 Thus the roles of Simeon and Anna are complementary, representing the two aspects of the Isaianic vision of restoration. Simeon, presumably a native of Jerusalem, waiting for the consolation of Israel, hails the Messiah Jesus as the one who will fulfil Israel’s destiny to be a light to the nations (2:31–32). He represents the hope of the centrifugal movement of salvation out from Jerusalem to the Gentiles. Anna, a returnee from the diaspora of the northern tribes, waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem, recognizes the Messiah Jesus as the one who will fulfil Jerusalem’s destiny to be the centre 44

R. Bauckham, ‘Anna of the Tribe of Asher (Luke 2:36–38),’ RB 104 (1997) 161–191. We know of one such: Nahum the Mede, who was remembered in rabbinic tradition (m. Nazir 5:4; m. Shabb. 2:1; m. B. Bat. 5:2; b. Ketub. 105 a; b. Abod. Zar 7 b). 46 For the hope of the return of all twelve tribes, see Ezek 37:15–23; 47:13–14; 48; Sir 36:11; PsSol 11; 17:28; 4 Ezra 13. 45

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to which all the tribes of Israel are regathered. She represents the hope of the centripetal movement of salvation as the diaspora returns to Zion. 2.5. The Messiah of David reigns forever Whereas the Benedictus portrays the Davidic Messiah in his salvific role of defeating the enemies of Israel and thereby establishing the messianic peace (Luke 1:69–71, 78–79), the annunciation to Mary complements that picture by portraying him as the king who will rule Israel forever. Luke 1:32–33 constitute a messianic interpretation of God’s promise to David in Nathan’s oracle (2 Sam 7:12–16). The promise that David’s descendants will rule forever (cf. also Isa 9:7; Jer 33:17; Ps 89:4, 29; 132:12; Sir 47:11, 22; 1 Macc 2:57;47 PsSol 17:4) is interpreted to mean that the Messiah, son of David and son of God (2 Sam 7:14), will himself reign over Israel forever. This messianic understanding of Nathan’s oracle is attested also in 4Q174(4QF lor) 1 1:10–13, and probably lies behind other assertions that the Davidic Messiah’s rule will last forever (SibOr 3:49–50; 2 Bar 73:1), even if the ‘forever’ is not always to be taken in an absolute sense (2 Bar 40:2–3). 2.6. God exalts the lowly and humiliates the exalted The main theme of Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55) is the eschatological reversal of status: God exalts the lowly and humbles the exalted. Mary sees God’s choice of herself to be the mother of the Messiah as itself an instance of God’s blessing of the lowly and as paradigmatic of the general reversal of status in favour of God’s oppressed people which the messianic salvation will bring.48 In this respect, the Magnificat follows the lead of the song of Hannah (1 Sam 2:1–10), on which it is partly modelled and which contains one of the most extended of Old Testament expressions of God’s characteristic action of reversing status. In view of the references to YHWH ’s king49 and YHWH ’s Messiah (anointed one) at the end of Hannah’s song (2:10) it is not surprising that it should have been given a messianic interpretation. This does not happen in Pseudo-Philo’s rewritten version of Hannah’s song (LAB 51:3–6), but it does occur in the paraphrase and expansion of the song in Targum Jonathan to the Former Prophets.50 47

On this text, see Laato, A Star, 277–278. See my essay, ‘Elizabeth and Mary in Luke 1: Reading a Gynocentric Text Intertextually,’ in R. Bauckham, Gospel Women (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2002) chapter 3. 49 LXX has ‘our kings.’ 50 Translation in D. J. Harrington and A. J. Saldarini, Targum Jonathan of the Former Prophets (Aramaic Bible 10; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1987) 105–106; discussion in D. J. Harrington, ‘The Apocalypse of Hannah: Targum Jonathan of 1 Samuel 2:1–10,’ in D. M. Golomb and S. T. Hollis ed., “Working With No Data”: Semitic and Egyptian Studies Presented to Thomas O. Lambdin (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1987) 147–152; 48

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The Targum ‘transforms Hannah’s song into an apocalypse that charts the course of Israel’s future history and climaxes in a vision of the eschaton.’51 It understands verse 1 b–5 as prophecies of six great acts of deliverance in Israel’s history, in which God will reverse the fortunes of oppressed Israel and her pagan oppressors. Thus, for example, verse 4 refers to the Seleucid emperors and to the Hasmoneans, verse 5 a to the sons of Haman (reduced from wealth to poverty) and to Mordecai and Esther (exalted from poverty to wealth and freedom), and verse 5 b to Jerusalem (no doubt post-70 ce Jerusalem, ‘like a barren woman’ without inhabitants, but ‘to be filled with her exiled people’) and to Rome (the populous city which will become desolate). The following verses on reversal of status (vv 6–9) are referred to the general fate of the righteous and the wicked in the world to come, while the last verse (v 10) is understood to predict God’s judgment on Gog and the nations from the ends of the earth and his establishment of the messianic kingdom. Of course, none of this detail is paralleled by the Magnificat, but the two rewritings of Hannah’s song share the general approach of understanding the activity of God in reversing status as characteristic both of his general activity in his people’s history but also of the messianic salvation of Israel. Harrington’s conclusion that since the ‘language, paraphrastic technique, and theology set the passage apart from the bulk of Targum Jonathan of the Former Prophets…, we are most likely dealing with a traditional piece taken over in the final redaction of the Targum,’52 cannot be followed with any confidence. It is true that the Targum generally keeps much more closely to the Hebrew text, but its exceptional treatment of Hannah’s song is similar to that of the other songs in the narrative of the Former Prophets: Deborah’s song in Judges 5, David’s song in 2 Samuel 22, and David’s last words in 2 Samuel 23:1–7 (this passage is developed into a fully messianic prophecy in the Targum). In particular, it is notable that the Targum evidently recognizes the interpretative role which the two songs of Hannah (1 Sam 2) and David (2 Sam 22) play in encompassing the narrative of 1–2 Samuel,53 and, since J. E. Cook, ‘Hannah’s Later Songs: A Study in Comparative Methods of Interpretation,’ in C. A. Evans and J. A. Sanders ed., The Function of Scripture in Early Jewish and Christian Tradition (JSNTSup 154; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998) 244–249. 51 Harrington, ‘The Apocalypse of Hannah,’ 149. 52 Harrington, ‘The Apocalypse of Hannah,’ 152; cf. Cook, ‘Hannah’s Later Songs,’ 249 n. 8. Harrington no longer draws this conclusion in Harrington and Saldarini, Targum Jonathan, 10–11, where he recognizes the parallels with the Targum’s treatment of Judges 5, 2 Samuel 22, and 2 Samuel 23:1–7. 53 Cf. P. E. Satterthwaite, ‘David in the Books of Samuel: A Messianic Expectation?’ in P. E. Satterthwaite, R. S. Hess and G. J. Wenham ed., The Lord’s Anointed: Interpretation of Old Testament Messianic Texts (Carlisle: Paternoster / Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995) 43–47.

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both end with reference to YHWH ’s king and YHWH ’s Messiah (anointed one) (1 Sam 2:10; 2 Sam 22:51), reads the song of David also in a messianic sense, seeing the Lord’s victories through David as prototypical of those of the Davidic Messiah, with their climax in the deliverance from Gog and his army of nations (Tg 2 Sam 22:50), as in the Targumic version of Hannah’s song. David’s reference to the theme of reversal of status (2 Sam 22:28) is developed more explicitly with reference to Israel and her oppressors: ‘the people, the house of Israel, who are called in this world a poor people, you will save; and by your Memra you will humble the strong who are showing their might against them’ (Tg 2 Sam 2:28).54 From what stage in the development of the Targum these interpretations of Hannah’s and David’s songs date it is hardly possible to tell, even though there is nothing to prevent their being as early as c. 100 ce.55 While these considerations of date must caution us against concluding too much from the parallel between Mary’s song, as an adaptation of Hannah’s, and the Targum’s version of Hannah’s song, the latter does show that the kind of messianic reading of Hannah’s song and of its key theme of reversal of status that we find in the Magnificat is easily understood on the basis of common Jewish exegetical practice and messianic expectation. The exegetical practice of reading as apocalyptic and eschatological prophecy passages of Scripture which are by no means obviously such was certainly already current before Luke’s time: Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities, for example, provide several examples (LAB 19:10–15; 23:6–7; 28:6–9; cf. 13:8–10). Otherwise, Second Temple Jewish literature rarely states the theme of messianic or eschatological reversal of fortunes as sharply and specifically as Luke 1:50–53, though one good example occurs in the Qumran War Rule: You have raised the fallen with your strength, but those who arose, you cut down to humiliate them (1QM 14:10–11).

But implicit in much messianic or eschatological expectation is the hope that Israel (or the righteous remnant within Israel), currently poor and oppressed, will be delivered and exalted by God, while the oppressors, the wealthy and powerful, will be brought low. This is assumed, for example, in the talk of faithful Israel as ‘the poor’ in the Psalms of Solomon, and forms the overall theme of the sustained contrast between the righteous and their wicked oppressors in 1 Enoch 94–104.

54 Note also how the Targum’s interpretation and expansion of 1 Sam 2:2 and 2 Sam 22:32, already similar in the Hebrew text, depends on developing the similarity between the two verses. 55 Cf. Harrington and Saldarini, Targum Jonathan, 13–14.

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2.7. The Messiah is opposed and causes division in Israel The last prophetic words spoken about Jesus in Luke’s infancy narrative are those of Simeon’s prophecy given specifically to Mary (2:34–35). Compared with the material we have discussed so far, this prophecy is notably enigmatic and obscure, not least in the prospect it suggests for Mary herself.56 This enigmatic character is to be explained by the fact that here we no longer find an expression of widespread Jewish messianic and eschatological hopes, expressed in clear allusions to the Hebrew Bible, but rather a first indication of the unexpected route that Luke’s narrative of the Messiah Jesus will take in demonstrating how Israel’s messianic hopes are fulfilled in him in a different way from that in which the restoration programme of Luke 1–2 might otherwise have led us to expect. His people will be divided in their response to him and in the consequences for themselves. He will be opposed and rejected and (though this is only very obscurely hinted at) suffer so severely that even his mother’s consequent suffering will be as though her soul were pierced by a sword.57 Probably Simeon’s words contain an allusion to Isaiah 8:14 (not LXX !), one of the ‘stone’ passages (with Isa 28:16; Ps 118:22; Dan 2:34–35, 44–45) which were widely understood in early Christianity as prophecies of the rejection of Jesus by his people and the failure of many of his people to believe in him (Matt 21:42–44; Mark 8:31; 12:10; Luke 9:22; 17:25; 20:17–18; Acts 4:11; Rom 9:33; Eph 2:22; 1 Pet 2:4, 6–8). There is no evidence in the literature of Second Temple Judaism either of the use of Isaiah 8:1458 or of the theme it expresses in Simeon’s prophecy. We can take it, then, that Simeon’s prophecy introduces a discordant and riddling note into Luke’s programme of messianic restoration.

56 Cf. J. B. Green, The Gospel of Luke (NICNT ; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997) 149–150: Luke ‘introduces new puzzles, making certain that the climax of the birth narrative actually carries us over into the story of Jesus’ mission in subsequent chapters.’ 57 I prefer this interpretation of the words about Mary (so also J. Nolland, Luke 1–9:20 [WBC 35A; Dallas: Word, 1989] 121–122) to various other proposed interpretations (see R. E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah [revised edition; New York: Doubleday, 1993] 462– 465, 687–688; Fitzmyer, The Gospel according to Luke I–IX) 429–430. Contra Brown, this interpretation does not presuppose the Johannine picture of Mary standing at the foot of the cross (though Luke 23:49 with Acts 1:14 may, in fact, imply that Luke understood her to be present at the cross). It presupposes merely the notion, which for most readers will be self-evident, that a mother is likely to suffer from her son’s suffering. 58 Isa 8:14 is interpreted messianically in b. Sanh. 38 a, but in a way that is portrayed as unacceptable.

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2.8. Conclusions – The passages we have studied in Luke 1–2 present a remarkably comprehensive programme of restoration for Israel, expressed throughout in exegetical allusions to texts of the Hebrew Bible. – There is nothing in these passages that suggests use of the Septuagint, much that requires or suggests that the underlying biblical texts are Hebrew.59 – Most of the biblical sources are also found interpreted messianically or eschatologically in non-biblical Jewish literature of the Second Temple period. (The exceptions are 1 Samuel 2, Isaiah 8:14 and Isaiah 9.) – The Lukan passages we have examined exhibit the same kind of exegetical moves and developments we find in Jewish texts (see, for example, the parallel, rather than identical, treatment of Mal 3:24[4:6] in Mal 3:23LXX ; Sir 48:10 b and Luke 1:17; or the parallel between the Magnificat and the Targum’s version of the song of Hannah). – Though some of the elements in the messianic expectation presented in Luke 1–2 are paralleled more frequently than others in Jewish literature of the Second Temple period, there is none that is unparalleled. Each of these elements, as presented by Luke, could easily stand in a non-Christian Jewish text of the late Second Temple period, as could the whole restoration programme that Luke here outlines. – Given the diversity of messianic and eschatological expectations in the late Second Temple period (though this has been exaggerated in many recent studies), it is nevertheless probable that in substantial outline the restoration programme of Luke 1–2 could have been recognized as their own expectation by the majority of Jews of the period.

59

The scholarly literature contains much misinformation on this point. For example, Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, 349, writes: ‘At times the Magnificat and the Benedictus seem to depend more closely on the LXX than on the Hebrew Bible (see the asterisked passages in Tables XII and XIII ).’ Several of these asterisks mark texts to which it is not likely Luke is alluding at all. In other cases, the assertion that Luke’s text is closer to the LXX than to the MT is completely fallacious. For example, it is impossible to see how Luke 1:46 b–47 is closer to the LXX than to the MT of Ps 35:9 (LXX 34:9). In the case of Isaiah 9:1(2), echoed in Luke 1:79, not only is Luke’s text not closer to the LXX than to the MT , it is actually closer to the MT than to the LXX : (‘sitting’) is a literal . Not rendering of the Hebrew , which LXX translates idiomatically as one of Brown’s nine examples is convincing. Ravens, Luke, 29, writes: ‘not only is the style reminiscent of the LXX , but so also is the content of the Magnificat and Benedictus in which Creed has noted some forty allusions to a wide range of passages in the LXX .’ But J. M. Creed, The Gospel according to St. Luke (London: Macmillan, 1942) 303–306, merely lists a series of OT texts in Greek which resemble the texts of the Magnificat and the Benedictus. He makes no attempt to show that Luke follows the LXX rather than the Hebrew.

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– These first six points suggest that we should credit Luke with the intention of representing accurately the hopes of restoration that would have been espoused by just the kind of circles of pious Jews as we meet in Luke 1–2. These chapters fulfil that intention skilfully and successfully. – Along with this broad correspondence with current Jewish messianic hopes, we need to notice certain specific omissions and emphases in this Lukan restoration programme. In the first place, it is very considerably focused on the restoration of Israel, with only one reference to the positive effect of this restoration on the Gentile nations (2:31–32). This is probably representative of a considerable range of messianic expectation in Second Temple Judaism. – Secondly, the programme is exclusively composed of the more ‘immanent’ aspects of Israel’s hope, the ‘this-worldly’ future of Israel and the nations. There is no reference to the resurrection of the dead, to the end of all evil and suffering, or to the renewal of the created world. The same can be said of some significant expressions of the messianic hope in Second Temple Judaism, such as the Psalms of Solomon and the writings of the Qumran community. It may reflect an expectation of a messianic kingdom preceding the resurrection, the last judgment and the renovation of the cosmos (as is explicit in 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra).60 – Jewish messianism was to a considerable extent a tradition of exegesis of Scripture. Given the large range of Old Testament texts which could be applied to the Davidic Messiah or to eschatological events associated with him, much depended on which texts were selected and emphasized. From this point of view it is worth observing that Luke does not allude in these chapters to some of the favourite texts of Davidic Messianism in this period: Numbers 24:17–19; Psalm 2;61 Isaiah 11:1–5; Daniel 7. – It is at least partly owing to this exegetical selectivity that this Lukan restoration programme does not refer to the military or violent overthrow of Israel’s oppressors (though 1:71, 74 imply their defeat or destruction) or to the subjecting of other nations to rule by Israel. – Three important elements in the most common forms of Jewish expectation are not explicitly mentioned in Luke 1–2, though they are very strongly implied: the repossession of the land (cf. 1:72–75), the restoration of the temple (cf. 2:38) and the return of the diaspora to the land (cf. 1:68, 72–75, 79; 2:36). It is possible that Luke leaves these inexplicit, not because he does not recognize their firm basis in biblical prophecy or their im-

60 2 Bar 40:2–3 shows that the Messiah can be said to reign forever even in such a scenario. 61 Cf. allusions to and quotation from Ps 2:9 in Luke 3:22; 9:35; Acts 13:33.

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portance to current Jewish messianism, but because he understands their fulfilment to be one which significantly reinterprets them. – The only indication in Luke 1–2 that the Messiah’s way to his kingdom would be through rejection and death comes in Simeon’s prophecy given to Mary (2:34–35). This passage has an enigmatic character which marks it, not as part of the widespread messianic expectation of Second Temple Judaism which Luke 1–2 otherwise expresses, but as a hint of the unexpected which the rest of Luke’s narrative must portray and explain.

3. Restoration accomplished and to come That Paul, in Rome in the last chapter of Acts, can say that ‘it is for the sake of the hope of Israel that I am bound with this chain’ (28:20; cf. 26:6–7), is indicative of the extent to which the theme of the restoration of Israel dominates Luke’s narrative and does so in a way that does not negate but actually entails the Gentile mission. In some sense the whole narrative from Luke 3 to Acts 28 is recounted as the fulfilment of the hopes of restoration expressed in Luke 1–2. 3.1. John the Baptist and the beginning of restoration From Luke’s account of John the Baptist in chapter 3, it is clear the restoration programme announced in chapters 1–2 has unambiguously begun.62 The lengthy quotation of Isaiah 40:3–5 (Luke 3:4–6) summarizes the whole restoration programme of both Isaiah 40–66 and Luke 1–2 from beginning to end, from the preparation of the Lord’s people for his coming (Luke 1:17, 76) to his salvation of his people in the sight of all peoples (2:30–31), such that they too share in salvation. There is a revealing contrast here with the quotation of Isaiah 40:1–5 in 4Q176[4QT anh] 1–2 1:4–9, part of an anthology of ‘words of consolation’ drawn from Isaiah 40–55. This quotation ends with the first line of Isaiah 40:5 (‘And the glory of YHWH will be revealed’), omitting the next line (MT : ‘and all flesh shall see it together’), with which Luke’s quotation ends (in the more emphatic LXX form: ‘and all flesh shall see the salvation of God’). Luke is certainly concerned with the 62

Against H. Conzelmann’s view that in Luke-Acts John belongs to ‘the period of Israel’ and not to ‘the period of Jesus,’ see J. A. Fitzmyer, Luke the Theologian (NewYork / Mahwah: Paulist, 1989) 102–110. But Conzelmann’s whole scheme of periodization in Luke’s theology is seen to be inappropriate once we see that Luke is concerned with the restoration of Israel. What begins with John’s ministry is the period of the restoration of Israel, within which there are several stages, of which John’s ministry (in Luke complete before Jesus’ begins) is the first.

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consolation of Israel, but not just for its own sake. It is the necessary first step from which the conversion of the nations will follow. John the Baptist calls people to turn to God and to each other (cf. Luke 1:16–17) in repentance and its practical fruits (Luke 3:7–14). He not only calls to repentance but also announces the good news of salvation arriving (3:18; cf. Isa 52:7; Luke 1:77). For readers of Luke 1–2 there are no surprises here, but for what follows the reader has not been prepared. In terms of the programme laid out in chapters 1–2 from Scripture and in accord with late Second Temple period Jewish expectation, nothing further seems to go according to plan. It is important that fulfilment does begin according to plan, with John’s ministry, so that the beginning of the restoration of Israel can be unequivocally recognized, but it is just as important that thereafter fulfilment turns out to happen in unexpected ways. 3.2. Unexpected route to Israel’s restoration It is not that what happens departs from the plan of God already indicated in Scripture. Quite the contrary: Luke continues to quote and allude to Scripture in order to identify messianic fulfilment, but his use of Scripture as messianic prophecy in the rest of the Gospel and Acts contrasts remarkably with his use in chapters 1–3. The texts are for the most part not those familiar in Jewish messianic and eschatological expectation, while the few we do know to have had a place in that expectation are understood differently in Luke-Acts. The Gospel narrative itself interprets this phenomenon. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus ‘had hoped [Jesus] was the one to redeem Israel’ (24:20; cf. 1:8; 2:38). Their disappointment, after his death, was that of people who had shared the messianic expectations of Zechariah, Simeon, Anna and ‘all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem’ (2:38; cf. also 23:51). Only retrospectively was the risen Christ able to show them, from ‘all the scriptures’ (24:26), that what had happened was in fact God’s plan for the Messiah as prophesied (24:25). What could have been expected in fact was not. We are surely to understand that in the very events that first convinced the two disciples Jesus was not the one to redeem Israel, he was in fact – and according to the Scriptures! – redeeming Israel. Here we can only summarize very briefly the way Luke reads Scripture as indicating Jesus’ unexpected route to the restoration of Israel: (1) the Messiah as authoritative teacher and healer before and after his death (Isa 61:1–2/Luke 4:18–19; 7:22|Deut 18:15–19/Luke 9:35; Acts 3:22–23; 7:37); (2) the Messiah rejected and exalted (Ps 118:22/Luke 20:17; Acts 4:11);63 63

For the importance of Ps 118 in Luke-Acts and for further allusions to Ps 118:22 in Luke-Acts, see J. R. Wagner, ‘Psalm 118 in Luke-Acts: Tracing a Narrative Thread,’ in

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(3) the Messiah treated as a criminal and put to death (Isa 53:12/Luke 22:37|Isa 53:7–8/Acts 8:32–33|Ps 2:1–2/Acts 4:25–26); (4) the Messiah raised from death (Ps 16:8–11/Acts 2:25–28, 31; 13:35|Isa 55:3/Acts 13:34); (5) the Messiah exalted to the heavenly throne of God (Ps 110:1/Luke 20:42–43; 22:69; Acts 2:34–35; 5:30; 7:56); (6) the Messiah bestows the Spirit (Joel 2:28–32/Acts 2:17–21);64 (7) the Messiah will come in the glory of universal rule (Dan 7:13/Luke 21:27).

Thus it turns out that the new exodus is accomplished through the Messiah’s death (Luke 9:31) and he enters upon his messianic reign, not by ascending the throne of David in Jerusalem, but by sitting at the right hand of God on the throne of the cosmos (Luke 20:42–43). The problem for interpreters of Luke-Acts has been to understand what this means for the restoration of Israel. In what way are the hopes of chapters 1–2, Israel’s scriptural and traditional expectations of restoration, fulfilled through these unexpected but divinely intended events? Are we to understand the restoration of Israel as completed, as in process, as frustrated by Israel’s unbelief, as superseded by God’s purpose for the Gentiles, as still to be fulfilled in the future? 3.3. The twelve tribes and the twelve apostles Evidently both the twelve tribes (Acts 26:7) and the twelve apostles matter for Luke. The number of the twelve itself must be significant for Luke, since he reserves the term ‘apostle’ almost exclusively for them, and since he narrates the replacement of Judas by Matthias in order for the number twelve to be maintained (Acts 1:15–26). The reason why the number of the twelve apostles matters is their connexion with the twelve tribes, made in Jesus’ promise at the Last Supper that the apostles are to sit on thrones65 ruling66 the twelve tribes of Israel (Luke 22:30). The twelve are the phylarchs of the restored Israel, whose constitution requires that the tribes C. A. Evans and J. A. Sanders ed., Early Christian Interpretation of the Scriptures of Israel (JSNTSup 148; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) 154–178. 64 For the role of the Spirit in the restoration of Israel, according to Luke-Acts, see the important study of Turner, Power. The subject deserves much more attention than we can give it in this essay. Although, on the basis of Isaiah 11:2, Second Temple Jewish messianic hopes certainly expected that the Messiah would be endowed with the Spirit of God (PsSol 17: 37; 18:7; 1QS b 5:25; 1 Enoch 49:3; 62:2) and sometimes refer to a creative activity of the Spirit at the end-time (2 Bar 23:5; 4Q521 2 2:6), there does not seem to be clear evidence that the Messiah was expected to bestow the Spirit (4Q521 2 2:6 is debatable: see Turner, Power, 117). 65 Jervell, Luke, 85, is probably right in suggesting that Luke, unlike Matthew, does not specify ‘twelve thrones’ because he is conscious that Judas is present and the promise does not apply to him. 66 The context shows that here means ‘to rule’ rather than ‘to judge’ in a narrow sense.

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have each a prince, as in Israel’s primal leadership in the wilderness (Num 1:4–16).67 Luke cannot have thought that the twelve were literally members of all twelve tribes, one drawn from each, because the twelve included two pairs of brothers (Luke 5:1–11; 6:14). But the number does indicate that the restoration of Israel is to be of all twelve tribes, as traditionally in the Jewish eschatological hope. There is an instructive parallel in 1 Esdras 5:8, where the leaders of the return from the Babylonian exile under Zerubbabel number twelve (in the parallel text in Ezra 2:2, one name has dropped out). These are most unlikely to have been (or to have been thought to be) drawn one from each of the twelve tribes, but they presumably indicate that the return is understood as the beginning of the restoration of all twelve tribes of Israel to the land. Notionally, if not actually, the return represents all Israel, and therefore its leaders are twelve. If the twelve apostles represent the tribes notionally, are the twelve tribes themselves only notional, a merely conventional expression no longer corresponding to actuality in the time of Jesus and Luke? Evidently Luke did not think so (Luke 2:36), nor is there any reason to suppose that most of his Jewish contemporaries would have thought so. But do the notional leaders of the restoration of the twelve tribes encounter Israelites of all twelve tribes within Luke’s story? Since the deportations of the northern tribes (the ten or nine-and-a-half tribes as they were variously reckoned in Jewish literature of the late Second Temple period) had carried off only part of their populations, it is probable that in Galilee and Transjordan there were still, in this period, people who counted themselves members of tribes other than Judah, Benjamin and Levi. But Luke draws no attention to this and notably ignores Galilee once Jesus has left it on the way to Jerusalem (though he knew of Christian communities there: Acts 9:31). Samaria, however, is an area to which Luke gives special attention, both in his Gospel (9:52–56; 10:33; 17:11–19) and in his story of the church’s early expansion (Acts 8:4–25). The Samaritans themselves claimed descent from the two Joseph tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh, though Jews often refused to believe this.68 Since Luke’s Jesus calls a Samaritan ‘this foreigner’ ( : Luke 17:18; cf. Josephus, Ant. 9.291: , the term 67 See W. Horbury, ‘The Twelve and the Phylarchs,’ NTS 32 (1986) 503–527; J. A. Draper, ‘The twelve apostles as foundation stones of the New Jerusalem and the foundation of the Qumran community,’ Neot 22 (1988) 41–63. 68 The hitherto unknown work 4Q371, 372, which has been rather misleadingly called ‘4QA pocryphon of Joseph’ (Joseph appears in it as the personification of the two Joseph tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh), is a very interesting expression of this Jewish view of the Samaritans. It seems to represent the Joseph tribes as entirely exiled from the land (‘scattered in the whole world’), while ‘fools’ (cf. Sir 50:26) build the temple on mount Gerizim. Joseph’s prayer seems to express the conviction that, because of God’s covenant with Abraham, the tribes in exile will never be completely exterminated.

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Josephus says Samaritans use when they do not wish to claim kinship with Jews), it is far from clear that Luke himself regarded them as of true Israelite descent. But David Ravens has argued that the prominence of the Samaritans in Luke-Acts is the way in which Luke includes the northern tribes in the restoration of Israel: ‘the inclusion of the Samaritans as the descendants of the northern tribes is, for Luke, an indispensable element in the restoration of Israel.’69 He connects Luke’s interest in the Samaritans with Luke’s stress on the twelve tribes and the twelve apostles. The difficulty with his argument is that, although he himself states accurately that the Samaritans ‘claimed to be descended from the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh and Levi,’70 he speaks as though they were the descendants of the northern tribes in general.71 In fact, as Luke’s narrative fully recognizes, Samaria in the first century ce corresponded very closely to the old tribal territory of Ephraim and Manasseh (apart from the transjordanian part of Manasseh). The tribes of Asher, Zebulun, Issacher, Naphtali, Dan, Gad, and Reuben never lived in that area and Samaritans never claimed descent from them. To include Samaritans in Israel, along with Judah and Benjamin, is still to include only a minority of the twelve tribes, as Luke must certainly have known. But is it the case that, if Luke was to include members of the northern tribes in Israel, ‘Samaritans were the only possible candidates for that role’?72 Descendants of the northern tribes were in fact well known to be living in the eastern diaspora (Josephus, Ant. 11.131–33; TM os 4:9; 2 Bar 77:2), probably still in areas of northern Mesopotamia to which they were first deported (Nisibis and Adiabene) but more especially in Media (Josephus, Ant. 9.279; LivProph 3:16–17; t. Sanh. 2:6; b. Abod. Zar. 34 a, 39 a; cf. Tob 1:14; 3:7; 4:1; 5:6; 14:4, 12–15). These exiles had nothing to do with the Samaritans, but had, at a time and by means unknown to us, adopted the same Jerusalem-centred Judaism as the rest of the eastern diaspora. They sent their temple tax to Jerusalem, and no doubt some pilgrims made the journey to Jerusalem occasionally, despite their remoteness.73 To an informed reader, Luke’s inclusion of Medes in his list of diaspora Jews present in Jerusalem at Pentecost (Acts 2:9) could refer to no one but members of the northern tribes,74 while ‘residents in Mesopotamia’ could certainly include not only the major area of settlement of the exiles of the southern tribes (Mesopota69

Ravens, Luke, 47. Ravens, Luke, 74; cf. the earlier argument of Jervell, Luke, 113–132, 71 E. g. Ravens, Luke, 45, 99. 72 Ravens, Luke, 99. 73 On the evidence for the Median diaspora and its contacts with Palestine, see Bauckham, ‘Anna,’ 167–170, 173–178. 74 Parthia (Acts 2:9) is not a reference to the whole Parthian empire, but to Parthia proper, most likely to Hyrcania, where Judean Jews had been settled in the fourth century bce. 70

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mia) but also the northern Mesopotamian settlements of northern Israelite exiles. Whether Luke’s list of Jews categorized by their places of origin in the diaspora (Acts 2:9–11) is of Jews who had migrated from the diaspora to settle permanently in Jerusalem or, as is much more likely, of pilgrims visiting Jerusalem for the festival, it certainly indicates the presence of members of all the twelve tribes of Israel. They are said to be ‘from every nation under heaven’ (2:5) because the Jewish diaspora was commonly said to be in every nation of the world (e. g. Philo, Leg. Gai. 283–284), but Luke’s list is not, as has sometimes been thought, a list of all nations, but a list of major areas of Jewish settlement in the diaspora.75 It does not, of course, list such places exhaustively, but it is broadly accurate and comprehensive. In particular, it seems designed to include places in all four directions from Jerusalem, from Parthia in the far east to Rome in the west (on ancient maps these are roughly equidistant from Jerusalem), from Pontus in the north to Arabia in the south. In Jewish mental maps Jerusalem was both at the centre of the world and at the centre of the diaspora, and the diaspora was often said to be in the east and the west (since these two directions were the most obvious ones in this case: Zech 8:7; Bar 4:37; 5:5) or in all four directions from Jerusalem (Zech 2:10[English versions 2:10]; 4Q448 2:3–6; Isa 11:12; 43:5–6; 49:12; Ps 107:3; PsSol 11:2–3). Such a list, together with the phrase Luke uses in Acts 2:5, could well bring to mind the hope of the return of all the exiles. 2 Maccabees 2:18 expresses the hope that God ‘will gather us from everywhere under heaven into his holy place,’ probably echoing the classic treatment of exile and restoration in the Torah: Deuteronomy 30:4–5 (cf. also Deut 2:25; 4:19). Most of the passages just cited as locating the diaspora in two or four directions from Jerusalem are in fact descriptions of the exiles’ return from these directions to Jerusalem. Luke himself includes just such a description in a saying of Jesus: ‘people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God’ (Luke 13:29). Both Luke’s version with four points of the compass and Matthew’s with only two (Matt 8:11) have precedents in Jewish literature, but Luke’s four directions accord with his own geographical outline of the diaspora in Acts 2:9–11. Whether Luke 13:29 refers to diaspora Jews or (as Matthew’s version undoubtedly does) to Gentiles may not be of decisive significance, since, as we have noted, one prominent version of the return from the diaspora has the nations of the world bringing to Jerusalem, as offerings to God, the exiled Israelites from their homelands (Isa 49:22–23; 60:1–9; 66:20; PsSol 17:31). Another 75 See R. Bauckham, ‘James and the Jerusalem Church,’ in R. Bauckham ed., The Book of Acts in its Palestinian Setting (Carlisle:Paternoster / Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995) 419–422.

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version pictures Gentiles, ten for every single Jew, asking the Jews to take them with them to Jerusalem (Zech 8:20–23).76 In these images, the return from the diaspora and the end-time pilgrimage of the nations coincide. We can see how the twelve tribes of Israel could matter to Luke as an essential ingredient in the wider picture of salvation for all the nations.77 Pentecost may be not so much the birthday of the church as the beginning of the restoration of the diaspora. In the form of Peter’s preaching the twelve apostles commence their task of reconstituting the renewed Israel of the regathered twelve tribes. Appropriately, Peter’s sermon ends with a proclamation to ‘the whole house of Israel’ (Acts 2:36; cf. Lev 10:6; Num 20:29; 1 Sam 7:2–3; 2 Sam 6:5; Jer 9:26; 13:11; Ezek 3:7), a term which naturally encompasses all twelve tribes, in the diaspora as well as in Jerusalem, and which readily suggests restoration (Ezek 20:40; 36:10; 37:11, 16; 39:25; 45:6).78 In Ezekiel 37, the term is associated with the reunification of the southern and northern tribes and their restoration to the land (37:15–22), as well as with the giving of God’s Spirit to revive and restore his people (37:14; cf. 39:29) and with the rule of the new David (37:24–25). Accordingly, in Acts 2 Israelites from the whole diaspora return to God (‘repent’: Acts 2:38) and receive from the Davidic Messiah, enthroned in heaven, the promised gift of the Spirit (Acts 2:33, 38–39), which is not yet the ‘restoration of all things’ (Acts 3:21) but is the earnest of it. The narrative appears to assume that the three thousand who respond to Peter’s message in this way (2:41) form the community of messianic Jews in Jerusalem which is then described (2:42–47). It may be a natural assumption that many of those who were visitors from the diaspora would have returned home, but the narrative is certainly less concerned with this than with portraying a community in Jerusalem including at least some Jews drawn from the whole diaspora. Moreover, in the narrative of Acts, chapter 2 is surely programmatic, in the sense that the apostles’ continued preaching in Jerusalem would reach the constant flow of many thousands of visitors from the diaspora that assembled for all the major festivals in the temple. Luke has shown us very graphically and plausibly how the twelve apostles, without leaving Jerusalem, were able to witness to members of all the tribes of Israel, both from the land of Israel and from the diaspora. 76 Note that this follows a prophecy of the return of the diaspora from east and west to Jerusalem (Zech 8:7–8) and an allusion to the blessing of Abraham, predicting that the Jews in the diaspora will become a blessing to the nations (8:13). 77 Another reference to the regathering of the diaspora to Jerusalem might be found in Luke 13:34, but in context it seems much more likely that the image of gathering indicates protection and that therefore Jerusalem’s children are here not the exiles but her present inhabitants. 78 The term ‘house of Israel’ is especially characteristic of Ezekiel, used far more often in Ezekiel than in other books of the OT .

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That the restoration of the diaspora was also naturally connected with the turning of the Gentiles to the God of Israel is also suggested, in significant hints, in the narrative. These hints are not anachronistic in suggesting that the conversion of Gentiles was already taking place in the earliest days of the church, but they are suggestive of the association which could readily be expected between the restoration of Israel and the conversion of the nations. The quotation from Joel begins with the promise that God will pour out his Spirit on ‘all flesh’ (Acts 2:17; Joel 3:1 [English versions 2:28]). The context might seem to define this as all Jewish flesh, except that it recalls the identical phrase in Isaiah 40:3, quoted in Luke 3:6. There it forms the climax of the Isaianic summary of the whole restoration programme from the preaching of the new Elijah to the conversion of the nations, and serves to indicate how the restoration of Israel will be the means of making the God of Israel known to the nations. The reference to ‘all flesh’ in Joel seems to be taken up by Peter when he says that the promise is not only for his hearers and their children, but also ‘for all who are far away’ (Acts 2:39). Like references to the four points of the compass (with which it is combined in Isa 43:6; 49:12), this is language which could easily suggest both the Jewish diaspora in the distant lands of its exile and also the distant nations among whom they lived (cf. 1 Kings 8:46; Isa 6:12; 43:6; 49:12; 57:19; Dan 9:7; 4Q504 1–2 6:12–13). In Isaiah 43:6, ‘far away’ is parallel to ‘the ends of the earth,’ while several of these passages are explicitly concerned with the return from exile (Isa 43:6; 49:12; 4Q504 1–2 6:12–13). In Acts 22:21, Jesus commissions Paul for his mission to the nations with the words, ‘I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’ Of course, in fulfilment of that mission Paul went to the diaspora at the same time and in the same places as he went to the nations. Luke’s account of Paul’s mission never loses sight of the connexion between the restoration of Israel and the conversion of the nations. We have seen, then, that Luke carefully relates the role of the twelve apostles to the whole of Israel, all twelve tribes, both in the diaspora and in the land, and to the restoration of Israel, including both the regathering of the diaspora to Jerusalem and the closely connected hope of the conversion of the nations to the God of Israel. We still have to understand precisely how Luke understands this role of the twelve in the restoration of Israel. Their commission in Acts 1:8 (cf. Luke 24:48–49) portrays their role as that of witnesses, beginning in Jerusalem and extending to the end of the earth. There are clear allusions here to Isaiah 43:10–12 (cf. also 44:8), in which Israel (here not personified as singular but addressed in the plural) are YHWH ’s witnesses to the nations, and Isaiah 49:6, in which the servant of YHWH is not only to restore the tribes of Israel, but also to be ‘a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.’ (The singular, ‘end of the earth,’ as also in the quotation of this verse in Acts 13:47, makes clear that

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the allusion in Acts 1:8 is to Isaiah 49:6, rather than to other texts of Isaiah which speak of ‘the ends of the earth.’ The singular is not significant geographically, as though Luke expected the apostles’ witness to reach only one of the ends of the earth, but scripturally, as constituting an allusion to Isaiah 49:6.) Luke thus relates the ‘witnessing’ task of the twelve apostles both to the restoration of Israel and to the conversion of the nations. Their witness, as emerges in the later speeches of Acts, is primarily to the fact that Jesus is Messiah and Lord, in consequence of his resurrection and exaltation to the throne of God. God’s lordship, which the nations in Isaiah 40–66 come to acknowledge and to know as salvific (Isa 45:22–23), is his lordship exercised by his Messiah enthroned on his cosmic throne. It is this messianic form of God’s lordship that leads to the restoration of Israel and to consequent conversion of the nations. The apostles’ testimony to it is therefore the essential basis of both. Acts 1:8 does not require that the twelve personally witness to the nations as far as the ends of the earth, though Peter’s role in initiating the mission to the Gentiles is important. Acts 1:8 does require that their witness – as the witness of those specially appointed to be the witnesses of the saving events – be integral to the message of salvation as others preach it to the diaspora and the nations (as in Acts 13:31). At Pentecost the witness of the twelve begins to be effective in the gathering of the exiled tribes into the restored Israel, already with the implication that thereby their witness will also come to the nations at the end of the earth (2:39: ‘all who are far away’). It is, of course, Jesus who both restores Israel and enlightens the nations. But he does so by means of the Spirit who empowers the witness of the apostles to his saving kingship. As witnesses the twelve are the leaders of the restored Israel both in furthering its restoration and in furthering its role of enlightening the nations. The difficult question we must now ask is whether this leadership, as portrayed in the narrative of Acts, is itself the fulfilment of Jesus’ promise that the twelve will take part in his own kingly rule and sit on thrones ruling the twelve tribes of Israel (Luke 22:29–30)?79 In the preceding context of this saying (22:24–27) Jesus radically redefines rule, as not a matter of status or domination, but of humble service. The lesson applies to the apostles80 as leaders of the restored Israel, but is reinforced by Jesus’ own example as one who serves (22:27 b). However, Jesus’ example of service and suffering in his earthly ministry precedes his enthronement as king, which in Luke-Acts occurs at his exaltation to heaven (Acts 2:34–36). His humble service qualifies him for rule, and shows that his rule will be 79 The parallel in Matt 19:28 can leave no doubt that the promise is for the eschatological future, but this is less clear in Luke’s version. 80 Note that in 22:14 Luke has, unusually for the Gospel, defined Jesus’ audience as ‘the apostles.’

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exercised in a spirit of service, but his earthly role as a servant is not itself his rule. Is it at the time of his own enthronement that he confers a share in his rule on the twelve, so that their witness in the service of Israel and the nations is their kingly rule over the twelve tribes, or will it be only at the parousia that he will confer kingship on the twelve, whose humble service to his people as witnesses in the meantime will have qualified them for this role? Probably the reference to the eschatological banquet (‘eat and drink at my table in my kingdom’) requires the latter interpretation, since Luke seems elsewhere to reserve this image for the still future consummation of salvation (cf. Luke 12:37; 13:29; 14:15; 22:16, 18). This passage about the rule of the twelve over the tribes of Israel is quite closely connected with two references in Luke-Acts to the restored Israel’s own rule, presumably over the nations. Naturally the rulers of Israel also exercise Israel’s rule over the nations. Thus Luke 12:32 promises the royal rule to the ‘little flock,’ the small group of disciples who constitute the nucleus of the restored Israel, while in Acts 1:6 the apostles’ question about the time of the restoration of the royal rule to Israel is implicitly also a question about their own rule as leaders of the restored Israel. With Jesus’ answer to the question, we face a similar question to the one we have discussed with reference to Luke 22:29–30: Is the apostles’ role as witnesses to the end of the earth (1:8) itself the restoration of Israel’s royal rule, or is it the role that they exercise in the meantime, on the way to that restoration? The logic of vv 6–8 seems to require the latter (otherwise why is v 7 required?). However, in both these cases (Luke 22:29–30 and Acts 1:6–8), it is important to notice that the way to the future restoration of Israel’s kingdom is through the service and witness of the apostles. This unexpected route to the kingdom, parallel to Jesus’ own unexpected route to his own enthronement, must make a difference to the nature of the kingdom itself, even though Luke does not spell this out, content as he usually is with the traditional eschatological imagery when speaking of the still future aspects of salvation. This is not a kingdom that comes through violent overthrow of enemies but through service and witness. 3.5. The continuing and future restoration The second half of Peter’s second sermon in Acts (3:19–26) is full of restoration terminology: Four instances are noteworthy and require some discussion: (1) The people are urged to ‘repent’ and to ‘turn ( ) to God’ (3:19). (2) God sent Jesus ‘to bless you by turning ( ) each of you from your wicked ways’ (3:26). Both Greek verbs very frequently translate in the Septuagint. While, in this respect, Peter’s message continues that of the new Elijah, John the Baptist, as well as that of Jesus, there is no need to

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see here reference specifically to Elijah’s restorational task. The terminology is widely used in Old Testament prophecies of Israel’s restoration (3) The result of repentance and forgiveness will be that ‘times of revival ( )81 may come from the face of the Lord’ (3:20). The meaning of the word is not as obvious as many commentators tend to assume. This noun (like the verbs / and ) can be understood as related either to (cool) or to (life, soul).82 The meanings usually cited for (cooling, relief, respite, refreshment) assume a connexion with , but ‘refreshment’ is close to ‘revival,’ which would be the natural meaning if the word is connected with . Greek speakers could easily make either connexion and not always be sure of the difference. When the Septuagint uses to translate (Judg 15:19) or the Niphal of (Exod 23:12; 2 Sam 16:14), it seems that the verb is being associated with . (It is thus being understood as the opposite of , ‘to faint, to stop breathing’) The important difference is that ‘times of refreshment’ could be understood to be temporary periods of spiritual refreshment,83 or ‘the breathing space … accorded for Israel’s repentance and salvation,’84 whereas ‘times of revival’ would refer to Israel’s eschatological restoration under the image of restoring life. The former would have a parallel in 4 Ezra 11:46, where the result of the destruction of the Roman empire is that ‘the whole earth, freed from your [Rome’s] violence, may be refreshed and relieved (refrigeret et relevetur), and may hope for the judgment and mercy of him who made it.’ The Latin verb refrigero (literally, ‘to cool’) is precisely equivalent to , and so it is very likely that was used in the Greek Vorlage of our Latin text of 4 Ezra 11:46. But this parallel would suggest that Acts 3:20 refers not to conversions, miracles or opportunity for repentance, but to the kind of hopes for liberation from oppression by enemies that we have observed in Luke 1:71, 74.85 On the other hand, if the word is used in Acts 3:20 because of its connexion with , the reference could be to the restoration of life to Israel through the gift of the Spirit, as depicted in Ezekiel 37:1–14 81 The major views on the interpretation of this phrase are summarized, with references to the scholarly literature, by H. F. Bayer, ‘Christ-Centered Eschatology in Acts 3:17–26,’ in J. B. Green and M. Turner ed., Jesus of Nazareth: Lord and Christ (I. H. Marshall FS ; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans / Carlisle: Paternoster, 1994) 245–247. 82 The confusion can be illustrated by the fact that TDNT (9.663–665) includes and in the entry on , but gives them meanings appropriate to the connexion with 83 C. K. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, vol. 1 (ICC ; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994) 205. 84 J. A. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles (AB 31; New York: Doubleday, 1998) 288. It is hard to see how this breathing space for repentance could be the result of repentance and forgiveness (v 19). 85 Cf. Turner, Power, 308.

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(cf. also Hos 6:2). In that case, Peter is putting in a different way what he said at Pentecost in Acts 2:38: if people repent and are forgiven, they will receive the Spirit, though in 3:20 the emphasis is probably more on the corporate revival of Israel as a people. Interesting corroboration for the latter interpretation is the fact that Symmachus translated (a spirit from on high) in Isaiah 32:15 as . This is clear evidence of an understanding of the noun as connected with . It is clear that in this context it refers to revivification, and was no doubt chosen by Symmachus because the pouring out of ‘a spirit from on high’ is shown by the rest of the verse to result in fertility and fruitfulness. We do not have to suppose that this translation of Isaiah 32:15 was already known to Luke in order to find its evidence relevant, but it could even be suggested that Luke’s phrase ‘times of revival from the face of the Lord’ is a paraphrase of the opening words of Isaiah 32:15 (‘until a spirit from on high is poured out on us’). The context is a prophecy of Israel’s restoration, and Luke makes probable allusion to these words of Isaiah 32:15 in Jesus’ promise of the Spirit (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:8). On either interpretation, it is debatable whether the coincide with or precede the (v 21). It may well be that, in the use of these plurals (cf. Acts 1:7), Luke is indicating that the restoration of Israel is a process rather than a single event. (4) A fourth significant instance of restoration terminology is in 3:21: ‘until the times of restoration of all things of which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.’ There is a grammatical problem which affects the interpretation: what is the antecedent of in the words ? The obvious antecedent is , but ‘the restoration all the things of which God spoke’ can hardly be the meaning. The prophecies are of the restoration, not of the things themselves. It is awkward, even if possible, to regard as the antecedent of .86 The best solution seems to be to treat the phrase as elliptical, meaning: ‘the restoration of all things of [whose restoration] God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets.’ This helps to determine the meaning of ‘all things,’ which would then be qualified as all the things whose restoration the prophets predicted. We have noticed (section 2.1.1 above) that in the similar phrase in Mark 9:12 ( ) the ‘all things’ are probably defined by the prophecy in mind (Mal 3:24[4:6]) as all the things Elijah is expected to restore. In Acts 3:21 the reference is probably broader, but most likely, given the context, restricted to the various aspects of the restoration of Israel that the prophets predicted. There is a helpful parallel in 2 Baruch 85:3–4, where Baruch writes to the exiles: 86

As Barrett, Acts, vol. 1, 206, does.

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… we have left our land, and Zion has been taken away from us, and we have nothing now apart from the Mighty One and his Law. Therefore, if we direct and dispose our hearts, we shall receive everything which we lost again by many times. For that which we lost was subjected to corruption, and that which we receive will not be corruptible.

Similarly, what Peter promises is the restoration of all that Israel had lost, including no doubt the sovereignty to which Acts 1:6 refers. (Not only the word [1:6], but also the reference to in 1:7 links Acts 1:6–7 with 3:20–21.) The rest of Peter’s sermon (3:22–26) hinges on two Old Testament quotations (neither following LXX ), making two complementary points about the consequences of Israel’s response to Jesus the Messiah. The prophecy of the prophet like Moses (Deut 18:15–20, conflated with Num 15:3187) makes the point that anyone who does not heed this prophet, identified as Jesus, will forfeit their place in the Israel whose restoration is expected. The words of God’s covenant with Abraham (a conflated quotation from Gen 12:3 and 22:1888), together with Peter’s comment in verse 26, make the point that repentant Israel, blessed by God, will fulfil the promise that Abraham’s seed89 will be a blessing to all the families of the earth. God sent Jesus to Israel ‘first’ (v 26) so that they should be blessed by God in repentance, and the Israel thus restored would then be a blessing to the nations. This is the familiar connexion between the restoration of Israel and the conversion of the nations. Peter’s words at Pentecost had hinted at it. Here the main point of Peter’s sermon is still the restoration of Israel itself, but the consequent 87 Not Lev 23:29, as the commentators generally assert, following the erroneous premise that Luke is working from the LXX . The connexion between Deut 18:19 and Num 15:31 is intelligible as a piece of interpretative exegesis, but the connexion between Deut 18:19 and Lev 23:29 is not exegetically intelligible. 88 Reference to Gen 18:18 here (Barrett, Acts, vol. 1, 212) is superfluous. Again, the text of Acts 3:25 b is easily intelligible when the unjustified assumption of a LXX basis is discarded. The word order corresponds to the Hebrew of both Genesis verses, as LXX does not. is from Gen 22:18, occurs in both Genesis verses, while is from Gen 12:3 (where LXX has ). is an accurate translation of (which it quite often translates in LXX ), and there is no reason to suppose that Luke has changed the of Gen 22:18LXX to in order to include Jews as well as Gentiles in the term (Turner, Power, 309, following S. G. Wilson). The idea that includes Jews in any case makes no sense, because Abraham’s seed (Israelites) and the families of the earth are obviously mutually exclusive categories. The reason for conflating Gen 12:3 and 22:18, instead of quoting Gen 22:18 alone, may be that the emphasis on antiquity in the whole passage made reference to the very earliest promise of God to Abraham appropriate. 89 It would be misleading to suppose that ‘seed’ is here applied to Jesus rather than to Israel in general. The introduction to the quotation in v 25 makes clear that Peter is identifying his hearers, the descendants of Abraham, with the ‘seed’ in the quotation. Similarly, in Luke 1:55 the ‘seed’ of Abraham is his Israelite descendants.

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blessing of the nations is now made explicit by the quotation of the covenant with Abraham. From the passage as a whole, as well as in connexion with chapter 2 and with the accounts of the Gentile mission that follow later in Acts, it seems that Luke envisages the restoration of Israel as a process that has already begun with the formation of the Jerusalem church and which will be complete only at the parousia. The blessing of the Gentiles that follows from the restoration of Israel need not therefore be delayed until the completion of that restoration. Before long Peter himself will be involved in its beginning. It is also clear that the sifting process in Israel whereby some will ‘fall’ and others ‘rise’ (Luke 2:34) through their response to Jesus is now beginning. It is Jesus who, through the Spirit, is restoring Israel. Those who reject him are excluded. This division in Israel in the course of its restoration continues to the end of Acts (28:24). It is important to notice, however, that, although the possibility of rejecting the Messiah is clearly stated in Peter’s sermon as a warning (3:22–23), it is on the positive note of blessing and restoration for Israel that the sermon ends. This sequence is the same as that of ‘falling’ and ‘rising’ in Simeon’s prophecy (Luke 2:34). It is very clearly not from Israel’s rejection of the Messiah that the blessing of the nations results, but rather from Israel’s heeding the Messiah and being restored. There is a possibility that Peter’s message about the restoration of Israel is more closely linked with the healing of the lame man (Acts 3:1–10), which occasions the sermon, than at first appears. The explicit connexion is that the healing in the name of Jesus demonstrates that the risen Christ is the source of eschatological salvation (3:16). In a sense, therefore, the lame man’s restoration to health is indicative of Israel’s restoration. The parallel is closer, however, when we remember that in one of the prophecies of restoration the exiles whom God will restore and reign over in Jerusalem are described as the lame (Mic 4:6–7: Hebrew, not LXX !; cf. Zeph 3:19; and Isa 35:6 with Acts 3:8). From this point on in Luke’s narrative the restoration of Israel proceeds apace in the form of the growth and spiritual flourishing of the churches in Jerusalem and the rest of Jewish Palestine. In a whole series of summary passages Luke presents this as an unqualified success story (4:4; 5:14; 6:1, 7; 9:31, 35, 42; 12:24) and one which he gives his readers no reason to suppose has concluded. When his narrative returns to Jerusalem after many chapters following Paul’s travels elsewhere, we learn from James that there are ‘myriads of believers among the Jews’ (i. e. in Jerusalem or perhaps in Jerusalem and Judea) (21:20). The witness of Palestinian Jewish Christians to their non-Christian Jewish neighbours continued in Luke’s own time, quite possibly with renewed success, and there is no reason why Luke should not have approved of it. When Jervell writes: ‘At the time of Luke there was no

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longer a mission to Jews,’90 he follows the old practice of writing post-70 ce Jewish Christianity out of history. The restoration of Israel has not been completed within Luke’s narrative, and, if our interpretation of 3:20 is correct, it will not be completed until the parousia. Nevertheless the renewed Israel, in the form of the Palestinian Jewish Christian communities, is by chapter 10 sufficiently established for the light to begin to go out from it to the Gentiles. Shortly before the Cornelius narrative, Luke gives the first of his two summaries that describe not just the Jerusalem church but the flourishing state of the churches throughout Jewish Palestine. It is quite distinctive among the summaries also in the language it uses: Meanwhile the church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and was built up ( ). Living ( ) in the fear of the Lord and in the consolation ( ) of the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers (Acts 9:31).

All of this language can be understood in restorational terms. Most notably perhaps, ‘consolation’ ( ) recalls ‘the consolation of Israel’ for which Simeon was waiting (Luke 2:25) and the proclamation of which stands as a kind of statement of theme at the head of the whole prophecy ; cf. of the restoration of Israel in Isaiah 40–66 (Isa 40:1LXX : 51:12; and 52:9 Hebrew). ‘Living [literally: going] in the fear of the Lord’ may recall the language of Deuteronomy: ‘keep the commandments of YHWH your God, by walking in his ways and by fearing him’ (Deut 8:6; cf. 10:12; Neh 5:9), which is closely associated in Deuteronomy 8 with entering the promised land. ‘Peace’ is a well-known summation of eschatological blessing, which forms the climax of the Benedictus: ‘to guide our feet into the way of peace’ (Luke 1:79; cf. also Luke 2:14; Acts 10:36). Finally, ‘being built up’ ( ), which Luke uses in this metaphorical way of the church elsewhere only in Acts 20:32, may well allude, as in similar usage elsewhere in the New Testament, to the image of the church as the eschatological temple (cf. Matt 16:18; Rom 15:20; 1 Cor 3:9–17; Eph 2:20–22; 1 Pet 2:5).91 Luke has used the verb with reference to Solomon’s temple and with reference to the impossibility of building with human hands an adequate temple for God (Acts 7:47–49), and he will use (to rebuild) of the eschatological temple that God himself builds, i. e. the church (Acts 15:16).92 In various ways, therefore, this verse (9:31) describes the Jewish 90

Jervell, Luke, 68. It is noteworthy, in this connexion, that Acts 9:31 speaks of ‘the church’ (singular) in all of Jewish Palestine. 92 I have dealt elsewhere with Acts 15, especially vv 13–21, in a way that is consistent with my present argument, but I will not attempt to summarize that discussion here. See R. Bauckham, ‘James and the Gentiles (Acts 15.13–21),’ in B. Witherington ed., History, 91

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Christian church throughout Jewish Palestine as Israel restored in the last days. While this summary occurs shortly before the story of Cornelius, Luke’s last summary about the continued increase of the Palestinian Jewish church (12:24) is placed at the precise point at which the Acts narrative takes leave of the story of the Jerusalem church and takes up instead the story of the missionary journeys of Paul and Barnabas. The message must be, not that the restoration of Israel is complete, but that the restoration is sufficiently under way for the witness to the Gentiles to proceed. Once we realise that in Luke’s understanding of salvation history, the restoration of Israel is indeed the means of the conversion of the Gentiles, but that the two events are processes that can go on simultaneously, we need not seek finality in Luke’s account of the first process any more than in his account of the second. Jervell convincingly showed that in Acts it is not Israel’s rejection of the Gospel that clears the way for the evangelizing of the Gentiles, but rather Israel’s acceptance of the Gospel which makes it possible for the Gospel to reach the Gentiles.93 Luke’s portrayal of the impact of the preaching of the Gospel by Paul and his missionary colleagues on Jews in the diaspora is in fact quite varied. But on three or four occasions there is a clear common pattern: Paul preaches first in the synagogue; then mixed response by the Jewish community, some believing but others strongly rejecting the message, makes further preaching in the synagogue impossible and leads Paul to move explicitly from preaching in the synagogue to speaking directly to the Gentiles.94 This pattern occurs first in Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13:40–48), where the account is perhaps programmatic for the general pattern of Paul’s missionary activity and is therefore interpreted by two quotations of Old Testament prophecies (13:41=Hab 1:5; 13:47=Isa 49:6). The pattern is repeated at Corinth (Acts 18:5–8), less clearly in Ephesus (19:8–10), and then, in the final chapter of Acts, in Rome (28:17–28). The pattern is consistent with the idea that it is the restored Israel that provides the Gentiles with the witness to God that brings the Gentiles to faith in the God of Israel, because Paul and his missionary colleagues are seen as themselves representative of this restored Israel. This point is made by the quotation of Isaiah 49:6 in Acts 13:47 (recalling also, of course, Luke 2:32 and Acts 1:8). Jervell argued correctly that in Pisidian Antioch and in Corinth Paul is not portrayed as abandoning his mission to the Jews from then onwards, Literature and Society in the Book of Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 154–184. 93 Jervell, Luke, 41–74. 94 For a full discussion of the pattern, see R. C. Tannehill, ‘Rejection by Jews and Turning to Gentiles: The Pattern of Paul’s Mission in Acts,’ in J. B. Tyson ed., Luke-Acts and the Jewish People (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988) 83–101.

