Genres of Rewriting in Second Temple Judaism: Scribal Composition and Transmission 1108769985, 9781108769983, 9781108477581, 9781108725750

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Genres of Rewriting in Second Temple Judaism

In this book, Molly M. Zahn investigates how early Jewish scribes rewrote their authoritative traditions in the course of transmitting them, from minor edits in the course of copying to whole new compositions based on prior works. Scholars have detected evidence for rewriting in a wide variety of textual contexts, but Zahn’s is the first book to map manuscripts and translations of biblical books, so-called parabiblical compositions, and the sectarian literature from Qumran in relation to one another. She introduces a new, adaptable set of terms for talking about rewriting, using the idea of genre as a tool to compare and contrast different cases. Although rewriting has generally been understood as a vehicle for biblical interpretation, Zahn moves beyond that framework to demonstrate that rewriting was a pervasive textual strategy in the Second Temple period. Her book contributes to a powerful new model of early Jewish textuality, illuminating the rich and diverse culture out of which both rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity eventually emerged. molly m. zahn is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas. She has published widely on the intersections between composition, transmission, and interpretation in early Jewish texts, especially the Dead Sea Scrolls. She is the author of Rethinking Rewritten Scripture (2011) and coeditor of two essay collections. She currently serves as executive editor of the international Qumran journal Dead Sea Discoveries.

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Genres of Rewriting in Second Temple Judaism Scribal Composition and Transmission

MOLLY M. ZAHN University of Kansas

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University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, usa 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108477581 doi: 10.1017/9781108769983 © Cambridge University Press 2020 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2020 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd, Padstow Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data names: Zahn, Molly M. (Molly Marie), 1979- author. title: Genres of rewriting in Second Temple Judaism : scribal composition and transmission / Molly M. Zahn, University of Kansas, Lawrence. description: Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. identifiers: lccn 2019060034 (print) | lccn 2019060035 (ebook) | isbn 9781108477581 (hardcover) | isbn 9781108725750 (paperback) | isbn 9781108769983 (ebook) subjects: lcsh: Bible–Evidences, authority, etc.–History. | Bible–Criticism, Textual. | Judaism–History–Post-exilic period, 586 B.C.-210 A.D. | Dead Sea scrolls–Relation to the Old Testament. classification: lcc bs480 .z34 2020 (print) | lcc bs480 (ebook) | ddc 221.6/6–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019060034 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019060035 isbn 978-1-108-47758-1 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Contents

List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations

page vi vii ix xi

Introduction

1

1

Rewriting, Revision, and Reuse: Language and Methods

28

2

Genre and Rewriting

56

3

Revision and Reuse in the Bible

74

4

Beyond “Rewritten Bible”: Revision and Reuse in the Temple Scroll, Jubilees, and Qumran Sectarian Works

98

5 6 7

Translation and/as Rewriting: The Greek Bible, the Targumim, and the Genesis Apocryphon

137

Diverse Genres of Reuse: Centripetal, Limited, Historical Résumé, Pastiche

169

Second Temple Rewriting in Context: Authority, Exegesis, and Scribal Culture

196

Conclusion

227

Bibliography Index of Ancient Sources Subject Index

233 255 260

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Figures

2.1 A concentric model of genre 2.2 Overlapping genres

page 61 61

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Tables

I.1 I.2 I.3 I.4 I.5 I.6 1.1 1.2 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6

Two versions of Jeremiah 10 Two versions of Exodus 7 Additions of new material in SP The Aqedah in Jubilees Minor changes to pentateuchal law in TS Laws grouped according to topic in TS Coordination of parallel legal formulations in TS Coordination of parallel legal formulations in Greek Deuteronomy 4Q227 frag. 2 Two versions of Jubilees 1:29 Use of Jubilees in 4Q390 Alternate arrangements of material in 11Q19 and 4Q524 The Wood Offering in 4Q365 and the Temple Scroll Zakodite expansions in 1QS 5 Added references to scripture in 1QS 5 Rewriting of earlier hymnic material in 1QM Alternative arrangements of hymns in 1QHa and 4QHa Equivalencing work by the Greek translators Content changes by the Greek translators Translation reflecting Greek cultural context Influence of the Greek Pentateuch on Greek Isaiah Exodus 17:6a Non-isomorphic translation in Job

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page 11 14 16 21 25 26 40 41 103 106 108 114 117 122 123 129 132 146 147 150 152 152 154

viii

6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

List of Tables Reuse of Nahum 3 in Apocryphon of Jeremiah C References to Abraham in historical résumés Pastiche in Temple Scroll col. 59 Diverse forms and functions of reuse

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177 182 188 194

Acknowledgments

Like many second books, this one was a long time coming. Yet most of the things that held it back – besides, of course, my own struggles to get my thoughts in order – are themselves reasons for gratitude: a stable teaching and research position with all the time commitments that entails, (too) many invitations for conference presentations or writing projects, increasing service in the field, and most of all family and parenthood. The richness of my life and the encouragement and support of my colleagues at the University of Kansas and, in particular, in the community of Qumran scholars has provided the positive energy to bring this project to completion. Particular thanks are due to a number of institutions and individuals. This project got off the ground in earnest during a year spent as a Kingdon Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities (IRH) at the University of Wisconsin (2013–2014). I am grateful to the IRH for the financial support, and to then-director Professor Susan Stanford Friedman for creating such a collegial environment in which to work and share ideas. Particular thanks are due to Ayelet Ben-Yishai, Joe Marchal, and Jordan Zweck for conversation and moral support during my time in Madison. I am also grateful to the University of Kansas for providing supplemental salary during the fellowship period, and for supporting a sabbatical leave in Fall 2017. I want to express my thanks to my editor at Cambridge, Beatrice Rehl, and to the two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript for their careful reading and many constructive comments: their suggestions improved the final product a great deal. Earlier on, several colleagues took time to read and comment on draft versions of various chapters: Chris Jones, Dan ix Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. , on , subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108769983

x

Acknowledgments

Machiela, Sara Milstein, Nick Pumphrey, Hanna Tervanotko, Eric Welch, and Ben Wright. These and numerous others also offered valuable feedback in conversation or in response to various oral presentations of this material: Kipp Davis, Ron Hendel, Jeremy Hutton, Paul Mirecki, Noam Mizrahi, Eva Mroczek, Madhavi Nevader, Judith Newman, Laura Quick, Michael Segal, Hamsa Stainton, Andy Teeter, Bill Tooman, Ron Troxel, and Jacqueline Vayntrub. Thank you to you all for your generosity and expertise. Thanks also to a number of senior colleagues who have been unstinting in their support of my work: George Brooke, John Collins, Sidnie White Crawford, Charlotte Hempel, Bernard Levinson, Dan Stevenson, and Eibert Tigchelaar. Finally, I am grateful to Pam LeRow of the University of Kansas for assistance with compiling the subject index. As I noted at the start, a project of this magnitude is only possible for me because of the love that surrounds me. Some of that love comes from the many family members and friends who don’t care that much about what I do, but love me anyway. (If you ever read this, you know who you are!) In relation to this book, my parents’ love for me has manifested in their surprisingly frequent willingness to drive ten hours to hang out with their granddaughter so I could get a couple more workdays in – thank you, Mom and Dad, for that and everything else! My husband Peter has been there through the highest highs and the lowest lows, and I am so grateful for his constant love, his commitment to equal partnership, and his unfailing confidence in me. Finally, my daughter Iris, who was conceived well after this book was, but who is now old enough to be mildly interested in the fact that I am “making a book.” She fills life with joy, and gives a whole new meaning to love.

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Abbreviations

Technical and bibliographical abbreviations used, except where noted, follow The SBL Handbook of Style for Biblical Studies and Related Disciplines. 2nd ed. Edited by Patrick H. Alexander, John F. Kutsko, James D. Ernest, Shirley Decker-Lucke, and David L. Petersen. Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2014.

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Introduction

Modern European and American culture has definite ideas on what texts are, even if these presumptions are not always talked about. Texts, especially literary ones, are uniquely associated with their authors, who alone have the right to change them. An author may draft several versions of a text before she publishes it, and may produce revised editions and the like, but at any one time there is one latest, “up to date” version of the text. New works of course will be influenced by older works, but authors are obligated not to use existing works too extensively or literally without acknowledging their debt – to do otherwise would be to plagiarize, to misrepresent the work of another as your own. If this is what texts are in our modern world – or at least what we think texts are – the nature of textuality in Second Temple Judaism was strikingly different.1 Literary texts, including those later collected in the Hebrew Bible, were the products of many hands, and existed in multiple forms simultaneously.2 Composers of new works drew freely on older works in a variety of ways, from making a known character the

1

2

William Graham points out how our modern notion of a text really reflects reality, if at all, only for a sliver of modernity, after the rise of mass literacy and cheap printing but before the digital revolution. See William A. Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 31–41. On ways in which digital forms may help us better grasp some aspects of ancient textuality, see Eva Mroczek, “Thinking Digitally about the Dead Sea Scrolls: Book History Before and Beyond the Book,” Book History 14 (2011): 241–69. I use “literary” in a broad sense to refer to texts reflecting cultural and intellectual traditions (including poetic, narrative, legal, and scientific texts), as opposed to documentary texts like letters and contracts.

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2

Introduction

protagonist of an entirely new text to recycling whole paragraphs of earlier works in a new context. All of this was done anonymously: nearly no one attached their own name to a literary text they had written, nor did they “cite their sources” when they reused material from older texts. Scribes who copied texts frequently added, changed, or omitted content – without giving any indication in the manuscript that they had done so. Literary texts were not seen as the creative work of an individual author, but as repositories of ancient tradition or divinely revealed wisdom. Although all this was going on long before there was such a thing as a “Bible” (in the sense of a specific collection of books viewed as specially holy and authoritative), it has a profound impact on the way we think about the composition and development of biblical texts, and indeed of “scripture” as a concept.3 While determining exactly what counted as scripture in the Second Temple period, and for whom, is not an easy task, clearly many literary texts (both inside and outside the later canon) were regarded as authoritative in some sense: they are said to contain divine wisdom, prophetic revelation, and the traditions of revered ancestors. And yet they lack what has long been viewed as the sine qua non of the category scripture: their texts were not fixed. In other words, in Second Temple Judaism, textual authority did not imply textual stability. Authoritative texts, even those seen as divinely revealed, could continue to grow and change, and new texts produced on the basis of older ones could claim themselves to represent divine revelation. This reality, demonstrated spectacularly by the Qumran discoveries, has allowed scholars to move beyond the distinctions between scripture and interpretation, and between composition and transmission, which have been mainstays of Western understandings of the Bible (both lay and scholarly) for hundreds of years. No longer do we assume that scripture takes priority (both temporal and conceptual) over interpretation; we can now see that scripture itself is largely a product of 3

I deliberately avoid capitalizing the word “scripture.” When it is capitalized, it is much too easily construed as a synonym for the Bible. Not only is that construal inappropriate for Second Temple Judaism, where the body of works regarded as scriptural, however this is determined, demonstrably did not correspond to the shape of the later Hebrew canon. It also discourages productive comparison between the concepts of sacred/authoritative text in Judaism and Christianity and similar concepts in other religious traditions. For a sensitive recent exploration of the idea of scripture in cross-cultural perspective, see Vincent L. Wimbush, ed., Theorizing Scriptures: New Critical Orientations to a Cultural Phenomenon (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2008). An older but still valuable set of reflections can be found in Miriam Levering, ed., Rethinking Scripture: Essays from a Comparative Perspective (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989).

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1 Rewriting

3

interpretation.4 But if we are justified in saying that the Qumran discoveries have revolutionized our understanding of the development and interpretation of early Jewish scripture, it must also be said that the revolution remains incomplete. This is so because the nature, extent, and social background of this textual fluidity have not yet been fully explored. In this book, I examine one aspect of this data: the evidence for how and why Second Temple scribes reworked existing texts in new contexts.5

1 rewriting This book focuses on what I refer to (for reasons explained below) as rewriting: the deliberate, formally unmarked reproduction and modification of existing texts. Although there has been significant attention devoted to this phenomenon, especially in the wake of the discovery and publication of the Qumran scrolls, scholarly study of rewriting has been constrained by a number of conceptual and disciplinary boundaries: between “biblical” and “extrabiblical”; between “text criticism” and “Rewritten Bible”; between “biblical/parabiblical” and “Qumran sectarian texts”; indeed between “biblical studies” and “Second Temple/ Qumran studies.”6 Rewriting occurs in all these contexts, but specialists in each subfield have not always communicated well with those in other disciplines. Text critics who examine variants in manuscripts and versions of biblical books, for example, have one set of data; those who study parabiblical works such as the book of Jubilees have another; those who specialize in the study of the works associated with the sectarian community resident at Qumran have yet another, but these bodies of data and the analytical work done with them have not been integrated as much as they need to be. Of course, it would be an overstatement to say that

4

5 6

See the foundational work in this regard of Michael A. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), and Bernard M. Levinson, Legal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). More recently, see especially Andrew Teeter, “The Hebrew Bible and/as Second Temple Literature: Methodological Reflections,” DSD 20 (2013): 349–77. For an explanation of my use of the term “scribe,” see Chapter 1. On these subdisciplinary divides, see D. Andrew Teeter, Scribal Laws: Exegetical Variation in the Textual Transmission of Biblical Law in the Late Second Temple Period, FAT 92 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 3; Charlotte Hempel, “Pluralism and Authoritativeness: The Case of the S Tradition,” in Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism, ed. Mladen Popović, JSJSup 141 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 203.

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4

Introduction

scholars with different specializations never exchange ideas, and certainly there are scholars whose work encompasses multiple subfields. But there is a degree to which many of us have been talking about the same thing, or at least the same sort of thing, without really realizing it. The goal of this book, then, is to find ways to map the extent and significance of rewriting in early Jewish texts, across the boundaries (such as biblical/extrabiblical, sectarian/nonsectarian, Hebrew/Greek) that have obscured the breadth of the phenomenon.7 I will argue that, when all these textual contexts are looked at together, rewriting emerges as a widespread, even ubiquitous scribal technique in early Judaism. One important aspect of the project, therefore, is to highlight similarities in the forms and functions of rewriting across the various contexts in which we find evidence for it.8 This does not, however, mean obscuring or neglecting difference, or somehow implying that all rewriting is the same. Diversity in the forms rewriting can take and the functions it can serve – that is, the fact of different “genres” of rewriting – will be a significant theme in what follows. Yet the nature and significance of the diversity can only be understood when the basic similarities are understood – when a 7

8

A recent major research endeavor carried out at the Universities of Manchester and Durham in the UK originated in part out of similar frustrations with subdisciplinary boundaries and the lack of a clear “map” for putting disparate texts into conversation with each other; the result is the “Database for the Analysis of Anonymous and Pseudepigraphic Jewish Texts of Antiquity,” ed. Alexander Samely, Philip Alexander, Rocco Bernasconi, and Robert Hayward (http://literarydatabase.humanities.manchester .ac.uk/Default.aspx). The “Inventory of Structurally Important Literary Features” developed for the database consists of over 500 separate descriptive features that are then applied to nearly 100 anonymous or pseudepigraphic Jewish texts dating from 200 BCE–700 CE, including works discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls, works traditionally classified as belonging to the “Old Testament Apocrypha” or “Pseudepigrapha,” and rabbinic texts. The database constitutes a significant new resource for understanding the literary culture(s) of early Judaism. Yet the scope of the Manchester/Durham project is at once much broader and much different from what I am concerned with here. I focus narrowly on evidence for the phenomenon of rewriting, while aspects of what I call rewriting form only one small element of their Inventory, which aims for comprehensive literary descriptions. On the other hand, one of my major goals is to juxtapose evidence for rewriting found within the textual history of the books of the Hebrew canon with evidence from texts that were not included in the canon, while the Database excludes biblical texts from its corpus. For an explanation of the goals and methods of the Manchester/Durham project, see Alexander Samely, in collaboration with Philip Alexander, Rocco Bernasconi, and Robert Hayward, Profiling Jewish Literature in Antiquity: An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), esp. 3–28. As I will discuss at the end of Chapter 1, we generally can only see rewriting where multiple versions of the rewritten text or tradition are preserved; thus very many cases likely escape our notice.

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2 The Plan of This Book

5

way is found of bringing all the different types and contexts of rewriting into conversation with one another.

2 the plan of this book To draw further on the idea of “mapping,” we might say that producing a new map involves two elements. First, there is the choice of the mapmaker of what places to include – some of which might be new to the mapmaker or otherwise not included in previous maps. Second, there is the demonstration of how the places on the map are connected – the positioning of places in relationship to one another. I don’t wish to push this analogy too far, but it bears a certain resemblance to the approach of this book. I want to expand our mental map of rewriting by considering “places” on that map (types of texts) that may not have been included or fully delineated in earlier studies. Expanding the map involves demonstrating the relationships between and among both new and existing points on the map; thus, I propose new ways of talking and thinking about rewriting that allow us to put all our data points into relationship with one another. It should be clear that this proposal results from a dialectical process. My own increasing awareness of the breadth of the data concerning rewriting and the limits inadvertently imposed in earlier discussions prompted a search for better models. As scholars develop different ways of thinking, new frameworks and categories, we in turn reconceptualize the data. The back-and-forth between expanding the map, so to speak, and finding the language by which to account for the new, bigger map as a whole will be evident throughout the following chapters. In lieu of a long history of scholarship, in the rest of the Introduction I situate my work by presenting the existing map of rewriting. Certain types of texts, and then certain specific texts within those categories, have played especially important roles in the study of rewriting to date. As such, they constitute a set of “prototypes” or paradigmatic examples. A brief overview of some of these texts will give a good sense of how rewriting has typically been understood. It thus provides a basis for pushing the discussion beyond these prototypes in the chapters that follow: because of their importance in previous studies, they serve as touchstones and points of reference throughout this study. The first part of the book focuses on developing language that will facilitate a broader conceptualization of rewriting. In Chapter 1, after some initial reflections on the nature of text use and production in early Judaism, I explain why I have chosen to talk about rewriting, as opposed

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6

Introduction

to a range of other terminological options (Rewritten Bible/Scripture, innerbiblical exegesis, parabiblical texts, paratext(ual), hypertext(ual), etc.). I also introduce terms for two primary types of rewriting: revision and reuse. These subcategories mark the two different ways in which rewriting can relate to its base or source text: either as a new copy of an existing work (revision) or as a new composition constituted through redeployment of an earlier text (reuse). The remainder of Chapter 1 will lay out why I consider this distinction to be so important, and consider a series of related methodological issues concerning how we identify rewriting and distinguish revision from reuse. In Chapter 2, I explore how the idea of genre can provide a helpful tool for mentally organizing different types of rewriting in relationship to one another – positioning them on the map, we might say. Modern genre theory has developed a variety of models for understanding how and why humans categorize things and how categories shape our imagination. After discussing some of these models, I show how conceptualizing revision and reuse (and their respective subtypes) as analogous to genres – not literary genres but “genres” of scribal activity – helps us understand how they relate to one another as distinct forms of a broader scribal strategy. I also highlight the implications of recent advances in genre theory for our understanding of how rewriting relates to the various (literary) genres of the works in which it occurs, as well as the formation of the scholarly categories that have exercised so much influence in our study of early Jewish texts. After having laid the methodological and theoretical groundwork in Chapters 1 and 2, the following chapters consider a series of data sets in light of this new framework. All of these involve texts or categories that demonstrably contain rewriting but, for one reason or another, have not usually been seen as fully relevant. I do not aim for comprehensiveness – there are other texts and categories that could have been considered – but have chosen types of texts that have played the biggest role in my own thinking. I begin in Chapter 3 with rewriting found “in the Bible” – within the compositions that came to make up the Hebrew Bible. A long history of seeing Rewritten Bible as separate from and posterior to “Bible,” alongside other canonical assumptions, has made it difficult to fully integrate evidence from biblical texts into conversations about rewriting and, conversely, to effectively apply insights from the study of rewriting to discussions of the composition and development of biblical books.9 9

The reference to “canonical assumptions” comes from Robert A. Kraft, “Para-mania: Beside, Before and Beyond Bible Studies,” JBL 126 (2007): 10.

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Speaking of revision and reuse instead of using anachronistic labels like Rewritten Bible or innerbiblical exegesis allows us to overcome the barriers erected by this sort of canonically inflected thinking. I will also show how reconsideration of evidence found in the text of biblical books, properly situated, in fact allows us to address key methodological issues in the study of Second Temple rewriting more broadly. Chapter 4 moves in the other direction conceptually. The vast majority of studies of rewriting, whether concerned primarily with reuse (in the form of compositions characterized as Rewritten Bible) or revision (in the form of multiple literary editions or expanded copies) have pertained in one way or another to rewriting of biblical texts. This has resulted in certain widespread views about the nature and purpose of rewriting, such as a tendency to regard rewriting as a form of scriptural interpretation or to view it as a sign of the authoritative status of the text being subject to rewriting. Ongoing study of the Qumran materials in particular, however, has increasingly made clear that it would be a serious mistake to regard rewriting as primarily a “biblical” phenomenon. To the contrary, I will demonstrate the evidence that numerous nonbiblical compositions, including most of the best-preserved Qumran “sectarian” manuscripts, were subject to the same sorts of revision and reuse as were books that ended up in the Bible. With Chapters 5 and 6, rather than focusing on specific textual corpora as sites or contexts for rewriting, I explore forms of rewriting that have not always been regarded as such or have not fully been brought into the conversation. Chapter 5 deals with translation as a form of rewriting, focusing in the first instance on Greek translations of Hebrew scripture. While giving attention to the extent to which every translation can be seen as a rewriting or re-presentation of its source, I am especially concerned with instances where translators do more than seek to represent their source in the target language and actually introduce deliberate content changes. Reliably identifying such cases can be difficult because of the constant possibility that a given change originated in a Hebrew Vorlage. Nevertheless, it is clear that the Greek translators frequently made changes very similar to those made by scribes working in the same language. In the second part of the chapter I examine two sets of Aramaic materials, the rabbinic targumim and the Genesis Apocryphon from Qumran. Each of these bodies of material has distinctive features that demonstrate the connections between translation and (other types of ) rewriting in entirely different ways.

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Introduction

I turn to reuse in Chapter 6, not focusing on a single form but attempting to illustrate the diversity of ways in which scribes could interact with existing traditions. I argue that our understanding of reuse has been disproportionately shaped by the extensive, serial rewriting characteristic of those texts typically seen as prototypical of Rewritten Bible: Jubilees, the Temple Scroll, and so on. The influence of these prototypes has resulted in too little attention to other types of reuse. I also explore some types of engagement with prior texts that sit at the margins of reuse/rewriting as I have defined them, shading into looser or less text-connected types of interaction. The range of forms and functions highlights the degree to which rewriting was a flexible tool that could be deployed in a variety of ways to accomplish quite different literary and ideological goals. Finally, in Chapter 7, I attempt to synthesize the results of the previous chapters and consider how this new perspective on the nature and functions of rewriting might impact our understanding of Second Temple literary culture more broadly. How does rewriting – now understood as a diverse, flexible, and widespread set of scribal techniques essential not only to the reception but also the composition of literary texts – relate to questions of textual authority and interpretation? Moving to a wider lens, how are we to contextualize early Jewish rewriting not only within Second Temple Judaism, but within the Hellenistic world as a whole, and in relation to earlier Israelite and ancient Near Eastern scribal cultures as well as the rabbinic culture that emerged after 70 CE? The prevalence of rewriting as documented here suggests that Jewish scribes conceived of their literary tradition as both broad and ultimately divine in origin, and that they imagined themselves as integral partners in the ongoing project of making this tradition available (indeed, revealing it) to Israel. As this brief overview makes clear, this study is programmatic, in the sense that each chapter highlights by means of a series of examples some of the questions and issues that strike me as critical to a better understanding of the role of rewriting in early Jewish textual culture. I cannot claim to have thought of all the significant issues that could be raised, nor to have exhaustively addressed those I do consider. In the Conclusion, I lay out some directions for future research that could build on the approach I take here. Even though this study inevitably falls short of the comprehensiveness this topic deserves, I hope it will increase our appreciation of the ways the textual realities of early Judaism challenge traditional concepts of scripture and interpretation.

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9

3 meet the prototypes Over the years, a great number of scholars across different fields have produced a rich reserve of scholarship documenting the creative power of rewriting in early Jewish texts – whether they used this language for it or not. Yet certain examples have played especially important roles in discussions of rewriting to date. In Chapter 2, I will introduce the idea of “prototypes,” drawn from cognitive science via genre theory. Humans develop categories on the basis of examples seen as prototypical, and they process new or unfamiliar data largely by comparing it to better-known prototypes. Thus, it is of little surprise that certain texts have come to function as prototypes – subject to the most study or perhaps just coming to scholars’ attention earlier than others, and thus serving as the basis upon which definitions are proposed and categories formulated. Even as I seek in many ways to undermine these texts’ prototypical status by drawing attention to other kinds of examples, the prototypes remain important as points of comparison – as “old members” of the club. Because these texts are prototypical, the basics of their contents and interpretation are well-trodden ground. But because readers may be familiar with some of these texts more than others, or with none at all, here I provide a brief overview of those that appear most frequently in the following chapters. (At the same time, this overview serves as a basic introduction to what rewriting looks like in prototypical cases.) The selection of texts that I highlight here reflects the fact that study of rewriting has focused primarily on two types of materials: on the one hand, scribal interventions reflected in manuscripts of books of the Hebrew Bible and, on the other hand, new compositions that draw heavily on existing biblical texts (so-called Rewritten Bible). Of course, the choice of texts represents my own construal of what is prototypical, but I think it reflects with some measure of accuracy the trends in recent scholarship on rewriting.10

10

See especially Moshe J. Bernstein, “‘Rewritten Bible’: A Generic Category Which Has Outlived Its Usefulness?,” Textus 22 (2005): 169–96; Michael Segal, “Between Bible and Rewritten Bible,” in Biblical Interpretation at Qumran, ed. Matthias Henze (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 10–29; Daniel K. Falk, The Parabiblical Texts: Strategies for Extending the Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Companion to the Qumran Scrolls 8 (London: T&T Clark, 2007); Sidnie White Crawford, Rewriting Scripture in Second Temple Times (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008); Molly M. Zahn, Rethinking Rewritten Scripture: Composition and Exegesis in the 4QReworked Pentateuch Manuscripts, STDJ 95 (Leiden: Brill, 2011).

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10

Introduction Revised and Expanded Biblical Manuscripts

In the Second Temple context, examples of rewriting can be found wherever multiple manuscripts of a given composition have been preserved.11 Since the compositions later included in the Hebrew Bible are very well represented in the manuscript record, most of our best examples come from biblical manuscripts and versions, including the manuscripts discovered at Qumran as well as previously known versions such as the Masoretic Text (MT), the Greek translations (LXX/OG), and the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP).12 Though interesting variants can be found in a wide variety of manuscripts, certain manuscripts or versions have played especially important roles in shaping our ideas of the kinds of changes scribes might introduce in the course of copying. Jeremiah The OG version of Jeremiah, as is well known, differs substantially from MT, lacking about 17 percent of the content of MT and presenting shared materials in a significantly different sequence in the latter portions of the book.13 The Jeremiah manuscripts from Qumran Cave 4 have demonstrated that the differences between MT and OG should not be ascribed to the Greek translators; rather, multiple forms of the book must have circulated in Hebrew in Judea during the Second Temple period. 4QJera and 4QJerc preserve texts that largely correspond to the MT (though not completely so), while 4QJerb and 4QJerd contain texts that agree with OG against MT in some crucial variants, and thus attest forms similar to what the Vorlage of OG Jeremiah must have looked like.14

11

12

13

14

See the remarks of Brooke: “In one sense every copy of an authoritative scriptural book made in the late Second Temple period is a rewritten scriptural manuscript.” George J. Brooke, “The Rewritten Law, Prophets and Psalms: Issues for Understanding the Text of the Bible,” in The Bible As Book: The Hebrew Bible and the Judaean Desert Discoveries, ed. Edward D. Herbert and Emanuel Tov (London: British Library, 2002), 31–40. Since the term “Septuagint”/LXX properly refers only to the Pentateuch, I use the abbreviation LXX/OG to refer to the Greek Bible as a whole. On the issue of terminology, see Benjamin G. Wright III, “The Septuagint and Its Modern Translators,” in Die Septuaginta – Texte, Kontexte, Lebenswelten, ed. Wolfgang Kraus and Martin Karrer, WUNT 219 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 104–5. Armin Lange, Handbuch der Textfunde vom Toten Meer, Band 1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 303; Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), 287–88. For descriptions of the contents of the manuscripts, see Lange, Handbuch, 298–302.

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The differences between MT and OG Jeremiah range from minor variants to the presence or absence of whole paragraphs (e.g., Jer 33:14–26, present in MT but lacking in OG), as well as the alternative placement of the Oracles Against the Nations (MT Jeremiah 46–51 // OG Jer 25:14–32:38). To give just one example – indeed the one where the Qumran evidence for a Hebrew basis for the OG Vorlage is clearest – the MT version of Jeremiah 10 contains several plusses (vv. 6–8, 10) and a different sequence (the placement of v. 9) vis-à-vis the version preserved in the Greek and in 4QJerb (Table I.1).15

Table I.1 Two versions of Jeremiah 10 Jeremiah 10:3–11 MT (trans. NRSV with modifications)16

Jeremiah 10:3–11 OG (trans. NETS with modifications)  4QJerb (underlined)

3

3

For the precepts of the peoples are worthless: for a tree from the forest is cut down, the work of a craftsman’s hands with an axe. 4 they beautify it with silver and gold; they fasten it with nails and hammers so that it cannot move. 5 They are like a scarecrow in a cucumber field; they cannot speak;

they have to be carried, for they cannot walk. Do not be afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, nor is it in them to do good.

15

16

For the precepts of the peoples are worthless: there is a tree from the forest, cut down, the work of a craftsman, and a molten image. 4 they have been beautified with silver and gold; they fastened it with hammers and nails so that it cannot move. 5a Wrought silver it is – they will not walk. 9 Beaten silver will be brought from Tharsis, gold from Mophaz and a hand of goldsmiths, all works of craftsmen; they will clothe them in blue and purple. 5b they will be raised up and carried, for they will not walk. Do not be afraid of them, for they shall not do evil, and good is not in them.

For discussion, see Eugene Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Developmental Composition of the Bible, VTSup 169 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 146–49. All translations of ancient texts and transcriptions of Dead Sea Scrolls materials are my own unless otherwise noted.

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Introduction

12

Table I.1 (cont.) Jeremiah 10:3–11 MT (trans. NRSV with modifications)16

Jeremiah 10:3–11 OG (trans. NETS with modifications)  4QJerb (underlined)

6

There is none like you, YHWH; you are great, and your name is great in might. 7 Who would not fear you, King of the nations? For that is your due; for among all the wise of the nations and in all their kingdoms there is no one like you. 8 They are both stupid and foolish; the instruction of idols is no better than wood! 9 Beaten silver will be brought from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz; the work of the craftsman and of the hands of the goldsmith; their clothing is blue and purple; all the work of wise men. 10 But YHWH is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King. At his wrath the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure his indignation. 11 Thus shall you say to them: The gods who did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens.

11

Thus shall you say to them: Let gods who did not make the sky and the earth perish from the earth and from under this sky.

Of course, documenting two different forms of a text does not automatically tell us which version is earlier and which is later: did the rewriting witnessed in these copies of Jeremiah consist mostly of expansion, such that the longer MT version is the later one, or mostly of omission, such that the shorter version is later?17 I agree with the majority opinion that the evidence points most clearly to the former option: the version preserved by MT represents a later stage of development compared to that of OG, though the full history of that development is clearly more complicated than a simple unidirectional series of expansions.18 But resolving that question is not the main issue here. The key observation 17 18

For more on this issue of direction of dependence, see Chapter 3. For a detailed overview of scholarship on this question, see Lange, Handbuch, 304–14.

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from the perspective of scholarship on rewriting is the documentation the Qumran Jeremiah manuscripts provide that scribes working in Hebrew introduced substantial changes into the text of that book.19 The Samaritan Pentateuch and Its Qumran Precursors Another example of known differences taking on new significance in the wake of the Qumran discoveries is provided by the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP). SP, the earliest manuscripts of which date from the early medieval period, preserves a large number of major plusses (vis-à-vis MT and LXX) consisting of material drawn from elsewhere in the Pentateuch, as well as a smaller number of transpositions involving at least a verse. It also attests to a large number of more minor variant readings of different types.20 Before the Qumran discoveries, the major plusses and transpositions were assumed to have originated in the activities of Samaritan scribes. Evidence for this assumption was found in the fact that two of the plusses reflect distinctively Samaritan ideology: the insertion into the Decalogue, in both Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, of a command to build an altar at Mt. Gerizim.21 The publication of the Qumran Exodus scroll 4QpaleoExodm, however, recalibrated scholarly perspectives.22 This scroll contained all the major plusses and transpositions found in SP Exodus, except the new commandment in Exodus 20. Other scrolls from Qumran, especially 4QNumb, also attested major SP plusses.23 Scholars quickly realized that there was nothing distinctly “Samaritan” about all but a very few readings in SP. Rather, a version of the Pentateuch very similar to that found in SP (aside from the few truly Samaritan readings) must have circulated widely in late Second Temple period Judea.24 Texts preserving this version, like 4QpaleoExodm and 4QNumb, are typically referred to as “preSamaritan” manuscripts.

19 20

21

22

23

24

See Tov, Textual Criticism, 287. The best easily accessible overview of the textual history of SP is Tov, Textual Criticism, 74–93. On the background of this insertion, see Gary N. Knoppers, Jews and Samaritans: The Origins and History of Their Early Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 194–212. See Patrick W. Skehan, Eugene Ulrich, and Judith E. Sanderson, Qumran Cave 4.IV: Palaeo-Hebrew and Greek Biblical Manuscripts, DJD 9 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992); Judith E. Sanderson, An Exodus Scroll from Qumran: 4QpaleoExodM and the Samaritan Tradition, HSS 30 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1986). Versions of the Pentateuch containing major SP plusses are also attested by 4Q158 and 4Q364 (= 4Q[Reworked] Pentateuch A and B). Tov, Textual Criticism, 79.

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Introduction

14

The most famous changes attested in SP and the pre-Samaritan manuscripts from Qumran involve major insertions meant to resolve a perceived lack of correspondence between command and fulfillment or event and recollection.25 For example, there are several instances in the MT and LXX versions of the plague narrative in Exodus where Moses and Aaron are not explicitly said to carry out a command given to them by God. In these cases, SP and 4QpaleoExodm preserve insertions, drawn from the language of the command, that make clear that Moses and Aaron did indeed fulfill the command precisely as instructed (Table I.2): Table I.2 Two versions of Exodus 7 Exod 7:14–20 MT

Exod 7:14–20 SP = 4QpaleoExodm (underlined)a

14

14

25

YHWH said to Moses, “Pharaoh’s heart is hardened; he refuses to let the people go. 15 Go to Pharaoh in the morning, as he is going out to the water; station yourself at the river bank to meet him, and take in your hand the staff that was turned into a snake. 16 Say to him, ‘YHWH, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to you to say, “Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the wilderness.” But you have not listened thus far. 17 Thus says YHWH: “By this you shall know that I am YHWH.” See, with the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water that is in the Nile, and it shall be turned to blood. 18 The fish in the river shall die, and the river shall stink, and the Egyptians shall no longer be able to drink water from the Nile.’”

YHWH said to Moses, “Pharaoh’s heart is hardened; he refuses to let the people go. 15 Go to Pharaoh in the morning, as he is going out to the water; station yourself at the river bank to meet him, and take in your hand the staff that was turned into a snake. 16 Say to him, ‘YHWH, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to you to say, “Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the wilderness.” But you have not listened thus far. 17 Thus says YHWH: “By this you shall know that I am YHWH.” See, with the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water that is in the Nile, and it shall be turned to blood. 18 The fish in the river shall die, and the river shall stink, and the Egyptians shall no longer be able to drink water from the Nile.’”

On these changes, see Esther Eshel and Hanan Eshel, “Dating the Samaritan Pentateuch’s Compilation in Light of the Qumran Biblical Scrolls,” in Emanuel: Studies in Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, and Dead Sea Scrolls in Honor of Emanuel Tov, ed. Shalom M. Paul et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 215–40; Michael Segal, “The Text of the Hebrew Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Materia Giudaica 12 (2007): 5–20; Jonathan Ben-Dov,

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Table I.2 (cont.) Exod 7:14–20 MT

19

YHWH said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt – over its rivers, its canals, and its ponds, and all its pools of water – so that they may become blood; and there shall be blood throughout the whole land of Egypt, even in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone.’” 20 Moses and Aaron did so, just as YHWH commanded. In the sight of Pharaoh and of his officials he lifted up the staff and struck the water in the river, and all the water in the river was turned into blood . . .

Exod 7:14–20 SP = 4QpaleoExodm (underlined)a So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, “YHWH, the God of the Hebrews, has sent us to you to say ‘Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the wilderness.’ But you have not listened thus far. Thus says YHWH: ‘By this you shall know that I am YHWH.’ See, with the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water that is in the Nile, and it shall be turned to blood. The fish in the river shall die, and the river shall stink, and the Egyptians shall no longer be able to drink water from the Nile.” 19 YHWH said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt – over its rivers, its canals, and its ponds, and all its pools of water – so that they may become blood; and there shall be blood throughout the whole land of Egypt, even in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone.’” 20 Moses and Aaron did so, just as YHWH commanded. In the sight of Pharaoh and of his officials he lifted up the staff and struck the water in the river, and all the water in the river was turned into blood . . .

a

The only substantive variation between 4QpaleoExodm and SP in this section is the reading ‫]והדגה[ בת]וך[ היאר‬, “the fish in the midst of the Nile” for MT, SP ‫והדגה ביאר‬, “the fish in the Nile” in Exod 7:18 and again in the SP/4Q plus. For the text, see Eugene Ulrich, The Biblical Qumran Scrolls: Transcriptions and Textual Variants, VTSup 134 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 42.

Though these kinds of large additions of material from elsewhere are perhaps the most distinctive feature of the version of the Pentateuch “Early Texts of the Torah: Revisiting the Greek Scholarly Context,” JAJ 4 (2013): 210–34; Zahn, Rethinking Rewritten Scripture, 143–49.

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Introduction

16

preserved in SP and the pre-SP Qumran manuscripts, they are not the only kinds of changes that occur in this version. SP also contains a number of rearrangements, as well as frequent small- and moderately sized additions and omissions.26 For instance, SP attests the following substantial, unique plus in Exod 23:19 (Table I.3):27 Table I.3 Additions of new material in SP Exod 23:19 MT ‫לא תבשל גדי בחלב אמו‬ You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.

Exod 23:19 SP ‫לא תבשל גדי בחלב אמו כי עשה זאת כזבח שכח ועברה‬ ‫היא לאלהי יעקב‬ You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk, for the one who does this is like a zbh škh, and it is ʿbrh to the God of Jacob. _ _

Despite the overlap in a number of major variant readings, it would be a mistake to overemphasize the distinctiveness and singularity of SP and its Qumran precursors. For one thing, even setting aside the particularly “Samaritan” readings in SP, not all of the significant changes in SP are shared by the pre-SP mss, and the pre-SP mss contain some distinctive readings not shared by SP. For another, the types of changes attested in SP, though they occur there in distinctive concentration, are not unique to this group of manuscripts.28 In this sense, SP and the pre-SP manuscripts provide firm support for the idea that scribal modification was a widespread feature of the production of new manuscript copies in the Second Temple period. The 4Q(Reworked) Pentateuch Manuscripts Against the backdrop of an emerging picture of scribes as active partners in the shaping of the books of the Bible in the forms we now have them, another set of manuscripts of the Pentateuch has been instrumental in challenging our thinking on just how much scribes, even those copying the most prestigious texts, were willing to modify their received texts. The five Qumran manuscripts edited under the label 4Q(Reworked)

26 27

28

For an overview, see Zahn, Rethinking Rewritten Scripture, chapter 4. On the interpretation of this difficult plus, see D. Andrew Teeter, “‘You Shall Not Seethe a Kid in Its Mother's Milk’: The Text and the Law in Light of Early Witnesses,” Textus 24 (2009): 37–63. For examples of all of these cases, see Molly M. Zahn, “The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Scribal Culture of Second Temple Judaism,” JSJ 46 (2015): 285–313.

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Pentateuch (4Q158, 4Q364–367) all present pentateuchal materials that often correspond closely to pentateuchal texts known from elsewhere but sometimes diverge considerably.29 While many differences from known versions are minor, there are also some major rearrangements (for example, the juxtaposition of Numbers 27 and 36 in 4Q365 frag. 36), as well as several sections of otherwise unknown material comprising 6–10 lines or more. To give just one example, 4Q364 preserves parts of a dialogue prior to Gen 28:6 pertaining to Jacob’s departure for Padan Aram:30 4Q364 3 ii 1–8 1 him you shall see [ 2 you shall see in peace [ 3 your death, and before [your(?)] eyes[ 4 both of you. And he called [ 5 to her all the wo[rds 6 after Jacob her son[ 7 Esau saw that [Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him] 8 to Pa[dan]-Aram to acquire [a wife] from [there . . .

Other major sections of presumably added material include a song apparently sung by Miriam inserted after Exod 15:20 (4Q365 frag. 6); instructions for providing wood for the temple inserted after the beginning of Lev 24:2 (4Q365 frag. 23); and several columns of instructions for “the house that you will build,” apparently the temple and its courts (4Q365a frags. 1–5).31 29 30

31

For a full review of the 4QRP mss, see Zahn, Rethinking Rewritten Scripture, 25–134. On this addition and possible connections with Jubilees and Tobit, see Hanna Tervanotko, “You Shall See: Rebekah’s Farewell Address in 4Q364 ii, 1–6,” in The Hebrew Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Nóra Dávid et al., FRLANT 239 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 413–26. Though many scholars, myself included, have accepted the argument originally made by Florentino García Martínez that the 4Q365a fragments should be regarded as part of 4Q365, debate on this issue continues. See Florentino García Martínez, “Multiple Literary Editions of the Temple Scroll?,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Fifty Years after Their Discovery, ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman, Emanuel Tov, and James C. VanderKam (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society/Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, 2000), 364–71; Molly M. Zahn, “4QReworked Pentateuch C and the Literary Sources of the Temple Scroll: A New (Old) Proposal,” DSD 19 (2012): 133–58; arguing for the likely separate status of the 4Q365a fragments, see Sidnie White Crawford, “4QTemple? (4Q365a) Revisited,” in Prayer and Poetry in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature, ed. J. Penner et al., STDJ 98 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 87–95; James H. Charlesworth with A. R. Van Kirk, “Temple Scroll Source or Divergent Copy (4Q365a [4QTa?]),” in Temple Scroll and Related Documents, ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman et al., PTSDSSP 7 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 235–45.

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18

Introduction

As the name “Reworked Pentateuch” suggests, these five manuscripts were officially classified and published as extrabiblical texts, belonging to the Rewritten Bible category. Though the first scholar to study the manuscripts, John Strugnell, felt it was possible that they represented a “rogue” or “wild” Torah, their official editors, Emanuel Tov and Sidnie White Crawford, argued that they were too different from other known versions of the Torah to have been intended or recognized as copies of the Pentateuch.32 Others pointed out that the types of variants seen in the 4QRP mss are no different from those seen in the different versions of Jeremiah, or of Esther or Proverbs or other biblical books that exist in multiple forms. If extensive changes could be made to the text of these books in the course of the Second Temple period, could not the text of the Torah also undergo such changes?33 Most scholars, including Tov and Crawford, have accepted this argument and now regard at least some of the five manuscripts as copies of (parts of ) the Pentateuch. The manuscripts are thus sometimes now referred to as 4QPentateuch.34 For clarity, I will refer to them as 4Q(Reworked) Pentateuch.

32

33

34

This position is actually assumed more than argued for in the official edition; see Emanuel Tov, “364–367. 4QReworked Pentateuchb–e: Introduction,” in Qumran Cave 4.VIII: Parabiblical Texts, Part 1, ed. Harold Attridge et al., DJD 13 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 191; a clearer argument is presented in Emanuel Tov, “Rewritten Bible Compositions and Biblical Manuscripts, with Special Attention to the Samaritan Pentateuch,” DSD 5 (1998): 339. For Strugnell’s assessment, see Zahn, “4QReworked Pentateuch C,” 137–38. See in particular Eugene Ulrich, “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Biblical Text,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment, ed. Peter W. Flint and James C. VanderKam (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 1: 88; Michael Segal, “4QReworked Pentateuch or 4QPentateuch?,” in Schiffman, Tov, and VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Fifty Years after Their Discovery, 391–99; James C. VanderKam, “Questions of Canon Viewed through the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Canon Debate, ed. Lee Martin McDonald and James A. Sanders (Peabody: Hendrikson, 2002), 91–109. Besides Segal, “4QReworked Pentateuch,” see e.g. Emanuel Tov, “From 4QReworked Pentateuch to 4QPentateuch (?),” in Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism, ed. Popović, 73–91; Eugene Ulrich, “Methodological Reflections on Determining Scriptural Status in First Century Judaism,” in Rediscovering the Dead Sea Scrolls: An Assessment of Old and New Approaches and Methods, ed. Maxine L. Grossman (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 160; Ulrich, Developmental Composition, 187–94. Skepticism about the pentateuchal status of the 4QRP manuscripts continues to be expressed by Moshe J. Bernstein, “What Has Happened to the Laws? The Treatment of Legal Material in 4QReworked Pentateuch,” DSD 15 (2008): 24–49; and, more recently, Cana Werman, “The Canonization of the Hebrew Bible in Light of Second Temple Literature,” in From Author to Copyist: Essays on the Composition, Redaction, and Transmission of the Hebrew Bible in Honor of Zipi Talshir, ed. Cana Werman (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2015), 357–61.

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19

New Compositions That “Rewrite the Bible” Though the wealth of scribal interventions documented in the Qumran biblical manuscripts and other texts and versions provides a great deal of data about rewriting, the primary context for consideration of the phenomenon – indeed, the background of the term “rewriting” itself in the sense I am using it – has been under the rubric of Rewritten Bible (or, more recently, “Rewritten Scripture”).35 Geza Vermes’s initial formulation of the category has been so influential that it is worth quoting in full: In order to anticipate questions, and solve problems in advance, the midrashist inserts haggadic developments into the biblical narrative – an exegetical process which is probably as ancient as scriptural interpretation itself. The Palestinian Targum and Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities, Pseudo-Philo and Jubilees, and the recently discovered Genesis Apocryphon . . . each in their own way show how the Bible was rewritten about a millennium before the redaction of the Sefer ha-Yashar.36

We will have occasion to return to several aspects of Vermes’s construal of Rewritten Bible in subsequent chapters, from the inclusion of targum in the category to the assumption that Rewritten Bible is narrative and exegetical and pertains to biblical texts. For now, it is sufficient to note the idea of a category of texts that stand on their own as independent compositions and are constituted largely through their “retelling” or redeployment of extensive sections of a text known from the Hebrew Bible. Despite the amount of ink spilled on debates surrounding the appropriateness of the term Rewritten Bible, no one disputes that attention to the ways biblical texts are reworked in these compositions has taught us a great deal about the nature and function of engagement with earlier texts in the Second Temple period.37 Three works have been particularly significant in this regard. 35

36

37

For the significance of the terminological change from Rewritten Bible to Rewritten Scripture, see Chapter 1, n. 20; also Molly M. Zahn, “Rewritten Scripture,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Timothy H. Lim and John J. Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 323; and Molly M. Zahn, “Talking About Rewritten Texts: Some Reflections on Terminology,” in Changes in Scripture: Rewriting and Interpreting Authoritative Traditions in the Second Temple Period, ed. Hanne von Weissenberg, Juha Pakkala, and Marko Marttila, BZAW 419 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 109–12. Geza Vermes, Scripture and Tradition in Judaism: Haggadic Studies, 2nd ed., StPB 4 (Leiden: Brill, 1973), 95. On Rewritten Bible/Rewritten Scripture as a category, see especially Bernstein, “Rewritten Bible”; Anders Klostergaard Petersen, “Rewritten Bible as a Borderline Phenomenon – Genre, Textual Strategy, or Canonical Anachronism?,” in Flores

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Introduction

Jubilees The book of Jubilees has long been known as part of the “Old Testament Pseudepigrapha” due to its preservation by the Ethiopic church, but scholarly interest in it was renewed by the discovery of numerous fragmentary Hebrew copies at Qumran. The book opens with Moses’ ascent to the top of Mt. Sinai to receive the tablets of the law, as related in Exodus 24. Jubilees asserts, however, that at that time Moses also received an additional revelation, dictated to him from the heavenly tablets by one of God’s premier angels. This revelation, the contents of which of course are contained in the text of Jubilees itself, turns out to be largely historical in nature, covering the events of the period from Creation to Moses’ own time, all organized according to a chronological framework of 49-year “jubilees” and giving special attention to the role of obedience to divine law in the lives and fortunes of Israel’s ancestors.38 The narratives of Genesis 1–Exodus 19, unsurprisingly, serve as the major source for Jubilees’s retelling, though the space accorded each episode varies according to the authors’ particular interests.39 Some sections, in particular the story of Israel’s sojourn in Egypt, the plagues, and the exodus, are retold rather cursorily, while others are expanded and elaborated upon, and several sections are completely new vis-à-vis known versions of the Pentateuch.40 For instance, Jubilees 11–12 presents Abraham’s childhood and youth in Ur, chapter 23 contains a long digression regarding the shortening of human life due to wickedness and its anticipated lengthening again in the end times, and chapters 20–22 contain a

38

39 40

Florentino: Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Early Jewish Studies in Honour of Florentino García Martínez, ed. Anthony Hilhorst, Émile Puech, and Eibert Tigchelaar, JSJSup 122 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 285–306; Jonathan G. Campbell, “‘Rewritten Bible’ and ‘Parabiblical Texts’: A Terminological and Methodological Critique,” in New Directions in Qumran Studies, ed. Jonathan G. Campbell, William John Lyons, and Lloyd K. Pietersen, LSTS 52 (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 43–68; and the literature cited in Zahn, “Rewritten Scripture”; more recently, see the essays collected in József Zsengellér, ed., Rewritten Bible after Fifty Years: Texts, Terms, or Techniques?, JSJSup 166 (Leiden: Brill, 2014). For a convenient overview of the structure and themes of Jubilees, see James C. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees, Guides to Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001); for a fuller treatment, see James C. VanderKam, Jubilees 1: A Commentary on the Book of Jubilees Chapters 1–21, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2018), 17–25, 41–83. See also the profile of Jubilees produced for the Manchester/Durham database project, included in Samely, Profiling Jewish Literature in Antiquity, 357–72. On various approaches to the compositional history of Jubilees, see Chapter 4. Jubilees appears also to have used other known texts, such as 1 Enoch and possibly the Genesis Apocryphon, as sources; see VanderKam, Jubilees 1–21, 88–98.

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series of testamentary speeches by Abraham at the end of his life. The short extract in Table I.4 gives a taste of the way Jubilees weaves together new material with material drawn more directly from its pentateuchal Vorlage:

Table I.4 The Aqedah in Jubilees Jubilees 17:15–18:1341

Genesis 22:1–14

17:15 During the seventh week, in the first year during the first month – on the twelfth of this month – in this jubilee [2003], there were voices in heaven regarding Abraham, that he was faithful in everything that he had told him, (that) the Lord loved him, and (that) in every difficulty he was faithful. 17:16 Then Prince Mastema came and said before God: ‘Abraham does indeed love his son Isaac and finds him more pleasing than anyone else. Tell him to offer him as a sacrifice on an altar. Then you will see whether he performs this order and will know whether he is faithful in everything through which you test him.’ 17:17 Now the Lord was aware that Abraham was faithful in every difficulty which he had told him . . .18:1 The Lord said to him: ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ He replied: ‘Yes?’ 18:2 He said to him: ‘Take your son, your dear one whom you love – Isaac – and go to a high land. Offer him on one of the mountains which I will show you.’ . . . 18:8b Then he tied up his son Isaac, placed him on the wood which was on the altar, and reached out his hands to take the knife in order to sacrifice his son Isaac. 18:9 Then

After these things God tested Abraham.

41

He said to him, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ 2He said, ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt-offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.’ . . . Then he tied up his son Isaac and placed him on the altar atop the wood. 10And Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife in order to slaughter his son.

Translation from James C. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees, vol. 2, CSCO 511 (Leuven: Peeters, 1989).

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Table I.4 (cont.) Jubilees 17:15–18:1341 I stood in front of him and in front of Mastema. The Lord said: ‘Tell him not to let his hand go down on the child and not to do anything to him because I know that he is one who fears the Lord.’ 18:10 So I called to him from heaven and said to him: ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ He was startled and said: ‘Yes?’ 18:11 I said to him: Do not lay your hands on the child and do not do anything to him because I now know that you are one who fears the Lord . . .. 18:13 Abraham named that place ‘The Lord Saw’ so that it is named ‘The Lord Saw.’ It is Mt. Zion.

Genesis 22:1–14

11

But an angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ And he said: ‘Yes?’ 12And he said, ‘Do not lay your hand on the child and do not do anything to him, because now I know that you are one who fears God’ . . .

14

Abraham named that place ‘The Lord sees,’ as it is said to this day: ‘On the mountain the Lord is seen.’

Genesis Apocryphon The Genesis Apocryphon (hereafter GenAp) consists of a rewritten Aramaic version of parts of Genesis. The scroll (1Q20, or 1QapGen ar) is notoriously difficult to read due to metallic elements in the ink, which have eaten away at the leather.42 What is left of the composition presents the stories of Noah and Abraham (roughly Genesis 6–15) with significant elaborations vis-à-vis the versions preserved in the MT. Most of the Apocryphon, though clearly familiar with the Genesis stories, follows the biblical text only loosely, with several major expansions. For instance, cols. 2–5 pertain to Noah’s birth, including the following passage where Noah’s father, Lamech, doubts the paternity of the son his wife (here named Batenosh) has just given birth to: GenAp 2:1–1143 1 Then suddenly it occurred to me that the conception was from Watchers, and the seed from Holy Ones, and to Nephil[in 2 and my mind wavered concerning this infant. vacat

42

43

See Daniel A. Machiela, The Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon: A New Text and Translation With Introduction and Special Treatment of Columns 13–17, STDJ 79 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 29. Translations of the Genesis Apocryphon are drawn from Machiela, Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon.

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3 4 5

Then I, Lamech, was upset, so I approached Batenosh my wife and sa[id to her . . . I bear witness by the Most High, by the Mighty Lord, by the King of all A[ges [one of] the sons of Heaven, until you recount truthfully everything for me, whether [ 6 you must recount [truthfully] for me, without lies. The son (born) from you is unique (?) [ 7 by the King of all Ages until you will speak truthfully with me, without lies.[ 8 Then Batenosh my wife spoke with me very harshly, and wept[ 9 and she said, “O my brother and my husband, recall for yourself my pleasure . . . [ 10 in the heat of the moment, and my panting breath! I [am telling] you everything truthfully . . . [ 11 [ ] . . . entirely.” Then my mind wavered greatly within me. vacat

As is clear from this extract, for most of the Genesis Apocryphon the main protagonist of each section (Lamech, Noah, etc.) tells his story in the first person, in contrast to the anonymous third-person narration of Genesis. This continues for most of the extended section pertaining to Abr(ah)am. In the final preserved section of the Apocryphon, however (GenAp 21:23–22:34  Genesis 14–15), the style shifts, and Abram is referred to in the third person. In general, as Moshe Bernstein has emphasized, the Abram section of the Apocryphon differs from the earlier columns in adhering much more closely to the contours of the Genesis narrative, a change he attributes to the composer’s use of a variety of written sources.44 This closer relationship to Genesis still allows for substantial expansions and changes, notably a completely reworked (but still recognizable) version of Abram and Sarai’s sojourn in Egypt (Gen 12:10–20). For example, the text includes a dream to which Abram appeals in order to justify his request that Sarai present herself as his sister during their time in Egypt: GenAp 19:14–21 14 vacat Now I, Abram, dreamt a dream in the night of my entry into Egypt. I saw in my dream that there was a single cedar and a single date 15 palm, having sprout[ed] together from [one] roo[t]. And m[e]n came seeking to cut down and uproot the [ce]dar, thereby leaving the date palm by itself. 16 But the date palm cried out and said, “Do not cut down the cedar, for the two of us are sp[rung] from o[ne] root!” So the cedar was left on account of the date palm, 17 and they did not cut me down. vacat Then I awoke in the night from my sleep, and I said to my wife Sarai, “I dreamt

44

Moshe J. Bernstein, “Is the Genesis Apocryphon a Unity? What Sort of Unity Were You Looking For?,” Aramaic Studies 8 (2010): 107–34.

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Introduction

18 a dream, (and) on acco[unt] of this dream I am afraid.” She said to me, “Tell me your dream, so that I may know (about it).” So I began to tell her this dream, 19 and I said to [her], “. . . this dream . . . that they will seek to kill me, but to spare you. Therefore, this is the entire kind deed 20 th[at you] must do for me: in all cities (?) that [we will ent]er s[ay] of me, ‘He is my brother.’ I will live under your protection, and my life will be spared because of you. 21 [ t]hey [will s]eek to take you away from me, and to kill me.” Sarai wept because of my words that night

The Temple Scroll Like Jubilees, the Temple Scroll (TS) presents itself as Sinaitic revelation, though framed as the direct word of God rather than the dictation of an angel, and situating itself as Sinaitic through the use of Exodus 34 (Moses’ second stay atop the mountain, after the Golden Calf incident) rather than Exodus 24. Unlike Jubilees, its focus is entirely legal: it preserves no narrative material, instead presenting extensive instructions for the building of a massive temple complex, with an attendant list of sacrifices to be performed at the sanctuary (daily, sabbath, new moon, and for various annual feast days), and finally a collection of other laws regulating Israel’s interaction with the temple and its life in the land. Three copies of TS have been discovered at Qumran: the extensively preserved “a” copy, 11Q19; a very similar but more fragmentary copy, 11Q20; and an extremely poorly preserved series of fragments that seem to preserve an alternate edition or even perhaps an earlier source, 4Q524.45 Although the Temple Scroll, due to its lack of narrative, has not always been included in lists of Rewritten Bible (which has sometimes been defined, following Vermes, as a strictly narrative phenomenon), its dependence on texts now in the Hebrew Bible, the Pentateuch in particular, is extensive.46 However, its degree of similarity to earlier texts varies throughout the work. In the later sections of TS, especially cols. 54–56 and 60–66, entire paragraphs of Deuteronomy are presented in a form very similar to MT/LXX, save for the pervasive change from third-person reference to God (since Moses is the speaker in Deuteronomy) to first person. Elsewhere, especially in cols. 13–29, which describe the prescribed temple

45 46

For more on the compositional history of TS, see Chapter 4. On TS as Rewritten Bible, see Bernstein, “Rewritten Bible,” 193–95.

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sacrifices for feast days, the text of TS is an amalgam of the relevant pentateuchal sources on a particular topic; for example, the section on Passover and Unleavened Bread combines materials from Leviticus 23, Numbers 28, and Deuteronomy 16.47 In still other sections, such as the instructions for the temple building and its surrounding courts, TS uses architectural terminology familiar from passages such as 1 Kings 5 and Ezekiel 40–48, but does not extensively reproduce specific texts. It is difficult to provide just one or two excerpts from TS that would be representative of its interaction with pentateuchal materials, but the following passages may serve as an illustration of the authors’ creative reuse.48 In the first excerpt (Table I.5), the Temple Scroll reproduces Table I.5 Minor changes to pentateuchal law in TS Temple Scroll (11Q19) 56:2–8

Deut 17:9b–11 MT

and] they [shall decla]re to you the judgments, 3 and you shall act according to the teaching that they declare to you and according to the word 4 that they speak to you from the scroll of the Torah. They shall declare to you truthfully 5 from the place upon which I will choose to settle my name. And you shall be careful to act 6 according to everything that they teach you, and according to the judgment that they speak to you 7 you shall act; you shall not turn aside from the teaching that they declare to you to the right 8 or to the left.

and you shall inquire and they shall give you the judicial decision. (10) And you shall act according to the matter that they declare to you

47

48

from that place, which YHWH will choose, and you shall be careful to act according to all that they teach you. (11) According to the instruction that they teach you and the judgment that they speak to you you shall act; you shall not turn from the decision that they declare to you to the right or to the left.

For a judicious recent analysis of the Temple Scroll’s Passover law, see James Nati, “Compositional Technique in the Temple Scroll: Creative Interpretation and Integrative Interpretation in the Passover Legislation,” in New Vistas on Early Judaism and Christianity, ed. Lorenzo DiTommaso and Gerbern S. Oegema (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 112–30. A concise analysis of the stylistic and structural features of TS, drawing on his work for the Manchester/Durham database project, is presented by Alexander Samely, “Observations

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Table I.6 Laws grouped according to topic in TS Temple Scroll (11Q19) 52:3–8

Pentateuch (MT)

4

And you shall not sacrifice to me an ox or a sheep in which there is any serious blemish, for they are an abomination 5to me. And you shall not sacrifice to me an ox or a sheep or a goat that are pregnant, for they are an abomination to me. 6 An ox or a sheep, it and its offspring, you shall not sacrifice on the same day; and you shall not slay the mother 7along with (her) young. Every firstling that is born in your herd and your flock, 8the males, you shall consecrate to me . . .

You shall not sacrifice to YHWH your God an ox or a sheep in which there is a blemish, any serious problem, for it is an abomination to YHWH your God (Deut 17:1)

An ox or a sheep, it and its offspring, you shall not slaughter on the same day (Lev 22:28) You shall not take the mother along with the young (Deut 22:6b) Every firstling that is born in your herd and in your flock, that is male, you shall consecrate to YHWH your God . . . (Deut 15:19)

Deuteronomy’s law concerning the highest judicial instance, with only relatively minor changes (additions, omissions, and rearrangements). In the second excerpt (Table I.6), TS brings together a series of topically related laws that occur separately in the Pentateuch, and also adds a law not found in any pentateuchal version known to us. *** These examples provide a brief introduction to those texts that have played the most substantial role in shaping the scholarly conversation about rewriting, and also give a sense of the main lines of that conversation itself. The texts discussed here (along with others) constitute rich new data for the study of the development of the texts of the Hebrew Bible and the history of interpretation. Revised and expanded biblical manuscripts have demonstrated the fluidity of the texts in this period and have begun

on the Structure and Literary Fabric of the Temple Scroll,” in The Temple in Text and Tradition: A Festschrift in Honour of Robert Hayward, ed. R. Timothy McLay, LSTS 83 (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 233–77.

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to move scholars away from the default assumption that the MT generally represents the best and earliest witness to the Hebrew Bible. Rewritten Bible–type works not only witness to how the texts later collected in the Hebrew Bible were being read and interpreted, but also begin to give a fuller sense of the literary corpus more broadly; of what Second Temple Jews were reading. Despite all we have learned from these prototypes, however, the above examples also illustrate some of the limitations of the scholarly conversation thus far. Perhaps most notably, it is clear that the discussion orbits around the texts now in the Hebrew Bible, whether the focus is on multiple versions or editions of those texts, or on the use and interpretation of those texts in new compositions. Little attention has been given to how the processes that produced these examples relate to the development and use of other literary texts less directly associated with the Bible. Another issue is the tendency to see all of the above examples of rewriting as part of the history of reception: rewriting is generally characterized as something that happens to texts after they are “done.” Scholars such as Eugene Ulrich have pointed out that the extensive evidence for textual fluidity makes it problematic to draw this kind of line between “composition” and “reception” or “transmission.”49 The field as a whole, however, has yet to fully grasp the insight that these examples of rewriting have implications for understanding the processes by which ancient Jewish texts were composed, not just the processes by which they were received and passed down. Thus, as important as these prototypical cases have been, a full understanding of the role of rewriting in Second Temple Judaism requires us to move beyond them.

49

See, for example, his programmatic statement in Ulrich, Developmental Composition, 2: “But the evidence from Qumran indicates that the two processes of textual formation and textual transmission repeatedly overlapped for extensive periods of time. Thus, the two must be studied together.”

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1 Rewriting, Revision, and Reuse Language and Methods

The first challenge in fully understanding rewriting in early Judaism, in all its diverse contexts and manifestations, is finding language that is up to the task. A second is recognizing methodological pitfalls that may skew our interpretation of the evidence. Though these challenges may not seem particularly related, they represent two sides of the same coin. The terms we use are not interchangeable name tags, but in fact reflect particular interpretations or construals of the data under discussion.1 Categories and labels built on incomplete evidence or anachronistic frameworks actually constrain the ways we approach our data and the possibilities we entertain when analyzing it. As such, the question of terminology becomes a question of method: our ways of conceptualizing the data, reflected in the terms and categories we use, predispose us to respond to new data in particular ways. When it comes to the study of rewriting, errors of method have often resulted from precisely our traditional ways of thinking (and talking) about scripture and interpretation; we are only gradually realizing the degree to which those frameworks fail to fit our data. In a way, this entire project is about language and method: how we can develop ways of thinking and talking about rewriting that do justice to the wealth of Second Temple evidence that we now have. Here in this 1

Ulrich, “Methodological Reflections,” 151–52. See also the incisive observations of Campbell, “‘Rewritten Bible’ and ‘Parabiblical Texts,’” 63 (“it is fair to say that this unsatisfactory state of affairs is largely a by-product of muddling through with outmoded nomenclature, as scholars are sucked into an ideological framework imposed by obsolete terminology”), as well as my comments in Zahn, “Talking about Rewritten Texts,” 93–94.

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chapter, I lay the groundwork for the more specific chapters that follow by presenting the language I will use to talk about rewriting, a set of terms that I believe helps us to avoid many of the conceptual/methodological problems that have limited our understanding thus far. The delineation of these terms – the broad category “rewriting,” divided into two subcategories, “revision” and “reuse” – carries with it a series of basic methodological questions that will occupy the second part of the chapter: How are the subcategories distinguished from one another “in the field”? And how is (or better, how should) rewriting be identified and described in the first place? How do we know rewriting when we see it, and how do we appropriately compensate for the limits of our ability to see? Before we get to these specific terminological and methodological issues, however, some general orientation to the circumstances of ancient Jewish textuality is necessary. If the goal is to redraw and extend the map of rewriting in the Second Temple period, we need to make sure we are doing so against the appropriate background.