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but merely as moving from preaching to the synagogue community in that place to giving all his attention to the Gentile citizens of that place. In the next place he visits, Paul once again begins in the synagogue. But Jervell also argued that the final instance of this pattern, in Rome. is different in being a final abandonment of mission to the Jews as such.95 The reason why this is unconvincing is a reason Jervell himself gives, when he says, with respect to the events at Pisidian Antioch: ‘According to Luke, one cannot be purged from the people vicariously.’96 In other words, the response, in whatever combination of positive and negative, to the Gospel has to be made by each Jewish community in each city. The Jewish community in Rome has no status which allows it to represent all other Jewish communities. Whatever the meaning of Paul’s pronouncement on the Jews’ lack of response to the Gospel, citing Isaiah 6:9–10, in Acts 28:25–28, in its context it is a statement about his Jewish audience in Rome, not about the Jewish people as such.97 Jervell supposes that when the Jews in Rome have heard the Gospel, all Jews in the whole world have heard the Gospel.98 But surely no intelligent reader of Acts with a minimal knowledge of geography could think this. Paul’s missionary travels have taken him to no more than a small minority of Jewish communities throughout the world, and this is clear to readers of Acts because Luke himself provides, at the outset, a quite detailed sketch of the extent of the Jewish diaspora (2:9–11). Paul’s missionary journeys are not presented by Luke as the whole of the church’s mission, but only as pars pro toto. Probably Paul in Rome has not even reached the western end of the earth; he has certainly not been anywhere near the others. Whether or not Paul himself would move on to other as yet unevangelized areas the conclusion to Acts leaves us ignorant, but Luke certainly gives us no reason not to suppose that other people will. The conclusion to Acts is conspicuously lacking in finality. Nothing has ended, not even Paul’s own ministry. 3.6. A relatively open future? The scholarly debate about the significance of the last chapter of Acts for Luke’s view of Israel may be motivated, on all sides, by an expectation that 95 Jervell, Luke, 64. The same point is put in a considerably qualified way by Tannehill, ‘Rejection,’ 98–99; and similarly in Moessner ed., Jesus, 335–336. 96 Jervell, Luke, 62. 97 Scholars writing on Acts have shown a strong tendency to take it in the latter sense. M. Wolter, ‘Israel’s Future and the Delay of the Parousia, according to Luke,’ in Moessner ed., Jesus, 307–308, cites a variety of views on these verses, some seeing a final rejection by and of the Jewish people in them, others questioning the finality of the verdict, but all take the reference to be to the Jewish people as a whole, rather than simply the Jewish community in Rome. 98 Jervell, Luke, 49, 64.

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Luke must provide a definitive statement about the restoration of Israel. On the one hand, some see a statement that the mission to the Jewish people as such has ended, either in failure or in sufficient success to be regarded as the completion of the restoration of Israel. On the other hand, others seek, in this and some other passages, a clear implication that, beyond the temporary hardening of the hearts of part of Israel, there lies an expectation of future large-scale conversion of the Jews. It may be that the difficulty in reaching a generally convincing view of this issue reveals that in fact Luke has left the future of Israel relatively open. We conclude with two points about the future of Israel in Luke-Acts. First, Luke does make clear that there is a future for Israel with Jesus the Messiah according to the purposes of God. The restoration of all that God had promised through the prophets would be restored to Israel will be complete only at the parousia (3:21; cf. also 1:33). But neither Luke’s Jesus nor his apostles have anything to say about this that is not couched in the images of the prophecies in Scripture (Luke 13:28–29; 22:30). Insofar as the prophecies of restoration expressed in scriptural and traditional terms in Luke 1–2 find fulfilment in events which are narrated in Luke’s story, the fulfilment takes place in unexpected ways. But insofar as those prophecies remain open to further fulfilment in the future and at the end, the fulfilment can be described only in the scriptural and traditional language and images. Luke is no prophet. As a writer of salvation history he interprets his narrative as fulfilment of prophecy, but he cannot go beyond the already given prophecies that point to the future. How these prophecies are to be fulfilled remains open in his work. That Jesus is the Messiah for Israel is clear; in what ways he will prove to be the Messiah for Israel in the future remains open. Luke’s treatment of Jesus’ prophecy of the fall of Jerusalem is instructive in this respect. The event itself is described in scriptural language which strongly suggests that it constitutes a second exile or second stage of the exile of Israel, comparable with the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians (Luke 21:20–24; cf. 19:42–44). This is how the Jewish apocalypses of the late first century, 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra, also portrayed it. But exile suggests hopes of restoration. In particular, 21:24 a (‘captives among all the nations’) echoes Deuteronomy’s threat of exile (28:64) which precedes the well-known prophecy of restoration (30–33). Verse 24 b (‘Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled’) echoes Daniel 8:13 (cf. Zech 12:3), where the expectation is that the period of Gentile destruction and domination of Jerusalem will be succeeded by the restoration of Israel’s temple and city. Luke’s language suggests such hopes, but fails to state them. As far as Israel is concerned, the future is left ambiguous.

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Secondly, it is notable that Luke’s view of Israel and her future is open to (without requiring) a Pauline interpretation. Whether or not Luke intended it, Luke-Acts in canonical context can easily be read in this way. On the first occasion that Paul turns from the Jews to the Gentiles, the Jewish opposition to Paul is said to be motivated by the ‘jealousy’ that the eagerness of many Gentiles to hear the Gospel provokes in them (Acts 13:39; cf. also 17:5). This is readily connected with Paul’s view that God’s (and Paul’s) purpose in the Gentile mission was to provoke Israel to jealousy and thereby accomplish Israel’s salvation (Rom 11:11, 14), a notion which has its basis in the Torah’s classic prophecy of restoration (Deut 32:21, quoted in Rom 10:19). Paul’s parting words to the Jews in Rome (Acts 28:28: ‘Let it be known to you then that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles: they will listen’), which are also his final words in Acts, can be understood as calculated to provoke Jewish jealousy in the way that Romans 11 envisages. Similarly, the citation of Isaiah 6:9–10 (Acts 28:26–27) can be read as referring to the hardening of part of Israel of which Paul speaks in Romans 11:8–10, 25, a hardening limited to the time of the Gentile mission, but to be followed by the salvation of ‘all Israel’ (Rom 11:26).

20. Paul and Other Jews with Latin Names in the New Testament The most famous Jew with a Latin name is, of course, Paul, but there are also in the New Testament fourteen or fifteen other persons (three women and twelve or thirteen men) who are Jewish and bear Latin names. All occur in the Pauline corpus or the Acts of the Apostles (or both), with the exception of the Rufus of Mark 15.21, who may or may not be identical with the Rufus of Romans 16.13: hence the uncertainty as to whether the full list is of fifteen or sixteen persons. Two of the persons in this category who appear in Acts and Paul are also named in 1 Peter (Mark and Silvanus). Here is the complete list in Latin alphabetical order: 1. Agrippa – king Agrippa II (full name, not given in NT : Marcus Julius Agrippa) (Acts 25.13–26.32). 2. Aquila – from Pontus, co-worker of Paul, husband of Prisca / Priscilla (13 below) (Acts 18.2, 18, 26; Rom. 16.3; 1 Cor. 16.19; 2 Tim. 4.19). 3. Crispus – ruler of the synagogue in Corinth (Acts 18:8; 1 Cor. 1.14). 4. Drusilla – sister of king Agrippa II (Acts 24.24). 5. Iunia – apostle, probably wife of Andronicus (Rom. 16.7). 6. Iustus – ‘Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus’ (Acts 1.23). 7. Iustus – ‘Jesus called Justus,’ co-worker of Paul (Col. 4.11). 8. Lucius – from Cyrene, a leader of the church in Antioch (Acts 13.1). 9. Lucius – co-worker with Paul in Corinth (Rom. 16.21).1

* First publication: Alf Christophersen, Carsten Claussen, Jörg Frey and Bruce Longenecker ed., Paul, Luke and the Graeco-Roman World: Essays in Honour of Alexander J. M. Wedderburn (JSNTS up 217; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002) 202–220. 1 This Lucius has sometimes been identified with Luke ( ), a co-worker of Paul mentioned in Col .4.14; 2 Tim. 4.11; Phlm. 24, and traditionally considered the author of Luke-Acts (e. g. E. E. Ellis, ‘Coworkers, Paul and His,’ in G. F. Hawthorne and R. P. Martin ed., Dictionary of Paul and His Letters [Downers Grove / Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1993] 186). is a Greek hypocoristic form of Lucius ( ). Both forms of the name could be used of the same person, and there is no great difficulty in supposing Paul to refer to the same person in both ways (see A. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East [London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2 nd edition, 1927] 435–438). But (a) Col. 4.11 probably means that those named in vv 12–14, including Luke, are Gentiles, whereas the Lucius of Rom. 16.21 is Jewish; (b) Paul wrote Romans from Corinth (Rom. 16.23) at the time when Acts places him in Greece (Acts 20.2–3), and (if the “we” passages of Acts indicate the parts of the narrative in which Luke accompanied Paul) before he was joined by Luke

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10. Marcus – ‘John, also called Mark’ (so Acts 12.12, 25; 15.37), ‘cousin of Barnabas’ (Col. 4.10; other references: Acts 15.39; 2 Tim. 4.11; Phlm. 24; 1 Pet. 5.13). 11. Niger – ‘Simeon called Niger,’ a leader of the church in Antioch (Acts 13.1). 12. Paulus – ‘Saul, also called Paul’ (Acts 13.9; his Jewish name Saul [both and ] is used in Acts 7.58–13.9; 22.7, 13; 26.14; elsewhere he is ). 13. Prisca / Priscilla – co-worker of Paul, wife of Aquila (2 above) (Priscilla: Acts 18.2, 18, 26; Prisca: Rom. 16.3; 1 Cor. 16.10; 2 Tim. 4.19). 14. Rufus – son of Simon of Cyrene (Mk. 15.21). 15. Rufus – (Rom. 16.13). 16. Silvanus – co-worker of Paul (2 Cor. 1.19; 1 Thess. 1.1; 2 Thess. 1.1; 1 Pet. 5.12), probably the same person as Silas (Acts 15.22, 27, 32, 34, 40; 16.19, 25, 29; 17.4, 10, 14, 15; 18.5).2

Of these, we know that Paul was a Roman citizen3 and would have had the usual tria nomina: Paul(l)us was probably his cognomen. (Since the cognomen was the name that normally distinguished the individual, it would be the obvious one to use alone.) From Acts 16.37 it seems that Silas / Silvanus was also a Roman citizen: Silvanus would be his cognomen. Agrippa and Drusilla were Roman citizens by virtue of the grant of citizenship to their ancestor Antipater. We cannot tell whether any other of these persons were Roman citizens,4 but no doubt most bore just one Latin name, with or without also a Semitic name. Those whose Latin name is merely a common Latin praenomen (Marcus, Lucius) were certainly not Roman citizens.

in Macedonia or Troas (Acts 20.3–5). There is even less reason to identify Luke with the Lucius of Acts 13.1, since, if Luke is the author of Acts, he never refers to himself in the third person in this way, and since the names and were common among Greeks and diaspora Jews. 2 It is uncertain whether Maria (Rom 16.6) should be included in this list. She may be a Gentile bearing the Roman name Maria, the feminine of the nomen gentilicium Marius (so P. Lampe, Die Städrömischen Christen in den ersten beiden Jahrhundert [WUNT 2/18; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1987] 147). She may be Jewish, bearing the Hebrew name Miriam, which could be rendered in Greek as . In that case her Hebrew name would function in a Latin-speaking context as also a well-known Latin name, whether or not it was given her with this double function in view. Cf. G. H. R. Horsley, ‘… a problem like Maria,’ New Documents 4 (1987) 229–230 (no. 115). 3 On the issue of Paul’s Roman citizenship, see S. Légasse, ‘Paul’s Pre-Christian Career according to Acts,’ in R. Bauckham ed., The Book of Acts in its Palestinian Setting, vol. 4 of The Book of Acts in Its First Century Setting (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans / Carlisle: Paternoster, 1995) 368–372; R. Riesner, Paul’s Early Period (tr. D. Stott; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) 147–156; M. Hengel, The Pre-Christian Paul (tr. J. Bowden; London: SCM Press, 1991) 6–15. 4 The Corinthian Crispus is the most likely. For Crispus as the cognomen of a Jew with tria nomina at Acmonia, see P. R. Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor (SNTSMS 69; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) 76.

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Sound-equivalents (homophones) It seems to have been quite common5 for Jews to adopt Greek or Latin names that sounded similar to Semitic names (even though the meaning was quite different).6 Perhaps some diaspora Jews used only the Greek or Latin name, but many, along with some Palestinian Jews, would seem to have used either name according to context. The two names were not used together, like a name and a nickname or a name and a patronymic or the nomen and cognomen of a Roman citizen, but were treated as alternative versions of the same name. Probably the commonest, as well as the neatest example is the Greek name Simon used as equivalent to the Hebrew name Simeon.7 In pronunciation these two names would have sounded very similar indeed. Other Greek names we know to have been used by Jews because of their assonance with Hebrew names include Alkimos – Jakim / Eliakim8 Aster – Esther9 5 The evidence is underestimated by G. H. R. Horsley, ‘Names, Double,’ in D. N. Freedman ed., The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 4 (New York: Doubleday, 1992) 1015, who calls the practice ‘not especially common.’ This is partly because he distinguishes it from what he calls ‘substitute name’ (1016). But his examples of the latter do not differ from the former: Simon (Peter) did not discontinue the use of the Semitic form of his name Simeon (Acts 15.14; 2 Pet. 1.1), nor did Silas simply replace this name with the Latin Silvanus. As is clear from Acts, the alternatives names were used in different, appropriate contexts. Horsley’s mistake was earlier made by A. Deissmann, Bible Studies (tr. A. Grieve; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2 nd edition, 1903) 315 n. 2. 6 For evidence of the same practice among non-Jews, see Horsley, ‘Names, Double,’ 1015; Deissmann, Bible Studies, 315; C. J. Hemer, ‘The Name of Paul,’ TynB 36 (1985) 179–183, citing the interesting case of a native of Cilicia called both Lucius Antonius Leo and Neon son of Zoilus (CIL X.3377). 7 See N. G. Cohen, ‘Jewish Names as Cultural Indicators in Antiquity,’ JSJ 7 (1976) 112–117; but she does not take account of the fact that the popularity of Simon / Simeon in later Second Temple Judaism was to a large extent due to the fact that it was a Hasmonean name. T. Ilan, ‘The Names of the Hasmoneans in the Second Temple Period’ (Hebrew), Eretz-Israel 19 (1987), Hebrew section 238–241, shows that the most popular male names among Palestinian Jews were all those of the Maccabees: Simeon, Joseph, Judah, Eleazar, John. (For Joseph as one of the Maccabee brothers, Ilan relies rather perilously on 2 Macc 8:22.) A nice example of the equivalence of Simon and Simeon is N. Lewis, Y. Yadin and J. C. Greenfield ed., The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1989) nos. 21–22, where two Jews are called in the Greek parts of the documents, but Shim on in the Aramaic and Nabatean of the attestations. See also L. Y. Rahmani, A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority / Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1994) 215, no. 651, where the name is written both in the usual Hebrew form ( ) and in the Greek form transliterated into Hebrew ( ). 8 Josephus, Ant. 12.385. 9 is a fairly uncommon Greek name, but popular with Jews in both Greek ( or ) and Latin (Aster) (for the Greek spellings see D. Noy, Jewish Inscrip-

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Cleopas – Clopas10 Jason – Jesus (Yeshu a)11 Mnason / Mnaseas – Manasseh12 Mousaios – Moses.13

Latin names include Annia – Hannah?14 Annianus – Hanina / Hananiah15 Iulius / Iulianus – Judah16 Iustus – Joseph Lea – Leah?17 Maria – Mary (Miriam)?18 Rufus – Reuben.19 tions of Western Europe, vol. 1 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993] 66–67; M. Schwabe and B. Lifshitz, Beth She’arim, vol. 2 [New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1974] 64. assimilated the Greek name to the Hebrew: e. g. M. Williams ed., The Jews among Greeks and Romans (Baltimore, Maryland: John Hopkins University Press, 1998) 47 (no. II .70)(= CIL VIII .8499), 77 (no. III .55)(CIJ 874); Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, vol. 1, nos. 26, 47, 130, 192; D. Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) nos. 91, 140, 278, 552, 596; Schwabe and Lifshitz, Beth She arim, nos. 147, 176. The possible derivation of Esther from the Persian word for star would probably not have been known to Jews of this period. 10 Deissmann, Bible Studies, 315 n. 2; R. Bauckham, ‘Mary of Clopas (John 19:25),’ in G. J. Brooke ed., Women in the Biblical Tradition (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992) 231–255 (this essay is republished in my book, Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002] chapter 6). 11 Josephus, Ant. 12.239; Rom. 16.21. See also N. G. Cohen, ‘The Names of the Translators in the Letter of Aristeas: A Study in the Dynamics of Cultural Transition,’ JSJ 15 (1984) 46–48. 12 Acts 21.16; CPJ 28 l.17; Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, vol. 2, no. 544. See also H. J. Cadbury, ‘Some Semitic Personal Names in Luke-Acts,’ in H. G. Wood ed., Amicitiae Corolla (J. R. Harris FS ; London: University of London Press, 1933) 51–53. 13 CPJ 20; Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, vol. 2, no. 74. 14 Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, vol. 2, no. 15. 15 Schwabe and Lifshitz, Beth She arim, 147–148; see nos. 166, 175; Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, vol. 2, nos. 120, 288, 466 (?); Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, vol. 1, no. 176. 16 For the three male names in this list, see Lev. R. 32:5 (and the same tradition in Cant. R. 56.6 to Cant. 4.12): ‘R. Huna stated in the name of Bar appara: Israel were redeemed from Egypt on account of four things, viz. because they did not change their names…. They did not change their name[s], having gone down as Reuben and Simeon, and having come up as Reuben and Simeon. They did not call Judah “Leon,” nor Reuben “Rufus,” nor Joseph “Lestes” [corrected: Justus], nor Benjamin “Alexander.”’ The form of the text in Cant. R. 56:6 has: ‘They did not call Reuben “Rufus,” Judah “Julianus,” Joseph “Justus,” or Benjamin “Alexander”’ (adapted from J. Neusner, Song of Songs Rabbah: An Analytical Translation, vol. 2 [Brown Judaic Studies 196; Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1989] 73). 17 Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, vol. 2, no. 377. 18 See n. 2 above. 19 On this equivalence, see Cohen, ‘Jewish Names,’ 117–128. She also discusses the equivalence between Reuben and the Semitic name Roubel.

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In our list of New Testament Jews with Latin names, there are seven names which are probably to be understood as sound-equivalents 5. 6. 7. 12. 14. 15. 16.

Iunia – Joanna? Iustus – Joseph Iustus – Jesus (Yeshu a) Paulus – Saul Rufus – Reuben Rufus – Reuben Silvanus – Silas

In the case of the two Roman citizens, Paul and Silvanus, their Jewish name is an equivalent to their Latin cognomen. Neither of these equivalencies is attested outside the New Testament. That Silvanus20 and Silas should be regarded as sound-equivalents is generally accepted, but the case has understandably been much less discussed than Paul’s. Less understandably, it has not been given its due weight as a parallel in discussion of Paul’s names. That Saul and Paul were used as sound-equivalents has been suggested21 but also often doubted.22 We should first notice that it is not true, as Riesner23 and Hengel24 still assert, that we know no other case of an ancient Jew named Paul: there is one example from Sardis25 and one from Aphrodisias.26 We cannot prove that these Jews regarded the name as a sound-equivalent to the Hebrew name Saul, but in view of the practice attested in other cases of sound-equivalents we may at least suspect it.27 It is relevant to note that the name Saul is very rare among diaspora Jews but relatively common in Palestine.28 20

For another Jew called Silvanus, see Schwabe and Lifshitz, Beth She arim, no. 211. Schwabe and Lifshitz ignore the Silvanus of the New Testament when they say of this inscription: ‘Until now, the name was not known to have been borne by a Jew’ (195). 21 Deissmann, Bible Studies, 315–317; A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963) 153. 22 E. g. G. Lüdemann, Early Christianity according to the Traditions in Acts (tr. J. Bowden; London: SCM Press, 1989) 241; Riesner, Paul’s Early Period, 145; Hengel, The Pre-Christian Paul, 9. 23 Riesner, Paul’s Early Period, 144–145 and n. 57. 24 Hengel, The Pre-Christian Paul, 8–9. 25 Trebilco, Jewish Communities, 48. 26 J. Reynolds and R. Tannenbaum, Jews and Godfearers at Aphrodisias (Cambridge Philological Society Supplementary Volume 12; Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society, 1987) 6, 103. 27 For Aphrodisias, so G. Mussies, ‘Jewish Personal Names in Some Non-Literary Sources,’ in J. W. van Henten and P. W. van der Horst ed., Studies in Early Jewish Epigraphy (AGAJU 21; Leiden: Brill, 1994) 273. But Deissmann, Bible Studies, 316, was mistaken in thinking that the Paulos who appears in papyrus fragments of the Acta Pauli et Antonini is Jewish: see the edition in CPJ 158, 159. 28 Hengel, The Pre-Christian Paul, 9, 107–108 n. 78. To his list of occurrences of the name Saul in Jewish Palestine, add those in the Murabba at and Na al ever documents: P. Benoit, J. T. Milik and R. de Vaux, Les Grottes de Murabba at (DJD 2; Oxford: Claren-

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However, some discussion of the spelling of the name Saul in Greek is needed at this point. Three Greek forms of the Hebrew name are known: one simply a transliteration and used as an indeclinable word ( the other two with Greek case-endings added ( and ), as was often done with names adopted into Greek. In Acts, the form is used for the king of Israel (13.21) and when the heavenly voice or Ananias addresses Paul (Acts 9.4, 17; 22.7, 13; 26.14); elsewhere the apostle’s Hebrew name is rendered as . (This variation resembles the way Luke has James address Peter, uniquely, by the Hebrew form of his name, Simeon: Acts 15.14. It helps give readers a sense of the Palestinian Jewish context of the narrative.) Uniquely, however, the text of Acts in P45 has throughout.29 In 1940, G. A. Harrer argued that this was the original reading, and that the form was only created in the third or fourth century by analogy with .30 His argument has recently been revived by Riesner, who, however, states it misleadingly: ‘the form with the Greek ending might be simply a Christian construction analogous to .’31 Harrer argued that specifically the form was a Christian construction. He was aware that Josephus used the form , formed by adding the Greek ending to the usual transliteration of the name as .32 So his argument is not refuted, as Murphy-O’Connor thinks, simply by referring to Josephus’ usage.33 It is true that, in the manuscripts of Josephus, as well as the 196 occasions on which appears, with reference both to the king of Israel and to first-century Jews, there is one occurrence of , BJ referring to a first-century Jew whom Josephus elsewhere calls . This exception should probably be explained as due to a Christian scribe (all our manuscripts of Josephus were, of course, transcribed by don Press, 1961) nos. 30, 42, 74, 94; H. M. Cotton and A. Yardeni ed., Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek Documentary Texts from Na al ever and Other Sites (DJD 27; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997) no. 8; three occurrences in J. Naveh, ‘The Ossuary Inscriptions from Giv at Ha-Mitvar,’ IEJ 20 (1970) 36–37 (= Rahmani, A Catalogue, 132, nos. 226, 227, 228); and two ossuaries from East Talpiyot, Jerusalem in Rahmani, A Catalogue, nos. 716 (p. 224), 730 (pp. 227–228). 29 On the text of this third-century papyrus, see C. K. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, vol. 1 (ICC ; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994) 3. Its text of Acts covers only 4.27–17.17. 30 G. A. Harrer, ‘Saul Who Also Is Called Paul,’ HTR 33 (1940) 19–33. He was primarily arguing against the view that some form of Saul could have been the apostle’s cognomen, while Paul was a name he adopted later in life. So he argues that no form of Saul with Greek case-endings is known to have been extant before Josephus wrote. The claim that was Paul’s cognomen has been generally abandoned, and it is commonly recognized that he would have had both names from birth. 31 Riesner, Paul’s Early Period, 145. 32 Harrer, ‘Saul,’ 25. 33 J. Murphy-O’Connor, Paul: A Critical Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) 42.

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Christians) more familiar with the form from his reading of Acts. The epigraphic evidence for Jewish usage offers the forms (CIJ 956: (CIJ 803: Apamea 35 This example of is from Jaffa34) and 391 ce, but also occurs on three ossuaries, probably from before 70 ce, from Mount Scopus,36 Qiryat Tiv on37 and an unknown location in the Jerusalem area,38 and in a fragmentary list of accounts from Palestine dating from before the Bar Kokhba revolt.39 These occurrences prove that this form of the name was not invented by Josephus, as Harrer argued, but must have been in use by Palestinian Jews already in Paul’s time. It remains true, however, that we have no example of the form outside the manuscripts of Acts. Harrer and Riesner are probably wrong to think the form the original reading throughout Acts. As Hengel says, this could be ‘a bigoted whim of the copyist, who preferred for the Jewish name of Paul the version which had as it were the divine approbation.’40 probably belongs to the original text of Acts but it is unique to that document as far as extant evidence goes. It is possible that the form originated as a closer sound-equivalent to than , a closer equivalent to the Hebrew (Sha’ul), is,41 but it may simply be a normalisation of the word in line with Greek usage (compare the various Greek forms of Hebrew names such as Joseph and John). Was it Luke who originated the form or was he following Paul’s own usage, itself original, or was it already in use by diaspora Jews? We cannot tell, and it is important to remember how limited our evidence is. In any case, and , though the latter has a diphthong where the former has two distinct vowel sounds, are already sufficiently close to constitute a sound-equivalence, as close as Joseph (Yehosef) and Justus (on which, see below). Since the sequence of vowel-sounds and is not normal in Greek, Greek speakers may in any case have tended to approximate to in their pronunciation of . In that case, whatever the spelling, it is still relevant that the Greek adjective 34 Also an inscription from Phthiotis in Thessaly: Hengel, The Pre-Christian Paul, 107 n.78. 35 B. Lifshitz, Donateurs et Fondateurs dans les Synagogues Juives (Cahiers de la Revuew Biblique 7; Paris: Gabalda, 1967) no. 38 (p. 39). 36 Rahmani, A Catalogue, no. 122 (p. 109). This ossuary has the name both in Hebrew ( ) and Greek ( ). 37 Rahmani, A Catalogue, no. 425 (p. 173). 38 Rahmani, A Catalogue, no. 349 (p. 157). 39 Benoit, Milik and de Vaux, Les Grottes, 224: no. 94 (a l.10). 40 Hengel, The Pre-Christian Paul, 106 n.73. 41 Hengel, The Pre-Christian Paul, 9, recognizes this, but oddly thinks it is an alternative to thinking that the name Paulus was chosen for Paul because of its sound-equivalence to Saul.

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refers to walking in a wanton manner like courtesans or Bacchantes42 (Leary suggests the translation ‘slut-arsed’43). The name might invite ridicule, explaining why diaspora Jews avoided calling themselves by it while using its sound-equivalent Paulus, and providing Paul with an additional reason, in addition to wider cultural ones, for preferring his Latin name to his Jewish while engaged in his mission to Gentiles. The probability that Paul bore his two names because they were regarded as sound-equivalents is increased when we observe that there is an impressive number of other known cases of Jews who were Roman citizens choosing as their cognomen a Latin name which had a Jewish sound-equivalent. Silvanus / Silas is one, since Silas is not a hypocoristic form of Silvanus but a Semitic name, perhaps a hellenized version of the Aramaic form of Saul.44 There are also the Egyptian Jews Antonius Rufus45 and Achillas Rufus,46 Gaius Julius Justus, gerusiarch of the synagogue in Ostia,47 the Roman synagogue officer Flavius Julianus,48 Junius Justus and Gaius Furfanius Julianus of Rome,49 a Jew of Smyrna called Lucius Lollius Justus,50 Tiberius Claudius Julianus of Acmonia,51 Aurelius Rufus of Apamea,52 and a Jewish priest of Ephesus called either Marcus Mussius or Marcus Aurelius Mussius.53 Mussius is a known Latin nomen, but it would surely in Jewish usage suggest 42

LSJ s. v. T. J. Leary, ‘Paul’s Improper Name,’ NTS 38 (1992) 469. 44 C. J. Hemer, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History (WUNT 49; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1989) 230. 45 CPJ 162, 164, 170, 173, 174, 176, 178, 239, 240, 243, 246, 249, 252, 253, 257, 259, 263, 264, 266, 269, 270, 271, 274, 275, 276. He gave one of his sons the cognomen Niger, a common Latin cognomen, but seems to have added also as an alternative, supernomen the Greek name Theodotos, which Jews used as a translation of Nathaniel (or similar Jewish names) and so is a Greek / Jewish equivalent in a different way: CPJ 269, 274, 275 etc. Father and son illustrate two different ways of combining a fully Latin tria nomina with a Jewish name. 46 CPJ 375, 376–403. 47 Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, vol. 2, no. 18. 48 Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, vol. 2, no. 290. 49 Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, vol. 2, nos. 4, 71. 50 L. Robert, Hellenica: Receuil d’Épigraphie de Numismatique et d’Antiquités Grecques, vols. 11–12 (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1960) 259–262. 51 CIJ 767. 52 CIJ 774. 53 Robert, Hellenica, vols. 11–12, 381–384. He prefers the latter, because Mussius is known as a nomen, not a cognomen (his conclusion is misrepresented by I. Levinskaya, The Book of Acts in Its Diaspora Setting, vol. 5 of The Book of Acts in Its First Century Setting [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans / Carlisle: Paternoster, 1996] 147–148). But it is possible that a Jew, for the sake of the name’s assonance with Moses, would have used it as a cognomen. A rare case (among the rather few instances of Jews who were Roman citizens and whose nomina and cognomina are known) of a Jew who used a Jewish name as the third of his tria nomina is Publius Rutilius Joses of Teos: Robert, Hellenica, vols. 11–12, 384. 43

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also the name Moses and have been adopted precisely for that reason. These parallels rather strongly suggest that, in Paul’s case, his Jewish name Saul should not be regarded as a ‘by-name’ in the sense of a name that could be used alongside another name (supernomen), as in the case of Simon Peter or Joseph Barsabbas,54 but as the alternative, Jewish form of his cognomen. The phraseology Luke uses to put the two names together on the one occasion in the New Testament where they occur together, (Acts 13.1: ‘Saul who [is] also [called] Paul’), could be used as well in such a case as in the case of other kinds of double names.55 The equations of Reuben with Rufus and Justus with Joseph are known from the rabbinic tradition in Leviticus Rabbah 32.5 and Song of Songs Rabbah 56.6.56 Both were very popular Roman cognomina,57 but whereas Rufus ( ) had come into common use in the Greek-speaking as well as Latin-speaking world, Justus ( ) had not. The three volumes so far published of the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names58 lists 125 occurrences of but only nine of and only four of these from 59 seems before the third century ce. By contrast, among Jews 60 (though not in Egypt or Cyrenaica). The more common than 54 A case of a Jew who was Roman citizen and had a supernomen is the son of Antonius Rufus (mentioned above), who probably had the cognomen Niger and the supernomen Theodotos: CPJ 269, 274, 275 etc. 55 Horsley, ‘Names, Double,’ 1013, gives full details of the various forms of phraseology used; cf. also Deissmann, Bible Studies, 314–315. 56 See n. 16 above. 57 I. Kajanto, The Latin Cognomen (Societas Scientiarum Fennica: Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 36/2; Helsinki: Helsingfors, 1965) counts more than 1500 instances of Rufus (229) and more than 600 of Justus (252). 58 P. M. Fraser and E. Matthews ed., A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, vols. 1–3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987–1997). 59 One example (no. 148), an Alexandrian Jew buried in Jaffa (CIJ 928), in W. Horbury and D. Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Graeco-Roman Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); a Jew from Chalcis in an ossuary in Jerusalem (CIJ 1233); 3 buried at Jaffa (CIJ 928, 929, 946); 3 buried at Beth She arim (Schwabe and Lifshitz, Beth She arim, nos. 125, 127, 190); 2 at Capernaum (CIJ 983, 986 b); Justus of Tiberias (Josephus, Vita 34 etc.); a bodyguard of Agrippa II and Josephus (Vita 397); the third Jewish Christian bishop of Jerusalem (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 4.5.3); Justus son of Judas one of the agoronomoi of Sepphoris on a lead weight (N. Kokkinos, The Herodian Dynasty [JSPSS 30; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998] 234 n. 103); Lucius Lollius Justus of Smyrna (Trebilco, Jewish Communities, 173); a possible example at Nicomedia in Bithynia (New Documents 3 [1978] 122); Josephus’ son, born in Rome (Vita 5, 427); 13 or 14 examples (10 Greek, 3 or 4 Latin) in Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, vol. 1 (Rome); 3 (all Latin) in Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, vol. 2 (Italy and Gaul). The female or Justa occurs once or twice in Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, vol. 1 (Rome); once in Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, vol. 2 (Venosa). 60 Antonius Rufus (CPJ 162 etc.) and Achillas Rufus (CPJ 375–403) of Egypt; 1 example at Aphrodisias (Reynolds and Tannenbaum, Jews, 6, 104); 1 at Acmonia (Trebilco, Jewish Communities, 77); 1 at Apamea (Trebilco, Jewish Communities, 100); 4 in inscriptions in Cyrenaica in G. Lüderitz, Corpus Jüdischer Zeugnisse aus der Cyrenaika

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explanation is probably that, of the Jewish names to which they correspond, Joseph was more popular than Reuben.61 The suggestions that Justus was popular with Jews because it could be considered a translation of the name Zadok or represent a nickname, ‘the righteous’ (ha- addiq), continue to be repeated,62 but there is no evidence for them. Zadok was a very rare name among Jews, and the nickname ‘the righteous’ was given to the high priest Simon and to Jesus’ brother James because they were regarded as very exceptional people. For Justus as the sound-equivalent of Joseph, however, we have the evidence of Acts 1.23 to confirm the later rabbinic tradition. When Luke refers to ‘Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus’ ( ), he does not mean that Justus was a second nickname, additional to Barsabbas,63 but that he used Justus as the sound-equivalent of his first name, Joseph. When Josephus named his second surviving son, born in Rome when Josephus was a Roman citizen, Justus (Vita 5, 427), he surely intended the name as equivalent to the family name Joseph, borne by himself and his grandfather.64 Colossians 4.11 is the only evidence we have that Justus could also be used as the sound-equivalent of Joshua (Greek for the usual Hebrew form at this period: Yeshu’a). On the basis of Josephus’ statement that the hellenizing son of the high priest Simon changed his name from Jesus to Jason (Ant. 12.239) it is usually supposed that the Greek name Jason served (Beihefte zum Tübinger Atlas der Vorderen Orients B53; Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1983) nos. 37, 45 a, App. 18 d, App. 19 q; 3 in Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, vol. 1 (Rome); and once (in Greek) on an ossuary from Jerusalem (Rahmani, A Catalogue, 113, no. 142). Rufinus or occurs 2 or 3 times in Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, vol. 1 (Rome); once in Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, vol. 2 (Italy). The female Rufina/ occurs once (no. 145) in Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, vol. 1 (Rome); and at Acmonia (Trebilco, Jewish Communities, 77), Smyrna (CIJ 741) and Jaffa (CIJ 949). Herod the Great’s military commander Rufus (Josephus, BJ 2.52 etc.) is more likely Samaritan or Gentile than Jewish. 61 In Palestine in the Second Temple period, Ilan, ‘The Names,’ counts 150 examples of Joseph, making it the most popular name after Simeon (173), whereas Reuben does not make it onto the list (meaning that she counted less than 5 examples). (For instances of Roubel and Roube, for Reuben, in Palestine, see Cohen, ‘Jewish Names,’ 124–125.) These figures are not automatically relevant to the diaspora, where the Jewish onomasticon was significantly different from the Palestinian (M. H. Williams, ‘Palestinian Jewish Personal Names in Acts,’ in Bauckham ed., The Book of Acts, 106–108), but there is good evidence that Joseph (in various hellenized forms: Iosis) was also popular in the diaspora. 62 E. g. Mussies, ‘Jewish Personal names,’ 245; Horsley, ‘Names, Double,’ 1014; Schwabe and Lifshitz, Beth She’arim, 211; Williams, ‘Palestinian,’ 104–105. 63 Contra Horsley, ‘Names, Double,’ 1013. 64 The name of his first surviving son, Hyrcanus, celebrated his boasted ancestral connexion with the Hasmonean high priest John Hyrcanus, and the third, Agrippa, was named after his patron Agrippa II .

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as the sound-equivalent of Jesus / Joshua, a supposition that explains the quite common use of the name Jason among Jews65 (including the Jewish Christian Paul names in Rom. 16.21). Justus is phonetically closer to Yehosef and Jason ( ) than to Yeshu’a/ . But perhaps Jews in Latin-speaking environments, such as Rome, might prefer to use Justus for Joseph as well as for Joshua. This consideration would explain Colossians 4.11 especially if Colossians was written from Rome. Jesus / Justus could be a native of Rome or a Jewish Christian who had been working as a Christian missionary in Rome for some time and had adopted the locally appropriate sound-equivalent of his name. If he is an example of a wider practice, then the popularity of Justus among Jews would be the result of its functioning as a sound-equivalent to Joshua as well as Joseph. There is no longer any need to demonstrate that the name which appears in the accusative as in Romans 16.7 is the Latin female name Junia, not the postulated but unrecorded male name , which would be a Greek hypocoristic form of Julianus.66 This woman, probably the wife of her fellow-apostle Andronicus, is the only Jewish woman known to have borne the name Junia, which was the female version of the nomen of a prestigious Roman family.67 Freedmen and freedwomen often adopted the nomen gentilicium of their patron, and Lampe therefore argues that Junia was probably of slave origin (either a freedwoman herself or descended from a freedman).68 But it was not unusual for Jews and other non-Romans to use a Roman nomen gentilicium as their sole name or sole Latin name.69 We have noted that Jews used the names Julius and Julianus because they were sound-equivalents of Judah. So there is no need to postulate any connexion of the Jewish Christian Junia with the gens Junia. What has not been suggested before is the possibility that Junia in this case was chosen because it could serve as a sound-equivalent for the Jewish name Joanna. This sug-

65 Examples in L. V. Rutgers, The Hidden Heritage of Diaspora Judaism (Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology 20; Leuven: Peeters, 2 nd edition, 1998) 146 n.44. But note also the case of a Jew called, in Hebrew letters, Judah Jason: R. M. Baron, ‘A Survey of Inscriptions found in Israel, and published in 1992–1993,’ Scripta Classica Israelica 13 (1994) 145 (ossuary from Mount Scopus) (= Rahmani, A Catalogue, 183–184, no. 477). 66 B. J. Brooten, ‘Junia … Outstanding among the Apostles (Romans 16:7),’ in L. and A. Swidler ed., Women Priests (New York: Paulist Press, 1977) 141–144; P. Lampe, ‘Iunia / Iunias: Sklavenherkunft im Kreise der vorpaulinischen Apostel (Röm 16,7),’ ZNW 76 (1985) 132–134; Lampe, Die Städrömischen, 137 n. 40, 139–140; R. S. Cervin, ‘A Note Regarding the Name “Junia(s)” in Romans 16.7,’ NTS 40 (1994) 464–470. 67 One example of a Jew with the corresponding male name Junius is Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, vol. 2, no. 71 (from Monteverdi): 68 Lampe, ‘Iunia / Iunias,’ 133–134; Lampe, Die Städrömischen, 147, 152–153. 69 H. J. Leon, The Jews of Ancient Rome (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1960) 113.

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gestion will be supported in the next section when we ask why this Jewish woman who was evidently originally from Palestine should have borne this Latin name.

Palestinian Jews with Latin names The use of Latin names was rare among Palestinian Jews. The reasons are fairly obvious. For Jews who wished to add a non-Semitic name to or substitute one for their Semitic name, the practice of adopting Greek names was well-established before the Roman occupation. Moreover, adopting a Latin name would not imply culture, as a Greek name might, but alignment with Roman political rule. Few Palestinian Jews would have wanted a name that proclaimed allegiance to Rome. It is therefore easily understandable that almost all Palestinian Jews bearing Latin names in the works of Josephus70 belong to the following exceptional categories: (a) members of the Herodian royal family (Agrippa I, Agrippa II , Agrippa son of Aristobulus, Agrippinus grandson of Agrippa I, Drusilla, Drusus, Julius Archelaos); (b) close friends, court officials, army officers and other members of the Herodian households (Aequus Modius, Carus, Crispus, Fortunatus, Jucundus, Justus,71 Tiro, Varus);72 (c) members of the élite of Herod Antipas’ capital city, Tiberias (Crispus73 son of Compsios, Julius Capella son of Antyllos, Justus son of Pistos). These belong to precisely the only circles in first-century Jewish Palestine that could be described as romanized. Their Roman names are a statement, and it is notable that in the case of the three Tiberian aristocrats their fathers bear Greek names. Naming their sons was an act of allegiance to Rome and its Herodian client rulers. Category (b) are probably the people Mark calls ) ‘Herodians’ (Mk. 3.6; 12.13),74 and it is notable that this term ( is a Latinism, reflecting the romanized identity of members of the courts and governments of the Herods. Outside these three categories, we meet 70

For the references in Josephus to the persons listed here see A. Schalit, Namenwörterbuch zu Flavius Josephus (Leiden: Brill, 1968). 71 This Justus (Vita 397) had been bodyguard to Agrippa II before serving Josephus in the same capacity. 72 Rufus and Gratus, commanders of the Sebastenian troops of Herod the Great (BJ 2.52, 58–59, 63, 74, 236; Ant. 17.266, 294), are more likely to have been Samaritans or Gentiles than Jews. 73 This Crispus (Vita 33) is unlikely to be the same person as Agrippa II ’s groom of the bedchamber (Vita 382, 388–389, 393), listed in (b) above (against Schalit, Namenwörterbuch, 76). 74 See now J. P. Meier, ‘The Historical Jesus and the Historical Herodians,’ JBL 119 (2000) 740–746.

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only two other Palestinian Jews with Latin names in the pages of Josephus: Cornelius son of Cero (the Roman name Cerio?), a Jerusalem Jew who headed a Jewish delegation sent to the emperor Claudius in Rome (Ant. 20.14), and Niger, a native of Perea and governor of Idumea (BJ 2.520, 566; 3.11, 20, 25, 27; 4.359, 361, 363). Cornelius (the only Jew known to have borne this Roman nomen) was presumably chosen to head the delegation for reasons connected with his name: he may have spoken Latin fluently or have had contacts at the imperial court. The implication is probably that he had lived in Rome. Niger was a common Roman cognomen, which this Niger may well have acquired as a nickname because of his dark hair. Epigraphic sources yield two additions to category (c): Animus son of Monimos75 and Gaius Julius,76 both of Tiberias, while Justus son of Judas, a member of the élite of Antipas’ previous capital Sepphoris,77 the only other romanized city in Galilee, merely expands essentially the same category.78 The wealthy Roman citizen Julia Crispina, who appears in the Babatha archive, cannot be certainly be identified as Jewish. If she was, she may have been, as Kokkinos argues,79 a descendant of Crispus of Tiberias, and so an addition to category (b), or, as Ilan argues,80 a member of the Herodian dynasty, and so an addition to category (a). The few Latin names found in ossuaries from the Jerusalem area either certainly or very plausibly belonged to Jews from the diaspora.81 There are only three among the many names 75

Kokkinos, The Herodian Dynasty, 397–398. A. Stein, ‘Gaius Julius, an Agoronomos from Tiberias,’ ZPE 93 (1992) 144–148, argues that the Gaius Julius in question, serving as agoronomos of Tiberias, is Agrippa I, but Kokkinos, The Herodian Dynasty, 233 n. 100, 272 n. 26, 277, argues that the year when Agrippa I was agoronomos of Tiberias was 34/35, and that his full name must have been the same as that of his son Agrippa II : Marcus Julius Agrippa. 77 Kokkinos, The Herodian Dynasty, 234 n. 103. 78 Inscriptions from Capernaum, referring to Herod son of Monimos and his son Justus (CIJ 983 = Lifshitz, Donateurs, 61, no. 75) and to Symmachos son of Justus (CIJ 986 b), are much later than the first century, as is the Aramaic inscription from Noarah in which the name Yustah, an Aramaic form of Justus, occurs (CIJ 1197). On the many Latin names in inscriptions at Beth She arim, see Schwabe and Lifshitz, Beth She arim, 211: Agrippa, Annianus, Antoninus, Domnica, Furia, Gaius, Germanus, Julianus Capito, Julius, Justus, Lolianus, Magna, Magnus, Maxima, Paulinus, Primosa, Quirinius, Sabinus, Severius, Vitus, Saturnilus, Silvanus. But these inscriptions all date from no earlier than the end of the second century ce, many are considerably later, and some relate to diaspora Jews brought for burial in Israel. 79 Kokkinos, The Herodian Dynasty, 293–294. 80 Ilan, ‘Julia Crispina, daughter of Berenicianus, a Herodian Princess in the Babatha Archive: A Case Study in Historical Identification,’ JQR 82 (1992) 361–381. 81 I rely especially on a list compiled by Dr John P. Kane from ossuary inscriptions published up to 1967, and on Rahmani, A Catalogue. Latin names on ossuaries catalogued by Rahmani are Appia (98, no. 84), Claudius (156–157, no. 348), Gaius (168–189, no. 404; 172, no. 421), Julia (188–189, no. 498), Marcius (199–200, no. 568), Niger? (199, no. 565), Popilia (90, no. 56), Rufus (113, no. 142). A tomb in which several diaspora Jews were bur76

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on the Jewish ostraca from Masada.82 The consistency of this evidence is impressive.83 It suggests we should look very closely at those of our New Testament Jews with Latin names who were or may have been natives of Palestine: 1. Agrippa (II ) 4. Drusilla 5. Iunia 6. Joseph Barsabbas, also called Iustus 10. John, also called Marcus 15. Rufus (Rom. 16.13) 15. Rufus (Mk. 15.21) 16. Silvanus / Silas.

Agrippa and Drusilla, members of the Herodian family, present no problem. Rufus (Rom. 16.13) is listed only because Paul had known him and his mother well, and so they must have lived somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean area before moving to Rome. But he need not have been a native of Palestine. It has often been suggested that he is the same Rufus as the son of Simon of Cyrene (Mk. 15.21), which is entirely possible but cannot be

ied provides the Latin names Justus of Chalcis (CIJ 1233), Africanus (CIJ 1226), Furius Africanus and Furia Africana (CIJ 1227), Catulla (CIJ 1234). On ossuaries found on the Mount of Olives are the names Verutaria (CIJ 1273, 1274) and Castus (CIJ 1275). 82 H. M. Cotton and J. Geiger, Masada II : The Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963–1965; The Final Reports: The Latin and Greek Documents (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society / Hebrew University, 1989) no. 788 (p. 126): Appius Marcus; no. 926 (pp. 202–203): Patricus. 83 It is rather surprising to find the names Magnus and Aquila and perhaps one or two other Latin names in a Qumran text in Hebrew (4Q341), but this list of names is probably a writing exercise. The name Gaius appears in a list of names in a document from Na al eelim: B. Lifshitz, ‘The Greek Documents from Na al eelim and Na al Mishmar,’ IEJ 11 (1961) 55 (though it is not certain that this Gaius is Jewish). Two Jews with Latin names (Judah called Cimber, and Germanus son of Judah, a scribe who calls himself by the Latin title ‘librarius’) appear in documents from the Babatha archive from the years 128–132: N. Lewis, Y. Yadin and J. C. Greenfield ed., The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1989) nos. 18, 20 (Cimber), 20–23, 25–27 (Germanus). The documents are from Moaza in the Roman province of Arabia (as Nabatea had become in 106), though Cimber resided in En-gedi (on the name Cimber, see R. Zadok, ‘Notes on the Biblical and Extra-Biblical Onomasticon,’ JQR 71 [1980] 116–117). Lewis, The Documents, 16, observes that, because Nabatea had remained considerably less hellenized than other parts of the Near East, it quickly absorbed more Roman influence after 106 than other Roman provinces in the east. The names Cimber and Germanus, together with the latter’s use of the term ‘librarius’ (military clerk), suggest the influence of the Roman army. In the Muraba at documents there are a few possible but very uncertain occurrences of Jews with Latin names: Benoit, Milik and de Vaux, Les Grottes, no. 92 (the personal name Nero or Neronias as Simon’s place of origin?), no. 114 (Saturninus, probably a Roman soldier, not Jewish), no. 116 (Aurelius: a Jewish freedman or a Roman?).

Palestinian Jews with Latin names

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proved,84 since the name was so commonly used by diaspora Jews.85 Simon, a Jew from Cyrenaica, had evidently settled in Jerusalem86; we do not know whether his son Rufus was born before or after he did so, but if he was born in Jerusalem Simon named him according to the naming practices of Cyrenaican Jews,87 not those of Palestinian Jews. Silas / Silvanus, a leading member of the Jerusalem church (Acts 15.22)88 who also travelled in the diaspora with and without Paul, was, as we have seen, a Roman citizen. Presumably, therefore, he had borne his Roman name Silvanus, along with its Semitic sound-equivalent Silas, from birth. Like Paul, he may have been a native of the diaspora who had returned to Palestine. Like Paul, it is his Latin name that he seems to have used when engaged in Christian missionary activity in the diaspora (2 Cor. 1.19; 1 Thess. 1.1; 2 Thess. 1.1; 1 Pet. 5.12), though Luke, who likes authentic Palestinian touches in his narrative, consistently calls him Silas. John Mark also had family connexions with the diaspora (his relative Joseph Barnabas was a native of Cyprus: Acts 15.36), but this may not be what accounts for his Latin name. John (Yehohanan or Yohanan) was little used in the diaspora and Marcus was one of commonest praenomina. As Margaret Williams suggests: ‘The Gentiles he was seeking to convert would have found Mark a far easier name to cope with than the outlandish and unfamiliar Yehohanan’89 [even, we might add, in its shortened form Yohanan]. In other words, he probably adopted the name Marcus when he started travelling in the diaspora, and Luke merely identifies him retrospectively in Acts 12.12, 25, perhaps even intending to indicate the chronological point at which he adopted his Latin name in Acts 15.37–39. That Luke can call him, retrospectively, ‘John whose other name was Mark,’ when in Luke’s narrative he is still in Jerusalem (Acts 84 But it is not correct to label the suggestion ‘[o]nly pious speculation,’ as E. Käsemann, Commentary on Romans (tr. G. W. Bromiley; London: SCM Press, 1980) 414, does. It is possible to argue that, if Mark is a Roman Gospel, the reason he names the two sons of Simon of Cyrene is because they were well-known in the Roman church, as the Rufus of Rom 16:13 evidently was. 85 It is also possible that the tomb of a Cyrenaican Jewish family in the Kidron valley (N. Avigad, ‘A Depository of Inscribed Ossuaries in the Kidron Valley, ’ IEJ 12 [1962] 1–12; and cf. J. P. Kane, ‘The Ossuary Inscriptions of Jerusalem,’ JSS 23 [1978] 278–279) belonged to Simon’s family. Its twelve ossuaries include those of Alexander of Cyrene, son of Simon, and Sarah of Ptolemais, daughter of Simon. If this is the tomb of Simon’s family, it is notable that ossuaries belonging to Simon himself, his wife and his son Rufus have not been found, perhaps because they moved to Rome. 86 In Mk. 15.21 he seems to be returning to the city after working in the fields. 87 Four examples are known of Jews called Rufus in Cyrenaica: Lüderitz, Corpus, nos. 37, 45a, App. 18d, App. 19q. 88 1 Thess. 2.7 may indicate that Paul regarded him as an apostle, i. e. as having been commissioned by the risen Lord in a resurrection appearance. 89 Williams, ‘Palestinian,’ 105.

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12.12, 25), is a valuable clue to the significance of the Latin name of the last man on our list: Joseph Barsabbas, also called Justus (Acts 1.23). As we have noticed already, Justus is the sound-equivalent of Joseph. To qualify for the position for which he was proposed, Joseph must almost certainly have been a Galilean (Acts 1.21–22). Williams suggests he acquired the name Justus in the environment of Tiberias,90 but it is more likely that his case is parallel to Mark’s: he later became a missionary in the diaspora and adopted an appropriate Latin name for the purpose. The only information about him other than Luke’s one reference in Acts 1.23 is in Papias, who heard from the daughters of Philip (who settled in Papias’ home town Hierapolis) that he had once drunk deadly poison without ill effects91 (cf. Mk. 16.18). That Papias knew such a story suggests that he was later known as a travelling missionary. Significantly, Papias calls him ‘Justus who was also called Barsabbas,’ as he would have been known in the diaspora, substituting his Latin name for its Hebrew sound-equivalent Joseph. Like the three men discussed in the preceding paragraph, Junia was also a leading member of the early Jerusalem church and subsequently travelled as a Christian missionary in the diaspora. We know this because Paul calls her and her husband Andronicus apostles, meaning that they had been commissioned by the risen Christ in a resurrection appearance, and says that they were ‘in Christ’ before him and had been imprisoned (Rom. 16.7). So what is the significance of Junia’s Latin name? I suggested above that it could have been used as a sound-equivalent for the Hebrew name Joanna (Yehohannah or Yohannah).92 The latter, like its male version John (Yehohanan or Yohanan), was popular in Jewish Palestine. Ilan lists eight instances,93 making it the fifth most popular name among Palestinian women, after Salome (218 instances), Mariamme (Mary) (146), Martha (15) and Shappira (Sapphira) (10), though the overwhelming dominance of Salome and Mary considerably reduces the significance of this. But, again like the male name John, Joanna is rare in the diaspora: two or three instances ( ) from Egypt are the only known instances.94 To Greek- and Latin-speakers it was strange. This suggests that Junia’s case is parallel to that of two other members of

90

Williams, ‘Palestinian,’ 104. Apud Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.39.9. 92 But Yohannah or Yohanna in Aramaic or Nabatean was also used as a male name: Benoit, Milik and de Vaux, Les Grottes, no. 18; Benoit, Milik and de Vaux, Les Grottes, nos. 14, 15, 16, 20, 22; Gen. R. 64:2; cf. Mussies, ‘Jewish Personal Names,’ 252. 93 One of these (CPJ 1) is not certainly of Palestinian origin, and another is not certainly a female name (Benoit, Milik and de Vaux, Les Grottes, 167: no. 48). 94 CPJ 133; Horbury and Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, no. 6. The slave girl in CPJ 1 may have been of Palestinian origin, as Ilan judged, including her in her eight Palestinian instances of the name. 91

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the early Jerusalem church: Joseph / Justus Barsabbas and John Mark. She adopted a Latin name, in her case a close sound-equivalent to her Hebrew name Joanna, when she needed a more user-friendly name in the diaspora, in her case especially Rome. It becomes rather probable that the Junia of Romans 16.7 is the same person as Luke’s Joanna (Lk. 8.3; 24.10; and cf. Acts 1.14), a wealthy woman disciple of Jesus and wife of Chuza, Herod Antipas’s ‘steward’ (meaning either manager of a royal estate or manager of the estates and finances of Antipas’s whole realm). Perhaps Chuza (a Nabatean name) adopted the Greek name Andronicus for the same reason his wife adopted the name Junia, or perhaps Andronicus was her second husband. We should also note that in Palestine Chuza and Joanna were members of Herod’s court at Tiberias, the most romanized place in Jewish Palestine, where we have already located some of the rare Palestinian instances of Jews with Latin names. Joanna might have adopted the sound-equivalent and appropriately aristocratic name Junia already in Tiberias. When she and her husband decided to become Christian missionaries in Rome, she may already have had, not only the means to support herself and a degree of acculturation to Roman ways, but also even a Roman name.95

Additional Note Since this chapter was written, several reference works of great value for the study of Jewish names in antiquity have been published. Tal Ilan’s Lexicon96 lists all known Jews bearing every name attested in Palestine in the period 330 bce – 200 ce, while the three volumes of Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis97 (IJO ) contain all known Jewish inscriptions from Eastern Europe, Asia Minor, Cyprus and Syria. These volumes add very little to the data about the name Saul presented in the chapter above. Ilan confirms that the name Saul was quite common in Jewish Palestine. According to my own calculations from Ilan’s data, it is fourteenth (along with Honi) in order of popularity of Palestinian Jew-

95 I discuss Joanna, and the possible identification of her with Junia, at length in chapter 5 of Gospel Women. 96 Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity: Part I: Palestine 330 BCE–200 CE (TSAJ 91; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002). 97 David Noy, Alexander Panayotov and Hanswolf Bloedhorn ed., Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis, vol. 1: Eastern Europe (TSAJ 101; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004); Walter Ameling ed., Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis, vol. 2: Kleinasien (TSAJ 99; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004); David Noy and Hanswolf Bloedhorn ed., Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis, vol. 3: Syria and Cyprus (TSAJ 102; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004).