1 orality, memory, and text production in early judaism I have already noted in the Introduction some differences between ancient and modern expectations about textuality, particularly the fluidity and pluriformity of ancient Jewish texts, and the willingness of many tradents to make changes to the texts they transmitted. Another key difference has to do with how texts were experienced – not, most frequently, as written words on a scroll, but as words recited or performed orally. I focus heavily in what follows on written texts and manuscripts, and on the scribes who produced them. I talk about changes made to texts or reconfiguration of existing texts by later tradents. My approach is based on written texts out of necessity, since they provide our only access to the shape of ancient literary traditions. All of this focus on writing, however, can easily give an impression of scribes as not so different from modernday authors and editors – educated individuals sitting alone with written copies of their sources before them (much as I sit in my office as I write this, surrounded by piles of books and articles). Recent research on the production and use of texts in the ancient world, and in Second Temple Judaism in particular, has shown that such an image is well off the mark. The fact that ancient Jewish literary culture is accessible to us almost entirely through written texts, combined with our own embeddedness in

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Rewriting, Revision, and Reuse: Language and Methods

modern textual cultures, makes it difficult – but all the more essential – to keep in mind that this was a largely oral/aural environment.2 As was true throughout the ancient world, only a small percentage of Judeans in the Second Temple period would have been fully literate, in the sense of being able to read and write complex texts.3 Even those who could would largely have experienced text through hearing – silent, solitary reading was not the norm.4 Texts were meant to be performed. A related element of ancient textual culture is the importance of memorization. As David Carr has pointed out, all ancient Mediterranean cultures made the ability to recite prestigious cultural texts orally a key component of elite education. Highly trained individuals would show their mastery of the tradition by carrying large parts of it “written on the tablet of the heart,” retrievable by memory.5 Judith Newman connects this focus on internalization of the tradition with the ways education (Greek paideia) was conceptualized in the Hellenistic period. Instruction was imagined primarily as face-to-face interaction with a sage; the ideal sage knew the key texts of the tradition backward and forward, and could repackage and re-present their contents as part of the pedagogical process.6 In addition to the mobilization of memorized text in educational settings, we have other kinds of evidence from the Second Temple period

2

3

4

5 6

See the groundbreaking work of Susan Niditch, Oral World and Written Word: Ancient Israelite Literature (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996); Martin S. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism 200 BCE –400 CE (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); David Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). For a broader perspective see also Graham, Beyond the Written Word, 31–47. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth, 15n7; Samuel L. Adams, “The Social Location of the Scribe in the Second Temple Period,” in Sibyls, Scriptures, and Scrolls: John Collins at Seventy, vol. 1, ed. Joel Baden, Hindy Najman, and Eibert Tigchelaar, JSJSup 175 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 27–28. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth, 16; Mladen Popović, “Reading, Writing, and Memorizing Together: Reading Culture in Ancient Judaism and the Dead Sea Scrolls in a Mediterranean Context,” DSD 24 (2017): 449; Graham, Beyond the Written Word, 32–36. Carr, Writing on the Tablet, 9. Judith H. Newman, Before the Bible: The Liturgical Body and the Formation of Scriptures in Early Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 41–45; compare Carr’s similar comments on ancient Mesopotamia, Writing on the Tablet, 41–46. See also Jonathan D. H. Norton, Contours in the Text: Textual Variation in the Writings of Paul, Josephus, and the Yahad, LNTS 430 (London: Bloomsbury, 2011), 115: “A _ fundamentally oral culture situates knowledge within a context of discussion among authoritative, charismatic speakers.”

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that reading and writing were “deeply social” activities.7 For example, Philo’s descriptions of the Essenes and the Theraputae paint a picture of communal Sabbath assemblies during which the gathered members listened as sacred texts were read and then expounded as the basis for instruction.8 Similarly, a famous passage in the Qumran Community Rule (1QS 6:6–8) highlights the centrality (and interweaving) of group reading, study, and prayer in the yahad’s imagination: _ And in (any) place where the Ten are (gathered), there shall not lack a man to search in the torah day and night continually, one relieving the other. And the Many shall keep watch together for one third of every night of the year, to read in the book and to explain the ordinance and to bless together.

As Popović and Hempel note, this passage and others suggest that the yahad functioned as a “textual community” in Brian Stock’s sense of the _ term: a “micro-societ[y] organized around the common, shared, understanding of texts.”9 While such passages do not exclude the possibility of private reading or text study, they point to the social significance of reading and interpretation and its role in fostering a cohesive community.10 These indicators of the communal, oral/aural setting in which written texts were encountered should impact the way we think about text production in early Judaism. This is especially the case for texts, like those considered in this book, that are marked by clear engagement with earlier materials. Texts that extend or interpret existing prestigious traditions may well trace their origins to community settings where the existing traditions were read and studied, and where learned leaders might draw on the stores of text that they knew by heart to explicate

7

Popović, “Reading, Writing, and Memorizing,” 449. Popović, “Reading, Writing, and Memorizing,” 455; the passages in Philo are Good Person 81–82 (on the Essenes) and Hypothetica 7.13 (on the Theraputae). 9 Popović, “Reading, Writing, and Memorizing,” 450; Charlotte Hempel, “Reflections on Literacy, Textuality, and Community in the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Is There a Text in This Cave? Studies in the Textuality of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Honour of George J. Brooke, ed. Ariel Feldman, Maria Cioată, and Charlotte Hempel, STDJ 119 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 76–77. The reference is to Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). On this passage see also the important article by George Brooke, “Reading, Searching and Blessing: A Functional Approach to Scriptural Interpretation in the ‫יחד‬,” in McLay, The Temple in Text and Tradition, 140–56; as well as Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth, 32–36; Norton, Contours, 115–19. 10 Popović, “Reading, Writing, and Memorizing,” 449. 8

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one text or tradition in light of others.11 Such settings could be liturgical in nature – Newman, Carol Newsom, and George Brooke have all argued for the origins of certain poetic compositions in group settings where a learned interpreter would reformulate existing tradition in the context of a prayer or hymn – or more pedagogical, as in the kind of oral reformulation of the tradition that Newman posits on the basis of Ben Sira.12 In other words, both the content and the form of new compositions is shaped by the communal setting. The content may reflect specific traditions or trajectories of interpretation that result from group study, and the new text is likely intended from the beginning to be proclaimed or performed orally in a group setting. A text may have been written down to aid in its performance, or might have been prepared orally/from memory and only written down afterwards. In this context, what do we know about the people who did the writing down? I refer to these writers as “scribes” and characterize rewriting as a “scribal” activity.13 I use this term to denote the highly educated individuals who were responsible for the composition and transmission of early Jewish literary texts – but my usage must be seen in light of the textual culture sketched earlier. The English word “scribe” (from Latin scribere, to write) has inevitable connections to the written word – and I believe this is appropriate, given the written manuscripts that form the basis of this study.14 But these scribes, insofar as they were masters of Israel’s 11

12

13

14

Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth, 19; Brooke, “Reading, Searching and Blessing”; Newman, Before the Bible, 124; Norton, Contours, 119. See Brooke, “Reading, Searching and Blessing,” 153–54; Newman, Before the Bible, 53–74, 107–39; Carol A. Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran, STDJ 52 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 196–204; Carol A. Newsom, “Deriving Negative Anthropology through Exegetical Activity: The Hodayot as Case Study,” in Feldman et al., Is There a Text in This Cave?, 258–74. See most recently Sidnie White Crawford, Scribes and Scrolls at Qumran (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019). Note that my use of the term “scribe” is definitely an etic one. Our manuscript evidence witnesses the activities of highly educated individuals with a deep knowledge of Jewish traditions of various kinds (literary, ritual, scientific, etc.). I do not assume that all of these individuals necessarily belonged to a single social group or class, nor that they (all) would necessarily have been regarded as “scribes” (Hebrew sofer; Greek grammateus) in their own day – in fact, the term sofer occurs only once in the non-biblical Dead Sea Scrolls (Adams, “Social Location,” 34). Second Temple evidence does not give a clear picture of what it meant to be a scribe in this period. As Teeter puts it, “What is certain is that multiple and diverse conceptions of scribes existed, and that they functioned in a variety of different social roles.” See D. Andrew Teeter, “Scribes and Scribalism,” in The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism, ed. John J. Collins and Daniel C. Harlow (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 1203; Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth, 20–22; Adams,

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33

literary tradition, did much more than write – they must have been active participants in (and perhaps leaders of ) the performative and pedagogical contexts described earlier.15 And when they did write, their writing process would have been influenced by the importance of orality and memory in their textual culture.16 A scribe making a new copy of a text would know that text as a living tradition, and thus the new copy could reflect elements of the tradition as performed or discussed, recalled from the scribe’s memory, even if they had never existed in a written copy of that text before.17 Scribes who drew on existing texts to formulate new works likely recalled most, if not all, of their sources from memory – and again, these sources could include traditions known only orally, as well as prestigious texts that were written down and memorized. The point here is not to suggest that the significant role of orality and memory in this textual culture contributed to textual fluidity because memory is less precise than writing.18 Despite all the evidence for such fluidity, the frequency of detailed textual overlaps between preserved manuscripts, and the studied, scholarly, obviously deliberate nature of many variants show that texts were generally employed with precision,

15

16

17 18

“Social Location”; Crawford, Scribes and Scrolls, 49–105; and for an overview of the usage of the ancient terms, Christine Schams, Jewish Scribes in the Second-Temple Period, JSOTSup 291 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998). Note Newman’s call for additional focus on the lived, embodied experience of Second Temple scribes and sages; Before the Bible, 3, 11–17. Also important is Norton’s note (Contours, 107) that we should resist the collapse of “exegetical” and “scribal” – that is, some scribes “were technicians who did not engage in exegesis,” while those leaders and teachers responsible for the content of the developing tradition need not have been actually engaged physically in text production. For the role of memory and memorization as distinct from orality per se, see David M. Carr, “Orality, Textuality, and Memory: The State of Biblical Studies,” in Contextualizing Israel’s Sacred Writings: Ancient Literacy, Orality, and Literary Production, ed. Brian B. Schmidt, AIL 22 (Atlanta: SBL, 2015), 161–73. Norton, Contours, 55, 87. All scribes made errors, whether copying visually or from dictation, and presumably scribes could misremember a memorized text as well. But the kinds of “memory variants” charted by Carr (The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011], 25–34; “Orality, Textuality,” 166–69) differ qualitatively from graphic and aural errors: they constitute what Carr (drawing on Milman Perry) refers to as “good variants” – they fit the syntax and content of the text; they make good sense in context. It is inappropriate to describe such variants as “errors,” in the sense that the scribe is judged to have misremembered the text. Such judgments, for one thing, are implicitly biased toward the versions of the text that we know. For another, in most cases it is likely that the scribe did not “misremember” but rather substitutes a known alternative reading. Such changes must sometimes have occurred automatically, but surely were frequently deliberate.

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Rewriting, Revision, and Reuse: Language and Methods

whether copied from a page or recalled from memory. Rather, the environment of writing-supported orality helps us understand the context for constant reshaping of texts – if texts were generally experienced orally and routinely accompanied by elaboration or explication of various sorts, the notion of what constituted a “text” in early Judaism was more expansive than just words on a scroll. Whatever the specific conditions under which scribes wrote (alone, or in a group; with a copy-text in front of them or from dictation or from memory), the written texts they produced were only one element in the vibrant and ongoing discourse that constituted Israel’s literary heritage.

2 finding the right words Rewriting When we turn our focus specifically to rewriting, then, we must keep in mind that the various textual phenomena charted here took place as part of this rich culture of oral-written textuality. Against this background, my decision to talk about “rewriting,” as opposed to a number of possible alternatives, is a very conscious one. As indicated in the Introduction, much of the scholarly conversation surrounding deliberate, unmarked modification of earlier texts (i.e., what I call rewriting) has been carried out under the rubric of the terms “Rewritten Bible” and “Rewritten Scripture.” Some scholars reject the idea of Rewritten Bible/Scripture as a genre or textual category, preferring to refer to “rewriting scripture” or “rewriting the Bible” as a technique.19 But this entire conversation fails to do justice to the dynamic reality of Second Temple literary culture. It construes rewriting as something that happened solely, or at least primarily, to scriptural texts, a presumption that is very difficult to justify.20 First 19

20

For example, Daniel J. Harrington, “The Bible Rewritten (Narratives),” in Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters, ed. Robert A. Kraft and George W. E. Nickelsburg (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 243; George J. Brooke, “Rewritten Bible,” in Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, vol. 2, ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman and James C. VanderKam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 780; Falk, Parabiblical Texts, 17. For this reason, I am increasingly inclined to view the terminological shift from Rewritten Bible to Rewritten Scripture as of less importance than it might seem. It does avoid the blatant anachronism of talking about “Bible” before there is a Bible to be rewritten. It also allows for the possibility that certain texts that were considered scripture but did not end up in the Bible were subject to rewriting. But it does not fundamentally change how the scope of the phenomenon is conceptualized, insofar as most scholars would consider

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of all, there is no consensus on exactly what texts were regarded as scripture, and for whom, in Second Temple Judaism.21 Secondly, even if this could be determined, it would then have to be demonstrated (rather than assumed) that only scriptural texts were subject to rewriting. Therefore, labels that include Bible/biblical or Scripture/scriptural should not be used to refer to the deliberate modification of earlier texts as a phenomenon. This difficulty has been noted by others, regarding both Rewritten Bible/Scripture and other terms such as “parabiblical.”22 Various alternatives have been proposed, but two are especially worthy of comment: paratext and hypertext. Both of these terms avoid the canonical limitations of earlier language and thus might seem promising. But each ultimately is too broad for my purposes, encompassing not only the deliberate re-presentation of specific earlier texts, but also a variety of other types of textual relationships. Paratext has been proposed by Armin Lange as an alternative to earlier terms such as Rewritten Bible. Lange builds on the established idea of parabiblical literature, while seeking to avoid anachronism by replacing “biblical” with “textual.”23 But Lange’s unconventional use of paratext to designate reworkings of earlier materials seems prone to misunderstanding, in a couple of ways. First, the prefix “para-” (“beside”; “beyond”) does not straightforwardly refer only to later reworking, but could reasonably signify a whole host of textual relationships.24 In his 2006 SBL Presidential Address, Robert Kraft points out that, although

21

22

23 24

the corpus of “scripture” in the Second Temple period to have consisted of the books that later ended up in the Hebrew Bible, plus or minus a few texts (such as Jubilees or 1 Enoch). We still end up viewing rewriting as something that was done to a limited number of texts seen as especially sacred/authoritative. See the similar comments of Jonathan G. Campbell, “Rewritten Bible: A Terminological Reassessment,” in Zsengellér, Rewritten Bible after Fifty Years, 73–75. See Zahn, “Talking about Rewritten Texts,” 98–100, and the literature cited there, as well as Chapter 7. E.g., Campbell, “‘Rewritten Bible’ and ‘Parabiblical Texts’”; Armin Lange, “In the Second Degree: Ancient Jewish Paratextual Literature in the Context of Graeco-Roman and Ancient Near Eastern Literature,” in In the Second Degree: Paratextual Literature in Ancient Near Eastern and Ancient Mediterranean Culture and Its Reflections in Medieval Literature, ed. Philip S. Alexander, Armin Lange, and Renate Pillinger (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 3–42; George J. Brooke, “Hypertextuality and the ‘Parabiblical’ Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Reading the Dead Sea Scrolls: Essays in Method, ed. George J. Brooke (Atlanta: SBL, 2013), 67–84. Lange, “In the Second Degree,” 19–20. See OED, s.v. “para-”: “Forming miscellaneous terms in the sense ‘analogous or parallel to, but separate from or going beyond, what is denoted by the root word.’”

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scholars have tended to assume that parabiblical texts are later than biblical ones, properly, “para” could denote things like common sources, parallel or independent developments of the same traditional material, or earlier forms of the text, as well as later reworkings or retellings.25 Thus restricting paratext to refer only to later reworkings seems artificial and confusing. Also problematic is the fact that paratext/paratextual is defined quite differently in other branches of the humanities and sometimes within biblical studies itself. Based on the influential work of the French literary critic Gérard Genette, paratext is taken to refer to all the materials external to “the text properly speaking” that accompany it and provide clues to its interpretation: titles, prefaces, forewords, illustrations, marginal notes, dust jackets, etc.26 George Brooke, noting the problems with paratext, argues that Genette’s later term hypertext is more appropriate. Unlike paratext, which might plausibly refer to a parallel version or earlier source, hypertext clearly denotes a later text; a situation of relation to or dependence upon something prior. For Brooke, hypertext also has the advantage of breadth, in that it can include a variety of different types of reuse or interaction. These include mimicking the style, characters, language, or structure of an earlier text, without actually reproducing specific existing

25

26

See Kraft, “Para-mania,” 18–22. Kraft further suggests that our willingness to use “parabiblical” automatically to denote something later than the biblical text is rooted in old assumptions about the primacy – temporal as well as theological – of the biblical text. See Gérard Genette, Palimpests: Literature in the Second Degree, trans. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 3. Though, as Lange notes, Genette originally used paratext in the sense that Lange does, the later sense is the one that seems to have caught on in various realms of criticism. See for example the review by Thomas Dougherty, “The Paratext’s the Thing,” Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan 6, 2014 (https://chronicle.com/article/The-Paratexts-the-Thing/143761/). Dougherty focuses largely on the role paratexts have assumed in media studies. See also the titles of Renaissance Paratexts, ed. Helen Smith and Louise Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); and Laura Jansen, The Roman Paratext: Frame, Texts, Readers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). For the term used in this sense in the study of ancient Judaism and early Christianity, see e.g. Ingrid E. Lilly, Two Books of Ezekiel: Papyrus 967 and the Masoretic Text as Variant Literary Editions, VTSup 150 (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Liv Ingeborg Lied, “Between ‘Text Witness’ and ‘Text on the Page’: Trajectories in the History of Editing the Epistle of Baruch,” in Snapshots of Evolving Traditions, ed. Liv Ingeborg Lied and Hugo Lundhaug (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 272–96; Eva Mroczek, “The End of the Psalms in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Greek Codices, and Syriac Manuscripts,” in Lied and Lundhaug, Snapshots of Evolving Traditions, 297–322.

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textual units.27 But what for Brooke is an advantage, the breadth of the category, makes it a bit too expansive for my purposes here. There is a great deal still to be understood about the deliberate reuse of specific earlier texts in early Judaism, and I cannot fully consider here all the other forms of textual relationship that fall under the rubric of hypertextuality. It will become clear, however, that I am not interested in drawing firm boundaries or establishing absolute categories. I will explore in Chapter 6 the fuzzy edges where rewriting shades into looser forms of hypertextuality. But the majority of this project focuses on cases where we have evidence that specific existing textual units were reworked by later scribes. In the end, then, neither paratext nor hypertext fully suffices to capture the phenomenon I focus on here. Though I am in full agreement with Brooke and others that the terms Rewritten Scripture and Rewritten Bible are simply too problematic to be retained, I think that rewriting alone, stripped of its modifiers, is both specific enough and neutral enough to serve as a label for the deliberate, unmarked reproduction and modification of one text by another.28 Rewriting, as I will show, is not to be associated solely with biblical or scriptural texts, nor with any other particular text type (or even any particular type of textual manipulation).

Revision and Reuse The canonical language that has most often been used to designate rewriting as a phenomenon has also dominated discussion of different 27

28

Brooke, “Hypertextuality,” 70. The breadth of Brooke’s category is also reflected in Section 7 of the Manchester/Durham Inventory; see Samely, Profiling Jewish Literature in Antiquity, 64–71. Genette divides hypertexts into two basic categories: imitations and transformations. Transformation corresponds roughly to what I would call rewriting: changes of various types (linguistic, stylistic, thematic, etc.) made to a single text. Imitations, on the other hand, have a much looser relationship to individual texts. They are not “rewritings” in the sense of reworkings of earlier texts, but rather compositions written “in the style of” a given author or genre but not tethered to the contents, characters, or themes of a given work. See especially Genette, Palimpsests, 81–85. Campbell, “Rewritten Bible: A Terminological Reassessment,” 76, moves in a similar direction, though proposes that modifiers like “Rewritten Sectarian Work” or “Rewritten Popular Narrative” could function alongside a category such as “Rewritten Scripture.” To my mind, such an idea puts too much weight on universal ideas of “scripture” – for instance, would not a “sectarian” work such as the Community Rule (Serekh ha-Yahad) _ be viewed as authoritative/scriptural by the group that produced and preserved it? On the ways in which the Serekh claims scriptural authority for itself, see, with literature, Molly M. Zahn, “Torah for ‘The Age of Wickedness’: The Authority of the Damascus and Serekh Texts in Light of Biblical and Rewritten Traditions,” DSD 20 (2013): 410–32.

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types of or contexts for rewriting. Scholars have been concerned, for example, with distinctions between Bible and Rewritten Bible, or “innerbiblical” exegesis as opposed to (implicitly “normal,” unmarked) extra- or post-biblical interpretation. I interrogate these labels more fully in Chapter 3. For now, suffice to say that they are predicated on canonical boundaries that are at once anachronistic (they didn’t exist in the Second Temple period) and insufficient, in that they don’t allow us to talk about rewriting except in texts somehow related to the Bible. Furthermore, the preoccupation with issues of canon and authority has actually obscured a fundamental distinction between two basic situations in which rewriting can occur, a distinction that has nothing to do with the canonical or authoritative status of the work being rewritten but only with the formal relationship between the rewritten and the rewriting texts. If rewriting, in my definition, serves as a broad designation for the deliberate, unmarked reproduction and modification of one text by another, all rewriting theoretically takes one of the following two forms: a. revisions (of any size or type) made to a work in the course of the production of a new copy of that work; b. reuse in a new work of textual material drawn from an existing source, in a more or less modified form but such that the connection to a specific source text is recognizable. It will be clear that these two types of rewriting in effect emphasize different parts of the general definition of rewriting meant to encompass them both. Type “a” (revision) tends to consist mostly of reproduction – a scribe sets out to produce a new copy of a given text – with varying degrees of change introduced. The context for the rewriting in this case is simply a new manuscript (though of course that manuscript could be used and read in social, geographic, or historical contexts different from the old). The changes could comprise anything from shifts in orthography or morphology to addition or omission of major sections. In Type “b” (reuse), by contrast, the degree of reproduction varies more widely. Some new works may consist largely of older material (a high degree of reproduction), while others may only draw on specific earlier texts at a few points.29 In the same way, the older material may be reproduced in more or less modified form – from verbatim or nearly so at one extreme to a mere summary or brief allusion at the other.

29

See the discussion of “Centripetal Reuse” and “Limited Reuse” in Chapter 6.

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As I will demonstrate, appreciating the formal distinction between revision and reuse can go a long way toward clearing up terminological and methodological confusion caused by canonically oriented labels, as well as providing a neutral set of terms for discussion of rewriting of texts that did not become part of the Hebrew Bible.30 But the nature of the distinction between revision and reuse requires some elaboration. It is important to stress that I conceive of both revision and reuse as encompassing a variety of compositional techniques. Both can involve interventions small and large, from shifts in orthography to major additions, omissions, and rearrangements.31 The difference between them is not the nature of the rewriting per se (how the base text is transformed), but its context (new copy vs. new work). In other words, virtually identical textual manipulations – addition of new material, say, or minor harmonizations – could constitute revision or reuse, depending on the context in which they appear.32

30

31

32

I do not claim to have invented the terms “revision” and “reuse” in these particular senses, though I have not seen them construed elsewhere as two subtypes of a larger category “rewriting.” Brooke, for instance, talks about “revisions of biblical books” in contrast to “more thoroughgoing rewritings of such books,” thus contrasting revision with rewriting; George J. Brooke, “Between Authority and Canon: The Significance of Reworking the Bible for Understanding the Canonical Process,” in Reworking the Bible: Apocryphal and Related Texts at Qumran, ed. Esther G. Chazon, Devorah Dimant, and Ruth A. Clements, STDJ 58 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 86–87. Tooman, on the other hand, speaks of “scriptural reuse,” but since his work focuses on the redeployment of existing texts in a new composition, he does not discuss a possible distinction between such redeployment and the production of new versions of existing texts; William A. Tooman, Gog of Magog: Reuse of Scripture and Compositional Technique in Ezekiel 38–39, FAT 52 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), esp. chapter 1. In my experience, scholars have used the terms rewriting/rewritten, reworking/reworked, revision, and reuse more or less interchangeably. It is perhaps important to note that the size of the rewriting or amount of difference from the source is not a prima facie criterion for distinguishing revision from reuse, though it is sometimes made out to be such, as for example by Crawford, Rewriting Scripture, 13–14. Both examples of what I would call revision (e.g., MT Jeremiah or the 4Q[Reworked] Pentateuch manuscripts) and cases of reuse (e.g., Jubilees) involve larger and smaller types of modifications. What is more, quantifying the degree of difference between a rewritten text and its source is easy in the case of additions or word substitutions, but becomes more difficult in light of other types of modifications, such as rearrangements. For a discussion, see Zahn, Rethinking Rewritten Scripture, 7–11. My interest in investigating revision and reuse together as the two main forms of rewriting constitutes one of the main ways in which my project differs from the Manchester/Durham Inventory project (see n. 7 in the Introduction). Of course, that project seeks to describe every significant literary feature of the texts in its corpus, not just those pertaining to rewriting. But insofar as textual features that I would call rewriting do constitute part of the Inventory (see Samely, Profiling Jewish Literature in Antiquity,

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Some evidence for this point can be found already in the text extracts provided in the “Meet the Prototypes” section in the Introduction. Observe, for example, the formal similarities between MT Jer 10:3–11 and Jubilees 18, both of which closely adhere to their base text but also introduce sizeable expansions. But a couple additional examples may be helpful to illustrate more clearly the overlap between the techniques of rewriting in contexts of revision and reuse.33 First, careful comparison of prototypical examples of Rewritten Bible (cases of what I would call reuse) with the kinds of rewriting found in the manuscripts and versions of the books of the Hebrew Bible (cases of revision) indicates that both are full of minor changes of various analogous kinds. For instance, in two cases in the Temple Scroll, we find the adaptation of a deuteronomic formulation regarding the disposal of the blood of non-sacrificial animals by means of a small addition that coordinates the laws with a similar formulation in Leviticus (Table 1.1).34 Table 1.1 Coordination of parallel legal formulations in TS 11Q19 52:11–12 (see also 53:5–6)

Deut 15:23 MT (see also 12:24)

Lev 17:13 MT

‫רק הדם לוא תואכל על הארץ תשופכנו‬ ‫כמים וכסיתו בעפר‬ Only the blood you shall not eat; you shall pour it out on the ground like water and cover it with dust.

‫רק את דמו לא תאכל על הארץ תשפכנו‬ ‫כמים‬ Only its blood you shall not eat; you shall pour it out on the ground like water.

‫ושפך את דמו וכסהו בעפר‬ He shall pour its blood out and cover it with dust.

A similar specification of a law in light of a relevant parallel can be found in the Greek version of the Passover law in Deut 16:7 (Table 1.2).35

33

34 35

64–71), they are restricted to reuse – since only one text form of each work in the corpus is profiled, the project can only describe rewriting when it appears in a composition formally independent of the source text. It is unable to get at features of a particular text form that result from rewriting an earlier form of that work – i.e., what I would call revision. For further examples, see the comparison of minor changes in the Temple Scroll with those found in the Samaritan Pentateuch and the 4Q(Reworked) Pentateuch manuscripts in Zahn, Rethinking Rewritten Scripture, 218–28. On this example, see further Zahn, Rethinking Rewritten Scripture, 190–91. For more on this law, including other attempts to reconcile the tension between Deuteronomy and Exodus on the acceptable method of preparation of the pesach, see Teeter, Scribal Laws, 195–96.

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Table 1.2 Coordination of parallel legal formulations in Greek Deuteronomy Deut 16:7 LXX καὶ ἑψήσεις καὶ ὀπτήσεις ( = ‫ובשלת‬ ‫ )וצלית‬καὶ φάγῃ . . .

You shall boil (it) and roast (it) and eat (it) . . .

Deut 16:7 MT . . .‫ובשלת ואכלת‬

You shall boil (it) and eat (it) . . .

Exod 12:9 MT/LXX ‫אל תאכלו ממנו נא ובשל מבשל במים כי‬ . . .‫אם צלי אש‬ οὐκ ἔδεσθε ἀπ᾽ αὐτῶν ὠμὸν οὐδὲ ἡψημένον ἐν ὕδατι ἀλλ᾽ ἢ ὀπτὰ πυρί Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but rather roasted in fire . . .

On the other end of the size spectrum, we might consider very large additions. Though obviously less common than small additions and other types of minor change, these occur regularly in contexts of both revision and reuse. The nature and function of such additions can vary dramatically, of course, depending on the nature of the text, but one interesting phenomenon that occurs in both contexts is the frequent insertion of character speeches, including hymns, prayers, and blessings.36 The additions to Daniel 3 – the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men – constitute one example of the phenomenon in the context of revision (i.e., a new edition of the book of Daniel). The added Song of Miriam in 4Q365 (= 4Q[Reworked] Pentateuch C) frag. 6 is another.37 Among new, rewritten compositions (that is, cases of reuse), one could mention the lament put into the mouth of Jephthah’s daughter in chapter 40 of Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities, or the blessing of Jacob pronounced by Rebekah in Jubilees 25:15–22. Thus, as I employ these terms, revision and reuse represent different contexts or “genres” of scribal activity (more on their similarity to genres in Chapter 2). They are distinguished not by the ways in which the

36

37

This phenomenon was noted already by David Carr, “Method in Determination of Direction of Dependence: An Empirical Test of Criteria Applied to Exodus 34,11–26 and Its Parallels,” in Gottes Volk am Sinai: Untersuchungen zu Ex 32–34 und Dtn 9–10, ed. Matthias Köckert and Erhard Blum, Veröffentlichungen der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft für Theologie 18 (Gütersloh: Kaiser, 2001), 124–25. See further the discussion of 1QM in Chapter 4. That this song constitutes an addition to an earlier form of Exodus is clear from the exegetical work it accomplishes and its use of language from other known texts. See Crawford, Rewriting Scripture, 49; Zahn, Rethinking Rewritten Scripture, 100–2.

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existing text is manipulated but how the resulting text formally relates to the earlier text it rewrites. But immediately certain questions arise. Some are methodological: Is it always obvious whether a given rewriting was intended (or received) as a new work or simply a new copy? How exactly do we distinguish between revision and reuse? I will address these issues below. But there is also a more basic question about my definition of revision and reuse: Why does this distinction matter, and to whom? In a field rife with the anachronistic application of modern concepts to ancient textual culture, I do not want to add one more example. Perhaps the distinction between a new copy of a work and a new work based on an older one was not really meaningful for the scribes who did the rewriting or the audiences who used the resulting texts. Indeed, recent studies have stressed that our modern idea of a “work” as a self-contained product that is produced or “authored” at some distinct point in time ill fits the reality of ancient Jewish literary culture.38 In a context in which, as Eva Mroczek puts it, texts were ongoing projects (rather than products), why draw the line between “copies” and “new compositions”? In short, I think that the distinction helps bring clarity to scholarly discussions of rewriting, and that this is so because scribes and their audiences were aware of the distinction. (In other words, this is not a matter of a purely etic or analytical category.) The external and internal clues that I discuss in the next section provide evidence of this, as they show that materials were not (at least, not always) simply transmitted as an undifferentiated mass of traditions. What is more, as I will argue later on, postulating an awareness on the part of scribes that revision and reuse constituted two generically distinct processes helps us better understand differences between different contexts for rewriting that have often been mistakenly related to issues of authority and canon (for example, the apparent relative rarity of omission in the course of textual transmission).39 This is in no way meant to take away from the observations by Mroczek, Breed, and others of the “open” nature of literary

38

39

Eva Mroczek, The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 19–21, 106–7; Brennan W. Breed, Nomadic Text: A Theory of Biblical Reception History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014). On what Carr dubs “the trend towards expansion” (as opposed to omission), see Carr, Formation of the Hebrew Bible, 65–88; Segal, “Between Bible and Rewritten Bible,” 23–24. Making a case that omissions were more frequent in the composition history of biblical books than typically recognized is Juha Pakkala, God’s Word Omitted: Omissions in the Transmission of the Hebrew Bible, FRLANT 251 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013).

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composition in Jewish antiquity. Rather, the point is that that openness still allows for the perception of difference between different strategies for reconfiguring and extending tradition.

3 methodology, part 1: distinguishing revision and reuse Presuming, then, that the distinction between revision and reuse is meaningful, how do we distinguish one from the other; that is, decide if a text was perceived as a copy of an existing work or as something different? In some cases, we are lucky enough to have external clues as to how a given text was perceived to relate to the earlier text it rewrites. For instance, the MT version of Jeremiah is considerably longer than the version preserved in Greek, while the Greek versions of Daniel and Esther are considerably longer than the Hebrew. The fact that both the longer and shorter versions were received as copies of the books of Jeremiah, Daniel, and Esther respectively, despite major differences in content, indicates a strong precedent for regarding the longer versions as examples of revision. On the other hand, 1–2 Chronicles rewrites major portions of the books of Samuel and Kings. That Chronicles was given its own place in the canon alongside Samuel-Kings implies it was perceived as a different composition. The same could be said of Jubilees, which retells many of the narratives of the book of Genesis. Jubilees nowhere (as far as I know) replaces Genesis in the canon, though it sometimes accompanies Genesis.40 It also seems to be referred to by its own title in the Damascus Document.41 Thus, texts for which some reception history has been preserved (including paratextual information like titles) might give clear indications of whether they were intended, or at least treated, as new 40

41

Here by “replacement” I mean that there is no instance I know of where Jubilees appears in a canon of scripture instead of Genesis. The issue of whether rewritten works seek to “replace” their Vorlagen has occasioned considerable debate, with some scholars playing up the tendentious aspect of rewriting and others arguing that new rewritten compositions were intended to complement their Vorlagen (see Chapter 7, n. 7). To my mind the issue of the extent to which rewritten works hoped to displace their Vorlagen (in primacy/importance) is separate from the issue of literary identity/being seen as “the same work” as it functions in the distinction between revision and reuse. Though there are canons that preserve Chronicles alongside Samuel-Kings and Jubilees alongside Genesis, I do not know of any traditional canon that preserves multiple versions of Jeremiah or Daniel side by side. In the Roman Catholic canon, for example, the longer version of Daniel can be said to have replaced the shorter MT form. CD 16:3–4.

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works. But in many cases – even for major texts like the Temple Scroll – we know neither the title that was given to a text nor how it was received, and are left with only internal clues to the scribes’ intentions. These internal clues are of different types. Sometimes a rewritten work refers explicitly or implicitly to the text it rewrites, suggesting that it intends to be received as a separate composition. For instance, Jubilees seems occasionally to refer to the Pentateuch (6:22; 30:12), and the several mentions in Chronicles of “the books of the kings of Judah and Israel” (e.g., 2 Chr 16:11; 32:32) are sometimes interpreted as references to what we know as the canonical books of Kings.42 Other clues depend on modern judgments about literary characteristics that would make it more likely for a rewritten text to be perceived as an independent work rather than an updated or expanded copy. To appreciate these, a modern example may help. It is of the nature of stage plays that they are produced many different times, and each staging carries with it distinctive elements. For example, no two stagings of Romeo and Juliet will be exactly the same. Yet even quite novel productions (such as the 1996 movie starring Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio, set in a modern city called “Verona Beach”) are still recognizably the same work: the names, plot, and text are generally the same. We are thus able to distinguish productions of Romeo and Juliet, no matter how innovative, from retellings that constitute a new work, such as West Side Story. West Side Story follows the same basic plot as Romeo and Juliet, but the different title, different character names, and differences in specific content make clear that this is a different show, not simply a new staging of Romeo and Juliet. In the same way, literary clues like scope, setting, and voicing can provide insight into whether scribes likely saw themselves as engaged in revision or reuse. As Michael Segal noted in his essay on distinguishing new editions of biblical books from Rewritten Bible, a new setting or voicing is a strong indication that a rewriter imagined his or her work as a new composition.43 For example, Jubilees retells much of the content of Genesis 1–Exodus 19, but does so not in the voice of the anonymous narrator of the Pentateuch, but in the voice of the Angel of the Presence who speaks to Moses. In the same way, the Temple Scroll rewrites 42

43

On Chronicles, see Reinhard G. Kratz, “Innerbiblische Exegese und Redaktionsgeschichte im Lichte empirischer Evidenz,” in Das Judentum im Zeitalter des Zweiten Tempels, FAT 42 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 140; on Jubilees, see Hindy Najman, Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism, JSJSup 77 (Boston: Brill, 2002), 47–48. Segal, “Between Bible and Rewritten Bible,” 20–26.

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Deuteronomy to present its laws as God’s direct speech, instead of that of Moses. None of the 4Q(Reworked) Pentateuch manuscripts, on the other hand, appear to introduce a new voicing or setting, which is one indication that they likely represent expanded editions of the Pentateuch rather than new, rewritten compositions. These criteria are not hard and fast, however. Some new, rewritten compositions appear to mimic the voicing of their source text. For example, Chronicles uses the same style of anonymous historical narration as Samuel-Kings. Yet it clearly was regarded as a separate work, and likely intended to be taken as one as well, if its references to “the books of the kings of Judah and Israel” are any indication. 4QPseudo-Ezekiel may be another example of reuse that adopts the voice of its source, as it mimics the first-person speech and characteristic idioms of Ezekiel. Of course, perhaps that is an indication that 4QPseudo-Ezekiel was intended as revision rather than reuse, though there are other factors that point toward reuse.44 Segal suggests that in the case of Chronicles, scope might be a factor: Chronicles begins and ends at different points than SamuelKings, and this difference in coverage may indicate the intent to create a different work. (Another example might be Josephus’s Antiquities, the scope of which goes far beyond that of biblical history-writing.) Yet scope seems like a particularly tricky characteristic. First, it seems to apply most naturally to narratives, which have a built-in sequential logic.45 Second, we have many documented cases from the ancient world of new versions of texts being created by adding on to their beginnings or ends – a change that would naturally alter the scope of a composition.46 Of course, it can be difficult to tell for sure whether these changes constitute revision or reuse, but the issue is that using scope as a criterion to distinguish revision from reuse quickly becomes circular. The takeaway here is that, although in principle distinguishing between reuse and revision sounds easy enough, sometimes the distinction is not clear-cut. While the evidence we have sometimes provides a few clues to go on, we often lack the data we would like. In the (not 44

45

46

The most telling piece of evidence may be that Pseudo-Ezekiel seems to have been copied along with the Apocryphon of Jeremiah C on at least one manuscript (4Q385); for other considerations see Molly M. Zahn, “Prophecy Rewritten: Use of Scriptural Traditions in 4QPseudo-Ezekiel,” JAJ 5 (2014): 362. On the tendency to see Rewritten Bible as a narrative phenomenon, see Bernstein, “Rewritten Bible,” 174, 193–95. See Sara J. Milstein, Tracking the Master Scribe: Revision through Introduction in Biblical and Mesopotamian Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

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uncommon) cases where scholars must deal with highly fragmentary manuscript witnesses, we must be even more tentative. Thus, while I use these labels throughout the book to refer to two primary modes or genres of scribal rewriting, it should be kept in mind that, like other genres, they may at times appear to bleed into one another.

Excursus: Reuse vs. Quotation Though so far I have been concerned only with rewriting, that is, implicit or unmarked engagement with earlier texts, it should be recognized that some forms of rewriting bear real similarities to explicit use of earlier texts; that is, quotation or citation. One could ask: is not quotation a form of reuse, albeit one accompanied by a citation formula or marker of some kind (e.g., ‫כיא כן כתוב‬, “for thus it is written” [1QS 5:14–15]; ‫כאשר כתוב‬, “as it is written” [CD 7:19]), and thus falling outside the bounds of rewriting as I have defined it here? Certainly, in one sense, the answer is yes, especially when quotations are compared to cases of limited reuse, where just a small unit of a text is redeployed in a new context.47 Here one can see formal parallels – an older text is inserted into a different context (in one case with the insertion explicitly marked, in the other case not) – as well as possible similarities in function: for some reason the author of the later text wants to recall or point to this specific section of the earlier text. At times, the wording of the quotation may not precisely correspond to known versions of the source text, raising the possibility that the source is “rewritten” in the course of the quotation.48 In this sense, the boundary between explicit quotation and implicit reuse might obscure certain similarities between them. Since this book is about highlighting rather than obscuring points of connection, it’s valuable to point out this similarity. Comparison between implicit and explicit forms of interaction with prior texts is a promising avenue for further exploration of the nature and function of textual

47 48

On this phenomenon, see Chapter 6. On this phenomenon at Qumran, in the writings of Josephus, and in the letters of Paul, see Norton, Contours. Norton valuably connects such rewriting with the predominantly oral contexts for text study sketched above: writers who quote earlier texts, such as the composers of the pesharim, would also be familiar with (oral) interpretive traditions surrounding a particular reading, and sometimes those interpretations would make their way into the wording of the quotation itself (Norton, Countours, e.g. 55, 87).

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interpretation in early Judaism.49 Nevertheless, it is not an avenue I will pursue further here. Partly this choice is practical – this book, focusing only on rewriting/implicit reuse, is long enough as it is. But the choice is also due to a desire to keep the emphasis on precisely those aspects of ancient Jewish textuality that are most challenging to traditional concepts of text and interpretation. As such, they have the most to contribute to the construction of a new view of how authoritative literature was conceptualized in early Judaism, and how this conceptualization impacted the emergence of what became the Jewish and Christian scriptures. In any event, by noting the overlap between reuse and explicit quotation, even though I will not explore it, I acknowledge that the categories that we work with are not natural or preordained, but are defined by our own sets of interests.50

4 methodology, part 2: identifying rewriting The previous discussion of how we might actually be able to confidently distinguish between revision and reuse raises the broader question of how we identify rewriting in the first place. On an intuitive level, the answer is obvious: detailed similarities between two texts lead to the conclusion that there is a literary relationship between them. One must be rewriting the other. If we know which text is later than the other (which we are often presumed to do), voilà: we have identified a case of rewriting.51 In very many instances, scholars have hardly given more thought than this to the methods by which they determine the scope and nature of the rewriting that they discuss. They have been quick to compare “Text B” (usually a text not found in the Bible or representing a non-MT form of a biblical book) with “Text A” (often a text found in the MT) and conclude that 49

50

51

The Manchester/Durham Inventory points the way in this regard by placing some forms of explicit quotation (i.e., those that are not part of an extended lemmatic commentary, such as the formula-introduced quotations in the Damascus Document) in the same section of the Inventory as implicit uses of biblical texts (sections 7.1.3 and 7.1.4; see Samely, Profiling Jewish Literature in Antiquity, 267–69). See the thoughtful comments on the nature of scholarly “borders” in Breed, Nomadic Text, 12–13. Note how the relative dates of the texts involved are presumed in definitions such as those of Vermes (“the midrashist inserts haggadic development into the biblical narrative”; Scripture and Tradition, 95) and Alexander (“Within the corpus of post-biblical jewish [sic] literature are a number of texts devoted to retelling in their own words the story of the Bible”; Philip S. Alexander, “Retelling the Old Testament,” in It is Written: Scripture Citing Scripture, ed. D. Carson and H. G. M. Williamson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 99.

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Text B has rewritten Text A. But when we take a closer look at the methodology that lies behind such conclusions, we note multiple gaps: points where assumptions are made and alternatives ruled out without, in many cases, even being acknowledged as such. Before we go on, we need to consider the most frequent of these methodological shortcuts and how they have impacted our understanding of rewriting.

How Many Hands? Scholars of Second Temple literature, especially those focused on Rewritten Bible, have tended to construe rewriting as an uncomplicated, dyadic relationship between a given base text (typically a text now found in the Hebrew Bible) and a later, rewritten work. The author of Text B, in other words, directly engages Text A in the same form that we have it, and produces a new, rewritten composition. Therefore, if we want to understand the “rewriting techniques” of a given text, we need simply to analyze the differences between Text A and Text B, with the assumption that all the differences between the two texts stem from the rewriter, the author of Text B. My own earlier work on the Temple Scroll certainly assumed such a model, but I now realize it is much too simple, even simplistic.52 Essentially, it implies (even when we should know better) that the forms of the texts that we now have are the only ones that ever existed. In the case of the Temple Scroll, all of the significant differences between TS and the MT texts of the Pentateuch are usually taken as evidence for the rewriting techniques of the author of TS.53 But the data surrounding the Temple Scroll itself actually shows how false this presumption is. On the one hand, we know the Pentateuch itself existed in multiple forms in the Second Temple period. When TS’s formulation matches that of a version other than MT, it is unlikely that TS is responsible for the formulation – more likely, the author’s Vorlage already contained that reading.54 And this observation does not pertain only to minor variant readings: I have 52

53

54

Those who study rewriting in the context of textual criticism/multiple editions of books of the Bible tend to be more conscious of the possibility that variants in a given manuscript or version resulted from multiple hands, perhaps because of the minor and sporadic nature of many of the variants they typically deal with. This remains true despite the popular idea that the Temple Scroll was stitched together from several preexisting sources; see the discussion in Chapter 4, n. 28. See, similarly, Lawrence H. Schiffman, “The Septuagint and the Temple Scroll: Shared ‘Halakhic’ Variants,” in The Courtyards of the House of the Lord: Studies on the Temple Scroll, ed. Florentino García Martínez, STDJ 75 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 85–98.

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49

argued elsewhere that TS may have been based on an expanded edition of the Pentateuch that already contained major additions, such as the Wood Offering and perhaps even the description of a temple and its courts.55 On the other hand, as I will show in Chapter 4, we know from manuscript evidence that the text of the Temple Scroll was not stable either, but existed in multiple forms. That means that some of the formulations in TS were not produced through direct engagement with the Pentateuch (in whatever form) but as revisions of an already-existing form of TS. When we compare two texts, therefore, and seek to describe the rewriting that has apparently occurred, we need to keep in mind the multiple text forms that may have existed between and alongside them. Any particular variant between the MT Pentateuch and the main copy of TS (11Q19) might have originated at a number of different stages. Moving backward from 11Q19, it could have come from a scribe revising an earlier form of TS (and there could have been several stages of such revisions, of course). It could derive from a scribe modifying pentateuchal materials in the course of their reuse to create the new composition we know as TS. It could represent a revision vis-à-vis an earlier, MT-like form of the Pentateuch that was already present in the Temple Scroll’s Vorlage. Finally, since the MT does not represent the earliest form of the Pentateuch in every respect, there may be cases where the MT contains a revision while TS preserves an earlier form. And we must remember that the background of all of this is an environment of writing-supported orality, such that, however many written stages of a tradition might have existed, we can reckon with an ongoing unwritten discourse to which we have no access but which would have exerted influence on those written crystallizations. Of course, we are not totally at a loss when it comes to determining the stage at which a particular change or set of changes took place. For example, many rewritings have characteristic thematic or ideological interests, or Tendenzen; if a given variant seems to fit in with one of these, we can be more confident that it stems from the composer of the rewriting. The Temple Scroll’s systematic reformulation of texts from Deuteronomy so that God is referred to in the first person instead of the third falls into this category, as does the consistent organization of history according to seven-year “weeks” in Jubilees. But many variants found in rewritings do not show any particular ideological or thematic Tendenz, 55

Zahn, “4QReworked Pentateuch C.” For further discussion of this possibility, see Chapter 4.

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50

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and thus could theoretically have been introduced into the textual tradition at a number of different points. Unfortunately, in many of these cases it is impossible to be certain. Rather than jumping to conclusions and assuming that one author/scribe must have been responsible for all the (major) variants in a given rewriting, which could lead to a false characterization of the “rewriting technique” in that text, it would be more methodologically sound to live with the uncertainty. Much can still be said about a given example of rewriting, and rewritten works as wholes, even without knowing exactly when certain changes were introduced.

Identifying Allusion If in some cases it may be difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when a particular example of rewriting entered the tradition, in other cases it can be difficult to determine what text, if any, is actually being rewritten. It is of the nature of rewriting that there is no explicit identification of the text(s) used. Identification of the source(s) of a given formulation (or even of rewriting in the first place, as I will show below) depends upon recognizing the similarity between the rewriting text and the earlier text that is being rewritten. Of course, in cases where extensive amounts of a given text are reproduced, this is not an issue. But in other instances of reuse the overlap between the two texts is much less, perhaps only a word or two.56 Correctly identifying reuse in these cases is much more difficult. This has generally not stopped scholars from attempting to delineate the sources being reused in a given text, but rarely has substantial attention been paid to the process by which these sources are identified. The result has often been multiple, at times widely divergent lists of the sources that stand behind a given unit.57

56 57

See the section on “Pastiche” in Chapter 6. For example, for the unit on the queen in the Temple Scroll (11Q19 57:15–19), Yadin identifies five biblical sources, Elledge seven, Wise ten, and Swanson twelve. Each, except for Elledge, refers to at least one source that appears on none of the other lists. See Yigael Yadin, The Temple Scroll, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1977–83), 2:258; Michael Owen Wise, A Critical Study of the Temple Scroll from Qumran Cave 11, SAOC 49 (Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1990), 229; Dwight D. Swanson, The Temple Scroll and the Bible: The Methodology of 11QT, STDJ 14 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 162; C. D. Elledge, The Statutes of the King: The Temple Scroll’s Legislation on Kingship (11Q19 LVI 12–LIX 21), Cahiers de la Revue Biblique 56 (Paris: Gabalda, 2004), 147–52. For an evaluation of the proposals for this

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How can scholars look at the same text and come up with quite different lists of the sources it drew upon? In part, this is due to the fact that, as Benjamin Sommer has noted, identifying allusion (which to me can be understood as a specific type of small-scale reuse) is “an art, not a science.”58 It is also not a realm in which certainty is possible – we will never be able to know for sure which texts were in scribes’ heads while they wrote, and even if we knew that, we could not be entirely certain whether what we perceive as echoes of certain texts were intentional, deliberate allusions or not.59 But while a level of subjectivity is unavoidable – indeed, precisely because subjectivity is unavoidable – studies of rewriting need to show more methodological self-awareness in cases where reuse is not obvious. Fortunately, several good discussions of allusion and how to recognize it in early Jewish literature have been published in recent years.60 They stress that, while overlaps in language are key to identifying allusions, not all overlaps in language can be used as reliable indicators of allusion. The rewriter may have been thinking of a different text than the one that occurs to the scholar. Or an author may use language characteristic of a given earlier text, but apparently without drawing upon a specific place in that text.61 Or an overlap may be entirely coincidental and an author did not have an earlier text in mind at all. Several factors or criteria can help determine when overlaps in language really do likely indicate deliberate reuse. If the overlaps involve rare words or locutions that appear only or primarily in a given text, the case for reuse is bolstered. A less compelling overlap is more likely to represent

58

59 60

61

passage, see Molly M. Zahn, “Identifying Reuse of Scripture in the Temple Scroll: Some Methodological Reflections,” in A Teacher for All Generations: Essays in Honor of James C. VanderKam, vol. 1, ed. Eric Mason et al., JSJSup 153 (Leiden: Brill: 2012), 341–58. For another example, compare Tooman’s analysis of the sources of the poem in 1QHa 11:6–19 with that of Hughes: Julie A. Hughes, Scriptural Allusions and Exegesis in the Hodayot, STDJ 59 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 200–5; William A. Tooman, “Between Imitation and Interpretation: Reuse of Scripture and Composition in Hodayot (1QHa) 11:6–19,” DSD 18 (2011): 54–73. Benjamin D. Sommer, “Exegesis, Allusion and Intertextuality in the Hebrew Bible: A Response to Lyle Eslinger,” VT 46 (1996): 486. See Newsom, “Deriving Negative Anthropology,” 262. See especially Sommer, “Exegesis, Allusion,” esp. 483–85; idem, A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40–66 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), esp. 32–76; Hughes, Scriptural Allusions, 41–54; Jeffery M. Leonard, “Identifying InnerBiblical Allusions: Psalm 78 as a Test Case,” JBL 127 (2008): 241–65; Tooman, Gog of Magog, 23–35. For the distinction, see Samely, “Observations on the Temple Scroll,” 236–37.

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deliberate reuse if the same text is alluded to elsewhere. Overlaps are less likely to be coincidental if there is a thematic or topical correspondence between the two texts; that is, later texts tend to reuse earlier texts that are relevant to whatever topic they are addressing. Though others have noted them using different terminology, Tooman provides a convenient classification of these factors as the criteria of “uniqueness, distinctiveness, multiplicity, [and] thematic correspondence,” respectively.62 In the cases of diverging lists of source texts that I am most familiar with, in certain portions of the Temple Scroll, scholars seem especially prone to overlooking the importance of uniqueness, distinctiveness, and thematic correspondence (to use Tooman’s terms). Often the linguistic overlap with proposed sources involves quite common words (i.e., it is not unique or distinctive), and even rather distinctive linguistic overlaps often lack thematic correspondence.63 In reality, it seems likely that, in cases where a source is not obvious, the number of earlier texts actually reused in TS is quite a bit smaller than any of the various proposed lists. In more instances than is typically acknowledged, TS seems simply to be composing independently, if in the style of the traditional materials it reuses extensively elsewhere. Thus, the Temple Scroll constitutes a premier example of how lack of discussion of how reuse is identified has led to serious differences among scholars regarding the sources used in a particular case of rewriting. This is problematic enough in and of itself, but the Temple Scroll also shows how overconfidence in identification of sources can lead to erroneous conclusions on the compositional level, some of which can have farreaching implications. To give one example, alleged allusions to the books of Chronicles by the Temple Scroll have been used as evidence for the dating of the Scroll and as evidence for a common ideological perspective between the two works. But upon closer inspection, I have not found a single instance in TS where allusion to Chronicles is actually clear. In my 62

63

Tooman, Gog of Magog, 27. Tooman also includes a fifth criterion, inversion, whereby “in rare cases a number of elements in close proximity to one another in one text may be inverted in the borrowing text” (30). For instance, Wise (Critical Study, 119, 229) suggests that the phrase ‫ואת בנותיכם יקח‬ (1 Sam 8:13) is a source for TS 57:15–16 ‫ואשה לוא ישא מכול בנות הגוים כי אם מבית אביהו יקח לו אשה‬, “He [the king] shall not take a wife from all the daughters of the nations, but rather from his father’s house he shall take for himself a wife.” Not only is the shared language (‫בנות‬, ‫)יקח‬ quite common, but the thematic contexts of the two passages are quite different. 1 Samuel 8 refers to the king taking “your daughters” not as wives, but as servants (‫ואת בנותיכם יקח‬ ‫לרקחות ולטבחות ולאפות‬, “Your daughters he shall take to be ointment-grinders, cooks, and bakers”).

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view, there is very little evidence that TS knew or used Chronicles, and the supposed use of Chronicles cannot be used to date TS or explain its ideology.64 Not all cases of reuse are obvious, and a full understanding of rewriting requires appreciation of the skill and subtlety with which scribes could invoke earlier written texts. But the identification of sources without careful attention to methodology risks misrepresenting rewriting, both in the abstract and as it plays out in particular texts. It also opens up our analysis to the influence of modern assumptions about what texts were available to Second Temple composers and how they would have interacted with them. More explicit discussion of how decisions are made regarding identification of sources will not eliminate the subjective element of the enterprise, but it will allow for consideration of a broader range of possibilities and hopefully more accurate analysis as a result.

Falsifiability: How Can We Rule Out Rewriting? There is one final uncertainty that hangs over all the other causes for caution outlined in the previous paragraphs. It is in the nature of things that, in order to identify and describe rewriting, we must have access to multiple versions of the text – either multiple manuscript versions in the case of revision, or both the new composition and its earlier source(s) in the case of reuse. Of course, biblical studies has long been involved in identifying hypothetical cases of revision and reuse, in the form of glosses, redactional layers, or preexistent sources. Identification of such cases depends not on comparing two extant versions of the text but on observation of tensions or discontinuities (contradictions, repetitions, etc.) within a single version of the text, which scholars take as evidence of the text’s literary history. Despite the fact that the books of the Bible obviously did undergo extensive diachronic development, the ongoing debate over the reliability of the so-called discernable traces of that development indicates how difficult it is to reliably characterize rewriting on the basis of these hypothetical examples – the project quickly becomes

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For further details, see Molly M. Zahn, “The Levites, the Royal Council, and the Relationship between Chronicles and the Temple Scroll,” in Law, Literature, and Society in Legal Texts from Qumran: Papers from the Ninth Meeting of the International Organization for Qumran Studies, Leuven 2016, ed. Jutta Jokiranta and Molly M. Zahn, STDJ 128 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 253–69.

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circular.65 But even more worrying methodologically is the idea that rewriting might not leave any discernible trace. That this is a reality, as opposed to merely a worrying possibility, is amply demonstrated by the evidence of rewriting in the Qumran manuscripts.66 In other words, a text may be entirely constituted by rewriting, but if we have no access to its sources or earlier versions, the rewritten nature of the text might escape our notice altogether.67 This methodological hurdle has serious implications for traditional literary-historical biblical criticism, as I will discuss further in Chapter 3. It also reveals that the impression that it was primarily biblical texts that were rewritten is likely no more than a trick of the light – we are able to recognize rewritings of books that ended up in the Bible because these are the texts most fully preserved in the manuscript record. But there are more profound issues at stake as well. Recall that rewriting has often been construed as a feature of a discrete group of texts, even a defined genre – as a strategy used by some texts and not others. In reality, we can recognize texts we know employed rewriting (because we have the source), but we cannot actually know for sure that any text does not employ rewriting; we cannot confidently draw the boundaries between “rewritten” and “not-rewritten.” Rather than take this merely as an indication of the limits of our evidence, we would do better to take it as a sign of the ubiquity of rewriting – that rewriting was in fact a fundamental aspect of early Jewish textuality. This does not mean that no scribes ever copied texts precisely – we have plenty of evidence that many scribes, at least in particular instances, had no interest other than to pass on the text just as it came to them.68 On the other extreme, at least some new (oral or written) texts surely would have been genuinely innovative, without particularly strong attachment to prior traditions.69

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See in particular Raymond F. Person Jr. and Robert Rezetko, eds., Empirical Models Challenging Biblical Criticism, AIL 25 (Atlanta: SBL, 2016). Molly M. Zahn, “Scribal Revision and the Composition of the Pentateuch: Methodological Issues,” in The Formation of the Pentateuch: Bridging the Academic Cultures of Europe, Israel, and North America, ed. Jan C. Gertz et al., FAT 111 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 491–500. I owe this observation to a perceptive question raised by Judith Newman, personal communication, September 2013. See Emanuel Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert, STDJ 54 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 24–27; and especially Teeter, Scribal Laws, 243, 254–64. Of course, postmodern discussions of “intertextuality” stress the degree to which no text is truly innovative or wholly original with respect to the culture in which it is embedded. For brief discussion, see Sommer, A Prophet Reads Scripture, 8.

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Nevertheless, if we take the evidence that we do have seriously, we must conclude that, to a very large extent, ancient Jewish texts were constituted through rewriting, whether this involved the redeployment of existing texts in a new composition, the ongoing development of a composition over time, or both. While putting things this way might raise the objection that regarding everything as potentially or likely rewritten makes it pointless to talk about rewriting as a distinct phenomenon, I believe the opposite is the case. The more fundamental rewriting was, the more understanding its various forms and purposes can teach us about Second Temple textuality in general. This returns us to the methodological issues raised above. If we are right to assume that rewriting was more or less ubiquitous, then it can be likened to an iceberg, with 90 percent of cases concealed beneath the “ocean surface” of our available texts. The 10 percent we can see – the cases where a text and its source or multiple versions of a text are actually preserved – become invaluable glimpses of the processes that must have gone on in so many other places. In the chapters that follow, I will show that the evidence for rewriting that we do have takes many different forms and cuts across many different textual contexts, within the two broad categories of revision and reuse outlined above. We are talking about a range of related strategies for interacting with existing texts, not a fixed or static procedure. First, though, I will explain how genre theory can help us make sense of rewriting in all its diversity.

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2 Genre and Rewriting

In Chapter 1, I laid out a set of terms that will allow us the flexibility to explore various forms and contexts of rewriting. But despite the connection between how we speak and how we think, new terms and categories cannot by themselves lead to new ways of understanding. Study of rewriting has been marked not only by problems with the category labels we use (Bible, Rewritten Bible, etc.), but by problems in thinking about those categories in relationship to one another. We have struggled to account for the range of similarities, differences, and overlaps that we find across the boundaries of our traditional categories. These issues with constructing categories and then understanding how they relate constitute, in effect, a problem of genre. The concept of genre has a somewhat fraught history as it relates to the study of rewriting, exemplified by the debates over whether Rewritten Bible should be regarded as a genre.1 It might thus seem like an unlikely candidate for a framework by which to shed light on rewriting. But, in fact, recent work in genre studies has transformed our notion of what genres are, how they are constituted, and how they work. Genre, understood in light of this body of scholarship, gives us access to a toolbox of ideas for approaching a multiform phenomenon like rewriting and situating it in the landscape of Second Temple Judaism. This chapter begins with an overview of some recent developments in genre theory.2 I have found the idea of genre interesting and helpful for 1 2

See n. 19 in Chapter 1. This overview draws upon and expands my discussion of genre in Molly M. Zahn, “Genre and Rewritten Scripture: A Reassessment,” JBL 131 (2012): 271–88, esp. 276–81.

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the study of rewriting because, at root, genres are about function and communication – about the negotiation of expectations between author and audience. It follows that questions about genre always involve both the author/producer of a text and its reader or audience; genre is not defined solely by scholars or critics. For scholars of early Judaism, this means that genre study should address the ways texts were perceived by ancient communities and cannot function on a purely “etic” level. After drawing out some of these general trends in recent genre studies, the focus will return to the variety of ways such thinking can inform our study of rewriting. First, I will consider how rewriting could have served as a generic feature or contributed to the generic identity of certain texts. Far from simply rehashing old debates about whether Rewritten Bible/Scripture constitutes a literary genre, I will argue that thinking generically allows us better to appreciate the various goals and purposes of scribes when they employed rewriting. Second, I will propose that insights from genre theory can be used in a somewhat more metaphorical way in order to conceptualize the relationships between different types of revision and reuse. While I am still not sure that it really makes sense to identify revision and reuse and their subcategories as “genres” of scribal rewriting, the language of genre studies provides a helpful framework for talking about how distinct but related forms of textual manipulation could have been employed by scribes for discrete compositional purposes.

1 recent trends in genre theory Flexibility The most important insight of modern genre theory as it relates to the study of genre in early Judaism is that genres are flexible and dynamic. While genres once were seen as a sort of timeless essence, some fixed ideal that existed independently of any particular exemplar of that genre (sort of like a Platonic Form), most theorists have come to regard genre as inherently historically and culturally conditioned – as a subset of the broader human activity of categorization, by which we make sense of the world around us.3 The perception of genre ultimately depends on the reader or audience’s ability to group certain texts together depending 3

For the role of cognitive science in contemporary genre theory, see especially Michael Sinding, “After Definition: Genre, Categories, and Cognitive Science,” Genre 35 (2002): 181–219.

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upon some perceived likeness. For one thing, this means that genre conventions and expectations are built on real texts, not theoretical ideals. For another, this does not mean that genre is solely constructed by readers (or worse, critics), and authors have nothing to do with it at all. As I will discuss further below, genre is a complex interplay between authors’ intentions and readers’ expectations. But we cannot assume that any given audience’s perception of a text’s genre corresponds to the intentions of the text’s author.4 Finally, its roots in human processes of cognition mean that identifying genre is not just a matter of finding similarities between like texts. It is just as much about distinguishing difference – deciding what kinds of differences between otherwise similar texts might imply a generic distinction between them.5 The fluidity of genres is thus a product of the fluidity of our perceptions. On the one hand, the same reader might categorize texts differently depending on what features they are interested in: content, themes, structure, style, medium, meter or lack thereof, etc.6 On the other hand, perceptions change over time. Each new work that is seen as belonging to a given genre subtly shifts the perceived boundaries of that genre.7 From a diachronic perspective, later examples of a genre will introduce

4

5

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7

For a sensitive discussion of the importance of thinking of genre historically (that is, as derived from real texts) and as constructed by authors and readers as well as literary critics, see David Fishelov, Metaphors of Genre: The Role of Analogies in Genre Theory (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1993), 10–13. Ralph Cohen, “History and Genre,” New Literary History 17 (1986): 210; see also Thomas O. Beebee, The Ideology of Genre: A Comparative Study of Generic Instability (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1994), 263: “[T]he use-value of any single genre depends on our recognition of other genres that oppose it.” Amy J. Devitt, Writing Genres (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004), 7; see also Cohen, “History and Genre,” 204: “Since the purposes of critics who establish genres vary, it is self-evident that the same texts can belong to different groupings or genres and serve different generic purposes.” Cohen’s assertion that it is (solely) critics who “establish genres” is countered by Fishelov, Metaphors of Genre, 11–12. Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, trans. Richard Howard (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975), 6: “every work modifies the sum of possible works; each new example alters the species.” See also Cohen, “History and Genre,” 204; Alastair Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 23. In the sense that genres are inseparable from the texts that participate in them, and change as new texts participate in them in some way, Najman’s adaptation of Benjamin’s idea of “constellations” of themes or features (and the texts that contain them) appears to me to be closer to some movements in contemporary genre theory than she indicates; see Hindy Najman, “The Idea of Biblical Genre: From Discourse to Constellation,” in Penner et al., Prayer and Poetry in the Dead Sea Scrolls, 316–17.

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new elements reflecting changes in historical or cultural circumstances.8 Even though some genres, such as “tragedy” or “epic” or (to use a more pertinent example) “wisdom literature,” exhibit remarkable staying power across centuries and even millennia, there are important ways in which Paradise Lost differs from Homer’s epics, and Ben Sira or 4QInstruction differs from Proverbs or the Instructions of Amenemope.9 Sometimes, changes to the shape of genres, and interactions between genres, result in the creation of new genres. That is, new genres are not generally invented out of thin air, but develop out of modifications to existing genres.10 This conceptualization of genres as constantly under revision and created largely out of earlier genres provides suggestive parallels to rewriting, to which I will return. Another key aspect of the flexibility of genres lies in the nonuniformity of the features that define genres. Although texts attributed to a given genre must have something in common (in order to be perceived as alike in the first place), the nature of this something can vary; that is, there is diversity in the kinds of shared features that constitute genre. Some genres do involve strict adherence to certain formal or structural features (for example, the sonnet, or the knock-knock joke), while others involve much looser criteria (e.g., the novel).11 Within less formally rigid genres, it is easy for authors to mix in elements of other genres or even incorporate other genres in smaller sections. For example, a novel or other type of prose narrative might have the form of a (fictional) collection of letters, or

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Fishelov illustrates this principle via the analogy of biological speciation, according to which different populations of a species change at different rates relative to their geographic distance and isolation from other populations; Metaphors of Genre, 47–52. See also Cohen, “History and Genre,” 210. For debates concerning the scope and definition of the genre of wisdom in ancient Judaism, see Benjamin G. Wright III, “Joining the Club: A Suggestion about Genre in Early Jewish Texts,” DSD 17 (2010): 289–314, and the collection of essays in Mark R. Sneed, ed., Was There a Wisdom Tradition? New Prospects in Israelite Wisdom Studies, AIL 23 (Atlanta: SBL, 2015). See also the comments of Hindy Najman, “Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Period: Towards the Study of a Semantic Constellation,” in Feldman et al., Is There a Text in This Cave?, 459–72. See especially Cohen, “History and Genre,” 207: “A genre does not exist independently; it arises to compete or to contrast with other genres, to complement, augment, interrelate with other genres”; also Fishelov, Metaphors of Genre, 20, and, earlier, Tzvetan Todorov, “The Origin of Genres,” New Literary History 8 (1976): 161. Devitt, Writing Genres, 10. As Fishelov notes, scholars seem to have had a particularly difficult time providing a satisfactory description of the novel as a genre: he memorably describes the novel as “apparently the most elusive and protean of literary forms”; Metaphors of Genre, 61.

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might incorporate within it letters, speeches, jokes, or other genres.12 Even more interesting, and especially significant for the phenomenon of rewriting, are genres that are not determined by form or structure at all. This means that members of the genre automatically belong to other genres as well. One of the clearest examples of such a form-less genre is satire. Satire as a genre is defined by aim and style, not by any particular textual form.13 Examples of satire thus extend across a range of genres: newspaper article (of various subtypes, e.g., articles in The Onion), television news program (e.g., The Daily Show and its spinoffs and relatives), feature film (e.g., Monty Python’s Life of Brian), novel (e.g., Gulliver’s Travels), etc. Each of these works contains features that allow it to be identified as satire, but also features that associate it with another genre (e.g., an article in The Onion will use the same stylistic and structural conventions as non-satirical newspaper articles). In cases such as satire, the issue is not one of “hierarchies of genre” or broader genres that encompass more narrowly defined ones.14 Such hierarchies of genres, or genres and subgenres, certainly do exist: within the genre of “novel,” say, one could distinguish historical novels, mysteries, romances, etc. One can even consider very broad categories such as “poetry” and “prose” genres. But this is not what is going on with genres such as satire, even though superficially they may appear to contain many different genres within them. The difference is that a genre such as satire overlaps with other genres, but does not subsume them entirely. Some novels may be satirical, but many are not. Some newspaper articles (e.g., those in The Onion) are satirical, but most are not. Rather than imagining concentric circles of ever-broader genres (e.g., historical novel ➔ novel ➔ prose narrative, as in Fig. 2.1), we can better position genres like satire in relation to other genres by means of something like a Venn diagram, comprised of overlapping but distinct circles (as in Fig. 2.2). The key point is that texts can belong to, or participate in, multiple genres simultaneously, and that even this simultaneity can take a number 12

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14

The recent novel by Julie Schumacher, Dear Committee Members (New York: Doubleday, 2014), cast as a collection of letters of reference written by a beleaguered professor of English, uses this technique to great comic effect. The OED defines satire as “A poem or (in later use) a novel, film, or other work of art which uses humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize prevailing immorality or foolishness, esp. as a form of social or political commentary,” and “the genre of literature which consists of satires.” (OED s.v. satire.) For the term in this sense, see George Brooke, “Genre Theory, Rewritten Bible and Pesher,” DSD 17 (2010): 361–86. Note that Fowler has used it in a different sense, to refer to the relative status or prestige of certain genres in certain historical periods (Kinds of Literature, 35, 216–26).

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Fig. 2.1 A concentric model of genre

newspaper article

TV newscast

novel satire

Fig. 2.2 Overlapping genres

of different forms. It can be a question of levels of abstraction, or of embedding distinct textual units in a larger work, or of mixing the features of multiple genres alongside one another.

Function A second helpful element of genre theory is the stress by theorists of various stripes on the mediatory or communicative role played by genre – the role it plays in joining author and audience.15 This mediation is

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On genre as “mediator,” see especially Fishelov, Metaphors of Genre, 14.

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described in various ways, but two main trends can be identified. The first is the idea of genre as a sort of “contract” between author and audience, or set of shared institutions and conventions: readers have certain expectations based on their knowledge of existing texts, and they use that knowledge to process a new work and situate it in relationship to other works.16 From the audience’s perspective, proper understanding of genre allows for the proper understanding of a work.17 From the writer’s perspective, genre provides a template or framework that can be adopted, adapted, reacted to, or rebelled against. In fact, writers cannot avoid genre; every text interacts somehow with existing genres, even if it tries to undermine them or combines their features in radical new ways.18 Nor can readers somehow escape genre: humans can only seek to understand new texts by relating them to ones they already know. In other words, genre is a fundamental aspect of communication.19 As Beebee puts it, “Primarily, genre is the precondition for the creation and the reading of texts.”20 The second mode of thinking about genre-as-communication comes largely from rhetorical genre theorists as opposed to literary critics (though some literature-focused scholars have moved in similar directions). These theorists focus on the function of particular genres; the “action” or “work” they accomplish for the writer.21 The idea is that a genre constitutes a typified response to a recurrent rhetorical situation. Writers and readers share expectations for what kind of text is most suitable in a given situation, and the writer’s (or speaker’s) product will

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For the language of genre as “contract,” see Frederic Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative As a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981), 105–6, with the important qualifications of Cohen, “History and Genre,” 208–9, and Fishelov, Metaphors of Genre, 86–89. Culler, from a slightly different angle, also refers to genre conventions as establishing “a contract between writer and reader”; Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), 147. See also Devitt, Writing Genres, 168–69. See e.g. Fowler, Kinds of Literature, 37–38; Culler, Structuralist Poetics, 147; Carol Newsom, “Pairing Research Questions and Theories of Genre: A Case Study of the Hodayot,” DSD 17 (2010): 273–75. Todorov, “Origin of Genres,” 160; Fishelov, Metaphors of Genre, 81–83, 95–97; Devitt, Writing Genres, 167. This position has become widely held; for a summary, see Devitt, Writing Genres, 166; also Fowler, Kinds of Literature, 23–24. Beebee, Ideology of Genre, 250. See Carolyn R. Miller’s seminal article, “Genre as Social Action,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 70 (1984): 151–67; more recently (with literature), Devitt, Writing Genres, 12–20.

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be judged according to those shared standards. Sometimes the appropriate genre will involve highly conventionalized formal features, like a business letter or a weather report. In other cases it is features such as content or tone that are more central, as in a eulogy or political speech. The defining features of genres may vary; what they share is their function as the appropriate response in a given situation.22 This model of genre as action, rooted as it is in the field of rhetorical studies, stresses the pragmatic value of genre competency as a set of skills by which writers/speakers and audiences successfully use language in their everyday activities. It cannot straightforwardly be transferred to literary texts, which rarely reflect a single or obvious “rhetorical situation” or target audience.23 Literary texts, at least in the Euro-American cultural tradition, are also expected to display creativity or innovation in relation to genre to a degree not required of non-literary forms of communication. That is, a literary text that simply reproduces conventional elements of an existing genre, without adding any new twists or creatively tweaking convention in any way, is likely to be viewed as dull, imitative, and hackneyed.24 On the other hand, a business letter or, say, the cover letter for an academic job application, will likely not be received well by its recipients if it departs too far from generic conventions. That said, some work within literary genre theory shows affinities with this rhetorical approach in highlighting the functional aspect of literary genres – the degree to which genres help people “do things with language.”25 Fowler, for instance, comments that “in literary communication, genres are functional: they actively form the experience of each work of literature.”26 Thomas O. Beebee introduces the concept of “use-value”: genres are defined not by “content, formal features, or . . . rules of production” but by what they do for their readers. (He gives the example of romance novels, which according to other studies provide a specific type of otherwise unavailable emotional gratification to their readers.) This use-value is apparent, if perhaps only subconsciously, to the readers who purchase these books, as well as to the authors and publishers who produce and market them.27 Though both literary and rhetorical genre studies have recognized the functional role played by genres, work in these fields has a decidedly modern slant. How much of all this is applicable to the literary landscape 22 24 26

23 Devitt, Writing Genres, 10. Devitt, Writing Genres, 179–81. 25 Fishelov, Metaphors of Genre, 43. Devitt, Writing Genres, 169. 27 Fowler, Kinds of Literature, 38. Beebee, Ideology of Genre, 4–7.

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of ancient cultures such as early Judaism? In fact, biblical studies itself, in the guise of form criticism, provides another angle on the functional aspects of genre. Hans R. Jauss argues in his article “Theory of Genres and Medieval Literature” that more attention should be paid to the sociohistorical realities that lie behind the development and interrelationships of genres over time. Though he is talking in principle about modern literary genres, he supports his argument with an appeal to pre-modern literature, in which (he claims) a social function can more clearly be detected: literary forms and genres were not simply the inventions of individual authors or “art for art’s sake,” but were meant to serve particular community needs.28 Jauss explicitly references the concept of Sitz im Leben, or “setting in life,” the particular social situation to which, according to biblical form critics, each particular genre was tied. As famously articulated by Gunkel, the basic Gattungen, or genres, of literary expression in ancient Israel were inseparable from the different situations in which they were used. Although Gunkel and his successors tended to operate with a rigid concept of genre and put too much emphasis on reconstructing original, “pure,” oral forms, his insight that each genre related to a “peculiar and recurring situation” anticipates the idea of genre as typified response to a given situation.29 28

29

Hans Robert Jauss, “Theory of Genres and Medieval Literature,” in Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti, Theory and History of Literature 2 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 99. There is a way in which both Jauss and Beebee imply that the functional aspect of genre is most visible in texts somehow distinct from modern “Literature” (a term Beebee uses ironically) and its correlative demand for creative genius: premodern texts, Jauss implies, were produced in situations where modern conceptions of literary authorship had not yet taken hold, and Beebee’s “genre fiction” is separated from “literary fiction” precisely because of its more conventionalized features. For the quotation, see Hermann Gunkel, The Psalms: A Form-Critical Introduction, trans. Thomas M. Horner (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967), 19. Martin Buss provides a helpful overview of the development of Gunkel’s formulations on Sitz im Leben, discussing work in cognate fields on the connection between “situation” and literary form, some of which most likely influenced Gunkel. See Martin J. Buss, “The Idea of Sitz im Leben: History and Critique,” ZAW 90 (1978): 157–70. Significantly, one major recent attempt to categorize early Jewish texts according to their literary features has acknowledged the functional aspect of genres: introducing the Manchester/Durham Inventory of Structurally Important Literary Features in the Anonymous and Pseudepigraphic Jewish Literature of Antiquity, Alexander Samely notes that “We came to realize that the Inventory categories could not, as such, define ‘genres’, because genre terms usually imply a social function as well as a certain literary surface or content, and the Inventory categories are exclusively devoted to the latter” (Profiling Jewish Literature in Antiquity, vi). In other words, function is in some sense inherent to genre.

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Prototypes A final aspect of contemporary genre theory that will prove helpful is the notion of prototypes. Prototype theory was originally developed by cognitive scientists exploring how humans perceive similarity and difference and group things perceived as similar together in categories. It thus examines the cognitive processes fundamental to the ability to perceive genre.30 The key insight is that humans do not place items in categories by running down a mental checklist of features and seeing whether the new item has the right ones, but by a much more intuitive process of comparing the new item with what is perceived as a prototypical member of the category. As I have formulated it elsewhere: The classic example given by prototype theorists is birds: we identify birds not by making a list of the things that identify them as birds (wings, feathers, hollow bones, etc.), but by comparing the potential bird to a prototypical bird – for those of us from Europe or North America, as Wright suggests, probably something like a robin or a sparrow. Birds that differ greatly from sparrows or robins, like storks or emus or penguins, are still recognized as belonging to the category, but less obviously than the prototypical members.31

The idea of prototypes has been fruitfully explored in relationship to Second Temple texts in recent work by Carol Newsom, Benjamin Wright, Robert Williamson, and others.32 There are two ways in which it is especially promising for this study. First, it helps us understand how ancient Jews may have conceived of genres/categories of text, and in particular how certain centrally important or widely distributed pieces of literature (say, Deuteronomy or Proverbs) might have played an outsized role in determining what “counted” as a certain type of literature. A work might have been seen as more authentically “wisdom” or “instructional” literature to the degree to which it was perceived as similar to Proverbs, for example. Second, as I noted briefly in the Introduction, prototype theory can also provide insight into how we scholars have developed certain categories (say, Rewritten Bible) on the basis of 30 31 32

See especially Sinding, “After Definitions.” Zahn, “Genre and Rewritten Scripture,” 278. Carol A. Newsom, “Spying Out the Land: A Report from Genology,” in Bakhtin and Genre Theory in Biblical Studies, ed. Roland Boer, SemeiaSt 63 (Atlanta: SBL, 2007), 19–30; Wright, “Joining the Club”; Robert Williamson Jr., “Pesher: A Cognitive Model of the Genre,” DSD 17 (2010): 336–60; Michal Beth Dinkler, “Genre Analysis and Early Christian Martyrdom Narratives: A Proposal,” in Baden et al., Sibyls, Scriptures, and Scrolls, 314–36; Elizabeth E. Shively, “Recognizing Penguins: Audience Expectations, Cognitive Genre Theory, and the Ending of Mark’s Gospel,” CBQ 80 (2018): 273–92.

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certain paradigmatic examples. In turn, as I will argue in Chapter 6, it can help us understand how focus on these prototypes has sometimes hampered our ability to fully appreciate the significance of other, less prototypical examples.

2 genre and rewriting What is common to all of these approaches is the conceptualization of genre as a system in which both author and audience are actively involved. (This is a departure from essentialist views that saw genre as something “real” or timeless as opposed to socially constructed and mutable, as well as from exclusively reader-oriented views that saw genre as existing only in the mind of the literary critic.33) The active participation of authors and audiences in shaping generic systems, along with the cultural and historical embeddedness of genre, is precisely what makes thinking about genre so helpful in seeking to understand the relationships between different contexts for rewriting. Genre theory in its recent iterations provides a fresh means for articulating questions that go to the heart of what we seek to understand about early Jewish texts: what were the goals of their authors, and how were they received by their readers? What effects did they have upon their

33

For critiques of these strongly critic-oriented perspectives, see Fishelov, Metaphors of Genre, 10–13; Devitt, Writing Genres, 169–74. From the perspective of scholarship on ancient texts, I do not find it helpful to talk about “analytical” or “etic” categories of genre; that is, genres as scholarly constructs that would not necessarily have been recognized by the ancient producers and consumers of the texts. Such a view is proposed, e.g., for the pesharim by Timothy Lim, Pesharim, Companion to the Qumran Scrolls 3 (London: Sheffield, 2002), 40, 52–53; and, more broadly, by John J. Collins, “Epilogue: Genre Analysis and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” DSD 17 (2010): 421. Insofar as genre constitutes a necessary element of human meaning-making (Fowler, Kinds of Literature, 22), all texts engage the generic norms of the society in which they are produced, even if that society does not explicitly theorize or name those norms. See Williamson, “Pesher: A Cognitive Model,” 352–53; Petersen, “Rewritten Bible as a Borderline Phenomenon,” 303. To me this means that discussions of genre in ancient texts must attempt to recover features that would have been generically meaningful to ancient composers and audiences; the question of whether we succeed in the attempt is of course a different question. The formulation “analytical genre” is taken from the folklore scholar Dan Ben-Amos, who uses it to describe scholarly attempts to systematize and compare folklore genres across cultures, in contrast to “ethnic systems of genre” which reflect the particular generic norms and expectations of a given culture at a given time. See Dan Ben-Amos, “Analytical Categories and Ethnic Genres,” Genre 2 (1969): 275–301.

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audience, and how did their various formal, stylistic, and literary features contribute to those effects? How do these texts in all their variety relate to one another, at the level of production or the level of reception?34 More particularly, there are a number of specific ways in which thinking about rewriting through the lens of genre might be helpful. One of the simplest possibilities to imagine is that rewriting itself (in the form of reuse; i.e., the redeployment of existing texts) might represent a key element of some recognizable genre of early Jewish literature. This possibility in fact is assumed in depictions of Rewritten Bible or Rewritten Scripture as a literary genre. Though such depictions have been rightly criticized, some critiques erroneously suggest that rewriting should not be considered a generically significant feature because rewritten texts fall into many different genres.35 As I illustrated in the discussion of satire above, however, there are examples of genres constituted not by concrete formal features but by a particular mode of relationship to an existing text (or existing genre). Thus, the idea that rewriting, or a particular type of rewriting, might constitute a defining feature of a textual genre makes perfect sense.36 What exactly such a genre or genres might look like remains to be seen. I no longer think that defining a genre called Rewritten Bible (or Rewritten Scripture) is very helpful, because of the problems with these terms discussed earlier.37 Another possibility, though, is presented by Hindy Najman in her concept of “discourse tied to a founder.” Najman describes “Mosaic discourse” as a genre defined by conventionalized features such as attribution to Moses and self-designation as Torah, but also (in her original formulation of the idea) by “reworking and

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An important analysis of the Hodayot from the perspective of these questions is found in Newsom, “Research Questions.” Brooke, “Rewritten Bible,” 780; Collins, “Epilogue,” 428; John J. Collins, “Changing Scripture,” in von Weissenberg et al., Changes in Scripture, 31. Of course, we must keep in mind the methodological caveat that we can only recognize rewriting when we have access to the text being rewritten. In that sense, generic boundaries postulated on the basis of the presence of rewriting will have to remain especially flexible. See Chapter 1. In my article “Genre and Rewritten Scripture,” I argued that it might be possible to define a genre called Rewritten Scripture that is characterized by the extensive redeployment and interpretation of earlier traditions. While I still believe that the features I identify there may be constitutive of one or more distinct genres, I would no longer call this genre Rewritten Scripture; Najman’s concept of “discourse tied to a founder” seems more promising (see nn. 38–39).

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expanding older traditions.”38 In other words, rewriting is a key element of the genre, though not the only one.39 Another way of looking at rewriting and genre, though, moves beyond the idea that rewriting itself could form a constitutive element of a genre. Instead, we might imagine situations where an author might use rewriting to meet certain generic expectations unrelated to the rewriting per se. From the perspective of prototype theory, we might say that an author places a new work in a given genre by imitating prototypical members of that genre. For instance, the Community Rule (1QS) cannot as a whole be considered a rewriting of Exodus or Deuteronomy: there is no sustained interaction with those texts. However, at certain points 1QS alludes to or mimics the typical language of texts from the Torah, and it seems that those allusions are designed to convey a certain similarity between 1QS and the Torah; to imply that at some level it is the same type of thing.40 Another example may be the Hodayot (Thanksgiving Hymns), where allusions to certain psalms now known from MT Psalms arguably helped the author(s) to place their new hymns in the tradition of culturally prestigious or authoritative songs.41 In such instances, where rewriting facilitates the placement of a work within a particular generic tradition, we can recall the significance of functional approaches to genre: using rewriting (or other means) to locate a text within a genre is not simply about labels or claims to a certain kind of authority, but also influences how the text functions. By associating a text with a given genre a composer creates a particular kind of use-value for the text, influencing how it will be received and what kind of impact it will have on its audience. But even apart from this issue of generic identity or relationships, there are other ways in which rewriting might contribute to a text’s function or communicative goals. Writers redeploy earlier

38 39

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See Najman, Seconding Sinai, 16–19; Najman, “The Idea of Biblical Genre,” 314–15. It is not necessarily the case that all “discourses tied to founders,” to use Najman’s term, would use rewriting to the same extent or in the same ways as appears to be the case for Mosaic discourse. For example, building on the work of Mroczek, Literary Imagination, 51–85, we might regard the various hymns associated with David (found in various psalm collections and elsewhere) as constituting a genre of “Davidic discourse.” But this genre does not seem to involve a great deal of rewriting of specific earlier compositions known to us. For the details, see Zahn, “Torah for ‘The Age of Wickedness.’” One of the features I discuss, the use of deictic pronouns to identify the text as (or with) Torah, is noted by Najman (Seconding Sinai, 30–31) as a typical feature of “Mosaic Discourse.” See Brooke, “Hypertextuality,” 82; Brooke draws on the analysis of Hughes, Scriptural Allusions.

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traditions not only to assert their new work’s consistency with those traditions but also to make specific ideological points. Part of what the authors of Jubilees, for example, hope to accomplish with their reuse of Genesis is to indicate that the laws of the Torah, as well as the authors’ distinctive 364-day calendar, were operative and known from the time of creation. Other, more limited types of reuse, such as the redeployment in 1 Chronicles 16 of texts known from the book of Psalms, even more obviously serve purposes other than creating a generic profile.42 Even when genre is not directly at issue, however, the concept of a text’s function or goals, as formulated in genre theory, is useful. It leads us to ask what “work” is done by particular instances of rewriting, how this work fits into the larger goals or character of a given text, and whether it might indeed shed light on our understanding of how the text as a whole works from the perspective of genre. Whatever the answers to these questions in particular cases, genre theory’s focus on the communicative function of writing helps us, I think, to articulate the possibilities and their significance more clearly. So far, I have been talking about the intersection of rewriting and genre as it plays out in new compositions – all of which, after all, in some way interact with existing generic expectations in the course of their production. Much of the rewriting that I will consider in this book, however, does not occur in new compositions but in copies or translations of existing compositions (“revision,” as articulated in Chapter 1). What is the role of genre theory in thinking about these contexts for rewriting? After all, copyists and translators are primarily simply reproducing their copy-text. They do not have to make compositional decisions about style, content, structure, and so on that will ultimately influence generic perceptions of the work. We might assume, therefore, that producers of new copies or of translations would be less concerned with genre than producers of new compositions.43 While there may be a certain truth to this idea – that genre plays a less prominent role in revisionary contexts than in contexts of reuse – the distinction should not be overstated. Similar to the ways composers of new works made choices based on their understanding of the expectations surrounding the particular kind of text they saw themselves as producing, copyists and translators would have been constrained by their 42 43

For more on this example, see Chapter 6. See George Brooke’s reflections on the role of the individual in “Memory, Cultural Memory, and Rewriting Scripture,” in Reading the Dead Sea Scrolls, 53–55.

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understanding of conventions surrounding the genre of the text they were reproducing. Even quite interventionist scribes tend to fit their interventions to the context, in that the language, style, and topic of the intervention generally match that of the existing text. In one sense this is unremarkable – it simply illustrates that ancient scribes were well-trained language users, with a likely innate grasp of the conventions of different styles of writing. But on the other hand, it highlights just how fundamental a working understanding of generic expectations is to all kinds of scribal activity, not just composition of new works. In turn, this fundamental generic competency suggests that special attention should be paid to instances where revisions breach the linguistic or stylistic norms of the existing text. It is of course always possible that scribes in these cases simply weren’t attentive to what they were copying, but if we assume that such departures were more often deliberate, they might constitute interesting illustrations of scribes’ attitudes.44 I think genre can also help us understand revisionary contexts for rewriting – as well as rewriting in the form of reuse – in another way. Not only would scribes have been aware of the generic conventions of the particular texts they were reproducing or composing, but they would also have been aware of certain conventions surrounding various contexts for revision and reuse as well. More importantly, scribes would have been aware (surely much more aware than we can ever be!) of the differing functions of different aspects of their activity. Producing a new composition – however dependent on existing materials – is a different activity, with different goals, than revising an existing composition. Likewise, despite many similarities, a translation has a different function than a

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For example, as Alexander Samely in particular has observed, one of the key generic features of the targumim is the fidelity to the sequence and voice of the biblical text, even when the text is extensively supplemented or rendered non-literally. The few cases where this fidelity is interrupted (and the voice of the targumist “intrudes,” as it were, into the text) “can easily be recognized,” as Samely puts it, “as a mixing of the genres of targum and midrash;” see Alexander Samely, The Interpretation of Speech in the Pentateuch Targums: A Study of Method and Presentation in Targumic Exegesis, TSAJ 27 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), 165. But more can be said from the perspective of genre: whatever the distinctive function of targum within rabbinic culture – whatever the “use-value” of targum – that function clearly overlaps to some extent with the quite different (formally speaking) discourse of rabbinic midrash. The occasional intrusion of forms appropriate to midrash into targum is an indication of this close ideological relationship. On the relationship between targum and midrash see Steven D. Fraade, “Locating Targum in the Textual Polysystem of Rabbinic Pedagogy,” BIOSCS 39 (2006): 69–91.

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new copy in the same language.45 In light of evidence that instances of relatively precise copying existed alongside copying that introduced significant changes, one could also distinguish the function of heavily revised or expanded copies from that of more precise copies.46 Insofar as the production of all these different types of texts would be bound by certain conventions and would serve different purposes and audiences, it may thus be helpful to imagine revision and reuse, along with their various subcategories, as genres of scribal activity. It may be going too far to suggest that they actually are genres, depending on how loose of a definition of genre one is comfortable with. Perhaps it makes more sense to define only the products of this scribal activity – i.e., groups of texts – as genres in the strict sense. But recognizing the analogy with textual genres can help us in a couple of ways to better grasp the significance and interrelationships of these (and other) modes of scribal activity.47 First, there is the attention that a genre framework brings to the issue of function. I dwelt at some length above on how differences in genre imply differences in what a text is intended to do and how it is used by or impacts its audience. In the same way, differences in modes of rewriting can be construed as differences in the intended function of that rewriting – 45

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See Chapter 5. From another angle, translation allows for further transformation of a text’s function by bringing it into contact with a new set of generic norms, namely that of the target culture. Cameron Boyd-Taylor has explored how the Greek translators of Esther made a series of changes that brought the book into conformity with the genre of the Greek novella; see Cameron Boyd-Taylor, “Esther’s Great Adventure: Reading the LXX Version of the Book of Esther in Light of Its Assimilation to the Conventions of the Greek Romantic Novel,” BIOSCS 30 (1997): 81–113. This distinction is described by Teeter as “precise” or “exact” vs. “facilitating” copying. In Teeter’s view, facilitating copies most definitely had a distinctive function: as their name suggests, they were meant to provide a more understandable and accessible version of authoritative texts. In the context of this project, it is notable that Teeter describes such facilitating copies as “something approaching a Gattung of scriptural manuscript.” See Teeter, Scribal Laws, 254–67 (quote from 266). Besides rewriting, another prominent area of exploration might be scribal practices such as orthography, morphology, and layout and other paratextual features. Current work on scribal practice in the Qumran and other Judean desert manuscripts has highlighted the possibility that individual scribes did not always write in the same way but copied differently depending on the nature and intended use of the text they were preparing. Similar to the way I am envisioning rewriting across different contexts, we might imagine scribal practice both as adaptable depending on the genre of the text being copied and as itself comprising different “genres,” such that certain features or techniques would have been employed by individual scribes in certain situations but not in others. See Molly M. Zahn, “Beyond ‘Qumran Scribal Practice’: The Case of the Temple Scroll,” RevQ 29 (2017): 185–203.

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in the goals and norms that governed particular types of scribal production. A second, related issue is the attention brought to the agency of the scribes who engaged in this or that form of rewriting. The past couple of decades have seen considerable reflection on the social situation of the scribes who were doing this sort of thing, for example, the idea that more precise copying of biblical texts (as opposed to revisionary or expansionist copying) was at home in Temple circles (Tov), or the theory that rewriting of scriptural texts was particularly associated with a “priestlylevitical/Essene movement” (Crawford).48 There has been less attention as of yet to a more dynamic image of scribes as highly generically competent individuals, who would have composed and copied many different kinds of texts, and thus would have made choices about what kinds of techniques to use across various types of tasks. Finally, conceiving of different modes of rewriting in generic terms provides a framework for situating the different modes in relationship to one another. Just as genres can overlap with regard to content, themes, form, or style while distinguishing themselves on the basis of other features, different modes of rewriting might share certain techniques or concerns while differing in context, scope, and so on. I should stress, as I did in Chapter 1, that by talking about “genres” or even “modes” of scribal rewriting, I am not aiming to propose a new classification system that would somehow neatly categorize every instance of rewriting. In fact, I think engagement with modern genre theory helps us to embrace fuzzy boundaries and resist the urge to pigeonhole, as genre theory has had to overcome its own long legacy of considering genres as timeless essences or mutually exclusive kinds.49 *** My goal in this chapter has been to offer a brief introduction to the most promising elements of genre theory and to make some initial suggestions as to how thinking in terms of genre might help us understand rewriting. Most of these proposals will reappear, with more specifics, in the chapters

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For Tov’s theory, see e.g. Emanuel Tov, “The Text of the Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek Bible Used in the Ancient Synagogues,” in Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible and Qumran: Collected Essays, TSAJ 121 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 171–88, with the important critique of Teeter, Scribal Laws, 227–37. For Crawford, see Rewriting Scripture, esp. 146–49. I cannot leave this chapter bereft of a reference to Fowler’s much-quoted dictum that genres are less like pigeonholes than like pigeons; Kinds of Literature, 37.

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that follow, though I do not think I have at all exhausted the potential of this line of inquiry. To sum up, recent scholarly thought on the topic of genre can clarify our thinking insofar as it highlights the most significant issues we face in coming to terms with the variety of contexts for rewriting in Second Temple Judaism. Genre theory’s emphasis on fluidity and interrelation suits a phenomenon like rewriting that is inherently flexible in form and emerges from a network of intertextual relationships. It also provides a way of theorizing or making sense of both similarity and difference – of tensions between convention and innovation, continuity and change.50 Finally, conceptions of genre as the socially conditioned product of the complex negotiation of writer’s and reader’s expectations suggest the significance of attending to both sides of that dialectic: the purposes (background, expectations, assumptions) of the writer and the perceptions (background, expectations, assumptions) of the reader. While it is certainly possible to talk about rewriting without talking about genre, we gain a valuable breadth and depth of perspective when we do.

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A similar point is made by Wright, “Joining the Club,” 313–14.

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3 Revision and Reuse in the Bible

Thus far, I have explored a set of terms (rewriting, revision, and reuse) and a conceptual framework or analogy (genre) that together can facilitate a new understanding of rewriting. In this and the following chapters, I apply these perspectives to “real live” bodies of data. The more neutral terms I have proposed allow us to analyze rewriting as it occurs within all sorts of texts, not just a small group of compositions that extensively rewrite texts later included in the Hebrew Bible. Indeed, one of the most important aspects of this project is extending the conversation concerning rewriting to texts not directly related to the Hebrew canon, such as the core “sectarian” texts found at Qumran; this is the subject of Chapter 4. But before we look “beyond the Bible,” the discussion must be expanded in another direction as well, not away from the books of the Bible but back toward them. Not only do traditional categories such as “Rewritten Bible” exclude from consideration texts not directly related to the Bible. By implying that rewriting is something that most naturally happens to biblical texts, rather than in them, these categories obscure the abundant similarities between cases of rewriting that occur on both sides of the artificial divide between “biblical” and “nonbiblical.” In this chapter, I first investigate how canonically inflected language has hampered our understanding, and how speaking instead of revision and reuse allows us to appreciate more fully the extent of rewriting within “the Bible” itself. (Of course, in doing so, I break down the notion of “Bible” as a relevant category for the study of Second Temple rewriting.) Second, from this new methodological perspective that emphasizes genres of rewriting rather than artificial canonical categories, I consider a number of issues that have arisen from discussions of rewriting within now-canonical texts. 74 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. , on , subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108769983.004

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We will see that in fact biblical examples of rewriting raise methodological issues that should be, but often are not, considered in all kinds of cases of rewriting.

1 the tyranny of canonical assumptions, part 1: bible vs. rewritten bible 1 When Geza Vermes coined the term Rewritten Bible in the 1960s, it was accepted broadly because it seemed to name such a clear and coherent phenomenon: a new composition that interpretively reworks biblical narrative. Vermes’s term elegantly captured the sustained redeployment of, and exegetical engagement with, biblical texts that is distinctive of works like the Genesis Apocryphon, Jubilees, and the Biblical Antiquities of Pseudo-Philo. That such reworking took place beyond the bounds of the transmission of the biblical text itself seemed largely taken for granted: while traditional text criticism had documented myriad interpretive changes to the biblical texts in the course of their transmission, these were generally quite minor in comparison to the large-scale interpretive rewritings found in, say, Jubilees or the Genesis Apocryphon. In this sense, Rewritten Bible was construed as a generic category clearly distinct from Bible.2 Over the course of the 1990s and 2000s, however, this easy separation between Bible and Rewritten Bible began to be called into question. The evidence came from two fronts. One point of weakness in the conceptual barrier was the recognition that some books of the Bible in fact rewrote other books, and in that sense were just as much Rewritten Bible as other, extracanonical examples. The prime example here was, of course, the books of Chronicles. Chronicles reworks the narratives of Samuel and Kings from a distinctive ideological perspective, just as Jubilees reworks the narratives of Genesis and Exodus from its own particular point of view.3 Also sometimes mentioned in this 1

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Again, the phrase “tyranny of canonical assumptions” is drawn from Kraft, “Paramania,” 10. It should be noted that not all scholars view these assumptions as tyrannical, or indeed as inappropriate. See for example Werman, “Canonization of the Hebrew Bible”; similarly, Philip S. Alexander, “Textual Authority and the Problem of the Biblical Canon,” in Feldman et al., Is There a Text in This Cave?,” 42–68. Besides Vermes’s own statements, see the important essay by Philip Alexander, “Retelling the Old Testament.” Alexander (“Retelling the Old Testament,” 100) refers to Chronicles as “arguably the prototype of all the rewritten Bible texts,” though he goes on to say that it “lies outside the scope of the present chapter” on postbiblical rewritings. Similarly, Hayward stresses that

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connection was the book of Deuteronomy, with its reworking of the Covenant Code.4 Though many scholars thus recognized that the boundary between Bible and Rewritten Bible was not absolute, the nature of the case, with Chronicles as the primary example, made it easy to see Chronicles as an outlier, even a sort of infiltrator. Chronicles, after all, is one of the latest books of the Hebrew Bible, a product of the Persian or even Hellenistic period, when (it has typically been assumed) many of the other books of the Hebrew Bible, especially the Pentateuch and Former Prophets, had already become authoritative.5 In that sense, it already has one foot out the door of the “biblical” period: it is not surprising that it would participate in an interpretive genre like Rewritten Bible.6 Thus the recognition of Chronicles as a clear example of Rewritten Bible did not do as much as it perhaps could have to break down the barrier between Bible and Rewritten Bible. The second type of evidence, on the other hand, seems to have been more successful in challenging this artificial distinction. It was increasingly observed that the kinds of changes to the text seen in Rewritten Bible compositions did not differ, in quality or in quantity, from the kinds of changes that often occurred in the transmission of biblical books themselves. The publication of the 4Q(Reworked) Pentateuch (4QRP) manuscripts in 1994 played a key role in this shift in perspective, causing other kinds of evidence that had long been available to be seen in a new light. As I noted in my introduction of the 4QRP mss as a prototypical case of

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“the Chronicler’s work is instructive as providing examples of principles and practices which informed the authors of rewritten biblical books” – perhaps implying, like Alexander, that there is great similarity between Chronicles and Rewritten Bible, but that they are not quite the same thing. (Because Chronicles is inside the Bible?) See Robert Hayward, “Rewritten Bible,” in A Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, ed. R. J. Coggins and J. L. Houlden (London: SCM, 1990), 596. More strongly asserting that Chronicles constitutes Rewritten Bible are Brooke, “Rewritten Bible,” 778; Bernstein, “Rewritten Bible,” 173. Brooke (“Rewritten Bible,” 778) regards Deuteronomy as an example of Rewritten Bible. More frequently, Deuteronomy is cited as a precedent for later Rewritten Bible compositions, without necessarily suggesting it is itself a member of the category: Hayward, “Rewritten Bible,” 596; Bernard M. Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 34; Najman, Seconding Sinai, 39–40. On the date of Chronicles, see e.g., Gary N. Knoppers, 1 Chronicles 1–9, AB 12 (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 101–17. See Brettler’s comments on the frequent hesitance to use Chronicles as a model for understanding “biblical” (= pre-exilic) historiography: Marc Zvi Brettler, The Creation of History in Ancient Israel (London: Routledge, 1995), 20.

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rewriting, Emanuel Tov and Sidnie Crawford, who edited 4QRP B–E for the DJD series, assumed on the basis of their sometimes major plusses and rearrangements that these manuscripts represented an extrabiblical, Rewritten Bible–type composition.7 But others called this assumption into question, pointing out that large additions and rearrangements of material were also present in – indeed, characteristic of – the textual histories of numerous biblical books. Thus the shift on the part of many scholars toward regarding the 4QRP manuscripts as expansive copies of the Pentateuch (that is, as “biblical manuscripts”), rather than as new compositions belonging to the category of Rewritten Bible.8 This debate (paralleled in some ways by a similar conversation on the Cave 11 Psalms Scroll 11QPsalmsa) was framed most directly as a question of whether the 4QRP manuscripts constituted Bible or Rewritten Bible.9 But it had the important side effect of calling into question our construction of the two categories in the first place. If different versions of a single book of the Bible could differ dramatically from each other, what then distinguishes an extensively revised copy of a biblical book (such as MT Jeremiah or 4QRP C) from texts like Jubilees or the Temple Scroll, which do the same kinds of things to their biblical sources but are classified as Rewritten Bible?10 As Michael Segal asks in his important 2005 article, how can we tell the difference?11 Segal was one of the first to

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10

11

See Introduction, n. 32. 4QRP A (4Q158) had previously been published by John Allegro in DJD 5 as 4QPentateuchal Paraphrase; Tov and Crawford argued it was another copy of the same composition represented by 4Q364–367 (DJD 13:190). See Introduction, nn. 33 and 34. The debate over 11QPsa was in some ways a mirror image of the one over 4QRP: unlike the RP mss, 11QPsa was published as a “biblical” manuscript; as an alternate edition of the book of Psalms. See James A. Sanders, The Psalms Scroll of Qumran Cave 11 (11QPsa), DJD 4 (Oxford Clarendon, 1965). Dissenting voices argued that the scroll could not have contained an authoritative/scriptural collection of Psalms, and instead should be regarded as a nonauthoritative, “liturgical” collection; see especially M. H. Goshen-Gottstein, “The Psalms Scroll (11QPsa): A Problem of Canon and Text,” Textus 5 (1966): 22–33; also Tov, Textual Criticism, 321. A vigorous defense of the “biblical” status of 11QPsa was mounted by Eugene Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 115–20; see also Ulrich, Developmental Composition, 194–99. More recently, the whole idea that there would have been fixed psalm collections in the Second Temple period has been called into question; see especially Mroczek, Literary Imagination, 33, who comments, “the ‘book of Psalms’ did not exist as a conceptual category in the Second Temple period.” See Brooke, “Rewritten Law, Prophets and Psalms”; Raymond F. Person Jr., “Text Criticism as a Lens for Understanding the Transmission of Ancient Texts in Their Oral Environments,” in Schmidt, Contextualizing Israel’s Sacred Writings, 203–7. Segal, “Between Bible and Rewritten Bible.”

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articulate the differences between the two categories primarily in terms of literary features like scope, setting, and voicing; his analysis helped spur me to search for more effective ways of talking about and comparing what we see in texts like Jeremiah, 4QRP, and Jubilees. In his focus on literary features rather than the quantity or extent of rewriting, Segal recognizes that the key difference between Bible and Rewritten Bible is generic (in the sense of pertaining to a certain type or category of scribal activity), not canonical. The difference between (say, for example) MT Jeremiah and Jubilees has nothing to do with the fact that one is in the traditional Hebrew canon and one is not. Instead, the main difference (as pertains to their rewriting, that is) lies in the nature of MT Jeremiah as an expansion of an earlier form of Jeremiah (known from OG and the Qumran scrolls), and of Jubilees as a literary work that exists independently of the source texts that it rewrites. The scribe(s) responsible for MT Jeremiah were making a new copy of an existing literary work, into which they introduced numerous changes. The scribe(s) who produced Jubilees, on the other hand, created a new work altogether, with its own voice, setting, scope, and compositional logic, despite heavy use of existing texts (especially Genesis and Exodus). Segal’s analysis, with its stress on the differences in how rewriting is presented and framed rather than on canonical labels, goes a long way toward exposing the inadequacies of canonically based categories like Bible and Rewritten Bible. But even so, the article continues to use these problematic terms, which inevitably imply that canonical boundaries have some significance. This is where using the terms that I have adopted, revision and reuse, can help us speak more clearly.12 MT Jeremiah revises earlier versions of Jeremiah, whereas Jubilees reuses the Pentateuch and other existing texts. These terms operate independently of any canonical framework: both Jubilees and Chronicles are examples of reuse; the presence of one of them within and the other outside of most versions of the canon is completely immaterial.13 The authority of either the

12

13

Note Segal’s comment that he is using the term Bible in a “literary” sense; that is, as shorthand for the individual literary works that together make up the Bible (“Between Bible and Rewritten Bible,” 16). Though I myself have made the same choice in some previous publications, continuing to use the loaded term “Bible” even when it does not reflect what we really mean simply perpetuates the “tyranny of canonical assumptions.” Jubilees, of course, is part of the canon of the Ethiopic church; for a recent overview, see Leslie Baynes, “Enoch and Jubilees in the Canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church,” in A Teacher for All Generations: Essays in Honor of James C. VanderKam, vol. 2, ed. Eric F. Mason et al., JSJSup 153 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 799–818.

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rewritten base text or the new, rewriting text or copy (either at the time of rewriting or later on) plays no role in the distinction between revision and reuse.14 As explained in Chapter 1, the only significant difference between these two types of rewriting is the nature of the textual relationship with the source text, either copy or new composition. Speaking of revision and reuse instead of Bible and Rewritten Bible allows us to see meaningful similarities and differences, without impediment from category distinctions that would not have been meaningful in the Second Temple period.

2 the tyranny of canonical assumptions, part 2: innerbiblical vs. extrabiblical If the term Rewritten Bible implies that rewriting was something that happened to, rather than in, the texts of the Hebrew Bible, another scholarly trend has come from the opposite direction. Scholarship concerned with “innerbiblical exegesis” aims to show just how much rewriting is present within the biblical texts themselves. Michael Fishbane, in his landmark 1985 book Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, construes innerbiblical exegesis as comprising all the myriad and various ways biblical tradents interpreted the text even as they preserved and passed it on. His magisterial study collects a wide range of examples of such interpretation, and he and other scholars working along similar lines have played a key role in breaking down the old false division between “scripture,” on the one hand, and “interpretation,” on the other.15 But in another way, the idea of innerbiblical exegesis reifies canonical boundaries. Though Fishbane sought to demonstrate the continuity between innerbiblical exegesis and later stages of Jewish scriptural interpretation, the label itself undermines such an effort, implying that the types of 14

15

Contra Ulrich, Developmental Composition, 201–12, who argues that the extensive changes (in voice, scope, etc.) that I associate with reuse were seen as appropriate in a “pre-Scripture” stage of the biblical texts’ authority and again in a “post-Scripture” stage (i.e., the production of new Rewritten Scripture compositions). By contrast, he argues, changes made to the text of scriptural books themselves in the late Second Temple period were more “moderate” (not altering voice or scope) precisely because of the texts’ new status as “Sacred Scripture.” Here again, the notion of “scriptural status” has become a red herring: it is used to explain differences that I would argue stem from two different types of rewriting, reuse vs. revision. For further discussion and bibliography, see below. An important article anticipating Fishbane’s more comprehensive work was authored by Nahum M. Sarna, “Psalm 89: A Study in Inner Biblical Exegesis,” in Biblical and Other Studies, ed. Alexander Altmann (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 29–46.

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changes tradents introduced when transmitting the books of the Hebrew Bible (“innerbiblical”) are somehow to be distinguished from the work of scribes dealing with other texts.16 The term also threatens to obscure important distinctions between different types of rewriting. Fishbane is certainly sensitive to differences within his material, dividing his book according to several major topical subcategories (scribal comments and corrections, legal exegesis, aggadic exegesis, and mantological exegesis). But ultimately, the only thing binding his examples together is the fact that they all occur “within the Bible” (and in fact, within the Masoretic Text of the Bible) – a designation that would have been meaningless in the Second Temple period.17 Instead of speaking of innerbiblical exegesis, thinking in terms of revision and reuse as they occur within biblical texts allows us to avoid these difficulties (and other mayhem that canonical assumptions can cause) and see more clearly how cases of each might compare with instances of revision and reuse in other texts.

3 revision, reuse, and the bible My goal in the remainder of this chapter is to consider some of the issues that emerge when we use revision and reuse as a framework for investigating rewriting in books that ended up in the Bible. On the one hand, this framework, in conjunction with the body of scholarship on “extrabiblical” rewritings, provides important new perspectives on rewriting in books of the Bible, including methodological insights relevant to scholars who generally work with traditional literary-critical methodologies. On the other hand, “biblical” examples have much to contribute to a broader picture of rewriting as well. Much of the work on examples of rewriting in books of the Bible has been done in the context of scholarship on those particular books, and as a result their relevance to our understanding of rewriting as a phenomenon has not sufficiently been explored. In other words, biblical scholarship has framed certain issues in such a way as to highlight valuable points that have not received the same attention in studies of (extrabiblical) rewriting. The following discussion is organized around a distinction between two types of evidence for revision and reuse in books of the Bible. As

16

17

See Molly M. Zahn, “Innerbiblical Exegesis – The View from beyond the Bible,” in Gertz et al., The Formation of the Pentateuch, 107–20. On Fishbane’s focus on MT, see n. 24.

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noted in Chapter 1, rewriting (in prototypical cases) has generally been identified via comparison of two texts – that is, both the base text that is rewritten and the new, rewriting text are available to the scholar in some form. The first part of what follows will focus on what such “documented” evidence of rewriting looks like in biblical books, in particular the differences in the nature of the documented evidence for reuse on the one hand and revision on the other.18 It will also consider the vexing issue of direction of dependence, which is one of those topics that seems to have been thematized more in biblical studies and (biblical) textual criticism than in other subfields. Beyond documented cases, though, biblical scholars have identified myriad instances of rewriting within biblical books on the basis of literary evidence alone – that is, tensions, contradictions, and other signs of diachronicity detectable on a text’s surface, without having access to any earlier version or prior source. The identification of such instances, of course, is the bread and butter of traditional literary-historical study of the Bible, which in turn has generally been regarded as a discipline separate from that of the study of post-biblical literature (including rewritten texts). But this distinction is gradually breaking down. The latter part of the following discussion explores the connections that scholars are making between these “non-documented” cases of rewriting and documented examples. In light of recent interest from biblical scholars in the idea of “empirical models,” I consider some of the ways documented cases of revision and reuse (both within and beyond the Hebrew canon) might profitably change the way we think about reconstructing the literary history of biblical books prior to our earliest manuscript evidence.

Documented Cases of Reuse in Biblical Books Like all cases of reuse, instances of reuse within the corpus of biblical books involve the production of a new text on the basis of an older one. Since this new text does not take the place of the older one, many documented cases of reuse can be noted even within a single version of

18

The term “documented” is used by Carr, Formation of the Hebrew Bible, esp. 37–101; documented cases of textual growth are often referred to in the literature as “empirical models,” following the title of Tigay’s famous edited volume: Jeffrey H. Tigay, ed., Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985). See now also Person and Rezetko, Empirical Models Challenging Biblical Criticism.

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the Hebrew Bible, such as MT. For example, we can identify the books of Chronicles as a large-scale reuse of Samuel-Kings because Samuel-Kings is also preserved for us within the canon. The same basic relationship can be seen in various parts of the pentateuchal legal corpus, for example in the reuse of the Covenant Code by both Deuteronomy and the Holiness Code.19 Another frequently cited example is Exod 34:11–26, a legal pericope that seems clearly to draw on earlier materials from across the Pentateuch (Exod 23:14–17; Deut 16:1–17; and various priestly passages).20 Other fairly obvious instances of reuse might be the double appearance of the Decalogue in Exodus and Deuteronomy; the repetition in Deuteronomy 1–9 of various narrative materials from Exodus and Numbers; the parallels between Psalm 18 and 2 Samuel 22; or Isaiah 36–39 and 2 Kings 18–20; or Jeremiah 52 and 2 Kgs 24:18–25:30. Now, some qualifications are in order here. First, while it is often easy to recognize cases where one text has reused another, the question of which text has reused which (that is, which version is earlier and which is later) is not always so simple and often prompts vigorous debate. As we will see, this is certainly not an issue unique to cases of reuse, either in biblical books or more generally. I will say more on this issue of direction of dependence in a later section of this chapter. Second, here we should recall the discussion of the possibility of multiple hands or stages of rewriting in Chapter 1. By mentioning the above examples as cases of reuse, I do not mean to imply that these are all cases where Composition X has simply drawn on Composition Y, in the same forms that we now find those compositions in our Bibles. For one thing, even if Composition X did draw upon Composition Y as a whole, that does not mean that the form or edition of Composition Y known by the composer of Composition X necessarily corresponds to the form(s) preserved for us today. So, for instance, the authors of Chronicles seem to have worked with a text of Samuel that more closely resembles that preserved in 4QSama than that of the MT.21 For another, though we can sometimes see that a particular textual unit has been reused, that does not mean that the later 19

20

21

On the reuse of the Covenant Code by Deuteronomy and the Holiness Code, see especially Levinson, Deuteronomy; Jeffrey Stackert, Rewriting the Torah: Literary Revision in Deuteronomy and the Holiness Legislation, FAT 52 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007). See especially Shimon Bar-On (Gesundheit), “The Festival Calendars in Exodus XXIII 14–19 and XXXIV 18–26,” VT 48 (1998): 161–95; Carr, “Method in Determination of Direction of Dependence.” For an overview, with literature, see Knoppers, 1 Chronicles 1–9, 70.

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composition (Composition X) actually took that unit from Composition Y; it may have been taken from another source or even have been known independently.22 To stay with the example of Chronicles, the appearance of parts of Psalms 105, 96, and 106 in 1 Chr 16:8–36 does not necessarily mean that the Chroniclers found these in a collection that looked like the book of Psalms now known to us, or even in a written text.23 Thus, even when we see parallels between two biblical texts and can posit a relationship of reuse between them, numerous complicating factors should be kept in mind.

Documented Cases of Revision in Biblical Books If identifying reuse in biblical texts is fairly straightforward (aside from the issue of direction of dependence), isolating documented cases of revision “within the Bible” presents a slightly different set of issues. Since revision involves changes made in the course of producing a new copy of a given text, documented cases of revision can only be identified by comparing multiple versions of the same text. Unlike reuse, then, one could not isolate a documented instance of revision on the basis of MT (or any other single version) alone. Instead, the extensive documented evidence for revisions in biblical texts results from comparison of the traditional Hebrew of MT with the LXX/OG, SP, the Qumran biblical manuscripts, and other versions. Such comparison shows that pluriformity, rather than stability, was the rule: the majority of manuscripts dating prior to 70 CE show differences from the consonantal text of MT. Such differences, as we have seen, range from orthographic and morphological variation, through small and moderate additions, omissions, substitutions, and rearrangements, to the major reshapings and additions evident in texts like MT Jeremiah, 4Q(Reworked) Pentateuch C, and the Greek versions of Daniel and Esther. It may seem self-evident that this manuscript variation constitutes our only documented evidence for “biblical” examples of revision. Such, however, has not always been the case: a sort of MT-hegemony widespread among biblical scholars and text critics has meant that evidence 22

23

It is to be assumed that such work went on in, or was informed by, the contexts of group study and performance described in Chapter 1. Thus, it is likely that some of this reuse was “oral” in the sense of being accessed from memory rather than from a written exemplar. For more on this example, see Chapter 6.

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from manuscripts and versions of biblical books has often been regarded as not really biblical. Fishbane’s study of innerbiblical exegesis seems to have set the tone here: while Fishbane readily recognizes that similar phenomena occur in the versions and in Qumran manuscripts, he strongly implies that innerbiblical exegesis is defined as interpretive rewriting attested in MT itself.24 Later scholars have had to struggle to disrupt this tendency to equate biblical with MT: in a 2012 survey article on innerbibical interpretation, Yair Zakovitch asks, referring to non-MT witnesses, “Is exegesis that is incorporated into these different versions inner-biblical or extrabiblical exegesis?”25 Zakovitch does not really answer the question.26 Yet this equation of biblical with MT is indefensible. If we use the term biblical at all for Second Temple texts, I would argue that the only responsible use is as shorthand for the group of compositions that were later collected into the Bible (or perhaps we should say into the Bibles, recognizing the differences between the Hebrew, Greek, and other canons). Knowing what we know about the textual fluidity of the period, to privilege only one specific form of each of those compositions as alone truly biblical can have no justification, and shows the influence of a later canonical perspective.27 Thus, looking for biblical cases of revision and 24

25

26

27

This restriction is not (as far as I can see) articulated explicitly, but can be deduced from a number of Fishbane’s formulations in Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel. Thus for example he draws a contrast on p. 57 (pertaining to the scribal nature of certain glosses) between “the Ben Sira and Qumran manuscripts” (in context, 1QIsaa) and, on the other hand, “inner-biblical examples” – thus implying that examples found in 1QIsaa do not count as “inner-biblical.” See also the distinction between “inner-biblical parallels” and “text versions” on p. 64. Fishbane occasionally refers to readings found in LXX/OG or other versions, but they are not regarded as examples of innerbiblical exegesis; LXX/OG readings are referred to either as evidence for an earlier reading vis-à-vis MT (thus helping to isolate the exegetical material in MT; e.g., p. 69) or, in cases where LXX/OG appears to preserve a later reading than MT, as examples of the continuing exegetical tradition that developed out of that attested in the MT itself (e.g., 77; 220–21). Yair Zakovitch, “Inner-biblical Interpretation,” in A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism, ed. Matthias Henze (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 35. Instead, he notes that “the Masoretic version is not a more ancient or original one and that comparing it with other biblical witnesses helps us to discover interpretative additions also within it” (“Inner-biblical Interpretation,” 35). Thus, while other witnesses are identified as “biblical,” the emphasis remains on the MT as the primary locus for innerbiblical interpretation. One formulation by Kratz makes this point, but at the same time shows the difficulty of avoiding canonically inflected language: He begins by correctly noting that “Textual transmission and translation are not extrabiblical analogies in the strict sense, but rather examples of innerbiblical exegesis, although those with external evidence.” But in the very next sentence he undercuts the force of this observation: “They [sc., such

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reuse (that is, looking for cases of revision and reuse within the text histories of Genesis + Exodus + Leviticus, etc.) properly involves the entire manuscript histories of the compositions we, from our later perspective, label as biblical. Versions of, say, Exodus preserved in SP and the 4Q (Reworked) Pentateuch manuscripts – or the Greek versions of Daniel and Esther – are every bit as much a part of this history as the versions included in MT.28

Direction of Dependence Though the types of evidence for documented cases of revision and reuse in the text traditions of biblical books vary, they share the common methodological problem of determining “direction of dependence.” That is, even when we clearly possess two different versions of a text, such that one seems to be rewriting the other, it can be difficult to decide which text is rewriting which. The problem is well-known in the field of textual criticism, which in dealing with different manuscripts and versions of biblical books is concerned with evidence for what I call revision. Text critics have developed a variety of rules of thumb, such as lectio difficilior praeferenda (“the more difficult reading is to be preferred”) and lectio brevior potior (“the shorter reading is the more preferable”), for deciding which out of a set of variant readings likely represents the earlier and which the later reading.29 As Tov points out, such principles might be true enough in terms of general tendencies (i.e., shorter readings may be more often earlier than longer

28 29

examples] are well known to exist inside the Bible as well, independent of the manuscript tradition”; here “inside the Bible” can only mean “inside the MT.” [“Textüberlieferung und Übersetzung sind keine ausserbiblischen Analogien im strengen Sinne, sondern eher Beispiele für die innerbiblische Exegese, allerdings solche mit externer Evidenz. Sie gibt es bekanntlich auch innerhalb der Bibel, unabhängig von der handschriftlichen Überlieferung.”] Kratz, “Innerbiblische Exegese,” 148. See Ulrich, Developmental Composition, passim but especially p. 202. The language of these Latin formulae, with their emphasis on “preference,” points to the traditional goal of biblical textual criticism, namely the recovery of the earliest/best/most original form of the Bible. Not only is such a goal impossible; it also tends to devalue later stages of the compositional process, viewing them only as accretions to be purged. Yet the basic text-critical methodology of comparing readings to determine – when possible – which might be earlier and which later remains crucial, as a means of charting textual history as a window into early Jewish intellectual culture.

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ones), but there are so many exceptions that in practice they afford little help.30 Each case must be evaluated on its own terms. If we are lucky, various types of contextual clues might indicate that one version is earlier than the other. But in many cases, no clear evidence exists to indicate which reading is the earlier one, or the evidence is open to multiple interpretations. Many such instances of “synonymous variants” pertain to minor variations, for example the use of ‫“ וידבר‬and he spoke” instead of ‫“ ויאמר‬and he said.”31 But even some cases of substantial variation can be difficult to judge. For instance, 4QSama contains an entire paragraph pertaining to Nahash, king of the Ammonites, that is absent from the MT, OG, and other versions. Citing the fact that Josephus clearly knew this version of the story (thus it must have circulated fairly widely), some scholars have suggested that the longer version with the additional story about Nahash is more original, and was lost at a relatively early stage due to an eye-skip.32 But the evidence for an eye-skip is not all that compelling here, and others have argued that the paragraph was a later interpretive addition, meant to fill in additional background for the story of Nahash’s dealings with Jabesh-Gilead in 1 Samuel 11.33 The problem of direction of dependence is even more fraught with cases of reuse that involve two biblical texts. Here in principle the issues are the same as for revision in biblical manuscripts: Though one should be able to examine each case for evidence that would indicate which text makes more sense as a rewriting of the other, the evidence can often be construed in multiple ways. Cases of reuse in biblical texts face the added complication that discussion of such instances frequently ends up entangled in larger debates about the dating of biblical sources and the relations of those sources to one another. Treatments of the pentateuchal slave laws

30 31

32

33

Tov, Textual Criticism, 275–81. This occurs, e.g., in SP vs. MT of Exod 7:14; listed by Tov, Textual Criticism, 87. On the phenomenon of synonymous variants, see also Shemaryahu Talmon, “Synonymous Readings in the Masoretic Text,” in Text and Canon of the Hebrew Bible: Collected Studies (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 171–216; Raphael Weiss, “‫חילופי לשונות נרדפים בין נוסחת המסורה ובין הנוסחה השומרונית של התורה‬,” in Studies in the Text and Language of the Bible (Jerusalem: Magness, 1981), 63–189. Frank Moore Cross, “The Ammonite Oppression of the Tribes of Gad and Reuben: Missing Verses from 1 Samuel 11 found in 4QSamuela,” in History, Historiography and Interpretation, ed. H. Tadmor and M. Weinfeld (Jerusalem: Magness, 1983), 148–58; Ulrich, Developmental Composition, 100. Alexander Rofé, “The Acts of Nahash according to 4QSama,” IEJ 32 (1982): 129–33; Alexander Rofé, “4QMidrash Samuel? – Observations Concerning the Character of 4QSama,” Textus 19 (1998): 63–74.

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provide a case in point. Laws on slavery appear in the Covenant Code (Exod 21:2–11), the Holiness Code (Lev 25:39–46), and the Deuteronomic code (Deut 15:12–18). The traditionally dominant dating of the pentateuchal sources would see the Covenant Code as the earliest of the legal sources, with Deuteronomy in the middle, and the Holiness Code latest. Some studies of the slave laws have supported that dating, arguing (convincingly in my view) that the law in Deuteronomy 15 represents a thorough revamping of the Covenant Code’s law, while Lev 25:39–46 responds to elements of both Exodus 21 and Deuteronomy 15.34 But other studies, by authors who argue for a different relationship of the pentateuchal legal corpora, read the evidence differently, arguing in some cases that Deuteronomy’s version rewrites that of Leviticus (for the sequence CC – H – D), and in at least one instance that it is Exodus 21 that preserves the latest version of the law (for the sequence D – H – CC).35 The point here is not to advocate for a particular solution to this particular problem, but to note that much can remain resistant to full explanation even in “documented” cases of reuse. As with cases of revision, some general criteria have been proposed for determining direction of dependence in such instances of reuse.36 But just as with revision, each case should be evaluated on its own terms, without pre-judging based on larger points of view regarding the relative dates of texts. And in many cases, it may simply not be possible to make a firm decision on textual grounds regarding which version is earlier. Considerations of direction of 34

35

36

Bernard M. Levinson, “The Manumission of Hermeneutics: The Slave Laws of the Pentateuch as a Challenge to Contemporary Pentateuchal Theory,” in Congress Volume Leiden 2004, ed. Andre Lemaire, VTSup 109 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 281–324. The strongest arguments for the priority of H to D here are Sara Japhet, “The Relationship between the Legal Corpora in the Pentateuch in Light of Manumission Laws,” in Studies in Bible, 1986, ed. Sara Japhet, ScrHier 31 (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1986), 63–89; Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, AB 3B (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 2251–57. Arguing that the Covenant Code knows and responds to both D and H, see John Van Seters, A Law Book for the Diaspora: Revision in the Study of the Covenant Code (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 82–95. See especially Carr, “Method in Determination of Direction of Dependence,” 123–26. Carr’s proposed criteria for identifying the later of two parallel texts include the presence of allusions to other existing texts or linguistic phenomena associated with multiple texts, additional character speeches, apparent adaptation to later circumstances or ideas, and plusses that can be interpreted as gap-filling. See also my attempt to apply Carr’s criteria: Molly M. Zahn, “Reexamining Empirical Models: The Case of Exodus 13,” in Das Deuteronomium zwischen Pentateuch und Deuteronomistischem Geschichtswerk, ed. Eckart Otto and Reinhard Achenbach, FRLANT 206 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 36–55.

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dependence in cases of reuse can also learn from text criticism to keep complex scenarios in mind: even in cases where reuse is clear, it is not safe to assume that the later text had access to a form of the earlier one that corresponds to what we find in the MT. There is always a reasonable possibility that both texts may have undergone further development, even in light of one another. Clear indications of such activity can be found in the manuscript witnesses to the Decalogue in its Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 versions: each was clearly read and copied in light of the other over the course of several centuries.37 Though in this particular case ample evidence for such coordination is found in the manuscript witnesses, in other cases it may have gone on prior to our earliest manuscripts and thus may or may not be recoverable to us.38

Non-documented Cases of Rewriting and the Quest for “Empirical Models” This mention of textual developments that may not be preserved in the manuscript data brings us to the broader question of non-documented cases of rewriting. Notwithstanding the various examples mentioned above, the vast majority of proposals regarding the textual development of the books of the Hebrew Bible do not involve documented cases where multiple forms of a text are preserved. Instead, they are theoretical reconstructions based on clues embedded in a single version of a text (typically MT). Such clues are the classic building blocks of the diachronic analysis of biblical texts: contradictions, repetitions, changes in style or vocabulary, and so forth. On the basis of these features, biblical scholars over the past three centuries have developed detailed models of the stages by which the books now in our Bibles came into being, stages largely unattested in any manuscript or versional evidence. These models presume the same basic processes of textual manipulation as I am discussing here. Source criticism, for instance, attempts to isolate materials within a given text that had an independent existence prior to being incorporated (with or without revision) into the biblical text – that is, it focuses on reuse 37

38

For many examples, see Eshel and Eshel, “Dating the Samaritan Pentateuch’s Compilation.” See Carr’s comments about the ongoing coordination of Deuteronomy with its parallels in the Tetrateuch: the manuscripts and versions preserve some evidence for this process, but Carr argues it likely began prior to our earliest documented witnesses; Formation of the Hebrew Bible, 102–5.

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of earlier materials in a new context. Redaction criticism, on the other hand, concentrates on identifying elements of the text as secondary vis-àvis an earlier stratum of materials; in this sense, we might say redaction critics are concerned with revision. Some traditionally trained biblicists might be somewhat surprised to see the core techniques of biblical Literarkritik presented as types of rewriting, a phenomenon usually discussed in the context of Qumran scholarship or Second Temple Studies.39 Certainly, my training in precisely those areas leads me to put things this way.40 But here I am building on the convergence of a number of scholarly trends that have all, in different ways, contributed to a weakening of the artificial distinction between biblical and postbiblical literature. One of the key developments is an increased appreciation for the interpretive elements of biblical texts – the degree to which, as Konrad Schmid puts it, the texts of the Hebrew Bible constitute “Auslegungsliteratur.”41 While in the English-speaking world this idea is primarily associated with the work of Fishbane and his predecessors, Schmid notes that it has a very long history in German-speaking biblical scholarship.42 However, even when the interpretive aspects of the work of biblical redactors were noted, earlier scholars tended to denigrate or marginalize such activities in their quest to recover the earliest forms of the text. It was only in the latter part of the twentieth century, with the breakdown of consensus surrounding the Documentary Hypothesis and increasing dissatisfaction with a “great man” approach to the Latter Prophets, that

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The continuity between undocumented stages of the development of biblical texts and what we see in the manuscript record has been asserted most trenchantly by Eugene Ulrich, who argues for a gradual evolutionary process from the earliest, oral stages through the compilation and redaction of larger works to the editing and rewriting visible in the Qumran scrolls. See Ulrich, Developmental Composition, esp. 1–9, 42, 201–12; for instance, “Virtually all the books of Scripture are rewritten. The process of the composition of the Scriptures was organic, developmental, with successive layers of tradition, revised to meet the needs of the historically and religiously changing community” (212). See Brooke’s programmatic essay, George J. Brooke, “The Qumran Scrolls and the Demise of the Distinction between Higher and Lower Criticism,” in Campbell et al., New Directions in Qumran Studies, 26–42. Konrad Schmid, Literaturgeschichte des Alten Testaments: Eine Einführung (Darmstadt: WBG, 2008), 41. See Schmid’s enormously helpful essay, “Innerbiblische Schriftauslegung: Aspekte der Forschungsgeschichte,” in Schriftauslegung in der Schrift: Festschrift für Odil Hannes Steck zu seinem 65. Geburtstag, ed. Reinhard G. Kratz, Thomas Krüger, and Konrad Schmid, BZAW 300 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2000), 1–22.