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ish male names in the period.98 Ilan lists thirty men who bore the name,99 though one is Saul of Tarsus (included because he studied in Jerusalem, but not properly a Palestinian Jew because he was born in the diaspora). In only eight of these cases does the name occur in a Greek form. is attested only for Saul of Tarsus in Acts, and the unique form occurs once. There are six instances of : two persons in Josephus,100 three names on ossuaries, and one on a Muraba’at parchment. These last four instances are those to which I refer in notes 36–39 of the chapter above. The IJO volumes include the synagogue inscription from Apamea in which occurs as the name of one of the synagogue elders (IJO 3 Syr 53 = CIJ 803: 392 ce), as noted in my chapter, and the epitaph of from Phthiotic Thebes (IJO 1 Ach 17: 3 rd–4 th centuries ce or later) to which my note 34 refers. To the two instances of Jews (other than Paul the apostle) bearing the name Paul to which my chapter referred (notes 25, 26) we can now add three more, though one of these, in an epitaph from Iconium referring to (IJO 2 226: 4 th century ce or later), is far from certainly a Jew. The other two occur in a tomb inscription of the first century ce from Jatt, near Caesarea.101 Since this tomb is in a burial cave with a considerable concentration of Herodian names102 it further illustrates the point, made in my chapter, that most occurrences of Latin names borne by Palestinian Jews are connected in some way with the Herodian family. Edwin A. Judge, ‘The Roman Base of Paul’s Mission,’ TynB 56 (2005) 103–119, is a learned and significant study of the phenomenon of Latin names among the New Testament persons ‘around Paul,’ by which he means ‘those mentioned by name [in Acts or the Pauline epistles] who seemed linked with his mission to the extent of sharing it in some way (traveling for him, or giving hospitality).’103 He reckons a total of 91 such people (including Paul himself), of whom 29 bear at least one Latin name.104 This proportion (more than 30%) cannot be explained by the use of common Latin names as Greek personal names. Judge provides evidence that in the Greek cities of the east only 3% of Greeks bore Latin names: 98 Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006) 85–86. 99 Ilan, Lexicon, 121–213, 449. 100 Ilan does not note the spelling in War 2.418. 101 Ilan, Lexicon, 336. 102 Ilan, Lexicon, 53. 103 Edwin A. Judge, ‘The Roman Base of Paul’s Mission,’ TynB 56 (2005) 108. 104 There is only one case of an individual bearing two Latin names: Titius Justus (Acts 18:7). This case means that Judge s list of thirty Pauline Latin names (Table 5) accounts for 29 persons. In Tables 3 and 4, however, the figure for persons around Paul bearing Latin names is given as 31. I do not know the reason for this discrepancy.

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By the mid-first century up to three percent of such people [‘Greeks of good standing in their own cities’] might be using Latin names, but around St Paul it is more than thirty percent. We might have to say either that the latinising fashion in names had caught on far more at levels below that of the local elites (assuming, as some people still do, that Paul operated well down the social scale), or that Paul is picking up strong support not only from Greeks but from the various sorts of Roman by now well settled in the Greek East [i. e. Roman citizens or so-called ‘Junian Latins,’ i. e. freedmen who were half-way to citizenship]. But of course we need not make these two possibilities exclude each other.105

In spite of the last sentence, it is clear that Judge favours the second explanation. By taking account of the fact that many Roman citizens or freedmen would have been known by Greek rather than Latin cognomina, Judge calculates that probably ‘more than half of Paul’s associates ranked as Roman.’106 Of the 29 persons ‘around Paul’ with Latin names in Judge’s list, 12 appear in my own list (in the chapter above) of Jews with Latin names in the New Testament. This is a significant proportion. Judge himself allows only eight of these to be certainly Jewish.107 The four persons whom I list as Jewish but he does not regard as certainly Jewish are Lucius of Cyrene (Acts 13:1), Rufus (Rom 16:13), Lucius (Rom 16:21) and Junia (Rom 16:7). Doubt is certainly possible in the first two cases, but it is very strange that Judge does not consider the Lucius and Junia of Romans 16 as certainly Jewish. They are both described as Paul’s ‘relatives’ ( ), which is usually thought to mean ‘fellow-Jews’ (cf. Paul’s use of the word in this sense in Rom 9:3). Judge evidently takes it to mean that they were familial relatives, members of Paul’s extended family,108 but in that case too they would be Jews. However, even the eight persons ‘around Paul’ with Latin names whom Judge considers certainly Jewish make up a significant proportion of his list of 29. It is rather surprising he does not consider the significance of this. He treats the Jews among Paul’s associates as either Greeks or Romans, without regard to their distinctiveness as Jews. But if Judge’s figures show a propensity of Paul’s mission to recruit Roman citizens or freedmen as collaborators, they also show that this propensity overlaps with a propensity to recruit Jews. The overlap is rather striking. Judge considers that probably 19 of the total of 91 persons around Paul were Jewish.109 This is a much smaller proportion than the proportion of Jews among those who bear Latin names. 105

Judge, ‘The Roman Base,’ 108. Judge, ‘The Roman Base,’ 103, cf. 113–116. 107 Judge, ‘The Roman Base,’ 114 (Table 7). Table 7 also shows that Judge thinks 9 of those people around Paul who were ‘quite likely’ Jewish bore Latin names, but he does not reveal who the extra one is. 108 Judge, ‘The Roman Base,’ 108. 109 Judge, ‘The Roman Base,’ 114. 106

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When Judge’s article is read in connexion with my chapter above, a specific issue that arises is: How many of these Jews with Latin names were Roman citizens? Judge distinguishes the implications of the three kinds of Latin names in this respect. The Latin names that were widely adopted as Greek personal male names were the praenomina, and so persons bearing these names in the New Testament would normally not be Roman citizens. Judge therefore agrees with my statement that those Jews in the New Testament who bore these names – Marcus and Lucius – would almost certainly not be Roman citizens. The nomen, however, being the inherited family name, ‘clearly marks a person as a Roman citizen by birth.’110 In the case of a woman, this would be her only name. So Judge says, of the three women ‘around Paul’ who bear a Roman nomen (Junia [Rom 16:7], Julia [Rom 16:15], Claudia [2 Tim 4:21]) that the ‘feminine form’ is ‘decisive’ for their identity as Roman citizens. However, as we have already noted, he does not seem to recognize that Junia is Jewish. We shall return to the significance of this shortly. Of the cognomina Judge writes, in a passage significant for our topic: The Latin cognomina of the New Testament should imply Roman citizenship, except where they are referred to in the text as extra names. Jews in particular might adopt a fine-sounding Latin name (e. g. Justus) for common use, their Hebrew one perhaps being echoed in the lingua franca.111

Of his own examples of people around Paul who are called in the New Testament by Latin cognomina, this would suggest that Niger (Acts 13:1: ‘Simeon who was called Niger’) and Justus (Col 4:11: ‘Jesus who is called Justus’) were not Roman citizens. Both, of course, are Jewish. But the same principle would imply that Paul himself (Acts 13:9: ‘Saul, also known as Paul’) was not a Roman citizen. But since it is the same author who both informs us that Paul was a Roman citizen (Acts 16.37–38) and that the name Paulus was additional to his Hebrew name Saul, the principle can only mean that people named in this way need not have been Roman citizens, not that they could not have been. So on these grounds we cannot know whether Simeon Niger and Jesus Justus were Roman citizens or not. In Niger’s case, however, there is a different reason for doubting that he was a Roman citizen. Although the Latin word suggests it was used in imitation of the Latin cognomen Niger, it is most likely to have functioned as a nickname, referring to the colour of the man’s skin or hair, and used to distinguish him from others called Simeon.112

110 111 112

Judge, ‘The Roman Base,’ 111. Judge, ‘The Roman Base,’ 113. Margaret H. Williams, ‘The Use of Alternative Names by Diaspora Jews in Graeco-

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Also questionable in Judge’s statement is the insistence that Roman cognomina ‘should imply Roman citizenship, except where they are referred to in the text as extra names.’ It is not clear why we should expect the texts always to refer to such people by both names. In the cases of Niger and Justus this is done because their Hebrew names (Simeon / Simon and Jesus) were extremely common Jewish names, in the diaspora113 as well as in Palestine, and their Latin alternative names serve to distinguish them from others. But Silvanus / Silas is never in our literature called ‘Silas who was called Silvanus.’ Precisely because the names were alternatives they would both be used together only for specific reasons. In Acts 13:9 the reason is that Luke is marking the point at which Saul, known by his Hebrew name in Palestine and Antioch, switched, as he embarked on his mission to Gentiles as well as Jews in the diaspora, to his Roman name as his common usage. In Romans 16 Paul evidently saw no need to refer to any of the persons he greets by two names, but this does not mean that none of them had an alternative name. In the case of Rufus, whom Judge thinks must be a Roman citizen because he bears a Latin cognomen and no additional, non-Latin name, we are justified in suspecting that he was Jewish precisely because Rufus was a popular name among Jews, used because of it was heard as a sound-equivalent of Reuben. The Latin and Hebrew names would be considered alternative forms of the same name, and naturally, addressing him in Rome,114 Paul uses the Latin version. Thus, if he was Jewish, Rufus need not have been a Roman citizen, though, like Paul / Saul, he might have been. Finally, we return to the case of Junia. Since the only female Latin names were nomina, a Jewish woman (or her parents) wanting to adopt a Latin name could only give her a nomen. Since Junia was undoubtedly Jewish and since Paul need not have called her by both her names, if she had an additional name, we cannot tell whether she was a Roman citizen or not. With the nomen of a Jewish woman, we are in the same position as with the cognomen of a Jewish man: we cannot tell whether these people were Roman citizens or not. These cases introduce a further element of uncertainty as to the real significance of the large proportion of people ‘around Paul’ who bore Latin names. Roman Antiquity,’ JSJ 38 (2007) 307–327, here 315–316. She refers both to this Niger and to a Jew of the Egyptian diaspora: ‘Theodotus, also called Niger.’ 113 Margaret H. Williams, Palestinian Personal Names in Acts, in Richard Bauckham ed., The Book of Acts in Its Palestinian Setting (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans / Carlisle: Paternoster, 1995) 79–114, here 87, 93. 114 The way Paul speaks of Rufus s mother (Rom 16:13) implies that Paul had known the family either in Jewish Palestine or in one of the Greek cities of Syria, Asia Minor or Greece. Rufus was therefore probably not a native of Rome.

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However, there is a further consideration, for which we must turn to another recent article, by one of the foremost experts on ancient Jewish onomastics: Margaret H. Williams, ‘The Use of Alternative Names by Diaspora Jews in Graeco-Roman Antiquity,’ JSJ 38 (2007) 307–327. She argues that the use of alternative names was considerably less common in the diaspora than in Palestine, and that there are significant differences from Palestine in the kinds of names that were used as alternative names and the reasons for using them. She provides a valuable list of 54 diaspora Jews, from the literary, documentary and epigraphic sources, who are recorded as bearing two names (mostly with some variant of the formula, ‘who is also called…’).115 The majority have a Hebrew name and a Greek or Latin one, but some have no Semitic name. Only one is a case of sound-equivalents in Hebrew and Latin or Greek: Saul / Paul, for whom Williams cites the verse of Acts (13:9) that attributes both names to him. Does this evidence that alternative names were comparatively uncommon among Jews in the diaspora support the view that those Jews whose only recorded names are a Latin cognomen are likely to have been Roman citizens or freedmen? This must depend partly on whether the contexts in which these names are found are contexts, such as epitaphs and formal inscriptions, where we might expect both names to be used if there were two. We should not necessarily expect this in all literary or epigraphic contexts. But, furthermore, in cases where the two names were sound-equivalents and generally treated as alternative forms of the same name, we need not expect both names to appear even in highly formal contexts of naming. We must also reckon with the possibility that only the Greek or Latin name was ever actually used, but had been chosen because it was the sound-equivalent of a well-known Hebrew name and for this reason considered an appropriate Greek or Latin name for a Jew. This may have been the case for many Jews called Rufus or Justus. The same could also be true of names, such as Theodotus or Theodorus, which were popular with Jews because they had a similar meaning to well-known Hebrew names, though none of the New Testament Jews bearing a Latin name seems to fall into this category. Our conclusion must be that it is very difficult to tell whether a Jewish man bearing a Latin cognomen as the only name attested for him in the sources or a Jewish woman bearing a Latin nomen as the only name attested for her in the sources was really a Roman (i. e. citizen or Junian Latin). Judge’s conclusions need to take more account of specifically Jewish onomastic practices.

115

Williams, The Use, 324–327.

21. The Horarium of Adam and the Chronology of the Passion Annie Jaubert is best known to New Testament scholars for her pioneering work on early Jewish calendars and her innovative theory about the chronology of the passion. Even though the latter as a whole has not won much support, it has undoubtedly stimulated fresh thinking about the topic. The present article is a minor contribution to the issue of understanding the chronologies of the Gospel passion narratives by way of a neglected Jewish work about the hours of the night and the day which, I shall argue, can be fairly confidently dated within the Second temple period.

1. Introduction to the Horarium of Adam The work which I am here calling the Horarium of Adam is a catalogue of the hours of the night and the day, detailing how the worship of God by all his creatures takes place throughout the twenty-four hours, in most cases specifying which of the creatures worships or petitions God at each hour. It is widely attested in several languages and forms: three recensions in Syriac,1 two in Greek,2 two in Arabic,3 one in Garshuni,4 two in * First publication: Kristianskij Vostok [Christian East] 4 (X) (2002) 413–439 (this volume is in honour of Annie Jaubert). 1 Edited and translated by S. E. Robinson, The Testament of Adam: An Examination of the Syriac and Greek Traditions (SBLDS ; Chico, California: Scholars Press, 1982) 45–104. A more idiomatic translation of the first Syriac recension, also by Robinson, appears in J. H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1983) 993. 2 Edited and translated by Robinson, The Testament, 105–133. The second recension is a passage from the Compendium of George Cedrenus, which no doubt abbreviates a text of the Horarium, but does specify what happens at each hour of the day. Since it frequently agrees with the Syriac recensions against the first Greek recension, it is clearly independent of the latter, and its value as a witness to the text is dismissed too quickly by Robinson, The Testament, 139. 3 Shorter recension edited by C. Bezold, ‘Das arabisch-äthiopische Testamentum Adami,’ in Orientalische Studien Theodor Nöldeke zum siebzigsten Geburtstag gewidmet (Giessen: Töpelmann, 1906) vol. 2, 893–912; and by M. D. Gibson, Apocrypha Arabica (Studia Sinaitica 8; London: C. J. Clay, 1901), with English translation (13–15). A. Battista

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Ethiopic,5 two in Armenian6 and one in Georgian.7 Its popularity in Christian use may be due partly to monastic interest in the theme of worship throughout the hours of day and night, as well as to its combination with other Adam literature, while in one Greek recension and one Armenian it has been adapted to magical use. These last two recensions form a quite distinct form of the work, distinguished especially by the fact that names are given to all the hours and instructions about the talismans that can be made during them are added. In this form also the work is ascribed not to Adam, but to Apollonius of Tyana.8 There is now scholarly agreement that this form of the work is a secondary and relatively late development. All other versions except the Falasha Ethiopic and the Garshuni9 are ascribed to Adam, and in most of these cases (all except the second Armenian recension) the Horarium forms the first part of the Testament of Adam.10 This and B. Bagatti, La Caverna dei Tesori (Studium Biblicum Franciscanum; Collectio Minor 25; Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1980) republish Gibson’s text, with Italian translation (47–49). Longer recension published and translated by G. Troupeau, ‘Une Version Arabe du “Testament d’Adam,”’ in R.-G. Coquin ed., Mélanges Antoine Guillaumont (Cahiers d’Orientalisme 20; Geneva: P. Cramer, 1988) 3–14, and translated from a different manuscript by E. Galbiati, ‘Il Testamento di Adamo in un Codice Arabo della Bibliotheca Ambrosiana,’ in F. Manns and E. Alliata ed., Early Christianity in Context: Monuments and Documents (E. Testa FS ; Studium Biblicum Franciscanum: Collectio Maior 38; Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1993) 459–472. The longer recension is a considerably expanded and rewritten version of the Horarium. 4 English translation in A. Mingana, Woodbrooke Studies III: 1. Vision of Theophilus, 2. Apocalypse of Peter (Cambridge: Heffer, 1931) 111–115. 5 First recension edited by Bezold, ‘Das arabisch-äthiopische Testamentum’; French translation in S. Grébaut, ‘Littérature Éthiopienne Pseudo-Clémentine III : Traduction du Qalémentos,’ ROC 16 (1911) 172–174. (The English translation in E. A. W. Budge, The Book of the Cave of Treasures [London: Religious Tract Society, 1927] 245–245, is translated from Bezold’s Arabic and Ethiopic texts.) A Falasha version (which does not seem to have been noticed in studies of the Testament of Adam) is translated in W. Leslau, Falasha Anthology (Yale Judaica Series 6; New Haven / London: Yale University Press 1951) 118–119, from the Ethiopic text published by J. Halévy, Prières des Falashas (Paris, 1877). 6 First recension edited and translated by M. E. Stone, Armenian Apocrypha Relating to Patriarchs and Prophets (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences, 1982) 39–77; second recension edited and translated by M. E. Stone, Armenian Apocrypha Relating to Adam and Eve (SVTP 14; Leiden: Brill, 1996) 167–173. 7 Edited and translated by Z. Avalichvili, ‘Notice sur une Version Géorgienne de la Caverne des Trésors: Appendice, ’ ROC 26 (1927–28) 396–405; new edition: C. Kourcikidzé ed., La Caverne des Trésors: Version Géorgienne (CSCO 526; Scriptores Iberici 23; Louvain: Peeters, 1993) 17–21; French translation in J.-P. Mahé, La Caverne des Trésors: Version Géorgienne (CSCO 527; Scriptores Iberici 24; Louvain: Peeters, 1992) 13–15. 8 Balinas in Armenian. 9 This is ascribed to Jesus Christ. 10 The second Syriac recension, the second Armenian recension, and the Falasha Ethiopic contain only the hours of the night, while George Cedrenus’ report of the contents (second Greek recension) refers only to the hours of the day. All versions containing the hours of both night and day place those of the day first, except the first Syriac version,

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latter work comprises the Horarium and a Prophecy given by Adam to his son Seth before Adam’s death and burial.11 In one case only (the first Syriac recension) a third component is added: an Angelology.12 It is very probable that the Horarium originated separately from the patently Christian Prophecy, and it may not have been ascribed to Adam until it was combined with the Prophecy. References to the priests (N7, N12, D10)13 are anachronistic as spoken by Adam, while the two passages in which Adam speaks in the first person, recalling his experiences in paradise (N4, N5), could be additions to the text. The problem of the relationships between the many forms of the text is too complex to be discussed here. Stephen Robinson makes a good case for regarding the first Syriac recension as the most original of the texts we have,14 but he also correctly points out that while this entails ‘the overall priority of recension 1,’ ‘any of the three [Syriac recensions] may preserve the original reading at a given point.’15 The same may be said, with greater caution, of some of the versions in other languages, especially Greek 2 (George which most likely preserves the original order, following the Jewish understanding that a twenty-four hour day begins at sunset. 11 In the first Arabic, Garshuni, first Ethiopic and Georgian recensions, the Testament of Adam itself is incorporated into the work known as the Cave of Treasures, which in its Syriac texts does not contain the Testament of Adam. In the first Arabic, Garshuni and first Ethiopic recensions, the Cave of Treasures is in turn incorporated into the Book of the Rolls (Ethiopic Qalementos). S.-M. Ri, ‘Le Testament d’Adam et la Caverne des Trésors,’ Orientalia Christiana Analecta 236 (1990) 111–122, argues that the Testament of Adam is a work supplementary to the Cave of Treasures, forming an exegesis of the text of this latter work, but the argument is unconvincing. The hours of prayer in the Horarium do not in fact correlate with the times of Adam’s first day according to the Cave of Treasures 5:1 or with the times of Christian prayer attached to the Horarium, in a clearly secondary development, in the Garshuni version (Mingana pp 116–118). 12 For a survey of scholarship on the Testament of Adam up to 1982, see Robinson, The Testament, chapter 2. It is unfortunate that Robinson’s book was published in the same year as Stone’s edition of the first Armenian recension, so that neither was able to refer to the other’s work. In Robinson’s article, ‘The Testament of Adam: An Updated Arbeitsbericht,’ JSP 5 (1989) 95–100, he was still unaware of Stone’s work, and in fact the article adds nothing to his survey of scholarship in his 1982 book, except for a reference to M. Beit-Arié’s unpublished Hebrew University dissertation on the Perek Shirah. See also M. E. Stone, A History of the Literature of Adam and Eve (SBLEJIL 03; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992) 77, 85–87, 95–97, 100, 108–109, 111. 13 I follow Stone in designating the sections of the text that deal with the hours of the night N1-N12 and those that deal with the hours of the day D1-D12. Robinson’s treatment of the hours of the night as chapter 1 (divided into 12 verses) and the hours of the day as chapter 2 (divided into 12 verses) is potentially confusing because only in Syriac 1 do the hours of the night precede the hours of the day. (The confusion occurs in Robinson’s book itself: in the first paragraph on p. 140, the references to chapter 2 should be to chapter 1, and vice versa). 14 Robinson, The Testament, 102–104. 15 Robinson, The Testament, 103.

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Cedrenus’ summary of the text he knew), which Robinson dismisses rather too cavalierly.16 The fact that it uniquely agrees with Syriac 1 at D1 suggests that it reflects an early form of the text, and this may also throw some doubt on Robinson’s argument that the Horarium was first composed in Syriac. While there can be no doubt, in view of Robinson’s evidence,17 that Greek 1 is derivative from the Syriac tradition, Greek 2 (which is clearly quite independent of Greek 1) could be evidence of a Greek Vorlage behind the Syriac. In such a short text the absence of indications in the Syriac of translation from Greek18 may not be very significant. Alternatively, a Hebrew original still remains a possibility. 2. The Horarium of Adam: translation and notes For our purposes in this article it will not be necessary to establish the original text of the Horarium in every detail. For the convenience of readers I reproduce below Stephen Robinson’s translation of Syriac 1,19 with some notes and comments on other readings in cases where they may be preferable. The hours of the night (N1) The first hour of the night: the praise of the demons. And in that hour they neither injure nor harm any human being. (N2) The second hour: the praise of the doves. This reading is unique to Syriac 1. Other forms of the text refer here to fish and other aquatic animals and omit fish from N3. Syriac 1’s inclusion of the fish in N3 is odd, since ‘the depths’ of that hour are probably not the seas, but the subterranean regions. Probably other forms of the text are in this respect preferable to Syriac 1. But cf. Psalm 148:7–8, which may be the source, and 4Q405 Frags. 1–2 7:8–9. (N3) The third hour: the praise of the fish and of fire and of all the depths below. (N4) The fourth hour: the trishagion of the seraphim. Thus I used to hear, before I sinned, the sound of their wings in paradise when the seraphim were beating them with the sound of their trishagia. But after I transgressed against the law, I did not hear that sound any longer. (N5) The fifth hour: the praise of the waters that are above the heavens. Thus I myself used to hear, with the angels, the sound20 of mighty waves, a sign which would inspire them to raise a mighty hymn of praise to the Creator.

16 17 18 19 20

Robinson, The Testament, 139. Robinson, The Testament, 139–140. Robinson, The Testament, 140. From Robinson, The Testament, 53–59. Or, ‘both the angels (and) the sound’ (Robinson’s note).

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(N6) The sixth hour: the construction of clouds and the great fear which occurs at midnight. The reading of Ethiopic 1 – ‘the clouds worship the Lord in fear and trembling’ (Arabic 1 is similar) – may be preferable, since the fear of midnight in Syriac 1 seems to have no connexion with the clouds. (N7) The seventh hour: the viewing of their powers when the waters are sleeping. And in that hour the waters are taken up and the priest of God mixes them with consecrated oil and anoints those who are afflicted and they rest. Syriac 3’s version of the first sentence (supported by Armenian 2 and broadly by several other forms of the text) may be preferable: ‘the powers of the earth are resting when the waters are sleeping.’ (N8) The eighth hour: the springing up of the grass of the earth while the dew is descending from heaven. (N9) The ninth hour: the praise of the cherubim. All other forms of the text refer to angels variously described, partly in language corresponding to D7 and D9 in Syriac 1. Priority here is hard to establish. (N10) The tenth hour: the praise of human beings and opening of the gate of heaven where the prayers of all living things enter and worship and depart. And in that hour whatever a man will ask from God is given to him when the seraphim and the roosters beat their wings. (N11) The eleventh hour: joy in all the earth while the sun is rising from paradise, and shining forth upon creation. (N12) The twelfth hour: the awaiting of incense and the silence which is imposed upon all the ranks of fire and of wind until all the priests burn incense to his divinity. And at that time all the powers of the heavenly places are dismissed.

The hours of the day (D1) The first hour of the day: the petition of the heavenly beings. This is supported by Greek 2 (Cedrenus: ‘the first prayer is completed in heaven’), but all other forms of the text refer to prayer by humans. Syriac 1 is probably more original, allowing D1 and D2 to correspond to the first two verses of Psalm 148. Other forms of the text may be influenced by Christian practice of prayer at the first hour of the day.21 (D2) The second hour: the prayer of the angels. (D3) The third hour: the praise of flying creatures. (D4) The fourth hour: the praise of the beasts. The best reading of Syriac 3 has ‘creeping things’ here at D4 and ‘every beast’ at D5, while Greek 2 has ‘domestic animals’ here and ‘wild animals’ at D5. In either case D2, D3 and D4 would then correspond to three of the four categories of creature 21

Cf. the references to this practice in the Christian supplement to the Horarium in the Garshuni version: Mingana, Woodbrooke Studies III, 116–117.

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in Psalm 148:10. Arabic 1, Ethiopic 1, and Garshuni all refer in D4 to spiritual beings, meaning probably creatures with souls (so Georgian). (D5) The fifth hour: the praise which is above heaven. This odd reading has no support from other forms of the text, which all (except Greek 1) refer in some way to animals here (see note above on D4). (D6) The sixth hour: the praise of the cherubim who petition against the iniquity of our human nature. (D7) The seventh hour: the entry and exit from before God, when the prayers of all that lives enter and worship and depart. Greek 2 and Ethiopic 1 refer to the entry and exit of angels, doubtless understood as carrying the prayers. (D8) The eighth hour: the praise of fire and of the waters. Instead of fire and waters, various manuscripts of Syriac 3 have ‘heavenly and fiery beings,’ ‘heaven and earth and fiery beings,’ ‘sun and fire’ and ‘heaven and fire’ (cf. Arabic 1: ‘all heavenly beings and fiery creatures’; Ethiopic 1: ‘heavenly and shining beings’; Georgian: ‘winged beings of heaven’). If some form of this reading is original, the reference may be to the heavenly bodies (cf. Ps 148:3), otherwise surprisingly absent from the Horarium (except for the reference to the sun’s rise in N11). (D9) The ninth hour: the supplication of those angels who stand before the throne of majesty. (D10) The tenth hour: the visitation of the waters when the Spirit is descending and brooding over the waters and over the fountains. And if the Spirit of the Lord did not descend and brood over the waters and over the fountains, human beings would be injured, and all whom the demons saw, they would injure. And in that hour the waters are taken up and the priest of God mixes them with consecrated oil and anoints those who are afflicted and they are restored and they are healed. (D11) The eleventh hour: the exultation and the joy of the righteous. (D12) The twelfth hour, the hour of the evening: the supplications by human beings, for the gracious will of God,22 the Lord of all.

3. Affinities with early Jewish literature and practice In this section we shall build a case for the origin of the Horarium within Second Temple Judaism by demonstrating its affinities with pre-Mishnaic Jewish literature and practice. One particular feature of the text (discussed in [6] below) will enable us to be more precise and to date the original Horarium in the period before 70 ce. 22

Lit. ‘which is with God’ (Robinson’s note).

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(1) The praise of all creation. The Horarium is a particular kind of expression of the conviction that all creatures praise their Creator. That conviction is found in the Hebrew Bible most fully in Psalm 148 (cf. also Pss 19:1; 96:11–13; 98:7–9; 103:20–22; 150:6; Isa 42:10–12; and in early Jewish literature: Tob 8:5; 2 Enoch 51:5J; 4Q287 Frag. 3; 4Q501 Frag. 1:1–5). Psalm 148 calls on the various creatures, mentioned one by one in some detail, from the heavens to human beings, all to praise God their Creator. This psalm is evidently the most important scriptural source of the Horarium,23 as the following allusions show: Horarium N3 N5 D1 D2 D3 D4–5 D8

Ps 148 7–8 4 1 2 10 10 3?

The Song of the Three among the Greek Additions to Daniel is also deeply indebted to Psalm 148.24 The Horarium shows no specific correspondences with the Song of the Three beyond those which derive from common dependence on Psalm 148 (which might be a minor indication that the Horarium does not come from a context in which the Septuagint was commonly used), but the resemblance shows that it is not difficult to envisage the origins of the Horarium in Second Temple Judaism. Also in the tradition of Psalm 148 is the Qumran text 4Q504 Frags. 1–2 7:4–9. The idea of the praise of God by all his creation is also expressed in another Jewish work, Perek Shirah.25 Here each of category of the creatures (e. g. each kind of plant or bird) has its own hymn of praise, usually consisting of an appropriate sentence or two from the Hebrew Bible. This kind of attribution of biblical sentences is characteristic of rabbinic Midrash and probably dates the Perek Shirah after the Second Temple period. Nevertheless it is further evidence that the theme of creation’s praise is at home in the Jewish religious tradition.

23

The other major source appears to be the Genesis 1 creation narrative. C. A. Moore, Daniel, Esther, and Jeremiah: The Additions (AB 44; New York: Doubleday, 1977) 70–73, 75. 25 M. Beit-Arié, ‘Perek Shirah,’ Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 13 (Jerusalem: Keter, 1972) 274–275. 24

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(2) Praise at each hour of day and night. Neither Psalm 148 nor the Song of the Three assigns the praises and prayers of the various parts of creation to the various hours of night and day as the Horarium does. But there are a few traces of this idea in early Jewish literature. In the Apocalypse of Abraham, the angel Yahoel includes among his powers and responsibilities: ‘I teach those who carry the song through the medium of man’s night of the seventh hour’ (10:10). From 18:11 we know that those he teaches the song are the living creatures (the ayyot) or the cherubim, while the song he teaches them is evidently ‘the song of peace which the Eternal One has in himself’ (18:11; cf. Job 25:2). The text is too obscure to permit any very secure conclusions, but the reference to the seventh hour of the night would suggest some relationship to the kind of traditions we find in the Horarium. The allusion is evidently not to precisely the same traditions, since in the Horarium the praise of the cherubim occurs at the ninth hour of the night (according to Syriac 1, though not other forms of the text) and / or at the sixth hour of the day (according to most forms of the text). But in the latter case it is described as ‘the praise of the cherubim who petition against the iniquity of our human nature’ (D6 Syriac 1), which might suggest a connexion with ‘the song of peace’ sung by the cherubim according to the Apocalypse of Abraham (18:11). The Life of Adam and Eve explains that Eve sinned when her guardian angels were not with her: ‘the hour drew near for the angels who were guarding your mother to go up and worship the Lord’ (Greek 7:2; cf. 17:1; Latin 33:2).26 A similar reference to a specific time of the day at which the angels worship God occurs in the shorter recension (B) of the Testament of Abraham: Michael ‘was taken up into the heavens to worship before God, for at the setting of the sun all angels worship God’ (4:4–5). However, the fact that this point is not made in the longer recension (A), along with the fact that the Apocalypse of Paul expresses the belief that all the angels worship God at sunset (long Latin recension 7), means that we may here be dealing with a Christian contribution to the Testament of Abraham. Finally, mention may be made of 2 Enoch 51:5–6 (recension J), where the injunction to humans to worship God in his temple in the morning, at noon, and in the evening, is followed by the reason: ‘For every kind of spirit glorifies him and every kind of creature, visible and invisible, praises him.’ The association of this statement with the hours of prayer in the temple could perhaps suggest the kind of sequence of human prayers and those of other creatures at various hours that we find in the Horarium. 26 See the various versions in G. A. Anderson and M. E. Stone ed., A Synopsis of the Books of Adam and Eve: Second Revised Edition (SBLEJIL 17; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999) 36, 37, 51.

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Two early Christian apocalypses, quite plausibly dependent on Jewish sources, also contain similar ideas. In a passage, already mentioned, of the Apocalypse of Paul (long Latin recension 7), humans are exhorted to ‘bless the Lord God unceasingly, every hour and every day; but especially at sunset,’ since this is the hour at which all the guardian angels of men and women go to worship God and to bring before God all the deeds which people have done during the day.27 This is said to be the first hour of the night. They do the same at the twelfth hour of the night. Previously unnoticed in this connexion is a passage in the Coptic Mysteries of John. When the apostle wishes to know how the hours of day and night are ordered, he is told that twelve cherubim each sing a hymn that lasts for one hour of the day. The hours of the night are similarly ordered, but by animals rather than angels: ‘when the beasts, and the birds, and the reptiles pray, the first hour is ended. When the second hour is ended, the beasts pray [again?], and so on until the twelfth hour of the night; it is the animals of God which set limits to them.’28 This is clearly not dependent on the Horarium of Adam, but belongs to a similar world of ideas about a daily liturgy of the creatures. (3) The times of human prayer.29 The best evidence from the Second Temple period shows that devout Jews prayed at home at the very beginning and at the end of the daylight hours (Wis 16:28; Sir 39:5; Josephus, Ant. 4:212; SibOr 3:591–592; Ps-Aristeas 160, 304–305; 1QS 10–10; 1QM 14:13–14; Ps Sol 6:4; 4Q503). These times were understood to be set by Deuteronomy 6:7 as the times when the Shema was to be recited (‘when you lie down and when you rise’) (Josephus, Ant. 4:212–213; Ps-Aristeas 160; 1QS 10:10). The Shema was accompanied by the decalogue and prayers, and this act of worship was normally the first thing to be done on waking and the last thing done before sleeping. Since most people got up at or even just before first light in order to make the most of all the daylight hours, the morning prayers would have preceded sunrise (this is explicit in Wis 16:28; cf. Ps 57:8) by as much as an hour or more. Later the Rabbis in the Mishnah rule that the Shema must be said between first light and sunrise, and debate exactly what constitutes first light 27 This idea is also found in the Greek version of 3 Baruch 11–16, where it is clearly a secondary addition to a text which originally referred to angels bringing the prayers (not the deeds) of humans to God, as in the Slavonic version of these chapters. 28 Translated in E. A. W. Budge, Coptic Apocrypha in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (London: British Museum, 1913) 254. 29 On this subject, see especially D. F. Falk, ‘Jewish Prayer Literature and the Jerusalem Church in Acts,’ in R. Bauckham ed., The Book of Acts in its Palestinian Setting (Carlisle: Paternoster / Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995) 267–301.

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and whether the third hour of the day might not be considered the later limit (m. Ber. 1:2). Since modern scholars often write vaguely about dawn, not distinguishing first light and sunrise, it is important to stress that the distinction was important to ancient people in general, but especially to the Jews because of its relationship to the times of prayer. These practices are clearly reflected in the Horarium, which assigns prayer to the tenth hour of the night and the twelfth hour of the day.30 The former, as we shall see below, is the time of daybreak, before sunrise, which is assigned to the eleventh hour of the night. Most forms of the text of the Horarium refer to human prayer also at the first hour of the day, but, as we have noted above, the more original text is probably that of Syriac 1 and Greek 2, which refer here to prayer in heaven. There is minimal evidence for a third time of Jewish prayer also at noon (Dan 6:10; Ps 55:17; 2 Enoch 51:4;31 Acts 10:9). This might have been a minority practice of those who wished to supplement the more common twice-daily prayers. The Horarium apportions noon (the sixth hour of the day) to the cherubim rather than to humans, though the prayer of the cherubim is for humans. The curious events of the seventh hour of the day, to be discussed below, might indicate the entry into heaven of prayers offered at noon on earth, but the prayers are said to be those of all living beings, not just humans. In addition to the twice- or thrice-daily prayers whose time was determined by the daily cycle of the sun, there is also evidence of Jewish prayers at the times of the daily morning and evening burnt-offerings in the Temple in Jerusalem, or, more especially, at the times of the offering of incense which preceded the morning sacrifice and followed the evening sacrifice. Such prayers certainly took place in the Temple itself, where people assembled to pray at both times (Josephus, C. Ap. 2:193–197; Sir 50:19; Luke 1:10; Acts 3:1). The time of the evening sacrifice changed during the Second Temple period from the last hour of daylight to the ninth hour of the day, and we have evidence from before this change of time (Ps 141:2; Ezra 9:5;

30 M. Philonenko, ‘Prière au soleil et liturgie angélique,’ in A. Caquot ed., La Littérature Intertestamentaire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1985) 227, thinks that the Horarium of Adam is of Essene origin, on the grounds that it contains a liturgy to be followed throughout the hours of the night. He seems to have been misled by the second Greek recension, which includes prescriptions for making talismans at each hour. This is a magical adaptation of the Horarium, which in its more original forms does not expect humans to do anything at most of the hours of day and night. 31 This last text is apparently the only one which speaks of prayer at morning, noon and evening in the Temple (though Dan 6:10 may well indicate that Daniel prayed at the times when prayers would have been offered in the Temple). But 2 Enoch might refer to the Jewish temple at Heliopolis in Egypt.

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Dan 9:21; Jdt 9:132) of people not in Jerusalem praying at the time of the evening sacrifice. But at that time this would have coincided in any case with the regular prayer around sunset. After the change, Acts 10:3, 30 attests prayer at the time of the evening sacrifice (and for possible early rabbinic corroboration, cf. m. Ber. 4:1), but we have no evidence for prayer outside the Temple at the time of the morning sacrifice. We do not know whether prayer at the ninth hour was alternative or additional to prayer around sunset. But certainly the evidence suggests that outside the Temple itself prayer was much more commonly at sunset than in the afternoon. It is therefore unproblematic that the Horarium does not refer to the latter. (4) The entry and exit of prayers. At the seventh hour of the day, according to the first and the third Syriac recensions, occur ‘the entry and exit from before God, when the prayers of all that lives enter and worship and depart.’ Although Greek 1 (Cedrenus’ summary) refers to ‘the entrance of the angels to God and the exit of the angels,’ the reading of the Syriac recensions is probably original. It is confirmed by the Georgian (‘every prayer enters before God’), while Arabic 1 has modified the text to make it more intelligible, but without mentioning angels: ‘the entrance to God and the exit from his presence, for in it the prayers of every living thing rise to the Lord.’ Ethiopic 1 introduces angels: ‘the angels enter before the Lord; they go out from before him, for, at this hour, the prayer of all living things rises to the Lord.’ This passage may be related to the picture of the offering of prayers in heaven found in 3 Baruch 11–16. (The Greek and Slavonic versions of these chapters differ in that while the Slavonic speaks consistently of prayers, the Greek refers to deeds as well as prayers. Probably the Slavonic preserves the original text more faithfully, while the Greek has been influenced by the ideas found in Apocalypse of Paul 7.) There, in the fifth heaven, the seer sees the guardian angels of humans bringing their prayers to Michael, who fills a huge receptacle with them and then enters through the door into the higher heavens, where, unseen, he presents the prayers to God. He returns to the fifth heaven bringing the angels the answers to or rewards (negative as well as positive) for the prayers, for the angels to take back to the humans whose prayers they had brought.33

32 Since the date of the change is unknown and the date of the book of Judith is uncertain, it is not possible to be sure whether this text refers to prayer at the earlier or the later time. 33 For angels bringing human prayers to God, cf. also Tob 12:12, 15; 1 Enoch 47:1–2; 99:3.

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The passage in the Horarium differs in that angels are not mentioned; instead the prayers themselves, personified, go in and out before God. It also differs in that it refers to the prayers of all living beings (presumably on earth and in the lower heavens; the prayers of the cherubim would not need to enter before God), not just those of humans. Perhaps we are to understand that the prayers offered at all the other hours of the day and night come into God’s presence at this special hour, the seventh of the day. (If so, the passage is in tension with the meaning of the events of the twelfth hour of the night, as we shall see.) (5) Cocks at daybreak. Some of the words of D7 occur also in N10: D7: ‘the entry and exit from before God, when the prayers of all that lives enter and worship and depart…’ N10: ‘the praise of human beings and opening of the gate of heaven [where] the prayers of all living things enter and worship and depart. And in that hour whatever a man will ask from God is given to him when the seraphim and the roosters beat their wings.’

There is reason to think that these words, original in D7, are a secondary intrusion into N10, borrowed from D7 by a scribe who thought that the significance of the ‘opening of the gate of heaven’ (N10) in conjunction with ‘the praise of human beings’ must be that prayers enter God’s presence through this gate. But parallels with the rest of the content of D7–8 show that the opening of the gate of heaven here has a different significance. There are three passages in early Jewish apocalypses in which the seers get to view sunrise and sunset from a high point in the heavens: 3 Baruch 6–8; 2 Enoch 11–15; and 1 Enoch 72. In all three cases there are gates of heaven which are opened before sunrise so that the sun may enter the world through them.34 According to 3 Baruch 6:13, angels open 36535 gates of heaven. The number must correspond to the days of the solar year, on each of which the sun enters the world through a different gate and so at a different point on the horizon. Enoch sees six gates in the east, through which the sun comes in the morning (2 Enoch 13:2), and six in the west, through which it leaves in the evening (14:1). In probably the best text at 13:2 (recension A), he sees one of the six eastern gates open, since presumably only one is open at any one time. There is a quite elaborate scheme (defective in our texts) explaining how the sun uses different entrances and exits in different portions of the year (13:2–5). The same kind of scheme, with six gates of 34 35

There are also gates of heaven for the stars and the winds: 1 Enoch 33–36, 75–76. This figure in the Greek version is clearly preferable to 65 in the Slavonic.

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heaven in the east and six in the west (1 Enoch 72:2–3), along with a more complete and elaborate explanation of the way the sun’s use of these various gates accounts for the varying lengths of day and night throughout the year, is found in the Astronomical Book of Enoch (1 Enoch 72).36 Finally, the rather fragmentary Qumran text (4Q503) which provides blessings to be said at sunrise and in the evening on each day of a month refers on the sixth day to ‘the six gates of light’ (Frags. 7–9 2), on the fourteenth day to ‘fourteen gates of light’ (Frags. 1–3 3), and similarly on each day for which the relevant portion of text survives. In the fragmentary state of the text it is difficult to know the function of these gates, but they would seem most probably to be those through which the sun enters the world. We should also notice that, according to 2 Enoch, the light of the sun is already seen, presumably through the open gate of heaven, before the sun rises (14:3J). According to 1 Enoch 72, it seems that each gate has twelve windows through which, when opened at the proper time, flames from the sun emerge ahead of the sun’s own rising (72:3, 7). In the light of these parallels, it becomes clear that the description of the events of the tenth hour of the night in the Horarium really refers to the opening of that gate of heaven through which the sun will rise in the next, the eleventh hour. Already before sunrise light from the sun comes through the gate, and it is at this time, at first light, that people get up and recite the Shema and pray before starting their daily work. According to the Horarium, this time of the opening of the gate of heaven is also the time ‘when the seraphim and roosters beat their wings’ (N10). 3 Baruch and 2 Enoch can also help us with this statement. Baruch sees a huge bird, the phoenix, whose function is to fly in front of the sun, absorbing some of the dangerous heat of the sun’s rays with its wings.37 When the angels open the gates of heaven for the sun to rise, Baruch hears this bird cry out, ‘Light giver, give splendour to the world!’ (3 Bar 6:13–14). This cry, Baruch is told, is what wakens the cocks on earth, so that they crow, announcing to the world that the sun is going to rise (6:16). A somewhat differing version of the same idea occurs in 2 Enoch, where the sun is accompanied by several flying creatures called phoenixes and chalcedras (2 Enoch 12:1–2J). It is these who, before sunrise, burst into song, celebrating the imminent coming of the light-giver and announcing 36

For the text and explanation see O. Neugebauer in M. Black, The Book of Enoch or 1 Enoch (SVTP 7; Leiden: Brill, 1985) 389–396. 37 On the wider religious historical parallels to 3 Baruch’s account of the phoenix, see D. C. Harlow, The Greek Apocalypse of Baruch (3 Baruch) in Hellenistic Judaism and Early Christianity (SVTP 12; Leiden: Brill, 1996) 131–138. The parallels between 3 Bar 6 and 2 Enoch 12–15 were first discussed by M. R. James, Apocrypha Anecdota: Second Series (Texts and Studies 5/1; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1897) lxiv–lxvii.

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the morning watch, which begins at first light (15:1–2J). 2 Enoch does not refer specifically to the cock, but merely notes that, when the phoenixes and chalcedras sing, ‘every bird flaps its wings, rejoicing at the giver of light’ (15:1J). This generalizing (perhaps a secondary development in the textual tradition of 2 Enoch) obscures the more specific point made in 3 Baruch about the crowing of the cock, which was thought to crow even before first light, announcing the dawn before any other creature on earth is aware of its approach. (Hence the benediction that the rabbis taught should be said on hearing the cock crow: ‘Blessed is he who has given the cock understanding to know the difference between day and night’ [b. Ber. 60 b].) 2 Enoch explains this remarkable ability of the cock by supposing that, while the angels are still preparing the sun for its rising, the cock hears the cry of the phoenix when it calls on the sun to rise.38 It seems that the Horarium alludes to a similar but distinct tradition, according to which the imminent arrival of the sun was announced by the seraphim beating their wings. The cocks hear the seraphim and in turn beat their wings while crowing. As we know from N4, the seraphim sing with their wings, a notion which is elsewhere found in rabbinic and Jewish mystical literature with reference to the ayyot or cherubim (b. ag. 13 b; 3 Enoch 22:15; Hek. Rab. 11:4; Pesiqta de Rab Kahana 9:3; Pirqe de Rabbi Eliezer 4)39 and which probably originated as an interpretation of Ezekiel 1:24–25. The idea may already be implied in 4QS hirShabb (4Q405 frags. 20–21–22). The Horarium connects it with the observation that cocks beat their wings while crowing. Since N4 (in Adam’s reminiscence of his time in paradise) connects the seraphim with paradise, and according to N11 it is from paradise40 (usually, in Jewish tradition, located in the east, following Gen 2:8) that the sun rises over the earth, we should probably think of the music of the seraphim greeting the sun’s arrival in paradise in preparation for its rising. Brief though the descriptions in N10–N11 are, they allude to a coherent cosmological picture of the dawn comparable to those found in 3 Baruch and 2 Enoch. 38 Another such explanation is given in the Perek Shirah, as summarized by Ginzberg: ‘When God at midnight goes to the pious in Paradise, all the trees therein break out into adoration, and their songs awaken the cock, who begins in turn to praise God’ (L. Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, vol. 1 [Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913] 44); cf. also the Zohar as reported in L. Ginzberg, ‘Cock,’ in I. Singer ed., The Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 4 (New York / London: Funk & Wagnalls, 1903) 138–139: when God visits paradise to confer with the souls of the pious, a fire proceeds from paradise and touches the wings of the cock, who then breaks out into praise of God, at the same time calling on humans to praise the Lord and do his service. 39 For other references and discussion, see D. J. Halperin, The Faces of the Chariot: Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiel’s Vision (TSAJ 16; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1988) 52, 59 and n. 20, 122, 131–132, 388–389, 398. 40 Cf. the reference to paradise in the Perek Shirah’s account of the cock’s crowing.

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(6) Incense and silence. Following daybreak at the tenth hour of the night, the sun rises from paradise, bringing joy to all the earth (N11). Syriac 1 probably gives us the best text of what then happens, at the twelfth and last hour of the night: ‘the awaiting of incense and the silence which is imposed upon all the ranks of fire and of wind until all the priests burn incense to his divinity. And at that time all the powers of the heavenly places are dismissed.’ I have discussed this passage elsewhere, along with detailed discussion of later Jewish texts which evidence a similar tradition.41 These texts explain that the worship of the angels in heaven is silenced at the time when Israel prays on earth, so that Israel’s prayers may be heard by God in heaven. For example, according to b. agigah 12 b, the fifth heaven is full of angels who sing God’s praise during the night, but are silent by day so that God may hear the prayers of his people on earth. Here the silence begins at dawn, when Israel prays the morning prayer on rising, and presumably continues until the evening prayer at sunset has been said. Another text, in the early medieval Jewish mystical work Hekhalot Rabbati, describes how every day at the approach of dawn God sits on his throne and blesses the ayyot before commanding them to be silent so that he may hear the prayers of his children Israel.42 In view of the Horarium’s notion of the seraphim singing by beating their wings, a notion elsewhere in Jewish literature associated with the ayyot, it is also worth noticing that Ezekiel 1:24–25 was interpreted to mean that it is when the ayyot drop their wings that they fall silent (4Q405 frags. 20–21–22, lines 12–13; Tg. Ezek 1:24–25). In Genesis Rabbah (65:21) this is connected with the silence of the ayyot during the times when Israel says the Shema (at dawn and sunset). Dating from periods after the destruction of the Second Temple, these texts refer to the angelic worship in the heavenly temple and to the prayers of Israel on earth, but not to the ritual of the Jerusalem Temple. What is distinctive about the Horarium is that it refers to the silence of all the ranks of angels in the heavens (‘all the ranks of fire and wind’ alludes to Ps 104:4, the basis of a Jewish notion of two kinds of angels: those of fire and those of 41 R. Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1993) 70–83. See also P. Wick, ‘There Was Silence in Heaven (Revelation 8:1): An Annotation to Israel Knohl’s “Between Voice and Silence,”’ JBL 117 (1998) 512–514 (written without reference to my work), who connects Rev 8:1 and Horarium of Adam N12 with the fact that sacrifices took place in silence in the Jerusalem Temple (as shown by I. Knohl, ‘Between Voice and Silence: The Relationship between Prayer and Temple Cult,’ JBL 115 [1996] 17–30), but fails to take full account of the fact that in Horarium of Adam N12 it is the worship in heaven that is silenced while the prayers of people on earth are offered. 42 P. Schäfer, Übersetzung der Heikhalot-Literatur II, §§81–334 (Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1987) 112–113.

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wind; cf. 2 Bar 21:6; ApAbr 19:6) until the priests on earth burn incense. In its position at the twelfth hour of the night, this can only refer to the daily morning service in the Jerusalem Temple, in which the burning of incense on the altar of incense took place soon after daybreak between the slaughter of the sacrificial lamb and its offering as the daily morning burnt-offering. This passage in the Horarium is indubitably Jewish rather than Christian, since there is no evidence of liturgical use of incense by Christians until the late fourth century,43 while, even when it was used, it did not have the key significance which the Horarium’s singling out the offering of incense for mention requires. In the daily Temple ritual the incense offering did have this significance, as accompanying, symbolizing and assisting the prayers of the people. If this passage in the Horarium is indubitably Jewish rather than Christian, it also most probably dates from before the destruction of the Temple in 70 ce. The reference to the incense offering as current practice cannot be explained by the attribution of the Horarium to Adam (whether by a Christian or post-70 Jewish writer), since it is, of course, anachronistic as spoken by Adam. Comparison with Revelation 8:1, 3–5 is also instructive. If the Horarium is a pre-70 ce text, then, among texts that deploy the theme of silence in heaven for the sake of God’s hearing of prayers by humans on earth, Revelation is chronologically the closest to the Horarium, though (in my view) Revelation should be dated after 70. It is also the only other text to refer specifically to the incense offering, though in Revelation 8:3 this is the incense offering performed by an angelic priest on the altar of incense in the heavenly temple. This is clearly the heavenly counterpart of what had happened, before 70, in the Jerusalem Temple, and, like the latter, it serves the function of conveying the prayers of God’s people on earth up to the throne of God. The silence specifically for half an hour, to which Revelation refers, is most plausibly explained as more or less the time which the incense offering in the earthly Temple had taken when it was part of the daily Temple ritual. In the light of Revelation 8:1, 3–5 we can recognize in Horarium N12 a pre-70 reference to this Jerusalem Temple ritual itself along with the belief that the angelic worship of heaven ceases while the levitical priests burn the incense in Jerusalem. N12 gives the clearest indication we have of the date of the original Horarium. 43

E. Fehrenbach, ‘Encens,’ in F. Cabrol and H. Leclercq ed., Dictionnaire d’Archéologie Chrétienne et de la Liturgie, vol. 5/1 (Paris: Letouzey & Ané, 1922) 6–8; E. G. C. F. Atchley, A History of the Use of Incense in Divine Worship (Alcuin Club Collections 13; London: Longmans, Green, 1909) 81–96; S. Ashbrook Harvey, ‘Incense Offerings in the Syriac Transitus Mariae: Ritual and Knowledge in Ancient Christianity,’ in A. J. Malherbe, F. W. Norris and J. W. Thompson ed., The Early Church in its Context (E. Ferguson FS ; NovTS up 90; Leiden: Brill, 1998) 176–179.

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For the precise timing of the morning ritual in the Temple our only substantial evidence is that of tractate Tamid of the Mishnah.44 Even though we cannot be sure how far this account reflects accurate memories of what happened in the Second Temple, its references to timing seem very plausible. Events in the Temple begin when the officer whose task is to cast lots to determine which of the serving priests undertake which duties arrives: ‘sometimes he came at cockcrow and sometimes a little sooner or later’ (m. Tam. 1:2). Clearing the altar of ashes and other preparations then take place in darkness. After casting lots to determine the respective duties of the priests in the acts of sacrifice, the officer ‘said to them, “Go and see if the time is come for slaughtering”’ (3:2). This time is first light, but there appears to be a disagreement in the Mishnah as to precise indication of this that was required. One view was that the priest who had observed reported, ‘The morning star!’ (referring to the appearance of Venus which accompanies the first glimmerings of dawn). The other view was that he said, ‘The whole east is alight,’ and when asked, ‘As far as Hebron?,’ replied, Yes’ (m. Tam. 3:2). In either case, it is not yet sunrise. Having ascertained that dawn was beginning, the priests proceed to a variety of other duties preparatory to the sacrifice, of which the most important were the opening of the main doors of the sanctuary and, immediately following, the slaughtering of the lamb. The priests then recite the Shema and other prayers. (Presumably at this point it is still not quite sunrise, since, according to m. Ber. 1:2, the Shema should be recited between daybreak and sunrise.) Further lots determine who is to offer the incense that morning. The incense offering takes place on the altar of incense inside the holy place, and the priests concerned with it come out and pronounce the priestly blessing on the assembled people. The offering of the sacrificial animal on the altar of burnt-offering follows, then the grain-offering and drink-offering are offered, immediately following which the Levites begin singing psalms and blowing trumpets. Sunrise itself is not mentioned in the account, presumably because it was not regarded as a point of time which the priests had to note in order to proceed with the appropriate duties, but it must have occurred around the time of the incense offering. The reason the priests had to determine that dawn was beginning, before proceeding with the main preparations for sacrifice, was presumably to ensure that the incense- and burnt-offerings would be made when there was sufficient light and as early as possible once there was sufficient light. Since the Temple faced east, the rising sun would shine into the holy place, where the incense was offered, and onto the court 44 M. Eduy. 6:1 attributes to R. Judah b. Baba the view that the morning burnt-offering was offered at the fourth hour of the day. But in context it appears that this was a singular view held by R. Judah, and it is not easy to harmonize with m. Tamid.

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of the priests, where the altar of burnt-offering stood. The holy place had its own lighting, the menorah lamps, but the sun may have enabled the people assembled outside the court of the priests to see the incense offered. Thus the morning Temple ritual, so far as we are able to ascertain it, does correlate chronologically with the sequence in the Horarium. The events in N10–N12 in sequence seem to be: cock-crow, first light, morning prayers, sunrise, incense offering. More dubious is the way three hours are allotted to these events, in particular because it seems to require an hour to elapse between sunrise and the incense offering. While not impossible, this is unlikely. But the Horarium is also surprising at this point in that it treats the hour after sunrise, the hour in which the incense is said to be offered after the heavenly hosts have waited in silence for it, as the last hour of the night, rather than the first hour of the day, as it would usually have been reckoned. Hours of the night were, of course, of a length that varied through the year, consisting of a twelfth of the actual time between sunset and sunrise, but since they were also very difficult to determine with accuracy, they were also very approximate.45 Observable events of the early morning – cock-crow, first light, sunrise, and, for people in the Temple, incense offering – were the real indicators of time in practice. Cockcrow, rather than some independent way of knowing that it was 3.00 am, signalled the beginning of the fourth of the three watches of the night; the gradually dawning light indicated the progress of these last three hours of the night; sunrise marked the beginning of the day itself. The degree of artificiality in the way the Horarium assigns these events to three hours would not have concerned ancient readers. We need not press the scheme to requiring a full hour between sunrise and incense offering, since it is the sequence that matters much more than the duration. What is interesting is that the Horarium, uniquely so far as our evidence goes, places the boundary between night and day not at sunrise itself but at the liturgical act in the Temple (the only one the Horarium mentions) that occurred probably soon after sunrise. This may be because the Horarium views the events of N10–N12 as a unified sequence, beginning with morning prayers (N10) and ending with the incense offering that symbolically and effectively raised these prayers up to the heavenly throne of God where the angels kept silent while the prayers were heard by God. We have noted above that, whereas people assembled in the Temple court itself would have prayed at the time when the incense was offered (cf. Luke 1:10), there is no evidence that Jews elsewhere prayed at the time of the morning incense offering rather than at first light. (Since most people started work before sunrise, this would in any case not 45

On the reckoning of hours of the day and night, see E. J. Bickerman, Chronology of the Ancient World (revised ed.; London: Thames & Hudson, 1980) 13–16.

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have been practicable for many.) Most Jews could not have understood the link between their own morning prayers and the Temple liturgy as strictly chronological coincidence. Rather they would think that the prayers they had uttered on rising would come into God’s presence and be heard at the time of the incense offering. A degree of confirmation for this can be found in Revelation 8:3, where the prayers of the saints that the angel offers with the incense on the heavenly altar are not being prayed at that moment. They are the prayers already in the golden incense bowls held by the twenty-four elders in 5:8. (7) Priests anointing the sick. So far we have demonstrated how the Horarium of Adam fits well into a context in early Judaism and also that there is one strong indication of a date before 70 ce. However there is one feature of the Horarium which may be considered problematic in a Second Temple Jewish context. The events described at the seventh hour of the night and the tenth hour of the day are exceptional. They do not consist in the praise of God by his creation. Rather, at the seventh hour of the night, all the natural powers on earth, including the waters, rest without movement: ‘And in that hour the waters are taken up and the priest of God mixes them with consecrated oil and anoints those who are afflicted and they rest.’ This is a kind of medicinal sympathetic magic: the sleeping waters bring rest to those who cannot rest for pain. At the tenth hour of the day the Spirit of God descends and broods over waters and springs (with allusion to Gen 1:2), preventing the harm the demons would otherwise do (by poisoning the waters?): ‘And in that hour the waters are taken up and the priest of God mixes them with consecrated oil and anoints those who are afflicted and they are restored and they are healed.’ Here the water that has been healed by the Spirit brings healing to sick people. The difficulty these accounts pose is that there seems to be no other evidence in Jewish literature associating priests with healing. In other ancient cultures priests were often healers, but not, it seems, in Judaism according to extant sources. The only association between priests, disease and healing in the Bible is in the case of the purification of someone with skin disease (leprosy), according to Leviticus 14. Here the priest does use oil as part of the purification ritual (14:12, 15–18, 21, 26–29), but he has no part in the physical healing. The disease must be healed before the person comes to the priest to have the healing verified and purification from ritual impurity secured. However, despite the lack of corroborative evidence, it is not difficult to suppose that, at the level of popular practice in the localities of Palestine where most priests lived most of the time, when not officiating in

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the temple, priests may have functioned as healers because they were able to consecrate the oil that was used to anoint the sick. If the Horarium is accepted as evidence for such practice in Second Temple Jewish Palestine, then it very interestingly provides evidence, such as hitherto been lacking,46 that Jewish practice lies behind the religious anointing of the sick to which two New Testament passages refer (Mark 6:13; Jas 5:14).

4. Cock-crow and chronology in the Gospels According to all four Gospels Jesus on the evening of his arrest predicted that Peter would deny him three times before a cock crowed (Matt 26:34; Mark 14:30; Luke 22:34; John 13:38). All four Gospels record the cock-crow itself after recounting Peter’s denials (Matt 26:74; Mark 14:72; Luke 22:60; John 18:27). In Mark uniquely the prediction is that Peter’s denials will occur before the cock crows twice, and the actual cock-crow, when it occurs, is said to be the second (Mark 14:30, 72). The meaning of these references to cock-crow and the time of the night to which they refer have been much discussed. Notable discussions include those of Ramsay (1917),47 Mayo (1921),48 Lattey (1953),49 Kosmala (1963 and 1967–68),50 Brady (1979),51 Derrett (1983),52 and Brown (1994).53 None of these mentions the evidence of the Horarium N10,54 which we can now recognize as one of perhaps only half a dozen references to the morning cock-crow in non-Christian Jewish literature up to the Mishnah (the others are 3 Macc 5:23; 3 Bar 6:16; m. Yoma 1:8; m. Sukk. 5:4; m. Tamid 1:2). In the following discussion the Horarium will corroborate and supplement the other evidence. We should note, first, that ‘cock-crow’ (gallicinium, ) was used as the name for the third watch of the night, according to the Roman system that divided the night into four theoretically equal parts, 46 Cf. L. P. Hogan, Healing in the Second Temple Period (NTOA 21; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag / Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992) 295–296. 47 W. M. Ramsay, ‘The Denials of Peter,’ ExpTim 28 (1916–1917) 276–281. 48 C. H. Mayo, ‘St Peter’s Token of the Cock Crow,’ JTS 22 (1921) 367–370. 49 C. Lattey, ‘A Note on Cockcrow,’ Scripture 6 (1953) 53–55. 50 H. Kosmala, ‘The Time of the Cock-Crow,’ ASTI 2 (1963) 118–20; ‘The Time of the Cock-Crow (II ),’ ASTI 6 (1967–68) 132–134. 51 D. Brady, ‘The Alarm to Peter in Mark’s Gospel,’ JSNT 4 (1979) 42–57. 52 J. D. M. Derrett, ‘The Reason for the Cock-crowings,’ NTS 29 (1983) 142–144. Derrett argues that cock-crow was the time when evil spirits, who had been abroad during the hours of darkness, returned to their own abode, but remarkably he cites no evidence that actually makes this point. 53 R. E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah, vol. 1 (New York: Doubleday, 1994) 136–137, 605–607. 54 Nor do they notice 3 Bar 6:16.

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two from sunset to midnight and two from midnight to sunrise. By New Testament times this Roman system of four night watches had replaced the older Israelite scheme of three watches.55 The four watches are listed in Mark 13:35, which gives them their usual names (‘late’ or ‘evening’ [ ], ‘midnight’ [ ], ‘cock-crow’ [ ], ‘early’ or ‘morning’ [ ]). The suggestion of Mayo and others that Jesus’ prediction in the Gospels referred not to the actual crowing of a cock but to this period of three hours after midnight has been adequately refuted.56 We may add that Kosmala is certainly wrong when he cites m. Yoma 1:8 as an instance of ‘at cock-crow’ ( ) referring to the whole period of the third watch.57 This reference (‘at cock-crow, or near it, either before or after it’) is parallel to m. Tamid 1:2 (‘at cockcrow and sometimes a little sooner or later’ ), in the account of the morning service in the Temple, cited above. Neither can conceivably refer to a three-hour period. While the references to cock-crow in the Gospel passion narratives are not to the third watch of the night, there is some relevance for us in asking why the third watch was called cock-crow. Kosmala assumes it got this name because there were three regular cock-crows within it (as well as irregular cock-crows if the birds were disturbed).58 But it is worth noting that the second watch was called ‘midnight’ because it ended at midnight. If, as we shall argue below, there was one cock-crow, shortly before first light, which was considered the cock-crow, the one on which people actually relied for telling the time, it seems more likely that the third watch was also named by what occurred at its end: the cock-crow that heralded the dawn. Pliny (N. H. 10.24.47) speaks of this cock-crow as the beginning of the fourth watch. Probably the most significant of the arguments about the actual time at which the cock-crow in the passion narratives would have occurred is that of Kosmala and consists of three major points: (1) He claims, on the basis of his own observation over twelve years, that in Jerusalem the cocks crow three times in the later part of the night, each time for three to five minutes. These crows occur with regularity at about 12.30, about 1.30 and about 2.30 a. m., and do not vary through the year, despite the fact that the time of the dawn does vary. (In addition to these three regular crowings, 55 Luke 12:38 is not an exception, pace R. T. Beckwith, Calendar and Chronology, Jewish and Christian (AGAJU 33; Leiden: Brill, 1996) 2 n.7. People such as the servants in the parable got up at the end of the third watch and started work around the beginning of the fourth watch. During the fourth watch the servants would not be staying awake exceptionally to await their master’s return; they would be awake then in any case, even if they had gone to bed earlier in the night. 56 Brady, ‘The Alarm,’ 44–46; Brown, The Death, 606. 57 Kosmala, ‘The Time,’ 119. 58 Kosmala, ‘The Time,’ 118.

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Kosmala allows that cocks may also crow at other times if alerted by any disturbance.) (2) He takes two ancient references to a ‘second’ cock-crow (Aristophanes, Eccl. 390–391; Juvenal, Sat. 9.107–108) to be to the second of the three regular crows he observed, i. e. at around 1.30 a. m. (3) Assuming this to be the most important of the three, he thinks it is the one intended in most of the references to cock-crow in Greco-Roman literature, where only one cock-crow is mentioned.59 However, with reference to (1), Kosmala’s observations are in apparent conflict with those of Père Lagrange, who often listened for the first cockcrow in Jerusalem during late March and early April. He observed that the time of the first cock-crow varied much, but that 2.30 a. m. was the earliest time he heard it and that it occurred most often between 3.00 and 5.00 a. m.60 The conflict with Kosmala’s evidence diminishes if we suppose that in every case Lagrange heard the cock-crow that Kosmala reckoned as the third, and that Lagrange was simply not listening for cock-crows as early as 12.00 or 1.30. It would have been more helpful if both observers had noted the times of first light and the times of sunrise, but it seems likely that Kosmala’s third regular crowing and Lagrange’s earliest crowing are the one that ancient writers speak of as occurring before first light and which was used as an important indication of time during the hours of darkness, marking the time at which most people woke and got up in preparation for beginning work as soon as there was sufficient light. That the time of this cock-crow and the interval between it and first light varied quite a lot would not have mattered to people who had few other means of easily telling time at night and expected only very approximate times.61 With reference to points (2) and (3) in Kosmala, he can cite only one ancient reference to three cock-crows at night (b. Yoma 21 a) and two to two cock-crows (Aristophanes, Eccl. 30–31, 390–391; Juvenal, Sat. 9.107–108; he could have added Ammianus Marcellinus 22.14.4).62 Other Greco-Roman references, like those in Jewish literature (Horarium of Adam N10; 3 Macc 5:23; 3 Bar 6:16; m. Yoma 1:8; m. Sukk. 5:4; m. Tamid 1:2), refer to a single event of cock-crow at the time when most people woke and got up. This cock-crow served to wake them if they had not already woken. But the texts 59

Kosmala, ‘The Time (II ),’ 135–136. Lattey, ‘A Note,’ 53. 61 Other observations of the times of cock-crow are reported in Ramsay, ‘The Denials,’ 280 (his own in Asia and London) and Brady, ‘The Alarm,’ 48–49. Ramsay distinguishes between ‘isolated crowings, at long intervals, and at last a real chorus’ just before first light. He considers only the latter to be fairly regular. These and other writers, including, in antiquity, Cicero (De Div. 2.26, 54), point out that random cock-crows could be heard at any hour of the night. 62 The texts of these three passages are quoted in Brady, ‘The Alarm,’ 51 n. 24, 55 n. 39. 60

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Kosmala himself cites make it implausible that this was the second of the regular three he observed, i. e. the one around 1.30 a. m. Even on a summer day, Kosmala’s third cock-crow (c. 2.30 a. m.) would surely be early enough for people to rise in time to begin work in the daylight. We should probably conclude that for most people, most of the time, there was only one cockcrow that mattered, the one that occurred sometime before first light. It is therefore also likely that this was the one occasionally called, for the sake of greater accuracy, the second cock-crow. Most people, of course, would not have been woken each night by each cock-crow, regular or not, and have counted them. Most people would sleep soundly through any cock-crows before the only one that mattered, the one that coincided with the time their body-clocks were accustomed to register as the time to wake. Like Lagrange, they would not normally be interested in earlier crowings. Poor sleepers might sometimes be wakened (and misled, for only the passage of time would reveal the mistake) by earlier cockcrows, but more often by Kosmala’s second than by his first. This kind of experience might lead to the cock-crow becoming known sometimes as the second cock-crow. But, more probably, this reckoning could derive from soldiers and guards who kept watch through the night, and were interested, not in a cock-crow near the beginning of the third watch (Kosmala’s first), but in Kosmala’s second cock-crow, since this would indicate that a considerable part of the third watch had passed. There is one Jewish text which does seem to confirm Kosmala’s observation of three regular cock-crows, the first occurring not long after midnight. This is the Perek Shirah, here summarized by Ginzberg: Great among singers of praise are the birds, and greatest among them is the cock. When God at midnight goes to the pious in Paradise, all the trees break out into adoration, and their songs awaken the cock, who begins in turn to praise God. Seven times he crows, each time reciting a verse. The first verse is: “Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in. Who is the King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle” [Ps 24:7–8]. The second verse: “Lift up your heads, O ye gates; yea, lift them up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the King of glory” [Ps 24:9–10]. The third: “Arise, ye righteous, and occupy yourselves with Torah, that your reward may be abundant in the world hereafter.” The fourth: “I have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord!” [Gen 49:18]. The fifth: “How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? When wilt thou arise out of thy sleep?” [Prov 6:9]. The sixth: “Love not sleep, lest thou come to poverty; open thine eyes, and thou shalt be satisfied with bread” [Prov 20:13]. The seventh verse sung by the cock runs: “It is time to work for the Lord, for they have made void Thy law” [Ps 119:126].63 63

Ginzberg, Legends, vol. 1, 44–45.

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The number seven is no doubt contrived, but it is notable that if we correlate the first three songs with Kosmala’s three cock-crows, the first two do not relate to wakening or rising from bed. The third cock-crow is the first that constitutes a wake-up call, confirming that, of Kosmala’s three, it must have been the third, not the second, that was generally regarded as the one cock-crow that actually mattered for most people most of the time. It may well be significant that the words of the cock’s third crow are the only ones of the seven that do not consist of words of Scripture. These words, summoning the righteous to get up and to recite the Shema , may have been a traditional understanding of the one important cock-crow, to which has been added in this account appropriate scriptural quotations to make up the unusual series of seven. The fourth crow perhaps greets first light or sunrise, and the remaining three are addressed to sluggards who sleep late. There remains the one text Kosmala himself cited as evidence that the Rabbis knew of the three regular cock-crows he observed: b. Yoma 21 b: We have learnt in accord with R. Shila: If one starts out on a journey before eri ath ha-geber [cock-crow64], his blood comes upon his own head! R. Josiah says: [He should wait] until he has crowed twice, some say: Until he has crowed thrice. What kind of cock? The average type.

Kosmala’s interpretation of this passage is possible, but produces an odd meaning. The general point must be that it is dangerous to travel in the hours of darkness. But it is no more dangerous before 12.30 than before 1.30 or before 2.30 a. m. Another possible interpretation is that R. Shila refers to the cock-crow, the one not long before first light. R. Josiah envisages that someone might be wakened and misled by an earlier cock-crow (regular or not), and so counsels waiting to see if the cock crows again before daybreak. Then the cock-crow will be the second one heard. The anonymous ‘some’ think the would-be traveller should play even safer, in case the cock-crow that wakes him or her should turn out to be an even earlier one. It seems that we can reasonably assume that the cock-crow, the one that mattered and the one usually referred to in ancient literature, marked the division between the third and fourth watches of the night, which was also the time at which most people woke and got up. Since the night was envisaged as lasting twelve hours, these being each a twelfth of the actual time from sunset to sunrise, whatever that was at the time of year, and since each watch was a three-hour segment of the night, the cock-crow would conventionally be thought to occur three hours after midnight and three hours before the beginning of the day proper. Measured as we would measure the time, in strict clock-time, the time of the cock-crow would no doubt vary quite a 64

The Soncino translation leaves the phrase untranslated here because in the context there is debate as to whether geber means cock or man.

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lot and the interval between it and sunrise would also vary according to the time of year, and so the third and fourth watches, divided by the cock-crow, would often be of rather unequal length. But this is to think with a temporal precision quite foreign to the ancients who lacked, especially during the night, the means of being at all precise about time (a star-clock, the most accurate means of telling time during the night, would not be accessible to most people).65 Moreover, such temporal precision was quite unnecessary for them. A conventional time for cock-crow placed it in relation to other times quite sufficiently accurately for ordinary purposes. It is this conventional time that appears in the Horarium, which assigns cock-crow to the tenth hour of the night, three hours after midnight and three before the beginning of the day proper. What, so far as our evidence goes, is unusual is that the latter is marked not by sunrise but by the incense-offering, placed a conventional hour later. As we have noted, it may not have occurred in strictly measured time much after sunrise. But the Horarium here illustrates how vague even the point of transition from night to day might be.66 After all, again for most people, cock-crow and daybreak, rather than sunrise, marked the beginning of their own day, the time during which they were awake and active. Jesus’ prediction in the Gospels cannot mean that Peter will deny him three times before any cock is heard to crow at any time during the night. It must mean that Peter’s denials will occur before the cockcrow, before the end of the third watch of the night, before the time when those who slept would be up in the morning. Three of the evangelists follow the usual practice of calling this simply cock-crow, whereas Mark follows the apparently rare practice of calling it second cock-row. Perhaps, since Peter spends the third watch of the night with people who, like him, stayed awake all night, it seemed appropriate to Mark to refer to cock-crow as those on watch 65 In b. Pesa . 11 b–12 b there is a discussion of the degree of error that could be expected in the reckoning the hour of a reported incident by a witness in court. Opinions differ from half an hour to almost three hours. But the subject is hours of the day, for which the height of the sun and the length of shadows provided a reliable guide, not hours of the night, which were much more difficult to reckon. 66 On the beginning of the day in antiquity, see G. F. Unger, ‘Tages Anfang,’ Philologus 15 (1892) 14–45, 212–230; Beckwith, Calendar, 3–9; W. M. Ramsay, ‘The Sixth Hour,’ Expositor 5 th Series, vol. 3 (1896) 457–459; J. Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964) 3–7. Although the Roman civil day ran from midnight to midnight (Pliny, N. H. 2.79.188), Ramsay (following Unger) disputes that it was ever reckoned in hours: ‘Even when a Roman was describing a civil Day, or series of civil Days, he still counted his “first hour” as beginning from sunrise; and he called midnight, which was the beginning of his twenty-four hours day, “the sixth hour of the night”’ (458). If this is right, it is the decisive argument against the claim (adopted by Finegan) that John, unlike other New Testament writers, reckons the hours of the day from midnight.

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through the night might do. But, in any case, even Mark does not record the occurrence of the first cock-crow67 presupposed by his reference to the second. Even Mark is not counting cock-crows, but employing one way of referring to the one cock-crow that usually mattered. The reference to the cock-crow in the four Gospels, while it cannot provide a precise time in terms of our modern understanding of temporal precision, does provide a precise time within the conventions of ancient time-keeping. It signals the transition from the third to the fourth watch of the night. Moreover, each evangelist follows it with an indication that events now take place from daybreak onwards, during the fourth watch which was known as ‘early’ or ‘morning’ ( ) and lasted for a conventional three hours until sunrise or the beginning of the day proper: Mark 15:1: ‘And immediately, in the early morning ( Matthew 27:1: ‘And when the early hour had come ( priests…’ Luke 22:66: ‘And when daylight came ( of the people…’

), the chief priests…’ ), all the chief ), the assembly of the elders

John 18:28: ‘Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas to the praetorium. Now it was early ( ).’

There is no difficulty in supposing that the evangelists represent the Jewish authorities as taking Jesus to Pilate a considerable time before sunset. It was at daybreak that the working day began, and Roman officials, like other people, began work as early as possible.68 It is also not especially surprising to find that, according to Mark’s chronology, Simon of Cyrene is coming back into the city from working in the fields outside not long before the third hour of the day. He could easily have put in four hours’ work (Mark 15:21–25). It has not infrequently been observed that Mark’s passion narrative seems to follow a schematic division of time dividing the whole day from sunset on Maundy Thursday to sunset on Good Friday into three-hour segments. The sequence begins with ‘evening’ (Mark 14:17: ), suggesting the beginning of the first night-watch at sunset. The crucifixion itself takes place at the third hour of the day (15:25), the preternatural darkness falls at the sixth hour, i. e. noon (15:33), and Jesus dies at the ninth hour (15:34). It is when the whole day’s cycle is completed with the coming of evening ( ) again, that Jesus’ body is taken down and buried (15:42). Between the commencement of the Last Supper and the time of the cruci67 I take it that the words in Mark 14:68, omitted in some manuscripts, are not original but added by a scribe in the light of 14:72; cf. Brown, The Death, 601, 605. 68 Evidence in Brown, The Death, 629.

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fixion itself, Mark has only one (double) indication of a similar temporal moment, at 14:72–15:1, which indicate the transition from the third to the fourth watch of the night. Contrary to some representations of the Markan scheme,69 Mark does not allocate three hours, the first three of the day, to the trial before Pilate. He overlooks the transition from night to day at sunrise completely. Nor does he indicate the transitions between the first, second and third watches of the night. His indications of time thus divide the whole day: (1) from the beginning of the first to the end of the third watch of the night (9 ‘hours’); (2) from the end of the third / beginning of the fourth watch of the night to the third watch of the day (6 ‘hours’); (3) from the third to the sixth hour of the day (3 ‘hours’); (4) from the sixth to the ninth hour of the day (3 ‘hours’); (5) from the ninth hour of the day until sunset (3 ‘hours’). The lack of division within the first nine hours of this scheme is intelligible in that there were no readily observable signs of the transition from first to second and from second to third watch. Few would be aware of them. The omission of sunrise, one of the most easily observable time-markers, is less easily explicable, since it would have divided Mark’s six hour period into precisely two three-hour blocks like the three which follow. However, Mark’s narrative in fact has relatively little to fill these six hours. We have to suppose that sunrise occurred during the trial before Pilate, but there is no turning-point in Mark’s narrative which it could appropriately mark. Mark’s chronological scheme is therefore not imposed rigidly on his material, but adapted both to the realities of time-keeping and to the components of his narrative.

69

E.g. J. Nolland, Luke 18:35–24:53 (WBC 35C; Dallas: Word, 1993) 1025.

22. The Spirit of God in Us Loathes Envy (James 4:5)* It is understandable that the letter of James hardly ever appears in discussion of New Testament pneumatology. The word occurs only twice (2:26; 4:5) and only one of these references could conceivably refer to the Holy Spirit or Spirit of God. But whether the words in James 4:5 refer to the divine Spirit or to the / a human spirit is only one of the many debatable aspects of this verse and cannot be decided without discussion also of other controverted issues. According to most, though not all interpreters, the reference to occurs in a short quotation from Scripture ( , but the quotation is not to be found in any of our Hebrew or Greek texts of the Bible. Perhaps it is from an apocryphal work no longer extant. But the quotation also presents a series of problems of translation which together make a whole series of proposed translations apparently possible. Deciding between such proposed translations is not easy.1 In this article we shall review the proposed translations of the verse, finding none of them wholly satisfactory, and then offer a new proposal. This new proposal for translating the verse will then lead to a suggestion about the source from which James drew this quotation.

1. The Problem of Translation (1) In the first place, we must note a text-critical issue. The readings (‘he made to dwell’) and (‘he took up residence’ are both attested: in the former case the subject of the verb must be God (understood) while in the latter case it must be . Nearly all modern scholars2 prefer the former, as the harder reading, both because scribes are * First publication: Graham N. Stanton, Bruce W. Longenecker and Stephen C. Barton ed., The Holy Spirit and Christian Origins: Essays in Honor of James D. G. Dunn (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004) 270–281. 1 W. Popkes, Der Brief des Jakobus (Theologische Handkommentar zum Neuen Testament 14; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlaganstalt, 2001), pp. 269–71, considers the problem insoluble. 2 One exception is J. Adamson, The Epistles of James (New International Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), p. 165.

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more likely to have replaced the verb (‘to make to dwell’), used only here in the New Testament, with the much more common (‘to dwell’), than vice versa,3 and because scribes who understood to be a spirit of envy might wish to avoid the idea that God made such a spirit dwell in humans.4 (2) There is also a question about how to punctuate the verse. Most translations and scholars take (‘the Scripture says’) to introduce a scriptural quotation and take the rest of the verse ( ) to be that quotation. However, the fact that these words cannot easily be understood as a quotation from the known text of the canonical Jewish scriptures, various other ways of punctuating and interpreting the verse have in the past been proposed, sometimes involving taking with , often involving treating the second part of the verse, along with the opening words of the next verse ( : ‘but he gives greater grace’), as a parenthesis, such that in verse 5 refers to the quotation from Proverbs 3:34 in verse 6.5 The version of this view that has been advocated by some recent scholars is that which reads verse 5 as two rhetorical questions: ‘Or do you think that the Scripture speaks in vain? Does the spirit that he [God] made to dwell in us desire enviously?’ According to Sophie Laws, who pioneered this interpretation in recent scholarship,6 the second question alludes indirectly to scriptural passages, while according to others both questions refer forwards to the scriptural quotation in verse 6.7 The plausibility of such an interpretation will be discussed below.

3 B. M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1975), p. 683. 4 R. W. Wall, Community of the Wise: The Letter of James (New Testament in Context; Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1997), p. 203. 5 For references to and arguments against such proposals, see J. B. Mayor, The Epistle of James, 2 nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1897), p. 136; J. H. Ropes, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle of St. James (International Critical Commentary; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1916), pp. 262–63; M. Dibelius and H. Greeven, James (tr. M. A. Williams; Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), pp. 221–22. 6 S. Laws, ‘Does Scripture Speak in Vain? A Reconsideration of James iv. 5,’ New Testament Studies 20 (1974): 210–15; S. Laws, A Commentary on the Epistle of James (Black’s New Testament Commentary; London: A. & C. Black, 1980), pp. 176–79; followed by T. C. Penner, The Epistle of James and Eschatology (Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplements 121; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), p. 152. 7 L. T. Johnson, The Letter of James (Anchor Bible 37A; New York: Doubleday, 1995), pp. 280–82; Wall, Community of the Wise, pp. 202–4. Johnson’s earlier study (‘James 3:13–4:10 and the Topos ,’ Noveum Testamentum 25 [1983]: 330–31, 346) follows Laws in general but does not make clear what he takes to be the referent of in verse 5.

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(3) Besides punctuation there are a series of other issues about the translation of the second part of the verse.8 The main issues are: (a) Does indicate the goal of the action of the verb (‘longs for envy’) or should it be understood adverbially, as equivalent to (‘enviously’). (b) Does have a bad sense (‘envy’) or a good sense (‘jealously’ in a good sense)? (c) Is the subject of God (understood), making God the subject of both verbs, or ? (d) Is the divine Spirit or the human spirit (understood as either good or bad)? Different answers to these questions in different combinations account largely for the differences of translation of the second part of the verse. We shall consider first the main translations offered of the second part of the verse by those who consider it a quotation introduced by , and then the translations that treat it as a question: (3.1) Among scholars over the last century, the most popular option has been the translation: ‘He [God] longs jealously for the spirit he has made to dwell in us.’9 Among major English translations, this is adopted by RSV and NRSV (and cf. RV Margin). This translation takes adverbially, gives a good sense (‘jealousy’), takes God to be the subject of (it is, in fact, the only proposed translation that does), and understands to be the human spirit (given in creation, as in Gen. 2:7). Its appropriateness to the context in James can be defended, as recently by

8 There have also been proposals to amend the text, though these do not seem to have appealed to any recent scholars; cf. J. A. Findlay, ‘James iv.5, 6,’ Expository Times 37 (1926): 381–82 ( for ); some earlier attempts at emendation are listed in H. Coppieters, ‘La Signification et la Provenance de la Citation Jac. iv, 5,’ Revue Biblique 12 (1915): 38. 9 E. g. F. J. A. Hort, The Epistle of St. James (London: Macmillan, 1909), pp. 93–94; Ropes, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary, pp. 262–65; J. Moffatt, The General Epistles (Moffatt New Testament Commentary; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1928), pp. 60–61; J. Marty, L’Épître de Jacques (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1935), pp. 159–60; H. Windisch and H. Preisker, Die katholischen Briefe, 3 rd ed. (Handbuch zum Neuen Testament 15; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1951), pp. 26–27; C. Spicq, ‘ , Désirer ou Chérir?,’ Revue Biblique 64 (1957): 189–91; J. Jeremias, ‘Jac 4 5: ,’ Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 50 (1959): 137–38; F. Mussner, Der Jakobusbrief (Herders Theologische Kommentar zum Neuen Testament 13/1; Freiburg: Herder, 1964), pp. 181–82; C. L. Mitton, The Epistle of James (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1966), pp. 154–56; Dibelius and Greeven, James, pp. 223–24; P. Davids, The Epistle of James (New International Greek Testament Commentary; Exeter: Paternoster, 1982), 163–64; D. J. Moo, The Letter of James (Tyndale New Testament Commentary; Leicester: InterVarsity Press / Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), pp. 144–46; H. Frankemölle, Der Brief des Jakobus (Gütersloher Verlag, 1994), pp. 602–5; M. Klein, “Ein vollkommenes Werk”: Vollkommenheit, Gesetz und Gericht als theologischen Themen des Jakobusbriefes (Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament 17/19; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1995), pp. 112–15; D. J. Moo, The Letter of James (Pillar New Testament Commentaries; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans / Leicester: Apollos, 2000), pp. 188–90.

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Moo, for whom this is the decisive criterion for preferring this translation, given the inconclusive nature of other criteria in his view.10 However, this translation founders on its need to understand in a good sense, as the divine jealousy (or zeal) frequently attributed to God in the Scriptures and in Jewish literature. The Greek word for this positive divine quality is always . The use of in this sense is unattested and hardly conceivable, since in Hellenistic moral philosophy, while can be a vice or a virtue, is always a vice.11 For this reason Jewish writers, while frequently using of God, consistently avoid using of God. The fact that was often used of the gods of Greek mythology12 in ‘the true Greek sense of a spiteful god’s envy of man’13 would certainly not have recommended it to a Jewish writer wishing to speak of the God of Israel; indeed, the opposite would more likely be the and are often linked and can be case.14 That the two words used virtually synonymously (e. g. 1 Macc. 8:16; 1 Clem. 3:2; 4:7; 5:2) is not a basis for thinking that James could, exceptionally, have used positively of a divine attribute,15 since the two words are used synonymously only in a bad sense, not in the good sense of . Moreover, even if we could think of James (or his source) inappropriately and incompetently using of divine jealousy, it is scarcely credible that he could have done so in this context. James has used in a bad sense in 3:14 and the cognate verb also in a bad sense in 4:2. Luke Johnson has shown that themes common to the ancient moral topos on envy run through 3:13–4:10.16 If James had wanted to distinguish the positive divine quality in verse 5 from the negative human quality in the preceding passage, he should have used in verse 5 and / in the other cases. But even this might not have served the purpose of contrasting the two terms. In a passage so heavy with resonances of envy and using both terms, they are most likely

10

Moo, The Letter of James (2000), p. 190. Johnson, ‘James 3:13–4:10,’ p. 335 (and see the whole article); Johnson, The Letter of James, p. 281. 12 E. g. Mayor, The Epistle of James, pp. 136–37. 13 Adamson, The Epistle of James, p. 171. 14 Davids, The Epistle of James, p. 163, is mistaken in claiming that G. W. H. Lampe ed., A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961) cites three passages in the Alexandrian Fathers where is used of God. On the contrary, these deny that God acts out of envy ( ) and echo Plato’s famous statements (Phaedrus 247 a; Tim. 29 e) that envy is absent from the divine realm; cf. P. W. van der Horst, The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides (Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha 4; Leiden: Brill, 1978), pp. 163–64. 15 Davids, The Epistle of James, pp. 163–64; R. P. Martin, James (Word Biblical Commentary 48; Waco, Texas: Word, 1988), p. 150; Moo, The Letter of James (2000), p. 190. 16 Johnson, ‘James 3:13–4:10,’ pp. 327–47. 11

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both to be read in the same negative sense that is the only sense in which they are synonymous. (3.2, 3.3) There are two translations which give a similar sense in English but differ at just one point in how they understand the Greek: (3.2) ‘The spirit he [God] made to dwell in us longs for envy’;17 (3.3) ‘The spirit he [God] made to dwell in us longs enviously.’18 Among major English translations, 3.2 is adopted by NEB (‘The spirit which God implanted in man turns towards envious desires’), while 3.3 is apparently adopted by REB (‘The spirit which God implanted in us is filled with envious longings’) and NIV (‘The spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely’). Both translations give a bad sense, take to be the subject of , and understand to be the human spirit. They differ in that 3.2 understands as the goal of the action of the verb, while 3.3 understands the phrase adverbially as equivalent to . 3.2 is the least plausible of these options. Although the use of after ,19 as proposed by this translation, can be paralleled (LXX Ps 41[42]:1: ), it is hard to make much sense of ‘longs for envy,’ and advocates of this meaning often give the reduced sense of ‘tends, inclines,’ which does not seem to be paralleled. The verb always refers to strong desire. However, there is no such difficulty in understanding as an adverbial phrase equivalent to the adverb (cf., e. g., similar phrases in Josephus, BJ 2.534; Ant. 7.195; 12.398), as translation 3.3 does. It is true that the verb generally has a good sense in the biblical literature,20 but it certainly can have a bad sense when its object or some other aspect of the context implies that (e. g. Sir. 25:21; Ezek. 23:5, 7, 9 Aquila). An entirely possible translation of would be ‘lusts enviously.’ If this phrase has a bad sense, as it does for both translations 3.2 and 3.3, then clearly must be the human spirit. The most plausible account of the meaning, in that case, is that which sees here the Jewish idea 17 E. g. Coppieters, ‘La Signification,’ pp. 35–50; J. Adamson, The Epistles of James (New International Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), p. 171–73; J. Marcus, ‘The Evil Inclination in the Epistle of James,’ Catholic Biblical Quarterly 44 (1982): 608–9 n. 7, 621; L. J. Prockter, ‘James 4.4–6: Midrash on Noah,’ New Testament Studies 35 (1989): 625–26; C. Burchard, Der Jakobusbrief (Handbuch zum Neuen Testament 15/1; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), pp. 171–74. 18 E. g. J. Chaine, L’Épitre de Saint Jacques (Études Bibliques; Paris: Gabalda, 1927), pp. 101–3; A. Meyer, Das Rätsel des Jacobusbriefes (Giessen: Töpelmann, 1930), p. 258; J. Michl, ‘Der Spruch Jakobusbrief 4,5,’ in J. Blinzler, O. Kuss, and F. Mussner ed., Neutestamentliche Aufsätze (Festschrift for J. Schmid; Regensburg: Pustet, 1963), pp. 167–72; E. M. Sidebottom, James, Jude and 2 Peter (New Century Bible; London: Nelson, 1967), pp. 52–53. 19 One would expect a direct object or . 20 Spicq, ‘ ,’ pp. 184–95.

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of the ‘evil inclination’ ( ),21 which was based on Genesis 6:5; 8:17, and is well illustrated by Sirach 15:11–20.22 This shows that the evil inclination was understood to belong to the created nature of humans, but that this did not make God directly responsible for evil, since humans have the choice whether to yield to the inclination or to resist it. James 1:13–15 is very close to this passage of Sirach and certainly reflects a similar notion of the evil desire, which James there calls . There are two difficulties about finding the same idea in James 4:5. One is the word . Can this be equivalent to (‘desire’) in 1:14–15? It is true that in the Qumran literature (‘spirit’) is used in a somewhat similar sense: Abraham ‘did not choose according to the will of his own spirit ( )’ (CD 3:2–3, cf. the use of in 2:16), and the well-known passage about the ‘two spirits’ God placed in humanity, to one of which, ‘the spirit of deceit,’ sin is attributed (1QS 3:17–4:26).23 But even these passages use ‘spirit’ for the evil inclination only with some further specification. James’s own anthropological use of in 2:26 certainly does not have this sense. Secondly, while this translation of James 4:5 fits well with the succeeding context (which would mean that for those who wish to resist the evil inclination God’s grace is available and proves stronger), it does not follow so well from the preceding context. In what sense might those James has been attacking in the preceding verses think the sentence quoted in verse 5 spoken ‘in vain’? By simply acknowledging their envy as deriving from the inclination God placed in them at creation what does it say to counter their behaviour or their ideas? In spite of these difficulties, 3.3 is probably the most satisfactory of the translations that have been proposed. (3:4) ‘The Spirit he [God] made to dwell in us longs jealously’: this translation, advocated by Mayor,24 was adopted by JB (‘the spirit which he sent to live in us wants us for himself alone’), and is also given in RV Margin and NIV Margin. It gives a good sense, understands adverbially, takes to be the subject of and understands to be the divine Spirit. It also requires something to be understood as the object of (Mayor interprets: ‘The Spirit which he made to dwell in us jealously yearns for the entire devotion of the heart’). But it is 21 See especially Marcus, ‘The Evil Inclination,’ pp. 606–21, for an account of this idea in Second Temple Jewish sources and in James. 22 But note that Di Lella in P. W. Skehan and A. A. Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira (Anchor Bible 39; New York: Doubleday, 1987), pp. 271–272, understands in 15:14 as free will. On the relationship of James to Sir. 15:11–20, see H. Frankemölle, ‘Zum Thema des Jakobusbriefes im Kontext der Rezeption von Sir 2,1–18 und 15,11–20,’ Biblische Notizen 48 (1989): 21–49. 23 But cf. also the two spirits in some passages of Hermas: O. J. F. Seitz, ‘Two Spirits in Man: An Essay in Biblical Exegesis,’ New Testament Studies 6 (1959–60): 82–95. 24 Mayor, The Epistle of St. James, pp. 136–40.

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untenable primarily for the same reason as translation 3.1: cannot have a good sense. (3.5) Ralph Martin offers this translation: ‘The Spirit God made to dwell in us opposes envy.’25 Of all the translations offered, this provides the best fit with the context, both preceding and following, but unfortunately it is hard to see how the Greek can mean this. Martin writes: ‘the meaning must be that God’s jealous yearning over his people is set over against ( + accusative) their “jealousy”; hence our rendering, admittedly more a really mean ‘opposes’? Mayor paraphrase.’26 But can is surely right to object: ‘ can only mean “against” when joined with a word that implies hostility: it cannot have this force when joined with a word which implies strong affection like .’27 (3.6, 3.7) We turn finally to proposals to translate the verse, not as containing a quotation, but as two rhetorical questions. One such proposal (3.6) translates the whole verse thus: ‘Or do you think that scripture speaks to no effect? Does the spirit which he made to dwell in us long enviously?’28 This adopts the translation given above as 3.3, but turns it into a question. The scholars who propose this translation understand it as a question expecting the answer ‘no.’ The spirit is not the evil inclination, but the good spirit given by God, and so the reader is expected to respond, ‘No, of course the spirit given by God does not envy!’ This avoids the difficulty about the use of the word which was raised in our discussion of translation 3.3. There is, however, a grammatical difficulty in that a question expecting a negative answer should include the particle , as Johnson admits.29 This problem is avoided if the question is understood to expect an affirmative answer, as in Robert Walls’ proposal to translate the verse (3.7): ‘Or do you think that Scripture says foolish things? Does the spirit that God made to dwell within us incline us intensely towards envy?’30 He takes to be the evil inclination, and apparently thinks that the second question 25

Martin, James, p. 140. Martin, James, p. 141. 27 Mayor, The Epistle of St. James, p. 138. Mayor is responding to older interpreters who took to have the sense of ‘against.’ 28 S. Laws, ‘Does Scripture Speak in Vain? A Reconsideration of James iv. 5,’ New Testament Studies 20 (1974): 212–215; S. Laws, A Commentary on the Epistle of James (Black’s New Testament Commentary; London: A. & C. Black, 1980), pp. 176–79; L. T. Johnson, ‘James 3:13–4:10 and the Topos ,’ Novum Testamentum 25 (1983): 330–31, 346; L. T. Johnson, The Letter of James (Anchor Bible 37A; New York: Doubleday, 1995), pp. 280–82; T. C. Penner, The Epistle of James and Eschatology (Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplements 121; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), p. 152. The translation given is by Laws; Johnson translates similarly. 29 Johnson, The Letter of James, p. 282. 30 Wall, Community of the Wise, p. 202. 26

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expects the answer yes, by contrast with the first question.31 This translation is therefore subject to the same objections we made to translations 3.2 (of which this is the interrogative version) and 3.3. Moreover, all proposals to treat the latter part of this verse as other than a quotation face the objection that the formula elsewhere directly introduces a quotation (John 19:37; Rom. 9:17; 10:11; 1 Tim. 5:18), even when it is used interrogatively (Rom. 4:3; Gal. 4:30; cf. Rom. 11:2).

2. A New Proposal for Translation Since none of the proposals reviewed above are entirely satisfactory, it is appropriate to offer a new proposal. This postulates that the quotation in James 4:5 is taken from an apocryphal text originally written in Hebrew (and the Greek translation in Jas. 4:5 either taken by James from an already existing Greek translation of the apocryphal work or made by James himself). The verb is used twelve times in the Septuagint and renders no less than eight different Hebrew verbs in those occurrences which have an extant Hebrew Vorlage. One of these is (‘to long’), used in Psalm 118(119):174 (‘I have longed for your salvation, O Lord’). This verb is rare in the Hebrew Bible. It occurs also in Psalm 119:40, and the cognate noun is used in Psalm 119:20. The only other occurrence of is in Amos 6:8, where the Pi el is used with God as the subject. This is problematic, because the context here requires the verb , a more common verb which in the Pi el means ‘to regard as an abomination, to abhor, to loathe’ (with God as subject: Pss. 5:7; 106:40; with human subject: Deut. 7:26; Pss. 5:7; 107:18; 119:163; Amos 5:10; Mic. 3:9). In Amos 6:8 the Septuagint has , indicating either that the Vorlage had instead of , or that the translator understood to have the same meaning as . Modern scholars and lexicographers regard in Amos 6:8 as a scribal error or a deliberate alteration replacing an original .32 But it may be that some ancient Hebrew speakers thought of the two verbs and as the same verb with two different meanings: ‘to long for’ and ‘to regard as an abomination.’ Both meanings entail intense feeling, positive in one case, negative in the other. The Hebrew original of the quotation in James 4:5 may have used / in the sense of ‘to abhor,’ giving the meaning of the sentence: ‘The Spirit [or 31

Wall, Community of the Wise, pp. 202–4. W. R. Harper, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Amos and Hosea (International Critical Commentary; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1905), p. 153 n.; J. L. Mays, Amos (Old Testament Library; London: SCM Press, 1969), p. 117 n. 32

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spirit] God made to dwell in us abhors envy.’ The translator used , which would appropriately translate / in the sense of ‘to long for.’ He attributed to the Greek verb the same range of meaning as he attributed to / . He meant to mean ‘abhors, is intensely opposed to,’ but unfortunately has the positive sense of but not the negative sense of . To extend the range of meaning of a word in one language to match the range of meaning of a word in another language is a natural error in translation.33 The translation, ‘The Spirit [or spirit] God made to dwell in us abhors envy’ is close to translation 3.5 above (‘The Spirit God made to dwell in us opposes envy’), which we observed would, of the proposals hitherto made, make best sense in the context, but which seemed impossible as a rendering of James’ Greek. The new proposal explains how such a meaning could have been intended owing to the improper use of to translate in this sentence. If the quotation is read attributing to the strong meaning of the Hebrew – ‘the Spirit [or spirit] regards envy as an abomination, something to which God is implacably opposed’ – it follows very well not only from 3:13–4:3, where envy is the theme, but also from 4:4, with its sharply dualistic correlation between friendship with the world and enmity with God. The quotation in 4:5 provides the scriptural basis for this by pointing out God’s enmity towards envy. This contextual consideration makes it much more likely that, if this proposal for translation is correct, then refers to the divine Spirit rather than the human spirit. A reference to the human spirit here would be an unnecessarily indirect way of pointing out God’s own opposition to envy. If we are correct in finding a reference in James 4:5 to the divine Spirit indwelling Christians, is this a unique reference to the Holy Spirit in James? It has sometimes been observed that the way in which James 3:13–18 speaks of the wisdom that ‘comes down from above’ and produces the fruits of ethical qualities in Christians resembles the Pauline understanding of the Holy Spirit, especially in Galatians 5:22–23,34 where there is a contrasting list of works of the flesh (5:19–21) comparable with many of the vices James attacks in 3:14–4:3. Understanding James as deploying here a wisdom pneumatology (cf. Wisd. 1:3–8; 7:7, 22–25; Sir. 24:3)35 fits very well with 33 Cf. J. M. Voelz, ‘The Language of the New Testament,’ in W. Haase and H. Temporini ed., Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt, Part 2, vol. 25/2 (Berlin / New York: de Gruyter, 1984), pp. 957–58, for Greek words whose meaning was extended by their Jewish and Christian use to correspond to Semitic terms. 34 E. g. Windisch and Preisker, Die katholischen Briefe, p. 26; Davids, The Epistle of James, p. 154. 35 J. A. Kirk, ‘The Meaning of Wisdom in James: Examination of a Hypothesis,’ New Testament Studies 16 (1969): 24–38, argues that wisdom in James functions in some re-

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our proposed understanding of the quotation in 4:5. Both the wisdom from above of 3:13–18 and the Spirit of 4:5 are opposed to envy.

3. The Source of the Quotation We need not here review the many suggestions as to the source of the quotation in James 4:5 which find some kind of basis for it in the Hebrew Bible, since our new proposal for translating the quotation provides a fresh starting-point for considering this question. One of the very few passages in the Hebrew Bible which could be understood as a warning against envy is the story of Eldad and Modad in Numbers 11:25–30. It speaks of the Spirit that rested upon the seventy elders, with the result that they prophesied (11:25), and also upon Eldad and Modad, who were outside the camp at the time and also prophesied (11:26). Because this was anomalous, Joshua protested to Moses, asking him to stop Eldad and Modad from prophesying. Moses replied, ‘Are you jealous ( , LXX : ) for my sake? Would that all the Lord ’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them’ (11:29). The reference to jealousy is picked up in an interesting way in PseudoPhilo’s Biblical Antiquities, where the content of Eldad and Modad’s prophecy is said to have been that after Moses’ death the leadership would pass to Joshua36: ‘And Moses was not jealous (zelatus) but rejoiced when he heard them’ (20:5). Despite the usually positive word zelatus, it is clear that jealousy here has a bad sense. The theme of jealousy is also taken up in a quite different way in Midrash Numbers Rabbah 15:19, where Moses, commanded by God to appoint seventy elders (Num 11:16), wondered how to select this number from the twelve tribes without taking more from one tribe than from another with the result that ‘I will introduce jealousy between one tribe and another.’ These examples illustrate how Jewish exegesis of this passage could seize on the reference to ‘jealousy’ (Num 11:29) and develop it as a quality to be avoided. It is not difficult to imagine how a Jewish re-telling of the story of Eldad and Modad could have expanded Moses’ words to Joshua (Num 11:29) and included the sentence: ‘The Spirit God made to rest on us (dwell in spects as the Spirit does in other Jewish and Christian literature, and cites much evidence for the association of the Spirit with wisdom. 36 Cf. Sifre Num. 95: ‘And what did they [Eldad and Modad] say as their prophecy? “Moses will die and Joshua will bring Israel into the Land”’; similarly b. Sanh. 17 a; Tg. Ps-Jon. Num. 11:26; Tg. Neof. Num. 11:26; Num. Rab. 15:19. All of these sources, apart from Sifre, also attribute to Eldad and Modad a prophecy about Gog and Magog (a tradition doubtless intended to explain Ezek. 38:18).

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us) abhors envy.’ But where might James have found such a re-telling of the biblical story? There was an apocryphal book of Eldad and Modad, to which the ancient canonical lists refer, and of which we have only one explicitly attributed quotation. Hermas, Vis. 2:3:4 reads: ‘ “The Lord is near to those who turn to him,” as it is written in the book of Eldad and Modad, who prophesied to the people in the wilderness.’ That this quotation occurs in the Shepherd of Hermas is significant, because it is also in Hermas that a remarkable parallel to James 4:5 is found: ‘the Spirit which God made to dwell in this flesh’ ( )’ (Mand. 3:1; cf. also Mand. 5:2:5; 10:2:6; 10:3:2). There is a similar passage, though with reference to the flesh of Jesus, in Sim. 5:6:5: ‘The Holy Spirit which goes forth, which created all creation, God made to dwell in the flesh ( ) that he willed.’ These three passages (Jas. 4:5; Hermas, Mand. 3:1; Sim. 5:6:5) contain the only occurrences of the verb in Christian literature before Justin. Other resemblances between James and Hermas have often been no(Jas. 1:8; 4:8), a New ticed.37 Most significant of these is the word Testament hapax, which occurs 19 times in Hermas, who also uses the verb 20 times and the noun 16 times. This vocabulary also appears in a quotation from an unknown apocryphal work (called in 1 Clement and in 2 Clement) which appears in both 1 Clement 23:3 and 2 Clement 11:2 ( ). Otherwise this vocabulary (completely unattested in non-Jewish, non-Christian Greek) is found in Jewish and early Christian literature before Clement of Alexandria only in 1 Clement 23:2; 2 Clement 11:5 (both with reference to the quotation); 19:2 ( ); Didache 4:4; and Barnabas 19:5 (both ).38 It has sometimes been suggested that the apocryphal quotation in 1 Clement 23:3 and 2 Clement 11:2 comes from the book of Eldad and Modad,39 and it has also been argued quite cogently that the work from which this apocryphal quotation was drawn was also the source of Hermas’ use of this very dis37

E. g. Laws, A Commentary, pp. 22–23. For the usage in the Fathers, see S. E. Porter, ‘Is dipsuchos (James 1,8; 4,8) a “Christian” Word?,’ Biblica 71 (1990): 484–96. O. F. J. Seitz, ‘Antecedents and Signification of the Term ,’ Journal of Biblical Literature 66 (1947): 218–19, shows that the title given to a fragment of Philo – does not imply that Philo actually used the word . 39 E. g. J. B. Lightfoot, reported in M. R. James, The Lost Apocrypha of the Old Testament (London: SPCK , 1920) pp. 39–40; James himself thinks the apocryphal Ezekiel a more likely source of the quotation. O. J. F. Seitz, ‘Afterthoughts on the Term “Dipsychos,”’ New Testament Studies 4 (1958): 332–34, agrees with Lightfoot, and goes on to speculate that the Book of Eldad and Modad might actually be the ‘little book’ which Hermas, Vis. 2 describes and that Hermas himself was instrumental in the publication of the Book of Eldad and Modad. 38

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tinctive vocabulary.40 We should note that one of the two occurrences of in James (4:8) is in close proximity to the quotation in 4:5. There are also other striking resemblances to Hermas in this immediate context (Jas. 4:7: cf. Hermas, Mand. 12:5:2; Jas. 4:12: cf. Hermas, Mand. 12:6:3). Finally, also in this immediate context James even has a quite close parallel (4:8: ) to the one explicit quotation we have from the Book of Eldad and Modad (Hermas, Vis. 2:3:4: ). We can conclude that there is considerable probability that the quotation in James 4:5 comes from the apocryphal Book of Eldad and Modad, which was also well-known in the Roman church,41 quoted by Hermas, and described as in 1 Clement (23:3) and in 2 Clement (11:2).

40 O. F. J. Seitz, ‘Relationship of the Shepherd of Hermas to the Epistle of James,’ Journal of Biblical Literature 63 (1944): 131–40. S. E. Porter, ‘Is dipsuchos,’ maintains that James is the source of all other occurrences of and its cognates, but can do so only by apparently just denying that 1 Clem. 23:3 and 2 Clem. 11:2 do quote an apocryphal source. While he recognizes that ‘1 and 2 Clement are not apparently directly summarizing or paraphrasing James at this point’ (p. 476), it is wholly unclear what he thinks they are doing. 41 S. S. Marshall (subsequently S. Laws), ‘ : a local term?,’ Studia Evangelica 6 = Texte und Untersuchungen 112 (1973): 348–51, argues that was a local term used in Jewish and Christian circles in Rome and may have been coined in a Greek-speaking Jewish community in Rome. On the relationship of the letter of James to the Roman church, see R. Bauckham, James: Wisdom of James, Disciple of Jesus the Sage (New Testament Readings; London / New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 18, 23.

23. Tobit as a Parable for the Exiles of Northern Israel* The proposal The book of Tobit is probably best classified as an Israelite religious novella. It is generally agreed that the works it most resembles are the books of Esther and Judith. Like them, it is designed as both entertaining and instructive, and is composed with great skill in both character construction and narration. It is one of the finest short stories to have come down to us from non-classical antiquity. But whereas in the cases of Esther and Judith scholars agree that the stories of individual Israelites are not told purely for their own sakes but with a view to their significance for the story of the nation, in the case of Tobit this has been much less commonly recognized.1 The book has been generally read as the personal story of Tobit and his family.2 Some scholars have even found the predictions of the national future in chapters 13–14 so lacking in congruity with the rest of the book that they have pronounced them later additions,3 a position that is hardly tenable now that these chapters are known to have belonged to the Aramaic text of Tobit used at Qumran.4 The proposal of this essay is that, not only is the story of Tobit and his family set within the broader context of national history and destiny, but also it functions as a kind of parable of that national history and destiny. * First publication: Mark Bredin ed., Studies in the Book of Tobit: A Multidisciplinary Approach (LSTS 55; London/New York: T. & T. Clark, 2006) 140–164. 1 Scholars who have recognized this include G. W. E. Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature Between the Bible and the Mishnah (London: SCM Press, 1981), pp. 33–35; W. Soll, ‘Misfortune and Exile in Tobit: The Juncture of a Fairy Tale Source and Deuteronomic Theology,’ CBQ 51 (1989), pp. 209–31. 2 See, for example, the account of ‘The Teaching of the Book’ in J. A. Fitzmyer, Tobit (CEJL ; Berlin / New York: de Gruyter, 2003), pp. 46–49. 3 Notably F. Zimmermann, The Book of Tobit (Jewish Apocryphal Literature: Dropsie College Edition; New York: Harper, 1958); and P. Deselaers, Das Buch Tobit: Studien zur Entstehung, Komposition und Theologie (OBO 43; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag / Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), who makes this part of a complex redactional theory. 4 For this and other reasons not to deny the integrity of the book as we have it, see Fitzmyer, Tobit, pp. 42–45.

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Tobit’s story is a parable of Israel’s story from exile to restoration. In using the term parable I distinguish it from allegory. I do not propose that every character or event in Tobit’s story has its non-allegorical counterpart in the story of Israel, but that the overall shape of Tobit’s story models that of Israel. The story of Tobit has its own narrative integrity, such that it entertains and instructs readers even if its parabolic function is not recognized (unlike, for example, the extended allegories in Ezek 17 and 19). Nor am I proposing that the book is to be categorized generically as a parable. Rather parable (mashal, comparison) describes the way that Tobit’s story functions in the wider national-historical framework of the book as a model for the past, present and future story of Israel, a personal story with which the national story can be compared. A further aspect of the proposal in this essay is that it takes seriously, as no other modern interpreters of the book have done, Tobit’s narrative setting in the exile of the northern Israelite tribes (those which even modern scholars have inappropriately conceived as ‘lost’). Tobit’s eschatological prospect is not simply the restoration of the exiles of Judah, but, more importantly for the message of the book, the return of the exiles of the northern tribes to the land of Israel and their reconciliation to Jerusalem as the national and cultic centre.

The pattern of judgment and mercy The plot of the book of Tobit focuses on three misfortunes and the way that each is reversed. They are Tobit’s poverty, Tobit’s blindness and Sarah’s lack of a husband. In a sense all three are Tobit’s own misfortunes, since his desire that Tobias marry a close relative makes Sarah the most eligible wife for Tobit’s son and the most eligible mother of his grandchildren. Through Sarah’s deliverance Tobit’s line is perpetuated. Although the remedy for each of the three misfortunes is different, Tobias is the agent of all three and Azariah / Raphael is in all three cases the helper who enables Tobias to succeed. The three misfortunes are therefore closely interlinked and the stories of how they are remedied are closely intertwined. Moreover, as Will Soll has pointed out,5 all three misfortunes are ‘acute manifestations of a more chronic problem, the exile itself.’6 As the narrative is told, Tobit suffers the common misfortune of his tribe and nation, exile under Assyrian rule, 5 W. Soll, ‘Misfortune and Exile in Tobit: The Juncture of a Fairy Tale Source and Deuteronomic Theology,’ CBQ 51 (1989), pp. 222–25. 6 Soll, ‘Misfortune,’ p. 225. This is least obvious in the case of Sarah, but it is arguable that the activity of the demon Asmodeus is an aspect of the misfortunes of exile in a Gentile land, as Soll, ‘Misfortune,’ p. 225, argues.

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before the more specific evils – the loss of his property (1.20) and the loss of his sight (2.10) – come upon him. Correspondingly, at the end of the book, after his sight and his property have been restored, Tobit foresees the end of exile for his descendants and his nation. The national story of misfortune and its reversal thus forms a kind of broad inclusio around Tobit’s individual story of misfortune and its reversal. Tobit attributes both his misfortune and its reversal to God. When his eyes are opened, he says, ‘Though he has afflicted me, he has had mercy upon me’7 (11.15; cf. also 11.17).8 This formula is very significant. As several scholars have recognized, it reflects the theology of Deuteronomy and the deuteronomic history, in which the nation’s misfortunes are understood to be divine judgments on its sin, while repentance and righteousness can lead to God’s mercy, delivering from judgment and restoring the nation’s fortunes.9 God’s treatment of Tobit is, at the very least, along the same lines as his treatment of Israel. But the parallel becomes quite explicit in chapter 13, Tobit’s great hymn of praise to God. Just as the formula – God afflicts and God shows mercy – occurs in 11.15 as the reason for Tobit to bless God on his own account, so it recurs three times in chapter 13 as the reason why all Israelites should join Tobit in blessing God.10 The first occurrence of the formula is a general statement about God: For he afflicts, and he shows mercy; he leads down to Hades in the lowest regions of the earth, and he brings up from the great abyss, and there is nothing that can escape his hand (13.2).

This echoes God’s great self-declaration at the end of the Torah, in the Song of Moses, with reference also to the parallel claim in the Song of Hannah: See now that I, even I, am he; there is no god beside me. I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and no one can deliver from my hand (Deut. 32.39).11 7

The second clause is lacking in GII, but preserved in GI and OL . Quotations of Tobit in English translation are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted. NRSV translates the longer Greek recension (GII), witnessed primarily by Codex Sinaiticus. 9 A. A. Di Lella, ‘The Deuteronomic Background of the Farewell Discourse in Tob 14:3–11,’ CBQ 41 (1979), p. 382; C. A. Moore, Tobit (AB 40A; New York: Doubleday, 1996), pp. 263–64. 10 Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature, p. 33, recognizes the importance of this application of the formula both to Tobit and to Israel, suggesting that the application to Tobit is secondary and the national expectation foremost in the author’s mind and intention. 11 Quotations from the Bible in English translation are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted. 8

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The LORD kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up (1 Sam. 2.6).

In Second Temple Judaism the Song of Moses was often read as a prophecy of Israel’s future, predicting Israel’s subjection to the nations and subsequent deliverance and restoration by YHWH .12 If Tobit’s hymn can be seen as in some sense an equivalent to the Song of Moses, as Steven Weitzman argues,13it is not because the latter ends with Moses’ prediction of Israel’s original settlement in the land, whereas Tobit’s foresees the corresponding re-settlement of exiled Israel in the land,14 but because the Song of Moses was widely understood as itself predicting Israel’s restoration after exile. Tobit takes up Moses’ own prophecy, elaborating it with allusions to later prophecies of restoration in the prophets. In the Song of Moses, deliverance and restoration for Israel can be expected from God because he is as he describes himself in 32.39: the one whose will none can resist, the one who, in sovereign power, kills and makes alive, wounds and heals. Tobit’s hymn takes up this characterization of God for just the same purpose: to ground the promise of God’s restoration of Israel following judgment and exile. The same God who scattered sinful Israel will re-gather repentant Israel (Tob. 13.5–6). Following this initial use of the formula – God afflicts and God shows mercy – to characterize God’s ways in general at the beginning of Tobit’s hymn (13.2), he subsequently uses it more specifically, addressing all Israel: He afflicted15 you for your iniquities, but he will again show mercy on all of you. He will gather you from all the nations among whom you have been scattered (13.5).