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such interpretive activity began to be “rediscovered” and evaluated more positively.43 Of course, by this time, the Qumran discoveries were beginning to be published, gradually reframing our understanding of the textual culture of ancient Judaism. Another byproduct of the breakdown of the Documentary Hypothesis and the rise of alternative approaches to the study of biblical literature was scholarly interest in “empirical models”: documented examples of textual development that might corroborate the basic presumptions of diachronic analysis and, perhaps, provide guidance in the face of a bewildering profusion of source- and redaction-critical theories. This interest led to increased engagement with bodies of data such as ancient Mesopotamian literature, the biblical versions (in particular LXX/OG and SP), and, as they became available, the biblical and “parabiblical” materials from Qumran.44 The push for a closer relationship between biblical studies “proper” and Qumran studies continues (and of course plays out in a number of ways that go beyond a desire for empirical models or even an interest in rewriting).45 Thus, it is starting to become more normal to imagine the earlier, nondocumented stages of the composition of the books of the Bible as part of the same conceptual universe as the cases of revision and reuse attested in Qumran manuscripts and other Second Temple witnesses.46 This, it is easy to see, is a development of which I thoroughly approve. However, the use of documented cases of revision and reuse as models or examples for non-documented reconstructions is still a work in progress. As spectacularly as these documented cases demonstrate that a long and complex

43 44

45

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Schmid, “Innerbiblische Schriftauslegung,” 4–9. Besides Tigay’s Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism and Person and Rezetko’s Empirical Models Challenging Biblical Criticism (and the literature cited there), see also e.g. Stephen A. Kaufman, “The Temple Scroll and Higher Criticism,” HUCA 53 (1982): 29–43; Carr, Formation of the Hebrew Bible, 3–149. See for example the concern to include sessions on Qumran/Second Temple literature in the recent pair of conferences stemming from the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies research group “Convergence and Divergence in Pentateuchal Theory,” now published as Jan C. Gertz et al., The Formation of the Pentateuch: Bridging the Academic Cultures of Europe, Israel, and North America, FAT 111 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016); also the recent thematic issue of Dead Sea Discoveries, “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hebrew Bible” (DSD 20, no. 3 [2013]), and the inclusion of an essay on the significance of Second Temple traditions in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of the Pentateuch (Joel Baden and Christophe Nihan, eds.). On which, see especially Teeter, “Hebrew Bible and/as Second Temple Literature,” 351–58.

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compositional history was standard for ancient Israelite and Jewish texts, they equally suggest that a heavy dose of caution is in order. For one thing, documented instances of revision and reuse can provide a range of examples of the kinds of things scribes did with texts, but they can never fully demonstrate the correctness of a given approach. Take, for example, redaction criticism: documented cases support the basic tenet of redaction criticism, that texts could be expanded and updated, often substantially, in the course of their transmission. In fact, some have used such evidence to argue for the superiority of redaction criticism over other approaches to biblical texts.47 But the fact that we have many documented cases of revision/redaction does not directly allow us to conclude that a redactional model is the best or only option in the case of every biblical text. Not only do we also have documented cases of other kinds of textual transformation, such as the incorporation of material from diverse sources, but we perhaps also must not take for granted that analogical arguments based on documented cases are even justified. This has been an issue for pentateuchal theory in particular, where some scholars argue that the Pentateuch is distinctive, perhaps even sui generis, in its preservation of contradictory traditions, and that therefore empirical models do not really apply.48 I would submit that, even if some aspects of the compilation and transmission of the Pentateuch are distinctive (such as the juxtaposition and preservation of contradictory narrative and legal material), the documented instances of revision within the manuscript histories of pentateuchal books make it highly likely that other moments of revision (that is, redaction) occurred for which we no longer have any documentation. Be that as it may, however, the whole idea of using documented cases as empirical models suffers when one attempts to move beyond generalities to specific reconstructions of textual development. To continue with the example of redaction criticism, documented cases of revision demonstrate the plausibility of a text undergoing multiple rounds of revision and expansion in the course of its composition. But these documented cases are of little help when it comes to adjudicating between the profusion of specific reconstructions of the redaction history of a given pericope. 47

48

E.g., Reinhard G. Kratz, “Reworked Pentateuch and Pentateuchal Theory,” in Gertz et al., The Formation of the Pentateuch, 524. See especially Seth L. Sanders, “What if There Aren’t Any Empirical Models for Pentateuchal Criticism?,” in Schmidt, Contextualizing Israel’s Sacred Writings, 281–304; similarly, Jeffrey Stackert, A Prophet Like Moses: Prophecy, Law, and Israelite Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 21n67.

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The problem, in fact, goes even deeper: it is not only that documented cases can’t help us decide the merits of particular redaction-critical proposals (or source-critical ones, for that matter); they in reality suggest that, in the absence of manuscript evidence, we may never be able to accurately reconstruct the textual histories of books in the Bible. Documented cases of revision and reuse raise serious methodological questions for both source and redaction criticism, insofar as they suggest that the specific contours of any given case of rewriting would rarely be reconstructable in the absence of the source text. We can describe fairly specifically, for example, how Chronicles rewrites Samuel-Kings because we can compare the two. If we tried to reconstruct Samuel-Kings on the basis of Chronicles, however, we would surely miss the mark widely. (The same point was made long ago by Steven Kaufman regarding the Pentateuch and the Temple Scroll.)49 Similarly, some documented glosses or revisions might be identifiable as such on the basis of literary evidence even if no earlier version were preserved – but many would not be. The larger issue here is that traditional literary criticism relies on indications of diachronicity preserved in the text as we have it – those tensions that represent “discernible traces” of a text’s literary history. It has periodically been asked whether the standard discernible traces that scholars use really do reliably indicate textual development.50 But on the other end of the spectrum, the documented cases that we do have show that scribal intervention does not always leave discernible traces – sometimes glosses and alterations are integrated so smoothly that we would not necessarily be able to guess that the text did not originate all in one go.51 This is the flip side of the methodological issue raised in Chapter 1 regarding the impossibility of ruling out that a given text was produced via rewriting. Although rewriting was likely a pervasive element of textual composition, it cannot reliably be detected, let alone described in detail, without access to the source. Thus, in broad perspective, the impact of documented cases of revision and reuse on the scholarly enterprise of reconstructing non-documented cases is decidedly mixed. On the one hand, they demonstrate that early Jewish literary and religious texts, as a rule, had complex histories of

49 50

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Kaufman, “Temple Scroll and Higher Criticism,” 42. This is the thrust of many of the contributions to Person and Rezekto, Empirical Models Challenging Biblical Criticism. Kaufman, “Temple Scroll and Higher Criticism,” 34; Carr, Formation of the Hebrew Bible, 134.

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development. The works that ended up in the Bible are no exception, in the stages of development that we have access to in manuscript form, which suggests that the same would hold true in earlier stages as well.52 But on the other hand, documented cases actually challenge traditional scholarly confidence in our ability to offer detailed reconstructions of each stage. Taking this data seriously means acknowledging that we will not be able to say as much as we might like about the compositional history of biblical books.53 All this being said, however, I do not think the picture is wholly negative at all. Documented cases of revision and reuse should open our eyes to the complexity (and the fundamental irrecoverability) of texts’ literary histories. But they also allow us to refine our understanding of how scribes work, and reimagine the compositional process behind the books of the Bible in light of what we can see happened elsewhere.54 In other words, documented cases may challenge many aspects of traditional Literarkritik, but they also can suggest new things to look for. Research along these lines is just beginning, but some promising work has been done. In his recent book, The Formation of the Hebrew Bible, David Carr discusses a series of “documented cases of transmission history” and then explores how we might use documented cases to identify nondocumented ones. He highlights the prominent scribal interest in harmonizing or coordinating parallel materials, noting that the documented cases preserved in the manuscript record are likely “the tip of the iceberg” of a larger phenomenon. As likely, but non-documented, instances – both occurring in contexts where multiple documented instances of coordination are preserved – he mentions parts of the Tabernacle instructions revealed by God to Moses in Exodus 25–30, and the Ptinged recollection of the Reed Sea miracle in Josh 24:6–7a.55 Carr’s student Sara Milstein studies the phenomenon of “revision through introduction” as attested in ancient Mesopotamian and Hebrew literature. She then provides new analyses of two biblical pericopes (Judges 6–9 and 19–21), demonstrating that the same techniques were very likely used in

52

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Compare Ulrich’s comments on the use of documented evidence as a basis on which “we can plausibly reconstruct some aspects of the early history of the texts”; Developmental Composition, 42. Carr, Formation of the Hebrew Bible, 4. See my attempt to balance these two issues in Zahn, “Scribal Revision and the Composition of the Pentateuch,” 497–500. Formation of the Hebrew Bible, 104, 134–35.

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the composition of these units even though no manuscript documentation (what she calls “hard evidence”) is available.56

4 conclusion In this chapter I have aimed to reframe our image of rewriting that takes place “in the Bible” in terms of revision and reuse, a reframing that allows us to move beyond artificial limitations imposed by canonically inflected labels and to see more clearly how biblical examples might fit into the larger landscape of rewriting in the Second Temple period. Once this is done, we can see how discussions taking place in biblical studies in fact have been engaging issues relevant to the study of Second Temple rewriting, and vice versa. The observations made here regarding biblical texts, of course, draw on my own study of Second Temple/Dead Sea Scrolls materials, but at the same time the insights or types of frameworks that engage biblical scholars can help us understand and contextualize nonbiblical rewritings as well. Thus several of these observations will recur in the following chapters. Distinguishing Revision from Reuse. The key difference between revision and reuse is in the context in which the rewriting occurs, either in a new/expanded copy of a work (revision), or in a new composition (reuse). The old debate about how to distinguish Bible from Rewritten Bible was really about how to articulate the difference between revision and reuse, but the canonical frame of reference confused the issue and prevented the insights gained from being extended to other groups of texts. In reality, all rewriting can be described as revision or reuse, and examples of both types occur both within and outside what is now the canon.57 In fact, the distinction between revision and reuse is arguably more meaningful, at least from the perspective of rewriting, than canonical or other types of group boundaries. The multiple textual forms of books like Jeremiah or Ezekiel are more similar (as examples of revision) to something like the multiple textual forms of the Community Rule than to Chronicles (as an example of reuse). Textual Histories and Clusters of Traditions. Another helpful way of looking at the data that is obscured when canonical boundaries are imposed pertains to groups of related traditions. Labels like innerbiblical

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Milstein, Tracking the Master Scribe. See the chart in Zahn, “Innerbiblical Exegesis,” 119.

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exegesis and Rewritten Bible cut certain of these traditions off from others to which they are closely related topically or thematically. We have seen that documented cases of revision preserved in the manuscripts and versions of biblical books have sometimes been seen as something different from cases preserved within the MT itself. This in itself is problematic enough, but the problem is compounded when canonical boundaries impede the discussion of larger genres or constellations of tradition.58 By this I mean the entire cluster of texts concerning a particular event, book, or figure, whether they take the form of revisions or reuse. For example, we might consider under the rubric of “Ezekiel traditions” not only the MT and p967 versions of the book of Ezekiel, but also the so-called 4Qpseudo-Ezekiel manuscripts from Qumran (4Q385, 386, 388, 391), as well as (if we had them) sources or earlier traditions incorporated into Ezekiel.59 These different instantiations of Ezekiel traditions would have been transmitted together in varying degrees and may well have influenced each other along the way.60 As we will see, such a conceptualization of textual clusters corresponds to what we see among the Qumran manuscripts for other compositions, such as Jubilees and the Community Rule (S). In both of these cases, we have a variety of witnesses that seem to involve both revision and reuse, including multiple forms of Jubilees and S themselves, bits of possible source materials, and possible later rewritings.61 Imagining the familiar forms of the texts in our Bibles in this “vertical” sense, as individual points in a cluster of related traditions handed on over time, frees them from later canonical perspectives and allows us to compare them more directly to other Second Temple literature.62 58 59

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For the terminology of “constellations,” see Najman, “Idea of Biblical Genre.” On Ezekiel in p967, see Lilly, Two Books of Ezekiel. For Pseudo-Ezekiel, see Zahn, “Prophecy Rewritten”; Anja Klein, “Resurrection as Reward for the Righteous: The Vision of the Dry Bones in Pseudo-Ezekiel as External Continuation of the Biblical Vision in Ezekiel 37.1–14,” in ‘I Lifted My Eyes and Saw’: Reading Dream and Vision Reports in the Hebrew Bible, ed. Elizabeth R. Hayes and Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 196–220. Mladen Popović, “Prophet, Books and Texts: Ezekiel, Pseudo-Ezekiel and the Authoritativeness of Ezekiel Traditions in Early Judaism,” in Popović, Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism, 227–51. For details, see Chapter 4. As I will stress there, the fragmentary preservation of many of the manuscripts makes it very difficult to determine in many cases whether we are dealing with revision or reuse. Some of this work is done in the new series La Bibliothèque de Qumrân, which does not separate “nonbiblical” or “parabiblical” compositions from “biblical” ones, but presents them together; thus for example variant manuscripts of Deuteronomy are presented

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Direction of Dependence. Difficulties in determining which version of a given text is the earlier one have gotten much more attention in discussions of biblical texts – whether by literary-historical critics or text critics – than in studies of other Second Temple rewriting. It is clear that this once again goes back to certain canonically oriented presuppositions. Discussions of Rewritten Bible have generally taken for granted that this was a postbiblical phenomenon: Jubilees, for example, is seen as obviously later than the Pentateuch, so direction of dependence is not much of an issue.63 While I would certainly agree that prototypical examples of reuse like Jubilees, the Temple Scroll, and the Genesis Apocryphon all knew and drew on something that looked a lot like the Pentateuch as we know it, more attention to the problem of determining direction of dependence would help those of us studying rewriting to approach the data with a more open mind. For one thing, even in prototypical cases of reuse that are demonstrably later than their now-biblical source texts in general terms, attention to direction of dependence helps us keep complex scenarios and multiple stages of rewriting in mind. For another, as we expand the idea of rewriting from a genre of biblical interpretation to a set of related strategies applied to many types of text, we may find issues of direction of dependence less easy to resolve.64 Ultimately, as text criticism

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alongside the 4Q(Reworked) Pentateuch manuscripts, the Temple Scroll, and works of sectarian halakhah. This novel arrangement makes it easy to see the trajectories along which texts and traditions related to books of the Bible developed. In other ways, however, it seems further to entrench canonical perspectives. For one thing, texts of biblical manuscripts are only printed if they differ substantially from the text of the MT, meaning the MT continues to function as a (literally invisible) norm or standard rather than as one witness among others. For another, the presentation of nearly the entirety of the Qumran corpus according to the canonical order of the Hebrew Bible tends to give the impression that this rich literature, in all its diversity, is reducible to a commentary on the (later) canon. Among other difficulties, it obscures the degree to which certain non-biblical texts, like 1 Enoch or S, themselves sponsored the development of clusters of related materials. For an explanation of the principles of the series, see the editors’ introductions in Katell Berthelot et al., La Bibliothèque de Qumrân 1: Torah: Genèse (Paris: Cerf, 2008), and Katell Berthelot et al., La Bibliothèque de Qumrân 3A: Torah: Deutéronome et Pentateuque dans son ensemble (Paris: Cerf, 2013). Relatedly, against the typical conclusion that the Enochic Book of the Watchers knows and comments on Genesis 1–11, see Ida Fröhlich’s argument that it is Genesis that knows and reacts to the Enoch traditions: Ida Fröhlich, “Origins of Evil in Genesis and the Apocalyptic Traditions,” in Apocalyptic Thinking in Early Judaism: Engaging with John Collins’ The Apocalyptic Imagination, ed. Sidnie White Crawford and Cecilia Wassén, JSJSup 182 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 141–59. See for example the discussion of Jubilees and the Community Rule in Chapter 4.

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reminds us, direction of dependence must be decided on the basis of evidence for every individual case of rewriting. Documented vs. Non-Documented. Though the use of literary-critical methodologies to reconstruct earlier stages in a work’s textual history is best known from biblical studies, most of the major texts discovered at Qumran have been subject to the same types of analysis. In the early years of Scrolls scholarship, key texts, like the Community Rule, the Hodayot, the War Scroll, and the Temple Scroll, were known only from one relatively well-preserved copy.65 Scholars developed source- or redaction-critical theories for their composition on the basis of the same kinds of literary and stylistic tensions detected in biblical texts. Then, with the publication of the Cave 4 manuscripts, new, concrete evidence pertaining to the textual histories of all of these compositions became available. Though sometimes the Cave 4 manuscripts supported or at least did not contradict earlier theories, in all cases they provided new evidence for textual development that scholars could not have anticipated on the basis of the single well-preserved copies alone. The point here is not that hypothetical reconstruction is never justified, but that it will remain just that – hypothetical – and that evidence from manuscripts will reveal further instances of rewriting that source- and redaction-oriented analyses did not predict. This chapter shows how thinking generically, in terms of revision and reuse, instead of canonically, allows us better to appreciate the wealth of evidence for rewriting found within the mass of texts and versions that make up Hebrew Scripture. The perspectives gained here will help integrate the evidence from another underexplored body of data pertaining to rewriting: early Jewish literature not directly related to the Bible.

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In the case of TS, remnants of another copy were known early on, but that copy (11Q20) showed minimal differences from the “a” copy (11Q19).

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4 Beyond “Rewritten Bible” Revision and Reuse in the Temple Scroll, Jubilees, and Qumran Sectarian Works

As we have seen, the scholarly conversation about rewriting has been intertwined from the outset with study of the textual and reception history of the books that ended up in the Bible. Whether in the form of variant editions of biblical books or “Rewritten Bible” compositions that creatively redeployed biblical texts, rewriting has generally been approached through the lens of scriptural interpretation. It is not as if there are not good reasons for this approach: the various manuscripts of biblical books and the works viewed as paradigmatic examples of Rewritten Bible represent perhaps the clearest and most extensive body of ancient Jewish manuscript data illustrating the ways scribes manipulated existing texts. And without doubt much of this manipulation serves interpretive concerns and deserves a prominent place in discussions of the history of biblical exegesis. Yet the close association of rewriting with the transmission and interpretation of the books that ended up in the Bible seems at times to reflect scholarly presumptions more than the full range of available data.1 For instance, the association is reinforced by the observation that it is precisely the authority of these materials that caused them to be subjected to continual updating, rewriting, and exegetical reflection – after all, one does not spend energy revising and rewriting texts that are not significant!2 As true as such an observation might be, it can lead us astray 1

2

See the comments on Rewritten Bible by Hindy Najman and Eibert Tigchelaar, “Unity after Fragmentation,” RevQ 26 (2014): 495–500, as well as the programmatic observations by Campbell, “Rewritten Bible: A Terminological Reassessment,” 69–73. See in particular Brooke, “Between Authority and Canon,” 98: “the tendency for almost all extant scriptural traditions to be matched by interpretative reworkings in the precanonical period may indicate that rewriting and reworking were normally or usually

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if accompanied by the idea that the texts now in the Hebrew Bible held a unique prestige and authority in the late Second Temple period. In fact, the evidence of the Qumran scrolls shows that the revision and reuse most familiar to us from manuscripts of biblical books and related compositions also took place in the course of transmission of many other texts. If being subject to revision and reuse was a sign of a text’s prestige, we must reckon with the fact that there seem to have been many more texts prestigious enough to be rewritten than merely those later included in the Hebrew Bible. This chapter will show how “non-biblical” texts were revised and reused in much the same ways as the texts now in the Bible were. Two groups of examples will help illustrate this point. First, I will discuss evidence for revision and reuse of texts that have generally been considered from the perspective of their own reuse of biblical texts. Focusing on two prototypical Rewritten Bible texts, the Temple Scroll and Jubilees, I will approach them not in terms of the ways their composers appear to manipulate the texts of the Pentateuch, but as works that were themselves subject to revision and reuse. I will also highlight evidence that the rewriting engaged in by the authors of TS and Jubilees involved more than the texts that later became biblical; in other words, the manuscripts indicate that each also drew upon other texts, some of which evidence rewriting themselves. In the second part of the chapter, I will discuss evidence for revision and reuse in manuscripts produced by the yahad. _ The long-standing scholarly distinction between “biblical,” “nonsectarian,” and “sectarian” manuscripts means we are not used to thinking of yahad texts as the same type of thing as the so-called biblical and _ parabiblical materials, and as a result there has been a tendency to ask different kinds of questions of each group.3 Yet core sectarian texts like the Community Rule (S), the War Scroll (M), and the Hodayot (H) demonstrably reflect the same types of scribal revision and reuse as are found in texts we associate with the Bible.

3

carried out on compositions that carried some authority.” Similarly, Najman (“Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Period,” 463) has spoken of texts with an “excess of vitality” which is demonstrated through their giving rise to new texts: “To acknowledge certain texts as scriptural is to recognize them as possessing an excess of vitality, more life than ordinary texts, and it is the nature of life to generate life, to sustain and reproduce itself. Insofar as scripture is authoritative, it is also generative.” For similar observations, see Charlotte Hempel, “Sources and Redactions in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Growth of Ancient Texts,” in Grossman, Rediscovering the Dead Sea Scrolls, 164–66.

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The evidence for revision and reuse discussed below is drawn almost entirely from comparison of multiple Qumran manuscripts. This is not the only type of evidence that could be used for this kind of discussion. As noted in Chapter 3, biblical scholars have long used the literary features of a single text as clues to that text’s compositional history, and from the earliest phases of Qumran scholarship the same techniques were applied to newly discovered works. Proposals for multistage textual histories, whether involving the incorporation of pre-existing sources or signs of redactional activity, have been made regarding essentially all of the major texts I engage with here (Jubilees, TS, S, the Damascus Document [D], M, and H). But theories of textual development based only on internal literary features are unable to tell us exactly how the composers of later manuscripts revised or reused earlier ones, since we don’t actually know what the earlier sources or versions looked like. With the discovery and full publication of the manuscripts from Qumran Cave 4, we now have access to multiple (unfortunately, usually more fragmentary) copies of manuscripts more fully preserved in other caves or settings (Cave 1 for S, M, and H; Cave 11 for TS; the Cairo Geniza for D; later Ethiopic translations for Jubilees), as well as fragments of other, related compositions. Using this fragmentary material is not without frustrations – in particular, as we will see, incomplete preservation often makes it impossible to know precisely how manuscripts related to one another. Nevertheless, the Cave 4 materials provide many concrete examples of rewriting, allowing us to say something specific about how Qumran texts were transmitted and transformed.

1 “rewriting rewritten”: revision and reuse of classic rewritten texts 4 The Temple Scroll and the book of Jubilees, along with a few other works such as the Genesis Apocryphon and Josephus’s Antiquities, have long served as paradigmatic examples of rewriting because of their extensive redeployment of materials known to us from the Hebrew Bible. But rather than simply witnessing a dyadic relationship of interpretive reuse, 4

The section heading quotes the title of chapter 2 of Najman, Seconding Sinai. While Najman uses the phrase with reference to the continuation in Jubilees and the Temple Scroll of the “Mosaic discourse” initiated by Deuteronomy, I stretch it in the other direction as well, to refer to developments in the textual and interpretive histories of Jubilees and the Temple Scroll themselves.

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according to which the authors of the later works reshape existing scriptural material for their own purposes, the manuscript records available for some of these compositions show the ways in which they engaged material other than what ended up in the Bible, and in which they themselves were, in turn, subject to revision and reuse.

Jubilees Jubilees, with its sustained retelling of narratives known from the book of Genesis and the first 19 chapters of Exodus, has typically been studied as a parade example of Rewritten Bible as formulated by Geza Vermes: as the product of a single author who interpretively reworked pentateuchal texts as part of the compositional process.5 In recent years, however, attention has been brought to several ways in which the rewriting associated with Jubilees transcends this dyadic relationship between a single author and an essentially stabilized pentateuchal text. First, various types of evidence suggest that whoever composed Jubilees did not (always) work directly with Genesis and Exodus (in whatever form), but may have drawn some of its rewritten pentateuchal narratives from other existing sources. That is, Jubilees may at times have reused earlier materials that themselves reused pentateuchal texts. Second, the Jubilees manuscripts from Qumran contain hints that the book was revised over time. Third, other manuscript evidence suggests that Jubilees itself was reused in other Second Temple compositions. One approach to identifying earlier sources used in Jubilees (besides Genesis and Exodus) involves attention to internal literary data. Though scholars have tended to read Jubilees as a literary unity, a few publications have drawn attention to contradictions or tensions that might point to a more complex compositional history.6 Michael Segal, for instance, has argued that conceptual differences between the sections of Jubilees that consist of rewritten pentateuchal narratives and those that focus on legal matters or the book’s distinctive chronological framework indicate 5

6

On this point, see Michael Segal, “The Dynamics of Composition and Rewriting in Jubilees and Pseudo-Jubilees,” RevQ 26 (2014): 556; Michael Segal, The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and Theology, JSJSup 117 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 11–14. For the influence of Vermes’s definition, see Najman and Tigchelaar, “Unity after Fragmentation,” 496. Reviewed by VanderKam, Jubilees 1–21, 25–28. VanderKam does not find the evidence for any of these proposals compelling enough to abandon the thesis that Jubilees is an authorial unity.

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102

Beyond “Rewritten Bible”

separate origins for these bodies of material. He proposes that the composer of Jubilees drew the rewritten narratives from existing sources, complemented them with the legal materials, and embedded them in the chronological framework. In other words, for Segal, the composer of Jubilees does not directly reuse Genesis and Exodus, but instead reuses existing rewritings.7 The sources Segal posits for the rewritten narratives in Jubilees are mostly hypothetical; the only indication of their existence is the observation of tensions and contradictions in the text of Jubilees that, in his interpretation, point to the earlier origins of some of the material. Another approach to identifying instances where Jubilees has used earlier sources focuses on observing parallels between Jubilees and other extant texts. Of course, the argument still has to be made as to which of the parallel versions is later, and this has sometimes been a source of much debate, for example in analysis of parallels between Jubilees and the Genesis Apocryphon.8 At other times the evidence is more clear, and in fact provides partial support for Segal’s theory of a separate origin for the rewritten narrative materials in Jubilees.9 Segal demonstrates convincingly that the story of the Watchers in Jub 5:1–12 draws on (and revises) 1 Enoch 10–11 in something close to its current literary form.10 Another example is provided by 4Q227 (published as 4Qpseudo-Jubileesc). This manuscript consists of two fragments, the second of which discusses Enoch in terms very similar to those used in Jubilees 4 (Table 4.1).

7 8

9

10

Segal provides a sketch of his argument in Book of Jubilees, 21–35. For an overview of the various positions here, see Machiela, Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon, 13–16; also VanderKam, Jubilees 1–21, 93–94. Segal’s theory is compelling and, as discussed below, has some manuscript evidence in support of it. My only concern would be with an overly rigid conclusion that, because some of the rewritten narratives in Jubilees can be shown to have a prior source, none of them could have originated with the composer. In cases that do not present clear tensions or contradictions, it is probably impossible to be sure in the absence of more evidence, but there are documented cases elsewhere in which later scribes made further changes of the same kind as revisions already present in their Vorlagen (for example, the large coordinating additions in the Samaritan Pentateuch; see Zahn, “Samaritan Pentateuch,” 293–98). Segal, Book of Jubilees, 115–18. Other indications that the composer of Jubilees knew much of the range of traditions compiled in 1 Enoch are presented by James C. VanderKam, “Enoch Traditions in Jubilees and Other Second-Century Sources,” in From Revelation to Canon: Studies in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Literature, (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 305–31; also VanderKam, Jubilees 1–21, 88–90.

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Table 4.1 4Q227 frag. 2a

1[ 2[ 3[ 4[ 5[ 6[

E]noch after theywe taught him ]?[ ]six jubilees of years e]arth among the children of humankind. And he testified against all of them ] and also against the Watchers. And he wrote all the ]sky and the paths of their host and the [mon]ths ]so that the ri[ghteous] should not err

a

James C. VanderKam and J. T. Milik, “227. 4Qpseudo-Jubileesc,” in Qumran Cave 4.VIII: Parabiblical Texts, Part 1, DJD 13, ed. Harold Attridge et al. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 173. Translation mine, in consultation with the DJD edition.

Similar to 4Q227 line 1, in which Enoch appears to be taught by angels, Jubilees mentions Enoch learning “writing, instruction, and wisdom” (4:17) and being shown earthly and heavenly secrets by the angels (4:21). The reference in line 2 to “six jubilees of years” is also paralleled in Jub 4:21. The idea present in lines 3–4, that Enoch testified against humankind and against the Watchers, occurs in Jub 4:18–19, 22. Finally, that Enoch wrote down astronomical information for the purpose of instructing humanity (“And he wrote all the [. . .] heavens and the paths of their host and the [mon]ths [. . .] [s]o that the ri[ghteous] would not err”; lines 4–6) is expressed in Jub 4:17.11 As Segal notes, the extensive parallels in content and terminology indicate some sort of literary relationship between 4Q227 and Jubilees, though the substantial differences (particularly in sequence) suggest that the material has been thoroughly reworked. Segal, drawing on Dimant, argues that a chronological discrepancy shows that the text of 4Q227 is earlier than Jubilees rather than the other way around. The “six jubilees of years” in 4Q227 (and Jub 4:21) surely reflects the 300 years that Enoch “walked with God” according to Gen 5:22, indicating that this text envisions a jubilee of 50 years (300/6 = 50). Yet the normal chronological 11

For these parallels in chart form, along with further discussion, see Segal, “Dynamics of Composition,” 563–64.

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104

Beyond “Rewritten Bible”

system used throughout Jubilees operates with a jubilee period of 49 years.12 This suggests that the composer of Jubilees did not originate the expression of Enoch’s 300 years with God as “six jubilees of years,” but rather adopted it from an earlier source, namely 4Q227 or a similar text.13 1 Enoch (the Book of the Watchers in particular) and 4Q227, therefore, give strong indications of having been reused by the composer of Jubilees. Not only do they constitute sources that were incorporated into Jubilees, but each shows signs of having been considerably transformed in the process. In other words, whoever produced Jubilees did not simply stitch existing sources together or even just append new material to existing texts, but thoroughly transformed (i.e., rewrote) these sources in the course of composition.14 If other Second Temple texts (besides Genesis and Exodus) were reused by Jubilees, other evidence suggests that Jubilees itself, once it came into existence as a discrete work, was both revised and reused. Again, one type of evidence for revision is literary: over the years, several scholars have proposed redactional models for the composition of Jubilees in which later segments or strata were added to an earlier core.15 Since none of these models has garnered a great deal of scholarly support, the focus here will be on other types of clues found in the ancient Jewish manuscript record. Unfortunately, that record is not as extensive as we might hope: though VanderKam lists 14 manuscripts of Jubilees at Qumran, all are very fragmentary, and many likely did not originally contain the entire

12

13

14

15

For example (used by Segal, “Dynamics of Composition,” 565), Noah’s lifespan is given in Jub 10:16 as “950 years . . . 19 jubilees, two weeks, and five years.” The math works only with a jubilee period of 49 years, not 50 (19 jubilees x 49 years per jubilee = 931; 2 weeks x 7 years per week = 14; 931 + 14 + 5 = 950). With Segal (“Dynamics of Composition,” 565), I find the suggestion that Jubilees means to say Enoch was only “with God” for 294 years (6 x 49) rather implausible, given the Genesis tradition of 300 years. See for example VanderKam, Book of Jubilees (2001), 33; VanderKam, Jubilees 1–21, 256–57. In this sense, it is significant that Segal moves from talking about the “redactor” of Jubilees in his 2007 book to the “composer” of Jubilees in his 2014 article (“Dynamics of Composition,” 558–59). Notable among these is the view of James Kugel, who attends to many of the same tensions and contradictions as observed by Segal, but explains them as the result of discrepancies between a basic version of Jubilees and the work of a later “Interpolator” who sought to correct the earlier version, in particular by stressing that Israel’s legal practices originated from the Heavenly Tablets. For an overview see James Kugel, “The Compositional History of the Book of ‘Jubilees,’” RevQ 26 (2014): 517–37. On other redactional proposals, see James C. VanderKam, “Jubilees as the Composition of One Author?,” RevQ 26 (2014): 501–16.

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work.16 Yet a few of these manuscripts do preserve evidence suggesting that Jubilees was revised in the course of its transmission. For instance, 4Q217 contains in frags. 1–2 words and phrases reminiscent of the Prologue of Jubilees as well as Jub 1:29 as known from the standard Ethiopic version, but seems considerably shorter than both. Tigchelaar observes that most of the preserved words in 4Q217 also occur in Jub 1:29, and in the same order.17 Given this correspondence, it seems quite likely that 4Q217 preserves a shorter and likely earlier form of Jub 1:29, which would then, as Tigchelaar suggests, have undergone expansion to produce the form now preserved in the Ethiopic (Table 4.2).18 Another tantalizing, if ambiguous, case occurs in 4Q216. This manuscript contains fragments corresponding to Jubilees 1 on one sheet of leather, and fragments from Jubilees 2 on a second sheet. Parts of both sheets and the stitching that joined them are preserved in frag. 12. Intriguingly, the two sheets are written in two different hands, the first dating to the mid-first century BCE and the second to approximately 125–100 BCE. That is, the writing on the second sheet is considerably older than that on the first sheet. There are of course many possible explanations for this, any of which must take into account the fact that 4Q216 cannot have contained the entire book of Jubilees due to its relatively few lines per column.19 The original editors proposed that the newer first sheet represented a repair made to an older manuscript: the original first sheet was damaged, so it was removed and its columns were recopied on a new sheet, which was then attached to the manuscript.20 But others have suggested that we perhaps have here evidence for the growth of Jubilees;

16

17

18

19

20

Eibert Tigchelaar, “The Qumran ‘Jubilees’ Manuscripts as Evidence for the Literary Growth of the Book,” RevQ 26 (2014): 582. Following Tigchelaar, “Qumran Jubilees Manuscripts,” 587. Note that the DJD edition presents frags. 1 and 2 separately (VanderKam and Milik, “217. 4QpapJubileesb?,” in DJD 13:23–33), but Tigchelaar notes they can tentatively be combined. Tigchelaar, “Qumran Jubilees Manuscripts,” 588. Two other points made by Tigchelaar should be mentioned here. First, additional support for the identification of these fragments with Jub 1:29 comes from the proposed reconstruction of frag. 2 5 as ‫כתו[ב‬ ]‫את כל‬, “wri]te all the[. . .,” which would fit the next verse in Jubilees, 2:1. Second, the remains of 4Q217, with its cursive hand and wide line spacing, make it highly improbable that this was a full copy of Jubilees. As Tigchelaar notes (“Qumran Jubilees Manuscripts,” 588), cursive “is more common for documents, personal copies or for notes.” As Tigchelaar (“Qumran Jubilees Manuscripts,” 583) points out, such short columns would mean 4Q216 would have had well over 100 columns if it contained the entire book. VanderKam and Milik, “216. 4QJubileesa,” DJD 13:1.

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Jub 1:29 (Ethiopic, tr. VanderKam)a

4Q217 frags. 1–2

1. And he (the angel of the presence?) too[k divisions of the times for the law and for[ 106

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Table 4.2 Two versions of Jubilees 1:29

2. the years [ eternity from the creati[on 3. the new[ ]m and all[ until the day w[hen 4. [ Je]rusalem h[] 5. [ ]m[ 6. [ ]dh yh[

a

] the ]

] for all the y[ears] of ] that is] created

]b all the[ ]

]

The angel of the presence, who was going along in front of the Israelite camp, took the tablets (which told) of the divisions of the years from the time the law and the testimony were created – for the weeks of their jubilees, year by year in their full number, and their jubilees from [the time of the creation until] the time of the new creation when the heavens, the earth, and all their creatures will be renewed like the powers of the sky and like all the creatures of the earth, until the time when the temple of the Lord will be created in Jerusalem on Mt. Zion. All the luminaries will be renewed for (the purpose of ) healing, health, and blessing for all the elect ones of Israel and so that it may remain this way from that time throughout all the days of the earth.

Translations of Jubilees follow VanderKam, Book of Jubilees (1989).

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that is, the original manuscript would have begun with Jubilees 2, and later, once chapter 1 had been added to the composition, an additional sheet with that chapter was added to the older manuscript.21 Other cases where Jubilees has been subject to rewriting seem more likely to fall into the category of reuse (i.e., in a new composition) rather than revision (i.e., updates made in the course of copying Jubilees), though the fragmentary evidence makes it impossible to be completely sure. What seems like the clearest case is found in 4Q390, a text consisting primarily of two substantial fragments that has been classified as a “pseudo-Moses” text but also has been associated with 4QApocryphon of Jeremiah C.22 4Q390 is demonstrably not a copy of Jubilees: it is a historical apocalypse that uses the chronological framework of the jubilee period to “predict” events situated in the post-exilic period. As such, it is closely related generically and structurally (and to a lesser extent, terminologically) to 4QApocryphon of Jeremiah C, while displaying some key differences in ideology.23 At the same time, however, 4Q390 shows extensive correspondences with Jubilees in its language and ideas. These correspondences have been charted by Todd Hanneken, who has demonstrated that nearly every phrase in the two best-preserved fragments of 4Q390 has a parallel in Jubilees. Table 4.3 shows some of the most distinctive correspondences.24 Besides these parallels, several ideas or terms distinctive of Jubilees occur in 4Q390, including the use of the “jubilee” as a measure of time and the mention of the “angels of Mastemot” (apparently a development 21

22

23

24

The first to suggest that the newer sheet in 4Q216 might be relevant to the compositional history of Jubilees was Charlotte Hempel, “The Place of the Book of Jubilees at Qumran and Beyond,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context, ed. Timothy H. Lim (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 189–90. The proposal has recently been elaborated upon by Matthew P. Monger, “4Q216 and the State of Jubilees at Qumran,” RevQ 26 (2014): 595–612, and by Tigchelaar, “Qumran Jubilees Manuscripts.” Monger’s and Tigchelaar’s articles both contain some additional possible cases of revision in the transmission history of Jubilees at Qumran. For a review of the history of scholarship surrounding 4Q390, see Kipp Davis, The Cave 4 Apocryphon of Jeremiah and the Qumran Jeremianic Traditions: Prophetic Persona and the Construction of Community Identity, STDJ 111 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 62–68, 180–92. Davis (Apocryphon of Jeremiah, 227) argues that 4Q390 knows and is influenced by but does not necessarily “rewrite” or “rework” 4QApocryphon of Jeremiah C. Though there are numerous overlaps in terminology and ideas, the lexical overlaps between 4Q390 and the 4QApocJer C manuscripts are actually not very extensive. Table 4.3 extracts from the more extensive table assembled by Todd R. Hanneken, “The Status and Interpretation of Jubilees in 4Q390,” in Mason et al., A Teacher for All Generations, vol. 1, 410–13.

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Table 4.3 Use of Jubilees in 4Q390 4Q390 Hebrewa 4Q390 1 6–7

4Q390 1 8–10

‫ואדברה בהמה ואשלחה אליהם מצוה‬ ‫ויבינו בכול אשר עזבו הם ואבותיהם‬

4Q390 English

Jubilees parallels (tr. VanderKam)

And I shall speak to them and send to them a commandment, and they will understand everything which they and their fathers abandoned

I will give you the . . . commandments which I have written so that you may teach them (Jub 1:1) They will not listen until they acknowledge their sins and the sins of their ancestors (Jub 1:22) They abandoned my statutes, my commandments (Jub 1:10) They will forget all my law, all my commandments, and all my verdicts. They will err regarding (4Q216: forget) the new moon, the sabbath, the festival, the jubilee, and the decree. (Jub 1:14) They will abrogate everything and will begin to do evil in my sight (Jub 1:12) Then I will hide my face from them. I will give them over to the nations (Jub 1:13; cf. 1:10) He will deliver them to the sword (Jub 23:22)

they will forget statute and festival and sabbath and covenant, and they will violate everything, and will do what is evil in my sight, and I will hide my face from them and give them over to their enemies, and [I] shall deliver [them up] to the sword

4Q390 2 i 4–5

They will be violating all my statutes and all my commandments which I commanded th[em and sent by the ha]nd of my servants the prophets

4Q390 2 i 8–9

to pursue wealth and profit [and violence, ea]ch man robbing what belongs to his neighbor and each oppressing his neighbor. They shall defile my sanctuary . . .

a

For they will forget all my commandments – everything that I command them . . . they abandoned my statutes, my commandments (Jub 1:9, 10) I will send witnessesb to them so that I may testify to them for cheating and through wealth so that one takes everything that belongs to another . . .. They will defile the holy of holies . . . (Jub 23:21)

109

Devorah Dimant, Qumran Cave 4.XXI: Parabiblical Texts, Part 4: Pseudo-Prophetic Texts, DJD 30 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2001), 237, 245. b In context, these are the prophets of the pre-exilic period; see Hanneken, “Status and Interpretation of Jubilees,” 412.

110

Beyond “Rewritten Bible”

of the presentation in Jubilees of Mastema as the chief angelic opponent of God and Israel). These extensive conceptual and formal parallels strongly suggest that the composer of 4Q390 knew and deliberately drew upon Jubilees. 4Q390 does not appear to closely follow a particular pericope in Jubilees, instead mixing language from different passages, largely in chapters 1 and 23.25 As Hanneken notes, this kind of nonlinear reuse indicates that the language and ideas of Jubilees were firmly embedded (and well-mixed) in the author’s mind.26 Yet the predominance of parallels to Jubilees 1 and 23 also makes sense, since those two chapters are the parts of Jubilees most generically similar to 4Q390, in that they present not the historical review (looking to the past) that dominates the narrative in Jubilees, but a glance toward events yet to come, from the text’s Sinaitic perspective. Furthermore, despite the clear influence of Jubilees, 4Q390 also evinces ideological differences. For instance, in frag. 1 11 and frag. 2 4, 4Q390 states that the demonic Belial and the angels of Mastemot will rule over Israel. Jubilees, by contrast, is adamant about the fact that, despite their threatening presence, Belial, Mastemot, and their minions will never rule over Israel. As Hanneken points out, such differences are exactly what we should expect from rewritings of authoritative texts – and what we do in fact see elsewhere.27

The Temple Scroll Like Jubilees, the Temple Scroll has been approached primarily as the product of a single author creatively interacting with the pentateuchal texts, in this case the pentateuchal legal corpus.28 Yet the manuscripts 25 26 27 28

The reuse thus constitutes a type of pastiche; see Chapter 6. Hanneken, “Status and Interpretation of Jubilees,” 414. Hanneken, “Status and Interpretation of Jubilees,” 422. In this sense, the tone for future study was set by Yadin, who regarded TS as the work of a single author; see his much-cited list of ways in which the author manipulated the pentateuchal source texts: Yadin, Temple Scroll, 1: 71–88. Despite the prominence of the source-critical model initially propounded by Wilson and Wills and accepted in modified form by García Martínez, Schiffman, and Crawford, detailed studies frequently have either rejected the idea of multiple sources (Elledge, Paganini) or accepted the theory but paid little attention to it in their analysis, such that the focus remains on the dyadic relationship between the author of TS/the source and the biblical text (Schiffman, Swanson). See Andrew M. Wilson and Lawrence Wills, “Literary Sources of the Temple Scroll,” HTR 75 (1982): 275–88; Elledge, Statutes of the King; Florentino García Martínez, “Temple Scroll,” in Schiffman and VanderKam,

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point to a more complex story. The evidence is fragmentary and can be construed in different ways, but it seems likely that TS existed in multiple forms – that is, was revised in the course of its transmission. There are also indications that some of the most distinctive elements of TS, including its temple plan, may have originated prior to TS – though in this case, it seems that these elements did not necessarily come from an additional “source” outside of the Pentateuch, but could have already been present in a version of the Pentateuch known to the author of TS.

The Transmission of TS: Precision and Revision? With regard to manuscripts of biblical books, we are accustomed to seeing cases of more or less precise copying (resulting in two manuscripts with few or minor differences), as well as cases of extensive intervention. The same thing seems to have happened in the textual history of the Temple Scroll. We have three manuscript copies of TS: the relatively well-preserved “a” copy, 11Q19; the slightly later 11Q20; and the considerably older and very fragmentary 4Q524.29 The two Cave 11 copies appear to be very closely related: the extant text of 11Q20 is very close to that of 11Q19, presenting no substantive variants and only a handful of orthographic variants (though difficulties in reconstruction imply that

29

Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2: 927–33; Sidnie White Crawford, The Temple Scroll and Related Texts, Companion to the Qumran Scrolls 2 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000); Lawrence H. Schiffman, “The Deuteronomic Paraphrase of the Temple Scroll,” RevQ 15 (1992): 543–67; Schiffman, Courtyards of the House of the Lord; Simone Paganini, “Nicht darfst du zu diesen Wörtern etwas hinzufügen”: Die Rezeption des Deuteronomiums in der Tempelrolle: Sprache, Autoren und Hermeneutik, BZABR 11 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009); Swanson, Temple Scroll and the Bible. An exception is the work of Wise (Critical Study), who attempts to use differences in rewriting technique as evidence for his reconstruction of sources and redactional materials in TS. The strong “biblicism” of many studies on TS has been roundly criticized by Johann Maier, Die Tempelrolle vom Toten Meer und das «Neue Jerusalem», 3rd ed., UTB 429 (Munich: Ernst Reinhardt, 1997), 28–35. The hand of cols. 6–66 of 11Q19 has been characterized as middle Herodian, dating from the end of the first century BCE or early first century CE. (Cols. 2–5 are copied in a slightly later hand, dating to the first half of the first century CE; on the two hands see Yadin, Temple Scroll, 1: 11–12.) 11Q20 shows a late Herodian hand (20–50 CE), while 4Q524 displays “a semicursive hand of the early Hasmonean period, dated c. 150–125 BCE”; see García Martínez, “Temple Scroll,” 2: 927–28. The date of 4Q524 was established by Émile Puech, Textes Hebreux (4Q521–4Q528, 4Q576–4Q579): Qumran Cave 4.XVIII, DJD 25 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 87.

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Beyond “Rewritten Bible”

there may have been some differences).30 In several cases 11Q20 even seems to have been corrected toward a text very similar to that of 11Q19.31 The situation for 4Q524, however, is entirely different. This manuscript is older than the Cave 11 copies by at least 100 years, and even though it is very poorly preserved we can tell that it must have differed substantially from the 11Q19/11Q20 version of TS. Some of the differences involve the presence or absence of large chunks of material. Given that 4Q524 is extremely fragmentary, it’s impossible to know whether or which sections of the version known from 11Q19 were originally present in 4Q524. On the other hand, 4Q524 definitely preserves materials absent from 11Q19. In fact, only 22 of the 39 numbered fragments of 4Q524 can be identified with extant parts of 11Q19. This is not quite as dramatic as it sounds, since most of these fragments are very small, and 11Q19 is missing several lines at the top of every column. One fragment, however, 4Q524 frag. 25, contains parts of eight lines. 4Q524 has quite wide columns, so these eight lines would have covered the better part of a column in 11Q19 – too much material to have been lost in one of the gaps at the top of the scroll. Thus, 11Q19 cannot have contained this material. Also absent in 11Q19 but present in 4Q524 is the law of levirate marriage (4Q524 frag. 21–22 // Deut 25:5–10).32

30

31 32

Florentino García Martínez, Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, and Adam S. van der Woude, Qumran Cave 11.II: 11Q2–18, 11Q20–30, DJD 23 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 365; see also Andrew D. Gross, “Appendix to the Introduction: Problems Noted in Reconstructing 11Q20,” in Schiffman et al., Temple Scroll and Related Documents, 179–81. See García Martínez, Tigchelaar, and van der Woude, DJD 23: 366. Puech (DJD 25: 103–4) reconstructs the law of levirate marriage to have followed directly upon the laws of incest that appear in the final column of 11Q19 (// 4Q524 frags. 15–20), though this reconstruction is uncertain. There is no room for the levirate law at this point in 11Q19, as shown by Lawrence H. Schiffman, “The Unfinished Scroll: A Reconsideration of the End of the Temple Scroll,” DSD 15 (2008): 67–78. Schiffman accepts the theoretical possibility that 11Q19 represents a different recension of TS than the one preserved by 4Q524, but finds this scenario unlikely: “Why would any copyist of any version of the scroll leave the levirate law out when it fits so logically, and if it existed already in an earlier version?” (Schiffman, “The Unfinished Scroll,” 78). Instead, Schiffman prefers the idea that the absence of the levirate marriage laws from 11Q19 results from some sort of scribal accident: either they were unintentionally omitted from the Vorlage of 11Q19 or they were present in the Vorlage but the scribe of 11Q19 neglected to copy them. In my view, Schiffman is too quick to assume continuity between 4Q524 and 11Q19, and overlooks other significant indications of difference between them.

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Besides just the presence or absence of certain materials, however, 4Q524 in at least one case clearly presents the same basic material differently from 11Q19 (Table 4.4). 4Q524 14 2–4 contains a rewriting of Lev 19:16 and Deut 21:22 that also appears in 11Q19 col. 64 and is, as far as we know, unique to the Temple Scroll. Thus, through line 4, 4Q524 can be reconstructed according to 11Q19 (ending with the first half of Deut 21:23, commanding that corpses hanged from a tree must not be left hanging overnight). In line 5, however, the two texts go in different directions, marked here by underlining. 11Q19 continues with the second half of Deut 21:23, noting that the one hung from a tree is “accursed by God and people,” and then proceeds to the next verse of Deuteronomy, 22:1. But 4Q524 does not appear to have contained the second half of verse 23, since at the beginning of line 5 we find the words ‫תלבוש שטנז‬, “you shall [not] wear mixed cloth.” This seems to refer to Deuteronomy 22:11, the prohibition on wearing clothing of mixed wool and linen. This prohibition is not extant in 11Q19, though of course it may have appeared in a lacuna somewhere. It certainly does not appear in what remains of col. 64. What comes next in 4Q524 does not match the text of 11Q19 either. The extant traces in line 6, which appear to read ‫אל זקני עירו‬, “to the elders of his city,” have no parallel in 11Q19 at this point.33 The poor preservation of 4Q524 makes a characterization of its precise textual relationship to the Cave 11 copies of TS difficult. On the one hand, it contains features that tie it closely to 11Q19, including the distinctive sedition law mentioned above, as well as the transition from TS’s kingship law to the laws on priestly prebends that follow (4Q524 6–13 // 11Q19 59:17–60:6).34 On the other hand, it is impossible to know how extensive the correspondences with 11Q19 would have been, and there are the clear

33

34

Puech (DJD 25: 100) tentatively reconstructs this line according to Deut 21:18–21, the law concerning the rebellious son. As Puech notes, however, this reconstruction is problematic since the same law appears in 11Q19 64:2–6, right before the law about the slanderer. Puech has reconstructed 4Q524 14 1 as paralleling the end of this law. The solution to this problem is unclear: might the law about the rebellious son have occurred twice in 4Q524? More likely, either the reference to the elders in line 6 or the statement about “purging the evil from your midst” in line 1 should be reconstructed differently. That the transition from 11Q19 col. 59 to col. 60 is preserved in 4Q524 is especially significant in that it marks a major transition between sections that has also frequently been construed as a transition between sources, from the Law of the King (cols. 57–59) to the surrounding Rewritten Deuteronomy material.

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Table 4.4 Alternate arrangements of material in 11Q19 and 4Q524 11Q19 64:6–13

6

and he shall die. You shall remove the evil from your midst, and all the children of Israel will hear and be afraid. vacat If 7 there is a slanderer among my people, who delivers up my people to a foreign nation and does evil against my people, 8 you shall hang him upon the tree, and he shall die. On the testimony of two witnesses or on the testimony of three witnesses 9 he shall be put to death, and they shall hang him (on) the tree. If there is in a man a sin (resulting in) a judgment of death, and he flees to 10 the midst of the nations and curses my people, (namely) the children of Israel, him also you shall hang on the tree 11 and he shall die. But do not leave their corpses on the tree overnight, but you shall surely bury them on the same day. For 12 accursed by God and people are those hung on the tree, and you shall not make impure the ground that I 13 am giving to you as an inheritance. You shall not see your kinsman’s ox or his sheep or his donkey 14 straying . . .

4Q524 frag. 14

[the evil from] your [midst, and] al[l the chi]ldr[en] of Is[rael will hear and be afraid.(?) 2 If there is] a slanderer among my people, [who delivers up my people to a foreign nation and does evil against my people, you shall hang him upon the tree, and he shall die. On the testimony of two 3 witnesses or on] the testimony of three witnesses [he shall be put to death, and they shall hang him (on) the tree. If there is in a man a sin (resulting in) a judgment of death, and he flees to the midst of the nations 4 and curses my peo]ple, (namely) the children of Israel, [him also you shall hang on the tree and he shall die. But do not leave their corpses on the tree overnight, but you shall surely bury them on the same day.] 5 You shall [not] wear mixed cloth, wo[ol and linen together. If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father or his mother, they shall seize 6 him and bring him out t]o [] the elder[s ]of his city[ and to the gate of his locality . . . ]

1 “Rewriting Rewritten”

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signs of difference mentioned above.35 Given the much earlier paleographic date of 4Q524, we might cautiously assume that it likely represents a text form earlier than that of the 11Q copies.36 But does it constitute an early version of TS, as argued by Puech?37 Or might it not be a copy of TS at all, but rather a copy of some other work (perhaps a rewritten Deuteronomy?) that the composer of TS used as a source?38 A definitive answer seems impossible in light of 4Q524’s poor preservation. This then is one of those cases where it is difficult to be sure whether we are talking about a case of revision (i.e., multiple versions or editions of TS) or reuse (incorporation, with changes, of an existing source in TS). Either way, the differences between 4Q524 and 11Q19 make clear that TS as we know it in its first-century CE form came to be through multiple stages of rewriting – not just rewriting of (some form of ) the pentateuchal text, but also rewriting of that rewriting.

Reuse In, or Of, TS? Another set of data pertaining to the textual history of TS has important implications one way or the other, though problems in determining direction of dependence make it difficult to determine exactly which set of implications apply. Scholars have long noted two major and distinctive overlaps between TS and fragments of 4Q365 (4Q[Reworked] 35

36

37

38

None of the instructions for the temple and its courts or the laws concerning festivals or purity regulations that appear in 11Q19 3–51 are clearly preserved in 4Q524. Puech, in a reconstructional tour de force, identifies 4Q524 frags. 1 and 2 with 11Q19 35:7 and 50:17–20, but given that each fragment preserves only a few letters, this identification must remain tentative. This assumption is usually not made cautiously, but we should be aware that later manuscripts sometimes seem to preserve earlier text-forms, as is the case not only, for example, with the medieval (or even Bar Kochba era) copies of (proto-)MT, but also apparently with the manuscripts of the Community Rule, where the 4Q copies that appear to contain earlier text-forms are paleographically later than 1QS. See below and, e.g., Sarianna Metso, The Serekh Texts, Companion to the Qumran Scrolls 9 (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 17–19. Because of the extremely poor preservation of 4Q524, comparative literary arguments (such as which version of the text seems more likely to constitute a revision of the other) are difficult to make with any confidence. Puech, DJD 25: 85–86. Following Puech’s lead and viewing 4Q524 as an early copy of TS are, e.g., García Martínez, “Multiple Literary Editions,” 367–69; Schiffman, “Unfinished Scroll”; Crawford, Temple Scroll, 14. The strongest expression of the view that 4Q524 represents an earlier source of TS rather than an early version comes from James H. Charlesworth, “Temple Scroll Source or Earlier Edition (4Q524 [4QTb; 4QRT]),” in Schiffman et al., Temple Scroll and Related Documents, 250–51.

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Pentateuch C). The first of these involves the regulations for the Wood Offering, one of several “non-pentateuchal” annual feasts that appear in TS’s calendar. Instructions for the Wood Offering also appear in 4Q365 frag. 23, where they are placed right after Lev 24:1–2. Though 4Q365 introduces the Wood Offering differently from TS, using language reminiscent of Deuteronomy in its association of the feast with the period after the entry into the land, both texts appear to contain the same ritual prescriptions, according to which two tribes bring wood each day for six days (Table 4.5). The second, even more extensive, overlap concerns TS’s instructions for the temple courts in cols. 38 and 41. One large fragment of 4Q365, labeled 4Q365a frag. 2, contains parts of two columns. Col. i preserves substantial parallels to 11Q19 38:9–15, though the texts must have differed somewhat. What is preserved of 4Q365a 2 ii, on the other hand, corresponds nearly verbatim to large portions of 11Q19 41, with the extant parallels stretching over 13 lines in TS. Scholars have struggled to decide what to make of these parallels, in ways that track the history of publication of the Qumran Scrolls over the past several decades. Yadin, aware of the parallels in certain Cave 4 fragments but working before much progress had been made on their study, published what we now know as 4Q365 frag. 23 and 4Q365a frags. 2 and 3 as fragments of an additional copy of TS.39 Yadin was clearly unaware that many more fragments from this same manuscript had been preserved; none of the rest showed any real connection with TS. As noted in Chapter 1, the 4Q365 fragments were published along with the other 4Q(Reworked) Pentateuch manuscripts (4Q364, 366–367) by Emanuel Tov and Sidnie White Crawford in DJD 13. However, Tov and Crawford removed several fragments from 4Q365 and published them separately as 4Q365a, on the grounds that they contained no biblical text.40 These included the large fragment that corresponded extensively with TS cols. 38 and 41 (4Q365a frag. 2), so 4Q365a was given the tentative title “4QTemple?”. As we have seen, recent advances in our understanding of the fluidity of scriptural texts at Qumran have led to calls for a reclassification of 4Q365 (including, for some at least, the 4Q365a frag-

39

40

These fragments were photographed together on PAM 43.366. Yadin published the photographs from this plate; see Temple Scroll, 2: 172 and supplementary plates 38* and 40*. See Crawford’s explanation in “365a. 4QTemplea?,” in Attridge et al., DJD 13: 319.

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Table 4.5 The Wood Offering in 4Q365 and the Temple Scroll

117

4Q365 frag. 23

11Q20 (11QTb) 6:11–18a// 11Q19 23:03–4

4 YHWH spoke to Moses, saying: command the children of Israel, saying: When you come into the land that 5 I am giving to you as an inheritance, and you dwell upon it in surety, you shall bring wood for the burnt offering and for all the wor[k] 6 [of the ho]use which you shall build for me in the land, to arrange them upon the altar of burnt offering; [and] the calv[e]s[ 7 []?m for Passover sacrifices and for sacrifices of well-being and for thank-offerings and for free-will offerings and for burnt offerings, daily [ 8 [ ]l?[ ]l?[ ]?mym and for the do[o]rs and for all the work of the house let [them] brin[g] 9 [ the fe]ast of the new oil let them bring the wood, two [ 10 [ ]??y those who shall bring on the fir[s]t day: Levi ?[ 11 [ Reu]ben and Simeon[ and on ]the four[th] day [ 12 [ ]l[

11 [ and after the festival of new oil, the twelve tribes of Israel shall bring] 12 [the woo]d to the alta[r. And they shall offer: on the first day,] 13 the tribes of [Levi] and Judah, and on [the second day Benjamin and the sons of Joseph, and on the third day Reuben and Simeon,] 14 and on the fourth day Issachar [and Ze]bulun, and [on the fifth day Gad and Asher, and on the sixth day Dan] 15 and Naphtali. [ ] [ And they shall bring on the festival] 16 of wood a burnt offering to YH[WH male] 17 goats, two, for[ and their grain offering and their drink offering according to the ordinance; 18 [it is] a burnt offeri[ng

a

Transcription follows García Martínez, Tigchelaar, and van der Woude, DJD 23: 381.

118

Beyond “Rewritten Bible”

ments) as a revised and expanded manuscript of the Pentateuch.41 Thus, what originally looked like fragments of another copy of TS have now emerged as most likely part of a revised version of the Pentateuch. Yet noting that the 4Q365 and 365a fragments belong together still leaves us asking how this manuscript (which can be referred to as 4Q365+) relates to TS.42 The extensive textual overlaps point to direct reuse of one by the other. Did TS draw upon 4Q365+, or vice versa? Either way, the implications are significant. I have argued elsewhere for the former option: that 4Q365+ constituted the pentateuchal source used by TS.43 If this is correct, some of the most distinctive elements of TS, including new festivals and the instructions for the temple’s gigantic outer court, already existed in a pentateuchal manuscript of the late Second Temple period.44 This would demonstrate the piecemeal and multistage reworking of these traditions: TS did not work directly with a version of the Pentateuch similar to MT, but with an already heavily rewritten Pentateuch. More recently, Michael Segal has made a strong argument for the opposite direction of influence, that 4Q365+ drew upon TS.45 If he is right, he has found a distinctive case where (to use anachronistic terminology) a non-canonical composition has influenced the revision of a biblical book.46 Though Segal himself is hesitant to go so far, I would

41

42

43 44 45

46

On the pentateuchal status of the 4QRP manuscripts, see the Introduction. Explicitly including the 4Q365a fragments along with the rest of 4Q365 as a copy of the Pentateuch is Lange, Handbuch, 39–40. For the designation 4Q365+, which I hope will catch on, see Michael Segal, “Reconsidering the Relationship(s) between 4Q365, 4Q365a, and the Temple Scroll,” RevQ 30 (2018): 213–33. Zahn, “4QReworked Pentateuch C.” See further Zahn, “Exegesis, Ideology, and Literary History,” 336–41. Segal’s most compelling piece of evidence is the mention of ‫מועד היצהר‬, the festival of new oil, in 4Q365 23 9. This festival forms an integral part of TS’s calendar, coming immediately prior to the wood offering, but is not otherwise mentioned in 4Q365. The mention of the festival of new oil implies a calendrical scheme that is carried out consistently in TS (thus the festival of new oil and then the wood offering appear after the festival of new wine and before the feast on the first of the seventh month) but is ignored in 4Q365, where the instructions for the annual wood offering appear out of place, after the end of the festival calendar. See Segal, “Reconsidering the Relationship(s),” 228–29. Calling this phenomenon the “boomerang effect” (a term coined by Zakovitch), Segal notes other cases where a rewritten version of a text in turn influences further revisions of the original text, but each of them takes place “within” the canon: for example, in certain places in Daniel, it appears an original formulation preserved in OG is reworked by the MT/Theodotion version, which in turn is further revised in later stages of OG. Segal’s second example is precisely parallel to what he has postulated here, aside from the

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say that (if his proposal is correct) here we have extrabiblical material reused in the course of producing a new manuscript of the Pentateuch.47 In other words, the direction of development was not solely from versions of biblical books “outward” to new rewritten compositions like TS, but those new compositions themselves could then in turn influence the ongoing internal development of the text of biblical books.48 *** These examples from Jubilees and the Temple Scroll make clear the problems with the older model of rewriting as essentially a dyadic and monodirectional relationship between “the biblical text” and a single interpretive rewriter. These prototypes of Rewritten Bible instead attest to a much more fluid process: their composers drew not only on versions of books now in the Bible (at times in forms other than the traditional ones) but other sources as well, and the new works themselves existed in multiple forms and were reused in other compositions. The composition and transmission of “parabiblical” works (that is, texts not now in our Bibles but related somehow to works that are) thus continues and overlaps the composition and transmission of the biblical texts themselves.49 Rather than the substantial completion and stabilization of a corpus of authoritative scripture and then the secondary production of a series of exegetical responses to it, we have instead the continuous use, study, and development of scriptural traditions, manifested both in revisions to existing works and in the production of new works on the basis of the old.

47

48

49

“canonical” status of the texts involved: he suggests that the text of 2 Samuel 24 reflected in 4QSama represents a revision of the Samuel text in light of the parallel in 1 Chronicles 21, which in turn rewrote the earlier version of 2 Samuel 24. Segal, “Reconsidering the Relationship(s),” 232–33. Segal, “Reconsidering the Relationship(s),” 231: “If 4Q365+ includes passages from the Temple Scroll, which is itself generally referred to as Rewritten Bible/Scripture, then it is even further removed than what we generally label as ‘biblical.’” He is careful to note that we do not know exactly “how far this category [sc., the “biblical”] should be expanded.” Mladen Popović (“Prophet, Books and Texts,” 246) has speculated that exactly this kind of process may have gone on with Ezekiel traditions, but he does not offer any concrete textual examples. Similarly, Najman and Tigchelaar, “Unity after Fragmentation,” 497: “the development of ideas and textual forms in Jubilees should not be separated from the development of ideas and textual forms in the Pentateuch, as if they were two distinct processes.”

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Beyond “Rewritten Bible”

2 beyond the sphere of “biblical” As important as the insight is that manuscripts and versions of biblical books and Rewritten Bible texts stand in a single continuous trajectory of revision and reuse, it could still allow us to conceive of rewriting as remaining in the orbit of the “scriptural.” Prototypical Rewritten Bible texts, including Jubilees and the Temple Scroll, themselves claim scriptural status – that they are part of Israel’s ancient literary heritage. If texts like this were intended and received as Torah, it perhaps makes sense that they would be revised and reused just as the Pentateuch was.50 It is therefore crucial to realize that texts not generally associated by scholars with this scriptural corpus could be rewritten in the same range of ways. Clear evidence comes from the documents found at Qumran that seem to have been produced by or closely associated with the yahad, the separatist _ community (or network of communities) that most scholars believe inhabited the site.51 The major yahad works, including the Community _ Rule (S), the Damascus Document (D), the War Scroll (M), and the Hodayot (H), all show evidence of revision and/or reuse.

Multiple Forms of S The Serekh ha-Yahad or Community Rule was one of the first seven _ scrolls recovered from Qumran Cave 1, and quickly achieved fame for its description of the ideology and practices of an early Jewish separatist group, usually identified with the Qumran Essenes. Early studies sometimes detected evidence of textual development based on literary analysis of the Cave 1 copy.52 But the publication of several fairly well-preserved

50

51

52

The concept of “Torah” in the Second Temple period was considerably broader than the literary work that would come to be known as the Pentateuch. See Molly M. Zahn, “Torah, Traditioning of,” in T&T Clark Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism, vol. 2, ed. Daniel Gurtner and Loren T. Stuckenbruck (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 783–85. The older view of the yahad as a celibate group located at Qumran is now widely _ regarded as simplistic, given advances in our understanding of the texts and archaeology of Qumran. Many scholars now envision a widespread movement, comprising multiple related communities, of which the group at Qumran was only one, and not necessarily the most important one. For a convenient recent overview, see John J. Collins, “Sectarian Communities in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Lim and Collins, Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 151–72. See the overview in Metso, Serekh Texts, 15–17.