But Tobit’s vision of Israel’s future is also Jerusalem-centred (and in this respect also deuteronomic), just as his understanding of her punishment is. It was for worshipping Jeroboam’s calf in Dan and on all the mountains of Galilee, rather than going to Jerusalem, as Tobit alone did (1.6–8), that his tribe had been exiled (1.4–5). Therefore his prophecy of Israel’s restoration in chapter 13 gives pride of place to the glorious Jerusalem of the future (13.9–17). He ends his address to Israel by calling on all to acknowledge the divine King ‘in Jerusalem’ (13.9), the place of his earthly dwelling (1.4), and 12 R. H. Bell, Provoked to Jealousy: The Origin and Purpose of the Jealousy Motif in Romans 9–11 (WUNT 2/63; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994) chapter 7. 13 S. Weitzman, ‘Allusion, Artifice, and Exile in the Hymn of Tobit,’ CBQ 115 (1996), pp. 49–61; idem, Song and Story in Biblical Narrative (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), pp. 67–68. 14 Weitzman, ‘Allusion,’ pp. 54–55; idem, Song, pp. 67–68. 15 The past tense is found here in OL and Vg, whereas GII (Sinaiticus) has ‘will afflict.’ NRSV follows GII in the text, but gives ‘afflicted’ in the marginal note.

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turns to address Jerusalem herself in the rest of the hymn. Significantly this address to Jerusalem begins by applying the formula – God afflicts and God shows mercy – to Jerusalem: O Jerusalem, the holy city, he will afflict16 you for the deeds of your hands, but will again have mercy on the children of the righteous (13.7).

Thus the four occurrences of the formula (11.15; 13.2, 5,7) describe God’s ways in general and apply it to the particular cases of Tobit himself, Israel and Jerusalem. This creates a strong parallel between Tobit’s story and that of the nation. Indeed, it indicates that the reason Tobit sings his hymn of joyful praise to God for his future dealings with Israel is that he himself has experienced precisely the mercy of God after judgment that Moses and the prophets have predicted for Israel. He takes his own experience to be a confirmation of God’s intention for the nation.17 He also takes this demonstration of God’s powerful mercy in his own case as a basis for calling on Israel to repent so that the whole nation may likewise experience God’s mercy after judgment (13.6). It is clear that, so far from chapter 13 being unrelated to Tobit’s own story, there is a close correlation and connexion between Tobit’s own experience and his celebration of Israel’s future in this hymn.

Tobit’s solidarity with his people In the early part of the book Tobit is portrayed as a righteous man, who, when he lived in Israel, was an exception to the apostasy that brought exile on his people, and, when in exile, was known for his acts of charity to his people, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and burying the dead. This might seem to obviate a comparison between his misfortune and Israel’s. Israel’s misfortune was deserved, but Tobit’s, apparently, was not. However, we must also take account of the way Tobit sees himself as in solidarity with his people, in their sin as well as in their misfortune. There is only one formal quotation from Scripture in the book, which therefore deserves closer attention than interpreters have given it. When Tobit’s celebration of the feast of Pentecost with his family was interrupted by the news that the corpse of a murdered Israelite was lying unburied, 16

Here NRSV prefers the reading of OL and Vg (‘afflicted’), consigning that of GII (‘will afflict’) to the marginal note. But the latter is confirmed by 4QT oba 17.2.8. It makes good sense, because from Tobit’s perspective the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians lies still in the future (cf. 14:4). 17 Moore, Tobit, p. 284, recognizes this but in rather too general terms: ‘If God had done all that for Tobit and his family, how much more, concludes Tobit, will God do for his people and his Holy City?’

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Tobit left his food untouched and went to bury the body (2.1–4). On his return from this sad task, he ate [his] food in sorrow. Then I remembered the prophecy of Amos, how he said against Bethel, “Your festivals shall be turned into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation.” And I wept (Tob. 2.5–6).

The quotation is from Amos 8.10: I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation.

Tobit has modified the quotation only to the extent of turning the firstperson speech by YHWH into the ‘divine passive’ that only implies YHWH as the agent of the action. The change is probably not due to ‘an unwillingness to ascribe evil to God,’18 for there is another example of the ‘divine passive’ in 1.4 and in this case the action is not judgmental (Jerusalem ‘had been chosen from among all the tribes of Israel’). Elsewhere Tobit shows no reluctance to attribute his misfortunes to God (3.5; 11.15). The alteration of the words of Amos may be due to a reverential unwillingness by Tobit to speak as though in the divine first-person. The appositeness of the quotation depends not only on the fact that Tobit’s celebration of a festival has given place to mourning, but most probably also on the fact that in the unquoted context in Amos the mourning is related to the unburied bodies of the dead, just as Tobit’s is: “The songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day,” says the Lord GOD ; “the dead bodies shall be many, cast out in every place” (Amos 8.3).

Evidently Tobit sees the way in which his own celebration of Pentecost had been overtaken by mourning for the murdered man as an instance of the judgments of God on Israel to which the words of Amos refer. What is striking is the fact that, by explicitly informing the reader that Amos’s words were spoken against Bethel, Tobit explicitly problematizes their reference to his own case. The words are certainly not being reapplied by ignoring their context in the book of Amos, where it is the festivals at the illegitimate sanctuary in Bethel (among others) that are being condemned (cf. Amos 5.5; 7.10–13; 8.3). Tobit has himself made clear both that it was for this illegitimate worship in sanctuaries other than Jerusalem that his tribe had been condemned to exile (1.5), but also that he alone had not participated in it, instead fulfilling all the requirements of Torah in Jerusalem 18

Zimmermann, The Book of Tobit, p. 56, followed by Moore, Tobit, p. 129.

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(1.6–8). Of course, the feast of Pentecost should have been celebrated in Jerusalem (Deut. 16.9–11), and the fact that, by virtue of his exile,19 Tobit had to celebrate it at home in Nineveh may serve to associate his worship with the apostate worship that had brought the exile on his people. While it can hardly be blameworthy in the way that that apostasy was, nevertheless Tobit’s inability fully to fulfil the requirements of Torah highlights the way he, despite his innocence, had had to suffer the full consequences of the sins of the rest of his people. Because they had refused to worship in Jerusalem, now he, no less than they, was obliged to worship apart from Jerusalem. Though innocent, he is identified with the sins of his people. The point is reinforced by the circumstance that, whereas those condemned by Amos were also, in the immediate context, denounced for exploitation of the poor (Amos 8.4–6; cf. 2.6–7; 5.11–12), the occasion for Tobit’s quotation of Amos had come about through his charitable concern for the poor (Tob 2.2–3). By applying Amos 8.10 to his own case Tobit is not protesting his innocence, compared with the sins of his people, but accepting God’s treatment of him because of his solidarity with his people. This significance of the quotation becomes even more notable when we appreciate a point that previous interpreters have missed: that the quotation in its context in Tobit not only points backwards to the preceding episode (2.1–5) but also forwards to what follows. What precedes the quotation is an instance of the first line (‘Your festivals shall be turned into mourning’), but it is what follows that instantiates the second line (‘and all your songs into lamentation’). It anticipates Tobit’s lament in 3.1–6, which culminates the whole account of Tobit’s misfortunes and expresses the extremity of his grief over them. In this light we can see that the quotation from Amos, the only formal quotation from Scripture in the book, has pivotal importance for understanding the meaning of Tobit’s sufferings as a whole. What brings Tobit to the extremity of grief expressed in his lament is not only his blindness (2.9–10), but also the taunts and reproaches thrown at him even by his (presumably Israelite) neighbours (2.8) and even by his wife (2.14). These form an inclusio around the section that describes the infliction and consequences of his greatest misfortune: blindness (2.8–11). This coheres with the special prominence reproaches and insults have in Tobit’s lament (2.4,6). Anna’s reproach, rather like Job’s wife’s (Job 2.9–10),20 proves the final aggravation that precipitates his lament. But there is a crucial difference from Job. Tobit does not protest his innocence, but confesses his sins along with those of his people (3.3, 5). Unlike Job’s questioning of the justice of God, Tobit begins his lament by emphatically confessing it 19 20

The Jerusalem Temple, of course, was still standing at this time. But note the differences pointed out by Moore, Tobit, p. 135.

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(3.2). Tobit never questions God’s justice, however much the reader of the book may be tempted to do so. It is likely that, in the episode that leads to Anna’s reproach, Tobit is portrayed as finally acting in a way that is not entirely blameless. He is unjustifiably suspicious of her, refusing to believe her truthful explanation, and angry with her (2.13–14). It is a sin to which his extreme misfortunes have finally driven him. Just as his innocent participation in the exile his people deserved gave him no choice but to disobey Torah to the extent of not celebrating the festivals in Jerusalem, so now his further misfortunes provoke him to a truly blameworthy act. Perhaps the realisation that he has acted wrongly and that Anna’s reproach was at least partly justified is what leads to his grief and his voicing of the lament. On the other hand, he evidently still feels Anna’s reproach, which appears to question either the sincerity or the value of his charitable acts (2.14), to have been ‘undeserved’ (3.6). However, what is notable about the lament is how Tobit treats himself as a sinner alongside his people and even acknowledges God’s justice in punishing him as well as them: Do not punish me for my sins and for my unwitting offences and those that my ancestors committed before you. They sinned against you, and disobeyed your commandments. So you gave us over to plunder, exile, and death, to become the talk, the byword, and an object of reproach among all the nations among whom you have dispersed us. And now your many judgments are true in exacting penalty from me for my sins. For we have not kept your commandments and have not walked in accordance with truth before you (3.3–5).

This acknowledgement of sin and just punishment could not be more different from Job’s approach to God or, closer to home, from Sarah’s lament, which speaks only of her innocence (3.14–15). Thus, despite the initial portrayal of Tobit as exemplary in his faithful observance of Torah, the narrative of Tobit’s misfortunes climaxes in his own representation of himself as fully in solidarity with his people’s sins and their punishment.21 It is this solidarity that qualifies Tobit to function in the book both as a representative of Israel’s just punishment and as a representative of God’s merciful reversal of that punishment. His solidarity with his people in the lament introduces a kind of logic that is worked out in the closing sections of the book. For if God does respond to Tobit’s prayer 21

Cf. Soll, ‘Misfortune,’ p. 224: Tobit ‘identifies himself with wayward Israel to a striking degree.’

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that he not be further punished for his sins (3.3), then his solidarity with his people should also mean that God will withhold further punishment also from Israel as a whole.

Images of exile and restoration The parallels between the misfortunes of Tobit and their reversal, on the one hand, and the misfortunes of Israel and their reversal, on the other, are strengthened by the way the former reflect ways in which Deuteronomy and the prophets predict the misfortunes of Israel’s punishments and restoration. We recall that there are three key personal misfortunes that are reversed: Tobit’s loss of his property, Tobit’s blindness and Sarah’s lack of a husband. In the case of Tobit’s deprivation of his property – taken from him by the Assyrian king Sennacherib (1.20) – Tobit himself provides the parallel when he characterizes Israel’s punishment as ‘plunder, exile, and death’ (3.4). The plundering of faithless Israel’s goods by the nations who oppress her is predicted in Deuteronomy’s catalogue of evils that God will bring on his people who rebel against him (Deut. 28:30–31, 33, 51; cf. 2 Kgs 21.14), but the more fundamental parallel to Tobit’s misfortune may be Israel’s loss of ‘the good land’ (as Deuteronomy echoed by Tob 14.4 calls it), the source of all her material sustenance and prosperity. The reversal of Tobit’s plight, in this aspect, will be paralleled in Israel’s case not only by the restoration to the land (Tob. 14.5, 7), but also by the wealth of the nations that will pour into the gloriously restored Jerusalem (Tob. 13.11; cf. Isa. 60.5–7, 9, 11; 61.4; 66.12). Blindness also occurs among the punishments Deuteronomy predicts for faithless Israel (Deut. 28.29, 65). But we should also notice that Tobit speaks of his blindness as equivalent to death: I am a man without eyesight; I cannot see the light of heaven, but I lie in darkness like the dead who no longer see the light. Although still alive, I am among the dead (Tob. 5.10).

There may scriptural allusions here: We wait for light, and lo! there is darkness; and for brightness, but we walk in gloom. We grope like the blind along the wall, groping like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among the vigorous as though we were dead (Isa. 59.9–10). I am one who has seen affliction

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under the rod of God’s wrath; he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light…. he has made me sit in darkness like the dead of long ago (Lam. 3.1–2, 6; cf. also Mic. 7.8–9).

We might also note that, in common with the speakers in Isaiah 59.10, blind Tobit stumbles (Tob. 11.10). As for Tobit’s healing, the opening of the eyes of the blind is a standard feature of the Isaianic prophecies of Israel’s restoration (Isa. 29.18; 35.5; 42.7, 16, 18; cf. 9.2). The vocabulary of healing is used in Tobit for both the healing of Tobit’s blindness and the delivery of Sarah from the demon (2.10; 3.17; 5.10; 6.9; 12.3, 14). In most of these cases (all except 6.9), the Greek verb is , the verb that usually, in the Septuagint, translates the Hebrew . This Hebrew verb is also, of course, part of the name of the angel Raphael (‘God has healed’) and it is Raphael who is sent by God to heal both Sarah and Tobit (3.17; 12.14). In the Hebrew Bible, is often used to speak of God’s healing of the nation of Israel or of Jerusalem (e. g. 2 Chron. 7.14; 30.20; Jer. 3.22; Hos. 11.3; cf. Isa. 19.22). It is a standard image of restoration (Isa. 30.26; 57.18–19; Jer. 30.17; Hos. 6.1; 6.11–7.1; 14.4), sometimes associated with the gathering of the exiles and the rebuilding of Jerusalem (Jer. 33.6–9; Ps. 147.2–3). Often it is God who has wounded his people as punishment and who subsequently will heal them (Isa. 57.17–19; Jer. 30.10–17; 33.5–6; Hos. 6.1). Perhaps especially significant is God’s declaration of his identity and ways in the Song of Moses: I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and no one can deliver from my hand (Deut. 32.39).

We have already pointed out that Tobit’s hymn paraphrases this: For he afflicts, and he shows mercy; he leads down to Hades in the lowest regions of the earth, and he brings up from the great abyss, and there is nothing that can escape his hand (13.2).

Here Deuteronomy’s ‘I wound and I heal’ corresponds to Tobit’s ‘he afflicts and he shows mercy,’ which we have seen to be the formula by which Tobit’s own suffering and restoration are correlated with those of Israel and Jerusalem. Among Deuteronomy’s predictions of evils for apostate Israel we also find: ‘You shall become an object of horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the Lord will lead you’ (Deut. 28.37; cf. 28.25; 1 Kgs 9.7; Jer. 24.9; Ps. 44.13–16). Tobit himself alludes to this passage when he laments the punishments God has inflicted on his people:

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So you gave us over to plunder, exile, and death, to become the talk, the byword, and an object of reproach among all the nations among whom you have dispersed us (Tob. 3.4).

The correspondence with his own suffering of reproaches and insults (2.8, 14; 3.6) is obvious in the context. This suffering of reproaches is a form of distress that Tobit shares with Sarah (3.7, 10, 13). Finally, among Deuteronomy’s curses is one that Anna suffers: ‘you will strain your eyes looking for them [the sons and daughters who have been taken from you] all day but be powerless to do anything’ (Deut. 28.32). Anna instantiates this curse when, day after day, she spends the whole of the daylight hours watching the road Tobias had taken (Tob. 10.7). The curse is reversed when finally she sees him coming (11.5–6).

Sarah’s story as a parable of the desolation and restoration of Jerusalem In the previous section we have mentioned Sarah’s plight and restoration only in two respects that she shares with Tobit: she suffers insults and is healed by Raphael. But in Sarah’s story in particular there are also scriptural resonances that suggest that (whereas Tobit models the story of Israel) Sarah models the story of the city of Jerusalem, often portrayed as a woman or, more specifically, a bride. Sarah’s plight is that of a childless widow with no prospect of marriage or children. Her plight is reversed when Tobias marries her and she bears seven sons. She resembles Jerusalem after its fall to the Babylonian armies: deserted, without inhabitants. But in marriage and childbearing she resembles the gloriously restored Jerusalem of the prophets: You [Jerusalem] shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be called Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight Is In Her, and your land Married (Isa. 62.4).

The account of Sarah in Tobit seems especially designed to recall the portrayal of the desolate Jerusalem in the book of Lamentations, which begins: How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations! She that was a princess ( ) among the provinces has become a vassal (Lam. 1.1).

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Given (as we shall show more fully below) that most of the names in Tobit seem carefully chosen for their significance, it is probably not coincidental that Sarah’s name ( , meaning ‘princess’) occurs in this opening verse of Lamentations as an epithet of Jerusalem. Lamentations goes on to describe Jerusalem weeping bitterly in the night (Lam. 1.2; cf. Tob. 2.10) and the taunts she suffers (Lam. 2.14–15; cf. Tob. 3.7–9). Sarah does not become the bride of God, as Jerusalem is in some of the prophets. It may be that her marriage to Tobias prefigures the embracing of Jerusalem as Israel’s cultic centre on the part of the northern tribes. Or it may be that the joy of the marriage celebration is simply an appropriate image of the restoration of previously desolate Jerusalem: In this place of which you say, “It is a waste without human beings or animals,” in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate, without inhabitants, human or animal, there shall once more be heard the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride…. (Jer. 33.10–11).

The personal names It has been widely recognized that many of the personal names in Tobit have been chosen for their significance in relation to the story, but the correct significance has not always been recognized and the full significance not appreciated. This is particularly true of the names Tobit and Tobias. Tobit’s father, Tobit himself and his son bear related names. His father’s name Tobiel ( ) means ‘God is good,’ his son’s name Tobiah ( ) 24 or ,23 ) is means ‘YHWH is good,’22 while his own name ( a hypocoristicon (i. e. abbreviated form) of one or the other. The names are not, as Carey Moore claims,25 to be considered ironic – in view of Tobit’s sufferings. Rather they are prophetic of the goodness of the Lord as it appears in the reversal of the family’s misfortunes. When Tobit, his sight restored, blesses God, saying, ‘Though he afflicted me, he has had mercy upon me. Now I see Tobias my son’ (11.15), there may be a double entendre: ‘Now I see that YHWH is good.’26 His son’s name comes true, as it were, when the divine pattern of scourging and having mercy is completed. 22 The names are sometimes said to mean ‘God is my good’ and ‘YHWH is my good,’ but this is probably incorrect; see R. Zadok, The Pre-Hellenistic Israelite Anthroponymy and Prosopography (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 28; Leuven: Peeters, 1988) 52. 23 On the Greek forms of the name, see Fitzmyer, Tobit, p. 93. 24 That this was the original, Semitic form of the name is now confirmed by the Qumran Aramaic and Hebrew fragments (4Q197 4.3.5, 6; 4Q200 4.7; 6.1). 25 Moore, Tobit, p. 25. 26 Soll, ‘Misfortune,’ p. 229, citing J. Craghan.

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These names may well constitute an allusion to Nahum 1.7: The Lord is good ( ), a stronghold in a day of trouble; he protects those who take refuge in him.

This is one of the few statements about God’s salvation of his people27 in the midst of a book largely devoted to prophesying God’s judgment on Nineveh. Because of this dominant theme Nahum is, besides Amos, the only prophet named in Tobit (14.4). His book clearly had a special significance for exiles of northern Israel, and the fulfilment of its prophecy of the destruction of Nineveh (14.4, 15) was an assurance that all the prophecies, especially those of future restoration, would also come true: ‘not a single word of the prophecies will fail’ (14.4). It would be quite appropriate for Tobit’s and Tobias’s names to echo Nahum’s prophecy. The words, ‘YHWH is good,’ are also well known in the recurrent refrain in the Psalms: ‘The Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever’ (Pss 100.5; 106.1; 107.1; 118.1, 29; 135.3; 136.1; 1 Chron. 16.34; 2 Chron. 5.13; 7.3; Ezra 3.11), but there is also an occurrence of this refrain, especially significant for the theme of Tobit, in Jeremiah 33.11. The context is a prophecy of the restoration of Israel (33.6–12) to which we have already referred. In the once desolate cities of Judah, there will again be heard voices of joy. The climax of the list of such voices is the voices of those who sing, as they bring thank offerings to the house of the Lord: “Give thanks to the Lord of hosts, for the Lord is good ( ), and his steadfast love endures forever!” (Jer. 33.11)

Tobias’s name is what the exiles will sing when they have returned to the land and give thanks to YHWH in the Jerusalem Temple. The prophetic significance of the name thus points far ahead of the personal experiences of Tobit’s family to the ultimate fulfilment of the divine promises of national restoration. Several names of Tobit’s relatives28 contain the Hebrew root (‘to show favour, to be gracious’): Hananiel (‘God has been gracious’) (Tob. 1.1); Hananiah (‘YHWH has been gracious’) (5.13–14); and, most importantly, Tobit’s wife Anna or Hannah (‘[God’s] grace’). In the Hebrew Bible grace is a key attribute and activity of YHWH and is closely related to his mercy (cf. Exod. 34.6). It can refer to God’s favour shown to individuals or to Israel, 27 Note also Nah. 1.12: ‘Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no more.’ This may have influenced Tobit’s phrasing of the formula ‘he afflicts but he shows mercy.’ 28 NRSV gives the name Hanael (‘the grace of God’) in 1.21 for the Greek , but 1Q196 2.6 shows the original Semitic form of this name is .

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not least in acts of restoration after judgment (Amos 5.15; Ps. 102.13; Isa. 30.19; Jer. 31.2), including that of the northern tribes (2 Chron. 30.9). We have already noticed the significance of the names Raphael (‘God has healed’) and Sarah (‘princess’). The appropriateness of Raphael’s assumed human name, Azariah (‘YHWH has helped’), is obvious. The names of Sarah’s parents, Raguel ( , ‘friend of God’) and Edna ( , cf. , ‘delight’), seem to be appropriate in only a rather general sense. ‘Friend of God’ suggests Abraham (cf. 2 Chron. 20.7; Isa. 41.8), but the word is not used in his case. Edna’s name recalls the Garden of Eden ( ), and it is worth noticing that the prophecies of the restoration of Jerusalem speak of the city as a desert that will become like the garden of Eden (Isa. 51.3; Ezek. 36.35; cf. Joel 2.3), while the precious stones said by Ezekiel to be in Eden (Ezek. 28.13) resemble those of which the restored Jerusalem will be built (Tob. 13.16).

Restoration for the northern tribes Recognizing that Tobit’s story is told as a paradigm for the restoration of Israel requires us to take particularly seriously the fact that Tobit is a Naphtalite. His tribal membership is of considerable significance for him. He is precise about his geographical origins (Tob. 1.2). It was primarily for people of his own tribe that he performed acts of charity (1.3, 16). He himself married within his tribe and clan (1.9) and he expects his son to do the same (4.12; cf. 3.15). It was because Azariah belonged to a good family closely related to Tobit’s that Tobit was willing to put his son into Azariah’s care (5.11–14). A narrative so embedded in such specific tribal loyalty can scarcely serve as the paradigm for a restoration of the nation in a sense that would exclude this tribe from it. Indeed, within his hymn, Tobit includes his personal hope for his own descendants: How happy I will be if a remnant of my descendants should survive to see your [Jerusalem’s] glory and acknowledge the King of heaven (13.16).

We cannot suppose the author’s hope of restoration was such as to exclude this hope expressed by the hero of his tale. Why should the author have chosen a Naphtalite family for his story? In the deportations of Israelites by the Assyrians and the Babylonians, according to the biblical history, the tribe of Naphtali has a special place. They were the first to be deported: In the days of King Pekah of Israel, King Tiglath-pileser of Assyria came and captured Ijon, Abel-beth-maacah, Kedesh, Hazor, Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali; and he carried the people captive to Assyria (2 Kgs 15:29).

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Though it remains mysterious that Tobit has transferred this action from one Assyrian king (Tiglath-pileser) to his successor (Shalmaneser) (Tob. 1.2), it is certainly to this deportation that he refers. Tobit’s references to Kedesh Naphtali29 and Hazor place his home village, Thisbe, clearly within the geographical area to which 2 Kings 15.29 refers.30 By making a family deported in this very first of the deportations the subject of his story, the author of Tobit has devised a story that can apply inclusively to all the deported tribes. Tobit’s family stands for all those who were exiled subsequently, down to the fall of Jerusalem. From his vantage-point at the beginning of exile, Tobit can foresee the whole history of exile: All of our kindred, inhabitants of the land of Israel, will be scattered and taken as captives from the good land; and the whole land of Israel will be desolate, even Samaria and Jerusalem will be desolate (Tob. 14.4).

Not only was Naphtali the first tribe to be deported; it is also specifically mentioned in a prophecy of restoration in which that deportation is recalled: In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them the light has shined (Isa. 9.1–2 [Hebrew 8.23–9.1]).

The precise meaning of verse 1 is obscure and debated,31 but it could certainly have been read as an instance of Tobit’s formula for the judgmental and restorative action of God: he afflicts and he has mercy.32 In that case, the subject is God, who humbled these northern tribes by subjecting them to exile, but will glorify their land when he restores them. That such a reading has informed the book of Tobit seems especially attractive when we notice also that verse 2 puts the twofold experience of the tribes into language applicable literally to Tobit’s experience. Blind Tobit lay ‘in darkness like the 29 It is clear that Tobit took the Kedesh Naphtali of Judg. 4.6 to be Kedesh in Upper Galilee. This is why his grandmother was called Deborah (1.8). 30 This makes the identifications of the places by J. T. Milik, ‘La Patrie de Tobie,’ RB 73 (1966), pp. 522–30, implausible. 31 A reference to two phases of Assyrian conquest seems likely: cf. Y. Aharoni, The Land of the Bible: A Historical Geography (2 nd edition; London: Burns & Oates, 1979) 374; J. Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39 (AB 19; New York: Doubleday, 2000), p. 247. 32 Cf. B. S. Childs, Isaiah (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), p. 80: ‘two qualities of time, judgmental and redemptive, are being contrasted…. [This verse] anticipates both the humiliation and exaltation of the land by the use of the perfect form of the verbs.’

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dead who no longer see the light’ (Tob. 5.10) until he was healed and saw the light (11.8). Thus Tobit models the experience of his tribe, and his tribe that of all the tribes. This understanding of the treatment of Naphtali as paradigmatic of all the tribes of Israel coheres with an emphasis, also found in Tobit, on all the tribes. Jerusalem, he insists, ‘had been chosen from among all the tribes of Israel, where all the tribes of Israel should offer sacrifice’ (Tob. 1.4). The centrality of Jerusalem to Tobit’s eschatological expectation (13.9–17) is not, from this perspective, a particularly Judean hope but a genuinely panIsraelite hope: All the Israelites who are saved in those days and are truly mindful of God will be gathered together; they will go to Jerusalem and live in safety forever in the land of Abraham (14.7).

An expectation of the return and reunification of all the tribes of Israel is found frequently in the prophets (Nah 2.2; Isa. 11.11–16; 27.12–13; 43.5–6; Jer. 3.18; 16.14–15; 23.6–8; 31.7–14, 31; Ezek. 11.14–17; 20.1–44; 37.16–23; 47.13–14, 21–23; 48.1–35; Hos. 11.10–11; Zech 8.13; 9.1; 10.6–12) and in the literature of early Judaism (e. g. Sir 36.13, 16; 48.10; 2 Macc 1.27–29; 1 Enoch 90.33; Pss Sol. 8.28; 11.1–9; 17.26; 4 Ezra 13.39–50; 2 Bar. 78.1–7). It is therefore not at all surprising to find it in Tobit. As in Tobit, many of these passages explicitly make Jerusalem the centre of the regathered tribes. What is distinctive in Tobit is that the regathering and return of all the tribes is viewed from the perspective of the northern tribes in exile. This point can be appreciated particularly if we consider the role of the fall of Nineveh in Tobit. The conclusion of the book narrates how Tobias, now in Media, heard of the destruction of Nineveh and saw the citizens of Nineveh led captive into Media. Tobias praised God for all he had done to the people of Nineveh and Assyria; before he died he rejoiced over Nineveh, and he blessed the Lord God forever and ever (14.15).

The point is not just that God judged Nineveh for its oppression, but that the fulfilment of this prediction of the prophets guarantees the fulfilment of the rest of their predictions, including Israel’s restoration to the land, along with the glorified Jerusalem to which all Israel will adhere. Earlier in the chapter Tobit has associated Nahum’s prophecy of the judgment of Nineveh, in which he firmly believes, with his confidence that ‘everything that was spoken by the prophets of Israel, whom God sent, will occur’ (14.4). The point is given remarkable emphasis, twice repeated. On this basis Tobit then goes on to predict what will happen up to and including the final restoration (14.4–7). The further waves of deportation, the fall of both Samaria and Jerusalem, and especially the destruction of the temple,

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are predicted. But the return and rebuilding of the Temple in the time of the Persian Empire are mentioned mainly in order to indicate that they are relatively minor acts of God’s mercy, not to be mistaken for ‘the times of fulfilment’ (14.5). Only later they all will return from their exile and will rebuild Jerusalem in splendour; and in it the temple will be rebuilt, just as the prophets of Israel have said concerning it (14.5).

From the perspective of the northern tribes in exile, the one event still in Tobit’s future that is of decisive significance for their future is the fall of Nineveh. This is the event that brings with it the assurance that God will also restore them to the land. God’s judgment of Nineveh is the obverse of his mercy for his people oppressed by Nineveh. The fall of Nineveh concludes the book because it is the last event that really matters to the exiles of northern Israel prior to the still future restoration of all Israel and Jerusalem. Notably, Tobit’s predictions do not include the fall of Babylon, so important for the exiles of Judah. If Tobit has in view an audience primarily of exiles of the northern tribes, then the particular focus of the book provides an intelligible message. It makes clear to them that their exile was the consequence especially of their apostasy from Jerusalem, the God-given cultic centre for all Israel. The words of the prophets, especially Amos, who denounced their apostasy and foresaw their judgment were vindicated in their exile. But the further fulfilment of the prophecies of judgment on Nineveh, especially by Nahum, should assure them that God’s promises to have mercy on his people will be fulfilled in their restoration to the land. The glorious new Jerusalem of the future will be theirs just as much as Judah’s and Benjamin’s. What is required of them meantime is repentance and righteousness. For this Tobit, in his loyalty to Jerusalem and his assiduous practice of charity, provides a model. They have shared his affliction, and, if they practise his righteousness, they will also experience God’s mercy as he did. His story will set the pattern for the story of all Israel. Is Tobit then a book for the diaspora of the northern tribes? For this to be plausible, we must establish that, at the time of writing, there was such an identifiable diaspora of the northern tribes.

What became of the exiles of the northern tribes? The date of the book of Tobit is difficult to determine with any precision. On the one hand, it presupposes the building of the Second Temple (14.5) and probably the final editing of the Pentateuch. On the other hand, the

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lack of belief in a personal destiny after death (also characteristic of Ben Sira) suggests a relatively early date. But the book’s failure to reflect either the events or the spirit of the Maccabean period does not necessarily, as has been commonly held, make it ‘unquestionably pre-Maccabean,’33 since this would not be surprising in a work written, as we shall argue Tobit was, in the eastern diaspora and for the exiles of the northern tribes. It is now widely agreed that the Aramaic fragments from Qumran preserve the text in its original language. Fitzmyer has classified this as Middle Aramaic, along with other Qumran Aramaic texts such as the Genesis Apocryphon, the books of Enoch, and the Targum of Job. On the basis of the language and his agreement with other critics that it must be pre-Maccabean, Fitzmyer opts for a date between 225 and 175 bce.34 I doubt if we can be so precise. The available texts in Middle Aramaic for comparison are few, and Fitzmyer himself points out that ‘copyists often changed the forms to their customary modes of writing.’35 Neither a date earlier in the Hellenistic period (or even the late Persian period)36 nor a later second-century date is impossible. For our present argument a more precise dating would make no difference, since most scholars seem agreed that exiles of the northern tribes preserving their Israelite identity in the eastern diaspora had ceased to exist long before the Hellenistic period. Shemaryahu Talmon (who uses here the term ‘Ephraimite’ to refer to the northern kingdom of Israel as a whole) writes: On account of the small size of their community and their second-class status, the Ephraimite expatriates were unable to organize any resistance to their captors. Under duress, they adjusted to the difficult situation of life in exile. Neither biblical nor extra-biblical sources attest to the emergence in Assyria of an Israelite exilic community that was marked by identifiable cultural characteristics which set it apart from the surrounding foreign society, and distinguished the faith system of its members from that of their compatriots in the homeland who had escaped banishment.37 Their passivity was further deepened by the fact that the biblical sources do not give any reason for assuming that the Ephraimite diaspora ever developed an expectation of a return to the land. It may be said that the absence of the hope of a restoration on the Samarians’ spiritual horizon, of the deportees as of those who remained on their soil, was a primary cause of the disappearance of the ten tribes from the stage of history. Lacking the spiritual stamina for successfully resisting assimilation to the surrounding society, in the diaspora as well as in the homeland, the population of the Northern Kingdom fell prey to a process of internal dissolution, which culminated in its final 33

Moore, Tobit, p. 41. Fitzmyer, Tobit, pp. 18–27, 50–52. 35 Fitzmyer, Tobit, p. 52. 36 Cf. L. L. Grabbe, ‘Tobit,’ in J. D. G. Dunn and J. W. Rogerson ed., Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), p. 736. 37 He appears to mean the worship of YHWH only as one god of the Canaanite pantheon. 34

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eclipse not long after the fall of Samaria. Consequently the Ephraimite diaspora in Assyria shall have no part in the post-exilic restitution of a new in the land, possibly with some exceptions (see below).38

The possible exceptions to which he refers are a group of three families listed among those who returned from Babylonia to Judea in the early Persian period. These families, who came from a series of named but not now identifiable39 places, were unable to authenticate their genuinely Israelite descent (Ezra 2.59–60). Talmon suggests that these families had lived in the diaspora for longer than the Judeans deported in 586, and so may have lost information about their ancestry.40 Although, intriguingly, one of the three families is that of Tobiah (Ezra 2.60),41 this suggestion must remain no more than a guess unless the place names in Ezra 5.59 can be identified with places in the areas where exiles of the northern tribes settled (i. e. in northern Mesopotamia or Media). There are several problems with Talmon’s remarks on the fate of the exiles of the northern tribes. One is that he fails to refer at all to Assyrian deportations prior to the fall of Samaria in 722 bce (thus ignoring 1 Chron. 5.6, 26 as well as 2 Kgs 15.29), with the result that his reference to the small numbers of the deportees may well be mistaken. Tiglath-Pileser, himself, in an Assyrian text about his campaign of 733–32 (the one to which 2 Kgs 15.29 and Tob. 1.2 refer), claims to have deported 13,520 Israelite captives, while an archaeological survey has confirmed a marked decline in the population of the area at this time. Moreover, as well as the unknown numbers deported in Shalmaneser’s campaign up to 722, we know from Assyrian sources that 27,290 were deported by Sargon in 720 and probably others in 716.42 There seems good reason to suppose that the northern Israelite exiles were more numerous than the exiles of Judea deported later by the Babylonians (only 4600 according to Jer. 52.28–30), and so the number of the northern Israelite exiles cannot be said to have inhibited their survival as a distinctive ethnic and cultural group. (Incidentally, the book of Tobit’s strong concern for 38 S. Talmon, ‘ “Exile” and “Restoration” in the Conceptual World of Ancient Judaism,’ in J. M. Scott ed., Restoration: Old Testament, Jewish, and Christian Perspectives (JSJS up 72; Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 119–120. 39 For the best suggestions up till now, see J. Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah (OTL ; London: SCM Press, 1988), p. 91. 40 Talmon, ‘ “Exile”,’ p. 130. 41 More likely than a connexion with the book of Tobit is the possibility that this name is connected with the Tobiah clan that we know from Babylonian sources to have formed a large part of the Jewish community in the Babylonian city of Nippur during the Persian period: see R. Zadok, The Jews in Babylonia during the Chaldean and Achaemenian Periods according to the Babylonian Sources (Haifa: University of Haifa, 1979), pp. 54–55, 62–64. 42 K. L. Younger, ‘Israelites in Exile,’ BAR 29/6 (2003), pp. 41–42.

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endogamous marriage illustrates one way in which such identity could be preserved across generations.) Talmon’s assertion of their lack of ‘spiritual stamina’ is, of course, sheer speculation. When he states that ‘the biblical sources do not give any reason for assuming that the Ephraimite diaspora ever developed an expectation of a return to the land,’ we must ask in what sort of biblical sources we could expect to find evidence of such an expectation. The Bible preserves no texts or even traditions from northern Israelite sources subsequent to the fall of Samaria. We have only Judean sources. What is impressive – and ignored by Talmon – is the persistent expectation in the prophets (notably Jeremiah, Ezekiel, later parts of Isaiah, and both Zechariah and Deutero-Zechariah) of the return of the northern tribes to the land and their reunification with the southern tribes. This is surely the strongest evidence we could reasonably expect from Judean sources about the continuing identity of the northern Israelite exiles. While we cannot exclude the possibility that this prophetic expectation had no connexion with empirical reality, it seems unlikely to have persisted so strongly if no one had heard of any such Israelite exiles for a century or two. Talmon has also ignored the considerable number of Israelites, identifiable mostly by their theophoric names referring to YHWH , who appear in Assyrian texts down to the end of the seventh century.43 If Israelites preserved their distinctive identity among the Assyrians for more than a century there seems no reason why they could not have preserved it for much longer. Like Tobit and his relative Ahikar in the book of Tobit, some of the Israelites who appear in Assyrian sources were employed in the imperial administration and attained high office. Others served in the army and even as Assyrian priests. Of course, there is little evidence of the majority of Israelite deportees and their descendants, who were poor and in some cases slaves. K. Lawson Younger detects in these Assyrian sources a process of ‘Assyrianization’ of Israelite families. This is evidenced by families in which the father bears an Israelite name but the son an Assyrian one.44 Doubtless many families did become completely assimilated to Assyrian culture, intermarried with non-Israelites and forgot their Israelite identity. But the evidence is quite insufficient for us to tell whether these were a majority or even a large minority of the northern Israelite exiles. Even the evidence of

43 Younger, ‘Israelites in Exile,’ pp. 45, 65–66. The latest such text he notes is from 602 bce. Zadok, The Jews in Babylonia, pp. 35–37, gives a somewhat less complete list of instances down to 621 bce. 44 Younger, ‘Israelites in Exile,’ p. 66.

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names is not conclusive, for it was possible to adopt an Assyrian name in addition to an Israelite one (cf. Est. 2.7; Dan. 1.7).45 The Israelites deported from the northern kingdom by the Assyrians were settled in three areas: (1) Halah, which is probably the Assyrian Halahhu, an area and town north-east of Nineveh; (2) the Habor river, which flows into the Euphrates in northern Mesopotamia, and on which the city of Gozan stood; and (3) the cities of Media (2 Kgs 17.6; 18.11; 1 Chron. 5.26). Assyrian sources confirm these three locations.46 The first two locations are both within the northern Mesopotamian area of Assyria proper. Later evidence tends to associate the northern Israelite exiles especially with the third location, Media (Josephus, Ant. 9.279; 11.131–133; Liv. Proph. 3.16–17; Asc. Isa. 3.2), and thus confirms the impression given in Tobit that Media became the most important place of exile for them (cf. Tob. 1.14; 3.7; 4.1; 5.6; 14.12–15). Josephus, writing in the late first century ce, certainly supposes that the descendants of the exiles of the ten tribes were still living in Media in his time (Ant. 11.131–133). The locations are crucial to establishing the continuity of the northern Israelite diaspora. By rabbinic times, the three main areas of the eastern Jewish diaspora were (1) southern Mesopotamia, where the exiles of Judah had been settled by the Babylonians and where many of them remained after the resettlement of some in Palestine during the Persian period; (2) northern Mesopotamia, the area known in Roman times as Nisibis and Adiabene, and corresponding to the Assyria of earlier times; (3) Media.47 It is a very likely deduction that the Jews of northern Mesopotamia were predominantly descended from the northern Israelite exiles who settled around Halah and the Habor river, while those of Media were descended from those Israelites of the northern tribes who settled there in the eighth century, perhaps augmented later by others. This is much more likely than that the original Israelite exiles in these areas entirely lost their Israelite identity, but were replaced later by Jews emigrating from the land of Israel or Babylonia. 45 An especially interesting comparable case is that of Ahikar, i. e. the historical figure on whom the later Book of Ahikar was based (and, in turn, the figure of Ahikar in Tobit). He was a high official of king Esarhaddon’s time and bore the Assyrian name Aba-enlil-dari. But, according to an Assyrian text, the Ahlamu (Arameans) called him Ahuqar (Ahikar). See J. C. VanderKam, ‘Ahikar / Ahiqar,’ in D. N. Freedman ed., The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), vol. 1, p. 114. It could be because Ahikar was an Aramean that the author of Tobit felt able to make him an Israelite (cf. Deut. 26.5). 46 Younger, ‘Israelites in Exile,’ p. 66. 47 For rabbinic references to the Median diaspora, see R. Bauckham, Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), pp. 88–90. Note especially the letter of Gamaliel the Elder addressed to ‘our brothers belonging to the exile of Babylonia and belonging to the exile of Media and all the other exiles of Israel’ (t. Sanh. 2.6).

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But there is an important corollary. The rabbinic sources assume that the Israelites of those areas shared the same general kind of Judaism as the Jews of Babylonia and Israel, i. e. they accepted the Torah of Moses as known to other Jews and the (by then, of course, theoretical) exclusive centrality of the Jerusalem Temple for Jewish faith. At some point the northern Israelite exiles must have adopted Jerusalem’s form of the Israelite religion. There is probably evidence in Josephus that this had happened by the late Second Temple period. He recounts (Ant. 11.311–13, cf. 379) how the two cities of Nisibis and Nehardea served as the collecting points for the temple tax contributions from the eastern diaspora, where the resulting huge sums of money could be kept safe until they were conveyed to Jerusalem along with the caravans of pilgrims, whom Josephus numbers at tens of thousands. Nehardea was the most important centre of the Jewish exiles in Babylonia, located on the Euphrates to the west of Seleucia and Ctesiphon. Because Josephus appears to locate Nisibis on the Euphrates near Nehardea (Ant. 18.311), many scholars have saved his geographical accuracy by supposing it to be, not the famous Nisibis in northern Mesopotamia, but another, otherwise unknown Nisibis near Nehardea.48 But it is more likely that Josephus made a geographical mistake. Rather than two collecting points for the tax contributions in close proximity, it would make sense that for the eastern diaspora as a whole there was one (Nehardea) in southern Mesopotamia and another (Nisibis) in northern Mesopotamia.49 The latter would be the natural centre to which the exiles in Adiabene and northern Mesopotamia would send their tax and gather for making the journey to Jerusalem, but it would also serve the Median diaspora, being located on the main route from Media to Jerusalem. We have no information at all about when and how the exiles of the northern tribes adopted the Jerusalem-centred version of their religion that they evidently did come to share with their fellow-exiles from Judah in Babylonia – unless the book of Tobit bears some relation to this process. As we have seen, its message amounts to an argument that, just as the northern Israelite exiles have seen the fulfilment of the prophecies of Deuteronomy and the prophets in their own punishment and in the punishment of their adversary Assyria, so, if they repent, they can expect to share in the restoration of all the tribes in the land, as the same prophets also predicted. But Tobit emphatically links this interpretation of both the past and the future of the northern tribes with the centrality of Jerusalem, as promoted by Deuteronomy and the prophets. We can surely imagine Israelites in 48 E. g. A. Oppenheimer, Babylonia Judaica in the Talmudic Period (Beihefte zur Tübinger Atlas der vorderen Orients B47; Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1983) 333–34. 49 J. Neusner, A History of the Jews in Babylonia: I. The Parthian Period (SPB 9; revised edition; Leiden: Brill, 1969) 13–14, 47 n.2.

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northern Mesopotamia and Media finding hope and inspiration in the book of Tobit and in its reading of the law and the prophets, and finding in Jerusalem a welcome symbolic focus both of national-religious identity in the diaspora and of hope for a better future. Thus the book of Tobit itself may have played a part – we cannot tell how significant – in the conversion of the northern Israelite exiles to its own Jerusalem-centred Judaism, and may have been composed precisely for this purpose.

Geographical errors?50 We have argued that the book of Tobit not only reflects a diaspora situation, as most scholars have agreed, and more specifically the context of the eastern diaspora, as some scholars agree,51 but also that it addresses precisely the situation of the exiles of the northern tribes. On this view, it must either have been written in Media itself for the Median diaspora or written elsewhere in the eastern diaspora, most likely Babylonia, but with the Median diaspora as its intended audience. The historical errors in chapter 1 of the book,52 which are often cited in this connexion, really only exclude an origin close in time to the end of the Assyrian empire. In the ancient world such errors are easily possible even a century after the events and even in areas geographically close to the events. They are no argument against the composition of Tobit in Media or Babylonia in the Persian period. More serious are the commonly alleged geographical errors, which are two.53 The first concerns the location of Nineveh. In 6.2, Tobias and Raphael, having set out from Tobit’s home in Nineveh on their way to Ecbatana, 50

This section is a revised version of Bauckham, Gospel Women, pp. 103–107. Listed in Moore, Tobit, pp. 42–43; and in Fitzmyer, Tobit, p. 54. Deselaers, Tobit, p. 322, summarizes the arguments which have been advanced for an origin in the eastern diaspora (which he does not accept), and in n.24 lists those who have taken this view. Deselaers, Tobit, p. 323, advances against the hypothesis of an origin in the eastern diaspora the remarkable argument that there is no hope for return from exile, so characteristic of the eastern diaspora, in the book. This argument is possible only because his theory of several stages of expansion of the book eliminates such a hope from the Grunderzählung. 52 These are listed in Fitzmyer, Tobit, p. 32. 53 C. C. Torrey, The Apocryphal Literature (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon, 1963 reprint of 1945 edition), p. 86; D. C. Simpson, ‘The Book of Tobit,’ in R. H. Charles ed., The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), p. 185; Zimmermann, Tobit, 16; C. A. Moore, ‘Tobit, Book of,’ in D. N. Freedman ed., The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), vol. 6, pp. 587–588; Fitzmyer, Tobit, p. 33. Fitzmyer, Tobit, p. 54, finds the ‘geographical and historical anomalies’ a great difficulty for placing the origin of Tobit in the eastern diaspora, and so tentatively prefers Palestine. 51

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camp for their first night beside the river Tigris. From Nineveh, which lay just to the east of the Tigris, the road to Ecbatana led east: it would not meet or cross the Tigris. We should note that it is not really clear that the author thought Nineveh lay to the west of the Tigris, since he does not say that Tobit and Raphael had to cross it.54 He may have thought only that their route ran beside the Tigris for some distance.55 But that the relation of Nineveh to the Tigris was vague in his mind is not inconsistent with his living in Media or Mesopotamia two or more centuries after Nineveh’s destruction in 612 bce. Nineveh did not exist in his time. When Xenophon passed through the area in 401 bce, he saw a ruined, uninhabited city, which he was told had been a Median city called Mespila (Anabasis 3.4.10–12).56 It was certainly the ruins of Nineveh that he saw, but evidently his guides could not identify it as the famous capital of the Assyrian empire (of which Xenophon would certainly have heard). The southern part of ancient Nineveh (Nebi Yunis) was later resettled and rebuilt as a Hellenistic city, but this was probably not before the second century bce.57 The second, more serious error concerns the location of the two most important cities of Media: Ecbatana and Rhagae (Rages, Ragha).58 According to Tobit 5.6 b, ‘It is a distance of two regular days’ journey from Ecbatana to Rhagae, for it lies in the mountains ( ), while Ecbatana is in the middle of the plain.’59 Rhagae (modern Rai, about five miles south-east of Teheran) is in the plain, though a minor mountain ridge curves around it and the major range, the Elburz mountains, is close. Ecbatana is located in the Zagros mountains, far from the plain. Moreover, they are 180 miles 54

Nor is it clear, as Torrey, Apocryphal Literature, p. 86, claims, that 11:1 implies they have to cross the Tigris on their return journey. 55 It is even possible, though not likely, that he thought of the suburbs of Nineveh spreading across the Tigris to the west, as indeed they probably did (cf. D. Oates, Studies in the Ancient History of Northern Iraq [London: British Academy, 1968], p. 77), and, influenced by Jonah 3:3, supposed that from Tobit’s house in these western suburbs it was a day’s journey to the Tigris. Moore, Tobit, 198, cites two other possible explanations of the geography of 6.2: Tobit and Raphael ‘may have stopped at either one of [the Tigris’s] eastern tributaries… or, because the “fish” caught there was “large” (v 3), possibly the Upper or Lower Zab, both of which are called “the Tigris” (Herodotus, Hist. V.52).’ For these suggestions, see also Fitzmyer, Tobit, 205. 56 Oates, Studies, p. 60, supposes that Xenophon saw both the ruins of a Median city (Nineveh) and a nearby town called Mespila, but this is clearly a misunderstanding of the passage. 57 Oppenheimer, Babylonia, pp. 312–313. 58 For the information in ancient sources on Rhagae, see A. V. W. Jackson, ‘A Historical Sketch of Ragha, the Supposed Home of Zoroaster’s Mother,’ in J. J. Modi ed., Spiegel Memorial Volume: Papers on Iranian Subjects (F. Spiegel FS ; Bombay: British India Press, 1908), pp. 237–245. 59 This is my translation from the text of Greek Recension II . There are many minor variations in the manuscripts of the Old Latin in this passage, but the text I have translated is nevertheless well supported.

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apart, by the most direct route.60 Thus the whole statement is erroneous. No inhabitant of Media could have made it. However, it is possible to question whether it is an original part of the text of Tobit.61 It does not fit its context very happily. Raphael explains how far it is from Ecbatana to Rhagae, but has not explained how far it is from Nineveh to Ecbatana, even though Tobias has told him he does not know the roads to Media or how to get there (5.2). Even if the distance between the cities has some relevance to the conversation, it is not at all clear why their respective locations in the mountains and the plain should be added. The whole statement could easily be a later gloss, by someone, a scribe or the Greek translator, who thought the relation of the lesser known city, Rhagae, to the better known, Ecbatana, needed explanation.62 A better test of the author’s knowledge of Median geography is whether the story, as told in 8.20–10.8, allows sufficient time for Raphael to travel from Ecbatana to Rhagae and back. The narrative assumes that, within a period of fourteen days, the period of the wedding celebration (8.20; 10.7), Raphael travels from Raguel’s home in Ecbatana to the home of Gabael in Rhagae, and Raphael and Gabael then travel to Ecbatana, arriving before the end of the wedding celebrations (9.6). Raphael travels with four servants and two camels, the latter for the purpose of transporting the money bags on the return journey. This means that, although Raphael is an angel in disguise and is capable of moving from place to place very rapidly indeed (8.3), we cannot suppose that he in fact travels faster than a human could. We can assume that both journeys are made with as much speed as possible, since Tobias has sent Raphael on this mission precisely so that he should not have to stay in Ecbatana longer than strictly necessary (9.4), while Gabael will be anxious to arrive in time to join at least the end of the wedding celebrations. Allowing for Sabbaths, when they could not travel, six days is the most that the journey in each direction could take. For the view that this is too short a period for the journey from Ecbatana to Rhagae, recent commentators have followed Frank Zimmermann’s reference to Arrian’s account (Anabasis 3.19.8–3.20.2; cf. also Plutarch, Alexander 42) of Alexander the Great’s pursuit of Darius, in which it took 60 R. D. Milns, ‘Alexander’s Pursuit of Darius through Iran,’ Historia 15 (1966), p. 256. 61 Zimmermann, Tobit, p. 73, doubts that it is (but his statement that it is lacking in the Old Latin is mistaken), though, inconsistently, on p.16 he treats it as evidence that the author of Tobit was ignorant of the geography of Media. 62 That the statement does not occur in the manuscripts of the abridged Greek recension (I) has little significance. Unfortunately neither this verse nor its context is represented among the Qumran fragments of Tobit. The view that Ecbatana was located on a plain was apparently a common western mistake, found also in Diodorus 2.13.6 (Moore, Tobit, p. 184).

458

23. Tobit as a Parable for the Exiles of Northern Israel

ten (or eleven) days of forced marches for Alexander and his army to make the journey from Ecbatana to Rhagae.63 But this is certainly not good evidence that this was the fastest time in which the distance could be covered, as the various discussions of Alexander’s route in this area make clear. A. B. Bosworth argues that Arrian is incorrect in saying that Alexander travelled to Rhagae via Ecbatana, preferring Curtius’s report (5.8.5) that when Alexander heard that Darius had left Ecbatana, he broke off his march into Media and went in pursuit.64 But those who accept Arrian’s account have long pointed out that it could not have taken Alexander’s army this long to cover the direct route from Ecbatana to Rhagae. J. Marquant pointed out in 1907 that the distances given in the Arabic itineraries make it no more than a nine days’ journey, and concluded that Alexander must have made a detour.65 A. F. von Stahl calculated that the direct route would take eight days, and argued for a detour to the south,66 while G. Radet argued for a detour to the north.67 J. Seibert suggests that Alexander could have been delayed by battles.68 Clearly Alexander’s march provides no secure basis for calculating the time the same journey would take Raphael and Gabael. It is better to begin with the fact that the distance of 360 (180 × 2) miles (581 kms) would have to be covered in twelve days (the longest time available within the narrative) at the rate of 30 miles (48 kms) per day. Reliable estimates of the distances foot-travellers in the ancient world could cover per day are hard to come by. William Ramsay, discussing the Roman world, cites Friedländer’s estimate of 26 or 27 Roman miles69 per day, but thinks it too high, largely on pragmatic grounds of what modern people find possible, and the fact that people not in a hurry and travelling in the Mediterranean summer, 63

Zimmermann, Tobit, p. 16; Moore, Tobit, p. 184; Fitzmyer, Tobit, p. 189. A. B. Bosworth, ‘Errors in Arrian,’ CQ 26 (1976), pp. 132–136. The latest discussion of the issue, in J. Seibert, Die Eroberung des Perserreiches durch Alexander d. Gr. auf kartographischer Grundlage (Beihefte zur Tübinger Atlas des vorderen Orients B68; Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1985), pp. 111–112, n. 46, notes Bosworth’s view but finds difficulties with it. 65 J. Marquant, ‘Alexanders Marsch von Persepolis nach Herat,’ Philologus: Supplementband 10 (1907), p. 21. 66 A. F. von Stahl, ‘Notes on the March of Alexander the Great from Ecbatana to Hyrcania,’ Geographical Journal 64 (1924), pp. 317–318. He calculates that the direct route measures about 310 kms (193 miles), which he says would take 8 caravan stages at the rate of 35 kms (22 miles) per day. In fact, it would take about 39 kms (24 miles) per day for 8 days. His proposed southern detour would make 440 kms (273 miles), requiring 40 kms (25 miles) a day for 11 days. 67 G. Radet, ‘La dernière campagne d’Alexandre contre Darius (juin-juillet 330 avant J.-C.),’ in Mélanges Gustav Glotz, vol. 2 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1932), pp. 767–771. 68 Seibert, Die Eroberung, p. 112. 69 The Roman mile was 1,618 English yards. 64

Geographical errors?

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when most travel was done, would probably travel only in the morning, a five-hour stage before noon. But he admits that people in a hurry would travel a second such stage in the evening.70 On the other hand, it has been calculated that Roman soldiers managed a daily maximum distance of only 30 kms (18.6 miles) per day.71 These calculations seem to make 30 miles (48 kms) per day an almost impossible pace to maintain for two weeks, even for people in a hurry, as Raphael and Gabael are. Eighteen days, at a rate of 20 miles (32 kms) per day, would seem more realistic.72 This agrees with Marquant’s calculation that, according to the Arabic itineraries, the journey from Ecbatana to Rhagae would take nine days.73 These considerations make it unlikely that the author of the book of Tobit himself lived in Media. However, the error, if such it is, in calculating the travelling distance between Ecbatana and Rhagae is not gross. Even for people living in Babylonia or Adiabene, Rhagae was remote. The mistake would be quite possible. There is therefore no serious obstacle here to concluding that the book was written largely for the benefit of exiles of the northern tribes, who lived in Adiabene and especially in Media, by an author living somewhere in the eastern diaspora other than Media.

70 W. M. Ramsay, ‘Roads and Travel (in NT ),’ in J. Hastings ed., A Dictionary of the Bible: Extra Volume (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1904), p. 388. 71 C. P. Tiede, The Emmaus Mystery (London: Continuum, 2005), p. 33, citing M. Junckelmann, Die Legionen des Augustus: Der römische Soldat im archäologischen Experiment (Mainz, 1986), pp. 233–34. 72 Tiede, The Emmaus Mystery, 26, says of a distance of 43 Roman miles (63.5 kms) (from Rome to Forum Appii), that, ‘For someone in a hurry, it could be done in two days, but the seasoned traveller would have taken three.’ 73 Marquant, ‘Alexanders Marsch,’ p. 21.