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copies of the Serekh from Cave 4 provided concrete evidence of such development, and gave rise to a number of studies focused on the textual plurality of the S tradition.53 These have made clear that S must have existed in several forms, and was apparently revised over time to meet changing community needs. Part of the evidence pertains to the overall structure and organization of S. Several of the 4Q manuscripts lack major sections contained in 1QS:  The first column of 4QSd, which contains material corresponding to 1QS 5, seems to represent the original beginning of the manuscript; that is, 4QSd never contained anything from the first four columns of 1QS.54 e  4QS lacks the section of text corresponding to 1QS 8:16–9:11 (a section also attested in 4QSd). This is not an issue of poor preservation: 4QSe 3a 6 preserves the transition from 1QS 8:15 to 1QS 9:12. e  4QS also lacks the final hymn attested in 1QS 9:26b–11:22 (as well as in 4QSb, d). Instead, it ends with a calendrical text known as 4QOtot.55 b d  4QS shares a shorter form of 1QS 5 with 4QS (see below), but unlike d 4QS also preserves material corresponding to parts of 1QS 1–4. This array of major variants points, needless to say, to a complex history of textual development, in which earlier collections of S material were expanded or substantially reworked at several different stages. We are fortunate also to have evidence for another kind of revision in S. Besides the presence or absence of major sections, there are also cases of more detailed revision, where two copies of the same section preserve different forms of the text. The clearest and most extensive example of

53

54 55

See the official edition of the 4QS manuscripts: Philip Alexander and Geza Vermes, Qumran Cave 4.XIX: 4QSerekh Ha-Yahad, DJD 26 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998); also _ Philip Alexander, “The Redaction-History of Serekh Ha-Yahad: A Proposal,” RevQ 17 (1996): 437–56; Sarianna Metso, The Textual Development _of the Qumran Community Rule, STDJ 21 (Leiden: Brill, 1997); Charlotte Hempel, “The Literary Development of the S Tradition: A New Paradigm,” RevQ 22 (2006): 389–401; Alison Schofield, From Qumran to the Yahad: A New Paradigm of Textual Development for the Community _ Rule, STDJ 77 (Leiden: Brill, 2009). Alexander and Vermes, DJD 26: 85. On this text, which has been reclassified as 4Q319 though it is part of the same manuscript as 4QSe (4Q259), see Jonathan Ben-Dov, “319. 4QOtot,” in Qumran Cave 4.XVI: Calendrical Texts, ed. Shemaryahu Talmon, Jonathan Ben-Dov, and Uwe Glessmer, DJD 21 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2001), 195–244.

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Beyond “Rewritten Bible”

this occurs in 1QS 5 vis-à-vis its parallels in the 4Q manuscripts, where 1QS presents a longer and likely later version compared to 4QSb, d. While following the same basic structure and often paralleling the 4Q copies word-for-word, 1QS includes numerous additions and changes of various sizes. The contents of this new material vary, but certain themes do emerge. For instance, at two points, one of which is shown in the following example, 1QS reflects a different concept of the authority structures in the community: instead of appealing to the ‫( רבים‬the “many”), or “the council of the men of the yahad,” 1QS speaks of a _ special role for the Zadokite priests (Table 4.6).56 Table 4.6 Zakodite expansions in 1QS 5 1QS 5:1–3 (underlining marks differences from 4Q)

4QSd 1:1–3 (compare 4QSb)

This is the rule for the men of the yahad who _ evil have freely pledged to repent of all and to hold fast to everything that he commanded by his good will, to separate from the congregation of the men of injustice, to become a community with respect to Torah and possessions, and responding according to the opinion of the Sons of Zadok, the priests, the keepers of the covenant, (and) according to the opinion of the majority of the men of the yahad who hold fast to the covenant. _ According to their opinion shall decisions be made in any matter regarding Torah or possessions or judgment . . .

Instruction for the Maskil concerning the men of the Torah who have freely pledged to repent of all evil and to hold fast to everything that he commanded, and to separate from the congregation of the men of injustice, and to be a community with respect to Torah and possessions, and responding according to the opinion of the many in any matter regarding Torah or possessions . . .

56

See already Geza Vermes, “Preliminary Remarks on Unpublished Fragments of the Community Rule from Qumran Cave 4,” JJS 42 (1991): 250–55; also Markus Bockmuehl, “Redaction and Ideology in the ‘Rule of the Community (1QS/4QS),’” RevQ 18 (1998): 550; Maxine L. Grossman, “Community Rule or Community Rules: Examining a Supplementary Approach in Light of the Sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Person and Rezetko, Empirical Models Challenging Biblical Criticism, 311–12.

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This extract also exemplifies the increased focus on ‫ברית‬, “covenant,” which appears in many of the added materials in 1QS, such that “covenant” is mentioned much more frequently in 1QS than in the 4Q version.57 Another recurrent move in this section of 1QS 5, which Metso has highlighted, is the addition of a reference to prior scripture as explanation or justification for an instruction. In the following example, the prohibition on “unjust men” (‫ ;אנשי העול‬4QSd 1:7//1QS 5:10) touching the pure food of the community has been expanded with a motivational section that includes an implicit reference to Lev 22:16 (‫והשיאו אותם עון אשמה‬, “they shall cause them to bear sinful guilt”) as well as an explicit quotation of Exod 23:7. It is hard not to see such insertions as attempts to bolster the authority of community regulations by connecting them with existing pentateuchal law (Table 4.7).58 Table 4.7 Added references to scripture in 1QS 5 1QS 5:13–16 (underlining marks differences from 4Q)

4QSd 1:7–9 (// 4QSb 9:8–10)

He shall not enter the water so as to touch the purity of the men of holiness, for none can be purified except by repenting from their wickedness, for all who transgress his word are impure. None is to be joined with him in his work or in his wealth lest he cause him to bear sinful guilt. Rather one must keep distant from him in every matter, for thus it is written: “from every false thing you shall distance yourself” (Exod 23:7). None of the men of the yahad shall _ respond to them on any matter of torah or judgment.

[Fur]thermore, they shall not touch the purity of the men of [holin]ess, and none shall eat with him in [community.

57

58

None] of the men of the yahad [shall respond] to them on any _matter of [torah] or judgment.

See Alec J. Lucas, “Scripture Citations as an Internal Redactional Control: 1QS 5:1–20a and Its 4Q Parallels,” DSD 17 (2010): 37. The word ‫ ברית‬occurs 14 times in 1QS 5, of which 11 are found in 1QS plusses (i.e., material that never was part of 4QSb, d). See Sarianna Metso, “Biblical Quotations in the Community Rule,” in Herbert and Tov, The Bible as Book, 87; Lucas, “Scripture Citations.”

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Much more could be (and has been) said, but these two examples are enough to illustrate the revision of this section of the Serekh in light of various ideological concerns relating to community structures and procedures, as well as to the authority and status of the Serekh itself. A spate of studies after the publication of the 4QS manuscripts has resulted in a variety of theories attempting to account for the relationships between the different witnesses (as well as the fact that 1QS, which in many ways appears to represent the most developed form of the tradition, is paleographically among the earliest of the S manuscripts).59 Though I agree with Metso, Hempel, and others that 1QS appears to represent a later form of the Serekh at least than a manuscript like 4QSd, the point here is not to endorse a particular theory of development but simply to note the pluriformity of the tradition.60 Just as the shape of books later included in the Bible changed over time, with the addition of major new sections alongside the revisionary updating of older sections, the S tradition must have grown and changed, even if, despite all the manuscript evidence, we are no longer able to retrace every stage in this growth.61

Reuse in S We are fortunate to have ample evidence for revision in the course of the Community Rule’s transmission. Other indications point to scribal activity and textual connections across different compositions, rather than solely “within” the transmission history of S itself. A fascinating range of relatively loose parallels between S and the Damascus Document (D) suggests that these two core sectarian texts were transmitted and revised in part in the same milieu, and seem to have influenced each other in the

59 60

61

See especially the literature cited in n. 53. See the important argument by Jokiranta that we must not be too quick to assume that there was ever such a thing as “S,” in the sense of a stable and “complete” literary work; Jutta Jokiranta, “What is ‘Serekh ha-Yahad (S)’? Thinking About Ancient Manuscripts as Information Processing,” in Baden et al., Sibyls, Scriptures, and Scrolls, vol. 1, 611–35. On the parallels between the development of the Serekh and that of biblical books, see Grossman, “Community Rule or Community Rules,” especially 326–30; earlier on, Hempel, “Sources and Redactions,” 162–81. In fact, Hempel suggests (178) that the S traditions are remarkable in this respect in that they presumably witness to stages of transmission much closer to the actual first composition of the work than is the case for the Qumran biblical scrolls vis-à-vis the composition of biblical books.

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process.62 It also seems that there are cases where each more or less independently reused common source material. The most notable of such cases is that of the so-called Penal Code, a list of infractions of community regulations, and prescribed punishments, preserved most fully in 1QS 6:24–7:25.63 While only a couple of infractions are preserved in the Cairo Geniza manuscripts of D (CD 14:20–22), more substantial portions of the Penal Code appear in the 4QD manuscripts, in particular 4Q266 (4QDa) and 4Q270 (4QDe). One range of ten infractions appears in 4Q266 in the same order as in 1QS (except that 1QS contains one additional infraction, spitting during a gathering of the Many). Most of these, plus an additional parallel, are also extant in 4Q270, again in the same order. But in other parts of the list, there is less agreement. Leaving aside the impossibility of knowing the original scope of the Penal Code in the fragmentary 4QD manuscripts, it is clear that neither could have presented the Penal Code just as it is found in 1QS. 4Q270, after corresponding to 1QS for several laws, ends with a number of prescriptions not found in 1QS. In 4Q266, on the other hand, the first preserved infractions do not match what is found in S, and then several of S’s infractions are absent before the long string of parallels with 1QS begins. Also, as has frequently been noted, the S and D manuscripts differ regarding the prescribed punishments for the various infractions.64 Finally, Penal Code material is also preserved in a manuscript that is not a copy of D or S: 4Q265

62

63

64

See Charlotte Hempel, “Rewritten Rule Texts,” in The Qumran Rule Texts in Context, TSAJ 154 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 137–50. An argument for a more direct literary correspondence between (1Q)S and D has been proffered by Annette Steudel, who maintains that D constitutes a full-scale “rewriting” of S. However, the textual connections that she offers as evidence are not sufficiently compelling to support her argument. See Annette Steudel, “The Damascus Document (D) as a Rewriting of the Community Rule (S),” RevQ 25 (2012): 605–20. The literature on the various versions of the Penal Code is extensive. For this presentation, I found the following most helpful: Charlotte Hempel, “The Penal Code Reconsidered,” in Legal Texts and Legal Issues, ed. Moshe J. Bernstein, Florentino García Martínez, and John Kampen, STDJ 23 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 337–48; Metso, The Serekh Texts, 33–35; Reinhard G. Kratz, “Der ‘Penal Code’ und das Verhältnis von Serekh Ha-Yahad (S) und Damaskusschrift (D),” RevQ 25 (2011): 199–227; Schofield, From Qumran to the Yahad, 180–83; Grossman, “Community Rule or _ Community Rules,” 314–20. Note that there is some evidence of fluidity in the length of the punishments even within the manuscripts of S: in 1QS 7:8, the punishment for nursing a grudge has been corrected from 6 months to 1 year; the reading “[6 mo]nths” appears in 4QSe. On the other hand, 4QSe prescribes a punishment of sixty days instead of 1QS 7:14’s thirty for indecent exposure.

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(4QMiscellaneous Rules).65 Though there are some clear overlaps with the S and D versions, in general 4Q265 shows less correspondence to the other versions of the Code. Various explanations have been proposed to account for these overlapping versions of the Penal Code, including the idea that S has taken up and revised an earlier form of the Penal Code resembling the version found in 4QDa,e, as well as the opposite suggestion, that the D manuscripts represent a rewriting of the version preserved in 1QS.66 But both the S and D versions contain elements that seem later than the other, suggesting that multiple construals of independent material, or a complex process in which one composition originally borrowed the Code from the other but both were subject to subsequent revision, are more likely options than wholesale rewriting of one version by the other.67 Again, the salient point here is not to establish the exact transmission history of the Penal Code. Instead, it is to stress the creative reuse of a relatively stable body of existing material across a range of related compositions, in a setting which we know was marked by intensive communal text study.68 Just as various types of texts known to us from the Bible could be reused in a variety of contexts, the compilers of S and D drew upon other significant texts in the course of producing their distinctive religious compositions.

The War Scroll (1QM) and Related Materials Like the Community Rule, the well-preserved Cave 1 copy of the War Scroll (1QM) is paralleled by a number of more fragmentary manuscripts from Cave 4. In its bewildering variety and poor state of preservation, the Cave 4 collection of M-related materials has received less attention than the 4QS manuscripts. The manuscripts make clear that much of the material collected in 1QM predates that manuscript, and they provide several intriguing examples of rewriting. The poor preservation of most of these manuscripts means, however, that it is difficult to say much on a broader level about their relationships to one another. Though six

65

66

67 68

On this manuscript, see Charlotte Hempel, The Damascus Texts, Companion to the Qumran Scrolls 1 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 90–104. For the former, see Hempel, “The Penal Code Reconsidered,” 343–48; for the latter, see Kratz, “Der ‘Penal Code,’” 204–13. Similarly, see Schofield, From Qumran to the Yahad, 182. _ See Chapter 1; also Brooke, “Reading, Searching and Blessing,” 148–49.

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manuscripts have been published as 4QM – that is, copies of the War Scroll – Hanna Vanonen’s recent thorough analysis has shown that there is very little evidence that any of them would ever have looked much like 1QM such that they could be construed as copies of the same composition.69 This case in particular is one where the distinction between “revision” and “reuse” probably needs to be kept at a purely heuristic level. The 4QM manuscripts, fragmentary as they are, present a variety of degrees of textual relationship to specific parts of 1QM, from very close parallels with little difference to cases of shared subject matter and some shared terminology but no real textual overlap.70 These extremes of the spectrum give little to talk about in the way of rewriting; more interesting from this perspective are instances where there are extensive textual parallels but also substantive differences. One such case comes in 4Q491a, a manuscript that itself preserves materials with a range of textual relationships to 1QM.71 In 4Q491a 11 ii, the beginning and end 69

70

71

Hanna Vanonen, “Stable and Fluid War Traditions: Re-Thinking the War Text Material from Qumran” (PhD diss., University of Helsinki, 2017); see also Jutta Jokiranta and Hanna Vanonen, “Multiple Copies of Rule Texts or Multiple Rule Texts? Boundaries of the S and M Documents,” in Crossing Imaginary Boundaries: The Dead Sea Scrolls in the Context of Second Temple Judaism, ed. Mika S. Pajunen and Hanna Tervanotko, PFES 108 (Helsinki: Finnish Exegetical Society, 2015), 11–60. 4Q492 constitutes an example of the former, corresponding very closely to 1QM 19. Vanonen postulates that this manuscript, which is marked by large spaces between sections, was produced as a sort of draft or study copy that served as the basis for the revision of 1QM 19 now found in 1QM 12 (“War Traditions,” 254). On the other end of the spectrum, the fragment labeled 4Q493 describes the sounding of trumpets during battle in a manner reminiscent of 1QM, but despite its fairly good preservation (major portions of 14 lines) does not overlap textually with 1QM. It also differs from 1QM conceptually, in the exclusive focus on priests, as well as terminologically, in the mention of two weapons whose names do not occur in 1QM. See Vanonen, “War Traditions,” 135–46. The question of the interrelationships of the fragments collected as 4Q491 (4QMa) has occasioned considerable debate. Martin Abegg’s proposal that 4Q491 in fact contains fragments of 3 different manuscripts (4Q491a, b, and c) has been accepted widely, but Kipp Davis has recently argued on material grounds that at least 4Q491a and c belong together even though they appear to be written in two different hands. See Kipp Davis, “‘There and Back Again’: Reconstruction and Reconciliation of the War Text 4QMilhamaa,” in The War Scroll, Violence, War and Peace in the Dead Sea Scrolls _ and Related Literature: Essays in Honour of Martin G. Abegg on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. Kipp Davis et al., STDJ 115 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 125–46. In another essay, Davis even raises the possibility that the two quite similar hands (a and b/c) could represent the same scribe writing under somewhat different circumstances, rather than two different scribes: “The Dead Sea Scrolls in Colour: Re-imag(in)ing the Shape and Contents of 4QMa (4Q491).” https://www.academia.edu/13599207/the_Dead_Sea_

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of the fragment correspond extensively with 1QM 16 and 17, presenting instructions for battle. In the middle of the fragment, however, is a block of hymnic exhortation that appears to have been rewritten significantly in 1QM (Table 4.8). Although the beginning of the priest’s exhortation appears nearly the same in both texts – with reference to God’s “testing his people’s heart in a crucible” and allusion to past heeding of “the mysteries of God” (4Q491a 11 ii 12–13 // 1QM 16:15–16) – the priest’s words go in different directions thereafter. The speech is considerably longer in 1QM, with added references to God’s punishment of Nadab and Abihu (perhaps an extrapolation of the “mysteries of God” referred to earlier?) and to the role of Michael as God’s heavenly agent. Yet certain key vocabulary remain in both versions (underlined in Table 4.8), suggesting that 1QM did not simply replace the shorter speech preserved in 4Q491, but revised and expanded it, keeping the general focus on God’s power to save and the promise of victory for the righteous, but also weaving in new themes.72 As Vanonen notes, this extensive rewriting seems to be part of a pattern in M-related material, according to which battle instructions tend to show more textual stability than hymns and speeches, which seem to have been regarded as especially suited to the exercise of scribal creativity.73

Hodayot: Multiple Collections of Poetic Material As is the case for the Serekh and War materials, the manuscripts of the Qumran Hodayot found in Cave 4 have provided new angles for considering the development of that collection. Alongside 1QHa and the two small fragments assigned to 1QHb, six 4Q manuscripts have been identified as copies of Hodayot (4Q427–432). By now it should be no surprise

72

73

Scrolls_in_colour_Re-imag_in_ing_the_shape_and_contents_of_4QM-a_4Q491. Fortunately, the following presentation does not require certainty about the exact scope of the manuscript. Jean Duhaime, “Dualistic Reworking in the Scrolls from Qumran,” CBQ 49 (1987): 49–51; Vanonen, “War Traditions,” 89–90. Vanonen, “War Traditions,” 79: “one can infer that hymns and speeches seem to offer a place to pursue literary creativity and also allow the presentation of novel ideas.” This observation is interesting in light of evidence from other textual traditions of speech as a frequent locus of expansion/revision, as observed by Carr, “Method in Determination of Direction of Dependence,” 124–25. One might also speculate about connections to the kinds of performative contexts outlined by Newman, Before the Bible.

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4Q491a 11 iia

1QM 16–17

11 And the [hi]gh prie[st shall approach and st[and ]k[ ] 12 their hands for his battle [ ]l and the heart of his people he shall test in the crucible. Not m[ ] 13 For from of old you have heeded the myster[ies of God ] stand in the breach and do not f[ea]r when [ ]strengthens [ ]

13 And the high priest shall approach and stand before the battle line, and he shall strengthen (14) their heart with [ of Go]d and their hands for his battle. vacat (15) And he shall say in response [ the] h[ea]rt of his people he shall test in the crucible.

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Table 4.8 Rewriting of earlier hymnic material in 1QM

Table 4.8 (cont.) 1QM 16–17

14 [ ]ms[ ].[ ]faithful, and his redemptive help [ ]l[ ] _ of truth and to remove the melted heart, to strengthen 15 [ son]s the hea[rt ] 16 [ batt]le this day the God of Isr[ael] shall humble . . .[ ]k[ ] 17 [ ] so that none could stand. And the [kingshi]p shall belong to God and salvatio[n] to his people [ ] 18 [ ]tw[ a] little while to Belial and the covenant of the God of peace [for I]srael in all the appointed times of[ ] 19 And after these word[s] the priests shall blow to arrange a second battle with the Kit[tim . . . ]

And not [ ]your slain. For from of old you have heeded (16) the mysteries of God [ ] them to be warm (17) bg.. [ ]l[ ] (17:1) He will set peace for them with burning [ ] those tested in the crucible. And he shall sharpen his instruments of war, and they will not become blunt until [ ] (2) wickedness. And as for you, remember the judgment [of Nadab and] Ab[i]hu, the sons of Aaron, by whose judgment God showed himself holy before [ ] (3) But Ithamar he held for himself for a covenant [ ]forever. vacat (4) And you, take courage, and do not fear them [ ] As for them, their longing is for emptiness and the void, and their support is without [ ]and not [ ] (5) Israel all that is and that will be w[ ]h.[ ]l in all that comes to be forever. Today is his appointed time to humble and to bring low the prince of the realm of (6) wickedness, and he shall send eternal help to the lot of his [re]demption through the power of the mighty angel, to the authority of Michael in everlasting light. (7) (He will) light up with joy Israel’s covenant, peace and blessing to the lot of God, to exalt the authority of Michael among the gods and the dominion of (8) Israel among all flesh. Righteousness will rejoice in the heights and all the sons of his truth shall be glad in everlasting knowledge. And you, sons of his covenant, (9) take courage in God’s crucible, until he waves his hand and fills up his crucibles; his mysteries concerning your existence. (10) And after these words the priests shall blow for them to arrange the standards of the battle line. . .

130

4Q491a 11 iia

a

Transcription and translation of 4Q491 and 1QM here follows Vanonen, “War Traditions,” 85–87. I have omitted indications of uncertain readings (dots and circlets).

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that these manuscripts do not correspond exactly to what we find in the Cave 1 copy. But the kinds of evidence they preserve regarding textual transmission are in certain ways distinctive. Schuller notes in the DJD edition of the Cave 4 manuscripts that “the multiple copies do not give evidence of major recensional activity or systematic revision of these psalms on ideological grounds.”74 In other words, where the Cave 4 manuscripts overlap with 1QHa, they closely resemble the text of 1QHa. The differences are in content preserved only in one manuscript or another, and in the sequence of that content. There is thus little evidence in the Hodayot for the kind of detailed rewriting we saw in 1QS 5 or 1QM 17 vis-à-vis their 4Q parallels. Instead, based on the evidence we have, rewriting in the Hodayot seems to have operated at the level of the overall scope and arrangement of the collection. The 4QH fragments preserve two types of evidence: that pertaining to what was included in individual manuscripts, and that pertaining to the sequence of psalms in each. Of the six 4QH manuscripts, only 4QHb seems likely to have closely resembled 1QHa in scope. Two of the manuscripts are very unlikely to have contained all the materials in 1QHa. One (4QHc) has very short columns of only 12 lines; a scroll of this height (ca. 10 cm) with the contents of 1QHa would reach the impossible length of 14–15 m.75 The other (4QHa) can be reconstructed to have originally been about 3.7 m long, which is too short to accommodate the contents of 1QHa.76 4QHa (in frag. 8) is also the only one of the 4QH mss to preserve a psalm not paralleled in 1QHa. Though this psalm could have come from the lost cols. 1–3 or 27–28 of 1QHa, it raises the possibility that some H manuscripts contained material that was not (ever) present in 1QHa. This would certainly not be particularly surprising, given the textual situations of the Community Rule and the War Scroll discussed above. Several of the 4QH mss also appear to present a sequence that differed from that of 1QHa. Here too 4QHb seems to correspond closely to 1QHa.77 Another ms, 4QpapHf, also apparently matches the sequence of 1QHa, but it begins with material corresponding to 1QHa col. 9.78 It is impossible to know whether the material corresponding to 1QHa 1–8 74

75 76

77

Eileen Schuller, “Hodayot,” in Qumran Cave 4.XX: Poetical and Liturgical Texts, Part 2, ed. Esther Chazon et al., DJD 29 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), 74. Schuller, DJD 29: 179. Schuller, DJD 29: 86. Two other manuscripts, 4QHd and 4QHe, preserve portions of only a single psalm, and thus it is very difficult to determine their relationship to 1QHa. See Schuller, DJD 29: 195, 202. 78 Schuller, DJD 29: 130–31. Schuller, DJD 29: 210–12.

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might have been located elsewhere in the scroll (in which case we are in fact dealing with a difference in sequence), or whether it was never present in 4QpapHf at all (meaning this is a difference in content rather than in sequence). Similarly, 4QHe consists of two fragments containing the hymn known from 1QHa 25:34–27:3, but the very wide right margin on frag. 1 indicates that it was the beginning of the scroll – so if this manuscript contained other material corresponding to 1QHa, it would at the very least have presented it in a different order.79 4QHa, which we already know must have differed in scope and content from 1QHa, also provides the best concrete evidence of a different sequence. Frag. 3 of 4QHa preserves the end of the psalm known from 1QHa 19:6–20:6, and then follows in the next (fragmentary) line with material apparently corresponding to 1QHa 25:34. Frag. 8 contains the psalm that appears in 1QHa 7:12–20, followed by numerous lines of new material – a psalm unknown from other H mss – and then by the psalm that begins in 1QHa 20:7. Schuller presents the following schematization of the reconstructed contents of 4QHa in comparison to 1QHa (Table 4.9).80 The 4QH mss, in comparison with 1QHa, thus suggest that the Hodayot circulated in a number of collections that differed from one another in contents and arrangement. Of course, this evidence complements long-standing recognition of indications within 1QHa itself that it represents a compilation of material with diverse origins.81 While in some Table 4.9 Alternative arrangements of hymns in 1QHa and 4QHa 4QHa 4QHa 4QHa 4QHa 4QHa

79 81

Col. Col. Col. Col. Col.

1:1–2:17 (frags. 1–3) = 2:18–ca. 5:3 (frags. 3–7) = ca. 5:4–12 (frag. 8 i) = 5:13–6:9 (frag. 8 i–ii) 6:10–10:? (frag. 8 ii, 9–12) =

1QHa Col. 19:6–20:6 1QHa Col. 25:34–ca. 27:2 1QHa Col. 7:12–20

1QHa Col. 20:7–22:?

80 Schuller, DJD 29: 200–2. See Schuller, DJD 29: 86. For a recent review, see Angela Kim Harkins, “A New Proposal for Thinking About 1QHa Sixty Years after Its Discovery,” in Qumran Cave 1 Revisited: Texts from Cave 1 Sixty Years after Their Discovery, ed. Daniel K. Falk et al., STDJ 91 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 101–34. One particularly intriguing indication of prior sources comes from the orthography of 1QHa. While three different scribal hands are evidenced in the scroll (the second only for a few lines, 19:25–29), and there are orthographic differences between them, there are also orthographic differences between certain psalms that are written in the hand of the same scribe. The correlation of orthographic patterns to the boundaries of

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ways (e.g., the presence or absence of major sections) the pluriformity of the H text tradition resembles what we saw with other traditions such as that of S and M, there seems to be a particularly close correspondence to the so-called biblical Psalms manuscripts. As is the case with the manuscripts of H, the Qumran Psalms manuscripts tend not to present reworked versions of individual psalms, but do vary considerably in scope and sequence.82 11QPsa famously presents materials in a different order than the one known from the MT Psalter, and includes a number of individual psalms not present in MT. A number of other manuscripts also incontrovertibly differ from the sequence or, less frequently, the content of the MT Psalter. If it is fair to take the manuscripts of the Hodayot and the biblical Psalms traditions as representative, we might say that psalm collections at Qumran were particularly characterized by fluidity in their order and contents.

3 conclusion With the preceding examples I hope to have illustrated the relatively simple point that rewriting is not a procedure that was exclusively associated in the Second Temple period with the texts later included in our Bibles. Rather, forms of rewriting, both revision and reuse, are attested throughout the Qumran corpus. What are we to make of the fact that a procedure long bound tightly to the Bible in our scholarly imaginations in fact appears to have been much more broadly employed? Obviously, our categories need to be rethought. I will save a full exploration of implications for Chapter 7. But here I want to at least raise, if not answer, some of the larger questions prompted by this data. These include the relationships between rewriting and authority, rewriting and exegesis, and rewriting and genre. The first issue is that of authority. The conceptualization of rewriting as a mode of interpretation of biblical texts has led to the related idea that texts were rewritten precisely because of their authoritative status as

82

particular poetic units strongly suggests that the variation is due to divergent origins for the materials. See Emanuel Tov, “Scribal Features of Two Qumran Scrolls,” in Hebrew in the Second Temple Period: The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and of Other Contemporary Sources, ed. Steven E. Fassberg, Moshe Bar-Asher, and Ruth A. Clements, STDJ 108 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 241–58. For a very helpful chart, as well as the argument that traditional appraisals of the number of “manuscripts of the book of Psalms” at Qumran have been misleadingly inflated, see Mroczek, Literary Imagination, 26–33.

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scripture: rewriting allowed for the adaptation of scriptural traditions to new circumstances, ensuring their continued vitality and relevance, while at the same time implicitly reinforcing the authority of the scriptural text through extension of its authoritative voice.83 How does this emphasis on the authority of the rewritten (base) text fare in light of the evidence that a broad range of material was rewritten, far beyond what came to be included in Bibles? Do we argue that all these texts for which we have evidence of rewriting were authoritative in some way? How do we tell? Or might it be better to loosen the presumed connection between rewriting and the authority of the base text, and see rewriting as a fundamental and pervasive compositional tool in early Judaism? Second, the degree to which rewriting has been construed as a species of interpretation is reflected in the common use of the words “exegesis” or “exegetical technique” to describe the various ways a text reworks an earlier source or version.84 Indeed, the connection goes back at least as far as Vermes’s coinage of the term Rewritten Bible, which he defined as “an exegetical process” in which “the midrashist inserts haggadic developments into the biblical narrative.”85 But scholars seem less inclined to use this kind of language to describe rewriting in nonbiblical texts like the Community Rule. Are we only to talk about rewriting as exegesis in cases where the base text ended up in the Bible? Furthermore, to anticipate the discussion in Chapter 6, this chapter has highlighted a range of types of rewriting, from extended reuse to pastiche to rearrangement. Are all of these types of changes equally “exegetical”? Given the broad attestation of rewriting, the variety of types of textual manipulation that scribes could engage in, and the context of oral performance and communal study in which it appears all literary texts were produced and used, we would do well to look more closely at the link between rewriting and exegesis. A related issue is the degree to which the rewriting attested at Qumran reinforces observations about the “open” nature of texts in the Second Temple period and about rewriting as an element of composition, not only reception and transmission. The evidence of pluriformity for texts like Jubilees and especially S, M, and H points to a situation where clusters of text could be assembled in different ways for different purposes. Attempts to determine what counts as “completion” of such texts – 83

84

See the comments of Brooke, “Between Authority and Canon,” 95, 98. On distinguishing “authoritative” from “scriptural,” see further in Chapter 7. 85 See Chapter 7, n. 34. Vermes, Scripture and Tradition, 95.

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to distinguish between composition and reception by marking a point at which a text is “done” – are doomed to fail. Which version of S, for instance, would mark that composition as “complete”?86 The extreme pluriformity of the core compositions of the yahad, perhaps related to the _ fact that they are closer to their point of origin than biblical manuscripts,87 makes especially clear the nature of rewriting as a primary strategy for the developmental process by which texts were composed in the Second Temple period. Finally, the wide range of types of texts that are rewritten or use rewriting, and the variety of ways rewriting can function, returns us to genre as a potentially helpful framework. George Brooke has noted that “Rewritten Bible texts come in almost as many genres as can be found in the biblical books themselves.”88 We can expand his observation to note that rewriting occurs not only across all kinds of literary genres (narrative, law, prophecy, rule texts, psalms, etc.), but also across different “genres of authority” (to coin a term). That is, even if we construe rewriting as pertaining to texts seen as authoritative in some way (a somewhat tautological proposition, as I will argue in Chapter 7), the nature of that authority differs. Jubilees and TS not only rewrite pentateuchal texts that claimed (or were granted) ancient and revealed status, but they made the same claims for themselves. Texts like the Community Rule, on the other hand, do not attempt to present themselves as ancient, but instead insinuate that their contents are consistent with revealed Torah.89 And, of course, we have a range of texts, including the War Scroll and the Hodayot, whose authoritative status (either as claimed or as granted) is more difficult to determine. Further study may be able to establish links between particular kinds of rewriting and the specific nature of the authority claimed by or granted to a given text.90 From another angle, the additional data provided by the “nonbiblical” Qumran corpus might lead to new ways of understanding the relationship between rewriting and literary genre. In particular, it seems that certain

86 87 89 90

Compare Jokiranta, “What is ‘Serekh ha-Yahad (S)’?” 88 Hempel, “Sources and Redactions,” 178. Brooke, “Rewritten Bible,” 2: 780. See Zahn, “Torah for ‘the Age of Wickedness.’” For example, Teeter interprets the revisions he documents in the manuscripts and versions of pentateuchal law as evidence of a quasi-canon consciousness (Scribal Laws, 199–204). If it could be shown that some of these revisions are distinctive in kind and do not occur in other (types of ) texts, there may be evidence that at least some scribes were treating the text of the Pentateuch in a distinctive way, not just in that they were revising it but in the particular kinds of revisions involved.

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types of rewriting might correlate with certain types of text. The tendency both in the Hodayot and in the biblical Psalms manuscripts for the scope and sequence of the compositions to change (i.e., which psalms are included and in what order), but for there to be apparently little intervention in the actual text of the individual compositions, seems potentially significant in this regard. Of course, it’s not surprising that collections of discrete textual units like psalms might be particularly amenable to reordering and extracting or being combined with other psalms. Such a technique could hardly be employed as easily for, say, narrative texts. But this does not explain the absence of more detailed rewriting of individual psalms. Another area of inquiry might be represented by the apparently somewhat agglutinative and repetitive 1Q versions of the Community Rule and the War Scroll: were rule texts (or legal materials more broadly?) seen as particularly amenable to gathering related materials together or including multiple presentations of the same topic? These suggestions are, of course, highly tentative and would need to be fleshed out with a much more detailed presentation of the data than is possible here. I will give some further consideration to the connection between genre and particular types of rewriting in Chapter 6. The point here, though, is to stress that, even though this chapter highlights the pervasiveness of rewriting, that does not mean that we need to regard the corpus of works that employed or experienced reuse or revision as a shapeless, undifferentiated blob. Instead, there is space to recognize similarity but also attend to the specifics of each particular situation; in other words, to view rewriting not as a genre itself but as conversant with or engaged with genre in multiple ways.

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5 Translation and/as Rewriting The Greek Bible, the Targumim, and the Genesis Apocryphon

Chapter 4 highlighted the frequency of rewriting in ancient Jewish literary texts not directly connected with the Bible, ending by suggesting that attention to how rewriting interacts with genre might help us attend to differences in what rewriting looks like in various textual situations. In this chapter, I explore in more depth how that might work by looking at one type of rewriting that has rarely been talked about as such: translation. On the face of it, translation has obvious connections to rewriting. The German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer famously described translation as “immer die Vollendung der Auslegung” (“always the end result of [an] interpretation”).1 In other words, the re-presentation of a source text in a different language requires the translator first to interpret, to decide on the meaning of, the source text. This inextricable connection between translation and interpretation suggests a priori that ancient translations have a role to play in the conversation about rewriting, given the frequency with which rewriting is likewise connected with interpretation. Even a passing familiarity with the nature of the ancient versions,

1

Though this much-quoted clause makes it sound like Gadamer is speaking of translation as the “fullfillment” or “completion” of interpretation per se, the rest of the sentence makes clear that he is speaking of each individual act of translation as the result of a prior, necessary process of interpretation on the part of the translator: “Jede Übersetzung ist daher schon Auslegung, ja man kann sagen, sie ist immer die Vollendung der Auslegung, die der Übersetzer dem ihm vorgegebenen Wort hat angedeihen lassen.” (Every translation is therefore at once interpretation; one can even say that it is always the end result of the interpretation that the translator has provided for a given word.) Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1960), 362.

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especially the Greek and Aramaic, would suggest a connection even more strongly: like Hebrew-language copies, both often reproduce their sources fairly faithfully, but also witness various kinds of differences from the Hebrew texts we know. Yet for all these apparent points of contact, the evidence of the ancient translations has been only poorly integrated into our conversations on rewriting.2 What might we learn if we looked more closely at the relationship between translation and rewriting, with the lens of genre theory to help make sense of similarities and differences? This chapter will explore that relationship by considering four types of cases where Hebrew-language scriptural materials are rendered in a different language. The first two sections focus on the Greek translations of Hebrew scripture (the LXX/ OG). I will use recent scholarship by Septuagintalists to consider the ways in which every translation, no matter how “faithful,” resembles rewriting in that it requires countless decisions on the part of the translator and is governed by norms and conventions related to the intended function of the translation. I will then focus specifically on the phenomenon (highly contested for the LXX/OG) whereby translators themselves changed the text they were translating – that is, added or altered materials beyond the necessary transformation of the source text into the target language. While all translation can be compared to rewriting in some sense, the evidence that translators also sometimes employed the compositional moves associated with same-language rewriting suggests we should not separate the scribal process of producing a translation too strongly from the scribal process of producing a new copy of a work.3 In sections three and four, I examine two cases that highlight the connection between rewriting and translation in different ways from the LXX/OG. Section three considers the rabbinic renderings of Hebrew scripture into Aramaic known as the targumim.4 While scholars have 2

3

4

See Benjamin G. Wright, “Scribes, Translators and the Formation of Authoritative Scripture,” in In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes: Studies in the Biblical Text in Honour of Anneli Aejmelaeus, ed. Kristin De Troyer, T. Michael Law, and Marketta Liljeström, CBET 72 (Leuven: Peeters, 2014), 6. As noted also by Wright, “Scribes, Translators,” 14: “Translators were scribes whose work reveals the same kind of concerns as other scribes.” The same point is made strongly by Hans Debel, “Greek ‘Variant Literary Editions’ to the Hebrew Bible?,” JSJ 41 (2010): 161–90. Just as the books of the Greek Bible differ from one another in translation technique and other features, the various targumim demonstrate different types and degrees of intervention into their source texts; thus, neither group can be spoken of as a uniform collection. On the LXX/OG, see Tov, Textual Criticism, 127–32; on the targumim, see e.g.

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debated the extent of interpretation or rewriting in the books of the LXX/ OG, the situation is reversed for the targumim: their interpretive nature is unquestioned, to the extent that the label of “translation” is viewed by many as unsuitable. I will demonstrate how their distinctive form, in which the high degree of interpretive material seems to distinguish them generically from other translations, is a result of their distinctive function within rabbinic culture. Most translations, including the books of the LXX/OG and the targumim, are compared most readily to revision. They generally aim to, and claim to, fully represent a given source text in the target language, and as such constitute in effect “new copies” of their source texts. Yet this is not the only setting in which translated material can be found. The final section of this chapter will explore the connection between rewriting and translation in a paradigmatic example of reuse, the Qumran Genesis Apocryphon (GenAp). Like the targumim, GenAp renders Hebrew scriptural materials into Aramaic, but unlike them does so in the context of a new work that is not formally bound to the text and sequence of existing scripture. GenAp thus provides an especially provocative lens through which to think through the various functions that can be served by translation, and leaves no doubt that translation very much belongs in any discussion of rewriting.

1 form, function, and interpretation in translations As Gadamer indicates and as many both within biblical studies and outside of it have pointed out, translation cannot proceed except through a process of interpretation. Languages are not interchangeable codes whereby a given signified X is simply denoted by either α or β (or α or ‫ )!א‬depending on the language employed. The translation theorist Lawrence Venuti has pushed this insight further to argue that since “language is creation thickly mediated by linguistic and cultural determinants,” – that is, all texts are embedded in particular social and historical contexts – and since translation involves a transfer to a new context, there can be no unchanging “essence” or meaning that can be Philip Alexander, “Jewish Aramaic Translations of Hebrew Scriptures,” in Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Martin Jan Mulder, CRINT 2.1 (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 217–25; more recently, Paul V. M. Flesher and Bruce Chilton, The Targums: A Critical Introduction (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2011), particularly 9–11.

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transferred without modification from the source text to a translation.5 Instead, every translator “decontextualizes the source text by dismantling, rearranging, and abandoning features of its signifying process,” and creates a new text in its place, one with “a different set of contexts that constitute a different signifying process.”6 In this sense, there is nothing inevitable about the form or content of a given translation in relation to the source text – every translation constitutes an interpretation that, as such, necessarily transforms key aspects of the source text. Thus, all translation requires countless interpretive decisions in order to negotiate the inevitable distance between the linguistic and cultural context of the source text and that of the translation. As Umberto Eco illustrates in his illuminating and evocatively titled Mouse or Rat?, even apparently simple lexical substitutes can present the translator with difficult choices.7 Beyond the fundamental task of reflecting the semantics of the source text in the target language, translators must also make myriad decisions concerning grammar, syntax, meter, tone, register, readability, and on and on. Should the translation aim to mirror the source as closely as possible, or should it attempt to create the same impression or effect upon the reader in the target language as the original had upon its readers/ hearers?8 Should the translation capture something of the “flavor” of the source language – which might mean stretching or breaking the usual literary or linguistic conventions of the target language – or should it aim for readability in the target language instead?9 5

6

7

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Lawrence Venuti, “Genealogies of Translation Theory: Jerome,” in The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti (New York: Routledge, 2012), 483. For a lucid overview of Venuti’s arguments, see Benjamin G. Wright III, “Translation, Reception, and the Historiography of Early Judaism: The Wisdom of Ben Sira and Old Greek Job as Case Studies,” in “When the Morning Stars Sang”: Essays in Honor of Choon Leong Seow on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Scott C. Jones and Christine Roy Yoder, BZAW 500 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), 241–57. Venuti, “Genealogies,” 496. Venuti thus takes a definitive side in a long-standing debate over whether “accurate” representation of a source text in a target language is possible at all. For an engaging overview of this debate, see Anthony Pym, Exploring Translation Theories (London: Routledge, 2010), 6–42. Umberto Eco, Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003), 32–34. This is the distinction between “formal” and “dynamic” or “functional” equivalence articulated by Eugene Nida; see e.g. Eugene Nida, “Principles of Correspondence,” in Venuti, The Translation Studies Reader, 141–55. Venuti, of course, disputes the idea that such equivalence can be achieved; for his critique of Nida, see Venuti, “Genealogies,” 496. For discussion of the possible implications of such choices with reference to the LXX translation, see Tessa Rajak, Translation and Survival: The Greek Bible of the Ancient Jewish Diaspora (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 154.

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The choices that a translator makes in response to these challenges vary according to a number of factors. Venuti calls these factors “interpretants,” frameworks or “codes” that govern how the translator translates.10 From a different angle, Gideon Toury, in his influential work outlining the approach known as Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS), construes these factors in terms of the goals or purposes of the translation – its intended function.11 To take a modern example of how intended function can influence what a translation looks like, in Mouse or Rat Eco discusses the role of literary allusion in several of his novels. In Foucault’s Pendulum, for instance, “the three protagonists . . . frequently indulge in literary quotations and seem incapable of seeing the world except through their literary recollections.”12 In his communications with his translators, Eco stressed the importance of retaining these quotations. The problem was that simply translating the quotations from Italian into the target language would lose the whole force of the literary allusion, since readers of, say, French or German or English would be much less likely to recognize an allusion to an Italian literary classic. So Eco instructed his translators to create different literary allusions, ones that would resonate with readers in the language of the translation. Thus, in one particular instance the German translation alludes to Goethe, while the English refers to Keats. This resulted in a situation where Eco’s original Italian words were actually not translated at all, but replaced with other words that more effectively mirrored the allusivity of the original. In this case, the “faithfulness” of the translation (on the level of individual words and phrases) was less important to the author and translators than the reflection of specific literary qualities of the original.13 Closer to home, several Septuagint scholars have used DTS, as developed by Toury, to argue that differences among books of the Greek Bible in their textual-linguistic makeup and in their relation to the Hebrew source text can be attributed to differences in their intended function within the textual world of Greek-speaking Judaism. In contrast to the translations of Eco’s work, of course, ancient translations do not generally come with “translators’ notes” or other metatextual data that would give us insight into the translators’ goals or methods, or even their 10

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12

Venuti classifies interpretants as either formal (e.g., concepts of equivalence, style, or syntax) or thematic (values, beliefs, existing discourses, or interpretations); “Genealogies,” 497; see also Wright, “Translation, Reception,” 244. Gideon Toury, Descriptive Translation Studies – and Beyond, rev. ed. (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2012), 6. 13 Eco, Mouse or Rat?, 66. Eco, Mouse or Rat?, 66–68.

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social situation or working conditions.14 For the most part, we can only make judgments about the intended function of a translation on the basis of the nature of the translation itself: its relationship to its source and its linguistic acceptability in the target culture.15 One influential theory of Septuagint origins that has drawn heavily on DTS posits that most LXX/ OG texts are characterized by an “interlinear” model of translation, by which is meant that the translation, while not necessarily physically interlinear in format, is marked by a relationship of “dependence and subservience” to its source. As such, it was not intended to be read and studied independently, but alongside the original-language Hebrew texts.16 Translations using this “interlinear” model show a high degree of isomorphism (that is, they tend to reflect as many elements of the source text as possible) and tolerate a high degree of linguistic interference – structures and features drawn from the source language that depart from the normal usage and style of the target language. On the other hand, according to this theory, some OG texts, such as Job, Proverbs, and Isaiah, apparently were intended to function as stand-alone literary works, as opposed to aids or study guides to the Hebrew original. This function is reflected in their reduced concern with isomorphism (i.e., their willingness to change, add to, or omit some features of the source text) and in their more idiomatic Greek usage.17 The interlinear paradigm, while not free of difficulties, represents a key advance in Septuagint scholarship.18 Its importance for my project lies in 14

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The most relevant exceptions are discussed by Benjamin G. Wright III, “Access to the Source: Cicero, Ben Sira, the Septuagint and Their Audiences,” JSJ 34 (2003): 1–27. For discussion of the inevitable push-and-pull between the two poles of acceptability and adequacy (that is, adequate representation of the source text), see Toury, Descriptive Translation Studies, 70. Albert Pietersma, “Beyond Literalism: Interlinearity Revisited,” in “Translation Is Required”: The Septuagint in Retrospect and Prospect, ed. Robert J. V. Hiebert, SBLSCS 56 (Atlanta: SBL, 2010), 5, citing his own original presentation of the model in a 1998 conference paper. See also the brief overview given in Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright, “To the Reader of NETS,” in A New English Translation of the Septuagint, ed. Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), xiii–xx. The interlinear paradigm has been elaborated upon in most detail by Pietersma’s student Cameron Boyd-Taylor, Reading between the Lines: The Interlinear Paradigm for Septuagint Studies, BTS 8 (Leuven: Peeters, 2011). See Boyd-Taylor, Reading, 425–27. On OG Isaiah from the perspective of the interlinear model and DTS, see J. Ross Wagner, Reading the Sealed Book: Old Greek Isaiah and the Problem of Septuagint Hermeneutics, FAT 88 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013). One common critique suggests that proponents of the interlinear model have gone beyond the available evidence in linking the isomorphic tendencies in LXX/OG to a specific historical setting, namely a pedagogical context where the Greek was used as

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its emphasis, drawing on DTS, on the connection between the formal features of translations and their intended function in the cultures for which they were produced. In other words, it construes translation as a socially situated activity, shaped by the norms and expectations of the culture(s) or subculture(s) in which translators work (in the case of the LXX/OG, not just the general Hellenistic world, but that of Greekspeaking Judaism in particular).19 The link of form and function that is constitutive of Toury’s model also recalls genre theory, in reminding us that different social settings or prospective uses will prompt translators to go about their work in different ways, which in turn will leave traces in the translations themselves. In other words, DTS and its explication in the interlinear paradigm have highlighted the significance of differences between translations. We can be confident that the high degree of isomorphism that characterizes many books of the LXX/OG is potentially

19

an aid to understanding the Hebrew. See for instance Ronald L. Troxel, LXX-Isaiah as Translation and Interpretation: The Strategies of the Translator of the Septuagint of Isaiah, JSJSup 124 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 65–70; Rajak, Translation and Survival, 144; Jan Joosten, “Reflections on the ‘Interlinear Paradigm’ in Septuagintal Studies,” in Collected Studies on the Septuagint, FAT 83 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 225–39. Pietersma has responded by emphasizing that the interlinear paradigm was not meant as a historical theory of origins, but as a metaphor; as “nothing more than a visual aid to help us conceptualize the linguistic relationship that is deemed to exist between the original and its rendition into Greek” (“Beyond Literalism,” 5). If the model has no specific historical implications, it seems to function as little more than shorthand for “highly isomorphic and tolerating a high degree of linguistic interference,” and thus seems almost tautological (interlinear = isomorphic). But it is hard to avoid the impression that the paradigm, in seeking to identify “possible target cultural slots” (Wright, “Septuagint and Its Modern Translators,” 108) that LXX/OG texts might have filled, does assume or imply a pedagogical context. For one thing, Pietersma himself states in another early presentation of the model that “there can be no question that most of the Septuagint reflects the school milieu as illustrated by the school texts we have,” and uses the existence of diglot school texts elsewhere in the Hellenistic world as evidence for the paradigm. See Albert Pietersma, “A New Paradigm for Addressing Old Questions: The Relevance of the Interlinear Model for the Study of the Septuagint,” in Bible and Computer: The Stellenbosch AAIBI Conference, ed. J. Cook (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 358. For another, Pietersma seeks to clarify the argument that the concept is to be understood as a metaphor by stating that “while knowledge of interlinearity is presupposed on the part of the modern reader of the Septuagint, the existence of a Hebrew-Greek diglot is not” (“Beyond Literalism,” 18). But if interlinearity would naturally be connected by modern readers with an educational or “cribbing” function, as I suspect it would be, then using the concept as metaphor seems not to be neutral, as Pietersma claims, but to tip the scales toward a specific historical setting. See also below on the question of whether interlinearity can appropriately be taken as implying isomorphism. For nuanced discussions of the origins of the LXX against the background of Hellenistic Judaism, one that critiques the interlinear paradigm and one that defends it, see Rajak, Translation and Survival, 125–75; Boyd-Taylor, Reading, 315–66.

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intentional and significant. Likewise, the reduced isomorphism and more literary Greek of some books (e.g., Isaiah, Job, Proverbs) is also intentional and significant, and deserves (attempts at) explanation.20 Construing translation as a socially conditioned activity highlights the translators’ agency as actors within their particular cultural contexts and negotiators of various types of norms and expectations.21 Seen in this light, the act of translation becomes comparable to the other types of rewriting discussed in this book. I want to pause here to dwell a bit further on this comparison from the perspective of genre. I noted at the start of the chapter that translations like the Greek renderings of books of Hebrew scripture should be considered a type of revision: they are one particular form of a new copy of a given work. The very fact of the transfer to a different linguistic system marks the translation as a revision, since the product of translation always differs linguistically from the source text.22 But this difference in form from same-language revisions (i.e., transfer to a different language) corresponds to a difference in function. Of course, translations could have many potential functions within their target culture (for instance, for the books of the LXX/OG, educational, liturgical, and literary functions have been proposed). But they all share the function of mediating the source text to the target culture – of representing in a new cultural/linguistic system something that had not been present there before.23 Same-language revisions generally operate on texts within a cultural/linguistic system, and as such differ in function from translations. (Of course, same-language revisions equally can serve a variety of functions.) Together the differences of form and function between translations and same-language revisions distinguish translations as a generically distinct 20

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This model thus opposes older views that the LXX/OG translators had poor command of Greek, or were translating the only way they could think to do so, or even that Septuagint Greek represented the particular “pidgin” dialect of the Jews of Alexandria; for an overview and response, see Rajak, Translation and Survival, 127–42. This of course does not mean that translation never became “automatic” or routine or that no translator ever simply intuitively followed the model provided by other translations without thinking about it much; see Toury’s discussion of norms and conventions in Descriptive Translation Studies, 61–67. Note Toury’s identification of the “value” of translation as “The production of a text in a particular culture/language which is designed to occupy a certain position, or fill a certain slot, in the host culture, while at the same time, constituting a representation in that language/culture of a text already existing in some other language, belonging to a different culture and occupying a definable position within it” (Descriptive Translation Studies, 69). See Toury, Descriptive Translation Studies, 22.

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subset of revisions.24 While the wholesale transfer of a text into a different linguistic system is obviously distinctive, it is worth pointing out that some of the changes attested in same-language rewritings can be characterized as functionally similar to translations. Though more attention tends to be paid to more substantive changes, same-language rewritings themselves are replete with linguistic changes of various kinds. Apparently anomalous or erroneous syntax is corrected, rare words are replaced with more common ones, and so forth.25 In this sense, same-language rewritings at times “translate” lexical or syntactic elements that are problematic or have become unfamiliar.26 Although there is a considerable difference between such sporadic linguistic updating and the translation of a text into a different language, the frequency of linguistic changes within same-language rewritings forms another aspect of the overlap between translations and other types of revision.

2 beyond “just translating” If the linguistic changes made by translators and the interpretive decisions that inform their work allow us to see translations as a form of revision, other textual aspects of the LXX/OG strengthen the connection still further. In addition to linguistic changes – the rendering of the Hebrew text into Greek, according to whatever norms the translator worked – the LXX/OG is also full of cases where the translator appears to intentionally depart from the meaning of the source text. Such instances, which Screnock calls “content changes,” could involve attempts to “correct” the text’s meaning (through additions, omissions, or modifications), to introduce themes or ideas absent in the source text, or to increase the 24 25 26

Similarly, see Wright, “Scribes, Translators,” 14. For examples of such changes, see Tov, Textual Criticism, 256–57. It has been argued that such changes can be viewed as a type of “intralingual translation,” in the sense that some of the linguistic features of the source text are changed in order to facilitate understanding by a new audience; see John Screnock, Traductor Scriptor: The Old Greek Translation of Exodus 1–14 as Scribal Activity, VTSup 174 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 50–72. On the other hand, Brian Mossop, “‘Intralingual Translation’: A Desirable Concept?,” Across Languages and Cultures 17 (2016): 5–6, points out that improving the readability or accessibility of a text differs fundamentally from the basic act of translation, which is representing source text A in target language B. He would argue that cases where texts are revised for an audience that is unable to understand them linguistically (e.g., across different dialects or historical forms of a language) are not “intralingual translation” at all, but simply (interlingual) translation, since the divisions between languages are drawn on the basis of social and cultural factors, not intelligibility.

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literary cohesion or artistry of the text.27 Another useful set of terms is provided by Brian Mossop, who argues that translation is characterized by “equivalencing work” (that is, the rendering of the source text in the target language with as close to an equivalent meaning as possible), but that nearly all translators also engage in “non-equivalencing work” (departures from the source text for readability, clarification, correction, improvement, etc.).28 By way of example, consider the Greek translation of Exod 24:9 (Table 5.1). Table 5.1 Equivalencing work by the Greek translators Exod 24:9 MT

Exod 24:9 LXX

‫ויעל משה ואהרון נדב ואביהו ושבעים מזקני ישראל‬

καὶ ἀνέβη Μωυσῆς καὶ Ααρων καὶ Ναδαβ καὶ Αβιουδ καὶ ἑβδομήκοντα τῆς γερουσίας Ισραηλ So Moses and Aaron and Nadab and Abioud and seventy of the council of elders of Israel went up.

So Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up

This is quite a straightforward sentence in the Hebrew, and the Greek closely mirrors its source in terms of both word order (serial fidelity) and number of words (quantitative fidelity). The words used are standard equivalents for the Hebrew words (ἀναβαίνω for ‫עלה‬, etc.). Still, the translator had to make choices. For example, γερουσία, “council of elders,” is used here for ‫זקנים‬, “elders.” This equivalency is common in Exodus, but so is πρεσβύτεροι – in fact, in a very similar context just a few verses earlier, LXX translates ‫ ושבעים מזקני ישראל‬with καὶ ἑβδομήκοντα τῶν πρεσβυτέρων Ισραηλ, “and seventy of the elders of Israel” (Exod 24:1). It is probably impossible for us to determine exactly what caused the 27

28

Screnock, Traductor Scriptor, 52–57, drawing on the work of Karen Zethsen. Similarly, Theo van der Louw charts a range of reasons why translators depart from what he calls the “literal rendering,” from the impossibility or unnaturalness of a literal translation, through attempts to improve style or logic/coherence, to truly ideological transformations. See Theo A. W. van der Louw, “Linguistic or Ideological Shifts? The Problem-oriented Study of Transformations as a Methodological Filter,” COLLeGIUM 7 (2012): 23–41. See Mossop, “Intralingual Translation,” 7–8. In the spirit of Venuti, we might note that the boundary between such “non-equivalencing” or “content changes” and the “equivalencing” or “linguistic changes” that are part of any translation is fuzzy and should not be overstated (e.g., by implying that the latter is “just translation” while the former is “interpretation”). In Venuti’s model, there can be no true “equivalence”; rather, both types of changes are interpretations governed by particular sets of interpretants.

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translator to use γερουσία in one instance and πρεσβύτεροι in another, but that choice – however well- or ill-considered in this case – is a linguistic one; part of what Mossop would call the translator’s “equivalencing work”: one step in the constant process of deciding how best to reflect the source text in the target language. Contrast the translation of Exod 24:9 with the beginning of the following verse (Table 5.2). Table 5.2 Content changes by the Greek translators Exod 24:10 MT

Exod 24:10 LXX

and they saw the God of Israel . . .

καὶ εἶδον τὸν τόπον οὗ εἱστήκει ἐκεῖ ὁ θεὸς τοῦ Ισραηλ and they saw the place where the God of Israel stood . . .

The Greek is several words longer than the Hebrew, and the extra words (“the place where he stood”) substantially change the meaning of the phrase. The Israelite delegation does not see God directly, but only the place where God stands. The added words do not correspond to any element of the Hebrew text. Instead, they seem motivated by discomfort with the idea that Moses, Aaron, and their companions actually saw God. Here we have moved from the realm of linguistic change or equivalencing work (finding the right words to express the meaning of the source text) to content change or non-equivalencing work. More than just representing the sense of the source in a different linguistic system, the translator seems to have incorporated additional material in light of a new cultural and theological context, in which such a direct encounter between the Israelite delegation and God enthroned on Sinai was a bit too anthropomorphic.29 In such a case, the work of the translator extends to adjusting the contents of the text, just as a scribe producing a same-language copy might do.

Translator or Vorlage? While the idea here is clear, scholars disagree vehemently on the degree to which changes such as this should actually be ascribed to the LXX/OG 29

This example is one of several presented by Tov, Textual Criticism, 121. Note his caution that in many of these cases it is difficult to determine whether these theological corrections derived from the translators or from earlier Hebrew copyists. For more on this issue, see below.

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translators. The root of the disagreement is a serious methodological issue that has become especially apparent with the full publication of the manuscript discoveries from Qumran: how can it be determined whether a given variant was introduced by a scribe working in Hebrew or by a translator? The Qumran biblical manuscripts, as we have seen, sometimes preserve texts very similar to what has come down to us in the MT, but also contain numerous major and minor variants. In light of that reality, when an interpretive variant appears in a Greek translation of a scriptural text, how do we know that the change was made by the translator, as opposed to representing a precise translation of a variant that already existed in the translator’s Hebrew Vorlage?30 The very pluriformity of the Hebrew text tradition makes it methodologically problematic to distinguish the work of a translator from that undertaken by copyists working in Hebrew.31 Septuagint scholars have handled this uncertainty in various, indeed contradictory, ways. Some are inclined to attribute any divergences from MT to the translator, unless there is manuscript evidence that the reading existed in Hebrew.32 Others insist it is best to assume that content variants originated in a Hebrew Vorlage, even in the absence of concrete manuscript evidence, unless there are compelling reasons to ascribe them

30

31

32

Of course, it is also possible in every such case that MT is the version that contains the “variant” or chronologically later reading while the Greek or an alternative Hebrew manuscript preserves an earlier reading. On the issue, see for example Anneli Aejmelaeus, “What Can We Know about the Hebrew Vorlage of the Septuagint?,” in On the Trail of the Septuagint Translators: Collected Essays, 2nd ed., CBET 50 (Leiden: Peeters, 2007), 71–106, esp. 78–85; Tov, Textual Criticism, 115–27; Eugene C. Ulrich, “The Septuagint Manuscripts from Qumran: A Reappraisal of Their Value,” in Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible, 165–83; Screnock, Traductor Scriptor, 38–39. See e.g. Pietersma, “Beyond Literalism,” 12, who describes as “standard procedure in the discipline . . . that the consonantal MT is assumed to be the parent text of the Septuagint until proven otherwise”; Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Numbers, xxxvi: “I have taken the parent text as the consonantal text of MT except where the evidence makes such a parent text unlikely.” Incredibly, some Septuagintalists equivocate even where there is concrete evidence for the Hebrew origins of a variant. Though the theoretical possibility of an alternative Vorlage is generally recognized, in concrete cases it is often ignored or rejected. See for example Wagner, Reading the Sealed Book, 95, where the author calls attention to the additional και in the OG at the beginning of Isa 1:8b as indicative of the translator’s manner of working, though he recognizes in a footnote that the additional conjunction is present in 1QIsaa and several other witnesses, strongly suggesting that it was present in the translator’s Vorlage.

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to a translator.33 The reality, as is so often the case, likely lies somewhere in the middle.34 On the one hand, the general fluidity of scriptural texts in the Second Temple period means there is a real possibility that a given variant originated in Hebrew, even if it is now preserved only in a translation. On the other hand, there is no real basis for assuming that variants originated in Hebrew and that ancient translators stuck to translation and did not otherwise intervene in their source texts. An analogy with scribes making same-language copies of a text makes this clear. We have come to appreciate that, although some scribes aimed to reproduce their source text precisely, others saw it as part of their job to update the text, make it more readable, correct perceived errors, and so on.35 If we think of ancient translators in the same way, we might draw the same tentative conclusions: some translators hewed closely to their source text and eschewed content changes, while others engaged in various types of updating or correction.36 In practical terms, since a great many variants are just as likely to have originated in Hebrew as in Greek, special care must be taken when seeking to identify examples of revision that can confidently be ascribed to translators. Evidence must be marshalled on a case-by-case basis for why the change is better attributed to a translator than a Hebrewlanguage scribe, and many instances may be impossible to decide.37 In other words, the true number of changes introduced by a given translator will be impossible to recover because some of them will give no clues as to whether they were introduced in Hebrew or Greek.38 The following 33

34 35

36

37 38

Aejmelaeus, “What Can We Know,” 91; Ronald S. Hendel, The Text of Genesis 1–11: Textual Studies and Critical Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 18. See Troxel, LXX-Isaiah, 74, 77. For the important thesis that “facilitating” (expansionist/revisionist) copying coexisted with more precise copying throughout the Second Temple period, see Teeter, Scribal Laws, 254–64. Debel observes that, more frequently than rejecting the possibility that some translators were quite interventionist (which seems indisputable in the case of certain books of the OG), scholars have dismissed such activity as “free translation” rather than regarding it as “witness to exactly the same creative approach toward the scriptural text that can be found in many Hebrew ‘variant literary editions’”; “Greek ‘Variant Literary Editions,’” 180. Troxel, LXX-Isaiah, 80. In his recent monograph, John Screnock attempts to demonstrate that translators could change their texts in the same manner as copyists working in Hebrew. However, in his analysis of the OG of Exodus 1–11, he dismisses from consideration any instance where the Greek does not seem isomorphically to reflect a Hebrew Vorlage (Traductor Scriptor, 107). This leaves as data only variants that could equally have originated at the level of the translation or at the level of a Vorlage. Since all of the variants he discusses could be attributed to a scribe working in Hebrew as easily as to the OG translator, the data set

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examples illustrate both some of the kinds of changes that can be attributed to translators with some confidence, and the points of connection such changes show with same-language rewriting.

Small and Moderate Changes One kind of textual intervention that can be attributed to translators with some confidence is changes that reflect the particular cultural context in which the translators lived. For example, the LXX of Deut 23:18 (LXX: 23:17) includes two additional clauses not present in the Hebrew (Table 5.3). Table 5.3 Translation reflecting Greek cultural context Deut 23:18 MT

Deut 23:17 LXX

‫לא תהיה קדשה מבנות ישראל ולא יהיה קדש מבני‬ ‫ישראל‬

οὐκ ἔσται πόρνη ἀπὸ θυγατέρων Ισραηλ καὶ οὐκ ἔσται πορνεύων ἀπὸ υἱῶν Ισραηλ οὐκ ἔσται τελεσφόρος ἀπὸ θυγατέρων Ισραηλ καὶ οὐκ ἔσται τελισκόμενος ἀπὸ υἱῶν Ισραηλ There shall not be a prostitute among the daughters of Israel; there shall not be one that practices prostitution among the sons of Israel. There shall not be an initiate among the daughters of Israel, and there shall not be anyone initiated from the sons of Israel. (NETS)

There shall not be a qadesha from the daughters of Israel, and there shall not be a qadesh from the sons of Israel.

We appear to have here a double translation that, however it originated, reflects two different ways of reading the Hebrew ‫קדשה‬/‫קדש‬. The first half of the verse interprets the terms as referring to prostitution (πόρνη/ πορνεύων), while the second draws on the cultic/ritual implications of the root ‫קד"ש‬. The Greek terms that appear here, τελεσφόρος and τελισκόμενος, appear nowhere else in the LXX, and seem to represent clear references to

seems to make the demonstration of his point impossible: in order to demonstrate that translators did the same sorts of things as Hebrew-language scribes, it is necessary to analyze cases of variation that can confidently be attributed to the translator.

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“initiation” in the sense of the Greek mystery religions.39 Yet they are clearly reasonable renderings for a translator who took ‫ קדש‬and ‫ קדשה‬in a cultic sense; there is nothing that would point to a different Vorlage.40 Therefore, it is very likely that the doublet originated in Greek.41 Another type of interpretive activity witnessed frequently in some books of the LXX/OG involves increasing lexical correspondence between sections or books. In such cases, the textual form of a given passage is adjusted so that it corresponds more closely with one or more other passages. These other passages could be in the same chapter or the same book, or in a different book altogether; in particular, it seems that the Greek Pentateuch was known to and sometimes influenced the later translators of books belonging to the Prophets and Writings.42 Similar types of “harmonization” or increase in textual correspondences also occur frequently in Hebrew-language contexts of rewriting. That means we cannot assume that any such case that appears in LXX/OG was the work of the translators. But in some instances the increased correspondence appears to function in Greek only, and not in Hebrew, which would suggest that the change originated at the level of the translation rather than a Vorlage. Consider for instance Isa 48:21 (Table 5.4). This verse, in both Hebrew and Greek, alludes to the episode at Massah and Meribah recounted in Exod 17:6a (Table 5.5).

39

40

41

42

As indicated by the NETS translation; see Liddell and Scott ad loc., and also John William Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Deuteronomy, SBLSCS 39 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1995), 371–72. Although this verse has traditionally been interpreted as a reference to cult prostitution, there is no good evidence for such a practice in ancient Israel or its surroundings. As Tigay points out, ‫ קדשה‬elsewhere in the Bible refers to a “common prostitute,” perhaps euphemistically. The term ‫ קדש‬here is a bit more difficult: in the books of Kings they are associated with pagan cult practices, but Tigay argues persuasively that that meaning does not make much sense in the context of this verse; he suggests that, based on the meaning of ‫קדש‬, ‫ קדשה‬may mean “male prostitute” here. See Jeffrey H. Tigay, The JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996), 215–16, 480–81. For this and for other cases where the LXX/OG translation reflects the particular cultural situation of the translators, see Isac Leo Seeligmann, “Problems and Perspectives in Modern Septuagint Research,” in The Septuagint of Isaiah and Cognate Studies, FAT 40 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 78 and elsewhere. Emanuel Tov, “The Impact of the Septuagint Translation of the Torah on the Translation of the Other Books,” in The Greek and Hebrew Bible: Collected Essays on the Septuagint, VTSup 72 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 183–94; also e.g. Troxel, LXX-Isaiah, 106; Wagner, Reading the Sealed Book, 58.

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Table 5.4 Influence of the Greek Pentateuch on Greek Isaiah Isa 48:21 MT

Isa 48:21 OG ‫ולא צמאו בחרבות הוליכם‬ ‫מים מצור הזיל למו‬ ‫ויבקע צור ויזבו מים‬

They did not thirst in the wastelands where he led them Water from rock he caused to flow for them He split rock and water gushed out.

καὶ ἐὰν διψήσωσιν δι᾽ ἐρήμου ἄξει αὐτούς ὕδωρ ἐκ πέτρας ἐξάξει αὐτοῖς σχισθήσεται πέτρα καὶ ῥυήσεται ὕδωρ καὶ πίεται ὁ λαός μου And if they should thirst through the desert he will lead them Water from rock he will bring out for them He will split rock and water will flow, And my people will drink.

Table 5.5 Exodus 17:6a Exod 17:6a MT ‫והכית בצור ויצאו ממנו מים ושתה העם‬ You shall strike the rock, and water will come out from it, and the people will drink.

Exod 17:6a LXX καὶ πατάξεις τὴν πέτραν καὶ ἐξελεύσεται ἐξ αὐτῆς ὕδωρ καὶ πίεται ὁ λαός μου You shall strike the rock, and water will come out from it, and my people will drink.

The final clause of Exod 17:6a is obviously the source for the plus in the Greek of Isa 48:21: it adds an element of the original pentateuchal story that is absent from the allusion in MT Isaiah.43 Although this phenomenon of adding details drawn from one passage into a parallel passage occurs frequently in Hebrew texts as well, here there are some important clues that this is the work of the translator. First, the exact wording of the plus in Isa 48:21, “my people will drink,” matches the Greek form of Exod 17:6, but not that of the MT (‫“ = ושתה העם‬and the people will drink”). SP, 4QpaleoExodm, and Targum Onkelos all agree with MT and lack the possessive. Of course, the Greek translators of Exodus may have found ‫“( ושתה עמי‬and my people will drink”) in their Vorlage. But since there is considerable evidence that

43

Troxel, LXX-Isaiah, 149. As Troxel notes, the idea that here the Greek translator of Isaiah quotes from the Greek Pentateuch goes back to Seeligmann; see Isac Leo Seeligmann, “The Septuagint Version of Isaiah,” in The Septuagint of Isaiah and Cognate Studies, 190.

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the translators of Isaiah knew and were influenced by the Greek Pentateuch, it is most likely that they drew on Exod 17:6 in its (attested) Greek form, rather than drawing directly on a Hebrew version containing this reading. Second, grammatical differences between the Hebrew of Isa 48:21 and Exod 17:6 make a Hebrew origin for the plus even less likely. In Hebrew, the Isaiah verse uses perfect and converted imperfect verbs to reflect past action, while God’s command in Exodus uses imperfect and converted perfect verbs, reflecting action yet to take place. After a list of past actions (“they did not thirst . . . he led them . . . he caused to flow . . . he split”), a converted perfect referring to a future action (“the/my people will drink”) would be grammatically and syntactically out of place. But in OG Isaiah, the whole verse is in the future tense, such that the future καὶ πίεται ὁ λαός μου fits in perfectly.44 We can never totally disprove a more complex scenario: perhaps a Hebrew scribe originally inserted the plus, drawing on a Hebrew Exodus manuscript with the reading ‫ =( עמי‬LXX-Vorlage), but changed the verb to conform to the past-tense context (*‫)וישת עמי‬, and then in the course of the translation this verb was changed again, to a future form, like the other verbs in the verse. But given the available evidence, it seems more likely that the translators of OG Isaiah were responsible for the plus, and drew it from an existing Greek translation of Exodus. Some books of the LXX/OG witness a translation technique that involves more pronounced departures from the source text. Job is perhaps the most notable example – the translators reproduce the basic structure and meaning of the text, but consistently deviate from the Hebrew at the level of both syntax and semantics. The resulting Greek text is considerably shorter than the Hebrew. Because of its highly idiomatic Greek (at least in comparison to other books of the LXX/OG), it is difficult to reconstruct a potential alternative Hebrew Vorlage, and indeed nearly all scholars believe that the differences between the Hebrew and Greek in this case are attributable to the translator.45 One (somewhat extended) example, drawing on Cameron BoydTaylor’s analysis, will illustrate some of the ways that the translators

44

45

Note that the future tense is actually theologically significant here, as it makes explicit what is only implied by the Hebrew: that the new exodus from Babylon will repeat elements of the old/first Exodus from Egypt. See Boyd-Taylor, Reading, 394, and the literature cited there; also Debel, “Greek ‘Variant Literary Editions,’” 176–77.

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Table 5.6 Non-isomorphic translation in Job Job 41:23–25 MT

Job 41:23–25 OG 23

It makes the deep boil like a pot; it makes the sea like a pot of ointment. After itself it lights up a path; one would think the deep to be white-haired. On earth it has no equal, a creature without fear. (NRSV, Job 41:31–33, adjusted)

ἀναζεῖ τὴν ἄβυσσον ὥσπερ χαλκεῖον ἥγηται δὲ τὴν θάλασσαν ὥσπερ ἐξάλειπτρον 24 τὸν δὲ τάρταρον τῆς ἀβύσσου ὥσπερ αἰχμάλωτον 25 οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδὲν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ὅμοιον αὐτῷ πεποιημένον ἐγκαταπαίζεσθαι ὑπὸ τῶν ἀγγέλων μου It makes the deep boil like a cauldron, And regards the sea as a pot of ointment, and Tartaros of the deep as a captive. There is nothing on earth like it, Made to be mocked at by my angels. (NETS)

reformulate the meaning of Job in light of various theological, cultural, and textual contexts (Table 5.6). The Greek rendering of v. 23 is quite close to the Hebrew, the only substantive change being that Leviathan here regards the sea as an ointment pot (i.e., something small and trivial?) rather than making it resemble an ointment pot. The first hemistich of v. 24 is omitted, however, and the second introduces a reference to Greek mythology, clearly drawing upon the broader Hellenistic cultural context.46 Likewise, the first half of v. 25 is rendered fairly precisely, while the second half goes in a different direction. Other than “made” (πεποιημένον), reflecting the Hebrew passive participle ‫העשו‬, there is no clear relationship between the Hebrew and the Greek. Although we can probably not ever be sure why the translators chose to deviate from the source precisely at this point, they accomplish some significant interpretive work with their new version.47 A nearly identical phrase, πεποιημένον ἐγκαταπαίζεσθαι ὑπὸ τῶν ἀγγέλων αὐτοῦ (“made to be mocked at by his angels”), occurs in OG Job 40:19, where it describes Behemoth. Like the rendering of 41:25b, in 40:19 the translation departs 46

Boyd-Taylor, Reading, 413.

47

See Boyd-Taylor, Reading, 415–19.

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substantially from the Hebrew (‫העשו יגש חרבו‬, “only its maker can approach it with the sword” [NRSV]). It is surely not a coincidence that these two verses have the consonantal form ‫ העשו‬in common, and perhaps it was this that led the translators to insert this phrase in 41:25.48 The result is a coordination of the descriptions of Behemoth and Leviathan, increasing the similarities between the two primordial monsters.49 Besides increasing lexical correspondences within the book of Job, however, this rendering (in both 40:19 and 41:25) points beyond Job to the book of Psalms. As Boyd-Taylor notes, the idea of Leviathan and Behemoth as objects of mockery likely derives from Ps 104 (103):26b, where the great sea monster is described as ‫לויתן זה יצרת לשחק בו‬, “Leviathan whom you formed to sport with.” The Greek rendering of this half-verse, δράκων οὗτος ὃν ἔπλασας ἐμπαίζειν αὐτῷ, “the serpent whom you formed in order to mock,” uses the same word for “mock” as appears in OG Job 40:19 and 41:25 (and πλάσσω occurs in the first half of Job 40:19). Thus, the translators import material describing Leviathan in the psalm to enrich the portrait of the primordial monsters in Job, building connections not only within the book of Job, between the two monsters, but between their descriptions here and discussion of them elsewhere in Jewish literature.50

48

49 50

Note the pointing is different in each case: 40:19 as an active participle with a 3ms object suffix, and 41:25 as a passive participle. It seems the translators read the form in 40:19 as a passive participle as well. Boyd-Taylor, Reading, 419. Boyd-Taylor, Reading, 417. Boyd-Taylor does not explicitly defend the assumption that the translator of OG Job knew and drew on the OG translation of Psalms, rather than the reverse. This direction of dependence, though, is easily demonstrated by the fact that OG Ps 103:26b is a straightforward rendering of the corresponding Hebrew, while the matching phrase in OG Job 40:19; 41:25 has no precedent in the Hebrew. Interestingly, this may represent a case where an original direction of dependence is reversed in later stages of transmission (the so-called boomerang effect; see Chapter 4, n. 46). While OG Job here clearly draws upon OG Psalm 103, the image of Leviathan in the original Hebrew of the psalm seems to respond to, or at least represent a stage of thinking secondary to, that of the depiction of Leviathan in Job 41:25. In (Hebrew) Job, Leviathan still represents a fearsome primordial sea monster whose capture demonstrates God’s power and mastery, but Psalm 104 defangs the monster, presenting Leviathan as “fashioned by YHWH from the start and only for the purpose of his personal diversion and amusement”; Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 54.

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The Old Greek of Job seems to present a case where the translators retained the basic structure and meaning of the text but made significant changes at the level of individual sentences. Other books of the Greek Bible contain different kinds of major changes. In particular, a number of books attest entire sections or chapters that are not present in the Hebrew. These include the addition to the book of Daniel of the Prayer of Azariah, the Song of the Three Young Men, Bel and the Dragon, and Susannah; the six large additions (labeled Additions A–F) in Greek Esther; and several major additions in the Greek 3 Reigns (1 Kings). These kinds of major insertions are also attested, of course, in same-language revisions of Hebrew texts. With these major additions we face the same question as arose with smaller variants preserved only in Greek: how can we know whether they stem from the translator (or a later Greek revision) or from an alternate Hebrew Vorlage? In most of the above cases, scholars have argued that Semiticisms in the Greek text of the plusses, or continuities with the style of the surrounding translated text, point in the direction of a Hebrew/ Aramaic Vorlage rather than an addition crafted by the translator. At the very least, we can say that they give no clear sign of having been composed in Greek.51 There are exceptions, however. Two of the additions to Esther, Additions B and E, take the form of letters sent from King Artaxerxes to his provincial governors and other officials. General scholarly consensus maintains that the syntax and style of these letters indicate they were originally composed in Greek and added by the translator.52 Another, more disputed case is found in Baruch: while the early portions of that book (1:1–3:8) clearly constitute a translation from a Hebrew original, the poem found in Baruch 3:9–5:9 lacks the abundance of

51

52

On Daniel, see John J. Collins, Daniel, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 199, 204 (on the additions to Daniel 3), 410 (on Bel and the Dragon), 428 (on Susanna); on Esther and 3 Reigns, see Tov, “Three Strange Books of the LXX: 1 Kings, Esther, and Daniel Compared with Similar Rewritten Compositions from Qumran and Elsewhere,” in Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible, and Qumran, 283–308. Though I do not wish to re-adjudicate any of these specific cases, it may be worth pointing out that translators would have been perfectly capable of continuing to write in a “translational” style even when composing in Greek. Toury’s discussion of “pseudo-translation” (Descriptive Translation Studies, 47–54) is relevant here in its demonstration that just because something sounds like a translation doesn’t necessarily mean it is a translation. Tov, “Three Strange Books,” 293; see also Carey A. Moore, “Esther, Additions to,” ABD 2: 630.

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Hebraisms that characterize the first half of the book, and may well have been composed in Greek, perhaps (Wright cautiously suggests) by the same individual who translated the first part of the book.53 Furthermore, even if a given plus originated in a Semitic language, this need not necessarily mean the translator had no role in the shaping of the Greek version of the work. The additions to Daniel constitute more or less freestanding compositions that likely existed on their own before being added to the book.54 Because of their complete lack of attestation in the ancient Hebrew/Aramaic manuscript tradition, scholars have generally held that they were added to Daniel by the translator of the Old Greek.55 If this assessment is accurate, the translator did not compose the added passages, but was still responsible for the major editorial supplements to the book, much as we sometimes find existing texts incorporated into new contexts in Hebrew-language cases of revision and reuse.56

Translation as Revision in Light of the LXX/OG It is essential to keep in mind that these examples represent just a selection of cases where content changes can be attributed with some measure of confidence to the Greek translators. And such cases likely represent only a fraction of the changes actually made by the Greek translators, if we reckon with the likelihood that, although an unknown Hebrew Vorlage remains a constant possibility, many changes that cannot confidently be attributed to translators must nonetheless have originated in Greek. Despite all these unknowns, the picture that emerges of the activities of the Greek translators bears a real resemblance to our picture of the activities of scribes working within a single language. Both scribes and translators often represented their source texts precisely (translators, of course, doing 53

54 56

Benjamin G. Wright III, “The Epistle of Jeremiah: Translation or Composition?,” in Deuterocanonical Additions of the Old Testament Books, ed. Géza G. Xeravits and József Zsengellér, DCLS 5 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 140. For overviews of the evidence from Baruch, see Carey A. Moore, Daniel, Esther and Jeremiah: The Additions, AB 44 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977), 303–4, 313–16; Tony S. L. Michael, “To the Reader of Barouch,” in Wright and Pietersma, A New English Translation of the Septuagint, 925–27. As Wright argues, the Epistle of Jeremiah was also likely composed in Greek, despite the broad assumptions that it is a translation. 55 Collins, Daniel, 200, 207, 418, 437. Collins, Daniel, 204, 419, 428. For examples, see Chapter 6. According to Collins, the translator may also have been responsible for some smaller additions meant to coordinate the major plusses with their new context, for instance the “prose interlude” in Daniel 3 between the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men (Daniel, 203–4).

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so in a different language), but also made content changes of various sizes, from increasing the connections between different verses or books, to clarifying or adjusting the sense, to addition of whole new sections or restructuring of a work. In this sense, the Greek translations functioned not only to mediate the source text into the target culture, but also to do the same kinds of things that revisions aimed to do: expand, correct, smooth, and otherwise improve the source text. In this sense, translators and scribes (or a scribe who was translating and a scribe who was not) were engaged in two different, but nevertheless substantially overlapping, activities.

3 translation and rewriting in the targumim While scholars dispute the degree to which the translators of the LXX/OG also functioned as rewriters, no one doubts the highly interpretive nature of the various Aramaic renditions of Hebrew scripture known as the targumim. Though the various targumim differ considerably among themselves in the nature of their relationship to the texts of the Hebrew Bible on which they depend, all go far beyond a simple presentation of the Hebrew text in Aramaic.57 In fact, they depart so frequently from their Hebrew source texts that scholars are often hesitant to call them “translations,” or feel it necessary to qualify that designation in some way.58

57

58

I am speaking here of the traditional rabbinic targumim; we do have three fragmentary “targum” manuscripts from Qumran (4Q156 = 4QtgLev; 4Q157 = 4QtgJob; 11Q10 = 11QtgJob), but all of these appear to stay fairly close to the Hebrew. See Loren T. Stuckenbruck and David Noel Freedman, “The Fragments of a Targum to Leviticus in Qumran Cave 4 (4Q156): A Linguistic Comparison and Assessment,” in Targum and Scripture: Studies in Aramaic Translation and Interpretation in Memory of Ernest G. Clarke, ed. Paul V. M. Flesher (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 79–95; Daniel J. Harrington, Wisdom Texts from Qumran (New York: Routledge, 1996), 18–22; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “Some Observations on the Targum of Job from Qumran Cave 11,” CBQ 36 (1974): 503–24. See for example Moshe J. Bernstein, “The Aramaic Targumim: The Many Faces of the Jewish Biblical Experience,” in Jewish Ways of Reading the Bible, ed. George J. Brooke, JSSSup 11 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 137: “The targum(im) is/are not (a) translation(s) like other translations, ancient or modern”; Edward M. Cook, “The Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in the Targums,” in Henze, A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism, 95: the targumim are “both less and more than translations”; Alexander, “Jewish Aramaic Translations,” 239: “There is clear evidence that the Rabbis viewed the targum as more than translation in any narrow sense.” Samely strongly denies that “translation” is the proper generic label for targum; see Interpretation of Speech, 158–59; Alexander Samely, “Is Targumic Aramaic Rabbinic

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A brief consideration of the targumim in light of the relationship between form and function sheds light from a different angle on the connections between translation and other forms of rewriting. The types of content changes attested in the targumim, generally speaking, resemble what we find in Hebrew-language revisions, from minor grammatical adjustments to increasing coordination between passages to theological changes and substantial additions.59 This is not to say that there are no differences, either between the targumim and other types of revision (translations included) or between individual targumim.60 For instance, Samely notes that the targumim as a rule do not engage in rearrangement, and only very rarely in omission.61 Some targumim, such as Pseudo-Jonathan, accomplish most of their interpretive work by means of additions, while others, Onqelos in particular, are much more likely to make changes by way of substitution.62 All of the targumim also reflect the particular concerns and exegetical assumptions of the rabbis.63 Nevertheless, the basic range of types and scope of changes feels very familiar in light of the changes found in Hebrew-language revisions. The targumim also resemble the Greek translations and other ancient Jewish revisions in their formal boundedness to their source texts. In all these cases (and in contrast to examples of reuse), the new text is presented as corresponding to, in some way reproducing, the contents of the source. This places certain constraints on the formal features of content changes. First, interventions must remain within what we might call “the

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Hebrew? A Reflection on Midrashic and Targumic Rewording of Scripture,” JJS 45 (1994): 92–100. For overviews of the kinds of interpretive changes introduced by the targumists, see e.g. Alexander, “Jewish Aramaic Translations,” 225–37; Cook, “Targums,” 97–113; and see the wealth of information in Alexander Sperber, The Bible in Aramaic, Volume IV B: The Targum and the Hebrew Bible (Leiden: Brill, 1992). The Manchester/Durham Database project includes the targumim, virtually the only texts it includes that I would consider to be “revisions” (see Chapter 1, n. 32). Their distinctive features are placed in Section 6 of the project’s Inventory (“Meta-linguistic Structuring of a Text According to Another Text”), the bulk of which section treats lemmatic commentaries. For a discussion of the place of the targumim in the Inventory and the distinctions that can be made between different targumim, see Alexander Samely, “The Targums within a New Description of Jewish Text Structures in Antiquity,” Aramaic Studies 9 (2011): 5–38; Alexander Samely, Profiling Jewish Literature in Antiquity, 250–52. (Note also his comments on 252 about the possibility of future comparison with Greek translations of Hebrew scripture.) Interpretation of Speech, 161, 174. Samely, Interpretation of Speech, 178; see also the illustrative comparison of Onqelos, Neofiti, and Pseudo-Jonathan in Fraade, “Locating Targum.” Samely, “Targumic Aramaic,” 97; Fraade, “Locating Targum,” 82–83.

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world of the text.” They must respect, and mimic, its setting and narrative voice. Thus, interventions are not marked as such, but are integrated seamlessly into the fabric of the text. As Samely puts it, “the targumist usually inserts his additions as a continuation of the perspective and voice of the narrator of MT.”64 Second, there is no room for multiple interpretations or multiple significations, as is common in other types of rabbinic discourse. Despite whatever interpretive ends are accomplished by the targumist’s reworking of the Hebrew, the interpretive quality of the text is subordinated to its formal features as (ostensible) reproduction of the source.65 The same rules apply, of course, to the books of the LXX/OG and to new same-language copies. Where the targumim distinguish themselves from translations such as the LXX/OG (and other ancient versions) on the one hand, and from same-language revisions on the other, is in the combination of transfer of the words of their Hebrew source into another language (i.e., translation) with extensive content changes. Recalling the insights of both genre theory and DTS, we should expect that these formal differences point toward a distinctive function for the targumim as well. The high degree of interpretive changes suggests that the targumists were not simply concerned with providing target-language (i.e., Aramaic) access to their source texts in the sense normally associated with translations.66 On the other hand, the conversion into Aramaic must have some function; otherwise why bother? Recent work on the nature and function of the targumim, especially that of Samely and Fraade, can help us be more precise. Contrary to a history of scholarship that tended to stress the “pre- or extrarabbinic” nature of targum, as Fraade puts it, and its liturgical setting, these scholars have shown the integral role of targum in the larger landscape of rabbinic culture, and in particular in rabbinic study.67 The point of targum was not primarily to make the meaning (sense) of the biblical text accessible to non-Hebrew speakers; that is, to bridge a linguistic barrier. Instead, it was

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Interpretation of Speech, 71; see also 165, and note the small handful of exceptions to this principle listed in 71n13. Samely, Interpretation of Speech, 179. Though it has often been assumed that the targumim originated out of the need for a vernacular translation of scriptural texts for a community in which Hebrew was no longer readily understood, that assumption has been challenged; see Samely, “Targumic Aramaic,” 99; Fraade, “Locating Targum,” 78. Fraade, “Locating Targum,” in particular stresses targum as “a component of the rabbinic study curriculum” (82).

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to represent in the form of an Aramaic paraphrase a particular rabbinic construal of the “true meaning” of the text; much more important than the bridge between Hebrew and Aramaic was that “between biblical source text and rabbinic target culture,” in Fraade’s words.68 The rabbis, of course, had other means of bridging the gap between the world of the Bible and their own horizons, especially the rich discourse of midrash. What then was the distinctive function of this Aramaic rewording of the Hebrew text? Why the persistence of this textual form standing somewhere between translation and midrash?69 Two further pieces of evidence might provide some insight. The first is the generally bilingual context of rabbinic study: the rabbis and their students would have been competent in both Hebrew and Aramaic; as such they did not, strictly speaking, need an Aramaic translation to convey to them the meaning of the Hebrew in a linguistic sense.70 Samely even suggests that “Aramaic is treated like just another thesaurus of synonyms for the words of biblical Hebrew,” providing a “doubly rich reservoir of vocabulary for paraphrastic rewording” of the biblical text.71 Yet it is noteworthy that these two lexica (Hebrew and Aramaic) are not mixed in the targumim. The second key piece of data is the physical format of early targum manuscripts, along with rabbinic rules governing the ways in which targum was to be recited aloud in the synagogue as accompaniment to the Hebrew text. Most introductions to targum emphasize that the targumim were never meant to exist independently of their Hebrew sources, physically or orally; “targum should always stand in the presence of Scripture.”72 The earliest manuscripts of targum are formatted

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“Locating Targum,” 83. Samely (“Targumic Aramaic,” 99) observes of the targumim that “in their exegetical framework and in their paraphrastic method, their closest kinsman is the Hebrew literary genre of midrash.” Steven D. Fraade, “Rabbinic Views on the Practice of Targum, and Multilingualism in the Jewish Gallilee of the Third-Sixth Centuries,” in The Galilee in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I. Levine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), 258, 261; Fraade, “Locating Targum,” 80. At the end of this article, Fraade makes the argument that in fact the targumim depend on and assume a bilingual audience for the full import of their exegesis to emerge: “The targum may be said not only to interpret Scripture but to require Scripture for its own interpretation, and to assume a bilingual audience that could attend to this translational transition from Mosaic to rabbinic authority within the social pedagogic context in which such rabbinic empowerment mattered the most” (“Locating Targum,” 90). Samely, “Targumic Aramaic,” 98. Alexander, “Jewish Aramaic Translations,” 239. See also Bernstein, “Aramaic Targumim,” 137–38; Cook, “Targums,” 95.

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interlinearly, in the sense that they present a single Hebrew verse followed by the targum for that verse.73 Scholars have generally seen in this boundedness to the Hebrew a basis or license for the targumists’ content changes: since the targums were always presented alongside scripture, no one could possibly mistake the targums for authoritative scripture.74 The interlinear format of the targumim deserves special attention in light of the importance of the “interlinear paradigm” in Septuagint studies, discussed above. There, the concept of interlinearity is proposed as an explanation for the high degree of isomorphism and tolerance of negative interference shown by many Greek translations of Jewish scripture. Of course, we have no actual evidence for interlinear formatting of LXX/OG manuscripts, nor any for an orally “interlinear” alternation between Hebrew and Greek in the synagogue or anywhere else, as the rabbis describe for the targumim. The proponents of the interlinear paradigm stress that the term is meant only as a metaphor, and thus the actual existence of an interlinear text of the LXX/OG is beside the point.75 Nevertheless, it is striking that in the case of the targumim, where we do have evidence for physical interlinearity, interlinearity does not correlate with isomorphism at all. In fact, the situation is just the opposite: while it binds the text of targum to the Hebrew in a physical sense, interlinearity frees the targum to move far beyond the Hebrew text at the level of meaning. The evidence of the targumim thus suggests that, if interlinearity is to serve as a metaphorical characterization of highly isomorphic LXX/OG texts, an important caveat must be kept in mind. Actual interlinearity, it seems, did not necessarily correlate with isomorphism, and thus (given the connection between the character of a translation and its function) could serve a much different set of cultural purposes than those that the interlinear paradigm suggests for LXX/OG. Along the same lines, the observation that the targumim served as exegetical accompaniments to Hebrew scripture in the bilingual context of rabbinic study may allow us to explain the use of Aramaic throughout the targumim, even when the Hebrew is simply converted into Aramaic with no real exegetical “work” done (i.e., translated literally). While 73

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Fraade, “Rabbinic Views,” 265n31. Here Fraade refers to certain manuscripts of the Palestinian targums found in the Cairo Geniza. He notes that other Geniza mss as well as later mss of the targumim do not reproduce the Hebrew verse in its entirety, but they do usually include an initial word or two. Thus, even when the interlinearity is not complete, targum manuscripts are “keyed to the reading or studying of the Hebrew original.” 75 E.g., Bernstein, “Aramaic Targumim,” 137. See above, n. 18.

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Samely implies that even the synonymous rewording of the Hebrew in Aramaic can be accounted for in terms of a rabbinic desire for exegetical comprehensiveness – a sort of paraphrase for paraphrase’s sake – another option (or perhaps just another way of putting the same idea) is that Aramaic provided the substrate for a comprehensive exegetical rewording that the rabbis would not see as appropriate in Hebrew.76 In other words, the appearance of a “translation,” formally subordinated to and accompanying the Hebrew text, allowed the targumists the freedom to, in effect, present a revised version of scripture that reconfigured the meaning of the text in light of rabbinic exegesis. I would stress that this view of targum only makes sense when targum is seen as part of rabbinic textual culture. It has been suggested that by the late Second Temple period, the growing sanctity of the texts of the Hebrew Bible meant that the Aramaic targumim “were the only outlets for ‘rewriting’ large portions of Bible text.”77 The present study documents the degree to which the books that came to make up Hebrew scripture, as well as other texts, continued to be subject to revision and reuse at least through the end of the Second Temple period. Thus, we cannot tie the origins of targum to the increased standardization of scripture in a general sense.78 But the rabbis certainly had a view of scripture that precluded direct rewriting of the scriptural texts, and in that context the use of Aramaic to facilitate a comprehensive paraphrase makes good sense. Whatever the function of other Aramaic versions of Hebrew scripture that might have existed, the targumim play a distinctive exegetical role governed by the rabbinic culture in which they took shape.79 Approaching the targumim with an eye to the interplay between form, function, and place in the target culture, as DTS encourages us to do, we are able to better articulate their similarities to and differences from other genres of revision, translations included. Without necessarily weighing in on the issue of whether targum “counts” as translation, we

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Along these lines, see Fraade, “Rabbinic Views,” 283–84, and especially Teeter, Scribal Laws, 263. Cook, “Targums,” 94. For more on the question of the standardization of scripture, see Chapter 7. As noted in n. 57, the remnants of Aramaic translations of Leviticus and Job from Qumran do not share the exegetical features of the targumim. On the possible relationship (or lack thereof ) of the targumim to Aramaic translations used in synagogues to serve the linguistic needs of non-Hebrew speakers, if such things ever existed, see Samely, “Targumic Aramaic,” 99.

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can say that its apparent differences from translations such as those of the LXX/OG are the result of its distinctive function (mediation of rabbinic learning) in a particular sociocultural context (the rabbinic academy). On the other hand, the differences between targum and Hebrew-language revisions (in particular the use of a different language) stem from the particular norms of that sociocultural context concerning the proper forms in which restatement of scripture might take place.

4 translation and rewriting in the genesis apocryphon Consideration of the targumim has highlighted how the rendering of a text in a different language can serve purposes other than simply making available a given source text in the target language. One final case can nuance our understanding of the relationship between translation and rewriting even further. While the previous examples from LXX/OG and the targumim all fall into the category of revision, the Aramaic rewriting of Genesis attested in the Genesis Apocryphon shows that translation can be employed in new compositions (reuse) as well. The frequently observed parallels between GenAp and the targumim, when understood correctly, underscore even more forcefully the overlaps between translation and same-language rewriting and the importance of attention to function in the analysis of different examples of rewriting. As noted in the Introduction, GenAp has served as a paradigmatic example of “Rewritten Bible”; of a new composition based on existing scriptural traditions. Its early columns (0–17) loosely follow the chronology of Genesis 5–10, including material related to Enoch, Lamech, Noah, and the Flood, but only rarely seem to reflect the actual language of particular verses of Genesis.80 The latter part of the scroll, cols. 19–22, covers the Abram story of Genesis 12–15, still with major expansions and paraphrase but engaging the text of Genesis in much more detail.81 The

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Moshe J. Bernstein, “The Genre(s) of the Genesis Apocryphon,” in Reading and ReReading Scripture at Qumran, vol. 1, STDJ 107 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 232–33. The more extensive interaction with Genesis correlates with other features of language and style – particularly the titles used for the divine – to suggest that these two sections of GenAp may be the product of different composers. See Bernstein, “Is the Genesis Apocryphon a Unity?”

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textual correspondences are especially prominent in col. 22 (// Gen 14:1–15:4). Shortly after the publication of GenAp, a spate of articles sought to understand it as an example of, or at least a precursor of, the Palestinian targumim.82 After all, like these targumim, GenAp presents an Aramaic rendering of Genesis with expansions and other types of changes. Moshe Bernstein has rightly argued that such understandings overlook critical generic differences between the targumim and GenAp, in particular the much greater degree of non-Genesis material in GenAp, and the compositional independence of GenAp in contrast to the formal boundedness to the Hebrew text evinced by the targumim.83 In the terms of this study, the targumim are revisions, in that they claim to represent the Hebrew text and reproduce its sequence and voicing in detail, while GenAp constitutes reuse: its scope and voicing (narrated mostly by the various patriarchs themselves) mark it as an independent composition rather than a copy (or “translation”) of Genesis. Nevertheless, the juxtaposition with the targumim is not wholly irrelevant. The composer(s) of GenAp clearly interact with Genesis traditions, which they presumably knew in Hebrew.84 Yet they chose to compose the work not in Hebrew but in Aramaic.85 This creates a basic correspondence with the targumim in the sense that the contents of Hebrew scriptural texts are translated into Aramaic, while accompanied by extensive reworking. I suggest that the correspondence extends to another level: as was the case for the targumim, the choice of Aramaic for GenAp was not simply due to a desire to make available to an Aramaic-speaking audience scriptural materials that would not otherwise be accessible (i.e., “translation” per se), but involved other ideological factors as well.

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Moshe J. Bernstein, “The Genesis Apocryphon and the Aramaic Targumim Revisited: A View from Both Perspectives,” in Reading and Re-Reading Scripture, 266–85. “Genesis Apocryphon and the Aramaic Targumim,” 276. For a similar conclusion but using the framework and terminology of the Manchester/Durham Inventory of Structurally Important Literary Features, see Rocco Bernasconi, “A Literary Analysis of the Genesis Apocryphon,” Aramaic Studies 9 (2011): 139–62. Though some scholars have argued that GenAp may have drawn on an existing Aramaic translation, Bernstein rightly points out that there is no evidence for such an assumption; “Genesis Apocryphon and the Aramaic Targumim,” 273. To my knowledge, no scholar has suggested that GenAp was originally composed in Hebrew and only later translated into Aramaic. Such a possibility seems extremely unlikely given the ideological connections between GenAp and other Aramaic compositions from Qumran (see below).

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Again, we are prompted to consider how the form of GenAp might reflect its intended function. On the one hand, GenAp shares a series of functions with other paradigmatic examples of reuse: to expand and elaborate upon Israel’s traditional literature (in this case, especially the stories about the antediluvian patriarchs and Abram); to tell an entertaining story; to offer its audience a series of moral exemplars; to resolve interpretive difficulties in the text of Genesis.86 It does not function as a copy or representation of the book of Genesis, and in that sense it is difficult to imagine that one of its intended functions was simply to mediate the contents of Genesis into Aramaic, as a typical translation would. On the other hand, GenAp does indeed “translate” Hebrew scriptural material into Aramaic. Or to put it another way, its composers choose to present their rewriting of the early chapters of Genesis in Aramaic instead of Hebrew. What might explain this choice? Various options have been proposed, from a desire to mark the new composition as different from Genesis to the idea that Aramaic best fit the “pre-Israel” context of the early patriarchal narratives.87 But the most cogent suggestion is that of Machiela, who has devoted extensive attention to the corpus of Aramaic writings found at Qumran. Machiela argues that the bulk of these texts share not only language but also a quite coherent worldview, including a pronounced interest in the periods of the patriarchs and the exile, an apocalyptic conviction of God’s universal rule and coming judgment of the wicked, and a belief that God has revealed a “blueprint for righteous conduct” in the lives and teachings of ancient luminaries such as Enoch and Noah.88 Against this background, the choice of Aramaic fit these texts’ persistent concern with issues of life under foreign rule and their universalist bent (in the sense of God being in control of the whole earth

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See the comments of Bernstein, “Genesis Apocryphon and the Aramaic Targumim,” 285. For an overview, see Daniel Machiela, “Situating the Aramaic Texts from Qumran: Reconsidering Their Language and Socio-Historical Settings,” in Apocalyptic Thinking in Early Judaism, ed. Cecilia Wassén and Sidnie White Crawford, JSJSup 182 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 98–99. Machiela, “Situating the Aramaic Texts,” 96; see also Daniel A. Machiela, “The Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls: Coherence and Context in the Library of Qumran,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran and the Concept of a Library, ed. Sidnie White Crawford and Cecilia Wassén, STDJ 116 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 243–57; Daniel A. Machiela, “The Compositional Setting and Implied Audience of Some Aramaic Texts from Qumran: A Working Hypothesis,” in Vision, Narrative, and Wisdom in the Aramaic Texts from Qumran: Essays from the Copenhagen Symposium, 14–15 August, 2017, ed. Mette Bundvad and Kasper Siegismund, STDJ 131 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 168–202.

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and all of human history). These were texts meant to be addressed to all Israel, both those in the land and those outside of it. The choice of Aramaic, the cosmopolitan lingua franca, also reflects these texts’ interest in science and relatively open attitude toward interaction with nonIsraelites.89 If Machiela is right that part of the reason for composing these texts in Aramaic instead of Hebrew is to allow access by Diaspora Jewish communities, then there is a function somewhat similar to standard translations here: texts or traditions that would otherwise have been inaccessible to non-Hebrew-speakers are now available to a broader audience. Equally, however, the choice of Aramaic seems to reflect generic and ideological concerns – to convey what type of literature this is, to place the text in a certain genre, to assert a level of universality or sophistication.90 Thus, the Aramaic text of GenAp shows a range of different kinds of connections to the examples of translation we have considered thus far. Insofar as its composers rendered parts of the Hebrew text of Genesis into Aramaic, they engaged in the same kind of “equivalencing work” that is characteristic of all translations. Yet the degree to which the composers added to, rearranged, and omitted materials from Genesis underscores how the “equivalencing work” of translation and the “non-equivalencing” work of rewriting can go hand in hand – even in the production of new works. Furthermore, similar to the targumim, it shows that the choice to render material in a different language is not as simple as it seems, but can be influenced by a number of different types of ideological or sociocultural considerations. Like other aspects of rewriting, translation can function as a strategy to locate texts in particular discourses or to open up space for innovation within a tradition.

5 conclusion In this chapter I have tried to propose helpful ways of bringing translation into the conversation about rewriting. Though translation per se bears a certain resemblance to same-language revision, I was more interested in those instances where translators go beyond seeking equivalencies for 89 90

Machiela, “Situating the Aramaic Texts,” 105. See also Annette Yoshiko Reed, “Writing Jewish Astronomy in the Early Hellenistic Age: The Enochic Astronomical Book as Aramaic Wisdom and Archival Impulse,” DSD 24 (2017): 1–37.

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units of the source text in the target language, and actually change the contents of the text. The evidence of the LXX/OG illustrates that translators can and do engage in such content changes, sometimes on a large scale. The lens of genre allows us to see the overlap between the activities of translators and same-language scribes while still appreciating the distinctive functions of translation. Consideration of the rabbinic targumim and the Genesis Apocryphon provided additional perspectives on this overlap. If it is fair to say that a primary function of the LXX/OG is to make the books of Hebrew scripture accessible in Greek, the targumim and GenAp evince different primary functions: for the targumim the exegetical restatement of scripture in light of rabbinic norms; for GenAp the elaboration and supplementation of traditions surrounding Israel’s pre-history. In both these contexts, the rendering of the text in a different language is not an end in itself, but advances other priorities. Thus, the similarity between translation and rewriting lies not only in the fact that translators treated their texts in the same sorts of ways as (other) rewriters, but also in that translation emerges as one strategy alongside others that writers might use to engage with or extend existing tradition.

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6 Diverse Genres of Reuse Centripetal, Limited, Historical Résumé, Pastiche

In Chapter 5, I investigated the relationship between translation and rewriting, arguing that translations such as we find in the LXX/OG can profitably be conceptualized as a type (or genre) of revision, addressing many of the same goals and functions of same-language revisions, but with the additional function (or range of functions) of mediating the source text in a new linguistic context. Here I turn back to reuse, with a similar interest in the relationship between form and function. In the course of earlier chapters we have already encountered a variety of types of reuse, but in this chapter I will explicitly thematize that diversity. Again in this chapter, ideas from genre theory will serve as models for how we might illustrate points of connection while still taking differences seriously. As in previous chapters, I will be considering issues of genre from multiple perspectives. On the one hand, concepts of genre can work as tools for organizing different types of reuse – and their correlative functions – in relation to one another; that is, considering these in a heuristic sense as “genres” of reuse. But in thinking about the function of various types of reuse, I also want to pick up on some of the issues raised preliminarily at the end of Chapter 4 with regard to the literary genre of the texts that employ reuse. As we began to see earlier, surveying a variety of types of reuse enables us to consider how reuse interacts with a text’s generic identity. As I hope the discussion below will illustrate, I see this interaction as dialectical. On the one hand, the particular type of reuse employed in a given text can depend on genre: the type of text the author sets out to compose impacts the ways in which prior texts are redeployed. On the other hand, reuse can also be a tool to contribute to the text’s generic identity – to place a text in a particular discourse. 169 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. , on , subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108769983.007

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1 beyond centripetal reuse Part of the reason for a chapter devoted explicitly to the diversity in form and function of reuse is the outsized influence in scholarship of a few particular examples of reuse. Our imaginations have been heavily shaped by the prototypical examples of reuse discussed in the Introduction: Jubilees, the Genesis Apocryphon, and the Temple Scroll. These prototypes all present a more or less continuous rewriting of earlier authoritative texts, and all present themselves as ancient. But as important as these and similar texts have been to our understanding of rewriting – and reuse in particular – in Second Temple Judaism, their dominant modes of reuse and the goals and functions of their reuse are not the only ones we find in early Jewish texts.1 Given their prototypical status, the influence of these particular texts on our mental frameworks is not surprising. As cognitive genre theory reminds us, viewing certain examples of a category as paradigmatic or prototypical is a natural product of human cognition.2 But the analytical process of examining the nature and appropriateness of our scholarly categories requires that we resist the temptation to confuse the paradigmatic with the necessary – that is, to view the prototype as the exclusively possible manifestation of a category. With regard to reuse, because the most attention has been paid to the techniques and purposes of reuse in a couple of prototypical exemplars, the implications of other types of reuse for our understanding of the category as a whole have tended to be overlooked. In formal terms, reuse in our prototypical examples (Jubilees, Genesis Apocryphon, Temple Scroll) tends to be conceptualized as extensive, serial, and centripetal rewriting of a single main base text.3 Even with regard to the prototypes themselves, this is not entirely an accurate

1

2 3

A more integrative attempt to describe various types of relationships between biblical texts and (other) early Jewish literature is made by the Manchester/Durham Inventory of Structurally Important Literary Features; see Samely, Profiling Jewish Literature in Antiquity, 64–68. The Inventory could serve as a useful starting point for describing different kinds of reuse (as well as other types of hypertextuality). Here, however, especially in focusing on less extensive examples of reuse, I attempt a more finely grained analysis than the Inventory, with its aim of describing all significant literary features (not only those pertaining to rewriting), can provide. See Chapter 2. Alexander, “Retelling the Old Testament,” 117; Brooke, “Rewritten Bible,” 778 (“It can generally be said that Rewritten Bible texts are those compositions which closely follow their scriptural base text”); Bernstein, “Rewritten Bible,” 195.

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characterization: as we saw in the Introduction, they all have sections that depart from this type of rewriting. But taking a broader view requires us to recognize many additional instances where rewriting does not look like the reproduction of a single base text with additions, omissions, and other modifications. The variety in the form of reuse is especially significant because, as we have come to expect, form relates to function. Different types of reuse serve different purposes within the broader context of the compositions of which they are a part. While the precise function of rewriting in our prototypes of reuse has been approached from different perspectives, two main trends have been observed. First, I have already noted at several points the strong tradition of regarding one of the primary aims of such centripetal reuse as exegesis.4 To a certain extent, such a view is implicit in the idea of extensive, centripetal reuse: insofar as the text is changed at all, the meaning is altered and, perforce, a new interpretation of the text is given.5 Some voices have warned against an overemphasis on reuse as functioning to resolve interpretive problems.6 Nevertheless, the exegetical nature of such rewriting continues to be more or less taken for granted. The second primary function that has been associated with reuse is that of authorization, or better, the placing of a text in a given discourse. I will look in Chapter 7 at the various ways scholars have traditionally viewed rewriting as a means of authorizing a new text, and at how the kinds of evidence discussed in this book might change the direction of that conversation. For now, it is sufficient to note that extended reuse creates the impression of similarity between the new composition and the older text(s) being reused.7 Some examples of extended reuse, like Chronicles 4

5 6

7

Alexander, “Retelling the Old Testament,” 117; see also e.g. Crawford, Rewriting Scripture, 3; Falk, Parabiblical Texts, 22–25. See Zahn, “Rewritten Scripture,” 331. See e.g. Najman and Tigchelaar, “Unity after Fragmentation,” 496. I read Najman and Tigchelaar (here specifically addressing Jubilees) as not so much denying that rewriting is interpretive but as advocating a move away from seeing rewriting as motivated solely by an interpreter’s response to specific exegetical problems emerging from the text, as is implied by Vermes’s definition. As they note (referencing James Kugel and Michael Segal), the specific interpretation presented by Jubilees is driven by the author(s)’ own “ideological and even theological motivation,” not just by “exegetical problems.” See also Teeter’s critique of what he calls the “false dichotomy” between “exegetical questions” and historical or theological concerns: D. Andrew Teeter, “On ‘Exegetical Function’ in Rewritten Scripture: Inner-Biblical Exegesis and the Abram/Ravens Narrative in Jubilees,” HTR 106 (2013): 402. See e.g., on the Temple Scroll, Molly M. Zahn, “New Voices, Ancient Words: The Temple Scroll’s Reuse of the Bible,” in Temple and Worship in Biblical Israel, ed. John Day,

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and 4QPseudo-Ezekiel, mimic the “voice” of their main source text (e.g., Pseudo-Ezekiel presents Ezekiel speaking in the first person, just like the book of Ezekiel). Other texts, like Jubilees and TS, introduce a voicing different from their sources (e.g., Jubilees is presented as the speech of the Angel of the Presence to Moses). Nevertheless, the extent of the reuse of earlier materials creates an impression of generic likeness: Jubilees and TS appear as Torah-like compositions because of their extended reuse of Torah. While offering a new interpretation of the text being rewritten and locating the new text in a particular existing discourse certainly constitute important functions of the extensive, centripetal reuse we see in our prototypes, to identify these as the primary functions of all reuse gives too much weight to the particular type of reuse that we have come to see as prototypical. Other forms of reuse, as we shall see, function differently; they do not involve exegetical adjustment or correction of specific aspects of specific prior texts. Similarly, while some non-centripetal forms of reuse seem to relate to construction of a text’s generic identity/place within an existing discourse, the way they do this differs from that of prototypical examples. What we end up with is a series of different types of reuse that overlap in different ways with regard to both form and function.

2 limited reuse While we tend to imagine reuse as involving extended reproduction of large swaths of text, sometimes a section of an existing text is incorporated into a new context without any further use of or interaction with that text. To give three examples that I will discuss in more detail below: 1 Chr 16:8–36 contains a hymn constructed out of Pss 105:1–15; 96:1–13; 106:1, 47–48. Jubilees often inserts into its rewriting of pentateuchal narrative excerpts from pentateuchal legal material, such as the inclusion of Lev 12:2–5 in Jub 3:10–11. From a different genre, 4QApocryphon of LHB/OTS 422 (London: T & T Clark, 2005), 441: “By redeploying the biblical text, albeit in sometimes drastically altered form, the author creates a biblical voice for the text, a voice worthy of a text that claims to have been spoken by God.” Similarly, on TS and Jubilees, Najman, Seconding Sinai, 45: by weaving their own innovations into “the very words of already authoritative traditions . . . they claimed, for their interpretations of authoritative texts, the already established authority of the texts themselves.” Compare also Bernard M. Levinson and Molly M. Zahn, “Revelation Regained: The Hermeneutics of ‫ כי‬and ‫ אם‬in the Temple Scroll,” DSD 9 (2002): 308.

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Jeremiah C, which typically does not engage in sustained rewriting of known earlier texts, at one point reproduces Nah 3:8–10 in a form very similar to that of known versions. In each of these cases, this limited reuse arguably functions differently from the centripetal reuse that (at least in the cases of Chronicles and Jubilees) characterizes much of the surrounding compositional context.

1 Chronicles 16 Likely the only thing that has prevented 1–2 Chronicles from being more fully recognized as a prototypical example of reuse is the fact that it was preserved alongside its source texts, Samuel and Kings, in the canon of the Hebrew Bible.8 Generally, its use of its main source is characterized by the type of reuse we associate with the prototypes: the Deuteronomistic History (DtrH) is rewritten extensively, serially, and centripetally. In line with the discussion above, two main functions of this centripetal reuse can be discerned: first, it facilitates the reinterpretation of the history of the monarchy as presented in DtrH: Chronicles alters certain aspects of DtrH to present a new version of its story that more closely aligns with the authors’ particular theological perspectives.9 Second, it helps the Chroniclers to situate their new work as an additional example (alongside DtrH) of Judean historiography: by reusing DtrH, Chronicles implies that it is the “same type of thing” as its presumably well-known and somewhat prestigious predecessor; it marks itself as generically similar. The reuse of parts of certain psalms in 1 Chronicles 16, on the other hand, functions differently. Though the authors have deliberately selected certain materials that support their ideology, the point of the reuse is not to provide a particular interpretation of these psalm sections.10 Nor, of course, is it to situate the work as a whole in the poetic discourse in which these psalms take part – such would be difficult given the limited scope of 8 9

10

See Chapter 3. On which see in particular Sara Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1989; repr., Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2009). On the selection, see Gary N. Knoppers, 1 Chronicles 10–29: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 12A (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 644. On the multitudinous connections between the language and ideology of the psalm selections and the surrounding context in Chronicles, see James W. Watts, Psalm and Story: Inset Hymns in Hebrew Narrative, JSOTSup 139 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), 158–59.

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the reuse! Instead, the borrowed hymn functions to support the larger project of Chronicles, the rewriting of DtrH. It highlights the importance of music, and the levitical singers, in Jerusalem worship: at a point when the sacrificial cult is still being conducted at Gibeon (1 Chr 16:39–40), already David institutes musical worship before the ark in Jerusalem.11 The use of presumably known materials to exemplify the liturgical songs of the Asaphites serves to establish continuity between the time of David and the time of the Chroniclers’ readers. This in turn authorizes what is, after all, an innovation by the Chroniclers – the levitical singers – by depicting the singers as praising God with songs (presumably) regarded as ancient and prestigious in the time of the authors.12 Here we see reuse functioning not as an occasion for exegesis of the reused text or to aid the generic characterization of a new work, but in service of a different set of compositional goals. The use of these psalms is not so much about the psalms themselves (in a sense, the specific content is of secondary importance, no matter how well it fits key themes of Chronicles) as about the ways incorporation of known psalms contributes to the Chroniclers’ distinctive picture of the early history of the monarchy.

Jubilees 3 Similar to the example from 1 Chronicles 16, the use of Leviticus 12 in Jubilees involves the reuse of a substantial amount of text in a context in which another text (in this case, Genesis) is being extensively and centripetally rewritten. After describing the formation of Eve from Adam’s rib in language heavily dependent upon Gen 2:21–24, Jubilees notes that Adam was placed in Eden on the 40th day, and Eve on the 80th day. “For this reason,” the text continues, a commandment was written in the heavenly tablets for the one who gives birth to a child: if she gives birth to a male, she is to remain in her impurity for seven days like the first seven days; then for 33 days she is to remain in the blood of purification. She is not to touch any sacred thing nor to enter the sanctuary until she completes these days for a male. As for a female she is to remain in her impurity for two weeks of days like the first two weeks and 66 days in the blood of her purification. Their total is 80 days. (Jub 3:10–11; trans. VanderKam)

11 12

Knoppers, 1 Chronicles 10–29, 660. See Watts, Psalm and Story, 164–65. By the same token, Chronicles implicitly (re)affirms the prestige of these particular psalms by treating them as originating in the time of David.

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This commandment, inscribed on the heavenly tablets, corresponds very closely to the laws for purification after childbirth found in Lev 12:2–5: Speak to the children of Israel saying: A woman who conceives and gives birth to a male shall be impure for seven days; as (in) the days of her menstrual flow she shall be impure . . . 33 days she shall remain in the blood of purification; she is not to touch any sacred thing nor may she enter the sanctuary until the days of her purification are complete. And if she gives birth to a female, she shall be impure for fourteen days as in her menstruation, and 66 days she shall remain in the blood of purification.

Despite the differences in genre, there are a number of correspondences in function between the reuse of Leviticus 12 in Jubilees 3 and the reuse of the psalm materials in 1 Chronicles 16. As in Chronicles, there is no real exegesis of the reused text, though (again as in Chronicles) the reuse involves a claim about the text’s origins: just as the reused psalm is put in the mouth of the Asaphites in David’s time, the laws of Leviticus 12 are given a pre-Sinaitic etiology in God’s treatment of the first man and woman. Just as Chronicles’ use of the psalms served to help the authors paint a particular picture of the early monarchy, so too does the use of Leviticus in Jubilees reflect not so much a particular understanding of Leviticus itself as the author’s distinctive interpretation of the primeval history.13 If the roles of the Levites and of music in the temple cult is one of the prime foci of the Chroniclers, the primordial existence of Sinaitic law is one of the prime foci of the author of Jubilees.14 The reuse of pentateuchal legal material is not for its own sake, as it were, but to promote a particular conception of the cosmic origins of Torah and its role in Israel’s – indeed, humanity’s – earliest history.

13

14

A similar connection between Adam and Eve’s placement in Eden and Leviticus 12 appears in 4Q265 (Miscellaneous Rules) frag. 7. Given the heterogeneous collection of traditions represented in 4Q265, most scholars have seen this parallel as evidence for the continued reading and interpretation of Jubilees within the yahad movement, rather _ than as an independent witness to the tradition. For discussion and bibliography, see VanderKam, Jubilees 1–21, 217–18. For a basic overview, see VanderKam, Book of Jubilees (2001), 100–9. For further bibliography and reflection, see D. Andrew Teeter, “Torah, Wisdom, and the Composition of Rewritten Scripture: Jubilees and 11QPsa in Comparative Perspective,” in Wisdom and Torah: The Reception of ‘Torah’ in the Wisdom Literature of the Second Temple Period, ed. Bernd Schipper and D. Andrew Teeter, JSJSup 163 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 242–43.

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Diverse Genres of Reuse Apocryphon of Jeremiah C

If there are some structural similarities between the previous two examples, the same does not seem to be true for this final case. It occurs in the fragmentary composition 4QApocryphon of Jeremiah C.15 This text comprises a historical apocalypse framed by narrative material associated with the figure of Jeremiah. Despite the Jeremianic framing, though, the text lacks the sustained, centripetal reuse of a known source that characterizes both Chronicles and Jubilees. Even the narratives describing Jeremiah as accompanying the exiles on their way to Babylon (4Q385a 18 i; cf. Jer 40:116) or the refugees in Tahpanhes (4Q385a 18 ii; cf. Jer 42:2–3; 43:8) do not draw much of their structure or wording from the versions of Jeremiah known to us. The apocalyptic discourse that constitutes much of the work at times alludes to known events from Israel’s history, but generally does not use the language of specific existing texts. In a couple of instances, though, 4QApocJer C does contain an extended parallel (i.e., of several words or more) to a text known from the Hebrew Bible. The largest of these, in 4Q385a 17 ii, reproduces Nahum 3:8–10 (Table 6.1).17 From our modern perspective, this limited reuse is quite remarkable. After showing virtually no extended engagement with specific texts through numerous fragments, all of a sudden 4QApocJer C reproduces (at least) six lines of a known prophetic oracle, with relatively insubstantial alterations.18 Why would this be the case? What is the significance of this text (Nah 3:8–10) in particular? How does the reuse function in this composition that seems otherwise to have little interest in extended reuse? As Davis remarks, “it seems perplexing that this single section is the only place in the remains of the entire text that directly employs an already existing oracle.”19 15

16

17 18

19

On this composition, see esp. Dimant, DJD 30: 129–234; Bennie H. Reynolds III, Between Symbolism and Realism: The Use of Symbolic and Non-Symbolic Language in Ancient Jewish Apocalypses 333–63 B.C.E., JAJSup 8 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 263–325; Davis, Apocryphon of Jeremiah. Here Jeremiah accompanies the exiles only as far as Ramah; in 4Q385a it appears he accompanied them some distance further (‫עד[ הנהר‬, “until] the River”; 4Q385a 18 i 7). See Dimant, DJD 30: 161–62. The other good example is Amos 8:11 in 4Q387 3 7–9. I have included the Greek text because at several points 4Q385a seems somewhat closer to the Greek than to the Hebrew; see Davis, Apocryphon of Jeremiah, 129–32; Eibert Tigchelaar, “Thrice Nahum 3:8-10: MT, LXX, and 4Q385a 17 ii – New Proposals,” in Sibyls, Scriptures, and Scrolls: John Collins at Seventy, vol. 2, JSJSup 175, no. 2, ed. Joel Baden et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 1271–72. Apocryphon of Jeremiah, 168.

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Table 6.1 Reuse of Nahum 3 in Apocryphon of Jeremiah C 4Q385a 17a–e ii 4–9a

Nah 3:8–10 (MT) ‫התיטבי מנא אמון הישבה‬ ‫ביארים‬ ‫מים סביב לה אשר חיל‬ ‫ים מים חומתה‬ ‫כוש עצמה ומצרים ואין‬ ‫קצה פוט‬ ‫ולובים היו בעזרתך גם‬ ‫היא לגולה הלכה בשבי‬ ‫גם עלליה ירטשו בראש‬ ‫כל חוצות ועל‬ ‫נכבדיה ידו גורל וכל‬ ‫גדוליה רתקו בזקים‬

4 Your portion is established, Amon, who [is (herself ) establis]hed by the Nil[e] 5 waters surround her; [her] d[ominion] is the sea; water is [your] wall 6 Cush, from [your]cit[ies? c but] there is no end to flight [ ] 7 Libya is your help, even she will go into exile, into cap[tivity]

Are you better than Thebes that sat by the Nile? Waters surround her, whose rampart is the sea; water is her wall. Cush was her strength, and Egypt, and without end; Put and the Libyans were your help. Even she went into exile, into captivity, and her

Nah 3:8–10 (LXX)b ἑτοίμασαι μερίδα ἅρμοσαι χορδήν ἑτοίμασαι μερίδα Αμων ἡ κατοικοῦσα ἐν ποταμοῖς ὕδωρ κύκλῳ αὐτῆς ἧς ἡ ἀρχὴ θάλασσα καὶ ὕδωρ τὰ τείχη αὐτῆς καὶ Αἰθιοπία ἡ ἰσχὺς αὐτῆς καὶ Αἴγυπτος καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν πέρας τῆς φυγῆς καὶ Λίβυες ἐγένοντο βοηθοὶ αὐτῆς καὶ αὐτὴ εἰς μετοικεσίαν πορεύσεται αἰχμάλωτος καὶ τὰ νήπια αὐτῆς ἐδαφιοῦσιν ἐπ᾽ ἀρχὰς πασῶν τῶν ὁδῶν αὐτῆς καὶ ἐπὶ πάντα τὰ ἔνδοξα αὐτῆς βαλοῦσιν κλήρους καὶ πάντες οἱ μεγιστᾶνες αὐτῆς δεθήσονται χειροπέδαις Tune a chord; prepare a portion, O Amon who dwells in rivers; water is around her, whose dominion is the sea, and her walls are water, and her strength is Ethiopia and Egypt – and there is no end to flight! Even the Libyans have become her

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Table 6.1 (cont.) 4Q385a 17a–e ii 4–9a 8 and her children will [be dashed to pieces] at the head[ of the road]s. And over 9 [her dignitaries they will cast] lots and all her [luminar]ies will be in fetters

Nah 3:8–10 (MT) children will be dashed to pieces at the head of every street. And over her dignitaries they cast lots, and all her luminaries were bound in fetters

Nah 3:8–10 (LXX)b helpers. She too shall go into migration as a captive, and they shall dash her infants to the ground at the head of all her streets. And they shall cast lots for all her glorious things, and all her nobles shall be bound in handcuffs.

a

Text and translation follow Davis, Apocryphon of Jeremiah, 127–28. The text is difficult; alternative transcriptions can be found in Dimant, DJD 30:156, and Tigchelaar, “Thrice Nahum 3:8–10.” b Translation follows NETS. c Though Davis transcribes ]‫( מע ̊ב‬Apocryphon of Jeremiah, 127), it is difficult to think of a plausible reconstruction that would fit the context, and the reading of the third letter is very uncertain. More recently (personal communication, June 2018), Davis has suggested that ‫ ר‬would fit the ink traces just as well or better than ‫ב‬, and would allow for a meaningful reconstruction (‫מערבה‬/‫מעריך‬/‫)מעריה‬. Tigchelaar follows an unpublished suggestion by Strugnell to read ]‫מ ̇ע ̇ו‬, and recon-structs ‫מ ̇ע ̇ו]זך‬, “your strength”; “Thrice Nahum 3:8–10,” 1270n21.

Various explanations for this reuse and how it functions in the larger composition have been offered. Dimant argues that 4QApocJer C reapplies Nahum’s oracle against Egypt to an eschatological future, perhaps even as an ex eventu prophecy of the invasion of the Ptolemaic kingdom by Antiochus IV in 170–169 BCE.20 That much – that the oracle is now construed as applying to the eschatological future described in the larger composition – seems clear, but the question remains,

20

DJD 30: 158–59. Note that, in MT, Nah 3:8–10 is not really an oracle against Egypt (or Thebes) at all; it uses the fact of Thebes’ destruction as a warning for Nineveh. In the Greek, however, the consistently future-tense verbs indicate that the text was being read as a prediction.

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why? – especially given the numerous other prophecies in the Apocryphon that are not couched in terms of existing oracles. Insofar as the reuse imagines a specific referent for Nahum’s oracle, we might imagine that the purpose is to provide a particular interpretation of the Nahum passage, or even more generally to demonstrate that this new apocalyptic discourse concords with prior prophecy.21 But either way, we are left with the question: why this and (virtually) only this passage? The rest of the composition, so far as we can tell, is not concerned with specifying the application of existing prophetic oracles, nor does it elsewhere use this technique to demonstrate its compatibility with earlier traditions.22 Davis’s suggestion that the oracle might have served some sort of liturgical function is intriguing, but he is ultimately unable to provide much evidence to support that conjecture.23 Rather than trying to definitively explain this peculiar case of limited reuse, I want to use it as a challenge to our typical explanatory frameworks. Two, quite different, additional possibilities present themselves. First, it is possible that the reuse in this case does not bear a great deal of meaning – that the Nahum passage was placed in this Jeremianic manuscript simply because the author (or even a later scribe) felt its contents were suitable to the context, or even simply because this oracle was seen

21

22

23

Though Dimant implies that the prophecy is used to predict the destruction of Egypt, Tigchelaar takes her observation of a possible connection with Antiochus IV’s invasion in a different direction. If ‫ והיא בגולה תלך‬in line 7 is read as disjunctive, introducing a new subject, perhaps Amon/Egypt and its allies are not the targets of the prophesied destruction after all, but some other entity. Tigchelaar tentatively proposes that the new subject may be Jerusalem; thus the (ex eventu) prophecy would contrast Ptolemaic Egypt’s escape from Antiochus’s advances with the attack on Jerusalem that immediately followed. See Tigchelaar, “Thrice Nahum 3:8–10,” 1276. Other devices, such as the use of themes and vocabulary known from a variety of prophetic and covenant-oriented texts, seem to have helped the authors locate 4QApocJer C in the tradition of apocalyptic discourse; see especially Monica Brady, “Biblical Interpretation in the ‘Pseudo-Ezekiel’ Fragments (4Q383–391) from Cave Four,” in Henze, Biblical Interpretation at Qumran, 88–109; Reynolds, Between Symbolism and Realism, 320–25. Jassen’s suggestion that the point of the reuse is to depict Jeremiah as a scribal interpreter of earlier written prophecy seems to go beyond the evidence: the reused oracle is not depicted as previously written but presumably (like the rest of the oracles) as direct divine communication, and Jeremiah’s presence as the implied audience/mediator of the oracle is not thematized, nor even hinted at, in the preserved portions of this fragment. See Alex P. Jassen, Mediating the Divine: Prophecy and Revelation in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Second Temple Judaism, STDJ 68 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 227, 230; also the comments of Davis, Apocryphon of Jeremiah, 168. Davis, Apocryphon of Jeremiah, 169.

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as in some way connected to Jeremiah.24 In other words, existing texts serve as a repository of language and ideas and can be drawn upon as a scribe sees fit.25 Obviously such casual reuse says something about the nature of the textual imagination in Second Temple Judaism, but perhaps may not always be indicative of some more concrete agenda. Alternatively, second, we could go in the opposite direction and take this example as an indication of the limits of our knowledge. Part of the reason this sudden reuse of Nahum seems so unusual is because it appears in a context where extended rewriting does not seem to be employed. If the surrounding context presented oracles against foreign nations similarly drawn from known prophetic collections, we would easily construe the appearance of the Nahum oracle as a sort of “harmonization” or bringing together of parallel materials, or at least as a part of a larger effort to construct something new out of older building blocks. But here is where our limited knowledge creates methodological problems: how do we know that the rest of 4QApocJer C doesn’t employ reuse to the same extent? Certainly, it does not extensively reuse texts that we know – but it could be reusing other texts that no longer survive. Our characterization of the function of reuse, in other words (in the text as a whole and in the reuse of Nah 3:8–10 in particular), is predicated upon our understanding of the nature of the tradition that the authors of 4QApocJer C would have had at their disposal. Though we often ignore it, the reality is that that understanding is quite limited. These three cases of limited reuse, taken together, begin to broaden our concept of what reuse looks like and how it works: it need not always involve the extended reuse of a single main text, and when it does not, will contribute to the overall goals and generic identity of a text differently from cases of centripetal reuse. The next category continues the broadening, but in another direction.

24

25

Tigchelaar notes that, even if the prophecy as it stands in 4Q385a 17 does pertain to the second century BCE, it does not have a clear chronological connection to the preceding historical apocalypse, nor is it connected to the narratives about Jeremiah that follow in frag. 18, and thus does not appear to be strongly rooted in its manuscript context. He proposes that 4Q385a may constitute a sort of Sammelhandschrift, which collected together a variety of disparate materials associated with Jeremiah. See “Thrice Nahum 3:8–10,” 1276; Tigchelaar, “Jeremiah’s Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Growth of a Tradition,” in Jeremiah’s Scriptures: Production, Reception, Interaction, and Transformation, ed. Hindy Najman and Konrad Schmid, JSJSup 173 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 289–306. Similarly, Davis, Apocryphon of Jeremiah, 168, before rejecting this as unsatisfactory.