24. The Continuing Quest for the Provenance of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha* For most scholars and students of the New Testament the most important question about the indefinite category of works generally known as Old Testament pseudepigrapha is: which of them are reliable evidence for the Judaism of the late Second Temple period? Since most of them have been preserved only in Christian traditions and in manuscripts dating from centuries after the New Testament period (as well as frequently only in languages other than those in which they were composed), the question has to be asked individually and specifically about each such work. There is a core of such works that are almost universally accepted as composed by non-Christian Jews before the middle of the second century CE. This includes those of which at least fragments have been found at Qumran (Jubilees, all parts of 1 Enoch except the Parables, and the apocryphal Psalms 151–155), as well as the Psalms of Solomon, the Testament of Moses, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch,1 Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities, the Letter of Aristeas, 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees2 and Sibylline Oracles book 3. But a much larger range of works,3 whose date and/or provenance remains debatable, have in the last few decades been treated by many scholars as also of nonChristian Jewish provenance and of sufficiently early date to be relevant to New Testament research: the Parables of Enoch, 3 Baruch, 2 Enoch, the Apocalypse of Abraham, the Ladder of Jacob, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Testament of Abraham, the Apocalypse of Zephaniah, the * This essay also appears in Gerbern S. Oegema and James H. Charlesworth (eds.), The Pseudepigrapha and Christian Origins: Essays from the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, London: T & T Clark, 2008. 1 Rivka Nir, The Destruction of Jerusalem and the Idea of Redemption in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (SBL Early Judaism and its Literature 20; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003) has argued that 2 Baruch is a Christian composition, but she seems to have persuaded few scholars. For an argument against her proposal, see James R. Davila, The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha: Jewish, Christian or Other? (JSJSup 105; Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2005) 126–131. 2 4 Ezra (in the expanded form 2 Esdras) usually and 3 Maccabees and 4 Maccabees sometimes are included in English editions of the Apocrypha, but are also regularly classified with the Pseudepigrapha. 3 I am excluding here works, such as the Apocryphon of Ezekiel, which survive only in small fragments.

462 24. The Continuing Quest for the Provenance of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Martyrdom of Isaiah (a section extracted from the Ascension of Isaiah), Joseph and Aseneth, the Lives of the Prophets, the Life of Adam and Eve (Apocalypse of Moses), the Testament of Job, 4 Baruch (Paralipomena of Jeremiah), Pseudo-Phocylides, Jannes and Jambres, the Prayer of Manasseh, and Sibylline Oracles books 1–2 (in part), 4, 5 and 11. Most (though not all) of these works contain some manifestly Christian features, but scholars who treat these works as of Jewish provenance judge the Christian features to be secondary accretions to the original works and no impediment to use of these works as evidence of the Jewish context of the New Testament writings. All or most of them are treated as early Jewish compositions in such standard works as George Nickelsburg’s Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah (first edition),4 the Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum volume on Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period,5and the revised version of Schürer’s The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ,6 all published in the 1980’s.

More or fewer, sooner or later, more or less Jewish? James Charlesworth’s landmark edition of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha in two volumes,7 also from the 1980s, probably represents the highest point of scholarly optimism as to the number of such works that can be confidently considered Jewish and of sufficiently early date to be relevant to the study of the New Testament. This is the judgement, more or less confidently made, by the authors of the introductions to virtually all of the works I have just listed in Charlesworth’s edition. Though it was manifest to most readers that some of the fifty-two works included in the collection, such as the Greek Apocalypse of Daniel and the Odes of Solomon, were of unequivocally Christian provenance, the collection did foster the 4 George W. E. Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah (London: SCM Press, 1981). Of the works I have listed, the Ladder of Jacob, the Lives of the Prophets, Pseudo-Phocylides, the Prayer of Manasseh, Jannes and Jambres, and the Sibyllines other than book 3 are not included. 5 Michael E. Stone ed., Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period (CRINT 2/2; Assen: Van Gorcum/Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984). Of the works I have listed, only the Ladder of Jacob, and Jannes and Jambres are not included. 6 Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B. C. – A. D. 135), new English edition edited by Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar and Martin Goodman, vols. 3/1 and 3/2 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986, 1987). The Apocalypse of Zephaniah and the Ladder of Jacob are considered dubiously Jewish. 7 James H. Charlesworth ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1983, 1985).

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impression that all of its contents were in some sense early Jewish and that the Christian dimension of many of these works, whether redactional or interpolated, was a relatively unimportant addition to their substantially Jewish character. After all, Charlesworth’s definition of the Pseudepigrapha claimed that these writings ‘almost always were composed either during the period 200 B. C. to A. D. 200 or, though late, apparently preserve, albeit in an edited form, Jewish traditions that date from that period.’8 Charlesworth himself admitted that a ‘few documents now collected in the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha are far too late for New Testament research,’9 and listed thirteen such,10 none of which occur in the list I have given of works treated by many scholars as substantially early Jewish. Few of Charlesworth’s list of thirteen have ever been used as evidence for the Jewish context of the New Testament. Charlesworth also urged considerable caution in the use of the works preserved only in Slavonic (the Apocalypse of Abraham, the Ladder of Jacob, and 2 Enoch) because of the strong possibility of Bogomil interpolation and redaction of such works.11 Also to ‘be used with great circumspection’ are works that ‘are originally Jewish but have received both Christian interpolations and extensive and occasionally imperceptible Christian redaction.’12 But again, with the exception of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, those Charlesworth mentions as belonging to this category13 have never been much used by New Testament scholars. Moreover, Charlesworth’s specific discussion of this problem in the case of the Testaments of the Twelve leaves the distinct impression that it is a problem specialists can easily and adequately overcome: Again we must perceive that the Jewish source or sources behind the Testaments would have looked appreciatively different from the extant Greek version; and that, of course, means that the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is not to be read as a Jewish document, like Jubilees or 1 Enoch, that pre-dates Early Christianity … The explicit christological phrases and passages are the result of Christian interpolation and redaction. They must not be used in describing the background of the New

8

James H. Charlesworth, ‘Introduction for the General Readers,’ in Charlesworth ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1, xxv. 9 James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the New Testament (SNTSMS 54; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) 32. 10 3 Enoch, the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra, the Latin Vision of Ezra, the Questions of Ezra, the (calendrical) Revelation of Ezra, the Apocalypse of Sedrach, the Greek Apocalypse of Daniel, the Testament of Isaac, the Testament of Jacob, the Testament of Solomon, the Testament of Adam, the History of Joseph, and Syriac Menander. 11 Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the New Testament, 32–36. 12 Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the New Testament, 36. 13 Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, History of the Rechabites, Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah, Hellenistic Synagogal Prayers.

464 24. The Continuing Quest for the Provenance of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Testament. Yet, most specialists can perceive the relatively obvious, and at times quite clear, limits of the Christian addition to the Jewish document.14

The kind of approach taken by Charlesworth and many of the contributors to his collection – a confident delimitation of the Christian element in texts that display both ostensibly Christian and ostensibly Jewish features – largely resembles that of R. H. Charles, while extending the approach to many more works than Charles included in his own edition. One of the other great pioneers of the modern study of Old Testament pseudepigrapha, M. R. James, was more inclined to regard such works as simply Christian compositions. A smaller collection of Old Testament pseudepigrapha (containing only twentyfive works), edited by H. F. D. Sparks and published contemporaneously with Charlesworth’s,15 followed more in the footsteps of James than of Charles.16 Though the translations were done by other scholars, Sparks himself wrote the introductions to the works, and he was much more ready than any of the contributors to Charlesworth’s collection to leave open the issue of Jewish or Christian provenance. He does this in the case of the Life of Adam and Eve, the Apocalypse of Abraham, the Testament of Abraham, the Ladder of Jacob, the Paralipomena of Jeremiah (4 Baruch), and the Apocalypse of Zephaniah, while, like James, he considers the Testament of Job to be Christian and 3 Baruch to be a Christian composition using Jewish materials. The Testaments of the Twelve in his view, which owes much more to the work of Marinus de Jonge than Charlesworth’s approach,17 is a Christian work, using Jewish sources. Thus Sparks takes a much more cautious approach to the question of early Jewish provenance than Charlesworth, even taking account of Charlesworth’s own exhortations to caution in some cases. Almost all the pseudepigraphal works that Sparks accepts as unequivocally early Jewish belong to the core of works I indicated as so regarded by almost all scholars: Jubilees, the Assumption (i. e. Testament) of Moses, the Psalms of Solomon, and 2 Baruch.18 In addition he follows Marc Philonenko in judging the short recension of Joseph and Aseneth to be early Jewish, but the longer recensions to be Christian. At the time it looked as though the mainstream of scholarship on the Old Testament pseudepigrapha was going with Charlesworth towards a maximal 14

Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the New Testament, 40. Hedley F. D. Sparks, The Apocryphal Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984). 16 For his conscious difference of approach from that of Charles, see Sparks, The Apocryphal Old Testament, xiii–xvii. 17 De Jonge’s work is discussed below. 18 Sparks did not include in his collection works that occur in the English Apocrypha, and so 4 Ezra is missing. He also understands the term ‘Apocryphal Old Testament’ rather strictly, such that the Sibylline Oracles and the Letter of Aristeas do not qualify. It is rather surprising that he does not include Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities. 15

More or fewer, sooner or later, more or less Jewish?

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view of early Jewish provenance rather than with Sparks’ much more cautious approach.19 Few would disagree that the great merit of Charlesworth’s edition was to bring many hitherto little known Old Testament pseudepigrapha to the attention of scholars of early Judaism and the New Testament. Charlesworth urged an expansion of horizons: The whole Pseudepigrapha is to be digested and assessed for its possible assistance in clarifying the characteristics of Early Judaism. That should mean a careful evaluation of all the fifty-two documents and all the excerpts in the Supplement [i. e. ‘The Fragments of Lost Judeo-Hellenistic Works’] in the light of all the other Jewish writings we have from the period.20

This statement gives the unfortunate impression that Charlesworth’s collection somehow defines what ‘the whole Pseudepigrapha’ is (note the odd use of ‘Pseudepigrapha’ as a singular noun), as though there were not a great many more Old Testament pseudepigrapha not included in Charlesworth’s collection.21 Sparks had a more modest approach: To refer to ‘the Pseudepigrapha’, without further definition or qualification, creates the impression in the popular mind that alongside the ‘canonical’ Old Testament and the ‘deutero-canonical’ Apocrypha there is a third, universally recognized, ‘tritocanonical’ collection of books – when there is not. Any collection of books of this kind, however chosen, is bound to mirror the predilections and the prejudices of its editor(s); and it is well that this should be recognized.22

But, aside from this issue of a definitive collection, Charlesworth’s exhortation was reasonable. Many of the works in his edition had been far too little studied for their relevance to the study of early Judaism and the New Testament to be conclusively established. It was only a pity that this was not more clearly recognized in the introductions to many of the works in his edition. So far as relevance to the study of early Judaism and the New Testament is concerned, Charlesworth’s collection should be regarded as heuristic. Since Charlesworth wrote that exhortation there has, of course, been a great deal of valuable work on individual pseudepigrapha, and much it has tended in the maximal direction that Charlesworth himself favoured. But there have also been a series of important studies that have argued that the ultimate provenance of some of these works is not at all easy to determine, 19 Cf. Lorenzo DiTommaso, ‘A Report on Pseudepigrapha Research since Charlesworth’s Old Testament Pseudepigrapha,’ JSP 21 (2001) 179–207, here 189: ‘one principal characteristic of this period of scholarship is a greater willingness on the part of scholars to use a wider variety of texts and methodologies.’ 20 Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the New Testament, 28. 21 James Davila and I are currently editing a large collection of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha that were not included in Charlesworth’s edition: see http://www.standrews. ac.uk/academic/divinity/MOTP/index-motp.html. 22 Sparks, The Apocryphal Old Testament, xvii.

466 24. The Continuing Quest for the Provenance of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha that the works as we have them must be regarded as Christian compositions and/or of considerably later date than the New Testament period, and that their use of identifiably Jewish traditions, still less of traditions that just look Jewish, does not necessarily make them Jewish compositions. In 1995 David Frankfurter published a study of the Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah that is exemplary in its detailed attempt to understand the work in its context of composition in third-century Egyptian Christianity.23 Frankfurter rejected any attempt to identify a Jewish Grundschrift for this work, while acknowledging that its Christian writer must have drawn on (in his judgment, oral) sources in the Jewish and Christian apocalyptic tradition. In 1995 David Satran published his study of the Lives of the Prophets, arguing that this work as we have it in the earliest identifiable recension is ‘in the fullest sense a text of early Byzantine Christianity,’ however much it may be dependent on earlier Jewish traditions.24 Like Frankfurter’s work this is a carefully contextualized study of an Old Testament pseudepigraphon as a Christian composition that must be appreciated as such and cannot simply be mined for early Jewish material. Ross Kraemer’s book on Joseph and Aseneth, published in 1998,25 issued a strong challenge to the consensus that dates this work in the first century BCE or the first century CE, locates it in Egypt and attributes it to purely Jewish authorship. Kraemer dated it in the third or fourth century CE and judged the evidence inadequate either to locate it or to attribute it to Jewish, Christian, ‘Godfearer’ or even Samaritan authorship.26 Differently from Frankfurter and Satran, Kraemer’s work offers, not a specific historical contextualization of this pseudepigraphon, but a challenge to the accepted one by opening up a wide range of paral23 David Frankfurter, Elijah in Upper Egypt: The Apocalypse of Elijah and Early Egyptian Christianity (Studies in Antiquity and Christianity; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993). See my review in JEH 46 (1995) 488–490. 24 David Satran, Biblical Prophets in Byzantine Palestine: Reassessing the Lives of the Prophets (SVTP 11; Leiden: Brill, 1995) 120. But for restatements of the view that the Lives of the Prophets is a Jewish composition of the first century C. E., with only very limited Christian interpolation, see A. M. Schwemer, Studien zu frühjüdischen Prophetenlegenden Vitae Prophetarum (2 vols.; TSAJ 49–50; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995, 1996); Pieter W. van der Horst, ‘The Tombs of the Prophets in Early Judaism,’ in idem, Japheth in the Tents of Shem: Studies on Jewish Hellenism in Antiquity (Leuven: Peeter, 2002) 119–138. 25 Ross Shepard Kraemer, When Joseph Met Aseneth: A Late Antique Tale of the Biblical Patriarch and His Egyptian Wife, Reconsidered (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). See my review in JTS 51 (2000) 226–228, where I suggest that the possibilities for reading Joseph and Aseneth as embodying Christian theological allegory are greater than Kraemer has recognized. On the other hand, John J. Collins, ‘Joseph and Aseneth: Jewish or Christian?,’ JSP 14 (2005) 97–112, re-affirms, against Kraemer, the early date and Jewish provenance accepted by most recent scholars. 26 See also Ross S. Kraemer, ‘Could Aseneth be Samaritan?,’ in Benjamin G. Wright ed., A Multiform Heritage: Studies on Early Judaism and Christianity in Honor of Robert A. Kraft (Homage Series; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999) 149–165.

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lels, connexions and possibilities. Daniel Harlow’s work on 3 Baruch is also of interest in this connexion. In his monograph, published in 1996, he argued that the original work was a Jewish composition from the decades following 70 CE, though he notably also included a study of the work as a Christian text in order to account for the Christian interest in and redaction of this work.27 But in a paper to an SNTS seminar devoted to the topic of the Christianization of Jewish texts,28 subsequently published in 2001,29 he revised his view. While maintaining that the explicitly Christian features of the text are not original, he leaves it open whether the original work was of Jewish or Christian provenance. The works just surveyed all date from the 1990s, but they cohere closely with the work that Marinus de Jonge has done on the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs over fifty years, beginning with his dissertation, published in 1953.30 It is not surprising that he writes warmly of the work of Satran, Kraemer and Harlow.31 De Jonge has consistently maintained that the Testaments as we have them are Christian works and, although there is evidence of some Jewish sources, there is no reason to suppose, as many scholars do, that the Testaments are a Jewish work to which some Christian interpolations have been added. On the contrary, he has argued that the content of the Testaments coheres well with ideas to be found in such early Christian authors as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Hippolytus. More recently he has extended his approach to the Life of Adam and Eve, arguing that, while the earliest Greek recension has hardly any features that can be regarded as distinctively Jewish or distinctively Christian, the content fits well into mainstream Christianity of the patristic period and there is no reason not to attribute the work to a Christian author.32 In the course 27 Daniel C. Harlow, The Greek Apocalypse of Baruch (3 Baruch) in Hellenistic Judaism and Early Christianity (SVTP 12; Leiden: Brill, 1996). 28 This was the seminar on Early Jewish Writings and the New Testament meeting during the SNTS conference in Tel Aviv, 2000. Other papers from these sessions were also published in JSJ 32/4 (2001). 29 Daniel C. Harlow, ‘The Christianization of Early Jewish Pseudepigrapha: The Case of 3 Baruch,’ JSJ 32 (2001) 416–444. 30 Marinus de Jonge, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Study of their Text, Composition and Origin (Assen: van Gorcum, 1953); see also Marinus de Jonge ed., Studies of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (SVTP 3; Leiden: Brill, 1975); H. W. Hollander and Marinus de Jonge, The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Commentary (SVTP 8; Leiden: Brill, 1985); Marinus de Jonge, Jewish Eschatology, Early Christian Christology and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (NovTSup 63; Leiden: Brill, 1991); idem, Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament as Part of Christian Literature (SVTP 18; Leiden: Brill, 2003). 31 De Jonge, Pseudepigrapha, 43–48, 56–58, 61–62. 32 De Jonge, Pseudepigrapha, chapters 11–13; Marinus de Jonge and Johannes Tromp, The Life of Adam and Eve and Related Literature (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) chapter 4. Note also his questioning of the claim that the Paralipomena of Jeremiah

468 24. The Continuing Quest for the Provenance of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha of his work de Jonge has formulated some methodological principles for the study of pseudepigrapha transmitted by Christians that have also been proposed by Robert Kraft. Since Kraft’s work in this respect has probably been more influential, we shall shortly consider these principles as he has propounded them. Also noteworthy is the complete abandonment, since 1983, by scholars working on the Ascension of Isaiah, of the theory that a Jewish source, the so-called Martyrdom of Isaiah, can be extracted from its Christian redaction in chapters 1–5 of the Ascension of Isaiah.33 As in other cases just mentioned, the plausibility of the incorporation of Jewish traditions by a Christian author has to be distinguished from the identification of a Jewish text from which Christian redaction can easily be distinguished. The extensive work of a mainly Italian research group on the Ascension of Isaiah has shown that at least each of the two sections of the work (chapters 1–5 and 6–11) is a thoroughly coherent Christian composition that does not require source criticism.34 A significant sign of the growing ascendancy of the trend we have been tracing is the second edition of George Nickelsburg’s Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah, published in 2005.35 In this edition, some works which were treated as early Jewish in the first edition have been omitted altogether (Martyrdom of Isaiah, 3 Baruch, Paralipomena of Jeremiah), while five others are treated as ‘of disputed provenance’ (Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Testament of Job, Testament of Abraham, Life of Adam and Eve, Joseph and Aseneth). was originally a Jewish work: Marinus de Jonge, ‘Remarks in the Margin of the Paper, “The Figure of Jeremiah in the Paralipomena Jeremiae,” by Jean Riaud,’ JSP 22 (2000) 45–49; idem, Pseudepigrapha, 52–56. The Christian origin of the Paralipomena of Jeremiah is also maintained by Pierluigi Piovanelli, ‘In Praise of “The Default Position”, or Reassessing the Christian Reception of the Jewish Pseudepigraphal Heritage,’ NTT 61 (2007) 233–250, here 241–249. 33 The case against this view was first made by Mauro Pesce, ‘Presupposti per l’utilitazzione storica dell’Ascensione di Isaia,’ in idem ed., Isaia, il Diletto e la Chiesa: Visione e esegesi profetica cristiano-primitive nell’Ascensione di Isaia (Texte e Ricerche di Scienze Religiose 20; Brescia: Paideia Editrice, 1983) 40–45; idem, Il “Martirio di Isaia” Non Existe: L’Ascensione di Isaia e le Tradizione Giudaiche sull’Uccisione del Profeta (Bologna: Centro Stampa Baiesi, 1984). Cf. Jonathan M. Knight, Disciples of the Beloved One: The Christology, Social Setting and Theological Context of the Ascension of Isaiah (JSPSup 6; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996) 28–32. 34 Especially, Enrico Norelli ed., Ascensio Isaiae Commentarius (CCSA 8; Turnhout: Brepols, 1995). Cf. also Richard Bauckham, ‘The Ascension of Isaiah: Genre, Unity and Date,’ in idem, The Fate of the Dead: Studies on the Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (NovTSup 93; Leiden; Brill, 1998) 363–390. 35 George W. E. Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah (revised edition; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), especially 301–344, 412–423. I have not had access to this edition, and the information I give about it derives from Piovanelli, ‘In Praise of “The Default Position”,’ 234–239.

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Robert Kraft: Methodological Proposals In a paper first presented in 1976 and finally published in 1994,36 a paper that Ben Wright called ‘perhaps the most well-known unpublished paper in the field of Pseudepigrapha studies,’37 Robert Kraft addressed the methodological issues involved in determining the provenance of Old Testament pseudepigrapha. He rightly observed that many scholars have approached the issue of distinguishing between Jewish and Christian materials among Old Testament pseudepigrapha with too little methodological rigour.38 He returned to the same concerns, developing his proposals a little further, in a paper for the already mentioned SNTS seminar on the Christianization of Jewish texts.39 While he has not himself published studies of particular pseudepigraphal texts deploying the kind of methodology he proposes, Kraft’s work has influenced some American scholars, such as Kraemer and Harlow (in the works mentioned above)40 and James Davila (whose work will be discussed below), who have questioned the confidence with which some pseudepigraphal works have in recent decades been treated as Jewish rather than Christian.41 Two methodological principles of particular importance emerge from Kraft’s work. The first is that, when we know a work only as preserved by Christians, as is the case with most Old Testament pseudepigrapha, the starting-point for study of the work must be its Christian context: ‘when the evidence is clear that only Christians preserved the material, the Christianity of it is the given, it is the setting, it is the starting point for delving more deeply into this literature to determine what, if anything, may be safely identified as originally Jewish.’42 On this basis, he maintains that ‘the default position’ must be that ‘sources transmitted by way of Christian communities are “Christian,” whatever else they may prove to be.’ That such works are Christian does not need to be proved. The burden of proof lies with 36 Robert A. Kraft, ‘The Pseudepigrapha in Christianity,’ in John C. Reeves ed., Tracing the Threads: Studies in the Vitality of Jewish Pseudepigrapha (SBLEJL 06; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994) 55–86. 37 Benjamin G. Wright, ‘Introduction,’ in Benjamin G. Wright ed., A Multiform Heritage: Studies on Early Judaism and Christianity in Honor of Robert A. Kraft (Homage Series 24: Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999) xvii. 38 In ‘The Pseudepigrapha,’ 56, he speaks of ‘the relatively uncontrolled and hasty approach pursued by most scholars sifting these materials for clues regarding Judaism.’ 39 Robert A. Kraft, ‘Setting the Stage and Framing Some Central Questions,’ JSJ 32 (2001) 370–395. A slightly different version is available on-line at htpp://ccat.sas.upenn. edu/rs/rak/publics/pseudepig/sntsnew.html. 40 Also the Israeli scholar David Satran: see Satran, Biblical Prophets, 31–32. 41 De Jonge, Pseudepigrapha, chapter 3, provides an approving overview of Kraft’s approach to the Pseudepipha. 42 Kraft, ‘The Pseudepigrapha,’ 75.

470 24. The Continuing Quest for the Provenance of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha claims that they are originally Jewish or incorporate material of originally Jewish provenance.43 The second key methodological principle to emerge from Kraft’s work is that the absence of any distinctively Christian features in a text does not prove it is Jewish. It is possible that ‘self-consciously Christian authors,’ adopting the perspective of the Old Testament Scriptures and other Jewish literature they knew and valued, wrote works that had an Old Testament setting and no explicitly Christian references.44 After all, much that is Jewish is also Christian. As Kraft noted, Sparks had also made this point,45 but it challenges directly the opposite principle, espoused by, for example, many of the contributors to Charlesworth’s edition, that ‘Whatever is not clearly Christian is Jewish.’46 But if Kraft and Sparks are right, how will it be possible to distinguish a Jewish composition from a Christian one of the type we call Old Testament pseudepigrapha? Given that some Jewish compositions of this type undoubtedly were faithfully preserved by Christians (for example, Jubilees and those parts of 1 Enoch of which we have texts from Qumran), careful reflection on the possible criteria that could enable us to make that distinction seems to be needed.

James Davila: Methodology in Action James Davila’s important book, The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha: Jewish, Christian, or Other?,47 has taken up that challenge. He offers a fairly detailed and precise methodology for identifying the provenance of Old Testament pseudepigrapha. The ‘Other’ in the book’s title is significant because Davila maintaints we must take account of all the kinds of persons or groups that could have authored Old Testament pseudepigrapha, not

43

Kraft, ‘Setting the Stage,’ 372–373, cf. 386. Kraft, ‘The Pseudepigrapha,’ 74; ‘Setting the Stage,’ 389–391. 45 Sparks, The Apocryphal Old Testament, xiv–xv. It is recognized also by Michael E. Stone, ‘The Study of the Armenian Apocrypha,’ in Wright ed., A Multiform Heritage, 139–148, here 140–141; idem, A History of the Literature of Adam and Eve (SBLEJL 3; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992) 57–58; Marinus de Jonge, Pseudepigrapha, 28; and William Adler, ‘Introduction’ in James C. VanderKam and William Adler ed., The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity (CRINT 3/4; Assen: Van Gorcum/Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996) 1–31, here 27. 46 Kraft, ‘The Pseudepigrapha,’ 62, cites this formulation from Adolf von Harnack. The principle is also challenged by Michael E. Stone, ‘Categorization and Classification of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha,’ in Stone, Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha and Armenian Studies: Collected Papers, vol. 1 (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 144; Leuven: Peeters, 2006) 3–13, here 7 (this article was first published in 1986). 47 JSJSup 105; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2005. 44

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simply ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians.’ So, as well as ethnic Jews and proselytes,48 we must take account of Gentile ‘God-fearers,’ Gentile sympathizers, nonJewish Israelites (Samaritans), syncretistic Jews, Jewish (i. e. Torah observant) Christians, judaizing Gentile Christians, and other Gentile Christians.49 This wide range of possibilities means that he often finds it impossible to narrow the possible authorship of a work to only one of these categories. Moreover, this range of possible communities and individuals highlights the fact that there was a good deal of continuity between Judaism and nonChristian Gentiles, and between Judaism and Christianity. When we try to make distinctions in assigning provenance, the works we are most likely to be able to identify will be those deriving from ‘boundary-maintaining’ Jews or Christians, those who themselves made sharp distinctions and who only later, in Davila’s view, became the mainstream.50 Davila works with the two methodological principles that I have isolated from Kraft’s work. Moreover, he provides a much more adequate grounding for the second of these. He demonstrates that it was possible for a Christian in the patristic period to write about an Old Testament period, person or topic without what he calls Christian signature features, or with only few or peripheral ones. He does so by providing examples of texts or substantial parts of texts that are securely known to have been authored by Christian writers. Two sermons of John Chrysostom on Genesis and one of Augustine on Micah and Psalm 72 have very few Christian signature features, while the Heptateuch of Pseudo-Cyprian and sections of Ephrem the Syrian’s commentaries on Genesis and Exodus arguably have none.51 These examples provide evidence, not only against the assumption that a work with no Christian signature features must be Jewish, but also against the frequently made claim that, even if there are a few explicitly Christian features or passages, if these can removed without damage to the integrity of the work, it is to be considered Jewish. Davila’s demonstration that such claims and assumptions are unjustified is one of the most valuable features of the book. Davila only briefly indicates what Christian signature features might be,52 though he often refers to such, but he does draw up a considered list of eight Jewish signature features drawn from undoubtedly Jewish literature of the period. He treats these as a ‘polythetic’ description of the common Judaism of the late second Temple period, meaning that all forms of Judaism 48 Davila rightly thinks it is unlikely to be possible to distinguish a work by a born Jew from one by a proselyte. 49 Davila, The Provenance, 23–59. 50 Davila, The Provenance, 59–61. 51 Davila, The Provenance, 84–111. 52 Davila, The Provenance, 64 n. 109.

472 24. The Continuing Quest for the Provenance of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha have at least some of these features, but no single feature is a sine qua non, necessarily to be found in every form of Judaism.53 While I agree with him that ‘different forms of Judaism will emphasize different elements in different ways, and some forms of Judaism may emphasize features that are not characteristic of “common Judaism,”’54 I would be much more inclined to treat several of them as common to all forms of Judaism in the period and to specify the Torah of Moses as authoritative scripture for all such forms,55 but this is not a major issue for our present purposes. The ways in which Davila uses these criteria of Jewishness are complex and nuanced and cannot be detailed here.56 In general, however, they enable Davila to proceed with identifying works of Jewish provenance with positive criteria rather than the commonly used negative criterion of absence of Christian signature features. He asserts that Positive criteria may isolate texts more likely to be Jewish in origin, but negative criteria (such as a lack of Christian signature features) have much less, if any weight.57

This may be an over-statement of his case, since, for the identification of the work as Jewish, there must surely also be a lack of pervasive or integral Christian features. The latter is not a sufficient criterion (since Christians could write works without Christian signature features), but it is surely a necessary condition. I suspect that Davila neglects this point because the works he considers candidates to be tested for Jewish origin are those that scholars have already identified as having no or easily dispensable Christian features. Davila admits one weakness of his methodology: Of Old Testament pseudepigrapha transmitted solely by Christians, those texts that we can label with confidence as “Jewish” are mostly the ones strongly concerned with boundary maintenance, and it will thus be these that make the main contribution toward reconstructing ancient Judaism. This is an unfortunate fact, but it arises inevitably from the nature of our evidence: if we start with the Christian manuscripts in which these works are now preserved and only work backwards to a Jewish origin as the evidence requires, Jewish works superficially congenial to Christianity, at least 53

Davila, The Provenance, 15–20. The eight characteristics are: (a) worship of the God of Israel alone; (b) the acceptance of certain books as Jewish scriptures given as revelation by this God; (c) the acceptance of a historical narrative drawn from those scriptures; (d) the following of the customs, laws, and rituals mandated in those scriptures; (e) participation in or support of the temple cult in Jerusalem; (f) self-identification as Jews; (g) membership in and acceptance by a particular Jewish community; and (h) acceptance of Palestine as the Holy Land. 54 Davila, The Provenance, 20. 55 Davila follows Gabriele Boccaccini in postulating an ‘Enochic Judaism’ that did not acknowledge the Mosaic Torah. 56 Davila, The Provenance, 59–71. 57 Davila, The Provenance, 63.

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in their surviving forms, will be largely undetectable. We may suspect that some works of this kind are Jewish but we cannot be confident that they are, and so, at best, we should pigeonhole them in a “possible” or “doubtful” category”.58

But may it not be possible to refine and extend the methodology in order to make some progress even with this group of works? It is, after all, a group we might expect to be quite numerous, since such works would be prima facie more congenial to Christian use and more likely to have been preserved by Christians than those with obtrusively Jewish features. Armed with a relatively rigorous methodology, Davila proposes to ‘accept particular works as Jewish only when this is established beyond reasonable doubt on the basis of positive evidence.’59 He establishes this in the cases of eight Old Testament pseudepigrapha that are almost universally accepted as Jewish and which were mentioned as such at the beginning of this essay (Letter of Aristeas, 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra, 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, the Testament of Moses, Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities, and the Psalms of Solomon).60 In the same category he includes also the Similitudes of Enoch,61 whose Jewishness and early date have sometimes been doubted. He is confident that all of these works were in existence by the beginning of the second century CE, with the possible exceptions of the Similitudes of Enoch and 3 and 4 Maccabees, which could be later. Along with those pseudepigrapha (and Apocrypha) for which there is manuscript evidence from Qumran, these are the works ‘that are likely to give New Testament scholars the best information about Judaism in the time of Jesus and the formative years of early Christianity’.62 In the case of these works, therefore, Davila’s more rigorous methodology has confirmed the general view of scholars. However, in the cases of several other pseudepigrapha his verdict as to their Jewish provenance is more negative, though in none of these cases does he think Jewish provenance impossible. Book 3 of the Sibylline Oracles, widely accepted as Jewish, turns out to have been ‘written either by a highly Hellenized Jew or by a gentile who was much taken with or influenced by Judaism in the second or first centuries BCE,’63 while for the fifth book, also generally regarded as Jewish with only minor Christian interpolation, Davila offers three possible authorships, all in the period 70–132 CE: Jewish, 58 Davila, The Provenance, 70–71; cf. 232: ‘it is by nature extremely difficult to confirm that a work transmitted only by Christians is Jewish unless that work represents boundary-maintaining Judaism.’ 59 Davila, The Provenance, 8. 60 Davila, The Provenance, chapter 3. 61 Davila, The Provenance, 132–137. 62 Davila, The Provenance, 164. 63 Davila, The Provenance, 186.

474 24. The Continuing Quest for the Provenance of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Jewish-Christian or Gentile God-fearer: ‘I do not believe that any of these possibilities can either be proven or dismissed.’64 For Joseph and Aseneth, there are four possibilities: a Christian work of late antiquity, a Jewish work (possibly from Leontopolis), the work of a God-fearer or a Samaritan work: ‘The first involves the least extrapolation from the earliest physical evidence for the document [i. e. the earliest manuscripts, from c. 600 CE] and should perhaps be our working hypothesis for the present, but none of the other possibilities should be dismissed.’65 In the case of the Testament of Job, ‘although composition by a Jew, or for that matter a God-fearer, cannot be ruled out, if we start from the manuscript evidence and move backward only as needed, no positive evidence compels us to move beyond a Greek work written in Christian, perhaps Egyptian, circles by the early fifth century CE.’66 The Testament of Abraham is a particularly interesting case for exemplifying Davila’s methodology. It offers real difficulties, which Davila admits, for ascribing it to Christian authorship, but Davila here deploys the principle that Christians, who alone preserved the text, must have found it acceptable, and if they could read it in a way acceptable to Christians, why should they not have written it? Composition of an Urtext by a Jew or a Gentile God-fearer cannot be ruled out, but identifying such an Urtext is virtually impossible and not required for a satisfactory explanation of the work. In other words we are not compelled to go beyond the ‘default position’ that Davila shares with Kraft. The case of the Story of Zosimus, including its two main sources, he finds easier to resolve: it fits the context of Christian monasticism in late antiquity and nothing suggests a Jewish provenance.67 Finally Davila examines two works conventionally classified among the Apocrypha or deutero-canonical works of the Old Testament: Baruch (1 Baruch) and the Wisdom of Solomon. In the case of Baruch, the Jewish signature features, though few, are such as to make Christian provenance unlikely, but Davila cannot decide between composition by a Jew or by a Gentile God-fearer.68 His treatment of the Wisdom of Solomon is the case that will occasion the most surprise. He is not actually the first scholar to suggest Christian authorship of this work, but the suggestion does not seem to have been made for well over a century.69 Davila finds its use in 64

Davila, The Provenance, 189. Davila, The Provenance, 195. 66 Davila, The Provenance, 199. 67 Among pseudepigrapha he does not discuss, Davila indicates that he ‘concur[s] with the doubts expressed in recent publications about the alleged Jewish origins of the Lives of the Prophets, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and the Life of Adam and Eve’ (referring to the work of David Satran and Marinus de Jonge). 68 Davila, The Provenance, 227. 69 For references to scholars who argued for Christian authorship, see Joseph Reider ed., The Book of Wisdom (Jewish Apocryphal Literature; New York: Harper, 1957) 16–17 65

Comments: on starting-points and default settings

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1 Clement to be the earliest evidence of the existence of the work and finds no compelling reason to move back from this earliest known context of use to a different context of origin. He ‘would by no means rule out the possibility of composition by a Hellenistic Jew, a God-fearer, or a JewishChristian any time in the Hellenistic period up to the second half of the first century [CE],’ but ‘finds nothing in the work that prohibits or even renders unlikely its having been written by a gentile Christian in the second half of the first century CE.’70 This is the most striking example of the way Davila’s methodology shifts the burden of proof to those who wish to argue for the Jewish provenance of a work only known to have been transmitted by Christians.

Comments: on starting-points and default settings Kraft and Davila both maintain that the starting-point for understanding a pseudepigraphon transmitted only by Christians should be ‘the social context’ of our earliest manuscripts (or the earliest quotations of the work).71 Michael Stone also makes the point: ‘before the Pseudepigrapha are used as evidence for that more ancient period [the Second Temple period], they must be examined in the Christian context in which they were transmitted and utilized.’72 There is obvious sense in this principle. That context is the earliest one in which we undoubtedly know that the work in question existed (though how much we know about that context varies enormously). Davila maintains that, if the work fits comfortably into that social context, ‘we may take note of other possible origins, but our working hypothesis should be that it is a Christian composition of roughly that milieu.’ Only if it does not fit comfortably do we have ‘positive evidence that we need to work backwards from the context of the earliest manuscript, and presumably we will also have some idea of what kind of original context to look for.’73 It is perhaps surprising that Davila actually does so little in his book by way of understanding the texts in the social context of the earliest manun. 74; William Horbury, ‘The Christian Use and the Jewish Origins of the Wisdom of Solomon,’ in John Day, Robert P. Gordon and Hugh G. M. Williamson ed., Wisdom in Ancient Israel: Essays in Honour of J. A. Emerton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 182–196, here 182 n. 2. 70 Davila, The Provenance, 225. 71 Reference to quotations is a point Davila adds to Kraft’s proposal: The Provenance, 238. 72 Stone, ‘Categorization,’ 9. 73 James R. Davila, ‘The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha as Background to the New Testament,’ ExpT 117 (2005) 53–57, here 55.

476 24. The Continuing Quest for the Provenance of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha scripts or quotations of them. In the case of the Testament of Job, for example, he argues that it fits comfortably into ‘Christian circles in Egypt’ in the early fifth century at the latest, but takes only a dozen lines to establish this point, referring only to works from the Nag Hammadi library and Coptic magical texts.74 Might not Job’s conflict with a vividly imagined figure of Satan correspond rather well to the spirituality of the Desert Fathers who retreated to the desert in order to do battle with Satan? The point would seem to be at least worth pursuing and experts in early Egyptian Christianity could probably suggest other avenues to pursue. Davila might justifiably claim that in the context of his book he cannot be expected to do more than sketch the kind of argument required, but he offers no indication that the Testament of Job’s relationship to a fifth-century Egyptian context really needs further exploration in detail, and he moves with remarkable assurance to the conclusion that there is no compelling reason to move backwards from that context to an earlier one.75 Naturally there is also the question of how much a single scholar can be expected to know about all the various contexts in which Old Testament pseudepigrapha were transmitted (and for this reason Davila avoids any discussion of the psuedepigrapha preserved in Old Slavonic), but the field is therefore one requiring a great deal of interdisciplinary collaboration among scholars of many disciplines. A weakness of Davila’s work may be that he makes it all seem too easy. Davila follows Kraft in presuming that, in the context of the earliest manuscripts or quotations, a pseudepigraphon ‘functioned as a Christian work,’ since it presumably meant something to the Christians who preserved and copied it.76 Up to a point this is valid, but it is worth remembering that we have most of the literature of Greek and Roman antiquity only in very late manuscripts, typically of the ninth to the fifteenth centuries.77 In this respect, there is nothing unusual about the Old Testament pseudepigrapha (though the fact that they so often survive only in translations into such languages as Ethiopic and Armenian is relatively more unusual). The Greek and Latin classics were preserved by Christians, often in communities of monks dedicated to the rigorous practice of Christianity. Does that mean that they ‘functioned as Christian works’? The fact is that, in the Latin West and the Byzantine East, all sorts of works from antiquity were preserved for a wide variety of reasons, including literary quality and antiquarian interest. We need to consider more carefully the reasons why Old Testament pseud74

Davila, The Provenance, 197–198. Davila, The Provenance, 198. 76 Davila, The Provenance, 7. 77 For the Latin classics, full information is readily available in Leighton D. Reynolds ed., Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983). 75

Comments: on purposes and uses

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epigrapha were preserved in specific cases and contexts before we can be clear what it means to say that they functioned as Christian works. Is it not the case that in most of the contexts in which our earliest manuscripts of the pseudepigrapha are found, most other manuscripts were of literature composed long before? The probability must be that a pseudepigraphon did not originate in the immediate context of our earliest manuscript, but long before. The context of the earliest manuscript may be the earliest context of the pseudepigraphon that we can be sure of, but we should also admit that, in most cases, if we cannot find positive evidence for an earlier context of origin, then we simply do not know its provenance. These considerations make me dubious about the ‘default position’ that works transmitted only in a Christian context should be considered Christian unless positive evidence for a Jewish provenance can be advanced. If our earliest evidence for an Old Testament pseudepigraphon is, for example, an eleventh century Byzantine manuscript, I think it is more likely than not to have been composed at an earlier time, and I do not see that we have reason to think it more likely to be of Christian than of Jewish provenance. But why should we need a ‘default position’? If we have nothing more to go on than such general probabilities, then we had better say simply that we do not know whether it was of originally Jewish or Christian provenance (or of any of the various possible combinations of the two). What we need is to build up a body of considerations that enable us to go beyond such very general probabilities. These could include, not only those employed by Davila, but also some idea as to whether in various different Christian contexts works of this type were composed as well as preserved or only preserved, and whether in various different contexts such works tended to be preserved fairly faithfully or were commonly redacted and expanded.

Comments: on purposes and uses A point of fundamental importance is that the reasons for which a work is valued, preserved and used do not have to be the purpose for which it was composed. Seldom do I read Old Testament pseudepigrapha for the purposes for which they were composed, and this may well be true also of many who read them in the past. A pertinent example is Daniel Harlow’s study of the reception history of 3 Baruch. There is little direct evidence available, but one approach that Harlow pursues is to observe the other works that accompany 3 Baruch in the manuscripts. In the Slavonic tradition these are quite various, but it appears most often, as we might expect, along with other apocalypses and eschatological works. Harlow deduces that

478 24. The Continuing Quest for the Provenance of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha the contents of the Slavonic manuscripts point to no single rationale for the inclusion of 3 Baruch. That our apocalypse most often appears in the company of historicaltype apocalypses and other eschatological works, however, does suggest that it was valued in the Slavic tradition above all for its cosmology and eschatology, that is, for what it offers by way of pseudo-information about the heavenly realm and the post-mortem fate of human beings.78

However, from the manuscript tradition of the Greek version of 3 Baruch we gain a quite different impression of the use to which it was put. Here the contents of the two manuscripts in which it is found suggest that in the Greek tradition 3 Baruch was valued as a work of hagiography, the apocalypse having been received as a kind of autobiographical installment [sic] narrating a noteworthy episode in the life [of] a figure who had come to be venerated as a saint in the Christian East. The institutional framework for the reception of 3 Baruch was provided by the liturgical calendar of the Eastern churches, which commemorated Old Testament notables right alongside Christian martyrs and saints.79

What is important here for my argument is, not only that 3 Baruch was evidently valued for quite different reasons in different Christian contexts,80 but also that the use suggested by the Greek manuscripts cannot be the purpose for which the work was written. While it is understandable that 3 Baruch, once it existed and was transmitted, could be put to hagiographical use, it is very unlikely that it could have been written as hagiography. Therefore, even if we knew only the Greek tradition of 3 Baruch, we could be fairly certain that the work did not originate in the earliest context in which we actually find it. The discussion of the original provenance of the work can therefore move to consideration of the work’s original purpose. In his book Harlow’s reading of this purpose understands it as a specifically Diaspora Jewish response to the specifically Jewish situation following the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.81 In his later article he allows the possibility of a different construal of the work’s purpose, suggested by Martha Himmelfarb, that would make Christian authorship conceivable.82 My own proposal for understanding the overall message of the book, different from both Harlow’s and Himmelfarb’s, would, if correct, require a Jewish rather than Christian provenance.83 78 Harlow, ‘The Christianization,’ 435. The material is presented in more detail in Harlow, The Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, 175–177. 79 Harlow, ‘The Christianization,’ 436. The material is presented in more detail in Harlow, The Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, 178–181. 80 Harlow continues with evidence for yet more possible reasons why Christians may have valued this work. 81 Harlow, The Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, chapters 2–3; cf. idem, ‘The Christianization,’ 427–429. 82 ‘The Christianization,’ 429–430 83 Richard Bauckham, ‘Apocalypses,’ in Donald A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien and Mark

Comments: on purposes and uses

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This example illustrates that determining the purpose of a pseudepigraphon may not be easy, but it also shows that it is closely related to the search for a work’s original provenance. We certainly cannot simply conclude that, because a work was evidently valued and used in a particular Christian context, it could have been written in that context. We need to enquire carefully into the kinds of reasons for which the work was valued and used as well as whether those reasons could explain the origin of the composition. It seems to me that Davila gives too little attention to determining the purpose of a work. A mismatch between the purpose of a work and the reasons for its use by the Christians who transmitted it is one way in which a pseudepigraphon may not ‘fit comfortably’ (in Davila’s phrase) in the social context of the earliest manuscripts we have of it and therefore require that we postulate a different context of origin for it. There is a great deal we do not yet know about the reception history of Old Testament pseudepigrapha,84 and the uses to which they were put in their Christian contexts of transmission.85 Probably most Christians who have valued such works in some way have not regarded them in the same way as they did the canonical Scriptures of the Old Testament (though a few pseudepigrapha have been reckoned canonical in some Christian traditions, such as the Ethiopian). This is clear enough from the fact that the texts were not preserved with the care accorded to Scripture, but were frequently abbreviated, interpolated, extended and redacted in various ways. This means that Christian readers of these works could have been interested in them without approving or agreeing with everything in them. In many cases it may be that the stories rather than the teaching were what attracted them. This would have been true at a popular level, but we should also not forget that from as early as Julius Africanus in the third century86 there A., Seifrid ed., Justification and Variegated Nomism, vol. 1: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism (WUNT 2/140; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001) 135–187, here 182–185. 84 An example of what can be done is Antonio Acerbi’s reception history of the Ascension of Isaiah: Serra Lignea: Studi sulla Fortuna della Ascensione di Isaia (Rome: Editrice A. V. E., 1984). 85 Cf. Michael E. Stone, ‘The Study of the Armenian Apocrypha,’ in Wright ed., A Multiform Heritage, 139–148, here 141: ‘The study of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha is still in its infancy and so far little attention has yet been paid to the history of their reception in the cultures which preserved and transmitted them.’ Anke Holdenried, The Sibyl and Her Scribes: Manuscripts and Interpretation of the Latin Sibylla Tiburtina c. 1050–1500 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006) is a fine example of what can be done, given the right sources. Whereas previous scholars have thought the popularity of the Tiburtine Sibyl (translated from Greek in the eleventh century) in the late medieval West was for the sake of its political apocalyptic, Holdenried is able to show, partly from the manuscripts, that this was by no means the only factor. Many who read it were more concerned with personal eschatology or with the Sibyl as a prophet of Christ. 86 On Africanus as a polymath, see William Adler, ‘Julius Africanus and Judaism in the Third Century,’ in Wright ed., A Multiform Heritage, 123–138.

480 24. The Continuing Quest for the Provenance of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha were Christian scholars with antiquarian interests, especially in the kind of ancient history about which such works as Jubilees and the Enoch literature could inform them. Much material from Old Testament pseudepigrapha has been preserved in the works of the later Christian chronographers such as George Syncellus and Jacob of Edessa.87 Modern scholars tend to be interested in the teaching or message of a work, but this is not necessarily what interested Christian readers or even what they noticed. They preserved these works for all sorts of reasons that may not correspond at all well to the purposes for which the works were written.

Comments: on Jews, Gentiles and Jewish Christians An interesting feature of Davila’s work is that he takes seriously the possibility that Old Testament pseudepigrapha could have been written not only by Jews (born or proselytes) or Christians (Jewish or Gentile), but also by God-fearers, i. e. Gentiles who did not convert to Judaism, but were attracted to it, worshipped the God of Israel, observed some Jewish rituals and took a very positive view of the Jewish people.88 Some of the works for which such a provenance Davila thinks a possibility seem to me to belong, in some respects, to the same category, despite their generic and other differences: Sibylline Oracles books 3 and 5, the Wisdom of Solomon and Pseudo-Phocylides.89 In all these cases, Davila observes some Jewish signature features, but also notes, despite their paraenetic character, a lack of reference to such Jewish distinctives as circumcision, Sabbath and dietary laws. He makes the point most fully in relation to Sibylline Oracles book 3: It is pro-Jewish, pro-temple, pro-sacrifice, and sings the praises of the Jewish Law … Although the work repeatedly refers to the Law and advocates obeying it, when the contents of the Law are specified they seem mainly to involve proper worship 87

See William Adler, Time Immemorial: Archaic History and its Sources in Christian Chronography from Julius Africanus to George Syncellus (Dumbarton Oaks Studies 26; Washington, D. C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, 1989); idem, ‘Jacob of Edessa and the Jewish Pseudepigrapha in Syriac Chronography,’ in Reeves ed., Tracing, 143–171. Note also the learned interest in matters Jewish in the Armenian tradition, noted by Stone, ‘The Study,’ 146–148. 88 See Davila’s definition: The Provenance, 28–29. 89 He discusses these in The Provenance, 181–186, 186–189, 219–225, 36–37. That Pseudo-Phocylides was written by a Gentile God-fearer is one of four possibilities discussed by Pieter W. van der Horst, The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides (SVTP 4; Leiden: Brill, 1978) 76, but it is a possibility that, ten years later, he discounted: idem, ‘PseudoPhocylides Revisited,’ JSP 3 (1998) 3–30, here 16.

Comments: on Jews, Gentiles and Jewish Christians

481

of God, as opposed to idolatry, and sexual morality. Circumcision, the dietary laws, the Sabbath, and the Jewish festivals are ignored. This viewpoint could reflect a liberal Judaism that was highly assimilated to its surrounding Hellenistic environment …, but it could also reflect the perspective of a gentile God-fearer who was quite familiar with Judaism but who picked and chose what was appealing for his or her own religion. Such a writer might well have subsumed the Mosaic Law into natural law, considered the Jerusalem temple to be the central locus for the worship of God, and yet cheerfully ignored any ritual practices that seemed primitive or unsophisticated.90

What I think may be wrong here is a failure to consider that a mainstream Jewish writer – not necessarily ‘liberal’ – might distinguish between what God required of Jews and what God required of Gentiles, just as later rabbis thought Gentiles were subject to the Noachic laws and only Israel to the Mosaic Torah. All four of the works we are considering are ostensibly addressed to Gentiles.91 We can assume this in the case of Pseudo-Phocylides because of the pseudonymous attribution to the pagan philosopher Phocylides. In the book of Wisdom Solomon addresses his fellow-rulers (Wisd 1:1; 6:1), a literary convention that implies a general, not an Israelite, audience. The Sibyls were ancient pagan prophetesses. There are a variety of views on whether these works were seriously intended to reach pagan readers. I am inclined to think they were, since this is the most obvious reason for their elaborately maintained pseudonymous attributions (even Solomon had an international reputation for wisdom). If, as seems probable, Virgil knew the third book of the Sibyllines (Eclog. 4.21–25), then this book at least reached pagan readers who did not recognize its Jewish provenance. In any case, what these books depict as God’s requirements for Gentiles are abandonment of idolatry92 and worship of the one God, to whom sacrifice should be made in his temple in Jerusalem, together with adherence to basic moral norms, especially sexual. When judgment is threatened or pronounced on Gentiles, it is for idolatry and sexual immorality (both characteristic of Gentile society, in the view of Jews). This is evidently what ‘the law’ – given to Israel in order to be spread to the Gentiles (Wisd 18:4) – means for Gentiles. It is the cultic and moral essence of the Torah, identified with nature or a common law of humanity, and, according to the Sibyllines, in the future the nations will turn to the God of Israel and observe his laws. There is here both an approximation of the Torah to Hellenistic ideas of natural law, and also strong inspiration from the hope for the conversion of the nations to be found in the post-exilic prophets. None of this means that these writers 90

Davila, The Provenance, 184–185. In SibOr 3:266–294, the Sibyl addresses Israel, much as in other oracles she addresses Egypt, Rome, Greece and so forth. 92 A critique of idolatry is surprisingly absent from Pseudo-Phocylides. 91

482 24. The Continuing Quest for the Provenance of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha exempted Jews themselves from the more particularly Jewish aspects of Torah. It is true that, in book 3 of the Sibyllines particularly, the Jews’ own way of life is depicted without emphasis on the Jewish distinctives, but it is being held up as an example for Gentiles to emulate and so we should not expect such an emphasis. Understood in this way, these books do not seem to me to require, if their provenance is Jewish, that they represent an especially ‘liberal’ or ‘highly assimilated’ kind of Judaism. Such attitudes to Gentiles may be ‘liberal’ by comparison with, for example, Jubilees and 4 Ezra, but they nevertheless entail severe condemnation of most current Gentile life, while the openness to Gentile worship of the God of Israel featured in the Jerusalem temple itself in the permission for Gentiles to offer sacrifice there that obtained until the Jewish revolt, and the expectation of the future conversion of the nations is found, inter alia, in Tobit, the Book of Watchers, and the Enochic Animal Apocalypse.93 I have characterized a somewhat diverse group of books in rather too generalized terms, but the purpose is to show that they are broadly similar in relating the Torah to Gentiles in a way that leaves aside the Jewish particularities of circumcision, dietary laws, Sabbath and so forth, without any necessary implication that Jews are not bound to observe all the particularities of the law as given to Israel. This attitude will have enabled many Jews to be encouraging and welcoming to Gentile God-fearers without necessarily expecting them to become proselytes. Consequently, a pseudepigraphon maintaining this attitude might derive as well from a Jewish author representative of this widespread Jewish view of Gentiles as from a God-fearer who had learned the same approach from just such Jews. What of the two cases in which Davila leaves open the possibility of Jewish Christian authorship: Sibylline Oracles book 5 and the Wisdom of Solomon? In the former case, an obstacle that Davila negotiates much too easily94 is the book’s attitude to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Romans (especially Nero, who is here blamed for it), a prominent topic in this book of the Sibyllines (5:150–151, 397–413). The event is treated as a tragedy visited on the blameless Jews, whereas throughout early Christian literature (as in some Jewish literature) it is understood as a divine judgment.

93 My account in this paragraph broadly agrees with Terence L. Donaldson, Paul and the Gentiles: Remapping the Apostle’s Convictional World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997) 60–74; Ed P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE – 66 CE (London: SCM Press, 1992) 267–270; John J. Collins, ‘A Symbol of Otherness: Circumcision and Salvation in the First Century,’ in idem, Seers, Sibyls and Sages in Hellenistic-Roman Judaism (JSJSup 54; Leiden: Brill, 1997) 211–235. 94 Davila, The Provenance, 189: ‘a Jewish-Christian who was outraged by the Roman destruction of Jerusalem.’

Conclusion

483

There is no evidence that Jewish Christians thought differently about this.95 Jesus’ prophecies of the destruction of the temple are too widespread in the Gospel traditions to have been unknown to them.96 As for the Wisdom of Solomon, although there may be no specific statement in it that could not have been written by a Christian (Jewish or Gentile) placing himself in Solomon’s pre-Christian context, we must ask: why should a Christian in the second half of the first century CE have wanted to write such a work? The Christian literature that we have from this early period of the Christian movement is overwhelmingly concerned with the specific Christian message about Jesus and its implications. Interestingly, this is also true of the earliest Old Testament pseudepigrapha that are indisputably Christian: the Ascension of Isaiah, 5 Ezra,97 book 8 of the Sibylline Oracles, and the Odes of Solomon (if this counts as an Old Testament pseudepigraphon).98 While we need to be aware of the danger of circular argumentation, it may be that study of those Old Testament pseudepigrapha we know to be Christian could assist our attempts to identify others.

Conclusion These comments should not detract at all from the importance of The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha. Davila’s work achieves a major advance in the quest for the provenance of Old Testament pseudepigrapha and opens a new stage of discussion to which, I hope, this essay has contributed.

95 Harlow, The Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, 107–108, after a survey of the evidence, concludes: ‘Virtually nowhere in the literature of early Christiannity or Jewish Christianity do we find evidence of regret over Jerusalem’s loss or interest in the Temple’s restoration.’ Cf. also Geoffrey W. H. Lampe, ‘A. D. 70 in Christian Reflection,’ in Ernst Bammel and Charles F. D. Moule ed., Jesus and the Politics of his Day (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) 153–171. 96 In the Gospel of the Ebionites, there is even a saying of Jesus: ‘I came to abolish sacrifices, and if you do not cease from sacrificing, the wrath will not cease from you’ (frag. 6), while the probably Ebionite source of Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions 1.27–71 also sees the destruction of Jerusalem as the divine response to the refusal of the Jews to obey Jesus’ command that they abandon sacrifice (see Richard Bauckham, ‘The Origin of the Ebionites,’ in Peter J. Tomson and Doris Lambers-Petry ed., The Image of the Judaeo-Christians in Ancient Jewish and Christian Literature [WUNT 158: Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003] 162–181, here 167–168). 97 A vision of the exalted Christ is the climax of this work. 98 It seems to me probable that the ascription to Solomon was not original.

Particulars of First Publication 1. Introduction 2. The Martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah: Jewish or Christian? Journal of Biblical Literature 95 (1976) 447–458. 3. Enoch and Elijah in the Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah Elizabeth A. Livingstone ed., Studia Patristica, vol. XVI Part II (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1985) 69–76. 4. The Rise of Apocalyptic Themelios 3/2 (1978) 10–23; reprinted in Carl R. Trueman, Tony J. Gray, Craig L. Blomberg ed., Solid Ground: 25 Years of Evangelical Theology (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 2000) 43–68. 5. The Delay of the Parousia Tyndale Bulletin 31 (1980) 3–36. 6. A Note on a Problem in the Greek Version of 1 Enoch 1:9 Journal of Theological Studies 32 (1981) 136–138. 7. The Son of Man: ‘A Man in my Position’ or ‘Someone’? Journal for the Study of the New Testament 23 (1985) 23–33. 8. The Apocalypses in the New Pseudepigrapha Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26 (1986) 97–117; reprinted in Craig A. Evans and Stanley E. Porter ed., New Testament Backgrounds: A Sheffield Reader (Biblical Seminar 43; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) 67–88. 9. Pseudo-Apostolic Letters Journal of Biblical Literature 107 (1988) 469–494. 10. Kainam the Son of Arpachshad in Luke’s Genealogy “More on Kainam the Son of Arpachshad in Luke’s Genealogy,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 67 (1991) 95–103. 11. The List of the Tribes of Israel in Revelation 7 “The List of the Tribes in Revelation 7 Again,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 42 (1991) 99–115. 12. The “Parting of the Ways”: What Happened and Why Studia Theologica 47 (1993) 135–151.