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3 Historical Résumés

181

3 historical re´ sume´ s If the examples of limited reuse described above involve relatively extensive but not serial or centripetal rewriting, historical résumés might be viewed as serial but not extensive. As the name suggests, these are brief retellings or lists of selected episodes from Israel’s history, a form that has drawn significant attention in biblical scholarship since Gerhard von Rad’s famous identification of the “kleine geschichtliche Credo” (small historical credo) as one of the earliest expressions of covenantal theology.26 Such résumés occur frequently within the canon of the Hebrew Bible, as well as in a variety of other Second Temple texts.27 They occur in a wide range of genres and contexts, from the deuteronomistic reviews of history by Joshua (Joshua 24) and Samuel (1 Samuel 12), to the liturgical/ hymnic recounting of God’s deeds in Pss 105, 106, and LAB 32, to the praise of the ancestors in Sirach 44–50, to the descriptions of the works in history of Wisdom (Wisdom 10) and the “guilty inclination” (CD 2:16–3:12), to the ex eventu prophecies of the Animal Apocalypse (1 Enoch 85–90) and the Apocalypse of Weeks (1 En 93:1–10; 91:11–17). Insofar as they recount past events, they draw upon existing sources describing those events. But what does this reuse actually look like, and how did it function? The precise extent and nature of the reuse of earlier materials, of course, differs from one historical résumé to the next. Some are longer than others, dwelling on each episode in some detail before moving on to the next, while others do little more than list names or events with minimal elaboration. Compare the four depictions of Abraham in Table 6.2.

26

27

For a definition, see Atar Livneh, “Deborah’s New Song: The Historical Résumé in LAB 32:1–11 in Context,” JSJ 48 (2017): 205n6. Von Rad’s influential assessment can be found in Gerhard von Rad, “Das formgeschichtliche Problem des Hexateuchs,” in Gesammelte Studien zum Alten Testament (Munich: Kaiser, 1961), 11–16. For helpful overviews, see Carol A. Newsom, “Rhyme and Reason: The Historical Résumé in Israelite and Early Jewish Thought,” in Lemaire, Congress Volume Leiden 2004, 215–33; and Livneh, “Deborah’s New Song.” Compare also the brief treatment by Devorah Dimant, “Use and Interpretation of Mikra in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha,” in Mulder, Mikra, 392–95. On the “historical psalms” and their parallels in other Second Temple texts, see Anja Klein, “Fathers and Sons: Family Ties in the Historical Psalms,” in Functions of Psalms and Prayers in the Late Second Temple Period, ed. Mika S. Pajunen and Jeremy Penner, BZAW 486 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 320–38.

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182

Diverse Genres of Reuse

Table 6.2 References to Abraham in historical résumés Josh 24:2–3

1 Macc 2:52

Sir 44:19–21

1 En 89:10–11

From of old your Was not Abraham Abraham was the . . . But among them a white great father of a found faithful ancestors lived bull was born. multitude of when tested, and beyond the And they began nations, and no it was reckoned river – Terah the to bite one one has been to him father of another, but that found like him in as righteousness? Abraham and white bull that glory. He kept Nahor – and was born among the law of the they served other them begot a Most High, and gods. And I took wild ass and a entered into a your father white bull with covenant with Abraham from it, and the wild him; he certified beyond the river asses increased. the covenant in and brought him his flesh, and through the when he was whole land of tested he proved Canaan, and faithful. I multiplied his Therefore the seed and gave Lord assured him Isaac. him with an oath that the nations would be blessed through his offspring; that he would make him as numerous as the dust of the earth, and exalt his offspring like the stars, and give them an inheritance from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.

Not only do these excerpts differ in length, but they focus on different aspects of Abraham’s life: while Joshua is concerned with God’s unilateral call and blessing of Abraham, 1 Maccabees and Ben Sira both emphasize Abraham’s faithfulness (though Ben Sira does so in much more detail). The Animal Apocalypse, on the other hand, merely marks Abraham as

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the beginning of a new, chosen line of humanity. Furthermore, the excerpts differ in the degree and nature of their connection to the account of Abraham’s life that we know from the book of Genesis. The author of Joshua 24 obviously knows the outlines of the story as presented in Genesis, but does not use the specific language of the Genesis text. The same could be said of the Animal Apocalypse: generally speaking, locutions from the accounts of Israel’s human ancestors in Genesis do not fit the Apocalypse’s elaborate symbolism of bulls, sheep, and wild animals. (The designation of one of Abraham’s offspring as a “wild ass,” however, must relate to the description of Ishmael as such in Gen 16:12.) The brief sentence in 1 Maccabees does not leave too much space for interaction with the text of Genesis, but “and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” alludes, of course, to Gen 15:6, ‫והאמן ביהוה ויחשבה לו צדקה‬, “he believed YHWH, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”28 Finally, Ben Sira’s more extended praise of Abraham draws on several phrases and images known from Genesis: “father of a multitude of nations” (Gen 17:5); “entered into a covenant” (Gen 15:18; 17:2); “nations would be blessed through his offspring” (Gen 22:18); “as numerous as the dust of the earth” (Gen 13:16); “like the stars” (Gen 15:5). On the other hand, while clearly alluding to key aspects of the Genesis narrative, Ben Sira also uses his own formulations (e.g., “no one has been found like him in glory”; “he certified the covenant in his flesh”), and in one case applies to Abraham a locution known from a completely different context (“from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth”; compare Ps 72:8; Zech 9:10).29 While we can often see clear connections to specific texts known to us (primarily biblical texts), we should beware of the methodological pitfall of assuming that any reference to, for example, Abraham constitutes a reference to the text of Genesis, neglecting the possibility that authors could have accessed Abraham traditions in other forms, either through other texts or through unwritten cultural knowledge.30 Even phrases that we might see as deriving from a specific text, such as “reckoned to him as 28

29

30

Interestingly, 1 Maccabees here associates this crediting of Abraham with righteousness not with Abraham’s trust in God’s promises, as in Genesis, but with Abraham’s faithfulness when tested (presumably a reference to the Aqedah). See James L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 298. The use here of these dimensions associated with messianic rule is interesting; perhaps the formulation is prompted by the description in Gen 15:18 of Abram’s descendants inheriting “this land, from the River of Egypt to the Great River.” See here Kugel’s concept of the “exegetical motif”; Traditions of the Bible, 24–29.

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184

Diverse Genres of Reuse

righteousness,” or “wild ass” as a descriptor of Ishmael, may have simply been known to the authors as associated with certain figures (much as Americans might associate “I cannot tell a lie” with George Washington without necessarily thinking of the story that gave rise to the phrase). We certainly do at times see allusions to specific texts – Ben Sira’s frequent deployment of the language of Genesis in his description of Abraham makes clear to me that he knew the text in a form similar to the ones we have. But the nature of the form – brief recaps of events or figures – means we should set a high bar for concluding that a given historical résumé actually deliberately reuses a specific text. Reuse in historical résumés thus looks different from the extended reuse characteristic of our prototypes, as well as from the limited reuse of larger chunks of text considered above. The brevity of the references often makes it hard to be certain that a specific textual allusion is intended. Even when such allusions do seem to be present (as in the Ben Sira example above), they are cobbled together from various sections of text and do not continuously represent a single unit. In other words, they are centripetal in a sense, but their “orbit” is larger – they dip into the source text only at widely spaced points. The distinctive form of the historical résumé is, of course, related to its distinctive function. Though these résumés can serve a variety of specific functions (see below), they all share a concern to construct or construe Israel’s past in some particular way, and more specifically to use a selective presentation of the past to serve some larger compositional goal. In this sense, it is the selection itself that constitutes the key interpretive work in this type of reuse. As Newsom perceptively notes, the choice to highlight certain episodes or figures and ignore others serves as the mechanism by which the authors of these résumés create a particular type of meaning. This can involve emphasizing a particular type of event – such as God’s actions on behalf of Israel, or Israel’s disobedience – or can involve the creation of patterns or parallels between different events.31 In such contexts, interpretive changes to specific pericopes (such as 1 Maccabees’ association of the righteousness reckoned to Abraham with his faithful obedience rather than his believing God’s promises) are not as important to the function of the historical summary as the selection of the pericopes itself.

31

Newsom, “Rhyme and Reason,” 219–20.

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Insofar as historical résumés lend themselves to a particular kind of function, they might profitably be regarded as a particular genre of reuse. On the other hand, these résumés are put to a wide variety of uses, depending on the type of work in which they appear. The genre of the overall composition, in other words, influences the specific function of the historical résumé(s) in that work.32 For instance, given the pedagogical/ wisdom focus of Ben Sira, it is not surprising that his Praise of the Ancestors highlights individual exemplars of righteousness. The historical résumé sung by Deborah and Barak in LAB 32, in contrast, emphasizes God’s deeds of deliverance, in keeping with the setting following yet another such act of deliverance, the Israelite defeat of Sisera.33 The Damascus Document focuses not on the righteous or on God’s saving actions but on disobedient human generations, using the idea of the “guilty inclination” (‫ ;יצר אשמה‬CD 2:16) as a leitmotif to organize its historical review in CD 2:16–3:12. Even more distinctive is the function of historical résumés in certain apocalypses. Here a rehearsal of selected past events (from the perspective of the actual author) is presented as inspired prophecy of future events by an ancient figure such as Enoch or Daniel. Such ex eventu prophecy, while it might interpret certain historical events in particular ways, functions primarily to demonstrate the connections between past and future: the patterns discernible in past events demonstrate the reliability of the predictions concerning events that have not yet happened.34 This selection of examples makes clear another feature of historical résumés. Because of their self-contained nature and adaptability, they can be found within a wide variety of genres, including parenesis (CD), poetry/hymns (Pss 105 and 106), wisdom literature (Wisdom; Ben Sira), apocalypse, and historical narrative. Their brevity means that, when they are embedded in a larger (especially narrative) composition, they often take the form of character speeches, such as Joshua’s speech in Joshua 24, the Song of Deborah in LAB 32, or the words of Mattathias in

32

33 34

For this reason, Newsom argues against seeing historical résumés as a distinct genre (“Rhyme and Reason,” 215). While she is certainly correct that the résumés we have function in a variety of ways, viewing them together as a loose generic category (as she does in a way in her article, under the label of an “important cultural mode of cognition,” 215) helps us to see that, despite the differences, we are dealing with a distinctive type of compositional activity that serves similar types of goals (having to do with broad construals of the past), even across very different literary genres. See Livneh, “Deborah’s Song,” esp. 222. See Newsom, “Rhyme and Reason,” 228.

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186

Diverse Genres of Reuse

1 Maccabees 2. Furthermore, their appearance across different literary genres is matched by diversity in their co-occurrence with other types of rewriting. As the presence of several such summaries in LAB and Josephus’s Antiquities illustrates, they can occur in works that also employ extended centripetal reuse. But they are also at home in compositions apparently not otherwise constituted through extensive reuse, such as CD. These few paragraphs cannot do justice to the rich variety of forms and functions taken by early Jewish historical résumés and all the ways they interact with existing (written and non-written) traditions. The point here is merely to bring some attention to these résumés as a distinctive form of reuse. For our prototypical examples of reuse, which rewrite extended contiguous sections of text, it is fair to think of the detailed exegesis of those texts as one of their primary functions – thus Jubilees gives a new take on Israel’s history, but it is specifically that history that is described in Genesis 1–Exodus 18, and Jubilees repeatedly engages with details of that particular version of history. The view of history in historical résumés can be more sweeping and more schematic, precisely because of their brevity; they are thus particularly suited to serve as exempla (of good or bad behavior) or testimonia (to God’s faithfulness or the determined-ness of history). In other words, their distinctive forms of reuse of earlier traditions reflect a range of functions that may overlap with, but substantially differs from, the functions of the kind of reuse that we normally have regarded as prototypical.

4 pastiche Yet another form of reuse is neither serial nor extensive. It involves the creation of new text by combining short snippets of a variety of earlier texts, without reproducing substantial portions of any one of them. Such a technique demonstrates an author’s mastery of the existing literary tradition, at the same time as it frees the author to use that tradition with utmost creativity. The resulting text can be completely innovative (say something very new) and yet appear completely rooted in tradition. Like the typically brief allusions that make up the historical résumés discussed above, pastiche presents great methodological challenges when it comes to accurately identifying the textual sources an author likely drew upon. For one thing, analyses suffer from the same inherent canonical bias as study of other types of reuse: we can only identify reuse if we

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4 Pastiche

187

have access to the source text, which means that the allusions we are able to recognize tend to involve reuse of texts preserved in the Hebrew Bible. Even setting aside the fundamental limits of our knowledge, however, the fact that pastiches never use more than a few words of an earlier text at a time can make it very difficult to be sure that a specific text is actually being alluded to. Thus, even when scholars agree on the character of a given text as pastiche, they may identify very different texts as the sources of the pastiche. Complicating the issue is the possibility that an author may use language associated with a specific earlier text without apparently intending to allude to a particular passage or verse in that source.35 In the past, many scholars have tended toward very “maximalist” approaches to identifying the (typically biblical) sources used in these sorts of compositions, assuming (rather than demonstrating) that an author must have had a specific biblical source in mind for every phrase of the new text. All this is to say that close study of examples of pastiche must be extremely sensitive to the methodological issues raised in Chapter 1, as well as the inevitable subjectivity involved in identifying allusions. Nevertheless, there is no question that this was a distinct strategy for producing new texts in the Second Temple period. Cases have been identified, for example, in Ezekiel 38–39; Nehemiah 9; in certain of the Hodayot; in the opening column of 1QS; and in parts of the Temple Scroll.36 In fact, I would argue that one of the best examples of this technique is the Temple Scroll’s laws on kingship (cols. 57–59). A brief extract will give a sense of what pastiche can look like (Table 6.3). This section of the kingship law in TS details the consequences that will befall the people for infidelity to the covenant. I have been fairly conservative in identifying likely source texts, looking for distinctive overlaps in formulation as well as theme, and thus the list of sources here is shorter

35

36

On this issue see especially Kittel’s early study of the Hodayot: Bonnie Pedrotti Kittel, The Hymns of Qumran: Translation and Commentary, SBLDS 50 (Chico: Scholars Press, 1981), 48–55. On the nature and function of the category, see especially Tooman, Gog of Magog, 198–269; Tooman, “Between Imitation and Interpretation.” While Tooman argues that pastiche is basically restricted within the Hebrew Bible to Ezekiel 38–39 (Gog of Magog, 115), Casey Strine has argued that Tooman’s definition is too narrow and that analogous examples can be found in other biblical texts as well. See Casey A. Strine, “On the Compositional Models for Ezekiel 38–39: A Response to William Tooman’s Gog of Magog,” VT 67 (2017): 589–601.

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Diverse Genres of Reuse

Table 6.3 Pastiche in Temple Scroll col. 59 11Q19 59:2–7

Source Texts (MT)

‫והיית לשמה למשל ולשנינה‬ ‫ובחסר כל ונתן על ברזל על צוארך‬ ‫ועבדתם שם אלהים מעשה ידי‬ ‫אדם עץ ואבן‬ ‫לתת אתם לחרבה לשמה‬. . .‫ואת ערי יהודה‬ ‫לשקרה‬ ‫ושממו עליה איביכם‬ ‫ימקו בעונם בארצת איביכם‬ . . .‫ויאנחו בני ישראל מן העבודה ויזעקו‬ ‫כן יקראו ולא אשמע‬ ‫וזעקו אלי ולא אשמע אליהם‬ ‫מפני רע מעלליהם‬

2 And they shall scatter them among many lands, and they shall become a horror and a proverb and a taunt, and with a heavy yoke 3 and with lack of everything, and they shall serve there gods made by human hands, wood and stone, silver 4 and gold, and in all this their cities shall become a horror and a hissing and a ruin, and 5 their enemies will be horrified at them, while they, in the lands of their enemies, groan 6 and cry out because of a heavy load.

And they shall call, but I shall not hear, and they shall cry out, but I will not answer 7 them because of the wickedness of their deeds . . .

Deut 28:37 Deut 28:48 Deut 4:28 Jer 25:18 Lev 26:32 Lev 26:39b Exod 2:23 Zech 7:13 Jer 11:11 Jer 21:12 / 26:3

and you shall become a horror and a proverb and a taunt and with lack of everything, and he shall put an iron yoke on your neck and you shall serve there gods made by human hands, wood and stone . . . and the cities of Judah, to make them into a ruin, a horror, a hissing and your enemies will be horrified at it

Deut 28:37

they shall rot in their iniquities in the lands of your enemies The Israelites groaned because of the labor, and they cried out. . .

Lev 26:39

And they shall call, but I shall not hear and they shall cry out, but I will not listen to them because of the wickedness of their deeds

Zech 7:13 Jer 11:11

a

Deut 28:48 Deut 4:28

Jer 25:18 Lev 26:32

Exod 2:23

Jer 21:12 / 26:3

The reading [‫ ]ל[שמ ]ה‬follows Yadin, Temple Scroll, 2: 266. Qimron reads ‫שמ]ה‬, “there”; Elisha Qimron, The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Hebrew Writings, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2010), 198. If this reading is correct, it would reduce the likelihood of a specific allusion to Deut 28:37, since the two-word phrase ‫משל‬ ‫ ושנניה‬occurs a number of times in the Hebrew Bible. In my view, the material remains could support either reading. b Cf. ‫ ארץ איביהם‬in Lev 26:34, 36, 38, 41, 44.

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4 Pastiche

189

than and different from those of other scholars.37 Nevertheless, I have found allusions to numerous specific texts across five different books of the Hebrew Bible. Given the topic, it is unsurprising that TS here draws on the covenant curses of Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26 – but not exclusively, extensively, or sequentially. It also alludes to several other passages, nearly all from the prophets and especially Jeremiah, which share the themes of destruction, suffering, and disobedience. In a couple of cases, such as ‫ בארצות אויביהמה‬in line 5 and ‫ מפני רוע מעלליהמה‬in line 7, it seems likely that TS is redeploying phrases or idioms associated with a particular source, rather than intentionally alluding to a specific instance of the locution. Again, the particular form of reuse involved in pastiche points to a distinctive function. In his groundbreaking study of the Gog Oracles (Ezekiel 38–39) as pastiche, Tooman stresses that the primary function for this type of composition is to imply continuity with prior tradition. The various resonances with different existing texts make clear that the new composition belongs in the tradition; that is, they “secure the authority” of the new composition.38 Imitating the language of existing prestigious texts serves to suggest that the new text is an authentic member of the group.39 Another way to put it is that this type of authority claim essentially is a claim about genre; pastiche is a strategy by which to “join the club.”40 Earlier in this chapter, I talked about extended reuse such as we find in prototypical rewritings such as Chronicles as, in part, a strategy to locate a new text in a particular discourse. How, then, does pastiche differ in function? With regard to placement in a discourse, one way might be in the specificity of the discourse being imitated: a pastiche that alludes to a large variety of compositions may sound vaguely “scriptural” or “traditional” or “ancient,” but would not evoke a specific discourse (such as Mosaic or Ezekielian discourse) as easily as sustained reuse of existing

37

38

39

40

Compare Yadin, Temple Scroll, 2: 266–67; Wise, Critical Study, 230; Swanson, Temple Scroll and the Bible, 166; Tooman, Gog of Magog, 210–11. Tooman, Gog of Magog, 267; similarly, on the opening lines of 1QS, see Newsom, Self as Symbolic Space, 111. Compare the comments on pastiche as a form of identity creation by Brooke, “Hypertextuality,” 79–82. As the title of Wright’s article on genre implies; see Wright, “Joining the Club.”

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190

Diverse Genres of Reuse

examples of that discourse would.41 Most notably, though, pastiche lacks the exegetical function of sustained reuse. As noted earlier, by reproducing (with changes) substantial sections of existing texts, sustained reuse almost inevitably implies a particular way of reading those texts. Pastiche, however, uses only snippets of earlier texts, in the service of the creation of something new.42 It is hard to see how the meaning of the older texts is altered, even implicitly, by this kind of reuse. This is not to say that pastiche is not interpretive at all. On the most basic level, to the extent that we are talking about deliberate allusion, an author must make decisions about which texts are relevant to the topic of the new text.43 These decisions imply some degree of interpretive reflection about the meaning and possible applications of the existing texts – composers who use pastiche do not reproduce locutions willy-nilly, but tend to draw from texts with some thematic connection, as seen in the example from TS col. 59 given above.44 It is also possible that at times reflection on certain texts has informed the particular ideas the author wishes to express. For example, Tooman notes that one of the goals of the author of the Gog Oracles was to “introduce new topics into the book of Ezekiel,” particularly the “vindication of Israel” and “the fate of the nations.” To do this, the author drew on “language and motifs that were borrowed from prophets who did speak to these subjects.”45 But while reading and reflection upon earlier texts may inform the contents of the new composition as well as the choice of texts out of which it is constructed, the pastiche does not offer specific interpretations of the source texts employed. In this sense, it is much less functionally interpretive than other types of reuse. Pastiche thus serves to create connections to older materials where for whatever reason more direct connections are not possible or not desirable. Pastiche seems most prominent in those portions of the Temple 41

42

43 44

45

Note that claims to membership in particular discourses can go along with pastiche: for example, Tooman shows how the Gog Oracles draw from many different texts in the Torah and Prophets, but draw upon Ezekiel most of all, thus implying a continuity with Ezekielian discourse. One could imagine pastiches drawn from narrower groups of text that would likewise serve to locate the new text in a more specific existing discourse, for example, the pastiche-like use of Jubilees in 4Q390 (see Chapter 4). See Tooman, Gog of Magog, 84, 224; and, in particular, “Between Imitation and Interpretation,” 71. Compare Tooman, Gog of Magog, 261. This fact can (and should) serve as a major methodological control on studies of this type of allusion. Tooman, Gog of Magog, 239.

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5 Other Forms of Reuse

191

Scroll where there is no clear precedent (that we know of!) for the topic the author is addressing, such as many of the laws pertaining to kingship in cols. 57–59. On the other hand, Tooman stresses that there may be times when an author may not want to draw on earlier sources so extensively that the new work would inevitably constitute an interpretation of those specific sources – in other words, an author may want to use traditional idioms but does not wish to pursue an exegetical agenda.46 Pastiche allows authors the flexibility to say something new while still giving the impression of deep rootedness in existing tradition.

5 other forms of reuse To close this discussion of different types of reuse, I want to mention a couple of additional possibilities. Throughout this study, reuse (along with rewriting more broadly) has been defined in terms of the redeployment of specific, recognizable units of text: I have generally been talking about cases where we can trace particular locutions or formulations in a later text to the same or similar formulations in an earlier text. I have argued that such specific, detailed rewriting constitutes a particular genre or type of scribal activity. But we have seen, in this chapter especially, that reuse can shade from extensive reproduction of a single source text over many columns or chapters to much less extensive allusions, even into use of the characteristic idioms or style of a particular source rather than specific identifiable passages from that source. At this point it is worth noting other types of reuse of prior traditions that do not involve reproduction of specific texts, but might nonetheless share some functions with rewriting.47 One such type is the reuse of the structure or motifs of an earlier text, without any sustained reproduction of the language of that text. For example, Steven Fraade has pointed out how the combination of historical review, covenant renewal, and law found in the Damascus Document seems to take its inspiration from the similar combination of the same

46 47

Tooman, “Between Imitation and Interpretation,” 71. Several of these types of reuse are covered by parts of Section 7 of Samely et al.’s Inventory of Structurally Important Literary Features, which focuses on “Correspondences and Wording Overlap between Texts” (see Samely, Profiling Jewish Literature in Antiquity, 64–67, and the discussion on 261–67, 270–72).

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Diverse Genres of Reuse

elements in Deuteronomy.48 Tobit’s use of themes and topoi from the narrative frame of the book of Job, as illustrated by Devorah Dimant, may constitute another good example.49 Similar to pastiche, such structural reuse functions to create resonances in the mind of the audience. By implying a comparison or connection with an existing prototype, the writer leads the audience to construe the new text in a particular way. Another type of reuse without extensive reproduction of specific texts is the composition of new narratives associated with a particular known figure. While narrative expansions occur in many texts that do employ extensive reuse (such as the story of Abraham and the Ravens in Jubilees 11, or the account of Jehoshaphat’s judicial reform in 2 Chronicles 19), other compositions have only very loose connections to the existing literary traditions surrounding that character, or go far beyond existing traditions. Examples include 4QApocryphon of Jeremiah C, 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, Joseph and Aseneth, and many others.50 No one would deny that all of these compositions have many connections to texts from the Hebrew Bible, but those connections do not take the form of sustained rewriting.51 As such, they do not function primarily to interpret specific earlier narratives. Instead they fill narrative or conceptual gaps, enhance or elaborate a character’s image, or exploit a character’s status to authorize new literary production.52 Such functions, of course, are sometimes also served by prototypical cases of extensive reuse. These types of cases illustrate, to my mind, the porous or flexible limits of reuse as a category. Given that I have defined rewriting as involving reproduction of specific identifiable units of specific texts, it may make more sense to view these examples not as reuse/rewriting but as a different, less textually specific, form of hypertextuality. As originally defined by Genette and as applied to Second Temple studies by George Brooke, hypertextuality encompasses a broader variety of ways of relating to earlier texts than rewriting “proper.”53 Indeed, both structural reuse

48

49 50

51 52 53

Steven D. Fraade, “Ancient Jewish Law and Narrative in Comparative Perspective: The Damascus Document and the Mishnah,” Diné Israel: Studies in Halakhah and Jewish Law 24 (2007): 65*–99*. Dimant, “Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha,” 417–19. Some early scholarship, especially the influential articles by Nickelsburg and Harrington, included such expansions in the category of Rewritten Bible. Most later scholarship has tended to dissociate them from this category because of their lack of sustained rewriting. On the distinction, see Bernstein, “Rewritten Bible,” 177. On the various functions of such pseudepigraphy, see Chapter 7. See Brooke, “Hypertextuality,” and the discussion in Chapter 1.

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and new narratives associated with a known character would seem to constitute examples of what Genette called imitation, in which a later text does not use the actual words of an earlier text, but extends, mimics, or otherwise takes its inspiration from it.54 But the fact that they function similarly to certain types of reuse that do rewrite specific earlier texts indicates that it would be counterproductive to imagine a hard and fast distinction between rewriting and other forms of hypertextuality. Indeed, we might even imagine reuse as a category that is not completely contained within the category of rewriting (i.e., not simply a subcategory of rewriting), but one that overlaps with it substantially but incompletely.

6 conclusion Without any claim to comprehensiveness, the previous sections have aimed to show that reuse of existing texts or traditions can take numerous forms, and that this diversity of form correlates, as we might expect, with diversity in function. The results can be summarized in tabular form (Table 6.4). Table 6.4 allows us to see at a glance similarities and differences in both form and function between different types of reuse. We see, for instance, that both extended “centripetal” reuse and historical résumés serve a clear interpretive function, but in different ways. Similarly, several different techniques can help situate the new composition within existing traditions, but different types of reuse carry different valences. Pastiche, depending on the range of texts evoked, can imply continuity with the tradition broadly speaking, even when the content is very new. Structural reuse and the composition of new materials associated with a known character each create continuity with a more specific subset of existing traditions: the composition being mimicked, in the case of structural reuse; and the traditions already associated with a given character, in the case of pseudepigraphy. The concept of “family resemblance,” as known from genre studies, may be helpful here as a framework for understanding a range of related activities or techniques that nevertheless present great differences in form 54

See especially Genette, Palimpsests, 81–85. Note that, for Genette, “pastiche” is a form of imitation; that is, it involves the attempt to mimic the style of a particular text or genre, not the reuse of particular snippets of a single text (or, if it does, he implies, that reuse is incidental). Thus, he uses pastiche in a sense different from the way it has been employed by the scholars cited above.

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Table 6.4 Diverse forms and functions of reuse Type of Reuse

Form

Function

Centripetal Reuse

 Large chunks  Extended coverage

 Re-presentation of known topic ➔ New interpretation of known topic  Placing new composition in known discourse/genre  Expand or develop characters

Limited Reuse

 large chunks  NOT extensive

 Re-presentation implies possible interpretive function, but limited/secondary to main composition  NOT helpful in situating composition as a whole in a discourse/genre

Historical Résumé

 No large chunks  Extended (but selective) coverage  Wide range of generic settings/ locations

 Re-presentation ➔ New interpretation of known topic, but highly schematic  NOT helpful in situating whole composition in a discourse/genre

Pastiche

 No large chunks  No extended coverage

 No real re-presentation ➔ no detailed interpretation  Suited to new content/topics  Situates new composition as part of tradition (but in a broad sense)

Structural Reuse

 No large chunks  No extended coverage  No representation

 No detailed interpretation  Suited to new content  Situates new composition in a discourse through imitation of prototype

New Narratives associated with a Known Character

 No large chunks  No extended coverage  No representation

 No detailed interpretation  Suited to new content  Situates new composition, but through use of character rather than imitation of structure.  Expands/develops character

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and function. The family resemblance model notes that members of a group will all share one or more characteristics with at least one other member of the group, though there may be no single characteristic common to all members, and there may even be two individual group members who share nothing with one another. The group is constituted by networks of similarities rather than by checklists of features.55 Thus, we can appreciate how structural reuse or pastiche function similarly to other types of reuse, even if they appear nothing like the sustained rewriting that we tend to view as prototypical.56 Here, as I indicated earlier, I am not so interested in drawing firm boundaries or deciding what “counts” as reuse or rewriting and what does not. Obviously, techniques like structural imitation or creating a new narrative pertaining to a known character differ a great deal from centripetal reuse. We may want to label these techniques as modes of hypertextuality rather than reuse/rewriting, or we may take them as evidence for construing the category of reuse as sometimes extending beyond rewriting. The point is not the categories themselves but finding a way of balancing precise descriptions of the nature and function of reuse in specific situations (i.e., attention to difference) with awareness of formal and functional connections between all these different situations. In this sense, thinking in terms of a family resemblance concept of reuse can help overcome the pull exerted by prototypical cases. It allows us to acknowledge that types of reuse can differ drastically from one another – even perhaps go beyond the bounds of the category – yet still share fundamental commonalities.

55 56

Fishelov, Metaphors of Genre, 53–84. Fishelov and others warn that the “family resemblance” model of genre can quickly become useless if it is pushed too far, “implying that genres are totally open and undelineated categories” (Metaphors of Genre, 56). His solution is to combine the family resemblance model with prototype theory: though members of the genre/family are related through networks of similarities rather than lists of features, the network is not an undifferentiated web, but one with a nucleus or central cluster, represented by prototypical examples. While the point is well taken (thus, as I note below, perhaps we might not want to regard structural reuse or pseudepigraphy as types of rewriting per se), here I am particularly interested in the ways the family resemblance model can help us see beyond the prototypes.

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7 Second Temple Rewriting in Context Authority, Exegesis, and Scribal Culture

The previous chapters have shown the wide range of ways in which, and contexts in which, Second Temple scribes employed rewriting. Rather than constituting a particular textual genre or even a single “genre” of scribal activity, rewriting comprises a set of strategies for textual manipulation that could be deployed across text genres for many different purposes. What we have yet to consider explicitly is how all this impacts our broader picture of early Jewish literary and religious culture. If rewriting (in its many different forms) was essentially pervasive, how does that realization change the way we might best talk about Second Temple textual culture? Two particularly prominent elements of the discussion concerning rewriting need to be rethought in light of the evidence we have examined. First there is the question of authority. Studies on “Rewritten Bible” have consistently sought to imagine what kind of status rewritten texts would have had vis-à-vis the texts they rewrote, and rewriting itself has frequently been depicted as an authorizing strategy. But these discussions have centered on prototypical cases of reuse, where a late Second Temple composer rewrites a presumably already authoritative biblical text. We have seen, however, that there is evidence for rewriting of the texts of the Hebrew Bible before their authoritative status can be demonstrated – that is, as part of the compositional histories of those books (Chapter 3). Even more to the point, we have seen that revision and reuse occur in the textual histories of many texts that did not make it into the Hebrew Bible (Chapter 4). How might our conversations about the relationship between rewriting and authority need to be adjusted when rewriting is not so closely connected with the “biblical”? Second, and related, 196 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. , on , subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108769983.008

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rewriting is widely construed as a subspecies, or form of presentation, of scriptural exegesis. Again the argument is predicated upon the Rewritten Bible model: the notion that the texts being rewritten were already being regarded as sacred and/or authoritative, and therefore in need of interpretation. But the rewriting of texts that did not later become biblical, as well as the fact that some types of rewriting do not seem to have served directly “exegetical” purposes (Chapter 6), begs the question of the relationship between rewriting and exegesis. Moving to an even wider-angle lens, these issues are tied up with questions about the broader cultural context in which Second Temple scribes worked. How much continuity can we posit with ancient Near Eastern and earlier Israelite and Judahite textual practices? Or how closely is rewriting connected with discontinuities – with new historical and cultural realities, whether “internal” (stemming from the particular circumstances of the exile and subsequent colonization by foreign powers) or “external” (the broader Hellenistic culture of which Judeans of the late Second Temple period were a part)? How does early Jewish rewriting compare to modes of text production and reception attested in neighboring cultures? Consideration of all the interrelated issues attached to these questions – to say nothing of proposing answers to them all! – is not possible here. What I aim to do in this chapter is instead to lay the groundwork for future work by reflecting upon how a different understanding of rewriting might fit into ongoing conversations about Second Temple textual culture in its broader ancient context.

1 rewriting and authority Despite the ease with which scholars of early Judaism use terms like “scriptural” and “authoritative,” not enough attention has been given to what exactly is meant by these terms and how we might be able to decide which texts would have been regarded as such, and by whom, in the Second Temple period.1 Too often, the tendency has been to operate from the assumption that most or all of the books later included in the Hebrew Bible were already regarded as scripture in the late Second Temple period, and that other works may have claimed authority, but

1

Mladen Popović, “Introducing Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism,” in Popović, Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism, 1.

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this was never quite the same or as widely recognized as the authority of scriptural books. When criteria other than later canonical frameworks are sought, the elements of divine revelation and/or ancient origins are usually considered to be paramount for a text to have been regarded as scripture.2 Authoritative, when it is considered separately from scriptural, tends to have an element of normativity as related to practice or belief.3 But there have been very few attempts to imagine how these categories would have operated in early Judaism – to take seriously as possibly scriptural the full range of texts that make some kind of claim to divine revelation or antiquity, for instance, or to interrogate the status of texts that make no such claim.4 Were there really texts that were considered authoritative but not scriptural (that is, normative but not seen as ancient or revealed in some sense)? If so, for whom were they authoritative and how did they come to be regarded as such? What about the hundreds of fragmentary texts from Qumran whose authoritative or scriptural status is impossible to determine? As important as these questions are, answering them is not my main purpose here, in large part because we have evidence for rewriting of texts that make many different kinds of claims to authority (or none at all). In what follows, I do not make a strong distinction between scriptural and authoritative, nor do I claim to know exactly what it meant for a text to be regarded as authoritative by an individual or group in the Second Temple period. But many texts that employ rewriting demonstrably make claims to ancient origins or divine revelation, or otherwise locate themselves within existing traditions. Such claims involve issues of authority, if not exclusively so. Understanding the significance of these claims is key to our broader understanding of rewriting, as the amount of scholarly

2

3

4

See e.g. Popović, “Introducing,” 2; Eibert Tigchelaar, “Aramaic Texts from Qumran and the Authoritativeness of Hebrew Scriptures: Preliminary Observations,” in Popović, Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism, 161; Hanne von Weissenberg and Elisa Uusimäki, “Are There Sacred Texts at Qumran?,” in Feldman et al., Is There a Text in This Cave?, 21–41; earlier, see James VanderKam, “Authoritative Literature in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” DSD 5 (1998): 388; Eugene Ulrich, “From Literature to Scripture: Reflections on the Growth of a Text’s Authoritativeness,” DSD 10 (2003): 7–8. E.g., Ulrich, “Methodological Reflections,” 148–49; von Weissenberg and Uusimäki, “Sacred Texts at Qumran,” 32. On the former issue, see now especially Mroczek, Literary Imagination. For a briefer and more subtle statement, see VanderKam, “Authoritative Literature,” 400: “1 Enoch and Jubilees seem to represent a larger class of compositions [later he refers to them as ‘probably only two of many’] which one group or several accepted as having divine authority.”

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attention to them has indicated. We must keep in mind, however, how spotty our information really is when it comes to talking about the authority of particular texts in the late Second Temple period. Armed with these caveats, we can now turn to that scholarly conversation about rewriting and authority and see how it might be redirected in light of a broader concept of rewriting.

Reuse Much of the discussion of rewriting and questions of authority has surrounded what I have been calling reuse: rewriting in the context of a new composition. Insofar as prototypical Rewritten Bible texts constitute later interpretive reworkings of texts (for instance, the Pentateuch) that are generally acknowledged to have had scriptural status in the Second Temple period, they were sometimes assumed to be non-authoritative, at least compared to the scriptures they interpreted.5 This view, however, has long been somewhat of a minority position, as scholars quickly realized that at least some rewritten compositions either claimed a very high degree of authority for themselves (e.g., Jubilees, Temple Scroll) and/ or were granted considerable authority (Jubilees, 1–2 Chronicles). More significantly, scholars working on Rewritten Bible have regarded rewriting itself as, in part, an authorizing strategy – that is, rewriting (though it also has other goals) constitutes an attempt to claim authority for a new text by employing within it materials from an older text already recognized as prestigious.6 5

6

See e.g. Tov, “Rewritten Bible Compositions,” 334: “A biblical manuscript has an authoritative status . . . while a rewritten Bible composition does not constitute an authoritative biblical text”; see further p. 336, “We have three types of non-authoritative texts in mind” (one of which types is Rewritten Bible). For an earlier example, see M. Goshen-Gottstein’s reaction in Ha-Aretz (October 25, 1967) to Yigael Yadin’s preliminary lectures introducing the Temple Scroll: Goshen-Gottstein deemed it “inconceivable” that the author of TS “was of the opinion that this is a text of the Torah or that others would accept it from him” (cited according to Yadin, Temple Scroll, 1: 391). Specifically referring to the reuse of biblical texts in the Temple Scroll, see Gershon Brin, “‫המקרא במגילת המקדש‬,” Shnaton 4 (1980): 224; Levinson and Zahn, “Revelation Regained,” 308; Zahn, “New Voices,” 442–44. For reuse as an authorizing technique more broadly, see Najman, Seconding Sinai, 45; Brooke, “Between Authority and Canon,” 96; Anders Klostergaard Petersen, “Textual Fidelity, Elaboration, Supersession or Encroachment? Typological Reflections on the Phenomenon of Rewritten Scripture,” in Zsengellér, Rewritten Bible after Fifty Years, 26, 31. See also my comments in Zahn, “Rewritten Scripture,” 330.

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Much debate has surrounded this idea. One area of contention has been the so-called replacement issue: Though most would agree that rewritten texts borrow or take on some of the authority of the texts they rewrite, some go further to argue that rewritten texts were intended to usurp the authority and essentially take the place of their base texts, while others insist that the rewritten text was meant simply as a complement to the older text.7 On another level, the basic idea that rewriting per se actually constitutes an authorization technique has itself been challenged. John Collins in particular notes that rewritten texts like the Temple Scroll and Jubilees (as well as Deuteronomy) authorize themselves through direct claims to contain Sinaitic revelation, not through rewriting. The reuse of earlier texts, he argues, at most might bolster the rewritten texts’ authority claims by making them sound authentically Sinaitic, but it does not constitute an independent authority claim.8 Much sophisticated work has been done recently on various aspects of the relationship between rewriting and authority. Hindy Najman and, following her, Kipp Davis have advocated for construing rewriting (and the separate but related issue of pseudepigraphic attribution) not as a simple grab for authority but as “participation in a discourse”; an attempt to extend and renew existing authoritative forms.9 George Brooke has highlighted the reciprocity of the rewriting process, as an act that reinscribes the authority of the original but also appropriates some of that authority.10 Most recently, Anders Klostergaard Petersen has helpfully reminded us that rewritten texts need not all have had the same intentions toward their base texts: some appear to have been more interested in extending or complementing, while others seem to exhibit a more

7

8 9

10

Strong arguments for replacement are offered by Levinson, Deuteronomy, 152–55; Stackert, Rewriting the Torah, 218–24. Arguing that rewritten texts did not mean to replace but rather to complement the texts they rewrote are, e.g., Alexander, “Retelling the Old Testament,” 116–17; Brooke, “Rewritten Law, Prophets and Psalms,” 33; Najman, Seconding Sinai, 20–29, 44–50. Collins, “Changing Scripture,” 28, 36, 39. Najman, Seconding Sinai, 27–45; Davis, Apocryphon of Jeremiah, esp. 27–29. On the idea of “discourse,” in this sense, see further below. Brooke, “Between Authority and Canon,” esp. 93–98; “Hypertextuality,” 74. See also Michael Fishbane’s nuanced comments on the relationship between the contents of tradition (the traditum) and the process of that tradition’s transmission (the traditio): “the older traditum is dependent upon the traditio for its ongoing life. This matter is paradoxical, for while the traditio culturally revitalizes the traditum, and gives new strength to the original revelation, it also potentially undermines it.” (Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 15).

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subversive aim, seeking to displace or undermine their Vorlagen.11 Nevertheless, the entire conversation tends to presume, implicitly or explicitly, the Rewritten Bible model: that the texts being rewritten are highly authoritative and mostly stabilized works.12 More attention needs to be paid both to the pre-canonical situation – i.e., that the books later included in the Bible did not yet have the unique authority they would later possess – and to the evidence that many other texts, besides those later canonized, were subject to reuse. In one sense, the authority of the older, rewritten work will always remain relevant no matter what the scope of our evidence for reuse. As Brooke points out, no one bothers to reuse a text that is not seen as somehow worth engaging with.13 But the kind of literary authority, prestige, or even just popularity that would cause a work (or a smaller unit of text) to be reused in a new context is a far cry from scriptural authority in the strong sense.14 Thus, saying rewriting demonstrates the authority of the rewritten work is not really saying very much at all, other than that the text was seen as important or interesting enough (by someone) to merit inclusion in a new literary context. In a textual culture marked by writing-supported orality, any text that a group or individual had taken the time to write down or commit to memory and thus preserve for any length of time was likely “authoritative enough” to be (revised or)

11 12

13 14

Petersen, “Textual Fidelity,” 31–44. An exception is Ulrich’s chapter, “‘Pre-Scripture,’ Scripture (Rewritten), and ‘Rewritten Scripture’: The Borders of Scripture,” in Developmental Composition, 201–12. Here Ulrich stresses the ongoing, organic process of textual development from the earliest stages to the latest. Nevertheless, he does associate the emergence of Rewritten Scripture with the increasing scriptural status of biblical books, by suggesting that new Rewritten Scripture compositions gave scribes an outlet for the kinds of major changes no longer seen as appropriate within the sacred texts themselves (207, 212). “Between Authority and Canon,” 98. See VanderKam, “Authoritative Literature,” 389; Tigchelaar, “Aramaic Texts,” 162. Petersen’s otherwise very valuable reflections on Rewritten Scripture and authority do not sufficiently address this issue: on the one hand, he argues that the rewriting of authoritative/scriptural texts is a key element that distinguishes the phenomenon of Rewritten Scripture from “intertextuality” more generally (“Textual Fidelity,” 26–27); on the other hand, he allows that “Scripture” can be defined as any text with “cultural authority” (“Textual Fidelity,” 26n31). Given the wide spread of rewriting in Second Temple period texts, and the difficulty of assessing the authority of the texts that were rewritten, it seems problematic to define the phenomenon of Rewritten Scripture in terms of authority: we either construe “authority” broadly, in which case it becomes meaningless when applied to ancient literary texts, or we risk importing canonical perspectives into the Second Temple period.

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reused. And indeed, this is exactly what our evidence suggests – that rewriting was the rule, rather than the exception. If rewriting is so widespread that it cannot be seen to imply any special authority on the part of the base text (or conversely, to constitute any strong claim for the authority of the new text per se), this doesn’t mean there is no connection between rewriting and authority. We just need to think about it in a more nuanced way (and with the reappearance of our trusty genre toolbox!). Continuing to focus on reuse, it is first worth remembering the diversity in scope and function of reuse, which will imply differences in how reuse is related to questions of authority. As Petersen points out, even formally similar types of rewriting (say, extended narrative rewritings) can differ in their implied attitudes toward their base texts.15 We should expect even more differences between quite different types of rewriting: as we saw in Chapter 6, for example, the limited reuse in a new work of an existing individual hymn, prophecy, or series of laws will not impact the overall genre and perception of that work in the same way as the sustained rewriting of a narrative. Secondly, the caution by Collins that it is hard to see how rewriting itself constitutes an authority claim is well-taken, especially in light of other ways texts might gain prestige (e.g., pseudepigraphic attribution).16 Here Najman’s concept of “participating in a discourse,” alongside related ideas about genre, can help us form a more nuanced picture. Recent work on authorship and authority in ancient Judaism has suggested that modern concepts of a literary work as the product of a single author (who in turn is the source of the work’s authority) should not be applied to the literary landscape of Second Temple Judaism.17 Instead of a collection of discrete works attributed to particular authors, the “library” of early Judaism was more a series of interlocking streams of tradition, some of which came to be associated with prestigious individuals from the ancient past.18 These streams of tradition, or “discourses,” were carried

15

16

17 18

Petersen, “Textual Fidelity,” 33–42; Petersen makes his point by means of an analysis of the New Testament Gospels. He argues that Matthew’s reuse of Mark was rather “irenic,” in the sense that Matthew incorporates most of the material from Mark into a larger narrative context, while John’s use of the Synoptic tradition is marked by more polemic attempts to “deconstruct” and “completely annihilate . . . the structural logic” of the earlier texts (42). See further Florentino García Martínez, “Rethinking the Bible,” in Popović, Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism, 31. Najman, Seconding Sinai, 9–16; Mroczek, Literary Imagination, 53–63. See Mroczek, Literary Imagination, especially chapters 2 and 3.

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forward through continual study and elaboration in communal and pedagogical contexts, the results of which appear in written texts both in the form of updated/revised copies of existing works and as new works situated in the discourse.19 So, for example, we have clusters of works associated with Moses/Sinai (the Pentateuch in its various forms but also Jubilees, the Temple Scroll, the Apocryphon of Moses, and so on), Jeremiah (the multiple forms of the book of Jeremiah, 4QApocJer C, Letter of Jeremiah, 4 Baruch/Paraleipomena Jeremiou, etc.), Enoch (the five originally independent sections that make up 1 Enoch, the Book of Giants, etc.), but also clusters of texts related to the Community Rule, the diverse Hodayot collections, a group of War materials, and so forth. From this perspective, we can regard reuse as one way for a text to enter such discourses, which function analogously to genres.20 Participating in a genre involves making some kind of connection to existing members of the genre – in effect, “sounding like” that genre. What better way to do this than actually reworking paradigmatic examples of the discourse/genre?21 Neither the Temple Scroll nor Jubilees simply asserts that it was revealed on Sinai; rather, both open with a rewriting of the pentateuchal account of one of Moses’ sojourns on Mt Sinai (Exodus 34 and Exodus 24, respectively). In other words, we can see rewriting as one strategy whereby a new text associates itself with or is made to resemble an existing text. Such association, it should be stressed, is not only about authority. Participation in a discourse, Najman reminds us, does not function only as a way of “getting heard” or claiming ancient origins. It represents an engagement with the tradition – a desire to extend, validate/valorize, and update that tradition.22 Nevertheless, authority or legitimacy must be seen as an important component of the degree to which ancient Jews

19 20

21

22

See in particular Popović, “Prophet, Books and Texts,” 247–49. Najman considers her concept of Mosaic Discourse in generic terms in “The Idea of Biblical Genre.” Note Genette’s comment that genres are largely constituted through “mimetic hypertextuality”; Palimpests, 210. Hindy Najman, “How Should We Contextualize Pseudepigrapha? Imitation and Emulation in 4 Ezra,” in Past Renewals: Interpretative Authority, Renewed Revelation and the Quest for Perfection in Jewish Antiquity, JSJSup 53 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 236–42, explores the ways in which pseudepigraphic attribution functions as “a perfectionist practice of effacing oneself in order to emulate an exemplary figure” (242). Mroczek takes Najman’s work in a somewhat different direction, highlighting the degree to which pseudepigraphy functions to enrich the portrait and conception of a character; give the character “more things to say” (Literary Imagination, 63).

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innovated precisely through presenting innovation in the guise of the ancient or traditional. Participation in a recognized discourse was, among other things, the way individuals or communities made space for their own particular conceptions of tradition.23 While such practice appears to subvert the needs of the individual and the present to the force of the traditional past, it should not obscure the degree to which claims to represent the tradition – claims that one’s own presentation of tradition is the correct one – could be tendentious or even subversive.24 It should also be pointed out that rewriting was not the only way a new text could be joined to an existing discourse. In Chapter 6 I discussed a variety of strategies for doing this. Some of these, such as centripetal reuse and pastiche, do involve rewriting specific identifiable textual units. But others, such as pseudepigraphic attribution or structural reuse, employ different forms of hypertextuality – mimicking or extending existing works without actually redeploying their texts.

Revision The issue of authority has been less prominent in discussions of revision than it has been in scholarship on Rewritten Bible (reuse). Nevertheless, we can see in the history of scholarship that certain prominent ways of conceptualizing revision depend upon a particular construal of the authority of the text being revised. First, assumptions about authority and status often lay behind earlier discussions of pluriformity in the manuscripts and versions of biblical books, up to the late twentieth century. The characterization of editions that differed from MT as “vulgar,” “popular,” and so on is predicated upon an idea of an already-existing authoritative standard text, which of course MT is taken to represent.25 It is now widely recognized that such terms are inappropriate. Not only do they overlook the highly technical (that is, studied/ scholarly, as opposed to popular/“free”) nature of many of the revisions evident in biblical manuscripts, but there is no clear evidence for a “standard” version of any biblical text prior to the end of the Second 23

24

25

Najman, Seconding Sinai, 15, 45; Najman, “Torah of Moses: Pseudonymous Attributions in Second Temple Writings,” in Past Renewals, 73–86. See especially the remarks of Collins, “Changing Scripture,” 23; also, more broadly, Levinson, Legal Revision, 89–94. For an extremely helpful overview of the history and significance of such evaluations of the biblical versions, see Teeter, Scribal Laws, 210–39.

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Temple period.26 The assumption that such a standard existed earlier results from the influence of later canonical conceptions. The plentiful evidence for similar pluriformity in nonbiblical texts only highlights the degree to which anachronistic assumptions are involved: to my knowledge, no one has described revisions of the Community Rule or the War Scroll as “vulgar” or “popular.” Similar assumptions appear to underlie a second, quite different way of talking about revision: the idea that revision was a key means of innovation in the face of authoritative tradition. Bernard Levinson perhaps expresses this perspective most trenchantly, referring to a “rhetoric of concealment” by which later tradents obscured their reformulations of tradition by presenting them as consistent with that tradition.27 Other scholars, such as Michael Fishbane and Andrew Teeter, focus more on the hermeneutical aspects of revision as attempts to cope with a sacred text that yet is recognized as insufficient in some way. As Teeter puts it with reference to scribal revisions in the transmission history of biblical law, “these variants are thus indirect evidence of a belief in a divine text.”28 The basic insight from which the work of all three of these important scholars flows – the overlap between “Revelation” and “Interpretation” – constitutes an indispensable, paradigm-changing contribution to our understanding of early Judaism.29 Nevertheless, without proper framing this model can give the impression that something very like the later postcanonical situation already pertained in the Second Temple period: the books of the Hebrew Bible were being read as highly authoritative, sacred literature, which in turn required the concealment of the voice of the innovative interpreter (Levinson) or prompted a certain set of hermeneutical responses (Teeter). The construal of revision (and other forms of engagement) as a response to the scriptural authority of the texts squares poorly, though, with the evidence for revision in a whole range of texts, some of whose authoritative status cannot be determined. As was the case for reuse, the broad attestation for revision suggests that it was not

26

27 28

29

Teeter, Scribal Laws, 247–54; Ulrich, Developmental Composition, 20–24. On sporadic evidence for correction of one biblical manuscript toward another, see n. 79. Levinson, Legal Revision, 48–49; similarly, 90–91. Teeter, Scribal Laws, 201. See also Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 15, as well as the lucid analysis by Alex P. Jassen, Scripture and Law in the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 60–63. For the formulation, see Michael Fishbane, “From Scribalism to Rabbinism: Perspectives on the Emergence of Classical Judaism,” in The Garments of Torah: Essays in Biblical Hermeneutics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 78.

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reserved for extremely high-authority texts. Rather, revising texts in the course of copying them was more likely a normal, perhaps even everyday, aspect of early Jewish textual culture.

2 rewriting and exegesis We have already seen in the previous section the connection between authority and exegesis: the importance of both of these ideas in the scholarly conversation is a natural outcome of the tendency to discuss rewriting as something that happened to biblical books. The line of thinking, not always laid out explicitly, is that the authoritative texts prompt interpretive responses, which are then presented by means of rewriting – either in new Rewritten Bible compositions or inserted into the texts themselves by means of revision. Here I want to focus more specifically on this close association, often even identification, of rewriting with exegesis. As I have noted, from the beginning of the scholarly conversation, Rewritten Bible was formulated as essentially a species of biblical interpretation. To cite Vermes’ foundational formulation again, In order to anticipate questions, and solve problems in advance, the midrashist inserts haggadic developments into the biblical narrative – an exegetical process which is probably as ancient as scriptural interpretation itself.30

In other words, it was taken for granted that the point of rewriting was to interpret the biblical text.31 In subsequent decades, rewriting has often been portrayed as a primary mechanism for the interpretation of scripture prior to the rise of lemmatic commentary.32 In the field of text criticism, as earlier notions of variants as reflections of scribal incompetence or sloppiness have fallen away, the alterations made by scribes have increasingly been construed as exegetical in nature.33 In both areas, the connection 30 31

32

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Vermes, Scripture and Tradition, 95. For critique of the modern scholarly tendency to construe all Second Temple literary production in terms of its relationship to the Bible; that is, as “exegesis,” see Mroczek, Literary Imagination, 118–39. E.g., Steven D. Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and Its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991), 2; Moshe Bernstein, “Interpretation of Scriptures,” in Schiffman and VanderKam, Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 1: 379; Brooke, “Authority and Canon,” 95; Crawford, Rewriting Scripture, 14. Again, for the history, see Teeter, Scribal Laws, 208–45. Note his strong endorsement of the connection between exegesis and revision, a relationship he sees as predicated upon

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between rewriting and exegesis is so tight that “exegesis” is sometimes used as a synonym for rewriting.34 This idea, of rewriting as a type of biblical interpretation, requires interrogation from two separate angles. First, we could question whether rewriting is really a type of biblical interpretation (i.e., is the exclusive connection with biblical books warranted?). It will come as no surprise by now that I would answer that question in the negative. One factor that seems to lie in the background of this close connection between rewriting and exegesis is the commonly held idea that, after the exile, Judaism was increasingly characterized by a concern for scriptural interpretation. Rather than God’s will being manifest in older forms such as prophecy or temple ritual, communication with the divine was increasingly seen as accomplished through the study and interpretation of texts.35 This “textual turn” in postexilic Judaism is a significant phenomenon that will occupy us further below. But the concomitant assumption that the corpus of texts subject to such interpretation basically comprised the books later included in the Hebrew Bible is unwarranted. It fails to account for the fact that, as I demonstrated in Chapter 4, many other literary texts in this period seem to have been treated in the same basic range of ways. If rewriting was not limited to biblical texts, it is impossible to sustain the idea of rewriting as a type of biblical exegesis. But there is a second way in which the question needs to be examined: given that rewriting cannot be exclusively associated with biblical exegesis, is it valid to regard rewriting as inherently exegetical, as so many have done? After all, scholars tend not to talk about revision and reuse in non-biblical traditions (the Community Rule or the War Scroll, for example) as “exegesis.” Is that simply because we are not used to regarding those texts as the kinds of things that would be subject to exegesis? Or is there a real difference in the nature of the rewriting that goes on in texts later included in the Bible, as opposed to other texts?

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the scriptural authority of the texts: “It is precisely because of their scriptural quality that these texts are changed in the ways attested” (201). See the literature cited in Zahn, Rethinking Rewritten Scripture, 12–13. For example, Emanuel Tov writes, “A biblical manuscript has an authoritative status, even if the manuscript is replete with exegetical changes (additions, omissions) . . .. It is not the amount of exegesis or deviation from MT which counts.” (“Rewritten Bible Compositions,” 334; my emphasis). See especially James L. Kugel, “Early Interpretation: The Common Background of Late Forms of Biblical Exegesis,” in Early Biblical Interpretation, by James L. Kugel and Rowan A. Greer, LEC 3 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986), 17–19. For additional bibliography, see Teeter, Scribal Laws, 202–3.

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Again, the answer to this latter question is clearly “no.” Recall the evidence presented in Chapter 6 that some types of reuse (including reuse of texts that ended up in the Bible) do not seem particularly “exegetical” at all. Thus, if only a subset of rewriting is to be labeled exegetical, the dividing line cannot be the boundaries of the later Hebrew canon. In point of fact, there has not been much reflection on what exactly we mean by exegesis and when and why rewriting is characterized as exegesis. It seems to me that there are two competing factors at work. On the one hand, scholars have tended toward a lack of precision in the application of the label exegetical, such that real differences in function between different types of rewriting are not attended to. On the other hand, there is the methodological difficulty of drawing a firm line between “exegesis” and “not-exegesis,” and the real sense in which any type of interaction with an existing text can be appropriately construed as a form of interpretation. In Chapter 6 I pointed out a number of types of reuse (limited reuse, pastiche, historical résumé) that do not seem to have exegesis as their primary purpose, in the sense that they do not seem to imply a specific adjustment, correction, or reapplication of the meaning of the base text. From a somewhat broader angle, several scholars have recently challenged the emphasis on solving exegetical problems inherent in Vermes’s definition of Rewritten Bible: even a text like Jubilees, which certainly resolves many exegetical problems in its centripetal retelling of Genesis, should not be construed as constituted solely in response to such problems. It is a carefully crafted work with its own agenda, not simply a compendium of solutions to problems or gaps in its source texts.36 Although these observations suggest a certain, rather narrow definition of exegesis – i.e., response to or adjustment of textual meaning in a specific base text – and then argue that certain kinds of rewriting are not exegetical in that narrow sense, they begin to address a broader desideratum, namely a more comprehensive attempt to categorize and compare the formal and functional characteristics of documented cases of rewriting. That is, more could be done to capture the variety of functions revision and reuse could serve, and to correlate the appearance of certain kinds of rewriting with the genres or corpora in which they appear. The issue is not simply whether a given change is exegetical or not (however 36

See Najman and Tigchelaar, “Unity after Fragmentation,” 496; with regard to the Temple Scroll compare also Zahn, “New Voices,” 446–52; on the Genesis Apocryphon see Bernstein, “Genesis Apocryphon and the Aramaic Targumim,” 283–85.

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that is defined), but how the meaning of the base text is transformed, what purpose(s) the change serves, and what analogues exist in other texts. As we continue to move toward such a comprehensive view, we will be able to speak with more nuance about types of rewriting that seem more and less exegetical in terms of their goals and function. For instance, a theologically motivated insertion such as we find in LXX Exod 24:10 (“they saw the place where the God of Israel stood”) obviously seeks to adjust the meaning of the text it rewrites, while the examples of pastiche noted by Tooman and others use snippets of older texts as the building blocks of new ones, without direct implications for the meaning of the older, reused text.37 But despite the results of Chapter 6, I am hesitant to suggest that we should seek to draw a firm line between categories of rewriting that we deem exegetical in function and those that seem to serve other, non-exegetical purposes. There are two reasons for this. First of all, even if we can identify certain changes that clearly serve exegetical functions, in the sense that they respond directly to some perceived gap or problem in the text, and others that clearly do not function exegetically in this narrow sense, there is a vast middle ground. Perception of the exegetical weight of a given change often involves a large measure of subjectivity: is a minor grammatical correction, for example, a simple scribal edit (perhaps even an automatic or semiconscious one) or is it a deliberate exegetical decision meant to make sure the sacred text meets the standards of perfection that are placed upon it?38 On the other end of the spectrum, does a large addition indicate that the scribe found a convenient place to include a body of material that originated independently of that textual context, or does it reflect an exegetical conclusion that the earlier form of the text was incomplete and required expansion? Though scholars have often tried to distinguish between exegetical and ideological or theological motivations for particular changes, this distinction is impossible to maintain in practice: exegetical and theological/ideological concerns are often inextricable.39 For all of

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For the Exod 24:10 example, see Chapter 5. On exegesis (including rewriting) as a response to certain assumptions about the perfection and relevance of the text, see Kugel’s classic formulation of “Four Assumptions”; Traditions of the Bible, 14–19; also Samely, Interpretation of Speech, 171–72; Levinson and Zahn, “Revelation Regained,” 306–8; Ben-Dov, “Early Texts of the Torah,” 214. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible, 21; Teeter, “Exegetical Function,” 401–2. Similarly, Samely (Interpretation of Speech, 169) has highlighted the extent to which “gaps” and other “problems” with the text are themselves a matter of interpretation: “We know

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these reasons, an attempt to classify all rewriting as either exegetical or not seems doomed to failure. Secondly, though, there is the question of whether a narrow definition of exegesis is really appropriate. I think it is important to point out, as I have done, that certain forms of rewriting do not engage the meaning of the rewritten text as intensely or directly as others. But this does not mean they are not exegetical in a broad sense. Moshe Bernstein reminds us that “all rewriting is commentary, and the methodology of selection, rearrangement, supplementation, and omission in the process of rewriting is a form of commentary.”40 Thus, from a broader hermeneutical perspective, all rewriting is by its very nature interpretive. Just as we saw in Chapter 5 that translation is always an act of interpretation, every instance in which a scribe takes up a text and renders it in a new way involves engagement with the meaning of the text. Even the reuse of a short excerpt of an existing text in a new context (say the inclusion of a preexisting psalm in a narrative context, as in 1 Chronicles 16; or the deployment of Nah 3:8–10 in 4QApocJer C) transforms the meaning of both the smaller unit of text that is transferred and (insofar as the new context might now be recalled when the older text is read) the entire text from which the unit was taken. By the same token, a major reworking of an existing text (say, 1QS as a whole in comparison to the shorter versions preserved in some 4Q copies) cannot but constitute a response to the existing text that at once acknowledges its worth and its shortcomings.41 Recalling the oral-performative contexts in which texts were produced and used in the Second Temple period sheds light on this issue from another angle. The production of new texts is rooted in the study of older texts – the ingestion of large chunks of the existing tradition.42 As Brooke observes, writing (all writing but rewriting in particular) is rooted in reading.43 The active reading of and interpretive engagement with

40 41

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what the targumists perceived as gaps in the text only because we see them filled – some of them in agreement with our own understanding of a passage, some of them not.” Bernstein, “Interpretation of Scriptures,” 379. Along the lines of the dynamics of rewriting suggested by Brooke, “Authority and Canon,” 95–98 and, more broadly for interpretation per se, by Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 15, and Michael A. Fishbane, “Revelation and Tradition: Aspects of Inner-Biblical Exegesis,” JBL 99 (1980): 360–61. For a hypothetical example of this process, see Newsom, “Deriving Negative Anthropology,” 271–72. Brooke, “Reading, Searching and Blessing,” 146; see also Popović, “Reading, Writing, and Memorizing,” 458.

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existing tradition provides the background out of which scribes – either as individuals or reflecting the results of group study – produced new extensions of the tradition. Insofar as it stems from acts of reading, then, I would argue that rewriting is indeed inherently exegetical.44 But we must recognize the wide variety of specific motivations this exegesis could include, and remain firmly aware that it operated (in one way or another) in all cases of rewriting. That is, we must sever the link between rewritingas-interpretation and the biblical texts as the privileged site of Second Temple interpretive activity. If all rewriting is interpretive, that holds just as much for rewritings of the Serekh ha-Yahad (or any other example we _ might happen to find) as it does for rewritings of Genesis.

3 the cultural context Based on the data of this book, rewriting thus emerges as an activity pertaining broadly to literary texts in Second Temple Judaism. It can be regarded as inherently interpretive insofar as it involves reading and engagement with specific earlier forms of the tradition. What does the pervasiveness of rewriting suggest about the larger literary landscape of Second Temple Judaism? How, in turn, might our understanding of this landscape help us contextualize the ongoing appeal of rewriting as a scribal technique throughout the Second Temple period?

44

In my experience, “exegesis” and “interpretation” are usually used interchangeably. It is tempting to propose that exegesis could be used in a narrow sense to refer to more direct reconstruals or reformulations of the meaning of a given text, while interpretation could designate a broader category encompassing exegesis but also including more general or indirect engagement with tradition. (A similar distinction is proposed by Pietersma, “Exegesis in the Septuagint,” 34–35, who argues that every translation involves interpretation, but reserves the term exegesis for cases where the translator “deliberately, systematically, and purposefully” changes the meaning of the source text. See also Sommer, Prophet Reads Scripture, 23 for a narrow construal of exegesis.) However, such an artificial restriction in meaning seems unhelpful, and leads back to the same problems discussed above: a binary distinction between exegesis and other types of (non-exegetical?) interpretation cannot be maintained when dealing with real examples. Rather than trying to label examples of rewriting as exegetical or not, it seems better to attempt in each case to describe more precisely the nature of the interaction with the meaning of the base text.

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First, I would like to return to the idea of a “textual turn,” or the “textualization of revelation,” beginning in the late pre-exilic period and continuing in exilic and postexilic Judaism: throughout this period, divine revelation and ancient wisdom were increasingly regarded as accessed through the written word (however much, in practice, texts continued to be engaged with in an oral/aural context). The evidence for such a change is extensive, from the developing focus on Torah as a specifically written collection, to prophetic images of ingesting scrolls (Ezek 2:8–3:3) or flying scrolls (Zech 5:1–4), to the thematization of writing and writtenness in works like Jubilees and 1 Enoch.45 But as Eva Mroczek emphasizes in her recent monograph, there is no evidence that this connection between writing and sacred knowledge pertained only to those texts that were later included in the canon. Instead, it seems that essentially all literary texts were seen as participating in a tradition of divinely revealed knowledge – a tradition believed to stretch back to hoary antiquity and only partially accessible to humans at any given point in history.46 By virtue of being part of this tradition, any particular text merited study and scrutiny, according to which it might be reused or revised as circumstances warranted. In this conception, the hermeneutical background of rewriting lies not in the special status of a narrow subset of Israel’s written traditions (i.e., “scripture,” understood primarily as the books that would end up in the Bible), but in a more general attitude toward prestigious texts. It makes a certain heuristic sense to imagine this entire body of tradition as scripture, but in the root sense of “what is written” – such that all prestigious traditions committed to writing and

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See e.g., Kugel, “Early Interpretation,” 18–22; Fishbane, “From Scribalism to Rabbinism”; Teeter, Scribal Laws, 201–3; Seth L. Sanders, From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Culture and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon, TSAJ 167 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 103–27; Hindy Najman, “Interpretation as Primordial Writing: Jubilees and Its Authority Conferring Strategies,” JSJ 30 (1999): 379–410. For the preexilic roots of this shift, see Najman, “The Symbolic Significance of Writing in Ancient Judaism,” in Past Renewals, 3–38; Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 221–27; Joachim Schaper, “‘Scriptural Turn’ und Monotheismus: Überlegungen zu einer (nicht ganz) neuen These,” in Die Textualisierung der Religion, ed. Joachim Schaper, FAT 62 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 275–91. Mroczek, Literary Imagination, e.g., 49, 103–6, 154–55.