486

Particulars of First Publication

13. The Messianic Interpretation of Isaiah 10:34 “The Messianic Interpretation of Isaiah 10:34 in the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2 Baruch and the Preaching of John the Baptist,” Dead Sea Discoveries 2 (1995) 202–216. 14. The Relevance of Extra-Canonical Jewish Texts to New Testament Study Joel B. Green ed., Hearing the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans/ Carlisle: Paternoster, 1995) 90–108. 15. Josephus’ Account of the Temple in Contra Apionem 2.102–109 Louis H. Feldman and John R. Levison ed., Josephus’ Contra Apionem: Studies in its Character and Context with a Latin Concordance to the Portion Missing in Greek (AGAJU 34; Leiden: Brill, 1996) 327–347, with the addition of a previously unpublished section. 16. Life, Death, and the Afterlife in Second Temple Judaism Richard Longenecker ed., Life in the Face of Death: The Resurrection Message of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) 80–95. 17. What if Paul had Travelled East rather than West? Biblical Interpretation 8 (2000) 171–184; also in J. Cheryl Exum ed., Virtual History and the Bible (Leiden: Brill, 1999) 171–184. 18. Covenant, Law and Salvation in the Jewish Apocalypses “Apocalypses,” chapter 6 in Donald A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien and Mark A Siefrid ed., Justification and Variegated Nomism, vol. 1: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism (Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 2001) 135–187. 19. The Restoration of Israel in Luke-Acts James M. Scott ed., Restoration: Old Testament, Jewish and Christian Perspectives (JSJS up 72; Leiden: Brill, 2001) 435–487. 20. Paul and Other Jews with Latin Names in the New Testament Alf Christophersen, Carsten Claussen, Jörg Frey and Bruce Longenecker ed., Paul, Luke and the Graeco-Roman World: Essays in Honour of Alexander J. M. Wedderburn (JSNTS up 217; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002) 202–220. 21. The Horarium of Adam and the Chronology of the Passion Kristianskij Vostok [Christian East] 4 (X) (2002) 413–439. 22. The Spirit of God in Us Loathes Envy: James 4:5 Graham N. Stanton, Bruce W. Longenecker and Stephen C. Barton ed., The Holy Spirit and Christian Origins: Essays in Honor of James D. G. Dunn (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004) 270–281. 23. Tobit as a Parable for the Exiles of Northern Israel Mark Bredin ed., Studies in the Book of Tobit: A Multidisciplinary Approach (LSTS 55; London/New York: T. & T. Clark, 2006) 140–164. 24. The Continuing Quest for the Provenance of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Also appearing in Gerbern S. Oegema and James H. Charlesworth ed., The Pseudepigrapha and Christian Origins: Essays from the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas (London: T. & T. Clark [Continuum], 2008).

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings Old Testament Genesis

1 1:2 2:7 2:8 2:17 4:24 5:1–32 5:9–14 5:12–13 5:12–16 5:15–20 5:24 6:5 8:17 9:1–17 10:2–5 10:21–31 10:22 10:24 11 11:9–14 11:10–26 11:10–32 11:12–13 11:13 12:3 13:16 15 15:5 15:11 15:13–21 15:18–21 17 17:4

21, 48, 152, 154–155, 160, 167, 170–171, 260 399 411 423 406 78 158 151, 154 151 151, 153 153 151 19, 21, 249, 255 426 426 156 262 262 151 151, 153, 155 154 151 154 151 155 155 364 164, 258 79–80, 338 164, 258, 302 79–80 339 337–338 338 302

17:4–6 17:4–8 18:18 22:16–18 22:17 22:18 25:1–4 25:2–4 25:13 25:13–15 26:3–4 26:4 28:13–14 28:14 29–30 29:31–30:24 30:1–13 30:9 32:12 35:11 35:11–12 35:16–18 35:23–26 41:8 46 46:8–27 46:16–17 46:17 48:19 49:9 49:10 49:17 49:18

164 338 364 338 164 364 260 261 260–261 260 338 164 338 164 168–169 169 167 170 164, 258 164 338 169 163, 167 45 168 167–168 169 22 164 163, 341–342 199 162 415

Exodus 1:2–4

233–234 163

488 2:24 4:13 4:23 6:5 6:18 7:16 8:20 9:13 10:7 19:5–6 19:6 23:12 23:20 25:10–22 25:23–40 27:1–8 28:1 28:17–20 28:21 30:1–10 30:17–21 30:19–21 32:33 34:6 34:6–7 39:10–13 39:14 40:10

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

337–339 21 340 337–339 21, 334 340 340 340 340 340 164 362 333 234 233 233 157 169 169 233 234 234 293 74–75, 445 298 169 169 21, 334

Leviticus 1:4 3:2 3:8 4:29 4:33 7:12–14 7:30 10:6 12:2 12:2–8 12:5 13:46 14 14:8–10 15:2–15 15:13–15 15:14–15

282 231 231 231 231 231 237 231 358 229 230 229 229 411 230 230 228 230

15:19–30 15:29–30 15:31 19 19:11–18 19:13 19:18 21:20 21:21–23 23:17 23:29 25:18–19 26:42 26:45

230 230 231 219 219 219 219 224 229 237 264 339 339 339

Numbers 1 1–2 1–3 1:3 1:4–16 1:5–15 1:18 1:20 1:21 1:23 1:32 2 3:2–4:22 4:3 4:23 4:30 4:35 4:39 4:43 4:47 5:2–3 8:23–26 10 11:16 11:25–30 11:29 14:18 15:31 19:13 19:20 19:22 20:29

165, 172 166 165 165 355 163 165 165 165 165 172 172 157 225 225 225 225 225 225 225 230 225 165 430 430 430 74 364 231 231 230 358

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

24:17 24:17–19 25:11–13 25:12 25:13 26 26:2 26:4 31:4–6

340 341–342, 351 334 21, 333–334 334 165 165 165 165

Deuteronomy

2:25 4:19 4:30 6:7 7:26 8 8:6 10:12 16:9–11 18:15–19 18:15–20 18:19 19:5 23:2–3 24:14–15 26:5 28–30 28:18–21 28:25 28:29 28:30–31 28:32 28:33 28:37 28:51 28:58–68 28:64 28:65 29:28 29:29 29:30 30 30–33

180, 276, 305–306, 313–314, 319, 366, 369, 435, 441–443, 454 357 357 336 401 428 366 366 366 439 353 364 364 201 190 219 453 313 314 442 441 441 443 441 442 441 313 369 441 303, 305 305, 309 303 322, 333 325, 369

30:1–5 30:1–10 30:2 30:3 30:4 30:4–5 30:10 30:19 30:19–20 31–34 32 32:21 32:21–27 32:31 32:36 32:39 33–34 33:1 33:1–2 33:2

329, 336 313 329, 333, 336 329 21, 333–334 357 336 305, 313, 322 306, 313 54 319–320 320 320 370 320 248, 435, 442 276 276 276 90–91, 276, 306

Joshua 24:2–15

331

Judges 4:6 5 5:13 5:25 15:19

447 347 203 203 362

Ruth 3:2–11 4:18 4:18–19 4:19 4:19–20 4:20 4:21 4:21–22 4:22

152 152 152 152 152 152 152 151 151

1 Samuel 2 2:1–10 2:2 2:6

347 347, 350 346 348 248, 436

489

490 2:10 7:2–3

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

340, 348 358

2 Samuel 6:5 7:12–16 7:14 16:14 22 22:3 22:28 22:32 22:50 22:51 23:1–7 24:9

347 358 346 346 362 347 340, 342 348 348 348 348 347 165

1 Kings 4:2 8:46 9:7 19:10 19:14–18

157 359 442 334 302

2 Kings 2:3 2:15 2:17 5:7 15:29 17:6 18:11 21:14 25:18

249, 255 337 22 248 446–447, 451 453 453 441 157

1 Chronicles 1:2 1:18 2:1–4 2:4–5 2:5 2:9 2:9–10 2:10 2:10–11 2:11 2:11–12

153 155 152 152 152 152 152 152 152 152 152

2:12 2:12–13 2:15 3:1 3:5 3:10–16 3:17 3:17–19 3:19 3:19–24 4:9–10 4:17 5:6 5:26 6:10 16:13 16:34 21:5 23:3 23:24 23:27 24 24:7 24:7–18 24:10 27:23 29:15

151 151 151 151 151 157 159 152 152 152 22 22 451 451, 453 157 277 445 165 225 225 225 240 223 223, 237 336 165 216

2 Chronicles 5:13 7:3 7:14 20:7 21:12 21:12–15 23:20 30:9 30:20 31:17

445 445 442 446 128 133 203 446 442 225

Ezra 2:2 2:36–39 2:59–60 2:60 3:2 3:8

301, 326 355 239 451 451 152 152, 225

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

3:11 5:2 5:59 7:1–5 8:2–3 9:5 9:7–9 9:8–9 9:13–15 10:18–22

445 152 451 157 240 402 326 343 301 239–240

Nehemiah 5:9 7:39–42 8:1–9 9:36 9:36–37 10:3–9 12:1–7 12:12–21

326 366 239 329 326 343 240 240 240

Esther 1:13 2:7 9:20–23

133 45 453 133

Job 2:9–10 14:1 15:20 25:2 31:6 31:39 34:11

439 439 215 215 400 288 219 288

Psalms 2 2:1–2 2:9 5:7 16:8–11 18:2 18:3 19:1

245, 248–249 342, 351 354 351 428 354 340–341 342 399

24:7–8 24:9–10 29 34:8 35:9 37:6 37:20 41 42 44:13–16 49:15 55:17 57:8 62:12 68:2 68:18 69:28 73:24 74:9 80 86:15 88:7 89:4 89:29 89:25 90 90:4 90:5–6 90:15 92:13 96:11–13 98:7–9 100:5 102:13 103:8 103:15–16 103:20–22 104:4 105:6 105:7–11 105:43 106:1 106:5 106:40 106:45 107 107:1 107:3

415 415 86 350 350 216 215 425 425 442 245, 249, 255 402 401 288 215 90–91 293 245, 249 59 199 74 90 346 346 340 80 78–79, 81 215 78 200 399 399 445 446 74 215 399 407 277 338 277 445 277 428 338 343 445 357

491

492 107:10 107:13–14 107:18 109:23 110:1 118 118:1 118:22 118:29 119:20 119:40 119:126 119:163 119:174 132 132:12 132:17 135:3 136:1 141:2 144:4 147:2–3 148 148:1 148:2 148:3 148:4 148:7–8 148:10 150:6

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

342 342 428 216 101, 354 353 445 349, 353 445 428 428 415 428 428 340–341 346 340–342 445 445 402 216 442 397, 399–400 399 399 398–399 399 396, 399 398–399 399

Proverbs 3:34 6:9 8:30 16:2 20:13 21:2 24:12 27:1 29:14

45 422 415 78 288 415 288 288 215 330

Ecclesiastes 6:12 10:10

216 201

Song of Songs (Canticles) 4:12 374 4:15 199 Isaiah

2:2–4 2:3 2:12–13 2:12–14 4:1 4:2 5:9 6:9–10 6:12 8:6 8:14 8:24 9 9:1 9:1–2 9:2 9:6–7 9:7 9:17 9:22 10 10:22–11:5 10:28–32 10:33 10:33–34 10:33–11:1 10:33–11:5 10:34 10:34–11:1 10:34–11:4 10:34–11:5 11 11:1 11:1–5 11:2 11:3–4 11:4 11:10–12 11:10–16

40, 54, 108, 194–195, 277, 300, 339, 344–345, 360, 452 344 196 200 199, 205 108 199 219 368, 370 359 199 349–350 108 343, 350 162, 342–343, 350 447 342–343, 350, 442 343 346 198, 200 108 195 194 195 194–195, 198–201 193, 195–198, 205 198 199, 201 193–201, 203–204 194–196 198 204 204 193, 196–197, 199 163, 193, 195, 203–205, 351 205, 354 198 198, 204, 337, 341–342 261–262 337

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

11:11–12 11:11–16 11:12 11:15–16 11:16 13:6 14:31 19:22 23:1 23:6 23:14 24–25 25:7–8 26:19 26:20 27:12–13 28:16 29:18 30:19 30:26 32:15 32:18 35:5 35:6 35:9–10 38 40–55 40–66 40:1 40:1–5 40:3 40:3–5 40:4 40:5 40:6–8 40:10 41:8 42 42:6 42:7 42:10–12 42:16 42:18 43:5–6 43:6 43:10–12 44:22–24

165, 345 448 357 165, 262 108 217 217 442 217 217 217 40 245, 250 44, 64, 245, 247, 253 84 165, 448 349 442 446 442 363 339 442 365 339 109 352 42, 325, 344, 352, 359, 366 344, 366 352 205, 330, 335–336, 359 205, 352 199, 205 344, 352 215–216 89 446 343 344 343, 442 399 442 442 448 359 359 339

44:25 44:26 45:6 45:22 45:22–23 46:9–11 46:13 47:10–13 47:13 48:20 48:22 49 49–66 49:1–6 49:3 49:5–6 49:6 49:12 49:16 49:22–23 51:3 51:12 52:2 52:7 52:7–10 52:7–12 52:9 52:9–10 52:10 52:11–12 53:7 53:7–8 53:12 55:3 56–66 57:1 57:14 57:17–19 57:18–19 57:19 57:21 58:12 59:9–10 59:10 59:20 60:1–3 60:1–9

45, 48 49 262 262 360 49 344 45 48 262 277 330 54 260 344 329 330, 344, 359–360, 367 262, 359 312 345, 357 344, 446 344 343 334, 336, 353 333 336 339, 343–345 345 344 345 164 354 354 354 41–42 52 335 442 442 277, 359 277 329 441 442 329 344 345, 357

493

494 60:4–9 60:5–7 60:6–7 60:7 60:9 60:12 60:17 60:21 60:22 61:1–2 61:2 61:3 61:4 62:4 62:6 62:10 63:3 63:4 63:6 64:12 65 65:15 65:17 65:17–25 65:19 65:19–20 65:20 65:20–23 65:22 66:12 66:13 66:15 66:16 66:18–20 66:19 66:19–20 66:20 66:22 66:23 66:24

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

261 441 261 261 261–262, 441 82 277 277, 279 72, 76 353 344 277 441 443 57 335 200 78 43 75 277–278 52, 277 52 43 52 52 52 277 52 441 344 89 43 261 261–262 261 345, 357 52 52 52

Jeremiah

3:18 3:22 7:32 7:33

58, 75, 135–136, 217–218, 452 448 442 218 218

8:16 9:26 10:11 12:3 13:11 14:3 15:15 16:14–15 16:15 17:10 18:7–10 19:6 19:7 22:13 23:3 23:5 23:6 23:6–8 24:6 24:9 27:19 29 29:4 29:14 30:2 30:10–17 30:18 30:17 30:21 31:2 31:7–9 31:7–14 31:11 31:13 31:23 31:31 32:37 32:44 33:5–6 33:6–9 33:7 33:10–11 33:11 33:15 33:17 33:26 35 36:1

162 358 135 217–219 358 203 75 448 329 288 62 218 218 219 329–330 199, 341 339 448 329 442 329 134–135 128 329 329 442 329 442 196, 203 446 165 448 339 344 329 448 329, 339 329 442 442 329 444 329, 445 199, 341 346 329 22 135

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

36:4 36:32 37:21 38:7–13 39:15–18 45:1 46:22 46:22–23 48:20 50:19 50:35–36 52:28–30

136 136 203 22 22 136 200 200 217 329 45 451

Lamentations 1:1 1:2 2:14 2:14–15 3:1–2

443–444 443 444 329 444 442

Ezekiel 1:24–25 3:7 11:19 11:14–17 16:53 17 17:6–8 17:8 17:24 19 20:1–44 20:40 23:5 23:7 23:9 28:13 28:26 29:21 31:12 34:28 36:10 36:26 36:35 37 37:1–14

41–42, 45, 57, 358, 452 406–407 358 331 448 329 434 199 199 199 434 448 358 425 425 425 446 339 340 200 339 358 331 446 358 254, 362

37:11 37:14 37:15–22 37:15–23 37:16 37:16–23 37:19 37:24–25 38:8 38:18 39:17 39:17–20 39:25 39:27 39:29 40:39–43 44:6–9 45:6 47:13–14 47:21–23 48 48:1–35

495

358 358 358 165, 345 172, 358 448 172 358 329, 339 430 218 218 329, 358 329 358 234 190 358 345, 448 448 345 448

Daniel

1–6 1:7 2 2:2 2:18 2:21 2:27 f. 2:23–35 2:44–45 2:46 2:48 3:13 3:19 4 4:1–37 4:4–5 4:9 4:10 5 5:7 5:11 5:12

40, 43–44, 46, 49, 54, 58, 60, 86, 91, 269, 300 45–46 453 45–47, 49, 54 45 45 63 48 349 349 48 45 14, 30 14, 30 45–46, 125 133 45 45 200 45–46 45 45 45

496 5:27 6:4 6:10 6:25–28 7

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

7–12 7:10 7:11 7:13 7:13–14 7:23 7:27 8 8:13 9 9:7 9:19 9:21 9:25 10:21 11 11:27 11:29 11:30 11:33 11:34 11:35 f. 12:1 12:2 12:2–3 12:3 12:6 12:6 f. 12:13

288 72 402 133 45, 97, 99–101, 198, 204–205, 351 45–46, 49, 54 91 198 97–101, 354 200 204 204 45 369 58, 62–63 359 68 403 329 62 46, 62 62 62 14, 30 58 60 62 58, 293 251 245, 247, 249, 253 58, 254 68, 84 87 245, 247, 253

Hosea 1:10 6:1 6:2 6:11 6:11–7:1 11:3 11:11 11:10–11 13:3 14:1 14:4

164 329, 442 363 329 442 442 329 448 216 336 442

Joel 2:3 2:13 2:28 2:28–32 3:1 3:13 4:13

359 446 74 359 354 359 199 199

Amos 2:6–7 5:5 5:10 5:11–12 5:15 6:8 7:10–13 8:3 8:4–6 8:10 9:11–12 9:14

438–439, 449 439 438 428 439 446 428 438 438 439 438–439 190 329

Jonah 3:3 4:2

456 74–75

Micah 1:3 2:4 3:9 4:1–3 4:6–7 7:8–9 7:20

90, 276 217 428 344 365 442 339

Nahum 1:7 1:12 2:2 2:5 3:18

445 445 445 448 203 203

Habakkuk 1:2

84

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

1:5 2:2 2:3 3:9

367 149 67, 82, 87 86

Zephaniah 3:13 3:19 3:20

339 365 329

Haggai 2:6

41–42 84

9–14 9:1 10:6–12 10:8 11:1 11:2 12:3 14 14:5 14:6–9 14:16 14:20–21

497

41–42 448 448 339 198 203 369 40 89–91 43 52, 344 235

Malachi Zechariah 1–6 1–8 1:12 1:17 2:10 3:1 3:8 6:12 8:7 8:7–8 8:13 8:20–23 9–13

40, 452 45, 108 42 84 344 357 292 199, 341 199, 341 357 358 448 344, 358 40

2:4–7 3:1 3:5 3:7 3:19 3:22 3:23 3:23–24 3:24 4:1 4:4 4:5 4:5–6 4:6

329–330, 332, 335, 337 334 330–331, 333–336 219–220 329, 333, 336 203 329 331–332, 350 329, 336 329–336, 350, 363 18–19, 203 329 331–332 8, 336 329–336, 350, 363

Apocrypha (Greek) Additions to Daniel 399 Additions to Esther 11:1 133 13:1–7 133 16:1–24 133 1 Baruch

1:1 1:1–9 1:3–4 1:10

133, 135–136, 142, 144 135–136 135 136 128

1:10–14 1:15–5:9 2:30 2:33 2:34 4:30 4:36–37 4:37 5:5 5:5–9

135 135 329 329 339 344 345 357 357 345

Bel and the Dragon 8 30 8:2 14

498

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

Ben Sira (Sirach/Ecclesiasticus) 426 1:17 335 11:19 215 14:17–19 216 15:11–20 426 24:3 429 25:21 425 26:8 72 34:25–27 219 34:27 219–220 35:18 82 36:10 339 36:11 165, 345 36:12 341 36:13 448 36:16 448 39:5 401 44:21 338 45:23 334 45:24 334 47:11 345 48:2 334 48:10 19, 331, 333, 350, 448 48:10–11 330 50:19 402 50:26 355 51:12 340–341 Epistle of Jeremiah 133, 135, 142 2 128 3 135 1 Esdras 5:8 8:7 8:78 8:86–90

355 297 301 301

Judith 9:1

403, 433 403

2:54 2:57 4:10 4:46 7:17 8:16 14:29

334 346 338 53 30 424 223

2 Maccabees 1:2 1:27–29 2:18 7:9 7:11 7:14 7:22–23 7:28–29 7:39 8:22 12:43–45 12:44 14:36 15:13–16

248 339 448 345, 357 247, 253 247 253 247 247 14, 30 373 247 253 247 22

3 Maccabees 3:12–29 4:11 5:23 5:24 7:1–19

133 30 412, 414 30 133

4 Maccabees 7:18–19 8:2 9:10 16:25 17:4–6 17:14 18:12 18:17 18:19

30, 252 252 14, 30 14, 30 252 254 30 334 254 248

Tobit 1 Maccabees 2:1 2:26

223 334

1, 339, 433–435, 438, 442, 444–445, 447–455, 457, 459

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

1 1:1 1:2 1:3 1:4 1:4–5 1:5 1:6–8 1:9 1:14 1:16 1:20 2:1–4 2:1–5 2:2–3 2:4 2:5–6 2:6 2:8 2:8–11 2:9–10 2:10 2:13–14 2:14 3:1–6 3:2 3:3 3:3–5 3:4 3:5 3:6 3:7 3:7–9 3:10 3:13 3:15 3:17 4:1 4:12 4:14 5:2 5:6 5:10 5:11–14 6:2 6:9 8:3 8:5

455 445 446–447, 451 446 438, 448 436 438 436, 439 446 356, 453 446 441 438 439 439 439 438 439 439, 443 439 439 442, 444 440 439–440, 443 439 440 439, 441 440 441, 443 438–439 440, 443 356, 443, 453 444 443 443 446 442 356, 453 446 219 457 356, 453, 456 441–442, 448 446 455 442 457 399

8:20 8:20–10:8 9:4 9:6 10:7 11:5–6 11:8 11:10 11:15 11:17 12:3 12:12 12:14 12:15 13 13–14 13:2 13:5 13:5–6 13:6 13:7 13:9 13:9–17 13:10 13:11 13:13 13:13–14 13:16 14:4 14:4–7 14:5 14:6 14:7 14:11 14:12–15 14:15

457 457 457 457 443, 457 443 448 442 435, 437–438, 444 435 442 318, 403 442 318, 403 435–437 433 248, 435–437, 442 436–437 329, 436 437 437 437 436, 448 343 344, 441 165 345 446 356, 437, 441, 445, 447–448 448 329, 345, 441, 449 344 345, 441, 448 339 356, 453 445, 448

Wisdom of Solomon 142, 252–253 1:3–8 429 3:1–4 252 3:7–8 253 4:10–15 255 5 217 5:5 90, 255 5:7–16 216 5:9–14 216

499

500 5:14 7:7 7:22–25

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

15:1 16:13 16:28

216 429 429

74 248 401

New Testament Matthew

1:1–17 1:3–4 3:3 3:7–10 3:9 3:10 3:11 3:12 4:15 5:23 8:11 8:19 8:20 9:5 9:6 10:32–33 11:4–5 11:10 11:19 12:8 12:32 12:40 12:41–42 13:30 13:40–41 16:18 16:27 17:11 17:22 18:22 19:3 19:28 21:42–44 22:2 22:18 23:38 24:2 24:40–41

185, 201–202, 266, 354, 357 152 152 205 72 200 200–201 202, 204 201, 203–204 162 185 357 95 95, 98–99 99 95 96, 100 100 333 95, 98–100 99 95, 99 99 100 204 204 185, 366 90–91 331 99 158 210 165, 360 349 106 99 185 185 291

25:31 26:2 26:24 26:34 26:45 26:53 26:61 26:64 26:74 27:1 27:40

90–91 99 99 412 99 91 185 101 412 418 185

Mark

1:2 1:3 1:7 1:8 1:15 2:10 2:10–11 2:28 3:6 3:27 6:13 6:14–16 6:16 8:31 8:37 8:38 9:11 9:11–13 9:12 9:31 10:33 11:16 12:9 12:10 12:13 13:2

93, 98, 202, 235, 412, 418–419 333 205 202 204 202 99 95, 101 99 382 99 412 24 25 99, 349 90 90–91 331 18 27, 99, 363 99 99 235 106 349 382 185

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

13:14 13:35 14:17 14:21 14:30 14:41 14:58 14:62 14:68 14:72 14:72–15:1 15:1 15:21 15:21–25 15:25 15:29 15:33 15:42 16:18

45 413 418 99 412 99 185 99, 101 418 412, 418 419 418 267, 371–372, 384–385 418 418 185 418 418 386

Luke

1–2 1–3 1 1:5 1:8 1:10 1:16–17 1:17 1:32–33 1:46–47 1:46–55 1:50–53 1:55 1:68 1:68–73 1:69 1:69–71 1:71 1:72–73

151–153, 158–160, 201–202, 205, 210, 272, 327–329, 331, 335–337, 340–341, 344–345, 348–357, 360–361, 363–365, 367, 369–371, 376 328, 341, 343, 349–354, 369 353 335 239, 336 239, 353 402, 410 335, 353 335–337, 350, 352 346 350 346 348 364 337, 339–340, 351 337–338 340–341 337, 346 338–339, 342, 351, 362 338

1:72–75 1:74 1:74–75 1:76 1:76–77 1:77 1:78 1:78–79 1:79 2:14 2:25 2:25–38 2:30–31 2:31–32 2:32 2:34 2:34–35 2:36 2:38 3 3:4–6 3:6 3:7–9 3:7–14 3:8 3:9 3:16 3:17 3:18 3:22 3:27 3:29 3:31–34 3:33 3:34–38 3:36 3:37 4:4 4:18–19 5:1–11 5:14 5:24 6:1 6:5 6:7 6:14 6:24–25 7:22

501

337, 339, 351 338–339, 351, 362 337, 340 335–336, 352 335 336, 353 341 337–338, 342–343, 346 343, 350–351, 366 366 366 343 352 345, 351 367 365 352 345, 351, 355 340, 345, 351, 353 352 205, 352 359 72 353 200 200–201 202, 204 201, 203 353 351 152 158 151 152 151 151 151 365 353 355 365 95, 99 365 99 365 355 219 100, 353

502 7:27 7:34 8:3 9:22 9:26 9:31 9:35 9:42 9:44 9:52–53 9:52–56 9:57 9:58 10:33 11:30 11:32–33 12:8–9 12:10 12:24 12:32 12:37 12:38 13:6–9 13:28–29 13:29 13:34 13:35 14:15 17:11–19 17:18 17:25 17:34–35 18:31 19:42–44 19:44 20:17 20:17–18 20:42–43 21:6 21:20 21:20–24 21:24 21:27 22:14 22:16 22:18 22:22 22:24–27

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

333 95, 98–100 387 99, 349 90–91, 99 354, 365 351, 353, 365 365 99 181 355 95 95, 98–99 355 96, 99–101 100 96, 99–100 95, 99 365 361 361 413 72 369 357, 361 358 185 361 355 355 349 291 99 369 185 353 349 354 185 365 369 369 353 360 361 361 99 360

22:27 22:29–30 22:30 22:34 22:37 22:48 22:60 22:66 22:67 22:67–68 22:69 23:49 23:51 24:10 24:20 24:21 24:25 24:26 24:48–49 24:49

360 360–361 354, 369 412 353 99–100 412 418 101 101 354 349 353 387 353 340 353 353 359 363

John

1:5 1:15 1:19–24 1:23 1:27 1:30 1:33 1:51 2:19 2:19–22 4:20 8:40 13:38 18:27 18:28 19:25 19:37

180, 188, 191, 202–203, 205, 266, 349, 417 202 202 334 205 202 202 204–205 99, 192 185 192 180 100 412 412 418 374 427

Acts 257, 263–264, 266–267, 327–328, 352–354, 356, 360– 361, 365, 367–373, 376–377, 388

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

1:6 1:6–7 1:6–8 1:7 1:8 1:14 1:15–26 1:21–22 1:23 1:33 2 2:5 2:9–11 2:9 2:11 2:17 2:17–21 2:25–28 2:30 2:31 2:33 2:34–35 2:34–36 2:36 2:38 2:38–39 2:39 2:41 2:42–47 2:46 3:1 3:1–10 3:8 3:16 3:17–26 3:19 3:19–26 3:20 3:20–21 3:21 3:22–23 3:22–26 3:25 3:26 4:4 4:11 4:25–26 4:27–17:17

361, 364 364 361 363–364 257, 359–360, 363, 367 349, 386 354 386 371, 380, 386 369 257, 358 357 257, 357, 368 345, 356 261 359 354 354 45 354 358 354 360 358 358, 363 358 359–360 358 358 185 185, 402 365 365 365 362 361 361 362–363, 366 364 358, 263, 363, 369 353, 365 364 364 361, 364 365 349, 353 354 376

5:14 5:30 5:42 188 6:1 6:7 6:14 7:37 7:47–49 7:54 7:56 7:58–13:9 8:4–25 8:32–33 8:38 9:4 9:17 9:30 9:31 9:35 9:42 10 267 10:3 10:9 10:22 10:30 10:36 12:1 12:12 12:24 12:25 13:1 13:9 13:13 13:19–21 13:21 13:25 13:31 13:34 13:35 13:39 13:40–48 13:41 13:47 15 15:13–21

365 354 185 259, 365 365 185 353 366 14, 30 354 372 355 354 257 376 376 262 185, 355, 365–366 365 365 366 403 402 91 403 366 210 372, 385–386 365, 367 372, 385–386 371–372, 378–379, 389–390 372, 390–392 351 72 376 202 360 354 354 370 367 367 359, 367 190, 366 366

503

504 15:14 15:16 15:16–17 15:19–20 15:22 15:27 15:28–29 15:29–29 15:32 15:34 15:36 15:37 15:37–38 15:37–39 15:39 15:40 16:19 16:25 16:29 16:37 17:4 17:10 17:14 17:15 18:2 18:5 18:5–8 18:7 18:8 18:18 18:26 19:8–10 20:2–3 20:3–5 20:32 21:16 21:17–36 21:20 21:20–25 21:26 21:27–29 22:7 22:13 22:14–15 22:17–21 22:21 23:8 24:24

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

373, 376 185, 366 190 267 372, 385 372 267 190 372 372 385 372 390 385 372 372 372 372 372 372 372 372 372 372 371–372 372 367 388 371 371–372 371–372 367 371 372 185, 366 374 189 365 188 187 189 372, 376 372, 376 260 262 359 246 371

25:13–26:32 26:5 26:6–7 26:7 26:14 26:17–18 28 28:5–8 28:20 28:24 28:25–28 28:26–27 28:28

371 210 352 354 372, 376 260 352 367 352 365 368 370 370

Romans 1:16 2:4 4:3 4:16–18 9:3 9:17 9:33 10:11 10:19 11 11:2 11:8–10 11:11 11:14 11:25 11:26 14:19 15:2 15:19 15:20 15:23–24 16 16:3 16:3–4 16:6 16:7 16:13 16:15 16:21 16:23

263, 267, 371 261 75 428 164 389 428 349 428 370 370 428 370 370 370 370 370 185 185 262 185, 366 262 389, 391 371–372 267 372 267, 371, 381, 386–387, 389–390 267, 371–372, 384–385, 389, 391 370 371, 374, 381, 389 371

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

1 Corinthians 1:14 3:6 3:9–17 3:16–17 8:1 9:5 9:20 10:23 14:3–5 14:17 14:26 15 15:3 15:35 15:50–52 16:10 16:19

371 268 366 185 185 268 187 185 185 185 185 77 266 254 23 372 371

2:22 4:12 4:16 4:27

349 185 185 108

Philippians 3:5

140 261

Colossians 1:12 2:7 4:10 4:11 4:14 4:16

126, 143, 145, 147, 381 90 185 372 371, 380–381, 390 371 126, 140

1 Thessalonians 2 Corinthians 1:19 2:4 6:16 6:16–7:1 10:8 11:32–33 11:32–12:10 12:2 12:19 13:10

140 372, 385 140 185 190 185 262 262 100 185 185

Galatians 1:15 1:16 1:17 1:17–18 1:21 2:1 2:18 4:30 5:22–23

260 260 260 260, 262 262 187 185 428 429

Ephesians 1:18 2:11–22 2:20–22

140, 142, 145–147 90 190 185, 366

505

1:1 2:7 3:13 4:16 f. 4:17 5:11

145 372, 385 385 90 91 10 185

2 Thessalonians 1:1 1:7 1:10 2:2 2:8 3:11

11, 125, 145–147 372, 385 90–91 90 125, 145 13, 34 145

1 Timothy 1:20 4:1–3 4:1–5 4:6 5:18 6:14 6:15

144 147 144, 148 148 143 428 149 149

2 Timothy 134, 144, 148–149

506 2:2 2:16–17 2:17 2:17–18 3:1–5 3:1–9 3:5 3:10 3:13 4:2 4:3–4 4:5 4:6 4:11 4:19 4:21

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

143, 147 148 147 145 148 144, 148 144, 149 144 148 144 144, 148 144 148 371–372 371–372 390

Titus 2:2

137 143

Philemon 24

371–372

Hebrews

7:3 9:4 10:37 11:12 12:22 13:15–16

125, 128, 137, 146, 187, 266 334 233 84 164 91 185

4:2 4:5 4:7 4:8 4:12 4:13 4:13–16 4:13–17 4:13–5:6 4:14 5:1 5:1–6 5:1–8 5:3 5:4 5:5 5:6 5:7–11 5:9 5:14 5:16 1 Peter 2:4 2:4–10 2:5 2:6–8 4:17 5:12 5:13

1:1 1:8 1:10–11 1:13–15 2:8 2:8–13 3:13–18 3:14 3:14–4:2

145, 147, 371 349 190 185, 366 349 185 372, 385 372

2 Peter

James 126, 143, 145–147, 214–215, 217–220, 265, 421, 424, 426, 428–429, 431–432 265, 143 431 215–216 426 219 214 429–430 424 429

424 421, 424, 426, 428–432 432 431–432 432 214 216–217 214 214 215–216 214, 217 214, 216–217, 219 214 219 219 217–218 219–220 219 201 412 219

1:1 1:12–15 1:12–16 2 2:1–3 2:10–22 2:19 3 3:1 3:1–4 3:3–10 3:5 3:5–13

11, 77, 81–82, 123, 134, 143–144, 146, 148 373 143 144 77 148 148 77 77, 79 144 148 148 148 77

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

3:7 3:8 3:9 3:10 3:12 3:13 3:15 3:16

79 77, 79–81 77, 81 77 72 82 77 148

1 John 146, 128 2 John 146 3 John 146 Jude

2 14 17–18 19 20

77, 89, 143, 145, 212, 271–272 77 89–91, 158, 212 144 144 185

Revelation

1:1 1:3 1:5 1:7 1:18 2:16 3:5 3:11 3:12 3:21 3:33 5 5:5 5:6–10 5:9 6

18–19, 30–31, 37–38, 82–84, 88, 127, 160, 162–165, 191–192, 266, 408 83 83, 88 83 83 83 83 293 83 185–186 83 83 83 83 83 88, 164 87

6–11 6:8 6:9–11 6:10 7 7:3 7:4–8 7:5–8 7:9 7:14 8:1 8:3 8:3–4 9 9:6 9:12 9:13–21 9:20 f. 10 10:1–7 10:1–11:13 10:3 10:3 f. 10:6 10:7 10:8 10:8–11 10:11 11 11:1–2 11:1–13 11:2 f. 11:3 11:3–12 11:3–13 11:8 11:13 11:24 12–14 12:7–11 12:11 12:12 13:16 14:1 14:4 14:9 14:10

507

83–84 84 84–85 84, 88 84–86, 171–173 31, 85 165, 171–172 160, 162, 165, 171, 173 164 85 408 408, 411 318, 408 86 31 87 87 84, 86 86–87 88 85, 87 86 86 87 88 87 87–88 87 5–15, 17–18, 27–32, 87 185 85, 87–88 87 86 28 3, 8–9, 15, 24–25, 27 86 86 87–88 87 83 13 84 31 31 165 31 91

508 14:14–20 15:1 15:2 15:3 16 16:15 17:10 17:14 18:1–19:3 19:4 19:11–21

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

19:15 19:17–18 20:4 20:15 21:16–17 21:22 22:6 22:7 22:10 22:12 22:20

199 84 13 83 84 83 84 91 88 90 13, 34

91 218 31 293 165 192 83 83 83, 88 83 83, 88, 149

Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Apocalypse of Abraham 61, 79, 103–104, 109, 115, 119, 269, 295, 400 10:10 400 18:11 400 19:6 408 23:5–11 115 Apocalypse of Adam 116 2 Baruch (Syriac Apocalypse) 22, 54, 60–61, 73, 76, 80–82, 103, 110, 113–114, 119, 136–137, 142, 193, 197–198, 203, 205, 207, 269, 310–317, 319–320, 332, 351, 369, 405 1–9 310 1:4 76 1:5 76, 312 4 312 4:1 76 4:2 312 5 311 5:1 73 5:2 74 10–12 310 11 311 11:3 75 12:4 74–75 13–20 310

13:3 13:3–11 13:5 13:10 13:12 14 14:5 14:8–9 14:8–11 14:10 14:10 f. 14:10–11 14:10–14 14:11 15:3 15:8 18:1 19:1 20:1 f. 20:2 20:6 21–34 21:4–10 21:6 21:8 21:10 21:11 21:13 21:19 21:19 f. 21:20 f. 21:21 21:23

22 313 74 76 75 311 315 217 74 216 74 216 216 315 315 312 311 311, 313 72–73 74 73 310 74 408 74 74 311, 314 76 68, 73 75 75 73 253

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

21:25 23:2–5 23:5 23:7 24:1 24:1–2 24:2 30:2 31:2–32:6 32:1 35–40 35–47 36–40 36:3 36:6 36:7–8 36:10 37:1 38:4 39:5 39:7 40:1 40:1 f. 40:1–2 40:2 40:2–3 40:3 41–42 41:1 41:3 41:4 41:5 42 42:2 42:4 42:5 42:8 44–46 44:2–15 44:3 44:7 44:8 44:9 44:14 44:15 46:3 46:5 f. 46:5–6

68, 73, 84 74, 85 354 73 287, 315 314 75 253 312 313 204 310 197, 200 199 199 198 198 198 315 197–198, 204 199 198 34 313, 342 314 346, 351 204 317 314 314 76 314 314 315 315 76 74, 253 136 76 315 313, 344 312 23 315–316 311 313 76 313

48 48–77 48:2 f. 48:2–17 48:3 48:12 48:12 f. 48:19 48:29 48:32 48:39 48:40 48:42–43 49:1–51:1 50–51 50:2 50:3 51:1–5 51:4 51:5 51:7 51:10 51:12 51:13 52:6 54:1 54:1–13 54:4 54:4–5 54:5 54:14 54:15–19 54:16 54:17 54:21 56:2 f. 57:2 59:2 59:6 59:10–11 61:9 63 66:1 72:4–5 73:1 75:5 75:5–6 75:7

311, 315 310 74 74 74 74 80 311 75, 315 73 73 315 316 254 332 253–254 332 314 315 255 74 254–255 255 332 76 72, 74 74 315 310 315 314 316 315 73, 315 314–315 74 315 315 74–75, 85 109 316 60 315 311 346 74 315 315

509

510 75:7–8 76:2 76:5 77:1–10 77:2 77:2–10 77:6 77:6–7 77:11–26 77:12 77:16 78–86 78–87 78:1–7 78:3–7 78:5–7 78:6 78:6–7 78:7 79:2 81:3 82:2 82:6 82:6–9 82:7 82:8–9 82:9 83:1 83:1–8 83:8 83:9–20 83:10–21 84:1–85:15 84:2 84:6 84:9 84:10 84:11 85:1–2 85:3–4 85:4 85:4–5 85:8 85:10 85:12 85:12–13 85:15

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

313 334 313 136 356 76 74, 313 315 314 136 313 135–137, 142, 144, 310 133–134 448 76 165 76, 313 313 315, 339 76 73 73, 75 216 216 215 216 75 72–73 76 315 312 76 76 313 313 137 315 315 294 363 313 312 75–76 73, 312 76 294 316

3 Baruch (Greek Apocalypse) 53, 103, 108, 113–115, 119–120, 207, 269, 272, 317–320, 405–406 1:2 318–320 6 405 6–8 404 6:13 404 6:13–14 405 6:16 405, 412, 414 11–16 318, 401, 403 11:4 318 11:9 318 12:5 318 12:12 318 12:15 318 13 320 14:2 318 15:1–3 320 15:2 318 15:2–3 318 16:1–3 318–319 16:2 319–320 16:2–3 320 16:4 109 16:4–8 115, 318 4 Baruch (Paraleipomena Jeremiou) 6:19–25 133 7:24–34 133 (Greek) Apocalypse of Daniel (Diegesis Danielis) 116 7:14 117 14:1–15 16 (Coptic) Apocalypse of Elijah 3, 5–7, 10, 13–15, 24, 27–28, 30–37, 107–109, 116, 119 1:2 28 1:5–6 38 1:6 f. 28 1:19 28 3:1–4 116 3:7–20 25 3:10 28, 33

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

3:13 3:20 3:21 f. 3:23 3:24 3:25–29 3:31 3:31–33 3:34 3:35 3:36 3:37 3:38 3:40 3:54 3:54 f. 3:66 3:81 3:82 f. 3:91 3:91–97 3:93 4:7–19 5:26–29 5:32–34

28 32 31 31 31 30 32 31 31 28, 33 31 32 31 32 31–32 33 28 33 33 33 33 34 38 116 38

Hebrew Apocalypse of Elijah 119 (Syriac) Apocalypse of Ezra 4, 9, 29, 31, 111 (Falasha) Apocalypse of Ezra 16, 111 Apocalypse of Sedrach 111–113 15.2–5 108 Apocalypse of Zechariah 108–109 Apocalypse of Zephaniah 106–109, 119, 291–294 1:1–2 291 2:2–4 291 2:8–9 293 3:5–7 292

3:7 3:9 4:1–10 4:9 7 7–9 7:8 7:9 7:10–11 8:5 9:2 10:9 10:10–11 11:1–6

511

293 292 292 292 287, 292 292 292 292 288, 292 292 292 291 293 293

Apocryphal Syriac Psalms 154:19 340–341 Apocryphon of Ezekiel 106, 116, 119 Frag. 5 106 Aristeas, Letter of 133, 242 35–40 133 41–46 133 92 242 95 242 96 242 160 401 304–305 401 Ascension of Isaiah 91, 103, 108–109, 119 1.3 109 3.2 453 4.1 108 4.14 90–91 8.24 108 9.22 108 11.16 108 Assumption of Moses (Testament of Moses) 15, 30, 54 6 54 Book of Zerubbabel 119

512

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

1 Enoch 19, 49, 51–52, 59, 91, 103–105, 119–120, 133, 212, 219, 270, 273–276, 282, 297, 300, 450 1 274 1–3 273 1–5 50–51, 275–280, 283–284 1–36 (Book of Watchers) 49, 54, 59, 270, 273, 275–277, 280–281, 285 1:1 276–277, 300 1:3 277 1:3–4 276 1:3–9 276, 306 1:4 276 1:4–6 90 1:7–9 276 1:8 277 1:9 89–91, 276–277 2–5 274, 276 5:4 274, 278 5:4–5 277 5:6 52, 277 5:6–7 277 5:6–8 277 5:7 277 5:8 277 5:8–9 278, 316 5:9 52, 277 6–13 52 6–16 273 6–19 50–51 7:1 50 8:3 50, 153 10:3 277, 279 10:8 273 10:12 159 10:13 51 10:14 52 10:16 277, 279 10:17 52, 277 10:17–19 277 10:20 51 10:21 52, 276–277 10:22 51 12:5–6 277

12:4–14:7 279 13:1 277 13:1–2 274 13:1–3 274 15:8–16:1 51 16:1 51 16:2–4 274 16:4 274, 277 17–36 274, 276 19:1 51 20:7 292 21–36 50 22 51–52, 247, 252, 278 22:3–10 251 22:5–7 52 22:12 52 22:27 109 25:5 277 25:5–6 275 25:6 52 26–27 275 27:2–3 52 27:3 52 33–36 404 37–71 (Similitudes/Parables) 49, 120, 204–205, 270–271, 282–283, 285 38:1 285 38:2 277, 284 38:3 277 38:4 277, 285 38:5 300 38:5–6 285 38:6 294 39:5 284 39:6 277 39:7 277 40:5 277, 284 41:1 285, 288 41:2 277, 284–285 42 285 43:4 284 45:1 284 45:2 284 45:3 277, 284–285 45:4–5 255 46:6 284 46:7 284

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

46:8 284 47 85 47:1–2 318, 403 47:3 293 48:1 277, 284 48:9 277 48:10 284 49:3 163, 354 50:1 277 50:2 285 50:2–5 285 51:1 254 51:4 255 51:5 255, 277 53 285 56:6 277 56:8 277 57 345 58:1 277 58:2 277 58:3 255, 277 60:1 277 60:5–6 294 60:8 158 61:4 277, 284 61:8 288 61:13 277 62–63 285 62:2 342, 354 62:7 277 62:8 277, 279 62:9–10 294 62:11 277 62:12 277 62:13 277 62:15 277 62:15–16 255 63:8–9 285 63:9 285 67:8 284 67:10 284 69:6–14 50 70:3 277 71:16–17 284 72 404–405 72–82 (Astronomical Book) 49, 270 72:1 52

513

72:2–3 404 72:3 405 72:7 405 75–76 404 80 271 80–82 273 80:7 51 81:2 62 81:9 52 82:4 f. 51 83 59 83 f. 58, 63 83–90 (Book of Dreams) 49, 52, 58–60, 270, 281 84:6 279 85–90 19, 58 85:3 282 87:2–4 19 89:59–90:17 58 90:8–18 60 90:19 20, 300 90:20 20 90:20–27 20 90:28–29 185 90:28–30 20 90:29–33 345 90:31 19–20, 29, 331 90:33 247, 448 90:33–38 282 90:38 282 91–105[107] (Epistle of Enoch) 49, 51–52, 133, 142–144, 219, 270–271, 279–280, 283–284 91–108 219 91:1–10 279 91:2 279 91:3–4 279 91:10 253 91:11–17 155, 271, 279 91:12 280, 300 91:17 280 91:18–19 279–280 91:19 279–280 91:30 344 92–105 133 92:1 133–134, 219 92:1–5 279

514 92:3 92:3–5 92:4 93:1 93:1–10 93:2 93:3 93:3–10 93:4 93:5 93:6 93:7 93:8 93:9 93:10 93:14 94–104 94–105 94:1–4 94:3 94:4 94:7–8 94:8–95:2 94:9 94:11 95:3 95:5 95:7 96:1 96:1–3 96:2 96:3 96:4 96:4–8 96:5 96:7 96:8 97:1 97:7 97:8–10 98:1 98:2–3 98:8 98:10 98:15 99:1 99:2 99:3

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

253 280 255, 280 133 279 277, 280 133, 155–156 155, 271 51, 156 156, 279–280 156–157 156–157 157 279 157, 277, 279–280 280 348 279–280 280 280 280 219 219 218 281 219, 281, 300 281 281 281 219 219 281 219 219 219 219 219, 281 219, 281 219 219 280 219 281, 287 219 281 280 281 318, 403

99:4 219 99:6 219 99:7–10 280 99:10 280 100:5 280 100:6 133, 280 100:7 281 102:4 251 102:5 219 103:9 180, 281 103:14–15 280 103:15 281 104:2 254–255, 281 104:4 255, 281 104:5 280 104:6 281 104:7 281, 287 104:9 280 104:12 280 104:13 280 105:2 280 106–107 (Noah Appendix) 133, 270 107 133 108 270 108:3 293 108:12 255 108:12–13 255 108:14 255 2 Enoch

2:2 2:3 7 8–10 10:4 11–15 12–15 12:1–2 13:2 13:2–5 14:1 14:3 15:1 15:1–2 19:5

53, 103, 105, 108, 119–120, 272, 285–292, 300, 402, 405–406, 450 286, 288 287, 291 285 289 289 404 405 405 404 404 404 405 406 406 287

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

23:4 30:15 34:1–2 35:1 35:2–3 40–41 40–47 41:2 43:3 44:3 44:5 45:1–2 45:1–3 45:3 46:2 46:3 47:2 48:7 48:7–8 48:8 48:8–9 49:2 49:2–3 50 50:1 50:5 50:6 51:4 51:5 51:5–6 52:15 53:1 53:2–3 53:3 59:1–5 60–62 60:3 61:1 61:2–3 62:1 63:2 65:8 66:2 66:3 66:5 68:5–7 69–73 69:9–18

289 289 289 286 286 109 108 290 289 288 288 288 286 287–288 287 287 286 290 290 291 286 288 288 286 287 288 288 402 399 400 287–288 294 287 287 286 290 288 287 289 286 287 255 286 287 287 286 103, 272 286

70:2 70:19–21

286 286

3 Enoch 22:15

105, 116, 272, 450 406

4 Ezra (Apocalypse of Ezra) 22–23, 54, 61, 103, 107–112, 114, 119, 205, 207, 269, 290, 293, 295–297, 300–305, 307–313, 315–317, 322, 331, 344, 351, 369 1–2 110, 296 1:39 8 2:33–35 344 3 302 3–14 344 3:1–58 296 3:7 302 3:14 299 3:15 302 3:30 75 3:32 306 3:35–36 306 4:24 215–216 4:27 311 4:33 84 4:35 84 4:35–37 85 4:36 74 4:38–42 71 4:41–43 254 5 311 5:1 306 5:21–6:34 296 5:29 306 5:40 299 5:43–45 74 6:5 306 6:25 301 6:26 7, 22, 29, 331, 334 6:26–28 299 6:28 306 6:32 307 6:35–9:26 296

515

516 6:56–57 7:12–14 7:20 7:22–24 7:23–24 7:28 7:28–29 7:28–31 7:31–35 7:32 7:33 7:33–34 7:34 7:35 7:37 7:38 7:45 7:50 7:59–61 7:61 7:72 7:74 7:75–101 7:77 7:78 7:79 7:82 7:83 7:84 7:88 7:89 7:92 7:94 7:95 7:98 7:102–115 7:105 7:106–111 7:114 7:125 7:127–129 7:129 7:132–139 7:132–140 8:1 8:15–16 8:20–36 8:26–30

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

298 307 300 305 306 7, 22, 301, 331 334 23 23 254 75 294, 307 306 306 305 306 306 59 298, 300 216 306 75 252 306 254 305–306 306 306 109 306 307 307 307 306 306 294 306 294 306 254 322 306, 313 75 298 299 298 298, 316 298

8:27 8:30 8:31–36 8:32–33 8:32–35 8:33 8:36 8:39 8:53 8:55–56 8:56 8:59–61 9:7 9:7–8 9:9 9:9–11 9:11 9:21 9:21–22 9:27–10:59 9:32 10:24 10:45 f. 10:53–54 11 11–12 11:1–12:51 11:46 12 12:31–32 12:31–34 12:34 12:36–38 12:38 13 13–14 13:1–58 13:2 13:5 13:8–11 13:9–11 13:10 13:10–11 13:11 13:12 13:20 13:23 13:34

306 306 316 306 298 306 306 306 250 305 306 299 306 301 306 305 306 75 308 296 306 290, 307 80 300 311 341 296 362 297 163 300 290, 300–301, 307 309 297 204, 301, 345 308 296 204 302 300 204 163 342 302 301–302 216 306 302

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

13:37–38 13:39 13:39–50 13:40 13:40–46 13:42 13:44 13:45 13:47 13:48 13:48–49 13:52 13:57 13:57–58 14 14:1–48 14:5 14:6 14:9 14:11 f. 14:22 14:27–36 14:29–33 14:30 14:31 14:34 14:35 14:45 14:45–46 14:45–47 14:46 15–16

300, 342 301–302 448 303 137 306 303, 308 303, 305 302 301 300 7, 22, 331, 334 296 302 297, 309, 311 296 299 303, 305, 309 22, 331, 334 80 309 310, 312 309 306 306 290, 307, 309 306 309 309 309 297, 303 110, 296

5 Ezra 110, 119, 296, 344 6 Ezra 110, 296 Genesis Apocryphon 450 History of Joseph (Arabic) 5 (Bohairic) History of Joseph 29, 32 31–32 4, 30

517

Joseph and Aseneth 15:4 293 17:6 185 20:7 248 Jubilees

1:15 2:23 4:23–24 4:30 7:20–39 7:39 8:1–5 13:20 14:4–5 18:15 25:16 27:13 30:22 31:17 31:18 31:20 32:22 34:30 44:11–34

52, 153–156, 158, 160, 166 329 154 287 78 156 158 151, 153, 155 164 164 164 164 164 293 339 339 339 167 169 168

Ladder of Jacob 1:10

103, 116, 119, 269, 295 164

Liber antiquitatum biblicarum (Pseudo-Philo) 20–23, 154, 166–170, 178, 331–332, 334, 337, 348, 430 1:16 21 3:10 23, 248, 250, 253–254, 332 4:9 155 8:2 133 8:6 167, 169 8:6–7 133 8:11–14 167–168, 170–171 8:13 169 10:3 166 13:8–10 348

518 19:2 19:10–15 19:12 19:13 19:15 20:5 21:4–5 23:6 23:6–7 23:13 25:4 25:9–13 26:4 26:10–11 26:12 28:6–9 30:7 33:3 33:5 47:1 47:7 48:1 49:1 50–54 51:3–6

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

339 348 253 72, 253 80 430 170 109 348 332, 336 167, 169–171 167, 169–171 169 167–171 169 348 338 254, 332 254 334 334 21, 23, 334, 336 170 133 346

Life of Adam and Eve 400 Lives of the Prophets 25 3:16–17 356, 453 Odes of Solomon 264 22:12 185 Psalms of Solomon 348, 351 3:12 253, 255 6:4 401 8:28 448 9:10 339 11 345 11:1–9 448 11:2–3 357 17:4 346 17:23–24 342

17:24 17:26 17:28 17:31 17:35–37 17:37 17:44 18:6 18:7

163, 342 448 345 344–345, 357 163 354 330 330 354

Pseudo-Phocylides 215 9–21 219 19 219–220 116–117 215 Questions of Ezra 111–112 Revelation of Ezra 104 Secrets of Rabbi Simon ben Yohai 119 Sibylline Oracles 48, 106, 320 1–2 119, 321 1–14 103 2 321 2:154–177 321 2:154–338 321 2:170–176 166 2:178–338 321 2:187 8, 18 2:242 90–91 3 321 3–5 103, 119 3:49–50 346 3:195 322 3:218–247 321 3:245 321 3:256–259 321 3:273–294 322 3:399–401 322 3:574–594 322 3:585–586 322 3:591–592 401

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

3:594–600 3:599–600 3:686–687 3:710–723 3:719 3:757–758 4 4:6–30 4:115–118 4:162–178 4:181–182 4:182 4:187 5 5:265 5:357 7–8 8 8:221 11 12–14 14

321 322 322 344 322 322 321–322 323 323 322 254 254 255 321–322 322 322 119 321 90 321 119 106

Testament of Adam 393–395 2:7 318 Testament of Job 255 4:9 253 12:4 219 Testament of Moses 53–54, 63 1:18 72 4:1–4 63 4:9 356 8:1 58 9 58 10:1–7 276 10:9–10 255 11:14 63 11:17 63, 294 12:5 62 12:6 58, 63, 294 12:11–13 63 12:13 339

519

Testaments of the Three Patriarchs Testament of Abraham 253, 289, 291–292, 400 A12–13 288 A12–14 289, 292 B4:4–5 400 B10–11 287 B9 289 Testament of Jacob 7:27 293 Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs 166, 169, 171 Testament of Dan 5:4–5 162 5:9–13 162 Testament of Gad 1:2 169 Testament of Issachar 1:2 169 Testament of Joseph 19:4 165 Testament of Judah 24:4–6 163 Treatise of Shem 104 Visio Danielis (Greek) 4, 29, 31 (Armenian) Vision of Enoch 117 Vision of Ezra 38

111–112 108

(Coptic) Vision of Daniel 80–81 16

520

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

Scrolls From The Judean Desert 1QpHab 7:10–12

67

1Q20 (Genesis Apocryphon) 450 1QapGen 19.14–19 21.14

200 90

1Q27 (1QMysteries) 1QH 15.17

217–218 217–218

1QM (War Scroll ) 165–166, 196 1.2 339 1.2–3 165–166 1.3 195 2.2 238 2.2–3 166 2.7 166 3.13–14 166 4.16 166 5.1–2 166 6.10 166 11.6–7 341 14.5 339 14.10–11 348 14.13–14 401 15.1 339 15.2 196 15.10 216 15.10–11 216 15.11 215 18.11 339 1QS (Rule of the Community) 182 3.17–4.26 426 4.8 255 10.10 401

1QSa (1Q28a) 1.8–15 225 1QSb (1Q28b) 5.20–29 5.24 5.24–25 5.25 5.29

163 341 342 354 341

4Q161 (4QpIsaa) 163, 194–198 8–10.2–9 193 4Q174 (4QFlorilegium) 190 1.1.10–13 346 1.3–4 190 1.11–12 163 1–3.1.18–19 342 4Q175 (4QTestimonia) 9–13 341 4Q176 (4Qtanhumim) 1–2.1.4–9 352 4Q177 (4Qcatenaa) 4Q185 1

216 215

4Q196 (4QToba) 2.6 445 17.2.8 437 4Q197 4.3.5 4.3.6

444 444

4Q200 4.7 6.1

444 444

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

4Q202 (4QEnochc) 1.1.15 90 1.2.22–24 134 1.4.10 159 1.5.1 51 1.22 51 4Q242 (4Qprayer of Nabonidus) 46 4Q243–245 (4QpsDaniela–c) 46