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memory and transmitted over time would be scripture, and thus would demand engagement, preservation but also renewal.47 This way of imagining the Second Temple literary landscape is an attempt to take seriously the lack of evidence for a sharp distinction in that period between books that later ended up in the Hebrew Bible (scripture, in the traditional sense) and those that did not. It does not mean that no distinctions were made at all – that all texts or all streams of tradition were equally important to all members of the Second Temple literary elite. The model of a broad and relatively undifferentiated literary tradition does not preclude the idea that certain texts (the Pentateuch, to give an obvious example) were more popular, or seen as more central and/ or more authoritative, than others.48 It also allows for the likelihood of debate over what works authentically represented the tradition or over the relative centrality or marginality of certain streams of tradition. The Serekh texts, for instance, would have been less likely regarded as authentic representatives of tradition by Jews not connected with the yahad. In _ other words, the particular set of texts that would have been actively read, studied, and transmitted likely varied from group to group – some texts (again, the Pentateuch) likely had a core role for many groups, while others had more limited reach. But in whatever contexts a given text was being studied and copied, there is scant evidence that that text was treated differently from others based on its perceived status. In terms of rewriting, it should perhaps be highlighted at this point that texts were certainly treated in a variety of different ways, as previous chapters have shown. Some of that variety conceivably could involve issues of authority.49 But I would submit that, on the whole, it has less to do with the perceived status or authority of the texts (anything being read and transmitted was already regarded as authoritative in some sense) than with the varying literary genres of the texts themselves as well as the goals of the scribe undertaking the rewriting. We have already seen that the kinds of activities undertaken by a rewriter depend on what type of rewriting a scribe is engaged in (revision vs. reuse; translation vs. same-

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Here “scripture” is used in a sense approaching other formulations such as “longduration” texts (Carr, Writing on the Tablet, 19); “classics” (van der Toorn, Scribal Culture, e.g., 57); or even simply “literary texts” (Milstein, Tracking the Master Scribe, 1–11 et passim). On the centrality of the Pentateuch in the Second Temple period, see Jassen, Scripture and Law, 50–55. See Chapter 4, n. 90.

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language revision; pastiche vs. sustained reuse of a single text; limited vs. extensive reuse, etc.). I have also noted how different genres (in the more traditional sense of literary genres) put different constraints upon or invite different types of rewriting. But we do not yet have clear evidence that the perceived authority or status of a certain (group of ) text(s) caused it or them to be subjected to different kinds of rewriting than other, ostensibly less authoritative texts.

Rewriting, Textual Authority, and the Scribal Persona in Judea and Surrounding Cultures The idea of the growing authority and sanctity of written texts helps to explain a literary imagination in which writtenness and the activity of writing played a key role. But it actually does not translate in obvious ways to a culture in which rewriting was pervasive. Given all the evidence for rewriting in the Second Temple period, it is clear that the turn toward textualized revelation could accommodate textual fluidity. And the fact that so many of the exegetical results of this “age of interpretation” are embedded in rewritten texts might lead us to believe that the prominence of rewriting in early Judaism in fact is directly related to the “textual turn.”50 But positing a causal relationship between these two phenomena is actually more difficult than it might seem. The main issue is the ample evidence that rewriting – i.e., substantive revision of existing texts and creation of new ones through reuse of older materials – predated the textual turn we have been talking about. The evidence does not come primarily from ancient Israel, given that signs of an increased focus on writing and writtenness appear already in a range of likely pre-exilic texts.51 For example, Deuteronomy, with its thematization of text and writing, is a key player in this textualization of revelation.52 This means that even Deuteronomy’s arguably pre-exilic reworking of the Covenant Code likely took place in a scribal culture where revelation was already coming to be conceived of textually.53 50

51 52 53

Compare Campbell’s comments about the tendency among scholars working on Rewritten Bible to assume a causal connection between a text’s scriptural/canonical status and the fact that it was rewritten; “Rewritten Bible: A Terminological Reassessment,” 75. For the term “age of interpretation,” see Kugel, Traditions of the Bible, 2. See especially Najman, “Symbolic Significance of Writing,” 5. Schaper, “Scriptural Turn,” 279–85. On Deuteronomy’s reuse of the Covenant Code, see especially Levinson, Deuteronomy.

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Earlier cases of rewriting of Israelite traditions simply cannot be reliably detected given our evidence. However, comparative evidence much more clearly demonstrates the ancient origins of rewriting. Mesopotamia provides a rich corpus of literary texts, some of which are attested in multiple forms dating from throughout the course of the second millennium BCE, long before Israel came on the scene.54 That reconfiguration of earlier traditions was a common practice among Mesopotamian scribes implies that Israelite and Judean scribes might have been familiar with it from earliest times.55 In the absence of any concrete evidence, though, it might be best not to speculate. The important point is that parallel forms of rewriting are attested in neighboring cultures long before any textual turn in Israel; the points of continuity between ancient Mesopotamian rewritings and what we see in later/postexilic Hebrew texts suggest that rewriting was a long-known set of scribal techniques whose prominence in Second Temple Judaism was not directly caused by the increasing textualization of revelation.56 The Mesopotamian evidence in fact demonstrates this point in another way, showing that, phenomenologically, rewriting should not necessarily be connected with conceptions of revelation in textual terms. As Karel van der Toorn and others have noted, Mesopotamian culture underwent its

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For a helpful recent overview, with bibliography, see Milstein, Tracking the Master Scribe, 1–58. I do not mean to imply a simple equivalence or continuation between the scribal culture(s) of ancient Mesopotamia and those of ancient Israel/Judah; for warnings against overgeneralizing in this regard, see Sanders, From Adapa to Enoch, 4–6; Seth L. Sanders, “Introduction to How to Build a Sacred Text in the Ancient Near East,” JANER 15 (2015): 113–20. On the other hand, there are many signs of cultural contact between Mesopotamia and the Levant in the late Bronze and Iron Ages (particularly the neo-Assyrian period), including some clear cases of adaptation of Mesopotamian texts/ genres. For an overview of such cases, with important methodological reflections, see Sanders, From Adapa to Enoch, 162–88. For additional evidence and literature concerning contacts in the neo-Assyrian period, see Bernard M. Levinson, “Is the Covenant Code an Exilic Composition? A Response to John Van Seters,” in “The Right Chorale”: Studies in Biblical Law and Interpretation, FAT 54 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 303–5; Bernard M. Levinson and Jeffrey Stackert, “Between the Covenant Code and Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty: Deuteronomy 13 and the Composition of Deuteronomy,” JAJ 3 (2012): 132. See also William M. Schniedewind, “Scripturalization in Ancient Judah,” in Schmidt, Contextualizing Israel's Sacred Writings, 306. The evidence from Israel’s other powerful neighbor, Egypt, is much scantier given the shorter “shelf life” of papyrus than the clay used as writing material in Mesopotamia. But the evidence we do have confirms the general picture of ongoing fluidity in the transmission of culturally important texts; see Carr, Writing on the Tablet, 77–79.

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own textual turn, in the sense that revealed knowledge was increasingly located in texts, rather than in the person of highly trained experts.57 The new emphasis on texts as “repositories of reliable knowledge” is accompanied by a new interest in authors and authorship, and a concern to attribute classic texts either to the gods themselves or to ancient scribes and sages. The beginnings of this shift may date to the late second millennium BCE, and it reached its height by the neo-Assyrian period.58 It parallels the move seen in exilic and postexilic Israel not only in the concern with authorship and writing, but in the rise of hermeneutics. With texts increasingly regarded as privileged loci of divine wisdom, Mesopotamian scholars showed more and more interest in interpretive issues such as ironing out textual discrepancies or difficulties, explicating the situations to which certain texts (especially omen collections) applied, and making connections or drawing analogies between various parts of the corpus.59 But strikingly, the textual turn in Mesopotamia was accompanied by a turn away from rewriting. The increased emphasis on the texts as sites of revelation (as seen by their attribution to gods or ancient sages) seems to have involved an increased concern with textual standardization – a loss of willingness on the part of scribes to intervene directly in prestigious texts or to create new literary texts by redeploying old ones.60 Instead, new genres developed, most notably the genre of commentary.61 Commentaries became the sites where the hermeneutical questions raised by careful study of prestigious texts were addressed. 57

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Niek Veldhuis, “Mesopotamian Canons,” in Homer, the Bible, and Beyond: Literary and Religious Canons in the Ancient World, ed. Margalit Finkelberg and Guy G. Stroumsa (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 9–28, contrasts the attitudes of the second millennium, when “knowledge was located in the heads of schoolmasters, not in collections of tablets,” with those of the first millennium, in which “knowledge and wisdom are entrapped in texts talking to texts about texts and the intricacies of writing” (28). Van der Toorn, Scribal Culture, 206–21. See especially Veldhuis, “Mesopotamian Canons,” 20–21; Uri Gabbay, “Akkadian Commentaries from Ancient Mesopotamia and Their Relation to Early Hebrew Exegesis,” DSD 19 (2012): 287–93. Gabbay gives examples in which commentaries clarify the meaning or application of a particular word or phrase by means of analogy with another text; in one case, the meaning of a rare word in an omen text is explained by reference to the occurrence of the same word in the Epic of Gilgamesh (290). See in particular Veldhuis, “Mesopotamian Canons,” 27–28; Carr, Writing on the Tablet, 34–39. Gabbay, “Akkadian Commentaries,” 270. Gabbay makes the important point that the interests of ancient Mesopotamian scholars do not necessarily match our own: the vast majority of commentaries were written on omen series and other divinatory literature; very few pertain to literary texts (275–78).

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Thus, in first-millennium Mesopotamia, textual variation in great classics like Gilgamesh, Etana, and prestigious omen series like Enūma Anu Enlil is greatly reduced, and innovation and interpretation no longer get deposited within the textual history of the compositions themselves.62 In other words, there is an inverse correlation in Mesopotamian culture between the prevalence of rewriting and ideas about the sanctity of writing and the revelatory nature of written texts. In Mesopotamia, the textual turn leads to standardization and away from rewriting. This suggests that there is likely no direct correlation between rewriting and the textual turn in ancient Judah/Judea, either. But more than this, the Mesopotamian evidence makes the case of postexilic Judea all the more interesting. If in a neighboring culture, increasing conceptualization of revelation in textual terms seems to have led to a shift away from rewriting in the transmission of prestigious traditions, why did the same not occur in Judea (at least until much later)? Especially interesting is the degree to which hermeneutical concerns similar to those of Mesopotamian commentators – glossing unfamiliar words, clarifying or specifying the application of certain oracles, resolving contradictions or connecting one portion of the corpus to another – continue to take written form in Judean contexts not through commentary but through rewriting at least until the end of the Second Temple period. Though we do have lemmatic commentary attested for the first time in the Qumran pesharim, the pesharim have a very specific set of interpretive concerns.63 Only with the rise of rabbinic discourse, it seems, is the

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For an overview of the development of Enūma Anu Enlil and its commentaries and related material, see Ulla Koch-Westenholz, Mesopotamian Astrology, CNI Publications 19 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 1995), 74–87. It should be stressed that the shift away from rewriting does not mean the end of textual fluidity per se: concerns about standardization and authorship seem to have been applied only to prestigious cultural texts. Other types of text seem to have continued to circulate in highly divergent forms. Alan Lenzi, for example, has documented the fluid text-forms of ritual texts dating to the seventh century BCE; see Alan Lenzi, “Scribal Revision and Textual Variation in Akkadian Šuila-Prayers: Two Case Studies in Ritual Adaptation,” in Person and Rezetko, Empirical Models Challenging Biblical Criticism, 63–108. On which see, e.g., Alex P. Jassen, “The Pesharim and the Rise of Commentary in Early Jewish Scriptural Interpretation,” DSD 19 (2012): 363–98; Daniel A. Machiela, “The Qumran Pesharim as Biblical Commentaries: Historical Context and Lines of Development,” DSD 19 (2012): 313–62; Maren R. Niehoff, “Commentary Culture in the Land of Israel from an Alexandrian Perspective,” DSD 19 (2012): 442–63.

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commentary genre used in Hebrew/Aramaic-speaking Jewish contexts to address a wider range of hermeneutical issues.64 Thus, it appears that rewriting more likely continued to flourish in postexilic Judea despite the textualization of revelation, rather than because of it. Or to put it in a more neutral way, something in the scribal culture of the Second Temple period must have allowed rewriting to retain its place where similar shifts in a neighboring culture had led toward textual standardization. In a way this is the same thing that has intrigued scholars about rewriting all along: how can a text be seen as sacred and divinely authored, yet at the same time be subject to change by successive generations of tradents? The Mesopotamian evidence shows that this is not purely a modern hang-up. We will never be able to get into the minds of ancient scribes to answer this question definitively – nor should we assume that all scribes would have had the same attitude! But some clues can be gleaned from the ways in which Second Temple period writers talked about scribes and about texts. We can return here to the picture of the early Jewish “literary imagination” that I sketched out earlier, leaning on Eva Mroczek’s recent work. If Second Temple scribes were responsible for transmitting a broad corpus of ancient traditions believed ultimately to have divine origins, it is clear that many scribes viewed themselves as active participants in the process of instantiating these traditions. Why exactly scribes had such a self-conception is, of course, unclear. Perhaps scribal self-understanding was not heavily theorized: maybe intervention into and development of existing texts was simply institutionally expected of a fully trained scribe; it went with the job – and persisted even as the texts scribes were called on to transmit were seen more and more as the locus of revelation. The writing-supported oral-performative textual culture of early Judaism would speak in favor of such an idea: scribes participated in textual communities marked by ongoing active reading and application of 64

There is earlier Jewish commentary literature in Greek: the writings of Philo, of course, but also fragments of works from the second century BCE by Demetrius and Aristobulus, now preserved only in Eusebius. On these, see Maren R. Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 38–74. Niehoff argues elsewhere that rabbinic commentary “seems to have developed as a result of active engagement with Hellenistic culture”; “Commentary Culture,” 445. Whether Alexandrian commentary culture likewise influenced the pesharim is disputed; see the literature cited in Jassen, “Pesharim”; and more recently, vigorously defending the relevance of Alexandrian commentary, Pieter B. Hartog, Pesher and Hypomnema: A Comparison of Two Commentary Traditions from the Hellenistic-Roman Period, STDJ 121 (Leiden: Brill, 2017).

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existing traditions. Much of what a scribe included in a rewritten text would surely have stemmed, directly or indirectly, from such communal activities. As such, scribes may have seen themselves simply as updating the (written) tradition in light of its ongoing unfolding in nonwritten contexts. On the other hand, there is also evidence that some composers of early Jewish texts might have seen themselves as doing more than simply reflecting the will of the community. As Mroczek, Seth Sanders, Samuel Thomas, and others have pointed out, some people clearly did theorize the role and status of the scribe, imagining ancient figures such as Enoch, Moses, Ezra, and David as scribes.65 The ancient heroes who received and transmitted divine knowledge to Israel were transformed in Second Temple literature precisely into scribal heroes; in this sense, they served as ideal exemplars for actual scribes. In this model, scribes’ ability, or duty, to contribute actively to ancient, divine knowledge is the result of a sort of sense of scribal inspiration – a sense that properly trained scribes might identify with scribal heroes to such an extent that they could transcend the usual barriers and access divine knowledge just as their exemplars had.66 Such ideas could be connected to prayer and other liturgical practices, not just scribal training narrowly conceived. For instance, Newman discusses the model of scribal inspiration promoted by Ben Sira, according to which daily prayer becomes the vehicle for disciplining the mind and body to become a site of revelation.67 She finds similar connections between prayer, inspiration, and text production in the depiction of Daniel in Daniel 9 and of the authoritative speaker in the Hodayot.68 I think, however, that another aspect of the Second Temple literary imagination that Mroczek sketches might provide an alternative (or at least complementary) view of how scribes may have conceptualized their work of rewriting. She notes that the tradition, the “imagined sacred 65

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Eva Mroczek, “Moses, David and Scribal Revelation: Preservation and Renewal in Second Temple Jewish Textual Traditions,” in The Significance of Sinai: Traditions about Sinai and Divine Revelation in Judaism and Christianity, ed. George J. Brooke, Hindy Najman, and Loren T. Stuckenbruck, TBN 12 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 91–115; Samuel I. Thomas, “Eternal Writing and Immortal Writers: On the Non-Death of the Scribe in Early Judaism,” in Mason et al., A Teacher for All Generations, vol. 2, 573–88; Mroczek, Literary Imagination, 85; Sanders, From Adapa to Enoch, 150. Mroczek, “Moses, David and Scribal Revelation,” 115; Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth, 24–25. For the ritual identification in Mesopotamia of the sage with ancient, semidivine exemplars, see Sanders, From Adapa to Enoch, 71–101. 68 Newman, Before the Bible, 25–26. Newman, Before the Bible, 73, 126.

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library” of early Judaism, was conceived of as limitless, at least in terms of the human ability to access or comprehend it all. The image that emerges from the Book of Jubilees (one of the texts that most explicitly thematizes writing and writtenness) is that “God has been talking to Israel – in writing – forever.”69 Jubilees also develops the idea of the heavenly tablets; that is, that the divine knowledge communicated to humans has an actual exemplar in heaven.70 In this scenario, any performance of a traditional text, or any particular physical text copied by a scribe, can represent no more than a tiny extract of an inexhaustible whole, and it would have been understood that later scribes would continue the work of transmitting sacred knowledge; works were not understood as “complete” but as ongoing “scribal projects.”71 The idea of the heavenly origins of writing and, more specifically, the notion of heavenly exemplars intersects in an interesting way with another recent proposal for understanding Second Temple scribal activities, specifically exegetical revision of biblical laws. Andrew Teeter proposes that the scribal practice of embedding “facilitating” readings (that is, changes that clarified textual meaning) in manuscript copies of the Pentateuch was enabled by the simultaneous existence of “precise,” conservative copies – such that the tradition was at the same time carefully preserved and exegetically renewed. “The recognized and continuous existence of a relatively exact manuscript tradition somewhere (or even the very idea of such) might actually have enabled or encouraged the high degree of intervention of the facilitating approach.”72 Teeter’s elaboration of this hypothesis focuses on the actual physical existence of these “relatively exact” copies in the Second Temple manuscript record, such that exact and facilitating copies functioned side by side in a larger “textual polysystem.”73 To my mind, there are several difficulties with this approach in light of the textual data of the Second Temple period. To mention just one, nearly all early manuscripts of biblical books contain some variants – how is the boundary drawn between a “conservative” and a “facilitating” copy?74 But Teeter’s 69 70

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Mroczek, Literary Imagination, 155. See especially Teeter, “Torah, Wisdom, and the Composition of Rewritten Scripture,” 242–51. 72 Mroczek, Literary Imagination, 40–41, 103–10. Teeter, Scribal Laws, 257. For the term, see Teeter, Scribal Laws, 256, drawing on Fraade, “Locating Targum.” Another issue is the fact that, once a facilitating version of a text was produced, it must have been copied precisely many times (as, e.g., the pre-Samaritan version of the Pentateuch). This juxtaposition of precise copying with facilitating text-forms calls into

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comment that “even the very idea” of the existence of a precise copy could support the production of facilitating copies is highly suggestive in light of the notion of a vast heavenly repository of divine knowledge. Rather than revision and reuse being enabled by the physical presence of conservative/ non-interventionist copies of a work, what if it was the imagined existence of a heavenly exemplar that empowered scribes to continually revise and creatively transform existing traditions?75 If any human-produced copy represents only an incomplete (and potentially inaccurate) extract of the sum total of divine knowledge, scribes could have envisioned their work of rewriting as bringing the tradition more fully into conformity with the divine exemplar, or as reformulating or expanding it to include more of the divine knowledge believed to be accessible to humans. In other words, scribes perhaps did not worry as much about the preservation of earlier versions of the text as they did about continuing to unfold a practically inexhaustible store of divine wisdom. If the true locus of the text was heavenly, then scribal modifications or transformations of existing versions did not risk losing anything. If this speculative proposal is on the right track, it means that scribes participated in the continued development of tradition not primarily, or at least not only, because of their own inspiration, but because of the nature of the texts themselves, as embodying divine knowledge, but never exclusively or completely so. Obviously, though, these two options are not mutually exclusive – participation in the ongoing stream of tradition, the right and responsibility to continue to mediate divine wisdom to Israel, would at the very least have been predicated on appropriate scribal education and training (and what counted as “appropriate” likely varied

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question the emphasis the model places on the existence of “more archaic, conservative texts” (Teeter, Scribal Laws, 266) – it seems to conflate acts of copying, which could have been precise or facilitating (or in between?), with extant text-forms, each of which surely underwent multiple acts of copying, some precise and some facilitating. Positing a functional distinction between precise and facilitating copies also seems to overlook the presence of facilitating readings in all versions: if not in documented stages of the manuscript evidence, then as detected through literary analysis. Teeter notes the nearseamless continuity of late Second Temple revisions with earlier redactional activity (Scribal Laws, 266) – but then how do we imagine the selection of any given form of the text as the one that functioned as the basis for “precise” copies? Teeter in fact proposes that the idea of an exact copy could function the same way whether “understood primarily in physical/terrestrial terms, in ideal/celestial terms, or both” (Scribal Laws, 257). But he does not explore the implications of this suggestion.

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from one group to another).76 But we could also imagine a “stronger” sense of scribal inspiration at work as well, perhaps especially in certain genres of rewriting such as major reformulations of traditional material (as opposed to, say, new copies with limited revision). This could mean certain individuals might have been seen as more able to compose new, rewritten works, on the basis of their mastery of the tradition and/or their status within a given community.77 But it could also mean that certain scribal acts would require an individual to somehow access a higher-thanusual state of inspiration or identification with an inspired exemplar. All of this represents an admittedly speculative attempt to understand the data – the evidence for the prevalence and persistence of rewriting, in various forms – against the backdrop of what we think we know about the broader cultural context of Second Temple literary activity. The extent of rewriting is indisputable, but contextualizing it is more difficult, in light of evidence for continuity with much older textual cultures (the second-millennium evidence from Mesopotamia) and earlier stages of the composition of Israelite texts, but also evidence for the development of new attitudes toward texts and textuality (more textualized views of revelation). Older models of scripturalization, textual development, and rewriting struggle to account for this juxtaposition of the antiquity of rewriting with its use in the Second Temple period in service of a new, more hermeneutical mindset. They also tend to have a canonical bias, operating with certain assumptions about the goals and status of rewritten texts vis-à-vis their Vorlagen and overlooking the operation of the same basic dynamics of transmission in the textual histories of noncanonical and “sectarian” compositions as well as those that ended up in the Bible. Here I have turned instead to newer proposals for conceptualizing Second Temple scribal culture, which emphasize fluidity and change while recognizing the breadth of Israel’s sacred traditions. Adapting elements of these proposals allows us at least to imagine a couple of ways in which rewriting (in all its variety) might have continued to make sense to early Jewish scribes, even as the texts they were rewriting were increasingly seen as repositories of divine wisdom. 76

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See Justus T. Ghormley, “Inspired Scribes: The Formation of the Book of Jeremiah and the Vocation of Ancient Jewish Scribal Scholars” (PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 2015). On such possibilities, see Carr, Writing on the Tablet, 33–37; Milstein, Tracking the Master Scribe, 209–10; Newman, Before the Bible, 127–38. See also the comments of Hanna Tervanotko, “Reading God's Will? Function and Status of Oracle Interpreters in Ancient Jewish and Greek Texts,” DSD 24 (2017): 424–46.

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4 looking ahead: standardization, canonization, and rewriting It seems unfair to end this chapter without at least waving to the elephant in the room, the canonical shadow that hangs, fairly or not, over the study of the Second Temple period. For, of course, the textual fluidity and expansive view of the tradition that characterizes early Judaism in this period does not last. By the end of the first century CE, a single text-form, essentially identical to the consonants of the medieval MT, comes to dominate the manuscript record of biblical books. The rabbis assume not only a basically fixed text of scripture, but also a fixed canon. They develop new genres to engage with earlier authoritative texts; the “biblical” past is no longer seen as accessible through rewriting in the way that it was for Second Temple scribes.78 The processes by which these changes took place are definitively not the focus of this book. But in light of the previous discussion, it seems worth pausing for a moment to think about how movements and ideologies that initially could be subsumed within a culture of rewriting ultimately seem to have forced rewriting into other modes and genres. This way of framing the matter is important: neither revision nor reuse ended with the Second Temple period. But the forms of rewriting that are paradigmatic for the Second Temple period – revision of Hebrew-language manuscripts of scriptural books, and reuse of scriptural texts to create new works that also claimed to stem from the ancient past – did not persist. Though there is almost no evidence for the existence of a “standard” text form of books of the Hebrew Bible prior to 70 CE, there is some evidence that at least some scribes were starting to compare manuscripts and correct manuscripts in the direction of other copies.79 This movement has often been connected with the work of the Greek grammarians of Alexandria, who in the third and second centuries BCE worked to establish the “best” text of the Homeric epics and other Greek classics (though in the case of Homer it seems that not very many people paid attention to

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Jassen, Scripture and Law, 57–60; see also the section on targum in Chapter 5. Armin Lange, “‘They Confirmed the Reading’ (y. Ta‘an. 4.68a): The Textual Standardization of Jewish Scriptures in the Second Temple Period,” in From Qumran to Aleppo, ed. Armin Lange, Matthias Weigold, and József Zsengellér (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009), 29–80, with the caveats of Teeter, Scribal Laws, 250.

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them!).80 The grammarians’ text-critical activities, interestingly enough, were accompanied by the production of commentaries explaining the text.81 For these scholars, the goal was to recover the original, inspired words of Homer. Thus in the Greek world, just as in Mesopotamia, a rise in commentary culture was connected to moves toward textual stabilization.82 The parallel is suggestive – it seems that, ultimately, Greek ideas of authorship and textual authority – of a single “correct” version of the text, a version associated with the author to whom the text is ascribed – may have become dominant in Jewish contexts as well, supplanting earlier, more fluid models such as those discussed above.83 Whether for these reasons or combined with others, the rabbis construed the revelatory past, and indeed, written revelation per se, as uniquely preserved in the 24 books of the canon. Like the trope of the “end of prophecy,” this “closure of the canon” served to bolster the rabbis’ own claims: God’s will is no longer accessible directly, or via previously unknown “ancient” revelations, but only through the rabbis’ own (oral) discourse, which itself is legitimized as “Torah from Sinai.”84 In this context, adding to the store of ancient traditions via reuse, as we see in works like the Temple Scroll or Jubilees, is no longer possible. But to take this shift as an “end to rewriting” would be mistaken. For one thing, though the manuscript transmission of the books of the Hebrew Bible was now marked by an emphasis on precision, the transmission of other texts continued to accommodate substantial fluidity.

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See the important comments of John Van Seters, The Edited Bible: The Curious History of the “Editor” in Biblical Criticism (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 46–52. On the work of the Alexandrian grammarians, see especially Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria. On commentary as part of this work, see Francesca Schironi, “Greek Commentaries,” DSD 19 (2012): 399–441; Hartog, Pesher and Hypomnema, 109–35, 198–237. Van Seters stresses that, even though the emergence of the “vulgate” text of Homer seems to have occurred around the same time as the work of the Alexandrian grammarians, the vulgate text does not seem to have been the work of the grammarians themselves; Edited Bible, 48–49. Fraade points out that it is likely no coincidence that it is Philo of Alexandria, steeped in the textual scholarship of that city, that is “our most prolific early Jewish writer of biblical commentaries”; From Tradition to Commentary, 7. On the connections between rabbinic interpretation and the Alexandrian grammarians, see recently Niehoff, “Commentary Culture,” and the literature cited there. On the ideological significance of orality in rabbinic discourse, see Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth; also Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, “The Orality of Rabbinic Writing,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, ed. Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 38–57.

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This includes the transmission of rabbinic texts themselves, as well as books of the “Apocrypha” and “Pseudepigrapha” like Ben Sira, 2 Baruch, and others.85 Indeed, medievalists have demonstrated that scribal revision and reuse in the course of manuscript production appears to have remained commonplace until the advent of the printing press changed not only the mechanics of text production but also, as a result, the ways texts were conceptualized.86 Secondly, the prestigious texts now canonized in the Hebrew Bible did not cease to be rewritten, if in different ways than what we see in the revision and reuse of the Second Temple period. The genre of rabbinic midrash differs significantly from the genre(s) of prototypical Second Temple rewritings, but Steven Fraade has pointed out how, in propounding a new understanding of the biblical text, midrash effectively creates a rewritten version of scripture.87 Much more closely related generically to Second Temple examples is rabbinic targum. As discussed in Chapter 5, the formal and hermeneutical features of targum bear a very high degree of similarity to those of Second Temple revisions. But it is precisely the fact that the targumim are written in Aramaic, and exist in the presence of

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On the fluidity of manuscripts of rabbinic texts, see e.g. Peter Schäfer, “Research into Rabbinic Literature: An Attempt to Define the Status Quaestionis,” JJS 37 (1986): 139–52; Lieve Teugels, “Textual Criticism of Late Rabbinic Midrashim: The Example of Aggadat Bereshit,” in Recent Developments in Textual Criticism: New Testament, Other Early Christian and Jewish Literature, ed. Wim Weren and Dietrich-Alex Koch (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2003), 207–55; Philip Alexander, “Rabbinic Paratexts: The Case of Midrash Lamentations Rabbah,” in Alexander et al., In the Second Degree, 183–203. On Ben Sira, see Mroczek, Literary Imagination, 103–12; for a convenient overview of the diversity of the Hebrew manuscripts, see Pancratius C. Beentjes, The Book of Ben Sira in Hebrew, VTSup 68 (Leiden: Brill, 2006). On 2 Baruch, see Liv Ingeborg Lied, “Nachleben and Textual Identity: Variants and Variance in the Reception History of 2 Baruch,” in Fourth Ezra and Second Baruch: Reconstruction after the Fall, ed. Matthias Henze and Gabriele Boccaccini, JSJSup 164 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 403–28. Note especially the comments to this effect by John Dagenais, The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture: Glossing the Libro de Buen Amor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 15–17. On medieval manuscript culture, see also e.g. Tim William Machan, “Scribal Role, Authorial Intention, and Chaucer’s ‘Boece,’” The Chaucer Review 24 (1989): 150–62; Israel M. Ta-Shma, “The ‘Open’ Book in Medieval Hebrew Literature: The Problem of Authorized Editions,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 75 (1993): 17–24; Malachi Beit-Arié, “Publication and Reproduction of Literary Texts in Medieval Jewish Civilization: Jewish Scribality and Its Impact on the Texts Transmitted,” in Transmitting Jewish Traditions: Orality, Textuality, and Cultural Diffusion, ed. Yaakov Elman and Israel Gershoni (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 225–47. Steven D. Fraade, “Rewritten Bible and Rabbinic Midrash as Commentary,” in Current Trends in the Study of Midrash, ed. Carol Bakhos, JSJSup 106 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 59–78, esp. 63.

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a fixed, unchangeable (= “non-rewritten”) Hebrew text, that allows the targumists the freedom to rewrite biblical texts. Beyond the framework of rabbinic Judaism, biblical texts of course have continued to be rewritten in all manner of ways, down to the present day. Visual art, drama, literature, and other cultural forms – to say nothing of explicit commentary and other written genres – have all constituted means of retelling and reconfiguring scriptural texts for new contexts and new audiences. The connections between such retellings and the rewritings that form the subject of this project remain underexplored and deserve much more attention.88 Further study would have to highlight the various ways in which they differ in form, medium, authority, and implied relationship to the base text from Second Temple rewritings.89 But it would also indicate, I believe, a strong degree of continuity. Despite conforming more to post-canonization norms regarding the inviolability and primacy of the biblical texts, these rewritings arguably accomplish much of the same “work” as Second Temple rewritings: They provide new lenses by which the earlier texts are experienced and thus change for their audiences the meaning of those texts.

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For movements in this direction, see Antti Laato and Jacques van Ruiten, eds., Rewritten Bible Reconsidered: Proceedings of the Conference in Karkku, Finland August 24–26 2006 (Turku: Åbo Akademi; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2008); Anders Klostergaard Petersen, “The Riverrun of Rewriting Scripture: From Textual Cannibalism to Scriptural Completion,” JSJ 43 (2012): 485. Note also that Vermes not only includes the medieval Sefer ha-Yashar in his category of Rewritten Bible, but actually uses it as the basis for illustrating the nature of Rewritten Bible texts (Scripture and Tradition, 67–95). On the significance of the variety of ways rewritten texts can appropriate, extend, and/or challenge the authority of the texts they rewrite, see Petersen “Textual Fidelity,” 31–41.

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Conclusion

This project started with the observation that the extensive evidence we now have available for rewriting in Second Temple Judaism has for some time outstripped our ways of talking and thinking about the phenomenon. As the evidence for deliberate scribal alteration or redeployment of existing material in all kinds of texts and contexts has accumulated, the inadequacy of models developed in the first generations of Qumran scholarship has increasingly become apparent. Here I have tried to speed the emergence of new modes of thinking by highlighting the range of our evidence and the ways traditional categories have prevented us from making connections across that range of evidence. I have proposed at least a rudimentary new map of rewriting, both broader in the area it covers and different in the placement of the paths connecting its discrete points. In the sense that it began from a desire to find ways of talking about rewriting that better fit the evidence, this book is programmatic, seeking to advance a conversation rather than to pretend to have the final word. The data is so extensive and so complex that I found myself able to consider in depth only some of the issues that might have been judged relevant and to offer only a few of many possible examples. In that vein, this short conclusion will reflect on what I see as key next steps in that conversation.

Genre I have returned repeatedly to genre as a conceptual framework for developing language that can replace outdated, canonically inflected

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categories. Imagining revision and reuse (and their various subtypes) analogically as “genres” of rewriting provides a flexible tool for mapping similarities (connections, overlaps) as well as differences between various instances of rewriting. Thinking generically also encourages us to attend to function as one of the most significant elements for mapping instances of rewriting in relation to one another. Though function, as we saw, can be difficult to determine with any specificity for ancient texts, a functional approach invites us to consider explicitly not only what rewriting looks like but the work it appears to do in its literary context. Finally, I have drawn attention at several points to the variety of ways rewriting might interact with or influence the generic identity of the texts involved. From types of rewriting that seem particularly related to certain genres (for example, resequencing with psalms, or expanded speech in narratives), to the ways in which rewriting can help place a text in a certain genre or discourse (for example, through centripetal reuse or pastiche), genre appears to have a significant impact on what rewriting looks like from case to case. Many of my thoughts about genre, though, have been little more than suggestive. Now that we have a broader view of the range of relevant data, much more could be done to fill out the picture of different genres of rewriting – to collect and compare examples of particular types of rewriting, to correlate forms of rewriting with possible functions, and to further map points of contact and divergence as pertains to both form and function. The same could be done with the relationships between types/ genres of rewriting and the literary genre of the texts in which they occur: for example, which techniques do seem to correlate with specific genres (and if so, why and how?), and which appear across a variety of literary contexts? It should be stressed once again that, with all this talk of types and categories, the point is not classification as an end in itself, as if every example of rewriting (or the text in which it appears) could ultimately be filed in a particular box in a great filing system of rewriting, like the collections of bird “skins” in the ornithological sections of natural history museums. Genre is ultimately about classification in the sense of how we humans perceive likeness and difference. But as we have seen, these perceptions shift based on what we are looking at and what features we are paying attention to. If this is recognized, the fluidness of genre can be an asset to the analytical scholar: we can improve our understanding of textual phenomena by playing with the ways texts (or examples of rewriting) are grouped – to choose some arbitrary examples, one could

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group a set of texts or examples first according to, say, theme, but then according to how they appear to use their source text(s), and then again according to how they are voiced.1 Certain features will have played more important roles than others in determining how ancient audiences sorted texts into groups or types – that is, we must account for the fact that not all the features we perceive as potentially generically meaningful would have been felt as such by ancient communities. Nevertheless, productively engaging with the instability of genre, rather than viewing generic classification as a once-and-for-all immutable label, allows us better to map various kinds of relationships between groups of texts that we might otherwise have been ill inclined to discuss in the same breath.

Scribes and Social Setting Another especially suggestive aspect of genre theory is the emphasis it places on the implicit negotiation carried out between composer and audience: composers of texts are always interacting with the generic ideas current in their social context. Even if they are not consciously thinking of genre, composers are constantly making choices about how to structure and present their text. We saw in Chapter 5 how this idea of negotiation of norms and expectations has been extended by Descriptive Translation Studies to translators, and I suggested that it could equally be applied to scribes making same-language copies of existing texts. In other words, scribes, whether they were producing a new text, a same-language copy, or a translation, had to make an array of different kinds of decisions about their work. The choice to copy a text precisely or to introduce many changes, to translate with a higher degree of isomorphism or to render the text more fluid in the target language, to produce a new text by close reformulation of an existing one or via looser paraphrase – all of these are instances where scribes exercised agency. The idea of scribes as agents who made deliberate choices as to how to go about their work (and potentially made different decisions or worked in different kinds of ways at different times) could, I think, intersect with the evidence collected here for diversity in forms and functions of rewriting to suggest promising directions for further work on the culture of text

1

It is already possible to search according to some of these types of features in the Manchester/Durham Database (Samely et al., “Database for the Analysis of Anonymous and Pseudepigraphic Jewish Texts of Antiquity”).

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230

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production in Second Temple Judaism. If rewriting comprised an array of related techniques and forms that could be deployed for a range of purposes, that diversity has certain implications. Whether because of differences in training, social setting, status, or ideology, we should not expect that all scribes would have done the same kinds of things. But conversely, the autonomy implied in the image of scribes as skilled navigators of a range of generic systems and expectations means we should not be too quick to associate specific activities with specific types of scribes (for example, to see translators as different from same-language scribes or to see those who produced precise copies as different from more “interventionist” scribes). Rather, it seems to me we should be imagining scribes as individuals who in principle could and did work across various social and textual contexts. I believe there is potential here to develop these ideas in light of recent studies of the pedagogical, liturgical, and other communal contexts in which texts were read, studied, and produced in Second Temple Judaism. Scholars are beginning to propose specific connections between particular social scenarios and particular forms or modes of text production.2 Other recent work is attempting to refine our understanding of the intellectual and social ties that might bind together various collections of texts, such as the Aramaic materials preserved at Qumran.3 More detailed and fluid understandings of how existing texts were revised and reused, and for what purposes, might allow for increased integration of this “text-critical” data with other types of evidence. In other words, a more organic view of rewriting could contribute to a more organic view of Second Temple textual culture as a whole.

The Nature of Scripture in Early Judaism and Beyond I introduced this study by noting that we are in the process of a revolution in our understanding of the production and transmission of scripture in early Judaism. What I hope to have contributed to this revolution is clear and extensive evidence for a culture that thought about and interacted with texts, especially revealed texts, in ways strikingly different from those of later Jewish and Christian culture. As I suggested in Chapter 7, the thematization of writing and its connections to revelation as depicted

2 3

See especially Newman, Before the Bible; Newsom, “Deriving Negative Anthropology.” E.g., Machiela, “Compositional Setting”; Reed, “Writing Jewish Astronomy.”

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Conclusion

231

in numerous Second Temple works, as well as the many different kinds of claims to connection with revelation or revealed tradition found in the works discussed here, points to a culture where the corpus of literary tradition as a whole was regarded as in some sense (and in different ways) inspired.4 But the pervasive rewriting of that tradition, as documented here, implies a radically open and participatory model of revealed text, in comparison to what became the norm (in different ways) in both Judaism and Christianity. Obviously there are critical implications here for our understanding of the books that later became Jewish and Christian scripture. This study has further confirmed the role of rewriting in the very constitution of those texts. Perhaps more importantly, it has demonstrated that this rewriting, generally speaking, cannot be construed as a response to a unique status already possessed by this small group of texts: it was not something that happened only because these texts were especially important.5 The evidence indicates that texts later included in the Bible were revised, expanded, extended, and spun off just like other literary texts of the time. In other words, they were only a small part of a much broader textual tradition, all of which seems to have been treated in the same basic range of ways. While future work can and should bring nuance to this picture in terms of the ways individual texts or text-groups were treated, the starting point for study of texts that later became biblical should now be their place as individual members of a broader literary tradition, rather than the presumption of their central role and special status. Finally, we can consider the implications of this new view of early Jewish textual culture on an even broader level, namely our understanding of scripture as a phenomenon. Discussions of the phenomenology of scripture from a cross-cultural perspective have often highlighted the hegemony in scholarship of Jewish and Christian (especially Protestant Christian) concepts of scripture: as fixed, as written, as the ipsissima verba

4

5

As I noted in Chapter 7, I do not mean to imply that all texts were regarded as equally divine or authoritative to all groups, and claims to revealed status must have been contested. However, it makes more sense to make the starting point, as it were, a general concept that the tradition is divine in origin than to argue that it was primarily the texts later included in the Hebrew Bible that were seen as divine, and the claims made by other texts were somehow not serious or accepted only by a few. Once again, it is important to stress here that I am speaking of rewriting generally; as noted above, some types of rewriting and some instances of rewriting could be argued to represent direct responses to the particularly high status of certain texts. But rewriting per se cannot be subsumed to that model.

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232

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of the divine.6 While modern scholars of religion have noted that the basic dynamic of a sacred text in need of continual reapplication characterizes many different religious traditions, they have also stressed that these contexts do not always conform to the traditional Protestant model of scripture.7 Their attention to the outsized role of Christian theological concepts in the discipline of religious studies is to the point. But less attention has been paid to the ways in which Second Temple Jewish ideas of scripture likewise challenge the traditional model. The “open and participatory” nature of scripture in early Judaism (as I put it above) decenters what has been portrayed as the classic Jewish and Christian view of scripture, as fixed and immutable. In this sense, scholars of early Judaism, as we continue to fill in this new picture of Second Temple textual culture, have a real contribution to make to larger conversations across religious studies and the humanities. Rewriting in early Judaism, in all its variety, sheds new light on the cultural role of authoritative texts and of those who transmit them. It gives eloquent witness to “the human voice in divine revelation”8; to the dynamic interaction between the weight of the past and the needs of the present.

6

7

8

See in particular Kendall W. Folkert, “The ‘Canons’ of ‘Scripture’,” in Levering, Rethinking Scripture, 170–79. E.g., Graham, Beyond the Written Word, 1–8; Wilfred Cantwell Smith, What Is Scripture? A Comparative Approach (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992); and, with attention to the ways in which Cantwell Smith’s work gave insufficient attention to issues of race, politics, and power, Vincent L. Wimbush, “Introduction: TEXTtureS, Gestures, Power: Orientation to Radical Excavation,” in Wimbush, Theorizing Scriptures, 1–20. Quoting the title of Bernard M. Levinson, “The Human Voice in Divine Revelation: The Problem of Authority in Biblical Law,” in Innovation in Religious Traditions, ed. Michael A. Williams, Collett Cox, and Martin S. Jaffee, Religion and Society 31 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1992), 35–71. The revised version of Levinson’s essay concludes with a powerful statement of how the texts themselves, insofar as they embed what I would call revision and reuse, challenge the conventional idea of canon as fixed, closed, and unitary in its message, and demonstrate the relevance of biblical studies to the humanities; see Bernard M. Levinson, “You Must Not Add Anything to What I Command You: Paradoxes of Canon and Authorship in Ancient Israel,” Numen 50 (2003): 1–51.

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Index of Ancient Sources

Only references to specific textual loci (chapter/verse/manuscript) are included in this index. Ancient texts referred to in their entirety can be found in the Subject Index. 15:19, 26 15:23, 40 16:1-17, 82 16:7, 41 17:1, 26 17:9b-11, 25 21:18-21, 113 21:22, 113 21:23, 113 22:1, 113 22:6b, 26 22:11, 113 23:18, 150 25:5-10, 112 28:37, 188 28:48, 188

hebrew bible and second temple period texts Amos 8:11, 176 Baruch 1:1–3:8, 156 3:9–5:9, 156

1 Chronicles 16, 174, 210 16:39-40, 174 16:8-36, 83, 172 21, 119 2 Chronicles 16:11, 44 19, 192 32:32, 44

Daniel 3, 41, 156 9, 219 Deuteronomy 1-9, 82 4:28, 188 5, 13, 88 15:12-18, 87

1 Enoch 10-11, 102 85-90, 181 89:10-11, 182 91:11-17, 181 93:1-10, 181 Esther Addition B, 156 Addition E, 156 Exodus 1-11, 149 2:23, 188 7:14-20, 14 7:14, 86

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256 Exodus (cont.) 12:9, 41 15:20, 17 17:6, 151 20, 13, 88 21:2-11, 87 23:7, 123 23:14-17, 82 23:19, 16 24, 20, 24, 203 24:1, 146 24:9, 146 24:10, 147, 209 25-30, 93 34, 24, 203 34:11-26, 82 Ezekiel 2:8–3:3, 212 38-39, 187, 189 40-48, 25 Genesis 1-11, 96 2:21-24, 174 5-10, 164 5:22, 103 6-15, 22 12-15, 164 12:10-20, 23 13:16, 183 14-15, 23 14:1–15:4, 164 15:5, 183 15:6, 183 15:18, 183 16:12, 183 17:2, 183 17:5, 183 22:1-14, 21 22:18, 183 28:6, 17 Isaiah 1:8, 148 36-39, 82 48:21, 152 Jeremiah 10:3-11, 11, 40 11:11, 188 21:12, 188

Index of Ancient Sources 25:14-32:38, 11 25:18, 188 26:3, 188 33:14-26, 11 40:1, 176 42:2-3, 176 43:8, 176 46-51, 11 52, 82 Job 40:19, 154–55 41:23-25, 153–56 Joshua 24, 181, 185 24:2-3, 182 24:6-7a, 93 Jubilees 1, 105, 110 1:1, 108 1:9-10, 109 1:10, 108 1:12, 108 1:13, 108 1:14, 108 1:22, 108 1:29, 105 2, 105 2:1, 105 3, 174–76 3:10-11, 172 4:17-22, 103 5:1-12, 102 6:22, 44 10:16, 104 11-12, 20 11, 192 17:15–18:13, 21 18, 40 20-22, 20 23, 20, 110 23:21, 109 23:22, 108 25:15-22, 41 30:12, 44 Judges 6-9, 93 19-21, 93 1 Kings 5, 25 2 Kings

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Index of Ancient Sources 18-20, 82 24:18-25:30, 82 Leviticus 12:2-5, 172, 175 17:13, 40 19:16, 113 22:16, 123 22:28, 26 23, 25 24:1-2, 116 24:2, 17 25:39-46, 87 26:32, 188 26:34, 188 26:36, 188 26:38, 180 26:39, 188 26:41, 192 26:44, 172 Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (LAB) 32, 181, 185 40, 41 1 Maccabees 2, 186 2:52, 182 Nahum 3:8-10, 173, 177–80, 210 Nehemiah 9, 187 Numbers 27, 17 28, 25 36, 17 Psalms 18, 82 72:8, 183 96, 83 96:1-13, 172 104:26, 155 105, 83, 181, 185 105:1-15, 172 106, 83, 181, 185 106:1, 172 106:47-48, 172 1 Samuel 8:13, 52

11, 85–86 12, 181 2 Samuel 22, 82 24, 119 Sirach 44-50, 181 44:19-21, 182 Wisdom of Solomon 10, 181 Zechariah 5:1-4, 212 7:13, 188 9:10, 183

dead sea scrolls CD (Damascus Document) 2:16–3:12, 181, 185 2:16, 185 2:17–3 12, 185 7:19, 46 14:20-22, 125 16:3-4, 43 1QIsaa, 84, 148 1QapGen ar (Genesis Apocryphon) 0-17, 164 2-5, 22 2:1-11, 22 19-22, 164 19:14-21, 23 21:23–22:34, 23 22, 165 1QS (Community Rule), 210 1-4, 121 1, 187 5, 121, 131 5:1-3, 122 5:10, 123 5:14-15, 46 6:6-8, 31 6:24–7:25, 125 7:8, 125 7:14, 125 8:15, 121 8:16–9:11, 121 9:12, 121

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257

258

Index of Ancient Sources

1QS (Community Rule) (cont.) 9:26b-11:22, 121 1QM (War Scroll) 12, 127 16-17, 128 17, 131 19, 127 1QHa (Hodayota), 128–33 1-8, 131 7:12-20, 132 9, 131 11:6-19, 51 19:6–20:6, 132 19:25-29, 132 20:7, 132 25:34–27:2, 132 25:34–27:3, 132 1QHb (Hodayotb), 128 4QpaleoExodm, 13–14 4QNumb, 13 4QSama, 82, 86, 119 4QJera, 10 4QJerb, 10–11 4QJerc, 10 4QJerd, 10 4Q156 (4QtgLev), 158 4Q157 (4QtgJob), 158 4Q158 ([Reworked] Pentateuch A), 13 4Q216 (Jubileesa), 105–8 4Q217 (papJubileesb?) 1-2, 106 4Q227 (pseudo-Jubileesc?), 102–4 2 1-6, 102 4Q256 (4QSb), 121 9:8-10, 123 4Q258 (4QSd), 121 1:1-3, 122 1:7-9, 123 4Q259 (4QSe) 1:4, 125 1:13, 125 3:6, 121 4Q265 (Miscellaneous Rules) 4, 125 7, 175 4Q266 (4QDa) 10 ii, 125 4Q270 (4QDe) 7 i, 125 4Q319 (4QOtot), 121 4Q364 ([Reworked] Pentateuch B), 13

3 ii 1-8, 17 4Q365 ([Reworked] Pentateuch C), 115–19 6, 17, 41 23, 17, 116 23 9, 118 36, 17 4Q365a, 17 2, 116 3, 116 4Q385 (pseudo-Ezekiela), 45, 95 4Q385a (Apocryphon of Jeremiah Ca) 17 ii, 176–80 18 i, 176 18 ii, 176 4Q386 (pseudo-Ezekielb), 95 4Q387 (Apocryphon of Jeremiah Cb) 3 7-9, 176 4Q388, 95 4Q390, 107–10, 190 1 6-7, 108 1 8-10, 108 2 i 4-5, 109 2 i 8-9, 109 4Q391, 95 4Q427 (4QHa) 8, 131 4Q428 (4QHb), 131 4Q429 (4QHc), 131 4Q430 (4QHd), 131 4Q431 (4QHe), 131–32 4Q432 (4QpapHf ), 131 4Q491 (4QMa), 127 4Q491a 11 ii, 127–28 4Q492 (4QMb), 127 4Q493 (4QMc), 127 4Q524 (4QRT), 24, 111 1, 115 2, 115 6-13, 113 14, 113–14 15-20, 112 21-22, 112 25, 112 11QPsa, 133 11Q10 (11QtgJob), 158 11Q19 (Temple Scrolla), 24, 49, 97, 111 13-29, 24 23:03-4, 117 35:7, 115 38:9-15, 116

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Index of Ancient Sources 41, 116 50:17-20, 115 52:3-8, 26 52:11-12, 40 53:5-6, 40 54-56, 24 56:2-8, 25 57:15-16, 52

57:15-19, 50 57-59, 113, 187, 191 59:2-7, 188–89 59:17–60:6, 113 60-66, 24 64:6-13, 114 11Q20 (Temple Scrollb), 24, 97, 111 6:11-18, 117

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259

Subject Index

additions (editorial technique). See expansion allusion, 68, 141, 184, 190 identification of, 51, 187 apocalypse, 107, 176, 180, 185 Apocryphon of Jeremiah C, 45, 107, 173, 176, 192 Aramaic, 7, 22, 137–39, 158, 161–62, 166–67, 225, 230 as genre feature, 167 authority, 37, 68, 122–23, 133–35, 161, 189, 196–207, 213, 224, 226 of texts, 2, 8, 38, 42, 98, 213–14 authorship, 64, 202, 216–17, 224 Baruch, 2nd (= 2 Baruch), 225 Baruch, 4th (= 4 Baruch), 203 Beebee, Thomas O., 62–64 Ben Sira, 32, 59, 84, 182–86, 219, 225 Bernstein, Moshe, 23, 165, 210 blessing. See prayer Boyd-Taylor, Cameron, 71, 153–56 Breed, Brennan, 42 Brooke, George, 32, 39, 135, 192, 200–1, 210 canon, 2, 4, 38, 42–43, 77–78, 81, 84, 94, 96, 135, 208, 223–24, 232 canonization, 226 Carr, David, 30, 33, 42, 81, 87–88, 93, 128 Chronicles (books of ), 43–46, 52, 75–76, 78, 81–83, 92, 94, 171–76, 189 cognitive science, 9, 57, 65, 170

commentary, 47, 206, 210, 216–18, 224, 226 Community Rule/Serekh ha-Yahad (S), 37, _ 94–96, 99, 115, 120–26, 131, 203, 205, 207, 211, 213 copyists/copying. See scribes Covenant Code, 76, 82, 87, 214 Crawford, Sidnie White, 18, 39, 72, 77, 116 Damascus Document (D), 43, 47, 120, 124 Daniel additions to, 156–57 book of, 41–44, 83 figure of, 185 Davis, Kipp, 127–29, 176–79, 200 Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS), 141–44, 160, 163, 229 Deuteronomistic History (DtrH), 173 Deuteronomy, book of, 24, 45, 49, 65, 68, 76, 82, 87–88, 95, 100, 113–16, 192, 200, 214 Dimant, Devorah, 103, 177–79, 192 direction of dependence, 12, 81–83, 85–88, 96–97, 115, 155 discourse, 202–4 Mosaic, 67–68, 100, 189, 203 tied to a founder, 67, 192, 200 Eco, Umberto, 140–42 education, 30, 221 empirical models, 81, 88, 91 Enoch figure of, 96, 102–4, 164, 166, 185, 203, 219

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Subject Index first book of (= 1 Enoch), 20, 35, 96, 102–4, 192, 198, 203, 212 Enūma Anu Enlil, 217 errors, scribal, 33, 149 Esther, book of, 18 Esther, Greek, 43, 71, 83, 156 Etana Epic, 217 exegesis (see also interpretation) definition of, 208–10 rabbinic, 163 Exodus, book of, 13–14, 40–42, 68, 75, 78, 82, 84–85, 100–2, 104, 146 expansion (editorial technique), 15–16, 22–23, 26, 39–42, 49, 77–78, 83–85, 91, 102, 105, 122, 128, 145, 155–60, 164–65, 171, 192, 209 Ezekiel book of, 45, 94–95, 172, 189–90 traditions surrounding, 119 Ezra, 4th (= 4 Ezra), 192 Fishbane, Michael, 78–80, 84, 89, 200, 205 Fowler, Alastair, 60, 63, 72 Fraade, Steven, 160–62, 191, 225 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 137, 139 Genesis Apocryphon (GenAp), 7, 20–23, 74–76, 96, 100, 102, 139, 164, 168–71, 208 Genesis, book of, 22–23, 43, 69, 75, 78, 96, 103–4, 164–67, 174, 182–84, 208, 211 Genette, Gérard, 35–37, 193, 203 genre(s) as communication, 57, 61, 63 as concept, 6, 56, 135, 144, 169, 227 features of, 59, 63 flexibility of, 57–61, 229 functions of, 57, 64, 69, 71, 160, 228 scribal activity as, 6, 57, 71, 191, 196, 228 theories of, 56–57, 61–63, 66, 160, 193, 229 Gilgamesh, Epic of, 216–17 grammarians, Alexandrian, 223–24 Greek language, 4, 32, 156–57, 168, 176 translations, 7, 10, 43, 83–84, 138, 141, 160, 162 translators, 7, 10, 71, 148, 157 Gunkel, Hermann, 64

261

Hanneken, Todd, 107–11 harmonization, 39, 93, 151, 180 Hebrew Bible, 1, 9–10, 19, 24, 26, 35, 40, 48, 74, 78–80, 89, 99, 158, 163, 181, 192, 205, 207, 213, 223–25 Hempel, Charlotte, 31, 123–25 historical criticism, 54, 81, 89–93, 96 historical résumé, 181–82, 184–86, 193 Hodayot / Thanksgiving Hymns (H), 67–68, 97, 99, 120, 128–33, 135–36, 187, 203, 219 Holiness Code, 82, 87 Homer, 59, 223 hymns, 41, 67–68, 128, 185(see also prayer) hypertext, 6, 36–37, 192 imitation, 37, 193–95 innerbiblical exegesis, 6–7, 38, 78–81, 83–85, 95 Instruction, 4Q (Musar le-Mevin), 59 Instructions of Amenemope, 59 interlinearity (translation mode), 142–44, 161–63 interpretation, 8, 47, 205, 208, 211 as communal, 31–32, 126, 219 rewriting as, 35, 171 translation as, 137–41, 210 Isaiah book of, 142, 144 Jauss, Hans R., 221–22 Jeremiah book of, 10–13, 18, 39, 42–44, 77–78, 83, 94, 157, 180, 203 figure of, 176, 178–80 Letter of, 203 traditions surrounding, 203 Job, book of, 142, 144, 153–56, 163, 192 Joseph and Aseneth, 192 Josephus, 45–46, 86, 100 Jubilees, book of, 3, 17, 19–21, 24, 35, 39, 43–45, 49, 69, 74–78, 95–97, 99–111, 118–20, 134–36, 169–71, 174–76, 186, 190, 198–200, 203, 208, 212, 220, 224 Kaufman, Steven, 92 Kings, books of, 43–44, 75, 151, 156, 173 Kraft, Robert, 35, 75

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262

Subject Index

Lange, Armin, 35–37 law / legal texts, 20, 23–26, 45, 86–87, 91, 110, 115, 123, 135, 174–75, 187–92, 205, 220 Levinson, Bernard, 205–6, 232 Leviticus, book of, 40, 87, 163, 175 Machiela, Daniel, 166–67 Mark, Gospel of, 202 Masoretic Text (MT), 10, 27, 48–49, 80, 82–85, 96, 148, 204 Matthew, Gospel of, 202 memory, 30, 32–34, 83, 201, 213 Mesopotamia, 30, 90, 214–17, 219, 222, 224 methodology/method, 28–29, 39, 48, 53, 187 Metso, Sarianna, 122–24 midrash, 70, 161, 225 Milstein, Sara, 93 Mosaic discourse. See discourse Moses, Apocryphon of, 203 Mossop, Brian, 145–47 Mroczek, Eva, 42–43, 203, 212, 218–20 Najman, Hindy, 58, 67–68, 99–100, 171–72, 200, 202–4 narrative, 19, 45, 59, 91, 100–2, 134–36, 180, 185, 192, 202, 206, 228 Newman, Judith, 30, 32–33, 54, 219 Newsom, Carol, 32, 65, 67, 184–85 Numbers, book of, 82 omission (editorial technique), 12, 16, 26, 38–39, 42, 83, 145, 159, 171, 210 orality, 32–34, 46, 49, 201, 224 orthography, 39–40, 71, 132 paideia. See education parabiblical (texts), 3, 6, 35–36, 90, 95, 99, 119 parenesis, 185 paraphrase (editorial technique), 161, 163–64, 229 paratext, 6, 35–37 pastiche, 50, 110, 134, 186–90, 192–93, 195, 204, 207–9, 214, 228 Pentateuch, 13, 15–16, 24, 26, 40, 44, 48–49, 76–78, 91–92, 96, 111, 118–20, 135, 151, 153, 199, 203, 213, 220 textual fluidity of, 18, 48

pentateuchal theory, 91 pesharim, 46, 66, 217 Petersen, Anders Klostergaard, 200–2 poetry, 60, 185 Popović, Mladen, 31 prayer, 31–32, 41, 219(see also hymns) prophecy, 135, 179 ex eventu, 185 prototypes, 7–9, 65–66, 68, 169–73, 194–95 Proverbs, book of, 18, 59, 65, 142, 144 Psalms, book of, 68–69, 76–78, 83, 132–33, 136, 154–56 pseudepigraphy, 192–93, 195, 200, 202–3 Pseudo-Ezekiel, 45, 95, 172 Pseudo-Philo, 41, 75 Qumran biblical manuscripts, 148 community 3, 120 (see also yahad), _ scrolls from, 4, 11, 13, 32, 94, 198 quotation, 46–47, 123 rabbis/rabbinic literature, 160–62, 223–24 Rad, Gerhard von, 181 rearrangement (editorial technique), 10–12, 14–17, 26, 39, 77, 83, 103, 131–34, 136, 159, 165, 210 redaction, 89, 91 redaction criticism. See historical criticism replacement (of older text by a newer one), 43, 200 reuse, 6, 38, 67–69, 78–79 centripetal, 171–73, 176, 180, 184, 186, 189, 193, 195, 204, 228 extended, 134 limited, 46, 69, 173–74, 179–81, 184, 202, 208, 214 revelation, 20, 24, 135, 198, 205, 230 textualization of, 207, 212, 214–18, 222 revision, 6, 13, 38, 69–70, 78–79 translation as, 144–45, 167, 214 Reworked Pentateuch (RP), 16–19, 39, 41, 45, 76, 83, 85, 96, 116 rewriting as claim to authority, 68, 196, 199, 201–3 as generic feature, 57, 67, 135, 169, 189, 202, 214, 228 as interpretation, 7, 27, 96, 98, 133–34, 137, 139, 172, 206–11, 214 definition of, 3, 6, 37

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Subject Index Rewritten Bible, 3, 5, 27, 34–36, 40, 44, 48, 65, 74–79, 96, 98–99, 118–20, 170, 196, 208 as exegesis, 171, 197, 206–7 as genre, 56–57, 67, 75 definitions of, 18–19, 24, 75, 192, 226 problems with term, 7, 37–38, 67, 94–95 within canon, 75–76 Rewritten Scripture. See Rewritten Bible Samaritan Pentateuch (SP), 10, 13, 40, 83, 102, 220 Samely, Alexander, 64, 70, 159–61, 163 Samuel, books of, 43, 75, 82, 173 satire (genre), 60–62, 67 Schuller, Eileen, 131–32 Screnock, John, 145, 149 scribes, 3, 7–9, 29, 32–33, 98, 216 activities of, 16, 29, 32–33, 53, 69–70, 72, 91, 134, 149, 157, 206, 229–30 as copyists, 10, 54, 69, 72, 107, 111, 147–49, 206 as translators, 138, 147, 158, 229 attitudes of, 8, 42–44, 70, 218, 222 inspiration of, 218–22 intentions of, 51, 57 interventionist, 70, 149, 221, 230 Mesopotamian, 214–16 Samaritan, 13 social setting of, 72, 197, 211, 229–30 translators as, 168 scriptural status, 35, 79, 120, 198–99, 201 scripture (as concept/category), 2, 35, 213, 230–32 Segal, Michael, 44–45, 77–78, 95–96, 103–4, 118, 171 sequence. See rearrangement (editorial technique) Sommer, Benjamin, 51 source criticism. See historical criticism speech, direct, 45(see also speeches) speeches, 21, 41, 60, 87, 128, 185 standardization. See texts, standardization of Strugnell, John, 18, 178 targum(im), 7, 19, 70, 138–39, 158–66, 168, 225 Targum Neofiti, 159 Targum Onqelos, 159–60 Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, 159–60

263

Teeter, Andrew, 171, 205–6, 220–21 Temple Scroll (TS), 8, 24–26, 44, 48–50, 52–53, 96–97, 99–100, 110–19, 135, 170, 172, 189–90, 199, 224 terminology, 28–29, 34–39, 95, 107 text(ual) criticism, 3, 48, 75, 81, 85, 88, 96, 206 texts composition of, 1–2, 8, 27, 70, 89–90, 93–94, 119, 124, 134, 192, 197, 222, 230 fluidity/pluriformity of, 3, 26–27, 29, 32–34, 83–84, 116, 124, 133–34, 148–49, 204, 215, 217, 225 growth of/textual growth, 81, 105, 201 performance/recitation of, 32, 134, 210, 220 reception of, 8, 27, 43, 67, 98, 135, 197 setting of, 45, 77–78, 126, 160 standardization of, 163, 204, 216–18, 223 transmission of, 2, 27, 32, 42, 75–76, 90–93, 98–99, 105, 111, 119, 124, 126, 131, 134, 205, 215, 217, 222, 224–25, 230 voicing of, 44, 78, 160, 165, 172 textual communities, 31, 218 textual turn. See revelation, textualization of textuality, 1, 29, 34, 47, 54–55, 197, 222, 230 Tigchelaar, Eibert, 104–7, 171, 178–80 Tobit, book of, 17, 192 Tooman, William, 51–52, 187–91, 209 Toorn, Karel van der, 215 Tov, Emanuel, 18, 72, 77, 85, 116, 207 translation as rewriting, 7 functions of, 141, 144, 158, 160, 168 techniques of, 140–42, 144–46, 153, 167 translators, 7, 69, 140–42, 167, 229–30 Ulrich, Eugene, 27, 89, 93, 201 VanderKam, James C., 101, 104–5, 174 Vanonen, Hanna, 126–28 variant literary editions, 149(see also versions, manuscript) Venuti, Lawrence, 139–41, 146 Vermes, Geza, 18–19, 24, 47, 74–76, 101, 134, 171, 206, 208

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264

Subject Index

versions, manuscript, 9–10, 26, 43, 83, 90, 98, 148 War Scroll (M), 97, 99, 120, 126, 131, 135–36, 203, 205, 207 Williamson Jr., Robert, 65

wisdom literature, 59, 65, 185 Wright III, Benjamin, 65–66, 157 writing, 29, 31–34, 127, 210, 212–20, 230 yahad, 31, 99, 120–24, 135, 175, 213 _

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