4Q378 (4QPsJoshuaa) 11.2–3 338 4Q385 (4QpsEzek) 254 4Q405 (4QshirShabb) 1–2.7.8–9 396 20–21–22 406 20–21–22.12–13 407 4Q434 1.1.9

343

4Q448 2.3–6

357

4Q285 4 5

197–198 197 194–197

4Q471 4Q287 3

238 399 4Q501 1.1–5

4Q319

399

238 4Q503 4Q320

401, 405 405 405

238

1–3.3 7–9.2

238

4Q504 (4QdibHama) 1–2.5.9 338 1–2.5.12–13 329 1–2.6.12–13 359 1–2.7.4–9 399

4Q321

4Q323 238 4Q324 238 4Q325

4Q521 332 332 354 332 332 332

384

1.2.4 2.2.6 2.2.12 7+5.2.6 2.3.2

355

11Q5 (11QPsa) 18.1–18 340

238 4Q341

4Q371

4Q372 355

11Q19 (11QT) 24 166, 168, 171 24.10–16 168

521

522

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

39–41 44–45 48.14–17

166 166 229

4:12 7:19–21

58 341

Babatha Archive 383–384

CD 182 58 74 426

1:5 2:4 3:2–3

P. Yadin 36

Early Christian Literature (Except New Testament) Acta Pauli et Antonini 375 Acts of Paul 4 5 11:4

136, 140–141 141 141 30

Acts of Pilate 25

6 4, 10

Acts of Thomas 263–264

(Ethiopic) Apocalypse of Peter 6, 11–12, 14, 24, 29–32, 106, 108, 116, 118–119, 149, 189, 321 1 90–91 2 3, 32 4–14 106 (Arabic [Clementine]) Apocalypse of Peter 29, 32 (Ethiopic [Clementine]) Apocalypse of Peter 4, 12, 14, 29, 32

Adso Libellus de Antichristo 4

(Syriac [Clementine]) Apocalypse of Peter 4, 29, 32

Andreas Salos Apocalypse 286–289 16

Apocalypse of Ps.-Shenoute 4, 13, 29, 31–32

1 Apocalypse of James 265

Apocalypse of Ps.-John 4, 29, 31–32

Apocalypse of John 82, 112, 118–119

Apocalypse of Shenoute 25

Apocalypse of Leo of Costantinople 21 16

Apocalypse of Thomas 128

Apocalypse of Paul 113, 118, 318, 400 7 401, 403 20 8

Apocalypse of the Virgin 113

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

Apocryphon of James 138–139, 142, 147 1:2 138–139 1:11–12 138 1:19–20 138 1:21–22 138 1:23–24 138 1:35 138 2:1 139 2:2 139 2:3–4 139 2:7 139 2:34–37 138 Apostolic Constitutions and Canons 6.8.1 141 6.10.1 141 Augustine De civitate Dei 21.17–27 113 Barnabas, Epistle of 128, 137, 185, 188 4:3 72 4:11 185 6:5 185 15:4 78–79 16 185 19:5 431 1 Clement 3:2 4:7 5:2 17:6 23–26 23:2 23:3 23:6

431 424 424 424 215 77 431 77, 431–432 91

2 Clement 9–12 11:2 11:2 f. 11:5

128, 431 77 431–432 77 431

15:2 17:3 19:1 19:2

128 128 128 431

Commodian Carmen apologeticum 941–986 166 Carmen de duobus populis 833 8 833–864 8 839 8 850 8 3 Corinthians 2:5 3:24–32

136, 139–145 140 77

Didache 4:4 10:2 16:7

431 185 90–91

Ephraem “Graecus” Sermo in adventum Domini 4, 12–14, 29, 31–32 Ephraem Syrus Sermo de fine extremo 4, 29, 31–32 Epiphanius of Salamis De mensuris et ponderibus 9a 133 Epistle of the Apostles 138, 142, 144 2 138 3–5 138 6–7 138 7 139 9–12 138 12–51 138 34 149

523

524

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

Epistle of Peter to James 139, 142, 144, 147 1:2 139 2:1 139 2:2 139 2:3–4 139 2:7 139 2:17 148 Eupolemus apud Eusebius, Praep. Evang. 9.31–34.3 133 Eusebius Praeparatio Evangelica 9.31–34.3 133 9.38 133 Historia Ecclesiastica 3.38.4 128 3.39.9 386 4.5.3 379 4.22.7 181 Gospel of Thomas 71 185 Hegesippus apud Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 4.22.5 141 4.22.7 181 Hilarius In Matt 20:10

Honorius of Autun Elucidarium 3.9 11 Ignatius Ephesians 9:1

185

Irenaeus Adversus Haereses 5.5.1 8 5.23.2 78–79 5.28.3 78–79 5.30.2 162 Jerome Apology against Rufinus 3.25 125 John of Damascus De fide orthodoxa 4.20 11 Justin 1 Apology 31.6

189

Dialogue with Trypho 17.1 191 49 8, 18 80.2 181 81 78–79 108.2 191 119–120 164

8 Kerygmata Petrou 139

Hippolytus 9, 12, 14, 28 De Antichristo 14 43 46–47 47

162 4, 29 4, 29 8

Lactantius Divinarum Institutionum 7 8 17 8 17.1–3 25 Laodiceans

In Danielem 35 50

139–140, 142 4, 29 4, 29

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

525

Letter of Peter to Philip 137 132:10–133:8 137

De consummatione mundi 21 4–5, 12, 29 29 4, 14, 29

Letter to the Alexandrians 139–140

Pseudo-Methodius 13–14, 29, 31–32, 34, 117 Revelationes 6 4 14 4

Muratorian Canon 126, 139–140 (Coptic) Mysteries of John 401 Oracles of Leo the Wise 5.36–39 16 Origen In Joann. 6.14(7)

334

Papias apud Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.39.9 386 Philippus Solitarius Dioptra 3.19 11 Polycarp Philippians 3:2 7 12:2

185 77 185

Shepherd of Hermas 119, 426, 431–432 Visions 2 2.2.7 2.3.4 3 3.4.1 3.8.2

431 91 431–432 185 91 185

Mandates 3.1 12.5.2 12.6.3

431 432 432

Similitudes 3 5.6.5

185 431

Sibyl A (Arabic) 15

Pseudo-Clementine Homilies 139

Sibyl B (Arabic)

Pseuco-Cyprian Ad Novatianum 16 89

Stichometry of Nicephorus 108–109

Pseudo-Ephraem “Latinus” Sermo de fine mundi 4, 29, 31 Pseudo-Hippolytus 13, 28, 31

15

Teachings of Silvanus 142 Tertullian Adversus Marcionem 5.11.17 140

526 De anima 25 50

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

8 3, 5, 14, 33

De resurrectione 22 8, 106 Testament of our Lord Jesus (Karshuni) 1:2 149 6 16 Testament of our Lord in Galilee 149

Tiburtine Sibyl (Greek) 4, 14, 29, 32, 34 Tiburtine Sibyl (Latin) 4, 9 Two Sorrows of the Kingdom of Heaven 8 16 Victorinus of Pettau In Apocalypsin 11:5 8

Other Ancient Greek And Roman Literature Aristophanes Ecclesiazusae 30–31 390–391

414 414

Cicero De Divinatione 2.26 414 2.54 414 Epistulae ad Atticum 11.5.1 125 Diodorus Bibliotheca Historica 2.13.6 457 Diogenes Laertius Lives of Eminent Philosphers 10.85 126–127 Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 175, 221, 230 1.143–147 262 1.221 260 1.239 260 1.344 167 2.177–183 167 3.114 234 3.147 233

3.169 3.198 3.226 3.261 3.278 4.212 4.212–213 7.195 7.267 7.364 7.365 7.365–366 7.366 8.2.6–7 8.50–54 9.279 9.290 9.291 11.131–133 11.133 11.311–313 11.379 12.100 12.239 12.265 12.385 12.398 14.72 15.391–402 16.187 17.266

167, 169 233 231 230 228 401 401 425 240 239 238 223 223, 239 133 133 356, 453 181 181, 355 258, 356, 453 302 454 454 133 374, 380 223 373 425 235 234 224 382

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

18.19 18.34 18.311 18.311–313 18.379 20.14 20.34–35 20.38–48 20.97 20.118–136 20.169–170

182 259 454 258 258 383 265 265 337 181 337

Contra Apionem 221–222, 226, 228, 239, 243 1.29–36 221 1.54 222 2.76–77 221, 243 2.91 233 2.91–96 226 2.97–102 226 2.102–104 227, 243 2.102–109 221, 226 2.103 229 2.104 228, 230 2.105 232, 239 2.106 234–235 2.106–107 233 2.107–108 236 2.108 235, 237–239 2.119 221, 241, 243 2.185–187 221 2.193 243 2.193–197 402 2.193–198 221 Jewish War (Bellum) 221, 227–228, 241, 264 1.152 235 2.52 380, 382 2.164 253 2.232–246 181 2.250 383 2.259 337 2.261–262 337 2.409–421 191 2.418 376, 388

2.534 2.566 3.11 3.20 3.25 3.27 4.155 4.316 f. 4.359 4.361 4.363 5.184–226 5.199 5.201 5.202 5.211 5.215 5.216 5.218 5.219 5.220 5.226 5.227 5.228 5.231 5.259 5.261–262 5.388 5.395 6.293 6.299 6.312 7.161 7.431

425 383 383 383 383 383 223, 239 30 383 383 383 234 227 241 241 241 241 233 233 234 235 231 227, 230 225 242 337 337 235 343 241 232 341, 341 235 180

Vita 1–2 2 2–3 3–4 5 6 12 13 34 80 397 427

222, 224 223, 239 224 224–225 379–380 222 225–226 225 379 222, 225–226 379, 382 379–380

527

528 Juvenal Saturae 9.107–108 Herodotus Historiae 5.52

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

344

Plato Phaedrus 247a

424

Timaeus 29e

424

414

456

Philo De legatione ad Gaium 276–329 133 283–284 262, 357

Pliny Naturalis Historia 2.79.188 417 10.24.47 413

De praemiis et poenis 95 341 164 343 De vita Mosis 1.290 1.306 2.44 2.94

De virtutibus 119–120

Plutarch Alexander 42

341 165 344 233

457

De sera numinis vindicata 81 Socratic Epistles 130

De specialibus legibus 1.198–199 231 2.145–146 231

Xenophon Anabasis 456

Quis rerum divinarum heres sit 226 233

Rabbinic Literature Babylonian Talmud b. ’Abodah Zarah 7b 345 9a 72 34a 356 b. Baba Batra 10a 82 b. Baba Metzi’a 111a 219 b. Berakot 60b

406

b. Gittin 56a–56b

197

b. Hagigah 12b 13b

407 406

b. Hullin 24a–b

225

b. Ketubbot 105a

345

b. Pesahim 11b–12b

417

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

b. Sanhedrin 17a 38a 97a 97b 97b–98a 99b

430 349 78 72–73 71 78

m. Mo‘ed Qatan 3:2 229 m. Nazir 5:4

345

m. Pesahim 9:4

229

m. Sanhedrin 10:3

165, 303

m. Shabbat 2:1

345

m. Sheqalim 5:1 5:4–5 6:4

236–237 236 234

m. Baba Batra 5:2 345

m. Sotah 2:2

234

m. Berakot 1:2 4:1

402, 409 403

m. Sukkot 4:10 5:4 5:8

234 412, 414 238

m. Kelim 1:6 1:6–9 1:8

228 228 231

m. Ta‘anit 4:2

240

b. Sotah 49b b. Yoma 21a 21b 86b

333

414 416 82

Mishnah 228–232, 234, 237– 238, 241–242, 401, 409, 412

m. Tamid m. Keritot 2:1

229

m. Menahot 8:2 8:7 11:7

236 236 234

m. Middot 1:6 1:8–9 3:5 3:6 4:2

237 239 234 234 241

1:1 1:1–2 1:2 1:3 1:4 2:1 3:2 3:4 3:5 3:7 3:8 5:1 5:3

409 239 232 409, 412–414 236 234 234 409 235 234 241 234 232–233, 238 232

529

530

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

m. Yoma 1:8 3:10 3:11 4:5

412–414 234 237 234

m. Zabim 5:6

229

Canticles Rabbah 56.6 374 Derek Eretz Zuta 1 22 Exodus Rabbah 38.8–9

Palestinian Talmud j. Berakot 2:5a 197 3b 94 5b 94 5c 99 j. Ketubbot 35a

99

j. Sanhedrin 10:6

165

169 169

Fragment Targums Exodus 28:17–20 169 Genesis Rabbah 8:2 78 19:8 78 41:1 200 64:2 386 65:21 407

j. Shebi’it 38d

94

Hekhalot Rabbati 407 11:4 406

j. Ta‘anit 1:1 68a

71, 73 223, 239

Lamentations Rabbah 1:5:31 197 2:2:4 236

j. Yebamot 13a

99

Leviticus Rabbah 29:11 158 32:5 374, 379

Tosephta t. Sanhedrin 2:6

356, 453

Midrash on Psalms 25:6 78 90:4 78

t. Sheqalim 2:14 2:177

237 237

Midrash Tanhuma Behuqotai 5 71–72

t. Ta‘anit 2:1 2:16

239 239

Palestinian Targum to Genesis 4:14 97

Numbers Rabbah 169 2:7 169, 171 15:19 430 21:3 334 Perek Shirah 395, 399, 406, 415

Index of Scriptures and Other Ancient Writings

Targum Neofiti Exod. 4:13 334 28:17–20 169 39:10–13 169

Pesiqta de Rab Kahana 9:3 406 Pesiqta Rabbati 1:7 78 23:1 73 Pirqe de Rabbi Eliezer (PRE) 4 406 18 78 28 79–80 29 21, 20

Num. 11:26 25:12

430 336

Sifre on Numbers 95 430

Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan 170, 333, 346–347 Exod. 4:13 21, 334 6:18 21, 333 28:17–20 169 39:10–13 169 40:10 21, 333

Song of Songs Rabbah 56:6 379

Deut. 30:4

21

Targum Neofiti Exod. 28:17–20 169 39:10–13 169

Num. 11:26 25:12

430 21, 333, 336

2 Sam. 22:28 22:50

348 348

Targum of Ezekiel 1:24–25 407

Jer. 10:11

135

Targum of Isaiah 195

Ezek. 1:24–25

407

Targum of Job

Yalqut Shim‘oni 76 80

Shemoneh ‘Esreh 340, 341

Num. 11:26

430

450

Manuscripts Codex Panopolitanus Codex Sinaiticus Lake Tana 9

89 435–436 104

531

Index of Ancient Persons Aaron 21, 157, 222, 334, 336 Aba-enlil-dari 453 Abercius, bishop of Hieropolis 264 Abishua 157 Abraham 22, 79–80, 116, 151–152, 154–156, 158–160, 185, 200, 260–262, 269, 274, 276, 279, 291, 293, 296–297, 299, 301–302, 304, 332, 337–339, 355, 358, 364–365, 426, 446, 448 Achillas Rufus 378–379 Adam 61, 78, 151, 153–156, 158–160, 282, 286–287, 289, 298, 316, 394–395, 406, 408 Addai 265 Admin 158–159 Adso 4, 9, 29, 32 Aequus 382 Africanus 384 Agrippa – son of Aristobulus 382 – son of Josephus 380 Agrippa I 210, 382–383 Agrippa II (Marcus Julius) 371–372, 379–380, 382–384 Agrippinus, grandson of Agrippa I 382 Ahikar (Ahuqar) 452–453 Ahitub 157 Ahuramazda 47 Alciphron 130 Alexander 259, 263, 457–458 Alexander of Cyrene 385 Alkimos 373 Amariah 157 Amel-Marduk 46 Ammianus Marcellinus 414 Amminadab 152, 156–157 Amos 438–439, 445 Amram 157 Ananias 376

Andronicus 267, 371, 381, 386–387 Anna – daughter of Phanuel 343, 345, 353 – wife of Tobit 443, 445 Annia 374 Annianus 374, 383 Antiochus Epiphanes 46, 48, 58, 226–227, 233, 235, 247, 281 Antipas, Herod see Herod Antipas Antipater 372 Antoninus 383 Antonius Rufus 378–379 Aphrahat of Nisibis 265 Apollonius of Tyana 394 Appia 383 Appius Marcus 384 Aqiva, Rabbi 303 Aquila – named in 4Q341, 384 – of Pontus 267–268, 371 – of Sinope 425 Archedemus of Tarsus 259 Arni 159 Arpachshad 153–156 Arrian 457–458 Asamonaeus 223–224 Asher 162, 167–169, 171–172, 345, 356 Asmodeus 434 Aster 373 Augustine 81, 113 Aurelius Rufus of Apamea 378 Azariah 157, 434, 446 Baal 86 Bannus 225 Bardaisan 264 Barnabas (Joseph) 137, 268, 367, 372, 385

Index of Ancient Persons

Baruch 7, 22, 54, 73–77, 80–81, 85, 114–115, 134, 136–137, 197, 199, 207, 254, 295, 310–311, 314 Belshazzar 45 Benjamin 162, 166–168, 171–172, 258, 355–356, 374, 449 Ben Sira 215, 245, 286, 329–330, 333, 335–336, 450 Ben Katin 234 Bilhah 162–163, 167–169, 171 Bithiah, daughter of Pharaoh 22, 35 Boaz 152, 156 Bukki 157 Cain 51, 97 Caiaphas 418 Carus 382 Castus 384 Catulla 384 Cedrenus, George 393–394, 396–397, 403 Cerinthus 138–139 Charlemagne 117 Chuza 387 Cimber 384 Claudia 390 Claudius (emperor) 383 Clement of Alexandria 1, 106–108 Cleobius 141 Cleopas 374 Clopas 374 Commodian 3, 8, 18, 166 Cornelius 366–367, 383 Crispus – ruler of synagogue in Corith 371–372 – of the Herodian household 382 – son of Compsios 382 – of Tiberias 383 Curtius 458 Dan 161–162, 167–168, 170–172, 356 Daniel 45–46, 48–52, 54, 62–63, 87, 117–118, 294, 402 Darius 47, 457–458 David 45, 151–152, 156, 158–160, 163, 170–171, 190, 193–196, 201, 203–204, 239, 325, 328–329, 331, 333–334, 337, 340–342, 346–348, 351, 354, 356, 358

533

Decian 37 Deborah 347, 447 Didymus (the Blind) 36 Dinah 170 Dionysius of Alexandria 37 Domnica 383 Drusilla, sister of Agrippa II 371–372, 382, 384 Drusus 382 Ebed-melech 22 Eber 155–156 Edna 446 Eldad 430–432 Eleazar – ben Azariah, Rabbi 79–80 – Maccabeus 373 – son of Aaron 157 Eliakim 373 Eliezer – ben Hyrcanus, Rabbi 71–73, 76–78, 82, 303 – ben R. Jose the Galilean, Rabbi 78 – servant of Abraham 22 Elijah 3, 5–15, 17–25, 27–35, 38, 116, 249, 255, 301, 328–337, 359, 361–363 Enoch 3, 5–15, 17–24, 27–35, 43–44, 46, 49–52, 54, 59, 63, 108, 133–134, 153–154, 157–160, 212, 249, 255, 269, 272–278, 281, 283–287, 290– 291, 297, 299–300, 302, 305, 307, 316, 331, 404 Enosh 156 Ephraem Syrus 8 Ephraim 162, 167, 170–172, 355–356 Ephrem 265 Epictetus 126 Esarhaddon 453 Esau 260 Essenes 6, 28, 176–178, 182, 212, 256, 402 Esther 347, 373, 433 Eusebius 181 Eve 400 Ezekiel 106 Ezra 7, 22, 54, 71, 74, 112–113, 118, 157, 216, 295–306, 308–311, 313, 315–316

534

Index of Ancient Persons

Flavius Julianus 378 Fortunatus 382 Furia 383 Furia Africana 384 Furius Africanus 384 Gabael of Rhagae 457–459 Gabriel (archangel) 5, 9, 12, 17, 32, 328 Gad 161–162, 167–169, 171–172, 356 Gaius 383–384 Gaius Furfanius Julianus of Rome 378 Gaius Julius 383 Gaius Julius Justus 378 Gamaliel the Elder 453 Garmu (family) 237 Germanus 383 Germanus, son of Judah 384 Gratus 382 Haman 73, 76, 347 Hananiel 445 Hannah 346–348, 350, 435, 445 Harim 239 Hegesippus 181 Herod – Antipas 210, 382–383, 387 – the Great 221, 234, 326, 380, 382 – son of Monimos 383 Hezekiah 108–109 Hezron 152, 156 Hilkiah 157 Hillel 211 Hippolytus 6–10, 13, 29 Hiram, king of Tyre 22 Honi 387 Hyrcanus 380 Immer 239 Isaac 152, 156–157, 185, 293, 332, 338 Ishmael 260 Issachar 162, 167–172, 356 Iulius 374 Iunia 371, 375, 384 Iustus – Joseph Barnabas 371, 374–375, 384 – Jesus, co-worker of Paul 371, 375 Izates 265

Jabez 22 Jacob 152, 154, 156–157, 167–169, 185, 260, 293, 338, 340 Jakim 373 James 138–139, 185, 190, 217–219, 265, 365, 376, 380, 421, 426, 428, 431 Japheth 262 Jared 156, 273 Jason 374, 380–381 Jasub 108 Jeconiah 152, 157 Jedaiah 239 Jehoiarib 223, 225, 237–238 Jeremiah 8, 22, 134–136, 218 Jeroboam 436 Jesse 151, 156 Jesus 1, 24–25, 30, 56, 61, 65, 77, 83, 85–86, 88, 90, 93–101, 113, 152, 158–160, 171, 176, 181, 185, 187–188, 191–192, 204–205, 207, 210–211, 213, 215, 235, 260, 265–267, 272, 326–327, 343, 345, 349, 352–355, 357, 359–361, 363–365, 369, 371, 380–381, 387, 394, 412–413, 417–418, 431 Jesus Justus 371, 381, 390–391 Joanna 375, 381, 386–387 Job 255, 299, 439–440 Job’s wife 439 John – Hyrcanus 380 John – Mark 372, 384–385, 387 – of Patmos (author of Revelation) 83–88, 163–164, 166, 171–172 – the Baptist 72, 95, 108, 193, 200– 205, 330–331, 334, 336–337, 352–353, 361 – the evangelist 5, 17 Jonadab the Rechabite 22 Jonah 96 Jonathan Maccabeus 223–224 Jose the Galilean, Rabbi 78, 82 Joseph – called Barsabbas (Justus) 371, 379–380, 384, 386–387 – father of Jesus 159

Index of Ancient Persons

– Maccabeus 373 – son of Jacob (patriarch) 45, 158, 162, 167–168, 170–172, 180, 355 – son of Jannai 158 Josephus 1–2, 166–168, 170, 177, 180, 210, 221–243, 246, 253, 258, 262, 264, 302, 337, 356, 376–377, 379–380, 382, 382–383, 388, 453–454 Joshua – ben Hananiah, Rabbi 71–73, 77–78 – ben Levi, Rabbi 22 – son of Eliezer 158 – son of Jehozadak 42 – son of Nun 331, 337, 430 Josiah, Rabbi 416 Jucundus 382 Judah – ben Baba, Rabbi 409 – called Cimber 384 – Maccabeus 373 – patriarch 152, 156, 159, 161–164, 167–168, 170–172 – the Prince, Rabbi 22, 82 Judas – Iscariot 161–162, 172, 354 – Maccabeus 20, 60 – Thomas 263 Jude 144 Julia 390 Julia Crispina 383 Julianus Capito 383 Julius – Archelaos 382 – Capella 382 – Crispina 383 Junia 267, 381, 386–387, 389–391 Junius Justus 378 Justin Martyr 181, 431 Justus – bodyguard of Agrippa II 382 – of Chalcis 384 – of Tiberias 379 – son of Herod (son of Monimos) 383 – son of Josephus 380 – son of Judas 379, 383 – son of Pistos 382

535

Kainam, son of Arpachshad 151, 153–158, 160 Kedar 261 Kenan 156 Kenaz 169–170 Keturah 260 Kohath 157 Lactantius 8, 18 Lamech 156 Leah 161, 163, 167–170, 374 Levi 157, 161–162, 166–168, 170–172, 334, 355–356 Lolianus 383 Lucius – Antonius Leo 373 – co-worker with Paul 371, 389 – from Cyrene 371–372, 389 Lollius Justus 378–379 Luke 246, 264, 268, 327–328, 336, 341–343, 345, 349, 351, 355–361, 363–372, 377, 379–380, 385–387, 391 Magna 383 Magnus 383–384 Mahalalel 156 Malachi 329–330 Manasseh 161–162, 167, 170–172, 355–356, 374 Marcion 140 Marcius 383 Marcus – Aurelius Mussius 378 – Julius Agrippa 371, 383 Mussius 378 Mari 265, 268 Maria 372, 374 Marius 372 Mark 235, 371, 382, 385–386, 417 Mary, mother of Jesus 118, 328, 346, 348–349, 352 Mattathias 158 Matthias 161–162, 224, 354 Maxima 383 Melchizedek 334 Meraioth 157 Methodius 117, 119 Methuselah 156, 159

536

Index of Ancient Persons

Michael (archangel) 5, 9, 12–13, 17, 32, 34, 113, 159, 319, 400, 403 Miriam 372, 374 Modad 430–432 Modius 382 Mordecai 133, 347 Moses 7–8, 22, 30, 35, 54, 63, 74, 165, 169, 180, 191, 208, 214–215, 220, 230, 275–276, 287, 294, 298, 303, 305, 311, 313, 322, 334, 337, 339, 364, 374, 378–379, 430, 435–437, 442, 454

Phinehas (high priest) 21–23, 157, 334, 336 Plato 245, 424 Pliny 413 Pontius Pilate 418–419 Prisca / Priscilla 267–268, 371–372 Pseudo-Aristeas 242–243 Pseudo-Hippolytus 7 Publius Rutilius Joses of Teos 378 Pythocles 127 Quirinius 383

Nahor 156 Nahshon 152, 156 Nahum – the Mede 345 – the prophet 445, 448–449 Naphtali 162, 167–172, 356 Nathan 151–152, 159, 346 Nathaniel 378 Nebaioth 260–261 Nebuchadnezzar 45–47, 58, 125, 295 Neon son of Zoilus 373 Nero 30, 384 Neronias 384 Niger 383 Noah 153–154, 156, 269–271, 274, 320 Obed 151, 156 Origen 1, 108, 114 Papias 386, 395 Pashur 239 Paul 23, 30, 75, 77, 100, 109, 112, 115, 125–126, 131, 137, 140–141, 144–145, 147–149, 185–190, 211, 254, 257, 259–268, 352, 359, 365, 367–368, 370–372, 375–379, 381, 384–386, 388–392, 400 Pedaiah 152 Peleg 156 Perez 152, 156 Peter (Simon) 109, 138–139, 144, 148, 185, 268, 358–361, 363–365, 373, 376, 379, 412, 417 Pharaoh 45 Philip 268, 386 Philo of Alexandria 1–2, 431

Rachel 162–163, 167, 169 Raguel 446, 457 Ram (Aram) 152, 156, 159 Raphael 434, 442–443, 446, 455–459 Rehoboam 157 Remiel 292 Reu 156 Reuben 161, 167–168, 171–172, 356, 374–375, 379–380, 391 Roubel 374, 380 Rufina 380 Rufinus 380 Rufus 267, 371–372, 374–375, 379–380, 382–385, 389, 391–392 Sabinus 383 Salmon 152, 156 Salome 386 Samael 34 Sappira (Sapphira) 386 Sarah 200, 385, 434, 440–444, 446 Sargon 451 Saturnilus 383–384 Schila 5, 30 Sedrach 113 Seneca 127, 137 Sennacherib 60, 195, 441 Serah 22 Seraiah 157 Serug 156 Seth 156, 395 Severius 383 Shallum 157 Shalmaneser 447, 451 Shammai 211

Index of Ancient Persons

Shappira 386 Shealtiel 152, 158–159 Shelah 153, 155–156, 158 Shem 151, 154–156, 158, 262 Shila, Rabbi 416 Sibyl 30, 320 Silas (Silvanus) 268, 371–373, 375, 378, 384–385, 391 Simeon – called Niger 372, 390–391 – of Jerusalem 328, 343–345, 349, 352–353, 365–366 – patriarch 161–162, 167–168, 170–172 – ben Yohai 94 Simon – bar Kokhba 189 – Magus 139, 141 – of Cyrene 372, 384–385, 418 – Peter see Peter (Simon) – the High Priest 380 – the Stammerer 224 Solomon 156, 159, 325, 366 Stephen 188 Symmachus – the Ebionite 363 – son of Justus 383 Tabitha 5, 14–15, 30–31, 33, 35 Taxo 30 Terah 151, 154–156 Tertullian 6, 10, 13, 33, 35 Theodorus 392 Theodotos 378–379, 391–392 Thomas 118, 128, 263 Thucydides 130 Tiberius Claudius Julianus of Acmonia 378 Tiglath-Pileser 446–447, 451

Timothy 143–145, 147–149 Tiro 382 Titus – companion of Paul 137, 143, 145, 147, 149 – emperor 235 – Justus 388 Tobiah 444, 451 Tobias 434, 443–445, 448, 455, 457 Tobiel 444 Tobit 433–449, 452, 455–457 Trophimus the Ephesian 190 Trypho 18 Uriel 51, 296–307 Uzzi 157 Varus 382 Venus 409 Vespasian 197 Vitus 383 Xenophon 456 Yahoel 400 Yohanan ben Zakkai 197 Yustah 383 Zadok 157, 325, 336, 380 Zarathustra 47 Zebulun 162, 167–172, 356, 447 Zechariah – prophet 41–42, 108 – father of John 108, 328, 353 Zephaniah 107, 291–293 Zerahiah 157 Zerubbabel 42, 152, 355 Zilpah 162–163, 167–169, 171

537

Index of Modern Authors Adamson, J. 422, 424–425 Adler, W. 272 Agourides, S. 112–113 Aharoni, Y. 447 Alexander, P. J. 117, 119 Alexander, P. S. 4, 29, 105, 132–133, 149, 177 Allegro, J. M. 193–195, 197 Alliata, E. 394 Allison, D. C. 327, 331 Allmen, D. von 77–79 Ameling, W. 387 Andersen, F. I. 105, 286, 290 Anderson, G. A. 400 Assemani, J. S. 4, 29 Atchley, E. G. C. F. 408 Attridge, H. W. 35 Avalichvili, Z. 394 Avigad, N. 385 Baethgen, F. 4, 29 Bagatti, B. 393 Bahr, G. J. 124 Baker, J. A. 110 Bammel, E. 20 Barker, M. 275, 277 Baron, R. M. 381 Barr, J. 39, 44, 91 Barrett, C. K. 20, 185, 362–364, 376 Barton, S. C. 421, 462 Battista, A. 393 Bauckham, R. J. 21, 143–144, 147, 149, 152, 158, 160, 163–166, 172, 185, 188–189, 192, 213, 236, 257– 259, 265, 267, 271–272, 275, 281, 287–288, 291, 293–294, 301–302, 318, 345–346, 356–357, 366, 372, 374, 380, 388, 391, 401, 407, 432, 453, 455

Bayer, H. F. 362 Beall, T. S. 182 Beasley-Murray, G. R. 86 Beckwith, R. T. 156, 413, 417 Beit-Arié, M. 395, 399 Bell, R. H. 436 Benoit, A. 117 Benoit, P. 375, 377, 384, 386 Berger, K. 16, 23–25, 116–117 Betz, H. D. 47, 55 Bezold, C. 393–394 Bickerman, E. J. 180, 410 Bigg, C. 81 Biggs, R. D. 46 Billerbeck, P. 34, 79 Black, M. 6, 20, 27, 89–90, 94, 155–156, 240, 275, 280, 285, 293, 341, 405 Blackburn, B. 18 Blenkinsopp, J. 447 Blinzler, J. 425 Blomberg, C. L. 39, 461 Bloedhorn, H. 387 Boccaccini, G. 176–177, 212, 272 Bogaert, P.-M. 73, 80, 136–137, 311, 314, 316 Borger, R. 46, 50 Bosworth, A. B. 458 Bousset, W. 3, 6–7, 10–11, 13, 18–19, 27, 29, 34, 162 Bowden, J. 175, 261, 372, 375 Box, G. H. 115–116 Brady, D. 412–414 Brändle, R. 267 Brandon, S. G. F. 288 Bratke, E. 4, 29 Bredin, M. 433, 462 Bromiley, G. W. 385 Brooke, G. J. 186, 190, 374 Brooten, B. J. 381

Index of Modern Authors

Brown, R. E. 128, 349–350, 412–413, 418 Buchanan, G. W. 119, 294, 337 Budge, E. A. W. 394, 401 Bultmann, R. 56 Burchard, C. 425 Buttenwieser, M. 7, 13, 28, 34 Cabrol, F. 408 Cadbury, H. J. 374 Caird, G. B. 85–88 Campbell, J. Y. 99 Caquot, A. 402 Carroll, J. T. 327 Carson, D. A. 269, 317, 462 Casey, M. 93, 98–100, 183, 326, 331 Caspari, C. P. 4, 29 Cave, C. H,. 223 Cave, F. H. 223 Cervin, R. S. 381 Chaine, J. 89 Chance, J. B. 327 Charles, R. H. 51, 73, 80, 86, 88–89, 103, 136, 154, 282, 311, 455 Charlesworth, J. H. 16, 21, 35–36, 103–104, 118, 136, 153, 213, 274, 286, 282, 295, 312, 321, 325, 332, 393 Chaumont, M.-L. 264–265 Childs, B. S. 447 Christophersen, A. 371 Claussen, C. 371, 462 Clifford, R. J. 43 Cohen, N. G. 373–374, 380 Collins, J. J. 30, 45–47, 106, 274, 276, 297, 301, 304, 307, 309–310, 321 Colpe, C. 98–99 Comstock, S. T. 35 Conzelmann, H. 65, 148, 352 Cook, J. E. 347 Coppieters, H. 423 Coquin, R.-G. 394 Cotton, H. M. 376, 384 Craghan, J. 444 Creed, J. M. 350 Cross, F. M. 43 Crossan, J. D. 203 Crum, W. E. 30 Cullmann, O. 65, 83, 143

539

Dahl, N. A. 143 Daniélou, J. 110, 166 Davids, P. H. 143, 423–424, 429 Davies, G. I. 184 Davies, P. R. 165 Davies, W. D. 20, 310 Day, J. 86 Deissmann, A. 371, 373–375, 379 Delcor, M. 42–43, 59 Denis, A.-M. 35 Dequeker, J. 238 Derrett, J. D. M. 412 Descamps, A. 140 Deselaers, P. 433, 455 Desjardins, M. 310 Dexinger, F. 155–156, 180 Dibelius, M. 148, 422–423 Di Lella, A. A. 330, 340, 426, 435 DiTommaso, L. 16 Donaldson, T. L. 189 Donfried, K. P. 126, 128, 267 Doty, W. G. 124–128 Draper, J. A. 355 Dumville, D. 16 Dunn, J. D. G. 177–179, 183, 186–187, 191, 450 Ebied, E. Y. 15 Eddy, S. K. 47 Eduy, M. 409 Eisenman, R. H. 194–197 Ellis, E. E. 371 Emerson, R. K. 16 Emerton, J. A. 43, 238 Eshel, E. 238 Eshel, H. 238 Esler, P. F. 182 Evans, C. A. 103, 291, 327, 332, 337, 347, 354, 461 Exum, J. C. 157 Faierstein, M. M. 331 Falk, D. F. 401 Fehrenbach, E. 408 Fekkes, J. 163–164 Feldman, L. H. 221, 462 Feuillet, A. 163 Findlay, J. A. 423

540

Index of Modern Authors

Finegan, J. 417 Fitzmyer, J. A. 90, 97, 201, 331, 339, 349, 352, 362, 433, 444, 450, 455–456, 458 Flusser, D. 47, 117, 339 Fornberg, T. 81 France, R. T. 166 Francis, F. O. 128 Frankfurter, D. T. M. 35–38 Frankmölle, H. 423, 426 Freedman, D. N. 238, 373, 453, 455 Frerichs, E. 177, 212 Frey, J. 371, 462 Friedlander, G. 80 Friedländer, L. H. 458 Fritz, K., von 125 Galbiati, E. 394 Garcia Martinez, F. 186, 270–271 Gärtner, B. 186 Gasque, W. W. 123 Gaylord, H. E. 113–114 Geiger, J. 384 Gese, H. 42 Geyser, A. 166 Gibson, M. D. 393–394 Ginzberg, L. 22, 34, 406, 415 Goldingay, J. E. 40 Goldstein, J. A. 54 Golomb, D. M. 346 Goodman, M. 181 Gordon, R. P. 197 Grabbe, L. L. 450 Gray, T. J. 39, 461 Grayson, A. K. 46 Green, J. B. 207, 349, 362, 462 Green, M. 81 Green, W. S. 177, 186, 212 Greenfield, J. C. 373, 384 Greeven, H. 422–423 Gregg, J. A. F. 108 Grelot, P. 49–50 Grieve, A. 373 Grundmann, W. 89 Guthrie, D. 123, 140, 142 Haase, W. 109, 115, 189, 429 Halévy, J. 16, 394

Hallo, W. W. 46 Halperin, D. J. 406 Hamerton-Kelly, R. 310 Hanson, J. S. 337 Hanson, P. D. 40–44, 55–56 Harlow, D. C. 317–319, 405 Harnack, A. 140 Harnisch, W. 110 Harper, W. R. 428 Harrer, G. A. 376–377 Harrington, D. J. 21–22, 276, 325, 346–348 Hartman, L. 59, 79, 274, 276 Harvey, A. E. 326, 408 Hastings, J. 459 Haugg, D. 6, 27 Hawthorne, G. F. 371 Hayward, R. 21, 334 Helderman, J. 138 Hellholm, D. 278 Hemer, C. J. 373, 378 Hendricksen, W. 87 Hengel, M. 21, 47–48, 58, 208, 261, 267, 334, 372, 375, 377 Hennecke, E. 3, 11, 29–30, 106, 129, 138–140 Henten, J. W. van 243, 375 Herbert, M. 16 Hervey, A. 152 Hess, R. S. 347 Higgins, A. J. B. 98 Himmelfarb, M. 107–109, 111, 291, 297 Hirvitz, A. 238 Hogan, L. P. 412 Hollis, S. T. 346 Horbury, W. 184, 187, 197, 355, 379, 386 Horgan, M. P. 193–196 Horsley, G. H. R. 372–373, 379–380 Horsley, R. A. 337 Horst, P. W. van der 243, 375, 424 Hort, F. J. A. 423 Hunger, H. 46 Ilan, T. 373, 380, 383, 386–388 Isaac, B. 188 Isaac, E. 104

Index of Modern Authors

Jackson, A. V. W. 456 Jacobson, H. 21 Jagersma, H. 175 James, M. R. 23, 106, 142, 166, 321, 405, 431 Jaubert, A. 393 Jenks, G. C. 18–19 Jeremias, J. 3, 6–7, 27–28, 34, 98–99, 101, 152, 159, 223, 229, 239–240, 242, 423 Jervell, J. 327, 354, 356, 365–368 Johnson, L. T. 209, 326, 422, 424, 427 Judge, E. A. 388–392 Juel, D. 186 Junckelmann, M. 459 Kaiser, O. 193 Kajanto, I. 379 Kane, J. P. 383, 385 Kaplan, C. 156 Käsemann, E. 39, 77, 81, 385 Kaufman, S. A. 46 Keane, A. H. 18 Kelly, J. N. D. 79, 148–149 Kiddle, M. 86 Kirk, J. A. 429 Kister, M. 340 Klein, M. 423 Klein, R. W. 154 Klijn, A. F. J. 113, 136, 140, 310–312 Kneucker, J. J. 136 Knibb, M. A. 58, 89–90, 104, 134, 159, 218, 275, 278 Knohl, I. 238, 407 Koch, K. 44, 156 Kokkinos, N. 379, 383 Kolenkow, A. B. 63 Kosmala, H. 412, 413, 414, 415, 416 Kourcikidzé, C. 392 Kraeling, C. H. 203 Kraft, R. A. 180 Kühn, G. 152 Kuhn, K. H. 35 Kümmel, W. G. 35 Kuss, O. 425 Laato, A. 341, 346 Ladd, G. E. 86–87

541

Lagarde, P. A. 4, 29 Lagrange, P. 414–415 Lambert, W. G. 46 Lampe, G. W. H. 424 Lampe, P. 267, 372, 381 Lamy, T. J. 4, 29 Landsman, J. I. 115 Larsson, G. 154 Lattey, C. 412 Laws, J. S. 126, 422–423, 427, 431–432 Leary, T. J. 378 Lebram, J. C. H. 278 Leclerq, H. 408 Légasse, S. 372 Legrand, E. 16 Leon, H. J. 381 Leslau, W. 394 Levinskaya, I. 378 Levison, J. R. 221, 462 Lewis, N. 373, 384 Licht, J. 54 Lichtenberger, H. 186 Lierman, J. 21 Lifshitz, B. 374–375, 377, 379–380, 383–384 Lightfoot, J. B. 431 Lindars, B. 89, 93–100, 187, 236 Lindeskog, G. 101 Livingstone, E. A. 27, 461 Lohse, E. 90 Longenecker, B. W. 295–297, 301, 303–305, 308–309, 371, 421, 462 Longenecker, R. 245, 462 Lorein, G. W. 18 Lovering, E. H. 327 Lüdemann, G. 375 Lüderitz, G. 379, 385 Lunt, H. G. 115 Lupieri, E. 113 MacRae, G. 116 Mahé, J.-P. 394 Maier, J. 166 Maisano, R. 16 Malherbe, A. J. 408 Manns, F. 394 Marcus, J. 331, 425–426 Marquant, J. 458–459

542

Index of Modern Authors

Marsh, C. 326 Marshall, I. H. 327 Marshall, S. S. 432 Martin, R. P. 123, 371, 424, 427 Martone, C. 238 Marty, J. 423 Mason, R. A. 42 Matthews, E. 379 Maurer, C. 11 Mayo, C. H. 412–413 Mayor, J. B. 89, 422, 424, 426–427 Mays, J. L. 428 McCown, C. C. 47 McKelvey, R. J. 185 McKnight, S. 327 McNamara, M. 16 Meier, J. P. 382 Meinardus, O. 16 Metzger, B. M. 109–110, 125, 422 Meyer, A. 425 Meyer, B. F. 327 Meyer, M. W. 137 Michl, J. 425 Mildenberg, L. 188 Milgrom, J. 238 Milik, J. T. 16, 20, 43, 49–51, 89–90, 134, 155, 195, 270, 375, 377, 384, 386, 447 Millar, F. 181, 240, 261–263, 339, 341 Milns, R. D. 457 Mingana, A. 11, 29, 394–395, 397 Mitton, C. L. 423 Modi, J. J. 456 Moessner, D. P. 327, 368 Moffatt, J. 423 Monferrer Sala, J. P. 16 Moo, D. J. 423–424 Moore, A. L. 82 Moore, C. A. 135, 399, 435, 437–439, 444, 450, 455–458 Morris, L. 86–87 Mounce, R. H. 86–88 Mueller, J. R. 106, 112 Müller, H. P. 44, 111 Munck, J. 7, 10, 27–29 Murdock, W. R. 55 Murphy, F. J. 21, 310, 312–313, 315 Murphy-O’Connor, J. 260–261, 376

Murray, R. 265 Mussies, G. 375, 380, 386 Mussner, F. 423, 425 Musurillo, H. 14, 30 Naum, F. 4, 29 Naveh, J. 376 Neugebauer, O. 405 Neusner, J. 71–73, 177, 212, 259, 374, 454 Newman, C. C. 326–327 Nickelsburg, G. W. E. 19–20, 30, 51, 54, 107, 135–136, 180, 198, 204, 274, 276, 287, 318–319, 325, 433, 435 Noll, S. F. 90 Nolland, J. 201, 349, 419 Norris, F. W. 408 Noth, R. 42 Noy, D. 373–374, 378–381, 386–387 Nützel, J. M. 23–25 Oates, D. 456 O’Brien, P. T. 269, 462 O’Ceallaigh, G. C. 6 Odeberg, H. 105 Oegema, G. S. 341 Oesterley, W. O. E. 73 O’Neill, J. C. 239, 243 Oppenheim, A. L. 45 Oppenheimer, A. 188, 454, 456 Osburn, C. D. 89–90 Panayotov, A. 387 Pannenberg, W. 55 Parvis, P. M. 7, 28 Pearson, B. A. 287–288 Pelletier, A. 133 Penner, T. C. 422, 427 Pesch, R. 24 Peterson, D. 327 Philonenko, M. 28, 115–117, 166, 402 Philonenko-Sayor, B. 115 Picard, J.-C. 166, 318 Pietersma, A. 35 Ploeg, J. van der 165 Pomykala, K. E. 341 Popkes, W. 421 Porter, S. E. 103, 291, 431–432, 461

Index of Modern Authors

Preisker, H. 423, 429 Prockter, L. J. 425 Purvis, J. D. 180 Quasten, J. 264 Quispel, G. 140 Rad, G. von 44, 51, 55, 61–63 Radet, G. 458 Rahmani, L. Y. 373, 376–377, 380–381, 383 Rajak, T. 222, 224 Ramsay, W. M. 412, 414, 417, 458–459 Ravens, D. 327, 350, 356 Reader, W. R. 169 Reynolds, J. 375, 379 Rheinhartz, A. 189 Ri, S.-M. 395 Richardson, P. 188, 267 Riesner, R. 261–262, 372, 375–377 Ringgren, H. 339 Robbins, G. A. 112 Robert, L. 378 Robinson, F. 4, 29 Robinson, J. A. T. 14, 34 Robinson, S. E. 106, 393, 395–396 Rogerson, J. W. 450 Rollins, W. G. 61 Ropes, J. H. 422–423 Rosenstiehl, J.-M. 6–7, 10, 28, 166 Rowland, C. 107, 120 Rubinkiewicz, R. 115 Russell, D. S. 53 Rutgers, L. V. 381 Rydén, L. 16 Sacchi, P. 275, 277, 280 Sackur, E. 4, 29 Safrai, S. 238 Saldarini, A. J. 119, 346–348 Sanders, E. P. 75, 175, 179–180, 182, 213, 231–232, 237, 240–242, 282–283, 290, 300, 305–308, 310, 316–317, 327 Sanders, J. A. 327, 337, 347, 354 Sandmel, S. 211 Satterthwaite, P. E. 347 Saylor, G. B. 310–311 Schäfer, P. 407

543

Schalit, A. 382 Schenke, H.-M. 138 Schiffman, L. H. 233, 238 Schmid, J. 425 Schmidt, F. 166 Schmithals, W. 44 Schneemelcher, W. 3, 44, 106, 129, 139–140 Scholem, G. G. 107 Schrage, W. 35, 110 Schürer, E. 6, 27–28, 181, 240, 339, 341 Schüssler Fiorenza, E. 128 Schwabe, M. 374–375, 379–380, 383 Schwartz, D. R. 235, 238 Schwartz, S. 223–224 Schwemer, A. M. 261, 267 Scott, J. M. 261–262, 325, 327, 451 Scroggs, R. 310 Seccombe, D. 327 Segel, A. F. 191 Seibert, J. 458 Seitz, O. J. F. 426, 431–432 Sherwin-White, A. N. 375 Sevenster, J. N. 185 Short, W. J. 275 Shukster, M. B. 188 Sidebottom, E. M. 425 Siefrid, M. A. 269, 462 Simpson, D. C. 455 Singer, I. 406 Skehan, P. W. 330 Smalley, S. S. 89 Smith, C. R. 161, 163, 166, 170–171, 173 Smith, D. 21, 334 Smith, M. 132 Soll, W. 433–434, 440, 444 Sparks, H. F. D. 35, 103 Spicq, C. 423, 425 Spitta, F. 78 Stahl, A. F. von 458 Stanton, G. N. 110, 191, 421, 462 Steck, O. H. 313 Stegemann, E. W. 267 Stein, A. 383 Steindorff, G. 3, 6, 27, 291 Stern, M. 238–239 Steyn, G. J. 151

544

Index of Modern Authors

Stirewalt, M. L. 126, 138 Stone, M. E. 109, 111–113, 116, 120, 133, 296–299, 301, 394–395, 400 Stott, D. 261, 372 Strack, H. L. 79 Strauss, M. L. 337, 341 Strecker, G. 139 Strobel, A. 65, 67, 71–72, 75, 77–78 Strugnell, J. 109, 116, 193, 197 Stuckenbruck, L. T. 270–271 Suter, D. W. 271 Sweet, J. P. M. 85–88, 187 Swete, H. B. 86, 88 Swidler, A. 381 Talbert, C. H. 77 Talmon, S. 238, 325, 450–452 Tannehill, R. C. 327, 367–368, 375 Tannenbaum, R. F. 379 Temporini, H. 109, 115, 429 Testuz, M. 140 Thackeray, H. St. J. 233, 241 Thilo, J. K. 4, 29 Thompson, A. L. 68, 75 Thompson, J. W. 408 Tiede, C. P. 459 Tiede, D. L. 327, 344 Tiller, P. A. 20 Tischendorf, L. F. K. 4–5, 29, 11 Torrey, C. C. 455–456 Trebilco, P. R. 372, 375, 379–380 Trebolle Barrera, J. 233, 238 Troupeau, G. 394 Trueman, C. R. 39, 461 Turner, M. 327, 354, 362, 364 Tyson, J. B. 327, 344, 367 Unger, G. F. 417 Unnik, W. C. van 136, 185 Urbach, E. E. 72–73 VanderKam, J. C. 19, 89–90, 153–156, 272, 453 Vassiliev, A. 4, 29 Vaux, R. de 375, 384, 386 Vegas Montana, L. 233, 238 Vermes, G. 67, 93–94, 97, 99–100, 181, 194–197, 217, 240, 266, 339, 341

Vielhauer, P. 44 Voelz, J. M. 429 Vogel, C. 117 Wadsworth, M. 80 Wagner, J. R. 353 Wahl, O. 111–112 Wainwright, A. W. 327 Walker, P. W. L. 327 Wall, R. W. 422, 427–428 Wasserstein, A. 259 Webb, R. L. 201–203 Weinel, H. 6, 27 Weitzman, S. 436 Wenham, D. 166 Wenham, G. J. 347 Werner, M. 65 Westermann, C. 58 White, J. L. 127–128 Whitehouse, O. C. 136 Wick, P. 407 Wiefel, W. 267 Wilkinson, R. H. 186 Willi-Plein, I. 52–53 Williams, A. 163 Williams, M. A. 422 Williams, M. H. 374, 380, 385–386, 390–392 Williamson, H. G. M. 238 Wilson, R. McL. 3, 11, 29, 44, 106, 129, 138 Wilson, S. G. 149, 188, 364 Windisch, H. 423, 429 Wink, W. 6, 28 Winkle, R. E. 172 Winter, P. 238, 330 Wintermute, O. S. 35, 106–108, 116, 153, 292 Wise, M. O. 194–197, 238 Witherington, B. 190, 267, 366 Wolter, M. 368 Wood, H. G. 374 Wright, D. P. 238 Wright, N. T. 326–327 Yadin, Y. 165–166, 373, 384 Yardeni, A. 376 Yinger, K. L. 281–282, 288, 315

Index of Modern Authors

Young, M. J. L. 15 Younger, K. L. 451–453 Zadok, R. 384, 444, 451–452 Zeron, A. 20, 22–23

Zervos, G. T. 16, 116–117 Ziadé, J. 16 Zimmerli, W. 44 Zimmermann, F. 433, 438, 455, 457–458

545

Index of Place Names Abel-beth-maacah 446 Abila 260 Acmonia 372 Adiabene 258, 263, 265, 356, 453–454, 459 Alexandria 1, 37, 106–107, 268, 272, 379, 424, 431 Antioch 51, 263, 371–372, 391 Antioch in Pisidia 367–368 Apamea 377–379, 388 Aphrodisias 375, 379 Apion 226–227, 237, 240 Arsinoe 37 Arzareth 303 Asia Minor 25, 128, 143, 263, 321, 387, 391 Assyria 196, 258, 325, 434, 441, 446– 448, 450–456 Athens 259 Babel 318 Babylon 43, 45–46, 48, 50, 107, 134–136, 258–259, 263, 296, 298, 310, 313, 325–326, 340, 355, 369, 437, 443, 446, 449, 451, 453–455, 459 Balikh (river) 263 Berytus 260 Beth She‘arim 379, 383 Bethel 438 Bithynia 379 Caesarea 388 Cairo 97, 341 Canaan 337–338 Capernaum 379, 383 Chalcis 379, 384 Charax Sidou 263 Charax Spasinou 263, 265

Charrhae 263 China 262 Cilicia 373 Corinth 140–141, 265, 268, 367, 371–372 Court of the Gentiles 228–231, 234–235 Court of the Israelites 226, 228, 230–233, 240 Court of the Priests 225–226, 228, 231–234, 242 Court of the Women 227–231, 233 Cyprus 268, 385, 387 Cyrenaica 379, 385 Cyrene 265 Damascus 260, 262–263 Dan 436 Danaben 21 Delos 181 Doura Europos 263 East Talpiyot 376 Eastern Europe 387 Ecbatana 455–459 Eden 446 Edessa 263, 265 Egypt 22, 25, 35–37, 47–48, 253, 265, 267, 286, 288, 321–322, 337, 339, 374, 378–379, 386, 391, 402 Elburz (mountains) 456 Emmaus 353 En-gedi 384 Ephesus 189, 265, 268, 367, 378 Ethiopia 119–120, 257 Euphrates 162, 258, 263–265, 453–454 Forum Appii 459

Index of Place Names

547

Galilee 161–162, 180, 207, 265, 355, 366, 383, 386, 436, 446–447 Gaul 379 Gehenna 218, 255, 294 Gilead 446 Gog 347–348, 430 Gozan 453 Greece 263, 371, 391

379–380, 383, 385–388, 402–403, 407–408, 413–414, 434, 436–449, 454–455 Jordan (river) 447 Judah 137, 157, 166, 199, 258, 355–356, 434, 445, 449, 453–454 Judea 262, 356, 365–366, 448, 451–452

Habor (river) 453 Halah (Halahhu) 453 Hauran 260 Hazor 446–447 Hebron 409 Heliopolis 402 Hierapolis 386 Hinnom (valley) 218 Hyrcania 356

Kedesh Naphtali 447 Kidron valley 385 King’s Highway 260

Ichnai 263 Iconium 388 Idumea 383 India 262–263 Israel 1, 11, 22, 41, 43, 45, 48–49, 52, 58–59, 62–63, 69, 72–73, 76–77, 80, 134, 138, 161–166, 169–170, 172– 173, 175–177, 180–182, 184, 189, 191, 196–197, 200, 203–205, 208, 228–229, 245, 248, 251, 256, 258, 260, 262, 269, 275–279, 281–283, 285–287, 290, 294–298, 300–305, 308–309, 311–314, 317, 319–323, 325–331, 333, 336–339, 341–370, 376, 383, 407, 424, 434–438, 440– 446, 448–450, 453–454 Jaffa 377, 379–380 Japheth 262 Jatt 388 Jerusalem 5, 17, 54, 57–58, 60, 70, 73, 75–76, 114, 116, 134–137, 157, 180–182, 184–192, 195, 207, 210, 221, 225–226, 228, 230, 235, 237, 239, 246, 257–259, 262, 265, 267–268, 272, 275, 286, 294–296, 299–300, 302, 304, 308, 310–313, 316, 318–320, 322–323, 325, 328–329, 339, 343–345, 347, 353–359, 365–367, 369, 377,

Laodicea 126, 140 Lebanon 194, 196–200 Leontopolis 180, 286 Macedonia 372 Magog 430 Masada 384 Media 47, 258, 263, 345, 356, 448, 451, 453–459 Mesene 263 Mespila 456 Mesopotamia 45–46, 50, 258–259, 262, 264–265, 356–357, 451, 453–456 Midian 165, 261 Moaza 384 Mount Gerizim 180–181, 355 Mount of Olives 384 Mount Scopus 377, 381 Nabatea 261–262, 384 Nahal Seelim 384 Naphtali 446–448 Nebi Yunis 456 Nehardea 258, 263, 454 Nicephorium 263 Nicomedia 379 Nineveh 439, 445, 448–449, 453, 455–457 Nippur 451 Nisibis 258, 263, 265, 356, 453–454 Noarah 383 Osrhoene 264 Ostia 378

548

Index of Place Names

Palestine 2, 25, 46, 48, 50, 176–177, 180, 188, 207, 210, 257, 259–260, 356, 365–367, 375, 377, 380, 382, 384–387, 391–392, 411–412, 453, 455 Palmyra 262–263 Parthia 257, 263, 356–357 Perea 383 Persia 47, 259 Persian Gulf 259, 263, 265 Petra 260 Philadelphia 181 Philippi 140–141 Phthiotic Thebes 388 Phthiotis 377 Pisidian Antioch 367–368 Pontus 257, 357, 371 Qiryat Tiv‘on 377 Qumran 46, 49, 52, 67, 89–90, 105, 133, 155, 179, 182–183, 186–187, 190–191, 194–198, 200, 212–214, 217, 238, 270–273, 278, 282, 326, 351, 384, 426, 433, 444, 450, 457 Rhagae 456–459 Rome 162, 198–200, 225, 235, 257, 259, 264, 266–268, 322, 338, 347, 352, 357, 362, 367–368, 370, 378–385, 387, 391, 432

Samaria 181, 355–356, 366, 448, 451–452 Sardis 375 Seleucia-Ctesiphon 265 Seleucia on the Tigris 263, 265 Sepphoris 379, 382 Sheba 261 Shiloah, waters of 199 Shiloh 199 Sinai (mount) 74, 156–157, 274, 276 Smyrna 181, 378–380 Spain 263 Susa 263 Syria 143, 262, 264, 387, 391 Tarshish 261 Tarsus 259, 261–262, 388 Teheran 456 Thessaly 377 Thisbe 447 Tigris 263, 265, 456 Tiberias 383, 386–387 Troas 372 Tyana 394 Tyre 22 Yavneh 176–177, 297 Zagros (mountains) 456